accounts, was "frantically in love;" and the lady a beautiful young married woman of a noble Bavarian family.

Various circumstances, and among others the jealousy of her husband, who determined to carry her off to the country, invested this affair with an unusual degree of interest. It is alluded to in all the letters :-"Le Prince Max est fou de la jeune P.; tous les jours nouvelles scènes; toute l'illustre famille électorale s'agite; le mari est jaloux à l'excès, tout le monde est soupçonné de faire des rapports." At last the prince was ordered to rejoin his regiment in garrison at Strasburg, and the parting scene appears to have taken place in public, for an eye-witness says, "He was beside himself, and, but for the assistants, would have fallen on his sword."

The writer, an English traveller, had himself been much struck with the same lady, but, discouraged from all thoughts of further rivalry by the scene at which he had assisted, he quietly withdrew to Vienna, from whence he wrote to his friend that "he felt himself a pitiful ass for having stayed so long."

Towards the end of the summer of 1776 Hugh Elliot's first mission came to an end, and Mr. Morton Eden "reigned in his stead;" the latter made his début at Munich with great success; the people pronounced him "engel-schön," and the dames de cour smiled graciously on one who promised to be less indifferent to their charms than his predecessor had been.

I wish, for the sake of my grandfather's reputation

for politeness, I could have ended this chapter of his history without mentioning a trait, which is, however, too characteristic to be omitted. "How could you," says his friend Mr. Pitt, writing to him some time afterwards, "think yourself justified in telling your Munich friends that the day of your departure was the happiest of your life? Was it not unnecessary to make a round of visits for that purpose?"

:

NOTE. On his way through Paris my grandfather visited Madame du Deffand, and thus she writes of him to Horace Walpole "Le petit Elliot est tout-à-fait aimable; il a beaucoup d'esprit, il sent encore un peu l'école, mais c'est qu'il est modeste, et qu'il est la contre partie de Charles Fox; la sorte de timidité qu'il a encore sied bien à son âge; surtout quand elle n'empêche pas qu'on en démèle le bon sens et l'esprit."-Corres. de Madame du Deffand.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

1772 to 1777.

THE FAMILY.

I HAVE now brought down the narrative of my grandfather's early life to the period of his return to England and the close of his first mission, in the autumn of 1776, and in doing so I have confined myself solely to that portion of his correspondence which bears directly upon his affairs. It will therefore be desirable, before going any further, to cast a backward glance over the other portion of the letters now before me-that which relates to the circumstances of his correspondents. An additional reason for doing so, before entering on another year, consists in the changes which occurred in the family in the early part of 1777, and which amounted to a break-up of the family home.

When, in 1771, Hugh "tore himself from his mother's arms," as she expresses it, "to seek honourable employment in a foreign land," the family group had already lost one of its members by the departure of Alick for India, which had taken place some time before; but there still remained under the paternal roof-tree two sons and two daughters. Gilbert, the eldest, was pursuing his

studies at Oxford. Bob was a Westminster school-boy.

Isabella, a young lady going out in the world, was the delight of her mother's life. Eleanor, a wild young girl, called by her brothers by many aliases, was studying French, with no great success, under the charge of Madame Dumont, and setting all rules of English grammar and orthography at defiance.

It could not be expected that Sir Gilbert's letters to a son under the age of twenty would contain any confidential communications on political matters. Nor do they. But there are indications in the general correspondence of his political influence having suffered some diminution about this time, or rather before it.

Horace Walpole, in his last Journals, under the date of February 1773, mentions Sir Gilbert Elliot as the man "whom the King most trusted, next to Lord Bute, but who nevertheless had been acting discontent for the last two years." He also frequently alludes to misunderstandings between Sir Gilbert and Lord North, and on one occasion describes a popular vote of Sir Gilbert's, on which he divided the House against Ministers, as a revenge for Lord Barrington's refusal to give a commission in the army to one of his sons.

This theory is not, however, consistent with two others equally put forward by Walpole. First, That Sir Gilbert, in opposing Lord North, was acting secretly by the King's instigation. Second, That military patronage was entirely at the disposal of the King. For it is obvious that, had Sir Gilbert's influence with the King at this time been so great as Walpole supposed it, he

would not have met with the treatment from Lord Barrington, by which he thought himself so much aggrieved.

Certain allusions in the letters rather lead one to suppose that the King himself may have been somewhat cool in the matter of Hugh's commission, and that when the latter left England, his father's position at Court was not what it had been. At all events, there can be no doubt that Sir Gilbert saw in the refusal of Lord Barrington to nominate his son to a captaincy in the Guards, a studied insult to himself, and a triumph to his enemies. It was "a party move," as indeed every question affecting a "Scot" was sure to be considered in those days. Lady Elliot not only shared in her husband's feelings, but was still more sensitive to the hardship of parting with her promising and brilliant son, at a moment when she had believed him to be about to enter an honourable career in the service of his country; this distress bore all the harder upon her because she was at the time suffering from ill health, and smarting under the disappointment of a hope she had conceived of seeing her eldest daughter suitably married. Many a long letter did she write to her absent son on the subject of her grievances.

"These things give me a disgust to the world that I can hardly overcome, but yet am chained to the oar, and called upon to drag still into public a dispirited tormented mind. I can seldom go anywhere without meeting persons and objects mortifying to me. Lord Barrington-faugh! my soul rises at him!-is very