You will be little disposed or curious to hear politics; yet it must import you always to know the situation of your country, and ’It never was less settled.  Mr. Pitt is not yet able to attend the House, therefore no inquiries are yet commenced.  The only thing like business has been the affair of preparing quarters for the Hessians, who are soon to depart; but the Tories have shown such attachment to Mr. Pitt on this occasion, that it is almost become a Whig point to detain them.  The breach is so much widened between Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, and the latter is so warm, that we must expect great violences.  The Duke of Newcastle’s party lies quiet; one of the others must join it.  The -new ministers have so little weight, that they seem determined at least not to part with their popularity:  the new Secretary of State(741) is to attack the other, lord Holderness, on a famous letter of his sent to the mayor of Maidstone, for releasing a Hanoverian soldier committed for theft.  You may judge what harmony there is!

Adieu, my dear Sir!  How much I pity you, and how much you ought to pity me!  Imitate your brother’s firmness of Mind, and bear his loss as well as you can.  You have too much merit not to be sensible of his, and then it will be impossible for you to be soon comforted.

(741) Mr. Pitt.

356 Letter 207
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, Dec. 23, 1756.

I know I can no more add to your concern than to my own, by giving you the last account of your dear brother, who put a period to our anxious suspense in the night between the 20th and 21st.  For the five last days he had little glimmerings of amendment, that gave hopes to some of his friends, terror to me, who dreaded his sensibility coming to Itself!  When I had given up his life, I could not bear the return of his tenderness!  Sure he had felt enough for his friends—­yet he would have been anxious for them if he had recovered his senses.  He has left your brothers Edward, James, and Foote,(742) his executors; to his daughters 7500 pounds a-piece, and the entail of his estate in succession—­to a name I beg we may never mention, 700 pounds a-year, 4000 pounds and his furniture, etc.  Your brother James, a very worthy man, though you never can have two Gals. desired me to give you this account—­’ how sad a return for the two letters I have received from you this week!  Be assured, my dear Sir, that nothing could have saved his life.  For your sake and my own I hurry from this dreadful subject-not for the amusement of’ either, or that I have any thing to tell you:  my letter shall be very short, for I am stabbing you with a dagger used on myself!

Mr. Pitt has not been able to return to Parliament for the gout, which has prevented our having one long day; we adjourn to-morrow for a fortnight; yet scarce to meet then for business, as a call of the House is not appointed till the 20th of January; very late indeed, were any inquiries probable:  this advantage I hope will be gained, that our new ministers will have a month’s time to think of their country.