trial. The trial, however, was reduced to this: that Wall called out Armstrong on parade, told him that he was a mutinous fellow, and asked him what he had to say for himself; and on Armstrong replying what he had previously alleged, viz. that he preferred his pay in cash rather than in glass beads, the lashes were laid on.

It is a strange and repulsive story, this life on the West Coast a century ago; and Wall's crime is the most horrible incident of the story. As a rule, crimes of violence were not frequent; irregularities ran mostly on the lines of extravagant swindling of Government and revolting intoxication. But Wall was exceptional in every way. Socially he was rather above the average of men appointed to the West Coast; personally he was a good soldier, and had shown most distinguished courage at the siege of Havana. During his exile, whether because he was removed from the temptations of authority or for whatever reason, he showed himself an agreeable and more than an agreeable man. At the trial his witnesses to character testified that he was a man of distinguished humanity, a good husband and father.' Another witness said: 'I never knew a man of more benign disposition in my life, a gentleman brimful of the nicest feelings of philanthropy.' It may have been so, but he was convicted of the capital crime, and hanged on the 28th of January 1802.

The nineteen years of Wall's exile nearly corresponded with the French occupation of Goree, from 1783 to 1800. In the latter year Sir Charles Hamilton retook the island. He simply appeared before the place, which, after a verbal summons, capitulated with the honours of war. It is to be noted that there is no more talk of Goree being useless to England, after the fashion of Colonel Worge. Sir Charles Hamilton assumes, as a matter of course, that my Lords' will appreciate the strength and importance of his conquest. Goree by its natural situation is a thorn in our side;' 'the only way to serve this colony is to take Goree immediately;' these are the views of the contemporary governor of Senegambia. Colonel Fraser, the new governor of Goree, held similar views about Senegal. Senegal is a thorn in the side of Goree,' he wrote to Henry Dundas on the 5th of January 1801. He had just been repulsed with a loss of eleven killed and eighteen wounded in an attempt to capture Senegal, so he wrote with more than customary bitterness.

Thus the balance of opinion, official and commercial, had by this time settled down to this view-that whatever was settled on the mainland, Goree ought to be held along with the mainland colony. This conclusion was arrived at after an experience of a century and a half, during which time we had held Goree by itself, Gambia by itself, Goree and Gambia, Goree and Senegambia.

We have now reached the most critical moment of this century. Napoleon had made his famous dash on the East and had failed; he

was now pushing on swiftly, and as secretly as might be, his preparations for the conquest of England by sea or land. The Treaty of Amiens had been signed in March 1802. It gave Napoleon time, and he never intended that it should serve any other end. He felt himself gradually falling into the grip of the great Sea Power; and the struggle of the Titan to set himself free raised the billows the distant ripples of which were felt even on the rock of Goree. Everything turned on Malta. England, nervously anxious for peace, welcomed even the designedly cumbrous provisions of the Treaty of Amiens relating to that island, and honestly endeavoured to carry them out. Still clinging to the hope that France would preserve the peace, our Ministers nevertheless grew every day more anxious and perturbed. We can trace this painful tension even in the home correspondence with the little island of Goree. On the 30th of June 1802, Henry Dundas directed Colonel Fraser to evacuate the island, in accordance with the Treaty of Amiens, and take his troops to Sierra Leone. On the 26th of October 1802, Lord Hobart, Mr. Dundas's successor, in a despatch marked 'Most Secret,' revokes the last order, and commands Fraser to hold on; already the Cabinet is growing uneasy. On the 15th of November 1802, in a secret despatch which shows signs of reassurance, Lord Hobart once more enjoins the evacuation of Goree. Ten days earlier the French had invited Fraser to retire. He had at once consented, but alleged the sound excuse that he had no transports. It does not appear that this was a subterfuge, and the French were quite polite and even contented with the situation. But although the evacuation was demanded by the French on the 5th of November 1802, Fraser was still in command a year later, and receiving Hobart's orders to put in hand the conquest of Senegal forthwith. Apparently the French had made no move. This is the more remarkable in that Sebastiani's famous Report had been published in January 1803, and by May Lord Whitworth had already left Paris. Nevertheless, the year closed at Goree in profound peace.

The blow, when it fell, came from an unexpected quarter-from French Guiana. Louis the Sixteenth had accorded to the Royal Company of Guiana the exclusive privilege of trafficking in slaves with Goree. Hence there were in Cayenne numbers of desperate men already familiar with the cross-Atlantic voyage, partly ruined by the presence of the English on the West Coast, and perfectly acquainted with the island of Goree and-most important of all-with its geography. The French authorities call these men corsairs: we need not be more particular. It was, in any case, a private undertaking, and not a Government expedition.

