TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
London, June 13, 1814.
Business has brought us to London; and the difficulty of procuring good apartments while the Great People were there, detained us till after their departure. My curiosity is not lively, and I made no effort to see them, except going one morning to Portsmouth to witness the entrée of Alexander; which enabled me to say I had seen the outside of a shabby coach containing an Emperor within. This is the ‘head and front’ of my knowledge of this last truly brilliant and heroic spectacle. I should have been pleased to see the King of Prussia, from my gratitude for the peculiar kindness with which I was distinguished by his charming Queen. She was the means of my taking a near view of so much Court parade as has entirely satiated my curiosity or interest on that subject.
June, 1814.—Lord Nelson’s Letters to Lady Hamilton, though disgraceful to his principles of morality on one subject, do not appear to me, as they do to most others, degrading to his understanding. They are pretty much what every man, deeply entangled, will express, when he supposes but one pair of fine eyes will read his letters: and his sentiments on subjects unconnected with his fatal attachment are elevated—looking to his hearth and his home for future happiness; liberal, charitable, candid, affectionate, indifferent to the common objects of pursuit, and clearsighted in his general view of politics and life.
July 3.—Saw the Duke of Wellington received at the opera with rapturous applause. Every eye beamed on him with delight, and cold must have been the heart which did not throb with an accelerated movement. The unanimous expression of that noble sentiment, admiration of great actions, is extremely affecting; and those indefinite sounds of exultation and applause used by men to express feelings for which words are inadequate, form part of that universal language more impressive than the speech of any individual nation.