Those persons who do not believe that up to the signature of the Commercial Treaty of 1860 we were more than once in very serious danger of having a quarrel forced upon us by our nearest neighbour, will find much in these volumes which will be disagreeable to them upon that subject, and but little which they will like; but it is highly desirable that the public, which has since the war of 1870 been dreaming of dangers from all kinds of impossible quarters, should be recalled to the fact that the one Power which could be seriously troublesome to us, if it would, is France; and that for that reason every movement there tending to diminish the hateful military spirit, which has brought so much inconvenience to all Europe, should be eagerly welcomed, and every symptom of an opposite nature carefully watched. Happily there is great reason to believe that the masses of the peasantry in France are getting better to understand their power, and when the masses of the peasantry understand their power the days of vast armaments are numbered in France as elsewhere. Let us do all to knit together the two nations by the bonds of common interest and common agreement in sane views of European politics; but let us cherish no sentimental illusions as to all old grudges having been forgotten, or any specially friendly feelings being permanently entertained. If the policy of 1860 could be carried to its fullest consequences, all would soon be well; but the ghost of M. Thiers will walk for some time longer.

Every one will turn to the account of the visit to M. Guizot at Val Richer, a sort of political idyl; and the talk with Lamoricière about Algeria, with Horace Say about the Hôtel de Ville in February, 1848, with M. de Beaumont about his life in the country, with M. Mohl about Germany a quarter of a century ago, with Count Flahault about Wagram, with Lamartine about the French Academy, with Corcelle about Mezzofanti's skull, with Laffitte the Comtist about the Empire, with Chevalier about the Commercial Treaty, with Ristori about acting, with Rossini about the Grand Duke of Tuscany, are only a mere fraction of those which I should advise no one to omit. A less grave personage than Mr. Senior would probably have noted more of the anecdotes which are always flying about in Paris; but he has preserved a few, such as the following:

A. The other day Persigny said to the Emperor: 'Si Votre Majesté laisee IImpératrice entre Fould et Magnan, elle sera comme le Christ entre les deux larrons.' 'Peut-être,' answered the Emperor.

Senior: Who were present?

A.: Only three persons-the Emperor, the Empress, and Persigny.

Senior: Then how do you know that the story is true?

A.: Because Persigny told it to me the same evening.24

De Witt: When Lamartine was in power he used to jot down indiscriminately hints for his poems and hints for his administration. In a paper containing among other things a list of prefects was found the word 'David.' M. David appeared,

24 Vol. ii. p. 255.

therefore, in the Moniteur as prefect, and Lamartine's secretary came to him to ask M. David's address. Lamartine was sorely puzzled. The name certainly was there, but he could not tell why. At last he recollected that he had put it down as a memorandum of some allusion to King David, to be introduced into a 'meditation.' So a notice appeared in the Moniteur nominating A. B. a prefect in the place of M. David, 'appelé à d'autres fonctions.' 25

The extracts which have been selected will give the reader a fair idea of the amount of interest which he will find in this book, if he uses it for the purposes for which it was intended. Mr. Senior never supposed that, in recording these conversations for the perusal of his friends, he was giving them the key to a treasure-house of wisdom. He meant, I apprehend, to show people here what was being said in Paris and elsewhere by a certain number of intelligent and often eminent men, differing very much from each other, and talking often, to speak plainly, most frightful nonsense. The drawback of his system was, of course, that his diaries could hardly be read with advantage, when he returned from abroad, except by those who knew a good deal about the countries in which he had been staying, and the men whom he had seen. But then the diaries went chiefly, at first, into the hands of people who did know a good deal about these things; and now that they are given to a wider public, they will doubtless find some new readers who have this same advantage, while the lapse of time will have helped most people to see who talked sense, and who talked foolishness.

They are extremely easy reading, and the politician who does not gain enough from them to make it worth his while to make them his companion for a couple of holidays, must be either fearfully superior to his fellow-creatures or just a trifle stupid.

I trust they may recall attention to the two volumes of her father's diaries, published in 1871 by Mrs. Simpson, under the title of Journals in France and Italy-a collection not by any means equal in interest to that which is now given to us, but still extremely well worth reading-and to the correspondence and conversations with Tocqueville, one of the most charming books of our generation, the book which Mr. Bagehot, whose memory will live in the recollections of those who knew him well as one of the wisest and most gifted Englishmen of these days, used to take down when he wanted a pleasant half-hour.

When the time comes for a new edition, it is to be hoped that the editor will go carefully through the pages, and amend the faults of the copyist or printer, of which there is good store. If so, she will add to the considerable services which, as literary executor to her father, she has already done to his contemporaries and to the next generation.

M. E. GRANT DUFF.

:5 Vol. ii. p. 383.

MALTA.

SEVERAL causes combine at the present moment to draw special attention to Malta. Though in point of size it may be accounted least amongst the colonial jewels in the English crown, it is far from being least in value. Lying half-way between Gibraltar and Port Said, it may be described as the most advanced post on the European part of the road to India. Lying equidistant between Constantinople and Marseilles, and within sixty miles of Sicily, it may be described as the very eye of England in the Mediterranean. It is, in fact, much more than the eye, much more than an advanced post. During the Crimean war it was an effective base of operations, and a sanatorium for sick and hurt. The twenty-three years which have elapsed since that time have enormously increased the value of Malta in these respects. The rapid growth of armour-clad fleets, the ungauged power of modern naval ordnance, and of other means of offence new since 1855, all tend to make the possession of a safe base of operations, two thousand five hundred miles away from England, a matter of signal importance. And this is true, whether the enemy to be attacked or to be provided against lies to the east or to the west. Malta affords a point d'appui against any nation having a seaboard in the Mediterranean, or in the seas which run into it.

