Countess Grey, 20th Oct. 1835 (Paris).—“I shall not easily forget a matelote at the Rochers de Cancale, an almond tart at Montreuil, or a poulet à la Tartare at Grignon’s. These are impressions which no changes in future life can obliterate.”
Miss G. Harcourt, 1838.—“I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave.”
Sir George Philips, about Sept. 1838.—“Nickleby is very good. I stood out against Mr Dickens as long as I could, but he has conquered me.”
Mrs Meynell, Oct. 1839.—“I feel for --- about her son at Oxford; knowing as I do, that the only consequences of a University education are, the growth of vice and the waste of money.”
Lady Holland, 28th Dec. 1839.—“I have written against --- one of the cleverest pamphlets I ever read, which I think would cover --- and him with ridicule. At least it made me laugh very much in reading it; and there I stood, with the printer’s devil and the real devil close to me; and then I said, ‘After all, this is very funny, and very well written, but it will give great pain to people who have been very kind and good to me through life.’” Finally Sydney threw it into the fire.
Mrs Meynell, June 1840.—“A Canon at the opera! Where have you lived? In what habitations of the heathen? I thank you, shuddering; and am ever your unseducible friend.”
Countess Grey, 29th Nov. 1840.—“You never say a word of yourself, dear Lady Grey. You have that dreadful sin of anti-egotism. When I am ill, I mention it to all my friends and relations, to the lord lieutenant of the county, the justices, the bishop, the churchwardens, the booksellers and editors of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews.”
Lady Ashburton, 1841.—“Still I can preach a little; and I wish you had witnessed, the other day at St Paul’s, my incredible boldness in attacking the Puseyites. I told them that they made the Christian religion a religion of postures and ceremonies, of circumflexions and genuflexions, of garments and vestures, of ostentation and parade.”
R. Murchison, 26th Dec. 1841.—“Immediately before my window there are twelve large oranges on one tree.” He adds that they are not Linnæan orange-trees but bay-trees with oranges tied on.
Lady Davy, 11th Sept. 1842.—“I have not yet discovered of what I am to die, but I rather believe I shall be burnt alive by the Puseyites.”