[Footnote 1:  “A new one appointed.” This is a mistake of Walpole’s.  A new Parliament was not, nor indeed could be, appointed; but Maupeou created six new Sovereign Courts at Arras, Blois, Chalons sur Marne, Clermont, Lyon, and Poitiers, at which “justice should be done at the sovereign’s expense” (Lacretelle, iv. 264).]

In the mean time our most serious war is between two Operas.  Mr. Hobart, Lord Buckingham’s brother, is manager of the Haymarket.  Last year he affronted Guadagni, by preferring the Zamperina, his own mistress, to the singing hero’s sister.  The Duchess of Northumberland, Lady Harrington, and some other great ladies, espoused the brother, and without a license erected an Opera for him at Madame Cornelys’s.  This is a singular dame, and you must be acquainted with her.  She sung here formerly, by the name of the Pompeiati.  Of late years she has been the Heidegger of the age, and presided over our diversions.  Her taste and invention in pleasures and decorations are singular.  She took Carlisle House in Soho Square, enlarged it, and established assemblies and balls by subscription.  At first they scandalised, but soon drew in both righteous and ungodly.  She went on building, and made her house a fairy palace for balls, concerts, and masquerades.  Her Opera, which she called Harmonic Meetings, was splendid and charming.  Mr. Hobart began to starve, and the managers of the theatres were alarmed.  To avoid the act, she pretended to take no money, and had the assurance to advertise that the subscription was to provide coals for the poor, for she has vehemently courted the mob, and succeeded in gaining their princely favour.  She then declared her Masquerades were for the benefit of commerce.  I concluded she would open another sort of house next for the interests of the Foundling Hospital, and I was not quite mistaken, for they say one of her maids, gained by Mr. Hobart, affirms that she could not undergo the fatigue of managing such a house.  At last Mr. Hobart informed against her, and the Bench of Justices, less soothable by music than Orpheus’s beasts, have pronounced against her.  Her Opera is quashed, and Guadagni, who governed so haughtily at Vienna, that, to pique some man of quality there, he named a minister to Venice, is not only fined, but was threatened to be sent to Bridewell, which chilled the blood of all the Caesars and Alexanders he had ever represented; nor could any promises of his lady-patronesses rehabilitate his courage—­so for once an Act of Parliament goes for something.

You have got three new companions;[1] General Montagu, a West Indian Mr. Paine, and Mr. Lynch, your brother at Turin.

[Footnote 1:  As Knights of the Bath.—­WALPOLE.]

There is the devil to pay in Denmark.  The Queen[1] has got the ascendant, has turned out favourites and Ministers, and literally wears the breeches, actual buckskin.  There is a physician, who is said to rule both their Majesties, and I suppose is sold to France, for that is the predominant interest now at Copenhagen.  The Czarina has whispered her disapprobation, and if she has a talon left, when she has done with the Ottomans, may chance to scratch the little King.