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that whilst the British flag is at Gibraltar, Spain can never 'develop her plans in Marocco." This is perfectly true, and this is one reason why the Moors have been our fast friends for two centuries. The fact that in France they have a new and most acquisitive neighbour has sufficed to bind them still closer to us. In the next fight for dominion in the Straits, this point should tell strongly in our favour.

When a serious Spanish writer assumes that Spain is at least England's equal in civilization, and has an equal claim to treat Marocco as a Dark Continent, one is entitled to ask a direct question. For even a modern Briton, scourged by the memory of places like Khartoum which England has deliberately restored to savagery and slave-dealing, may decline to admit the accuracy of the parallel. Is Spain then, in her southern half at least, a civilized nation in the English sense? Do African or European traits predominate in her inhabitants? Are they more laborious than the Moors, are they more enterprising or better educated, are their ideas concerning foreign countries and the relative position of their own country much less primitive? The question will not be answered by stating (truly we admit) that Spain is very much richer in able parliamentary orators and halfpenny newspapers. For she is also richer in beggars, the Andalusian being much less ashamed of asking alms than the Moor. But no foreigner would obtain an answer to this question, since Spaniards as a rule still justify Lord Mahon's description and

think it a point of honour to disguise their national calamities even from each other, as if successful measures could ever be concerted from false information!"

It is true that in other parts of his book Don Antonio forgets that his country is the standard-bearer of civilization in Marocco, and draws a harrowing picture of the poverty, backwardness and decay of Spain. He No. 346.-vOL. LVIII.

tells his countrymen that unless all this is altered England will laugh at any demand for the restoration of Gibraltar. With the view of quickening their decision he draws up a list of tasks which they can and must accomplish before recovering the Rock. The list will repay perusal.

1. Spain must "wipe out the artificial frontiers" which separate her from Portugal.

2. She must effect a Latin Union, on a democratic basis, between Spain, Italy and France.

3. She must convert Ceuta, and the other Spanish positions in Africa, into humming marts of trade, which shall rob Gibraltar of all her commerce and "make the grass grow inside the place."

4. She must thoroughly develop the mineral and other resources of Spain, foster irrigation and agriculture, and adopt a thoroughly liberal commercial policy.

5. She must forswear pronunciamientos, revolutions, and the political conditions which enable fifteen or twenty recognized parties to differ in everything save a desire for office.

6. She must fortify and arm with the newest guns, Ceuta, Algeciras and any other point whence Gibraltar may be annoyed.

7. She must become, by adopting the foregoing measures, a mighty naval and commercial power whose enmity would be England's ruin.

"When we have realized this programme," says Don Antonio, "Spain will recover Gibraltar." We quite concur in this view.

Lengthy programmes, such as this, of reforms involving an entire change in the habits, genius and character of a people, and designed to secure a particular end, seem to possess a peculiar charm for nations belonging to the Latin race, Language exactly like this was heard in France after the disasters of 1870-71. The able editors of Paris proclaimed in chorus that the country had before it a plain and direct path towards La Revanche.

T

Frenchmen had but to determine to become hardy, moral, serious and modest, and then (i.e. when this entirely accessible ideal had been realized in the smallest possible number of years) they would recover Alsace and Lorraine by force of arms. "The word 'impossible"" virtually said these Mentors, "is unsuitable to French dictionaries. If France demands her provinces, and you can only recover them by dropping all the national weaknesses out of your natures, and adopting the best points in those of your Teutonic conquerors, why, you must drop the one and adopt the other." Many were such journalistic exhortations to provide France with hairs off the Great Cham's beard. One French army tried to secure a few in Tongking, but the famous beard remained intact.

Don Antonio betrays some consciousness that the unchanging aversion of Portugal to union with Spain is a greater disgrace to the latter than the loss, two centuries ago, of Gibraltar. He gives a slight turn to the question by accusing England of standing in the way of Iberian Unity by maintaining her flag on the Rock. Were that removed, he says, Portugal would also be unwilling to resist any longer. But how stand the authorities? Thiers said once, "The Portuguese are only Spaniards," but he added, "who hate other Spaniards." General Prim said in May, 1870, "We Spaniards have never had the pretension that the noble Portuguese people . . . should come to form part of the Spanish nation. We know it cannot be."

As regards the idea of a Latin Union, in which Spain, Italy, and France should combine to impose their will on England for the benefit of Spain, history is still more decisively adverse. Monarchical Italy, the friend and ally of England, may be left out of this consideration. But the dealings of France with Spain have ever been those of an invader or of a patron. As lately as the year 1870, France made a casus belli of the candi

dature of a German Prince for the Spanish throne. France, as we have already said, was the country chiefly affected by the British capture of the Rock. It was accordingly a Frenchman, the Marquis de Nancre, who, in the name of a French Prince, the Regent Orleans, undertook, but in vain, to obtain the cession of Gibraltar in 1719 from George the First. In the various sieges of the Rock the French consistently claimed and obtained the foremost place. How did they work with the Spaniards? In the siege of October, 1704, the latter, who had scaled the eastern side of the Rock were, according to all Spanish historians, deliberately deserted by their French supports, and died to a man. Later on Villadarias, the Spanish commander, was superseded by a Frenchman, Marshal Tessé, and retired in dudgeon from the siege with many of his officers.

