to assure you that still it was nothing less than a judgment.  Dr. Barton, the rector of St. Andrews, was the only sensible, or at least honest divine, upon the occasion.  When some women would have had him to pray to them in his parish church against the intended shock, he excused himself on having a great cold.  “And besides,” said he, “you may go to St. James’s church; the Bishop of Oxford is to preach there all night about earthquakes.”  Turner, a great china-man, at the corner of Dext street, had a jar cracked by the shock:  he originally asked ten guineas for the pair; he now asks twenty, “because it is the only jar in Europe that has been cracked by an earthquake.”  But I have quite done with this topic.  The Princess of Wales is lowering the price of princes, as the earthquake has raised old china; she has produced a fifth boy.  In a few years we shall have Dukes of York and Lancaster popping out of bagnios and taverns as frequently as Duke Hamilton.(140) George Selwyn said a good thing the other day on another cheap dignity:  he was asked who was playing at tennis, He replied, “Nobody but three markers and a Regent.” your friend Lord Sandwich.  While we are undervaluing all principalities and powers, you are making a rout with them, for which I shall scold you.  We had been diverted with the pompous accounts of the reception of the Margrave of Baden Dourlach at Rome; and now you tell me he has been put upon the same foot at Florence!  I never heard his name when he was here, but on his being mob’d as he was going to Wanstead, and the people’s calling him the Prince of Bad-door-lock.  He was still less noticed than he of Modena.

Lord Bath is as well received at Paris as a German Margrave in Italy.  Every body goes to Paris:  Lord Mountford was introduced to the King, who only said brutally enough, “Ma foi! il est bien nourri!” Lord Albemarle keeps an immense table there, with sixteen people in his kitchen; his aide-de-camps invite every body, but he seldom graces the banquet himself, living retired out of the town with his old Columbine.(141) What an extraordinary man! with no fortune at all, and with slight parts, he has seventeen thousand a year from the government, which he squanders away, though he has great debts, and four or five numerous broods of children of one sort or other!

The famous Westminster election is at last determined, and Lord Trentham returned:  the mob were outrageous, and pelted Colonel Waldegrave, whom they took for Mr. Leveson, from Covent-garden to the Park, and knocked down Mr. Offley, who was with him.  Lord Harrington(142) was scarce better treated when he went on board a ship from Dublin.  There are great commotions there about one Lucas, an apothecary, and favourite of the mob.  The Lord Lieutenant bought off a Sir Richard Cox, a patriot, by a place in the revenue, though with great opposition from that silly mock-virtuoso, Billy Bristow, and that sillier Frederick Frankland, two oafs, whom you have seen in Italy, and who are commissioners there.  Here are great disputes in the Regency, where Lord Harrington finds there is not spirit enough to discard these puppet-show heroes!