re

ductions, to which they stand committed by the most absolute pledges and promises, has been altogether overlooked. Army, Navy, Civil Service, every branch of public expenditure grows and thrives under their reforming and trenching management; and the Prime Minister, confronted by his violent diatribes against the extravagance of his more economical predecessors, has recourse to the poor and pitiful device of shifting the blame of swollen and everincreasing estimates from the shoulders of Government to those of the House of Commons, elected, be it remembered, on the cry of Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform; and which has been pronounced by Mr Bright to be the best House of Commons ever elected. This excuse, translated into plain English, means that an economical Government is unable to resist the pressure of its extravagant supporters; but it is a little surprising that so scrupulous and high-toned a Minister should consent, even at the bidding of his political supporters, to saddle the taxpayers of the country with an expenditure which he believes in his conscience to be unnecessary, and consequently unjust. But so it is; and the taxpayers of the country now know to their cost, at the end of the fourth session of Mr Gladstone's Administration, that so long as he remains in office their burdens may be shifted, but will not be diminished, even if not perceptibly augmented.

Nor have the ratepayers fared much better than the payers of taxes. True it is that last year, in order to avoid a defeat on Colonel Harcourt's motion, Mr Gladstone accepted it, and a subsidy of £200,000 a-year is now voted in aid of highway maintenance; but the school board and other local rates have more

than absorbed that slight relief, and the only comfort the ratepayers are offered is the promise that, some time or other, after London has been endowed with a brand-new municipality, county boards will be established which may, if they can, effect a diminution of local burdens. Meanwhile, in consequence of this flagrant failure to deal with local taxation, it is satisfactory to note the decided progress made in public opinion towards recurring to the ancient and just system of rating, and bringing, through the agency of the income-tax machinery, personal property under charge for poor-law and other so-called local, but really national purposes.

If, then, in all the great departments of State policy, the failures of the Government have been so numerous and conspicuous, can it be said that individual members of the Cabinet have redeemed general failure by personal success, and that on the retirement of Mr Gladstone, the country and the Liberal party can look forward with hope to a more successful management of public affairs? On the contrary, it is evident that in spite of all the faults of temper and conduct on the part of Mr Gladstone, to some of which we have just referred, he remains the centre round whom converge all the hopes and aspirations of the Liberal party. Cabinet reputation has risen, and hardly one has escaped diminution. In 1880 it is not too much to say that in England Lord Hartington's was as potent a name to conjure with as Mr Gladstone's: at the next election who will invoke it? His individuality is merged in Mr. Chamberlain's; and the weakness of his conduct in sacrificing the Contagious Diseases Act and his convictions, recalling his former capitulation on the question of

No

flogging in the army, has extinguished him as a leader; while the fatuity of his declaration at the beginning of the session, that he hoped six months would be the term of our occupation in Egypt, affords a melancholy measure of his political foresight and statesmanlike wisdom. Sir William Harcourt has of late retired so much into the background that his claims to leadership have retired also; but it is pretty obvious that if revived, they would be seriously contested by Mr Chamberlain and the caucus. That Mr Chamberlain has particularly distinguished himself we will not assert, but he has contrived to keep his name well before the public; and the defiances he hurled at the recalcitrant Whigs, on the occasion of the Cobden dinner, show that if they continue to belong to the Liberal party, they

must be content to act in subservience to him and his coadjutors. Lord Granville's ill-timed appearance at Birmingham, in the wake of Mr Bright and Mr Chamberlain, seems to set the seal to the future absorption of the Whigs in the Radical host; and the country must contemplate the complete ascendancy of the latter in the Cabinet on Mr Gladstone's withdrawal. Timidities like Lord Derby and Mr Goschen, and nonentities like Lord Kimberley and Mr Dodson, can offer no resistance to energy and determination in the persons of Sir C. Dilke and Mr Chamberlain. In leaving the personal aspect of our subject, it would be ungracious not to mention that out of the Cabinet two or three Ministers have favourably distinguished themselves. At the Post-office Mr Fawcett has

achieved great successes; and in the thankless and dangerous office of Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, Mr Trevelyan has shown a courage, energy, and impartiality deserving of all praise. But with these exceptions, and possibly that of Mr Shaw Lefevre, who, having little to do, has done that little well, we look in vain for proof of administrative or oratorical ability in the official hierarchy outside the Cabinet. Of Lord E. Fitzmaurice, Mr Ashley, Mr Cross, and Mr Courtney, it may only be said that they rarely open their mouths without giving unnecessary if unintentional offence.

Of the numerous, and, in some instances, not unimportant defeats sustained by the Government during this session, we have said nothing they have become so frequent as to cease to attract much notice. But under the leadership of Lord John Russell or Lord Palmerston, it is difficult to conceive a Liberal Government accepting such defeats as befell Mr Gladstone on the Affirmation Bill, and Mr Chaplin's motion on the importation of foreign cattle. A Government which can placidly disregard such signs of diminished confidence on the part of the House of Commons, may prolong its existence for another session or two. But failures such as those we have chronicled, gradually but surely produce an effect on the public mind; and whenever a general election takes place, there will be no more successful appeal to the electoral body on the part of our political friends than to the contrast between the extravagant speeches and programme of the Mid-Lothian campaign, and their ignominious failure in the imperial Parliament.

