On this occasion the New Year was danced into "in good old English fashion. In the middle of the dance, as the clock finished striking twelve, a flourish of trumpets was blown, in accordance with a German custom." The past year had been good also, and fertile in blessings on that roof-tree, though in the world without there were the chafings and mutterings of more than one impending crisis. The corn-laws, with the embargo they laid on free trade, weighed heavily on the minds both of statesmen and people. In Scotland Church and State were struggling keenly once more, though, bloodlessly this time, as they had struggled to the death in past centuries, for mastery where what each considered its rights were in question. Among the blows dealt by death in 1841, there had been heavy losses to art in the passing away of Chantrey and Wilkie. In January, 1842, events happened in Afghanistan which brought bitter grief to many an English home, and threw their shadow over the palace itself in the next few months. The fatal policy of English interference with the fiery tribes of Northern India in support of an unpopular ruler had ended in the murder of Sir Alexander Burns and Sir William Macnaghten, and the evacuation of Cabul by the English. This was not all. The march through the terrible mountain defiles in the depth of winter, under the continual assaults of an unscrupulous and cruel enemy, meant simply destruction. The ladies of the party, with Lady Sale, a heroic woman, at their head, the husbands of the ladies who were with the camp, and finally General Elphinstone, who had been the first in command at Cabul, but who was an old and infirm man, had to be surrendered as hostages. They were committed to the tender mercies of Akbar Khan, the son of the exiled Dost Mahomed, the moving spirit of the insurrection against the native puppet maintained by English authority, and the murderer, with his own hand, of Sir William Macnaghten, whose widow was among the prisoners. The surrender of hostages was partly a matter of necessity, in order to secure for the most helpless of the party the dubious protection of Akbar Khan, partly a desperate measure to prevent what would otherwise have been inevitable--the perishing of the women and children in the dreadful hardships of the retreat. The captives were carried first to Peshawur and afterwards to a succession of hill-forts in the direction of the Caucasus, while their countrymen at home, long before they had become familiar with the tragedy of the Indian Rebellion, burned with indignation and thrilled with horror at the possible fate of those victims of a treacherous, vindictive Afghan chief. In the meantime the awful march went on, amidst the rigours of winter, in wild snowy passes, by savage precipices, while the most unsparing guerilla warfare was kept up by the furious natives at every point of vantage. Alas! for the miserable end which we all know,