_June 21st._--At St. Leonards last week for Ascot races, where I got wet, and have been ever since confined with the gout. The 'Times,' though by way of supporting the Government, went on violently attacking John Russell about the recent changes. Lord John was very well received in the City at his election, and at the opening of the Crystal Palace he was more cheered than anybody. This morning the Duke of Bedford came here and told me he had had a good deal of conversation with his brother about this business, to which he (the Duke) had been a stranger while it was going on. Lord John said that when the Government was formed he had proposed to Aberdeen that he should be President of the Council, but Aberdeen had objected on the score of its being so unusual, therefore he was only going back to his original design. He had an invincible repugnance to taking the Duchy of Lancaster or any inferior office. Both when the Government was formed and now, he would have much preferred to have kept aloof, and to have led in the House of Commons that section of the Whig party which would have followed him, but he found this impossible, and as the Government could not have been formed without him, and could not now go on without him, he was obliged to sacrifice his own inclination. I said I could not conceive why he could not go on as he was till the end of the session, and then settle it, that his pushing out Granville had a very ungracious appearance, and he would have done much better to take the sinecure office of the Duchy, it being quite absurd to suppose that he could be degraded by holding any office, no matter what. The Duke owned it would have been better to wait till Parliament was up before anything was done, and he regarded the question of the particular office much as I do. There was a discussion in the House of Lords on Monday night on the war, when Lyndhurst made a grand speech, wonderful at his age--82; he spoke for an hour and a quarter with as much force and clearness as at any time of his life: it was greatly admired. Clarendon spoke well and strongly, and elicited expressions of satisfaction from Derby, after whom Aberdeen rose, and imprudently spoke in the sense of desiring peace, a speech which has been laid hold of, and drawn down upon him a renewal of the violent abuse with which he has been all along assailed. I see nothing in his speech to justify the clamour, but it was very ill judged in him with his antecedents to say what he did, which malignity could so easily lay hold of. LORD JOHN RUSSELL VOTES WITH THE TORIES.