LONDON. 75 



serviceable, and he answered that he did not know, 

 but that a sort of instinct guided him. From this 

 habit of making indices, he was enabled to give the 

 astonishing number of references on all sorts of sub- 

 jects, which may be found in his * History of Civilisa- 

 tion/ This book I thought most interesting, and 

 read it twice, but I doubt whether his generalisations 

 are worth anything. Buckle was a great talker, and 

 I listened to him saying hardly a word, nor indeed 

 could I have done so for he left no gaps. When 

 Mrs. Farrer began to sing, I jumped up and said that 

 I must listen to her ; after I had moved away he 

 turned round to a friend and said (as was overheard 

 by my brother), " Well, Mr. Darwin's books are much 

 better than his conversation." 



Of other great literary men, I once met Sydney 

 Smith at Dean Milman's house. There was some- 

 thing inexplicably amusing in every word which he 

 uttered. Perhaps this was partly due to the expecta- 

 tion of being amused. He was talking about Lady 

 Cork, who was then extremely old. This was the 

 lady who, as he said, was once so much affected by 

 one of his charity sermons, that she borrowed a guinea 

 from a friend to put in the plate. He now said " It is 

 generally believed that my dear old friend Lady Cork 

 has been overlooked," and he said this in such a 

 manner that no one could for a moment doubt that he 

 meant that his dear old friend had been overlooked 

 by the devil. How he managed to express this I 

 know not. 



I likewise once met Macaulay at Lord Stanhope's 



