whereas it was, in fact, as explicit as words could make it: The state of war is now declared to exist between the two 'Governments.' But it is not only on this point that we are compelled to differ from him in his interpretation of the State Papers relating to these transactions; and especially in what we conceive to be an entire misapprehension of both Lord Stratford's share in the proceedings, and also of Lord Clarendon's. He says, for instance :

'It is amazing to read in his own words that Lord Clarendon, in concert, of course, with Lord Aberdeen, was induced by the representations of a foreign government, based upon a single telegraphic report, to take the serious step of ordering the advance of the squadron through the Dardanelles, without waiting for Lord Stratford's despatches.'

And in the following pages he dwells repeatedly on the fatuity of Lord Clarendon in issuing these positive, untimely, ill-judged orders, and on the embarrassment they caused to Lord Stratford. Assertions and implications such as these, coming from one who, as he wrote, had the original documents before him, we find it truly amazing to read.' 'Your Excellency is instructed to send for the British fleet to "Constantinople,' is the short sentence which Mr. Lane-Poole quotes from Lord Clarendon's despatch of September 23, in order to insist on its positive nature. But, in fact, the instruction to call up the fleet was as provisional as an instruction could well be.

Under ordinary circumstances,' it ran, and as long as the Sultan does not declare war against Russia, nor demand the presence of the British fleet... your Excellency's original instructions on this matter remain in full force. But when it appears that the lives and properties of British subjects are exposed to serious danger, and that the Turkish Government declares itself unable to avert that danger, it is clear that the Treaty has no longer a binding force upon us, and that urgent necessity supersedes its provisions. Your Excellency is therefore instructed to send for the British fleet to Constantinople, and, in conjunction with the admiral, to dispose of it in the manner you deem most expedient for protecting British interests and the personal safety of the Sultan.' (Eastern Papers, part ii. p. 116.)

And in case anything more than the words themselves should be needed to show that the instruction was provisional, Lord Clarendon was careful to insert the phrase: assuming, of course, that his [the Frenchman's] report ' is correct.' That Lord Stratford perfectly understood the instruction as having these limitations is evident from his own quotation of its sense in his official reply, in which he

refers to that part of these instructions which authorises 'me to consider the presence of her Majesty's squadron here, if I thought proper to require it, as intended to embrace 'the protection of the Sultan also in case of need.'*

Mr. Lane-Poole's impression that on this and other important points at this conjuncture grave differences of opinion had arisen between Lord Stratford and Lord Clarendon, is distinctly contradicted by the documentary evidence and by our own personal knowledge. From the date of the insurrection of the Softas, Lord Stratford was clear that war was inevitable. On October 1 he wrote to his wife, 'We have narrowly escaped a sanguinary revolution, ' and we have only escaped it to go full tilt into war;' and if he had retained any doubt, it was removed by the declaration of October 4. He had then before him the immediate possibility of two most serious dangers: an insurrection of the fanatical party, which was not utterly quelled; and an attack of the Russian fleet, which might any morning sail down the Bosphorus and seize Constantinople. There was absolutely nothing to hinder such a coup-de-main, except a Turkish three-decker moored in mid-channel off Therapia. That these contingencies were present to Lord Clarendon's mind when he penned his despatch of September 23 is clear from the despatch itself; that Lord Stratford had the same contingencies before him, that he doubted of the fulness of his powers to summon the fleet and was most anxious to receive instructions concerning it, we know from his own conversation at the time. Mr. Lane-Poole tells us that the 'sinister impression created at St. Petersburg by Lord 'Clarendon's ill-starred despatch of September 23 forms an 'important link in the chain of circumstances that made 'towards war.' Of course a protest was made against what the Russians pretended to call a violation of the treaty of 1841; a treaty which had been suspended, as Lord Clarendon pointed out, since the day the Russian troops entered the Principalities; but so little did the Russian Government consider it as making towards war that they professed to consider even the Turkish declaration as purely nominal. On

* We have previously had occasion to argue this point in reviewing the first volume of Mr. Kinglake's History (see Edinburgh Review, vol. cxvii. p. 327), where the whole matter is fully discussed, and from the highest authority; and we are surprised that in this work the erroneous view of the transaction taken by Mr. Kinglake should have been repeated.

October 14, with Lord Clarendon's despatch fresh in his mind, Count Nesselrode made a categorical statement to that effect to Sir Hamilton Seymour.

'We shall in all probability,' he said, 'issue no counter-declaration, nor shall we make any attack upon Turkey. We shall remain with folded arms, only resolved to repel any assault made upon us, whether in the principalitics or on our Asiatic frontier. . . . So we shall remain during the winter, ready to receive any peaceful overtures which during that time may be made to us by Turkey.'

The purport of this conversation was embodied in a circular letter of October 31. On the strength of this assurance, the Powers permitted themselves to hope that even yet they might be able to arrange peace without passing through the horrors of war; and on their side, out of deference to the susceptibilities of Russia, they refused to send the fleets into the Black Sea. Mr. Lane-Poole has overlooked or undervalued the meaning of this assurance, and does not perceive that the allied Powers were acting in honest, though, as it turned out, misplaced belief in the truth of the Czar and of his Chancellor, Count Nesselrode. They believed them to be honourable men, and the Turkish shores of the Black Sea to be guarded by their word more efficiently than they could be guarded by the whole strength of the allied fleets. The result was a lesson which it is well should not be forgotten. On November 30, a squadron of Turkish frigates and corvettes lying in the harbour of Sinope, under the safeguard of the allies and the word of Count Nesselrode, was attacked and destroyed by an overwhelming Russian force. This, as between Russians and Turks, was an operation of war legitimate enough barbarous, brutal, no doubt; but not more so than other operations of war between the same people, in which Englishmen have taken a prominent and, it has even been considered, a creditable part-the wholesale slaughter of the Turks at Chesmé, for instance, in 1770; or in the Liman of the Dniepr, in 1788; but as between the Russians and the Western Powers, it was as gross a piece of treachery and falsehood as any recorded in the history of civilised nations.