It has other claims, however, upon the attention of Europe. It is without rival as a coaling station for all ships bound eastward from England, France, Spain, Holland, Germany, and the Baltic. In its ever safe harbours, and with its active waterside workers, ships can always depend on getting, and getting quickly, the means of continuing their voyage. Nowhere else along the route, Port Said not excepted, can ships be coaled so well, so quickly, or so cheaply as at Malta. That they avail themselves of the privilege is witnessed by the fact that in the year 1876 steamers, representing a tonnage of 2,378,386 tons, put into Malta; and that, judging by the port statistics, the steamer tonnage calling at Malta increases at the rate of more than a hundred thousand tons a year. And this speciality of advantage possessed by Malta obtains in spite of the keen competition of Italian and Sicilian ports which have striven energetically since the liberation of Italy to regain the position they held when

Messina was the residence of a viceroy, and when Naples and Syracuse were unblighted by the Bourbons.

More than once since the supersession of the Papal temporal power by that of the Italian monarchy, Malta has been looked to as the residence of the Pope; and so lately as January of the present year it was proposed by an influential section at the Vatican that the Conclave for the election of the next Pope should be held there, as the most convenient spot outside Italy, and as the most absolutely free spot anywhere.

But Malta has been full of interest for Europe and for the world for the last three hundred and fifty years. Nay, it has an anterior interest still. The shipwreck of the apostle of the Gentiles in this Melita, not in the Melitaion of the Adriatic Sea, as some contend, is not only an article of faith with the Maltese, but of credible belief with all candid students of St. Paul's history. The nautical reasonsfor and against Mediterranean Malta having been the scene of the shipwreck, and the whole learning of the subject, are condensed in a masterly way by Mr. James Smith, of Jordanhill, in his Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul. Apart from tradition, that stout and generally faithful guardian of local historic truth, which avers that Malta was the Melita of St. Paul, it is not difficult to-day to see the great probability of this having been the very spot. The visitor to the pretty indented bay at the north-west end of the island is at small pains to find the certain creek with a shore, into the which they were minded, if it were possible, to thrust in the ship.' As easily will he recognise the place where two seas meet' and the reasonableness of the popular legend which claims to fix the site of the encampment of the shipwrecked men and of the wood fire from which came the viper that fastened on the apostle's hand. These and other main features of the account in the Acts come vividly before the eye when examined on the spot, whilst the nautical and meteorological reasons why the ship of Alexandria sailing into Italy' should, under the conditions stated, have been cast away to the southward of Sicily, are borne in upon the mind fresh from a perusal of Mr. Smith's work. Publius is still a chief man of the island.' If his arms and his chariot are not visible, his church on Floriana, outside Valletta, is; and the prayers of the faithful addressed to Santo Pubblio are only deemed second, if second, in efficacy to those addressed to San Paolo himself. By St. Paul and his companions on their voyage to Rome Christianity first came to the Maltese, and by them it was cherished and maintained, in spite of the efforts of Vandals, Goths, and Saracens to stamp it out.

What manner of men they were, ethnologically considered, to whom St. Paul spoke, is not easily to be defined. The governor was Publius, a Roman citizen, though probably of the colonial or provincial type, like St. Paul himself; and the government was that of

a pro-prætor dependent on the prætorship of Sicily. But the people must have belonged to the family of mixed nations. According to De Boisgelin, the Phoenicians landed in Malta about 1519 B.C., and established a colony. Whether they did so on sufferance, or whether, to establish their settlement, they had to dispossess the Phæacian giants, or other the descendants of Homer's people of Hyperia, history says not, but records that the Phoenicians founded a colony and called the island Ogygia. In B.C. 736 the Greeks took possession, called the island Melitaion, and introduced their civilisation and their language. Two hundred years later the Carthaginians came, and gradually dispossessed the Greeks, though the Greek people remained, and both the Greek and the Punic or Phoenician languages were equally spoken in Melita.' Then came the Punic wars. In the first war the Romans landed and plundered Malta, and in B.C. 242 they took final possession of it, appointing a pro-prætor, and, after their manner, affording to all the races represented in the population an equal protection. It was to a population with such a history that St. Paul addressed himself. These were the barbarous people' who showed him and his two hundred and seventy-five fellow-voyagers 'no little kindness;' who now thought him a murderer whom 'vengeance suffereth not to live,' and now a god.' This was the people amongst whom healing was wrought, and who honoured the apostle with many honours,' and loaded him with such things as were necessary' when he shipped for Italy in the Castor and Pollux.

If the precise nationality of the Maltese to whom St. Paul spoke be doubtful, on what ground can it be possible to base a Particularismus argument for the cession of Malta to any one European state on the nationality principle of like to like? Since the time of St. Paul no less than eight waves of conquest swept over the island, before finality seemed to be given by the advent of the Order of St. John. The Vandals, who in A.D. 454 overran Sicily, also occupied Malta, but were driven out, after ten years, by the Goths. In 553 the Romans reoccupied the island, and held it for three hundred and twenty years. In 870 the tide of Saracen conquest swept over Malta, but a successful insurrection by the Greek portion of the inhabitants drove the invaders out, and kept them at bay for thirtyfour years. Then came the Moslem again, recruited and dominated this time by the addition of the fierce Turkish element in their ranks ; and for the first time in the history of the island we read of a sys-tematic massacre of the vanquished. All the Greek men, by which one understands not only the sons of families of ancient Greek descent, but the men of Byzantine households, were put to death; their women and children were reduced to slavery; and all that remained of mankind besides the conquerors were survivals of the unfittest in the shape of deteriorated Carthaginians and other African peoples. Between such and the new-comers there was a certain