CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

1780 to 1781.

BERLIN.

My grandfather returned to Berlin in the spring of 1780 -returned, as he says, to find "nature buried in sand, and mankind in slavery;" and with so many regrets for the "clear streams, green fields, and stirring interests of English life," that, had the "attraction to Berlin been less powerful than it was," he might have found it a hard task to tear himself away from home. "Would that men could be turned out to grass like horses, and that I had been wicked enough to have been sent agrazing with Nebuchadnezzar!" On his way back to his post he stayed a few days in Paris to consult doctors, and writes of the impression he received there, to a friend at home, in the following words :-" I never made so interesting a visit to the capital of our enemies. They are perfectly disgusted with the war and their ministers. The name of an Englishmen has again risen to its sterling value; and were it not for the trust they put in our divisions at home, I do not believe they would continue the war six weeks. You have no idea of the avidity with which ils s'arrachent le 'Courrier de

1 Before the year closed, M. Necker, "as the leading minister in

l'Europe,' and the admiration they have for le grand M. Bourique,1 and his system of economy. I breakfasted every morning with the flower of the young men of Paris, at the Marquis de Voyer's, where politics were the constant theme, and everything they knew was débité avec toute la franchise et toute l'étourderie qui leur sont propres. I saw several of the officers who were at Savannah, and who have the greatest respect for our sans culottes ever since that business. Noailles is a d-d coxcomb, says everything civil in the presence of an Englishman, and is, I understand, one of the most barefaced liars of the many France is blessed with. As for myself, I fear nothing in France but the dark eyes of the Countess Jules."2

How soon the public acknowledgment of his marriage followed upon his return to Berlin, and what was the sensation it created, are circumstances of which we are left in ignorance; but in his letters, written in June 1780, he talks openly of his wife and of his plans of life; and towards the autumn his house seems to have become the point de réunion for a very agreeable society. 1780 and 1781 are marked as white years in my grandfather's

Paris, addressed a secret letter to Lord North expressing a strong desire to treat."-Mahon's Hist. Eng. vol. vii. p. 80.

1 Burke.

* Countess Jules de Polignac, the favourite friend of Marie Antoinette. After Mr. Elliot's return from Paris he filed among his papers notes from Baron de Grimm; from L'Abbé Raynal, asking him to go with him to dinner at M. Necker's; from Comtesse Schouwaloff, begging him to meet d'Alembert and La Harpe; from the Duc de Guines; from d'Argenson, de Saussure, etc.

history; they were spent entirely at Berlin, except during very short excursions in the neighbourhood; and we gather from almost every letter that he was happier than he had ever been before. "Berlin is dull and insipid," he wrote, "but that is nothing to me. I have at home all that I require." His unusual regularity as a correspondent is remarked on by his family and friends; and they in their turn are desired to write frequently of pleasant things to amuse "Charlotte." "My wife is so fond of your letters," he wrote to Sir Gilbert, "that I can think of no better way of teaching her English than by begging you to write to her often, and to make her answer in English." Her picture was painted for Sir Gilbert, and great were the discussions as to the backgrounds and hues of drapery which should do most justice to her blue eyes and brilliant skin. "If you take half as much charge of your wife's appearance as you did of mine," said Mrs. Eden, "I pity her from my heart." Whether the family ever received this picture or not remains untold; but an unknown miniature found in a desk of my grandfather's, and given to me last year, agrees so entirely with the description in his letters of the looks and dress of his wife, when sitting for her portrait at this time, that we can have no doubt any longer as to whom belonged those long fair curls and skyblue draperies. The picture, in a curiously-worked gold frame, is well preserved, but the back has been removed. It probably once contained hair, or a name or date.

In looking over such a correspondence as this, the map of a whole life is unrolled before one. The starting

point and the goal, the sunshine and the rain-cloud, are seen together. The same glance shows us the cause and consequence of action, the visions of hope, and the experiences of reality, the growth and decay of friendships, the rapid succession of gladness and grief; and thus, looking "before and after," and pondering over what might have been, what has been, and what may be again, the thought rises in one's mind, that, if there be in other spheres spectators of these shifting scenes of life, they see few sadder sights on earth than the dawn of human joy.

Mr. Elliot's home, with its beautiful young wife and its pleasant society, seems somewhat to have effaced the visions of cots beneath a Lowland hill, among purling streams and green bowers, for in the course of 1780 he wrote in very dissuasive tones to a brother diplomatist,1 who, like himself in former days, entertained notions of throwing up his foreign appointment to rusticate at home:

"Permit me to advise you to go to England before you resolve to ask for your retraite. Except you are master of £2000 per annum, believe me, England is no place to be idle in. The very wear and tear of society is necessary, and you will be miserable in any society but the best. There is no medium. All those I saw who had left the foreign line regretted it. I repeat it -England is not the country for an idle man; an idle duke with £20,000 a year s'y ennuie à périr; judge how much more an idle gentleman with a mere sustenance must languish."

1 To Sir T. Wroughton.

Berlin was at this time a very dull residence for any one seeking the pleasures of society. The growing infirmities of the King had increased the natural irritability of his temper to a degree which made him an object of dread to all who came within reach of his sudden outbreaks.

Of the foreign ministers, as many as could kept at a distance from the Court; and when to general illhumour was added a particular dissatisfaction with England,1 Mr. Elliot found himself singled out for special marks of the King's ill-will.

On the 23d May he wrote to Lord Stormont :"The King has been on horseback these three last mornings before five o'clock, in the coldest weather ever known in this season; I never saw him more active or in better spirits. Yesterday, at the levée, he addressed himself principally to the French minister; and, after asking the news of the day, told Admiral Byng's story last war with more humour than I imagined that tragical event could have admitted of. The King, in his private conversation, often treats the fatalities our naval officers ascribe to winds and weather as mere excuses for their own misfortunes or misconduct : 'Si j'avais une flotte, je chasserais les vents de la mer,' is an expression his Majesty made use of several times this winter, when he read the complaints of both sides against an enemy he believes often called in to the assistance of an unable or

1 The late successes of the Court of Vienna at St. Petersburg were supposed, at Berlin, to be in part due to the "machinations" of Sir James Harris, English minister there.