rite often and more at a time; for none of your
prescriptions operate to their proper uses more certainly than your
letters operate as cordials.'

August 26. 'I suffered you to escape last post without a letter, but you
are not to expect such indulgence very often; for I write not so much
because I have any thing to say, as because I hope for an answer; and
the vacancy of my life here makes a letter of great value. I have here
little company and little amusement, and thus abandoned to the
contemplation of my own miseries, I am sometimes gloomy and depressed;
this too I resist as I can, and find opium, I think, useful, but I
seldom take more than one grain. Is not this strange weather? Winter
absorbed the spring, and now autumn is come before we have had summer.
But let not our kindness for each other imitate the inconstancy of
the seasons.'

Sept. 2. 'Mr. Windham has been here to see me; he came, I think, forty
miles out of his way, and staid about a day and a half, perhaps I make
the time shorter than it was. Such conversation I shall not have again
till I come back to the regions of literature; and there Windham is,
_inter stellas_[1105] _Luna minores_[1106].' He then mentions the
effects of certain medicines, as taken; that 'Nature is recovering its
original powers, and the functions returning to their proper state. God
continue his mercies, and grant me to use them rightly.'

Sept. 9. 'Do you know the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire? And have you
ever seen Chatsworth? I was at Chatsworth on Monday: I had indeed seen
it before[1107], but never when its owners were at home; I was very
kindly received, and honestly pressed to stay: but I told them that a
sick man is not a fit inmate of a great house. But I hope to go again
some time.'

Sept. 11. 'I think nothing grows worse, but all rather better, except
sleep, and that of late has been at its old pranks. Last evening, I felt
what I had not known for a long time, an inclination to walk for
amusement; I took a short walk, and came back again neither breathless
nor fatigued. This has been a gloomy, frigid, ungenial summer, but of
late it seems to mend; I hear the heat sometimes mentioned, but I do
not feel it:

"Praterea minimus gelido jam in corpore sanguis
Febre calet sola[1108].----"

I hope, however, with good help, to find means of supporting a winter at
home, and to hear and tell at the Club what is doing, and what ought to
be doing in the world.