My dear Mr. Reeve,--Allow me to say how very much I have been gratified in reading the article on my 'Life of Pitt' in the new number of the 'Edinburgh.' Had the criticism been hostile I assure you that I should not have felt that I had the smallest reason to complain; nor should I have inquired or even wished to know the writer's name. But as the matter stands, I would ask to convey to him through you my acknowledgement for his very indulgent appreciation of myself, as well as for the perfect fairness and honourable candour with which the public questions at issue between us are discussed. It would be a pleasure to me if either now or at some time hereafter he would permit me to become acquainted with the name of a critic who is evidently so accomplished as to render the praise of no slight or mean account. Believe me, Very faithfully yours, STANHOPE. It does not appear that Lord Stanhope ever knew who the writer was. Meantime the Journal notes:-- This was the year of the second Great Exhibition. _May 15th_.--The Binets came to see us. On the 21st the Duc d'Aumale's _fete_ to the Fine Arts Club; took Binet there. Went to the Derby with Binet and Stewart Hodgson. Xavier Raymond came. _July 22nd_.--Dined at the Clarendon with the Comtes de Paris and Chartres, on their return from the American war. Prince Edward of Saxe Weimar and the Due d'Aumale were there. _July 31st_.--Left London for Germany. By Ostend and Cologne to Wiesbaden, where the Boothbys and Hathertons were. Then to Nuremberg, Munich, Salzburg, and through the Tyrol to Venice. Stayed there till the 24th. _August 25th_.--Went to Arqua to see Petrarch's house and tomb. Milan; Italian lakes. Back over the St. Gothard, Lucerne, Paris. Home, September 9th. _To Lord Brougham_ _C. O., September 11th_.--Your very kind letter of last month would certainly not have remained so long unanswered if I had been in England. But we have been travelling for the last five weeks in the Tyrol and the north of Italy; my letters were not forwarded, and I only received that which you had been good enough to address to me on my return to London yesterday. There is probably no living opinion upon the character and administration of Mr. Pitt so enlightened and valuable as your own, and I am gratified in the highest degree to find that my attempt to place the leading acts of his administration in a somewhat new light meets with your approval. The chief defect in Lord Stanhope's book is, in my opinion, that it does not present any connected view of Mr. Pitt as a statesman at all; and this the reader of the article may infer from every page of it. I began to write with a disposition to place Mr. Pitt rather higher than he had been placed before in the 'Review;' but upon a careful survey of his conduct on each of these questions, I found the ground crumble away under me.