the government of London or with the economic laws which affected it. I have not tried to point any definite moral, but I would leave it to yourselves to judge what progress we have made, and how we have made it. Many questions have solved themselves quietly without any direct intervention. Of others the solution has made itself so obvious that there was no doubt about it. High-handed interference, however wise and foreseeing, has mostly been productive of evil. It is even possible to assert that the greatest boon to London was the Great Fire. But on such a point, or indeed on any point, I do not wish to dogmatise.

There is one matter, however, to which in conclusion I would call your attention. We ask ourselves, What sort of men were our forefathers? The question is worth trying to answer, and can best be answered by discovering the impression which they produced on men of other nations. I will collect some opinions on that point.

In 1497 a Venetian writes: They have an antipathy to foreigners and imagine that they never come into their island but to make themselves masters of it, and to usurp their goods.' A Roman in 1548 writes: The English are destitute of good breeding, and are despisers of foreigners, since they consider him but half a man who may be born elsewhere than in Britain.' Ten years later a Frenchman testifies: This people are proud and seditious, with bad consciences, and faithless to their word; they hate all sorts of foreigners. There is no kind of order; the people are reprobates and thorough enemies to good manners and letters.' In 1592 a German from Württemberg says: "They are extremely proud and overbearing; and because the great part, especially the tradespeople, seldom go into other countries, but always remain in the city attending to their business, they care little for foreigners, but scoff and laugh at them.' A Hollander bears record: They are bold, courageous, ardent and cruel in war, fiery in attack, and having little fear of death; they are not vindictive, but very inconstant, rash, vainglorious, light, and deceiving, and very suspicious of foreigners whom they despise. They are not so laborious as the Netherlanders or the French, as they lead for the most part an indolent life.' Another German from Brandenburg says: 'They are good sailors and better pirates, cunning, treacherous, and thievish; they are powerful in the field, successful against their enemies, impatient of anything like slavery. If they see a foreigner well made, or particularly

handsome, they will say "It is a pity he is not an Englishman."

I will not go on multiplying quotations. Those which I have given show a remarkable consensus of opinion. They come from different sources, and in an age when newspapers were unknown they are independent testimonies. Perhaps we might be tempted to put them aside as prejudiced; but I hesitate to do so, because there is an agreement on a point which we would not readily surrender. All foreign observers are at one in the opinion that the English women were the most beautiful in the world. We must admit that this proves their power of discernment.

I am afraid that these testimonies show that, however much we may have improved in other things, we have not yet been successful in impressing on other countries a due appreciation of those excellent qualities which we are profoundly conscious that we possess. We have not amended our provoking insularity or our arrogant self-assertiveness—at all events in the opinion of outside critics. The men of Elizabeth's time had very little ground for their belief that the world was primarily intended for the use of Englishmen. Perhaps for that reason, they judged that it was true kindness to others to make that fact generally known. But I would point out that the unpopularity which we undoubtedly enjoy is of long standing and arose from the first expression given to the peculiarly English temper. I will only leave with you, as a subject deserving consideration, whether or no the advantages of the temper itself may not be retained with certain modifications in the form of its expression, which the experience of three centuries might allow us to make without any loss of the sense of national dignity.

NATAL MEMORIES.

BY LADY BROOME.

As I sit, sad and alone in my empty home, dreading the cries of the newspaper-boys in the streets, my thoughts often fly back to the Fair Natal' I knew long ago. More than twenty years

have passed since I last saw it. Then, as now, it was early summer-time. The wide, well-watered stretches of veldt were brilliantly green and covered with blossom, chiefly lilies and cinerarias, the spruits were running like Scotch burns, and the dreadful red dust of the winter months no longer obscured everything. I have often, between April and November, not known what was within an approaching bank of solid red cloud, until the shouts of the unseen little 'Voor-looper' warned me that a huge wagon and its span of perhaps twenty or thirty oxen had to be avoided.

But after November, dust gives place to mud on the roads; mud of a singularly tenacious quality, formed from the fertile red clay soil. I don't believe it rains anywhere so hard as it does in Natal, and during the summer months it is never safe to part for a single hour from the very best waterproof cloak which you can procure, or from a substantial umbrella. Round Maritzburg a thunderstorm raged nearly every summer afternoon, coming up about three o'clock. But when, by any chance, that thunderstorm passed us by, we regretted it bitterly, for the oppressive, suffocating heat was then ever so much worse. Even the poor fowls used to go about with their beaks open and their wings held well away from their sides, literally gasping for breath. One was prepared for thunderstorms, even on the largest scale, when they came up with the usual accompaniments of massed clouds, rumbling or crashing thunder, and were followed by a deluge of rain; but I could not get used to what I have never seen anywhere else, and which could only be described as a 'bolt from the blue.'

