disappointment which would take away from the Christian populations, already so cruelly undeceived by the issue of the inquiry confided to Kiprisli Pacha, the last ray of hope which they could attach to the collective solicitude of Europe, it would be, in our opinion, to throw into the midst of the combustible matters which cover the Turkish soil the spark which might set them in a blaze.

"I have not concealed this opinion from the representatives of the great powers at St. Petersburgh, and you are invited to express yourself in the same sense both to your colleagues and to the Ottoman ministers.

"Our august master perseveres in his conviction that the position of Turkey requires urgent measures; that the duty of Europe, for its own interest, as well as that of the Porte and the Christian populations, is to prevent new disasters, in order not to be exposed to the much more painful task of repairing them; and that an immediate entente of the great powers among themselves, and with the Porte, would offer a chance of attaining this result.

"We are disposed to all the consideration possible for the dignity of the Ottoman government; and we do not at all refuse to leave to it the initiative of the proposals to be made: but on condition that it take up without delay the conference of representatives-in a word, that it substitute, if it will, its own convocation for that of Sir H. Bulwer, but that this convocation take place without delay.

"Nothing is opposed to the discussion having, for a point of departure, the reforms which the Porte has already in view; the foreign representatives could add to them such as they think it desirable to produce.

"The measures to be taken would result from the entente established at the end of the deliberations, to which, for our part, we should carry the most conciliating spirit. But setting aside the question of form, we consider it our duty to maintain, in substance, our point of view, even should we remain alone in taking up this ground.-Receive,' &c.

"16. Despatch from His Excellency Prince Gortchacow, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to His Excellency Baron de Brunnow, dated St. Petersburgh, 12th January, 1861.

"Your excellency's despatch of the 1st (13th) January has been placed before the emperor. His imperial majesty has deigned to approve the observations that you have made to the British principal Secretary of State, on the adjournment of the conference, the meeting of which at Constantinople had been proposed, for the consideration of the reforms to be recommended to the Porte.

"There is, however, an important point to which I must call your attention. In your interviews with Lord John Russell, you have rightly insisted that this adjournment should not imply the abandonment of the question. The idea of the imperial cabinet goes beyond this. We have not adhered to the adjournment. The despatch which, by order of his majesty the emperor, I addressed to Prince Lobanow, and of which your excellency has received a copy, proves this. We have declared ourselves ready to yield to the scruples manifested by the Turkish government, and of which the cabinets of Paris and London have admitted the value, as to the initiative. We have consented that the Porte should substitute its own convocation for that of England, and that it should itself take up the conference on the reforms which it may have prepared. But we made the express condition that this convocation should take place without delay.

"It is neither from amour-propre, nor from obstinacy, that we persist in this respect on our point of view. All the cabinets are struck as we are by the increasing gravity of the state of affairs in the East, in presence of the events which seem to be preparing in Europe for the coming spring. The necessity of calming the minds of the Christian populations is then more evident than ever. Now, the best means of sustaining their patience, and preventing the resolutions

which despair might inspire in them, is to give them the certainty that the powers will occupy themselves with their fate in concert with the Porte, and that the sad result of the mission of Mehemet Kiprisli Pacha is not the last word spoken on their condition. The adjournment, we fear, would be looked upon by them as a fruitless termination; and, under this impression, three months would amply suffice to allow the development of a crisis which nothing had been done to prevent, whilst external excitations would tend to provoke it.

"The immediate convocation by the initiative of the Porte would, on the contrary, cause hope to revive in minds which it has nearly abandoned; and would give a chance for the maintenance of tranquillity which is for the interests of all. It is therefore that we insist that it take place without further delay.

"If once the conference were really assembled, we would attend to the proposals of the Porte, in order to examine them in concert with the other powers; and it certainly would not be our fault if they did not come out of these deliberations as complete as possible. The essential point, I repeat, is that it be positively known that these proposals will be made, when they will be made, and that the collective assembly, which is to take cognisance of them, be now decided upon, in order to show that this time the intentions are serious, and to prevent the fear of new deceptions. From the moment that the principle of this assembly seems to be admitted by common consent, we cannot understand why time, which present conjunctures render doubly precious, should be lost.

"Your excellency is authorised to read the present despatch to the principal Secretary of State of her Britannic majesty, and to leave him a copy of it.Receive,' &c.

"17. Despatch from His Excellency Baron Brunnow, Russian Ambassador in London, to His Excellency Prince Gortchacow, Minister of Foreign Affairs, dated London, January 24th (February 5th), 1861.

"In coming from the audience at Buckingham Palace, I called upon the principal Secretary of State, to read to him, and give him the copy of, the despatch which your excellency did me the honour to adress to me, under date of the 12th (24th) January, and which reached me last evening.

"In acquitting myself of this duty, I took care to clearly point out the sentiment of high foresight which induces the imperial cabinet to insist upon the immediate assembly of the conference at Constantinople, in the well-understood interest not only of the Christian populations, but of the Porte itself.

