Lords Grenville and Granville.

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'And this is the power which Lord Granville has behind him, and which is to give the force and meaning to his words. Poor Lord Granville! I imagine he is under no illusions. He knows the British Philistine, with his likes and dislikes, his effusion and confusion, his hot and cold fits, his want of dignity and of the stedfastness which comes from dignity, his want of ideas and of the stedfastness which comes from ideas ;-he has seen him at work already. He has seen the Russian war and the Russian peace; a war and peace your aristocracy did not make and never would have made, the British Philistine and his newspapers have the whole merit of it. In your social gatherings I know you have the habit of assuring one another that in some mysterious way the Russian war did you good in the eyes of Europe. Undeceive yourselves; it did you nothing but harm, and Lord Granville is far too clever a man not to know it. Then, in the Denmark quarrel, your Philistines did not make war, indeed, but they threatened it. Surely in the Denmark case there was no want of brave words; no failure to speak out "with promptitude and energy." And we all know what came of it. Unique British Philistine! Is he most to be revered when he makes his wars or when he threatens them? And at the prompting of this great backer Lord Granville is now to speak! Probably he will have, as the French say, to execute himself; only do not suppose that we are under

any delusion as to the sort of force he has behind him.' -Friendship's Garland.

THE BRITISH PHILISTINE AND CONTINENTAL

GOVERNMENTS.

'You are a self-governing people,' Arminius went on, 'you are represented by your "strong middle part," your Philistine and this is what your Government must watch; this is what it must take its cue from.

'Here, then, is your situation, that your Government does not and cannot really govern, but at present is and must be the mouthpiece of your Philistines; and that foreign Governments know this very well, know it to their cost. Nothing the best of them would like better than to deal with England seriously and respectfully,— the England of their traditions, the England of history; nothing, even, they would like better than to deal with the English Government,-as at any time it may happen to stand, composed of a dozen men more or less eminent, -seriously and respectfully. But, good God! it is not with these dozen men in their natural state that a foreign Government finds it has to deal; it is with these dozen men sitting in devout expectation to see how the cat will jump, and that cat the British Philistine!

'What statesman can deal seriously and respectfully with you, when he finds that he is not dealing mind to mind with an intelligent equal, but that he is dealing with

The British Philistine, etc.

145

a tumult of likes and dislikes, hopes, panics, intrigues, stock-jobbing, quidnuncs, newspapers,-dealing with ignorance, in short, for that one word contains it all,-behind his intelligent equal? Whatever he says to a British Minister, however convincing he may be, a foreign statesman knows that he has only half his hearer's attention, that only one of the British Minister's eyes is turned his way; the other eye is turned anxiously back on the home Philistines and the home press, and according as these finally go the British Minister must go too. This sort of thing demoralises your Ministers themselves in the end, ever your able and honest ones, and makes them impossible to deal with. God forgive me if I do him wrong! -but I always suspect that your sly old Sir Hamilton Seymour, in his conversations with the Emperor Nicholas before the Crimean war, had at last your Philistines and your press, and their unmistakable bent, in his eye, and did not lead the poor Czar quite straight. If ever there was a man who respected England, and would have gone cordially and easily with a capable British minister, that man was Nicholas. England, Russia, and Austria are the Powers with a real interest in the Eastern question, and it ought to be settled fairly between them. Nicholas wished nothing better. Even if you would not thus settle the question, he would have forborne to any extent sooner than go to war with you, if he could only have known what you were really at. To be sure, as you did

L

not know this yourselves, you could not possibly tell him, poor man ! Louis Napoleon, meanwhile, had his prestige to make. France pulled the wires right and left; your Philistines had a passion for that old acrobat Lord Palmerston, who, clever as he was, had an aristocrat's inaptitude for ideas, and believed in upholding and renovating the Grand Turk ; Lord Aberdeen knew better, but his eye was nervously fixed on the British Philistine and the British press. The British Philistine learnt that he was being treated with rudeness and must make his voice heard 'with promptitude and energy.' There was the usual explosion of passions, prejudices, stock-jobbing, newspaper-articles, chatter, and general ignorance, and the Czar found he must either submit to have capital made out of him by French vanity and Bonapartist necessities, or enter into the Crimean war. He entered into the Crimean war, and it broke his heart. France came out of the Crimean war the first Power in Europe, with French vanity and Bonapartist necessities fully served. You came out of it with the British Philistine's rôle in European affairs for the first time thoroughly recognised and appreciated.'-Friendship's Garland.

THE BLACK SEA QUESTION ILLUSTRATED.

In my immediate neighbourhood here in Cripplegate we have lately had a case which exactly illustrates the present difficulty with Russia as to her use of the

The Black Sea Question Illustrated. 147

Black Sea. We all do our marketing in Whitecross Street; and in Whitecross Street is a famous tripe-shop which I always visit before entertaining Arminius, who, like all North Germans, and like our own celebrated Dr. Johnson, is a very gross feeder. Two powerful labourers, who lodge like Arminius in Chequer Alley, and who never could abide one another, used to meet at this tripe-shop and quarrel till it became manifest that the shop could not stand two such customers together, and that one of the couple must give up going there. The fellows' names were Mike and Dennis. It was generally thought the chief blame in the quarrel lay with Mike, who was at any rate much the less plausible man of the two, besides being greatly the bigger. However that may be, the excellent City Missionary in this quarter, the Rev. J-hn B-ll (I forbear to write his name at length for fear of bringing a blush to his worthy cheek), took Dennis's part in the matter. He and Dennis set both together upon Mike, and got the best of him. It was Dennis who appeared to do the most in the set-to; at all events, he got the whole credit, although I have heard the Rev. J-hn B-ll (who was undoubtedly a formidable fellow in his old unregenerate days) describe at tea in the Mission Room how he got his stick between Mike's legs at all the critical moments; how he felt fresher and stronger when the fight ended than when it began; and how his behaviour had some