or as the best-bred Arabian mare, that ever neighed beneath Abou-al-eb-saba-bedin-lolo-ab-alnin!  But pray now, how does cet homme l`a, as the Princess used to call him, dare to tap the chapter of birth!  I thought he had not had a grandfather since the creation, that was not born within these twenty years!-But come, I must tell you news, big news! the treaty of commerce with Spain is arrived signed.  Nobody expected it would ever come, which I believe is the reason it is reckoned so good; for autrement one should not make the most favourable conjectures, as they don’t tell us how good it is.  In general, they say, the South Sea Company is to have one hundred thousand pounds in lieu of their annual ship; which, if it is not over and above the ninety-five thousand pounds that was allowed to be due to them, it appears to me only as if there were some halfpence remaining when the bill was paid, and the King of Spain had given them to the company to drink his health.  What does look well for the treaty is, that stocks rise to highwater mark; and what is to me as clear, is, that the exploded Don Benjamin(190) has repaired what the patriot Lord Sandwich had forgot, or not known to do at Aix-la-Chapelle.  I conclude Keene will now come over and enjoy the Sabbath of his toils.  He and Sir Charles are the plenipotentiaries in fashion.  Pray, brush up your Minyhood and figure too:  blow the coals between the Pope and the Venetians, till the Inquisition burns the latter, and they the Inquisition.  If you should happen to receive instructions on this head, don’t wait for St. George’s day before you present your memorial to the Senate, as they say Sir Harry Wotton was forced to do for St. James’s, when those aquatic republicans had quarrelled with Paul the Fifth, and James the First thought the best way in the world to broach a schism was by beginning it with a quibble.  I have had some Protestant hopes too of a civil war in France, between the King and his clergy:  but it is a dull age, and people don’t set about cutting one another’s throats with any spirit!  Robbing is the only thing that goes on with any vivacity, though my friend Mr. M’Lean is hanged.  The first Sunday after his condemnation, three thousand people went to see him; he fainted away twice with the heat of his cell.  You can’t conceive the ridiculous rage there is of going to Newgate; and the prints that are published of the malefactors, and the memoirs of their lives and deaths set forth with as much parade as—­as—­Marshal Turenne’s—­we have no General’s worth making a parallel.

The pasquinade was a very great one.(191) When I was desiring you to make speeches for me to Dr. Cocchi, I might as well have drawn a bill upon you too in Mr. Chute’s name:  for I am sure he will never write himself.  Indeed, at present he is in his brother’s purgatory, and then you will not wonder if he does nothing but pray to get Out of it.  I am glad you are getting into a villa:  my castle will, I believe, begin to rear its battlements next spring.  I have got an immense cargo of painted glass from Flanders:  indeed, several of the pieces are Flemish arms; but I call them the achievements of the old Counts of Strawberry.  Adieu!