Australia. From December 1852 to January 1855 he was one of the joint secretaries of the Board of Control, after which he occupied the position of vice-president of the Board of Trade and paymaster-general, retiring from which in 1858 he became vice-president of the Education Board in 1859, when he had exchanged the representation of Wiltshire for that of Colne. He was then coming more decidedly into the active political life of parliament, and we shall presently hear of him, and of the eccentric course which he more than once pursued in relation to prominent questions.

The Duke of Argyle, who had held the office of postmaster-general from 1855 to 1858 and now as lord privy-seal took his place in the ministry of Lord Palmerston, had been more distinguished in the world of letters than in that of practical politics; but his intellectual training and a certain faculty for incisive criticism well fitted him for taking a prominent part in the consideration of some important questions which were occupying attention. He had been Chancellor of the University of St. Andrews in 1851 and Rector of Glasgow University in 1854, and before the earlier of these dates had published an able essay on "The Ecclesiastical History of Scotland since the Reformation," which was followed by several other pamphlets on religious or ecclesiastical subjects. It is needless to say that the position held in the country by George John Douglas Campbell represented a wide social influence, if not a strong political following. The time had perhaps gone by when the descendant of Diarmid and MacCallum More was powerful, because he was the chief of a great clan; but to be the hereditary head of a large and influential family, of historical rank and distinction, was still sufficient to command an important place in the state, especially when the holder of the title had given proofs of remarkable ability for taking his part in the council of the nation.

In 1844 his grace married the charming and accomplished Lady Elizabeth Georgiana Leveson Gower, eldest daughter of the Duke

of Sutherland, and this union, of the hereditary master of the royal household in Scotland with the daughter of the beautiful Duchess of Sutherland, mistress of the robes, may naturally have brought the family of the Campbells into that intimate domestic relation to the children of the queen, which resulted in the alliance of the Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorne. This, however, belongs to a later date, and is mentioned here chiefly because it has been believed that the peculiar position occupied by the Duke of Argyle has necessarily, or at least properly, acted in restraint of his taking so prominent a place in the political arena as he might otherwise have assumed.

There were three Campbells in the field in 1859, for the venerable lord chief-justice was still living, and the young law student of Lincoln's Inn-who, in the year 1800, had helped out his small allowance by reporting for the Daily Chronicle, was now lord-chancellor at eighty years of age, with an untarnished reputation for clear judgment and extraordinary acuteness, and a passion for work which had enabled him to devote his brief leisure to the production of two remarkable books, The Lives of the Chief Justices and The Lives of the Lord Chancellors. Lord Campbell was still vigorous, and intellectually capable of taking one of the highest and most responsible offices in the realm. His only rivals, both in vigour and intensity at an advanced age, were the venerable Lord Lyndhurst, who was still full of fire, though he had to lean on the back of the seat in front of him when he rose to speak in the House of Lords:-and Lord Brougham, who was yet to be seen walking across the lobby, not to the House of Commons but to the Lords, with his looselyhanging, ill-fitting clothes, his hat pulled tight down over his great prominent forehead. Old he certainly looked, for he had passed his eighty-first year, but to the friend on whose arm he hung he talked volubly enough.

He still had the wonderful faculty not only of knowing something about everything. but of being able to talk about anything, and he still possessed the power of sleeping at will,

or of doing without sleep for a long time and then making up the arrears. It was known that in a drawing-room, in the midst of a lively conversation which he would begin with a lady, he would softly slumber, or seem to slumber while his fair companion went on talking, and would wake up at the right moment to reply or to resume the discussion. There was a joke, probably well founded, that at a conversazione he was talking learnedly about a Hindoo poem written five hundred years before the Christian era, when suddenly somebody gave a turn to the conversation, which led him to discourse with equal knowledge and fluency on the philosophical method of cooking a beaf-steak.

But we can scarcely pass the subject of veterans without referring to the third Campbell, the veteran warrior who had, at nearly seventy years of age, completed the great work of the suppression of the rebellion in India, and at last had received the recognition of his services there and in the Crimea, by receiving a peerage with the title of Baron Clyde. Sir Colin Campbell was born in Glasgow in 1792, and obtained such learning as he possessed at the High School. He entered the army as an ensign in the 9th Regiment of foot, when he was sixteen, his commission having been procured for him by his uncle, Colonel Campbell. The same year he was at Vimiera with Wellesley, and was afterwards at Corunna with Sir John Moore. His career begun with hard fighting, and it continued through the Peninsular war, and yet he only obtained the rank of captain, for there was no family influence to back him, and he gained every step by active service, such as the leading of a storming party at St. Sebastian, where he was severely wounded, and only recovered in time to take part in another engagement, in which he was again disabled by a musket shot.

