Lord Chesterfield was another of the individuals of note whose glass ran out during this year. He was always protesting that he cared nothing for death. Such persistence of protest generally arises from a feeling contrary to that which is made the subject of protest. This lord (as we have said) jested to the very door of his tomb. That must have reminded his friends during those Tyburn days, how convicts on their way up Holborn Hill to the gallows used to veil their terror by cutting jokes with the crowd. It was the very Chesterfield of highwaymen, who, going up the Hill in the fatal cart, and observing the mob to be hastening onwards, cried out, ‘It’s no use your being in such a hurry; there’ll be no fun till I get there!’ This was the Chesterfield style, and its spirit also. But behind it all was the feeling and conviction of Marmontel’s philosopher, who having railed through a long holiday excursion, till he was thoroughly tired, was of opinion, as he tucked himself up in a featherbed at night, that life and luxury were, after all, rather pretty things. Chesterfield was, nevertheless, much more of a man than his fellow peer who crossed the Stygian ferry in the same year, namely, the Duke of Kingston. The duke had been one of the handsomest men of his time, and, like a good many handsome men, was a considerable fool. He allowed himself, at all events, to be made the fool, and to become the slave, of the famous Miss Chudleigh--as audacious as she was beautiful. The lady, whom the law took it into its head to look upon as _not_ the duke’s duchess--that is, not his wife--was resigned to her great loss by the feeling of her great gain. She was familiar with her lord’s last will and testament, and went into hysterics to conceal her satisfaction. She saw his grace out of the world with infinite ceremony. To be sure, it was nothing else. The physicians whom she called together in consultation _consulted_, no doubt, and then whispered to their lady friends, while holding their delicate pulses, ‘Mere ceremony, upon my honour!’ The widow kept the display of grief up to the last. When she brought the ducal corpse up from Bath to London, she rested often by the way. If she could have carried out her caprices, she would have had as many crosses to mark the ducal stations of death as were erected to commemorate the passing of Queen Eleanor. As this could not be, the widow took to screaming at every turn of the road, and at night was carried into her inn kicking her heels and screaming at the top of her voice.