ion, but added: "I do not tell you that | He had done everything to prevent it; I should have been able to carry it into "mais il a toujours eu un travers pour effect ; it was perhaps too great au in- les femmes.” novation for a sovereign, nouveau comme moi, singly to attempt; but I am persuaded that if it could be adopted throughout the colonies generally, it would produce the most beneficial results." He asked how our affairs went on in America: "Comment font-ils pour vous battre sur la mer? I answered, that their frigates were of a larger size and more fully manned. He said with a smile, "Mais c'est toujours vrai qu'ils vous battent." He entered into some discussion on the grounds of the war, and concluded: "You had better make peace; you will gain more by trading with them than by burning their towns; besides your state of war at this time weakens your influence at the Congress (of Vienna)." He inquired kindly after "mon bon ami Usher," and spoke with great admiration of our discipline and skill in the management of our ships: "Si j'étois resté en France, j'aurois aussi avec le temps eu une marine; je ne dis pas qu'il auroit battu la votre, mais j'en aurois pourtant eu.” Speaking of some of the events of the last campaign, he said, that on the Allies crossing the Rhine, he had urged the Senate to decree that no peace should be made whilst the enemy was within the territory of France. "Cela auroit donné de la confiance au peuple qui commençoit à se soulever coutre les alliés c'étoit là le moment de montrer du caractère — les Romains furent souvent vainqueurs, mais ils ne furent jamais si grands qu'après la bataille de Cannes. A Parliament like that of England would have done so, mais le Sénat n'en eu pas le courage. They began à me chicaner sur des misères, which had been matter of dispute between us. Ils se disoient : L'Empereur n'est pas comme les autres hommes, il ne se plait qu'à la guerre, il hait le répos, les plaisirs, les femmes. This was by no means the case; I enjoyed my pleasures like another man, when I had time for them. J'ai eu deux femmes - vous savez l'histoire de mon divorce." He believed there could hardly be found an example of another grounded so exclusively on public motives," Et dans l'amitié la plus parfaite. J'ai depuis épousé une jeune princesse, d'un age un peu disconvenable, à la mienne; mais personne, je crois, ne doute qu'elle ne me soit beaucoup attachée. J'ai aussi eu des maîtresses qui m'ont bien aimé; mais je n'ai jamais eu une maîtresse en titre, et je ne me suis jamais laisse gouverner par une femme." On my expressing my surprise at the admirable sang-froid with which he bore the change of his situation, he said: "C'est que tout le monde en a été, je crois, plus étonné que moi : je u'ai pas une trop bonne opinion des hommes, et je me suis toujours mefié de la fortune; d'ailleurs j'ai peu joui ; mes frères ont été beaucoup plus rois que moi. They have had the enjoyments of royalty, whilst I have had Some of the old Republicans, among little but its fatigues." He asked me whom, I think, he named Cambacérès, if I knew his brother Lucien, and what | remonstrated with him against his marsuccess his poem had had ? said he riage, lest the niece of Marie Antoiwas a clever man, but doubted his un-nette should indulge a spirit of revenge derstanding sufficiently the "finesses "against those who had been instrumenof the French language for an epic tal to her aunt's death. He answered poet. "C'est de tous mes frères celui them: "Rassurez-vous, mes amis, je qui a le plus de talent; mais c'est un l'épouserai; mais je vous promets bien homme qui m'a fait beaucoup de mal; qu'elle ne me gouvernera pas. son mariage étoit pour moi, qui vouloit | femme qui est une personne d'un bon fonder une dynastie, une chose terrible sens excellent, a parfaitement entrée -d'aller se marier avec une femme du dans mes vues sur ce point, en leur peuple, une jolie femme de Paris, etc."' faisant à tous l'accueil le plus gracieux.” Ma He asked me about my intended stay | ambitious periodical entitled the Melin Italy, the places I proposed visiting, bourne Review, which I have been etc. On my mentioning Naples, he assured since by amiable persons was said: 66 Vous verrez donc sûrement le quite on a level with anything of the Roi de Naples c'est un bon militaire; kind in London. This, however, did c'est un des plus brillants hommes not furnish us with an overwhelming que j'ai jamais vu sur un champ de circulation, nor with a literary staff bataille. Pas d'un talent supérieur, whose names appealed to the large outsans beaucoup de courage moral, assez side public, at least not to the extent of timide même pour le plan des opéra- 2s. 6d. a copy. In our dearth of local tions-mais le moment qu'il voyoit contributors of fame we thought fit to l'ennemi, tout cela disparaissoit appeal to a number of celebrated Enc'étoit alors le