SHADE OF COBDEN (_quoting from his own speech at Rochdale, June 26, 1861_). "I AM NOT ONE TO ADVOCATE THE REDUCING OF OUR NAVY IN ANY DEGREE BELOW THAT PROPORTION TO THE FRENCH NAVY WHICH THE EXIGENCIES OF OUR SERVICE REQUIRE. WE HAVE A LEGITIMATE PRETENSION TO HAVE A LARGER NAVY THAN FRANCE.... IF THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT SHOWED A SINISTER DESIGN TO INCREASE THEIR NAVY TO AN EQUALITY WITH OURS, I _SHOULD VOTE A HUNDRED MILLIONS STERLING_ RATHER THAN ALLOW THAT NAVY TO BE INCREASED _TO A LEVEL WITH OURS...._ I HAVE SAID SO IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, AND I REPEAT IT TO _YOU_."] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. Mr. FISHER UNWIN is, my Baronite writes, still engaged in the important work, some time ago undertaken by his house, of publishing _The Story of the Nations_. The last volume issued is the thirty-fifth, in which Mr. GREVILLE TREGARTHEN deals with the History of the Australian Commonwealth. Australasia is a mere chit among the nations of the world, and story, God bless you, it has hardly any to tell. It has never been at war except with the aboriginal settlers, who were, at the outset, so lost to all proper feeling as to resent the incursion of the white man, occasionally carrying their prejudice to the absurd extent of eating him. But this is ancient history in a record which, beginning a little more than a hundred years ago with a convict settlement--it was on January 26, 1788, the British flag was for the first time unfurled in Sydney Bay--has already spread out lusty limbs over a vast Continent. _The Story of the Nations_ forms a library of itself, and this last volume is not the least fascinating of the series.