At Epsom all last week for the races at a house which Lord Chesterfield took; nobody there but the three sisters[4] and their two husbands. Rode out on the downs every morning, and enjoyed the fine country, as beautiful as any I have seen of the kind. After the races on Friday I went to Richmond to dine with Lord and Lady Lyndhurst, and was refreshed by his vigorous mind after the three or four days I had passed. He thinks the state of things very bad, has a great contempt for this Government, is very doubtful what will happen, thinks Lord Grey will not stand, and that Brougham will be Chancellor and Prime Minister, like Clarendon; he talked of the late Government, the Duke of Wellington and Peel; he said that the former meddled with no department but that of Foreign Affairs, which he conducted entirely; that he understood them better than anything else, and if he came into office again would be Foreign Secretary; that in the Cabinet he was always candid, reasonable, and ready to discuss fairly every subject, but not so Peel. He, if his opinion was not adopted, would take up a newspaper and sulk. Lyndhurst agreed with me about his manners, his coldness, and how he disgusted instead of conciliating people; he said that when any of his friends in Parliament proposed to speak in any debate, he never encouraged or assisted them, but answered with a dry 'Do you?' to their notification of a wish or intention. He said that this Bill was drawn up by Lambton himself, but so ill done, so ignorantly and inefficiently, that they were obliged to send for Harrison, who, in conjunction with the Attorney-General, drew it up afresh; that when John Russell brought it forward the Bill was still undrawn.[5] He says that there is not the least doubt they never had an idea of bringing forward any such measure as this till they found themselves so weak in the House of Commons that nothing but a popular cry and Radical support could possibly save them. It is very remarkable when we look back to the moment of the dissolution of the late Government, when Brougham was in the House of Commons armed with his Bill, which, though unknown, was so dreaded, and which turns out to have been mere milk and water compared with this. He said Brougham was offered the Attorney-Generalship by a note, which he tore in pieces and stamped upon, and sent word that there was no answer; that he has long aspired to be Chancellor, and wished to get into the House of Lords. He ridicules his pretensions to such wonderful doings in his Court and in the Bills he has announced; says that he has decided no bankruptcy cases, and, except some Scotch appeals in the House of Lords, has got rid of hardly any arrears; and as to his Bills, the Bankruptcy Bill was objectionable and the Chancery Bill he has never brought on at all; that he knows he affects a short cut to judicial eminence, but that without labour and reading he cannot administer justice in that