noblest, sentiments of Liberty". Horace Walpole wrote to William Mason, quoting with approval Thomas Gray's opinion that it was the "most sensible, unaffected and best history of England that we have had yet". Early in 1769, Horace Walpole recorded dining with "the famous Mrs. Macaulay": "She is one of the sights that all foreigners are carried to see". However, Walpole later changed his opinion: "The female historian as partial to the cause of liberty as bigots to the Church and royalists to tyranny, exerted manly strength with the gravity of a philosopher. Too prejudiced to dive into causes, she imputes everything to tyrannic views, nothing to passions, weakness, error, prejudice, and still less to what operates oftenest and her ignorance of which qualified her less for a historian—to accident and little motives". William Pitt praised the History in the House of Commons and denounced Hume's Tory bias. Also approving were Joseph Priestley and John Wilkes. Around 1770, Lord Lyttelton wrote that Macaulay was "a very prodigy", with portraits of her "on every print-seller's counter". There was a Derby figure of porcelain made of her and one of Patience Wright's first life-sized wax figures was of Macaulay. James Burgh wrote in 1774 that Macaulay wrote "for the purpose of inculcating on the people of Britain the love of liberty and their country". The French statesmen Mirabeau, Jacques Pierre Brissot and the Marquis de Condorcet admired the History as a corrective to Hume. In 1798, the French Ministry of the Interior recommended the History in a list of works suitable for school prizes. Her fame came to an end in 1778 when she remarried, with many of her friends and supporters dropping her. She henceforth disappeared into obscurity, only occasionally re-emerging into the public eye. Macaulay also wished to write a History of England from the Revolution to the Present Time, however only the first volume (covering 1688–1733) was completed. Politics Macaulay was associated with two political groups in the 1760s and 1770s: the Real Whigs and the Wilkites. She was also sympathetic with the cause of the American Colonists. However, she was more interested in polemic than everyday strategy. She was a supporter of John Wilkes during the Wilkesite controversy of the 1760s and closely associated with the radical Society for the Supporters of the Bill of Rights. Both of these groups wanted to reform Parliament. The Tory Samuel Johnson was