These are some Boswelliana of Sydney; not very clerical, you will say, but indescribably amusing to the hearers, whatever the readers may think of them.  Nothing can present a more striking contrast to his rapid, loud, laughing utterance, and his rector-like amplitude and rubicundity, than the low, slow, emphatic tone, and the corpse-like face of Rogers.  There is as great a difference in what they say as in the voice and look with which they say it.  The conversation of Rogers is remarkably polished and artificial.  What he says seems to have been long meditated, and might be published with little correction.  Sydney talks from the impulse of the moment, and his fun is quite inexhaustible.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M Macaulay.

London:  June 8, 1831.

My dear Sister,—­Yesterday night I went to the Jew’s.  I had indeed no excuse for forgetting the invitation; for, about a week after I had received the green varnished billet, and answered it, came another in the self-same words, and addressed to Mr. Macaulay, Junior.  I thought that my answer had miscarried; so down I sate, and composed a second epistle to the Hebrews.  I afterwards found that the second invitation was meant for Charles.

I set off a little after ten, having attired myself simply as for a dinner-party.  The house is a very fine one.  The door was guarded by peace-officers, and besieged by starers.  My host met me in a superb court-dress, with his sword at his side.  There was a most sumptuous-looking Persian, covered with gold lace.  Then there was an Italian bravo with a long beard.  Two old gentlemen, who ought to have been wiser, were fools enough to come in splendid Turkish costumes at which everybody laughed.  The fancy-dresses were worn almost exclusively by the young people.  The ladies for the most part contented themselves with a few flowers and ribands oddly disposed.  There was, however, a beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, who looked as well as dressed the character perfectly; an angel of a Jewess in a Highland plaid; and an old woman, or rather a woman,—­for through her disguise it was impossible to ascertain her age,—­in the absurdest costume of the last century.  These good people soon began their quadrilles and galopades, and were enlivened by all the noise that twelve fiddlers could make for their lives.

You must not suppose the company was made up of these mummers.  There was Dr. Lardner, and Long, the Greek Professor in the London University, and Sheil, and Strutt, and Romilly, and Owen the philanthropist.  Owen laid bold on Sheil, and gave him a lecture on Co-operation which lasted for half an hour.  At last Sheil made his escape.  Then Owen seized Mrs. Sheil,—­a good Catholic, and a very agreeable woman,—­and began to prove to her that there could be no such thing as moral responsibility.  I had fled at the first sound of his discourse, and was talking with Strutt and Romilly, when behold!