LORD WOODHOUSELEE. 557 
returned willingly to another occupation, with which he had 
always intended to close his literary career. This was the re- 
vision of his lectures upon history. In the composition of 
these lectures, the best years of his life had been employed, 
and at the distance of time that had intervened, he was now 
able to review them with the eye of impartial criticism, and to 
make such additions or alterations as might better fit them for 
that general usefulness for which they were .originally intend- 
ed. To this pleasing occupation all his remaining seasons of 
leisure were devoted ; and with the usual chearfulness of his 
temper, he flattered himself, that he might be able to accom- 
plish a revision of the whole of the lectures that composed 
his Academical Course. As the first great subject of these 
lectures related to Grecian History, he now began anew the 
study of the Greek historians ;, and as his views included the 
history of science, of literature and of the fine arts, he was 
Jed insensibly to the study of the moralists, the orators and the 
poets, of that interesting period. So fascinating to his mind 
was the occupation, that, in the course of a few vacations, he 
was able to compose anew the whole of his lectures upon 
Grecian History, and to be rewarded by that peculiar delight, 
(which has been so often observed in the later years of literary 
men,) the delight of returning again to the studies of their 
youth, and of feeling, under the snows of age, the chearful me- 
mories of their spring. 
In the year 1812, the death of his friend and relation Gene- 
ral Sir James Crate, (the late Governor of Canada,) and the 
property to which he succeeded. by his will, rendered it neces- 
sary for Lord WoopuouseELze to undertake a journey to Lon- 
don. -As Sir James Craic had been distinguished by the Order 
of the Bath, it became the duty of Lord WoopuousEteExz, as his 
nearest relation, to return to the Prince Regent the ensigns of 
4A2 the 
