but, without a moment's hesitation, he "hurled himself on the fugitives with a handful of police sowars," and did such fearful execution that 150 of them were laid dead on the line of retreat, 150 surrendered, and the greater number of those who escaped up the hills were wounded. The moral effect of this, just when everything was hanging in the balance, cannot be over-estimated. The tide of mutiny had rolled up almost unchecked until it broke upon this rock.

It has been well said that, at the outbreak of the Mutiny, the valley of Peshawar stood in "a ring of repressed hostilities," while beyond that lay the chronically hostile kingdom of Kaubul. The military forces in this valley consisted of 2800 Europeans and 8000 native soldiers of all arms; and when the intelligence of the events at Delhi and Meerut reached Peshawar, most of the native soldiers became ripe for mutiny. It has often been alleged that the sepoys took no part in the atrocities of this dreadful time, and that these were committed only by released felons and other bad characters; but in the Panjab Mutiny Report it is stated (para. 145) that at Peshawar, in May 1857, "the most rancorous and seditious letters had been intercepted from Mohammedan bigots in Patna and Thaneysur, to soldiers of the 64th Native Infantry, revelling in the atrocities that had been committed in Hindústhan on the men, women, and children of the Nazarenes,' and sending them messages from their own mothers that they should emulate these deeds." Communications also were going on between the sepoys in open rebellion and their brethren across the frontier. It was most fortunate that at this juncture Sir Sydney Cotton ordered the disarmament of his native troops; and there is reason to

believe that Nicholson had great influence in leading him to do so; but how did he come to do so? The Mutiny Report mentions that "this measure was determined on under the strenuous opposition of the condemned corps; some had 'implicit confidence in their regiment; others advocated conciliation."" Of these infatuated old Indians, who have their counterparts at the present day, one colonel shot himself when his regiment, the 99th, revolted, so much did he feel the disgrace.

Peshawar is a very interesting place; and though the acting commissioner, Mr. M'Nab, was absent on the border, I had met with him at Mardán, and received much information and great kindness from him as well as from Major Ommaney, another civil officer, as also from Mr. Hughes of the Church Mission. Mr. Ward, the superintendent of police, accompanied me up the Khyber Pass, near to Ali Musjid, the first campingground on the way to Kaubul. This is managed through the Afrídís, or Afreedees, of the fort of Jumrood, which stands on the sort of no man's land-the desolate strip between our territory and that of Kaubul. The Khyberís are a rapacious and sanguinary lot, and it does not do to enter their territory without protection of some kind. They even annoyed Sher Ali, the ruler of Kaubul, on his return from visiting Lord Mayo in 1869; and when I was at Peshawar the Khyber route into Afghanistan was entirely closed, owing to the exactions practised on travellers by the tribes who occupy it. More recently some of these people came down to Peshawar one night by stealth, and carried off into their fastnesses the bandmaster of an English, or perhaps a Scotch, regiment, who had fallen asleep by the roadside on his

way from the sergeants' mess to his own quarters, and held him to ransom for £700, but were finally induced to accept a smaller sum.

So thirty-five of the armed Afrídís and one piper marched with me up the Khyber Pass, "to plunder and to ravish," no doubt, if there had been anything to plunder. We saw some caves high above the place where we stopped for breakfast, but none of the natives of the pass appeared. We then had a shooting-match, in which even little boys, who carried matchlock and dagger, acquitted themselves very well, played our most insulting tunes in the face, or rather against the back, of the enemy,-and marched back again. The pass is so narrow, and the mountains on both sides of it are so high and precipitous, that the Khyber must be a particularly unpleasant place to be attacked in. The entire length of this wonderful gorge is nearly fifty miles; it runs through slate, limestone, and sandstone; and in wet weather the

path becomes the bed of a torrent. Near Ali Musjid the precipices rise from this narrow path to the height of 1200 feet, at an angle of about 80°. This wild pass is said to be able to turn out 26,000 fighting men, and during the Afghan war many of our troops perished in it.

