the personage heaved a profound sigh.  The Bishop rang the bell; but the servants were so sound asleep, that nobody heard him.  He repeated his question:  still no answer; but another deep sigh.  Then the apparition took some papers out of the ghost of its pocket, and began to read them to itself.  At last, when the Bishop had continued to ring, and nobody to come, the spectre rose and departed as sedately as it had arrived.  When the servants did at length appear, the bishop cried, “Well! what have you seen?” “Seen, my lord!” “Ay, seen; or who, what is the woman that has been here?” “Woman my lord!” (I believe one of the fellows smiled; though, to do her justice, Lady Onslow did not say so.) In short, when my lord had related his vision, his domestics did humbly apprehend that his lordship had been dreaming; and so did his whole family the next morning, for in this our day even a bishop’s household does not believe in ghosts:  and yet it is most certain that the good man had been in no dream, and told nothing but what he had seen; for, as the story circulated, and diverted the ungodly at the prelate’s expense, it came at last to the ears of a keeper of a mad-house in the diocese, who came and deposed, that a female lunatic under his care had escaped from his custody, and, finding the gate of the palace open, had marched up to my lord’s chamber.  The deponent further said, that his prisoner was always reading a bundle of papers.  I have known stories of ghosts, solemnly authenticated, less credible; and I hope you will believe this, attested by a father of our own church.

Sunday night, 28th, 1794.

I have received another letter from dear Mary, of the 26th; and here is one for sweet Agnes enclosed.  By her account of Broadstairs, I thought you at the North Pole; but if you are, the whales must be metamorphosed into gigs and whiskies, or split into them, as heathen gods would have done, or Rich the harlequin.  You talk of Margate, but say nothing of Kingsgate, where Charles Fox’s father scattered buildings of all sorts, but in no style of architecture that ever appeared before or has since, and in no connexion with or to any other, and in all directions; and yet the oddity and number made that naked, though fertile soil, smile and look cheerful.  Do you remember Gray’s bitter lines on him and his vagaries and history?(890)

I wish on your return, if in good weather, you would contrive to visit Mr. Barrett’s at Lee; it is but four miles from Canterbury.  You will see a child of Strawberry prettier than the parent, and so executed and so finished!  There is a delicious closet, too, so flattering to me:  and a prior’s library so antique, and that does such honour to Mr. Wyat’s taste!  Mr. Barrett, I am Most sure, would be happy to show his house to you; and I know, if you tell him that I beg it, he will produce the portrait of Anne of Cleve by Holbein, in the identic ivory box, turned like a Provence rose, as it Was brought over for Henry the Eighth.  It will be a great favour, and it must be a fine day; for it lives in cotton and clover, and he justly dreads exposing it to any damp.  He has some other good pictures; and the whole place is very pretty, though retired.