I was entertained the other night at the house of much such a creature as Sir John Rawdon, and one whom you remember too, Naylor. he has a wife who keeps the most indecent house of all those that are called decent:  every Sunday she has a contraband assembly:  I had had a card for Monday a fortnight before.  As the day was new, I expected a great assembly, but found scarce six persons.  I asked where the company was—­I was answered, “Oh! they are not come yet:  they will be here presently; they all supped here last night, stayed till morning, and I suppose are not up yet.”

My Lord Bolinbroke has lost his wife.  When she was dying, he acted grief; flung himself upon her bed, and asked her if she could forgive him.  I never saw her, but have heard her wit and parts excessively commended.(125) Dr. Middleton told me a compliment she made him two years ago, which I thought pretty.  She said she was persuaded that he was a very great writer, for she understood his works better than any other English book, and that she had observed that the best writers were always the most intelligible.

Wednesday.

I had not time to finish my letter on Monday.  I return to the earthquake, which I had mistaken; it is to be to-day.  This frantic terror is so much, that within these three days seven hundred and thirty coaches have been counted passing Hyde Park corner, with whole parties removing into the country.  Here is a good advertisement which I cut out of the papers to-day;

“On Monday next will be published (price 6d.) A true and exact List of all the Nobility and Gentry who have left, or shall leave, this place through fear of another Earthquake.”

Several women have made earthquake gowns; that is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all to-night.  These are of the more courageous.  One woman, still more heroic, is come to town on purpose:  she says, all her friends are in London, and she will not survive them.  But what will you think of Lady Catherine Pelham, Lady Frances Arundel,(126) and Lord and Lady Galway,(127) who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back-I suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish.(128) The prophet of all this (next to the Bishop of London) is a trooper of Lord Delawar’s who was yesterday sent to Bedlam.  His colonel sent to the man’s wife, and asked her if her husband had ever been disordered before.  She cried, “Oh dear! my lord, he is not mad now; if your lordship would but get any sensible man to examine him, you would find, he is quite in his right mind.”

I shall now tell you something more serious:  Lord Dalkeith(129) is dead of the small-pox in three days.  It is so dreadfully fatal in his family, that besides several uncles and aunts, his eldest boy died of it last year; and his only brother, who was ill but two days, putrefied so fast that his limbs fell off as they lifted the body into the coffin.  Lady Dalkeith is five months gone with child; she was hurrying to him, but was stopped on the road by the physician, who told her that it was a miliary fever.  They were remarkably happy.