moreover, a firm and decided will of his own. We thought it a hazardous experiment on the part of French Republican's, for Louis. held a craze on the subject of his uncle's "ideas," and the craze had sufficient "method" to induce us to believe that he was the last man who would have been selected to fill the presidential chair.

fugee in England, we had given him small credit for sagacity; and as an emperor and a man, history has already said of him that he was cunning, unreliable, and thoroughly unscrupulous. Although a comparison between the two men is impossible, there was at least this similarity between the two Napoleons, that both were indebted for their elevation to the imperial purple to a revolution; here, however, all resemblance ceased. The first Napoleon relied upon himself alone, while Louis was advised by counsellors and adventurers wiser and more unscrupulous than himself, and who were prepared to back his fortunes with a view of advancing their own. At the close of 1851, Europe was electrified by the unexpected and dastardly blow delivered by these men, and by means of a "great crime," the history of which has been so graphically related by Victor Hugo, Louis Napoleon, Prince President of the Republic, found himself master of the destinies of France. The event is referred to by John Leech in the cartoon of France is Tranquil !!! which she cannot well fail to be, seeing that we find her bound hand and foot; a chain-shot fastened to her foot, and a sentry menacing her with his bayonet. The next volume shows us the Prince President in the act of being measured by his military tailor, while he offers money to his cast-off mistress Liberté, her mother (France) looking indignantly on. Immediately behind, a priest (in allusion to the support which the Papal party were receiving from this "eldest son of the Church") helps himself from a plate of money which stands by the President's side; the floor is littered with miscellaneous articles,bayonets, knapsacks, imperial and other crowns, crosses of the legion of honour, the code Napoleon, and, in reference to Louis's craze on the subject of his uncle and his "ideas," one of Napoleon's old boots. On a stool stands a bust of the first Napoleon, and on a chair to the right a roll of "Imperial purple."

By the year 1853, the only persons who steadily shut their eyes to the signs of the times, and continued steadfastly to believe in the immediate advent of the "Millennium," were the peace-at-any-price party (represented by Messrs Bright and Cobden), the members of the Peace Society, and the very strange people who obstinately opposed any attempt on the part of England to provide for her national safety by putting her defences in order. To the Peace Society, Leech especially addressed his cartoon of No Danger, which represents a donkey braying in front of a loaded cannon; while to the mischievous lunatics who opposed any scheme of national defence, he dedicated an appropriate gift in the shape of A Strait Waistcoat Worked by the Women of England. By this time John Bull had awoke from his dreams, and tacitly admitting that the time for conversion of his swords into ploughshares and his spears into pruning hooks had scarcely arrived, adopted the far more sensible method of sending his troops to the camp at Chobham by way of getting them acclimatized to the trials and vicissitudes of wind and weather. This step leads of course to a number of little pleasantries. In one cartoon we see an officer of household cavalry parting his hair in front of his cuirass, whilst a soldier servant brings him his shaving water in a bucket; another, entitled A Cold in the Head, represents an officer in this melancholy condition, who requests his servant to bring him his bucket of gruel as "sool as he has tallowed his loze." John, in fact, had been aroused from his slumbers by the Emperor Nicholas, who, thinking it a good time to appropriate Turkey, was suspected of having offered a slice to Austria. The rumour is referred to in the cartoon of The Old 'Un and the Young 'Un, in which we see the Russian and Austrian Emperors at table with a bottle of port between them, "Now then, Austria," says Nicholas, "just help me to finish the Port(e)." In another cartoon, John Bull nails the Russian eagle to his barn door, remarking to his French friend the while, that he

The national defences, such as they are, being an accomplished fact, these strange people are now making themselves active in the promotion of the last suicidal mania-the Channel Tunnel !

wouldn't worry the Turkeys any more." Lord Aberdeen, who, notwithstanding the signs of the times, refused like Nicholas to believe in a war with England, is represented placidly smoking the Pipe of Peace over a barrel of gunpowder.

