but that is no reason why we should think they are so in fact."

Some of his memoranda on that most troublesome and embarrassing question, the policy of England to wards the Ottoman Porte, are well worth the attention of statesmen at this moment. Here is what the Prince says, in a "Memorandum for the Consideration of the Cabinet," in October 1853, the whole of which has well deserved republication in this biography : *

"Throughout the transaction we have taken distinctly the part of Turkey as against Russia. The motives which have guided us have been mainly three:

"1. We considered Turkey in the right and Russia in the wrong, and could not see without indignation the unprovoked attempt of a strong Power to oppress a weak one.

"2. We felt the paramount importance of not allowing Russia to obtain in an underhand way, or by a legal form, a hold over Turkey, which she would not have ventured to seek by

open conquest.

"3. We were most anxious for the preservation of the peace of Europe, which could not fail to be endangered by open hostilities between Turkey and Russia.

"These motives must be pronounced just and laudable, and ought still to guide our conduct. By the order to our fleet, however, to protect the Turkish territory, and by the declaration of war now issued by the Turks, the third and perhaps most important object of our policy has been decidedly placed in jeopardy. In acting as auxiliaries to the Turks, we ought to be quite sure that they have no object in view foreign to our duty and interests; that they do not drive at war whilst we aim at peace; that they do not, instead of merely resisting the attempt of Russia to obtain a protectorate over the Greek population incompatible with their own independence, seek to obtain themselves the power of imposing a more oppressive rule of two millions of fanatic Mussul

*

mans over twelve millions of Christians; that they do not try to turn the tables upon the weaker Power, now that, backed by England and France, they have themselves become the stronger."

"It will be said that England and Europe have a strong interest, setting all Turkish considerations aside, that Constantinople and the Turkish territory should not fall into the hands of Russia, and that they should in the last extremity even go to war to pre

vent such an overthrow of the balance of power.

This must be admitted, and such a war may be right and wise. But this would be a war not for the maintenance of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, but merely for the interests of the European powers of civilisation."

No man could have been more averse than the Prince to the subjugation of a Christian population to what he calls, in this same memorandum, "the ignorant, barbarian, and despotic yoke of the Mussulman ;" and Lord Palmerston actually professed to see in its language a design of "expelling from Europe the Sultan and his two millions of Mussulman subjects." But assuredly the writer felt that England had other duties than to "We canjoin in a new crusade. not look on," he says subsequently in a letter to Stockmar, "and see the Porte destroyed by Russia."

It was at the very time that he was giving this wise and independent counsel that he was accused of being the mere agent of Russian ambition. This is the most painful story in Mr Martin's present volume; and he has told it, as it seems to us, with perfect fairness to all parties, without bitterness, though not without a grave indignation. The jealous suspicion which from certain quarters had never ceased to pursue the Prince, rose, at the beginning of the Crimean war, into an open

accusation that "our foreign policy was mainly directed by him." Of this monstrous charge Mr Martin says:

"It was gravely put forward as a great political crime, that the Prince was occasionally present at the interviews between the Queen and her Ministers, that the Queen discussed political questions with him, that he ventured to have opinions on matters of policy foreign and domestic, and that these had weight in guiding and strengthening the opinions of her Majesty. As if the Sovereign must not by the very instincts of nature lean for counsel, in the continuous care of her kingdom, upon her nearest and surest friend, and that friend a Privy Councillor, subject to the same rules as her Ministers, and liable to the same penalties! An active correspondence with foreign Courts was alleged to be kept up by the Prince, with the view of defeating the policy of her Majesty's responsible advisers, and thus secrets of State, it was said, ceased to be secret, where it was most important they

should not be known. No effort was spared by the class of politicians whose cue it was to injure the monarchy, or to resent upon the Prince their personal or political dislikes, to influence public opinion to his prejudice."

Even his dignified patience found the trial a sore one. "The Prince," writes the Queen to Stockmar, "treats it with contempt; but with his keen and very high feeling of honour, he is wounded, hurt, and outraged at the attack on his honour, and is looking very ill, though his spirits do not fail him." The Baron wrote him a long letter of encouragement, remarkable not only for its strong good sense, but for its intelligent view of that complicated growth of centuries, the English constitution, and the true place which the Consort of a Queen regnant ought to hold in it.* It is much too long to reproduce, and too com

plete for fragmentary quotation; as Mr Martin justly says, "the deepest student of our political history will find in it much to learn and profit by." The writer showed clearly that the accusations, when sifted from the actual falsehoods contained in them, amounted after all to no more than this, "that the Prince has acted and now acts as the Queen's private secretary;" and this he maintained to be not only strictly constitutional, but in every way becoming and desirable. He quotes, in support of this view, an opinion given to himself by Lord Grey, before the Royal marriage: "The best thing that could be for the Princess would be to marry soon, and to marry a prince of ability. He, as her bosom friend, would then be her best and safest private secretary."

