Of one thing the citizens of the Federal States may rest assured: that, if ever the time arrives when the Confederate States may be entitled, according to the usual course of international policy, to claim our recognition, that recognition will not be delayed for an hour out of regard to all the menaces which the disappointed party may fulminate against us.

If anything could make the nation depart from its resolution to observe a strict neutrality in this unhappy contest, it would be the perpetration of that cruel and vindictive act which has just excited indignation alike in England and in Francewe mean the destruction of Charleston Harbour. In the course of military operations it may become necessary to destroy a harbour which is so situated as to menace us with peculiar danger. But when we read of ships filled with masses of rock being sunk with the avowed object of making permanently unfit for the purposes of commerce a harbour not menacing to the enemy, and whose existence is so vitally important to the country in which it is situated, we seem to be carried back to the worst ages of barbarism. It is an act which will weigh heavily against the North in the judgment of history. Such an act of ruthless spite must be viewed as a convincing proof that the Federal Government has no serious expectation of recovering its footing in the South. The Northern press speaks of the effect in a tone of exultation, as a silent blight falling on the South, deadly and inevitable.' The whole world denounce it as an act of cowardly revenge-as a step deliberately adopted by the North, with the declared object of starving half a continent into submission. It is intended that the seaboard of the Atlantic, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, shall be rendered for ever inaccessible to the merchant ships of the world. The question therefore is not one of isolating a colony or a province, but of cutting off from the great family of mankind a population larger than that of many an European kingdom. Other nations may possibly feel themselves called upon to ask, How long is the North to be allowed to keep under the ban of its interdict so vast a portion of the New World? Does any one out of the Federal States believe that it is possible to restore the Union? What ground has really been recovered by the Northern States? What signs of a submission or desponding spirit has the South yet made? How many battles might the Confederates lose without being forced to submit? It is impossible to lose sight of these considerations in determining what the policy of other Governments should be; indeed it is probable that they may be tempted rather to accelerate than delay the recognition of the independence of the

the South, as the readiest means of putting a stop to that cruel and useless war, which is hurrying one at least of the contending parties into new and lamentable excesses.

The sympathy of Europe with the South would, no doubt, be greater, if it were not for an uneasy suspicion that the success of the Confederate States would be a triumph of the cause of Slavery. But we think it probable, on the contrary, that if it were on other grounds desirable to recognize the independence of the Southern States, the evils of slavery might be greatly mitigated. Terms might be made with the States as a condition of their admission into the family of nations. It might be insisted, for instance, as a sine quâ non, that the laws against the Slave-trade shall be rigorously enforced, instead of being, as they are now, too often violated.

The new Republic would have ambassadors at foreign Courts, and the pressure of public opinion upon the question of domestic slavery would bear much more directly and forcibly on its policy than can possibly have been the case while the Southern States were members of the Union. To use the words of an American writer, quoted by Mr. Spence, 'It has shielded their peculiar institution from the hatred and hostility of the civilized world.' Whatever opprobrium was cast upon the slave-owner, it was shared by the whole nation, for the nation had solemnly recognized slavery as part of its institutions. The North could not interfere with it without exposing itself to the charge of breaking the terms of partnership and violating the Constitution. But no such difficulty will occur when the Confederate States are brought face to face with Foreign Governments. There would be no irritating sense of injustice to prevent the voice of humanity from being heard; and we may confidently hope that if the Confederates shall succeed in establishing their independence, large concessions will from time to time be made, all of which will be in favour of the slave. As to the Federal States, as has been long ago observed, in proportion to the sincerity of their hatred of slavery ought to be their joy that they have parted with it for ever. Secession has done for them what all the efforts of Abolitionists could never have effected. It has purged-or, at all events, when the independence of the South is recognized, it will purge the dark stain from their boasted shield of freedom. They will be able to repeat, without blushing at their own inconsistency, the words of the Declaration of Independence, We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that amongst these are life, liberty, and the

pursuit

pursuit of happiness.' There is not a single benefit they ought now to enjoy which they will lose by the independence of the Confederate States; for we do not call the power of exercising the lust of conquest a benefit either to themselves or to mankind. And we deny that they ought to have the right to protect their manufactures at the expense of the South, and enrich themselves by impoverishing their neighbours. But if they persist in the visionary scheme of restoring the Union by force of arms, they will proclaim to the world that they prefer power to justiceextent of territory to the happiness of a people-and the dominion of tyranny to the equality of freedom.

NOTE to the Article on 'Shelley,' Vol. 110.

