Your lordship tells me you hope my summer has glided pleasantly, like our Thames- I cannot say it has passed very pleasantly to me, though, like the Thames, dry and low; for somehow or other I caught a rheumatic fever in the great heats, and cannot get rid of it.  I have just been at Park-place and Nuneham, in hopes change of air would cure me; but to no purpose.  Indeed, as want of sleep is my chief complaint, I doubt I must make use of a very different and more disagreeable remedy, the air of London, the only place that I ever find agree with me when I am out of order.  I was there for two nights a fortnight ago, and slept perfectly well.  In vain has my predilection for Strawberry made me try to persuade myself that this was all fancy:  but, I fear, reasons that appear strong, though contrary to our inclinations, must be good ones.  London at this time of year is as nauseous a drug as any in an apothecary’s shop.  I could find nothing at all to do, and so went to Astley’s, `which indeed was much beyond my expectation.  I do not wonder any longer that Darius was chosen king by the instructions he gave to his horse; nor that Caligula made ’his consul.  Astley can make his dance minuets and hornpipes:  which is more extraordinary than to make them vote at an election, or act the part of a magistrate, which animals of less capacities can perform as dexterously as a returning officer or a master in chancery.  But I shall not have even Astley now:  her Majesty the Queen of France, who has as much taste as Caligula, has sent for the whole dramatis personae to Paris.  Sir William Hamilton was at Park-place, and gave us dreadful accounts of Calabria:  he looks much older, and has the patina of a bronze.

At Nuneham I was much pleased with the improvements both within doors and without.  Mr. Mason was there; and as he shines in every art, was assisting Mrs. Harcourt with his new discoveries in painting, by which he will unite miniature and oil.  Indeed, she is a very apt and extraordinary scholar.  Since our professors seem to have lost the art of colouring, I am glad at least that they have ungraduated assessors.

We have plenty and peace at last; consequently leisure for repairing some of our losses, if we have sense to set about the task.  On what will happen I shall make no conjectures, as it is not likely I should see much of what is to come.  Our enemies have humbled us enough to content them; and we have succeeded so ill in innovations, that surely we shall not tempt new storms in haste.

>From this place I can send your lordship new or entertaining, nor expect more game in town, whither nothing but search of health should carry me.  Perhaps it is a vain chase at my age; but at my age one cannot trust to Nature’s operating cures without aiding her; it is always time enough to abandon one’s self when no care will palliate our decays.  I hope your lordship and Lady Strafford will long be in no want of such attentions; nor should I -have