It is scarcely worth repeating that he objected, in a good-natured manner, to the designation of Baron Sacken’s note in the despatch as “a formal note,” observing that a formal note always commenced with “the undersigned,” and not the first person. This was intended to be an informal note, and that was the reason it had been submitted to Mr. Livingston before it was transmitted to the Department of State. I congratulate you that this unpleasant affair has had such an auspicious termination. We shall, I think, hear no more complaints from this quarter, on the subject of publications in the American newspapers, especially if the editor of the _Globe_ should be a little more circumspect in his course hereafter. In regard to the subject of Polish affairs, the treatment of which by the _Globe_ was the occasion of Baron Sacken’s imprudent note, it will be seen hereafter that the emperor was peculiarly sensitive to the comments of the foreign press. Mr. Buchanan, who had the best opportunity for observation while he was in St. Petersburg, formed the opinion that the personal attacks upon the emperor, on account of the conduct of his government towards the Poles, with which the English, French, and American journals abounded, were to a certain extent unjust; that the inveterate national hatreds with which the Russian and Polish races regarded each other, were at the bottom of most of the difficulties with which the emperor had to contend; and that the fact that Russian officers were intrusted with power in Poland over a race whom they hated and by whom they were hated in turn, inevitably led to many of the cruelties and oppressions with which the world outside of Russia resounded, and which were charged upon the emperor personally, as if he had designed them. Buchanan did not palliate or excuse the conduct of the Russian government towards the Poles; nor does he seem on any occasion, when it was proper for him to refer to it, to have allowed any one to suppose that he defended it. But in writing to his own Government or to his friends at home, he did not hesitate to say that he thought many of the causes which produced the oppression that so roused the indignation of the world, lay deep in the national hatred between the two races, and were not to be imputed to an arbitrary and cruel temper in the emperor.