These were among the chief results of the brief but useful Session of 1857, which was prorogued on the 28th of August. Up to midsummer the House of Commons dozed through halcyon days, only too well pleased to do the bidding of its master. Lord John Russell was meek, Mr. Gladstone was an absentee, the Tories were discouraged, and the Radicals were docile. To go to a division at this time on any question was to rush to ignominious defeat. But about the middle of July the House began to show signs of a quickened life. The debates on the Persian War roused the combatant spirit of the Opposition; Mr. Gladstone reappeared, as Ministers knew to their cost when the Divorce Bill was obstructed; and it was remarked that even Palmerston’s most subservient followers no longer hesitated to cheer Mr. Roebuck or Mr. Disraeli, when they made an exceptionally clever attack on the Ministry. In August the shadow of the Indian Mutiny darkened the prospects of the Government, and when Parliament was prorogued there was some ill-concealed grumbling among the captious critics of the Court, because the Queen went to Scotland at a time when the British Empire in India was in dire peril. But on the whole, Palmerston’s _prestige_ was not materially impaired. His domestic programme, modest as it was, had been successfully carried out. Moreover, for the first time in his career, his relations with the Court had been put on a satisfactory footing. On this point Mr. Greville records an interesting conversation with Lord Clarendon, who told him that the Queen had treated Palmerston during the Session with unreserved confidence. Palmerston, on the other hand, found it expedient to treat the Queen with a deference and attention which had produced a favourable change in her sentiments towards him. Mr. Greville says, “Clarendon told me that Palmerston had lately been ailing in a way to cause some uneasiness.... Clarendon talked one day to the Queen about Palmerston’s health, concerning which she expressed her anxiety, when Clarendon said she might indeed be anxious, for it was of the greatest importance to her, and if anything happened to him he did not know where she could look for a successor to him, that she had often expressed her great desire to have a _strong_ Government, and that she had now got one, Palmerston being a strong Minister. She admitted the truth of it. Clarendon said he was always very earnest with her to bestow her whole confidence on Palmerston, and not even to talk to others on any subjects which properly belonged to him, and he had more than once (when, according to her custom, she began to talk to him on certain things), said to her, ‘Madam, that concerns Lord Palmerston, and I think your Majesty had better reserve it for your communications with him.’ He referred to the wonderful change in his own relations to Palmerston, that seven or eight years ago Palmerston was full of hatred and suspicion of him, and now they were the best of friends, with mutual