His work did not prevent him from mixing pretty freely with men in
society, though he seems to have thought that little of what passed was
worth transcribing, nor in truth had Mr. Gladstone ever much or any of
the rare talent of the born diarist. Here are one or two miscellanea
which must be made to serve:--

_April 25/38._--A long sitting and conversation with Mr. Rogers
after the Milnes' marriage breakfast. He spoke unfavourably of
Bulwer; well of Milnes' verses; said his father wished them not to
be published, because such authorship and its repute would clash
with the parliamentary career of his son. Mr. Rogers thought a
great author would undoubtedly stand better in parliament from
being such; but that otherwise the additament of authorship, unless
on germane subjects, would be a hindrance. He quoted Swift on
women.... He has a good and tender opinion of them; but went nearly
the length of Maurice (when mentioned to him) that they had not
that specific faculty of understanding which lies beneath the
reason. Peel was odd, in the contrast of a familiar first address,
with slackness of manner afterwards. The Duke of Wellington took
the greatest interest in the poor around him at Strathfieldsay, had
all of eloquence except the words. Mr. Rogers quoted a saying about
Brougham that he was not so much a master of the language as
mastered by it. I doubt very much the truth of this. Brougham's
management of his sentences, as I remember the late Lady Canning
observing to me, is surely most wonderful. He never loses the
thread, and yet he habitually twists it into a thousand varieties
of intricate form. He said, when Stanley came out in public life,
and at the age of thirty, he was by far the cleverest young man of
the day; and at sixty he would be the same, still by far the
cleverest young man of the day.

PROGRESS IN PUBLIC LIFE

_June 13th._--Sir R. Peel dined at Mr. Dugdale's. After dinner he
spoke of Wilberforce; believed him to be an excellent man
independently of the book, or would not have been favourably
impressed by the records of his being in society, and then going
home and describing as lost in sin those with whom he had been
enjoying himself. Upon the other hand, however, he would have
exposed himself to the opposite reproach had