all the Nobility and Gentry who have left, or shall leave,
this place through fear of another Earthquake."

Several women have made earthquake gowns; that is, warm gowns to sit out
of doors all to-night. These are of the more courageous. One woman,
still more heroic, is come to town on purpose: she says, all her friends
are in London, and she will not survive them. But what will you think of
Lady Catherine Pelham, Lady Frances Arundel, and Lord and Lady Galway,
who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to
play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back--I suppose, to
look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish. The
prophet of all this (next to the Bishop of London) is a trooper of Lord
Delawar's, who was yesterday sent to Bedlam. His _colonel_ sent to the
man's wife, and asked her if her husband had ever been disordered
before. She cried, "Oh dear! my lord, he is not mad now; if your
_lordship_ would but get any _sensible_ man to examine him, you would
find he is quite in his right mind."...

I shall now go and show you Mr. Chute in a different light from
heraldry, and in one in which I believe you never saw him. He will shine
as usual; but, as a little more severely than his good-nature is
accustomed to, I must tell you that he was provoked by the most
impertinent usage. It is an epigram on Lady Caroline Petersham, whose
present fame, by the way, is coupled with young Harry Vane.

WHO IS THIS?

Her face has beauty, we must all confess,
But beauty on the brink of ugliness:
Her mouth's a rabbit feeding on a rose;
With eyes--ten times too good for such a nose!
Her blooming cheeks--what paint could ever draw 'em?
That paint, for which no mortal ever saw 'em.
Air without shape--of royal race divine--
'Tis Emily--oh! fie!--'tis Caroline.

Do but think of my beginning a third sheet! but as the Parliament is
rising, and I shall probably not write you a tolerably long letter again
these eight months, I will lay in a stock of merit with you to last me
so long. Mr. Chute has set me too upon making epigrams; but as I have
not his art mine is almost a copy of verses: the story he told me, and
is literally true, of an old Lady Bingley:

Celia now had completed some thirty campaigns,
And for new generations was hammering chains;
When whetting those terrible weapons, her eyes,
To Jenny, her handmaid, in anger