This account corresponds with all I have before heard, and confirms the opinion I have long had that a more contemptible, cowardly, selfish, unfeeling dog does not exist than this King, on whom such flattery is constantly lavished. He has a sort of capricious good-nature, arising however out of no good principle or good feeling, but which is of use to him, as it cancels in a moment and at small cost a long score of misconduct. Princes have only to behave with common decency and prudence, and they are sure to be popular, for there is a great and general disposition to pay court to them. I do not know anybody who is proof against their seductions when they think fit to use them in the shape of civility and condescension. The great consolation in all this is the proof that, so far from deriving happiness from their grandeur, they are the most miserable of all mankind. The contrast between their apparent authority and the contradictions which they practically meet with must be peculiarly galling, more especially to men whose minds are seldom regulated, as other men's are, by the beneficial discipline of education and early collision with their equals. There have been good and wise kings, but not many of them. Take them one with another they are of an inferior character, and this I believe to be one of the worst of the kind. The littleness of his character prevents his displaying the dangerous faults that belong to great minds, but with vices and weaknesses of the lowest and most contemptible order it would be difficult to find a disposition more abundantly furnished. January 16th, 1829 {p.155} I went to Windsor to a Council yesterday. There were the Duke, the Lord Chancellor, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Mint, Lord President, Lord Aberdeen, Peel, Melville, Ellenborough. The King kept us waiting rather longer than usual. He looked very well, and was dressed in a blue great coat, all over gold frogs and embroidery. Lord Liverpool was there to give up the late Lord's Garter, and had an audience. He said to me afterwards that the King had asked him all sorts of questions about his family concerns, with which he seemed extraordinarily well acquainted, and to some of which he was puzzled to give an answer. The King is the greatest master of gossip in the world, and his curiosity about everybody's affairs is insatiable. I spoke to Peel about the Council books,[24] which are in the State Paper Office, and he promised they should be restored to the Council Office. [24] [At the fire which took place at Whitehall in 1619 several volumes of the 'Council Register' were lost or dispersed. Some of these missing volumes were in the State Paper Office, and two are still in the British Museum.]