"thoughtful Mr. Lawrence" setting fire to their own houses.

Thus was the young commander again triumphant, but the end was now at hand. The malarious trenches of Jamestown proved a more powerful foe than redskin or governor. The rest of Bacon's career is thus summed up by the ancient chronicler:

"This Prosperous Rebell, concluding now the day his owne, marcheth with his army into Gloster County, intending to visit all the northern part of Virginia . . . and to settle affairs after his own measures. . . But before he could arrive to the Perfection of his designes (which none but the eye of omniscience could Penetrate) Providence did that which noe other hand durst (or at least did) doe, and cut him off. »

At the house of a friend in Gloucester, on October 1, 1676, Bacon breathed his last. There seems to be little doubt that his death was due to the fever contracted at Jamestown, though rumors were circulated that he died of poison administered by his enemies.

Lawrence and other friends, fearing lest the body might fall into the hands of Berkeley and be hanged on a gibbet, disposed of it with the greatest secrecy. From a vague statement of one of the old writers it would seem that the burial took place in some secluded spot in the Gloucester woods, but as another refers to stones being placed in the coffin, it may be that the body was sunk beneath the waters of the York.

other man in Virginia. Mr. Drummond, you shall be hanged in half an hour." "What your honor pleases," replied Drummond, coolly. He was hanged that afternoon, his wife's ring having been previously torn from his finger.

In all, twenty-three persons were executed when the newly elected Assembly forced Berkeley to desist. "If we had let him alone," said one of the Assembly, "he would have hanged half the country." When the report of his conduct came to the king he said, "The old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I did here for the murder of my father." It is pleasing to note that "the thoughtful Mr. Lawrence" made good his escape.

Berkeley's conduct made him hated in Virginia and also turned the king against him. Hoping to justify himself he sailed to England, his departure being celebrated. in Virginia with bonfires and cannon. But before he could obtain an audience with the king he died, July 13, 1677.

The death of Berkeley is the last scene of this memorable struggle. The rebellion had failed, but as a recent historian has said,

"In the early history of our country Bacon must ever remain one of the bright and attractive figures. Our heart is always with the man who boldly stands out against corruption and oppression. . . . Bacon's brief career was an episode in the perennial fight against taxation without representation, the ancient abuse of living on other men's labor.»

Virginia is justly proud of her sons, whose deeds have added lustre to our nation's history. She has erected monuments to Washington, to Jackson, and to Lee; why in two centuries has no suitable memorial been erected to this younger "rebel" who so early showed that rebellion, even though unsuccessful, might be glorious?

DENVER.

JOSEPH R. LONG.

CURRENT EVENTS

When does the A curious and almost inCentury Close? explicable controversy has of late been raging as to the precise period when the present nineteenth century closes and the twentieth century will be ushered in. The difficulty appears to have arisen from supposing that the century began with a zero year. There is no zero year in the calendar any more than in the record of a human life. To suppose that there is has evidently led to the mistake of conceiving that the century ended Dec. 31, 1899, instead of a year later, when the hundredth year has been added to the ninety-nine that have preceded it. We do not say that a man has lived a hundred years when he has completed only his ninety-ninth. A child who first saw the light January 1, 1801 (remember that the year 1800 is a part. of the eighteenth century cycle, just as the year 100 A. D. [not 99 A. D.] was the completing year of the century whose initial year closed at the end of the twelfth month in the year!), would, if he lived for a century, only complete his hundredth year on Dec. 31, 1900. There would be no confusion of thought in regard to this if we bore in mind the incontrovertible fact that the first century closed, not at the end of the first ninetynine years, but at the end of the first hundred. The nineteeth century obviously, therefore, has its finish at the close of the present year.

Is there need, save, it may be, for those who do not think clearly, to continue the argument? For the benefit of such - of whom there must be few, we should think, among our readers - we would add that we do not receive a dollar (a hundred cents) until the hundredth cent has been paid to us. No one, surely, would give a receipt for a hundred dollars owed to him until he had had the full hundred-not ninety-nine dollars - paid over to him. Similarly, we would not call squared a debt amounting to nineteen hundred dollars until the final hundred (the 1900th) had been handed over to us. If those who are puzzled over this matter will reflect that the first hundred years are not completed

until the year 101 is about to begin, they will see that the nineteenth century is not ended until 1900 has run its full course and the twentieth century is about to begin, obviously and necessarily in 1901. To realize this and dissipate any confusion all that is wanted is a few moments' clear thinking.

