the stolen colours, and promptly executed forty of his prisoners by blowing them from his guns. The rest of the broken regiment crossed the border, were hunted down by the hill-tribes, fell into the hands of Mohammedan fanatics, were 'converted' by the argument of whip and sword, or were sold as slaves. One fat old subahdar,' says Mr. Cave-Browne, 'was sold for four annas (sixpence)'! Mutiny, it is clear, proved a very bitter experience for the unhappy 55th!1

A LONDONER'S LOG-BOOK.

'IT was a mild winter evening; a little fog still hanging about, but vanquished by the cheerful lamps, and the voice of the muffin-bell was just heard at intervals-a genial sound that calls up visions of trim and happy hearths. If we could only so contrive our lives as to go into the country for the first note of the nightingale, and return to town for the first note of the muffinbell, existence, it is humbly presumed, might be more enjoyable.'

February is upon us, and surely its peculiar charm was never better described than in the opening lines of the foregoing extract from 'Lothair.' Lord Beaconsfield, a Londoner by birth, worshipped our glorious city as Matthew Arnold worshipped Oxford. To be sure, he never called it an 'adorable dreamer;' and, indeed, the phrase would scarcely have been appropriate. But he loved it as warmly as Samuel Johnson, and knew it as accurately as Samuel Weller-knew it, not merely in all the infinite variety of its exterior aspect, but also in its inner charm and spiritual significance. 'One should always mention localities,' he said, 'because they often indicate character.' Baker Street, indeed, and Gloucester Place, and Harley Street and Wimpole Street, he likened to 'a large family of plain children, with Portland Place and Portman Square for their respectable parents;' but 'the Strand is perhaps the finest street in Europe, blending the architecture of many periods; and its river-ways are a peculiar feature and rich with associations. The Inns of Court, and the quarters in the vicinity of the port, Thames Street, Tower Hill, Billingsgate, Wapping, Rotherhithe, are the best parts of London; they are full of character: the buildings bear a nearer relation to what the people are doing than in the more polished quarters.'

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The man who loves Billingsgate must be a Londoner indeed; and Lord Beaconsfield's enthusiasm for his native city was not circumscribed by its legal boundaries. He had a tender feeling for despised Suburbia. It seems to the writer that the inhabitants of London are scarcely sufficiently sensible of the beauty of its environs. With the exception of Constantinople, there is no city in the world that can for a moment enter into competition

with it. For himself, though in his time something of a rambler, he is not ashamed in this respect to confess to a legitimate cockney taste; and for his part he does not know where life can flow on more pleasantly than in sight of Kensington Gardens, viewing the silver Thames wind by the bowers of Rosebank, or inhaling from its terraces the refined air of graceful Richmond.'

Personally, I go all lengths with Lord Beaconsfield. When, after a temporary exile, I again smell the air of London, my heart leaps up like Wordsworth's when he saw a rainbow. To my mind life in this beloved town resembles a long, luxurious voyage, full of profit and pleasure and incident and health. And, if any of my fellow-travellers care to inspect my log-book, it is frankly at their disposal.

Just thirty years ago-on 'Candlemas Day, 1871 '-Mr. Matthew Arnold wrote his Dedicatory Letter to Adolescens Leo, Esq., of the 'Daily Telegraph.' 'We are now on the point of commencing what Arminius, with his fatally carping spirit, called our "Thyestëan banquet of claptrap"-we are on the eve of the meeting of Parliament.' This year the Thyestëan banquet-table is spread amid surroundings of appropriate gloom-continued disaster in South Africa, virulent ill-will on the part of our European neighbours, wars and rumours of wars, taxes and prospects of taxes. These are things which every one dislikes ; but there is another feature of this year's banquet which is deplorable or satisfactory according to the onlooker's standpoint, and that is the collapse of our parliamentary system. That system, as till 1895 we understood it, postulated something like a balance of parties; a system of checks; a wholesome competition for public favour; a remorseless and untiring criticism directed by the 'Outs' against the 'Ins.' All this has departed, and instead of it we have a Government, tried for five years, found in some grave respects conspicuously wanting, and yet sent back to office with a majority which makes them safe for another five years; and an Opposition, puny in numbers, notoriously divided on every question of actual interest, incapable of effective criticism, and apparently reconciled to permanent exclusion from office.

