He even consented to allow 6,000 troops from some minor State--Belgium was suggested--to support the International Commission for reorganising the Government of an autonomous Bulgaria. This scheme was to have been adopted by the Porte at a Plenary Conference. Relying on the support of Lord Beaconsfield, and misled by the denunciations of Lord Salisbury which appeared in the Ministerial Press--then busy manufacturing failure for the English representatives at the Conference--the Porte met the demands of the Powers for reform, by proclaiming a grotesque Parliamentary Constitution for the Ottoman Empire. But it obstinately refused to grant the reforms demanded by the Conference, which accordingly broke up on the 20th of January, 1877. The Ambassadors of the Powers were then recalled from Constantinople. On the 8th of December (1876) a National Conference, under the presidency of the Duke of Westminster, and representing not only the heads of the Whig nobility, but most of the leaders of literature, science, and art, the High Church clergy, the Nonconformists, and politicians of every shade of Liberal opinion, met in St. James’s Hall to condemn Lord Beaconsfield’s policy, and protest against England giving armed aid to Turkey. Early in 1876 the death of Lady Augusta Stanley, wife of the Dean of Westminster, removed one of the Queen’s most trusted friends. She had been for many years in personal attendance on her Majesty, and her services were so valuable that for many years her marriage with Dean Stanley had been postponed simply because the Royal Family could not spare her from their domestic circle. This gentle lady, throughout her life of unobtrusive usefulness at the Deanery of Westminster, served as one of the connecting-links between the upper, the middle, and the lower classes. She was as well known and as well loved in the dismal “slums” of London as in the radiant circle of the Court, and her death somewhat dimmed the brightness of the London season of 1876. It was a feverish, ill-conditioned season, agitated by financial scandals, by the pressure of hard times, by the failure of trade due to the uncertainty of the political situation, and by fierce and factious controversies as to the relative merits of Turks and Eastern Christians. To be in the mode one had to affect a strong admiration, not only for the ethics of the Koran, but for those of the Bashi-Bazouk, and a compassionate regret that Christianity had failed to elevate the European subjects of the Sultan, to the plane of Asiatic civilisation. The china mania, or craze for collecting old pottery, represented the fashionable movement in Art. Rinking, or skating on roller-skates in very mixed assemblies,[98] was the favourite form of physical recreation, and persons of quality kept their intellects alive by holding the spelling competitions known as “Spelling Bees.” Besides the “hard times” due to the collapse of investments, the Colorado