he would go. In August he accepted the offer of First
Secretary to the Legation in Japan, most reluctantly, because he saw his
peculiar knowledge of Germany would be wasted there. Ten days later this
offer was changed for a similar position at the Court of Greece, which
was equally uncongenial; but at the end of the year the Foreign Office
decided that he would be most useful in the field which he had chosen
for himself, and after a few months at Frankfort he was sent in the year
1866 as charge d'affaires to the Grand Ducal Court of Hesse-Darmstadt.

From these posts he was destined to be a spectator of the two great
conflicts by which Bismarck established the union of North Germany and
its primacy in Europe. Morier detested the means by which this end was
achieved, but he had consistently maintained that this union ought to
be, and could only be, achieved by Prussia, and he remained true to his
beliefs. It is a great tribute to his intellectual force that he was
able to control his personal sympathies and antipathies, and to judge
passing events with reference to the past and the future. He had liked
the statesmen whom he had met at Vienna, and he recognized their good
faith in the difficult negotiations of 1865. But for the good of Europe,
he thought the Austrian Government should now look eastwards. It could
not do double work at Vienna and at Frankfort. The impotence of the
Frankfort Diet could be cured only by the North Germans, and the
aspirations of good patriots, from Baden to the Baltic, had been for
long directed towards Prussia. But it was no easy task to make people in
England realize the justice of this view or the certainty that Prussia
was strong enough to carry through the work. Led by _The Times_, the
British Press had grown accustomed to use a contemptuous tone towards
Prussia; and when in the decisive hour this could no longer be
maintained, and British sentiment, as is its nature, declared for
Austria as the beaten side, this sentiment was attributed at Berlin to
the basest envy. Relations between the two peoples steadily grew worse
during these years, despite the efforts of Morier and other friends of
peace.

The Franco-German war brought even greater bitterness between Prussia
and Great Britain. The neutrality, which the latter power observed, was
misunderstood in both camps; and the position of a British diplomat
abroad became really unpleasant. Morier in particular, as a marked man,
knew that h