I have been at Epsom for a week; the Duke of Grafton, Lords Wilton, Jersey, and Worcester, Russell, Anson, Irby, and myself took Down Hall for the races and lived very well. Nothing particular has occurred. Lord and Lady Ellenborough are separated, and he is supposed to have behaved very handsomely to her. They say he does not now know the whole story of her intrigue with Felix Schwarzenberg; that hero is gone to the Russian army. All the new appointments were declared when I was out of town, and they excited some surprise and more disapprobation. They have made Best a Peer, who is poor and has a family, by which another poor peerage will be added to the list; and he is totally unfit for the situation he is to fill--that of Deputy-Speaker of the House of Lords, and to assist the Chancellor in deciding Scotch causes, of which he knows nothing whatever; and as the Chancellor knows nothing either, the Scotch law is likely to be strangely administered in that great court of appeal. They would have done better to have made Alexander[19] a Peer, who is very old, understands Equity Law, and has no children; but he knows very little of Common Law (which Best is well versed in), and so they keep him on the bench and put Best on the Woolsack. Lord Rosslyn is Privy Seal,[20] and Scarlett Attorney-General, which looks like a leaning towards the Whigs; but then Trench and Lord Edward Somerset are put into the Ordnance; George Bankes goes back to the India Board, and Government supports him in his contest at Cambridge against William Cavendish. This conduct is considered very unhandsome, and Tierney, who was well disposed towards the Government, told me yesterday that if the Duke did not take care he thought he would get swamped with such doings, that the way he went on was neither fish nor flesh, and he would offend more people than he would conciliate. At present there is no party, and if Government have no opponents they have no great body of supporters on whom they can depend; everything is in confusion--party, politics, and all. [19] [Sir William Alexander, then Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. The Court of Exchequer still retained its Equity jurisdiction.] [20] [Lord Rosslyn was considered to be a Whig, and Sir James Scarlett was better known for the Liberal opinions he once professed than for the Tory opinions he afterwards assumed.] [Page Head: LORD PALMERSTON ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS.]