[1] [This was the first time the Emperor Nicholas had visited Poland since the Revolution of 1830, and he took the opportunity to express himself in language of excessive severity to the municipality of Warsaw, threatening to lay the city in ruins if the Poles rebelled again.] November 22nd, 1835 {p.320} My brother Algy showed me a few days ago a letter from the Duke of Wellington to the Duke of Cumberland--a gossiping letter about nothing, but in which there was this which struck me as odd. He said that he was informed that the English who had been to the reviews at Kalisch had been very ill received, and that even those to whom _he_ had given letters of introduction had experienced nothing but incivility, and that he regretted having had the presumption to imagine that any recommendation of his would be attended to by the Sovereigns or their Ministers--a curious exhibition of pique, for what I believe to be an imaginary incivility. It is a strange thing that he is very sensitive, and yet has no strong feelings; but this is after all only one of the forms of selfishness. [Page Head: SOCIAL LAW.] Burdett has written a letter to the managers of Brooks's, to propose the expulsion of O'Connell. It will do no good; these abortive attempts do nothing towards plucking him down from his bad eminence, and their failure gives him a triumph. So it was in Alvanley's case; there a great deal of very proper indignation was thrown away, and O'Connell had the satisfaction of baffling his antagonists, and obtaining a sort of recognition of his assumed right to act as he does. It is a case which admits of a good argument either way. On the one side is the perilous example of any club taking cognizance of acts of its members, private or political, which do not concern the club, or have no local reference to it--a principle, if once admitted, of which it would be next to impossible to regulate and control the application, and probably be productive of greater evils than those it would be intended to remedy. On the other hand, the case of O'Connell is altogether peculiar; it is such a one as can hardly ever occur again, and therefore may be treated as deserving an exception from ordinary rules, because it not only cannot be drawn into a precedent, but the very circumstance of its being so treated must prevent the possibility of its recurrence. There exists a code of social law, which is universally subscribed to, as necessary and indispensable for the preservation of social harmony and decorum. One man has given public notice that he is self-emancipated from its obligations; that he acknowledges none of the restraints, and will submit to none of the penalties, by which the intercourse of society is regulated and kept in order; and having thus surrounded himself with all the immunities of irresponsibility, 'out of the reach of danger he is bold, out of the reach of shame