William I. and his successors has scarcely anything in common with French imperialism, nor will German soldiers ever be Pretorians. An organisation by which the whole people are most effectively entrusted with the defence of the country cannot deviate from its purpose, so as to become a standing menace to a peaceful world.

In all probability we have arrived at an important turning-point in the history of our race. Perhaps, to a period of about two centuries, during which France more or less aspired to European supremacy, an epoch of Germanic predominance is to succeed. Strassburg, once the prey of Louis XIV., but still a German city, much more than it may appear at a hasty glance, is in our hands again; and the siege of Paris, as well as the reconstruction of a new Germany, have been conducted from the Royal German head-quarters in the favourite palace of the Grand Monarque.

Yet the great moral lesson derived from the terrible agonies of our neighbours would be lost entirely, if

Germany and her rulers were ever to be dazzled by the same passionate love of military glory and unjust aggrandisement which in a former age were inaugurated from Versailles. May the patient and even temper of the Germans guard them successfully against the committal of such a fatal and irrevocable mistake. May they never forget, that by adhering to everything that has been pure and legitimate in their cause, by an impartial faith in the rights of nationality, they best fulfil their duty towards mankind. A succession of wars within seven years has secured but the bare walls of the house we live in, leaving hitherto very little time to furnish it comfortably. Naturally, we pray for a long and permanent peace, by which alone the cruel wounds inflicted on all sides can be healed. We pray for it in order to use our independence in the only justifiable way, that is to say, by taking up sincerely and manfully the huge mass of internal work before us, if possible with the sympathy and the good wishes of other nations.

VOL. III.-NO. XIV. NEW SERIES.

R

24

THE

HE events by which Englishmen, to adopt the phrase of an eminent author, have been of late amazed and bewildered' are not opportune for a consideration of the literature of past wars. Attention is literally absorbed by the multiplicity of harrowing details given by a whole army of war correspondents. The proportions of the present struggle are gigantic. Its issues are complicated and vast. Its effects will influence the social and national feelings of generations not yet born. And, in contemplating the enormous hosts, the scientific methods of destruction, the outpouring of life and treasure, and the deadly grapple of two great military Powers, we feel tempted to forget all previous contests for empire or for existence, and to say with Dr. Johnson, 'Let me never hear of the Punic wars again.' Yet the story of the Indian mutiny, or the Sepoy war as Mr. Kaye prefers to call it, is one of surpassing interest to all Englishmen who rightly value those Eastern possessions which we hold by a judicious combination of moral ascendency with physical force. Fourteen years ago, at a period almost equidistant from the Crimean and the Italian wars, Europe looked with varied feelings of envy, dislike, and admiration at the isolated bands of Englishmen who were resolutely bent on winning battles or retaining provinces against enormous odds. The story has been told, in parts, by many graphic pens; but by no one so qualified to combine a mass of conflicting, ample, or ill-assorted materials into one consistent whole, as the practised author before us.

Mr. Kaye brings to his task a

variety of qualifications not often united in the same individual. He has a great command of language and a full and flowing style. The story of the Afghan war, as told by him in two goodly volumes, has all the power and significance of a Greek Trilogy. His biographies of such statesmen as Metcalfe and Malcolm have been welcomed by the Indian administrator at his desk as well as by the English student in the library. No writer is more jealous of our national reputation as conquerors or rulers, and none has shown greater willingness to recognise the merits of those from whose policy he may have reason to dissent. But many readers who know the author only as the first of writers on Anglo-Indian subjects or as Political Secretary at the India Office, may not be aware that Mr. Kaye was, in his early years, a lieutenant in the Bengal Artillery. He left India about a quarter of a century ago, on account of failing health. But even at that time he was favourably known to the AngloIndian public as a writer; and his early productions of Peregrine Pulteney and Long Engagements contain graphic and faithful pictures of social and domestic life in India, and stand out in happy contrast to those vulgar tales and flashy novels which describe a sensational elopement at the hills, an improbable boar hunt in the plains, and an administration conducted by rogues or idiots, on principles borrowed from a corrupt French prefecture or a Russian police office. Mr. Kaye's practical experience at the old headquarters of the Bengal Artillery near Calcutta, in Southern India, and in Arracan, is a guarantee for his ac

curacy in military and political details. He has even more than that knowledge of evolution which Scott acquired from service with the Edinburgh volunteers in 1798, and Gibbon from a commission in the Hampshire militia. His present occupation gives him an insight into everything of importance with regard to our frontier policy, our treatment of Indian feudatories, and the principles which now actuate the Viceroy as the unquestioned representative of the Queen of England and the Mogul Emperor. He has lived in constant communication with statesmen and administrators of every rank. Large masses of familiar and private correspondence have been freely placed at his disposal. He has ready access to the vast stores of information which the official pen of viceroys and secretaries has sent home to be stored up at Westminster. And, consequently, when we regard his past associations and his present employment, his experience in literature, his opportunities for collecting accurate information, and his political training, it may safely be conceded that no writer has commenced such a task with greater advantages, or is more likely to produce an historical narrative which shall be accurate without being wearisome, and full but not overflowing; which shall illustrate the most striking differences in the British and the Asiatic character, and which shall rise to the just level of the great arguments and the exciting topics with which the historian of 1857 must necessarily deal.

The first volume of the work was published five years before the second. As so often happens in these literary ventures, the author has somewhat miscalculated the extent of his materials and the proportions of his work. In the volume published in 1865 he had given us his own view of the causes and origin of discontent amongst

the Sepoys. This led him to examine narrowly the very foundations on which our Indian Empire rested, the motives which had actuated successive rulers in undertaking wars, in annexing provinces, and in civilising the population, and the general effect on the minds of princes and peoples of the measures which had tended to feed national vanity or to build up individual reputation. And though some critics and administrators did not wholly concur in the strictures of the author with regard to particular statesmen, or were not prepared to endorse all the inferences which he drew from facts stated with fairness and not disputed in essentials, yet all men agreed in reading and praising the work as one in which a mass of information was collected and set out with undeniable ability, and which was a valuable record of the efforts of a dominant Power to do justice to the most solemn trust ever delegated to any nation distinguished both in commerce and in war.

Mr. Kaye, at the close of his first volume, left his readers on the tiptoe of expectation at the outbreak of Meerut. It was then understood in literary and Anglo-Indian circles, though perhaps without any solid grounds for the belief, that the task of the author would be accomplished in three volumes. The second was to contain the whole history of the outbreak, battles, sieges, and retributive operations. The third and last was to be taken up with an account of the changes in the Constitution, and in the remedial measures by which Lord Canning endeavoured to substitute order for chaos, and generous trust and loyal submission in the place of frenzied alarm or inveterate dislike. It seems, however, tolerably clear that the original limits of the work on the above programme must be exceeded. That a good deal of ground is got over in the present