since her earliest
days in London society, now wrote to her in her sorrow. His note is worth
preserving. He was past his ninetieth year when he wrote, and it reveals a
side of him which is lost sight of in the memoirs of the time, where he
usually appears as saying many neat things, but few kind ones. Mrs. Norton,
in a letter to Hayward, gives an authentic picture of him at this time. She
begins by saying that no man ever _seemed_ so important who did so
little, even said so little:

"His god was Harmony," she wrote; "and over his life Harmony
presided, sitting on a lukewarm cloud. He was _not_ the 'poet,
sage, and philosopher' people expected to find he was, but a man in
whom the tastes (rare fact!) preponderated over the passions; who
defrayed the expenses of his tastes as other men make outlay for
the gratification of their passions; all within the limit of
reason.

"... He was the very embodiment of quiet, from his voice to the
last harmonious little picture that hung in his hushed room, and a
curious figure he seemed--an elegant pale watch-tower, showing for
ever what a quiet port literature and the fine arts might offer, in
an age of 'progress,' when every one is tossing, struggling,
wrecking, and foundering on a sea of commercial speculation or
political adventure; when people fight over pictures, and if a man
does buy a picture, it is with the burning desire to prove it is a
Raphael to his yielding enemies, rather than to point it out with a
slow white finger to his breakfasting friends."

_Mr. Samuel Rogers to Lady John Russell_

_August_ 13, 1853

MY DEAR FRIEND,--May I break in upon you to say how much you have
been in my thoughts for the last fortnight? But I was unwilling to
interrupt you at such a moment when you must have been so much
engaged.

May He who has made us and alone knows what is best for us support
you under your great affliction. Again and again have I taken up my
poor pen, but in vain, and I have only to pray that God may bless
you and yours wherever you go.

Ever most affectionately yours,

SAMUEL ROGERS

In the autumn of 1853 Lord John took his family up to Roseneath, in
Scotland, which had been lent them by the Duke of Argyll. They had been
there some weeks, occasionally making short cruises in the _Seamew_,
which the Commission of Inland Revenue had placed at