f peerage, she was
discharged on payment of the usual fees.

It is scarcely possible to believe that a man of the rank and profession
of Lord Bristol, could have been base enough to connive at his wife's
marriage with the Duke of Kingston. But there can be no question, that in
the prevalent opinion of the time, he had even taken a large sum of money
for the purpose. In one of Walpole's letters, subsequently to the trial,
he says, "if the Pope expects his duchess back, he must create her one,
for her peers have reduced her to a countess. Her folly and her obstinacy
here appear in the full vigour, at least her faith in the ecclesiastical
court, trusting to the infallibility of which she provoked this trial in
the face of every sort of detection. The living witness of the first
marriage, a register of it fabricated long after by herself, the widow of
the clergyman who married her, many confidants to whom she had entrusted
the secret, and even Hawkins, the surgeon, privy to the birth of the child,
appeared against her. The Lords were tender, and would not probe the
earl's collusion; but the ecclesiastical court, who so readily accepted
their juggle, and sanctified the second match, were brought to shame--they
care not if no reformation follows. The duchess, who could produce nothing
else in her favour, tried the powers of oratory, and made a long oration,
in which she cited the protection of her late mistress, the Princess of
Wales. Her counsel would have curtailed this harangue; but she told them
they might be good lawyers, but did not understand speaking to the
passions. She concluded her rhetoric with a fit, and retired with rage
when convicted of the bigamy."

The charge to which Walpole alludes, was, that the earl had given her a
bond for L.30,000 not to molest her; but as there was no proof, this gross
charge certainly has no right to be implicitly received. Still it is
unaccountable why he should have suffered her to have married the Duke of
Kingston without any known remonstrance, and why he should have allowed
her to retain the title of the duke's widow until the rightful heir
instituted the proceedings. The earl died in 1779, within three years from
the trial.

Among the characters which pass through this magic-lantern, is Topham
Beauclerk, so frequently mentioned, and mentioned with praise, in
Boswell's _Johnson_. He seems to have been a man of great elegance of
manner, and peculiarity of that happy talent of c