IX.

CHAP. at hand. Also he had good right to suppose that France would be isolated, for it was not to be believed that England or any other Power would take a part or even acknowledge the slightest interest in a question between two sorts of monks.

On the other hand, the violent language of M. de Lavalette, his threats, the persistence of the French Government, and the advance of the Toulon fleet to the Bay of Salamis,-all these signs seemed to exclude the expectation that the French Government would easily give way. Here was an error. Zealous himself, the Russian Ambassador imagined a zeal in the Government and the Church to which he was opposing himself, and fancied that he saw in the French Ambassador's resistance a proof of the encroaching 'spirit of that Church which proclaims itself universal, and looked for its real cause in the unceasing desire of the same Church to extend the sphere of its action.' * He failed to see that his French antagonist might suddenly smile and throw off the cause of the Latin Church, and so rob the Czar of the signal triumph on which he was reckoning, by the process of mere concession.

But whilst, to the common judgment of men who watched this haughty Embassy, it seemed that the Czar, in all the pride of strength and firm purpose, was descending on his prey, he was fulfilling the utmost hope of the patient enemy in the West, who had long pursued him with a stealthy joy, and was now keenly marking him down.

*Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 139.

CHAPTER X.

X.

State of the

dispute respecting the

Holy Places.

MEANTIME the course of events affecting the CHAP. question of the Holy Places had shifted the grounds of dispute; for the solemn act performed at Bethlehem in the foregoing December had converted the claims of the Latins into established privileges; and the Emperor Nicholas, notwithstanding his religious excitement, had still enough wisdom to see that, although he might have been able to prevent this result by a violent use of his power at an earlier period, he could not now undo what was done. Without outraging Catholic Europe, and even, it may be believed, his own sense of religious propriety, he could not now wrench the key of the Bethlehem Church from the hands of the Latin monks, nor tear down the silver star from the Holy Stable of the Nativity. Therefore all that Prince Mentschikoff demanded in regard to the key and the star was a declaration by the Turkish Government that the delivery of the key implied no ownership over the principal altar of the Church; that no change should be made in the system of the religious ceremonies or

X.

*

CHAP. the hours of service; that the guardianship of the Great Gate should always be entrusted to a Greek priest; and, finally, that the silver star should be deemed to be a gift coming from the mere generosity of the Sultan, and conferring no sort of new rights. In regard to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin at Gethsemane, Prince Mentschikoff required that the Greeks should have precedence at her tomb. He also insisted that the gardens of the Church of Bethlehem should remain in the joint guardianship of the Greeks and the Latins; and in demanding that some buildings which overlooked the terraces of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre should be pulled down, he required that the site of these buildings should never become the property of any nation,' but be walled off and kept apart as neutral ground. This last demand is curious. The Russian Government felt that even at Jerusalem it would be well to set apart one small shred of ground, and keep it free from the strife of the Churches.

But the last of Prince Mentschikoff's demands in regard to the Holy Places was the one most hard to solve. It has been said that in comparing the ways of men in the East with the ways of men in the West, there are found many subjects on which their views are not merely different but opposite. One of these is the business of repairing churches. Whilst the English Churchmen were contending that they ought not to be laden with the whole burthen of keeping their sacred Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 129.

*

X.

buildings in repair, the Christians in Palestine CHAP. were willing to set the world in flames for the sake of maintaining their rival claims to the honour of repairing churches. The cupola of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem was out of order. The Greeks, supported by Russia, claimed the right to repair it. The Latins denied their right. The dispute raged. Then, as usual, the wise and decorous Turk stepped in between the combatants, and said he would repair the Church himself. This did not content the Greeks, and Prince Mentschikoff now demanded that the ancient rights of the Greeks to repair the great Cupola and Church at Jerusalem should be recognised and confirmed; and although he did not reject the Sultan's offer to supply the means for the repairs, he insisted that the work should be under the control of the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem.*

Some of these demands were resisted by France; and although M. de Lavalette had been long since recalled, M. de la Cour, who succeeded him, seemed inclined to be somewhat persistent, especially in regard to the question of the Cupola and the question of precedence at the Tomb of the Blessed Virgin.

It seems probable, however, that although M. de la Cour may have been sufficiently supplied with instructions touching the immediate question in hand, he had not perceived so clearly as his English colleague the dawn of the new French policy. From the communications of his own * Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 129.

X.

CHAP. Government before he crossed the Channel, from his sojourn at Paris, and from the tenor of the despatches from England, Lord Stratford had gathered means of inferring that France no longer intended to keep herself apart from England by persisting in her pressure upon the Sultan; and, supposing that she had made up her mind to enter upon this new policy, Lord Stratford might well entertain a hope that the question whether a Greek priest should be allowed to control the repair of a Cupola at Jerusalem, or whether the doorkeeper of a Church should be a Greek or a Latin, would not be fought with undue obstinacy by the quick-witted countrymen of Voltaire. He spoke with M. de la Cour, and found that he was prepared for concession, if matters could be so arranged as to satisfy what Lord Stratford, in his haughty and almost zoological way, liked to call 'French feelings of honour.'*

Lord Stratford's measures for settling it.

By means of his communications with the Turks, the English Ambassador easily ascertained the points on which Prince Mentschikoff might be expected to be inexorable. These were:-the repair of the Cupola, the question of precedence at the Tomb of the Virgin, and the question about the Greek doorkeeper in the Church of BethleFurnished with this clue, Lord Stratford saw M. de la Cour, and dissuaded him from committing himself to a determined resistance on any of these three questions. He also gave his French colleague to understand that, in his opinion, the * Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 134.

hem.