beyond the control of an irritable temper, Weisspriess walked out of sight of the soldiery with Carlo, to whom, at a special formal request from Weisspriess, Nagen handed his sword. Again he begged Count Ammiani to abstain from fighting; yea, to strike him and disable him, and fly, rather than provoke the skill of his right hand. Carlo demanded his cousin's freedom. It was denied to him, and Carlo claimed his privilege. The witnesses of the duel were Jenna and another young subaltern: both declared it fair according to the laws of honour, when their stupefaction on beholding the proud swordsman of the army stretched lifeless on the brown leaves of the past year, left them with power to speak. Thus did Carlo slay his who would have served as his friend. A shout of rescue was heard before Carlo had yielded up his weapon. Four haggard and desperate men, headed by Barto Rizzo, burst from an ambush on the guard encircling Angelo. There, with the one thought of saving his doomed cousin and comrade, Carlo rushed, and not one Italian survived the fight.

old

enemy

An unarmed spectator upon the meadow-borders, Beppo, had but obscure glimpses of scenes shifting like a sky in advance of hurricane winds.

Merthyr delivered the burden of death to Vittoria. Her soul had crossed the darkness of the river of death in that quiet agony preceding the revelation of her Maker's will, and she drew her dead husband to her bosom and kissed him on the eyes and the forehead, not as one who had quite gone away from her, but as one who lay upon another shore whither she would come. The manful friend ever by her side, saved her by his absolute trust in her fortitude to bear the great sorrow undeceived, and to walk with it to its last resting-place on earth unobstructed. Clear knowledge of her, the issue of reverent love, enabled him to read her unequalled strength of nature, and to rely on her fidelity to her highest mortal duty in a conflict with extreme despair. She lived through it as her Italy had lived through the hours which brought her face to face with her dearest in death; and she also on the day, ten years later, when an Emperor and a King stood beneath the vault of the grand Duomo, and the organ and a peal of voices rendered thanks to Heaven for liberty, could show the fruit of her devotion in the dark-eyed boy, Carlo Merthyr Ammiani, standing between Merthyr and her, with old blind Agostino's hands upon his head. And then once more, and but for once, her voice was heard in Milan.

GEORGE MEREDITH.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

THE month of November is generally one of the dullest of the year in politics. The spring is emphatically the time for action; a great deal of waste steam gets blown off in meetings during the autumn; but in November all the active agents of the world's political movements are more or less preparing themselves for the future. The Cabinet are concocting their bills; Stephens is brooding over the conquest of Ireland; Bismarck, if accounts be true, is settling the division with Russia of what remains of the North of Europe; Austria, under the dictatorship of De Beust, is laying plans to regain her lost power; Italy is on the tiptoe of expectation for December, and the French sphinx is mysteriously collecting vast physical forces, which "authority" assures the public are never to be used. In America every object is distorted through the medium of Presidential canvassing, and to that must be attributed Mr. Seward's letter, and the swerving of the Government from its straightforward course with regard to Fenianism; but there also the nation is in an attitude of expectation, awaiting the meeting of Congress and the President's Message.

The most important subject that has occurred in home affairs is Mr. Bright's visit to Ireland, and the demonstrations there to which it has given rise. We are far from agreeing with Mr. Bright in all his political views, as our readers are aware, but we think it must in justice be admitted that his speech at the Rotundo was not only vigorous and poetic, but temperate, and delivered in the proper spirit which should animate an English statesman. There cannot be a more disgraceful spectacle to English statesmanship than Ireland at the present time. Lord Kimberley drew an alarming picture of the state of that country in a speech which he delivered in the House of Lords at the end of last session. The intense dislike of England and disaffection to our Government pervades not only the lowest classes, but those who are well to do, and in easy circumstances. The contrast is constantly drawn between happiness in the United States and misery in Ireland, and if discontent continue to spread, a bloody issue must be arrived at, perhaps at a time when England shall be engaged in some mortal conflict. There is, of course, another side to the picture. If the lower classes are more active and dangerous, the upper and middle classes are more contented and loyal than they have ever been before. There are no Lord Edward Fitzgeralds now. The upper and middle classes are Englishmen in their feelings, and in favour of the English union, and the lower classes in the north of Ireland are rapidly increasing in wealth and numbers, and share the same sentiments. In the South and the Catholic parts of Ireland are the principal centres of discontent, and even there education has spread too much to permit any persons of note to join the party which openly avows the wish to have a separation of Ireland from England. The banquet to Mr. Bright has some cheering features about it. The O'Donoghue was in the chair, but the health of the Queen and of the Prince of Wales was enthusiastically drunk, and the state of Ireland was calmly and temperately discussed. Mr. Bright had evidently prepared himself with great care for the occasion, and there was much in his speech with which all thinking Englishmen will agree. "How comes it to pass that the king is never the richer for Ireland?" is still a fair

