f the corn-laws was impossible,--I have been considered as a capital
physician for desperate cases in politics. However,--to return from that
delightful theme, my own praises,--Lushington, who is not very popular
with the rabble of the Tower Hamlets, thinks that an oration from me
would give him a lift. I could not refuse him directly, backed as he was
by my father. I only said that I would attend if I were in London on the
11th; but I added that, situated as I was, I thought it very probable
that I should be out of town.

I shall go to-night to Miss Berry's soiree. I do not know whether I
told you that she resented my article on Horace Walpole so much that
Sir Stratford Canning advised me not to go near her. She was Walpole's
greatest favourite. His Reminiscences are addressed to her in terms of
the most gallant eulogy. When he was dying at past eighty, he asked her
to marry him, merely that he might make her a Countess and leave her
his fortune. You know that in Vivian Grey she is called Miss Otranto. I
always expected that my article would put her into a passion, and I was
not mistaken; but she has come round again, and sent me a most pressing
and kind invitation the other day.

I have been racketing lately, having dined twice with Rogers, and once
with Grant. Lady Holland is in a most extraordinary state. She came
to Rogers's, with Allen, in so bad a humour that we were all forced
to rally, and make common cause against her. There was not a person at
table to whom she was not rude; and none of us were inclined to submit.
Rogers sneered; Sydney made merciless sport of her. Tom Moore looked
excessively impertinent; Bobus put her down with simple straightforward
rudeness; and I treated her with what I meant to be the coldest
civility. Allen flew into a rage with us all, and especially with
Sydney, whose guffaws, as the Scotch say, were indeed tremendous. When
she and all the rest were gone, Rogers made Tom Moore and me sit down
with him for half an hour, and we coshered over the events of the
evening. Rogers said that he thought Allen's firing up in defence of his
patroness the best thing that he had seen in him. No sooner had Tom and
I got into the street than he broke forth: "That such an old stager as
Rogers should talk such nonsense, and give Allen credit for attachment
to anything but his dinner! Allen was bursting with envy to see us so
free, while he was conscious of his own slavery."

Her Ladyship has been th