Lady Howe begged her husband to show me the correspondence between him and Sir Herbert Taylor about the Chamberlainship. It is long and confused; Taylor's first letter, in my opinion, very impertinent, for it reads him a pretty severe lecture about his behaviour when he held the office before. Howe is a foolish man, but in this business he acted well enough, better than might have been expected. Taylor, by the King's desire, proposed to him to resume the office; and after some cavilling he agreed to do so with liberty to vote as he pleased, but promising not to be violent. So stood the matter on the 9th of September. He heard nothing more of it till the 5th of November, when young Hudson[3] wrote by the King's orders to know definitely if he meant to take it, but that if he did he must be 'neutral.' Howe wrote back word that on such terms he declined it. I told him my opinion of the whole business, and added my strenuous advice that he should immediately prevail on the Queen to appoint somebody else. I could not tell him all that people said, but I urged it as strongly as I could, hinting that there were very urgent reasons for so doing. He did not relish this advice at all, owned that he clung tenaciously to the office, liked everything about it, and longed to avail himself of some change of circumstances to return; and that though he was no longer her officer, he had ever since done all the business, and in fact was, without the name, as much her Chamberlain as ever. Lady Howe, who is vexed to death at the whole thing, was enchanted at my advice, and vehemently urged him to adopt it. After he went away she told me how glad she was at what I had said, and asked me if people did not say and believe everything of Howe's connexion with the Queen, which I told her they did. I must say that what passed is enough to satisfy me that there is what is called 'nothing in it' but the folly and vanity of being the confidential officer and councillor of this hideous Queen, for whom he has worked himself up into a sort of chivalrous devotion. Yesterday Howe spoke to the Queen about it, and proposed to speak to the King; the Queen (he says) would not hear of it, and forbad his speaking to the King. To-day he is gone away, and I don't know what he settled, probably nothing. [3] ['Young Hudson' was the page of honour who was sent to Rome in the following year to fetch Sir Robert Peel, when, as Mr. Disraeli expressed it, 'the hurried Hudson rushed into the chambers of his Vatican.' He grew up to be a very able and distinguished diplomatist, Sir James Hudson, G.C.B., who rendered great services to the cause of Italian independence.] [Page Head: LYNDHURST AND MANNERS SUTTON.]