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The  Nation 


A  WEEI-<LY  JOURNAL  . 

( 
( 

POLITICS,  LITERATURE,  SCIENCE  &  ART 


DEVOTED  TO 


VOLUME    LXII 

FROM  JANUARY  i.   1896,  TO  JUNE  30,   1896 


NEW  YORK 

THE  EVENING  POST  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

1896 


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N.- 


INDEX   TO   VOLUME   LXII.. 


JANUARY    TO    JUNE.    1896. 


(Nos.   1592-1617.) 


The  Week.  , 

▲THOME. 

Xrltona.  movement  for  ftdmlaston  to  Union.  189, 207— 
▲rbltratlon,  movement  for,  140,  New  York  and 
PhiladripliU  meellnge.  N.  T.  Assembly  resolves, 
IM.  call  for  a  conference,  846,  Congress  at  Wash- 
tofton.  883,  arbitration  for  Italy  and  Abyssinia. 
847.  Salisbury's  proposals  to  U.  8 ,  864. 
Bootwell,  Oeo.  8..  denounces  the  Venesuela  business, 
llO-Wharton  Barker's  address  to  msnufacturers. 
180— Benjamin  H.  Brlstow  deceased,  488— Business 
depression  and  Its  cause.  808— Bond  Investigation 
In  New  York  by  Senate  Cknnmlttee,  488. 
Connecticut,  heresy  case  at  Madison,  869— Callfomla 
Republican  oonventlon  for  free  coinage,  870— Colo- 
ra^  Republican  oonrentlon  for  silver  and  Teller, 
887— Onban  reeognlUon  by  Congress.  187. 188. 807, 
deprecated  by  Admiral  Meade.  807,  motive  exposed 
by  Senator  Boar.  888,  Congressional  resolutions  a 
foocball,  864»  effect  on  European  alliances  exhibited 
by  London  Spe^t^ar,  864— Chicago  chosen  for  De- 
mocratic national  convention.  60.  editorial  revolt 
against  chromrs.  111,  gold ^ Democrats  hoist  their 
Hag,  487— Cincinnati  CommenHai  OoKetU  c-annot 
draw  out  Presidential  candidates  on  money  ques- 
tion, 80?— President  Cleveland  Judged  by  Burke,  1, 
paralyses  England's  acdon  for  Armenia,  81.  threa^ 
•Bed  with  impeachment  for  not  recognising  Cuba, 
807.  home-missionary  speech  censured.  808,  brings 
under  clvll-servioe  rules  the  remaleing  Presiden- 
tial appointees,  887,  860.  wfll  not  recognise  Cu- 
ban belligerency,  S07,  vetoes  rlver-and-harbor  bill, 
485,  463,  forces  Republican  convention  to  gold 
standard.  468,  spurs  the  Democratic  convention  the 
same  way.  488-8ecretary  Carlisle  offers  a  popular 
loan.  81,  speech  to  Chicago  workingmen,  81ft— W. 
E.  Chandler  makes  Speaker  Reed  a  compromise 
nooey  candidate,  60,  reproaches  MoKlnley  with 
eorrupt  promotion  <tf  his  candidacy.  887,  c<mf esses 
to  cowardice  In  New  Hampshire  convention,  870— 
Sefior  Cinovas's  aUfged  dispatch  to  the  Worlds  808 
— Oobden  Club  lie  naOed,  818— Columbia  College 
4lcdlcatlon,  858-<}opyright  law's  effect  on  literary 
output  for  1800,  180— Congregational  heresy  case, 
Madismi,  Conn.,  86ft-Church  convention  politics, 
400. 
Comuas— LIVth.,  first  session:  Tariff  and  bond  bills 
passed  (House),  8— Free-coinage  bill,  Elkins  resolu 
tlon  as  to  popular  loan.  Sherman's  financial  censure 
of  Administration,  Burrows's  objections  to  wool 
tax  (Senate).  81— Jones  "holding  up"  the  House 
tariff  blU.  Teller's  fight  for  free  coinage  (Senate). 
48— Morgan's  Transvaal  sympathy  resolutton  (Se- 
nate). 4i-flale's  HawaUan  cable  bUl  (Senate).  68- 
Ofow  on  Executive  encroaohments,  Bartlett  defeats 
peaskm-sharks  (House).  60— Chaplain  prays  for  pro- . 
tectlon,  new  rule  oi  quorum  counting,  Baya^'s 
English  speeches  spread  on  Record  «House),  87— 
Utah  Sanatdks  admitted.  Sewell's  speech  against 
Cleveland-Olney  Doctrine.  Frye's  uproar  over  Ar- 
menia (Senate),  88— Armenian  resolutions  (both 
i  Houses),  Cuban  resolutions.  Free-coinage  bill  passed 
<Senate).  109— Tillman's  abuse  of  Cleveland,  Thurs- 
ton's readlf)«ss  for  war  (Senate).  1 10— Movemmit  to 
divide  up  appropriation  blUs  defeated,  and  Lodge's 
ooast^lefence  bill  (Senate),  Hall  of  Missouri  speaks 
for  sound  money.  Johnson  of  Callfomla  attacks 
Reed's  Inaetloa  policy  (House),  180— Davis  defends 
his  resolatloa  (Senate),  Free^olnage  defeated.  At- 
tack on  Secretary   Morton    by    seed    spoilsmen 
<House),  140— Morgan's  tirade  against  Spain,  tariff 
biU  buried  (Senate).  Seed  cUuse  In  agricultural  blU 
made  mandatory,  Indian    Inspectors*  pay  issue 
(House),  170 -Cuban  belligerency  resolutions  (both 
booses).  Teller  on  the  Republican  bunco  silver 
game  (Senate).  187,  188— Hale's  exposure  of  Sher- 
man's Cuban  falsifying  (Senate),  807— Savings  In 
salaries  of  U.  S.  n&arshals  and  district  attorneys 
(House),  SOfr-Hoar's  exposure  of  Sherman's  falsl- 
fleatlon  regarding  Cuba  (Senate),  88S-Ooban  reso- 
lutions referred  back  to  conference  committee, 
Sherman's  Ignoranoe,  Oray's  preference  (Senate), 
840,  Senate  set  adopted  by  conference  committee^ 
864,  and  by  House,  Hltfs  somersault  on  thsm,  870 
-Can's  Maybriek  resolution    squelched  (Senate), 


807-Metrlc  system  defeated  (House).  808-Postal 
consolidations  forbidden  (House).  80^-Berlng  Sea 
commission  treaty  confirmed  (Senate),  816— (Gene- 
ral pension  bill  passed  (House),  838— Teller  expoees 
Harrison's  approval  of  silver-purchase  act.  Battle- 
ships reduced  to  two  (fenate).  858— Sherman  op- 
poses  certificates  of  Indebtedness  (Senate),  407— 
Butler  bill  to  prevent  AdmlnUtration  borrowing 
passed  (Senate).  485,  446— Sherman  oppoees  extra 
tax  on  beer  (Senate).  485,  and  President's  right  to 
veto  river-and-harbor  bill,  446 -Morgan's  move  to 
Interfere  In  (?uba  (Senate).  446— Art  experts  rebuff- 
ed (Senate),  461— Cannon's  proof  of  economic  ses- 
sion (House),  adjournment  (Iwth  houses),  468. 

Delaware's  Senator  Du  Pont  oppoeed  by  Populists.  880 
—Detroit  convention  for  tariff  tinkering.  407— Se- 
nator Davis  of  Minnesota  dropped  from  Presiden- 
tial race.  864— Lord  Dunraven's  charges  confuted, 
111— Democratic  National  Convention  to  meet  at 
Chicago,  60,  question  of  two-thirds  rule,  487. 

Florida  Democratic  convention  for  gold  standard,  488— 
Field,  (Hilef  Justice,  of  Maassohusetts,  on  non-pro- 
gresflve  legal  profession,  8  i— J.  B.  Foraker  on  the 
coming  Republican  bimetallic  plank.  851— C.N.Fow- 
ler  on  credit  banking.  888— Fre#-colnage  votes  in 
Senate  in  1806  and  1800, 100. 

(leorgia  bankers  addressed  on  sUver  by  ex-Senator 
Walsh.  486— Henry  George  at  Cooper  Union  anti- 
war meeting,  1— Oov.  John  W.  Griggs's  Inaugural 
address,  80— C.  H.  Grosvenor  on  gold-standard  in- 
sanity ,468— (Government  bond  syndicate  suspended. 
48, 68,  popular'  loan,  48,  progress  of,  87,  effect  of 
gold  payments  on  markets,  171— Gold  premium,  68, 
gold-reserve  shrinkage  nothing  to  do  with  revenue, 
68. 

Hawaii  neglected  In  Republican  platforms,  816— Benja- 
min Harrison  withdraws  from  Presidential  candi- 
dacy. 110,  unless  needed,  808— Senator  G.  F.  Hoar 
on  the  Inwardness  of  the  <^ban  resolutions.  888— 
T.  W.  HIgginson  on  the  disappearance  ot  gnee  at 
table,  151— CNtfret  A.  Hobart  nominated  for  Tlce- 
Presldent,  481,  inept  speechmaker,  488  — House 
of  Representatives  sound  on  money  question  need- 
ed under  McKlnley.  468. 

Illinois  Republican  convention  for.  Mckinley,  851— In- 
diana Republican  convention  against  free  coinage, 
860— Iowa  Democratic  convention  for  free  eolnagei 
407. 

Kentucky,  (Governor  pardons  carrying  concealed  wea- 
pons. 8.  Inoome-tax  amendment  to  Constitution  pro- 
poaed,  180,  Democratic  convention  for  free  silver, 
445. 

Louisiana,  antl-negro^offrage  amendmaat  defeated, 
884,  Democratic  party's  loss  of  hold  on  white  vote, 
870— Seofretary  Lamont  on  lieutenant-generalship 
for  (3en.  Miles.  865— Henry  Cabot  Lodge  for  annex- 
ing the  Danish  West  Indies.  67.  t%  on  cause  of  antl- 
Britlth  feeling  (England's  snubbing  of  sUverites), 
171,  leads  Massachusetts  Republican  conventlOB  on 
a  gold  platform,  868,  on  President  Cleveland's  final 
extension  of  civll-servlce  law,  860— Lincoln's  birth- 
day hoUday,  181. 

Maine,  long  service  ot  Its  Ckmgressmen,  8,  Republican 
convention's  gold  platform,  815,  for  Reed  for  Hw^ 
dent,  445,  Democratic  cdnventlon  for  tree-coin- 
age, 488— Massachusetts.  A.  P.  A.  turns  out  the 
clerk  of  the  House,  88,  Republican  convention 
adopts  goM  platform.  868,  Democratic  ditto,  888, 
Veterans*  Preference  act  unconstitutional.  884— 
Michigan  Republican  eonventlon  votes  down  gold 
plank.  860,  Democratic  conventton  votes  sliver 
down,  860.  Bar  AssoolaUon  for  arbitration.  888- 
Maryland,  Oov.  Lowndea's  reform  Inaugural,  45. 
Bankers'  Association  for  gold  standard.  807— Min- 
nesota declines  Senator  Davis  for  President.  864, 
Democratic  convention  for  gold  standard.  464— 
Montana  Republicans  for  free  coinage  but  not  for 
boltlog,  870— Mississippi  law  against  concealed  wea- 
pons strengthened,  800,  defeated  measures  against 
colored  schools.  881— Missouri  Democratt  for  tree 
coinage,  808,  816,  858— Wm.  IfcKlnley,  boom  un- 
dermined in  Ohio,  80,  stronger  than  his  rivals,  160, 
varloualy  figured,  868.  838,  dictates  currency  strad- 
dle to  Ohio  Republican  convention.  Presidential 
propaganda  captures  Pennsylvania,  little  mind.  887, 
his  boodle  boom,  846,  posltlOB  Ukened  to  Blaine's 


t!^ 


by  Joe  Manley,  864,  accidental  tariff  pr^dneace. 
851.  mischievous  sUver  speech  In  1801. 86l,>ipodla- 
tlon  vote  In  1878. 446.  for  sUver  In  1800. 446.agnlnst 
retiring  greenbacks  In  1S78, 464.  others'  oertlieatea 
to  his  sound-money  views,  860.  his  own  slley.887, 
486,  Advance  Agent  of  Prosperity,  887,  suj^rted 
by  sliver  Repnbltoans  of  West,  486,  Judged  by 
Leroy-Beaulleu.  4(M,  dvH-servtoe  reform  r«eord 
good.  481.  nominated  for  President  at  St.  LMds, 
481,  speeches  after  nomination  dodging  the  cur- 
rency Issue.  488-8enator  Morgan's  weaknefl  ex- 
cused byBoston  Hierald,  88— Gov.  L.  P.  Morton  signs 
Rabies  blU.  846,  and  Greater  New  York  bill.  890. 
manful  stand  against  A.  P.  A.,  464— Wm.  R.  Morri- 
son's Presidential  bid,  815-Gen.  Nelson  A.  Ifllea 
against  war,  1,  proposed  lieutenant -genemlriilp, 
865-4dmlral  Meade  not  a  Cuban  Jingo,  807-«UI- 
tary  training  In  public  schools,  bill  to  foster.  170— 
Monroe  Doctrine  d  stasteful  to  Senator  Berrien  In 
1886, 88,  defined  by  Profs.  Burgessand  Moore,  8BS— 
Manoa  Company's  history,  140. 

New  Toric  State:  Gov.  Morton  appoints  Geo.  P«  Lord 
dvil-service  commissioner.  44,  signs  Ralngs  bill. 
846.  Judge  Barrett's  special  Jury  bUl,44.  Extlnetloa 
of  constitutional  popular  government,  816,  Repub- 
lican rising  against  Piatt,  11 1 ,  C^mmilsslonerAMrich 
submits  his  clerks  to  competitive  examlnftttona. 
884,  bUH  for  their  Ulegal  payment.  888/^Ptatfs 
designs  on  Greater  New  York,  150.  bill  forced 
to  a  pasMge,  860,  816.  signed  by  Govui^  870. 
commission  appointed.  465,  Piatt's  legislative  m^ 
slon  at  5th  Ave.  Hotel,  816.  Assembly  resold 
for  arbitration,  160.  Sanger's  eorrapt  praetlcea 
law,  180.  Raines  Uquor  blU  passed  and  signed. 
846.  disastrous  effect  on  RepubHoaa  party,  870, 
special  agenu  put  on  non-oompetltlve  Ust,  890.  na- 
able  to  pass  pass  exsmlnatlons,  406.  400,  put  on 
competitive  list.  487.  appointment  of  tnapadora 
SQspended  by  Gov.  Morton.  880,  obsours  and  shady 
appointees,  884,  Piatt  and  Ralnea  surety  coiipany 
for  excise  bonds.  880. 858.  Republican  conventloa 
adopts  gold  platform.  868,  Supreme  Court  finds  Al- 
bany police  bin  unconstitutional.  447:  C«lir:  An|^ 
war  meeting  at  Cooper  Union,  1,  Dr.  J.  fi.  BttUi^p 
to  be  Ilbrarlaa  ot  Tilden  foundation,  45.  Central 
Labor  Unkm  protest*  against  militarism.  188, 
Chamber  ot  Commerce  memorial  for  sound  nsoney 
platforms,  808,  hearings  before  Mayor  Strong  am. 
Greater  New  York.  881,  park  advertising  signs  for- 
bidden. 884.  Columbia  omege  dedication,  868. 
Deputy-<?omptroller  Btorrs  dsesassd,  888.  Mavor 
Strong  extends  civil-servloe  rules,  447-  New  Jerse]^ 
Senate  squelches  Jingo  Doctrine  resolutions,  110, 
Democratic  currency  plank  sound,  860-New  Hamp- 
shire Densocratic  convention  against  free  oolaage, 
407— New  Mexico,  movement  for  admlstloa  to 
Union.  180.  807— New  Orleans  grand  Jury  thvors 
carrying  concealed  weapons,  809— Nicaragua  CvuJL 
criticised  by  Joseph  NImmo.  Jr ,  808. 809,  In  report 
of  Board  of  Englneera,  889,  but  subsidy  recommend* 
ed  by  House  Committee,  485-Ntagara  Falls  Reser- 
vation Commlislon  menaced.  889. 

Ohk>  oonvlcu  doomed  to  Idleness,  8,  ReputUlcan  con- 
vention's currency  platform,  887,  obJeottonaMe  t* 
Republican  press  at  large,  845,  corrupt-praetioes 
act,  846flHlepublloan  onfreney  planks  1876  and 
1896,  SSdioregon  Democratic  conventton  for  troo 
coinage.  898,  Republicans  and  Populists  likewise, 
487,  Popullst-Dsmocratlc  majority  In  election,  af- 
fect on  MoKlnleyltes,  445-8ecretary  Olney  sends 
ships  and  not  a  flat  to  Corlnto,  188,  his  Moaroo 
and  his  law  dsorted  by  Profs.  Moore  and  Burgtss. 
888— Ocean  steamships  and  the  antl-JIngo  axq^na. 
89. 

Pennsylvania,  higb-llcense  saloons  dosed  during  tfol- 
ley-strike  In  Philadelphia.  8,  PhlUdelphta  oonv%n- 
tlons  favor  Quay  and  Reed  for  President.  69,  Phila- 
delphia Manufacturers'  Club  repudiates  stiver,  803, 
State  Republican  convention  nominates  Qus^,  888, 
Philadelphia  Ledgm-  tor  gold  standard  ISMe,  859— 
E.  J.  Phelpa's  address  on  Moa*oa  Boetrlne.  964- 
Prssldentlsl  candidates  silaOt  as  to  money  qneettoa. 
808,  septuagenariaasr  3A-Prohlbttlonlsts  spUt  on 
sflvar  question,  48S-Presbyt«rlans  at  Saratoga  on 
uirfi«  with  Mtoopaoy.  487- Proteotloa  and  tree- 
coinage  conspiracy.  845.  868. 


Vol.  Ixii] 


Index. 


[J  an. -June,  1896- 


f 


Qa«7.  lUtt,  a  Preildeiitltf  rwdldate,  171. 

Kbode  Island  B^piiblteaa  conTentfon's  «old  platform, 
M7— Spiaker  Reed  unable  Co  control  Howe.  8,  mo- 
tlTe  for  making  a  itaort  tesilon.  81,  Presidential  can- 
dldaof  promoted  by  Senator  Chandler  and  In  Phlla- 
deliAla,  60,  by  Kellogg  In  Louisiana.  1  ;0,  alienee  In 
faoe  of  sliver  schism,  188.  and  Chandler's  calling 
blm  a  blmetalllst,  870,  support  In  Massaohuietts. 
8M,  and  In  New  England  (half-hearted).  870.  helped 
bf  Maine's  gold  platform*  815.  lets  In  the  general- 
ptnslon  bin.  333,  skit  on  MoKlnley,  887.  baited  with 
yice-Presldency.  486— William  B.  Russell  a  Presl- 
dtPtial  candidate,  338 -Republican  press  opposed 
to  ^Tli  resolution.  67,  Republican  free  coinage 
SoaAtort  confer  with  Philadelphia  manufacturers, 
840,  Republican  sllTer  straddling  condemned  by 
CbaAhcey  Depew,  808.  Republican  eonrentlOB  and 
platform  at  fit.  Louis.  461. 

loaCh  Carolina.  Income-tax  bill  rejected,  lynchers  ao- 
qpiltted.  180.  bill  against  carrying  concealed  wea- 
ptfis  defeat*  d.  800,  Democratic  oouTentlon  for  free 
«£kage,  407— South  Dakota  Democratic  conrenUon 
^painst  free  coinage.  407— St.  Louis  tornado  damages 
Republloan  wigwam,  486— Secretary  Hoke  Smith's 
action  for  forest  preserratlon,  808— Senator  Stew- 
art's former  gold-bug  views,  110— Senator  8her- 
mant  Cuban  falsifying  exposed.  807,  and  Ignorance, 
845— O.  W.  Smalley's  p*an  of  Venesuela  settlement, 
168,  romancing  telegrams  to  London  Times.  335— 
Commodore  Slcard  on  our  weak  nary,  80— Henry 
v.  Stanley  on  our  sensational  press,  871- -South 
Opposed  to  war  with  England,  1— Salvation  Army 
dissensions,  800.  new  name  and  costume  for  Ame- 
llcan  branch,  846,  Oen.  Booth's  anti- Americanism. 
800  Seal,  proposal  to  exterminate,  100— Steel 
rails  for  Japan,  808— Shipbuilders'  move  for  dls- 
crlmhiatlng  duties,  888— Silver-mining  States 
plague  their  admltters  to  the  Union,  180,  silver 
IsMie  divides  Republicans,  188.  stiver  puU  the 
sorews  on  protection.  845,  863,  silver  mania  as  a 
bar  to  European  Investments.  387— Supreme  Court 
decisions:  Hor^a  case,  sugar  bounty  ladenmlty, 
niinols  Central  case,  408. 

Tenneiiee.  Chief -Justice  Snodgrass  defended  for  homl- 
eld«,  8— Texas  Populists  at  loggerheads  with  Rail- 
load  Commission,  45— Capt.  H.  C.  Taylor  on  the 
moral  necessity  of  war,  ISl— Henry  M.  Teller  cap- 
tares  Color sdo  delegation  to  St.  Louis,  887— Tam- 
many branch  in  Brooklyn,  870— Treasury  public- 
debt  statement,  188,  deficit  not  sobering  to  Con- 
gress, 480. 

Ytah  admitted  into  the  Union,  88,  Senators  admitted, 
88. 

Tencsuelan  imbroglio,  war  opposed  by  Henry  George, 
Oen.  Miles,  the  South,  1 ;  international  peace  mes- 
sage*, I.  probable  increase  of  navy,  inland  war  fever, 
Washington  diipatchcs  to  London  CKnmieU^  specu- 
lators foiled  by  Oresham,  88,  British  documents  to 
be  published  in  advance  of  Parliament.  48,  Manoa 
Company's  fortunes  and  Secretary  Olney's  dispatch. 
44,  140,  Congressional  patriotism  discredited  by 
general  imbecility.  180.  Venesuelan  Commission 
appeals  for  British  aid,  67,  Smalley  plan  of  settle- 
ment, 160,  Queen's  speech.  180,  London  OKnmM» 
picks  flaws  In  British  Case.  888,  Venesuela  boundary 
from  a  geographer's  point  of  view,  67— Vermont 
Republican  conventton  for  McElnley.  801-Vlrginla 
Democratic  convention  for  free  silver.  440— E.  Van 
Ingen's  BrltUhgold  prosecutions.  810. 

Washington,  Chinese  cook  uproar  in  Tacoma,  3-Presi- 
dent  Washburn  on  the  Armenian  deadlock,  180— 
Whiskey  tax  not  yielding  pro  rata  of  Increase.  87— 
Wool  business  of  1800  unprecedented,  3,  revenue 
under  Wilson  tariff  in  proportion  to  cut  In  duty, 
188. 

ABROAD. 

Okkat  BBiTAn}-MaJ.  Rlcarde-Seaver  on  the  future  of 
,  the  Transvaal,  44,  BrttUh  treaty  reUtions  with 
Transvaal.  60,  Chamberlain's  Interference  with 
Transvaal  affairs,  101,  330,  803,  new  diplomacy^ 
•  ridiculed  by  Lord  Rosebery,  upheld  by  Sir  W.  Har- 
eourt.  371,  Haroonrt's  attack  on  Cecil  Rhodes,  880. 
Jameson's  raid  explained  by  O.  S.  Fort,  460.  ^.Ar- 
nold Foster  on  governing  and  making  money.  880. 
Balfour's  Manchester  ipeech  on  foreign  complloa- 
tlons.  67— Salisbury  confesses  impotence  to  deal 
with  Turkey,  111.  assailed  for  It  In  Parliament,  1 80, 
Gurson's  admissions,  847— Queen's  speech  as  to 
Venesuela.  180.  London  ChnmMe  picks  flaws  in 
British  Case.  888.  Salisbury's  proposal  of  inter- 
national arbitration  with  United  States.  864— Tory 
programme.  380.  Rosebery  and  Harcourt  poke 
fnn  at  It,  leO-Iritb  land  blU,  817— Anglo-French 
•ctn^fiDtioii  oTpr  Sljux),  131— Kile  DnoTemeiil;  agslDtt 
the  MiiJ|](JLBt«,  247,  i>ppci««(]  bj  I^rmicH;  Aod  RutnU^ 
^^,  eruk'lft&di  t^  Lof^  F«rr9r  a.Dd  Major  Griffiths* 
800,  flKpAUfte  iihHrra  by  ladlaD  budget,  4S7— Jobn 
Horloy  deflafti  &  JVo^o,  J3l— ConDdencp  La  RoHbery 
enforced  by  NatloaiLl  Ltberai  Federalion,  MiJl  — 
Li  bi"  rail  oncl  hume  raLe.  "m^,  bru^acli,  ^i't7— Moreton 
f^wirD*s  eorrfst[)oad^«  with  Lodge,  171.fdl,Wjr 


Michael  Hloks-Beaoh  declares  that  England  wlU 
have  no  bimetallism.  847— Time  of  becoming  a  candi 
date  for  ofllee.  101— SproCator  on  effect  of  American 
Cuban  jingoism  on  European  equilibrium.  864  — 
Royal  rommtsslon  report  on  the  relief  of  sgrlcul- 
ture,  847— Government  bill  remitting  half  the  rates, 
817,  Chamberlain's  former  denunciations  of  it,  338, 
Obstruction  In  committee,  400— Principal  Falrbalm 
on  the  education  bill.  460— Corrupt-practices  re- 
turns. 400— Gladstone's  letter  to  Cardinal  RampoUa, 
400— Chamberlain's  imperial  customs-union  flasco, 
'488.  I 

FRAlfcx^-Jules  Simon  on  arbitration,  160,  decease, 
447— Bourgeois  cabinet  resigns  in  face  of  Senate. 
830— Income-tax  disf  enslon  between  House  and  Se- 
nate, 303— Protection  In  medicine  at  Paris  and 
Montpelller.  330-Death  of  Lton  Say,  447— ZoU  and 
G.  Deschamps.  488. 

SPA0I— Hannis  Taylor  complains  of  depreciation  of 
America;  160— Suppression  of  antl  American  de- 
monstrailouff,  807- Elections  carried  by  Govern- 
ment, 800— Valera  on  unifying  effect  of  war  with 
U.S.,  817— Church  procession  in  Madrid  for  rain, 
308— Queen  Regent's  speech  to  the  Cortes  about 
Cuba,  871— Financial  burden  of  Cuban  rebellion, 
880. 

Italy:— Pope's  appeal  for  union  replied  to  by  Greek 
Patriarchs,  40— Crlspl  Ministry  overthrown  by 
Abyssinian  defeat  809— Informal  alliance  with 
England  announced.  865. 

Okrmamt:- Plan  to  make  full  out  of  half- battalions,  3— 
Emperor's  calendar  of  absences  from  Berlin,  131— 
Lese-majetty  run  mad,  101— Dr.  Stacker  In  disgrace. 
180— Russian  grain  to  be  excluded  for  Infection,  181 
—Charges  airalnst  Dr.  Peters,  889— Degeneration  of 
Reichstag.  880. 

AusTRiA-HuMOART  — Nsw  autl-Semitlo  municipal  coun- 
cil. 180. 

Bulqasia:— Conversion  and  baptism  of  Prince  Boris, 
171.  Ferdinand's  Visit  to  the  Porte.  317. 

CtJBA>-Bogns  Insurgent  successes.  83,  court-martial  of 
American  fUtbusters,  371.  Hor»a  decision  by  U.  B. 
Supreme  Court,  408,  patriots  issue  gold  bonds,  408. 

Mexico:— President  Diss  on  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  880. 

Vbxkusla.*— Crespo's  severity  towards  the  current 
revolution.  44. 

BiusiL^-Bio  JWrtss  on  South  Anserlcan  friendship  for 
U.S.  180. 

AnosimirK  RxPUBuc:— Sugar  protection  development, 
80.  Buenos  Aires  Herald  on  Argentine  want  of  affec- 
tion for  U.  S.,  189. 

South  AFUCA^-Matabe]e  uprising,  31 7,  President  Krue- 
ger  will  not  viilt  England,  358,  303— Death  sentence 
for  Jameson's  Invaders,  808,  proofs  of  conspiracy, 
803. 

Notes. 

Announeem<nto.  18.  38.  04.  77.  00, 110. 138, 107, 177, 
107.  816.  834,  803.  860,  888,  806.  883.  348,  360.  878, 
300, 4 1 6, 434, 404, 478, 401— Alfred  Austin  on  Tenny- 
son. 160-F.  A.  Anlard  on  the  18th  Brnmaire,  474 
—Africa,  recent  German  works  on,  100,  800,  Ro- 
man colonisation  compared  with  French,  437— 
American  Ornithological  Union's  list  of  native  birds 
revised,  14,  American  Psychologloal  Association 
meeting  In  Philadelphia,  36,  American  Historical 
Association  meeting  in  Washington,  36,  American 
Imprints,  Early,  Palne's  List  of,  100,  American  So- 
ciety of  Mechanical  Engineers,  TransacUonr,  808, 
Anytrioan  Btatorioal  iZevteie,  06. 

Bolyal,  JAncs,  Halsted's  translation  of,  188,  Wilhelm 
Bode  as  an  art  collector,  418  — Gaiton  Boissier's 
Rome  and  Pompeii.  871— Gen.  du  Barall  on  the  army 
and  the  white  flag,  379— Due  de  Broglle's '  Ambas- 
sador of  the  Vanquished.'  418-John  Brown  and  the 
Underground  Railroad,  368— Boston  Public  Library 
report,  436— Brnmaire,  18th,  F.  A.  Anlard  on,  474 
-Book-Prices  Current,  American  and  British,  100, 
457—BU)graphi»oh€Bldtttr,  101— B%aieHn  de  Oor- 
*^  respofufanos  HeiUnigut,  140,  141— BlbMo^rapAfo, 
40). 

Chaucer's  Fquire's  Tale  owes  nothing  to  Marco  Polo, 
400.  TroUtts  studied  by  Prof.  Klttredge,  408- 
John  C.  Calhoun  to  Waddy  Thompson  on  Mexi- 
can War,  06—8.  G.  Czoswell  on  trolley  rights  vs. 
telephone,  880  — Edward  Channing*s  History  ot 
United  States,  417— Rev.  W.  Cunningham  on  Mo* 
dem  civlllBatlon's  economic  aspects,  800— OalUe- 
botte  collection  of  Impresstoxilat  pictures.  418— 
Cambridge,  Eng.,  movement  for  degneB  for  women, 
101.  178— Copyright,  Putnam's  Question  of,  436— 
Century  Dictionary,  revised  edition,  474— Cyprino- 
donti,  Gannaii'B,  57. 

BQDno's  PoenMv  e<lltKl  by  &  K.  Cbamben,  850— Ed- 
ward Dowdi'n  on  Ooctbc,  4&3— fljftcoma  Ptna^i  psr 
pen  edited  by  LtUgl  Cblala,  4fl:t--|i^.  Dupanloup 
and!  the  GenDsn  cunqoest  of  FrAOi^e,  3V0— Reiil^ 
DoBmlc  ub  t:^ii  Intterpcl  and  the  Barbara,  368— 
Deaf-mate  edacatlan  la  PeiiuiLark,  3{}B— Dolmens, 
<HitribuUotiOf,4::i7, 

Btif  iDLud,  Cbef  Tidy's  Social  Cbaagei  in,  in  16th  Cantur7i 


101.  Wylle's  History  under  Henry  IV.,  880.  English 
Dlcilonsry,  Oxford.  70, 344,  English  Monetary  Hls> 
tory  Documents.  Shaw's,  403.  Englishmen,  tailed. 
George  Nellson  on.  406— Egypt.  FDnders  Petrie's 
winter's  work  at  Luxor.  804— Ekkehard.  SoheffePs. 
181— Education,  U.  S.  Commissioners'  repoit  (1808- 
03).  871. 

Freeman,  E.  A-,  discovered  by  H.  d'Arbols  de  Jubaln- 
ville,  lOl-Slr  W.  Fraser's  Napoleon  III.,  344— 
Frossard  Revolutionary  Collection,  817— Frederick 
the  Great's  Testaments  Politlqoes.  8  8— Count 
Frankenberg's  diary  and  Mgr.  Dupanloup,  380— 
French  concession  to  excavate  in  Persia,  80,  Fren<eh 
Academy  discussion  of  can(  Idates  revivtd,  818». 
Franoo-German  Ambulance,  Ryan's,  880.  French 
Language  and  Literature,  Peiit  de  JulievUle's  His- 
tory of.  380. 

Gallenga,  Antonio,  deceased,  14— E.  de  Gonoourt's 
Journal.  437— S.  Garman's  Cyprinodonts,  57 — 
Goethe's  drawings,  181,  Life  by  K.  Helnemann. 
160,  unfavorable  estimate  by  Prof.  Dowden,  408 
—Galatea  Collection  of  books  about  women  in  Bos- 
ton Public  Library,  806— Germany,  woman's  cause 
gaining  supporters,  836,  Jews,  Protestants,  and 
Catholics  at  higher  institutions  of  learning,  406. 

Halsted,0.  B.,  translation  of  Bolyal,  188— Hokusai.Gon- 
court  and  Blng  on.  308— Hernanl.  literary  souroea 
of,  436. 

Italian  popular  sacred  drama,  108,  Italian  Chamber  of 
Deputies,  800— Impressionist  pictures  for  the  Lux- 
embourg, 418— latemarional  Journal  of  Ethic*,  80. 

Jeffersons  Writings,  vol.  vll„  800— Johnson's  Uvea  of 
the  Poets  reprinted,  348— Japanese  dynasty  portrait 
gallery,  140.  Japan  Gulde-Book.  Murray's,  178.  Ja* 
panose  medical  staff  In  war  with  China.  886,  Japan 
Asiatic  Society's  Transactions,  800.  478— Jesuit  Re- 
lations. Bressani's,  830,  and  Thwaites's  new  editl*  a 
with  translatilon,  836. 

King,  Ruftts,  Life  and  Correspondence,  voL  IIL,  801. 

Lodeman,  E.  0.,  Spraying  of  Plants,  160— Legouv6  on 
the  discussion  of  candidates  for  French  Academy^ 
8 1 8— Luxor,  Flk  dtrs  Petrie^s  winter's  work  at,  854. 

Marguerite  of  Navarre,  inedited  works.  57,  88»- 
General  Maroean,  Johnson's  Life  of,  818— Adolf 
Menaei,  honors  to,  847— Mrs.  Anna  Lea  MerrtU  on 
water-glass  mural  painting.  80— Chas.  B.  Mlnot  on 
Welsmann.  190— G.  Musgrave^s  translation  of  tha- 
Infemo.  160— Mediterranean  Guide-book.  Brooks's,. 
179— Me  and  not-Me  sensitiveness  in  Foraminlf  era. 
14— Modem  Language  Association  meeting  In  New 
Haven.  56-Manuscrtpt  facsimiles  by  A.  W.  SU- 
thoff.  417— Magasines  for  January.  30,  February,. 
181.  March,  100,  April,  800,  May,  361,  June,  486- 
Mlnerva,M. 

Nietssche,  Fried  rich,  fate  and  archives,  86-George 
NIelson  on  tailed  Englishmen,  406— Napoleon's  his- 
tory in  verse,  Hlllls's,  179— Napoleon  IIL,  W.  la- 
sers, 344— New  Jersey,  State  Geologist's  report,  14 
— NeucbAtel  chrotloles  impugned,  89— National  pre- 
judices, 80. 

Oxford  degrees  for  women*  movement  for,  178. 

Petrarch's  Aime,  text  of  G.  Mestiea,  806— PUto,  F.  W. 
Busseli's  School  oU  474— Panly's  dssslcal  encyolo- 
psBdia.  new  edition.  79— L.  L.  Price's  Money  and  its 
Relations  to  Prices,  474— Flinders  Petrie's  winter's 
work  at  Luxor,  834— Ptolemies  In  Egypt  from  the 
papyri.  880— Poe's  Works,  Woodberry  and  Sted- 
man's  edition,  871— Persia,  French  concession  to 
excavate  In,  80— Piedmontese  popular  sacred  drama, 
108— Pelntare  en  Europe,  Lafenestre  and  Rlohten- 
berger's,  07— Piece-rate  system  ot  wages,  808— Ain, 
88. 

Quain's  Anatomy,  818. 

lUJntgen,  Wllhelm  Conrad,,  electrical  photography,  101 , 
140— Rabelais  expurgated  by  M.  Boixomont,  140— 
R.  Rosl^re  on  Contemporary  Poetry.  406— Russia, 
readers  in.  A.  Rambaud  on,  836,  reform  in,  in  1880,. 
808— Ravenna  codex  of  Aristophanes.  179— Reign 
of  Terror.  Hesdln's  Journal  of  a  Spy  in,  179. 

Smlth,Adam,  relations  with  Turgot.  00— Swift  and  Stel- 
la, A.  von  W.  Leslie  on,  868— W.  A.  Shaw's  English 
Monetary  History  Documents,  493— Scheffel's  Ekke* 
hard.  181- Paolo  Sarpl,  disinterment  and  tha  Ro- 
man Inquisition,  878— Spanish  Inquisition's  prose^ 
cuUons  of  the  dead,  800— *' Soclalisme,"  first  use  in 
French,  890— Saintly  women  pictured  by  G.  Broo- 
lanl,  396— Spraying.of  Plants,  Lodenmn's,  160— Sun'S- 
ecUpse,  August  8, 9,  observation  parties,  844. 

Tennyson  rated  by  Alfred  Austin.  160  — Trambntt 
sketches  and  relics  dubious,  8l7r-Trolley  rights  vs. 
telephone,  880. 

Verlalne,  Paul,  deceased,  188— Vienna  medical  writing 
for  and  agatast  women's itadylng  medicine,  140. 

WashlDgton.  GeDcral,  aad  aegro  eD]LBtineiib»,  d^bstn  lu 
ConUneBlal  Coaarwia,  a«-^.  a.  WyLle'a  ELn^Und 
under  Boary  IV.,  3fii9— Dorotbj  Wordiwarth^i  Por* 
tugiiese  Journal,  BHO^Wflltkarteii,  1£.  MLHer^i,  10# 
— Water-gLu*  mutflJi  paint,  Bfra.  Anna  Lea-Merrttt 
on,  do— Women,  moTeme&t  for  degreei  at  cam- 
brldi«  and  Oxford,  1U1,  UH. 
Vucataa,  Holmes^  Moaumentaof,  118^ 


Nos.  1 592-161 7j 


Inde 


X. 


[Vol.  Ixii 


Editorial  and  Mlsoellaneous 
Articles. 

^irrtom  Troobto tS.  988 

AltaBj  PoUoe  JoafVMBt 4W 

AlbaaytWhatTbey  DoAt 878 

**  ImerloftB  **  DoctrtBe,  The  N«w 70 

j^Bcrtoan  BAtnd  of  Xaglttkd 40 

Arbltralloa.  Intcrnatkmal 188 

AraMelaa  BffMlutloiii 98 

Bayard  CeDeore 848 

BtlUfetenoy,  BMOcnlBlng 178 

Blabop  amoac  tlM  Proi»lMtB ji9 

^*HMi.  Protpecta  of  a 591 

\Boiid8ale,  OoTcmment 189 

^JMtaahCaaeand  tha  Jlagoat 910 

BulBcaall«i.AWordto 879 

Chaaiia  without  Variety 910 

SCkleaffo    Damocratlo     CooTentloD, 

Proapact 498 

CAvlMerTloa  Law,  Claraland's  Com- 
plete Kzteaaloa  of 879 

OonpletSon  of  the  Work  of  Extend- 

lag  the  CtTll^erTloe  Law 879 

OoamlaBHyiiiBa 808 

Cttbaa  Catechism 811 

iMoitar  Slcaals  In  MoreU 71 

Be  Doctrtaa  and  De  racto 95 

Delaware  Benaiorthlp  Contest 987 

"*  ^*«>emocrata  Mot  All  Dead 800 

Macusslcn,  Function  of 109 

BIseoMloii,  Valne  of 980 

Disguised  ReTolntloa 179 

Bdncatlon  Question  In  Xnglaad 801 

Bnglaad.  American  Hatred  of 46 

'  Baglaad,  Education  Question  In 801 

HUfland.  Free  Trade  In 407 

Bagland  on  her  Knees 818 

BBglaad*s  Revenue  and  Am.  Trade...  838 

Flaanoe,  Lesson  la  448 

Free  Trade  In  fngland 407 

French  Claims  Veto 440 

Ffcnch     Nstlonal    Assemblies    and 

Congress 98i 

Furaess.  ^ llllam  Henry lu 

GeaUemtn.  Political    400 

Uermaa  and  Irish  Crims  aitd  Disor- 
der  ^ 988 

Germany,  Press  and  OoTemmwit  In.    49 

Gold  Standard  Assured 880 

Guatemala  Described  by  Calrano 103 

BayeaajMlMcKlnley 988 

Bcndersdn  Kx-8enator,  on  MoKlnley  498 

BomoBOixsghy  In  GoTcmment 91 

IsamlgTatloo.  Foreign 948 

in  Close  ^ouch  with  the  People 800 

iBf pectrtz, The 41I 

Intention  Is  Intematlooal  Relations.  801 
Internatto^al  BtmetaUio  Agreement, 

That...., 486 

llago  and  the  Money  Market 0 

Jingoes  and  the  BrItiBh  Case 910 

•  Laureates  and  Poets 80 

Literary  Crisis 983 

Utmry  Propmty  Onoa  More 874 

MeKlnley  and  Hayes 988 

MeKlaley,  Bx-fi«nator  Benderson  on.  498 
MeKlnley  m  Principle  and  In  8che> 

dale 940 

^cKlnley.  Meaning  of gs2 

^■sKl^y  Numlnaied 484 

MeKinley's  oratory 406 

MeKluley*8  Blteuce 800 

Made  In  France 281 

Majorttlca.  Fatal 888 

^%fi<f^  CompiMiy. 5 

Militarism  In  a  Remtbllo*. '.*.!*.'.'.'. '.'.'.'!'.  100 

Monroe  "Doctrtae^* 90 

Monroe  DoctrlL  e,  Derelopmeo  t  of . . .        4 
Morton.  GuTemor,  and  the  Platform  804 

Morton's,  Governor.  Position 836 

Matlooal  aoi»or 47 

national  Insanity       198 

Mew  Mexico  Twraty  two  Tears  Ago. .  887 

Mew  York  ( Ity,  Future  of stO 

Mew  York,  Greater , 888 

%ae  Issue  Disposed  of T 801 

'One- Una  Power  In  America 47 

Faaaionerand  his  Dollar 44H 

^ngeonholed  Knowledge 174 

^^Intf orms .  410 

Flau's Legal  Posltloa!!!'.!!'.'.'.!!'.!!!'.!!  lot 

Pocket  vs.  Patriotism us 

Popular  Loans  and  Ityndlcate  Loans. .    48 

Press.  Uaforttmate 350 

Prosperity's  Advance  Orator 400 

BaUroad  Case*. Two 410 

BarlprorityJ*o1ie7of 860 

^iepubllcan  Morality.  FaUure  of 178 

^^epobllcan  Nominee 484 

■lepnbUcan  Platform  at  St.  Louis. ...  484 

moad  to  victory 818 

Boot  of  the  Trouble 70 

Ruleof  Thumb 490 

■alvation.  Good  American '.['  lOO 

2!ft?^'H*r  R«^OoBqoeB^  cf 104 

Baatlonal  Issue  Disposed  of 801 

Osualurlal  Dtealty 980 

^BMrmaa  BUtoe 400 

OMvsnt  •a  Divided    804 

^^•fivarfis  aectastou 4AO 

^SBerrPurtys Platform... .:  .;    09 

■^■lia  •mertcaa  BepubUe,  a  Bpecl- 

BgSToiptoiy::::^ 

ftrtflr  Lrglslattoa 01 

Tariff.  Soane  Basults  of  we 119 

2knm(^T)  and  Journal 80fl 

Tofjrollapae 487 

Traaavaal,  British  In  the 109 

TaMfaa^la  as  a  thiur  Republic 0 

f  SMsnete  Oomml8»IOB 7.  94 

jMcraslaa  Gold  Flelda 118 

SgiQMiMiBurpnfe 109 

Tfliafw  Tenor 194 


Special  Correspondence. 

