I met Brunnow a few days ago coming from Palmerston, where he had been (though he did not say so) to present the Emperor's indignant note. He was laughing as he always does when he speaks of Palmerston; said of this affair, 'que c'Ètait une bÍtise; qu'il ne pouvait pas faire comprendre ‡ Palmerston l'humiliation de l'affaire.' So far from acknowledging this, or evincing the least sign of regret or shame, when Hume asked him a question in the House the other night, he replied with the utmost effrontery, and with rather more than his usual insolence and audacity. As on every occasion, the House laughed and nobody said a word. All that relates to him, his character, conduct, and career, will hereafter form one of the most curious passages in history and the most astounding and unaccountable. [Sidenote: THE GORHAM JUDGEMENT.] _March 9th._--Yesterday judgement was given in Gorham's case at the Council Office. The crowd was enormous, the crush and squeeze awful. I accommodated my friends with seats in court, and there were Wiseman and Bunsen sitting cheek by jowl, probably the antipodes of theological opinions. The Lords met an hour before. They made some alterations in the judgement, and some judicious omissions. The Bishop of London, after much vacillation, half assenting and half dissenting, being on and off, by turns against Gorham and against the Bishop, disagreeing with everybody and everything, finally sent his determination through Lushington, and announcing (as was said in the judgement) that he could not concur. He did not, however, concur in the statement of Gorham's doctrine as gathered by the Lords, a difference of construction which shows how impossible it would have been to condemn Gorham on the score of heterodox, if not heretical, opinions, when a number of very able men, laymen and clergymen, after careful examination, could not agree what his opinions really were. Knight Bruce dissented altogether, wrote to Lord Langdale to that effect, and declined coming. The Archbishop agreed in both judgement and reasons. There was a preliminary discussion about costs. Langdale, Campbell, and Lushington were for giving Gorham costs in the Court below; Pemberton Leigh was against it; and the three eventually yielded to the one, and it was agreed to say nothing about costs. Langdale read the judgement well, and the people who heard it (at least those I talked to) thought it able and judicious; but of course all the highflyers and Puseyites will be angry and provoked, and talk of schisms and secessions, which will be, I am firmly convinced, _bruta fulmina_. Reeve received yesterday afternoon from Paris the Russian Note--not the Note itself, but the whole substance of it, textual evidently, and copied from the note.[111] [Footnote 111: [This was a Note in which the Russian Government protested against the abuse of the maritime power of England to coerce small and unresisting States.]]