The garrison of Goree, who soon had to resist the assault of these daring slavers, is thus described by their commandant: They were the sweepings of every parade in England; for when a man was

sentenced to be flogged he was offered the alternative of volunteering for the Royal Africans, and he generally came to me.'

6

Those who were not recruited in this way were deserters from continental armies or from other English corps. They were not a bad set of fellows when there was anything to be done, but with nothing to do they were devils incarnate.'

We must not confuse the commandant with the ruffians his predecessors. Sir John Fraser was a remarkable man, honest and courageous; he had been twice wounded, one wound costing him a leg, and was soon in the thick of the hardest fighting ever seen at Goree. The attacking force consisted of 600 men, including some soldiers of the regular army picked up at Senegal, and was led by an officer of the French Navy, Chevalier Mahé. The fleet that conveyed them carried sixty guns. Fraser's garrison numbered fifty-four men, all told, including the sick. This considerable disparity of forces becomes yet more formidable when we remember that the great strength of Goree was that, unless the attacking party were familiar with the geography of the island, there was only one place where they could land, and that place was covered by the guns of the fort. There was a possibility of landing on another part of the beach, but only if the attacking party knew exactly where to take the beach in the boats and so avoid the surf.

Fraser was deprived of this advantage, because the Guiana men knew the beach of Goree better than he did himself. He was therefore compelled to divide his diminutive army into two detachments. But, like all remarkable commanders, he had materially increased his scanty strength by the enthusiasm he had inspired in all around himnot only in his soldiers, but also in the civilian population of the island. When all is said, the enemy numbered rather more than four to one, for they landed 240 men from their ships on the 18th of January 1804.

We have seen what Fraser's men were like: they were devils incarnate,' and like devils incarnate they fought. For twenty-four hours the battle raged all over the island. The main guard was captured and recaptured, and Fraser did not surrender until he had only twenty-five men left who could bear arms. But though seventyfive of the French had fallen-or half as many again as the entire force of the garrison-the French could afford their losses, and remained in a preponderance of seven to one, without counting the 360 men still on board the ships. Surrender was no dishonour under these circumstances; so the British flag was hauled down, and for the fifth time in 127 years Goree passed over to the French. The remainder of the English garrison was despatched to Senegal, and thence to England.

But this French occupation lasted a very short time. Although won at so great expense, it only endured for six weeks. Moreover, it

seems to have been held with some timidity; for English colours were kept flying, and sentinels clothed in red paced the walls of the fort in order to mislead any passing British squadron. They did not mislead Captain Dickson, who appeared before the place on the 7th of March 1804. Two days later, after a slight brush with the enemy and the exchange of some communications by letter, the English entered Goree, and commenced an occupation which, though their last, was destined to be their longest, for it endured till the conclusion of peace in 1814. The island, however, was not actually handed over to the French until the year 1817, exactly two hundred years after its first occupation by the Dutch.

Although we had been capturing and restoring Goree at intervals ever since the year 1663, the total period of our occupation did not exceed twenty-eight years. The record of the various occupations runs as follows:

THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE NOVEL

UNDER QUEEN VICTORIA

Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporations in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers; and while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogised by a thousand pens, there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.

So wrote Miss Austen, a woman of spirit as well as a woman of genius, at the commencement of the expiring century. Nobody could write so now. The eighty years which have elapsed since Jane Austen was laid to rest in Winchester Cathedral have brought no intellectual or moral revolution more complete than the apotheosis of the novel. Sir Walter Scott seriously, and with good reason, believed that if he had put his name to Waverley and Guy Mannering he would have injured his reputation as a poet, and even his character as a gentleman. If a novel is published anonymously nowadays, it is in order that the public may be subsequently informed whose identity it is which has been artfully, and but for a moment, concealed. The novel threatens to supersede the pulpit, as the motor-car will supersede the omnibus. We have a new class of novelists who take themselves very seriously, and well they may. Their works are seldom intended to raise a smile. They are designed less for amusement than for instruction, so that to read them in a spirit of levity would be worse than laughing in church, and almost as bad as making a joke in really respectable society. The responsibilities of intellect are now so widely felt that they weigh even where there is no ground for them. Imagination, if it exists, must be kept within bounds. Humour, or what passes for it, must be sparingly indulged. The foundations of belief, the future of the race, the freedom of the will, the unity of history, the limits of