Last evening we passed at the Earl of Auckland’s, the head of the Admiralty. The party was at the Admiralty, where there is a beautiful residence for the first lord. . . . I had a long talk with Lord Morpeth last evening about Mr. Sumner, and told him of his nomination. He has a strong regard for him. . . . Not a moment have I had to a London “lion.” I have driven past Westminster, but have not been in it. I have seen nothing of London but what came in my way in returning visits. _To I. P. D._ LONDON, November 17, 1846. MY DEAR UNCLE: I cannot help refreshing the remembrance of me with you and dear Aunty by addressing a separate letter to you. . . . Yesterday we hailed with delight our letters from home. . . . One feels in a foreign land the absence of common sympathies and interests, which always surround us in any part of our own country. And yet nothing can exceed the kindness with which we have been received here. Last evening I went to my first great English dinner and it was a most agreeable one. . . . It seems a little odd to a republican woman to find herself in right of her country taking precedence of marchionesses, but one soon gets used to all things. We sat down to dinner at eight and got through about ten. When the ladies rose, I found I was expected to go first. After dinner other guests were invited and to the first person who came in, about half-past ten, Lady Palmerston said: “Oh, thank you for coming so early.” This was Lady Tankerville of the old French family of de Grammont and niece to Prince Polignac. The next was Lady Emily de Burgh, the daughter of the Marchioness of Clanricarde, a beautiful girl of seventeen. She is very lovely, wears a Grecian braid round her head like a coronet, and always sits by her mother, which would not suit our young girls. Then came Lord and Lady Ashley, Lord Ebrington, and so many titled personages that I cannot remember half. The dinner is much the same as ours in all its modes of serving, but they have soles and turbot, instead of our fishes, and their pheasants are not our pheasants, or their partridges our partridges. Neither have we so many footmen with liveries of all colours, or so much gold and silver plate. . . . The next morning Mr. Bancroft breakfasted with Dr. Holland to meet the Marquis of Lansdowne alone. [Thursday] he went down to Windsor to dine with the Queen. He took out to dinner the Queen’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, the Queen going with the Prince of Saxe-Weimar, who was paying a visit at the Castle. He talked German to the Duchess during dinner, which I suspect she liked, for the Queen spoke of it to him afterwards, and Lord Palmerston told me the Duchess said he spoke very pure German. While he was dining at Windsor I went to a party all alone at the Countess Grey’s, which I thought required some courage.