een comfortless enough
had it not have been for the attention of Mr. Hudson Gurney, a young man
on whom I had no claims except from a letter of Mr. Sanford's, who,
without knowing him, or having any connection with him, recommended me to
his care, feeling wretched that I should be unprotected in the first part
of my journey. He has already devoted to me one evening and two
mornings, assisted me in money matters, lent me books, and enlivened my
confinement to a wretched room by his pleasant conversation. Mr. Sanford
having described me as a person travelling about _for her health_, he
says his old assistant in the Bank fancied I was a decrepit elderly lady
who might safely be consigned to his youthful partner. His description
of his surprise thus prepared was conceived in a very good strain of
flattery. He is almost two-and-twenty, understands several languages,
seems to delight in books, and to be uncommonly well informed.' Little
credit, however, is due to Mr. Hudson Gurney for his politeness in this
case. The lovely and lively widow--she had married Colonel St. George at
the age of eighteen, and the marriage only lasted two or three years, the
Colonel dying of consumption--must have possessed personal and mental
attractions irresistible to a cultivated young man of twenty-two. Had
she been old and ugly, it is to be feared his business engagements would
have prevented the youthful banker devoting much time to her ladyship's
service.

Yarmouth is intimately connected with literature and the fine arts. It
was off Yarmouth that Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked; and the testimony
he bears to the character of the people shows how kindly disposed were
the Yarmouth people of his day. 'We,' he writes, 'got all safe on shore,
and walked afterwards on foot to Yarmouth, where, as unfortunate men, we
were used with great humanity, not only by the magistrates of the town,
who assigned us good quarters, but also by particular merchants and
owners of ships, and had money given us, sufficient to carry us either to
London or back to Hull, as we thought fit.' It was from Yarmouth that
Wordsworth and Coleridge sailed away to Germany, then almost a _terra
incognita_. Leman Blanchard was born at Yarmouth, as well as Sayers, the
first, if not the cleverest, of our English caricaturists. One of the
most brilliant men ever returned to Parliament was Winthrop Mackworth
Praed, M.P. for Yarmouth, whose politics as a boy I detested as m