1851-1853.
Louis Napoleon's Coup d'État--Condemned in the English
Press--Lord Palmerston's Indiscretion Rebuked by the Queen--He
Repeats it and is Removed from Office--Opening of the New Houses
of Parliament--French Invasion Apprehended--Russell's Militia
Bill--Defeat and Resignation of Ministers--The "Who? Who?"
Cabinet--Death of the Duke of Wellington--His Funeral--The
Haynau Incident--General Election--Disraeli's First
Budget--Defeat and Resignation of Ministers--The Coalition
Cabinet--Expansion of the British Colonies--Repeal of the
Transportation Act.
[Sidenote: Louis Napoleon's Coup d'État.]
The Great Exhibition closed on October 15, 1851, and hardly had the
contractors begun to dismantle the glittering fabric, before the vision
of universal peace, which some spirits had hailed in it, was rudely
shattered by events in France. The _coup d'état_ whereby Prince Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte seized on the government of the country and suspended
the Constitution took place on the morning of December 2. This event
concerns the present narrative only in one respect. When the news came
to England it caused an almost unanimous feeling of horror at the
massacre of peaceful citizens. The Queen, who was at Osborne, was
informed on December 4 of what had taken place, and at once wrote to the
Prime Minister, enjoining on him the necessity "that Lord Normanby (her
Ambassador at Paris) should be instructed to remain entirely passive,
and should take no part whatever in what is passing." These instructions
were conveyed to Lord Normanby next day by the Foreign Minister, Lord
Palmerston. But, in a despatch written by Lord Normanby to Lord
Palmerston on December 6, informing him that he had made known to M.
Turgot, the French Foreign Minister, that he had received Her Majesty's
commands to make no change in his relations with the French Government
in consequence of what had passed, the following startling passage
occurred:--"Monsieur Turgot said that ... he had two days since heard
from M. Walewski (French Ambassador in London) that your lordship had
expressed to him your entire approbation of the act of the President,
and the conviction that he could not have acted otherwise than he had
done."
[Sidenote: Lord Palmerston's Indiscretion.]
On reading a statement attributed to her Foreign Minister so far at
variance with her own opinion and the decision of her Cabinet, the Queen
wrote to Lord John Russell, asking him if "he knew anything about the
alleged approval, which, if true, would again expose the honour and
dignity of the Queen's Government in the eyes of the world."
[Illustration: _J. Leech._} {_From "Punch"._
THE "JUDICIOUS BOTTLE-HOLDER," OR DOWNING STREET PET.
"Bless you! it's all chaff--won't came to a fight. Old Nick's got no
constitution--and then, I'm Bottle-holder on t'other side, too!"]
[Illustration: _From the Silver Model_} {_by R. Hodd & Son._
H.M.S. "BRITANNIA," 1837.
This, the most formidable line-of battle ship afloat at the time of Her
Majesty's Accession, was built in 1820 and carried 120 guns. She was the
Flag ship at Portsmouth from 1835 to 1840. In 1850 she was converted
into a Training Ship, and was finally broken up in 1869. The Silver
Model, from which this Illustration was photographed, was presented to
Her Majesty the Queen, together with a similar one of the ill-fated
_Victoria_--the typical ship of 1887--by the officers and men of the
Royal Navy, Royal Marines, and Auxiliary Naval Forces, and was exhibited
amongst the Jubilee Presents.]
[Illustration: H.M.S. "JUPITER," 1897.
This "first class battleship," which has but lately undergone her sea
trials, is of the same size as the _Majestic_ and the _Magnificent_. She
was built by the Clydebank Shipbuilding Company, and may be taken as the
representative ship of the year. Displacement, 15,000 tons; horse-power,
12,000; speed, 17-1/2 knots.]
