of Control, come there to exercise in person the authority with which he is invested. It was just as I was starting for the Grove that I heard of the assassination of Edward Drummond,[54] one of the most unaccountable crimes that ever was committed, for he was as good and inoffensive a man as ever lived, who could have had no enemy, and who was not conspicuous enough to have become the object of hatred or vengeance to any class of persons, being merely the officer of Sir Robert Peel, and never saying or doing anything but in his name, or as directed by him. It is almost impossible that in his official capacity he can have offended, or even apparently injured, anybody, and as the man assigns no reason for what he has done, and does not appear in the slightest degree deranged, it quite baffles conjecture to account for the commission of such an enormity. [Footnote 54: [Mr. Edward Drummond, Private Secretary to Sir Robert Peel, was shot in Whitehall by a man named Daniel Macnaghten, on January 20.]] _January 26th._--Poor Drummond died yesterday morning, and I never remember any event which excited more general sympathy and regret. He was informed the night before of his hopeless condition, which he heard with great composure, and he was sensible almost to the last. There never was a man who, according to every rule of probability, was safer from any chance of assassination. He was universally popular, much beloved and esteemed by numerous friends, and without an enemy in the world; of moderate but fair abilities, a cheerful, amiable disposition, and, entirely without vanity or ambition, he was content to play a respectable but subordinate part in life, which he did to the perfect satisfaction of all those with whom he was connected. The extreme strangeness of the event, and the absence of any apparent cause for the commission of such a crime, have given rise to various conjectures, the most prominent of which is the notion that he was taken for Peel. I utterly rejected this at first, because I thought the assassin could so easily have made himself acquainted with the person of Peel that it could not be true; but a circumstance of which I was reminded yesterday (for I had before heard it from Drummond himself, but forgotten it), has changed my opinion. When the Queen went to Scotland, Peel went with Lord Aberdeen, or in some other way, no matter how, but not in his own carriage. He sent Drummond in his carriage, _alone_. In Scotland Peel constantly travelled either with the Queen, or with Aberdeen, and Drummond continued to go about in his carriage. I well remember his telling me this, and laughing at the idea of his having been taken for a great man. It has been proved that this man was in Scotland at the time; and if he saw, as he probably did, Drummond in a carriage which was pointed out to him as Sir Robert Peel's, he may have very naturally concluded that the man in it was the Minister, and he may therefore have believed