aground on the shelving rocky shores of Greece constitute a romance in the annals of the sea; but to that I cannot do more than allude in passing. It sufficeth to say that no man, during his command in the Mediterranean, left a deeper and more abiding sense

REAR-ADMIRAL MARKHAM,

Commanding the Second Division of the Mediterranean Squadron on board "Camperdown,"

of a masterful, resourceful personality-a man capable of foreseeing all things and preparing for all things.

BRITAIN'S FINEST FIGHTING ADMIRAL.

One in whose judgment I would place more respect than that of any other person employed in the navy, told me that after long and close observation of Admiral Tryon, both in command of fleets and in naval manoeuvres, and on his flagship in the Mediterranean, he had come to the absolute conviction that if ever we had been plunged into naval war, Admiral Tryon was not only the best man, but was absolutely without a rival as commander-in-chief of the naval forces of Great Britain. Few men really knew how much he had meditated, how carefully he had prepared for almost every contingency which could arise in case of the outbreak of war. Commanding the confidence of his officers and the respect and admiration of his men, he was almost an ideal commander, and as our sea-king in the Mediterranean he occupied a position for which he was pre-eminently well qualified.

And now, in face of all this, and much more that was known among those who have cruised with him and lived with him in storm and calm during the

forty years and more that he served under the flagin face of all this comes the disastrous tidings from the Levant, from which it would appear that we have lost our finest fighting admiral and one of our finest warships through a miscalculation as to distance of which a young lieutenant could hardly have been guilty. It seems incredible; nor can we wonder-even in face of the official dispatch and the detailed telegrams from the officers who survived the collision-that many of those who have known him best find it utterly impossible to believe that he could have issued the order that brought about the disaster. THE STORY OF THE GREAT DISASTER.

It would seem that the squadron, consisting of thirteen ships, was performing some evolutions off the coast of Tripoli. Rear Admiral Markham's official report of the collision runs as follows:

"When about five miles from the anchorage off Tripoli the signal was made at twenty minutes past two in the afternoon to form columns of divisions in line ahead, disposed abeam to port, the columns to be six cable lengths apart.

"We proceeded in this formation until twenty-eight minutes past three, when the signal was made from the 'Victoria' to the first division to turn sixteen points to port, and to the second division to turn sixteen points to starboard. As the columns were only six cable lengths apart it was not, therefore, in my opinion, possible within the manoeuvring distance to execute such an evolution. I directed the flag lieutenant to keep the signal, which we were repeating, at dip as an indication that the signal from the Victoria' was not understood. I then directed him to signal with the semaphore: 'Do I understand it is your wish for the columns to turn as indicated by the signal now flying?'

"But before my order could be carried out the Commander-in-Chief semaphored me to know what I was waiting for. It then struck me that he wished me to turn sixteen points, as indicated by the signal, and it was his intention to circle round the second division, leaving them on the port hand. Having the fullest confidence in the great ability of the commander to manoeuvre the squadron without even risk of collision I ordered the signal hoisted as an indication that I understood.

"When the signal was hauled down the helm of the 'Camperdown' was put hard a-port. At the same time the helm of the Victoria' was starboarded. I watched very carefully the helm of the 'Victoria' as indicating the purpose of her signals.

"As the two ships turned toward each other and seeing that the helm of the Victoria' was still hard starboard, I directed the captain of the 'Camperdown' to go full speed astern with the starboard screw in rder to decrease our circle of turning.

"Seeing that a collision was inevitable I then ordered him to go full speed astern with both engines, but before our speed could be materially checked the stem of the 'Camperdown' struck the Victoria' on the starboard bow about twenty feet before the turret and crushed into the ship almost to the centre line, the fore and aft lines of the ships at the time of the collision being inclined toward each other at an angle of about eighty degrees."

For two awful minutes the vessels were interlocked, but the "Camperdown," which was almost uninjured, then succeeded in withdrawing her ram from the injured side of the "Victoria." But the

sudden flooding of one side of the ship with some hundreds of tons of water caused a list and a settlement at the head, which soon showed that the ship was in imminent danger.