"Lord John Russell, in appreciating this motive, expressed to me anew his regret at not having succeeded in the first trial which he had made to open the deliberations to which Sir H. Bulwer had invited his colleagues, with a view to arrive at an early agreement as to the measures of reform to be recommended to the Porte.

"He acknowledged the benevolence of the intentions which determined the imperial cabinet to leave to the sultan the initiative of this deliberation. But he doubts the earnestness and good-will that will be shown by the Porte in taking this initiative.

"The reports of Sir H. Bulwer seem to attest, on the contrary, the desire of the Ottoman government to gain time by seeking to avoid the difficulty of a collective examination.

"The system of temporisation which prevails in all the actions of the Porte, is shown here by the language of the Ottoman ambassador. According to his view, three months' respite ought to be allowed to the Turkish government before proceeding to any plan of reform whatever. Lord John Russell was the first to destroy this illusion. He declared that, in his opinion, if it were agreed to allow to the Porte a preparatory interval to meditate and ripen the measures of amelioration judged indispensable for the consolidation of the well-being and the repose

of the Christian populations, it was certainly not three months to be allowed to pass away in a state of inaction. Far from that, it was, at the expiration of that delay, that the Porte should be in a position to produce in its entirety the result of its labours. It was then, also, that the representatives of the friendly powers would be enabled to judge of the merits of the plan of reform, in order exactly to appreciate what additions would be required to it.

"After having communicated to me these explanations, the principal Secretary of State informed me that he would not fail to take into serious consideration the reflections so clearly expressed in the despatch of the 12th January, of which I left a copy in his hands.

"This document will one day serve to attest that, if the eventualities so long pointed out by the imperial cabinet should ultimately disturb the repose of the interior of the Ottoman empire, it will assuredly not be upon Russia that the reproach of a want of foresight and of solicitude will fall; whilst you, my prince, have devoted all your energies to turn away from Europe the danger of so grave a trial. I have the honour,' &c.

"Three months afterwards, on the expiration of the term proposed to the Porte, the ambassador of his majesty the emperor in London addressed to Prince Gortchacow the following despatch :

"18. Despatch from His Excellency Baron de Brunnow, Ambassador of Russia in London, to His Excellency Prince Gortchacow, Minister of Foreign Affairs, dated London, 7th (19th) April, 1861.

"Arrived at the termination of the delay of three months, fixed by Lord John Russell, to allow the Porte to ripen its plan of reforms in favour of the Christian populations, I considered it my duty to interrogate the principal Secretary of State on the result which this preparatory work had produced.

"He made the avowal that the reports of Sir H. Bulwer on this subject are entirely barren. From day to day the Porte has deferred the communication of the plan which it has promised.

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"I insisted on the necessity of not habituating the Ottoman ministers to contract engagements with the great powers which they have no intention of fulfilling.

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"On his side, the principal Secretary of State acknowledged the opportunity of reminding the Porte of the obligation it is placed under to give effect to a system of amelioration, of which it ought to understand the urgency for its own interests. He will hasten to write in this sense to the English ambassador, desiring him to reiterate to the Ottoman government strong remonstrances against the slowness with which it proceeds to keep its word.

"However doubtful may be the result of this new step, it nevertheless constitutes a serious duty in my eyes. In effect, my prince, when Turkey shall have finished by drawing upon herself the misfortunes which we have so long presaged, then will come the day when we may remind the other powers that it was not our warnings that were wanting to prevent the catastrophe while there was yet time.I have the honour,' &c.

"We will proceed no further with this excursion in the domains of the past. "The insurrection in Herzegovina, the war of Montenegro, the bombardment of Belgrade in time of peace-such have been the results of the efforts of diplomacy to avoid a crisis which everything foretold. Already at that time. there was great difficulty in preventing its degenerating into a general conflagration.

"It was a truce which has not been profited by. Those exclusive appeals to force and to repression, the profound resentments which they have excited, the encouragement given to the populations by contemporary events, the national claims pursued or accomplished elsewhere, and even the precedents laid down by the Porte itself with regard to the United Principalities-all these considerations

have brought about in the East one of those extreme situations which render palliatives powerless, half measures barren, and treaties inefficacious.

"The documents we have just published attest that, according to the expression of the Russian ambassador in London, the imperial cabinet has not failed, either in foresight to estimate the peril, or frankness to point it out."

Russia and the powers of Europe have only to wait the beginning of the end. The Ottoman rule is now threatened with destruction, not only by alien races clamouring for independence, but by its own inherent defects. Of the two dangers, the first is the more formidable.

