disposition to treat; and, false throughout, gave assurances that he would not assume the offensive on any point. “Our latest intelligence,” says M. Drouyn de Lhuys, so recently as the 15th December—“our latest intelligence from St Petersburg is to the effect that Russia is resolved to treat, and, above all, to adopt no offensive measures, and our confidence in this may suffice to explain the inactivity of the fleets.” But the pacific declarations of Russia, which we fear M. Castelbajac too readily believed, were but the cloak under which the attack on the Turkish squadron of Sinope, and the massacre which followed, were concealed. With such a deed perpetrated at so short a distance from the spot where the flags of England and France were floating together, the fleets could not linger any more in the Bosphorus. They entered the Black Sea, and what was termed _a policy of action_ commenced. Prussia and Austria were startled from their propriety, but they still followed on in the pursuit of that peace which, when nearest, always eluded their grasp,—and “Like the circle bounding earth and skies, Allures from far, yet, as they follow, flies.” The attitude of France and England became more decided, and at length, after much hesitation, the Russian ambassadors were recalled from Paris and London. In the course of the long operation which preceded the rupture of diplomatic relations, the judgment of M. Drouyn de Lhuys appeared nowhere to greater advantage than in the accuracy with which he divined and unmasked the real designs of the Czar in the matter of the Holy Shrines, while our noble Premier looked on credulous and confiding. The anger of the Czar, so much out of proportion to the offence, had, to be sure, something suspicious in it, and to the uninitiated or unsuspecting was utterly inexplicable. M. Drouyn de Lhuys knew well the cause of that immense wrath. It was not on account of the miserable squabbles of Latin and Greek monks that vast bodies of troops traversed the plains of southern Russia, that stores sufficient for an immense army and for a long campaign were accumulated in the magazines of Odessa, and that vast preparations were made at Sebastopol.