MY DEAR FRIEND: I am now (what I have very seldom been) two letters in
your debt: the reason was, that my head, like many other heads, has
frequently taken a wrong turn; in which case, writing is painful to me,
and therefore cannot be very pleasant to my readers.
I wish you would (while you have so good an opportunity as you have at
Hamburg) make yourself perfectly master of that dull but very useful
knowledge, the course of exchange, and the causes of its almost perpetual
variations; the value and relation of different coins, the specie, the
banco, usances, agio, and a thousand other particulars. You may with ease
learn, and you will be very glad when you have learned them; for, in your
business, that sort of knowledge will often prove necessary.
I hear nothing more of Prince Ferdinand’s garter: that he will have one
is very certain; but when, I believe, is very uncertain; all the other
postulants wanting to be dubbed at the same time, which cannot be, as
there is not ribband enough for them.
If the Russians move in time, and in earnest, there will be an end of our
hopes and of our armies in Germany: three such mill-stones as Russia,
France, and Austria, must, sooner or later, in the course of the year,
grind his Prussian Majesty down to a mere MARGRAVE of Brandenburg. But I
have always some hopes of a change under a ‘Gunarchy’--[Derived from the
Greek word ‘Iuvn’ a woman, and means female government]--where whim and
humor commonly prevail, reason very seldom, and then only by a lucky
mistake.
I expect the incomparable fair one of Hamburg, that prodigy of beauty,
and paragon of good sense, who has enslaved your mind, and inflamed your
heart. If she is as well ‘etrennee’ as you say she shall, you will be
soon out of her chains; for I have, by long experience, found women to be
like Telephus’s spear, if one end kills, the other cures.
There never was so quiet, nor so silent a session of parliament as the
present; Mr. Pitt declares only what he would have them do, and they do
it ‘nemine contradicente’, Mr. Viner only expected.
Duchess Hamilton is to be married, to-morrow, to Colonel Campbell, the
son of General Campbell, who will some day or other be Duke of Argyle,
and have the estate. She refused the Duke of B-----r for him.
Here is a report, but I believe a very groundless one, that your old
acquaintance, the fair Madame C------e, is run away from her husband,
with a jeweler, that ‘etrennes’ her, and is come over here; but I dare
say it is some mistake, or perhaps a lie. Adieu! God bless you!