worn threadbare by a politician of our day, and are foul
in the nostrils of every civilized nation. In the middle ages, and
in Italian courts, such tricks may have been necessary, but they are
unsuitable to constitutional states. A pope of Rome is recorded to have
said of the Abbe Polignac:--"This young man always appears to be of my
opinion at first, but at the end of the conversation, I find I am of
his." Such an "artful dodge" and dissembler would be disrelished now
by all pure and honest men. An attempt has been made by some French
writers to attribute the science of negotiation to Mazarin. But the
science existed before the time of the wily cardinal, or even of that
good King Dagobert who, according to the old rhyme, "_Mit sa culotte
a l'envers_;" and France, and other modern countries, as well as Egypt,
Greece, and Rome, had produced great negotiators.

On the 14th of August parliament was prorogued, and soon after the
ministry showed renewed activity in the work of diplomacy, without
any advantage to the nation. The policy of the prorogation was much
arraigned by the public; but the evening on which it took place tidings
arrived of the bombardment of Sweaborg, which drew away the public
attention to a real and brilliant, although partial, triumph.

[Illustration: 848.jpg BOMBARDMENT OF SWEABORG]

THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR--OPERATIONS IN THE CRIMEA AND BLACK SEA.

January opened upon the starving British army still more terribly
than the December of 1854 closed. The French also suffered, but their
superior military organization, commissariat, and care of the sick,
spared them many miseries which afflicted the whole of the British
lines. It was remarkable in the British army that very few officers
perished of cold, none of hunger, while their men fell in such numbers.
Very few officers died from sickness, unless such as fell victims to
cholera, which smote with impartial hand the poor private and his titled
chief. Various sick and wounded officers died in consequence of not
having been removed in sufficient time to the Bosphorus, or to such
other quarters as were not only possible, but convenient, had it
not been for the heartless and stupid routine by which the heads of
departments, at home and abroad, civil and military, were guided. It was
the more remarkable that so few officers died in the camp in proportion
to the men who perished, as the proportions were reversed in combat.
The facts were, that the of