to the senate-house; from the head of a table to the head of an army; or, after making tea for a country justice, to attend the exploits, counsels, and harangues of a Roman consul, gives all the variety the busy find in the bustle of the world, and variety and change (except in a garden) make the happiness of our lives.” She read Hooke’s “Roman History” as an agreeable variety. Her mind was stronger than her body. She was now only thirty-two years of age; and she writes to Gilbert West, that ex-lieutenant of horse, and honest inquirer into theological questions: “You will imagine I am in extraordinary health, when I talk of walking two miles in a morning.” If she could not walk far, she could read and stand anything. In December, she was again at home in Hill Street. On Christmas Eve, 1752, she writes: “I proposed answering my dear Mrs. Boscawen’s letter yesterday, but the Chinese-room was filled by a succession of people from eleven in the morning till eleven at night.” Early in January, 1753, close upon the anniversary of the death of the brother whom she dearly loved,—her brother “Tom,”—who died a bachelor, in 1748, an event occurred, the bearing of which is only partially told in a letter from Mrs. Montagu to Gilbert West: “My mind was so shocked at my arrival here, that for some days I was insupportably low. I am now better able to attend to the voice of reason and duty. A friendship, begun in infancy, and reunited by our common loss and misfortune, had many tender ties. By tender care I had raised her from despair almost to tranquillity. I had hourly the greatest of pleasures, that of obliging a most grateful person. She made every employment undertaken for me, and every expression of my satisfaction in her execution of those employments, a pleasure. I received from her kind offices, which, however considerable, fell short of the zeal that prompted them. Of this, I do not know that there is a pattern left in the world. She was much endeared, and her loss embittered to me by another consideration, which you may reasonably blame, as it shows too fond an attachment to those things which we ought to resign to the Great Giver; but while she was under my care, I thought a kind of intercourse subsisted between me and a most dear and valuable friend whom I lost this time five years. Whatever I did for her I thought done for that friend on whom my affections, hopes, and pride were placed.”