little of practical value as possible. Probably the Porte was not unwilling to make use of any antipathy existing between Druses and Maronites. The Porte was also under the impression, rightly or wrongly, that the Maronites were planning an attack upon the Druses with the object of shaking off the Turkish yoke. It may be that Constantinople was anxious to anticipate matters, and to call in the fanaticism of the Druses to rid them of the Maronites. Certainly the manner in which the Turkish officials at first seemed to connive at the massacres might have justified any such suspicion in the mind of Europe.

England and France took strong and decisive steps. They resolved upon instant intervention to restore tranquility in the Lebanon. A convention was drawn up, to which all the Great Powers of Europe agreed, and which Turkey had to accept. By the convention England and France were intrusted with the duty of restoring order. France undertook to supply the troops required in the first instance; further requirements were to be met as the intervening Powers might think fit. The intervening Powers pledged themselves reciprocally not to seek for any territorial advantage or exclusive influence. England sent out Lord Dufferin to act as her commissioner; and Lord Dufferin accomplished his task with as much spirit as judg. ment. The Turkish Government, to do it justice, had at last shown great energy in punishing the authors and the abettors of the massacres. The Sultan sent out Fuad Pasha, his Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the Lebanon ; and Fuad Pasha showed no mercy to the promoters of the disturbances, or even to the highly-placed official abettors of them. The Governor of Damascus and the commander of the Turkish troops suffered death for their part in the transactions, and about sixty persons were publicly executed in the city, of whom the greater number belonged to the Turkish police force. Lord Dufferin described what he

actually saw in such a manner as to prove that even alarmed rumor had hardly exaggerated the horrors of the time. Lord Dufferin tells that he came to Deir-el-Kamer a few days after the massacre. "Almost every house was burned, and the street crowded with dead bodies, some of them stripped and mutilated in every possible way. My road led through some of the streets; my horse could not even pass, for the bodies were literally piled up. Most of those I examined had many wounds, and in each case the right hand was either entirely or nearly cut off, the poor wretch, in default of weapons, having instinctively raised his arm to parry the blow aimed at him. I saw little children of not more than four years old stretched on the ground, and old men with gray beards."

The intervention was successful in restoring order and in providing for the permanent peace of Syria. It had one great recommendation; it was thorough. It was in that respect a model intervention. To intervene in the affairs of any foreign state is a task of great responsibility. The cases are few indeed in which it can be justified or even excused. But it has long been to all seeming a principle of European statesmanship that Turkey is a country in the government of which it is necessary for other Powers to intervene from time to time. The whole of the policy of what is called the Eastern Question is based on the assumption that Turkey is to be upheld by external influence, and that being thus virtually protected she is liable also to be rebuked and kept in order. Now there may be some doubt as to the propriety of intervening at all in the affairs of Turkey, but there can be no doubt that when intervention does take place it should be prompt and it should be thorough. The independence of Turkey is at an end when a conference of foreign ministers sits round a table to direct what she is to do; it is then merely a question of convenience and expediency as to the extent to which intervention shall go. Nothing can be more

illogical and more pernicious in its way than to say, "We will intervene just far enough to take away from the Turkish Government its domestic supremacy and its responsibility; but, out of consideration for its feelings, or its convenience, we will not intervene far enough to make it certain that what we think necessary shall be promptly and efficiently done." In the case of the Syrian disturbances the intervention was conducted on a practical principle. The Great Powers, acting on the assumption, which alone could justify their interference, that Turkey was not in a condition to restore order herself, proceeded to do this for her in the most energetic and complete manner. The consent of Tur key was not considered necessary. The Sultan was distinctly informed that the interference would take place whether he approved of it not. When the intervention had succeeded in thoroughly restoring order, the representatives of the Great Powers assembled in Constantinople unanimously agreed that a Christian governor of the Lebanon should be appointed in subordination to the Sultan, and the Sultan had, of course, no choice but to agree to this proposition. The French troops evacuated Syria in June, 1861, and thereby much relieved the minds of many Englishmen, who had long forgotten all about the domestic affairs of the Lebanon in their alarm lest the French Imperial troops, having once set foot in Syria, should not easily be induced to quit the country again. This was not merely a popular and ignorant alarm. On June 26th, 1861, Lord Palmerston wrote to the British ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Henry Bulwer, "I am heartly glad we have got the French out of Syria, and a hard job it was to do so. The arrangement made for the future government of the Lebanon will, I dare say, work sufficiently well to prevent the French from having any pretext for returning thither." In the saine letter Lord Palmerston makes a characteristic allusion to the death of the Sultan of Turkey, which had taken place the very day before.

