the trouble of getting into bed, where very seldom I get above
two hours' sleep. It is enough to make a parson swear! To this
I must add, I found full employment for the few moments, when I
could rouse myself from a melancholy lethargy, to spend in
looking over my store of astronomical and other memorandums of
upwards of fifty years' collecting."

Later in the year she writes:--


"I know not how to thank you sufficiently for the cheering
account you give of the climate agreeing so well with you and
all who are so dear to me, and that you find all about you so
agreeable and comfortable;... so that I have nothing left to
wish for but a continuation of the same, and that I may only
live to see the handwriting of your dear Caroline, though I
have my doubts about lasting till then, for the thermometer
standing 80° and 90° for upwards of two mouths, day and night,
in nay rooms (to which I am mostly confined), has made great
havoc in my brittle constitution. I beg you will look to it
that she learns to make her figures as you find them in your
father's MSS., such as he taught me to make. The daughter of a
mathematician must write plain figures.

"My little grand-nephew making alliance with your workmen shows
that he is taking after his papa. I see you now in idea,
running about in petticoats among your father's carpenters,
working with little tools of your own; and John Wiltshire (one
of Pitt's men, whom you may perhaps remember) crying out, 'Dang
the boy, if he can't drive in a nail as well as I can!'