seldom do now, as I certainly am not of the age to mix often with
young people. Lady Melbourne was standing before the fire, and
adjusting her feathers in the glass. Says she, 'Lord, they say the
stocks will blow up! That will be very comical.'"

Greville ('Memoirs', ed. 1888, vol. vi. p. 248) associates her name with
that of Lord Egremont. Reynolds painted her with her eldest son in his
well-known picture 'Maternal Affection'. Her second son, William,
afterwards Prime Minister, used to say,

"Ah! my mother was a most remarkable woman; not merely clever and
engaging, but the most sagacious woman I ever knew"

('Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne', vol. i. p. 135). Lady Melbourne, whom
Byron spoke of as

"the best, the kindest, and ablest female I have ever known, old or
young,"

died in 1818, her husband in 1828. He thus described her to Lady
Blessington ('Conversations', p. 225):

"Lady M., who might have been my mother, excited an interest in my
feelings that few young women have been able to awaken. She was a
charming person--a sort of modern Aspasia, uniting the energy of a
man's mind with the delicacy and tenderness of a woman's. She wrote
and spoke admirably, because she felt admirably. Envy, malice, hatred,
or uncharitableness, found no place in her feelings. She had all of
philosophy, save its moroseness, and all of nature, save its defects
and general 'faiblesse'; or if some portion of 'faiblesse' attached