Domestic-Prohibition  In  Malae 00 

The  Bsstem  Question  In  Crete. ...  180 
American  Orlenul  Society's  Meet- 

Ine 809 

Civil  Service  Principles  In  the  De- 
partment of  State 807 

Protest  of  the  Mountain  Lover.  . .  430 

Two  N^w  G«*nnan  Tragedies 401 

England— Toe  Thomas  Pahie  ExhIbI 

tlonln  London 10 

Unpublished  Letters  of  Thomas 

Palne 471 

Spanish  Art  In  London 01 

Royal  Academy's  New  Departure  110 

The  Ca*  lyle  Boose  in  Chelsea 9H0 

New  Deffr^es  at  Oxford 891 

New  National  Portrait  Gallery...  330 

Tbe  New  Osllery 808 

The  Royal  Academy   439 

Franoe— The  French  a osdemy 80 

Lafraettre's  La  Fontaine    74 

Paintings  at  ChantUIy 116 

Condd  and  the  Revocation  of  the 

Kdlot  of  Nantes. IRO 

Omcker's  Lets'ug ... 104 

Napol««n  and  Alexander  I. . .  .91 4.  808 

Barras's  Memoirs 876,808 

Madame  de  Cbasteoay 409.  480 

Perslgny's  Memoirs 804 

>ctlon  and  Inaction  In  Europe...  380 

Paris  Salons 4e0 

Italy— A  Doomsday  Book  Doomed  ....      8 

The  Bastera  Question 97 

Thlrty-flfth  Anniversary  of  Car- 

ducct's  Prof4*ssor»hlp 178 

Italy's  HunUUatlon  andProweas 

In  Africa 4 984 

Social  Regeneration  In  Italy 808 

How  Italy  is  Governed 418 

Why  Italy  Is  Not  Rich 488 

Henry  Cemuscbl 431 

Germany— Sodermann*s  '  Love  In  a 

Cottage" 98 

The  Complete  "Faust"   on  the 

Oermanstaffe 840 

The  German  Quarter-Centennial.  184 

Two  New  German  Tragedies 401 

British  Oulana>A    Colonist  00  the 

Venesuelan  Boundary  Queatlon    79 

The  Canba  of  Guiana 108 

Pope  Alexan<i«>r  VI. 's  BuU,  and 

tbe  Treaty  of  Munater 318 

Auftralasla— Tasmania... 00 

TheMaorls       900 

Japan- Political  Development  In  Ja- 
pan  vrr. 04 

Partv  PoUUcs  In  Japan 870 

Revenue  Measures  in  Japan 414 

Amherst  Eclipse  Expedition 468 

Occasional  Correspondence 

Addition  and  Subtraction 89 

4Lmerlosn  Batted  of  Kngland 89,  07 

American  School  In  Rome 107 

"  As  Tou  Like  It"  at  Smith  Collage..  400 

Athenian  Forum lOi 

BalumoreUp  to  Date 18^ 

Book-Worms 300 

•Tarry" 177,  \ 07 

Collf^ge  Term luo 

Colter.Jobn        410 

Columbia  College  In  1 770 877 

Corinth,  Exploration  of 00 

Correction.  A 479 

fotton  rrop,Present 106 

Cuba  Libre 9<«4 

^ba.  RecogQitloa  of 137 

D«)ntlstt  In  Society 490 

Enemies  of  Mank  nd 70 

England's  CI vUlslmr  Power 03 

Prance,  Schools  I0.  before  the  Revo- 

lutlou 76 

"Gsllo" 88 

Olas  d  Paper,  Reason  for 76 

Guatemala.  The  Good  Name  of 1 76 

Halle.  Faculty  of  the  University  of .. .  107 

Hsrd  esse 434 

Heine's  Solitude 1 07 

"  Rlred  Man"..       107. 177.  107.  960.  806 
Hutchinson's.  Tbomaa.  Strictures  ....  816 

Inailtutes  snd  Novelbe 04 

Jefft  raoo's  Draft  of  theKentacky  Re- 

/    solutions 106 

Tlngo  Oeogrsphy 04 

fingo  History...  07 

OlngnUm.Tbe  Hotbed  of 82 

Klua's,  RufuB.  Correspondence 388 

KlrehhofT,  A..  TisUmonlal  to 04 

Letlbton,  Lord  ]06 

Le«senlng  of  Difficulties 484 

Ught:  A  DlscrlmlnaUon 117 

Led  ffe's  Jin  k  o  History 07 

Macksy,  Capt.  Jsimes 810 

Uacsslne  writing.  Careless 08 

Maryland  Colonof 76 

Mnnarchbm.  Iiukllous 81 

Naked  Bed    988,  349,  800 

Nsilonal  University  at  Washington. .     70 

Neeoof  aNewRevlrw 188 

NfgroF'^-Lore ]9 

Normal  Schools.  Debasement  of 800 

ObJ>  ct- Lesson 454 

Paine.  Thomas,  Unpublished  Letter 

„    of       ..  118.408 

Parthenon  Inscription 833 

Personal  Fiction  and  Fact 884 

Pidgin  Spanish 883 

Hlaglsrlst  Transatlantic 106 

i*rotectlon— by  Annexation 118 

Kork-Fisbes.  Concerning 900 

Rossrttl.  CtarlsUns,  Memorial  to 804 

I  Ruaalan  Bryce 809 

■Reward  aod  the  Monroe  Doctrine ....    96 

•Seward  vs  Cleveland 08 

^Silver  Prripsgaada 987 

Slniie  Tax  Community 960 

Smith,  a4am. on  Prohibitory  Duties. .    08 

S'.othem/'aupers  and  Races 433 

"Squirrel  Girl" hh 

Slepbfins.  George.  In  Memory  of 410 

Soger  Bountv  aad  the  Comptroller. . .  483 

Traohen»*  College 987 

Tucker,  G.  M.,  and  Hail.  F 987 

Ualtarlan  Churoh,  First  in  America. 

107.  170 


Yenesuela  Ccmralasloii.  Pointers  for.  81 
iWar  with  England 11,80.    '8 

Washington's  Library 404 

aWhere  war  Should  Elevate 170 

>^' Women  "  Used  Ad jcctlvally 33 

Titles  of  Books  Reviewed. 


Absolute  Science  of  Space  (Bolyal's). 

_  : .     issarge's) 

Af  rlka.  (Lens's)  Wanderungen  in. . . . 


Adamana  (Passa 


199 

100 

10« 

AaasslB.  Louis.  (Msroou's)  Ufe  of  ....  869 

Age  cf  Reason  rPalne'0 404 

^>a6aifui,  (Sinclair's)  Two  Years  on 

the 100 

Algebra  (Seta fader's) 880 

Alpine  Notes,  and  tae  Climbing  Foot 

(Wherrj'fc) 478 

Am»>as»ador  of  the  Vanqnlshed  (Bro- 

glli^'s) 418 

Americ «  Llberau  (Vickers'O 480 

American  Imprints.  Early  (Psine's). .  100 

Amot  Judd  (Mltrbell*k> 181 

Anatomy  (Qttaln'i|) 918 

Aodenen.  H.  O.  (Pain's) 990 

Andersen.  H.  C,  (Sommer's)  Stories 

by \ 990 

Antma  Poetse  (Coleridge's) 180 

Animals.  Domesticated  rSbaler's) ....  80 
Animal  Symbolism  In  Ecclesiastical 

Architecture  «Evsns*s) 406 

Ann^auz  dans  TantlquttA  Romalne, 

(Deloohe'y)  Port  des 400 

Annees  de  PrlntMnps  (TheurlefS)  ...  807 

Appenxell  (Rlcbman's; 941 

Arabic  EnLllsh  Vocabulary.  Bgypclan 

(Solro's) 470 

Ar«*ol lecture  In  Italy,  eta,  Uiongfal 

low's)  CycloosDdia  of 09 

Arctic  Discoveries  (OreetyS) 970 

Argot -Francis   DicUonnalrs    (Dele- 

ssHe's) 980 

Armenian  Poems  (Blackwell's) 480 

Art.  (Haddon's)  Evolution  In 980 

Asia.  (Cahun's)  Introduction  k  I'Bk- 

tolrede 403 

Assembly    of    Gods    (Triggs's    L^d- 

irate^) 7. 800 

Aucassln  and  Nicolette 430 

Aus  Melsem  Leben  (Vrgt's^ .,  970 

Australasian  Colonies.  (Jefths's)  His- 
tory of 884 

A>entur6sde  ma  Vie  (Rnchefort's)..  917 
Avery  Architectural  Library  Cata- 
logue      88 

Baraotxova,  Vera  (Kovalevsky  's)  . . . .  1 69 
Barnard.  F.  A.  P  .(Fultob's)  Memolrof  830 
Bayem  unter  dem  Mlnlsterlum  Mont- 

gelas  /Moulin  Ecksrfr ) 177 

Beautiful  Houses  (Olbsoa^i) 900 

Belgium.  (Desirte'»)  Renal-ssnce  of 

Sculptorein 18 

B«>rlln,  (Dahms's)  Utterarlsches 00 

Blbltogrspble  Hlstorlqoe  (Langlnis's)  409 
Bibliomaniac,  (Field's)  Love  Affairs 

ofa 994 

BUderatlas     sur     Gescblchte     der 

Deotscben    Natlonallltteratur 

(Kbaneok'f) 84 

Biological  Lectures    and  Addreasea 

(Marshall's) 430 

Birds,  (Headley's)  Structure  and  Life 

of 888 

Bismarck   und   die   Parlamentarler 

(Poschlnger's) 00 

Bismarck- Museum  (Strecker's) 307 

Black  Splrlu  and  White  ^Cram's). ...  181 
Bloomer.  Amelia.  (Blonmer»  Life  of.  809 

Bonheur  de  Glnette  (Mattel's) 970 

Bookbindings  ( Matt  be  we'») 64 

Book-hunter  In  Utm^on  (Roberts's! . .  904 
Bookplstes,  Lsdlcs'  (Laboucbere's) . .  180 
Book -Prices  Current,  Am>  rican,  Eng 

llsh 180 

Book  Sales  of  1800  (Scott'0 404 

Bcoki  and  ihetr  Makers  during  the 

Middle  Ages  (Put nam'») 499 

Books.  (Pennell'B)  Bustratlon of 980 

Boss  (Tyler's) 408 

B  ston    Public    Library    Handbook 

(Small'n) 930 

Boston  Public  L*brary.  (FenoUosa's) 

Mural  Paintings  tn 416 

Bougainville,  iKeratlaln's)  Jeunesse 

ds 347 

Brain.  (I><^nsldson's)  Qrowth  of 960 

Brlt-fe  und  Schrirten  (BUInw's) 141 

Rrltlsb  Policy.  (Seeley's^  Growth  of.    340 

Brother  and  Sister .348 

Burmsn.Tbe 916 

Bums.  Robert,    In    Other    Tongues 

(Jacks's) 811 

Butler,  Joseph,  (Olsdstone't)  Works 

of 940 

California  of  the  Sou  h  (LIndley  and 

Wldnejr's) 107 

Caxnpalanlng  In  South  Africa   and 

Egypt  (Molyneux's) 888 

ranyotu  of  the  CTolorado  (Pow«>irs) . .  461 
Cape Hnm.(8pears's)  Gold  Dlgg*ugs of  8^4 

Castelsr.  Bmllln  (Hannay's) 416 

Cavalry  Studies  from  Two  Great  Wars  40l 

Century  Dictionary 474 

Chamberlain.  Jo«eph  1  J^-ves's) 860 

Cbansonnlers  et  les  Cabarets  Artls- 

Uquesivaibel's) 84 

riiauct  r's  TroUus  (RMtredge's) 408 

Gheever.  Haatam  and  Hilton  Fami- 
lies (Baasam's) 348 

Cbemlns  de  Per  aux  Btats-Unls  (Paul 

Dubois's) 801 

Chemistry  .Analytical  (Monshutkln's)  18 
Chemistry,  Theoretical  (NerLst's)  ...  409 

r'bess  Noveltle*  (Bird's) loo 

Chess  Spsrks  (Ellis's) 100 

Chester,  nid  (Crlckmore's)       107 

Child  and  Childbnof*  in  Folk-Thought  180 

CMldho.  d.  (ftnlly's)  ^tu  lesof 988 

Cblna^Jspaa  War  (Vladimir's) 4?0 

Chltral.  (Tounghusbaad's)  Relief  of  .  904 
Chltrat.  (Rejnon'»)Wlth  Kelly  In  . . ..  904 
Cholera.  (Koch's)  BacU  riologlcal  Dl- 

agnoslsof 909 

Christian  aod  Leah  (Tompert's) 408 

Chronicles  of  (^untAntoolo(BopB*s)  408 

CUirenoe(Harte's).... 181 

Colnrdce,  Lord,  rFlshbaok's)  Reool> 

lecflonsnr 144 

Collateral   and    Direct   laharltanoa 

1  axes  (Doe  Passos'a) 441 


Colorado,  (Powell's)  Canyons  of  tbe.  48t 

Comedlea  of  Courtship  ( Hope's) 406 

Comenlus.  (Keatlnge's)  Great  Didac- 
tic of 491 

Coming   Individualism    (Hake  ana 

Weaslaus) 880 

Coming  of  Tbe  jdora  ( White'*) gf 

Commentaries  on  Conadtutlon  of  U. 

S.  (Foater's) 900 

Ccucord  and  Appledora.  (Stearns's) 

Sketches  from 110 

Confederate  Soldier  In  the  Civil  War 

OaBree**), 499 

Confessloiu  (Verlalne's) I8 

CoogresaloBal  Currency  (Gordon's)..  110 
Conquest  of  the  Country  Northwest 

or  the  River  Ohio  (Envllsh's) lOT 

Constantinople  ((n«ment*«) ISO 

Constantinople  (Crawford's) ItS 

Constantinople  (Oroavenor*s) 09 

Constitution  of  U.  S.,  (Foster's)  Com- 
mentaries on 905 

OontemDoralns,  Les  (Lemaltre's)  ....  904 
Copyright,  (Putnam's)  Question  of..  486 
Corresrdo.  Antonio  AllegrI  da  (Rio- 

cTs) 8S 

Cour  et  un  Aventurl^r  (8yveton*s)  . .  488 

Cretan  PIctographs  (Evans's) 938 

Criminal  Sociology  (Ft  rrl's) SQi 

Crystallography  (Maskelyne's) 900 

Cuba  (M^rchan's) 80f 

Cuba  and  the  Cunans  (Cabrera's) 807 

Cuba,  (Halstead's)  Rtory  of 4V6 

Cuellar.  Capt.,Latter  by  (Sedgwick's)  189 
CtU'ure    ArUatlque    en     Am^rlqua 

(Ring's) ;...  980 

Cup  of  Trembling  (Foote'S) 161 

Cycllste  en  France,  (Bertot's)  Gtildes 

du 499 

Cyprinodonta  (Oarman's) 07 

Damages,  (Sedgwick's)  Elements  of.  449 
Dartmoor,  (Rowers)  Prrambulatton 

of 908 

David,  (Gerard  (Wral**s) OS 

Day  Dreams  (Reekie's) 909 

Days  of  Auld  Lang  Syne  (Kaclaren's)  181 

D«atta-Wake  (8toddart>) 901 

Democracy  and  Liberty  (Leckv's)....  880 
De  Nature  Deorum  ( Brook  •  's  Cicero's)  405 
De  Quln«v  y  and  his  Friends  (Bom's).  449 

Demter  Ri  f age  (Rod's) .TTt.  . . .  916 

Deutschen  Relohs,  (Sjrbel's)  B^rOu- 

dungdes 199.149 

Deutschen   Stadtverfawung,  (Keut- 

gen's)  Ursprung  d*-r 989 

Deutsohes  ^  orterbuch  (Beyne's)  ....    78 

D*^  utschcs  Wdrterbuch  ( Paul's) 1  OS 

Devant  le  Ki^le  (VogO^'s) 418 

Diplomacy,  (Benedettl's)  Studies  In. .  918- 
Divina  rommedla  (Scariaaxlnl's) ....  ilO 
DfTt<-'P.n!p>)»»>  ...     04 

D<  ■  ■  -  .  -  1  ,  -..rv..  .1--^..  45B- 
Jh  K  ■  ImuuhUra  tti^YWB)  40S 

IX  .     Foj-d-s)  .............  408 

Df      ^Mmn1ll  (*l)aler's^  .  ..     89 

D<MNf  P- iii»«  uT  Kbambfn'Sji,,.  ...  900 

D<Nrto  Bt-ed  (    sMiSj  ,,,.*. 909 

D4>rii}»}'  tWfirfU^n^tt 181 

D<4j  iKmt^'are  rPrntri^p}  ., 01 

Drnwiti>£r  In  Art,  (Moofv'ti  ^Isnceof  930 

DiiTikhUL  Jnise  ..  , ,, 909 

Est E li'^  KrilKTiKMi  Hlolwrl«"S) 308 

Ec^l'|*'l^f^^>m  Rsb'oi*  Firro  tFl»»Hl*S>  ..  908 
EtMle  Sdliit  '<^lm>itil''i]ii'N  i  ^  HiVtf  . ...  800 
Ec.'is'HHicH.  i.Hi-iian'p)  SHuftletla......     19 

FMii'J^i'i'ii  I  tloiinani'ii..,. ...... .  401 

EcLueall"  □    fu  A  ogle  I  err?    tPnmion- 

.    tler'») 878 

Education    et    Instruction  (Bruna- 

t*re's) 77 

Rdticatlon.  (B  Ir  adale's)  Sttidiea  In ... .  401 
■gypr.  (Sallh's)  Churches  and  Monaa- 

.     terlesof 888 

Egyptian  Decorative  Art  (Petrle's)...  147 

Egyptian  Tales  (Petrle's) 393 

Kkkehard  (Scheffel's) 191 

Electricity.  (Benjamin's)  Intellecttial 

BIseof 18 

Electric  Lighting  (Oocker's) 478 

Elementar  -  Mathematlk    (HolsmQl- 

ler's)    34 

BllKat>eihaa  Soimet-Cycles  (Crowe's)  401 
Elisabeth.  Queen.  (Hume's)  Court- 
ships of 418 

Emancipated  (Gsslna's)    198 

Englano.  (Raasome's)  Advanced  Hls- 

toryof 9«9 

Englan<f.  Feudal  (Round's) 899 

England,  (Cannan^s;  History  of  Local 

Rares  In 479 

England  In  10th  Century.  (Cheyney's) 

Social  Chsns^s  In       lOt 

England  under  Henry  IV.  (Wyiie's)..  390 

England's  Darling  (Austin's)       437 

Ed  gland's  Wealth  Ireland's  PovorQr 

(Lough's) 491 

Em  llschen  Sprache,  (KlOpper's)  Real- 

Tiexlkonder       878 

English  Essays  from  a  French  Pan 

(Jusserar  d's) 196 

English  Glee  Com poser«  (Baptle's)....  401 
English     Homes,     Eome      Ancient 

(Bodges's) 49 

English  Plnstrelsle(BarlngOoold's).  800 
English  Monetary  Blstory,  (Shaw's) 

Tracts  of 408 

Enoch.  B  ok  of  the  Secrvts  of 119 

Episcopal  Church,  Proteatant  In  U. 

^.  tTiffnny'S) 8*7 

Episcopate  In  America  ( Perry's) 977 

Brlanger  Burschenscbaft(Reuter's)..  479 

Erstltngswerkes.  Gescblchte  des 1 77 

Esquisses  Mezlcalnes  (Heard's) 989 

Esther  (Blunt's)    909 

Etudes  Lltt4talrea  et   Moralea  (HO- 

mon's) 896- 

Eorqpe  In  Africa  In   19th  Century 

(Latimer's) 18 

Evolution  and  Man's  Place  In  Mature 

(  alderwood's) 499 

Evolution  In  Art  (Haddon's) 989 

Excursions  in  Llbrarla  (Powell's) ....  480 
Extraordinary  Cases  (Cimtonls)  ..  449 
Fablea  and  Fabulists  (Nen^Sligtag's) .  88 
Famllle  et  las  Amia  de  Monulgne 

(Stapfer's). 00 

Far  Eaatem  QMtlon  ((n>trol*s) 818 

Father  Archangel  of  Scotiaad  (Gra- 

ham*i> 890 

Father  of  the  fUrtat(Wataon*a>. 901 


Vol.  Ixii] 


Inde 


X. 


[Jan.-June^  1896 


PuMtvMotalohtM.  Nttrnberg«r  (May-    ^^ 

ci»g) XOO 

P^Mtoof  Autolrou«(Peniien'«) 849 

PMlte^  Les  (XlotUhao  •) IS 

Femaie  derant  la  Bclence  Contem- 

poralne  (Lourb^t's) 809 

Vemmra.  (Le^oavO's)  Hlttolre  Mora'e 

det ,370 

FOTffOMon.   (Fergtuona)  Recorda  of 

thaClan  109 

yarry.  Julet,  Dlscoim  et  Ootnlons. . . .  395 
yiftta  AmiT  C«tnia  (Powell's )  \5B 

RUedaD4pat«(0lipet't) 870 
■heM,   Pomll.  in   B  Itlan   MoMom 

(Woodward's) 1 97 

Flahea.  Uvlng  and  Poaall  ( Dean  a) ....  444 

flsttes  of  Slnaloa  (Jordan's) ^18 

Fleet  Street  Ecloguea  (DaTldson's).. . .  908 
Florentine  Paloten  of  Benaiasanoe 

(Berenvon's) 8W 

Florida.  (C^ry'sj  Hunting  an<l  Pian- 

laaln 404 

Folk-lore,  (Cox's)  Introduction  to. . . .    83 

Force  du  BialC^dam^s) 853 

Formosa.  From  Far  ( Naokay's) 367 

Forward  House  (Case's) 61 

Foaa(1    Flsbe>    In    BritUb     Muwnm 

(Woodward's) •  l®'' 

France.  (Bertot's)  Guides  da  CycMste 
-     1-"  ..  498 

100 


1  J^xmllum  ih  r  «j   l. 


frft    .-11 

f  4^b*T«'«k 140 

(llsariaJE'si  .,   140 

FpSDrh  ftfid  PtDgllib   Sllltarjf  T*-iin», 

ntarn  r^aMltctionarf  (*f  ...473 

t1^a1  il^r&inmat  oi^ ,,        .   ,..416 

Frrij*>li  Law  at  Ms^rUiCP  and  DHm  ce 

<Kenj-fti 441 

FrliiKi(iflfHiiK*teinan*'air       202 

FroiTi  BliDiDiiJoii  toStnolsy  ii^f%(if*i'->..  295 
From  ThftBlatk  SS«  *li*nuich  Prr-Ua 

an'l  TnfllR  fWw»tii'r>    876 

Fanfl,  li^oolneyi  IntrijdiicUon  y*  ...  119 
FOf#tllelili(?h«i  fcPhrifMC'Uef  ZlniKiar- 

niann'sl* 1/7 

Oellad^^  I  FU<fTli7r'A^ 102 

fliS-^T&pli'eHli.r"Ki«<'  (  L»ripari*i*r  -»)..  8«»9 
fl.»rman  KnulHli    iKtloiiftry  (Plu^el- 

S.'hH5irh  TiinKi«r'*!  ,        198 

OrtTn  Ul  Hi  m  jc*  ^>f  ToHfi^y  iTl  n**V  i  ...  400 
Oofinftit;   fSftylej's)  Comtnon  fch^iol 

8vsvpra  of ...  878 

«(iiija»i^  ft  BHIlca  (F»in»»n'»> b8 

Olony  CiiT'iit  iSTtsru'ii^  •••'?! 

Blrli.  t  A  ■  fHN  ■irv*  ^^M-*  TaUti  wi  f  h  . .  19 
Olfl*  tVufip^^'^M  KiJuH»b  ►H*pil*«'fl'  ..  491 
Qtory  H^f  tn«i  lif'U  1  HVi*ri*»>  ..489 

Odirtbt  t  ♦  I  T»cbi>*  city's) 894 

(FTrrn^oiiun'd)    .  ..  160 

fl^Hie'a  r«n*f  tri*^1i*r-»]       818 

HoM  Dlw<flr\g9  -r  "  ■D(j*'H"rn  i  H|.4*iir^'s)  824 
OoM  Fl  h  - 1  f !  T  Til n  r  h t in li  t  Lu m ai  1 «  i)  398 
Oov^njiin-nS'* '.r  I\*itsk>- i'i*'ar*'»i  ...  99 
Orav  ftoai^'- 1  iH,.ir]iirMj>t  .....   ..  ...     61 

hv*li.^5  i»f  .... -  846 

Qtt^k  AiiXhuiU^m^ifimffiofT  «di1  Je 

TQnBB^  Uaiiuat  or..,^.  ..812 

Ofvefe  Few    TcvtauK^ht^  iMitcbrii's) 

BandtKiokof  ..  ,.....,  .  -.916 
QrMk     Fab^rli     CbteRr     riote^nmlc 

ffJr€.nWrp>  ,...„,.,...  ,..-880 
Gr««k  Rf  ulpture,   rOftrtlii«r'»)  Ha  rid- 

hfiok  f>f     . ...869 

Gre^ulaafl  IcefleLSs  i  Wriffbt  aiiO  Up- 

b»ni*s> ...:.. ...  «25 

Ourof^s  of  FrtliAxa  t  Rar*?  • '  ...  SVf 

0iiBta*iis  idolpboji  [i^o^iiff**}  ...  878 

SalSTT,  1 0  omaa  i  Hatf»ejr'H  t.  ..  876 

>    Bamburv     uu«l     Enil&nd      (Ebrtin 

brritii ..  978 

Hands!  Ia\  NtMiitr  iDrb«ii'«>    .  . .  870 

HaMWin ,  B  i  I  too  a  o  <1  C  b  t> '  v  ■?  r  If  Am  i  E  les 

mBCdatn'sj  .,   ..  3*9 

HenK-'bel!^   sml    tSod^^ra    Attm^niitray 

iCIerlct'-Hj 18 

HtUiof  StvtuuViiUflffl*")  ^  488 

HlrnHlA^afi,  { McC'ormk't'a  *  AJtl^l  In 

tbe  ............. ,    . , 869 

His  Ffttb^rs  Snn  (Mattb^wsU 181 

HlntortcKl   mn4   iilher  Ps|>?rs    ^K?y- 

nnld»'*3   ....,..►.   ...   .. 944 

Hlitor*,  f  iL'tiin'st  SLiidy  of  .   ..      ...     89 

EIoku.a^al '  Ctonpoiiri  ui. ...  308 

Lfeuf  496 

Home    Rule    Parl'aqient.     (Lucy's) 

DUry  of 484 

Homme  et  la  Vie  (Vapereau's) 860 

Horticulture      In      New      England 

(Blade's)       119 

House  that  JUl  Built  (Gardner's) 9^9 

How  to  Drain  a  Hou«e  (Waring's). . . .  189 
Hoguenota  and  the  Revocation  or  the 

^dlct  of  Nantes  (tialrd'si 19 

Hunting  In  Many  Lands  (Rooseyelt 

and  urlnnelt^) 814 

Hutchinson,  Thoroai  (Hosmer's)  Life 

of  298 

mustratlon  of  Books  (Pennell's) 939 

In  a  Walled  Garden  (Belloc's) 41 

India,  In  (Cb<^Trlllon^s) 443 

Indian  JoumalNt  (^krlne^s)  .  — 


Indian.  ( irinnell's)  Story  of  the.. 


Inferno  (V usgravn^s  Dante's) 160 

International  Law  (Hall't) 440 

International     Law,     (Lawreoce'i) 

Prtnelplesof 440 

Interpretation  and  Construction  of 

the  Laws  (Black's) 440 

Intestate  Succeaslon  In  N.  Y.  (Kem- 

sen  *A) 441 

Into  the  ttighways  aod  Hedges  (.Hon- 

tr«aor'i>T 61 

Invention.  (Haaon*Si  Origins  of 924 

Invertebrata,  (Shipley's)  Z(.91ogy  of..  198 

Iranl«ches  Namenfoucn  (Justt's) 999 

Ireland,  Pagan  (Wood^Martin's)  62 

Irish  Peasantry,  (Carleton's)  Traits 

and  Stnrlca  of 473 

IrraUe**  Buahranger  (Hornung's) 4:28 

Italian  KOato,  <8treatf eltd's)  fiastrrs 

of 867 

Japan.  ( Murray's)  Samlbook  for.  . . .  178 

Japan.  (Trlstram^i)  RnmMi|  In 908 

Japan-China  War  (InouyeFif. 476 

Japanese     Convert,      ((Tcbimnra's) 

Diary  of « 480 


Japaneee  Marriage  (Sladen'o) 969 

Journal  of  a  Spf  la  Paris  *    Reign  of 

Terror  (HesdlD'B) 179 

Jnde  the  Obscure  (Bard  193 

Keat**!  letters  (Korwr  806 

Keats's  Poems  (l>rnry** '  806 

Key  of  the  Paciflo  (o  > 199 

King  of  Andaman  (C_^:^      181 

King  Stork  and  King  ^^^     alak's)  104 

King's  i'eaoe  (InderiP  974 

Koch  on  the  Dlagnc  .era.. . . .  969 

Konversarfons  -  '  (Brock- 

hans's) 100 

Korean  Games  (caUn's) 948 

Krishna  Kanta's  WUI  ( Chatter jee's) .  944 
Labor  In  its  Relations  to  Law  (Stim- 

son's) 166 

Labor  Question  In  Britain  (BouHer's)  479 
Ladlt-B' Bookplates  (Laboncbere's)...  189 
Lad7<tf  Quairy(Bamett*») 898 


John  (Waem's). 


4*« 


Mj^  Farge,  tfvnu  v  »t»»t«»i  mt »— < 

Lak<*s  of  North  America  (RusseU's) . . .  248 

Lamar.  Luclu«  Q.  C.  ( Hayes's) M4 

Lanaue  et  Utt^raiure  Fran(;aise(Petit 

de  JulleTllle's) 880 

Law's  Lumb«rRoora  (Watt**) 119 

Lectures  and  Euavs  ( vettleahlp's  > ...    64 
Legal  Hlstonr.  (White's)  OutUnea  of.  189 

Leplioptera.Brtctoh(M«ynek's) 889 

Levant.  (HogarthV)  Wandering  Scho- 

larln 998 

Ufe  of  Nancy  (JewetfS) 181 

Ltnguet  (Cmppl's) 84 

Literary  Ane'*doteaof  19th  Century 

(Nloolland  Wise's)  896 

Lltt^^ratnre     Francslse,    (Doumlc's) 

F.tudes  sur  la. 489 

Little    Rhymea    for    Uttle    I'eople 

(Pratt'*) 439 

Lives  of  the  PoeU  (Waugh's  John- 
son's)   848 

Llvrea  et  les  Ufien  (Ponsegrire's) 416 

London  Garland 99 

Lonffmans'  Oaaeiteer 180 

Lord  Hy land  (Bonnie  res's ^ 09 

Loud'^n  (Va.)  RanRer*  (Goodnart's)..  823 

Lover's  Saint  Ruth's  (Gtilney's) 181 

1  orrtcs  of  R«rth  (Lampman's) 480 

McKinley's  Masterpieces  (Paget's)...  494 
Ma  iemol»elle  Buguette  (Fraoay's)...  489 

Mafcda  (Sudermano's) 209 

Magnrtlc  Circuits  (Du  Bolt's) 478 

Manassas     to    Appomattox    (Long- 
street's) 146 

Manniuff,  (cardinal.  (Puroell's)  Ufe  of  161 

Marceau,F.B.  (Johnson's) 818 

Marcuerlte  de  Nsvarre,  (Lefranc's) 

D^m'^res  Podsies  de 889 

Mars(Loweiri>) 106 

Maiyland,  (Stetner's)  Cltlsenahlp  and 

Suffrageln 88 

Mathematical  Papers  at  Internation- 
al Mathematical  Congress .'.  878 

Maxims  of  Chanakya  (Raghunatbjt*s)  994 
MAcanl«me  de  la  vie  Modeme  (Ave- 

nel's)        860 

Mecbaolral  Engineer's  Pocket-Book 

(Kent'*) 96r 

Medlterrsnean  Trip  (Brooks's) 179 

Mellnflr    Snows    (Scboenalch  •  Caro- 

lath'f) 61 

Memories,  A  Few  (Anderson's) 844 

Aentone,  Cairo  and  <^rfn    (Wool- 
son's;       189 

Miliiary  Law  and  Precedents  (Wln- 
fhrop's) ._.       989 


MlUtary  Letters  and  Essays  (Maude's)  401 

Mind  and  Motion  (Romanes's) 

Mind   Training.    (Aiken's)    Methods 


<rf 41 

Minerals,  (Chester's)  Dictionary  of...  894 
Miranda,  (  Welsh's)  Last  Cruise  of. ...  149 

Miscellaneooa  Studies  ( Pater's) 991 

Misstoon  and  Mission  Philanthropy 

(Goldle's) 99 

Modeoa,  (Oondl's)  Duomo  di 807 

Modem  Civilisation  fn  Some  of  its 
Economic  Aspects(Cimnlngham*s)  999 

Molecules  (Rlsteen's) 147 

Molldre,    (ulvet's)    Lexlque    de    la 

Languede   989 

Monde  Sodaliste  (Seilhac'S) 473 

Money  (Nicholson's) 99 

Money  and  Ranking  (Whitens) 97 

Money  and  its  Relations  to  Prices 

(Price's) 474 

Money  and  Prices,  (SchoenhoTs)  His- 
tory of  197 

Mon  Franc-parler  ((:k>pp^'s) 4.9 

Mongolia  and  Tlbet,(Ruckhill's)  Jour- 
ney through 198 

Monk  of  KifeTLsinies) 181 

Mosby'a  Rangers  (Williamson's) 893 

Mosses.  (Campbell's)  Struc'ure  of 977 

MunlciiMti  (}ovrrnmeni  in  (Continen- 
tal Europe 'Shaw's) 293 

Musical  Terms   (Baker's)  Dictionary 

of 860 

My  Confidences  (LookerLampfon's).  883 
My  Lady  Nobody  (Masrten»'s). ...        498 

My  Mascot 360 

Mystery  of    Witch-Face     MounUln 

(Craddock's) 181 

Nama  and  Damara  (Francois's) 199 

NameTbls  Child  (Chesson's) 61 

Napoleon,  ( fUllis's)  Metrical  History 

of 179 

Ni4>ol4on,  (Turquao's)  Sceurs  de 899 

Napoleon  III   (Fraser's) 844 

Natural    History    Lore    and    Legend 

(Bulme's) 83 

Nature  in  Verae  (  ovejoy's)  903 

Neuengllsches  Lesebuch  (PlUfrel's) 19 

Nevius,  John  L..  (Neviu^'n)  Life  of. . .     19 
New  England  Fields  and  Woods,  In 

(Robinson's) 94 1 

New  Enicisnd  Town,  O'd  (Child's)....  126 
New  Kngland,  (Johnson's)  What  They 

Sav  in 478 

New  Orleans  (King's)  lo7 

New  f)weden,  Sto  y  of 360 

NUe  Springs.  (Colviile's)  Land  of  the.  904 
Norweiclan     Immigration,     (Ander- 

sonVB)  First  Chspter  of 163 

Number  Concept  (Conant's) 404 

NQmberger  Faustgeschlchten  (Mey- 
er's)   100 

Nursery  Ethics  ( Winterbum's) 09 

NyiBBhs.  Nixies  and  Naiads  (Evans's)  439 
Oaten  Pipe  (Kenyons) 438 


Odes  (Moore's) 488 

CSuvres  Completes  (Huygensf s) 894 

OfBdal  IntellGrence  (  Bnrdett's) 849 

Old-Kashloned  Garden  (Hayeses) 903 

Old  South  Leafl'>ts 9M9 

One  w  ho  Looced  On  ( Montrtoor*B) . . .  498 
Ontar«o  ( Ross's)  S<>hool  System  of . . .  49 1 

On  the  Point  (Dole's) 61 

Our  System  or  Government  (Rogers's)  409 
Ovnm.  (Wilson  and  Learning's)  Fer^ 

til^tlon  of 198 

Oxford  Church    Movement  (Wake- 

lng*s) 18 


Painting.  8eulp*ure  and  Arehlteetore 

(Ravmord^s) _ 

Paris.  (  %dolphtis'S)  MemoHcs  of 18 


19 


Parliament  during  the  19th  Century 

(Lowes  DIcklDson's) 866 

Parody  fHartlns) 496 

Paul  and  Virginia  of  a  Northern  Zone 

«>rachmann's).'. 498 
les  and  Shells  (Hawkee's) 908 

Pel ntnre  en  Europe  ( i.Af enenre's). ...  67 
Penological  and  Preventive  Prind- 

plrs  (rallack's) 19 

Perseus.  (Bartland's)  Legend  of 99 

Personal     Reminiscences     ( ruoker- 

man's) 106 

Pemela.  ( Lnpac^lirs)  Pittnra  In 1 98 

Petraroa,  Ofestlc%'s)  Rime  di 896 

Phrygia.  (Ramsay's)  Cities  and  olah 

opri-s  of 848 

Phys«cal  Geography.  (Terr's)  Ele- 
mentary   197 

Pianoforte  Playing,   (BhrMifecter's; 

Delivery  in 478 

Pianoforte  Sonata  (Shedlock's) 819 

Plerres  Gravies  (Relnach's) 408 

Pilgrim,     and    Other   Poems   (Bur- 

rcughs's)  438 

Pilgrim  Fathers  of    New    England 

(Brown's) 144 

Plnksand  Cherries  (Ko*s's) 498 

Pioneer  Work  in  Openlne  the  Medi- 
cal Pr  feasion  to  Women  (Black- 
well's)  864 

Plttura  In  Peruf  U  (LupatelU's) 1 98 

Plaidolrie  dans  la  Langue  Francslse 

(Mnnleraolaln's) 899 

Plant  Form,(Llilev  and  Mldgley's)  . .  4 16 
Plants,  (Marliann's)  Natural  History 

of 164 

Plato.  (BusaeU's)  School  of 474 

Plu  arch  (North's) 968 

Poems  (Du*r«'s) 489 

Poems  (McGaffey'4) 909 

Poems  (MeyneU's) 901 

Poems,  (Elected  (MltcheM's) 439 

Po'^ms  New  (Christina  Roesettl's)....  437 
Po^'l^     Bretonne     an     19e    SItele 

(Rou«se's) 99 

Pci  ie  Contemporalne  (Ros^^re'*) 496 

Po^Me^JLolse'syHistoire  de  la. 899 

PoePs  works  (woodberry  and  Sted- 

man**) 971 

Political  Science.  (Seeley's)  Introdnc- 

tlonto 479 

Porosnder  of  V»r«e  (Nesblt's) 903 

.*orphvry  the  Philosopher  to  his  Wife 

(ZImmem's)  469 

Pcrtugal,  (Wordsworth's)  Residence 

in 880 

Positive     Philosophy     (Martlneau's 

Comte's) 860 

^te.  Capt.  WlllUm,  Jr  .Journal .  403 
Providence  Tax  lisU  1 686-89  (Field's)  994 

Prussia.  (Tuttle's;  History  of 894 

Public  8pe%k1ng  and   Debate  (Hoi- 

yoake^)...::. 898 

Punch.  («plelmann's)  History  of 987 

Pushkin's  Prose  Tales 894 

Railway  Library,  Hopklna.(Teggart's) 

Catalogneof 77 

Rare  B'^ovs  and  their  Prices  (Rob- 
erta's)   904 

Bates,  Local  in  England  (Cannan's).  479 
Real  Estate  Tltirs  in  N.  T  (Gerard's).  441 
Reconstmotion  daring  the  (Tlvil  War 

(Scott's) 188 

Red  Men  and  White  (Wister's) 181 

Red  Star  (McManus's) 61 

Renaissance    Fancies    and   Studies 

(Paget's) 989 

Renaisaance,  (Be  enson's)  Florentine 

Painters  of 939 

Renard  the  Fox  (Jacob^'S)    119 

Rhode  Island  Houses,  Early  (Isham 

and  Brown's) 149 

RIpperda,  Baron  de  (Syveton'S) 439 

Hitter's    Geographlach  -  Statlsttsches 

L-xlkon 7^ 

River  Bend  (Hussey's) 489 

Riviera.  Ancient  and  Modem  (Len- 

th6rlc's) 40 

Roads   and   Pavements   in   France 

(Rockwell's; 119 

Rol  ApapUCherbuiIes's) 970 

Roland,  (Way  and  Spencer's)  Song  of    83 

Rolle,  R  chard,  of  Bampole 491 

Romans.  (Granger's)  worship  of 961 

Rome  and  Pompeii  (BMssler's) 971 

Russia  and  the  English  Church  (Blrk- 

beck'B) 184 

Russian  Politics  (Thompson's). 401 

Sarsfleld.  Patrick.  (Todhuntei's)Llfe 

of 89 

Schrlf  ten  und  UnwOrfe  (Nletssche's)    36 
Srl^oe  and  Art  Drawinv  (Spanton's)    49 
Sculpture  In  Belgium.  (Drstr^e's)  Re- 
naissance of 13 

Senate  of  U.  S..  (  Appleton's)  Century 

of 197 

Sen'ences  of  Publlllus  Syrus  (Blck- 

ford  Smith's) 814 

^herrnan'*.  John,  Recollections 80 

Siena.  Affr  sehl  della  Libreria  del 

Duomo  di 807 

RUva  of  North  Amer'ca  (Sargent's)..  831 

Sister  of  a  Saint  (Ohanning's)  49H 

Smoke  (Turgeneff's) 807 

Snow  Bird    and    the  Water   Tiger 

(Coropton's) 88 

nocial  Rights  and  Dutiee  (Stephen's)  449 
Sodologie,  (Gtmiplowics*s)  Precis  de  998 
Socrates  and  Athenian  Society  (God- 
ley's) 166 

Soil  (»ln.*'s) 49 

Sonata,  Pianoforte  ( Shedlock's) 819 

Song  Favor*  (Dalmcm's) 901 

Songs  (Spanldlng's) 909 


Bonga  from  the  Greek  (Sedgwick's). .  48(1 
Bonn  of  Might  and  Day  (Ounaanloa^)  MS 
— Tan^ —    


Sonland  Sen<-e  (Kimball's) . . 

