I write in the midst of a crowd.  A debate on Slavery is going on in the Commons; a debate on Portugal in the Lords.  The door is slamming behind me every moment, and people are constantly going out and in.  Here comes Vernon Smith.  “Well, Vernon, what are they doing?” “Gladstone has just made a very good speech, and Howick is answering him.”  “Aye, but in the House of Lords?” “They will beat us by twenty, they say.”  “Well, I do not think it matters much.”  “No; nobody out of the House of Lords cares either for Don Pedro, or for Don Miguel.”

There is a conversation between two official men in the Library of the House of Commons on the night of the 3rd June 1833, reported word for word.  To the historian three centuries hence this letter will be invaluable.  To you, ungrateful as you are, it will seem worthless.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Smoking-Room of the House of Commons
June 6, 1833.

My Darling,—­Why am I such a fool as to write to a gypsey at Liverpool, who fancies that none is so good as she if she sends one letter for my three?  A lazy chit whose fingers tire with penning a page in reply to a quire!  There, Miss, you read all the first sentence of my epistle, and never knew that you were reading verse.  I have some gossip for you about the Edinburgh Review.  Napier is in London, and has called on me several times.  He has been with the publishers, who tell him that the sale is falling off; and in many private parties, where he hears sad complaints.  The universal cry is that the long dull articles are the ruin of the Review.  As to myself, he assures me that my articles are the only things which keep the work up at all.  Longman and his partners correspond with about five hundred booksellers in different parts of the kingdom.  All these booksellers, I find, tell them that the Review sells, or does not sell, according as there are, or are not, articles by Mr. Macaulay.  So, you see, I, like Mr. Darcy,[The central male figure in “Pride and Prejudice.”] shall not care how proud I am.  At all events, I cannot but be pleased to learn that, if I should be forced to depend on my pen for subsistence, I can command what price I choose.

The House is sitting; Peel is just down; Lord Palmerston is speaking; the heat is tremendous; the crowd stifling; and so here I am in the smoking-room, with three Repealers making chimneys of their mouths under my very nose.

 To think that this letter will bear to my Anna
 The exquisite scent of O’Connor’s Havannah!