his own credit. About six weeks ago Duke Hamilton,1 the very reverse of the Earl, hot, debauched, extravagant, and equally damaged in his fortune and person, fell in love with the youngest at the masquerade, and determined to marry her in the spring. About a fortnight since, at an immense assembly at my Lord Chesterfield's, made to show the house, which is really most magnificent, Duke Hamilton made violent love at one end of the room, while he was playing at pharaoh at the other end; that is, he saw neither the bank nor his own cards, which were of three hundred pounds each: he soon lost a thousand. I own I was so little a professor in love, that I thought all this parade looked ill for the poor girl; and could not conceive, if he was so much engaged with his mistress as to disregard such sums, why he played at all. However, two nights afterwards, being left alone with her while her mother and sister were at Bedford House, he found himself so impatient, that he sent for a parson. The doctor refused to perform the ceremony without licence or ring: the Duke swore he would send for the Archbishop-at last they were married with a ring of the bed-curtain, at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair chapel. The Scotch are enraged; the women mad that so much beauty has had its effect; and what is most silly, my Lord Coventry declares that now he will marry the other.

Poor Lord Lempster has just killed an officer3 in a duel, about a play-debt, and I fear was in the wrong. There is no end of his misfortunes and wrong-headedness! -Where is Mr. Conway?-Adieu !

James, fourth Duke of Hamilton. He died in 1758.-D.

2 On the 14th of February.-E.

3 Captain Gray of the Guards. The duel was fought, with swords, in Marylebone Fields. Lord Lempster took his trial at the Old Bailey in April, and was found guilty of manslaughter.-E.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, March 23, 1752.

MR. CONWAY has been arrived this fortnight, a week sooner than we expected him; but my Lady Ailesbury forgives it! He is full of your praises, so you have not sowed your goodness in unthankful ground. By a letter I have just received from you, he finds you have missed some from him with commissions; but he will tell you about them himself. I find him much leaner, and great cracks in his beauty. Your picture is arrived, which he says is extremely like you. Mr. Chute cannot bear it; says it wants your countenance and goodness; that it looks bonny and Irish. I am between both, and should know it: to be sure, there is none of your wetbrown-paperness in it, but it has a look with which I have known you come out from your little room, when Richcourt has raised your ministerial French, and you have writ to England about it till you were half fuddled. Au reste, it is gloriously coloured-will Astley promise to continue to do as well? or has he, like all other English painters, only laboured this to get reputation, and then intends to daub away to get money?

The year has not kept the promise of tranquillity that it made you at Christmas; there has been another parliamentary bustle. The Duke of Argyll has drawn the ministry into accommodating him with a notable job, under the notion of buying for the King from the mortgagees the forfeited estates in Scotland, which are to be colonized and civilized. It passed with some inconsiderable hitches through the Commons; but in the Lords last week the Duke of Bedford took it up warmly, and spoke like another Pitt. He attacked the Duke of Argyll on favouring Jacobites, and produced some flagrant instances, which the Scotch Duke neither answered nor endeavoured to excuse, but made a strange, hurt, mys

1 Archibald Campbell, Duke of Argyll, formerly Earl of Isla.

2 For Lord Hardwicke's notes of this speech, see Parl. Hist. vol. xiv. p. 1235.-E.

VOL. II.

2 E

terious, contemptuous, incoherent speech, neither in defence of the bill nor in reply to the Duke of Bedford, but to my Lord Bath, who had fallen upon the ministry for assuming a dispensing power, in suffering Scotland to pay no taxes for the last five years. This speech, which formerly would have made the House of Commons take up arms, was strangely flat and unanimated, for want of his old chorus. Twelve lords divided against eighty that were for the bill. The Duke, who was present, would not vote; none of his people had attended the bill in the other House, and General Mordaunt (by his orders, as it is imagined) spoke against it. This concludes the session: the King goes to Hanover on Tuesday he has been scattering ribands of all colours; blue ones on Prince Edward, the young Stadtholder, and the Earls of Lincoln, Winchilsea, and Cardigan; a green one on Lord Dumfries; a red on Lord Onslow.3

The world is still mad about the Gunnings: the Duchess of Hamilton was presented on Friday; the crowd was so great, that even the noble mob in the drawing-room clambered upon chairs and tables to look at her. There are mobs at their doors to see them get into their chairs; and people go early to get places at the theatres when it is known they will be there. Dr. Sacheverel never made more noise than these two beauties.

