The weather is moderating. I scarcely can account for my morning and yet I do not feel as if it had been wasted. Wrote a letter to Mr Bayard Taylor at St Petersburg, and another to Edward Brooks at Paris. On the whole my mind seemed to be under a sense of relief from late apprehensions, though there was nothing materially encouraging in the accounts from home. Mr Pierce paid us a visit and spent some time. I dined by invitation with Mr Cyrus W. Field at the Buckingham palace Hotel. The company consisted of Mr Steward Wortley, Professor Wheatstone, Mr Varley, Capt Bythesea Captain Douglas Galton, Dr Wallach, and others whom I did not identify. Most of these are men of science and talked pleasantly. Mr Field told me of an interview he had had with Mr Gladstone in which he had disavowed friendliness to the rebels. Mr Field is now quite sanguine about the success of his telegraph scheme. He told me too that there was much excitement in the Clubs, at the rumor that the law offices of the crown were of opinion that the British government did not stand well on the Alabama case. This244 doubtless grows out of the necessity of answering the paper I sent in last week. They will not yield the point however. I well remember the course taken last year in the Trent affair. There was the same hesitation at first and then a change of doctrine to suit the exigency. Learning that Mr Peabody was ill in bed upstairs I called upon him after dinner. He is suffering from one of his customary attacks of gout. He talked a little upon politics. He had told my son of his receiving information from Paris that Leopold of Belgium had initiated the proposal of mediation. I asked him where he got this. He said, from Mr Lindsay. I then told him of my enquiry of M Van de Weyer, and of his very emphatic contradiction of it all. The latter charges the fiction to the Emperor. I am more disposed to attribute it to Mr Slidell and his purchased allies about the Court