gratitude for a long and undeviating course
of kind and cordial hospitality experienced for many years.

December 6th, 1838 {p.141}

[Page Head: LORD DURHAM'S RETURN.]

If notoriety upon any terms could satisfy anybody, Lord Durham
would have ample reason for contentment, as his name is in
everybody's mouth, and the chief topic of every newspaper and
political periodical. He was detained by the storms on board his
ship for a day or two, and met on his landing by a Devonport
address, to which he returned a rather mysterious answer (talking
of the great disclosures he had to make), with a reference to his
Glasgow speech in which in '34 he announced his Radical tendency.
The most interesting question is how he and the Ministers will go
on together, what they ought to do, and how he will take their
usage of him whatever it may be. He has been in no hurry to come
to town, and has reposed himself at Plymouth as long as it suited
him; but he is expected to-day. Brougham, who is sitting every
day at the Privy Council, is always growling at him
sarcastically, and was much pleased when news came of the fresh
outbreak in Canada, and his disappointment was equally evident
when he heard it was so rapidly quelled. He was reading the
newspaper in my room before the Court opened, when Denman came
and announced that he had just met Charles Wood, who had told him
that young Ellice was released, and the insurrection suppressed.
Brougham did not take his eyes off the paper, and merely
muttered, 'It will soon break out again.' He is all day long
working sums in algebra, or extracting cube-roots; and while he
pretends to be poring over the great book (the cases of the
parties) before him, he is in reality absorbed in his own
calculations. Nevertheless, he from time to time starts up, and
throws in a question, a dictum, or a lecture, just as if he had
been profoundly attentive.

December 10th, 1838 {p.142}

Nothing can exhibit more strikingly the farcical nature of public
meetings, and the hollowness, worthlessness, and accidental
character of popularity, than the circumstances of Durham's
arrival here. He has done nothing in Canada, he took himself off
just as the fighting was going to begin, his whole conduct has
been visited with universal disapprobation, and nevertheless his
progress to London has been a sort of triumph; and he has been
saluted with addresses and noisy receptions at all the great
towns through which he passed