vigilant in maintaining the rights of Britain he had no aspiration to extend British territory even where he was invited to do so. It is not generally known that it is owing to Lord Aberdeen's recognition of the fact that the Pacific Slope of California was part of the natural heritage of the United States of America that the British flag is not flying at this moment over the Golden Gate. When the annexation of Texas brought the United States to the verge of war, the Mexican government offered to cede California to Great Britain. Lord Elenborough, then First Lord of the Admiralty, strongly urged upon his colleagues the importance of accepting the offer. "Let us obtain possession," he cried, "while we can, of the key of the northwest coast of America." His arguments produced some effect upon Sir Robert Peel, then Prime Minister, but Lord Aberdeen set his face as a flint against the scheme. However tempting a bait San Francisco might be to a power which had the onerous naval responsibilities of Great Britain, he peremptorily refused to permit the acceptance of an offer which would have been considered as an unfriendly act to the United States, and which might not improbably have landed the Republic and the Empire in hostilities. Such a possibility might be faced in maintaining existing rights, but nothing could justify risking such a disaster in order to establish British authority where it had not previously existed. Sufficient has been said to show that Lord Aberdeen, the Prime Minister, recognized the necessity of maintaining a good understanding between the United States and the British Empire to induce him to swerve a hair's breadth from the policy which he recognized as both just and expedient.

After the repeal of the Corn Laws, which Lord Aberdeen strongly supported, the Peel administration fell, and on the fall of Lord Derby's Government Lord Aberdeen became Prime Minister of the Queen, a post which he afterwards resigned under circumstances as honorable to him as it was discreditable to some of his colleagues. Her Majesty accepted his resignation with unfeigned regret. She immediately gave him the vacant Garter, and wrote him a letter which is worth while introducing as indicating the kind of relations which existed between the Sovereign

and her Prime Minister.

WINDSOR CASTLE, February 7, 1855. Though the Queen hopes to see Lord Aberdeen in a short while, she seizes the opportunity of approving the appointment of the Hon. and Rev. Arthur Douglas to the living of St. Olive's, Southwark, to say what she hardly trusts to do verbally, without giving way to her feelings. She wishes to say what a pang it is for her to separate from so kind and dear and valued a friend as Lord Aberdeen has ever been to her since she has known him. The day he became her Prime Minister was a very happy one for her; and throughout his ministry he has ever been the kindest and wisest adviser, one to whom she could apply for advice on all and trifling occasions even. Tuus she is sure he will ever be-but the losing him as her first adviser in her Government is very painful. The pain has been to a certain extent lessened by the knowledge of all he has done to further the formation of this Government in so loyal, noble and disinterested a manner, and

by his friends retaining their posts, which is a great security against possible dangers.

The Queen is sure that the Prince and herself may ever rely upon his valuable support and advice in all times of difficulty, and she now concludes with the expression of her warmest thanks for all his kindness and devotion, as well as of her unalterable friendship and esteem for him, and with every wish for his health and happiness.

Mr. Gladstone at the same time wrote a letter of sympathy, saying that he never regretted having urged him to accept "the seat of power, to which he had a paramount claim, conferred by superior wisdom and virtue." On his resignation Lord Aberdeen remained in retirement. He kept up the relations which existed between him and his monarch and continued to bring to bear upon all questions his keen, impartial judgment, which made his counsel so valuable to statesmen of both parties. Lord Aberdeen never quite forgave himself for his share of the bringing about of the Russo-Turkish war. His one cause of regret, he wrote in 1857, was that he did not at once retire, instead of allowing himself to be dragged into a war which, though strictly justifiable in itself, was most unwise and unnecessary. So deeply did he take it to heart that he refused to rebuild the parish church of Methlick. He said he would leave the work for his son. No one knew why he refused until after his death, when it was found that he shrank from building a church owing to the share which he had in the Crimean War. The suggestion came to him from the text in the Book of Chronicles: "And David said to Solomon, My son, as for me it was in my mind to build an house unto the name of the Lord my God; but the Word of the Lord came to me saying, Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars; thou shalt not build a house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight."

Her Majesty visited him in 1857 at Haddo House. Three years afterwards he expired in London, leaving a memory of a singularly stainless career marred by no selfish or unworthy trait. No man was less of a self-advertising politician. A ripe scholar, a sagacious statesman, and a profound and prescient thinker, he constantly displayed an unshaken courage in maintaining the principles to which he was attached and defending what he believed to be true against all odds. Few British statesmen have had a greater position and a larger share in the shaping and molding of their country, and none have ever emerged from the ordeal with a higher reputation for a love of justice and an unshaken devotion to the cause of

peace.

