LORD ROSEBERY AS ELISHA:

WITH ELIJAH'S RETURN POSSIBLE! "ALEXANDER has gone, and his generals are fighting each for his own hand." This is the situation in the Liberal Party without Mr. Gladstone, as summed up by the Quarterly. The reviewer is much exercised by the falsity of the prophecies that Mr. Gladstone's departure would mean the disruption of his party. In default of an open and outward breach, he is fain to find inward dissension. He remarks on Mr. Gladstone's undramatic exit and Lord Rosebery's unexpected elevation. The latter he attributes, with a fine ignorance of the actual facts, solely to Mr. Gladstone's dictatorial decree:

The explanation of Mr. Gladstone's choice of a successor is not far to seek. When he determined on quitting office he wished to keep open a possibility for his return to power in the event of the terrible physical calamity with which he was then threatened being averted, as there was every reason to hope it might be...

He is far too old a parliamentary hand not to have perceived that the days of his administration were numbered, and that his own authority would stand higher in the future if he had left the helm before, instead of after, the inevitable shipwreck. With restored sight, renewed vigour, and with the prestige of a sort of political resurrection attaching to his personality, he might well reckon on being carried back into power by a wave of popular enthusiasm; and in order to take advantage of such a reaction in his favour, it was necessary his place should be filled during the interregnum by an Elisha, who, even if he wished, could not retain the prophet's mantle in the event of Elijah's return to earth.

...

"A PRIME MINISTER OF CHANCE."

We entertain a shrewd suspicion that Lord Rosebery's chief recommendation in the late Premier's eyes lay in the fact that, whatever his political ability might prove to be, he was disqualified by position, by character, and by birth from ever being a successful "under-study" of his great predecessor. If our view is correct, Lord Rosebery's rise up to the time of his attaining the position of Premier has been due in the main to a succession of fortunate accidents. We do not deny for one moment that it is his own ability, his own efforts, and his own qualities which raised him to a position that entitled him to avail himself of these accidents; but it can hardly be said that he owes the Premiership entirely, or even mainly, to his own merits.

MR. MORLEY THE FRENCH AND FEMININE.

Sir William Harcourt, according to the reviewer, has only remained in office with an eye to the reversion of the Premiership, and has been persistently putting himself in evidence and the Premier in the background. Mr. Morley, too, has "naturally under-estimated his disqualifications" for the same high post. The reviewer kindly tries to remind him of them :

In all the characteristics of his mind, Mr. Morley belongs more to the Latin than the Anglo-Saxon type. His clearness of diction, his lucidity of reasoning, his devotion to abstract principles, his feminine acuteness of restricted vision, are French rather than English attributes. French, too, are his lack of humour, his disregard of the consequences inseparable from the triumph of his ideas, his deep though narrow sympathies, his preference for an ounce of theory to a pound of fact. A scholar, a philosopher, a man of letters, who would have been in his true element filling the chair of a French professorship, or taking part in the conclaves of the French Academy, the irony of fate has assigned to him the duty of conducting the administration of Ireland in accordance with abstract ideas. Still it must be admitted that Mr. Morley possesses the immense advantage of not realising the absurdity of his own position.

The reviewer is candid enough to close his picture of the fortuitous Premier and his mutinous Ministers by

DR. CALMETTE's experiments in inoculation against snake poison, carried on at the Pasteur Institute, are pleasantly described by Mr. H. J. W. Dam in the October number of McClure's. Through his researches the deadliest serpents of the world have ceased to be deadly." He has a collection of these venomous creatures, which by proper irritation he gets to discharge their poison on a leaf. Analysis of poisons thus secured showed that the albumen or white of an egg and the poison of the cobra of India are nearly identical in composition.

The cobra death was found, by the study of bitten animals under the microscope, to be due to a peculiar coagulation of the blood. The corpuscles lost their shape and agglomerated, and the blood was thus unable to do its work. This explained the paralysis of the leg or arm in a person bitten on these parts, and proved that the immediate cause of the fatal result was paralysis of the lungs through the stoppage of the circulation. Consequently, it early appeared that the remedial measure must be chemical and physiological, rather than bacterial.

