hastened away as fast as they could. The prisoners were tried, and the ringleaders sentenced to death, but were pardoned in the hope that the clemency of the government would be duly appreciated.

But it was not so: two of the leading men in the conspiracy, by name Deasy and Kelly, having been captured in Lancashire, a plot was organized for rescuing them from the hands of justice as they were being conveyed from the police-court to the prison. The van in which they were riding was attacked on the 18th September by a large body. of men mostly armed with revolvers, a policeman in charge. was shot dead, and the leaders were set at liberty. Such a daring attack upon the law was promptly punished: the ringleaders were caught, tried, and convicted, and three of them were executed, notwithstanding the energetic attempts to procure a commutation of the sentence.

Even this severity failed to check the lawlessness of the conspirators. Some of their number having been betrayed and captured in London, a few miserable creatures concocted a scheme for liberating them from the prison in Clerkenwell, where they were detained awaiting their trial. Although wretchedly poor, they managed to buy a large quantity of gunpowder, which, in broad daylight, they placed against the wall of the prison, and then set fire to it. A wide breach was made in the wall, but the prisoners, who would have been the first victims of the miscalculating zeal of their friends, were saved from destruction by having been locked up in their cells, in consequence of warnings that had been received from one of the confederates. But their innocent neighbours were less fortunate. The houses immediately opposite the prison wall were blown down, killing six persons, and wounding 131, of whom 11 died afterwards. The damage done to property was estimated at £20,000. In the spring of 1868 Fenianism was the motive of two other crimes: one, the attack upon Prince Alfred at Sidney, where he had arrived during the course of a tour through the British colonies; the other, the assassination of Mr M'Gee, who had been engaged in Smith O'Brien's rising in 1848, but was now an earnest defender of law and order in Canada, where he had attained great political eminence.

10. In the year 1865 Lord Palmerston died. He had been in office almost continuously since 1807, and prime

minister from February 1855, with a short exception, until his decease at the ripe age of 81. Earl Russell succeeded him in the ministry, but retired from office in 1866 in consequence of the opposition made to the Reform Bill introduced by his government in that year. The Earl of Derby now became prime minister, and in 1867 a Reform Bill was passed supplementary to the great measure of 1832, which the premier, then Lord Stanley, had warmly supported. But failing health compelled him to retire from public life, and Mr Benjamin Disraeli, the chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, succeeded to his office. It was a time of difficulty and trial, and with the hope of reviving the naturally loyal feelings of the Irish people, the Prince of Wales went to Dublin at Easter 1868, to be publicly installed a knight of the Order of St Patrick. He was accompanied by the Princess, and both were received with the most cordial welcome. In the opening of the same year, an expedition, under Sir Robert (now Lord) Napier, was sent to Abyssinia to recover a number of Englishmen and others whom the king detained in captivity. After a march of nearly 400 miles inland, through a pathless and almost barren. country, the fortress of Magdala was stormed, King Theodore slain, and the prisoners restored to liberty. This ended the war, and the British force withdrew with scarcely the loss of a single soldier.

EXERCISES.

1. What caused our first differences with the United States? What was the result? What took place at San Juan? What do you know of the Anderson case? What happened in the United States on the election of Mr Lincoln? What do you understand by the Trent outrage?

2. What is known of the fate of Sir John Franklin? What attempts have been made to authenticate the story? What has been the result of these Arctic explorations? Give an account of the Persian war. Give an account of the commercial crisis in 1857.

3. What was the cause of the Chinese war? In what treaty did it end? Give the chief conditions. How was the treaty observed? What took place at the mouth of the Peiho? Give a sketch of the war and its results. What took place in Japan?

4. Who succeeded Lord Dalhousie? When and where did the Indian mutiny break out? What was its alleged cause? What do you know of Delhi and Cawnpore? What native princes remained faithful? Give a sketch of the massacre of Cawnpore. By whom was Lucknow relieved? How did England assist the sufferers?

5. What notable marriage was celebrated in 1858? What large ship was launched? Give the history of the Atlantic Telegraph. What changes of ministry occurred? Give an account of the volunteer movement.

What financial reforms were carried out? What remarkable disasters happened in 1861? What great domestic events occurred in 1862 and 1863?

6. What occasioned the cotton famine? How was the distress relieved? When did the famine end? What was the Alabama difficulty? What inethods were proposed to arrange it. Give an account of the Cattle Plague. What precautions were taken against it, and what damage did it occasion? 7. Give an account of the Sheffield catastrophe. What terrible crime was committed in the same year? What occasioned the Belfast riots, and how did they terminate? What violent explosion occurred near London? 8. What occurred in Japan? What change took place in Greece? Who was elected to the vacant throne? What was done with respect to the Ionian Islands? What was the nature of the differences with Brazil, and how were they ended? What calamity occurred on the Guinea coast? 9. Who were the Fenians? What precautions were taken against them? What happened in Canada? What occurred at Chester? Describe the events in Ireland in the month of March? What happened at Manchester? Describe the Clerkenwell outrage. How did the loyal people act?

