altercations.  The Commons abuse the Barons, and the Barons return it; in short, Mr. Fox attacked the Chancellor violently on the Marriage-bill; and when it was sent back to the Lords, the Chancellor made the most outrageous invectives on Fox that ever was heard.  But what offends still more,—­I don’t mean offends Fox more,—­was the Chancellor describing the chief persons who had opposed his bill in the Commons, and giving reason why he excused them.  As the speaker was in the number of the excused, the two maces are ready to come to blows.(396) The town says Mr. Fox is to be dismissed, but I can scarce think it will go so far.

My Lord Cornwallis is made an earl; Lord Bristol’s sisters have the rank of Earl’s daughters; Damer is Lord Milton in Ireland, and the new Lord Barnard is, I hear, to be Earl of Darlington.

Poor Lady Caroline Brand is dead of a rheumatic fever, and her husband as miserable a man as ever he was a cheerful one:  I grieve much for her, and pity him; they were infinitely happy, and lived in the most perfect friendship I ever saw.

You may be assured that I will pay you a visit some time this summer, though not yet, as I cannot leave my workmen, especially as we have a painter who paints the paper on the staircase under Mr. Bentley’s direction.  The armoury bespeaks the ancient chivalry of the lords of the castle; and I have filled Mr. Bentley’s Gothic lanthorn with painted glass, which casts the most venerable gloom on the stairs that ever was seen since the days of Abelard.  The lanthorn itself, in which I have stuck a coat of the Veres, is supposed to have come from Castle Henningham.  Lord and Lady Vere were here t’other day, and called cousins with it, and would very readily have invited it to Hanworth; but her Portuguese blood has so blackened the true stream that I could not bring myself to offer so fair a gift to their chapel.

I shall only tell you a bon-mot of Keith’s, the marriage-broker, and conclude.  “G-d d-n the bishops!” said he, (I beg Miss Montagu’s pardon,) “so they will hinder my marrying.  Well, let ’em; but I’ll be revenged!  I’ll buy two or three acres of ground, and, by G-d!  I’ll underbury them all!” Adieu!

(395) The name of the Saxon great council, the supposed origin of parliaments.

(396) Among the Hardwicke papers there is a letter from Dr. Birch to the Hon. Philip Yorke, giving an account of the debate in the House of Lords.  The following is an extract:—­ “My Lord Chancellor expressed his surprise, that the bill should have been styled out of doors an absurd, a cruel, a scandalous, and a wicked one.  With regard to his own share in this torrent of abuse, as he was obliged to those who had so honourably defended him, so,’ said he, ’I despise the invective, and I despise the retractation; I despise the scurrility, and I reject the adulation.’  Mr. Fox was not present, but had soon an account of what had passed; for the same evening, being at Vauxhall with some ladies, he broke from them, and collecting a little circle of young members of parliament and others, told them with great eagerness, that he wished the session had continued a fortnight longer, for then he would have made ample returns to the Lord Chancellor.  The Speaker talks of my Lord Chancellor’s speech in the style of Mr. Fox, as deserving of the notice of the Commons, if they had not been prorogued."-E.