a forage magazine was established on the Pruth, or a new frigate
laid down at Nickolief, the news reached him by the time it arrived at St.
Petersburg. It is true he was aware how hopeless it was to write home about
these things. The ambassador who writes disagreeable despatches is a bore
or an old woman. He who dares to shake the security by which we daily boast
we are surrounded, is an alarmist, if not worse. Notwithstanding this, he
held his cards well 'up' and played them shrewdly. And now he was to turn
from this crafty game, with all its excitement, to pore over constabulary
reports and snub justices of the peace!

But there was worse than this. There was an Albanian spy who had been much
employed by him of late, a clever fellow, with access to society, and great
facilities for obtaining information. Seeing that Lord Danesbury should not
return to the embassy, would this fellow go over to the enemy? If so, there
were no words for the mischief he might effect. By a subordinate position
in a Greek government-office, he had often been selected to convey
despatches to Constantinople, and it was in this way his lordship first
met him; and as the fellow frankly presented himself with a very momentous
piece of news, he at once showed how he trusted to British faith not to
betray him. It was not alone the incalculable mischief such a man might do
by change of allegiance, but the whole fabric on which Lord Danesbury's
reputation rested was in this man's keeping; and of all that wondrous
prescience on which he used to pride himself before the world, all the
skill with which he baffled an adversary, and all the tact with which he
overwhelmed a colleague, this same 'Speridionides' could give the secret
and show the trick.

How much more constantly, then, did his lordship's thoughts revert to the
Bosporus than the Liffey! all this home news was mean, commonplace, and
vulgar. The whole drama--scenery, actors, plot--all were low and ignoble;
and as for this 'something that was to be done for Ireland,' it would of
course be some slowly germinating policy to take root now, and blossom in
another half-century: one of those blessed parliamentary enactments which
men who dealt in heroic remedies like himself regarded as the chronic
placebo of the political quack.

'I am well aware,' cried he aloud, 'for what they are sending me over. I am
to "make a case" in Ireland for a political legislation, and the bill is
already drawn and read