he
French court had been lavish, and which had been gracefully
reciprocated by English royality, the Prince Consort had retained an
undisturbed perception of much that was not quite satisfactory in the
qualifications of the despotic chief of the French State for his
difficult post. Thus it is without surprise that we find the Queen
writing in 1859, as to a plan suggested by the Emperor: "The whole
scheme is the often-attempted one, that England should take the
chestnuts from the fire, and assume the responsibility of making
proposals which, if they lead to war, we should be in honour bound to
support by arms." The Emperor had once said of Louis Philippe, that
he had fallen "because he was not sincere with England"; it looked
now as though he were steering full on the same rock, for his own
sincerity was flawed by dangerous reservations.

England remained an interested spectator, but a spectator only, while
the French ruler played that curiously calculated game of his, which
did so much towards insuring the independence of Italy and its
consolidation into one free monarchy. It was no disinterested game,
as the cession of Nice and Savoy to France by Piedmont would alone
have proved. It was daring to the point of rashness; for as a French
general of high rank said, there needed but the slightest check to
the French arms, and "it was all up with the dynasty!" Yet the "idea"
which furnished the professed motive for the Emperor's warlike action
was one dear to English sympathies, and many an English heart
rejoiced in the solid good secured for Italy, though without our
national co-operation. There was a proud compensating satisfaction in
the knowledge that, when a crisis of unexampled and terrible
importance had come in our own affairs, England had perforce dealt
with it single-handed and with supreme success.

Those who can remember the fearful summer of 1857 can hardly recall
its wild events without some recurrence of the thrill of horror that
ran through the land, as week after week the Indian news of mutiny
and massacre reached us. It was a surprise to the country at large,
more than to the authorities, who were informed already that a spirit
of disaffection had been at work among our native troops in Bengal,
and that there was good reason to believe in the existence of a
conspiracy for sapping the allegiance of these troops. Later events
have left little doubt that such a conspiracy did exist, and that its
aim was the