[239]. ‘No cards, because cards are employed in gaming; no assemblies, because many dissipated persons pass their lives in assemblies. Carry this but a little further, and we must say—no wine, because of drunkenness; no meat, because of gluttony; no use, that there may be no abuse.’—Sydney Smith on Hannah More.
[240]. Voyages and Travels in India, Ceylon, &c., 1809.
[241]. A pathetic interest attaches to this sentence. Here A. Y.’s fine hold handwriting (of late rather painting in black ink) ceases. A few desperate splashes, and we seem to see the pen despairingly cast aside and the journalising handed over to his secretary.
[242]. Still addressed to Jane Young.
[243]. Written from London.
[244]. This is explained in a letter from Mary Young to her brother Arthur, dated March 27; no year added, but evidently written in 1811. The Duke of Grafton died March 14, 1811. ‘It seems that the poor patient was very intractable, and that the operator said, “Indeed, sir, if you are not more patient I must leave you.”... Mr. Wilberforce, with the best wishes imaginable, called [after the couching], and was shown up to his bedroom; and the very first words he said were, “So we have lost the poor Duke of Grafton!” then began and continued in his mild, soft manner a most pathetic dissertation on the duke’s pious resignation, &c. &c., till your father burst into tears, which was, Phipps (the oculist) vowed, the worst thing possible, and which anyone knew in his lamentable state of inflammation was destruction. It flung him back, being only a week after the operation. Oh, Ar., as I greatly believe he will be entirely blind, do try to come to him.’
[245]. ‘Citrine ointment: a mercurial ointment, the unguentum hydrargyri nitralis.’—Webster.
[246]. A selection from the writings of Baxter, by A. Y.
[247]. This lady afterwards became assistant secretary to A. Y.
[248]. This must be a mistake of the French secretary. Surely Baring is intended.