lent friends.

Lord Howick, who is the bitterest of all that party, and
expresses himself with astonishing acrimony, talked in his usual
strain, and I could not refrain from giving him a bit of my mind.
He talked of 'the Lords having played their last trump,' of 'the
impossibility of their going on, of the hostility towards them in
the country, and the manner in which suggestions of reforming the
House of Lords were received in the House of Commons,' and
expressed his conviction that 'that House as an institution was
in imminent danger.' I told him I did not believe that such
sentiments pervaded the country, that I had not yet seen
sufficient evidence of it, and asked if such a spirit really was
in activity, did he not think he was bound to set about resisting
and counteracting it? He talked of 'its not being resistible;' he
said that 'the Lords must give way or a collision would be the
consequence,' and 'he knew who would go to the wall.' I said that
'it was such sentiments as those, uttered by such men as himself,
which most contributed to create the danger the existence of
which he deplored.' To this he made no answer; but who can feel
secure when a Minister of the Crown, in the palace of the King,
within three yards of his person, while he is there present
exercising the functions of royalty, holds language the most
revolutionary, and such as might more naturally be uttered at
some low meeting in St. Giles's or St. Pancras' than in such a
place? In spite of my disposition to be sanguine, it is
impossible to shake off all alarm when I hear the opinions of men
of different parties (opinions founded on different data and
biassed by opposite wishes) meeting at the same point, and
arriving by different roads at the same conclusion.

[Page Head: THE KING AND THE DUCHESS OF KENT.]

Lyndhurst (who called on me the day before yesterday about some
business) talked over the Corporation Bill, which he considers to
be nearly as important as the Reform Bill. He says it must give
them all the corporate boroughs, for he assumes as an undoubted
fact that the new councils will be Radical, and that their
influence will radicalise the boroughs. He said there was no
chance of the House of Lords surviving ten years, that power must
reside in the House of Commons, as it always had, and that the
House of Commons would not endure the independent authority of
the other House; so that Howick and Lyndhurst are not far apart
in their calc