3 MAY 1873, Page 2

Prince Bismarck, of course, accompanied his sovereign lord, inseparable as

Mephistopheles from Faust. He, too, for the occasion assumed the Cossack. When Prince Gortschakoff visited him in state, the Chancellor wore all his Russian orders. Prussia, once said Mr. Urquhart wittily and at that time wisely (for it was the time of the Crimean war), is only Russia plus a capital P. But Prince Bismarck may have reflected that this was the first visit paid by a Prussian sovereign to a Czar, in which they met on conditions of absolute equality, and that this had all come to pass since the days when he himself., as Ambas- sador to the Czar (1859-62), began to feel the full sense of his power, and meditated on his future by the banks of the Neva. The great rising diplomatic genius of Russia, Ignatieff, has, been summoned from Constantinople to confer with the two Chan- cellors,--a significant circumstance, especially as the official organs, both Russian and Prussian, declare that the two sovereigns think and talk of nothing but peace, for all their parading and drumming. If the temptation should only come upon them to combine their forces, and overrun Europe, what is there in the present state of Southern Europe, to prevent their repeating the role of Attila, who after all had not two millions of men armed with breech-loaders with which to attack the Roman Empire ? In Peter the Great's will such a proposal is laid down,—but is the time ripe? Hardly. Meantime the Foreign Ministers of England, Austria, and Turkey would very much like to be in General Ignatieff's confidence.