answered him and vindicated himself in the House of Commons yesterday, if he had not been detained so long by the Queen that the hour was up when he got there. He means to return to the charge to-morrow. In the course of all these transactions he urged Lansdowne himself to take the Government, and offered to continue at the Council Office and lead the House of Commons, or to take no office at all, and give him independent support in the House of Commons, or to go to the House of Lords and give him his best assistance there; but Lord Lansdowne declined all these offers. _February 5th._--I have often had occasion to remark on the difficulty of avoiding making false or erroneous statements in affairs like those I am treating of, for the reports which we hear from different people generally vary considerably, and sometimes the same thing repeated by the same person varies also; not that there is any intention to misrepresent or mislead, but circumstances apparently trifling are narrated differently according as the narrator has been impressed by, or remembers them, and thus errors creep in and accumulate, and at last it becomes difficult to reconcile statements that have become conflicting by degrees. However, I can only jot down what I hear, and reconcile the accounts afterwards as well as I can. Yesterday afternoon I saw Clarendon, who confirmed his refusal to join Lord John, but with some slight difference as to the details. He said he had spoken very openly to him, but so gravely and quietly that he could not take offence, and he did not. It was not till he received Clarendon's final refusal that he wrote to the Queen and threw up his commission. LORD PALMERSTON TAKES OFFICE.