against them by divergent routes, presuming that either would suffice singly for the purpose. But the Afghans, slipping through between them, marched on Cabul, and it was for a time more than possible that the enemy would seize the issues of the city, and overwhelm the cantonments which the departure of the brigades had left all too meagrely guarded. The immediate danger passed, the brigades returned, and in a series of actions the brigadiers drove the enemy from the neighbouring positions and held the hills around the city. But now from the heights were descried such masses of Afghans approaching from north, south, and west, that the general called in all his posts, and concentrated his entire force in Sherpur. The hordes of the enemy, in numbers estimated variously up to 120,000, congregated round the cantonments, plundered quarters of the city, occupied the surrounding villages and enclosures, offered, in full confidence of success, terms on which the garrison might surrender, and at last made a general assault on the walls. For this Roberts had made ample preparation, and the Afghans, beaten back at every attempt, retreated, and their combination thereupon fell to pieces. On the proclamation of an amnesty, many chiefs made their submission, and tranquillity at length prevailed in northern Afghanistan.

such acts of valour and devotion as that displayed by Major George F. Blackwood and his gallant artillerymen. Orders arrived for the immediate march of a force to Candahar, and the Viceroy appointed Roberts to command it. Stewart, the commander-in-chief, himself about to lead a column back to India through the passes, and who must have felt that Roberts now had the opportunity of achieving success of a nature to eclipse any which could be open to himself, behaved on this occasion with genuine nobility. He did all in his power to assure success to Roberts, by entirely putting aside his own interests, and bestowing on him the choice of troops and the best of all other means of accomplishing his enterprise; and, accompanying him on his first march towards Candahar, gave him the most cordial and cheering farewell. It was a revival of the best traditions of comradeship, when neither jealousy nor self-interest were allowed to be prime considerations; and this generous co-operation of his friend and commander is as high a compliment as Roberts ever received.

It is not necessary to dwell now on the circumstances of the march and battle which made so deep an impression in India and in Europe. About ten thousand fighting men marched, under the burning sun of August in that country, 320 miles in twenty-four days, in compact and perfectly efficient condition. It was exactly a case in which the immediate influence of the commander, personally conducting and accompanying each day's march, should especially make itself felt; and it has always been accounted as an unusually important element in the success of this remarkable operation, which ended in a way to bring its character under the most brilliant light. At dawn, on the morrow of the last day's march,

the army, fresh and confident, advanced to attack the position before which it had bivouacked the night before, and in a few hours the formidable and victorious host with which Ayoob had been menacing Candahar was annihilated.

We will not attempt to heighten by comment the military reputation which rests on such assured foundations as the incidents of Roberts's career, from subaltern to general, which we have endeavoured to trace. But we may note that his ability, valour, and judgment are supplemented by other soldierly attributes. He is very fair and just towards those who serve him, troops and officers-a quality absolutely essential in him who would evoke the devotion of his followers, and which can never be denied its influence without serious evil. He is modest in describing his own achievements, a stranger to all posing for effect, and probably has never in his life been influenced, in anything he has done, by the desire to get himself talked about a true disciple of the chivalrous school in which he was trained. Having passed about thirty years in India, he has had small opportunity of propitiating those powers which unhappily now count for so much in the establishment of a military reputation. The British public may be said to form its opinions of its military servants from the newspapers and from after-dinner speeches; those charged with the administration of its affairs accept the popular verdict; and thenceforward the officer who merely does his duty efficiently has small credit compared with him who has made dexterous use of other paths to eminence. And though this may have been of disadvantage to Roberts's fortunes,— for nobody has ever spoken of him

as over-praised or over-rewarded,yet it must be counted as enormously in his favour that he owes his fame to his military merits alone. And when any less genuine type of soldiership shall commend itself to our army as more worthy to be admired and imitated, the military spirit among us must be far gone in its decline.

It would be unfair to Mr Low not to mention that the present is an improvement on the former biography. While it contains no greater proportion of tedious and irrelevant matter, it gives us much less of trivial comment, much less of that distribution of praise and blame to military men and operations which, coming from Mr Low, is worthless or offensive, while the grandiloquent encomiums have almost ceased. This last improvement may be due to the fact (which he records) that part of the work was submitted before publication to Sir Frederick Roberts, who is much too genuine a character to lend countenance to preposterous adulation. But Mr Low's curious propensity to quote poetry remains in full force, and the book is lavishly besprinkled with passages of verse, dragged in, with simple awkwardness, in supposed reference to what are, or even to what might have been, the incidents of the narrative. He seems to think that by suddenly springing on the unsuspecting reader a long quotation from Byron, or Pope's Homer, he is inspiring him with admiration for the writer's literary taste and culture. If Sir Frederick Roberts's career should be marked by other famous achievements, he may be certain that his life will be finally written by a very different kind of biographer from the present representative of the Muse of History.

