From my own Apartment, May 6.
There has a mail this day arrived from Holland; but the matter of the advices importing rather what gives us great expectations, than any positive assurances, I shall, for this time, decline giving you what I know, and apply the following verses of Mr. Dryden, in the second part of "Almanzor," to the present circumstances of things, without discovering what my knowledge in astronomy suggests to me.
When empire in its childhood first appears,
A watchful fate o'er sees its tender years:
Till grown more strong, it thrusts and stretches out,
And elbows all the kingdoms round about.
The place thus made for its first breathing free,
It moves again for ease and luxury;
Till swelling by degrees it has possest
The greater space, and now crowds up the rest.