o offered at her shrine, who did not fondly deem that her reign, if not eternal, was far indeed from any abrupt termination. Men, as they looked in one another's eyes, and grasped each other's hands, felt an electric message of love, goodwill, and progress thrill through their frames — the public prints were loud in their congratulations, and the peace party and their opponents believed themselves equally remote from the possibility of putting the new theories of world government to the rude and shattering test of practical experience.
If, indeed, some sacrificers to Nemesis believed that this unruffled calm must perforce portend a storm, far indeed were they from conjecturing in what quarter it was gathering, or where it would burst in fury. Some uneasy glances were still cast across the narrow strip of sea,— narrower now than ever, thanks to the wondrous development of steam, — on the opposite shore of which the jealous eye of fear would picture the gathering legions of the greatest military power of the West, the hereditary foe and rival of England's greatness, ready to swoop down at the bidding of one iron and irresponsible will on the " inviolate island," scattering death and destruction around, and leaving her gardens desolate; thus avenging a memory which has long since been effaced by the fraternal mingling of the two nation's blood on many a well-fought field.
If Eussia was remembered, it was in the mood of congratulation, not of fear; and her contributions to the World's Palace were hailed as the evidences of her progressing civilization, and of her determination to vindicate for herself a foremost position in the amicable contests of the great family of nations.
These remarks must be understood as applying more to the public in general, whose political speculations are necessarily confined pretty nearly within the limits of what is brought from day to day within their field of intellectual vision, than to statesmen and diplomatists, who are not only compelled by their position to take a wider view of the aspect of the political horizon, but whose peculiar sources of information give them an insight into matters which are beyond the sphere of the periodical purveyors to the public curiosity. To men of this class it had indeed been long apparent that the next serious disturbance of the European equilibrium would, in all human probability, arise from inevitable complications in the East. The hereditary pretensions of Russia in that quarter were not unfamiliar to their minds, and
(") THE MALAKOFF, OR ROUND TOWER.
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they were well aware that the specious tranquillity, so long enjoyed, was due at least as much to the self-denial and guardedness of the other European Powers, as to the moderation of the Muscovite.
It was under the influence of these considerations that the French Alliance was prepared and cemented, and that the Emperor Napoleon III., forgetful of the bitter attacks to which, since the period of the coup d'etat, he had been constantly exposed on the part of the English Press, and mindful only of his own exalted mission, inaugurated that policy of upright and cordial co-operation with this country, which will ever entitle him to the respect of all true Englishmen. His rapid and almost instinctive appreciation of the true position of affairs taught him the immense importance of such a combination; and, in the wisest and most laudable spirit of self-abnegation, he waived those claims of France upon the Sublime Porte which might have introduced an embarrassing complication into the already intricate question of the East; and thus brought into the scale of progress and civilisation the concentrated energy of that magnificent people, whose prescient choice he has so amply justified in every action of his prosperous reign.
If, as it is scarcely possible to deny, the actual breaking out of the War seized by surprise even those charged with the supreme management of affairs, and who should have been best qualified to judge of the final probabilities of a rupture, it must be remembered that it was difficult for men trained, by forty years of peace, in the knowledge of how much Diplomacy could effect, to realise that her powers would be so soon exhausted, and no resource left but an appeal to arms.
Certain it is that a long time elapsed ere this conviction could be brought home to the bulk of the English people, and even after decisive steps, of whose import it was difficult to doubt, had been taken, there was a general unwillingness to believe that the scabbard was on the eve of being thrown aside, and that the nation was on the brink of a war of colossal proportions, and of a duration which the profoundest vatic skill would hesitate to determine.