It was found by experiment that the hypochlorites of sodium and lime were chemicals which neutralised the poison by chemical action. Chloride of gold is equally of value, and ordinary chloride of lime gave perhaps the best results of all.

The chloride should be free from absorbed water, and, when used, should in all cases he freshly taken from a hermetically sealed bottle. One part of it by weight should be dissolved in eleven parts of boiling water, and the solution should never be made until it is about to be used, as .. the therapeutic power diminishes by keeping. This should be injected subcutaneously with a trephine all about the wound, and also under the skin of the abdomen, that it may enter the circulation as quickly as possible.

As an interval of from two to twenty-four hours elapses between bite and death, there is time for these measures to be taken. Dr. Calmette thinks 75 per cent. of snake-bitten persons could thus be saved. Rabbits inoculated by him are bitten by cobras, asps, and vipers without any fatal result following.

Why Joan of Arc was Raised Up.

THAT is the question which Miss E. M. Clerke discusses at the close of her vivid sketch in the Dublin Review of "the real Joan of Arc." She asks, "Why, on behalf of France among all countries that have suffered similar miseries, so violent a deviation should have been made from the ordinary laws guiding human events, why a miraculous deliverance should have been wrought by the visible intervention of Heaven." She finds a possible answer in the suggestion that, had the two countries remained under a single rule, France might have been forced to accept the Reformation as England was by Henry VIII-a secession which would almost have extinguished the Church's authority in Europe. Clerke finds a modern parallel. As Joan was specially inspired to save France from Protestantism, so Bernadette, the child of Lourdes, was sent "to uphold the standard of our Lady" against the gross materialism now oppressing France.

Miss

THE INDEPENDENT IRISH PARTY.

AND THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE LORDS. MR. J. E. REDMOND, Writing in the Nineteenth Century, in the name of the Independent Irish Party ejaculates, "What has become of Home Rule?". It has died out of the Liberal programme from the day the Lords rejected it until it was 66 formally buried" at the Birkenhead election. AS WELL ABOLISH THE MONARCHY!"

To give the first place to the ending or mending of the House of Lords "would simply mean nothing more or less than an abandonment of the Irish question."

To think such a feat capable of accomplishment within, say, the lifetime of the present generation, is evidence of either childishness or imbecility. As well propose to abolish the monarchy; and, indeed, it is doubtful whether, on the whole, England would not prefer the House of Lords to the Throne, if it had to choose between the two.

The Irish movement for Home Rule . . . would have been dead and buried long before the House of Lords' veto was abolished.

HOME RULE OR NOTHING!

66

The Lords need not be abolished, they only need to be overawed, in order to carry Home Rule. If the next election should result in a clear verdict in favour of Home Rule, obtained on a clear issue, the House of Lords must and will succumb again." A Reformed Second Chamber might be more powerful and more anti-Irish. If the next election went against Home Rule, a fresh term of Coercion would keep the Irish national sentiment alive and resolute. Therefore-and this is the ultimatum

The Independent Party in Ireland see no course open to them, as Irish Nationalists before everything else, but to take the shortest way to put a summary end to a situation sɔ full of peril to the Irish cause. That way seems to lie through an early dissolution and a direct appeal to the constituencies on the issue of Home Rule unencumbered, as far as possible, with other issues.

Mr. Redmond would again follow the tactics approved by Mr. Gladstone in 1886 of "rendering it impossible for Parliament to transact any other business till it has settled the Irish question."

A POLYGLOT JOURNALIST.

MR. CHARLES E. DANA, some time colleague of Horace Greeley on the Tribune staff, then Assistant Secretary for War during the Rebellion, and since 1868 editor of the New York Sun, is the subject of a lengthy sketch by Mr. E. P. Mitchell in McClure's for October. He combines with his daily journalism a rare knowledge of languages. On his first attempt at learning Latin, when he was nineteen, he found exceptional difficulty in mastering the paradigms. But he mastered them.

