--and he
does not appear to have at any time liked miscellaneous society much,
though he prided himself, and very justly, on having, from all but his
earliest youth, frequented many kinds of it, including the best. The
perfect ease of his correspondence with all sorts and conditions of men
and women may have owed something to this; but, no doubt, it owed as
much to the happy peculiarities and composition of his nature and
temperament.

The only fault or faults of which he has been accused with any
plausibility are those which attend or proceed from a somewhat too high
estimate of rank and of riches;--that is to say, a too great eagerness
to obtain these things, and at the same time a too great deference for
those who possessed them. From avarice, in any of the ordinary senses of
the word, he was, indeed, entirely free. His generosity, if not
absolutely and foolishly indiscriminate, was extraordinary, and as
unostentatious as it was lavish. He certainly had no delight in hoarding
money, and his personal tastes, except in so far as books, 'curios,' and
so forth were concerned, were of the simplest possible. Yet, as we have
seen, he was never quite content with an income which, after very early
years, was always competent, and when he launched into commercial
ventures, already, in prospect at least, considerable; while in the one
article of spending money on house and lands he was admittedly
excessive. So, too, he seems to have been really indifferent about his
title, except as an adjunct to these possessions, and as something
transmissible to, and serving to distinguish, the family he longed to
found. Yet no instance of the slightest servility on his part to
rank--much less to riches--has been produced. His address, no doubt,
both in writing and conversation, was more ceremonious than would now be
customary. But it must be remembered that this was then a point of good
manners, and that 'your Lordship' and 'my noble friend,' even between
persons intimate with each other and on the common footing of gentlemen,
were then phrases as proper and usual in private as they still are in
public life.[51] Attempts have been made to excuse his attitude, on the
plea that it was inherited from his father (_vide_ the scene between
Saunders Fairford and Herries), that it was national, that it was this,
that, and the other. For my own part, I have never read or heard of any
instance of it which seemed to me to exceed the due application to