‘My dear R.,—I have little to report these two days. The cry against our new Chancellor continues. Rolfe was certainly the fittest man, but Dean Swift says that quality is quite fatal to any candidate. Then he had no place to give up which any one wished to have. Wilde, Lord Truro of Bowes, in Middlesex (for the heralds are queer geographers) took his seat yesterday, and I ushered him in with Redesdale. Lyndhurst would have been my second, but he came late. The peers present observed that my friend has not the “air distingué.” But I predict that his kind and honourable nature and entire freedom from all affectation and conceit will make him a favourite. I only dread his working himself to death to get rid of the arrears, and he cannot do it, work how he may. I had ten times his bodily strength, and more than ten times his power of shortening business. His fault is in that direction.
‘Let me know by verbal message if you desire I should call on you. We have no news except that an ex-Maid of Honour advertises for a situation—as servant, I suppose.
