the machinery into working gear after their departure. It is on the manufacturing and commercial classes that the blow would fall heaviest, and they should be ever watchful that we are prepared to award it. We do not doubt that patriotic indignation would overpower all other considerations at the last; and even Mr Bright, whom we have treated rather unceremoniously at the beginning of this article, be found haranguing the Manchester operatives on the necessity of keeping their powder dry, and their mills from capture. After all, it is the lower orders who must decide how long the contest can be prolonged, and history does not show that the peasant is less jealous of his country's honour than the peer, nor can any man say beforehand what wretchedness the populace will not submit too, rather than pass under the yoke. Take the sieges in the Netherlands, or in Spain. According to Sir A. Alison, at the siege of Saragossa, when the garrison was perishing of fever and famine, those suspected of desiring accommodation with the enemy were hung in the market-place; and when Palafox signed a favourable capitulation after fifty-four thousand had perished, and six thousand corpses lay unburied in the streets, it was with difficulty that the ruling junta prevented an insurrection for the purpose of carrying on the contest to the last extremity.

An invasion of England would certainly be a desperate undertaking. To attempt it, the Emperor must be at peace with all Europe, or he could not collect a sufficient army. He must utterly demolish our Channel fleet, or never hope to return to France. If both these points are in his favour, he may land; but before he can carry off the Duke of Wellington's statue to grace the Invalides, he must prove that Englishmen cannot fight on their native soil, as they fought at Badajos, at Vittoria, or Waterloo.

P.S.-Since writing the above remarks, we have seen the Ministerial statement of Monday evening. Government propose to carry out the recommendation of the Commissioners, and look to the country for

VOL. LXXXVIII—NO. DXXXVIII.

£11,000,000, of which, however, only £2,000,000 are required this year. We have advocated delay in the construction of these fortifications (and that of the landward defences only), in order to have a comprehensive report on the defences of the United Kingdom laid before Parliament, in lieu of, or in addition to, this report regarding our dockyards. There is plenty of time for this before next February. By defences we do not mean fortifications only, but men, guns, and rifles. The first thing in a fortress is plenty of men, and provisions for them; the next, plenty of guns, and ammunition for them; last, and least, the ramparts and ditches. Where a garrison is large, -15,000 or 20,000 men, for instance, -the difference in their influence on the defence between the very best and very worst fortifications is not twenty per cent. The public, now more accustomed to military subjects, has got to understand that the "stupen. dous fortifications" of Sebastopol were a myth that Todtleben did wonders, but could not perform miracles. In fact, his works were not equal to those of a fifth-class fortress. It was the men and guns that held out Sebastopol for so long. Sebastopol was fortified in a fortnight; our fortifications are to take three years: and if their sieges begin this decade, and last in proportion to Sebastopol, they will be surrendered by garrisons yet unborn. The practical deduction which we wish to enforce is, that strong garrisons can defend weak fortresses, but strong fortresses cannot protect weak garrisons. course, if you can get a strong garrison and a strong fortress, so much the better, and our dockyards are well worthy of both. We must not have all to do at the declaration of war. Some organisation for the distribution of firearms among the population-some plan on which garrisons are to be furnished by volunteers-is required. If this is all cut and dry in the War-Office, may we not have a peep at it? We have had too much of ships without sailors to desire forts without soldiers.

Of

We are glad to see Mr Sidney Herbert does not propose surrounding London with forts. We do not,

M

however, despair of seeing an intrenched camp constructed such as has been recommended in this article, and which we are confident would be the best system of defence, both as regards efficiency and economy. If ever an enemy marches on London, the proper way for our army and levée en masse of Londoners to afford each other mutual support, is, not to be mixed up together, but to have a post assigned to each for which they are fitted the Londoners to man the suburban enclosures, where discipline and military formations would be of little avail; our army to remain compact in a strong camp clear of the suburbs, and operate on the enemy's rear if they tried to pass onwards. The invader would thus have an undisciplined but brave force in his front on ground where discipline was of little use, and a regular army to contend with in rear, where military manœuvres were more practicable. If our army loses a battle near the coast, it will lose all its artillery, as is always the case after a defeat in an enclosed country. They ought to have some place on which to retire and refit, and where could this be so well done as near Woolwich? As

regards economy, a camp covering ten square miles, at ten miles from London, would surely not cost more than £400 an acre, and two square miles would amply suffice for the forts necessary to render it impregnable if held by an army; leaving eight square miles of ground to remain under cultivation or pasture. The ground need not even be bought outright; the power of forbidding enclosures or buildings would suffice. We have already said we should be prepared to meet an enemy both on the side of Surrey and Essex, but we might commence with one camp on the Surrey side, and £2,000,000 would more than cover the whole expense. We believe this scheme will bear the strictest investigation by military men, and it would be very useful, when the cry is raised of "Wolf!" to have some dog to point to with which we could throttle him. John Bull knows London is open to attack, and will have something in the shape of fortifications to swear by. An intrenched camp can be held either by regulars or volunteers; so, with 2,000,000 people close at hand, we should never be at any loss for a garrison.

