are not wholly without defects; and among these was noticeable, before Cavour put his strong hand to the helm, a tendency to the theatrical, which has reappeared of late years in enlarged dimensions. It is a fine thing, be it admitted, when politics are theatrically dealt with, to have upon paper an army of eight hundred thousand men; to see unsurpassed iron men-of-war afloat in the Italian harbors, at from eight hundred thousand to a million sterling each; to have Italy, which for so many ages knew nothing of Germany except from contact with her iron heel, lauded in the German press; to find the excellent King Humbert fêted (but not for his excellence) and be praised; and when Signor Crispi, travelling in his suite, has an interview with Prince Bismarck, to hear of the minutes or the hours during which "the two statesmen'' were closeted together. But these are the arms of copper, which Italy receives in exchange for her arms of gold; and it requires no closeting to learn that the inclusion of Italy in any Cisalpine alliance, for or against France, or Germany, or anybody else, is a one-sided bargain, the triumph of the stronger over the weaker mind, and the harbinger of downfall or of woe. All this, however, undoubtedly implies that Italy has no enemy on this side the Alps. By joining the Alliance she has taken a step which implies, on the contrary, that, in the judgment of her recent Governments, she has one enemy, and that that enemy is France. Sad as the avowal may be, it must be confessed that two nations may conceivably go to war as dog and cat go to war, with no greater cause, and with rather less title to respect. Nor is it easy to deny that in the surface-opinion of one or both countries there is plenty of animosity afloat, the scum is thick upon the face of the cauldron. There is not the least reason to believe that the independent mind, or that the popular masses, of either nation, share these got-up or official enmities. Traditional hatred between them there is none for if the historic record of France toward Italy be not absolutely clear, at least it will bear favorable comparison with that of Austria, and of Germany, through its relations with Austria, prior to 1866. Italy sins against policy, and sins also against justice, if she moulds her policy into hostile forms toward any European State on the ground of events which happened when her own Governments were the friends of the stranger, and used him for their evil purposes. Plainly she ought to recollect the great service rendered her in 1866 by Germany, and the yet greater service which she received from France in 1859; a service still greater than that of 1866, because he that breaks the first link of the captive's chains makes the most effectual contribution toward his complete and final freedom. It may have been, and probably it was, a paltry measure on the part of Napoleon III. to exact from Italy a payment toward the liquidation of the charges incurred in the short war, best known in connection with the names of Magenta and Solferino. Savoy, indeed, could under no circumstances have been moved in freedom and harmony with a great Italian kingdom, but the exacted cession of Nice was a measure condemned by the liberal sentiment of Europe. These, however, are simply limited deductions from a debt of gratitude, which would otherwise have been immeasurable. They do not cancel the obligation itself, and they impart an evil taint to any course of action which proves that it has already been forgotten. But the shining service of 1859, blazoned on the page of history, is not the only reason which makes the accession of Italy to the Triple Alliance a matter of mingled grief and marvel to those Englishmen, who felt strong and early sympathy with her upward and onward movement, and rejoiced in that happy spirit of cooperation between Italy and their own country, which is reasonably believed to have produced important and beneficial results at certain junctures of European policy. It is with an earnestness proportioned to the strength of their interest in Italy that they deprecate and denounce what seems to them, upon anxious consideration, a course of suicidal action. It is suicidal when it happens to be directed against France, but it would not have been a whit less irrational if it had Austria or Germany for its mark. Animosity, growing into hostility, without cause both just and of adequate magnitude, is a great sin. There is no such cause as between France and Italy. Sometimes we are told that France behaved ill to Italy in Tunis; but Italy never would have set up political preltensions there, were it not for the preva lence of that theatrical spirit which seems to have been the evil genius of some among her more recent statesmen. Some times it is complained that a section of French opinion is against her in the vital question of the temporal power. But that section is the very same which is in deadly hostility to the French Republic, and which ought to be counteracted by frankly cultivating the liberal sympathies of the French nation at large. Who can say that German or Austrian opinion will ultimately afford a firmer support to Italy in the Papal controversy, than the opinion of France? It must not, however, be forgotten that the duty of Italy to avoid intermeddling in Cisalpine conflicts is dictated not more by political honor and consistency, than by the strictest and sternest laws of self-preservation. Italy is an united country, and she derives her title to national existence wholly and absolutely from the doctrines of popular will. She cannot honorably undertake engagements which might bind her to aid in suppressing anywhere popular will by military force. Should