ht; but latterly, as Lord Stanhope noticed, no
historian ever took this trouble, and whatever Macaulay said was final.

On another occasion I met at Lord Stanhope's house, one of his parties
of historians and other literary men, and amongst them were Motley and
Grote. After luncheon I walked about Chevening Park for nearly an hour
with Grote, and was much interested by his conversation and pleased by
the simplicity and absence of all pretension in his manners.

Long ago I dined occasionally with the old Earl, the father of the
historian; he was a strange man, but what little I knew of him I
liked much. He was frank, genial, and pleasant. He had strongly marked
features, with a brown complexion, and his clothes, when I saw him,
were all brown. He seemed to believe in everything which was to others
utterly incredible. He said one day to me, "Why don't you give up your
fiddle-faddle of geology and zoology, and turn to the occult sciences!"
The historian, then Lord Mahon, seemed shocked at such a speech to me,
and his charming wife much amused.

The last man whom I will mention is Carlyle, seen by me several times at
my brother's house, and two or three times at my own house. His talk was
very racy and interesting, just like his writings, but he sometimes
went on too long on the same subject. I remember a funny dinner at my
brother's, where, amongst a few others, were Babbage and Lyell, both of
whom liked to talk. Carlyle, however, silenced every one by haranguing
during the whole dinner on the advantages of silence. After dinner
Babbage, in his grimmest manner, thanked Carlyle for his very
interesting lecture on silence.

Carlyle sneered at almost every one: one day in my house he called
Grote's 'History' "a fetid quagmire, with nothing spiritual about it." I
always thought, until his 'Reminiscences' appeared, that his sneers were
partly jokes, but this now seems rather doubtful. His expression was
that of a depressed, almost despondent yet benevolent man; and it is
notorious how heartily he laughed. I believe that his benevolence was
real, though stained by not a little jealousy. No one can doubt about
his extraordinary power of drawing pictures of things and men--far more
vivid, as it appears to me, than any drawn by Macaulay. Whether his
pictures of men were true ones is another question.

He has been all-powerful in impressing some grand moral truths on the
minds of men. On the other hand, his views about slavery w