FRENCH-BRITISH RECIPROCITY TREATY



appointed December 18 to devise compromise measures for
a restoration of peace, soon reported that it was "not able
to agree upon any general plan of compromise."
   And so, while Congress debated, and Buchanan hesi-
tated, and the North looked on helpless, the people of the
lower South made ready to employ that remedy for their
grievances which, at various times and in various dissatisfied
corners of the Union, had been suggested or threatened but
never tried.
   While the United States was drifting into what appeared
a ruinous war, England advanced her commercial prosperity
by a master-stroke. With Gladstone acting as the chief
finance minister of the country, Richard Cobden was engaged
as a plenipotentiary of the British Government in negotiating
a commercial treaty with France based on free trade. It
was calculated to give enormous impulse to the trade between
the two countries. The treaty was signed on January 23,
and soon after passed Parliament, with the sole exception of
the proposed reduction of the duty on paper, which was
thrown out by the Lords.
   Scientifically, the year was notable for the work of Robert
Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff, two German chemists, who
perfected the spectroscope. They established the science of
spectrum analysis, and showed that infinitesimal quantities
of metals could be readily detected by means of the spectro-
scope in an incandescent mass. Their researches have had
an incalculable influence on stellar chemistry.
   It was at this time that the last volume of Ruskin's
"'Modern Painters" was published. The first volume of this
brilliant book had appeared in 1843, the outgrowth of an
early pamphlet written by Ruskin in defence of Turner,
which excited great attention in England at the time. As
was said in "Hora Subsessive," Thackeray's organ: "There
is one man among us who has done more to breathe the breath
                           856



1860