rles's head was exactly as Vandyke had painted him.

July 26th, 1831 {p.168}

At Oatlands on Saturday, and came back on Sunday night. Nobody
there but my father, mother, Walpole, Sneyd, and Alava; very
different from what I once remember it. There has been a great
deal of talk about the Duke of Wellington giving Lord Munster the
Lieutenancy of the Tower, the truth of which is as follows:--It
is in the King's gift, and he sent to the Duke and desired him to
name somebody. The Duke would have liked to name one of
three--Fitzroy Somerset, Colin Campbell, or Hardinge. The latter
would not have been agreeable to Government, and therefore it
would have occasioned the King an embarrassment; the second was
provided for, and Lord Hill advised the first to remain as he is
(though I don't see why he could not have had both); so the Duke
thought it would gratify the King if he was to name Munster.
Munster wrote a very civil letter to the Duke, full of thanks and
saying that he begged he would not think of him if he had anybody
else to give it to, and that he would take upon himself to
explain to the King his not accepting it. The Duke persisted,
and so he had it. I must say he might have found some one out of
the number of his old officers to give it to rather than Munster.

The King of France's Speech arrived yesterday, but nothing was
said in the House of Lords, because Lord Grey was at Windsor. It
will make a stir--the general tone of it, and the demolition of
the fortresses which cost us seven millions. Not one of the
papers made a remark upon it; nothing will do for them but
Reform.

[Page Head: THE CHOLERA.]

Fresh claims have been raised about cholera morbus. A man at Port
Glasgow insists upon it, without much apparent reason, that it
prevails there; so we have sent a medical man down, in order to
quiet people's minds and to set the question at rest. Lord Grey,
who is credulous, believes the Glasgow man's story, and spread
the news in his own family, who immediately dispersed it over the
rest of the town, and yesterday nobody could talk of anything
else; not believing it very much, and not understanding it at
all, for if they did they would not be so flippant. Lady Holland
wrote to Lord Lansdowne to desire he would recommend her the best
_cholera_ doctor that he had heard of. I have just received a
letter from Moore, saying he has ordered his publisher to send me
a copy of 'Lord Edward Fitzgerald,' and that he only