A.D. 1864.]

689

spirits bestriding the animal's back, or perched upon the shoulders of the king himself. At last Stafford House was reached, and the long, fatiguing, exciting journey came to an end. Garibaldi was hoarse and

felt delight at seeing you in our midst; and expressing a fervent desire for the full realisation of your hopes, namely, your country's and the world's freedom, once more-welcome!"

To this the General, leaning upon his stick, and evidently much moved, replied in a few broken sentences. His knowledge of English, never great, was apt to fail him in moments of excitement, and he was obliged to rontent himself with a few disjointed expressions of gratitude and pleasure. His presence, however, was enough, and his speech was lost in the cheering. A carriage drawn by four horses was waiting for him outside the station, to which the eager crowd inside at last allowed the Duke of Sutherland, whose guest he was to be, to carry him away. As it passed through Nine Elms, crowds, kept in order by mounted policemen, lined the roads, the front ranks of which pressed forward to shake the General's hand. At Wandsworth Road a halt was made while a monster procession of trades unions filed past. Upwards of 30,000 men took part in it, and as they passed the General one and all broke out in cheers and cries. Thirty thousand English workmen are a fine sight at any time, but London had more still to offer Garibaldi. To the dense multitude gathered at Vauxhall and Kennington, 30,000 men would have been as nothing. As far as the eye could see, road, windows, roofs were black with human beings, while down the closely-packed ranks ran one huge continuous cheer as the carriage approached. In Lambeth Road farther progress became for a time impossible, in spite of the efforts of the band of Italians preceding the carriage to clear the way. Nor was the enthusiasm less in the richer and more aristocratic portions of the city. Courage and sincerity found their meed here as elsewhere. The sunset on Westminster Bridge over the struggling crowds, and the calm river dotted with shipping beyond, was a sight not easily forgotten. It must have been a proud moment for the man thus welcomed by surging thousands of his fellowcreatures. Such an experience may well send the subject of it on his way encouraged and heartened for the future. And yet, perhaps, there is something sad about the unmeasured, unreasoning homage which humanity pays to those whom it holds to be its benefactors. Are there so few in the world, and is self-devotion so rare a virtue, that it must be acknowledged by such passionate gratitude?

Trafalgar Square was one vast sea of faces as the procession entered it, while along Pall Mall the clubs were lit up, and the windows and balconies filled with spectators. Ladies in gay dresses made bright spots of colour along the house-fronts, and every successive monument and statue was covered with gazers-boys found precarious seats among the medallions at the foot of the Nelson Column, while Charles I. and his horse were almost hidden from view by a band of adventurous

him, and after his introduction to the Duchess of Sutherland, his friends saw his retirement in the care of his host with relief. So far his visit had been an unexampled success; London had given him a noble welcome, as the most cynical confessed. Of the greater part of Garibaldi's stay in the capital little need be said here. He was fêted by the aristocracy, the best houses in London were open to him, while the leaders of society vied with one another in efforts to please and amuse him. Throughout it all he remained his simple unconscious self, unfeignedly pleased by the admiration and attention shown him, but always glad when he could escape the throng round him for a minute or two, and chat in a corner with a friend. He went one evening to the Opera, and the Royal Italian Opera Company celebrated his visit by performing the two great acts of" Massaniello," the fisher-patriot. Two days were spent in going over the Woolwich Arsenal, and in inspecting the great steam-plough manufactory of Messrs. Howard at Bedford. His visit to the Crystal Palace was the most striking event, however, of this period of his stay. From 25,000 to 30,000 people were congregated in the nave and centre transept of the Palace to bid him welcome. All ranks and professions were represented among them, and the great building crowded to the roof was an imposing sight. Garibaldi was received at the north wing of the Palace by the various officials of the Crystal Palace Company, by Mr. Grove, whose versatile genius has done so much for music at Sydenham, in the development of the Saturday Concerts, and by representatives of the Italian committees in London, wearing the scarf of the tricolour. The General addressed these last in Italian, and it was then seen with what vigour and ease he could speak when unshackled by the half-understood forms of a foreign tongue. Afterwards, wheeled along the gallery in a Bath chair, he was taken to the nave, where the assembled thousands of spectators were eagerly waiting. When he appeared the enthusiasm was tremendous. The great Handel orchestra, crowded from top to bottom, was one mass of waving handkerchiefs. Again and again the cheers re-echoed along the nave, to be drowned at last in the "Garibaldi Hymn," which was now familiar to all London. The hymn was the prelude to an Italian concert, performed by Italian singers. The inspiriting tuneful melodies of Italy suited the scene well. In every Italian's face shone that love of and profound admiration for the music of his country with which the followers of classical and German art find it so hard to sympathise. A German orchestra would have broken out in the

