turf, with a concealed orchestra and sod seats for the audience, with a
mossy stage, not incommodious neither, and an admirable contrivance for
shifting the scenes, and savouring the exits, entrances, &c. of the
performers, gave me a perfect idea of that refined luxury which hot
countries alone inspire--while another elegantly constructed spot, meant
and often used for the entertainment of tenants and dependants who come
to rejoice on the birth or wedding day of a kind landlord, make one
suppress one's sighs after a free country--at least suspend them; and
fill one's heart with tenderness towards men, who have skill to soften
authority with indulgence, and virtue to reward obedience with
protection.

A family coming last night to visit at a house where I had the honour
of being admitted as an intimate, gave me another proof of my present
state of remoteness from English manners. The party consisted of an old
nobleman, who could trace his genealogy unblemished up to one of the old
Roman emperors, but whose fortune is now in a hopeless state of
decay:--his lady, not inferior to himself in birth or haughtiness of air
and carriage, but much impaired by age, ill health, and pecuniary
distress; these had however no way lessened her ideas of her own
dignity, or the respect of her cavalier servente and her son, who waited
on her with an unremitted attention; presenting her their little dirty
tin snuff-boxes upon one knee by turns; which ceremony the less
surprised me, as having seen her train made of a dyed and watered
lutestring, borne gravely after her up stairs by a footman, the express
image of Edgar in the storm-scene of king Lear--who, as the fool says,
"_wisely reserv'd a blanket, else had we all been 'shamed_."

Our conversation was meagre, but serious. There was music; and the door
being left at jar, as we call it, I watched the wretched servant who