504 PRÆTERITA-III

bright one with the grove of lances in the Church of St. Cassan, which I wanted to get for the National Gallery. I wrote to Lord Palmerston about it, and believe we should have got it, but for Mr. Edward Cheney’s putting a spoke in the wheel for pure spite.¹ However, Lord Palmerston was, I believe, satisfied with what I had done; and now, perhaps thinking there might be some trustworthy official qualities in me, allowed Mr. Cowper-Temple to bring me, one Saturday evening, to go down with him to Broadlands. It was dark when we reached the South-Western station. Lord Palmerston received me much as Lord Oldborough receives Mr. Temple in Patronage;²-gave me the seat opposite his own, he with his back to the engine, Mr. Cowper-Temple beside me;-Lord Palmerston’s box of business papers on the seat beside him. He unlocked it, and looked over a few,-said some hospitable words, enough to put me at ease, and went to sleep, or at least remained quiet, till we got to Romsey. I forget the dinner, that Saturday; but I certainly had to take in Lady Palmerston; and must have pleased her more or less, for on the Sunday morning, Lord Palmerston took me himself to the service in Romsey Abbey: drawing me out a little in the drive through the village; and that day at dinner he put me on his right hand, and led the conversation distinctly to the wildest political theories I was credited with,* cross-examining me playfully, but attending quite seriously to my

* The reader will please remember that the “Life of the Workman” in The Stones of Venice,³ the long note on Education at the end of first volume of Modern Painters,⁴ and the fierce vituperation of the Renaissance schools in all my historical teaching, were at this time attracting far more attention, because part of my architectural and pictorial work, than ever afterwards the commercial and social analyses of Unto this Last.

¹ [For Edward Cheney, see, again, Vol. XII. p. lxi.; and Vol. X. p. xxvii.]

² [The reference is to the well-bred condescension with which the Minister in Miss Edgeworth’s novel treats the literary gentleman who became his private secretary.]

³ [Chapter vi. of vol. ii., “The Nature of Gothic,” to which title was added in the separate reprint “And herein of the True Functions of the Workman in Art” (Vol. X. p. lxviii.).]

⁴ [Really at the end of the fourth volume: see Vol. VI. p. 482.]

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