at least.' Lord Lyndhurst told me that
Lord Mansfield stopped speaking as soon as the door
opened to admit the King. He said he never saw him so
excited before, and in his robes he looked very grand.
He also told me that he was at Lady Holland's giving an
account of the scene when Brougham came in. He said, 'I
was telling them what passed the other day in our
House,' when Brougham explained his part by saying that
the Usher of the Black Rod (Tyrwhit) was at his elbow
saying, 'My Lord Chancellor, you must come; the King is
waiting for you: come along; you must come,' and that
he was thus dragged out of the House in this hurry and
without having time to sit down or say any more.

[Page Head: THE KING DISSOLVES PARLIAMENT.]

Such has been the termination of this Parliament and of the first
act of the new Ministerial drama; there never was a Government
ousted with more ignominy than the last, nor a Ministry that came
in with higher pretensions, greater professions, and better
prospects than the present, but nothing ever corresponded less
than their performances with their pretensions. The composition
of the Government was radically defective, and with a good deal
of loose talent there was so much of passion, folly, violence,
and knavery, together with inexperience and ignorance mixed up
with it, that from the very beginning they cut the sorriest
possible figure. Such men as Richmond, Durham, Althorp, and
Graham, in their different ways, were enough to spoil any
Cabinet, and consequently their course has been marked by a
series of blunders and defeats. Up to the moment of the
dissolution few people expected it would happen, some thinking
the King would not consent, others that the Government would
never venture upon it, but the King is weak and the Ministry
reckless. That disposition, which at first appeared so laudable,
of putting himself implicitly into the hands of his Ministers,
and which seemed the more so from the contrast it afforded to the
conduct of the late King, who was always thwarting his Ministers,
throwing difficulties in their way, and playing a double part,
becomes vicious when carried to the extent of paralysing all free
action and free opinion on his part, and of suffering himself to
be made the instrument of any measures, however violent. It may
be said, indeed, that he cordially ag