corresponding degree. A peculiar type of Ambassador is he who arrives on the scene unduly advanced in life, “un peu gaga, ramolli,” whose mechanical style of address and response acts like a yawn on his surroundings. There is again the Ambassador who has been sent to Constantinople in order to be got decently out of the way from his own country. He is known to be in the wake of business, and spites the diplomatic world by giving no entertainment beyond a cup of tea, thus saving a good proportion of his salary, but thereby inculcating the habit of economy among a class only too readily given to spend money. It was said of one such that he “stole like a raven,” and had become a millionaire since he came to Constantinople. He managed to keep on excellent terms with the wily representative of another great country, and more particularly with certain journalists who might easily have exposed his menées. One of his exploits was to join the representative of another Power in bullying the Sultan and ultimately blackmailing the Turks shamefully, who thus had good reason to hurl their maledictions at his head when he departed. A pitiable figure of the diplomatic world is the poor Ambassador: one whose private income is unequal to the calls upon his position and whose life is besides bankrupt in happiness. He sits alone in glittering dejection in his beautiful palace, with no money to entertain and no wife to comfort him and cheer his solitude. Diplomatic Constantinople is exceptional in that an Ambassador and his staff live out of social contact with the nation to which they are accredited, and are thus thrown much more on their own resources—those of their immediate circle and nationality—than anywhere else in Europe. The Embassies form a social centre for those who come under their influence such as is not readily met with elsewhere in European society. I need only mention, as far as England is concerned, the brilliant names of the past, the many references to be found in diplomatic memoirs to such men as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, Sir Henry Layard, Lord Dufferin, Sir William White, and last, but not least, the late Sir Nicholas O’Conor, all of whom exercised a beneficial influence over those who passed their time of diplomatic apprenticeship under them. Hence the rôle of an Ambassador at Constantinople—and partly that of an Ambassadress as well—is of an educational nature. Many a young attaché has found in the wife of his chief a motherly and sympathetic confidante whose counsel has kept him out of mischief in this dangerous centre of temptation. For the family life of the English diplomatic world in Constantinople has long been an exemplary one: one to look up to. English diplomacy can boast of having always preserved personal integrity, an aloofness from every species of sordid and illegitimate transaction and from all concession-mongering and cadging for favours of any and every description in the Turkish capital. The English