that I had personally known Italy in her darkest season of degradation and slavery :—when the infernal foreigner was in Lombardy, in the Dominio Veneto, and at Ancona; and the Papal Legates and the Papal soldiery were at Bologna and in the States of the Church-I think I may be pardoned if I say a very few words about the ethics of the occupation of Rome by General Cadorna and his troops, on September 20th, 1870. In strict morality, perhaps, the act was indefensible. Victor Emmanuel was not at war with the Pope; nor had any Italian subjects been subjected to illusage by the Papal Government. Again, by the with drawal of the French garrison, Rome was practically defenceless, since it was obvious that the small contingent of Ultramontane mercenaries were utterly incompetent to make head against the prodigious forces which could be brought against them by the King of Italy.

They say that all is fair in love, war, and electioneering; perhaps the same may be said of politics. The Cabinet of Victor Emmanuel saw that they had a fine opportunity before them; and the coast being clear, they availed themselves of that opportunity, lest the action they must have so long contemplated should be impeded, and perhaps wholly frustrated, by the jealousies of other great European Powers. Furthermore, they might have pleaded that by the prompt occupation of Rome, they prevented the outbreak of insurrection. in the city, and consequent effusion of blood. You must remember that 133,000 Roman citizens voted at the plebiscitum for union with Italy. Those two

hundred thousand and odd supporters of Victor Emmanuel would not certainly have long remained quiet under Papal rule; they would have broken out in revolt; they would not have been spared by the Papal Government; and after a certain amount of slaughter, the Italian Government would have been absolutely compelled to intervene.

Perhaps after saying this, I had best refer the ethics of the question to some English Debating Society. It would not be by any means an uninteresting topic for discussion. After that our budding Gladstones and Beaconsfields might inquire as to what right William of Orange had to invade the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He was not at war with King James II., to whom he was bound by the closest family ties; he was not called to invade us by the people of England as a body. He only came at the request of an association of powerful Whig families; and his coming was eminently distasteful to the majority of the Anglican clergy, and to the two great Universities. He was hailed as a Deliverer by the Scotch Presbyterians; but the Highlanders were almost unanimously against him; and he was certainly not wanted by the great body of the Irish people; but he saw his opportunity and availed himself of it.

When they had disposed of this question, the Debating Society might discuss whether Napoleon the Great was justified in returning to France from Elba. The Allied Sovereigns in their manifesto, in which they delivered him over to public vengeance,

insinuating thereby that they would be very much obliged to anybody who would murder the invader, declared that his claim to existence had been nullified by his violation of the compact into which he had entered at Fontainebleau. It so happened that the compact had already been violated by the Government of Louis XVIII., which, with scandalous dishonesty, had omitted to pay him the stipulated revenue settled upon him. It was also a matter of notoriety that the diplomatists assembled at Vienna were contemplating the kidnapping of their dangerous neighbour, and his deportation to the island of St. Helena, or to some other far remote spot. Finally, Napoleon was kept constantly alive to the facts that the Bourbons were desperately unpopular in Paris; that the army were almost to a man enthusiastically favourable to him; that the judiciary and the bureaucracy were as willing to serve under Imperial as under Royal rule; and that, save in the South, the mass of the people, in spite of the repeated decimations of the Conscription, preferred his rule to that of the priest-ridden Bourbons, with their haughty emigrant aristocracy, and their swarms of Jesuit missionaries. This I hope is the last digression on which I shall venture.

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CHAPTER LI.

GOING TO LAW, AND TO BERLIN.

A Libel-My "Extravagance "-A Question about My Nose-Mr. Friswell, my Assailant-Heavy Damages-How the Money Went-At the Opening of the German Parliament-A Tobacco and Beer Symposium--Among the French Prisoners at Spandau.

THERE was plenty to do in my old line of leaderwriting directly I got back to London; and the recent experience which I had gathered both in France and England was of great service to me in my articles. Of public events in England, requiring special narration, there were but few. Early in 1871, I went, for the first time in my life, to law; quite unwittingly, but, strange to say, with a quite unexpected amount of success. One day, an old and dear friend, whose advice I have always valued and generally followed, came to me and said, "George, look here; you must bring an action for libel against the publishers of this book." He handed me a little volume entitled "Men of Letters Honestly Criticised," the author of which was a certain Mr. Hain Friswell. I turned to the article relating to myself, and found so many pages of attenuated "skimble-skamble," which, although sufficiently illnatured, did not strike me as being at all libellous from a legal point of view.

Here and again were innuendos that I had squandered very large sums which I had gained; and

that I had been repeatedly held up to odium as a sensational, foolish, and ungrammatical writer by the Saturday Review, and other influential journals. With regard to the manner in which my income had been expended, I am not aware that I had been very lavish in any respect, save in buying a great many more rare books and china than I wanted, and giving away a good deal of money to people, the majority of whom naturally have requited me with the basest ingratitude; and besides, what I had done with the income which I had laboriously earned was my business, and not that of the author of "Men of Letters Honestly Criticised.” Touching my being a "sensational, foolish, and ungrammatical writer," I have over and over again criticised myself much more harshly than any of my critics have done. I know perfectly well that, as an author, I belong to the second class; but I thank God that I have always been ready to recognise and to acclaim authors of the first class.

The most malevolent, and withal the drollest, of the aspersions contained in Mr. Friswell's book, had reference to that unfortunate nose of mine. How it got split open with a diamond ring, I have already told my readers; but that nose has been since a Slawkenbergian one, and has brought me alternately good and evil fortune. The doctor of a Life Insurance Company once refused to pass me in consequence of my nose; but I once made a little capital out of it at a crowded public meeting at which I was presiding at St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre. 'Where did you get your blooming nose?"