Stories exactly similar are told, and perfectly truly, by Spanish chroniclers of the sieges of 1727 and 1779-82. Making full allowance for the inherent Spanish tendency to thwart and spite an ally instead of co-operating with him against the common enemy, it is patent that the French considered all these struggles as matters between themselves and England, and held the Spaniards as mere pawns in the game. Were England to-day to surrender the Rock to Spain, how long would Spain hold

it against France, already supreme in Algeria and Tunis, and pressing hard on Marocco? Would a people of seventeen millions, scattered over a very large peninsula, a people with what is (in spite of the native bravery of the men composing it) a third-rate military and naval force, be long able to hold both Ceuta and Gibraltar}

We disclaim the slightest parti pris against Spain. Indeed, the heavy task which the present Queen Regent of Spain, a daughter of one of the most illustrious of dynasties, is so bravely discharging is one to awake feelings of respect and sympathy. The halo of romance which sur

rounds the past of Spain is still sufficiently vivid to prevent our looking too curiously into her present. But when the past relations of England, France, and Spain are appealed to, we must give romance the go-by and adhere to history.

Considerations such as the foregoing, which are but recognitions of various practical certainties, should put an end to discussions on the abstract comparative values to England, as fortresses, harbours, or coaling-stations of Gibraltar, Ceuta, Tangier, or Tarifa. Whatever the present importance of each of these places, any or all of them may change hands in the course of the next naval war. That France, for instance, will make a dash at Ceuta, is a moral certainty. It is easy enough to quote

"Wicquefort,

And Puffendorf and Grotius;
And prove from Vattel,
Exceedingly well,

Such a deed would be quite atrocious," but in the uncertain future before us at least two things are very probable : that the race will be to the swift and that the hindmost will fare as usual. Let us carry back our minds to the spring of this year. Upon the very first rumours of the Moorish Sultan's illness, there was a kind of international race of ironclads to Tangier. And this in the piping times of peace!

Gibraltar, fortunately, we have: let us make the best of it, in preparation for new and troublesome neighbours in the Straits. Most periods of England's real or imaginary weakness have been marked by attacks on Gibraltar. When our American Colonies revolted in 1774, France aided them by land and sea and also joined Spain in the great siege of the Rock in 1779. Again, when we surrendered the fruits of the Crimean war to Russia in 1870, there sprang up at once a serious agitation for the further surrender of Gibraltar, an agitation for which certain leading Englishmen displayed a perverted enthusiasm.

Such, then, is our connection with Gibraltar. We hold it, legally, by four consecutive Treaties, but practically by force, as a principal buttress of our present position in the world as the first of maritime nations. When we lose that position, our presence at Gibraltar will lose its meaning also. Our footing in the Straits has little or nothing to do with the special relations between England and Spain. We maintain it because the trade that

passes through the Straits is mainly British trade, and goes to countries which are and which we mean to keep under British rule. Even on the Suez Canal the ill-will and intrigues of its French managers have been powerless against the hard fact that the traffic of the Canal is our traffic, and that we are believed to be willing in the last resort to fight for its safe passage.

It is appropriate to our character as a maritime people that Gibraltar is best defended by the co-operation of the fortress with a fleet. In every siege of the place the comfort of the garrison has generally depended on the success or failure of a British fleet to preserve the command of the Straits. No modern guns could enable Gibraltar to sweep a passage twelve miles in breadth with their fire. Moreover the weather on these coasts is often so thick and misty that the very presence of a hostile squadron would remain unobserved. But, in ordinarily clear weather, a British fleet manoeuvring from the Moorish shore towards the Rock could place any hostile ship between two fires.

Most arguments for abandoning Gibraltar have dealt with the place as it is now, with its antiquated works, its insufficient armament, its insecure anchorage, its crying need of an efficient breakwater and a firstrate naval dock, its unprotected coalstores, and its crowded civil population. But little reference has been made to the transformation which might be worked by sagacious additions and alterations. The question of armament is indeed actually being

grappled with, though we fear that it will be easier for experts to specify the necessary guns than to secure their being made and mounted within any reasonable time. There is little doubt that the old-fashioned water-edge batteries for direct fire à fleur d'eau will be supplemented by others very highly-placed and armed with modern high-velocity guns. It will be the special function of the latter to direct a plunging or downward fire on the decks of an attacking fleet. Most modern iron-clads are built with the primary idea of their engaging ships, i.e., antagonists who have not the advantages of position enjoyed by shore-batteries on a height. Hence their decks are unarmoured or thinly armoured, and their main strength lies in their sides. Were a modern Duc de Crillon to challenge some modern Sir Roger Curtis to meet him " among the floating batteries" he would have to follow the precedent of 1782 and construct special ships for an attack on the Rock. They would need to be decked with impregnable armour and to carry guns capable of almost any degree of elevation, so as to deal adequately with the highest batteries of the defence. Lastly such ships would require speed and other sea-going qualities sufficient to meet the attack of a British fleet on their way to the siege.

