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distasteful in the one class of studies as in the other, and therefore real education as exceptional as ever. For, after all, the grand question to be solved will be that which Lord Devon, in apparent despair at its being solved in any way by himself or his brother Commissioners, puts to one of the young Rugby witnesses, and gets little help from his answer

"2216. Can you suggest any mode by which a boy can be prevented from being idle?—I cannot."

NOTE. In the previous article on the Eton Report in our June

66

number, it was stated that the collegers were members of a separate football and cricket club." This statement is not literally correct; the words of the Report are "They do not play together [i. e., with the oppidans], except at fives, in some of the cricket clubs, and in the first football club."—(Report, p. 68.) It was stated in the same article that "no oppidan had now gained the Newcastle scholarship for seven years." This was the fact as appeared in the evidence given before the Commission in 1862; but Mr Fremantle retrieved the honour of the oppidans in this respect in 1863.

ART.

Is this the stately shape I saw
In Greece a thousand years ago,
Who ruled the world by Beauty's law,
And used among the gods to go?

Who, wheresoe'er she turned her eyes,
Below her saw a reverent throng,
Whose praise was taken as a prize,
Who made immortal with a song?

Now, scant in garb, a mendicant,

She stretches forth her prayerful palms, And wealth, in pity for her want, Contemptuous tosses her its alms.

This gift is not for charity,

But love, that at thy feet I lay.

Oh, take my heart that throbs for thee!

And smile as in the ancient day.

W W. S.

GIULIETTA.

Aн, how still the moonbeams lie
On the dreaming meadows!
How the fire-flies silently

Lighten through the shadows!
All the cypress avenue

Waves its tops against the blue,

As the wind slides whispering through— He is late in coming!

There's the nightingale again!

He alone is waking;

Is it joy or is it pain

That his heart is breaking?
Bliss intense or pain divine?
Both of them, O Love, are thine!
And this heart, this heart of mine,
With them both is thrilling.

From the deep dark orange-grove
Odorous airs are steaming,
Till my thoughts are faint with love—
Faint with blissful dreaming.
Through the slopes of dewy dells
Crickets shake their tiny bells,

And the sky's deep bosom swells
With an infinite yearning.

On my heart the silent weight
Of this beauty presses ;
Midnight, like a solemn Fate,
Saddens while it blesses.

All alone I cannot bear

This still night and odorous air; Dearest, come, its bliss to share, Or I die with longing.

I have listened at the doors,
All are calmly sleeping;
I alone for hours and hours

In the dark am weeping.
Only weeping can express
The mysterious deep excess
Of my very happiness,

Therefore I am weeping.

Like a fountain running o'er
With its too great fulness,
Like a lightning-shivered shower
For the fierce noon's coolness,
Like an over-blossomed tree
That the breeze shakes tenderly,
Love's too much falls off from me
In these tears of gladness.

Ah, beloved! there you are!
I once more am near you;
Walk not on the gravel there,
Somebody may hear you.
Step upon the noiseless grass,—
Oh! if they should hear you pass
We are lost, alas! alas!

We are lost for ever!

Hark! the laurels in the light
Seem with eyes to glisten;
All things peep and peer-and night
Holds its breath to listen.
Deeper in the shadow move,
For the moon looks out above,

I am coming to you, love,
In a moment coming.

W. W. S.

THE VOTE OF CENSURE.

THE Ministry is as good as dead, and only waits to be buried. It has lost its influence abroad, it has lost its character at home. It is an inert chrysalis, in which the soul of Lord Palmerston is expiring. It is the ghost of his reputationof a name that has been famous in Europe which has kept the Ministry in a nominal existence. The waverers who decided the recent vote in favour of the Government shrank from terminating the career of a great minister by placing on the records of the House of Commons a formal condemnation of his policy. But the debate has virtually killed the Ministry. It has laid bare the unparalleled blindness and blundering which have marked their foreign policy. The whole story of the negotiations has been placed in full view of the pub

lic; and so strong was the case against the Government, that the independent members, who supported the Cabinet with their votes, were the most unsparing in their condemnation of its blundering and abortive policy. The House of Lords condemned the Government by a majority of nine; the House of Commons acquitted it with a verdict of Not Proven by a majority of eighteen. And so the Ministry still exists, although its reputation is extinct and its hours are numbered.

