[Pall Mall,] November 10.—­Ere I leave la belle France, however, it is fit I should express my gratitude for the unwontedly kind reception which I met with at all hands.  It would be an unworthy piece of affectation did I not allow that I have been pleased—­highly pleased—­to find a species of literature intended only for my own country has met such an extensive and favourable reception in a foreign land where there was so much a priori to oppose its progress.

For my work I think I have done a good deal; but, above all, I have been confirmed strongly in the impressions I had previously formed of the character of Nap., and may attempt to draw him with a firmer hand.

The succession of new people and unusual incidents has had a favourable effect [on my mind], which was becoming rutted like an ill-kept highway.  My thoughts have for some time flowed in another and pleasanter channel than through the melancholy course into which my solitary and deprived state had long driven them, and which gave often pain to be endured without complaint, and without sympathy.  “For this relief,” as Francisco says in Hamlet, “much thanks.”

To-day I visited the public offices, and prosecuted my researches.  Left inquiries for the Duke of York, who has recovered from a most desperate state.  His legs had been threatened with mortification; but he was saved by a critical discharge; also visited the Duke of Wellington, Lord Melville, and others, besides the ladies in Piccadilly.  Dined and spent the evening quietly in Pall Mall.

November 11.—­Croker came to breakfast, and we were soon after joined by Theodore Hook, alias “John Bull"[401]; he has got as fat as the actual monarch of the herd.  Lockhart sat still with us, and we had, as Gil Blas says, a delicious morning, spent in abusing our neighbours, at which my three neighbours are no novices any more than I am myself, though (like Puss in Boots, who only caught mice for his amusement) I am only a chamber counsel in matters of scandal.  The fact is, I have refrained, as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition.  Here is an ample subject for a little black-balling in the case of Joseph Hume, the great AEconomist, who has [managed] the Greek loan so egregiously.  I do not lack personal provocation (see 13th March last), yet I won’t attack him—­at present at least—­but qu’il se garde de moi: 

    “I’m not a king, nor nae sic thing,
      My word it may not stand;
    And Joseph may a buffet bide,
      Come he beneath my brand.”

At dinner we had a little blow-out on Sophia’s part:  Lord Dudley, Mr. Hay, Under Secretary of State, [Sir Thomas Lawrence, etc.] Mistress (as she now calls herself) Joanna Baillie, and her sister, came in the evening.  The whole went off pleasantly.