not at this moment in quite a satisfactory condition. There the absence of the master's hand may be felt at the helm; and should the vessel go down, even for a moment, into the trough of the sea, it may tax all the energies of a new and a better steersman to right her again. We take it for granted that no move will be made by Lord Derby, or any member of the Tory party, to assume, at this crisis, the direction of public affairs. Had Lord Palmerston died before the dissolution, our wishes as well as our expectations would have gone in a different direction. The Liberal majority in the late Parliament was so small, and the jealousies at work within the party so well known, that, in the event of a vacancy, the Queen (we write it with all possible respect for the prerogative) could have hardly called any other than Lord Derby to her counsels. And then, with Palmerston removed, there would have been no cry at the hustings, except a general profession of loyalty and content. The case is different now. Lord Palmerston lived to dissolve; and, as we took occasion not very long ago to point out, one half at least of the so-called Liberal candidates made no other profession of political faith than that, if returned, they would support Lord Palmerston's Government. Very many of these men meant what they said, and no more. They would go with Palmerston as long as he was there to lead them; but they would not pledge themselves, in the event of his death, to follow his successor. At the same time, they and we equally understood that a pledge to support Lord Palmerston implied something very like a promise to go as far as he might go before them in the direction of Liberalism in the abstract. It would not do for them, now that he is dead, to turn round, without specific given cause, and tender their votes to Lord Derby. On the contrary, they are in honour bound to take their seats, as they

will do without doubt in January next, unshackled indeed-the conditions of their election being fulfilled-but disposed to give the new Prime Minister, whoever he may be, a fair trial. We may not therefore reckon anything upon them, at all events at the opening of the session. And as to the rest of the party, though not a few of them were glad enough to seek shelter under the popular name of the late Premier, they are well known to have gone in for Liberalism to the utmost meaning of the term. From them only bitter hostility to Conservative principles is to be looked for.

With a House of Commons so disposed, and showing a nominal majority of Liberals over Conservatives of sixty or seventy, the Queen can scarcely avoid offering the lead in her councils to some member of the existing Cabinet. And in that Cabinet there are four men, each of whom has a following, and all, in their own estimation, as well as in the estimation of others, have a fair right to aspire to the vacant office. First, there is Mr Gladstone, beyond comparison the ablest and most dangerous of the body-a brilliant orator, a successful financier, and, which is not lightly to be spoken of, a member of the House of Commons. He is old enough to have acquired as much experience as is necessary to the fulfilment of any duties which may be imposed upon him, yet retains the full vigour both of body and mind, with the strongest possible prospect of so doing for at least ten years to come. But, to counterbalance these advantages, Mr Gladstone lacks temper, and does not possess the entire confidence of any section of the party to which he now belongs. The old Whigs personally detest him; the new entertain no sympathy for his High-Churchism and his ultra-Liberalism in secular affairs. The ultraLiberals, while they cling to and endeavour to cajole him, cannot forget that he was once a Tory, and live in the constant dread that his HighChurch bias may carry him back into

Toryism again, if not in name certainly in spirit. The City people, or at least a large proportion of them, and the masters of the money market, like, without entirely confiding in, him. They would rather have him in office, perhaps, than any other public man of the day, but they would prefer his remaining Chancellor of the Exchequer to seeing him Lord Palmerston's successor. And last, though not least, the House of Commons would rather not have him as a leader. We say rather not, because, whether he become First Lord of the Treasury or remain as he is, they know that, with the Whigs in office, he must be their leader. But brusqueries which might be got over when committed by a Chancellor of the Exchequer, would never be endured from a Prime Minister, especially after the experience of Lord Palmerston's manner of management, who never showed his tact and knowledge of human nature so much as when he smoothed down the asperities, which Mr Gladstone's frequent bursts of ill-humour tended to excite. For the present, then, we think that Mr Gladstone may be set aside—that is, if other contingencies do not occur, of the probability of which, among the Liberals, there is good reason to be apprehensive.

Next in order of precedence to Mr Gladstone may be enumerated Lord Granville, Lord Clarendon, and Lord Russell. To Lord Granville's accession there is this fatal objection-which applies, we believe, with equal force to that of Lord Clarendon - that Mr Gladstone would not serve under him; and with Mr Gladstone in the House of Commons either indifferent or hostile to them, there would be an end to the Liberal Government in a week. We must fall back, therefore, upon Lord Russell, and for him, we assume, the Queen will send. We express ourselves thus, because our readers must be aware that, at the moment of our writing, the question of the future

primacy is still open; though we daresay that it will be closed before these pages are submitted to their perusal. Assuming then, that Lord Russell is sent for, and that he undertakes to form an administration, let us see what may be expected to follow.

