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Tartary, there had been generated a seething activity: mules, horses, and carts coming in laden, and finding men to unload them: splendid sailors, men of the yacht, bringing strength and resources from on board: men intrenching the ground to find shelter for hampers and bales: interpreters lightly bridging the gulf between the mind of the East and the mind of the West: strong barbarians carrying loads; and, propeller of all, his great eyes flaming with zeal, his mighty beard laden or spangled like the bough of a cedar on Lebanon with whatever the skies might send down, snow, sleet, or rain, an eagle-faced, vehement Englishman, commanding, warning, exhorting, swooping down in vast seven-leagued boots through the waters and quagmires upon any one of his Mussulmans who, under cover of piety, stopped kneeling too long at his prayers. If any wayfarer between camp and port sought to learn what all this stir meant, he might be told, perhaps, Orientally, by some of the bearers of burdens, that "the will of Allah— his name be it blessed!-had made them the hard-driven slaves of the sacredly-bearded commander, the all-compelling, the sleepless, the inexorable Father of boxes"; while the answer to any such question, if drawn from an English officer, was likely to be altogether neglectful of the spiritual element, and simply explain in five words that the cause of all the commotion was "Tom Tower working his Croats."

The mere sight of this promising turmoil began to do good. It was England, busy England herself, that had at last planted her foot in the midst of the drear winter soldiering. Not the England officially typified, that swathes her limbs round with red tape: still less the quarrelsome, critical England, that goes digging and digging for faults, as though for diamonds or gold; but the larger, generous England, fondly glowing with the love of her army from head to foot, and come out all the long way to share with it the troubles of the winter campaign.

The soldier, who by this time had lived almost through the winter, was, if judged by his looks, a man of wrought

Armored thickly and clumsily against the rigors of the climate he, of course, in his outer self, was a roughlooking sample of masculine strength. But, ennobled by war and self-sacrifice, he was more equal to exalted resolves than luxurious idlers at home; more capable, too, of the sentiment that would make tears well to his eyes if it chanced that, in one of the "Christmas hampers," he saw a slip of paper with some word of blessing in lady's handwriting, for the soldier unknown to whom her present might come. For, to look on such traces of tender thoughtfulness, in that spirit of distant worship which sways the heart of the exile, was like coming under the spell of some gracious presence in England, like seeing the gentle hands busied in their labor of love and hearing a silver voice speak.

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE.

Note 62.

THE INSULAR STRENGTH OF ENGLAND.

In one of the old English charters we read that “ on the 6th of July, 1264, the whole force of the country was summoned to London for the 3d of August, to resist the army which was coming from France under the queen and her son Edmund. The invading fleet was prevented by weather from sailing until too late in the season. The Papal legate, who soon after became Clement IV., threatened the barons with excommunication; but the bull containing the sentence was taken by the men of Dover as soon as it arrived, and thrown into the sea

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As I read this, I think of the sturdy men of Connecticut beating the drum to prevent the reading of the royal order of James II. depriving the colony of the control of its own militia and feel with pride that the indomitable spirit of English liberty is alike indomitable in every land where

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men of English race have set their feet as masters. As the success of the Americans, in withstanding the pretensions of the crown, was greatly favored by the barrier of the ocean, so the success of Englishmen in defying the enemies of their freedom has no doubt been greatly favored by the barrier of the English Channel. The war between Henry III. and the barons was an event in English history no less critical than the war between Charles I. and the Parliament four centuries later; and we have every reason to be thankful that a great French army was not able to get across the Channel in August, 1264. Nor was this the only time when the insular position of England did good service in maintaining its liberties and its internal peace. We cannot forget how Lord Howard, aided also by the weather, defeated the Armada that boasted itself "invincible," sent to strangle freedom in its chosen home by the most execrable and ruthless tyrant that Europe has ever seen; a tyrant whose victory would have meant the usurpation of the English crown, and the establishment of the Inquisition at Westminster Hall. Nor can we forget with what longing eyes the Corsican barbarian, who wielded for mischief the forces of France, in 1805, looked across from Boulogne at the shores of the one European land that never in word or deed granted him homage.

But in these latter days England has had no need of stormy weather to aid the prowess of the sea-kings who are her natural defenders. It is impossible for the thoughtful student of history to walk across Trafalgar Square and gaze on the image of the mightiest naval hero that ever lived, on the summit of his lofty column, and guarded by the royal lions, looking down upon the land he freed from the dread of Napoleonic invasion, and not admire the artistic instinct that devised so happy a symbolism, and the rare good fortune of our Teutonic ancestors, in securing a territorial position so readily defensible against the assaults of despotic powers.

JOHN FISKE.

Note 63.

THE UNIFICATION OF ITALY.

WE all remember the incidents of the last war.that disturbed Europe. We remember the swift, decisive blows that Prussia dealt the Second Empire, wounding its pride at Saarbrück, and never pausing till she ended its existence at Sedan.

Amid these vivid memories, other events of the time are liable to be robbed of their importance. The withdrawal of the French soldiers from Rome was a quiet episode; but it was of far more significance than the battle which occasioned it. The capitulation of Sedan was the collapse of an unsound, shallow-rooted dynasty: the evacuation of Rome was the crowning act in the disenthrallment of a nation from foreign oppression. Still more! That act sealed the fate of Papal monarchy. Internal despotism ended with alien interference; and Italy became free and united, “from the Alps to the Gulf of Taranto," for the first time since barbarism sacked the palaces of the Cæsars.

The story of Italian unification may well enlist our warmest sympathies. It is the story of a people rising from slavery to freedom: rising, not in the flush and enthusiasm of rapidly succeeding battles, but by a struggle slow and painful, extending over half a century, full of failures as a human life, yet never once abandoned. They were animated by a patriotism that outlived enthusiasm, that did not know despair.

The child of these stormy times, the leader and prophet of his countrymen, was Joseph Mazzini. Practically considered, Mazzini's plans were as idle as the day-dreams of a boy but acted out in an earnest, loyal, suffering life, and preached with fervent, solemn eloquence, they sanctified and ennobled the spirit of "Young Italy." In place of vague discontent and morbid revenge, he implanted a fixed purpose, a holy patriotism.

In becoming a nation Italy has undergone no wonderful

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change in her condition. Her mountains are still infested with robbers her cities are sunk in ignorance: her people indifferent in the use of suffrage; but these are the lingering mists of her splendid dawn. She has an established, central government. The nations are greeting her as she rises proud in her young strength. With no impatient longing for revolution, let us look forward to the day when the land of Mazzini and Garibaldi shall grasp again the grand principle of sovereignty by the people, and realize the hope of a glorious and enduring republic.