ending edifice, surveying it with a sardonic sneer that I should
think even brick and mortar must have found it hard to bear. He had
hardly uttered his three first disparaging bitter sentences, of
utter scorn and abhorrence of the architectural abortion, which,
indeed it was, when Mrs. Grote herself made her appearance in her
usual country costume, box-coat, hat on her head, and stick in her
hand. Mr. Rogers turned to her with a verjuice smile, and said, "I
was just remarking that in whatever part of the world I had seen
this building I should have guessed to whose taste I might attribute
its erection." To which, without an instant's hesitation, she
replied, "Ah, _'tis_ a beastly thing, to be sure. The confounded
workmen played the devil with the place while I was away." Then,
without any more words, she led the way to the interior of her
habitation, and I could not but wonder whether her blunt
straightforwardness did not disconcert and rebuke Mr. Rogers for his
treacherous sneer.

During this visit, much interesting conversation passed with
reference to the letters of Sydney Smith, who was just dead; and the
propriety of publishing all his correspondence, which, of course,
contained strictures and remarks upon people with whom he had been
living in habits of friendly social intimacy. I remember one morning
a particularly lively discussion on the subject, between Mrs. Grote
and Mr. Rogers. The former had a great many letters from Sydney
Smith, and urged the impossibility of publishing them, with all
their comments on members of the London world. Rogers, on the
contrary, apparently delighted at the idea of the mischief such
revelations would make, urged Mrs. Grote to give them ungarbled to
the press. "Oh, but now," said the latter, "here, for instance, Mr.
Rogers, such a letter as this, about ----; do see how he cuts up the
poor fellow. It really never would do to publish it." Rogers took
the letter from her, and read it with a stony grin of diabolical
delight on his countenance and occasional chuckling exclamations of
"Publish it! publish it! Put an R, dash, or an R and four stars for
the name. He'll never know it, though everybody else will." While
Mr. Rogers was thus delecting himself, in anticipation, with R----'s
execution, Mrs. Grote, by whose side I was sitting on a low stool,