vousness. (2) From the poison on the arrow, which was a wooden one. No blood-spitting took place; and the lungs were uninjured. We all feel depressed. Msengessi was a regular character in the place; he had a first-rate idea of gardening, was cheery, ready for work, and contented. His death adds to the already depressed state of the men. P. held no post-mortem, as the man's comrades did not fancy the idea. The Wasongora bowmen are deadly shots up to sixty yards or so, when they get a long aim; their bows and arrows are beautifully made. 13th. P.'s state gives N. and myself great anxiety; it is bilious, malignant fever, and remittent, that he has got; we have no fowls for soup for him, no meat for broths, no sugar to make things tasty, no condiments or tea even; preparations of Indian corn and banana flour in the shape of gruel are what he is now eating; his condition is serious, 104° and 105° will take him down to nothing if it keeps 15th. The Wasongora never chew or snuff tobacco, but only use it in pipes. I never saw a genuine native of the interior chewing tobacco. Our men are very fond of it in this way, and add lime made out of shells to it, as it bites better with this. I collected one hundred and twenty words of the dwarfs' language. 16th. Moved P. into Emin's hut, he is very bad. The elephants are wonderfully bold; it will mean starvation if we cannot keep them back. It is at night that they do most damage; they are so cunning and quiet about it we rarely hear them, and find it out to our cost the next morning. 17th. Off after elephants; made over twenty fires up for the evening, and set them going at 6 P.M.; they will burn till II P.M. Saw four elephants and blazed away; only one charged, but we ran and got away. One print in the mud, a straight up and down one, measured twenty-two and one-quarter inches from front to rear ; this is the biggest one I have seen yet. 19th. Sadi died this morning; N. buried | him in the graveyard. Six fires going to N.E. for elephants. No elephants crossed the line of fires of yesterday. Elephants reported in corn; went round and found nothing. P. has bad nights, he is frightfully yellow; quinine does him no good. 25th. Juma Uledi again up for stealing corn, fell-in the men, had Juma flogged, and threatened to make a prison if this went on, and keep offenders in it, as they could not be trusted loose. Put new roof on Water Gate Tower. The driving rains and wind have played havoc with the four-acre field. It was our last hope; it is yellow now, and prematurely so. P.'s temperature is up to 104°; it is real bilious remittent fever; he has been ill three weeks. We have twenty-three rows of peas coming on and looking well. Issued rations as usual; sixty days without meat; it is killing P. slowly. November 2nd. Making needles from spare steel wire of Maxim gun, drilled the eyes with small drill in tool-case. In Tennyson s “Amphion " to-day, I read: And I must work through months of toil This is our experience: With hail-storms wild and native gangs, A thousand rations scooped up clean, We plant again with hopes to glean 6th. P. is better, Mohammed Ali's ulcer is increasing, his foot looks as if it must drop off soon. me Saturday, 10th. Had another probe for my arrow; P. discovered it and took it out with his tweezers. It has been in fourteen months and twenty-three days; it was an ordinary wooden poisoned arrow just like the natives about here use, but had become eaten away from long presence in the tissue. It was the rib that saved my life. Boys caught some more fish. Our rice has been in the ground just four months; it will be another fortnight before we can eat it. P. 22nd. Made some arrow-poison. and I have specimens of the ingredients; we followed the dwarf's directions. 24th. Tried poison on a native dog. P. shaved the hair of his back, and made a slight incision with his knife and rubbed the poison well in, covered the wound up with canvas, and put him in the old cookhouse. By evening the dog was drowsy and stupid. 26th. Stanley away five months. The dog died at 1.45 P.M., just twenty-eight and a half hours after the poison was introduced; he drank no water. There are six ingredients in the poison: four kinds of leaves, a bark, and a small dark brown bean. This bean is poisonous if taken internally. 30th. The dry season is now on us. The crops don't look at all well. N. weighs one hundred and thirty-eight pounds; he is over twelve stone in England. December 7th. Picking the rice; yield one hundred and twenty-five per cent., or one hundred and twenty-five cups to every one cup planted. 8th. Found a native camp seven and a half miles S.S.E., and in it a brass rod metako, which must have belonged to Boryo, the old chief of west Ibwiri. In days gone by we had given him two of these. Monday, 10th. Boys again saw the lion! Abedi's eyes like saucers when relating about it; most probably it was a leopard. The heat is intense. Our latitude is 1" 20′ North. Have got fever. 