_July 19th._--Clarendon arrived from Ireland a few days ago. He told me he had only seen John Russell for a few minutes, in a great hurry as he was going to the Cabinet, when these few words passed about foreign affairs. Clarendon said 'they had got well out of their difficulties on that score.' _Lord John._--Yes, I think it did--very well. _Lord Clarendon._--Yes; but don't misunderstand me. If what has passed serves as a lesson to Palmerston, and induces him to begin another course of conduct, I shall think you got very well indeed out of it; but if he only regards what has happened as a triumph, and as sanctioning and approving all his previous proceedings, then I shall think you got very ill out of it, and that your success was a misfortune; but I hope the former alternative is the truth. _Lord John._--I hope so, too; but it is very difficult to get any man who has long pursued any particular course to change that course, more especially when that man is Palmerston. From this Clarendon inferred that Palmerston means to go on just as before and will not take a lesson from what has occurred, and he is confirmed in this idea by something Charles Wood said to him in the same strain. Yesterday Normanby came to take leave of me before returning to Paris. He has been very much dissatisfied and annoyed at Palmerston's goings on, and at the _rÙle_ which was imposed on him, and he told me he did not like Palmerston's tone, which was much too triumphant, and he was very much afraid he would not change his ways of proceeding. His best hope was that no case would occur to elicit any fresh conduct or language of his of a questionable nature. _July 28th._--This day week the Radicals gave Palmerston a dinner at the Reform Club. It was a sorry affair--a rabble of men, not ten out of two hundred whom I know by sight. They asked John Russell who would not go, and then they thought it better to ask no more of Palmerston's colleagues. Neither Lord John nor any of them liked it, but of course they said nothing. Palmerston would have done better to repose on his House of Commons laurels, and find some pretext for declining this compliment. The Court are just as much disgusted with him as ever, and provoked at his success in the House of Commons.[123] [Footnote 123: [In spite of the triumph Lord Palmerston had obtained in the House of Commons, the evils of his arbitrary mode of conducting-foreign affairs continued to excite the anxiety of his colleagues and something more than the distrust of the Court, and an attempt was made, with the concurrence of Lord John Russell, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Clarendon, to induce him to take some other office in the Government, which, of course, he declined to do. The details of this negotiation cannot now be published, but they were the premonitory symptoms of the storm which wrested the Foreign Office from the hands of Lord Palmerston in the following year.]]