ing from cataract and the distressing symptoms of the malady which was within a year to end his life, conceived the notion that he would take a trip to Paris! We believe this strange whim has never been mentioned before: and this is how the Duke of Wellington dealt with it.

To the King.

'Walmer Castle, August 26, 1829.

'Sir William Knighton has communicated to me your Majesty's wish to go to Paris; and I assure your Majesty that nothing would gratify me more than to promote any wish of your Majesty.

'It is needless to discuss the state of the law upon the subject of the King quitting this country; as what I am now about to submit to your Majesty turns upon the circumstances of the time.

There is no doubt that it is important that all the friendly relations between your Majesty and the King of France should be cultivated as much as possible; and particularly those of a personal nature. The happiness and prosperity of your Majesty's kingdom, and the peace of the world, depend in a great degree upon these relations.

'But I am confident that your Majesty's presence at Paris at the present moment is not calculated to improve those relations. The King of France has lately made a change in his ministry which, whether beneficial or otherwise, is very unpopular at Paris; and is most falsely attributed to the influence of your Majesty's servants. Nothing would be more false than to state that the cause of your Majesty's visit to Paris at this moment, unexpected as it is, is the desire to countenance, support, and establish the administration recently formed by the King of France. But however unfounded such an assertion, it would be openly made by some, and believed by others, to the great inconvenience of the King of France and his government.

It will be impossible for your Majesty to visit Paris assuming any title or in any character which can conceal that which belongs to you; and I consider it to be essentially necessary that your Majesty should be received upon your arrival at Paris, not only by the King and his Court and his servants, but by the public at large, with the attention, respect, and affection which are due to you. If I have not mistaken the state of the public opinion at Paris at the present moment, I cannot doubt that you would not be received as the King of this country, whatever his title and character, and particularly your Majesty ought to be. I believe that the King of France would not have the power to protect your Majesty from those effects of the public temper occasioned by the late changes in his ministry falsely attributed to your Majesty's counsels.

'It is not fit that your Majesty should be placed in the way of risking such events; which would be equally disagreeable to your Majesty's feelings and to those of your people, as they would be undeserved, and as they would eventually prove detrimental to the friendly relations between the two countries.

'I beg that your Majesty will believe that, in writing upon this sub

ject, I have been guided solely by my desire to prevent the occurrence of circumstances which will hurt your Majesty's feelings, and will make you very uncomfortable; and will for that reason greatly irritate all your people.

"All of which is humbly submitted to your Majesty by your Majesty's most dutiful and devoted subject and servant,

'WELLINGTON.'

So no more was heard of the Parisian excursion!

But his Majesty was not always so easily dealt with. He had conceived, as is well known, an inveterate hatred against Mr. Denman for something he had said at the Queen's trial. The story has been fully related by Mr. Greville and by the Duke of Wellington. But it now appears that in spite of Denman's disavowal of a malicious intention and the King's magnanimous declaration of pardon (which had been drawn up by the Duke), George IV. still declared that he would never admit him to his presence; and his obstinate vindictiveness gave rise to violent altercations with his Ministers. It would take a good deal to wring such a cry as this from the stern Duke :

To Sir William Knighton.

November 10, 1829.

'My dear Sir William,-I saw the King, and had a very distressing scene with him. It ended by his approving of the act of his ministers of last night, and his determining that he would hear no report till the Recorder should be well enough to make it. His majesty did not mention your name, and I did not tell him that I had seen you.

If I had known in January 1828 one tithe of what I do now, and of what I discovered in one month after I was in office, I should never have been the King's minister, and should have avoided loads of misery! However, I trust that God Almighty will soon determine that I have been sufficiently punished for my sins, and will relieve me from the unhappy lot which has befallen me ! I believe there never was a man suffered so much, and for so little purpose!

'Believe me ever yours most sincerely,

'WELLINGTON.'

No sooner was the independence of Greece extorted from the Porte, than it became necessary to decide who was to be King of the Hellenes. The Duke of Wellington knew Capo d'Istria too well to have any faith in him; for it had transpired that whilst this patriot was protesting of his pure devotion to the interests of Greece, a sum of 40,000l. was actually placed to his credit in London by the Russian Government, on the very day the Treaty for the emancipation of the Greeks was signed. Indeed, Capo d'Istria was at this very time dissuading

Prince Leopold from accepting the Greek Crown, and he was himself assassinated by a Greek not long afterwards. Prince Leopold was the English candidate, not because he had been connected by marriage with this country, but because he was the man best qualified for such a task. But George IV. treated his son-in-law with a royal hatred, and was soon found to be carrying on every species of intrigue, through the Duke of Cumberland and others, to procure the election of some other German Prince.

