George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[398] the Lord Chancellor . . . . . We had a most hearty meeting, and I felt at home at once . . . . We dined at eight, and had a most agreeable evening. Sir Edmund is in great force; Lady Head is charming, as she always is; and Lady Cranworth is quite equal to her. Wednesday, August 26.—The estate of Ellerbeck is a large one; . . . . there is a good park, fine gardens and hot-houses, and a mansion which they are at this moment furnishing and fitting anew. But everything is comfortable, and the cuisine, with some other parts of the establishment, luxurious. Cardwell carried off all the honors at Oxford in his time; is still an excellent scholar; was five years a barrister, and then entered Parliament, became soon Secretary of the Treasury and President of the Board of Trade, which brought him into the cabinet of Sir Robert Peel, who left him one of his literary executors. He has an abundance of capital anecdotes, which he tells in a most agreeable manner, and makes his house as pleasant as possible to his guests. Immediately after breakfast all seven of the party set off for the exhibition in Manchester. In the vestibule of the immense and well-proportioned building,— while the ladies were giving up their parasols and taking numbers for them,—a stout man, with the air of a police officer, leaned over the barrier to me, and said, ‘I want to speak to Sir Edmund Head.’ I touched Sir Edmund, and the man gave him a letter. When he had read about half of it, he tossed it to me, saying a little impatiently, ‘That is too bad; it is the second time Labouchere has summoned me back to London, since I have been on this excursion.’ I read it through, and found he was sent for to be sworn in as a Privy Councillor; a great honor, which can be conferred on him only on Friday, as that is the last meeting of the Council for some weeks or months. . . .. After five minutes consultation, and making an appointment with Lady Head to meet her on Saturday at Tewksbury, he jumped into a cab, and was off for Ellerbeck and London. As soon as he was gone the rest of us went into the exhibition. At first I was much bewildered. The building is so vast, and the number of pictures, statues, bronzes, engravings, drawings, and, in short, everything that can be called a work of art, is so immense, that, with five or six thousand people walking up and down, it was a very confusing scene. But the arrangement is good, and gradually the whole became intelligible. We first took a walk all round, and it was not a short one . . . . . The result on my mind was, that the Italian schools were not so strong as I expected to find them; the