Laid up these two days with the gout in my knee, so could not go out to hear what is going on. The Duke, I find, after the Council on Monday (losing no time), repaired to the Home Office and ordered the Irish papers to be brought to him, then to the Foreign Office, where he asked for the last despatches from Spain and Portugal, and so on to the Colonial Office, where he required information as to the state of their department. I have no doubt he liked this, to play the part of Richelieu for a brief period, to exercise all the functions of administration. They complain, however, and not without reason, of the unceremonious and somewhat uncourteous mode in which without previous notice he entered into the vacant offices, taking actual possession, without any of the usual preliminary civilities to the old occupants. Duncannon, who had been in the Home Office up to the time of the Council on Monday, and whose papers were unremoved, if he had returned after it, would have found the Duke seated in his still warm chair, issuing directions to Phillips, the under-secretary, while Macdonald, Duncannon's private secretary, was still at his vocation in the adjoining room. Pretty much the same thing he did in the other three offices. He has fixed his head-quarters at the Home Office, and occasionally roves over the rest. All this is unavoidable under existing circumstances, but it is enough to excite merriment, or censure, or suspicion, according to different tastes and tempers. The King offered to make Melbourne an earl and to give him the Garter, but he declined, and begged it might be given to the Duke of Grafton. In consequence of what passed between Lyndhurst and me concerning the 'Times' (at St. James's) I made Henry de Ros send for Barnes (who had already at his suggestion adopted a conciliatory and amicable tone towards the embryo Government), who came and put on paper the terms on which he would support the Duke. These were: no mutilation of the Reform Bill, and the adoption of those measures of reform which had been already sanctioned by votes of the House of Commons last session with regard to Church and corporations, and no change in our foreign policy. I have sent his note to Lyndhurst, and begged him to call here to talk the matter over. Powell, a Tory solicitor and _âme damnée_ of the Speaker's, has just been here; he declares that the Tories will be 420 strong in the new Parliament, which I mention for the purpose of recording their expectations and being able to compare them hereafter with the event. They have already put themselves in motion, despatched messengers to Lord Hertford and Lowther, and probably if ever these men could be induced to open their purse strings, and make sacrifices and exertions, they will do it now.