t have troubled you so soon if this alarm from Turin, and
the courier, &c., had not filled my head. My best compliments to
Lord and Lady Holland and my love to Charles and Harry.(58) Charles
is in my debt a letter; I shall be glad to hear from him. Crawfurd
desired me to make his (ex)cuses to you, that he has not answered
your last; he gains no ground; I think he is immaigri, et d'une
inquietude perpetuelle qui porte sur rien.

The Duke of N[ewcast]le(59) seems to have gained strength and life
since that manly resolution which he took last week of being no
longer a Minister of this country. Let what would happen, he has
given a conge to his friends to do what they will, and it shall not
be looked upon as desertion. That is undoubtedly the most capital
simpleton that ever the caprice of fortune placed in the high
offices which he filled, and for so long a time.

The last paragraph of this letter can scarcely belong to this date,
for the Duke of Newcastle was not in Chatham's Ministry, which was
formed on the fall of the first Rockingham Administration in July,
1766.

(46) Lord Clive had recently returned from India in bad health. He
lived, however, till 1774.

(47) Sisters of Lord Carlisle.

(48) Henry Frederick, younger brother of George III.; notorious for
his dissipation.

(49) Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon, wife of Alexander, fourth
Duke. She was a social leader of the Tory party, and a confidante of
Pitt. Horace Walpole called her "one of the empresses of fashion."

(50) Lady Almeria Carpenter was famous for her beauty. She was
lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Gloucester and mistress to the
Duke. "The Duchess remained indeed its nominal mistress, but Lady
Almeria constituted its ornament and its pride." (Wraxall, vol. v.
p. 201).

(51) John Russell, fourth Duke of Bedford (1710-71), died 1756. He
was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1762; he went as
Ambassador to Paris, where he negotiated the unpopular Treaty of
Paris. He was at the head of the place-seeking politicians called
the Bloomsbury Gang, from his town house in Bloomsbury Square; and
when, in 1767, his faction came into power, the Duke of Bedford,
who was worthy of better clients, made a feeble effort to arrive at
an understanding with Lord Rockingham about a common policy; but he
could not keep his followers for five minutes together off the
subject that was next their hearts. Rigby bade the two noblemen take
the Court Calendar and g