Sous  les  (Jalona  (Relin's) 

Southern     Qoakers     and 


^ Blavary 

(Weeks'sl 401 

Spraying  of  Plants  (Lodeman's) t69 

Staauwuaenschaftcn,    (Conrad'a) 

HandwHrterbuoh  der 994 

8ta<«ley.  Arthur  P..  (Prothero's)  Let- 
ters of 908 

Statlstlos    and     Boelotocy     (Mayo- 
Smith's) aog 

Sterae.  (Fltecerald's)  Life  of.. 
,  luibert    I     " 


Btevenson, 


Loola.    Koveta. 


Travels,  etc ,  of 88 

Stories  by  English  Authors 860 

Story  of  Babette  (Stnartfs) 81 

Strangers  at  Llao.'mnel  (Barlow's)  ..  898 
Strikes  and  Social  Problems  (Niohol 

eon's) » 497 

Stmrtnre    and    S^la,    (Brewster's) 

-Srij.iu^  tn  ...  484 

BU'lfin.  r  ^]]iiin/0i  Fire  and  Sworfl  In  ..  867 

Svik  ry.'ijrva'ftj.  ,..497 

Bntt-irlni'  imdi  f?biuloir  rPr«fit1i«%]i  ...  489 
Sufw  rsHrUiinA,  Oirr**nt  (Bc-^rj^i-ti's)  ...  478 

Tsk«  fr-'ro  tbe  FJ**Ji1  rDe*«nt'6>. 189 

TSTjt^  Kapjlt  Jifie  (Dombre'H) t04 

Ta  n  1  ]  IT-'  dfm  *  oni  ^'1 1  en  a  f  Iti^jcti1*r'ft  | . .  881 
TsTnr  4^p   and  Taxes  In   tbe    United 

Pi  li  ri^n  f  Hnt*  e"»  f 479 

TsxaH-Kft,  ra»'|itrmftfi'»)  Issaysln 166 

Teji'hinif  uic   iJiajmage-Arta  (lllna- 

ff^ilfVi  .         491 

Tfc ' '« r  TP.  CmmFiif^t  {  loint1n.»Va>  ,,,,....  960 

Til  r^'nirb  <ir»*niOook  <^l»*i>.... 868 

T<'h,'t>y  To  'Jlr^s  (  Li^'iit 849 

Tir^K  rfi^tN!t*VoJieirefLton"S)  ,,......  466 

Tf.iv.  f-*  «Tifl  VawAs^m  ( Waoker|ee'*) . .  998 
Tfr-rM.  iFr'  iide'as  CduovH  ^  ,.^. .*....  400 

Til  El  1 1 V  Veri*  488 

Tim,- 'Wrtrhi'*)  .......  .. 61 

TidirK,   L  Lc-royBeaatten's}  Empire  of 

T«v  V. .  c   li uudred  Miles  '  in'  a  Wagon 

(Balfour's) 168 

Twenty-second  Regiment,  N.  T  N.O. 

(Wlngare's) 499 

Uganda.  (Ashe's)  Chronicles  of 84 

Under  the  Pines  (Cooley's) 908 

Undertones  (Cawein's) 487 

United  Statea of  Amerca(Channing's)  417 
Unlverslt^a  des  Denx  Mondes  (Lau- 
rent's)  878 

Universities  of  Europe  in  M.  die  Ages 

(RaahdaU's) 809,  897 

Utopia,  Mora's  (Luoton'st 149 

(MichelisandZiegler's).  149 

Vacation  Ramblea  (Biighes's) 989 

Vademecum  fOr  Staolerende  (MQl 

ler's) 77 

Venesuela  (Cnrtis's) 849 

Venesuela,  (Davis's)  Three  Ortngoe  in.  884 

Vera  Voront«oir  (Kovalevsky 's) 878 

Verses  (Plimimer**) 489 

Vers  Franceis,  (Blbeaco^s)  Question 

du :. 898 

VespertlUa 901 

Vioforlan    Llteratore,  Early  (Harri- 
son's)    999 

Vf*'  *t  ir^^  Mfftini  en  jour  le  Jour 

VI rgl  I   9 a   t U e   MUl rli i<  Ages '  (Cooipi^ 

rettV*) 88 

Vlr^tDt*  Cunpalgti  fif   1869  under 

f^jpe        .....:..  88 

VlrKlnlft^  (Birooe's)  Economic  HIatory 

nt  ^.  890.  410 

Vrtk'e  H ullr  1  ti g  { 1.  urtla's) 401 

W* irnnr,  ( fUe  EachmVt  CJase  of 490 

Wurt^ifxrliii;    f^^^holar  tn  the  Levant 

^T^viitnrlb'ft) 808 

Witf-fiirt-  of  i^?i4^nc^  with  Theology      ^ 

I  Wfiiif^Bj 49r 

War>  rlo'i  ^flDrtbiirgb's)  908 

Waterloo  CatnpalgiDL.  (V^ood's)  Oav- 

uitf  In 177 

Wft*er  BupDiy  crf  New  York  (Weg- 

nsAnn'N'i 894 

W,M    .        V  rf    V    ^.g) 191 

W..^^.^,., .  ;....;  .,  Die  Aelteaten.  109 

Westminster  (^Vsant'S) 978 

When  Love  is  Done  (Davis's) 01 

White  Snake  (CawHn's) 909 

Whitney.  John,  (MelvUie's)  Anceetry 

of 970 

Wilson,  James.  (Andrews's)  Worlcsof  408 

Wise  woman  (Bumham's) 01 

With  an  Ambulance  in  Franco-Ger- 
man War  (Ryan's) 896 

With  the  Fathera  (MoMaster's) 400 

Women    in    Modem    BngUfh    Life 

(Hill's) 407 

Words  for  Mlislc  ( Newell's) 90S 

Worship  of  Romans  rGranger's) 901 

Yellowstone  NaUonal  Park  (Chitten- 
den's)  910 

Tucatan.  (Mercer's)  Hill  Cavea  of  ... .  818 
Yucatan,  (Holmes's)  Monuments  at. .  818 

Books  of  the  Week. 

19.  49,  09   89   107.  198.  147,  167.  180*. 
909,  999,  944.  969.  978.  296.  814,  889,  3601 
867,  366,  409,  428,  444, 469,  480,  498.  ^^^ 


EBB  ATA. 


Page  79.  col.  I,  line  46.  For  "  (Collector  of 
the  Port  of  Georgetown  "  read  "  Cmnp- 
troller  of  Customs  of  the  Colony."         _ 

Page  101,  col.  Hi,  line  9.  For  "radiometer'^ 
read  *  vacuum  tube." 

Page  187,  col.  11,  line  97.  from  bottom. 
For  "  Yale  College  "  read  "  De  Pauw  Unl- 
versltv." 

Page  9()1.  ool.  Hi.  line  19  from  bottom. 
For  "Renunciation"  read  "Renounce- 
ment " 

Page  249.  coL  HI .  line  16  18  from  bottom. 
Dele  sentence  beginning  "The  Act  of 
Settlement." 

Page  896,  col.  U,  line  89.  For"o(idral" 
read  "  octdaf." 

Page  488.  ool.  11.  line  34.  For  "Sedgwick 
Minot"  read  "Minot  SedgwidET*  and 
"Sedgwick"  for  " Minot '*^throaglMmt 
the  paragraph. 


The    Nation. 


NEW   YORK,   THURSDAY,  JANUARY  8.   1806. 


The  Week. 


President  Cleveland's  friends  were 
pointiDg  on  the  following  Wednesday  and 
Thursday  to  popular  approval  of  his  war 
message  as  its  sufficient  justification. 
They  have  since  learned  a  thing  or  two 
about  the  real  popular  sentiment  of  the 
country,  and  are  now  quite  ready  to  drop 
that  argument.  But  even  if  the  blare  of 
the  first  week  had  kept  up,  it  would  but 
have  intensified  the  President's  guilt.  His 
vast  powers  were  put  in  his  hands,  as 
Burke  said  of  the  war  powers  of  the 
ministers  of  the  Crown,  **  as  a  sacred  de- 
posit, to  secure  ua  against  popular  rash- 
ness in  plunging  into  wars."  Thus  the 
yell  of  the  mob  is  itself  the  condemnation 
of  the  ruler  who  evokes  it.  As  Burke 
adds:  **  It  is  no  excuse  at  all  for  a  minis- 
ter who,  at  our  desire,  takes  a  measure 
contrary  to  our  safety,  that  it  is  our  own 
act.  Ho  who  does  not  stay  the  hand  of 
suicide  is  guilty  of  murder."  Sir  Robert 
Walpole  was  forced,  against  his  better 
judgment,  into  the  war  with  Spain,  in 
1739,  by  popular  clamor.  That  was  an 
immensely  popular  war.  Yet  what  was 
the  testimony,  a  few  years  later,  of  the 
men  who  bad  excited  that  clamor  and 
compelled  Walpole  to  go  to  war? 

'*  None  of  tbeai.''  says  Barke,  *'  no,  not  one. 
did  Id  the  ]ea»t  defend  the  measure,  or  attempt 
to  justify  their  conduct.  They  coDdemoed  it 
as  freely  as  tbey  would  have  done  in  commeDt- 
log  upon  aDT  proceeding  in  history  in  which 
they  were  totally  unconcerned.  Thus  it  will 
be.  They  who  stir  up  the  people  to  improper 
desires,  whether  of  peace  or  war,  will  be  con- 
demned by  themselves.  They  who  weakly 
yield  to  them  will  be  condemned  by  history.'^ 


The  anti-war  meeting  at  Cooper  Union 
last  week  was  as  large  as  the  great  hall 
could  hold,  and  as  enthusiastic  for  peace 
and  as  full  of  indignation  over  the  war- 
dance  at  Washington  as  it  is  possible  to 
conceive.  Not  over  10  per  cent,  of  those 
present  were  out  of  harmony  with  the 
speakers.  The  Jingo  press,  and  especially 
the  Tribune,  gave  mendacious  reports  of 
it  in  order  to  magnify  the  numbers  of 
those  who  came  to  create  a  disturbance. 
They  sought  to  belittle  the  demonstration, 
which  was  here  given  in  an  impromptu 
way,  of  the  Christian  spirit  and  sound 
sense  of  New  York.  This  meeting  was 
called  suddenly.  The  hall  was  not  se- 
cured until  a  late  hour  on  Saturday  eve- 
ning. There  were  no  posters  and  no  bands 
of  music.  There  had  been  no  time  to  col- 
lect a  crowd  in  the  usual  way.  Scarcely 
any  notice  of  it  had  been  given  in  the 
newspapers.  Yet  the  people  came  in 
larger  numbeis  than  the  hall  could  con- 
tain, and  they  cheered  the  speakers  to  the 
echo,  and  fairly  drowned  with  applause 
the  few  dissenters  who  came  to  make  a 


row.  The  latter  were  toleraV  -Ti^  good- 
natured  way,  but  they  oug^  ^  4iajre 
been  expelled  by  the  police,  '^'  ^"^the 
ringleaders  ought  to  have  been  lodged 
in  the  Tombs.  It  was  not  their  meet- 
ing. They  can  hold  a  meeting  of  their 
own.  They  have  a  perfect  right  to  do 
so.  They  had  no  right  to  come  and 
disturb  Henry  George's  meeting.  Mr. 
Oeorge  is  entitled  to  the  greatest  credit 
for  this  demonstration.  He  hired  the 
hall,  obtained  the  speakers,  and  procured 
the  little  advertising  that  it  had,  and 
himself  made  a  powerful  and  effective 
speech  in  the  interest  of  peace  and  com- 
mon sense.  The  slow  coaches  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  might  well  take 
pattern  from  him. 


Mr.  George  asked  the  question,  how 
many  of  the  people  knew  a  month  ago 
where  British  Guiana  was.  The  answer 
was  an  outburst  of  laughter  all  over  the 
house,  which  was  equivalent  to  saying 
that  none  of  them  or  very  few  of  them  did 
know.  Mr.  Greorge  frankly  acknowledged 
that,  a  month  ago,  he  did  not  know  him- 
self. There  was  no  more  reason  a  month 
ago,  or  even  a  week  ago,  why  people 
should  know  where  British  Guiana  ia, 
than  where  Griqualand  is,  or  the  Trans- 
vaal Republic.  H^y  many  people  know 
to-day  where  the  Rand  gold  mines  are? 
The  newspapers  have  teemed  with  ac- 
counts of  these  mines,  and  of  the  **  Kaffir 
circus,"  for  a  whole  year,  yet  if  a  map  of 
Africa  were  laid  before  the  audience  that 
filled  the  hall  of  Cooper  Institute,  or  any 
other  mixed  audience,  not  one  in  fifty 
could  put  their  fingers  within  a  thousand 
miles  of  the  place;  and  no  blame  to 
them  for  that.  Richard  Cobden  once 
said  that  not  one  in  ten  of  the  fellows  of 
Oxford  University,  if  they  had  a  map  of 
the  United  States  before  them,  could  tell 
where  Chicago  was,  or  come  within  a 
thousand  miles  of  it,  although  25  per  cent, 
of  the  inhabitants  of  Great  Britain  ob- 
tained theur  food  from  that  place.  Now, 
if  Mr.  George  was  right  in  saying  that  the 
average  American  citizen  did  not  know  a 
month  ago  where  British  Guiana  is,  is  it 
likely  that  he  knew  nvhether  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  applied  to  it  or  not?  The  ques- 
tion answers  itself.  Mr.  Cleveland  must 
have  presumed  upon  this  ignorance  when 
he  sent  in  his  threatening  message.  He 
assumed  that  people  would  take  his  word 
for  it  that  the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  in- 
fringed. This  they  have  done  to  a  very 
large  and  dangerous  extent. 


The  General  of  the  Army,  Nelson  A. 
Miles,  made  a  speech  at  the  New  Eng- 
land dinner  in  Philadelphia  on  Monday 
week  which  is  described  by  those  who 
heard  it  as  a  most  impressive  protest 
against  the  barbarity  of  war.  Like  most 
men  who  have  done  their  fighting  in  the 


field,  not  on  paper,  he  has  only  words  of 
reprobation  for  those  who  are  crying, 
**  On  to  war !  Any  kind  of  a  war  so  long 
as  we  have  a  war ! "  Gen.  Miles  spoke 
with  great  earnestness  of  the  absolute 
need  of  a  general  conviction  that  a  war 
was  just,  before  the  possibility  of  the 
American  people's  going  into  it  or  suc- 
ceeding in  it  could  be  thought  of.  It  was 
a  needful  warning,  too,  which  he  gave  the 
citizens  of  Philadelphia,  with  their  com- 
merce of  $400,000,003  a  year,  when  he  re- 
minded them  that  not  a  single  modern 
gun  stood  between  them  and  the  sea.  Of 
course.  Gen.  Miles  could  say  nothing  of 
current  war  alarms^  but  his  significant 
plea  for  peace  and  moderation,  coming 
from  such  a  source,  is  most  timely  and 
welcome.  A  fortnight  ago,  though,  the 
Jingoes  would  have  been  clamoring  for  hia 
instant  dismissal. 


The  South  has  cut  a  very  creditable 
figure  during  the  past  fortnight.  Like 
every  other  section,  it  has  suffered  from 
the  too  frequent  lapse  of  its  newspapers 
into  the  control  of  men  who  have  no  pro- 
per appreciation  of  the  editor's  obligation 
to  take  a  calm  view  of  events,  and  quiet 
rather  than  intensify  an  unreasoning  popu- 
lar excitement.  Then,  too,  the  South  has 
felt  a  special  obligation  to  manifest  its 
entire  readiness  to  support  the  national 
authorities  loyally  if  a  crisis  should  come, 
iu.view  of  the  fact  that  the  last  time  the 
Federal  Government  was  engaged  in  war 
it  was  with  the  Southern  States.  Under 
these  circumstances  it  was  inevitable  that 
there  should  have  been  a  good  deal  of 
wild  talk  in  that  part  of  the  country;  but 
a  number  of  the  leading  editors  did  not 
lose  their  heads,  an  J  the  tone  of  the 
Southern  press  now  compares  favorably 
with  that  of  Northern  newspapers.  The 
Charleston  Xewn  and  Cowr/er, which  haa 
been  on  the  right  side  throughout,  ex* 
presses  the  not  unjustifiable  opinion  that 
**  the  good  sense  and  cool  judgment  dis- 
played by  the  Southern  press  in  this  time 
of  unusual  and  unnecessary  excitement 
will  be  of  lasting  benefit  to  the  South,  and 
contribute  vastly  to  the  commercial  and 
industrial  development  of  this  part  of  the 
country." 


The  inborn  and  intense  hatred  which 
Americans  and  Englishmen  have  for  each 
other  has  had  some  curious  manifesta- 
tions during  the  past  ten  days.  At  the 
very  moment  that  third- term  organs  of 
hate,  like  the  Sun,  were  declaring  that 
nothing  would  be  so  popular  in  this  coun- 
try as  a  war  with  England,  and  while  the 
President  was  being  made  to  believe  that 
nine- tenths  of  the  people  were  of  his 
mind,  the  real  feelings  of  sympathy  and 
solidarity  between  the  two  nations  began 
to  stir,  and  have  led  to  some  of  the  most 
remarkable  interchanges  of  international 


53 


Tlie   INTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1592 


greetiDgs  ever  recorded.  Messages  of 
peace  have  passed  between  churches, 
chambers  of  commerce,  acd  trade  associa 
tioDS.  The  appeal  from  English  men  of 
letters  to  their  American  brethren  to  do 
their  best  to  prevent  a  civil  war  in  Eng- 
lish literature,  was  perhaps  couched  in 
somewhat  hysterical  terms,  but  spoke, 
after  all,  for  a  strong  and  genuine  senti- 
ment on  both  sides  of  the  ocean.  It  was 
but  an  echo  of  Tennyson's  message,  an 
expression  of  the  real  continuity  of  life 
that  still  binds  this  country  to  England, 
and  a  conviction  that  our  best  civil  life 
and  ideals  are  due  to  **  that  deep  chord 
which  Hampden  smote." 


The  reports  of  the  committee  on  ways 
and  means  on  the  financial  situation  are 
as  petty  as  the  conduct  of  both  House 
and  Senate  in  rushing  madly  at  the  Pre- 
sident's heels  when  he  sent  his  war  scare 
to  Congress.  The  committee  assumes 
first  that  the  trouble  with  the  finances  is 
a  lack  of  revenue,  although  the  Treasury 
holds  a  hundred  millions  of  surplus  of  the 
kinds  of  money  it  does  not  want ;  being 
the  very  kind  that  this  sapient  committee 
proposes  to  give  it  some  more  of.  In  or- 
der to  do  this,  it  proposes  a  tariff  on  woolr 
not  to  furnish  revenue  for  the  Govern- 
ment, but  to  favor  special  interests  at  the 
expense  of  the  consumers  of  woollen 
goods.  An  increased  duty  on  sugar 
would  really  give  the  (Government  more 
revenue  if  more  were  needed,  as  it  is  not. 
All  the  tariff  talk  is  a  mere  blind.  Those 
who  voted  for  the  committee's  bill,  ac- 
cordingly, know  that  its  effects,  even  if  it 
should  pass  the  Senate  and  be  signed  by 
the  President,  would  not  be  felt  in  the  re- 
venue returns  of  the  Government  for  a 
whole  year.  Moreover,  the  declared  pur- 
pose of  the  bill  is  to  curtail  importations.^ 
Since  revenue  is  collected  from  goods 
which  come  in,  and  not  from  goods 
which  are  kept  out,  the  result  must  be  a 
Btill  further  shrinkage  of  the  public  re- 
ceipts. Therefore  the  tariff  bill  is  a  game 
of  false  pretences.  Probably  those  who 
voted  for  it  do  not  expect  that  it  will  be- 
come a  law. 


The  debate  on  the  bond  bill  showed 
clearly  that  the  Republicans  are  getting 
ready  to  jump  on  the  President  with  both 
feet  when  the  terms  of  the  new  loan  are 
announced.  They  say  that  a  3  per  cent, 
bond  can  easily  be  sold  at  par  if  offered  as 
**  a  popular  loan."  They  have  fixed  that 
rate  in  the  bill,  and  have  provided  that  all 
loans  made  hereafter  shall  be  negotiated 
in  pursuance  of  advertisement.  Nearly 
two  years  ago  the  Government  tried  to 
cell  150,000,000  of  bonds  for  gold  in  that 
way.  The  ••popular"  part  of  the  loan 
panned  out  at  something  less  than  two 
millions.  The  Government's  credit  was 
better  then  than  it  is  now,  yet  the  loan 
would  have  been  a  total  failure  had  not 
the  bankers  come  in  at  the  very  last  day 
and  subscribed  for  all  that  was  left—that 
49,  for  all  except  the  two  millions.    A  po- 


pular loan  at  3  per  cent,  now  would  bring 
nothing.  If  the  Senate  should  pass  this 
bill  in  time,  it  might  be  worth  while  to 
try  the  effect  of  such  an  advertisement  for 
the  purpose  of  demonstrating  its  futility. 
There  is  not  the  least  probability,  how- 
ever, that  the  Senate  will  pass  it  at  all. 
There  was  only  thirty-four  majority  for  it 
in  the  House,  and  the  elements  of  opposi- 
tion to  it  in  the  Senate  are  relatively  much 
greater,  especially  the  Republican  opposi- 
tion. This  is  composed  of  men  who  want 
the  country  brought  to  a  silver  basis  or  a 
paper  basis.  The  men  who  want  a  depre- 
ciated currency  are  much  stronger  in  the 
Senate  than  in  the  House,  and  they  have 
the  further  advantage  that  there  is  no 
rule  in  the  Senate  for  terminating  debate. 
In  this  matter  the  Senate  is  as  badly  off 
as  it  was  in  1893,  when  the  Sherman  re- 
peal bill  was  pending.  The  situation  of 
the  Grovernment,  however,  is  such  that  it 
cannot  wait.  It  can  hardly  wait  for  ordi- 
nary debate.  Its  demand  notes  must  be 
met.  They  must  be  met,  too,  in  such  a 
way  as  to  give  assurance  that  they  will  be 
paid  regularly  and  continuously,  since 
otherwise  there  will  be  a  panic  like  that  of 
last  February,  when  gold  was  drawn 
largely  for  private  hoarding.  The  upshot 
of  the  whole  matter  is  that  the  bond  bill, 
as  passed  by  the  House,  is  worthless,  but 
that  it  will  be  stopped  in  the  Senate  be- 
cause it  is  not  bad  enough.  The  Govern- 
ment will  then  resort  to  the  same  legisla- 
tion that  it  used  when  the  bond-syndicate 
transaction  was  made.  The  rate  of  in- 
terest will  be  high,  corresponding  to  the 
needs  of  the  borrower,  and  then  the  Re- 
publicans will  turn  all  their  batteries  on 
the  President. 


Speaker  Reed  finds  that  he,  too,  has  a 
team  of  wild  horses  on  his  hands,  as  Mr. 
Harrison  said  that  President  Cleveland 
would  find  that  he  had  when  the  last 
Congress  met.  When  the  Maine  man  was 
Speaker  before,  the  Republicans  had  only 
a  bare  majority  of  the  House,  and  it  was 
simply  necessary  to  decide  upon  a  course  of 
party  action  in  order  to  bring  an  irresisti- 
ble pressure  to  bear  upon  any  member 
who  was  inclined  to  be  recalcitrant.  But 
it  is  a  very  different  thing  to  warn  a  Rep- 
resentative that  he  must  surrender  his 
own  convictions  or  wreck  the  prospects  of 
the  party  when  he  can  see  that  his  vote 
may  turn  the  scales,  and  to  **  bring  him 
into  line"  when  there  is  a  Republican 
majority  of  over  130  to  draw  upon.  The 
crack  of  the  party  whip  even  by  a  czar 
who  had  just  taken  the  reins  in  hand  had 
no  effect  upon  nearly  fifty  Republican 
Representatives  on  Saturday,  and  the 
Speaker  had  a  narrow  escape  from  defeat 
at  the  very  opening  of  the  session. 


Mr.  Reed  suffers  seriously  now  from 
the  lack  of  that  quality  which  made  him 
so  powerful  six  years  ago.  Then  he  was 
bold  to  the  verge  of  rashness,  and  defiant 
of  all  opposition  in  the  party  ranks.  His 
very  audacity  made  him  irresistible,  and 


Republican  Representatives  who  did  not 
agree  with  him  had  to  support  him,  how- 
ever much  against  their  will.  But  now 
he  is  hampered  by  his  Presidential  ambi- 
tion,  and  his  consequent  unwillingness  to 
run  the  risk  of  offending  members  who 
may  control  the  choice  of  delegates  from 
their  districts  to  the  Republican  national 
convention.  He  wants  support  from  the 
States  that  believe  in  greenbacks  and  free 
silver  coinage,  as  well  as  from  those  that 
are  outspoken  for  sound  money.  More- 
over,  he  knows  that  McElinley  and  Har- 
rison have  friends  and  supporters  on  the 
Republican  side  of  the  House  who  would 
like  to  see  him  tripped  up,  and  he  there- 
fore feels  that  he  must  pick  his  way  with 
great  caution.  The  effect  of  all  this  is 
that  the  Thomas  B.  Reed  of  18d5-'96  is  a 
very  different  personality  from  the  Tho- 
mas B.  Reed  of  1889-'90,  and  the  indica- 
tions are  that  he  will  be  a  much  less 
forceful  Speaker  during  this  session  than 
he  was  six  years  ago,  without,  however, 
making  up  for  his  losses  from  this  source 
by  an  accession  of  popular  confidence  on 
the  ground  of  his  conservatism. 


The  State  of  Maine  has  now  a  record 
for  unbroken  service,  in  one  or  other 
branch  of  Congress,  on  the  part  of  all  of 
her  delegation,  which  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
no  other  commonwealth  has  ever  equalled 
in  the  history  of  the  country.  Frye  en- 
tered the  House  of  Representatives  in 
1871  and  served  there  continuously  until 
1881, when  he  was  promoted  to  the  Senate 
as  Blaine's  successor,  and  recently  began 
a  term  that  will  end  in  1901.  At  the  same 
time  Eugene  Hale  entered  the  Senate  as 
Hamlin's  succtessor,  and  he  has  been  twice 
re-elected.  Mr.  Reed  entered  the  House  in 
1877,  and  has  now  entered  upon  his  tenth 
consecutive  term.  Mr.  Dingley  joined  him 
in  1881,  and  Messrs.  Boutelle  and  Milli- 
ken  in  1883,  and  each  of  these  three  has 
been  reelected  every  two  years  since  he 
entered.  Until  1883  Maine  had  five  Rep- 
resentatives; since  then  only  four.  Begin- 
ning with  1883  and  ending  with  1897,  the 
entire  delegation  in  both  Senate  and  House 
will  have  gone  without  a  single  change 
for  a  period  of  fourteen  years.  The  result 
is  that  Maine  has  carried  off  an  extraor- 
dinary proportion  of  congressional  honors: 
Mr.  Reed  is  Speaker  of  the  House,  Mr. 
Frye  is  to  be  President  pro  tem.  of  the 
Senate  when  the  Republicans  come  into 
control  of  the  upper  branch,  Mr.  Dingley 
is  chairman  of  the  ways  and  means  com- 
mittee, and  Mr.  Boutelle  has  an  important 
chairmanship. 


The  new  Republican  Governor  of  Ken- 
tucky has  made  a  very  unfortunate  start. 
After  uttering  in  his  inaugural  brave  and 
sound  words  against  lynching  and  in  favor 
of  maintaining  the  laws,  his  first  official 
act  was  to  pardon,  in  advance  even  of  his 
conviction  or  trial,  a  man  who  had  been 
arrested  on  election  day  for  violation  of 
the  law  against  carrying  concealed  wea- 
pons.   Worse  still,  the  object  of  executive 


Jan.  2,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


faTor  was  a  man  whose  occupation  makes 
him  a  daily  violator  of  the  laws — a  man 
engaged  in  the  lottery  business,  which  is 
a  felony  in  Kentucky.  The  exercise  of 
the  pardoning  power  in  advance  of  con- 
viction has  always  been  exceedingly  rare, 
and  is  never  justified  save  in  those  very 
exceptional  cases  where  malice  or  acci- 
dent or  popular  feeling  has  plainly  sub- 
jected a  good  citizen  to  the  unmerited 
odium  of  an  arrest  That  it  should  be 
used  in  behalf  of  a  professional  lawbreaker, 
and  apparently  for  political  reasons,  is 
disgraceful.  That  it  should  save  such  a 
law-breaker  from  even  so  much  as  a  fine 
for  the  offence  of  carrying  a  concealed 
weapon,  is  a  fresh  threat  to  the  safety  of 
life  in  a  community  where  every  official  is 
bound  to  use  all  his  influence  against  a 
return  to  barbarism. 


Chief-Justice  Snodgrass  of  the  Tennes- 
see Supreme  Court  is  not  without  defend- 
ers. One  of  them  writes  to  the  Nashville 
Banner^  which  had  condemned  him  for 
shooting  a  lawyer  who  had  criticised  one 
of  his  decisions,  to  say  that  '*  the  Judge 
dki  exactly  right,*'  and  that  *^he  could 
not  have  done  otherwise  without  disgrac- 
ing the  State  and  the  high  position  which 
he  occupies."  Nor  does  the  Banner* $ 
correspondent  stop  with  justifying  Snod- 
grass in  this  particular  case.  He  carries 
the  argument  to  its  logical  conclusion,  and 
boldly  maintains  that  it  is  the  lack  of 
Snodgrasses  that  is  ruining  the  judiciary 
of  this  country.    Upon  this  point  he  says: 

*'No  man  it  fit  to  t)e  on  the  Supreme  bench 
or  hold  any  other  high  public  trust  in  this 

Seat  republic  who  is  not  the  personiflcation  of 
ivalry  and  honor,  and  the  trouble  with  the 
oountry  now  is  that  there  are  too  many  of  the 
white-Uvered  fellows  occupying  high  positions. 
The  degrading  crusade  against  the  manhood  of 
the  citizen  by  the  white-livered  moral  censors 
since  the  war  has  well  nigh  degraded  our  peo- 
ple.** 

This  is  no  mere  matter  of  theory.  The 
Banner^a  correspondent  appeals  to  his- 
tory, and  asks  the  world  to  **  compare  the 
men  of  that  chivalric  age  that  gave  birth 
to  our  Declaration  of  Independence  and 
our  Constitution  with  the  present  genera- 
tion, and  behold  the  difference."  It  is 
well  for  a  degenerate  age  thus  to  be  re- 
minded how  often  George  Washington 
used  to  draw  his  revolver  on  any  editor 
who  ventured  to  criticise  him,  how  fre- 
quently Thomas  Jefferson  would  leave  his 
desk  In  the  State  Department  in  order  to 
call  to  account  some  politician  who  ques- 
tioned the  purity  of  his  motives,  and  what 
a  common  occurrence  it  was  for  Chief- 
Justice  Jay,  when  he  left  the  Supreme 
Court  room,  to  shoot  down  some  upstart 
of  a  lawyer  who  had  expressed  doubt  as 
to  his  being  the  greatest  jurist  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world. 


Ohio  has  a  prison-labor  problem  for  the 
new  Legislature  to  solve.  The  last  body 
of  lawmakers  enacted  a  statute  which 
restricts  the  output  of  convict- made  goods 
to  10  per  cent,  of  the  product  of  the  free 
tabor  of  the  State  in  the  same  line  of  ma- 


nufacture. This  law  was  due  to  an  agi- 
tation on  the  part  of  workingmen  in  cer- 
tain industries,  who  claimed  that  they 
were  being  ruined*  by  the  cheap  goods  put 
on  the  market  by  contractors  for  prison 
labor.  It  has  proved  even  more  effective 
than  was  anticipated.  The  restriction  of 
output  to  one- tenth  of  the  total  product 
outside  of  the  penitentiary  has  rendered 
it  impossible  for  the  State  to  secure  enough 
contracts  in  any  industry  to  keep  the 
prisoners  at  work.  The  result  is  that  500 
men  who  have  been  sentenced  by  the 
courts  to  hard  labor  sit  in  idleness,  and 
suffer  all  the  demoralizing  consequences 
of  inactivity  which  we  have  seen  under 
similar  circumstances  in  this  State.  The 
frequent  recurrence  of  such  a  state  of 
things  in  our  penal  institutions  is  a  re- 
proach to  the  modern  capacity  for  gov- 
ernment. 


The  recent  strike  among  the  street-car 
men  in  Philadelphia  has  served  incident- 
ally to  show  one  advantage  of  the  high- 
license  system  that  prevails  in  Pennsylva- 
nia. It  has  always  been  held  that  the 
large  sum  demanded  for  the  privilege  of 
conducting  a  saloon  not  only  must  incline 
the  holders  of  licenses  to  obey  the  law 
when  its  violation  •threatened  so  heavy  a 
loss  as  the  withdrawal  of  the  privilege, 
but  also  would  secure  a  higher  order  of 
men  as  saloon-keepers  than  when  anybody 
can  get  the  chance  to  sell  liquor  for  a  petty 
sum.  This  theory  has  been  demonstrated 
to  be  correct  in  Philadelphia.  Appreciat- 
ing the  danger  to  the  public  peace  involv- 
ed in  keeping  the  saloons  open  evenings 
while  many  thousands  of  idle  and  despe- 
rate men  were  abroad,  the  Director  of  Pub- 
ic Safety  requested  the  holders  of  licenses 
to  close  their  places  at  the  end  of  the  after- 
noon. He  could  only  ask  this,  not  require 
it,  as  the  law  gives  no  city  official  the  right 
to  close  saloons  except  during  the  hours 
required  by  the  State  law;  and  yet  the  mere 
request  was  universally  complied  with 
throughout  the  city.  Such  action  would 
hardly  be  possible  in  a  city  of  low  license, 
and  the  incident  furnishes  a  fresh  argu- 
ment in  favor  of  demanding  a  large  sum 
for  the  privilege  of  liquor-selling. 


The  burning  issue  in  the  State  of  Wash- 
ington week  before  last  was  not  whether 
there  should  be  a  war  with  England,  but 
whether  a  citizen  of  Tacoma  should  be 
allowed  to  keep  a  Chinese  cook.  Some 
years  ago  the  Chinese  were  '*  run  out "  of 
the  city,  and  until  recently  they  have  un- 
derstood that  their  treaty  rights  did  not 
entitle  them  to  residence  in  Tacoma. 
Not  long  ago,  however,  a  prominent  citi- 
zen engaged  a  Chinese  cook  and  another 
houaefapld  servant  of  V^^Mme  race.  The 
greatest  excitem^t  ensued,  and  a  strong 
elementi favored  driving  the  two  China- 
man out  of  town  immediately.  One  of 
the  two  concluded  that  the  safest  plan 
was  to  leave  of  his  own  accord,  but  the  I 
other  stood  his  ground.    It  was  finally 


agreed  to  refer  the  question  whether  he 
should  be  allowed  to  remain  to  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce,  and  **  the  largest 
and  most  representative  gathering  of 
business  men  held  in  a  long  time"  re- 
sponded to  the  call  for  the  meeting.  For- 
tunately for  the  reputation  of  the  city, 
after  full  consideration,  a  report  present- 
ed by  the  trustees  of  the  Chamber  was 
adopted,  advising  that  the  Chinese  agita- 
tion be  speedily  dropped,  and  declaring 
that  it  has  no  place  in  Tacoma ;  that  the 
city,  being  a  seaport  town,  is  necessarily 
cosmopolitan,  and  that  all  nationalities 
should  be  given  equal  rights  in  the  com- 
munity. The  report  held  that  it  was  en- 
tirely improbable  that  any  considerable 
number  of  Chinese  would  come,  and  con- 
cluded : 

*<  The  members  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce 
pledge  themselves  here  and  now,  as  law-abidine 
citizens,  to  sustain  and  uphold  the  Mayor  of 
this  city  in  any  effort  be  may  be  called  upon  to 
make  to  suppress  lawlessness  or  disorder  grow, 
ing  out  of  the  agitation  of  the  sa  called  Chinese 
question.'* 


Thursday's  Wool  and  Cotton  Report- 
er said  of  the  year  just  closing,  that  in 
the  wool  business  1895  has  been  **  signally 
eventful,"  having  **  broken  all  previous 
records  in  the  volume  of  sales."  As  com- 
pared with  1894,  the  increase  of  foreign 
and  domestic  wool  sold  has  been  86,000,- 
000  pounds.  The  year  has  also  been 
"  memorable,"  adds  the  Reporter ^  for 
"an  unprecedented  development  of  the 
worsted  industry,"  and  for  "  some  tardy 
recoyery  in  values  of  the  staple  from  the 
depression  of  two  years  ago  "  (McKinley- 
tariff  times).  It  quotes  the  prices  of  seve- 
ral lines  of  domestic  wool  to  show  the  ad- 
vance scored  under  free  wool.  If  the  new 
Republican  wool-tax  ever  reaches  the  Pre- 
sident, this  leading  organ  of  the  wool  trade 
and  woollen  manufacture  will  furnish  him 
all  the  reasons  he  needs  to  veto  it. 


War-talk  as  a  partisan  trick  is  some- 
thing about  which  the  German  Conserva- 
tives have  little  to  learn.  Whenever  they 
find  themselves  too  hard  pressed  political- 
ly, they  get  up  a  great  row  over  the  army 
estimates,  or  navy  enlargement,  and  come 
out  strong  in  behalf  of  the  fatherland. 
They  are  just  now  trying,  by  a  little  di- 
version of  this  kind,  to  rally  from  the  se- 
vere check  they  received  in  the  Reichstag 
by  the  defeat  of  the  anti-revolution  bill 
and  the  loss  of  prestige  involved  in  the 
forced  resignation  of  Von  Keller,  the  great 
l^se-majestd  prosecutor.  The  occasion 
seized  is  the  proposal  to  make  full  bat- 
talions out  of  half-battalions;  and  as  the 
Reichstag  must  vote  the  money  required 
for  this  increase  of  the  army,  a  great  deal 
has  had  to  be  heard  at>out  being  **  true  to 
the  Kaiser  from  head  to  foot,"  protecting 
the  frontiers  against  the  foe,  and  all  that. 
The  thing  may  succeed,  as  similar  tricks 
have  so  many  times  succeeded,  but  at 
least  nobody  in  Germany  is  imposed  upon 
by  it  at  this  time  of  day. 


Tlie   IsTation, 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1592 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  MONROE 
DOCTRINE, 

OicE  of  the  best  passages  in  Dr.  Hud  ting- 
ton's  sermon  on  Sunday  week  was  what 
follows : 

^*ODe  point,  howeyer,  it  may  not  be  amiss 
to  make,  seeing  bow  mucb  talk  there  is  just 
now  of  *  Doctrine,'  and  seeing  also  that  doc 
trine  is  a  matter  well  within  the  lines  of  the 
pulpites  liberties.  I  remark,  then,  that  in  all 
qaestions  where  a  *  doctrine*  is  involved,  no- 
tnint;  is  more  important  than  that  we  should 
distinguish  between  husk  and  kernel,  bark  and 
pith,  shell  and  substance.  The  letter  of  the 
doctrine  is  one  thing,  the  spirit  of  it  is  another. 
What  were  the  framers  of  a  doctrine  driving 
at  when  they  set  it  forth,  what  was  the  con- 
viction that  lay  behind  their  words,  what  was 
the  end  at  which  they  aimed,  the  thought 
tbev  labored  to  express  ?  That  is  the  way  in 
which  large-minded  theologians  look  at  and  in- 
terpret the  doctrines  of  religion  ;  would  it  be 
amu»  on  the  part  of  statesmen  if  they  were  to 
scan  and  sift  political  doctrine  after  the  same 
fashion  ?  And  if  we  were  to  subject  to  that 
sort  of  analysis  the  pnrtictilar  doctrine  which 
is  now  so  hotly  discussed,  should  we  not  find 
the  essence  of  it  to  be  in  our  resolve  that  there 
shall  be  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  no  subvert 
ing  of  that  form  of  government  which  we  call 
free?" 

If  our  politicians  bad  any  resemblance 
to  *Marge-minded  theologians,*'  they  would 
of  course  have  sought  out  the  original  in- 
tention of  the  framers  of  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine, and  have  examined  it  from  genera- 
tion to  generation  in  the  light  of  that  in- 
tention. Any  one  who  examined  it  in 
that  light  would  have  found  that  the  ker- 
nel and  spirit  of  it  was  the  fear  that  Eu- 
ropean monarchies  would  do  what  the 
Spaniards  were  then  trying  to  do  in  South 
and  Central  America,  and  what  the  French 
tried  to  do  afterwards  in  1863  in  Mexico- 
impose  governments  on  the  people  by  the 
use  of  foreign  force — and  that  a  set  of 
such  governments  on  this  continent  would 
then  endanger  our  republican  institutions 
here. 