No year has passed during his busy life without adding to his stock of languages, or increasing his familiarity with some of those which he has already partially acquired. Most spoken languages except the Slavonic and the Oriental are at his command; and he has but just now started on Russian. He is restless so long as something which he really wants to know remains behind a curtain of words which he does not comprekend. An accidental circumstance, a chance reference, impatience with an obviously imperfect translation, may direct his attention to some tongue or some dialect which he has not yet checked off. Then he turns to with grammar and dietionary, and is not satisfied until his mastery of that particular medium of thought is sufficient for practical purposes. Many visitors to the Sun office have found Mr. Dana bending over text-book and lexicon, and working away with the energy of a freshman who has only half-an-hour before Greek recitation. Curiosity concerning the Norwegian-Icelandic literature led Mr. Dana, years ago, to a systematic and persistent study of

the old Norse. That and its surviving Scandinavian kindrel have long been a favourite occupation with him. In th whole range of classic literature, next to the Bible, for which his admiration is profound and unaffected, the "Divin Comedy" perhaps holds the first place in his esteem. H began to read Dante in the original in 1862, taking it up for the benefit of his eldest daughter. Mr. Dana's study of Dante has been almost continuous for thirty years. . . . When the editor of the Sun met Pope Leo XIII. a few years ago in the Vatican Palace, tw most accomplished Dante scholars cime together, and they exchanged ideas on doubtful readings up equal terms and with mutual satisfaction.

In this connection it is rather odd to find that Mr. Dana's first journalistic sensation was that, under his acting editorship, the Chronotype, an orthodox Congregational newspaper, came out mighty strong editorially against hell, to the astonishment of the subscribers and the consternation of the responsible editor."

THE DECLINE OF THE COSSACK.

THE Cowboy of Europe is Mr. Poulteney Bigelow's description of the Cossack in his well illustrated article in Harper's. The origin of his historic character may surprise some readers:

The Cossack is essentially Russian and Orthodox. He was at the height of his glory when the Pilgrim Fathers were sailing towards Cape Cod and Cromwell was regenerating England. The Cossack is the peasant of "Great" Russia turned highwayman, cowboy, and soldier. In the reign of Peter the Great, and for a hundred years before, there was a steady stream of dissatisfied peasants constantly leaving their homes under the pressure of tyranny, seeking only the opportunity for enjoying life with a very small admixture of liberty. They gravitated to the great lonesome wastes south and east of Moscow, where, in bands, they protected themselves against the savage tribes beyond, and lived largely by carrying on plundering expeditions wherever booty offered. A great impulse was given to these communities by the introduction of serfdom in 1591, and little by little, owing to the necessity of growing up with the weapons of soldiers in their hands, the tamest of serfs became in time enterprising and enduring as cowboys.

They were specially privileged by the Tzar for a time, as he wanted a buffer on the frontier. They prided themselves on being soldiers. One of their cardinal laws "sentenced to death any man who dared to plough the land." But colonists are now entering the land, the special privileges are withdrawn, and "the spirit of the Cossack is being broken by forcing upon him class distinctions which he did not know in his prosperous days, when all Cossacks were equal, and the leaders were the chosen of the people." Their breed of horses is "in a bad way;" and out of their six armies only two could muster their available men and provide also for reserves. The writer opines that, though they are now ubiquitous in the territories of the Tzar

In the future we may expect to hear much of Cossacks, but I fancy it will be more on the edges of China, India, and Persia than on a great European battlefield. It is as a cowboy coloniser that his fame, if he is destined to have any, will perpetuate itself, rather than as a member of cavalry divisions.

A SKETCH of W. C. Bryant," the poet of Nature," by Mr. F. F. Emerson, appears in the New England Magazine for October, with a good portrait as frontispiece. H. C. Shelley contributes "Gleanings in Carlyle's Country," and O. F. Adams a pleasing sketch of Samuel Longfellow, the poet's brother, and himself a poet as well as a Unitarian divine. Reminiscences of the battle of Bull's Run, by F. S. Fiske, who fought in it, shed vivid light on that memorable time.

AN EXPLOSION AT THE WINTER PALACE.

BY ONE WHO WAS THERE.

JUST now, when Russia is the object of universal sympathy, special interest attaches to an article in the Daheim of October 6th, entitled "A Watch at the Winter Palace." In it Count Pfeil gives a vivid description of the explosion at the Palace, on February 17th (New Style), 1880, during the festivities connected with the silver jubilee of the reign of Alexander II.

