patriot, against the life of Louis Napoleon, provoked great anger among the Imperialists of France against England, the former asylum of Orsini.  A series of violent addresses from the French army, denouncing Great Britain as a mere harbour of assassins, did but give a more exaggerated form to the representations of French diplomacy, urging the amendment of our law, which appeared incompetent to touch murderous conspirators within our borders so long as their plots regarded only foreign Powers.  The tone of France was deemed insolent and threatening; Lord Palmerston, who, in apparent deference to it, introduced a rather inefficient measure against conspiracy to murder, fell at once to the nadir of unpopularity, and soon had no choice but to resign; and the Volunteer movement in England—­which had been begun in 1852, owing to the sinister changes that then took place in the French Government—­now at once assumed the much more important character it has never since lost.  The immense popularity of this movement and its rapid spread formed a significant reply to the insensate calls for vengeance on England which had risen from the French army, and which seemed worthy of attention in view of the vast increase now made in the naval strength of France, and of other preparations indicating that the Emperor meditated a great military enterprise.  That enterprise proved to be the war with Austria which did so much for Italy, and which some observers were disposed to connect with the plot of Orsini—­a rough reminder to the Emperor, they said, that he was trifling with the cause of Italian unity, to which he was secretly pledged.  But Englishmen were slow to believe in such designs on the part of the French ruler.  “How should a despot set men free?” was their thought, interpreted for them vigorously enough by an anonymous poet of the day; and they enrolled themselves in great numbers for national defence.  With this movement there might be some evils mixed, but its purely defensive and manly character entitles it on the whole to be reckoned among the better influences of the day.

[Illustration:  Lord Palmerston.]

Palmerston’s discredit with his countrymen was of short duration, as was his exile from office; he was Premier again in the June of 1859, and was thenceforth “Prime Minister for life.”  His popularity, which had been for some time increasing, remained now quite unshaken until his death in 1865.  Before Lord Derby’s Government fell, however, a reform had been carried which could not but have been extremely grateful to Mr. Disraeli, then the Ministerial leader of the House of Commons.  The last trace of the disabilities under which the Jews in England had laboured for many generations was now removed, and the Baron Lionel de Rothschild was able quietly to take his seat as one of the members for the City of London.  The disabilities in question had never interfered with the ambition or the success of Mr. Disraeli, who at a very early age had become a member of the