curious how the spirit of dislike to kings had run in the blood of the
Hampdens some centuries before Charles' time: they lost three manors in
this county, forfeit for a Hampden having struck the Black Prince.

Tring, Wing, and Ivanhoe,
Old Hampden did forego,
For striking the Black Prince a blow.

When this is read you will say he deserved to lose three manors for
striking such a Prince.

Besides two spacious bed-chambers and a dressing-room, munificent Lord
Carrington would insist upon our having a sitting-room to ourselves, and
we have one that is delightful: windows down to the ground, and
prospect--dark woods and river, so pretty that I can scarcely mind what
I am saying to you.

Yesterday arrived a Mr. Hay, very well informed about mummies and Egypt,
talks well, and as if he lived with all the learned and all the
fashionable in London: his account of the unrolling of a mummy which he
lately saw in London was most entertaining. All the folds of the
thinnest linen which were unwound were laid more smoothly and
dextrously, as the best London surgeons declared, than they can now
apply bandages: they stood in amazement. The skin was quite tough, the
flesh perfect: the face quite preserved, except the bridge of the nose,
which had fallen in. Count Ludolf, who has been a fine painter in his
day, says he has used mummy pitch, or whatever it is in which mummies
are preserved, as a fine brown paint, like bistre, "only bitter to the
taste when one sucks one's brush."