“I wish that complaining of people for abandoning me were an infallible recipe for bringing them _back_! but I doubt it will not do in acute cases. To-day, a few hours after writing the latter part of this, appeared Mr. Batt.[122] He asked many pardons, and I easily forgave him; for the _mortification_ was not begun. He asked much after you both. I had a crowd of visits besides; but they all come past two o’clock, and sweep one another away before any can take root. My evenings are solitary enough, for I ask nobody to come; nor, indeed, does anybody’s evening begin till I am going to bed. I have outlived daylight as well as my contemporaries. What have I not survived? The Jesuits and the monarchy of France! and both without a struggle! Semiramis seems to intend to add Constantinople to the mass of revolutions; but is not her permanence almost as wonderful as the contrary explosions! I wish--I wish we may not be actually flippancying ourselves into an embroil with that Ursa-major of the North Pole. What a vixen little island are we, if we fight with the Aurora Borealis and Tippoo Saib at the end of Asia at the same time! You, damsels, will be like the end of the conundrum, “‘You’ve seen the man who saw these wondrous sights.’ “I cannot finish this with my own hand, for the gout has returned a little into my right arm and wrist, and I am not quite so well as I was yesterday; but I had said my say, and have little to add. The Duchess of Gordon, t’other night, coming out of an assembly, said to Dundas, ‘Mr. Dundas, you are used to speak in public; will you call my servant?’… Adieu! I will begin to write again myself as soon as I can.” In the middle of March he wrote from Strawberry Hill to Miss Berry: “As I have mended considerably for the last four days, and as we have had a fortnight of soft warm weather, and a south-west wind to-day, I have ventured hither for a change of air, and to give orders about some repairs at Cliveden; which, by the way, Mr. Henry Bunbury, two days ago, proposed to take off my hands for his life. I really do not think I accepted his offer.” All the spring he vibrates between London and Twickenham. He writes again from the latter place to Miss Berry towards the end of April: