This was the work of the pro-Turkish party, enraged by the sympathy evoked by my correspondence on behalf of the Montenegrins, and Sir Henry Elliott had made himself the mouthpiece of it.

Mr.Gladstone, having become warmly interested in the little mountain principality by my correspondence, had taken its case up in a strong review article, and had persuaded Tennyson to devote a sonnet to it.

He was, as he himself informed me, warned by Sir Henry Elliott not to trust to my letters or to employ them as authority for his work, for Sir Henry said that I was considered in the Levant, where I was well known, to be an infamous and untrustworthy character.

Mr.Gladstone, therefore, though he used my facts, referred them to the authority of a second-hand version.

Fortunately for me and my work, Professor Freeman had heard the reports in question, and knowing me personally, and taking the passionate interest he did in the war against the Turks, applied himself to the investigation of the tales, and satisfied himself and Gladstone that they were simple libels, without a shadow of foundation, and even had never been heard of until they were promulgated in London.