tells me that he is confident there will be a peace, whatever
terms be asked us, and he confides that it will take because the French
and Dutch will be jealous one of another which shall give the best
terms, lest the other should make the peace with us alone, to the ruin
of the third, which is our best defence, this jealousy, for ought I at
present see. So home and there very late, very busy, and then home to
supper and to bed, the people having got their house very clean against
Monday's dinner.

7th (Easter day). Up, and when dressed with my wife (in mourning for my
mother) to church both, where Mr. Mills, a lazy sermon. Home to dinner,
wife and I and W. Hewer, and after dinner I by water to White Hall to
Sir G. Carteret's, there to talk about Balty's money, and did present
Balty to him to kiss his hand, and then to walk in the Parke, and heard
the Italian musique at the Queen's chapel, whose composition is fine,
but yet the voices of eunuchs I do not like like our women, nor am more
pleased with it at all than with English voices, but that they do
jump most excellently with themselves and their instrument, which is
wonderful pleasant; but I am convinced more and more, that, as every
nation has a particular accent and tone in discourse, so as the tone of
one not to agree with or please the other, no more can the fashion of
singing to words, for that the better the words are set, the more they
take in of the ordinary tone of the country whose language the song
speaks, so that a song well composed by an Englishman must be better to
an Englishman than it can be to a stranger, or than if set by a stranger
in foreign words. Thence back to White Hall, and there saw the King come
out of chapel after prayers in the afternoon, which he is never at but
after having received the Sacrament: and the Court, I perceive, is quite
out of mourning; and some very fine; among others, my Lord Gerard, in
a very rich vest and coat. Here I met with my Lord Bellasses: and it is
pretty to see what a formal story he tells me of his leaving, his place
upon the death of my Lord Cleveland, by which he is become Captain of
the Pensioners; and that the King did leave it to him to keep the other
or take this; whereas, I know the contrary, that they had a mind to have
him away from Tangier. He tells me he is commanded by the King to go
down to the Northward to satisfy the Deputy Lieutenants of Yorkshire,
who have desired to lay down their commissions u