Footnote 2: [This refers to the case of the 'Newport,' a vessel which had been condemned by the Vice-Admiralty Court at St. Helena for alleged trading in slaves, together with penalties to the amount of 13,000_l._ on the shippers and owners of the cargo. The Lords of the Judicial Committee reversed this sentence with costs and damages, and declared that the owners of the ship must look to the Government for their indemnity. They added that 'merchants who, having engaged only in a lawful adventure, have been subjected to an unjust and illegal sentence, are entitled to be indemnified against its consequences, and against the costs which they have incurred in obtaining its reversal, in relieving themselves from the heavy pecuniary loss which it inflicted, and from the deep stain which it cast upon their characters, and that the national honour must be vindicated at the national expense.'] _Hatchford, December 26th._--Christmas Day, usually coming in frost and snow, was yesterday like a fine day in May, the glorious weather being in unison with the general gladness at the good news from India and the tidings that Lucknow, with its wounded and its long suffering band of women and children, had been relieved at last, and for good and all. This news arrived on Christmas Eve, to make the day itself as merry as it is proverbially said to be. [Sidenote: LORD NORMANBY'S 'YEAR OF REVOLUTION.'] Brougham has taken Normanby's book, 'A Year of Revolution,' under his protection, for what reason nobody can divine. He wrote to Mrs. Austin begging she would exert her influence with her nephew Reeve to get it noticed favourably in the 'Edinburgh Review,' that it was a good book, had the merit of being true, and that it was much approved by Louis Napoleon, who had encouraged its being translated. I had imagined Brougham was improved, but it is evident from his conduct on this occasion that he is the same man he ever was. The book contains page after page of matter the most offensive to Guizot and to Louis Philippe and his family, with which everybody is revolted, and its malice is not redeemed by literary merit or attractiveness in any shape. That Brougham should take up such a production is as unaccountable as it is indecent, for he affected to be exceedingly attached to the Orleans royalties, to be on very intimate terms with the King, and he treated Guizot with a familiarity quite at variance with good taste and propriety, and which had excited the astonishment, with no small disgust, of Guizot himself. It might have been expected that he would have resented such a production as Normanby's, instead of patronising it. He told Mrs. Austin he could not himself speak to Reeve about it, since he had made the 'Edinburgh Review' the vehicle of a personal attack upon himself. What he alluded to was, that when Lord Cockburn's life was published an article (anonymous of course) appeared in the 'Law Magazine' in which Lord Cockburn was very ill-used, and another