as Lady Holland calls a great
hulking fellow of about twenty, is called 'Edgar,' his real name
being Tom or Jack, which he changed on being elevated to his
present dignity, as the Popes do when they are elected to the
tiara. More rout is made about him than other people are
permitted to make about their children, and the inmates of
Holland House are invited and compelled to go and sit with and
amuse him. Such is the social despotism of this strange house,
which presents an odd mixture of luxury and constraint, of
enjoyment physical and intellectual, with an alloy of small
_desagrements_. Talleyrand generally comes at ten or eleven
o'clock, and stays as long as they will let him. Though everybody
who goes there finds something to abuse or to ridicule in the
mistress of the house, or its ways, all continue to go; all like
it more or less; and whenever, by the death of either, it shall
come to an end, a vacuum will be made in society which nothing
will supply. It is the house of all Europe; the world will suffer
by the loss; and it may with truth be said that it will 'eclipse
the gaiety of nations.'

November 27th, 1832 {p.332}

At Roehampton from Saturday till Monday. The Chancellor had been
there a few days before, from whom Lord Dover had picked up the
gossip of the Government. There had been a fresh breeze with
Durham, who it seems has returned from Russia more odious than
ever. His violence and insolence, as usual, were vented on Lord
Grey, and the rest of the Cabinet, as heretofore, are obliged to
submit. I have since heard from the Duke of Richmond that the
cause of this last storm was something relating to Church Reform,
and that he had been forced to knock under. I fancy he wanted to
go much further than the others, probably to unfrock the Bishop
of Durham and Bishop Phillpotts, the former because he is a
greater man in the county than himself, and the latter from old
and inextinguishable hatred and animosity.

[Page Head: THE SPEAKERSHIP.]

There has been another dispute about the Speakership. All the
Cabinet except Althorp want to put Abercromby in the chair, and
Althorp insists on having Littleton. The former is in all respects
the best choice, and the man whom they ought, from his long
connexion with the Whigs and his consistency and respectability,
to propose, but Althorp thought fit to commit himself in some way
to Littleton, who has no claims to be compared with those of
Abercromby (having been h