THE SALUTE OF HONOUR.

Count Pfeil, who was a friend of Captain W. of the Finnish Bodyguard, had gone to see the Captain at the Winter Palace on that memorable day. The first duty of W.'s Company, he says, was to fetch their flag from the palace of the Grand Duke Constantine, who was the head of the regiment, and march to the Winter Palace, making a salate of honour to it at a certain distance. In Russia this ceremony is observed before all Imperial castles, even when unoccupied, and all monuments of former rulers. As soon as the company reached the Palace and entered the spacious courtyard a bell called the old watch to resume arms and give place to the new-comers. The formality was gone through with great care on this occasion, for both parties were conscious that the Tzar was observing them from the upper windows.

APARTMENTS IN THE PALACE.

W.'s men then betook themselves to the watch-room, a large apartment immediately below the dining-hall. Here benches and tables were provided for such as were not on actual duty in the sentry boxes. The only ornament was a Russian picture of the Saviour, and under it a lamp was burning and had been kept burning for years. The men supplied the oil, and never failed to do reverence to the picture. The ceiling was a vaulted one, and a window in a niche showed the great thickness of the walls of the Palace.

Opposite this room, but separated from it by a wide passage, was the room for the officers. In the ante-room leading to it, several boxes with iron bands round them were kept and guarded by a sentinel. They were said to contain money for the expenses of the Court, and might only be opened in the presence of the watch and certain officials. The officers' apartment was as comfortable as it could be made for its purpose. It was heated by a marble stove, and had five large divans. A handsome clock hung on the stove-a clock with a silver dial, and pointers to indicate the year, the month, and the day, as well as the hours, minutes, and seconds. It had been a present to the Tzar Nicholas, and he kept it on his writing-table, and always wound it up himself-till one day he forgot, and was late for parade in consequence. This vexed him so that he could not bear to see the clock again, and it was passed on to the room of the officers of the guard.

THE TZAR'S ELECTRICAL APPARATUS.

Near the stove in this same room there was an electrical apparatus, communicating with the Tzar's study. It had not been installed long, when one day it gave two rings-a signal that the Captain of the watch with half of the guard must hasten to the Tzar. Terrified, the officer collected his men and flew to the rescue, only to find the Tzar quietly at work, and greatly astonished to see an officer with a long line of bayonets behind him rushing into the room. "What do you mean? You must have been dreaming," he said, and dismissed them very ungraciously. The officer had scarcely departed when the alarm gave one ring-a signal that the commander

was expected to appear alone. Not without feelings of anxiety the officer returned, but this time the Tzar received him with a smile. He had just discovered that his dog had been sniffing about the button by the new apparatus on his desk and had caused it to ring, but some arrangement was promptly made to prevent similar misunderstandings in the future.

PRESENTIMENTS.

When Captain W. and his two officers entered their room, certain formalities were gone through, and those who had been on duty retired. Later, a Cossack officer was added, and the men under him patrolled near the Palace. The meals were supplied from the Imperial kitchen. By-and-by the Palace was lighted up, but the long row of brilliant windows was broken by one, in which only the flickering light of a lamp was discernible. This lamp, which was always kept burning, lighted the splendid church of the Palace, and that spot under the Imperial baldachin on which every departed member of the Romanoff family is laid for some days before he is taken to his last resting-place in the great family vault. And not far from the church window certain other windows could be distinguished, also dimly lighted. Behind them there lay a high-born woman on her bed of pain-a bed which she was soon to exchange for that place in the church just referred to. She, the Tzarina, so lonely in life, was also lonely in death. Neither husband, nor children, nor dependents had she round her at the early morning hour when she quite unexpectedly breathed her last. Farther on were the windows of the room of the Tzar. He had just had a narrow escape at Moscow, but the respite was not long. In a year he was carried dead into the room in which he was now dressing for the reception of his royal guests.

