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listening to genuine eloquence. Putting aside for the moment recollection of foibles, almost too obvious to deserve the careful demonstration which they have sometimes received, we are glad to surrender ourselves to the charm of his straightforward, clear-headed, hard-hitting declamation. There is no writer with whom it is easier to find fault, or the limits of whose power may be more distinctly defined; but within his own sphere he goes forward, as he went through life, with a kind of grand confidence in himself and his cause, which is attractive and at times even provocative of sympathetic enthusiasm.

Macaulay said, in his Diary, that he wrote his "History" with an eye to a remote past and a remote future. He meant to erect a monument more enduring than brass, and the ambition at least stimulated him to admirable thoroughness of workmanship. How far his aim was secured must be left to the decision of a posterity, which will not trouble itself about the susceptibilities of candidates for its favor. In one sense, however, Macaulay must be interesting so long as the type which he so fully represents continues to exist. Whig has become an old-fashioned phrase, and is repudiated by modern Liberals and Radicals, who think themselves wiser than their fathers. The decay of the old name implies a remarkable political change; but I doubt whether it implies more than a very superficial change in the national character. New classes and new ideas have come upon the stage; but they have a curious family likeness to the old. The Whiggism, whose peculiarities Macaulay reflected so faithfully, represents some of the most deeply-seated tendencies of the national character. It has, therefore, both its ugly and its honorable side. Its disregard, or rather its hatred, for pure reason, its exaltation of expediency above truth and precedent above principle, its instinctive dread of strong religious or political faiths, are of course questionable qualities. Yet even they have their nobler side. There is something almost sublime about the grand unreasonableness of the average Englishman. His dogged

contempt for all foreigners and philosophers, his intense resolution to have his own way and use his own eyes, to see nothing that does not come within his narrow sphere of vision, and to see it quite clearly before he acts upon it, are of course abhorrent to thinkers of a different order. But they are great qualities in the struggle for existence, which must determine the future of the world. The Englishman, armed in his panoply of self-content, and grasping facts with. unequalled tenacity, goes on trampling upon acuter sensibilities, but somehow shouldering his way successfully through the troubles of the universe. Strength may be combined with stupidity, but even then it is not to be trifled with. Macaulay's sympathy with these qualities led to some annoying peculiarities, to a certain brutal insularity, and to a commonness, sometimes a vulgarity of style which is easily criticised. But, at least, we must confess that, to use an epithet which always comes up in speaking of him, he is a thoroughly manly writer. There is nothing silly or finical about him. He sticks to his colors resolutely and honorably. If he flatters his countrymen, it is the unconscious and spontaneous effect of his participation in their weaknesses. He never knowingly calls black white, or panders to an ungenerous sentiment. He is combative to a fault, but his combativeness is allied to a genuine love of fair play. When he hates a man, he calls him knave or fool with unflinching frankness, but he never uses a base weapon. The wounds which he inflicts may hurt, but they do not fester. His patriotism may be narrow, but it implies faith in the really good qualities, the manliness, the spirit of justice, and the strong moral sense of his countrymen. He is proud of the healthy vigorous stock from which he springs, and the fervor of his enthusiasm, though it may shock a delicate taste, has embodied itself in writings which will long continue to be the typical illustration of qualities of which we are all proud at bottom-indeed, be it said in passing, a good deal too proud.-Cornhill Magazine.

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DURBAN, Jan. 3rd, 1876.

I MUST certainly begin this letter by setting aside every other topic for the moment and telling you of our grand event, our national celebration, our historical New Year's Day! We have "turned our first sod" of our first inland railway, and, if I am correctly informed, at least a dozen sods more; but you must remember, if you please, that our navvies are Kafirs, and they do not understand what Mr. Carlyle calls the beauty and dignity of labor in the least. It is all very well for you conceited dwellers in the Old and New Worlds to laugh at us for making such a fuss about a projected hundred miles of railway,-you whose countries are made into dissected maps by the magic iron lines; but for poor us, who have to drag every pound of sugar and reel of sewing cotton over some sixty miles of vile road between this and Maritzburg, such a line, if it be ever finished, would be a boon and a blessing indeed.

I think I can better make you understand how great if I describe my journeys up and down: journeys made, too, under exceptionally favorable circumstances. The first thing which had to be done, some three weeks before the day of our departure, was to pack and send down by wagon a couple of portmanteaus with our smart clothes.

