who do you think were the invited?-the Visconti, Giuletta, the Galli, Amorevoli, Monticelli, Vanneschi and his wife, Weedemans the hautboy, the prompter, etc.  The bouquet was given to the Guiletta, who is barely handsome.  How can one love magnificence and low company at the same instant!  We are making great parties for the Barberina and the Auretti, a charming French girl; and our schemes succeed so well, that the opera begins to fill surprisingly; for all those who don’t love music, love noise and party, and will any night give half-a-guinea for the liberty of hissing-such is English harmony.

I have been in a round of dinners with Lord Stafford, and Bussy the French minister, who tells one stories of Capuchins, confessions, Henri Quatre, Louis XIV., Gascons, and the string which all Frenchmen go through, without any connexion or relation to the discourse.  These very stories, which I have already heard four times, are only interrupted by English puns, which old Churchill translates out of jest-books into the mouth of my Lord Chesterfield, and into most execrable French.

Adieu!  I have scribbled, and blotted, and made nothing out, and, in short, have nothing to say, so good night!

(747) Lady Lucinda Sherard, widow of John Manners, second Duke of Rutland.  She died in 1751.-E.

(748) Lady Lucy Manners, married, in 1742, to William, second Duke of Montrose.  She died in 1788.-E.

(749) Judith, sister of Lord Viscount Fane, wife of John Montagu, fifth Earl of Sandwich.-E.

(750) Robert d’Arcy, fourth Earl of Holderness; subsequently made secretary of State.  Upon his death his earldom extinguished, and what remained of his estate, as well as the Barony of Conyers, descended to his only daughter, who was married to Francis Osborne, fifth Duke of Leeds, in 1773.-D. [From whom she was divorced in 1779.  She afterwards married Captain John Byron, son of Admiral Byron, and father of the great poet.]

302 Letter 93 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, Jan. 6, 1743.

You will wonder that you have not heard from me, but I have been too ill to write.  I have been confined these ten days with a most violent cough, and they suspected an inflammation on my lungs; but I am come off with the loss of my eyes and my voice, both of which I am recovering, and would write to you to-day.  I have received your long letter of December 11th, and return you a thousand thanks for giving up so much of your time; I wish I could make as long a letter for you, but we arc in a neutrality of news.  The Elector Palatine (751) is dead; but I have not heard what alterations that will make.  Lord Wilmington’s death, which is reckoned hard upon, is likely to make more conversation here.  He is going to Bath, but that is only to pass away the time until be dies.