(516) Only son of Charles third Duke of Queensberry, who was shot by the accidental discharge of his pistol on his journey from Scotland to London, in company with his parents and newly-married wife, a daughter of the Earl of Hopetoun.  Lady Mary Wortley thus alludes to this calamity in a letter to her daughter:—­“The Duchess of Queensberry’s misfortune would move compassion in the hardest heart; yet, all circumstances coolly considered, I think the young lady deserves most to be pitied, being left in the terrible situation of a young and, I suppose, rich widowhood; which is walking blindfold upon stilts amidst precipices, though perhaps as little sensible of her danger, as a child of a quarter old would be in the paws of a monkey leaping on the tiles of a house."-E.

221 Letter 113 To Richard Bentley, Esq.  Strawberry Hill, Nov. 3, 1754.

I have finished all my parties, and am drawing towards a conclusion here:  the Parliament meets in ten days:  the House, I hear, will be extremely full—­curiosity drawing as many to town as party used to do.  The minister(517) in the house of Lords is a new sight in these days.

Mr. Chute and I have been at Mr. Barret’s(518) at Belhouse; I never saw a place for which one did not wish, so totally void of faults.  What he has done is in Gothic, and very true, though not up to the perfection of the committee.  The hall is pretty; the great dining room hung with good family pictures; among which is his ancestor, the Lord Dacre who was hanged.(519) I remember when Mr. Barret was first initiated in the College of Arms by the present Dean of Exeter(520) at Cambridge, he was overjoyed at the first ancestor he put up, who was one of the murderers of Thomas Becket.  The chimney-pieces, except one little miscarriage into total Ionic (he could not resist statuary and Siena marble), are all of a good King James the First Gothic.  I saw the heronry so fatal to Po Yang, and told him that I was persuaded they were descended from Becket’s assassin, and I hoped from my Lord Dacre too.  He carried us to see the famous plantations and buildings of the last Lord Petre.  They are the Brobdignag of the bad taste.  The Unfinished house is execrable, massive, and split through and through:  it stands on the brow of a hill, rather to seek for a prospect than to see one, and turns its back upon an outrageous avenue which is closed with a screen of tall trees, because he would not be at the expense of beautifying the black front Of his house.  The clumps are gigantic, and very ill placed.

George Montagu and the Colonel have at last been here, and have screamed with approbation through the whole Cu-gamut.  Indeed, the library is delightful.  They went to the Vine, and approved as much.  Do you think we wished for you?  I carried down incense and mass-books, and we had most Catholic enjoyment Of the chapel.  In the evenings, indeed, we did touch a card a little to please George—­so