I picked up some news from these Cabinet Ministers.  There is to be a Coronation on quite a new plan; no banquet in Westminster Hall, no feudal services, no champion, no procession from the Abbey to the Hall, and back again.  But there is to be a service in the Abbey.  All the Peers are to come in state and in their robes, and the King is to take the oaths, and be crowned and anointed in their presence.  The spectacle will be finer than usual to the multitude out of doors.  The few hundreds who could obtain admittance to the Hall will be the only losers.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London:  July 8, 1831.

My dear Sister,—­Since I wrote to you I have been out to dine and sleep at Holland House.  We had a very agreeable and splendid party; among others the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, and the Marchioness of Clanricarde, who, you know, is the daughter of Canning.  She is very beautiful, and very like her father, with eyes full of fire, and great expression in all her features.  She and I had a great deal of talk.  She showed much cleverness and information, but, I thought, a little more of political animosity than is quite becoming in a pretty woman.  However, she has been placed in peculiar circumstances.  The daughter of a statesman who was a martyr to the rage of faction may be pardoned for speaking sharply of the enemies of her parent; and she did speak sharply.  With knitted brows, and flashing eyes, and a look of feminine vengeance about her beautiful mouth, she gave me such a character of Peel as he would certainly have had no pleasure in hearing.

In the evening Lord John Russell came; and, soon after, old Talleyrand.  I had seen Talleyrand in very large parties, hut had never been near enough to hear a word that he said.  I now had the pleasure of listening for an hour and a half to his conversation.  He is certainly the greatest curiosity that I ever fell in with.  His head is sunk down between two high shoulders.  One of his feet is hideously distorted.  His face is as pale as that of a corpse, and wrinkled to a frightful degree.  His eyes have an odd glassy stare quite peculiar to them.  His hair, thickly powdered and pomatumed, hangs down his shoulders on each side as straight as a pound of tallow candles.  His conversation, however, soon makes you forget his ugliness and infirmities.  There is a poignancy without effort in all that he says, which reminded me a little of the character which the wits of Johnson’s circle give of Beauclerk.  For example, we talked about Metternich and Cardinal Mazarin.  “J’y trouve beaucoup a redire.  Le Cardinal trompait; mais il ne mentait pas.  Or, M. de Metternich ment toujours, et ne trompe jamais.”  He mentioned M. de St. Aulaire,—­now one of the most distinguished public men of France.  I said:  “M. de Saint-Aulaire est beau-pere de M. le duc de Cazes, n’est-ce pas?” “Non, monsieur,” said Talleyrand; “l’on disait, il y a douze ans, que M. de Saint-Aulaire