Polignac has been made Prime Minister of France. De Rigny is made Minister of Marine. The Government is Tory, and I should think very favourable to English alliance, not Greek, and certainly not Russian. If it should be able to stand, it must be good for us. Received letters from Colonel Macdonald from Tabriz. He says the Russians at Tiflis talk as if they were going to war with us. _August 11._ Received Persian despatches. The Persians will pay no more. They wanted to go to war. No one would go as Envoy to Petersburg but an _attaché_. They all thought they should be beheaded. Macdonald seems to have kept them quiet. Cabinet room. Met Lord Melville. Read Gordon's letters from Constantinople. The Turks have not above 20,000 men there. They are not disposed to yield at all. Gordon thinks if we declared we would fix in any manner the limits of Greece, and maintain them, the Porte would not quarrel with us, and would rather do anything than yield the point of honour by acknowledging the independence of the Greeks. The Russians mean to pass the Balkans with 60,000 men and march on Adrianople. They send a large force by sea to Sizeboli to turn Bourgas. Lord Francis Leveson holds out the apprehension of a long religious contest in Ireland. [Footnote: Unhappily, like other pessimists, he seems to have judged Ireland correctly.] I believe he looks only at the surface and judges from first appearances. _August 12._ A victory gained by Paskewitz over the Seraskier, whom he has taken prisoner, with thirty-one pieces of cannon, &c., near Erzeroum--that is, three days after the battle, Paskewitz, still in pursuit, was within forty miles of Erzeroum. Wrote two letters to the Duke--one on the subject of Sir J. P. Grant, who has closed the Courts at Bombay because the Government would not execute an unlawful process, and the other respecting Persian affairs, giving the substance of the despatches which I enclosed. We have a Cabinet to-morrow at 12 on Turkish affairs. I would not allow the Russians to advance any further. I would send one from our own body, _incognito,_ to Paris to talk to Polignac and endeavour to get him to join us in an act of vigorous intervention which would give character to his Government and save Constantinople. I would pass the English and French fleets through the Dardanelles, and give Russia a leaf out of the Greek Treaty. But I do not expect that this will be Aberdeen's course. Drummond, whom I saw, said the Duke was delighted with the account of the Jaghirdars of the Kistna. Granville is gone to Ireland. The Duke was gone to Windsor. It is the King's birthday. _August 13._