Hilaire to order a large, sensible bonnet for her in Paris,
which was at once christened the 'Aristotelian,' and was supposed to be
the only useful bonnet in England. Grote has to leave Paris after the
coup d'etat, he tells her, because he cannot bear to see the
establishment of a Greek tyrant. Alfred de Vigny, Macaulay, John
Stirling, Southey, Alexis de Tocqueville, Hallam, and Jean Jacques Ampere
all contribute to these pleasant pages. She seems to have inspired the
warmest feelings of friendship in those who knew her. Guizot writes to
her: 'Madame de Stael used to say that the best thing in the world was a
serious Frenchman. I turn the compliment, and say that the best thing in
the world is an affectionate Englishman. How much more an Englishwoman!
Given equal qualities, a woman is always more charming than a man.'

Lucie Austin, afterwards Lady Duff Gordon, was born in 1821. Her chief
playfellow was John Stuart Mill, and Jeremy Bentham's garden was her
playground. She was a lovely, romantic child, who was always wanting the
flowers to talk to her, and used to invent the most wonderful stories
about animals, of whom she was passionately fond. In 1834 Mrs. Austin
decided on leaving England, and Sydney Smith wrote his immortal letter to
the little girl:

Lucie, Lucie, my dear child, don't tear your frock: tearing frocks is
not of itself a proof of genius. But write as your mother writes, act
as your mother acts: be frank, loyal, affectionate, simple, honest,
and then integrity or laceration of frock is of little import. And
Lucie, dear child, mind your arithmetic. You know in the first sum of
yours I ever saw there was a mistake. You had carried two (as a cab
is licensed to do), and you ought, dear Lucie, to have carried but
one. Is this a trifle? What would life be without arithmetic but a
scene of horrors? You are going to Boulogne, the city of debts,
peopled by men who have never understood arithmetic. By the time you
return, I shall probably have received my first paralytic stroke, and
shall have lost all recollection of you. Therefore I now give you my
parting advice--don't marry anybody who has not a tolerable
understanding and a thousand a year. And God bless you, dear child.

At Boulogne she sat next Heine at table d'hote. 'He heard me speak
German to my mother, and soon began to talk to me, and then said, "When
you go back to England, you can tell your friends that you have seen
Heinrich Heine." I replied, "And who is Heinrich Heine?" He laughed
heartily and took no offence at my ignorance; and we used to lounge on
the end of the pier together, where he told me stories in which fish,
mermaids, water-sprites and a very funny old French fiddler with a poodle
were mixed up in the most fanciful manner, sometimes humorous, and very
often pathetic, especially when the water-sprites brought him greetings
from the "Nord See." He was . . . so kind to me and so sarcastic to
every one else.' Twenty years afterwards the little girl whose 'braune
Augen' Heine had celebrated in his charming poem Wenn ich an deinem
Hause, used to go and see the dying poet in Paris.