him leaning towards Home but that after a disastrous deRule,' answered Lord D., feat in the field. But for a 'what he calls a National nation in the plenitude of its Council. I confess I don't see power to hand over men who my way to it, as I explained had relied on its honour and its at Blackburn.' 'When I saw power is what has never before him last,' said Kimberley, 'he been recorded in the annals of was much troubled by the im- history. If it is done it will be moral means which were used done by this country for the to bring about the Union: he first time.' His fierce denunciafelt that a great National sin tion of the cry "Justice to Irehad been committed, and his land" may be repeated effectconscience was troubled.' 'Oh, ively word by word. "When damn his conscience,' answered did it first dawn upon the Lord Derby." Thus begins the thousands," he asked, "who history of Gladstone's unhappy are now called upon to echo attempt to inflict Home Rule that cry that Justice demanded upon Ireland. Home Rule? I think I know. It was when they were told so by authoritative lips. .. We did not hear of that doctrine in November last. Yet Justice is not an intermittent apparition. Justice is not a figure that can be here at some times and absent at others. Justice is not an apparition that can be invoked at the polling-booth alone. Expediency may change from time to time. But Justice always stands in the same position. Expediency may have set in." There is the truth of yesterday and of to-morrow. Expediency has set with a kind of ferocity. Justice has once more gone by the board, and the will of Mr Redmond is the expediency of English Ministers.

Henceforth Goschen's severance from Gladstone was complete and irrevocable. He fought against the proposals of his ancient leader with energy and courage. It was his fate most often to follow the Grand Old Man in debate, and never did he lose a chance of tearing the flimsy rhetoric in pieces which served that eminent man for argument. As we are doomed to fight the same battle over again, to bring forward with what force we may the same arguments, it is well to recall the speeches delivered half a century ago by Goschen. Here is an armoury ready to our hand. His defence of the Loyalists, whom Gladstone proposed to abandon, will serve us to-day as well as it served us then. "There have been cases of countries," said Goschen, "who, after the humiliation of defeat, have seen torn from their sides subjects who have relied upon them for support;

So Goschen fought the battle of Union. So at last, when Lord Randolph Churchill forgot him, he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Salisbury's Government, and, to make his severance complete, joined the Carlton Club. And

runs:

"A

should be the statesman's
ideal. Thus it
proud man desires power to
execute the ideas which he
has, not to execute the ideas
of others. He wishes to be
the author of a work, not the
instrument of a caprice. It
is a mean ambition to aspire
to the state of a servant, and
he is a servant who trembles
at the murmuring of a hun-
dred thousand dirty-handed
loafers as much as he who
kneels at the august smile of
a Highness in an embroidered
coat. There is not one mem-
ber of our present Cabinet
who with truth and sincerity
could echo these wise and
winged words.

as we review his long and honourable career, it is not merely for the services which he rendered to the Country and the Empire that we reverence his memory, but also for the honourable lustre which he cast upon the life and character of Parliament. Never once did he stoop to accommodate his friends. Rigorous in expressing his opinions, he was determined to translate them always, if he could, into act. If only all our politicians were of the same moral fibre as Goschen, we should contemplate the future of England with equanimity. For we should know, as we do not know today, that those who sit upon the front bench were saying what they believed to be the truth without concealment or self-interest. We should know, as we do not know to-day, that our Ministers sought only the advantage of the Empire, unbiassed by the profitable persuasion of this group or that, by the necessity of winning here or there a parcel of votes. We should know, as we do not not know to-day, that the fatal policy of purchasing support If at the end of the in the country with public second volume we realise what money was discarded for ever. kind of a man Lord Goschen In brief, we might have con- was, it is because we have confidence that the politicians verted the raw material into a who hold in their hands the portrait for ourselves. Morefate of Great Britain were over, the tone of the book is freemen, and not the slaves of the tone of a superior person. their country's enemies. There A note of priggishness is heard is a passage from Taine, quoted now and again, which should in Mr Elliot's book, which not not be heard in life of merely sums up Goschen's Goschen. It is true that in character and ambition, but a sense Goschen was what is sketches, very roughly, what called a "moderate" man, and

Mr Elliot's Life of Lord Goschen,' though it contains a vast deal of excellent material, is not of itself a good book. As a biography it deserves little praise. It is less an account of Lord Goschen than a sketch of the times in which he lived. The central figure is too often blurred; the narrative is too rashly broken by documents to satisfy the artistic requirements of the biographer's craft.

IN their grandeur as they rise to the mist-wreathed skies,
The Minster-towers of England that crown her long renown,
Have they heard the mighty rumour, rolling inland from the sea,
Of the centuries to be?

Hath the sea-wind told them? Is the hallowed dust they keep
Stirred by a word across the deep?

Hath a whisper touched the sleep of our ancient island kings? Hath a trumpet-call not reached them on the wings of the wind In the shrine where they were crowned, long ago,

In the shrine that crowned the Saxon ere the conquering

Norman came,

In the shrine whose rival glories make a single beacon-flame,
In the shrine that saw the Red Rose wedded to the White,
And the warring shires of England 'neath a single crown unite,
And the Rose of England triumph in the fore-front of the fight,
As they swept in their might to meet the foe.

VOL. CLXXXIX.-NO. MCXLVIII.

3 в

II.

Shrine of mighty memories,

Binder of the centuries,

O, hear'st thou yet the pæan and the vast exultant throng Of the golden world approaching? Thou hast listened for it long!

Can the dust of conflict blind thee?

Canst thou dream the light withdrawn
To a mythic age behind thee?

Hast thou dreamed it all a dream,
Hast thou caught not yet the gleam

That shall thrill thy grey old watch-towers with the clear
Memnonian song

Of the dawn? Thou hast listened for it long!

Through the thunder of the City, through the silence of the

ages,

Ere the hamlet that was London heard thy lonely curfew tolled, Thou hast pleaded, thou hast called, across the pasture and the

fold,

Drawing scattered tribes to worship from the river and the wood,

In a close-knit brotherhood.

From century to century,

In ever-widening unity,

Thou hast crowned us here a people, in the splendour of the sun, Till, around thee waiting, listening still, the great new oceans

rolled,

And thy seamen plunging Westward bade the Golden Gates

unfold,

And the vision that sustained them deepened onward to this hour,

When the crown is yet to set upon the purpose
of thy power,
And the mightiest page is yet to turn of all thy golden pages
O, lift thy towers to heaven, for thy work is not yet done!
Nations, not shires, this day,

Bring thee their worlds and say,
Keep thou thine ancient way,
Weld us in one!

With tumult of multitudes, with trample of cavalry,
With clangour of trumpets and with brilliance of steel,
Surging like an ocean thro' the channels of the City,
Flows the single splendour of a world-wide Commonweal,
Rolls the single thunder of the royal flag of England
Shaken to a thousand winds beneath the Eternal sun.
God of all power and might,
Bless Thou our crown to-night,
Make it our beacon-light,

Weld us in one.