a most favorable impression of the talents and attainments of his
visitor. Long after, when Hastings was ruling the immense population of
British India, the old philosopher wrote to him, and referred in the
most courtly terms, though with great dignity, to their short but
agreeable intercourse.

Hastings soon began to look again towards India. He had little to attach
him to England; and his pecuniary embarrassments were great. He
solicited his old masters the Directors for employment. They acceded to
his request, with high compliments both to his abilities and to his
integrity, and appointed him a Member of Council at Madras. It would be
unjust not to mention that, though forced to borrow money for his
outfit, he did not withdraw any portion of the sum which he had
appropriated to the relief of his distressed relations. In the spring of
1769 he embarked on board of the Duke of Grafton, and commenced a voyage
distinguished by incidents which might furnish matter for a novel.

Among the passengers in the Duke of Grafton was a German of the name of
Imhoff. He called himself a baron; but he was in distressed
circumstances, and was going out to Madras as a portrait-painter, in the
hope of picking up some of the pagodas which were then lightly got and
as lightly spent by the English in India. The baron was accompanied by
his wife, a native, we have somewhere read, of Archangel. This young
woman who, born under the Arctic circle, was destined to play the part
of a Queen under the tropic of Cancer, had an agreeable person, a
cultivated mind, and manners in the highest degree engaging. She
despised her husband heartily, and, as the story which we have to tell
sufficiently proves, not without reason. She was interested by the
conversation and flattered by the attentions of Hastings. The situation
was indeed perilous. No place is so propitious to the formation either
of close friendships or of deadly enmities as an Indiaman. There are
very few people who do not find a voyage which lasts several months
insupportably dull. Anything is welcome which may break that long
monotony, a sail, a shark, an albatross, a man overboard. Most
passengers find some resource in eating twice as many meals as on land.
But the great devices for killing the time are quarrelling and flirting.
The facilities for both these exciting pursuits are great. The inmates
of the ship are thrown together far more than in any country-seat or
boarding-house. None