pletely miscalculated the means by which he hoped to attain that end; he began the war against a spiritual and cosmopolitan power just as if he had to prepare a conflict with France or Austria; heedless of all warnings he enacted, with the applause and help of the Liberals, a series of laws destined to reduce Catholicism in Germany to a mere State Church, cut asunder from its Roman centre. Of the twelve Prussian Catholic Bishops five have been imprisoned or deposed by the civil authority, two are dead, five only remain to be the objects of fresh persecution. If he had studied the history of Joseph II. and of the French Revolution, he would have seen how utterly such a crucial experiment must fail against a spiritual power. The Catholic Church of Prussia of course suffers materially under the heavy blows of a strong centralised Government, but it will never submit to the Falk Laws, because, in doing so, it would cease to be itself; if the bishops are fined and put into prison they appear as martyrs to their cause; the clergy are deprived of their salary, but they are supported by their flocks; the Government has authorised the parishes to elect priests for vacant places, and not a single election has taken place; it has favoured to the utmost the Old-Catholic movement, but that weak plant will not take root. The result of the enormous pressure which during five years has been brought to weigh upon the Prussian Catholic Church, has only been to render it internally more united, more homogeneous, than it was ever before, and to split the nation into two hostile camps. The dignity of the State, of course, suffers if one-third of its citizens refuses on principle to submit to laws which are legally enacted, but the dignity of the State does not require that its rulers should deem themselves infallible; on the contrary, the fault is with them who do not strive to correct the blunders they have committed, but proceed from bad to worse. Prince Bismarck may by this time have discovered that he has rashly embarked in a contest without justly appreciating the dimensions it would take, but his indomitable pride and self-will still rebel against avowing that he has made a mistake. He has preferred to divert public opinion from ecclesiastical affairs by starting a new gigantic project-the buying up of the German railways by the Empire. We greatly doubt the expediency of this policy, which forces the Middle States into opposition against the central power, and will probably only add a new schism to the old one. Nor would a new successful war break up the Ultramontane party, as Sadowa split the Liberals. Questions such as the relation of State and Church having once been opened cannot be settled by arbitrary power.

It is one of the characteristics of the Foreign Policy of the Two Chancellors, as related by M. Klaczko, that they have drawn up their plans and followed their schemes, without the slightest reference to England. Prince Bismarck especially has never concealed his unmitigated contempt for the policy of this country, and has been known to say that a State which gives anything up, as we gave up the protectorate of the Ionian Islands, must be regarded as a thing of the past. We may be permitted to say that in their jubilant calculations these bold and sagacious ministers appear to us to have reckoned without their host. There is not one of their schemes which England is not powerful enough to traverse and defeat, if she thinks the time is come for her to take a more active part in the affairs of Europe. The Andrassy Note, to which England gave a qualified assent; the projected Note of the Berlin Conference, which has fallen to the ground; the intrigues by which Russia acting on Servia, Montenegro, and the Slavonian provinces of Turkey, has brought them to actual war, have all been more or less foiled by the appearance of the British fleet in Besika Bay; not only because that fleet is a powerful armament, but because it is backed by the public opinion of Europe. France, Austria, Italy, Turkey know very well that whatever may be plotted between the Two Chancellors at Berlin and St. Petersburg, that fleet represents the principles most essential to the maintenance of peace and international law. Accordingly the Northern Courts have not been slow to acknowledge that for the present at least the game has turned not to their advantage. Perhaps they have by this time discovered that, in spite of their vast military armaments and unscrupulous political combinations, they are not masters of the board. The British Government, acting without the slightest appearance of bravado or irritation, has shown foresight and ability in putting forth its strength. The country, irrespective of party, is, we venture to say, well satisfied with the position which has been assumed on the basis of the Treaties of 1856, as far as that policy has been made known. It is not our business to inquire how far Prince Gortchakoff conceived himself to have advanced in the process of undermining those Treaties. Suffice it to say, that the current of recent events has been adverse to him; that the policy of Russia in the East is placed in the alternative of a rash war or an inglorious peace; and that at the most critical moment the Emperor William of Germany and his powerful Minister appear to have withheld their support from the Cabinet of St. Petersburg.

ART. IX.-New Guinea and Polynesia. Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea and the D'Entrecasteaux Islands. A Cruize in Polynesia and Visits to the Pearl-Shelling Stations in Torres Straits of H.M.S. Basilisk. By Captain JOHN MORESBY, R.N. London: 1876.

IN

a recent Number we reviewed the wonderful story which that modern Maundeville-Captain Lawson-published about a year ago as to his wanderings in New Guinea. It was a book that spoke for itself, as one of the most daring romances of travel ever concocted. We now call our readers' attention to a work of quite another stamp--a real honest account of a series of voyages, the result of which has been a great extension of our knowledge as to the south-east and north-east coasts of New Guinea; not to mention the surveying and ascertaining the true geographical position of many islands in Torres Straits and the adjacent waters, where the coral formations burst out on the surface in islands like mushrooms in meadows in autumn. Truth, it is well known, is often stranger than fiction; but we can hardly hope that Captain Moresby's modest and sober narrative will prove so fascinating to the general reader as the marvels related by Lawson. There was a reckless disregard of time and space in the one writer which at once places the other, who is bound by those vulgar obstacles the laws of nature, at an immense disadvantage. How can an honest British sailor compete in fiction with a man who, when he lands in New Guinea, puts his foot ashore at a spot which, according to his own observations, is several miles out at sea, and when he quits the island after his wonderful adventures, sails in a Chinese junk, against the north-west monsoon, 1,000 miles in five days? In a word, Lawson's New Guinea' and Moresby's Surveys and Discoveries' in that great island are further even than the poles apart, and differ as much as truth does from fiction. On a former occasion we revelled in fiction and found it very amusing. Let us now turn to truth, and see if she, too, when she tells of New Guinea, has not something to say for herself.

