Footnote 2: [Amongst these Littlecote papers was found the correspondence of Queen Henrietta Maria with Charles I. when she went to Holland to raise money for carrying on the Civil War. I am not aware that they have been published.] [Sidenote: THE WHIGS NEGOTIATE.] _London, May 13th._--Nothing ever was like the state of confusion and excitement which has prevailed here during the last fortnight, while I have been out of town, particularly on the resignation of Ellenborough, which took everybody by surprise. Before I went away the impression had become general that this Government neither could nor ought to be endured much longer, and that their repeated and enormous blunders made them a nuisance which must be abated. All the Liberals (except some of the extreme Radicals who wished them to stay on some time longer), however they differed on other questions, were agreed on this. Numerous meetings took place, and there was a prodigious activity of negotiation, communication, and going backwards and forwards, with a view to some general organisation and combination of attack on the unfortunate Ministry. The Duke of Bedford was brought up to see what he could do to bring Lord John and Palmerston together. Lord John joined heartily in the plan of turning the Government out, and said that _anything_ was preferable to leaving them any longer in office. Clarendon, who had been informed of Lord John's peculiar grudge against him, expressed a wish to have an interview with him, which the Duke brought about. Lord John called on Clarendon, and they had a frank communication, so far as Lord John telling him all that he thought about foreign affairs, and in what he disagreed with the late Government on various questions; but he did not allude to Vienna, which is the real gist of his grievance and the source of his hostile feeling, so that with that reticence it is not strange that they should have parted much as they met. Then Palmerston expressed a wish to have a _tête-à-tête_ conversation with Lord John, which the latter assented to, but Palmerston seems to have changed his mind, and to have shrunk from it when the opportunity presented itself. Charles Wood is the man who has been constantly communicating with Lord John in behalf of the Whig Cabinet, and one day Palmerston came into Charles Wood's while Lord John was there. It rained, and Palmerston offered to take Lord John home, which he accepted, but nothing passed on the way, nor did Palmerston propose to get out and enter the house when he might have had the conversation he had expressed a wish for, and so it ended. The plans imagined by mutual friends for effecting a political reconciliation have vanished into air. Palmerston is resolved not to go to the House of Lords, and Lord John is equally determined not to take office under him. Palmerston says he cannot trust Lord John to lead the House of Commons. Personally, meanwhile, they are ostensibly friends,