I am sorry for the Comte de la Marche, and much more sorry for the Duc de Gisors.(911) He was recommended to me when he was in England; I knew him much, and thought as well of him as all the world did.  He was graver, and with much more application to improve himself, than any young Frenchman of quality I ever saw.  How unfortunate Belleisle is, to have outlived his brother, his only son, and his hearing!  You will be charmed with an answer of Prince Ferdinand to our Princess Gouvernante of Holland.(912) She wrote by direction of the States to complain of his passing over the territories of the Republic.  He replied, “That he was sorry, though he had barely crossed over a very small corner of their dominions; and should not have trespassed even there, if he had had the same Dutch guides to conduct him that led the French army last year to Hanover.”

I congratulate ’you on your regale from the Northumberlands.  How seldom people think of all the trouble and expense they put you to—­I amongst the rest!  Apropos, if they are not bespoken, I will not trouble you for the case of drams.  Lord Hertford has given me some of his; the fashion is much on the decline, and never drinking any myself, these will last me long enough and considering that I scarce ever give you a commission, but somehow or other ends at your expense, (witness the medals you gave me of your own,) it is time for me to check my pen that asks so flippantly.  As I am not mercenary, I cannot bear to turn you to account; if I was, I should bear it very easily:  but it is ridiculous to profit of one’s friends, when one does not make friendships with that view.

Methinks you don’t make a Pope very fast.  The battle of Crevelt has restored him a little, or the head of our church was very declining.  He said the other day to Lady Coventry in the drawing-room, “Don’t look at me, I am a dismal figure; I have entirely lost one eye."Adieu!

(911) Only son of Marshal Belleisle; he was killed at the battle of Crevelt:  the Comte de la Marche was not.

(912) Anne, eldest daughter of George ii. and Princess Dowager of Orange.

434 Letter 274 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.  Strawberry Hill, July 21, 1758.

Your gazette, I know, has been a little idle; but we volunteer gazettes, like other volunteers, are not easily tied down to regularity and rules.  We think we have so much merit, that we think we have a right to some demerit too; and those who depend upon us, I mean us gazettes, are often disappointed, A common-foot newspaper may want our vivacity, but is ten times more useful.  Besides, I am not in town, and ten miles out of it is an hundred miles out of it for all the purposes of news .  You know, of course, that Lord George Sackville refused to go a-buccaneering again, as he called it; that my friend Lord Ancram, who loves a dram of any thing, from glory to brandy, is out of order; that just as Lord Panmure was going to take the command,@e missed