Pray don’t die, like a country body, because it is a fashion for gentlefolks to die in London; it li’s the bon ton now to die; one can’t show one’s face without being a death’s-head.  Mrs. Bethel and I are come strangely into fashion; but true critics in mode object to our having underjaws, and maintain that we are not dead comme il faut.  The young Lady Exeter(675) died almost suddenly, and has handsomely confirmed her father’s will, by leaving her money to her lord only for his life, and then to Thomas Townshend.(676) Sir William Lowther has made a charming will, and been as generous at his death as he was in his short life; he has left thirteen legacies of five thousand pounds each to friends; of which you know by sight, Reynolds,(677) Mrs. Brudenel’s son, (678) and young Turner.  He has given seventeen hundred pounds a-year; that is, I suppose, seventeen hundred Pounds, to old Mrs. Lowther.(679) What an odd circumstance! a woman passing an hundred years to receive a legacy from a man of twenty-seven; after her it goes to Lord George Cavendish.  Six hundred pounds per year he gives to another Mrs. Lowther, to be divided afterwards between Lord Frederick and Lord John.  Lord Charles, his uncle, is residuary legatee.  But what do you think of young Mr. James Lowther, who not of age becomes master of one or two and forty thousand pounds a-year?  England will become a heptarchy, the property of six or seven people!  The Duke of Bedford is fallen to be not above the fourth rich man in the island.

Poor Lord Digby(680) is like to escape happily at last, after being cut for the stone, and bearing the preparation and execution with such heroism, that waking with the noise of the surgeons, he asked if that was to be the day?  “Yes.”—­“How soon will they be ready?”—­“Not for some time.”—­“Then let me sleep till they are?” He was cut by a new instrument of Hawkins, which reduces an age of torture to but one minute.

The Duke had appeared in form on the causeway in Hyde Park with my lady Coventry:  it is the new office, where all lovers are entered.  How happy she must be with Billy and Bully!(681) I hope she will not mistake, and call the former by the nickname of the latter.  At a great supper t’other night at Lord Hertford’s, if she was not the best-humoured creature in the world, I should have made her angry:  she said in a very vulgar accent, if she drank any more, she should be muckibus.  “Lord!” said Lady Mary Coke, “what is that?"-"Oh! it is Irish for sentimental.”

There is a new Morocco ambassador, who declares for Lady Caroline Petersham, preferably to Lady Coventry.  Lady Caroline Fox says he is the best bred of all the foreign ministers, and at one dinner said more obliging things than Mirepoix did during his whole embassy.  He is so fashionable, that George Selwyn says he is sure my lady Winchelsea will ogle him instead of Haslang.

I shall send you soon the fruits of my last party to Strawberry; Dick Edgcumbe, George Selwyn, and Williams were with me:  we composed a coat of arms for the two clubs at White’s, which is actually engraving from a very pretty painting of Edgcumbe, whom Mr. Chute, as Strawberry king at arms, has appointed our chief herald painter; here is the blazon: