and neighbourhood:-" After riding a couple of miles the town of Khiva appeared on our right, and we entered a country laid out in gardens and dwellings of the gentry. The houses have all one character, being an enclosure of lofty clay walls, flanked by ornamental towers at the angles, which give them the appearance of castles. The walls, built with great regularity of rammed clay, are generally fluted, an effect given them perhaps by the bundles of straight branches, between which the clay is supported whilst soft and bearing the process of ramming. The gardens are surrounded by very low walls of similar construction, allowing the eye to command many estates from a single point of view. The trees are a species of elm, wide and very shadowy, the poplar, and the plane-tree. The appearance of the country is pleasing, but it is too flat for beauty. The men wore the Uzbek attire. The complexion of the women was very ruddy, showing more red than white. Their countenance too round or square for beauty, and their shapes (unless indeed they owe the effect to their apparel) clumsy in the extreme. Their eyes are dark, long, and ill-opened; the brow delicately pencilled. They are accounted beauties in a region where fair complexions are at a premium."

The winter climate of Khiva is described by the same writer (and) others) as excessively severe, following a summer usually of tropical heat. "In England nothing is known like the chill of a Khiva winter. In the shade the snow always lays feathery and granulated, incompressible into masses, so that snowballs could not be formed. But the sun now shone cheerily through the cutting air, lighting in its passage myriads of minute particles of mist, small as the motes in the sunbeam, and invisible like them, excepting in the brightest light; which the intense chill of the air was continually freezing, and which, falling in an unceasing shower of light, gave a spectacle to the atmosphere that savoured of enchantment. This effect I have observed only at Khiva."

Besides a million of subjects of Uzbek race, inhabiting the thickly-peopled region towards the mouth of the Oxus, agricultural and prosperous, unless when visited by the frequent accident of civil or foreign wars, the Khan exercises a dominion more or less complete over a great number of Turcoman nomad tribes, wandering over the deserts between the Caspian Sea and that of Aral, whose number is estimated by Vambery at a million more.

It is to the predatory habits of these uncontrollable though necessary allies that Khiva has owed, at least in the first instance, most of the collisions which have taken place between her and her overpowering Russian neighbour, whatever other causes we may think proper to assign to the policy of the latter.

A few words will suffice to show in what manner the relations between Russia and the Khanate of Khiva affect-or are supposed to affect the stability of our Anglo-Indian Empire. A glance at the map will suffice to show that the connexion between them is extremely indirect. Masters of Bokhara and Samarkand, and irre

sistible along the whole right bank of the Oxus, from its entrance on the great plain to its mouth in the sea of Aral, the Russians are in close proximity to the great elevated region of Chinese Turkestan, over which, as is now known, practicable though arduous routes may be found to Kashmir and Cabul. Khiva lies, on the other hand, far to the north-west, a long way out of any rationally supposable line of march from Russia to India; but, isolated as its position was, it formed a constant embarrassment to the invading power by threatening its communications in rear and flank. Besides, the conquest of Khiva was necessary to complete the subjugation of the coasts of the Caspian sea, and establish a permanent menace on the northern flank of Persia. Nor was it without prospective advantages to Russian commerce, which were perhaps more immediately effectual than any other cause in stimulating the enterprise.

In January of this year Count Schouvalow, "a statesman enjoying the confidence of the Emperor of Russia," was despatched to England to give some explanations respecting the intended expedition to Khiva, and other points of Russian policy in Asia concerning which English jealousy was apprehended. As regards the first subject, with which we are now concerned, the following is the statement of the mission made by Earl Granville in a despatch to her Majesty's minister at St. Petersburg :

"With regard to the expedition to Khiva, it was true that it was decided upon for next spring. To give an idea of its character, it was sufficient to say that it would consist of four battalions and a half. Its object was to punish acts of brigandage, to recover fifty Russian prisoners, and to teach the Khan that such conduct on his part could not be continued with the impunity in which the moderation of Russia had led him to believe. Not only was it far from the intention of the Emperor to take possession of Khiva, but positive orders had been prepared to prevent it, and directions given that the conditions imposed should be such as could not in any way lead to a prolonged occupancy of Khiva.

"Count Schouvalow repeated the surprise which the Emperor, entertaining such sentiments, felt at the uneasiness which it was said existed in England on the subject, and he gave me most decided assurance that I might give positive assurances to Parliament on this matter.

"With regard to the uneasiness which might exist in England on the subject of Central Asia, I could not deny the fact to Count Schouvalow; the people of this country were decidedly in favour of peace, but a great jealousy existed as to anything which really affected our honour and interest; that they were particularly alive to anything affecting India; that the progress of Russia in Asia had been considerable, and sometimes, as it would appear, like England in India and France in Algeria, more so than was desired by the central Governments; that the Clarendon and Gortchakow arrangement, apparently agreeable to both Governments, had met with great delay as to its final settlement; that it was with the

object of coming to a settlement satisfactory to both countries, and in a friendly and conciliatory spirit, that I had addressed to your Excellency the despatch of the 17th of October."

