Variable weather. I was somewhat taken up by visits. People come here daily from the United States, and wish to see me during the best part of my day. This array with all power to keep up with my duties. I must prepare my letters home early in the week or I find myself so pressed by despatches in the latter part as to be driven to omit them. Today I went out with Mrs Adams to pay some visits, and getting out a Manrigy’s Hotel in Regent Street I walked up through Regent and Oxford Streets to find Cork Street and the Burlington Hotel. I succeeded after some wandering in reaching it and visiting Mr B F Crowninshield and his daughter who are stopping there. He seems to be in better spirits than before he left here. He says the accounts about business are better. On the other hand I do not construe my despatches so favorably. The secretary grows more and more indignant with the proceedings of the two powers. And not altogether without cause. I shall have as much as I can do to keep things smooth here. We dined today by invitation with Lord and Lady Lyndhust. Very much of a Tory company. Lord Malmsbury, Mr d’Israel and his Wife, Lord Elgin and Mr Walpole, the same gentleman I met at Mr Munckton Milnes’s185 but is not in the government as I had supposed. He has been a member, but when the other side was in. Lord Stanley and Miss Lyndhurst made up the company. Lord Ellenborough accepted but failed to come. The dinner was small but lively. The tone was however unmistakeably conservative or tory. Lord Elgin was the exception. They are more bitter than I supposed. The old Lord was sarcastic about the grant to Lord Bruegham of the remission of his title over to his second brother, and the payment of the cost of his patent by government. Some bits also at Mr Edward Ellice who has had a road made through his extensive estate in Scotland at the public cost. They said he always disapproved of the measures of the ministry and as certainly voted for them. Lord Malmsbury rather pleased me. He may be the Foreign Secretary again before long. We left here and stopped a few minutes at Mrs Darby Griffith’s. A small house very crowded. There were singers, but we left after one song.