ners have been without the polished ease
of him who felt himself half the host? What would all Sir Horace Upton's
subtlety avail him, if it were not that he had sources of information
which always laid open the game of his adversaries? Singly, each would
have had a tough struggle with the world; together, they were more than
a match for it.

The highest order of diplomatist, in the estimation of Upton, was the
man who, at once, knew what was _possible_ to be done. It was his
own peculiar quality to possess this gift; but great as his natural
acuteness was, it would not have availed him, without those secret
springs of intelligence we have alluded to. There is no saying to what
limit he might not have carried this faculty, had it not been that one
deteriorating and detracting feature marred and disfigured the fairest
form of his mind.

He could not, do all that he would, disabuse himself of a very
low estimate of men and their motives. He did not slide into this
philosophy, as certain indolent people do, just to save them the trouble
of discriminating; he did not acquire it by the hard teachings of
adversity. No; it came upon him slowly and gradually, the fruit, as he
believed, of calm judgment and much reflection upon life. As little did
he accept it willingly; he even labored against the conviction: but,
strive as he might, there it was, and there it would remain.

His fixed impression was, that in every circumstance and event in
life there was always a _dessous des cartes_,--a deeper game concealed
beneath the surface,--and that it was a mere question of skill and
address how much of this penetrated through men's actions. If this
theory unravelled many a tangled web of knavery to him, it also served
to embarrass and confuse him in situations where inferior minds had
never recognized a difficulty! How much ingenuity did he expend to
detect what had no existence! How wearily did he try for soundings where
there was no bottom!

Through the means of the Princess he had learned--what some very wise
heads do not yet like to acknowledge--that the feeling of the despotic
governments towards England was very different from what it had been at
the close of the great war with Napoleon. They had grown more dominant
and exacting, just as we were becoming every hour more democratic. To
maintain our old relations with them, therefore, on the old footing,
would be only to involve ourselves in continual difficulty, with a
certain