“Montagu is gone to Lord Harrowby’s to spend ye holydays. He acquitted himself admirably of all his devoirs at Bath. He danced as many minouets, caper’d as many cotillions, and skipp’d as many country-dances as any young gentleman at ye place. He usually open’d the ball, and danc’d to the last. Indeed, with a great deal of prudence and discretion, he has as lively, gay spirits as any one I ever knew; so, he is happy at all times and in all places, and makes those who are with him so. “... We all imagine Mr. Pitt will have little to fear from the opposition. I do not hear any news. It would be doing too much honour to ye slanders of the newspapers to contradict them. “... You did my letters undeserved honour in taking the trouble to copy them. As I am arrived at an age to look back on my past life with more pleasure, perhaps, than to future expectations, I have found some satisfaction in the recollection of former days, which letters then written present to the mind in a more distinct and lively manner than memory can do. Whatever gave one great joy or great grief, leaves strong marks on the mind, but the soft, gentle pleasures, like ye annual flowers in a garden, pass away with ye season, unless thus preserved.” These reflections denote the way whither this Lady of the Last Century was going. Hannah More, noted, in 1790, the change that had come over the old order of things. In April, she chronicles, indeed, “a pleasant party,” at Mrs. Montagu’s, including Burke, “a sufficiently pleasant party of himself,” and Mackenzie, “the man of feeling;” but she also adds, “the old little parties are not to be had in the usual style of comfort. Everything is great, and vast, and late, and magnificent, and dull.” Wilberforce, too, was one of the welcome guests, and so intimate, that Mrs. Montagu called him by a pseudonym “the Red Cross Knight.” But the splendid stage, the superb style, the pillars of verd antique, the room of feathers, these could not compensate for the less showy, but more real, delights of the old Bluestocking days in Hill Street. But the lady of the house had still the same inexhaustible spirits, the same taste for business and magnificence. Three or four great dinners in a week with Luxembourgs, Montmorencies, and Czartoriskis. “I had rather,” said the sage Hannah, “for my part, live in our cottage at Cheddar. She is made for the great world, and is an ornament to it. It is an element she was born to breathe in.”