The subsequent visit to France was wholly unexpected in England; and it was even said, and with some show of truth, that the Ministers were unaware of the intention. Of course we cannot speak with any certainty, but it seems but too likely that Louis Philippe intrigued to secure the aid, or at least the condonation, of the Queen of England in those astute enterprises which his busy brain was even now concocting, with which the phrases "Pritchard and Tahiti," and the "Spanish Marriages" will ever remain associated, and which ultimately, and retributively, cost him his throne. Mr. Raikes, who, be it remembered, was the intimate and bosom friend of the Duke of Wellington, then a Minister of England, has at this date the following entry in his Journal, which was published in 1857, and is an acknowledged, and if not absolutely an indisputable, yet a most weighty authority:-- _Tuesday, 19th._--Much conversation after dinner about the Queen's visit to Eu. I said, that the day before I left Paris, Kisseleff, the Russian Minister, scouted the idea of this visit, and betted that it would never take place. Lord Canning remarked, as a singular coincidence, that Brunow, the Russian Minister in London, asserted positively, on the very morning that the Queen embarked at Southampton, that she had no intention of going to Eu. They both spoke, I suppose, as they wished. This, it may be said, is mere club gossip. Not so what we are about to quote, and which was written under the Duke of Wellington's roof:--