It was with Lord Chesterfield that Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea was most frequently at very disgraceful issue. Lord Chesterfield was one of the prince’s court, and he was possessed of an uncontrollable inclination to turn the princess into ridicule. Of course she was made acquainted with this propensity of the refined Chesterfield by some amiable friend, who had the regard which friends, with less judgment than what they call amiability, generally have for one’s failings. Caroline, perhaps half afraid of the peer, whom she held to be a more annoying joker than a genuine wit, took a middle course by way of correcting Chesterfield. It was not the course which a woman of dignity and refinement would have adopted; but it must be remembered that, at the period in question, the princess was anxious to keep as many friends around her husband as she could muster. She consequently told Lord Chesterfield, half in jest and half in earnest, that he had better not provoke her, for though he had a wittier, he had not so bitter a tongue as she had, and any outlay of his wit, at her cost, she was determined to pay, in her way, with an exorbitant addition of interest upon the debt he made her incur. The noble lord had, among the other qualifications of the fine gentleman of the period, an alacrity in lying. He would gravely assure the princess that her royal highness was in error; that he could never presume to mimic her; and thereupon he would only watch for a turn of her head to find an opportunity for repeating the offence which he had protested could not possibly be laid to his charge. Caroline was correct in asserting that she had a bitter tongue. It was under control, indeed; but when she gave it unrestricted freedom, its eloquence was not well savoured. Indeed her mind was far less refined than has been generally imagined. Many circumstances might be cited in proof of this assertion; but perhaps none is more satisfactory, or conclusive rather, than the fact that she was the correspondent of the Duchess of Orleans, whose gross epistles can be patiently read only by grossly inclined persons; but which, nevertheless, tell so much that is really worth knowing that students of history read, blush, and are delighted. The Prince of Wales, dissatisfied with his residences, entered into negotiations for the purchase of Buckingham House. That mansion was then occupied by the Dowager-duchess of Buckingham, she whose mother was Catherine Sedley, and whose father was James II. She was the mad duchess, who always went into mourning and shut up Buckingham House on the anniversary of the death of her grandfather, Charles I. The duchess thus writes of the negotiation, in a letter to Mrs. Howard:--