Letters to His Son, Complete On the Fine Art of Becoming...

MY DEAR FRIEND: I have this moment received your letter of the 27th past. I was in hopes that your course of waters this year at Baden would have given you a longer reprieve from your painful complaint. If I do not mistake, you carried over with you some of Dr. Monsey’s powders. Have you taken any of them, and have they done you any good? I know they did me a great deal. I, who pretend to some skill in physic, advise a cool regimen, and cooling medicines.

I do not wonder, that you do wonder, at Lord C——-’s conduct. If he was not outwitted into his peerage by Lord B——, his accepting it is utterly inexplicable. The instruments he has chosen for the great office, I believe, will never fit the same case. It was cruel to put such a boy as Lord G—-over the head of old Ligonier; and if I had been the former, I would have refused that commission, during the life of that honest and brave old general. All this to quiet the Duke of R——to a resignation, and to make Lord B——Lieutenant of Ireland, where, I will venture to prophesy, that he will not do. Ligonier was much pressed to give up his regiment of guards, but would by no means do it; and declared that the King might break him if he pleased, but that he would certainly not break himself.