annoyances.  It is every day in the power of an amiable person to confer little services.  It not seldom happens that serious distress and danger call forth, in genuine beauty and deformity, heroic virtues and abject vices which, in the ordinary intercourse of good society, might remain during many years unknown even to intimate associates.  Under such circumstances met Warren Hastings and the Baroness Imhoff, two persons whose accomplishments would have attracted notice in any court of Europe.  The gentleman had no domestic ties.  The lady was tied to a husband for whom she had no regard, and who had no regard for his own honour.  An attachment sprang up, which was soon strengthened by events such as could hardly have occurred on land.  Hastings fell ill.  The Baroness nursed him with womanly tenderness, gave him his medicines with her own hand, and even sat up in his cabin while he slept.  Long before the Duke of Grafton reached Madras, Hastings was in love.  But his love was of a most characteristic description.  Like his hatred, like his ambition, like all his passions, it was strong, but not impetuous.  It was calm, deep, earnest, patient of delay, unconquerable by time.  Imhoff was called into council by his wife and his wife’s lover.  It was arranged that the Baroness should institute a suit for a divorce in the courts of Franconia, that the Baron should afford every facility to the proceeding, and that, during the years which might elapse before the sentence should be pronounced, they should continue to live together.  It was also agreed that Hastings should bestow some very substantial marks of gratitude on the complaisant husband, and should, when the marriage was dissolved, make the lady his wife, and adopt the children whom she had already borne to Imhoff.

At Madras, Hastings found the trade of the Company in a very disorganised state.  His own tastes would have led him rather to political than to commercial pursuits:  but he knew that the favour of his employers depended chiefly on their dividends, and that their dividends depended chiefly on the investment.  He, therefore, with great judgment, determined to apply his vigorous mind for a time to this department of business, which had been much neglected, since the servants of the Company had ceased to be clerks, and had become warriors and negotiators.

In a very few months he effected an important reform.  The Directors notified to him their high approbation, and were so much pleased with his conduct that they determined to place him at the head of the government at Bengal.  Early in 1772 he quitted Fort St. George for his new post.  The Imhoffs, who were still man and wife, accompanied him, and lived at Calcutta on the same plan which they had already followed during more than two years.