l the Tories except about six or
seven.' There was no mistaking the mandate either of Parliament or of
the people. Lord Aberdeen on the following day went down to Windsor and
laid his resignation before the Queen, and in this sorry fashion the
Coalition Government ignominiously collapsed, with hardly an expression
of regret and scarcely a claim to remembrance.

The Queen's choice fell upon Lord Derby, but his efforts to form an
Administration proved unavailing. Lord Lansdowne was next summoned, and
he suggested that Lord John Russell should be sent for, but in his case,
also, sufficient promises of support were not forthcoming. In the end
Her Majesty acquiesced in the strongly-expressed wish of the nation, and
Lord Palmerston was called to power on February 5. For the moment Lord
John was out of office, and Lord Panmure took the place of the Duke of
Newcastle as War Minister, but all the other members of the defeated
Administration, except, of course, Lord Aberdeen, entered the new
Cabinet. Lord Palmerston knew the feeling of the country, and was not
afraid to face it, and, therefore, determined to accept Mr. Roebuck's
proposals for a searching investigation of the circumstances which had
attended the conduct of the war. Loyalty to their late chief, as well as
to their former colleague, the Duke of Newcastle, led Sir James Graham,
Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Gladstone, and other Peelites to resign. Lord
John, urged by Lord Palmerston, became Colonial Secretary. Palmerston
shared Lord Clarendon's view that no Government calling itself Liberal
had a chance of standing without Lord John. Sir G. C. Lewis succeeded
Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Sir Charles Wood took
Sir James Graham's vacant place at the Admiralty.

[Sidenote: 'GENERAL FEVRIER TURNS TRAITOR']

Changes of a more momentous character quickly followed. Early in the
winter, when tidings of the sufferings of the Allies reached St.
Petersburg, the Emperor Nicholas declared, with grim humour, that there
were two generals who were about to fight for him, 'Janvier et Fevrier;'
but the opening month of the year brought terrible privations to the
Russian reinforcements as they struggled painfully along the rough
winter roads on the long march to the Crimea. The Czar lost a quarter of
a million of men before the war ended, and a vast number of them fell
before the cold or the pestilence. Omar Pasha defeated the Russian
troops at Eupatoria in the middl