therefore it was announced that she was about to resume her place and duties, men rejoiced and London's loyal heart throbbed with an honest thankfulness. But the result was not satisfactory. She came, but not in state. She opened the session by her presence, but would not read her speech; and the end was a sense of disappointment, which crops out in the journals and is shown in many ways. There remain but few duties to the monarchy of England. Politically, as we know, the sovereign is sovereign no longer; but the queen is the Head of the Social Life and the Fountain of Honor. She can control the morals of her court, and temper or not the tone of its society. Victoria did a noble work in the earlier days of her long reign, and renewed the life of the monarchy in English hearts. She can hardly afford to throw away her influence or withdraw herself, while she enjoys the privileges, from the discharge of the chief duties of her place. Her throne rests on the faith and affection of her people, on a faith that is constant, on an affection that still is strong. But the one may be shaken and the other loosened, and neither can be fed and kept alive only (through a disheartening present into a doubtful future) by the memory-however pleasant—of the past.

THE Senatorial elections seem to bespeak some stability for the Republic. The newspapers give various accounts and different classifications of the successful candidates but we can perhaps be certain that a majority of the new Senate will be Republican. The distinctions between French political parties are not, like our own, clearly marked. There are no Whig or Tory, Liberal or Conservative, Democratic or Republican parties in France. No two journals seem to classify the partisans of their Centres or Lefts and Rights. alike and so of course, none agree about the Senators. One puts the "Conservative Republicans" at 170. Another divides them into "Republicans" and "Conservatives" and says that the former number about 100. This one includes the Radicals among the Republicans, that puts them in a class by themselves. "Monarchists"

are, in the account given by a leading paper, all who favor a monarchy, Legitimists, Orleanists, Bonapartists. According to another, the Orleanists as a party do not exist, and the Legitimists are included with the Radicals, probably as irreconcilable like them and fit to be tied up in a bag together with them. The experiment of this new Senate for life will be interesting to watch.

CASTELAR and one other are the only two Republicans by profession elected to the Spanish Cortes. The unknown other is probably not, like Castelar, a Republican by conviction and on principle. The war in the North still continues with varying success, and the Carlists seem to the observer from a distance to be as busy as ever. If King Alfonso has in him any stuff at all, he has not shown it yet, and it can hardly be expected that he will prove himself other than a weak and, it is hinted, vicious boy, He comes of a bad stock, run out and exhausted. When the barrel runs as low as it has done in the case of his family, little but sediment remains.

THE reports are contradictory about Herzegovina, Count Andrassy and the Porte. It has been said that notwithstanding the acceptance of the Austrian note, the Sultan is going on building his expensive mosque and bothering himself very little about the northern troubles. The insurgents, too, have gained ground so fast that they are growing more and more importunate in their demands. The fire which a bucketfull of water would have quenched may, after a little, resist a torrent like Niagara; and this Herzegovinian flame has seized on dry material in the midst of much that is inflammable. Montenegro is hardly to be kept cool. Servia and Bosnia are hot already. It is said that Austria has three hundred thousand troops massed near the frontier. La Scandale commence. It was said in the Levant, in '67, when the Cretan Revolution was at its height and seemed to have a chance of success, that His Imperial Majesty Abdul Aziz inquired one day what Crete was, and where and what the trouble meant. Unusual as such a natural desire for knowledge was, his majesty's ministers were quite prepared for it, and comforted him by producing a map on which Crete was a tiny rocky islet in a distant sea, and assuring him that the trouble was not of the slightest consequence. They were successful then; perhaps they have tried the same plan now. It would certainly be easier to follow a similar course with the imperial mind than to try to explain to it the origin and rise of these disturbances among the Slaves. The Herzegovinian question is after all only a little more comprehensible than the Schleswig-Holstein question, of which Lord Palmerston said that he and Mr. A., of the Foreign Office, were the only men that ever understood it; and Mr. A was dead, while he himself had forgotten all about it.

