But we are not to suppose that this association with the mighty of the earth, and these exhibitions of capitulating armies were without their drawbacks. The Prussian king's politics were always subtle, the English cabinet was already tottering, and the campaign was already prolonged into winter. The envoy's correspondence at length sinks into complaint, and his description of his harassed life might make a man shrink from the honours of travelling diplomacy. He writes in November from Seidlitz-- "I am here in a very awkward situation--quite out of my element; and though I have great reason to be satisfied with the King of Prussia's manner of treating me, I wish I was at Berlin again, or rather in England, notwithstanding the absurd speeches that I should hear in parliament. "The Prussian camp is no place of pleasure. Neither convenience nor luxury dwell here. You are well provided with everything, _if_ you bring it along with you. I find I must increase my equipage, or _starve_. _All my family are like spectres._ It is true I am fed at the king's table, because he desired me to leave my equipage at Dresden. The Duke of Newcastle has this _encouraging_ paragraph in his letter: 'I will forward your demands for the expenses of your journey, whenever you send them over in a _proper manner_ to my Lord Holdernesse.' I have spent a great deal of money, and have _hardly_ the necessaries of life, and _none_ of its comforts." Correspondence of this intimate kind gives us a true view of that life which the world in general sees so gilded and glittering. It thus has a value superior to even its historical interest. It tells the humbler conditions of life to be content with their fate; and perhaps demonstrates that, like the traveller among mountains, the higher man goes, the more slippery is his path, and the more stormy his atmosphere. The Secretary of State thus writes:-- "_November, 1766._