of Bath and Wells (still, I rejoice, surviving), and the
late John Sinclair, long Archdeacon of Middlesex
and Vicar of Kensington.

Before his elevation to the episcopate, a quarter of
a century ago. Lord Arthur held the family living
of Ickworth in Suffolk, and was for some years Arch-
deacon of Sudbury. Some of his lectures at the Bury
Athenaeum, and some of his contributions to the published
Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, bore
testimony to his accomplishments and culture at that
period. Since then he has become widely known as
the successful administrator of an important diocese, as
the author of charges to his clergy replete with dig-
nity and wisdom, as an influential member of the Com-
mission for Revising the Holy Scriptures, and as the



OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 47

writer of a remarkable course of lectures upon the au-
thenticity of St. Luke's Gospel. I have had repeated
opportunities for appreciating the charm of his do-
mestic circle both amid the pleasing rural scenery
of Ickworth Rectory and the picturesque surroundings
of the episcopal palace at Wells. It was while on
a visit to him at Wells that I first met his neighbor,
the historian Freeman.

Archdeacon Sinclair brought me a note of introduc-
tion when he came over with Bishop Spencer and others
many years ago to attend the Triennial Convention of
the Protestant Episcopal Church at New York. Almost
immediately on receiving him, I ventured to inquire
whether he were not a son of that Sir John Sinclair
who corresponded with Washington on agriculture ;
and on his replying in the affirmative, I said, "I sup-
pose you have an abundance of copies of that corre-
spondence as printed long ago in England ? " " Not
one," said he; "we have given them all away from
time to time, and I have not even saved a copy for my-
self." " Then," said I, " perhaps you will accept this
copy from me," taking one from the table at my side,
where I had a dozen of them which had just been sent
to me as a Trustee of the Massachusetts Agricultural
Society, by whom a new edition had been printed for
distribution as prizes that very year. It was a striking
coincidence, and amused and gratified us both. Since
then I twice visited him at his pleasant vicarage of
Kensington, and at least once partook the Communion
from his hands in old Kensington church, which has
now disappeared for a new one. Among the persons



48 A FRAGMENT



T met at his table were two of his sisters, — Miss
Catharine Sinclair, whose writings are so well known,
and the Dowager Countess of Glasgow, — Lord Chan-
cellor Hatherley, then Sir William Page Wood, and
others whose names have escaped me ; and I owed to
him an introduction to the late Lady Holland, and
several charming visits to Holland House, as well as to
Dean Ramsay and other friends of his in Edinburgh.
There never beat in human bosom a kinder heart than
in that of the good Archdeacon. His sermons and
charges, of which he sent me not a few, were full of
good sense as well as of religious instruction. Suc-
cessive bishops of London leaned on him for support.
Macaulay was one of his parishioners. Some sketches
of eminent men whom he had known, printed for
private circulation only, were excellent. Without pre-
tensions to the graces of oratory, simple and natural
in expression and delivery, the one sermon I heard
from him was admirably adapted to a Communion
Sunday, and prepared us all for partaking in the
right spirit of that simplest, solemnest feast.

I may not forget, in this connection, that I have been
in the company of three successive Archbishops of
Canterbury. Of the earliest (Sumner), in 1847, I saw
but little, and was only presented to him formally. Of
the two others I have happily been privileged to know
more. A delightful afternoon at Lambeth with Long-
fellow, accompanied by the ladies of our party, is fresh
in my memory. Longley was then Primate, and a
more charming old man has rarely been seen. I had



OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 49

heard him preach forcibly and eloquently ten or twelve
years before in Paris, while he was Bishop of Ripon.
Since then he had been Archbishop of York for a very
brief term, — giving room for the hon mot of Punch,
" Longley, Archbishop of York ; Shortly, Archbishop of
Canterbury." He was a favorite at Court, as he de-
served to be for hi§ piety and excellence, and the earli-
est opportunity was taken to make him Primate. He
was full of kindness in taking us into the old Lambeth
chapel and showing us where the first American bishop
was consecrated ; and he sent his son with us to the top
of the Lollard's Tower, with its interesting historical
associations, and its exquisite view of London and the
Thames, the shipping and the bridges. Some of the
ladies were but too well satisfied to remain below and
enjoy his delightful conversation. He died soon after
our return to America, universally respected and
beloved.

