“The fine condition in which I found my estates in Northumberland and in Yorkshire, and the universal prosperity there, made me wish we might enjoy our plenty in peace, run no new hazards, and incur no new taxes. The labouring people in the north do not suffer the poverty we see in the same rank in the south, and our parish rates are very low. “... Lord Kames and Mrs. Drummond, his wife, came from Edinburgh, which is an hundred miles from Denton, on purpose to spend a few days with me. His lordship is a prodigy. At eighty-three he is as gay and as nimble as he was at twenty-five. His sight, hearing, and memory perfect. He has a great deal of knowledge and a lively imagination, and is a most entertaining companion. I have promised to return his visit two years hence. I think as he has not grown old in the space of eighty-three years, two years more cannot have much effect. If it should abate a little of his vivacity, he would still have enough left.” “_Sandleford, February 10, 1779._ ... I am inform’d that our minister at Lisbon sends an account that Admiral Rodney fell in with the Spanish fleet in the Gulf of Gibraltar, has blown up the admiral’s ship of ninety guns, taken four or five ships, and only one has got into Cadiz. This news is but just arrived. Rule, Brittannia, rule the waves. There is an admirable work of Mr. Anstey’s just published called ‘Speculation; or, a Defence of Manhood,’ a poem. “... Montagu is still at Harrow.... His master says more of him than it becomes me to repeat; so I will, for once in my life, show more discretion than vanity.”