We do not propose to follow Mr. Lane-Poole into the history of the war, in which he seems to regard Lord Stratford as if he had been commander-in-chief of the navy and of the army, director of transports, head of the commissariat, and director-general of the medical department. Of course, he was nothing of the sort, and no one knew it better than Lord Stratford himself. He professed, indeed,

his readiness to forward the wishes of the commanders-inchief in every possible way, and was frequently able to render most valuable assistance, if only by his indomitable energy and his extraordinary influence over Turkish officials; but the extent of these services, in which he was powerfully seconded by others, has been somewhat exaggerated. Of far greater importance and very real interest are Lord Stratford's considerations on the objects to be obtained by the war, as stated in a letter to Lord Clarendon of June 12, 1854.

To begin with the ends: What kind of Russia, what kind of Turkey do we mean to have after the conclusion of peace? Is it the Russia of Catherine, the Russia of Alexander, or the Russia of Nicholas ? Is it Russia founded on the status quo ante, or Russia separated from Turkey by a cordon of principalities or states no longer dependent upon her; or, finally, Russia such as Russia was before she proclaimed, without shame or disguise, her appetite for territorial extension at the expense of every neighbour in turn, whether friend or foe? . . . The Russia of this day is, more or less, a result of national tendencies and national traditions, ably directed by a government which, partly sympathising and partly affecting to sympathise, employs them for the twofold purpose of dynastic despotism and political aggrandisement. . . . The Power, thus raised on a million of soldiers trained to implicit obedience, and selected from sixty millions of ignorant and fanatical slaves, is an ever-growing and ever-encroaching force-encroaching as much from inherent gravitation as from systematic policy.' After speaking further of the tendencies, he passed on to sketch the history of Russian aggression, on the side of Turkey alone, during the reign of the Emperor Nicholas; and, assuming that the end to be aimed at is an arrangement by which the integrity and independence of Turkey 'would be maintained under such material and diplomatic guarantees as are really indispensable for the purpose,' suggested as a minimum of effective guarantee,'

'a settlement by which the course of the Danube would be free, the principalities extended to the Black Sea and released from Russian protection, Circassia restored to independence under the suzeraineté of the Porte, the Crimea established in a similar manner, the Black Sea opened to foreign ships of war, and Poland restored in the limits recognised by the Congress of Vienna.'

Here, at any rate, he left no doubt as to his meaning. We may or may not accept his conclusions, but we are bound to recognise them as deliberately formulated by a man of extraordinary ability, and with unequalled opportunities for studying the question. A year later, with the warrant of our success in the Crimea, he reverted to the same view, on September 13, 1855, when he wrote: Having reduced the

'Russia of accumulated power, we have to guard against the Russia of prospective growth. This, I imagine, might be 'effected by interposing a barrier of independent neutrals along 'the whole frontier.' And again, on February 3, 1856 :

'Nicholas's Russia is to all appearance on its knees. The Russia of nature is still in its growth, shorn of its most forward branches, but capable of shooting into greater luxuriance at no distant period. Against this latter Russia I should like to see due precautions taken; and I know nothing better than a barrier of neutral or independent states prolonged between the two empires in Europe and Asia.'

Holding these opinions, it was natural that Lord Stratford should be profoundly dissatisfied with the treaty concluded at Paris, when, after two years of war, the French Government was resolved on peace, and the English Government, unwilling to continue the struggle independently, consented to such terms as, under the circumstances, could be obtained. Like his old acquaintance of 1832, he said: 'I would rather have cut off my right hand than have signed that treaty.' But with the French Government openly determined on finishing off the business, and the French plenipotentiaries playing into Russian hands, so that, as Lord Clarendon wrote (March 22), France has no plenipotentiary in the conference, and Russia has three, and Cowley and I stand alone,' all that could be done was to snatch as much from the fire as possible. After all, the Treaty of Paris, though far indeed from Stratford's ideal, must be considered to have answered its purpose fairly well. It gave Turkey rest for twenty-two years, and an opportunity of which the Porte very imperfectly availed itself-for carrying out the internal reforms inaugurated by Lord Stratford. Had the terms been more stringent, they would scarcely have endured longer than the alliance or the armament which enforced them; and later experience has in some measure realised the scheme of a barrier of principalities, which are at this moment a subject of anxiety to Europe, and may prove a cause of war.

It was some little time before the close of the war that, in a letter from David Morier, his friend and colleague in his first service at Constantinople, Lord Stratford received news of the death of their old chief, Sir Robert Adair, at the advanced age of 92. He was himself in his 70th year, and the last affectionate expressions of his former master touched him deeply.

'As he read the words,' writes Mr. Lane-Poole in his happiest mood, 'his mind wandered back to those early days at Stamboul, when