I wish you would now and then call on Lord Melbourne, as since he is invalided he takes great pleasure in receiving visits from his friends, and I think about four o’clock or a little later (when there is no House of Lords) is a good moment to find him. Poor Lady Holland’s death has deprived him of a very near neighbour, where he could be (without fatigue or form) in pleasant society. She had certainly a very real regard for him.
If Mr. Thackeray will send his reply to Lord Melbourne, it will save time and be more _correct_. It is only in _writing_ that he is glad sometimes to get a secretary (like me), as his hand is rather crippled, and his writing a trouble to perform, and when performed, very illegible.”
I assure you there is ‘no love lost’ in your preference for him—as the moment I mentioned your name he began praising you. The ‘green turf and flat stone’ is a receipt for blotting out all dislikable qualities, and we will give Lady H. the benefit of it. The charmed circle is gone! It was the first peep of the great world I got in my girlhood, and what the gap must be to those who are old enough to remember all who composed that circle, we cannot judge, who only knew it as the stars were dropping one by one away.
I am very sorry you cannot dine on Monday. I hope it will be a pleasure deferred. Tell Mr. Thackeray the hour is 7.30, not nominally, as is usual in London invitations.
It is hardly to be wondered at that Panizzi never became so thoroughly indigenous as to understand what must appear to a foreigner a greater puzzle than even the constitution and politics of England—viz., the management and regulation of ecclesiastical affairs. His opinion of the Hampden case, and of the circumstances affecting it, cannot be the result of any very profound reflection on the matter. As to the trouble which, he feared, it might bring upon Lord John Russell, it may be recollected that Lord John succeeded, in one instance at least, in evading it in a manner that did more credit to his decision than to his good manners.
... I have had nothing to do more amusing of late than to see and hear all that has been said and spoken about Hampden. _I, a good Roman Catholic and Apostolic man_, did not care how much damaged all parties were spiritually; and so I did not mind if Hampden was proved an infidel, or all the Bishops for him, as well as those against him, in the wrong. But at one time I feared for the temporal effects of the quarrel, lest it might give Lord John some trouble. It has ended admirably. A Bishop who confesses that he condemned what he had not read; thirteen Bishops and a Deacon opposed by a Deacon and thirteen heads of houses at Oxford; part of the clergy sending addresses against and part in favour of Dr. Hampden; a Dean who swears he will not vote, and all the way allows his vote to be recorded; a Canon who will not have Dr. Hampden because he was condemned by the very Bishop who retracts three days after his condemnation, and confesses his ignorance whilst he exposes his knavery; yesterday half a Church hissing and the other half cheering, when the sermon of some Apostle or other is declared duly elected; the folly, which I hear will be persisted in to-morrow, of apologizing to the Court of the Queen’s Bench, calling on Lord Denman and others to prevent the Archbishop of Canterbury from exercising a merely spiritual rite—is not this charming? Could any one like me wish for more fun?”