“He described a dreary Sunday spent in Sabbatarian Glasgow, and how, everything else being shut up and forbidden, he had betaken himself for hours to examining the epitaphs in the churchyard, and at length found a single verse which atoned for the badness of all the rest:—
‘Shed not for me the bitter tear,
Nor pour for me the vain regret,
For though the casket is not here,
The gem within it sparkles yet.’”
“Jan. 27.—Count Nesselrode has come. He has been describing to the Duchess how parents are always proposing to him for their beautiful young girls of fifteen or sixteen. He says that he answers, ‘Est que à mon âge je puis songer à me marier?’ and that they reply, ‘Avec le nom que vous portez, M. le Comte, on est toujours jeune.’ ... ‘et ça me donne le chair de poule.’
“On the Duchess asking Count Nesselrode after his sons, he said they were at a tutor’s, ‘pour former le cœur et l’esprit.’
“There used to be a ghost at Battle Abbey. Old Lady Webster told Mr. Hussey of Scotney Castle how she saw it soon after her marriage, an old woman of most terrible aspect, who drew the curtains of her bed and looked in. Immediately after, Sir Godfrey came into the room. ‘Who was that old woman?’ she said. ‘There could have been no old woman.’ ‘Oh, yes, there was, and you must have met her in the passage, for she has only just gone out of the room.’ In her old age Lady Webster would describe the pattern on the old woman’s dress, and say that she should recognise it anywhere.”
“Holmhurst, Feb. 1.—A long visit to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe in Lady Jocelyn’s singular house at St. Leonards, which you enter from the top story. Lord Stratford is a grand old man with high forehead and flowing white hair. He can no longer walk, and sits in his dressing-gown, but his artistic daughters make him very picturesque, hanging his chair with a shade of purple which matches the lining and cuffs of his dressing-gown, &c. He talked of many different people he had seen, of Goethe, ‘who had a very high forehead’ (but ‘the highest forehead known was that of the immortal Shakspeare, who had every great quality that could exist phrenologically’), and then he spoke of Mezzofanti, whom he had known personally in Italy, and who had told him the story of his life. He had been a carpenter’s apprentice, and had one day been at his work outside the open window of a school where a master was teaching. Having a smattering of Greek, which he had taught himself, he felt sure that he detected the master in giving a wrong explanation. This worried him so much that he could not get it out of his head, and, after the school and his own work were both over, he rang the bell and begged to see the master. ‘I was at work, sir, and I heard you speaking, and I think you gave such and such an explanation in Greek.’—‘Well, and what do you know about Greek?’—‘Not much, sir; but, if you will forgive my saying so, I am sure you will find, if you examine, that the explanation was not the correct one.’ The master found that the young carpenter was right, and it led to his obtaining friends and being educated. Lord Stratford said that Mezzofanti spoke English perfectly to him, and excellent modern Greek to his servant, and yet that, apart from his wonderful versatility in languages, he seemed to be rather a dull man than otherwise, utterly wanting in originality.
“Lord Stratford described going to dine one day with his agent, and meeting there a lady whose name he did not catch, but whom he was told to take down to dinner. In the course of dinner the conversation turned upon some subject of mathematics, ‘And then,’ said Lord Stratford, ‘I did what I have never done at any other time on a mathematical question. I tried to explain it and make it easy for my companion, who listened with polite attention. When I went upstairs I inquired her name, and it was ... Mrs. Somerville! I knew her intimately afterwards, and she told me something of her early life, which I regret should not have appeared in her memoirs. Her childhood was passed in Burntisland, whither her brother returned for his holidays, having some school-work to do whilst at home. One day, when he was called out, she took up the Euclid he had been studying. ‘Ah! what curious little designs! let me see if I can understand what it is about.’ And she found that she could, and devoured Euclid with avidity. Afterwards she got hold of her brother’s Æschylus and taught herself Greek in order to read it.