I have written against --- one of the
cleverest pamphlets I ever read, which I think would cover --- and him
with ridicule. At least it made me laugh very much in reading it; and
there I stood, with the printer's devil and the real devil close to me;
and then I said, 'After all, this is very funny, and very well written,
but it will give great pain to people who have been very kind and good to
me through life.'" Finally Sydney threw it into the fire.

MRS MEYNELL, _June_ 1840.--"A Canon at the opera! Where have you lived?
In what habitations of the heathen? I thank you, shuddering; and am ever
your unseducible friend."

COUNTESS GREY, 29th _Nov._ 1840.--"You never say a word of yourself, dear
Lady Grey. You have that dreadful sin of anti-egotism. When I am ill, I
mention it to all my friends and relations, to the lord lieutenant of the
county, the justices, the bishop, the churchwardens, the booksellers and
editors of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews."

LADY ASHBURTON, 1841.--"Still I can preach a little; and I wish you had
witnessed, the other day at St Paul's, my incredible boldness in
attacking the Puseyites. I told them that they made the Christian
religion a religion of postures and ceremonies, of circumflexions and
genuflexions, of garments and vestures, of ostentation and parade."

R. MURCHISON, 26_th Dec._ 1841.--"Immediately before my window there are
twelve large oranges on one tree." He adds that they are not Linnaean
orange-trees but bay-trees with oranges tied on.

LADY DAVY, 11_th Sept._ 1842.--"I have not yet discovered of what I am to
die, but I rather believe I shall be burnt alive by the Puseyites."

LADY GREY, 19_th Sept._ 1842.--"I tire of Combe Florey after two months,
and sigh for a change, even for the worse. This disposition in me is
hereditary; my father lived, within my recollection, in nineteen
different places."

LADY HOLLAND, 6_th Nov._ 1842.--Asked by her to go to opera, he replies:
"It would be rather out of etiquette for a Canon of St Paul's to go to an
opera; and where etiquette prevents me from doing things disagreeable to
myself, I am a perfect martinet."

COUNTESS GREY, 21_st Dec._ 1842.--"I am quite delighted with the
railroad. I came down in the public carriages without any fatigue. . . .
Distance is abolished--scratch that out of the catalogue of human evils."

C. DICKENS, 6_th Jan._ 1843.--"You have been so used to these sort of
impertinences that I believe y