No sooner had the disappointing and unsatisfactory session of 1883 come to a close, than the unofficial organs of the Government began with one consent to deprecate any extra-parliamentary criticisms of their past policy. It might be well for Messrs Gladstone and Chamberlain and Sir W. Harcourt, when in Opposition, to "rave, recite, and madden round the land"; but such conduct, venial, even pardonable in them, would be shocking to the nerves of the conductors of the Ministerial press, and would receive the severest condemnation if pursued, however temperately, by Lord Salisbury, Sir Stafford Northcote, and Lord Cranbrook. In spite, however, of much good advice to that effect, the Opposition leaders have not abstained from

frankly placing before the country the views they entertain on the principal political topics of the day, nor from exposing to a just but not immoderate criticism the misdeeds and failures of the most boastful and arrogant Administration of modern times. We rejoice that it has been so, and especially that in all parts of the United Kingdom have the voices of our leaders been heard, and that Ireland and Wales, no less than England and Scotland, have been invited by them to contribute their share to the coming triumph of the Constitutional

cause.

Chronologically, the first speaker of importance to break the silence of the recess was Lord Hartington, who represented at the Sheffield Cutlers' Feast the house of Chatsworth and the Government. Dull, ponderous, and harmless, his oration was remarkable for nothing except a futile attempt to reconcile his foolish prophecy of a speedy evacuation of Egypt with the un

accommodating facts of the case. Sir Evelyn Wood has since then, after exhibiting his Egyptian uniform to her Majesty at Balmoral, returned to the command of his native army, the success, the very existence indeed, of which depends, in his opinion, on that continued occupation of the country which Lord Hartington loses no opportunity of vilipending. That he and his colleagues, notably Mr Gladstone, did not foresee the necessary consequences of their Egyptian campaign, is no doubt the case; but now, when all the world recognises them, that any one claiming to be a statesman should persistently continue to ignore them, shows conclusively the low ebb to which Gladstonian statesmanship has fallen. We venture to prophesy that if, during Mr Gladstone's rule, the British army is withdrawn from Egypt, its destination will be neither England nor Malta, but Cyprus, despised Cyprus, which the prescient genius of Lord Beaconsfield acquired, and of which the importance to our Eastern empire is yearly becoming more manifest and indisputable. Let us here render a word of welldeserved praise to Sir Robert Biddulph, who, in spite of much discouragement from the Colonial Office and its unsympathetic chief, has, with very restricted means, largely developed the resources of the island, and effected a financial equilibrium, very much, apparently, to Lord Derby's astonishment. We augur a brilliant future for Cyprus when a Government that can appreciate the importance of our colonial empire succeeds, as it shortly will, this Administration of political pedlars.

Following Lord Hartington, the lord of Knowsley appeared on the

to examine some of the leading incidents of that much-vaunted Conference. Presided over by an accomplished gentleman of the press, new to parliamentary life, and graced by the presence and oratory of that genial buffoon Sir Wilfrid Lawson, we look in vain down the list of M.P.'s, aldermen, and barristers for the name of any one who, out of his own immediate circle, would be recognised as an authority upon any political question whatever; and granting the assumption-a preposterous one -that the 2000 nobodies there assembled represented any section or class of the community except themselves and the partisan organisations which elected them, the next point worth noticing is the wide difference of opinion expressed on all the leading questions discussed, with the exception of the trite Liberal commonplace in favour of a uniform suffrage. Whether that change should be proposed next session, whether it should take precedence of or follow metropolitan and county reorganisation, whether it should be accompanied by redistribution of seats, or whether that thorny subject should be relegated to a new session or a new Parliament; how the gigantic anomalies (in comparison with which existing electoral anomalies are flea-bites) created by the assimilation of the franchises are to be met; whether any representation should be accorded to minorities in large constituencies; whether Scotland and Ireland are to be subjected to the same scale of numerical representation as obtains in England; and most important and significant omission of all, whether Ireland is to be treated to the same reduction of the county franchise as Great Britain,—on these and other analogous questions the widest difference of opinion either prevailed, or was only pre

vented from appearing by the topic being prudently tabooed.

In the height of the Bulgarian frenzy, Mr Bright amused the unemotional part of mankind by posing in the novel character of a medieval crusader: upon this occasion, and with similar ill success, he affected the rôle of a moderate Liberal, repudiating the very name of Radical-only for the purpose of suggesting a change in the Constitution more radical than ever found favour with Cobbett or Feargus O'Connor. The founders of the American Constitution, as we are aptly reminded by the brilliant author of "Disintegration," spared no pains to devise efficient checks on the hasty action of a democratic assembly. Mr Bright assumes the garb of moderation in order to sweep away the last defence against it left by modern practice to our ancient Constitution. So significant and suggestive is the passage in Mr Bright's speech which follows immediately upon his repudiation of Radicalism, that we give it entire; the sting, like that of the wasp, lies in the tail of the oration.

"It has been a common opinion that two Houses are necessary, and that no steady Government could exist in any country whose policy and whose legislation were determined by the voice of a single representative was a boy writing an essay in defence Chamber. I recollect myself when I of that very opinion. I think the conduct of the majority of the Peers is fast dispelling that opinion and that delusion. How do we stand with regard to the Crown? The Crown cannot now reject any Bill sent up for its heard that the Queen, or any King acceptance. Not one of you ever that preceded her, has rejected any measure that has passed both Houses of Parliament. If the Crown be limited in this way, why are not the Peers? Why not enact that if the has been reconsidered in a subsequent Peers have rejected a Bill once, and it session by the Commons, and, after due deliberation, has been again sent