ser had been to Cowley and to Gray, the Bishop of Dromore was to the Homer of Scotland. In 1802 he published the first edition of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and in 1805 the Lay of the Last Minstrel. In the prose illustrations of the earlier work was displayed the germ of the narrative and descriptive power subsequently matured in his novels; and in the later one he stamped himself as one of the greatest among living poets. The fitness of Scott's works for reprinting in cheap form for general reading was never better illustrated than by the following passage from the Life of Bernard Barton. We must, for the present purpose, substitute poems for novels, and Scott's greater poems are truly novels in verse : — Scott's novels Bernard Barton seemed never tired of reading and hearing read. During the last four or five winters I have gone through - - gener several of the best of these with him ally on one night in each week - Saturday night, that left him free to the prospect of Sunday's relaxation. Then was the volume taken down impatiently from the shelf almost before tea was over; and at last, when the room was clear, candles snuffed, and fire stirred, he would read out, or listen to, those fine stories, anticipating with a glance, or an impatient ejaculation of pleasure, the good things he knew were coming which he liked all the better for knowing they were coming-relishing them afresh in the fresh enjoyment of his companion, to whom they were less familiar; until the modest supper coming in closed the book and recalled him to his cheerful hospitality. Here was a true reader of Scott; and if his poems and novels, now brought to the door of such as can rarely purchase books, find equally genial readers and listeners, we shall have reason to rejoice that many a folio stands on its shelf unmoved, and that literature has been "plebified." In the foregoing remarks we have dwelt almost entirely upon Scott's eminent fitness for an instructor of the people. It would have indeed been idle to expatiate on the merits of one whose place among "the laureate fraternity" has long been assigned. But it would be unjust to pass over in silence the excellent memoir and prefaces with which the editor accompanies the Globe Edition of Scott's Poetical Works. Mr. F. T. Palgrave puts the reader in possession of all that is material to know of Scott's life, character, and literary rank. He does not gloss over, as is the manner with some biographers, Scott's few errors; neither, though he rates them highly, does he at all exaggerate his personal and literary virtues. Mr. Palgrave is, like Griffith an "honest chronicler "; and he is besides, what Griffith was not, an acute, delicate, and genial critic. We have room for only one extract from his memoir, but this may suffice as a sample of its general excellence : — We read in the early ages of the world how whole nations sprang from and were known by the name of some one great chief, to whom a more than human rank was assigned by the Doris and Ionia were personified in Ton and Dopoetry and the gratitude of later generations. rus. It appears not altogether fanciful to think similarly of Scott; in the phrase employed by the historians of Greece, he might be styled the eponymous hero of Scotland. He sums up, or seems to sum up, in the most conspicuous manner, those leading qualities in which his countrymen, at least his countrymen of old, differ from their fellow Britons. No one human being can, however, be completely the representative Iman of his race, and some points may be observed in Scott which do not altogether reflect the national image. Yet, on the whole, Mr. Carlyle's estimate will probably be accepted as the truth-"No Scotchman of his time was more entirely Scotch than Walter Scott; the good and the not so good, which all Scotchmen inherit, ran through every fibre of him.” From the Spectator, Oct. 26. NAPOLEON AND ROME. THE only probable explanation of the series of incidents which we call the "Roman crisis," is the one lying upon the surface. A dozen other explanations are possible, and are widely believed, but politicians are sometimes too wary, and the superficial is in this case the least difficult vi ew. If it is correct, affairs have gone in this way. Rattazzi, always lié with the Reds, and relying greatly on the votes of the Left, thought a month ago the hour had arrived for forcing Napoleon's hand. Aware that the Emperor of the French disliked the Temporal Power, confident that he would never, save in the last resort, attack Italy, and over-trustful in the ambition of Count von Bismarck, he, in a half-hearted, timorous way, let the Revolution loose. In other words, he caused it to be understood in London, Geneva, and Florence that though Garibaldi must be arrested, the King's Government thought the hour for regaining Rome had almost arrived. The Roman exiles, eight thousand of whom are in the Italian service, at once swarmed towards