exhaustion, partly through the energy of the neighbours who
had exerted themselves manfully and loyally. The danger
was over; the scene of ruin, with the flames still bursting out
in distant parts of the woods, was so remarkable that Sir
Henry sent again, to beg us to go up and witness it. E-----
went; I preferred to retain unspoiled the image of that moon-
light night, and remained where I was. The outbursting of
the fierce irrational forces of nature has to me something
painful and horrible, as if we lived surrounded by caged wild
beasts, who might at any moment break their bars and tear
us to pieces. Such indeed our condition is in this world, and
it is well for us when only forests are set blazing, and not the
distracted heads of human beings, like those French commu-
nists of whom I had been talking with my host at St. Hubert's.
But if we cannot escape such things, I have no curiosity to be
a spectator of them.

With the gentlemen whom I met at the Club I had much
interesting talk about colonial politics--federation, the rela-
tion of the colonies with the empire, &c., the results of which
I shall sum up further on. There was anxiety about England
too. When English interests were in peril, I found the Aus-
tralians, not cool and indifferent, but ipsis Anglicis Angliciores,
as if at the circumference the patriotic spirit was more alive
than at the centre. There was a general sense that our affairs
were being strangely mismanaged. The relations of large
objects to one another can be observed better at a distance
than close at hand, when we see nothing clearly except what
is immediately next to us. Now Guinea was half-forgotten
in our adventures in Egypt, and men asked me, and asked
themselves, what, in the name of wonder, we were about. It
began to be perceived, too, that the disease was in the consti-
tution. The fault was not in individual ministers, but in
the parliamentary system, which placed the ministers at the
mercy of any accidental vote in the House of Commons, laid

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