When Mr. Canning retired from Portugal, he was received at Paris with a
distinction and a deference perhaps never before bestowed on a foreign
diplomatist; he dined with Charles X. almost tete-a-tete, and was
scrambled for by the leading aristocracy of France. It happened that
he also dined, on one occasion, with the Bailly Ferret, who was the
oldest foreign ambassador in Paris; and it was generally understood
that Canning, who had the reputation of being a gourmand, and was not
in robust health at the time, never thoroughly recovered from these
Parisian hospitalities. A short time after, this great orator, and the
most brilliant statesman of the day, breathed his last at Chiswick, in
the same room in which Charles James Fox died.