as South Africa was concerned, this reasoning was unanswerable, as Cape Town and the harbour of Table Bay were all that Great Britain really required there."

And yet at that very moment Downing Street was drifting headlong into a mad and insensate war with Russia, in which, before it was ended, more English soldiers lost their lives than would have enabled us to have policed all South Africa from the Cape to the Zambesi. Nations, like individuals, occasionally go mad, and seldom was there a more startling illustration of this fact than the pinch-penny chuck-farthing policy enforced in South Africa, at the very moment when tens of thousands of lives and a hundred millions of treasure were being lavished on the worse than purposeless war undertaken in defence of the unspeakable Turk.

Sir George Grey went out to the Cape as Governor. The moment he set foot in South Africa he applied himself to the redress of grievances. His first act was thoroughly characteristic. Everywhere he found disbanded Hottentot soldiers were centres of disaffection. Inquiring as to the cause of this, he discovered that Downing Street had, in fact, cheated these poor fellows of three-quarters of the pension which they had been promised. Forthwith the honest Governor issued a proclamation in the Queen's name, promising the Hottentot soldiers that, out of the love borne them by Her Most Gracious Majesty, she had determined that the exact amount promised should be paid, and that all arrears should be settled if claimed before a certain date. The Cape Parliament raised the money needed, all Hottentot disaffection ceased as by magic, the Queen was delighted; but Downing Street was furious. It had practically been proclaimed in the Queen's name as a promisebreaker; and although the charge was true, the greater the truth the greater the libel, and the blacker the mark which Colonial officialdom put against the name of the "prancing proconsul." He did not mend matters by his next action. Theophilus Shepstone had secured the provisional approval of the Lieutenant-Governor of Natal, and, through him, of Downing Street, for a great concession, by virtue of which he would have established himself as a subsidised but independent king of a great Zulu settlement, which he proposed to form in No Man's Land, a fertile hill country lying between Natal and British Kaffraria. Sir George Grey roundly condemned the whole transaction, and convinced even the Colonial Office that it must be stopped, and stopped it was.

Having thus brushed away the perils threatening the peace and security of South Africa, Sir George set himself diligently to pacify and to civilise the great region committed to his care. In these years of patient justice-doing and civilising labour in the Cape Colony, Sir George Grey laid the foundations of the prestige which subsequently facilitated the northern extension of the Empire under the Chartered Company to beyond the Zambesi. By utilising the agency of the magistrate, the missionary, the schoolmaster, and the trader, the Governor, who ruled almost as dictator in the name of the Queen, succeeded in establishing throughout the tribes in South Africa a deeprooted confidence in the justice and love of the Queen. As the Fingoes said in a petition to the Crown, "We are a blessed people under Queen Victoria. We are like children who have a father in all things to preserve, feed and help them." No man knew better than Sir George Grey how to utilise the native sense of reverence and loyalty to a person by ever putting the Queen's majesty in the forefront. He was the representative of the crown, acting for and by the express authority of the Queen. All that he did of good he represented as coming from the love and goodness of the White Queen beyond the Seas. And as a result he succeeded in impressing upon the mind of the natives of South Africa a living conception of the existence of a beneficent semi-divine Terrestrial Providence beyond the black water, which has been no small element in securing the tranquility of our possessions and the readiness of the

tribes beyond our border to submit to the civilising sovereignty of the Queen's rule.

Forty years and more have passed since Sir George Grey first inoculated the black man with a vivid though vague sense of the Queen's love and the Queen's power. But to this day the Great Idea operates like a magic charm in many a Kaffir kraal. It was to see the Queen that Lobengula sent his Envoys; to see the Queen that Khama and his brother chiefs journeyed to London town. The Queen has no sovereignty over the Transvaal that can be helpful to the poor Kaffirs who were handed over to be dealt with as goods and chattels by the Boers; but not even the infamy of our double desertion has eradicated from the native mind the suggestion that the Queen is the friend and helper of the black man, a very present help in any time of trouble. In the mines of the Rand so well is this known that I have been told by residents in Johannesburg that one of the familiar dodges of unscrupulous speculators who wish to limit the output of gold, is to spread abroad in the native quarters the report that the Queen is dead. On the day after that ill rumour circulates among the Kaffirs no native will venture into the mines. For deep in the recesses of his simple mind the news fills him with a sense of gloom. It is as if the sun were eclipsed in mid-heaven, or as our ancestors phrased it in the evil days of Stephen, as if God and his Saints were dead. The shadow of personal loss, of an extinguishing of one of the confidences which are as the lamps of life, lies heavy on the untutored toiler when he hears the cruel lie that "the Queen is dead," and sometimes days elapse before he can be induced to resume his work.

