If it were not for Brougham, who keeps enlivening the world from time to time with his speeches and correspondence and quarrels with one person or another, the political dullness and stagnation would be complete. This singular being is in an incessant state of morbid activity, never silent, never quiet; the _âme damnée_ of Lyndhurst, he grossly and incessantly flatters the Duke, and calls Peel his 'right honourable friend;' he hates his 'noble friends' and former colleagues with an intensity which bursts out on every occasion when he can contrive to vilify or assail them. He began the campaign with his squabble with M. de Tocqueville, which he had the best of, and this was eventually made up and civil messages were exchanged through the mediation of Reeve.[56] Next came his comical reconciliatory intercourse with the Queen. He has been for a long time by way of being in a sort of disgrace. He always has spoken disrespectfully or disparagingly of the Court and of 'Albertine,' and he has said uncivil things in sundry pamphlets. He behaved very ill one night when he dined at the Palace, and has never been to Court nor invited since. The other day the Queen said to the Chancellor, 'Why does Lord Brougham never come to Court?' This he repeated to Brougham, who considered it an overture, and by way of meeting it, he sent a copy of one of his books to the Queen, and another to Prince Albert. He received acknowledgements from both, and the Queen thanked him by an autograph letter. This was deemed a singular honour, and made a great sensation, and it was thought the more curious as he had just before made a most virulent speech, in which he had talked of 'vipers' in a way not to be mistaken, and which was levelled at her former Minister, and his friend, Lord Palmerston. The next thing was his squabble with Lord Lynedoch, who, though very near a hundred and stone blind, called him to account for saying something offensive about him in one of his speeches. On this, heaps of correspondence and many interviews took place between him and William Russell on the part of old Lynedoch, and he promised an explanation in the House of Lords, but they never could get him to make it, and at last Lord Lynedoch put something himself in the 'Morning Chronicle,' not very intelligible. His last appearance in public is in the shape of a correspondence with an Anti-Corn Law Leaguer and Quaker of the name of Bright, which is long and not very intelligible either, but it is amusing inasmuch as it exhibits the slyness of the Quaker, who contrives to baffle his angry 'friend' by a good deal of cunning, and rather disingenuous verbiage.