“‘There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this world, Sancho,’ says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not), and so I have often found it
“Page 128, article 91, of this collection I had alluded to
my friend Lord Clare in terms such as my feelings
suggested. About a week or
| 554 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1821. |
“This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years between the present time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like rising from the grave, to me. Clare too was much agitated—more in appearance than was myself; for I could feel his heart beat to his fingers’ ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own which made me think so. He told me that I should find a note from him left at Bologna. I did. We were obliged to part; for our different journeys, he for Rome, I for Pisa, but with the promise to meet again in spring. We were but five minutes together, and on the public road; but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence which could be weighed against them. He had heard that I was coming on, and had left his letter for me at Bologna, because the people with whom he was travelling could not wait longer.
“Of all I have ever known, he has always been the least altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad passions.
“I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others, during absence and distance.”
