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should be obeyed than that the controlling and regulating power should be removed.

If we look back at the result which had been attained in 1895, we may fairly come to the conclusion that the quiet persistence of the Imperial Government had not been in vain. All reasonable demands on the part of the Republic had been carefully considered and generally granted. Meanwhile, by an inevitable fate, the territory of the Transvaal had been surrounded and enclosed by the advancing forces of civilisation. It would be absurd to suppose that the Boers were satisfied with the course which events had taken; the more adventurous among them made one last attempt to find a new home in the unexplored country beyond the desert, where most of them found only a grave, but there was room for hope that a new generation would grow up, which would become reconciled to the new conditions. That this hope was frustrated was due, in the first place, to the Hollanders, who monopolised the Government and taught the Boers to look for help to foreign Powers; and, in the second place, to the Raid. We know that, in regard to that disastrous event, the English Government was guiltless; but who can ever expect a single Boer to believe this? The connexion of the Company and the Crown was too close; the unfortunate transference of Bechuanaland to the Company, which alone made the Raid possible, was too recent. authority of the Crown, which the Boers were perhaps beginning to regard as a symbol of law, was now made apparently the accomplice of lawlessness.

The

We do not wish now to enter on a discussion about the Raid; no one denies that it was both a crime and a blunder. One thing, however, we must say, and that is that, looking back on the history of the Chartered Company, we have no right to be surprised, either at the lawlessness of the attempt or at its rashness. The achievements for which the Company had gained most credit had been undertaken under the control and with the co-operation of the Imperial Government. The pioneer expedition into Mashonaland was not permitted to advance until the High Commissioner had assured himself that proper preparations had been made and every precaution taken; and until, in order to protect it against the possibility of attack from the Matabele, a body of the Bechuanaland Police had been stationed on the northern frontier of the Protectorate. It is this more than anything else which, according to so good a judge as Mr. Selous, ensured the immunity from attack which the immigrants enjoyed, when an attack would have been disastrous. It was their great success in the

Matabele war which spurred the Company on to further military enterprises; but let us recollect that Dr. Jameson's first proposal for attacking the Matabele was to advance upon Bulawayo with a small mounted force, each man carrying four days' provisions, without waggons, and without reserves of ammunition. Had he been permitted to carry out his intention he would have failed, as he failed in the Raid; and the Matabele would have shown no mercy. For three months he was kept back, and he was not allowed to advance until horses, waggons, and ammunition had been provided, and until a column of the Imperial Bechuanaland Police were ready to divert half of Lobengula's warriors by an invasion from the south. Then, and not till then, the restrictions on his action were removed. The High Commissioner-Mr. Rhodes being on his way to Beira at the time-gave permission to clear the Matabele from the frontier, and the invasion followed. Prudence and adequate preparation were rewarded by success; but success unfortunately encouraged Dr. Jameson to embark on a reckless enterprise in which he was no longer restrained by the prudence of others, and it ended, as was inevitable, in disaster. And let those who are astonished at the lawlessness of the Raid recollect what happened in 1891, when, contrary to the orders of the Government, the armed forces of the Company made a similar expedition into Portuguese territory, just at the time when the whole efforts of the Government were being directed to the task of bringing about a peaceful demarcation of the Portuguese and British dominions in Africa.

This is not the place to speak of the terrible struggle which is desolating South Africa, but the connexion of the foregoing remarks with the event which we all deplore is obvious. We have attempted to show that the policy of the Republic has, ever since 1881, been of such a nature that it had to be checked, as checked it was for some years. The means for holding such dangerous ambitions in restraint were, first, the moral justice of our attitude, and the civilising and pacific influence of our control; and secondly, a resolute decision of purpose, backed by the consciousness of overwhelming strength. Both the moral and the physical force were unquestionably ours for some ten years after the Convention of Pretoria; and, for so long, South Africa was quiet. But the arming of the Republic gradually deprived us of one of these advantages, or induced the Boers to believe that we had lost it, which, in regard to consequences, is the same thing; while the Raid deprived us of the other, at least in the eyes of the Boers and their sympathisers. When this change had taken place, war became inevitable.

ART. XII.-1. The Flora of Cheshire.

By the late Lord De Tabley. Edited by Spencer Moore, with a Biographical Notice of the Author by Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff. London: Longmans and Co., 1899.

