ity, and
influential members of a great world in which extraordinary capacity was
never an excuse for want of urbanity or the absence of the desire to
please; their intercourse was charming as well as profoundly interesting
to me.

During a conversation I once had with Lady Dacre about her husband, she
gave me the following extract from the writings of Madame Huber, the
celebrated Therese Heyne, whose first husband, Johann Georg Forster, was
one of the delegates which sympathizing Mentz sent to Paris in 1793, to
solicit from the revolutionary government the favor of annexation to the
French republic.

"In the year 1790 Forster had attached to himself and introduced in his
establishment a young Englishman, who came to Germany with the view of
studying the German philosophy [Kant's system] in its original language.
He was nearly connected with some of the leaders of the then opposition.
He was so noble, so simple, that each virtue seemed in him an instinct,
and so stoical in his views that he considered every noble action as the
victory of self-control, and never felt himself good enough. The friends
[Huber and Forster] who loved him with parental tenderness sometimes
repeated with reference to him the words of Shakespeare--

'So wise, so young, they say, do ne'er live long.'

But, thanks to fate, he has falsified that prophecy; the youth is grown
into manhood; he lives, unclaimed by any mere political party, with the
more valuable portion of his people, and satisfies himself with being a
good man so long as circumstances prevent him from acting in his sense
as a good citizen. Our daily intercourse with this youth enabled us to
combine a knowledge of English events with our participation in the
proceedings on the Continent. His patriotism moderated many of our
extreme views with regard to his country; his estimate of many
individuals, of whom from his position he possessed accurate knowledge,
decided many a disputed point amongst us; and the tenderness which we
all felt for this beloved and valued friend tended to produce justice
and moderation in all our conflicts of opinion."[A]

[A] Sketch of Lord Dacre's character by Madame Huber.

Lady Dacre had had by her first marriage, to Mr. Wilmot, an only child,
the Mrs. Sullivan I have mentioned in this letter, wife of the Reverend
Frederick Sullivan, Vicar of Kimpton. She was an excellent and most
agreeable person, who inherited her mother's literary and artistic
g