* * *

Mr. Heathcote met with a genteel little accident
the other day in hunting; he got off to lead his
horse over a hedge, or a house, or something, and
his horse in his haste trod upon his leg, or
rather ancle, I believe, and it is not certain
whether the small bone is not broke.

. . . Martha has accepted Mary's invitation for Lord
Portsmouth's ball. He has not yet sent out his
_own_ invitations, but _that_ does not signify;
Martha comes, and a ball there must be. I think it
will be too early in her mother's absence for me
to return with her.

* * * * *

_Sunday Evening._--We have had a dreadful storm of
wind in the fore part of this day, which has done
a great deal of mischief among our trees. I was
sitting alone in the dining-room when an odd kind
of crash startled me--in a moment afterwards it
was repeated; descend into the Sweep!!!!! The
other, which had fallen, I suppose, in the first
crash, and which was the nearest to the pond,
taking a more easterly direction, sunk among our
screen of chestnuts and firs, knocking down one
spruce-fir, beating off the head of another, and
stripping the two corner chestnuts of several
branches in its fall. This is not all. One large
elm out of the two on the left-hand side as you
enter what I call the elm walk, was likewise blown
down; the maypole bearing the weathercock was
broke in two, and what I regret more than all the
rest is, that all the three elms which grew in
Hall's meadow, and gave such ornament to it, are
gone; two were blown down, and the other so much
injured that it cannot stand. I am happy to add,
however, that no greater evil than the loss of
trees has been the consequence of the storm in
this place, or in our immediate neighbourhood. We
grieve, therefore, in some comfort.

Mr. Holder's paper tells us that some time in last
August Captain Austen and the _Peterel_ were very
active in securing a Turkish ship (driven into
Port in Cyprus by bad weather) from the French. He
was forced to burn her