together till four o'clock. Let us say for Lord Geoffrey that his examination had been a very hard one. He had done an amount of work for it which would have insured him a first class at Oxford and Cambridge. The genius of competitive examination, a genius of very unpleasant description, is abroad, and is sorely troubling the ornamental classes. I have heard stories from gentlemen of the old school, of bishops who have privately ordained their own gardeners, and secretaries of legation who could hardly write a grammatical note. Now let us sum up what Lord Geoffrey had to do. Of course he had to do precis, whatever precis may happen to mean. He must be a fair Latin scholar.

He had to

show himself a good linguist, knowing French and German pretty perfectly, with the examiner's kind permission to add Italian if he liked. He must diligently have perused the Bishop of Natal's works on Elementary Mathematics. He must know an immensity of international lawthanks to Jeremy Bentham, who coined the phrase-the highest kind of all law, to be gleaned from sundry bulky volumes. Then he must have a minute acquaintance with the whole of modern European history since the epoch of the Restoration-a subject so vast and undefined that a man may spend any number of years in seeking to master it completely. Such an examination is one of almost unexampled variety and difficulty.

And what will a grateful country give to a scion of the aristocracy who has manfully achieved all this in her behalf? The grateful country will give just nothing at all, this official income being payable, I presume, quarterly. That is to say, the attaché must serve a probation of four years before he gets any salary at all, and then, according to the new regulations, he will no longer be paid attaché, but second secretary. It will therefore be readily seen that the official income must be helped from private sources, even when a man has become entitled to his hundred and fifty a year. In addition to his examination, he must have served in the

Foreign Office, and have resided abroad three years, and have earned a certificate from the minister under whom he has served. I really think the country drives a tolerably hard bargain with those who thus serve her. Of course there must be contingent advantages. Of course the members of the service must be recruited from a privileged class. Very few men, comparatively, will enter a service where they must spend, say, at least four or five hundred a year more than their income. Accordingly the Upper Ten enjoy the practical monopoly of the foreign and diplomatic service. A very large number never have any money dealings with the British public. They do not stay long enough in the service. They are content with the great social advantages which they derive from the period for which they served. They travel under the best auspices, and mix freely with the best society of European capitals. This is the great object of many men in entering the diplomatic service. Thus, at the very outset, diplomacy and fashion go together. And this is not only the case with young attachés, but ambassadors and envoys act on the principle of the inseparable connection. This has always been the case in the history of diplomacy. Take up the 'Memoirs of Segur,' French ambassador at St. Petersburgh before the Empire; the society furnished by the diplomatic service was incomparably the best in the Russian capital. After the fall of the first Empire, how fashion and diplomacy went hand in hand! Lord Castlereagh's parties were among the most important political transactions of the time. They were much better than any parties given by the Emperor of Austria. Lady Castlereagh was as potent an influence almost as the Emperor Alexander himself. I imagine diplomacy and fashion are inextricably mixed up at the réunions of the Viscountess Palmerston, and the same was as conspicuously the case with the Princess Lieven and the Princess Esterhazy.

The diplomatic service, to my mind, affords, perhaps, the noblest

career at the present day. This is especially the case since the old traditions of the service have been exploded. The old diplomatic policy of ambiguity, chicanery, circumvention has been superseded, in the English service at least, by frank and fearless open dealing. An English gentleman need never more be an English gentleman than when engaged in the diplomatic service of his country. In the society of a foreign court he cannot do his country a better service than by personally conveying a clear impression of simplicity, self-reliance, kindly feeling, and good faith. To do one's work fully at a foreign court requires both a scholarly and accurate acquaintance with the history of that country, and a quick and accurate perception of the state of the various political parties in the country. If the first is derived from books, the second must be derived from society. The diplomatic element and the fashionable element are, I repeat, inseparable, and after a time this element of fashion becomes serious history. One sees this in Mr. Froude's recent volumes, where the Spanish ambassador -to take an instance-sends all the way to the Escurial an account of the careless conversation that took place during a water party on the Thames. But then the interlocutors were Robert Dudley, de Feria, and Queen Elizabeth. Things may be different at Windsor Castle or Osborne House; but a fashionable gathering at Fontainebleau or Compiègne has always the highest diplomatic importance.

