Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/42

 nobody could ever accuse me of folly: even those actions which might seem folly to a common observer, were wisdom. Everything with me, through life, has been premeditatedly done.

"Mr. Pitt paid me the greatest compliment I ever received from any living being. He was speaking of C*****, and lamenting he was so false, and so little to be trusted; and I said, 'But perhaps he is only so in appearance, and is sacrificing ostensibly his own opinions, in order to support your reputation.'—'I have lived,' replied Mr. Pitt, 'twenty-five years in the midst of men of all sorts, and I never yet found but one human being capable of such a sacrifice.'—'Who can that be?' said I. 'Is it the Duke of Richmond? is it such a one? and I named two others, when he interrupted me—'No,—it is you.'

"I was not insensible to praise from such a man; and when, before Horne Tooke and some other clever people, he told me I was fit to sit between Augustus and Mæcenas, I suppose I must believe it. And he did not think so lightly of my lectures as you do: for one day he said to me, 'We are going to establish a new hospital, and you, Hester, are to have the management of it: it is to be an hospital for the diseases of the mind; for nobody knows so well as you how to cure them.' I should never have done if I were to repeat the many attestations of his good opinion of