One of the greatest of Parliamentarians, attacking the Goverr.ment of the day, talked about that state of insignificance for which God and nature designed you.' Our more modest Opposition substitutes 'us' for 'you,' and, speaking by the mouth of its chief whip on the eve of the General Election, meekly accepts insignificance as its appropriate and predestined portion. The Liberal oracles are dumb. Sir William Harcourt, having failed badly in his iconoclastic mission, betakes himself to financial criticism, but somehow cannot induce people to take him seriously in either department. Mr. Asquith is understood to be writing a treatise on 'How to be for and against Annexation.' Mr. Morley occasionally ingeminates Peace, but the note is lacrymose, and neither alarms his opponents nor inspirits his friends. The Roseberyan faction dines together, eulogises its patron, writes articles about itself, and insists on 'vindicating its character, when nobody knows that it has one; and explaining its motives, when its hearers have forgotten its acts.' Were parties evenly balanced, the Roseberyan section might be of some importance, because it would be worth buying. But, as it is, Lord Salisbury is quite strong enough to dispense with the services of such a very broken reed, and it is not the 'Use of Sarum' to encumber himself with wholly uprofitable alliances.

But, after all, Westminster is not London; and though its doings form the natural topic for February, a Londoner must (like Observation) take an extended view, and survey the Church as well as the State. Here the outlook is happier. The State is rather sickly; the Church remarkably vigorous. That admirable liberty which its critics call licence, and which has survived a good many attempts to curb it, seems to be emerging triumphant from its latest conflict. Episcopal coercion moves, as has been happily said, with a leaden foot in a velvet shoe. Those good men whose first article of faith is I believe in an Established Church, have begun to discover that it is safest to let Ritualism alone. The abolition of incense might also spell the abolition of income, and the triumph of Puritanism might disestablish the Church.

Lord Hugh Cecil, I observe, promises, or threatens, legislation which shall curb the freedom of the parish priest, and give greater power both to the bishop and to the lay parishioners. This strikes me as an ominous conjuncture. Certainly those inhabitants of Hatfield whose memories run back ten or fifteen years may be excused if they feel a dread of what Lord Hugh calls 'Rectorcraft.' But, though the unfettered independence of the English incumbent has, like other human things, its drawbacks, it is in my judgment infinitely better for the interests of the Church than either an episcopal dictatorship such as our Holy Aunt, the Church of Rome, permits; or that sway of the rich cheesemonger

which is the bane of Nonconformity. But the Bishop and the Cheesemonger combined would indeed produce a tyranny against which the meekest incumbent in Christendom would soon revolt.

Leaving these high questions of State and Church, which indeed are mainly suggested by the opening of Parliament and of Convocation, I turn to the social aspect of the month. Where all are good, it would be invidious to particularise, as Pennialinus used to say. And yet, socially considered, February has a charm among months which is all its own. That charm is partly due to climatic conditions. I am so loyal a Londoner that I admire even the climate of London, and can almost be lyrical about the fogs of its December and the smells of its July. And yet, undoubtedly, the interspace between the fogs and the smells is the golden age of Society. By February the fogs, as a rule, have disappeared. We no longer lose our way when we go out to dinner, nor are made prisoners in our houses by fear of bronchial asthma. We no longer are married (like Mr. Wilfrid Ashley) under a pall of inky blackness; nor peer (like Lord Roberts) at our admirers through a cold haze of grey cotton-wool. Far ahead are the poisonous exhalations of the dog-days, and the suffocative dinner-parties where men stare and gasp and women collapse. February, March, April, May are the choice months of social enjoyment, and of these I specially love February-not, as Cardinal Newman says,

because it is best, But because it comes first

And is pledge of the rest.

As we advance along the vale of years, and become haunters of clubs and readers of magazines, social enjoyment begins to acquire new meanings for us. Emphatically it does not mean ball-going. I no longer waltz. I think the Kitchen Lancers undignified; and I am quite sure that three minutes of the 'Washington Post' would destroy me. If by chance I ever yield to the importunities of a niece or a neighbour, and look in for a moment at a dance, I recoil with horror when I see the sprightly partners of my youth ranged in patient martyrdom on a hard bench, and drawing worsted shawls over their shoulders as dawn begins to peep. And, if I am thus moved when I look at them, what must be their emotions when they recognise me?

When the ball-going instinct fails, one takes to evening parties; but, as one advances, even these seem hardly worth the