The Policy of England to Ireland--Ministers object to the Publication--Could the Book be delayed and published anonymously?--Visit to the Grange--Buckland--Visit to Broadlands--Visit to Woburn--Prince Albert complains of want of Secrecy--Visit to Ampthill--Baron Rolfe--The Master of the Rolls to sit at the Judicial Committee--The Queen knew nothing of the Irish Book--Reconciliation of Thiers and Palmerston--Mr. Gladstone resigns on the Maynooth Endowments--Changes in the Cabinet--Sidney Herbert--Lord Lincoln--Precarious Position of French Ministry--Mr. Gladstone's Resignation transpires--Sensitiveness of the French Government--Debate in the House of Commons--Gladstone's Resignation unintelligible--Mr. Duncombe's Letters--Death of Rev. Sydney Smith--Publication of the 'Policy to Ireland'--Death of Robert Smith (Bobus)--Death of Miss Fox--Visit to Althorp--Effects of the Irish Book--Whig and Tory Opinions--The Maynooth Grant--Meeting of Thiers and Guizot--Debate on the Maynooth Grant--Macaulay's Speech--Divisions in the Tory Party--Possibility of a Whig Government--Break-up of Parties--Birkenhead--Depression--Visits to the Grove and to Broadlands--Lord Melbourne--Opinions on the Irish Book--Sir Robert Peel's Improved Position--Embarrassment caused by the Queen's Absence from England--A Queer Family. [Sidenote: MR. GREVILLE'S BOOK ON IRELAND.] _London, January 12th, 1845._--More than four months have elapsed since I wrote anything in this book, and I have not much hope either of finding materials or having sufficient application to make it interesting or amusing. When people kept diaries in former times, there were no such newspapers as the 'Times' with its volume of letterpress, and dozens of Sunday papers all collecting and retailing the public events and the private anecdotes of the day, and the memoranda of very inconsiderable persons consequently became interesting and amusing; but now it requires that a writer should either have access to stores of hidden information, or live in intimacy with remarkable people and become the chronicler of their words, thoughts, and actions, or that he should have a strong original genius of his own, and to none of these can I lay any considerable claim. I say _considerable_ (I have none at all to the last), because, though I know very few State secrets, I do every now and then acquire the knowledge of curious and interesting facts; and I live more or less with conspicuous people, both literary and political, though much more, I am sorry to say, with the common herd. Certainly, however, the principal reason which has prevented my writing in this Journal has been the absorbing occupation of writing my book upon Ireland; and though the one need not have prevented the other, somehow it did, and whenever I was disposed to write, I always went to my manuscript and not to my red book.