have been guided principally by party considerations. Here is a letter he wrote to Lord Lansdowne in June 1838 with respect to conferring peerages upon supporters of the Government in the House of Commons:

"I think it absolutely necessary not to vacate counties or towns at the present moment. I would, therefore, boldly lay down as a rule founded upon the necessity of the circumstances that we should make few members of the House of Commons peers. It follows from this that we must have a very limited creation, as it must be remembered that the claims of those who are in Parliament will be considered hereafter. I propose, therefore, to make only eight. English: Hanbury-Tracy, William Ponsonby, Sir John Wrottesley, Paul Methuen; Irish: Lissmore, Rosmore, Carew; Scotch: Kintore. I think if we adhere strictly to this we can stand upon it, and shall produce the least dissatisfaction, which is all that can be expected. The only promotions, Mulgrave to be a Marquis and Dundas to be an Earl. I am very desirous that the whole should be limited, as these large creations at Coronations are, I believe, quite unprecedented, and date no further back than the Coronation of George IV., who was overwhelmed with promises. If no Members of Parliament are made, the whole may be discontented, but no particular person can be. I hope that you may think this is the safest course that can be pursued in a difficult conjuncture. I send you John Russell's view of it, which is very much mine. All the Scotch agree that Kintore is the only Scotch peer we have who has fortune for it."

The petty annoyances which usually follow the distribution of honors is illustrated by the following extract from a letter from Melbourne to Lansdowne on June 27, 1838, after the publication of the Coronation List:

"I have this morning received Lord

Queensberry's resignation of the Lieutenancy of the County of Dumfries, upon the ground of Lord Kintore being made a peer whilst he is passed over." A peer who was an old friend of Melbourne called on the Prime Minister previous to the Coronation to urge that his long fidelity to the Whig Party deserved some recognition. "Well, what can I do for you?" asked the Prime Minister. "I don't care about it myself," said the Baron; "but my lady wishes that I should be an earl." Melbourne, who knew that his friend was hardly rich enough to maintain an earldom, exclaimed, "Why, you are not such a damned fool as that, are you?" A peer, who was already a knight of "the Most Noble Order of the Garter," but whose ambition was still unsatisfied-"a fellow," as Melbourne scribed him, "who was asking for everything, and fit for nothing"-wrote to the Prime Minister for an interview. "What the devil would he have now?" said the worried dispenser of patronage. "Does he want a Garter for the other leg?" A Scotch peer who was manoeuvring for a decoration got a mutual friend to sing his praises in the ear of the Prime Minister. "It won't do," cried Melbourne. "If I gave

de

the Thistle he'd eat it." Poor Melbourne, indeed, found it impossible for some time before the Coronation of Queen Victoria to escape from the hunters after titles and decorations. He had contracted the habit of talking to himself aloud, and one day, as he stood alone in the hall of Brooks's Club, divesting himself of his overcoat, he was heard to exclaim, "I'll be hanged if I'll do it for you, my lord!" No doubt in imagination he was still being pursued by an importunate claimant for a higher rank in the peerage.

What was incorrectly said of Lord Melbourne, that his vanity found a vent in the distribution of titles, seems to have been true, to some extent at least,

of Gladstone.

Lord Morley in his Life of Gladstone writes: "Once in a conversation with Mr. Gladstone I asked him whether he remembered Peel's phrase to Cobden about the odious power that patronage confers. He replied, 'I never felt that when I was Prime Minister. It came in the day's work like the rest. I don't recall that I ever felt plagued by improper applications. Peel was perhaps a little overfond of talking of the sacrifices of office. A man has no business to lay himself out for being a Prime Minister, or to place himself in the way of it, unless he is prepared to take all the incidents of the post, whether disagreeable or not. I have no sympathy with talk of that kind.'" Lord Morley adds: "He was far from the mind of a Carteret. 'What is it to me,' said that glittering Minister, 'who is a judge or who is a bishop? It is my business to make kings and emperors, and to maintain the balance of Europe.' To the bestowal of honors he brought the same diligent care as to branches of public business that to men of Peel's type seemed worthier of care." Sir Edward Hamilton, who was Gladstone's private secretary, also declared that his chief found "a pleasurable excitement in proffering a Lord Lieutenancy or a peerage, an order or a baronetcy."

Having been four times Prime Minister during an aggregate period of twelve and a half years, Gladstone had ample opportunities of indulging in this form of excitement. Like Melbourne, he would never accept an honor for himself; but he created sixty-seven new peerages; on his recommendation fourteen Scotch and Irish lords, who were not peers of the realm, were called to the House of Lords; he was also responsible for seven promotions in the peerage-one dukedom, two marquisates, one earldom, and three viscountcies; and the baronetcies created on his recommendation were ninety-seven.

Gladstone must have had many applications, direct and indirect, for honors which he felt bound to refuse. That, no doubt, has been the experience of all Prime Ministers. There is a good story told of the way in which Disraeli got rid of an importunate applicant for a baronetcy upon which, for sufficient reasons, it was impossible to confer the honor. "You know I cannot give you a baronetcy," said Disraeli; "but you can tell your friends I offered you a baronetcy, and that you refused it. That's far better."

