While I was at Stoke news came that Charles X. had arrived off Portsmouth. He has asked for an asylum in Austria, but when once he has landed here he will not move again, I dare say. The enthusiasm which the French Revolution produced is beginning to give way to some alarm, and not a little disgust at the Duke of Orleans' conduct, who seems anxious to assume the character of a Jacobin King, affecting extreme simplicity and laying aside all the pomp of royalty. I don't think it can do, and there is certainly enough to cause serious disquietude for the future. Sefton in the meantime told me that Brougham and Lord Grey were prepared for a violent opposition, and that they had effected a formal junction with Huskisson, being convinced that no Government could now be formed without him. I asked him if Palmerston was a party to this junction, and he said he was, but the first thing I heard when I got to town was that a negotiation is going on between Palmerston and the Duke, and that the former takes every opportunity of declaring his goodwill to the latter, and how unshackled he is. Both these things can't be true, and time will show which is. It seems odd that Palmerston should abandon his party on the eve of a strong coalition, which is not unlikely to turn out the present Administration, but it is quite impossible to place any dependence upon public men now-a-days. There is Lord Grey with his furious opposition, having a little while ago supported the Duke in a sort of way, having advised Rosslyn to take office, and now, because his own vanity is hurt at not being invited to join the Government, or more consulted at least, upon the slight pretext of the Galway Bill in the last Parliament he rushes into rancorous opposition, and is determined to give no quarter and listen to no compromise. Brougham is to lead this Opposition in the House of Commons, and Lord Grey in the Lords, and nothing is to be done but as the result of general deliberation and agreement. Brougham in the meantime has finished his triumph at York in a miserable way, having insulted Martin Stapylton on the hustings, who called him to account, and then he forgot what he had said, and slunk away with a disclaimer of unintentional offence, as usual beginning with intemperance and ending with submission. His speeches were never good, but at his own dinner he stated so many untruths about the Duke of Wellington that his own partisans bawled out 'No, no,' and it was a complete failure. His whole spirit there was as bad as possible, paltry and commonplace. That man, with all his talents, never can or will _do_ in any situation; he is base, cowardly, and unprincipled, and with all the execrable judgment which, I believe, often flows from the perversion of moral sentiment. Nobody can admire his genius, eloquence, variety and extent of information, and the charm of his society more than I do; but his faults are glaring, and the effects of them manifest to anybody