suppose it really was true, and that he did not mind. We tried, for two or three days, I remember, to declare he looked very ill, but now you say he had not lost a night’s rest, I give up that point. It never was very tenable. The young Greys have all been pre-eminently absurd, Lord Howick more than all the rest. He told me he had been to all the clubs, and calling at all the houses he knew, to spread every report against the Chancellor he could think of, and coming from him, of course, it was set down as coming from his father, who is as unlike his sons as he well can be. I do not wish to entrench on Mrs. E.’s[409] province--how tiresome she must be!--but she can say nothing of Lord Grey I don’t think. He is the only great man I ever had the good luck to see--consistent and magnanimous--two qualities that I never met with in any other politician. I have closed my political accounts with him.... I am sure I cannot tell you generally anything about the Government. Politics have answered so ill to me in my private capacity that I gave them quite up, and can only tell you these private gossipries of the time. I have not read a debate since last Easter, and can only wonder how I could be so foolish three years ago as to think politics and office the least amusing. I suppose to the end of our days we shall all wonder at ourselves three years ago. But I have had such a horrid uncomfortable year this year; I never was so tired, so out of breath, so bored. You may well ask where we lodge. At a little cottage on Ham Common, hired by the week, without a scrap of garden, but where by dint of hard labour, a doctor, and quantities of steel draughts, I have recovered a little of the health I lost entirely by being kept eight months in London, frying over the coals. I declare I believe I have lived ten whole lives in the last ten months; we have been so unsettled, which is the only state I cannot abide. First George was to have that Exchequer place with Greenwich, and we made up our plans for that, and were to part with Grosvenor Street; then Greenwich was cut off from the Exchequer, and we prepared to give that up; then the Government found it convenient to make him keep the Board of Trade, and we went back to be as we were. Then came the Stanley secession and we thought we were all to be out, and reverted to the Exchequer, and looked at every villa round London. Then came the Admiralty, and George sent me to Greenwich to pack up and sell and give up everything, (the only spot of ground I care about in the world). Well! That was done, and as the goods were on their road, just turning into the Admiralty gate, and just after we had paid Sir James Graham for _his_ goods, and stuck up a bill in Grosvenor St. “To Be Sold”--out went dear Grey.