His successor, Dr. Tait, I had previously known as
Bishop of London ; and in m}^ address at Plymouth in
1870, on the 250th Anniversary of the Landing of the
Pilgrims, I was led, in speaking of the Bradford Manu-
script, to give some account of visits to him at Fulham,
.since which time I have repeatedly been his guest at
Lambeth Palace, and have been invited to stay with him
at Addington. A man of the greatest simplicity of
manner and character. Dr. Tait seemed to me as well
calculated to win hearts to the Church and to Christ as
any one I had ever known. The apparent feebleness of
his health only added to his attractions, though there



50 A FKAGMENT

was nothing feeble in his tone. Eminently prudent,
conciliatory, liberal, and wise, he seemed made for pre-
siding over the councils of the English Church at a
moment when a stern or bigoted policy must have cost
a breach, if not a schism. I never heard him preach,
but I was present during the first debate on the Bill
for disestablishing the Irish Church, when he rose
about midnight and made one of the most admirable
and impressive speeches to which I have ever listened.
Advancing to the middle of that magnificent chamber,
crowded with all that was most distinguished in rank,
statesmanship, literature, and theology, without notes
and with no evidence of formal jjreparation, he dis-
cussed the policy of the bill with a moderation, a
clearness, a precision, and a power which were worthy
of his position and of the solemnity of the occasion ;
and I could say of Tait, as Webster said of his
predecessor in the See of London (Blomfield), that I
heard nothing better of its kind in either House of
Parliament. His death, fourteen years later, was a
great public loss.

I must not omit to allude to my slight acquaintance,
in 1847, with the venerable Dr. Vernon- Harcourt,
then Archbishop of York, who told me that he saw
Webster for only a few minutes, but that in that brief
interview he learned more about the American Consti-
tution than in all the rest of his life. My own inter-
view with him, alas, was as brief as Webster's, and
left only the impression of a grand old prelate, ripe for
the translation which he soon exj^erienced, whose noble



OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 51

monument in York Cathedral I saw on my next visit
to England. From two of his sons, both members of
the House of Commons, Colonel George Harcourt, of
Nuneham, and Granville Vernon, I received polite at-
tentions. The former became, somewhat late in life,
the third husband of the famous Frances, Countess
Waldegrave ; and the latter was the father of a charm-
ing woman, the second wife of my friend and remote
connection, Humphrey Mildmay.

Nor can I fliil to recall the kindness which I received
in 1847 and afterward from the late Lord Lansdowne,
to whom I have already passingly alluded. He was
hardly a great statesman, but he had elements of char-
acter which are even better than greatness. Frank,
honest, cordial, genial, he was the man of all others for
a President of the Council, and seemed eminently calcu-
lated to influence the course of government by persua-
sion rather than by force; to be always ready with
conciliatory explanations, to temper and control the
extravagances of party leaders, and to preside over
public ceremonials and administer official hospitalities.

After breakfasting tete-a-tete with him on one occa-
sion, he took me in his carriage to see one of the
" Home and Colonial Juvenile and Teachers' Schools "
in which he was interested, and gave me a number of
the school-books to bring home for comparison with
our own. But some of these books were really our own,
though not perhaps under the name of the American
author. There was a great power of appropriation, assi-
milation, and digestion among the commoner sort of



52 A FRAGMENT

English book-makers, and they did not always give
credit for what they borrowed, still less for what they
stole. We have been dishonest enough in the matter
of copyright, but when we reprint, we at least acknow-
ledge the authorship to belong elsewhere.

Lord Lansdowne kindly invited me to be his guest at
Bowood after the rising of Parliament, and promised me
a meeting with Tom Moore ; but I had then never been
on the Continent, and had much to do and see before
returning home for the ensuing session of Congress. I
less regretted not meeting Moore as he was fast becom-
ing a wreck, and little but the name of the charming
poet and songster was left. I was similarly obliged to
forego visits to Lord Ashburton at the Grange, and to
Evelyn Denison at Ossington ; but I found time for a
pious pilgrimage (the first of several) to the home of
my ancestors at Groton, in Suffolk, in which neighbor-
hood I was hospitably entertained by Richard Almack,
of Long Melford, a leading member of the Society of
Antiquaries, the possessor of an exceptional store of
local information, who, from that time until his death in
1875, was one of my most valued friends and correspon-
dents. 1 found time, also, in the course of a flying trip
through Scotland, to pass a couple of days with Web-
ster's friend, the nineteenth Earl of Morton, at Dal-
mahoy House, near Edinburgh. Lady Morton and her
daughters were full of kindness ; and this brief experi-
ence of Scottish hospitality caused me additional regret
at having been constrained to decline an invitation from
the Duke of Richmond to Gordon Castle, and from the
Earl of Aberdeen to Haddo House.



OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 53

Everett had given me a letter to Lord Aberdeen,
who gave a dinner for me which I came very near miss-
ing. I had ventured to go down to see the great
Derby race on the same day, and found much difficulty
in getting back in season, owing to the crowd. It would
have been a serious loss, as the guests included Lord
Canning, Sir James Graham, Lord Ashburton, Sir
Robert Gordon, Count Jarnac, the French Minister, and
other persons of note.

Lord Aberdeen struck me as one of the most sensible
men in England, — grave, thoughtful, prudent, with no
pretension or ostentation. He and Everett had a great
liking for one another, and he sat to Harding for a por-
trait, which was in Everett's library till his death.
With his youngest son, the well-known Sir Arthur
Gordon, recently created Lord Stanmore, I had some
pleasant intercourse at a later period.

Pakenham, then British Minister at Washington, had
given me a letter to the third Earl of St. Germans,
a former Postmaster-General in Peel's Cabinet, pre-
viously associated with a mission of mercy to Spain in
1835, when he most successfully negotiated with the
two parties to the civil war for an exchange of pris-
oners, and was the immediate instrument of saving the
lives of others at the peril of his own. He was the
lineal descendant of that great parliamentary leader,
Sir John Eliot, the friend of Hampden, of whom the
late John Forster wrote so instructive a biography, by
which it seems that Governor Winthrop's reasons for
coming to New England were the subject of considera-



54 A FRAGMENT

tion and correspondence between Eliot and Hampden
while Eliot was imprisoned in the Tower.

I remember visiting the Tower in company with
Lady St. Germans and her son Granville Eliot (who
fell in the Crimean campaign), and we lingered in the
room where this great martyr of bold and free speech
died. Lady St. Germans was a granddaughter of Lord
Cornwallis, and one day when I had been dining with
her husband he showed me the sword of Tippoo Saib,
which Cornwallis captured in India, — adding pleasantly
that he was not able to show me the sword Cornwallis
wore at Yorktown, as he unfortunately lost it !

Lord St. Germans was subsequently Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland and Lord Steward of the Queen's household,
in which latter capacity he accompanied the Prince of
Wales to the United States. Nothing could exceed his
repeated kindness to me and mine, and our friendship
ended only with his death in 1877. Lady St. Germans,
a most amiable and excellent woman, died on the very
day (it has been said) on which her son's regiment
entered London in triumph on its return from the
Crimea, and when a fresh sense of her bereavement
was forced upon her already shattered health.

My passing allusion to Sir Richard Pakenham recalls
our intimacy while I was in Congress and he Minister
at Washington. He was a frank, hearty, honest Irish-
man, with no diplomatic reserve or equivoque about
him, with no superabundance of accomplishment, but
with talent and experience enough to do his work ad-
vantageously for England and acceptably for our gov-



OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 55

ernment. His predecessor was another bachelor, Heney
Stephen Fox (nephew of Charles James Fox), whose
eccentricities were the laugh of Washington when I
first entered Congress. Rising generally when other
people were almost ready to go to bed, when a ceremony
or a duty compelled hiin to an earlier appearance, Fox
was like an owl in the daytime. " How strange," said
he to Madame Calderon, one morning at a State
funeral, — "how strange we look to each other by
daylight!" I stood near him at the inauguration of
President William Henry Harrison in 1841, and shall
never forget how like a figure of fun he looked, with
a uniform which he had outgrown, and which he had
probably brought from Brazil, his white cassimere
trousers barely reaching his ankles, and his chateau de
Iras tawny with time and use ! As Harrison alluded to
foreign nations, Fox, as doyen of the diplomatic corps,
advanced slowly toward him ; but before he could get
near enough to hear, the President had changed his
topic to " our brethren, the red men." The expression,
half smile and half chagrin, which came over Fox's face
at that moment, as he fell back into the throng, defies
description. His debts compelled him to economy, and
he rarely gave dinners. A year or two before I knew
him, he had invited a large party to his house, — Mr.
Clay, Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Webster, and all the giants (for
there were giants in those days), — and when they
were all assembled, he said, " Gentlemen, now be good
enough to put on your hats and follow me." And thus
saying, he led the way to a neighboring eating-house !
But he was an agreeable and accomplished man, with a



56 A FRAGMENT

noble head and a ready wit ; and nobody could have
been more agreeable than he was at a little dinner
given for the historian Prescott by our friend Calderon
de la Barca, the Spanish Minister. His death at
Washington from an overdose of opium sufficiently
revealed the secret of his oddity, — if, indeed, it had
been a secret to any one who saw and knew him.

