DEAR LEWIS,

I have followed your directions with some success, and might have
been upon my legs by this time, had the weather permitted me to
use my saddle-horse. I rode out upon the Downs last Tuesday, in
the forenoon, when the sky, as far as the visible horizon, was
without a cloud; but before I had gone a full mile, I was
overtaken instantaneously by a storm of rain that wet me to the
skin in three minutes -- whence it came the devil knows; but it
has laid me up (I suppose) for one fortnight. It makes me sick to
hear people talk of the fine air upon Clifton-downs: How can the
air be either agreeable or salutary, where the demon of vapours
descends in a perpetual drizzle? My confinement is the more
intolerable, as I am surrounded with domestic vexations. My niece
has had a dangerous fit of illness, occasioned by that cursed
incident at Gloucester, which I mentioned in my last. -- She is a
poor good-natured simpleton, as soft as butter, and as easily
melted -- not that she's a
fool -- the girl's parts are not despicable, and her education
has not been neglected; that is to say, she can write and spell,
and speak French, and play upon the harpsichord; then she dances
finely, has a good figure, and is very well inclined; but, she's
deficient in spirit, and so susceptible -- and so tender
forsooth! -- truly, she has got a languishing eye, and reads
romances. -- Then there's her brother, 'squire Jery, a pert
jackanapes, full of college-petulance and self-conceit; proud as
a German count, and as hot and hasty as a Welch mountaineer. As
for that fantastical animal, my sister Tabby, you are no stranger
to her qualifications -- I vow to God, she is sometimes so
intolerable, that I almost think she's the devil incarnate come