The word "again" used by the Queen in this letter had reference to Lord
Palmerston's action in regard to the visit of Kossuth, the Hungarian
refugee, to England in the previous October. There had been much
sympathy in England with the cause of Hungarian independence; Kossuth
had been fêted in many towns as an illustrious patriot and exile, and
Palmerston consented to receive a visit from him. This was more than the
susceptibilities of the Austrian Government could endure; Russell having
summoned a Cabinet Council to consider the intended reception by the
Foreign Minister, Palmerston reluctantly yielded to the opinion of his
colleagues, and the reception was given up. But he consoled himself by
receiving at the Foreign Office addresses from Radical meetings, in
which the Emperors of Russia and Austria were described as "odious and
detestable assassins" and "merciless tyrants and despots"; and, in
expressing himself "extremely flattered and highly gratified" at the
terms directed towards himself, he added that "it could not be expected
that he should concur in some of the expressions which had been used in
the addresses." It was in receiving the deputation conveying these
addresses that this characteristically English Minister earned one of
his most-enduring nicknames. He said in the course of his speech that
the conduct of Foreign Affairs required "a great deal of good
generalship and judgment, and during the pending struggle a good deal of
judicious bottle-holding was obliged to be brought into play." However
much this allusion to the prize ring may have scandalised some of the
"unco guid," it was just one of those sayings that tickle the popular
fancy, and the "Judicious Bottle-holder" furnished the subject of one of
_Punch's_ lively cartoons.
[Illustration: H.M.S. "BOXER," TORPEDO BOAT DESTROYER.
The _Boxer_, a twin-screw vessel, built by Messrs. Thornycroft, of
Chiswick, is one of the fastest ships in the world. Her length is 200
feet; speed, 29·17 knots. Her sister-ship, the _Desperate_, has steamed
30 knots.]
But it was necessary to put a check on the Foreign Secretary's
recklessness. It was intimated to him that his conduct was calculated to
place the Sovereign in a most painful position towards her allies, and
this rebuke, Russell wrote to the Queen, it was hoped would "have its
effect on Lord Palmerston." This incident closed on December 4, only two
days after the French _coup d'état_, and when it became apparent that
the Foreign Secretary had perpetrated a further indiscretion, strong
measures had to be taken. The dismissal of a Minister is an extreme
exertion of the Royal Prerogative, though it is one that was not
uncommon in former reigns. Nevertheless, it is the only expedient when a
Minister refuses to carry out the policy of the Queen's Government or
enters upon an independent one of his own.
[Sidenote: Dismissal of Palmerston.]
[Illustration: H.M.S. "VICTORIA" FIRING HER 110-TON GUN.
The _Victoria_ was built in 1887 by Sir W. G. Armstrong, Mitchell. &
Co., and was one of three "first-class armourclads" which were armed
with 110-ton guns--the heaviest ordnance ever made. She was of steel,
10,500 tons displacement. The loss of this magnificent ship, with the
Admiral, 30 officers, and 320 men out of a crew of 600, on the 22nd June
1893, through colliding with H.M.S. _Camperdown_ while executing
manoeuvres off the Syrian coast, is one of the most tragic events in
recent history.]
After some correspondence between Russell and Palmerston, the former
wrote, on December 17, informing Palmerston "that the conduct of Foreign
Affairs could no longer be left in his hands with advantage to the
country," and offering him the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland. Of course
Lord Palmerston resigned, and the Queen accepted the resignation. "The
distinction," wrote Her Majesty to the Prime Minister, "which Lord
Palmerston tries to establish between his personal and his official acts
is perfectly untenable."
[Illustration: H.M.S. "TERRIBLE," 1897.
This is the latest of the "first class cruisers"; displacement, 14,200
tons; horse-power, 25,000; speed, 22 knots. Built by the Clydebank
Shipbuilding Company.]
[Sidenote: The New Houses of Parliament.]
In this year (1852) the Houses of Lords and Commons took possession of
the new Palace of Westminster, built from the design of Barry on the
site of the old Palace, destroyed by fire in 1835. The style of
architecture selected--the Tudor-Gothic--is not one which lends itself
readily to grand or massive treatment, owing to the infinite repetition
of detailed ornament; but it has this to recommend it, that it is
exclusively indigenous to England, and the architect was successful in
erecting on a very unpromising site a crowning example of that
particular form of Gothic building. The cost of the new Palace as it
stands amounted to about £3,000,000; but it should be said that Barry's
design has never been completed. It was intended to extend the buildings
to form a quadrangle round the court at the foot of the Clock Tower, to
accommodate various Public Departments now housed in Whitehall and
Downing Street.