it happen that Alsace-Lorraine is found to remain incurably French in sentiment, that France, listening to her appeal, should at some future time enter into a struggle which, ex hypothesi, would be a war of liberation; and that Italy was found to act as a member of a military partnership for the purpose of stifling local freedom, even in an area so limited; then, whatever might he said of Germany and Austria, there would be recorded against Italy one of the gravest, one of the most shocking scandals in history. It is not, indeed, the object of these pages to incriminate the conduct of any Power, but equity seems to require the remark, since Italy is a liberal and popular State, that France has promoted the cause, or even fought the battle, of liberty on more than one occasion. She has promoted the emancipation of Greece, of Belgium, and of Spain, the self government of the Lebanon, the Union of the Danubian Principalities; and some of us may now be sorry that she was prevented, in 1840, from advancing and elevating the status of Egypt. It would be difficult to draw up any similar record on behalf of the principal members of the Triple Alliance. If such is the state of the case on the side of honor, feeling, and consistency, what aspect does it present when we examine it on grounds of rational calculation? Has she reason to suppose that France cherishes the evil intention of making war upon her? Or rather is it not plain, and beyond dispute, that France is in a condition, wealthy indeed and strong, and perhaps well equipped, but one in which she cannot afford to waste one jot or tittle of her resources ? Now there is no mark of waste so gross and fatuous as to turn gratuitously into enemies those who might be friends. To ascribe to France in her present position hostile designs against Italy is to impute to her the extreme of wickedness combined with the extreme of folly. No doubt there may be found cases where such extremes have been combined; but rational calculation takes for its materials the usual forms of human motive, and the average of conduct, and not those exceptional and prodigious cases which may occur, as frolics of Nature, once in a generation or a century. And what are the internal conditions under which Italian statesmen are contemplating an enterprise, from which Don Quixote would have shrunk in dismay? They may be set forth intelligibly in very few words. First of all, it seems plain that a nation's infancy is not suited to the efforts which demand full maturity of strength. Italy is old in the civilization of her people, but young in political experience. The gristle has not yet hardened into bone. The noblest charger must needs break down, if he have to begin his campaigning as a colt. But there is unhappily the yet more commanding consideration that financial excesses have already brought about a premature decrepitude. In peace Italy already totters under a taxation truly afflic tive. She has to lament the prevalence among her people of grinding though not universal distress. The inexorable figures of her public accounts demonstrate that all the resources, commonly husbanded for the extreme contingencies of war, have been already dissipated amid the serenity of perfect peace. The neglect and apathy of the older Governments, now happily displaced, left Italy under special and urgent necessities of internal development, which are in direct competition with the devouring demands of her military and naval establishments; that is to say, of her eccentric, and perhaps unexampled, foreign policy. And the Power that has calmly embraced this policy, which may be called one of dementation, is the very Power, and the only Power, that carries folded in her own bosom a foe sufficiently formidable to make even such lessons of prudence, as might be optional for others, imperative upon her. Every enemy of Italy will know that she has to reckon a part of her population, doubtless a minor, but possibly a considerable and somewhat powerful part, who are the Pope's men first, and the King's men afterward; and that he can negotiate with a great person age to make appropriations of time such as the multitude cannot from the pressure of their daily necessities afford. In contradistinction to the people, we may call these persons of influence the select. Having leisure, and, as a rule, not being pressed by daily toil or care for their subsistence, they have a free margin of time available for the constant supervision of political affairs, which, it must be observed, have in themselves great attractions for men of leisure and of easy circumstances. The nation, then, is divided into these two parts: the first, inferior in force when directly pitted against the other; the second superior in force, but requiring to be roused and drawn away from standing, and more or less imperative, avocations, in order to bring its force to bear. On the few occasions when the facts are palpable and salient, motive is proximate and urgent, and the atmosphere well warmed, the people, being awakened, will have their own way. But as to that large proportion of affairs which is either unimportant, or without salient and telling interest, or recondite, or with issues hidden from view, down to the present day all these affairs, which constitute the vast majority, have in all European countries been mainly in the hands and under the management of the leisured classes. But there is leisured classes. And all this manifestly applies in a particular degree to what are regarded departmentally as foreign affairs, of which not one but all are of necessity remote from the eye, and which are for the most part only apprehended by a nation when remedies for error