rtues which
cannot be denied him.

[1] [Sir Lancelot Shadwell, Vice-Chancellor of England.]

April 3rd, 1834 {p.077}

[Page Head: PERSONAL REFLECTIONS.]

Yesterday I was forty years old, an anniversary much too
melancholy to think of; and when I reflect how intolerably these
forty years have been wasted, how unprofitably spent, how little
store laid up for the future, how few the pleasurable recollections
of the past, a feeling of pain and humiliation comes across me
that makes my cheeks tingle and burn as I write. It is very seldom
that I indulge in moralising in this Journal of mine; if anybody
ever reads it, what will they care for my feelings and regrets? It
is no reason, they will think, that because I have wasted my time
they should waste theirs in reading the record of follies which
are nothing more than the great mass of the world are every day
committing; idleness, vanity, and selfishness are our besetting
sins, and we are perpetually whirled about by one or other of
them. It is certainly more amusing, both to other people and to
myself (when I look back at what I have written), to read the
anecdotes and events of the day than all this moral stuff (by
which I mean stuff as applied to me, not as being despicable in
itself), but every now and then the fancy takes me, and I think I
find relief by giving vent on paper to that which I cannot say to
anybody. 'Cela fait partie de cette doctrine interieure qu'il ne
faut jamais communiquer' (Stendhal). _Jam satis est_, and I will
go to other things--the foreign or domestic scraps I have picked
up.

Parliament being _en relache_, there are few people in town.
William Ponsonby, whom I met the other evening, told me he had
just returned from the assizes at Dorchester, where some men had
been convicted of illegal association. On the event of this
trial, he said, the lower and labouring classes had their eyes
fixed, and the conviction was therefore of great consequence; any
relaxation of the sentence would have been impossible under the
circumstances, and though a great disposition was evinced, partly
by the press, by petitions, and by some speeches in Parliament,
to get them left off more easily, Melbourne very wisely did not
wait for more manifestations, but packed them off, and they are
gone. William Ponsonby told me that the demoralisation in that
part of the country is very great--the distress not severe, no
political disaffection, but a recklessness, a