_November 18th._--Called on Mr. Grenville yesterday morning. He told me he was eighty-eight, and had never been ill in all his life; had colds, but never been ill enough to keep his bed a whole day since he was born. His memory, he said, failed as to dates and names. He told me a curious anecdote of Wolfe. In Pitt's (Lord Chatham's) administration, when Wolfe was going out to take the command of the army in America, at that time a post of the greatest importance, Mr. Pitt had him to dinner with no other person present but Lord Temple (Mr. Grenville's uncle). After dinner Wolfe got greatly excited, drew his sword, flourished it about, and boasted of the great things he would do with it in a wonderfully braggart style. Lord Temple and Mr. Pitt were horror-struck, and when the General was gone, they lifted up their hands and eyes, and said what an awful thing it was to think that they were about to trust interests so vital to the discretion of a man who could talk and bluster in such a way. Mr. Grenville said he had never liked to repeat this anecdote, and had never done so till very lately, for he had been reluctant to say anything which might, by possibility, throw a slur on the reputation of Wolfe. But I told him it was too curious to be suppressed; curious as a peculiar trait of character, and that the heights of Abraham had secured the fame of Wolfe beyond the possibility of being injured by anything that could now be said. [Sidenote: THE REFORM BILL OF 1831.] _November 22nd._--At Hillingdon from Saturday till Monday. I never go to that place without looking with envy and admiration at a scene of so much happiness. There is certainly nothing to admire but the result. There are none of the qualities which are generally desirable; but if happiness is the aim and object of life, by which I mean something active, sentient and intelligent, not the happiness of an oyster or an opium-eater, then these people have attained it, subject only to its disturbance from the ordinary and unavoidable accidents and vicissitudes of existence. I suppose that happiness depends on, as wit has been described by, negatives. They are happy because they are without avarice, or ambition, or vanity, or envy. They have no extravagant or unreasonable pretensions, and therefore are not subject to perpetual mortifications and disappointments. They lead an easy, placid, semi-sensual but not vicious life, with a full flow of affection for each other, and a natural ever-springing cheerfulness and content.