in love with Prince Leopold," said Lady W., "and I think it will be a happy marriage." Prince Leopold, it is reported, has promised to befriend and support his bride's mother. I hope it may be so, and that he will fulfil his promises; but a crown in the distance will make a man vow many things which, when he wears that crown, he will not perform.

Lady W. spoke of Doctor Nott in high terms and thinks he conducted himself with regard to his royal charge with great discretion.

Lady C. hints that Mr. Brougham intends to restrict the Princess of Wales to thirty thousand pounds, and to employ the remainder in paying the debts; and that the salaries of all her attendants must be diminished. Lady C. says she told him how herself and Lady C. Campbell were situated, and only desired him to do what he considered to be most just and equitable by all the household. He has a difficult task to perform, and she says he probably thinks that if he bears too hard upon her income, the Princess may do what she did before, viz. supersede the power of attorney and throw it all into more complaisant hands, which would ruin all the creditors, though it would relieve Brougham of much trouble and vexation.

"How I do wish," Lady continues in her letter, "that we could do as well without our salaries as we can without our Court duties! with what joy would we resign them! I have lately received letters from my mother from Milan. She had dined once with her Royal Highness at Como, and once at Milan. I am sorry to say the accounts of the style of her attendants is very unfavourable."

•

I dined with Sir In speaking of Adam Smith, with whom he was intimately acquainted, he said, that notwithstanding his great superiority of mind, he had his weaknesses, but that they were the weaknesses of a learned and a good man-a man more conversant with books than what is commonly called "the world." Sir

added that Smith's mother, who was a most superior woman, impressed the Doctor's mind, when a boy, with the most correct and exalted principles of conduct,

which he retained and improved to a degree exceedingly uncommon. He was always of Doctor Young, the poet's opinion, that high worth was an elevated place—that it made more than monarchs can make—an honest man. "I never," continued Sir —,"knew a man more amiable in this respect than Smith; but when he met with honest men whom he liked, and who courted him, he would believe almost any thing they said. The three great avenues to Smith were his mother, his books, and his political opinions. The conquest of him was easy through any of these channels; and this came to be very soon known to the dolphins that played in the waters where sailed this great navigator in literature. He approached," Sir, observed, " to republicanism in his political principles, and considered a commonwealth as the platform for a good government; hereditary succession in the chief magistrate being necessary only to prevent the commonwealth from being shaken by ambition, or absolute power being introduced by the collision of contending parties. Yet Pitt and Dundas praised his books, and adopted some of its principles in Parliament; and they sent him down from London, on his last visit, a Tory and a Pittite, instead of a Whig and a Foxite, as he was when he set out. By and by,' Sir said, "the impression wore off, and his former sentiments returned, but unconnected either with Pitt or Fox, or any one else. I saw Adam Smith for the last time, in the February that preceded his death. I said, on taking leave of him, that I hoped to see him often when I returned to town in the ensuing year; in reply to which, he squeezed my hand and said, 'I may be alive then, and perhaps for half a dozen years to come, but you will never see your old friend any more. I find that the machine is breaking down, so that I shall be little better than a mummy.' I found a great inclination to visit him when I heard of his last illness, but the mummy stared me in the face, and I desisted."

Sir continued to say, "Smith's misplaced affection for Hume and others of his caste hindered him, I believe, from being a Christian. From the same foible I have already described, he had no ear for music, nor

6

any just perception of the sublime or the beautiful in poetry. He was too much of a geometrician to have much taste in the fine arts, though he had the justest perception of moral beauty and excellence. He was replete with anecdotes, and a highly amusing companion. One anecdote, I remember, he told me of Dr. Johnson, of whom Smith entertained a very contemptuous opinion. 'I have seen that creature,' said he, bolt up in the midst of a mixed company, and without any previous notice, fall upon his knees behind a chair, repeat the Lord's Prayer, and then resume his seat at the table. He has played this freak over and over, perhaps five or six times in the course of an evening. It was not,' Smith observed, hypocrisy, but madness.' Though an honest man himself, he was always patronising scoundrels. Savage, for instance, whom he so loudly praises, was a worthless fellow. His pension of fifty pounds never lasted him longer than a few days. As a sample of his economy, you may take a circumstance that Johnson himself once told Adam Smith. It was, at that period, fashionable to wear scarlet cloaks, trimmed with gold lace, and the Doctor met him one day, just after he had received his pension, with one of these cloaks upon his back, while, at the same time, his naked toes were breaking through his shoes.