Thanks to Messrs Bright and Cobden, who obstinately persisted in opposing the popular feeling which had set in steadily in the direction of war,-thanks to the exertions of the Peace Society, who were not restrained from sending certain zealous members of their body to the Emperor Nicholas, who not unnaturally supposed that these broad-brimmed gentlemen represented the sentiments of the great English people,-but thanks above all to the French Emperor and his astute advisers, who were enabled to take advantage of the state of English feeling to hoodwink the "great nation" by the prospect of an alliance with a great and respectable power, the year 1854 found us in actual conflict with Russia, starting off after our usual fashion with a handful of men to attack the strongest fortress in Europe, provided with an unlimited supply of men and metal and inexhaustible stores of warlike materiel of all kinds. In vol. xxvi. we see Her Majesty Throwing the Old Shoe after her Guards, who, for the first time since 1815, are seen setting out on foreign service. Another cartoon, which has reference to our Bombardment of Odessa, is divided into two parts, in one of which we see Lord Aberdeen (whose dream of peace had been so rudely dissipated), and in the other Nicholas of Russia, both reading the newspaper. Says Aberdeen, "Bombardment of Odessa! Dear me, this will be very disagreeable to my imperial friend!" Says the Emperor, "Bombardment of Odessa! Confound it! this will be very annoying to dear old Aberdeen!" In November, 1854, occurred our disastrous victory of Inkermann, in which scarcely four thousand English troops found themselves opposed by forty thousand Russians and drove them into flight. No thanks, however, to our allies, who -with the exception of sixty brave Zouaves and their lieutenant, who played truant from their regiment to give us timely assistance-either looked on or absolutely ran away.* Spectators of this battle were

* Vide Kinglake's "Invasion of the Crimea."

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two of the Imperial family, a circumstance alluded to in vol. xxvii. by Leech's cartoon of The Russian Bear's Licked Cubs, Nicholas and Michael.

Picton remarked of our officers, when en route to Waterloo, that with fifty thousand of his own men, and French officers at their head, he would march from one end of Europe to the other. But both the quality of French officers and soldiers had deteriorated at the time of the Crimean War, and was destined still further to deteriorate until the utter unsoundness of their military discipline was laid bare years afterwards by Prussia. The French had no generals, while we had one general and an excellent body of soldiers. Unquestionably the Russian war did us the service of thoroughly exposing the rottenness of our military system so far as concerned the officering of the army. The principle followed was precisely that complained of by Sir Thomas Picton forty years before; there was no actual test of fitness until it came to be subjected to the practical test of emergency; money invariably had the advantage of merit, not only in the appropriation of first commissions, but in the purchase of subsequent regimental grades, which were given in exchange for pecuniary value, and not as a reward for military efficiency. The material thus obtained was splendid as regards manliness and bravery, but something more than these were wanted in the absence of a leader like the great Duke; and although the type selected is an extreme one, the result may be indicated by my Lord Cardigan, who, though equal to any amount of endurance and heroism, proved himself incapable of the exercise of the smallest particle of common sense. The scandal of the then existing system of purchase was aptly exposed by the artist in vol. xxviii., where we find a rich titled old lady in a shop served by military counterjumpers, one of whom, wrapping up a lieutenant-colonelcy for her

THE PURCHASE
SYSTEM.

boy, inquires, in the well-known jargon of the trade, "What is the shing

next article?" in answer to which she expresses a wish to have “a nice majority for his little brother"; a wounded officer with his arm in a sling timidly inquires the price of a captain's commission, and turns wearily away on finding the preposterous price (£3,694)

1853

is wholly beyond his means. Fortunately for us (for events proved that in trusting to French assistance we were leaning on a broken rced indeed!) the Russian rank and file, besides being badly led, were as inferior to our own in endurance and pluck as they were superior to us in the mere matter of numbers. Justly wondering why forty thousand men, supported by twenty thousand reserves, had failed to hold their own against a mere handful of British infantry, Nicholas nevertheless treated the result apparently in a philosophical spirit, and calmly asked his people to wait for "Generals Janvier and Fevrier.” But the brave man's heart was broken, and when February came it found the Imperial prophet a corpse. The death of this great and disappointed man is forcibly commemorated by Leech's memorable cartoon of General Fevrier Turned Traitor. Lord John Russell, true to his character of "Lord Meddle and Muddle," had done nothing for us at the Congress, and in The Return from Vienna, Her Majesty catches the frightened little statesman by the collar and angrily asks him, "Now, sir, what a time you have been! What's the answer?" To her Lord John-"Please 'M-there is-is-is-is-isn't any answer."

An English general in those days was so scarce a commodity that in Lord Raglan we seemed absolutely to have exhausted the supply one old incapable was replaced by another, until the dearth of English military ability became at length nothing less than an absolute scandal. In What we must Come to, reference is made to this lamentable state of things, wherein an old woman in bonnet and shawl, with a capacious umbrella, applies for a post to Lord Panmure (the Minister of War), "Oh, if you please, sir, did you want a sperity old woman to see after things in the Crimea? No objection to being made a Field Marshal, and glory not so much an object as a good salary"; in another (A Grand Military Spectacle) we find the heroes of the campaign engaged in inspecting the Field Marshals, a pair of decrepid, purblind, old men seated in arm chairs; in the third we recognise the amiable Prince Consort,

* There are of course curious stories about as to the cause of the Emperor's death for one of these see "Journal of the Rev. J. C. Young," vol. ii. p. 331.