TC-Lord M [LM], 7 March. MS: Rodger L. Tarr. Hitherto unpbd. Philip Henry Stanhope (1805–75; ODNB), historian and politician; styled Viscount Mahon, 1816–55, and then succeeded as 5th earl of Stanhope; see TC to JAC, 11 March 1839, and TC to EF, 12 Jan. 1847.

1. TC wrote in his Journal, 14 March: “Friday last at Lord Mahon's to breakfast; Macaulay, Ld. and Lady Ashley &c, there. Niagara of eloquent commonplace talk from Macaulay: ‘very good-natured man’; man cased in official mail of proof; stood my impatient fire-explosion with much patience, merely hissing a little steam up, and continued his Niagara—supply-and-demand, power ruinous to powerful himself, impossibility of govt. doing more than keep the peace, suicidal distraction of new French Republic &c, &c. Essentially irremediable commonplace nature of the man: all that ever was in him now gone to the tongue. A squat thickset, low-browed, short, and rather potbellied, grizzled little man of fifty: these be thy gods O Israel! Ashley is very strait between the eyes: a bad form of physionomy. Otherwise a stately aristocratic-looking man. Full of wind mainly, I doubt.— the rest, Sir Rt Inglis &c, nichts zu bedeuten [no importance].” Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859; ODNB), historian and politician. Emily, b. Cowper (d. 1872), Lady Ashley, m. 1830. Sir Robert Harry Inglis (1786–1855; ODNB), 2d bart., Tory politician.

2. Thus in MS.