We read this note with surprise. It proves that Mr Kinglake can, when in hot pursuit of the foe, step to a conclusion over grounds where few can follow. The fleets entered the Dardanelles on the 22d October. The attack of Sinope took place on the 30th November. The Turks and Russians had been at war for six weeks; and though the Russian Minister had announced in a circular some time before, that the Czar, in hopes still of a peaceful solution, would remain on the defensive as long as his dignity and interests would allow, yet, as Mr Kinglake himself says, “After the issue of the circular, the Government of St Petersburg had received intelligence not only that active warfare was going on in the valley of the Lower Danube, but that the Turks had seized the Russian fort of St Nicholas on the eastern coast of the Euxine, and were attacking Russia upon her Armenian frontier;” and he fully absolves the Czar from any breach of faith in this matter. Yet he would gravely have us believe that the attack of the ships of one Power upon those of another with which it is at open war requires explanation, and that the most natural explanation possible is to be found in attributing it to a slow retaliation for an imaginary injury inflicted by two other Powers. It is as if we should be told that, in the early rounds of a celebrated pugilistic encounter, Mr Sayers had hit Mr Heenan very hard in the eye, not because they were fighting, but because one of the bystanders had previously trodden on the champion’s coat.