troops from Mexico, and the failure of the Mexican expedition drove the empire to its deserved ruin. From England we demanded an apology and a penalty, and received both. But the South has nothing but the bitter memory of interested friendship, deceitful promises, and blasted hopes as the fruit of foreign sympathy. England and France have the satisfaction of knowing that they wronged and offended both sides, without the compensation of having acted in a manly and honorable fashion.

For the first time we learn the exact attitude of France. We now know that she not only connived at aid to the South, but actually urged Mr. Slidell and others to build ships of war in French dockyards. Thus stimulated, the Confederate agents built the ships; but when the vessels were completed the tide had turned, and then the French government compelled the sale of these all-important cruisers to other nations. Thus France stood technically clear toward the United States; but her policy was in reality outrageous. The Confederacy would never have built ships in France unless actually invited to do so by the emperor's government. Led on and encouraged in this way, the South was at the last moment treacherously struck down, because defeat was upon her. False to the United States, false to the Confederate States, France exhibits in this connection a profligate selfishness which is not often equaled.

One merit, however, France possessed: whatever she did was plain and definite. England vacillated, and let "I dare not wait upon I would, like the poor cat i' the adage." Captain Bulloch gives a history of the causes which led to the civil war, drawn from the most singular sources imaginable, the English newspapers. There is something delicious in the idea of writing American history on the authority of the cheap sneers of Blackwood and the profound learning NO. 316.

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and fair judgment of the Saturday Re view and the London Times. Captain Bulloch's object is to show the enlight enment of English opinion, and how England came to understand that the cause of the slave-holder was the cause of liberty. He might have spared himself the trouble of making this exposition. The course of England, the country of fair play and moral ideas, was dictated by mere selfishness tempered by prudence. The aristocracy, and the upper classes generally, hailed the war between the States with delight. They saw the hated republic threatened with anarchy and ruin, going to pieces, and leaving the world for them to bustle in. Thereat they rejoiced mightily. They would have liked to recognize the Confederate States as a nation, but prudence forbade, and voices which could not be disregarded — the voices of John Bright and Richard Cobden were fearlessly raised against it. Still they could abuse. the North and sympathize with the South, and this much they did to their hearts' content. They could connive at sending out ships of war, and this they also did, so far and so long as they dared. The Alabama escaped by a trick, as Lord John Russell admitted to Mr. Cobden; and the cases of the Alabama and Florida were indefensible, as the same minister said to Mr. Adams. The subordinate officers of the English government at Liverpool and elsewhere were in the interest of the South. The letter of Morgan, the Liverpool surveyor, published in the first volume, shows that he, and consequently the government, knew the Alabama to be a ship of war, and were only anxious that there should be no technical violation of the law. The builders of the Southern ships were honored and applauded for their work; and thus privateers were let loose on American commerce from English ports, to the great detriment of the United States and the great benefit of England, and without any effect on the Southern

cor

cause. Captain Bulloch is much incensed at the terms "pirate" and " sair" as applied to the Confederate cruisers. It is not easy to say what they were. They held commissions delivered on the high seas from an unrecognized government, which had not a port in which to shelter them. They differed in no essential respect from privateers; and if we judge them, as Captain Bulloch wishes the belligerency of the Confederate States to be judged, by facts, they were only a species of letterof-marque ships. They did nothing but burn and plunder peaceful merchantmen, and the only one that fought with a ship of war was disastrously beaten. There is no use, moreover, in belittling the Kearsarge, for Winslow's only mistake consisted in not sinking the Deerhound, and teaching British sympathizers with the South a wholesome lesson against meddling. The Alabama had a fair fight, and was whipped. It is a great pity that the same cannot be said of the Florida.

Gradually, however, the policy of England changed, to the great and bitter dismay of the Confederate agents. The two big rams, innocent, unarmed things, were watched and stopped, to the intense and natural disgust of Captain Bulloch. The Shenandoah got loose, but on the whole the path of the naval agent of the Confederacy became harder and harder. England began, in fact, to live up to her international duties. The South was really as much an object of sympathy as ever, her cause was as good as it had been in 1861 and 1862, and her troops were fighting with undiminished gallantry. Unfortunately, she was rushing to defeat, and as her pace was accelerated England became more and more hostile. We do not wonder that Captain Bulloch writes bitterly of English vacillation. It is only surprising that he is so moderate. He is even now unwilling to face the truth, although he tells it frankly.

