_April 8th._--To The Grove on Thursday afternoon, and returned yesterday. On Good Friday morning George Lewis and I were left alone, when we talked over the questions of the day, and he quite amazed me by the way in which he spoke of his principal colleagues. I asked him if John Russell was not exceedingly mortified at the ill-success of his Reform Bill and its reception in the House of Commons and in the country. George Lewis said he did not think he felt this, that at present his mind was entirely occupied with foreign politics, and he was rejoicing in the idea of having been largely instrumental to the liberation of Italy; and as to Reform, that he was satisfied with having redeemed the pledge he gave to Bright to propose a 6_l._ franchise, and having done this he did not care about the result, as he had never pledged himself to carry it. The most strange thing to me is, that George Lewis seemed not to be alive to the culpable levity of such conduct, or to the censure to which his own conduct is obnoxious in consenting to act with such a man, and to be a party to such a measure. With regard to Palmerston, he said that Palmerston thought of nothing but his pro-Sardinian and anti-Austrian schemes, and he was gratified by seeing everything in that quarter turning out according to his wishes, that in the Cabinet he took very little part and rarely spoke. Gladstone George Lewis evidently distrusts, and his financial schemes and arrangements are as distasteful to him as possible. He is provoked at Gladstone's being able to bear down all opposition, and carry all before him by the force of his eloquence and power of words, and what I have said of his conduct in supporting John Russell is still more applicable to it in reference to Gladstone and his measures, which he thinks more dangerous by far than he does Lord John's Reform Bill and 6_l._ clause. I asked him what was to be the end of this Bill, and he said he did not expect it to pass, that probably the debates on it would be so spun out and so many delays interposed that either it would fail in the House of Commons itself, or even if it passed, the House of Lords would say it came up too late for them to examine and consider it, and it would be thrown out there. I gathered in the course of conversation that Palmerston (whose whole antecedents and recorded opinions forbid the idea of his approving such a measure) would be glad to see the franchise raised, and that 8_l._ and 15_l._ would in his view improve the Bill. [Sidenote: MACHINATIONS OF NAPOLEON.]