When Alexander himself left the realm of vague ideals and descended to details, his impulses often took a form somewhat like the proposal made to Castlereagh at Vienna, “We are going to do a beautiful and grand thing. We are going to raise up Poland by giving her as king one of my brothers or the husband of my sister.” The British statesman does not seem to have been immediately carried away with this generous design. It was consistent with the character and temper of the Congress of Vienna that there flowed in it innumerable currents and counter-currents of intrigue. In January, 1815, the representatives of England, France and Austria agreed upon a secret treaty of alliance, directed against Russia and Prussia. When Napoleon returned from Elba he found this document and showed it to the Russian Minister before tearing it up. The first half of the nineteenth century was dominated by the principles that had prevailed at Vienna. In the details of diplomatic intercourse, indirection, bribery and deceit continue to prevail although in a less flamboyant fashion than in the eighteenth century. As the principle of nationalism comes more clearly to emerge, the secrecy of diplomatic _methods_ is distinguished from the secrecy of diplomatic _policy_ with increasing condemnation of the latter; a greater sense of responsibility to the nation as a whole begins to show itself, and the traditional resources of diplomacy are no longer quite adequate. Nevertheless, the diplomatic literature of the age still looks upon diplomacy as essentially a tactical pursuit, conditioned by the continuous enmity of states. The French writer, Garden, in his _Traité de diplomatie_, gives the following elucidation: “Put on this plane, diplomacy becomes like a transcendent manœuvering of which the entire globe is the theater, where states are army corps, where the lines of combat change unceasingly, and where one never knows who is a friend, and who is an enemy. It is a political labyrinth in the midst of which ability alone is capable of moving with ease and without being smothered by detail.” The memoirs and anecdotal literature of the period afford numerous instances of the persistence of that desire for cleverness in dealing with secrets, which often brings about amusing incidents. At the time when Frankfort was the capital of the North German Confederation, the Austrian government provided its representative there (Count Rechberg) with duplicate instructions; one to the effect that he must exhaust every energy to maintain the most friendly and mutually helpful relations with Prussia; the other of quite the opposite tenor. The former was to be shown to the Prussians. Unfortunately, at the critical moment the Austrian Minister showed the wrong letter to Bismarck, who guessed the situation; suppressing his amusement as best he could, Bismarck tried to console the embarrassed Austrian by promising not to take any advantage of the slip.