[Illustration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Valentine & Sons, Dundee._
THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.]
[Sidenote: French Invasion Apprehended.]
[Sidenote: Resignation of Ministers.]
[Sidenote: The "Who? Who?" Cabinet.]
The political convulsions in France were mildly reflected in Great
Britain during the year 1852--the year of three Administrations. In the
first-named country, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince-President of the
Republic which he had turned into a farce, had secured the good will of
the Army by restoring to them their Napoleonic Eagles, and then, with
the whole armed force of the nation at his back, had issued an appeal to
the people in the form of a plebiscite. By 7,824,189 votes to 253,145
they had bestowed on him the title and dignity of Emperor Napoleon III.
Such an appeal and such a response could only be interpreted as the
resurrection of the Napoleonic idea. In the forefront of the policy of
the new Emperor must surely be found vengeance for Waterloo and the
humiliation of England. If this was not expressed in so many words,
there were frequent passages in the speeches of Louis Napoleon which
could bear no other interpretation. England awoke to her danger; the
"nation of shopkeepers" did not wait for legislative measures, but
quietly began arming and drilling, encouraged by the authorities, thus
laying the foundation of that splendid defensive force of artillery and
infantry of which the Volunteers are composed at this day. Great Britain
possessed in 1852 a small army--about 24,000 infantry at
home--absolutely without any reserve force. The Cabinet devised a scheme
for creating a local Militia, to be drilled for fourteen days in each
year, and to serve exclusively within their own counties. Prince Albert
saw grave defects in the plan, and the Duke of Wellington liked it even
less than he did; nevertheless Lord John Russell introduced his Bill to
give effect to it. Then came Palmerston's opportunity. He was a free
agent now, and rendered good service in opposing an inadequate and
almost wholly useless measure. On his motion the Government were
defeated by eleven votes on February 20, and next day the resignation of
Ministers was in the hands of the Queen. The Earl of Derby (the
irreconcilable Lord Stanley of Peel's Cabinet) undertook to form a
Ministry, which, inasmuch as it could only be drawn from Protectionist
ranks, was in a hopeless minority in the House of Commons. Lord
Malmesbury took the seals of the Foreign Office, and Mr. Disraeli
became, _per saltum_, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the
House of Commons--an instance unique in recent times of such a position
being assumed by one who had never before held office. The rest of the
Cabinet was made up of men then untried and unknown, though some of them
afterwards rose to distinction, and got the name of the "Who? Who?"
Ministry. The origin of the nickname was a conversation overheard in the
House of Lords between the Prime Minister and the Duke of Wellington,
who was eagerly questioning Lord Derby about the composition of his new
Cabinet. The old Duke had grown very deaf, and all his inquiries were
plainly audible to the House, as well, of course, as the Premier's
replies. "Who? Who?" asked the old Duke, as, hand to ear, he strove to
identify the unfamiliar names, and "Who? Who?" became the title of the
new Government. Weak as it was, however, and holding office as it did on
sufferance only, the Derby Ministry was able to prepare and carry a
Militia Bill which satisfied even so critical an expert as the Iron Duke
himself.
[Illustration: _Louis Haghe._} {_From the Royal Collection._
THE FUNERAL OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON PASSING APSLEY HOUSE, November 18,
1852.]
[Sidenote: Death of the Duke of Wellington.]
Brief as was the duration of the Derby Ministry it outlived the days of
one of its warmest friends. The Duke of Wellington drew his last breath
at Walmer Castle on September 14, 1852. To say that he was the most
popular individual in the United Kingdom would be to apply a term which
perhaps, of all others, he would have relished least; but without doubt
"the Duke" was the best beloved. The first soldier in Europe,
thirty-seven years of peace had not dimmed the lustre of his great
renown in war, nor prevailed to make the nation forget his services in
the hour of England's greatest need. If, as a statesman, he could not
command the same unanimous meed of "Well done!" he had established a
standard of public life too often obscured in the heat of party strife.
Vittoria, Salamanca, Talavera, Waterloo--the radiance from those far off
conflagrations still glowed round that venerable head, but it was the
honest purpose, bluntly spoken and fearlessly acted on, that won for
Wellington a place in the hearts of his countrymen far more enduring
than the reward of any commander, however successful--of any orator,
however powerful.