the frontier, the Garibaldini joined them, and the Papal States were filled with tumult, and as the Pontifical Zouaves advanced, with bloodshed. Napoleon was informed that the Government of Italy could not restrain its people, and urged to modify the Convention in the interests of order. Napoleon who, we must always remember, is at heart a deadly enemy to the priestly power, as implacable a foe to the Papacy as his noisy cousin, hesitated, waited to see what France thought, waited to see what Rome would do, finally discerned, with those slow, much meditating eyes of his two unexpected facts. Rome was not ready to rise; Catholic France was ready to sob with rage at the apparent disregard to her position in Italy and Europe. If he would enforce the Treaty of Prague, he must enforce the Convention with Florence. Slowly he made up his mind, as for twenty years he has invariably done, that France must be thought of first, and gently and silently he put the terrible machine in motion. It worked as it always does, as the British machine also would work, but for the disorganizing influence of the military prerogative, as certainly and as swiftly as a healthy body, to which the brain has communicated commands. In less than forty-eight hours an expedition greater than the one we are toiling to organize for Abyssinia was ready for embarkation, the steamers were in harbour with their steam up, and an army of fifty thousand men was gathering outside Lyons. Then the Emperor flashed his ultimatum to Florence. He was determined to defend the Temporal Power; Italy must put down the Revolution, or he himself would do the necessary work. Rattazzi replied that Italy could not obey, that he could reach Rome first, and that if he reached it first, intervention would mean war. That is true, was the rejoinder, and after the war France will state her terms at the gates of Florence. The supreme hour had clearly arrived, and Italy gave way. The King, overawed, refused to run so tremendous a risk, removed Rattazzi, who probably did not object to his own removal, but who by possibility may have intended to fight rather than break with the Revolution, and summoned to his councils the one man he dreads in Italy. Cialdini, the man whose father was poisoned by a Court, who fought by Napoleon's - side against the Papacy, who conquered the Romagna, who is Red by every conviction, but who, like many a Red, like Carnot, for example, hates and crushes down disorganization. The King in person there seems no doubt of this-telegraphed to Paris that the Convention should be obeyed, the Garibaldians suppressed, and the Italians held in check; and Napoleon, drawing the longest breath he has ever drawn in life, suspended the embarkation of the troops at Toulon. As we have said, a dozen explanations, all more or less possible, could be offered of the transactions of the crisis, but among them all, this, the simplest and most superficial, is incomparably the most probable and consistent. It is also morally and politically the worst. Nothing, if this account is correct, can excuse the conduct of the Reds, who in their mad impatience have left their country no alternatives except humiliation or a war with the power which brought her first into existence. Nothing can extenuate the folly of Rattazzi, who has allowed the Revolution to spring up armed, in order with her aid to play a game of brag, in which he had so miscalculated his cards that he could not win. And nothing this is our strongest feeling of all can palliate the conduct of Victor Emanuel, who, with the supreme hour of his life upon him, with Rome within his grasp, decided to "save" his own wretched soul, and to employ the force which might have driven back France in coercing his own people for being one shade more zealous for unity than himself. But when we have weighed every Italian fault, and analyzed every Italian weakness, the deepest censure of all must still be reserved for the Emperor of the French. What has Heaven tolerated him for, save the enfranchisement of Italy? What has he done save this, that he should not descend to history as a man who destroyed the liberty of a mighty and free people to erect a personal throne? What is his raison d'être, his justification, the reason why freemen should pardon or even support him save this, that if he enslaved a nation, he liberated one; if he suspended a history, he began one; if he gave chloroform to France, he inspired Italy with a vitality, out of which every good might have come. And this Sovereign, to soothe priests in whom he does not believe, to pacify a people whom a decree granting them the right of free speech would have quieted more rapidly, to maintain an authority only tolerable when it is creative, would have undone his own work, killed his own off would prefer at heart to tread. Can policy fall lower than that? Admit that the threat succeeds, that Victor Emanuel can hold his people in, that Garibaldi does