I have been in town, as I told you I should, but gleaned nothing worth repeating, or I Would have wrote before I came away.  The Churchills left me on Thursday, and were succeeded by the Marshal and Mr. Taylor, who dined and stayed all night.  I am now alone, having reserved this evening to answer your long, and Agnes’s short letter; but in this single one to both, for I have not matter enough for a separate maintenance.  I went yesterday to Mrs. Damer, and had a glimpse of her new house; literally a glimpse, for I saw but one room on the first floor, where she had lighted a fire, that I might not mount two flights; and as it was eight o’clock, and quite dark, she only opened a door or two, and gave me a cat’s-eye view into them.  One blemish I had descried at first; the house has a corner arrival like her father’s.  Ah, me! who do not love to be led through the public.  I did see the new bust of Mrs. Siddons, and a very mistressly performance it is indeed.  Mrs. Damer was surprised at my saying I should expect you after you had not talked of returning near so soon. another week; she said.  “I do not mention this, as if to gainsay your intention; on the contrary, I hope and beg you will stay as long as either of you thinks she finds the least benefit from it:  and after that, too, as long as you both like to stay.  I reproached myself so sadly, and do still, for having dragged you from Italy sooner than you intended, and am so grateful for your having had that complaisance, that unless I grow quite superannuated, I think I shall not be so selfish as to combat the inclination of either again.  It is natural for me to delight in your company; but I do not even wish for it, if it lays you under any restraint.  I have lived a thousand years to little purpose, if I have not learned that half a century more than the age of one’s friends is not an agr`ement de plus.

I wish you had seen Canterbury some years ago, before they whitewashed it; for it is so coarsely daubed, and thence the gloom is so totally destroyed, and so few tombs remain for so vast a mass, that I was shocked at the nudity of the whole.  If you should go thither again, make the Cicerone show you a pane of glass in the east window, which does open, and exhibits a most delicious view of the ruins Of St. Anstin’s.

Mention of Canterbury furnishes me with a very suitable opportunity for telling you a remarkable story, which I had from Lady Onslow t’other night, and which was related to her by Lord Ashburnham, on whose veracity you may depend.  In the hot weather of this last summer, his lordship’s very old uncle, the Bishop of Chichester,(889) was waked in his palace at four o’clock in the morning by his bedchamber door being opened, when a female figure, all in white, entered, and sat down near him.  The prelate, who protests he was not frightened, said in a tone of authority, but not with the usual triple adjuration, “Who are you?” Not a word of reply; but