There were no private letters from the family received from America today, but the newspapers as usual absorbed my attention for a while. A good many Despatches, but no answer to my application now of four months date. Thus my project joining the family at Naples or even at Rome is probably at an end. I am sorry for it, but I should been reconciled, had Mr Seward given me a direct answer. He is an amicable man, and a friendly one, but he never had any fine sense of honor in his personal relations which is the true definition of a gentleman. There is an indirectness about him that always repelled me. A visit from Mr Fraser for letters which I had promised. Walk in the course of which I went round the regent’s park. Dined at Lady Belper’s. Got there the last, owing the interposition of a note of invitation from Lady Hatherton which required an immediate answer. I knew very few of the company. Young Mr Thompson and Mr Romilly and his sister, the revd Mr Brookfield and Lady Elizabeth Romilly were pretty much all out of the whole. Afterwards there was a reception where I met Sir John Romilly, the master of the rolls, and his brother Edward and his Wife. Lady Belper’s sister married Sir John, but is not living. As it was rather dull, I came home. I had almost forgotten to mention two incidents of the day241 which were interesting. This comes of omitting the record and suffering it to run into arrears. At two o’clock I went by invitation to take luncheon at the Speaker’s. Lady Charlotte had invited me on Saturday evening. Nobody there but the Duke and Duchess of Argyll and Mr Merivale, the historian, The latter is very evidently a student and not a man of society. I tried to talk with him about the Emperor’s book which comes in with his line of research, but he found shy. The Duke has not much conversation, and what he has partakes a little of dogmatism and conceit. The Duchess is always pleasing in manner. I waited on to the hour appointed by Lord Russell for an interview at the foreign Office. My only errand was to communicate to him the substance of the cyphered Despatch. I reminded him of the remark I made at my former conference, upon the intriguing tempter manifested at the peace conference, an account of which I had been directed to give him in Mr Seward’s Dispatch. I had now to show him confidentially the proof my allegation by the admission of the parties themselves— He read it through, alluded to the remark touching the action of Great Britain, by saying that no application had been made excepting that which had been answered by him in a published letter. He also said that he had asked the French Ambassador here, Prince La Tour d’Auvergne whether any application had been lately made to the Emperor, and he had replied in the negative. Some desultory observations followed touching the early termination of the contest and I took my leave.