The subject of fortifications in Canada was to be brought before the house, and Mr. Bright was anxious that Cobden should, if possible, be present during the discussion. It seemed scarcely probable that the state of his health would allow him to make the journey to London; but on the 21st of March his desire to be present when the Canadian fortification scheme had to be opposed, induced him to undertake it, though the weather was bleak and cold. He was accompanied by Mrs. Cobden and his eldest daughter, and they had taken lodgings in Suffolk Street, that he might be near to the Athenæum Club, and not far from the House of Commons. He had only just arrived, and was writing letters to some of his friends, when he was prostrated by an attack of asthma. An east wind continued to blow, and he lay watching the smoke as it was carried from the chimneys of the houses opposite. In a few days he appeared to be so much better that he was allowed to see one or two of his friends; but the recovery was only apparent, and a relapse occurred, which on the 1st of April became worse, and another attack of bronchitis made his recovery almost impossible. Even Mr. Bright was not allowed to see him on that evening; but early the following morning (Sunday, the 2d of April) he was admitted. Alas! all hope of Cobden's recovery was then over. Mr. Bright remained beside him, and another old and sincere friend, Mr. George Moffatt, was also there. The end was very near. As the bells of St. Martin's Church were ringing for the morning service, that simple, earnest, faithful brother and comrade was no longer with them. The funeral was at Lavington Churchyard, where, on the slope of the hill among the pine woods, the body of Richard Cobden, and that of the son whose early death he had so long mourned, are buried. His biographer1 relates that one afternoon in the summer of 1856, Cobden and a friend took it into their heads, as there was nothing of importance going on in the house, to stroll into Westminster Abbey. His friend had never been inside before, as he confessed that he had never been inside St. Paul's

1 Mr. John Morley.

Cathedral, though he had passed it every day of his life for fifteen years. They strolled about among the monuments for a couple of hours, and the natural remark fell from his companion that perhaps one day the name of Cobden too would figure among the heroes. "I hope not," said Cobden, “I hope not. My spirit could not rest in peace among these men of war. No, no, cathedrals are not meant to contain the remains of such men as Bright and me."

At the time of his death Cobden was within two months of the completion of his sixty-first year.

On the day after the sad event, when the House of Commons met, the prime minister spoke kindly, but without much tact, of the loss which the country and every man in it had sustained. The best sentence in the speech was that which said: "That same disinterested spirit which regulated all his private and public conduct led him to decline those honours which might most properly have recognized and acknowledged his public services." Mr. Disraeli, speaking for the opposition, struck a deeper note. "There is this consolation," he said, "remaining to us when we remember our unequalled and irreparable losses, that these great men are not altogether lost to us, that their words will be often quoted in this house, that their examples will often be referred to and appealed to, and that even their expressions may form a part of our discussions. There are, indeed, I may say, some members of parliament who, though they may not be present, are still members of this house, are independent of dissolutions, of the caprices of constituencies, and even of the course of time. I think that Mr. Cobden was one of these men; and I believe that when the verdict of posterity shall be recorded upon his life and conduct, it will be said of him that be was without doubt the greatest politician that the upper middle class of this country has as yet produced, and that he was not only an ornament to the House of Commons, but an honour to England."

The house was hushed and silent, but there was such an evident expectation that Mr. Bright should say something that, deeply

affected as he evidently was, he rose and endeavoured to say how every expression of sympathy that he had heard had been most grateful to his heart. "But the time," he went on in broken accents, "which has elapsed since in my presence the manliest and gentlest spirit that ever quitted or tenanted a human form took its flight is so short that I dare not even attempt to give utterance to the feelings by which I am oppressed. I shall leave to some calmer moment, when I may have an opportunity of speaking before some portion of my countrymen, the lesson which I think may be learned from the life and character of my friend. I have only to say that after twenty years of most intimate and almost brotherly friendship, I little knew how much I loved him until I had lost him.”

