actuated, or how he can (if it be so, which from Stuart's account is probable) fancy that any object is attainable which involves in it a breach or separation between Peel and the great body of the Tories. I would give much to see the recesses of his mind, and know what he really thinks of all these proceedings, and to what consequences he believes that they will lead. [14] [Mr. Knight Bruce, afterwards Lord Justice in Equity.] August 6th, 1835 {p.284} Yesterday to Brighton, to see my horse Dacre run for the Brighton stake, which he won, and back at night. The day before I met the Vice-Chancellor[15] at Charing Cross, going down, to the House of Lords. 'Well,' said he, shrugging his shoulders, 'here I am going to the House of Lords, after hearing evidence all the morning, to hear it again for the rest of the evening.' 'What is to happen?' I asked him. 'O Lord, it is the greatest bore; they have heard Coventry and Oxford; they got something of a case out of the first, but the other was beyond anything tiresome; they are sick to death of it, and Brougham and Lyndhurst have agreed that _it is all damned nonsense_, and they will hear nothing more after Saturday next.' So this is the end of all this hubbub, and here are these two great comedians thundering against each other in the House of Lords overnight with all imaginable vehemence and solemnity, only to meet together the next morning and agree that _it is all damned nonsense_. There is something very melancholy and very ludicrous in all this, and though that great bull calf the public does not care about such things, and is content to roar when he is bid, there are those on the alert who will turn such trilling and folly to account, and convert what is half ridiculous into something all serious. Winchelsea and Newcastle after all did not vote the other night; they said they wanted no evidence, that they would have no such Bill, and would not meddle with the discussion at all except to oppose it point-blank. Fools as they are, their folly is more tolerable and probably less mischievous than the folly of the wise ones. [15] The Great Seal being in Commission, the Vice-Chancellor of England (Sir Lancelot Shadwell) sat as one of the Commissioners on the Woolsack. August 9th, 1835 [Page Head: THE KING AND LORD TORRINGTON.]