listened to with an ominous calm, which bespoke the neglect that afterwards frustrated his efforts to carry it through either house. It is true that there was nothing startling about the proposed changes. There was to be a £10 occupation franchise for the counties, and the borough franchise was to be reduced to £6. The payment of poor-rates was to be a qualification for a vote. Twenty-five boroughs returning two members each were to be left with one; twelve counties or county divisions were to have one member; the West Riding two additional seats and the southern division of Lancashire two; Kensington and Chelsea were to form a borough with two members; Birkenhead, Stalybridge, and Barnsley were to have one each; and Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Leeds each an additional member. The University of London was also to be represented by a member. In places where three members were returned the third was to represent the minority. The bill appeared to be unacceptable to both sides. It was too much for those who deprecated disturbance, and not enough for the promoters of political progress in the direction of a largely increased representation of the body of the people. It was said that the opposition were so sure of Lord Palmerston's hostility to the scheme, that Lord Derby had broadly hinted to him that if he could remove Gladstone, Russell, and Milner Gibson from the ministry the Conservatives would support the government. If this had really been suggested, it betrayed a singular misunderstanding of Palmerston's character. He may have cordially disliked the proposed Reform Bill, but he would certainly not betray his colleagues. However, he probably knew that there was little occasion for him to be troubled about Lord Russell's measures. Proposals were made for its adjournment till the following year, when the census was to be taken, and it was so evident that by the delay of a prolonged debate the opponents of the bill might be able to defeat it, that, with manifest grief and disappointment, Lord Russell announced its withdrawal. In the following year he had evidently abandoned all intention of moving any further in the direction of a similar bill, and indeed, in the royal speech, no mention was made of parliamentary reform. The question was subsequently raised by Mr. Locke King, who proposed to lower the county qualification to £10, and by Mr. Baines, who brought forward a motion for reducing the borough franchise to £6, but both suggestions were rejected. Reference has been made to the ages of Lord Palmerston, Lord Lyndhurst, and Lord Brougham, and to the failing health of Sir James Graham. These were instances of some of the losses which might naturally be expected to befall the nation at no remote period. Already several of those who had been the contemporaries of Mr. Gladstone during the early part of his career were seen no more in their accustomed places, and he had referred in words of solemn pathos to the fact that the time had arrived when, in looking round him, he missed the once familiar forms and faces, and felt their loss by that sense of solitariness which even the necessity for making new associations will not for a time overcome. In the ranks of literature as well as in the world of politics and statesmanship, well known names had fallen out of the lists of the living. Douglas Jerrold the satirist, whose brilliant wit and caustic subtle humour had sparkled both in the drama and in the pages of Punch and other periodicals, had died in 1857, just as the tidings of the Indian mutiny had reached England. Hallam the historian-long bereft of the son whose early death was mourned by Tennyson and by Gladstone-lived on and worked on until January, 1859, when he died at the age of eighty-one. Leigh Hunt, the charming poet and essayist, who had outlived the dreary days of his imprisonment for libelling George the Fourth, was seventy-five years old when his death took place at Putney in August, 1859. In November of the same year intelligence came from Bonn of the death of the Chevalier Bunsen, who, when he was Prussian ambassador in London, had been the delightful companion and warm friend of distinguished men of letters in this country, and was himself the author of many books of deep interest to students of ecclesiastical lore, and of one by which he has been better known, MACAULAY-GLADSTONE'S TRIBUTE TO HIS MEMORY. entitled Egypt's Place in History. He had been recalled to Prussia or had resigned because of his opinions on the policy of the king in relation to the Russian war, but he was greatly esteemed by men of all parties in England. But a larger gap than either of these was left in the public and literary ranks in England by the sudden death of Lord Macaulay on the 28th of December, 1859. This loss, which was felt throughout the country, may be said to have cast a shadow on the closing days of the year, for his books, and especially his History of England from the Accession of James the Second, was known and read all over England, and some of his poems had been listened to with delight when they were recited before large audiences. His prodigious memory and his philosophical mode of thought were allied to a strong imagination and to the power of striking poetical expression. Few men have united so much of the genius of the poet to the plodding industry and research of the antiquarian. The latter quality enabled him to seek the material for