Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/125

 BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. S3 « little what line the French might think proper chap. ' to take in Eastern affairs ; and he had apprised L_ ' the Sultan that if his assistance were required ' for resisting the menaces of the French, it was ' entirely at the service of the Sultan.'* ' When ' we (Russia and England) are agreed, I am quite ' without anxiety as to the West of Europe : it is ' immaterial what the others may think or do.'f There remained, then, only England, and upon of England the whole it had come to this : that the Emperor j££oiP Nicholas would feel able to meet the emergency S° n occasioned by the downfall of the Sultan, and might perhaps be inclined to do a little towards bringing about the catastrophe, if beforehand he could come to an understanding with the English Government as to the way in which Europe should deal with the. fragments of the Turkish Empire. But he had learned, as he said, that an alliance with England must depend upon the feeling of the country at large, J and this he strove hard to understand. England had long been an enigma to the politi- cal students of the Continent, but after the sum- mer of 1851 they began to imagine that they really at last understood her. They thought that she was falling from her place among nations ; and indeed there were signs which might well lead a shallow observer to fancy that her ancient spirit was failing her. An army is but the limb of a nation, and it is no more given to a people to J Ibid., part iii.
 * 'Eastern Papers,' part v. p. 10. t Ibid., p. 1.