PERFECT DISCIPLINE IN THE CREW.

Admiral Tryon, however, notwithstanding the tremendous shock with which the vessels had collided, could not believe that the flag ship was in serious danger. He even forbade the lowering of boats by the other ships who realized the situation and were preparing for the worst. The conduct of the crew appears to have been ideal. When the vessel struck, a silence so profound reigned that every word uttered by the captain could be heard by all on deck. Every order given was promptly executed, the men going to their quarters as if they were doing ordinary drill, and every effort being made to adjust the collision mats. Unfortunately the wound was too serious, and it is probable that the water was now pouring in at the opened port holes. Orders were given to drive full steam ahead for the shore, in the hope of being able to beach the vessel. She had not proceeded a mile when it was evident that all was lost. Captain Bourke gave the order for every one to save himself who could, and every effort was made to bring up the sick and others from below, while those who could, flung themselves into the sea. But the majority were still on board when the ship suddenly heeled over. her masts striking the water with great force, and the ship remained floating bottom uppermost for three minutes.

Then a strange thing was seen. The engines, which had been going at full speed, were kept going although the furnace fires were on the top of the boilers instead of below, and the double screws, released from the water, were racing through the air at a fearful speed. As the ship slowly sunk below the water the screws

dashed up clouds of foam, in the midst of which, it is feared, some poor struggling mortals were cut to pieces. Then, at last, with a gurgling sound, the great ironclad sank to the bottom, her decks bursting as she plunged below. The boats of the "Camperdown" were busily picking up the remnant of the crew, but the majority will be seen no more until the sea gives up its dead.

THE END OF A GREAT SEA CAPTAIN.

As for Admiral Tryon, who realized too late the catastrophe which his miscalculation had brought upon his country and upon his crew-the last that was seen of him was that he was standing upon the bridge, steadying himself with one hand on the rail, while with the other he covered his eyes, as if to shut out the scene of horror and of death which spread around him. Then the ship heeled over, and Admiral Tryon was seen no more. Such was the end of a great career an end not lacking in dignity and in tragic awe. There is something intensely pathetic in the thought of this great captain and sea-lord going down to his doom, shattering into irremediable ruin his great career, and at last paying the penalty with his own life for his own mistake.

I cannot do better than conclude this article by quoting a letter which Lord Charles Beresford has just written to me in reply to a letter I had sent him on the subject:

"I have only just received your letter. I should have been glad to have added my voice to the universal praise given to poor Sir George Tryon. The country will never know what it has lost by his death. Amongst brilliant leaders, he was exceptional. He commanded absolute faith, unsparing devotion, and the most kindly affection. He forgot nothing, his thoughts were as kindly and as sympathetic for the boys under his command as they were for his officers. I cannot think of his loss without the most intense emotion.”

ology. At present but slightly developed, its rudiments stir even an amateur to enthusiasm. The civic sense has been re-born among us, and as we pass, though hurriedly, from city to city, we look upon them with "other, larger eyes" than those of the mere sightseer. We see no longer mere shows of the builder's skill or of the landscape gardener's art. We look for embodiments of the civic soul. Even where there is a magnificent display of ancient architecture and a rich store of historical associations-as, for example, in Oxford-the absence or meagerness of the civic spirit affects us painfully. It is perhaps in the New World that we become most conscious of the new attitude. Being there undistracted by the glamour of antiquity, we are able to view the city simply as a corporate expression of the existing local life. We see the civic idea of modern humanity taking shape before us, unfettered by the petrified conceptions of the past. Few things, I may confess, have given me keener pleasure than to watch the fresh forms assumed by the English town as it springs up on totally new soil. My opportunities were limited. They rarely went beyond a day or two of sympathetic observation, and sometimes amounted to only a few well-filled hours between trains. But the local individuality is not slow to reveal itself, and one soon comes to discern the peculiar flavor of the local life. Memories of such glimpses are as precious to me as any specimens gathered by naturalists in a newly discovered land. But these impressions, pleasing and striking as they are, may not compare with the impact made on the mind by the gigantic Queen of the West, the chief warden and chief wonder of the World's Fair-the city of Chicago.