2. Poems Dramatic and Lyrical. By John Leicester Warren, Lord De Tabley. London: Elkin Matthews and John Lane, 1893.

3. Poems Dramatic and Lyrical. By Lord De Tabley. Second Series. London: John Lane, 1895.

THE

HE publication of this work on the 'Cheshire Flora,' by the late Lord De Tabley, has revived the memory of a remarkable man who was well-known in literary circles some years ago, although he never obtained the public recognition which he deserved. A native of Cheshire and a botanist from early youth, Lord De Tabley, or, as he was in those days, Leicester Warren, had devoted many years of his life to a careful study of the flora of the country round his ancestral home. After his death, the MS. of the work before us was found among his papers by his sister, Lady Leighton, and entrusted by her to Mr. Spencer Moore, who has edited the volume with care and judgment. Botanists have welcomed the book as a valuable addition to the local floras of Great Britain, and a fitting memorial to one whose love for plants was both genuine and scientific. But the general reader will turn with deeper interest to the short biographical sketch at the beginning of the volume, which we owe to Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff. In these fifty pages the accomplished writer has drawn a faithful portrait of his lamented friend, who to the end remained the poeta ignotus of his day, and whose dim and shadowy form adds yet another picturesque figure to the literary annals of a century which began with John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, to end with Robert Louis Stevenson. Sir Mountstuart has, so far as was possible within these limits, shown us the wide range of Lord De Tabley's powers and the extraordinary versatility of his genius. The impression which he made upon other distinguished men was uniformly striking. Statesmen and poets, critics and historians, Mr. Gladstone and Lord Strangford, Tennyson and Browning, Edward Freeman and George Henry Lewes, all agreed in declaring him to be one of the foremost men of his generation. Whatever he did was well done. Whatever the subject might be to which he turned his attention -whether he discussed literary topics in the 'Saturday' or 'Fortnightly Review,' or wrote learned treatises on plants and coins in botanical or numismatical papers, or took up the study

of book-plates-he was immediately recognised as one of the first living authorities in that particular department. The only time that he ever spoke in the House of Lords—in a debate that took place in 1891 on a Bill for compensating Cheshire landlords whose property was undermined by salt-works-his speech attracted general attention, and was warmly praised by Lord Herschell. During thirty years he wrote poetry, under a variety of different names, and it was only near the end of his life, when he was on the verge of sixty, that he caught the ear of the public and attained any substantial measure of The few friends who knew him well found in him a gentle and lovable, often a gay and witty, companion, but he was too shy and sensitive to find pleasure in general society, and even to his most intimate associates he often remained a mystery.

success.

'Lord De Tabley,' writes Mr. Arthur Benson,' always struck me as being a curious instance of the irony of destiny-a man with so many sources of pleasure and influence open to him-his love of literature, his mastery of style, his conversational charm, his social position, his affectionate nature-yet bearing always about with him a curious attitude of resignation and disappointment, as though life were, on the whole, a sad business, and, for the sake of courtesy and decency, the less said about it the better. I must repeat the word courtesy, for like a subtle fragrance it interpenetrated all he did or said. It seemed the natural aroma of an exquisitely sensitive, delicate, and considerate spirit. He contrived to inspire affection to a singular extent. Perhaps there was a certain pathos about his life and the strange contradictions it contained, but I think there was also in him a deep need of affection, and, in spite of his determined effort after courage and calm, an intimate despair of gaining the encouragement of others.'

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The extracts which Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff has given us from Lord De Tabley's letters reveal, better than anything else, the brilliant powers of the man, his wide range of learning, refined and scholarly tastes, lively imagination, and keen sense of humour. It is only to be regretted that the limited space at the writer's disposal did not admit of a larger and fuller selection, especially from those delightful letters, sparkling with fun and dealing with every variety of subject, which the writer addressed to Sir Mountstuart himself during the year of his absence from England. In these circumstances, a few further details regarding this singularly gifted and little-known man of letters may be of interest to our readers.

* Letter quoted in 'Critical Kitcats,' by Edmund Gosse, p. 195.

John Byrne Leicester Warren, the elder and last surviving son* of the second Baron De Tabley, was born at Tabley House, in Cheshire, on the 26th of April, 1835. The race from which he sprang was one of the oldest and proudest in the kingdom. The bluest blood of England and Ireland, of France and Germany, flowed in his veins. On his mother's side he was descended from the princely house of De Salis, and numbered among his ancestors Gui de Lusignan, the paladin who, according to the old legend, wooed the water-nymph Melusina for his bride. Through his father he traced his descent from the O'Byrnes, those ancient kings of Ireland whose heroic deeds still live in the songs of Wicklow, and from the famous Earl Warenne, who married Gundrada, once said to be a daughter of William the Conqueror. Early in the eighteenth century the chief of the clan O'Byrne married the heiress of the Leicesters, a Cheshire family which had settled at Nether Tabley in the days of the Plantagenets, and whose fourteenth-century manorhouse, built of oak from the neighbouring forests, is still standing in the park at Tabley. The picturesque gables of crimson brick, the herb-garden with its old sun-dial, and the ancient chapel, rebuilt two hundred years ago by that eminent antiquary and loyal Cavalier, Sir Peter Leicester, are all reflected in the waters of the moat. Within the house nothing is changed. The armour of the old Cheshire squires still hangs upon the panelled walls; the tapestries which their wives and daughters embroidered still adorn my lady's parlour; their spinning wheels and linen chests, the spinets upon which they made music, the very playthings which they used, have all been carefully preserved. At a short distance from this Old Hall, where the whole history of the past is as it were enshrined, stands the stately modern house, built in the last century from the designs of Carr, and decorated after the fashion of Adams and Wedgwood. The poet's grandfather, created Lord De Tabley in 1826 by George IV, finished the new house after his father's death, and became famous not only as a friend of the Prince Regent, but as a generous patron of art. Turner and Romney, Northcote and Martin, Ward and Opie, were among the painters who found shelter under his hospitable roof, and whose works adorn the picture-gallery at Tabley. There, among the portraits of Leicesters painted by Vandyck and Zucchero, by Lely and Kneller, by Sir Joshua and Coates, we recognise Lawrence's picture of 'Hope' wearing the features of the first Baroness De Tabley, Mademoiselle Cottin, the fair

* A younger brother, Francis, died at six years old.

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