Catalogue description LADY WILLOUGHBY to the PRINCE OF WALES.

--Sir, The flattering and honourable testimony I have received of your Royal Highness's approbation, in the very gracious message Lady Cholmondeley communicated to me on Thursday evening, has afforded me unfeigned satisfaction. That I have obtained your Royal Highness's good opinion is among the most gratifying circumstances of my life, and I hope you will do me the justice to believe it must ever be the anxious wish of my heart to retain it. Expressions of gratitude are so inadequate to the acknowledgments I owe your Royal Highness at this moment that I must only entreat you will give me credit for those sentiments which words could but ill convey. Allow me, Sir, to assure you I am fully sensible of the magnitude of the favor you are willing to confer on me, and I trust you will not withdraw that protection which is so highly flattering to me, if I submit to the painful necessity of entreating your Royal Highness to admit of my declining the distinguished situation in which, with unbounded goodness, you are disposed to place me; but sincerely as I wish to obey your commands, from long habits of retirement, the duties I must shortly be engaged in with my daughter, and a very uncertain state of health, I am too well aware how impossible I should find it, to attend on her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, in the manner which gratitude, respect and attachment would direct. I flatter myself your Royal Highness will forgive my having till now delayed my answer on a subject in which my feelings were too deeply engaged not to require some hours of reflection, and permit me the honor of assuring you, that I remain, with sincere attachment and respect, your Royal Highness's most dutiful and faithful servant, Willoughby."