In many respects the Governor-General of Canada reminds one of his grandfather. In one respect he differs from him. The Prime Minister was so reserved that his real character was only known to his intimates. His grandson is affability itself; his urbanity, his courtesy, and his general amiability enable him to be sympathetic with all sorts and conditions of men; indeed, he has almost carried matters to the other extreme. The grandfather hid his natural kindliness behind a mask of almost forbid

ding reserve. So far from wearing his heart upon his sleeve, he hid it behind a somewhat cold and stern exterior. The world thought him proud and unsympathetic and therein did him an injustice. With the grandson the misunderstanding lies on the other side, his ready sympathy, his absolute forgetfulness of self, his natural bonhomie, are apt to lead those who do not know him to forget that beneath all this extreme geniality of demeanor there is concealed a strong character all the more resolute to carry out its end because it is extremely indifferent as to the mere formalities of ceremony and etiquette.

The fifth Earl of Aberdeen, the son of the Prime Minister, better known as Lord Haddo, whose memoirs, written by the Rev. E. B. Elliot, of Brighton, has long been a favorite biography among Evangelicals. The work passed into a sixth edition twenty years ago. Lord Haddo was an invalid, whose last years were spent in the constant presence of death. He took but slight interest in politics, although he was a member of the House of Commons. He threw his whole soul into the work of evangelization. He preached, he taught, he distributed tracts and Bibles, built churches and generally laid himself out to promote as much as in him lay the coming of the Kingdom. He was singularly free from the besetting sin which characterizes most persons of a pronounced evangelical piety. He was not intolerant, and his influence was ever exerted to break down the barriers of sect and the differences which separated good men.

On his death, at the early age of 47, he was succeeded by the sixth Earl of Aberdeen, the elder

brother of the present Governor General. His singular career was one among the many links which unite the Aberdeens with America. Two years after he had succeeded to the earldom, thinking that the resources of the family had been somewhat drained by the generosity of his father and by the necessity of providing allowances to its younger members, he suddenly arrived at a strange decision, to which he was, doubtless, also prompted by an innate love of adventure and passion for a seafaring life. Abandoning his princely domain at Haddo, he crossed the Atlantic, and after a short tour in the United States, abandoned his name and rank at Boston and shipped himself as a sailor on board a merchant ship which was bound for the Canary Islands. No one on board knew him as an earl; they only knew him as George H. Osborn. He was over 6 feet high, handsome, full of the natural courtesy of a great nobleman, but he served in the forecastle as if he had been an ordinary seaman. He was enthusiastic about navigation, and passed in the Nautical College at Boston as first-class navigator and second class for seamanship. He had not been long enough at sea to secure a captain's certificate until the next year. He sailed as mate in an American coasting vessel, but shortly afterwards we find him again as an ordinary seaman making a voyage to Mexico. For the next three or four years he continued to earn his living before the mast. On one occasion a ship in which he was sailing visited the colony where his uncle, afterwards Lord Stanmore, was governor, but he never made himself known, although it is said that one day he wrote his name on a pane of

glass in the governor's residence. Between his voyages he lived for the most part in Maine. He seems to have been very happy. He was a rigid teetotaler, and took an active part in religious exercises, both on ship and at home. During the whole of his sojourn in America the fifth Earl only drew £200 from the revenues of his estates, nor did his mode of living differ from that of an ordinary seagoing man. In 1870 he started to make a voyage to Australia, hoping from there to complete the circle round the globe. Six days, however, after he left Boston he was caught by the bight of the down haul as he and his companion were lowering the mainsail. Lord Aberdeen was caught by the rope and thrown into the sea. His companion heard his cry for help as he dropped into the water, but he was never seen or heard of since. His death when serving as first mate on board that American ship brought about the accession of the present earl, John Campbell Gordon, who was the youngest son of Lord Haddo, and to whom this sketch is more particularly devoted.

It was necessary to dwell at much greater length than usual upon the character of Lord Aberdeen's ancestors. The Governor-General is the resultant of the very varied and strangely marked features which make up the sum of the Gordon character. There are in him many of the salient traits of the more notable of his forbears. He has the administrative genius and statesmanlike ability of the Prime Minis,ter, the earnest piety and catholic evangelism of Lord Haddo, while he is by no means devoid of the love of action and adventure which were so strongly developed in his brother George. Although he resembles many of his ancestors he has a distinct character of his own, which will be better appreciated both in Canada and the United States four years hence than it is now.

