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bute of great beauty, and lively, without the not less invidious faculty of wit. All the court officials crowded her apartments in the palace. Chesterfield, young Churchill, Lord Hervey, Lord Scarborough, all hurried to the tea-table of the well-bred bedchamber-woman, to escape the dreary duties and monotonous moping of attendance on the throne. Lady Walpole, Mrs Selwyn, Mary Lepell, and Mary Bellenden, formed a part of this coterie--all women of presumed character, yet all associating familiarly with women of none. Of Mrs Howard, Swift observed in his acid style--"That her private virtues, for want of room to operate, might be folded and laid up clean, like clothes in a chest, never to be put on; till satiety, or some reverse of fortune should dispose her to retirement." Then, probably in reference to the prudery with which she occasionally covered her conduct,--"In the meantime," said he, "it will be her prudence, to take care that they be not tarnished and moth-eaten, for want of opening and airing, and turning, at least _once a-year_." Those matters seem to have sought no concealment whatever. "Es regolar," says the Spaniard, when his country is charged with some especial abomination. Howard, the husband, though a _roue_, at last went into the quadrangle at St James's and publicly demanded his wife. He then wrote to the Archbishop. His letter was given to the Queen, and by her to Mrs Howard. Yet all this scandal never interrupted the lady's intercourse with the highest personages of the court. Mrs Howard continued to be the Queen's bedchamber woman; the Queen suffered her personal attendance, her carriage was escorted by John Duke of Argyle; her husband obtained a pension to hold his tongue; and even when the King grew tired of the _liaison_, and wished to get rid of her, actually complaining to the Queen, "That he did not know why she would not let him part with a deaf old woman, of whom he was weary," the politic Caroline would not allow him to give her up, "lest a younger favourite should gain a greater ascendency over him." After this, we must hear no more of the delicacy of Queen Caroline. Virtue and religion scarcely belonged to her day. In a court of this intolerable worldliness, the worldly must thrive; and Mrs Clayton advanced year by year in the imitation of her mistress, and in power. She, as well as Lady Suffolk, adopted Caroline's patronage of letters, and corresponded a good deal with the clever m
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