Lord Russell will either keep the seals of the Foreign Office, with the First Lordship of the Treasury, or he may hand them over to Lord Clarendon. In the former case, even Lord Russell will soon find that he has undertaken an amount of work which he cannot perform. If he give the larger share of his attention to the foreign affairs of the country, his general superintendence of the government must grow proportionately slack, and confusions and misunderstandings in and out of the Cabinet will inevitably follow. If he neglect the Foreign Office we shall have blunders committed there, which it may cost the country rivers of blood and an enormous expenditure of money to rectify. In the latter casethat is to say, assuming that Lord Clarendon is to be our Foreign Minister-we should be glad to know how long the most sanguine of Whigs expects to see this particular wheel in the machine of state working as it ought to do. Lord Clarendon is a gentleman in every sense of the term, but he labours under a defect of character which, unsatisfactory in common men, is fatal to a statesman-he cannot say No. Whether this be the result of a life spent chiefly in diplomacy, or is natural to him, or be superinduced by the bad practice of smoking incessantly, we cannot tell; but the fact is as we have stated it. Now, a feeble man at the Foreign Office, in the present complicated state of affairs on both sides of the Atlantic, would be ruin. Either England would be enticed into truckling to America, and placed in the falsest possible position towards both France and Germany; or, in order to avoid

that disgrace, Parliament would be forced to interfere, and thus war might come upon us before we were prepared for it. Lord Clarendon, be it remembered, has been tried in situations of difficulty before this and found wanting. He was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland during the famine there, and has the merit of having contrived that very original method of dispensing relief, which brought men together in gangs to make roads which were never finished, and led nowhere. He had a secret conspiracy, likewise, to ferret out and suppress; and he did the work with so much deliberation that the conspirators slipped through his fingers. And though he held the seals before at a period when England's course in her relations with foreign powers was obvious to the least scrutinising of outsiders, he contrived to miss it. Lord Clarendon may go to the Foreign Office, but if he do, we and all who feel as we do will find cause to rue it, and so in time will his colleagues.

It is just possible that Lord Russell, not inattentive to these considerations, and interested, as we know him to be, in the diplomatic correspondences which now engage his attention, may take yet another line, and try and possibly succeed in soothing down Mr Gladstone's arrogance, and persuading him to serve, for a while at least, under Lord Granville. We confess that this appears to us very little probable, for two reasons: first, Lord Russell is too old to remain in a state of expectancy; and we all know that he is bent on becoming once again Prime Minister of England before he dies. only man indeed whom he would ever allow to go over his head was Lord Palmerston; and when these two came to their celebrated agreement, it was understood between them that if by any accident Lord Palmerston broke down Lord Russell should take his place, and Lord Palmerston serve under him. That this occurred some

The

years ago is indeed true, as it is equally true that Lord Palmerston never broke down till the hand which controls and binds the strongest set him aside. But we mistake Lord Russell's temperament if it turn out that he is prepared to depart to-day, by a hairbreadth, from the terms into which he entered then. Again, Mr Gladstone will never, we are satisfied, submit to the leadership of Lord Granville. Lord Granville is a younger man than he; and acquiescence in an arrangement, even though understood to be temporary, which should carry the junior over the head of the senior, would, in the estimation of the latter, be tantamount to an acknowledgment of his own unfitness to fill the highest office in the State. Now, Mr Gladstone does not consider himself on any ground unfit to fill the highest office in the State; he believes, too, that the hearts of the people are in his keeping. He is not, indeed, ignorant that the great houses of Cavendish, Russell, FitzWilliam, and suchlike, at once fear and abhor him; and he repays the sentiment with undisguised contempt and scorn. But he is persuaded that Whiggery is extinct beyond the limits of these families; and that the busy, active, working classes, the moneyed interests, and the traders, are all with him; so that, whether they relish it or not, the Whigs must now sail in the wake of the masses. For these reasons, Mr Gladstone is not prepared to acquiesce, even for a day, in such a distribution of places as shall appear to the outer world to mark him as a statesman passed over. We fall back, therefore, on our original idea, that Lord Russell will go to the Treasury, and that somebody or anotherperhaps Lord Cowley, possibly Earl Grey-may join the Ministry, and be placed at the Foreign Office. But however this latter card may be played, it follows that, if played at all, Mr Gladstone continues to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that on him the

