On Friday night Brougham announced to the Lords that they must make up their minds to the Ballot after the division of the preceding night, and yesterday morning, when we were assembled in my room before going into court (Parke, Erskine, Bosanquet, and himself) he gave us his speech in high glee. Parke, who is an alarmist, had just before said that he had never doubted when the Reform Bill had passed that England would become a republic, and when Brougham said that he gave the Ballot five years for its accomplishment, Parke said, 'And in five years from that we shall have a republic,' on which Brougham gave him a great cuff, and, with a scornful laugh, said, 'A republic! pooh, nonsense! Well, but what if there is? _There are judges_ in a republic, and very well paid too.' 'Well paid!' said the other in the same tone, 'and no.' 'Yes, they are; they have L350 a year. But, never mind, you shall be taken care of; I will speak to Grote about you.' This is the way he goes on. He sits every day at the Judicial Committee, but pays very little attention to the proceedings; he is incessantly in and out of the room, giving audience to one odd-looking man or another, and while in court more occupied with preparing articles for the 'Edinburgh Review' or his Parliamentary tirades than with the cases he is by way of hearing. The day after the Lord Advocate's attack upon him in the matter of the Glasgow cotton-spinners, he received Wakley, and as he returned (through my room) from the interview, he said, 'Do you know who that was? It was Wakley. He would have felt your head if he had stopped, for he is a great phrenologist. He examined all the heads of the Glasgow men, and he said they had none of them the organ of destructiveness except one.' 'Oh,' said I, 'then that man would have committed murder.' 'No,' said he, 'for the organ of benevolence was also strongly developed.' He is in extraordinary good humour; in a state of furious mental activity, troubled neither with fear nor shame, and rejoicing in that freedom from all ties which renders him a sort of political Ishmael, his hand against everybody, and everybody against him, and enables him to cut and slash, as his fancy or his passion move him, at Whig or Tory, in the House of Lords. [Page Head: LORD JOHN OPPOSES THE BALLOT.]