As we have never had a rainbow to assure us that the world shall not be snowed to death, I thought last night was the general connixation.  We had a tempest of wind and snow for two hours beyond any thing I remember:  chairs were blown to pieces, the streets covered with tassels and glasses and tiles, and coaches and chariots were filled like reservoirs.  Lady Raymond’s house in Berkeley-square is totally unroofed; and Lord Robert Bertie, who is going to marry her, may descend into it like a Jupiter Pluvius.  It is a week of wonders, and worthy the note of an almanack-maker.  Miss Draycott, within two days of matrimony, has dismissed Mr. Beauclerc; but this is totally forgotten already in the amazement of a new elopement.  In all your reading, true or false, have you ever heard of a young Earl, married to the most beautiful woman in the world, a lord of the bedchamber, a general officer, and with a great estate, quitting every thing, resigning wife and world, and embarking for life in a pacquetboat with a Miss?  I fear your connexions will but too readily lead you to the name of the peer; it is Henry Earl of Pembroke,(218) the nymph Kitty Hunter.  The town and Lady Pembroke were but too much witnesses to this intrigue, last Wednesday, at a great ball at Lord Middleton’s.  On Thursday they decamped.  However, that the writer of their romance, or I, as he is a noble author, might not want materials, the Earl has left a bushel of letters behind him; to his mother, to Lord Bute, to Lord Ligonier, (the two last to resign his employments,) and to Mr. Stopford, whom he acquits of all privity to his design.  In none he justifies himself, unless this is a justification, that having long tried in vain to make his wife hate and dislike him, he had no way left but this, and it is to be hoped will succeed; and then it may not be the worst event that could have happened to her.  You may easily conceive the hubbub such an exploit must occasion.  With ghosts, elopements, abortive motions, etc., we can amuse ourselves tolerably well, till the season arrives for taking the field and conquering the Spanish West Indies.

I have sent you my books by a messenger; Lord Barrington was so good as to charge himself with them.  They barely saved their distance; a week later, and no soul could have read a line in them, unless I had changed the title-page, and called them the loves of the Earl of Pembroke and Miss Hunter.

I am sorry Lady Kingsland is so rich.  However, if the Papists should be likely to rise, pray disarm her of the enamel, and commit it to safe custody in the round tower at Strawberry.  Good night! mine is a life of letter-writing; I pray for a peace that I may sheath my Pen.

(218) Henry Herbert, tenth Earl of Pembroke, married, 13th March 1756, Lady Elizabeth Spencer, second daughter of Charles, third Duke of Marlborough, by whom he had a son, George, eleventh Earl, born 19th September 1759:  and some years afterwards, when he ran away with her, which he actually did, after they had lived for some time separated, a daughter, born in 1773, who died in 1784, unmarried.