army with water by boring Artesian wells; how he stormed Magdala with an impetuous rush on the 12th of April, when King Theodore, having previously released the captives, committed suicide, need not be now dwelt on. It was a brilliant little achievement, and the story of it was read with pride and emotion by the Queen. Napier’s skilful adaptation of means to ends, and the nicety of his calculations may be simply illustrated. At the beginning of the war he was asked when he could be at Magdala. He replied, “About the end of March.” He was asked when he could get back to Zoulla. He said, “Early in June.” As a matter of fact, he was at Magdala on the 10th of April, and he returned to Zoulla on the 18th of June, after which the country was at once evacuated. The thanks of both Houses of Parliament were voted to Sir Robert Napier on the 2nd of July, Mr. Disraeli complimenting him on having “planted the standard of St. George on the mountains of Rasselas,” and “led the elephants of Asia, bearing the artillery of Europe, over African passes which might have startled the trapper and appalled the hunter of the Alps.” As trappers hunt the beaver, which lives in water and not in mountains, the metaphor was a little mixed; but the orator’s intention was good, and his gaudy phrases served to divert the town during the languor of perhaps the sultriest London season on record. On the 9th of July Mr. Disraeli brought to the House a message from the Queen conferring a Peerage on the leader of the Expedition--who thus became Lord Napier of Magdala--together with an annuity of £2,000 a year for two lives. As Napier’s eldest son was an adult, and the usual grant in such cases had hitherto been for three lives, the Queen’s message was a distinct concession to the economists. Parliament was prorogued on the last day of July, and a curious passage in the Queen’s Speech referred with satisfaction to the fact that the Government had not seen cause to use the power given them for suspending _Habeas Corpus_ in Ireland. Then came the struggle for power in the new democratic constituencies. The usual preparation, said Mr. John Morley, in a Jeremiad in the _Fortnightly Review_, was made for the unlimited consumption of beer all over the land. Candidates of the old sort were put up. Reactionary Whigs, like Mr. Horsman, were suddenly transformed into iconoclastic Radicals, and were pledging themselves, not merely to abolish the Irish Church, but even to reform the House of Lords. Tories boasted that they were the only true democrats. Hardly any new men were brought to the front, and rich nobodies in many cases thrust aside true and tried servants of the people. Bloodshed was expected at Blackburn, and cavalry were drafted into the district. In short, Reform appeared to have changed nothing, and the first General Election under it seemed painfully like all its predecessors.