repared to entrap him--Brumsey had
discovered a secret demand made by Russia to enable one of the imperial
family to make the tour of the Black Sea with a ship-of-war. Though it
might be matter of controversy whether Turkey herself could, without the
assent of the other Powers to the Treaty of Paris, give her permission,
Brumsey was too elated by his discovery to hesitate about this, but at once
communicated to the Grand-Vizier a formal declaration of the displeasure
with which England would witness such an infraction of a solemn engagement.

As no such project had ever been entertained, no such demand ever made,
Kulbash Pasha not only laughed heartily at the mock-thunder of the
Englishman, but at the energy with which a small official always opens
fire, and in the jocularity of his Turkish nature--for they are jocular,
these children of the Koran--he told the whole incident to Atlee.

'Your old master, Mr. Atlee,' said he, 'would scarcely have read us so
sharp a lesson as that; but,' he added, 'we always hear stronger language
from the man who couldn't station a gunboat at Pera than from the
ambassador who could call up the Mediterranean squadron from Malta.'

If Atlee's first letter to Lord Danesbury admitted of a certain
disappointment as regarded Speridionides, it made ample compensation by the
keen sketch it conveyed of how matters stood at the Porte, the uncertain
fate of Kulbash Pasha's policy, and the scarcely credible blunder of
Brumsey.

To tell the English ambassador how much he was regretted and how much
needed, how the partisans of England felt themselves deserted and abandoned
by his withdrawal, and how gravely the best interests of Turkey itself were
compromised for want of that statesmanlike intelligence that had up to this
guided the counsels of the Divan: all these formed only a part of Atlee's
task, for he wrote letters and leaders, in this sense, to all the great
journals of London, Paris, and Vienna; so that when the _Times_ and the
_Post_ asked the English people whether they were satisfied that the
benefit of the Crimean War should be frittered away by an incompetent youth
in the position of a man of high ability, the _Debats_ commented on the
want of support France suffered at the Porte by the inferior agency of
England, and the _Neue Presse_ of Vienna more openly declared that if
England had determined to annex Turkey and govern it as a crown colony, it
would have been at least courtesy to hav