I have just received an account of Mrs Cholmondeley's[81] Death. The next letter, a month later, leaves Pitt still at Bath; the gout had almost the lion's share of his life, and we wonder that he accomplished so much under its constant pangs. On this occasion he strains our credulity by the complimentary assertion that he thinks a thousand times more of Ann than of the struggle over Pelham's succession, and his own involved ambition. On all that sordid scramble he kept the fierce, unflinching eye of a hawk, and of a hawk fastened by the talon. Ten days before he wrote this note he had despatched a letter to Newcastle, Pelham's brother and successor, burning with a passion which Ann's ailments could never have inspired. Ann indeed, knowing her William, would smile as she read, and value the extravagance at its worth. _Bath. April 4th. 1754._ Dear Sister,--The Account you give me of your own health, and the kind concern you feel for mine, touches me more than I will attempt to express, tho' I am still at Bath, don't think the worse of my health, but be assured that I am in a fairer way of recovering a tolerable degree of it, than I have been in for a long time pass't. My Gout has been most regular and severe, as well as of a proper Continuance to relieve, and perhaps quite remove, the general disorder which had brought me so low. I am recovering my feet and drinking the waters with more apparent good effects than I ever experienced from them. I have been out of all the bustle of the present Conjuncture; and believe me, my thoughts go a thousand times to Nevers, for once that they go towards London. Nothing in this world can, in the smallest degree, interest my mind like the recovery of your health. I wait with very painfull Impatience for better weather for you, and to hear, that the waters you propose to take, afford you relief. I am My Dear Sister's ever most affectionate Brother W. PITT. My sister Nedham is well, and went yesterday to Marybone to see her Sons. Poor George Stanhope died of a feaver a few days since.[82] The next, after an interval of six months, is again from Bath, but in a different strain. He is now the happiest of men, about to be united to the most meritorious and amiable of women, whose brothers are already his own in harmony and affection; a happy marriage, but a disastrous, storm-tossed brotherhood, as it was destined to be in the years to come, when rival ambitions would strain the bond to breaking.