The influence which the Queen exercises over native tribes is by no means confined to South Africa. Mr. Castell Hopkins remarks that "it is, indeed, a question if the Queen's name is not better known and more important to large masses of the world's population, than of the name of the country over which she primarily reigns."

He quotes as illustrating this the address which a Maori Chief presented to Sir George Bowen in 1869

"O my guests," said Kawana Hunia, of the Ngatiapis, "she is our Queen as well as your QueenQueen of Maoris and Queen of Pakeha. Should wars arise we will take up our rifles and march withersoever she shall direct. My cousin Wiremu went to England and saw our Queen. He returned. When you landed in this island he was already dead. He died fighting for our Queen. As he died we will die, if need be--I and all my chiefs. This do you tell our Queen. I have said."

This impression, so beneficial to the security of the Empire, was not produced by acquiescing in the prejudices or tolerating the cruel customs of the savages. Sir George Grey was a propagandist of civilization to his finger-tips. While in South Africa he suppressed witch-doctors, that murderous tyranny; he undermined and supplanted without bloodshed the power of the savage chiefs, and in order to win the natives from faith in the efficacy in witchcraft, he founded the Grey Hospital, utilising as builders of this beneficent institution the soldiers who, in the profound peace which his policy secured, were no longer needed for operations of war. This hospital, where black and white received equal care, attention, and comfort, has been for nearly half a century a great object-lesson to the native as to the science and the benevolence of the Queen's rule.

There was one fierce rally on the part of the Kaffir chiefs againt the civilising sovereignty which was reducing lawless despots to the level of British citizens. Inspired by a native girl, who appears to have been a trance medium able to give tests as to the reality of her communication with the spirits of departed chiefs, 200,000 of the Kaffirs, including 60,000 fighting men, slaughtered their cattle, burnt their crops, and prepared to launch their whole force upon the Cape Colony. Sir George captured all the chiefs, and the leaderless horde, incapable of aggression, perished of starvation

in the midst of a self-created wilderness. Sir George Grey did what he could to rescue the remnant of the force which had menaced him with destruction. Migration was organized, public works instituted, taxes were levied, and the Queen's writ ran everywhere in Kaffraria, where but a few months before 60,000 men were banded together to loot the colony and massacre the colonists.

IV. THE QUEEN'S APPROBATION.

It was almost immediately after the pacification of Kaffraria that Sir George Grey came upon the supreme moment of his destiny. One such moment comes to all of us, but seldom do we rise to meet it with such prompt heroic resolve as did Sir George Grey. In the month of August, 1857, a steamer touched at the Cape bringing the Governor a despatch from Lord Elphinstone reporting the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny. It is difficult to us, who have the memory of the mutiny ever at the back of our minds, to realise the absolute disbelief which prevailed fifty years ago as to the possibility of any danger. John Bull was so absolutely certain that the Sepoys would be true to their salt, that when the mutiny broke out he had only 40,000 white soldiers in all India and 250,000 Sepoys. During the Crimean War there had been a noisy agitation against the Government for not recalling all the white garrison from India in order to reinforce the trenches before Sebastopol! Hence it was some time before the public at home realised what the rising at Meerut and the fall of Delhi meant. Fortunately the Governor of the nearest British colony was a man of ready wit and keen imagination. Sir George Grey saw in a moment that our Indian Empire was shaken to its base, and that unless instant help could be given the British would be driven into the sea, and without hesitation he decided to denude the Cape of its garrison and military stores and send every available soldier in hot haste to India. In three days after receiving the terrible news a man-of-war and three transports sailed from the Cape for Calcutta. Salus populi suprema lex. The Empire in India was in danger. Everything depended upon the immediate reinforcement of its small and hard-pressed garrison. Sir George Grey did not hesitate. Had Sir George Grey flinched from assuming the responsibility he shouldered without hesitation we might have had to reconquer India from the sea.*

Sir George Grey reported his act to the Home Government. The Colonial Secretary expressed the greatest satisfaction; but what was much more acceptable was the communication in which the Colonial Secretary wrote as follows :

"October 20, 1857.

"In writing to me on the subject of your last despatch, the Queen has commanded me to express to you in a private letter her high personal appreciation of your services, and her gratification at the loyalty of her subjects at the Cape.' You will at the same time receive Her Majesty's approbation of the measures you have adopted in an official form."

Here we have an instance of the way in which the eye of the Sovereign cheers and encourages her agents. The influence which Westminster Abbey has in stimulating patriotism and in unifying the sentiment of race is well known. The Queen is a living influence of the same kind, and as much superior to that of the Abbey as life is superior to death. The Queen's approbation, expressed in a thousand cases of which the world hears nothing, is to her subjects more, much more, than the formal thanks of Parliament or the approval of their official superiors.

