of her time in conversation--if those could be called conversations
in which one of the talkers insisted upon a monopoly of attention. It
would be more accurate to describe them as monologues, with occasional
interpolations of assent on the part of the listener. We have no wish to
underrate their charm, though, from the reports transmitted to
posterity, they would hardly seem to have deserved the very warm eulogy
pronounced by the physician, who says,[25] "Her conversations lasted
eight and ten hours at a time, without moving from her seat: so that,
although highly entertained, instructed, or astonished at her versatile
powers, as the listeners might be, it was impossible not to feel the
weariness of so long a sitting. Everybody," he adds, "who visited Lady
Hester Stanhope in her retirement will bear witness to her unexampled
colloquial powers; to her profound knowledge of character; to her
inexhaustible fund of anecdotes; to her talents for mimicry; to her
modes of narration, as various as the subjects she talked about; to the
lofty inspiration and sublimity of her language, when the subject
required it; and to her pathos and feeling, whenever she wished to
excite the emotions of her hearers. There was no secret of the human
heart, however studiously concealed, that she could not discover; no
workings in the listener's mind that she would not penetrate; no
intrigue, from the low cunning of vulgar intrigue to the vast
combinations of politics, that she would not unravel; no labyrinth,
however tortuous, that she would not thread. It was this comprehensive
and searching faculty, this intuitive penetration, which made her so
formidable; for under imaginary names, when she wished to show a person
that his character and course of life were unmasked to her view, she
would, in his very presence, paint him such a picture of himself, in
drawing the portrait of another, that you might see the individual
writhing on his chair, unable to conceal the effect the words had on his
conscience. Everybody who heard her for an hour or two retired humbled
from her presence, for her language was always directed to bring mankind
to their level, to pull down pride and conceit, to strip off the garb
of affectation, and to shame vice, immorality, irreligion, and
hypocrisy."

We have admitted Lady Hester Stanhope's great mental powers, but we can
find no trace in the records of her conversation of such extraordinary
genius as is here indicated.