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watched. Mr. M. says the idea is of an organised resistance to rent, and seizure of crops. We have no arms here but some hand grenades we don't know how to use. Perhaps Smith has a pistol. Everything quiet. W. came home. Mama arrived at five, and approved of all I had done.'

'December 10.-Set out for England to see doctor.

'December 14.-Returned to Ireland. We have now the Clonmel plan for a soup kitchen.

'December 12, 1850.-Went early to settle the site for Portlaw Church; the school afterwards. There is going to be an immense meeting on tenants' rights at Kilmacthomas. It went off quietly. About 4,000 people amused themselves, and speechified about everything but tenants' rights.'

Lord Waterford's death was caused by a fall from his horse. Ford Castle was left to a widow who ever lived on terms of the greatest mutual tenderness with his heirs and her successors at Curraghmore. Highcliffe she inherited after the death of her parents, and in those two places, beside the rolling hills of the Scottish border, or beside the bluest of English seas, she lived. She disliked London, and rarely made any stay in it, and with characteristic humility, she avoided display, either of herself or of her talents. The exhibition of Lady Waterford's drawings, two years ago, proved to the public, what her intimates had long known, an industry and an originality which have never been equalled in any woman's work. It consisted of 338 framed pictures, lent by 104 fortunate contributors. But this list, imposing as it reads, by no means exhausted either the wealth of the exhibition or the measure of the artists' work. There were wall-cases and tables full of notebooks and studies, pochardes full of colour and vigour, and of the quiet, happy inspirations of a genius which was all alive to beauty and to pathos. Of the series of great frescoes which she designed and painted for the walls of her school at Ford (The Lives of Holy Children') only an approximate notion could be formed from the cartoons, but it sufficed to suggest their value and their importance. Mr. Ruskin sent his blessing on the exhibition of her pictures.' The message was not only characteristic of him, but it was appropriate to a display of fresh poetic fancy, reverent study of Nature, and deep religious feeling, seen through the medium of beautiful forms and splendid colour. No one who saw that exhibition could forget it. The impression that it left was one of rest from worldliness; and while contemplating the recreations of Lady Waterford one realised the intense

solitude of her nature as well as the purity of her taste. Through all her life Lady Waterford complained of being lonely. Almost the last letter she ever wrote-one in which all the lines are blurred by approaching blindnessshe speaks of 'poor solitary me.' In some ways the intense solitude of her life seems uncalled for. Granting that the ordinary level of artistic culture in England was low, Lady Waterford's kinsman, the late Earl Somers, was ever ready and able to appreciate her. To the tenderness of General and the second Mrs. Charles Stuart she owed as much, in old age, as Lady Canning had done during the last year of her life in India, while such relations as the Recorder, the late Mr. James Stuart Wortley, and his wife, with Lord and Lady Lothian (her niece), were hosts in themselves, without the weariness of numbers.

But, in truth, as Carlyle pointed out, Genius is not a ' sinecure.' It is supersensitive; it divines where others observe; it has bread to eat of which others not only do not know, but of which they would not even care to taste. And if genius happens to abide in a woman, the public is apt to draw aside from her, even should she be noble and wealthy and beautiful, because, like the Argives of old, commonplace people feel and dislike the difference between themselves and the faces of the daughters of Danaüs. Like only takes truly and permanently to like. The initiated see life from a different standpoint, and, though not an exacting woman, Lady Waterford was, owing to the peculiarities of her temperament, often as set apart

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Les grands esprits, d'ailleurs très estimables,

Ont très peu de talent pour former leurs semblables.'

Yet it must not be forgotten that Lady Waterford, while cultivating her charming talents, was not, and never wished to be, ignorant of those necessities of practical life which to genius generally appear much less important than their own visions. Genius is apt to remain naïf, and Lady Waterford, to practical ability in the management of her house, estate, and charities, added this charm. She remained to the close of her life as devout, as unsuspicious, as guileless, as generous, and as full of wonder and pleasure as a child. She possessed the blessings of health and strength, and though she had, like all the children of genius, a vivid sense of individual misfortune, to have been unhappy without becoming less good, less loving, or less intelligent, argues a really sound and powerful organisation of both mind and body, and that

was what the two Stuart sisters possessed, though one only of them survived to old age to prove how

'To the steadfast soul and strong,

Life's autumn is as June.'

On the subject of Art few artists have ever said or written so little. She never instructed, nor did she talk well on it, perhaps because she was too absent to be a brilliant conversationist, perhaps because she had discovered that it is far easier to abandon an ideal aim than to attain to it, or even to describe it. Painting like a man, and a Venetian man, she felt like a woman, and prayed like a child. On one of the rare occasions when she spoke of herself as an artist, it was with a touching humility:

'I have a something which has been given me to comfort and fill up a void; but it is no more. To some such gifts would be given as would help their lives in other things-action, eloquence, influenceeach would have it, as it had been God's will to bring it to them. To me, without children, a gift was given to be used-not only for self, but in some measure for the setting forth of ideas, and that it might sometimes express what must otherwise be sealed up. I could never attain to one work which would be what I see in my mind's eye, and if I could it would be and do less than was done by the great men of old, whose works have not yet quelled evil nor taught good. I could not live for art. It would not be what I was put into the world to do. Two homes have been given me, and it is that I may try to do what I can in them, seeing that they are mine for "brief life."'