The debate which took place on the vote of censure is, we do not hesitate to say, the most remarkable that the oldest member of either House has witnessed. It is the most important debate on foreign policy that has occurred since 1815, and the speeches were characterised by a fulness of knowledge, by an ability of statement, and by a sharpness and power of rhetoric, which have not been surpassed in any similar discussion. Every side of the question-nay, every nook and cranny of it-was

VOL. XCVI.-NO. DLXXXVI.

fully set forth and minutely criticised. Both parties did their best, but the course of the argument has shown clearly that the Opposition had a good case, that the Ministry had none. Horsman, Cobden, Roebuck, and Bernal Osborne made elaborate speeches in condemnation of the Ministerial policy; and the fact that the three first-named gentlemen voted with the Ministry, after all, adds special weight to the anathemas with which they felt compelled to assail it. Other members of less note acted in similar fashion. They could not resist the force of the evidence against the Ministry, but they sought with eager ingenuity to devise excuses for voting with it. Mr Roebuck did so by attempting to disconnect the conduct of the Foreign Minister from that of the Cabinet. Mr Horsman, with a similar disregard alike of constitutional principles and of the facts of the case, held that Parliament, by not sooner expressing its opinion on the question, had become accomplices in the miserable policy of the Ministry. Mr Cobden openly confessed that he would vote that black was white rather than terminate the rule of the Liberal party. Mr Osborne, while pouring his withering sarcasms upon the whole Cabinet, declared that the " great Liberal party" was already defunct, yet was not disposed to help the Tories into office. Had the motion condemnatory of the foreign policy of the Government been decided upon its merits, it would have been carried by an overwhelming majority; and even as a party struggle—as a vote of want of confidence-it was a sentiment of respect for the past greatness of Lord Palmerston which alone saved the Ministry from a decisive overthrow.

Seldom in its long history has the British Parliament had so grave an issue to decide, or so sad a position

to contemplate. England has become a hissing and a byword among the nations. The public which remembers the commanding position which our country occupied at the close of the war of giants which terminated at Waterloo-who remember the dominating influence of England when Castlereagh conducted our foreign policy, and Wellington led our armies-who read in every history, even in that of M. Thiers, that it was England which broke the power of the first Napoleon, and delivered all Europe from bondage-were stupefied to find that our Government had sunk into so humiliating a position. Ten years ago, at the commencement of the last European war in which we took part, the influence of England was so great that, if she had spoken her mind in time, there Iwould have been no war. It was the vacillation of a Liberal Ministry, of which Lords Russell and Palmerston were members, that occasioned the Crimean war, by leading Russia to believe that we should not oppose her attack upon the independence of the Porte. But where is our "just influence" now? Russia and France disregard our solicitations-Austria and Prussia, as well as the minor States of Germany, despise our bluster, and set at defiance our threats. England has become isolated, hated, and ridiculed. The fault was not that of the country, but of the Government. The conduct of the Ministry has been alike alien to our traditional policy and at variance with the wishes of the nation. England has been humbled solely by the culpable incapacity of the Ministers; and the right and only possible way of retrieving her position, and placing herself in her just attitude towards Europe, was to disconnect herself from the conduct of the statesmen who misrepresented her,

and to repudiate their policy by a vote of censure.

It is a poor plea for any Ministry to excuse itself by throwing the blame of its errors and failures upon Parliament. It is the bounden duty of a Ministry to resign if it cannot carry out the policy which it believes to be right. But, in the present case, no excuse of this kind, poor though it be, could be pleaded by the Government. It took every means in its power to prevent its foreign policy being examined and discussed by Parliament. It delayed in a most unusual manner to lay the record of its negotiations before the House; and first by one plea, then by another, it staved off discussion until with the failure of the Conference all was at an end. The papers were furnished in driblets; when one batch was printed, another was promised; and at last came the miserable project of the Conference, not to save Denmark, but to save the Ministry. Even taking the facts as stated by Mr Layard, the papers (he ought to have read a portion of them) were laid on the table of the House at the beginning of March; and it would take a week before members could have time to master the contents. Well, what took place then? Lord Ellenborough, who on several occasions had fretted at the Ministerial delays, and who considered that it was a matter of the utmost importance that Parliament should express its opinion upon the foreign policy of the Government before the Easter recess, gave notice of a motion which would have led to a full discussion of the question; but when the day came Lord Russell made a most earnest appeal to him to abandon his motion, on the ground that any discussion would embarrass the Government and impede the progress of the negotiations for peace.* What could Lord Ellenborough, or any one in

* "I rise, on public grounds, to request the noble Earl not at present to bring on that discussion. I do not expect that anything that falls from him will tend to increase the difficulties which surround the settlement of this question; and, for

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