that the English Government would be glad to see him back in office.  With characteristic presence of mind he framed his answer to provoke a more definite pronouncement.  He could not, he said, return to office alone or abandon the party he had been at so much pains to create.  “Naturally,” answered Lord Malmesbury, “you cannot return to power without your friends.”  Reassured as to the sentiments of one great political party, Cavour approached the other in the person of Lord Palmerston, than whom he never had a firmer political friend or more sincere admirer.  Lord Palmerston saw the larger meaning of the experiment of freedom in Piedmont, and he was one of the first to see it.  If that experiment succeeded, the Italian tyrannies were doomed; how, he did not discern, but the fact was apparent to him.  He heard, therefore, with much interest what Cavour had to tell him of the gradual taking root of constitutional government in the Sardinian kingdom, and he promised him the moral support, not of one party or another, but of England, “in pledge of which,” he added, “we have sent you our best diplomatist.”  This allusion was to Mr. (afterwards Sir James) Hudson, whom Lord Palmerston had called back from the Brazils in the spring of the year, because by a singular intuition he guessed him to be the very man to help the Italian cause.  It was intended to send him to Florence, but when he reached the Foreign Office, which Lord Palmerston had just vacated, he received instructions to go to Turin, a fortunate change of plan.  No two men were ever better fitted to work together than Cavour and Sir James Hudson.  Without ceasing to be particularly English and strictly loyal to the interests of his own country, the British Minister at Turin served Italy as few of her sons have been able to do.  Beneath a rather cold exterior he concealed the warmest of hearts, and he had the power of attaching people to him, so that they never forgot him.  It is greatly to be regretted that he left no record of the stirring years of his mission, which coincided with the rise and ascendency of Cavour.

Enchanted with the country, and “more Anglomane than ever,” Cavour left England for Paris, where he laid himself out to conciliate political men of all shades, from Morny to Thiers, who advised him to be patient and not to lose heart:  “If, after giving you vipers for breakfast, you have another dish served up for dinner, never mind”—­such was the diet of politicians.  What Cavour once called “his powerful intellectual organisation” made an immediate impression on the Prince President, as he was still styled.  Louis Napoleon cultivated an impassible exterior, but at bottom his character was emotional, and, like all emotional persons, he was susceptible to the magnetism of a stronger brain and will.  Cavour summoned Rattazzi to Paris to present him to the future Caesar.  “Whether we like it or not,” he wrote at this time, “our destinies depend on France; we must be her partner