a very political
march: my Lord asked him whither he was going. Oh, said I, to Aix la
Chapelle.

You ask me about the marrying Princesses. I know not a tittle. Princess
Louisa seems to be going, her clothes are bought; but marrying our
daughters makes no conversation. For either of the other two, all
thoughts seem to be dropped of it. The Senate of Sweden design
themselves to choose a wife for their man of Lubeck.

The City, and our supreme governors, the mob, are very angry that there
is a troop of French players at Clifden. One of them was lately
impertinent to a countryman, who thrashed him. His Royal Highness sent
angrily to know the cause. The fellow replied, "he thought to have
pleased his Highness in beating one of them, who had tried to kill his
father and had wounded his brother." This was not easy to answer.

I delight in Prince Craon's exact intelligence! For his satisfaction, I
can tell him that numbers, even here, would believe any story full as
absurd as that of the King and my Lord Stair; or that very one, if
anybody will write it over. Our faith in politics will match any
Neapolitan's in religion. A political missionary will make more converts
in a county progress than a Jesuit in the whole empire of China, and
will produce more preposterous miracles. Sir Watkin Williams, at the
last Welsh races, convinced the whole principality (by reading a letter
that affirmed it), that the King was not within two miles of the battle
of Dettingen. We are not good at hitting off anti-miracles, the only way
of defending one's own religion. I have read an admirable story of the
Duke of Buckingham, who, when James II. sent a priest to him to persuade
him to turn Papist, and was plied by him with miracles, told the doctor,
that if miracles were proofs of a religion, the Protestant cause was as
well supplied as theirs. We have lately had a very extraordinary one
near my estate in the country. A very holy man, as you might be, Doctor,
was travelling on foot, and was benighted. He came to the cottage of a
poor dowager, who had nothing in the house for herself and daughter but
a couple of eggs and a slice of bacon. However, as she was a pious
widow, she made the good man welcome. In the morning, at taking leave,
the saint made her over to God for payment, and prayed that whatever she
should do as soon as he was gone she might continue to do all day. This
was a very unlimited request, and, unless the saint was a prophet too,