WE are at length AT WAR — and it is now of comparatively little use to inquire how we got into it. The subject will prove an inviting one to future annalists, who will descry in the present, one of the great turning-points of European history. But for ourselves we can only give a single glance at the recent diplomatic imbroglio,-not in a spirit of censure, not to give utterance to vain regrets,-but simply in order that our readers may better discern the real nature of the contest in which we are engaged. Although we have most carefully watched every detail of the Eastern Question, since first it began to show head among the Montenegrin mountains, and in the mazy disputes concerning the Holy Places, and although our inspection of the correspondence of the several Powers has been such as may well entitle us to speak on the subject, we shall not offend the irascible Sir James Graham by presuming to "potter with the Blue Books," or rake up isolated facts of mismanagement to throw at the heads of an embarrassed Ministry.

The story may be compressed into a nutshell. Russia, as every one knows, is the most wily and cautious Power on the Continent. She moves slow as a tortoise in her path of conquest, and never trusts to vigour and ability what can be more surely though slowly accomplished by patience and combination. Proud and confident in the mission long ago marked out for her by Peter the Great, she looks on her neighbour States-on the whole region lying eastward of a line drawn from Denmark to the Adriatic-as the natural inheritance of her Panslavic Empire; but, with unrivalled caution, she takes care never to absorb more into her system at once than she can comfort

VOL. XLIII.-NO. CCLVI.

ably assimilate. Bit by bit Poland went to pieces before her knocks, and was absorbed; yet so slow and sure is the Muscovite policy, that forty years were allowed to elapse after the final partition of Poland before that ill-fated kingdom was incorporated as an integral part of the Russian empire. Bit by bit Turkey has been encroached upon, alike in Europe and Asia, in the same way; and although two score of years have passed since first the Muscovite forces were in possession of the Principalities, yet it is only now that the Czar has resolved to openly extend his frontier to the Danube.

and

But the Danube will not now content him as the limit of his power. The last twelvemonth of events has at once tempted and forced him into a general struggle for the mastery. Russia is up and in arms,-the levée en masse has been raised over the length and breadth of the empire-the priesthood have preached a holy war the Czar, fancying himself a new Godfrey of Bouillon, is ready once more to lead the forces of the Cross against those of the Crescent. Of late years the policy of Russia towards Turkey has been to obtain an ascendancy over the Christian subjects of the Sultan anticipating that the Greeks would steadily increase and the Turks decrease in numbers and power, until the former would throw off the Mussulman yoke, and establish a Greek-Christian State under the

protectorate of the Czar. The private correspondence between Nesselrode and the Grand-duke Constantine in 1830- found by the insurgent Poles in the archives of Warsaw, and subsequently published in France — has shown this to have all along been the aim of Russia. In 1844, when the 2 c