August 26.  ’I suffered you to escape last post without a letter, but you are not to expect such indulgence very often; for I write not so much because I have any thing to say, as because I hope for an answer; and the vacancy of my life here makes a letter of great value.  I have here little company and little amusement, and thus abandoned to the contemplation of my own miseries, I am sometimes gloomy and depressed; this too I resist as I can, and find opium, I think, useful, but I seldom take more than one grain.  Is not this strange weather?  Winter absorbed the spring, and now autumn is come before we have had summer.  But let not our kindness for each other imitate the inconstancy of the seasons.’

Sept. 2.  ’Mr. Windham has been here to see me; he came, I think, forty miles out of his way, and staid about a day and a half, perhaps I make the time shorter than it was.  Such conversation I shall not have again till I come back to the regions of literature; and there Windham is, inter stellas[1105] Luna minores[1106].’  He then mentions the effects of certain medicines, as taken; that ’Nature is recovering its original powers, and the functions returning to their proper state.  God continue his mercies, and grant me to use them rightly.’

Sept. 9.  ’Do you know the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire?  And have you ever seen Chatsworth?  I was at Chatsworth on Monday:  I had indeed seen it before[1107], but never when its owners were at home; I was very kindly received, and honestly pressed to stay:  but I told them that a sick man is not a fit inmate of a great house.  But I hope to go again some time.’

Sept. 11.  ’I think nothing grows worse, but all rather better, except sleep, and that of late has been at its old pranks.  Last evening, I felt what I had not known for a long time, an inclination to walk for amusement; I took a short walk, and came back again neither breathless nor fatigued.  This has been a gloomy, frigid, ungenial summer, but of late it seems to mend; I hear the heat sometimes mentioned, but I do not feel it: 

     “Praterea minimus gelido jam in corpore sanguis
      Febre calet sola[1108].——­”

I hope, however, with good help, to find means of supporting a winter at home, and to hear and tell at the Club what is doing, and what ought to be doing in the world.  I have no company here, and shall naturally come home hungry for conversation.  To wish you, dear Sir, more leisure, would not be kind; but what leisure you have, you must bestow upon me.’

Sept. 16.  ’I have now let you alone for a long time, having indeed little to say.  You charge me somewhat unjustly with luxury.  At Chatsworth, you should remember, that I have eaten but once; and the Doctor, with whom I live, follows a milk diet.  I grow no fatter, though my stomach, if it be not disturbed by physick, never fails me.  I now grow weary of solitude, and think of removing next week