Wednesday, the day of our coming here, intervened, with the absorbing interests of the Derby. To be winner of the Derby while in office as Prime Minister, was, it is said, Lord Derby's ambition, but would be, it was thought, too high a felicity for any simply human Earl. Toxophilite's defeat may, it is presumed, be the inevitable sacrifice that may avert the parliamentary catastrophe.
To the same.
I have had, mirabile dictu, a letter from Emerson, who reprimanded me strongly for the termination of the 'Amours de Voyage,' in which he may be right, and I may be wrong; and all my defence can only be, that I always meant it to be so, and began it with the full intention of its ending so; but very likely I was wrong all the same.
I cannot help wishing to preserve some Corporate Body or Privy Council for India, to elect half the Ministers' Council, though I have no liking for the constituency of 7,000 or 8,000 to whom Lord Stanley did propose to give this power.
Last night I heard Tennyson read a third Arthur poem: the detection of Guenevere and the last interview with Arthur. These poems all appear to me to be maturer and better than any he has written hitherto.
As for wars and rumours of wars, I trust we need not alarm ourselves at present. I hope the French are at heart pacific; they cannot well afford the money for a war, and though I believe they might inflict, if the chances favoured them, immense damage upon us, in the end they would find themselves the weaker vessels. Their population, it is said by the statistical authorities, is decreasing, and they ought to nurse their vitality carefully. It has not yet recovered the losses of the wars of 1812-15.
