says so, and Mr. Bradlaugh himself tells us that the Prince of Wales is heir apparent to the Throne by virtue of the Act of Settlement. Then comes the most remarkable sentence that ever was penned by a bewildered republican. Thus writes the advocate of an English republic: "Let him (the Prince of Wales) be elected or rejected on his own merits and qualifications for the kingly office." So Mr. Bradlaugh approves of "an elective monarchy-republic" ! Is the Crown to be submitted to competitive examination? May Mr. Bradlaugh as well as Albert Edward be a candidate for the high office? Or is the Prince of Wales to be tried by judge and jury? Mr. Bradlaugh has queer ideas of law and justice. Parliament is forthwith to enact that, "The Throne shall be no longer filled by a member of the House of Brunswick," but on the demise of the Crown Albert Edward is to be elected or rejected on his merits. His Royal Highness is to be first executed and afterwards tried. If Mr. Bradlaugh could be as successful in assailing the Throne as he is in demolishing his own arguments the Prince of Wales would never be King of England.

I do not propose to follow Mr. Bradlaugh in his charges against the government of the Georges, because whether they are true or false they have no more to do with the question raised by Mr. Bradlaugh than they have with a mathematical problem. Let us admit that one early act of George I. was to purchase for the sum of £250,000 Bremen and Verdun." Let us admit "that George II. repeatedly signed treaties pledging England to the payment of enormous subsidies." Let us admit that George III. was responsible for the loss of the American colonies. It would be easy enough to show that since the revolution of 1688 the monarchs of England have not ruled without the consent of Parliament, and that therefore some part of the nation at least was conjointly responsible for the policy of the King's Government. But we will let that pass. We will, for argument's sake, agree with Mr. Bradlaugh, that for all that has been done amiss, for all the national ills we have suffered, our kings are solely responsible. Our wars were their wars, and against our will and welfare. The Great Rebellion was in vain; and, though shipmoney was abolished, the House of Brunswick has, against our will, burdened us with a debt of £800,000,000. The Brunswick monarchs have filled the butchers' shops with great blow-flies, and diseased the potatoes. What then? This is a world of weal and woe. If all the woe is to be charged against our monarchs, we must perforce give them credit for all our weal. If the King is held responsible for the blight, he may justly claim our gratitude when the harvest is VOL. X., N.S. 1873.

N

plenteous. Now what, I ask, is the condition of our Empire? It is a condition of unsurpassed greatness, glory, and prosperity. The sceptre of England is acknowledged in the five quarters of the globe. The standard of England is planted in Africa. We govern the West Indies. The grim rock of Gibraltar is the stately monument of our naval supremacy in Europe. We have ports in China. The vast Dominion of Canada is affiliated to the British Crown. The Australias, the last discovered world, the countries of unspeakable riches, are our colonies. The Queen of England is also Empress of India. Our language is the language of America and Australia. It is in Africa the language of freedom to the negro, and in India the language of command. Our ships crowd the pathways of the ocean, and are seen in every port. Our commerce is the wonder of the age. Our wealth is beyond calculation. In science and in literature we hold the foremost rank. We rejoice in the political liberty the lovers of freedom in other ages and in other countries have vainly sighed for, fought for, and died for. I say that it is under the monarchy of the House of Brunswick that we have attained to this supreme dominion, wealth, and honour. I do not say this unprecedented prosperity and this exceeding weight of national glory are due to the wisdom and conduct of our kings. I hold that the monarchs of the reigning house have effectively done the work they had to dofor, by their occasional resistance to the popular demands, they have prevented reform being hurried into revolution; and our Queen is an example to all constitutional monarchs. But it is to the blessing of God, and to the wisdom and conduct of the nation-and "the Nation" means the Lords as well as the people, and the Sovereign as well as the Lords and people-that we must ascribe the national might and majesty that the most ardent and sanguine patriot could not have dreamed of in 1688. But I say that if we are so foolish as to charge the monarchy with our failings, it must also be credited with our triumphs. I say, as I have before said, that if the House of Brunswick is to be judged by the condition of the Empire, and if we compare it with what it was when the Act of Settlement gave the Throne to the Protestant granddaughter of James I., and her heirs, then, so far from denouncing the Act of Settlement, we find only reasons for gladness that the Princes of Brunswick have been our kings.

Mr. Bradlaugh concludes his reply to my criticism with a paragraph in which he virtually brands himself with monstrous and graceless folly. He writes:

I am only a plain, poor-born man, with the odium of heresy resting on me and the weight of an unequal struggle in life burdening me as I move on. That I

have ambition to rise in the political strife around me, until I play some small part in the legislative assembly of my country, is true. If I live, I will.

