ENERGY OF HIS FEW LAST ACTS.

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Fenians, moreover, may have arms for infantry, and may, by possibility, have guns, though that is unlikely, but cavalry they cannot have; and a Fenian put suddenly on horseback, even if they could so fit out some of their men, would not be a cavalry soldier. Then, upon the general principle, we should be inspiring confidence in the loyal, and be giving a useful warning to the Fenians by showing that we could, if needed, add to the regular force now in Ireland.

The same week he is writing to the Secretary of State for War to inquire into the provision of arms and ammunition in Canada, and to suggest heavier armaments for the works around Quebec. Three years previously he had urged successfully that these fortifications should be restored and enlarged, so as to provide some place of strength for our small body of regular troops to fall back upon, should a sudden invasion take place from the United States. This did not then appear an unlikely event. It was very widely anticipated, at the time, that the civil war would end in the separation of South from North, and that the North would want compensation and some triumph over somebody to wipe away the stain of failure. The invasion of Canada, if it could be followed by the conquest of the province, would have satisfied. both requirements, and, had we been unprepared, the temptation might have been overpowering. Matters, however, took a different turn, and the defeat of the Southerners not improbably saved the Canadians from attack. But during the summer of 1865 alarm had been renewed by the threatening aspect of the Federal Government, as manifested by a notice to the British Government of the abrogation of the Treaty of 1817, and by the establishment of a system of passports between Canada and the United States. The Federals were flushed with success; they had many men under arms, and many grudges against the Canadians. Lord Palmerston was fully alive to all this, and was anxious, by assisting the colony in her fortifications, and by maintaining an efficient flotilla on the lakes, to back that spirit of self-reliance which alone, in the moment

of danger, could secure her independence, and to form a centre round which some 200,000 loyal volunteers might rally if they wished to maintain their connection with the British Crown.

Thus, indefatigable to the last in his care of the interests committed to his charge, did Lord Palmerston complete his work, which had lasted through a longer term of public service than is easily paralleled in official annals.

In one life he summed up the political honours of several generations, for he was a member of every Government from 1807 to 1865, except those of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Derby. He sat in sixteen Parliaments, and was elected to sit in the seventeenth. During the later years of his life a detractor might have been driven to say of him what the sarcastic Archbishop Sheldon said of his ancestor, Sir John Temple, He has the curse of the Gospel, for all men speak well of him.' He died full of years and honours, and free from fears or unmanly regrets. Over his grave might well be written the words, 'Felix etiam opportunitate mortis,' for he suffered neither long nor painfully, died at work, and quitted the scene with undimmed reputation, before any failing on his part had made the audience impatient. He bequeathed his Party to his successor, newly strengthened and consolidated by a general election, fought and won under his name; while to the Party itself he left as a noble legacy the example of a long and honourable career, spent indeed within their ranks, but devoted, even in the closing hours, to the service of the whole country. The national voice decreed for his remains the tribute of a public funeral and a grave in Westminster Abbey.

He had prepared for himself a last resting-place in Romsey Cemetery; but, as he had left no express directions as to his place of burial, it was considered right to yield to the representations of those who urged that the last testimony of respect which can be paid to frail mortality was in his case the concern of the nation.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

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His body was accordingly moved up to his town residence in Piccadilly, and the funeral took place on the 27th of October. The whole distance to the Abbey was lined by a dense crowd of interested and sympathetic spectators, and the sacred building itself was filled with all that was most distinguished and most representative. The Houses of Parliament, although their session was over, were amply represented, and through the dense crowd that surrounded the entrance into the Abbey Church all his late colleagues of the Cabinet marched as pallbearers. In the north transept, near the grave of Pitt, were laid the mortal remains of Palmerston.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHARACTER-CHARACTERISTICS OF STYLE OF WRITING AND

SPEAKING.

LORD PALMERSTON'S character has been so frequently discussed its many-sidedness offering to such various dispositions some point or other of attraction-that it may seem superfluous in me to attempt a repetition of a similar kind. Yet, in closing this history, I cannot resist the desire to put, however imperfectly, on record the impressions made upon me by seven years of close intercourse, both private and official. Biographers are proverbially partial; and it is, on the whole, to their credit that they should be so. Retrospect should rather fasten on the good than the evil. But, on the other hand, indiscriminate and extravagant praise is as unreal as it is unsatisfactory; and whoever undertakes to inform his fellow-countrymen is bound to bring his judgment as well as his affection into play.

Lord Palmerston, then, was a great man chiefly in the sense that he was so complete a man. His character deserves our attention more from its unusual combination of good qualities than from the marked presence of any one great quality or attribute. He had about him neither the glories nor the follies of a genius; but he possessed, in rare harmony, characteristics which are generally in antagonism. He had great pluck, combined with remarkable tact; unfailing good-temper, associated with firmness amounting almost to obstinacy. He was a strict disciplinarian, and yet ready above most men to make allowance for the weak

HIS CHARACTER: ITS COMPLETENESS.

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ness and shortcomings of others. He loved hard work in all its details, and yet took a keen delight in many kinds of sport and amusement. He believed in England as the best and greatest country in the world, while he had not confined his observation to her affairs, but knew and cared more about foreign nations than any other public man. He had little or no vanity in his composition, and, as is seen in several of his letters to his brother, he claimed but a modest value for his own abilities; yet no man had a better opinion of his own judgment, or was more full of self-confidence. It was amusing to notice the good-natured pity with which he quite unconsciously regarded those who differed from him in questions whereon he had made up his mind. He never doubted for an instant in such a case that he was right, and that they were wrong.

This gave him great tenacity of purpose, and helped him through many difficulties, and even mistakes, which would have swamped a weaker man. He seems almost

to be describing himself when, writing to Sir Stratford Canning in December 1850 about the Turkish Ministers, he says: "I believe weakness and irresolution are, on the whole, the worst faults that statesmen can have. A man of energy may make a wrong decision, but, like a strong horse that carries you rashly into a quagmire, he brings you by his sturdiness out on the other side.' During the critical moment before the breaking out of the Franco-Austrian war in 1859, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, talking to Lord Clarendon, used the same simile:

'I sigh,' he said, 'for one hour of Palmerston. No one knows better than I do his faults. I have often suffered by them, and so has England, and so has Europe. But his merits, his sagacity, his courage, his trustworthiness, are invaluable when you want

"A daring pilot in extremity;"

with whom one feels as if one was mounted on a first-rate hunter, who pulls, indeed, and rears and kicks, but never swerves, never starts, and carries you over everything as long as you give him his head.'