There is an old epigram, written by Sir John Harrington, which covers the

case:

"Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason." At the outset the cause of the South was in England the cause of liberty, of aristocracy, and of "the gentleman," and everybody praised it and tried to help it. But it did not prosper. Then it became treason, and the gentle would-be ally cast it out in the cold, and congratulated the victor. Cobden says in one of his letters, "I have seen with disgust the altered tone with which America has been treated since she was believed to have committed suicide, or something like it. In our diplomacy, our press, and with our public speakers, all hastened to kick the dead lion. Now (1865) in a few months everybody will know that the North will triumph; and what troubles me is lest I should live to see our ruling class-which can understand and respect power better than any other class grovel once more, and more basely than before, to the giant of democracy. This would not only inspire me with disgust and indignation, but with shame and humiliation. I think I see signs that it is coming. The Times is less insolent and Lord Palmerston is more civil. . . . The alteration of tone (in the debate) is very remarkable. It is clear that the homage which was refused to justice and humanity will be freely given to success." There could be no better statement of the case than that of Cobden. It is indeed well worth our while to look back and see, in these volumes, just what the course of the ruling classes in England was. Much has been forgotten, and it is a matter on which it is well occasionally to refresh our memories, so that we may bear in mind what the admiration and friendship of the English are worth. They admire our success; they respect a people who can fight hard, and then pay their debts at the rate of a hundred millions a year.

That is the beginning and end of the whole matter. If we were to get into serious trouble again, the old policy would be repeated, and even extended, if it seemed likely to be safe and profitable. It is particularly instructive to read Mr. Gladstone's speeches, confidently assuring the world that the South would succeed; and it is sad to find the same gentleman, the great moral statesman, some years after declaring that he had always been a friend to the North, and that his predictions of Southern success, which were cheered to the echo when they were uttered, really meant nothing, and were full of good-will to the United States. Mr. Gladstone's conduct represents that of the ruling classes of England. Their whole course during our civil war presents a touching example of England's well-known affection for the weaker party in a fight. That English affection for the weak is always robust when the weaker side is

likely to win, and fades away when the weaker side is driven to the wall. The one thing which England never forgives is failure; the one thing she never fails to worship and follow is success. This is the way of the world and of nations; but it becomes repulsive when it is accompanied with loud moral talk, professions of love of fair play, and wretched cant about always sympathizing as a people with the weaker party. The policy and the acts of England and France in regard to both sides, in our civil war, make a sorry chapter in the history of those countries, and one of which they have reason to be ashamed. Nothing, let us say in conclusion, throws more light upon this subject or gives a better idea of it than the well-written and interesting work of the naval agent of the Confederacy, which we have discussed, and which constitutes a real and important addition to the best and truest history of that exciting time.

This he can

living, human creatures. never do unless he know those fictitious personages himself; and he can never know them unless he can live with them in the full reality of established intimacy. They must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them. He must argue with them, quarrel with them, forgive them, and even submit to them. He must know of them whether they be cold-blooded or passionate, whether true or false, and how far true and how far false. The depth and the breadth and the narrowness and the shallowness of each should be clear to him. And, as here, in our outer world, we know that men and women change,- become worse

or better as temptation or conscience may guide them, so should these creations of his change, and every change should be noted by him. On the last day of each month recorded, every person in his novel should be a month older than on the first. If the would-be novelist have aptitudes that way, all this will come to him without much struggling; but if it do not come, I think he can only make novels of wood.

"It is so that I have lived with my characters, and thence has come whatever success I have obtained. There is a gallery of them, and of all in that gallery I may say that I know the tone of the voice and the color of the hair, every flame of the eye, and the very clothes they wear. Of each man I could assert whether he would have said these or the other words; of every woman, whether she would then have smiled or so have frowned. When I shall feel that this intimacy ceases, then I shall know that the old horse should be turned out to grass."

Most people imagine that they know themselves in this fashion; but let them try to tell the story of their lives, and they will see what poor stuff they will make of it. Mr. Trollope knew himself as he knew his characters, and the facility which he had acquired as the historian of imaginary persons stood him in good stead when he came to write his own history. He was as real to himself as Mr. Crawley and Johnny Eames were to him; and as, in sketching their lives, he knew a great deal more than he told, but told what was necessary to be known, so in this autobiography he has gone just so far in narrating the circumstances and development of his life as a complete picture, with the Trollope limitations, required. The reason why Hawthorne could never have written his autobiography, and chose that no one else, if he could prevent it, should write his life, was in the kind of interest which he took in the persons whom

he created. He could not stop short of the arcana of being; and however much he might use introspection for this purpose, it would have been an insult to himself had he treated himself in print as he treated even Miles Coverdale. Mr. Trollope stopped a long way short of the arcana of being, and had no difficulty in using quite as much frankness concerning himself as he used concerning his fictitious characters.