[Illustration: _J. Leech._} {_From "Punch."_
THE PROTECTION GIANT.
"Fee, fi, fo, fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman!
Be he alive or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread!"
(Mr. Punch's idea of the policy of Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli.)]
[Illustration: THE WELLINGTON MONUMENT IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL,
AS IT IS TO BE WHEN COMPLETED.
From a Photograph taken in the Cathedral, to which the statue has been
added from the sculptor's model in the Architectural Court of the South
Kensington Museum. The lower illustration represents the sarcophagus in
the Crypt which contains the body of the Duke; the Funeral Car is also
preserved in the Crypt. The tomb in the background is that of Nelson.]
[Sidenote: The Haynau Incident.]
There was the precedent of the obsequies of Nelson to justify the Queen
in commanding a funeral of the Great Duke at the public expense; but Her
Majesty was desirous to associate her people with herself in doing
honour to the memory of her greatest subject. The body of the Duke,
therefore, was put in charge of a guard of honour till the meeting of
Parliament in November, when the consent of both Houses was immediately
given to a funeral at the public expense and the interment of Wellington
in St. Paul's Cathedral, beside the tomb of Nelson. All the Great Powers
of Europe, save one, sent representatives to the ceremony. It would have
caused no surprise had France, with a Napoleon once more in supreme
power, refused to allow her Ambassador to attend the funeral of her
ancient foe, but Louis Napoleon told Count Walewski he wished to forget
the past and to continue on the best of terms with England. It was not
France, but Austria, who was conspicuous by the absence of her
Ambassador from St. Paul's on this November day; and the reason was
found in an extraordinary circumstance which had occurred a few weeks
previously. An Austrian notable, General Haynau, arrived in England
early in September, on an unofficial visit. He had earned an unenviable
reputation for cruelty in putting down insurrections in Italy and
Hungary; ugly stories had been circulated about the flogging of
Hungarian women and other barbarities, enough, whether true or not, to
make his name detested by all who sympathised with the national movement
on the Continent. One day he went to inspect Barclay's brewery, and as
soon as his identity with the "Austrian butcher" became known to the
workmen there, they rushed at him with loud cries, pelted him, tore his
coat and tried to cut off his long moustaches. Escaping from the
brewery, he was assailed with equal fury in the street, and had to take
refuge in a public house till the police came to his assistance. The
Austrian Chargé d'Affaires appealed for redress, and Lord Palmerston
called in person to express the deep regret of Her Majesty's Government
at the outrage.
[Illustration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Thiele, Chancery Lane._
WEIGHING ANCHOR ON A MODERN WARSHIP.
This Photograph was taken on board H.M.S. _Repulse_, off the Isle of
Portland. A portion of the anchor, covered with mud, is seen just over
the ship's side. The ships in the background are H.M.S. _Resolution_ (on
the left), and H.M.S. _Royal Sovereign_ (in the centre).]
[Illustration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Symonds, Portsmouth._
H.M.S. "WARRIOR," THE FIRST ENGLISH IRONCLAD.
The first ironclad built was the _Gloire_, designed by M. Dupuy-de-Lôme
for the French Government. It was regarded by the English Naval
Authorities as of doubtful practical value; but it soon became necessary
for them to adopt the principle of defensive armour for our own ships.
The _Warrior_, built by private contract at a cost of £376,000, was
completed in October, 1861. She has a length of 380 feet, breadth 58
feet, displacement 9,210 tons, horse-power 1,250; and, whilst she
has the general form of a wooden ship, with overhanging bows and
stern, she embodied many of the ideas--such as that of watertight
compartments--which have been adopted in all the more recent warships.]
[Sidenote: Disraeli's First Budget.]
