After the King’s Levee there was a Drawing-room; the Queen stood under the throne:  the women were presented to her by the Duchess of Hamilton, and then the men by the Duke of Manchester; but as she knew nobody, she was not to speak.  At night there was a ball, drawing-rooms yesterday and to-day, and then a cessation of ceremony till the Coronation, except next Monday, when she is to receive the address of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, sitting on the throne attended by the bridesmaids.  A ridiculous circumstance happened yesterday; Lord Westmoreland, not very young nor clear-sighted, mistook Lady Sarah Lenox for the Queen, kneeled to her, and would have kissed her hand if she had not prevented him.  People think that a Chancellor of Oxford was naturally attracted by the blood of Stuart.  It is as comical to see Kitty Dashwood, the famous old beauty of the Oxfordshire Jacobites, living in the palace as Duenna to the Queen.  She and Mrs. Boughton, Lord Lyttelton’s ancient Delia, are revived again in a young court that never heard of them.  There, I think, you could not have had a more circumstantial account of a royal wedding from the Heralds’ Office.  Adieu!

Yours to serve you,

HORACE SANDFORD.

Mecklenburgh King-at-Arms.

THE CORONATION AND SUBSEQUENT GAIETIES.

TO THE COUNTESS OF AILESBURY.

STRAWBERRY HILL, Sept. 27, 1761.

You are a mean, mercenary woman.  If you did not want histories of weddings and coronations, and had not jobs to be executed about muslins, and a bit of china, and counterband goods, one should never hear of you.  When you don’t want a body, you can frisk about with greffiers and burgomasters, and be as merry in a dyke as my lady frog herself.  The moment your curiosity is agog, or your cambric seized, you recollect a good cousin in England, and, as folks said two hundred years ago, begin to write “upon the knees of your heart.”  Well!  I am a sweet-tempered creature, I forgive you.

[Illustration:  THE LIBRARY, STRAWBERRY HILL]

My heraldry was much more offended at the Coronation with the ladies that did walk, than with those that walked out of their place; yet I was not so perilously angry as my Lady Cowper, who refused to set a foot with my Lady Macclesfield; and when she was at last obliged to associate with her, set out on a round trot, as if she designed to prove the antiquity of her family by marching as lustily as a maid of honour of Queen Gwiniver.  It was in truth a brave sight.  The sea of heads in Palace-yard, the guards, horse and foot, the scaffolds, balconies, and procession exceeded imagination.  The Hall, when once illuminated, was noble; but they suffered the whole parade to return into it in the dark, that his Majesty might be surprised with the quickness with which the sconces catched fire.  The Champion acted well; the other Paladins had neither the grace nor alertness of Rinaldo.