I am not surprised to find you still lamenting your dear brother but you are to blame, and perhaps I shall be so, for asking and giving any more accounts of his last hours.  Indeed, after the fatal Saturday, on which I told you I was prevented seeing him by his being occupied with his lawyer, he had scarce an interval of sense—­and no wonder!  His lawyer has since told me, that nothing ever equalled the horrid indecencies of your sister-in-law on that day.  Having yielded to the settlement for which he so earnestly begged, she was determined to make him purchase it, and in transports of passion and avarice, kept traversing his chamber from the lawyer to the bed, whispering her husband, and then telling the lawyer, who was drawing the will, “Sir, Mr. Mann says I am to have this, I am to have that!” The lawyer at last, offended to the greatest degree, said, “Madam, it is Mr. Mann’s will I am making, not yours!”—­but here let me break it off; I have told you all I know, and too much.  It was a very different sensation I felt, when your brother Ned told me that he had found seven thousand pounds in the stocks in your name.  As Mr. Chute and I know how little it is possible for you to lay up, we conclude that this sum is amassed for you by dear Gal.’s industry and kindness, and by a silent way of serving you, without a possibility of his wife or any one else calling it in question.

What a dreadful catastrophe is that of Richcourt’s family!  What lesson for human grandeur!  Florence, the scene of all his triumphs and haughtiness, is now the theatre of his misery and misfortunes!

After a fortnight of the greatest variety of opinions, Byng’s fate is still in suspense.  The court and the late ministry have been most bitter against him; the new admiralty most good-natured; the King would not pardon him.  They would not execute the sentence, as many lawyers are clear that it is not a legal one.(64) At last the council has referred it to the twelve judges to give their opinion:  if not a favourable one, he dies!  He has had many fortunate chances had the late admiralty continued, one knows how little any would have availed him.  Their bitterness will always be recorded against themselves:  it will be difficult to persuade posterity that all the shame of last summer was the fault of Byng!  Exact evidence of whose fault it was, I believe posterity will never have:  the long expected inquiries are begun, that is, some papers have been moved for, but so coldly, that it is plain George Townshend and the Tories are unwilling to push researches that must necessarily reunite Newcastle and Fox.  In the mean time, Mr. Pitt stays at home, and holds the House of Commons in commendam.  I do not augur very well of the ensuing summer; a detachment is going to America under a commander whom a child might outwit, or terrify with a pop-gun!  The confusions in France seem to thicken with our mismanagements:  we hear of a total change in the ministry there, and of the disgrace both of Machault and D’Argenson, the chiefs of the Parliamentary and Ecclesiastic factions.  That the King should be struck with the violence Of their parties, I don’t wonder:  it is said, that as he went to hold the lit de Justice, no mortal cried Vive le Roi! but one old woman, for which the mob knocked her down, and trampled her to death.