concluding secret treaties of offensive and defensive alliance with the South German States, the effect of which was to establish a still more powerful Germany, with an overwhelming military force, under the command in chief of the King of Prussia. They were then published at an inconvenient moment to the French Government. Even the design on Luxemburg did not proceed smoothly. The King of Holland was so impressed with Prussian predominance that he would not cede it without Prussia's consent, which gave Bismarck the opportunity of saying that though he would not oppose the cession, neither Iwould he consent to it. Ac

cordingly the King of Holland refused the cession - a fresh rebuff for the unfortunate Emperor. None of the parties concerned were ready or desirous for war at this juncture, and the deadlock at which negotiations had arrived gave a fair opportunity for foreign, chiefly British, intervention; with the result, by way of compromise, that Luxemburg was placed in 1867 under the collective guarantee of Europe, remaining part of Holland, the Prussian garrison being withdrawn. Immediate war was averted, and Prussia at least gained time, while France nursed her indignation, but not apparently her resources and her preparations.

Three short years intervened, and then came the crash of that tremendous struggle which Bismarck foresaw, elaborately prepared for by treaties and

military organisation, and deliberately provoked when his schemes were ripe. Napoleon's empire had been reinstated in power by the votes of 7 millions of Frenchmen in May 1870, foreign affairs were in the hands of Olivier and the Duc de Gramont, England was convinced that peace was assured, and that there was no important question for Europe to deal with, when suddenly a Hohenzollern prince was put forward as a candidate for the throne of Spain. The resentment of France, fanned by the humiliations of the past years, was skilfully roused to a white heat by Bismarck, who was now ready for a war which he knew to be inevitable, and for which he also knew that France was not prepared. He received on a secret mission, as an unofficial envoy from Spain, the man who was the chief advocate of the Hohenzollern succession. He was present at a conference in Berlin of the prince himself, his father, and the King of Prussia. The envoy returned to Spain accompanied by a German officer and a letter from Bismarck to Marshal Prim. The French Foreign Minister was goaded into saying that France would not tolerate a Hohenzollern or any Prussian prince on the throne of Spain, and thus imperil the honour and interests of France. The French people were irritated by what they regarded, and apparently were intended to regard, as an insult and a challenge. The candidature was withdrawn, owing to foreign mediation, but not

marck forced on the war, availing himself of the incident of the Hohenzollern candidature, which was probably a royal family affair. But the French got all the odium of it, and very naturally, for they brought undue violence to bear, first in objecting, and second in not acquiescing in their diplomatic victory. These errors were fatal and grotesque, for France was without allies and without a sufficient and properly organised army. A few weeks delay might have brought Austria and France into line, since the former would have been glad to recover Southern Germany. If Napoleon had been successful at the first, Austria might have joined him. As it was, the Second Empire was overthrown in six weeks, Paris was besieged, and Rome was evacuated. The completion of Italian unity, the one successful project of the Emperor's reign, was achieved at and by his fall, having been started by a campaign which gained him no gratitude, and having been fostered by diplomatic influences and in a manner to which he was hostile. He closed the traditional battlefield of Europe only to fall a victim to that policy of blood and iron which was so ruthlessly pursued in the north. His reign was associated with, and he was an important actor in, all the momentous dramas which filled these fourteen years. He was not man enough to play his part with success. He was opposed by the most unscrupulous statesman of the age, a man of

VOL. CLXXVI.-NO. MLXVI.

enormous power, and in his pitiable failure he is scarcely entitled to compassion. Equally with his so-called uncle he seems to have been without a virtue of any kind, false and untrustworthy, -a selfish conspirator seated on a throne. Our censure of Bismarck's ruthlessness in forcing on an inevitable war is somewhat mitigated, while all pity for the desperation to which Napoleon's folly and political ineptitude had reduced him is destroyed, by the fact which must have been well known to Bismarck, that after he had abandoned his nefarious designs on Belgium, distrustful no doubt of Prussian aid, he had an alternative scheme of union with Austria in an attack on Saxony and Berlin. Negotiations in 1870 had gone very far in that direction. In the spring of that year Napoleon and the Austrian Archduke Albert concerted the plans, which were, "that the allied armies-and it was hoped that Italy might be induced to join the alliance-shall simultaneously invade Germany, neutralise by their presence the forces of the South German States, and ultimately march through Southern Germany on Saxony and Berlin." Napoleon, however, was always more ready with his plans than with the capacity to execute them and to bend the views and wills of others to his own. Austria prudently discovered that it would take her six weeks to mobilise, and as France could mobilise in fifteen days it would be better that she should commence hostilities,

