Great astonishment has been excited by the appointment of a Mr. Bickersteth as Bishop of Ripon, against whom nothing can be said, nor anything for him, except that he is a very Low Churchman. All the vacant sees have now been filled with clergymen of this colour, which is not very fair or prudent, as it will exasperate the moderate High Churchmen and set them strongly against a Government which appears determined to shut the door of ecclesiastical preferment against all but the Lowest Churchmen, and such a policy will most likely have the effect of encouraging the advocates of those extreme measures of an anti-Catholic or a puritanical character which always give so much trouble and embarrassment when they are brought forward in Parliament.
_December 12th._--The Conference to which Clarendon told me he would not agree is going to take place after all, but everybody is ridiculing what is notoriously a got-up comedy with a foregone conclusion, devised to solve the difficulty into which all the great actors had got themselves, but it is not yet quite clear what the _modus operandi_ is to be. From what I have picked up here and there I gather that Sardinia is to be induced to give a casting vote against Russia, leaving France still at liberty to fulfil her original engagement and vote with her, while we obtain the object for which we have stood out, and by such a _dodge_ to bring the dispute to an end. When Parliament meets there will be plenty to be said about this affair and about Naples, and no doubt the Opposition or the malcontents will be able to bombard the Government and vent their spleen, but that will be all, for Palmerston is perfectly invulnerable and may commit any blunders with impunity.
[Sidenote: LEADERSHIP OF THE OPPOSITION.]
A report has been lately current that Gladstone will become the leader of the Opposition _vice_ Disraeli, a report I thought quite wild and improbable, but I heard the other day something which looks as if it was not so much out of the question as I had imagined. George Byng told me he had met Sir William Jolliffe, who is the Derbyite whipper-in, at Wrotham, and having asked him whether there was any foundation for the above report, he replied that it certainly was not true at present, that he could not say what might or might not happen hereafter, but that he could not at once be accepted as _leader_, and must in any case first serve in the ranks. I do not know what may be the value of Jolliffe's opinions, or what he knows of the intentions of his chief, but he may probably be more or less acquainted with the sentiments of his party, and may be aware that their necessities have modified their extreme repugnance to Gladstone, and that they may now be willing to accept him as leader (eventually), though two years ago they so peremptorily insisted on his entire exclusion from their political society. Meanwhile there is no combination amongst them. Derby is at Knowsley amusing himself, and Disraeli at Paris, doing nobody knows what.