Notwithstanding the vogue of duelling, in many instances, as in the case of Steele, persons who were challenged endeavoured to decline a meeting, and the following letter from an officer of the Guards to a gentleman who had called him out, is an illustration of the light in which private combat was even then viewed by men of real honour:— “Sir,—I reckon it my peculiar happiness that I can produce the officers and soldiers who witnessed my behaviour at Fontenoy, as evidence of my courage. You may endeavour, if you please, to propagate my refusing your challenge, and brand me with cowardice; but I am fully convinced that nobody will believe me guilty, and every one will see that you are malicious. The cause in which we quarrelled was a trifle: the blood of a soldier should be reserved for nobler purposes. Love is blind, resentment mean, and taste capricious; and it ought to be considered that murder, though palliated by a false show of honour, is murder still, and calls for vengeance.” During the administration of Sir Robert Walpole the practice of duelling was most fashionable, and of course frequently resorted to. In the following letter to Mann, we find an illustration of the manners of the day (1750). “About ten days ago, at the new Lady Cobham’s assembly, Lord Hervey was leaning over a chair talking to some women, and holding his hat in his hand; Lord Cobham came up and spit in it—yes, spit in it—and then, with a loud laugh, turned to Nugent, and said ‘Pay me my wager.’ In short, he had laid a guinea that he committed this absurd brutality, and that it was not resented. Lord Hervey, with great temper and sense, asked if he had any further occasion for his hat. ‘Oh, I see you are angry.’ ‘Not very well pleased.’ Lord Cobham took the fatal hat and wiped it, and made a thousand foolish apologies, and wanted to pass it off as a joke. Next morning he rose with the sun, and went to visit Lord Hervey: he would not see him, but wrote to the _spitter_ (or, as he is now called. _Lord Gob’em_), to say that he had grossly insulted him before company, but having involved Nugent in it, he desired to know to which he was to address himself for satisfaction. Lord Cobham made a most submissive answer, and begged pardon both in his own and Nugent’s name. Here it rested for a few days, till, the matter getting wind, Lord Hervey wrote again to insist upon an explicit apology under Lord Cobham’s own hand, with a rehearsal of the excuses that had been made to him. This too was complied with, and the _fair conqueror_ showed all the letters. Nugent’s disgraces have not ended here. The night of his having declaimed so furiously against Lord Sandwich, he was standing by Lady Catherine Pelham at the masquerade, without his mask. She was telling him some history of a mad dog (which I believe she had bit herself). Young Leveson, the Duchess of Bedford’s brother, came up, without his mask too, and looking at Nugent, said, ‘I have seen a mad dog to-day, and a