a country that can call itself intelligent and reflective, M. Blanc thinks it is assuredly England. In this country, which has so much to complain of as regards the sun, there exists, in any case, an intellectual sun whose absence is rarely to be felt, and which is prodigal of light. What a permanent flood of publicity. What a host of journals, and for those journals what a host of readers! How many minds employed every morning in searching into all the nooks and corners of any given question! And yet, let instinct chance to lift up its voice, farewell to logic, to reason, and to the sun.

In letter upon letter, with untiring patience, M. Blanc sweeps away the heaps of falsities imported by this irrational instinct. It was very true, he said, that the Washington Government made a mistake at the commencement of the war in inscribing only on its flag the word Union; and it was very true that even in 1863 it seemed to regard as an expedient what is a principle, by positively maintaining slavery in the faithful States, and by declaring its abolition only in the rebel States. Yes, that was unhappily true. But was that a reason for so furiously desiring victory for the South?-What! Because the North had not struck hard enough blows at slavery, should it be wished that slavery might remain in possession of the field?-What! Because the North had not embraced with sufficient resolution and zeal the cause of humanity and justice, should it be wished that that holy cause might be finally trampled under foot! Who could not see that the necessary result of the struggle, if the North proved successful, was the abolition of slavery; whereas, if the South triumphed, this conflict must necessarily be followed not only by the maintainance of slavery, but by its extension-ay, by its conservation, if the triumph of the South was to be greeted with the applause of Europe? That was the point to be decided. The question was not whether the North had done all that it could or ought to have done against slavery. The real question was, what would become of a part of the human race should the planters succeed, by help of cannon balls and sword-thrusts, in preserving their human cattle-herds? Let the partisans of the South answer this question if they could.

Too true is the charge he brings against England, of frequently sacrificing justice to its passions. What policy, he asks, has less troubled itself than that of England about the exigencies of justice when the national interests were concerned? In what nation of the world has cupidity displayed its vulture wings more widely than in England? He admits that it is true that England can lay claim to some of the noblest pages of history; that to her belongs the immortal honour of being

the

the classic land of liberty; that her laws, even under the yoke of an aristocracy, have rendered admirable testimonies to the dignity of human nature; that from her breast arose the most potent cry that has ever been uttered against sacerdotal tyranny; and that even now she is the only country which political conflicts have not made inhospitable. But is it not equally true that in her eagerness to subdue the seas, to extend her influence, and to conquer new markets for her products, she has rarely obeyed the voice of principle? It is a very remarkable dualism that he notices in almost every one of the constituent members of English society. An English gentleman is the best of men. Penetrate into the recesses of his nature, and you will love him. You will find him, beneath a reserved exterior, endowed with much feeling. He will charm you by the sincerity of his character, the solidity of his attachments, and his unostentatious generosity. That justice in small matters which constitutes the security of mutual relations, you may regard it as certain you will have to admire in him. But let an event occur by which the material welfare of England is compromised, you will be surprised to see your friend apply to the conduct of his country principles quite different from those which regulate his own actions. This man of sense and feeling will not allow that any one should dispute England's right to be inexorable. This just man will, openly before your very eyes, bow down to the god of might.

His strictures on Sir John Bowring's Chinese war, and the destruction of the Summer Palace, have much pungency. He says justly that to pretend to diffuse civilisation by plunder, devastation, and revenge, is to degrade the idol for which new worshippers are being sought. It is true, he adds, that Lord Elgin, in his capacity of an Englishman, might have his own reasons for finding it quite right that China should be treated as a Turk would treat a Moor, seeing that, in 1857, in her quarrel with England, China committed the serious offence of being in the right. M. Blanc found in this a curious chapter of contemporary history; for us, who are English, and are concerned for the fair fame of our country, a melancholy one. If, whilst in the war with China, she bombarded Canton, heaped up its ruins and flooded them with blood, England, in the war with Russia, out of regard for humanity and civilisation, abstained from bombarding Odessa, this discrepancy he explains on the principle that, whilst lions devour lambs, they always spare one another!

And yet, on the other hand, he sees that by the side of, or rather above, that England which is selfish, jealous, encroaching, and always ready to prefer herself even to justice, there

is

is another England which professes the manly worship of liberty, which honours thought in its most diverse manifestations, advances along the path of progress without ever receding a single step, and in her respect for the right of discussion, has raised to human intelligence a throne far loftier than those on which force is seated.

A sonorous voice, flashing eyes, a flow of words gushing forth like a torrent, and the ardour of an indomitable conviction, M. Blanc attributes to Mr. Bright. He describes him as aggressive, vehement, intrepid-intrepid to a fault. Having in view the air with which he attacks the aristocracy in the classic land of aristocracy, one feels that he is one of those great wrestlers who require great obstacles and great adversaries. Looking at the manner in which he braves public opinion in a country where the despotism of public opinion forms the counterpoise to liberty, one feels that he believes himself capable of mastering the people, while in the very act of arming them against himself. In the midst of the patriotic enthusiasm excited by the battles of the Alma and the Inkermann, Mr. Bright was to be heard thundering against the Crimean war, and calling it bloodthirsty folly. At the height of the irritation produced by the affair of the 'Trent,' he was to be found extolling the Republic of the United States, proposing it to the world as a model, and rushing forward with a sort of savage pride to confront the reproach of not having the heart of an Englishman. At once austere and violent, Mr. Bright is half-Quaker, half-tribune. Beneath every one of the figures employed by his eloquence, always substantial though always animated, passion is heard growling. He brandishes statistics as a strong arm flourishes a club. When he recommends peace at any price, it is with words which seem to sound the charge. In Rome, he would have been the man of the forum; in England he is, before all, the man of the hustings. But for that very reason he is not at home in the House of Commons, where part of his strength sometimes deserts him, and where his stormy eloquence is in an uncongenial atmosphere.

