SIR R. PEEL'S CONVERSATION WITH THE QUEEN.

He then talked of his communications with the Queen. He said that he had told her that if any other Ministerial arrangement had been possible, if any other individual could have been substituted for him, as far as his personal inclinations were concerned, he should have been most ready to give way to such person; but it was impossible for him not to be aware that no man but himself could form the Government, and that he had taken on himself responsibilities, and owed obligations to his Party, which compelled him to accept the task. The Queen had agreed upon this necessity, and upon the impossibility of anybody else being substituted for him. He said a great deal to me of his own indifference to office, of the enormous sacrifices which it entailed upon him; and as to power, that he possessed enough of power out of office to satisfy him, if power was his object. He had told the Queen that his present position enabled him to make concessions to her which it was impossible for him to do in '39, when he was so weak and in a minority in the House of Commons; that now he could consult her wishes in a manner that was then out of his power, and with regard to her Household she should have no one forced upon her contrary to her own inclination. As to her Ladies, he hoped, under the circumstances, she would take Conservatives, but he had no desire to suggest any particular individuals. Those who were most agreeable to her would be most acceptable to him, and he begged her to make her own selection. As to the men, she had said she did not care who they were, provided they were of good character; but every appointment had been made in concert with her, and it so happened that they were all exactly such as he had wished to make, as well as such as she liked to have. He then repeated that he would not suffer her to be annoyed with the pretensions of any people who would be disagreeable to her. He knew that there were many expectations, and would be many disappointments, but he could not help that, and if Conservatives were not ready to make some personal sacrifices—if for the advantage of having their Party placed in power they would not postpone their claims—he could not help it, and must take the consequences whatever they might be.

He was a good deal disappointed at the Duchess of Buccleuch's refusal to be Mistress of the Robes. Besides the extreme difficulty of finding a fit person for the office, it is awkward and mortifying to have so much difficulty in filling up these high places; and the Duke of Rutland's refusal to be Chamberlain, and the subsequent offer to Lord Exeter (who had not given his answer), made it more mortifying to those candidates to whom no offers are made. He has, in fact, deeply offended and mortified a great many expectants of office, and first and foremost the Duke of Beaufort, who, after having received the Queen at his house, and been distinguished with rather peculiar marks of favour, fully expected that he would have been selected as one especially agreeable to Her Majesty, instead of finding himself in a manner proscribed, he cannot tell why. The Irish lords, Glengall and Charleville, are also furious, and consider Ireland—that is, Orange Ireland—insulted and neglected in their persons; the Beauforts are only sulky. Wilton is another disappointed aspirant; but the Irish lords are open-mouthed and abusive. On the other hand, his Whig enemies accuse him of endeavouring to shift the odium of these exclusions on the Queen, which is certainly not true; but in these times bitterness and disappointment never fail to engender swarms of lies.

With regard to Peel and his conduct, I think he is doing well, and acting a fair, manly, and considerate part. He was wrong, I think, to ask her to name Conservative Ladies. The principle of a mixed household having been admitted, he had better have placed no limitation on her discretion, and she would probably have taken Conservatives. While he was talking to me, I felt some surprise—some at his tone about office and power, some at what he said about M—, and all that. I thought to myself, 'You are a very clever man; you are not a bad man; but you are not great.' He may become as great a Minister as abilities can make any man; but to achieve real greatness, elevation of mind must be intermingled with intellectual capacity, and this I doubt his having. There is a something which will confine his genius to the earth instead of letting it soar on high. I dare say he can be just, liberal, generous and wise, but he has been so long habituated to expedients, to partial dissimulation, to indirect courses, and has such a limited knowledge of the world and human nature, and so little disposition or desire for reciprocal confidence with other men, that I doubt his mind ever expanding into a true liberality and generosity of feeling. However, he has never before been in possession of real and great power, his course has been impeded and embarrassed by all sorts of obstructions and difficulties. It remains to be seen how he will act in his new capacity, and whether he will assert his independence to its fullest extent; above all, whether he will elevate his moral being to 'the height of his great argument.'

