thing might come of
their communications, as he would not hear of any other Peers who
were disposed to go along with him. It is not a bad thing that
they should each be impressed with a salutary apprehension, the
one that he will have the same difficulties to encounter in the
House of Lords, the other that nobody will follow him, for it
will render an arrangement more probable than if they both
thought they had only to agree together, and that the rest must
follow as a matter of course. The Duke of Wellington has written
again to Wharncliffe, declining altogether to be a party to any
negotiation. De Ros told me that he never saw such a letter as
Peel's--so stiff, dry, and reserved, just like the man in whom
great talents are so counteracted, and almost made mischievous,
by the effects of his cold, selfish, calculating character. In
the meantime the state of the country is certainly better, the
proclamation putting down the unions has been generally obeyed,
the press has suspended its fury, and the approach of the meeting
of Parliament seems to have calmed the country to a great degree.
The event most to be desired is that the Government may carry
their Bill quietly through the House of Commons, amendments be
carried in the Committee of the House of Lords, and upon these
there may be a compromise, though after all it is impossible not
to have a secret misgiving that the alterations which appear
desirable may prove to be mischievous, for it is the great evil
of the measure that being certainly new no human being can guess
how it will work, or how its different parts will act upon one
another, and what result they will produce.

There seems to be a constant sort of electrical reciprocity of
effort between us and France just now. The three days produced
much of our political excitement, and our Bristol business has
been acted with great similarity of circumstance at Lyons, and is
still going on. Talleyrand produced the 'Moniteur' last night with
the account, lamented that the Duc d'Orleans had been sent with
Marshal Soult to Lyons, which he said was unnecessary and absurd,
that Soult was the best man for the purpose of putting it down. It
was begun by the workpeople, who were very numerous, not political
in its objects, but the cries denoted a mixture of everything, as
they shouted 'Henri V., Napoleon II, La Republique, and Bristol.'
He was at Lady Holland's, looking very cadaverous, and not very
talkative, talked of Mad