cause it has been translated into a crowd of lan- | problems. Yet they will obtain, from his marked guages, nor because it has been sold in hundreds of thousands, that we believe it will live; but because, however open it may be to criticism, it has in it the character of a true and very high work of art. Whether he will subsist as a standard and supreme authority is another question. Wherever and whenever read, he will be read with fascination, with delight, with wonder. And with copious instruction too; but also with copious reserve, and telling points of view, great aid in solving them. We sometimes fancy that ere long there will be editions of his works in which his readers may be saved from pitfalls by brief, respectful, and judicious commentary; and that his great achievements may be at once commemorated and corrected by men of slower pace, of drier light, and of more tranquil, broad-set, and comprehensive judgment. For his works are in many respects among the prodigies of literature; in some, they JUSTIN MCCARTHY. THE IRISH PATRIOT AND MAN OF LETTERS. IN the great conflicts in which the government or misgovernment of Ireland has involved every recent British administration, Justin McCarthy has, for twenty years, taken an important part. He had been the champion of his country long before he entered Parliament, and as an editor, and in lectures and speeches both in the United Kingdom and in America, he had distinguished himself not only by his devotion to the cause of Ireland, but by the intelligence, force, and, what was too rare among the Irish leaders, the good judgment which he displayed. Born in the city of Cork in 1830, the young McCarthy early entered journalism in his native place, but afterward went to Liverpool, and in 1860 was attached as parliamentary reporter to the staff of the London Morning Star, of which, from 1864 to 1866, he was editor. He spent a number of years in America, and, returning to his own country, was, in 1879, returned to Parliament from the Irish county of Longford. He became one of the trusted lieutenants of Charles Stewart Parnell, and after the decline from power and the death of that great leader, he occupied a sort of middle position between the two hostile factions into which the Irish party separated, and probably did as much as any one man to bring them together. McCarthy has written a number of novels, among which are "Paul Mesie," "My Enemy's Daughter," "Lady Judith," "Dear Lady Disdain,' "Miss Misanthrope," "The Comet of a Season," and "Camiola." He has also published a large number of essays on political and literary subjects, one volume of which bears the title, "Con Amore." It is in his historical writings, however, that he chiefly excels. A number of these essays are included in the volume called "The Epoch of Reform," and he has published a "History of Ireland," but the work upon which his fame seems likely chiefly to rest is his "History of Our Own Times, from the Accession of Queen Victoria," which has recently been brought down from 1880 to the present time. This is a most admirable account of the longest reign in English history, and excels in the lively pictures it presents of the marvelous progress which the great British empire has made within the most wonderful sixty years of modern times. There is probably no other book which tells the story so completely or so well, or which better deserves the wide circle of readers it has had. THE WITHDRAWAL FROM CABUL. FROM "A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES." HE withdrawal from Cabul began. It was the heart of a cruel winter. The English The English had to make their way through the awful pass of Koord Cabul. This stupendous gorge runs for some five miles between mountain ranges so narrow, lofty, and grim, that in the winter season the rays of the sun can hardly pierce its darkness even at the noontide. Down the center dashed a precipitous mountain torrent, so fiercely that the stern frost of that terrible time could not stay its course. The snow lay in masses on the ground, the rocks and stones that raised their heads above the snow in the way of the unfortunate travelers were slippery with frost. Soon the white snow began to be stained and splashed with blood. Fearful as this Koord Cabul Pass was, it was only a degree worse than the road which for two whole days the English had to traverse to reach it. The army which set out from Cabul numbered more than four thousand fighting men, of whom Europeans formed but a small proportion; and some twelve thousand camp-followers of all kinds. There were also many women and children. The winter journey would have been cruel and dangerous enough in time of peace; but this journey had to be accomplished in the midst of something far worse than common war. At every step of the road, every opening of the rocks, the unhappy crowd of confused and heterogeneous fugitives were beset by bands of savage fanatics, who with their long guns and long knives were murdering all they could reach. It was all the way a confused constant battle against a guerilla enemy of the most furious and merciless temper, who were perfectly familiar with the ground, and could rush forward and retire exactly as suited their tactics. The English soldiers, weary, 'weak, and crippled by frost, could make but a poor fight against the savage Afghans. "It was no longer," says Sir J. W. Kaye, "a retreating army; it was a rabble in chaotic fight." Men, women, and children; horses, ponies, camels; the wounded, the dying, the dead; all crowded together in almost inextricable confusion among the 66 "The snow and amid the relentless enemies. massacre,' massacre," to quote again from Sir J. W. Kaye, was fearful in this Koord Cabul Pass. Three thousand men are said to have fallen under the fire of the enemy, or to have dropped down paralyzed and exhausted