fluences of the nation proceeded almost | The middle classes excel in the virtue of entirely from the middle classes. The domesticity and the arts of commerce. But watchword of these classes has always been these, though they are the foundation of Liberty. Throughout our history they liberty, are not the end of national life. The have performed the most valuable services unswerving aim of Liberalism, however, has to the state in preserving the balance of the been to identify the life of England with Constitution. It was in great part through the homely and commercial character of the their courageous resolution that religious middle classes, as if they alone were the independence was secured at the Reforma- makers and maintainers of the English Contion. The staunch support which they stitution. The Englishman's house has algave to the cause of civil liberty carried the ways been his castle. Liberal policy would nation through the long struggle which make his counting-house into his Church, ended with the settlement of 1688. As the his parish into his country, and himself into chief counterpoise to the powers lodged in the world. The basis of England's power the monarchical part of the Constitution, is her commerce; Liberalism accordingly their influence has always been beneficially seeks to restrict the national action to buyexercised. But it has been far otherwise ing in the cheapest market and selling in when events have elevated them into the the dearest, and encourages among every preponderating power of the State. When class of the people one dominant passionthe Monarchy fell in the Civil Wars, the Money-making. middle and dissenting classes usurped for a moment the direction of affairs. What happened? Those who had shown themselves so well qualified to defend the principle of liberty, were found to be utterly devoid of the instinct of government. They produced Fifth-monarchy men, Levellers, Antinomians, in abundance, but not a single Parliament which could fuse into a new harmony the dissolving elements of the Constitution. A great man repressed for a while their anarchical aspirations, but on his death all things returned once more to chaos, till public opinion restored the legitimate Monarchy.

Again, what happened after the first Reform Bill Long experience of liberty, and the spread of education, had entitled the nation to demand direct representation in Parliament, and the prophecies of those who foretold that the first fruits of Reform would be the immediate destruction of existing institutions were signally falsified. Nevertheless, it cannot escape notice, that the great and predominant aim of all the legislation, which followed the first Reform Bill, was rather to complete the emancipation of the individual, than to reconstruct the idea of the State. The abolition of the Test Acts; Catholic Emancipation; the admission of the Jews to Parliament; the Repeal of the Corn Laws, Navigation Laws, and Paper Duty; the Disestablishment of the Irish Church; the University Tests Act; these measures have all largely increased the liberty of the individual, but they have at the same time destroyed much of that corporate life, in which-if we may use the phrase the personality of the State found, rightly or wrongly, a mode of expression. Nor have the ideals which have been abolished been replaced by any just equivalents.

All this we believe to be contrary to the true spirit of the English Constitution, which, like the genuine art described by Reynolds, seems to involve an assemblage of contrary qualities, mixed in such proportions that no one part is found to counteract the other.' .It is, indeed, not surprising that the long period of Liberal supremacy should have produced a fixed belief in the mind of Liberal leaders that Liberalism, or the middle class self, and England, are identical terms, nor that, like Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Lowe they should accordingly indulge in grotesque caricatures of their rivals' policy. Mr. Gladstone is not likely to change his opinion, that his own ideal has an equivalent in the law of things. the country perceived that when the principle of liberty in his hands ceased to be one of negation and destruction, when it endeavored to shape itself into a constructive form, it ceased to be liberty in the English sense of the word. Liberty then appeared in the shape of Mr. Bruce's Licensing Bill; in the disregard of law in the Collier and Ewelme Rectory appointment; and in the use of the Royal Prérogative to accomplish the personal will of the First Minister of the Crown, at the expense of the rights of one branch of the Legislature.

