as a high and
strong character, very true, very noble, and, I think,
intelligible, which (as you know) I think rare in politicians. My
relations with him will be kept up in one sense by having to act,
and I fear act much, as his executor and trustee, with De Tabley,
an excellent colleague, who discharged the same duty for the Duke
of Hamilton and for Canning.

_Dec. 28._--I cannot give you a full account of Lord Derby's
translation [of the _Iliad_], but there is no doubt in my mind
that it is a very notable production. He always had in a high
degree the inborn faculty of a scholar, with this he has an
enviable power of expression, and an immense command of the
English tongue; add the quality of dash which appears in his
version quite as much as in his speeches. Undoubtedly if he
_wrought_ his execution as Tennyson does, results might have been
attained beyond the actual ones; but, while I will not venture to
speak of the precision of the version, various passages in the
parts I have read are of very high excellence. Try to find out
what Tennyson thinks of it.

_1865_

_Aug. 8._--My reading has been little, but even without your
question I was going to mention that I had caught at the name of
"_L'Ami Fritz_," seeing it was by the author of the _Conscrit_,
and had read it. I can recommend it too, though the subject does
not at first sight look ravishing: it tells how a middle-aged
middle-class German bachelor comes to marry the daughter of his
own farm bailiff. Some parts are full of grace; there is a
tax-gatherer's speech on the duty of paying taxes, which came home
to _my_ heart. Though it a little reminds me of a sermon which I
heard preached in an aisle of the Duomo of Milan to the boys of a
Sunday school (said to have been founded by St. Charles Borromeo)
on the absolute necessity of paying tithes! The golden breadths of
harvest are now a most lively joy to me. But we have had great
official troubles in the death of Mr. Arbuthnot, a _pillar_ of the
treasury, and a really notable man.

_Sept. 12._--I am working off my post as well as I can with the
bands playing and flags fluttering outside. By and by I am going
to carve rounds of beef for some part of four hundred diners. The
ladies are only allowed tea. Our _weather_ anxieties are great,
but all is going we