r the prorogation; the first time I have seen all
these new Ministers in a bunch--a queer set, all things
considered, to be in possession of the Palace. Great change of
decoration. Duncannon, Ellice, Hobhouse, Abercromby, Mulgrave,
Auckland. The King, who is fond of meddling in the Council
business instead of repeating like a parrot what is put in his
mouth, made a bother and confusion about a fancy matter, and I was
forced to go to Taylor and beg to explain it to him, which I did
after the House of Lords. The King was quite knocked up and easily
satisfied, for he neither desired nor could have understood any
explanations. There were not much more than half a dozen Peers in
the House, but many ladies. The Chancellor went down, and, in
presence of the ladies, attired in his golden robes (and
especially before Mrs. P., to whom he makes love), gave a judgment
in some case in which a picture of Nell Gwynne was concerned, and
he was very proud of the _delicacy_ of his judgment. There never
was anything like his exhilaration of spirits and good-humour. I
don't know what has come to him, except it be that he has
scrambled through the session and got Lord Grey out. He wound up
in the House of Lords by the introduction of his Bill for a
Judicial Committee there, which he prefaced by a speech exhibiting
his own judicial acts, and undoubtedly making a capital case for
himself as to diligence and despatch if it be all true (which I
see no reason to doubt), and passing a great eulogium upon the
House of Lords as an institution, and drawing comparisons between
that House and the House of Commons (much to the disadvantage of
the latter), expressing many things which are very true and just
and of a highly conservative tendency. He is a strange being whom,
with all his inconsistencies, one cannot but admire; so varied and
prodigious are his powers. Much more are these lines applicable to
him than to his predecessor on the Woolsack:--

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

In a speech the other night, by way of putting his audience on a
wrong scent with regard to his correspondence with Lord
Wellesley, he assured them that that correspondence was on any
subject but politics, and in every language except English; and
Lemarchant told somebody that his most difficult employment was
to correct and copy out the Chancellor's Greek epigrams to Lord
Wellesley, his Greek