Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

nine years sooner; and that the Emperor himself would have been luckier, even as a

soldier, if his nose had not induced him to thrust it into Spain and Moscow.

CHAPTER III.

LITTLE HOLLAND

HOUSE-MRS. INCHBALD-HON.

MISS

FOX-BENTHAM AND SIDNEY SMITH-ADDISON ROADGENERAL AND LADY MARY FOX- HOMER VILLAS,"

[ocr errors][merged small]

66

[blocks in formation]

NURSERY -KENSINGTON GRAVEL

PITS-SWIFT THE

CALLCOTTS-SHEFFIELD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE—

CAMPDEN GROVE NEWTON HOUSE, AND SIR ISAAC

NEWTON-CAMPDEN HOUSE-STRANGE HISTORY OF THE

LITTLE DUKE OF

GLOUCESTER, SON OF PRINCESS, (AFTERWARDS QUEEN) ANNE- DUKE UPON DUKE,"

OR LECHMERE AND GUISE-ROMANTIC TOWER.

NEAR Holland House, in a portion, still accessible, of the late thoroughfare leading

to it, called, Nightingale Lane, stands Little Holland House; a small mansion compared with the other, but still a mansion; isolated, countryfied, and standing in a garden. Here Mrs. Inchbald once spent a couple of weeks with its occupant, a Mr. Bubb, and dined frequently with him on Sundays (who was and here lived and died Miss Fox,

he?);

the sister of the late Lord Holland, a lady

deserving to be remembered; for everybody seems to have loved her.

In her girlhood, she and a young friend, Miss V., a distant connection of the family, were much in the house of another family connexion, the first Lord Lansdowne, at that time Lord Shelburne the minister, where she became intimate with his Lordship's protégé, Jeremy Bentham, who at that time was still young himself. The future venerable jurist possessed a great deal of vivacity; played on the harpsichord

and violin; and being in a curious state of perplexity between his amatory and his crossexamining tendencies, appears to have fallen at one and the same time, in love with Miss V., and in dread of the match-making intentions of his noble host, who seems privately as well well as publicly to to have been considered a very plotting personage. Bentham thought that his Lordship was constantly meditating marriages for all his young lady visitors. The consequence was, that the philosopher delayed the declaration of his love till he was grown old; and what is more curious, he took it to heart that the lady refused him. He had not much cultivated her acquaintance meantime; yet seems to have concluded, that she had remained single on purpose to wait her chance. We do not know whether he ever again saw the lady, after the refusal; but one of the last glimpses

which biography affords as of himself, is his walking from Little Holland House, one Sunday morning, in company with Miss Fox and the Reverend Sidney Smith, on the way of the two latter to church. Bentham did not go to church with them. He did not think it right; and he was too honest to belie his opinions. On the other hand, he tells us, that the reverend wit apologized to him for going, alleging that it was his "trade." It may be doubted, nevertheless, whether Sidney, in making this apparently "indiscreet" observation, was not bantering the philosopher's tendency to such assumptions; and intimating that it was hopeless to suppose him capable of taking any other view of the proceeding. Wits, however, it must be owned, are apt to make questionable churchmen.

The turning out of the high road, next to Nightingale Lane, is Addison Road; and in

« ПредишнаНапред »