he said it. [Mr. Sharp died in 1837,
before Macaulay's return from India.] I encouraged him; and told him
that I hoped to be in England again before the end of 1839, and that
there was nothing impossible in our meeting again. He cheered up after
a time; told me that he should correspond with me, and give me all the
secret history both of politics and of society; and promised to select
the best books, and send them regularly to me.

The Fishmongers' dinner was very good, but not so profusely splendid as
I had expected. There has been a change, I find, and not before it was
wanted. They had got at one time to dining at ten guineas a head. They
drank my health, and I harangued them with immense applause. I talked
all the evening to Sharp. I told him what a dear sister I had, and how
readily she had agreed to go with me. I had told Grant the same in
the morning. Both of them extolled my good fortune in having such a
companion.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: November--, 1833.

Dear Hannah,--Things stand as they stood; except that the report of my
appointment is every day spreading more widely; and that I am beset by
advertising dealers begging leave to make up a hundred cotton shirts for
me, and fifty muslin gowns for you, and by clerks out of place begging
to be my secretaries. I am not in very high spirits to-day, as I have
just received a letter from poor Ellis, to whom I had not communicated
my intentions till yesterday. He writes so affectionately and so
plaintively that he quite cuts me to the heart. There are few indeed
from whom I shall part with so much pain; and he, poor fellow, says
that, next to his wife, I am the person for whom he feels the
most thorough attachment, and in whom he places the most unlimited
confidence.

On the 11th of this month there is to be a dinner given to Lushington
by the electors of the Tower Hamlets. He has persecuted me with
importunities to attend, and make a speech for him; and my father has
joined in the request. It is enough, in these times, Heaven knows, for
a man who represents, as I do, a town of a hundred and twenty thousand
people to keep his own constituents in good humour; and the Spitalfields
weavers, and Whitechapel butchers, are nothing to me. But, ever since
I succeeded in what everybody allows to have been the most hazardous
attempt of the kind ever made,--I mean in persuading an audience of
manufacturers, all Whigs or Radicals, that the immediate alteration
o