Words spoken to any member of the diplomatic circle within the Tuileries have often the most serious import. How anxiously have the words of the present Emperor been always scanned on New Year's Day! It is not many years since, when, on one of these occasions, words were dropped which excited a painful sensation throughout all Europe, and were the precursors of European war and of agitations in the political atmosphere which never since have fully cleared away. As it is with the present Napoleon, so it was with the first. Recal, for in

to wait for an answer, I observed only, "C'en est déjà trop." "Mais," said he, "vous voulez la faire encore quinze ans, et vous m'y forcez." All this passed loud enough to be overheard by two hundred persons who were present.' I have no doubt my readers made themselves acquainted with the remarkable despatches sent by the English Minister, Sir Henry Seymour, at the Court of St. Petersburgh to his government at home, previous to the Crimean war. The best kind of ambassadorial art is there admirably displayed. The English minister watched with the eagerness of a sleuthhound every word that fell from the imperial lips, and with the utmost adroitness interposed a courteous question, which, if unanswered, would convey an answer by significant silence.

But more authoritative language than ours shall sum up the connexion between fashion and diplomacy. It is the characteristic and peculiar charm of diplomacy that the enjoyments of society combine in it with the interests of political life and superficial relaxations with serious labours. Not only does the representative of a state, in a foreign land, find himself placed at the outset in the highest society of the country in which he resides, but he is naturally incited, and led to hold that society in great estimation. To render it agreeable to himself, and to win success there, he must please; he must establish in the bosom of that indifferent world relations and habits approaching to intimacy; he must gain a personal importance which may become a power in his mission. For him, cares apparently frivolous are a necessary pre-occupation. He commits an error, if, in the drawing

room and in the midst of festivals, the thought of business is not present to his mind. A passing conversation may serve him as much as an official interview; and the impressions he leaves on the world through which he passes are scarcely less important to him than the arguments he develops in a ministerial tête-à-tête.' These are the words of M. Guizot. He was himself eminently successful in the line he thus chalked out for a diplomatist. Lady Holland wrote to Paris: -M. Guizot pleases all the world here, including the queen.' And M. Guizot found out that it was more necessary in England than in any other country, to be successful in fashion if he wished to be successful in diplomacy.

A few notices, comparatively recent, of fashion and diplomacy in our own land and time, which have a special value, are to be found in Guizot's Embassy to the Court of St. James's.' The opinion of foreign contemporaries is that which corresponds most nearly in value with the judicial decisions of history. It is impossible that there should be a more calm, clear-sighted, and impartial observer than M. Guizot. When he visited England on his diplomatic mission, singularly enough, it was his first visit to this country. At ten minutes past one on a certain morning, he received a note from Lord Palmerston, saying that at one o'clock precisely her Majesty would see him. The queen's message had not been punctually delivered to him. The illustrious Frenchman was greatly, but, it appears, unnecessarily distressed. The queen received me with a gracious manner, at once youthful and serious; the dignity of her deportment added to her stature. "I trust, Madam," said I, on entering, "that your Majesty is aware of my excuse, for of myself I should be inexcusable." She smiled as if little surprised at the want of punctuality.' It is to our credit, and contrasts with Lord Clarendon's experience at Madrid, that the more the diplomatic relations between the two countries, at the time of the Syrian difficulty, became disturbed

and involved, the greater was the personal kindness manifested towards the French ambassador. He found, in reference to Lord Melbourne, that the fashionable element predominated over the diplomatic. He first met the fashionable roué, then Premier, in Lady Palmerston's drawing-room. He was buried in an easy chair; he listened and talked, and now gently smiled, and now genially laughed. His attention at times even amounted to curiosity. The French minister was earnest and eager; but the sum total of the result was, that he slightly disturbed the nonchalance of the Englishman. He found, however, warm friends in the very bosom of the cabinet.' Amid all fashionable movement, diplomatic business steadily advances. A ball is given at Buckingham Palace; Lord Palmerston passed with M. Guizot into a saloon adjoining the gallery; then an important conversation ensued, an account of which occupies six pages of print, and which was immediately reported to the government of M. Thiers, at Paris. In his notices of our society, Guizot has a keen remark on the 'dark passions ever fermenting by the side of these frivolous amusements.' M. Guizot detected a circumstance which has always been a mistake on the part of the great Conservative party, that, compared with the Whigs, they had fewer centres of reunion and intimate conversation. He thought our ministry very nonchalant. A political difficulty of serious magnitude arose. The French ambassador was very anxious to express surprise and compel explanation. "There was no minister in London. People sleep quite at ease with the ocean behind them. I called on Lord Clarendon, who was not at home; he came to my house an hour after. 'My lord," I said to him, 'you are the only member of the cabinet I can find.'" He noticed how the tactics of society were identified with political tactics. Mr. Grote and his radical friends were becoming a power in Parliament. Guizot writes:- Mrs. Grote is become a person of importance,