[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE.] _December 19th, 1846._--On Thursday evening at seven o'clock Mr. Grenville died, after a week's illness which was no more than a severe cold or influenza. If he had lived till the 31st of this month, he would have completed his ninety-first year. I had only known him with any sort of intimacy for the last five or six years, during which I saw a good deal of him. He was a remarkable man, not so much from great ability as from a singular healthiness of mind and body and the greenness of his old age. I never saw so old a man in possession of such mental and bodily faculties; his only infirmity was deafness; till about a year ago he used to walk vigorously; he never had an illness till the one with which he was attacked the year before last, and from which he recovered entirely though with strength somewhat impaired. His memory was remarkable; his cheerfulness, vivacity, and kindness of disposition delightful. He evinced an affection for his relations and a cordiality to his friends that were pleasant to behold, and he was not only entirely free from the moroseness and captiousness which so often attend old age, but he blended an extreme suavity of manner and sweetness of temper with the high-bred politeness of the more ceremonious age in which he had flourished. He was certainly the most amiable and engaging specimen of an old man I ever beheld. I do not conceive that his abilities were ever first-rate, and latterly (whatever may have been the case early in life) he entertained very strong prejudices and often very unreasonable ones; these prejudices caused him to act in some instances in a manner inconsistent with the urbanity of his disposition. He never could endure the Reform Bill or forgive its authors; he never would set his foot in Holland House after that measure; and he estranged himself from all his old political friends, even those with whom he had been the most intimate, not indeed absolutely quarrelling with them, but desisting from all intimacy. He was a scholar and a well-informed man, and he retained till the last all his literary tastes and habits; he loved the society of literary men, and to the last entered with zest and spirit and unimpaired intelligence into all questions both of literature and politics. It is difficult to say what the exact colour of his political opinions was. He used to be a Whig; but he was, at all events latterly, a moderate anti-reforming Whig, with a horror of organic changes and not fond of any changes, disliking free trade and disliking Cobden more; favourable to Catholic emancipation and the establishment of a Catholic Church, but abhorring O'Connell who was his _bÍte noire_, and in his eyes the incarnation of all evil and mischief. He never was married, but when he was young he was desperately in love with the Duchess of Devonshire, and he never married because her image remained enthroned in his breast, and he never could find any other woman to be