He is,

III. THE EARL OF ABERDEEN. John Campbell Gordon, sixth Earl of Aberdeen, was born in 1847, just before the great revolutionary outburst which shook the thrones of Europe. therefore, 46 years of age, but does not look more than 36. He has a singularly youthful appearance, and in this he resembles Lord Rosebery whose juvenility of aspect has frequently occasioned remark, and which for some time stood in the way of the recognition of his qualities even by so familiar a friend as Mr. Gladstone. Lord Aberdeen was only a younger son till 1870, when the death of his brother George gave him a seat in the House of Lords and brought him in sight of the career which up to the present moment has been one long progress of increasing service to the State. The Gordons are physically a fine race, and the present Earl, although not so tall as his brothers, is much stronger in muscular development than might be imagined from those who note his comparatively slight build. Like most men of his family, he is extremely fond of sport-physical exercise. Both of his brothers were splendid shots with the rifle, having carried all before them at Wimbledon on more than one occasion. It was this extreme devo

tion to the rifle which led to the lamentable accident which caused the death of his second brother.

Lord Aberdeen, however, unites with the love of sport which is common to most landed aristocracy a passion which among peers is almost uniquefrom boyhood he has had a delight in locomotive engines he is probably the only peer who could drive an engine from London to Edinburgh. Through the indulgence of a relative, when he was still a schoolboy he had permission to ride on the engine of a local railway and he never, if he could help it, rode anywhere else. He had no greater delight than to stand in front of the fire-box acting as fireman or starter and occasionally being permitted to drive the engine. He still remembers as one of the proudest days of his life how, when he had finished oiling the engine when at full speed, the old engine driver said to him: "John, I think I must apply for a day's holiday and let you take charge." From that time forward Lord Aberdeen has never lost touch with the locomotive engineers; no one is more popular with the railway servants in the old country and nothing but the lack of acquaintance with the road and the signals stands in the way of his being able to take a Canadian Pacific express right across the whole continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He is certainly the first Governor-General who was also an engine driver. Engine driving, in fact, may be considered as one of his favorite hobbies, and one of the things which he looked forward to in the new world was that of making a study of the engines of America, as complete as that which he has made of the locomotives of England and Scotland. It was this boyish passion which first introduced him to public life. Lord De la Warr had moved for a select committee into railway accidents and in support of his motion Lord Aberdeen, who a very young man, made his maiden speech in the House of Lords. There is no more difficult audience to address than the Peers, but his knowledge of the subject and the enthusiasm with which he explained the technicalities of railway management and the mysteries of fly-shunting to the Peers won him high praise, and when at a later period a Royal Commission was constituted in order to inquire into railway accidents he was immediately nominated as a commissioner. Of this commission the Duke of Buckingham was the first chairman, but on his appointment to the Indian presidency, Lord Aberdeen, although one of the youngest members of the commission, succeeded him as chairman. It was a remarkable elevation for so young a man and one of which he made the most to the interest of the railway servants. The Commission reported in favor of the block system, continuous brakes, continuous foot boards, and of many other improvements which the railways have for the most part introduced of their own accord. As the commission was not unanimous Lord Beaconsfield shirked the duty of legislation. Few questions are of more importance in the New World than that of reducing the unnecessary slaughter of railway employees, which in the United States attains dimensions. far in excess of that of any other civilized country.

There is probably no man west of the Atlantic with whom those who are working in this matter could more properly take counsel than the Governor-General of the Dominion of Canada, whose sympathies with the workmen are by no means circumscribed by parallels of latitude or mountain range or sea.

Lord Aberdeen's second appointment was somewhat similar, inasmuch as it concerned the prevention of the loss of life on the part of the working population. The agitation initiated by Mr. Plimsoll concerning the wholesale destruction of sailors' lives by the sending of coffin ships to sea, in order to realize a profit for the owners, led to a prolonged and angry controversy, in which Mr. Chamberlain, who was then President of the Board of Trade, took a very strong line against the ship owners. After considerable recrimination, during which feeling on both sides became extremely heated, it was at last decided to appoint a Royal Commission on which both parties could be represented to take evidence and report. The Commission was a strong one. Mr. Chamberlain was one of its members, and the leading representatives of the ship owners were also there in force. It was no easy task presiding over a tribunal in which the chief disputants sat as judges, and it was a singular tribute to the rapidly rising reputation of the young Earl that he was selected as chairman, a position which somewhat resembled that of Æolus in the cave of the winds. However, by the judicious dining of the Commissioners before they commenced the inquiry, and the excellent practice of lunching together during the course of the inquiry, Lord Aberdeen was able to establish sufficiently genial relations with the Commissoners to get through with a singular absence of friction. His position as chairman was largely official and appeal was constantly made to him by the advocates of the respective sides to rule out of order this, that or the other question. He was almost the youngest man on the Commission, and his courtesy and amiability might have led some of the ruder Commissioners to try to get their own way with a rough hand. Whatever attempts were made in this direction miscarried signally, and the Commission had not beer many days in session before its members recognized that although its president had a glove of velvet there was within it a hand of steel. When he had to vacate the chair in order to undertake the responsibilities of the Irish Viceroyalty, the Commissioners, on the motion of Mr. Chamberlain, passed a unanimous vote expressing their high sense of the signal impartiality and savoir faire with which he had discharged the arduous duties of his office.

