I hope there is a good article on the Amendment Cases in the 'E. R.' They have stupidly omitted to send it from Grafton Street. The 'Quarterly' came, and a better article than our friend your neighbour's never was written. I admired it so much that I wrote to him about it. Pray tell him my opinion of it, in case my letter should have miscarried, and that I admired it far more than I did the very spiteful article of someone inspired by a personal enmity against myself, and who has not the common sense and fairness, when relying on the wholly immaterial circumstance of my mis-stating the day of the Westminster election (the night of Princess Charlotte's running away), to see that Dundonald [Footnote: Autobiography of a Seaman, ii. 892. It has, however, been recently shown (Atlay's Trial of Lord Cochrane, pp. 330 et seq.) that Lord Dundonald had very little to do with it.] makes the Duke of Sussex fall into the very same mistake.
Cannes [February].—I am much obliged to you for your kind letter, and rejoice to hear of the good intelligence [Footnote: As to the health of Lady Duff Gordon.] from the Cape which will be such a relief to my valued friend, her mother.
The American news is a good deal more favourable, but still they are not out of the wood, or anything like it; and, even if they beat the Southerners in the field, the re-union is as far off as ever. Their only safe course is to regard the whole campaign as a kind of drawn battle, and both sides to negotiate as to terms of separation.
I have no doubt that a certain most intriguing ambassadress is at the bottom of the spiteful attack in the 'Quarterly,' and she will find her own letters rise up in judgement against her. She never will forgive my having been at the dancing school with her, because that makes her near eighty, and she pretends only to be seventy-four.
I am in constant expectation of a paper from a great mathematician, to which will be added, by B. Ker, artistic matter on monuments. It will be all sent to you, in the hope that it may assist whoever you have put on the monument question.
Cannes, March 17th.—I am extremely sorry to find that, after all, I cannot finish you the Cambridge article on Newton, to be used at your discretion, or that of your contributor; for Mr. Routh has no less than five wranglers, including the senior, as his pupils, and this has entirely occupied him, to the exclusion of all other work. I trust it will not prevent the article. In truth, my discourse at Grantham contains all the learning on the subject, and it may be used without any acknowledgement whatever, and I shall never complain of the plagiarism.
The Journal records:—
April 4th.—Breakfast to the Philobiblon at home. There came the Due d'Aumale, Van de Weyer, Milman, Lord Taunton.
To Mr. Dempster
Exeter, April 25th.—If that providence which shapes our ends will but finish those I rough-hew, I trust that the second week in October, or perhaps a few days earlier, will see us at Skibo. We hope to start straight for the far North as soon as ever my autumnal egg is laid….