g immediately addressed him in French: 'Eh, mais, Monsieur
l'Envoye d'Angleterre, qu'avez-vous done? Pourquoi riez-vous? Est-ce
qu'il y'ait quelque chose qui vous ait diverti? Faites-moi le plaisir de
me l'indiquer. J'aime beaucoup les ridicules.'"

Parliament is up at last. We official men are now left alone at the
West End of London, and are making up for our long confinement in
the mornings by feasting together at night. On Wednesday I dined with
Labouchere at his official residence in Somerset House. It is well that
he is a bachelor; for he tells me that the ladies his neighbours make
bitter complaints of the unfashionable situation in which they are
cruelly obliged to reside gratis. Yesterday I dined with Will Brougham,
and an official party, in Mount Street. We are going to establish a
Club, to be confined to members of the House of Commons in place under
the present Government, who are to dine together weekly at Grillon's
Hotel, and to settle the affairs of the State better, I hope, than our
masters at their Cabinet dinners.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: September 20, 1832

My dear Sister,--I am at home again from Leeds, where everything is
going on as well as possible. I, and most of my friends, feel sanguine
as to the result. About half my day was spent in speaking, and hearing
other people speak; in squeezing and being squeezed; in shaking hands
with people whom I never saw before, and whose faces and names I forget
within a minute after being introduced to them. The rest was passed in
conversation with my leading friends, who are very honest substantial
manufacturers. They feed me on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding; at
night they put me into capital bedrooms; and the only plague which they
give me is that they are always begging me to mention some food or wine
for which I have a fancy, or some article of comfort and convenience
which I may wish them to procure.

I travelled to town with a family of children who ate without
intermission from Market Harborough, where they got into the coach, to
the Peacock at Islington, where they got out of it. They breakfasted
as if they had fasted all the preceding day. They dined as if they had
never breakfasted. They ate on the road one large basket of sandwiches,
another of fruit, and a boiled fowl; besides which there was not an
orange-girl, an old man with cakes, or a boy with filberts, who came to
the coach-side when we stopped to cha