Thank you for your lamentations on my gout; it was, in proportion to my size, very slender—­my feet are again as small as ever they were.  When I had what I called big shoes, I could have danced a minuet on a silver penny.

My tour has been extremely agreeable.  I set out with winning a good deal at loo at Ragley; the Duke of Grafton was not so successful. and had some high words with Pam.  I went from thence to Offley’s at Whichnovre, the individual manor of the flitch of bacon, which has been growing rusty for these thirty years in his hall.  I don’t wonder; I have no notion that one could keep in good humour with one’s wife for a year and a day, unless one was to live on the very spot, which is one of the sweetest scenes I ever saw.  It is the brink of a high hill; the Trent wriggles through at the foot; Litchfield and twenty other churches and mansions decorate the view.  Mr. Anson has bought an estate close by, whence my lord used to cast many a wishful eye, though without the least pretensions even to a bit of lard.

I saw Litchfield cathedral, which has been rich, but my friend Lord Brook and his soldiery treated poor St. Chadd(93) with so little ceremony, that it is in a most naked condition.  In a niche ,it the very summit they have crowded a statue of Charles the Second, with a special pair of shoo-strings, big enough for a weathercock.  As I went to Lord Strafford’s I passed through Sheffield, which is one of the foulest towns in England in the most charming situation there are two-and-twenty thousand inhabitants making knives and scissors; they remit eleven thousand pounds a week to London.  One man there has discovered the art of plating copper with silver; I bought a pair of candlesticks for two guineas that are quite pretty.  Lord Strafford has erected the little Gothic building, which I got Mr. Bentley to draw; I took the idea from Chichester-cross.  It stands on a high bank in the menagerie, between a pond and a vale, totally bowered over with oaks.  I went with the Straffords to Chatsworth, and stayed there four days; there were Lady Mary Coke, Lord Besborough and his daughters, Lord Thomond, Mr. Boufoy, the Duke, the old Duchess,(94) and two of his brothers.  Would you believe that nothing was ever better humoured than the ancient grace?  She stayed every evening till it was dark in the skittle-ground, keeping the score:  and one night, that the servants had a ball for Lady Dorothy’S(95) birthday, we fetched the fiddler into the drawing-room, and the dowager herself danced with us!  I never was more disappointed than at Chatsworth, which, ever since I was born, I have condemned.  It is a glorious situation; the vale rich in corn and verdure, vast woods hang down the hills, which are green to the top, and the immense rocks only serve to dignify the prospect.  The river runs before the door, and serpentizes more than you can conceive in the vale.  The duke is widening it, and will make it the middle of his park;