The very next day it became public that the Duke of Cumberland had, on the first of the month, retired to Calais with a widow, Mrs. Horton, whom he had married, and had notified his wedding to the King. What was the astonishment of mankind, what the mortification of the King and Princess, and what the triumph of Wilkes, when it came out that this new Princess of the Blood, was own sister of the famous Colonel Lutterell, the tool thrust by the Court into Wilkes’s seat for Middlesex! Could punishment be more severe than to be thus scourged by their own instrument? And how singular the fate of Wilkes, that new revenge always presented itself to him when he was sunk to the lowest ebb! The Duke of Cumberland, after having been exposed to the derision of mankind by his foolish letters, by his absurd conduct in his intrigue, and by his pusillanimity on the detection, had added perfidy to ridicule, and abandoned his victim to her shame. He had next engaged openly in an intrigue with another married woman, a very handsome wife of a timber-merchant; and it was uncertain which was most proud of the honour, the husband or the wife. But they had not long displayed their triumph in all public places, before the restless Duke seeking new diversions, was made a more substantial conquest of at Brighthelmstone by Mrs. Horton, who had for many months been dallying with his passion, till she had fixed him to more serious views than he had intended. She was daughter of Simon Lutterell, Lord Irnham, and had married a gentleman of fortune, with whom she had been in love; and had the misfortune of losing an only child, an infant daughter, and her husband within a fortnight of each other, still covering her grief for the first to conceal the misfortune from the last. She was rather pretty than handsome, and had more the air of a woman of pleasure than of a woman of quality, though she was well made, was graceful, and unexceptionable in her conduct and behaviour. But there was something so bewitching in her languishing eyes, which she could animate to enchantment if she pleased, and her coquetry was so active, so varied, and yet so habitual, that it was difficult not to see through it, and yet as difficult to resist it. She danced divinely, and had a great deal of wit, but of the satiric kind; and, as she had haughtiness before her rise, no wonder she claimed all the observance due to her rank after she became Duchess of Cumberland. It had been believed that she would marry General Smith, a very handsome well-built young man; but glory was her passion, and she sacrificed her lover to it, as she had never sacrificed her virtue to her lover. Thus in herself she was unexceptionable--at least, superior to the frailty of her sex, if not above its little ambition. From her family, though ancient, she drew many disadvantages. Her ancestors had been noted and long odious in Ireland for treachery, villany, and arrogance. Her father