7th (Easter day). Up, and when dressed with my wife (in mourning for my
mother) to church both, where Mr. Mills, a lazy sermon. Home to dinner,
wife and I and W. Hewer, and after dinner I by water to White Hall to Sir
G. Carteret's, there to talk about Balty's money, and did present Balty to
him to kiss his hand, and then to walk in the Parke, and heard the Italian
musique at the Queen's chapel, whose composition is fine, but yet the
voices of eunuchs I do not like like our women, nor am more pleased with
it at all than with English voices, but that they do jump most excellently
with themselves and their instrument, which is wonderful pleasant; but I
am convinced more and more, that, as every nation has a particular accent
and tone in discourse, so as the tone of one not to agree with or please
the other, no more can the fashion of singing to words, for that the
better the words are set, the more they take in of the ordinary tone of
the country whose language the song speaks, so that a song well composed
by an Englishman must be better to an Englishman than it can be to a
stranger, or than if set by a stranger in foreign words. Thence back to
White Hall, and there saw the King come out of chapel after prayers in the
afternoon, which he is never at but after having received the Sacrament:
and the Court, I perceive, is quite out of mourning; and some very fine;
among others, my Lord Gerard, in a very rich vest and coat. Here I met
with my Lord Bellasses: and it is pretty to see what a formal story he
tells me of his leaving, his place upon the death of my Lord Cleveland,
by which he is become Captain of the Pensioners; and that the King did
leave it to him to keep the other or take this; whereas, I know the
contrary, that they had a mind to have him away from Tangier. He tells me
he is commanded by the King to go down to the Northward to satisfy the
Deputy Lieutenants of Yorkshire, who have desired to lay down their
commissions upon pretence of having no profit by their places but charge,
but indeed is upon the Duke of Buckingham's being under a cloud (of whom
there is yet nothing heard), so that the King is apprehensive of their