[Footnote 13: [The conduct of the British Government with reference to the annexation of Cracow was again discussed by Lord George Bentinck. Eight or ten years before it had been proposed, and even promised, to send a British Consul to Cracow, but this design being strongly opposed by the three Northern Powers, Lord Palmerston abandoned it.]] [Sidenote: MORE BLUNDERS AT PARIS.] Normanby writes from Paris out of humour: he has lost his senses and his temper; he harps querulously upon the details of his miserable quarrel, and thinks the Government have used him ill by not supporting him. He is writhing under the consciousness of cutting a poor figure, and of the triumph Guizot has gained over him, but there is no end of his _gaucheries_. When the quarrel was made up, and he invited Guizot to dinner, he selected the day on which Guizot himself always receives his friends. Guizot accepted, and announced that he should not receive that day, but of course the invitation was attributed either to stupidity or to impertinence. St. Aulaire asked me, 'Est-ce que c'Ètait une Ètourderie, ou l'a-t-il fait exprËs?' I assured him it must have been an _Ètourderie_, but an unpardonable one. What was graver, however, was that the first night of Guizot's reception after the reconciliation, when he ought to have taken care to go there, he went to MolÈ instead, and never went to Guizot at all. However, John Russell is now alive to foreign affairs, and his brother is keeping him up to it. The Duke told me he wrote him six sheets on the subject of our foreign relations, especially with France, '_very confidential_.' The Government here are going on very well. Lord John speaks excellently; the Speaker says he never saw any Government do their business so well. Charles Wood's success is an immense thing for them; a good Chancellor of the Exchequer is a tower of strength to a Government. Goulburn was only Peel's chief clerk; Wood is taking a flight of his own. Every day strengthens the Government by exhibiting the utter incapacity of the Opposition, and the impossibility of any other Government being formed; and people who have no party heat or prejudices will have the best workmen; but there is a disposition to _fronder_ in some quarters. I observed to Lincoln, whom I met, that the Government were going on very well, but he would not admit it.