I dined with David Dundas the Solicitor-General the day before yesterday at the Clarendon Hotel: splendid banquet; twenty miscellaneous friends. Labouchere there told me that Lord Hatherton had not long ago shown him Dudley's diary, which is very curious.[16] It was very regularly kept, and told of everything he did, giving minute details of his adventures both in high and low life. Certainly nothing could be more injudicious than to commit to paper and to leave behind him such memorials as these, and accordingly Labouchere advised Hatherton to commit the MS. to the flames. Dudley speaks of his friends, and even of his acquaintances generally, in a very good-natured spirit, and of himself with modesty and diffidence. He was in a dreadful state of nervousness whenever he had to make a speech in Parliament. He felt very bitterly against his father, who, he thought, had ruined his prospects and character by the way he had brought him up. I hope Hatherton will not burn this MS., and that I shall some day manage to see it. [Footnote 16: [Lord Hatherton and the Bishop of Exeter (Phillpotts) were Lord Dudley's executors. This diary never saw the light.]] Yesterday Le Marchant told me an anecdote illustrative of the power of the press. He called late one night many years ago on Barnes at his house, and while there another visitor arrived whom he did not see, but who was shown into another room. Barnes went to him and after a quarter of an hour returned, when Le Marchant said, 'Shall I tell you who your visitor is?' Barnes said yes, if he knew. 'Well, then, I know his step and his voice; it is Lord Durham.' Barnes owned it was, when Le Marchant said, 'What does he come for?' Barnes said he came on behalf of King Leopold, who had been much annoyed by some article in the 'Times,' to entreat they would put one in of a contrary and healing description. As Le Marchant said, here was the proudest man in England come to solicit the editor of a newspaper for a crowned head! Moxon told me on Wednesday that some years ago Disraeli had asked him to take him into partnership, but he refused, not thinking he was sufficiently prudent to be trusted. He added he did not know how Dizzy would like to be reminded of that now.