retiring-rooms of the pavilion, they returned to their carriages, the street procession of which was similar to that for the journey to the cathedral. Here was a guard of honour of the Scots Fusilier Guards. The guns of the Tower fired a salute, answered by those in St. James's Park. The homeward route from St. Paul's to Buckingham Palace was by the Old Bailey, over the Holborn Viaduct, along Holborn and Oxford-street, to the Marble Arch, by the east side of Hyde Park to Piccadilly, thence down Constitution-hill. The Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, and Aldermen went with the procession to the boundary of the City. The streets and house-fronts were as much crowded along this route as those in the Strand, Fleet-street, and Ludgate-bill; the decorations were as numerous, as tasteful and elaborate, in Holborn and Oxford-street, more especially near the Circus at the upper end of Regent-street, where a light and graceful triumphal arch was erected. The stands or galleries for spectators in the Old Bailey, on the Holborn Viaduct, and in Holborn-circus, accommodated their thousands; but a greater thing of this kind was the stand put up by the Metropolitan Board of Works in Hyde Park. The Queen and the Prince and Princess were heartily cheered, and did not seem too much fatigued. They arrived at twenty-five minutes to four o'clock. After entering Buckingham Palace, in front of which there was a great crowd, her Majesty, with the Prince and Princess of Wales, kindly showed herself a moment on the balcony, where they graciously bowed to the people in acknowledgment of the enthusiastic greeting they had received from the Londoners that day.

The illuminations at night were the object of admiration which kept hundreds of thousands of quiet folk out in the street to a very late hour. The centres of attraction were the dome and west front of St. Paul's, the Mansion House, the triumphal arch at the crossing of Farringdon-street, between Ludgate-hill and Fleet-street, and the triumphal arch at Regent-circus, Oxford-street. The dome of St. Paul's was shown by three rings of coloured lamps, at different elevations. The shops of many of the West-end tradesmen and others were decorated with a profusion of ingenious devices. The triumphal arch at the end of Farringdon-street, above mentioned, was illuminated with gas jets, displaying the mottoes, "God Bless the Prince of Wales," "Thanks be to God," and "God save the Queen and the Prince."

An absurd outrage on the Queen's person which was perpetrated on the day after the great festival by a half-witted Irish lad, and which till its real proportions became known caused great and general excitement, served to confirm and as it were complete the national exhibition of loyalty to the reigning house; and the following letter from the Queen, published in the London Gazette, formed the closing event in an interesting and exciting chapter of her history. "Buckingham Palace, February 29, 1872. "The Queen is anxious, as on a previous occasion, to express publicly her own personal very deep sense of the reception she and her

dear children met with on Tuesday, February 27, from millions of her subjects, on her way to and from St. Paul's.

"Words are too weak for the Queen to say how very deeply touched and gratified she has been by the immense enthusiasm and affection exhibited towards her dear son and herself, from the highest down to the lowest, on the long progress through the capital, and she would earnestly wish to convey her warmest and most heartfelt thanks to the whole nation for this great demonstration of loyalty.

"The Queen, as well as her son and her dear daughter-in-law, felt that the whole nation joined with them in thanking God for sparing the beloved Prince of Wales' life.

"The remembrance of this day, and of the remarkable order maintained throughout, will for ever be affectionately remembered by the Queen and her family."

The business prospects of the year seemed favourable enough. A contemporary report says,

"The pocket' barometer at the beginning of 1872 stands at 'set fair' with a rising tendency; the monetary prospect seldom more satisfactory, according to the reading of all the sensitive City indicators. Everything is upward, and honestly, not fictitiously, upward. Of course we do not know what sudden storm may come and depress everything, but there are no signs anywhere just at present of any such storm. The average rise, at least 30 per cent. in railway stocks during the past year, owing, not to the speculation of the railway king, but to a genuine increase of railway traffic, tells in itself an astonishing tale of commercial activity. Money is easy, with the bank rate at 3 per cent.; business active, and new speculations not of any magnitude to create misgiving in any quarter. In fact, what people say of the year 1872 in this respect is very similar to what they said of 1871 at its opening. The prospect is most promising."

