Mary had lost considerably in the "bubble ;" probably some of the money so squandered was gained by discreditable means; she feared the truth reaching her husband's ears, as well as the ridicule which was showered upon every victim of that nefarious scheme. Mr. Montagu was methodical and upright in all his dealings, and it has been suggested that some disgraceful money transaction might have been the cause of their ultimate separation. The event created no gossip, no sensation; it seems to have been tacitly yet not formally understood between them, but unknown to the world at the time-a fact which, considering the number of gossips and scandal-mongers there were about, adds another mystery to the many others. From the period of his return from Constantinople Mr. Montagu falls into the background, and appears only here and there in an indirect and unimportant way. Indeed, from the first we fail to obtain any clear view of his character. Throughout the two-and-twenty years, she never breathes one word of complaint against him—a circumstance which tells strongly in his favour; for Lady Mary had gall and wormwood for all who injured her, and was not a person to play the wronged but angelic wife. To the last she writes to him even tenderly and affectionately, for the correspondence of this strange couple was never interrupted. Instance the following passage from a letter addressed to him not long before his death :—

Having had no opportunity of writing by a private hand, I have delayed some time answering your last letter, which touched me more than I am either able or willing to express. I hope your apprehensions of blindness are not confirmed by any fresh symptoms of that terrible misfortune. If I could be of any service to you, on that or any other occasion, I shall think my last remains of life well employed.

A wife who had been banished her husband's hearth for years through no fault of her own would scarcely write thus. The greater portion of those long years was passed in a farm at Lovero, near Venice, where she cultivated silkworms for mercantile purposes. But she occasionally visited Venice and Florence. Writing from the latter place, under date September 25, 1740, Horace Walpole gives the following maliciously-coloured sketch :—

Did I tell you Lady Mary is here? She laughs at my Lady Walpole, scolds my Lady Pomfret, and is laughed at by the whole town. Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze anyone that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob that does not cover her great black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face swelled violently on one side with the remains of partly covered with plaister, and partly with white paint, which for cheapness she has bought so coarse that you would not use it to wash a chimney.

After making all allowance for this as being a portrait drawn by an enemy, enough of truth remains to make it exceedingly painful to those who have contemplated the Lady Mary of Thoresby. Her letters of this period are as vivacious, as clever, as hard, and as satirical as ever; if the worm is gnawing at her heart, she hides her anguish beneath a gay exterior. Only once or twice is a sad note struck, and that only when the end is drawing very close. "A long series of disappointments," she writes to Sir James Stuart in 1761, "have, perhaps, worn out my natural spirits, and given a melancholy cast to my way of thinking. I would not communicate this weakness to any but yourself, who can have compassion." The plaint is only such a gentle one as might be expected from even a happy old age, but the proud, hard, indomitable spirit, that the weight of seventy-two years could not subdue, breaks out in the midst of it.

Mr. Montagu died in 1761, leaving behind an immense fortune, and then, at the desire of her daughter, she returned to England. One more picture, even more terrible than the last, and from the same merciless hand—the date February 2, 1762:-"Lady Mary Wortley is arrived; I have seen her. I think her avarice, her dirt, and her vivacity are all increased. Her dress, like her language, is a galimatias of several countries,-the ground-work rags, and the embroidery nastiness. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, no shoes. An old black-laced hood represents the first, the fur of a horseman's coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second, a dimity petticoat is deputy and officiates for the fourth, and slippers act the part of the last. When I was at Florence and she was expected there, we were drawing Sortes Virgilianas for her; we literally drew Insanam vatem aspicies. It would have been a stronger prophecy now even than it was then." Her cousin, Miss Elizabeth Montagu, gives us a sketch almost as whimsical, but not so coarsely personal :

She does not look older than when she went abroad, has more than the vivacity of fifteen, and a memory which is perhaps unique. . . . I was very gra ciously received by one who neither thinks, speaks, acts, nor dresses like anybody else. Her domestick is made up of all nations, and when you get into her drawing-room, you imagine you are in the first story of the Tower of Babel. An Hungarian servant takes your name at the door; he gives it to an Italian, who delivers it to a Frenchman; the Frenchman to a Swiss, and the Swiss to a Polander; so that, by the time you get to her ladyship's presence, you have changed your name five times without the expense of an act of parliament.

Later on, Horace Walpole wrote to Mann :-"Lady Mary is departing. She brought over a cancer in her breast, which she concealed

till about six weeks ago; it burst, and there are no hopes for her. She behaves with great fortitude, and says she has lived long enough." Indomitable to the last!

