4.  When must we answer this letter, this N.15 of our little MD?  Heat and laziness, and Sir Andrew Fountaine, made me dine to-day again at Mrs. Van’s; and, in short, this weather is unsupportable:  how is it with you?  Lady Betty Butler and Lady Ashburnham sat with me two or three hours this evening in my closet at Mrs. Van’s.  They are very good girls; and if Lady Betty went to Ireland, you should let her be acquainted with you.  How does Dingley do this hot weather?  Stella, I think, never complains of it; she loves hot weather.  There has not been a drop of rain since Friday se’ennight.  Yes, you do love hot weather, naughty Stella, you do so; and Presto can’t abide it.  Be a good girl then, and I will love you; and love one another, and don’t be quarrelling girls.

5.  I dined in the City to-day, and went from hence early to town, and visited the Duke of Ormond and Mr. Secretary.  They say my Lord Treasurer has a dead warrant in his pocket; they mean a list of those who are to be turned out of employment; and we every day now expect those changes.  I passed by the Treasury to-day, and saw vast crowds waiting to give Lord Treasurer petitions as he passes by.  He is now at the top of power and favour:  he keeps no levees yet.  I am cruel thirsty this hot weather.—­I am just this minute going to swim.  I take Patrick down with me, to hold my nightgown, shirt, and slippers, and borrow a napkin of my landlady for a cap.  So farewell till I come up; but there is no danger, don’t be frighted.—­I have been swimming this half-hour and more; and when I was coming out I dived, to make my head and all through wet, like a cold bath; but, as I dived, the napkin fell off and is lost, and I have that to pay for.  O, faith, the great stones were so sharp, I could hardly set my feet on them as I came out.  It was pure and warm.  I got to bed, and will now go sleep.

6.  Morning.  This letter shall go to-morrow; so I will answer yours when I come home to-night.  I feel no hurt from last night’s swimming.  I lie with nothing but the sheet over me, and my feet quite bare.  I must rise and go to town before the tide is against me.  Morrow, sirrahs; dear sirrahs, morrow.—­ At night.  I never felt so hot a day as this since I was born.  I dined with Lady Betty Germaine, and there was the young Earl of Berkeley[15] and his fine lady.  I never saw her before, nor think her near so handsome as she passes for.—­After dinner, Mr. Bertue[16] would not let me put ice in my wine, but said my Lord Dorchester[17] got the bloody flux with it, and that it was the worst thing in the world.  Thus are we plagued, thus are we plagued; yet I have done it five or six times this summer, and was but the drier and the hotter for it.  Nothing makes me so excessively peevish as hot weather.  Lady Berkeley after dinner clapped my hat on another lady’s head, and she in roguery put it upon the rails.  I minded them not; but in two minutes they called me