I have often remarked your lordship
with admiration, talking big and blustering loud, so as to frighten
urchins who were about half your lordship's size, when you had no
precise meaning in any thing you said. And I shall never forget, the
longest day I have to live, when I hugged you in my arms in a kind of
prophetic transport, in consequence of your whispering me, in the midst
of a room-full of company, in so sly a manner that nobody could observe
you, that you had just seen John the coachman bestow upon Betty the
cook-maid, a most devout and cordial embrace. From your rawest infancy
you were as much distinguished, as Milton represents the goddess Hebe to
have been, by "nods and becks and wreathed smiles;" with this
difference, that in her they were marks of gaiety, and in you of
demureness; that in her they were unrestrained and general, and in you
intended only for a single _confidant_. My lord, reflecting upon all
these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that I treated your
lordship even in clouts with the reverence due to an infant Jove, and
always considered myself as superintending the institution of the first
statesman that ever existed.
But, my lord, it has ever been my opinion, that let nature do as much as
she will, it is in the power of education to do still more.
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