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so exclusively upon Count Waxewsjci , that the Count ' s * speech constituted the bulk of the telegraphic communication to Brussels and London—the Brussels report slightly mentioning Count Bttoi ,, and Lord CiiAbendok . This implies an admiration of the Preach Plenipotentiary which may , we trust , conciliate some clemency for the unhappy functionary who was " tampered with" by M . LEJOMVET .
M . IdEjroxiVBT , the telegraphic clerk , is arrested on the plea that the Treaty was transmitted to London and Brussels by electricity . Very long messages have been transmitted , but was the telegraph occupied the livelong day in sending along its wires the text of the Treaty ? It would be interesting to ascertain whether , in point of fact , any telegraph in Paris was occupied on the day
during which the despatch was transmitted for so long a time as that j ob would have taken . If not , then the extra-official communication must have been by another channel . Through what post ? Has the ITreneh G-overnment inquired whether it was Bent in the mail of any embassy ; and if so , what functionary at the Foreign Office placed it in the mail ?
There is also another curious fact . "When the version of the Treaty was published in Iiondoivthere were four , clauses missing , the fifth , sixth , seventh , and eighth ; some accident had happened to " three slips , " at the last moment . The report was transmitted on the 21 st of April . -Now it is rather remarkable that it was at the latest deliberation
of the Conference that . Lord Ciabbitooh brought forward the proposal embodied in the eighth clause . This proposal was adopted , it constitutes a most essential modification of the Treaty , it was added very late . Had somebody forgotten to correct the original draft , and remembered the omission after sending the draft as the Treaty ? In whose custody had the draft been permitted to re * main ? Because , of course , that person , whoever he was , must have been much trusted by the author of the draft .
It is no secret that , near the person of the Emperor of the Fbbnch , have been gentlemen who have not agreed with each other upon particular questions . It is difficult to say that they have not agreed with the Emperor , because , except upon important occasions , the Emperor is very reserved . He has his opinion , but whether it is in agreement ov disagreement with that expressed by his interlocutor , nobody knows . The supposition is , however , that there has not been a
complete agreement between Count Wajuewski and his Imperial master . There is another discrepancy , which it is important to note . We called to mind , last week , the fact that soon after the coup cPdtat was effected in Piwis , a decree was actually signed and set up in the office of the Moniteur , only cancelled at the hist moment , for executing a parallel coup d " &at in Belgium , with a direct appeal to the majority of the country more , Napoleonic *) . In the speech which the admiring accomplice of M . Lkjoi » ivet transmitted to Belgium and to London , were
expressions extremely ominous to Belgium , and , amongst others , hinting that " the majority" might be the final arbitrator upon a great question . Now the word " majority , " m . ft Freskcht mouth addicted to coups d ? 6 tat , would , have a peculiar significance in Belgium . ; / tStiB remarkable that in the authenticated protocol of the 8 th of April , that word " majority" disappears , and is replaced by " all sensible persona in . Belgium . " There are other ebnngea , uniformly in . the same sense . It i » . y «* y aingular that M . Lejoju-Tjax ' s accomplice should ao completely Have caught the Waiuwbki tone as to have made
the composition transmitted to Brussels and London more powerfully express the spirit that moves the Count than the formal Protocol . It often happens that a man who is very much in earne ' st—and the author of that passage against Belgium must have been in earnest—softens his expressions when he revises his composition . The version which
found its way to Brussels and London was like the rough draft containing the spirited touches , with all the fire of the artist in the moment of original inspiration . Now the accomplice of M . Lejolivet , who had access to the confidential portfolio of the author of that part of the Protocol , must assuredly be a person easily found out .
A report has been current in the Continental papers , lately , that Count CoiiONiirA " Waiewski , the son of a Polish lady , not without Imperial blood in his veins , has been negotiating the purchase of estates belonging to his mother ' s family in Poland . We do not know , exactly , what this means . In the language of English law the " purchase" of landed property means almost any process of
obtaining land except by inheritance or bequest ; in England , indeed , it does not mean free gift . Of course the " purchase , '" whatever that may mean , by a gentleman who is now an alien to Russia , could only be effected through the favour of the reigning Emperor . In the fervour of the spirited remonstrance against a free press in Belgium , the Emperor Alexanxhkb II . cannot but perceive the heart of a man who is animated by a reverent regard
for autocratic authority . In this review we have done nothing but state facts which have already been mentioned in the papers , or are in themselves notorious . Perhaps they throw some light upon the mode in which the illieit copy of the Treaty and the extremely imperfect version of the Protocol reached Brussels and London . The
French police have made nothing out of M . Lejomvet . They have , we suspect , got hold of the wrong man ; and when putting him in prison , they certainly put the wrong man in the wrong place .
