CHAPTER THE TWELFTH.

1790 to 1799.

PARIS-DRESDEN.

IN 1790 Mr. Elliot came home on leave, and was sent by Mr. Pitt on a secret mission to Paris in 1790 and 1791.

Beyond the bare fact that he was so sent, the correspondence tells nothing of this mission. In one letter only is there an illusion which throws a light upon its nature and success. A brother diplomatist, writing to him some years afterwards concerning a delicate negotiation then pending, says :-" If you could have been sent to conduct it as successfully as you did your mission to Mirabeau," etc. etc.

In 1792 he was appointed minister at the court of Saxony, where he remained till 1802. His mission to Dresden was not apparently marked by events of any peculiar interest.

The house of Bourbon, of which we have heard so much, had fallen, in its most important branch, before a power, of which we have heard nothing! though for many a day to come it was found not ponderable by the statesmen whose scales and weights had been adapted

to the "balance of the North." Revolutionised France had started into life with a giant's strength, prepared to use it like a giant. And during the ten years passed by Mr. Elliot in Saxony, his correspondence is occupied with details concerning the submissions of small powers, the struggles of great ones, the intrigues of French emigrants, and the insolence of French agents. A voluminous correspondence with his brother, after the latter had become Lord Minto and Envoy to Vienna, contains very little matter of public interest at the present date. One short note, however, has a trait in which we see that time and circumstance had not entirely subdued early predilections in the diplomatist's breast. "Suwarrow," he said, "is at Prague; if it were not for my family ties, I should be strongly tempted to throw up my post and have a campaign with my old chief!"1 A quarter of a century before he had written from Munich, his first diplomatic post, "My greatest pleasure is to shut my eyes and fancy myself in Count Woronzow's tent on the Danube."

Of his manière d'être at this time of his life Mrs.

1 "Mr. Elliot was attached to General Suwarrow's staff when the latter took and destroyed the town of Turticaya, took several cannon, and made a great number of prisoners. Mr. Elliot was the person despatched by Suwarrow with this news to Marshal Romanzow. The general gives the highest encomiums to this young gentleman."Letter of Sir R. Gunning, June 15, 1773.

With Romanzow Mr. Elliot corresponded from time to time till the close of the Marshal's life. In the summer of 1788, the Marshal acknowledges, in a little note, the pleasure Mr. Elliot had given him by introducing to him M. de Blucher, an officer of whose qualities he formed a high opinion.

Trench gives a lively description in her charming Journal, on reading which his surviving children declared it to be himself.

"Mr. Elliot," she says on 66 one occasion, was wonderfully amusing. His wit, his humour, his discontent, his spleen, his happy choice of words, his rapid flow of ideas, and his disposition to playful satire, make one always long to write shorthand and preserve his conversation."1

The pages in which Mrs. Trench describes the visit of Lord Nelson and of Sir William and Lady Hamilton to Dresden are among the most entertaining in her journal.

Lord and Lady Holland too are mentioned by her among the guests she met at the English legation, and it was probably during this visit that a circumstance occurred which gave rise to the following anecdote of my grandfather, told me by Lord Russell, who had heard it from Lord Holland.

Conversing one day with a Prussian gentleman, whose exaggerated praises of two Princes of that Royal House had somewhat wearied him, he watched his opportunity to get rid of his interlocutor. At last it came :- "Il faut avouer que ce sont deux grands princes?" said the Prussian, and waited for an answer. "Oui, et deux fort mauvais sujets!" quietly replied Mr. Elliot, to the great amusement of Lord Holland, a listener to the dialogue.

While at Dresden he and my grandmother had the 1 Dresden, October 7, 1801.

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happiness of receiving his brother and Lady Minto under their roof when they passed through Dresden on their way to Vienna, to which court Lord Minto was accredited as envoy extraordinary in 1799. Lord Minto's visit to Dresden preceded his wife's by some months; various family reasons having prevented her from leaving England at the same time with himself. To this circumstance we are indebted for a glimpse into my grandfather's home, preserved for us in the letters of his brother and sister-in-law.

Some years had passed since the brothers had met, and in the interval Hugh Elliot had married a beautiful girl of humble birth, but whose personal qualities justified his choice.

Lord Minto, writing to his wife from Dresden, 1799, says:"I have, since I have seen Hugh's wife and beautiful children, better hope of his happiness than I ever had before. She is very handsome-her face and head remarkably pretty, in so much that the celebrated Virgin of Raphael in the gallery, one of the finest pictures I ever saw, is her exact portrait; while two of the children are so like the cherubs looking up, that I told Hugh it was a family picture. I find her sensible and pleasant, and they are both generally liked, and on the best possible footing here.

"Hugh's extreme good humour and temper, and his affectionate and cordial manner to every creature that approaches him, in whatever shape, are captivating qualities."

In May of the following year it became Lady Minto's

turn to write to her husband of the household at Dresden, and her expressions of pleasure at being again with Hugh and with his family, are no less cordial than Lord Minto's. "I am delighted with Dresden," she wrote on the 2d May 1800,"with the gallery

with the country, in which there seems so much comfort and so many beautiful scenes. We take long airings every evening, and I know you will be glad to hear that I admire Mrs. Elliot and the children to the utmost." After a glowing tribute to "Margaret's" uncommon beauty and natural pleasing manner, she ends thus-"The children are really charming, and the two groups are hugging and kissing, and intimate friends already."

"It is a happiness to me," wrote Lord Minto to Hugh after this visit, "that for a moment our families have made one family."