THE FIRST IMPRESSION OF CHICAGO.

Perhaps one of the first ideas suggested to the stranger by Chicago is that of vastness. This is due not merely to the great extent of the actual area, it is possibly as much caused by the flatness of the surface, the length of the streets, and the wide intervals of houseless land. It is an impression dear to the Chicagoan heart. “This is certainly a city of magnificent distances," I remarked somewhat impatiently

on reaching a friend's house after pacing several miles of one of the seemingly interminable avenues. "It is very good of you to say so," rejoined my host, graciously, "after coming from London." I may be mistaken, but I rather imagine that already Chicago has begun to eye the British capital as the only serious rival to the civic immensity which she counts on as her certain future. To remind a Chicagoan that after all the Old Country possesses the very biggest city in the world is felt by him to be something of an affront. He has one retort, which is unfailing. "Look at the time you've had. You have taken nearly two thousand years to get together just about four times as many people as we have gotten here in fifty years. Give us as good a start and then see!" The words may vary, but the point remains the same. Even a small boy of some ten years, whom I came across one day in the streets, had it all ready to fire off at the Britisher.

THE CAPITAL OF BROBDINGNAG.

The variety of things that Chicago possesses which are truly described as of their kind "the greatest in the world," naturally induces in her citizens a certain superlative self-consciousness. The stranger grows somewhat weary of this comparison with the achievements of the rest of the planet, and is tempted to be a trifle malicious. "We have in Chicago the longest street in the world," said a friend to me one day. "Ah, and how long is that?" "Halstead street, sir," was the reply, "is eighteen miles long.” "We can beat that in the Old Country," I could not resist saying. "Impossible!" "Yes; we have a

street over three hundred miles long. It is called Watling street." Yet, I must admit, that until I was in Chicago I never saw so vividly the reasonableness, not to say necessity, of the "tall talk” which we have remarked in our American cousins. The scale of language which applies to the Old World does not come up to the requirements of the New. I had not been twenty-four hours in the Lake City before I found my lips becoming perilously familiar with " enormous," "tremendous," "colossal," and other such grenadiers of speech. I began to admire the diction of my American friends as something quite moderate.

BUT ONLY HALF BAKED. Next to its vastness, the unfinished and unequal appearance of the city must strike the European visitor. Beside it even our sprawling leviathans of towns seem compact and trim. It is in many respects a huge cluster of incongruities. The rectangular regularity which so severely rules the lines of the streets is balanced by the most startling irregularity of architecture. The "sky-scraper" and the shanty stand side by side. The slight wooden or frame house alternates with buildings of granite put together in the most massive style. Where stone is used, whether for places of business or dwelling houses. I noticed that the architecture generally bore a very ponderous and somewhat sombre appearance. Villas on the boulevards seem to have been constructed on the model of a feudal keep. One might be tempted to fancy "they dreamt not of a perishable home who thus could build," did not a neighboring villa, obtrusively wooden and fragile, suggest precisely the opposite conclusion.

A CITY OF CONTRASTS.

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Even the sidewalks know no mean between extremes. These are either of solid, impervious, perfectly level concrete, or a flooring of deal irregularly laid, dropping now a foot or six inches without notice, now rising equally suddenly, and by even treacherous depressions and elevations of an inch or so, playing havoc with the toes and the temper of the unwary pedestrian. "Ponder the path of thy feet" is a precept the stranger learns to value in Chicago streets. The same genius for contrast presents you with great patches of raw prairie within a few yards of some of the finest boulevards in the world. Nay, in the very heart of the city, at the corner of one of the busiest blocks, where the whirl of traffle is at its fiercest, and all the appliances of the latest modern civilization are in full swing, close to sky-soaring "temples," elevators, telephones, electric light, almost grazed by the cable cars, I found a veritable unmistakable tree stump. It was, of course, cut down to the level of the road, but there it stood, an eloquent reminder of the wilds which reigned around it sixty years ago. What a place for some Chicago laureate to meditate :

O stump, what changes hast thou seen!
There, where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness-of the dismal swamp.

