“... I arrived at Mrs. Garrick’s, at Hampton, the evening of the day on which I visited you at Reading, and spent five days with her; making, indeed, almost every day an excursion to London to visit my poor friend, Mrs. Vesey, whom I found in a very declining state of health. From Hampton, I went to the Dowager Lady Spencer’s, at St. Albans, where I passed two days very agreably, and regretted that my business here would not allow me to prolong my visit. The history of La Fée Bienfaisante is not half so delightful as seeing the manner in which Lady Spencer spends her day. Every moment of it is employed in some act of benevolence and charity. Her ladyship carried me to see the remains of the seat of the great Lord Bacon, at Gorhambury, where remains, but is soon to be pulled down, the gallery in which he passed those hours of study which pointed out the road to science, and investigation of the works of nature. The estate is now in the possession of Lord Grimston, who has built a fine house there; but I could not help sighing at the reflection that the posterity of the ridiculous author of ‘Love in a Hollow Tree,’ should build on the ruins of Lord Bacon’s habitation. “From St. Albans I struck into the highroad at Welling, not without paying the tribute of a sigh to the memory of my old friend Doctor Young. From that place till I got into Yorkshire, I did not see any interesting objects but the mile-stones.... Here, at my Gothick mansion near Newcastle, the naiads are dirty with the coal-keels, and the dryads’ tresses are torn and dishevelled with the rough blasts of Boreas. My lot has not fallen on a fair ground, but it would be ungrateful not to own it is a goodly heritage, and makes a decent figure when it arrives at ye shop of Hoare and Co., in Fleet Street. A week after me, arrived in perfect health my nephew and neice Montagu. We are always here plagued with high winds, and this season they have raged with great violence; but as this house was built in 1620, I hope it will not now yield to storms it has braved for now two hundred years. The walls are of immense thickness, having been built of strength to resist our Scottish neighbours, who, before the Union, made frequent visits to this part of the world. My Gothick windows admit light, but exclude prospect; so that, when sitting down, I can see only the tops of the trees.