Such sad thoughts had not yet taken possession of Captain W. and his officers, but, do what they would, their conversation would take a gloomy turn. While the Imperial party were expected to take their places at table every moment, these officers of the guard were discussing the many attempts on the Tzar's life. W. remarked that, according to Russian superstition, every Tzar who had been on the throne twenty-five years was safe from all further attempts on his life. S. observed that the Tzar was only safe in the Winter Palace; but even there, in spite of all precautions, persons with bad intentions could manage to gain admittance. 'Do you see that fellow? How can such creatures be let into the Palace?" he said. This was a man in workman's clothes, emerging in all haste from a cellar-door under the guards' room. He looked round several times and then disappeared through the great gate of the castle, but he left an unpleasant impression. His face was white as death, and W. said, The fellow has either been stealing, or has a guilty conscience."

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THE EXPLOSION.

Meanwhile their attention was attracted to the procession to the dining-hall, which they could see through the windows of the first floor. At the same moment they heard a loud report, the gas went out, and they were left in total darkness. A gas explosion!" shouted one. "Quick with the watch to the courtyard!" called another; and the officers rushed towards the door, but had much difficulty in finding it, for it had been torn off its hinges by the force of the explosion. To add to the confusion, the sentinel's bell was ringing anxionsly to call the men to arms. A stupefying smell of sulphur came from the cellar, and loud cries and moans were audible, but it was impossible to tell whence they came. Everywhere there was broken glass, for the windows had gone to

shivers. At last W. made an effort to organise his men, but instead of eighty, he could only muster eight or ten, and they were shouting that the roof had fallen in and that all the others were killed. The servants brought torches and lanterns, and with the aid of these it was possible to gain some idea of the horrible spectacle which presented itself in the guards' room.

The place was one heap of ruins, and from under the blocks of stone and bits of wall, limbs were seen projecting-here a head, there a leg or an arm. Dull moans, as from men in their last death-agony, mingled with the mad cries of fear and horror. Meanwhile more and more people had arrived on the scene, among them the Preobrashenski Bodyguard, whose quarters were connected with the Palace by an underground passage. Suddenly the crowd fell back reverently and the Tzar appeared, followed by his guests and the Grand Dukes.

All this was of course the work of a few brief moments; but what an eternity it was for the poor fellows under the ruins! The Tzar was deeply moved. The tears came

to his eyes when he looked round and saw how few were left of the watch, but these few, though covered with dust and with their weapons broken, made him the usual salute. How weird sounded their, "We wish health to your Majesty!" by the side of the groans of their comrades!

THE WORK OF RESCUE.

General Gourko, who was then Governor of St. Petersburg, ordered assistance to be sent, and the work of rescue was begun. But with all help, it was no light task to remove the blocks of stone. Captain W. stood by and wrote down the name of each one as he was brought out, but it took a long time to rescue all who had been in the room at the time of the explosion. The Tzar also stood by, and had a kind word of consolation for every man who was carried past him. Suddenly two grenadiers were got out. "Wounded?" "Dead, your Imperial Majesty!" As the Tzar bent over them, he saw two faces whose features were not unfamiliar to him, the more so as they bore the most striking resemblance to each other. A few hours before he had noticed them on duty before his work-room. At last they came to the sergeant himself. He was not quite dead, but he managed the usual greeting to the Tzar, and asked the captain not to forget his wife and child. Then, pointing to the pocket of his cloak, he said, almost inaudibly, that they would find the guard-list there, and it would be useful in the identification of the dead and injured. An effort was made to take him home, but he died on the way. After hours of digging, eleven dead and sixty-two injured were brought to the light.

The Tzar was now quite convinced that this was no gas explosion, for as soon as the gas was lighted it burnt as before. The guests had not had time to get seated when the explosion occurred; but even if they had been at table, they would only have experienced the shock. The powder-mine was laid in the cellar, under the guards' room, and this room was under the dining-hall; but the villains had forgotten to shut the cellar door, and so the explosion did not take such deadly effect as it had been intended it should do. Marvellous to tell, the guards' picture of the Saviour was quite unhurt, and it is now specially prized by the men on duty in the Palace.

WITH the November part the Girl's Own Paper begins its sixteenth volume. In it Mrs. Emma Brewer gives the first part of what promises to be an interesting sketch of the life of Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands. The Boy's Own Paper also begins a new volume this month.