But

And not only did liberty suffer in the hands of those who pretended to be its foremost champions, but almost every principle of life in the nation was dwarfed and enfeebled by their policy. The character of the people of England is not solely commercial; it is monarchical, aristocratic, warlike, and religious. How many of its inborn energies then must be suppressed by the despotism of a single principle of action; how inevitable it is that these energies, driven in upon themselves, should

cease to co-operate towards the harmonious development of the nation! The aristocracy has its wealth and position ready made; the exclusive national worship of money narrows to ungenerous limits its opportunities of political action. The Church listens to the words of her Founder, Ye cannot serve God and Mammon;' she sees the heart of the nation apparently devoted to the service of Mammon; it is scarcely wonderful then, if one powerful party within her pale should, with a deplorable recklessness, cry for separation from the State. Art finds in the prevailing atmosphere of trade little that is pleasing to the imagination; the foolish cry, 'Art for Art's sake' is consequently heard. The poet turns his eyes inward and begins to analyse the workings of his own mind; the painter seeks for liberty in a purely artificial revival of antique forms. The professor of taste or 'Culture' will have nothing whatever to do with the vulgarity of current politics. My ardent young Liberal friends,' he says, keep aloof from the arena of politics at present, and promote within yourselves an inward working.' Foreign policy becomes an obsolete phrase. England is congratulated on her insularity, and is exhorted to exhibit herself to the backsliding nations of the Continent, from the secure vantageground of her enormous business profits, as a sublime, if isolated, spectacle of self-conscious morality.

make all the kingdoms of Europe fiefs of the Church; both claimed to be the arbiters of the West; and had their pretensions been founded on reason they might fairly have hoped to realize them, at a time when mankind were united by common law, common language, and common religion. They failed; the spirit of local liberty was too strong for them; the boundaries of nature, the ambition of kings, the diversities of national language, and the genius of national art, all fostered the instincts of Gothic independence as opposed to the ideal of imperial centralization. What probability is there, now that the passion of the European nations for independence has been so clearly proved by history; when religion itself has become a cause of division between these nations, and their various characters are so sharply defined in their laws, arts, languages, and literatures; that they will ever submit their liberties to the judgment of a tribunal, so rash, wavering, and destructive as democratic opinion? There is but one system by which in these days the sense of European kinship and of national indepèndence can be preserved, and that, as Burke justly observes, is the balance of power.

To maintain public law, the sole bulwark of national independence, has ever been the leading motive of genuine English statesmen. Advantageously placed by nature, and strong in the genius of her people, England has been for centuries the chief barrier against aggression. And if this love of independence has characterized the nation in the past, it is doubly and trebly necessary that it should do so in the present :—

ampli,

1

Si patriæ volumus, si nobis vivere cari.'

Again, the immoderate extension of the idea of individual liberty has weakened the old English love of national independence. Mr. Gladstone's belief in a new law of nations recognising independence, frown-Hoc opus, hoc studium, parvi properemus et ing upon aggression, favoring the pacific and not the bloody settlement of disputes, and aiming at permanent not temporary adjustments,' is founded on the Revolutionary dream of the perfectibility of man, and of the moral' solidarity' produced by the progress of democracy. But it is opposed alike to our experience of our own nature and to the teaching of history. It is true, as Burke says, that England is one member of a community of nations bound together by moral sentiments, rising originally out of a common political and religious system. Great efforts have been made by men of the highest genius to bring this European community under a tribunal of paramount authority.' Charlemagne, who was able to legislate throughout his empire 'for the correction of abuses, the reformation of manners, the economy of his farms, the care of his poultry, and even the sale of his eggs;'* Gregory VII., who sought to

'

* Gibbon, 'Roman Empire,' chapter xlix.

Not only have the institutions of English freedom been established all over the globe; not only is England the pledged champion of the smaller free societies of Europe, but the forces of aggression against which she has to contend are infinitely stronger than in earlier times. We have seen the great representative of Absolute Force in Europe deliberately violate the public law, while what is ironically called the European Areopagus, including ourselves, who by our honour, our interests, our traditions, were bound to resist the aggression, sat indifferently looking on.