THE MOUNTAIN SCENERY OF THE CITY.

The enormously tall buildings for which Chicago is famed did not impress me quite so unfavorably as I had anticipated. Seen from the Auditorium tower, they serve agreeably to diversify the civic scenery, a service which the flatness of the situation and the monotonous straightness of the streets render peculiarly acceptable. What other cities possess in the natural undulation of the ground, Chicago creates for herself by her irregular mountains of masonry. Woman's Temple is an imposing erection, though in its architecture scarcely suggestive of feminine grace; and the meagre dimensions of its assembly hall struck me as hardly in keeping, either with the rest of the

The

The heterogeneousness which I observed in the appearance of the place was not less marked in the people. "Chicago is a foreign city," is a frequent remark of the American resident. She would be better called a world-city. So great is the crowd of nationalities present, and so swiftly has the population gathered that the distinction of "native" and "foreign" is out of place. Chicago is one vast crucible, wherein is being poured ingredients from all races, and one looks with wonder to see what strange amalgam promises to result. There is here a sort of civic epitome of mankind, and if Brother Jonathan can succeed in thoroughly Americanizing Chicago, he need not despair of Americanizing the world. From the faces I met in the streets I judged that the preponderant type is the German, slightly sharpened towards the American. On looking up my guide-book I was glad to find statistical corroboration of this opinion; for Germans form one-third of the population. Native Americans make less than one-fourth. If the national ingredients should become more fairly proportioned, will the Chicagoan of the future prove to be, as it were, the composite photograph of man? It is the possibility involved in this question which invests the civic life of Chicago with such interest for the student of humanity.

CORRUPTION IN THE MUNICIPALITY.

At present, however, disproportion reigns not merely in the composition, but also in the character of the corporate life. In some respects Chicago is a model of civic unity. The Christian Union quotes from "a thinker and observer of rare philosophic mind" the proposition that "Chicago represents better than any other American community the true principle of civic life. It stands for the civic spirit ; it is an organic community." This is high praise, which, in presence of the World's Fair alone, a stranger cannot declare to be undeserved. A colossal city which has sprung into being in less than sixty years, and has twice arisen again from a tomb of fire, must, he is bound to argue, possess a tenacious unity of will. And yet he finds her best citizens groaning under the sway of the saloon-keepers. After Mammon, the most potent demons in Chicago are confessedly those of drink, debauchery and gambling ; and when these three vile powers combine to corrupt municipal politics, the result may be imagined.

THE WORST SLUMS IN THE WORLD.

A few days after my arrival I was fortunate enough to meet a group of earnest social reformers, who were discussing the condition of the lower strata of Chicago life. One of them, a friend of mine connected with a University settlement in East London, and well acquainted with the darkest districts in the metropolis, startled me by saying that he had found worse slums in Chicago than he had ever seen in London.

"Our rookeries " he said, "are bad enough, but they are at least built of brick or stone. Here, however, the low tenements are mostly of wood, and when the wood decays or breaks away the consequencs are more deplorable than anything we have in London."

This was the testimony of a visitor. It was confirmed by the testimony of resident sociological experts. One of these was a lady, at present engaged by the national government in investigating and reporting on the life and homes of the poor in Chicago. The awful state of things she described greatly surprised me, and I suggested that it was due to the presence of the large foreign element.

NOT FOREIGN, BUT AMERICAN.

