Central Asia. I replied
that I should have preferred the Baltic.--H.R.]

So, too, Alava, as soon as intelligence reached him and
Palmerston of the overtures of Maroto, asked leave to communicate
it to the Duke, which was immediately conceded. He was therefore
informed of all that was going on, and it met with his fullest
approbation; and yet all this time the great organ of the Tories
is raving against the Government in the most frantic manner, for
having been instrumental to this happy termination of the most
frightful and revolting civil war that ever afflicted any
country.[6]

[6] [The active support given to Espartero by the British
Government under the Quadruple Treaty, and the
operations of Lord John Hay on the northern coast of
Spain, which stopped the supplies of the Carlists,
contributed to bring the contest for the Crown of Spain
to an end, and on the 15th August Don Carlos
surrendered himself to the French Government at
Bayonne.]

September 23rd, 1839 {p.242}

Lady Holland asked me the other night what I thought of their
prospects, and I told her I thought them very bad. She said, 'The
fact is, we have nothing to rely upon but the Queen and Paddy.'
This has since struck me as being an epigrammatic but very
correct description of their position.

Last night there came to Holland House after dinner Brunnow and
Nesselrode's son, the first (not unlike Brougham, and would be
very like if his nose moved about), a very able man, and said to
be 'la pensee intime de l'Empereur,' sent over to see what can be
done about the Eastern Question, which I take to be a very
difficult matter.[7] I had much talk with Dedel (who told me
this) about Palmerston. I said it was well known he was very able
with his pen, but I did not know how he was in Conference. He
replied: 'Palmerston comes to any Conference so fully and
completely master of the subject of it in all the minutest
details, that this capacity is a peculiar talent with him; it is
so great, that he is apt sometimes to lose himself in the
details.'

[7] [Baron Brunnow was sent to England at this time by the
Emperor Nicholas to make the first overtures for the
intervention of the Great Powers in the quarrel between
the Sultan and the Pasha of Egypt. This overture was
rejected by the Cabinet in 1839, but accepted on the