Clear with a chilly easterly wind reminding me of ours at home. I had little of my customary holiday, for the Irish consuls keep me fully employed. I wrote several letters. Looked at the house next door to the one I am in, which I can have if I want it. It is in much better condition, though without all the objects of art which make this so attractive. Then out with Mrs Adams at Mr Cardwell’s. A small company consisting of Lord and Lady Robert Cecil, Dr Lushington and a lady whom I took to be a daughter, Sir John Shaw and his Wife, Sir Roundell Palmer and his Wife41 Sir James Ferguson ad another gentleman whose name I did not get. It was tolerably pleasant, but here was not much interesting conversation. After we left the table Dr Lushington talked a good deal of his reminiscences extending as far back as the time of Burke. He has gone through a long and honorable career, and now at the age of eight is at the head of the admiralty and ecclesiastical Court, deciding upon the creed and the heresy in the late difference in the church caused by the Oxford Essays and Reviews. Home by eleven. This has been on the whole quite a dissipated week, and I am not sorry it is at an end.