November 14th


On Saturday we dined at the Duc de Broglie's. He married the
daughter of Madam de Stael, but she is not now living. I was very
agreeably placed with Mr. Macaulay on one side of me, so that I
found it more pleasant than diplomatic dinners usually. At the
English tables we meet people who know each other well, and have a
common culture and tastes and habits of familiarity, and a fund of
pleasant stories, but of course, at foreign tables, they neither
know each other or the English so well as to give the same easy flow
to conversation. I am afraid we are the greatest diners-out in
London, but we are brought into contact a great deal with the
literary and Parliamentary people, which our colleagues know little
about, as also with the clergy and the judges. I should not be
willing to make it the habit of my life, but it is time not misspent
during the years of our abode here. . . . The good old Archbishop of
York is dead, and I am glad I paid my visit to him when I did. Mr.
Rogers has paid me a long visit to-day and gave me all the
particulars of his death. It was a subject I should not have
introduced, for of that knot of intimate friends, Mr. Grenville, the
Archbishop, and himself, he is now all that remains.


November 28th


. . . On Monday evening I went without Mr. Bancroft to a little