rrectly reported--rather _under_stated--but that after
he had so delivered himself, he met the English Consul in the
street, took him by the arm, walked about with him for an hour,
and begged him not to be _too hard_ upon him in his report to his
Government. I was not present, but Henry de Ros was, who told it
me. I am thus particular from, as it seems to me, the exceeding
curiosity of the anecdote, evincing on the part of the autocrat,
in the midst of the insolence of unbridled power, a sort of
consciousness of responsibility to European opinion, and a
deferential dread of that of England in particular.

[1] [This was the first time the Emperor Nicholas had
visited Poland since the Revolution of 1830, and he
took the opportunity to express himself in language of
excessive severity to the municipality of Warsaw,
threatening to lay the city in ruins if the Poles
rebelled again.]

November 22nd, 1835 {p.320}

My brother Algy showed me a few days ago a letter from the Duke
of Wellington to the Duke of Cumberland--a gossiping letter about
nothing, but in which there was this which struck me as odd. He
said that he was informed that the English who had been to the
reviews at Kalisch had been very ill received, and that even
those to whom _he_ had given letters of introduction had
experienced nothing but incivility, and that he regretted having
had the presumption to imagine that any recommendation of his
would be attended to by the Sovereigns or their Ministers--a
curious exhibition of pique, for what I believe to be an
imaginary incivility. It is a strange thing that he is very
sensitive, and yet has no strong feelings; but this is after all
only one of the forms of selfishness.

[Page Head: SOCIAL LAW.]

Burdett has written a letter to the managers of Brooks's, to
propose the expulsion of O'Connell. It will do no good; these
abortive attempts do nothing towards plucking him down from his
bad eminence, and their failure gives him a triumph. So it was in
Alvanley's case; there a great deal of very proper indignation
was thrown away, and O'Connell had the satisfaction of baffling
his antagonists, and obtaining a sort of recognition of his
assumed right to act as he does. It is a case which admits of a
good argument either way. On the one side is the perilous example
of any club taking cognizance of acts of its members, private or
political, which do not concer