question for us to put, and Mr. Bright answered it as every Englishman ought to answer it: "How can we or Parliament so act as to bring about in Ireland contentment and tranquillity, and a solid union between Ireland and the rest of Great Britain? How can we improve the condition and change the mind of the people of Ireland?" Any Englishman deserves credit for endeavouring to solve this problem, and Mr. Bright may fairly say, as he does, "the methods hitherto tried have utterly failed, and therefore what I suggest is at least deserving of a respectful hearing." At first Mr. Bright goes over old ground. Why do the Irish flourish in the United States and not in their own country? For which several reasons may be given. He then fastens on the old grievances, the Church and the land. And with regard to the Church he makes observations which, coming from him, are of great importance. He does not think that the abolition or reduction of the Established Church in Ireland would be looked upon by the Protestants of Scotland, and the Dissenters of England, as a Protestant, but simply as a Church of England question. If this be really the case we are happy to welcome a greatly improved tone of feeling in the Protestant world from the days when the Maynooth grant was discussed in 1845, and an able writer was "shocked and surprised at the storm of bigotry which so suddenly and noisily burst upon us." If English Dissenters and Scotch Presbyterians would join heartily with Irish Roman Catholics in pressing forward a reform of the Irish Church, that question might be quickly settled, although at the expense of the existence of the present Government. There are, moreover, many English Churchmen who would join the movement from a sentiment of justice; and it would be strongly opposed only by those who have got fixed in their mind the notion that the Church is a gigantic fortress, of which the outworks are church-rates and the Irish Church, and that these must consequently be defended to the death, not for their own sakes, but lest the Church of England should afterwards fall, and be followed by anarchy and paganism. We believe, however, that the number of persons is diminishing, who believe an artificial ecclesiastical system necessary to hold together the elements of society, and that the Irish Church question is one which might have been successfully undertaken by the late Government with the happiest results.

The land question is more important than the Church question, and far more difficult to grapple with. A vast amount of the land of Ireland has passed through the Encumbered Estates Court during the last fifteen or twenty years, and has been bought in moderate sized estates, principally by Irishmen. The country also has increased in wealth, but still the discontent seems greater than ever. Tenant right answers in Ulster, and it is difficult to understand why it should be so violently opposed by the landlords in other parts of Ireland. Nothing can be worse than the present tenure, where the tenant holds at will under a landlord with whom he is perpetually at feud. Mr. Bright is justly of opinion that to alter this unhappy relation is to strike at the root of the evil. The efforts of industry are checked in Ireland because those who sow are uncertain if they will be allowed to reap. There is no security in Ireland that the tenant will be able to profit by the fruits of his labour. "The interests of the public require that Parliament should secure to the tenant the property which he has invested in his farm." If that were done, in the words of the old farmer in Wexford, "the tenants would

soon bate the hunger out of the land." Mr. Bright would do away with the law of primogeniture and the law of entails. But as an immediate measure he would appoint a parliamentary commission with power to buy up estates of absentees up to £5,000,000, and resell them in small farms to the tenants, the principal being repaid with the rent gradually during a long term of years. This proposal is founded on the same principle, Mr. Bright says, as the drainage loans, and as land societies in England. The plan has, however, found little favour with the English press, and is not at all likely to be carried out. It is founded on the Prussian system, which has worked wonders in the last fifty years. It would, however, require the provision of the Prussian law, that the peasant properties once formed should never again be sold to a large proprietor. This would be creating an artificial system in a new direction, which would cause the most violent opposition. The fact, however, is undeniable that land has been much subdivided in most of the countries of the Continent, and that their pauperism is much less than ours. In most of the countries of the Continent, except Russia, these changes were the result of revolution; the Russian Government has recently had the good sense to settle the land question from an enlightened view of what the future welfare of the empire required, and if it be possible to pass some well-matured scheme for Ireland of a similar nature, the security and wealth of the British Empire will be immensely increased. As the Attorney and Solicitor-General of the late Government were both present at the banquet in the Rotundo, we are surprised that no mention was made of the bill which the late Government introduced-for giving greater security to tenants during the last session, and which was violently opposed by the Conservatives. The bill provided that, where no special agreement was entered into between landlord and tenant, and the tenant made improvements after giving due notice to his landlord, he should receive compensation for unexhausted improvements. This was a very important measure, because it, so to speak, altered the conscience of the law, and showed, where no private arrangements interfered, what was to be considered the course of natural justice. It resembled, but did not go so far as, the common law of England, which defended the old copyholders, and did not allow a man who had reclaimed the wastes of the manor, and created a valuable commodity by his labour, from being arbitrarily ousted from his possession, so long as he paid his customary rent.

