beside, all recited and set forth in the lease.

"I suppose I have something of Robinson Crusoe in my nature, for I loved the isolation of this spot immensely. It wasn't an island, but it was all but an island. Towards the land, two jutting promontories of rock denied access to anything not a goat; the sea in front; an impenetrable pine wood to the rear: and there I lived so happily, so snugly, that even now, when I want a pleasant theme to doze over beside my wood-fire of an evening, I just call up Pertusola, and ramble once again through its olive groves, or watch the sunset tints as they glow over the Carara mountains.

"I smartened the place up wonderfully, within doors and without. I got flowers, roots, and annuals, and slips of geraniums, and made the little plateau under my drawingroom window a blaze of tulips and ranunculuses, so that the Queen she was at Spezia for the bathingcame once to see my garden, as one of the show spots of the place. Her Majesty was as gracious as only royalty knows how to be, and so were all her suite in their several ways; but there was one short, fat, pale-faced man, with enormous spectacles, who, if less polite than the rest, was ten times as inquisitive. He asked about the soil, and the drainage, the water and its quality was it a spring-did it ever fail-and when, and how? Then as to the bay itself, was it sheltered, and from what winds? What the anchorage was like-mud-and why mud? And when I said there was always a breeze even in summer, he eagerly pushed me to explain why; and I did explain that there was a cleft or gully between the hills, which acted as a sort of conductor to the wind; and on this he went back to verify my statement, and spent some time poking about, examining everything, and stationing himself here and there on points of rock, to experience the currents of air. 'You are right,' said he, as

he got into his boat, 'quite right; there is a glorious draught here for a smelting furnace.'

"I thought it odd praise at the time, but before six months I received notice to quit.

"Pertusola had been sold to a lead company, one of the directors having strongly recommended the site as an admirable harbour, with good water, and a perpetual draught of wind, equal to a blast furnace."

Looking at the dress-coat in which you once captivated dinnerparties, on a costermonger-seeing the strong-boned hunter that has carried you over post and rail, in a cab,-are sore trials; but nothing, according to my companion's description, to the desecration of your house and home by its conversion into a factory. Such an air of the "Inferno," too, pervades the smelting-house, with its lurid glow, its roar, its flash, and its furious haste, that I could readily forgive him the passionate warmth with which he described it.

"They had begun that chimney, sir," cried he, "before I got out of the house. I had to cross on a plank over a pit before my door, where they were riddling the ore. The morning I left, I covered my eyes, not to see the barbaric glee with which they destroyed all around, and I left the place for ever. I crossed over the Gulf, and I took that house you can see on the rocky point called Marola. It had no water; there was no depth to anchor in; and not a breath of air could come at it except in stillness. No more terrors of smelting-house here, thought I. Well, sir, I must be brief; the whole is too painful to dwell on. I hadn't been eight months there when a little steamer ran in one morning, and four persons in plain clothes landed from her, and pottered about the shore— I thought, looking for anemones. At last they strolled up to my house, and asked permission to have a look at the Gulf from my terrace. I acceded, and in they came. They were all strangers but one, and who

do you think he was? The creature with the large spectacles! My blood ran cold when I saw him.

"You used to live yonder, if I mistake not,' said he to me, coolly.

"Yes, and I might have been living there still,' replied I, 'if it had not been for the prying intrusion of a stranger, to whom I was weak enough to be polite.'

"He never noticed my taunt in the least, but, calmly opening the window, passed out upon the terrace. The others speedily gathered around him, and I saw that he knew the whole place as if it had been his bedroom; for not only did he describe the exact measurements between various points, but the depth of water, the character of the bottom, the currents, and the prevailing winds. He went on, besides, to show how, by running out a pier here, and a breakwater there-by filling up this, and deepening that safe anchorage could be secured in all weathers; while the headlands could be easily fortified, and 'at a moderate cost,' I quote himself, 'of say twenty two or three millions of francs, while a fort erected on the island there would command the whole entrance.'

"And who, in the name of all Utopia, wants to force it?' cried I; for as they talked so openly, I thought I might interpose as frankly.

"He never seemed to resent my remark as obtrusive, but said quietly, 'Who knows? the French perhaps-perhaps your own people one of these days.'

"I'd like to have said, but I didn't, We could walk in and walk out here, with our iron-clads, as coolly as a man goes out in the rain with a macintosh.

with a little grin, 'We're going to disturb you again.'

"How so?' cried I; 'you can't smelt lead here.'

666

'No, but we're going to make an arsenal. Where you stand now will be a receiving-dock, and that garden of yours a patent slip. You'll have to clear out before the New Year.'

"Who is he? who is that with the spectacles?' asked I of one of the servants, who waited outside with cloaks and umbrellas.