This  was  a  perfectly  rational  view.  The 
talk  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  and  the  invasion 
of  Spain  by  the  French,  all  lent  color  to 
it.  Canning  believed  it,  and  expressed 
his  belief  in  a  proposal  to  resist  European 
aggression  of  this  sort  in  America,  in 
combination  with  the  United  States.  Had 
this  view  been  adhered  to,  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  would  have  become  every  year 
of  less  importance  to  us,  and  have  receiv- 
ed less  mention,  as  we  grew  stronger  and 
the  European  Powers  more  liberal  and  less 
aggressive.  Since  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
was  propounded,  France,  which  was  one 
of  the  members  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  has 
become  a  republic;  Austria  and  Germany, 
other  members  of  it,  have  become,  as  has 
Italy,  which  they  were  holding  in  bond- 
age, parliamentary  monarchies.  England 
has  become  a  trading  republic  in  all  but 
in  name,  and  we  have  risen  from  a  nation 
of  10,000,000  to  one  of  70,000,000.  The 
sole  attempt  ever  made  since  Monroe's 
time — that  in  Mexico— ended  in  most  tra- 
gical defeat.  The  death  of  Maximilian 
and  the  overthrow  of  the  French  Empire 
were  as  solemn  warnings  against  any 
other  attempt  to  Europeanize  any  Ameri- 
can state  as  history  contains  on  any  sub- 
ject, 


But,  strange  to  say,  the  more  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine  lost  its  importance  the  more 
eagerly  our  politicians  went  to  work  to 
'* develop  it."  There  is  nothing  in  th( 
.history  of  Christian  doctrine  which  cai 
Vompare  with  the  unrolling  which  Mr. 
Monroe  has  undergone  at  the  hands  of  his 
disciples.  Abyssinian  Christianity  is  con- 
sidered a  good  way  off  from  the  New  Tes- 
tament Gospel,  but  it  is  not  nearly  so  far 
from  it  as  the  Monroeism  of  Olney  and 
Lodge  and  Chandler,  and  the  general 
Jingo  multitude,  from  the  Monroeism  of 
Monroe.  In  reading  Mr.  01ney*s  despatch 
the  other  day,  we  were,  in  fact,  irresistibly 
reminded  of  the  things  a  clever  juggler 
extracts  from  a  hat.  First  will  come  a 
photograph,  then  some  baby-linen,  then  a 
flower,  then  a  pair  of  drawers,  and  then  a 
sausage,  and  then  an  endless  ribbon. 

Although  there  has  been  much  hammer- 
ing out  of  the  doctrine  by  the  newspaper 
youths  and  by  the  politicians,  the  real 
work  of  development  did  not  begin  until 
last  year.  In  the  early  part  of  1895  we  were 
simply  lending  '*  good  offices"  to  bring 
about  a  settlement  of  the  dispute  by  me- 
diation, just  as  Mr.  Monroe  himself  might 
have  done  before  the  birth  of  the  Doc- 
trine; just  as  any  Power  might  do  to-day. 
The  first  article  that  comes  out  of  the  hat 
is  an  *'  admitted  canon  of  international 
law  "  that  any  nation  may  interfere,  if  it 
pleases,  in  any  quarrel  between  any  other 
two  nations.  To  call  this  a  *'  canon  of 
international  law"  ip  almost  funny,  be- 
cause it  is  as  old  as  the  Aryan  race,  being 
neither  more  nor  less  than  the  right  of 
every  nation  to  go  to  war  if  it  pleases. 
The  next  is  a  prohibition,  directed  to  Eu- 
ropean Powers,  to  make  a  canal  across 
the  Isthmus  of  Panama.  Next  a  prohibi- 
tion against  Cuba  being  transferred  to 
any  other  European  Power.  Next,  in- 
ability of  the  United  States  to  act  as  me- 
diator jointly  with  European  Powers  in 
a  dispute  between  two  American  states. 
Next,  that  '*any  permanent  political 
I  union  between  a  European  and  American 
'state  is  unnatural  and  inexpedient,"  and 
that  any  such  union  is  dangerous  to  the 
United  States.  Next,  that  the  United 
States  and  the  Spanish  American  states 
are  by  **  geographical  proximity,  natural 
sympathy,  and  similarity  of  governmental 
constitutions  our  friends  and  allies  com- 
mercially and  politically."  This  is  the 
most  marvellous  of  the  developments,  and 
corresponds  to  the  baby-linen  in  the  jug- 
gler*s  hat.  Next  is  the  doctrine  that  if 
the  European  Powers  were  now  allowed 
"  to  convert  American  states  into  pro- 
vinces or  colonies  of  their  own,"  **the 
struggle  now  going  on  for  the  acquisition 
of  Africa  might  be  transferred  to  South 
America,"  and  the  *'  partition  of  all  South 
America  between  the  various  European 
Powers"  would  soon  take  place.  Next, 
that  **  suggestions  of  the  friendliness  of 
the  European  Powers,  and  their  good  will 
towards  us,  and  their  dispositions,  should 
they  be  our  neighbors,  to  dwell  with 
us  in  peace  and  harmony,"  are  of   no 


value.  All  this,  Mr.  Olney  says,  is  '*  Ame- 
rican public  law,  founded  on  principle 
and  abundantly  sanctioned  by  prece- 
dent." 

Next  comes  the  *' development "  that 
the  Monroe  message,  in  sanctioning  *'  Eu- 
ropean colonies  or  dependencies  then 
existing  on  this  continent,"  meant,  "then 
existing  with  their  limits  then  existing," 
and,  of  course,  that,  where  the  limits  were 
not  defined,  the  American  state  was  to 
draw  the  boundary  line  to  please  itself, 
and  that  the  United  States  might  decide 
in  what  manner  the  boundary  line  should 
be  determined.  Next,  that  strong  Euro- 
pean states  must  always  submit  to  arbi- 
tration any  claim  made  by  weak  American 
states,  and  that  it  is  the  duty  and  privi- 
lege of  the  United  States  to  chastise  the 
strong  states  if  they  refuse.  Next,  that 
Great  Britain's  refusal  to  arbitrate  is  in- 
jurious '*to  the  interests  of  the  people  of 
the  United  States,  as  well  as  oppressive  in 
itself,"  and  will  justify  war.  After  this 
the  last  and  greatest  development  of  all, 
that  the  United  States  is  "  sovereign  on 
this  continent "  and  actually  rules  it,  will 
excite  no  surprise. 

We  are  sure  that  Dr.  Huntington  will 
agree  with  us  that  not  only  in  no  one  year, 
but  in  no  one  century,  of  the  Christian 
church,  was  one-tenth  part  as  much  ever 
got  out  of  any  one  Christian  doctrine  by 
the  most  industrious  theologian  as  Mr. 
Olney  has  got  out  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
within  the  present  year.  What  makes  the 
performance  all  the  more  extraordinary  is, 
that  although  the  European  Powers  have 
never  formally  accepted  the  original  Mon- 
roe Doctrine,  they  have  practically  accept- 
ed it  in  its  original  purity.  None  of  them 
would  now  attempt  to  oppress,  or  encroach 
on,  or  impose  a  foreign  government  on,  an 
American  state.  But  they  had  not  accept- 
ed it  as  "  a  canon  of  international  law," 
and  probably  will  never  be  got  to  do  so, 
any  more  than  the  Olney  developments. 
The  reason  is  very  simple.  Any  nation 
can  hold  any  doctrines  it  pleases  as  to  its 
own  hopes,  aims,  or  duties  in  this  world, 
just  as  a  private  man  can  hold  wiiat  the 
Catholics  call  '*  pious  opinions."  But  if  it 
produces  a  doctrine  that  brings  it  in  con- 
tact with  foreigners,  and  is  to  govern  its 
conduct  towards  them,  the  doctrine  is  sim- 
ply a  sort  of  declaration  of  war  which 
sleeps  until  the  occasion  for  its  application 
arises.  The  doctrine  has  no  place  in  in- 
ternational law  until  all  other  nations  agree 
to  it.  It  owes  all  its  importance  to  the 
threat  which  backs  it.  If  Mr.  Olney  had 
any  proper  conception  of  what  he  was  ar- 
guing about,  he  might  have  disposed  of  the 
whole  matter  in  half  a  column.  All  he  need 
have  said  to  Lord  Salisbury  was,  *'  If  you 
don't  arbitrate  that  boundary  line  with 
Venezuela,  we  shall  go  to  war  with  you  as 
soon  as  we  hear  from  you."  His  argu- 
mentative discussion  is  really  not  only  con- 
tradictory and  difficult  of  comprehension, 
but  unnecessary.  As  he  and  the  President 
have  left  the  doctrine  to-day,  it  is  simply  f 
a  challenge  to  the  world  to  flight  the  United     1 


Jan«  2,  1896] 


Tlie    N^ation. 


Slataa,  and   haa  no  more  law  in  it  than 
Napolaon's  in?aaion  of  Russia. 


VENEZUELA  AS  A  8J8TER  REPUBLIC. 

It  ia  a  remarkable  example  of  the  power 
of  words  to  take  the  place  of  ideas  that 
oar  QoTemment  should  now  revert  to  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  and  call  upon  us  to 
stand  by  Veneiuela,  as  a  republic,  against 
Great  Britain— our  ally  in  the  previous 
oontroTer^y— as  a  monarchy.  Of  course, 
Venesuela  is  called  a  republic,  as  Great 
Britain  is  called  a  monarchy;  but  if  we  go 
behind  the  names  and  consider  the  facts, 
what  do  we  find  ?  Are  the  institutions  of 
Venesuela  republican  ?  Is  its  government 
popular?  It  is  notcMrious  that  in  Latin 
America  the  majority  of  the  so-called  re* 
publica  are  military  dictatorships,  tem- 
pered by  periodical  revolutions.  In  the 
intermediate  periods  between  successive 
dictatorships  their  condition  is  one  of  an- 
archy* During  the  reign  of  each  military 
tyrant  the  forms  of  republican  govern- 
ment are  observed;  elections  are  held;  but 
the  **  purity  of  the  ballot "  is  protected 
by  troops,  and  the  success  of  the  govern- 
mental candidates  is  assured  by  the  show 
of  armed  force.  During  the  periods  of 
revolutionary  anarchy  all  traces  of  re- 
publicanism disappear.  There  is  no  secu- 
rity for  life  or  property  except  in  the  case 
of  foreigners,  who  are  protected  by  the 
war-vessels  of  their  respective  countries. 

Nowhere  did  Mr.  Olney  have  his  eye 
more  off  the  fact  than  when,  in  his  horror 
at  the  idea  of  '*  monarchical*'  England 
getting  33,000  more  square  miles  in  South 
America,  he  enlarged  upon  *'  the  opposite 
principle  *'— "  the  inalienable  right  of  self- 
government  '*— which  Venezuela  so  happi- 
ly illustrates.  Not  only  by  '*  geographical 
proximity,"  but  by  **  natural  sympathy  " 
and  *'  similarity  of  governmental  constitu- 
tion," she  is  our  "  friend  and  ally."  How 
then  oould  we,  with  our  "  vital  interest  in 
the  cause  of  popular  self-government," 
allow  the  ** subjugation"  of  this  model 
and  sister  republic  by  any  European  power 
committed  to  the  **  monarchical  princi- 
ple"? Our  Secretary,  it  is  true,  seems 
aware  that  there  have  been  *'  frequent  in- 
ternal revolutions"  in  Venezuela,  but  these 
are  lor  him  only  a  good  reason  why  she 
bad  not  more  constantly  opposed  the  ag- 
gression of  Great  Britain — not  at  all  an 
impeachment  of  her  pure  republicanism. 
Yet  it  needs  but  a  glance  at  Venezuelan 
history,  a  slight  acquaintance  with  the 
writings  of  travellers,  and  a  reference  to 
oar  own  diplomatic  dealings  with  Vene- 
zuela, to  show  tlie  true  nature  of  the 
*'  popular  self-government "  in  which  Mr. 
Olnc^  displays  so  vital  an  interest.  Vene- 
zuelan independence  was  not  coaoeded  by 
Spain  tiU  1846.  From  1846  to  1870  the 
country  rushed  from  one  revolution  into 
another,  stable  government  of  any  sort 
being  practically  unknown  during  all  that 
period*  Fkom  1870  to  1873  Guzman  Blanco 
was  Dictator,  and  from  the  latter  year  on 
was  Dictator  under  the  name  of  President 


He  adopted  the  convenient  custom  of  hav- 
ing himself  declared  President  for  four 
years,  then  of  going  as  Minister  to  France 
and  England  for  four  years,  leaving  one 
of  his  creatures  in  the  Presidential  chair, 
and  then  returning  to  be  President  again 
himself.  The  present  President,  Qen, 
Crespo,  got  his  office  by  a  revolution,  held 
it  two  years  as  Dictator,  meanwhile  con- 
fiscating the  property  of  all  who  had  op- 
posed him,  and  then  went  through  the 
form  of  being  elected  President  by  a  Con- 
gress elected  by  himself. 

Venezuelan  devotion  to  the  inalienable 
right  of  self-government  is  finely  illus- 
trated by  events  that  took  place  no  longer 
ago  than  1892.  In  that  year  there  was  a 
dispute  as  to  the  validity  of  the  title  of 
President  Palacio,  pending  the  election  of 
a  successor  under  a  new  constitution.  The 
opinion  of  the  Supreme  Court  was  in- 
voked. The  judges  found  against  the  Pre- 
sident. He  promptly  threw  all  of  them 
into  jail— except  the  ones  that  ran  away. 
Then  the  President  asked  Congress  to 
pass  a  resolution  affirming  his  title.  When 
it  refused  to  do  so,  he  had  it  closed  by 
troops,  and  had  all  the  members  who  voted 
against  him  arrested.  Every  member  of 
the  federal  council  was  also  imprisoned. 
All  the  newspapers  except  the  Grovern- 
ment  organ  were  suppressed.  Martial  law 
was  declared,  and  the  President  issued  a 
proclamation  asserting,  in  the  most  patri- 
otic terms,  his  earnest  purpose  to  "  safe- 
guard the  liberties  of  the  people."  He 
went  on  to  say  that,  as  "  guardian  of  the 
Constitution  and  the  law,"  it  would  be 
necessary  for  him  to  become  Dictator, 
though  this  did  not  mean  "  a  personal 
government,  which  I  in  my  strict  republi- 
can convictions  abhor.**  Mr.  Olney  him- 
self could  not  be  more  emphatic  on  that 
point. 

Venezuela's  record  as  a  stanch  friend 
and  ally  of  this  country  is  fully  up  to  her 
shining  example  of  republicanism.  The 
volumes  of  our  foreign  correspondence  re- 
veal a  succession  of  embarrassments  and 
embroilments  with  her  Government.  Two 
late  instances  of  her  extreme  friendliness 
to  us  should  appeal  with  especial  force  to 
our  Republican  friends.  She  rejected  the 
Blaine-McKinley  proffer  of  reciprocity, 
and  did  it  in  offensive  terms.  Her  Con- 
gress resolved  t)iat,  in  the  first  place,  they 
did  not  wiAit  to  abate  any  of  their  cus- 
toms duties,  and,  furthermore,  that  they 
did  not  want  to  discriminate  in  favor  of 
the  manufacturers  of  the  United  States 
as  against  those  of  Europe,  with  whom 
they  were,  and  desired  to  continue,  on 
the  best  of  terms.  This  from  our  **  na- 
tural, commercial,  and  political  ally*'! 

In  1871  three  American  steamers  were 
seized  by  Venezuelan  belligerents,  and  a 
claim  for  damages  was,  in  consequence, 
taken,  up  and  pushed  by  our  State  De- 
partment. Venezuela  promised  indem- 
nity again  and  again,  but  would  never 
pay  up.  Negotiations  dragged  along  for 
twenty  years  till,  finally,  hi  1880,  Con- 
gress passed  a  joint  resolution  **  authoriz- 


ing and  empowering  the  President  of  the 
United  States  to  take  such  measures  as 
in  his  judgment  may  be  necessary  to 
promptly  obtain  indemnity  from  the  Ve- 
nezuelan Government;  .  .  .  and  to 
secure  this  end  he  is  authorized  to  em- 
ploy such  means  or  exercise  such  power 
as  may  be  necessary."  This  resolution 
became  a  law  without  President  Harri- 
son's signature.  But  oh  the  difference  to 
Mr.  Olney  if  it  had  been  England  and 
Lord  Salisbury  proposing  such  violence 
against  our  friend,  ally,  and  sister  repub- 
lic ! 

In  a  word,  the  American  Secretary  of 
State's  references  to  Venezuelan  republi- 
canism and  friendship  and  English  mon- 
archy and  hostility  have  no  more  to  do 
with  the  facts  than  with  the  planet  Jupi- 
ter. Hundreds  of  Americans  in  the  Tur- 
kish Empire,  many  of  them  from  Mr. 
Olney's  own  State,  pray  Grod  every  day 
that  England  may  take  Syria  or  Armenia 
and  give  the  natives  and  American  resi- 
dents alike  justice,  liberty,  and  protection 
to  life  and  property.  At  the  same  moment 
the  head  of  their  own  Grovemment  is 
asserting  that  if  Great  Britain  should  re- 
tain English  law  and  representative  gov- 
ernment over  33,000  square  miles  in  South 
America,  where  it  now  exists,  the  people 
of  the  United  States  would  be  compelled 
to  arm  themselves  to  the  teeth  and  rush 
into  a  bloody  war  to  undo  the  outrage. 


THE  MANOA  COMPANY. 

Thb  London  TimeSf  on  the  very  day  of 
receiving  the  President's  war  meesage, 
spoke  significantly  of  "the  American 
concession-hunters  who  swarm  in  Caracas 
and  are  responsible  for  much  of  the  ex- 
citement in  Venezuela."  We  have  receiv- 
ed several  letters  since  the  message  was 
sent  to  Congress,  requesting  us  to  look 
into  the  matter  of  the  Manoa  Company, 
with  a  view  to  seeing  whether  any  Ame- 
rican capitalists  or  adventurers  were  pri- 
vately interested  in  getting  up  a  war  be- 
tween this  country  and  Great  Britain.  An 
allusion  was  made  in  one  of  Lord  Salis- 
bury's despatches  to  concessions  granted 
by  Venezuela  in  the  disputed  territory 
after  an  agreement  had  been  reached  by 
the  two  governments  to  treat  it  as  neutral 
ground  pending  the  negotiation.  He  used 
the  following  language : 

**  While,  however,  the  Venesuelan  Minister 
conitantly  stated  that  the  matter  was  under 
active  oonsideratioD,  it  was  found  that  in  the 
same  year  a  concession  had  been  given  hy  his 
GoTemment  to  Gen  Pulgar,  which  incioded 
a  large  portion  of  the  territory  in  dispute. 
This  was  the  third  breach  by  Venesuela  of  the 
agreement  of  1860. 

'*  Early  in  1884,  news  arrived  of  a  fourth 
breach  by  Venezuela  of  the  agreement  of  1850 
through  two  different  grants,  which  eov€red 
th4  ufhoU  of  th9  territory  in  dispute,  and  aa 
this  was  followed  bv  actual  attempts  to  settle 
on  the  disputed  territory,  the  British  (Govern- 
ment oould  no  longer  remain  inactive. 

**  Warning  was,  therefore,  given  to  the  Ven- 
ezuelan Government  and  to  the  concessien- 
aires,  and  a  British  magistrate  was  sent  into 
the  threatened  district  to  aawrt  the  Britiab 
rights.'' 

Lord  Salisbury  mentioned  no  names  or 


Tlie   N'ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1592 


natioDalities,  any  more  than  he  did  in  his 
quiet  little  remark  to  Mr.  Olney,  apropos 
of  arbitration,  that  "the  task  of  insuring 
compliance  with  the  award  when  it  is 
made  is  not  exempt  from  difficulty."  It 
was  quite  eyident,  however,  that  he  knew 
as  well  who  the  concessionaries  were  as 
he  did  what  country  it  was  that  had  re- 
fused to  pay  up  after  the  Bering  Sea  ar- 
bitration had  gone  against  it  The  Manoa 
Company  may  not  come  to  take  its  place 
in  diplomatic  history  alongside  the  Ship- 
herd  claims,  the  Landrau  claims,  and  the 
Balmaceda  nitrate-beds,  but  it  will  be 
just  as  well  to  keep  an  eye  on  it. 

The  Evening  Post  of  March  8,  1888, 
printed  a  letter  from  a  correspondent  on 
the  subject  of  the  concession  to  the  Ma- 
noa Company,  which  it  now  reprints  for 
its  present  interest.  One  fact  of  some  im- 
portance is,  that  in  1888  Congressman 
McAdoo  of  New  Jersey  appeared  as  a 
champion  of  the  Manoa  Company.  This 
individual  is  now  Assistant  Secretary  of 
the  Navy.  An  investigation  of  the  volume 
of  official  corre8x>ondenco  between  the  Bri- 
tish and  Venezuelan  governments  printed 
by  the  latter,  at  Car&cas,  in  1887,  discloses 
the  following  facts:  An  agreement  had 
been  reached  in  1850  to  consider  the  dis- 
puted territory,  for  the  present,  as  no- 
man's  land ;  that  is,  each  party  was  to 
keep  hands  off  until  a  settlement  of  some 
kind  should  be  reached.  The  correspond- 
ence was  continued  in  a  very  amicable 
tone  until  1884,  when  the  fact  became 
known  that  Venezuela  had  conceded  this 
very  territory  to  an  American  concern 
called  the  Manoa  Company,  of  which  a 
certain  Thomas  A.  Kelly  was  acting  Pre- 
sident, and  that  Mr.  Kelly  had  taken  pos- 
session of  it  to  the  extent  of  sending  men 
on  it  to  cut  timber  and  erect  a  sawmill. 
It  appears,  also,  that  Kelly  was  invested 
with  some  kind  of  powers  as  a  functiona- 
ry of  Venezuela.  When  the  authorities 
of  British  Quiana  learned  these  facts,  the 
Superintendent  of  Crown  Lands  and  For- 
ests, Mr.  McTurk,  sent  the  following  let- 
ter to  Kelly : 

**7%otnaa  A.    Kelly ^   President   Manager  of 

Manoa  Company : 

**I  havetheht>Dor  to  iDform  yoo  that  yoa 
are  now  within  the  limits  of  British  Quiana, 
and  those  of  the  dis^ct  under  my  Jurisdio 
tion  as  one  of  the  special  magistrates  and 
superintendents  of  crown  lands  and  forests  of 
this  colony,  and  therefore  you  are  outside 
your  jurisdiction  as  a  functionary  of  Vene- 
zuela. Whatever  notification  you  should 
make  to  the  inhabitants  will  be  void,  and  all 
persons  in  this  or  any  part  of  the  colony,  or 
visiting  it,  will  have  to  conduct  themselves  in 
accordance  with  its  laws.  I  must  likewise  call 
your  attention  to  the  notifications  put  upon 
the  trees  on  the  banks  of  this  river  as  alffo  on 
the  rivers  Waini  and  Barima.  These  notifica- 
tions were  fixed  where  they  are  by  order  of 
the  Qovemment  of  British  Guiana.** 

The  fixing  of  these  notices  was  at  once 
complained  of  by  the  Venezuelan  Grovem- 
ment  as  a  violation  of  the  agreement  of 
1850  to  consider  the  territory  neutral  for 
th^  time  being,  the  grant  to  the  Manoa 
Company  and  the  partUl  occupation  of 
it  by  Kelly  being  absolutely  ignored. 
Thus,  on  the  28th  of  July,  1886,  Guzman 
Blanco,  who  was  then  the  Venezuelan 


Minister  in  London,  had  the  effrontery  to 
write  to  Lord  Rosebery  complaining  of 
the  placing  of  the  notices  in  the  disputed 
territory,  and  even  of  the  letters  sent  to 
Kelly  by  the  authorities  of  British  Gui- 
ana. Kelly  or  his  underlings  promptly 
removed  the  notices  from  the  trees  on 
which  they  were  posted  and  sent  them  to 
Caracas.  They  made  so  complete  a  job 
of  it  that  Mr.  McTurk,  the  officer  of  Bri- 
tish Guiana  in  charge  of  the  district, 
could  not  find  one  there  in  April,  1885. 
Guzman  Blanco  coolly  ignored  the  in- 
fringement of  the  bargain  which  was  in- 
volved in  the  concession  to  the  Manoa 
Company. 

One  of  the  letters  in  this  correspondence 
is  addressed  by  the  Secretary  of  British 
Guiana  to  C.  C.  FitzGerald^  Phcenix 
Building,  No.  16  Court  Street,  Brooklyn, 
N.  T.  It  is  dated  October  25,  1884.  It 
acknowledges  receipt  of  documents  from 
FitzGerald  which  were  apparently  in- 
tended to  exhibit  the  title  of  the  Manoa 
Company  to  the  territory  in  question,  and 
it  notifies  him  that  anybody  trespassing 
on  said  territory  will  be  prosecuted  ac- 
cording to  the  laws  of  the  colony.  From 
FitzGerald's  communication  to  the  Eve- 
ning Post  on  Saturday  it  appears  that  the 
Manoa  Company,  a  New  York  corpora- 
tion, hitherto  unknown,  holds  a  grant 
ffom  the  Venezuelan  Government  com- 
prising a  territory  "almost  as  large  as 
New  England."  Mr.  FitzGerald  con- 
tends- that  no  part  of  it  is  within  the 
limits  of  British  Guiana,  because  the 
terms  of  the  grant  carry  it  only  **  to  the 
limit  of  British  Guiana."  The  nalvetd  of 
this  argument  is  charming  when  we  re- 
member that  the  boundary  line  of  the  two 
countries  has  been  a  matter  of  dispute 
for  half  a  century.  The  assumption  of 
FitzGerald  that  he  and  Kelly  and  the 
other  Manoans  know  where  that  bound- 
ary runs,  while  the  authorities  of  British 
Guiana  do  not,  shows  that  he  holds  a  clue 
which  the  civilized  world  might  give  mil- 
lions to  possess.  Possessing  this  secret, 
the  Manoans  went  boldly  forward  Bjad 
"  properly  removed  "  the  notices  posted 
by  the  authorities  of  British  Guiana  as 
warnings  against  trespassers.  The  tres- 
passing, according  to  FitzGerald,  was 
on  the  part  of  the  British  Government 
against  "  an  American  company  "  which, 
but  for  this  interference  with  its  rights, 
**  would  be  in  full  operation  to-day,  giving 
employment  to  thousands  of  American 
citizens."  Moreover,  he  tells  us  that, 
**  thanks  to  the  attitude  of  President 
Cleveland,  it  will  now  be  possible  to  do 
business  under  the  American  flag  in 
Venezuela  without  fear  of  future  encroach- 
ment"; implying  that  this  territory,  al- 
most as  large  as  New  England,  has  al- 
ready been  annexed  to  the  United  States 
by  the  determined  action  of  President 
Cleveland  and  in  virtue  of  Mr.  Olney 's 
views  of  the  "sovereignty  "  of  this  coun- 
try on  the  American  continent.  If  this 
is  the  case,  we  shall  expect  FitzGerald 
and;  Kelly  to  be  the  first  Senators  from  i 


the  State  of  Manoa,  and  we  are  glad  to 
be  assured  that  *'  they  have  no  Populist 
or  free-silver  cranks  and  have  no  difficulty 
in  maintaining  a  solid  gold  basis."  We 
shall  have  more  facts  to  present  on  this 
subject  hereafter.  Meanwhile  we  com- 
mend Mr.  FitzGerald's  letter  to  public 
attention  in  connection  with  "President 
Cleveland's  attitude"  and  Olney's  argu- 
ments on  sovereignty,  and  the  unanimous 
support  given  to  all  three  by  the  Ameri- 
can Congress. 


THEJINOO  AND  THE  MONET  MARKET. 

NoTHUfo  was  to  us  more  startling  in  Mr. 
Cleveland's  last  two  messages  than  his 
remark,  which  we  quoted  last  week,  that 
patriotism  was  no  substitute  for  a  sound 
currency.  Whether  this  was  a  conviction 
which  had  been  forced  on  him  by  the 
events  of  the  past  few  days,  or  whether 
he  felt  it  necessary  to  remind  Congress  of 
it  as  a  great  financial  truth,  makes  little 
difference.  He  really  addressed  himself 
to  one  of  the  most  remarkable  branches 
of  Jingo  insanity,  namely,  that  which  sees 
in  the  fall  in  the  value  of  securities  and 
the  general  disturbance  of  the  money  mar- 
ket, under  the  threat  of  war,  the  result 
either  of  a  plot  of  foreign  enemies  against 
the  republic  or  want  of  patriotism  on  the 
part  of  brokers.  The  Jingo's  state  of 
mind  as  regards  foreign  investors  is  by  no 
means  a  product  of  his  own  experience  of 
human  nature.  He  would  never  himself 
think  of  selling  his  stocks  and  bonds  at  a 
heavy  loss  in  order  to  spite  some  foreign 
nation.  If  you  proposed  to  him,  for  in- 
stance, to  go  down  to  Wall  Street  and  let 
his  property  go  at  seventy-five  or  fifty 
cents  on  the  dollar  in  order  to  "bring 
England  to  her  knees,"  he  would  treat  it 
as  a  merry  conceit.  But  when  you  sug- 
gest that  this  is  what  Englishmen  are  do- 
ing to  annoy  us,  he  sees  nothing  wonder- 
ful, much  less  incredible,  in  it  In  fact, 
in  all  matters  connected  with  patriotism 
he  is  as  simple  and  credulous  as  a  mediae- 
val monk.  When  you  begin  to  tell  him 
marvellous  stories  of  what  the  British 
financiers  or  the  gold- bugs  are  capable  of 
in  the  way  of  plots  against  America,  or 
against  silver  or  the  greenbacks,  far  from 
crying,  "Oh,  come  now,"  or  "Hold. on 
there,"  he  says,  "  Tell  me  some  more; 
what  did  they  do  next?  "  His  view  of  the 
Wall  Street  brokers  is  somewhat  different. 
Everything  bad  which  occurs  in  Wall 
Street  he  thinks  is  due  to  either  the 
timidity  or  want  of  patriotism  of  the 
brokers.  When  prices  fall,  he  thinks 
either  the  brokers  did  it,  or  wickedly  let  it 
be  done.  It  would  take  Dean  Swift  to 
deal  adequately  with  the  exhortations  he 
addresses  to  them  under  these  circum- 
stances. 

The  fact  is,  that  Wall  Street  is  but  the 
dial-plate  on  which  the  condition  of  the 
business  of  the  country,  especially  in  times 
of  disaster,  is  recorded.  Of  course,  the 
machine  does  not  work  this  way  every 
day;  simple  speculation  often  deranges  it. 


Jan.  2,  1896] 


Tlie    IN^ation. 


But  as  a  rale,  and  especially,  as  we  hsTe 
■aid,  in  seasons  of  depression,  Wall  Street 
records  either  the  riew  which  careful  ob- 
serrers  take  of  our  financial  future,  or  the 
fears  and  anxieties  or  distresses  of  those 
whose  savings  are  invested  in  stocks 
and  bonds  of  various  descriptions.  For 
what  the  brokers  deal  in  is  other  people's 
property.  Their  action  reflects  the  fears 
and  hopes  of  these  people — generally,  in 
times  like  this,  their  fears.  In  fact,  this 
dial-plate  might  in  days  of  alarm  fairly  be 
called  an  agony-plate,  lliousands  sell  be- 
cause they  fear  prices  are  going  still  lower; 
others,  because  they  fear  a  stoppage  of 
dividends.  But  the  real  misery  of  a  panic 
is  to  be  found  among  the  multitude  who 
kx>k  on  in  silence,  and  see  the  value  of 
of  their  savings  rapidly  diminish  without 
any  earthly  means  of  preventing  it,  and 
who  know  that  their  credit  and  every- 
body's credit  is  being  affected  by  it,  that 
their  bankers  will  call  for  more  margin  on 
their  loans,  or  will  refuse  to  make  them 
any  loans  at  all  on  any  security  they  can 
offer,  or  among  the  dealers  who  hoped  to 
get  their  bills  renewed  and  know  now  that 
it  will  be  impossible,  or  among  the  manu- 
facturers who  do  not  know  now  where  the 
money  for  the  next  pay-day  is  to  come 
from.  80  minute,  and  delicate,  and  far- 
reaching,  in  fact,  is  the  machinery  of  mo- 
dem trade  and  commerce  that  a  general 
fall  of  securities  in  the  Stock  Exchange  is 
sooner  or  later  felt  in  every  corner  of  the 
country  and  every  branch  of  industry, 
however  humble.  Either  people  find  they 
are  no  longer  trusted  as  they  were,  or  that 
they  can  afford  less.  In  the  one  case  they 
restrict  their  producing  activity;  in  the 
other  they  restrict  their  purchases. 

There  has  not  been  a  panic  here  since 
1857  the  blame  of  which  foolish  people  did 
not  lay  on  **  the  brokers,"  and  pronounce 
a  *'  Wall  Street  fiurry,"  which  would  be 
confined  to  Wall  Street  and  would  soon 
blow  over.  But  not  one  of  them  has  fail- 
ed to  search  out  all  owners  of  property  in 
every  comer  of  the  land.  The  waters  of 
calamity  flow  silently  into  every  creek  and 
inlet,  and  bring  home  to  everybody  who 
has  saved,  and  everybody  who  produces 
anything  to  sell,  full  knowledge  of  what 
destruction  the  folly  or  wickedness  of 
rulers  has  wrought.  Worst  of  all,  the 
disaster  does  not  pass  by  as  an  inunda- 
tion. Confidence  is  a  plant  of  slow 
growth,  and  confidence  means  credit,  and, 
if  shaken  or  cut  down,  it  takes  a  good 
while  to  grow  up  again.  Credit  is  the 
most  wonderful  invention  of  modem  civil- 
ization. It  means  the  belief  of  each  man 
in  the  civilised  world  that  the  rest  of  the 
civilised  world  will  keep  its  promises  to 
do  certain  things  on  certain  days.  Of 
course,  in  order  to  build  up  this  belief,  a 
comparatively  long  period  of  experience 
is  necessary.  It  has  to  be  based  on  the 
testimony  of  years  as  to  the  ability  and 
willingness  of  each  man's  neighbors  and 
enstomers  to  do  what  they  said  they 
would  da  Even  when  it  is  strongest  and 
Bost  secure,  it  is  the  most  delicate  and 


sensitive  of  human  instruments.  The 
slightest  shock  impairs  it;  the  slightest 
sign  of  calamity  or  peril  makes  it  melt 
away;  but  as  long  as  it  lasts  it  literally 
moves  mountains.  The  statesman  or 
ruler  who  does  not  think  of  this  when 
shaping  bis  policy  or  announcing  his  in- 
tentions, is  and  ought  to  be  anathema. 
To  disturb  credit  in  the  modern  world 
without  good  cause  is  to  declare  one's  self 
an  enemy  of  mankind. 

America  is  the  one  happy  country  in 
the  world  whose  workable  resources  far 
surpass  its  disposable  capital.  We  have 
not  a  quarter  enough  papital  of  our  own  to 
develop  them.  We  are,  therefore,  com- 
pelled as  a  condition  of  material  progress 
to  get  all  we  can  from  Europe.  In  send- 
ing her  millions  of  emigrants  here,  she 
has  also  to  send  the  money  to  employ 
them.  Any  one,  therefore,  who  arrests 
this  flow  of  European  capital,  or  who 
frightens  it  away,  is  as  much  an  enemy  of 
the  country  as  the  invader  who  should 
block  our  railroads,  trample  down  our 
wheat  fields,  and  close  our  mines.  Let 
him  also  be  anathema.  There  is  a  class 
of  Jingoes  among  us  who  have  been  and 
are  to-day  the  curse  of  the  Old  World 
and  a  blot  on  our  civilization,  who  main- 
tain that  the  poor  man  ought  to  be  glad 
to  be  out  of  work  and  see  his  children 
starving  if  his  wages  can  be  used  in 
slaughtering  the  natives  of  some  other 
country  in  defence  of  something  which  a 
small  knot  of  gentlemen  at  the  national 
capital  choose  to  consider  the  ''national 
honor."  To  hear  much  of  the  current 
talk  which  precedes  a  war,  one  would 
imagine  that  "national  honor"  was 
something  that  we  could  handle,  taste,  or 
cut  in  slices,  whereas  in  nine  cases  out  of 
ten  it  is  nothing  but  a  notion  of  the  Bill 
Chandlers  or  Cabot  Lodges,  to  which  no 
one  would  listen  for  a  moment  if  it  re- 
lated to  his  private  affairs.  Most  wars 
originate  in  some  concoction  of  a  not  very 
respectable  brain.  Hundreds  of  thou- 
sands perish  that  some  stupid  or  wicked 
politician  may  be  glorified. 


THE  COMMISSION. 

On  the  17th  of  December  last  the  Presi- 
dent sent  in  a  message  to  Congress  con- 
taining the  following  passage  apropos  of 
the  Venezuela  boundary : 

*■*  In  order  that  such  an  examlDation  should 
be  prosecuted  in  a  tborough  and  satisfactory 
manner,  I  suggest  that  the  Congress  make  an 
adequate  appropriation  for  the  expenses  of  a 
commission  to  be  appointed  by  the  Executive, 
who  shall  make  the  necessary  investigation  and 
report  upon  the  matter  with  the  least  possible 
delay.  When  such  report  va  made  and  accept- 
ed, it  will,  in  my  opinion,  be  the  duty  of  the 
United  States  to  resist  by  every  means  in  its 
power,  as  a  wilful  aggression  upon  its  rights 
and  interests,  the  appropriation  by  Great  Bri- 
tain of  any  lands,  or  the  exercise  of  govern- 
mental jonsdiction  over  any  territory,  which, 
after  investigation,  we  have  determined  of 
right  tielong  to  Veneiuela." 

And  be  added : 

**In  making  these  recommendations  I  am 
fully  alive  to  the  responsibility  incurred,  and 
keenly  realise  all  the  oonsequenoes  that  may 
foUow." 


This  is  as  plain  a  declaration  that  war 
will  follow  the  occurrence  of  curtain  con- 
tingencies as  has  ever  been  made  by  a 
ruler.  It  is  a  proposal  to  trace  the  boun- 
dary line  between  Great  Britain  and  Vene- 
zuela, with  or  without  British  coopera- 
tion, and  impose  our  finding  on  Great 
Britain  by  force.  On  its  face  it  leaves 
Great  Britain  only  one  alternative,  accept- 
ance of  a  condition  cast  in  the  most  in- 
sulting form,  or  war.  Congress  acted 
promptly  on  the  President's  suggestion, 
and  passed  the  following  act  practically 
without  discussion : 

**  Be  it  enacted  by  the  Senate  and  the  House 
of  Representatives  of  the  United  States  of 
America,  in  Congress  assembled,  that  the  sum 
of  $100,000,  or  so  much  thereof  as  may  be 
necessary,  be  and  the  same  is  hereby  appro- 
priated for  the  expenses  of  a  commission  to  be 
appointed  by  the  President  to  investigate  and 
report  upon  the  true  divisional  line  between 
the  republic  of  Venezuela  and  British  Guiana." 

This  is  authority  to  the  President  to  do 
what  he  proposed  to  do  in  the  message, 
without  modification. 

As  soon  as  this  message  was  made  pub- 
lic there  was  something  like  a  panic  In  the 
money  markets,  and  American  securities 
were  sold  out  in  great  quantities,  and  the 
business  men,  clergy,  and  professors,  and 
thinking  persons  generally  made  a  great 
outcry.  The  noisy  Jingoes  were  fright- 
ened by  the  effect  of  their  uproar  on  the 
finances,  and  ceased  their  applause  of  the 
President  and  ceased  to  talk  of  war  as  im- 
minent. The  word  was  passed  around 
that "  there  would  be  no  war  "—some  said 
because  Ghreat  Britain  would  not  fight, 
and  others  because  "  we  should  get  out 
of  it  in  some  way  ";  and  offers  of  service 
in  the  field  ceased  to  come  in. 

