On the 12th of August, the Queen was delivered of a Prince of Wales; and the same morning the treasure of that capital prize, the Hermione, arrived in town in many waggons, and passed through the City to the Tower. The sum taken amounted to near eight hundred thousand pounds. In the beginning of the following month came the first news from the Havannah; and before the end of it we learned the entire conquest of that important place by the three Keppels,[238]--the Earl of Albemarle, the Commodore and the Colonel his brothers. The honour they won was a little soiled by their rapaciousness and by our great loss of men: but to Spain the blow was of the deepest consequence, and the place irrecoverable by any force they could exert. Yet such a victory seemed to infuse as little joy into the Court of St. James’s as into that of Madrid. The Favourite and his creatures took no part in the transports of the nation; and, when he declined availing himself of any merit from the conquest, it was plain he was grieved either to have more to restore at the peace, or less reason for making that peace but on the most advantageous terms: but he was infatuated, and, breaking through all the barriers of glory, he sent the Duke of Bedford to Paris to settle the preliminaries, whence the Duc de Nivernois arrived for the same purpose. Sullen and silent as Mr. Pitt was, and feeble and impotent as the faction of Newcastle, still the City and merchants showed some symptoms of indignation at this obstinate alacrity for treating. The Duke of Bedford was hissed as he passed through the principal streets; and treasonable papers were dispersed in the villages round London. But in France the Duke was received as their guardian angel. The most distinguished and unusual honours were paid to him; and the principal magistrate of Calais, thinking him descended from the other John Duke of Bedford, brother of Henry the Fifth, complimented his Grace (and no doubt felicitated himself on the comparison) on seeing him arrive with as salutary and pacific, as his great ancestor had formerly landed there with hostile intentions.