injuring his own popularity by his mortifying and almost savage behaviour to the various people who approach him. [Sidenote: ARMORIAL BEARINGS OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.] _December 3rd._--I dined again with Bingham Baring yesterday and met Lord FitzGerald, with whom I had a long talk, the first time I have seen him since he came into office. We discussed the Duke of Wellington's Paisley correspondence, and he fully confirmed my impression of the vexation it would cause the Government. It is clear enough that they would be very glad to be without him; and after talking of the unhappy and increasing infirmity of his temper, he expressed his apprehension of the probable consequences in the House of Lords,[20] and that the Government may be seriously compromised by some imprudent or intemperate expressions of the Duke; that, last year, nothing but the extreme forbearance of Brougham, and his good-nature, had prevented some disagreeable results of this kind; and it was now the more serious, when the Duke was to be the organ of the Government, and from his habits and his deafness it would be impossible for anybody to check or restrain him, Lyndhurst placed afar off on the woolsack, and the Duke sitting with his head buried in his chest, and neither consulting with, nor attending to, anyone. In 1835, he said, it had been the Duke's wish to do what he is now doing--to lead the House of Lords without a place; but Peel had then thought this was open to constitutional objections. Why he did not raise the same objections now, I don't know, unless it was that he found the Duke bent on forming part of the Government, and that he would have insisted on the Foreign Office again, if he was not permitted to lead without one. This, however, is mere conjecture. FitzGerald owned that it would have been better if he had retired, and kept aloof from Government. It has been his great misfortune never to have people about him who ventured to oppose his opinions, and he has always liked the society of those who applauded to the skies everything he said and did. As long as his faculties were unimpaired, it is difficult not to believe that if he had had candid and intelligent friends he would have listened to and considered their opinions, for his obstinacy is not the result of pride or vanity, from both of which he is singularly free, but arises from the habit, become inveterate, of trusting entirely to himself and to his own judgement. FitzGerald told me that he had never been more struck by anything than by the despatches and State-papers of Lord Auckland, and that he had no sort of idea he was so able a man; that he was, with the sole exception of John Russell, by far the ablest man of his party. His views most statesmanlike, and his government of India particularly just. I never heard a warmer panegyric than he passed upon Auckland.[21]