more serious theme. He laments that he has lost all relish for the books that once delighted him. He asks himself what, after all, is the use of reading or composition. 'We work on,' he says, 'and die without achieving any good to ourselves, and, if we do good to others, we never know it.' He confesses a hunger for fame, but doubts both the use and the pleasure of it. Even, if gained, it adds not an inch to a man's stature, and puts not a guinea in his purse. It does not prevent him from 'rotting partially while above ground, or altogether when under it.' Neither merit nor fame leaves him anything but what it found him—a mere grub, whose annihilation would mean less than the evaporation of a single drop of water from the surface of the ocean,' seeing that the extinction of earth itself would be 'unfelt, except by one small spot in the boundless universe.' He muses on the fact that Herschel's telescope had shown him stars whose light has been two millions of years reaching earth, and from this alone he accepts the unimportance of man.

In 1813 travel-hunger once more overcame him. Byron, with whom he had renewed the closest relations of friendship, was unhappily far too much and too unworthily occupied to go with him. Had it been otherwise, the course of the two years which indelibly blackened the poet's fate might have been differently ordered.

This time he attacked the Continent from the north. According to prevailing fashion he had furnished himself with despatches, as a sure method of obtaining social advantages and facilities in travel. He was thus enabled to present himself to King Bernadotte at Stralsund, and to the Duke of Cumberland at Strelitz. He passed through Berlin, where he was honoured by the notice of distinguished personages, and left that city in company with Mr Douglas Kinnaird. The armistice of Plesswitz was then subsisting, and, through it, the pair were enabled to reach the headquarters of the Emperor Alexander at Breslau. Besides the honour of an introduction to the Tsar, they made the acquaintance of General Potemkin, Lord Cathcart, Sir Hudson Lowe, Baron Stein, and other prominent people. They were warned off Prague through an oversight in their passport, and turned aside to Vienna where they settled

themselves for some time. That Conference of Prague was then on foot which the fatuousness of Napoleon rendered abortive. Peace on the terms proposed by Austria would have left to France an enormous external territory; and the madness which could reject such a settlement might well have been accompanied with the insolence commonly attributed to Napoleon, and vouched in a modified form by Hobhouse, of having, after reading the draft through, flung his cocked hat to the other end of the room, exclaiming, 'Metternich, how much did England give you to propose such terms to me!' The nemesis was not long in coming. Dresden and Kulm followed hard on one another. Mr Kinnaird was present at the second battle, but Hobhouse stayed safely at Vienna. Thence he went to Fiume, and across Istria to Pola, where he was much struck with the magnificent amphitheatre, in spite of his memories of 'far more famous ruins in Greece.' His experiences were full and diverse, and included a shooting excursion in Dalmatia, with a dip into Carinthia. At Gratz, during an evening party given by the Countess Purgstall, he received from Prince Hohenzollern the first news of the battle of Leipzig. He was soon back at Vienna, where he had the good fortune to achieve something like intimacy with the aged patriot the Prince de Ligne, who, in spite of his seventy-six years, and much physical, infirmity, had offered his services to his master upon the rupture of the negotiations at Prague. In answer, to a sarcastic questioner as to how he came to make so wild an offer, he replied, Because I am the only General, of my rank whom Napoleon has not defeated.' Hobhouse tells another anecdote of his illustrious acquaintance which strikes us as still better. They were both present at a private dinner where a secretary of the Russian Embassy, on being asked for a toast, gave 'Death to the Emperor Napoleon.' 'Sir,' said the Prince, who was gentleman enough to see the bad taste of this, we give healths, not deaths; and besides, we are not accustomed in this capital to the deaths of Emperors.' The Prince seems to have been much affected at his parting with Hobhouse. 'C'est avec beaucoup de peine que je vous quitte, je ne puis pas vous parler,' said he, and putting a complimentary letter of farewell into his hand, turned away,

6

6

From Vienna to Prague, Prague to Dresden, Dresden to Leipzig, Hobhouse went, accumulating from point to point ghastly evidences of the horrors of war. In fact all the way from Frankfort to Holland he was in the thick of the details of contemporary history, always of the most stirring, too often of the most terrible kind. But though he does full justice to the more serious elements in all he saw, he never fails to regain his lighter touch, and in this chapter of his second tour he is as full of anecdote and appreciation of place and scenery as ever. Having enjoyed the sights of Amsterdam, Haarlem, Leyden, and the Hague, he sailed from one of the Dutch ports, and reached England, after an absence of eight months, some time in February 1814, to find his father as glad to see him as a man of fifty-six is to see anything'!

His 'Recollections' of the first three months of 1814 are sprightly and full. Once again, in April, he tried to get Byron to go abroad with him, but once more, and unhappily, he failed. It was not that the friends were slipping apart; they were as intimate as ever; for upon March 21 he makes this entry:

'Lord Byron, whom I love more and more every day, not so much from his fame as from his fondness-I think not equivocal-for me.'

