I dined with the Duke of Wellington on Saturday. Arbuthnot was there, and he said the Duke is in a state of unutterable disgust with the present Government and their proceedings, particularly with their foreign policy, which he fancies they shape in systematic and wilful opposition to his own. This, of course, is merely his imagination, and rather a preposterous notion. He says the Duke does not think well of the state of the country, but that he grasps with eagerness at any symptoms of returning or increasing prosperity, and (what is rather inconsistent with his bad opinion of affairs) he is always telling the foreigners (i.e. the Ambassadors) who talk to him that they will fall into a great error if they think the power or resources of England in any way impaired. His antipathy to the Whigs, is, however, invincible, and of very ancient date, as this proves. Arbuthnot said that he was looking over a box of papers the other day, and hit upon the copy of a letter he had written to Lord Liverpool, by desire of some of his principal colleagues, to dissuade him from quitting office, which, he thought of doing at the time of the first Lady Liverpool's death. With it there was a scrap on which was written, 'Taken down from the Duke of Wellington's own lips;' and this was an argument that, in the event of his refusing, he (the Duke) should think himself at liberty to join any other party or set of men, but that his great object was to keep the Whigs out of power, as he was convinced that whenever they got in they would ruin the country. Lord Liverpool said that they (The Tories) had been too long in possession of the Government. May 23rd, 1834 {p.083} Newmarket, Epsom, and so forth. Nothing remarkably new. In the House of Commons the Poor Law Bill has been going on smoothly; in the House of Lords little of note but one of Brougham's exhibitions. Old Wynford brought in a very absurd Bill for the better observance of the Sabbath (an old sinner he, who never cared three straws for the Sabbath), which Brougham attacked with excessive virulence and all his powers of ridicule and sarcasm. His speech made everybody laugh, very heartily, but on a division, the Bishops all voting with Wynford, the latter carried the second reading by three in a very thin House. The next day the Chancellor came down with a protest, written in his most pungent style, very smart, but more like a bit of an article in the 'Edinburgh Review' than a Parliamentary protest. Wynford was in the House when he entered his protest, and he called out to him, 'Holloa, _Best_, look at my protest!'