"

On another occasion, speaking in more moderate tones, she observed to a
circle of acquaintances: "My husband is a man who has been born out of
his due time. He ought to have been born nineteen hundred years ago. Had
he been born then, he would have been Judas Iscariot. He would have
betrayed his Master; he would have taken the thirty pieces of silver;
but then he would not have hanged himself--far from it. He would have
sat down and written the Epistle to the Ephesians."

On another occasion she told the following story of him. He was, so she
said, in London, and she, having been left in the country, had written
to propose joining him. He had at once replied begging her not to do so,
but to leave him a little longer in the enjoyment of philosophic
solitude. "When I heard that"--so she confided to a friend--"I set off
for London instantly; and there I found him with Philosophic Solitude,
in white muslin, on his knee."

"Perhaps," added the narrator, "even less agreeable to the delinquent
would have been, had he heard it, her description of his physical
appearance. Alluding to the fact that his head was undoubtedly too large
for his body, she said, 'My husband has the head of a goat, and he has
the body of a grasshopper.'"

But of all the men who, in the way of conversational wit or otherwise,
figure in my memory as types of a now vanished generation, the most
remarkable still remains to be noticed. This was the second Duke of
Wellington. Even to those who knew him only by sight he was memorable,
on account of his astonishing likeness to the portraits or statues of
his father. He had not, or he had not chosen to cultivate, the talents
which mainly lead to distinction in public life, but by the small circle
of those who were intimate with him during his later days he was known
for a humor, a polished wit, and a shrewdness which made him, of all
possible companions, one of the most delightful. I knew him intimately
myself as far as my age permitted. I often stayed with him at
Strathfieldsaye, not only when he had parties, but also when, as
sometimes happened, we were together for a week alone. On these latter
occasions I had all the mornings to myself, and every afternoon I took
with him long walks, during which he poured forth his social or other
philosophies, or else told me stories of his father so pointed and
numerous that, had I written them down, I might then have compiled a
life of him which would form a very