IN A
paper gives the following account of the expe-
riences of one of the inhabitants of Strasburg
during the siege:-"I had been established in
Strasburg for many years, and my affairs had
never been so prosperous as they were when the
war broke out. On the approach of the enemy
I sent away my wife and family, but could not
leave my warehouses and shops, lest when the
town was taken they should be given up to pil-
lage. The first eight days all went well, the
quarter I inhabited seemed to be spared; but on
the ninth day a shell exploded in front of my
house and broke all the windows on the ground
floor. I thought it prudent from that time to
take refuge in my cellar. I had some provis-
ions there, so that I seldom went out of it. I
spent my days and evenings in reading, little
thinking what was about to befall me. On Sat-
urday, the 10th, about mid-day, while I was
taking a meal, I heard a tremendous noise over-
head. I ran to the stairs to ascertain the
amount of damage doubtless caused by a shell
falling into my house. I drew back terrified.
The entrance of the cellar was stopped up by
portions of the wall. The house had fallen in,
and I was buried alive. What passed through
my mind in the first hour of my captivity I can-
not adequately describe. I had fits of dumb an-
ger, to which general exhaustion succeeded.
By degrees I came to myself, for I must confess
I completely lost my head; I collected my ideas,
and thought I remembered having during the
day brought down a petroleum lamp. I felt my
way to the piece of furniture on which I be-
lieved I had placed it, and by good fortune
there it was. I lighted it instantly. It was
then that I realized my true situation; all round
me there were ruins; the staircase no longer ex-
isted; I could no longer deceive myself; the
house had fallen in and this cellar was to be my
tomb. To clear the rubbish on that side was

CELLAR AT STRASBURG.-A French | and wept for more than two hours. I had spent
four days in that cellar. I went into it without
one grey hair, and now it is quite white. I
have aged more than twenty years in four days.
As for my shops, all are burnt. I had worked
for ten years to set up my family in tolerable
comfort. My wife and I looked for an old age
exempt from care; now all must begin over
again, and I see no prospect of anything but
misery for our future days."
Pall Mall Gazette.

FLUID LENSES. - AN invention has been patented by Mr. Woodward, of Baltimore, U.S., which consists in bending circular discs of glass to any curvature, either spherical or parabolical, and afterwards cementing and firmly secur ing them together by means of rings or bands of metal, or other suitable material, thus forming cells for holding fluids, whereby a fluid lens, or any combination of fluid lenses, may be made of any required focus, and of a size much larger than can be made of solid glass; and, by means of the spherical or parabolically curved glasses, the metallic rebated rings, and system of cementing which are employed, a combination of cells may be formed for holding fluids of different indices of refraction, thus forming a fluid lens which will overcome both spherical and chromatic aberration in its own construction, and also whereby reflectors can be made of any of the precise and exact curvatures mentioned, the shells of glass being silvered like ordinary mirrors.

THE result of the experiments at Woolwich in my only hope, and I began it with the fury of reference to war balloons is that it has been despair. Every brick I took away made others found that a height of 100 fathoms at horizontal fall; the walls crumbled continually, and I was distance of 600 fathoms from the enemy would from one moment to another threatened with enable observers to secure the widest expanse destruction by the ruins. Then my lamp went of view. It is ascertained that captive balout for want of oil, and for a time I gave up all loons attain stability. The balloon having taken hope; but the instinct of self-preservation pre- a statonary position, eight cameras and lenses vailed, and I set to work again in a sort of rage. spread round the country at equal distances enI ad been working, as it seemed to me, more able the country to be photographed. The inthan two days, when the ceiling suddenly fell in; clination and length of the cord to keep the a brick struck me on the heal, and I fainted. balloon in the same stratum of air was found to How long I remained insensible I cannot tell. be easily calculable. By the new system of milWhen I reopened my eyes I perceived an open-itary telegraphy for field service telegraph wires ing above my head; the stars were shining; it can be carried through the air from terrafirma was night. I suffered horribly, and dared not to a balloon, and the wire can be paid out as move for fear of producing a fresh fall of ma- fast as the balloon sails; and two or more balsonry. I waited for day in mortal anxiety. As soon as I could realize my position hope returned. I made a heap of the rubbish all round me, and clinging to a beam of the ceiling, I raised myself out of this cellar which had so nearly been my grave. Once out of it, I again gave way. When I came to myself once more, I crouched down among the ruins of my abode