leadership of the House of Commons will devolve. We shall be anxious to see how the House accepts Mr Gladstone's leadership; we shall not be without curiosity to learn in what light Sir George Grey, and even Sir Charles Wood, are disposed to regard it. One thing, at all events, is certain enough, that Lord Palmerston, when sickness kept him at home, never intrusted so delicate a charge to the management of his Chancellor of the Exchequer; and what he was too sagacious to attempt, we may well doubt whether his successor will do without finding cause sooner or later to repent it.

Into all these difficulties, and they are both numerous and grave, the death of Lord Palmerston has plunged his party. It was but yesterday, so to speak, that through their organs of the press they blew a note of triumph which was heard from one extremity of the empire to another. They had gained at the elections so many seats-they were so immeasurably superior in the new Parliament to their rivals, that all chance of fighting an unsuccessful battle was taken away. They forgot to add, while so expressing themselves, that their success was owing to one circumstance, and to one only. The country, rightly or wrongly, had unbounded confidence in Lord Palmerston. He was regarded as the very beau ideal of an English statesman. People did not stop to inquire very closely into particular acts of his, far less into his manner of doing them. They were content to accept the results, overlooking much which could not bear inspection; and catching, as it were, their inspiration from his genial and very confident manner of expressing himself, they believed that England was as much respected abroad as she is prosperous at home, and that Lord Palmerston made her so. Hence

the countless protestations, as well from avowed Conservatives as from nominal Liberals, that they were going to Parliament for the purpose of supporting him, whom with a remarkable unanimity they separated, as of set purpose, from the Cabinet over which he presided. All this is now at an end; and there remains but Lord Palmerston's Cabinet without Lord Palmerston for the new Parliament to deal with as it shall see meet. That the Cabinet will not be needlessly harassed, it is scarcely necessary for us to say. With Tory politicians it is a principle to give to the Ministers of the Crown all the support in their power. They never devise plans for getting their rivals into a minority, and then abandon their own principle as soon as they have wriggled into place. The new Prime Minister, even if Mr Gladstone should be he, may rest assured that every possible allowance will be made for the difficulties of his situation. At the same time the Tories cannot allow either the honour or interests of the country to be sacrificed. Any truckling to foreign insolence, any attack upon the principles of the Constitution, will be resisted to the death; and if the Liberal Ministry fall in a battle which they have themselves provoked, theirs must be the blame, as theirs will surely be the scathe.

Since the preceding article was written, Lord Russell has received a commission to form a Cabinet. Lord Clarendon, we believe, goes to the Foreign Office; Lord Cowley returns from the French Embassy, to which Lord Granville succeeds. In other respects, things remain as they were. The lapse of a few months will determine what amount of vitality there is in an administration composed of such materials. For our own parts, we look without the smallest alarm to what is in the future.

GENERAL STUART had received orders from General Lee to march at once, with two of his brigades (Hampton's and Robertson's), two regiments of infantry, and his horseartillery, to the little town of Williamsport, about fifteen miles higher up the Potomac, cross again into Maryland, and by a vigorous demonstration induce the enemy to believe that a large portion of our whole army was manoeuvring against them at that point. Accordingly, we had scarcely fallen asleep when the order was given to mount, and we commenced our rapid march through the chill fog of the morning, cold, hungry, and wet to the skin. But a few hours of hard riding, the genial warmth of the sun breaking through the watery sky, and more than all else, a luxurious breakfast, which was quickly prepared for us at a hospitable house on the roadside, the first regular meal that we had enjoyed

VOL. XCVIII.-NO. DCII.

for many days, revived and refreshed us. About noon we reached the Potomac opposite Williamsport, forded the river, and drove a squadron of Federal cavalry stationed there out of the place towards Hagerstown, a village some six miles distant.

A mile beyond Williamsport we halted, throwing out our pickets and videttes. It was not long before the enemy returned with reinforcements, and a lively skirmish ensued, with even a spirited cannonade; for we made, of course, as a part of our plan, as great a display of our forces and as much noise as possible.

I had here a very striking example of how little effect is often produced by volley - firing. Two companies of one of our infantry regiments which were stationed on the turnpike running to Hagerstown, and had hastily thrown up a small intrenchment across the road,

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