campaign, is an almost complete suspension of attention to political matters, and to what is passing in the world: and as I have learnt nothing but what everybody else knows, I have not thought it worth while to waste pen and ink in making my own observations on passing events. I have been too idle and too busy for that. If I had been used to write in the common diarial form, I should have put down something of this sort: On Tuesday in Epsom week I went to Bingham Baring's at Addiscombe, with the Clanricardes, Damers, Ben Stanley, Levesons, Poodle Byng; very agreeable people, but the women brimful of ill-nature. Clanricarde and his wife excellent members of society; both of them extremely clever, quick, light in hand. [Sidenote: STATE OF THE COUNTRY.] The King of Hanover arrived on Friday, too late for the Royal christening, and all the world is asking why he did not arrive in time, or why they did not wait for him. The political world is all out of joint. Peel is become very unpopular. Ireland is in a flame. The whole country is full of distress, disquiet, and alarm. Religious feuds are rife. The Church and the Puseyites are at loggerheads here, and the Church and the Seceders in Scotland; and everybody says it is all very alarming, and God knows what will happen, and everybody goes on just the same, and nobody cares except those who can't get bread to eat. Somehow or other, it does seem very strange, that after thirty years of peace, a thing unprecedented, during which time all the elements of public prosperity have been in full activity and had ample scope, while we have been reforming and improving, and fancying that we have been getting wiser and better, we find ourselves to all appearance in as bad a condition, with as much difficulty for the present, and as much alarm for the future, as we have often been in. This is a great problem, which I cannot pretend to solve, and which it would task most men's philosophy satisfactorily to explain. [Footnote 59: [Viscount Kelburne, afterwards fourth Earl of Glasgow, was a distinguished patron of the Turf; he died in 1869.]] [Sidenote: THE PRIVY COUNCIL REGISTERS.]