There are two wretched women that just now are as much talked of, a Miss Jefferies and a Miss Blandy; the one condemned for murdering her uncle, the other her father. Both their stories have horrid circumstances; the first, having been debauched by her uncle; the other had so tender a parent, that his whole concern while he was expiring, and knew her for his murderess, was to save her life. It is shocking to think what a shambles this country is grown! Seventeen were executed this morning, after having murdered the turn

1 George Brudenell, fourth Earl of Cardigan, created Duke of Montagu in 1776; died in 1790.-D.

2 William Crichton Dalrymple, fourth Earl of Dumfries in Scotland, in right of his mother. He also became, in 1760, fourth Earl of Stair, and died in 1768.-D.

3 George, third Lord Onslow; died in 1776.—D.

key on Friday night, and almost forced open Newgate.

One

is forced to travel, even at noon, as if one was going to battle.

Mr. Chute is as much yours as ever, except in the article of pen and ink. Your brother transacts all he can for the Lucchi, as he has much more weight there1 than Mr. Chute. Adieu !

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.?

Arlington Street, May 5, 1752.

I NOW entirely credit all that my Lord Leicester and his family have said against Lady Mary Coke and her family; and am convinced that it is impossible to marry anything of the blood of Campbell, without having all her relations in arms to procure a separation immediately. Pray, what have I done? have I come home drunk to my wife within these four first days? or have I sat up gaming all night, and not come home at all to her, after her lady-mother had been persuaded that I was the soberest young nobleman in England, and had the greatest aversion to play? Have I kept my bride awake all night with railing at her father, when all the world had allowed him to be one of the bravest officers in Europe? In short, in short, I have a mind to take counsel, even of the wisest lawyer now living in matrimonial cases, my Lord Coke **** If, like other Norfolk husbands, I must entertain the town with a formal parting, at least it shall be in my own way: my wife shall neither run to Italy after lovers and books,3 nor keep a dormitory in her dressingroom at Whitehall for Westminster schoolboys, your Frederick Campbells, and such like; nor yet shall she reside at her mother's house, but shall absolutely set out for Strawberry Hill in two or three days, as soon as her room can

With the late Mr. Whithed's brothers, who scrupled paying a small legacy and annuity to his mistress and child

2 Now first published.

3 Alluding to the wife of his eldest brother, Lord Walpole, Margaret Rolle, who had separated herself from her husband, and resided in Italy.-E.

4

Lady Townshend.-E.

be well aired; for, to give her her due, I don't think her to blame, but flatter myself she is quite contented with the easy footing we live upon; separate beds, dining in her dressing-room when she is out of humour, and a little toad-eater that I had got for her, and whose pockets and bosom I have never examined, to see if she brought any billets-doux from Tommy Lyttelton or any of her fellows. I shall follow her myself in less than a fortnight; and if her family don't give me any more trouble,-why, who knows but at your return you may find your daughter with qualms, and in a sack? If you should happen to want to know any more particulars, she is quite well, has walked in the park every morning, or has the chariot, as she chooses; and, in short, one would think that I or she were much older than we really are, for I grow excessively fond of her.1

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, May 12, 1752.

You deserve no charity, for you never write but to ask it. When you are tired of yourself and the country, you think over all London, and consider who will be proper to send you an account of it. Take notice, I won't be your gazetteer; nor is my time come for being a dowager, a maker of news, a day-labourer in scandal. If you care for nobody but for what they can tell you, you must provide yourself elsewhere. The town is empty, nothing in it but flabby mackerel, and wooden gooseberry tarts, and a hazy east wind. My sister is gone to Paris; I go to Strawberry Hill in three days for the summer, if summer there will ever be any.

If you want news, you must send to Ireland, where there is almost a civil war, between the Lord Lieutenant and Primate on one side (observe, I don't tell you what side that is), and the Speaker on the other, who carries questions by wholesale

All this letter refers to Ann Seymour Conway, then three years old, who had been left with her nurse at Mr. Walpole's, during an absence of her father and mother in Ireland.-E.