'Baring cannot stand with no one to support him,' was the burden of his warning.

'Now I think,' he wrote, 'it is very obvious why the Council may fear [a certain "reinforcement"], for there is no doubt but that his presence, supporting Baring, would drive the other jingo lot out of the field. I do think that in justice to Baring he ought to have some one who you would know would assist him in his troubles.' And again, 'The Chinese Government have a system under which men who belong to the College of Censors go through the country and report on the deeds of the local authorities. These censors have a right to address the throne which cannot be questioned. They are a wonderful lot, and often die in defence of their rights. Well, to-day I censored Lord Northbrook, and told him it was mean not to send out reinforcements to Baring, who was surrounded by bores; that Baring was a man who, if he was not supported, would resign; that H.M.G. had put him there and ought to help him.'

...

...

Reinforcements, as Gordon called them, were sent. But there was no ground for pessimism. Lord Cromer, as he afterwards became, could take care of himself. Lord Ripon's biographer has not had access to the letters written home by Evelyn Baring during the many weeks when Lord Ripon lay at the point of death from an attack of typhoid fever, from which he was rescued by the skill and experience of his doctor, Jock Anderson, who remained Lord and Lady Ripon's lifelong friend and adviser. During that time, when the Government of India was nominally in other hands, its real director was Evelyn Baring, who, though only recently arrived, by his coolness, lofty intelligence, and stubborn character very soon found all the threads between his fingers. That later there were difficulties in the relations between Lord Ripon and his Finance Minister cannot be disputed; but, thanks to two generous minds that recognised the nature of each other's difficulties, they were adjusted. When the parting came, Lord Ripon admitted that the loss of Baring was serious, as they had got to understand each other thoroughly'; and he knew he could ' rely upon Baring absolutely in the hour of difficulty.'

The most characteristic portrait of Lord Ripon appears in the second volume of the biography. It was

taken in the garden at Studley by his almost adoptive son, 'Loulou,' the present Lord Harcourt. He is seated dressed in the suit of homespun which, if renewed in the course of years, showed no distinctive badge differentiating it from its predecessors, with the inevitable book open beside him. The attitude, the curious platform, which was intended as a preservation from damp and could be pushed or carried easily from point to point the whole picture, in fact, is to the life. Short of stature, unstriking in feature, Lord Ripon could carry himself with dignity and effect. His utterance was clear, his voice somewhat rough, but he spoke in private and in public with ease, often with pathos, and with a sincerity that replaced eloquence. An optimist by temperament and conviction, it was from Prosperity Robinson' that he inherited this persistent buoyancy. But his simple faith in a Divine Power that was specially engaged in safeguarding his decisions had also much to do with it. Whether as a Freemason, or later as a Catholic, he never doubted the validity of his orders. He had no need to wrestle, like his great ancestor Cromwell, with troubling thoughts. Obedience came easily to him as rebellion to more imaginative souls. Leadership, whether of the Pope or of Campbell-Bannerman, was one of the cardinal truths of life's battle. To follow worthily the preacher of a doctrine he believed to be true, or the chief of a political party which was his, was, as George Eliot, whom he read admiringly, had explained, as ennobling as leadership itself.

as

The home life of Lord Ripon was centred in Studley Royal. For centuries the monks of Fountains influenced the lives of the country folk who inhabited that stretch of Yorkshire from the cathedral town of Ripon to the weird rocks of Brimham, and to the fringe of the moors at Dallowgill. In what degree that influence is still operative is one of the unexplored secrets of history. All that apparently remains are the lovely arches of the Abbey, standing desolate below the wooded slopes from which, on winter days, high-flying pheasants were driven, immune except from the destructive skill of the son of the house. And what will remain in the coming years of the influence and charity, in its broad Greek sense, of Lord Ripon and his wife? What will remain of

the memory of their son Oliver, whose relation to his mother was so loverlike and intimate, and of his wife, Sidney Herbert's daughter, so beautiful, so brilliant, and so beloved? To recall them all there is not even a

ruined arch.

