_July 11th._--I find London rather empty and tolerably calm. The elections are sufficiently over to exhibit a pretty certain result, and the termination of the great Yorkshire contest by the signal victory of the Tories--a defeat, the magnitude of which there is no possibility of palliating, or finding any excuse for--seems to have had the effect of closing the contest. The Whigs give the whole thing up as irretrievably lost; and though some of them with whom I have conversed still maintain that they did right to dissolve, they do not affect to deny that the result has disappointed all their hopes and calculations, and been disastrous beyond their worst fears. They now give Peel a majority of sixty or seventy. The most remarkable thing has been the erroneous calculations on both sides as to particular places, each having repeatedly lost when they thought the gain most certain. The Whigs complain bitterly of the apathy and indifference that have prevailed, and cannot recover from their surprise that their promises of cheap bread and cheap sugar have not proved more attractive. But they do not comprehend the real cause of this apathy. It is true that there has not been any violent Tory reaction, because there have been no great topics on which enthusiasm could fasten, but there has been a revival of Conservative influence, which has been gradually increasing for some time, and together with it a continually decreasing confidence in the Government. They have been getting more unpopular every day with almost all classes, and when they brought forward their Budget the majority of the country, even those who approved of its principles, gave them little or no credit for the measure, and besides doubting whether the advantages it held out were very great or important, believed that their real motives and object were to recover the popularity they had lost, and to make a desperate plunge to maintain themselves in office. It was all along my opinion that their dissolution was a great blunder, that they would have consulted their own party interests better, and still more certainly the success of the fiscal measures they advocate, by resigning. But they thought they could get up excitement, and by agitation place matters in such a state that their successors would be unable to govern the country. This their understrappers and adherents kept dinning into their ears, and by urging the Cabinet one day in the name of the Queen, another in that of the Party, and setting before them the most exaggerated and erroneous representations of the state of public opinion, they at last persuaded Melbourne, Clarendon, and the two or three others who were originally against dissolution, to acquiesce in that desperate and, as it has turned out, fatal experiment. They richly deserve the fate that has overtaken them, for their conduct has been weak and disgraceful, and as no Ministry ever enjoyed less consideration while they held power, so none will ever