The Year's Necrology

The year 1899 closed with the chronicle of a comparatively slight death-rate in the ranks of the world's eminent men. War, in the conflict between Briton and Boer in South Africa, has in England darkened many a home with the trappings of death in this country the same has to be said with respect to the casualties in our war with the Tagals in Luzon. Otherwise the grim conqueror has been merciful in the shafts he has sped in the past year; though not a few of the great ones of the earth have fallen whose passing into the beyond has made the world poorer by their loss. Early in the year (Feb. 16) France, in the death of President Faure, suffered the loss of the head of the Republican government, which has since been carried on in comparative quietness by M. Loubet, though the Dreyfus affair ruffled the repose of the mid-year and caused many, even of those who wear the tricolor badge, to sigh for that inextinguishable longing of France - the revival of the monarchy. In the same month (Feb. 6) Germany mourned the death of Count von Caprivi, Prince Bismarck's successor in the Chancellorship of the Empire. A general in the army, Count von Caprivi was of much service to the Emperor in conducting through a hostile parliament, in 1892-93, the German Army Bills, besides, later on, reorganizing the new navy and looking after the foreign policy of the nation. Later in the year (May 25), death deprived Spain of her eloquent orator, historian, and statesman, Señor Castelar, who, though living in the later years of his life under a monarchy, was at once a republican and a patriot. For some months, in 1873-74, Castelar was president of the (563)

republic which had been ushered in by General Prim, and in this high position he showed the worthiest qualities, while doing much to rouse Spain from her benighted condition and to hold in check anarchic tendencies.

Of diplomats, death has in the past year taken a few notable men, such as exSenator J. B. Eustis, United States ambassador to France during the Cleveland administration, and formerly professor of civil law in the University of Louisiana. In the war of the rebellion ex-Minister Eustis served on the Confederate side, on the staffs of Generals Magruder and Joseph E. Johnston. He died on the 9th of September last at Newport, R. I., at the age of sixty-five. At Washington, on March 1, the death took place of the chief representative of Britain on the Joint High Commission, Baron Farrer Herschell, who was twice Lord Chancellor in Mr. Gladstone's ministry. In the same month (13th) there died in England a colonial statesman whose name was a household one in New Zealand and in two at least of the Australian Colonies. This was Sir Julius Vogel, the Jewish ex-Premier of New Zealand, who had risen to eminence through journalism and politics. To Sir Julius Vogel's enlightened interest in commerce we owe the mail and steamship service established between Auckland and San Francisco.

Abroad, literature mourns the demise in France (July 1) of Victor Cherbuliez, novelist, political writer, and member of the French Academy.

Art has lost during the year (March 27) Birket Foster, the well-known watercolor painter, and (May 25) Rosa Bonheur, the French delineator of animal life, familiar to all by her "Horse Fair," the chief attraction of the Paris salon of 1853. This famous picture is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, having been presented to it by the late Cornelius Vanderbilt, who acquired it by purchase from the A. T. Stewart collection.

Science records its losses in the deaths (August 16) of the distinguished German chemist and physicist, Prof. R. W. E. von Bunsen, of Heidelberg, whose chief work has lain in the application of chemistry and physics to the useful arts and to manufactures and to the discovery of new metals by means of spectrum analysis; of Sir W. H. Flower (July 1), an eminent

authority in anatomy and zoölogy and the successor of Sir Richard Owen as Director of the Natural History department of the South Kensington Museum; of Sir Douglas Galton (March 10), formerly an officer in the Royal Engineers, at one time President of the British Association, and a high authority in England on hospital construction, sanitation, ventilation, and the hygienic arrangement of public buildings; of Sir Wm. Dawson (Nov. 19) the learned Canadian geologist, formerly Principal of McGill University, Montreal; of Dr. D. G. Brinton (July 31) the well-known surgeon and professor of American archæology and linguistics in the University of Pennsylvania; and of Dr. Elliot Coues (Dec. 25) an expert in zoölogy and comparative anatomy and a delightful observer and expounder of bird-life. To Science, no less than to Literature, belonged the late Grant Allen (who died October 25), a many-sided man as essayist, story-teller, novelist, and popular science expounder, and withal a writer of indefatigable industry. To practical science, also, belonged the deceased inventor, Otto Mergenthaler, whose linotype or typesetting machine is familiar in most printing and newspaper offices.

