Upon some occasion, soon after Mr. Temple came to be his lordship’s secretary, Mr. Temple acknowledged to a gentleman, in Lord Oldborough’s presence, some trifling official mistake he had made: Lord Oldborough, as soon as the gentleman was gone, said to his secretary, “Sir, if you make a mistake, repair it--that is sufficient. Sir, you are young in political life--you don’t know, I see, that candour hurts a political character in the opinion of fools--that is, of the greater part of mankind. Candour may be advantageous to a moral writer, or to a private gentleman, but not to a minister of state. A statesman, if he would govern public opinion, must establish a belief in his infallibility.” Upon this principle Lord Oldborough abided, not only by his own measures, but by his own instruments--right or wrong, he was known to support those whom he had once employed or patronised. Lucky this for the Falconer family! LETTER FROM ALFRED TO ERASMUS. “MY DEAR DOCTOR, “How I pity you who have no vacations! Please, when next you sum up the advantages and disadvantages of the professions of law and medicine, to set down _vacations_ to the credit side of the law. You who work for life and death can have no pause, no respite; whilst I from time to time may, happily, leave all the property, real and personal, of my fellow-creatures, to its lawful or unlawful owners. Now, for six good weeks to come, I may hang sorrow and cast away care, and forget the sound and smell of parchments, and the din of the courts. “Here I am, a happy prisoner at large, in this nutshell of a house at the Hills, which you have never seen since it has become the family mansion. I am now in the actual tenure and occupation of the little room, commonly called Rosamond’s room, bounded on the N. E. W. and S. by blank--[N.B. a very dangerous practice of leaving blanks for your boundaries in your leases, as an eminent attorney told me last week.] Said room containing in the whole 14 square feet 4-1/2 square inches, superficial measure, be the same more or less. I don’t know how my father and mother, and sisters, who all their lives were used to range in spacious apartments, can live so happily, cooped up as they now are; but their bodies, as well as minds, seem to have a contractile power, which adapts them to their present confined circumstances. Procrustes, though he was a mighty tyrant, could fit only the body to the bed. I found all at home as cheerful and contented as in the days when we lived magnificently at Percy-hall. I have not seen the Hungerfords yet; Colonel H. is, I hear, attached to Lady Elizabeth Pembroke. I know very little of her, but Caroline assures me she is an amiable, sensible woman, well suited to him, and to all his family. I need not, however, expatiate on this subject, for Caroline says that she wrote you a long letter, the day after she returned from Hungerford Castle.