of May
the Poles embarked. After three weeks' passage in a small merchant
vessel, they landed at Gravesend, and thence reached London.
"Kosciuszko, the hero of freedom, is here," announced the Gentleman's
Magazine; and indeed the English papers were full of him. He stayed in
Leicester Square. The whole of London made haste to visit him. The
leading politicians, including Fox, men of letters, among whom we find
Sheridan, the beauties of the day and the rulers of fashion, all alike
thronged his rooms. To Walter Savage Landor, then a mere youth, the
sight of Kosciuszko awoke the sympathy for Poland that he never lost, to
which English literature owes one of his Imaginary Conversations. More
than half a century later he looked back to the moment in which he spoke
to Kosciuszko as the happiest of his life. The Whig Club presented
Kosciuszko with a sword of honour. The beautiful Duchess of Devonshire
pressed upon him a costly ring, which went the way of most of the gifts
that Kosciuszko received: he gave them away to friends. All such tokens
of admiration had never counted for anything in Kosciuszko's life, and
now they were the merest baubles to a man who had seen his country fall.
In the portrait that, against his wish and without his knowledge, Cosway
painted, said by Niemcewicz to resemble him as none other, we see him,
lying with bandaged head in an attitude of deep and sorrowful musing.
The face, the whole attitude, are those of one absorbed by an
overmastering grief that filled his soul to the exclusion of all else.
The fine portrait has found its way to Kosciuszko's native land, and is
now in Warsaw. The English doctor recommended by Rogerson attended
Kosciuszko assiduously, and the Russian ambassador's kindness was so
unfailing that Kosciuszko, sending him his farewells as he left England,
wrote: "If ever I recover part of my health it will be sweet to me to
remember that it is to your attentions, to the interest that you took in
me, that I shall owe it."[1]

[Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]

Bristol was at that time the English port of sailings for America. It was
there that after a fortnight's stay in London Kosciuszko betook himself,
passing a night in Bath on the way. He found in Bristol old friends of
his American days. He was the guest of one of them, now the United
States consul, as long as he stayed in the town. A guard of honour
received him, long processions of the townsfolk flocked to catch a
glimp