If you grow wise and ask me with a political face, whether St. Maloes is an object worth risking fourteen thousand of our best troops, an expense of fifty thousand pounds, and half of the purplest blood of England, I shall toss up my head with an air of heroism and contempt, and only tell you—­There! there is the Duke Of Marlborough in the heart of France; (for in the heroic dictionary the heart and the coast signify the same thing;) what would you have?  Did Harry V. or Edward iii mind whether it was a rich town or a fishing town, provided they did but take a town in France?  We are as great as ever we were in the most barbarous ages, and you are asking mercantile Questions with all the littleness of soul that attends the improvements in modern politics!  Well! my dear child, I smile, but I tremble-. and though it is pleasanter to tremble when one invades, than when one is invaded, I don’t like to be at the eve even of an Agincourt.  There are so many of my friends upon heroic ground, that I discern all their danger through all their laurels.  Captain Smith, aide-de-camp to Lord George Sackville, dated his letter to the Duke of Dorset, “from his Majesty’s dominions in France.”  Seriously, what a change is here!  His Majesty, since this time twelvemonth, had not only recovered his dominions in Germany, but is on the acquiring foot in France.  What heads, what no heads must they have in France!  Where are their Cardinals, their Saxes, their Belleisles?  Where are their fleets, their hosts, their arts, their subsidies?  Subsidies, indeed!  Where are ours? we pay none, or almost none, and are ten times greater than when we hired half Europe.  In short, the difference of our situation is miraculous; and if we can but keep from divisions at home, and the King of Prussia does not prosper too fast for us, we may put France and ourselves into situations to prevent them from being formidable to us for a long season.  Should the Prussian reduce too suddenly the Empress-Queen to beg and give him a secure peace, considering how deep a stake he still plays for, one could not well blame his accepting it—­and then we should still be to struggle with France.

But while I am politicising, I forget to tell you half the purport of my letter—­part indeed you will have heard; Prince Ferdinand’s passage of Rhine, the most material circumstance of which, in my opinion, is the discovery of the amazing weakness of the French in their army, discipline, councils, and conduct.  Yesterday, as If to amuse us agreeably till we hear again from St. Maloes, an express arrived of great conquests and captures which three of our ships have made on the river Gambia, to the destruction of the French trade and settlements there.  I don’t tell you the particulars, because I don’t know them, and because you see them in the gazette.  In one week we strike a medal with Georgius, Germanicus, Gallicus, Africanus.

Mr. M’Kinsy, brother of Lord Bute, has kissed hands for Turin; you remember him at Florence.  He is very well-bred, and you will find him an agreeable neighbour enough.