The entries for the year 1824.5 and 6 are short, but those for 1827-32 provide a full account of those years. There is much material on his own career and his decision to give up his ambassadorship to Berlin in 1827; on the Canning and Goderich administrations; on Roman Catholic Emancipation; and on the Reform Bill crisis of 1831-2; as well as accounts of his travels abroad, with particularly full account of a trip in Scandinavia in the summer of 1828. The entries are written on one side of the page, until the last page of the volume, p.129, whereupon the volume is turned upside down and begun again, the entries being on the reverse side of the page.
‘Nov. 1828 Vienna[…] It is asserted that not only Pahlen found the greatest difficulty in getting the Grand Dukes to consent, but that he never mentioned [? unvedu] as any part of the plan, under any contingency. Indeed, Russians tell you that the murder was an impromptu, as they had not expected that a man of such doubtful courage would have been so intractable. But Constantine once told Rasumoffsky, that Paul had come to his room on the evening preceding the murder, and had thrashed the valet because he could not tell him where the Grand Duke then was, and (added C.’s) it was a lucky chance that P. did not examine the room, for on the table lay a quarto volume of Voltaire, opened at the passage in which Brutus justifies to Cassius the murder of Caesar. ‘Et ne crois-tu pas a ton caractere donner demente, Si tu sents en balance une vie a la patrie.'[…]