nal truth. We are bound to say, to the honor of the women who, in our time, stand in the first rank of English novelists, some already gone from earth, as Mrs. Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte; others still at work with an incomparable strength of study and talent, as the author of Adam Bede and Romola,* or devoted to the moral improvement of those whom they instruct while they amuse them, as Mrs. Dinah Muloch Craik, and Miss Yonge, all have exercised over their age a deep and salutary influence. They have led their readers into a region whose air is not merely pure, but also healthful and strength-giving; they have put at the service of their country and their generation a talent of observation, the rectitude of a moralist, an elevation of thought and sentiment, often served by the finest intelligence and the acutest talent, thus contributing to the moral reputation of England throughout the world. Painfully in contrast with this are the pictures heaped up in France by men pretending to depict the manners of a social life to which they are and must be strangers, or to paint the domestic life of honest homes into which their works never penetrate.

Neither novelists nor poets have been lacking to modern England, and, like the novelists, the poets have led the English public into a pure and elevated region. No one has more perfectly merited this praise than Mr. Tennyson, and his influence over the mind and the imagination of his time is to the honor both of the public and of the poet. At times obscure and eccentric in his genius, Browning has had aims no less high, and his wife has walked before him in those lofty paths. Names crowd beneath the pen, of poets of the second rank, among whom it would have been unjust to place Mr. Matthew Arnold, had he not divided his mental work into such diverse fields that his

* Marian Evans Cross (George Eliot), author of Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Romola, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, and other works, died Dec. 22, 1880. — Tr.

poetic compositions lack the abundance necessary to place him in the highest rank.

The slightly naturalistic tendency of the poems of Mr. William Morris belongs to a more recent epoch in the reign cf Queen Victoria. The same falling off in the moral element can be detected among the novelists of the later period. Here lies a danger, and the ranks of the defence are becoming aware of this. England has need to put herself on guard, and to protect the imaginations and hearts of her children, the very ramparts of a social state unique in the world's history, and threatened at the present day with the invasion of a destructive democracy.

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CHAPTER VIII.

THE CRIMEAN WAR.

HE Duke of Wellington, the most illustrious representa

THE

tive of the great European wars, was dead; at the head of affairs in England was Lord Aberdeen, a man ardently attached to a peace policy, both by natural disposition and by the everpresent memory of those evils of war which he had labored to assuage in 1814, at the opening of his career; and yet, a certain anxiety pervaded the minds of all. A breath of war seemed beginning to blow over Europe once more. The increasing power of the Emperor Nicholas, and his views upon the Eastern question, gave offence to England; he was unfriendly to French influence at other points. Diplomatic foresight took the alarm, and the public mind at once shared in the anxiety

Russia was at this time involved in a dispute with France on the question of the rights of the Greek clergy, or of the Latin monks, to the custody of the sanctuaries at Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem. The possession of these holy places was regarded by each Power as a proof of supremacy in the East, as a symbol of the all-powerful protection extended by the one, over all Roman Catholics in the East; by the other, over the children of the Greek Church, to whatever nationality they might belong. Already the emperor was beginning to exercise his right and fulfil his duty of defending the numerous subjects of the Porte who professed the Orthodox faith. In the czar's mind, as well as in that of his predecessors, this efficient and decisive protection was inti

mately connected with the possession of Constantinople, that promised city, which the old Russian language called Tzargrad, the city of the czars. Crowded hard by Russia and by France, obliged to yield to the one, and fearing to offend the other, the Turkish government had placed itself in the wrong towards Russia, by failing to perform all that it had promised. The Greek clergy at Jerusalem complained that they had not been allowed all the concessions which had been promised at Constantinople. The Emperor Nicholas was both angry and anxious on this subject. He knew the English ministry to be less favorable to the policy of the Emperor Napoleon than its predecessors had been. Lord Palmerston was Home Secretary, and Lord John Russell had the charge of foreign affairs; an intimate alliance with England seemed possible, and, with her, the czar could dictate his own terms to Turkey and to the rest of Europe. He opened the subject to Sir G. Hamilton Seymour, English ambassador at St. Petersburg, at a ball given by the Grand Duchess Helena, on the 9th of January, 1583. After protesting his friendship towards the new ministry, and particularly Lord Aberdeen: "You know my feelings toward England," said the czar; "it is essential that the two governments, that is to say, the English gov. ernment and I, I and the English government,- should be on the best terms; and the necessity was never greater than at present. I beg you to convey these words to Lord John Russell. When we are agreed, I am quite without anxiety as to the rest of Europe; it is immaterial what the others may think or do. As to Turkey, that is another question; that country is in a critical state, and may give us all a great deal of trouble."

The czar was about to turn away, after these vague but significant words, but the English ambassador was very anxious to hear more. He ventured to question the emperor,