Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/164

 122 01UG1N OF THE WAR OF 1S53 chap, means of enforcing counsels somewhat similar to VII[ - those which were pressed upon the Sultan by the English Ambassador; for though his first care would have been always for his own Church, it would have suited his pride and his policy to extend his protection to all the Christian subjects of the Porte. But just as similarity of doctrine often embitters the differences between contend- ing sects, so the very resemblance between his and Sir Stratford Canning's views with regard to the Christian subjects of the Porte made it the more intolerable to him to see that he, the power- ful neighbour of Turkey, who was able to hover over her frontiers and her shores with great armies and fleets, could never make an effort to force his counsels on the Torte without finding himself baffled or forestalled by the stronger mind. Even in his very early life it had been the fate of Sir Stratford Canning to have to resist and thwart the Russian Government ; and during a great part of the years of his embassy at Constantinople he had been more or less in a posture of resistance to the Emperor Nicholas. Moreover, the feeling with which the Emperor carried on this long- standing conflict was quickened by personal ani- mosity, and by a knowledge that diplomacy was watching the strife with interest and amusement ; for he had once gone the length of declining to receive Sir Stratford Canning as the English Ambassador at St Petersburg, and had thus marked him out before Europe as his recognised antagonist. The struggle had lasted for a long