his vivid pages in musty parliamentary records-long closed correspondence-timeworn ballad-sheets, and even stained and frayed broadsheets relating to events that might otherwise have been forgotten, since they were never popularly depicted until he drew them with a vigorous hand. It has been contended that Macaulay only wrote history from the Whig side; and it can scarcely be denied that while he draws the misdeeds of the other party in strong dark outlines, he sublimates some of the faults of his political predecessors and somewhat idealizes their professed principles. Yet his remarkable power of illustration and the charming lucidity which characterizes his style will always cause his history to hold a high place among all classes of readers. It was not, however, as an author alone that Macaulay was sorely missed. The place he had occupied in parliament and in the arena of politics could not easily be filled. Failing health had compelled him to resign the representation of Edinburgh and to abandon public speaking; but his superb achievements as a speaker, both in and out of the 39 House of Commons, were not forgotten when he had retired to the seclusion of the home, where his presence was ever welcome and where his tender and affectionate nature found fitting companionship in his sister's family. He had been eminently successful, and his great ability and indefatigable energy had enabled him to achieve high distinction in whatever he attempted. Probably it would not have added to his fame if he had lived to carry his voice to the House of Peers, which would, however, have been graced by his intellect; and though it is to be deplored that his history remained uncompleted, it is not a mere fragment, but a shapely and finished production, a monument of his genius. Macaulay was never married, and the wealth which he had acquired went to his relatives; but during his life he was one of the most generous of men, and few distressed representatives of the literary craft applied to him in vain for assistance. It is certain, on the contrary, that because of the natural goodness of heart which could spare some pity for their distresses, he consciously helped some who were incompetent, and should never have taken upon themselves the profession of letters. We have already seen something of the early correspondence between Mr. Gladstone and the brilliant reviewer in their early days, and we may therefore fitly refer here to a few of the words used by the former when, in 1876, in a review of The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, by his nephew George Otto Trevelyan, M.P., he has to speak of the man whose own achievements had by that time almost become historical. Mr. Gladstone says: "Lord Macaulay lived a life of no more than fifty-nine years and three months. But it was an extraordinarily full life, of sustained exertion; a high table-land, without depressions. If in its outer aspect there be anything wearisome, it is only the wearisomeness of reiterated splendours, and of success so uniform as to be almost monotonous. He speaks of himself as idle; but his idleness was more active, and carried with it hour by hour a greater expenditure of brain-power, than what most men regard as their serious employments. He might well have been in his mental career the spoiled child of fortune; for all he tried succeeded, all he touched turned into gems and gold. In a happy childhood he evinced extreme precocity. His academical career gave sufficient, though not redundant, promise of after celebrity. The new golden age he imparted to the Edinburgh Review, and his first and most important, if not best, parliamentary speeches in the grand crisis of the first Reform Bill, achieved for him, years before he had reached the middle point of life, what may justly be termed an immense distinction. "For a century and more, perhaps no man in this country, with the exceptions of Mr. Pitt and of Lord Byron, had attained at thirty-two the fame of Macaulay. His parliamentary success and his literary eminence were each of them enough, as they stood at this date, to intoxicate any brain and heart of a meaner order. But to these was added, in his case, an amount and quality of social attentions such as invariably partake of adulation and idolatry, and as, perhaps, the high circles of London never before or since have lavished on a man whose claims lay only in himself, and not in his descent, his rank, or his possessions. Perhaps it was good for his mental and moral health that the enervating action of this process was suspended for four years. Although after his return from India in 1839 it could not but revive, he was of an age to bear it with less peril to his manhood. He seems at all times to have held his head high above the stir and the fascination which excite and enslave the weak. His masculine intelligence, and his ardent and single-minded devotion to literature, probably derived in this respect essential aid from that depth and warmth of domestic affections which lay nearer yet to the centre of his being. He was, indeed, prosperous and brilliant; a prodigy, a meteor, almost a portent, in literary history. But his course was laborious, truthful, simple, independent, noble; and all these in an eminent degree. Of the inward battle of life he seems to have known nothing: his mind was, so to speak, self-contained, coherent, and harmonious. His experience of the outward battle, which had reference