There is one passage that reveals a chagrin of this kind.

A few days after the meeting between the Duke of Portland and Elliot, for the purpose of settling his place in the new ministry, Burke went down to Beaconsfield.

In writing (January 24, 1789) to invite Windham and Pelham to come to stay a night, with promise of a leg of mutton cooked by a dairymaid who was not a bad hand at a pinch, he goes on to say that his health has received some small benefit from his journey to the country.

"But this view to health, though far from unnecessary to me, was not the chief cause of my present retreat.

I began to find that I was grown rather too anxious; and had begun to discover to myself and to others a solicitude relative to the present state of affairs, which, though their strange condition might well warrant it in others, is certainly less suitable to my time of life, in which all emotions are less allowed; and to which, most certainly, all human concerns ought in reason to become more indifferent than to those who have work to do, and a good deal of day and of inexhausted strength to do it in."[1] [Footnote 1: _Correspondence_, iii.