to feel much for my poor uncle's illness. Though, as usual, very busy,
he accompanied me to the Lamb to see my father and cheer him up. Roland
still continued to mend, as the surgeon phrased it; and as we went back
to St. James's Square, Trevanion had the consideration to release me
from my oar in his galley for the next few days. My mind, relieved from
my anxiety for Roland, now turned to my new friend. It had not been
without an object that I had questioned the young man as to his
knowledge of French. Trevanion had a large correspondence in foreign
countries which was carried on in that language; and here I could be but
of little help to him. He himself, though he spoke and wrote French with
fluency and grammatical correctness, wanted that intimate knowledge
of the most delicate and diplomatic of all languages to satisfy his
classical purism.

For Trevanion was a terrible word-weigher. His taste was the plague of
my life and his own. His prepared speeches (or rather perorations) were
the most finished pieces of cold diction that could be conceived under
the marble portico of the Stoics,--so filed and turned, trimmed and
tamed, that they never admitted a sentence that could warm the heart, or
one that could offend the ear. He had so great a horror of a vulgarism
that, like Canning, he would have made a periphrasis of a couple of
lines to avoid using the word "cat." It was only in extempore speaking
that a ray of his real genius could indiscreetly betray itself. One may
judge what labor such a super-refinement of taste would inflict upon a
man writing in a language not his own to some distinguished statesman
or some literary institution,--knowing that language just well enough
to recognize all the native elegances he failed to attain. Trevanion at
that very moment was employed upon a statistical document intended as
a communication to a Society at Copenhagen of which he was all honorary
member. It had been for three weeks the torment of the whole house,
especially of poor Fanny (whose French was the best at our joint
disposal). But Trevanion had found her phraseology too mincing, too
effeminate, too much that of the boudoir. Here, then, was an opportunity
to introduce my new friend and test the capacities that I fancied he
possessed. I therefore, though with some hesitation, led the subject to
"Remarks on the Mineral Treasures of Great Britain and Ireland" (such
was the title of the work intended to enlighten the savan