an frame. After having been throughout the Catholic
question the furious enemy of the Orangemen, upon whom he
lavished incessant and unmeasured abuse, he has suddenly turned
round, and inviting them to join him on the Repeal question, has
not only offered them a fraternal embrace and has humbled himself
to the dust in apologies and demands for pardon, but he has
entirely and at once succeeded, and he is now as popular or more
so with the Protestants (or rather Orangemen) as he was before
with the Catholics, and Crampton writes word that the lower order
of Protestants are with him to a man.

* * * * *

1831.

January 2nd, 1831 {p.101}

[Page Head: A DINNER AT THE ATHENAEUM.]

Came up to town yesterday to dine with the Villiers at a dinner
of clever men, got up at the Athenaeum, and was extremely bored.
The original party was broken up by various excuses, and the
vacancies supplied by men none of whom I knew. There were Poulett
Thomson, three Villiers, Taylor, Young, whom I knew; the rest I
never saw before--Buller, Romilly, Senior, Maule,[9] a man whose
name I forget, and Walker, a police magistrate, all men of more
or less talent and information, and altogether producing anything
but an agreeable party. Maule was senior wrangler and senior
medallist at Cambridge, and is a lawyer. He was nephew to the man
with whom I was at school thirty years ago, and I had never seen
him since; he was then a very clever boy, and assisted to teach
the boys, being admirably well taught himself by his uncle, who
was an excellent scholar and a great brute. I have young Maule
now in my mind's eye suspended by the hair of his head while
being well caned, and recollect as if it was yesterday his
doggedly drumming a lesson of Terence into my dull and reluctant
brain as we walked up and down the garden walk before the house.
When I was introduced to him I had no recollection of him, but
when I found out who he was I went up to him with the blandest
manner as he sat reading a newspaper, and said that 'I believed
we had once been well acquainted, though we had not met for
twenty-seven years.' He looked up and said, 'Oh, it is too long
ago to talk about,' and then turned back to his paper. So I set
him down for a brute like his uncle and troubled him no further.
I am very sure that dinners of all fools have as good a chance of
being agreeable as dinners of all clever p