He whom even his admirers generally accounted the most distant and frigid of men here forgets all distinctions of rank, and pours out all his thoughts with the ingenuousness of a schoolboy.

He imparts without reserve secrets of the highest moment.

He explains with perfect simplicity vast designs affecting all the governments of Europe.

Mingled with his communications on such subjects are other communications of a very different, but perhaps not of a less interesting kind.

All his adventures, all his personal feelings, his long runs after enormous stags, his carousals on St.Hubert's day, the growth of his plantations, the failure of his melons, the state of his stud, his wish to procure an easy pad nag for his wife, his vexation at learning that one of his household, after ruining a girl of good family, refused to marry her, his fits of sea sickness, his coughs, his headaches, his devotional moods, his gratitude for the divine protection after a great escape, his struggles to submit himself to the divine will after a disaster, are described with an amiable garrulity hardly to have been expected from the most discreet and sedate statesman of the age.