and dragoons, and you will crown our beginnings with a complete success, and yourself with an entire possession of your ancient hereditary kingdom of Scotland. My wounds forbid me to enlarge to your Majesty at this time, though they tell me they are not mortal. However, sir, I beseech your Majesty to believe, whether I live or die, I am entirely yours,

'DUNDEE.'

Dr. Pitcairn wrote a classical epitaph on Claverhouse which Dryden translated, and which everybody knows; but terser and more telling was the exclamation of the old chief, who remembered the charge at Killiecrankie, at the indecisive fight of Sheriff-muir, Oh, for one

hour of Dundee !'

Then Horace followed suit:—

MY

CAMILLO BENSO DI CAVOUR.

Y hero (quoth Horace) is not an Antinous. A graphic pen has thus described him :—‘A squat, pot-bellied form; small stumpy legs; short, round arms, with the hands stuck constantly in the trousers pockets; a thick neck, in which you could see the veins swelling; scant, thin hair; a blurred, blotched face; and sharp grey eyes, covered by goggle spectacles.' You ask what I find heroic in this unheroic figure? It is perhaps enough to say that this man is Camillo Benso di Cavour, the most fertile and powerful brain that modern Europe has produced. That is, perhaps, enough: but as he has been dead beyond a year and a day, as his heroic qualities are gradually becoming more visible, and as we sadly lack men worthy of imitation (real men, not distinguished names' only), it may not be unprofitable to consider, at our leisure, of what stuff this latest 'hero' was compacted.

Cavour is, in the first place, one of our silent heroes, not much addicted to windy vehemence of any kind. There is a remarkable absence of clap-trap, alike in his speech-anxious, hesitating, inelegant, and intent only on saying the exact thing exactly—and in his conduct. He did his work, as he did his talk, quietly. He had a horror of charlatanism, meaning thereby the vulgar and noisy appeal to popular passion. Garibaldi's disposition is too pure and loftily unselfish

to expose him to the imputation; else his appearance at the Naples opera in a red shirt (because he was too poor, though he had the national treasury at hand, to purchase decent garments) might be called a piece of charlatanism. Cavour could not have done this; he would have felt that the conqueror of a country might not unpardonably help himself to a new coat. His temperament, in like manner, indisposed him to violence -when violence was not indispensable. He would not break with his bitterest foe, if he could avoid it. When the Vatican, for instance, vetoed the bishops nominated at Turin, the Minister did not retaliate in a direct or angry way. He merely ceased to nominate any candidates at all: a policy which quickly reduced the number of bishops, without inflicting, as it appeared, any loss on the community. The policy of contemptuous acquiescence was maintained by Cavour on many occasions with complete success.

And Cavour was a moderate, as well as an undemonstrative man; moderate in feeling, and moderate in design. He was no fanatic. He loved the golden mean-auream mediocritatem. He was never the slave of impulse; never allowed himself to be influenced by resentment, remorse, or visionary enthusiam. It is said that he was an ardent whist-player, and on one occasion lost a larger sum than he could well afford. Many men would have played on more recklessly; many men would have thrown away the cards in disgust; but Cavour, for the future, merely reduced his stakes. The smile of the Court could not make him an apologist of

tyranny; when its ban was on him he did not ally himself with the republicans. He was, in one sense, an intensely practical man. Pure logic was a science which he did not comprehend, and for which he had no aptitude. 'He did what he could.' That was his motto. Yet Cavour, though he did not love speculative truisms, was not insensible to the higher and more spiritual motives by which nations are governed. His entire career for many years was an appeal to these intangible influences. We have lost,' he is reported to have said after Novara,' thousands of brave soldiers; we have wasted many millions; we have had disastrous campaigns; and from all this we have only reaped one thing; we have got the Italian tricolour as our standard, instead of the flag of Savoy. Well, in my opinion, we have not paid too dear a price.' The man who in those dark days could hold that Novara was not a barren defeat, recognised very clearly the power of national · sentiment, of aspirations for unity and freedom, as opposed to more material agencies. His financial operations were not directly paying speculations; but they did what they were intended to do. They made Sardinia the model Italian State. A similar feeling induced him to embark in the Crimean campaign. He probably did not care a straw which power held Sebastopol; but he was persuaded that a few drops of Italian blood shed on an eastern battle-field would do much for Italy. When the nations of Europe beheld an Italian army in the field, they would begin to comprehend that there was an Italian nation behind, and that the nation could

produce live soldiers as well as old pictures and balletdancers. Mrs. Browning has summed up in a powerful couplet, the impression produced on the mind by Cavour's policy during the uneventful years that followed Novara :

He held up his Piedmont ten years,

Till she suddenly smiled, and was-Italy.

The Minister who could work on in this indirect way for so long, and who could enlist such apparently hostile elements to aid his design-waiting in patience' for the atoning hour to come'-must have possessed a very powerful imagination, or been possessed by an absorbing passion. Cavour's passion was the Italian Kingdom. In his boyish dreams he already saw himself the Minister of a united Italy, and the dream of his youth became the devouring excitement of his life. A holy ambition burned beneath that politic subtlety. It is impossible to arrive at a just estimate of his character, unless we keep this constantly in mind. Cavour was the embodiment of an idea. The idea was that to which Dante long before had given an imaginative personality. The ravenous she-wolf was to prey upon Italy, until the greyhound come to drive her to her doom.'

He shall not feed on lands and pelf,
But wisdom, love, and righteousness.
From Feltro unto Feltro he shall rule,
And raise our humbled Italy,

For which the maid Camilla bled

With Nisus, Turnus, and Euryalus.

Thus Cavour's is a somewhat impersonal character. It