not rouse Rome, that the American man-of-war which is always stumbling about the world, and which is said to have carried him from Caprera, has not unmeshed the whole net, and what is gained? The Roman question is where it was before a difficulty for Italy, a grief for the Ultramontane world, an opprobrium for the policy of France. Is not that a result for a wise monarch to have gained, at the cost of the undying hatred of a nation whose love he had won upon the field? The Italians have been just as much coerced as if a French army had entered Florence, while they have not the relief of feeling that they had done what they could, and have yielded only to irresistible force. It is more than probable, it is almost certain, that they will turn their wrath on their own Government; that Napoleon will have the satisfaction of having, by one and the same decree, terminated the hopes of the Romans, by whose side he once fought, and terminated the freedom of the Italians, for whose liberation his people bled. spring, crushed down with insult his own himself to be urged upon the course he closest friend; would, to save a Pope whom he regards with scorn, and a throne which he has fought to overthrow, have subjugated a nation whom he had enfranchised with the blood of the people who called him to the throne. The word "crime" is often used in politics too lightly; but has there ever been, even in our time, -an era so full of intrigue and violence. — an act which morally was like this? We understand, and in a measure sympathize with, the De Lusignan or Lussac who, full of memories and illusions, half believing in St. Peter's Chair, half feeling that noblesse oblige, with Renan in his pocket and an indulgence in his purse, a pink billet doux over his heart just hidden by the medal of the Madonna, rushes out with the Papal Zouaves to die for a power he would not live under for a day. We can understand, though we do not sympathize with, the cold statesman who says Italy must be divided that France may be at ease upon her southern flank. But for a Bonaparte, a Jacobin who can govern, a man made by the principles of 1789, a Sovereign whose historic claim to rule is that he freed Italy, to overthrow his own handiwork in the interest of a priest, this, we confess excites, in us a feeling of personal shame. And it is done, too, by a great, farseeing statesman, who knows that with Italy hostile the unity of Germany never can be arrested, and that Italy, which has so often forgiven invasion, will never forgive gratuitous humiliation. If Bismarck had arranged Napoleon's policy, had dictated his despatches, he could have wished him to do nothing better for German interests than he has done of his own accord. Of course, when all is said, palliatives are still possible. Anything is possible when conspirators, tricksters, and inspired simpletons are allowed by Providence to dispose of the destinies of nations. Napoleon, for aught anybody can tell, may have contracted to deliver Rome as the price of Italian humiliation, may have been playing a comedy, may have only dramatized an imaginary triumph. Rattazzi may be winning as he falls, Garibaldi breaking the Triple Crown as he escapes from prison. Nothing is certain except that truth is extinct in such a world. But, we repeat, the obvious explanation is the only one which meets the obvious facts, and if that explanation is true, the Emperor of the French has inflicted the last humiliation on the kingdom which he liberated, in order that he might not be suspected of allowing It is urged, we perceive, even in the Times, that Napoleon had a technical right under the Convention to return to Rome. Who denies it? He has a technical right to coerce England - if he can because in threatening Theodore she menaces a French ally. The difference between a wise man and a fool, a firm man and a bully, is the manner in which he asserts and employs his rights. A wise man does not crush a friendly neighbour because he is over intent on a result for which both long, a firm man does not placard his decree of Court outside the lodge gate. From The Spectator. BIRDS OF PREY.* EVEN from the author's own point of view, usually the fairest, for it is unjust to blame a book for not being what its writer never intended it to be, this is a poor story. The theory of the sensational school is, we take it, of this kind. Crime exists and catastrophes occur, and mankind, Birds of Prey. A Novel. By the Author of and Tyler. "Lady Audley's Secret." London: Ward, Lock, "Such a man as I cannot afford to love any one. What have I to offer to the woman I might pretend to love? Truth, or honour, or honesty, or constancy? Those are commodiIf I know what ties I have never dealt in. it is about as much as I do know of them. If they are, and that I have never possessed them, I have any redeeming grace, Diana Paget, it lies in the fact that know what a worthless wretch I am. Your father thinks he is a great man, a