are too late, and procrastination is followed, and its evil results often aggravated, by precipitancy. seated in the Vatican, who has the disposal of the hearts, and at the critical time perhaps also of the hands, of what may prove to be a respectable fraction of Italians. Surely the statesmen who, in a state of things whereof the aggregate is almost intolerable (and is worse each day than it was the day before), can employ them selves in creating dangers absolutely gratu. itous, must be adepts such as the world has rarely seen in the art of shutting their eyes. It may be said that, if this be a true picture of the case, then, in introducing the Italian people into the European concert, there has only been created a new obstacle to peace, instead of that fresh guarantee of stable equilibrium which impartial observers, forming their estimate from the great character and policy of Cavour, had desired and hoped from the erection of Italy into a great Power. But there is no warrant for saying that the policy of the more recent Governments had received its inspiration from the nation. The theory of self-government is a gain for mankind, but it is a long way, "a far cry," from the theory to the perfect practice. Even in this country, what multitudes of people give their votes according to the pressure not of what is greatest, but of what is nearest; just as, if your child has the scarlet fever, you are more impressed than by the news that five hundred people have been drowned by a flood in China. A sleepless vigilance, an incessant activity, a large command and free expenditure of time, constitute the conditions which alone could enable the mass of a people to restrain all sectional forces and all partial tendencies, and to determine from point to point the fashion in which its own public interests are to be handled. This ag gregate of silent influences upon the State is usually lodged in persons who have wealth, or station, or culture. All of these imply command of leisure, and the power It is difficult, with the imperfect ineans we possess, to say positively that the Italian Government does not in this grave matter represent the people. Yet the signs, as far as they go, suggest that conclusion, Within no long period, unless we are mistaken, University students (who are the warmest of patriots) have made vigorous demonstrations in this sense. The voice of what may be termed the literary portion of the press has sounded in many quarters to the same effect. For example, in this very month, an emphatic denunciation of the policy has proceeded from the Marchese Alfieri di Sostegno.* No manifesta *Nineteenth Century, Sept. 1889: "Italy Drifting.” tion of individual opinion in that country could possibly carry greater weight than the Pensieri of Iacini,* one of the few Italians still surviving who have received the lessons of experience in all the stages of the great revolution of the Peninsula, and who are qualified to point the moral that they teach. How different might and should have been the prospects of Italy! Her people have imbibed the sentiments of nationality with a rapidity and a thoroughness beyond the highest expectations of their friends. Self-government at many points on the surface of the country vindicates itself, in despite of the enormous taxation, by material and by social developments. All the hazards of a tremendous transition have been faced, with a complete success. The King and the Queen reign in the hearts as well as over the bodies of their subjects. It would be very difficult for either the Pope or the clergy (many of whom are believed to be liberal) to make out a case of practical grievance under the existing system. The party of reaction never can be formidable to a country which has no enemies, and no serious ground of quarrel with any State or nation in the world, unless she herself chooses spontaneously to sow the dragon's teeth from which the hostile army are to spring. Italy by Nature stands in alliance neither with anarchy nor with Cæsarism, but with the cause and the advocates of rational liberty and progress throughout Europe. Never had a nation greater advantages from soil and climate, from the talents and dispositions of the people; never was there a more smiling prospect (if we may fall back upon the graceful fiction) from the Alpine tops, even down to the Sicilian promontories, than that which for the moment has been darkly blurred. It is the heart's desire of those, who are not indeed her teachers but her friends, that she may rouse herself to dispel once and forever the evil dream of what is not so much ambition as affectation, may acknowledge the true conditions under which she lives, and it perhaps may not be yet too late for her to disappoint the malevolent hopes of the foes of freedom, and to fulfil every bright and glowing prediction which its votaries have ever uttered on her behalf. -Contemporary Review. THE CITY OF LHÁSÁ. BY GRAHAM SANDBERG. It seems strange that at this advanced period in the world's history there should still remain any city of importance which has never yet been visited by any European now living. Nevertheless the huge city of Lhásá, the capital of Tibet, the Rome of the vast family of Northern Buddhists, occupies at the present day that unique position. Three only, or, at the most, four, natives of Europe during the past hundred years have managed to reach the confines of the mysterious metropolis. It is already forty-five years since the two last of these adventurous heroes, the French missionaries Huc and Gabet, made their residence of six weeks, and were then expelled from the Grand Lama's stronghold. Twenty-five years have elapsed since the Abbé Huc, the survivor, died, after giving to the world his charming series of volumes *"Pensieri sulla politica Italiana." Firenze: Civelli. 