"I have heard Maly Johnston say she was told that she was very like the empress-queen. Please tell her it is not so. The empress, though not very well shaped, is better than Maly; but she has not so good a face. She looks also as if she were prouder and worse tempered. Apropos, to our friends of Hutton hall, inform them that they have a very near relation at this court, who is a prodigious fine gentleman, and a great fool. His name is Sir James Caldwell.[260:1] He told me his grandmother was a Hume, and that he expected soon to inherit a very fine estate by her, which he was to share with the Johnstones in Scotland. But he says it is only Wynne that has the half, not the ladies, who have no share; so that you'll please tell Sophy that I am off; and give her her liberty, notwithstanding all vows and promises that may have past betwixt us." "_Vienna, 25th April._ "We set out to-morrow, but go not by the way of Venice, as we at first proposed. This is some mortification to us. We shall go, however, by Milan. This town is very little for a capital, but excessively populous. The houses are very high, the streets very narrow and crooked, so that the many handsome buildings that are here, make not any figure. The suburbs are spacious and open; but, on the whole, I can never believe what they tell us, that there are two hundred thousand inhabitants in it. It is composed entirely of nobility and of lackeys, of soldiers and of priests. Now, I believe you'll allow, that in a town inhabited only by these four sets of people above-mentioned, the empress-queen could not have undertaken a more difficult task, than that which she has magnanimously entered upon, viz. the producing an absolute chastity amongst them. A court of chastity is lately erected here, who send all loose women to the frontiers of Hungary, where they can only debauch Turks and Infidels. I hope you will not pay your taxes with greater grudge, because you hear that her imperial majesty, in whose service they are to be spent, is so great a prude. "There has been great noise made with us on account of the queen's new palace at Schönbrunn. It is, indeed, a handsome house, but not very great nor richly furnished. She said to the general last night, that not a single soldier had gone to the building, whatever might be said in England, but that she liked better to be tolerably lodged than to have useless diamonds by her; and that she had sold all her crown jewels to enable her to be at that expense. I think, for a sovereign, she is none of the worst in Europe, and one cannot forbear liking her for the spirit with which she looks, and speaks, and acts. But 'tis a pity her ministers have so little sense.