The India-bill, air-balloons, Vestris, and the automaton, share all attention.  Mrs. Siddons, as less a novelty, does not engross all conversation.  If abuse still keeps above par, it confines itself to its prescriptive province, the ministerial line.  In that walk it has tumbled a little into the kennel.  The low buffoonery of Lord Thurlow, in laying the caricatura of the Coalition on the table of your lordship’s House, has levelled it to Sadler’s Wells; and Mr. Flood, the pillar of invective, does not promise to re-erect it; not, I conclude, from want of having imported a stock of ingredients, but his presumptuous debut on the very night of his entry was so wretched, and delivered in so barbarous a brogue that I question whether he will ever recover the blow Mr. Courtenay gave him.(514) A young man may correct and improve, and rise from a first fall; but an elderly formed speaker has not an equal chance.  Mr. Hamilton,(515) Lord Abercorn’s heir, but by no means so laconic, had more success.  Though his first essay, ii was not at all dashed by bashfulness; and though he might have blushed for discovering so much personal rancour to Mr. Fox, he rather seemed to be impatient to discharge it.

Your lordship sees in the papers that the two Houses of Ireland have firmly resisted the innovations of the Volunteers.  Indeed, it was time for the Protestant proprietors to make their stand; for though the Catholics behave decently, it would be into their hands that the prize would fall.  The delegates, it is true, have sent over a most loyal address; but I wish their actions may not contradict their words!  Mr. Flood’s discomfiture here will, I suppose, carry him back to a field wherein his wicked spirit may have more effect.  It is a very serious moment!  I am in pain lest your county, my dear lord, (you know what I mean) should countenance such pernicious designs.

(513) Some excellent advice on the subject of female letter-writing, will be found in a letter written, in 1809, by Lord Collingwood to one of his daughters:—­“No sportsman,” says the gallant Admiral, “ever hits a partridge without aiming at it; and skill is acquired by repeated attempts.  When you write a letter, give it your greatest care, that it may be as perfect in all its parts as you can make it.  Let the subject be sense, expressed in the most plain, intelligible, and elegant manner that you are capable of If in a familiar epistle you should be playful and jocular, guard carefully that your wit be not sharp, so as to, give pain to any person; and before You write a sentence, examine it, even the words which it is composed, that there be nothing vulgar or inelegant in them.  Remember, my dear, that your letter is the picture of Your brains; and those whose brains are a compound of folly, nonsense, and impertinence, are to blame to exhibit them to the contempt of the world, or the pity of their friends.  To write a letter with negligence, without proper stops, with crooked lines and great, flourishing dashes, is inelegant; it argues either great ignorance of what is proper, or great indifference towards the person to whom it is addressed, and is consequently disrespectful.”  Memoirs, p. 430.-E.