personal friendship with the Czar, and now that Russia
was beginning to show herself in her true colours, prejudice against a
Prime Minister who had sought to explain away difficulties was natural,
however unreasonable. The English people, moreover, had not forgotten
that Russia ruthlessly crippled Poland in 1831, and lent her aid to the
subjugation of Hungary in 1849. If the Sultan was the Lord of Misrule to
English imagination in 1853, the Czar was the embodiment of despotism,
and even less amenable to the modern ideas of liberty and toleration.
The Manchester School, on the other hand, had provoked a reaction. The
Great Exhibition had set a large section of the community dreaming, not
of the millennium, but of Waterloo. Russia was looked upon as a standing
menace to England's widening heritage in the East, and neither the logic
of Cobden nor the rhetoric of Bright was of the least avail in stemming
the torrent of national indignation.

[Sidenote: THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER]

When the Vienna Note became a dead letter Lord Aberdeen ought either to
have adopted a clean-cut policy, which neither Russia nor Turkey could
mistake, or else have carried out his twice-repeated purpose of
resignation. Everyone admits that from the outset his position was one
of great difficulty, but he increased it greatly by his practical
refusal to grasp the nettle. He was not ambitious of power, but, on the
contrary, longed for his quiet retreat at Haddo. He was on the verge of
seventy and was essentially a man of few, but scholarly tastes. There
can be no doubt that considerable pressure was put upon him both by the
Court and the majority of his colleagues in the Cabinet, and this, with
the changed aspect of affairs, and the mistaken sense of duty with
regard to them, determined his course. His decision 'not to run away
from the Eastern complication,' as Prince Albert worded it, placed both
himself and Lord John Russell in somewhat of a false position. If Lord
Aberdeen had followed his own inclination there is every likelihood that
he would have carried out his arrangement to retire in favour of Lord
John. His colleagues were not in the dark in regard to this arrangement
when they joined the Ministry, and if not prepared to fall in with the
proposal, they ought to have stated their objections at the time. There
is some conflict of opinion as to the terms of the arrangement; but even
if we take it to be what Lord Aberdeen's own fri