The two first are but middling, and I am bound to think the last so, as it is my own.  Shebbear is a broken Jacobite physician, who has threatened to write himself into a place or the pillory:  he has Just published a bitter letter to the Duke of Newcastle, which occasioned the above two lines.

The French have seized in their own name the country of Bentheim, a purchase of the King’s, after having offered him the most insulting neutrality for Hanover, in the world; they proposed putting a garrison into the strongest Post(785) he has, with twenty other concessions.  We have rumours of the Prince of Bevern having beaten the Austrians considerably.  I believe, upon review, that this is a mighty indefinite letter; I would have waited for certainties, but not knowing how long that might be, I thought you would prefer this parenthesis of politics.

lord Northumberland’s great gallery is finished and opened; it is a sumptuous chamber, but might have been in a better taste.  He is wonderfully content with his pictures, and gave me leave to repeat it to you.  I rejoiced, as you had been the negotiator—­as you was not the painter, you will allow me not to be so profuse of my applause.  Indeed I have yet only seen them by candle-light.  Mengs’s School of Athens pleased me:  Pompeio’s two are black and hard; Mazucci’s Apollo, fade and without beauty; Costanza’s piece is abominable.  Adieu! till a ministry.

(785) Hamelen.

374 Letter 218
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, May 19, 1757.

We are not yet arrived at having a ministry, but we have had two or three alarms at one.  On Monday, the Duke of Devonshire, impatient for a plaything, took the chamberlain’s staff and key—­these were reckoned certain prognostics; but they were only symptoms Of his childishness.  Yesterday it was published that Mr. Pitt’s terms were so extravagant, that the Duke of Newcastle could not comply with them—­and would take the whole himself—­perhaps leave some little trifle for Mr. Fox—­to-day all is afloat again, and all negotiations to recommence.  Pitt’s demands were, that his grace should not meddle in the House of Commons, nor in the province of Secretary of State, but stick to the Treasury, and even there to be controlled by a majority of Mr. Pitt’s friends-they were certainly great terms, but he has been taught not to trust less.  But it is tautology to dwell on these variations; the inclosed(786 is an exact picture of our situation—­and is perhaps the only political paper ever written, in which no man of any party can dislike or deny a single fact.  I wrote it in an hour and a half, and you will perceive that it must be the effect of a single thought.

We had big letters yesterday of a total victory of the King of Prussia over the Austrians,(787) with their army dispersed and their general wounded and prisoner—­I don’t know how, but it is not confirmed yet.  You must excuse the brevity of my English letter, in consideration of my Chinese one.  Adieu! (786) Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese philosopher at London, to his friend Lien Chi at Pekin.