of ascertaining whether Napoleon is still in Elba.' On the 28th came his report from Elba. We know from a fresh spy, sent at the last moment, that the Emperor's flotilla had been in sight,' becalmed till noon on the previous day.

Campbell was not prevented by Pauline's tears from writing to his Government, behind her back, that should he' overtake this pest of tranquillity, the world should be eased of him.' In another of his many versions: 'The lives of this restless villain . . . and his followers are not to be put in competition with . . . the tranquillity of the world.'

The Austrian archives now reveal congratulations that Napoleon had not 'unchained' the Revolution in Italy. He had gone where it would be the business of Wellington and Blücher to stand the brunt with such troops as could be collected before the return of our Peninsula veterans from New Orleans.

When Bentinck's life comes to be written, stress should be laid upon the new proofs of his admirable administration of our Mediterranean affairs in March 1815. Testimony is borne to the value of his services at the time in the letters not only of Macfarlane and of Exmouth, but of Burghersh and Bathurst. The direct and manly course you pursued,' wrote Exmouth, would have produced results infinitely more advantageous than the crooked, half-measured, temporising means which he [Lord C.] followed.' The 'direct and manly course' extended, with Bentinck, to his wishes as regarded the Austrian generals in Italy. Their timidity and hesitation were censured by him from Genoa on April 21. Doubting whether the Austrians will venture to pursue' Murat, or be 'ready to come forth when the French shall enter Italy,' Bentinck urged 'pursuit till they have killed and eat him.'

This article has already shown the strange shifts to which Metternich and Castlereagh were put in their Italian policy, under the strain of Napoleon's entry to Paris. Commandant Weil brings out in his fourth volume Metternich's negotiations with Murat at the end of March. Our Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Cooke, who happened' to be at Rome, was also at the same time making proposals for Murat's alliance,

as well as alternative proposals to Sardinia for the creation of an Italian kingdom with a National Council.

War with Napoleon was not decided by Castlereagh until later. Historians have been misled by Wellington's signature of the declaration at Vienna which Castlereagh at first refused to ratify. The secret orders given by the Admiralty to Penrose and afterwards to Exmouth concerned Murat. Long before Castlereagh became certain that we should undertake the job' our fleets chased French men-of-war. One was taken after a hard fight. The French tricolour was treated as a piratical, because an unknown, flag. We were not at war. Exmouth was directed to follow Bentinck's 'plan of operations'; but it concerned the war in Italy.' As late as May 24 our admirals wrote of preparations against France, in the event of war taking place.' The Prince Regent's message announcing the probability of war was of May 22, and the Duke of Wellington's action of March 12 and 13 had then been ratified in guarded terms. Although on May 8 Castlereagh wrote secretly of the 'management required to bring' the public to the point of war,' yet as late as May 23 he admitted the possible need of an accommodation with Napoleon. His hesitation strengthened the conviction entertained on the Continent of our supposed treachery to the allied cause.

In the parliamentary debates of 1815 Bentinck was roughly handled for undue hostility to Murat. But he was also attacked for having left Dalrymple so long at Murat's headquarters in April as to justify the complaints of the Austrian generals who were fighting against the Neapolitan army on the Po. Castlereagh had approved Bentinck's action, now explained at enormous length in the pages of Commandant Weil's four volumes. The doubt left by the new papers is whether Dalrymple may be open to a charge of some abuse of the confidence of his treacherous and untruthful, but splendidly courageous, host. Austria revealed to Castlereagh letters to Bentinck from Lord Holland, obtained by the capture of the Whig peer's messenger in an amateur negotiation on behalf of Murat. We now read of Bentinck, in Austrian police records explaining the need for the arrest, that, although the enemy of the King [Murat], he is dangerous to Austria as a

partisan of Italian independence.' There was no love lost between Bentinck and 'Holland House,' but it suited Austria to treat Lord Holland as Bentinck's confidential friend. Bentinck's letters show his belief that our Government were preparing, at the end of April, to make him a scapegoat rather than to resist Napoleon. A fresh war with France was unpopular, and Ministers were building up a case for Parliament. A curious letter at Welbeck from Charles À Court, and one of the same date from Bentinck to Bunbury, give the grounds for Bentinck's suspicion.

