le and eccentric as to be treading on the very edge of the
partition which divides wit from madness.

Lord Durham arrived at Plymouth some days ago, but was not able
to land (on Thursday last) owing to the violence of the storms.
Great curiosity prevails to see what sort of a reception he gets
from Ministers and the Queen, and what his relations are to be
with Government. Nothing they say can exceed the astonishment
which he and his court feel, or will feel, at the sensation
excited in the country by his conduct. Gibbon Wakefield, the
first who arrived, said he had never been so amazed in the course
of his life, and owned that they had all expected to make a very
different impression, and to be hailed with great applause.
Brougham, who is sitting at the Judicial Committee, is in high
spirits and looking forward with exceeding zest and eagerness to
the fun he is to have in the House of Lords.

[Page Head: CHARACTER OF LORD SEFTON.]

While I was in the country, Lord Sefton's long illness came to a
close, but not before he was reduced to a state of deplorable
imbecility, so that his death was a release from misery to
himself as well as to all about him. He was a man who filled a
considerable space in society, and had been more or less
conspicuous from the earliest period of his life. He was
possessed of an ample fortune, which he endeavoured to convert
into a continual source of enjoyment in every mode which fancy,
humour, or caprice suggested. His natural parts were excessively
lively, but his education had been wholly neglected, and he never
attempted to repair in after-life the deficiencies occasioned by
that early neglect. He had therefore not the slightest tincture
of letters, his mind was barren of information, and he not only
took no interest in intellectual pursuits, but he regarded with
aversion, and something like contempt, those who were peculiarly
devoted to them. On the other hand, he was an acute man of the
world, eagerly entering into all the interests, great and small,
of his own time, sufficiently acquainted with the mushroom
literature of the day for all social purposes, and, partly from
the authority which his wealth and position gave him, partly from
his own dexterity, he contrived to turn conversation aside from
those topics in the discussion of which he was incapable of
mixing, and to promote that sort of half-serious, half-ludicrous
talk, in which he was not only fitted to play a prominent part,