sincerity, praising warmly and criticising freely. He took the
praise as a greedy boy takes an apple-pie, and the criticism as a
good, dutiful boy takes senna-tea. At all events I shall expect him
to puff me well. I do not see why I should not have my puffers as
well as my neighbors."

Here is a glimpse of the domestic economy of the great Holland House:--

"The dinner was not as good as usual, and her ladyship kept up a
continued lamentation during the whole repast. I should never have
found out that everything was not as it should be, but for her
criticisms. The soup was too salt; the cutlets were not exactly
_comme il faut_; and the pudding was hardly enough boiled. I was
amused to hear from the splendid mistress of such a house the same
sort of apologies which ---- made when her cook forgot the joint
and sent too small a dinner to table."

All these artless details were given to amuse his young sisters at
home,--the beings he loved best on earth, not only at this time but
throughout life. If he ever had any deeper love for another, there is no
hint given of it in his life or letters. Probably for many reasons he
never contemplated marriage. When he was young he was too poor to think
of it; when he was older he had his own family upon his hands, and cared
for them munificently to the end. He was very generous with his money
and never learned the art of saving. It would seem scarcely possible
that a man of his warm heart and ardent temperament could have gone
through life with no romance; but if he had any such experience it has
not been given to the world. He loved his sisters, and his nephews and
nieces, with the most passionate devotion, and was in turn idolized by
them. His nephew says:--

"It must be acknowledged that where he loved, he loved more
entirely and more exclusively than was well for himself. It was
improvident in him to consecrate such intensity of feeling upon
relations who, however deeply they were attached to him, could not
always be in a position to requite him with the whole of their time
and the whole of their heart. He suffered much for that
improvidence, but he was too just and kind to permit others to
suffer with him; and it is not for one who obtained by inheritance
a share of his inestimable affection to regret a weakness such as
this."

This refers to his grief at the mar