14th. Anniversary of our first reaching the Albert Nyanza. Wednesday, 19th. Repairing roof of Water Gate guard-house; putting leaves on granary. Thursday, December 20th. About II A.M. we heard shots, and soon after Stanley and the advance of the column were seen three hundred and fifty yards down the west road. The whole garrison turned out amidst yells, and we gave them three volleys. For half an hour or So we asked each other dozens of questions and got no answers. We heard the terrible news of Bonalya, and half an hour later Bonny came in. All got a grand blow-out of our hardly gained corn, and there was a boisterous dance in the evening. It was six months since Stanley left us, and altogether we had spent eight in the fort. We were able to say, "All's well" at Fort Bodo. Three days later we moved towards the Nyanza, and burnt the fort to the ground amidst cheers. There is a large bottle containing a letter buried near the spot where the flag 357 staff stood. Some Remington rifles lie buried nine yards N.N.E. from it, and we left the steel shield of the Maxim gun lying on the square. Will a white man ever find these? Months and months later, as we rolled along through Usagara, and neared the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, round the camp-fires at night was the story of our life at Fort Bodo repeated again and again. And when, at last, we actually caught sight of the sea with its fringe of cocoanut palms, and heard the wild volleys of cheers from our black boys, there was not a white man amongst us but felt the blood rush up into his face as each thought that he had helped, in a small way, to bring his men through the forest, and across the plains of Africa, to their homes by the sea. W. G. STAIRS. (Lieutenant R.E.) From Belgravia. LORD MELBOURNE. To eat a particular quantity of food at a particular time of the day, whether hungry or not hungry, seems to constitute, according to the law of the nursery, good behavior; judged from that standard of excellence, the behavior of William Lamb between the age of three and five, or perhaps more, never approached goodness; he ate when hungry and at no other time, foreshadowing thereby the possession of a spirit of independence, which throughout his after life was forever manifesting itself. From his nurses, therefore, William Lamb did not get altogether a good character, but his mother, Lady Melbourne, who naturally did not feel the same annoyance at a carefully prepared meal or a basin of milk getting cold, did not altogether dislike this originality and independence, and fancied she could discern in his waywardness, the promise of a strong will which might some day be turned to good account that was one reason why she was willing to spend with her boy so many hours away from the gay crowd that was always glad to see her. Another reason was that she saw plainly enough that her husband was too much bound up in the child she had borne him nine years before the heir to the family title and wealth-to pay attention to William. So it was that the second son, whilst the eldest was his father's boy, re ceived so large a share of her influence an influence which in after years stood him in good stead, and which he readily acknowledged. "Ah," he would often say, after she had been put to rest in the family vault at Hertford, "my mother was a most remarkable woman! not merely clever and engaging, but the most sagacious woman I ever knew. She kept me right as long as she lived." When William Lamb went to Eton in 1790 he was eleven; of the six years he spent there, before he went to Cambridge, no record has been preserved, except that he left the school a fairly good classic. In July he was entered as a fellow commoner of Trinity College and went into residence during the October following. Here he formed the acquaintance of the sons of numerous Whig politicians, with some of whom he afterwards became connected in administering the affairs of the country. He studied hard, his determined hatred of mathematics, thirst for classical education and ethical speculation becoming almost daily more apparent. The law was pointed out to him as a desirable profession and he liked well the idea of following it, par ticularly as his mother reminded him that in it he would get a good training for the political career which she looked forward to his eventually following. In the summer of 1797, speaker Addington entered him as a student at Lincoln's Inn; at the close of Michaelmas term in the following year he gained the declamation prize for an oration delivered in his college chapel on "the progressive improvements of mankind," and at the close of 1799 he went with a younger brother, Frederick, to finish his education at Glasgow. In going to Scotland to attend what were known as "open classes " of philos. ophy and jurisprudence, William Lamb and his brother were following what was just then a very customary course with young men of promise. Fox recommended Professor Millar of Glasgow as a desirable tutor and to him William and Frederick went. Lord Lauderdale wrote to Millar of the former," he has the reputation, and I believe really possesses uncommon talents." Of the professor's household, Lord and Lady Melbourne got their first account from Frederick Lamb, "There is nothing heard of in this house but study, though there is as much idleness, drunkenness, etc., out of it, as at most universities." William's letters from Glasgow reveal an intense interest in passing politics which must have gladdened his mother's heart; but before coming to these, here is one typical of the author's youthful style and not uninteresting as a sketch of daily life in Glasgow at the close of the last century: "For the company and manners of this place, I do not see much dif ference in them from the company and manners of any country town. I have dined out, in a family way, at a wealthy merchant's, and we have had several parties at home. We drink healths at dinner, hand round the cake at tea, and put our spoons into our cups when we desire to have no more, but exactly in the same manner as we used to behave at Hatfield, at Eton, and at Cambridge. Almost the only exclusive custom I have remarked is a devilish good one, which ought to be adopted everywhere. After the cheese, they hand round the table a bottle of whiskey and