confidence and goodwill, and lately, when he was talking to Palmerston of the satisfactory state of his relations to the Queen, and of the utility it was to his government that it should be so, Palmerston said, ‘And it is likewise a very good thing that she has such boundless confidence in her Secretary for Foreign Affairs, when after all there is nothing she cares about so much.’”[322] And yet it cannot be said that in foreign affairs Lord Palmerston had won any conspicuous triumph for British diplomacy. The dispute with Persia did not end gloriously for England. It is true that the controversy over Neufchâtel, in which the Queen, owing to her close relations with the Royal Family of Prussia, was deeply interested, terminated happily.[323] But on the other hand, the vexed question of the Danubian Principalities was still open, and it was almost certain that it would lead to the diplomatic humiliation of England. The future government of the two Principalities was left by the Congress of Paris to be settled by the Treaty Powers. Russia desired their union under a Native prince. France and Sardinia desired their union under a foreign prince, fearing that a Native ruler would soon become a mere satrap of the Czar. Turkey and Austria desired to keep the Principalities separate, and this view was warmly supported by Lord Palmerston and Lord Clarendon. At the Congress of Paris, France had insidiously suggested to Austria that she should take the Principalities, the object being to justify new territorial arrangements on the Rhine in French interests. After that proposal was rejected, the French Emperor drew closer and closer to Russia; but when the General Election gave Palmerston a solid majority, Russia became effusively civil to England. When, however, England persisted in acting with Austria and the Porte, thereby resisting territorial changes, which could only be made [Illustration: THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. (_From a Photograph by Bassano._)] at the expense of Austrian and Turkish interests,[324] the French Emperor took umbrage at our diplomacy. But Persigny’s influence was successfully exerted to hold him true to the Anglo-French alliance, Persigny’s chief argument being that a war with England would so convulse France that, in the general confusion, the Bonapartist dynasty might disappear. Napoleon III., therefore, determined to pay the Queen a private visit, and, though her Majesty was not anxious to receive him, she consented to do so, in the hope and belief that personal communications between the two sovereigns might serve some useful purpose.