The helpless hopeless condition of small states in all such conflicts was actually pitiable. The poor little trembling King Charles dog in the cage of the lion, and who felt that he only lived on sufferance, was the type of them. I remember an incident which occurred some years ago at the Bagni di Lucca, which will illustrate what I mean. An English stranger at one of the hotels, after washing his hands, threw his basinful of soap-and-water out of the window just as the Grand-duke was passing, deluging his imperial highness from head to foot. The stranger hurried at once to the street, and, throwing himself before the dripping sovereign, made the most humble and apologetic excuses for his act; but the Grand-duke stopped him short at once, saying, “There, there! say no more of it: don’t mention the matter to any one, or I shall get into a correspondence with Palmerston, and be compelled to pay a round sum to you for damages!” After all, one could say for these small posts in diplomacy what, I think it was Croker said for certain rotten boroughs in former days, “If you had not had such posts, you would have lost the services of a number of able and instructive men, who, entering public life by the small door, are sure to leave it by the grand entrance.” These small missions are very often charming centres of society in places one would scarcely hope for it; and from these little-known legations, every now and then, issue men whom it would not be safe for Williams to bark at, and whom, even if he were rabid, he would not bite. DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. What a number of ingenious reasons have been latterly given for the decline of the Drama, and the decrease of interest now felt for the stage. Some aver that people are nowadays too cultivated, too highly educated, to take pleasure in a play; others opine that the novel has supplanted the drama; others again declare that it is the prevalence of a religious sentiment on the subject that has damaged theatrical representation. For my own part, I take a totally different view of the subject. My notion is this: the world will never pay a high price for an inferior article, if it can obtain a first-rate one for nothing; in other words, people are come to the conclusion that the best actors are not to be found on the boards of the Haymarket or the Adelphi, but in the world at large--at the Exchange, in the parks, on railroads or river-steamers, at the soirées of learned societies, in Parliament, at Civic dinners or Episcopal visitations.