I have been led to enlarge on this, partly from the pleasure of finding you think as I do, and have not adopted a cold and heartless philosophy, now so prevalent, and partly from having suffered a severe privation in the departure of my dear Miss Agar. Her deep affection for me, her excellent understanding, and her admirable heart, ever active in works of piety and charity, concur to make this an irreparable loss. I was at her bed-side during her whole illness, till the last, and after the last. It was a fine lesson of resignation and unassuming firmness.
TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.,
STOCKHOLM.
Roehampton, April 24, 1822.
I write from Roehampton, which I could not summon up courage to revisit until now. It was a melancholy moment when that bell rung at the gate, announcing a visitor, which used to give her so much pleasure, when I was expected; and when I went into the house and missed her cheerful welcome; and in my room found not the flowers she used to leave; and when at night I retired without being followed by her for a short half hour, sometimes to laugh at the little shadows or flittings of vanity or peculiarity we had witnessed, but oftener to arrange some little plan of charity or kindliness, in which she took the lead.
Lord Clifden is extremely pleased with Mr. Ellis’ choice. I presume her to be one of those dignified and refined young persons, in whom the rays are so equally blended as to produce pure white; for I have always heard her described as extremely amiable, without any definite addition; and this is exactly what Lord Clifden would desire in the wife of his son, in which he is sincerely joined by your affectionate mother.
The following earnest jeu d’esprit was written at the commencement of the Irish famine of this year, and printed for private circulation.
A DINNER IN 1822.
I was yesterday one of sixteen, at a dinner of that neutral tint in externals, which never excites a remark, being on the general plan adopted by ninety-nine in a hundred, from the country gentleman, or the aspirant to office, of two thousand a year, to the peer of twenty or thirty, or even the more wealthy Leviathans of the East. In the small remainder we may find all those who either entertain, as some call it (and oh! how often is the word misapplied), with singular and princely magnificence, or who have courage to refrain from any part of the general usage, unsuitable to them.