In the Life of Lord Randolph Churchill there are some amusing letters from Lord Salisbury which make further contributions to the comical side of the subject. Churchill, when leader of the House of Commons, wanted some honors for his supporters. The Prime Minister writes: "I am afraid that in the matter of honors I am as destitute as you are. The C. B.'s are all exhausted." Again Lord Salisbury says: "My Baths are all run dry."

Titles, decorations, and distinctions are, of course, legitimate objects of ambition, and if their distribution appears at times capricious, narrow, or unwarranted, they have been on the whole worthily bestowed for eminent services to the State in all walks of life. John Leech, in a famous Punch cartoon published in 1851, represented the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, as a little boy writing "No Popery" on the wall, and then running away. It was a satirically amusing illustration of Russell's precipitate action in passing an Act prohibiting the assumption of English territorial titles by the newly constituted Roman Catholic hierarchy, and then irresolutely declining to put its provisions into force. "That was very severe, and did my Government a great deal of harm," said Russell, talking of the cartoon to a friend years after; "but I was so convinced

that it was not maliciously meant that I sent for Leech and asked what I could do for him. He said he should like a nomination for his son to the Charterhouse, and I gave it to him. That is how I used my patronage."

He

Every Prime Minister has also the bestowal of considerable ecclesiastical patronage. Lord Salisbury had to appoint to almost every bishopric during the years he was Prime Minister, and to some of them more than once. is said to have been known in ecclesiastical circles by the most appropriate name of "the bishop-maker." There is a story told of a dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, named Packingham, who wrote to Wellington, his brotherin-law, at the time he was Prime Minister: "My dear Duke, one word from you will get me the vacant bishopric;" and received the following laconic reply: "My dear Dean, not a single word." But we have had an interesting confession from Gladstone on the subject of Church preferments which shows that the sense of duty, not the hope of reward, is the distinguishing note of dignitaries of the Church. "It has been my lot," said he to the Honorable Mrs. Goodhart in 1889, "to dispose of some fifty preferments in the Church-high preferments. I mean, such as bishoprics and deaneries. Not one of the men I have appointed has ever asked me for anything. That is the literal and absolute fact; and I do not know that anything could be more honorable to the Church of England as a body." "I am a very lucky manluckier than most Ministers. I have no sons, grandsons, or nephews to stuff into the Church," said Lord Palmerston cynically enough. During the years he filled the office of Prime Minister he had twenty-five mitres at his disposal, and, like all Premiers-so far as we can gather from the biographies of statesmen-he was uninfluenced in his appointments by political motives. "If

a man is a good man, I do not care what his political opinions are," he said to Lord Shaftesbury. "Certainly I had rather not name a bishop who would make party speeches and attacks on the Government in the House of Lords; but, short of that, let him do what he likes."

Dr. Magee, who died Archbishop of York, applied to Disraeli in 1868 for an appointment. At that time he was Dean of the Chapel Royal, Dublin, and wishing to get to England, he wrote to the Prime Minister asking for any minor vacancy that might be created by the filling up of the Deanery of St. Paul's. Disraeli perpetrated a droll joke at Magee's expense. He began his reply so that on one page of the letter the words appeared: "Very Reverend Sir, I regret that I cannot comply with your request;" while upon turning over the leaf Magee read the reason: "I felt it my duty to recommend Her Majesty to nominate you, if agreeable to yourself, to the vacant See of Peterborough." This was a jest in which Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, had indulged in years before. Dr. Fisher of Charterhouse applied to him for one of the Crown livings to which the Lord Chancellor has the right of presentation. He replied: "Dear Fisher, I cannot to-day give you the preferment for which you ask.-I remain, your sincere friend, Eldon." Then came the injunction, "Turn over," and on the next page Fisher read: "I gave it to you yesterday."

Queen Victoria exercised a strong personal influence and control over the appointments to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. When Dr. Sumner died, in 1862, Lord Palmerston nominated Dr. Baring, Bishop of Durham, for the Primacy; but the Queen insisted on appointing Dr. Longley, then Archbishop of York. On the death of Archbishop Longley in 1868, the Queen's selection was the Bishop of London, Dr. Tait, set

ting aside Disraeli's nominee, Bishop Ellicott of Gloucester and Bristol. Bishop Wilberforce records in his diary a conversation with Dean Wellesley on the subject. The Dean told him: "Disraeli recommended Ellicott for Canterbury. The Queen would not have him; then Disraeli agreed most reluctantly, and with passion, to Tait." It is hardly credible, however, that that supreme courtier, Disraeli, could have been put into a passion by anything the Queen might do.