noble, suffering creature, and that the world has ill-used him. I know that I am a scoundrel, and that let my fellow-men treat me as badly as they please, they can never give me worse usage than I deserve. And am I a man rightly or wrongly, take more interest in billiards as helps to live, who refuses to exceptional crimes and unusual catastrophes make love to a girl he loves, and who bethan in the more regular and less exciting longs to his own set, because he is a scouncourse of every-day life. Why, then, drel, but has no such scruple about a much should we not make crimes or catastrophes better woman whom he also loves, who will the main incidents of our tales? Surely cheat for sixpences but cares nothing about they are within the legitimate province of a hundred thousand pounds, surrenders half art, just as Jael's murder, or the fall of a of it for no reason at all, and mounts in a tower, are within the legitimate province moment a hobby-horse of perfect and, most of a painter. We are bound, indeed, not men would say, perfectly unreasonable chivto increase the temptation to crime, or to alry. Cheats exist, and very often have create an idea that catastrophes are regular redeeming points, but when authors describe occurrences, but within that limit why should cheats they ought to make them intelligible; we be attacked as if we specially sinned and, as we contend, Valentine Hawkehurst against truth? The theory is reasonable is not intelligible at all. He is a mere bunenough, but then the sensationalists must dle of opposing qualities which, we daresay, remember that they are as much bound to Miss Braddon could have reconciled — we do their work well as if they were depict- have never denied her talent, though we ing the quietest scenes; that a picture of dislike its application, but which she has Prometheus and the vulture is not to be not reconciled or attempted to reconcile. excused for bad drawing because it makes It is possible that a man, confederate of sensitive persons recognize that they have card-sharpers, might talk like this: livers. Birds of Prey is in bad drawing. The whole interest of the tale is in the suggestion of crime which from first to last pervades it, and the suggestion is not so offered as to be interesting. Philip Sheldon, a bad dentist with gleaming teeth, in the beginning of the book poisons a friend under circumstances of peculiar treachery, in order to marry his friend's wife and her eighteen thousand pounds. The crime is never described or asserted, but still the reader sees it, and then there is till the end of the book pretty much an end of Philip Sheldon. Nothing is added to explain him, or make him possible, or give a human interest to him, except that he speculated successfully on the Stock Exchange, and was indifferent to most things except money, for which he devises but does not yet execute a second murder. The real subjects of the story are other people; a brother Sheldon, who thinks he can get fortune in an hour by finding out an unconscious heir to lapsed property, and who might have been a creation, the patient, laborious, self-denying villain, being scarce, if Miss Braddon had taken the slightest trouble over him; Diana Paget, goodish daughter of a bad father, very like Charles Dickens's first idea of Lettie in Our Mutual Friend; Mr. Paget, gentlemanly swindler with a grievance against the world, also good, but indistinet; and Valentine Hawkehurst, meant, we presume, to be the hero of the book. We have not, we confess, the slightest idea of what he was like. By his own account he was a scoundrel, with a tendency to drink and play, a man content to earn a living by small cheating, who craves for curaçoa and to talk about love, or to ask a woman to share my life? Good God, what a noble partner I should offer her! what a happy existence I could assure her!" And also possible that he might talk like this : " 'I am tired of watching and suspecting," he said to himself. "If my dear love has a right it should never come, we can live very happily to this fortune, it will surely come to her; or if without it. Indeed, for my own part, I am inclined to believe that I should be prouder and happier as the husband of a dowerless wife, than as prince consort to the heiress of the Haygarths. We have built up such a dear, cheery, unpretentious home for ourselves in our talk of the future that I doubt if we should care to change it for the stateliest mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens or Belgrave Square. My darling could not be my housekeeper, and kitchen, if we lived in Belgrave Square; and make lemon cheesecakes in her own pretty little how could she stand at one of those great Birmingham ironwork gates in the Palace Gardens to watch me ride away to my work? The But then if he is to talk in both strains | phere by the glass, a radical mistake which the novelist should reconcile them, and this in a new author would indicate poverty of Miss