1889. NEW SERIES.-VOL. L., No. 5. concerning Tibet, Mongolia, and China. In the meantime many Indian sportsmen have boasted in recent years of having "entered Tibet ;" but on cross-examination it is always made evident that they have not penetrated at the furthest a dozen miles beyond the actual frontier-line of Tibet proper, even at the Ladak side of the country. As to reaching Lhásá itself, neither Englishman, Frenchman, nor Russian has in our own time advanced to within 200 miles of that coveted goal. Alas! that the dauntless traveller Pryevalski should have been cut off, the dream of his life unrealized. However, although no European now existent has ever been even near to the forbidden city, yet it is equally strange that the topography, defences, and general features of Lhásá, as she stands at the present day, are tolerably familiar to several English officials in India. The very names of the streets are recorded; while two independently-drawn 45 plans of the city are now in the hands of the Government; or were in its hands, for it is whispered that one-the most correct -has been lost! We have been enabled to procure by degrees this recent and accurate account of the greater portion of Tibet by a somewhat ingenious machinery. At Darjiling there has been established an institution known as the Bhutia School, where certain lads of the Sikkim clan of Tibetans are clothed and educated at the Government expense. English is taught them by a Bengali master, and Tibetan by a resident lama. From these a few of the more promising are drafted elsewhere, to be trained in surveying and the use of observing in struments; and ultimately, if they seem discreet and of the proper metal, they are despatched as secret explorers beyond the Himalayas. It is from the private reports and observations of these trained emissaries that at length a fair half of the inhabited parts of Tibet has been described and mapped out with some degree of minuteness. The explorers, from their thorough knowledge of the language and manners of the people, usually succeed in deceiving the Tibetan guards stationed at every accessible pass along the frontier line. As the authorities have long ago become aware of our tactics, when within the forbidden land, the utmost guile is still essential. But our agents are true masters of craft. Observing instruments and diaries can be hidden in the cylinders of their prayerwheels, and detection is rarely their lot. Thus, A. K. resided for a whole year in Lhásá; and by the help of his Buddhist rosary measured nearly every street in the place. Again, through the observations of N. S., M. H., and L., the dimensions of lakes, heights of mountains, and the latitude and longitude of numerous fortresses and towns, have been accurately determined and recorded. But the most remarkable exploring adventure of all remains to be mentioned. This was a secret enterprise under the auspices of the Indian Government; but it was the performance, not of one of the trained spies who are of Tibetan extraction, but of a Bengali, one Sarat Chandra Dás. This gentleman was at one time headmaster of the Darjiling Bhutia school; and there he was seized with a perfect mania for the study of the Tibetan language and literature. His learning and general abilities soon attracted Government notice. Though a Bengali by birth and education, he acquired a marvellous acquaintance with colloquial Tibetan, which differs greatly from the literary language. Accordingly he was taken into special Government employment; and, although holding, as he still does, the nominal office of Inspector of Schools, has been constituted ever since a confidential referee in all technical matters relating to Tibet. In the year 1881 Sarat Chandra Dás offered to undertake a secret journey to Lhásá in the disguise of a Tibetan lama. He had already accomplished an expedition of this kind, wherein he had managed to reach Tashi-lhumpo, the second capital of Tibet. Having been furnished by Government with money, and with various costly presents to reward any great Tibetan officials who might befriend him, he set out from Darjiling, on our side of the Himalayas, one dark night in November, 1881. He was accompanied by a Sikkim lama of the Red Cap Buddhist school, one Lama U-gyen Gyats' ho, a resident at Darjiling. The pair had to leave Darjiling and traverse even the quasi-friendly state of Sikkim with the utmost secrecy; otherwise information would have reached the Tibetan frontier before them in the magical manner it always does, and the travellers would have been inevitably stopped. They entered Tibet via Nipal over the dangerous Kanglachhen Pass, 17,000 feet high; and, after the most arduous and surprising adventures, and after visiting many places and monasteries hitherto undescribed, Babu Sarat Chandra Dás at length saw before him the glittering domes of the mysterious Lhásá. They resided in Lhásá not longer than two weeks, but he seems to have made good use of that time in visiting everything that was notable, even obtaining an interview with the Grand Lama. His return journey occupied six months; and he did not reach Darjiling until the 27th of December, 1882. The narrative of his travels is really most fascinating reading. It was written in the outward form of a confidential report to Government, but has been only privately printed and is not allowed to be made public. If published we believe it would prove one of the most delightful books of travel ever written. Its simple narrative style-most creditable to a Bengali-is relieved by the introduction, every few pages, |