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STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

Meanwhile Arthur Young had a more pathetic end. His secretaryship had taken him to London, there his handsome presence and open-hearted, cordial ways made him acceptable in society, which he heartily enjoyed. But his life was cruelly darkened. He was tenderly attached to his youngest daughter 'Bobbin,' to whom, in her infancy, he wrote pleasant little letters, and whom he never forgot in his travels. 'I have more pleasure,' he says at the end of his first tour in France, 'in giving my little girl a French doll than in viewing Versailles,' and 'viewing Versailles' was no small pleasure to him. Her death in 1797 struck a blow after which he never quite recovered his cheerfulness. His friends thought that a blindness which soon followed was due to 'excess of weeping,' I do not know whether physicians would regard this as a possible cause of cataract. An operation for this disease was performed eleven years later, and recovery promised on condition of calmness. Wilberforce, coming to see him, told him of the death of the Duke of Grafton, now chiefly remembered by the abuse of Junius. The duke, however, became serious in his later years, and was one of Young's improving landlords. Anyhow, the news, or