I
always thought Josephine would fail in England. It is, indeed, a widely
different thing to succeed in the small Courts of Germany, and our great
whirlpool of St. James. _You_ could do it, my dear friend; but where is
the other dare attempt it?

Until I hear from you again I can come to no resolution. One thing is
clear,--they do not, or they will not, see the danger I have pointed
out to them. All the home policy of our country is drifting, day by
day, towards a democracy: how, in the name of common sense, then, is our
foreign policy to be maintained at the standard of the Holy Alliance?
What an absurd juxtaposition is there between popular rights and
an alliance with the Czar! This peril will overtake them one day or
another, and then, to escape from national indignation, the minister,
whoever he may be, will be driven to make war. But I can't wait for
this; and yet, were I to resign, my resignation would not embarrass
them,--it would irritate and annoy, but not disconcert. Brekenoff will
surely go home on leave. You ought to meet him; he is certain to be at
Ems. It is the refuge of disgraced diplomacy. Try if something cannot be
done with him. He used to say formerly yours were the only dinners now
in Europe. He hates Allington. This feeling, and his love for white
truffles, are, I believe, the only clews to the man. Be sure, however,
that the truffles are Piedmontese; they have a slight flavor of garlic,
rather agreeable than otherwise. Like Josephine's lisp, it is a defect
that serves for a distinction. The article in the "Beau Monde" was
clever, prettily written, and even well worked out; but state affairs
are never really well treated save by those who conduct them. One must
have played the game himself to understand all the nice subtleties of
the contest. These, your mere reviewer or newspaper scribe never attains
to; and then he has no reserves,--none of those mysterious concealments
that are to negotiations like the eloquent pauses of conversation: the
moment when dialogue ceases, and the real interchange of ideas begins.

The fine touch, the keen _apercu_, belongs alone to those who have had
to exercise these same qualities in the treatment of great questions;
and hence it is that though the Public be often much struck, and
even enlightened, by the powerful "article" or the able "leader," the
Statesman is rarely taught anything by the journalist, save the force
and direction of public opinion.

I had a de