All these authorities will, however, agree in one thing, that the Sultan is an essential part of the present constitution, if constitution it can be called, of Turkey.

Setting aside then, for the present, any idea of turning the Turks out of Europe,' of substituting some other nation for the Turks in the sovereignty of Turkey, is there any chance of so improving the existing machinery of administration that reasonably good government may be secured? Can the Porte be reformed and extended so as to represent the interests of the Christian as well as the Moslem races? Can a Sultan be maintained who shall be a permanent chief of the Executive, exercising his authority not despotically, but under limitations? Can the diplomatic interference of the great Powers be regulated in any mode which shall not annihilate the independence of the Turkish Government?

These are, no doubt, problems of great difficulty; yet in their solution with the acquiescence of all the great Powers lies the only chance of avoiding the armed interference of some one Power, and a consequent struggle over the spoils of the Turkish Empire, which can hardly fail to end in a general European

war.

Arduous as the task undoubtedly is, it does not seem to us a hopeless one. To arrange for the administration of the several provinces which have claimed, or are likely to claim, local selfgovernment, is not beyond the ordinary powers of diplomacy. What has been already done, within living memory, in Egypt and Roumania, in Servia, Montenegro, and in other parts of the Turkish Empire, may be done again in Bosnia, in Herzegovina and Bulgaria, however the latter province may be defined. Between the virtual independence of Roumania or Egypt, and the scant measure of self-government accorded to Lebanon or Crete, there is a wide field for selecting such a form of provincial government as shall satisfy the reasonable wishes of the people, and secure a nominal suzerainty with payments of a fixed tribute to the Central Government at Constantinople. At present no two of these provinces wish for, or would accept, union with any other. The desire will no doubt come in time; meanwhile its absence removes the only insuperable difficulty to securing the acquiescence of the Porte and of such Powers as Austria. They would have no objection to a number of small States, each independent of its neighbours, and practically self-governed. They would dread any kind of federal union, which might create another great European Sclavonic Power on the Lower Danube.

The first great difficulty is the reform of the Porte, so as to make

the

the Great Council of Constantinople an adequate representative of all interests in the Empire. It is now exclusively Moslem. It must be made to comprehend representatives of other creeds, whose votaries in the Sultan's dominions form important sections of the population. It at present consists in great part of Court parasites and personal favourites of the Sultan. It must be made a permanent body, in which every great interest of the Empire shall find a voice, and every province a virtual representative.

Here, again, we are not expecting more than experience shows to be possible. If we compare the present administration of Egypt with what it was at the beginning of the present century, or even forty years ago, we shall find an instance of a great and gradual amelioration in the Central Government, brought about with the materials which were on the spot, and capable of further ulterior improvement in the direction of European progress. The result may still be far from all we can • desire; but, at any rate, it does not present any hopeless features of immobility or of hostility to European ideas. It might have been well for all parties concerned if, at some periods of recent history, the advice of disinterested external Powers had been more distinctly expressed to the ruler of Egypt, or better followed; but no one can say that there has been any indifference on his part to European opinion, or any want of desire to adopt European ways and modes of government. If the Khedive's diplomatic advisers could only agree as to what ought to be done, there can be little doubt but that the attempt to do it would be made in all good faith.

There is probably among the Sultan's own subjects ample intelligence as to what can be and ought to be done. The great difficulty is to enforce its being attempted with the real intention to do it. In this respect, the power and influence of Great Britain, as the most disinterested friend of Turkey, may be most usefully exerted. But it will require all the pressure which can be brought to bear to obtain effectual guarantees that what is required shall be actually done, and not merely promised.

If this part of the work can be carried out effectually, the necessary limitations of the Sultan's arbitrary powers will follow, as a matter of course, and diplomatic interference of the great Powers may be restricted within narrower limits than has heretofore been usual.

But we must abandon once and for ever the fiction that the Sultan's office is other than a trust. The scope of his duties may be anything from the active head of the whole executive Vol. 142.-No. 284.

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to the titular sovereignty of a Mikado or Grand Lama. If the good fortune of the house of Othman should produce a Sovereign who can comprehend the real necessities of his position only as well as any person of ordinary capacity who has resided for a few years in his capital, the difficulties of the task may be infinitely lessened, even if the Sultan should lack the intelligence of Selim or the energy and firmness of Mahmud II. Otherwise it may require all the pressure which a union of the European Powers can put upon him to effect the necessary reforms without the prelude of a general European war.

It is this difficulty of uniting the European Powers for the persistent pursuit of any common object which is the real problem of the Eastern question-not the mere coercion of Turkey; and it will task all the firmness and temper of English statesmen to direct effectually the influence of the only Power which can approach the subject free from any direct interest in the ⚫ ruin or dismemberment of the Turkish Empire.

