_June 14th._--The Duke of Bedford has been telling me what has been going on about India and the appointment of Hardinge's successor. In the first place Normanby has been making desperate attempts to get it, but Lord John will not hear of it, and believes the Directors would object to him if he was proposed. Lord John is resolved that this great appointment shall not be made an affair of party, and he desired the Chairs to furnish him with a list of the persons they would consider most eligible for the office of Governor-General without distinction of party. They sent him four or five names--Clarendon, Graham, I think Dalhousie, and the others I forget, but Normanby's was not among them. Lord John has made up his mind to offer the post to Graham, and has communicated his intention to the Duke of Wellington, at the same time consulting him about the military appointment. The Duke approves of Graham, and proposes Sir George Napier for Commander-in-Chief, to which Lord John agrees. Normanby, who had a suspicion that Graham was thought of, from something the Duke of Bedford had said to him, wrote him a long letter, strongly arguing against this appointment, and not a very bad argument either. Meanwhile I have seen Graham, and had a long conversation with him. It began about the Portuguese question, which is now going on in the House of Commons; but after discussing this and some electioneering matters, I asked him what his own projects were. He said he was indifferent about them and had settled nothing. I said, 'You know that it is reported in the world that you are likely to go to India.' He said he had three times refused to go there; that it would always be a matter of much doubt and deliberation, both on private and public grounds, whether he should accept it if offered; but at present it was out of the question, for Lord John Russell was evidently animated by very implacable sentiments towards him, and he never would take an office from him while he was in such a disposition, and when the appointment would be clearly offered at the suggestion of others, and not by his own free will. He then talked a great deal about the feeling which subsisted between himself and the Whigs--of their resentment towards him; of the way in which he had been persecuted by them; of Lord John's sending for him in the autumn of 1845; about the change of government; how gratified he had been; how frankly he had behaved; how desirous he had been to give every aid in his power to his successor; how generally friendly to the Government, of which he gave instances; and then how hurt he had been at the bitterness and severity of Lord John's attack upon him in reply to his speech objecting to the exclusion of Catholics from the grant; that that speech had proved to him that Lord John's dislike of him was unmitigated and unappeasable. This is a very brief summary of a long discourse he made to me on the subject. I