_30th June._--On Friday, 28th, Ld. H. went to the Slave business.[317] I dined at home with Drew and Mr. Adderley. When Ld. H. returned they fell into a long metaphysical disquisition upon the nature of the soul. Add. has applied himself to the examination of that inquiry, and can reason fluently and technically upon those abstract, incomprehensible points. He has adopted the Platonician doctrine of spirit and matter, and conceives that spirit is a quality endued with faculties indefinable, that it is a particle of celestial origin, and secures to us immortality. The other two supported the old Epicurean tenet (for after all those old fellows were the first who started the systems which our modern philosophers appropriate to themselves) of materialism, that life and intelligence were carried on by material objects only, matter acting upon matter; in short, that to a fortuitous concourse of atoms we owed _being_ as we are. I have not the capacity to follow thro’ a labyrinth of metaphysical sophisms; the very little I could ever understand I had no sooner been convinced was right than a new system proved to me it was fallacious, and this having happened above once, I have determined not to trouble myself with endless speculations that neither make one wiser nor happier. Ld. Wycombe has neglected an eruption. He is under the care of Adair and Hawkins, and is quite a cripple. This disease gives him an opportunity of moralising upon the want of moral justice among mankind. A pampered debauchee writhing under the gout, a malady brought on by his own excesses, is an object of general pity; all hearts are in union with his pangs and sympathetic with every twinge, whereas he says a temperate, unoffending person who acquires accidentally a disease conveyed by harmless, innocent contact, is shunned and treated with disgust and contumely. The D. of Bedford told a story of Ld. Lauderdale’s delight at reading a passage in Arthur Young, who says the cattle, especially the sheep, in Lincolnshire, are affected with a cutaneous disease upon their nose. This, he says, is owing to their rubbing their snouts upon thistles. ‘Aye, to be sure,’ cried Ld. L., ‘we pull the thistles in Scotland between our fingers, so we catch the itch.’ On Saturday I went to town and did many duties in the visiting way. T. has made his wife low-spirited and unhappy by his foolish whimsies about me. Ld. G. Leveson came to dinner accidentally on his way from Winchester races; Mr. Adderley dined also. In the evening the Smiths came. She looked, as usual, cold and starch. Nothing very interesting in the conversation. _4th July._--Sunday, 30th June, Lds. Ossory and Macartney came; the latter stayed 3 hours and 3 quarters. We drove up and down the Green Lane in the whisky all the time; he declares that he has closed his peregrinations, that he always said he would at 60. Mr. Richard Penn[318] called to see me upon the score of an old acquaintance. [Sidenote: A FOOLISH SECRET]