Vienna Note. Cowley told me this war in its present shape and with these vast armaments had gone on insensibly and from small beginnings, nobody could well tell how. In the first instance, the Emperor told Cowley he had no intention of sending any land forces to the East, and when we proposed to him to despatch there a small corps of 5,000 English and 10,000 French he positively declined. Soon after Sir John Burgoyne was sent to examine and report on the state of the country, and he gave an opinion that it would be desirable to send such a force to occupy a fortified position at Gallipoli in case of the Russians making a sudden attack with their fleet on Constantinople, in which case our fleets might be in some danger. Cowley took him to the Emperor, to whom he told his story. The Emperor said he thought his reasons good, and this was a definite and tangible object, and he would send the troops. When Raglan was offered the command of the forces we were to send out, he said he would not go with less than 20,000 men; and when we agreed to send this force, the French said if we sent 20,000 they must send 40,000, and so the expedition began, and it has since swelled to its present magnitude--our's in consequence of the clamour here and pressure from without, and their's to keep pace with our's in relative proportions. With regard to the Vienna Note, Clarendon said Stratford never would have let the Turks sign it, and if they had recalled him the Cabinet here would have been broken up, Palmerston would have gone out, Stratford would have come home frantic and have proclaimed to the whole country that the Turks had been sacrificed and betrayed, and the uproar would have been so great that it would have been impossible to carry out the intention. I think the first answer is more weighty than the last, and that the popular clamour and Palmerston's secession ought to have been encountered at whatever hazard rather than persist in the fatal course which could hardly fail to lead, and did eventually lead, us into this deplorable war. CHAPTER VIII.