Youth may and ought to have—­yes, I see by others that it has—­pleasures which surpass those of unthinking though lovely childhood:  but have I experienced them? ...  What makes the same sun seem one day to make all nature bright, and the next only to show more plainly the dreariness of the landscape?  Oh wicked, sinful must be those feelings that make me miserable—­selfish and sinful—­and I cannot reason them away, for I do not understand them.  Prayer has helped me before now, and I trust it will still do so.  O Lord, forsake me not—­take me into Thy own keeping....  Mama fifty to-day [March 30, 1836].  Oh the feelings that crowd into my heart as if they must burst it when I look to this day three years ago.  I cannot write or think clearly of it yet.  I can only feel—­but what, I do not myself know—­at one moment agony, doubts, and fears, as if it was still that fearful day; then joy almost too great to bear.  When I think of her as she now is, then everything vanishes in one overpowering feeling of intense thankfulness.  I have several times to-day seen her eyes fill with tears—­every birthday of those one loves gives one a melancholy feeling, and the more rejoicings there are the stronger that feeling is.

    June 27, 1836, ADMIRALTY

It was decided that we should go to the Duchess of Buccleuch’s breakfast.  My horror of breakfasts is only increased by having been to this one, though I believe it was particularly pleasant.  Certainly the day was perfect, and the sight and the music pretty; but I scarcely ever disliked people more or felt more beaten down by shyness.  My only thoughts from the moment we went in were:  How I wish it was over, and how I wish nobody would speak to me.

    September 6, 1836, ROEHAMPTON

Mama and I went to dine at Holland House....  The rooms are just what one would expect from the outside of the handsome old house, with a number of good pictures in the library, where we sat, all portraits.  Lord Holland is perfectly agreeable, and not at all a man to be afraid of, in the common way of speaking, but for that very reason I always am afraid of him—­much more than of her, who does not seem to me agreeable.  I was very sorry Lord Melbourne did not come, as he would have made the conversation more general and agreeable.

The impression she made on others in her girlhood will be seen by this passage in the “Reminiscences of an Idler,” by Chevalier Wyhoff:  “I had the honour of dancing a quadrille with Lady Fanny Elliot, the charming daughter of the Earl of Minto.  Her engaging manners and sweetness of disposition were even more winning than her admitted beauty.”