It was because Byron was deep in the mire of passion and intrigue that, after breaking a promise to go, he let Hobhouse start for Paris without him. The latter took Mr Henry Grattan by way of a companion. He enjoyed the Louvre Museum, and the playing at the Français of Orestes' by Talma, and of 'Hermione' by Mademoiselle Georges. He preferred the man to the lady, although he objects to his declamation. He liked the Champs Élysées even less than Talma's declamation. He makes a note of the likeness between Napoleon and Claudius; he had not yet seen the Vatican galleries, or he would have carried the parallel of facial type between the Bonapartist and Cæsarean families much further.

His historical sketches of Paris at the moment of the first Bourbon restoration make the chief charm of the chapter in which they are found. Light as they are, the faintest of aquarelle, they are still precise and clear, and

vigorous as they are delicate. He insists that, ‘amidst all the sights and ceremonies of these surprising days, the fallen conqueror, though unseen, was not forgotten.' Rumours of his attack by a dangerous if not a fatal illness were rife; the story of his attempt at self-destruction was first asserted, then discredited, and at last stoutly denied. We know now that it was actually true. Hobhouse went to St Denys, was shown the place where the body of Henri Quatre had been discovered, and the exact corner in the same vault of which Napoleon in 1811 had said to the sacristan, who was then conducting the two English visitors round the cathedral, 'C'est ici que j'ai fixé ma sépulture.' He had even gone the length of having the chosen corner painted a light yellow and dotted over with Bees, which were already half-effaced by damp. He is better off at the 'Invalides'!

Hobhouse quotes Dr Woolstan as authority for the statement that when Marshals Macdonald and Ney came back to Fontainebleau charged with the refusal of the Emperor Alexander to treat with Napoleon, they found him reviewing thirty-six thousand troops, and were for delivering their message secretly. Speak out,' said their master, 'there is nothing you can say that should not be heard by ces braves.' On hearing this answer the troops offered to march with him upon Paris, and Napoleon at first accepted their offer. The marshals, however, told him that he would find himself faced by 130,000 men, and that it would cost 40,000 lives to force a way through. 'I see it,' admitted Napoleon, and the fateful departure southward was made. He was protected by a bodyguard of his own soldiers as far as Rouen; but from Rouen onward, where these left him, he was ill-received, hissed, and loaded with abuse. More than once he was in danger of his life, and had to submit to disguises. He even condescended to set a white cockade in his hat, and to cry at intervals, 'Vive le Roy.' At one town the mob endeavoured to seize him and pull him to pieces, but the general in whose charge he was said, 'My friends, let him live; death will not be a sufficient punishment for his crimes.' Napoleon turned to him with, General, I have heard and understood you; I thank you.' If his custodian were an Englishman-of which we are left unaware-let us hope that his speech was a ruse, and that the magnani

mous rejoinder was not undeserved. Through undeniable peril he and his escort arrived at Fréjus, which he had not visited since he landed there on his return from Egypt. Thence, with some five hundred men of his Old Guard, he embarked for Elba, where he was cordially welcomed. 'Believe me,' he had said to the Comte de Flahaut, when taking leave of him at Fontainebleau, 'I had rather be master of Elba than of a diminished France'; and we ourselves agree with Hobhouse in believing him; witness his rejection of the proposals of Prague.

.

Hobhouse quotes largely from his own book of 'The Last Reign' to enrich these Recollections' with an account of the great exile's life on the island. His principal authorities are Captain Usher of the 'Undaunted,' who had him in charge during his voyage, Colonel Campbell, who attended upon him at Elba, and a Mr Macnamara, a friend of Hobhouse, who threw himself in the Emperor's way, and, if he be to be believed, had a conversation with him of some hours, during which Napoleon permitted, and indeed invited, a very impertinent cross-examination upon many of the most debatable incidents of his life. This account, if only it be true, abounds in curious detail of explanation and selfdefence; but Hobhouse is careful to say of it that he only tells the tale as it was told to him, but that he does not believe that his old friend, though a very cool hand,' was untruthful.

His diary, on March 11, 1815, has this remarkable entry:

'Lord Cochrane has escaped from prison; Buonaparte has escaped from Elba. . . From the first I feel sure of Napoleon's

success.'

His prognostic was right, in the sense that Napoleon regained his army, his capital, and his throne, and once more enabled France under his captaincy to confront the world in arms. He devotes some hundred and twenty pages to a summary of the Hundred Days. This may strike lovers of consecutive narrative as disjointed and fragmentary, but it must be remembered that these 'Recollections' are nearer to being a diary than a book, and that the book for which such critics ask had already been written by the author of them. Lord Rosebery