d'affaires, he undertook upon his own responsibility the critical affair of the Falkland Islands, which he conducted so admirably as to win the praise of both political parties at home; and the issue, so honourable to England, at once established his diplomatic reputation, and obtained for him in the following year the post of Minister at Berlin, where Frederick the Great, although past his prime, reigned in the full vigour of his tyrannical and eccentric genius. Next, after a few months in England in 1776, when he married, he was sent to St. Petersburg as our minister at the Court of the Empress Catherine, whose shameless passion for 'favourites' affected even her policy, and where he had a hard battle to fight, owing to the Empress's ill-will to England, although his _esprit_ and remarkable conversational talents made him personally much more liked by the Empress than any of his diplomatic rivals. It appears to have been a costly office, and diplomatic salaries at that time were so inadequate that on leaving Russia he had diminished his private fortune to the extent of £20,000. The severe climate of Russia broke down his health, and he returned to England in 1782, having previously received from the King the Order of the Bath, in acknowledgement of his services at the Russian Court. But two years afterwards he was despatched to the Hague, at that moment the scene of the most active political operations and manoeuvres; the Stadtholder being then threatened with deposition, and Holland with subjection to France. In this emergency, Sir James Harris matured a bold plan of an Anglo-Prussian alliance and an intervention on behalf of Holland; a project which Mirabeau, the French agent at Berlin, when he got wind of it, scouted as absurd, _et seulement la conception personelle de cet audacieux et rusé Harris_, but which completely succeeded--freeing Holland from her peril, and winning high fame for its bold projector, who was created Baron Malmesbury, and received honours from the King of Prussia and the Stadtholder. Lord Malmesbury now enjoyed the almost unbounded confidence of his Government in all matters relating to foreign politics, and was entrusted with all the most important missions. In 1793, he was sent to Berlin, and in 1796 and again in the following year he was sent to France to endeavour to negotiate a peace with the French Directory. We cannot do more than simply mention those important missions; but we cannot refrain from noticing a mission of a very different kind which befel him in 1794, when he received orders 'to ask of the Duke of Brunswick his daughter in marriage for the Prince of Wales.' Lord Malmesbury had little hope of this union turning out well, but he had no discretionary power in the matter, so he married her Royal Highness by proxy, and brought her over to England. The Prince of Wales never forgave Lord Malmesbury for his share in this affair, which was certainly hard upon his Lordship,