Dear Hannah,—­I have just finished my article on Horace Walpole.  This is one of the happy moments of my life; a stupid task performed; a weight taken off my mind.  I should be quite joyous if I had only you to read it to.  But to Napier it must go forthwith; and, as soon as I have finished this letter, I shall put it into the general post with my own fair hands.  I was up at four this morning to put the last touch to it.  I often differ with the majority about other people’s writings, and still oftener about my own; and therefore I may very likely be mistaken; but I think that this article will be a hit.  We shall see.  Nothing ever cost me more pains than the first half; I never wrote anything so flowingly as the latter half; and I like the latter half the best.  I have laid it on Walpole so unsparingly that I shall not be surprised if Miss Berry should cut me.  You know she was Walpole’s favourite in her youth.  Neither am I sure that Lord and Lady Holland will be well pleased.  But they ought to be obliged to me; for I refrained for their sake from laying a hand, which has been thought to be not a light one, on that old rogue the first Lord Holland. [Lord Holland, once upon a time, speaking to Macaulay of his grandfather, said:  “He had that temper which kind folks have been pleased to say belongs to my family; but he shared the fault that belonged to that school of statesmen, an utter disbelief in public virtue.”]

Charles Grant is still at Paris; ill, he says.  I never knew a man who wanted setting to rights so often.  He goes as badly as your watch.

My father is at me again to provide for P—.  What on earth have I to do with P—?  The relationship is one which none but Scotchmen would recognise.  The lad is such a fool that he would utterly disgrace my recommendation.  And, as if to make the thing more provoking, his sisters say that he must be provided for in England, for that they cannot think of parting with him.  This, to be sure, matters little; for there is at present just as little chance of getting anything in India as in England.

But what strange folly this is which meets me in every quarter; people wanting posts in the army, the navy, the public offices, and saying that, if they cannot find such posts, they must starve!  How do all the rest of mankind live?  If I had not happened to be engaged in politics, and if my father had not been connected, by very extraordinary circumstances, with public men, I should never have dreamed of having places.  Why cannot P—­ be apprenticed to some hatter or tailor?  He may do well in such a business; he will do detestably ill as a clerk in my office.  He may come to make good coats; he will never, I am sure, write good despatches.  There is nothing truer than Poor Richard’s say:  “We are taxed twice as heavily by our pride as by the state.”  The curse of England is the obstinate determination of the middle classes to make their sons what they call gentlemen.  So we are overrun by clergymen without livings; lawyers without briefs; physicians without patients; authors without readers; clerks soliciting employment, who might have thriven, and been above the world, as bakers, watchmakers, or innkeepers.  The next time my father speaks to me about P—­, I will offer to subscribe twenty guineas towards making a pastry-cook of him.  He had a sweet tooth when he was a child.