We divert ourselves extremely this winter; plays, balls, masquerades, and pharaoh are all in fashion.  The Duchess of Bedford has given a great ball, to which the King came with thirty masks.  The Duchess of Queensberry is to give him a masquerade.  Operas are the only consumptive entertainment.  There was a new comedy last Saturday, which succeeds, called The Foundling.  I like the old Conscious lovers better, and that not much.  The story is the same, only that the Bevil of the new piece is in more hurry, and consequently more natural.  It Is extremely well acted by Garrick and Barry, Mrs. Cibber and Mrs. Woffington.  My sister was brought to bed last night of another boy.  Sir C. Williams, I hear, grows more likely to go to Turin:  you will have a more agreeable correspondent than your present voluminous brother.(1423) Adieu!

(1420) John Stanhope, third son of Philip, third Earl of Chesterfield, successively M. P. for Nottingham and Dorhy.  He died in 1748.-D.

(1421) Lord Robert Bertie was third son of Robert, first Duke of Ancaster, by his second wife.  He became a general in the army and colonel of the second regiment of Guards, and was also a lord of the bedchamber and a member of parliament.  He died in 1732.-D.

(1422) The Duke’s.

(1423) Mr. Villettes.

545 Letter 249
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, March 11, 1748.

I have had nothing lately to tell you but illnesses and distempers:  there is what they call a miliary fever raging, which has taken off a great many people, It was scarce known till within these seven or eight years, but apparently increases every spring and autumn.  They don’t know how to treat it, but think that they have discovered that bleeding is bad for it.  The young Duke of Bridgewater(1424) is dead of it.  The Marquis of Powis(1425) is dead too, I don’t know of what:  but though a Roman Catholic, he has left his whole fortune to Lord herbert, the next male of his family, but a very distant relation.  It is twelve thousand pounds a-year, with a very rich mine upon it; there is a debt, but the money and personal estate will pay it.  After Lord Herbert(1426) and his brother, who are both unmarried, the estate is to go to the daughter of Lord Waldegrave’s sister, by her first husband, who was the Marquis’s brother.

In defiance of all these deaths, we are all diversions; Lady Keith(1427) and a company of Scotch nobility have formed a theatre, and have acted The Revenge several times; I can’t say excellently:  the Prince and Princess were at it last night.  The Duchess of Queensberry gives a masquerade tonight, in hopes of drawing the King to it; but he will not go.  I do; but must own it is wondrous foolish to dress one’s self out in a becoming dress in cold blood.  There has been a new comedy called The Foundling;(1428) far from good, but it took.  Lord Hobart and some more young men made a party to damn it, merely for the love of damnation.  The Templars espoused the play, and went around with syringes charged with stinking oil, and with sticking plaisters; but it did not come to action.  Garrick was impertinent, and the pretty men gave over their plot the moment they grew to be in the right.