His conduct of the negotiations preceding the Crimean War is justly called the cornerstone of his career:  at this moment of his greatness Kinglake encounters and describes him:  through the brilliant chapters in his opening volume, as more fully later on through Mr. Lane Poole’s admirable biography, the Great Eltchi is known to English readers.  He moves across the stage with a majesty sometimes bordering on what Iago calls bombast circumstance; drums and trumpets herald his every entrance; now pacing the shady gardens of the Bosphorus, now foiling, “in his grand quiet way,” the Czar’s ferocious Christianity, or torturing his baffled ambassador by scornful concession of the points which he formally demanded but did not really want; or crushing with “thin, tight, merciless lips and grand overhanging Canning brow” the presumptuous French commander who had dared to enter his presence with a plot for undermining England’s influence in the partnership of the campaign.  Was he, we ask as we end the fascinating description, was he, what Bright and the Peace Party proclaimed him to be, the cause of the Crimean War?  The Czar’s personal dislike to him—­a caprice which has never been explained {20}—­exasperated no doubt to the mind of Nicholas the repulse of Menschikoff’s demands; but that the precipitation of the prince and his master had put the Russian Court absolutely in the wrong is universally admitted.  It has been urged against him that his recommendation of the famous Vienna Note to the Porte was official merely, and allowed the watchful Turks to assume his personal approbation of their refusal.  It may be so; his biographer does not admit so much:  but it is obvious that the Turks were out of hand, and that no pressure from Lord Stratford could have persuaded them to accept the Note.  Further, the “Russian Analysis of the Note,” escaping shortly afterwards from the bag of diplomatic secrecy, revealed to our Cabinet the necessity of those amendments to the Note on which the Porte had insisted.  And lastly, the passage of the Dardanelles by our fleet, which more than any overt act made war inevitable, was ordered by the Government at home against Lord Stratford’s counsel.  Between panic-stricken statesmen and vacillating ambassadors, Lord Clarendon on one side, M. de la Cour on the other, the Eltchi stands like Tennyson’s promontory of rock,

“Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crowned.”

Napoleon at St. Helena attributed much of his success in the field to the fact that he was not hampered by governments at home.  Every modern commander, down certainly to the present moment, must have envied him.  Kinglake’s mordant pen depicts with felicity and compression the men of Downing Street, who without military experience or definite political aim, thwarted, criticised, over-ruled, tormented, their much-enduring General.  We have Aberdeen, deficient in mental clearness and propelling force, by his horror of war bringing war to pass; Gladstone,