nt religious sects and against the
most illiberal Church to which he belongs--but how could I be happy? The
more he talked of what I wished to hear, the more idiotically shy I felt
and the more impossible it became to me to ask one of the many questions or
make one of the many remarks (foolish very likely, but what would that have
signified?) which were filling my mind."

_December_ 24, 1836, BOWOOD

Mr. Moore sang a great deal, and one song quite overcame Lady
Lansdowne. At dinner I sat between Henry [11] and Miss Fazakerlie,
who told me that last year she thought me impenetrable. How sad it
is to appear to every one different from what one is.

I like both her and Henry better than ever, but oh, I dislike
myself more than ever--and so does everybody else--almost. Is it
vain to wish it otherwise?--no, surely it is not. If my manner is
so bad must there not be some real fault in me that makes it so,
and ought I not to pray that it may be corrected?

[11] Afterwards Lord Lansdowne and the father of the present Marquis.

She read a great deal at this time; Jeremy Taylor, Milton, and Wesley,
Heber, Isaac Walton, Burnet; Burns was her favourite on her happiest days.
She thought that work among the poor of London might help her; but her time
was so taken up both with looking after the younger children and by society
that she seems to have got no further than wondering how to set about it.

On June 20th, 1837, William IV died, and in July Parliament was dissolved.
On the 4th they were back again at Minto.

Her uncle John Elliot was successful in his candidature of Hawick.
"Hawick," she writes, "has done her duty well indeed--in all ways; for the
sheriff's terrible riots have been nothing at all. Some men ducked and the
clothes of some torn off. We all felt so confused with joy that we did not
know what to do all the evening." These rejoicings ended suddenly: Lady
Minto was called to the death-bed of her mother, Mrs. Brydone.

_August_ 19, 1837, MINTO

I feel this time as I always do after a great misfortune, that the
shock at first is nothing to the quiet grief afterwards, when one
really begins to understand what has happened.

I cannot help constantly repeating over and over to myself that she
is gone, and sometimes I do not know how to bear it and however to
be comforted for not having seen her once more.

When the new Queen's Parliament met aft