that no
man was ever a better, more honourable, or kinder colleague, more
anxious to smooth differences and adjust disputes; that _he_
could not attack him in the House of Commons, neither would
Stanley; that Peel, who hated him, would not dislike doing so,
but that he was too cautious to trust implicitly to Urquhart's
assertions, and to commit himself by acting on them; that there
was nobody else capable of dealing with the subject well, and
that Canning[22] ought not, for the same reasons (only much
stronger in his case) that restrained himself and Stanley.

[20] [King William's Private Secretary.]

[21] The truth never was manifested, the matter blew over,
very little ever was said about it in the newspapers,
Urquhart's revelations never appeared, the public
forgot it, and the whole affair died a natural death.--
January 6th, 1839.

[22] [Sir Stratford Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford de
Redcliffe, was at this time a Member of the House of
Commons.]

The bishops were at loggerheads in the House of Lords the other
night on the Ecclesiastical Discipline Bill. Exeter (Phillpotts),
in a most venomous speech, attacked the Archbishop, whose
mildness was stimulated into an angry reply; but Exeter gained
his point, for both Brougham and the Duke were for postponing the
Bill. Phillpotts would have made a great bishop in the days of
Bonner and Gardiner, or he would have been a Becket, or, still
better, a Pope either in the palmy days of papal power or during
the important period of reaction which succeeded the Reformation.
He seems cast in the mould of a Sixtus.

August 3rd, 1838 {p.120}

The following panegyric on the sixth volume of the Duke's
Despatches, evidently written by no common hand, was given by Dr.
Ferguson to Edward Villiers,[23] the Doctor not knowing the
author:--

'The sixth volume appears to me among the most
extraordinary of human productions, ancient or modern. It
is not the mere power of sagacity, vigilance, acute and
comprehensive reasoning, or, in short, the intellectual
perfection of the book, various and wonderful as it is,
which affects my mind most deeply: it is the love of
justice, the love of truth, the love of humanity, the
love of country, the fine temper, the tolerance of error,
the mildness of reproof, the _superb morality_ of the
great and masculine spirit displaye