"On the contrary," she replied, "the very worst places in the city are inhabited by native Americans." And she showed me the official chart of one of the lowest streets, on which the tenements were marked white when occupied by native Americans, black when occupied by foreigners. The rooms to the front which possess the worst character were white.

These carefully ascertained facts knock the bottom out of the complacent assurance which I have since so often heard expressed, that foreigners were responsible for the darkest shades of Chicago life.

"Is this state of things allowed by law to exist?" I asked.

"Certainly not," replied the lady; "it exists in flat contravention of every municipal ordinance."

"Can nothing be done to enforce the law?" "The very men whose duty it is to enforce the law are the nominees of the classes interested in violating it."

"Can you not rouse the churches to combine and put a stop to this municipal corruption?"

"The churches!"-the lady spoke with infinite scorn-" the proprietors of the worst class of property in Chicago are leading men in the churches. I have more hope of arousing the poor Polish Jews to a sense of their civic duty and opportunity than the churches. The Poles, poor as they are, and ignorant, do want to lead a decent life."

A TIMOROUS PRESS.

"Is there no one who will stir the public conscience on these questions? Have you no pressmen who will dare to do itno journalist of the heroic type-no knight-errant of the pen?"

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We tried hard to induce the proprietor of one of our leading newspapers to take up the matter on his own account, and to compel the municipality to do its duty. But he absolutely declined. He said he would publish signed communications from us, but he could on no account commit the paper to the crusade. The reason he gave for his refusal was that the persons most concerned in the maintenance of these abuses were among the principal men of the city, and, though he fully admitted the justice of our complaint, he dared not alienate them. It would ruin his paper." These statements, I need hardly say, I heard and I repeat with great regret. Any city has come to a serious pass in which those who make their fortune

out of the squalor, disease and shame of their fellowcitizens are powerful enough not only to control the municipal authorities, but also to check the Church and awe the press into silence. I was not, of course, in a position by personal research to corroborate or qualify what I was told. But the responsible official position of my informant more than justifies me in making it public.

THE LAST MAYORAL CONTEST.

I rather fancy, however, that the people who are in earnest about civic righteousness were in a somewhat desponding mood. They had rallied for a great fight over the last mayoral election, and had felt themselves badly beaten. The nominee of the party of-civic laxity, let us say-had been swept into office by a majority of some score thousand votes, and during the World's Fair he represents Chicago to mankind. This was naturally dispiriting. Yet, if a judgment formed on knowledge as meagre as mine necessarily is possess any value, I should regard that mayoral contest as the beginning of better days for municipal integrity. Much was achieved when the forces of religion and morality were organized into something like electoral unity, and fought a pitched battle on great issues independent of party. It is possible that the discipline of defeat may do more than the elation of any easy victory to make the civic conscience permanently and compactly effective. Time will show.

A HEROIC CHIEF OF POLICE.

In the meantime, Chicago is fortunate in possessing and retaining at the head of her police a man who thoroughly believes in the supremacy of conscience. Major McClaughrey was appointed chief of police by the late mayor in 1891, but he happily regards himself as responsible to a higher than vote-made authority. He is an avowed Christian man, and a Presbyterian to boot. He has not shrunk from doing what he conceived to be his duty in the very teeth of municipal opposition. He has dared the wrath of the worst elements in Chicago, and so far he has come off victorious.

Let me tell the story of the struggle as it was told to me. The fight for civic reform is after all not less interesting than the exploits of our military heroes, and, alas! is not without its sanguinary episodes. Towards the fall of last year a combination of persons, which obtained the expressive sobriquet of "the Gamblers' Syndicate," made evident their intention of organizing a deliberate revolt against the law. Their "hells" were kept open in defiance of statute and police order. But the head and front of their offending, as well as the point around which the battle raged, was the carrying on of races without a license in a certain park. This was described to me as the most notorious race-track in America, thousands of people being there regularly robbed and fleeced.

HOW HE CLOSED THE RACE-TRACK.

At last the crime against public decency, as well as public order, evoked a great outcry. Major Mc