Great promise in the stock-markets, a general advance in prices, foreign stocks rising considerably, and a large amount of business done in all classes of securities-such were the announcements of the opening year, indicative of that national prosperity which often falls so hardly upon individuals, and which as the year advanced was to be shown more and more in the increased difficulty of living, the alarming rise of prices in the most common commodities of life, and the unequal struggles of the salaried middle-classes to keep abreast of the wave of wealth which threatened to sink them while the battle raged between capital and labour: the claims of the latter being emphasized by the rapid and dangerous growth of strikes, which was to attain before the close of the year the most threatening proportions, though far indeed from what we can venture to hope will prove to be their climax. But these and other troubles showed little on the surface when the year began. Except in the elements, there was a remarkable absence of animation-political, social, or religious. Whatever signs there

might be of disturbance of the present order of things, they denoted no immediate agitation. Changes and movements were talked of but prospectively. Indifference seemed to be more and more the leading characteristic of the bulk of the people-of the great body of the middle classes at all events-and political and social agitators strove in vain to strike a spark out of them, with any real flame in it, upon any subject whatever. Only on the Prince's illness did the national pulse give evidence of active life in any direction save the making of money. And all this, strange to say, in the face of ample evidence of the truth of the allegation that every institution of the country is being in turn put upon its trial.

In this condition of public feeling, or the absence of it, quiet observers could not but attach but little importance, as far as Parliamentary prospects are concerned, to the increasing unpopularity which Mr. Gladstone and his Government had undoubtedly incurred, and were aggravating every day. On the eve of the meeting of Parliament a general feeling of irritation had been widely spread. An active section of the Dissenting body, having engaged in a violent agitation against some of the provisions of the Education Bill, threatened, unless its demands were conceded, to withdraw its allegiance from the Ministers. A larger portion of the community resented the evasion of a recent Act of Parliament which regulated appointments to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; and the Prime Minister had, unwisely, confirmed the unfavourable impression by his perverse disposal, in violation of the spirit of another statute, of an ecclesiastical benefice. The recent loss of the "Megæra" had thrown a slur on the administration of the Navy; and, above all, the apparently imminent miscarriage of the Washington Treaty tended to discredit the Government by which it had been negotiated. Its best friends were of opinion that perhaps no administration of our time had ever yet got into so many political scrapes as the present Government was in now. "It has made,' said a leading Liberal journal, in summing up its history, "some very bad blunders. It has had some fearfully bad luck. Its best actions have not yet reaped their reward, and the delay is making weak people doubt whether they were good actions; and its worst actions have reaped a good deal more than their natural penalty. The anarchy at the Admiralty is shocking every body; the Collier scandal has seldom been equalled for superfluousness as well as bad judgment; the Ewelme Rectory scandal seems likely to reinforce the Collier scandal; the American claims are raising a great prejudice against what was, not without reason, thought one of the shrewdest departments of the Government, for not expressly excluding from the scope of the Treaty arbitration on those enormous 'indirect' claims which in spirit had certainly been waived by the American Government; the Education policy of the Government-its greatest claim to public gratitude in England at least has brought about something very like a secession of the Nonconformist party; Mr. Bruce's weakness-his moral prostration