loons can be kept in communication with each other, so that telegraphic operations can be made from the balloon to head-quarters and thence to the base of operations. It is believed that war balloons will be manufactured at the Royal Arsenal, and that officers of Royal Engineers will be trained in their use.

Nature.

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Nay, France is mine, and your thought is All rude winds were hush'd to rest

From The Quarterly Review.
LORD PALMERSTON.*

Reform Bill of 1832, and the Repeal of the Corn Laws, with the attendant and It sounds strange to say of a man who analogous changes - we might rest, be died in his eighty-second year that he died thankful, and take breath, before hazardopportunely, neither too soon nor too late, ing any fresh attempt to improve or confor his fame. Yet this is strictly true of firm our political, social, or material adLord Palmerston. If he had died at vantages by legislation. In other words, seventy, before his first Premiership, the moderate Conservatism was in the ascendplace permanently assigned to him by his- ant; Lord Palmerston was pre-eminently tory would be amongst British statesmen a moderate Conservative; and the wideof an inferior order: he would have no spread conviction that he was so, that he pretension to rank with Somers, Walpole, was equally opposed to undue caution and Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Burke, Peel, or Can- rash enterprise, was what gained him ning; he would, at best, be remembered as the confidence and insured him the supone who, by conducting the foreign policy port of the most influential portion of of the country on liberal and enlightened the so-called Opposition in addition to principles, had caused England to be re- the largest, steadiest, and (we think) wisest garded, with alternating fear and grati-section of the Liberal party. During the tude, as the eager, not invariably ju- closing years of his career he attained and dicious, promoter of free institutions held power by being the representative throughout the world. On the other man, or (more correctly speaking) reprehand, if he had lived a year or two longer, he would probably have survived much of his utility and his popularity: although he would certainly not have fallen back on the reactionary party, he would hardly have moved fast enough to satisfy the party of progress, who were already beginning to murmur; he was imperfectly qualified for a home minister at the best of times; he would have upheld unwillingly and with a bad grace the banner of Retrenchment and Reform; and neither the disestablishment of the Irish Church nor the Irish Land Bill would have been carried (if carried at all) in the sweeping, dashing, and uncompromising style in which Mr. Gladstone has carried them.

It was owing to the peculiar exigencies of a transition period that Lord Palmerston's reputation culminated. It was during a lull, between the ebb and flow of the tide, when the State vessel was pausing in her course, that the national voice kept him at the helm. The rational majority of the people thought that, after the abolition of almost all prominent and admitted evils or inequalities—after such measures as Catholic Emancipation, the

* Life of Henry John Temple, Third Viscount Palmerston, with Extracts from his Journals and Correspondence. By the Right Hon. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, G.C.B., M.P. Vols. I. and II. London,

1870.

sentative politician, of the period; and this must not be understood in a depreciating sense, for it was not he who changed and accommodated himself to the times, but the times had come over to his way of thinking and acting. He remained substantially what he always had been; tout vient àpropos à qui sait attendre; and the good fortune which attended him through life had so ordered it that, as contemporary after contemporary died out, he should be recognized as the statesman of all others best qualified to satisfy the expectations of his countrymen.

