1859. June 30.–Ball at Buckingham Palace last evening. Leopold of Belgium, the Count of Flanders, and the Prince of Oporto were present. The Prince of Wales, too, on his return from Rome and travels, looking more manly and much improved, though still very boyish and undersized.
Lord Clarence Paget, Milner Gibson, Monckton Milnes, and Charles Villiers were surprised by my telling them of Cobden’s arrival, and a general solicitude spread through the ballroom to know if he would enter the Cabinet.
Had a long talk in the refreshment-room with Lord Stanley, who begged me to explain the precise principle upon which turned the difference between the Douglas faction of the Democratic party and the extremists of the South. He took it in immediately, and said it was a difference fraught with very large, practical consequences.
Mr. Cobden’s speech, highly complimentary and grateful towards the United States, appears fully reported in the Times of this morning.