We should altogether misjudge Rich if we looked on him as the founder of the modern, miserable, purposeless, storyless harlequinade. This sort of entertainment deteriorated soon after his death. In 1782, Walpole saw the pantomime of "Robinson Crusoe," and his comment is, "how unlike the pantomimes of Rich, which are full of wit, and coherent, and carried on a story." Rich left Covent Garden to his son-in-law, Beard, the vocalist. Beard's first wife was Lady Henrietta Herbert, daughter of the Earl of Waldegrave, and this match was a happy one, though Lord Wharncliffe incorrectly recorded of Beard that he was "a man of indifferent character." Beard held Covent Garden, for himself and second wife, under a not unpleasant restriction. Rich directed that the property should be sold, whenever £60,000 could be got for it; and for that handsome sum the house was ultimately made over to Colman, Harris, and their partners. Beard and Lady Herbert remind me of another _mésalliance_. In the studio of Catherine Read, the portrait painter, a good deal of love-making was carried on. Here is a February morning of 1764, and a young couple, all the handsomer for a bracing walk through the eager and nipping air, are conversing confidentially in one corner of the room while discreet Miss Read plies her work in another. The lady is Lady Susan Fox Strangways; the gentleman owns a villa at Dunstable, and is one of the airiest actors of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Mr. O'Brien. Subsequently, the lady's father, Stephen Fox, the first Earl of Ilchester, opening his post-bag, hands a letter to Lady Susan from Lady Sarah Bunbury, his daughter's dearest friend. The letter was really from O'Brien, who imitated Lady Sarah's writing. The intrigue was discovered, and the father's wrath was so overwhelming, that Lady Susan promised that the affair should proceed no further, if she were only permitted to take a last farewell. She waited a few days for this final meeting, till she became of age, when, released from lock and key, she went on foot, escorted by a lacquey, to breakfast with Lady Sarah, and to call on Miss Read by the way. In the street, she sent the footman back, for a particular cap in which she was to be painted; a few moments after he was out of sight, a couple of chairmen were carrying her to Covent Garden Church, where Mr. O'Brien was waiting for her, and, the wedding ceremony being performed, the happy and audacious pair posted down to the bridegroom's villa at Dunstable. Only the night before he had played 'Squire Richard, in the "Provoked Husband."