sure of receiving your letter this morning, so I shall write to
you to-day, and not to Lord C., and I am the more glad to do so,
because I think it but fair, as you have married him for better, for
worse, that you should divide my nonsense and importunity between
you. Je laisse courir ma plume, which would be abominable and
indiscreet, if I was not writing to one who is used to hear me say a
thousand things which he attributes to passion and perverseness, and
is not for that the less my friend. Then I like, when my mind and
heart are full, and I cannot open the budget before him, to
evaporate upon paper, which provokes no tart reply. I wish that we
were agreed upon every point of consideration in the Grand
Affair(237) which occupies the whole country, so naturally, but I am
afraid that we are not, yet he will not be angry with me. For when I
change my mind, or my rage is abated, it will be more from cool and
friendly advice from him than from anybody, and to make me, as I
have told him, quite reconciled to measures. I must, besides, seeing
they have not all the evil tendency which I expect, be persuaded
that he will be considered as he ought to be, and that they think
one person of character, as well as rank, is no disparagement to
their connection, but on the contrary will give some credit to it. I
shall say no more to you upon this matter.

The K. is so much in the same state he was, and there is so little
appearance of any immediate change, that I am not, for the present,
solicitous about it. There must be a new Government I see, and it
may be a short or a lasting one, for it will, or ought to depend
entirely upon his Majesty's state of mind. For my own part I am free
to confess, that if I only see his hat upon the Throne, and ready to
be put upon his head, when he can come and claim it, and nothing in
the intermediate time done to disgrace and fetter him, as in the
[year] 1782, I shall be satisfied. It is a sad time indeed, and if
the Arch(bishop)p pleases, I will call it by his affect(ted?)
phrase, an awful moment.

I pity the poor Queen, as you do, most excessively, and for her
sake, I hope that a due respect will be paid to the K., and while he
and she were grudged every luxury in the world, by those mean
wretches Burke, Gilbert,(238) and Lansdown, all kind of profusion is
not thought of to captivate his R(oyal) H(ighness).(239) In short, I
shall be glad, if his Majesty has lost his head, to hear that the P.
h