Christ! how can anybody hurt them? Nobody could but those Cherokees the English, who desire no better than to be halloo'd to blood:-one day Admiral Byng, the next Lord George Sackville, and to-day the poor dogs!

I cannot help telling your lordship how I was diverted the night I returned hither. I was sitting with Mrs. Clive, her sister and brother, in the bench near the road at the end of her long walk. We heard a violent scolding; and looking out, saw a pretty woman standing by a high chaise, in which was a young fellow, and a coachman riding by. The damsel had lost her hat, her cap, her cloak, her temper, and her senses; and was more drunk and more angry than you can conceive. Whatever the young man had or had not done to her, she would not ride in the chaise with him, but stood cursing and swearing in the most outrageous style: and when she had vented all the oaths she could think of, she at last wished perfidion might seize him. You may imagine how we laughed. The fair intoxicate turned round, and cried, "I am laughed at! Who is it? - What, Mrs. Clive? Kitty Clive? No Kitty Clive would never behave so!" I wish you could have seen my neighbour's confusion. She certainly did not grow paler than ordinary. I laugh now while I repeat it to you.

I have told Mr. Bentley the great honour you have done him, my lord. He is happy the Temple succeeds to please

you.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Strawberry Hill, September 19, 1760.

THANK you for your notice, though I should certainly have contrived to see you without it. Your brother promised he would come and dine here one day with you and Lord Beauchamp. I go to Navestock on Monday, for two or three

ways after the 27th, and offered a reward of two shillings for every dog that should be killed and buried in the skin. In Goldsmith's Citizen of the World there is an amusing paper, in which he ridicules the fear of mad dogs as one of those epidemic terrors to which our countrymen are occasionally prone.-E.

days; but that will not exhaust your waiting. I shall be in town on Sunday; but as that is a court-day, I will not — so don't propose it- dine with you at Kensington; but I will be with my Lady Hertford about six, where your brother and you will find me if you please. I cannot come to Kensington in the evening, for I have but one pair of horses in the world, and they will have to carry me to town in the morning.

I wonder the King expects a battle; when Prince Ferdinand can do as well without fighting, why should he fight? Can't he make the hereditary Prince gallop into a mob of Frenchmen, and get a scratch on the nose; and Johnson straddle cross a river and come back with six heads of hussars in his fob, and then can't he thank all the world, and assure them he shall never forget the victory they have not gained? These thanks are sent over: the Gazette swears that this nosuccess was chiefly owing to General Mostyn; and the Chronicle protests, that it was achieved by my Lord Granby's losing his hat, which he never wears; and then his lordship sends over for three hundred thousand pints of porter to drink his own health; and then Mr. Pitt determines to carry on the war for another year; and then the Duke of Newcastle hopes that we shall be beat, that he may lay the blame on Mr. Pitt, and that then he shall be minister for thirty years longer; and then we shall be the greatest nation in the universe. Amen! My dear Harry, you see how easy it is to be a hero. If you had but taken Impudence and Oatlands in your way to Rochfort, it would not have signified whether you had taken Rochfort or not. Adieu! I don't know who Lady Ailesbury's Mr. Alexander is. If she curls like a vine with any Mr. Alexander but you, I hope my Lady Coventry will recover and be your Roxana.

1 Mr. Conway, as groom of the bedchamber to the King, was then in waiting at Kensington.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Strawberry Hill.

You are good for nothing; you have no engagement, you have no principles; and all this I am not afraid to tell you, as you have left your sword behind you. If you take it ill, I have given my nephew, who brings your sword, a letter of attorney to fight you for me; I shall certainly not see you: my Lady Waldegrave goes to town on Friday, but I remain here. You lose Lady Anne Connolly and her forty daughters, who all dine here to-day upon a few loaves and three small fishes. I should have been glad if you would have breakfasted here on Friday on your way; but as I lie in bed rather longer than the lark, I fear our hours would not suit one another. Adieu !

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Strawberry Hill, October 2, 1760.