What M. Blanc admires in Mr. Bright even more than the fire of his eloquence, is the indomitable character of his courage. Tribunes are sometimes only courtiers in disguise, but he is indubitably a tribune in the highest sense of the word. He never flatters any species of royalty. His detractors, indeed, accuse him of ambition; but what a strange ambition that must be which never utters a word that does not tend to make the man impossible as a minister, or that is not pretty sure to achieve unpopularity! It is worth seeing with what

haughty

haughty disdain Mr. Bright treats public opinion, in a country wherein public opinion holds the sceptre. It is worth observing with what a proud sort of satisfaction he, an Englishman, contradicts all English tendencies. Whereas England, without being quarrelsomely disposed, has a profound faith in the efficacy of forcible procedures, Mr. Bright maintains that the best mode of disconcerting attack is by not thinking about self-defence. Whilst England is so imbued with aristocratic sentiment, that even the poor man who goes along bent beneath his burden abounds in it, as well as the lord whose horses bespatter him as he goes by, Mr. Bright loses no opportunity of attacking aristocracy in its head-quarters. Whereas England claims right of property over the ocean, Mr. Bright sees in the sea only the highway of nations. Mr. Bright denounces the government of India as spoliation and oppression; whilst England plumes herself on her manner of ruling the foreign countries over which she bears sway. England insists that what she conquers she is entitled to without question; but Mr. Bright reproaches her with having gained Gibraltar by injustice, and advises her to restore it to Spain without loss of time. In the late civil war of the United States, England sympathised in general with the Southerners; so at least M. Blanc thinks; but Mr. Bright displayed a passionate earnestness in pleading the Northern cause. England dreaded the restoration of the Union, as likely to revive in new vigour a Power whose prodigious and rapid development has long been a source of alarm to her; but Mr. Bright prayed with his whole heart for the re-establishment of a Republic of the United States, powerful and prosperous enough to be adopted by the New World, and to serve as a model to the Old. More strongly marked the antagonism could scarcely be, or directed to more numerous and important questions. And yet, strange to say,-and it imprints on this conflict between the opinion of one individual and that of a people a startling character of grandeur-Mr. Bright is able to play this part, not only without neutralising himself, but without exhausting or diminishing his influence. Public opinion, whose despotism it is so difficult to brave, and whose excessive power is the malady of free peoples, respects whilst repelling him, and by that fact creates for him a position as original as it is splendid. His ambition might be held to consist in maintaining himself in this position, if his words did not breathe a sort of contagious fanaticism which guarantees his moral disinterestedness and proclaims his sincerity. At the banquet in Birmingham, in 1863, whatever could possibly be said in opposition to English sentiment was said by Mr. Bright, with a rude and

vhement

vehement frankness. Nothing that was calculated to irritate the pride, offend the political creeds, or clash with the prejudices of his country was omitted. And he was applauded with enthusiasm. In the popularity enjoyed by Mr. Bright, notwithstanding his efforts to lose it, M. Blanc beholds the virile homage which a people brought up in the school of liberty is alone capable of rendering to a proud and honest spirit. That is truly a great nation which has so little need to be flattered; and it is a fine spectacle, that of human dignity asserting itself in the very applause accorded by an assembly of free men to the free man who rebukes them.

ON

ART. VI.-A STRUGGLE WITH FATE.

N a drizzling, gloomy September day, four or five autumns ago, a gentleman was seen pacing the platform of the Derby Railway Station, restlessly waiting for his train. There was much bustling to and fro of other passengers; and much fuss and noise the engines made as they arrived and departed with their precious freight. But this one traveller with whom we have to do paid little heed to them; his mind was wholly pre-occupied, and not unpleasantly, to judge from the sunny light that overspread his serious face now and then, as he walked and thought, with his hands behind him, and his eyes directed to the floor. In truth he was thinking of his happy home, and was all impatience to get northward, as he had been detained a whole fortnight in the south by business engagements; and, such a home-lover as Edward Fortescue felt a fortnight to be a really considerable period to be away from home and its treasures. There was another man pacing the platform at the same time, who presented a complete contrast to Fortescue. From the staid, self-contained, comfortable air of the latter, it was easy to tell that, much as he might be tossed about the world, there was one spot in it to which he was safely and happily anchored; and it was equally easy to tell, from the wretched, listless, aimless air of the other, that he was but a poor waif on life's stormy sea, and he was drifting, drifting— he neither knew nor cared whither.

This man was observing Fortescue, following him with eye and step, yet without attracting his notice. First he glanced at him casually and carelessly; but, upon passing him again, his gaze was full of interest and then of recognition. He would have stepped impulsively forward to claim acquaintanceship; but, looking down at his shabby apparel, he checked

himself;