IN THE AVAR AGAINST RUSSIA. 51 blessing of peace upon the grateful, astonished chap. nations. On the other hand, an English Minister ^^' ^ vould be careless of this kind of celebrity, and, so that peace could be restored to Eui'ope, would be well pleased that the honour of the achieve- ment should seem to belong to the French Emperor. There is no reason to doubt that the English Government assented to the somewhat startling: plan under which the French Emperor conceived himself entitled to speak for the Queen of Eng- land, as well as for himself; and certainly the licence, however strange it may appear, was in strict consistency with the spirit of the under- standing which seems to have been established between the two Western Powers.* On the 29th of January the Fi-uncli Emperor addressed an autograph letter to his 'good friend' of All the Kussias. Tiie letter in many parts of it was ably worded, and moderate in its tone, but it was mainly remarkable for the language in which the French Emperor took upon himself to speak and even to threaten war in the name of the Queen of England. After suggesting a scheme of pacification, he said to the Czar : ' Let your ' Majesty adopt this plan, upon which the Queen ' of England and myself are perfectly agreed, and ' tranquillity will be re-established and the world ' satisfied. There is nothing in the plan which is
- See the inferred purport of this understanding as stated
in Vol. I. of ' The Invasion of the Crimea,' pp. 350, 351 of the Cabinet Edition.