The Prince in his reply betrays, as he seldom does, an amount of wounded feeling which must have for some time existed :

"A very considerable section of the nation had never given itself the trouble to consider what really is the position of the husband of the Queen regnant.

When I first came over here, I was met by this want of knowledge and unwillingness to give a thought to the position of this luckless personage. Peel cut down my income, Wellington refused me my rank, the Royal Family cried out against the foreign interloper, the Whigs in office were only inclined to concede to me just as much space as I could stand upon. The constitution is silent as to the Consort of the Queen — even Blackstone ignores him; and yet there he was, and not to be done without. As I have kept quiet and caused no scandal, and all went well, no one has ings; and any one who wished to pay troubled himself about me and my dome a compliment at a public dinner or meeting, extolled my wise abstinence from interfering in political matters.'

Now when the present journalistic controversies have brought to light the fact, that I have for years taken an active interest in all political matters, the public, instead of feeling surprise at my reserve, and the tact with which I have avoided thrusting myself forward, fancied itself betrayed, because it felt it had been self-deceived. It has also rushed all at once into a belief in secret correspondence with foreign Courts, intrigues, &c.; for all this is much more probable, than that thirty millions of men in the course of fourteen years should not have discovered that an important personage had during all that time taken a part in their government."

Further on he says:

"Victoria has taken the whole affair greatly to heart, and was excessively indignant at the attacks. Finally, if our courage and cheerfulness have not suffered, our stomachs and digestions have, as they commonly do when the feelings are kept long upon the stretch. Since yesterday I have been quite miserable; to-day I have had to keep to the house, and this is why you get this long letter."

When Parliament met in the following January, Lord Aberdeen brought the whole matter forward in the Upper House, and Lord John Russell in the Commons. Their vindication of the Queen's husband was warmly supported by the leaders on the other side, Lord Derby and Mr Walpole; and Lord Chief Justice Campbell added the weight of his judgment on the point of constitutional law. The defence was complete enough to satisfy the Queen herself, and all reasonable Englishmen ; but disappointed jealousy still raised its voice here and there through the public

by party speakers upon the policy and sometimes even the motives of their opponents. It might appear to one who heard for the first time a parliamentary debate upon a hotlycontested question, or read for the first time the leading articles in which the debate was commented upon by even the higher class of political journals, that her Majesty's Ministers were doing all they could to ruin the country, and her Majesty's Opposition devoting all their brains and energies to save it,-or vice versa, as the case might be. The almost violent language of reproach and retort which are hurled in the heat of debate are merely the at opponents from opposite benches conventional weapons of earnest conviction. It is impossible, perhaps, to mould the iron solidity of English natures into energetic action unless you work them to a whiteheat. But when we read this record of the confidential intercourse between the Crown and its advisers, here disclosed to us with such exceptional fulness, we find, somewhat to our surprise it may be, but surely to the intense satisfaction of all honest men of all opinions-how well the Crown is served. If it be true of England, as it was causti cally said of the world in general, that it is sometimes governed with "infinitely little wisdom," it is at least true that it has been governed of late years with sufficient honesty. Place-hunting and patronage the "loaves and fishes". -are not the ruling principles of English Ministers. Melbourne, Peel, Wellington, Derby, Aberdeen, all in turn command the respect and even the affection of the Queen and Prince, whose servants they are. The Minister who is at first received only with the graciousness of royalty is parted from with the regret of a friend. The conscientious unselfishness which hesitates at taking or retain

ing office is far more conspicuous than eagerness to hold it at the price of self-respect. Party ties and party combinations are no doubt strong; but stronger than all is loyalty to the Crown and to England. Even Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston, whose jealous political rivalry is shown to have caused much trouble and anxiety -obstinate and perverse as they sometimes appear-are unimpeachable as the rest in integrity of purpose.

