I told you the women talked of going out of town:  several families are literally gone, and many more going to-day and to-morrow; for what adds to the absurdity, is, that the second shock having happened exactly a month after the former, it prevails that there will be a third on Thursday next, another month, which is to swallow up London.  I am almost ready to burn my letter now I have begun it, lest you should think I am laughing at you:  but it is so true, that Arthur of White’s told me last night, that he should put off the last ridotto, which was to be on Thursday, because he hears nobody would come to it.  I have advised several, who are going to keep their next earthquake in the country, to take the bark for it, as it is so periodic.[1] Dick Leveson and Mr. Rigby, who had supped and stayed late at Bedford House the other night, knocked at several doors, and in a watchman’s voice cried, “Past four o’clock, and a dreadful earthquake!"...

[Footnote 1:  “I remember,” says Addison, in the 240th Tatler, “when our whole island was shaken with an earthquake some years ago, that there was an impudent mountebank who sold pills, which, as he told the country people, were ‘very good against an earthquake.’”]

This frantic terror prevails so much, that within these three days seven hundred and thirty coaches have been counted passing Hyde Park corner, with whole parties removing into the country.  Here is a good advertisement which I cut out of the papers to-day:—­

     “On Monday next will be published (price 6_d._) A true and exact
     List of all the Nobility and Gentry who have left, or shall leave,
     this place through fear of another Earthquake.”

Several women have made earthquake gowns; that is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all to-night.  These are of the more courageous.  One woman, still more heroic, is come to town on purpose:  she says, all her friends are in London, and she will not survive them.  But what will you think of Lady Catherine Pelham, Lady Frances Arundel, and Lord and Lady Galway, who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back—­I suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish.  The prophet of all this (next to the Bishop of London) is a trooper of Lord Delawar’s, who was yesterday sent to Bedlam.  His colonel sent to the man’s wife, and asked her if her husband had ever been disordered before.  She cried, “Oh dear! my lord, he is not mad now; if your lordship would but get any sensible man to examine him, you would find he is quite in his right mind."...

I shall now go and show you Mr. Chute in a different light from heraldry, and in one in which I believe you never saw him.  He will shine as usual; but, as a little more severely than his good-nature is accustomed to, I must tell you that he was provoked by the most impertinent usage.  It is an epigram on Lady Caroline Petersham, whose present fame, by the way, is coupled with young Harry Vane.