patronesses, by talking as if London lay packed in Willis's rooms, and
nobody existed but on Wednesday nights. Forgive my impertinence; you
know how, in my heart, I revere your oligarchy.

"You will wonder how I amuse myself in the midst of this curious
specimen of a social _Macedoine_--quite well--and am acquiring a taste
for that true epicurean apathy which one enjoys in perfection, among
people whom one expects neither to interest, nor to be interested by;
and I sit down among them as calmly comfortable as I can conceive a
growing cabbage to be in wet weather. I hold my tongue and watch the
chaos as gravely as I can, while Berwick labours to make the jarring
elements of his party harmonize, and offends every one in turn by trying
to talk to him in his own way. I observe this generally irritates
people; nobody likes to be so well understood.

"I can hardly judge at present, but I don't think Arlington's suit will
prosper, and you will laugh when I tell you why: it is not that the
youth is too shy and the maiden too cold; it is not the officiousness of
the Berwicks;--it is because Lord Arlington has some thirty or forty
thousand a-year. He is so rich, and the Rochdales so poor, and so
stiffly disinterested withal; and it is such a mortal sin to think of
money in this dirty world, where we cannot live without it, that they
actually discourage him, and make it a point of honour to snub him
daily, to prove their superiority to mercenary considerations. What weak
things your strong-minded people sometimes do! and what horrors arise
from acting upon principle! I, who have none, fancy I sometimes stumble
into right by just doing what I please, and letting others do the same.

"Pray be bountiful, and send me some news, true or false--only if the
latter, tell me the inventors. I have had nothing of the kind save a