coup d'œil le plus ra-glishmen whose names and contribupide, une valeur vraiment chevale- tions we felt sure would confound our resque. D'ailleurs un bel homme, critics and double our circulation. grand, bien mis, et avec beaucoup de With true colonial modesty we soin; quelque fois un peu fantasque- straightway wrote to Tennyson and Enfin un magnifique Lazza- Swinburne for an occasional poem, and I asked if he did not make a to Mr. Froude, among half-a-dozen fine charge with the cavalry at the others, for articles in prose. Mr. battle of Leipsic, on the first day. He Froude was of the kindly minority who replied: " Parbleu, il les menoit tou-vouchsafed us an answer; and he not jours même trop bien, il les faisoit trop only replied courteously, but even contuer- et toujours en avant lui-même. sented to become a contributor. This C'étoit vraiment un superbe spectacle conduct was in marked contrast to that de le voir dans les combats à la tête de of most of the other eminent personla cavalerie." ages, whose chief concern seemed to have been centred in the question of our scale of payment per page. ment. rone." He showed more animation in speaking on this than on any other topic in the whole course of conversation, and seemed quite to dwell on it with pleasure. He said, "Vous verrez aussi la reine; c'est une belle personne et très-Gardens. I was then unversed in the fine." He then asked me how long I proposed remaining at Elba; offered me a horse out of his stables to ride about the island; and at a little past eleven o'clock dismissed me. From The National Review. THE following pages should be taken simply as a slight record of the personal impressions made by this distinguished man of letters on one who was thrown into friendly, though never close, relations with him during the past ten or twelve years. My acquaintance with the late Mr. Froude began in this way. Before coming to England I had edited in Australia a somewhat too On my arrival in London, some little time afterwards, Mr. Froude invited me to breakfast with him at Onslow pleasant region of Kensington, so had to inquire my way, and almost fancied I detected in the bright eye of the old Hibernian crossing-sweeper, of whom I asked the direction to Mr. Froude's house, a look as of one eager to wipe out the Saxon tyranny of centuries. It may have been mere fancy, but years before in a remote part of the Australian bush I had seen evidence of how the very name (6 Froude 99 (after certain Trans-Atlantic lectures on the Irish question) could arouse terrific feelings of tribal animosity. I shall never forget the warm welcome and the long, pleasant conversation I enjoyed that morning in the library of the historian. He was the first famous Englishman I had met, and accordingly I took special notice of his manner and appearance. In the Yorick Club, Melbourne, there used to to be a photograph of Froude; but Imembered, traces in great measure to found the real man much more pleas-absenteeism — to the fact that the ant to gaze upon than his counterfeit West Indian colonist, as soon as his presentment. In a portrait Froude's bank balance permitted it, deserted his strongly marked features look rather real home and returned to England. severe, not to say hawk-like, because we miss the charming smile and the kindly, half-sad, half-humorous glance of the eyes. His voice and manner that of the old Oxford scholar of the best type, and, alas! of a bygone generation, with its indescribable indication of cultured and lettered ease, were singularly attractive to one so long accustomed to the off-hand bluntness of a bustling colonial community. I, at once, asserted (this was long before Mr. Froude himself visited Australia), that my fellow-colonists in this respect were quite unlike the West Indians. There was, I assured him, a growing love of Australia on the part of Australians; and that the "nativeborn" of the new generation would inevitably come to regard England as a remote European island, from which, indeed, their forefathers came, but which they themselves would never behold unless as passing tourists. This, Mr. Froude declared, was the best thing he had yet heard about Australia, and gave him greater hopes of its future than would the discovery of any number of gold mines. 