debate, 'Nothing will satisfy me but to have the noble Lord's head; I will have his head.' Lord North said, 'The honourable gentleman says he will have my head. I bear him no malice in return, for though the honourable gentleman says he will have my head, I can assure him that I would on no account have his.' September 13th, 1834 {p.132} Dined again at Holland House the day before yesterday; Melbourne, Rice, Lord and Lady Albemarle, and Lord Gosford; rather dull. A discussion about _who_ was the man in a mask who cut Charles I.'s head off; Mackintosh believed he knew. What a literary puerility! The man in a mask was Jack Ketch (whatever his name was); who can doubt it? Where was the man, Roundhead or Puritan, who as an amateur would have mounted the scaffold to perform this office? But the executioner, though only discharging the duties of his office, probably thought in those excited times that he would not be safe from the vengeance of some enthusiastic cavalier, and that it was more prudent to conceal the features of the man by whom the deed was done. Melbourne swore that Henry VIII. was the greatest man who ever lived, and Allen declared if he had not married Ann Boleyn we should have continued Catholics to this day, both of which assertions I ventured to dispute. Allen with all his learning is fond of a paradox, and his prejudices shine forth in every question in which Church and religion are implicated. Melbourne loves dashing opinions. September 18th, 1834 {p.133} [Page Head: LORD BROUGHAM'S ABERRATIONS.]