The Adullamites were the forerunners of the Liberal Unionists. They represented society and the classes. They were Liberals in name alone. For the most part they were dull persons, of the mental calibre of their nominal leader, the present Duke of Westminster. But they had two men of more than average capacity among them Mr. Horsman, the "superior person, ," and Mr. Lowe. The latter they held in some contempt. The general belief of the dukes and their allies was that he had eked out a precarious livelihood in Australia by keeping a school, and that he now supported himself by writing for the press-and in those days so near and yet so far, the "newspaper man was held in abhorrence in the House of Commons. Probably most of the Adullamites at the outset of their battle against reform would have been better pleased if Mr. Lowe had not joined them. But in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, he made himself their master and their chief. In those speeches in which he did such fierce battle against the spirit of democracy he gave splendid expression to those sentiments which lay too deep for utterance in their own dumb breasts. He found them the brains they lacked; he supplied the tongue which in their own case was paralyzed. And as they saw him striking blow after blow in defence of privilege and wrong and old-world abuses, they cheered him with frantic enthusiasm, and deluded themselves with the belief that at last one had been found to stay the advancing tide of democracy. It was a wonderful spectacle, upon which some of us must even now look back with a thrill of emotion. Then, indeed, did the giants do battle before the eyes of the sons of men. Lowe, Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, all threw themselves into the struggle with their whole hearts. When one recalls the great debates of those days and contrasts them with the House of Commons which has just died, one seems to have fallen upon the age of the pygmies. But grand and heroic as were the mental stature and intellectual equipment of Mr. Lowe, the task to which he had committed himself was a hopeless one, and twelve months after he had heard the rafters of the House ring with the rapturous cheers of Tories and Whigs as he boldly proclaimed the unworthiness of his fellow-men to exercise the right of self-government, he had the mortification of seeing those who had then applauded him engaged in trampling down the very bulwarks of class privilege he had defended so brilliantly. All that he had accomplished was to overthrow a ministry and to transfer the task of carrying the great Reform Bill from the hands of men who believed in it to those of men who loathed it. But his personal success was not the less marked because he had failed as completely as Dame Partington in his battle with the in-flowing sea. When the turn of the tide came in 1868 and Mr. Gladstone found himself called to the head of the State, everybody felt that Mr. Lowe had earned a place among ministers, and so the ex-Adullamite became the Liberal chancellor of the exchequer. It was at that time (December 6th, 1868) that he wrote these touching lines: Success is come the thing that men desire; The toil of office, and the care of State. Ambition has naught left her to acquire. Success is come! But ah, it comes too late. Where is the bounding pulse of other days That would have thrilled enchantment The lips that would have loved to speak my through my frame; praise, The hearts that would have kindled at my name? Oh Vanity of Vanities! For Truth And Time dry up the source where joy was rife, Teach us we are but shadows of our youth, And mock us with the emptiness of Life. When one reads these lines one realizes a side of "Bob Lowe's" character which was certainly not conspicuous in the eyes of the world. As a minister he was the hardest, most matter-of-fact, and most unsympathetic person who ever sat upon the Treasury bench. He delighted to rub people— not antagonists only, but friends and even colleagues the wrong way. Most of us remember the blunt question he put to the deputation of country bank. ers, provincial notables every man of them, when they had complained that they positively could not live if some measure of his were carried into effect: "And pray, why should you live?" All Mr. Gladstone's older colleagues can recall the fight between Mr. Lowe and Mr. Baxter which led to the resignation of the latter, and which caused Mr. Lowe's removal from the chancellorship to the Home Office. A hundred stories might be told of the offence which was given to people of importance by the brusque cynicism and downright brutality of the chancellor of the exchequer. But even these char acteristics do not furnish the secret of | is the cocoanut-palm. Another peculMr. Lowe's downfall. It was not merely iarity of this region is the ubiquitousness his contempt for others, but that contempt of the dwarf Pandanus, probably the same plus his admiration for himself, which proved fatal to him. He delighted in his own cleverness, and he could with difficulty be induced to abandon his ill-starred match-tax because he had invented the punning "Ex luce lucellum," as the motto to be placed upon the stamps. People bore his contempt, but they could not bear his self-adulation, and so in the end he fell fell more completely and suddenly than any other man of his time who had risen so high. In 1880 he was sent to the House of Lords and to him the Upper Chamber was no better than a tomb. A man of splendid intellectual force, of great eloquence, of gifts many and precious, but utterly lacking in that insight into character which flows from sympathy, and absolutely devoid of that spirit of reverence which is the hall-mark of the truly wise, Mr. Lowe was destined after achieving a wondrous triumph to see his inferiors pass him in the race, and to spend an old age of impotent regrets. HAINAN. From Nature. THE great island of Hainan, off the south-eastern coast of China, is but little known to Europeans, although since 1877 there has been a treaty port there. Mr. Parker, the consul at Kiungchow, the port in