"I like him, too, for his manliness of character, for the extreme pleasantness of his conversation, and his good-nature towards myself, personally. May he prosper!--for he deserves it. I know no reading to which I fall with such alacrity as a work of W. Scott's. I shall give the seal, with his bust on it, to Madame la Contesse G. this evening, who will be curious to have the effigies of a man so celebrated. "January 20th, 1821. "To-morrow is my birthday--that is to say, at twelve o' the clock, midnight, i.e. in twelve minutes, I shall have completed thirty and three years of age!!!--and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little purpose. "It is three minutes past twelve.--''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, and I am now thirty-three! 'Eheu, fugaces, Posthume, Posthume, Labuntur anni;--' but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I might have done. "Through life's road, so dim and dirty, I have dragg'd to three-and-thirty. What have these years left to me? Nothing--except thirty-three. "January 22nd, 1821. 1821. Here lies interred in the Eternity of the Past, from whence there is no Resurrection for the Days--whatever there may be for the Dust-- the Thirty-Third Year of an ill-spent Life, Which, after a lingering disease of many months, sunk into a lethargy, and expired, January 22nd, 1821, A.D. Leaving a successor Inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its Existence." LORD CLARE. On the road to Bologna he had met with his early and dearest friend, Lord Clare, and the following description of their short interview is given in his "Detached Thoughts." "Pisa, November 5th, 1821. "'There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this world, Sancho,' says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not,) and so I have often found it. "Page 128, article 91, of this collection, I had alluded to my friend Lord Clare in terms such as my feelings suggested. About a week or two afterwards, I met him on the road between Imola and Bologna, after not having met for seven or eight years. He was abroad in 1814, and came home just as I set out in 1816.