It is rather extraordinary, but I longed excessively to see this lady. At length the following occurrence led to the event which I had anticipated with so much anxiety. My father had ridden to London, and taken his friend Coward with him as a companion. On their return, having started early on a Sunday morning, they rode, as was my father's custom, twenty miles before breakfast, which brought them to the Windmill, at Salt Hill. They rode into the yard, and having called for the hostler, the landlord, Mr. Botham, came up to them and made his bow. Having learned, in the course of his conversation with them, that they came from the neighbourhood of Devizes, he enquired if my father knew Mr. Halcomb who kept the Bear Inn, to which my father replied, that he not only knew but was particularly intimate with him; a reply which led to a more familiar conversation. As soon as they had finished breakfast, the landlord entered the room, and invited them to walk into the garden and take some fruit; an invitation which was accepted. From thence they had a full view of Windsor Castle, which being admired by Coward, Mr. Botham enquired if they had ever seen Windsor. The answer being in the negative,--"Well, Gentlemen," said he, "If you will favour me with your company to dinner, I will take you over in a chaise, shew you the King's farms, the Queen's dairy, &c. after which we will walk over the Castle, and go to the Chapel Royal where you will have an opportunity of seeing all the Royal Family, who are at Windsor, as they scarcely ever fail in fine weather to attend divine service." Coward's eyes sparkled with joy at the proposal, and he looked with anxious expectation for my father's answer. The latter replied that it would have been a great treat to him, particularly to have inspected the King's farms; but that he was, nevertheless, reluctantly obliged to decline this polite offer, as they were under the necessity of reaching home the next morning, and had made arrangements for sleeping that night at Newbury, a distance of nearly forty miles from Salt Hill, much too far for their horses to take them after dinner. "If that be all the objection you have," replied Botham, "we will soon settle that: I will send a steady man on to Reading with your horses, who shall get them well cleaned and fed, and after we have seen Windsor, and you have dined and taken one of the best bottles of old port my house can produce, and drank the health of my friend Halcomb, I will put the best pair of horses I have in my stables to a post chaise, in which you shall be taken to Reading in such style as will give you a specimen of the way in which we conduct posting at the London end of the Bath road. By the time that you arrive at Reading your horses will have had good time to feed, and will be fresh to take you on to Newbury as early as you have named." Coward begged my father to accept so very excellent a proposal, and declared that it would not only be a