Pakenham had not a particle of Fox's peculiarity,
and rendered himself all the more acceptable by the
contrast. It happened that he was in Ireland on leave
when I visited Dublin in 1847 ; and as I could not
accept his pressing invitation to go to him in the
country, he came to Dublin and spent four or five
days with me. We drove to Donnybrook Fair
together in a jaunting car, and the next day to
Castletown (the princely seat of his cousin, Colonel
Connolly), and the day after drove through the
Powerscourt demesne in the beautiful county Wicklow.
We dined together, too, with Lord Clarendon, then
Lord-Lieutenant, at the Vice-regal Lodge in Phoenix
Park, and at Sir Philip Crampton's at Lough Bray.
Thus the only regret I had at being unable to visit
him was from losing the promised privilege of seeing
Miss Edgeworth, the authoress, who was a near
neighbor and friend of his. At home or abroad, at
Washington or in Dublin, Sir Richard was a delightful
companion, and his constant kindness attached me
strongly to him.

Nor can I say much less of Sir John Crampton, who
succeeded Sir Richard, and who was the son of Sir



Ht



OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 5



Philip, my host at Lough Bray. The latter, by the
way, was a great surgeon, and had been medical adviser
to all the Lord-Lieutenants for nearly half a century.
Among others he had attended the Marquis of Welles-
ley, and had been intimate with him and our American
Mrs. Patterson at the time of their courtship and mar-
riage. I should not venture to put on paper his
account of their love passages, which were at once
comic and pathetic. Sir Philip looked younger than
his son, whose premature white hairs when he came
to Washington suggested sixty instead of forty. The
frost was only on the outside, however, and he had not
a little amiability as well as ability.

After Crampton came Sir Henry Bulwer, afterward
Lord Bailing, the very impersonation of diplomacy, —
artful, accomplished, capable of intrigue, not afflicted
with scruples, though a valetudinarian in all other
respects ; a man of real talent and of many agreeable
qualities, a charming writer and a good speaker, whose
compliments at public dinners were always gracefully
turned.

After Bulwer came Lord Napier, not inferior to Bul-
wer in the arts of diplomacy, superior to him in the
graces, and of a personal figure and address quite fasci-
nating. He was a man of great elegance, and rendered
himself exceedingly agreeable in social life. His little
speech at the Harvard festival, while I was President of
the Alumni, was one of the most felicitous I ever heard.
His admiration for Washington Allston's coloring was



58 A FRAGMENT

unbounded. He told me repeatedly that no other
living artist of any country could have painted such
pictures; and he tried hard to persuade the British
Government to purchase one for the National Gallery
in London. Lord Napier had himself written a book
on modern Italian art, of which I have a copy, though
not of his gift, for he said he was ashamed of it, and
would not let me see it. He gave me, however, an
interesting biography of his ancestor, the great master
of Napier and author of Logarithms, by his cousin the
late Mark Napier. Lord Napier was a delightful com-
panion during a summer which I passed with him at
the Nahant hotel, where I formed the acquaintance of
his lovely wife, — one of the most saintly persons I
have ever known, as full of goodness of heart as of
grace and sweetness of manner, and whose image will
always have a place in my little gallery of cherished
memories.

The Napiers were followed by Lord Lyons, an
excellent man of business, a bachelor, and wholly
wedded to his profession, — a plain, blunt, genial
Englishman, with not a little touch of the sailor
manner, which he may have caught from the Admiral
his father. I had long been out of Congress when
he was at Washington, but met him frequently else-
where, and dined at least once with him there at his
own table, when Everett and I went on to present a
memorial for peace just before the Civil War. I dined
with hhn afterward in Paris, where he was long
Ambassador, and in London, after he had retired



OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 59

from that post. An ancestor of his, Capt. Henry
Lyons, of Antigua, married a granddaughter of Gov-
ernor Winthrop's son Samuel, who was himself Deputy-
Governor of Antigua, so that we called ourselves
kinsmen.

