“... Mr. Wyatt has nearly completed what belonged to the architect; and Mr. Brown, by removing a good deal of ground and throwing it down below, to raise what was too low, while he sank what was too high, has much improved the view to the south; and, having, at my request, made a fanlight over the east window, so that the arch formed by the trees is now visible, these rooms are the most beautiful imaginable. With the shelter, comfort, and convenience of walls and roofs, you have a beautiful passage and the green shade of a grove.... The celebrated Mr. Brown has already beautified our pastoral scenes extreamly. “... I can easily give you credit when you say you love society, because I know society loves you, and I am perfectly of the opinion of the common maxim, that nobody lives out of the world who is fit to live in it. Now your husband’s party have got into power, I have no doubt but they will bestow a prebendary upon him, if he asks them. However, his income will very well afford your spending some months in London every winter.” “_Sandleford, June ye 16th 1783._ ... You must know, as many authors with whom I have not any personal acquaintance do me the favour to send me their works, I found the carriage of them to be amongst my weekly expenses during the summer. So, of late, if I make a short excursion into the country, I order the literature to wait until my return. Or, if I go for a longer time, to be sent down at proper opportunities, with the tea, or groceries, or some other of the vulgar necessaries of life. So my dear nephew’s letter was supposed to come with a pamphlet from a bookseller’s shop, and my porter kept it, with other things from the same source, till my return from Bath. “... I found Sandleford improv’d by the attentions of the great Mr. Brown. My pleasure in those improvements was mix’d with regret for his death.... Brown was certainly a man of great genius.... Happily for me, he made a plan for all that is intended to be done here. As I do not allow my yearly expenses to exceed my yearly income, I go on softly; so that the plan will hardly be completed by this time two years. “... I dare say my brother has read with great pleasure Mr. Potter’s ‘Enquiry into some Passages of Doctor Johnson’s Lives of the Poets.’ Mr. Potter has also ably vindicated his friend Mr. Gray’s Odes, etc., from cruel and unjust criticism, and this is done with great wit, taste, and good manners,—ingredients rarely put into the bitters of criticism. Modern witts and modern orators are apt to fall into the Billingsgate style, and from every kind of chastisement, made more severe and outrageous than the fault it should correct, one takes the part of the culprit against the harshness of the corrector.”