t I mistook, and have got the
large paper. The Queen is laid up with the gout at Hampton Court: she
is now seldom without it any long time together; I fear it will wear her
out in a very few years. I plainly find I have less twitchings about my
toes since these Ministers are sick and out of town, and that I don't
dine with them. I would compound for a light easy gout to be perfectly
well in my head.--Pray walk when the frost comes, young ladies go a
frost-biting. It comes into my head, that, from the very time you first
went to Ireland, I have been always plying you to walk and read. The
young fellows here have begun a kind of fashion to walk, and many of
them have got swingeing strong shoes on purpose; it has got as far as
several young lords; if it hold, it would be a very good thing. Lady
Lucy(1) and I are fallen out; she rails at me, and I have left visiting
her.

5. MD was very troublesome to me last night in my sleep; I was a
dreamed, methought, that Stella was here. I asked her after Dingley, and
she said she had left her in Ireland, because she designed her stay to
be short, and such stuff.--Monsieur Pontchartain, the Secretary of State
in France, and Monsieur Fontenelle, the Secretary of the Royal Academy
there (who writ the Dialogues des Morts, etc.), have sent letters to
Lord Pembroke that the Academy have, with the King's consent, chosen
him one of their members in the room of one who is lately dead. But the
cautious gentleman has given me the letters to show my Lord Dartmouth
and Mr. St. John, our two Secretaries, and let them see there is no
treason in them; which I will do on Wednesday, when they come from
Hampton Court. The letters are very handsome, and it is a very great
mark of honour and distinction to Lord Pembroke. I hear the two French
Ministers are come over again about the peace; but I have seen nobody
of consequence to know the truth. I dined to-day with a lady of my
acquaintance, who was sick, in her bed-chamber, upon three herrings and
a chicken: the dinner was my bespeaking. We begin now to have chestnuts
and Seville oranges; have you the latter yet? 'Twas a terrible windy
day, and we had processions in carts of the Pope and the Devil, and the
butchers rang their cleavers. You know this is the Fifth of November,
Popery and gunpowder.

6. Since I am used to this way of writing, I fancy I could hardly make
out a long letter to MD without it. I think I ought to allow for every
line taken up b