He chuckled over the indignation of the haute volee, when on the visit to England of President Grant’s daughter in 1872, Americans in London sent out cards of invitation headed “To meet Miss Grant,” as at a profane imitation of a practice hitherto confined to royalties; laughing not at the legitimate American mimicry of European consequence, but at the silly formalists in Society who fumed over the imagined presumption.  Consulted by an invalid as to the charm of Ostend for a seaside residence, he limited it to persons of gregarious habits; “the people are all driven down to the beach like a flock of sheep in the morning, and in the evening they are all driven back to their folds.”  He reported a feeble drama written by his ancient idol, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe; “it is a painful thing to see a man of his quality and of his age unduly detained in the world; when the Emperor Nicholas died, the Eltchi lost his raison d’etre.”  He disparaged the wild fit of morality undergone by the “Pall Mall Gazette” during the scandalous “Maiden Tribute” revelation, pronouncing its protegees to be “clever little devils.”  He was greatly startled by Gortschakoff’s famous circular, annulling the Black Sea clause in the Treaty of Paris, and much relieved by Bismarck’s dexterous interposition, which saved the susceptibility of Europe, and especially of England, by yielding as a favour to the demand of Russia what no one was in a position to refuse; but he maintained, and Lord Stratford agreed with him, that Gortschakoff’s precipitate act was governed by circumstances never revealed to mankind.  He learned, too, that it caused the Chancellor to be deconsidere in high Russian circles; he was called “un Narcisse qui se mire dans son encrier.”  Kinglake used to say that in conceding the right of the Sultan to exclude any war-flag from the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, Russia was treating Turkey as a bag-fox, to be gently hunted occasionally, but not mangled or killed; and he felt keenly the ridicule resting on the allies, who were compelled to surrender the neutralization purchased at the cost of so much blood and treasure.  He watched with much amusement the restoration of Turkish self-confidence.  “Turkey believes that he is no longer a sick man, and is turning all his doctors out of the house, to the immense astonishment of the English doctor, so conscious of his own rectitude that he cannot understand being sent off with the quacks.  You know in our beautiful Liturgy we have a prayer for the Turks; it looks as if our supplications had become successful.”  His interest in Turkey never flagged.  “I am in a great fright,” he said in 1877, “about my dear Turks, because Russia gives virtual command of the army before Plevna to Todleben, a really great homme de guerre.”