My first entry this year is to record a loss. Another old friend is gone,—Sir Robert Wilson. Sir Robert Wilson was born in 1777. He entered the army very early. He was much employed on diplomatic missions of delicacy and importance. In 1812, he was associated with Sir Raoul Liston on a mission to the Emperor Alexander, to prevail on him to make peace with Turkey, and not to enter into any negociations with Napoleon. He had seen a great deal of service; but the action with which his name will be for ever associated in the memory of Englishmen is the generous and gallant assistance he lent to effect the escape of Count Lavallette, generously perilling both his personal liberty and his position in life. It was an act of pure generosity, for he had never even seen the Count. It was in January, 1816. Lavallette had been condemned to be guillotined, and all the attempts to

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soften the stupid and callous heart of Louis XVIII. had failed. Lavallette’s heroic wife had effected her husband’s escape from the walls of the Conciergerie, and he had been concealed in Paris; but the police were on his track, and he must soon have been discovered if Sir Robert Wilson and two of his friends had not given their services to aid his escape over the frontier into Belgium. Sir Robert Wilson conveyed him in his own carriage in the uniform of a British officer, as far as Mons.

The escape was entirely successful; but on Sir Robert’s return to Paris the police, seeing his coach covered with mud, as though from a long journey, set their spies upon his servant, and contrived to extract from him that his master had been to Mons with an officer of the guards who could not speak a word of English. They bribed him to carry the correspondence of Sir Robert to the prefect of police (for he was trusted by his master to carry his letters). The servant betrayed his trust, and the first letter they got hold of was a long despatch to Earl Grey, containing full details of the escape. Sir Robert and his two friends were immediately apprehended; but eventually they did not fall victims to their generosity. Sir Robert, when young, had been a very handsome man, with a fine commanding presence.

I was most agreeably surprised by your letter of the 17th February. I had heard and believed that you were living in Dublin. You may be quite convinced that I consider it a bonne fortune pour moi that you inhabit London. To enjoy again your agreeable society will be my tardy compensation for the long, weary, unintellectual years inflicted on me in this my dull native country, to which I have never owed advantages, pleasures or happiness. I owe nothing to my country; no one expects me to be grateful for the evil chance of having been born here. I shall emancipate myself, par le grâce de Dieu, about the middle of July next; and I will either write to you before I leave New York or immediately after my arrival at Liverpool. I had given up all correspondence with my friends in Europe, during my vegetation in this Baltimore. What could I write about, except the fluctuations in the security and consequent prices of American Stocks. There is nothing here worth attention or interest, save the money market. Society, conversation, friendship, belong to older countries, and are not yet cultivated in any part of the United States which I have visited. You ought to thank your stars for your European birth; you may believe me when I assure you that it is only distance from republics which lends enchantment to

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the view of them. I hope that about the middle of next July I shall begin to put the Atlantic between the advantages and honours of democracy and myself. France, je l’espère dans son interêt is in a state of transition, and will not let her brilliant society be put under an extinguisher nommée la République. The Emperor hurled me back on what I most hated on earth—my Baltimore obscurity; even that shock could not divest me of the admiration I felt for his genius and glory. I have ever been an imperial Bonapartiste quand même, and I do feel enchanted at the homage paid by six millions of voices, to his memory in voting an imperial President; le prestige du nom has, therefore, elected the Prince, who has my best wishes, my most ardent hopes for an empire. I never could endure universal suffrage until it elected the nephew of an emperor for the chief of a republic; and I shall be charmed with universal suffrage once more if it insists upon their President of France becoming a monarch. I am disinterested personally. It is not my desire ever to return to France.

My dear Lady Morgan, do you know that having been cheated out of the fortune which I ought to have inherited from my late rich and unjust parent, I have only ten thousand dollars, or two thousand pounds English, which conveniently I can disburse annually. You talk of my “princely income,” which convinces me that you are ignorant of the paucity of my means. I have all my life had poverty to contend with, pecuniary difficulties to torture and mortify me; and but for my industry, and energy, and my determination to

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conquer at least a decent sufficiency to live on in Europe, I might have remained as poor as you saw me in the year 1816.

I shall have much to tell you. Lamartine, and Chateaubriand are giving their memoirs to the public. The first de son vivant. I am now reading Les Mémoires d’ outre tombe. I have no doubt that your memoirs would be infinitely better, more piquant, and more natural. When I knew Lamartine he was chargé d’affaires from Charles X. Florence was then a charming place; I met him every night at parties. How little did I foresee that he was to become a poetical republican, and that dear Florence was to be travestie en République! ni l’un ni l’autre, ne gagnera par le troc. Hoping that England may remain steady and faithful to monarchical principles, that at least some refined society may be left in the world, I shall, Dieu permettant, have the satisfaction of seeing you in the course of next summer.

May.—The death of my husband’s and my own dear old friend, Horace Smith, has not the least shocked me, being long expected. He was my blessed Morgan’s intimate friend—an intimacy founded on the singleness of their character, their pure and honest lives, and the similarity of their political and social opinions and habits. Gray, tender, kind, hospitable,

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and intellectual. I have known him since the first day of my marriage.

Death of Lord Jeffrey. Jeffrey gone! Oh, for the last, gay, classic evening he spent with us at our Taudis, in Grosvenor Place! How many bright and brilliant women who were with us that evening are gone now!

December 30.—Confined to my room; my maid reading to me Shirley, by the author of Jane Eyre. It is high-flown, and the talent factitious. Great force of style, great feebleness of action, incoherent in its working out; but original in its thinking.