husbands, nor rivals, nor gossips, were near my then idol, who was
beautiful as the statues of the gallery where we stood at the time,)--*
* *, I say, had seized upon me by the button and the heart-strings, and
spared neither. W. Spencer, who likes fun, and don't dislike mischief,
saw my case, and coming up to us both, took me by the hand, and
pathetically bade me farewell; 'for,' said he, 'I see it is all over
with you.' * * * then went away. _Sic me servavit Apollo._"

* * * *

"I remember seeing Blucher in the London assemblies, and never saw any
thing of his age less venerable. With the voice and manners of a
recruiting sergeant, he pretended to the honours of a hero,--just as if
a stone could be worshipped because a man had stumbled over it."

[Footnote 100: Petrarch was, it appears, also in his youth, a Dandy.
"Recollect," he says, in a letter to his brother, "the time, when we
wore white habits, on which the least spot, or a plait ill placed, would
have been a subject of grief; when our shoes were so tight we suffered
martyrdom," &c.]

[Footnote 101: To this masquerade he went in the habit of a Caloyer, or
Eastern monk,--a dress particularly well calculated to set off the
beauty of his fine countenance, which was accordingly, that night, the
subject of general admiration.]

[Footnote 102: In his Memoranda there were equally enthusiastic praises
of Curran. "The riches," said he, "of his Irish imagination were
exhaustless. I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have ever
seen written,--though I saw him seldom and but occasionally. I saw him
presented to Madame de Stael at Mackintosh's;--it was the grand
confluence between the Rhone and the Saone, and they were both so d----d
ugly, that I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France
and Ireland could have taken up respectively such residences."

In another part, however, he was somewhat more fair to Madame de Stael's
personal appearance:--"Her figure was not bad; her legs tolerable; her
arms good. Altogether, I can conceive her having been a desirable woman,
allowing a little imagination for her soul, and so forth. She would have
made a great man."]

* * * * *

We now approach the close of this eventful period of his history. In a
note to Mr. Rogers, written a short time before his departure for
Ostend[103], he says,--"My sister is now with me, and leaves town
to-morro