England is far behind France in the recorded story of her people's lives. When English muniment rooms are ransacked, the searchers are apt to select documents that bear upon events inaptly called public, and to place aside those that refer to more intimate things. In France an acuter sense of relative values obtains. And yet Littré regretted that every family, however humble, had not preserved its archives and some record of its moral history. Unfortunately, politics and war have absorbed an undue share of attention in the

written history of mankind. In a noble passage a writer of the 19th century speaks of the great river courses which have shaped the lives of men, as having hardly changed; while even those lesser streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in human hearts, still pulsate to the same needs, the same loves and terrors. Even so; even if there is a broad sameness of the human lot which never alters in the main headings of its history-hunger and labour, seed-time and harvestthere are variations of poignant interest to the artist, the poet, and the historian.

So far, it is to the novelist and not to the biographer that the wise reader looks for a picture of life as it really is. A truer appreciation of the function of biography would subordinate the recital of events to environment, would place, even before achievements, a man's hopes formed in youth, their realisation or shattering in after-years, and would record the every-day life of a man and a woman, amid those common things which, after all, are the only setting in which character is formed or blasted.

ESHER.

Art. 2.-NAPOLEON AND THE BRITISH NAVY AFTER TRAFALGAR.

SEEING that it is hoped to revive the project of founding in the University of London a School of Naval History -a project which the late war held up-it seems appropriate on this occasion to select for the Creighton Lecture a subject which would indicate how much remains for such a school to do. Judged by the standards of modern historical scholarship, naval history between Trafalgar and Waterloo is a trackless desert. There are many other periods that have been no better worked, but the one we are about to consider probably surpasses all others in importance and instruction. So much may be said with confidence, not only because it is nearest to our own times, but also because of its striking analogy to the history we have recently been living. For a great part of the period it turned on a mortal commercial struggle, the issue of which for many exhausting years hung in the balance. This is but one of the analogies of which I have spoken, but I place it foremost for the sake of emphasising a special aim in the scheme it is hoped to inaugurate.

In defining the scope of the proposed School of Naval History it was never the idea that it should be concerned only with the operations of the Royal Navy. The word 'Naval' was intended to connote the whole activities of our life at sea. We already knew enough to appreciate that the successes of the Royal Navy owed much to the correlative enterprise of our oversea merchants and our mercantile Marine. I need hardly tell how the experiences of our last war have deepened, illuminated, and intensified that impression. Here then is a further reason for the choice of my subject. Never perhaps were the resourcefulness, enterprise, and courage of our mercantile community a weightier factor in a great war than when they found themselves face to face with Napoleon's colossal system for boycotting our trade. Yet it is still the obscurest and least studied part of the story. It is the more to be regretted, for a main reason

* The Creighton Memorial Lecture, delivered on Oct. 11, 1921, at King's College, London.

why Naval History has become so much a close borough, in which the general historian seldom ventures to tread, is undoubtedly that our trade history has been so much divorced from Naval History. Yet in truth each must remain obscure out of the light of the other. They are, in fact, twins which can never be quite happy apart.

This is but one of the still dark aspects of my subject, and there are so many others that it is difficult to deal, even in outline, with all the accepted views which cry most loudly for revision. From Trafalgar to Waterloo is nearly ten years-obviously too big a canvas for one short lecture. I would, therefore, ask your main attention to the period following Nelson's victory, the period in which, after the Third Coalition collapsed, we were left to carry on the world-war practically alone.

Looked at from the purely military point of view (the only one, except perhaps the diplomatic, from which it has been studied) the course of the war seems to have violated all sound doctrine. Thus seen, it is a series of sporadic and apparently unrelated efforts in which our small army was used in driblets nearly all over the world with no consistent policy. No concentration of effort is visible anywhere; so that, in contrast with the justly admired conduct of the great military and political leader who was opposed to us, it all looks like amateurish child's play, and, as such, it is often dismissed with contempt. Yet it was this child's play that won, and won, as it seems, miraculously. For half the period which extended from the downfall of the Third Coalition to Elba, we had, practically single-handed, to face one of the greatest masters of war the world has ever seen, with nearly the whole of Europe at his back in subjection or alliance. Yet we survived in such vigour that we were in due time able to revive and in a great measure to finance the last Coalition, which finally brought our great adversary to his knees.

How was it done, if all sound war doctrine was violated? Where the facts have been so imperfectly studied it would be idle to attempt a final judgment. But clearly revision is needed; and all I would endeavour to indicate is the line on which revision could proceed. It is not without hesitation that I do so. It is difficult to offer an apologia for the Government of the time