The legal profession has in the past year lost many learned men, among whom we find Sir J. W. Chitty (Feb. 15), a valued member of the English Chancery bar, and latterly a Queen's Privy Councillor and a Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal. The home profession has reason to mourn the deaths of the Hon. Stephen J. Field (April 9), one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States; the Hon. Walbridge A. Field (July 15), chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts; and the late president of the American Geographical Society, Judge C. P. Daly (Sept. 19), exchief justice of the Court of Common Pleas of New York.

The Church has to regret the loss during the year of the Rt. Rev. Dr. J. Williams, of Connecticut (Feb. 7), presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States; the Rev. Dr. John P. Newman (July 5), bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, New York; the Rev. Dr. Chas. S. Robinson (Feb. 1), of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, a voluminous writer and compiler of works on hymnology; the Rev. Dr. Chas. A. Berry (Jan. 31), a

prominent English nonconformist divine, who, it may be remembered, was called to succeed Henry Ward Beecher, but declined the call; the Rev. Dr. A. B. Bruce (Aug. 7), an expository writer of wide note and. professor of apologetics and New Testament exegesis in the Free Church College, Glasgow, Scotland; and the Rev. Dr. W. G. Blaikie (June 11), of Edinburgh, Scotland, professor of theology in the Free Church College. Among the losses of the Roman Church on this side of the Atlantic during the year mention may be made of the good Father Malone of Brooklyn, a loyal and useful citizen and worthy son of the Church. The recent death (Dec. 22) at East Northfield, Mass., of the Evangelist, Dwight L. Moody, may find fit mention among divines and professional laborers in the theological field, though there was little of the theologian in the man. Essentially he was a preacher and an exhorter, and one of much force, earnestness, and power, as well as a successful organizer and founder of institutions of a religious and educational character. We record in this category the demise (July 21), in his sixty-sixth year, of Colonel R. G. Ingersoll. We have, of course, no design in bracketing the great iconoclast with theistic champions, whose removal by death the Church has had reason to deplore in the past year: it is only convenient to put him thus in juxtaposition with orthodoxy, which the rationalist orator vigorously combated all his life.

Among the heroes of another militant order whose deaths have here to be recorded are Brigadier-General Guy V. Henry (October 27) and Major-General H. W. Lawton (December 19). We have already in these pages paid our tribute to General Henry: the death on the field of action of the intrepid Lawton adds one of the greatest losses to the many the nation has suffered in the war with the Filipinos. His life was an inspiration to our arms: his death at this juncture is a public calamity.

Journalism, in the past year, sustained a loss not lightly to be estimated in the death (Dec. 24) of Daniel S. Ford (who traded in Boston under the firm name of Perry Mason & Co.), owner of that most stimulating and helpful periodical for the young "The Youth's Companion.» On the 6th of July there also fell to the reaper's sickle, at the ripe age of seventy-five, Robert Bonner, proprietor of "The New

York Ledger." A shining mark, dropped by the enemy on the 19th of October, was Wm. H. Appleton, the revered head of the publishing firm of D. Appleton & Co., New York. The book world has also had to deplore the death (Dec. 18) of Bernard Quaritch, a well known bibliophile and enthusiastic book-collector. Commerce and railroad enterprises had also to mourn the demise (Sept. 12) of Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose position was an honorable as well as a unique one in financial and business circles. Among railway magnates and multi-millionaires the death (Dec. 3) has also to be noted of John I. Blair, of Blairstown, N. J.

One of the high offices of the State was for a time rendered vacant by the demise (Nov. 21) of Vice-President Garret A. Hobart, a politician of the worthiest type and a helpful associate of the President in undertaking the duties of the Executive. Legislation was made the poorer by the death (Jan. 13) of Congressman Nelson Dingley, Jr., of Maine, and by that of Richard P. Bland, of Missouri, on the 15th of June. Civil-service reform lost an able champion and worker in the death (Dec. 23) of Dorman B. Eaton, who as president of the Civil Service Commission wrought great changes in the methods of appointing public officers.

