Considering his independence on any profession, the ease of his manners, his talents for conversation, and his knowledge of modern languages, it may be wondered that Hayley did not mix more in society, or visit other countries besides his own. Once, indeed, when a young man he made an excursion to Scotland; and, in the summer of 1790, passed three weeks at Paris with his friends, Carwardine and Romney, from whence, much to the scandal of the neighbourhood, he brought back a French governess for his son. Mrs. Hayley had then left him, or rather had been gently forced out of his house; and, afterwards when she begged for leave to return, was denied it. From his own account of the matter, and from the letters that passed between them, some of which he has published in his Memoirs, it is difficult to acquit him of blame, and not to wish that he had endured with more patience the foibles of a woman, who, though irreproachable in her own conduct, was more indulgent than she need have been to his frailties. He appears, however, to have been anxious for her happiness after they were separated. She died in London in 1797, and received from her husband, the empty honours of a funeral sermon and an epitaph. He was loth to quit his home except on some errand of friendship, when he was ever ready to run to the Land's End. I remember his quoting to me the following line out of Aeschylus, on the advantage of a master's presence in his own family. [Greek: "Omma gar domon nomixo despton paronsian".] He seems to have taken delight in the instruction of youth; besides his own boy, he undertook to educate gratuitously two sons of his friend, Mr. Carwardine, and one of his neighbour Lord Egremont. On the death of Warton, he declined some advances that were made him through his friends, towards an offer of the laureatship. Nothing but a high sense of independence could have prompted this refusal; for, though no courtier, he was not wanting in loyalty; and the stipend would have been a welcome addition to an income which barely sufficed his own moderate wants and his liberal contributions to the necessities of others. He was not more fortunate in a second marriage than he had been in his first. The vain confidence which he placed in his good stars on this occasion shall be told in his own words, which are as follows: While he was deeply engaged in his biographical compositions he used to say, 'I have not leisure to wander from my hermitage, and look into the world in quest of a wife; but I feel a strong persuasion that if it is really good for me to venture once more on marriage, that step Of deepest hazard and of highest hope, my kind stars will conduct to my cell some compassionate fair one, fond of books and retirement, who may be willing to enliven, with the songs of tenderness, the solitude of a poetical hermit.'