Prince Alexander is young, and as inexperienced as his people, but those who know him best have confidence in his good sense, and he is said to be not unlike the late Prince Albert in character. He will need all his good qualities to attain success; and if successful, he will certainly deserve to be ranked with the Prince Consort and King Leopold. His work certainly involves more self-denial than either of theirs, and not less tact and good sense. He was no doubt elected through the influence of Russia; but he is no mere creature of the Czar, and has no desire to act as a Russian agent. On the contrary, he is heartily in sympathy with the liberal ideas of the West, and anxious to secure the goodwill of England. Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Palgrave, the English Consul-General, this does not seem to the Bulgarians so hopeless a task as it once did. The Prince was received by his people with the greatest enthusiasm. No sovereign was ever more heartily welcomed, and each stage of his journey was a new triumph. He probably appreciated this all the more from the fact that his visit to Constantinople was made as disagreeable as possible. He was first refused permission to come at all, on the pretence that his life would be in danger. This plea was too absurd to deceive any one, but it might have caused serious difficulty if he had not appealed to the Great Powers, and at the same time manifested a disposition to conciliate the Porte by proposing to limit his stay at Constantinople to a visit of a few hours. He arrived in the Bosphorus in the morning, and left in the afternoon. He was received by the Sultan, but was told that owing to the pressure of business his Firman was not ready, and could not be delivered to him. No Bulgarian was allowed to approach him, and no boat allowed to go out to his steamer. Large bodies of troops were stationed along his route and about the Russian Embassy, and he was treated very much like a prisoner of State. It is not easy to understand why this farce was played by the Turks, or what they expected to gain by it. They probably refused the permission in the first place with the intention of treating him as an ordinary Turkish Vali, and sending his Firman to be read in public at Tirnova by a Turkish official; but after the failure of this plan there was no obvious reason for treating him as they did at Constantinople. Some have supposed that it was intended as a studied insult to the Prince, others that it was an elaborate practical joke played upon the Russian Embassy, which had at one time suggested that it was unnecessary for the Prince to come to Constantinople, as other vassal Princes had always done. But whatever may have been the motive which prompted this singular treatment, it only served to make the reception of the Prince the next day at Varna more impressive, and to give more importance to the wild enthusiasm of his new subjects, who could not have received him with greater joy if he had