every thing else, it resembles it in this, that it wearies by continuous splendour. And yet, even in saying thus much, one almost dreads to be unjust, so lively is the impression produced by its animation, its clearness, its copiousness, its fire; and with such remorseless power does he wield in turn his favourite weapons-bantering humour, invective, and, above all, his terrible irony. In short, despite all the faults that may justly be attributed to it, the book remains a great intellectual effort; and while we feel that Mr. Kinglake has set himself to dazzle our imaginations, disarm our judgments, and carry us away the helpless captives of his literary skill, it is impossible to deny him the praise of, at all events, a temporary success.

It is the more necessary, however, to allude to these characteristics of Mr. Kinglake's style, because they are the result of habits of thought. This perpetual effort at picturesqueness does not indeed alter facts, but it may marshal them, give to this undue prominence, and keep that too much in the background. Even where it does not, it makes us suspect that it has done so, and so destroys our trust in the narrator. But when this love of word-painting is combined with an intense love of estimating character, of scrutinising men's motives and feelings and passions, it betrays a writer into statements which, if not quite, are at least very nearly, incapable of proof. It would, for instance, be very curious to know how Mr. Kinglake obtained so complete a knowledge of the feelings which influenced the Czar and Lord Stratford in the duel which he so dramatically depicts. In sober reality, such statements are mere inferences, such as all men draw erroneously every day, even in the case of their most intimate friends, and which should never be put forward by a historian except hesitatingly, and with a statement of the facts on which they rest. For instance, soon after Lord Stratford returned to Constantinople, Prince Mentschikoff received despatches from St. Petersburg; and he then began to use a tone of violence to the Porte to which he had not before resorted. Will it be believed that Mr. Kinglake proceeds to infer, "from the known bent and temper of the Czar's mind," what were his instructions to his ambassador, and actually writes for him a long imaginary despatch? "By the time you receive this," Count Nesselrode is supposed to say, "Stratford Canning will be at Constantinople. He has ever thwarted his majesty the Emperor. The inscrut able will of Providence has bestowed upon him great gifts of mind, which he has used for no other purpose than to baffle and humiliate the Emperor and keep down the orthodox church. Again, the Emperor commands me to say you must strike

....

terror.

Use a fierce insulting tone." Mr. Kinglake cannot

of course imagine that any Russian statesman ever did write, or even that the Czar ever consciously thought in such a strain as this; still, as a piece of sarcasm, it is certainly powerful. But what would be well enough in a novelist is out of place in a grave historian. The supposed despatch has not even the kind of truth which is to be found in the imaginary speeches of Thucydides or Livy.

So in the second chapter of his book Mr. Kinglake reminds us, that under the law of nations any state has the right by force of arms to prevent or redress a wrong done to another state, but that its duty is not coextensive with its right. Whether it will interfere, depends on whether it is its interest to do so, and whether it has the power to wage war with success. In other words, nations are actuated in redressing the wrongs of other nations by those ordinary motives of expediency by which human beings generally are actuated. That this is stated with great clearness and force is true enough, but it does not seem to be a doctrine which contains any great mystery or remarkable novelty. Still it is absolutely necessary that Mr. Kinglake, if he states it at all, should state it in a way which will strike the fancy; and it is accordingly throughout his book dressed out as the Usage, and the great Usage. In this pompous form, and with a capital letter, it really bears, until closely examined, a very fair resemblance to a great discovery in politics. But surely this resort to the expedients of Sir Bulwer Lytton is a little beneath him. And as this perpetual straining after effect, being executed with vigour and success, at first fascinates the reader, so, when its influence has passed off, the mind suffers from a sort of reaction, and unconsciously avenges itself by undervaluing what before it had set too high. Mr. Kinglake's earliest critics could see no faults; perhaps now the tendency is to depreciate him more than is just. For this, however, he must thank himself,-and that the more because he himself sets the example of partiality. In the Emperor of the French and his abettors he can see no merit. Nothing ever emanates from them that is wise or honest. Certainly it is not wonderful that any man should look with horror on the perpetrators of the massacre of December; but still it is hard to believe that every soldier who held command in the army of Paris during the week of the coup-d'état was of necessity a bungler and a fool. Yet this is apparently the moral of the book, set forth with a trenchant scorn which cannot but be mischievous. For Mr. Kinglake is not unknown,-not a mere literary man; but his words borrow notoriety, and perhaps to the apprehension of foreigners weight, from his parliamentary position. But it is a sufficient comment on the spirit in which

these volumes are written, that in Paris they should have been regarded as endangering the entente cordiale, and that the English Government should have thought it desirable to take the first fitting opportunity which occurred after their publication to convey to M. Drouyn de Lhuys its desire to draw yet closer the ties which unite not merely the two nations but their governments.*

In the year 1850 an exaggerated notion of the decrepitude of Turkey prevailed in Europe. The efforts of the later sultans to reinvigorate the nation by imitating the more civilised peoples of the West, had deprived the upper classes and inhabitants of the capital of the strength which comes of simplicity, but had not as yet given them the strength which comes of cultivation. Without even the tradition of an aristocracy, it was the custom of the Porte to choose statesmen and officers from the dregs of the Byzantine populace, and it was nothing unusual that one who had been born the slave of a pasha should die the equal of his master. Thus the vices of barbarism and civilisation were met together; and to those who judge a people by its rulers, the Turks seemed utterly corrupt. Only a few English travellers, who "going to Eastern countries in early life," had been "charmed with the grand, simple, violent world that they had read of in their Bibles," knew better; knew that "the Ottoman people still upheld the warlike spirit which belongs to their race and faith.”