to be slaughtered by the Afghan knives. And amidst these fearful scenes of carnage, through a shower of matchlock balls, rode English ladies on horseback or in camel panniers, sometimes vainly endeavoring to keep their children beneath their eyes, and losing them in the confusion and bewilderment of the desolating march." Was it for this, then, that our troops had been induced to capitulate? Was this the safe-conduct which the Afghan chiefs had promised in return for their accepting the ignominious conditions. imposed on them? Some of the chiefs did exert themselves to the utmost to protect the unfortunate English. It is not certain what the real wish of Akbar Khan may have been. He protested that he had no power to restrain the hordes of fanatical Ghilzyes, whose own immediate chiefs had not authority enough to keep them from murdering the English whenever they got a chance. The force of some few hundred horsemen whom Akbar Khan had with him was utterly incapable, he declared, of maintaining order among such a mass of infuriated and lawless savages. Akbar Khan constantly appeared on the scene during this journey of terror. At every opening or break of the long straggling flight he and his little band of followers showed themselves on the horizon: trying still to protect the English from utter ruin, as he declared; come to gloat over their misery and to see that it was surely accomplished, some of the unhappy English were ready to believe. Yet his presence was something that seemed to give a hope of protection. Akbar Khan at length startled the English by a proposal that the women and children who were with the army should be handed over to his custody, to be conveyed by him in safety to Peshawur. There was nothing better to be done. The only modification of his request, or com mand, that could be obtained, was that the husbands of the married ladies should accompany their wives. With this agreement the women and children were handed over to the care of this dreaded enemy, and Lady Macnaghten had to undergo the agony of a personal interview with the man whose own hand had killed her husband. Akbar Khan was kindly in his language, and declared to the unhappy widow that he would give his right arm to undo, if it were possible, the deed that he had done. The women and children, and the married men whose wives were among this party, were taken from the unfortunate army and placed under the care of Akbar Khan. As events turned out, it was the best thing that could be done. Not one of these women and children could have lived through the horrors of the journey which lay before the remnant of what had once been a British force. The march was resumed; new horrors set in; new heaps of corpses stained the snow; and then Akbar Khan presented himself, with a fresh proposition. In the treaty made at Cabul between the English authorities and the Afghan chiefs there was an article which stipulated that "the English force at Jellalabad shall march for Peshawur before the Cabul army arrives, and shall not delay on the road." Akbar Khan was especially anxious to get rid of the little army at Jellalabad at the near end of the Kyber Pass. He desired above all things that it should be on the march home to India; either that it might be out of his way, or that he might have a chance of destroying it on its way. It was in great measure as a security for its moving that he desired to have the women and children under his care. It is not likely that he meant any harm to the women and children; it must be remembered that his father and many of the women of his family were under the control of the British Government as prisoners in Hindostan. But he fancied that if he had the English women in his hands the army at Jellalabad could not refuse to obey the conditions set down in the article of the treaty. Now that he had the women in his power, however, he demanded other guarantees, with openly acknowledged purpose of keeping these latter until Jellalabad should have been evacuated. He demanded that General Elphenstone, the commander, with his second in command, and also one other officer, should hand themselves over to him as hostages. He promised if this were done to exert himself more than before to restrain the fanatical tribes, and also to provide the army in the Koord Cabul Pass with provisions. There was nothing for it but to submit; and the English general himself became, with the women and children, a captive in the hands of the inexorable enemy. Then the march of the army, without a general, went on again. Soon it became the story of a general without an army; before long there was neither general nor army. It is idle to lengthen a tale of mere horrors. The struggling remnant of an army entered the Jugdulluk Pass, a dark, steep, narrow, ascending path between crags. The miserable toilers found that the fanatical implacable tribes had barricaded the pass. All was over. The army of Cabul was finally extinguished in that barricaded pass. It was a trap; the British were taken in it. A few mere fugitives escaped from the scene of actual slaughter, and were on the road to Jellalabad, where Sale and his little army were holding their own. When they were within sixteen miles of Jellalabad the number was reduced to six. Of these six, five were killed by straggling marauders on the way. One man alone reached Jellalabad to tell the tale. Literally one man, Dr. Brydon, came to Jellalabad out of a moving host which had numbered in all some sixteen thousand when it set out on its march. The curious eye will search through history or fiction. in vain for any picture more thrilling with the suggestions of an awful catastrophe than that of this solitary survivor, faint and reeling on his jaded horse, as he appeared under the walls of Jellalabad, to bear the tidings of our Thermopyle of pain and shame. |