the Duke of Cumberland gave her away.  She is not tall, nor a beauty; pale, and very thin; but looks sensible; and is genteel.  Her hair is darkish and fine; her forehead low, her nose very well, except the nostrils spreading too wide; her mouth has the same fault, but her teeth are good.  She talks a good deal, and French tolerably; possesses herself, is frank, but with great respect to the King.  After the ceremony, the whole company came into the drawing-room for about ten minutes, but nobody was presented that night.  The Queen was in white and silver; an endless mantle of violet-coloured velvet, lined with ermine, and attempted to be fastened on her shoulder by a bunch of large pearls, dragged itself and almost the rest of her clothes halfway down her waist.  On her head was a beautiful little tiara of diamonds; a diamond necklace, and a stomacher of diamonds, worth three score thousand pounds, which she is to wear at the Coronation too.  Her train was borne by the ten bridesmaids, Lady Sarah Lenox,[1] Lady Caroline Russell, Lady Caroline Montagu, Lady Harriot Bentinck, Lady Anne Hamilton, Lady Essex Kerr (daughters of Dukes of Richmond, Bedford, Manchester, Portland, Hamilton, and Roxburgh); and four daughters of the Earls of Albemarle, Brook, Harcourt, and Ilchester—­Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Louisa Greville, Elizabeth Harcourt, and Susan Fox Strangways:  their heads crowned with diamonds, and in robes of white and silver.  Lady Caroline Russell is extremely handsome; Lady Elizabeth Keppel very pretty; but with neither features nor air, nothing ever looked so charming as Lady Sarah Lenox; she has all the glow of beauty peculiar to her family.  As supper was not ready, the Queen sat down, sung, and played on the harpsichord to the Royal Family, who all supped with her in private.  They talked of the different German dialects; the King asked if the Hanoverian was not pure—­“Oh, no, Sir,” said the Queen; “it is the worst of all.”—­She will not be unpopular.

[Footnote 1:  Lady Sarah Lennox, in an account of a theatrical performance at Holland House in a previous letter, is described by Walpole as “more beautiful than you can conceive.”  The King himself admired her so greatly that he is believed to have had serious thoughts of choosing her to be his queen.  She afterwards married Major G. Napier, and became the mother of Sir William and Sir Charles Napier.]

The Duke of Cumberland told the King that himself and Lady Augusta were sleepy.  The Queen was very averse to leave the company, and at last articled that nobody should accompany her but the Princess of Wales and her own two German women, and that nobody should be admitted afterwards but the King—­they did not retire till between two and three.

The next morning the King had a levee.  He said to Lord Hardwicke, “It is a very fine day:”  that old gossip replied, “Yes, Sir, and it was a very fine night.”  Lord Bute had told the King that Lord Orford had betted his having a child before Sir James Lowther, who had been married the night before to Lord Bute’s eldest daughter; the King told Lord Orford he should be glad to go his halves.  The bet was made with Mr. Rigby.  Somebody asked the latter how he could be so bad a courtier as to bet against the King?  He replied, “Not at all a bad courtier; I betted Lord Bute’s daughter against him.”