The sketch which he draws of his boyish life is much the most complete and penetrating part of the autobiography. Since he was making an object of himself, his boyhood was naturally more easily projected into space than his later life, to which he was more closely linked. Most people find it easier to detach their personality from their boyhood than from their maturity. The boy is father of the man, and a man does not confuse his father with himself. Trollope's boyhood was a miserable existence, haunted by indigent gentility, and cursed with more than ordinary boyish awkwardness and isolation. The distinctness with which he remembers all his wretchedness induces a mingled sense of pity and shame. Poor little Trollope! he says to himself. You were kicked and cuffed about; but oh, how generally unattractive you must have been!

His account of his mother and his father is exceedingly well done. There is no want of respect, and yet he manages to give the reader a very clear notion of the visionary, unpractical character of his father, and the courageous, optimistic, self-satisfied nature of his mother. His mother, it will be remembered, was one of the earliest of the English censors who found the United States disgracefully different from England. "No observer," her son candidly says, "was certainly ever less qualified to judge of the prospects, or even of the happiness, of a young people. No one could have been worse adapted by nature

for the task of learning whether a nation was in a way to thrive. Whatever she saw she judged, as most women do, from her own standing-point. If a thing were ugly to her eyes, it ought to be ugly to all eyes; and if ugly, it must be bad. What though people had plenty to eat and clothes to wear, if they put their feet upon the tables and did not reverence their betters? The Americans were to her rough, uncouth, and vulgar, and she told them so.. Her volumes were very bitter; but they were also clever, and they saved the family from ruin. . . . Work sometimes came hard to her, so much being required, for she was extravagant, and liked to have money to spend; but of all people I have known, she was the most joyous, or, at any rate, the most capable of joy." The notices of his mother are many, and each adds to our acquaintance; but of his father he writes more briefly, though with a summing up which reads as if it were taken out of the book of the day of judgment:

"I sometimes look back, meditating for hours together, on his adverse fate. He was a man finely educated, of great parts, with immense capacity for work, physically strong, very much beyond the average of men, addicted to no vices, carried off by no pleasures, affectionate by nature, most anxious for the welfare of his children, born to fair fortunes, who, when he started in the world, may be said to have had everything at his feet. But everything went wrong with him. The touch of his hand seemed to create failure. He embarked in one hopeless enterprise after another, spending on each all the money he could at the time command. But the worst curse to him of all was a temper so irritable that even those whom he loved the best could not endure it. We were all estranged from him, and yet I believe that he would have given his heart's blood for any of us. His life, as I knew it, was one long tragedy."

The outward circumstances of his own life, after he left his home and began to support himself, were more varied than fall to the lot of most men. He obtained a clerkship in the postoffice; and when he was regarded by his superior officers as a ne'er-do-weel, he asked and obtained permission to undertake a difficult task in connection with the work of the office in Ireland. His success there laid the foundation of his business fortune. He remained in the post-office service until 1867, a period of thirty-three years; but it must not be supposed that the varied circumstance of his life was outside of this work. On the contrary, it was by means of it. For a large part of the time his business was to make journeys for the office, to ferret out abuses, and to establish postal connections with remote hamlets.

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Early in 1851," he says, "I was sent upon a job of special official work, which for two years so completely absorbed my time that I was able to write nothing. A plan was formed for extending the rural delivery of letters, and for adjusting the work, which up to that time had been done in a very irregular manner. A country letter-carrier would be sent in one direction, in which there were but few letters to be delivered, the arrangement having originated, probably, at the request of some influential person; while in another direction there was no letter-carrier, because no influential person had exerted himself. It was intended to set this right throughout England, Ireland, and Scotland; and I quickly did the work in the Irish district to which I was attached. I was then invited to do the same in a portion of England, and I spent two of the happiest years of my life at the task. I began in Devonshire, and visited, I think I may say, every nock in that county, in Cornwall, Somersetshire, the greater part of Dorsetshire, the Channel Islands, part of Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Here