BRUGSCH PASHA.

GERMANY has recently lost two of her famous sons. Professor von Helmholtz was a well-known figure in the domain of science, and Brugsch Pasha was a distinguished Egyptologist.

Professor Brugsch was born at Berlin in 1827. It was at Berlin, too, that he received his early education, and before he left the gymnasium he had published several treatises on the language and hieroglyphical characters used by the ancient Egyptians. These publications were regarded as such valuable contributions to the subject of Egyptology that Humboldt and King Frederick William IV. liberally supported the boy in his future

studies. His first scientific journey to Egypt was made in 1853 at the expense of the king, and there he met M. Mariette. Returning to Berlin in 1854, he was made keeper of the Egyptian Museum, and he wrote accounts of his sojourn among the monuments of Egypt. Other visits to the Nile were made in 1857 and 1858, and also fully described.

He made a tour through Persia in 1860, and returned home to publish an account of it in the following year. He was Prussian Consul at Cairo from 1864 to 1868, when he was appointed to the post of Professor of Egyptology at Göttingen. In 1870, the Khedive offered him the direction of the School of Egyptology at Cairo. His later travels have been in Syria, Persia and Egypt, and in 1886 he settled in Berlin. His last book was "My Life and My Wanderings."

In the November Velhagen Carl von Vincenti, of Vienna, writes an interesting sketch of Brugsch, and Brugsch himself appears as the author of two interesting art.cles in the later reviews to hand. In Heft 3 of the Universum he has an article on "Heliopolis and Its Obelisks," and in the Deutsche Rundschau for November there are some interesting reminiscences of Auguste Mariette, the French Egyptologist, by his friend Professor Brugsch.

STORIES THAT STIR THE BLOOD.

SIR EVELYN WOOD'S REMINISCENCES.

SIR EVELYN WOOD in the Fortnightly continues his papers on the Crimea, 1854 and 1894. He deals this month with Balaclava and Inkerman. The chief interest of his paper is in the stories which he tells of individual heroism and of endurance. I extract a few, chiefly relating to the charges of the Heavy and Light Brigades at Balaclava :

Lieutenant Sir William Gordon, who greatly distinguished himself in personal combats in Central India in 1858, is still an active man, although the doctors said, on the 25th October, he was "their only patient with his head off," so terribly had he been hacked by a crowd of Russians into which he penetrated. He used to make little of his escape, but we learnt that after being knocked out of the saddle he lay on his horse's neck, trying to keep the blood from his eyes. Eventually, without sword or pistol, he turned back, and, unable to regain his stirrups although a perfect horseman, rode at a walk up the valley. He found between himself and our Heavy Brigade a regiment of Russian cavalry facing up the valley. He was now joined by two or three men, and he made for the squadron interval. The nearest Russians, hearing him approach, looked back, and by closing outwards to bar his passage, left sufficient opening in the squadron, through which Gordon passed at a canter. He was followed, and summoned to surrender, and refusing, would have been cut down had not his pursuer been shot. We know that a cornet, rich in worldly possessions, whose horse was killed well down in the valley near the guns, kept his head, and extricating the saddle, carried it back into camp on his head.

Lieutenant Piercy Smith, 13th Light Dragoons, from an accident to his right hand, carried merely a dummy sword in the scabbard. While leading his men on the far side of the Russian battery, a Russian soldier, perceiving he had no sword, galloped up alongside, and resting his carbine on the left arm, pressed the muzzle close to Smith's body as the two horsemen galloped, locked together. Smith presently, finding the suspense intolerable, struck at the Russian's face with the maimed hand, and the carbine going off, the bullet passed over Smith's head, the Russian then leaving him alone.

The Naval brigade sent doctors down to attend to the wounded, and they described to us that evening the effect of some of the sword cuts inflicted by our heavy dragoons on the heads of the Russians as appalling; in some cases the head-dress and skull being divided down to the chin. The edge of the sword was used, for the great-coats worn by the Russians were difficult to pierce with the point. In those days our men were taught the sword exercise with great regard for regularity, each cut being followed in correct sequence by its corresponding guard. A doctor, dressing a wound in one of our men's head, asked, " And how came you to get this ugly cut." The trooper replied with much warmth, "I had just cut five at a Russian, and the damned fool never guarded at all, but hit me over the head"! Few Russians had made any attempt to sharpen their swords. Many of our men survived after receiving an incredible number of cuts, and a private of the 4th Dragoon Guards had fifteen cuts on his head, none of which were more than skin deep. This and the faulty leading of the Russian officers account for the very slight loss incurred by the Heavy Brigade, seventy-eight killed and wounded.

