THE YEAR WE’VE LEFT BEHIND US.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 7, 18 February 1893, Page 148

THE YEAR WE’VE LEFT BEHIND US.

IT may seem rather late to review the year of 1892, but pictures and photos of the ‘ mighty dead ’ and celebrated people take time in collection and execution, and it was not till the last ’Frisco mail that we received the final instalment of portraits and materials which enable us to put before our readers a complete and profusely illustrated review of the year we have left behind us. So far as it has sounded any dominant note, 1892 must be classed as a year of disappointments. Opening for the nation in all the sunshine of the hopes and generous aspirations awakened by the recent betrothal of the Prince of Wales’ heir to one of the most popular of English princesses, the year was to see those aspirations blighted and those hopes darkened by the sombre hand of Death. In the arena of public affairs the year commencing found two great parties girding up their strength for the struggle which summer must bring.

The year has been frather conspicuously fatal to the aristocracy, and three dukes appear in the year’s obituary. The Duke of Marlborough was a great landlord and a good one, and a somewhat prominent amateur man of science. He had figured in the Divorce Court, and was not on terms with all his relatives, but on the Blenheim estate he is understood to be deeply lamented. The sudden death of the Duke of Manchester, following, as it did, hard upon

the marriage of his mother, lent a further halo of melancholy romance to that circumstance. But a romance is somewhat appropriate to a Duchess of Devonshire, which title the lady in question acquires by her union with the quondam Marquis of Hartington, a marriage popular in all circles, for the public adores a lovematch. The late Duke of Sutherland represented that county (of which his family a,e almost the landlords) in Parliament from 1852 to 1861, and is succeeded by his son. the Marquis of Stafford. Abroad, while the war cloud has hung less imminent over Europe, and General von Caprivi declares that he will not brandish the sabre, the ingenuous self-revelations of his predecessor will not, ns showing the power of a single highplaced and unscrupulous politician to * let loose the dogs of war,' tend to strengthen the hopes of those who wish for peace. The hopes of the faction in France, which sees in every disturbance of public life an opportunity or a hope of

subverting the Republic, have, as usnal, risen to a grotesque height over the squalid scandal of the Panama bribes, which

threatens to crush with its obloquy poor Ferdinand de Lesseps, le grand Francais as he is affectionately called, whose health has given way under the pressure of his many anxieties, and whose son has already been arrested as a party to the malpractices alleged against the promoters of the Canal. Meantime, political feeling in America shows a tendency to taking up the Canal. General Harrison, the retiring President, was handsomely beaten in November by Grover Cleveland, and may be said to have owed his downfall in a great measure to the insane hostility towards England, of which he vainly endeavoured to make party capital. The McKinley Bill was unquestionably directed

against the manufactures of that country; but far-seeing politicians of both parties in the United States saw from the first its suicidal tendency. Labour troubles have been much in evidence in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

M. Ernest Renan, who wrote the Life of Jesus, esteemed chiefly by people who have not read it a very wicked book (it is, as a matter of fact, a very beautiful, and though heretical, a very reverent one) was, with the exception of

Lord Tennyson, the most remarkable man of letters who died during the year under review. He was something as different as possible to the militant sceptic of convention, a conversationalist of the old school, and a very great man. Professor Freeman is chiefly remembered by most people as the historian of the Norman Conquest. He was, however, a voluminous writer, and was exhaustively learned on many historical questions. Professor Owen’s popular reputation rested mainly on his restorations, on the ex pede Herculem principle, of extinct animals from insignificant remains, but bis claims on the gratitude of those who know how to appreciate his industry and learning are of a wider, if less sensational order. The most important event of the year, as affecting the course of politics and the destinies of the nation, was of course the General Election, which overthrew the administration of Lord Salisbury and placed Mr Gladstone in office, with a majority of forty-two, in the House of Commons. Rumours of disagreement, associated with the name of Lord Rosebery, were contradicted by the appearance of that nobleman as Foreign Secretary, and in matters colonial Lord Kimberley’s services were secured, as in Mr Gladstone’s second administration. The return of Lord Ripon to the Cabinet did not excite the quasi-rehgious objections raised on his first assumption of office some years ago. Sir George Trevelyan’s complete re-identification with the party from which he had been for some little time estranged in

’B6, was marked by his assumption of office. The yonnger element is well represented in the new Government, the Home Secretary (Mr Asquith, Q.C.), being, at forty, one of the very youngest Cabinet ministers on record. Mr Arnold Morley (Postmaster-General), and Mr A. H. D. Acland in the Cabinet, and, in the outside ministry, Sir Edward Grey (Under-Secretary to the Foreign Office), Mr Sydney Buxton, celebrated as well by his successful attack on the late Government on the ‘ half-timers ’ question as by his political handbooks, Lord Sandhurst, Mr George Russell, Mr W. A. McArthur, MrT. E. Ellis, MrG. Leveson-Gower, and Mr Herbert Gladstone, can none of them be accused of belonging to what has been contumeliously termed • the old

gang.’ Lord Houghton, son of a man better remembered as Monckton-Milnes, poet and society man, than as a politician, was raised unexpectedly to what his personal attractions would alone justify our calling an ornamental post, as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. But of course the responsibilities of Irish business rest with Mr John Morley, the only possible Chief Secretary. Since the religious difficulty debais him from the Woolsack, Sir Charles Russell resumes also his old post of Attorney-General, Mr James Bryce’s appointment to Cabinet rank was popular, despite Mr

