induce Lord John to do so. Lord John seems disposed to bide his time, and evidently cherishes a hope and expectation that the Whig party will return to their allegiance to him and enable him to form another Government. He seems to have a liking for Bright, though he does not agree with all his views of Reform. At this moment my own belief is that the present Government have the best chance in this race for power from the mere fact of their being in possession, and from the hopeless disunion and confusion in which the Whigs and Liberals are plunged. Montalembert's paper is admirable, and I agree with almost every part of it, especially about the Indian debate and Indian policy, and the causes of Palmerston's extraordinary fall and the loss of his popularity. His prosecution by the Imperial Government is either an enormous mistake and political error, or a stroke of policy so deep and refined as to be beyond my comprehension. Here everybody regards it as a great imprudence. [Sidenote: PROSECUTION OF COUNT MONTALEMBERT.] _December 2nd._--I returned to town yesterday, having been to Badger Hall, thence to Grimstone, then to Ossington, and yesterday from Hinchinbrook. If I have written nothing it is not from want of interesting events worth notice, but because I have known and heard nothing more than all the world learnt from the newspapers. The chief topics of interest have been the pamphlet and the trial of Montalembert and the visit of Palmerston and Clarendon to Compiègne. The first seems to have excited more interest here than in Paris, where the tyrannical proceeding was taken very quietly, and little sympathy felt for a man who wrote so enthusiastically about England, and rebuked his own countrymen, and particularly his co-religionaries, for their unworthy conduct and language towards us. There appears to have been a general feeling of regret or disapproval of the visit to Paris, even on the part of those who are most friendly to the two Lords. I think it is a pity they should have gone just at this moment, when the Montalembert affair and the Portuguese quarrel have made the Emperor Napoleon very unpopular here; but it does not seem to me to be a matter of much consequence, or to be worth the indignation which in some quarters it has elicited.