“To be sure you die with impatience to know the particulars. You must know then--for all my revels must out--I not only went five miles to Lady Aylesford’s ball last Friday, but my nieces, the Waldegraves, desired me there to let them come to me for a few days, as they had been disappointed about a visit they were to make at another place; but that is neither here nor there. Well, here they are, and last night we went to Lady Hertford at Ditton. Soon after, Lady North and her daughters arrived, and besides Lady Elizabeth and Lady Bell Conways, there were their brothers Hugh and George. All the _jeunesse_ strolled about the garden. We ancients, with the Earl and Colonel Keene, retired from the dew into the drawing-room. Soon after, the two youths and seven nymphs came in, and shut the door of the hall. In a moment, we heard a burst of laughter, and thought we distinguished something like the scraping of a fiddle. My curiosity was raised, I opened the door, and found four couples and a half standing up, and a miserable violin from the ale-house. ‘Oh,’ said I, ‘Lady Bell shall not want a partner;’ I threw away my stick, and _me voilà dansant comme un charme_! At the end of the third dance, Lord North and his son, in boots, arrived. ‘Come,’ said I, ‘my Lord, you may dance, if I have’--but it ended in my _resigning my place_ to his son. “Lady North has invited us for to-morrow, and I shall reserve the rest of my letter for the second volume of my regeneration; however, I declare I will not _dance_. I will not make myself too cheap; I should have the Prince of Wales sending for me three or four times a week to hops in Eastcheap. As it is, I feel I shall have some difficulty to return to my old dowagers, at the Duchess of Montrose’s, and shall be humming the Hempdressers, when they are scolding me for playing in flush. “Friday, the 27th. “I am not only a prophet, but have more command of my passions than such impetuous gentry as prophets are apt to have. We found the fiddles as I foretold; and yet I kept my resolution and did _not_ dance, though the Sirens invited me, and though it would have shocked the dignity of old Tiffany Ellis, who would have thought it an indecorum. The two younger Norths and Sir Ralph Payne supplied my place. I played at cribbage with the matrons, and we came away at midnight. So if I now and then do cut a colt’s tooth, I have it drawn immediately. I do not know a paragraph of news--the nearer the minister, the farther from politics. “P.S. My next jubilee dancing shall be with Lady Gertrude.” Not long after the date of these letters, Mann sends news of further improvements at Florence. Walpole answers: