eally cannot describe. He told me yesterday, with tears in his eyes,
that he did not know what the Board would do without me. I attribute his
feeling partly to Robert Grant's absence; not that Robert ever did me
ill offices with him far from it; but Grant's is a mind that cannot
stand alone. It is begging your pardon for my want of gallantry, a
feminine mind. It turns, like ivy, to some support. When Robert is near
him, he clings to Robert. Robert being away, he clings to me. This may
be a weakness in a public man; but I love him the better for it.

I have lately met Sir James Graham at dinner. He took me aside, and
talked to me on my appointment with a warmth of kindness which, though
we have been always on good terms, surprised me. But the approach of
a long separation, like the approach of death, brings out all friendly
feelings with unusual strength. The Cabinet, he said, felt the loss
strongly. It was great at the India Board, but in the House of Commons,
(he used the word over and over,) "irreparable." They all, however, he
said, agreed that a man of honour could not make politics a profession
unless he had a competence of his own, without exposing himself to
privation of the severest kind. They felt that they had never had it
in their power to do all they wished to do for me. They had no means of
giving me a provision in England; and they could not refuse me what
I asked in India. He said very strongly that they all thought that
I judged quite wisely; and added that, if God heard his prayers, and
spared my health, I should make a far greater figure in public life than
if I had remained during the next five or six years in England.

I picked up in a print-shop the other day some superb views of the
suburbs of Chowringhee, and the villas of the Garden Reach. Selina
professes that she is ready to die with envy of the fine houses and
verandahs. I heartily wish we were back again in a nice plain brick
house, three windows in front, in Cadogan Place or Russell Square, with
twelve or fifteen hundred a year, and a spare bedroom,--(we, like Mrs.
Norris, [A leading personage in Miss Austen's "Mansfield Park."] must
always have a spare bedroom,)--for Edward and Margaret, Love to them
both.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

London: December 5, 1833

Dear Napier,--You are probably not unprepared for what I am about to
tell you. Yesterday evening the Directors of the East India Company
elected me one of t