The Ministry released Belleisle, who went _incog._ about London, and was entertained at dinner by the Duke of Newcastle at Claremont, and by the Duke of Grafton at Hampton Court. Walpole compares the idle gossip about the French coming over in the interest of the Pretender, and the neglect of all defence, with the conduct of the Londoners on a report that the plague was in the city. ‘Everybody went to the house where it was, to see it!’ If Count Saxe, with ten thousand men, were to come within a day’s march of London, ‘people will be hiring windows at Charing Cross and Cheapside to see them pass by.’ Walpole, in truth, was as indifferent as he accused his contemporaries of being. If anything happened to the ship, what was that to him, he was only a passenger. He playfully described himself as learning scraps from ‘Cato,’ in case of his having to depart in the old, high, Roman fashion. Recollecting that he is writing on the anniversary of the accession of the House of Brunswick, he tacks a joyous P.S. to one of his letters, in the words, ‘Lord! ’tis the first of August, 1745, a holiday that is going to be turned out of the almanack!’ When the Government _did_ begin to prepare for serious contingencies, Walpole expressed his belief of their being about as able to resist an invasion as to make one. [Sidenote: _DIVISIONS IN FAMILIES._] When the young Chevalier, stealing a march upon Cope, was approaching Edinburgh, Walpole wrote from London, that people there had nothing to oppose, ‘scarcely fears.’ Lord Panmure, who had got his title through the attainder of his elder brother, for the ’15 affair, and the Duke of Athol, who owed his dukedom to the attainder of his elder brother, the Marquis of Tullibardine (who was then with Prince Charles Edward), for the same affair, left London, in order to raise forces in Scotland for the defence of the Hanoverian succession. Panmure, with other Scotch lords, raised a few men. Athol returned to London to announce his inability to get together a force for such a purpose; and when it was proposed to send the Duke of Argyle, Maccullummore excused himself on the singular ground that there was a Scotch Act of Parliament against arming without authority. There was a scene in a London house that might furnish a subject to a painter. The young Whig Duke of Gordon, at an interview with his Jacobite uncle, told the latter that he must go down to Scotland and arm his men. ‘They are in arms,’ was the reply. ‘You must lead them against the rebels.’ ‘They will wait on the Prince of Wales,’ rejoined the uncle, who alluded to the young Chevalier. The duke flew in a passion, but the uncle pulled out a pistol, and said it was in vain to dispute. As Walpole here drops the curtain over this scene, we may suppose that the little domestic drama was carried no further. [Sidenote: _COURT AND CITY._]