That Russia is ambitious and greedy of power, few will deny; but her encroachments are not altogether due to the mere love of extending her territories. Her existence, as a nation of the first rank, is menaced by her maritime weakness, and until she frees herself from the shackles that cripple her commercial activity on the sea, she is the ready and easy victim of the Power that holds, and has strength to use, the keys of her house. But, added to this, her statesmen have long perceived that, as soon as they shall have gained the Bosphorus, they will win a commanding supremacy over the destinies of the world. While, therefore, they are impelled to a system of aggrandisement, in order to force their way to the sea and to preserve the life of their Imperial structure, they by no means despise the glorious goal of wide dominion, to which the success of this policy must infallibly conduct them. This, then, is, and has been for many generations, ever since their genius conceived the design, the reason which has urged them relentlessly to enlarge their possessions in Poland, Persia, and in Central Asia, and to exhibit undying hostility towards the Turkish Empire. The Western Powers have not failed to recognise the danger to which they are exposed by this active and aggressive policy, and Great Britain, having vital interests of her own in the far East, has never been able to view with unconcern the absorption of Turkey by her Northern rival. Hence, it has come about that, when the Sultan has been threatened, many nations of the West have endeavoured to go to his assistance, and to ward off the disaster that seemed to be imminent. But their efforts have been badly directed; for, divided among themselves, pursuing divergent interests, interfering without wisdom, or led away by false conceptions of the real situation, they too often manacled the defensive power of Turkey, and gave victory to the Russians, when the latter had not won it by their own strength. In this way Russia advanced and prospered,—by the ascendency that organized intelligence will ever command over a policy of mere sentimental or unreflective expediency,—until 1853, when another crisis was impending in the East, which produced a great European war, and terminated the long peace that had existed since 1815.