Mr. Friend, the _friend_ of his early years at the bar; and that great
luminary, who in a higher orbit had cheered and guided him in his ascent.
The chief justice was in a station, and of an age, where praise can be
conferred without impropriety, and without hurting the feelings of delicacy
or pride. He knew how to praise--a difficult art, but he excelled in it.
As Caroline once, in speaking of him, said, "Common compliments compared
to praise from him, are as common coin compared to a medal struck and
appropriated for the occasion."

About this time Mr. Temple came to tell Alfred, that a ship had been
actually ordered to be in readiness to carry him on his intended embassy;
that Mr. Shaw had recovered; that Cunningham Falconer had no more excuses
or pretences for delay; despatches, the last Lord Oldborough said he should
ever receive from him as envoy, had now arrived, and Temple was to have set
out immediately; but that the whole embassy bad been delayed, because Lord
Oldborough had received a letter from Count Altenberg, giving an account
of alarming revolutionary symptoms, which had appeared in the capital, and
in the provinces, in the dominions of his sovereign, Lord Oldborough had
shown Mr. Temple what related to public affairs, but had not put the whole
letter into his hands. All that he could judge from what he read was, that
the Count's mind was most seriously occupied with the dangerous state of
public affairs in his country. "I should have thought," added Mr. Temple,
"that the whole of this communication was entirely of a political nature,
but that in the last page which Lord Oldborough put into my hand, the
catch-words at the bottom were _Countess Christina_."

Alfred observed, "that, without the aid of Rosamond's imagination to
supply something more, nothing could be made of this. However, it was a
satisfaction to have had direct news of Count Altenberg."