I may

as well mention here that the cost for transit came to fourteen shillings each way for these light and small packages, and that on each occasion we were separated from our possessions for a fortnight and more. The next step to be taken was to secure places in the daily postcart, and it required as much mingled firmness and persuasion to do this as though it had reference to a political crisis. But then there were some hundreds of us Maritzburgians all wanting to be taken down to Durban within the space of a few days, and there was nothing to take us except the post cart which occupied six hours on the journey, and an omnibus which took ten hours but afforded more shelter from possible rain and probable sun. Within the two vehicles some twenty people might, at a

push, find places, and at least a hundred wanted to go every day of that last week of the old year. I don't know how the others managed: they must have got down somehow, for there they were in great force when the eventful day had arrived.

This first journey was prosperous, deceitfully prosperous, as though it would fain try to persuade us that after all there was a great deal to be said in favor of a mode of travelling which reminded one of the legends of the glories of the old coaching days. No dust, for there had been heavy rain a day or two before, a perfect summer's day, hot enough in the sun, but not disagreeably hot, as we bowled along, fast as four horses could go, in the face of a soft, balmy summer breeze. We were packed as tightly as we could fit, two of us on the coach-box, with the mail bags under our feet and the driver's elbows in our ribs. The ordinary light dog-cart which daily runs between Maritzburg and Durban was exchanged for a sort of open brake, strong indeed, but very heavy one would fancy for the poor horses, who had to scamper along, up and down veldt and berg, over bog and spruit, with this lumbering conveyance at their heels. Not for long though: every seven miles, or even less, we pulled up, sometimes at a tidy inn, where a long table would be set in the open verandah laden with eatables (for driving fast through the air sharpens even the sturdy colonial appetite), sometimes at a lonely shanty by the roadside, from whence a couple of Kafir lads emerged, tugging at the bridles of the fresh horses. But I am bound to say that although each of these teams did a stage twice a day, although they were ill-favored and ill-groomed, their harness shabby beyond description, and their general appearance forlorn, they were, one and all, in good condition, and did their work in first-rate style. The wheelers were generally large, gaunt, and most hideous animals, but the leaders often were ponies whom one could imagine under happier circumstances might be handsome little horses

enough, staunch and willing to the last degree. They knew their driver's cheery voice as well as possible, and answered to every cry and shout of encouragement he gave them as we scampered along. Of course each horse had its name, and equally of course "Sir Garnet" was there, in a team with "Lord Gifford" and "Lord Carnarvon" for leaders. Did we come to a steep, steep hill-side, up which any respectable English horse would certainly expect to walk in a leisurely and sober fashion? then our driver shook out his reins, blew a ringing blast on his bugle, and cried,

"Walk along, Lord Gifford : think as you've another Victoria Cross to get top o' this hill! Walk along, Lord Carnarvon you ain't sitting in a Cab'nit Council here, you know! Don't leave Sir Garnet to do all the work. Forward, my lucky lads creep up it!" And by the time he had shrieked out this and a lot more patter, behold we were at the top of the hill, and a fresh lovely landscape lying smiling in the sunshine below us. It was a beautiful country we passed through, but except for a scattered homestead here and there by the roadside, not a sign of a human dwelling on all its green and fertile slopes. How the railway is to drag itself up and round all these thousand and one spurs running into each other, with no distinct valley or flat between, is best known to the engineers and surveyors who have declared it practicable. To the nonprofessional eye it seems not only difficult, but impossible. But oh, how it is wanted! All along the road shrill bugle blasts warned the slow trailing ox-waggons, with their naked "fore-looper" at their head, to creep aside out of our way. I counted 120 waggons that day on fifty miles of road. Now if one considers that each of these waggons is drawn by a span of some thirty or forty oxen, one has some faint idea of how such method of transport must waste and use up the material of the country. Something like ten thousand oxen toil over this one road summer and winter, and what wonder is it, not only that merchandise costs more to fetch up from Durban to Maritzburg than it does to bring out from England, but that beef is dear and bad? As transport pays better than farming, we hear on all sides of farms