question, lately made a short journey in the interior of the island, of which he gives some account in a recent report. He travelled about sixty miles up the Poh-Chung River, to within a mile or two of Pah-hi, which is, at most seasons of the year, considered the limit of navigation for all but the smallest craft. He walked round the walls of Ting-an city, one of the disturbed districts during the recent rebellions, on New Year's day (February 9); they are just one mile in circuit, and differ little from those of other Chinese cities. Wherever he had an opportunity of walking diametrically across lengthy curves of the river he found the inclosed area to be extremely well cultivated; though not so flat, its general appearance recalled many features of the Tonquin delta, especially in its great wealth of bamboos. The productions of the soil are much the same, the papaw, areca-palm, sweet potato, turnip, ground-nut, orangetree, etc.; but a peculiar Hainan feature as the P. odoratissima of Fiji, the fibre of or, This grub is For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. SHELLEY'S CENTENARY. (AUGUST 4th, 1892.) WITHIN a narrow span of time, To join the fellowship sublime He, first, his earliest wreath who wove Of laurel grown in Latmian grove, Conquered by pain and hapless love Found calmer home, Roofed by the heaven that glows above Eternal Rome. A fierier soul, its own fierce prey, And left the air Alike remote from Byron's scorn, Shelley, the cloud-begot, who grew Was fittingly resolved anew 'Twas like his rapid soul! 'Twas meet That he, who brooked not Time's slow feet, With passage thus abrupt and fleet Should hurry hence, Eager the Great Perhaps to greet Impatient of the world's fixed way, Would build divine, Vain vision! but the glow, the fire, That mounts a million paces nigher And power is his, if naught besides, Lost in a storm of light that hides Below, the unhasting world toils on, A meteor rushing on the sun, But, as he cleaves yon ether clear, In other shapes than he forecast Revolt is transient: what must last Is that pure strain, Which seems the wandering voices blent Of every virgin element, A sound from ocean caverns sent, From the pavilioned firmament From The London Quarterly Review. 707 the limestone rock and peering down across the greensward to the river, where THE famous town of Tours, on the later on was to rise the noble Abbey of banks of the rapid and sandy stream of Marmontier, whose greatest abbot was the the Loire, lies a hundred and forty-five famous Alcuin of York." Our Martinmas miles south-west of Paris. The charms still keeps alive the memory of the great of its situation have been much over-prelate's festival on the 11th of Novemrated, but it is a place with a great ber. His tomb, says Mr. Cook, "was the history. Under the proud name of Cæ- ancient sanctuary, the Delphic oracle of sarodunum it is mentioned in the itinerary France, the centre of the Merovingian of Antonine, and in the third century world, where its kings came to question holds rank as a free State. After three destiny at the shrine round which the hundred years of ease and prosperity un- counts of Blois and of Anjou broke so der its Roman masters, days of fighting many lances. Mans, Angers, and all began, when new walls had to be built Brittany were dependent on the See of round Tours, and the citizens, who had Tours, whose canons were the Capels and grown accustomed to peace, were com- Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, the pelled to buckle on their armor and de- Count of Flanders and the Patriarch of fend their good town against its foes. All Jerusalem, the Archbishops of Mayence, the tides of life in those early ages flowed of Cologne, and Compostello." Tours by Tours. It was the centre of the great prospered through the concourse of pilnetwork of Roman roads which bound to-grims to its shrine. Its population multigether Poitiers, Chartres, Bruges, Orleans, Le Mans and Angers. From this town Christianity spread throughout Gaul. Its first bishop, St. Gatien, was one of a party of missionaries sent from Rome to evangelize the Gallic provinces; St. Lidorius, the second bishop, began the cathedral the oldest in Touraine -in memory of his predecessor. Before the end of the fourth century St. Martin was installed as metropolitan. He had served in the army under Constantine, had been imprisoned and flogged at Milan for denouncing Arianism, and had founded the convent of Ligugé in the wilds of Poitiers, probably the oldest monastic establishment in France. When Lidorius died, in 370, the clergy insisted on having him as their head. Their choice was justified by the rapid spread of Christianity. On every side the heathen of Gaul hasten to join the Church. At last St. Martin, worn down by toil, retreated for rest to St. Symphorien, on the opposite bank of the Loire, "backed by plied tenfold; its mint became as famous as that of Paris; its silks were finer than any other part of France could produce, until Nantes and Lyons began to vie with its artificers. Charlemagne, eager to secure a worthy man for the See, summoned Alcuin, who had been trained under our own Bede, from Rome, and made him bishop. The emperor's three sons were taught in his famous school. He begged Charlemagne's permission to send England for some books, the "flowers of British learning; so that they may be found not only in the garden close of York, but that Touraine also may have its share in the fruits of Paradise." to Dark days came when the Northmen rowed up the Loire and burned St. Mar tin's Abbey, but the Counts of Anjou restored the place and granted many priv ileges to the brave citizens. Fulk the Good might now be seen sitting beside the dean in the abbey. He waged no wars and cared little for politics. Legend has gathered round his memory. Once, it is said, after all had refused the man's ap peal, he bore a loathsome leper on his shoulders to the shrine of St. Martin, to find whilst sitting in the choir that the leper was Christ himself. But it is another count - Fulk Nerra, the Black Falcon - who has left his stamp most deeply |