Richmond begged leave to stay in town, because the Duchess of Montrose was only to be seen from two to four.

The King complained that so few precedents were kept for their proceedings. Lord Effingham owned the Earl Marshal's office had been strangely neglected; but he had taken such care for the future, that the next coronation would be regulated in the most exact order imaginable. The King was so diverted with this flattering speech that he made the Earl repeat it several times.

Garrick exhibited the Coronation, and opening the end of the stage, discovered a real bonfire and real mob; the houses in Drury Lane let their windows at threepence a-head. Rich promised a finer Coronation than the real one: for there was to be a dinner for the Knights of the Bath and the Barons of the Cinque Ports, which Lord Talbot refused them.

PLAIN-SPEAKING AT COURT.

When old Mr. Richard Clive, through the elevation of his great. son, Lord Clive, had been introduced into society for which his former habits had not well fitted him, he presented himself at the levee. The King asked him where Lord Clive was. "He will be in town very soon," said the old gentleman, loud enough to be heard by the whole circle, "and then your Majesty will have another vote."

ROCHESTER'S LETTERS.

Mr. Bentley used to tell of an old devout Lady St. John, who burnt a whole trunkfull of letters of the famous Lord Rochester, "for which," said Mr. Bentley, "her soul is now burning in heaven." The oddness, confusion, and wit of the idea are very striking.

A VISIT TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

Walpole, writing in 1762, describes his visit to this strange lady: "I found her in a little miserable bedchamber of a ready-furnished house, with two tallow-candles, and a bureau covered with pots and pans. On her head, in full of all accounts, she had an old blacklaced hood, wrapped entirely round, so as to conceal all hair, or want of hair. No handkerchief, but up to her chin a kind of horseman's riding-coat, calling itself a pet-en-l'air, made of dark-green brocade, with coloured and silver flowers, and lined with furs; bodice laced, a foul dimity petticoat, sprig'd, velvet muffeetens on her arms, grey stockings, and slippers. Her face less changed in twenty years than I could have imagined. I told her so, and she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she need have taken it for flat

tery, but she did, and literally gave me a box on the ear. She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her language as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater. With nothing but an Italian, a French, and a Russian, all men-servants, and something she calls an old secretary, but whose age till he appears will be doubtful, she receives all the world, and crams them into this kennel. The Duchess of Hamilton, who came in just after me, was so astonished and diverted, that she could not speak to her for laughing.

Lady Suffolk was early affected with deafness. Cheselden, the surgeon then in favour at Court, persuaded her that he had hopes of being able to cure deafness by some operation on the drum of the ear, and offered to try the experiment on a condemned convict ther in Newgate who was deaf. If the man could be pardoned, he would try it; and if he succeeded, would practise the same cure on her ladyship. She obtained the man's pardon, who was cousin to Cheselden, who had feigned that pretended discovery to save his relation, and no more was heard of the experiment. The man saved his ear too, but Cheselden was disgraced at Court.

WALPOLE'S VISIT TO THE COCK-LANE GHOST.

The notorious Ghost in Cock-lane was set on foot in 1762 by a drunken parish-clerk; the Methodists adopted it, and the whole town thought of nothing else. "I went to hear it," says Walpole, "for it is not an apparition, but an audition. We set out from the Opera, changed our clothes at Northumberland-house, the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lord Hertford, and I, all in one hackney-coach, and drove to the spot: it rained in torrents; yet the lane was full of mob, and the house so full we could not get in; at last they discovered it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another's pockets to make room for us. The house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable; when we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people, with no light but one tallow-candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. At the top of the room are ropes to dry clothes. I asked if we were to have rope-dancing between the acts? We heard nothing: they told us, as they would at a puppet-show, that it would not come that night, till seven in the morning; that is, when there are only 'prentices and old women. We stayed, however, till half-an-hour after one. The Methodists

have promised their contributions; provisions are sent in like forage, and all the taverns and ale-houses in the neighbourhood make fortunes. The most diverting part is to hear people wondering when it will be found out, as if there was anything to find out as if the actors would make their noises when they can be discovered."

The girl-the clerk's daughter, twelve years old-it was said, was continually disturbed at night with the knocking and scratching of some invisible agent against the wainscot of whatever room she was in. These noises were made, it was said, by the departed spirit of a young gentlewoman of respectable family in Norfolk, buried in the vaults of the church of St. John, Clerkenwell. She was said to have been poisoned by her husband with a drink of deleterious punch, and the girl she pursued was said to have slept with her in the absence of her husband. Investigation of the noises was courted, and the supposed spirit had publicly promised, by an affirmative knock, that she would attend any one of the gentlemen into the vault where her body was deposited, and give a token of her presence by a knock upon her coffin. An investigation took place on the night of February 1, 1762; Dr. Johnson was present, with other gentlemen, and printed an account of what they saw and heard. Knocks and scratches were heard, and the girl declared that she felt the spirit like a mouse upon her back. The spirit was then required to manifest itself, but no evidence of any preternatural power was exhibited. Nor was the promised "affirmative knock" in the vault given; nor could any confession be drawn from the girl. This solemn inquiry undeceived the world, and the contrivers of the imposture were punished for what they did. The father of the girl was set three times in the pillory, and imprisoned for one year in the King's Bench prison; but the mob, instead of pelting him in the pillory, collected a subscription for him. Oliver Goldsmith has described the whole of this strange affair in a pamphlet.

