The D—— of H—— has brought himself into a scrape, out of which I imagine it will be difficult to extricate him. Being unacquainted with the trouble which these gentlemen give themselves on such occasions, he has expressed an inclination to three or four virtuosi to see their cabinets. I attended him on his first visitation yesterday. The gentleman made an unusual exertion to please his Grace. He said, being fully convinced of his taste for natural philosophy, in which people of his high rank were never deficient, he would therefore take pleasure to explain every particular in the collection with the greatest deliberation. He had kept himself disengaged the whole forenoon on purpose, and had given orders not to be interrupted. He then descanted on each particular in the collection, with such minuteness and perseverance, as completely satiated His Grace’s curiosity, and gave him such a knowledge of earths, crystals, agates, pyrites, marcasites, petrifactions, metals, semi-metals, &c. &c. as will, I dare swear, serve him for the rest of his life.
I began this letter at Frankfort, not suspecting that our departure would be so sudden. But as the day approached on which we had been promised the sight of another cabinet of curiosities, I found the D——’s impatience to be gone increase every moment. So sending our apology to the proprietors of two or three which he had asked permission to visit, we passed one day with Madame de Barkhause’s family, and another with Mr. Gogle’s, and then bidding a hasty adieu to our other acquaintances at Frankfort, we set out for this place. We slept the first night at Marburg, and on the second, about midnight, arrived at Cassel.
As the ground is quite covered with snow, the roads bad, and the posts long, we were obliged to take six horses for each chaise, which, after all, in some places moved no faster than a couple of hearses. The D—— bore this with wonderful serenity, contemplating the happy evasion he had made from the cabinets at Frankfort. A slave who had escaped from the mines could not have shown greater satisfaction. His good humour remained proof against all the phlegm and obstinacy of the German postillions, of which one who has not travelled in the extremity of the winter, and when the roads are covered with snow, through this country, can form no idea.