Mr. Bright speaks with some contempt of the numerous Acts of Parliament passed fruitlessly for Ireland. But there was once a Lord-Lieutenant, Oliver Cromwell by name, who is described as carrying Acts of Parliament, laws of heaven and earth, in one hand; drawn sword in the other." "Acts of Parliament," says Carlyle, "methods of regulation and veracity, emblems the nearest we poor puritans can make them of God's law-book, to which it is and shall be our perpetual effort to make them correspond nearer and nearer. Obey them, help us to perfect them, be peaceable and true under them, it shall be well with you. Refuse to obey them, I will not let you continue living." Without by any means justifying all Cromwell's policy in Ireland, we believe there never was a time when justice and sternness were more required. By all means let bad laws be altered, but let whatever is the law of the land be respected as long as it exists. If any futile attempt be made to realise the Fenian republic, let it be rigorously crushed at once. Let full warnings of the inten

tions of the Government be given, and then severity at the beginning will be the truest mercy. The policy of Cromwell was to strike at the "turbulent ringleaders of revolt," to allow the fighting men to be off to foreign parts, and as to all "ploughmen, husbandmen, artificers, and people of the meaner sort," they were allowed to live quiet where they were, and have no questions asked. This policy soon quieted the country, and Ireland was never more flourishing than under Cromwell's rule. Perhaps there never was a time when such a rule, -except for its religious intolerance, which was the fault of the age, not of the man-was more required than now. This is a time when the Lord-Lieutenant should wield all the powers of the State, military as well as civil, and if a man like Lord Strathnairn (Sir Hugh Rose) or General Storks could be invested with such plenary authority, it would restore confidence and dispel that "terrible dubiety" which still hangs over the state of Ireland, checking its prosperity, and making it our weakness instead of our strength.

Since our last number the Reform question has made quiet and steady progress. The Reform banquet at Manchester was a great event, and Mr. Bright's speech there was almost entirely devoted to endeavouring to enlist the sympathies of the middle classes in favour of reform. But when he taunts them with being the mere followers of the aristocracy, and possessing no real power, or rather lead in public affairs, he does not point out to them the reason of their nullity. He does not tell them that it is their want of culture, their "Philistinism," as Matthew Arnold calls it, and their devotion to the good things of this life, that makes the term " bourgeoisie" almost a word of reproach. A very little effort on their part, to raise their aims, and learn the ways of expressing cultivated thought, would quickly make their power irresistible, and enable them to assume in the conduct of public affairs the position which is their due.

The marriage of the Cæsarevich with the sister of the Princess of Wales has been celebrated with due splendour. The destiny is singular which has called two sisters to such positions. The indirect influence of crowned heads is still very great, and wars and political troubles arise as often from misunderstanding as from any other cause. England and Russia are daily approaching one another in the far East, and the fate of Turkey is still an unsolved problem of the future. Let us hope that the intimate relation between the English and Russian royal families may tend to renew a cordial feeling between the two nations, which was interrupted by the unfortunate Crimean war, and an enlightened understanding of the mission which each empire has to pursue.

In AUSTRIA the process of fermentation is still going on, without its being possible to make any certain prediction as to its result. For the present, the dualists seem to have the upper hand; but if even in Hungary the leaders have not yet succeeded in agreeing as to the principles of their future relations towards the entire monarchy, how could this be the case with the Germans of the empire, of whom hitherto only a relatively small fraction, and that solely under the pressure of necessity, have allowed themselves to be drawn away from the dreams of unity they had hitherto cherished? The politicians of Austria are united only on one point-that the old system must be done away with, and that the State must inevitably fall to ruin unless its internal and external policy, its financial, judicial, and, above all, its administrative organisation, is regu