Lady Holland asked me the other night what I thought of their prospects, and I told her I thought them very bad. She said, 'The fact is, we have nothing to rely upon but the Queen and Paddy.' This has since struck me as being an epigrammatic but very correct description of their position. Last night there came to Holland House after dinner Brunnow and Nesselrode's son, the first (not unlike Brougham, and would be very like if his nose moved about), a very able man, and said to be 'la pensee intime de l'Empereur,' sent over to see what can be done about the Eastern Question, which I take to be a very difficult matter.[7] I had much talk with Dedel (who told me this) about Palmerston. I said it was well known he was very able with his pen, but I did not know how he was in Conference. He replied: 'Palmerston comes to any Conference so fully and completely master of the subject of it in all the minutest details, that this capacity is a peculiar talent with him; it is so great, that he is apt sometimes to lose himself in the details.' [7] [Baron Brunnow was sent to England at this time by the Emperor Nicholas to make the first overtures for the intervention of the Great Powers in the quarrel between the Sultan and the Pasha of Egypt. This overture was rejected by the Cabinet in 1839, but accepted on the Baron's return to England in the following year, and it led to the celebrated treaty of the 15th July, 1840, and the quarrel with France, the true object of Nicholas having been the severance of the Western Powers. M. de Brunnow remained in England as Minister or Ambassador for nearly thirty-five years.] London, November 8th, 1839 {p.243} Six weeks nearly of an absolute blank. Left town October 1, Newmarket, then Cromer for ten days, Newmarket, London, Riddlesworth, Newmarket again, Euston, and back on Monday last. Nothing very remarkable has happened in this interval. Lord Clarendon[8] accepted the Privy Seal, not very willingly, but feeling that he could not, with decency, refuse it. They consider his accession to the Government a matter of great importance, and the Tories own it to be so, such a reputation has he acquired by the brilliant manner in which he conducted the mission in Spain, and by his popular and engaging qualities. [8] [George William Frederic Villiers, fourth Earl of Clarendon, succeeded his uncle in the title in December, 1838. He had filled for some years with distinguished ability the office of British Minister at Madrid. He now returned to England; married Lady Katharine Barham, eldest daughter of the Earl of Verulam and widow of John Forster-Barham, Esq., in June 1839, and entered the Cabinet for the first time as Lord Privy Seal.] [Page Head: LORD BROUGHAM'S PRETENDED DEATH.]