raeli seemed to have the same ambition. In birth, in nationality, in mental training, in appearance, in his instinctive way of looking at things, he was essentially a foreigner in English society. Of all classes of English society that with which, by intellect, temperament, and training, he might be expected to have the least sympathy, was the English landlord class. Yet it seemed that his pride was to be considered an English landlord, or rather to be mistaken for an English landlord. It used to be a remarkable sight to see Mr. Disraeli presiding on certain occasions of annual celebration, when, by the bounty and subscriptions of some of the landlords, the prize of a blue coat with brass buttons was to be conferred on the venerable laborer who had for the longest number of years contrived to support the largest family without having recourse to parish relief. The dignified gravity with which Mr. Disraeli admonished and blessed the happy recipient of this noble prize; the seeming assumption that a long life of privation and labor was well worth any true man's endurance for the glory of being publicly endued, at the age of seventy-five, with a remarkably high-collared blue swallow-tail coat, the indignant repudiation of the unworthy levity of persons in London, newspaper-writers and such like, who tried to make this ceremonial seem ridiculous-all this made up a performance of which caricature itself could hardly exaggerate the peculiarities. Joseph Arch himself mentioned in a speech the unlucky fact that one of the fortunate rustics who had actually been rewarded with this Monthyon prize, one of the proud wearers of this singular robe of honor, had been compelled after all to seek shelter in the workhouse, where they probably would not allow him to parade in the brass-buttoned blue coat even on Sundays. However that may be, Mr. Disraeli was none the less entitled and none the less willing to constitute himself the champion of the country squires, and, when the agitation became public, he stood forward to vindicate and glorify the impugned state of things. Mr. Disraeli insisted that everything was as it ought to be, and that the English laborer in the Midland and Southern counties was but another Corydon in an English Arcadia, piping for very happiness as though, like the shepherd boy in Sir Philip Sidney's tale, he could never

grow old. The controversy was taken up in the House of Commons, and served, if it did nothing else, to draw all the more attention to the condition of the British laborer. An amusing little side controversy arose between Mr. Newdigate and Mr. Arch's party. As a landlord and a Tory of the Tories, Mr. Newdigate was, of course, an opponent of the laborers' strike. It so happened that at one of the public meetings in London, where Joseph Arch spoke, Cardinal Manning was likewise a speaker. That was enough for Mr. Newdigate. He immediately proclaimed his discovery of a new Popish plot, and bluntly charged Mr. Arch with being a disguised emissary and agent of the Jesuits. Poor Arch, who so short a time before was only an obscure laborer, with a turn for preaching Methodism in a little country village, found himself acclaimed by half England as the apostle of a new social revolution, and denounced by the Tories generally as the pioneer of a lawless Jacquerie; he heard his name mentioned every day in the speeches of statesmen and the debates in Parliament; he had to defend himself against the charge of being a secret agent of the Vatican, and to disclaim any intention of conducting an agitation for the establishment of a republic.

One indirect but necessary result of the agitation was to call attention to the injustice done to the rural population when they were left unenfranchised at the time of the passing of the last Reform Bill. The injustice was strongly pressed upon the Government, and Mr. Gladstone frankly acknowledged that it would be impossible to allow things to remain long in their anomalous state. In truth, when the Reform Bill was passed nobody supposed that the rural population were capable of making any use of a vote. Therefore, the movement which began in Warwickshire took two directions when the immediate effects of the partial strike were over. A permanent union of laborers was formed, corresponding generally in system with the organizations of the cities. The other direction was distinctly political. The rural population, through their leaders, joined with the reformers of the cities for the purpose of obtaining an equal franchise in town and country; in other words, for the enfranchisement of the peasantry. The emancipation of the rural laborers began under that chestnut-tree where

the first meeting answered the appeals of Joseph Arch. The English peasant was the newest and latest figure on the political stage of the world. He followed the Virginian negro, and he came long after the Russian serf. Unlike these, however, he had for his leader no greater man than one of his own class. The rough and ready peasant preacher, Joseph Arch, had probably little idea, when he began his speech under the chestnut-tree, that he was speaking the first words of a new chapter of the country's history.

