-quietly-over-your-reasoning style, in which the
Russian minister answers them.

In order that our readers may form some idea of the manner in which King
Otho has carried on the government for five years, we shall describe the
political machine he has framed--name it we cannot; for it resembles
nothing the world has yet seen amidst all the multifarious combinations of
cabinet-making, which kings, sultans, krals, emperors, czars, or khans,
have yet presented to the envious contemplation of aspiring statesmen. The
king of Greece, it must be observed, is a monarch whose ministers are held
by a fiction of law to be responsible; and the editor of an Athenian
newspaper has been fined and imprisoned for declaring that this fiction is
not a fact. These ministers are not permitted by King Otho to assemble
together in council, unless he himself be present. The assembly would be
too democratic for Otho's nerves. In short, the king has a ministry, but
his ministers do not form a cabinet; his cabinet is a separate concern.
Each minister waits on his majesty with his portfolio under his arm, and
receives the royal commands. To simplify business, however, and make the
ministers fully sensible of their real insignificancy, King Otho
frequently orders the clerks in the public offices to come to his royal
presence, with the papers on which they have been engaged; and by this
means he shows the ministers, that though they are necessary in
consequence of the fiction of law, they may be rendered very secondary
personages in their own departments. If it were not a useless waste of
time, we could lay before our readers instances of this singularly easy
mode of doing business--instances too, which have been officially
communicated to the allied powers. His majesty carried his love of
performing ministerial duties so far, that for more than a year he
dispensed entirely with a minister of finance, and divided the functions
of that office among three of the clerks: no bad preparation for a
national bankruptcy, we must allow--yet the protecting powers viewed this
political vagary of his majesty with perfect indifference.

The most singular feature of King Otho's government is his cabinet, or, as
the Greek newspapers call it, "the Camarilla." This cabinet has no
official constitution; yet its members put their titles on the visiting
cards which they leave, as advertisements of the existence of this
irresponsible body, at the houses of the foreign m