ord Comandine, came up and spoke to me in so encouraging
a manner that I hope to be invited to one of his lordship's excellent
dinners (of which I shall not fail to give a very flattering
description) before the season is over. It is there you find yourself
talking to statesmen, poets, and artists--not sham poets like Bulbul, or
quack artists like that Pinkney--but to the best members of all society.
It is there I made this sketch, while Miss Chesterforth was singing a
deep-toned tragic ballad, and her mother scowling behind her. What a
buzz and clack and chatter there was in the room to be sure! When Miss
Chesterforth sings, everybody begins to talk. Hicks and old Fogy were on
Ireland: Bass was roaring into old Pump's ears (or into his horn rather)
about the Navigation Laws; I was engaged talking to the charming Mrs.
Short; while Charley Bonham (a mere prig, in whom I am surprised that
the women can see anything,) was pouring out his fulsome rhapsodies in
the ears of Diana White. Lovely, lovely Diana White! were it not for
three or four other engagements, I know a heart that would suit you to a
T.

Newboy's I pronounce to be the jolliest house in the street. He has only
of late had a rush of prosperity, and turned Parliament man; for his
distant cousin, of the ancient house of Newboy of ----shire, dying,
Fred--then making believe to practise at the bar, and living with the
utmost modesty in Gray's Inn Road--found himself master of a fortune,
and a great house in the country; of which getting tired, as in the
course of nature he should, he came up to London, and took that fine
mansion in our Gardens. He represents Mumborough in Parliament, a seat
which has been time out of mind occupied by a Newboy.

Though he does not speak, being a great deal too rich, sensible, and
lazy, he somehow occupies himself with reading blue-books, and indeed
talks a great deal too much good sense of late over his dinner-table,
where there is always a cover for the present writer.

He falls asleep pretty assiduously too after that meal--a practice
which I can well pardon in him--for, between ourselves, his wife, Maria
Newboy, and his sister, Clarissa, are the loveliest and kindest of their
sex, and I would rather hear their innocent prattle, and lively talk
about their neighbors, than the best wisdom from the wisest man that
ever wore a beard.

Like a wise and good man, he leaves the question of his household
entirely to the women. They l