“The growth of intimate relations between England and that country France ... was manifestly viewed by him with jealous distrust, calculated as it was to affect most seriously any designs which might be entertained at St. Petersburg for enlarging Russian territory at the expense of Turkey. To detach England from this alliance would naturally be regarded by the Czar as a master-stroke of policy, and the recent conduct of France in the Eastern Question may have seemed to furnish an opening for making the attempt. If, however, as currently believed at the time, one main object of his visit was to ascertain for himself whether this was possible, he must soon have been satisfied to the contrary by the very decided language with which Sir Robert Peel received his suggestions as to the probably selfish action of France, in the event of the affairs of Turkey coming to a crisis” (Sir T. Martyn’s “Life of the Prince Consort,” vol. i. p. 216). Footnote 58: Thornton’s “Foreign Secretaries of the Nineteenth Century,” vol. iii. p. 100. Footnote 59: In 1840 France succeeded in obtaining from the Porte a grant of distinguished privileges in regard to the Holy Land. Footnote 60: Ashley’s “Life of Lord Palmerston,” vol. i. p. 279. Footnote 61: Kinglake’s “History of Crimean War,” vol. i. p. 82. Footnote 62: Baron Brunnon, the Russian Minister, said, to Count Vitzthum, “he knew that his Emperor (Nicholas), relying on Lord Aberdeen’s well-known love of peace, and on the protocol which had been signed by Aberdeen in 1844 under entirely different circumstances, regarded two things impossible: first, that England should declare war against Russia; and secondly, that she should conclude an alliance against Russia with France” (Count Vitzthum’s “St. Petersburg and London,” vol. i. p. 66). Footnote 63: “Men dwelling amidst the snows of Russia are driven by very nature to grow covetous when they hear of the happier lands where all the year round there are roses and long sunny days. And since this people have a seaboard and ports on the Euxine, they are forced by an everlasting policy to desire the command of the straits which lead through the heart of an empire into the midst of that world of which men kindle thoughts when they speak of the Ægean and of Greece, and the Ionian shores, and of Palestine and Egypt, and of Italy, and of France, and of Spain, and the land of the Moors, and of the Atlantic beyond, and the path of ships on the ocean” (Kinglake’s “Invasion of the Crimea,” vol. i. p. 54). Footnote 64: Kinglake’s “Invasion of the Crimea,” vol. i. p. 90. Footnote 65: The Grand Vizier said the mission was meant “to win some important right from Turkey, which would destroy her independence, and that the Czar’s object was to trample under foot the rights of the Porte and the independence of the Sovereign” (Kinglake’s “Invasion of the Crimea,” vol. i. p. 99).