Churchill an Earl (afterwards Duke of Mailborough); Lumley (Scarborough) made a Viscount, Bentinck is an Earl (afterwards Duke of Portland); Sidney, a Viscount (afterward Earl of Romney).  Those that saw this and the last coronation tell me this was much finer and in better order; and if the number of the ladies were fewer, yet their attendance was with more application near the Queen all the time, and with more cheerful faces by a great deal.  By what is heard from Scotland, they mean to take the example from England.  The last reports from Ireland say, that King James was moving with his army towards the north.  And yesterday Lord Burlington said, Coleraine, a great town, was besieged by 6000 men, but that Lord Blaney had sallied out, and so behaved himself that they had raised the siege.  D’Avaux who was the French ambassador in Holland, would not speak in council till all the Protestants were put out.  So they were, and, as they say afterwards, discharged altogether....

“Lord Devonshire is to be installed at Windsor on St. George’s day.  My young folks have a longing desire to see the ceremony, and they cannot do it without a night’s lodging at Windsor.  If I can have that accommodation of your house I will think it a great favour, and will go with them, and look to your house while everybody is gone to the show.  I doubt the post can’t bring me a return time enough so I am put in hopes this may come to you by a coach; if it does, I do not question your order to your housekeeper to let us in.  In confidence of it, I think to send to her, that I believe I shall come and ask your beds for the night.”

X.

The following letter to her son (afterwards second Duke of Bedford), written from Stratton in July, 1706, is throughout so wise and good, that we give it without any curtailment.  She was then past seventy years of age, and no words could be more fitly pondered by the young, than these from an aged and tried and experienced Christian woman.

“When I take my pen to write this, I am, by the goodness and mercy of God, in a moderate and easy state of health—­a blessing I have thankfully felt through the course of a long life, which (with a much greater help), the contemplation of a more durable state, has maintained and upheld me through varieties of providences and conditions of life.  But all the delights and sorrows of this mixed state must end; and I feel the decays that attend old age creep so fast on me, that, although I may yet get over some more years however, I ought to make it my frequent meditation, that the day is near, when this earthly tabernacle shall be dissolved, and my immortal spirit be received into that place of purity, where no unclean thing can enter; there to sing eternal praises to the great Creator of all things.  With the Psalmist, I believe, ‘at His right hand there are pleasures for evermore:’  and what is good and of eternal duration, must be joyful above what we can conceive; as what is evil and of like duration, must be despairingly miserable.