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thrown out of cultivation, and, as a necessary consequence, milk, butter, and so forth, are scarce and poor; and in the neighborhood of Maritzburg, at least, it is esteemed a favor to let you have either at exorbitant prices and of most inferior quality. When one looks round at these countless acres of splendid grazing land, making a sort of natural park on either hand, it seems like a bad dream to know that we have constantly to use preserved milk and potted meat, as being cheaper and easier to procure than fresh. No one was in any mood, however, to discuss political economy or any other economy that beautiful day, and we laughed and chatted and ate a great many luncheons, chiefly of tea and peaches, all the way along. Our driver enlivened the route by pointing out various spots where frightful accidents had occurred to the post-cart on former occasions. "You see that big stone? Well it wor just there that Langalibalele and Colenso they takes the bits in their teeth, those 'osses do, and they sets off their own pace and their own way. Jim Stanway he puts his brake hard down and his foot upon the reins, but lord love you, them beasts would 'a pulled his arms and legs both off before they would give in. So they runs poor Jim's near wheel right up agin that bank, and upsets the whole concern, as neat as needs be, over agin that bit o' bog. Anybody hurt? Well yes. They was all what you might call shook. Mr. Bell he had his arm broken, and a foreign chap from the di'mond fields he gets killed outright, and Jim himself had his head cut open. It was a bad business, you bet, and rough upon Jim, ja!”

All the driver's conversation is interlarded with "ja," but he never says a worse word than that, and he drinks nothing but tea; as for a pipe or cigar, even when it is offered to him he screws up his queer face into a droll grimace, and says, "No: thanks. I want all my nerves, I do, on this bit o' road Walk along, Lady Barker; I'm ashamed of you, I am, hanging your head like that at a bit of a hill." It was rather startling to hear this apostrophe all of a sudden, but as my namesake was a very hard-working little brown mare, I could only laugh and declare myself much flattered.

Here we are at last amid the tropical vegetation, which makes a green and tangled girdle around Durban for a dozen miles inland. Yonder is the white and foaming line of breakers which marks where the strong current, sweeping all down the east coast, brings along with it all the sand and silt it can collect, especially from the mouth of the Kingui River close by, and so forms the dreaded bar, which divides the outer from the inner harbor. Beyond this crisp and sparkling line of heaving, tossing snow, stretches the deep indigo blue of the Indian Ocean; whilst over all wonderful sunset tints of opal and flame color are hovering, and changing with the changing wind-driven clouds. Beneath our wheels are many inches of thick white sand, but the streets are gay and busy with picturesque coolies in their bright cotton draperies, and swiftly passing Cape carts and vehicles of all sorts. We are in Durban indeed,-Durban in unwonted holiday dress, and on the tippest tip-toe of expectation and excitement. A Cape cart, with a Chinese coolie driver and four horses, apparently put in and harnessed together for the first time, was waiting for us and our luggage at the post office. We got into it, and straightway began to plunge through the sandy streets; once more turned off the high road, and beginning almost immediately to climb with pain and difficulty the red sandy slopes of the "Berea," a beautiful wooded upland dotted with villas. The road is terrible for man and beast, and we had to stop every few yards to breathe the horses. At last our destination was reached through fields of sugar-cane and plantations of coffee, past luxuriant fruit-trees, rustling broadleaved bananas, and encroaching greenery of all sorts, to a clearing where a really handsome house stands with hospitable wide open doors awaiting us. Yes, a good big bath first, then a cup of tea, and now we are ready for a saunter in the twilight on the wide level terrace (called by the ugly old Dutch

name

stoup") which runs round three sides of the house. How green and fragrant and still it all is! Straightway the glare of the long sunny day, the rattle and jolting of the post-cart, the toil through the sand, all slip away from mind and NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXIV., No. 1

memory, and the tranquil delicious present, with "its odors of rest and of love," slips in to soothe and balm our jaded senses. Certainly it is hotter than in Maritzburg. That assertion we are prepared to die in defence of; but we acknowledge the heat at this hour is not oppressive, and the tropical luxuriance of leaf and flower all around is worth a few extra degrees of temperature. Of course our talk is of to-morrow, and we look anxiously at the purpling clouds to the west.

"A fine day?" says our host; "and so it ought to be, with 5,000 people come from far and wide to see the sight. Why that is more than a quarter of the entire white population of Natal!"

Bed and sleep become very attractive suggestions, though made indecently soon. after dinner, and it was somewhere about ten o'clock when they were carried out; and, like Lord Houghton's famous fair little girl, we "knew nothing more till again it was day."

