r night that I said better
things than anybody. I was with them all at a subscription ball at
Ranelagh last week, which my Lady Carteret thought proper to look upon
as given to her, and thanked the gentlemen, who were not quite so well
pleased at her condescending to take it to herself. I did the honours of
all her dress. "How charming your ladyship's cross is! I am sure the
design was your own!"--"No, indeed; my lord sent it me just as it is."
Then as much to the mother. Do you wonder I say better things than
anybody?'

But these brilliant scenes were soon mournfully ended. Lady Sophia, the
haughty, the idolized, the Juno of that gay circle, was suddenly carried
off by a fever. With real feeling Horace thus tells the tale:--

'Before I talk of any public news, I must tell you what you will be very
sorry for. Lady Granville (Lady Sophia Fermor) is dead. She had a fever
for six weeks before her lying-in, and could never get it off. Last
Saturday they called in another physician, Dr. Oliver. On Monday he
pronounced her out of danger; about seven in the evening, as Lady
Pomfret and Lady Charlotte (Fermor) were sitting by her, the first
notice they had of her immediate danger was her sighing and saying, "I
feel death come very fast upon me!" She repeated the same words
frequently, remained perfectly in her senses and calm, and died about
eleven at night. It is very shocking for anybody so young, so handsome,
so arrived at the height of happiness, to be so quickly snatched away.'

So vanished one of the brightest stars of the court. The same autumn
(1745) was the epoch of a great event; the marching of Charles Edward
into England. Whilst the Duke of Cumberland was preparing to head the
troops to oppose him, the Prince of Wales was inviting a party to
supper, the main feature of which was the citadel of Carlisle in sugar,
the company all besieging it with sugar-plums. It would, indeed, as
Walpole declared, be impossible to relate all the _Caligulisms_ of this
effeminate, absurd prince. But buffoonery and eccentricity were the
order of the day. 'A ridiculous thing happened,' Horace writes, 'when
the princess saw company after her confinement. The new-born babe was
shown in a mighty pretty cradle, designed by Kent, under a canopy in the
great drawing-room. Sir William Stanhope went to look at it. Mrs,
Herbert, the governess, advanced to unmantle it. He said, "In wax, I
suppose?" "Sir?" "In wax, madam?" "The young prince, sir?