1826-1827] Lady Byron 203 



report it to her brother and he to Canning. She said it 

 was perfectly true that the King was very angry with the 

 ex-ministers, above all with the Duke of Wellington. He 

 said Canning had in the first instance been forced on him, 

 and then they wanted to force him to send him out, but this 

 time he should be his own master. 



Madame Sismondi to her niece Fanny Wedgwood. 



CED&NE, July 10 [1827]. 



. . . The house still feels very empty without you, very 

 silent, very triste, above all of an evening, and Thursday I 

 thought it odious. To be rid of this evening melancholy we 

 go out in the char pretty regularly as soon as the sun is 

 sufficiently low. My spirits have not sunk at all, and I have 

 escaped a great evil. For when I am low no one is so pros- 

 trate as I am, no one so disagreeable, as your Aunt Sara used 

 to say, and she was right. The truth is from the beginning 

 of your stay I have had my feelings in training to meet 

 with courage the termination which I knew must too 

 speedily come. I was determined Sismondi should have no 

 reason to regret the visits of those I love, but that he should 

 feel they permanently benefited me. I am happy to tell 

 you he was quite as low as I was myself, and that our feelings 

 never were in more perfect unison. Since my letter to 

 Emma I have read again Medwin's conversations of Byron, 

 and going one evening to town for the second vol. I received 

 a letter from Lady Byron saying she was at Secheron; so 

 putting the vol. in my pocket I went and paid her a visit. 

 I sat with her till I fancied I saw symptoms of thinking our 

 visit long enough, or I should have liked to have stayed 

 longer, though Sismondi thought her intolerable. She 

 talked more than I expected, and her manner was less cold. 

 She talked like a sensible and good woman. She looks thin, 

 pale, and old for her age, there is a stiffness in her features, 

 and she has a mouth that could never admit her to be very 

 pretty. She speaks in the low and languid tone that Sis- 

 mondi thinks so insupportable. She was sitting apparently 



