[Sidenote:  Horace Walpole]

Well! and so you think we are undone!—­not at all; if folly and extravagance are symptoms of a nation’s being at the height of their glory, as after-observers pretend that they are forerunners of its ruin, we never were in a more flourishing situation.  My Lord Rockingham and my nephew Lord Orford have made a match of five hundred pounds, between five turkeys and five geese, to run from Norwich to London.  Don’t you believe in the transmigration of souls?  And are you not convinced that this race is between Marquis Sardanapalus and Earl Heliogabalus?  And don’t you pity the poor Asiatics and Italians who comforted themselves, on their resurrection, with their being geese and turkeys?

[Sidenote:  Horace Walpole]

Here’s another symptom of our glory!  The Irish Speaker, Mr. Ponsonby, has been reposing himself at Newmarket.  George Selwyn, seeing him toss about bank-bills at the hazard-table, said, “How easily the Speaker passes the money-bills!”

[Sidenote:  Horace Walpole]

You would be more diverted with a Mrs. Holman, whose passion is keeping an assembly, and inviting literally everybody to it.  She goes to the drawing-room to watch for sneezes; whips out a curtsy, and then sends next morning to know how your cold does, and to desire your company next Thursday.

[Sidenote:  Horace Walpole]

For my own part, I comfort myself with the humane reflection of the Irishman in the ship that was on fire—­I am but a passenger!  If I were not so indolent, I think I should rather put in practice the late Duchess of Bolton’s geographical resolution of going to China, when Whiston told her the world would be burnt in three years.  Have you any philosophy?  Tell me what you think.

[Sidenote:  Horace Walpole]

If it was not too long to transcribe, I would send you an entertaining petition of the periwig-makers to the King, in which they complain that men will wear their own hair.  Should one almost wonder if carpenters were to remonstrate that since the peace their trade decays, and that there is no demand for wooden legs? Apropos my Lady Hertford’s friend, Lady Harriot Vernon, has quarrelled with me for smiling at the enormous head-gear of her daughter, Lady Grosvenor.  She came one night to Northumberland House with such display of friz that it literally spread beyond her shoulders.  I happened to say it looked as if her parents had stinted her in hair before marriage, and that she had determined to indulge her fancy now.  This, among ten thousand things said by all the world, was reported to Lady Harriot, and has occasioned my disgrace.  As she never found fault with anybody herself, I excuse her.  You will be less surprised to hear that the Duchess of Queensberry has not yet done dressing herself marvellously:  she was at Court on Sunday in a gown and petticoat of red flannel.