So this person, who tells us that he is a plain (by which, I suppose, he means uncultured), poor-born man (an un-English reflection on his parentage), with the odium of heresy resting on him (a fact that it is shameful for him to parade in a political discussion), and having an unequal struggle in life burdening him (which, I presume, signifies that Mr. Bradlaugh bemoans not being born to riches, and having to earn his daily bread), this person is resolved that if he lives he will get into Parliament! And if any constituency elects Mr. Bradlaugh he will be received at Westminster. Not lack of culture, nor humble birth, nor poverty, nor heresy will prevent him from sitting in the British Parliament. In no Republic, past or existing, is completer freedom to be found, and no Republic that may be devised can confer upon its citizens greater liberty than Mr. Bradlaugh confesses he enjoys as a British subject. Yet he vilifies a Constitution, and seeks to overthrow a settled order of government, that enables him -a plain, poor-born man, with the odium of heresy resting on him, and the weight of an unequal struggle in life burdening him-to declare that he will, if he lives, sit in the Parliament of the greatest empire of the world. Hereafter, when Mr. Bradlaugh assails the monarchy, he should use only abuse and carefully eschew arguments of which the premisses are false, the conclusions illogical, and by which he is self-convicted of senseless ingratitude.

JOHN BAKER HOPKINS.

F

A GARDEN IN SURREY.*

any of our classical readers should chance to have entertained hitherto even the shadow of a shade of doubt as to the real existence of Virgil's "Corycius Senex" in the flesh,

let him henceforth own that that shade is dispelled, for that at Wallington, in the parish of Beddington, near Croydon, less than fifteen miles from London, resides the venerable sage whom Virgil has immortalised under that name, and he has lately written a book, which, if it were only in poetry instead of prose, would easily pass muster as a fifth Georgic, on Horticulture.

But Mr. Smee is not a poet; he is a practical man; he is well known in the City of London as chief medical officer of the Bank of England, and as the busiest of busy men in other matters of a commercial, as well as of a scientific nature. He has found time, however, -at the beginning and end of the day, we presume to bring into successful cultivation a small estate of which he is the owner, and which, as he tells us in his preface, he regards in a twofold light; firstly, as "an experimental garden, designed to obtain information," and secondly, as "a practical garden, from which his residence in town is supplied with vegetables, fruit, and flowers." The book which he has lately published under the title of "My Garden," will serve to justify this twofold "end and aim."

It appears from a perusal of the second chapter of the work before us that when he entered upon his land at Beddington, what now is Mr. Smee's garden was a peaty bog, across which he could not walk However, he at once set to work to remove the cause of offence by taking in hand and fairly mastering the river which ran through it and which he regarded as an enemy that could be turned into friend;

Multâ mole docendus aprico parcere prato.

He "lowered the central brook, made a second stream parall with the river, and another crossing the garden at right angles nor was he victorious on the waves alone: he conquered also the pe and the sand; studied the nature of the chalk soil of the district i mediately adjoining his property; introduced a system of draina

* My Garden: its Plan and Culture. By Alfred Smee, F.R.S. (London Bell and Daldy. 1872.)

suitable to the locality and the purpose in hand; and, by a judicious management of soils and manures, and by other scientific applications, he "made the desert smile."

It does not fall within the scope of the present paper to give a detailed account of the way in which, step by step, Mr. Smee overcame the difficulties which nature placed in his way, and did for his garden on the banks of the Wandle-the "blue transparent Vandalis" of Pope -what the monks of old did for the once barren lands which by their labour and skill blossomed into the fair demesnes of Glastonbury, Beaulieu, and Tintern. But the work of Mr. Smee is one which has,

and must ever have, a special interest for SYLVANUS URBAN and his numerous readers, as embodying, inter alia, an admirably written account of the topography of Carshalton, Beddington, and the neighbourhood.

Flint instruments have been found, scattered over the district, in sufficient quantities to show that the neighbourhood was inhabited at a very early period. Equally distinct is the proof of Roman occupancy; and the discovery of a Roman house in situ, just at the east of Beddington Park, with the ground plan of its chambers still clearly distinguishable, could leave no room for doubt on the subject. Near this building were found specimens of Roman pottery and coins of the reigns of Commodus and Constantine, one at least of which was struck at Colchester. It is well known, we may add, that the Roman road known as Stane Street must have run through or near Beddington, on its way from the South Coast to London, though no actual traces of it remain at the present day; and some antiquaries have not hesitated to place near the same locality the Roman town Noviomagus-the site of which has been so long and so keenly