_March 20th._--I went on Friday with M. de Jarnac to Orleans House to pay a visit to the Duc d'Aumale and see his interesting collection of books and pictures. He is very courteous, obliging, and intelligent, and the Duchess very civil and pleasing. His house was formerly occupied by his father, Louis Philippe, improved and enlarged by Lord Kilmorey, who lived there with Miss Hoste, and bought from him by the Duke, who has filled it full of objects of historical or artistic interest, especially of memorials of the great Condé. The family portraits, of which there is a vast collection, are particularly curious. He has two sons, who bear the fine titles of Prince de Condé and Duc de Guise, but it is melancholy to contemplate the _avenir_ of these boys, whose high birth is their misfortune, and to whom no profession or occupation seems open. They have lost their own country by no fault of their own, and are so situated that they cannot or will not get adopted in any other.[1] It is a false position if ever there was one. The family appear to have been alarmed by the recent events in France, and the indirect effect which those events might have upon them, for they have reason to believe that they are exposed to a constant system of _espionnage_ by the French Government, who wish very much to implicate them if possible in some of the plots that they believe to be constantly going on here, and great vigilance on their part is necessary not to commit themselves in any way to unknown Frenchmen who approach under pretences of attachment to their family or to make appeals to their charity. The other day I got a note from Lord Derby about a Council, at the end of which he earnestly begged me if I had any influence with the 'Times' to get them to abstain from writing any more irritating articles about France, for that these articles provoked the French to madness, and, as matters are, that nothing but the utmost care and moderation on both sides enabled the two Governments to go on in harmony. I accordingly sent his note to Delane, who promised to attend to it, though it was hard to leave the French press without replies. It is curious that I should be found acting a friendly part towards Derby's Government, he being of all men the one to whom I have felt the greatest political repugnance; but I am now so free from all political predilections, and regard constant changes as so objectionable, that I wish this Government to be fairly tried, especially as it appears to me quite as good as any other we are likely to have; disposed to work hard and promote good measures, and to be unable, even if they were disposed, to do any harm. [Sidenote: SETTLEMENT OF THE FRENCH QUARREL.]