"The Hartlands are here: he talks parliament, and she talks strong sense, and tells every body how to do every thing, and seems to say, like Madame de Sevigné's candid Frenchwoman, _Il n'y a que moi qui ai toujours raison_. To close the list, we have that good-looking puppy, young Leighton, an underbred youth, spoiled by premature immersion in a dandy regiment, who goes about saying the same things to every body, and labouring to reward the inconsiderate benevolence of you soft-hearted patronesses, by talking as if London lay packed in Willis's rooms, and nobody existed but on Wednesday nights. Forgive my impertinence; you know how, in my heart, I revere your oligarchy. "You will wonder how I amuse myself in the midst of this curious specimen of a social _Macedoine_--quite well--and am acquiring a taste for that true epicurean apathy which one enjoys in perfection, among people whom one expects neither to interest, nor to be interested by; and I sit down among them as calmly comfortable as I can conceive a growing cabbage to be in wet weather. I hold my tongue and watch the chaos as gravely as I can, while Berwick labours to make the jarring elements of his party harmonize, and offends every one in turn by trying to talk to him in his own way. I observe this generally irritates people; nobody likes to be so well understood. "I can hardly judge at present, but I don't think Arlington's suit will prosper, and you will laugh when I tell you why: it is not that the youth is too shy and the maiden too cold; it is not the officiousness of the Berwicks;--it is because Lord Arlington has some thirty or forty thousand a-year. He is so rich, and the Rochdales so poor, and so stiffly disinterested withal; and it is such a mortal sin to think of money in this dirty world, where we cannot live without it, that they actually discourage him, and make it a point of honour to snub him daily, to prove their superiority to mercenary considerations. What weak things your strong-minded people sometimes do! and what horrors arise from acting upon principle! I, who have none, fancy I sometimes stumble into right by just doing what I please, and letting others do the same.