In 1748 George II. happened to see that gallant French equestrian, the Duchess of Bedford, on horseback, in a riding-habit of blue turned up with white. At that time there was a discussion on foot, touching a general uniform for the navy: the appearance of the Duchess settled the question. George II. was so delighted with her Grace’s appearance, that he commanded the adoption of those colours; and that accounts perhaps for the fact, that sailors on a spree are ever given to getting upon horseback, where they do not at all look like the Duchess whose colours they wear. Taste was undoubtedly terribly perverted in this century. Some ladies took their footmen with them into their box at the play; others married actors, and their noble fathers declared they would have more willingly pardoned their daughters had they married lacqueys rather than players. A daughter of the Earl of Abingdon married Gallini the ballet-master, of whom George III. made a “Sir John”; and Lady Harriet Wentworth did actually commit the madness of marrying her footman,—a madness that had much method in it. This lady, the daughter of Lord Rockingham, transacted this matter in the most business-like way imaginable. She settled a hundred a year for life on her husband, but directed her whole fortune besides to pass to her children, should she have any; otherwise, to her own family. She moreover “provided for a separation, and ensured the same pin-money to Damon, in case they part.” She gave away all her fine clothes, and surrendered her titles: “linen and gowns,” she said, “were properest for a footman’s wife;” and she went to her husband’s family in Ireland as plain Mrs. Henrietta Sturgeon. It is characteristic of the manners of this period, that Lady Harriet Wentworth, in marrying her footman, was not considered as having so terribly _dérogé_ as Lady Susan Fox, Lord Ilchester’s daughter, who in the same year, 1764, married O’Brien the actor, a man well to do, and who owned a villa at Dunstable. The actor had contrived something of the spirit of farce in carrying out his plot. He succeeded so well in imitating the handwriting of Lady Susan’s dearest friend, Lady Sarah Bunbury, that Lord Ilchester delivered the letters to his daughter with his own hand, and without suspicion. The couple used to meet at Miss Read’s, the artist;—that is, Catherine Read, who painted whole bevies of our grandmothers, and whose portraits of young Queen Charlotte and of that dreadful woman Mrs. Macauley (represented as a Roman matron weeping over the lost liberties of her country) were the delight of both connoisseurs and amateurs.