There remains much more to ask I understood the witnesses do not like to bother about, which is very natural.  One would like to know a little more of the Sultan, of the care taken to secure the fidelity of the boy who was the viewer and on whom so much depended; whether another sage practising the same feat, as it was said to be hereditary, was ever known to practise in the city.  The truth of a story irreconcilable with the common course of nature must depend on cross-examination.  If we should find, while at Malta, that we had an opportunity of expiscating this matter, though at the expense of a voyage to Alexandria, it would hardly deter me.[473] The girls go to the Chapel Royal this morning at St. James’s.  A visit from the Honourable John Forbes, son of my old and early friend Lord Forbes, who is our fellow-passenger.  The ship expects presently to go to sea.  I was very glad to see this young officer and to hear his news.  Drummond and I have been Mends from our infancy.

October 17.—­The morning beautiful.  To-day I go to look after the transcripts in the Museum and have a card to see a set of chessmen[474] thrown up by the sea on the coast of Scotland, which were offered to sale for L100.  The King, Queen, Knights, etc., were in the costume of the 14th century, the substance ivory or rather the tusk of the morse, somewhat injured by the salt water in which they had been immersed for some time.

Sir John Malcolm told us a story about Garrick and his wife.  The lady admired her husband greatly, but blamed him for a taste for low life, and insisted that he loved better to play Scrub to a low-lifed audience than one of his superior characters before an audience of taste.  On one particular occasion she was in her box in the theatre. Richard III. was the performance, and Garrick’s acting, especially in the night scene, drew down universal applause.  After the play was over Mrs. G. proposed going home, which Garrick declined, alleging he had some business in the green-room, which must detain him.  In short, the lady was obliged to acquiesce, and wait the beginning of a new entertainment, in which was introduced a farmer giving his neighbours an account of the wonders seen on a visit to London.  This character was received with such peals of applause that Mrs. Garrick began to think it rivalled those which had been so lately lavished on Richard the Third.  At last she observed her little spaniel dog was making efforts to get towards the balcony which separated him from the facetious farmer.  Then she became aware of the truth.  “How strange,” she said, “that a dog should know his master, and a woman, in the same circumstances, should not recognise her husband!”