Mr. Brammell, our ‘present Minister at Athens,’ as the _Times_ continued to designate him, as though to imply that the appointment might not be permanent, was an excellent man, of that stamp of which diplomacy has more--who consider that the Court to which they are accredited concentrates for the time the political interests of the globe. That any one in Europe thought, read, spoke, or listened to anything but what was then happening in Greece, Mr. Brammell could not believe. That France or Prussia, Spain or Italy, could divide attention with this small kingdom; that the great political minds of the Continent were not more eager to know what Comoundouros thought and Bulgaris required, than all about Bismarck and Gortschakoff, he could not be brought to conceive; and in consequence of these convictions, he was an admirable Minister, and fully represented all the interests of his country. As that admirable public instructor, the _Levant Herald_, had frequently mentioned Atlee’s name, now as the guest of Kulbash Pasha, now as having attended some public ceremony with other persons of importance, and once as ‘our distinguished countryman, whose wise suggestions and acute observations have been duly accepted by the imperial cabinet,’ Brammell at once knew that this distinguished countryman should be entertained at dinner, and he sent him an invitation. That habit--so popular of late years--to send out some man from England to do something at a foreign Court that the British ambassador or Minister there either has not done, or cannot do, possibly ought never to do, had invested Atlee in Brammell’s eyes with the character of one of those semi-accredited inscrutable people whose function it would seem to be to make us out the most meddlesome people in Europe. Of course Brammell was not pleased to see him at Athens, and he ran over all the possible contingencies he might have come for. It might be the old Greek loan, which was to be raked up again as a new grievance. It might be the pensions that they would not pay, or the brigands that they would not catch--pretty much for the same reasons--that they could not. It might be that they wanted to hear what Tsousicheff, the new Russian Minister, was doing, and whether the farce of the ‘Grand Idea’ was advertised for repetition. It might be Crete was on the _tapis_, or it might be the question of the Greek envoy to the Porte that the Sultan refused to receive, and which promised to turn out a very pretty quarrel if only adroitly treated. The more Brammell thought of it, the more he felt assured this must be the reason of Atlee’s visit, and the more indignant he grew that extra-official means should be employed to investigate what he had written seventeen despatches to explain--seventeen despatches, with nine ‘inclosures,’ and a ‘private and confidential,’ about to appear in a blue-book.