as 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, Queen Elizabeth's porter, from a picture in
the guard-chamber at Kensington: they were admirable masks. Lord
Rochford, Miss Evelyn, Miss Bishop, Lady Stafford, and Mrs. Pitt, 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
was Iphigenia, but so naked that you would have taken her for Andromeda;
and Lady Betty Smithson [Seymour] 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,[1] 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, a hundred and
twelve Lords and Commoners. The Duke of Beaufort 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 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 th