SCENE, ROADS OF CADIZ, October, 1741: BY WHAT ASTONISHING
ARTIFICE THIS ITALIAN WAR DID, AT LENGTH, GET BEGUN.

... "The Spanish Court, that is, Termagant Elizabeth, who rules
everybody there, being in this humor, was passionate to begin;
and stood ready a good while, indignantly champing the bit, before
the sad preliminary obstacles could be got over. At Barcelona she
had, in the course of last summer, doubly busy ever since Mollwitz
time, got into equipment some 15,000 men; but could not by any
method get them across,--owing to the British Fleets, which hung
blockading this place and that; blockading Cadiz especially, where
lay her Transport-ships and War-ships, at this interesting
juncture. Fleury's cunctations were disgusting to the ardent mind;
and here now, still more insuperable, are the British Fleets;
here--and a pest to him!--is your Admiral Haddock, blockading
Cadiz, with his Seventy-fours!

"But again, on the other or Pragmatic side, there were cunctations.
The Sardinian Majesty, Charles Emanuel of Savoy, holding the door
of the Alps, was difficult to bargain with, in spite of British
Subsidies;--stood out for higher door-fees, a larger slice of the
Milanese than could be granted him; had always one ear open for
France, too; in short, was tedious and capricious, and there seemed
no bringing him to the point of drawing sword for her Hungarian
Majesty. In the end, he was brought to it, by a stroke of British
Art,--such to the admiring Gazetteer and Diplomatic mind it
seemed;--equal to anything we have since heard of, on the part of
perfidious Albion.