About a twelfth of the members of the House of Commons attended the funeral at Lavington. Mr. Gladstone was there, and a large number of the old free-traders of the Anti-Corn-law League. The French government and the French press offered their respectful tributes to the memory of the man who had done so much to promote international good-will.

The year was only just nearing its close when the death of the prime minister caused a change in the immediate political aspect. People had said that he would never sit in another parliament, but the remark pointed rather to his probable retirement. Others, though they saw the signs of age and coming infirmity, declared that he would never give in while he could get down to the house.

In July, 1865, parliament being dissolved, there was a contest at Tiverton, and Lord Palmerston went there and was re-elected.

During the latter part of the preceding session he had suffered continuously from gout and disturbed sleep. He never abandoned his duties as leader of the house; but without doubt they were, under the circumstances, performed with much physical difficulty, and greatly aggravated his disorder. Immediately after the Tiverton election he retired to Brocket, in Hertfordshire-the place Lady Palmerston had inherited from

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her brother, Lord Melbourne-selecting this in preference to Broadlands as being more within reach of medical advice. The gout had affected an internal part owing to his having ridden on horseback before he was sufficiently recovered, and, although all his bodily organs were sound, and there was no reason why, with proper care, he should not have lived for several years longer, those around him could not fail to feel anxiety about his evident state of weakness, not only for the moment, but at the prospect of his again meeting parliament as prime minister. That he himself felt the same anxiety for the future was clear. "One morning about a fortnight before he died," says the Hon. Evelyn Ashley, "I witnessed an incident which was both evidence of this and also very characteristic of the man. There were some high railings immediately opposite the front door, and Lord Palmerston, coming out of the house without his hat, went straight up to them after casting a look all round to see that no one was looking. He then climbed deliberately over the top rail down to the ground on the other side, turned round, climbed back again, and then went indoors. It was clear that he had come out to test his strength and to find out for himself in a practical way how far he was gaining or losing ground. Not that he had any excessive dread of death, for, as he put it one day, in homely fashion, to his doctor, when pressing for a frank opinion as to his state, 'When a man's time is up there is no use in repining.' The most touching and characteristic feature of his bearing at this time was his solicitude to avoid adding to Lady Palmerston's anxiety, and the cheerfulness which he assumed in her presence. Indeed consideration for others was, as in life so in death, one of his finest qualities. I remember that, only a few days before his end, when, so far as the aspect of his face could betoken illness, he appeared as ill as a man could be when about and at work, Lady Palmerston, at breakfast, alluded to the cattle plague, which was then making great havoc in England. He at once remarked that all the symptoms of the disorder were described by Virgil, and repeated to me some eight

lines out of the Georgics descriptive of the disease. He then told us a story of a scrape he got into at Harrow for throwing stones; and the excess of laughter, which he was unable to restrain, with which he recalled the incident, was the only token that could have betrayed to Lady Palmerston how weak he was. ... A chill caught while out driving brought on internal inflammation, and on the 18th of October, 1865, within two days of completing his eighty-first year, he closed his earthly career, the half-opened cabinet-box on his table, and the unfinished letter on his desk, testified that he was at his post to the last."

The death of Lord Palmerston practically left no alternative but for the queen again to recognize the position and long public services of Earl Russell, by calling on him to form a ministry, which was in effect a reconstruction of the former one, with Mr. Gladstone as leader in the House of Commons. There were very serious doubts in many minds whether the chancellor of the exchequer, with his grave, serious ways, and the absence in his temperament of anything like the jaunty, bantering humour which had been so marked a characteristic of the late premier, would be able to sustain the position of leader with Earl Russell in the upper house. Gladstone was, it was said, too much in earnest. Every question was treated as though it were of grave and momentous interest. How would such a leader deal with a house which contained men of all dispositions, and a good many of whom were inclined to treat political questions with levity or with indifference, except when they could be turned to party purposes?

