This eventful Session and season has at length closed, Lyndhurst having wound up by a _resume_ of the acts of the Government, in one of those 'exercitations,' as Melbourne calls them, which are equally pungent for their severity, and admirable for their lucidity. Melbourne made a bitter reply, full of personalities, against Lyndhurst, but offering a meagre defence for himself and his colleagues. Those who watch the course of events, and who occasionally peep behind the curtain, have but a sorry spectacle to contemplate:--a Government miserably weak, dragging on a sickly existence, now endeavouring to curry a little favour with one party, now with another; so unused to stand, and so incapable of standing, on any great principles, that at last they have, or appear to have, none to stand on. Buffeted by their antagonists, and often by their supporters in Parliament, despised by the country at large, clinging to office merely to gratify the Queen, while they are just sufficiently supported in the House of Commons to keep their places, and not enough to carry their measures; for so meagre are their majorities, and so little do the public care for those majorities, or for the Ministers or their measures, that the Lords do not scruple to treat the Ministerial Bills with undisguised contempt. At the beginning of this Session, the weakness of the Government, and the impossibility of their going on, were so obvious, that the more wise and moderate of them began to prepare for their retirement, and Lord John Russell, by the publication of his Stroud letter, and the expression of those opinions which I was the means of conveying to Peel, evinced his determination to make the dissolution of the Government ancillary to the ascendency of true Conservative principles. The break-up came sooner than had been expected, and when Ministers resigned, on the majority of five on the Jamaica Bill (which they need not have done), they acted wisely, for they were enabled to retire with dignity, Peel and the Opposition having been clearly and flagrantly in the wrong upon this particular measure--so wrong, that it has been, and still is, matter of astonishment to me why they gave battle upon it, and I suspect that Peel was by no means elated at his own success on that occasion. However, out they went upon the Jamaica question, and though they fancy Peel did not really wish to form a Government, and that the difficulties he made were only a pretext for escaping from his position, this is not the case; he had no misgivings or fears, and was quite ready to undertake the task. However, _Diis aliter visum_: the Queen kept Lord Melbourne, and they came back to accumulated difficulties, and without any augmentation of parliamentary strength or popular sympathy to sustain them. They made one miserable effort, and tossed a sop to the Radicals, by making the Ballot an open question, the grace and utility of which were entirely marred by