Page:Earl Canning.djvu/34

28 me," if I expected any return.' Canning, however, made an unexpectedly generous return for his patron's good services, for, before long, there comes a hospitable letter from Mrs, Canning, inviting 'Caro' and his friends to a party at Salt Hill. Thereupon followed many pleasant expeditions to the great statesman's house, delightful and impressive to the boyish imagination, which continue till Gaskell sees his friend's father at Chiswick, lying on the couch from which he was never to rise. There is one pretty scene — George Canning walking back with the boys from Salt Hill to Eton, and, near the end of the long field, looking over Caro's holiday verses, the subject being Panthea and Abratates. An epithet is wanted for 'alâ' — 'celeri' is suggested and rejected; then someone suggests 'faustâ.' Yes, 'faustâ' will do — 'faustâ Victoria protegit alâ.' So the phantom figures — father and son and friend — pass away into the Olympian shades.

'Canning looked well at Surly,' so runs another letter;' he rode there, and leapt all the way, on a large black horse. He is twelve years old. I got nothing but some lobster and half a bottle of cider.' On another occasion we find the young debaters busied with a motion for discontinuing the Morning Chronicle, on the ground of its constant pugilistic reports, and the motion lost by Gladstone's casting-vote. In December, 1827, we have Charles Canning writing to his friend Gaskell a pleasant school-boy letter: —