Lady Castlemaine, they
greeting one another at every tour.
[The company drove round and round the Ring in Hyde Park. The
following two extracts illustrate this, and the second one shows
how the circuit was called the Tour: "Here (1697) the people of
fashion take the diversion of the Ring. In a pretty high place,
which lies very open, they have surrounded a circumference of two or
three hundred paces diameter with a sorry kind of balustrade, or
rather with postes placed upon stakes but three feet from the
ground; and the coaches drive round this. When they have turned for
some time round one way they face about and turn t'other: so rowls
the world!"--Wilson's Memoirs, 1719, p. 126.]
["It is in this Park where the Grand Tour or Ring is kept for the
Ladies to take the air in their coaches, and in fine weather I have
seen above three hundred at a time."--[Macky's] Journey through
England, 1724, vol. i., p. 75.]
Here about an hour, and so leaving all by the way we home and found
the house as clean as if nothing had been done there to-day from top to
bottom, which made us give the cook 12d. a piece, each of us. So to
my office about writing letters by the post, one to my brother John at
Brampton telling him (hoping to work a good effect by it upon my mother)
how melancholy my father is, and bidding him use all means to get my
mother to live peaceably and quietly, which I am sure she neither do nor
I fear can ever do, but frightening her with his coming down no more,
and the danger of her condition if he should die I trust may do good. So
home and to bed.
5th (Lord's day). Up and spent the morning, till the Barber came, in
reading in my chamber part of Osborne's Advice to his Son (which I shall
not never enough admire for sense and language), and being by and
by trimmed, to Church, myself, wife, Ashwell, &c. Home to dinner, it
raining, while that was prepared to my office to read over my vows with
great affection and to very good purpose. So to dinner, and very well
pleased with it. Then to church again, where a simple bawling young Scot
preached. So home to my office alone till dark, reading some papers of
my old navy precedents, and so home to supper, and, after some pleasant
talk, my wife, Ashwell, and I to bed.
6th. Up very betimes and to my office, and there made an end of reading
my book that I have of Mr. Barlow's of the Journal of the Co
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