finer specimens of treacherous diplomacy can be found than those which are furnished by the authentic records of the correspondence between the Czar and the British Government in the first five months of 1853. The anger and violence of the Emperor Nicholas at his defeat were augmented by the fact that Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was the British Envoy at the Porte. In spite of the evidence pouring in upon him from day to day, the Czar would believe that Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, overawing the Ministers, and coercing the Sultan, had alone been the cause of the rejection of the treaty. The Czar writhed at the thought. Count Nesselrode--and in reading his words we read, no doubt, the words of Nicholas--imputes the failure of Menschikoff to the vehemence of, "the Queen's Ambassador." Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was accused of displaying an "incurable mistrust, a vehement activity." Russia was aware of the efforts he employed with the Sultan and the Council, and how deaf he had proved to the prayers of Reschid Pasha. No; the rupture had been brought about by "passion," by "a blind obstinacy," by forcing the Porte "to brave" Russia by "distrust as unfounded as it was offensive." In short, the Czar believed, or affected to believe, that he had suffered a moral defeat at the hands of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe; and that he would not endure. Lord Clarendon's catalogue of Count Nesselrode's worthless promises was crossed on its way to St. Petersburg by a despatch from that Minister to Baron Brunnow, quite as insolent as any Prince Menschikoff had addressed to the Porte. In the most haughty style of the Russian Foreign Office Britain was warned not to drive the Porte, by a policy of mistrust, to the verge of an abyss in which the moderation of the Emperor had alone prevented her from being swallowed up. This heated language, this avowal that the Czar regarded himself as the destiny of Turkey, did not open the eyes of Lord Aberdeen, did not enable him to see that the Czar was resolved, cost what it would, to have his will obeyed. Nor did the ultimatum addressed to Reschid Pasha, insolent and peremptory as it was, reveal to Lord Aberdeen the true state of the case. Declaring that the Czar had been always friendly and generous and moderate, and that by opposing his intentions, by showing distrust without cause, by giving refusals without excuse, a serious offence had been committed against "a sincere ally and well-disposed neighbour," Count Nesselrode had the tact to appeal, not only to the wisdom, but to the "patriotism" of the Turkish Minister, and almost ordered him to surrender without delay, under penalty of seeing a portion of the dominions of his master taken, and held as a "material guarantee." Such was the character of the "last effort" made by this moderate, this conciliatory, this generous potentate, this "sincere ally and well-disposed neighbour," to extort from a weak Power the essence of sovereignty over twelve millions of subjects.