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" STEWARD I " Our excessively nautical contemporary , the Examiner , is even more at sea than usual in his rationale of a Naval Review . He has been so fond of taking poor landsmen like ourselves into blue water , with so merciless an indifference to the state of our stomachs , that we may be permitted to consider it a judgment when we find him avowedly qualmish , not to say sick , on a voyage from Southampton to the Nab , when the sea
was as calm as a millpond . He begins by telling us that the sight of a Naval Review is all an affair of calculation and reflection . In other words , to our contemporary , going to sea ( if an excursion on the Solent deserves that formidable description ) is all a matter of casting up accounts . In the next sentence we are informed , that " ships of the same class look much alike to the unnauiioal eye . " Indeed ! and to the nautical eye ( of our contemporary ) how do they look , we should like to know ?
A naval review muat be fagged up in ail its scattered details , thought of , and wondered at , qfler a fatiguing eMrt . The column of ships , great at one end , " small by degrees and beautifully less , " muse be cast up like a colrnnn of figures , and the admiration is at the bottom commensurate with the total . W e dare say there is something very profound at the bottom of these remarks , but we confess the passages we have italicized suffffest to our minds nothing so much as a
bilious town-gentleman addicted to figures ( a clerk in the Board of Trade , for instance ) performing a sacrifice to Neptune , of ail too delicacies of the season . The column of ships seems to have struck his somewhat
clouded eye obliquely , as he bent over the ship ' s side , fagging up his reminiscences of town dinners in all their scattered details ; and we do not wonder at his admiration being " at the bottom commensurate with the total , " whatever that may mean . Now , our contemporary , we have said is so passionately fond of carrying his unsuspeeting readers to sea on all occasions , and
of displaying a terrible familiarit y with the technical language of the nautical drama , that he might surely have given us a livelier picture of the scene at Spithead than this dismal joint production of a man of figures and a man of buckets . Let a ship be run down , or founder , or go ashore , and , as sure as fate , our contemporary will , on the very next Saturday , be prepared to prove how the accident could never have occurred if he had been on board . With
a power of words he boxes the compass , splices the main brace , reefs the flying jibboom , and tops his binnacle , and all we poor landsmen can do is to believe and tremble . So easily is a reputation for seamanship established among land-lubbers that our contemporary has enjoyed almost a speciality in this line , though we have heard it remarked by persons well acquainted with jest-books that he is seldom original or amusing now when he gets out of soundings . Perhaps this will account for his manner of reviewing the Review ; for it will be seen that he talks in the spirit of a coaster , or rather of a member of that illustrious Yacht
Club which is in the habit , we believe , of cruising between Vauxhall and Putney , and once or twice a year performing a perilous voyage to the Isle of Dogs . Among the members of that Cluh there is even a tradition that a member once penetrated with his gallant eraft as far as Erith , but the story is obscure . Maybe that adventurous and daring discoverer was no less a personage than our contemporary , and hence his nautical speciality . Let us test his latest
seamanship a little more particularly . He prefers a military to a naval review , because " a military review strikes and delights the sight at once . " We do not understand how the general effect of a large army can be said to strike the sight at once more than the general effect of a large fleet . In either case , the larger the army or the fleet , the more diiiicult it becomes to seize all the details at a glance . The array of an army strikes and dethe
lights the eye quite differently from array of a fleet : there is more moving life , more variety , more pomp in the brilliant colours , and the flashing and gleaming steel . But , surely , a vast fleet of war-ships , stretching over twelve miles of water , with a lovely island for a natural breakwater to seawaTd , is also a spectacle that " strikes and delights the eyo at
once . It requires an effort to a civilian s eye to fag up the details of a military review tho number of the regiments on the ground the various arms of the service , and to follow their positions in the field ; and after tho nrsc burst of smoke , whether from ships' guna or to
from artillery , the eyo of faith is necessary " realize" the spectacle to an unnautical or unmilitary eye . There are people who Imto the sen ,, and are sick at the sight of ships ; others who care as little for the fusa and finery of soldiery ; it is purely a qucHtion 01 tasto and sympathy . Our contemporary , wno tella ub that ships of the same olaaa look niucn alike to the unnautical oye , seems to him l >' mself in a similar predicament towards whips o totally different classes . You bogln with the gunboats , tho ugltast things ever contrived , much after tho model of the Nore l-igj «¦¦ . ahapo and fashion are thoso of a foot-p < in . » qu »
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422 THE LEADIB . [ No . 319 , Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 3, 1856, page 422, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2139/page/14/
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