"IT IS VERY INCONVENIENT."

This was a cant phrase with Walpole, which had its rise in the following story:-The tutor of a young Lord Castlecomer, who lived at Twickenham with his mother, having broken his leg, and somebody pitying the poor man to the mother, Lady Castlecomer, she replied, "Yes, indeed, it is very inconvenient to my Lord Castlecomer,"

As a companion to the above: A constable's journal kept during the Civil War, ended thus: "And there was never heard of such troublesome and distracted times as these five years have been, but especially for constables."

YAWNING'S CATCHING.

One evening, at the commerce-table, at the Princess Amelia's Horace Walpole was seen to gape—a great sin on any Palatine Hill A few days after, the Princess, calling at Strawberry Hill, and spy ing the shield with Medusa's head on the staircase, she said to Wal pole, “Oh, now I see where you learnt to yawn."

LORD BATH AND HIS CREDITOR.

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Lord Bath owed a tradesman cight hundred pounds, and would never pay him the man determined to persecute him till he did and one morning followed him to Lord Winchilsea's, and sent up word that he wanted to speak with him. Lord Bath came down and said, "Fellow, what do you want with me?" My money, said the man, as loud as ever he could bawl before all the servants He bade him come the next morning, and then would not see him The next Sunday the man followed him to church, and got into the next pew he leaned over, and said, "My money; give me my money!" My lord went to the end of the pew; the man too :"Give me my money!" The sermon was on Avarice, and the text, "Cursed are they that heap up riches." The man groaned out, "O Lord!" and pointed to my Lord Bath. In short, he persisted so much, and drew the eyes of all the congregation, that my Lord Bath went out and paid him directly.

LONG SIR THOMAS ROBINSON.

This eccentric person, who is now at rest in Westminster Abbey, was, when living, designated as "Long," to distinguish him from his namesake Sir Thomas Robinson, created Lord Grantham in 1761. Chesterfield being asked by the baronet to write some verses upon him, immediately produced the epigram:

"Unlike my subject now shall be my song,

It shall be witty, and it shan't be long.'

Long Sir Thomas, or "Long Tom," as he was familiarly called, filled the office of Commissioner of Excise and Governor of Barbadoes. He was a man of the world, or rather of the town, and a great pest to persons of high rank, or in office. He was very troublesome to the Duke of Newcastle, the Minister, and when on his visits to him he was told that his Grace was gone out, would desire to be admitted to look at the clock, or to play with the monkey that was kept in the hall, in hopes of being sent for in to the Duke. This he had so frequently done, that all in the house were tired of

him. At length it was concocted among the servants that he should receive a summary answer to his usual questions; and accordingly, at his next coming, the porter, as soon as he had opened the gate, and without waiting for what he had to say, dismissed him in these words: "Sir, his Grace has gone out, the clock stands, and the monkey is dead."

Long Sir Thomas distinguished himself also in this curious manner. When our King had not dropped the folly of calling himself also King "of France," and it was customary at the coronation of an English sovereign to have fictitious Dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy to represent the vassalage of France, Sir Thomas was selected to fill the second mock dignity at the coronation of George III., the last occasion on which the foolish phantoms appeared. Churchill alludes to the circumstance in his "Ghost," but he assigns a wrong dukedom to Sir Thomas:

"Could Satire not (though doubtful since
Whether the plumber is or prince)
Tell of a simple knight's advance,
To be a doughty peer of France?
Tell how he did a dukedom gain,
And Robinson was Aquitain."

We have said there were two Sir Thomas Robinsons-of whom one was tall and thin, the other short and fat: "I can't imagine," said Lady Townshend, "why the one should be preferred to the other; I see but little difference between them; the one is as broad as the other is long."

GROWING TOWARDS OLD.

Walpole, writing in 1767, says: "I have seen and remember so much that my life already appears very long; nay, the first part of it seems to have been a former life, so entirely are the persons worn out who were on the stage when I came into the world. You must consider, as my father was Minister then, that I almost came into the world at three years old. I was ten when I was presented to George the First, two nights before he left England for the last time. This makes me appear very old to myself, and Methuselah to young persons, if I happen to mention it before them. If I see another reign, which is but too probable, what shall I see then? I will tell you an odd circumstance. Nearly ten years ago, I had already seen six generations in one family, that of Waldegrave. I have often seen, and once been in a room with, Mrs. Godfrey, mistress of James II. It is true, she doted; then came her daughter the old Lady Waldegrave; her son the ambassador; his daughter