e was sailing about for her
amusement she had rather they did not salute her whenever she
appeared. The negotiation failed, for the Duchess insisted upon
her right to be saluted, and would not give it up. Kemp told me
he had heard that Conroy (who is a ridiculous fellow, a compound
of 'Great Hussy' and the Chamberlain of the Princess of
Navarre[2]) had said, 'that as Her Royal Highness's _confidential
adviser_, he could not recommend her to give way on this point.'
As she declined to accede to the proposals, nothing remained but
to alter the regulations, and accordingly yesterday, by an Order
in Council, the King changed them, and from this time the Royal
Standard is only to be saluted when the King or the Queen is on
board.

[2] See Sir C. Hanbury Williams' Poems.

Friday, July 12th, 1833 {p.004}

[Page Head: CHARACTER OF LORD DOVER.]

Went to Newmarket on Sunday, came back yesterday, got back at
half-past nine, went to Crockford's, and heard on the steps of the
house that poor Dover had died that morning. The accounts I had
received at Newmarket confirmed my previous impression that there
was no hope; and, indeed, the sanguine expectations of his family
are only to be accounted for by that disposition in the human mind
to look at the most favourable side, and to cling with pertinacity
to hope when reason bids us despair. There has seldom been
destroyed a fairer scene of happiness and domestic prosperity than
by this event. He dies in the flower of his age, surrounded with
all the elements of happiness, and with no drawback but that of
weak health, which until within the last few months was not
sufficiently important to counterbalance the good, and only
amounted to feebleness and delicacy of constitution; and it is the
breaking up of a house replete with social enjoyment, six or seven
children deprived of their father, and a young wife and his old
father overwhelmed with a grief which the former may, but the
latter never can get over, for to him time sufficient cannot in
the course of nature be allotted. Few men could be more generally
regretted than Lord Dover will be by an immense circle of
connections and friends for his really amiable and endearing
qualities, by the world at large for the serious loss which
society sustains, and the disappointment of the expectations of
what he one day might have been. He occupied as large a space in
society as his talents (which were by no means first-rate)
permitt