I do not like your putting off your visit hither for so long.  Indeed, by September the gallery will probably have all its fine clothes on, and by what have been tried, I think it will look very well.  The fashion of the garments to be sure will be ancient, but I have given them an air that is very becoming.  Princess Amelia was here last night While I was abroad; and if Margaret is not too much prejudiced by the guinea left, or by natural partiality to what servants call our house, I think was pleased, particularly with the chapel.

As Mountain-George will not come to Mahomet-me, Mahomet-I Must come to Greatworth.  Mr. Chute and I think of visiting you about the seventeenth of July, if you shall be at home, and nothing happens to derange our scheme; possibly we may call at Horton; we certainly shall proceed to Drayton, Burleigh, Fotheringay, Peterborough, and Ely; and shall like much of your company, all, or part of the tour.  The only present proviso I have to make is the health of my niece who is at present much out of order, we think not breeding, and who was taken so ill on Monday, that I was forced to carry her suddenly to town, where I yesterday left her better at her father’s.

There has been a report that the new Lord Holland was dead at Paris, but I believe it is not true.  I was very indifferent about it:  eight months ago it had been lucky.  I saw his jackall t’other night in the meadows, the secretary at war,(301) so emptily-important and distilling paragraphs of old news with such solemnity, that I did not know whether it was a man or the Utrecht gazette.

(300) Admiral Montagu, first Earl of Sandwich; by Sir Peter Lely.  In early life he was distinguished as a military commander under the parliamentary banner, and subsequently joint high-admiral of England; in which capacity, having had sufficient influence to induce the whole fleet to acknowledge the restored monarchy, he received the peerage as his reward.  Having attained the highest renown as a naval officer, he fell in the great sea-fight with the Dutch, off Southwold-bay, on the 28th of May, 1672.  Evelyn, in his diary of the 31st, gives the following high character of the Earl:—­“Deplorable was the loss of that incomparable person, and my particular friend.  He was learned in sea affairs, in politics, in mathematics, and in music:  he had been on divers embassies, was of a sweet and obliging temper, sober, chaste, very ingenious, a true nobleman and ornament to the court and his prince; nor has he left any behind him who approach his many virtues."-E.

(301) Welbore Ellis, Esq. afterwards Lord Mendip.-E.

Letter 162 To George Montagu, Esq.  Strawberry Hill, July 1, 1763. (page 226)