IT is so much the fashion to criticise public men unfairly, and form opinions of them on insufficient knowledge, that public journals cannot be too careful lest they do injustice. The reports about the American Minister in England have, however, taken a different shape now, and assume the form of charges which affect not only himself the Administration which sent him to London, or more correctly which has kept him there, but also the honor and reputation of the American name. One might excuse the unfortunate business about the "Poker Rules," which almost became a scandal last summer, and accept General Schenck's explanation of the matter, although he might regret the occurrence; but it is hard to find satisfactory his defence in the matter of the Emma Mine. Most men who know the General or were familiar with his course in Congress felt that General Grant, in selecting him as our Representative in London, had spoiled a useful Congressman to make an inefficient Minister. Not that he did not have ability. General Schenck had often proved that he is a man of parts, but neither his tastes, his experience nor his training, if the last he could be said to have had, fitted him to go to England. We have had there John Adams and J. Q. Adams, John Jay and Richard Rush, and in later times Mr. Dallas, Mr. McLane, Mr. J. R. Ingersoll, Mr. Everett, Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Buchanan, Mr. C. F. Adams and Mr. Motley, some of whom were statesmen and men of ability, and all at least "masters of deportment"— which General Schenck is not. Now that the cable is laid and the the Secretary of State insists on conducting negotiations himself, we do not need an acute politician at St. James's, but we do a gentleman. Of all things we want a man whose life and character, whose walk and works, will elevate in England the reputation of Americans. It is a serious injury to us as a people, more serious than seems at first, though we cannot measure it in money, when an American representative instead of winning confidence creates distrust, instead of reflecting honor brings us into shame. Now that legal proceedings are commenced in London, all men should wait and hope that the American Minister will prove himself duped and not dishonest. But his usefulness in England ceased with the first suspicion, and he ought to have been recalled without delay. Every day that he has remained since then has lowered our reputation, lessened our influence, done the Administration infinite harm and the General no good. His tardy resigation, now too late, (it is rumored) is at hand. Let

us hope that the President will give us, for the twelvemonth of power that remains for him, an intelligent, high-toned, cultivated American-of whom there are many, if he knows but few.

SPEAKING of Schenck reminds one that his last apologist is dead. Reverdy Johnson had outlived his activity as a politician, and his fame as a statesman belonged to an earlier day. But he was a great lawyer in every sense of those words. In Constitutional law he was an authority of the first rank, and in all branches of the science his name was honorably known. He was more than a lawyer, too, and more than a statesman. As a man he had won a reputation for honesty, sincerity and patriotism, which without his intellectual gifts would have made his name revered. In all the relations of life he bore an honored character, and his loss is felt by thousands who never saw the man.

ONE of the many foolish things which the Democratic party has done and which occurring all the time make its longevity partake of the miraculous was the appointment of the individual Hambleton, whom the Tribune has just driven out of the clerkship of Ways and Means. Of course it is not fair to call a party to account for the appointment of an obscure man to a two-penny office. But when a party (or an individual) makes great professions of honesty, and comes into office as the champion of Reform as the Democrats did in '74, it must not expect to do badly in any instance, whether from stubborness or want of knowledge, without encountering indignant criticism. The man's unworthy history must have been known to those who appointed him clerk of the Ways and Means Committee, or should have been if it was not, and they and their party are responsible. Even if the majority of the House had been active, intelligent, industrious and large-minded in its three months session, such acts as this would negative much of its influence with the men to whom party name is nothing and party organization only a means who seek high and patriotic ends, and care little by whom they are brought about, or how, if only honorably. The Democratic party has an especial giftit is so perfect that it can come only from the gods-of inspiring distrust in its sincerity and doubt of its capacity to govern; a gift of doing or saying something which convinces the people, even in the act

perhaps of placing the wheel in its hands, that it is after all unfit steer the ship.

MR. RANDALL'S retrenchment committee is cutting down a good many sound limbs along with the rubbish. The economy which it proposes is not entirely unselfish. The child of such economy, begotten by political necessity, is too apt to be called, and justly, too, political capital. He is a sickly infant, and doesn't often live to walk alone. Least of all does he ever become a staff for the aged, or present a shoulder stalwart and strong enough to lean upon. Unfortunately, Congressmen of both parties must be economical from expediency, and as a matter of policy rather than of principle, and the Republicans dare not oppose measures of economy except with infinite care. The public service is likely to suffer in consequence. One result of the policy inaugurated in the diplomatic appropriation bill will be (if it be carried out) to deprive the public of the services of all men who are not rich. Few men now can afford to leave their practice at the bar, their salaries on the bench or in other places, or the peace of private life, for the post of envoy or minister abroad; and if our economical House goes on, none but the richest Americans can accept such places in the future. This penny-wise pound-foolish policy has done us no end of injury already in other things. When shall we learn that it is wise economy in public affairs, as well as in private life, to buy the best article for the purpose and pay its honest value?

Some of the diplomatic correspondence, it is true, would convey the impression that it is dear at any price, and justify some of the prunings of the Committee. Mr. Meredith Read will certainly have only himself to blame if he is legislated out of office, if it should really be the fact that the Secretary had to publish his correspondence willy-nilly. The Department of State and the country at large hardly needed the assurance of a diplomatic letter headed "Legation of the United States, Athens, Greece. Sir:" and ending "I have the honor to be, Sir, etc., etc., etc.," that the moon which looked down on the Queen of Greece, the American Minister and the ruins of the Acropolis, was the same moon that did that identical thing for Pericles and Themistocles, and others of whom the Department and some portion of the country had already heard. Nor does it seem necessary, as Mr. Holman was inclined