vorce could only be
obtained in England by Act of Parliament, after sentence in
the ecclesiastical Court, and (in the case of a husband's
application) a verdict in _crim. con._ against the adulterer.
The present English law was established by the Bill of 1857,
the chief amendment made in Committee being the provision
exempting the clergy from the obligation to marry divorced
persons. Bishop Wilberforce opposed the Bill strenuously,
while Archbishop Sumner and Bishop Tait of London supported
it. Sir Richard Bethell, the Attorney-General, piloted the
measure most skilfully through the Commons, in the teeth of
the eloquent and persistent opposition of Mr Gladstone, who,
to quote a letter from Lord Palmerston to the Queen, opposed
the second reading "in a speech of two hours and a half,
fluent, eloquent, brilliant, full of theological learning
and scriptural research, but fallacious in argument, and with
parts inconsistent with each other."]

[Pageheading: THE FRENCH _ENTENTE_]

[Pageheading: THE EMPEROR'S VISIT]

_The Earl of Clarendon to the Prince Albert._

_20th May 1857._

SIR,--I have the honour to inform your Royal Highness that I have had
a very long and interesting conversation with M. de Persigny to-day.
He told me of the different _Utopias_ which the Emperor had in his
head, of His Majesty's conviction that England, France, and Russia
ought between them to _regler les affaires de l'Europe_, of the
_peu de cas_ which he made of Austria or any other Power, and of the
various little complaints which His Majesty thought he had against Her
Majesty's Government, and which had been magnified into importance by
the malevolence or the stupidity of the persons who had more or less
the ear of the Emperor.[16]

M. de Persigny told me also that in a conversation with the Emperor at
which he had taken care that Count Walewski should be present, he had
solemnly warned the Emperor of the danger he would incur if he swerved
the least from the path of his true interest which was the English
Alliance, that all the Sovereigns who were flattering and cajoling him
for their own purposes looked down upon him as an adventurer, and no
more believed in the stability of his throne, or the duration of
his dynasty, than they did in any other events of which extreme
improbability was the character; whereas the English, who never
condescended to flatter or cajole an