there can be none in them, though), and adjuring the Lords, con
quella voce! e quel viso! to pass the Bill, like good boys, and
remember the schoolmaster, who surely, when he is at home, cannot
be said to be abroad. A good _coup de theatre_ is not an easy
thing, and requires a good deal of tact and skill. I cannot help
thinking there must have been something grotesque in this
performance of Brougham's, as when Liston turned tragedian and
recited Collins's "Ode to the Passions" in a green coat and top
boots. The excitement, however, was tremendous; the House thronged
to suffocation; as many people crammed into impossible space as the
angels in the famous Needle-point controversy. Lady Glengall
declares that she sat for four hours on an iron bar. I think this
universal political effervescence has got into my head. And what
will you do now? You cannot create forty-one Peers; the whole Book
of Genesis affords no precedent. I suppose Parliament will be
prorogued, ministers will go out, a "cloth of gold" and "cloth of
frieze" Government, with Brougham and Wellington brought together
into it, will be cobbled, and a new Bill, which will set the teeth
of the Lords so badly on edge, will be concocted, which the people
will accept rather than nothing, if they are taken in the right
way. That, I suppose, is what you Whigs will do; for an adverse
majority of forty-one must be turned somehow or other, as it can
hardly be gone straight at by folks who mean to keep on the box, or
hold the reins, or carry the coach to the end of the journey....

I do not know at all how I should like to live in a palace; I am
furiously fond of magnificence and splendor, and not unreasonably,
seeing that I was born in a palace, with a sapphire ceiling hung
with golden lamps, and velvet floors all embroidered with
sweet-smelling, lovely-colored flowers, and walls of veined marble
and precious, sparkling stones. I almost doubt if any mere royal
palace would be good enough for me, or answer my turn. I should
like all the people in the world to be as beautiful as angels, and
go about crowned with glory and clothed with light (dear me, how
very different they are!); but failing all that I should like in
the way of enormously beautiful things, I pick up and treasure like
a baby all the lit