ght and obtained the sympathy
of the English; but both Austria and France were jealous of that
sympathy, and dreaded the dissemination of English constitutional
opinions. Austria, ever the foe of freedom, barred out, as it were,
English intercourse and views, in virtue of the power she obtained by
her convention of occupation with the sultan. The policy of Austria was
also vacillating and indeterminate. At one time she would appear ready
to join the fortunes of the allies, and immediately after direct her
endeavours to secure the Russian frontier from the assault of the allied
armies. It was generally believed that Russia was more vulnerable from
the confines of Podolia, and by a campaign carried into Poland, than
elsewhere. Austria dreaded the appearance of French and English uniforms
in too close proximity to Russian Poland; nor was Prussia less timid
of that phenomenon; for both were apprehensive of a general rising of
Poland against her tripartite oppressors. At one time Austria was said
to be willing to join in the war and march across the Russian frontier
in the rear of an allied invasion, provided England and France backed
the movement by a certain amount of force. As the Western nations could
not, or would not, march an amount of troops in that direction, such as
Austria deemed necessary in consequence of the vulnerability of her
own frontier line, she declined the peril, and satisfied herself with
holding the Dacian Provinces in the name of the sultan; but, for her own
purposes, Austria had designs upon Moldavia and Wallachia, and when the
war was brought to a termination, could with difficulty be persuaded to
withdraw her troops from them, and did not retire until public opinion,
in England and France, was expressed in terms of resentment and menace.
Such was, in brief, the history of the success of Turkey upon her own
European frontier, and of the quality of the help afforded by Austria to
Turkey and the allies during the war.

Another sphere of action now demands attention. The allied fleets
entered the Bosphorus immediately upon the slaughter of Sinope. Still,
as war was not declared, they confined their action to keeping the
Russian ships of war blockaded in their own harbours. One Russian
vessel, the _Vladimir_, gallantly broke the blockade; scoured the Black
Sea; and, in spite of the allied cruisers, inflicted severe injury upon
Turkish shipping all around the coasts of the Black Sea to the very
entrance