Everybody anxious for news from France. A few hope, and still fewer think, the King of France will succeed, and that the French will submit, but the press here joins in grand chorus against the suppression of the liberty of that over the water. Matuscewitz told me he had a conference with the Duke, who was excessively annoyed, but what seems to have struck him more than anything is the extraordinary secresy of the business, and neither Pozzo nor Stuart having known one word of it. Up to the last Polignac has deceived everybody, and put such words into the King's mouth that nobody could expect such a _coup_. The King assured Pozzo di Borgo the day before that nothing of the sort was in contemplation. This, like everything else, will be judged by the event--desperate fatuity if it fails, splendid energy and accurate calculation of opposite moral forces if it succeeds. I judge that it will fail, because I can see no marks of wisdom in the style of execution, and the State paper is singularly puerile and weak in argument. It is passionate and not dexterous, not even plausible. All this is wonderfully interesting, and will give us a lively autumn.
The King has been to Woolwich, inspecting the artillery, to whom he gave a dinner, with toasts and hip, hip, hurrahing and three times three, himself giving the time. I tremble for him; at present he is only a mountebank, but he bids fair to be a maniac.
Brougham will come in for Yorkshire without a contest; his address was very eloquent. He is rather mad without a doubt; his speeches this year have been sometimes more brilliant than ever they were; but who with such stupendous talents was ever so little considered? We admire him as we do a fine actor, and nobody ever possessed such enormous means, and displayed a mind so versatile, fertile, and comprehensive, and yet had so little efficacy and influence. He told me just before he left town that Yorkshire had been proposed to him, but that he had written word he would not stand, nor spend a guinea, nor go there, nor even take the least trouble about the concerns of anyone of his constituents, if they elected him; but he soon changed his note.
Yesterday morning I met Matuscewitz in St. James's Street, who said, 'You have heard the news?' But I had not, so I got into his cabriolet, and he told me that Bülow had just been with him with an account of Rothschild's estafette, who had brought intelligence of a desperate conflict at Paris between the people and the Royal Guard, in which 1,000 men had been killed of the former, and of the eventual revolt of two regiments, which decided the business; that the Swiss had refused to fire on the people; the King is gone to Rambouillet, the Ministers are missing, and the Deputies who were at Paris had assembled in the Chambers, and declared their sittings permanent. Nothing can exceed the interest and excitement that all these proceedings create here, and unless there is a reaction, which does not seem probable, the game is up with the Bourbons. They richly deserve their fate. It remains to be seen what part Bourmont and the Algerian army will take; the latter will probably side with the nation, and the former will be guided by his own interest, and is not unlikely to endeavour to direct a spirit which he could not expect to control. He may reconcile himself to the country by a double treachery.