rite number in the lottery of life, and who have
suffered double disappointment when their ticket came up a blank?"

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Leeds: December 12, 1832

My dear Sister,--The election here is going on as well as possible.
Today the poll stands thus:

Marshall Macaulay Sadler
1,804 1,792 1,353

The probability is that Sadler will give up the contest. If he persists,
he will be completely beaten. The voters are under 4,000 in number;
those who have already polled are 3,100; and about five hundred will
not poll at all. Even if we were not to bring up another man, the
probability is that we should win. On Sunday morning early I hope to be
in London; and I shall see you in the course of the day.

I had written thus far when your letter was delivered to me. I am
sitting in the midst of two hundred friends, all mad with exultation and
party spirit, all glorying over the Tories, and thinking me the happiest
man in the world. And it is all that I can do to hide my tears, and
to command my voice, when it is necessary for me to reply to their
congratulations. Dearest, dearest sister, you alone are now left to me.
Whom have I on earth but thee? But for you, in the midst of all these
successes, I should wish that I were lying by poor Hyde Villiers. But
I cannot go on. I am wanted to waste an address to the electors; and I
shall lay it on Sadler pretty heavily. By what strange fascination is it
that ambition and resentment exercise such power over minds which ought
to be superior to them? I despise myself for feeling so bitterly towards
this fellow as I do. But the separation from dear Margaret has jarred
my whole temper. I am cried up here to the skies as the most affable and
kind-hearted of then, while I feel a fierceness and restlessness within
me, quite new, and almost inexplicable.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: December 24, 1832.

My dear Sister,--I am much obliged to you for your letter, and am
gratified by all its contents, except what you say about your own cough.
As soon as you come back, you shall see Dr. Chambers, if you are not
quite well. Do not oppose me in this; for I have set my heart on it.
I dined on Saturday at Lord Essex's in Belgrave Square. But never was
there such a take-in. I had been given to understand that his Lordship's
cuisine was superintended by the first French artists, and that I
should find there all the luxuries of the Alm