two long telegrams from Vienna were published in the Times, of date 28th of April and 6th of May, semi-officially denying that Austria was conspiring to make a dash for Salonica. Her sole desire now was to stand by the Treaty of Berlin. Count Karolyi had some interviews with Lord Granville on the subject, and in return for assurances of Austrian loyalty and goodwill, he pressed for some expression of opinion from Mr. Gladstone that would allay irritation in Vienna. Mr. Hayward seems to have been asked to use his influence over Mr. Gladstone to get him to make this explanation. Mr. Gladstone accordingly, in a letter to Count Karolyi (4th of May), declared that since he had become a Minister he had resolved not to defend by argument polemical language which he had used in a position of “greater freedom and less responsibility.” He wished Austria well. He had threatened to thwart her policy solely because the evidence at his command indicated that she was hostile to the freedom of the rising nationalities of Turkey. But he accepted the assurances of Count Karolyi that Austria had no designs against that freedom, and added, “Had I been in possession of such an assurance as I have now been able to receive, I never would have uttered any one of the words which your Excellency justly describes as of a painful and wounding character.” The moment this letter was published, the Austrian organs in England, indeed, every Tory speaker and writer, made political capital out of it. The Premier was held up to odium for having humiliated England by an apology which was, undoubtedly, somewhat too exuberant. The people would have been better pleased if Mr. Gladstone had replied that an explanation should have been sought when it was possible for him to give it as the candidate for Midlothian. To ask for it now was to assume that a foreign potentate had a right to expect the Prime Minister of England to apologise for what he might choose to say, as a private person, fighting a contested election. [Illustration: OLD PALACE OF THE PRINCE OF MONTENEGRO, CETTIGNE.]