th the sides of the hall were covered
with such Acts of Parliament as had been made for the establishment of
public funds. The lady seemed to set an unspeakable value upon these
several pieces of furniture, insomuch that she often refreshed her eye
with them, and often smiled with a secret pleasure as she looked upon
them; but, at the same time, showed a very particular uneasiness if she
saw anything approaching that might hurt them. She appeared, indeed,
infinitely timorous in all her behaviour: and whether it was from the
delicacy of her constitution, or that she was troubled with vapours, as I
was afterwards told by one who I found was none of her well-wishers, she
changed colour and startled at everything she heard. She was likewise,
as I afterwards found, a greater valetudinarian than any I had ever met
with, even in her own sex, and subject to such momentary consumptions,
that in the twinkling of an eye, she would fall away from the most florid
complexion and the most healthful state of body, and wither into a
skeleton. Her recoveries were often as sudden as her decays, insomuch
that she would revive in a moment out of a wasting distemper, into a
habit of the highest health and vigour.

I had very soon an opportunity of observing these quick turns and changes
in her constitution. There sat at her feet a couple of secretaries, who
received every hour letters from all parts of the world, which the one or
the other of them was perpetually reading to her; and according to the
news she heard, to which she was exceedingly attentive, she changed
colour, and discovered many symptoms of health or sickness.

Behind the throne was a prodigious heap of bags of money, which were
piled upon one another so high that they touched the ceiling. The floor
on her right hand and on her left was covered with vast sums of gold that
rose up in pyramids on either side of her. But this I did not so much
wonder at, when I heard, upon inquiry, that she had the same virtue in
her touch, which the poets tell us a Lydian king was formerly possessed
of; and that she could convert whatever she pleased into that precious
metal.

After a little dizziness, and confused hurry of thought, which a man
often meets with in a dream, methoughts the hall was alarmed, the doors
flew open, and there entered half a dozen of the most hideous phantoms
that I had ever seen, even in a dream, before that time. They came in
two by two, though matched in th