for these six years. and gone absolutely retrograde to all true taste in every particular, I have already begun to practise walking on my head, and doing every thing the wrong way.  Then Charles Frederick has turned all his virt`u into fireworks, and, by his influence at the ordnance, has prepared such a spectacle for the proclamation of the peace as is to surpass all its predecessors of bouncing memory.  It is to open with a concert of fifteen hundred hands, and conclude with so many hundred thousand crackers all set to music, that all the men killed in the war are to be wakened with the crash, as if it was the day of judgment, and fall a dancing, like the troops in the Rehearsal.  I wish you could see him making squibs of his papillotes, and bronzed over with a patina of gunpowder, and talking himself still hoarser on the superiority that his firework will have over the Roman naumachia.

I am going to dinner with Lady Sophia Thomas(1472) at Hampton Court, where I was to meet the Cardigans; but I this minute receive a message that the Duchess of Montagu(1473) is extremely ill, which I am much concerned for on Lady Cardigan’s(1474) account, whom I grow every day more in love with; you may imagine, not her person, which is far from improved lately; but, since I have been here, I have lived much with them, and, as George Montagu says, in all my practice I never met a better understanding, nor more really estimable qualities:  such a dignity in her way of thinking; so little idea of any thing mean or ridiculous, and such proper contempt for both!  Adieu!  I must go dress for dinner, and you perceive that I wish I had, but have nothing to tell you.

(1472) Daughter of the first Earl of Albemarle, and wife of General Thomas.-E.

(1473) She was mother to Lady Cardigan, and daughter to the great Duke of Marlborough.

(1474) Lady Mary Montagu, third daughter of John, Duke of Montagu, and wife of George Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, afterwards created Duke of Montagu.

568 Letter 264 To George Montagu, Esq.  Strawberry Hill, Oct. 20, 1748.

You are very formal to send me a ceremonious letter of thanks; you see I am less punctilious, for having nothing to tell you, I did not answer your letter.  I have been in the empty town for a day:  Mrs. Muscovy and I cannot devise where you have planted Jasmine; I am all plantation, and sprout away like any chaste nymph in the Metamorphosis.

They say the old Monarch at Hanover has got a new mistress; I fear he ought to have got * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Now I talk of getting, Mr. Fox has got the ten thousand pound prize; and the Violette, as it is said, Coventry for a husband.  It is certain that at the fine masquerade he was following her, as she was under the Countess’s arm, who, pulling off her glove, moved her wedding-ring up and down her finger, which it seems was to signify that no other terms would be accepted.  It is the year for contraband marriages, though I do not find