He was, if I mistake not, a minister of more practical
ability than any England had sent to America since Mr.
Stratford Canning, the late Lord Stratford de Red-
cliffe, whom I also knew and with whom I remember
dining in 1867. He then had a great desire to talk
about his old friend John Quincy Adams, who was
our Secretary of State while he was Minister at
Washington. A man of grand presence, somewhat
stern and stately, he knew how to unbend gracefully,
and was long one of the most impressive and interest-
ins fig-ures in the House of Lords. The recent bio-
graphy of him, by Stanley Lane Poole, does no more
than justice to his really great career and character,
and, as Dean Stanley truly said in a sermon in West-
minster Abbey the day after his funeral: "No one
could enter into his presence, either as he sat on what
may be called his throne at Constantinople, or during
the long years of his dignified retirement, without
feeling that they had seen a king of men."

Lord Lyons was succeeded at Washington by Sir
Frederick Bruce, an amiable and excellent man,
whose diplomatic career was cut short by his much-
regretted death in Boston, after a short illness. I
had previously known his elder brothers : Lord Elgin,
when Governor-General of Canada, and General Robert



60 A FRAGMENT

Bruce, when head of the Prince of Wales's household.
All three brothers made a very agreeable hnpression
in society, both at home and abroad.

Of English men of letters I have already mentioned
Rogers and Wordsworth, Hallam and Milman, but
I must not forget Earl Stanhope, the historian, —
Lord Mahon, as he was when I first knew him, — a
laborious student and an earnest seeker after truth,
whose works will always be consulted for their substan-
tial merits, and as valuable authorities on the subjects
to which they relate. My relations with him and his
charming wife were particularly pleasant, and I was
among the many who mourned the untimely death of
his attractive daughter, the late Lady Beauchamp.

At a breakfast at Stanhope's one of the guests was
Thackeray, w^iom I had known in America, when he
was more than once at my house. I always associate
him with a visit I paid my dear friend, John Pendleton
Kennedy, in Washington, where he was then Secretary
of the Navy, and while Washington Irving was my
only fellow-guest. One dinner at Kennedy's, with
Living, Thackeray, and Tom Corwin, lingers in my
memory. Wit, humor, anecdote, reminiscence, and
sparkling merriment abounded to overflowing. Thack-
eray was approaching his end when I met him at
Lord Stanhope's, and ominous shadows were gathering
over his brow. He apologized for not calling upon
me on account of infirmities, but begged me to come to
see him before I left London. I did so, and found
him, as he said, "taking his first tea and toast for



OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 61

many days." His daughter was ministering to him,
and he seemed really ill. His somewhat cynical tem-
perament was not, however, wholly subdued. " Do
you know an American named AUibone ? " said he.
" He has sent me a big Dictionary, and wants me to
acknowledge it ; but I have not done it, and do not
mean to." I told him I knew Dr. Allibone well, and
valued him highly; that his Dictionary of Authors
was a work of great labor, and as useful in its way
as the Dictmmaire des Contemporains of Vapereau ; and
that the author was, Uke Vapereau, one of the most
obliging of men. "I thank you, I thank you," said
he, instantly, "for this explanation. I will write to
him at once, and make amends for my neglect." And
he did write to him in a cordial and complimentary
style, as I subsequently learned from Allibone him-
self. Thackeray's cynicism was only skin-deep. He
had a large heart below.

I did not meet Dickens in England, though I had



seen much of him at Washington during his first visit
to America.^ He then brought me a letter of intro-
duction from Mr. Everett, our Minister to England,
while I was keeping house at Washington with Kennedy.
Kennedy and I called at once and asked him to dine ;
but he had made his engagements long before his
arrival at Washington, and was obliged to refuse all
new invitations. He thus refused to dine at the
President's and at Ex-President John Quincy Adams's,
so that we lesser notabilities had no cause to complain.

1 I was iu Europe when he came last.



62 A FRAGMENT

I dined with him at Mayor Seaton's, when Mrs. Madison,
Clay, and Webster were among the guests, and after-
ward took him and Mrs. Dickens to the President's
reception, where we revolved around the East Room