Among his distractions were his visits to France, which for some time
were frequent. He had formed a somewhat singular intimacy with a blind
old lady, the Marquise du Deffand, a lady whose character in her youth
had been something less than doubtful, since she had been one of the
Regent Duc d'Orléans's numerous mistresses; but who had retained in her
old age much of the worldly acuteness and lively wit with which she had
borne her part in that clever, shameless society. Her _salon_ was now
the resort of many personages of the highest distinction, even of ladies
themselves of the most unstained reputation, such as the Duchesse de
Choiseul; and the rumours or opinions which he heard in their company
enabled him to enrich his letters to his friends at home with comments
on the conduct of the French Parliament, of Maupéon, Maurepas, Turgot,
and the King himself, which, in many instances, attest the shrewdness
with which he estimated the real bearing of the events which were taking
place, and anticipated the possible character of some of those which
were not unlikely to ensue.

Thus, with a mind which, to the end, was so active and so happily
constituted as to be able to take an interest in everything around him,
and, even when more than seventy years old, to make new friends to
replace those who had dropped off, he passed a long, a happy, and far
from an useless life. When he was seventy-four he succeeded to his
father's peerage, on the death of his elder brother; but he did not long
enjoy the title, by which, indeed, he was not very careful to be
distinguished, and in the spring of 1797 he died, within a few months
of his eightieth birthday.

A great writer of the last generation, whose studies were of a severer
cast, and who, conscious perhaps of his own unfitness to shine at the