"'There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this
world, Sancho,' says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not,) and so I have
often found it.

"Page 128, article 91, of this collection, I had alluded to my friend Lord
Clare in terms such as my feelings suggested. About a week or two
afterwards, I met him on the road between Imola and Bologna, after not
having met for seven or eight years. He was abroad in 1814, and came home
just as I set out in 1816.

"This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years between the present
time and the days of _Harrow_. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like
rising from the grave, to me. Clare too was much agitated--more in
_appearance_ than myself; for I could feel his heart beat to his fingers'
ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own which made me think so.
He told me that I should find a note from him left at Bologna. I did. We
were obliged to part for our different journeys, he for Rome, I for Pisa,
but with the promise to meet again in spring. We were but five minutes
together, and on the public road; but I hardly recollect an hour of my
existence which could be weighed against them. He had heard that I was
coming on, and had left his letter for me at Bologna, because the people
with whom he was travelling could not wait longer.

"Of all I have ever known, he has always been the least altered in every
thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me
to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for
society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of
the leaven of bad passions.