Christ! How unwilling to believe
that God's ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts!
How willing to bring them down to suit not what is divine, but what
is earthly, in ourselves! Yet, happily, we do not feel or act in
consistency with all that we repeat as a lesson upon the subject of
our faith--for man cannot altogether crush the growth of the soul
given by God--and I trust and believe a better time is coming, when
freedom of thought and of word will be as common as they are now
uncommon.

In May Lady John writes of a dinner-party in London where she had a long
conversation with the Russian Ambassador (Baron Brunow) on the Governments
of Russia and England; she ended by hoping for a time "when Russia will be
more like this country than it is now, to which he answered with a start,
and lifting up his hands, 'God forbid! May I never live to see Russia more
like this country! God forbid, my dear Lady _Joan!'"_

To follow the events which led to the fall of the Ministry it is necessary
to look abroad. The power of the Whigs in the House of Commons, such as it
was, was the result of inability of Tories to combine, owing to their
differences concerning Free Trade. The strength of Lord John's Ministry in
the country depended largely upon the foreign policy of Palmerston, who was
disliked and mistrusted by the Court. While Palmerston was defending his
abrupt, highhanded policy towards Greece in the speech which made him the
hero of the hour, a war was going on between Denmark and
Schleswig-Holstein, in which the Prince Consort himself was much
interested. It was a question as to whether Schleswig-Holstein should be
permitted to join the German Federation. Holstein was a German fief,
Schleswig was a Danish fief; unfortunately an old law linked them together
in some mysterious fashion, as indissolubly as Siamese twins. Both wanted
to join the Federation. Holstein had a good legal claim to do as it liked
in this respect, Schleswig a bad one; but the law declared that both must
be under the same government. Prussia interfered on behalf of the duchies;
England, Austria, France, and the Baltic Powers joined in declaring that
the Danish monarchy should not be divided.

The Prince Consort had Prussian sympathies, and he therefore disapproved of
the strong line which Palmerston took up in this matter. It was not only
Palmerston's policy, however, but the independence with which he was
acc