adds to this benevolence is, that we cannot contribute to the subsistence of our own prisoners in France; they conceal where they keep them, and use them cruelly to make them enlist.  We abound in great charities:  the distress of war seems to heighten rather than diminish them.  There is a new one, not quite so certain of its answering, erected for those wretched women, called abroad les filles repenties.  I was there the other night, and fancied myself in a convent.

The Marquis of Buckingham and Earl Temple are to have the two vacant garters to-morrow.  Adieu!

Arlington Street, 6th.

I am this minute come to town, and find yours of Jan. 12.  Pray, my dear child, don’t compliment me any more upon my learning; there is nobody so superficial.  Except a little history, a little poetry, a little painting, and some divinity, I know nothing.  How should I?  I, who have always lived in the big busy world; who lie abed all the morning, calling it morning as long as you please; who sup in company; who have played at pharaoh half my life, and now at loo till two and three in the morning; who have always loved pleasure haunted auctions—­in short, who don’t know so much astronomy as would carry me to Knightsbridge, nor more physic than a physician, nor in short any thing that is called science.  If it were not that I lay up a little provision in summer, like the ant, I should be as ignorant as all the people I live with.  How I have laughed when some of the magazines have called me the learned gentleman!  Pray don’t be like the Magazines.

I see by your letter that you despair of peace; I almost do:  there is but a gruff sort of answer from the woman of’ Russia to-day in the papers; but how should there be peace?  If We are victorious, what is the King of Prussia?  Will the distress of France move the Queen of Hungary?  When we do make peace, how few will it content!  The war was made for America, but the peace will be made for Germany; and whatever geographers may pretend, Crown-point lies somewhere in Westphalia.  Again adieu!  I don’t like your rheumatism, and much less your plague.

(26) Prints of the palace of Caserta.

(27) Don Carlos, King of Naples, who succeeded his half-brother Ferdinand in the crown of Spain.  An interesting picture of the court of the King of the Two Sicilies at the time of his leaving Naples, will be found in the Chatham Correspondence, in a letter from Mr. Stanier Porten to Mr. Pitt.  See vol. ii. p. 31.-E.

(28) Thomas, only son of Thomas Pitt of boconnock, eldest brother of the famous William Pitt. [Afterwards Lord Camelford. (Gray, in a letter to Dr. Wharton, of the 23d of January, says, “Mr. Pitt (not the great, but the little one, my acquaintance) is setting out on his travels.  He goes with my Lord Kinnoul to Lisbon; then (by sea still) to Cates; then up the Guadalquiver to Seville and Cordova, and so perhaps to Toledo, but certainly to Grenada; and,