George III. once adopted a more decisive way, even, of filling up a vacancy in the Archbishopric of Canterbury. On January 19, 1805, Dr. Manners-Sutton, Bishop of Norwich, was giving a dinner-party in his Windsor deanery, when his butler informed him that a gentleman wished particularly to see him, but would not give his name. "Well, I can't come now in the middle of dinner," said the Bishop. "Beg pardon, my lord, but the gentleman is very anxious to see you on important business;" and the butler was so urgent that the Bishop apologized to his company and went out. The gentleman who would not be denied proved to be King George III. "How d'ye do, my lord?" said he. "Come to tell you that you're Archbishop of Canterbury-Archbishop of Canterbury. D'ye accept-accept? Eh, eh?" The Bishop bowed low in token of acceptance. "All right," said His Majesty. "You've got a party-see

Chambers's Journal.

all their hats here. Go back to them. Good-night! good-night!" Next morning Pitt appeared at Windsor Castle to inform His Majesty that Archbishop Moore had died the day before, and to recommend the Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Pretyman, for the vacant primacy. "Very sorry; very sorry indeed, Pitt," said the king, "but I offered it to the Bishop of Norwich last night, and he accepted. Can't break my word." Pitt, according to Lord Sidmouth's account given afterwards to Dean Milman, was very angry; but the deed was done, as the king meant it should be, and SO Dr. Manners-Sutton became Archbishop of Canterbury, and held the great office for twenty-three eventful years.

So far as I have been able to ascertain, there is recorded but one attempt to bribe a Prime Minister. In November, 1802, a man named Hamlyn was indicted in the Court of King's Bench for offering a bribe to Henry Addington, the Prime Minister. The Premier should have two thousand pounds if he procured for the prisoner the office of landing surveyor at Plymouth. Hamlyn was sentenced to three months' imprisonment and a fine of one hundred pounds. Addington must have felt that the niggardliness of Hamlyn added injury to his insult. Two thousand pounds! What a paltry sum to offer the man who makes kings and emperors!

Michael MacDonagh.

Even last night the little town had seemed to us to be crowded to congestion. The electric trams, clattering up and down between the station and the Grotto, had been always black with pilgrims, and every open shop-front and crooked street-corner had held its knot of voluble if subdued conversational

ists. And yet this morning, very early, and while we were still more or less asleep, ten thousand more, so we are informed, have been landed in our midst, peasants for the most part, brought here in a long series of special trains from the flat country about Toulouse.

All night indeed the town had been

busy, as our uneasy dreams had testified. A Belgian pilgrimage, already established here, and some two thousand strong, had attended a midnight mass, filing down from the Basilica, the great church above the Grotto, in time only to extend a tired welcome to the first of these newcomers, brown-faced and black-smocked enthusiasts, marshalled along by devoted parish priests. All night the streets had echoed with the passing and repassing of uncountable boots and sabots or the softer footgear of the native inhabitants; and quite early, as it seemed to us, the trams had begun to run again, clanging their bells, a strange and bizarre contrast to the leisurely bullock waggons of the neighboring farmers.

A goatherd, playing upon a piccolo, had passed beneath our window more than once, taking up his position at last upon one of the roads near the Grotto, where he would milk his charges, for a small consideration, into the cups of passers-by. All night the streets had been evidence enough of a various and restless humanity; but now, as we sipped our coffee at seven in the morning, they were humming with half the jargons of Europe, set too, for the most part, in that curious pitch of half-awed, yet not uncheerful, intensity, that seems here to be at once characteristic and infectious. A continual pageant of Sunday clothes and smocks moved by us as we sat at the open window, black as a rule, and blacker still by contrast to the blaze of hot June sunshine, that poured down from a cloudless sky, and the glimpses of surrounding greenness, that came to us between the corners of the houses.

It is fifty years this year since the little peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, made known to her relatives and friends the visions that had been vouchsafed to her in the cavern by the Gave; and it

is impossible not to be impressed with the extraordinary position that her native village has since come to hold throughout the Catholic world, As we linger over our café complet an unbeliever among us raps the table dogmatically with his teaspoon. The neurotic imaginings of an hysterical girl, he tells us, a little brown water out of a rock and the infinite gullibility of evolving humanity in its lower intellectual stages-these are the ingredients of the renown of Lourdes. And yet and yet—well, by the day's end, even our unbeliever, unbelieving still, has contrived to modify his statement by a little, has come to behold in this scene of twentieth-century pilgrimage, in this odd jangle of electricity and mediævalism, of science and, if you like, superstition, something that lies too deep among the root fibres of the human being to be a mere spectacle for an instructed scoffer.

For, in the first place, if ever there were a spot designed by Nature to the ends of worship it would be Lourdes, perched above the plains, yet itself in something of a valley, bisected by the brown torrent of the Gave, bubbling down from its springs in the surrounding mountains-Lourdes, with the green hills rising up from it on all sides but one, rich in verdure and starred with flowers, campanula, campion, and gentian, and backed by the still snowtopped grandeur of the High Pyrenees. Within a couple of hours of Lourdes, there are mountain fastnesses unequalled in Europe; and we cannot help remembering that faith has always throned itself among the hills that, if they breed brigands here and there, produce religionists all the world over. While in the second place, as half an hour's stroll into the winding streets would assure the least appreciative, whatever else might be dwelling upon these swarthy passing faces. there was certainly no stuff for even