The honour of our land, imperilled by the oppression of
our subjects was triumphantly vindicated; other good was not
achieved. Theodore, unwilling to survive defeat, was found dead by
his own hand when Magdala was carried, and he was afterwards
succeeded on the Abyssinian throne by a chief who had more than all
his predecessor's vices and none of his virtues. For this
well-managed campaign Sir Robert Napier was raised to the peerage as
Lord Napier of Magdala. The swift success, the brilliant promptitude,
of his achievement are almost painful to recall to-day, in face of
another enterprise for the rescue of a British subject, conducted by
a commander not less able and resolute, at the head of troops as
daring and as enthusiastic, which was turned into a conspicuous
failure by unhappy delayings on the part of the civil authorities, in
the fatal winter of 1884-5.
[Illustration: Mr. Gladstone.]
Turning our eyes from foreign matters to the internal affairs of the
United Kingdom, we see two great leaders, Mr. Disraeli and Mr.
Gladstone--whose "long Parliamentary duel" had begun early in the
fifties of this century--outbidding each other by turns for the
public favour, and each in his different way ministering to the
popular craving for reform.
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