The Chancellor is very ill and not likely ever to sit again on the Woolsack. Great speculation, of course, about his successor (which people fancy will be Campbell or Rolfe), and Brougham is evidently not without hopes of clutching the Great Seal himself. He has been attending assiduously at the Judicial Committee and behaving marvellously well, so attentive, patient, and laborious, everybody is astonished; but the Duke of Bedford writes me word he has had letters from him expressing the utmost anxiety to see him and talk to him on a matter of great importance which he can speak of to nobody else, not even to Lord John or to Lord Lansdowne, and signing himself, 'Your's most affectionately, H. B.'! This is very amusing.
Hampden's bishopric has made a great stir after all:[27] thirteen protesting bishops, a stout answer from Lord John, a long, very clever rejoinder from the Bishop of Exeter, and a sensible protest the other way from Bishop Stanley. There never was a greater piece of folly than Lord John's bringing this hornet's nest about his ears, nothing could be less worth while. It is not over yet, and there will be more kicking and clamouring; but Lord John, however foolish he was in making the appointment, must of course go through with it now, and then like everything else it will be soon forgotten.
December 22nd.—On Sunday to the Temple Church; divine music and a very good preacher—a Mr. Hawes. Monday night I dined with Milman and went to the Westminster Play; pretty well done. The Hampden controversy flares away. Hampden himself has written a long, querulous, ill-composed letter to Lord John Russell, which he had better have let alone; if he did write, he should have written a shorter, more pithy and more dignified letter. Every day makes the fault of having appointed him more apparent.
December 24th.—Lord John Russell wrote an answer to the Bishop of Exeter, correcting a mistake in the Bishop's letter, and assuring him of his persuasion that he had conscientiously fulfilled his duty in writing, and his respect for his talents and his position in the Church. This brought a rejoinder which is a curiosity, written in a state of delight at the politeness of Lord John, and abounding in suavities of the most juicy description. Lord John persists that he has done a very wise thing, and predicts that before long everybody will admit it, and this opinion is grounded on the knowledge he has of the dangerous progress of Tractarianism, which this appointment is calculated to arrest.
I went yesterday to St. George's Hospital to see the chloroform tried. A boy two years and a half old was cut for a stone. He was put to sleep in a minute; the stone was so large and the bladder so contracted, the operator could not get hold of it, and the operation lasted above twenty minutes, with repeated probings by different instruments; the chloroform was applied from time to time, and the child never exhibited the slightest sign of consciousness, and it was exactly the same as operating on a dead body. A curious example was shown of what is called the étiquette of the profession. The operator (whose name I forget) could not extract the stone, so at last he handed the instrument to Keate, who is the finest operator possible, and he got hold of the stone. When he announced that he had done so, the first man begged to have the forceps back that he might draw it out, and it was transferred to him; but in taking it he let go the stone, and the whole thing had to be done over again. It was accomplished, but not of course without increasing the local inflammation, and endangering the life of the child. I asked Keate why, when he had got hold of the stone, he did not draw it out. He said the other man's 'dignity' would have been hurt if he had not been allowed to complete what he had begun! I have no words to express my admiration for this invention, which is the greatest blessing ever bestowed on mankind, and the inventor of it the greatest of benefactors, whose memory ought to be venerated by countless millions for ages yet to come. All the great discoveries of science sink into insignificance when compared with this. It is a great privilege to have lived in the times which saw the production of steam, of electricity, and now of ether—that is, of the development and application of them to human purposes, to the multiplication of enjoyments and the mitigation of pain. But wonderful as are the powers and the feats of the steam-engine and the electric telegraph, the chloroform far transcends them all in its beneficent and consolatory operations.
AN OPERATION UNDER CHLOROFORM.
December 26th.—Lamartine's 'Histoire des Girondins' is the most successful book that has been published for many years. He is the Jenny Lind of literature; his book is on every table and in every mouth; it just suits the half-informed and the idle, whom it dazzles, amuses, and interests; but his apparent partiality shocks the humanity of the age; and the generality of readers are unable to comprehend his philosophical analysis, and psychological theories of Robespierre's character. One of his most striking anecdotes is the conversation he gives between Louis Philippe and Danton, in which, according to Lamartine, Danton predicts to the young Duc de Chartres that he will one day be King, and tells him when that happens to remember the prophecy of Danton. I last night asked the Duc de Broglie[28] if that anecdote is true. He said it was not true: the King indeed had had a conversation with Danton, when the latter said to him, 'Young man, what do you do here? Your place is with the army.' So much of it is true, but the rest—the essential part, the prediction—is all false. The Duke told me he had read the King's own account of the conversation in his own journal, where it is recorded as he described. He said the King had kept a copious journal from a very early period. He afterwards talked a great deal about him, of his great industry and activity, of the quantity he read and wrote, and that he read and commented upon all the documents submitted to him for his signature. I regret not having made more acquaintance than I have done here with the Duke de Broglie, and Jarnac gives me to understand that he had rather expected me to cultivate him more than I have, and was disposed to receive my advances. The chief reason for my not doing so was that I found the greatest difficulty in understanding what he says.
January 1st, 1848.—The Hampden affair is still boring on with prejudicial effects to everybody concerned in it. Dean Merewether, who is piqued and provoked at not having got the bishopric himself (which William IV. once promised him), wrote a foolish, frothy letter to Lord John Russell, who sent an equally foolish, because petulant, reply—only in two lines. The Bishop of Oxford has recanted, and he of Salisbury has apologised for their respective parts; the former in a very ridiculous letter, not calculated to do him any credit. Everybody will believe that he found his conduct unpalatable at Court, so took a pretext for shuffling out of it.
DEATH OF LORD HARROWBY.
Last week, after a few days' illness, without pain or trouble, Lord Harrowby died at Sandon, having just completed his eighty-fifth year.[29] The three old friends, Tom Grenville, the Archbishop of York, and Lord Harrowby, thus died all three of old age, peacefully and painlessly, within twelve months. Lord Harrowby survived Mr. Grenville exactly a year, and the Archbishop three months. He was the last of his generation and of the colleagues of Mr. Pitt, the sole survivor of those stirring times and mighty contests. He had all along such bad health that half a century ago his life was considered a very bad one, and yet he reached his eighty-sixth year with his faculties very little impaired. He was at the top of the second-rate men, always honourable and straightforward, generally liberal and enlightened, greatly esteemed and respected. No man ever passed through a long political life more entirely without blemish or suspicion. It is curious that in the biographical notices of him, which according to the custom of the present day have appeared in the newspapers, no mention, or hardly any, has been made of by far the most remarkable transaction in which he ever was engaged, that of procuring the passing of the second reading of the second Reform Bill in the House of Lords—one of the most important services, as it turned out, that any man ever rendered to his country. In conjunction with Lord Wharncliffe he accomplished this, his conduct being perfectly disinterested, for he had long before resolved never again to take office, and had refused to be Prime Minister on the death of Canning. I was in their confidence, and much concerned in the whole of that transaction, as fully appears in my Journal of that period. His speech on the first Reform Bill was very celebrated, exceedingly able, and superior to any other he ever made. He was remarkably well informed. Madame de Staël speaks of him somewhere as Lord Harrowby, 'qui connaît notre littérature un peu mieux que nous-mêmes;' but his precise manner and tart disposition prevented his being agreeable in society. He was very religious, very generous, and a man of the strictest integrity in private and in public life. I lived a great deal with him, but all my intimacy was with his admirable wife, whose virtues and merits I have elsewhere recorded.