accomplished his task with as much spirit as judgment. The Turkish Government, to do it justice, had at last shown great energy in punishing the authors and the abettors of the mas sacres. The Sultan sent out Fuad Pasha, his Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the Lebanon; and Fuad Pasha showed no mercy to the promoters of the disturbances, or even to the highly-placed official abettors of them. The governor of Damascus and the commander of the Turkish troops suffered death for their part in the transactions, and about sixty persons were publicly executed in the city, of whom the greater number belonged to the Turkish police force. When the intervention had succeeded in thoroughly restoring order, the representatives of the Great Powers assembled in Constantinople unanimously agreed that a Christian governor of the Lebanon should be appointed in subordination to the Sultan; and the Sultan had, of course, no choice but to agree to this proposition. The French troops evacuated Syria in June 1861, and thereby much relieved the minds of many Englishmen, who had long forgotten all about the domestic affairs of the Lebanon in their alarm lest the French Imperial troops, having once set foot in Syria, should not easily be induced to quit the country again.

It would hardly be fitting to close the history of this eventful year without giving a few lines to record the peaceful end of a stormy life. Quietly in his Kensington home passed away, in the late autumn of this year, Thomas Cochranethe gallant Dundonald, the hero of the Basque Roads, the volunteer who lent his genius and his courage to the cause of Brazil, of Chili, and of Greece; a sailor of the Elizabethan mould. Lord Dundonald had been the victim of cruel, although not surely intentional, injustice. He was accused of having had a share in the famous stockjobbing frauds of 1814; he was tried, found guilty, sentenced to fine and imprisonment; expelled from the House of Commons, dismissed from the service which he had helped to make yet more illustrious than he found it; and deprived of all his public honours. He lived to see his innocence believed in as well by his enemies as by his friends. William IV. reinstated him in his naval rank, and Queen Victoria had the congenial task of completing the restoration of his well-won honours. It was not, however, until many years after his death that the country fully acquitted itself of the mere money debt which it owed to Lord Dundonald and his family. Cochrane was a Radical in

politics, and for some years sat as a colleague of Sir Francis Burdett in the representation of Westminster. He carried on in the House of Commons many a bitter argument with Mr. John Wilson Croker, when the latter was Secretary to the Admiralty. It cannot be doubted that Cochrane's political views and his strenuous way of asserting them, made him many enemies, and that some men were glad of the opportunity for revenge which was given by the accusation got up against him. His was an impatient spirit, little suited for the discipline of parliamentary life. His tongue was often bitter, and he was too apt to assume that a political opponent must be a person unworthy of respect. Even in his own service he was impatient of rebuke. To those under his command he was always genial and brotherly; but to those above him he was sometimes wanting in that patient submission which is an essential quality of those who would learn how to command with most success. Cochrane's true place was on his quarter-deck; his opportunity came in the extreme moment of danger. Then his spirit asserted itself. His gift was that which wrenches success out of the very jaws of failure; he saw his way most clearly when most others began to despair. His later life had been passed in retirement. It was his death, on October 30, 1860, which recalled to the mind of the living generation the hero whose exploits had divided the admiration of their fathers with those of Nelson, of Collingwood, and of Sidney Smith. A new style of naval warfare has come up since those days, and perhaps Cochrane may be regarded as the last of the old sea-kings.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

CIVIL war broke out in the United States. Abraham Lincoln's election as President, brought about by the party divisions of the Southerners among themselves, seemed to the South the beginning of a new order of things, in which they and their theories of government would no longer predominate. The struggle became one for life or death between slavery and the principles of modern society. Slavery existed in the Southern States, though it had ceased long to exist in the North. The two systems were really incompatible, but the inevitable

struggle between the supporters and the opponents of slavery might have been indefinitely delayed if the Southern States, the Slave States, had not decided to secede from the Union, to cut themselves adrift from the abolitionist North, and form a slave-holding confederation of their own.

The Southern States, led by South Carolina, seceded. Their delegates assembled at Montgomery, in Alabama, on February 4, 1861, to agree upon a constitution. A Southern confederation was formed, with Mr. Jefferson Davis as its President. Even then war might not have taken place; the North and South might have come to some agreement but for the impetuous action of South Carolina. This State had been the first to secede, and it was the first to commit an act of war. The traveller in South Carolina, as he stands on one of the quays of Charleston and looks towards the Atlantic, sees the sky line across the harbour broken by a heavy-looking solid square fort, which soon became famous in the war. This was Fort Sumter, a place built on an artificial island, with walls some sixty feet high and eight to twelve feet thick. It was in the occupation of the Federal Government, as of course were the defences of all the harbours of the Union. It is, perhaps, not necessary to say that while each State made independently its local laws, the Federal Government and Congress had the charge of all business of national interest, customs duties, treaties, the army and navy, and the coast defences. The excited Secessionists of South Carolina began to bombard the fort. The little garrison had no means of resistance, and after a harmless bombardment of two days it surrendered. The Federal President, Abraham Lincoln, had been anxious if possible to enable North and South to come to some terms without going to war. After the fall of Sumter, however, there was no prospect of any peaceful settlement of the quarrel. There was an end to all negotiations; thenceforward only strokes could arbitrate.

