"My dear lord," I began, "you could not have pleased me better: Mr. V. is a most estimable man, and I would not, for the world, have had you suspected of placing such a trifle as your own honour--that is to say-- your promise to me, before the commands--that is to say, the interests-- of your party; but no more of this now. Was your lordship at the Duke of- -'s last night?" Dawton seized joyfully the opportunity of changing the conversation, and we talked and laughed on indifferent matters till I thought it time to withdraw; this I did with the most cordial appearance of regard and esteem; nor was it till I had fairly set my foot out of his door, that I suffered myself to indulge the "black bile," at my breast. I turned towards the Green Park, and was walking slowly along the principal mall with my hands behind me, and my eyes on the ground, when I heard my own name uttered. On looking back, I perceived Lord Vincent on horseback; he stopped, and conversed with me. In the humour I was in with Lord Dawton, I received him with greater warmth than I had done of late; and he also, being in a social mood, seemed so well satisfied with our rencontre, and my behaviour, that he dismounted to walk with me. "This park is a very different scene now," said Vincent, "from what it was in the times of 'The Merry Monarch;' yet it is still, a spot much more to my taste, than its more gaudy and less classical brother of Hyde. There is something pleasingly melancholy, in walking over places haunted by history; for all of us live more in the past than the present." "And how exactly alike in all ages," said I, "men have been. On the very spot we are on now, how many have been actuated by the same feelings that now actuate us--how many have made perhaps exactly the same remark just made by you. It is this universal identity, which forms our most powerful link with those that have been--there is a satisfaction in seeing how closely we resemble the Agamemnons of gone times, and we take care to lose none of it, by thinking how closely we also resemble the sordidi Thersites."