driven under a strong escort to gaol, that the prison-van was attacked by a rescue-party, and Sergeant Brett, who was in charge of the prisoners, was shot. The rescuers, Allen, Larkin, and Gould, were executed on November 2, and on December 1 Clerkenwell Prison was blown up, in an ineffectual attempt to liberate the Fenian prisoners confined in it. On December 20 Matthew Arnold wrote to his mother, We are in a strange uneasy state in London, and the profound sense I have long had of the hollowness and insufficiency of our whole system of administration does not inspire me with much confidence.' The strange uneasy state' was not confined to London, but prevailed everywhere. Obviously England was threatened by a mysterious and desperate enemy, and no one seemed to know that enemy's headquarters or base of operations. The Secret Societies were actively at work in England, Ireland, France, and Italy. It was suspected then-it is known now, and chiefly through Cluseret's revelations that the isolated attacks on barracks and police-stations were designed for the purpose of securing arms and ammunition; and, if only there had been a competent general to command the rebel forces, Ireland would have risen in open war. But a competent general was exactly what the insurgents lacked; for Cluseret, having surveyed the whole situation with eyes trained by a lifelong experience of war, decided that the scheme was hopeless, and returned to Paris.

Such were some-for I have only mentioned a few of the incidents which made 1867 a memorable year. On my own memory it is stamped with a peculiar clearness.

On Wednesday morning, October 2, 1867, as we were going up to First School at Harrow, a rumour flew from mouth to mouth that the drillshed had been attacked by Fenians. Sure enough it had. The caretaker (as I said before) lived some way from the building, and, when he went to open it in the morning, he found that the door had been forced and the place swept clean of arms and ammunition. Here was a real sensation, and we felt for a few hours the joy of eventful living'; but later in the day the evening papers, coming down from London, quenched our excitement with a greater. It appeared that, during the night of October 1, drillsheds and armouries belonging to the Volunteer regiments had been simultaneously raided, north, south, east, and west of London, and all munitions of war spirited away, for a purpose which was not hard to guess. Commenting on this startling occurrence, the papers said: 'We

have reason to believe that one of the ablest of the Fenian agents has been for some time operating secretly in the United Kingdom. He has been traced to Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London. It is believed at Scotland Yard that he organised these attacks on Volunteer headquarters, arranged for the arms and ammunition to be transferred by a sure hand to Ireland, and has himself returned to Paris.' A friend of mine who had gone up to London to see a dentist brought back a 'Globe' with him, and, as he handed it to me, he pointed out the passage which I have just cited. As I read it, my heart gave a jump a sudden thrill of delicious excitement. My friend Mr. Beaumont must be the Fenian agent who had organised these raids, and I, who had always dreamed romance, had now been brought into actual contact with it. The idea of communicating my suspicions to anyone never crossed my mind. I felt instinctively that this was a case where silence was golden. Fortunately, none of my schoolfellows had seen Mr. Beaumont or heard of his visit; and the old caretaker of the drillshed had been too much gratified by talk and tip to entertain an unworthy thought of that pleasant-spoken gentleman.'

Soon the story of these raids had been forgotten in the far more exhilarating occurrences at Manchester and Clerkenwell which closed the year; and the execution of Michael Barrett on May 26, 1868 (the last public execution in England), brought the history of Fenianism in England to an end.

As I looked back on my journey from Scotland, and my walk round Harrow with Mr. Beaumont, I thought that the reason why he did not arrange for our school-armoury to be attacked was that he would not abuse the confidence of a boy who had trusted him. Perhaps it really was that the rifles were too few and the risks too many.

The year 1870 found me still a Harrow boy, though a tall one; and I spent the Easter holidays with my cousins, the Brentfords, in Paris. They were a remarkable couple, and, if I were to mention their real name, they would be immediately recognised. They had social position and abundant means and hosts of friends; but, acting under irresistible impulse, they had severed themselves from their natural surroundings, and had plunged into democratic politics. It was commonly believed that Brentford would not have committed himself so deeply if it had not been for his wife's influence; and, indeed, she was one of