Parliament had been prorogued on July 1 by the Queen in person and
dissolved immediately after by Royal Proclamation. The elections which
followed left the relative strength of parties nearly the same as in the
old Parliament, that is, with no working majority on either side. The
new Parliament met on November 4, and on December 3 Mr. Disraeli
introduced his Budget in a speech which lasted five hours. The debate
which followed is memorable as the occasion of the first encounter
between two men who, for a quarter of a century afterwards, were to be
as conspicuously the protagonists of their respective parties as Pitt
and Fox had been at the beginning of the century. Disraeli--by this time
fully conscious, and embittered by the consciousness, that he was
fighting for a losing cause--concluded a speech full of stinging
invective at two o'clock on the morning of December 11. To answer him
rose one whom Macaulay had described in 1838 as "the rising hope of
those stern and unbending Tories who follow reluctantly and mutinously a
leader (Peel) whose experience is indispensable to them, but whose
cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor." Mr. Gladstone had
been a Member of Parliament for more than twenty years, and was already
distinguished for power and poignancy in debate; but the moment had come
when, for the first time, the House of Commons was to come under the
full influence of his superb command of language, his impressive use of
gesture and his singularly resonant voice.
[Illustration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Gregory & Co., Strand._
THE GREAT STEAM-HAMMER AT WOOLWICH ARSENAL.
Maximum striking power, 1,000 tons.]
Gladstone's speech closed the debate on Disraeli's First Budget, and it
was decisive. The Government suffered defeat by nineteen votes, and next
day Lord Derby went to Osborne to tender his resignation. Her Majesty
laid her commands on the Earl of Aberdeen who, as a Peelite
Conservative, assisted by the Whig Marquis of Lansdowne, proceeded to
form a Coalition Cabinet.
[Sidenote: Expansion of British Colonies.]
Before entering upon a review of the events which brought to a violent
close the peace which Great Britain had maintained for thirty-nine years
with the other European Powers, the present seems a fitting place to
give a sketch of salient points in the expansion of British Colonies in
various parts of the world--Colonies which, for the greater part, had no
existence before Queen Victoria came to the throne. It was in 1858 that
the discoveries of gold in British territory, as well as in California,
had begun to fill the channels of trade and enrich the manufacturers of
the home country in a degree beyond all previous experience. The great
Continent of Australia, discovered by Captain Cook in 1770 and by him
named New South Wales, was hardly known to people in England during the
first forty years of the present century except as a penal settlement,
although a number of British emigrants found their way there when the
Army and Navy were reduced after the long European wars had come to an
end in 1815. But it was not until the gold-fields were discovered in
1851 that the full tide of immigration set in. The growth and
development of the European community since that time have been immense.
From the original settlement at Botany Bay in 1788 have arisen the
States of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and
Western Australia, each with its separate representative constitution
and legislature, and a governor appointed by the Queen. The population,
rapidly increasing, already amounts to three millions and a quarter,
with an annual export trade of more than £70,000,000. The gold-fields,
since their discovery in 1851, have added about £300,000,000 to the
wealth of the world, nor is there any near prospect of the supply
failing. On the contrary, the newly-opened mines at Coolgardie, in
Western Australia, promise to prove the richest field in the whole
island.
[Illustration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Gregory & Co., Strand._
THE SOUTH BORING MILL AT WOOLWICH ARSENAL.
Showing the machinery for boring and rifling heavy ordnance.]
New Zealand was first colonised in 1839, though Europeans had settled
there as far back as 1814, and in 1841 it was created by letters patent
a colony distinct from New South Wales. The chief wealth of this island
is pastoral and agricultural, though New Zealand contributes also to the
Pactolus flowing north, having exported gold to the value of more than a
million sterling in 1895.
Tasmania, formerly Van Diemen's Land, is another insular possession of
Great Britain in the South Pacific, originally occupied in 1803 as a
penal settlement; and the Australasian Dominions of the Crown were
completed by the annexation of the Fiji group of islands in 1874, and
British New Guinea in 1888. This vast territory, with its almost
inexhaustible mineral wealth and fertility, may be said with almost
literal accuracy to be the peculiar creation of the reign of Queen
Victoria.
[Illustration: _Walker & Boutall sc._
THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1897.
British possessions shaded or underlined. Views of the principal
Colonial towns are given on subsequent pages. * Egypt under British
occupation since 1882.]
[Sidenote: Repeal of the Transportation Act.]
