another, without the intervention of a fiend. Don't you
think, if he had never been heard of before, that he would have been
invented on the late partition of Poland! Adieu, dear Sir. Yours most
sincerely.

_HIS DECORATIONS AT "STRAWBERRY"--HIS ESTIMATE OF HIMSELF, AND HIS
ADMIRATION OF CONWAY._

TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.

STRAWBERRY HILL, _June_ 20, 1776.

I was very glad to receive your letter, not only because always most
glad to hear of you, but because I wished to write to you, and had
absolutely nothing to say till I had something to answer. I have lain
but two nights in town since I saw you; have been, else, constantly
here, very much employed, though doing, hearing, knowing exactly
nothing. I have had a Gothic architect [Mr. Essex] from Cambridge to
design me a gallery, which will end in a mouse, that is, in an hexagon
closet of seven feet diameter. I have been making a Beauty Room, which
was effected by buying two dozen of small copies of Sir Peter Lely, and
hanging them up; and I have been making hay, which is not made, because
I put it off for three days, as I chose it should adorn the landscape
when I was to have company; and so the rain is come, and has drowned it.
However, as I can even turn calculator when it is to comfort me for not
minding my interest, I have discovered that it is five to one better for
me that my hay should be spoiled than not; for, as the cows will eat it
if it is damaged, which horses will not, and as I have five cows and but
one horse, is not it plain that the worse my hay is the better? Do not
you with your refining head go, and, out of excessive friendship, find
out something to destroy my system. I had rather be a philosopher than
a rich man; and yet have so little philosophy, that I had much rather be
content than be in the right.

Mr. Beauclerk and Lady Di have been here four or five days--so I had
both content and exercise for my philosophy. I wish Lady Ailesbury was
as fortunate! The Pembrokes, Churchills, Le Texier, as you will have
heard, and the Garricks have been with us. Perhaps, if alone, I might
have come to you; but you are all too healthy and harmonious. I can
neither walk nor sing; nor, indeed, am fit for anything but to amuse
myself in a sedentary trifling way. What I have most certainly not been
doing, is writing anything: a truth I say to you, but do not desire you
to repeat. I deign to satisfy scarce anybody else. Whoever reported that
I was writing anyt