One of the shrewdest critics of international politics that I ever knew was old Count Nicholas Pablen, whom I mentioned at the beginning of this paper. A great traveller, and an excellent speaker of modern languages, he had been for half a century intimately associated with all the chief makers of the nineteenth century. He had, moreover, a marvellous memory, of which I may give an example. One day I found him in a great state of mind, fussing and fuming over some annoyance. I asked what was the matter. He said: “I am losing my memory! I wanted to write down the Knights of the Garter—I remembered twenty-four, but for the life of me I could not recollect the twenty-fifth!” All of a sudden his face brightened. “I have it,” he said, “the Duke of Westminster.” The honour of his memory was saved. His memory for political facts never failed him, and his judgment was not to be denied. His view of the state of affairs at the end of the Crimean War is given in one of those delightful letters with which Lord Granville used to keep Lord Canning posted in European matters whilst the latter was Governor-General in India. Lord Granville wrote, on the 3rd of August, 1856 (see “Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice’s Life,” vol. I., page 185): “Old Pahlen was the most irritable of all on this subject (the Crimean War). He says it has done no one good; not to the English, certainly not to the Russians—and has only been of use to one man in France,[21] whom he is not, as you know, fond of. He says that in England they considered him as merely speaking like a Russian parrot when he said that the Emperor Nicholas did not wish for war, and that he was considered in Russia almost a treacherous Anglomane when he declared that our Government did not wish it. He had been right in both cases, and yet by extraordinary bad management the war had come. He thinks it will take a whole generation to efface the recollection of it. He attributes the hatred of us, and comparative forgiveness of the French, not so much to the destruction in the Baltic, not so much to our Press and our public speaking, as to our having been old friends, and their always having thought of the French as enemies. He does not believe in any great changes in Russia. The Emperor has good intentions, but there have always been good intentions at the beginning of each reign. He has one great advantage over his father. Alexander during his life told Nicholas nothing. Nicholas, since his son has been of age, told him everything, and the latter, being of a very amiable disposition, heard everything that others did not dare tell his father. He is supposed not to have military tastes, but he issued new regulations about uniforms almost before his father was buried; and he and Constantine appeared in new hussar jackets a day or two afterwards, which were supposed to be foreign, instead of a