In 1853 an important change in the penal code of Great Britain was
effected by the Act altering the punishment of transportation of
convicts into that of penal servitude. The Lord Chancellor admitted, in
moving the Second Reading of the Bill, that transportation answered the
end of punishment better than anything else which could be devised; it
was the strongest deterrent, short of a capital sentence, which could be
employed without the infliction of physical pain, and, had the United
Kingdom only been concerned, no alteration in the law would have been
proposed. But the interests of the Colonies must be taken into account
also; the strong representations laid before the Government by the
Colonists, coupled with the extraordinary discoveries of gold in
Australia, made it imperative that these growing communities should
cease to be the slumping ground for the refuse of British civilisation,
and other provision must be made for the disposal of criminals. The
measure became law, and the Australasian settlements, relieved from the
slur which had become wellnigh intolerable, entered on a career of
expansion and profitable industry of which no man can yet foretell the
ultimate result.
Besides British India, of which the growth and consolidation is
described elsewhere, the chief expansion of the Empire and its
protectorate during the present reign has taken place in South Africa.
The Cape Colony was ceded to the British Crown in 1814; the Colony of
Natal was added to it in 1843, was erected into a separate Colony in
1856, and was made self-governing in 1893. Basutoland was annexed to the
Cape Colony in 1871, but in 1884 it was constituted a separate Crown
Colony, and neither it nor Bechuanaland, which, having been annexed in
1885, is governed from the Cape, have yet developed representative
institutions.
[Illustration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Gregory & Co., Strand._
TORPEDO STORES AT PORTSMOUTH.
Containing Torpedoes to the value of £150,000.]
In dealing with its great Dominion in South Africa the British
Government is confronted with a problem which has never presented itself
in Australasia. There the aboriginal population has died out
everywhere, except in New Zealand, from the mere contact with
civilisation, and, except in the Island of New Guinea of which the
Germans possess a moiety, British influence is not hampered by any
competing European race. But it is far otherwise in South Africa. There,
also, what may be regarded as the aboriginal races, the Hottentots and
Bushmen, have been crushed wellnigh out of existence, but they have been
replaced on the one hand by the powerful Bantu people, consisting of
Kaffirs, Zulus, Bechuanas, and other Negroid tribes, and on the other by
the Boers, descended from Dutch settlers of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The Administration of South Africa has to provide
for the development of British enterprise and to secure peaceful
relations between the diverse elements of the population. It cannot be
doubted that South Africa contains the material of enormous wealth. The
climate of the high veldt, a wide belt of land ranging between 4,000 and
5,000 feet above sea-level, is exceedingly salubrious. Diamonds and gold
already have been worked in large quantities, though a few years ago
their very existence was unsuspected. At the present time the yield of
gold is equal to that of either Australia or America, amounting to
one-fifth of the total annual output of the world. Should the gold ever
be worked out there is abundant mineral wealth of other kinds, including
an almost virgin coal-field, covering an area of nearly a thousand
square miles between Pretoria and Delagoa Bay.
[Illustration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Thiele, Chancery Lane._
A LANDING-PARTY OF SEAMEN.
_Punch_, at the time of the Siege of Sebastopol, depicted a couple of
seamen, on board a man-of-war off that town, asking for a day's holiday
"to go shooting with them soldiers." On the same principle of sharing
the fun it has come to be the practice to include a party of bluejackets
among the forces engaged in any of our "little wars."]
In America, the most notable feature in the recent history of the
British possessions is found in the growth of wealth and population in
the Dominion of Canada. It has been shown how that Colony rose in
rebellion in the first year of the present reign, and how Lord Durham
framed a Constitution for it in his report. Lord Durham died, and his
scheme lay in a pigeon-hole of the Colonial Office till 1867, when it
was virtually carried into effect by Lord Carnarvon's Act for the
Confederation of the British North American Provinces. Upper and Lower
Canada, the English and French territories of the rebellion, are now
known as the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and with them are
confederated New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, British
Columbia, Manitoba, and the North-West Territories. The population of
Canada has risen from about one million and a half in 1841 to five
millions at the present day, and progress in commerce and wealth has
been equally rapid.
[Illustration: _Carl Haag, R.W.S._} {_From the Royal Collection._
EVENING AT BALMORAL OLD CASTLE--THE STAGS BROUGHT HOME.--September
1853.]