LETTER 510.  TO LADY ——.

“Genoa, March 28. 1823.

“Mr. Hill is here:  I dined with him on Saturday before last; and on leaving his house at S. P. d’Arena, my carriage broke down.  I walked home, about three miles,—­no very great feat of pedestrianism; but either the coming out of hot rooms into a bleak wind chilled me, or the walking up-hill to Albaro heated me, or something or other set me wrong, and next day I had an inflammatory attack in the face, to which I have been subject this winter for the first time, and I suffered a good deal of pain, but no peril.  My health is now much as usual.  Mr. Hill is, I believe, occupied with his diplomacy.  I shall give him your message when I see him again.

“My name, I see in the papers, has been dragged into the unhappy Portsmouth business, of which all that I know is very succinct.  Mr. H——­ is my solicitor.  I found him so when I was ten years old—­at my uncle’s death—­and he was continued in the management of my legal business.  He asked me, by a civil epistle, as an old acquaintance of his family, to be present at the marriage of Miss H——.  I went very reluctantly, one misty morning (for I had been up at two balls all night), to witness the ceremony, which I could not very well refuse without affronting a man who had never offended me.  I saw nothing particular in the marriage.  Of course I could not know the preliminaries, except from what he said, not having been present at the wooing, nor after it, for I walked home, and they went into the country as soon as they had promised and vowed.  Out of this simple fact I hear the Debats de Paris has quoted Miss H. as ’autrefois tres liee avec le celebre,’ &c. &c.  I am obliged to him for the celebrity, but beg leave to decline the liaison, which is quite untrue; my liaison was with the father, in the unsentimental shape of long lawyers’ bills, through the medium of which I have had to pay him ten or twelve thousand pounds within these few years.  She was not pretty, and I suspect that the indefatigable Mr. A——­ was (like all her people) more attracted by her title than her charms.  I regret very much that I was present at the prologue to the happy state of horse-whipping and black jobs, &c. &c.; but I could not foresee that a man was to turn out mad, who had gone about the world for fifty years, as competent to vote, and walk at large; nor did he seem to me more insane than any other person going to be married.

“I have no objection to be acquainted with the Marquis Palavicini, if he wishes it.  Lately I have gone little into society, English or foreign, for I had seen all that was worth seeing in the former before I left England, and at the time of life when I was more disposed to like it; and of the latter I had a sufficiency in the first few years of my residence in Switzerland, chiefly at Madame de Stael’s, where I went sometimes, till I grew tired of conversazioni