I have been here with Lord Egremont above a fortnight. A good deal of rabble, but some better. Lord Spencer, Lord Althorp, Lord Dungarvan, Lord Milton, Lord Stair, Sir John Shelley, Mr. James Feiryman, &c. I shall stay the whole vacation. _February 14._—Another great gap, in which time I was four days with the Duke of Bedford at Woburn, with a strange party, for all in all I think the most strange I have been in for many years. Trevis, the pseudo-Venetian Jew, who came long ago to England, has ran through a great fortune, reduced from 200,000_l._to 1,200_l._ a year, having shined with most satanic light in the annals of gallantry; Lady Stanhope, Lady Cadogan, and a hundred more. Strong parts, wits, originality (name evidently omitted here) and at seventy-one sings wonderfully; Lord Lauderdale, who is a very pleasant, easy, cheerful companion with knowledge, and so more capable of doing mischief; Lord Maynard, Johns the parson, Bob Lee, Bligh, &c. The duke has much good sense and clearness of head. On my return to town, Lord Carrington applied to me to get a drainer for Mr. Pitt at Holwood. I told him none to be had but from a distance, and at a considerable expense; that perhaps it was an easy job, and if so his own people could do it if the drains were marked out for them, and I would go and look when nobody there. Next day he came again from Pitt with thanks, and desiring me to go when he was there. I went, and examined the land. A hill wet from springs, the cure obvious. So I am to do it for him. He and Lord Auckland and Lord Carrington walked round the place with me, and then returned to a cold dinner, where we debated the Board of Agriculture, and Pitt seemed pleased with my idea of Government hiring the Bishop of Llandaff’s house for the Board, and so getting rid of the difficulty of not being able to quit Sir J. Sinclair’s without sixteen members agreeing in the affirmative, a stupid statute they made. By the first reports of the Board, and a multitude of other expenses equally useless, Sir John ran the Board so much in debt that it became a question of great difficulty how they should be enabled to carry on any business at all. Through a spirit of liberality in many individuals, a subscription was set on foot, and ten guineas apiece by members and honorary members, which kept them for some time on their legs. The revenue of the Board went entirely to printers, above eighty reports in quarto, with broad margins, having been given away to any who would accept them; and they were in general so miserably executed, that they brought the institution into contempt.