In the morning I fell to penning this letter, as we were engaged to breakfast at Mr. James Watt's, at Aston Hall. You remember the fine old brick palace? Mr. Watt has fitted up half of it so as to make it superbly comfortable: fine hall, breakfast room, Flemish pictures, Boulton and Watt at either end. After breakfast, at which was Mr. Priestly, an American, son of Dr. Priestly, we went over all the habitable and uninhabitable parts of the house: the banqueting room, with a most costly, frightful ceiling, and a chimneypiece carved up to the cornice with monsters, one with a nose covered with scales, one with human face on a tarantula's body. Varieties of little staircases, and a garret gallery called Dick's haunted gallery; a blocked-up room called the King's room; then a modern dressing-room, with fine tables of Bullock's making, one of wood from Brazil--Zebra wood--and no more to be had of it for love or money. But come on to the great gallery, longer than that at Sudbury,--about one hundred and thirty-six feet long,--and at the farthest end we came to a sort of oriel, separated from the gallery only by an arch, and there the white marble bust of the great Mr. Watt struck me almost breathless. What everybody went on saying I do not know, but my own thoughts, as I looked down the closing lines of this superb gallery, now in a half-ruined state, were very melancholy, on life and death, family pride, and the pride of wealth, and the pride of genius, all so perishable. _To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH. CANTERBURY, _April 21._ I wrote to your dear father the history of our visit to Mr. Wren's at Wroxall Abbey, and Kenilworth, and Warwick, and Stratford-upon-Avon, and our pleasant three hours at Oxford. When we were looking at the theatre, Mr. Biddulph told us, that when all the Emperors and Kings came with the Regent, the theatre was filled in every part; but such was the hush you could have heard a pin drop till the Prince put his foot upon the threshold, when the whole assembly rose with a tremendous shout of applause. The Prince was supremely gratified, and said to the Emperor of Russia, "You heard the London mob hoot me, but you see how I am received by the young gentlemen of England!" When Lord Grenville was installed as chancellor, he was, the instant he look his seat, assailed with loud hisses and groans. Mr. Biddulph said he admired the dignity with which Lord Grenville behaved, and the presence of mind of the Bishop of Peterborough (Parsons), who said in Latin, "Either this disturbance must instantly cease, or I dismiss you from this assembly!" Dead silence ensued. PARIS, PLACE DU PALAIS BOURBON, _April 29._