A very few days after my arrival at Maritzburg at the end of 1875, I was standing one afternoon in the shade of my little house on a hill, anxiously watching the picturesque arrival of an oxwagon laden with my boxes. It was in the very early summer,

and the exigencies of settling in left me no time to worry about the thunderstorms, of which, of course, I had often heard. A more serene and brilliant afternoon could not be imagined, and it was not even hot--at all events, out of the sun. My two small boys, as usual, trotted after me like dogs, and clamoured to assist at the arrival of the wagon; so I lifted the little one up in my arms and stood there, with an elder boy clinging to my skirts. Suddenly, out of the blue unclouded sky, out of the blaze of golden sunshine, came a flash and a crash which seemed as if it must be the crack of doom. No words at my command can give any idea of the intolerable blinding glare of the light which seemed to wrap us round, or of the rending sound, as if the universe were being torn asunder. I suppose I flung myself on the ground, because I was crouching there, holding the little boys beneath me with some sort of protective instinct, when in a second or two of time it had all passed, for I heard only a slight and distant rumble. I do not believe the sun had ceased shining for an instant, though its light had seemed to be extinguished by that blaze of fire. Never can I forget my amazement, an amazement which even preceded my deep thankfulness at finding we were absolutely unhurt, the fearless little boys only inquiring, 'What was that, Mummy?' There had been no time for their rosy cheeks even to pale. I wonder what colour I was. I looked at the little stone house with astonishment to find it still there, for I had expected to see nothing but a heap of ruins. Nay, it seemed miraculous that the hills all round should still be standing.

I only saw one more flash equally bad during my two summers in Natal, and that was during a thunderstorm, and was accompanied by terrific hail. Of course, I was then in a house and trying to distract my thoughts from the weather, which I knew must be annihilating my lovely garden, by dispensing afternoon tea. I am certain that flash came down upon the tea-tray, for when I lifted up my head (I defy any one not to cower before a stream of electricity which seems poured upon you out of a jug), I felt the same surprise at seeing my cups and saucers unshattered. I am sure they had jumped about, for I heard them, but they had recovered their equanimity by the time I had. Almost every day one saw in the newspapers an account of some death by lightning, and I know of one only too true story, in which our Kaffir washerman was the victim. He had left our house one fine Monday morning with a huge bag of clothes on his back, which he intended to wash in the

at once.

river at the foot of the hill, when he observed one of these thunderstorms coming up unusually early, and so took shelter in the verandah of a small cottage by the roadside. After the worst of the storm had passed, he was preparing to step outside, when a violent flash and a deafening thunderclap passed over the little house. The lightning must have been attracted by a nail carelessly sticking up in its shingled roof. The poor Kaffir chanced to be standing exactly beneath this nail and was struck down dead I was told that he was in the act of speaking, promising some one that he would return the same way that very afternoon. The streets of Maritzburg used, in my day, to be mended or hardened with a sort of ironstone which abounds in the district, and in one of these daily thunderstorms it was not uncommon to see the electricity rising up as it were from the ground to meet the descending fluid. Of course, the rivers soon become impassable, and I have a vivid recollection of four guests who had ridden out rather earlier than usual one afternoon to have tea with me, being kept in our tiny house all night. More than one attempt was made before dark to find and use the little wooden bridge over the stream, which could hardly be called a river, but its whereabouts could not even be perceived, and the horses steadily refused to go out of their depth. So there was nothing for it except to return, drenched to the skin, and bivouac under our very small roof for the night.

And yet one is so glad of these same rains after the long dry winter, when all vegetation seems to disappear off the baked earth and the cattle become so thin that it is a wonder the gaunt skeletons of the poor trek-oxen can support the weight of their enormous spreading horns. The changes of temperature in winter were certainly very trying. The day began fresh and cold and bracing, but the brilliant sunshine soon changed that into what might be called a very hot English summer's day. About four o'clock, when the sun sloped towards the western hills, it began to grow cold again, and no wrap or greatcoat was too warm to put on then. By night one was only too glad of as big a fire on the open hearth as could be provided, for fuel was scarce and very expensive in those days. Doubtless the railway has improved all those conditions; but Natal, as far as I saw it, is not a well-wooded country, except on the Native Reserves, and the only forest-bush as they would call it in Australia-which I saw, cost me a fiftymile ride to get to it!