Up to this time the Earl of Aberdeen, although acting in hearty accord with Mr. Gladstone, who had always been a close personal friend of all the Aberdeens, and especially of the present Earl and Countess, had not held any purely political post under the Liberal Party. Lord Aberdeen, the Prime Minister, began life as a Conservative. He was first employed by Lord Castlereagh, and was subse

quently Foreign Minister of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. When the Corn Laws went by the board he became a Peelite, and the Aberdeen Ministry was a combination of Peelites and Liberals, hence when the present Earl took his seat in the House of Lords he sat neither with the Conservatives nor with the Liberals, but occupied a place in the cross benches, which is supposed to belong to peers of an independent mind who do not wish to identify themselves conspicuously with either of the two parties. He was regarded, however, as belonging to the Conservative Party by heredity, and hence in 1876 he was selected to move the address to the Queen in reply to the royal speech. Even then he gave an indication of how loosely he regarded the party tie by taking occasion to express his objection to the Royal Titles bill, a measure which was strongly supported in august circles.

It was soon evident, however, that the popular sympathies of the young Earl and the immense personal influence of Mr. Gladstone, who had always been as a father to the Earl and the countess, were sweeping him directly into the Liberal ranks. In addition to this, two influences, of different degrees of importance, were telling in the same direction. One was the influence of his wife, who was strongly Liberal, and the other the natural reaction against the follies and courses of the Jingo period which marked the close of Lord Beaconsfield's administration. His first overt act of rebellion against his party was when he telegraphed from Brindisi his adhesion to the popular protest which was being signed against the Afghan War. That this was no mere caprice he made abundantly evident when he spoke in the debate against the Afghan policy of the Ministry, thereby maintaining the traditions of his ancestor in his devotion to peace and conciliation. In 1879 he indicated his transference of political allegiance by supporting Mr. Gladstone's first Midlothian campaign, having accepted Lord Rosebery's invitation to form one of the house party at Dalmeny on that memorable occasion. The following year, on the very day on which Lord Beaconsfield dissolved Parliament, Lord Aberdeen took his seat for the first time on the Liberal side of the House. He had burned his boats and definitely cast in his lot with Mr. Gladstone on the eve of an election which, in the opinion of society, was certain to result in the return of Lord Beaconsfield to power. Society, as usual, was wrong, the elections went with a rush against the Jingoes, and Lord Aberdeen found himself embarked on the winning side.

The only appointment which he received from the Government of that day was the chairmanship of the Commission on Shipping, to which I have already referred. It should be mentioned, however, that Lord Aberdeen was, during these years, entrusted with the duty of acting as Lord High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland. The Lord High Commissioner is the representative of Her Majesty and he must be present at the opening of what may be called the Par

liament of the Scotch Church of Edinburgh. In this capacity Lord and Lady Aberdeen held almost royal court at Holyrood Palace. This was a kind of preliminary apprenticeship qualifying them for their subsequent viceroyalty in Dublin and their GovernorGeneralship in Canada. Lord Aberdeen in this and other positions which he filled in the cause of philanthropy and religion had proved that he not only possessed capacity, but also that his capacity was recognized and appreciated in the most influential quarters. Hence no one was astonished, unless it was the Earl himself, when, on the formation of the Gladstone ministry of 1886 he was sent for by the Prime Minister and offered the Viceroyship of Ireland. Lady Aberdeen was at Mentmore with Lady Rosebery at the time, when she received a telegram from her husband saying he wished to see her at the railway station that night on her return. To her immense astonishment she learned that her husband was going to Dublin Castle.

In the course of the morning a message had arrived summoning Lord Aberdeen to Mr. Gladstone's house.

Mr. Adam, (Chief Opposi Lady Reay.

tion Whip).

As soon as he arrived Mr. Gladstone told him that he must go to Ireland. At that time nothing in the world was further from Lord Aberdeen's mind. He was a Scotchman who had never paid any particular attention to Irish affairs. Mr. Gladstone was forming his ministry with Home Rule as his principal; in fact, its only article of its programme. The position of Irish Viceroy was, therefore, one of the most important in the whole administration. Lord Aberdeen hesitated to accept so responsible a position without time for consideration. But it seemed that political exigencies rendered it indispensable that the Viceroy must be appointed there and then, otherwise it would have been impossible for Mr. Morley to have taken office as Chief Secretary, and every hour of delay was of importance. And the old gentleman, when, in addition to being Prime Minister of the Queen, he feels himself to stand in loco parentis to a young politician, has about him a kind of parental imperativeness which it is difficult to resist. Therefore, Lord Aberdeen, being crowded into it, as it were, by Mr. Glad stone, found himself suddenly Lord of Dublin Castle,