a year.  The carpet was taken up, and chairs were set out in rows, as if we had been at a religious meeting.  Then we had flute-playing by the first flute-player in England, and pianoforte-strumming by the first pianoforte-strummer in England, and singing by all the first singers in England, and Signor Rubini’s incomparable tenor, and Signor Curioni’s incomparable counter-tenor, and Pasta’s incomparable expression.  You who know how airs much inferior to these take my soul, and lap it in Elysium, will form some faint conception of my transport.  Sharp beckoned me to sit by him in the back row.  These old fellows are so selfish.  “Always,” said he, “establish yourself in the middle of the row against the wall; for, if you sit in the front or next the edges, you will be forced to give up your seat to the ladies who are standing.”  I had the gallantry to surrender mine to a damsel who had stood for a quarter of an hour; and I lounged into the ante-rooms, where I found Samuel Rogers.  Rogers and I sate together on a bench in one of the passages, and had a good deal of very pleasant conversation.  He was,—­as indeed he has always been to me,—­extremely kind, and told me that, if it were in his power, he would contrive to be at Holland House with me, to give me an insight into its ways.  He is the great oracle of that circle.

He has seen the King’s letter to Lord Grey, respecting the Garter; or at least has authentic information about it.  It is a happy stroke of policy, and will, they say, decide many wavering votes in the House of Lords.  The King, it seems, requests Lord Grey to take the order, as a mark of royal confidence in him “at so critical a time;”—­significant words, I think.

Ever yours

T. B. Macaulay.

To Hannah More Macaulay.

London:  May 30, 1831.

Well, my dear, I have been to Holland House.  I took a glass coach, and arrived, through a fine avenue of elms, at the great entrance towards seven o’clock.  The house is delightful;—­the very perfection of the old Elizabethan style;—­a considerable number of very large and very comfortable rooms, rich with antique carving and gilding, but carpeted and furnished with all the skill of the best modern upholsterers.  The library is a very long room,—­as long, I should think, as the gallery at Rothley Temple,—­with little cabinets for study branching out of it. warmly and snugly fitted up, and looking out on very beautiful grounds.  The collection of books is not, like Lord Spencer’s, curious; but it contains almost everything that one ever wished to read.  I found nobody there when I arrived but Lord Russell, the son of the Marquess of Tavistock.  We are old House of Commons friends; so we had some very pleasant talk, and in a little while in came Allen, who is warden of Dulwich College, and who lives almost entirely at Holland House.  He is certainly a man of vast information and great conversational powers.  Some other gentlemen dropped