public character, the man from the Minister; and when we regard Lord Beaconsfield as a statesman, there is only one conclusion to which we can come. That is, that by birth, by training, by temperament, and by the strong bent of his own inclination, he is absolutely unfitted for the position which he now occupies at the head of the British Empire. He would have been an admirable Grand Vizier to the Good Haroun Alraschid; he would have been an excellent courtier in the train of le Grand Monarque; he might even have made a fair Prime Minister in the reign of Queen Anne; but in the days of Victoria, and as the leading member of a Parliamentary Government, he is, in spite of all his accomplishments and his talents, an anachronism of which it is our duty to get rid at the earliest possible moment. [LÉON GAMBETTA was born at Cahors, in 1838. Became a member of the Paris Bar in 1859. Was returned to the Corps Legislatif in 1869 as member for Paris and Marseilles, and took a prominent part among the opponents of the Empire. On the fall of the Empire, became Minister of the Interior in the Government of September 4th, 1870; and acted as virtual Dictator of France during the siege of Paris. Resigned on February 6th, 1871. Was returned to the National Assembly in the same month, and became the prominent leader of the Republican party. In 1879, appointed President of the Chamber of Deputies.] M. GAMBETTA. I OFFER no apology for asking my readers to turn aside from English political personages in order to study the character and the career of M. Gambetta. There is nobody like him in Europe. Other men have risen as high, and from almost as low a starting-point, but none of them have risen with such dazzling suddenness; and none, I believe, have borne their marvellous elevation so wisely, so steadfastly, or so modestly as he has done. The career of Lord Beaconsfield in its personal aspect may be likened to a three volume novel. It is very wonderful, very picturesque; but it extends over a great space of time, so that it is difficult to take in its many surprising details at a glance. The career of M. Gambetta, on the other hand, is like a drama in a single act. It covers, as biographers reckon, only a few months, or at most a few years, and the youngest politician of the day must be able to go back to its commencement without straining his memory. It was in the year 1865 that Léon Gambetta, a young barrister, who had been born of humble parentage at Cahors, in the south of France, first began life in Paris. He had little to do, and he had neither money nor influential friends. So he was forced to dress shabbily and to live cheaply. But he had two qualifications for succeeding in the vocation he had chosen. One was an unbounded confidence in himself, and |