characters being worse than his English;
while Lord Wellesley sent him very neatly written and prettily
composed epigrams in return. I should think Lemarchant's
occupation very amusing, and that no study could be more curious
than that of the mind and actions of this strange specimen of
humanity.

August 19th, 1834 {p.121}

At Stoke from Saturday, the 16th, till yesterday; had much talk
with old Creevey about the Chancellor. Sefton, his great ally, so
resented his conduct to Lord Grey that he was on the point of
quarrelling with him, and Brougham miscalculated so far as to
chuckle to Sefton himself over the improvement of his own
position in the new order of things, telling him that he could
more easily _manage_ Melbourne than he could Lord Grey. They are
a precious set with their squabbles and _tracasseries_. It
appears that they very well knew what Brougham was from the
beginning, especially Grey's womankind, who warned their father
against him, but they all flattered themselves they had taken the
sting out of him by getting him into the House of Lords. Creevey
says that Brougham is devoured with ambition, and what he wants
is to be Prime Minister, but that it is quite impossible he
should for ever escape detection and not be regularly _blown up_
sooner or later. He now wants to appear on good terms with Lord
Grey, and there is a dinner at Edinburgh in contemplation (at
which Brougham is to preside) to be given to Lord Grey. His
friends want him not to go, but he has a notion that the Scotch
have behaved so well to him that he ought not to refuse the
invitation. The Chancellor had intended to go junketting on the
Rhine with Mrs. P., and this project was only marred by his
discovering that he could not leave the country without putting
the Great Seal in commission at a cost (to himself) of L1,400.
This was a larger price than he was disposed to pay for his trip,
so he went off to Brougham instead.

On Sunday I went all over the private apartments of Windsor
Castle, and walked through what they call the slopes to the
Queen's cottage; all very splendid and luxurious. In the gallery
there is a model of a wretched-looking dog-hole of a building,
with a ruined tower beside it. I asked what this was, and the
housekeeper said, 'The Chateau of Meiningen;' put there, I
suppose, to enhance by comparison the pleasure of all the
grandeur which surrounds the Queen, for it would hardly have been
exhibited as a philosophica