Here is the story about Sir William Hewett's disobedience to orders at Inkerman ::

When the Russians were seen on the Inkerman crest, and were observed emerging from the Careenage ravine and approaching the battery, a message was sent to Mr. Hewett to spike his gun and retire. This order was delivered at a critical moment. Hewett had been firing at and keeping back some of the enemy who attempted to approach on the ridge in his right front, but now one or more companies which had ascended the Careenage ravine out of sight of the battery, were advancing by, and had got within two hundred yards of the right flank of the battery. The gun could not be trained to reach

them as the embrasure confined its "field" of fire, but Hewett was quick of resource, and after one more round, as the gun was being reloaded, he gave the word, "Four handspikes muzzle to the right," and trained the gun so that its muzzle rested against the earthen flank wall of his battery. Turning to the messenger who was repeating the order, he shouted, "Retire-retire be damned!-Fire!" and a mass of earth, stones, and gabions was driven by the projectile and 16 lbs. of powder into the faces of the victory-shouting Russians, who, struck by this wide-spreading extemporised shell, fell back discomfited. Our infantry pursued them, being led on most gallantly by one officer, the only man just then in red, the others wearing great coats.

SEBASTOPOL REVISITED.

BY LORD WOLSELEY.

THE first place in the United Service Magazine is occupied by Lord Wolseley's description of his visit last August to the old trenches before Sebastopol. He had last seen them in 1859. His reminiscences of the privations and perils of the old Crimean days are vividly and feelingly set forth. The intense emotion with which he recalls the repulse from the Redan leads to a hot invective against the lack of leadership displayed in that unfortunate affair. He tells of a brave boy-comrade who was the last man to leave the Redan, and who " had killed more of the enemy than any other man there," but who was so overcome with the shame of defeat as to sit down and cry like a child. We are given neat character vignettes, among others, of General Gordon's uncle and of Lord Raglan, and catch almost photographic glimpses of the awful scenes in the trenches.

HOW THE SOLDIERS SLEPT.

Even when the companies were relieved and withdrawn to rest after an average of eleven hours on duty out of the twenty-four

oh, what a bed our soldiers had to lie on! I shudder as I think of what our crowded tents were like, and what an amount of human, uncomplaining misery they covered. There were twelve men-sometimes more--in each tent, sleeping on the cold, wet ground, with their feet to the pole, round which the rifles were tied. Of course all ranks slept in their clothes, but the N. C. officer and the private had only their two miserable, shoddy blankets each, one to cover him, the other to lie upon. Sleeping thus closely huddled together they kept one another warm. But many had racking coughs, many were suffering badly from diarrhoea, so it was often difficult for any but the tired and exhausted to sleep much.

SOLDIER versus STUMP ORATOR.

One characteristic piece of reflection may also be quoted on the associations of the trenches:

To those who themselves often handled the pickaxe and set up the gabions or helped to fill the sandbags with which they were constructed, they are touching memorials of splendid deeds done by gallant comrades. They bring back the faces of men with whom we have laughed and chaffed behind the slight protection their parapets afforded. As I stood in that little sap near the Great Redan I thought of the many friends who had fallen around it. I remembered their valour and their daring, their love of regiment, devotion to duty, and intense loyalty to Queen and country. I could not help moralising upon the contrast between the lives and aims and manner of death of these soldiers, and of the stay-at-home talker, the frothy orator, the would-be tribune of the people! The man seeking to rise in political life may fret and fume in his little arena for a time, as he plays his part, but it is as hollow as the stage he struts upon. There is little reality about it... Where is the Englishman who, had he the choice left to him, would not prefer the soldier's manly work in the field to the dreary monotony of commercial life or the paltry party struggles of a political career?