It is thus evident that the Emperor's mind is divided between his anxiety to make peace and his determination to have no difference with England; but his desire for peace must be great when, as Clarendon assures me, it was not without difficulty that he was deterred from ordering his army away from the Crimea. The feeling here towards the Emperor seems to be one of liking and reliance, not unaccompanied with doubt and suspicion. He is not exempt from the influence of his _entourage_, though he is well aware how corrupt that is, and he listens willingly to Cowley and to whatever the English Government and the Queen say to him, but his own people eternally din into his ears that we are urging him on to take a part injurious to his own and to French interests for our own purposes, and because our Government is itself under the influence of a profligate press and a deluded people; and although he knows that those who tell him this are themselves working for their own private interests, he knows also that there is a great deal of truth in what they say. His own position is very strange, insisting upon being his own Minister and directing everything, and at the same time from indolence and ignorance incapable of directing affairs himself, yet having no confidence in those he employs. The consequence is that a great deal is ill done, much not done at all, and a good deal done that he knows nothing about, and he is surrounded with quarrels, jealousies, and struggles for influence and power both between his own Ministers and between them and the foreign diplomatists at his Court. LORD PALMERSTON'S POSITION. We have had a good deal of talk about Palmerston. Clarendon says nothing can go on better than he and Palmerston do together. They seldom meet except in the Cabinet, and their communications go on by notes between Downing Street and Piccadilly. Palmerston, much more moderate and reasonable than he used to be, sometimes suggests things or expressions in despatches, which Clarendon always adopts or declines according to his own ideas, and Palmerston never insists. Palmerston is now on very good terms with the Queen, which is, though he does not know it, greatly attributable to Clarendon's constant endeavours to reconcile her to him, always telling her everything likely to ingratiate Palmerston with her, and showing her any letters or notes of his calculated to please her; but he says it is impossible to conceive the hatred with which he is regarded on the Continent, particularly all over Germany. An agent of his (Clarendon's) who, he says, has supplied him with much useful information, has reported to him that he finds the old feeling of antipathy to Palmerston as strong and as general as ever, and that it is as much on the part of the people as of the Governments, both thinking they have been deceived and thrown over by him. [Footnote 1: M. de Seebach was the Saxon Minister in Paris, through whom many of these communications passed.]