I wish you would now and then call on Lord Melbourne, as since he is invalided he takes great pleasure in receiving visits from his friends, and I think about four o’clock or a little later (when there is no House of Lords) is a good moment to find him. Poor Lady Holland’s death has deprived him of a very near neighbour, where he could be (without fatigue or form) in pleasant society. She had certainly a very real regard for him.
Yours, &c., &c.,
Caroline Norton.”
“Dear Mr. Panizzi,
If Mr. Thackeray will send his reply to Lord Melbourne, it will save time and be more correct. It is only in writing that he is glad sometimes to get a secretary (like me), as his hand is rather crippled, and his writing a trouble to perform, and when performed, very illegible.”
I assure you there is ‘no love lost’ in your preference for him—as the moment I mentioned your name he began praising you. The ‘green turf and flat stone’ is a receipt for blotting out all dislikable qualities, and we will give Lady H. the benefit of it. The charmed circle is gone! It was the first peep of the great world I got in my girlhood, and what the gap must be to those who are old enough to remember all who composed that circle, we cannot judge, who only knew it as the stars were dropping one by one away.
I am very sorry you cannot dine on Monday. I hope it will be a pleasure deferred. Tell Mr. Thackeray the hour is 7.30, not nominally, as is usual in London invitations.
Yours, &c., &c.,
Caroline Norton.”
It is hardly to be wondered at that Panizzi never became so thoroughly indigenous as to understand what must appear to a foreigner a greater puzzle than even the constitution and politics of England—viz., the management and regulation of ecclesiastical affairs. His opinion of the Hampden case, and of the circumstances affecting it, cannot be the result of any very profound reflection on the matter. As to the trouble which, he feared, it might bring upon Lord John Russell, it may be recollected that Lord John succeeded, in one instance at least, in evading it in a manner that did more credit to his decision than to his good manners.