It was on the 15th of January, 1871, that H.M.S.' Basilisk,' a steamship of 1,031 tons, 400 horse-power, and five guns, manned by 178 officers and men, left Sydney under orders to proceed to Cape York, with horses and stores for that settlement, and to spend three months in the cruise. Touching at Brisbane in Moreton Bay, she proceeded to Cape York by the route inside the Great Barrier Reef, which, as is well known,

runs north and south along the coast of what is now the Colony of Queensland, for no less a distance than 1,200 miles. Its distance from the mainland varies from seven to eighteen miles, and though the waters thus protected from the restless surf of the Pacific are everywhere studded with islets, banks, and reefs, they have been admirably surveyed by Owen Stanley and Blackwood; so that relying on his chart the navigator moves inside this great breakwater on a perfect summer sea over calm and transparent water, and while he sails along in security sees the surf and hears the roar of the Pacific thundering against its everlasting wall outside. As the Basilisk' thus sped on she came upon a strange sail, strange indeed as the ship of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner! With a heavy water-logged look she swayed slowly up and down upon the swell; her sails were weather-beaten and her ropes slack. Just as they had made up their minds that she must be abandoned, one or two gaunt wild-looking creatures rose up in the stern, and others were discovered lying on the deck. Boarding the vessel, they found her crew were Solomon Islanders, the remains of 180 kidnapped natives, who had been brought to Rewa in Fiji, and thence transferred to the Peri '—that was the ship's name--for distribution among the islands of that group. The natives were in charge of three white men and a Fijian crew, but during the voyage food ran short, strife arose, the kidnapped natives rose on the crew and threw them overboard, whites and Fijians alike. Then left to themselves, they had drifted helpless and starving for five weeks before the south-east trade wind, a distance of nearly 1,800 miles to the spot where the Basilisk found them. Thirteen out of the eighty alone survived-living skeletons, who fumbled at their rusty muskets and vainly tried to point them at the boarding party. Having buried the dead and fed the living, the Basilisk' took the Peri' with her to Cardwell, a newly-made Queensland settlement at the top of Rockingham Bay. Except Cape York, this is the most northerly port of the colony; but it does not appear to have been well chosen, and, according to Captain Moresby, has few recommendations for a commercial harbour. There they left the Peri' under the charge of four men and a midshipman, and went to Cape York, which they reached on the 16th of February, anchoring off the settlement of Somerset, which was founded in 1866, under an expectation which has not yet been realised that from its geographical position it would become another Singapore in importance. At the same time a party of Royal Marines were landed there as a guard, and if our memory serves us right, forgotten by the naval authorities, till remon

strances and questions arising at home, they were withdrawn, and Somerset was left to its fate. There were at Somerset on this first visit of the Basilisk' but six white settlers-the Government police magistrate and his boat's crew. Besides these there were fifteen or twenty natives employed either as troopers or pearl-shell divers. The wooden houses were falling into decay, and the gardens growing wild. Such was the condition of the northernmost settlement in Australia. Here the 'Basilisk' safely landed her horses and stores, and went on to survey the islands in Torres Straits, which extend for 200 miles with a breadth of 80 miles between Cape York and the opposite coast of New Guinea. They are full of rocks and reefs, and though admirably sounded and surveyed by Captain Blackwood and others for a portion of their space, much remained to be done on their northern shores, and especially about the islands adjacent to the south-eastern extremity of New Guinea, to which navigators, with one consent, seem to have given a very wide berth. Having done good service in surveying, and having visited the pearl-shell diving stations, the chief of which is at Warrior Island, the 'Basilisk' returned inside the great Barrier Reef to Cardwell. Of this pearl-shell diving industry it suffices to say that it is principally worked by capital from Sydney, at which port the pearl-shell fetches from 150l. to 1807. per ton. The divers were partly hired and partly kidnapped, till, as we shall see, legislation mitigated, if it did not entirely stop, that nefarious practice. Mr. Bedford, the manager of the enterprise at Warrior Island, a rough and 'ready, but kindly organiser, had succeeded in enlisting the fierce islanders in the service, and the "Basilisks," during their 'visit, saw their formidable war canoes drawn up on the beach, and the six-foot bows requiring muscle as strong as that which shot at Agincourt to draw them' in the hands of men whose forefathers with the same weapons had beaten off a British man-of-war.

At Cardwell, which was reached on March 15th, Captain Moresby found the Peri' and learnt the sad tidings of the wreck of the Maria,' a crazy old brig of 167 tons, on board which several fine-spirited young men from Sydney' had embarked on a prospecting expedition to New Guinea, which we may say, once for all, seems to excite the attention of all the enterprising adventurers of the Antipodes. Their fate reminds one of what we read in Hackluyt and Smith and the first pioneers of American colonisation. In this case the expedition did not get very far on its way. The adventurers bold on land were feeble at sea; the master was incompetent, and, as we