Adam Smith, Sir- informed me, was no admirer of the Rambler or the Idler, but was pleased with the pamphlet respecting the Falkland Islands, as it displayed in such forcible language, the madness of modern wars. Of Swift, he made frequent and honourable mention, and regarded him, both in style and sentiment, as a pattern of correctness. He often quoted some of the short poetical addresses to Stella, and was particularly pleased with the couplet,

"Say, Stella,-feel you no content,
Reflecting on a life well spent?"

Smith had an invincible dislike to blank verse, Milton's only excepted. "They do well," said he, "to call it blank, for blank it is." Beattie's Minstrel he would

not allow to be called a poem; for he said it had no plan, beginning or end. He did not much admire Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd," but preferred the "Pastor Fido," of which he spoke with rapture.

Sir is a very amusing person to converse with. He is quite like an old chronicle, so full of curious anecdotes.

In the evening, I visited Lady —. She is also an amusing person in her way; but she is quite a woman of the world. Yet I think she has preserved more feeling than people who have lived so entirely for society generally possess. We talked a great deal of our poor friend, Lady E- and Lady said she thought the portrait of Imogen, in the Novice of St. Dominic, was a fac-simile of her character, and not at all a flattered portrait; that it had always appeared to her wonderful how the authoress of that novel should have so correctly portrayed Lady Ewithout knowing her; for," continued Lady "she was unique in charm and worth, and folly, as regarded the wisdom of this world."

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Lady and myself then discussed the merit of Miss Owenson, and agreed, as I believe most people do, in thinking her a very extraordinary woman, with genius of a very high stamp. When I told Lady . I had never read the Novice of St. Dominic, she was much surprised, and said, "Read it without delay, for the enthusiasm and exquisite sentiments which are conspicuous throughout the whole work, will enchant you. It is a most fascinating book. Perhaps you will find the half of the first volume heavy, and the language, though beautiful in parts, inflated. But I greatly prefer Imogen to the superhuman Corinne, whose character, though pleasing as a whole, is not always natural or consistent.' Lady spoke of the late Duchess of — and said, "Poor thing, with all her faults, she was very ardently loved by her friends, who severely felt her loss. Among them none were more sincerely affected than the Prince of Wales. The Duke cried bitterly and incessantly for a week before her death, and apparently felt much sorrow on her account." Her friend, Lady

was, her constant nurse, and was also said to be in great grief. The Duchess, to the last moment, expressed the warmest attachment for her, and Lady said she never could believe the scandalous stories told of the reason of their friendship. The Duchess was attended by almost all the physicians in London; but she had an accumulation of disorders, liver complaint, &c. The immediate cause of her death, however, was a fever, and this fever, Lady. said, was brought on, she believed, by the vexation and agitation of mind caused by a novel published a short time before her death. A character was introduced in it, supposed to be meant for the Duchess, and who is made to swindle and do all sorts of dishonourable actions; at the same time, suffering deep remorse, and struggling against amiable feelings and much natural sensibility. It was astonishing, how, in consequence of the report of this novel having hastened her death, it was universally read, and with the greatest avidity. Lady added that her debts were immense, and she suffered the most dreadful agitations from a constant fear of discovery, and the many exigencies she was driven to.

Lady read me a letter she received to-day from England, in which, her correspondent says, "I hear the Prince has been in the greatest rage, and desired Lord Liverpool to go and announce the sittings about a divorce in the House of Lords; which Lord L-refused to do-declared, in the first place, that it was impossible-secondly, that it would cost themselves their places, and perhaps the Prince, his; and he has been, it is said, obliged to give it up, and there is nothing publicly to be done at all against the Princess. So if the book comes out, it will be by the sanction of the Princess, I suppose, as the other will think it better to stop it; but how that will be I know not. I wish, as we all do, that the Princess of Wales would act more wisely; but I fear that is a useless wish. How foolish she was in England, in the choice of her associates. The Band Oxfords are so much despised in this country, by both sides in a political sense, that no one can have any credit in associating with them. As to her last letter,