P

and after she had reaped some successes, Austria and Italy could join in. With this project in view, with all its sanguinary and desolating possibilities, for no motive, so far as Napoleon was concerned, but the restoration of his damaged prestige and the security of his dynasty, obviously the element of time was an all-important consideration. Perhaps it may be demonstrated in Bismarck's vindication that his best, if not his only, chance of isolating France was to strike at once; and perhaps not even his military advisers had penetrated the miserable disorganisation by which the Emperor was surrounded.

The fourteen years of history which are spanned in these volumes are as momentous as

any in the last two centuries, if we except the wars of Napoleon. England all this time was absorbed in commerce, finance, parliamentary reform, and the disestablishment of a Church. She made her influence felt in the resuscitation of Italy, but with that exception she did not influence the trend of Continental events. The American Civil War and the Indian Mutiny interested her more closely. There was no hesitation in dealing with the latter. But the uncertainty of aim and vacillation of purpose over the Civil War, with its Alabama difficulty and the payment of an excessive indemnity, did not place the capacity of our statesmen in a very favour

able light. Still our prosperity went up by leaps and bounds while the Second Empire rushed to its fall. In Europe we were temporarily effaced. It was not till the RussoTurkish war arrived that Great Britain by the Treaty of Berlin resumed her old predominance, apparently with the approval of the Continental nations, which, however much they may hate us, find in the authoritative exercise of British influence their best security for peace. In the contest for South African dominion we have displayed our capacity for war on a larger scale and on a distant theatre; we established our authority in Egypt and the Soudan, and at the same time an Anglo-French agreement of peace; we localised the wars between Spain and America, and between Russia and Japan; we have successfully fostered friendship with the United States, and secured the alliance of the great rising power in the Far East. The greatest of British interests, and, looking to the deadly nature of modern war, the greatest interest of the world, is the maintenance of peace; and from that point of view the maintenance of our Empire, which has not been in the slightest degree disturbed by the thrilling events of these fourteen years, is a world-wide interest alike in the East and the West, in the old world of Europe, and in the new world of Greater Britain.

ESSENTIALLY a child of the tides, a fish that loves to give battle to the strong streamsthat is the first characteristic of the sea trout which is brought home even to those casually acquainted with the most active and "sporting" of all the Salmonida; ubiquity, adaptability, specific variation, -these and other attributes too numerous to summarise are the later discoveries of experience of his ways in many waters, from the burn to the salt-water river, from tidal pool to broad lake, from small stream to great river. You approach the study of the seatrout with a prejudice deeprooted by reason of many years of popular acceptance or scientific indifference. You look upon the fish as so closely akin to the salmon, that what is said to be true of the habits and life-history of the one must be true of the other. Both are migratory fish which ascend into fresh water to spawn and descend to salt water to grow. That is their broadest common characteristic. The life of each, after a certain stage, is divided into alternate periods of sojourn in the salt water as a sea-fish, and in the fresh water as a river- or lake-fish. From this dual life arises the puzzling problem, Were the fish originally sea-fish or fresh-water fish? No sooner is the question put than a maze of similar questions confronts the inquirer. Amongst other facts, he remem

bers that the salmon is at the present time more of a seafish than the sea- trout. The name of the latter in consequence strikes him as being something of a misnomer. Yet the scientific nomenclature saves the situation; salar when tacked on to Salmo is a satisfying qualification, though Salmo trutta remains as a mere popular generalisation, based on the superficial resemblance of the two fish in colour, form, and habits.

It is at this point that the inquirer realises that he stands at the parting of the ways. He begins to see that the study of the sea-trout is a separate problem. That the sea-trout is obviously the connectinglink between the salmon and the common trout does not affect the position. By taking the sea - trout separately, you are under no necessity to decide whether the salmon is the seatrout with an ocean range, or the common trout of our rivers and lakes is a degenerate salmon that has forsaken the sea until, after generations of sojourn in confined and niggard waters, it has become a dwindled race.

Dismissing such problems from the purview, the first salient feature of the sea-trout is its range. All the circumstances being considered, it is as great as that of the common trout, while the number of varieties of the sea-trout, due to the operation of similar, if not identical, causes to those