_May 17th._--This has been a day of agitation. On Wednesday night all London was excited by the announcement at Devonshire House (where there was a great rout) that Drouyn de Lhuys had been recalled and was gone to Paris, and that neither Brunnow nor Cetto had been present at Palmerston's birthday dinner. Everybody was talking yesterday in the two Houses of these things and of the cause of them, which of course had to do with Greece. Questions were put to Lord Lansdowne and to Palmerston, when both of them said that the French Government had desired the presence of Drouyn de Lhuys at Paris in order to explain matters, and they both said what was tantamount to a denial of his having been recalled. At the very moment that they were making these statements in Parliament, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs was reading in the tribune of the National Assembly the formal letter of recall which had been sent to their Ambassador, which he was instructed to communicate, and which he read to Palmerston on the preceding day, and he was at the same time explaining that the Ambassador had been recalled on account of the manner in which the English Government had behaved to that of France, which rendered it incompatible with the dignity of the Republic to leave any longer an Ambassador in London. The report of what had passed appeared in all the papers this morning, and Brougham again addressed an interpellation to Lord Lansdowne on the subject, while a Member did the same to John Russell in the House of Commons, Palmerston not having chosen to be present. Both made what must be called shuffling, prevaricating answers, endeavouring by some clumsy and sophistical pretences to make out that the letter of recall was not a letter of recall. All this is very pitiable. After a series of blunders and a long course of impolitic and unjustifiable acts, Palmerston has contrived to involve us in a _quasi_ quarrel with France, and to break up in the most wanton manner, and for the most ridiculous object, the good understanding which existed between the two countries. His colleagues, as usual, find themselves deeply plunged in the scrape into which they have permitted him to drag them, and obliged, as a hundred times heretofore, to make common cause with him, and to swallow all the dirt which he crams down their throats. While I am writing this they have brought me the newspaper with the report of what passed in Parliament, and Lord Lansdowne's and John Russell's replies, and it really is melancholy to see two such men reduced to such discreditable shifts, trying to evade giving direct answers to plain questions, attempting to mislead without doing so, and only exposing themselves. I see already that the friends and adherents of Government are sadly perplexed and annoyed. Lord Eddisbury, who sat next Lord Lansdowne in the House of Lords and prompted him, told Granville 'he thought Palmerston could not have told his colleagues everything that had