The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-10-09 00:00:00

ADVICE TO AMBASSADORS.

But I am treating of the art of negotiating, not the his-
tory of failures. To sum up, then, in a few terse maxims.
Do not make a parade of business ; do not appear always
in harness —you will get on quite as fast. Understand
your mission and pursue it. Learn to appreciate the true
character and requirements of the age ; render yourself
necessary to improvement and progress. Never get angry.
Efface, by your own example, all prejudice against your
countrymen. Seek an honest renown. Associate with
those from whom you can learn something—how to he
better, wiser, or wittier. Learn to suit your subject to
your listener. Moderate your imagination. Study charac-
ter ; not an observation will be thrown away. Have no
absurd mysteries and pretensions about you. Seem to all
men what you really are—neither more or less. Bump-
tiousness may impose on silly people for a time, but in the
end it is merely ridiculous. See your way out of a wood
before yon venture into it. Prepare for emergencies be-
forehand. Be easy of access. Be always ready to hear
useful intelligence, no matter whence it comes. Your own
prudence will judge of its value. Accommodate yourself
to all sorts of people ; that is, know them, and know all
about them. Be merry and wise, genial and sociable.
Make friends whenever you can honestly do so. Do not
be always in the clouds, a Jove too majestic to be useful.
' Act without being haunted by the fear of failure. Pro-
pose to yourself right objects, pursue them as justly and
wisely as you can, and trust the rest to Providence; it will
seldom fail you. Bonne esperance et droit en avant. Do
not show your weak point, or everybody will knock against
it. If you have a sore place, never complain, or somebody
will always contrive to he rubbing it. Your resentment
will appear the best joke possible, and malice will delight
in stirring you up. Never abuse any favour or influence
you may enjoy. Great friends are for great occasions. It
is but squandering your interest to use it on little things.
Do not be too obsequious ; it is a sort of deceit, and will
infallibly make people suspect you of sinister designs.
Beware of making promises ; but never break your word
when given. You may see the most serious disadvantage
in keeping it, but you will reap the benefit of having done
so in the end. Have no dealings with bribery and secret
service money. They can never be necessary for honest
objects. They are the resources of folly—incapacity. A
wise man should be ashamed of them. Politeness is a
debt due to every one, but excessive subservience is a lie.
The man who is guilty of it is not courteous, but slavish.
It is an improper homage to mere rank and fortune ; for
nobody stoops to flatter the most transcendent merit with-

out them. If you give, do so gracefully, so as to make
the rranner as acceptable as the concession. Strive to be
essentially a gentleman. Do not condescend to oppose
cunning to cunning ; trick by trick ; learn to acquire that
nameless something which gives a grace to all your words,
and a sense and spirit to all your actions, which is the last
finishing polish to every good quality.
Know how to prepare any business of importance, and
remember that we cannot sow and reap at the same time.
Lastly, a clever, or even a good-natured man will take care
to conform to all innocent local customs, and to avoid in
any way shocking the religious prejudices of the people
among whom he lives. If you cannot acquire all the
qualifications of a diplomatist, try to attain as many as
possible, or change your profession before you come to
public disgrace, and are driven out of it by the curses of a
betrayed and indignant people.
From the preceding example, it is clear,
whether he has taken the trouble to put it in
set phrase or not, that " The Roving Englishman"
is at least a covert advocate of "Administrative
Reform," and is bent, as far as in him lies, on
putting the " right men in the right places."
In many of his pictures, and those generally
the most lively, his causticity of observation
stands him in better stead than the grave saws of
sedate wisdom. In various places he gives
expression to sharp remarks upon the dignity and
grace evinced in the bestowal and acceptance of
honorary presents," time out of mind an
important branch of diplomatic art. He also
enlarges to a great extent on the value and im-
portance of female influence, which he illustrates
by numerous and often ludicrous examples.
" Ambassadressea" he treats with an especial
regard, and offers the following rather ill-natured
remarks on the

ACHIEVEMENTS AND FUNCTIONS OF AMBASSIDRESSES.