10. What famous person died in 1865? What political change followed? Describe the royal visit to Dublin. Give an account of the expedition to Abyssinia.

CHAPTER XL.

PRESENT STATE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

1. HAVING now traced the history of public events in Great Britain and Ireland during a period of nearly two thousand years, it may enable us the better to know and appreciate the tendency of the events we have recorded, to take a glance at the present state of the inhabitants of this country, that we may see what they have gained or lost by the progress of time.

Of all the objects that now surround us which are the product of man's labour, there were none in existence when Julius Cæsar landed on the Kentish shore, unless perhaps the great stone circles of Stonehenge and other rude monuments of a like kind. A few crumbling walls, some earthen camps and slender fragments of mansions and temples, are all that we possess of what the Romans may have left behind them when they bade a final adieu to this distant isle. Even from the Saxons, who have contributed something more valuable in our institutions, we have derived but scanty architectural remains. A few unadorned towers-perhaps one or two small pristine churches—are all we can attribute to them, and the authenticity of these is doubted.

We thus pass over more than a thousand years before we find that any considerable portion of our ancient buildings were reared. Some of the churches with round arches, such as Durham Cathedral, were built during the period between the Norman conquest and the end of the twelfth century. A few of the English castles, which consist of massive square towers like the White Tower of London, are of similar antiquity. Most of the fine Gothic churches, however, which are still the glory of England, were erected between the year twelve hundred and the year fifteen hundred. These buildings are known by their high towers and steeples, their pointed arches, and their richly ornamented windows. Besides the churches still in good preservation, there are many ruined edifices in England, Scotland, and Ireland, with parts of some mansions yet inhabited, which were built during this period. It will, however, be observed that the finest churches are those which have remained as they were built in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, and that there are scarcely any of the castles or inhabited mansions which have not received additions at later times. In fact, the lordly domicile of the fourteenth century would not at present accommodate a physician in good practice or a respectable merchant or tradesman.

2. England is conspicuous for the handsome mansions of the nobility and rich gentry. Except a few old fortified. towers, preserved more as curiosities than for use, these buildings are not older than the accession of Henry the Seventh, and by far the greater portion of them were built after the reign of Elizabeth. We recognise the edifices raised in England after the wars of the Roses by their wide windows and doors, and their great extent of area, which show that they were erected more for comfort and hospitality than for defence. Even these, built in what is called the Tudor style, are rare in comparison with the number of handsome structures whose date mounts no higher than the reign of Charles the Second. Many of the old castles were destroyed by Oliver Cromwell and the parliamentary generals in the civil wars of the seventeenth century. The buildings erected after the Restoration were of a still less warlike character than those which had been raised during the Tudor dynasty; and wherever we see one entirely devoted to comfort and ornament in the northern parts of England, we may be sure that it was built after the return of the Stewarts. In Scotland, especially in the neighbourhood of the English border, and in a great

part of Ireland, internal wars and feuds were continued to a later period than in the centre of England. The traveller will easily observe the existing marks of such a state of society, for whenever he meets with a house more than a hundred and fifty years old in Scotland, it bears some marks of having been fortified. In fact, down to the end of the rebellion of 1745, the country gentleman whose house was in or near the Highlands, required to have always at hand a few stout fellows accustomed to the use of arms. The cattle were driven at night to the neighbourhood of the mansion-house or castle, and its inhabitants had to be ready to protect their property from bands of plunderers, sometimes by firing small cannons from the interior, and at others by going in armed bands after the depredators. The same precautions were required along the border, but not to so late a period; while the distracted condition of Ireland has often rendered it necessary in very recent times to fortify private houses.

Whoever looks about him, in any part of the empire, will see that the old buildings to which the foregoing remarks refer are, comparatively speaking, not numerous. In England it is the practice to use brick for private residences, in Scotland stone; and in both countries, a convenient dwelling-house is the production of recent times. The humbler classes would not now be content to live as the great did two hundred years ago. Wherever we find apartments well aired, dry, light, and with means for the removal of impurities, we may be sure that they have been recently built, or improved at a great expense. The houses in London and most of the large towns in England are entirely modern structures, and not intended to last long. They are produced by the industry and riches of the day, and are so temporary, that if the country were going to ruin, as some ancient kingdoms have gone, London, Manchester, and many other large towns, would soon be mere heaps of brick dust.

Very few persons, except those who have visited the remoter parts of Ireland or of the Scottish Highlands, can form a correct idea of the dwellings of the peasantry in bygone times. The turf hovels, where the smoke comes out by the door as much as by the chimney, and where there is not a window admitting light enough to read by, will give a tolerable idea of the manner in which the country people generally lived a hundred years ago. Such cottages are very picturesque in a landscape with woods and hills; but to be obliged