It is, indeed, high time that England should resume her responsibilities.' But in the view of Mr. Gladstone, and, so far as we can gather from the speeches and writings of the recess, of Liberals generally, England's responsibilities are even now more than she can bear. The truth is,' they say,

'that turn where we will, we are met on every side with proofs that the cares and the calls of the British Empire are already beyond the strength of those who govern it. Mr. Gladstone looks forward with serene composure to the day when commercial supremacy shall pass from England to America. Mr. Lowe thinks it a grave misfortune that we ever acquired possession of India, and accuses the Ministry of leading the country astray from the true paths of "happiness,' which would appear to lie in money-making and engineering. We must --such can be the only inference-retrench our expenses, contract our frontiers, and leave the field to some hardier and younger race. What would Demosthenes have said to such despondency as this? I do not wonder,' he would have said, ' that the Russians, who are ever on the alert, get the better of you who sit still and delay; I say, I do not wonder at this at all. On the contrary, the wonder would have, been if we, who had left undone everything which men in our position ought to have done, had obtained the advantage over those who had done everything that they ought. What I do wonder at is this that you, men of England, who once maintained the struggle with Napoleon on behalf of European law, who abstained, in spite of your many opportunities, from all private aggrandizement, who sacrificed your properties and risked your persons that Europe might have justice, now shrink from service and hesitate to tax yourselves when your own empire is in peril; and, after preserving the liberties of other countries, collectively and individually, sit down quietly to the loss of your own. The man who did not despair of making Athens, with all her scattered maritime empire, the centre of a Grecian confederacy against the common foe, would never have admitted that the chief danger to the wealthiest country in the world lay in her physical incapacity to protect her extended possessions against foreign attacks. He would have seen that our peril was, as it had been with his own countrymen, a domestic one; that if it ever arose, it would be in the shape of a disinclination, on the part of the people, to make sustained efforts; in a readiness to disbelieve in all dangers not immediately present; in the failure to bear without murmuring burdens undertaken for the sake of ideal objects; above all, in the perverted ingenuity of party spirit, rancorously persisting in ascribing every act of political opponents to base and ignoble motives.

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We are happy to think that it is not the Tory party, the party that upholds constitutional authority, which has given utterance to despairing sentiments, or which has shrunk from incurring 'responsibility.' It was by daring to undertake responsibility that Englishmen created their empire. England understands the saying Noblesse oblige; and the word which she sets highest in her vocabulary is Duty. From the day when Clive at Chandernagore said, 'We cannot stop here,' to the day when the hero of Lucknow bade his friends inscribe over his grave: Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty,' there has never been a great public servant of this country who has feared to undertake the responsibility his position required of him. The Government, in acting on their own responsibility, have acted constitutionally, and their action will not be misinterpreted by the nation. The English people understand that the Ministry, so far from starting a novel policy of their own, have been rather endeavoring, as Lord Salisbury puts it, to gather up the threads of English tradition which Liberal policy had so rudely broken. They see that the Tories maintain the authority of the Sovereign, not in her mere personal capacity, but as the representative of the majesty of England. The imperial instinct the Government have encouraged is not the inflated self-esteem by which, according to Mr. Lowe, every Englishman comes to imagine himself an Alexander or a Sesostris, but the legitimate pride the Englishman feels in the inheritance transmitted to him by the valour of Clive and Wellington, by the statesmanship of Chatham and Hastings. And the empire they are resolved to defend is not, as Mr. Gladstone pretends, a disjointed property of leagues and acres, but a vast moral and political system, involving the highest interests of mankind, the Empire of Constitutional Liberty.

