arned
canary-bird, and was, in particular, carried by force to the Princess of
Talmond,[1] the Queen's cousin, who lives in a charitable apartment in
the Luxembourg, and was sitting on a small bed hung with saints and
Sobieskis, in a corner of one of those vast chambers, by two blinking
tapers. I stumbled over a cat and a footstool in my journey to her
presence. She could not find a syllable to say to me, and the visit
ended with her begging a lap-dog. Thank the Lord! though this is the
first month, it is the last week of my reign; and I shall resign my
crown with great satisfaction to a _bouillie_ of chestnuts, which is
just invented, and whose annals will be illustrated by so many
indigestions, that Paris will not want anything else these three weeks.
I will enclose the fatal letter[2] after I have finished this enormous
one; to which I will only add, that nothing has interrupted my Sevigne
researches but the frost. The Abbe de Malesherbes has given me full
power to ransack Livry. I did not tell you, that by great accident, when
I thought on nothing less, I stumbled on an original picture of the
Comte de Grammont. Adieu! You are generally in London in March; I shall
be there by the end of it.[3]

[Footnote 1: The Princess of Talmond was born in Poland, and said to be
allied to the Queen, Marie Leczinska, with whom she came to France, and
there married a prince of the house of Bouillon.]

[Footnote 2: The letter from the King of Prussia to Rousseau.--WALPOLE.]

[Footnote 3: Gray, in reference to this letter, writes thus to Dr.
Wharton, on the 5th of March:--"Mr. Walpole writes me now and then a
long and lively letter from Paris, to which place he went the last
summer, with the gout upon him; sometimes in his limbs; often in his
stomach and head. He has got somehow well (not by means of the climate,
one would think) goes to all public places, sees all the best company,
and is very much in fashion. He says he sunk, like Queen Eleanor, at
Charing Cross, and has risen again at Paris. He returns again in April;
but his health is certainly in a deplorable state."--_Works by Mitford_,
vol. iv. p. 79.]

_SITUATION OF AFFAIRS IN ENGLAND--CARDINAL YORK--DEATH OF STANILAUS
LECZINSKI, EX-KING OF POLAND._

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

PARIS, _Feb._ 29, 1766.

I have received your letters very regularly, and though I have not sent
you nearly so many, yet I have not been wanting to our correspondence,
when I have had anything part