Lord Mayor Sidney, who sustains the sumptuous hospitality of the
Mansionhouse, was enabled to regale his guests on Easter Mon- day with that dainty which would perhaps be regarded as the most desirable novelty of the season—a viva voce lecture on the state of Russia by Sir Hamilton Seymour in person. Sir Hamilton's after-dinner speech was the beau ideal of such a discourse. It was conversational yet full of information, unstudied in manner yet suggestive and. authoritative. In telling us that the Russian system of diplomacy and government is one of universal fraud and falsehood, Sir Hamilton indeed supplies nothing that we did not suppose ourselves to know before ; but there is a great difference between the inference of general writers or observers, however in- telligent, and the deliberate statement of a man who had such op- portunities for observing as he. He also justifies our own in- ference, that this system of fraud and falsehood deludes the Czar who puts it in motion, even more, perhaps, than his enemies ; and keeps up hallucinations in his mind, as to the state of Turkey, the position of the French Government, or the feelings of the English people, which have inspired the hardihood for his desperate course. It is evident that Sir Hamilton's irritation at having lost his " umbrella and carpet-bag," however it may have given a spiciness to his essay, did not betray him into any substantial deviation from plain fact; and the lecture which graced the Mansionhouse banquet was as sound in information as it was amusing in manner.