In conclusion, we turn once more from politics to taste. If, as we hold, the recent action of the Government amounts to a reassertion of the true life and character of England, and if the policy thus inaugurated is to be permanent, then we shall see a reflection of this spirit in our art. As the passion for liberty has prevailed in society over respect for authority, so in art the rage for analysis has weakened the spirit of action. The union of art and society, which in the days of Reynolds, and even in those of Scott, was so close, has been completely severed." At a time when the fate of his country is in the balance, the English poet is found dreaming of earthly paradises, and Paraphrased from Demosthenes, Olynth, the English painter is delineating the incidents of the modern nursery, or the man

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B. 25.

monarchical liberty of Shakespeare; by the self, and perhaps never will submit himself, republican orderliness of Milton; by the to analysis.' Prince Bismarck had been chivalrous common sense of Scott;-let tolerably frank before 1870; and at all this be done, and we shall acquire a basis of events he has since submitted himself to authority, by starting from which the artist analysis as completely as is well possible for may become a law to himself. Voluntary his any living statesman. We allude not merely obedience will be, but it will be at the to the compromising publication of Dr. same time unqualified. Yet his application Busch, although its indiscretion does not of established principles will by no means affect its authenticity, and we incline to lead him to the mere reproduction of an- think that, so far as it goes, the general imcient forms. Wide regions of imagination pression left by it is correct. There have are still open for his invention to explore. been interviewing correspondents and trusted He has the history of this country to raise biographers. The Prince's familiar letters, his ideas of action; the fresh life of the as well as his private conversation, have been colonies to furnish him with variety; the freely laid before the world. He has been annals of India to inspire him with romance. photographed in all attitudes, and stenoIn his endeavour to re-establish the broken graphed in all moods of mind. We have links of national tradition, he may move been unreservedly made acquainted with at first with something of stiffness, but he the strange medley of principle and precan encourage himself by reflecting on the judice, faith and superstition, sternness and success that attended the generous aims of volatility, strength and weakness, of which the school of the Carracci, who revived his character is made up; and altogether painting in Italy at a time when all the true there are now ample materials for deciding principles of composition seem to have been at least approximatively, in what class of forgotten. If the English artist continue statesmen he is to be placed whether to work in a similar temper, his task will amongst the bold and fortunate, or the really become lighter with familiarity; congenial great. Has his success been owing to sagacsubjects will occur to him; his style will ity, forethought, grasp and comprehensiveinsensibly adapt itself to the circumstances ness of view, the instinctive promptings of of his age; and he will find that, by follow-political genius, the grand qualities which ing the spirit of the English Constitution, he has touched the heart of the English people.

ART. IV.-1. The Life of Bismarck, Private and Political: with Descriptive Notices of his Ancestry. By J. E. L. Hesekiel. Translated and Edited &c., by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, F.S.A., &c. London, 1870.

2. Prince Bismarck's Letters, to his Wife, his Sister, and others, from 1844 to 1870. Translated from the German by Fitzh. Maxse. London, 1878.

naturally control events and dominate mankind; or to self-reliance bordering on audacity, an iron will, a set purpose, an inexhaustible fertility of resource, an unscrupulous resort to means, and a never-failing readiness to stake all on the hazard of the die?

The problem is well worth solving; and it cannot be solved without reverting to his birth, education, and early life, which, more than is commonly the case with men of his intellectual calibre, marked out and influenced his career.

To begin with bis birth-the most distinctive features of his character, his chivalrous devotion to his sovereign as a feudal chief or liege lord, his belief in the right 3. Deux Chanceliers, le Prince Gortcha- divine of kings, his aristocratic tendencies, koff et le Prince de Bismarck. Par M. were inborn and inherited. They came to Julian Klaczko, ancien Député au Par- him as the lineal descendant of a family lement de Vienna. Paris, 1876. whose nobility or gentility may be estimated 4. Graf Bismarck und seine Leute während from the fact that no flaw could be discovdes Kriegs mit Frankreich. (Countered in his pedigree till it was carried back Bismarck and His People during the War with France.') Von D. Moritz Busch. Zwei Bände. Zweite unveränderte Auflage. Leipzig, 1878.

to the fourteenth century, when Rulo Bismarck was member, and frequently prevot, of the guild of master tailors at the small borough of Stendal. In vain was it plausibly alleged that a noble might have been member of the guild without exercising the craft: that Rulo might have been a master-tailor, as Dante, his contemporary, was an apothecary: the Liberal Opposition could not re