It so happened that the session then approaching turned out to be one, the aspect of which demanded the exercise of those qualities which the chancellor of the exchequer possessed; and though Earl Russell's government was defeated before the close of the year, the measures and even the views of the ministry, or at all events of Mr. Gladstone and those of his colleagues who were in front of the demands of the public, so impressed the nation that the succeeding ministry found themselves

not only able, but impelled, to abandon their traditional policy, and to adopt measures which disturbed, if it did not alarm Lord Derby, who described the action he was obliged to endorse as "a leap in the dark," and intimated that he yielded for the purpose of supporting the Conservative party and continuing in office. Mr. Disraeli, on the other hand, spoke of having "educated" his party to the point where they seemed to have so far given up their previous convictions as to frame a measure of parliamentary reform in which what they had just before called "radical" measures were included, and even household suffrage was approached without much hesitation.

But we must now close this long chapter, and after a brief review of some of the lights and shadows of the time preceding the session of 1866,―lights and shadows which had presaged important changes and striking examples of progress,—will pass on to a period which may well be called one of "leaps and bounds."

Public regret for the loss of Lord Palmerston was sincere and general. Parliament was not sitting and therefore the official and ministerial tributes to his memory were not uttered till the following year, when the chancellor of the exchequer moved for an address to the queen, praying that an order might be given to erect a monument in Westminster Abbey to the memory of the late premier. Both Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli spoke with effect in their remarks upon the loss which the country had sustained. Mr. Gladstone had already publicly referred to other recent losses which the country had sustained.

On the 1st of November, 1865, he had been in Glasgow, where he was presented with the freedom of the city, and it was in his reply on that occasion that he said: “It has been my lot to follow to the grave several of those distinguished men who have been called away from the scene of their honourable labours-not, indeed, before they had acquired the esteem and confidence of the country, but still at a period when the minds and expectations of their fellow-countrymen were fondly fixed upon the thought of what they might yet achieve for the public good. Two of your

-1875.

Any historical narrative of social and political progress, if it is to be both interesting and intelligible, must frequently go to and fro: must carry on the story of one or other important event or episode to a point beyond that to which the main current of the record would have brought it, if the journey had been broken by a subordination of continuity to mere dates. No one can make a profitable journey on the stream of history if the raft that carries him is only chronological. In other words:-history is not an almanac.

We may, therefore, go back, or at least take a backward glance at some occurrences which have not been chronicled in these pages, but reference to which may be useful, or even necessary, for the due appreciation of the social and political conditions of the country at the commencement of what may be called a new period, if not a new era, in national experi

ence.

It would be beyond the limits of these pages to refer, however briefly, to ordinary accidents and calamities which had moved the public interest during the years with which we have just been concerned; but one or two exceptional occurrences demand a word of notice, for they were associated with important interests and with deep public feeling. One of these was the bursting of the Bradfield reservoir, eight miles above the town of Sheffield,

and the fearful inundation which followed. This terrible calamity occurred on the 11th of March, 1864, and the memory of those who witnessed it, or heard the particulars, at once went back to a date twelve years before, when, on the 5th of February, 1852, the Bilberry reservoir above the village of Holmfirth, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, burst upon a narrow pass in which the town stood. On that occasion the whole enormous volume of water from a reservoir 150 yards long and 90 feet high, rushed down the narrow gorges leading to the valley in the direction of the plain-crashing into ruin mills, dye-houses, barns, stables, and cottages, and sweeping before it trees which it tore up by the roots, as well as the carts, waggons, and wreckage, which, being stopped on their course by the bridges over a stream in the valley, formed obstacles behind which the mass of water accumulated till it burst onward with irresistible force sweeping through the village, destroying whole streets of cottages, shops, and factories, and overwhelming many of the inhabitants. Nearly a hundred lives were lost, and in some instances it was found that whole families were drowned. The damage to property was estimated at £600,000, and nearly 5000 adults and above 2000 children were left destitute. Above £45,000 was subscribed in England and the colonies for the relief of the sufferers, and it