As for the belief, universally entertained at the time outside the United Kingdom, that, in the words of an Austrian ambassador, we had 'facilitated Buonaparte's invasion,' our Cabinet heard of it from all sides. Burghersh from Florence reported that every one thought that 'the English connived at the escape.' Louis XVIII informed Metternich that Alexander had done the deed. If, indeed. this had been the King's belief, he would have stood alone in it at his capital.

Among the unpublished letters entrusted to me for this article by their possessors, are those written from Paris, in March '15, by Sir Charles Bagot to Mr Hammond. Bagot had been Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, and Minister Plenipotentiary in Paris. The recipient of the letters was George Hammond, also an Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, whose son, remembered as Lord Hammond, afterwards long occupied the same post. George Hammond had been one of those who joined with Canning in accepting Murray's idea of the 'Quarterly Review.' A long letter of March 7 contains Bagot's 'true account of what is filling all Paris, and will fill all London, with anxiety.' After quoting Campbell's report, 'forwarded by this courier to Government,' Bagot shows that Bonaparte is likely to march through Grenoble and to reach Lyons. At Lyons it was hoped to 'crush him.' This points to secret acquaintance with the intentions of Lavallette and the true situation at Grenoble. It is impossible to consider it as a mad effort of despair.' Believing in 'a general combination,' Bagot noted 'that there is combustible matter all round. . . . Here also there is much bad spirit. . . . There is an immense mass of disloyal people in Paris. I shall be anxious and very

...

curious to see how Soult, the Minister at War, conducts himself. On the 9th, Bagot wrote again, 'There is hardly a person of whatever principles or whatever party who does not declare aloud his entire belief that the English have not only connived at, but assisted Bonaparte in this project: folly; but universally believed.'

...

After the debates in both Houses, Bentinck's military career was ended. A day before Waterloo he was offered a command-too late. For twelve years he was laid upon the shelf. In 1827 remembrance of the administrative powers he had displayed and recognition of his nobility of character combined to give him India. Attacked, at one time, like Canning, by Whigs and Tories, he should perhaps be claimed by both as one of the honoured statesmen who are the glory of both parties. Of the private letters of 1815 which deplore his fall, those of Exmouth are best worth remembrance. The naval Commander-in-chief went out of his way, after declaring the strength of his personal friendship, to express in the strongest terms his complete agreement at every point with Bentinck in all the matters which had been criticised by their superiors or attacked by the Whig Opposition in both Houses.

The defence of Bentinck is now perhaps complete. That of Castlereagh lies in the incredible difficulty of the circumstances and in the profound distrust with which experience of Alexander, Metternich, and the Bourbons had filled the minds of British statesmen-' their allies.' CHARLES W. DILKE.

Art. 12.-ANGUS.

1. Angus or Forfarshire, the Land and People. Five vols. By Alex. J. Warden. Dundee: Alexander, 1880-1885. 2. Memorials of Angus and Mearns. By the late Andrew Jervise: rewritten and corrected by the Rev. James Gammack. Second edition. Edinburgh: Douglas, 1885. 3. The Land of the Lindsays. By the late Andrew Jervise: rewritten and corrected by James Gammack. Second edition. Edinburgh: Douglas, 1882.

4. Historic Scenes in Forfarshire. By William Marshall, D.D. Edinburgh: Oliphant, 1875.

Of all the old provinces of Scotland none presents a greater variety of scenery, a more complete combination of rural and urban interests, or a history more illustrative of early ages, of feudal greatness, and of modern activity than ancient Angus, the area of which was more or less coincident with that of the modern county of Forfar. First known to history as the land of the Horestii invaded by Agricola, it was the kernel of the kingdom of the Picts, and its grand Abbey of Arbroath was the chief religious house of north-eastern Scotland. It is rich in old castles, some in ruins, some still inhabited by the descendants of their hereditary lords; it is associated with the early developments of the Reformation; it had its own share of the vicissitudes of the great Civil War, and its own romantic traditions of the '15 and the '45; while its quartette of industrial and residential burghs, Forfar, Brechin, Montrose, and Arbroath, are 'Four Maries' in the train of its commercial queen city of Dundee.

Variously described as approximately a square or a circle, and bounded generally on the east by the North Sea, on the north by the river North Esk, on the south by the estuary of the Tay and the Perthshire border, and on the west by the crest line where wind and water shears' of the Grampians, Angus contains four districts of distinctive character. Though Glenisla is the only portion actually within the highland line, and the only part which long preserved its Gaelic population intact, the country of the glens' and the 'braes of Angus,' including the part of the Grampians distinguished as the 'Binchin