conclusion of your letter. Nothing can please me better. Once more
good-night. I am half in a dream already.

Your


_Letter 13._--There is some allusion here to an inconstant lover of my
Lady Diana Rich, who seems to have deserted his mistress on account of
the sore eyes with which, Dorothy told us in a former letter, her
friend was afflicted.

I cannot find any account of the great shop above the Exchange, "The
Flower Pott." There were two or three "Flower Pots" in London at this
time, one in Leadenhall Street and another in St. James' Market. An
interesting account of the old sign is given in a work on London
tradesmen's tokens, in which it is said to be "derived from the earlier
representations of the salutations of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin
Mary, in which either lilies were placed in his hand, or they were set
as an accessory in a vase. As Popery declined, the angel disappeared,
and the lily-pot became a vase of flowers; subsequently the Virgin was
omitted, and there remained only the vase of flowers. Since, to make
things more unmistakeable, two debonair gentlemen, with hat in hand,
have superseded the floral elegancies of the olden time, and the poetry
of the art seems lost."


SIR,--I am glad you 'scaped a beating, but, in earnest, would it had
lighted on my brother's groom. I think I should have beaten him myself
if I had been able. I have expected your letter all this day with the
greatest impatience that was possible, and at last resolved to go out