1831.] My Uncle's Diary at Calais. 517 



nimity ; and it depended totally on occasion, by what passion he was 

 impelled. Early convictions had made him a creature of humanity and 

 acquiescence ; the painful discoveries of prolonged existence had ren- 

 dered him capricious and mistrustful. His perceptions were quickened 

 by his animosity, which still was of a general and never of an individual 

 character. His original nature was too powerful for even the strong 

 perversions of adversity. He could enjoy, he fancied, the sufferings to 

 come, as they afflicted mankind indiscriminately ; but I have seen him 

 electrically shed a tear of undissembled anguish when calamity, though 

 merited, became a case in point. He could bear a sweeping visitation 

 on his species ; but the tenderness of his heart could not endure the suf- 

 ferings of an isolated individual. In short, he could have legislated like 

 Draco, in his wrath ; but his judgment, like that of a sublime spirit, 

 would have fallen in the lenity of mercy. His precipitation threw him 

 frequently into situations of peculiar hardship self-imposed, it is true, 

 but from which his pride would not allow him to recede at the bidding 

 of his sober judgment. To a circumstance of this description was attri- 

 butable his exile from his native land. A difference with his attorney on 

 a point involving twenty pounds, inspired him with a resolution to for- 

 sake a country, in which, he said, there was no protection against the 

 rascality of lawyers; and, rather than pay a sum so unjustly demanded 

 of him, he preferred a residence abroad, surrounded by the innumerable 

 miseries which afflict an Englishman born and bred, when he leaves his 

 own native region of convenience, comfort, sociality, and refinement, for 

 the realms of wretchedness, fraud, incivility, and insincerity, which 

 congenially triumph in a foreign land. 



It arose from this irritable mcod that my uncle, who chose his abode 

 at Calais, from its solitary merit of proximity to England, hastily and 

 angrily sometimes with prejudice, but more frequently with truth 

 described in vivid items the place and its inhabitants. His account 

 is eminently immethodical. The points most flagrant in offence were 

 foremost to engross the record of his indignation. The greater part of 

 his reproaches emanate from an impression of the country he had left, 

 which led him to comparative remarks, by no means favourable to the 

 elected city of his sojourn. Though he little thought, and certainly did 

 not intend, that his remarks should pass beyond the hasty memoranda of 

 his rambling diary, he seemed determined on the refutation of opinions 

 unjustly held of the superiority of aught in manners, morals, and civili- 

 zation to " the state of things in other countries" that he would not 

 name. To me, who knew him so profoundly, every entry in his manu- 

 script conveys the very mood in which it was committed to the paper. 

 I could trace those passages in which remembrance had evoked his 

 sighs ; and I think I see him now, in his seclusion, as a stroke of bitter 

 irony or caustic ridicule illustrated the truth of his perception, and sup- 

 plied an adequate expression of dislike. I see him, on the flash of an 

 effective simile, apply his fingers to his snuff, which he would often use 

 insensibly in vast profusion, and rise to pace his chamber with rapidity 

 proportioned to the satisfaction of his eager humour. Like many of his 

 singular countrymen, he partook very largely of the nature of a weather- 

 glass ; and the mercury was insensibly depressed or elevated as the tem- 

 perature operated on his physical components. In the languor of 

 oppressive weather, he would trace the less offensive singularities he saw 

 around him. It was certainly on some fine glowing day that he consented 



