'I believe one could not have dared to hope that things would be in so good a state by this time. Everywhere our troops have beaten the main bodies of rebels. All that has been attempted on a great scale has succeeded. Only small ill-considered attempts have led to. disaster.'

Such was Lady Canning's testimony to the conduct of this most astonishing struggle; what her share in it had been hardly even her companions knew. Her diary is a most valuable addition to the history of our time, while its moderation in tone, and its absolute truthfulness as to fact are alike characteristic of the writer.

We venture to think that, in compiling his book, Mr. Hare has been a little too much absorbed by his veneration and regret for Lady Waterford, and that he has hardly done justice to her elder sister-to all her force of character, her clear-seeing vision, her justice, her loyal love, as well as to the wisdom of Lady Canning's splendid calmness. He might easily have found instances of the contrary sentiment, for the European community in Calcutta was pervaded by such a feeling of panic, that courage like that of the Viceroy's wife, and of Lady Campbell (née Metcalfe) shone all the brighter by force of contrast. The way in which Lady Canning took her daily drive without any additional guard, or apparent change in her arrangements, had an extraordinary effect in steadying people's nerves. Seldom, indeed, have the sweet piety and the passive courage of a brave woman had more conspicuous results than in the example of coolness and moderation which she set in society. As communications in India were then most imperfect, and as all progress was greatly delayed by the Mutiny, Lady Canning was unfortunately little known beyond Calcutta. There she was the leading spirit. Always kind and charitable, she upheld the highest standard of purity and refinement, and it is only to be regretted that her influence was not allowed by circumstances to spread to other parts of India. The affection felt for her in Calcutta turned to consternation and to intense sorrow when it was known that Lord Canning's wife lay hopelessly ill of fever. She had caught a chill while sketching some wonderful tree-ferns and orchids in a jungle below Darjeeling. Death came gently to one cast in such a gentle mould. She held Lord Canning's hand, spoke at intervals a few soft words, expressed no sorrow at leaving the world, and passed painlessly out of it on November 18, 1861. She was 45 years of age. No workpeople were allowed to touch the shrouded corpse. The staff (Charlotte's

generals,' as her family called them) lifted her with reverent touches into her coffin, and then carried it out to its resting-place in the garden at Barrackpore. The last time that she had been in the garden she had sat under one of its peepul trees. There her grave was made, and thither of nights, when all his household slept, Charles Canning used to come and weep and pray. 'He was a changed man 'from the day the doctors told him that hope there was none,' says one who knew both husband and wife well in India; and Mr. Hare says that while life remained he mourned for her who had given him the love of her life 'with a depth of anguish, stricken love, and reverence ' which knew no words.'

The last months of Lord Canning's stay in India were spent in maintaining the principles of whose substantial value he was convinced, in securing fair play for a Mahomedan population, which forms by no means the least important element of our empire, in holding in check the rival pretensions of a vast congeries of different races, tongues, and creeds, in allaying the passions of resentment and fear, and above all in confirming, or even we may say in recreating a loyalty which had been seriously undermined.

To the torrent of calumny let loose against him Lord Canning had been indifferent, but he sickened now for want of the companion to whom his honour had been so dear, whose soul had been full of clemency, justice, and sympathy, and whose calm pride rose to the emergency when either calumny or danger threatened him. He touched English shores on May 5, 1862. He was made a Knight of the Garter, and national honours were ready for him, but they left him as they found him-very indifferent. When he came to die (on June 17), his watchers, to soothe the man who had so bravely fought with beasts 'in British India, told him that he was going to Charlotte.' On June 17 he was buried in Westminster Abbey, and in Mr. Canning's grave.

In Louisa Stuart, Marchioness of Waterford, we have a completely different type. Hers was not like her sister's, 'an intelligence so remarkable that it seemed a gift to lead her straight to truth in all things.' She was an English lady, born with a genius for form and colour as great as ever lodged in the breast of any of the Venetian masters. She had some of the Greek joy in natural life (vide the 'Spring' in the collection of Countess Manvers), and was endowed with all the purest instincts of love, beauty, strength, and diligence, which go to make up the artist.

She was as beautiful in person as in mind, and she retained her beauty, for when she lost youth she gained that 'new 'fairness on the features, and not on them only, but on the 'whole body,' which Ruskin says, 'is gained by the exercise ' of virtue, gentleness, and decision of just feeling.' All grace of action and all grace of form were already Louisa Stuart's when her marriage to Henry, Marquis of Waterford, took the world by surprise. Why she made such a choice remains a mystery. Some of her congeners affirmed at the time that she did it as a reaction from a disappointed hope; others that as her father was alone in St. Petersburg Lady Stuart was in a hurry to settle this daughter. It would be more fair to suppose that Louisa had been captivated by a personal beauty in Lord Waterford, which was as remarkable in degree, though it differed in kind, as that of Lord Douglas, while her mother's letters prove that she, at all events, felt many natural doubts and anxieties when this Last of the Mohawks presented himself as a suitor for her daughter. When an engagement was at last permitted, all the parties concerned agreed to take a couleur de rose view of it, and, whether he enjoyed the process or not, the bridegroom was presented to his new relatives, and roared like any sucking dove. Miss Berry describes the wedding :—

'By some accident Louisa's mother had moved from her side, and she stood alone, like a glorious picture of a poet's bride, in the arch of the chapel door, which had the effect of framing this costly picture. There she stood motionless, with her white robes and her long bridal veil, which covered her from head to foot. It was impossible to distinguish a feature, but the form was that of a marble statue of beauty veiled. She looked extremely pale. Everyone said, "Look! Look!" the gentle music of the organ commenced a hymn of praise, and we held our breath lest the least earthly sound should make that heavenly vision glide away.'

