Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/399

 BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 357 as to be able to put restraint upon his Sovereign, chap. xvi nor even perhaps to offer him counsel in his angry !_ mood. He could advise with Nicholas the Czar ; but there were reasons which made his counsels unwelcome to a heated defender of the Greek faith. He was a member of the Church of Eng- land, and the maddening rumours of the day made out that into the jaws of this very Church of England Lord Stratford was dragging the Sultan and all his Moslem subjects. Then, too, Count Nesselrode was worldly ; but, after all, the quality most certain to make him irksome to a Prince in a high state of religious or ecclesiastic excitement was his good sense. It was dangerous for a wise, able sinner like him to go near holy Nicholas the Pontiff, the Head of God's Orthodox Church upon earth, when he was hearing the voices from Hea- ven, when he was raging against the enemies of the Faith, and struggling to enforce his will upon mankind by utterances of the hated name of Canning,* and interjections, and gnashing of teeth. Ear from being able to make a stand against this consuming fury, Nesselrode did not even decline to be the instrument for disclosing to all the world his master's condition of mind. When the Czar knew that the fleets of the state of ti>e Western Powers were coming up into the Levant, knowing and that the sword of England was now in the neets of i i c t i n r>ii i • France and hands of Lord Stratford, he was thrown into so England , were ordeivd fierce a state, that his notions of what was true tothemouui of the Dar- and what was not true — of what was plausible, and daneiies.
 * The Czar used to call Lord Stratford ' Lord Canning.'