's "Life of Mirabeau." See the Miscellaneous
Writings of Lord Macaulay.] but sends me no money. Allah blacken his
face! as the Persians say. He has not yet paid me for Burleigh.

We are worked to death in the House of Commons, and we are henceforth
to sit on Saturdays. This, indeed, is the only way to get through our
business. On Saturday next we shall, I hope, rise before seven, as I am
engaged to dine on that day with pretty, witty Mrs.--. I fell in with
her at Lady Grey's great crush, and found her very agreeable. Her
husband is nothing in society. Ropers has some very good stories about
their domestic happiness,--stories confirming a theory of mine which, as
I remember, made you very angry. When they first married, Mrs.--treated
her husband with great respect. But, when his novel came out and
failed completely, she changed her conduct, and has, ever since that
unfortunate publication, henpecked the poor author unmercifully. And the
case, says Ropers, is the harder, because it is suspected that she wrote
part of the book herself. It is like the scene in Milton where Eve,
after tempting Adam, abuses him for yielding to temptation. But do you
not remember how I told you that much of the love of women depended on
the eminence of men? And do you not remember how, on behalf of your sex,
you resented the imputation?

As to the present state of affairs, abroad and at home, I cannot sum it
up better than in these beautiful lines of the poet:

Peel is preaching, and Croker is lying.
The cholera's raging, the people are dying.
When the House is the coolest, as I am alive,
The thermometer stands at a hundred and five.
We debate in a heat that seems likely to burn us,
Much like the three children who sang in the furnace.
The disorders at Paris have not ceased to plague us;
Don Pedro, I hope, is ere this on the Tagus;
In Ireland no tithe can be raised by a parson;
Mr. Smithers is just hanged for murder and arson;
Dr. Thorpe has retired from the Lock, and 'tis said
That poor little Wilks will succeed in his stead.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 21 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I am glad to find that there is no chance of Nancy's
turning Quaker. She would, indeed, make a queer kind of female Friend.

What the Yankees will say about me I neither know nor care. I told them
the dates of my birth, and of my coming into Parliament. I told them
also that I was educated at Cambri