new dress which he had been in such a hurry to exhibit himself in. He dismissed Klein Michel and another (two great robbers); and when his mother remonstrated on the ground of their having been his father’s friends, he made a good answer, which he had probably previously prepared. He said: ‘I am not a great man like my father. He could use such men as his tools—I am not strong enough.’ He (Pahlen) lays much stress on the absolute poverty of Russia in able men. He thinks Gortchakoff clever, but indiscreet, vain, and not successful in things which he undertakes. (This is confirmed by everybody.) “Tolstoi, a great friend of the Emperor, by whom he is called ‘milord Tolstoi,’ has no ability. “Kisseleff, who is named Ambassador to Paris, is clever, but has never been a diplomat and is seventy years old. Meyendorf, really clever, is done up. Chreptowitch is nobody. Orloff himself clever, but perfectly ignorant. He says that Gortchakoff laments to everyone this dearth of men to appoint. So Bloomfield told me. Pahlen says that in England it does not signify if we want a man, we can always pick up an intelligent man in some rank of life or other who will soon master the specialities of his business. In Russia those who are not diplomatists by profession are profoundly ignorant of all that relates to it.” A long quotation—but the appreciation of the state of affairs in his own country by so competent an observer as Count Pahlen, recorded, moreover, by no less a man than Lord Granville, seems to me to justify and even invite its insertion here. I myself knew almost all the men whom the Count mentioned, and I can appreciate the accuracy of his estimate. In two cases, that of the new Tsar and that of M. Tolstoi, I think he was hardly fair. As it turned out, the reign of Alexander the Second, if by no other measure than that of the liberation of the serfs, marked an important step in Russian history; while M. Jean Tolstoi—the “milord”—who was Postmaster-General in my time, proved to be a capable minister, none the worse for having travelled and being an accomplished man of the world. As Ambassador to England, Count Chreptowitch, a delightful old gentleman, was not an eagle; and it was not long before the astute old Baron Brunnow—with the “Baroness Brunnow who looked like Juno” of the “Ingoldsby Legends”—appeared once more as pilot of the diplomatic ship among the rather difficult shoals of British waters.