I have been too negligent of improving such opportunities, but the tremendous moment in which we live, so lately having seen the country without King, without minister, with a famine, and seven wars! If it be not a moment to call people to a serious recollection, nothing can ever do it. So near the expiration of the 1,260 years of Daniel and St. John; the Turkish Empire on the point of destruction; a strange and unthought-of establishment in Egypt, a country that is to have much to do in the return of the Jews—ourselves in India, they may have some unknown relation to that phial to be poured out on the Euphrates to make way for the Kings of the East—altogether combine strangely to give suspicion that we are on the eve of some great events which are to usher in the final consummation of all things, and consequently the fall of the ten Kings of Europe. The times are truly awful, and demand such piety and resignation as no other period of modern history even approached to. _23rd._—At the Lock yesterday. Scott is now my favourite preacher, and I have heard him ever since I came to Town with great pleasure and attention in spite of a very bad manner. His matter is most excellent. Received the Sacrament. _24th._—Called yesterday on Mr. and Mrs. Montagu in their great house. It is said he has just lost a coal pit that was worth 6,000_l._ or 7,000_l._ a year; I had a card for her Monday parties, and not having been, I apologised. I must now and then go after Easter. But all company of the sort is flat to me. I have just made up the annual account for 1800, and the loss upon the year is 22_l._; this meeting a tax on paper which will cost 48_l._ a year is alarming. I had entertained many vain hopes that the work after so many years’ continuance would have stood its ground, but I know not what to think. Now I must print only six instead of seven sheets, and try so for another year. If I lose then, I must give up the work, much as it will hurt me. The ‘Agricultural and Commercial Magazine’ and the ‘Farmers’ Magazine,’ which approach more to the nature of newspapers, and which have contained hardly one paper of real importance, have been selling well; such is the world, its judgment and discernment! _28th._—Yesterday the Board proceeded to Hyde Park in a body to see the experiments of Captain Hoar on the _Virgula divina_. He, many years ago, saw Lady Milbank’s surprising faculty of discovering springs, and trying, found that he had it himself. He is recommended to the Board by Mr. Lascelles, member for Yorkshire. I found from the conductor of the waterworks at the reservoir then at work, that the twig in Mr. Hoar’s hand when he crossed them turned up in a surprising manner. He seemed, in the opinion of Sir Joseph Banks, to fail once, but in the four trials I watched, and in which I know he could not be acquainted with the direction of the pipes, he succeeded completely. Next Tuesday another trial.