taste with which her little abode was arranged. Half-a-dozen really good pictures, picked up in Italy by some one who knew what he was about,and others from Paris, a piano, a handsome Turkey carpet, heavy curtains of silk brocade, spring couches and arm-chairs richly covered, some valuable little bits of old China, a goodly sprinkling of small Parisian looking-glasses in ornamented frames, composed the furniture of the two "cells" to which my friend and I were doomed. These opened out upon a balcony in front, overlooking a flower-garden and the convent square; and here we used to sit and smoke cigarettes, for the fragrant weed is much in vogue among the recluses, and their tobacco was always unexceptionable. Our first duty was to call upon the lady superior, who received us as kindly as her sister at Veratica. She told us that she had entered the convent at the age of thirteen-she was now seventy; and except an occasional trip to Jassy, had passed the whole of her existence in religious exercises. She, as well as several of the committee of direction, were keen politicians, and discussed with eagerness and a great deal of knowledge of affairs, the intrigues of Prince Couza and the abuses of his government. Nor were they at all sparing in the epithets they applied to the chief of the State. As many of the ladies at Veratica were nearly connected with families who have wielded absolute power in one or other principality, they were entitled to speak with a certain amount of bitterness; and as they maintain a hot correspondence with their relations, some of whom are the wealthiest and most powerful boyards, their information is generally pretty accurate. The brother of my hostess held a very high official position; she herself was very wealthy; and besides her delightful little house, she had a carriage and pair, a lady's-maid who was not a nun, and dressed in the last Parisian fashions; a very excellent cook, as

I have good reason to remember; and most attentive servants. Altogether it was quite clear that between Veratica and Agapia there was as great a difference as between Trinity College and Emmanuel, or Christchurch and Wadham. There was no doubt which was the most aristocratic, the most wealthy, and the most mundane of the two. Still I looked back with regret to the unsophisticated atmosphere of "the happy valley" of Agapia. How easy it is to be hypercritical on these occasions! How romantic and overwhelming in its novelty should we have found Veratica had we paid it our first visit! now there was something flat and vapid about it. There was not quite enough of the odour of sanctity in the air to suit our refined tastes. We felt as if we had almost got back to the world, and were sorely tempted to plunge into the wild valleys of the Bistritz, where convents nestle in unexplored recesses, approached by rock-cut steps overhung by glaciers, and where the occupants would really appreciate the visits of a stranger; where one may shoot chamois or catch trout; hunt bears or go picnics; sketch lovely scenery or learn Moldavian under pleasant auspices; scramble over mountainpasses, and generally find on the other side an ecclesiastical bed not yet confiscated by Prince Couza; where the monks are all really

66

good fellows," and only too glad to put you up, and forward your views, whatever they may be, to the best of their ability; where letters can't reach you, and the cares of this life cannot penetrate; where comfort is combined with economy, and the only way of gliding back to the world is on a raft.

Valley of Bistritz! if an inexorable fate-and the approach of winter-has compelled me once to turn my back upon you, the day may yet come when I may take another siesta under the conventual shadow, and awake from a dream as pleasant as this last.

Ir is no small privilege to you "gentlemen of England who live at home at ease," or otherwise, that you cannot hear how the whole Continent is talking of you at this moment. We have, as a nation, no small share of self-sufficiency and self-esteem. If we do not thank God for it, we are right well pleased to know that we are not like that Publican there, "who eats garlic, or carries a stiletto, or knouts his servants, or indulges in any other taste or pastime of 'the confounded foreigner." The "Times' proclaims how infinitely superior we are every morning, and each traveller-John Murray in hand-expounds, in his bad French, that an Englishman is the only European native brought up in the knowledge of truth and the wash-tub.

By dint of time, iteration, and a considerable amount of that same French I speak of, an article expressly manufactured for exportation, we really did at last persuade patient and suffering Europe to take us at our own valuation. We got them to believe that-with certain little peculiarities, certain lesser vices, rather amiable than otherwise-no nation, ancient or modern, could approach us. That we were at one and the same time the rich est, the strongest, the most honourable, the most courageous people recorded in history; and not alone this, but the politest and the most conciliatory, with the largest coal-fields and the best cookery in Europe. Now, there is nothing more damaging than the witness who proves too much. Miss Edgeworth tells us somewhere, I think, of an Irish peer who, travelling in France with a negro servant, directed him, if questioned on the subject, always

to say his master was a Frenchman. He was punctilious, faithful to his orders, but whenever he said, "My massa a Frenchman," he always added, "So am I."

