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[446]
I dined once with my old friend Lady Dudley Stuart. She is a good deal altered in person, and has feeble health, but her essential character is the same that I knew eighteen years ago.1 Lord Dudley Stuart was at Lord Brougham's on a visit. The company consisted of the Duke de Regina, the Count del Medico,—who owns the Carrara quarries,—and two or three other persons. It was pleasant, the conversation being entirely in French, and much of the amusement of the evening being music. An English composer, who is just bringing out an opera which he dedicates to Lady D. Stuart, came in and played and sang; and a Polish prince-among those who are indebted to Lord Dudley Stuart for carrying the bill in favor of the Poles through Parliament—was there a little while, and improvisated with great talent. There was nothing English about it, any more than if we had all been in Italy.

Dr. Holland, who travelled in Greece with Lord Byron, came to see me one morning, in consequence of a note from Miss Edgeworth, and was very kind in attentions afterwards, but I could only find time to breakfast with him. He is a short, active, very lively person, abounding in knowledge, and in very exact knowledge. He quite embarrassed me once or twice by his minute familiarity with American geography, but he is a very simple, direct, and agreeable person. His wife — a daughter of Sydney Smith—was not in town, for which I was sorry. But I shall see them both, I trust, when we return to England, for Dr. Holland is among the most interesting men I have met. He is now becoming one of the most famous and fashionable of the London physicians.

The day after we reached London the kind Sir Francis Doyle came to see us, and invited us so very pleasantly to the Tower, both to see it and to dine with him, that we could not refuse, though we could ill give the time to it. So on Saturday we drove to the Tower, four miles off; but the dense crowds in the Strand and the other protracted thoroughfares, with two, three, and sometimes four files of carriages abreast, reaching as far as the eye could follow them, often stopped us several minutes at a time .. . . . It was a part of our amusement, during an hour or more we were in reaching the Tower, to watch these different currents, embarrassments, and contests of the different sorts of passengers. At last we arrived, and, passing the drawbridge, drove through streets and ways that seemed quite long, to the Governor's house. It is one of the examples of the pleasant abuses with which England abounds, that the Duke of Wellington is Governor

1 Christine Bonaparte. See ante, p. 183, and note.

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