Went to poor Lydia White’s, and found her extended on a couch, frightfully swelled, unable to stir, rouged, jesting, and dying.  She has a good heart, and is really a clever creature, but unhappily, or rather happily, she has set up the whole staff of her rest in keeping literary society about her.  The world has not neglected her.  It is not always so bad as it is called.  She can always make up her soiree, and generally has some people of real talent and distinction.  She is wealthy, to be sure, and gives petit dinners, but not in a style to carry the point a force d’argent.  In her case the world is good-natured, and perhaps it is more frequently so than is generally supposed.

November 14.—­We breakfasted at honest Allan Cunningham’s—­honest Allan—­a leal and true Scotsman of the old cast.  A man of genius, besides, who only requires the tact of knowing when and where to stop, to attain the universal praise which ought to follow it.  I look upon the alteration of “It’s hame and it’s hame,” and “A wet sheet and a flowing sea,” as among the best songs going.  His prose has often admirable passages; but he is obscure, and overlays his meaning, which will not do now-a-days, when he who runs must read.

Dined at Croker’s, at Kensington, with his family, the Speaker,[405] and the facetious Theodore Hook.

We came away rather early, that Anne and I might visit Mrs. Arbuthnot to meet the Duke of Wellington.  In all my life I never saw him better.  He has a dozen of campaigns in his body—­and tough ones.  Anne was delighted with the frank manners of this unequalled pride of British war, and me he received with all his usual kindness.  He talked away about Bonaparte, Russia, and France.

November 15.—­At breakfast a conclave of medical men about poor little Johnnie Lockhart.  They give good words, but I cannot help fearing the thing is very precarious, and I feel a miserable anticipation of what the parents are to undergo.  It is wrong, however, to despair.  I was myself a very weak child, and certainly am one of the strongest men of my age in point of constitution.  Sophia and Anne went to the Tower, I to the Colonial Office, where I laboured hard.

Dined with the Duke of Wellington.  Anne with me, who could not look enough at the vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre.  The party were Mr. and Mrs. Peel, and Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot,[406] Vesey Fitzgerald, Bankes, and Croker, with Lady Bathurst and Lady Georgina.  One gentleman took much of the conversation, and gave us, with unnecessary emphasis, and at superfluous length, his opinion of a late gambling transaction.  This spoiled the evening.  I am sorry for the occurrence though, for Lord ------ is fetlock deep in it, and it looks like a vile bog.  This misfortune, with the foolish incident at ------, will not be suffered to fall to the ground, but will be used as a counterpoise to the Greek loan.  Peel asked me, in private, my opinion of three candidates for the Scotch gown, and I gave it him candidly.  We will see if it has weight.[407]