Quiet  having  been  in  a  measure  restored 
on  both  sides  of  the  water,  the  Jingoes 
and  demi- Jingoes  have, 'within  a  few  days, 
begun  to  pick  up  courage,  and  to  main- 
tain that  although  "  there  will  be  no  war," 
the  President  was  right,  etc.  One  of  the 
most  marked  characteristics  of  the  Jingo 
is  that  he  lives  in  a  fool's  paradise,  and  he 
is  consequently  always  astonished  by  the 
natural  and  inevitable  consequences  of  his 
own  folly.  The  only  opinion  he  ever  pays 
much  attention  to  is  that  of  his  brother 
Jingoes.  The  world  outside  does  not  ex- 
ist for  him.  In  our  belief  he  is  now  en- 
tering another  period  of  false  security, 
probably  to  be  followed  by  another  rude 
awakening,  and  we  believe  it  for  reasons 
that  are  not  far  to  seek.  In  the  first 
place,  the  President's  message  is  a  stand- 
ing and  very  insulting  threat  to  a  first- 
class  Power,  which  Lord  Salisbury  can 
overlook  or  pass  over  in  silence  as  long  as 
nothing  is  done  under  it.  He  may  even 
ignore  the  creation  of  the  Commission 
and  ignore  its  work.  But  it  is  impossible 
that  Great  Britain  will  appear  before  it, 
or  even  furnish  it  with  evidence,  as  long 
as  the  terms  of  its  appointment  remain 
unchanged.  No  ministry  would  dare  to 
face  the  House  of  Commons  which  al- 
lowed a  foreign  Power  to  trace  a  bounda- 
ry for  it,  under  a  threat,  in  territory  which 
did  not  belong  to  the  threatener.    Conse- 


8 


Tlie   ISTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1592 


quently,  unless  we  write  another  polite 
and  therefore  humiliating  despatch  aban- 
doning the  position  taken  in  the  message, 
the  Commission  will  have  before  it  only 
>  the  mess  of  lies  and  braggadocio  with 
^  which  half-civilized  States  like  Venezuela 
usually  carry  on  controversies.  If  its 
members  are  first-class  men,  fit  for  such 
work,  they  will  refuse  to  make  any  find- 
ing under  such  conditions.  Supposing, 
however,  they  go  on  and  decide  that  the 
British  line  is  the  correct  one,  the  reflec- 
tion on  the  President  and  Mr.  Olney,  and 
on  the  people  who  have  been  backing 
them  up  in  this  quarrel,  ought  to  be  too 
severe  to  be  borne;  and  we  trust  it  will  be 
followed  by  a  period  of  moral  anguish  such 
as  is  known  only  to  the  repentant  sinner. 
But  supposing  the  Commission  finds 
that  Qreat  Britain  has  been  encroaching 
on  Venezuela,  and  that  the  Venezuelan 
line  is  the  true  one,  then  we  shall  be 
bound,  under  the  message,  to  fight  Gkeat 
Britain  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  to 
offer  up  our  seaboard  cities,  our  foreign 
and  coasting  trade,  our  customs  revenue, 
and  our  currency  as  a  sacrifice  to  Crespo, 
his  cabinet,  and  his  concessionaires,  be 
sides  tens  of  thousands  of  lives,  and  to 
BOW  the  seeds  of  fresh  and  endless  inter- 
national hates  and  animosities.  Now  we 
wish  to  warn  the  Jingoes,  demi-Jingoes, 
and  business  men  of  the  community,  that 
they  must  not  be  talked  into  false  secu- 
rity because  the  Jingoes  have  stopped 
"  hollering,"  and  are  now  shouting  that 
"  there  will  be  no  war.*'  As  long  as  this 
Commission  exists,  with  the  functions  and 
consequences  defined  in  the  President's 
message,  it  will  act  as  a  cloud  on  the  rela- 
tions of  the  two  countries,  and  as  more 
than  a  cloud  on  the  money  market.  There 
will  be  no  return  of  confidence  as  long  as 
it  is  at  work,  because  the  things  depen- 
dent on  its  decision  are  too  serious.  If, 
however,  experience— even  their  own— had 
any  influence  on  Jingoes,  we  should  re- 
mind them  that  they  were  all  ready  in 
1892  to  kill  Chilians  and  bombard  their 
cities  for  an  offence  which  was  disposed 
of  by  a  few  words  of  written  apology. 
But  suppose  the  Chilians  had  proposed 
on  behalf  of  Great  Britain  to  come  up  and 
trace  the  Alaskan  boundary  for  us,  and 
to  compel  us  to  arbitrate  it  with  a  threat 
of  force,  would  a  few  words  of  apology 
have  disposed  of  the  matter?  Why,  even 
the  Presbyterian  Elder  who  at  that  time 
filled  the  Presidential  chair  would  have 
taken  the  field  in  person. 

Human  nature  in  Creat  Britain  is  much 
what  it  is  here.  Our  diplomacy  is  carried 
on  so  much  by  persons  who  are  not  train- 
ed in  the  use  of  diplomatic  phrases  and 
methods,  and  is  so  often  mixed  up  with 
domestic  politics,  that  European  diplo- 
matists usually  pass  by  without  notice  ex- 
pressions which  between  European  na- 
tions would  be  considered  highly  offen- 
sive. What  is  peculiar  about  the  present 
situation  is  that  Messrs.  Cleveland  and 
Olney  have,  for  the  first  time  since  1812, 
injected  into  an  international  controversy 


what  the  diplomatists  call  a  **mise  en 
demeure,"  or  a  peremptory  requisition  to 
do  a  certain  thing  by  a  certain  day  or 
take  the  consequences.  This  is  something 
which  the  diplomatists  of  the  Old  World 
avoid  till  the  last  moment— that  is,  until 
they  have  determined  on  war,  and  are 
quite  ready  for  it.  A  European  diplo- 
matist who  should  resort  to  it  with  a  first- 
class  Power,  and  then  keep  saying,  "  Oh, 
there  will  be  no  war,"  would  be  run  out 
of  the  country  like  Louis  Napoleon  or 
fimile  OlUvier,  and  he  would  be  served 
right.  Nothing  is  more  demoralizhig  to 
man  or  nation  than  the  habitual  use  of 
empty  threats.  If  the  Jingoes  want  to 
preserve  the  respect  of  mankind,  they 
will  now  face  the  consequences  of  their 
own  conduct  like  men.  They  must  not 
continue  to  applaud  the  President  and  at 
the  same  time  assure  us  that  there  b  no 
danger  of  war.  As  long  as  their  Commis- 
sion is  in  the  field,  there  is  danger  of  war 
which  no  prudent  business  man  will  over- 
look. The  situation  is  too  serious  for  any 
more  jocose  lying  and  **  hollering."  It 
ought  to  be  faced  with  calm,  and  mended, 
if  it  can  be  mended  now,  before  we  have 
waded  too  far  ever  to  go  back.  An  ex- 
planatory despatch  of  some  kind  could 
still  set  matters  right. 


A  DOOMSDAY  BOOK  DOOMED. 

ITALT,  December  11,  1885. 
The  year  1895  seemed  destined  to  doee  peace- 
fully for  Italy.  With  a  large  majority  for 
the  ministry,  a  decided  disinclination  to  rake 
ap  old  grievances  or  to  exhmne  decayed  scan- 
dais,  a  languid  interest  in  the  social  reforms 
proposed  for  poor  Sicily,  a  cheerfnl  assent  to 
the  prolongation  of  the  extra-legal  coercion 
laws,  approval  of  such  ecclesiastical  policy  as 
shall  prevent  the  Pope  from  infringing  on  the 
civil  power,  confidence  that  in  Africa  Bara- 
tieri  will  hold  his  own  against  Negus,  Ras  and 
Mahdists,  satisfaction  that  the  Italian  fleet 
takes  its  place  with  England  for  the  restraint 
of  the  unspeakable  Turk— there  seemed  no 
cause  that  could  produce  excitement,  still  lees 
agitation,  in  the  country  during  the  winter, 
which  promises  to  be  a  most  rigid  one.  But, 
on  the  25th  of  November,  when  the  Minister 
of  the  Treasury  made  his  annual  statement  in 
the  curt,  dry  manner  which  is  Sonnino's  own, 
he  announced  that  the  eatasto,  or  stock-taking 
of  the  quantity,  nature,  and  value  of  land  in 
Italy,  with  the  names  of  the  present  proprie- 
tors thereof,  must  be  suspended,  as  182,000,000 
lire  would  be  needed  to  complete  it  during  the 
next  thirty  years,  and,  when  completed,  it 
would  not  answer  any  of  the  objects  for  which 
it  was  originally  designed.  Had  a  bomb  fallen 
into  each  city,  town,  and  village  of  northern 
and  central  Italy,  the  alarm  could  not  have 
been  greater  or  more  general,  and  yet  Son- 
nino  had  only  expressed  the  private  belief  of  a 
large  portion  of  the  Italians  who  have  watched 
the  process  of  compiling  a  new  Doomsday 
Book  ever  since  it  commenced  in  1886.  That 
it  is  necessary  to  ascertain  the  amount  and 
quality  of  land  held  by  individuals,  for  the 
purposes  of  taxation  and  for  adjusting  its  in- 
cidence, all  admit  theoretically,  and  the  *'  how 
to  do  it "  has  been  a  moot  question  ever  since 
Italy  agitated  and  revolted  in  order  to  secure 
an  independent  national  existence.    In  1848 


the  Ligfurians  demanded  a  revision  of  the 
land-tax,  and  in  1860  the  Lombards  strenu- 
ously insisted  on  being  delivered  from  the 
enormous  burdens  laid  on  the  land  by  their 
Austrian  oppressors;  Venetia  joining  in  the 
demand  as  soon  as  the  Austrisjis  quitted  her 
territory.  The  exhaustive  Agrarian  inquiry 
initiated  by  Bertani,  and  carried  out  con 
amore  by  individuals  qualified  for  the  task, 
proved  the  inequality  of  the  taxes  paid  not 
only  in  the  different  provinces,  but  also  in 
different,  though  adjacent,  communes  of  the 
same  province. 

The  system  of  land  surveys  is  as  old  as  the 
hills  in  Italy.  Servius  Tullus  introduced  it 
into  Rome,  Oelon  into  Syracuse.  XJlpian  has 
handed  down  a  fragment  of  the  old  Roman 
Doomsday  Book  where  the  sice  of  an  estate,  its 
product  and  value,  are  recorded  on  the  reports 
of  the  proprietors.  When  Italy  waa  united, 
it  was  found  that  there  were  twenty-two  regis- 
ters compiled  for  the  purposes  of  taxation, 
all  different.  The  survey  of  the  Milanese  ter- 
ritory was  made  more  than  a  hundred  years 
ago;  it  shows  the  state  of  culture  at  tiiat 
time,  and  the  land-tax  has  been  imposed  from 
then  till  now  on  the  data  then  furnished.  The 
others  were  made  for  the  most  part  at  the 
commencement  of  the  century,  the  latest  thir- 
ty years  ago.  Still,  half  the  surface  of  the 
country  remains  without  a  land  survey  of  any 
kind.  As  the  25th  article  of  the  Constitution 
ordains  that  **all  citizens  shall  contribute  to 
the  maintenance  of  the  state  in  proportion  to 
their  property  (real  or  personal),"  Minghetti 
opined  that  no  new  tax  could  be  equitably 
laid,  or  existing  tax  increased,  untU  the  land- 
tax  had  been  equalized  throughout  the  new 
kingdom.  In  1860  the  minister  Vegezzi  for- 
mally pledged  the  Government  to  adjust  the 
incidence  of  land  imposts  in  the  following 
year,  and  in  1861  a  commission  was  nominated 
to  apply  the  speediest  and  most  economical 
methods  of  ascertaining  the  value  of  the  land 
and  to  equalize  taxation.  Various  bills  were 
presented,  but  the  war  of  1866  and  the  agita- 
tion for  Rome  during  the  following  years  pre- 
vented the  completion  of  any  such  projects. 

After  the  entry  into  Rome,  Cambray-Digny 
and  Sella  applied  themselves  to  the  task  ;  new 
bills  were  presented  and  all  were  shelved. 
When  the  Left  came  to  po¥rer,  the  **perequa- 
zione  *'  (equalizaldon  of  the  land-tax)  formed  a 
prominent  feature  of  Depretis's  Stradella  pro- 
g^mme.  He  proposed  that  the  state,  and  not 
the  communes,  should  bear  the  burden  of  the 
surveys.  The  examination,  per  province,  of  the 
taxes  levied  on  land  brought  to  light  the  enor- 
mous disproportion  of  the  burdens  ;  e.  (/.,  the 
province  of  Leghorn  paid  .82  lire  per  head; 
Cremona  10.99,  Lodi  11.99.  The  produce  of 
the  tax  per  hectare  proves  little,  but  when 
you  come  to  the  rate  for  every  100  lire  of  in- 
come derived  from  land,  the  glaring  injustice 
is  evident.  The  Sardinians  paid  18.76,  Ve- 
netian  Lombardy  44.27,  Sicily  17.12,  the  Mo- 
denese  79.29  I  At  last,  in  1885  *6,  when  Depre- 
tis  and  Magliani,  who  seemed  to  think  Italy's 
pecuniary  resources  inexhaustible,  and  who 
framed  the  coloesal  railway  network  which 
has  nearly  suffocated  the  people  in  its  meshes, 
were  masters  of  the  two  houses,  a  law  for  the 
reorganization  of  the  land-tax  passed  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies  and  the  Senate  and  re- 
ceived the  King's  sanction.  Throughout  the 
kingdom  a  uniform  cadastral  estimative  ca- 
tastoy  showing  the  quantity  and  quali^,  mea- 
sure and  value  of  every  portion  of  land  held, 
was  to  be  made  to  ascertain  the  real  estate 
and  to  equalize  the  land  tax  ;  the  property  of 
each  commune  and  of  every  individual  was  to 


Jan.  2,  1896] 


Th.e   ISTation. 


9 


be  thowD  on  separate  mapr.  A  special  de- 
partment dependent  on  the  Finance  Minister 
created  technical  and  judicial  commissions, 
and  institnted  central  and  proviQcial  commis- 
sions ;  a  regular  hierarchy  set  to  work  on  a 
taak  to  which  that  of  Sisyphus  was  a  trifle. 
In  valuing  the  land,  no  account  was  to  be 
taken  of  special  culture  or  high  farming,  or  of 
partial  or  total  neglect.  The  value  of  the  land 
was  to  be  estimated  according  to  its  actual 
production,  each  product  being  rated  at  its 
minimum  price  during  three  years  between 
1874  and  1885,  and  the  difference  between 
specie  and  paper  money  being  taken  into  ac- 
count. The  revision  of  the  land-tax  was  to 
take  effect  in  thirty  years.  The  provinces 
were  to  pay  the  expenses  of  the  technical 
boards  and  of  the  provincial  commissions, 
to  furnish  house-room,  furniture,  and  fuel  for 
the  necessary  ofDcee;  the  communes  to  pay  the 
cost  of  measuring  and  defining  the  boundaries 
of  their  respective  territories,  and  to  pay  their 
local  offloera  and  agents  for  the  publication 
and  notifications  necessary;  the  proprietors 
to  pay  the  cost  of  measuring  and  defining 
the  boundaries  of  their  several  estates.  All 
the  other  expenses  were  to  be  borne  by  the 
Government.  Such  were  the  chief  features  of 
the  famous  bill,  the  f ramers  not  hesitating  to 
fix  7  per  cent,  as  the  land  tax  to  be  levied 
on  the  net  income  derived.  It  was  provided 
that  any  province  wishing  to  accelerate  the 
operations  and  advancing  half  the  expenses, 
should  be  allowed  to  do  so,  and,  if  the  task  was 
completed  in  seven  years,  should  be  allow- 
ed to  apply  the  7  per  cent,  rate  provision- 
ally. The  Government  would  reimburse  the 
provinces  for  their  advances. 

The  debate  on  the  bill  was  serious  and  ani- 
mated. Venetian  Lombardy,  Modena,  and 
other  heavily  taxed  territories  instructed 
their  Deputies  to  support  it,  and  at  once  de- 
manded accelerated  operations  ;  but  the  oppo- 
sition of  the  lightly  taxed  provinces  was  strong 
and  cogent.  Perfectly  impartial  persons 
maintained  that  while  a  land  survey  was 
necessary  to  ascertain  the  actual  quantity 
under  cultivation  and  the  incidence  of  taxa- 
tion, it  was  imprudent  then  and  there  to  fix 
the  rate  to  be  applied .  Agriculture,  especially 
in  Sicily  and  some  of  the  Neapolitan  provinces, 
was  progressing ;  the  low  price  of  wheat,  the 
enormous  competition  of  America  and  Russia 
in  those  <fays  when  protection  was  heresy,  had 
led  many  proprietors  and  even  peasant  farm- 
ers to  plough  up  their  fields  and  plant  vines, 
especially  when  the  phylloxera  had  destroyed 
so  large  a  portion  of  the  French  vineyards, 
and  the  treaty  of  commerce  with  France  was 
so  favorable.  Others  declaimed  against  the 
iojustioe  of  estimating  the  value  of  the  land 
by  the  actual  produce,  so  that  a  landowner 
who  had  spent  time,  money,  and  intelligence 
in  draining,  manuring,  and  tilling  his  land 
would  be  highly  taxed,  whereas  absentee  own- 
ers of  latifundia,  or  feckless  farmers  who  had 
let  their  land  run  to  waste  and  neglected  its 
culture  altogether,  would  come  off  lightly  in 
direct  ratio  to  their  negligence.  The  members 
of  the  advanced  Left  opposed  the  whole  pro- 
ject on  financial  grounds.  Cairoli,  Baccarini, 
•ad  Crisp!  demonstrated  that  the  bill  as  it 
stood  would  entail  on  the  country  hundreds  of 
millions,  and  would  occupy  half  a  century,  so 
that  when  the  object  was  attained,  when  the 
quantity  of  land  possessed  by  each  individual 
with  Its  net  Income  in  1886  should  be  ascer- 
tained, such  would  be  the  transformation  of 
agriculture— owing  to  scientific  culture,  ame- 
lioration of  agricultural  appliances,  the  varia- 
tions  in  the  nature  and  demand  of  foreign 


markets— that  the  rate  of  taxation  paid  in 
1886  would  be  unjust  and  insupportable  in  the 
next  century.  The  Marquis  dl  Rudini,  a  large 
landowner  of  Sicily,  then  a  pillar  of  the  mode- 
rate church,  joined  in  with  the  dissenters, 
prophesying  that  instead  of  equalizing  the 
burdens  the  bill  would  double  the  inequalities, 
and  produce  a  fatal  regional  agitation  twtween 
the  northern  and  southern  provinces. 

Crispi,  on  December  7,  1885,  demonstrated 
the  fallacy  of  the  estimative  cafxistOf  admit 
ting  the  wisdom  of  **  taking  stock  of  the  true 
state  of  the  great  factor,  land."  The  estimative 
operations,  be  said,  will  not  result  in  equalis- 
ing the  land  tax,  and,  reviving  painful  memo- 
ries, will  arouse  such  distrust  in  the  country  as 
will  prevent  their  being  brought  to  a  success- 
ful  conclusion.  The  estimates  as  to  the  pro- 
ductive value  of  land  will  always  be  hypo- 
thetical, will  never  be  able  to  fix  the  actual 
income  subject  to  taxation;  and  when  the 
operations  are  concluded,  the  real  income  from 
land  will  differ  essentially  from  the  official  es. 
timates.  He  returned  to  the  charge  in  Janu- 
ary, 1886: 

"  If,  letting  the  value  of  produce  and  the 
estimate  of  income  alone,  confining  yourselves 
to  a  cadastral  survey  of  tbeland,  vou  ascertain 
the  amount  of  cultivable  soil  and  the  present 
owners  thereof,  you  will  have  data  which  will 
enable  you  to  arrive  by  other  methods  at  an 
approximate  system  of  equable  taxation." 

So  ardent  was  the  discussion  that  a  yea-and- 
nay  vote  was  insisted  on,  the  Opposition  being 
determined  that  their  hoetility  to  the  bill 
should  pass  down  to  posterity.  The  majority 
voted  for  the  Depretis-Magliani  bill;  the  chief 
Liberals  voted  for  Crispfs  amendment.  Ope- 
rations were  commenced  with  alacrity,  and 
millions  have  been  lavished  during  the  last 
nine  years.  The  project  was  modified  in  1894, 
but  it  was  clearly  seen  that  the  wheels  were 
clogg^  and  the  machine  would  not  work. 
Sonnino,  on  the  25th  of  November,  quietly  ob- 
served that,  without  taking  into  account  the 
expenses  devolving  on  the  provinces  and  the 
communes,  the  state  would  have  to  spend 
182  millions  more,  provided  the  work  con- 
tinued at  its  present  slow  rate,  whereas  the 
transformation  of  agriculture  is  so  great  that 
the  estimates  of  1886  no  longer  apply,  so  that 
the  whole  work  ought  to  be  accelerated  to 
avoid  further  injustice.  This  the  finances  of 
the  country  do  not  permit.  More  than  7  mil- 
lions  have  to  be  repaid  to  the  provinces  which 
have  accelerated  the  cadastral  survey ;  other 
103^  millions  for  the  estimates  of  value.  The 
application  of  the  fixed  rate  of  7  per  cent, 
already  reduces  the  land  tax  by  more  than  10 
millions ;  ergoy  increased  expense,  decreased 
income.  Can  we,  he  asks,  continue  on  this 
perilous  path  f  In  some  provinces  the  reform 
of  the  land  tax  will  be  effected  in  a  few  years ; 
in  others,  thirty  or  thirty-five  years  may  pa»8 
before  it  can  be  completed. 

•*  Already,"  he  contin«.ed,  "the  agricultural 
conditions  of  the  country  are  transformed;  the 
vine  culture  b  in  a  deplorable  state,  owing  to 
the  cessation  of  the  French  market;  wheat  is 
again  grown  on  a  large  scale,  owing  to  the 
protective  duties  on  foreign  grain.  Moreover, 
In  the  application  of  the  law  of  1886  intrusted  to 
local  bodies,  the  estimates  presented  by  neigh- 
boring provinces  are  so  diverse  that  it  is  evi 
dent  tnev  are  neither  true  nor  just.  We  roust 
halt  while  there  is  yet  time  on  this  path  that 
leads  to  ruin.  The  Minister  of  Finance  will 
present  a  bill  for  the  continuation  of  the  ca- 
dastral survey,  for  the  cessation  of  the  esti- 
mative eatasto,  for  the  reimbursement  to  the 
provinces  of  toe  sums  expended  with  5  per 
cent,  interest  from  the  date  of  the  advances. 
These  sums  amount  to  fourteen  millions,  the 
interest  to  two  millions,  which  will  be  paid  in 
seven  years.    The  annual  sum  of  three  millions 


will  be  set  aside  for  the  cadastral  survey;  no 
term  for  its  completion  can  be  fixed." 

Boselli,  Minister  of  Finance,  presented  the 
draft  of  his  bill  in  conformity  with  the  speech 
of  his  colleague  of  the  Treasury.  Its  provi. 
sions  are,  that  the  cadastral  survey  shall  be 
completed  first  in  the  provinces  which  demand 
acceleration  in  the  proceedings;  in  the  Mode- 
nese  territory  the  provinces  will  not  be  called 
upon  to  advance  further  sums,  but  will  be 
repaid  for  all  outlays  in  the  past — the  land  tax 
to  remain  at  its  present  incidence  until  another 
bill  for  estimating  the  actual  value  of  product 
and  the  net  income  derived  from  it  shall  be- 
come law.  All  estimative  valuations  are  to 
cease;  those  already  made  to  have  no  immedi- 
ate effect. 

The  sudden,  violent  agitation  produced  by 
this  bomb  raged  for  about  a  week,  threat- 
ening to  sunder  the  ministerial  majority. 
Out  of  the  nine  offices,  or  committees,  whose 
duty  it  is  to  examine  ministerial  or  pri- 
vate bills,  six  rejected  it  in  toto.  The  Econo* 
mista  of  Florence  had  a  furious  article  on  the 
"  iniquitous  project."  But  already  the  agita- 
tion is  calming  down,  and  to  this  have  contri- 
buted not  a  little  some  of  the  few  survivors  of 
the  old  Radical  party,  who  have  ever  sought 
the  true  interests  of  the  country,  and  not  their 
own  aggrandizement. 

The  suggestions  for  arriving  by  economical 
and  expeditious  methods  at  a  general  idea  of 
the  land-tax  now  paid  on  every  100  lire  of  net 
income  are  numerous.  Two  seem  to  us  ra- 
tional, if  not  original.  G.  B.  of  Ravenna  pro- 
poses that  the  Government  fix  the  sum  to 
be  exacted  from  the  land  in  the  form  of  a 
tax,  nominate  a  commission  to  apportion  the 
quota  among  the  various  agrarian  regions, 
taking  its  data  from  the  reports  of  the  Agra- 
rian inquiry;  then,  that  the  provincial  and 
communal  authorities  proceed  to  the  distribu- 
tion of  the  sum  total  among  the  landed  proprie- 
tors within  the  g^ven  districts,  who  must  sup- 
ply the  details  of  their  net  income.  The  writer 
is  of  opinion  that  the  work  can  be  accomplished 
in  two  years.  At  present  all  the  collectors  of 
the  land-tax  have  an  approximate  roll  of  the 
actual  incomes  of  each  landowner,  which  they 
take  care  to  rectify  if  understated,  so  that  to 
apportion  the  contribution  of  each  with  a  view 
to  make  up  the  sum  total  does  not  seem  an  im- 
possible achievement.  Deputy  Canzi,  well 
versed  in  agricultural  matters,  who  from  the 
first  opposed  the  estimative  valuation,  pro- 
poses  to  base  the  land-tax  on  the  dedarationa 
of  the  respective  landowners,  after  due  exami- 
nation  and  rectification.  The  venerable  pa- 
triot Gabriele  Rosa  approves  this  propoMil. 
The  Soltf  the  best  Milanese  commercial  and 
industrial  newspaper,  says  that  this  system 
is  gradually  gaining  the  approval  of  land- 
owners in  Venetian  Lombardy.  Meanwhile, 
the  parliamentary  commission,  with  Luigi  Lua- 
zatti  for  President,  is  in  daily  communioatlon 
with  Sonnino  and  Boselli,  whose  latest  pro- 
posals are  to  repay  the  sums  advanced,  to  lessen 
by  two  millions  the  land-tax  at  present  paid 
by  the  provinces  which  accepted  the  accele. 
rated  survey,  to  augment  by  60  centimes  the 
duty  on  the  importations  of  foreign  grain.  As 
yet  the  ministers  and  the  commission  have  not 
come  to  terms;  but  it  is  certain  that  Sonnino 
will  resign  rather  than  recede  from  his  aboU- 
tion  bill,  nor  do  we  believe  that  any  other 
ministers  of  the  Treasury  or  of  finance  could 
be  found  who  would  dare  to  burden  the  coun- 
try with  the  payment  of  180  unproductive  mil- 
lions. The  debate  on  the  bUl  by  the  Chamber 
of  Deputies  will  scarcely  be  entered  on  during 
the  piesentyear.  J.  W.  M, 


lO 


Tlie    N^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1592 


THE   THOMAS   PAINE   EXHIBITION  IN 
LONDON. 

London,  December  17, 1895. 
In  following  for  five  years  the  thread  of 
Thomas  Paine's  life  I  found  so  many  Interest- 
ing relics  strung  on  it,  even  through  efforts  to 
snap  the  thread  as  well  as  others  to  weave  with 
it,  that  the  idea  of  an  exhibition  occurred  to 
me.  After  due  consultation  with  men  well  in- 
formed in  such  studiee— such  as  Edward  Smith 
(biographer  of  Cobbett),  Clair  J.  Grece,  LL.D., 
George  Jacob  Holyoake,  G.  Julian  Harney, 
Edward  Truelove — a  good  working  committee 
was  formed  and  the  exhibition  occurred  in 
South  Place  Chapel  last  week.  It  was  success- 
ful beyond  eur  expectations,  the  catalogue 
enumerating  485  exhibits  and  really  represent- 
ing more  than  600;  many  tokens,  manuscripts, 
etc.,  being  included  under  one  or  another  sin- 
gle label.  In  the  evenings  the  exhibition  took 
the  form  of  a  soir^;  there  were  addresses  from 
eminent  men,  and  songs  of  the  old  period,  some 
composed  by  Paine,  were  sung.  Among  the 
exhibitors  were  some  eminent  Conservatives; 
and  among  the  exhibits  were  pamphlets,  cari- 
catures, and  tokens  hostile  to  Paine.  On  enter- 
ing, there  was  seen  on  the  platform  Vago*s 
large  bust  of  Paine,  and  on  either  side  death- 
masks  of  the  chief  antagonists,  Burke  and 
Paine.  The  fifty  years  extending  from  the 
publication  of  *  Common  Sense '  in  1776  to  the 
last  imprisonments  for  selling  the  *Age  of  Rea- 
son* was  represented  by  portraits  of  warriors 
whose  swords  were  unsheathed  to  establish  or 
to  resist  the  *  Rights  of  Man,*  and  of  writers 
whose  pens  were  unsheathed  for  or  against  the 
*Age  of  Reason.'  The  aim  of  the  exhibition 
was  purely  historical,  and  entirely  without 
any  purpose  of  propagandism.  It  was  recog- 
nized by  all  parties  as  a  striking  illustration  of 
the  distance  England  has  travelled  from  the 
terrors  and  intolerance  of  the  Georgian  era. 
Survivals  of  ancient  prejudices  are  so  few  that 
out  of  fifty  exhibitors  only  one,  in  a  remote 
comer  of  Cumberland,  asked  to  be  anony- 
mous, **not  knowing  how  far  the  arm  of  bigot- 
ry may  reach,"  and  we  tried  in  vain  to  get  a 
contemporary  tract  against  Paine.  After  the 
exhibition  was  over,  a  dingy  leaflet  was  sent, 
not  as  a  curiosity  but  for  pious  admonition  to 
those  in  danger  of  believing  with  **  Paine  and 
other  Infidels  that  there  is  nu  God,''  the  rest  of 
the  single  page  being  occupied  with  arguments 
for  the  divine  existence,  of  which  every  one  is 
taken  from  Paine's  ^Discourse  on  the  Existence 
of  God.'  Such  are  the  microscopic  remnants 
of  a  period  when  the  attempt  to  hold  any  such 
display  as  this  of  last  week  would  have  ended 
in  the  whole  crowd  finding  accommodation  in 
Newgate. 

South  Place  Chapel  was  a  good  point  from 
which  to  get  historical  perspective  of  the  hun- 
dred years'  history.  In  1795  the  Society's 
founder.  Rev.  Elhanan  Winchester,  replied  to 
Paine's  'Age  of  Reason,'  but  politely;  in  1796 
his  ministerial  successor  wrote  an  introduc- 
tion to  Winchester's  reply,  but  made  a  large 
concession  to  Paine's  position;  in  1819  Vidler's 
successor,  W.  J.  Fox,  denounced  the  imprison- 
ment of  Carlile  for  selling  the  'Age  of  Rea- 
son '  (the  only  minister  who  did  so);  and  now 
the  Society  built  up  by  those  men  has  given 
an  exhibition  which  displays  them  all,  agita- 
tors and  antagonists,  prisoners  and  imprison- 
ers,  as  performers  in  a  drama  now  memorable 
as  an  experience  and  an  instruction  in  the 
laws  of  political  and  ethical  e  solution. 

The  literary  exhibition  was  large.  Except 
that  there  was  no  first  edition  of  Paine's  pam- 
phlet 'Dissertations  on  Government,  the  Af- 


fairs of  the  Bank,  and  Paper  Money'  (Phila- 
delphia, 1786),  and  only  the  second  *  Crisis' 
(original),  which  was  given  me  by  Mr.  Horace 
White  of  New.  York,  all  of  Paine's  first  edi- 
tions were  exhibited.  There  was  a  sermon  on 
the  Existence  of  Deity,  headed  with  a  text  and 
ending  with  a  prayer,  made  up  with  slight  al- 
terations from  the  *Age  of  Reason'  (Paine's 
name  removed,  of  course),  which  was  circulated 
in  England  as  a  religious  tract  at  the  very  time 
that  booksellers  were  in  prison  for  selling  the 
book  with  Paine's  name  on  it.  Another  tract 
is  made  out  of  his  address  to  the  Theophilan- 
thropists  in  Paris  (1797),  with  nothing  removed 
but  the  names  of  the  society  and  Paine.  The 
many  answers  to  Paine  (Watson,  Wakefield, 
Tytler,  Levi,  Priestley,  and  a  score  of  others) 
showed  that  the  'Age  of  Reason'  was  taken 
very  seriously  by  the  scholars  and  scientists  of 
his  time.  Among  the  autographs  was  a  letter 
of  Paine*s  describing  his  being  shot  at  in  his 
house  at  New  Rochelle  (exhibited  by  Dr. Grece), 
and  a  number  (including  the  memorial  to  Mon- 
roe  written  in  Luxembourg  prison)  exhibited 
by  Mr.  Alfred  Morrison,  whose  collection  is  of 
almost  corresponding  value  in  European  his- 
tory to  that  of  Mr.  W.  F.  EUivemeyer  of  New 
York  in  Americana.  A  very  interesting  letter 
was  exhibited  by  our  anonymous  ''Friend," 
written  to  his  grandfather  (England)  by  the 
widow  of  Elihu  Palmer,  under  date,  "New 
York,  Sept.  8,  1806."  After  speaking  of  her 
husband's  sudden  death,  she  says: 

**  Of  course,  lam  left  poor  indeed.  I  have 
been  exceedingly  distressed  for  the  means  of 
living.  I  had  to  sell  my  furniture  to  pay  my 
rent  the  first  of  May,  was  in  very  bad  health, 
and  really  tired  of  my  life.  But  my  prospects 
and  condition  are  now  altered  for  the  better. 
Mr.  Thomas  Paine  had  a  fit  of  apoplexy  on 
the  27th  of  last  July,  and  as  soon  as  he  recov- 
ered his  senses  he  sent  for  me,  and  I  have  been 
with  him  ever  since.  And  I  expect  if  I  outlive 
him  to  be  heir  to  part  of  his  property,  fie  says 
I  must  never  leave  him  while  he  lives.  He  is 
now  comfortable,  but  so  lame  he  cannot  walk 
nor  get  into  bed  without  the  help  of  two  men. 
He  stays  at  Mr.  Carver's.  Mr.  raine  sends  his 
best  respects  to  you  and  all  your  family." 

This  was  written  to  Robert  Taylor  of  Man- 
chester, and  with  it  was  shown  a  silhouette  of 
Paine,  no  doubt  sent  by  Mrs.  Palmer,  as  it  is  in 
the  same  paper  frame  with  one  of  her  husband. 
It  represents  Paine  in  extreme  age,  and  shows 
the  g^at  length  of  his  head.  The  portrait  of 
Palmer  is  the  original  (colored)  of  that  en- 
graved in  Fellows's  sketch  of  his  life,  along 
with  Palmer's  '  Principles  of  Nature.'  He  holds 
a  staff,  used  after  he  became  blind,  and  over 
the  picture  is  engraved  a  quatrain,  of  which 
I  could  make  out  only  two  lines : 

"  Though  shades  and  darkneM  oloud  his  Tlsual  ray, 
The  mind  unclouded  f  eela  no  loss  of  day ; 
In  Reason's ** 

Eleven  different  portraits  of  Paine  were 
shown  (one  on  a  tea-tray  with  Washington, 
Franklin,  a  printing-press,  and  an  eagle),  and 
a  large  screen  was  covered  with  portraits  of 
'his  friends  and  opponents  in  America,  Eng. 
land,  and  France,  Franklin  and  Lafayette 
being  well  represented,  through  the  assistance 
of  Mr.  B.  F.  Stevens.  Manchester  College, 
Oxford,  loaned  Price  and  Priestley,  and  their 
librarian,  Miss  Toulmin  Smith,  a  fine  portrait 
of  Gilberc  Wakefield,  who,  in  his  reply  to 
Paine,  paid  a  warm  tribute  to  his  personal 
character.  Mr.  Henry  Willett  of  Arnold 
House,  whose  collection  of  pottery  is  deposit- 
ed in  the  Brighton  Museum,  sent  interesting 
specimens  of  political  pottery,  among  them  a 
quart  jug  with  a  fiattering  figure  of  Paine  on 
one  side,  and  on  the  other  (in  allusion  to 
Burke*s  phrase,    '*the    swinish    multitude") 


Paine  as  one  of  a  herd  of  swine  to  which  he 

says: 

"  Ye  pigs  that  neTer  went  to  ooUege, 
You  mnit  not  paat  for  pigs  of  knowledge" 

A  large  number  of  political  coin-tokens  were 
exhibited  by  Mr.  Edward  Snelling,  and  still 
more  by  Mr.  A.  W.  Waters,  a  young  butcher 
in  Old  Kent  Road,  who  is  one  of  the  most 
learned  men  in  London  in  historical  tokens. 
Theee  coins  (pence,  halfpence,  farthings)  were 
struck  by  private  persons,  the  GK>vemment 
not  issuing  enough  for  trade  needs.  Under 
(j^rge  II.  and  III.  no  copper  coin  was  issued 
between  1754  and  1770,  or  between  1775  and 
1797.  During  the  latter  interval  these  coins 
were  utilized  as  political  tokens,  some  showing 
Paine  on  the  gibbet,  others  Pitt  in  the  same 
predicament.  The  Federalist  cry  in  America 
of  *'the  two  Toms"  (Paine  and  Jefferson) 
seems  to  have  been  borrowed  from  **the 
three  Toms"  of  some  of  these  tokens.  These 
were  Tom  Paine,  Tom  Spenoe  (a  Radical  book- 
seller  who  coined  anti-Tory  tokens),  and  Sir 
Thomas  More.  It  appears  to  me  so  curious 
that  the  Tories  of  Paine's  time  should  go  back 
to  the  early  sixteenth  century  for  a  typical 
rebel  against  royalty,  that  I  incline  to  believe 
their  third  "Tom"  was  an  Anglicised  render, 
ing  of  Thomas  Muir.  Muir  was  an  Edinburgh 
barrister  who,  when  the  French  Convention 
was  formed,  and  before  the  Reign  of  Terror, 
got  up  in  Edinburgh  a  convention  in  imitation 
of  it  (but  opened  with  prayer).  He  was  banish- 
ed for  fourteen  years,  but  escaped  from  Botany 
Bay  and  found  his  way  to  Paine  (in  Paris), 
who  helped  to  support  him. 

There  were  photographs  of  Paine's  birth- 
house  in  Thetf ord,  of  his  residence  in  Lewes, 
and  of  his  house  in  New  Rochelle.  There  was 
also  a  photograph  of  No.  7  Upper  Marylebone 
Street,  London,  which  has  been  identified  by 
the  vestry  clerk  of  Marylebone  as  the  house 
in  which  Paine  resided  with  his  friend  and 
publisher,  "CUo"  Rlckman,  in  1792.  This 
house  is  unchanged;  the  old  bookshelves  are 
still  in  the  walls,  and  the  bookbinding  part  of 
Rickman's  business  has  steadily  continued  in 
it,  there  having  been,  I  believe,  only  one  bind- 
er (Howe)  between  Rickman  and  the  present 
aged  Mr.  Thomas.  Thirty  of  the  first  editions 
which  I  exhibited,  mostly  of  Paine's  works,  were 
bound  in  this  house,  where  many  of  them  were 
originally  printed,  and  where  several  of  them 
were  written.  The  venerable  bookseller,  Ed- 
ward Truelove,  recently  retired  from  business, 
brought  to  the  exhibition  a  little  mahogany 
table,  in  the  centre  of  which  was  the  follow, 
ing:  **  This  Plate  is  inscribed  by  Thomas  Clio 
Rickman  in  Remembrance  of  his  dear  Friend, 
Thomas  Paine,  who  on  this  table,  in  the  year 
1792,  wrote  several  of  his  invaluable  Works." 
This  table,  of  which  an  engraving  with  other 
articles  of  the  exhibition  appears  in  the  Sketch 
of  last  week,  seemed  to  bring  us  very  close  to 
Paine  in  England,  while  the  Diaries  of  John 
Hall,  who  resided  with  Paine  at  Bordentown, 
brought  us  entries  of  his  daily  life  in  America. 
(These  were  sent  by  Dr.  Dutton  Steele  of  Phila- 
delphia, Hall's  relative.) 

Amid  all  these  things  was  a  little  dried  sub. 
stance  shown  under  glass  by  Mr.  Louis  Breeze, 
beside  it  a  little  certificate  of  authenticity  from 
B.  Tilly,  Wmiam  Cobbett's  secretary.  It  is  a 
part  of  Paine's  brain.  Tbis  bit  of  the  **  impe- 
rial Caesar  "  of  last-century  radicalism,  **  dead 
and  turned  to  clay,"  quaint  relic  of  that  brain 
whose  every  word  a  hundred  years  ago  made 
thrones  tremble,  stirred  one  of  the  speakers 
(Allanson  Picton,  ex.M.  P.)  to  eloquence. 

But  I  must  remember  the  importance  of  your 
space  to  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  oen- 


Jan.  2,  1896] 


THe   ITation. 


11 


tarjt  and  not  ask  your  redden  to  ramble  with 
w  farther  among  these  reUos  of  the  eighteenth 
oentory,  evm  though  nnder  the  breath  of  in- 
tolligence  theae  dry  bones  regain  life  and  sig. 
nilloanoe  in  the  preeenttime. 

MONCUBX  D.  ColfWAT. 


Correspondence. 


THE  MAIN  QUESTION. 
To  THB  Editor  of  Thk  Nation: 

Sot:  In  yoor  excellent  itrae  of  December  19 
yoosay: 

**  For  what  do  obedience  to  the  law  and  re- 
liance on  the  law  mean  if  not  the  surrender  of 
one's  own  wilt  the  concession  to  others  of  the 
power  of  deciding  disputes  in  which  one  knows 
one  is  right?" 

Very  true;  and  at  this  particular  juncture 
many  people  will  apply  it  to  Lord  Salisbury's 
refusal  to  submit  his  case  to  the  decision  of 
oCharSi  even  though  he  may  be  absolutely  sure 
thai  within  the  Schomburgk  line  he  is  clearly 
within  his  irrefutable  rights.  True,  he  is  not 
herein  amenable  to  courts  that  can  enforce 
their  decrees;  but  there  is  the  forum  of  enlight- 
ened and  Christian  opinion,  which  we  trust 
will  make  war  more  and  more  impoesible  be- 
tween ciTiliaed  countries.  I  am  not  arguing 
that  he  ought  to  have  submitted  the  matter  to 
arbitration— especially  to  a  nation  that  came 
at  him  with  bristlee  up— but  your  weighty  sen- 
teooe  will  be  applied  to  this  case  by  very  many 
of  your  readers. 

As  to  the  President's  motiTes.  Has  he  not 
shown  his  sturdy  integritiy  and  unfaltering 
courage  too  often  for  us  to  assume  that  all  this 
was  done  as  a  political  scheme  for  a  renomina- 
tionf  Has  he  not  deeerred  too  well  of  the 
republic  to  be  arraigned  on  such  a  terrible 
etergef  It  seems  to  me  that  he  has.  And 
while  Tery  many  of  his  enthusiastic  admirers 
hare  to  cut  looee  from  him  now  on  this  poli- 
cy, we  need  not  go  to  the  extreme  of  accusing 
him  of  a  crime  so  heinous. 

The  beet  we  can  say  for  him  is  bad  enough; 
but  that  need  go  no  further  than  to  dissent 
from  and  strenuously  oppose  his  new  doctrine. 
The  writer  had  sincerely  hoped  to  vote  for 
him  as  our  next  President;  but  all  that  is  gone 
now.  Moreover,  he  has,  I  take  it,  lost  the  sup- 
port of  the  Herald;  for  it  can  hardly  continue 
tofaTor  his  renomination  after  saying  in  its 
•ditorial  of  Friday,  December  20,  that  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  applies  to  the  present  case 
only  by  the  most  **  mischievous  and  violent 
stretching.'*— Tours  respectfully, 

SOUTHXRlfZB. 


[There  oaq,  in  iotemational  dealingi, 
be  DO  obedienoe  to  a  law  which  does  not 
6ziat«  and  the  nations  have  never  yet 
agreed  to  formulate  the  cases  in  which 
th^  will  rely  on  arbitration  to  the  ezclu- 
■ioo  of  the  very  thought  of  war.  To  pro- 
niota  such  an  agreement  in  the  existing 
state  of  dvillaatioD,  efforth  to  secure  arbi- 
tratioD  in  any  given  instance  must  be  limit- 
ad  to  friendly  advice  with  purely  moral  in- 
sistence. No  nation,  by  its  behavior  after 
arbitration  had  imposed  definite  obliga- 
tkms  upon  it,  has  more  disqualified  itself 
for  thus  helping  on  the  cause  of  arbitra- 
tion than  has  the  United  States:  and  this 
is  what  malces  the  present  situation  a 
tragi-coiDady. 


