She is a very superior
woman, and very little spoiled, which is strange in an heiress--a girl
of twenty--a peeress that is to be, in her own right--an only child, and
a _savante_, who has always had her own way. She is a poetess--a
mathematician--a metaphysician, and yet, withal, very kind, generous,
and gentle, with very little pretension. Any other head would be turned
with half her acquisitions, and a tenth of her advantages.
[Footnote 1: Sir Samuel Romilly (1757-1818), Solicitor-General (1806-7),
distinguished himself in Parliament by his consistent advocacy of
Catholic Emancipation, the abolition of the slave-trade, Parliamentary
reform, and the mitigation of the harshness of the criminal law. Writing
of Romilly's 'Observations on the Criminal Law of England' (1810), Sir
James Mackintosh says,
"It does the very highest honour to his moral character, which, I
think, stands higher than that of any other conspicuous Englishman now
alive. Probity, independence, humanity, and liberality breathe through
every word; considered merely as a composition, accuracy, perspicuity,
discretion, and good taste are its chief merits; great originality and
comprehension of thought, or remarkable vigour of expression, it does
not possess."
The death of his wife, October 29, 1818, so affected Romilly's mind that
he committed suicide four days later.
"Romilly," said Lord Lansdowne to Moore ('Memoirs, etc'., vol. ii. p.
211), "was a stern, reserved sort of man, and she was the only person
in the world to whom he wholly unbent and unbosomed himself; when he
lost her, therefore, the very vent of his heart was stopped up.
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