Braddon does not do, does not, as conception, but in Miss Braddon is probably far as we see, attempt to or care to do. She the result of carelessness about her audience, leaves her picture blotted and blurred with -a carelessness, in this instance, carried too mere sketches of figures in it; suggestive, far, so far that her story, steeped as it is in no doubt, but suggestive as faces in the fire colour, is not awful or awe-inspiring, but may be, not as artistic portraits. only wearisome. She turns on the red But we shall be told the object is inci- light or the green light as stage machindent, not character-painting. Very well, ists do in profusion, and, of course, people though figures should be in drawing, even look at it, but then they expect to see someif the object is architectural display; but thing under it, and they do not see enough, where are the incidents? The first murder only some gleaming teeth, and a shadowy is interesting, if we consent to look at it young man who may be a hero, and may be through red spectacles, to accept the lurid a billiard marker, the sharpest eyes cannot atmosphere the author contrives to fill her precisely discern which. Either would do, houses with, but what more is there? A but let him dress for one or the other parts, suggestion that Mr. Paget cheated in some and not look like one and talk unintentionway, and then a long hunt for an heir in- ally like the other. Mere colour by itself tended to be in the style of Wilkie Collins, does not interest, or frighten, or attract but wholly wanting his dramatic vigour and playgoers above fourteen, and in this drama perfect closeness of workmanship, a long we are allowed to see nothing else. hunt which is as tedious as the actual hunt light is finely managed, we admit, but after would be, a hunt among obscure villages all one wants light to see by. and stupid people in whom nothing but the finest art could create any interest at all, with long copies of letters in English intended to be antique. Except a possibility that Philip Sheldon may poison the heiress for her money, a possibility not in the least developed, and contrived very clumsily. for if she married suddenly her will would be void, and Philip Sheldon would lose 5,000l. of his own cash, a risk such a man would never run-there is nothing left, the novel breaking off with startling abruptness. This is not good work, even though the subject of the work be admissible, and this is all we get. Murders are not interesting, either in real life or fiction, as murders. The book, we cheerfully concede, has one merit. It is in Miss Braddon's power, and the power is very rare indeed, to create by her pen a sort of mental atmosphere, to tinge the air of her tales so that you must see the characters under the false colour she pleases to throw over them. The medium is coloured, and the spectator cannot help himself. This power has been exercised to the full in Birds of Prey. It is impossible to see Philip Sheldon except as looking through the light cast by a blood-red pane, -a real feat of art. But then a figure like his is not rendered indistinct by such a medium, is rather more distinct because the imagination strains itself as well as the eye to see at least, if more may not be, the outline of him. Miss Braddon leaves him indistinct, as indistinct as if the spectator were watching him through glass instead of through a colour thrown into the atmos The power Miss Braddon can exercise and the carelessness with which in this story she has chosen to exercise it, are curiously shown in an episode inserted within Birds of Prey. In the hunt for an heir some old letters have to be read, and they reveal with wonderful force a strange household, a hard but good Wesleyan woman, married to and loving a man of a different stamp, who has been a roisterer, perhaps a criminal, but is a respectable, heart-broken citizen, his energy and his capacity of affection alike buried in the grave of a son by a dead love, "littel Matthew." The story is suggested rather than told with most pathetic art, but it is told in letters written in a dialect, supposed to be old English, which Miss Braddon, apparently to save trouble, has in parts just invented for the nonce. ever wrote at any time like this? Who "I am sorrie to hear my father is alcing; give him my love and servise, and will come to Ullerton immediate on receiving his commands. am plesed to think Mrs. Rebecka Caulfeld is I so dutifull and kind to him, and has comfortedd him with prairs and discorses. I thank her for this more than for any friendshipp for my undeserving self. Pray tell her that I am much at her servise. Our new king is lov'd and admir'd by all. His ministers not so; and wise peopel do entertain themselfs with what I think I am not cleverr enuff to see the funn in this foollish jokes a-bout a Skotch boote. Perhapps joke." The spelling matters very little, but why not either spell as men do now, or as men did then? |