Your brother and I are uneasy about your situation:  when we are treated insolently at Leghorn, to what are we sunk!  Can Mr. Pitt or the King of Prussia find a panacea for all our disgraces?  Have you seen Voltaire’s epigram?

“Rivaux du Vainqueur de l’Euphrate,
L’Oncle,(738) et le Neveu;(739)
L’un fait la guerre en pirate,
L’autre en partie bleue.”

It is very insipid!  It Seems to me,(740) as if Uncle and Nephew could furnish a better epigram , unless their reconciliation deadens wit.  Besides, I don’t believe that the Uncle of these lines means at all to be like Alexander, who never was introduced more pompously for the pitiful end of supplying @ rhyme.

Is it true what we see in the gazettes, that the Pantheon is tumbled down?  Am not I a very Goth, who always thought it a dismal clumsy performance, and could never discover any beauty in a strange mass of light poured perpendicularly into a circle of obscurity?  Adieu!  I wish you may hope more with your elder brother than tremble with me!

(736) “The Speech from the throne, by its style and substance, appeared to be the work of the new speech-maker:  the Militia, which his Majesty had always turned into ridicule, being strongly recommended, the late administration censured, and the uncourtly addresses of the preceding summer receiving the highest commendations.”  Waldegrave, 88.-E.

(737) “The new Lord of the Admiralty came, as he told the Lords, out of a sick bed, at the hazard of his life, (indeed, he made a most sorrowful appearance,) to represent to their lordships the fatal consequences of the intended compliment:  he said, that the people of England would be offended even at the name of Hanover, or of foreign mercenaries, and added many other arguments, without mentioning the true reason of his disapprobation:  namely, the Duke of Devonshire’s having added this compliment without consulting him:  and, having finished his oration, went out of the House, with a thorough conviction that such weighty reasons must be quite unanswerable.”  Ibid. p. 89.-E.

((738) George ii.

(739) The King of Prussia.

(740) Mr. Walpole had had a quarrel with his uncle Horatio.

354 Letter 206
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, Dec. 16, 1756.

It will be easier for you, I fear, to guess, than for me to describe, what I have felt for these last six days!  Your dear brother is still alive; it is scarce possible he should be so when you receive this.  I wrote to you this day se’nnight, the day after I saw him last.  On that day and Friday I received favourable messages.  I went myself on Saturday, as I had promised him—­how shocked I was at seeing Your brother Ned and a lawyer come to the chaise:  the former told me that poor Gal. had desired the lawyer to settle his affairs, which were then in agitation:  you may imagine I did not choose to add the tender sensations of seeing