We have somewhat unwillingly named Lord Palmerston at all, because there will be found in these pages some disclosures which the author could not avoid in setting down a faithful history of the times, but which leave a painful impression. We have no doubt but that Mr Martin has carefully weighed his evidence, and that even where he seems to bear hardest upon the mistakes of one of England's favourite statesmen he has done so not without reluctance, and only because he felt it needful in order to do justice to others. He has been partly compelled to it by the recent publication of some of Lord Palmerston's letters; and he had to dispose and we trust he has done so finally-of the calumnies against the Prince.

But if these volumes of Mr Martin's do something to increase our respect for English Ministers, what shall we say of the noble example here placed on record of the duties of Royalty conscientiously discharged? We set aside, for the moment, that faultless pattern of a pure and happy domestic life, set forth to all classes in the Palace itself this the nation has long admired, and even our wildest republican orators have, to their

credit, acknowledged and appreciated. But how complete an answer is here given to those who would represent the monarchy as a mere ornamental finish to the State! Men talk of the "working classes and the "idle classes :" at least the dead Prince and the living Queen are here shown to have been-not in spite of, but because of their high position-amongst the hardest and the most unselfish workers of their time. And their work will surely last; this record of it should do more than all Acts of Parliament or assertions of prerogative to strengthen the hold of the monarchy upon the heart of England.

We have said but little of the manner in which the author has done his work. He has in fact done it so well as to attain what is perhaps the highest, as it is the most selfdenying virtue of the biographer― he so fills us with his subject that we have little leisure, as we read, to trace in the picture the touches of the master. In having such materials placed unreservedly in his hands, he has enjoyed a most unusual confidence, and accepted what a man of delicate feeling and conscientious nature must have felt to be a grave responsibility-a responsibility to which the highest literary powers would surely have proved unequal, if not combined with the rarer qualifications of sound discretion and scrupulous good taste. It is enough to say that he has in all points fully justified the Queen's selection, and his own acceptance of the task. That he will worthily complete it there can be no doubt, and all readers will look eagerly for his concluding volume. They will not be disappointed if it maintains the high level of the two first.

NEARLY three months have passed away since the prorogation of Parliament; and the sole topic of interest still continues to be the Eastern Question. Not that it has made any progress towards solution, for a civil war has been raging within the empire more particularly affected by it; nor has any clearer perception of its true character and bearings been attained by the public mind, for the "silly season which invariably follows the rising of Parliament set in this year with unusual severity, and the country has been delivered over to the most pernicious agitation ever set afloat within the memory of its oldest inhabitants. That is the period in which, in ordinary times, politicians are content to discuss, in a more or less menacing style, some of the incidents of our own political institutions, life, and customs. This year, under the auspices of a great statesman, who ought to have learnt wisdom from experience-who in office plunged us into war over this very question-who, in America, nearly plunged us into another who, on both sides of the globe, over the Black Sea and the Alabama treaties, has made his country drink the cup of humiliation to the dregs,-under his wise and experienced tuition, public speakers have been heard upon nearly five hundred platforms, arousing the warlike fury of the people, demanding the expulsion of a numerous race from the territory which they have inhabited for centuries; denouncing their own Government for moral and material, if not purposed, complicity with massacre, spoliation, and rape; crediting the Governments of Europe with wise and humane projects, only hindered by the fac

tiousness and selfishness of England; inciting Russia to the accomplishment of purposes which the lives and treasure of Englishmen were only twenty years ago, at the bidding of this very statesman, lavishly expended to prevent.

Before we analyse the character and motives of Mr Gladstone's crusade against the Ministry, let us first recall in a few words what is this Eastern Question. From the commencement of the year we have insisted upon its twofold aspect. First, the maintenance of the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire; second, the im provement of the relations of the Porte to its subjects. In reference to the first, the phrase means something wholly different in the case of Turkey from what it would mean when applied to the other Powers of Europe. Nevertheless, all parties are agreed as to what is meant. Months ago, Lord Derby described it as meaning-" Here is an extensive territory which we all agree to respect, because, if not respected, it would lie open to a general scramble and become the theatre of war." Every one knows that the maintenance of the integrity of the Turkish Empire has been consistent with periodical changes in its internal arrangements, and that the maintenance of its independ ence has been deemed to be consistent with the perpetual interference by other States in its internal affairs, and with a large portion of its subjects being under the collective protection of the guaranteeing Powers. Then, as regards the duty of Great Britain in the whole question (in the present exalted mood of public sentiment, we will not venture to allude to her