a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this
world, Sancho,' says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not), and so I
have often found it.

"Page 128. article 91. of this collection, I had alluded to my friend
Lord Clare in terms such as my feelings suggested. About a week or two
afterwards I met him on the road between Imola and Bologna, after not
having met for seven or eight years. He was abroad in 1814, and came
home just as I set out in 1816.

"This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years between the present
time and the days of _Harrow_. It was a new and inexplicable feeling,
like rising from the grave, to me. Clare, too, was much agitated--more
in _appearance_ than was myself; for I could feel his heart beat to his
fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own which made me
think so. He told me that I should find a note from him left at Bologna.
I did. We were obliged to part for our different journeys, he for Rome,
I for Pisa, but with the promise to meet again in spring. We were but
five minutes together, and on the public road; but I hardly recollect an
hour of my existence which could be weighed against them. He had heard
that I was coming on, and had left his letter for me at Bologna, because
the people with whom he was travelling could not wait longer.

"Of all I have ever known, he has always been the least altered in every
thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me
to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible
for society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so
little of the leaven of bad passions.

"I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever
heard of him from others, during absence and distance."

* * * * *

After remaining a day at Bologna, Lord Byron crossed the Apennines with
Mr. Rogers; and I find the following note of their visit together to the
Gallery at Florence:--

"I revisited the Florence Gallery, &c. My former impressions were
confirmed; but there were too many visiters there to allow one to _feel_
any thing properly. When we were (about thirty or forty) all stuffed
into the cabinet of gems and knick-knackeries, in a corner of one of the
galleries, I told Rogers that it 'felt like being in the watchhouse.' I
left him to make his obeisances to some of his acquaintances, and
strolled on alone--the only four minutes I could snatc