before the victuallers-chafes the country; and even Mr. Lowe's good luck in getting so large a revenue is turned into a reproach on the financial pessimism which made him lay on the additional 2d. of incometax. Altogether there is hardly a department without a Parliamentary sorrow and fear of its own, and the Prime Minister is personally involved in at least two of the most serious discredits. Yet, in spite of all, though it is hard to find one thoroughly loyal section of the Liberal party-the Moderates being alienated by the Army reform, the Collier scandal, and the fear of Mr. Goschen's Local Rating Bill, and the left wing by the Education policy and the expenditure on the Army-and though the Conservatives are 'exceedingly mad' against the whole Administration and its leader, there is a very curious concurrence of hopes rather than expectations that the Government may yet be saved. The Tories are declaring everywhere that the time is not come for them to appeal to the country -one reason being that they are nervous as to the licensing question, and do not want to face the clergy if they give in to the licensed victuallers, or to face the licensed victuallers if they give in to the clergy-while the Nonconformists at Manchester are exhorting each other most eagerly, though not very successfully, to be temperate, and to give even Mr. Forster a second chance if he will take it. Thus it happens that while very few love the Government and very many hate it, no one is anxious to overthrow it; and every member is asking how far he can go in embarrassing and harassing the Government without overthrowing it. Many would like to knock over Lord Hatherley, many to expel Mr. Forster, many to rid the Government of Mr. Bruce, many to hurt Mr. Lowe, most of all, perhaps, to humiliate Mr. Gladstone. But they all want to know how this can be done without causing a dissolution or change of Government. It is a spiteful problem in maxima and minima-how to inflict on the Government the maximum of discredit with the minimum of immediate result. The censors of the Government are like a dueller who declares he does not want to kill his antagonist, but only to 'give him a lesson that he will remember to the day of his death.' That, however, is a very delicate feat to achieve when you are playing with deadly weapons. You may wish to wing' your adversary, and send a ball just through the heart. And the great question now is-Can the Government, even with the cordial help of its many open enemies and insincere friends, manage to receive the tokens of the accumulated dislikes of so many different sections and yet survive the Session?"

The conclusion was that it was next to impossible. But the greatest proof of the indifferentism of which we have spoken is that, though the Government only added fuel to the fire throughout the ensuing session; though, in the general opinion, they redeemed no blunders and made more; though the results of the Geneva Arbitration on the Alabama claims (with which we shall deal exclusively in a separate chapter) caused something more nearly approaching a popular outcry than anything else, being, as it was,

brought home to our pockets through the forfeiture of three millions of good money to no apparent purpose and with no apparent justification-though the session was to be signalized by a Bill more directly affecting the "liberty of the subject" than perhaps any measure which has been passed in constitutional days-that though all this and yet more happened, the end of the session found the Government where it was at the beginning, just as well abused, and just as little shaken.

As in England, so in Ireland, the signs of great and increasing material prosperity were to be set for what they were worth, at the beginning of this year, against evidences of political discontent. At the annual meeting of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, the president, Mr. Spotten, made a statement which is worthy of attention, and supplies some additional proofs of the progress of that thriving portion of the empire. He remarked with satisfaction that there are few towns in the kingdom which exhibit more hopeful signs of commercial prosperity or enjoy a larger share of public confidence. There had been of late years some disasters consequent upon the reaction which followed the abrupt termination of the American war, but they were few and unimportant, and at present there is not a loom or spindle in the North of Ireland which cannot be employed to advantage. The linen trade has seldom been in a more healthy state. "Spinners, manufacturers, and merchants are foresold for a considerable time; stocks of yarns and linens there are none of any importance, unless those held in the bleached and finished state," and "the staple trade is likely to enjoy for some years a fair share of uninterrupted progress and profit." He stated that wages never were so high, and the people never had greater cause to be contented and happy. The exports of goods from Belfast during the past year were 2,300,000l. in excess of 1870, and 3,400,000l. in excess of 1869, while the amount of capital now employed considerably exceeds 5,000,000l. sterling. Although the progress in manufactures is considerable, that in population outruns it. Belfast in 1861 numbered 121,000, in 1871 175,000. Buildings still grow up with marvellous rapidity, and houses are inhabited as quickly as they are built. He expressed regret that the short acreage and diminished yield of the flax crop in 1871 had seriously curtailed the supply of flax. The diminution last year, as compared with 1870, amounted to about 62 per cent. in production and 19 per cent. in area of cultivation. As to the future, the report of the Flax Supply Association was encouraging. He referred to the provision trade as another important element of prosperity, and stated that it is in a sound and healthy state. Another branch of local industry was shipbuilding, which was carried on most successfully by Messrs. Harland and Wolff. They had just launched three new ships for the White Star line of American packets, and finished two which they had launched last year. The average tonnage of the five was 10,000 gross register. They had also in hand two steamers of 3000 tons each for a Liverpool house, making