64 (161) is to be a fine sight, that is, a great concourse of people will be there, I suppose, on their Majesties' account. Mie Mie wants to go. If the Townshends, that is Mary and Lady Middleton, had offered to be troubled with her, I should have consented and gone there myself. I have made no preparations for the Birthday, but thinking where I shall go to avoid it; or for yours, but I will; Storer shall dine with me that day, et ceux que je crois vous etre les plus attaches, and we will drink the health of their Excellencies, cela du petit dauphin, of my dear little Caroline, et ainsi du reste. Pierre tells me that she is not so tall as Mie Mie is at present; en dedommagement de cela elle est cent mille fois plus robuste. As to myself, j'ai un management pour ma sante incroyable. For I am determined, if it pleases God, to live to see you and all of you again, but when or where, that must be left to the chapter of accidents. Emily has left off writing to me; he wrote to me twice pour faire votre eloge, ce qui ne fut fort peu necessaire, and there was an end of his epistolary correspondence. Pray goad that Dean(162) who slumbers in his stall, and make him write. . . . (160) Of Gloucester. (161) In the time of George III. and up to the date when it was abolished in 1847, Montem at Eton was a school holiday, an "event," as we should now say, of the London season. Of its origin nothing is known, but the ceremony of a procession in military costume "ad Montem" to a mound near Slough, now called Salt Hill, can be traced back to the sixteenth century. Visitors were offered salt by some of the boys, and in exchange gave money. The amount collected after payment of the expenses belonged to the captain of the school. --"History of Eton College," by H. C. Maxwell-Lyte, p. 450. (162) Edward Emly, Dean of Derry. (1781,) June 1, Friday m(orning).--I am at this moment employed fort pedagoguement. I have taken into my own department Mie Mie's translations out of English into French. That is, I am at her elbow when she translates, and by that means can see what faults she makes from insufficiency, and what are produced from carelessness. She is very much so if left to herself, but is very much improved, as I perceive. But Mrs. Webb can be of no use in this, and so I have the task when Labort is not here. I hope that Caroline has somebody to read French with her who has a real good pronunciation, otherwise it will take un mauvais pli, which will not be so easy to recover, and it is better not to speak a language at all than without some sort of grace.