. He suffered
martyrdom with her; and seems to have been himself, in all good-natured
easy-going ways, just what we know him now."

There were at this time some fresh arrivals of travelling English at
Lausanne, outside their own little circle, and among them another
baronet and his family made amusing appearance. "We have another English
family here, one Sir Joseph and his lady, and ten children. Sir Joseph,
a large baronet something in the Graham style, with a little,
loquacious, flat-faced, damaged-featured, _old young_ wife. They are
fond of society, and couldn't well have less. They delight in a view,
and live in a close street at Ouchy, down among the drunken boatmen and
the drays and omnibuses, where nothing whatever is to be seen but the
locked wheels of carts scraping down the uneven, steep, stone pavement.
The baronet plays double-dummy all day long, with an unhappy Swiss whom
he has entrapped for that purpose; the baronet's lady pays visits; and
the baronet's daughters play a Lausanne piano, which must be heard to be
appreciated. . . ."

Another sketch in the same letter touches little more than the
eccentricities (but all in good taste and good humour) of the subject of
it, who is still gratefully remembered by English residents in Italy for
his scholarly munificence, and for very valuable service conferred by it
on Italian literature. "Another curious man is backwards and forwards
here--a Lord Vernon,[126] who is well-informed, a great Italian scholar
deep in Dante, and a very good-humoured gentleman, but who has fallen
into the strange infatuation of attending every rifle-match that takes
place in Switzerland, accompanied by two men who load rifles for him,
one after another, which he has been frequently known to fire off, two a
minute, for fourteen hours at a stretch, without once changing his
position or leaving the ground. He wins all kinds of prizes; gold
watches, flags, teaspoons, tea-boards, and so forth; and is constantly
travelling about with them, from place to place, in an extraordinary
carriage, where you touch a spring and a chair flies out, touch another
spring and a bed appears, touch another spring and a closet of pickles
opens, touch another spring and disclose a pantry. While Lady Vernon
(said to be handsome and accomplished) is continually cutting across
this or that Alpine pass in the night, to meet him on the road, for a
minute or two, on one of his excursions; these being the only time