le bedchamber of a ready-furnished house,
with two tallow candles, and a bureau covered with pots and pans. On her
head, in full of all accounts, she had an old black-laced hood, wrapped
entirely round, so as to conceal all hair or want of hair. No
handkerchief, but up to her chin a kind of horseman's riding-coat,
calling itself a pet-en-l'air, made of a dark green (green I think it
had been) brocade, with coloured and silver flowers, and lined with
furs; boddice laced, a foul dimity petticoat sprig'd, velvet muffeteens
on her arms, grey stockings and slippers. Her face less changed in
twenty years than I could have imagined; I told her so, and she was not
so tolerable twenty years ago that she needed have taken it for
flattery, but she did, and literally gave me a box on the ear. She is
very lively, all her senses perfect, her languages as imperfect as ever,
her avarice greater. She entertained me at first with nothing but the
dearness of provisions at Helvoet. With nothing but an Italian, a
French, and a Prussian, all men servants, and something she calls an
_old_ secretary, but whose age till he appears will be doubtful; she
receives all the world, who go to homage her as Queen Mother,[3] and
crams them into this kennel. The Duchess of Hamilton, who came in just
after me, was so astonished and diverted, that she could not speak to
her for laughing. She says that she has left all her clothes at Venice.
I really pity Lady Bute; what will the progress be of such a
commencement!

[Footnote 1: It was known as the Cock-lane Ghost. A girl in that lane
asserted that she was nightly visited by a ghost, who could reveal a
murder, and who gave her tokens of his (or its) presence by knocks and
scratches, which were audible to others in the room besides herself; and
at last she went so far as to declare that the ghost had promised to
attend a witness, who might be selected, into the vault under the Church
of St. John's, Clerkenwell, where the body of the supposed victim was
buried. Her story caused such excitement, that at last Dr. Johnson, Dr.
Douglas (afterwards Bishop of Salisbury), and one or two other
gentlemen, undertook an investigation of the affair, which proved beyond
all doubt that it was a trick, though they could not discover how it was
performed, nor could they make the girl confess; and Johnson wrote an
account of their investigations and verdict, which was published in _The
Gentleman's Magazine_ and the newspapers