gardens of the Bosphorus, now foiling, "in his grand quiet way,"
the Czar's ferocious Christianity, or torturing his baffled
ambassador by scornful concession of the points which he formally
demanded but did not really want; or crushing with "thin, tight,
merciless lips and grand overhanging Canning brow" the presumptuous
French commander who had dared to enter his presence with a plot
for undermining England's influence in the partnership of the
campaign. Was he, we ask as we end the fascinating description,
was he, what Bright and the Peace Party proclaimed him to be, the
cause of the Crimean War? The Czar's personal dislike to him--a
caprice which has never been explained {20}--exasperated no doubt
to the mind of Nicholas the repulse of Menschikoff's demands; but
that the precipitation of the prince and his master had put the
Russian Court absolutely in the wrong is universally admitted. It
has been urged against him that his recommendation of the famous
Vienna Note to the Porte was official merely, and allowed the
watchful Turks to assume his personal approbation of their refusal.
It may be so; his biographer does not admit so much: but it is
obvious that the Turks were out of hand, and that no pressure from
Lord Stratford could have persuaded them to accept the Note.
Further, the "Russian Analysis of the Note," escaping shortly
afterwards from the bag of diplomatic secrecy, revealed to our
Cabinet the necessity of those amendments to the Note on which the
Porte had insisted. And lastly, the passage of the Dardanelles by
our fleet, which more than any overt act made war inevitable, was
ordered by the Government at home against Lord Stratford's counsel.
Between panic-stricken statesmen and vacillating ambassadors, Lord
Clarendon on one side, M. de la Cour on the other, the Eltchi
stands like Tennyson's promontory of rock,