A few lines ought, perhaps, to be spared to the Tichborne trial which has just been mentioned. A claim was suddenly made upon the Tichborne baronetcy and estates by a man who came from Australia, and who announced himself as the heir to the title and the property. He declared that he was the Sir Roger Tichborne who was supposed to have gone down with the wreck of the Bella, sailing from Rio, in South America, years before. The Tichborne case is certainly one of the most remarkable instances of disputed identity on record. Just now the most wonderful thing about it seems to be the extraordinary amount of popular sympathy and credit which "the Claimant," as he was called, contrived to secure. He was undoubtedly an impostor; that is, if the most overwhelming accumulation of evidence, positive and negative, could establish any fact. The person who presented himself as the long-lost Roger Tichborne bore not the slightest personal resemblance to the young man who sailed in the Bella, and was believed to have perished with her. "The Claimant" was, indeed, curiously unlike what people remembered Roger Tichborne, not only in face but in figure and in manners. A slender, delicate, somewhat feeble young man, of fair although not finished education, who had always lived in good society, and showed it in his language and bearing, went down in the Bella, or at least disappeared with her; and, thirteen years afterward, there came from Australia a man of enormous bulk, ignorant to an almost inconceivable degree of ignorance, and who, if he were Roger Tichborne, had not only forgotten all the manners of his class, but had forgotten the very names of many of those with whom he ought to have been most familiar, including the name of his own mother; and this man presented himself as the lost heir and claimed the prop

erty. If this were the whole story, it might be said that there was nothing particularly wonderful in it. A preposterous attempt was made to carry on an imposture, and it failed; such things happen every day; in this case the attempt was only a little more outrageous and ridiculous than in others. But the really strange part of the tale is to come. Despite all the obvious arguments against the Claimant, it is certain that his story was believed by the mother of Roger Tichborne, and by a considerable number of persons of undoubted veracity and intelligence who had known Roger Tichborne in his youth. True, it seems impossible that a slender Prince Hal could in a few years grow into a Falstaff. But so much the more difficult must it surely have been for the Falstaff to persuade people that he was actually the Prince Hal; so much the more wonderful is it that he did actually succeed in persuading many into full belief in himself and his story. The man who claimed to be Roger Tichborne utterly failed to make out his claim in a court of law. It was shown upon the clearest evidence that he had gradually put together and built up around him a whole system of imposture. He was then put on trial for his frauds, found guilty, and sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude. Yet thousands of ignorant persons, and some persons not at all ignorant, continued, and to this day continue, to believe in him. He became the figurehead of a new and grotesque agitation. His own imposture was the parent and the patron of other impostures. His story opens up a far more curious study of human credulity than that of Johanna Southcote, or that of Mary Tofts, or Perkin Warbeck, or the Cock Lane Ghost.

CHAPTER LXII.

THE FALL OF THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION.

THE first few days of 1873 were marked by an event which, had it occurred four or five years before, would have filled the world with a profound sensation. Happening as it did, it made comparatively little stir in the political waters. It was the death of Louis Napoleon, late Emperor

of the French, at his house in Chiselhurst, Kent. After his imprisonment, if it can be called so, at Wilhelmshohe, in Cassel, where he was treated as an honored guest rather than a captive, the fallen Emperor came to England. He settled with his wife and son at Chiselhurst, and lived in dignified semi-retirement. The Emperor became a sort of favorite with the public here. A reaction seemed to have set in against the dread and dislike with which he had at one time been regarded. He enjoyed a certain amount of popularity. He sometimes showed himself in public, as, for example, at a lecture given by Mr. Stanley, the adventurous New York "special correspondent" who had gone out to Africa and discovered Dr. Livingstone. Louis Napoleon had for a long time been in sinking health. His life had been overwrought in every way. He had lived many lives. in a comparatively short space of time. Most of his friends had long been expecting his death from week to week, almost from day to day. He died on January 9th. The event created no great sensation. Perhaps even the news of his death was but an anti-climax after the news of his fall. For twenty years he had filled a space in the eyes of the world with which the importance of no man else could pretend to compare. His political bulk had towered up in European affairs like some huge castle dominating over a city. All the earth listened to the lightest word he spoke. For good or evil his influence and his name were potent in every corner of the globe. His nod convulsed continents. His arms glittered from the Crimea to Cochin-China, from Algeria to Mexico. A signal from him, and the dominion of the Austrians over Lombardy was broken at Solferino, and a new Italy arose on the horizon of Europe. A whisper from him, and Maximilian of Austria hastens across the ocean in hope to found a Mexican empire, in reality to find a premature grave. A wave of his hand, and Garibaldi is

crushed at Mentana. What wonder if such a man should at one time have come to believe himself the special favorite and the spoiled child of destiny? The whole condition of things seemed changed when Louis Napoleon fell at Sedan. Some forty years of wandering, of obscurity, of futile, almost ludicrous enterprises, of exile, of imprisonment, of the world's contempt, and then twenty years of splendid success, of