. It
seems as if it were a mere struggle between the nobility and the
mobility, and the middle-class--that vast body of good sense,
education, and wealth, and efficient to hold the beam even between
the scales--throws itself man by man into one or the other of them,
and so only swells the adverse parties on each side.

Parliament meets again in a few days, and then comes the tug of
war. Lord John Russell was at Oatlands while we were there, and as
the Francis Egertons and their guests were all anti-Reformers, they
led him rather a hard life. He bore all their attacks with great
good humor, however, and with the well-satisfied smile of a man who
thinks himself on the right, and knows himself on the safe side,
and wisely forbore to reply to their sallies. Our visit there was
delightful.

As the distance is but one and twenty miles, my mother and I posted
down in the open carriage. The only guests we found on our arrival
were Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan (she is a daughter of Lady Dacre's, and
a charming person), Lord John Russell, and two of our _corps
dramatique_, Mr. Craven and Captain Shelley, son of Sir John
Shelley, a handsome, good-humored, pleasant young gentleman, who
acts Charles V. in "Hernani." I got up very early the first morning
I was there and went down before breakfast to our little old
cottage. In the lane leading to it I met a poor woman who lived
near us, and whom we used to employ. I spoke to her, but she did
not know me again. I wonder if these four years can have changed me
so much? The tiny house had not been inhabited since we lived
there.... My aunt Siddons is better, and Cecy very well.

Your affectionate
F. A. K.

[The beautiful domain of Oatlands was only rented at this time by Lord
Francis Egerton, who delighted so much in it that he made overtures for
the purchase of it. The house was by no means a good one, though it had
been the abode of royalty; but the park was charming, and the whole
neighborhood, especially the wooded ranges of St. George's Hill,
extremely wild and picturesque.... Lord Francis Egerton bought St.
George's Hill, at the foot of which he built Hatchford, Lady Ellesmere's
charming dower house and residence after his death, and the house of
Oatlands became a countr