It is impossible within our present limits to enter upon the very varied topics to be found in these volumes. They are an invaluable contribution to the history of the times, and we highly applaud the courage of the noble Editor in taking care that his father's opinions and correspondence should be published in their integrity. No memoir of the Duke of Wellington can have half the value of his own letters. The greatest of men are, after all, but short-sighted mortals; and one is surprised to perceive how little the Duke seems conscious that he was himself standing on the brink of a precipice, that his Government was incurably weak, that his party was broken up, that the old Tory principles were worn out, and that England was on the eve of the most momentous changes she had witnessed for a hundred and fifty years. When these things happened, it seemed to the old Tory servant of the Crown that the crack of doom was come. But happily he outlived the catastrophe, and in his later years he saw his country, under the rule of a more honest and enlightened Court, restored to entire peace and raised to an unprecedented point of prosperity by the triumph of the very principles to which he had been himself most opposed.

It is, fortunately, not our duty to follow the oscillating and uncertain tendencies of political events and pending negotiations which have swung many of our daily and weekly contemporaries to and fro, with singular inconsistency, in the course of the last few months. Our object is rather to unravel this tangled web, and to mark out some definite system of policy, by the application of fixed principles and historical traditions; and we see no reason to depart from the course we have hitherto pursued. In reviewing the Two Chancellors,' in July of last year, we showed that the result of Prince Gortschakoff's schemes and intrigues had been to place Russia in the alternative of a rash war or an inglorious peace. In October we pointed out that the scheme and object of the Russian Minister was to shake off and annul the restrictions

and obligations of the Treaty of Paris, by inducing the other Powers, and especially England, to relax their hold on those conditions of peace; and we demonstrated that the occupation of Bulgaria was not the easy task which some enthusiastic persons had imagined, and that unless the assent of England and the absolute neutrality of Austria were secured, such an enterprise would have obstacles to surmount even more perilous than the resistance to be anticipated from the Turkish fortresses and fleet. In January we anticipated that the work in which the Conference at Constantinople was at that moment engaged would probably fail, as similar negotiations had often failed before, because the Porte would never consent, until compelled by force of arms, to surrender the essential conditions of sovereignty; and it might confidently be predicted that there was only one Power by which the force of arms would be applied at all, and that Power could only go to war at its peril. These propositions, which were a good deal contested at the time, are now established by all the force of reason and experience: they are become facts. The Bulgarian agitation of last autumn was a mere wind-bag: no sooner was the bladder pricked than it collapsed altogether.

We say therefore to the distinguished members of that Conference, in the words of Touchstone to Corin in the forest of Arden, Come, Shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage." But it is not a matter of regret, in the interest of this country, that the Ottoman Porte declined the proposals of the Conference; for if they imposed an obligation on the Turkish Government, they imposed a duty, not less onerous, on ourselves -namely, that of controlling the administration of a State not forming part of her Majesty's dominions. The more the inconveniences of divided sovereignty are considered the more irksome does the responsibility attached to it become. To assume any share in the government of the Turkish Empire, in its present condition, is a task which might well daunt the most enthusiastic politician; but to assume it with limited and divided power and unlimited responsibility is little short of an act of madness. We should bind ourselves to enforce terms which other parties would seek to evade; to make those terms acceptable to races of men whom we wish to protect, although they would probably be deceived by our philanthropy; and to provide means at the cost of this country for carrying into effect these magnanimous designs. Those are duties which British Ministers, already overburdened with the cares of an immense empire, would do well not to accept. It is not within

their power or their capacity to set right all that goes wrong in the universe; and it is in the highest degree dangerous and impolitic to assume functions they cannot thoroughly discharge. It should never be lost sight of, that whosoever contributes to the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire by external means, is bound to erect some form of government in its place, and to assume the liability of maintaining order in the Sultan's dominions.

The Ottoman Empire is apparently in a state of revolution. Two Sovereigns have been deposed within the last year. Two Ministers have been assassinated. A third Minister, on whom the hopes of all the well-wishers of Turkey were fixed, and who might possibly have been the Turgot or the Necker of the falling State, was dismissed by a palace intrigue, which only conferred fresh lustre on his character and policy. No occurrence at Constantinople would surprise us. We are only surprised that more violent occurrences have not already taken place. But the more alarming we consider the state of the Turkish Empire to be, the less should we be disposed to interfere in it. There never was a case in which the doctrines of nonintervention were more absolutely recommended by experience and reason; and we mean by the doctrines of non-intervention, not only that we should not interfere ourselves in the relations of the Turkish Government to its subjects, but that we should resist by every possible means the interference of any other State in so complicated a problem. If there are, as we trust there may be, the elements of a future Government amongst the mixed races and religions of the Ottoman Empire, let them have fair play; and it may be hoped that after a period of agitation and conflict society would recover its balance and self-control. Up to the present time, the Turkish Parliament, still in its infancy, has surprised the world by the dignity and independence of its attitude; it evidently contains men of a different stamp from the Pashas of the Divan; and the representatives of various creeds have thus far united in a common attempt to save their country. But no such result is to be obtained by foreign intervention, which would only be a pretext for foreign conquest and an endless source of jealousy and dissension to the world. We are therefore emphatically for non-intervention-the policy which has been so loudly professed and eagerly practised by some of those who now hold an opposite language; but a non-intervention which should imply a vigilant attention to the designs and actions of other Powers, and a determination to oppose them if they become adverse or injurious to the interests of the British Empire.