If we have succeeded in conveying to our readers our own impressions regarding the present state of affairs in the East, we need scarcely repeat our conviction that the present crisis is one of the most momentous to the whole civilised world which has occurred since the French Revolution; and that it may in its ultimate results produce an upheaving of social forces, and a recasting of dynasties and nations, even exceeding in extent that which we and our fathers have witnessed since the revolutionary outburst of eighty years ago. We believe that England is destined to take a very prominent part in directing, as far as human agency can direct, the course of events arising from the decay of the Turkish Empire. We hold that her position is one of commanding influence, not so much from her great national strength and resources as from her interest in the peace and welfare of the countries concerned, and in the absence of any sordid motives of territorial aggrandisement. We are convinced that the due discharge of England's great national duties requires not abstention from the strife, or political selfeffacement, but a wise husbanding of her strength and influence, to be used only in the cause of justice and of right. We are assured that it is above all things necessary that at such a time the statesmen who grasp the helm of public affairs should feel they have with them, apart from party allies, the cordial support of the British people, and that they should keep their judgment calm and their purpose clear, as they are hurried along amid the whirlpools and breakers of an intricate and perilous navigation.

ART.

ART. VIII.-Life of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort. By Theodore Martin, C.B. Vol. II. London, 1876.

THE

HE Second Portion of the Narrative of the Life of the Prince Consort' fulfils the rich promise of the first, and confirms the singular felicity which secured the choice of a biographer so well qualified to do justice to a theme, of all others, the most difficult to treat with equal freedom and discretion.

Rare, indeed, are the qualifications indispensable to the writer of such a Life as this; of a Prince who but yesterday was a living presence in our midst; whose words and actions were a part of contemporary English and European history; who was the beloved Consort, the intimate confidential counsellor of a reigning Queen. Not only should the biographer bring to his work a wide and various culture, a trained comprehension of public affairs, a keen historic sense, a constant tact, discrimination, and discernment, a perfectly disinterested and dispassionate habit of mind; he should know how to arrange and set in order his narrative with a due regard to proportion, and, above all, he should abound in sincerity and simplicity, and let the Life he is portraying tell as much as possible its own tale without superfluous comment.

These conditions of success in a most arduous and anxious task are, it seems to us, fully satisfied by Mr. Theodore Martin, who, in this second volume, combines, to a larger extent than in the preceding chapters, the historian with the biographer, equally unobtrusive and unembarrassed in either capacity; whether in recounting the events of a year of Continental revolutions and reactions, or in the exposition of questions and measures of domestic policy, always perspicuous, accurate, and succinct. In the occasional glimpses which the Life affords of the home and family life of the Prince, it would not have been difficult for a biographer less sure of his own good taste and feeling to have marred the charm of such passages by misplaced emphasis. Mr. Martin's discretion is never at fault, and he has used the materials unreservedly confided to him by the Queen in a manner that leaves nothing to be desired by the most curious reader or regretted by the most fastidious.

In the concluding pages of the first volume the Revolution of February, with the sudden overthrow of the dynasty and government of Louis Philippe, and the crowd of hurrying consequences of that catastrophe, found the Prince Consort less astonished perhaps than the victims or even the victors of those disastrous days. All these movements were watched by him

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with the closest and most vigilant attention, and, more especially as regarded Germany, with the most anxious interest. In the first volume of the 'Life' we have seen by his Memorandum on German affairs how clearly he had calculated the means and methods by which alone violent changes might be prevented, the national institutions re-invigorated and reformed, and the common cause of liberty and unity be advanced, without spoliation or disturbance, if the King of Prussia had courage and constancy enough to lead the way. Unhappily, that element in the calculation was wanting; the King was a fervid and irresolute sentimentalist, alternately caressing a maddened popu lace, and repudiating the aspirations of an enthusiastic people. Prince Albert and his excellent old friend and teacher, Baron Stockmar, both desired to see the Fatherland in the enjoyment of a substantial national unity, and of public liberties; but the veteran statesman twitted his pupil with having too much faith in the dynastic evolution of constitutional reform, and with looking at German affairs from a British point of view. Both, however, discerned in Austrian jealousy the most dangerous enemy to German aspirations, and in Prussia the natural and rightful champion of the German cause.

With regard to Italy, we have seen by the Prince's Memorandum on Lord Minto's strange and questionable mission in 1847, how firm a friend he was to the cause of Italian independence, how clearly he discerned the dangers and difficulties besetting it, and how decidedly he urged that England should insist upon the right of every State to manage its own affairs, without the interference of any foreign Power. In all the Prince's counsels we discover the constant principles of justice and moderation, the conviction that national liberties must be organically developed, not artificially imported or imposed; the abhorrence of all despotisms, whether of monarchs or of mobs. Such, indeed, were the principles he had been taught by Baron Stockmar, whose somewhat grim humour and doctorial stiffness of style are the only characteristics of an almost instinctive aptitude for statesmanship, which remind us that he was not an Englishman born. In his political ideas and sympathies the Baron was, in all but a certain superiority of culture, and a tendency to clothe his principles in abstractions, as thoroughly English as the most loyal and devoted subject of the British Crown.

There were not wanting in those days in the metropolis and in the great provincial centres needy and unscrupulous agitators, harebrained enthusiasts, miserable plagiarists of the Parisian revolutionary heroes, who did their little worst to provoke dis

turbance