Pacha from establishing at Constantinople the seat of a new empire, which, be it what it might, would not have been Turkish. What were the reasons of Great Britain and France it is not now easy to say. Those of Russia are patent: she wanted Constantinople to remain in the hands of the Turks until she herself was in a position to seize it. From that time the Ottoman Empire became the "sick man of Europe," around whose bedside all the other powers were watching, each determined that none of the others should gain the greater share in his estates when he died. In 1844 they formally adopted him into the family of the nations of Europe, and promised that his safety should be the common care of all. [Footnote I: His mother was a Creole, a native of Martinique, and cousin of that other Creole who came to be the Empress Josephine. She had been sent to France to be educated, and on her voyage homeward was captured by an Algerine pirate who sold her to the Dey, by whom she was sent as a present to the Sultan, whose favorite Sultana she became.] Russia, in the mean while, was busy in endeavoring to make herself the patron of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, and when the time appeared ripe, entered upon those overt acts which led to the Crimean war. Out of this war the Ottoman Empire came with considerable apparent advantage. The man supposed to be sick unto death showed that there was unexpected vitality--of a spasmodic sort indeed--in his Asiatic members; and again there were hopes and fears of his ultimate convalescence, if not of restoration to robust health. That those hopes and fears were baseless is now clear enough. Never was the sick man so feeble as within the last five years.