Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/48

 who gives the following extract from Mr. Pell's conversation:—

"'The late Lord Chancellor, gentlemen,' said Pell, 'was very fond of me I remember dining with him on one occasion: there was only us two, but everything as splendid as if twenty people had been expected; the great seal on a dumb-waiter at his right hand, and a man in a bag- wig and suit of armour guarding the mace with a drawn sword and silk stockings, which is perpetually done, gentlemen, night and day.'"

In 1803, after having when a youth under nineteen obtained the degree of Seventh Wrangler, he sailed as a midshipman in the "Isis," of fifty guns, the flag-ship of Vice- Admiral Gambler, afterwards Lord Gambler. Being rather under the average height he nearly lost his life from having been unable to obtain the support intended to be given by the rope under the yard-arm from the outer extremity, of which he had to make his way—so that he said he was so exhausted that he thought he should have to let go his hold and drop into the sea. In the following year he was elected to a Fellowship at Queen's, "a sort of promotion," he remarked, "which has not often gone along with the rank and dignity of a midshipman." At Portsmouth in September, 1805, he saw Nelson embark