I mean no offence to Park-place, but the bitterness of the weather makes me wonder how you can find the country tolerable now.  This is a May-day for the latitude of Siberia!  The milkmaids should be wrapped in @the motherly comforts of a swanskin petticoat.  In short, such hard words have passed between me and the north wind to-day, that, according to the language of the times, I was very near abusing it for coming from Scotland, and to imputing it to Lord Bute.  I don’t know whether I should not have written a North Briton against it, if the printers were not all sent to Newgate, and Mr. Wilkes to the Tower—­ay, to the Tower, tout de bon.(279) The new ministry are trying to make up for their ridiculous insignificance by a coup d’`eclat.  As I came hither yesterday, I do not know whether the particulars I have heard are genuine—­but in the Tower he certainly is, taken up by Lord Halifax’s warrant for treason; vide the North Briton of Saturday was se’nnight.  It is said he refused to obey the warrant, of which he asked and got a copy from the two messengers, telling them he did not mean to make his escape, but sending to demand his habeas corpus, which was refused.  He then went to Lord Halifax, and thence to the Tower; declaring they should get nothing out of him but what they knew.  All his papers have been seize(].  Lord Chief Justice Pratt, I am told, finds great fault with the wording of the warrant.

I don’t know how to execute your commission for books of architecture, nor care to put you to expense, which I know will not answer.  I have been consulting my neighbour young Mr. Thomas Pitt,(280) my present architect:  we have all books of that sort here, but, cannot think of one which will help you to a cottage or a green-house.  For the former you should send me your idea, your dimensions; for the latter, don’t you rebuild your old one, though in another place?  A pretty greenhouse I never saw; nor without immoderate expense can it well be an agreeable object.  Mr. Pitt thinks a mere portico without a pediment, and windows retrievable in summer, would be the best plan you could have.  If so, don’t you remember something of that kind, which you liked at Sir Charles Cotterel’s at Rousham?  But a fine greenhouse must be on a more exalted plan.  In Short..  You Must be more particular, before I can be at all so.

I called at Hammersmith yesterday about Lady Ailesbury’s tubs; one of them is nearly finished, but they will not both be completed these ten days.  Shall they be sent to you by water?  Good night to her ladyship and you, and the infanta,(281) whose progress in waxen statuary I hope advances so fast, that by next winter she may rival Rackstrow’s old man.  Do you know that, though apprised of what I was going to see, it deceived me, and made such impression on my mind, that, thinking on it as I came home in my chariot. and seeing a woman steadfastly at work in a window in Pall-mall, it made me start to see her move.  Adieu!