[Sidenote: CHANCES OF WAR.] History is full of examples of the slight and accidental causes on which the greatest events turn, and of such examples the last war seems very full. Charles Wyndham told me that nothing but a very thick fog which happened on the morning of Inkerman prevented the English army being swept from their position and totally discomfited. The Russians could see nothing, lost their own way, and mistook the position of the British troops. Had the weather been clear so that they had been able to execute their plans, we could not have resisted them; a defeat instead of the victory we gained would have changed the destiny of the world, and have produced effects which it is impossible to contemplate or calculate. On the other hand, nothing but miscalculation and bad management prevented the capture of Sebastopol immediately after Alma. My nephew is just returned from a voyage with Lord Lyons to the Crimea, where he went all over the scenes of the late contest, all the positions, and the ruins of Sebastopol as well as the northern forts. He was well treated by the Russians, who showed him everything, and talked over the events of the war with great frankness. They told him that if the allies had marched at once after the battle on the north side, no resistance could have been made, and the other side must have fallen. We had long known that the north side would have fallen if we had attacked it at once. Frank asked the Russian officer whether there was any bad feeling on the part of the Russian army towards the French or English, and he said none whatever, but a great deal towards the Austrians, and that they desired nothing more than an opportunity of fighting them. He also said that they had been misled by our newspapers, from which they obtained all their information, and thinking that the announcements there of an intended invasion of the Crimea were made for the purpose of deceiving them, they had withdrawn a great many troops from the Crimea, so that while Sebastopol had been emptied of the garrison to increase the army of Menschikoff, the Russians had not more than 30,000 or 35,000 men at the Alma.