_April 20th._--The long promised statements were made in both Houses on Monday night, but they told us nothing that was not already known, and merely expressed hopes that war might still be averted. Disraeli in the Commons was more sanguine than Malmesbury and Derby in the Lords. Clarendon and Derby both made excellent speeches, the former particularly; all he said was sound and true. The most striking thing in both Houses was the extreme caution and reserve of the speakers on both sides, and particularly their reticence and forbearance about France. Not one word of blame of the Emperor of the French; no more about him, his sayings and doings, than about the Emperor of Russia, or than if he had had nothing whatever to do with the present state of things. This was probably politic, but it was lamentable and disgraceful that we should be obliged, or think ourselves obliged, to abstain from speaking the truth, for fear of offending this rascally adventurer, who by the egregious folly and cowardice of the French nation has been invested with such an awful power of mischief, and whom neither fear nor shame deters from pursuing his own wicked ends at the expense of any amount of misery and desolation which he may inflict upon mankind. One cannot help contrasting the extreme delicacy and forbearance exhibited towards him with the violence and abuse which were directed against the Emperor Nicholas in 1854. [Sidenote: MR. DISRAELI'S EXPECTATIONS.] I met Disraeli yesterday afternoon, when he told me they had got such satisfactory news from the Continent that he considered the affair as virtually settled and the danger at an end. God grant it may be so, but I am far from being satisfied that the danger is over. On the eve of great resolutions, and as the moment of taking an irrevocable step draws near, the actors in great events have generally some misgivings, and pause upon the brink, and so probably will these quasi-belligerents do now; but I believe the concessions which France expresses herself willing to make to our entreaties to be a part of her game. Clarendon or Derby said that if Cowley had been allowed to work out his purpose of mediation, probably all would have been settled, and that the proposition of Russia for a Congress had been mischievous, and only involved the question in fresh doubt and delay. But it appears evident that this was a French trick, and that Russia proposed the Congress at the instigation of France, who sought it for the purpose of delay, and most likely in order to extract from it a plausible cause of quarrel. Derby in his speech attributed a great deal to the menacing and disturbing speech of the King of Sardinia in opening his Chambers, but nobody said a word of Napoleon's _sortie_ to the Austrian Minister on the 1st January, nor was any allusion made to various important facts which were well known to many people in both Houses. No reproaches were