drummer, Ellis, is the least like, though it has much of his air.  I need say nothing of the lump of fat(779) crowned with laurel on the altar.  As Townshend’s parts lie entirely in his pencil, his pen has no share in them; the labels are very dull, except the inscription on the altar, which I believe is his brother Charles’s.  This print, which has so diverted the town, has produced to-day a most bitter pamphlet against George Townshend, called The Art of Political Lying.  Indeed, it is strong.

The Duke, who has taken no English with him but Lord Albemarle, Lord Frederick Cavendish,(780) Lord George Lennox,(781) Colonel Keppel, Mr. West, and Colonel Carlton, all his own servants, was well persuaded to go by Stade; there were French parties laid to intercept him on the other road.  It might have saved him an unpleasant campaign.  We have no favourable events, but that Russia, who had neither men, money, nor magazines, is much softened, and halts her troops.  The Duke of Grafton(782) still languishes:  the Duke of Newcastle has so pestered him with political visits, that the physicians ordered him to be excluded:  yet he forced himself into the house.  The Duke’s Gentlemen would not admit him into the bedchamber, saying his grace was asleep.  Newcastle protested he would go in on tiptoe and only look at him-he rushed in, clattered his heels to waken him, and then fell upon the bed, kissing and hugging him.  Grafton waked.  “God! what’s here?” “Only I, my dear lord.”  Buss, buss, buss, buss!  “God! how can you be such a beast, to kiss such a creature as I am, all over plaisters! get along, get along!” and turned about and went to sleep.  Newcastle hurries home, tells the mad Duchess that the Duke of Grafton was certainly light-headed, for he had not known him, frightened her into fits, and then was forced to send for Dr. -Shaw-for this Lepidus are struggling Octavius and Anthony!(783)

I have received three letters from you, one of March 25th, one of the second of this month, inclosing that which had journeyed back to you unopened.  I wish it lay in my way to send you early news of the destination of fleets, but I rather avoid secrets than hunt them.  I must give you much the same answer with regard to Mr. Dick, whom I should be most glad to serve; but when I tell you that in the various revolutions of ministries I have seen, I have never asked a single favour for myself or any friend I have; that whatever friendships I have with the man, I avoid all connexions with the minister; that I abhor courts and levee-rooms and flattery; that I have done with all parties and only sit by and smile—­(you would weep)—­when I tell You all this, think what my interest must be!  I can better answer your desiring me to countenance your brother James, and telling me it will cost me nothing.  My God! if you don’t believe the affection I have for you, at least believe in the adoration I have for dear Gal.’s memory,- -that, alas! cannot now