My dear lord, I am not sorry to be paving my way to Wentworth Castle by a letter, where I suppose you are at this time, and for which I waited:  it is not that I stayed so long before I executed my embassy aupr`es de Milord Tylney.  He had but one pair of gold pheasants at present, but promises my Lady Strafford the first fruits of their loves.  He gave me hopes of some pied peacocks sooner, for which I asked directly, as one must wait for the lying-in of the pheasants.  If I go on negotiating so successfully, I may hope to arrive at a peerage a little sooner than my uncle has.

As your Lordship, I know, is so good as to interest yourself in the calamities of your friends, I will, as shortly as I can, describe and grieve your heart with a catastrophe that has happened to two of them.  My Lady Ailesbury, Mr. Conway, and Miss Rich passed two days last week at Strawberry Hill.  We were returning from Mrs. Clive’s through the long field, and had got over the high stile that comes into the road; that is, three of us.  It had rained, and the stile was wet.  I could not let Miss Rich straddle across so damp a palfrey, but took her in my arms to lift her over.  At that instant I saw a coach and six come thundering down the hill from my house; and hurrying to set down my charge, and stepping backwards, I missed the first step, came down headlong with the nymph in my arms; but turning quite round as we rushed to the ground, the first thing that touched the earth was Miss Rich’s head.  You must guess in how improper a situation we fell; and you must not tell my Lady Strafford before any body that every petticoat, etc. in the world were canted high enough indeed!  The coach came on, and never stopped.  The apprehension that it would run over my Chloe made me lie where I was, holding out my arm to keep off the horses, which narrowly missed trampling us to death.  The ladies, who were Lady Holderness, Miss Pelham, and your sister Lady Mary Coke, stared with astonishment at the theatre which they thought I had chosen to celebrate our loves; the footmen laughed; and you may imagine the astonishment of Mr. Conway and Lady Ailesbury, who did not see the fall, but turned and saw our attitude.  It was these spectators that amazed Miss Pelham, who described the adventure to Mrs. Pitt, and said, “What was most amazing, there were Mr. Conway and Lady Ailesbury looking on!” I shall be vexed to have told you this long story, if Lady Mary has writ it already; only tell in@ honestly if she has described it as decently as I have.

If you have not got the new Letters and Memoirs of Madame Maintenon, I beg I may recommend them for your summer reading.  As far as I have got, which is but into the fifth volume of the Letters, I think you will find them very curious, and some very entertaining.  The fourth volume has persuaded me of the sincerity of’ her devotion; and two or three letters at the beginning of my present tome have made me even