'Ah,” he continued, "this is gratifying news; and you, too, must eventually return when you have seen everything we have to show you in the mother country, and secure 6 a Sabine farm' on the slopes of the Australian Alps—the air will be to you as that of Devonshire is to me." Mr. Froude afterwards told me that it was in some measure owing to this It was a dull, grey October morning. I should now call it rather fine, but then it struck me as being damp, dark, and foggy - and I remember that Mr. Froude began by gently bantering me for leaving a land of bright sunshine for such a climate as this. As usual with him, there was a serious meaning behind his playful speech and mauner. Those who have carefully read his "Oceana" and "The English in the West Indies" will be aware that Mr. Froude by no means upheld the prevailing British notion that we are the only colonizing nation, and that all others utterly fail in their efforts to people and civilize the waste places of the earth. On the contrary, Mr. conversation that he made up his miud Froude again and again pointed out to go out to Australia and New Zealand that the English too much regard their to see if the colonists had really come colonies merely as places in which to to regard those countries as their home. make a fortune and then to retreat After his return he was kind enough to from; while the Boers in South Africa tell me that I had been a faithful witand the French in Canada have createdness; that he believed the Australians permanent homes in the new lands. intended to stay and hold their country Père Labal had written at the begin- and that they would prosper accordning of the eighteenth century of the ingly. "This," he added, "though fine appearance of Bridgetown, in the opposed to the vulgar idea, is the true English West Indian colony of Barba- imperialism; only by the various coldoes : "Jewellers' and silversmiths' ouists remaining at their posts and creshops as brilliant as on the Paris Boule-ating new Englands can the empire vards." But Mr. Froude tells us that grow and expaud; only thus can the when he went out there a few years English race, laws, language, and reliago these shops had vanished, and he gion spread throughout the world." found the negro supreme; the En-On this ground alone he agreed that glishry having dwindled almost to van- Australia was of much greater imporishing point. This deplorable result tance than either Canada or the Cape; of two and a half centuries of English for the English in Australia have the colonization, Mr. Froude, it will be re- whole country to themselves without . any foreign competitors, or any seri-1 "What do they think of Mr. Gladous native question to complicate the stone in the colonies ?? he blandly problem. "Above all," he added, "I asked. I replied that colonists generagree with you, they are going to stick "ally abused Mr. Gladstone heartily, On that first morning as we passed but, I feared, ignorantly; the average through the hall into the library I stood | colonist judged English public men by for a moment to glance at a bust of his own standard, and had no concepCarlyle; and in the library itself look- tion of Mr. Gladstone's wide culture, ing out on the gardens was the stern many-sided ability, and his great disface of Cromwell in stone. It was tinction of mind and character. "I am some years ago before this Home Rule | afraid the average colonist is right imbroglio, but the usual confusions of enough in the main," responded Mr. party politics and the incessant strug- Froude. "We can be bamboozled by gle for the loaves and fishes of office so-called culture as well as by gross were rife at Westminster. "Ah," he ignorance. As an old Oxford man I said, following my eyes in the direction have been tempted more than once to of the great Protector, "I am afraid admire unduly some precious achievewe shall want him again soon.' Mr. ment of Mr. Gladstone. But posterFroude said this in the low, quiet tone ity will endorse the colonists' adverse in which a well-bred person would verdict, despite all Mr. Gladstone's make a commonplace remark as to the great and charming personal qualistate of the weather. It, however, soon plunged us into the arena of modern English politics. Mr. Froude's intense and undisguised dislike of Mr. Gladstone and all his works was quite startling. He stooped, and fished out of a cupboard a huge cartoon in which the Liberal prime minister sat as a horrible idol, with an axe in his hand and an ineffable smile of self-complacency on his features, while his followers were prostrating themselves before him; in the background were ghastly representations of Irish and South African horrors! This cartoon seemed to fascinate Mr. Froude, who held it up to the light, and then proceeded to expatiate on its chief figure. "Gladstone," he said, in his curious ironical tone, "is, you must know, our greatest orator. Such a machine for the coining of ambiguous phrases and their ready and mellifluous utterance, the world has never before witnessed. In many ways, believe me, the most remarkable man of this or any other time. If he were not, do you think he could rule this country in the face of these facts?" Mr. Froude pointed to the pictures of midnight assassinations, houghing of cattle, and carding of women, in the background of the car toon: ties." This will, perhaps, be the best place to set forth Mr. Froude's verdict as I have heard him pronounce it at various times, on some of our leading statesmen. Concerning