The old apartments, splendid enough in extent and proportion, are paltry in finishing.  Instead of being lined with heart of oak, the palace of the British King is hung with paper, painted wainscot colour.  There are some fine paintings and some droll ones; among the last are those of divers princes of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, of which Queen Charlotte was descended.  They are ill-coloured, orang-outang-looking figures, with black eyes and hook-noses, in old-fashioned uniforms.

We returned to a hasty dinner [in Pall Mall], and then hurried away to see honest Dan Terry’s house, called the Adelphi Theatre, where we saw the Pilot, from the American novel of that name.  It is extremely popular, the dramatist having seized on the whole story, and turned the odious and ridiculous parts, assigned by the original author to the British, against the Yankees themselves.  There is a quiet effrontery in this that is of a rare and peculiar character.  The Americans were so much displeased, that they attempted a row—­which rendered the piece doubly attractive to the seamen at Wapping, who came up and crowded the house night after night, to support the honour of the British flag.  After all, one must deprecate whatever keeps up ill-will betwixt America and the mother country; and we in particular should avoid awakening painful recollections.  Our high situation enables us to contemn petty insults and to make advances towards cordiality.  I was, however, glad to see honest Dan’s theatre as full seemingly as it could hold.  The heat was dreadful, and Anne was so very unwell that she was obliged to be carried into Terry’s house,—­a curious dwelling, no larger than a squirrel’s cage, which he has contrived to squeeze out of the vacant spaces of the theatre, and which is accessible by a most complicated combination of staircases and small passages.  Here we had rare good porter and oysters after the play, and found Anne much better.  She had attempted too much; indeed I myself was much fatigued.

October 22.—­This morning Drs. Gooch, Shaw, and Yates breakfasted, and had a consultation about wee Johnnie.  They give us great hopes that his health will be established, but the seaside or the country seem indispensable.  Mr. Wilmot Horton,[372] Under Secretary of State, also breakfasted.  He is full of some new plan of relieving the poor’s-rates by encouraging emigration.  But John Bull will think this savours of Botany Bay.  The attempt to look the poor’s-rates in the face is certainly meritorious.

Laboured in writing and marking extracts to be copied from breakfast to dinner, with the exception of an hour spent in telling Johnnie the history of his namesake, Gilpin.

Mr. William and Mrs. Lockhart dined with us.  Tom Moore[373] and Sir Thomas Lawrence came in the evening, which made a pleasant soiree.  Smoke my French—­Egad, it is time to air some of my vocabulary.  It is, I find, cursedly musty.