_February 11th._--Yesterday Algy showed me the Duke's correspondence with Haddington,[75] which is a terrible rigmarole, lengthy, angry, mistaken, and altogether sadly demonstrative of a falling off in his great mind. The subject is so insignificant that it would be waste of time to say a word on it, if it were not for the interest which attaches to the great man to whom it relates. Admiral Parker wrote a warm panegyric on his nephew, Captain Wellesley, which he wound up by saying, he spoke cautiously and reservedly (or some such expression) for fear his motives should be misunderstood. The sentence was an awkward one, but the sense was clear, and could only mean that he was afraid it might be thought he praised the nephew in order to pay court to the uncle, and therefore he in reality said rather less than more than he deserved. The Duke chose to take it in an exactly opposite sense, and insisted that it could only mean that _he_ was so obnoxious that even his relative was not to receive his just meed of praise--a thing not only quite improbable and absurd, but absolutely unmeaning. On this he descanted very angrily, and then went off on his own services, and that he never asked for anything for any of his belongings, and a great deal of very pitiful balderdash. Haddington seems to have _tombé de son haut_, at getting this extraordinary ebullition, and wrote back what he meant to be a soother, assuring the Duke that he had never thought of taking it in that sense, far from it, and he added all that was respectful and obliging of himself and his nephew, as well as what was reasonable and true; but the old hero's blood was up, he had got his head the wrong way, and the devil would not get it right again. He insisted on his own version of the Admiral's letter, declared nobody could possibly read it in any other sense (nobody could possibly see it in his), and fired back another sulky broadside upon the First Lord of the Admiralty. [Sidenote: LORD BROUGHAM'S JUDICIAL COMMITTEE BILL.]