The remaining difficulties, save one, may be overcome by spending money. The question of population is, however, much more serious. The civilians in Gibraltar now amount to twenty thousand, or ten times their number at the date of the last siege. It seems as if the military utility of the place could only be restored by some very

drastic measure, such as enforced migration to some new British acquisition on either shore of the Straits.

Such, we repeat, is Gibraltar, England's first link with the East. Is there indeed no more than a play of fancy in a suggestion lately made to us, that the ancient arms of the fortress consist of symbols deliberately chosen to represent its dominion over that Red Sea which leads us to India? How runs the original grant, confirmed by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1502? "The shield is divided into three parts or fields, and in the two upper thirds (which are to consist of a WHITE field) is a CASTLE on a golden plot. Between the Castle and the lower field is a BAR, to separate the same from the two upper thirds; and further, a golden KEY hangs by a CHAIN from the Castle, but so as to lie on the lower field, the colour of which is RED." Have we not here, with a sufficient observance of the true physical proportions1 and positions, the WHITE field for the Mediterranean, and the smaller RED field below for the Red Sea? Does not the BAR stand for the then unpierced Isthmus of Suez ? And, lastly, have we not in the KEY, which hangs across the Isthmus by a chain fastened to the CASTLE of Gibraltar, "but so as to lie on the RED field," the military command of the road to India? Let us accept the

omen !

HAROLD A. PERRY.

1 The white or upper field is twice the size of the red or lower field. The Mediterranean is two thousand three hundred miles in length; the Red Sea is one thousand three hundred and twenty.

THIS heading is more than equivocal on its face, for the writer can lay no claim to that title which of all others he covets most, that of a true gardener. Yet "Confessions of a person who would like to be a Gardener, but fears that he never will be," would take up too much space; and "Confessions of a young "" Gardener suggests Captain Mayne Reid; so the title must be interpreted by the text. And it will be convenient for my purpose if I am allowed to use the word as applicable to all persons who even try to garden; even to that degraded wretch who is so mercilessly scourged by Canon Hole for buying a lot of rosetrees, ordering them to be planted exactly where he pleases, without reference to draught, soil, or shade, and then wonders why they "don't do." For all who have begun to try and learn the art of gardening, and who have arrived at that first painful, but necessary, stage of conviction of their own ignorance and incapability, will feel that the poor fellow was but, after all, a degree or two worse than themselves.

Yet there is another way of looking at it. We all know the story of the three classes of violin players. Now in one sense there are but two classes of gardeners-those who can and those who can't get flowers to grow. To some people the art seems to come naturally to others no pains, no time, no money avail. I wish at once to disclaim condemnation of this latter class; and for the best of all possible reasons, because I feel myself more akin to it in some respects than even to the inferior members of the rival class: far more akin, indeed, than to those minions of Lady Flora who in a rood of smoky London garden, with an expenditure of about five shillings a

year, on a cold, sour clay soil and without visible personal attention, produce lovely clusters of the old Maiden's Blush rose. Such stand, indeed, upon serene heights. One such I know ; and as for her lilies of the valley, the less I think about them the better I feel.

For it will be as well to have out

all the cynicism at once. Envy, and those blacker feelings the names of which trip so glibly from our lips every Sunday, are much at the root of gardening. If indeed it is the purest of human pleasures the others must be pretty bad; but I don't think that the cold critical intellect of him who formulated that proverb was by any means free from the failings which I have mentioned; his early career at least belies the supposition, though I have always hoped that Lord Verulam's passion for gardening took possession of him long after he had forgotten all about the trial of Essex. The solid fact remains that while my neighbour A. possesses better roses and better chrysanthemums than I, I love him less than my neighbour B. whose blooms are inferior to my own; and it is part of that strong leaven of human nature which is said to be in man, that it should be so.

I began gardening but little more than two years ago, and therefore whatever value my crude ideas may have upon the subject, will be of the same kind as let us say a record of his experiences in England and his opinion of civilization in general by an Andaman Islander or one of Buffalo Bill's Red Indians. I cannot help thinking that a present record of mistakes may be of more interest to all classes of gardeners, than such a record ten years hence, when I should probably be afraid to recollect things which now I do not