Borneo which promises great advantages to England. . . . Everybody here has the _Influenza_—a right-down influenza, that sends people to their beds. Those who have triumphed at their exemption in the evening, wake up perhaps in the morning full of aches in every limb, and scoff no longer. . . . Dinner parties are sometimes quite broken up by the excuses that come pouring in at the last moment. Lady John Russell had seven last week at a small dinner of twelve; 1,200 policemen at one time were taken off duty, so that the thieves might have had their own way, but they were probably as badly off themselves. _To Mr. and Mrs. I. P. D._ LONDON, December 16, 1847. MY DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT: . . . On Saturday Mr. Hallam wrote us that Sir Robert Peel had promised to breakfast with him on Monday morning and he thought we should like to meet him in that quiet way. So we presented ourselves at ten o’clock, and were joined by Sir Robert, Lord Mahon, Macaulay, and Milman, who with Hallam himself, formed a circle that could not be exceeded in the wide world. I was the only lady, except Miss Hallam; but I am especially favored in the breakfast line. I would cross the Atlantic only for the pleasure I had that morning in hearing such men talk for two or three hours in an entirely easy unceremonious breakfast way. Sir Robert was full of stories, and showed himself as much the scholar as the statesman. Macaulay was overflowing as usual, and Lord Mahon and Milman are full of learning and accomplishments. The classical scholarship of these men is very perfect and sometimes one catches a glimpse of awfully deep abysses of learning. But then it is _only_ a glimpse, for their learning has no cumbrous and dull pedantry about it. They are all men of society and men of the world, who keep up with it everywhere. There is many a pleasant story and many a good joke, and everything discussed but politics, which, as Sir Robert and Macaulay belong to opposite dynasties, might be dangerous ground.