In the same spirit has Bull gone and damaged himself abroad. He might have enjoyed an unlimited credit for his stories of English wealth and greatness-how big was our fleet, and how bitter our beer; he might have rung the changes over our just pride in our insular position and our income-tax, and none dared to dispute him; but when, in the warm expansiveness of his enthusiasm, he proceeded to say, not merely that we dressed better and dined better than the foreigner, but that our manners were more polished, our address more insinuating, and the amiability of our whole social tone more conspicuous, "Mossoo," taking him to represent all from Stockholm to Sicily, began to examine for himself, and after some hesitation to ask, "What if the wealth be only like the politeness? What if the national character be about as rude as the cookery? What if English morality turn out to be a jumble and confusion, very like EnglishFrench? Who is to tell us that the coal-fields may not be as easily exhausted as the civility?" These were very ugly doubts, and for some years back foreigners, after that slow fashion in which public opinion moves amongst them, have been turning them over and over, but in a manner that showed a great revulsion had taken place on the Continent with regard to the estimate of England.

A nation usually judges another nation by the individuals and by the Government. Now it is no

calumny to say that, taking them en masse, the English who travel abroad, whether it be from indifference, from indolence, from a rooted confidence in their own superiority, or from some defect in character, neither win favour for themselves, nor affection for their country from foreigners. So long as we were looked upon, however, as colossal in wealth and power, a certain rude and abrupt demeanour was taken as the type of a people too practical to be polished. It grew to be thought that intense activity and untiring energy had no time to bestow on mere forms. When, however, a suspicion began to get abroad-it was a cloud no bigger at first than a man's handthat if we had the money it was to hoard it, and if we had the power, it was to withhold its exercise; that we wanted, in fact, to impose on the world by the menace of a force we never meant to employ, and to rule Europe as great financiers do the Stock Exchange then, and then for the first time, there arose that cry against England as a sham and an imposition, of which, as I said before, it is very pleasant for you at home if the sounds have not reached you.

All our late policy has led to this. Ever ready to join with France, we always leave her in the lurch. We went with her to Mexico, and left her when she landed. We did our utmost to launch her into a war for Poland, in which we had never the slightest intention of joining. prompt for the initiative, we stop short immediately after. I have a friend who says, "I am very fond of going to church, but I don't like going in." This is exactly the case of England. She won't go in.

Ever

Now, I am fully persuaded it would have been a mistake to have joined in the Mexican campaign. I cannot imagine such a congeries of blunders as a war for the Poles. But why entertain these questions? Why discuss them in cabinets, and debate them in councils? Why

convey the false impression that you are indignant when you are indifferent, or feel sympathy for sufferings of which you will do nothing but talk?

"Masterly inactivity" was as unlucky a phrase as ever was coined. It has led small statesmanship into innumerable blunders, and made second-rate politicians fancy that whenever they folded their arms they were dignified. To obtain the credit for a masterly inactivity, it is first of all essential you should show that you could do something very great if you would. There would be no credit in a man born deaf and dumb having observed a discreet silence. To give England, therefore, the prestige for this high quality, it was necessary that she should seem to bestir herself. The British lion must have got up, rolled his eyes fearfully, and even lashed his tail, before he resolved on the masterly inactivity of lying down again.

In Knickerbocker's History of New York' we have a very graphic description of the ship in which the first Dutch explorers sailed for the shores of North America. "The vessel was called the Goede Vrouw, (Good Woman), a compliment to the wife of the President of the West India Company, who was allowed by every one, except her husband, to be a sweet-tempered lady-when not in liquor. It was, in truth, a gallant vessel of the most approved Dutch construction-made by the ablest ship-carpenters of Amsterdam, who, as is well known, always model their ships after the fair forms of their countrywomen. Accordingly, it had one hundred feet in the keel, one hundred feet in the beam, and one hundred feet from the bottom of the stern-post to the taffrel. Like the beauteous model, who was declared to be the greatest belle of Amsterdam, it was full in the bows, with a pair of enormous cat-heads, a copper bottom, and withal a prodigious poop."

It is, however, with her sailing qualities we are more interested

than with her build. "Thus she made as much lee-way as head-way -could get along nearly as fast with the wind ahead as at poop, and was particularly great in a calm." Would not one say, in reading this description, that the humorist was giving prophetically a picture of the England of the present day, making as much lee-way as headway, none the better, wherever the winds came from, and only great in a calm! The very last touch he gives is exquisite. "Thus gallantly furnished, she floated out of harbour sideways, like a majestic goose." Can anything be more perfect; can anything more neatly typify the course the vessel of the State is taking, "floating out sideways like a majestic goose!" amidst the jeers and mockeries of beholding Europe.

Our whole policy consists in putting forward some hypothetical case, in which, if certain other states were to do something which would cause another country to do something else, then England would be found in that case God forgive me! I was going to quote some of that balderdash which reminds one of The Rivals, where Acres says, If you had called me a poltroon, Sir Lucas!" "Well, sir, and if I had?" "In that case I should have thought you a very ill-bred man.”