Choral Symphony," and so have lent a colossal voice and meaning to the scene; but perhaps the well-known love-songs and battle-airs of Italian opera were, independent of the compliment to the "Liberator," the bost exponents of this gay, pretty scene, and suited best with the red shirts, the flags, the flowers, and the pleased faces

A.D. 1864.]

partment was the object, he resigned the thankless office, giving place to Lord Panmure. Lastly, he took office under Lord Palmerston in 1859, accepting the post of Colonial Secretary, which he held till a few months before his death. He had studied colonial questions deeply, and none would deny him the praise of having administered the affairs of the department with firmness and justice, in a spirit of conciliation towards the colonists, yet with a due regard to the interests and dignity of the mother country. His judgment and political tact were seldom at fault, and were notably exemplified on the occasion of his accompanying the Prince of Wales to America in 1860, when he steadily refused to allow the demonstrations of welcome to the heir apparent to be made the vehicle for the gratification of national or religious rancour, telling the Mayor and Corporation of Kingston that he could not advise the Prince of Wales to accept their proffered hospitality, on account of the extent to which they had permitted their Orange zeal to interfere with the invitation.

Nassau William Senior, the eminent political economist, died this year at the age of 74. He came up to Oxford in the full flush of a self-confident temper, and armed with the weapon of a bright and penetrating intellect, disposed to educate himself after his own fashion, and to contemn what he regarded as the old-fashioned studies and methods of the place. But a seasonable check preserved him from the baneful intellectual consequences which the indulgence of this arrogant temper would probably have entailed. He was plucked at his examination for the B.A. degree; the mortification was great, and some sensible friend suggested that he should go and read with Whately, with the view of retrieving the disgrace. In Whately he found not only the classical tutor that he sought, but a college "don," whose powerful and active intellect, no less superior to vulgar prejudices than his own, he was compelled to respect, and also a friend with whom he maintained from that time an intimate communion of heart and spirit for more than fifty years. The effect of the conjunction of such a tutor and such a pupil was magical; Senior went in again for his examination in a few months, and came out in the first class. He adopted the law for his profession, in the equity branch of it, in which, however, he did not rise higher than to a Mastership in Chancery. In truth, economic science and literature attracted him far more powerfully than law. He was twice elected to the chair of political economy at Oxford, and wrote various works on that science. He was an eminent and representative member of the English school of economists, in whose hands the science of wealth tends to be mathematical and precise, and aims at excluding those moral and sentimental considerations from which most continental economists think that it cannot be disjoined. His mind, remarkable for the clear dry light which it brought to the analysis and classification of facts, was deficient in imagination and sensibility, though it made advances in this direction in the course of his later years, as his journals and letters testify. He was one of the commissioners in pursuance of whose report, founded on extensive investigation, and

71

analysing the baneful working of the old law with extreme ability, the new Poor Law of 1834 was introduced and passed into law. Senior, we believe, was in favour of the rigorous application of the workhouse test, and disapproved the gradual relaxations by which so much of the old plan of outdoor relief has been re-introduced. He died in less than a year after the early friend, the contact with whose noble nature and robust intellect had first taught him to know himself and others, and to recognise the essential limitation of the powers of man.

