_February 13th._--The political wheel turns rapidly round, and strange events occur, none more remarkable than John Russell's career during the last month, and the unexpected positions in which he successively appears. A few weeks ago breaking up his own Government, deeply offending colleagues and friends, and making himself generally odious, then trying to form a Government and finding nobody willing to act with him; he appeared to be in the most painful position of isolation, and everybody expected that his anomalous and unsatisfactory state would render him mischievous, and soon conduct him into a troublesome opposition to the Government. Very differently have matters turned out. He began by evincing a good and friendly spirit, and scarcely is the Government formed, when Clarendon proposes to him to go to Vienna as Plenipotentiary to treat for peace, and John at once accepts the offer, and yesterday morning his mission was publicly announced. It was a happy stroke of Clarendon's in all ways, and it was wise in Lord John to accept it, for it has all the appearance of a patriotic and unselfish act, will cause his recent misdeeds to be forgotten, and replace him in the high situation from which he was fallen. It is a very good thing for him to be thus withdrawn from Parliament for a time. There he is always in danger of saying and doing something foolish or rash, and it will leave his followers in a condition to attach themselves to the Government without abandoning their allegiance to him, which will relieve all parties from embarrassment.[1] [Footnote 1: The Conference of the Great Powers which was to open at Vienna, to which Lord John Russell was sent as British Plenipotentiary, had been convoked for the purpose of negotiating on the basis of the four points which contained the demands of the belligerent Allies and had been accepted as a basis of negotiation by the Emperor of Russia. These points were as follows:-- 1. That Russia should abandon all control over Moldavia, Wallachia, and Servia. 2. That Russia should relinquish her claims to control the mouths of the Danube. 3. That all Treaties calculated to give Russia a preponderance in the Black Sea should be abrogated. 4. That Russia should renounce the claim she made to an exclusive right to protect the Christians in the Ottoman Dominions. It was on the third of these points that the principal difficulty of the negotiation arose, and that the Conference failed to conclude a peace.]