"Clarissa" and "Sir Charles Grandison," which are pictures of high life
as conceived by a bookseller, and romances as they would be
spiritualized by a Methodist teacher: but Madame de Beaumont has almost
avoided sermons, and almost reconciled sentiments and common sense. Read
her novel--you will like it.


_DEBATE ON AMERICAN TAXES--PETITION OF THE PERIWIG-MAKERS--FEMALE
HEAD-DRESSES--LORD BYRON'S DUEL--OPENING OF ALMACK'S--NO. 45._

TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD.

ARLINGTON STREET, _Feb._ 12, 1765.

A great many letters pass between us, my dear lord, but I think they are
almost all of my writing. I have not heard from you this age. I sent you
two packets together by Mr. Freeman, with an account of our chief
debates. Since the long day, I have been much out of order with a cold
and cough, that turned to a fever: I am now taking James's powder, not
without apprehensions of the gout, which it gave me two or three years
ago.

There has been nothing of note in Parliament but one slight day on the
American taxes,[1] which, Charles Townshend supporting, received a
pretty heavy thump from Barré, who is the present Pitt, and the dread of
all the vociferous Norths and Rigbys, on whose lungs depended so much of
Mr. Grenville's power. Do you never hear them to Paris?

[Footnote 1: Mr. Grenville's taxation of stamps and other articles in
our American colonies, which caused great discontent, and was repealed