an hour; it is two good miles, and just five thousand seven hundred and forty-eight steps; so there is four miles a day walking, without reckoning what I walk while I stay in town.  When I pass the Mall in the evening, it is prodigious to see the number of ladies walking there; and I always cry shame at the ladies of Ireland, who never walk at all, as if their legs were of no use, but to be laid aside.  I have been now almost three weeks here, and I thank God, am much better in my head, if it does but continue.  I tell you what, if I was with you, when we went to Stoyte at Donnybrook, we would only take a coach to the hither end of Stephen’s Green, and from thence go every step on foot, yes, faith, every step; it would do DD[8] good as well as Presto.[9] Everybody tells me I look better already; for, faith, I looked sadly, that is certain.  My breakfast is milk porridge:  I do not love it; faith, I hate it, but it is cheap and wholesome; and I hate to be obliged to either of those qualities for anything.[10]

16.  I wonder why Presto will be so tedious in answering MD’s letters; because he would keep the best to the last, I suppose.  Well, Presto must be humoured, it must be as he will have it, or there will be an old to do.[11] Dead with heat; are not you very hot?  My walks make my forehead sweat rarely; sometimes my morning journey is by water, as it was to-day with one Parson Richardson,[12] who came to see me, on his going to Ireland; and with him I send Mrs. Walls’s tea, and three books[13] I got from the Lords of the Treasury for the College.  I dined with Lord Shelburne to-day; Lady Kerry and Mrs. Pratt are going likewise for Ireland.—­Lord!  I forgot, I dined with Mr. Prior to-day, at his house, with Dean Atterbury and others; and came home pretty late, and I think I’m in a fuzz, and don’t know what I say, never saw the like.

17.  Sterne came here by water to see me this morning, and I went back with him to his boat.  He tells me that Mrs. Edgworth[14] married a fellow in her journey to Chester; so I believe she little thought of anybody’s box but her own.  I desired Sterne to give me directions where to get the box in Chester, which he says he will to-morrow; and I will write to Richardson to get it up there as he goes by, and whip it over.  It is directed to Mrs. Curry:  you must caution her of it, and desire her to send it you when it comes.  Sterne says Jemmy Leigh loves London mightily; that makes him stay so long, I believe, and not Sterne’s business, which Mr. Harley’s accident has put much backward.  We expect now every day that he will be Earl of Oxford and Lord Treasurer.  His patent is passing; but, they say, Lord Keeper’s not yet; at least his son, young Harcourt, told me so t’other day.  I dined to-day privately with my friend Lewis at his lodgings at Whitehall.  T’other day at Whitehall I met a lady of my acquaintance, whom I had not seen before since I came to England; we were mighty glad to see each other,