I am most sincerely rejoiced, dear Sir, that you find yourself at all better, and trust it is an omen of farther amendment.  Mr. Essex surprised me by telling me, that you, who keep yourself so warm and so numerously clothed, do yet sometimes, if the sun shines, sit and write in your garden for hours at a time.  It is more than I should readily do, whose habitudes are so very different from yours.  Your complaints seem to demand perspiration—­but I do not venture to advise.  I understand no constitution but my own, and should kill Milo, if I managed him as I treat myself.  I sat in a window on Saturday, with the east wind blowing on my neck till near two in the morning-and it seems to have done me good, for I am better within these two days than I have been these six months.  My spirits have been depressed, and my nerves so aspen, that the smallest noise disturbed me.  To-day I do not feel a complaint; which is something at near sixty-two.

I don’t know whether I have not misinformed you, nor am sure it was Dr. Ducarel who translated the account of the Abbey of Bec—­ he gave it to Mr. Lort; but I am not certain he ever published it.  You was the first that notified to me the fifth volume of the Archaeologia—­I am not much more edified than usual; but there are three pretty prints of Reginal Seats.  Mr. Pegge’s tedious dissertation, which he calls a brief one, about the foolish legend of St. George, is despicable:  all his arguments are equally good for proving the existence of the dragon.  What diversion might laughers make of the society!  Dolly Pentraeth, the old woman of Mousehole, and Mr. Penneck’s nurse. p. 81, would have furnished Foote with two personages for a farce.  The same grave dissertation on patriarchal customs seems to have as much to do with British antiquities, as the Lapland:  witches that sell wind—­and pray what business has the Society With Roman inscriptions in Dalmatia!  I am most pleased With the account of Nonsuch, imperfect as it is:  it appears to have been but a villa, and not considerable for a royal one.  You see lilacs were then a novelty.  Well, I am glad they publish away.  The vanity of figuring in these repositories will make many persons contribute their manuscripts, and every now and then something valuable Will come to light, which its own intrinsic merit might not have saved. \ I know nothing more of Houghton.  I should certainly be glad to have the priced catalogue; and if you will lend me yours, my printer shall transcribe it-but I am in no hurry.  I Conceive faint hopes, as the sale is not concluded:  however, I take care not to flatter myself.

I think I told you I had purchased, at Mr. Ives’s sale, a handsome coat in painted glass, of Hobart impaling Boleyn—­but I can find no such match in my pedigree—­yet I have heard that Blickling belonged to Ann Boleyn’s father.  Pray reconcile all this to me. ’

Lord de Ferrers is to dine here on Saturday; and I have got to treat him with an account of ancient painting, formerly in the hall of Tammworth Castle; they are mentioned in Warton’s Observations on the Fairy Queen, Vol i. p. 43.