had he persuaded himself that his countrymen abroad all regarded him in no other light than as an outlaw or a show, that every new instance he met of friendly reception from them was as much a surprise as pleasure to him; and it was evident that to his mind the revival of English associations and habitudes always brought with it a sense of refreshment, like that of inhaling his native air.

With the view of inducing these friends to prolong their stay at Genoa, he suggested their taking a pretty villa called " Il Paradiso," in the neighbourhood of his own, and accompanied them to look at it. Upon that occasion it was that, on the lady expressing some intentions of residing there, he produced the following impromptu, which—but for the purpose of showing that he was not so "chary of his fame" as to fear failing in such trifles-I should have thought hardly worth transcribing.

"Beneath * * *'s eyes

The reclaim'd Paradise

Should be free as the former from evil;

But, if the new Eve

For an apple should grieve,

What mortal would not play the devil?”*

Another copy of verses addressed by him to the same lady, whose beauty and talent might well have

* The Genoese wits had already applied this threadbare jest to himself. Taking it into their heads that this villa (which was also, I believe, a Casa Saluzzo) had been the one fixed on for his own residence, they said "Il Diavolo é ancora entrato in Paradiso."

claimed a warmer tribute from such a pen, is yet too interesting, as descriptive of the premature feeling of age now stealing upon him, to be omitted in these pages.

"TO THE COUNTESS OF B *

1.

"You have ask'd for a verse:

-the request

In a rhymer 'twere strange to deny,
But my Hippocrene was but my breast,
And my feelings (its fountain) are dry.

2.

"Were I now as I was, I had sung

What Lawrence has painted so well;
But the strain would expire on my tongue,
And the theme is too soft for my shell.

3.

"I am ashes where once I was fire,

And the bard in my bosom is dead;
What I loved I now merely admire,
And my heart is as grey as my head.

4.

“My life is not dated by years

There are moments which act as a plough,

And there is not a furrow appears

But is deep in my soul as my brow.

5.

"Let the young and the brilliant aspire
To sing what I gaze on in vain;

For sorrow has torn from my lyre

The string which was worthy the strain.

VOL. VI.

с

"B."

The following letters written during the stay of this party at Genoa will be found,—some of them at least,-not a little curious.

66

LETTER 512. TO THE EARL OF B**.

My dear Lord,

"April 5. 1823.

"How is your gout? or rather, how are you? I return the Count **'s Journal, which is a very extraordinary production *, and of a most melancholy truth in all that regards high life in England. I know, or knew personally, most of the personages and societies which he describes; and after reading his remarks, have the sensation fresh upon me as if I had seen them yesterday. I would however plead in behalf of some few exceptions, which I will mention by and by. The most singular thing is, how he should have penetrated not the fact, but the mystery of the English ennui, at two-and-twenty. I was about the same age when I made the same discovery, in almost precisely the same circles, — (for there is scarcely a person mentioned whom I did not see nightly or daily, and was acquainted more or less intimately with most of them,)-but I never could have described it so well. Il faut être Français, to

effect this.

"But he ought also to have been in the country during the hunting season, with a select party of

In another letter to Lord B * * he says of this gentleman, "he seems to have all the qualities requisite to have figured in his brother-in-law's ancestor's Memoirs."

distinguished guests,' as the papers term it. He ought to have seen the gentlemen after dinner (on the hunting days), and the soirée ensuing thereupon, -and the women looking as if they had hunted, or rather been hunted; and I could have wished that he had been at a dinner in town, which I recollect at Lord C's - small, but select, and composed of the most amusing people. The dessert was hardly on the table, when, out of twelve, I counted five asleep; of that five, there were Tierney, Lord * *, and Lord * * I forget the other two, but they were either wits or orators--perhaps poets.

66

My residence in the East and in Italy has made me somewhat indulgent of the siesta;-but then they set regularly about it in warm countries, and perform it in solitude (or at most in a tête-à-tête with a proper companion), and retire quietly to their rooms to get out of the sun's way for an hour

or two.

Altogether, your friend's Journal is a very formidable production. Alas! our dearly beloved countrymen have only discovered that they are tired, and not that they are tiresome; and I suspect that the communication of the latter unpleasant verity will not be better received than truths usually are. I have read the whole with great attention and instruction. I am too good a patriot to say pleasure

at least I won't say so, whatever I may think. I showed it (I hope no breach of confidence) to a young Italian lady of rank, très instruite also; and who passes, or passed, for being one of the three most celebrated belles in the district of Italy, where

her family and connections resided in less troublesome times as to politics, (which is not Genoa, by the way,) and she was delighted with it, and says that she has derived a better notion of English society from it than from all Madame de Staël's metaphysical disputations on the same subject, in her work on the Revolution. I beg that you will thank the young philosopher, and make my compliments to Lady B. and her sister.

"Believe me your very obliged and faithful

"N. B.

"P. S. There is a rumour in letters of some disturbance or complot in the French Pyrenean army -generals suspected or dismissed, and ministers of war travelling to see what's the matter. Marry (as David says), this hath an angry favour.'

6

"Tell Count** that some of the names are not quite intelligible, especially of the clubs; he speaks of Watts perhaps he is right, but in my time Watiers was the Dandy Club, of which (though no dandy) I was a member, at the time too of its greatest glory, when Brummell and Mildmay, Alvanley and Pierrepoint, gave the Dandy Balls; and we (the club, that is,) got up the famous masquerade at Burlington House and Garden, for Wellington. He does not speak of the Alfred, which was the most recherché and most tiresome of any, as I know by being a member of that too."