another of brandy, and the whole company, male and female, in general indulge in a dram. This is very comfortable and very exhilarating and affords an opportunity for many jokes." Nearly every other letter from William Lamb, whilst at Glasgow, is about politics. After leaving Glasgow he read for the bar. The extent to which he read we do not know; but we learn from contemporary evidence that the theatre and society at Carlton House and Melbourne House had a good share of his company; and that he favored his friends with a good many very feeble poetical effusions. Still there can be no doubt that to cut a figure at the bar was his ambition. He was honest even in his admiration for his own talents. He firmly believed he spoke and wrote well; when he found out that he did neither one nor the other he seems to have been quite ready to admit his failure. He was "called " in Michaelmas, 1804, and took chambers in Pump Court, and through Scarlett's influence received a guinea brief; in after life he used to say that the highest feeling of satisfaction he ever experienced- very far transcending his enjoyment at becoming prime minister was reading his name on the back of that guinea brief. The case- a trivial one-came on at the Lancashire sessions, and Lamb got through his work, feeling, when he had finished, that his legal career had really begun. No doubt he would have followed this career had not the death of his elder brother in the following January made him heir to the family title and estates. A more promising heir could hardly have been found, but his father would not yield to Lady Melbourne's pleadings on his behalf. Penistone had enjoyed £5,000 a year allowance; £2,000 | make the girl by degrees more rational. was thought enough for William Lamb, Still, the first few years of married life who Lord Melbourne owned was good- were happy, and her letters to her husband looking and clever-in a way, but he was yield undoubted evidence of her attachnot Penistone ! One point, however, he ment to him. did yield he put his hand in his pocket and brought out enough to pay for the purchase of the borough of Leominster, for which place William took his seat next year as the "duly elected" member, and, to his mother's infinite joy, was launched on a parliamentary career. In August, 1807, she gave birth to a son, to whom the Prince of Wales stood sponsor, and on whom she seems to have lavished the wildest affection. Her pride knew no bounds and she walked every female visitor up to the top of the house to see his boy luckless the one not suffiThe year 1805 gave Lady Melbourne ciently enthusiastic over his beauty! Had another very considerable satisfaction; it this child turned out differently, probably saw William Lamb the accepted suitor of the married life of William and Lady Lady Caroline Ponsonby, daughter of Caroline Lamb would have turned out Frederick, Earl of Bessborough. To ally differently. When about eighteen months her son with one of the best Whig fam- old the boy was seized with fits, from the ilies had been Lady Melbourne's unceas-effects of which, though he lived for nineing endeavor ever since he returned from and-twenty years, he never recovered, and Glasgow, and when, after some time, he his intellect never developed. seemed to be particularly anxious to pay Though the condition of her child's visits to Lord Bessborough's villa at Roe- health went far to exaggerate Lady Carohampton, and talked often of the fascinat-line's peculiarities, it is only fair to say ing if not strictly pretty-girl who that it did not in the least diminish her rambled in the garden with him and told affection for him; about him she wrote him the quaint story of her childhood constantly to her husband and in the mo. passed in Italy, and earlier girlhood spent ments of her wildest passion and apparat Devonshire House, Lady Melbourne ent disregard for everything she never very likely wished that William Lamb had forgot him. been the heir to her husband's title. As The love of everything literary, erit was, how could she hope that Lady Car-ratic, and artistic brought to Lady Carooline, with the best of prospects before her, would think of a "second son" who if he wanted a fortune would have to work for it. Penistone Lamb's death drove any difficulties of that kind out of the field; early in 1805 William Lamb was Lady Caroline's accepted suitor, and before midsummer they were man and wife. When the new Parliament met in December, 1806, Lamb made his maiden speech, as mover of the address to the king's speech. Afterwards, he did not speak frequently, for he soon discovered that he was by no means eloquent; that fact, coupled with the hopelessness of the Whig prospect, a good deal disgusted him with parliamentary life, so that when he in 1812 lost his seat, in response to the 99 no popery cry which was filling the air around every polling booth in England, he was not very sorry at the prospect of a life to be spent more at home. 66 But the home to which he now turned was not altogether a happy one. Lady Caroline's eccentricities, which had charmed him at his occasional meetings with her, became aggravating, as they grew more, instead of less, marked, for there is no doubt that Lamb hoped, and indeed believed, that, as his wife, he could line's house every man of notoriety of the day; yet upon none could she be said to bestow especial mark of friendship, so that her familiar manner, though distasteful to her husband, aroused in him no feeling of jealousy. Whilst "Childe Harold " was still in proof, Byron showed it to Sam Rogers, who on one of his almost daily visits to Melbourne House showed it to