once travelled from Paris to Lyons for the express purpose of buying waistcoats; and during the whole journey they talked about nothing else.

Fox (in his earlier days, I mean), Sheridan, Fitzpatrick, &c., led such a life! Lord Tankerville assured me that he has played cards with Fitzpatrick at Brookes's from ten o'clock at night till near six o'clock the next afternoon, a waiter standing by to tell them "whose deal it was," they being too sleepy to know.

After losing large sums at hazard, Fox would go home,—not to destroy himself, as his friends sometimes feared, but-to sit down quietly, and read Greek.

He once won about eight thousand pounds; and one of his bond-creditors, who soon heard of his good luck, presented himself, and asked for payment. “Impossible, sir," replied Fox; “I must first discharge my debts of honour." The bondcreditor remonstrated. "Well, sir, give me your bond." It was delivered to Fox, who tore it in pieces and threw them into the fire. "Now, sir,” said Fox, "my debt to you is a debt of honour;" and immediately paid him.

When I became acquainted with Fox, he had given up that kind of life entirely, and resided in the most perfect sobriety and regularity at St. Anne's Hill. There he was very happy, delighting in study, in rural occupations and rural prospects. He would break from a criticism on Porson's Euripides to look for the little pigs. I remember his calling out to the Chertsey hills, when a thick mist, which had for some time concealed them, rolled away, "Good morning to you! I am glad to see you again." There was a walk in his grounds which led to a lane through which the farmers used to pass; and he would stop them, and talk to them, with great interest, about the price of turnips, &c. I was one day with him in the Louvre, when he suddenly turned from the pictures, and, looking out at the window, exclaimed, "This hot sun will burn up my turnips at St. Anne's Hill."

In London mixed society Fox conversed little; but at his own house in the country, with his intimate friends, he would talk on for ever, with all the openness and simplicity of a child: he has continued talking to me for half-an-hour after he had taken up his bed-room candle. I have seen it somewhere

stated that Fox liked to talk about great people: nothing can be more untrue; he hardly ever alluded to them. I remember, indeed, that he once mentioned to me Queen Charlotte, calling her "that bad woman."

He was very shy, and disliked being stared at. Windham and I accompanied him one night to Vauxhall, where he was much annoyed at being followed about, as a spectacle, from place to place. On such occasions he was not only shy, but gauche.

One morning at his own house, while speaking to me of his travels, Fox could not recollect the name of a particular town in Holland, and was much vexed at the treacherousness of his memory. He had a dinner-party that day; and, just as he had applied the carving-knife to the sirloin, the name of the town having suddenly occurred to him, he roared out exultingly, to the astonishment of the company, "Gorcum, Gorcum!"

Fox saw Voltaire at Ferney. Their interview was described to me in a letter by Uvedale Price,*

* Created a baronet in 1828.-A small portion of that letter, about Fox's visit to Voltaire, has lately been printed in Memorials and Correspondence of C. J. Fox, edited by Lord J. Russell, vol. i. 46.

who went there with him: but unfortunately I no longer possess that letter; I lent it to Lord Holland, and never could get it back.

-An account of the same visit, from the pen of the same writer, occurs in a letter to my unfortunate friend the late E. H. Barker, dated March 24, 1827, from which I shall not scruple to make a long extract :

"But among the characters of the second generation so ably drawn by Mr. Butler [in his Reminiscences], to me much the most interesting is that of Charles Fox. Our friendship and intimacy, which began at Eton, continued without interruption through life. While Etonians, we acted together in the plays given at Holland House, which, from the high character and connections of its owner, from the premature talents of C. Fox, two years younger than myself, and from the peculiarly lovely countenance and sweet-toned voice of Lady Sarah Lenox, our Jane Shore (whom, as Gloucester, I could hardly bring myself to speak to as harshly as my character required), these plays had at the time great celebrity. We were at Oxford together, were almost constantly together at Florence, where we studied Italian under the same master at the same time.

"From Rome we travelled together along the eastern coast to Venice, and thence to Turin, where we met by appointment our excellent friend and schoolfellow, Lord Fitzwilliam, who is mentioned by Mr. Butler in a few words, but most impressively, as spoken of him by Fox. All this, I am aware, can have little interest for you: but having the excuse of Mr. Butler's reminiscences, I have indulged myself in putting down mine, as they recall a period of great and unmixed delight. I then witnessed daily and hourly that characteristic good nature, that warm and unalterable attachment to his friends of which Mr. B. speaks in so impressive a manner: and likewise witnessed on more than one occasion, what was no less characteristic, his abhorrence of any thing like tyranny, oppression, or cruelty. Having got so far on my journey, I shall e'en proceed with it: from Turin we all three set out for Geneva, but

It is well known that Fox visited Gibbon at Lausanne; and he was much gratified by the visit. Gibbon, he said, talked a great deal, walking up and down the room, and generally ending his sentences with a genitive case; every now and then, too, casting a look of complacency on his own portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which hung over the chimney-piece, -that wonderful portrait, in which, while the oddness and vulgarity of the features are refined away, the likeness is perfectly preserved.-Fox used to say that Gibbon's History was immortal, because nobody could do without it,-nobody, without vast expense of time and labour, could get elsewhere the informa

went out of our direct road to that most singular and striking place, the Grande Chartreuse, so finely described in Gray's Alcaic Ode. From Geneva Fox and I went to Voltaire at Ferney, having obtained a permission then seldom granted. It is an event in one's life to have seen and heard that extraordinary man: he was old and infirm, and, in answer to Fox's note and request, said that the name of Fox was sufficient, and that he could not refuse seeing us, mais que nous venions pour l'exterrer.' He conversed in a lively manner, walking with us to and fro in a sort of alley; and at parting gave us a list of some of his works, adding, ' Ce sont des livres de quoi il faut se munir,' they were such as would fortify our young minds against religious prejudices. Fox quitted us at Geneva, went to England, and commenced his political career. I went with Fitzwilliam through the finest parts of Switzerland, and then down the Rhine to Spa, and met him again at Paris: and there ends my foreign journal, and high time it should."