of Mr. Stanyan’s quality.  I find by his Majesty’s way of speaking of you, that you are much in his favour and esteem, and I fancy you would find your ease and advantage more in being nearer his person than at the distance you are from him at present.  I omit no opportunity of doing you justice where I think it is for your service, and wish I could know your mind as to these several particulars by a more speedy and certain conveyance, that I might act accordingly to the utmost of my powers.  Madame Kielmansegg and my Lady Hervey desire me to forward the enclosed to my Lady Mary Wortley, to whom I beg you will deliver them with my most humble regards.”

What Montagu’s feelings were can only be imagined.  It is almost certain that he felt himself vastly aggrieved.  Nothing could have been more delicate or complimentary than Addison’s letter, but it did not, and could not, disguise the main fact.  It was easy for the Secretary of State to suggest that at least one reason for the recall was that Montagu must be anxious to return, but that certainly could not have deceived the Ambassador who was, indeed, so little anxious to get home that he remained at Constantinople until the following June.  Likewise, the statement that he would be able to promote the King’s service in Parliament, flattering as it read, meant, of course, nothing at all.  Certainly, though Montagu sat in the House of Commons until his death, office was never offered him in any Administration.

Lady Mary found herself again with child.  Whether this pleased her or not no one can say, but in a letter to Mrs. Thistlethwayte she treated the incident divertingly enough.

“I wish I could return your goodness with some diverting accounts from hence.  But I know not what part of the scenes here would gratify your curiosity, or whether you have any curiosity at all for things so far distant.  To say the truth, I am, at this present writing, not very much turned for the recollection of what is diverting, my head being wholly filled with the preparations necessary for the increase of my family, which I expect every day.  You may easily guess at my uneasy situation.  But I am, however, in some degree comforted, by the glory that accrues to me from it, and a reflection on the contempt I should otherwise fall under.  You won’t know what to make of this speech:  but, in this country, it is more despicable to be married and not fruitful, than it is with us to be fruitful before marriage.  They have a notion, that, whenever a woman leaves off bringing children, it is because she is too old for that business, whatever her face says to the contrary, and this opinion makes the ladies here so ready to make proofs of their youth (which is as necessary, in order to be a received beauty, as it is to shew the proofs of nobility, to be admitted knight of Malta), that they do not content themselves with using the natural means, but fly to all sorts of quackeries, to avoid the scandal of being past