Mr.  Cleveland's  motives  we  leave  for 
time  to  reveal.  His  political  opponents  in 
Ck)Dgress  notoriously  regarded  his  action 
as  a  partisan  mancBuvre,  which  they  could 
foil  only  by  rushing  madly  to  the  support 
of  it.  In  other  words,  the  Republican 
Congress,  like  the  nation  at  large,  did  not 
really  want  war  with  England.  This  ex- 
planation, strange  to  say,  does  something 
to  redeem  the  national  character.  But 
then,  what  did  Mr.  Cleveland  really  want? 
Was  it  war  buncombe  which  the  House  is 
now  following  up  with  tariff-for-revenue 
buncombe  ?— Ed.  Nation.] 


To  THE  Editor  of  Thx  Nation: 

Sib:  Although  I  esteem  the  Nation  very 
much,  I  cannot  refrain  from  telling  you  that 
your  paper,  in  my  opinion,  has  done  more  to 
necessitate  a  war  with  England  than  all  our 
Jingoes  combined. 

The  influence  of  the  Nation  is  far  greater  in 
England  than  in  this  country.  Being  read  ex- 
clusively by  very  intelligent  and  highly  edu- 
cated people,  the  English  statesmen  are  com- 
pelled to  presume  that  the  opinions  and  judg- 
ments published  by  it  are  those  held  by  the 
American  people.  For,  in  England,  the  classes 
of  society  corresponding  to  the  circle  of  your 
readers  control  the  (Government.  They  will, 
therefore,  think  that  all  steps  taken  by  the 
American  (Government,  the  message  of  (^eve- 
land,  etc.,  concerning  the  Venezuelan  oontro- 
versy  are  but  campaign  tricks,  especially  as 
they  are  used  to  similar  manoeuvres  in  their 
own  elections,  (consequently,  they  will  treat 
the  demands  of  the  United  States  in  such  a 
way  as  suddenly  to  be  confronted  with  the  ne- 
cessity either  of  sacrificing  their  personal  and 
national  honor  and  prestige  or  going  to  war. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  as  soon  as  the  question 
of  war--and  of  war  against  England— arises, 
you  are  perfectly  powerlees.  Since  we  have 
waged,  during  the  first  century  of  our  nation- 
al existence,  four  wars,  our  history  is  a  history 
of  war.  Young  America  leaves  school  and 
enters  life  with  two  impressions,  that  Eng- 
land is  our  hereditary  foe,  and  that  the  great- 
est thing  a  man  can  do  is  to  fight  for  one^s 
country.  Besides,  a  very  considerable  portion 
of  our  people,  almost  one-third,  is  of  Irish  de- 
scent and  looks  upon  a  war  with  England  as  a 
holy  war.  The  greatest  inducement,  however, 
is  that  war  brings  not  only  honor,  but  also 
pensions.  For  these  reasons  more  than  nine- 
tenths  of  all  Americans,  women  included,  will 
seise  with  the  greatest  enthusiasm  the  first 
pretext  for  a  war  against  England. 

We  may  be  sorry  for  this  state  of  affairs, 
but  we  have  to  recognize  it  if  we  try  to  pre- 
serve peace.  Whoever  strengthens  and  con- 
firma  Great  Britain  in  her  resistance  to  fair 
and  just  demands  on  the  part  of  the  United 
States  unchains  the  dogs  of  war. 

In  the  Venezuelan  controversy  you  not  only 
repreeented  the  people  of  the  United  States  as 
a  peace-loving  nation,  but  also  did  everything 
to  convince  the  Englishmen  of  the  justice  of 
their  claims  against  Venezuela.  They  must 
say:  '*  Why  should  we  submit  to  arbitration  f 
All  intelligent  Americans  are  with  us.  They 
tell  us  that,  even  if  the  land  occupied  by  us 
originally  belonged  to  Venezuela  and  not  to 
us,  we  nevertheless  ought  to  hold  it,  because 
we  enjoy  a  higher  state  of  civilization  than 
the  Venezuelans."  That  such  presumptions 
and  ideas  will  not  render  the  British  states- 
men more  fair  and  engaging  in  their  responses 
to  the  notes  of  our  (Government  goes  without 


saying.  As  a  kind  of  umpire  you  might  have 
shown  from  the  beginning  the  weakness  and 
the  danger  of  the  English  position.  By  weak, 
ness  I  mean  the  apparent  injustice  in  their 
dealings  with  Venezuela.  The  danger  oonsists 
in  the  awakening  of  the  war  spirit  in  America 
—for  it  is  certain  that  England  in  such  a  war 
has  nothing  to  gain,  but  much  to  lose. 

Tours  respectfully,        Wii.  Wkbkb. 
BzLLEynxB,  lLL.»  D«c«mber  84, 1806. 

[We  commend  our  correspondent's  por- 
trait of  the  American  people  to  whom  it 
may  concern.«~ED.  Nation.] 


To  THE  EnrroR  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  I  have  read  every  number  of  the  Na- 
tion since  I  first  subscribed  for  it  in  1872,  but 
it  has  never  elicited  my  esteem  and  admira- 
tion more  than  it  has  done  by  its  righteous  in- 
dignation and  protest  against  the  war  *  *  craze  *' 
now  possessing  the  American  people  and  their 
rulers.  I  heartily  sympathized  with  the  con- 
tempt the  Nation  expressed  for  the  political 
prayer  of  the  new  Ck>ngres8ional  chaplain,  and 
with  the  wish  of  your  correspondent.  Rev.  A. 
A.  Berle,  that  the  chaplaincy  be  abolished  as 
a  sacrUegiouB  nuisance. 

It  has  pleased  Providence  to  teach  some  na- 
tions  only  in  the  bitter  school  of  experience 
the  lessons  of  righteousness  and  common 
sense;  and  it  may  be  that  the  **  bumptious** 
conceit  of  Americanism  will  be  relieved,  and 
its  foolish  delusions  dispelled,  by  the  disastrous 
consequences  of  a  war  with  England,  in  which 
we  should  lose  far  more  than  England,  and 
gain  nothing.  Egyptian  and  Indian  cotton 
would  more  than  ever  supplant  our  Southern 
staple  in  European  countries;  their  planters 
would  get  from  ten  to  fifty  cents  for  their  cot- 
ton, our  planters  could  not  get  more  than  three 
or  four  cents  for  theirs.  Our  exports  of  all 
kinds  would  cease,  for  they  are  mostly  carried 
in  English  vessels.  We  should  be  helpless  to 
prevent  England  supplying  itself  with  all  the 
cereals  it  needed  from  Argentina,  Russia,  and 
Hungary,  not  to  speak  of  Canada.  By  the 
time  one  of  our  ** commerce- destroyers**  (the 
very  name  indicative  of  mediaeval  barbarism) 
crossed  the  Atlantic  to  attack  England*s  com- 
merce,  her  bunkers  would  be  depleted  of  coal 
and  she  would  lie,  a  helpless  bulk,  at  the  mercy 
of  her  enemies.  England  has  coaling-stations 
and  war. vessels  everywhere;  we  have  no  coal- 
ing-stations, and  our  few  war  vessels  would 
have  to  protect  our  own  expoeed  coasts.  So 
clearly  in  the  wrong  are  we  that  we  could  not 
count  upon  the  sympathy  or  cooperation  of  a 
single  European  nation.  The  more  we  con- 
sider the  numerous  qufstions  raised  by  the 
possibility  of  war  between  Great  Britain  and 
ourselves,  the  more  are  we  astonished  at  the 
fatuity  of  those  who  are  egging  it  on. 

The  sentiments  expressed  by  the  Nation  in 
discussing  this  question  seem  so  like  those  I  ex. 
pressed  in  an  impromptu  speech  made  in  the 
session  of  the  National  Educational  Assocla. 
tion  at  Toronto  in  1891,  that  I  take  the  liberty 
of  cutting  them  out  of  the  Journal  of  Pro- 
ceedings and  sending  them  to  you.  The  ques- 
tion discussed  was  whether  we  teachers  should 
celebrate  a  **PatrioU*  Day**  and  encourage 
Jingoism : 

**  True  patriotism  Is  the  endeavor  to  elevate 
my  country's  standard  of  honor  up  to  that 
which  is  right  and  true,  and  I  should  love  my 
country  for  that  in  her  which  is  devoted  to 
righteousness.  I  should  love  the  truth  and 
righteousness  which  Qod  has  given  us,  and 
seek  to  bring  my  country  up  to  it  I  am  not 
to  make  patriotism,  therefore,  the  end,  but 
rather  the  means  by  which  I  may  hope  to 


IQ 


The    iN^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1592 


briog  the  nation  to  a  love  of  truth,  to  a  love  of 
righteousness.  I  do  not  tbinlc  the  observance  of 
any  Patriots'  Day  will  ever  attain  that  result. 
The  time  wasted  or  spent  in  that  could  be  bet- 
ter spent  in  educating  the  young  men  in  those 
moral  truths  and  principles  which  will  make 
the  citizen  seek  that  which  will  be  for  his  coun- 
try's highest  good;  hence  it  is  not  patriotism 
in  itself  we  are  striving  to  attain,  but  it  is  love 
of  trutb,  of  right  and  righteousness.  Patriot- 
ism is  nothing  more  than  this;  that  is  the 
highest  patriotism.** 

Wm.  R.  Atkinson. 

8.  C.  COLLBOB  FOB  WOHXK,  COLUICBIA,  &  C. 


NEGRO   FOLK-LORE. 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation  : 

Bib  :  In  your  recent  review  of  Prof.  Ed- 
wards*s  *  Bahama  Bongs  and  Stories,'  I  was  in- 
terested in  seeing  the  persistence  of  an  old  for- 
mula for  closing  a  story, 

*•  E  bo  ban,  my  Btoi7*8  en',** 

which  is,  with  apparent  probability,  traced 
back  to  an  ancient  English  form, 

*'  Be  bow  bended,  my  story's  ended." 

I  may  add  to  this  that,  when  a  boy  in  Vir- 
ginia, I  was  familiar  with  a  similar  expression, 
invariably  used  in  stories  partaking  of  the 
marvellous,  which  ran,  in  atrocious  rhyme, 

*'  Be  bo  bum.  my  story's  done." 

C.DeK. 
BOLLA,  Mo..  December  87. 1806. 


Notes. 


Maomillan  &  Co.  have  in  press  *Tbe  King's 
Peace,'  by  Mr.  Inderwidk,  Q.C.,  in  the  Bocial 
England  Beries,  *  The  Spraying  of  Plants,'  by  E. 
O.  Lodeman  of  Cornell  University,  ^  Alternat- 
ing Currents  and  Alternating  Current  Ma- 
chinery,' by  Prof.  Dugaid  C.  Jackson  of  the 
University  of  Wisconsin,  and  *  Brown  Heath 
and  Blue  Bells,'  by  William  Winter;  and  in 
preparation  a  translation,  by  Dr.  W.  B.  Sho- 
ber  of  Lehigh  University,  of  Dr.  Ludwig  Gat- 
termann's  *  Die  Praxis  des  Organischen  Chemi- 
kers,'  and  a  new  edition  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne's 
*  Hydriotapbia,  and  the  Garden  of  Cyrus,'  ed- 
ited  by  the  late  Dr.  GreeohUl. 

David  Nutt.  London,  announces  ^Greek  Folk- 
Poesy,'  being  annotated  translations  from  the 
whole  cycle  of  Romaic  folk.verse  and  folk- 
prose,  edited  by  J.  S.  Stuart  Glennie,  who 
also  contributes  an  introduction  on  the  science 
of  folk-lore,  and  a  conclusion  on  the  survival 
of  paganism.  There  will  be  two  volumes,  for 
the  prose  and  verse  respectively. 

*  Old  Faiths  and  New  Facts,'  by  W.  W.  Kins 
ley,  will  shortly  be  published  by  D.  Appleton 
&Co. 

W.  B.  Clive,  65  Fifth  Avenue,  is  about  to 
issue  *  Inductive  Logic,'  by  J.  Welton,  M.A., 
lecturer  on  Education  in  the  Victoria  Univer- 
sity. 

That  dialectical  differences  in  the  language 
of  a  nation  may  lead  to  practical  difficulties,  is 
illustrated  by  the  circumstances  which  have 
induced  the  AUgemeiner  Deutscber  Sprach- 
verein  to  offer  two  prizes  for  essays  on  the 
naming  of  plants.  Some  of  the  common  plants 
of  Germany  bear  more  than  a  hundred  differ- 
ent names  in  the  various  parts  of  the  country, 
and  the  want  of  a  generally  recognised  popu- 
lar denomination  has  made  itself  felt  in  the 
schools,  where  botany  forms  an  important  and 
attractive  branch  of  study.  A  thorough  dis- 
cussion of  the  whole  subject,  and  especially 
of  the  principles  according  to  which  names 


should  be  selected,  is  to  be  the  task  of  the  es- 
sayists. 

The  Almanack  ds  Gotha  tar  1806  (Gotha : 
Perthes ;  New  York  :  Westermann)  has  been 
kept  within  bounds,  partly  by  the  ingenious 
device  of  omitting  from  the  genealogical  por- 
tion such  families  as  have  been  slack  in  re- 
turning their  proofs  to  the  editor.  This  rod 
will  regularly  be  held  over  the  delinquent 
hereafter.  On  the  other  hand,  the  editor  en- 
lists in  his  behalf  as  purveyors  of  information 
the  attach^  of  embassy  or  legation,  who  have 
never  before  be^i  honored  by  b^ng  named  in 
the  diplomatic  lists,  though  in  the  European  ser- 
vice at  least  their  turn  is  assured  of  ultimately 
becoming  secretaries  and  chiefs.  The  colonial 
world  has  been  yet  more  carefully  described, 
as  one  may  see  by  reference  to  Italy's  African 
possessions,  now  in  so  much  peril.  The  four 
portraits  embrace  President  Faure,  Prince 
Hohenlohle-Schillingsfiirst,  Chancellor  of  the 
German  Empire,  and  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of 
Aosta— she  that  was  the  Princess  of  Orleans. 

*  Hazell's  Annual '  for  1806  (London:  Hasell, 
Watson  &  Viney)  deserves  the  customary  com- 
mendation for  its  useful  contents,  arranged 
both  on  the  dictionary  plan  and  to  a  certain 
extent  in  classes;  see,  for  example,  the  more 
than  fourteen  pages  given  under  Engineering 
to  railways,  canals,  sewers,  harbors,  dams, 
bridges— the  Boston  subway,  the  Bournemouth 
Underoliff  Drive,  the  Niagara  utilisation,  the 
Manchester  water-supply,  the  Simplon  Tunnel, 
etc.  The  personal  and  statistical  information 
displayed  in  this  **  cydopswiio  record  of  men 
and  topics  of  the  day  "  is  of  the  most  extensive 
and  varied  character,  and  will  supplement  any 
book  of  reference  of  its  kind.  There  are  seve- 
ral new  maps  possessing  timely  interest. 

Mr.  William  Tallack,  the  Secretary  of  the 
Howard  Association  of  Great  Britain,  has  pre- 
pared  an  enlarged  edition  of  his  well-known 
work,  *  Penological  and  Preventive  Principles,' 
which  is  published  in  London  by  Wertheimer, 
Lea  &  Co.  For  thirty-seven  years  Mr.  Tallack 
has,  through  bis  connection  with  the  Howard 
Association,  been  in  a  position  to  observe  not 
only  the  opinions  of  those  accustomed  to  deal 
with  criminals,  but  also  the  practical  working 
of  many  different  systems  and  theories  of  re- 
formation and  punishment.  While  the  dif- 
ferences, both  practical  and  theoretical,  that 
prevail  in  these  matters  are  notorious,  there 
has  been  much  progress  made  toward  unity 
of  methods,  and  in  some  directions  practical 
unanimity  has  been  attained.  Certain  readers, 
as  Mr.  Tallack  admits,  will  deem  his  frequent 
references  to  the  influence  of  Christianity  to  be 
irrelevant.  We  do  not  find  ourselves  of  this 
number,  but  at  all  events  such  references  may 
be  omitted  by  readers  who  dislike  them,  and 
the  chief  substance  of  the  book  will  remain  un- 
affected. On  the  whole,  we  are  not  acquainted 
with  any  book  better  adapted  to  the  use  of 
those  who  are  interested  in  the  study  of  the 
modem  methods  of  repressing  crime. 

We  are  glad  to  see  that  Dr.  William  Smart 
of  the  University  of  Glasgow  has  published 
(through  Macmillan)  a  collection  of  his  essays; 
the  title  of  the  volume  being  *  Studies  in  Eco- 
nomics.' The  author  is  perhaps  beet  known  by 
his  work  in  translating  and  expounding  the 
theories  of  the  Austrian  economists,  but  these 
essays  show  that  his  own  capacity  as  a  thinker 
is  of  a  high  order.  Whatever  opinion  we  may 
entertain  of  the  Austrian  theory  of  value,  we 
can  say  that  it  has  no  particular  effect  on  the 
discussion  of  the  problems  here  considered, 
which  are  in  the  main  of  a  practical  nature. 
The  chief  topics  are  the  problem  of  wages  in 
various  aspects,  the  relation  of  prices  to  gene- 


ral production  and  to  that  of  gold,  and  the 
economic  results  of  different  modes  of  con- 
sumption. We  have  not  recently  had  the  plear 
sure  of  examining  any  economic  treatise  in 
which  the  reasoning  was  more  consecutive  or 
more  exempt  from  fallacy ;  and  the  spirit  in 
which  contentious  matter  is  handled  is  worthy 
of  the  science  developed  by  Smith  and  Ricardo 
and  MUL  "\ 

Prof.  Ewald  FlQgel  of  the  Stanford  Univer- 
sity has  just  issued  the  first  volume  of  his 
*  Neuenglisches  Lesebuob'  (Halle:  Niamey er; 
New  York:  Westermann).  The  volume  is  de- 
voted  to  the  time  of  Henry  VIIL,  and  contains 
about  860  large  pages  of  text  and  some  260 
pages  of  notes  and  indexes.  The  contents  are 
selected  on  the  basis  of  a  remarkably  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  period  and  with  excellent 
judgment.  They  embrace  every  kind  of  litera- 
ture, religious  and  secular,  in  prose  and  in 
verse.  When  extracts  only  have  been  printed, 
these  are  usually  long  enough  to  give  the  stu- 
dent a  good  idea  of  the  style  and  character  of 
the  whole  work.  In  this  respect  the  editor 
has  followed  the  exoellent  example  of  M&tzner's 
highly  esteemed  *  Altenglisohe  Bprach|»t>ben.' 
The  texts  of  the  manuscripts  or  of  early  print- 
ed  editions  are  reproduced  with  scrupulous 
accuracy.  The  notes,  though  necessarily  un- 
even, contain  much  valuable  information.  No 
one  who  understands  the  importance  of  this 
transition  period  of  English  literature— a  pe- 
riod  commonly  neglected  on  account  of  the 
inaccessibility  of  the  materials  for  its  study- 
can  fail  to  feel  profound  satisfaction  that  so 
competent  a  scholar  as  Prof.  Fl^el  has  been 
willing  to  subject  himself  to  the  great  labor  of 
making  such  a  book.  The  '  Reader '  will  at 
once  take  its  place  as  an  indispensable  part  of 
the  outfit  of  every  student  of  our  language  orj 
literature. 

A  translation  of  the  third  German  edition  of 
Prof.  Menshutkin's  *  Analytical  Chemistry" 
has  been  made  by  Mr.  James  Locke,  and  is  pub- 
lished by  Macmillan  &  Co.  The  work  which 
is  thus  made  available  to  American  and  Eng. 
lish  students  of  chemistry  is  entirely  worthy 
of  their  attention.  It  covers  both  qualitative 
and  quantitative  analysis,  including  under  the 
latter  short  sections  on  volumetric  and  organic 
analysis.  The  treatment  differs  from  that  of 
many  works  on  this  subject  in  possessing  a  dis- 
tinct pedagogic  value.  It  is  not  a  "cook-  book." 
Discussion  of  the  methods  of  analysis  and  of 
the  theory  of  the  reactions  which  are  Involved, 
and  the  absence  of  analytical  tables,  stimulate 
independent  thought  and  work,  and  lead  the 
student  to  a  broader  understanding  of  chemis- 
try. Analytical  chemistry  has  been  (and  is 
still)  too  often  taught  in  colleges  as  if  it  were 
an  end  in  itself,  to  the  neglect  of  its  larger  edu- 
cational possibilities.  A  certain  degree  of  ac- 
curacy in  manipulation  and  ability  to  execute 
correctly  a  certain  range  of  analytical  work 
according  to  set  schemes  is  acquired;  but  too 
little  stress  is  laid  on  the  development  of  power 
to  grapple  with  new  problems.  Menshutkin's 
point  of  view  is  indicated  by  this  extract  from 
his  introduction:  **  Analytical  chemistry  teach- 
es the  art  of  chmnical  Uiought^  which  is  the 
most  important  object  of  practical  work.  .  .  . 
Mechanical  study  affords  no  benefit  whatever." 
We  heartily  recommend  this  book  to  the  care- 
ful examination  of  all  teachers  of  analytical 
chemistry.  Mr.  Locke*s  translation  is  fairly 
good. 

We  have  already  reviewed  in  these  columns 
Prof.  G^rge  L.  Raymond's  *  Art  in  Theory,' 
and  commented,  not  very  favorably,  on  his 
doctrines.  In  *  Painting,  Sculpture,  and  Ar- 
chitecture as  Representative  Arts'  (Putnams), 


Jan.  2,  1896] 


Ttie   !N"atioii. 


18 


h«  develops  these  doctrines  more  Id  detaU,  but 
it  cannot  be  stid  that  he  strengthens  his  pre- 
sentation of  them.  Of  course,  many  things 
stated  here  are  true,  bnt  there  are  as  many 
more  that  are  untme,  and  the  reasons  given 
for  the  true  things  do  not  commend  themselves 
as  jnst.  The  aathor*s  knowledge  of  art  is  evi- 
dently purely  theoretical  and  derived  from^ 
reading  only,  and  he  makes  blunders  that  ar< 
tmly  amaslng.  A  single  one  must  serve  as  a: 
example.  On  page  41  is  to  be  found  this  stat 
ment:  **  In  drawing  and  painting,  shading 
usually  produced  through  the  use  of  lines 
either  in  black  or  In  color,  which,  for  this  pur 
pose,  are  either  abruptly  or  gradually  lesser  ed 
in  number  or  intensity.^  This  is  so  completely 
wrong,  and  shows  such  entire  ignorance  of  the 
arta  under  discussion,  that  it  dispenses  the 
eerious  critic  from  the  necessity  of  further 
consideration  of  the  writer.  The  book  is 
lavbbly  iUnstrated  with  200  odd  cuts,  raked 
together  from  all  sorts  of  sources  and  nearly 
aUbad. 

The  Pbrtfoiio  for  November  is  devoted, 
for  once,  to  a  purely  modem  subject,  the  re- 
oeot  *  Renaissance  of  Sculpture  in  Belgium.* 
Its  authcMT,  Georges  Destr^  is,  we  take  it, 
himself  a  Belgian,  and,  for  a  guess,  a  Walloon, 
and  patriotic  impulses  are  perhaps  discernible 
in  his  enthusiasm ;  but  whether  or  not  modem 
Belgian  sculpture  is,  as  he  would  seem  to  inti- 
mate, the  modem  school  of  sculpture  par  esc- 
oelfenoe,  it  Is  only  necessary  to  glance  at  the 
excellent  illustrations  he  gives  us  to  convince 
one*s  self  that  it  has  produced  a  series  of  most 
vital  and  interesting  works.  Here  are  half .«. 
score  of  artists  whose  very  names  will  be  new 
to  most  of  us,  and  every  one  of  them  is  a  man 
of  power  and  originality,  whoee  work  one  may 
conceivably  dislike,  but  must  surely  admire. 
Mr.  Deetr^  writes  in  French,  and  the  transla- 
tion,  seemingly  excellent,  has  been  done  by 
Miss  Florence  Simmons. 

Mr.  F.  Adolphus  has  put  together  his  re-< 
mlnisoences  of  life  in  the  French  capital  for 
more  than  forty  years  in  a  pleasant  little  vol- 
ume, which  he  has  entitled  *Some  Memories 
of  Paris'  (Henry  Holt  &  Co.).  The  most 
noteworthy  chapters  deal  with  the  agony 
of  the  great  city  in  1870-71.  A  vivid  de- 
scription is  given  of  the  last  day  of  the  Se- 
oond  Empire,  together  with  the  account  of 
the  distribution  of  the  English  gifts  of  food  to 
the  Parisians  after  the  siege,  the  narrative  of 
an  eye-witnea  of  the  entry  of  the  Germans 
into  the  conquered  city,  and  a  record  of  per- 
sonal experienoes  during  the  Commune.  Mr. 
Adolpfaus  seems  to  have  had  excellent  opportu- 
nities for  observing  what  was  going  on  during 
these  critical  months,  and  to  have  kept  his 
eyes  open  to  the  dramatic  possibilities  of  his 
surroundings.  He  was  with  Laurence  OU- 
phant,  at  that  time  correepondent  of  the 
TinuM^  when  the  G^ermans  entered  Paris,  and 
seems  to  have  been  on  intimate  terms  with 
that  erratic  man  of  genius.  Oliphant  left  Paris, 
so  Mr.  Adolphus  tells  us,  after  a  narrow  escape 
from  a  bullet  on  the  day  of  the  outbreak  of  the 
Commune,  in  the  belief  that  the  bullet  brought 
him  a  message  from  Prophet  Harris  that  he 
was  to  return  at  once  to  America.  But  in 
the  middle  of  June,  1871,  Oliphant  returned, 
aooompaaled  by  Harris,  who  described  the 
Oommnne  as  '*  a  yell  from  the  lower  man;  an 
up-seething  from  the  turbid  sources;  a  snatch 
at  the  impossible  and  the  undefined;  a  failure 
where  success  would  have  meant  a  nation^s 
shame'*  (p,  177). 

*  Europe  in  Africa  In  the  Nineteenth  Centu- 
ry,' by  Etiaabeth  W.  Latimer  (Chicago:  A.  C. 
MeCkaarg  A  Co.),  is  an  account,  both  too  dlifuse 


/. 


and  too  brief  at  times,  of  the  events  which 
have  led  to  the  partition  of  Africa.  It  is  illus- 
trated by  a  number  of  portraits  and  some 
rude  but  serviceable  maps. 

*The  Fishes  of  8inak>a,'  by  Prof.  D.  B.  Jor- 
^dan  of  Stanford  University,  is  a  reprint  of  187 
pages  and  28  plates  from  vol.  v.  (second  series) 
of  the  Proceedings  of  the  California  Academy 
of  Science.  The  paper  will  be  very  useful  in 
the  study  of  our  West  Coast  fishes.  A  large 
number  of  species  are  described  and  figured. 
The  work  would  be  much  more  convenient  and 
helpful  for  reference  if  the  date  and  place  of 
publication  bad  been  added  to  the  name  of  the 
describer  of  each  species.  Theee  slight  addi- 
tions cost  a  writer  but  little  trouble,  and  in 
saving  the  time  and  labor  of  investigators  con- 
tribute  greatly  to  the  advancement  of  science. 

iTie^Report  of  the  United  States  National 
Museum  for  the  year  ending  June  80,  1898,  is  a 
bulky  octavo  of  nearly  800  pages,  with  a  large 
number  of  plates  and  other  drawings.  It  con- 
tains the  report  of  Prof.  G.  Brown  Goode,  and 
reports  and  special  papers  by  a  number  of  his 
assistants.  Prof.  Goode's  report  is  an  able 
presentation  of  the  history,  present  status,  and 
possibilities  of  the  Museum,  and  of  museum 
development  In  generaL  The  numerous  illus- 
trations g^ve  a  good  Idea  of  the  cases,  mount- 
ings, labels,  arrangement,  etc.,  accepted  at 
the  time  as  best  adapted  to  their  purposes. 
The  majority  of  the  special  papers  are  ethno- 
logical, the  most  extensive  being  **  Notes  on 
the  Ethnology  of  Thibet,"  by  W.  W.  RockhiU, 
profusely  illustrated.  A  paper  of  much  inte- 
rest to  the  ornithologist  is  that  of  Maj.  CHiarles 
Bendire  on  the  *'Cow  Birds."  '*The  Poison- 
ous Snakes  of  North  America,"  by  Leoohard 
Stejneger,  is  a  work  of  great  general  as  well 
as  special  interest.  The  author  has  gone  deep- 
ly into  the  literature  of  the  subject  in  all  its 
bearings.  His  summaries  of  what  is  known  of 
habits,  distribution,  anatomy,  venom,  reme- 
dies, etc.,  are  comprehensive,  the  average  of 
the  many  illustrations  is  good,  and  his  descrip- 
tions and  comparisons  from  the  Museum's  col- 
lections are  admirable.  It  is  matter  of  regret 
that  in  a  work  of  so  much  excellence  the 
synonymy  is  not  entirely  complete,  and  that 
apparently  several  of  the  snakes  are  not  men- 
tioned. 

M.  Paul  Verlaine  has  given  to  the  world, 
through  the  publishing  department  of  the  Fin 
du  SUele,  a  small  volume  of  'Confessions,' 
which  cover  the  period  of  his  life  from  his  birth, 
at  Metz,  in  1844,  to  his  meeting  with  Arthur 
Rimbaud,  at  the  end  of  1871.  They  are  not 
very  startling,  and  are  pleasantly  written. 
His  description  of  his  college  life  and  exami- 
nations for  the  haccalauriatt  and  his  account 
of  his  early  poetic  efforts,  are  interesting;  but 
the  real  Verlaine  is,  after  all,  to  be  sought  for 
in  his  works. 

M.  K  Lintilhao  has  put  into  book  form, 
under  the  title  *  Les  F61ibre»— It  travers  leur 
monde  et  leur  podsie '  (Paris :  Lemerre),  the 
articles  he  wrote  on  this  subject  for  the  Temps. 
They  are  well  worth  preserving,  and  in  their 
present  form  are  infinitely  more  usefuL  The 
literature  which  is  here  treated  of  has  an  in- 
terest and  value  of  its  own,  apart  from  the 
attention  which  it  merits  as  a  revival  of  a  once 
rich  and  flourishing  branch  of  the  national 
literature  of  France.  The  work  of  Aubanel  is 
studied  most  fully  by  M  LiotUhac. 

M.  Rend  Doumic  has  already  made  a  name 
for  himself  as  a  critic  of  weight.  His  latest 
book  is  not  up  to  his  former  productions,  how. 
ever,  and  is  rather  ephemeral  in  character. 
*  La  Vie  et  les  mosurs  au  jour  le  jour '  (Paris: 
Perrin  &  Cie.)  is  simply  a  ooUeotion  of  articles, 


very  bright  and  vivacious,  and  nearly  all  based 
upon  a  thought,  occasionally  a  serious  one,  but 
scarcely  worth  putting  together  into  more 
permanent  form.  They  are  witty,  sarcastic, 
keen,  and  help  to  pass  an  hour  en joyably.  This 
much  praise  may  freely  be  given. 

The  Paris  JoumcU  des  IMbats  announcsa 
that,  beginning  with  the  new  year,  its  two  edl- 
tions,  of  morning  and  evening,  adopted  three 
years  ago,  will  be  abandoned.  Hereafter  there 
will  be  but  one  edition,  in  the  evening,  with  the 
familiar  pink  color  retained.  The  dimensions 
of  the  paper  will  be  enlarged  to  rival  the  great- 
est yet  adopted  by  the  French  press.  In  all 
othcur  respects  the  character  of  this  sober  and 
civilizing  journal  will  remain  unchanged. 

When  Edmond  Bird  was  engaged  upon  his 
volumes  on  Victor  Hugo,  he  had  access  to  the 
manuscript  of  Adolphe  Jullien's  *  Le  Roman- 
tisme  et  I'^iteur  Renduel,'  to  which,  as  some 
resders  may  remember,  he  refers  In  several  of 
his  foot-notes.  Out  of  consideration  for  per- 
sons  still  living,  this  work  has  hitherto  been 
withheld  from  puUication.  But  now  the 
Revus  dea  Deua  Monde$  (December  1)  publish- 
es a  first  instalment  from  it  under  the  above 
title  and  the  sub-title,  **  Eugene  Renduel  et 
Victor  Hugo."  The  pages  are  interesting,  but 
coiitain  nothing  important  concerning  the 
literature  of  the  epoch.  Hugo's  character  ap- 
pears here  in  much  the  same  light  as  that  to 
which  Bird  has  accustomed  us.  Renduel  was 
the  publisher  and  friend  of  many  of  the  most 
noted  writers  of  the  Romantic  period,  and,  as 
all  his  papers  and  books  have  fallen  into  M. 
Jullien^s  hands,  we  may  expect  much  from  the 
tatter's  divulgences. 

Several  astronomical  artldee  of  interest  ap- 
pear in  recent  numbers  of  Knowledge,  Vari- 
able red  stars  are  treated  by  Dr.  Breeter  of 
Delft,  and  the  question  **  What  is  a  nebula  f " 
is  again  raised,  this  time  by  Mr.  E.  W.  Maun- 
der of  the  Royal  Observatory,  who  gives 
answers  as  satisfactory  as  possible  in  the 
present  state  of  information  on  this  significant 
subject.  The  second  and  tiiird  of  Mr.  Stew- 
art's articles  on  spectrum  analysis  appear, 
and  an  account  of  new  stars  by  Dr.  Brester,  as 
well  as  a  very  interesting  article  by  Miss 
Clerke  on  the  exterior  nebulosities  of  the  Ple- 
iades, followed  by  a  note  upon  the  same  sub- 
ject by  Prof.  Barnard,  late  of  the  Lick  Obser- 
vatory. With  the  beginning  of  the  new  vol- 
ume for  1890,  Knowledge  will  revert  to  Its  ori- 
ginal title,  *'  An  Illustrated  Magazine  of  Sci- 
enoe,  Literature,  and  Art,"  which  it  bore 
when  Mr.  Proctor  founded  it  fifteen  years  ago. 
Although  this  implies  a  wide  field,  it  is  hoped 
that  the  magazine  will  not  fail  of  filling  it, 
and  of  affording  its  readers  even  greater  inte- 
rest in  the  future  than  in  the  past. 

Some  interesting  facts  as  to  the  recent  pro- 
gress of  Bolivia  in  building  railways,  post-roads, 
and  telegraph  lines,  taken  from  the  Chilian 
Minister's  report  to  his  Government,  are  given 
in  P6tennann*a  Mitteilungen  for  November. 
It  contains  also  a  discussion  of  the  proper  posi- 
tion for  the  provisional  boundary-stone  be- 
tween Chili  and  the  Argentine  Republic,  a 
question  in  which  Bolivia  and  Pern  are  Uke- 
wise  interested.  The  distribution  and  religion 
of  the  various  non-German  races  In  the  Ger- 
man Empire  are  shown  upon  an  admirably  col- 
ored and  shaded  map. 

Capt.  Lugard's  account  of  bis  Borgu  expedi- 
tion, in  the  Scottish  Geographical  Magazine 
for  December,  is  noteworthy  for  its  vigorous 
denunciation  of  the  Hquor  traffic  in  West  Af- 
rica and  bis  hearty  advocacy  of  the  Hausa 
Association.  This  has  been  formed  to  promote 
the  study  of  the  Hauaa  language,  which  is  used 


14: 


The   ISTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1592 


largely  by  the  Moslems  of  the  weBtem  Sudan. 
It  is  taught  in  their  schools— the  Arabic  al* 
;>babet  being  used  in  writing  it— and  it  has  the 
rudiments  of  a  literature.  A  grammar  and 
dictionary  of  the  language  has  been  compiled, 
and  a  translation  of  a  part  of  the  GkMpel  of  St. 
Matthew  is  already  in  print  The  magasine 
also  contains  some  notes,  historical  and  geolo- 
gical, on  Vancouver  Island. 

Signor  Anderson  (Rome:  Spithdver)  has  been 
of  late  greatly  increasing  the  debt  owed  him 
by  all  students  of  Italian  art.  He  has  made  a 
reproduction  approaching  the  original  in  siie 
of  Giorgione's  "Soldier  and  Gypsy";  a  repro- 
duction the  more  valuable  now  that,  thanks  to 
the  ridiculous  pretensions  upon  private  art- 
property  made  by  the  Italian  Government,  the 
Gioyanelli  Palace  is  absolutely  inaccessible. 
At  Parma,  Signor  Anderson  has  photographed 
everything  of  interest.  We  need  not  spealc  of 
Parma's  greatest  treasures,  its  many  Correg. 
gios;  but  the  gallery  contains  unrivalled  Cimas 
as  well,  and  one  of  Sebastiano  del  Piombo's 
grandest  works,  a  portrait  of  Clement  VII.,  in 
itself  worth  all  the  biographies  of  that  astute 
and  fascinating  Medici.  In  or  near  Parma  are 
also  to  be  found  some  of  the  finest  works  of 
Parmigiano,  the  most  genuine  and  therefore 
the  most  lovable  of  decadents. 

The  Gkdlery  of  Modena  was  for  twenty  years 
unhung.  At  last  it  has  been  admirably  ar- 
ranged, and  Signor  Anderson  has  photographed 
its  many  interesting  works.  There,  better  than 
anywhere  else,  the  Ferrara-Bologneee  school 
can  be  studied;  but  the  glory  of  Modena  is  its 
many  masterpieces  by  Dosso  Dossi,  a  most  fas- 
cinating artist,  hitherto  almost  undiscovered. 
Bymonds  is  the  only  writer  of  note  who  has 
made  so  much  as  a  passing  mention  of  Dosso, 
whose  ** Jester"  he  greatly  admired.  This 
"  Jester,**  even  in  the  photograph,  reveals  its 
quality  of  Shaksperian  humor. 

—The  annual  report  of  the  State  Geologist 
for  New  Jersey  for  ISH  (only  recently  printed) 
is  again  to  be  remarked  for  Prof.  R.  D.  Salis- 
bury's report  of  progress  in  the  study  of  sur- 
face geology.  This  novel  survey  continues 
to  throw  an  unexpected  light  on  the  glacial 
and  pre-glacial  history  of  the  State,  as,  in  the 
influence  of  stagnant  ice  on  the  deposition  of 
stratified  drift,  the  evidences  of  submergence, 
etc  The  study  proceeds  from  the  Schooley 
peneplain,  and  may  be  recommended  to  pedes- 
trians  and  bicyclists  whose  excursions  have  a 
more  substantial  motive  than  mere  exercise. 
To  one  who  understands  the  topography  of 
northwestern  New  Jersey,  says  Prof.  Sails- 
bury,  '*the  long,  even  crest  of  Kittatinny 
Mountain,  stretching  away  for  miles  to  the 
north,  and  the  almost  equally  even  crest  line 
of  the  Highlands,  seen  in  the  distance  across 
the  valley  to  the  east,  tell  of  a  lapse  of  time 
and  of  an  amount  of  erosion  beside  which  the 
gorge  of  the  [Delaware]  Water  Gap  seems 
paltry  and  invan.  .  .  .  as  a  geographic 
feature,  the  Kitta tinny  Mountain  cannot  be 
said  to  have  been  greatly  modified  by  the 
ice  of  the  glacial  period."  The  chapter  on  the 
abundance  and  direction  of  glacial  striae  is  ex- 
tremely interesting,  and  so  are  those  on  the 
changes  in  drainage,  on  the  nature  and  variety 
of  the  lakes  of  northern  New  Jersey,  on  the 
gravels  and  sands  south  of  the  terminal  mo- 
raine, etc.  **  If  the  ice  which  codperated  with 
water  in  the  deposition  of  the  Pensauken  [for- 
mation] was  berg  ice— emanating  from  gla- 
ciers—it is  believed  that  it  belonged  to  a  gla- 
cial epoch  antedating  any  which  has  heretofore 
been  recognized  in  America."  Of  great  prac- 
tical value  are  the  remarks  on  road  material, 


of  which  the  Pensauken  furnishes  an  abundant 
supply.  The  report  is  accompanied  by  plates 
and  a  large  colored  map  of  the  surface  forma- 
tions of  the  Passaic  valley  and  its  surround- 
ings. Mr.  Lewis  Woolman  extends  his  annual 
record  of  artesian  wells  in  Southern  New  Jer- 
sey, and  enumerates  the  several  diatom  clay 
beds  involved  in  the  borings;  No.  8,  which  ex- 
tends to  North  Carolina,  being  the  most  re- 
markable and  extensive  in  the  world.  The  re- 
port on  forestry,  by  Mr.  C.  C.  Vermeule,  re- 
veals an  unbroken  tract  of  forest  of  11,000 
acres  on  the  top  of  tiie  Palisades.  This  is  shown 
on  a  tinted  map  of  the  whole  State.  Finally, 
Mr.  John  Oifford  makes  a  preliminary  report 
on  the  forest  conditions  of  South  Jersey,  which 
possesses  a  curious  interest  on  account  of  its 
particularity,  and  especially  for  its  informa- 
tion respecting  forest  fires,  which  there  is  ur- 
gent need  of  controlling  by  State  regulation. 

