This resolution was hardly taken when the “Champion” frigate, having on board Mr. Grenville, a diplomatist charged with a mission of some importance, put back to Yarmouth, from which port she had sailed for Cuxhaven about a week before. The officers reported having encountered head winds against which they had vainly struggled to make their port, or even to reach the Holstein coast, where the envoy might have landed with some prospect of reaching his destination. They had sighted three Post-Office Packets beating about in the neighbourhood of Heligoland, apparently unable to proceed, while the master of a Bremen galliot had informed them that both the Elbe and the Weser had been frozen up for three weeks. The prospect appeared hopeless. Where the “Champion” had failed, it seemed useless to expect that a Post-Office clerk would succeed. For a few days, therefore, the matter drifted; but on the 4th January Mr. Freeling was summoned to Downing Street, and in the course of the interview which he had with Ministers so much stress was laid on the necessity of making a great immediate effort to obtain the mails and despatches which were lying at Cuxhaven, that on his return to the city he at once selected Mr. Henry Chamberlayne for the duty, and instructed him to make ready for an immediate departure. At Downing Street the opinion was held that the conditions of weather which rendered it impracticable to reach the mouth of the Elbe might admit of a landing at Norden in Friesland, from which place a journey overland to Hamburg ought to offer no insuperable difficulties. A sloop of war was sent round to Yarmouth, where it took up Mr. Chamberlayne, with two King’s messengers, and at once set sail in company with a Post-Office Packet and a lugger. The latter craft was to be detached to obtain the mails at Heligoland, and bring them on to Norden, whither the sloop and the Packet were to proceed direct. The scheme failed hopelessly however. It proved absolutely impossible to land either at Norden or elsewhere within striking distance of Hamburg; and after beating about the North Sea for ten days, wearing themselves out in ineffectual efforts to accomplish their mission, Mr. Chamberlayne and the King’s messengers returned with the report that the thing was impracticable, and that no mails must be looked for until the weather moderated. Their report, though in the main true enough, and made only after very great efforts to succeed, was already partially disproved in advance. A daring officer of the Yarmouth station had demonstrated that the ice blockade was not impenetrable, and had shown that on a service of this nature the proper person to despatch was a seaman, and one moreover to whom the navigation of the stormy North Sea was thoroughly familiar.