The Drawing-room and the Brown Room look beautiful in their new state, and you cannot think how elegant all our company appear at this important moment. Anne and the gay Cupid [Philip Stanhope] are enjoying all the agonies of a game of chess. The Glyns [1] are staying with us, and Tom [2] is fitting himself for Prime Minister by assiduously studying the papers. Lady Glyn and Mamma are enjoying a light supper; Sir Dicky puts in notes of interrogation and comments upon the passing scene with great effect. Papa is grunting, groaning and snoring in the library--the result of twenty brace of moor-grouse. The younger members of the family are, I suppose, enjoying delicious slumbers at Westminster, for the clock has just struck eleven, and I must to bed! From Southampton, then a fashionable and gay resort, where he was staying with a private tutor, Charles Stanhope likewise wrote to his distant brother. SOUTHAMPTON, _November 5th, 1812._ I dined the other day with the Fitzhughs who live near here, and was much disappointed at not meeting Mrs Siddons who is always with them. She is not liked by the people about here, she is so very _graciosissima pomposissima_. If she goes to any party she immediately usurps the sofa, monopolising it most infamously with her most corpulent latitude; and to those people who conceive themselves most her intimates, she bows like a Queen, with a slight inclination from her shoulders, never deigning to move from her seat, nor even in the slightest degree to bend her formal body. This, of course, cannot but disgust, tho' Mrs Fitzhugh doats on her. [3] When she acted here Mrs F. waited on her as a maid, and when she came off the stage, after having died most naturally, Mrs F. begged her to go to bed, and was worked up to hystericks wanting repeated assurances that she was not in _reality_ dead. Was there ever anything so absurd or foolish? I was at Gaunts, Sir Dicky Carr Glyn's. It is a pretty place and a well-arranged house in the inside, but the exterior is completely _à la Citoyen_. A square, formal house with an inclined, slated roof. I was amused at Sir D.'s upholding his prerogative. Lady Glyn was for folding doors from the drawing-room to the library. Sir D. was against them. The argument ran high. Sir D. then said, "Well, _my dear_, you may have your folding doors and your new fashions, but let me have the old. None of your new, flimsy introductions for me, I _will_ still be the old, worthy Alderman & English Gentleman!" Thought I-- _Bravo Sir Dicky!_ Encouraged by his own eloquence, he further insisted on his point, _and now, lo! there are big folding doors with a single small door close to them!_