s. Well, I must leave off, and go write to Sir John
Stanley,(10) to desire him to engage Lady Hyde as my mistress to engage
Lord Hyde(11) in favour of Mr. Pratt.(12)

2. Lord Halifax was at Hampton Court at his lodgings, and I dined
with him there with Methuen,(13) and Delaval, and the late
Attorney-General.(14) I went to the Drawing-room before dinner (for
the Queen was at Hampton Court), and expected to see nobody; but I
met acquaintance enough. I walked in the gardens, saw the cartoons
of Raphael, and other things; and with great difficulty got from Lord
Halifax, who would have kept me to-morrow to show me his house and park,
and improvements. We left Hampton Court at sunset, and got here in a
chariot and two horses time enough by starlight. That's something charms
me mightily about London; that you go dine a dozen miles off in October,
stay all day, and return so quickly: you cannot do anything like this in
Dublin.(15) I writ a second penny post letter to your mother, and hear
nothing of her. Did I tell you that Earl Berkeley died last Sunday was
se'nnight, at Berkeley Castle, of a dropsy? Lord Halifax began a health
to me to-day; it was the Resurrection of the Whigs, which I refused
unless he would add their Reformation too and I told him he was the only
Whig in England I loved, or had any good opinion of.

3. This morning Stella's sister(16) came to me with a letter from her
mother, who is at Sheen; but will soon be in town, and will call to see
me: she gave me a bottle of palsy water,(17) a small one, and desired I
would send it you by the first convenience, as I will; and she promises
a quart bottle of the same: your sister looked very well, and seems a
good modest sort of girl. I went then to Mr. Lewis, first secretary to
Lord Dartmouth,(18) and favourite to Mr. Harley, who is to introduce
me to-morrow morning. Lewis had with him one Mr. Dyot,(19) a Justice of
Peace, worth twenty thousand pounds, a Commissioner of the Stamp Office,
and married to a sister of Sir Philip Meadows,(20) Envoy to the Emperor.
I tell you this, because it is odds but this Mr. Dyot will be hanged;
for he is discovered to have counterfeited stamped paper, in which he
was a Commissioner; and, with his accomplices, has cheated the Queen of
a hundred thousand pounds. You will hear of it before this come to you,
but may be not so particularly; and it is a very odd accident in such a
man. Smoke Presto writing news to MD. I dined to-day with L