It is evident the resistance has been most serious. 20,000 French are in the town, and these probably direct the defence.  All clubs, and councils of all sorts, had ceased to have power two days before the attack.  There has been perfect anarchy.  The troops behaved admirably.  They were much exasperated.  No assistance had been sent by the country.

Aberdeen is confident the King’s troops have been driven out, because no official accounts were sent.  The Duke, and all the military men, say the non-arrival of dispatches proves nothing but that the affair was not over.  During an engagement a general can think of nothing but victory.  The importance of the result is incalculable.

At Paris the National Guard have dispersed a meeting of lookers on, who were led by curiosity to crowd about a riding school in which the Society of Les Amis du Peuple met the day after they were denounced by Guizot in the Chamber as agitating France.  Two officers of the National Guard entered the riding school, and warned the meeting of the danger they were bringing upon public tranquillity.  On the representation of the second they adjourned.

At dinner at Lord Rosslyn’s the Duke said the French Government could not go on as it was.  The chief of the National Guard necessarily commanded everything.  The National Guard might become janissaries.  I think the Government may go on as it is in form, but it will vary in substance from day to day.  Management, a little good fortune, and a few examples of determination may make it a fair Government; a single error may produce anarchy.

The Duke gave an excellent account of the feeling at Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham.  At Manchester it was better than at Birmingham, but there they received very coldly Tennyson’s speech about giving them members, and at last put an end to it by striking their glasses with their knives, which made such a ringing that Tennyson was obliged to sit down.  He deserved this for his bad taste.

The Duke was astonished by the machinery.  Those who have witnessed the improvements of late years expect progressive improvements so great that they say a man who laid out 100,000L now in the best machinery would, if he refused to adopt the new improvements they anticipate, be without profit in five years and be ruined in ten.

The rapidity of motion is so great in the steam carriages that even the Duke with his quick eyes could not see the figures on the posts which mark the distance at every quarter of a mile, and when two steam carriages crossed no face could be seen. [Footnote:  This was on the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, then just opened, and describes the first impression made by railway travelling.] It was like the whizzing of a cannon ball.  The cold is great, and they must have some defence against the wind, through which they pass so rapidly.

A new canal without locks, which brings coals to Birmingham in two hours, which by the old canal required nine, is more magnificent even than the railroad, splendid as that is.  The railroad cost a million.  For several days after it was opened the proprietors made 250L a day.