I was at the Abbey on Tuesday and
yesterday for a performance and a rehearsal of the 'Messiah.' The
spectacle is very fine, and it is all admirably managed--no crowd
or inconvenience, and easy egress and ingress--but the 'Messiah'
is not so effective as I expected, not so fine as in York
Minster; the choruses are admirably performed, but the single
voices are miserable--singers of extreme mediocrity, or whose
powers are gone; old Bellamy, who was at Handel's commemoration
as a singing boy, Miss Stephens, &c.

June 27th, 1832 {p.098}

Lord William Russell told me last night that his brother John has
frequently offered to resign, and they never would let him; at
last he said he must speak out on this Church appropriation
question, or positively he would not stay in, so that his speech
was not _blurted_ out, as I supposed, but was the result of a
fixed resolution. This alters the case as far as he is concerned,
and it can't be denied that he was right in thinking it better
that Government should make itself clearly understood, and that a
break-up was preferable to going on without any real cordiality
or concurrence amongst each other and the Administration an
object of suspicion to all parties. William Russell said that
Government were quite aware that Peel and the Duke could turn
them out when they would, but that they would not know what to do
next.

[Page Head: DON CARLOS ON HIS WAY TO SPAIN.]

Don Carlos is coming to town to Gloucester Lodge. When they told
him the Spanish Ambassador (Miraflores) was come to wait upon
him, he replied, 'I have no Ambassador at the Court of London.'
He will not take any money, and he will neither relinquish his
claims to the Spanish throne nor move hand or foot in prosecuting
them. 'If chance will have me king, why let chance crown me,
without my stir.' (He was meditating evasion at this time, and
got away undiscovered soon after.) They say he can get all the
money he wants from his partisans in Spain, and that there is no
lack of wealth in the country. Strange infatuation when men will
spend their blood and their money for such a miserable object. If
he had anything like spirit, enterprise, and courage, he would
make a fine confusion in Spain, and probably succeed; his
departure from the Peninsula and taking refuge here has not
caused the war to languish in the north. Admiral Napier is
arrived, and has taken a lodging close to him in Portsmouth.
Miraflores paid a droll compli