replied, 'Oh, by G--, it was too serious to say anything.' It was too late then to restore the original order of march, and the whole army crossed by the bridge. No further allusion was made to what had occurred. December 2nd, 1838 {p.137} Went from Wolbeding to the Grange, last Friday week--Henry Taylor and George Cornewall Lewis there--and came to town on Sunday. The Grange is a beautiful specimen of Grecian architecture, bought by Lord Ashburton of that extraordinary man Henry Drummond, a man so able and eccentric as to be treading on the very edge of the partition which divides wit from madness. Lord Durham arrived at Plymouth some days ago, but was not able to land (on Thursday last) owing to the violence of the storms. Great curiosity prevails to see what sort of a reception he gets from Ministers and the Queen, and what his relations are to be with Government. Nothing they say can exceed the astonishment which he and his court feel, or will feel, at the sensation excited in the country by his conduct. Gibbon Wakefield, the first who arrived, said he had never been so amazed in the course of his life, and owned that they had all expected to make a very different impression, and to be hailed with great applause. Brougham, who is sitting at the Judicial Committee, is in high spirits and looking forward with exceeding zest and eagerness to the fun he is to have in the House of Lords. [Page Head: CHARACTER OF LORD SEFTON.] While I was in the country, Lord Sefton's long illness came to a close, but not before he was reduced to a state of deplorable imbecility, so that his death was a release from misery to himself as well as to all about him. He was a man who filled a considerable space in society, and had been more or less conspicuous from the earliest period of his life. He was possessed of an ample fortune, which he endeavoured to convert into a continual source of enjoyment in every mode which fancy, humour, or caprice suggested. His natural parts were excessively lively, but his education had been wholly neglected, and he never attempted to repair in after-life the deficiencies occasioned by that early neglect. He had therefore not the slightest tincture of letters, his mind was barren of information, and he not only took no interest in intellectual pursuits, but he regarded with aversion, and something like contempt, those who were peculiarly devoted to them. On the other hand, he was an acute man of the world, eagerly entering into all the interests, great and small, of his own time, sufficiently acquainted with the mushroom literature of the day for all social purposes, and, partly from the authority which his wealth and position gave him, partly from his own dexterity, he contrived to turn conversation aside from those topics in the discussion of which he was incapable of mixing, and to promote that sort of half-serious, half-ludicrous talk, in which he was not only fitted to play a prominent part,