Lords, they have deeply offended many of their own friends by tendering to them such a measure, and they have behaved most unkindly and unhandsomely to Baron Parke, who thinks he has great reason to complain. I have been at Knowsley for the last three days, and so missed the march of the Guards into London on Wednesday. Lord Hardinge was struck down by paralysis as he was speaking to the Queen at Aldershot on Tuesday last. It is supposed that the Duke of Cambridge will succeed him, and that Jim Macdonald will be his Military Secretary. The American question is still undecided, but everybody appears to be very easy about it. [Sidenote: BARON PARKE ON THE LIFE PEERAGE.] _July 20th._--I met Baron Parke the other day, who talked over his affair, complained of the treatment he had received from the Government, but said he gathered from what the Chancellor had said to him that they meant now to make him an hereditary peer, declared there was not a shadow of doubt about the legality, and that Campbell had as little doubt as he himself had, but finding the measure was unpopular with certain lawyers, he had suddenly turned against his own recorded opinion and opposed it. The Baron said the Government were greatly to blame for not having ventilated the question, and ascertained whether they could carry it or not, and if he had had an idea of all the bother it had made, he never would have had anything to do with it. George Lewis told me that the life peerage had never been brought before the Cabinet, and he knew nothing of it till he saw it in the Gazette, nor did Clarendon; in fact it was confined to the Chancellor, Granville, and Palmerston. They none of them, however, know with whom it originated. Now that the measure turns out to be so unpopular and is so scouted, and the transaction has been attended with so many blunders and defeats, no one is willing to accept the responsibility of it, or to acknowledge having had anything to do with it. It is strange that Palmerston should ever have consented to it, but he knew nothing and cared nothing about it; he was probably assured it would go down without any difficulty, and in this _poco curante_ way he suffered himself to be committed to it, not seeing the storm it would cause. He allowed Granville to manage it all his own way, and at last he had the good luck to be beaten upon it in the House of Commons, for the scrape would have been more serious if he had earned it there. These last days of the session have been as usual marked by the withdrawal and abandonment of various bills that were for the most part introduced at the beginning of it, and which were found to be quite worthless, especially the Law Reform Bill.