“_December, 1788._ MY DEAR NEICE:—As I was indebted to you for the favour of a letter, when I left Sandleford, I should have fulfill’d my promise of sending you whatever news I could collect in the great metropolis; but instead of finding this town the seat of gayety, I found it the abode of melancholly. Every countenance (except of the fox kind) looked dejected. The king’s illness and our country’s danger occupied every mind, and tinctured every conversation with melancholly and anxiety. The reports of his majesty’s condition for these three days have been much more favorable than any time since he was first taken ill; so the hopes of being again under the government of a good king are revived, and the dread of a bad set of men who wanted to usurp his power, has, from the spirited conduct of the houses of parliament, much abated. “Mr. Fox is in a very bad state of health. His rapid journeys to England, on the news of the king’s illness, have brought on him a violent complaint in the bowels, which will, it is imagined, prove mortal. However, if it should, it will vindicate his character from the general report that he has no bowels, as has been most strenuously asserted by his creditors. “After I left Mrs. Boscawen’s, at Richmond, I passed a week very agreably with my dear friends at Shooter’s Hill; and should have prolonged my stay there if I had not been afraid to meet December in the country. The weather has justified my apprehensions. Weather makes small part of the comforts of a London life, and I have pass’d my time very comfortably. Twice or thrice a week, I invite seven or eight agreable persons to dine with me. On others days, I often prevail on some intimate friend to partake of my mutton and chicken, which, with the visits of such of my acquaintance as are in town, give me enough of society. I have not been out of my house above four times since I came to town, the first of December, for I am afraid to expose my weak eyes to the northern blast.