TURKEY. 



839 



bushy gray beard and hair, clear aquiline pro- 

 file, strong, deeply recessed, grayish-blue eyes, 

 with an expressive, half-smiling, half-sneering 

 mouth. The figure of the aged Arctic voyager 

 in Millais's celebrated picture, "The North- 

 west Passage," is a portrait of Trelawney ; but 

 it does not fairly represent the character and 

 bearing of the man, which seemed more like 

 the stern old type of the Scandinavian sea- 

 pirate a pirate, perchance, charmed into hu- 

 manity and gentleness by the spiritual beauty 

 of Shelley's genius. Certainly no Norse king 

 ever had a more powerful voice or hand. To 

 the end he wore neither overcoat nor flannel 

 under-clothing, and had never, so he said, been 

 sick. He died, at last, without disease, simply 

 from old age the sole survivor, save one, of 

 the group of friends who were the companions 

 of Byron and Shelley at Spezzia sixty years 

 ago. That one is Shelley's Jane, to whom 

 those fine lines of his last year, "The Rec- 

 ollection," and "Jane with a Guitar," were 

 addressed. She still lives, and has been twice 

 married, her first husband, Captain "Williams, 

 having been lost with Shelley. Many years 

 afterward his widow married Mr. Hogg, Shel- 

 ley's first and most intimate friend, who left 

 Oxford in disgust when the gifted author of 

 " Queen Mab " was expelled. In Trelawney's 

 house, among his most highly prized treasures, 

 hung the guitar which Shelley bought at Pisa 

 and presented to Mrs. Williams with the ex- 

 quisite verses. It long hung on his library- 

 wall, mute and with broken strings, but the 

 cause of melody which will continue to echo 

 through many centuries to come. Some months 

 before his death Captain Trelawney expressed 

 a wish that his body should be burned, and 

 that his ashes should be buried at Rome, by 

 the side of those of Shelley. Accordingly, 

 after his death, cremation not being permitted 

 in England, his body was embalmed and placed 

 in a zinc coffin, in which it was removed to 

 Gotha, Germany, where it was burned, four- 

 teen days after his death. A week later his 

 ashes were laid in their last resting-place, in 

 the Protestant Cemetery at Rome, near those 

 of his friends, Shelley, the poet Keats, and the 

 artist Joseph Severn. The twin monuments 

 over the two latter were unveiled in March, 

 1882, on which occasion William W. Story, 

 the American sculptor, rendered a fitting trib- 

 ute to the four friends, of whom Trelawney 

 was the last survivor. He had no surviving 

 children, and Mrs. Trelawney died many years 

 ago, after which event his household was pre- 

 sided over by an adopted niece, Miss Emma 

 Taylor, to whom Trelawney left all his prop- 

 erty, including many valuable souvenirs of 

 Shelley, Keats, and Lord Byron. 



TURKEY. The Eastern question entered 

 upon a new phase after the accession of the 

 Liberal ministry in England. The triangular 

 antagonisms of Russian, Austrian, and British 

 interests and ambitions in the Balkan Penin- 

 sula became acute, and the European concert 



was at an end. The other great powers were 

 on the alert to defend and aggrandize their 

 national interests in the impending permuta- 

 tions. The British interests in Egypt, and the 

 French and Italian rivalry on the Barbary 

 coast, were more or less involved. England, 

 having checked the Russian advance to Con- 

 stantinople under Disraeli, under the guidance 

 of Gladstone saw her vital interests threat- 

 ened by the advance of Austrian power to the 

 ^Egean. Before coming into office, Gladstone 

 had uttered the warning of "Hands off!" to 

 Austria, and his foreign policy was chiefly di- 

 rected to heading off the progress of Austrian 

 interests in that direction. This he sought to 

 accomplish, not by the old policy of bolstering 

 up the declining strength of the " sick man " 

 in Stamboul, but by forming a buttress of the 

 "interesting nationalities" of the Balkans, and 

 by strengthening Greece and preventing this 

 "country with a future" from being absorbed 

 and amalgamated through too long " waiting," 

 with its intelligent race of merchants and sail- 

 ors, and its commanding mercantile and naval 

 position, into the looming military and com- 

 mercial power which would dominate the east- 

 ern Mediterranean, when once established in 

 the harbors of the ^)gean. The interests of 

 Austria were already coming into actual collis- 

 ion with British interests in all the old prov- 

 inces of Turkey in Europe, which had always 

 been commercially tributary to Great Britain. 

 The immediate interest of Great Britain there- 

 fore coincided with the purposes of Russia in 

 checking the extension of Austrian influence 

 on the lower Danube, as well as in the direc- 

 tion of the Gulf of Salonica. An entirely 

 new development in the Eastern question was 

 the active participation of Germany. The 

 "moral" support which Germany had given 

 Russia in the Turkish War, whether in dis- 

 charge of a debt of gratitude for the neutrality 

 of Russia in the French War, or for other rea- 

 sons, was now cast in the other scale. The 

 rivalry of German and Slavic interests had be- 

 come more pronounced throughout the entire 

 length of Eastern Europe. The interests of 

 Germany and Austria were felt to be abso- 

 lutely identical. The Eastern question, which, 

 Bismarck had once said, involved no German 

 interest " worth the bones of a Pomeranian 

 musketeer," acquired an importance which was 

 not concealed, and the German Chancellor 

 placed himself in a position to act as the arbi- 

 ter of Europe. The sooner Austria becomes 

 established as a Slavic power, under German 

 influence, on the lower Danube, on the yEgean, 

 and possibly at Constantinople, the sooner the 

 German provinces of Austria and Russia will 

 be brought into the German Empire, and Ger- 

 many herself, falling heir to the Austrian posi- 

 tion on the Adriatic, can commence a career 

 as a Mediterranean power. Such was the atti- 

 tude of the powers when England commenced 

 her tactics to overthrow the Berlin Treaty with 

 the Berlin protocol. 



