The course taken by Lord John Russell in refusing to negotiation excepting in concurrence with a simultaneous proceeding at Paris has had the effect of throwing all the responsibility upon Mr Dayton. I am therefore quite at leisure for a day or two, so I decided to go with my Wife on an excursion to Brighton to meet her brother Edward who is there with his Wife. We left at noon, talking Mary with us, and arrived at a little before three at the Bedford House which faces the parade. The face of the country is green enough, but there was more of waste land than I expected, and the crops looked as if the soil was thin. Our friends received us cordially and me the more that I was not expected. Edward took a walk with Mary and myself to see the town which is a curious agglomeration of houses ranged in very streets and without any method. The best row faces the sea, along with a street and a walk has been constructed. In the days of George the 4th and William it was the resort of the fashion which in this country always follows the sovereign. But now the strange freak of architectural eccentricity called the Pavilion which was built for George has been deserted by Victoria, and the place suffers, as well as the edifice. We went to look at it, and wondered at the taste of the monarch who could put himself193 into such a box much more than at her who deserted it. Yet there is a season from the 1st of September to Christmas, when some of the crows who leave London console themselves with a clean breeze from salt water. I confess that gave me a good deal of pleasure to see a town that was not black with soot, and inhale an atmosphere with no perceptible smell of coal smoke. We made one party at dinner and spent the evening in conversation upon politics. Edward Brooks is both earnest and true, and many of impressions are very just. His views of English politics are in the main correct; but they are not particularly favorable.