I ANNOUNCE my Lady Huntingtower to you. I hope you will approve the match a little more than I suppose my Lord Dysart will, as he does not yet know, though they have been married these two hours, that, at ten o'clock this morning, his son espoused my niece Charlotte at St. James's church. The moment my Lord Dysart is dead, I will carry you to see Ham-house; it is pleasant to call cousins with a charming prospect over against one. Now you want to know the detail: there was none. It is not the style of our court to have long negotiations; we don't fatigue the town with exhibiting the betrothed for six months together in public places. Vidit, venit, vicit; the young lord has liked her some time; on Saturday se'nnight he came to my brother, and made his demand. The princess did not know him by sight, and did not dislike him when she did; she consented, and they were to be married this morning. My Lord Dysart is such a ———

Charlotte, third daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, and sister to Lady Waldegrave and to Mrs. Keppel.

that nobody will pity him; he has kept his son till six-andtwenty, and would never make the least settlement on him: "Sure," said the young man, "if he will do nothing for me, I may please myself; he cannot hinder me of ten thousand pounds a-year, and sixty thousand that are in the funds, all entailed on me"- a reversion one does not wonder the bride did not refuse, as there is present possession too of a very handsome person; the only thing his father has ever given him. His grandfather, Lord Granville, has always told him to choose a gentlewoman, and please himself; yet I should think the ladies Townshend and Cooper would cackle a little.

I wish you could have come here this October for more reasons than one. The Teddingtonian history is grown wofully bad. Mark Antony, though no boy, persists in losing the world two or three times over for every gipsy that he takes for a Cleopatra. I have laughed, been scolded, represented, begged, and at last spoken very roundly—all with equal success; at present we do not meet. I must convince him of ill usage, before I can make good usage of any service. All I have done is forgot, because I will not be enamoured of Hannah Cleopatra too. You shall know the whole history when I see you; you may trust me for still being kind to him; but that he must not as yet suspect; they are bent on going to London, that she may visit and be visited, while he puts on his red velvet and ermine, and goes about begging in robes.

Poor Mr. Chute has had another very severe fit of the gout; I left him in bed, but by not hearing he is worse, trust on Saturday to find him mended. Adieu !

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, Oct. 5, 1760.

I AM afraid you will turn me off from being your gazetteer. Do you know that I came to town to-day by accident, and was here four hours before I heard that Montreal was taken? The express came early this morning. I am so posthumous in my intelligence, that you must not expect any

intelligence from me- but the same post that brings you this, will convey the extraordinary gazette, which of late is become the register of the Temple of Fame. All I know is, that the bonfires and squibs are drinking General Amherst's1 health.

Within these two days Fame and the Gazette have laid another egg; I wish they may hatch it themselves! but it is one of that unlucky hue which has so often been addled: in short, behold another secret expedition. It was notified on Friday, and departs in a fortnight. Lord Albemarle, it is believed, will command it. One is sure at least that it cannot be to America, for we have taken it all. The conquest of Montreal may perhaps serve in full of all accounts, as I suspect a little that this new plan was designed to amuse the City of London at the beginning of the session, who would not like to have wasted so many millions on this campaign, without any destruction of friend or foe. Now, a secret expedition may at least furnish a court-martial, and the citizens love persecution even better than their money. A general or an admiral to be mobbed either by their applause or their hisses, is all they desire. Poor Lord Albemarle !

The charming Countess is dead at last; and as if the whole history of both sisters was to be extraordinary, the Duchess of Hamilton is in a consumption too, and going abroad directly. Perhaps you may see the remains of these prodigies, you will see but little remains; her features were never so beautiful as Lady Coventry's, and she has long been changed, though not yet I think above six-and-twenty. The other was but twenty-seven.

As all the great ladies are mortal this year, my family is forced to recruit the peerage. My brother's last daughter is married; and, as Biddy Tipkin says, though their story is too short for a romance, it will make a very pretty novel—

1 General Sir Jeffery Amherst distinguished himself in the war with the French in America. He was subsequently created a peer, and made commander-in-chief.-D.

2 The large armament, intended for a secret expedition and collected at Portsmouth, was detained there the whole summer, but the design was laid aside.-E.

3 Maria Gunning, Countess of Coventry.

In Steele's "Tender Husband."