y clearly on your side, to be as firm as a rock, and,
above all things, never to succumb to insolence and presumption.

[3] [Lord Duncannon was at this time First Commissioner of
Works, and the arrangements with reference to the Royal
Palaces fell within his department.]

[4] The Duchess, for particular reasons, objected to going
back to Kensington.

We had M. Guizot at dinner.[5] They all say he is agreeable, but
I have not been in the way of his talk. He is enchanted and
elated with his position, and it is amusing to see his
apprehension lest anybody should, either by design or
inadvertence, rob him of his precedence; and the alacrity with
which he seizes on the arm of the lady of the house on going out
to dinner, so demonstrative of the uneasy grandeur of a man who
has not yet learnt to be familiar with his own position. With
reference to diplomatic rank, I only heard last night, for the
first time, that the Duke of Sutherland had, some time ago,
addressed a formal remonstrance to Palmerston, against Foreign
Ministers (not Ambassadors) having place given them at the Palace
(which means going first out to dinner over himself _et suos
pares_), a most extraordinary thing for a sensible man to have
done, especially in such high favour as his wife and her whole
family are. He got for answer, that Her Majesty exercised her own
pleasure in this respect in her own palace. The rule always has
been that Ambassadors (who represent the persons of their
Sovereigns) have precedence of everybody; Ministers (who are only
agents) have not; but the Queen, it appears, has given the _pas_
to Ministers Plenipotentiaries, as well as to Ambassadors, and
ordered them to go out at her dinners before her own subjects of
the highest rank.[6]

[5] [M. Guizot had just been appointed French Ambassador in
London under the Government of M. Thiers, who took
office on the 1st March of this year.]

[6] [It was afterwards settled by Her Majesty that Foreign
Ministers should take precedence _after_ Dukes and
before Marquesses.]

April 3rd, 1840 {p.282}

They have made Lady Cecilia Underwood a duchess. Everybody
considers it a very ridiculous affair, but she and the Duke are,
or affect to be, enchanted, though nobody can tell why. She is
Duchess of Inverness, though there would have been more meaning
in her being Countess of Inverness, since Earl of