above shalt find,
On snow-white linen spread, the luscious meal.

(Exit MACAULAY up stairs.)

In plain English prose, I went this morning to breakfast at Holland
House. The day was fine, and I arrived at twenty minutes after ten.
After I had lounged a short time in the dining-room, I heard a gruff
good-natured voice asking, "Where is Mr. Macaulay? Where have you put
him?" and in his arm-chair Lord Holland was wheeled in. He took me round
the apartments, he riding and I walking. He gave me the history of the
most remarkable portraits in the library, where there is, by the bye,
one of the few bad pieces of Lawrence that I have seen--a head of
Charles James Fox, an ignominious failure. Lord Holland said that it
was the worst ever painted of so eminent a man by so eminent an artist.
There is a very fine head of Machiavelli, and another of Earl Grey,
a very different sort of man. I observed a portrait of Lady Holland
painted some thirty years ago. I could have cried to see the change. She
must have been a most beautiful woman. She still looks, however, as if
she had been handsome, and shows in one respect great taste and sense.
She does not rouge at all; and her costume is not youthful, so that
she looks as well in the morning as in the evening. We came back to the
dining-room. Our breakfast party consisted of my Lord and Lady, myself,
Lord Russell, and Luttrell. You must have heard of Luttrell. I met him
once at Rogers's; and I have seen him, I think, in other places. He is
a famous wit,--the most popular, I think, of all the professed wits,--a
man who has lived in the highest circles, a scholar, and no contemptible
poet. He wrote a little volume of verse entitled "Advice to Julia,"--not
first rate, but neat, lively, piquant, and showing the most consummate
knowledge of fashionable life.

We breakfasted on very good coffee, and very good tea, and very good
eggs, butter kept in the midst of ice, and hot rolls. Lady Holland told
us her dreams; how she had dreamed that a mad dog bit her foot, and how
she set off to Brodie, and lost her way in St. Martin's Lane, and could
not find him. She hoped, she said, the dream would not come true. I said
that I had had a dream which admitted of no such hope; for I had dreamed
that I heard Pollock speak in the House of Commons, that the speech was
very long, and that he was coughed down. This dream of mine diverted
them much.

After breakfast Lady Holland offered to conduct me to her