I felt shocked, as you did, to think how suddenly the prospect of joy at Osterly was dashed after our seeing it.  However the young lover(318) died handsomely.  Fifty thousand pounds will dry tears, that at most could be but two months old.  His brother, I heard, has behaved still more handsomely, and confirmed the legacy, and added from himself the diamonds that had been prepared for her.  Here is a charming wife ready for any body that likes a sentimental situation, a pretty woman, and a large fortune.(319)

I have been often at Bulstrode from Chaffont, but I don’t like it.  It is Dutch and triste.  The pictures you mention in the gallery would be curious if they knew one from another; but the names are lost, and they are only sure that they have so many pounds of ancestors in the lump.  One or two of them indeed I know, as the Earl of Southampton, that was Lord Essex’s friend.

The works of Park-place go on bravely; the cottage will be very pretty, and the bridge sublime, composed of loose rocks, that will appear to have been tumbled together there the very wreck of the deluge.  One stone is of fourteen hundred weight.  It will be worth a hundred of Palladio’s brigades, that are only fit to be used in an opera.

I had a ridiculous adventure on my way hither.  A Sir Thomas Reeves wrote to me last year, that he had a great quantity of heads of painters, drawn by himself from Dr. Mead’s collection, of which many were English, and offered me the use of them.  This was one of the numerous unknown correspondents which my books have drawn upon me.  I put it off then, but being to pass near his door, for he lives but two miles from Maidenhead, I sent him word I would call on my way to Park-place.  After being carried to three wrong houses, I was directed to a very ancient mansion, composed of timber, and looking as unlike modern habitations, as the picture of Penderel’s house in Clarendon.  The garden was overrun with weeds, and with difficulty we found a bell.  Louis came riding back in great haste, and said, “Sir, the Gentleman is dead suddenly.”  You may imagine I was surprised; however, as an acquaintance I had never seen was an endurable misfortune, I was preparing to depart; but happening to ask some women, that were passing by the chaise, if they knew any circumstance of Sir Thomas’s death, I discovered that this was not Sir Thomas’s house, but belonged to a Mr. Mecke,(320) fellow of a college at Oxford, who was actually just dead, and that the antiquity itself had formerly been the residence of Nell Gwyn.  Pray inquire after it the next time you are at Frocmore.  I went on, and after a mistake or two more found Sir Thomas, a man about thirty in age, and twelve in understanding; his drawings very indifferent, even for the latter calculation.  I did not know what to do or say, but commended them and his child, and his house; said I had all the heads, hoped I should see him at Twickenham, was afraid of being too late for dinner, and hurried out of his house before I had been there twenty minutes.  It grieves one to receive civilities when one feels obliged, and yet finds it impossible to bear the people that bestow them.