"Experience showed that the Turks could generally hold their ground with obstinacy, when the conditions of a fight were of such a kind that a man's bravery could make up for the want of preparation and discipline. In truth they were a devoted soldiery, and fired with so high a spirit that when brought into the right frame of mind they could look upon the thought of death in action with a stedfast, lusty joy. They were temperate, enduring, and obedient to a degree unknown in other armies. They brought their wants within a very narrow compass, and, without much visible effort of commissariat skill or of transport power, they were generally found to be provided

We rest this assertion on the following facts. Mr. Kinglake's book was published on January 15th. On the 25th the Emperor, distributing the prizes to the French exhibitors in the London Exhibition of 1862, spoke in praise of English liberty. On the 29th, the Moniteur announced that "Lord Cowley had been instructed to express to M. Drouyn de Lhuys the satisfaction felt by the British Government on account of the late speech of the Emperor, and its strong desire to see sentiments of mutual esteem daily strengthen the ties of friendship which unite the two nations as well as their governments." And the Constitutionnel of the same evening spoke of this message of Lord Russell as "requisite to secure the peace of the world." But surely the Emperor's speech had in no way endangered it. Of course it is open to any one to set aside the inference here drawn, as an instance of the old fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc; but we are sure Mr. Kinglake will not do so,-at all events, if he recurs again to the notes he has appended to pages 369 and 382 of his first volume.

with bread and cartridges, and even with means of shelter. Their arms were always bright. Their faith tended to make them improvident; but a wise instinct taught them that if there was one thing which ought not to be left to fate or to the precepts of a deceased prophet, it was the Artillery. Their guns were well served."

Unhappily for the peace of Europe it was not difficult for a power which, deceived by the corruption of the government, should think that the time had come to expel the Mussulman from Europe, to find excuse for å rupture. Every where the Christian nations," as they were called, who mainly peopled the European provinces of Turkey, had been abandoned to their own devices by the indolence or the contemptuous intolerance of the Turks. They paid tribute, they were liable to lawless outrages from their masters, and were not suffered to bear arms; but generally they lived apart, a kind of imperium in imperio, free in the exercise of their religion, and enjoying their own laws and customs; and as the conquest had overturned their temporal government, the administration of these laws and customs had fallen mostly into the hands of the priesthood. These Christian communities, comprising about three-sevenths of the population of the empire, and greatly preponderating over the Turks in its European provinces, had long been accustomed to seek for protection against the oppression of their conquerors from some European power of similar faith. Austria was empowered by treaties to protect the Roman Catholic worship. The piety of Louis XV. had obtained for France, in 1740, a capitulation which confirmed all the existing privileges of the Latin Church in Palestine. While, at the instance of Russia, concessions had been granted to the twelve millions of Turkish subjects who professed the faith of the Greek church; originally indeed liable to be revoked at the pleasure of the Sultan, but, as the Czar maintained, transformed into a binding engagement with him by "a few loose words" in the treaty of Kainardji. However, the Latin Christians were but few in number, and to Austria at least the unity and independence of Turkey were of vital importance. With Russia the case was different.

In the hearts of the Russian people there still lives that medieval faith which founded the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. They are devoted to a creed which came to them from Constantinople, and which still holds pilgrimage to holy shrines to be a rite which, like baptism, draws down heavenly blessings even on children of tender years. Thus the hopes as well as the memories of the nation all turn eastwards; and from their earliest years their fanaticism is fanned by the lessons of a warlike priesthood, and the visions of seers who had prophesied "the destruction of the Turks by the men of the yellow hair."

This religious zeal of the lower classes is supported by the ambition of the upper; and the possession of the gates of the Black Sea is the traditional policy which they have received from Peter and Catherine. Only the emperors understood the jealousy which so vast an accession of power would excite in Europe, and perhaps also dreaded the possession of a capital city at either extreme of their dominion as an omen of division. The Emperor Nicholas represented at once the feelings of his people, and the policy of his predecessors. Thus the vacillation with which Mr. Kinglake reproaches him was probably more apparent than real. What he wanted was, to have Turkey intact, and yet to seem to his people to be daily tightening his hold upon her Christian subjects. Nor was this to be altogether a seeming. He was determined that if he did not inherit Constantinople from the sick man, at least no other power should.

This being the state of things as between Russia and Turkey, Louis Napoleon, then President of the French Republic, was pleased to claim the strict execution of the treaty of 1740. Probably he had no deeper motive than a desire to gratify that love of domineering which is inherent in the French people; and it is at least certain that, though France was still "under parliamentary government," and was therefore "safe from the calamity of a wanton rupture with friendly states," it manifested no dissatisfaction with the President's policy. At Constantinople he found himself, however, opposed to Russia, for the stipulations of the treaty of 1740 were not to be reconciled with the concessions which had since been made to the Greek Christians; and the Czar, even if he had been inclined, did not dare to let his people know that he had suffered the Latin church to obtain a victory over the orthodox faith. Then came the coup-d'état of December 1851, and the claims of the Latin church were pressed with unseemly violence. Force was threatened. The Turks shuffled shamefully. But a fortnight after the assumption by Louis Napoleon of the imperial title, the long negotiation about a key and a star," which is known to diplomacy as the question of the Holy Shrines, and detailed by Mr. Kinglake in his happiest vein of banter, was brought to a close by the concession of the French demands, to the joy of the Latins, and, in the words of Count Nesselrode, "to the indignation of the whole people following the Greek ritual."

Technically France was in the right, for she claimed only the fulfilment of an existing treaty; but a wise statesman would not have raked up an obsolete engagement, so as to irritate the deeply-rooted fanaticism of Russia. The imprudence of the Czar had, however, by this time made it absolutely