The ambassadresses no sooner got their title than they re-
solved to display it in as public a manner as possible. Quiet,
sober, old diplomatists, all tricks and wig, were promptly
married by blooming and strong-minded females. Widows
of large fortune and a taste for society lay in wait for totter-
ing elderly gentlemen, who might have been their grand •
fathers, and bore them off, in spite of senile struggles, to
the nearest clergyman. There was quite a mania for am-
bassadors among marriageable ladies. Numerous females
who had long disappeared miraculously in company with a
plate chest and a captain in the Guards, turned up again
in the most unexpected and distressing manner. They
threatened their husbands with suits in Doctors' Commons
and Consistory Courts, unless they were immediately gra-
tified by the fullest restitution of conjugal rights. Other
energetic ladies who had kept their virtue till it was sour,
and had hitherto submitted to be stowed away in holes or
corners, started off with great decision to the most distant
foreign courts ; and ambassadors who were whispering
sweet nothings (in the interest of their country, of course,)
to the most distinguished beauties of Paris and Madrid
were horror-stricken at receiving a well-known box on the
ear, and an order to take larger lodgings, from an awful
person, with a false front and an anteiluvian bonnet,
whom they had not seen these twenty years. Diplomacy,
from being rather a jolly profession than otherwise, be-
came as gloomy as the private life of a comic actor, and
most of the small-legged, knock-kneed, dried-up little
beaux, in peach-blossom coats, who were among the
diplomatic celebrities of those times, thought of the Pope
with a bitterness and impotence of anger, which was the
laughter of all the pages and equerries in Europe.
The wives of envoys and ministers of a lower
grade than ambassadors, he tells us, were not re-
ceived at the old court of France, and some other
courts, with the same amount of consideration as
ambassadresses ; and this, we learn, occasionally
gave rise to misunderstandings of a nature more
grave than might at first sight have seemed likely
to arise from them. Of this see an illustration in
the subjoined

COURTLY DISPUTE IT STOCETIOLM.
There was a great dispute at Stockholm, in 1782.

130

SUPPL

The wife of the Austrian envoy (a diplomatist of the
second class) actually refused to kiss the Queen's hand
unless Her Majesty gave her a return kiss on the cheek
in the same manner as to the wives of senators. Here
was a pretty business. The Queen refused to receive her
at all ; and determined to be revenged on the bumptious
little Austrian. Her Majesty watched an opportunity
with female patience and address. It came, as all oppor-
tunities of punishing insolence do come if we wait' for
them. The Austrian lady went to a ball at the town-
hall. Austrian ladies dance wery well, and I dare say
she liked it. She little knew the sleepless vivacity of
royal pique. Immediately the royal family arrived, and
they probably came on purpose, the master of the cere-
monies approached- her with his most official countenance.
Let a country gentleman ask for • a passport at
our British Foreign Office, and he will get an idea
of the offended majesty which glowed in the Inass
ter of the ceremonies' eyes on this occasion : a
quaint picture of the lofty and absurd. " Sir," said the
little lady, stopping in her capers very unwillingly, " you
interrupt me." The official mouth moved with an official
whisper. The Austrian could not or would not hear, but
she blushed scarlet, and her eyes filled with tears. Again
the official mouth moved : its words were not very plain or
polite—official Words seldom are ; but their purport, for a
wonder, was intelligible. " She had not been presented,
and therefore could not remain within the august precincts
of the royal circle." lam bound to say that I would not
have sat at meat that evening with the offended lady.:-no,
to have been introduced to an accommodating bill-dis-
counter the ,next morning. The queen had had her re-
venge, but the insult so rankled, that she who had received
it never rested till her husband had solicited his recall,
and stirred up the imperial court to resent the affront.
This woman's quarrel about a kiss interrupted all inter-
national business between Austria and Sweden during no
less than six years. For another envoy was not sent to
Stockholm till 1788.

Every one is less or more acquainted with the
'fact, that on many occasions " dire events from
trivial causes spring ;" but the generality of
readers may not previously have been aware of
the importance attached to the salute ambassa-
dorial (we know of no feminine appellation for
it) between two punctilious and silly women.
From the specimens already adduced, a tolera-
bly correct estimate may be formed as to the
merits and demerits of " The Roving Englishman's"
volume of " tales about diplomacy." Those who
desire further information will find abundance of
varied and lively reading in the volume itself, in
which they will not fail to meet instruction com-
bined with amusement.

Gatherings from the Wine Lands.

London:

Foster and Ingle.

In this volume the reader will meet with a great
amount of historical lore, decently condensed and
pleasantly presented, relative to the early practice
of vine-growing and wine-making. He will also
find many quaint and some droll stories narrated
as to the wine-drinking habits of different nations,
both ancient and moderp, in which, among other
matters illustrative of the proverb that there is
" nothing new under the sun," he will learn that
the Yankee fashion of imbibing " sherry-coblers"
through straws is no novelty, but is as ancient,
at all events, as the celebrated "retreat of the
Ten Thousand" conducted and recorded by Xeno-
phon four centuries before the Christian era.
That great commander and historian narrating
that he came upon a people of Asia, whom he
calls the Mosyncecians, who excited the'most im-
moderate laughter among the Greeks, by sipping
their barley-wine, that is strong ale, through
straws. In dilating upon the qualities and
merits of the wines of different countries, the
author of this volume gives the following account of