In 1814 he was sent to America with his regiment the 60th Rifles. And in 1815, when the peace was declared, he found leisure to study the theory of his profession, and made such proficiency that he rose to a command as brigadier-major, in which capacity

VOL. IIL

305

he went to Demerara, with the thankless duty of quelling the negro insurrection. By 1825, and again in 1832, he was able to purchase his majority, so that in the latter year he was lieutenant-colonel of the 98th, with which he went to China, and was rewarded for his brilliant services by promotion to a full colonelcy.

His next campaign was in India in 1848, when Lord Gough made him brigadier, and he retrieved the losses of the battle of Chillianwallah (where he was wounded), with the victory of Goojerat, which closed the Sikh wars, and brought him the honours of a K.C.B. Though he went through the Scinde campaign with Sir Charles Napier, his military rank of brigadier was local only, and on his return in 1853 he was still only a colonel, until he went out to the Crimea in 1854 as brigadier-general.

We have already seen what were his services during that terrible time, and it can scarcely be wondered at that, upon the appointment of General Codrington to the command, after the death of General Simpson, Sir Colin should have felt himself slighted at having been superseded by a junior officer. He returned to England, but being requested to resume active service, had prepared to take command of a large corps of British and Turkish soldiers, to land at Theodosia, ascend the river and take the Russian entrenchments in the rear, when the war was brought to an end, and he returned home to receive a wellearned reward, not only in an addition to his title by being made a G.C.B., but in the enthusiastic regard of the country, and the public presentation of a sword of honour by six thousand of his fellow-citizens in Glasgow.

After his brilliant services in the Indian mutiny he was able to rest on his laurels, and to receive from the queen and the nation those further distinctions which had been so arduously earned.

Lord Lyndhurst was in his eighty-eighth year, and it was he who with amazing force and intensity advocated those additions to the national defences, which had been advised by Prince Albert and the Queen after their visit to

62

Cherbourg had shown them the French fortifications. Lord Palmerston was completely of the same opinion. In a strong speech in the House of Lords, Lord Lyndhurst had said: "If I am asked whether I cannot place reliance in the Emperor Napoleon, I reply with confidence that I cannot, because he is in a position in which he cannot place reliance on himself. He is in a situation in which he must be governed by circumstances, and I will not consent that the safety of this country should be placed in such contingencies. Selfreliance is the best road to distinction in private life. It is equally essential to the grandeur and character of a nation. . . . The question of the money expense sinks into insignificance. It is the price we must pay for our insurance, and it is a moderate price for so important an insurance. I know there are persons who will say 'Let us run the risk!' Be it so. But, my lords, if the calamity should come--if the conflagration should take place what words can describe the extent of the calamity, or what imagination can paint the overwhelming ruin that would fall upon

us!"

Lord Palmerston did not quite take this view. He had or seemed to have an invincible faith in England and in English pluck and mettle, but he was in favour of armaments for all that. He held that a frank avowal that we were prepared for war, if war should be necessary, was the best way of preserving peace. It was the friendship of the prizering; the shaking hands with an eye to a setto, as much as to say, "Nothing could exceed my pleasure in our amicable relations; but if you want anything-come on!"

It is scarcely to be wondered at that people should have been asking how Mr. Gladstone came to accept office as chancellor of the exchequer. He had held an appointment, though an honorary and non-political one, under the Derby administration (for it should be noted that he had refused to accept any salary for his services as commissioner extraordinary at Corfu), but his sympathies were certainly not with the Conservatives,and his Liberal opinions had even gone far beyond those of many who sat with Lord Palmerston. At this time Mr.

Gladstone may be said to have belonged to no party and to neither side. The "Peelites," no longer had any existence. The small group who had been called by that name had dispersed. Cardwell had long ago thrown in his lot with the Palmerston ministry, and was now secretary for Ireland. Sidney Herbert had followed, and Graham had given a final blow to the Conservatives in the last debate, and was all on the Liberal side.

Before the dissolution following that defeat, Gladstone had sat solitary among the Conservative party. His political convictions were many of them with the other side; but not some of his deepest moral or religious convictions. It happened to him then, as it had happened before and has happened since, that he came to a decision through a mental conflict from which men of less sensitive (some have said fantastic) feelings—or less habitual self-dissection and investigation of motives— would not have suffered. He accepted the office of chancellor of the exchequer amidst the murmurs of the extreme Radicals and the satisfaction of the Whigs, but it was understood that if he continued to hold office there must be a good many open questions, and that he was likely to oppose the demand for increased armaments, and yet to be more in sympathy with the aspirations of the Italians for freedom than with the policy of conciliating Austria.

The probability of a war in Italy between Austria and Sardinia, or rather between the Austrians and the French, who were ready to stand before the Sardinians in the name of Italian freedom, had been the burning question at the beginning of the year 1859, and now by the end of June it had been emphatically answered.

Austrian rule in Italy had become unendurable. It did not need the vivid utterances of Mazzini, or the desperate protests of Italian conspirators-to convince the world of this. All lovers of liberty regarded with indignation the conditions under which the Italians of the Duchies were governed; and in England sympathy with Mazzini and those who cried out for a united Italy and the overthrow of the usurper, had reached to a great height.