‘January 30, 1790. To Bradfield, and here terminate, I hope, my travels.’—_Travels in France_, Bohn’s Library. Footnote 136: This letter is interesting as written by the last representative of that unhappy country in England. We read in Knight’s _History of England_, vol. v., that, on the reassembling of Parliament after the partition of Poland no allusion whatever was made in the House of Commons to that event. The final partition treaty was signed in 1795 by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Footnote 137: The passage occurs in the small memorandum-book from which I have occasionally quoted particulars of yearly expenses, &c. Footnote 138: Vol. xv. 1791, _My Own Memoirs_. ----- CHAPTER IX PATRIOTIC PROPOSALS—1791-92 Illness—Correspondence with Washington—The King’s gift of a ram—Anecdotes—Revising MSS.—Patriotic proposals—Death of the Earl of Orford—Agricultural schemes—Correspondence. The year opened with a continuation of that severe illness which had confined me for some months. The following notes are from a journal I kept at that time:— This year my daughter Elizabeth married the Rev. Samuel Hoole, son of the celebrated John Hoole, translator of Tasso and Ariosto. He is a very sensible, moral man of strict integrity, and always behaved to my daughter with much tenderness. This same year my correspondence[139] opened with General Washington. Having been applied to to procure some implements for his husbandry, I wrote to him offering to procure any article in that line which he might have occasion for, and accordingly afterwards sent him many, amongst others the plan of a barn, which he executed, and is represented by a plate in the ‘Annals of Agriculture.’ This year his Majesty had the goodness to make me a present of a Spanish Merino ram, a portrait of which I inserted in the ‘Annals.’ How many millions of men are there that would smile if I were to mention the Sovereign of a great Empire giving a ram to a farmer as an event that merited the attention of mankind! The world is full of those who consider military glory as the proper object of the ambition of monarchs; who measure regal merit by the millions that are slaughtered; by the public robbery and plunder that are dignified by the titles of dignity and conquest, and who look down on every exertion of peace and tranquillity as unbecoming those who aim at the epithet _great_, and unworthy the aim of men that are born the masters of the globe.