66

See what it is to have a literary Foreign Secretary; see how he goes

back to our great writers, not alone for his style, but his statesmanship. We have been insulted, mocked, and sneered at; our national honour derided, our national strength defied ; but we are told it is all right: our policy is a "masterly inactivity," and the Funds are at ninety-one and one-eighth !

The Times,' too, is of the same cheery and encouraging spirit, and philosophically looks on the misfortunes of our friends pretty much as friends' misfortunes are usually regarded in life-occasions for a tender pity, and a hopeful trust in Providence. Let them-the writer speaks of the Allied armies-let them go on in the career of rapine and cruelty; let them ravage the Duchies and dismember Denmark, but a time will come when the terrible example of unlawful aggression shall be retorted upon themselves, and the sorrows of Schleswig be expiated on the soil of the Fatherland.

"They are going to hang Larry," cried the wife of a condemned felon to the lawyer, who had hurried into court, having totally forgotten he had ever engaged to defend the prisoner.

"Let them hang him, and I'll make it the dearest hanging ever they hanged."

These may be words of comfort in Downing Street. I wonder what the Danes think of them?

There is an annual publication called the 'Wreck Register,' which probably few of us have ever seen, if even heard of. Its object is to record all the wrecks which have occurred during the preceding year, accompanying the narrative by such remarks or observations as may contribute to explain each catastrophe, or offer likelihood of prevention in future. It is, though thoroughly divested of any sensational character, one of the dreariest volumes one can take up. Disaster

follows disaster so fast, that at length the reader begins to imagine that shipwreck is the all but invariable event of a voyage, and that they who cross the ocean in safety are the lucky mortals of humanity.

Fortunately, however, long as the catalogue of misfortune is, this is not the case, and we have the satisfaction of learning that the percentage of loss is decreasing with every year. The higher knowledge and attainments of merchant captains, and the increase of refuge har

bours, are the chief sources of this security. The old ignorance, in which a degree or two of latitude more or less was a light error in a ship's reckoning, is now unheard of, and they who command merchant-ships in our day are a very well informed and superior order of men. With reference to the conduct and capacity of these captains, this 'Wreck Register' is a very instructive publication. If, for instance, you find that Captain Brace, who was wrecked on the Azores in '52, was again waterlogged at sea in '61, and ran into an iceberg off Newfoundland in '62, you begin, mayhap unfairly, to couple him too closely with disaster, and you turn to the inquest over his calamities to see what estimate was formed of his conduct. You learn, possibly, that in one case he was admonished to more caution; in another, honourably acquitted; and in the last instance smartly reprimanded, and his certificate suspended for six months or a year. Now, though you have never heard of Captain Brace in your life, nor are probably likely to encounter him on sea or land, you cannot avoid a certain sense of relief at the thought that so unlucky a commander, to say the least of it, is not likely for a while to imperil more lives, and that the warning impressed by his fate will also be a salutary lesson to many others.

It was in reflecting over this system of inquiry and sentence, that it occurred to me what an admirable thing it would be to introduce the 'Wreck Register' into politics, and to have a yearly record of all parliamentary shipwrecks; all the bills that foundered, the motions that were stranded, the amendments lost in a fog!-to be able to look back and reflect over the causes of these disasters, investigating patiently how and why and where they happened, and asking ourselves, Have we any better security for the future? are we better acquainted with the currents, the soundings, or the headlands? and, above all, what amount of blame, if

any, is attributable to the commander?

If we find, for instance, that the barque Young Reform, no matter how carefully fitted out for seanew sheathed and coppered, with bran new canvass, and a very likely crew on board-never leaves the port that she does not come back crippled; and that old and experienced captains, however confidently they may take the command at first, frankly own that they'll never put foot in her again, you very naturally begin to suspect that there's something wrong in her build. She is either too unwieldy, like the Great Eastern, or she is too long to turn well, or she re quires such incessant repair; or, most fatal of all, she is entered for a trade where nobody wants her; and therefore you resolve that, come what will, you'll avoid her.

What an inestimable benefit to the student of politics would a few such brief notices be, instead of sending him, as we see him now, to the dreary pages of Hansard ! Imagine what a neat system of mnemonics would grow out of the plan, when, instead of poring over interminable columns of tiresome repetition, you had the whole narrative in few words — thus: "Barque Reform, John Russell, commander, lost A.D. 1854. The Commissioners seeing that this vessel was built for the most part of old materials, totally unseaworthy, are of opinion that she ought not to have sailed at all; and severely censure the commander, J. R., for foolhardiness and obstinacy, he having, as it has been proved, acted in entire opposition to "his owners." On the pressing recommendation, however, of the owners, and at the representation that R. has been long in the service, and, although too self-confident, a very respectable man, his certificate has been restored to him."

Lower down comes the entry :"THE YOUNG REFORM.-This was a full-rigged ship, in great part constructed on the lines of the barque