achment was only
kept away by mounted police in line across the street both ways.
This is not very sabbatical. There is strange work behind the
curtain, if one could only get at it. The instigators are those
really guilty; no one can wonder at the tools.

One Sunday afternoon a little later (March 4):--

Another gathering of people was held off by the police. I walked
down with C., and as a large crowd gathered, though in the main
friendly, we went into Dr. Clark's, and then in a hansom off the
ground.

Stories were put about that Lord Beaconsfield reported the names of
dissentient colleagues to the Queen. Dining with Sir Robert Phillimore
(Jan. 17), Mr. Gladstone--

was emphatic and decided in his opinion that if the premier
mentioned to the Queen any of his colleagues who had opposed him
in the cabinet, he was guilty of great baseness and perfidy.
Gladstone said he had copies of 250 letters written by him to the
Queen, in none of which could a reference be found to the opinion
of his colleagues expressed in cabinet.

On the same occasion, by the way, Sir Robert notes: "Gladstone was careful
to restrain the expression of his private feelings about Lord
Beaconsfield, as he generally is."

II

(M186) In the summer the famous congress assembled at Berlin (June 13 to
July 13), with Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury as the representatives
of Great Britain, to sanction, reject, or modify the treaty of San
Stefano. Before the congress met, the country received a shock that made
men stagger. While in London it was impossible to attempt to hold a
meeting in favour of peace, and even in the northern towns such meetings
were almost at the mercy of anybody who might choose to start a jingo
chorus; while the war party exulted in the thought that military
preparations were going on apace, and that the bear would soon be rent by
the lion; a document was one afternoon betrayed to the public, from which
the astounding fact appeared that England and Russia had already entered
into a secret agreement, by which the treaty of San Stefano was in
substance to be ratified, with the single essential exception that the
southern portion of Bulgaria was to be severed from the northern. The
treaty of Berlin became in fact an extensive partition of the Turkish
empire, and the virtual ratification of the policy of bag and baggage. The
Schouvaloff memorandum was not t