With this season also departed the actress whom Wilks and Booth looked upon as the legitimate successor of Mrs. Oldfield, namely, Mrs. Horton. Steele highly praised her for her acting Lady Brumpton in his "Funeral." Long after youth was passed she retained a luxuriant beauty, which was the envy of less richly endowed ladies. She loved homage rendered to her charms, and was grateful for it, however humble he who paid it. In her best days all young London was sighing at her feet, and in the meridian of her sunny time she invited adoration by the most exquisite coquetry. About this time her powers began so to decay that Rich only estimated her worth at £4 per week. Between Mrs. Woffington and Mrs. Pritchard she suffered shipwreck. Mrs. Horton was an artificial actress, the other two were of an opposite quality; Mrs. Pritchard especially captivated the public by her natural and intelligible style of speaking. Davies says,--Mrs. Horton had a small annuity, and that Garrick and Lacy added to it by giving her a "part of a benefit." She had, however, other resources. When Lord Orford patronised Lord Luxborough, eldest son of Knight, of South Sea Company notoriety, people could not account for it, but Horace Walpole could. "Lord Luxborough," he writes to Mann, "keeps Mrs. Horton the player; _we_ (Orford) keep Miss Norsa, the player. Rich, the harlequin, is an intimate of all; and to cement the harlequinity, somebody's brother (excuse me if I am not perfect in such genealogy) is to marry the Jewess's sister." In this wise did the stage in those days act upon politics. The Miss Norsa, above-named, had been a singer, of some repute, and Orford, then Lord Walpole, had taken her off the stage with the concurrence of her parents, to whom he gave a bond by which he engaged to marry her as soon as his wife should die! His wife, however, happily outlived him. Horace Walpole, writing to Mann from Houghton, in 1743, says:--"Lord Walpole has taken a dozen pictures to Stanno, a small house, about four miles from hence, where he lives with my Lady Walpole's vicegerent. You may imagine that her deputies are no fitter than she is to come where there is a modest, unmarried girl." This girl was Maria Walpole, daughter of Sir Robert, and subsequently the wife of Colonel Churchill, one of Mrs. Oldfield's sons. Six-and-thirty years had Mrs. Horton been on the stage (1714-1750), and in all that time she was the original representative of only one character, Mariana, in the "Miser."