You have no notion how I laughed at the man that “takes nothing but Madeira."(633) I told it to my Lady Pomfret, concluding it would divert her too; and forgetting that she repines when she should laugh, and reasons when she should be diverted.  She asked gravely what language that was That Madeira being subject to an European prince, to be sure they talk some European dialect!” The grave personage!  It was a piece with her saying, “that Swift would have written better, if he had never written ludicrously.”

I met a friend of yours the other day at an auction, and though I knew him not the least, yet being your friend, and so like you (for, do you know, he is excessively,) I had a great need to speak to him-and did.  He says, “he has left off writing to you, for he never could get an answer.”  I said, you had never received ’but one from him in all the time I was with you, and that I was witness to your having Answered it.  He was with his mother, Lady Abercorn,(634) a most frightful gentlewoman:  Mr. Winnington says, he one day overheard her and the Duchess of Devonshire (635) talking of “hideous ugly women!” By the way, I find I have never told you that it was Lord Paisley;(636) but that you will have perceived.

Amorevoli is gone to Dresden for the summer; our directors are in great fear that he will serve them like Farinelli, and not return for the winter.

I am writing to you in one of the charming rooms towards the park:  it is a delightful evening, and I am willing to enjoy this sweet corner while I may, for we are soon to quit it.  Mrs. Sandys came yesterday to give us warning; Lord Wilmington has lent it to them.  Sir Robert might have had it for his own at first, but would only take it as first lord of the treasury.(637) He goes into a small house of his own in Arlington Street, opposite to where we formerly lived.  Whither I shall travel is yet uncertain:  he is for my living with him; but then I shall be cooped-and besides, I never found that people loved one another the less for living asunder.

The drowsy Lord Mayor (638) is dead-so the newspapers say.  I think he is not dead, but sleepeth.  Lord Gower is laid up with the gout:  this, they say, is the reason of his not having the privy seal yet.  The town has talked of nothing lately but a plot:  I will tell you the circumstances. last week the Scotch hero (639) sent his brother (640) two papers, which he said had been left at his house by an Unknown hand; that he believed it was by Colonel Cecil, agent for the Pretender—­though how could that be, for he had had no conversation with Colonel Cecil for these two years!  He desired Lord Islay to lay them before the ministry.  One of the papers seemed a letter, though with no address or subscription, written in true genuine Stuart characters.  It was to thank Mr. Burnus (D. of A.) for his services, and that he hoped he would answer the assurances given of him.  The other was to command the Jacobites,