e."

The doctor was a croaker, as was the fashion of the time, with all who
pretended to peculiar political sagacity. Of course the family physician
of the ex-minister was in duty bound to echo the ex-minister's
discontent. It is clear that, whatever professional gifts the doctor
inherited from Apollo, he did not share the gift of prophecy. The
doctor, after realising enough by his profession to purchase an estate
in Devonshire, retired to Reading, where, in 1790, he died, having had,
in the year before, the enviable gratification of seeing his son elected
to the Speakership of the House of Commons.

Henry Viscount Sidmouth was born in 1757, on the 30th of May. At the age
of five years, he was placed under the care of the Rev. William Gilpin,
author of the Essays on the Picturesque, who for many years kept a
school at Cheam, in Surrey.

Lord Sidmouth had but one brother, Hiley, who subsequently figured so
often in the caustic rhymes of Canning, and who, under his brother's
auspices, was successively secretary of the treasury, paymaster of the
forces, and under-secretary of state. In his twelfth year, Henry,
followed by Hiley, was sent to Winchester, then under the government of
the well-known Dr Joseph Wharton, with George Isaac Huntingford as one
of the assistants.

The author of the biography gives Huntingford credit for the singular
degree of attachment exhibited in his occasional letters to his pupil.
It certainly seems singular; when we know the slenderness, if not
sternness of the connexion generally subsisting between the teachers at
a great English seminary, and the pupils. In one of those epistles
Huntingford says to this boy of fifteen.

"For my own part, to you I lay open _my whole heart without reserve_. I
divest myself of the little superiority which age may have given me.
With you I can enter into conversation with all the familiarity of an
intimate companion. The few hours of intercourse which we thus enjoy
with each other give more relief to my wearied body and mind than _any
other amusement on earth_. What I am to do when you leave school, _a
melancholy thought, I cannot foresee_. May the _evil hour be postponed_
as late as possible. Yet let me add, whenever it shall be most for your
advantage to leave me, I will not doubt to sacrifice _my own peace_ and
comfort for your interest. _I love myself, but you better_."

We hope that this style is not much in fashion in our public schools.
Dean Pellew