25.  Morning.  I wish you a merry New Year; this is the first day of the year, you know, with us, and ’tis Lady-day.  I must rise and go to my Lord Keeper:  it is not shaving-day to-day, so I shall be early.  I am to dine with Mr. Secretary St. John.  Good-morrow, my mistresses both, good-morrow.  Stella will be peeping out of her room at Mrs. De Caudres’[2] down upon the folks as they come from church; and there comes Mrs. Proby,[3] and that is my Lady Southwell,[4] and there is Lady Betty Rochfort.[5] I long to hear how you are settled in your new lodgings.  I wish I were rid of my old ones, and that Mrs. Brent could contrive to put up my books in boxes, and lodge them in some safe place, and you keep my papers of importance.  But I must rise, I tell you.—­At night.  So I visited and dined as I told you, and what of that?  We have let Guiscard be buried at last, after showing him pickled in a trough this fortnight for twopence apiece:  and the fellow that showed would point to his body, and, “See, gentlemen, this is the wound that was given him by his Grace the Duke of Ormond; and this is the wound,” etc., and then the show was over, and another set of rabble came in.  ’Tis hard our laws would not suffer us to hang his body in chains, because he was not tried; and in the eye of our law every man is innocent till then.—­Mr. Harley is still very weak, and never out of bed.

26.  This was a most delicious day; and my shin being past danger, I walked like lightning above two hours in the Park.  We have generally one fair day, and then a great deal of rain for three or four days together.  All things are at a stop in Parliament for want of Mr. Harley; they cannot stir an inch without him in their most material affairs:  and we fear, by the caprice of Radcliffe, who will admit none but his own surgeon,[6] he has not been well looked after.  I dined at an alehouse with Mr. Lewis, but had his wine.  Don’t you begin to see the flowers and blossoms of the field?  How busy should I be now at Laracor!  No news of your box?  I hope you have it, and are this minute drinking the chocolate, and that the smell of the Brazil tobacco has not affected it.  I would be glad to know whether you like it, because I would send you more by people that are now every day thinking of going to Ireland; therefore pray tell me, and tell me soon:  and I will have the strong box.

27.  A rainy, wretched, scurvy day from morning till night:  and my neighbour Vanhomrigh invited me to dine with them and this evening I passed at Mr. Prior’s with Dr. Freind; and ’tis now past twelve, so I must go sleep.