Lord Loch, who was on Lord Elgin's staff in 1857, has written to me pointing out that it is a mistake to believe that Sir George Grey had the honour and responsibility of diverting the troops destined for China to the seat of war in India. The statement is made in Rees's "Life of Sir George Grey," from which I quoted it in the Review, but a comparison of dates shows that Mr. Rees had been misinformed. Sir George Grey has no reason to grudge to Lord Elgin his fair share in sending the reinforcements which saved India.

It is worth while to lay a little stress upon this element in the Imperial factor known as the Monarchy. It is too often ignored. To the immense majority of her subjects the Queen only appears personally as a sympathising woman whose letters of comfort and of condolence always appear after any great disaster that has carried death into a multitude of humble homes. But those who stand within the magic circle of the Sovereign's service are aware that Her Majesty is in a very real sense the fount of honour, and the dispenser of the guerdons to win which men have always been glad to die. Readers of Elizabethan literature do not need to be reminded of the talisman of Empire which England enjoyed in the romantic devotion inspired by the Virgin Queen. Even novel reader with "Westwill remember of their royal spired the that heroicage est deeds of because our tron and cause she sure in being Cynthia or

the modern who is familiar ward Ho!" how the love Mistress inknights

of

to their great

chivalry. But Queen is mawidow, betakes no pleahailed

as

Gloriana, or modern Spen

SIR BARTLE FRERE, BART., P.C., G.C.B., G.C.S.I.
(From a photo by Elliott and Fry.)

joy when he "private let

Queen's com

mand, as was ever experienced by Lord Grey of Wilton on learning the Queen's good pleasure with his pacificatory work in Ireland.

of her gracious Majesty as

"Great lady of the greatest isle, whose light,

We no longer write or sing

Like Phoebus' lamp, throughout the world doth shine,"

but we bask none the less in the rays of her light, and profit more than we can realise in the incentive which the consciousness of her sympathetic eye gives to all knightly souls within the world-wide circuit of the Empire.

Sir George Grey was by no means exceptional in finding a ready and sympathetic listener in the Queen. During his stay in South Africa, Sir Bartle Frere had, at the Queen's desire, written regularly to her, and she had evinced the greatest

interest in, and clearest understanding of, what had passed there. Writing on October 16th, 1880, after his recall, Sir Bartle Frere declared that "nothing could be more kind or more constitutional than the kindness of the Queen to her recalled Governor, and I felt as I travelled home that there were other beings besides Katie's dog who would gladly 'die for the Queen.'

The experience of great Imperial administrators in India resembles that of Sir George Grey and Sir Bartle Frere. Take, for instance, the last letter which Lord Ellenborough, as Governor General, addressed to the Queen :

"Amidst all the difficulties with which he has had to contend in India, aggravated as they have been by the constant hostility of the Court of Directors, Lord Ellenborough has ever been sustained by the knowledge that he was serving a most gracious mistress, who would place the most favourable construction upon his conduct; and he now humbly tenders to your Majesty the expression of his gratitude,

look into the

more striking rallel between Elizabeth

Kingsley, quotes in Ho!" with the letter Walter RaElizabeth's Sir Humin which he

"Her Highto send you wished you as and safety to she were there ing you to have

LORD CLYDE.

(Engraved from a drawing by Mayall.)

those marks of with which it has to him that it is intention to revices, but yet constant support mated all his exmainly enabled India in the cessor in a state peace, the result victories, and in prosperity hereknown."

something of bethan ring in tences. But closely we matter the does the paVictoria and

appear.

for instance, "Westward

admiration which Sir leigh wrote by command to phrey Gilbert,

ness willed me word, that she

great good hap your ship as if in person, desircare of yourself

as of that which she tendereth; and, therefore, for her sake, you must provide for it accordingly."

"Who would not die, Sir," said Sir Humphrey, "for such a woman!" as he showed the letter to Amyas Leigh. But in the letter of our own Queen to Sir Colin Campbell (Lord Clyde) after the relief of Lucknow, there is a passage which is even better than Elizabeth's ::

"Writing on January 19th, 1858, the Queen wrote to Sir Colin Campbell expressing her feelings of pride and satisfaction' at the glorious victories of himself and his heroic troops.' Then she added, But Sir Colin must bear one reproof from his Queen, and that is that he exposes himself too much. His life is most precious, and she intreats that he will neither put himself where his noble spirit would urge him to be foremost in danger-nor fatigue himself so as to injure his health.'"