And so the curtain falls upon this Representative Woman of her age; for, from first to last, it would be difficult to discover a more complete female type of the eighteenth century. Whether we contemplate her at the head of her father's table at Thoresby, or the brilliant Court beauty, or the cynical, censorious, and coarsely-spoken woman of her old age, she is the reflection of her time. Her literary reputation rests solely upon her "Letters." But, unlike those of Sévigné, they can scarcely be regarded as genuine epistles. It was her custom to write down her observations and adventures in a journal, from which she extracted matter for her correspondence. Many of the letters were never sent to the persons to whom they are endorsed. All those she received from celebrated personages were also entered in that book. She was in the habit of giving copies of her compositions in manuscript to her friends. Thus, after her death, more than one version of her letters appeared. After buying up those confided to Sowden, the Butes were astounded to find the greater part of them, with some variations, published a few months afterwards. Included among these are her best-those written from the East. Some of the originals have perished, and some of those given are undoubtedly spurious. These compositions will always amuse and instruct from their sprightliness, and as pictures of manners; but they are in no way equal to those of Sévigné, whom, strange to say, Lady Mary affected to despise.

H. BARTON BAKER.

IN

A ZULU WAR-DANCE.

N all that world-wide empire which the spirit of English colonisation has conquered from out of the realms of the distant and unknown, and added year by year to the English dominions, it is doubtful whether there be any one spot of corresponding area, presenting so many large questions-social and political-as the colony of Natal. Wrested some thirty years ago from the patriarchal Boers, and peopled by a few scattered scores of adventurous emigrants, Natal has with hard toil gained for itself a precarious foothold hardly yet to be called an existence. Known chiefly to the outside world as the sudden birthplace of those tremendous polemical missiles which battered so fiercely, some few years ago, against the walls of the English Church, it is now attracting attention to the shape and proportion of that unsolved riddle of the future, the Native Question. In those former days of rude and hand-to-mouth legislation, when the certain evil of the day had to be met and dealt with before the possible evil of the morrow, the seeds of great political trouble were planted in the young colony, seeds whose fruit is fast ripening before our eyes.

When the strong aggressive hand of England has grasped some fresh portion of the earth's surface, there is yet a spirit of justice in her heart and head which prompts the question, among the first of such demands, as to how best and most fairly to deal by the natives of the newly-acquired land. In earlier times, when steam was not, and telegraphs and special correspondents were equally unknown agencies for getting at the truth of things, this question was more easily answered across a width of dividing ocean or continent. Then distant action might be prompt and sharp on emergency, and no one would be the wiser. But of late years, owing to these results of civilisation, harsh measures have, by the mere pressure of public opinion, and without consideration of their necessity in the eyes of the colonists, been set aside as impracticable and inhuman. In the case of Natal, most of the early questions of possession and right were settled, sword in hand, by the pioneer Dutch, who, after a space of terrible warfare, drove back the Zulus over the Tugela, and finally

took possession of the land. But they did not hold it long. The same hateful invading Englishman, with his new ideas and his higher forms of civilisation, who had caused them to quit the "Old Colony," the land of their birth, came and drove them, vi et armis, from the land of their adoption. And it was not long before these same English became lords of this red African soil, from the coast up to the Drakensberg. Still there were difficulties; for although the new-comers might be lords of the soil, there remained yet a remnant, and a very troublesome remnant, of its original and natural masters: shattered fragments of the Zulu power in Natal, men who had once swept over the country in the army of Chaka the Terrible, Chaka of the Short Spear, but who had remained behind in the fair new land, when Chaka's raids had been checked by the white man and his deadly weapons. Remnants, too, of conquered aboriginal tribes, who had found even Chaka's rule easier than that of their own chieftains, swelled the amount to a total of some 100,000 souls.

One of the first acts of the English Government when it took up the reins was to allot to each of these constituent fragments a large portion of land. This might perhaps have been short-sighted legislation, but it arose from the necessity of the moment. According to even the then received ideas of colonisation and its duties, it was hardly possible-danger apart-to drive all the natives over the frontier, so they were allowed to stay and share the rights and privileges of British subjects. But the evil did not stop there. Ere long some political refugees, defeated in battle, fled before the avenging hand of the conqueror, and craved place and protection from the Government of Natal. It was granted; and the principle once established, body after body of men poured in: for, in stepping over the boundary line, they left the regions of ruin and terrible death, and entered those of peace, security, and plenty.

Thus it is that the native population of Natal, fed from within and without, has in thirty years more than quadrupled its numbers. Secluded from the outside world in his location, the native has lived in peace and watched his cattle grow upon a thousand hills. His wealth has become great and his wives many. He no longer dreads swift"death by order of the king," or by word of the witch-doctor. No "impi," or native regiment, can now sweep down on him and "eat him up," that is, carry off his cattle, put his kraal to the flames, and himself, his people, his wives, and children to the assegai. For the first time in the story of the great Kafir race, he can, when he rises in the morning, be sure that he will not sleep that night, stiff, in a