CONVERSATION WITH THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

September 6th.—Yesterday I called on Melbourne and told him what had passed between Peel and myself. We had a great deal of talk about things and people connected with the Court, about the appointments and the exclusions which were producing so much heartburning. The woman the Queen would prefer for her Mistress of the Robes is Lady Abercorn. She said Peel was so shy, that it made her shy, and this renders their intercourse difficult and embarrassing, but Melbourne thinks this may wear off in time. I said it might be eased by his cultivating the Prince, with whom he could discuss art, literature, and the tastes they had in common. After a good deal of loose talk, we parted, he saying that if anything else occurred to him he thought desirable to communicate, he would send to me. So here am I strangely enough established as the medium of communication between the present and the past Prime Ministers, and have got the office of smoothing away the asperities of royal and official intercourse. If I can do any good, and prevent some evil, above all destroy the effects of falsehood and malignity, and assist in making truth prevail, I shall be satisfied.

September 7th.—I fell in with the Duke of Wellington yesterday coming from the Cabinet, and walked home with him. He seemed very well, but totters in his walk. The great difference in him is his irritability, and the asperity with which he speaks of people. Everybody looks at him, all take off their hats to him, and one woman came up and spoke to him. He did not seem to hear what she was saying, but assuming as a matter of course that, she wanted something, he said, 'Do me the favour, Ma'am, to write to me,' and then moved on as quickly as he could. Not that by her writing she would get much, for he has answers lithographed, to be sent to his numerous applicants, which is rather comical because characteristic. I had some talk with him about the applicants, when he told me, in confirmation of what Melbourne had said, that it was the Prince who insisted upon spotless character. He said it was impossible to explain all this, and he was aware how mortified and angry these people are, but he said some means must be found of pacifying them in other ways, and he talked in such terms of Beaufort's capacity that I began to think he was contemplating an embassy for him. They have been very fortunately delivered from the embarrassment of Lord Londonderry by the extravagance of his pretensions. They offered him Vienna, which he rejected with disdain; he wanted Paris, and not getting this, he went off in high dudgeon, and they were too happy to make him their bow and have done with him. In my opinion they were very wrong to offer him anything at all. It was a great blunder six years ago to have proposed to send him to Petersburg. He is neither useful abroad nor dangerous at home, and might very properly be left to his fate and his indignation.

September 8th.—Peel's troubles about the Household are drawing to a close, as he has prevailed on the Duchess of Buccleuch to take the Robes, and most of the others are named—on the whole pretty well, but with some exceptions.

CANDIDATES FOR OFFICE.

September 17th.—A Council at Windsor on Wednesday, the first since the change. It went off very well, all the new Ministers being satisfied with their reception. The Queen was very gracious and good-humoured. At dinner she had the Duke next to her (his deaf ear unluckily) and talked to him a good deal. After dinner she spoke to Aberdeen and then to Peel, much as she used to her old Ministers. I saw no difference in her manner. She talked for some time to Peel, who could not help putting himself into his accustomed attitude of a dancing master giving a lesson. She would like him better if he would keep his legs still. When we went into the drawing-room Melbourne's chair was gone, and she had already given orders to the Lord-in-waiting to put all the Ministers down to whist, so that there was no possibility of any conversation, and she sat all the evening at her round table with Lady De la Warr on one side and Lady Portman on the other, perhaps well enough for a beginning, but too stupid if intended to last. There was no general conversation. The natural thing would have been to get the Duke of Wellington to narrate some of the events of his life, which are to the last degree interesting, but this never seems to have crossed her mind. Peel told me that nobody could form an idea of what he had had to go through in the disposal of places, the adjustment of conflicting claims, and in answering particular applications, everybody thinking their own case the strongest in the world, and that they alone ought to be excepted from any general rule. I take it the examples of selfishness and self-sufficiency have been beyond all conception. A few I heard of: old Maryborough at seventy-nine years old is not content with passing the few years he may have to live in repose, and is indignant that nothing was offered to him. Lefroy, Peel told me, was with him for an hour consuming his precious time, and he had been forced to tell him that he must and would make his judicial appointments according to his own sense of their fitness and propriety. Chin Grant wanting to be Chairman of Ways and Means; everybody, as Peel said, fancying that to any office they had ever held they had a sort of vested right and title, and forgetting that younger men must be brought forward. I told him that he had had a great escape in Londonderry's refusal to go to Vienna, and that the appointment would have done him infinite mischief. The Duke of Beaufort has now applied for the Embassy at Vienna by letter to Peel.