to desire his advice, though people he never saw; and then my Lord he answers by commending the greatness of his discretion in making so good an alliance, &c., and so ends.  He says that it is so far from dishonour to a man to give private revenge for an affront, that the contrary is a disgrace; they holding that he that receives an affront is not fit to appear in the sight of the world till he hath revenged himself; and therefore, that a gentleman there that receives an affront oftentimes never appears again in the world till he hath, by some private way or other, revenged himself:  and that, on this account, several have followed their enemies privately to the Indys, thence to Italy, thence to France and back again, watching for an opportunity to be revenged.  He says my Lord was fain to keep a letter from the Duke of York to the Queen of Spain a great while in his hands, before he could think fit to deliver it, till he had learnt whether the Queen would receive it, it being directed to his cozen.  He says that many ladies in Spain, after they are found to be with child, do never stir out of their beds or chambers till they are brought to bed:  so ceremonious they are in that point also.  He tells me of their wooing by serenades at the window, and that their friends do always make the match; but yet that they have opportunities to meet at masse at church, and there they make love:  that the Court there hath no dancing, nor visits at night to see the King or Queen, but is always just like a cloyster, nobody stirring in it:  that my Lord Sandwich wears a beard now, turned up in the Spanish manner.  But that which pleases me most indeed is, that the peace which he hath made with Spain is now printed here, and is acknowledged by all the merchants to be the best peace that ever England had with them:  and it appears that the King thinks it so, for this is printed before the ratification is gone over; whereas that with France and Holland was not in a good while after, till copys come over of it in English out of Holland and France, that it was a reproach not to have it printed here.  This I am mighty glad of; and is the first and only piece of good news, or thing fit to be owned, that this nation hath done several years.  After dinner I to the office, and they gone, anon comes Pelling, and he and I to Gray’s Inne Fields, thinking to have heard Mrs. Knight sing at her lodgings, by a friend’s means of his;

[Mrs. Knight, a celebrated singer and mistress of Charles ii.  There is in Waller’s “Poems” a song sung by her to the queen on her birthday.  In her portrait, engraved by Faber, after Kneller, she is represented in mourning, and in a devout posture before a crucifix.  Evelyn refers to her singing as incomparable, and adds that she had “the greatest reach of any English woman; she had been lately roaming in Italy, and was much improv’d in that quality” ("Diary,” December 2nd, 1674).]

but we come too late; so must try another time.  So lost our labour, and I by coach home, and there to my chamber, and did a great deal of good business about my Tangier accounts, and so with pleasure discoursing with my wife of our journey shortly to Brampton, and of this little girle, which indeed runs in my head, and pleases me mightily, though I dare not own it, and so to supper and to bed.