th penning a page in reply to a
quire! There, Miss, you read all the first sentence of my epistle, and
never knew that you were reading verse. I have some gossip for you about
the Edinburgh Review. Napier is in London, and has called on me several
times. He has been with the publishers, who tell him that the sale is
falling off; and in many private parties, where he hears sad complaints.
The universal cry is that the long dull articles are the ruin of the
Review. As to myself, he assures me that my articles are the only things
which keep the work up at all. Longman and his partners correspond with
about five hundred booksellers in different parts of the kingdom. All
these booksellers, I find, tell them that the Review sells, or does not
sell, according as there are, or are not, articles by Mr. Macaulay.
So, you see, I, like Mr. Darcy,[The central male figure in "Pride and
Prejudice."] shall not care how proud I am. At all events, I cannot but
be pleased to learn that, if I should be forced to depend on my pen for
subsistence, I can command what price I choose.

The House is sitting; Peel is just down; Lord Palmerston is speaking;
the heat is tremendous; the crowd stifling; and so here I am in the
smoking-room, with three Repealers making chimneys of their mouths under
my very nose.

To think that this letter will bear to my Anna
The exquisite scent of O'Connor's Havannah!

You know that the Lords have been foolish enough to pass a vote implying
censure on the Ministers.[On June 3rd, 1833, a vote of censure on the
Portuguese policy of the Ministry was moved by the Duke of
Wellington, and carried in the Lords by 79 votes to 69. On June 6th a
counter-resolution was carried in the Commons by 361 votes to 98.] The
Ministers do not seem inclined to take it of them. The King has snubbed
their Lordships properly; and in about an hour, as I guess, (for it is
near eleven), we shall have come to a Resolution in direct opposition
to that agreed to by the Upper House. Nobody seems to care one straw for
what the Peers say about any public matter. A Resolution of the Court
of Common Council, or of a meeting at Freemasons' Hall, has often made
a greater sensation than this declaration of a branch of the Legislature
against the Executive Government. The institution of the Peerage is
evidently dying a natural death.

I dined yesterday--where, and on what, and at what price, I am ashamed
to tell you. Such scandalous extravagance and