We are informed, upon the highest authority, that Dr. Lind, whom Mr. Hogg has represented as a tutor and physician at Eton, who taught Shelley to curse George III. and Shelley's father, was in fact no tutor, and in no way connected with Eton; but was a physician residing at Windsor, devotedly attached, up to the day of his death, to King George and Queen Charlotte (from whom he and his family had received nothing but kindness and benefit), and incapable of invoking curses upon any one. It seems probable that any statement which Shelley may have made to Mr. Hogg on this subject was made (like so many of Shelley's statements) in jest, and that he named Dr. Lind as the most unlikely person he knew to have instructed him in such wickedness.

ART.

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.1. Hutchins's History of Dorset. New Edition. Parts I., II. Blandford.

2. Murray's Handbook for Travellers in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset. London, 1859.

3. The Bath and West of England Agricultural Journal. Vols. VIII. and IX.

4. Poems in the Dorset Dialect. By William Barnes. London, 1848.

5. Notes on Ancient Britain. By William Barnes. 1858. 6. Hwomely Rhymes. By William Barnes. London, 1859. 7. Celtic Tumuli of Dorset, with Map. (Printed for Subscribers.) By Charles Warne, F.S.A.

HE English counties appear from time immemorial to have carried on a quiet and harmless dispute for the title of 'the garden,' just as the Greek cities used to vie with one another for the credit of having given birth to Homer, and no less than four old topographers have recorded their votes in favour of Dorset. It is hard to say why, seeing that the 'sheepwalk of England' would be in every way a fitter handle to this county's name. Preserving a strict neutrality, however, with reference to the point in debate, we may safely say with Bowen -who wrote a Complete System of Geography' a hundred years ago that both for rider and abider' there are few pleasanter counties in the land-an opinion which Charles II., who had good reason to remember the neighbourhood of Charmouth, is said to have anticipated with some enthusiasm.

6

6

The name of Dorset comes straight from the Thorn-sætta' of Asser and the Dornsætta' of other writers, by which they meant to represent the Dwrn-gwys' of the Britons. What that word signified is a question. It has usually been deemed enough to say that the Belgic Durotriges were so called because they were dwellers by the sea, and dwr' stands for 'water.' But if the Britons of Dorset had a seabord, the Britons of Devon, Hants, and Sussex had one too; and Mr. Barnes, the county poet and antiquary, has stoutly maintained that the name, so explained, is by no means distinctive enough. His notion is Vol. 111.-No. 222.

U

that

that Wareham was the chief town of the district, not the mighty hill-fort of Maiden Castle, as it has been the fashion to suppose. He finds that this capital was called Durinum, 'the town by the little water' or 'little sea,' and sees reason to identify that name with Wareham, at that time a seaport-town on Poole Harbour, the waters of which have long since retreated, and left Wareham high and dry. The Durotriges would then be the men of the little sea,' the people whose chief town was Wareham. This theory is worth the notice of those who are curious in such matters, as the town certainly seems to have been almost a capital long after Dorchester became the chief station of the Romans and the head law-town of the Saxons.

The Saxons included Dorset in Wessex, and, even after the absorption of Wessex into the united kingdom, Dorset held up its head among the English counties. Corfe Castle and Kingston Hall were royal residences, and three of Alfred's brothers lie buried at Sherborne or at Wimborne Minster. The Danes worried the county. They seem to have attempted Wareham in 787, which is all in favour of Mr. Barnes's theory of its capital importance; and they were repulsed from the same place by Alfred a hundred years later, coming to great calamity off Peverel Point by Swanage Bay. But Dorset felt the pains of invasion in good earnest in 1002, when Sweyn is said to have utterly demolished the three important towns Dorchester, Sherborne, and Shaftesbury. At Shaftesbury Canute died, some sixteen or seventeen years after his defeat by Edmund Ironside at Pen Selwood, close to the famous Pen Pits. The battle-field lies on the border of Somerset and Dorset, and a point called Slaughter Gate, in the parish of Gillingham, seems to show that the pursuit was carried across the frontier-line.

What the Dorset men did at Hastings we are not told; and they seem to have lived ingloriously* or to have missed a vates sacer through whole generations from that date onwards, until we hear of them again in the time of Edward III., when the county sent thirty-one ships to the siege of Calais. The very next year t Dorset was unlucky enough to catch and to import inland one of the terrific mediæval plagues. The Oxford schools were shut up for some time, and Sir Walter Manny is said to have bought thirteen acres of ground near Smithfield, which were soon occupied by fifty thousand bodies; but the epidemic

They were able, however, to sun themselves in the light of King John's favour. He was fond of Cranborne Chace, and caused a perambulation of the boundaries to be made during his regency. He seems afterwards to have sojourned occasionally at Bere Regis, certain instruments (Rymer, quoted by Hutchins) bearing date from that place in 1214.

† 1347.

presently