454 J- W. WARD [1809. 



so slow in answering a letter you wrote to me imme- 

 diately after my return if I had known your direction. 

 You were then upon the circuit, and until you got 

 fairly out of those borean regions, and quite clear of 

 the company of Alan Park, there was no telling in 

 what direction to fire a shot with any certainty of 

 hitting you."'" If indeed, during the late gales, I had 

 seen any old lady sitting upon a broomstick, and 

 riding in the storm, I should have considered myself 

 as having found the safest, quickest, and most regu- 

 larly official messenger, the proper Correo di Gabi- 

 ii'jte of your satanic majesty. But failing of that 

 mode of conveyance, I was obliged to wait till I heard 

 that you had at last ceased to walk to and fro upon 

 the face of the earth, and had found, for a time at 

 least, a resting-place. Waiving, however, for the 

 present all discussion as to who is the evil principle, 

 or rather, as to what is the form he now inhabits, we 

 shall agree upon this at least, that there never was a 

 moment when he was more triumphant. His second 

 campaign in Spain, in which one would have imagined 

 that it exceeded even his powers to persuade any 



for Foreign Affairs in Canning's Government in 1827, when lie was 

 created Earl Dudley 



* James Alan Park, Justice of the Common Pleas, author of the 

 well-known standard law-Look on Marine Insurance. The followin^ 



O 



rhymes used to he sung when his health was drunk on grand nights, on 

 the northern circuit : 



James Alan Park 

 Came naked stark 

 From Scotland ; 

 Now hath he cares, 

 And breeches wears, 

 In England. 



