Cowley, who called on me the day before yesterday, said he should be very glad to have peace concluded, in order that our intimate connexion and dependence on each other might be at an end, for the difficulties arising therefrom, and the impossibility of placing any reliance on the French Ministers, were a perpetual source of annoyance. He thinks the Emperor honest and true, but that he is surrounded by a parcel of men every one of whom is dishonest and false. The Emperor knows this, and knows what is thought of his ministers, but he says 'What am I to do? and where can I find better men who will enter my service?'
Clarendon came here to-day to take leave of me on going to the Conference in Paris. He talks despondingly, but less about making peace than about making one that will be acceptable here. He augurs well from the choice of Russian Plenipotentiaries who are both personally agreeable to him, for he knows Orloff very intimately. When he took leave of Brunnow three years ago he said to him, 'If ever you see a good chance of peace, let me know,' and now Brunnow has sent him a message reminding him of what he had said, and telling him he now saw it. It was Clarendon who fixed on Paris for the Conference, everybody else being against it, especially the Emperor Napoleon and Palmerston, but Clarendon thought the advantage of having personal communication with the Emperor himself outweighed every other consideration, and he is right. Louis Napoleon will be the arbiter, and the struggle will be between England and Russia to get possession of him. Brunnow arrived at Paris to-day, the first arrival of the Plenipotentiaries, and he was received with great acclamations and manifestations of joy. Clarendon is dissatisfied at Brunnow's having got there first as if to steal a march on him, but this is unreasonable, as no particular day was fixed for their coming at once, and Clarendon might have been the first if he had chosen it, and Cavour is to be there to-day or to-morrow.
Footnote 1: [Sir John McNeill had been sent to the Crimea and Constantinople to investigate the causes of the sufferings of the troops in the winter 1854-55.]
_February 21st._--A week has passed since most of the Plenipotentiaries arrived at Paris, and we hear nothing of what has been going on amongst them; at least I hear nothing except that Clarendon writes word he is quite satisfied with the Emperor--the Hollands, that all sorts of intrigues are rife, Brunnow, Morny, and Madame de Lieven closeted together for hours, and Madame de Lieven writes to me in melancholy mood, saying she anticipates many difficulties, and complaining of the _exigeances_ which she hears of as probable, and how ungenerous as well as impolitic it is to make no allowance for the difficulty of the Emperor's position _vis à vis_ of his own people, and to bear so hard upon him. From all this I infer that the Russians have been informed that the Emperor Napoleon has engaged to back us up in our _exigeances_, the principal of which is probably the dismantling of Nicolaieff; this may be inferred from what has appeared in the French press. The 'Journal des Débats' published an article saying we had no right to demand this, to which the 'Siècle' replied asserting we had a right, and the article in the 'Siècle' was copied into the 'Moniteur,' which was tantamount to a recognition and approval of it. There are rumours afloat here that matters are not going on satisfactorily at Paris, and, taking all these things together, it looks as if the horizon was a little overcast, but as Orloff was only to arrive at Paris last night nothing essential can as yet have passed. Meanwhile this country remains in the same passive and expectant state, so far behaving very well that there is not the least stir or any attempt to make peace more difficult, not a word said in Parliament, no meetings or petitions, the 'Times' nearly silent, and only an undergrowl from time to time from the Radical or malignant journals. But all who have had any opportunity of testing the state of public feeling agree that the peace, be it what it may, will be taken with regret, and that if Clarendon were to return having broken off the negotiations, and to announce that the war would go on, he would be hailed with the greatest enthusiasm, and the ardour for war would break out with redoubled force.