A fine day, too, is this New Year's Day of 1876, a glorious day sunny, of course, but with a delicious breeze stealing among the flowers and shrubs in capricious puffs, and snatching a differing sceut from each cluster of blossom it visited. By midday F- has got himself into his gold-laced coat, and has lined the inside of his cocked hat with plantain leaves. He has also groaned much at the idea of substituting this futile headgear for his hideous but convenient pith helmet. I, too, have donned my best gown, and am horrified to find how much a smart bonnet (the first time I have needed to wear one since I left England) sets off and brings out the shades of tan in a sun-browned face, and for a moment I too entertain the idea of retreating to the protecting depths of my old shady hat. But a strong conviction of the duty one owes to a "first sod," and the consoling reflection that after all everybody will be equally brown (a failacy, by the way-the Durban beauties looked very blanched by this hot summer weather) supported me, and I followed F- and his cocked hat into the waiting carriage.

No need to say where we are to go; all roads lead to the first sod to-day. We are just a moment late. F- has to get out of the carriage, and plunge in

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to the sand, madly rushing off to find and fall into his place in the procession, and we turn off to secure our seats on the grand stand. But before we take them, I must go and look at the wheelbarrow and spade, and above all, at the first sod. For some weeks past it has been a favorite chaff with us Maritzburgians to offer to bring a fresh lively young sod down with us, but we were indignantly assured that Durban could furnish one. Here it is exactly under the triumphal arch! looking very faded and depressed, with a little sun-burned grass growing feebly on it--but still a genuine sod, and no mistake. The wheelbarrow was really beautiful, made of native woods, with their astounding names. All three specimens of the hardest and handsomest yellow woods were there, and they were described to me as "stink wood, breeze wood, and sneeze wood." The rich yellow of the wood is veined by handsome dark streaks, with "1876" inlaid in large black figures in the centre. The spade was just a common spade, and could not by any possibility be called anything else. But there is no time to linger and laugh any longer beneath all these fluttering streamers and waving boughs, for here are the Natal Carbineers, a plucky little handful of light horse, clad in blue and silver, who have marched at their own charges all the way down from Maritzburg, to help keep the ground this fine New Year's Day. Next come the strong body of Kafir police, trudging along through the dust, with their odd shuffling gait, bended knees, bare legs, bodies leaning forward, and keeping step and time by means of a queer sort of barbaric hum or grunt. Policemen are no more necessary than my best bonnet. They are only there on the same grounds,-for the honor and glory of the thing. The crowd is kept in order by somebody here and there with a be-ribboned wand, for it is the most orderly and respectable crowd you ever saw. In fact such a crowd would be an impossibility in England, or any higher civilized country. There were no dodging vagrants, no slatternly women, no squalid, starving babies. In fact our civilization has not yet mounted to effervescence, so we have no dregs. Every white person on the ground was well clad, well fed, and apparently well

to do. The "lower orders" were represented by a bright fringe of Coolies and Kafirs, sleek, grinning, and as fat as ortolans, especially the babies. Most of the Kafirs were dressed in snowy-white knickerbockers, and shirts bordered by a band of gay color, and with a fillet of scarlet ribbon tied tightly round their heads; whilst the Coolies shone out like a shifting bed of tulips, so bright were the women's "chuddahs" and the men's jackets. All looked smiling, healthy, and happy, and the public enthusiasm and good humor rose to its height when, to the sound of a vigorous band (it is early yet in the day, remember) of flute and trombone, a perfect liliputian mob of toddling children came on the ground. These little people were all in their cleanest white frocks and prettiest hats. They clung to each other, and to their garlands and staves of flowers, until the tangled mob reminded one of a May-day fête; not that any English May-day of my acquaintance could produce such a lavish profusion of roses and buds and blossoms of every hue and tint, to say nothing of sun and sky. The children's corner was literally like a garden, and nothing could be prettier than the effect of their little voices striking up through the summer air, as, obedient to a lifted wand, they burst into the chorus of the National Anthem when the Governor and Mayor drove up. Cheers from white throats, gruff, loud shouts all together of "Bayete!" (the royal salute) and "Inkos” ́ (chieftain) from black throats, yells expressive of excitement and general good fellowship from throats of all colors; then a moment's solemn pause, a hushed silence, bared heads, and the loud clear tones of a very old pastor in the land are heard imploring the blessing of Almighty God on this our undertaking. Again the sweet childish trebles rose into the sunshine in a chanted Amen; and then there were salutes from cannon and feu-de-joie's from carbines, and more shoutings, and all the cocked hats were to be seen bowing; and then one more tremendous burst of cheering told that the sod was cut and turned and trundled, and finally pitched out of the new barrow back again upon the dusty soil, all in the most artistic and satisfactory fashion.

"There are the Kafir navvies: they

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