LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. , 537 



line were never intended for the Baltick ; and that, beyond a doubt, 

 no first-rate can pass the Sound. This intelligence I got last night. 

 However absurd, there are persons still more absurd by giving credit 

 to such reports ; and what's more astonishing, the effect of that belief 

 is sensibly felt. I did not require fresh instances to convince me of 

 your friendship. But I should be sorry to delay expressing my best 

 thanks to your Lordship for the very kind manner in which, I 

 understand, you have mentioned me in some letters lately written to 

 England. Believe me to be, my dear Lord, most grateful for the 

 obligations you confer on me ; and with the utmost regard and 

 esteem, your very faithful servant, Elgin. I am just told that P. 

 Lambescq has entered the Austrian service with the rank he held in 

 the French army." The person spoken of in the postscript is a 

 Charles Eugene de Loraine, Prince de Lambescq, a relative of Marie 

 Antoinette, and Commander of the Royal German Regiment, with 

 which force he charged^ the mob assembled at the Tuileries in 1789. 

 The Count dArtois was afterwards Louis XVIII. (4) A letter of 

 William Hone's, transcribed from the original. Most people have 

 consulted Hone's " Every Day Book," Hone's "Year Book," Hone's 

 " Table Book," each of them filled with descriptions of old customs, 

 old buildings, and the rural phenomena of England. Of the "Every 

 Day Book," Charles Lamb took occasion thus to address its com- 

 piler : — 



" Dan Phoebus loves your book : trust me, friend Hone ; 

 The title only errs, he bids me say ; 

 For while such art, wit, reading, there are shewn, 

 He swears 'tis not a hooh of every day." 



My relic of this writer reads thus : " My Dear Sir, — From the time 

 I came here until after the rain yesterday I was no better. I can 

 make no effort with my pen, and very little orally, without pain. Yet 

 your kind pencilling demanded more than apparent indifierence. Can 

 you stage yourself hither 1 Yours ever, W. Hone." It is addressed 

 to Frederic Malcolm, Esq., from "Hampstead, at Mr. Hook's, 

 Mount Yernon, Holly Bush Hill, 12th June, 1838." Hone died in 

 1842, set. sixty-three. He was in his younger days a bold political 

 pamphleteer, and was once tried for seditious libel, but acquitted. 

 From being an erratic, unpractical revolutionist, he subsided at 

 length into the literary antiquarian, and quiet law-abiding citizen. 



