us.  The Duke of Newcastle has expected them every hour:  he was terribly alarmed t’other night; on his table he found a mysterious card with only these words, “Charles is very well, and is expected in England every day.”  It was plainly some secret friend that advertised him of the pretender’s approaching arrival.  He called up all the servants, ransacked the whole house to know who had been in his dressing-room:-at last it came out to be an answer from the Duchess of Queensberry to the Duchess of Newcastle about Lord Charles Douglas.  Don’t it put you in mind of my Lord Treasurer Portland in Clarendon, “Remember Caesar”!

The French have promised letters of noblesse to whoever fits out even a little privateer.  I could not help a melancholy smile when my Lady Ailesbury talked of coming over soon.  I fear major-general you will scarce be permitted to return to your plough at Park-place, when we grudge every man that is left at the plough.  Between the French and the earthquakes, you have no notion how good we are grown; nobody makes a suit of clothes now but of sackcloth turned up with ashes.  The fast was kept so devoutly, that Dick Edgecumbe, finding a very lean hazard at White’s, said with a sigh, “Lord, how the times are degenerated!  Formerly a fast would have brought every body hither; now it keeps every body away!” A few nights before, two men walking up the Strand, one said to t’other, “Look how red the sky is!  Well, thank God! there is to be no masquerade!”

My Lord Ashburnham(659) does not keep a fast; he is going to marry one of the plump Crawleys:—­they call him the noble lord upon the woolsack.

The Duchess of Norfolk has opened her new house:  all the earth was there last Tuesday.  You would have thought there had been a comet, every body was gaping in the air and treading on one another’s toes.  In short, you never saw such a scene of magnificence and taste.  The tapestry, the embroidered bed, the illumination, the glasses, the lightness and novelty of the ornaments, and the ceilings, are delightful.  She gives three Tuesdays, would you be at one!  Somebody asked my Lord Rockingham afterwards at White’s, what was there’!  He said, , “Oh! there was all the company afraid of the Duchess, and the Duke afraid of all the company.”—­It was not a bad picture.

My Lady Ailesbury flatters me extremely about my “World,” but it has brought me into a peck of troubles.  In short, the good-natured town have been pleased to lend me a meaning, and call my Lord Bute Sir Eustace.  I need not say how ill the story tallies to what they apply it; but I do vow to you, that so far from once entering into my imagination, my only apprehension was that I should be suspected of flattery for the compliment to the Princess in a former part.  It is the more cruel, because you know it is just the thing in the world on which one must not defend one’s self.  If I might, I can prove that the paper was writ last Easter, long before this history was ever mentioned, and flung by, because I did not like it:  I mentioned it one night to my Lady Hervey, which was the occasion of its being printed.