to money, was not inconsiderable, but it was confined to his earlier manhood. The general outline of his career has long been familiar, and offers neither need nor scope for detail. After four years of high parliamentary distinction, and his first assumption of office, he accepted a lucrative appointment in India, with a wise view to his own pecuniary independence, and a generous regard to what might be, as they had been, the demands of his nearest relations upon his affectionate bounty. Another term of four years brought him back, the least Indian, despite of his active labours upon the legislative code, of all the civilians who had ever served the Company. He soon re-entered parliament; but his zest for the political arena seems never to have regained the temperature of his virgin love at the time of the Reform Bill. He had offered his resignation of office during the debates on the Emancipation Act, at a time when salary was of the utmost importance to him, and for a cause which was far more his father's than his own. This he did with a promptitude and a manly unconsciousness of effect or merit in the act which were truly noble. Similar was his dignified attitude when his constituents of Edinburgh committed their first and last fault in rejecting him on account of his vote for Maynooth. This was in 1847. At the general election in 1852 they were again at his feet, as though the final cause of the indignity had been only to enhance the triumph of his re-election. Twice at least in the House of Commons he arrested the successful progress of legislative measures, and slew them at a moment's notice and by his single arm. The first of these occasions was the Copyright Bill of Serjeant Talfourd in 1841; the second, the bill of 1853 for excluding the Master of the Rolls from the House of Commons. But, whenever he rose to speak, it was a summons like a trumpetcall to fill the benches. He retired from the House of Commons in 1856. At length, when in 1857 he was elevated by Lord Palmerston to the peerage, all the world of letters felt honoured in his person. The claims of that, which he felt to be indeed his profession, acquired an increasing command on him as the interests of political action grew less and less. DEATH OF THE KING OF PRUSSIA-NEARER LOSSES. Neither was social life allowed greatly to interfere with literary work, although here, too, his triumphs were almost unrivalled. Only one other attraction had power over him, and it was a life-long power-the love of his sisters; which about the mid-point of life came to mean his sister Lady Trevelyan. "As there is nothing equally touching, so there is really nothing more wonderful in the memoirs, than the large the immeasurable abundance of this gushing stream. It is not surprising that the full reservoir overflowed upon her children. Indeed he seems to have had a store of this love that could not be exhausted, for little children generally; his simplicity and tenderness vying all along in graceful rivalry with the manly qualities, which in no one were more pronounced. After some forewarnings, a period of palpable decline, which was brief as well as tranquil, brought him to his end. "To the literary success of Macaulay it would be difficult to find a parallel in the history of recent authorship. For this and probably all future centuries we are to regard the public as the patron of literary men, and as a patron abler than any that went before to heap both fame and fortune on its favourites. Setting aside works of which the primary purpose was entertainment, Tennyson alone among the writers of our age, in point of public favour, and of emolument following upon it, comes near to Macaulay. But Tennyson was laboriously cultivating his gifts for many years before he acquired a position in the eye of the nation. Macaulay, fresh from college in 1825, astonished the world by his brilliant and imposing essay on Milton. Full-orbed he was seen above the horizon; and full-orbed, after thirty-five years of constantly-emitted splendour, he sank beneath it. "His gains from literature were extraordinary. The cheque for £20,000 is known to all. But his accumulation was reduced by his bounty; and his profits would, it is evident, have been far larger still had he dealt with the products of his mind on the principles of economic science (which, however, he heartily professed), and sold his wares in the dearest market, as he undoubtedly acquired them in 41 the cheapest. No one can measure the elevation of Macaulay's character above the mercenary level without bearing in mind that for ten years after 1825 he was a poor and contented man, though ministering to the wants of a father and a family reduced in circumstances; though in the blaze of literary and. political success; and though he must have been conscious from the first of a gift which, by a less congenial and less compulsory use, would have rapidly led him to opulence. Yet of the comforts and advantages, both social and physical, from which he thus forebore, it is so plain that he at all times formed no misanthropic or ascetic, but on the contrary a very liberal and genial, estimate. It is truly touching to find that never, except as a minister, until 1851, when he had already lived fifty years of his fifty-nine, did this favourite of fortune, this idol of society, allow himself the luxury of a carriage. "It has been observed, that neither in art nor letters did Macaulay display that