1853. RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA _Life of Lord J. Russell_ 99 1854. THE QUAKER DEPUTATION TO THE TSAR _Memoirs of Joseph Sturge_ 102 HORRORS OF THE CRIMEAN HOSPITALS _The Times_ 105 THE CRISIS AT THE ALMA _The Times_ 107 THE MORNING OF INKERMANN _The Times_ 110 1855. “MUDDLING THROUGH” BEFORE SEBASTOPOL _The Times_ 111 THE ANGEL OF DEATH _Hansard_ 114 WHY PEACE NEGOTIATIONS FAILED _Life of Lord J. Russell_ 118 COMMERCIAL POLITICS (1837-1856) ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA (1837). =Source.=—Lord Beaconsfield’s _Sybil_, bk. i., chap. vi. Hark! It tolls! All is over. The great bell of the metropolitan cathedral announces the death of the last son of George the Third who probably will ever reign in England. He was a good man: with feelings and sympathies; deficient in culture rather than ability; with a sense of duty; and with something of the conception of what should be the character of an English monarch. Peace to his manes! We are summoned to a different scene. In a palace in a garden—not in a haughty keep, proud with the fame, but dark with the violence of ages; not in a regal pile, bright with the splendour, but soiled with the intrigues of courts and factions—in a palace in a garden, meet scene for youth, and innocence, and beauty—came a voice that told the maiden that she must ascend her throne! The Council of England is summoned for the first time within her bowers. There are assembled the prelates and captains and chief men of her realm; the priests of the religion that consoles, the heroes of the sword that has conquered, the votaries of the craft that has decided the fate of empires; men grey with thought, and fame, and age; who are the stewards of divine mysteries, who have toiled in secret cabinets, who have encountered in battle the hosts of Europe, who have struggled in the less merciful strife of aspiring senates; men too, some of them, lords of a thousand vassals and chief proprietors of provinces, yet not one of them whose heart does not at this moment tremble as he awaits the first presence of the maiden who must now ascend her throne. A hum of half-suppressed conversation which would attempt to conceal the excitement, which some of the greatest of them have since acknowledged, fills that brilliant assemblage; that sea of plumes, and glittering stars, and gorgeous dresses. Hush! The portals open. She comes. The silence is as deep as that of a noontide forest. Attended for a moment by her royal mother and the ladies of her court, who bow and then retire, VICTORIA ascends her throne; a girl, alone, and for the first time, amid an assemblage of men.