—At  the  founding  of  the  American  Omitiio- 
logists*  Union  in  1883,  a  committee,  consisting 
of  Messrs.  Couee,  Allen,  Ridgway,  Brewster, 
and  Henshaw,  was  appointed  to  prepare  cer- 
tain canons  of  nomenclature  and  apply  these  to 
a  revision  of  the  list  of  North  American  birds. 
The  code  followed  up  to  that  time,  tacitly 
and  in  the  main,  was  the  Stricklandian  of  1844, 
which  in  its  time  formulated  the  consensus  of 
opinion  or  general  practice  of  ornithologists 
since  the  Linnaean  period.  The  committee 
prepared  a  more  elaborate  and  more  precise 
code,  some  main  features  of  which  were  the 
recognition  of  priority  as  a  cast-iron  principle 
of  nomenclature,  the  taking  of  Linnaeus  at 
1758  instead  of  1766,  and  the  rejection  of  homo- 
nyms in  face  of  whatever  sanction  by  usage, 
and  thereupon  drew  up  their  list  of  native 
birds  with  a  degree  of  consistency  which  had 
never  before  been  witnessed  in  any  department 
of  soOlogy.  This  list  acquired  such  authority 
that  every  name  not  on  it  went  out  of  use. 
The  code  itself  found  great  favor  among  other 
naturalists,  particularly  those  working  in  other 
departments  of  vertebrates  and  in  conchology 
and  entomology;  and  many  who  found  fault 
with  particular  provisions  preferred  to  waive 
their  objections  and  take  it  in  en  bloc,  as  being 
on  the  whole  most  conducive  to  that  stability 
of  nomenclature  for  which  they  yearned.  The 
same  ichor  in  due  course  infected  the  bota- 
nists; and  the  present  eruption  in  their  no- 
menclature, with  all  its  *'  burning  questions,*' 
which  had  never  been  allowed  to  ignite  during 
Asa  Gray*s  lifetime,  is  mainly  due  to  the  in- 
fluence of  the  ornithological  ordinances.  The 
original  committee  has  remained  the  same, 
with  one  exception,  and  has  never  found  occa- 
sion to  revise  its  code  in  a  single  particular, 
but  has  just  issued  what  may  be  called  its  first 
decennial  revision  of  the  list,  mainly  for  the 
purpose  of  formally  including  the  additions  to 
our  bird-fauna  made  during  the  past  few  years. 
These  are  more  numerous  than  they  ever  were 
before  in  the  same  space  of  years;  but  of 
changes  in  names  from  some  unexpected  bear- 
ing of  a  canon  in  this  or  that  case  the  instances 
are  very  few.  We  could  not  state  the  pre- 
sent total  of  species  and  subspecies  recognized 
without  actual  count,  as  the  committee  use 
a,  b,  c,  etc.,  for  subspecies,  and  interpolate 
new  species  with  a  decimal  point  in  order  that 
the  numbers  originally  affixed  may  be  perma- 
nent; we  suppose  the  total  to  be  upward  of  900. 
Names  relegated  to  the  **  hypothetical  list,** 
which  is  the  Union's  waste-basket,  are  only  28 
—a  surprisingly  small  amount  of  refuse  or  re- 
fractory material  after  sifting  and  identifying 
several  thousand  names  and  synonyms.  The 
list  of  fossil  birds  is  64—1  Jurassic,  28  Creta- 


ceous, the  rest  Tertiary.  The  names  are  print- 
ed in  very  heavy  type,  without  synonymy  ex- 
cepting  two  references  (to  the  original  name 
and  to  the  name  adopted),  and  four  others  (by 
number  only),  to  the  prior  lists  of  Baird,  1858, 
Omes,  1878  and  1882,  and  Ridgway,  1880;  and 
a  statement  of  habitat  is  made  in  every  case. 
The  book  makes  a  sizable  octavo  of  pp.  viil, 
372,  and  will  doubtless  remain  the  only  recog- 
nized authority  in  classification  and  nomen- 
clature until  its  next  revision,  which  is  expect- 
ed to  be  another  decennial  one. 

—Occasionally  a  scientific  observation  is 
made  which  gives  a  widegUmpee  into  the  vast 
unexplored  region  of  ignorance  by  which  we 
are  surrounded,  and  which  will  doubtless  for 
ever  save  the  scientist  from  the  pain  of  being 
obliged  to  sit  down  with  all  his  work  accom- 
plished. A  German  investigator  has  just 
made  out  the  very  curious  fact  that  if  the 
long,  threadlike  peeudopodia  of  certain  low 
animals  (foraminifera)  are  touched  by  the 
threads  of  another  individual,  they  contract, 
shrivel  up,  and  even  break  up  into  separate 
drops  of  protoplasm,  but  that  if  the  threads 
which  touch  are  thoae  of  the  same  individual, 
nothing  of  this  sort  occurs.  The  threads  may 
even  be  cut  off,  and  this  same  sensitivenees  to 
the  difference  between  the  Me  and  the  not-Me 
continues.  There  is,  of  course,  absolutely  no 
difference  of  structure— nothing  in  the  organic 
world  can  be  more  alike  so  far  as  our  powers 
of  observation  can  be  extended  by  all  the  ap- 
pliances at  our  conunand,  than  these  undiffer- 
entiated threads  of  naked  protoplasm.  And 
this  still  more  curious  fact  is  to  be  added— the 
peeudopodia  of  young  individuals  of  the  same 
brood  do  not  cause  this  mutual  contraction 
when  brought  into  contact  with  each  other ; 
this  difference  in  the  protoplasm  of  different 
individuals,  whatever  may  be  its  nature,  is 
developed  in  the  course  of  the  life  of  the  indi- 
vidual. If  little  things  like  orbitolites  have 
such  profound  differences  in  structure  as  this 
would  indicate,  what  deep  physical  bases  may 
there  not  be  for  the  antipathies  and  sympathise 
of  highly  organized  human  beings  f 

—The  career  of  Antonio  GkiUenga,  who  died 
a  fortnight  ago  in  England,  illustrated  the 
boundless  possibilities  of  romance  which  our 
miscalled  commonplace  century  has  furnished. 
He  was  bom  in  Parma  in  1810,  and  was  swept 
into  the  whirl  of  Italian  conspiracy  by  the 
abortive  revolutions  of  1881.  Thenceforth  he 
became  an  exile.  Visiting  this  country,  he 
was  cordially  received  by,  and  for  a  time  lived 
on  intimate  terms  with,  Longfellow,  Presoott, 
Ticknor,  and  the  older  literary  society  in 
Boston  and  Cambridge.  Returning  to  Burope, 
he  made  England  his  abode,  if  any  one  who 
travelled  continuously  could  be  said  to  have  an 
abode.  At  any  rate,  his  chief  works,  *Mari. 
otti*s  Italy,'  *  Italy  in  1848,'  'A  History  of 
Piedmont,'  etc.,  were  written  in  English  and 
published  in  London.  From  1850  till  about 
twelve  years  ago,  Gallenga  was  the  Italian 
correspondent  of  the  London  TimeSj  a  posi- 
tion in  which  he  exerted  an  infiuence  that  his 
character  hardly  justified,  for  Gallenga  may 
fairly  be  regarded  as  an  excellent  specimen  of 
the  modem  type  of  versatile,  clever,  and  irre- 
sponsible journalist,  and  the  ease  with  which 
he  changed  his  political  principles  to  suit  the 
taste  of  his  employer  is  further  evidence  of  his 
fitness  for  journalism.  His  works,  which  we 
have  mentioned,  are  still  worth  reading  by 
any  one  who  wishes  to  get  a  contemporary  look 
at  Italy  fifty  years  ago.  He  writes  with  much 
vivacity— like  RniBni,  he  quickly  mastered 


Jan.  2,  1896] 


Th.e    Nation. 


15 


Bo^lab-Hmd  b«  has  nnafUAl  abilitj  in  inter- 
wM^iog8tatiitic8,eTeoU,  and  Aspirations.  But 
probablj  he  will  be  remembered  longest  as 
having  been,  in  his  youth,  under  the  aliaa 
**Loigi  Hariotti,**  engaged  in  an  attempt  to 
aMassinate  Charles  Albert,  King  of  Piedmont. 
According  to  his  story,  Mazzinl  gave  him  a 
dagger  with  which  to  commit  regicide.  Maz. 
fini  denied  complicity  in  the  proposed  crime, 
but  for  years  his  enemies  used  the  insinuation, 
as  if  it  had  been  proof,  against  him.  Masdni- 
ans,  it  may  easily  be  imagined,  were  not  dis- 
posed to  construe  charitably  Mariotti-Ghillen- 
ga's  conversion  into  a  courtier  of  the  King 
whose  father  he  had  wished  to  kill. 


BAIRD»S  HUGUENOTS. 

7^  HugumioU  and  the  Uevocation  of  the 
Edict  of  Nantes,  By  Henry  M.  Baird. 
Charles  Bcribnei's  Sons.  1805.  2  vols ,  pp. 
xxviii,  566;  zix,  604. 

Pbof.  Baird  may  well  be  congratulated  on 
the  completion  of  a  great  undertaking.  The 
two  volumes  before  us  round  out  the  story  of 
the  Huguenots  already  traced  through  its 
earlier  course  in  his  '  Rise  of  the  Huguenots' 
(1879)  and  *  Huguenots  and  Henry  of  Navarre ' 
(1880);  and  the  hearty  commendation  expressed 
in  our  notices  of  tiie  preceding  sections  of  this 
series  is  deserved  by  these  volumes  also.  They 
exhibit  the  same  characteristics— lucidity  of 
style,  patient  investigation,  guarded  state- 
ment, and  repression  of  pcLrtisan  extravagance 
in  praise  or  blame— that  mark  the  other  por- 
tions of  his  work.  Prof.  Baird's  sympathies 
are  never  in  doubt,  and  his  aversion  to  the  dis- 
honesties of  Louis  Xm.  and  XIV.,  of  Louvois, 
of  Boesuet,  or  their  servants  and  associates,  is 
as  manifest  as  his  revulsion  from  the  cruel- 
ties  of  Marillac  or  Foucault;  but  he  carries 
the  stamp  of  fairness  and  of  willingness  to 
see  good  wherever  it  may  be  found.  Prof. 
Baird's  recent  volumes  have  the  same  limi- 
tations, also-^argely  self-imposed,  we  judge— 
which  characterise  his  earlier  narratives,  and 
have  already  been  pointed  out  by  us.  80  en- 
tirely is  his  work  the  history  of  a  party  that 
contemporary  politioil  and  intellectual  de 
velopment  is  given  a  subordination  that  is  al- 
most exclusion.  Not  infrequently  this  neglect 
seems  a  real  loss.  It  would  certainly  be  ger- 
mane to  the  story  of  the  Huguenots  to  de- 
velop with  some  fulness  the  policy  of  Richelieu 
which  led  to  the  downfall  of  La  Rochelle  in 
1698.  That  policy  is  outlined,  indeed,  but  with 
the  utmost  brevity.  Even  more  desirable 
would  be  a  sketch  of  the  growth  of  the  philo- 
scqihio  spirit  in  France  during  the  eighteenth 
osotury,  for,  assuredly,  it  was  not  increased 
love  for  Protestantism  that  gave  toleration  to 
the  Huguenots  in  1787. 

Prof.  Baird's  two  volumes  under  considera- 
tion cover  nearly  two  centuries— from  1610  to 
180S.    In  them,  as  he  tells  the  reader, 

**  I  have  treated  of  the  attempt  to  undo  the 
work  of  the  great  Henry,  from  the  gradual 
encroachments  under  Louis  the  Thirteenth  to 
the  more  rapid  and  more  violent  measures  that 
prepared  the  way  for  the  formal  Revocation  of 
the  Edict  by  Louis  the  Fourteenth.  I  have 
also  pointed  out  the  consequences  of  the  recall 
tn  the  great  emigration,  the  suppression  of 
Protestant  worship  save  in  tne  proscribed  con- 
venticles of  the  Desert,  and  the  war  of  the 
Camisards,  into  which  fanaticism  was  driven 
hw  cruel  intolerance.  Finally,  I  have  deline- 
ated the  gradual  recovery  by  the  oppressed 
Huguenots  of  their  ecclesiastical  organization 
and  of  the  dvO  and  religious  rights  from  which 
they  had  been  long  debarred,  until,  after  being 
barely  tolerated,  they  were  at  last  fully  recog- 
nised by  the  dvtl  government.** 


Only  a  few  points  of  interest  in  this  long 
story,  so  voluminously  told,  can  even  be  glanc- 
ed at  in  the  limits  of  this  review.  One  feature 
of  Huguenot  development,  then,  that  strikes  the 
reader  of  Prof.  Baird's  volumes  is  the  change 
that  came  over  the  party  after  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Bourbon  House.  Though  granted 
a  large  measure  of  privilege  by  the  Edict  of 
Nantes,  the  termination  of  the  struggles 
which  had  torn  France  under  the  Valois 
Kings,  and  the  opening  of  new  avenues  to  ad- 
vancement to  the  Huguenot  chiefs  under 
Henry  IV.,  cost  the  party  that  active  leader- 
ship  of  great  representatives  of  the  nobility 
which  bad  been  largely  its  source  of  political 
strength.  Sully  did  much  for  France,  but  lit- 
tie  for  his  feUow-Protestants.  Bouillon  pre- 
ferred his  own  interests  to  theirs.  Henry  of 
Rohan,  the  last  great  Protestant  leader,  is  es- 
teemed by  Prof.  Baird  ''as  g^enerous  as  Admi- 
ral Colig^y,  whom  he  probably  excelled  in 
military  genius'*;  but  his  unavailing  attempts 
to  support  the  political  power  of  the  Huguenot 
party  by  arms  from  1621  to  16^  met  with 
"  a  divided  support  from  his  fellow-believers,*' 
because  it  was  '*  an  age  of  inferior  devotion 
and  less  ardent  enthusiasm,  an  age  in  which 
the  ideas  of  the  royal  prerogative  had  reached 
an  exaggeration  unknown  in  the  preceding 
century." 

Prof.  Baird  points  out  many  instances  of 
this  zeal  for  royal  absolutism  among  the 
French  Protestants  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, remarking  **that  as  the  toleration  of 
the  Reformed  religion  became  more  and  more 
precarious,  .  .  .  the  Huguenots,  in  their  en- 
deavor to  prove  themselves  to  be,  what  in  re- 
ality they  were,  the  most  obedient  and  trust- 
worthy subjects  of  the  crown,  were  tempted 
to  rear  with  their  own  hands  that  formidable 
structure  of  the  absolute  authority  of  the 
EZing,  which,  when  once  erected,  was  destined 
to  prove  the  ruin  of  their  hopes  of  quiet.** 
Prof.  Baird  holds  the  address  of  Pierre  Hespe- 
rien  to  Louis  XIII.,  in  the  name  of  the  Na- 
tional  Synod  of  1617,  to  be  representative  of 
the  views  of  the  party  generally  :  "  After 
Ood,  we  recognize  your  Majesty  to  be  our 
only  sovereign ;  and  it  is  an  article  of  our 
creed  that  there  is  no  intermediate  power  be- 
tween God  and  kings.  It  is  among  us  a 
damnable  heresy  to  call  it  into  question.'* 
Daniel  Tilenus,  the  honored  theologian  of  Se- 
dan, writing  to  his  fellow-Huguenots  in  1621, 
went  so  far  as  to  say  :  **  Ton  wish  him  [Louis 
XIIL]  to  be  bound  to  observe  his  predecessor's 
Edict  in  every  point ;  but  you  do  not  consider 
that  you  owe  him  all  obedience  by  an  obliga- 
tion  divine,  natural,  and  civil.  Bear  in  mind 
that  no  king  is  bound  by  the  ordinances  of  bis 
predecessors,  nor  even  by  his  own.  ...  By 
the  laws  of  Gk>d  and  of  nature  he  is  undeniably 
bound ;  nevertheless,  should  he  chance  to  con- 
travene them,  he  has  no  other  judge  but  Ood.** 
Certainly  the  contrast  between  these  views 
and  those  of  their  fellow-Calvinists  across  the 
English  Channel  is  instructive,  and  a  suggest- 
ive light  is  thrown  on  the  later  experiences  of 
the  Huguenots  themselves. 

The  loss  of  La  RocheUe  in  1638  signiaed  the 
passing  away  of  Huguenot  political  power; 
but  though  a  statesman  like  Richelieu  could 
hardly  have  done  otherwise  than  oppose  that 
imptrium  in  imperio  which  the  Edict  of  Nan- 
tes had  sanctioned  in  the  assignment  of  hostage 
cities  to  Huguenot  control,  Prof.  Baird  shows 
that  the  Protestant?  found  the  great  Cardinal 
an  honorable  master;  and  he  deems  the  years 
from  1629  to  1660  the  most  prosperous  in  Hugue- 
not story.  Counting  **  somewhat  over  one-fif- 
teenth, never  more  than  one-tenth  part,**  oi 


the  population  of  France,  they  yet  powessed 
over  850  places  of  worship,  served  by  upwards 
of  700  ministers,  and  a  share  in  the  commerce 
and  manufactures  of  the  land  out  of  all  pro- 
portion to  their  numbers.  Prof.  Baird  attri- 
butes  the  superior  prosperity  of  the  Hugue- 
nots of  the  middle  classes  to  their  high  ave- 
rage of  moral  character,  but  he  also  gives 
weight  to  their  non-observance  of  the  eccle- 
siastical holidays— a  neglect  which  he  estimates 
as  yielding  an  advantage  of  twenty  (er  cent, 
in  working  time  to  the  Protestants. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  personal  reign  of 
Louis  XrV.  the  situation  of  the  Huguenots 
grew  rapidly  worse.  Tet  the  policy  of  the 
King  seems  to  have  looked  towards  the  conver- 
sion of  his  Protestant  subjects  by  Catholic  mia- 
sionary  effort,  by  unfriendly  interpretation  of 
existing  laws  and  the  creation  of  new  legal 
annoys nces,  and  by  the  employment  of  bribery, 
rather  than  to  have  cpntemplated  a  revocation 
of  the  Edict  of  Nantes.  Thus  the  King  regulated 
the  times  of  weddings  and  funerals,  the  dura- 
tion of  pastorates,  and  the  dress  and  visitation 
of  ministers;  abolished  the  mixed  courts  of  jus- 
tice; deprived  the  Huguenots  (between  1660 
and  1684)  of  two-thirds  of  their  houses  of  wor- 
ship by  a  variety  of  legal  devices;  and  finally 
(1681)  made  the  expression  of  a  preference  for 
Catholic  worship  by  huguenot  children  who 
had  reached  the  age  of  seven  an  irrevocable 
renunciation  of  their  parents*  faith. 

Naturally,  such  unscrupulous  royal  zeal  for 
the  conversion  of  Protestants  was  emulated  by 
those  who  wished  to  stand  high  in  the  graces 
of  the  King;  and  Prof.  Baird  shows  that  the 
notorious  dragonnades  originated  in  1681 
through  the  inventiveness  of  Michel  de  Maril- 
lac, intendant  of  Poitou,  who  turned  the  trcops 
he  had  been  using  to  collect  unpaid  taxes  to 
the  work  of  persuading  Huguenots,  with  such 
apparent  success  as  to  win  the  approval  of 
Louvois  and  Louis  XIV.  Public  opinion  did 
indeed  force  Louvois  eventually  to  remove  Ma- 
rillac from  office;  but  it  was  Marillac*s  system 
which  Foucault  revived  in  the  spring  of  1685, 
in  .B6am,  with  the  countenance  of  Louvois, 
and  which,  a  few  months  later,  when  Foucault 
reported  21,000  **con  versions**  in  his  district  as 
its  result,  Louvois  applied  widely,  though  otH- 
cially  disclaiming  the  violence  which  he  and 
Louis  XIV.  must  well  have  known  was  being 
exercised.  These  measures  undoubtedly  pro- 
duced a  nominal  change  of  faith  in  great  num. 
hers,  and  to  the  sanguine  thought  of  the  King 
it  seemed  as  if  Protestantism  was  about  to  dia- 
appear.  Prof.  Baird  shows  that  the  Revocatioo 
of  the  Edict  in  October,  1685,  was  due  to  a 
somewhat  sudden  determination  on  the  King*s 
part,  **  based  upon  a  false  opinion  that  Pro- 
testantism, thanks  to  the  measures  put  into 
operation  for  that  end,  had  almost,  if  not  quite, 
ceased  to  exist.**  He  assigns  the  chief  influ- 
ence in  the  royal  deliberations  to  Harlay,  arch- 
bishop of  Paris,  to  P6rede  U  Chaise,  the  King's 
confessor,  and  to  Louvois;  to  Mme.  de  Main- 
tenon,  so  often  charged  with  being  a  (^ef 
instrument  in  the  Revocation,  he  ascribes 
no  weight  in  swaying  the  King*s  decision, 
though  she  undoubtedly  ftympathized  with  the 
step. 

Prof.  Baird  depicts  the  consequences  of  the 
Revocation  with  graphic  minuteness.  Of  the 
Huguenot  ministry,  on  whom  the  blow  fell 
meet  severely,  and  to  whom  great  induce- 
ments to  conversion  were  offered,  only  about 
one-eighth  abjured  Protestantism.  Of  their 
flocks  Prof.  Baird  estimates  that  not  far  from 
four  hundred  thousand  (though  exact  flgurea 
are  impossible)  left  France,  in  spite  of  the 
perils  which  the  King  pat  in  their  way,  to  tha 


16 


Tlie   JSTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1592 


lasting  advantage  of  England,  Holland,  and 
Germanj.  With  interesting  fulness  he  traces 
the  efforts  to  preserve  Protestant  worship, 
now  officially  non-existent.  He  oondndee 
that  at  least  fifty  of  the  exiled  pastors  re- 
visited their  flocks  before  1700,  and  the  fate  of 
such  of  these  returned  ministers  as  fell  into 
the  hands  of  the  Gk>vemment  shows  that  the 
secrecy  observed  regarding  the  Man  of  the 
Iron  Mask  was  no  unique  feature  of  the  ven- 
geance of  Louis  XIV.  Bent  to  prisons  like 
those  of  the  tie  Ste.-Marguerite  or  of  Vin- 
cennes  without  public  trial  and  with  every 
precaution  to  avoid  communication  with  the 
outside  world,  they  disappeared  no  less  oonu 
pletely  than  apparently  mysteriously  from 
sight,  and  friends  inquired  In  vain  for  yean 
for  the  secret  of  a  fate  which  modem  publica- 
tion of  records  has  revealed. 

Of  the  Camisard  war  Prof.  Baird  has  much 
to  say,  and  the  picturesqueness  of  the  struggle 
makes  the  story  of  the  efforts  of  these  peasants 
one  of  interest,  tiiough  the  evident  hopeless- 
ness of  their  task,  and  the  fanatical  spirit  of 
so-caUed  prophecy  which  they  exhibited,  made 
the  rising  the  work  of  only  a  fragment  of  the 
Protestant  population  of  France.  It  demon- 
strated, however,  in  the  sight  of  all  Europe 
the  absurdity  of  any  governmental  claim  that, 
since  the  Revocation,  Protestantism  had  ceased 
to  exist  in  the  dominions  of  Louis  XIV. 

Of  more  value  for  the  permanent  interest  of 
the  land  was  the  restoration  of  organised  French 
Protestantism  effected  by  Antoine  Court  in 
1715,  with  its  redstablishment  of  the  synods 
and  regular  ministry.  The  story  of  these 
churches  of  the  **  Desert,*'  as  they  styled  them- 
selves in  language  borrowed  from  Scripture 
and  conveniently  indefinite  as  to  their  habitat, 
is  told  from  their  beginnings  in  the  C6vennes 
to  their  ultimate  recognition  by  the  French 
Gk>vemment.  In  spite  of  life-imprisonment 
and  galley  slavery  for  attendance  on  their  ser- 
vices, they  continued  to  grow,  aided  by  the 
theological  school  which  Court  estaUished  at 
Lausanne  about  1780.  As  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury wore  on,  this  opposition  declined,  so  that 
though  the  last  execution  of  a  minister  was  as 
late  as  February  19,  1762  (Frangois  Rochette  at 
Toulouse),  the  Protestants  attempted  to  build 
church- edifices  by  1756,  and  a  year  later  could 
count  48  pastors— a  number  which  had  increas- 
ed, when  the  memorable  year  1787  arrived,  to 
about  125.  Tet  the  case  of  Calas,  which  Prof. 
Baird  narrates  at  length,  together  with  the 
efforts  of  Voltaire  to  right  a  gieat  injustice, 
shows  the  popular  and  legal  hostility  to  which 
Protestants  were  still  liable.  So  far,  however, 
did  enlightened  opinion  outrun  the  slow  pro- 
cesses of  legal  revision  that  the  Gk>vemment, 
speaking  through  its  Comptroller-General, 
Tnrgot,  in  1775,  gave  a  recognition  to  the  still 
proscribed  Protestant  bodies  by  invoking  the 
services  of  their  ministers  in  suppressing  the 
bread  riots.  Such  an  act  was  natural  from 
one  who  had  written  in  favor  of  religious 
tolerance  as  early  as  1758.  It  was  Lafayette, 
however,  who,  on  May  28, 1787,  presented  to 
the  Assembly  of  Notables  the  resolution  which 
that  body  transmitted  without  opposition  to 
Louis  XVI.  praying  that  Protestant  proscrip- 
tion might  cease.  The  result  was  the  Edict  of 
Toleratiop,  which  did  not,  indeed,  grant  legal 
permission  to  Protestant  worship,  but  relieved 
the  Protestants  from  the  worst  of  their  disa- 
bilities. From  this  Edict  the  tide  of  the  Revo- 
lution swung  the  cause  of  Protestant  free- 
dom rapidly  onward  to  the  law  of  April  7, 
1802,  by  which  the  Reformed  and  Lutheran 
churches  of  France  were  given  full  rights,  and 
placed  under  the  oontroliing  and  supporting 


supervision  of  the  state— a  law  with  which 
Prof.  Baird  closes  his  history. 

Altogether  the  volumes  under  review  are 
scarcely  less  suggestive  to  the  student  of 
general  history  than  to  the  investigator  of  ec- 
clestiastical  story  in  their  demonstration  of  the 
difficulty  and  costliness  of  crushing  opinion  by 
force ;  and  one  application  of  this  lesson  to 
events  of  our  own  age  is  pointed  out  by  Prof. 
Baird  in  his  preface,  when  he  remarks  :  **  As 
history  repeats  itself,  the  close  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  is  even  now  beholding  the 
counterpart,  or  the  copy,  of  the  legislation  by 
means  of  which  Louis  the  Fourteenth  under- 
took to  crush  out  the  Hnguenot  religion  from 
France,  in  laws  remarkably  similar,  menacing 
the  existence  of  Protestantism  in  the  Baltic 
provinces  of  a  great  empire  of  our  own  times." 


BENJAMIN'S  HISTORY   OF  ELECTRI- 
CITY. 

The  Intellectual  Riee  in  Electricity:  A  History. 

By  Park  Benjamin.  Appletons.  1896. 
Ths  present  history  is,  in  its  two  halves  (the 
first  down  to  GUbert  inclusive,  and  the  second 
from  Gilbert's  successors  to  Franklin,  inclu- 
sive), of  very  different  orders  of  merit ;  the 
last  part  being  much  the  more  valuable.  In 
the  first  part,  in  which  we  miss  any  reference 
to  the  graceful,  useful,  and  beautifully  printed 
translation  by  our  countryman.  Dr.  Mottelay, 
of  Gilbert  on  the  Magnet,  which  we  reviewed 
some  months  ago,  every  scrap  of  information 
has  been  diligently  collected ;  but  our  com- 
ments will  show  that  the  work  has  its  ble- 
mishes. In  the  second  half,  this  work  comes 
into  competition  with  Dr.  Priestley's  *■  History 
and  Present  State  of  Electricity,'  which,  be- 
sides  being  a  thorough  and  full  account  of  the 
matter,  is  also  a  particularly  well-arranged 
account,  which  can  hardly  be  said  of  Mr.  Ben- 
jamin's. Priestley's  is  also  entirely  free  from 
the  sensational  tone  of  our  fin-de-siMe  style. 
But  there  is  enough,  both  of  fact  and  of  well- 
executed  general  sketches  of  historical  situa- 
tions, in  the  volume  before  us  to  establish  it 
as  the  leading  work  on  the  subject  in  any  Ian- 
guage. 

In  the  period  antecedent  to  the  death  of  Ba- 
con there  is  much  baseless  conjecture.  Thus, 
Mr.  Benjamin  guesses  that  Gilbert  lived  in 
London  in  Linacre's  house.  But  he  could 
easily  have  ascertained  that  Dr.  Gilbert  lived 
in  the  lane  called  Peter's  HiU,  south  of  Little 
Knightrider  Street,  while  the  Linacre  house 
was  No.  5  of  Knight  Hider  Street  proper,  and, 
we  believe,  on  the  north  side.  While  thorough 
scholarship  was  not  an  indispensable  qualifica- 
tion for  Mr.  Benjamin's  task,  we  could  wish 
there  were  fewer  indications  of  the  lack  of  it. 
On  the  second  page  of  the  first  chapter  we  recul 
that  Homer  ('*lliad,Z.>  518:  T.i  898")  calls thesun 
iikixrop.  A  proof- reader  familiar  with  the  looks 
of  Greek  words  would  have  challenged  that. 
Boesius  is  the  name  which  Mr.  Benjamin  gives 
to  the  philosopher  Boetitls.  We  are  familiar 
with  Boethius  and  even  Boecius,  but  do  not 
remember  Boesius.  Under  the  reign  of  **  Ael- 
fred,"  Mr.  Benjamin  informs  us  that  Sootus 
Erigena  **  began  the  assertion  of  the  scholas- 
tic philosophy."  There  are  three  errors  here. 
In  the  first  place,  Erigena  (whom  it  is  no 
longer  permissible  to  confound  with  another 
Irishman  at  the  court  of  the  Mercian  King) 
was  not  a  subject  of  Alfred.  In  the  second 
place,  the  scholastic  philosophy  did  not  consist 
in  any  assertion.  It  was  the  philosophy  taught 
in  the  lecture-rooms  {acholoB)  of  the  mediaeval 
universities.    The  only  philosophical  proposi- 


tion concerning  which  the  scholastic  dootora 
were  agreed  was  the  practical  infallibility  of 
Aristotle.  What  marked  their  teaching  was, 
first,  its  general  form  (it  was  usually  either  a 
commentary  or  a  disputation,  or  both),  and, 
second,  the  algebra- like  formality  of  its  state- 
ments. Scotus  Erigena  was  not  a  scholastic ; 
for,  first,  he  lived  over  three  centuries  before 
the  regular  organization  of  the  universities, 
and  in  a  deeply  dissimilar  civilisation  (or  want 
of  civilization);  second,  he  is  not  an  Aristote- 
lean;  third,  the  'De  Divisione  Naturss'  is 
neither  a  commentary  nor  a  disputation ; 
fourth,  it  is  not  marked  by  great  f OTmallty  of 
statement:  fifth,  it  is  in  no  sense  a  school-book. 
The  university  of  Alexandria,  according  to 
Benjamin,  was  "begun  by  Alexander."  We 
apprehend  it  will  be  necessary  to  take  the  will 
for  the  deed,  to  make  that  out.  As  ornaments 
of  that  university  are  mentioned  Archimedes 
and  Hipparchus.  The  former  did  study  and 
the  latter  may  have  studied  there ;  but  Archi- 
medes did  the  work  of  his  life  in  Syracuse,  and 
Hipparchus  at  Rhodes  and  elsewhere.  He  did 
not  observe  in  Alexandria. 

Mr.  Benjamin's  references  are  not  seldom  in- 
accurate. The  following  is  a  single  specimen: 
**Vincenti  Bellovacensis:  Speculi  Naturales, 
etc.,  tom.  it,  lib.  ix.,  c.  19."  On  one  of  the 
first  pages  there  is  a  faulty  reference  to  a  pas- 
sage in  Pliny,  which  is  all  the  worse  because 
Pliny  is  not  quite  accurately  reported.  Even 
the  scientific  statements  are  often  careless. 
Thus,  we  are  told  that  the  orientation  of  the 
Great  Pyramid  is  in  error  by  19'  58',  and  that 
a  surveyor  **with  the  best  modem  compass" 
could  hardly  do  better.  Now,  to  begin  with, 
the  error  of  orientation  is  only  about  \yi\ 
which,  being  the  minimum  visibile^iAaB  small 
as  the  probable  error  of  the  beet  possible  naked- 
eye  observation.  No  modem  surveyor,  when 
be  wants  to  do  nice  work,  dreams  of  employing 
a  compass;  and,  for  that  reason,  there  has 
been  no  attempt  to  develop  a  compass  of  pre- 
cision. But  in  all  magnetical  surveys  the  de- 
viation of  the  needle  is  ascertained  far  more 
closely  than  the  figure  given. 

But  let  us  come  to  the  substance  of  the  work. 
The  author  has  unfortunately  a  theory.  If  it 
were  a  very  broad  and  instructive  theory,  es- 
pecially if  it  were  very  solidly  founded,  this 
would  be  no  misfortune.  But  it  is  neither 
broad  nor  solid.  It  is  that  the  knowledge  of 
the  earliest  form  of  mariner's  compass  came 
from  the  Baltic  town  of  Wisby,  that  it  came 
to  Wisby  from  the  Finns,  and  that  it  had 
been,  perhaps,  an  ancient  heritage  of  the  great 
"Turanian"  race.  Apparently  because  that 
theory  is  sadly  in  need  of  support,  the  author 
accepts  without  the  slightest  reserve  the  theo. 
ry  of  Mr.  Terrien  de  Lacouperie  of  the  Elam- 
ite  origin  of  the  earliest  Chinese  civilization. 
Singularly  enough,  however,  when  it  comes  to 
accounts  of  the  Chinese  posseasing  compasses 
before  the  Europeans,  he  becomes  unexpected- 
ly sceptical.  The  letter  of  Klaproth  of  1885 
is  generally  supposed  to  have  proved  the  propo- 
sition that  the  Chinese,  some  time  before  ▲.  d. 
4(X),  at  latest — that  is,  many  ages  before  the 
Europeans — knew  that  a  needle  could  receive 
directive  force  from  a  lodestone.  As  for  the 
Egyptians,  Dr.  Benjamin  reaches  the  sane  con- 
clusion that  they  knew  nothing  about  magnets, 
though  the  process  by  which  he  reaches  that 
result  is  open  to  some  objection.  As  for 
knowledge  of  the  magnet  on  the  part  of  the 
Greeks  and  Romans,  it  is  easily  stated.  Dr. 
Benjamin  drags  in  irrelevant  matter  from 
Rossignol's  essay  on  the  mythology  of  Greek 
miners;  but,  for  the  matter  in  hand,  the  welL 
known  passage  in  the  *  Ion'  Qf  Plato  gives  all 


Jan.  2,  1896] 


Tlie    N*atioii. 


17 


Um  Inf ormatioii  there  ie.  Namel  j,  the  Greeln 
knew  that  a  lodertone  would  lift  aa  iron  ring, 
and  that  another,  and  eo  on;  but  they  knew  no- 
thing of  the  polarity  of  the  magnet. 

It  is  next  to  imporsible  to  prore  the  nega- 
tire  proposition,  that  the  mariner's  compass 
dn  some  erode  form)  was  not  known  at  a  girea 
date.  Booh  is  the  stupidity  of  man  that  it 
would  be  known  for  a  Tery  long  time  before 
it  oame  much  into  use.  On  an  Arabian  Tessel 
we  first  liear  of  it,  Mr.  Benjamin  assures  us, 
in  ▲.  n.  UMO.  Since  the  needle  was  floated  on 
water,  and  was  magnetised  then  and  there 
(only  soft  iron  being  at  hand),  it  would  be 
used  only  on  cloudy  nights  when  the  sea  was 
pretty  oalro.  It  might  go  a  long  time  unrecord- 
ed in  a  book;  and  it  might  be  recorded  in  num- 
bers of  books  before  it  was  recorded  in  one 
which  Western  scholars  haye  read.  To  show 
bow  slow  progreBs  was  in  those  dajrs,  the  oom- 
pass  is  mentioned  (as  Kiaproth  shows)  as  a  fa- 
miliar thing  in  the  laws  of  Alfonso  X  of  Cas- 
tile dated  ▲.!>.  1288;  and  yet  the  eTldenoe  seems 
to  be  (we  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Benjamin  for 
this)  that  Spanish  gallejrs  were  never  supplied 
with  it  before  1408.  The  rational  conclusion 
seems  to  us  to  be  that  it  was  probably  known 
in  the  Mediterranean  before  a.d.  1200;  but, 
owing  to  the  choppy  seaf ,  it  was  little  used  in 
theee  waters  until  it  was  balanced  on  a  point. 

We  now  turn  to  northern  waters.  The  Norse- 
men used  to  follow  the  method  of  Noah,  ex- 
oept  that  they  sent  out  ravens  instead  of  doves. 
The  earliest  description  of  the  mariner's  com- 
pass (in  precisely  the  same  form  af  that  of  the 
Arabians  of  ▲.  D.  1240)  which  Mr.  Benjamin 
finds  is  in  Neckam*s  book  *  De  Natura  Rerum,' 
written  about  1180.  He  gives  a  flattering  por- 
trait of  Neckam,  and  compares  his  book  with 
the  *  Origines  *  of  8t  Isidorus.  But  surely  tiie 
two  greatest  merits  of  an  encyclopflBdia  are  to 
be  full  and  to  be  compressed.  The  work  of  St. 
Isidorus  in  twenty  books  has  both  those  merits 
in  an  eminent  degree.  Considered  as  an  en- 
eydopsBdia,  the  work  of  Neckam  is  contempti- 
ble, being  both  small  and  garrulous.  Within 
a  few  years  after  Neckam,  notices  of  the  com- 
pass in  northern  waters  multiply.  M.  Faulin 
Paris  gave  in  1842  some  verses  by  Guyot  de 
Provins  and  some  others  by  another  poet.  Dr. 
Benjamin  has  very  prettily  translated  several 
of  these;  but  the  <»iginals  would  have  been 
quite  worth  giving,  too.  Within  fifty  years 
of  the  first  passage  in  Neckam  we  know  of 
near  a  dosen  passages  referring  to  the  com- 
pass. Tbeoootrastbetween  this  state  of  things 
and  the  single  Arabian  passage  may  be  at- 
tributed to  the  thorough  overhauling  of  early 
European  literature.  The  inference  is,  that 
the  oompaw  could  have  been  very  little 
known,  if  at  all,  in  Normandy  much  before 
the  eariiestctf  these  quickly  succeeding  notices. 
Therefore,  although  the  balance  of  evidence 
inclines  toward  the  supposition  that  the  com- 
pass  was  known  in  the  north  before  it  was 
known  in  the  Mediterranean,  it  inclines  only 
slightly  that  way.  As  far  as  investigation  has 
gone,  there  is  no  evidence  whatever  of  the 
compass  having  be^i  known  in  those  early 
days  in  the  Baltic.  True^  it  is  mentioned  as  of 
great  Importance  in  the  laws  of  Wisby;  but 
it  is  probable  that  that  law  was  a  late  insertion. 
We  should  expect  that  the  compass  would  in 
its  eariy  shape  have  been  used  in  the  Baltic, 
owing  to  the  fog«  and  the  smooth  sea;  but 
positive  evidence  is  altogether  wanting. 

Mr.  Benjamin  seems  to  regard  the  invention 
of  the  early  mariner's  compass  as  an  exceed- 
ingly  difficult  one.  If  that  be  just,  then  de- 
cidedly the  probable  hypothesis  about  its  in- 
Iroduotioii  is  that  of  Kiaproth,  that  the  Arabs 


got  it  from  the  Chinese,  and  that  from  them 
the  knowledge  was  carried  through,  or  crept 
round,  Europe  to  the  north.  But  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  the  invention  is  so  difficult 
that  it  might  not,  without  improbability,  be 
supposed  to  have  been  independently  invented 
in  different  places.  Is  it  incredible  that  a  man 
playing  with  two  lodestones  should  find  out 
their  polarity,  and  then  magnetisation,  and 
then  the  directive  virtue  of  the  needle  f 

The  latter  half  of  Mr.  Benjamin's  history, 
after  taking  leave  of  Gilbert,  is,  on  the  whole, 
much  the  more  interesting.  To  be  sure,  no  star- 
tling discovery  was  here  possible.  The  sue 
cession  of  discoverers  was  Von  Guericke. 
(Hauksbee?),  Gray,  Du  Fay,  Watson,  and 
Franklin.  Mr.  Benjamin  modifies  a  little  here 
and  there  our  notions  of  what  each  did.  It 
appears  that  that  Sagredo  who  takes  the  lead- 
ing part  in  Galileo^s  dialogues,  not  only  was  a 
living  person,  Uke  the  personages  of  Aretino's 
dialogues,  but  also  probably  discovered  the 
secular  change  in  the  variation  of  the  com- 
pass. He  mounted  a  lodestone  of  five  pounds 
so  that  it  would  support  twenty  pounds.  It 
was  in  experimenting  with  that  lodestone  that 
(jhdUeo  found  out  the  effect  of  the  armature 
in  causing  the  magnet  to  grow  in  strength. 
The  Jesuit  Nicolaus  C^bsous  is  another  old 
physicist  whose  achievements,  as  Ifr.  Benja- 
min states  them,  are  of  quite  another  order  of 
importance  from  what  we  had  supposed.  To 
make  our  meaning  dear,  let  us  say  that  there 
are  five  departments  of  work  in  any  branch  of 
pore  physics,  like  electricity;  namely,  (1), 
the  phenomena  have  to  be  brought  out  and  seen ; 
(2),  suitable  instruments  have  to  be  invented 
for  their  study;  (8),  the  process  of  experiment- 
al analysis,  or  cross-questioning  of  Nature, 
must  be  applied  so  as  to  produce  statements  of 
the  laws  of  the  phenomena;  (4),  measure- 
ments have  to  be  made  (though,  of  course, 
there  was  little  of  this  in  the  pre-Franklinian 
ages);  and  (5),  hypotheees,  mechanical  or 
other,  must  be  constructed  and  experimental- 
ly verified  to  show  the  inward  nature  of  the 
phenomena.  What  we  have  hitherto  been  told 
about  Cabeeus  was  that  he  extended  the  list  of 
electrics;  that  is,  he  slightly  increased  the 
range  of  a  known  phenomenon.  But  it  now 
appears  that  he  observed  tiiat  when  little 
bodies  are  attracted  to  an  electrified  body  and 
strike  it,  they  are  at  once  thrown  off  from  it. 
Now  this  observation  was  the  first  step  neces- 
sary in  the  experimental  analysis  of  the  phe- 
nomenon, ultimately  leading  to  a  knowledge 
of  its  laws.  Vor  was  that  all.  For  it  seems 
that  CabflBus  was  the  first  to  plunge  a  lodestone 
into  a  mass  of  iron  filings  and  notice  the  re- 
sult ;  and,  further,  that  he  made  an  analogous 
experiment  by  plunging  electrified  amber  into 
a  quantity  of  sawdust.  Here  be  took  a  step 
of  the  second  kind,  in  our  enumeration ;  for 
these  things  were  InstrumentB  of  observation 
of  high  importance. 

