“I do not know whether to call the horrors of the night greater or less than I thought. My printer, who has been out all night, and on the spots of action, says, not above a dozen were killed at the Royal Exchange, some few elsewhere; at the King’s Bench, he does not know how many; but in other respects the calamities are dreadful. He saw many houses set on fire, women and children screaming, running out of doors with what they could save, and knocking one another down with their loads in the confusion. Barnard’s Inn is burnt, and some houses, mistaken for Catholic. Kirgate[82] says most of the rioters are apprentices, and plunder and drink have been their chief objects, and both women and men are still lying dead drunk about the streets: brandy is preferable to enthusiasm. I trust many more troops will arrive to-day. What families ruined! What wretched wives and mothers! What public disgrace!--ay! and where, and when, and how will all this confusion end! and what shall we be when it is concluded? I remember the Excise and the Gin Act, and the rebels at Derby, and Wilkes’s interlude, and the French at Plymouth; or I should have a very bad memory; but I never till last night saw London and Southwark in flames! “After dinner. “It is a moment, Madam, when to be surprised is not surprising. But what will you say to the House of Commons meeting by twelve o’clock to-day, and adjourning, ere fifty members were arrived, to Monday se’nnight! So adieu all government but the sword! “Will your Ladyship give me credit when I heap contradictions on absurdities--will you believe such confusion and calamities, and yet think there is no consternation? Well, only hear. My niece, Mrs. Keppel, with her three daughters, drove since noon over Westminster Bridge, through St. George’s Fields, where the King’s Bench is smoking, over London Bridge, passed the Bank, and came the whole length of the City! They have been here, and say the people _look_ very unquiet; but can one imagine that they would be smiling? Old Lady Albemarle, who followed me in a few minutes from Gloucester House, was robbed at Mrs. Keppel’s door in Pall Mall, between ten and eleven, by a horseman. Sparrow, one of the delivered convicts, who was to have been hanged this morning, is said to have been shot yesterday as he was spiriting up the rioters. Kirgate has just heard in the Park, that the Protestant Association disavow the seditious, and will take up arms against them. If we are saved, it will be so as by fire.