“... I was mortified to hear the dreadful box which was intended to destroy Portsmouth was made at the respectable city of Canterbury. Mr. Silas Deane will make no very respectable figure when John Painter’s story is produced in public. If Doctor Franklin had been an incendiary, he would have been a more dangerous man than Mr. Deane; for you know he can bottle up lightning; but philosophers are honester men than politicians.... Lord Temple has been very useful in getting this horrid affair of John the painter brought to light.... Doctor Dodd’s affair is almost forgot. Some suppose that for want of some formality on his trial, he will escape hanging. Lord Chesterfield has behaved with great kindness to the doctor’s brother, who is a worthy man, and to Mrs. Dodd’s nephew.... “The match between Lord Powis and Miss Warren is not to take place, the young lady having expressed a predilection for Lord Bulkely, who is to have her. “Lady Strathmore’s conduct at Newcastle, in the election, is, perhaps, not generally known. Her ladyship sits all day in the window at a public-house, from whence she sometimes lets fall some jewels or trinkets, which voters pick up, and then she gives them money for restoring them—a new kind of offering bribes. What little interest I have I gave to Sir John Trevelyan, who, we hope, will carry the election by a good majority. My steward tells me he is very weary of the bustle and treating the voters; and that the town is in a wild uproar. Mr. Stoney Bowes has sold £5,000 a year of his lady’s income for her life to procure himself £40,000. I believe this gentleman will revenge the wrongs Lord Strathmore suffered from her ladyship. It is said Sir Thomas Robinson died worth above £10,000, but it is supposed he has left it to his natural daughter.” Lady Strathmore had the misfortune to be an heiress, Mary Eleanor Bowes. Lord Strathmore took her, her money, and her name, in 1767. In nine years he was removed by death; his widow soon after married Mr. Stoney, an Irish heiress-hunter, who adopted the name of Bowes, and thoroughly avenged the wrongs and sufferings of the first husband. But Stoney Bowes was sorely mauled in the cruel and scandalous struggle. It is a disgraceful story, from which the reader may well turn to a few plain lines from Mrs. Scott, in a fragment of a letter of this date: “I shall be very glad of my niece’s company on her way to Whitelands, and if I can find out any amusement for her, she shall have it. Plays, which I think are the best, it is so difficult for those to get places at, who do not give largely to the box-keepers, that I am discouraged from attempting, by having no hopes of success (but I shall try when my niece comes), tho’ I feel no degradation to my dignity from sitting in a front box, and like it just as well as the side, if not further back than the second row. I went with my sister to ‘Percy,’ and that is the only one I have seen.”