Disraeli’s well-known remark that the House of Commons hated professors. Mr Shaw Lefevre, Sir William Harcourt, Mr Campbell-Bannerman, Lord Herschel), and Mr Mundella have done yeoman’s service in former Governments, and may be ranked as old friends on the Treasury benches. Mr Arthur Balfour will make, on the other hand, a splendid fighting leader for the Opposition, and will be seconded by some of the best debating talent in the House of Commons in the efforts of Mr Chamberlain, who runs his leader close as the best debater there, Mr Goschen, Sir William Hart-Dyke, whose able management of the Free Education Act delighted all parties, Sir John Gorst, another of the clever men of the old Fourth Party, Mr ‘Jimmy’ Lowther, and Sir Richard Webster—the last hardly as great a success in Parliament as ‘ Mr Ex-Solicitor General ’ Sir Edward Clark. Lord Salisbury will be assisted in the Lords by the Duke of Devonshire, whose marriage to the Duchess of Manchester, • though often predicted, created some little surprise, following so early his accession to the title. Lord Sherbrooke, best remembered as ‘ Bobby ’ Lowe, had hardly been a power in politics since he left the House of Commons in 1880. He was the originator of numberless expressions which came to be the proverbs of politics, achieved a high place, both in power and in the estimation of his

fellow-commoners, in the teeth of almost insuperable physical disabilities, came near to enriching the official language of his country with something very like a pun, ‘ ex luce lucellum,’ the motto proposed for the ill-fated matchbox stamp, and was foiled in this favourite administrative scheme by the energy of a parcel of factory girls and other East-end workers ; we had (in his own words) • educated our masters ’ to some purpose. — Sir George Campbell, excellent man, was abhorred rather for his speeches than his opinions in the House of Commons, which will tolerate almost anything rather than garrulity. Dead also is Lord Bramwell, the famous • B ’ of Times letters, and a frequent speaker in the Lords. He was one

of the best * Law Lords,’ but a lawyer of a school which had almost become extinct in his time.

Lord Hampden, better known as Sir Henry Brand, who died in March, went to the Lords in 1884 on resigning the speakership of the Commons, which he had held with universal respect for twelve years. Lord Tennyson, after writing on the Duke of Clarence ami Avondale one of the noblest of his elegiacs, has himself

passed ‘to where beyond these voices there is peace,’and has been lamented in prose and song by nearly every writer of note, and by quite every minor poet in the Kingdom. In the land of shades James Greenleaf Whittier and rugged, sturdy Whitman are his fellows, both having died this year. Mr Swinburne has been much talked of as a possible next laureate, though it came to be known that Mr William Morris, without receiving an actual offer of the post, had been approached, naturally without success. To many people the bard of Atalanta or Calydon would seem an only less impossible laureate than the ex-editor of the Commonweal and the beloved of many demagogues. Dr. Philpott, ex-Bishop of Worcester, who resigned the see to Dr. Perowne, in consequence of advanced age and impaired health in the month of October, 1892, has passed peacefully away. Dr. Harold Browne, who resigned the

bishopric of Winchester at the same time, was, perhaps, a greater divine, but though not less unwearied in well doing than the brother prelate whom he has joined in rest, he had hardly Bishop Philpott’s exuberant energy. Like the latter, he had been Vice-Principal ot Lampeter. Of the late Bishop of St. Andrews, one of Dr. Boyd’s (A. K. H.B’s.) rather numerous ‘outstanding’ men, it is hardly possible to say anything that his episcopal brethren and clerical subordinates would think worthy of Dr. Wordsworth. There is little doubt that much higher preferment was well within his reach had he desired it.

The people’s cardinal—Manning —leaves a gap which a greater would not easily till. We missed Newman, but Cardinal Manning’s death takes away more. The many are poorer for it ; the very few only, perhaps, could be said to have missed Cardinal Newman a year earlier. Manning played the man in our midst, he might have said to his brother in dignity, as one king said in ancient Israel to the other, ‘ I will disguise myself and go into the battle, but

put thou on thy robes,’ save that his own life was lived without disguise amid the battles of the poor. Many of us found the installation of Cardinal Vaughan, his successor, less impressive than the lying in state of the man around whose bier a crowd filed continuously for three long days. Cardinal Howard, who in early life was a lieutenant of the 2nd Life Guards, and who became a prominent figure in the Church of Rome, also died during the year. Mr Spurgeon, who died after a lingering illness last

spring, was called by those qualified to estimate these high matters, a great organiser rather than a great preacher. He has found a successor from across the Atlantic in the Rev. Dr. Pierson, not without a rather unseemly controversy, arising out of the very natural desire of a section in the church that the deceased pastor should be succeeded by one of his sons, and stimulated by the visit of one of these sons (from New Zealand), who proved to have many of his father’s pecularities, and who certainly showed no anxiety to avoid a ‘call.’ The proceedings did not terminate without a visit to the police station, and perhaps the person who comes out of the whole transaction with most credit is Dr. Pierson himself. So, amid the distasteful echoes of the election courts, though it is pleasant to note that members of Parliament, even when unseated, have been exonerated from all personal reprehension, the year has flickered to a close. Taking from us the greatest poet of the century, and the most popular of our younger princes, it would be impossible to pretend that it has given us anything very worthy in return. Certainly it has given, and could give us nothing which we would have willingly taken in exchange for these irreparable deprivations. But sombre as its prevailing hues have been, it is pleasant to be reminded that, after all, 1892 was a year of peace and of steady progiess towards

‘That which once was the far off horizon, But which is now become the middle distance,’ with a fair hope that when we have reached it, it may

‘ In faithful promise be exceeded only By that which shall have opened in the meantime Into a new and glorious horizon.’