(47) Madame de Mirepoix, French ambassadress in England, to whom her father, Prince Craon, had written a letter of introduction for Horace Walpole.- D.

(48) Count Richcourt, and some Florentines, his creatures, had been very impertinent about Mr. Mann’s family, which was very good, and which made it necessary to have his pedigree drawn out, and sent over to Florence.

(49) Coxe, in his Memoirs of Lord Walpole, vol ii. p. 264, says that the Duke of Devonshire resigned, because be was disgusted with the feuds in the cabinet, and perplexed with the jealous disposition of Newcastle and the desponding spirit of Pelham.  He adds, " that the Duke was a man of sound judgment and unbiased integrity, and that Sir Robert Walpole used to declare, that, on a subject which required mature deliberation, he would prefer his sentiments to those of any other person in the kingdom."-E.

32 Letter 7 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, June 25, 1749.

Don’t flatter yourself with your approaching year of jubilee; its pomps and vanities will be nothing to the shows and triumphs we have had, and are having.  I talk like an Englishman:  here you know we imagine that a jubilee is a season of pageants, not of devotion but our Sabbath has really been all tilt and tournament.  There have been, I think, no less than eight masquerades, the fire-works, and a public act at Oxford:  to-morrow is an installation of six Knights of the Bath, and in August of as many Garters:  Saturday, Sunday, and Monday next, are the banquets(50) at Cambridge, for the instalment of the Duke of Newcastle as chancellor.  The whole world goes to it:  he has invited, summoned, pressed the entire body of nobility and gentry from all parts of England.  His cooks have been there these ten days, distilling essences of every living creature, and massacring and confounding all the species that Noah and Moses took such pains to preserve and distinguish.  It would be pleasant to see the pedants and professors searching for etymologies of strange dishes, and tracing more wonderful transformations than any in the Metamorphoses.  How miserably Horace’s unde et quo Catius will be hacked about in clumsy quotations!  I have seen some that will be very unwilling performers at the creation of this ridiculous MaMaMOUChi.(51) I have set my heart on their giving a doctor’s degree to the Duchess of Newcastle’s favourite—­this favourite is at present neither a lover nor an apothecary, but a common pig, that she brought from Hanover:  I am serious; and Harry Vane, the new lord of the treasury, is entirely employed, when he is not -,it the Board, in opening and shutting the door for it.  Tell me, don’t you very often throw away my letters in a passion, and believe that I invent the absurdities I relate!  Were not we as mad when you was in England?

The King, who has never dined out of his own palaces, has just determined to dine at Claremont to-morrow—­all the cooks are at Cambridge; imagine the distress!