Why has Lord Egmont ’gainst this bill
    So much declamatory skill
       So tediously exerted? 
    The reason’s plain:  but t’other day
    He mutinied himself for pay,
       And he has twice deserted.

[Footnote 1:  Sir Charles Hanbury Williams had represented Monmouth in Parliament, but in 1744 was sent as ambassador to Berlin, and from thence to St. Petersburg.  He was more celebrated in the fashionable world as the author of lyrical odes of a lively character.]

I must tell you a bon-mot that was made the other night at the serenata of “Peace in Europe” by Wall,[1] who is much in fashion, and a kind of Gondomar.  Grossatesta, the Modenese minister, a very low fellow, with all the jackpuddinghood of an Italian, asked, “Mais qui est ce qui represente mon maitre?” Wall replied, “Mais, mon Dieu!  L’abbe, ne scavez vous pas que ce n’est pas un opera boufon?” and here is another bon-mot of my Lady Townshend:  we were talking of Methodists; somebody said, “Pray, Madam, is it true that Whitfield[2] has recanted?” “No, sir, he has only canted.”

[Footnote 1:  General Wall was the Spanish ambassador, as Gondomar had been in the reign of James I.]

[Footnote 2:  Whitefield, while an undergraduate at Oxford, joined Wesley, who had recently founded a sect which soon became known as the Methodists.  But, after a time, Whitefield, who was of a less moderate temper than Wesley, adopted the views known as Calvinistic, and, breaking off from the Wesleyans, established a sect more rigid and less friendly to the Church.]

If you ever think of returning to England, as I hope it will be long first, you must prepare yourself with Methodism.  I really believe that by that time it will be necessary:  this sect increases as fast as almost ever any religious nonsense did.  Lady Fanny Shirley has chosen this way of bestowing the dregs of her beauty; and Mr. Lyttelton is very near making the same sacrifice of the dregs of all those various characters that he has worn.  The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon—­and indeed they have a plentiful harvest—­I think what you call flagrancy was never more in fashion.  Drinking is at the highest wine-mark; and gaming joined with it so violent, that at the last Newmarket meeting, in the rapidity of both, a bank-bill was thrown down, and nobody immediately claiming it, they agreed to give it to a man that was standing by....

EARTHQUAKE IN LONDON—­GENERAL PANIC—­MARRIAGE OF CASIMIR, KING OF POLAND.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

ARLINGTON STREET, March 11, 1750.

    Portents and prodigies are grown so frequent,
    That they have lost their name.