"Abdul-Medjid was a good-hearted and weak-headed man, who was running two horses to the gaol of perdition-his own life and that of his empire. Luckily for the empire his own life won the race." Then Palmerston adds, "If the accounts we have heard of the new Sultan are true, we may hope that he will restore Turkey to her proper position among the Powers of Europe." A day or two after, Lord Wodehouse, on the part of the Government, expressed to the House of Lords a confident hope that a new era was about to dawn upon Turkey. Another new era!

It would hardly be fitting to close the history of this stormy year without giving a few lines to record the peaceful end of a life which had, through all its earlier parts, been one of "sturt and strife." Quietly in his Kensington home passed away, in the late autumn of this year, Thomas Coch rane-the gallant Dundonald, the hero of the Basque Roads. the volunteer who lent his genius and his courage to the cause of Brazil, of Chili, and of Greece; a sort of Peter borough of the waves, a "Swiss of heaven." Lord Dun. donald had been the victim of cruel, although not surely intentional, injustice. He was accused, as every one knows, of having had a share in the famous stock-jobbing frauds of 1814; he was tried, found guilty, sentenced to fine and im prisonment; expelled from the House of Commons, dismissed from the service which he had helped to make yet more illustrious than he found it; and deprived of all his public honors. He lived to see his innocence believed in as wel by his enemies as by his friends. William IV. reinstated him in his naval rank, and Queen Victoria had the congenial task of completing the restoration of his well-won honors. It was not, however, until many years after his death that the country fully acquitted itself of the mere money debt which it owed to Lord Dundonald and his family. Cochrane was a Radical in politics, and for some years sat as a colleague of Sir Francis Burdett in the representation of Westminster.

He carried on in the House of Commons many a bitter argument with Mr. John Wilson Croker, when the latter was Secretary of the Admiralty. It cannot be doubted that Cochrane's political views and his strenuous way of asserting them made him many enemies, and that some men were glad of the opportunity for revenge which was given by the accusation got up against him. His was an impatient spirit, little suited for the discipline of parliamentary life. His tongue was often bitter, and he was too apt to assume that a political opponent must be a person unworthy of respect. Even in his own service he was impatient of rebuke. To those under his command he was always genial and brotherly; but to those above him he was sometimes wanting in that patient submission which is an essential quality of those who would learn how to command with most success. Cochrane's true place was on his quarter-deck; his oppor. tunity came in the extreme moment of danger. Then his spirit asserted itself. His gift was that which wrenches success out of the very jaws of failure; he saw his way most clearly when most others began to despair. During part of his later life he had been occupying himself with some inventions of his own-some submarine methods for blowing up ships, some engines which were, by their terrible destructiveness, to abridge the struggles and agonies of war. At the time of the Crimean War he offered to the Government to destroy Sebastopol in a few hours by some of his plans. The proposal was examined by a committee, and was not accepted. It was his death, on October 30th, 1860, which recalled to the mind of the living generation the hero whose exploits had divided the admiration of their fathers with those of Nelson, of Collingwood, and of Sidney Smith. A new style of naval warfare has come up since those days, and perhaps Cochrane may be regarded as the last of the old sea-kings.