_February 22nd._--On Wednesday, as I was crossing the Park, I fell in with Sir Robert Peel, and turned back with him to Charles Wood's, where he was going, after which we went towards his home, and walked up and down behind Whitehall for half an hour or more, talking of all sorts of things. He began about the Roden affair, on which he thought there was no case against Clarendon, but that he might have made more clearly known to Lord Roden his dislike to the procession, and considering the friendly terms they had been on, that there was some want of courtesy in making no communication to him before the notice of dismissal, particularly after Roden had offered to resign if it would be of any use to him that he should do so. I explained all these matters to him, and showed him that Clarendon had said and done all he could, and that no blame attached to him. He said he had known nothing of the matter but what Jocelyn had told him. He then spoke of foreign affairs, and did not spare Palmerston. He reviewed the general course of our proceedings, and especially the Greek affair, which he thought very bad; but what was still worse, was our having sent our fleet into the Dardanelles, having no right to do so, and then asserting we were driven there by stress of weather, which was a pretence and a falsehood. This was very disgraceful, and the use to which our fleet had been put very shameful. That Palmerston had met with nothing but failures from Lisbon, where he first sent the fleet, and where his enemy Cabral had been ever since in power down to the present occasion. Brunnow had spoken to him the other day, and talked very good sense. He said the Emperor of Russia would not quarrel on this matter, not having done so on our fleet going to the Dardanelles; he would not on account of two uninhabited islets, but he would feel it. He alluded to the Emperor's sarcastic remark on the story of our fleet being compelled to take shelter in the Dardanelles; that 'he had always understood our fleets were most ably and powerfully manned, their tactics very superior, and that Sir William Parker was a very skilful officer; but that _his_ fleet, though lying in that sea for many months, had never found itself under any such necessity.' Brunnow said it was a great pity that somebody could not represent to Palmerston the impolicy of the course he had been pursuing all over Europe; that it was evident his real motive and intention in the Greek affair had been to bring about a revolution there, and that he had expected, when his fleet appeared, there would be a rising against Otho, who would be expelled; that when Europe was only just emerging from a state of general revolution, and order was only lately restored, what folly it was to provoke a fresh revolution, and to reopen an important question, the settlement of which might lead to the greatest difficulties! Brunnow always defends Palmerston, and affects to make light of all the