as much now in the opposite extreme, and in general so pleased with the peace, that I could not help being struck with a passage I read lately in Pasquier an old French author, who says, “that in the time of Francis 1. the French used to call their creditors ‘Des Anglois,’ from the facility with which the English gave credit to them in all treaties, though they had broken so many.”  On Saturday we had a serenata at the Opera-house, called Peace in Europe, but it was a wretched performance.  On Monday there was a subscription-masquerade, much fuller than that of last year, but not so agreeable or so various in dresses.  The King was well disguised in an old-fashioned English habit, and much pleased with somebody who desired him to hold their cup as they were drinking tea.  The Duke had a dress of the same kind, but was so immensely corpulent that he looked like Cacofogo, the drunken captain, in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife.  The Duchess of Richmond was a lady mayoress in the time of James I.; and Lord Delawarr,(20) Queen Elizabeth’s porter, from a picture in the guard-chamber at Kensington; they were admirable masks.  Lady Rochford, Miss Evelyn, Miss Bishop, Lady Stafford,(21) and Mrs. Pitt,(22) were in vast beauty; particularly the last, who had a red veil, which made her look gloriously handsome.  I forgot Lady Kildare.  Mr. Conway was the Duke in Don Quixote, and the finest figure I ever saw.  Miss Chudleigh(23) was Iphigenia, but so naked that you would have taken her for Andromeda; and Lady Betty Smithson had such a pyramid of baubles upon her head, that she was exactly the Princess of Babylon in Grammont.

You will conclude that, after all these diversions, people begin to think of going out of town—­no such matter:  the Parliament continues sitting, and will till the middle Of June; Lord Egmont told us we should sit till Michaelmas.  There are many private bills, no public ones of any fame.  We were to have had some chastisement for Oxford, where, besides the late riots, the famous Dr. King,(24) the Pretender’s great agent, made a most violent speech at the opening of the Ratcliffe library.  The ministry denounced judgment, but, in their old style, have grown frightened, and dropped it.  However, this menace gave occasion to a meeting and union between the Prince’s party and the Jacobites, which Lord Egmont has been labouring all the winter.  They met at the St. Alban’s tavern, near Pall-mall, last Monday morning, an hundred and twelve Lords and Commoners.  The Duke of Beaufort(25) opened the assembly with a panegyric on the stand that had been made this winter against so corrupt an administration, and hoped it would continue, and desired harmony.  Lord Egmont seconded this strongly, and begged they would come up to Parliament early next winter.  Lord Oxford(26) spoke next; and then Potter, with great humour, and to the great Abashment of the Jacobites, said he was very glad to see this union, and from thence hoped, that if another attack like the last