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218 French Emperor than with the King of Prussia; that his ancestor, after Jena, had asked Napoleon to set him in the place of the reigning Hohenzollern, over what remained of the territory of Brandenburg. But there was an unforgotten feud. The Empress had promoted a match between one of them and her cousin, the daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, and he had broken off the engagement at the last moment. The Emperor made an attempt to bring European opinion to bear, and solicited influence in every quarter. He sent for Rothschild and asked him to obtain the friendly offices of the English Government. A long telegram was sent over, which was deciphered by the present Lord Rothschild, who took it, after breakfast, on Wednesday, 6th July, to Carlton House Terrace. Gladstone was on the point of leaving his house to present Lord Granville as Foreign Secretary at Windsor, and his visitor drove him to the station in his brougham. After a long silence he told Rothschild that he did not like to interfere with the choice of the Spaniards, but that he would probably be overruled in the Cabinet. The Ministry were divided. Bright would do nothing for Belgium; Lowe did not care what happened to Germany; Lord Granville asked himself what would be the position of England with the French at Berlin. Cardwell, at the War Office, estimated that they would get there in about six weeks. All agreed that the Germans had no chance, and that it would be doing them a service to get them out of the scrape. They were taken by surprise. Lord Clarendon had known about the Hohenzollern project, and had spoken of it to the Queen, and the Queen informed the Ministers. For Lord Clarendon died at the end of June. He had conferred with Moltke at Wiesbaden the year before, and learned from him that they expected to be at war shortly and to reach Paris in the way they afterwards did.

So far as I know, Dean Church was nearly the first man in England who saw that the quarrel had been brought on by Bismarck; and what the Dean wrote in private was published in the Times, with much acuteness and some errors, by another divine, who took the name of