faculty of the higher criticism which depends upon certain refined perceptions and the power of subtle analysis. His analysis was always rough, hasty, and sweeping, and his perceptions robust. By these properties it was that he was so eminently opτkos, not in the vulgar sense of an appeal to spurious sentiment, but as one bearing his reader along by violence, as the river Scamander tried to bear Achilles. Yet he was never pretentious; and he said frankly of himself that a criticism like that of Lessing in his Laocöon, or of Goethe on Hamlet, filled him with wonder and despair.” In the first days of January, 1861, intelligence arrived of the death of the King of Prussia, whose illness, accompanied by mental disorder, had long precluded him from taking any part in the government of the country. His brother, who had been appointed princeregent, came to the throne with the title of King William I., and our princess royal thereupon became Crown-princess of Prussia, and afterwards, of Germany. The relations between our own royal family and that of Prussia naturally increased the serious feelings with which the death of King Frederick William was regarded by the Queen and Prince Albert, especially at a time when they were mourning the sickness or the loss of some of those eminent servants of the state on whose loyalty and ability they had so frequently been able to rely. Sir James Graham was dead. On the 14th of December the Earl of Aberdeen, who had been so intimately associated with the royal family, had passed away. Sir Sidney Herbert, who had been raised to the House of Lords with the title of Lord Herbert of Leigh, had been for some time suffering from the same illness of which he died in the following August. As the year went on the other names were absent from the earthly roll-call of those who were loved, respected, or admired. On the 6th of June Cavour, suffering from typhoid fever, had been bled to death by Italian doctors, who could not depart from their old traditions, and the news telegraphed from Turin sent a shock through Europe; for the affairs of Italy had reached a crisis, in which it was believed only his strong guiding hand and inimitable statecraft could be of immediate avail. We shall have to return to the events which had produced that impression, and had caused Prince Albert, on receiving the intelligence of the death of the minister, to write in his diary the words, "Ein ungeheurer Verlust für Italien" (an immeasurable loss for Italy). There were other losses nearer to the royal domestic circle in England. Dr. Baly, the trusted physician to the prince and the royal family, was killed in a railway accident between London and Wimbledon on the 29th of January. He was the only person seriously injured. Soon afterwards, died Sir George Couper, physician to the Duchess of Kent. These losses occurred during the sorrow experienced by the royal household for the death in April, 1860, of Prince Ernest of Hohenlohe Langenburg, husband of the queen's sister, and president of the upper chamber of Wirtemberg. Not only were public affairs full of exciting interest during the latter half of 1860 in consequence of the Franco-Italian alliance, the schemes of Napoleon III., and other foreign complications of which we shall presently have to take note; but the royal family was to some extent separated, and amidst many domestic claims and an unflagging attention to public business the health of Prince Albert became precarious, and he frequently suffered from attacks of illness, against which he bore up with patient courage, but which were sufficient to cause great uneasiness to the queen and to others who anxiously watched his unremitting labours. In March, 1860, arrangements were made for the visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada, in fulfilment of a promise made to a deputation which came here during the Crimean war asking the queen to visit her American possessions. Her majesty could not accede to a request which would involve so long a voyage, and it was then proposed that one of the princes should become governor-general. They were both too young for such a proposition to be entertained; but it was agreed that as soon as the Prince of Wales was old enough, he should visit the Dominion. This intention was about to be carried out in the autumn, when the visit would be signalized by his royal highness laying the foundation-stone of the new Canadian parliament-house at Ottawa, and opening the great railway bridge across the St. Lawrence at Montreal. When it was known in America that the heir to the English throne was about to visit Canada, the president, Mr. Buchanan, addressed a letter to the queen, offering a cordial welcome at Washington to the prince if he should extend his visit to the United States, and assuring her majesty that he would be everywhere greeted by the American people in a manner which could not fail to prove gratifying to her majesty. This request was answered in the same cordial spirit, and Mr. Buchanan was informed by the queen that the prince proposed to return from Canada through the United States, and that it would give him great pleasure to have an opportunity of testifying to the president in person that the feelings which had dictated the president's letter were fully reciprocated on this side of the Atlantic. At the same time the municipality of New York sent a message through the American minister, Mr. Dallas, expressing |