When I reached St. Petersburg in 1863, and went through the archives of the Embassy, which were in my charge, I found that there was a dispatch missing. No trace could be found of it and no one had ever seen it. I wrote to London, asking the Foreign Office to send out a copy. When it came, it turned out to be a severe wigging from Lord Russell, scolding Crampton for not keeping him better informed on Russian affairs. Crampton had burned the dispatch! It was easy for him to do this, for the messenger arrived about ten o’clock at night, and he was in the habit of opening the bag himself, and only sending down its contents to the Chancery on the following morning. This particular document he kept to himself. In 1869 he left the service, and from that time lived chiefly at his Irish home in County Wicklow, where he died, full of years and comfort, in 1886, greatly regretted by all of us who knew him as a dear, kind, affectionate old friend. Never was there a happier appointment than that of Lord Napier, who succeeded him in Russia in 1860, with the more exalted rank of Ambassador, seconded by an ambassadress who seemed to have been born for the position. The British Embassy soon became the most popular centre of society in Russia. John Lumley—afterwards Lord Savile—was First Secretary (what would now be called Councillor), and he was a most valuable aide-de-camp socially to his chief. In these happy circumstances the prestige and influence increased every day, until at the end, when Lord Napier, in 1864, was transferred to Berlin, the Emperor Alexander wished to give him the Order of St. Andrew, the Garter of Russia, but unfortunately in those days the acceptance of foreign Orders was strictly forbidden. Queen Victoria was like Queen Elizabeth, who said that she would not allow her dogs to wear any collar but her own. Few men ever had a much more difficult task than that with which Lord Napier was confronted when he took possession of the Embassy. Not only did he conjure into life a new popularity out of the ashes of the dead indifference, and worse, in which England was held, but he succeeded in winning the personal love and affection of all with whom he came in contact; and this he did in spite of the emasculate meddlings in Polish affairs which were the favourite pastime of Lord Russell and the cynical amusement of Prince Gortchakoff. [Illustration: PRINCE GORTCHAKOFF. _From a photograph._ [_To face p. 296._]