nterest
in politics, and among other causes for the slight esteem in which
she not unnaturally held my intellectual capacity was my ignorance
of, and indifference to, anything connected with party politics,
especially as discussed in coteries and by coterie queens.

Great questions of European policy, and the important movements of
foreign governments, or our own, in matters tending to affect the
general welfare and progress of humanity, had a profound interest
for me; but I talked so little on such subjects, as became the
profundity of my ignorance, that Mrs. Grote supposed them altogether
above my sympathy, and probably above my comprehension.

I remember very well, one evening at her own house, I was working at
some embroidery (I never saw her with that feminine implement, a
needle, in her fingers, and have a notion she despised those who
employed it, and the results they achieved), and I was listening
with perfect satisfaction to an able and animated discussion between
Mr. Grote, Charles Greville, Mr. Senior, and a very intelligent
Piedmontese then staying at the Beeches, on the aspect of European
politics, and more especially of Italian affairs, when Mrs. Grote,
evidently thinking the subject too much for me, drew her chair up to
mine, and began a condescending conversation about matters which she
probably judged more on a level with my comprehension; for she
seemed both relieved and surprised when I stopped her kind effort to
entertain me at once, thanking her, and assuring her that I was
enjoying extremely what I was listening to.

Some time after this, however, I must say I took a mischievous
opportunity of purposely confirming her poor opinion of my brains;
for on her return from Paris, where she had been during Louis
Napoleon's _coup d'etat_, she offered to show me Mr. Senior's
journal, kept there at the same time, and recording all the
remarkable and striking incidents of that exciting period of French
affairs. This was a temptation, but it was a greater one to
me--being, as Madame de Sevigne says of herself, _mechante ma
fille_--to make fun of Mrs. Grote; and so, comforting myself with
thinking that this probably highly interesting and instructive
record, kept by Mr. Senior, would be sure to be published, and was
then in manuscript (a thing which I abhor), I quietl