The Peace is the accepted name for the condition which succeeded in England the generation which had been spent in the wars with France and the first Napoleon. For forty years after the Battle of Waterloo (1815), this condition was unruffled by actual hostilities between England and any European power, unless that "untoward event" the Battle of Navarino (1827) and the bombardment of Antwerp (1832) should be so considered. Petty wars with the native princes of India and on the Afghan frontier occurred from time to time, it is true, and the infamous Opium War was waged against China (1839-42), but until the Crimean Campaigns (1853-56) and the Indian Mutiny (1857) the war spirit of the nation was never stirred to its depths. Continental Europe during these years passed through many convulsions. Bloody revolutions shook many states, and Prussia, Austria, Denmark, Turkey, and Italy were involved in wars. The hand that piloted England among the rocks of the tortuous channel of foreign politics for nearly a generation was that of Lord Palmerston, for nearly twenty years Foreign Secretary and twice Prime Minister of the Queen's government. Henry John Temple was the descendant of an historic English family, and was born on the Temple estates at Broadlands in Hampshire, October 20, 1784. He was, therefore, four years older than Sir Robert Peel, whom he long survived, and twelve years the senior of his sometime colleague, Lord John Russell. From Harrow, where he was reckoned the jolliest boy in the school, and the pluckiest fighter, he was sent to Edinburgh in charge of Dugald Stewart, one of the great Scottish teachers of the time, and thence, after three years under exceptional educative influences, to Cambridge. His father's death had given him the title of Viscount Palmerston in the Irish peerage, and before receiving his degree, his ambition led him to offer himself to the university as its candidate for the House of Commons. Though rejected there, a pocket borough was provided for him, and in 1807, at the age of twenty-three, he took his seat as a member for Newtown, a borough in which he had never set foot. An office was soon found for him in the Perceval government as Secretary at War, a post which was charged with the supervision and control of military expenditure and accounts--no small responsibility at this juncture. During his score of years in this capacity the young Palmerston gave evidence of superior abilities as a bureau chief, while on the floor of the House his speeches marked him as a stanch asserter of the power of England, and a dangerous man to trifle with--so quick and powerful was his gift of repartee. During the brief ministries of Canning and Goderich he received flattering offers of advancement, leaving the cabinet in May, 1828, with Canning's followers, who opposed the government of Wellington.