ness."

Lord Bathurst left us while we were walking. "Lord Bathurst," I said, "is gone to his busi"I would rather he was there than I. If I was to live my life over again," he continued with a sigh, "I should do very differently."

We sat down to rest in the Pinery seat, inscribed

“ Pulcherrima pinus in hortis,” 1

Few

and the clock of the stables struck twelve. things, he said, affect me more than a clock its duration-its perseverance -the same voice, morning, noon, and night. There is somewhere a good account of a castle-clock in the Mysteries of Udolpho. "That old fellow crowed through the siege, and is crowing still."2 Yes, says he, (the clock was then striking,) that voice will be heard long after I am in my grave and forgotten. [Not forgotten, S. R.]

Dugald Stewart, in his Philosophical Essays, p. 420, gives a good description of a clock. He

1 Virgil. Eclog. VII. 65.

2 Mysteries of Udolpho, chap. 34.

gives it as another's, but he owned it to be his, when I mentioned it to him.1

The passage I admire most in the Odyssey is where Menelaus mentions his affection for Ulysses; and Telemachus weeps.2

I once said to Mr. Pitt, not at all in the way of flattery, "How came you to speak with a fluency and correctness so much beyond any of us?" "Why," he replied, "I have always thought "that what little command of language I have,

66

came from a practice I had of reading off in "the family after tea some passage in Livy or "Cicero, which I had learnt in the morning." And to this practice, said Lord Grenville, I think it was owing that whenever a sentence from the classics was quoted, he always translated it aloud

1 Dugald Stewart quotes it as from Bailly's Histoire de l'Astronomie Moderne; he speaks of the attention of the Astronomical Observer being drawn, among other secondary things, "to the silent lapse of time interrupted only by the beats of the Astronomical Clock." In a subsequent note he says he finds he has not quoted correctly; and appears to admit that it was not to be found in Bailly's work.

2 Odyssey, IV. 100, &c.

to himself before he went on further. (This anecdote Lord Grenville related to me, the last time, of his own accord, when we were sitting by ourselves one day after dinner; and I have put it down again, on account of the way in which he introduced it. S. R.)

Mr. Pitt used often to repeat with pleasure the six or eight lines added by Mrs. Rowe to Rowe's Lucan.

You have not named the best style in its way :- Blackstone's.1

Raleigh's "O eloquent, just, and mighty Death," one of the finest, if not the finest, passage in English prose.2

Mitford, in his account of Xenophon's place of retirement, struck me exceedingly.

Supra, p. 56.

1 Mr. Fox makes the same remark. 2 O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded, what none have dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, HIC JACET. — Raleigh's History of the World, Part I. Book v. p. 669.

8 See Mitford's Greece, III. c. 28, s. 9. The place was Scillus, in the Peloponnesus.

2

I have seldom been so vexed, as when I introduced the present King of France, Charles the Tenth, to the old King. He had desired to be presented, and it was not to be refused, and the audience was necessarily a private one. When I announced him in the closet, the King began a conversation running from topic to topic. He was often at a loss; but was unwilling to come to a conclusion, till I reminded him that Monsieur was at the door. The King spoke French very ill, and was always embarrassed on receiving a foreigner. As for the Bourbons, he hated them all, and indeed had no reason to love them.

At first, I understand, he spelt ill when writing English; but improved afterwards.

Castlereagh ignorant to the last, with no principle or feeling, right or wrong. Before he spoke, he would collect what he could on the subject, but never spoke above the level of a

1 Then Monsieur, the brother of Louis XVIII.

2 George III.

newspaper. Had three things in his favor: tact,

good humor, and courage.

Liverpool1 indolent in the extreme.

Has no

speaker on his side. If the Chancellor (Lord Eldon) speaks, it is generally to oppose him.

Never was such a thing done, as sending a cabinet minister 2 to Vienna to act as he pleased, one who was irresponsible, one who knew nothing, and who had never looked into a map.

Gibbon's best work, his review of the Roman Empire in the first volume, his only instance of generalizing.

Mr. Pitt used often to repeat the beginning of the Preface to Eikonoclastes, quoted by Symmons: "To descant on the misfortunes of a person fallen," &c. I. 401.

He always spoke of Lord Chatham with affection, and no wonder; for there never was a father more partial to a son. How well I remember

1 The Earl of Liverpool was then (1825) Prime Minister.

2 Lord Castlereagh, who attended the Congress of Vienna, in 1815.

3 By Milton: quoted in Symmons's Life of Milton.