But I must now draw these papers to a close. From Peshawar there was only the long drive across the Panjáb to Lahore, and from Lahore the railway to Bombay. This was in the end of December, and all across the country of the five rivers, afar off, high above the golden dust haze, there gleamed the snowy summits of the giant mountains whose whole line I had traversed in their central and loftiest valleys. The next snow I beheld was on the peak of Cretan Ida; but I had seen the great Abode of the Gods, where,

VOL. CXVIII.-NO. DCCXVII.

F

Ir would perhaps be a bold assertion to say that few ages have been so fond of historical investigations as our own. History, in all times in which the intelligence has been lively and free, has taken a first place among the subjects of interest which occupy at once the student and the more superficial reader, giving pleasure alike to the profound investigator of the past, and to him who snatches his lesson as he hurries through those busy ways of common life which permit no lingering. It is almost the first of literary arts for poetry, though she goes before the graver muse, has nearly always in her primitive efforts taken the form of chronicle, and occupied herself with a narrative of the deeds of men or gods, making of them a kind of sublimated history; and in every race which has maintained a place among the great community of nations the chronicler has been the first writer, the founder of literature. To record the deeds of those who have gone before us, for the sake of simple knowledge and natural interest in our fathers in the first place, and then by way of drawing from them models, examples of good or evil fortune, encouragement in our own exertions, is the first of intellectual movements, the beginning of all life which rises beyond the immediate requirements of to-day. But the further step of making that solid basis of history the object of our speculations, and of tracing through it great waves of purpose and meaning which probably the actors in it were totally unconscious of, is a development which comes much later. The philosophy of history is of modern growth; only long after the fact, in the safe distance which

at once reveals its full proportions to us, and is silent, making no contradiction to anything we say, can we frame elaborate theories of those mixed motives and cycles of meaning which the modern mind loves to investigate. Naturally the tendency in one direction or another which lies under the mental activity of any distinct period, is but dimly perceptible to those who are carrying it out. Our immediate motives we know; but how these motives fit into those of others all moving in the same direction, and sweeping towards a larger result than can be achieved by any individual action, we are powerless to see until the play is played out, and the work accomplished. Therefore it is that contemporary narratives, precious as they are in themselves, acquire to the historical student a quite independent value as memoires pour servir-materials for that great story which generation after generation works out with but partial knowledge of what it is doing, and which, only when the perfection of the past has rounded each individual chapter, falls into full rhythmic harmony and cadence with all that follows after, and with all that has gone before.

This final step in history, however, the philosophy which traces across the far-retiring champaign into the very horizon, those lines of meaning, those slowly-developed tendencies. which have worked themselves out into the present fabric of society, is attended with infinite dangers to the student, to whom it is often so delightfully easy to fit the facts into his theory, after the fashion of that divinity of the Sunday schools, which proves all manner of doctrines by means of

irrefragable “texts." Brilliant books have been produced in this way, we all know, and wonderful opportunities given to the politician and the partisan of promulgating their favourite views, and impressing at least the passive portion of the public with their favourite conception of historic truth. Such adaptations of history are often more exciting, more vivid, more living, as pervaded by the actual beliefs and sentiments of the writer, than more trustworthy works; yet it is disagreeable to feel no certainty after we have read, for example, the brilliant volumes of Lord Macaulay, that the greatest historical event or most notable character has not been subjected to some subtle modification or alteration, to suit his political views, or even, more disenchanting still, to answer the demands of chiaro-oscuro in his admirable style, by furnishing the due amount of light or of relief which that picturesque medium required. And it is painful when we turn to Mr. Froude's interesting pages to be aware, through all the beauty of the narrative, of that curious half-conscious manipulation of facts to suit an impassioned preconception of character, which turns the historian's judicial calm into the fiery force of a partisan's argument. Mr. Symonds is far from having attained the altitude of either Froude or Macaulay; and the period he has chosen is one which can scarcely move English readers, at least to anything of the same exciting interest which still clings to the names of Elizabeth and Mary, of Charles and Cromwell, or even of James and William-names which recall to us the great and long-standing duel which is still, by milder manifestations, going on among us, and in which it is still

