e yesterday night with a success beyond my utmost expectations. I
am half ashamed to tell you the compliments which I have received; but
you well know that it is not from vanity, but to give you pleasure, that
I tell you what is said about me. Lord Althorp told me twice that it was
the best speech he had ever heard; Graham, and Stanley, and Lord John
Russell spoke of it in the same way; and O'Connell followed me out of
the house to pay me the most enthusiastic compliments. I delivered my
speech much more slowly than any that I have before made, and it is in
consequence better reported than its predecessors, though not well. I
send you several papers. You will see some civil things in the leading
articles of some of them. My greatest pleasure, in the midst of all this
praise, is to think of the pleasure which my success will give to my
father and my sisters. It is happy for me that ambition has in my mind
been softened into a kind of domestic feeling, and that affection has at
least as much to do as vanity with my wish to distinguish myself. This
I owe to my dear mother, and to the interest which she always took in my
childish successes. From my earliest years, the gratification of those
whom I love has been associated with the gratification of my own thirst
for fame, until the two have become inseparably joined in my mind.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M Macaulay

London: July 8, 1831.

My dear Sister,--Do you want to hear all the compliments that are paid
to me? I shall never end, if I stuff my letters with them; for I meet
nobody who does not give me joy. Baring tells me that I ought never to
speak again. Howick sent a note to me yesterday to say that his father
wished very much to be introduced to me, and asked me to dine with them
yesterday, as, by great good luck, there was nothing to do in the
House of Commons. At seven I went to Downing Street, where Earl Grey's
official residence stands. It is a noble house. There are two splendid
drawing-rooms, which overlook St. James's Park. Into these I was shown.
The servant told me that Lord Grey was still at the House of Lords, and
that her Ladyship had just gone to dress. Howick had not mentioned the
hour in his note. I sate down, and turned over two large portfolios of
political caricatures. Earl Grey's own face was in every print. I was
very much diverted. I had seen some of them before; but many were new to
me, and their merit is extraordinary. They were the c