"That's the Conte di Cavour,' said the fellow, haughtily; and thus was the whole murder out at once. They turned me out, sir, in two months, and I never ventured to take a lease of a place till he died. After that event, I purchased a little spot on the island of Tino yonder, and built myself a cottage. They could neither smelt metal nor build a ship there, and I hugged myself at the thought of safety. But, would you believe it? last week-only last week-his successor, in rummaging over Cavour's papers in the Foreign Office, comes upon a packet labelled 'Spezia,' and discovers a memorandum in these words, "The English Admiral, at dinner to-day, laughed at the idea of defending the mouth of the Gulf from the island. He said the entrance should be twothirds closed by a breakwater, and a strong fort à fleur d'eau built in Tino. I have thought of it all night; he is perfectly right, and I'll do it; and here, sir," said my companion, drawing a paper from his pocket, "is a 'sommation' from the minister to surrender my holding on Tino, receiving a due compensation for the same, and once more betake myself, heaven knows where ; for, though the great Count Cavour is dead and gone, his grand intentions are turning up every day, out of drawers and pigeon-holes, and I shrewdly suspect that neither Pio Nono nor myself will live to see the last of them."

IT is one of the disadvantages incidental to our institutions, that a foreign policy which should be sufficiently profound to achieve the object desired can scarcely ever be adopted, because it would not be understood by the nation. If, instead of dealing as we do now with each individual question only when it has grown to such dimensions that it can be no longer ignored, we interfered to nip the danger in the bud, then, indeed, we might have the satisfaction of feeling that our influence in Europe was soothing and salutary. But only the experienced physician can detect the seeds of disease; and it is the unfortunate result of superior knowledge, when thus applied, that the more it is exercised the less it is appreciated by the blind and ignorant. We seek in vain for the guiding principle of British foreign policy. The nation, incapable of pursuing any definite system amid the various complications which arise, look, as we have said, at each question separately, while Ministers are too often compelled by the pressure of public opinion to pursue a policy which their better judgment condemns. Hence that extraordinary inconsistency, which has one advantage, that it utterly bewilders all Continental governments, and gives rise to the belief abroad that the foreign policy of the country conceals some deep-laid scheme of perfidy, when in reality it represents only the oscillating opinions of an ill-informed public. The best evidence that we are not speaking at random is to be found in the lamentable condition to which our diplomatic relations with Europe have been brought at the present juncture. It may be assumed that the chief objects of British diplomacy are to have as few eneanies as possible, and to maintain

universal peace. As a commercial nation, the tranquillity of the world is an important element to our prosperity; while, in the event of a war in which neutrality is impossible, a skilful diplomacy should always (place us on the strongest side. We shall have no difficulty in showing that the effect of our policy has been to create as many enemies as possible, while, in its latest phase, it has tended to precipitate a European war, under the most disadvantageous circumstances which could be conceived for England. Whether we take the nations separately, or, grouping them collectively, class individuals according to their political affinities, we find the same results. We stimulated the Poles to exertion by popular clamour, and have since exasperated them against us by what they term our desertion of their cause. We have irritated Russia to such a degree that she does not consider the insults she subsequently heaped upon us a sufficient compensation for our interference. The Christians throughout the East regard us as their natural enemies; and our shortlived popularity in Greece exists no longer, though we have made a sacrifice of the Ionian Islands to retain it. In Italy we are proverbial for barren sympathy; in France we have of late done all we could to increase the national antipathy; in the Southern States of America we are hated as cordially as in the Northern; while our latest diplomatic efforts in the Schleswig-Holstein question have outraged the whole German nationality. Curiously enough, the only Press more bitter against England than the German is the Danish; so that we have failed to conciliate the one million of people for whose sake we have offended forty. In point

of fact, the only real friends remaining to us in Europe are a few Mussulmans. Meantime, without knowing it, we are pushing matters to a revolutionary war with a fatal precision. Oppressed nationalities are accustomed to look to the British nation for aid and sympathy; while in complex questions the Foreign Office finds itself involved by tradition with the oppressors. Thus, up to the first of last February, Bismark and Rechberg leant upon us for support in their anti-national policy. Without our countenance they would never have had the courage to pursue a course which will probably excite the phlegmatic German masses to revolt. Without the knowledge that the British nation sympathises in every revolution, it is doubtful whether the phlegmatic German masses would revolt. So long as we wish to use the rulers as political allies, we lead them to trust us, but we desert them when the ruled demand our sympathy. Thus we have the confidence and the friendship of neither. We are perpetually tumbling between two stools: now the traditions of our foreign policy commit us to one course, now the sentimentalism of the masses drives us into another which conflicts with it; now we are encouraging the governors to resistance, now the governed to revolt, until it is no wonder that both governors and governed believe that we are doing our best to set them by the ears. We cast, not oil, but blazing petroleum on the troubled waters, and then throw the blame of the conflagration on the masses we have ourselves ignited. We have a knack of leading on our friends, and then deserting them-as fatal to them as it is encouraging to their enemies. As we stimulated the Poles to a resistance which has proved most disastrous, so we have forced Denmark to make concessions to Germany which will probably lead to the ultimate ruin of King Christian. As we blustered to Russia, so have we blustered to Germany; but whereas we were only humiliated by the Govern

ment of Russia, we now suffer insult and disgrace at the hands of the people of Germany. The representatives of liberal institutions in Europe, it was from us that the two men in Austria and Prussia who trample most notoriously upon those institutions received countenance and support. It is difficult, in this last matter, to say whether we have most ill-used the Danes or the Germans.

