to teach my wife the rules of perspective; but I think, upon trial, he thinks it too hard to teach her, being ignorant of the principles of lines.  After dinner comes one Colonel Macnachan, one that I see often at Court, a Scotchman, but know him not; only he brings me a letter from my Lord Middleton, who, he says, is in great distress for L500 to relieve my Lord Morton with, but upon, what account I know not; and he would have me advance it without order upon his pay for Tangier, which I was astonished at, but had the grace to deny him with an excuse.  And so he went away, leaving me a little troubled that I was thus driven, on a sudden, to do any thing herein; but Creed, coming just now to see me, he approves of what I have done.  And then to talk of general matters, and, by and by, Sheres being gone, my wife, and he, and I out, and I set him down at Temple Bar, and myself and wife went down the Temple upon seeming business, only to put him off, and just at the Temple gate I spied Deb. with another gentlewoman, and Deb. winked on me and smiled, but undiscovered, and I was glad to see her.  So my wife and I to the ’Change, about things for her; and here, at Mrs. Burnett’s shop, I am told by Betty, who was all undressed, of a great fire happened in Durham-Yard last night, burning the house of one Lady Hungerford, who was to come to town to it this night; and so the house is burned, new furnished, by carelessness of the girl sent to take off a candle from a bunch of candles, which she did by burning it off, and left the rest, as is supposed, on fire.  The King and Court were here, it seems, and stopped the fire by blowing up of the next house.  The King and Court went out of town to Newmarket this morning betimes, for a week.  So home, and there to my chamber, and got my wife to read to me a little, and so to supper and to bed.  Coming home this night I did call at the coachmaker’s, and do resolve upon having the standards of my coach gilt with this new sort of varnish, which will come but to 40s.; and, contrary to my expectation, the doing of the biggest coach all over comes not to above L6, which is [not] very much.

27th.  Up, and to the Office, where all the morning.  At noon home to dinner, and then to the Office again, where the afternoon busy till late, and then home, and got my wife to read to me in the Nepotisme,

[The work here mentioned is a bitter satire against the Court Rome, written in Italian, and attributed to Gregorio Leti.  It was first printed in 1667, without the name or place of printer, but it is from the press of the Elzevirs.  The book obtained by Pepys was probably the anonymous English translation, “Il Nipotismo di Roma:  or the history of the Popes nephews from the time of Sixtus the iv. to the death the last Pope Alexander the vii.  In two parts.  Written originally Italian in the year 1667 and Englished by W. A. London, 1669” 8vo.  From this work the word Nepotism is derived, and is applied to the bad practice of statesmen, when in power, providing lucrative places for their relations.]

which is very pleasant, and so to supper and to bed.  This afternoon was brought to me a fresh Distringas upon the score of the Tangier accounts which vexes me, though I hope it will not turn to my wrong.