Many of the readers of this book will feel disposed to disagree with the last sentence. We have had his interior {93} before us, as clearly perhaps as any other man's we can possibly call to mind, and yet there is scarcely one that must not admire and love him as well, for the sacrifice he made for their benefit in exposing his interior, as for the beautiful sight that very disclosure gives them of his noble heart. It is not very easy to write an interesting chapter about this portion of his life; the Autobiography is run out, and the Journal gives no incident of any great importance till we come to the subject-matter of the next volume. Let us string together a few of the leading events, especially such as may be calculated to give us some idea of his mind and occupations. He begins the volume by writing down that he got up rather earlier than usual, played at battledore and shuttle-cock with Lady Georgiana Bingham, and kept up to 2,120 hits. He is disappointed then in a day's sport, and gives this account of his evening: "I was rather bilious and nervous to-night, and consequently would have preferred being out of the way, but from a wrong principle, I fear, viz., because I thought I should seem rather dull and ill-humoured. But what if I did, to the gay people that do not, nor wish to, know? And what if I did, to those who do know how far it is real, my ill-humour?" It was customary, as he told us some chapters back, for the Spencer family to spend Christmas at Althorp, and collect many of their immediate relatives about them during the time. The place is beautifully disposed for every kind of enjoyment; there are landscapes and pictures for the ladies to draw from, fine grounds for the gentlemen to shoot over, everything that generosity and princely goodness could procure to make the evenings as lively and entertaining as possible. Balls and dances were, of course, a _sine qua non_. Let us not, however, imagine it was all dissipation at Althorp. Lords Althorp and Lyttelton used, every Sunday and often on week days, to read a sermon to the assembled guests from some of the Anglican divines, and sometimes, too, from the French, as we may see in a remark in the first chapter. The party at Althorp this Christmas did not go beyond three-and-twenty. George, notwithstanding {94} the sour extract quoted above, went into the sports with heartfelt glee occasionally, and, as a proof of this, it is enough to say that he danced, in one night, in seven country dances and eight sets of quadrilles. He says in one place: "Lyttelton, Sarah (Lady Lyttelton), and I, breakfasted together, talking of a wise resolve of Nannette's, to pull down a house she had just finished at Richmond, because it was not pretty enough for the inhabitants to look at."