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but as she was not expected home she had received no intimation of it. At that very dinner she had expatiated on her love for her father, and her ecstasy at the prospect of seeing him in London.

There were also on board Sir H. Blackwood, a cousin of Lord Dufferin's and rather like him, and Mr. Macleod, who said he was returning to England in order to buy machinery for the Nepaulese.

The rest of our journey was prosperous. The steamer from Alexandria to Trieste was exceedingly clean, clean, comfortable, and rapid-the Mediterranean and Adriatic looking like glassCorfu and Albania beautiful, the rail across Europe uneventful, and the arrival in London ecstatic.

MY

MY JOURNAL IN RUSSIA

1856

"Youth on the prow and

Pleasure at the helm."

Y brother was sent on a Special Mission to St. Petersburg on the occasion of the Coronation, in 1856, of Alexander II. He was good enough to include me in his staff of attachés, and to invite my wife to accompany me. following is a curtailed account of our expedition. A fuller description of it will appear in Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice's forth-coming life of my brother.

The

On Sunday evening, towards the end of July we railed to Dover by the last train. We put up at the Lord Warden Hotel, where we were received with bows and smiles, which we paid for.

The next morning our whole party assembled on board the Princess Alice, which was waiting alongside the pier to take us off to our big manof-war, the St. Jean d'Acre, which lay at anchor a short distance off. Our party consisted of Sir Robert and Lady Emily Peel, Lord Dalkeith,3

1 I was accompanied by my wife, Margaret, the youngest daughter of the second Marquis of Northampton, to whom I was married in 1853 (to which event I subsequently refer).

The late Sir Robert Peel, son of the Prime Minister; married Lady Emily Hay, daughter of the eighth Marquis of Tweeddale.

3 Afterwards sixth Duke of Buccleuch.

1856]

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Lord Ashley,' Lord Seymour, Sir Arthur Hardinge, Colonel Maude,3 Mr. Gerald Ponsonby, Mr. Lister, Dr. Sandwith, and ourselves.

The smiling aspect of affairs with which we started did not last long. As soon as we arrived on board we were shown our accommodation. A row of delightful cabins had been put where the guns used to be along each side of the main deck. They were charmingly furnished with a profusion of pretty chintzes, and fitted with every convenience. The Peels and ourselves were only allotted cabin apiece, and Sir Robert and I were expected to dress in the corner of our mess room, divided off by a curtain. This was certainly an inconvenient arrangement; it was too public, and any gust of wind might have betrayed our naked charms to the world at large. I said nothing, but very different was it when the Lord of the Admiralty, the Secretary to Secretary to our Embassy, and the bearer of so great a name, saw what was destined for us. He rated the Captain roundly. In vain the poor Captain, in whom the dignity of his position struggled with his awe of a Lord of the Admiralty, proposed a wooden partition or offered several vacant cabins. The Baronet would not be appeased. He would not stand such treatment, to be worse off than any single man in the ship. He would not remain there, but would go each night to sleep on board the Princess Alice,

1 Afterwards eighth Earl of Shaftesbury.

* Son of Viscount Hardinge, the Commander-in-Chief from 1852 to 1856.

3 Afterwards Crown Equerry.

Son of the fourth Earl of Bessborough.

the steamer we were taking in tow. This threat hung over our heads all day. I pitied Lady Emily. She either was or pretended to be angry. I only ventured to suggest to her that their sleeping in the Princess Alice would annoy my brother, but did not add would be punishing themselves. At dinner the couple avoided the Captain. We all rallied round him, as he had won our golden opinions by not being strait-laced about smoking, and by allowing us to dine in our morning dress.

Kiel, August 3rd.-Nothing worth mentioning occurred during our voyage here. The weather has been beautiful, and good humour generally prevailed. It was a merry party, "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm." Even Lady Stafford's coiffeur, Monsieur Plaisir, who was unhappy at first, was pleased. The nights were noisy, a cock incessantly crowing, a dog frequently barking, people chattering, and that dreadful holy-stone, which might well be literally translated into French cette sacrée pierre.

The Granvilles reached Hamburg on Saturday, and this place the next evening. I went to meet them at the station. The addition to our party besides the Granvilles were Sir John Acton,' Lord Lincoln, and Captain Robins, a Queen's Messenger.

The town of Kiel looks prosperous, although it has not yet recovered from the injury done to it by the Schleswig-Holstein War. At its termination two thousand inhabitants emigrated. The people cannot reconcile themselves to Danish

1 Stepson to Lord Granville, afterwards Lord Acton.

Afterwards sixth Duke of Newcastle.

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1856] rule. They will have no intercourse with any Danish officer; they spit on the ground after a Dane has passed them; and, what is more remarkable, if true, they refuse Danish money. They are fond of the English. We had their

best wishes during our campaign in the Crimea, partly because the Danes were favourable to Russia.

I

I was not very well after we left Kiel; my spirits were depressed and I lost all energy. suffered from gout, which came out in the knees, and made me hobble about the ship. I seemed to cross in one day the Rubicon which separates youth from old age. I liked Dr. Sandwith, though his theory cannot be popular among patients; as he liked to leave cures to nature and prudence, and had no golden rule.

There

My brother was in tearing spirits and encouraged and joined in the amusements of the crew. was singing and acting, sling-the-monkey and hi-cockalorum. All were cheery, and Sir Robert was seen the last day patting the Captain on the back.

On Friday, August the 9th, we cast anchor off Cronstadt. A steam yacht that belonged to the late Emperor Nicholas was placed at my brother's disposal. In it he and most of the party started off at once for St. Petersburg, where we arrived in a thick fog.

On the following Monday we began to sightsee in earnest. Count Nesselrode1 showed us over the Hermitage and the Winter Palace. In

Son of the celebrated Russian statesman, Comte Charles de Nesselrode. He was afterwards Russian Minister at Athens.