those women whom it is difficult to withstand. Her enthusiasm was contagious; and, when one was in her company, one felt that the Cause,' as she always called it without qualifying epithet, was the one thing worth thinking of and living for. As a girl, she had caught from Mrs. Browning, and Swinburne, and Jessie White-Mario, and the authoress of Aspromonte,' a passionate zeal for Italian unity and freedom, and, when she married, her enthusiasm fired her husband. They became sworn allies both of Garibaldi and of Mazzini, and through them were brought into close, though mysterious, relations with the revolutionary party in Italy and also in France. They witnessed the last great act of the Papacy at the Vatican Council; and then, early in 1870, they established themselves in Paris. French society was at that moment in a strange state of tension and unrest. The impending calamity of the Franco-German War was not foreseen; but everyone knew that the Imperial throne was rocking; that the soil was primed by Secret Societies; and that all the elements of revolution were at hand, and needed only some sudden concussion to stir them into activity. This was a condition which exactly suited my cousin Evelyn Brentford. She was at the height of the circumstances,' and she gathered round her, at her villa on the outskirts of Paris, a society partly political, partly Bohemian, and wholly Red. Do come,' she wrote, and stay with us at Easter. I can't promise you a Revolution; but it's quite on the cards that you may come in for one. Anyhow, you will see some fun.' I had some difficulty in inducing my parents (sound Whigs) to give the necessary permission; but they admitted that at seventeen a son must be trusted, and I went off rejoicing to join the Brentfords at Paris. Those three weeks, April 12 to May 4, 1870, gave me, as the boys now say, 'the time of my life.' I met a great many people whose names I already knew, and some more of whom we heard next year in the history of the Commune. The air was full of the most sensational rumours, and those who hoped to see the last King strangled in the bowels of the last priest' enjoyed themselves thoroughly. My cousin Evelyn was always at home to her friends on Sunday and Wednesday evenings, and her rooms were thronged by a miscellaneous crowd in which the Parisian accent mingled with the tongues of America and Italy, and the French of the southern provinces.

At one of these parties I was talking to a delightful lady

who lived only in the hope of seeing the Devil come for that dog' (indicating by this term a crowned head), and who, when exhausted by regicidal eloquence, demanded coffee. As we approached the buffet, a man who had just put down his cup turned round and met my companion and me face to face. Two years and a-half had made no difference in him. He was Mr. Beaumont, as active and fresh as ever, and, before I had time to reflect on my course, I had impulsively seized him by the hand. 'Don't you remember me?' I cried. He only stared. 'My name is George Russell, and you visited me at Harrow.' 'I fear, sir, you have made a mistake,' said Beaumont; bowed rather stiffly to my companion, and hurried back into the drawing-room. My companion looked surprised. The General seems put out -I wonder why. He and I are the greatest allies. Let me tell you, my friend, that he is the man that the Revolution will have to rely on when the time comes for rising. Ask them at Saint-Cyr. Ask Garibaldi. Ask McClellan. Ask General Grant. He is the greatest general in the world, and has sacrificed his career for Freedom.' 'Is his name Beaumont? ' 'No, his name is Cluseret.'

Next day at déjeuner I was full of my evening's adventure; but my host and hostess received it with mortifying composure. 'Nothing could be more likely,' said my cousin Evelyn. 'General Cluseret was here, though he did not stay long. Perhaps he really did not remember you. When he saw you before, you were a boy, and now you look like a young man. Or perhaps he did not wish to be cross-examined. He is pretty busy here just now, but in 1867 he was constantly backwards and forwards between Paris and London, trying to organise that Irish insurrection which never came off. England is not the only country he has visited on business of that kind, and he has many travelling names. He thinks it safer, for obvious reasons, to travel without luggage. If you had been able to open that leather case in the train, you would probably have found nothing in it except some maps, a toothbrush, and a spare revolver. Certainly that Irish affair was a fiasco; but depend upon it you will hear of General Cluseret again.'

And so indeed I did, and so did the whole civilised world, and that within twelve months of the time of speaking; but there is no need to re-write in this place the history of the Commune.

[The personal part of this narrative is fictitious; the rest is historical.]

TWO NORTHERN PRELATES.

BY EDMUND GOSSE.

Ir was my privilege in early youth to come for a while into close relations with the two Churchmen who exercised, during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, a wider influence, perhaps, than any other men of their time in Scandinavia. No youthful investigator could ask for more favourable opportunities for the observation of a foreign country than fell to my lot when I visited Denmark in 1872. What such a taker of notes requires, and commonly fails with infinitely more than my equipment to find, is the open door. He traverses the streets and takes the air, but he stays outside, while never the least fragment of a shoesole slips over a door-mat. By a profusion of good luck I got right inside, and what I did not find I must have lost by my own inexperience or density. Immediately on my arrival I became the guest of one of the most interesting and sympathetic men in the North of Europe, a man important at once as a type and as an individual, and I continued under his hospitable guidance until the end of my visit. How I became the friend of Dr. Fog is as simple as a fairy-tale. He was not infrequently in London on Church business, and in the spring of 1872 I had been introduced to him as a young man greatly interested in the literature of Denmark, who might be useful to him during his stay in London. I laid myself out with zeal to serve him as well as I could, and when he left England he showed his appreciation of my efforts in the most delicate and welcome form which he could have chosen-namely, by inviting me to visit him in his house in Copenhagen and note the state of affairs in Denmark from that belvedere.

There are many, no doubt, in England who remember Dr. Fog in later years, when he was Primate of the Danish Church, but I have to sketch him here in livelier colours, at a more vivid.