Four days after, President Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand men to volunteer in re-establishing the Federal authority over the rebel States. President Davis immediately announced his intention to issue letters of marque. President Lincoln declared the Southern ports under blockade. On May 8 Lord John Russell announced in the House of Commons, that after consulting the law officers of the Crown the Government were of opinion that the Southern Confederacy must be recognised as a belligerent power. On May 13

the neutrality proclamation was issued by the Government, warning all subjects of her Majesty from enlisting, on land or sea, in the service of Federals or Confederates, supplying munitions of war, equipping vessels for privateering purposes, engaging in transport service, or doing any other act calculated to afford assistance to either belligerent.

At first the feeling of Englishmen was almost unanimously in favour of the North. It was thought that the Southern States would be allowed quietly to secede, and most Englishmen did not take a great interest in the matter, or when they did, were inclined to regard the Southerners as a turbulent and troublesome set, who had better be permitted to go off with their peculiar institution and keep it all to themselves. When, however, it became apparent that the secession must lead to war, then many of the same Englishmen began to blame the North for making the question any cause of disturbance to the world. There was a kind of impatient feeling, as if we and the world in general had no right to be troubled with these American quarrels, as if it were unfair to us that our cotton trade should be interrupted and we ourselves put to inconvenience for a dispute about secession. There clearly would have been no war and no disturbance if only the North had agreed to let the South go, and therefore people on this side of the lantic set themselves to find good cause for blaming the stamen who did not give in to anything rather than disturb world with their obstinacy and The their Union. Out of this condition of feeling came the resolve to find the North in the wrong; and out of that resolve came with many the discovery that the Northern statesmen were all hypocrites. Suddenly, as if to decide wavering minds, an event was reported which made hosts of admirers for the South in England. The battle of Bull Run took place on July 21, 1861, and the raw levies of the North were defeated, thrown into confusion, and in some instances driven into ignominious flight.

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This was not very surprising. The Southerners had always a taste for soldiering, and had kept up their state militia systems with an energy and exactness which the business-men of the North had neither the time nor the inclination to imitate. It was not very surprising if some of the hastily-raised Northern regiments of volunteers should have proved wretched soldiers, and should have yielded to the sudden influence of panic. But when the news reached R

England a very flame of enthusiasm leaped up for the brave South, which, though so small in numbers, had contrived with such spirit and ease to defeat the Yankees.' It is important for the fair understanding and appreciation of the events that followed, to remember that there was, among all the advocates of the South in England, a very general conviction that the North was sure to be defeated and broken up, and was therefore in no sense a formidable power. It is well also to bear in mind that there were only two European States which entertained this feeling and allowed it to be everywhere understood. The Southern scheme found support only in England and in France. In all other European countries the sympathy of people and Government alike went with the North. In most places the sympathy arose from a detestation of slavery. In Russia, or at least with the Russian Government, it arose from a dislike of rebellion. The effect was that assurances of friendship came from all civilised. countries to the Northern States except from England and France alone. One of the latest instructions given by Cavour on his deathbed in this year was that an assurance should be sent to the Federal Government that Italy could give its sympathies to no movement which tended to the perpetuation of slavery. The Pope, Pius IX and Cardinal Antonelli repeatedly expressed their hopes fonene success of the Northern cause. On the other hand, the E aperor of the French fully believed that the Southern causs was sure to triumph, and that the Union would be broken up; he was even very willing to hasten what he assumed to be the unavoidable end. He was anxious that England should join with him in some measures to facilitate the success of the South by recognising the Government of the Southern Confederation. He had afterwards reason to curse the day when he reckoned on the break-up of the Union, and persuaded himself that there was no occasion to take account of the Northern strength. Yet in France the people in general were on the side of the North. Only the Emperor and his Government were on that of the South. In England, on the other hand, the vast majority of what are called the influential classes came to be heart and soul with the South, and strove to bring or force the Government to the same side.

At first the Northern States counted with absolute confidence upon the sympathy of England. The one reproach Englishmen had always been casting in their face was that