The solitary result of the Crimean War, says Mr. Spencer Walpole, was to “set back the clock for some fourteen years.”[276] Still he seems to think that it “was perhaps worth some sacrifice, to prove that England was still ready to strike a blow for a weak neighbour whom she believed to be oppressed.” This would have been a gain had it added to English prestige. But the war really diminished that prestige. M. De Tocqueville, after returning from a Continental tour, said to the late Mr. Senior, “I heard universal and unqualified praise of the heroic courage of your soldiers, but at the same time I found spread abroad the persuasion that the importance of England had been overrated as a military power properly so called--a power which consists in administering as much as in fighting, and, above all, that it was impossible (and this had never before been believed) for her to raise large armies, even under the most pressing circumstances. I never heard anything like it since my childhood. You are supposed to be entirely dependent on us.... A year ago we probably overrated your military power. I believe that now we most mischievously underrate it. A year ago nothing alarmed us more than a whisper of the chance of a war with England. We talk of one now with great composure. We believe that it would not be difficult to throw 100,000 men upon your shores, and we believe that half that number would walk over England or Ireland.”[277] After peace had been proclaimed, public life in England stagnated for a time, and party rancour temporarily disappeared. Ministers and Ex-Ministers met in society on the friendliest terms, and Lord Malmesbury describes a dinner party which the Queen gave on the 7th of May in honour of Baron Brunnow, at which the leaders of both factions were present--“the happy family I call them,” says the Queen in a letter to King Leopold. “Lord John Russell was there,” says Lord Malmesbury, “and very civil to me, as when I arrived he crossed the room to come to speak to me--a thing he never did before. He began by saying ‘You gave it them well last night,’[278] and seemed quite delighted at the Government being bullied.... I had to take Lady Clarendon to dinner. She was at first very cross, but I ended by laughing her out of her bad humour.”[279] A slight ripple on the calm waters was due to the suspension of diplomatic relations with the United States. In raising recruits under the Foreign Enlistment Act, it seems some overzealous British agents had given the American Government not unreasonable cause to complain that we were violating their law during the war. The dispute became acute, when the British Minister to the United States was requested to leave Washington--but the quarrel was not a serious one. “The Americans,” Prince Albert informs Stockmar on the 16th June, “have sent away our Minister, but accompanied the act with such assurances of friendship and affection, and of their perfect readiness to adjust all