The details of the Khivan expedition belong to the foreign portion of our history, in which we have to deal with some events more stirring than those which have characterized the year at home.

CHAPTER I.

FRANCE.

Death of Napoleon III.-Bonapartists-Royalists-Jour d'Expiation-M. Thiers and the Committee of Thirty-Propositions of Tallon, Decazes, &c.-Speech of Thiers before Committee-Broglie Report-Letter of the Comte de Chambord to the Bishop of Orleans-Discussion in the Assembly on the Report-Speech of Thiers, March 4th-Bill passed-Treaty of Evacuation-Prince Napoleon's PetitionQuestion of the Lyons Contracts-Suppression of Central Municipality at LyonsQuarrel in the Assembly, and resignation of M. de Grévy-Paris Elections-M. de Barodet-M. Ranc elected for Lyons-Ministerial changes-Constitutional BillsInterpellation by the Right-Debate of May 24th-Defeat of the GovernmentResignation of M. Thiers-Marshal MacMahon President of the Republic.

THE year 1873 had reached its ninth day only-it was but three days since the Assembly had met after its Christmas recess-when the telegraphic wires flashed from Chiselhurst to Versailles the news that the ex-Emperor, Napoleon III., was no more. Just after the deputies had arrived by the mid-day train, M. Barthélemy de St. Hilaire appeared in the Salle des Pas Perdus, and announced the message which had been received at the Ministry of the Interior. It was said that the first despatch had been intended for M. Rouher, and had reached M. de Goulard's hands by mistake. "C'est affreux, c'est affreux!" cried the Bonapartist leader when the fact was proclaimed, and immediately, with the rest of his party, he quitted the Chamber. That evening many of them crossed the Channel, and pressed to pay their last homage to the remains of the once mighty potentate. The illness of Napoleon III. has been detailed in another portion of our volume. Unable longer to endure the cruel sufferings to which the malady he had borne about for years had subjected him-sufferings which had tended to cripple his energies during the closing years of the Empire, which had added to his weight of woe at Sedan, and had made the ignominious repose of Chiselhurst at last acceptable to him-he had called in the aid of surgery under new and hazardous conditions, and in spite of the skill of the best operators had sunk, after a few days of increased agony.

We cannot better represent the state of public feeling in France on this event than by quoting the opinions of some of the journals on different sides of politics.

The Pays said:"Let us rise. The Emperor is dead. Those who regretted that he had not fallen on the field of battle on the 1st of September, 1870, may rejoice, for his death is a consequence of Sedan. And you, Bonapartists, dry your tears, repress your sobs, and upstanding let us close our ranks around his son, repeating the old cry of the former French Monarchy-The Emperor is dead; long live the Empire!' It is well known that we have never sought for or desired the Imperial restoration until the country had been completely liberated from foreign occupation. Now, as about that period the Prince will enter into his twentieth year, and be at the age which qualifies him for a soldier, it appears to us that he may well be an Emperor."

The Liberté said:-"It is all over. The legend of the great Emperor himself disappears. The child who weeps to-day beside the deathbed of his father has around him only a few devoted but powerless friends. He has no army, no noblesse, no clergy, nor any of the institutions which constituted the ancient monarchy, and which insured for it an existence during fourteen centuries. Let the Bonapartists consider well the situation in which they are placed by the unexpected death of the Emperor, and let their leaders decide whether the modest part of citizen of the Republic would not be preferable to that of a pretender in exile."

The Journal de Paris said:-"Heaven forbid that we should choose the present moment to write in a tone of insult, or even of bitterness, of the memory of the late Emperor. Compassion at this time throws into the shade every other feeling. It is not the man himself who is to be blamed for the faults which have been committed and the incalculable misfortunes which have followed from them. Personally he had great qualities. Those who knew him bear witness to the fact. He was generous and affable. On more than one subject he had liberal ideas, and more especially liberal aspirations. He was better than his Government. The true culprit was the system-that system of which his birth made him the representative, and to which there seems to be attached a kind of historical fatalism. We do not know what is in store for us in the future, but we know what the past has given us; and we cannot forget that, having had two returns of the Empire, and two Emperors differing very essentially from each other, we have had three invasions."

The Gazette de France said :-"The Emperor is dead, and with the Emperor the last traces of the Empire. We will not on this occasion recall the political actions of Napoleon III. For twenty years we have opposed him, and it would be necessary for us to take up day by day the history of a rule which, with the aid of Personal Government, has contrived, in opposition to the desires and interests of France, to establish the unity of Italy and of Germany, and to destroy the temporal power of the Holy See."

The Français said :-"The man of our times who has undergone the most striking vicissitudes of fortune is no more. He has not