England's Chastening Time

England, manifestly, has not found the war forced upon her by the Boers in any sense "a military picnic." For the first time, in many years of fighting, she has had to face a foe not only of exceptional ability, sturdiness, and resource, but one gifted with a genius for taking advantage of the strong natural defences in which South Africa largely abounds, and who is at the same time armed with modern weapons and knows, with deadly expertness, how to use them. To the English it has not been an agreeable lesson to learn that their fighting ability has been paralleled by Dutch prowess, and that in the mountain fastnesses in which the burghers find their strength the English have repeatedly been ambushed and more than once have signally been outgeneraled by Boer military tactics and the mobility of their many small and independent commandos. These advantages, on the side of the Dutch allies, have not only depressed the British nation, but have baffled its generals in the field, while they

have brought reverses and disasters, and at times even humiliation, to the British

arms.

There is, it is true, much to be said in explanation of these defeats and checks, as well as for the serious situation that confronts the nation. One explanation is to be found in the sturdy and independent character of the Boer community, every man of whom is trained to the use of arms, hardened from infancy to a vigorous outdoor life, and, like all game-stalkers, accustomed to concealment in ravine and kopje when in search of food, or when menaced by hostile natives or, as in the present instance, by an attacking army. Another explanation lies in the fact that, unlike the British, who never suspected that they would have again to proceed against the Boers in the field, they were, as it seems, perfectly prepared for hostilities, and that on a scale even of unexampled magnitude on the part of the British authorities, while they were well equipped with every expedient and appliance of modern warfare. A further explanation of the difficulties and disasters of the campaign is to be found in that defect of an insular people, powerful as a nation mainly at sea, and with its army intelligence department distant from the seat of strife, which caused them to be calamitously ignorant of the enemy's real strength and preparedness for the conflict, while esteeming them lightly as a foe and underrating their power. When at length British eyes were opened to the task that lay before the nation, they were handicapped, at first, by a war department that had not kept pace with the times, and had sent its forces into the field not only small in numbers, but deficient in long-range guns and in the modern essentials of mounted corps for scouting and other mobile army purposes.

England's chief disadvantage, however, has obviously lain in the altered conditions of modern warfare, to which she has not been careful or enterprising enough to adapt herself, and in her generals, clinging, with bulldog characteristic, to the frontal mode of attack, which is in the main unsuited to meet Boer methods of hillside fighting. Her generals have also had the disadvantage of operating over large and widely scattered areas, and in regions where the people were more or less disaffected, and in having to use scouts and local guides of doubtful loyalty.

Not the least handicap, moreover, has been the conducting of the campaign in the public eye, and with such newspaper publicity, through correspondents in the field, as to the proposed movements and dispositions of the troops, as well as in conveying immediate intelligence of reverses and checks, as to perplex and sometimes unnerve the British commanders. What effect all this has had in depressing and alarming the English people, we have seen from their journals and the daily newspaper cables. The evil of publicity, despite the rigid censorship which the generals have sought to maintain, has also been seen in the immediate cabling to England, from the far scenes of the conflict, of the casualties of each day, and of every record of mishap or disaster to the troops engaged, often highly exaggerated, and without adequate knowledge, which has always been astutely concealed, of what the enemy's losses have been. These things have naturally had their disconcerting effect upon the English and given them an anxious and chastening time of it.

Despite the gloom and anxiety that prevails, the nation has, however, risen bravely to the occasion and with remarkable fortitude has braced itself to meet the grave emergency in the most patriotic and practical manner. When Buller, Methuen, and Gatacre had each met with serious reverses, the English war authorities could not but see the mistakes that had been made and the lack of adequate and effective preparation. Large additions were therefore at once made to the force, by the mobilization of four new army divisions (the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th), the first two of which were dispatched to the Cape, with strong batteries of artillery and brigades of horse, while the militia and volunteers in England were enrolled for active service and new offers of colonial contingents were accepted by the British government. New and important appointments, in the persons of Lord Roberts and his staff aide, General Kitchener, were at the same time gazetted to the chief command of the army. This has had a calming and assuring effect in England, done much to dispel the national despondency and gloom, and has evoked a still larger measure of moral and material support from the people. Obstacles, serious and many, are manifestly still to be overcome by England before the war