July 27, 14. Meantime a serious 'disaster had befallen the English arms in the south of Afghanistan. At Maiwand a small army under General Burrows was almost annihilated by Ayoub Khan, who led a large force from Herat to attack Candahar. Thereafter General Primrose was besieged in the latter city. 1880 A. D. His rapid and 15. As soon as General Roberts heard at Cabul of this disaster, he set out for Candahar with all the forces at his command. orderly march is one of the most remarkable in the annals of Eastern warfare. In little more than twenty days he traversed the three hundred and fifty miles between the two cities; and he found his troops so fresh, that the very next day after his arrival he attacked Ayoub's army, and routed it with great slaughter. Sept. 1, 1880 A. D. 1881 16. This virtually closed the war. Ayoub Khan fled to Herat. Abdurrahman undertook the government of Candahar; and early in 1881 the whole of the English army was withdrawn within the Indian frontier. a-ban-doned, given up; quitted. on horseback. 1 Scientific frontier.-A frontier capable of regular defence in war. A. D. fa-nat-ics, religious madmen; zealots. ne-go-ti-a-tions, interchange of pro- 2 Gan'damak. - A place between Jelalabad and Cabul. 70.-VICTORIA. (PART IV.) 1. Ireland has needed a great deal of attention during the present reign. In 1845 the potato disease caused great distress. Partly by death and partly by 'emigration to America, the population was lessened by nearly two million. 1843 A.D. 1865 A.D. 2. The Irish have always complained of being badly governed by England. The favourite 'remedy with the Irish people for the ills of Ireland has been the "Repeal" of the Union of 1801. A great outcry for Repeal that is, for a separate Irish Parliament- was headed by Daniel O'Connell; but he was tried for 'sedition, and with that the outcry 'ceased for a time. 3. Some years later it was renewed, when the Fenian2 plot for the separation of Ireland from England was formed. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended-that is to say, it was made lawful to imprison men without trial -and many of the leading Fenians were banished. 4. The Irish had two special causes of complaint: the Established Church was the Protestant Church of England, while most of the Irish people are Roman Catholics: the laws for the letting of farms were unjust to the farmers. In 1869 the Irish Church was 'disestablished; in 1870 the Land law was amended so as to give better terms to tenants. For a time, Ireland was quiet. 1869 1870 A. D. 5. By-and-by, however, the demand for Repeal was raised again. The Irish Members of Parliament The 1880 A.D. asked for "Home Rule." Bad harvests in 1878 and 1879 caused much suffering and discontent among the small farmers in the west and the south. Home Rulers put themselves at the head of the discontent, and demanded a complete change in the land laws. They formed a Land League, which advised the farmers not to pay rents. Landlords and their agents were shot; the cattle and goods of those who obeyed the law were destroyed. The law was openly defied, and the country was on the brink of civil war. was 6. Early in January 1881, Parliament called together to consider the state of Ireland. An Act for the Protection of Person and Property was passed in March. 7. Notes of Progress.-The Penny Postage was adopted, chiefly through the efforts of Rowland Hill, in 1840. A Bill for the admission of Jews into Parliament was passed in 1858, when Baron RothsIchild took his seat as Member for London. In 1866, the first Telegraph Cable between Europe and America was successfully laid under the sea. In 1870, the Education Act, establishing School Boards, was passed for England and Wales. In 1872, the Ballot Act, allowing secret voting at parliamentary elections, became law. no longer the ceased, stopped. 1 O'Connell.-He was sentenced to two years' imprisonment; but the House of Lords prevented the sentence from being carried out. From this time rem-e-dy, cure. se-di-tion, trying to raise a rebell ion. sus-pend-ed, set aside for a time. terms, agreements for holding farms. O'Connell's power over his countrymen 71.-PROGRESS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 1. The application of steam to the purposes of locomotion has wrought a 'marvellous change on the life of the civilized world since the present century began. In 1811, Henry Bell, an innkeeper of Helensburgh, launched upon the Clyde the Comet, a vessel of twenty-five tons burden, 'propelled by steam. Four years later, George Stephenson achieved the construction of a locomotive engine capable of drawing waggons on a railway. In 1830 the same mechanical genius, aided by his son Robert, placed the "Rocket" on the rails of the newly made line between Liverpool and Manchester; and thenceforward the railway system grew and 'expanded over the world. The great ocean triumphs, achieved by steam-boats, were the voyage of the Savannah from New York to London (1819), and that of the Enterprise to India (1825). 2. The efforts of Rowland Hill, the son of a ence. Birmingham schoolmaster, resulted in 1840 in the establishment of a general penny postage, which has had the effect of immensely increasing 'correspondBut this was comparatively a slight matter, when viewed beside the achievement of Wheatstone and Cooke, who, in 1837, united in the construction of the electric telegraph. Their first successful trial took place on wires laid between Euston Square and Camden Town. 3. A necessary sequel was the invention of the 'submarine cable, of which the first idea occurred in 1842 to an American electrician named Morse. Jacob Brett reduced this idea to a practical form in 1851 by laying a wire wrapped in gutta-percha from Dover to Calais. This was followed in 1858 by the gigantic enterprise of placing a cable across the Atlantic between Valentia, an island on the west coast of Ireland, and Trinity Bay in Newfoundland. This cable conveyed messages for three weeks, but then ceased to carry the currents: there was a leak in the rope. 4. The eight years intervening between this failure and the grand success of 1866 were marked by the placing of lines in the Red and Mediterranean Seas and the Persian Gulf. In 1865 the Atlantic cable snapped during the process of laying it; but in the following year (1866) skill and science triumphed not only in the successful laying of a new and stronger ocean cable, but in the 'recovery, by grappling, of the lost rope from the depths of the mid-ocean. There are now four or five cables at work between Europe and America. |