Lady Melbourne, telling her she ought to know the author; after reading the poem, Lady Caroline was eager for an introduction. She had not to wait long for it, as they met at Lady Westmoreland's before "Childe Harold " was actually published. Praise of his coming poem no doubt drew from Byron some very pretty sentiments concerning his fair critic, and the impression he made upon her may be judged from the entry respecting the poet which she made in her dairy: "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." But the publication of the famous poem and consequent notoriety of the author precluded his madness, badness and the danger of his society from standing in the way of their intimacy. In due course this intimacy was noticed and talked of, and the more it was noticed and the more it was talked of the better was Byron's van ity pleased and the better satisfied was Lady Caroline's thirst for being a subject for remark. William Lamb heeded the ripening friendship with indifference; it was, he thought, simply one of a score friendships which his wife was almost daily cultivating and nearly as soon forgetting, but in this he was mistaken; on her side at least there can be no doubt of the depth of the attachment, and her history from this time till that of her death | - subsequent by some years to Byron's - demonstrates the permanency of the affection. It is difficult to arrive at a precise_conclusion as to Byron's feelings for Lady Caroline during any but the very early period of their acquaintance, though it is certain that as time went on temporary fascination was replaced by boredom, which he put up with because he liked to be talked of as an intimate friend at Melbourne House. The knowledge of this fact may have been one reason for William Lamb's indifference to what was passing; another was that he knew of his mother's intended match for Byron. The unfortunate results of this match did not mend matters; nor did Byron's conduct in constantly telling Lady Caroline-till he heard she was returning from Ireland, whither she had accompanied her husband that he tired of his wife's society and yearned for hers. Once certain of her return, he wrote terminating their acquaintance forever. Though many of the stories of Lady Caroline's temper and behavior after this event may be exaggerated there is plenty of truth in a good many; her eccentricities increased and left those who witnessed them in no doubt as to their being unfeigned-in short that her mind was unhinged. Lamb listened to the advice of those who urged a separation, but whilst arrangements were being made for it she wrote "Glenarvon " and sent it to him; he was pleased with much in the book and eagerly caught at the excuse suggested by reading it, that perhaps part of his wife's extraordinary behavior might have been caused by outward coldness on his part; in the end, when the deed of separation came to be signed the signatories were not forthcoming and were discovered by those in search of them wandering about the park at Brocket, friends as before. Lamb and his wife stopped on at Brocket for same time and there the news reached her of Byron's opinion of her novel; her eccentricity returned, she roasted an effigy of the poet over a bonfire and then sent him an ac count of the performance. She was now engaged upon her third novel, "Ada Reis," which appeared in 1817; her friends endeavored to dissuade her from bursting into print, but their opposition seems to have stimulated her energy in that line: "I am ordered peremptorily by my own family so she told Lady Morgan "not to write," but she asked what would be the natural effect of such opposition on one descended from Spenser and with the blood of the Duke of Marlborough, the Cavendishes and Ponsonbys running in her veins? Incidentally this letter to Lady Morgan reveals one of the better traits in Lady Caroline's character. Here, she says, are "Three Ada Reises," and in return she begs Lady Morgan's interest for a poor doctor who was a candidate for an appointment at Westminster Hospital. "He has done everything he could for my dear and only child, I therefore have done and will do everything for him." It is also worthy of note that when at the general election in 1818, George Lamb - her husband's brother-stood for Westminster, Lady Caroline worked hard on his behalf; during her canvas for this contest she became acquainted with Godwin, who afterwards went to Brocket and who she desired to advise her as to her son's condition. All this time things went more smoothly at Brocket. She delighted in the place, and the quiet rambles seemed to soothe her, if they provoked melancholy. She had, she said, there "one faithful, kind friend" and that was William Lamb, "health, spirits, and all else are gone, slowly and gradually by my own fault." But the news of Byron's death brought a return of her former and more violent form of mania, which was heightened by the circumstances of her meeting with the carriage conveying the poet's remains to Newstead. Scene followed scene, both at Brocket and at Melbourne House, till at last William Lamb told her they must live apart. He took up his residence for a while with his brother, and she, after inundating him with letters and verses, left for Paris. On returning to England a sense of her altered circumstances appears to have awakened her to a greater sense of propriety and an earnest wish for reconciliation with her husband, and once convinced of the genuineness of the desire, Lamb no longer held back. Her own health demanded that she should live chiefly at Brocket and his affairs took him constantly to London, but they kept up an |