In July it was decided that her brother Henry should go out to Australia with Sir John Franklin.  The idea of parting troubled her extremely, and, moreover, the project dashed all the castles in the air she had built for him.  August 21st was the day fixed for his sailing.  The 20th came—­“dismal, dismal day, making things look as if they understood it was his last.”  Long afterwards, whenever she saw the front of Roehampton House, where she said good-bye to him, the scene would come back to her mind—­the waiting carriage and the last farewells.  The autumn winds had a new significance to her now her brother was on the sea.  She was troubled too about religious problems, but she found it difficult, almost impossible, to talk about the thoughts which were occupying her.  Writing of her cousin Gilbert Elliot, afterwards Dean of Bristol, for whom she felt both affection and respect, she says:  “In the evening Cousin Gilbert talked a great deal, and not only usefully but delightfully, about different religious sects and against the most illiberal Church to which he belongs—­but how could I be happy?  The more he talked of what I wished to hear, the more idiotically shy I felt and the more impossible it became to me to ask one of the many questions or make one of the many remarks (foolish very likely, but what would that have signified?) which were filling my mind.”

    December 24, 1836, BOWOOD

Mr. Moore sang a great deal, and one song quite overcame Lady Lansdowne.  At dinner I sat between Henry [11] and Miss Fazakerlie, who told me that last year she thought me impenetrable.  How sad it is to appear to every one different from what one is.

I like both her and Henry better than ever, but oh, I dislike myself more than ever—­and so does everybody else—­almost.  Is it vain to wish it otherwise?—­no, surely it is not.  If my manner is so bad must there not be some real fault in me that makes it so, and ought I not to pray that it may be corrected?

[11] Afterwards Lord Lansdowne and the father of the present Marquis.

She read a great deal at this time; Jeremy Taylor, Milton, and Wesley, Heber, Isaac Walton, Burnet; Burns was her favourite on her happiest days.  She thought that work among the poor of London might help her; but her time was so taken up both with looking after the younger children and by society that she seems to have got no further than wondering how to set about it.

On June 20th, 1837, William IV died, and in July Parliament was dissolved.  On the 4th they were back again at Minto.

Her uncle John Elliot was successful in his candidature of Hawick.  “Hawick,” she writes, “has done her duty well indeed—­in all ways; for the sheriff’s terrible riots have been nothing at all.  Some men ducked and the clothes of some torn off.  We all felt so confused with joy that we did not know what to do all the evening.”  These rejoicings ended suddenly:  Lady Minto was called to the death-bed of her mother, Mrs. Brydone.