Your friend Lady Petersham, not to let the town quite lapse into politics, has entertained it with a new scene.  She was t’other night at the play with her court; viz.  Miss Ashe, Lord Barnard, M. St. Simon, and her favourite footman Richard, whom, under pretence of keeping places, she always keeps in her box the whole time to see the play at his ease.  Mr. Stanley, Colonel Vernon, and Mr. Vaughan arrived at the very end of the farce, and could find no room, but a row and a half in Lady Caroline’s box.  Richard denied them entrance very impertinently.  Mr. Stanley took him by the hair of his head, dragged him into the passage, and thrashed him.  The heroine was outrageous—­the heroes not at all so.(656) She sent Richard to Fielding for a warrant.  He would not grant it—­and so it ended—­And so must I, for here is company.  Adieu!

My letter would have been much cleverer, but George Montagu has been chattering by me the whole time, and insists on my making you his compliments.

(656) Lady Hervey, in a letter of the 23d of March, thus alludes to this story:—­“This is the time of year you used to come to town.  Come and hear a little what is going forward:  you will be alarmed with invasions which are never intended; you will hear of ladies of quality who uphold footmen insulting gentlemen; nay, you will hear of ladies who steal not only hearts, but gold boxes."-E.

304 Letter 171 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, Jan. 25, 1756.

I am troubled to think what anxiety you have undergone! yet your brother Gal. assures me that he has never missed writing one week since he began to be ill.  Indeed, had I in the least foreseen that his disorder would have lasted a quarter of the time it has, I should have given you an account of it; but the distance between us is so great, that I could not endure to make you begin to be uneasy, when, in all probability, the cause would be removed before my letter reached You.  This tenderness for you has deceived me:  your brother, as his complaint is of the asthmatic kind, has continued all the time at Richmond.  Our attendance in Parliament has been so unrelaxed, the weather has been so bad, and the roads so impracticable by astonishing and continued deluges of rain, that, as I heard from him constantly three or four times a week, and saw your brother James, who went to him every week, I went to see him but twice; and the last time, about a fortnight ago, I thought him extremely mended:  he wrote me two very comfortable notes this week of his mending, and this morning Mr. Chute and I went to see him, and to scold him for not having writ oftener to you, which he protests he has done constantly.  I cannot flatter you, my dear child, as much as to say I think him mended; his shortness of breath continues to be very uneasy to him, and his long confinement has wasted him a good deal.  I fear his case is more consumptive than asthmatic; he begins a course of quicksilver to-morrow for the