Rifleman, true is your heart, but be sure that your hand be as true!

Sharp is the fire of assault, better aim'd are your flank fusillades

Twice do we hurl them to earth from the ladders to which they had clung,

Twice from the ditch where they shelter we drive them with hand-grenades ;

And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.

V.

Then on another wild morning another wild earthquake out-tore

Clean from our lines of defence ten or twelve good paces or more.

Rifleman, high on the roof, hidden there from the light of the sun

One has leapt up on the breach, crying out: Follow me, follow me!'.

Mark him he falls! then another, and him too, and down goes he.

Had they been bold enough then, who can tell but the traitors had won?

Boardings and rafters and doors—an embrasure! make way for the gun!

Now double-charge it with grape! It is charged and we fire, and they run.

Praise to our Indian brothers, and let the dark face have his due!

Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us,

faithful and few,

Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them, and smote them, and slew,

That ever upon the topmost roof our banner in India blew.

L.

VI.

Men will forget what we suffer and not what we do. HoWe can fight;

But to be soldier all, day and be sentinel all thro' the

Ever the mine and assault, our sallies, their lying

alarms.

Bugles and drums in the darkness, and shoutings and soundings to arms,

Ever the labour of fifty that had to be done by five, Ever the marvel among us that one should be left

alive,

Ever the day with its traitorous death from the loop

Ever the night with its coffinless corpse to be laid in the ground,

Heat like the mouth of a hell, or a deluge of cataract

skies,

Stench of old offal decaying, and infinite torment of flies,

Thoughts of the breezes of May blowing over an English field,

Cholera, scurvy, and fever, the wound that would not be heal'd,

Lopping away of the limb by the pitiful-pitiless knife,

Torture and trouble in vain,-for it never could save us a life,

Valour of delicate women who tended the hospital bed,

Horror of women in travail among the dying and

dead,

Grief for our perishing children, and never a moment for grief,

Toil and ineffable weariness, faltering hopes of relief,

Havelock baffled, or beaten, or butcher'd for all that we knew

Then day and night, day and night, coming down on the still-shatter'd walls

Millions of musket-bullets, and thousands of cannonballs

But ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.

VII.

Hark cannonade, fusillade! is it true what was told by the scout?

Outram and Havelock breaking their way thro' the fell mutineers!

Surely the pibroch of Europe is ringing again in our

ears!

All on a sudden the garrison utter a jubilant shout, Havelock's glorious Highlanders answer with conquering cheers,

Forth from their holes and their hidings our women and children come out,

Blessing the wholesome white faces of Havelock's good fusileers,

Kissing the war-harden'd hand of the Highlander wet with their tears!

Dance to the pibroch!-saved! we are saved!—is it you? is it you?

Saved by the valour of Havelock, saved by the blessing of Heaven!

'Hold it for fifteen days!' we have held it for eightyseven!

And ever aloft on the palace roof the old banner of England blew.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

PAST AND FUTURE POLICY IN

SOUTH AFRICA.

THOUGH on some minor points I might be inclined to differ from Lord Blachford, the view he has taken of the causes of the Zulu War in the excellent paper he has contributed to the last number of the Nineteenth Century seems to me substantially correct. But in this paper Lord Blachford has confined his attention to the immediate, without adverting to the remoter, causes of this deplorable war, and on these last I am anxious to offer a few remarks. What is now going on in South Africa I regard as the natural result of the altered view as to what is the true interest and the duty of England with respect to her colonies, which has gradually gained acceptance both with the public and the majority of statesmen. Formerly it was the generally received opinion that the power and greatness of the British Empire mainly depended on its possession of large colonial dominions, and it was held to be alike the duty and the interest of the mother country to watch over the welfare of the colonies, to defend them, and as far as possible to promote their prosperity. But in the last twenty or thirty years a totally different view has prevailed. It seems to have been assumed that the great object of our policy with regard to the colonies ought to be to reduce to the utmost our expenses and our responsibilities, telling them that they must manage their affairs as they choose, not looking to us for advice or assistance, and, above all, taking care to cost us nothing. I do not mean to say that this policy has ever been avowed in such plain words as those in which I have now described it; but this is what is really implied by the language used by several of our leading statesmen, by the despatches which have been written, and by the measures adopted by successive Governments of both the great parties in the State. I regard this policy of mere selfishness as contrary alike to the interest and the duty of the nation. I do not deny that the opposite policy was formerly carried to a mischievous extreme. During the long war at the beginning of this century, a system grew up of reckless expenditure by the mother country in the colonies, coupled with vexatious interference in their internal affairs; and more than fifty years ago, when I entered the House of Commons, I heartily supported those who tried to check this extravagant and meddling policy. But

if the policy of the nation erred formerly in one direction, it has of late erred as much in the other. For the last five-and-twenty years the action of the Government and of Parliament has tended more and more to reduce the connection between England and her most important colonies to a merely nominal one. In these colonies the appointment of governors is now almost the only function left to the Imperial Government; these governors, when appointed, being practically powerless, and unable even to perform efficiently the duty which properly belongs to them, as representing the Crown, of checking those abuses of power into which colonial administrations are sometimes led by the virulence of party spirit.

I believe it to have been a great mistake thus to throw away the authority formerly exercised by the Imperial Government in the colonies, because I hold the maintenance of the British Empire in its integrity to be of vital importance both to the mother country and to the colonies, while I am unable to understand how the connection between them can be preserved with advantage to either, unless the Imperial Government is enabled to exercise such a measure of authority as is necessary in order to insure due regard, in the measures of the several colonial governments, to the general interest of the whole empire. This it does not receive at present; and it would be easy to show what unfortunate consequences to all concerned have followed from the weakness with which the ministers of the Crown and Parliament have allowed to slip out of their hands the power of preventing the different colonies from adopting measures injurious to themselves, to each other, and to the empire as a whole. This practical abdication of authority by the Imperial Government and Parliament has produced evils in more than one branch of the administration of the colonies, and especially in their commercial legislation, to which I may perhaps on a future occasion endeavour to call attention; but at present I wish to confine my remarks to pointing out how our acting upon the view of colonial policy which has of late been popular has tended to bring about that state of things in South Africa which we have now to deplore.

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DoThe principle of this policy is that British colonists should be left perfectly free to manage their own affairs according to their own judgment; but, on the other hand, must trust to their own exertions for their defence, except perhaps from foreign enemies. From what I have already said, it will be seen that I do not admit that absolute freedom of action can with advantage be accorded to any of our colonies; but, without stopping now to consider what limits should in other cases be set to this freedom, I have to observe that in those colonies in which a comparatively small number of British settlers are placed in the midst of far more numerous barbarous or semibarbarous tribes, there are special reasons for retaining a larger measure of authority in the hands of the Crown than is elsewhere