BEAUTY, health, ease, and a charming temper had all combined to hide from an inquisitive world the years that Matilda Wilmot had spent upon it. She looked young she was young. If her skin was as fair, her eyes as bright, and her tresses as luxuriant as they had been twenty years before, not less was her blood as impetuous and her fancy as warm. She still walked, rode, danced, and skated with the best-was the star of the neighbourhood, the theme of every busy tongue, the envy of every jealous heart; and one abominable fact undid it all-Lady Matilda was, O heavens! a grandmother.

"It is the most ridiculous thing," said her brother, and

VOL. CXXXIV.-NO. DCCCXVI.

-POPE.

Think

to

of a smile. "What are we to do? Come, advise me, brother. of something quickly, please." "Ah, but that's it. It's easy say, 'Think of something;' but what the dickens am I think of? There is only one way out of the scrape that I see, and that is for you to marry again, and cut the whole concern here."

"I have been married enough already," rejoined his sister. "Try again, my dear. Your prescription does not suit the complaint, doctor."

"Complaint! Well, I am glad to hear you have the sense to complain at least. 'Pon my word, it's too bad. However, all I can say is, you marry again."

"And all I can say is, I have been married once too often as it is."

"You women have no logic about you," burst forth Teddy impatiently. "Can't you see, now, that having had one bad husband at the start, it's long odds but you get a better to go on with? Can't you see that? Bless me! it's as plain as a pike-staff. It stands

to reason.

"In the abstract. Yes."

"In the abstract? Yes." He had not a notion, poor boy, what she meant, for Teddy was simple, very simple, as perhaps has been already gathered. "In the abstract, if you like. You marry again, anyway; and then — there we are."

"Then there we are," repeated Lady Matilda, with the same cheerful enunciation and the same immovable countenance as before; "but, pardon me, dear Ted, explain a little-how?"

"Don't you see how? I'll soon show you, then. When you marry, I can come and live with you, and we can live anywhere you choose, I am sure I don't care where, so long as it isn't here,

("Abstract husband, no vote," sotto voce observed Matilda.)

"We could go far enough away," proceeded her brother; "we could now, if we had a little more money -if we had not to hang on to Overton. I can't make out sometimes," with a little puzzled expression," I can't quite make out, Matilda, how it is that we haven't more money between us. I thought you had married a rich man."

"Oh, never mind-never mind that; we know all about that." Lady Matilda spoke rather hastily.

"Money is not interesting to either of us, Ted, and I want to hear more about your plan. Tell me what we should do when we had gone away from here, and where to go, and why go at all?"

"As to what we should do! We should do very well. I don't know what you mean by that. And then it's easy enough settling where to go. There are heaps of places, very jolly places, that I could get to know about, once I was on the look-out for them. Places always crop up once you are on the lookout; any one will tell you that." "And now, why should we go

at all?"

"Why?" Teddy opened his eyes, and stared at his sister. "Why? Have I not been telling you why all this time? I do believe you think I like to talk on, for talking's sake." (She did, but never let him know as much, listening patiently till the stream had run dry; but on this occasion Teddy was too sharp, and the subject was too engrossing.) "Why? To get quit of it, of course," he said. "Of it! Of what?" "That disgusting baby."

"Are you speaking of my grandson, sir? Are you talking of a hapless infant only a few hours old, you unnatural monster? Shame upon you! fie upon you, young man! Pray, Mr Edward Sourface, reserve such epithets in future for other ears; and be so good, sir, at the same time, to draw off some of the vinegar which is visible in your countenance, and let me have it presently as a fitting accompaniment to the oil which we shall see exhibited in that of my trusty and well-beloved son-in-law-since one will counteract the other, and thus shall I better be able to digest both. Why, Teddy, what an idiot you are!" said Lady Matilda, dropping all at once her mocking accents, and speaking gently and

playfully; "what an ado you make about the simplest and most natural thing in the world! I am married at eighteen, so of course Lotta improves on the idea, and marries before she is eighteen. I have a daughter, she has a son in every way my child has followed the lead given her, and indeed eclipsed her mother from first to last."

“ Fiddlesticks ! Eclipsed her mother! Lotta!" cried Teddy, with undisguised contempt. "Lotta!" he said again, and laughed.

"Oh, Teddy, Teddy, you are not a good uncle. How can you laugh in that unkind way? Be quiet, sir, be quiet, I tell you; I won't have it. From a grand-uncle, too! Granduncle! Think of that, Teddy, love. Dear, dear,-'tis really vastly surprising, as the old ladies say."

"Vastly-something else," muttered Teddy.

"Mr Grand-uncle," began the teasing voice.

"Oh, shut up, can't you? Granduncle!" said Teddy, with such distaste that it seemed he loathed the very term, independently of its adherence to himself "grand-uncle! Was there ever such bosh? It really

"What I was going to say was," pursued his sister, merrily, "that as the baby is a boy,-and youths under twenty do not usually affect matrimony in this country,-I may be permitted to entertain some hopes that I shall not be converted into a great-grandmother with the same delightful celerity with which I have already been turned into a grandmother."

Then there was a pause, during which the brother looked gloomily out of the window, while the sister found apparently a more agreeable prospect in her own thoughts, for she smiled once or twice before she spoke again. At last she rose from her seat. "I shall go over this afternoon, of course," she said,