Never was a Metropolis more merrily guarded. Pope remarks that the Scythian ladies that dwelt in the waggons of war were not more attached to the luggage than the modern women of quality were to Hyde Park Camp. ‘The Matrons,’ he writes to Digby, ‘like those of Sparta, attend their sons to the field, to be the witnesses of their glorious deeds; and the Maidens, with all their charms displayed, provoke the spirit of the Soldiers. Tea and Coffee supply the place of Lacedemonian black broth. The Camp seems crowned with perpetual victory, for every sun that rises in the thunder of cannon, sets in the music of violins. Nothing is yet wanting but the constant presence of the Princess to represent the _Mater Exercitus_!’ While the military were encamped in the Park, the civil authorities were busy in hunting down traitors. Unlucky Jacobite printers and their apprentices were dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, and they thought themselves fortunate if, instead of fine, imprisonment, or ruin in worse shape, they were admitted to even heavy bail in the morning. The shops of sword- and gun-makers were overhauled, and forfeiture of weapons followed detection of sword blades bearing some questionable motto on them, or of gun-barrels directed to as questionable localities. [Sidenote: _WHIG SUSCEPTIBILITY._] Whigs recognised the bloodthirstiness of the Tories in the stabbing of honest Mr. Barrett in the Strand, who had recently quitted the Romish religion for that of King George. For the safety of that royal person, they were so anxious as to consider with fear the fact that he occasionally walked for an hour or two together, almost alone, in Kensington Gardens, and went to dine with his most favoured nobles, or to the playhouse with its mixed audience, almost unattended. They were dissatisfied with messengers, assumed to be Jacobites, from whose custody traitors of mark escaped, as was supposed in return for costly bribes. They plucked up courage when an Irish papist priest, having been seized with dangerous papers upon him, was held to such bail as it was impossible for the wretch to procure. They shook their heads in displeasure when Colonel Arskine (Erskine) was allowed to go at large, on the security of his brother, the Earl of Buchan. The hanging of two Irish soldiers, lately in the Spanish service, Carrick and Mulhoney, who had come to London to be ready for the outbreak that was preparing, was perhaps justifiable; but a couple of strange gentlemen could not take lodgings in St. James’s parish without risk of being arrested; and ladies unprotected, and having apartments in the same district, were often invited to give an account of themselves to the nearest magistrate. The lightest words were strangely perverted; and when the Rev. Mr. Mussey, in Sacheverel’s old church, St. Andrew’s, Holborn, preached against the practice of Inoculation, contending factions thought there might be something in it; but neither party could well