[Footnote 1:  "A winter Ranelagh.”—­the Pantheon in Oxford Street.]

[Footnote 2:  Lady Townley is the principal character in “The Provoked Husband.”]

[Footnote 3:  West, as a painter, was highly esteemed by George III., and, on the death of Sir J. Reynolds, succeeded him as President of the Royal Academy.]

Well! what becomes of your neighbours, the Pope and Turk? is one Babylon to fall, and the other to moulder away?  I begin to tremble for the poor Greeks; they will be sacrificed like the Catalans, and left to be impaled for rebellion, as soon as that vainglorious woman the Czarina has glutted her lust of fame, and secured Azoph by a peace, which I hear is all she insists on keeping.  What strides modern ambition takes! We are the successors of Aurungzebe; and a virago under the Pole sends a fleet into the Aegean Sea to rouse the ghosts of Leonidas and Epaminondas, and burn the capital of the second Roman Empire!  Folks now scarce meddle with their next door neighbours; as many English go to visit St. Peter’s who never thought of stepping into St. Paul’s.

I shall let Lord Beauchamp know your readiness to oblige him, probably to-morrow, as I go to town.  The spring is so backward here that I have little inducement to stay; not an entire leaf is out on any tree, and I have heard a syren as much as a nightingale.  Lord Fitzwilliam, who, I suppose, is one of your latest acquaintance, is going to marry Lady Charlotte Ponsonby, Lord Besborough’s second daughter, a pretty, sensible, and very amiable girl.  I seldom tell you that sort of news, but when the parties are very fresh in your memory.  Adieu!

MASQUERADES IN FASHION—­A LADY’S CLUB.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

STRAWBERRY HILL, May 6, 1770.

If you are like me, you are fretting at the weather.  We have not a leaf, yet, large enough to make an apron for a Miss Eve of two years old.  Flowers and fruits, if they come at all this year, must meet together as they do in a Dutch picture; our lords and ladies, however, couple as if it were the real Gioventu dell’ anno.  Lord Albemarle, you know, has disappointed all his brothers and my niece; and Lord Fitzwilliam is declared sposo to Lady Charlotte Ponsonby.  It is a pretty match, and makes Lord Besborough as happy as possible.

Masquerades proceed in spite of Church and King.  That knave the Bishop of London persuaded that good soul the Archbishop to remonstrate against them; but happily the age prefers silly follies to serious ones, and dominos, comme de raison, carry it against lawn sleeves.