FEW celebrated men have suffered more injustice at the hands of posterity than John Grahame of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee. A perverse fate seems to have pursued his memory. Falling upon evil days, and playing an important part in the closing scenes of a dark and tragic period, it is not to be wondered at that his acts should have been misrepresented, and his character distorted, by contemporary malice and falsehood. But the ill fortune of Claverhouse has pursued him to our own times. Sir Walter Scott once remarked, with perfect truth, "that no character had been so foully traduced as that of the Viscount of Dundee that, thanks to Wodrow, Crookshank, and such chroniclers, he, who was every inch a soldier and a gentleman, still passed among the Scottish vulgar for a ruffian desperado, who rode a goblin horse, was proof against shot, and in league with the devil."* Unhappily it is not among the Scottish vulgar alone that misconception as to the character of Dundee has prevailed. It is indeed only very lately, and principally in consequence of the reaction produced by the unscrupulous virulence of recent attacks upon his memory, that investigations have been made, which have placed his character in a truer light, and removed the load of obloquý under which it has so long and so unjustly lain. True as Sir Walter Scott's instincts and sympathies were, even he has admitted into his masterly portrait of Claverhouse some touches darker than can be justified by what we now know of his character. This is to be attributed partly to the fact that many circumstances have come to light since Old Mortality was written, and partly to the excellences of Sir Walter Scott's own character, which became, by excess, defects. His acquaintance with the times of which he wrote was profound; his power of reproducing the character he depicted-of evoking not merely

the form and lineaments of the dead, but of breathing into that form the very soul by which it had been animated-was unequalled by any but Shakespeare himself; and his mind was far too great, his sympathies too catholic, and his disposition too generous, to permit him to pervert this power to the service of party aims, or the promulgation of his individual opinions and predilections. His fault lay in the opposite direction. His opponents found more than justice at his hands, whilst those with whose opinions and characters he sympathised, sometimes found less. He has adorned Balfour of Burley with a wild heroism far higher than should be awarded to the savage murderer of Archbishop Sharpe, and has dealt out but scant measure of justice to the accomplished and chivalrous Grahame of Claverhouse.

Lord Macaulay's errors were of a different kind. They proceeded from a too eager partisanship, a too fervid attachment to the creeds and traditions of the party to which he belonged. We have never grudged our share of the tribute universally and justly paid to the eloquence, the power, the varied research, the vast knowledge, which combine to chain the reader by a magical influence to the pages of his History. It stands like that fair cathedral, whose unfinished towers are reflected in the waters of the Rhine, a mighty and a beautiful fragment. We trust that no feebler hand will attempt its completion; and we indulge with pleasure the belief that future volumes would have redeemed the injustice into which his impetuous temperament, his love of striking and picturesque effects, and sometimes a natural, though dangerous, delight in the exercise of his own powers, have too often betrayed the historian.

There are few occurrences in life that so deeply impress the mind and touch the heart, as when a noble antagonist is struck down in the full vigour of his powers. The eloquent

him, any one of which he might select to punish the audacious poet. Nor, we conceive, would Lord Macaulay have denounced him as "wicked and profane."

To descend from kings and statesmen to "mortal men and miscreants," we remember when the "Olympic Devils" was the most popular of all amusements. It was in our younger days, when, in that pleasant little theatre behind the Strand Church, men, and women too, who, we trust, were not of any extreme wickedness, used to " play at the torments of hell," and certainly to call each other by very diabolical names. Yet the chief of that Tophet in Wych Street, an actress of distinguished beauty and professional skill, was, we trust, neither rapacious nor profane, and certainly not of violent temper nor obdurate heart, and has left a name which, wherever the English race is settled on the face of the globe, is mentioned with a peculiar energy of anything but hatred.

*

To come to more important matters: When Lord Macaulay asserts that Claverhouse was one of those whose conduct "goaded the peasantry of the Western Lowlands into madness," he shows an utter disregard both of facts and dates. There is probably but one opinion now as to the insanity of the attempt to force Episcopacy upon Scotland. But Prelacy was restored in May 1662; the ministers were ejected in the month of November in the same year. The Court of Ecclesiastical Commission commenced its proceedings in 1664. The military oppressions raged in 1665.§ The insurrection which terminated in the defeat of Pentland took place the following year. Then followed countless executions, civil and military.

The

boot and the gibbet were in constant employment. In 1668 the life of Sharpe was attempted by Mitchell. In 167 0, rigorous laws were passed against conventicles; at the same time, the tyranny and insolence of Lauderdale excited universal hatred and disgust. In 1676 the proceed

ings of the Government became even more severe. "Letters of intercommuning," as they were called, were issued, denouncing the severest penalties against all who should afford meat, drink, or shelter to an outlaw. The field-preachers were hunted down by the soldiery, but their hearers rallied round them, and contests, frequently bloody and often of doubtful issue, occurred. The Bass was converted into a prison, the dungeons of which were crowded with captive ministers, and the Highland host was called in to ravage the unhappy Western Lowlands at the latter end of 1677.¶

These were the outrages by which the country was "goaded into madness." But Claverhouse had not, nor could he have, any part or share whatever in them. He was absent from the country during the whole of the time during which they were committed, and did not return to Scotland until the early part of the year 1678.** The first mention of him that occurs in Wodrow is in May 1679, immediately before the skirmish of Drumclog. Lord Macaulay had Wodrow before him-he refers to him as his sole authority for this passage; yet it is upon Wodrow's pages that the dates and facts are to be found which contradict his deliberate and often-repeated assertion.

Lord Macaulay selects five instances of the crimes "by which the peasantry of the Western Lowlands were goaded into madness." An ordinary reader would certainly infer from his language that Claverhouse was concerned in all these instances, and would be somewhat surprised, after perusing Lord Macaulay's narrative, to find, on turning to his authority, that in three out of the five cases Claverhouse had no share whatever, and that in a fourth he acted the part of an intercessor for mercy, and exerted himself in vain to save the life of the victim. In the most cruel of all-that of Margaret Maclachlan and Margaret Wilson-we find, on referring to Wodrow, that a Colonel Graham was concerned, but it was Colonel David

**