The night before last there was a great concert on the staircase at Stafford House, the most magnificent assembly I ever saw, and such as I think no crowned head in Europe could display, so grand and picturesque. The appearance of the hall was exactly like one of Paul Veronese's pictures, and only wanted some tapestry to be hung over the balustrades. Such prodigious space, so cool, so blazing with light; everybody was _comfortable_ even, and the concert combined the greatest talents in Europe all together--Grisi, Malibran, Tamburini, Lablache, Rubini, and Ivanhoff. The splendour, the profusion, and the perfect ease of it all were really admirable.
Dined yesterday with the Vice-Chancellor; sixteen people whom I never saw before, almost all lawyers and lawyeresses. He told me that he believed Melbourne had no intention as long as he was Minister of changing the present arrangement with regard to the Great Seal,[12] that he was of opinion that a Chancellor was of no use, and that it was more convenient to keep in his own hands the law patronage of the Great Seal, that this obviated the disputes between Ministers and Chancellors, which have generally been very violent, as between Thurlow and Pitt, and still more between Eldon and Liverpool, which were incessant, and that nothing could exceed the hatred Eldon had for Lord Liverpool, as he knew.
[12] [The Great Seal was still in Commission.]
Tavistock told me a day or two ago that his Majesty's Ministers are intolerably disgusted at his behaviour to them and his studied incivility to everybody connected with them. The other day the Speaker was treated by him with shocking rudeness at the drawing-room. He not only took no notice of him, but studiously overlooked him while he was standing opposite, and called up Manners Sutton and somebody else to mark the difference by extreme graciousness to the latter. Seymour, who was with him as Serjeant-at-Arms, said he had never seen a Speaker so used in the five-and-twenty years he had been there, and that it was most painful. The Speaker asked him if he had ever seen a man in his situation so received at Court. Since he has been Speaker the King has never taken the slightest notice of him. It is monstrous, equally undignified and foolish.