letter from Neville, full of comfortable lies, which I have already
re-told, and now dearth is staring us in the face--not five minutes
consumption in the house--and we are reduced to talk about each other,
Berwick excepted, who falls back upon himself, and tells one again and
again the 'very good thing' he said ten years ago. Tell me something
about your intimates--what are their high mightinesses, Ladies Crawford
and Cheadle, now doing for the edification of the world? Has the former
forgiven his Majesty of ----? or is she _brouillée_ with any other
potentate! Has the latter made peace with the Cabinet? or are Ministers
still doomed to exclusion from her parties unless they will be good
boys, and do as she bids them? and is she still chattering party gossip,
and thinks all the while she is talking politics? Send me our dear
friend's last silly thing; and if you don't know which is the last, do,
pray do, go to her house and gather one.

"I know nothing of Beauchamp but that he is now in Scotland, chin-deep
in heather, killing grouse against time for a bet of some hundreds,
which he has persuaded some simpleton to make with him. No man knows
better than Beauchamp how to get paid for amusing himself. I had never
heard, and don't believe, that Beauchamp is going to take a wife.
Whatever you know of this, pray tell me; and say _whose_ wife--not Sir
Robert Ridware's, I hope; that would be so illiberal, and so
unnecessary! I hate monopolies; and, moreover, I have always admired,
the example of the poet Thomson, who ate his peaches off the tree.
Forgive this pedantry, and any other sins in my letter; or if you are to
scold me, let it be in person. Addio! fair lady. Yours,--not
unalterably, for that is tiresome,--but as long as it pleaseth you.

"G.D."