It was the Corporation of Leeds that by a subscription of £80,000 brought in the anti-Catholic candidate. I remember their subscribing a similar sum to bring in Morritt, if he would have stood. Saw in Morritt's possession an original miniature of Milton by Cooper--a valuable thing indeed. The pedigree seemed authentic. It was painted for his favourite daughter--had come into possession of some of the Davenants--was then in the Devonshire collection from which it was stolen. Afterwards purchased by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and at his sale by Morritt or his father.[358] The countenance handsome and dignified, with a strong expression of genius, probably the only portrait of Milton taken from the life excepting the drawing from which Faithorne's head is done. [_Grantham_,] _October_ 15.--Old England is no changeling. It is long since I travelled this road, having come up to town chiefly by sea of late years, but things seem much the same. One race of red-nosed innkeepers are gone, and their widows, eldest sons, or head-waiters exercise hospitality in their room with the same bustle and importance. Other things seem, externally at least, much the same. The land, however, is much better ploughed; straight ridges everywhere adopted in place of the old circumflex of twenty years ago. Three horses, however, or even four, are often seen in a plough yoked one before the other. Ill habits do not go out at once. We slept at Grantham, where we met with Captain William Lockhart and his lady, bound for London like ourselves. [_Biggleswade_,] _October_ 16.--Visited Burleigh this morning; the first time I ever saw that grand place, where there are so many objects of interest and curiosity. The house is magnificent, in the style of James I.'s reign, and consequently in mixed Gothic. Of paintings I know nothing; so shall attempt to say nothing. But whether to connoisseurs, or to an ignorant admirer like myself, the Salvator Mundi, by Carlo Dolci, must seem worth a King's ransom. Lady Exeter, who was at home, had the goodness or curiosity to wish to see us. She is a beauty after my own heart; a great deal of liveliness in the face; an absence alike of form and of affected ease, and really courteous after a genuine and ladylike fashion. We reached Biggleswade to-night at six, and paused here to wait for the Lockharts. Spent the evening together. [_Pall Mall_,] _October_ 17.--Here am I in this capital once more, after an April-weather meeting with my daughter and Lockhart. Too much grief in our first meeting to be joyful; too much pleasure to be distressing--a giddy sensation between the painful and the pleasurable. I will call another subject. Read over _Sir John Chiverton_[359] and _Brambletye House_[360]--novels in what I may surely claim as the style "Which I was born to introduce-- Refined it first, and show'd its use."