If any persons connected or intimately acquainted with Lord Palmerston and anxious for his fame should be inclined to question Sir Henry Bulwer's eminent qualifications for his task, their doubts and misgivings will be materially lightened, if not altogether dissipated, by the opening paragraphs, in which he clearly developes his estimate of the life and character which he proposes to describe and illustrate, and his plan :

"I have undertaken to write the biography

of a great statesman under whom I long served,

and for whom I had a sincere and respectful attachment. I shall endeavour to perform this not ungrateful task with simplicity and impartiality, feeling certain that the more simply and impartially I can make known the character of a singularly able and honourable man, the more

likely I am to secure for his memory the admi- and felicitous in expression. It is fully ration and affection of his countrymen. The borne out by the ensuing biography, for most distinguishing advantage possessed by the which abundant materials of the rarest eminent person whom I am about to describe and most valuable description were fortuwas a nature that opened itself happily to the nately at hand; including an autobiotastes, feelings, and habits of various classes and graphical sketch down to 1830, journals kinds of men. Hence a comprehensive sympa- for several years, and numerous letters to thy, which not only put his actions in spontane-near relatives and trusted friends to whom ous harmony with the sense and feeling of the public, but by presenting life before his mind in the writer communicates his thoughts and many aspects, widened its views and moderated speculations on both private and public matters without reserve. The letters to its impressions, and led it away from those subtleties and eccentricities which solitude or living his brother, Sir William Temple, the diploconstantly in any limited society is apt to gen- matist, who became Minister at Naples, I would alone constitute a highly interesting publication.

erate.

“In the march of his epoch he was behind the eager, but before the slow. Accustomed to a wide range of observation over contemporaneous events, he had been led by history to the conclusion that all eras have their exaggerations, which a calm judgment and an enlightened statesmanship should distinctly recognize, but not prematurely or extravagantly indulge. He

There is a conventional understanding that no notes are to be taken of what passes in Cabinets, and when notes have been taken that they should be carefully suppressed or sealed up till the generation interested in and affected by them shall have passed away. Lord Palmerston does not appear to have considered himself bound by any understanding of this sort. Some of his journals contain full and curious notes of what took place in the earlier Cabinets of which he was a member, and these have been placed at the unrestricted disposal of Sir Henry Bulwer,

the result) that he would exercise a sound discretion in quoting from them. He has used them in a manner to throw new and valuable light on public characters and events, without (that we can see) withdrawing the veil from anything which policy or delicacy required to be concealed.

Idid not believe in the absolute wisdom which some see in the past, which others expect from the future; but he preferred the hopes of the generation that was coming on to the despair of the generation that was passing away. Thus there was nothing violent or abrupt, nothing that had the appearance of going backwards and forwards, or forwards and backwards, in his long career. It moved on in one direction in the full confidence (amply justified by gradually but continuously from its commencement to its close, under the influence of a motive power formed from the collection of various influences the one modifying the other - and not representing in the aggregate the decided opinion of any particular party or class, but approximating to the opinion of the English nation in general. Into the peculiar and individual position, which in this manner he by degrees acquired, he carried an earnest patriotism, a strong manly understanding, many accomplishments derived from industry and a sound early education, and a remarkable talent for comprehending and commanding details. This, indeed, was his peculiar merit as a man of business, and wherein he showed the powers of a masterly capacity. No official situation, therefore, found him unequal to it; whilst it is still more remarkable that he never aspired to any prematurely. Ambitious, he was devoid of vanity; and with a singular absence of effort or pretension, he found his foot at last placed on the topmost round of the ladder he had been long unostentatiously mounting."

The distinctive merit of his book is the manner in which, step by step, by aid of these documents, the individual Palmerston is developed and placed in broad relief, until it is made clear how and why a man without commanding eloquence, without personal or parliamentary following, without grandeur of conception or originality of view, rose gradually and steadily to the highest point of power and popularity to which it is well possible for the subject of a constitutional State to rise. The trains are laid from the beginning, and even in the few and faint traces of Lord Palmerston's boyhood that have remained unThis strikes us to be just in conception | erased by time, Sir Henry Bulwer discov