“11. Went to the Duchess St. Albans’s _fête_ at Holly Lodge. The duke flew a falcon and killed a pigeon. Fireworks, dinner in a tent, dancing, singing, etc., etc., there. Mrs. Marjoribanks brought me home.” This _fête_ furnished some items for Willis’s story of “Lady Ravelgold.” “12. Dined with Mrs. Joanna Baillie at Hampstead. She gave me some of the wedding cake of Ada Byron. Said that her husband, Lord King, was hated by his own father and mother and often in want of money, but an excellent person and beloved by his own second brother, who had received from the father all that was not entailed. On the death of the father, Lord K. had nine thousand a year. Mrs. Baillie said that Lady Byron had given to the present Lord B. her whole jointure when he came to the title. “Went to Lady Blessington at ten, and had a long talk with Countess Guiccioli, who said she wished nevermore to be spoken of in good or ill. The evil was remembered and the good forgotten. She made a point of never reading the papers. “Thence to Charles Kemble’s _soirée_. Countess d’Orsay there.” And thus the journal proceeds with its daily count of dinners, balls, _soirées_, garden parties, and opera-going, the diarist finally recording himself as “fatigued to death with dinners and dissipations.” In fact the pace began to tell upon him. Following the last entry that I have copied here, for July 12th, comes the first draft of a poem, “Thoughts on the Balcony of Devonshire House at Sunrise after a Splendid Ball:” “Morn in the East! How coldly fair It breaks upon my fevered eye! How chides the calm and dewy air; How chides the pure and pearly sky! The stars melt in a brighter fire,-- The dew in sunshine leaves the flowers,-- They from their watch in light retire, While we in sadness pass from ours.” This is one of Willis’s most genuine utterances. The same revulsion of feeling is expressed in “Better Moments” and “She was not There.” There were two men in him, the worldling and the poet; and when worn with fashionable dissipation he was sensitive to the rebuke of the midnight heaven or of that “awful rose of dawn” which God makes for himself in the “Vision of Sin.” But the mood, though sincere, was not lasting. “Recovered my spirits,” runs the entry for July 15th, “after a causeless depression for a week.”