impossible for British men not to take sides. The age of the Renaissance is further off, and its influence was never so much felt in our distant regions as to move us beyond the range of impartial interest. Mr. Symonds, however, demonstrates to us the existence of a third danger beyond those of political or personal partiality. He is in love with his theory: the ordinary influences of humanity, the common sequence of events, disappear from before his eyes, and the Renaissance becomes all in all. Life stands still and steps aside; Religion abandons the field; even Vice, more potent, is superseded by this new power. It is not natural wickedness that makes a monster of Alexander VI., but the Renaissance; and it is not outraged faith and prophetic zeal which move Savonarola, but again the Renaissance, an influence still less tangible than those other spiritual influences. which have moved mankind through all the ages; but which, seen through Mr. Symonds' eyes, appears almost like an individual-a tremendous mysterious personality, taking upon itself all spiritual functions both for good and evil. This is a great drawback to his bock which in itself gives an animated and able picture of a very interesting period. The motive is doubtless a better one than those of the historians to whom we have referred; the writer's intention is to give a new life and interest to his record, not by elevation of one side or one person, but by development of a new spiritual action and spring of intellectual motive, before which all the old principalities and powers abdicated, for the moment at least. But we fear these ancient potentates are too strong for Mr. Symonds, and this sort

of spiritual personation (if we may be allowed the phrase) is not to be made in modern days. Religion we know, and wickedness we know, for these abstractions are as old as the world; but the imagination refuses to acknowledge Renaissance as a new ghostly power. The French have tried hard to establish Revolution as one of the spiritual potencies, not a fact or a series of facts, but a mystery and influence like truth or falsehood, war or peace; but though in France itself the attempt has been partially successful, we cannot allow our vague Olympus of abstractions to be thus tampered with in the nineteenth century. In art, in literature, in science, no doubt, the results of the Renaissance are sufficiently marked to be distinguishable as individual phenomena; but we fear Mr. Symonds oversteps the mark when he makes the influence of this period equally potential in history and moralstaking the sceptre out of the hands of those old Thrones and Dominations which existed before the Renaissance and after, and sway us still.

With this protestation, however, to begin with, the reader will find a very lively picture of an extremely interesting age in Mr. Symonds' big volume lively and interesting at once because of its goodness and its badness, the amount of study and research evident in it, and the curious breakneck falls down precipices of fine writing, with which much that is very good both in style and feeling is interlarded. Mr. Symonds belongs to a new school of writers of the class which would have been styled "elegant " a century ago, which has been produced by a new and small Renaissance of its own quite recently accomplished so that his downfalls in this kind call for more

notice thau were they merely the natural trippings-up in the haste of his career of a young and comparatively unpractised author. That young men should feel it in their power to throw an entirely new light over the antiquated old world, in which we too once were young and entertained the same delusion, is not only natural but desirable and attractive to the reader, who, if he is at all an amiable reader, likes nothing better than to share when he can the delightful surprise with which every new beholder sheds a novel glory upon the universe. But young writers entertaining this lofty hope, and dotting their pages with Greek quotations, which show that they aspire to the very highest and most cultured audience, and scorn all unclassical readers, women, and simple folks, should be very careful of committing themselves to rhetoric, or outbursts of graphic eloquence in the manner of Mr. Hepworth Dixon. Sad it is to say it, but duty compels us to point out that this is what Mr. Symonds has done, though he ought to know a great deal better. If the gentleman we have just named (with the greatest respect for where could a more popular writer be found?) should undertake (and why should he not?) a history of His Holiness's Palace' as he has done that of 'Her Majesty's Tower,' we do not know that even his experienced hand could produce a tableau more splendid than the following, which we quote from the chapter entitled the "Popes of the Renaissance," from Mr. Symonds' book :

"When our Elizabethan ancestors were about to act a History upon the stage, they used first to send in dumbshow across the scene a representative pageant of the chief personages. Let us imagine that we are assisting at such a spectacle. The Popes of the Renaissance defile before us in a figurative