ast twelve-at night, at May Fair Chapel. This
precipitated the marriage of Lord Coventry, a personage of a grave stamp,
but who had long paid attention to the elder sister Maria. He married her
about three weeks after. Except that we are accustomed to hear of the
frenzy which seizes people in the name of fashion, we should scarcely
believe the effect which those two women, handsome as they were, continued
to produce. On the Duchess of Hamilton's presentation at Court on her
marriage, the crowd was immense; and so great was the curiosity, that the
courtly multitude got on the chairs and tables to look at her. Mobs
gathered round their doors to see them get into their chairs; people
crowded early to the theatres when they heard they were to be there. Lady
Coventry's shoemaker is said to have made a fortune by selling patterns of
her shoe; and on the duchess's going to Scotland, several hundred people
walked about all night round the inn where she slept, on the Yorkshire
road, that they might have a view of her as she went off next morning.

Yet they appear to have been strangely neglected in their education;
good-humoured and good-natured undoubtedly, but little better than hoydens
after all. Lord Down met Lord and Lady Coventry at Calais, and offered to
send her ladyship a tent-bed, for fear of bugs at the inn. "Oh dear!" said
she, "I had rather be bit to death than lie one night from my dear Cov."

She is, however, memorable for one _etourderie_, which amused the world
greatly. Old George II., conversing with her on the dulness of the season,
expressed a regret that there had been no masquerades during the year, the
handsome rustic answered him, that she had seen sights enough, and the
only one she wanted to see now was--"a coronation." The king, however,
had the good sense to laugh, and repeated it good-humouredly to his circle
at supper.

Lady Coventry died a few years after of consumption, at the age of
twenty-seven. It was said that her death was hastened by the habit of
using white lead as a paint, the fashionable custom of the time. The Duke
of Hamilton had died two years before, in 1758, and the duchess became
subsequently the wife of Colonel John Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyle.
The narrative observes the remarkable circumstance, that the untitled
daughter of an Irish commoner should have been the wife of two dukes and
the mother of four. By her first husband she was the mother of James,
seventh duke, and o