I can't conclude without mentioning again the Toulon squadron: we vapour and say, by this time Matthews has beaten them, while I see them in the port of Leghorn!
My dear Mr. Chute, I trust to your friendship to comfort our poor Miny: for my part, I am all apprehension! My dearest child, if it turns out so, trust to my friendship for working every engine to restore you to as good a situation as you will lose, If my fears prove prophetic! The first peace would reinstate you in your favourite Florence, whoever were sovereign of it. I wish you may be able to smile at the vanity of my fears, as I did at yours about Richcourt. Adieu! adieu!
(894) Sir Horace Mann had written in great uneasiness, in consequence of his having heard that Count Richcourt, the Great Duke's minister; was using all his influence with the English government, in conjunction with Lady Walpole, to have Sir Horace removed from his situation at Florence.-D.
(895) "Lord Orford's personal credit with his friends was the main reason that the question was so well disposed of: he never laboured any point during his own administration with more zeal, and at a dinner at Hanbury Williams's had a meeting with such of the old court party as were thought most averse to concurring in this measure; where he took great pains to convince them of the necessity there was for repeating it." Mr. P. Yorke's MS. Journal.-E.
(896) It appears from Mr. Philip Yorke's Parliamentary Journal, that the letter-writer took a part in the debate-"Young Mr. Walpole's speech," he says, "met with deserved applause from every body: it was judicious and elegant: he applied the verse which Lucan puts in Curia's mouth to Caesar, to the King:-
"Livor edax tibi cuncta negat, Gallasque subactos,
Vix impune feres."-E.
(897) Between the King of England, the Queen of Hungary, and the King of Sardinia, to whom were afterwards added Holland and Saxony. It is sometimes called "the triple alliance."-D.
(898) Lord Orford.
(899) "Pitt as usual," says Mr. Yorke, in his MS. Parliamentary Journal, ,fell foul of Lord Carteret, called him a Hanover troop-minister; that they were his party, his placemen; that he had conquered the cabinet by their means, and after being very lavish of his abuse, wished he was in the House, that he might give him more of it." Tu the uncommon accuracy of Mr. Walpole's reports of the proceedings in Parliament, the above-quoted Journal bears strong evidence.-E.
358 Letter 128 To Sir Horace Mann. Feb. 9, 1744.