understand such impertinent answers being given to her chairman by an arracheur de dents.  The angry little gentleman, with as much intrepidity as if he had drawn out all her teeth, tore the card in five slits, and returned it with this astonishing sentence, “I return you your impertinent card, and desire you will pay me what you owe me.”  All I know more is, that the toothdrawer still lives; and so do many lords and gentlemen, formerly thought the slaves of the offended fair one’s will and passions, and among others, to his great shame, your sincere friend.

(385) Mr. Conway was then with his regiment quartered at Sligo in Ireland.

(386) Lord Albemarle was then ambassador at Paris.

165 Letter 77
To George Montagu, Esq. 
Strawberry Hill, May 22, 1753.

You may very possibly be set out for Greatworth, but what house Greatworth is, or whose, or how you came to have it, is all a profound secret to us:  your transitions arc so Pindaric, that, without notes, we do not understand them, especially as neither Mr. Bentley nor I have seen any of the letters, which I suppose you have written to your family in the intervals of your journeyings from Sir Jonathan Cope’s(387) to Roel, and from Roel to Greatworth.  Mr. Bentley was just ready to send you down a packet of Gothic, and brick and mortar, and arched windows, and taper columns to be erected at Roel—­no such matter, you have met with some brave chambers belonging to Sir Jonathan somebody in Northamptonshire, and are unloading your camels and caravan,.;, and pitching your tents among your own tribe.  I cannot be quite sorry, for I shall certainly visit you at Greatworth, and it might have been some years before the curtain had drawn up at Roel.  We emerge very fast out of shavings, and hammerings, and pastings; the painted glass is full-blown in every window, and the gorgeous saints, that were brought out for one day on the festival of Saint George Montagu, are fixed for ever in the tabernacles they are to inhabit.- The castle is not the only beauty:  and to-day we had a glimpse of the sun as he passed by, though I am convinced the summer is over; for these two last years we have been forced to compound for five hot days in the pound.

News there is none to tell you.  We had two days in the House of Commons, that had something of the air of Parliament; there has been a Marriage-bill, invented by my Lord Bath, and cooked up by the Chancellor, which was warmly opposed by the Duke of Bedford in the Lords, and with us by Fox and Nugent:  the latter made an admirable speech last week against it, and Charles Townshend,(388) another very good one yesterday, when we sat till near ten o’clock, but were beat, we minority, by 165 to 84.