d even affected me. I was talking to Lady
Charlotte Lindsay, the daughter of Lord North, a great favourite of
mine, about the apartments and the furniture, when she said with a good
deal of emotion: "This is an interesting visit to me. I have never been
in this house for fifty years. It was here that I was born; I left it a
child when my father fell from power in 1782, and I have never crossed
the threshold since." Then she told me how the rooms seemed dwindled to
her; how the staircase, which appeared to her in recollection to be the
most spacious and magnificent that she had ever seen, had disappointed
her. She longed, she said, to go over the garrets and rummage her old
nursery. She told me how, in the No-Popery riots of 1780, she was
taken out of bed at two o'clock in the morning. The mob threatened Lord
North's house. There were soldiers at the windows, and an immense and
furious crowd in Downing Street. She saw, she said, from her nursery
the fires in different parts of London; but she did not understand the
danger; and only exulted in being up at midnight. Then she was conveyed
through the Park to the Horse Guards as the safest place; and was laid,
wrapped up in blankets, on the table in the guardroom in the midst of
the officers. "And it was such fun," she said, "that I have ever after
had rather a liking for insurrections."

I write in the midst of a crowd. A debate on Slavery is going on in the
Commons; a debate on Portugal in the Lords. The door is slamming behind
me every moment, and people are constantly going out and in. Here comes
Vernon Smith. "Well, Vernon, what are they doing?" "Gladstone has just
made a very good speech, and Howick is answering him." "Aye, but in the
House of Lords?" "They will beat us by twenty, they say." "Well, I do
not think it matters much." "No; nobody out of the House of Lords cares
either for Don Pedro, or for Don Miguel."

There is a conversation between two official men in the Library of the
House of Commons on the night of the 3rd June 1833, reported word
for word. To the historian three centuries hence this letter will be
invaluable. To you, ungrateful as you are, it will seem worthless.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Smoking-Room of the House of Commons June 6, 1833.

My Darling,--Why am I such a fool as to write to a gypsey at Liverpool,
who fancies that none is so good as she if she sends one letter for my
three? A lazy chit whose fingers tire wi