Mr. Gladstone as a public man I never once heard Mr. Froude say a good word. The late Liberal leader was always in his eyes that "sinister politician" to whom he pointedly refers in his later writings. In conversation with me, Mr. Gladstone was nearly always Froude's stock illustration of the evil of oratory, and of the inevitable disgrace that follows a people which submits itself to the rule of the rhetorician. "The orator,?? Mr. Froude would say by way of detinition, "is he who uses words not to express truths, but to wheedle, flatter, and befool his hearers; and in this sense, as I have said, Mr. Gladstone is our greatest orator." Those at all familiar with Froude's political writings will recognize this note of contempt for oratory and the art of public speaking when regarded as the test of fitness to govern, or as a measure of intellectual capacity. Is there a single instance in our own or any other history of a great political speaker who has added anything to human knowledge or to human worth? Lord Chatham may stand as a lonely exception But, except Chatham, who is there? Not | which once seemed interesting; and I grow one that I know of. Oratory is the spend- daily more satisfied to sit still and see the thrift sister of the Arts, which decks itself world go by on its own ways. It will not like a strumpet with the tags and orna- go a road which in my opinion will lead to ments which it steals from real superiority. the right place. The order of the day is The object of it is not truth, but anything disintegration, spiritual, moral, social, and which it can make appear truth; anything which it can persuade people to believe by calling in their passions to obscure their intelligence. (The English in the West Indies, p. 35.) political. The process may be a harrowing I hope to return to London in ten days change from our sunny seas and warm J. A. FROUde. Concerning Mr. Gladstone's great rival, Mr. Froude when I first knew him was more tolerant, but not much more complimentary. This was before he wrote the "Life of the Earl of Bea-or a fortnight, though I shall not enjoy the consfield" for the excellent little series of the "Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria," edited by Mr. Stuart Reid. "Dizzy," as Froude always called him, was the conscious impostor, Gladstone the unconscious impostor; and, like Shortly after this I lunched with Mr. Carlyle, he preferred the former. Froude at Onslow Gardens, and found "With all Dizzy's faults," " said Mr. him very communicative concerning Froude to me one morning, "we can his biography of Lord Beaconsfield. never conceive him spouting from the He was collecting, in his own peculiar windows of railway carriages." After-fashion, the materials, and had seen wards, when he took in hand the little Disraeli's brother, who was a neighbor book to which I have referred, it of his, and Lord Rothschild, and, I struck me forcibly that he became something more than tolerant of Disraeli. Through the kind courtesy of Mr. Ashley Froude I am permitted to make use of one or two of the many letters which I had the honor to receive believe, the late Earl of Derby, with whom he was always on the most cordial terms. His appreciation of Lord Beaconsfield had very much increased; and even where he could not altogether approve of his public conduct I found from his eminent father. The follow-that Froude had come to regard Dising letter, dated November 2nd, 1889, raeli with that kind of affectionate forand written from his favorite Devon-bearance with which most of us smile shire home, at which he so recently over the shortcomings of Dr. Johnson passed away, will, I think, be read with or the foibles of Charles Lamb. He interest, especially by Lord Beacons- sat back in his chair and read with evifield's critics and admirers: DEAR MR. PATCHETT MARTIN, -I have left your letter longer unacknowledged than I should have done, but though not ill, as you seem to suppose, I am not well and dilatory. I have some pain which puts me from my sleep; but the doctors seem to have discovered at last what is the matter with me, and assure me that nothing essential has gone wrong. I have been asked to undertake a brief account of Lord Beaconsfield. I have no assurance, however, that I shall be able to make anything out of it worth publishing. Age makes me indifferent to many things dent delight his analysis of "Lothair," that satire in the form of a romance, which he pronounced a literary masterpiece! Disraeli's account of the machinations of the Roman cardinal, the English bishop, and the religious ladies, Anglican and Roman, to entrap the unfortunate Lothair struck Froude as so eminently entertaining that he could hardly continue to read what he had written for laughing; but the master-stroke, he thought, was when Lothair is wounded at the battle of Mentana fighting as a Garibaldian, and |