The mail brought us newspapers but no letters. It is not often John misses a Steamer but so it happens, now when we feel it most. There was not much in the news, but its drift is still confirmatory of former impression. I grew firmer in opinion that the war must come to an end pretty soon. A visit from Mr Smith, a member of Parliament, who came to get some information to answer some remarks in a newspaper by a Mr McHenry an American affairs. They are full of imprudent falsehoods. But their very audacity is what makes them difficult to answer. It is not easy to keep around one at all time the proofs that the moon and the planets revolve around the sun. If any one should deny it before the inhabitants of Colhin China, the charm is that this arrival would gain belief before the apparatus of reasoning to prove an affirmative could be got going. I did what I could for Mr Smith. Mr Dudley came to report the issue of the appeal in the Alexandra case. Four Judges of one court against it, three of the other for it. All these things on points of law. A curious illustration of the ponderous machinery of English justice. The effect upon the position of the government is comical. They fail in getting a knowledge of the true meaning of their own law. And their duty to a neutral nation continues the same. Strange is the whole history of this year! I went out with Mrs Adams to pay visits—at the Duchess of Argyll’s and Southerland’s, the Speaker’s, the Duchess of Cambridge’s and her son’s, and Lady Palmerston’s. Cards every where. I then left the carriage in Picadilly to call upon Mr R J Walker who was said to have been very unwell. I fond him up and better. He told me a curious rumor that had come to him, of an intention of the rebels to join the Archduke Maximilian in his movement to Mexico. Guinn to be made a Duke and Morehead a Marquis! Quiet evening, reading Vanity Fair.569