She none the less thought, with Thackeray, that 'Art is 'truth, and truth is religion; that its study and practice is a daily work of pious duty,' and her last words to her last visitor were Goodness and beauty! beauty and goodness! 'those are ever the great things.' Those who knew Lady Waterford best realised how she combined these cardinal joys, and they also know that they can never look upon her like again.

VOL. CLXXIX. NO. CCCLXVIII.

E E

ART. VI.-1. Moltke: a Biographical and Critical Study. By WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS, sometime Scholar of Oriel College, Oxford. London: 1893.

2. The Campaign of 1866 in Germany. Compiled by the Department of Military History of the Prussian Staff. Translated by Colonel VON WRIGHT and Captain HENRY HOZIER. London: 1872.

3. Les Luttes de l'Autriche en 1866. Rédigé d'après les documents officiels par l'Etat-Major Autrichien (Section Historique), traduit par M. le Capitaine FRANZ GRUSSE, Professeur à l'Ecole de Guerre. Paris: 1870.

4. Wanderungen über die Gefechtsfelder der preussischen Armeen in Böhmen, 1866. Von KÜHNE, Generallieutenant und Kommandeur der 31. Division. Vierte Auflage. Berlin:

1891.

ALTHOUGH we base our opinion upon different grounds, we entirely agree with Mr. O'Connor Morris that it is difficult to determine the place Von Moltke holds among great warriors. It is possible that further evidence may yet be brought to light as to the part he played in the conduct of the campaigns against Austria and France. For many years the archives of the Prussian Staff had been closed to the military historian. This reticent attitude, however, has lately been abandoned. A well-known writer has been granted access to those records which bear upon the interior working of the headquarters staff during the siege of Paris, and has made excellent use of his opportunity. His volumes, however, deal only with a few weeks of 1870; and, moreover, under the terms which permitted their publication, it is manifest that much has been left unsaid. Only a glimpse of the friction which attended Von Moltke's direction of the several armies, commanded by men who were either his social superiors or of higher reputation as fighting soldiers, and therefore impatient of his control, is vouchsafed to us; and this glimpse, whilst it makes clear the very great difference in the power wielded by a chief of the staff and that of an absolute commander-in-chief, of a Von Moltke and of a Napoleon, is limited to a single phase of a single campaign. The little that has been divulged, however, leads us to anticipate that

* Der Volkskrieg an der Loire, im Herbst 1870, von Fritz Hoenig. Berlin, 1893.

the personality of Von Moltke may yet be revealed as greater and more remarkable than has hitherto been suspected.

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But if the obstacles against which he had to struggle are but dimly seen, still sufficient knowledge is forthcoming on which to base a true estimate of his achievements. The 'glory of Alexander was incomplete,' it has been said, 'in 'that he had no Homer to sing his exploits.' The merits of Von Moltke as organiser, strategist, and tactician, wait only an historian worthy of his materials. With all respect to Mr. Morris, we are of opinion that an historian equal to the task has not yet been found, and that the present generation is incapable of producing him. That Von Moltke owed much of his success to his able strategy will scarcely be denied, and, despite certain opinions which have been broached to the contrary, we hold that the strategy of today differs in essential respects from that of past ages. It is true that the art of command must still be learned in the campaigns of the great captains. Napoleon's advice has not yet lost its force: soldiers, if they would be successful leaders, must model themselves on Alexander and the rest. 'A correct eye, rapidity, dash,' to use Suworoff's favourite maxim, are as essential as of yore. Surprise, stratagem, and moral influences were just as efficacious when used by Stonewall Jackson in Virginia as by Hannibal in Italy two thousand years before. Human nature remains constant; it is still to be played upon by those who have acquired the skill, and who can teach that skill better than those who possessed it so pre-eminently?

But if there was no manœuvre of Napoleon's which he had not followed on the map, no principle of his warfare which he had not assimilated, Von Moltke had elements to deal with on which the campaigns of Ulm and Jena could teach him nothing. Railways, the telegraph, and the press, had to be reckoned with in strategy; long-ranging and quickloading firearms in tactics. Was surprise still possible when the electric wire had brought every city in Europe within speaking distance of the rest? Could great strategic marches, like that of the Army of England' from the Channel to the Danube, be concealed? Could great concentrations of troops, like that behind the Sambre in 1815, be still effected without the adversary detecting the real point of attack before his line was broken? Were combinations possible which Napoleon had condemned? In what formation was the infantry to face the breechloader? How could the long range of rifled artillery be best turned to

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