Mr. Henderson's account of Mary in Scotland (1561-1568) is throughout

excellent. The affairs of Chastelard, of Riocio, of the murder of Riccio, of Mary's passion for Bothwell, are all treated carefully, judiciously, and with energy. On the inexplicable details of Darnley's murder the present writer takes a view of the evidence, though he takes it doubtfully, which differs from that of Mr. Henderson, believing that Morton had representa- tives present. Mr. Henderson's addition to historical materials from unpublished MSS. takes' the form of two of the Lennox Papers in the Cambridge University Library, and two letters of Lennox from the British Museum and the Record Office. These are concerned with a long con- troversial appendix on the authenticity of the Casket letters. It is not possible here to venture on a subject so full of complicated detail. Suffice it to say that Mr. Henderson is quite sure he is right, while the curious may read for themselves the work of his adversary, who does not pretend to be sure at all. We have mentioned points susceptible of improvement in the book, but it will be very welcome to the relatively large public which studies the history of the unhappy Queen.

SIR HORACE RUMBOLD'S FINAL RE C OLLECTIONS.*

CHATEAUBRIAND, when at the head of the French Foreign Office, assured a friend that the appointment of nominees to certain high diplomatic posts which had just become vacant would be a trifling matter. For, said the author of Rene and the Genie du Christianisme, "je connais trente imbeciles qui feraient d'excellents Ambassadeurs." Tried in an examination conducted on the lines thus indicated by the great Frenchman, the author of these " Final Recollections " would have failed to qualify for an Ambassadorial post. His physical fitness for palatial functions, citizenship of the world, and exceptional command of foreign languages might have been pardoned not so his knowledge of the international problems of the day, his acquaintance with Shakespeare, Heine, and Gibbon, and his love of Nature, art, and the piano. Sir Horace Rumbold's opportunities of " observation with extended view" as a diplomatic subaltern enabled him to "survey Mankind from China to Peru," or, to be more exact, to Chile, and when Minister at Stockholm in the beginning of 1885, he was transferred in the same capacity to Athens. During the drive up from the Piraeus to the " City of the Violet Crown" he expatiated to his wife on the charms of the mansion of the Legation, with its staircase of Pentelicus marble, and the terrace commanding a view of the Acropolis. These dreams of a luxurious picturesqueness were soon rudely shattered. Sir Horace's predecessors had let the official residence tumble into such a state that the new arrivals had to take refuge in the Hermes Street, a locality in all respects as unmercurial as possible, except in the name. The necessary corre- spondence with the Foreign Office regarding this dilemma took time, the local masons were slow, and nearly a year passed before the representatives of the British Crown could quit the hostelry in which the summer temperature mounted heights unknown in the English habitats of Calcutta and Madras. Happily for the Minister, the unbroken. activities imposed upon him by the perilous developments of the Balkan problems of the year 1885 helped to divert his attention from thermometer readings of even F.100. The rising of Philippopolis, followed by the voluntary submission of the Turkish semi-dependency of Eastern Roumelia to the Bulgarian State invented by Lord Salisbury and Bismarck at the Congress of Berlin, had aroused the greed of the Hellenes for new territorial aggrandisements. That miniature, though respectable, nineteenth-century Cleon, M. Delyannis, hounded on by the cries of " Polemos ! Polemos!" from the mob of the capital, and by patriotic wirepullers of the Boule, called up the reserves of half- * Final Recollections of a Diplomatist. By the Bight Hon. Sir Horace Rumbold. Bart, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., sometime H.M. A.mbasssdor at Vienna. London:_ Edward Arnold. [15s. :iota

trained peasants and labourers, and mobilised a raw, half-clothed Army, which forthwith scrambled, "shivering and sickening," up to a strategical position on the frontier of Thessaly, where; as their French organiser said, they were "des hommes avec des fusils, et voill tout." In the Concert of Europe organised in defence of the interests of peace, Sir Horace, though personally favourable to a limited tolerance of the Greek claims, played a vigorous part. Having exhausted his stock of conciliatory argumentation, he finally used plain language to the immovable Greek, saying : "En vous opposant h la volonte, si nettement exprimee, de l'Europe entiere, vow cherchez l'impossible. C'est de la folie que de vouloir persister dans In malheurease voie que vous avez suivie jusqu'ici. Croyez moi quittez In place et allez-vous-en platot." Taking this advice in good part, M. Delyannis only replied with an interjectory " Mais mon ami !" and when Sir Horace left, went with him to the front door and saw him into his carriage. Soon the gutter Press contained a mendacious " inspired " account of the interview, alleging that Sir Horace had grossly insulted the Greek Premier and slammed the door in his face, saying, as M. de Blowitz afterwards facetiously put it : " Allez vous ong sur le continong." Thereupon the Under Foreign Secretary undertook to publish in the official Journal a categorical contradiction of the said calumnies as approved by Sir Horace and his German colleague, an arrangement quashed by M. Delyannis, who nevertheless disavowed his

subordinate. Our diplomatist's narrative of the dealings of the Powers with the Greek question, which led to the

arrival of an international fleet and the eventful occu- pation of the Piraeus, is a model of exhaustive, vigorous historical composition. Of equal excellence is the description of a Maltese episode occasioned by Sir Horace's temporary retirement from Athens, under orders from home, in con- sequence of the final blockade of the Greek coast, his account of the relics of the Knights of St. John and other insular splendours being full of clear and brilliant details.

