n. The
solemn courtesy with which he compliments his "elegant Marian" reminds
us now and then of the dignified air with which Sir Charles Grandison
bowed over Miss Byron's hand in the cedar parlor.

After some months Hastings prepared to follow his wife to England. When
it was announced that he was about to quit his office, the feeling of
the society which he had so long governed manifested itself by many
signs. Addresses poured in from Europeans and Asiatics, from civil
functionaries, soldiers, and traders. On the day on which he delivered
up the keys of office, a crowd of friends and admirers formed a lane to
the quay where he embarked. Several barges escorted him far down the
river; and some attached friends refused to quit him till the low coast
of Bengal was fading from the view, and till the pilot was leaving the
ship.

Of his voyage little is known, except that he amused himself with books
and with his pen; and that among the compositions by which he beguiled
the tediousness of that long leisure, was a pleasing imitation of
Horace's Otium Divos rogat. This little poem was inscribed to Mr. Shore,
afterwards Lord Teignmouth, a man of whose integrity, humanity, and
honor it is impossible to speak too highly; but who, like some other
excellent members of the civil service, extended to the conduct of his
friend Hastings an indulgence of which his own conduct never stood in
need.

The voyage was, for those times, very speedy. Hastings was little more
than four months on the sea. In June, 1785, he landed at Plymouth,
posted to London, appeared at Court, paid his respects in Leadenhall
Street, and then retired with his wife to Cheltenham.

He was greatly pleased with his reception. The King treated him with
marked distinction. The Queen, who had already incurred much censure on
account of the favor which, in spite of the ordinary severity of her
virtue, she had shown to the "elegant Marian," was not less gracious to
Hastings. The Directors received him in a solemn sitting; and their
chairman read to him a vote of thanks which they had passed without one
dissentient voice. "I find myself," said Hastings, in a letter written
about a quarter of a year after his arrival in England,--"I find myself
everywhere, and universally, treated with evidences, apparent even to my
own observation, that I possess the good opinion of my country."

The confident and exulting tone of his correspondence about this time is
the more rema