On Sunday morning I called on Lord John Russell, and we had an argument about Lord Ashburton and his Treaty, which he abused very roundly, saying all that I had before heard of his writing to his brother against it, but still owning that it was not very injurious. I have a great respect for Lord John, who is very honest and clever, but in this matter he talks great nonsense. Palmerston is much more consistent and takes a clear and broad view of it. He says, 'We are all in the right, and the Americans all in the wrong. Never give up anything, insist on having the thing settled in your own way, and if they won't consent, let it remain unsettled.' But Lord John merely says you might have got better terms if you had held out for them, that _he thinks_ Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Everett would have arranged it here more favourably for us than Lord Ashburton did there; that if Lord Aberdeen had proposed such and such terms to Everett they would have been agreed to in America, and that Lord Ashburton gave up certain things for which he did not obtain a just equivalent--all of which is mere gratuitous assumption, and may be true or maybe false. However, he owned that the public was disposed to be satisfied with the Treaty, and he did not deny any assertion that Palmerston had committed a blunder in attacking it with such violence. The fifth volume of Madame d'Arblay's journal or memoirs is just come out. I have read the first three volumes, and then could read no more, it was so tiresome; but I returned to the fifth because I found everybody was amused by it. It is certainly readable, for there are scattered through it notices of people and things sufficiently interesting, but they are overlaid by an enormous quantity of trash and twaddle, and there is a continuous stream of mawkish sentimentality, loyalty, devotion, sensibility, and a display of feelings and virtues which are very provoking. The cleverest part of it is the remarkable memory with which she narrates long conversations and minute details of facts and circumstances. It is true she generally makes her people converse in a very ordinary commonplace style, and she hardly ever tells any anecdote or any event of importance or of remarkable interest. Nevertheless her rambling records are read with pleasure, for there is and ever will be an insatiable thirst for familiar details of the great world and the people who have figured in it. Anecdotes of kings, princes, ministers, or any _celebrities_ are always acceptable. I have often thought that my journal would have been much more entertaining if I had scribbled down all I heard and saw in society, all I could remember of passing conversations, jokes, stories, and such like, instead of recording and commenting on public events, as I have often, though irregularly, done. To have done this, however, and done it well, required a better memory and more diligence than I possess, to be more _Boswellian_ than I am.