idea I conceived of the breakfast and way of life there by no means answered.  You was a prophet; it was very agreeable.  I am ashamed to tell you that I laughed half an hour yesterday at the sudden death of your new friend Sir Harry Danvers,(421) “after a morning’s airing,” the news call it; I suspect it was after a negus.  I found my garden brown and bare, but these rains have recovered the green.  You may get your pond ready as soon as you please; the gold fish swarm:  Mr. Bentley carried a dozen to town t’other day in a decanter.  You would be entertained with our fishing; instead of nets, and rods and lines, and worms, we use nothing but a pail and a basin and a tea-strainer, which I persuade my neighbours is the Chinese method.  Adieu!  My best compliments to Miss Montagu.

P. S. Since writing my letter, I have received your twin dispatches.  I am extremely sensible of the honour my Lord Guildford does me, and beg you to transmit my gratitude to him:  if he is ever at Wroxton when I visit Greatworth, I shall certainly wait upon him, and think myself happy in seeing that charming place again.  As soon as I go to town, I shall send for Moreland, and barbour your wardrobe with great pleasure.  I find I must beg your pardon for laughing in the former part of my letter about your baronet’s death; but his “wine and water a little warm” had left such a ridiculous effect upon me, that even his death could not efface it.  Good night!  Mr. Miller told me at Stowe, that the chimney-piece (I think from Steane) was he believed at Banbury, but he did not know exactly.  If it lies in your way to inquire, on so vague a direction, will you?  Mr. Chute may bring me a sketch of it.

(420) The seat of Lord Guilford.

(421) Of Culworth, in Oxfordshire.  He died at the age of twenty-two.-E.

180 Letter 85 To Richard Bentley, Esq.  Arlington Street, September, 1753.

My dear Sir, I am going to send you another volume of my travels; I don’t know whether I shall not, at last, write a new Camden’s Britannia; but lest you should be afraid of my itinerary, I will at least promise you that it shall not be quite so dry as most surveys, which contain nothing but lists of impropriations and glebes, and carucates, and transcripts out of Domesday, and tell one nothing that is entertaining, describe no houses nor parks, mention no curious pictures, but are fully satisfied if they inform you that they believe that some nameless old tomb belonged to a knight-templar, or one of the crusado, because he lies cross-legged.  Another promise I will make you is, that my love of abbeys shall not make me hate the Reformation till that makes me grow a Jacobite, like the rest of my antiquarian predecessors; of whom, Dart in particular wrote Billingsgate against Cromwell and the regicides:  and Sir Robert Atkins concludes his summary of the Stuarts with saying, “that it is no reason, because they have been so, that this family should always continue unfortunate.”