We have turned the Danes out of Holstein, and lost that province to them irretrievably; but, on the other hand, we have handed it over to Prussia and Austria, and it is a question whether the Holsteiners would not prefer King Christian to Bismark. By our treaty of 1852, we imposed upon this victimised population King Log; and it is a remarkable diplomatic phenomenon, that the mode by which we proposed to give effect to that treaty in 1864 was by encouraging the triumphal entry of King Stork. Without our pressure exercised on Berlin and Vienna, the Cabinets in those capitals would never have ventured upon that rupture with the Diet at Frankfort which has since culminated in the occupation not only of Holstein, but of Schleswig. In other words, we have been the means of insidiously introducing into the dominions of King Christian his bitterest enemies. we should have honestly believed it possible to preserve the integrity of Denmark by means of an AustroPrussian army in Schleswig-Holstein, is an instance of such refreshing simplicity on the part of the Government, that even Bismark must have felt a twinge of conscience at betraying a confidence so innocently and touchingly reposed.

That

Have the people of England the least idea who are their friends and who their enemies? Do they know whom they want to injure and whom to benefit? If the absolute Governments of Vienna and Berlin are our friends, then we have imperilled their very existence by forcing them with positive threats into direct collision with the Diet of

Frankfort, with about thirty sovereign German states, and, with the exception of a small aristocratic faction, with the whole German nation. If the whole German nation are our friends, then we have betrayed them most egregiously, and have driven them for shelter into the arms of our natural enemy, the Emperor of the French: if the Danes are our friends, we have been the means of their abandoning without a struggle one of the finest provinces of the kingdom, and of leaving them to fight all Germany single-handed. To Germany we have presented the alternative of a war with Denmark or a civil war to Denmark, of a war with Germany or abject submission; while to ourselves we have reserved the choice of helping Denmark to fight Germany, or of leaving her to her fate, and receiving the contumely of all Europe condensed and heaped upon our heads. If we abandon Denmark after having urged her to make sacrifices on the promise of our support, we should deserve to be "cut" by every respectable nation.

If we

make war for Denmark in the antinationality sense, the one result more disastrous than failure would be success. We should be fighting to preserve a kingdom, one-half of the population of which wishes to be united to Norway and Sweden, the other half to Germany. If, after what has passed, we reattached by force the German element to the Danish, we should have expended blood and treasure to create the weakest power in Europe. "Rottenness" would then be no name for "the state of Denmark." The only nation which has thoroughly co-operated with us in our Danish policy has been the Russian, the only nation whose interests are in every respect opposed to ours in the Baltic, and whose aggressive tendencies we have to fear. She is the only nation whom, in the present crisis, we are treating in a really friendly and good-natured way. Thanks to our efforts, we have put matters upon such a footing that scarcely any

thing can turn up which will not be to her advantage. To be sure, the Emperor of the French is benefiting a good deal indirectly. He has not failed to avail himself of the opportunity of rendering abortive a very ill-timed effort on our part to settle matters by means of a conference; and he can scarcely fail to secure, as the price of his most valuable aid and comfort to the small German states, especially those bordering on the Rhine, attacked as they are at present by England and Bismark, certain provinces necessary to his frontier arrangements. By a curious fatality, the German population on the Rhine took a very strong interest in the Schleswig-Holstein question, are very liberal in their political tendencies, and naturally lean rather towards England, from whom they have nothing to fear, than towards their immediate neighbour. Had the Emperor wished us to present to him the Rhine provinces, he would probably have suggested to us the policy we have pursued in the Schleswig-Holstein question, by which we have not only entirely alienated this population from ourselves, but brought them into direct collision with the despotic element in Germany.

Had we placed the Emperor in this advantageous position because we could not thwart his aggressive designs without abandoning those liberal principles which Englishmen wish it to be supposed that they represent abroad, our policy, though unlucky, would have been intelligible. But the peculiar feature of the case lies in the fact that we are forcing upon the Emperor the presidency of that Rhine Confederation which he tried in vain to create some years ago at Baden, by dint of our opposing not merely the principle of nationality and of liberty, but of constitutional law. We actually applaud Prussia and Austria for an open violation of the constitution. Having failed at Frankfort to get a majority over the liberal states of Germany, the despotic governments, with the approval of