I have seen here a correspondence between the Chancellor and Lord Carrington about the appointment of Buckinghamshire magistrates, which is very discreditable to the former, and exhibits an example of authority exercised directly in the teeth of all the principles laid down by the Tories in a case very analogous three years ago. On this occasion the Chancellor, almost immediately after he got the Great Seal, peremptorily appointed fifteen magistrates, which Carrington of course knew very well was a list of the Duke of Buckingham's. He was very angry, and expressed his resentment, but the Chancellor would not give way, and could not satisfy him. Three years ago Lord Howard complained, in the House of Lords, of Lord Cottenham for appointing eight magistrates at Leeds. On that occasion the Duke of Wellington made a speech, in which he laid down what the Lord Chancellor ought to do, and what he ought not to do, and if he had made it in reference to this case, it could not contain a stronger and more applicable censure of the conduct of Lord Lyndhurst. The circumstances, too, make this a much stronger and more odious case than the other. I have been employed in reading the Duchess of Marlborough's correspondence with her two granddaughters, successively Duchesses of Bedford, and most amusing it is. I have urged the Duke to publish it, and, if Lord John, who is going to publish a volume or more of Bedford papers, does not choose to take the Duchess of Marlborough's letters in hand, to let me arrange them for the press, which he has promised to do. I hardly ever read any letters more expressive of character, and more natural than these, and they abound in shrewd observation and knowledge of human nature, besides a very good sprinkling of anecdotes, some very entertaining. I took Lord Spencer down with me to the librarian's room to look at them, when he told me two anecdotes of John Spencer, her grandson, to whom, after quarrelling with him violently, as she did with everybody else, she left all the property at her disposal.[22] The first was about the cause of their quarrel. She gave a great dinner on her birthday to all her family, and she said that 'there she was, like a great tree, herself the root, and all her branches flourishing round her;' when John Spencer said to his neighbour that 'the branches would flourish more when the root was under ground.' This produced great hilarity, which attracted the notice of old Sarah, who insisted on knowing the cause, when John Spencer himself told her his own _bon mot_, at which--and no wonder--she took great offence. She afterwards forgave him, and desired him to marry. He expressed his readiness to marry anybody she pleased, and at last she sent him a list, alphabetically arranged, of suitable matches. He said he might as well take the first on the list, which happened to be letter C, a Carteret, daughter of Lord Granville's, and her he accordingly married. Lord Spencer told