e found his odd
clerical acquaintance 'very amusing.'

[Sidenote: WITH LORD HOLLAND IN SPAIN]

In the summer of 1807 we learn from his journal that he passed three
months with his father and stepmother at the English lakes and in the
West of Scotland. With boyish glee he recounts the incidents of the
journey, and his delight in visiting Inverary, Edinburgh, and Melrose.
Yet it was his rambles and talks with Sir Walter Scott, whom he
afterwards described as one of the wonders of the age, that left the
most abiding impression upon him. On his way back to Woodnesborough he
paid his first visit to the House of Lords, and heard a debate on the
Copenhagen expedition, an affair in which, he considered, 'Ministers cut
a most despicable figure.' On quitting school life at Woodnesborough, an
experience was in store for him which enlarged his mental horizon, and
drew out his sympathies for the weak and oppressed. Lord and Lady
Holland had taken a fancy to the lad, and the Duke of Bedford consented
to their proposal that he should accompany them on their visit to the
Peninsula, then the scene of hostilities between the French and the
allied armies of England and Spain. The account of this journey is best
told in Lord John's own words:--

'In the autumn of 1808, when only sixteen years of age, I accompanied
Lord and Lady Holland to Corunna, and afterwards to Lisbon, Seville, and
Cadiz, returning by Lisbon to England in the summer of 1809. They were
eager for the success of the Spanish cause, and I joined to sympathy for
Spain a boyish hatred of Napoleon, who had treacherously obtained
possession of an independent country by force and fraud--force of
immense armies, fraud of the lowest kind.' There is in existence at
Pembroke Lodge a small parchment-bound volume marked 'Diary, 1808,'
which records in his own handwriting Lord John's first impressions of
foreign travel. The notes are brief, but they show that the writer even
then was keenly alive to the picturesque. The journal ends somewhat
abruptly, and Lord John confesses in so many words that he gave up this
journal in despair, a statement which is followed by the assertion that
the record at least possesses the 'merit of brevity.'

Spain was in such a disturbed condition that the tour was full of
excitement. War and rumours of war filled the air, and sudden changes of
route were often necessary in order to avoid perilous encounters with
the French. The travellers were some