On the 23rd of April, 1864, exactly three hundred years would have elapsed since the birth of Shakespeare; and before the anniversary arrived there was a general stir in literary and dramatic circles, out of a persuasion that a date so marked should be signalised by a national festival of a splendid character, which would show the world how England honoured her great poet. But it is one thing to resolve upon a festival, and another thing to carry it out. The English system of every man doing just as he pleases, of voluntary and irregular effort, while it conduces to the development of trade and the spread of colonisation, is unfavourable to all that requires unity of design and harmony of arrangement for its successful execution. There was no proper central authority to take the business in hand; whoever, therefore, was most forward and fussy naturally obtained an undue prominence for his views in the programme of festivities; then persons who thought that they had done more for Shakespeare, or had a better claim to be consulted, went about asking, "Who is Mr. So-and-so, or Miss So-andso, that they should stick themselves into such a prominent place? The whole affair will be a dead failure in such hands, and I shall have nothing to do with it." Something, however, was done, and, to some limited extent, well done. A great pavilion was erected by public subscription at Stratford-upon-Avon, which was to serve the threefold purpose of dining-room, theatre, and hall of discussion. On the morning of the 23rd of April, the Mayor of Stratford received, in the Town Hall, an address from the "Free German Institute of Arts and Sciences at Frankfort on the Main," describing in the glowing language of hero-worship the intellectual, and even moral, benefits which the signers believed to have been derived, for Germany not less than England, from the perusal and representation of the immortal dramas of Shakespeare. Professor Max Müller, in presenting this address, delivered a remarkable speech. He urged that hero-worship should henceforward replace for England that veneration of the saints which was so dear to our forefathers." As the height of the Alps is measured by Mont Blanc, let the greatness of England be measured by the greatness of Shakespeare. Great nations make great poets; great poets make great nations. Happy the nation that possesses a poet like Shakespeare. Happy the youth of England, whose first ideas of this world in which they are to live are taken from his pages. silent influence of Shakespeare's poetry on millions of young hearts, in England, in Germany, in all the world, shows the almost superhuman power of human genius. If one looks at that small house, in a small street of a

That

small town of a small island, and then thinks of the worldembracing, world-quickening world-ennobling spirit that burst forth from that small garret, one has learnt a lesson and carried off a blessing for which no pilgrimage would have been too long. Though the great festival which in former days brought together people from all parts of Europe to worship at the shrine of Canterbury exists no more, let us hope, for the sake of England more than for the sake of Shakespeare, that this will not be the last Shakespeare festival in the annals of Stratford-uponAvon. In this cold and critical age of ours, the power

virtue; and there would be something so unreal, so factitious, and so forced in a series of festivals instituted to honour and glorify mere gifts of the intellect, that the common sense of mankind would speedily put them down. It is not Shakespeare tercentenary festivals, nor the familiarity with Shakespeare's plays-no, nor the familiarity with the best that has been said and thought by men of genius in every age-that can rekindle the flame of pure and deep feeling in the breasts of a "cold and critical" generation.

In London, the great memory of Shakespeare was

of worshipping, the art of admiring, the passion of loving what is good and great, are fast dying out. May England never be ashamed to show to the world that she can love, that she can admire, that she can worship the greatest of her poets! May Shakespeare live on in the love of each generation that grows up in England! May the youth of England still continue to be nursed, to be fed, to be reproved and judged by his spirit!"

Grand words, but, alas! words merely. If it be true that persons of literary culture, in certain phases of mind, can be said, without any great abuse of language, to worship the genius of a poet, it is equally certain that ordinary mortals, and persons of culture themselves in their ordinary moods, cannot and do not worship anything of the kind. Men worship, or reverence, not genius, but

honoured in various ways, but the only truly public demonstration was that arranged by the Working Men's Committee. It was resolved to plant an oak in honour of Shakespeare at the foot of Primrose Hill. A young oak sapling was, by the Queen's gracious permission, obtained from Windsor Park; a procession of trades was organised from Russell Square; and after an oration had been delivered by Mr. George Moore, the chairman of the committee, Mr. Phelps, the celebrated actor at Sadler's Wells Theatre, planted the tree, and a Mrs. Banks, sprinkling it with water brought from the Avon at Stratford, christened it "Shakespeare's Oak."

The progress of Rationalism on all sides, and even among the clergy of the Establishment, made itself felt this year in various ways. The same Lord Chancellor,