er been known in those lands since Clovis was
signed with the cross. To the naked pride of the new men nations simply
were not. The struggling populations of two vast provinces were simply
carried away like slaves into captivity, as after the sacking of some
prehistoric town. France was fined for having pretended to be a nation;
and the fine was planned to ruin her forever. Under the pressure of such
impossible injustice France cried out to the Christian nations, one
after another, and by name. Her last cry ended in a stillness like that
which had encircled Denmark.

One man answered; one who had quarrelled with the French and their
Emperor; but who knew it was not an emperor that had fallen. Garibaldi,
not always wise but to his end a hero, took his station, sword in hand,
under the darkening sky of Christendom, and shared the last fate of
France. A curious record remains, in which a German commander testifies
to the energy and effect of the last strokes of the wounded lion of
Aspromonte. But England went away sorrowful, for she had great
possessions.

VIII--_The Wrong Horse_

In another chapter I mentioned some of the late Lord Salisbury's remarks
with regret, but I trust with respect; for in certain matters he
deserved all the respect that can be given to him. His critics said that
he "thought aloud"; which is perhaps the noblest thing that can be said
of a man. He was jeered at for it by journalists and politicians who had
not the capacity to think or the courage to tell their thoughts. And he
had one yet finer quality which redeems a hundred lapses of anarchic
cynicism. He could change his mind upon the platform: he could repent in
public. He could not only think aloud; he could "think better" aloud.
And one of the turning-points of Europe had come in the hour when he
avowed his conversion from the un-Christian and un-European policy into
which his dexterous Oriental master, Disraeli, had dragged him; and
declared that England had "put her money on the wrong horse." When he
said it, he referred to the backing we gave to the Turk under a
fallacious fear of Russia. But I cannot but think that if he had lived
much longer, he would have come to feel the same disgust for his long
diplomatic support of the Turk's great ally in the North. He did not
live, as we have lived, to feel that horse run away with us, and rush on
through wilder and wilder places, until we knew that we were riding on
the nightmare.

What