As you interest yourself about Kimbolton, I begin my journal of two days here.  But I must set Out With owning, that I believe I am the first man that ever went sixty miles to an auction.  As I came for ebony, I have been up to my chin in ebony; there is literally nothing but ebony in the house; all the other goods. if there were any, and I trust my Lady Convers did not sleep upon ebony mattresses, are taken away.  There are two tables and eighteen chairs, all made by the Hallet of two hundred years ago.  These I intend to have; for mind, the auction does not begin till Thursday.  There are more plebeian chairs of the same materials, but I have left commission for only the true black blood.  Thence I went to Kimbolton,(295) and asked to see the house.  A kind footman, who in his zeal to open the chaise pinched half my finger off, said he would call the housekeeper:  but a groom of the chambers insisted on my visiting their graces; and as I vowed I did not know them, he said they were in the great apartment, that all the rest was in disorder and altering, and would let me see nothing.  This was the reward of my first lie.  I returned to my inn or alehouse, and instantly received a message from the Duke to invite me to the castle.  I was quite undressed, and dirty with my journey, and unacquainted with the Duchess—­yet was forced to go—­Thank the god of dust, his grace was dirtier than me.  He was extremely civil, and detected me to the groom of the chambers—­asked me if I had dined.  I said yes—­lie the second.  He pressed me to take a bed there.  I hate to be criticised at a formal supper by a circle of stranger-footmen, and protested I was to meet a gentleman at Huntingdon to-night. the Duchess and Lady Caroline(296) came in from walking; and to disguise my not having dined, for it was past six, I drank tea with them.  The Duchess is much altered, and has a bad short cough.  I pity Catherine of Arragon(297) for living at Kimbolton:  I never saw an uglier spot.  The fronts are not so bad as I expected, by not being so French as I expected; but have no pretensions to beauty, nor even to comely ancient ugliness.  The great apartment is truly noble, and almost all the portraits good, of what I saw; for many are not hung up, and half of those that are, my lord Duke does not know.  The Earl of Warwick is delightful; the Lady Mandeville, attiring herself in her wedding garb, delicious.  The Prometheus is a glorious picture, the eagle as fine as my statue.  Is not it by Vandyck?  The Duke told me that Mr. Spence found out it was by Titian—­but critics in poetry I see are none in painting.  This was all I was shown, for I was not even carried into the chapel.  The walls round the house are levelling, and I saw nothing without doors that tempted me to taste.  So I made my bow, hurried to my inn, snapped up my dinner, lest I should again be detected, and came hither, where I am writing by a great fire, and give up my friend the east wind, which