Soon came the "adieu ye joys of La Valette, adieu Scirocco, sun, and sweat,"—the Minister was ordered to return to his post. If the Athens of that day had no Pericles, or even a Capodistrias, neither was there a local Aspasia, or even any aristocratic lady worthy of commemoration in lines like the Byronic "zoo mon sas agapo." Instead of sampling Sir Horace Rumbold's lifelike portraits of the few native and foreign personages meriting description, we will quote, as a specimen of his artistic power, his sketch of the view from Byron's "fortress formed for freedom's hands," now called the Acre Corinth :—

" We bad a longish journey by rail there and back, and upwards of an hour's steep climb—the ladies, of course, mounted on mules to the summit of the rocky eminence and the triple line of mediaeval fortifications which, from the Latin Crusaders who erected them, passed successively into Venetian and Turkish hands. The toil of the ascent in the mid-day heat was more than repaid, for the view obtained from the top is quite surprising, not alone for its beauty and extent, but for its entirely exceptional character. Greece in fact—or as much of it as enables one clearly to take in the entire configuration of the country, which looms so large in the world's history, and yet is territorially so small—lies stretched out before one exactly as it looks on the map. From this fortress eyrie—rising abruptly to a height of close upon two thousand feet above the level of the isthmus, midway between the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs, and with an incomparable outlook over both—the horizon stretches far away to the majestic background of Parnassus and Helicon, whose masses tower above the plains of Phocis, Eceotia, and Attica in Continental Greece ; while in the opposite, Peloponnesian, quarter it is bounded by the barren range that conceals Argos, and behind which, much further to the south, the mind's eye takes in Laconia with the rugged Spartan country. In the brilliantly transparent atmosphere and the wondrous light that lend a special enchantment to Greek scenery, even when most bare and ' arid, the map-like prospect is so clear that it looks almost possible to place one's finger, as on the map itself, on half-a-dozen world-renowned spots—Delphi, and Leuctra, and Plataea, and Mantinea—let alone Salamis and Marathon—the latter, however, being screened from view by the ridges of Pentelicus. Every one of these sites is included in the marvellous prospect, and the whole story of ancient Greece is spread out, as it were, at one's feet.'

We reluctantly skip a picture of the outburst of the Attic spring on " the slowly-trickling Mans " and the olive groves of Colonos, with its accompaniments of blazing colour and cooing doves. Neither can we follow the Rumbolds in

a journey to Hyderabad, undertaken to enable Sir Horace to press upon the Nizam certain family claims connected with childhood.

After a happy eight years' Dutch intermezzo, our diplomatist was given, under the rule palmam qui meruit ferat, the post of Ambassador at the Austrian Court. The beloved lustige Wien of his youth had suffered a sea-change. The green glacis down which Sobieski drove the defeated besieging army of Kara Mustafa was blocked by ranges of grand new buildings, the modern architect had desecrated the Graben and the old palace of the Hapsburgs, and the inner city was encircled by a ring of imposing edifices. But, as some of us well know, the local saying, 's gibt nur a Saiserstadt, is always true,—the

historic coffee, rolls, beer, and Tokay are incorruptible, while the sylvan beauties of the Prater which captivated Goethe's Mephistopheles never fade. If the courtly damsels with

whom Sir Horace had his Tanze fixe had grown to be elderly matrons, or had vanished from the scene, the sixteen-quartered

nobility had preserved intact the peculiar fascinations of manner and temperament which have always distinguished them from their patrician likes elsewhere. Then, to judge from the details of town and country hospitality given in this volume, the Viennese aristocracy and the Magyars of Budapest received the new Ambassador and his wife on a footing of intimacy hardly ever offered to foreign diplomatists. Sir Horace's epitome of the tangle of internal racial troubles that menace the continued existence of the polyglot

Dual Empire gives a lucid statement of the Pro-Boer movement in the Vienna Press and upper middle class.

Despite the tricks of Dr. Leyds and other malignant influences, English anti-patriotic declamations included, "the sympathies of the Imperial Government were never once led astray." The venerable Emperor Francis Joseph told our representative in a loud voice at the cercle before a

ball at the Hofburg that he was " entirely on the side of England in the war." Sir Horace writes :-

" So clearly and emphatically did he utter these words that the other Ambassadors standing near me, and their staffs behind them, could not have failed to hear them. In fact, when he had passed on, after speaking to my French and Spanish colleagues, M. de Reverseaux at once turned to me and said: Permettez suoi de vous feliciter sur is chaleur que l'Empereur a miss d vows dire eels.' As a matter of fact, the Emperor Francis Joseph never made any concealment whatever of his sentiments in our favour. On receiving about this time his Minister to the Court of Dresden, and hearing from him that the sympathies of the late King Albert of Saxony—the Emperor's life-long friend— were also on our side, H.M. said that he rejoiced to hear it, adding, 'Ich fiirchte wir rind beinahe die einzigen !' "