The beautiful girl's heart went with her hand, and if she had never doubted her own strength of character when she undertook to tame her Irish Nimrod, the event did, what events rarely do-it justified her confidence. It is greatly to Lord Waterford's credit that he listened to her, that little by little he gave up his strange habits and his inordinate love of field sports, and that she succeeded in taming him. They were ever an attached couple, and under his Louisa's care the desert and all the solitary places of Curraghmore, if they did not positively blossom like the rose, put on at least new beauty. Nor was it the fault of Lord and Lady Waterford if they did not also put on new

wealth. She tried all plans-churches and chapels, schools, farms, mills, and all those home industries which at that time (1843-58) were not the fashion as they have now become. To have worked as Lady Waterford worked in Ireland, half a century ago, must have necessitated an extraordinary amount of technical knowledge of details. She had, it is true, a large fortune, ample leisure, and a free hand, but the country was not rich in resources. She worked without stint or intermittence, till the daily labours she confronted, and the daily tasks she mastered, would have seemed more suited to Robert Owen, to Sir Adam Fergusson of Kilberran, to George Dempster of Dunnichen, to Sir James GibsonCraig, and to the Flowers, than to a beautiful young lady recently united to a fox-hunting squire. Thanks to her efforts there was always plenty of work on the estate, and incentives offered to the habits of industry and thrift, which have no great charms for the finest pisantry.' Lord Waterford habitually hunted from dawn till such a late hour that dinner was sometimes put off from 10 P.M. to midnight. Meantime Lady Waterford, in a short white washing suit, and with a close white cap tied tightly over her magnificent plaits of hair, went from cabin to cabin, and from one patient to the other. Trained nurses there were none, but she was young and strong, so she lifted and washed the sick, cooked food over the peat fires, and then went home, to send straight to the laundry clothing which was not always innocent of vermin. No task was too hard for her, and next day a fresh white suit was ready for the next visit to schools or sick bed; but when Lord Waterford returned he always found the lovely Lady of Curraghmore robed in all her splendour, smiling and singing, or painting portraits of her visitors and their dogs by lamp-light.

The instincts of her cottars were at first all for loyalty and grateful affection. But the famine of 1846-47 came, and, though Lord and Lady Waterford left nothing undone that love, money, wisdom, and physical courage could do, to alleviate the terrible distress, and to lay the sickness that always follows on famine, still, it is, as the proverb avers, 'ill talking between a full man and a fasting,' and the revolutionary movement of 1848 appealed only too easily to the suffering and depopulated Celts. Their Protestant benefactors were discredited, and the bloody Beresfords held up to the execration which too many Irish landlords once deserved, and which is now so impartially dealt out, both to the good and to the bad. The lives of Lord and

Lady Waterford were, for the time, in positive danger. That Lady Canning's sister stood firm before hunger-typhus, and the attempts to abduct her made by her quondam patients, goes for understood; but as this chapter of Irish social life under Queen Victoria is instructive, we make a few extracts. The principal agitator was, of course, Mr. Smith O'Brien; but there was no lack then, as now, of demagogues to excite the discontent of the people. Curraghmore was fortified with cannon, while the Fenians watched the park gates, threatening to carry off Lord Waterford's beautiful wife to the hills. In July this persecution obliged her to go for a short time to her mother; barricades were thrown up at Clonmel, and

The people,' wrote the housekeeper, are up all night at clubs, making pikes, and my Lord says he will barricade the house, and get in some men. I only wish all the stablemen were Protestants. We are going on strongly barricading, and unless they fire the house they will not get in easily. All the work is still going on, but spirit is wanting, and all looks dull and suspicious. I cannot but think the people ungrateful in the extreme.'

In September an attack on Curraghmore, where both husband and wife lived behind closed shutters, was hourly expected. Lady Waterford wrote:-

Thank you for thinking of us in our time of tribulation, for such it is. We live in a state of siege. W. goes armed to the teeth, and I am not allowed to venture out of sight, for one of Dohey and Dillon's plans was to seize W. for a hostage and do to him whatever is done to the leaders, and W. thinks I may be caught if he is not, and he does not want to have to chase me as well as the rebels. The evil spirit of this attempt is confined to about three counties, but is raging there. Our county is scoured by rebels, who force the farmers to give up their guns, and even live stock and provisions, while they force the labourers into their ranks, bon gré, mal gré. I am very glad to be on the spot. I hear of no more cholera in Waterford, and I assure you it is much less anxious. I am sure, much as the rebels wish it, they do not dare attack the house. A great many of our labourers have joined the rebels-some pressed into it, others willingly. Some conceal themselves about the farm to prevent the chance of being taken, but one afternoon a summons came and twenty-five openly walked away.'

Visited sick

'September 1849.-Waterford off to the Curragh. people. Found little Moses asleep in his cradle, with the pussy cat on top of him, quite content. Mr. Hill called, full of rumours of war, and of a black Sunday, for the massacre of all the Protestants. He wanted me to get troops here, and to go to the magistrate. I said I thought our own people would do well enough, and would only require to be