"It is a common remark," says a writer in the Fortnightly Review," with recent travellers in European Turkey, that the Osmanli race in that country is gradually dying out; and that all the wealth and influence it formerly possessed is passing into the hands of the Slavonians and Greek inhabitants. The ethnological map of the country, published in Petermann's Mittheilingen, shows, in a very striking manner, how small and scattered the population is, compared with those of other races. There is only one district where there is anything like a compact agglomeration of Turks-the coast of the Black Sea, between the Danube and the Balkan. Everywhere else they are only to be met with in small patches; and, strange to say, these patches grow smaller and further apart as they approach Constantinople. In Albania they are almost entirely absent; and even in Bulgaria they are few and far between. These facts are well known to the Turks themselves, who, with their usual predestinarianism, resignedly accept them as their destiny.""Is it not strange," lately said an old effendi to a Greek merchant of Salonica, "that you Ghiaours are lodged in palaces, while we Mussulmans live in hovels; you walk in the streets richly dressed, and we wear patchedup kaftans; you are pashas, we are dervishes ?" And he added, in a lower tone, as if speaking to himself, "And why not, if God wills it?" M. Poncade, the late French consul at Bucharest, tells a similar story of an old Mussulman, who taught him Turkish. He had observed that the Turkish houses in the town were dilapidated and falling in ruin, whilst those in which the Albanians lived were sound and strongly built; and, on asking the Turk the reason, obtained the following reply:-"Why do you ask me, when you know better than I do? Are not the great nations of Europe to divide us among them? Our destinies are written down: the strong shall resist, and be killed; the cowardly shall submit, and become infidels. Why should I repair my house for a Ghiaour?"

There are in Turkey at least three distinct European races, each with its own customs and national aspirations. These are the Servians, the Albanians, and the Greeks. Of these, the most important is the Servian, representing 4,700,000 of the total population of 10,000,000 of European Turkey. Russia is aware of this; and her aim, though working in the dark, and apparently inconsistently, has been to crush in the bud the rising spirit of Servian nationality. If the Russian propaganda have failed to do this, it has been more successful among the descendants of the degenerate Greeks of the lower empire, who still inhabit nearly the whole of the coast-line of the Egean and the Sea of Marmora; and are specially numerous in the vicinity of Constantinople. It is from this people that Russia has recruited some of her most skilful agents; and, doubtless, she would find little difficulty in securing their assistance, with bribes and promises of lucrative employment, if she should ever attempt to make herself mistress of Constantinople; just as the Turkish government, after overthrowing the Greek empire, found in their ancestors its most obsequious subjects. There are, altogether, about 90,000 Greeks on the Turkish continent.

The Albanians, who inhabit the coast of the Adriatic, between Servia and the kingdom of Greece, and who are 1,300,000 in number, are a very different race. They are a proud and martial people; and have little sympathy with either the Slavonians or Greeks, against both of whom they have frequently fought under Turkish generals.

There is no lack of candidates for the succession to the throne of the sultans. Prince Pitzipos, the leader of the Byzantine union, proposes the establishment of a Byzantine empire, with a Greek ministry, under the present Ottoman dynasty. M. Ubicini looks forward to the replacement of the Turkish rule by that of three separate states, which would divide Turkey between them, Constantinople being made a free port; and the Austrian and Russian papers think that the best way of settling the matter, would be to place Turkey under the rule of a strong power: by which the journalists of Vienna mean Austria, and those of Moscow, Russia.

The writer of the article in the Fortnightly Review is in favour of Austria rather than Russia. Her rule, he fancies, "would secure to Europe a solid guarantee of peace in the East; and to the races on the Danube and the Bosphorus, the unfettered development of their national existence." France inclines to side with Austria in her Eastern policy—a course to which, we are told, the interests of England also point.

The Eastern question, whatever may be its solution, has now entered on a new phase. Lord Palmerston was the last, as he was the firmest, believer in the regeneration of Turkey, and the stability of her power and rule.

Russia, also, has enough to do to mind her own affairs. Her position in the south is the work of her diplomacy, which strives to obtain for her the predominance in Europe; but it is not in conformity with her natural development; and any conquests she may make in that direction will have to be maintained by artificial and violent means. The whole of her military force was originally concentrated within the triangle formed by St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and Moscow; and although, since she has moved southwards, she has established military positions at Kieff and Sebastopol, these two strategetical points have been quite insufficient to attain her object. The condition of the interior of the country is, however, far from settled; and if the government courts external war, it must be in order to unite the various classes, whose relative position has been somewhat altered of late, in some great national enterprise. There seems, however, no occasion for this, because the whole feeling of the country is thoroughly national; and, probably, nothing is wanted but time to enable the people to settle down in their new state. What is chiefly required is capital, to develop the vast resources of the country. Turkey must probably grow weaker each year; while it is difficult to calculate the wealth and strength of Russia some years hence, when her industrious and homogeneous population shall have realised the value of freedom, and settled down to the labour of cultivating the land on their own account.

CHAPTER XXXV.

ANECDOTES OF LORD PALMERSTON.

Or so distinguished a statesman as Lord Palmerston the slightest personal traits are interesting. We have collected a few, which may be placed here. A writer in Fraser's Magazine-we refer to the number for November, 1865-favoured the world with many interesting anecdotes of his lordship. The writer says

"His first acceptance of high office was related by himself, the year before last, apropos of a bet said to have been made and won by the late Mr. Milnes, the father of Lord Houghton, a man of remarkable abilities and acquirements, though somewhat of an idler in his youth. He was lounging in a club, when he overheard a college friend saying that something was as unlikely as Bob Milnes becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer.