The day following the answer came: very civil, but declining on the ground of her youth and inexperience, and not feeling equal to such a position. The same day the Emperor proposed to the Empress. Cowley says he is evidently much changed since his marriage, and that he is conscious of his unpopularity and the additional insecurity in which it has involved his position. _February 19th._--Lord Cowley told me something more about the marriage. He saw the Queen on Thursday (17th), who told him all about it. The first step was taken by Morny, who wrote to Malmesbury, and requested him to propose it, stating that the Emperor's principal object in it was to 'resserrer les liens entre les deux pays.' Malmesbury accordingly wrote to the Queen on the subject. She was annoyed, justly considering that the proposal, with the reason given, placed her in a very awkward situation, and that it ought not to have been mentioned to her at all. The result was what has been already stated, but with this difference, that the Queen set her face against the match, although the girl, if left to herself, would have accepted the offer. However, nobody knows this, and they are very anxious these details should not transpire. The two accounts I have given of this transaction seem to me to afford a good illustration of the uncertainty of the best authenticated historical statements. Nothing could appear more to be relied on than the accuracy of Cowley's first account to me, and if I had not seen him again, or if he had not imparted to me his conversation with the Queen, that account would have stood uncorrected, and an inaccurate version of the story would have been preserved, and might hereafter have been made public, and, unless corrected by some other contemporaneous narrative, would probably have been taken as true. The matter in itself is not very important, but such errors unquestionably are liable to occur in matters of greater moment, and actually do occur, fully justifying the apocryphal character which has been ascribed to almost every historical work.[1] The Queen seems to be intensely curious about the Court of France and all details connected with it, and on the other hand Louis Napoleon has been equally curious about the etiquette observed in the English Court, and desirous of assimilating his to ours, which in great measure he appears to have done. DISRAELI'S ATTACK ON SIR CHARLES WOOD.