“Jan. 15.—Mrs. Stewart has been talking much of her great delight in the works of Ampère, and of the intense devotion, the passionate love of the younger Ampère for Madame Recamier. She was guilty of a trahison to him, though. When he was at Weimar, he wrote to her a private letter, telling her particulars about all the people there, which he had better not have told, but he wrote them in strict confidence. She made that letter public. ‘My dear Mr. Hare,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘I have never read any letter more exquisitely, more tenderly pathetic than that which Ampère wrote her when he heard this—a letter struggling between his old respect and admiration and the feeling that his idol had fallen, that he could not but reproach her.
“When Lowell (the American poet and minister) was describing his wife’s terrible illness, he said, ‘My dear Mrs. Stewart, I would have given Job ten and won.’
“After Lady Fitzhardinge came, Mrs. Stewart talked much of her acquaintance with Brother Ignatius. She was at the place of her son-in-law, Mr. Rogerson, in Scotland. One day out walking, Mrs. Rogerson met a young man, of wonderful beauty, dressed as a monk, with bare feet and sandals. He asked her whether they were near any inn, and said, ‘The fact is, I have with me two sisters, Sister Gertrude and another, and a brother—Brother Augustine. And the brother is very ill, possibly ill to death, and we cannot go any farther.’ So Mrs. Rogerson made them come to her house, and showed them infinite kindness, ‘giving them at once water for their feet and all Scripture hospitality.’ Brother Augustine was very ill, very ill indeed, and they all remained at Mrs. Rogerson’s house three weeks, during which Mrs. Stewart became very intimate with them, especially with Brother Ignatius and Sister Gertrude. They used to go out for the day together, ‘and then, in some desolate strath, Brother Ignatius would sing, sing hymns like an archangel, and then he would kneel on the grass and pray.’
“Many years afterwards, Mrs. Stewart heard that Brother Ignatius was going to preach in London—‘some very bad part of London,’ and she went. The room was packed and crowded, but she was in the first row. He preached, a beautiful young monk, leaning against a pillar. ‘There were at least a hundred of his attitudes worth painting,’ but there was nothing in his words. At last a little girl thought he looked faint, and brought him a smelling-bottle, which she presented to him kneeling. ‘He smelled at it, and then seeing me, an old woman, near him, he sent it on to me, and I smelled at it too. Afterwards I stayed to see him, and we talked together in a small room, talked till midnight. Then he gave me his blessing, gave it me very solemnly, and afterwards I said, ‘And God bless you too, my dear young man.’
“In the evening Mrs. Stewart spoke much of the Sobieski Stuarts—their gallant appearance when young, and their change into ‘the mildew of age.’
“Apropos of the last words of St. Evremond, ‘Je vais savoir le grand peut-être,’ Mrs. Stewart mentioned Mrs. Grote having said to her at their last meeting, ‘I trust, dear, that you are living, as I am, in respectful hope.’
“This led to much talk of Mrs. Grote, who had died (Dec. 29, 1878) when I was away at Rome with the Prince Royal, and Mrs. Stewart described how, when she returned from Hanover after the fall of the royal family, and was quite full of events there, she went down at once to visit the Grotes in the country. ‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Grote, ‘I cannot enter into your feelings about all your princesses and duchesses, but as regards your king, I can enter into them fully: he has lived “as it is written.”’ Mrs. Stewart wrote this to the King, who knows Shakspeare to his finger-ends, and he said it did him more good than anything else anybody wrote or said to him. As long as he lived, he and Mrs. Grote exchanged stories and messages afterwards, through Mrs. Stewart.
“Lady William Russell said with much truth of Mr. and Mrs. Grote, ‘He is ladylike, and she is such a perfect gentleman.’
“When Lady Catherine Clive was painting her town-hall at Hereford, she was very anxious to find new, not conventional, attributes for some of her allegorical figures; she especially wished for something instead of the scales of ‘Justice.’ Mrs. Stewart wrote this to Mrs. Grote: ‘Tell your friend,’ she answered, ‘not to try to struggle against conventionalities. Tell her to be content with the scales: she will come to find the cross conventional next.’
“When Lady Eastlake undertook to write Mrs. Grote’s life after her death, she asked Mrs. Stewart for all her ‘jottings’ of Mrs. Grote’s conversations, but she made no use of them. She was so anxious that every one should find the book too short, that she really omitted almost everything characteristic. She wrote her regrets afterwards to Mrs. Stewart, who answered, ‘You are suffering, my dear, from a granted prayer,’—for, in fact, the book was so short and dry that it passed almost unnoticed.