It is hard to believe young Spencer was so utterly devoid of religion as he here describes himself to be; we draw a more favourable inference from a journal he kept at the time. Noticing the death of the Princess Charlotte, he says: "It appears to be the greatest calamity that could have befallen us in public, and it is a deplorable event in a private point of view. It must be ascribed to the interposition of Providence, which must have some end in view beyond our comprehension." He speaks of the death of Mrs. Blomfield thus--"It is for her a happy event, after a life so well spent as hers has been." A few pages further on he has these words about the death of another friend of his. "I was extremely shocked to-day at hearing that James Hornby died last Friday of apoplexy. It was but a short time past that I was corresponding with him about the death of Mrs. Blomfield; and little he or I thought that he would be the next to go. The last year and a half I stayed at Eton I lived in the greatest intimacy with him, which had afterwards fallen away a little; but he was very clever and promising, and I always was fond of him. It must be a wise dispensation of Providence, and may be intended as a warning to us, in addition to those we have lately had in the deaths of Maitland and Dundas. God grant it may be an effectual one!" These are not the spontaneous expressions of one altogether {40} a stranger to piety, though they may very well be put down as the transient vibration of chords that had long lain still in his heart, and which these rude shocks must have touched and made audibly heard once more. This conclusion is more in accordance with other remarks found scattered here and there in the same journal. He criticises sermons and seems to like none; he is regular at chapel and puts on his surplice on the days appointed; but he refuses to take the sacrament for no conceivable reason but that he does not care about it, and hears it is administered unbecomingly. He is shrewd and considerate in his remarks upon persons and things; yet there is scarcely a line of scandal or uncharitableness in the whole closely written volume. When he records a drunken fit or a row, he suppresses the names of the rioters; and if he says a sharp word about a person in one page, he makes ample amends for it in many pages afterwards; by showing how mistaken he was at first, and how agreeable it was to him to change his opinion upon a longer acquaintance. This might not appear very high praise; but let us take notice of his age and circumstances, and then perhaps it may have its value. He was a young man, just turned eighteen; he had been brought up in splendour at home, and in a poisonous atmosphere at school. That he was not the vilest of the vile is to be wondered at more than that he preserved as much goodness as he did. Where is the young man, of even excellent training, who will be able to contend, unaided and taunted, against a