_October_ 22.--This morning Drs. Gooch, Shaw, and Yates breakfasted, and had a consultation about wee Johnnie. They give us great hopes that his health will be established, but the seaside or the country seem indispensable. Mr. Wilmot Horton,[372] Under Secretary of State, also breakfasted. He is full of some new plan of relieving the poor's-rates by encouraging emigration. But John Bull will think this savours of Botany Bay. The attempt to look the poor's-rates in the face is certainly meritorious. Laboured in writing and marking extracts to be copied from breakfast to dinner, with the exception of an hour spent in telling Johnnie the history of his namesake, Gilpin. Mr. William and Mrs. Lockhart dined with us. Tom Moore[373] and Sir Thomas Lawrence came in the evening, which made a pleasant _soirée_. Smoke my French--Egad, it is time to air some of my vocabulary. It is, I find, cursedly musty. _October_ 23.--Sam Rogers and Moore breakfasted here, and we were very merry fellows. Moore seemed disposed to go to France with us. I visited the Admiralty, and got Sir George Cockburn's journal, which is valuable.[374] Also visited Lady Elizabeth and Sir Charles Stewart. My heart warmed to the former, on account of the old Balcarres connection. Sir Charles and she were very kind and communicative. I foresee I will be embarrassed with more communications than I can well use or trust to, coloured as they must be by the passions of those who make them. Thus I have a statement from the Duchess d'Escars, to which the Bonapartists would, I dare say, give no credit. If Talleyrand, for example, could be communicative, he must have ten thousand reasons for perverting the truth, and yet a person receiving a direct communication from him would be almost barred from disputing it. "Sing tantararara, rogues all." We dined at the Residentiary-house with good Dr. Hughes,[375] Allan Cunningham, Sir Thomas Lawrence, and young Mr. Hughes. Thomas Pringle[376] is returned from the Cape, and called in my absence. He might have done well there, could he have scoured his brain of politics, but he must needs publish a Whig journal at the Cape of Good Hope! He is a worthy creature, but conceited withal--_hinc illæ lachrymæ._ He brought me some antlers and a skin, in addition to others he had sent to Abbotsford four years since. Crofton Croker made me a present of a small box of curious Irish antiquities containing a gold fibula, etc. etc. _October_ 24--Laboured in the morning. At breakfast Dr. Holland[377] and Cohen, whom they now call Palgrave,[378] a mutation of names which confused my recollections. Item, Moore. I worked at the Colonial Office pretty hard. Dined with Mr. Wilmot Horton and his beautiful wife, the original of the "_She walks in Beauty_," etc., of poor Byron.