236 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, xvi 



is one of your greatest admirers," and upon that he took 

 Mr Wordsworth by the shoulders and turned him round to 

 Jeffrey and left them together. They immediately began 

 talking, and Sir James came very proud to tell us what he 

 had done, and to fetch us to see them ; and Mr Wordsworth 

 looked very happy and complacent. Mr Lockhart said it 

 was the best thing he ever saw done. The two enemies 

 liked one another's company so much, that when the rest 

 of the party broke up at past 11, they remained talking 

 together with Sir James, discussing poets, orators, and 

 novelists, till one o'clock, with Mr Sheil listening with all 

 his ears, and Mr Empson 1 and Fanny and Uncle Baugh as 

 audience. I, alas ! was obliged to carry my head to bed. 

 Sir James enjoyed his two hours' talk very much. 



My father is attending the Canal meetings in New Palace 

 Yard. He has got his little mare with him, which makes 

 him take it very patiently and prevents his falling sick. 

 He is going down to Maer and his Water- works the end of 

 this week, but I mean to let him go without me. Now I 

 am in this bustle I like to stay and see a little more of it. 

 But the thing I am most anxious to hear is the debate on 

 Tuesday on Slavery. Macaulay's speech on the reform bill 

 almost made me cry with admiration, and I expect his 

 speech on so much more interesting a subject to be the 

 finest thing that ever was heard. It is most unfortunate 

 for this question that it should come on now. Who has 

 leisure to listen to the still small voice of justice in the 

 midst of such a turmoil ? And what ought this nation to 

 expect at the hand of God but calamities and disgraces as 

 long as we will not hear it, and suffer those daily murders 

 to go on ? Fanny has just been reading a little of one of 

 Jeffrey's reviews of Wordsworth, and W. really shewed no 

 small degree of placability in his good fellowship with him 

 last night. . . . 



1 William Empson (1791 1852), Editor of the Edinburgh Review 

 from 1847 and successor to Mackintosh as Professor of " Polity and 

 the Laws of England " at Haileybury. Brougham called him a bad 

 imitation of Macaulay. 



