After the death of Mr. Pitt, Lady Hester abandoned the gay and polished society of which she had been an acknowledged ornament, and quitted England. This defection society was by no means able to understand. That a woman of high birth, and rank, and wealth, the niece of one great minister and the kinswoman of another, should deliberately renounce the advantages of her position, was a circumstance unintelligible to ordinary minds, and thenceforth she shared with Lord Byron the curiosity and speculation of the public. Her singular independence of thought and character had already invested her with a fatal reputation for "eccentricity," and to "eccentricity" her action was very generally attributed. Some, indeed, were pleased to cast upon it a gleam of romance, and protested that it was brought about by her sweet sorrow for a young English officer of high rank who had perished on one of the battle-fields of the Peninsula. Others, who were nearer the truth, ascribed it to a love of adventure. But, in plain truth, the ruling motive was pride, a colossal, an all-absorbing pride, which could be satisfied only by power and influence, and a foremost place. Her great kinsman's death had necessarily excluded her from the councils of ministers, and closed upon her the doors of cabinets. The ordinary pursuits of society afforded her no gratification, opened up no channel in which her restless energies could expend themselves. She was of too strong a mind, of too clear an intellect, to value the ephemeral influence enjoyed by wealth or beauty; she wanted to reign, to rule, to govern, and as that was no longer a possibility in the political world, she resolved upon seeking some new sphere where she would always be first. It was this illimitable pride, this uncontrolled ambition, which weakened and obscured the elements of true greatness in her character, a character which cannot fail to possess an extraordinary interest for the psychological public. * * * * *