(144) It is engraved in Stosch’s book:  it is a Gladiator standing, with a vase by him on a table, on an exceedingly fine garnet.

68 Letter 25 To George Montagu, Esq.  Arlington Street, June 23, 1750.

Dear George, As I am not Vanneck’d(145) I have been in no hurry to thank you for your congratulation, and to assure you that I never knew what solid happiness was till I was married.  Your Trevors and Rices dined with me last week at Strawberry Hill, and would have had me answer you upon the matrimonial tone, but I thought I should imitate cheerfulness in that style as ill as if I were really married.  I have had another of your friends with me here some time, whom I adore, Mr. Bentley; he has more sense, judgment, and wit, more taste, and more misfortunes, than sure ever met in any man.  I have heard that Dr. Bentley, regretting his want of taste for all such learning as his, which is the very want of taste, used to sigh and say, “Tully had his Marcus.”  If the sons resembled as much as the fathers did, at least in vanity, I would be the modest agreeable Marquis.  Mr. Bentley tells me that you press him much to visit you at Hawkhurst.  I advise him, and assure him he will make his fortune under you there; that you are an agent from the board of trade to the smugglers, and wallow in contraband wine, tea, and silk handkerchiefs.  I found an old newspaper t’other day, with a list of outlawed smugglers; there were John Price, alias Miss Marjoram, Bob Plunder, Bricklayer Tom, and Robin Cursemother, all of Hawkhurst, in Kent.  When Miss Harriet is thoroughly hardened at Buxton, as I hear she is being,, in a public room with the whole Wells, from drinking waters, I conclude she will come to sip nothing but new brandy.

As jolly and as abominable a life as she may have been leading, I defy all her enormities to equal a party of pleasure that I had t’other night.  I shall relate it to you to show you the manners of the age, which are always as entertaining to a person fifty miles off, as to one born an hundred and fifty years after the time.  I had a card from Lady Caroline Petersham to go with her to Vauxhall.  I went accordingly to her house, and found her and the little Ashe,(146) or the Pollard Ashe, as they call her; they had just finished their last layer of red, and looked as handsome as crimson could make them.  On the cabinet-door stood a pair of Dresden candlesticks, a present from the virgin hands of Sir John Bland:  the branches of each formed a little bower over a cock and hen * * * * We issued into the mall to assemble our company, which was all the town, if we could get it; for just so many had been summoned, except Harry Vane(147) whom we met by chance.  We mustered the Duke of Kingston, whom Lady Caroline says she has been trying for these seven years; but alas! his beauty is at the fall of the leaf; Lord March,(148) Mr. Whitehead, a pretty Miss Beauclerc, and a very foolish Miss Sparre.  These two damsels