“I must be equitable; I must do the world justice; there are really some hopes of its amendment; I have not heard one lie these four days; but then, indeed, I have heard nothing. Well, then, why do you write? Stay, Madam; my letter is not got on horseback yet; nor shall it mount till it has something to carry. It is my duty, as your gazetteer, to furnish you with news, true or false, and you would certainly dismiss me if I did not, at least, tell you something that was impossible. The whole nation is content with hearing anything new, let it be ever so bad. Tell the first man you meet that Ireland has revolted; away he runs, and tells everybody he meets,--everybody tells everybody, and the next morning they ask for more news. Well, Jamaica is taken; oh, Jamaica is taken. Next day, what news? Why, Paul Jones is landed in Rutlandshire, and has carried off the Duchess of Devonshire, and a squadron is fitting out to prevent it; and I am to have a pension for having given the earliest intelligence; and there is to be a new farce called _The Rutlandshire Invasion_, and the King and Queen will come to town to see it, and the Prince of Wales will not, because he is not old enough to understand pantomimes.[76] “Well, Madam; having despatched the nation and its serious affairs, one may chat over private matters. I have seen Lord Macartney, and do affirm that he is shrunk, and has a _soupçon_ of black that was not wont to reside in his complexion.… “Mr. Beauclerk has built a library in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, that reaches half-way to Highgate. Everybody goes to see it; it has put the Museum’s nose quite out of joint. “Now I return to politics. Sir Ralph Payne and Dr. Johnson are answering General Burgoyne, and they say the words are to be so long that the reply must be printed in a pamphlet as long as an atlas, but in an Elzevir type, or the first sentence would fill twenty pages in octavo. You may depend upon the truth of it, for Mr. Cumberland told it in confidence to one with whom he is not at all acquainted, who told it to one whom I never saw; so you see, Madam, there is no questioning the authority.