In  many  places,  Mr.  Benjamin  fills  up  the 
gape  of  history  In  this  way.  Nor  does  he  ne- 
glect the  historian*s  more  difficult  tasks.  He 
pictures  the  fad  for  experimentation  that  was 
caused  by  Charles  II.*s  interest  in  it.  He 
shows  that  that  interest  was  pretty  deep,  too, 
and  that  it  had  a  most  stimulating  effect  upon 
experimental  science  in  England.  In  France, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  hoUowness  of  Louis 
XIV.'s  endeavor  to  interest  himself  in  science, 
combined  with  the  total  absence  of  interest  on 
the  pcu^  of  Louvois,  are  fully  proved  to  have 
had  a  very  unfortunate  effect  on  French 
science.  All  such  general  sketches  have  been 
executed  by  Mr.  Benjamin  upon  a  basis  of 
thorough  study. 


There  are  few  contested  points  in  the  history 
of  electricity  from  Gilbert  to  Franklin.  One 
of  these  is  whether  Cuneus,  a  gentleman  of 
Leyden,  had  any  hand  in  the  discovery  of  the 
Leyden  jar.  In  the  first  printed  account  of  it 
by  the  Abbd  NoUet,  in  the  '  M^moires  de  T  Aca- 
d6mie  Royale  des  Sciences  *  for  174^  it  is  said 
that  Cuneus  had  seen  some  of  the  experiments 
upon  which  the  celebrated  Musschenbroek  of 
Leyden  was  then  engaged,  to  ascertain  whether 
the  effects  of  electricity  would  not  be  increas- 
ed by  enclosing  the  electrified  body  in  glass, 
and  that  Cuneus  undertook  to  repeat  one  of 
them  at  his  home.  But  instead  of  leaving  the 
flask  in  which  the  conductor  to  be  electrified 
was  placed,  on  the  table,  he  held  it  in  his  hand, 
and  thus  got  a  strong  shock.  It  was  afterwards 
said  that  Cuneus  had  nothing  to  do  with  it; 
that  that  was  a  story  got  up  to  detract  from 
Musschenbroek^s  credit.  But  Dr.  Priestley, 
writing  his  history  only  twenty  years  later,  was 
in  a  condition  to  collect  testimony.  He  says: 
**The  views  which  led  to  this  discovery  in 
Holland  were,  aa  I  have  been  informed^  as  fol- 
lows." He  states  that  Cuneus  accidentally 
made  the  experiment  in  repeating  an  experi- 
ment by  Musschenbroek;  but  he  does  not  say, 
as  the  Abb^  Nolletdoes,  that  to  dhineus  belongs 
the  credit.  As  Cuneus  never  made  any  recla- 
mation, the  inference  is  that  he  immediately 
communicated  his  experience  to  Musschen- 
broek, and  that  the  analysis  of  the  phenome- 
non was  completed  by  the  latter.  Perhaps 
C*uneus  did  not  of  himself  find  out  that  the 
shock  depended  on  his  holding  the  bottle  in  his 
hand.  Mr.  Benjamin  inclines  to  disbelieve  en- 
tirely in  any  share  in  the  discovery  by  Cuneus. 

Mr.  Benjamin  is  quite  wrong  in  speaking,  as 
in  one  place  he  does,  as  if  the  use  of  experi- 
mentation as  an  instrument  of  discovery  was 
at  variance  with  the  Cartesian  philosophy.  We 
will  also  venture  to  doubt  his  confident  asser- 
tion that  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  in  his  *Two 
Treatises,  in  the  one  of  which  the  Nature  of 
Bodies,  in  the  other  the  Nature  of  Man's  Soule 
is  looked  into  in  the  way  of  Immortality,' 
plagiarizes  extensively  from  the  *Principia' 
of  Descartes.  The  latter  work  appeared  from 
the  press  of  L.  Elzevir  in  Amsterdam  on  July 
10, 1644.  Descartes  had  set  out  from  the  Hoef 
in  May  for  Paris ;  for  the  censure  (we  presume) 
would  not  in  those  days  permit  '*  author's  cor- 
rections" of  the  proofs.  He  arrired  in  Paris 
at  some  time  between  September  27  and  Octo- 
ber 1,  inclusive,  and  there  first  received  copies 
of  his  book.  Digby  had  been  in  Paris  all  along. 
There  is  evidence  that  his  book  (a  folio  of 
medium  thickness)  had  been  substantially  writ- 
ten in  the  previous  spring.  The  dedication  is 
dated  in  August.  The  last  imprimatur  was 
aflixed  September  26.  Now,  there  could  hardly 
have  been  time  for  extensive  plagiarisms  (for 
every  hypothesis,  if  plagiarized,  is  modified) 
between  the  date  at  which  Digby  could  have 
seen  the  *Principia'  and  the  date  of  the  im- 
primatur. Descartes  remained  in  Paris  ten  or 
twelve  days,  during  which,  though  much  press- 
ed for  time,  he  had  several  prolonged  inter- 
views with  Digby.  He  never  made  the  least 
reclamation,  though  be  hinted  that  Digby  was 
a  bold  theorist,  for  be  says  to  the  Prin- 
cess Elizabeth,  **Pouroe  qui  est  de  IVUt  de 
r&me  apr^s  cette  vie,  j'en  ay  biens  moins  de 
connoinance  que  Monsieur  d'Igby."  Digby 
and  Descartes  never  corresponded,  and  Dee- 
cartes  was  a  cautious  man  in  the  matter  of 
commonicatiog  unpublished  ideas,  while  Dig- 
by,  on  the  other  band,  was  a  talker.  Finally, 
although  no  man  ever  more  widely  missed  the 
alyh  of  Nature  than  Digby  did  In  hU  physical 
hypotheses,  yet  those  hypotheses  have  a  strong- 


18 


Ttie    IN"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1592 


I7  marked  style  of  their  own.  Tbey  have 
nothing  of  the  flavor  of  eclecticism.  Nor  can 
we  admit  that  any  hypothesis  of  the  *Two 
Treatises'  is  so  precisely  accordant  with  that 
of  the  *  Principia'  that  it  is  necessary  to  attri- 
bute them  to  one  author.  Digby,  by  the  way, 
is  a  better  psychologist  than  physicist.  He 
treats  of  the  association  of  ideas,  and  even  pro- 
poses  a  physical  hypothesis  to  account  for  it. 
We  find  it  very  difficult  to  let  this  intere8^ 
ing  work  go  without  saying  anything  more 
about  it.  An  excellent  present  for  a  scientifi- 
cally minded  youug  person  would  be  Motte- 
lay's  translation  of  Gilbert  on  the  Magnet 
(WUey)  and  Benjamin's  *  Intellectual  Rise' 
(Appleton). 


The  HeracheU  and  Modem  Astronomy.  By 
Agnes  M.  Gierke.  [The  Century  Science 
Series.]  Macmillan.  1895. 
LiTTLB  could  Dr.  (afterwards  Sir  William) 
Watson,  as  he  strolled  through  Walcot  Turn- 
pike, Bath,  late  in  an  evening  about  Christmas 
time,  1779,  have  thought  that  his  stopping  in 
the  street  to  look  through  the  telescope  of  a 
^*  moon-struck  musician  "  was  to  lead  the  way 
to  the  immediate  inception  of  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  careers  in  the  history  of  astrono- 
my. Such,  however,  was  the  fact.  Frederick 
William  Herschel,  bom  at  Hanover,  Novem- 
ber 15, 1788,  into  a  family  possessed  of  an  ir- 
resistible  instinct  and  aptitude  for  music,  hav- 
ing landed  as  a  lad  at  Dover  with  but  a 
French  crown-piece  in  his  pocket,  drifted 
through  a  series  of  ably  filled  engagements 
as  a  professional  musician  until,  in  1776,  he 
had  become  Director  of  the  public  concerts  at 
Bath.  But  while  all  this  time  a  musician  in 
body,  he  was  an  astronomer  in  spirit,  at  no 
time  losing  sight  of  the  vision  of  the  skies;  and 
it  was  in  the  latter  capacity  that  he  had  the 
good  fortune  to  attract  an  able  and  willing  pa- 
tron,  whoee  friendship  provided  precisely  that 
opportunity  which  was  needed  for  full  de- 
velopment of  his  powers.  All  the  while  that, 
in  his  official  capacity,  he  had  **  to  engage  per- 
formers, to  appease  discontents,  to  supply 
casual  failures,  to  write  glees  and  catches  ex- 
preesly  adapted  to  the  voices  of  his  executants, 
and  frequently  to  come  forward  himself  as  a 
soloist  on  the  hautboy  or  the  harpsichord,"  he 
was  absorbingly  occupied  with  a  self-impo«ed 
task  of  minutely  reviewing  all  the  heavenly 
bodies  and  every  spot  of  the  celestial  vault. 
During  the  progress  of  this  unprecedented 
task  it  was  that  the  above  incident  happened; 
for  young  Herschel,  then  engaged  in  a  series 
of  observations  on  the  lunar  mountains,  had 
brought  bis  seven-foot  reflector  into  the  street 
in  front  of  his  house,  and  was  gazing  diligent- 
ly when  Dr.  Watson  chanced  to  pass  by. 
Fortunately  he  did  not  rest  with  merely  ex- 
pressing great  satisfaction  at  the  view  of  the 
moon  courteously  afforded  by  the  young  Ger- 
man; he  called  the  next  morning  to  make  his 
further  acquaintance.  Instantly  this  led  to 
an  introduction  to  a  local  philosophical  so- 
ciety, then  to  the  Royal  Society  of  London, 
and  in  little  more  than  two  years  to  an  au- 
dience with  his  Majesty  George  III.  Thence- 
forward the  great  Herschel's  life  and  work  are 
the  common  knowledge  of  every  astronomer — 
and  it  is  a  little  singular  that  a  century  should 
have  elapsed  with  no  thoroughly  competent 
history  of  that  life  and  work,  and  no  repub- 
lication of  Herschel's  unsurpassed  volume  of 
technical  papers,  which  have  still  to  be  sought 
in  the  original  editions  of  the  *  Philosophical 
Transactions.'  I 

No  less  astonishing  is  it  that  his  equally  fa-  ' 


mous  son.  Sir  John  Herschel,  now  dead  near* 
ly  a  quarter  of  a  century,  has  thus  far  experi- 
enced a  like  fate.  Miss  Gierke's  *  The  Herschels 
and  Modem  Astronomy'  is  almost  the  sole  at- 
tempt to  acquaint  the  lay  reader  with  these 
great  names.  Sir  William's  sister,  Caroline, 
hrs  been  more  fortunate,  and  her  accurate 
*  Journals  and  Recollections'  form  the  chief 
authority  for  her  brother*s  eminent  life.  In- 
deed, he  often  referred  to  her  for  the  datee  of 
events  in  his  earlier  years.  Collateral  infor. 
mation  about  him  is  meagre;  but  in  the  caae 
of  Sir  John  Herschel  there  is  this  important 
difference,  that  his  long  and  intimate  friend- 
ship with  Sir  William  Rowan  Hamilton  led 
his  conscientious  biographer,  the  late  Dean 
Graves,  to  make  ample  inclusions  of  Herschel's 
letters.  Still,  hU  life,  as  Miss  Gierke  modest^ 
ly  says,  has  yet  to  be  written;  and,  as  we  are 
at  liberty  to  judge  from  her  excellent  success 
with  the  little  volume  now  before  us,  no  one 
could  tell  the  fascinating  story  of  that  life 
more  entertainingly  than  Miss  Gierke  herself. 
Her  evident  sympathy  with  the  breadth  of 
his  aims  in  physical  investigation,  her  accu- 
rate knowledge  of  methods,  and  her  singular 
felicity  of  expression  all  fit  her  worthily  for 
this  noble  task. 

But  to  retum  to  Sir  William.  Miss  Gierke 
has  admirably  told  the  authentic  anecdote  of 
the  odd  old  German  organ-builder,  Schnetzler, 
who,  exasperated  at  the  staccato  performance 
of  Herschers  rival,  became  wild  with  delight 
when,  on  ascending  to  the  loft,  Herschel  took 
from  his  pocket  two  leaden  weights  with  which 
he  held  down  an  octave,  all  the  while  impro- 
vising a  majestic  counterpoint.  '*  I  vil  luf  dis 
man,"  cried  Schnetder,  "because  he  gif  my 
pipes  time  for  to  shpeak."  And  here  is  her 
crisp  description  of  the  very  beginnings  of 
Herschel's  building  of  his  own  telescopes  (page 
15): 

"In  June,  1773,  when  fine  folk  had  mostly  de- 
serted Bath  for  summer  resorts,  work  was 
begun  in  earnest.  The  house  was  turned 
topsy-turvy ;  the  two  brothers  attacked  the 
novel  enterprise  with  boyish  glee.  Alexander, 
a  bom  mechanician,  set  up  a  huge  lathe  in  one 
of  the  bed  rooms ;  a  cabinet-maker  was  in- 
stalled in  the  drawing-room ;  Caroline,  in 
spite  of  secret  dismay  at  such  unruly  proceed- 
ings,  lent  a  hand,  and  kept  meals  going ;  Wil- 
liam directed,  inspired,  toiled,  with  the  ardor 
of  a  man  who  had  staked  his  life  on  the  issue. 
Meanwhile,  music  could  not  be  neglected. 
Practising  and  choir-training  went  on ;  novel- 
ties for  the  ensuing  season  were  prepared, 
compositions  written  and  parts  copied.  Then 
the  winter  brought  the  usual  round  of  tuitions 
and  performances,  while  all  the  time  mirrors 
were  being  ground  and  polished,  tried  and  re- 
jected, without  intermission.  At  last,  after 
two  hundred  failures,  a  tolerable  reflecting 
telescope  was  produced,  about  flve  inches  in 
aperture ;  .  .  .  but  those  two  hundred 
failures  made  the  Octagon  Ctiapel  organist  an 
expert,  unapproached  and  unapproachable,  in 
the  construction  of  specula." 

It  was  with  this  new  instrument  that,  in  the 
following  March,  Herschel  began  his  astro- 
nomical work  by  an  observation  of  the  great 
nebula  in  Orion,  the  record  of  which  is  still 
preserved  by  the  Royal  Society. 

Herschel  married  at  flf  ty  Mary  Baldwin,  only 
daughter  of  a  London  merchant,  and  widow  of 
Mr.  John  Pitt.  Her  jointure,  we  are  told,  re- 
lieved him  from  pecuniary  care,  and  her  sweet- 
ness of  disposition  secured  his  domestic  happi- 
ness. Miss  Bumey  records  in  her  diary  a  tea 
at  Mr.  De  Luc's,  adding,  of  the  newly  married 
wife,  "She  was  rich,  tool  And  astronomers 
are  as  able  as  other  men  to  discern  that  gold 
can  glitter  as  well  as  stars."  Their  only  child 
was  John  Frederick  William,  bom  1792,  and 
his  biography  is  here  presented  for  the  first 


time  by  Mist  Gierke  with  some  approach  to 
suitable  fulneei.  The  wider  sympathiee  of  the 
son  make  his  life  of  greater  general  interest 
than  his  father's,  and  not  a  single  phase  of  his 
beautiful  character  eacapes  that  careful  touch 
which  marks  the  perfect  biographer. 

Astronomy,  before  the  Herschels,  had  been 
mostly  dry  formulsB  and  drier  figures,  and  the 
irresistible  momentum  imparted  to  modem 
physical  astronomy  by  the  elder  Herschel  re- 
ceived a  marked  accession  of  impulse  from  the 
life  and  work  of  his  brilliant  son.  Before  their 
day,  astronomers  had  mainly  been  content 
with  inquiry  as  to  precisely  where  the  he^ 
venly  bodies  had  been  and  would  be;  anything 
beyond  the  crudest  speculation  as  to  whcU 
these  orbs  might  themselves  be,  rarely  oc- 
curred. Not  only  has  the  older  astronomy  not 
been  neglected,  but  the  new  astronomy  of  the 
nineteenth  century  has  made  uninterrupted 
progress  with  every  decade;  and  this  broad 
movement,  begun  by  the  Herschels  in  England, 
was  ably  promoted  by  Arago  in  France,  nor 
has  America  failed  to  lend  a  hand.  Not  only 
was  a  "knowledge  of  the  construction  of  the 
heavens  "  the  ultimate  object  of  the  elder  Her- 
schel's observations,  but  his  conception  of  the 
sun,  as  ruler,  fire,  light,  and  life  of  our  fdane- 
tary  system,  was  more  than  a  half  century  in 
advance  of  his  time,  and  no  less  prophetic. 
As  early  as  1801  he  wrote:  "  The  influence  of 
this  eminent  body  on  the  globe  we  inhabit  is 
so  great,  and  so  widely  diffused,  that  it  be- 
comes almost  a  duty  to  study  the  operations 
which  are  carried  on  upon  the  solar  surface." 
In  our  day  many  great  observatories  are  cliarg* 
ed  with  almost  the  sole  duty  of  that  study. 
Neither  to  the  younger  Herschel  was  astro- 
nomy merely  a  matter  of  right  ascension  and 
declination;  of  poising,  clamping,  and  reading 
off;  of  cataloguing  and  correcting— a  mere 
"inventory  of  God's  property,"  as  Thoreau 
has  aptly  said.  "It  was  his  peculiar  privi- 
lege," remarked  Dean  Stanley  in  his  funeral 
sermon,  "  to  combine  with  those  more  special 
studies  such  a  width  of  view  and  such  a  power 
of  expression  as  to  make  him  an  interpreter,  a 
poet  of  science,  even  beyond  his  immediate 
sphere." 

Unintentionally  we  have  left  little  space  for 
Miss  Gierke's  chapter  on  Caroline  Herschel— 
probably  the  best  of  all  the  brief  treatments 
of  her  life  extant.  Traits  of  modest  simplicity 
and  singular  selfeffkcement  were  preeminent- 
ly hers,  and  the  story  of  her  self  denial  for 
her  brother's  sake  will  never  grow  old.  Miss 
Gierke's  welcome  book  is  one  which  no  philoso- 
phio  student  of  modem  astronomy  can  pass 
over,  and  its  importance  as  pure  biography 
places  it  in  the  first  rank  among  the  Uvea 
of  famous  pioneers  in  science. 


The  Oxford  Church  Movement:  Sketches  and 
Recollections.     By  the  late   G,  Wakeling. 
With  an  Introduction  by  Earl  Nelson.    Lon- 
don: Swan  Sonnenschein  &  Co.;  New  York: 
Macmillan.    1895. 
In  the  great  variety  of  books  that  have  grown 
up  about  the  Oxford  Movement  there  have 
been  many  degrees  of  interest.    Mr.  Wake*- 
ling's  place  is  near  the  bottom  of  the  scale.    It 
comes  very  near  to  being  a  lucus  a  non  lucendo^ 
there  is  so  little  in  it  about  the  Oxford  Move- 
ment, speaking  carefully.    Dean  Church,  in 
his  admirable  history  of  the  Movement,  dates 
its  conclusion  from  the  condemnation  of  Ward 
in   1845.     Certainly  its  influence  upon   the 
church  for  good  or  Ul  went  on  for  a  long  time 
after  that,  but,  though  nearly  related  to  the 
Ritualististic  Movement,  it  was  quite  a  differ- 


Jan.  2,  1896] 


The   !N"atioii. 


19 


^«ot  thtcg.  To  read  Pusey'i  *Llfe  and  Corr^ 
«poDd«nce*  U  to  leani  that  he  did  not  know 
ib«  alphabet  of  that  language  of  ceremonial 
•obterraooe  which  hat  too  frequently  been 
-called  ''Pusejiim.'*  The  ipiiit  of  Newman 
and  Kehle  and  Posey  in  the  early  days  of  the 
liovemeot  had  Its  best  representative  after 
1846  in  Dean  Church,  and  his  indifference  to 
the  Ritualistic  Movement  is  a  striking  feature 
-of  his  beautiful  biography.  But  it  is  of  the 
Ritualistic  Movement  that  Mr.  Wakeling 
writes  almost  exclusively. 

One  of  bit  earliest  reoollecUons  as  a  bov  was 
-of  some  mention  of  the  Tractarians  in  1840.  It 
follows  that  he  was  still  a  boy  when  the  Move- 
ment collapsed  five  years  later,  and  coose- 
-quently  all  we  have  here  concerning  the  Trac- 
tarians proper  muH  be  a  matter  of  reading  or 
mere  hearsay.  This  fact  is  much  disguised, 
-we  trust  not  wilfully,  by  the  manner  in  which 
the  matter  of  the  book  is  presented.  Every- 
-thing  in  the  arrangement  is  helter-skelter,  and 
we  pass  back  and  forth  across  the  Hoe  which 
-divides  the  writer's  personal  knowledge  from 
'his  second-hand  material  without  a  hint  of  the 
transition.  Matters  which  occurred  before 
his  birth  are  produced  as  if  he  had  sketched 
them  on  the  spot.  There  is  very  little,  bow. 
-ever,  about  the  Tractarians  that  we  have  not 
bad  before  ia  better  shape.  The  real  interest 
«nd  value  of  the  book,  so  far  as  it  has  any,  liee 
in  its  exhibition  of  the  development  of  Ritual- 
ism. Even  here,  so  wide  is  the  field  from  which 
the  facts  are  grubbed,  only  a  small  part  can 
go  to  justify  the  '* Recollections''  of  the  title- 
page,  and  the  whole  is  like  the  primitive  chaos, 
without  form  and  void.  Only  occasionally 
<does  a  date  emerge  for  us  to  cling  to  in  the 
wide  inundation  of  incidents  and  names. 

The  names  are  generally  so  unfamiliar  that 
they  go  far  to  justify  the  complaint  which  has 
bean  made  of  the  lack  of  conspicuous  personali- 
ty in  the  Ritualistic  Movement.  The  incidents 
are  trivial  only  to  the  unritualixed  mind, 
and  there  is  something  very  entertaining  in 
the  naTre  enthusiasm  with  which,  page  after 
•page,  such  things  are  set  down  as  these:  **  The 
<hoir  were  not  in  surplices  till  Advent,  1846." 
**  The  altar  was  the  only  part  that  there  was  a 
liope  of  making  decent,  and  this,  with  the  aid 
-of  dorsel  and  flowers  at  festivals,  cross  and 
-candleaticks,  was  all  that  for  some  years  was 
attempted.^  Many  are  the  congratulations  on 
the  splendor  of  the  later  vestment*,  decora- 
tioos,  and  observances,  in  comparison  with 
the  weak  beginnings.  Every  change  in  this 
direetion  is  recorded  with  the  enthusiasm  of 
one  reporting  moral  victories.  Here  and 
tbere  the  triviality  verges  upon  silliness,  and, 
to  oiake  it  more  conspicuous,  it  is  frequently 
injected  into  the  body  of  a  paragraph  with 
which  it  has  little  or  no  connection,  as  if  too 
good  to  lose.  How  incidents  of  such  slight  im- 
portance  could  have  been  remembered  by  any- 
body of  good  sound  intelligence,  it  is  difficult 
10  conceive. 

There  Is  abundant  evidence  of  improvement 
in  the  taste  and  decency  of  religious  services. 
The  parish  clerk  does  not  inform  the  rector 
nowadays  between  the  prayers  that  the  bear 
for  the  bear-baiting  has  arrived  and  that  he  is 
a  floe  animal.  Daily  service  and  weekly  com- 
munion are  the  rule,  and  we  should  seek  in 
▼ain  for  "the  old  country  rector  who,  with- 
out the  least  conscious  profanity,  at  the  month- 
ly celebration  would  consecrate  nearly  half  a 
loaf,  giving  it  at  the  end  of  the  service  to  the 
poorer  communicants  who  flocked  to  the  altar 
raik.**  The  heinousnaas  of  this,  of  course,  de 
psods  somewhat  upon  the  point  of  view.  One 
liabit,  not  distinctly  moral,  teemed  rather  to 


increase  than  to  diminish  under  the  new  dis. 
pensation.  *^Mr.  Eeble  mentions  a  sajiogof 
Justice  Coleridge,  *  If  you  want  to  propagate 
your  opinions  you  should  lend  your  sermons: 
the  clergy  would  then  preach  them  and  adopt 
your  opinion^,*  and  this  has  really  been  the 
effect  of  the  Plain  and  other  Sermons.  It 
seems  a  pity  that  the  price  of  the  volumes  was 
so  high.''  **  What  a  boon  these  sermons  roust 
have  been  to  hard-working  pariah  priests  who 
certainly  could  not  secure  the  leisure  to  write 
more  than  one  good  sermon  a  week  1"  This 
sermon-stealing  sometimes  led  to  painful  situa- 
tions, and  a  sickly  gleam  of  humor  plays  for  a 
moment  across  Mr.  Wakeling's  solemn  page 
when  he  tells  of  a  few  sermons,  printed  with  a 
memoir,  which  the  subject  of  the  memoir  had 
not  written.  Mr.  Wakeling  has  not  exagge- 
rated the  triumph  of  ritualism  in  the  English 
church.  Ward  was  condemned  and  disgraced 
because,  in  his  *  Ideal  Church,'  he  insisted  on 
the  right  of  the  Anglican  to  the  free  use  of  the 
entire  Roman  ritual  and  doctrine.  That  was 
just  fifty  years  ago.  Now  there  are  hundreds 
of  Anglicans  making  good  his  claim,  with  no 
one  to  molest  or  make  them  afraid.  The 
Church  of  England  has  given  the  Church  of 
Rome  an  effectual  check  in  England  by  the  en- 
couragement of  home  manufactures  as  nearly 
as  may  be  resembling  those  of  the  Eternal 
City. 

The  Life  of  John  LivingsUm  Keviua.  By  Helen 
8.  Coan  Nevius.    Fleming  H.  Revel!  Co. 

It  sometimes  happens  that  the  best  works  ac- 
complished by  a  man  during  his  life  are  left 
out  of  )i\s  posthumous  biography.  We  are  not 
sure  but  that  something  like  this  has  happened 
in  the  present  instance.  Dr.  Nevius  was  for 
nearly  forty  years  a  missionary  in  China,  and 
the  story  of  his  life  as  told  by  his  wife  is  one 
of  great  moral  and  spiritual  beauty.  He  en- 
tered Shan  Tung,  the  holy  land  of  the  Chinese, 
the  birthplace  and  tomb  of  Confucius,  wheh 
the  people  handed  back  the  tracts  and  books  of 
the  missionaries,  saying,  **We  neither  ap- 
prove nor  desire  them."  He  died  after  having, 
with  his  colleagues,  planted  Christian  churches 
throughout  the  peninsula.  This  biography 
pictures  him  as  husband,  friend,  teacher, 
author,  and  preacher.  Tet,  unless  the  re- 
viewer mistake  the  impression  left  on  his  own 
mind  by  the  Chinese  themselves  and  by  non- 
clerical  and  non- professional  English-speaking 
people  in  China,  Dr.  Nevius  was  equally  pow- 
erful and  influential  in  other  ways.  His  prac- 
tical common  sense,  his  knowledge  of  manual 
expedients,  his  power  and  willingness  to  aid 
the  Chinese  in  applying  the  arts  and  sciences 
of  the  West,  his  willingne«  to  meet  them  on 
their  own  ground  and  to  respect  their  tradi- 
tions  and  their  sensibilities,  were  not  least 
among  the  secrets  of  his  power.  These  made 
him  everybody's  friend,  and  kept  his  influence 
ever  potent.  Without  belittling  **  the  power 
of  the  Gospel "  or  the  ordinary  means  used  to 
spread  it.  It  is  none  the  less  true  that  the 
quality  of  manhood  in  the  mersenger  Id,  at 
flrst,  even  more  potent  than  the  message. 
Among  the  hundreds  sent  out  as  misbionaries 
to  China  there  is  still  much  room  where  Dr. 
Nevius  dwelt  when  on  earth— at  the  top. 

John  Nevius  was  bom  in  the  beautiful  re- 
gion of  the  **flnger  lakes"  in  central  New 
York,  spending  his  boyhood  between  those 
named  Seneca  and  Cayuga.  The  name  Ne- 
vius, from  the  French  Neve  but  Latinized, 
proves,  along  with  well-supported  traditional 
and  documentary  evidence,  that  the  ancestral 
stock  was  Huguenot  and  Netherlandish.    His 


first  venture  in  early  manhood,  after  gradua- 
tion from  Union  College,  was  as  a  school- 
teacher in  Georgia.  After  a  year  of  pedagogy 
he  decided  to  enter  the  ministry,  and  went  to 
study  in  Princeton  Seminary.  He  married 
Miss  Helen  8.  Coan  (who  survives  him  as 
biographer),  and,  after  a  six  months*  voyage, 
reached  Ningpo  in  18M,  where  Dr.  D.  Be- 
thune  McCartee  had  come  as  pioneer.  In 
Ningpo,  as  a  well-equipned  speaker  and  writer 
of  Chinese,  he  was  finely  prepared  for  his 
main  life  work  in  the  province  of  Confucius. 
He  died  at  bis  poet  and  in  bis  own  home.  In 
presence  of  his  wife  and  among  his  books,  after 
only  a  few  hours  of  illness.  His  grave  Is  at 
Chefoo.  He  visited  Korea  once  and  Japan 
several  times.  One  is  not  surprised  to  have 
Mrs.  Nevius  write: 

"  As  to  the  people  of  Japan,  the  opinion  we 
formed  of  them  so  long  ago  [1800]  has  never 
changed.  There  is  a  certain  shrewdne«  and 
vivacity  and  readiness  to  learn  of  others,  in 
which  they  undoubtedly  are  superior  to  the 
Chinese;  but  in  most  resppcte  I  think  the  in- 
habitanto  of  the  *  Middle  Kingdom  *  are  fully 
their  equals." 

Rather  above  the  average  of  missionary  bio- 
graphy in  piquancy  of  style,  liveliness  of  nar- 
rative, and  quality  of  details,  this  literary  pic- 
ttire  of  an  American  gentleman  who  so  grand- 
ly combioed  the  ideal  and  the  practical,  de- 
serves the  study  of  young  men  as  it  will  com- 
mand the  delighted  attention  of  Dr.  Nevius's 
old  friends.  There  are  illustrations,  a  map, 
and  a  good  portrait,  but  no  index. 


Side  Talks  vnlh  OirU.     By  Ruth  Ashmore. 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 
Miss  Ashmobe  speaks  to  girls  with  the  wisdom 
of  experience.  This  Is  just  the  tort  of  wicdom 
which,  unless  displayed  with  much  discretion, 
girls  are  little  disposed  to  profit  by.  The  book 
Is  very  discreet,  the  author  putting  herself 
easily  on  terms  of  equality  with  her  audience, 
imparting  advice  tactfully,  and,  in  every 
way,  doing  her  best  not  to  excite  that  rebel- 
lious spirit  which  prompts  the  daughters  of 
each  generation  to  think  themselves  wiser 
than  their  mothers.  The  most'valuable  chap- 
ters (for  they  discuss  matters  beyond  the  ex- 
perience  of  many  mothers)  are  those  addressed 
to  girls  who  leave  comfortab1e|homes  in  order 
to  seek  fortune  in  large  dtiea.  The  descrip- 
tions  of  the  life  of  the  average  )actreas,  artist, 
and  shop-girl  are  unexaggerated  statement  of 
fact.  Any  error  is  in  understatement  of  the 
hardship  and  discouragement  which  the  home- 
less working-girl  must  face,  and* of  the  demo- 
ralization which  frequently  ensues.  For  the 
girl  whom  actual  necessity  drives  to  scramble 
for  a  living  as  best  she  may,  there  are  useful 
hints  and  suggestions  of  employment  not  lead- 
ing to  glory  or  fortune,  but  fairly  remunera- 
tive and  quite  compatible  with  preservation  of 
bodily  health  and  personal  decency. 

In  her  comments  the  author  emphasizes  the 
^oy  of  being  a  good  girl  at  home,  rather  ignor- 
ing the  sometimes  besetting  temptations  to  be 
a  bad  one.  Fathers,  mothers,  and  occasionally 
brothers,  are  not  always  compact  of  good 
temper,  justice,  and  love;  if  they  were.  Miss . 
Ashmore*s  talks  would  be  largely  superfluous, 
and  the  ** Advanced  Woman"  whom  she 
scourges  might  possibly  never  have  come  into 
existence. 


BOOKS  OF  THE  WEEK. 

Almsoftch  de  Ooths,  18dO.  Ootha:  Jiwttu  Perttow: 
New  York :  We«t«nnAiiD  ^  , 

Cbambert,  R.  W.  The  Re<l  RepubUc :  A  Romsnc*  of 
tbe  Comrotrae.    Putn»m«.    il.sa.     _  ^  ^        .  ^.w— 

CbAsnlDg,  Grace  E.  The  Sitter  of  •  8«lnt«  and  Otber 
Storlea.    Chicago :  Stone  a  KUnbaU. 


20 


Tlie   IN^ation 


^VoL  62,  No-  159^ 


Ctmumvtam.  Cape  ft.  V.     Tk«  Trik  ww^—  Ttawi 

ffteft.   ci«  ■■■■  tr     lUAwrc  ciHkc  Co. 
C«rttadiL  IL  V-     >ti«t*M  •*»     artjM  em  Cif  tic*  r  <b 

r.  f  C.    The  A<iw^  '.Lrt  :l:  •bli.     M'f^^K^^ 
.  w.  V.  A4ui»  '  f'     t: 


Lor^A 


Katt»>.  f.%anc«    hunm  trwm  A.\ 
can  ftcjibA  ',<*.    ^fJt:. 

T.  K    TteLI««a«r 

»»»»»i^.  a  c.  Tw  am-cov**  <if  r 

(iU* .  J.  B.  I  l|f  lafr*!  Co. 
JL..*-r.  ProC.  Ko«ntf.    I«e   Ummcs  Wctaksrtm.    IIL 

lU'O,  f\Mt%t%.    Tmr  Pi  I— I       Xcv  Tock:    I.   D. 

B/x^ru^A  A  » cm. 
t>^i^'  R»«  <i  r.    Wtat  fttaJl  I  T«a  Ike  CMMra> 

'/-  >-l  ftefvoM  a»«  TiiifciB^i     X«v  Tovk  :  W.  & 

zlc    VilkHm  BranLbllcr. 


:  Law  3^m  T«rt    fulfil  i>   SI  »u 
St«2»c«.  R.  U.  ai»d  B«m>ey  JT  L    MmfM^    A  Soto 

•b^^r.  B  vrV«  K.  ^  bc^  T«a'*  CiMl  ■iiiii .  Bmi^- 
t^*.  ¥!(■■  *  Co.    4Ac 

•175. 


SOME  BOOKS  PC  BUSHED  IX  iSgs 

BV 

Henry  Holt  &  Co. 


AOOLTttus' 5one  Me.iofties  OP  PAStf .  ^fiv^  b/o^;^  o^* 

AMOeSSOrS  em  BeSCCMBEl  DICKERS 'Be»«HAROT/.     W.tfa  portrait*.    Bd* 

STORIES,  witb  OSIMM  *  HAtTP.     Vo  ah.    (VrtMa  Hrowmjn  •  EaM§  fi^rmamj. . . . 

BALZAC'S  CL'O^e  OftAMOer 'BEROeStOM  .    W.tfa  N  »/.K^trr«pfa7  Aod  portrait 

BAUnBACM'S  FRAU  HOLOe  ^FOSSLERn     /r^^.    Wi«L  p'^rtrait.    fVlt 

BALOWtM'5  5PeCUie?«S OP  PROSE  DESCRlPnOM.     Kn^ju^  lUaU^j^    h>X% 

BREWSTER'S  5PECinE;<S  OP  PROSE  MARRATIOM.    Em^jU*k  h^aUi^n     Bds 

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•*fj*rim^n4  of  Kr%/fimtum.,  pr»rri//u*if  pu^'-i^i**^.  uiiif'/rm  10  %tjl#r  Ujd  pric*,^ 

BB ALB'S  JACIC  O'DOO^*.    A  I^«*ar^*  'if  iL*  N-^b  Caro.tri»  (>ja>i.    if«rirra«  .S*-riVj 

BENEDIX'S OER  DRfTTE,    rWHIT^EY.)    /^v.    Id* 

TEN  BRINK'S  PI VB  LECTURES  ON  SHAKESPEARE.    Tren<4at«d  by  JVUA  PRANKUN 

BRONS'JN'SEASV  GERMAN  PROSE  AND  POETRY,      n^rafj.  mod  tiortrnif 

BUCHAN'S  SIR  QUIXOTE  OP  THE  MOORS.    A -^-Ach  HfjniAooe.    Burk^am  s^rti-M 

CMAIISSO'S  PETER  SCHLEMIHL     'VOOEL  ;    JU'd.    IW« 

DUFF'S  TME  MASTER- KNOT,  a/id  "  ANOTHER  STORY."    Burkram  Ser.r»  

EDUCATIONAL  REVIEW      Vol*  IX  aud  I.     O'rT  No   Vc  ) Per  Year  r  lO  N««.; 

FORD'S  THE  BROKEN  HEART.    Trarj* dp.     K^^jit-M  lUwUn^j,  &1*.  40c     CT 

HARRIS' OERMAN  READER     '  Fr,r  B*^iuwr»» 

HAUFF'S  DIE  KARA  WANE.    ( Vnmi  Hrotwm*  EA^y  fi«rman,^      V^^ih 

HOPE'S  A  MAN  OP  HARK.     A  S'^uth   V'/iirican  TaW.     Biu-Lmm  *^rt*^M 

SPC  Rf  ROYAL.     A  NoTf-i^-tte  «m1  SLort  <Ufru^.     liurkrom  s^rt*$ 

HOPKINS  LADY  BONNIE'S  EXPERIMENT.     .\  .Vo»H      Burkram  Sen^-M 

JOHMfO.N'S  RASSELAS  lEHERSON;      /^v/m'.   i:*a  hfujM  Bd«  '^oc     CI. 

K AUDASA'5  SH AKUNTALA.     Tran-la'*^]  or  Pn.f   H.  H.  EDQREN 

KERNER'S  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  PLANTS.      W,th  Or^/- ;  /,/ ///,.    4to.     4  Part* • 

KLENZE'S  DEUTSCHE  OEDICHTE,     Frc.n,  V\t\y  P'^^-n.    ^  Pmrtii* 

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MACAULAY  AND  CARL^L^  ON  tsOSWELL'S  JOHNSON  (STRUNK^     Bds 

MacDOUOAL'S  EXPERIMENTAL  PLANT  PHYSIOLOOY 

NEVISSON'S  SLUM  STORIES  OP  LONDON.     Burkram  Serien 

NEWMAN:    PROSE  SELECTIONS.     KnglUh  Headuu,* B<Jji.  'soc.     CL 

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PAULSEN'S  INTRODUCTION  TO  PHILOSOPHY  .THILLY;.  Preface  by  WM.  JAMES 

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REMSEN  AND  RANDALL'S  CHEMICAL   EXPERIHENTS 

SCHILLER'S  JUNCJFRAU  VON    ORLEANS.     (MCHOLS.)  Ent^r^ly  Aeir  Ed Bd«.  '^Oc.  CI. 

SCHOENFELD'S  GERMAN  HISTORICAL   PROSE 

SCULLY'S   KAFIR  STORIES.     Burkram  Series 

SCHEI  FEL'S  EKKEHARD  (CARRUTHn    Complet*'.     Jtrd 

UERTROMPETER  VON  SAKKINGEN.     (FROST.)     IlCd 

SEUOEWICK  AND  WILSON'S  GENERAL  BIOLOGY.    Entirely  St w  Ed 

STERN'S  STUDIEN  UND  PLAUDERBItN.     Finti  s^rieu.      Ent, rely  Sew  Ed 

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THOMAS'  PRACTICAL    GERMAN    GRAMMAR 

TAINE'S  ORIG1NE9  DB  LA  FRANCE  CONTEflPORAIN.    Extracts.     (EDG'tEN.) 

VYNN^'S  A  HAN  AND  HIS  WOMANKIND.     Buckram  Seri't 

WALTER'S  CLASSIC  FRENCH  LETTERS 

WARREN'S  THE  NOVEL.  PREVIOUS  TO  THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

WHITNEY'S  INTRODUCTORY  GERMAN  READER 

WICHERT'S  AN  DER  MAJORSECKE  (HARRIS;.     Play.     Bds 

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to  ^o  without  reading  it." — The  Dial. 

THE  FIRST  XUMBER  OF  VOL.  XI. 

JANUARY 

EDUCATIONAL 
REVIEW. 


by  J  O.  Fl«-*:  La^jraaci^  «al  La''Tat«rp.  by 
TVicaa^B.  Prtre:  HixH«r  Y.t\temA:>\  la  tht  s->ata,  by- 
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Wanted,  a  podtkni  aa  Ubrarlaa,  Aialataot  Ubrarlaa 
or  Reference  Librarian,  by  a  yooog  man  thirty  Toora 
old,  a  oollege  rradnate,  and  a  graduate  of  tbe  New  York 
State  LlbnuT  School,  with  sereral  years'  expenence  In 
Ubrarywork.   Addreat  UBRARIAN. 

Office  of  The  Nation. 


W\ 


'AN  TED.  -  A     P  URCHA  SER     FOR 


WW  the  leadlna  Female  College  of  Texas.  •!  60.000 
worth  of  property  and  a  profitable  school  tor  leu  than 
one-third  of  Its  coat.  Small  cash  paj  meat;  balaace  on 
ten  years'  time.    Address 

"  Texas  Collbok/'  care  the  ^^altoll.  N.  T. 


Do  me  tbe  favor  to  ask  your  wine  mer. 
chant,  or  Park  &  Tilford  (wboltsale 
agents),  for  my  *'Picarillo*^  natural 
sherry,  and  **  Manzanilla  Posada.^' 

GUILLERMO  DOBLACHE, 

Puerto  de  Santa  Maria. 


The    Nation. 


NEW  YORK,   THURSDAY,  JANUARY  9,   1896. 


The  Week. 


Onb  effect  of  the  Venezuelan  business 
has  been  to  open  the  way  for  a  short  ses- 
sion of  Congress.  Before  the  end  of  the 
first  month  the  House  had  passed  both  a 
revenue  bill  and  a  bond  bill,  each  of 
which  measures,  in  the  natural  course  of 
things,  would  have  taken  some  weeks. 
The  Senate,  of  course,  may  use  up  a  great 
deal  of  time  over  the  two  bills,  but  at  any 
rate  the  upper  branch  has  them  in  hand 
months  before  anybody  expected  it  would 
when  Congress  met.  The  House  can  now 
devote  itself  to  the  appropriation  bills, 
and  should  easily  be  able  to  dispose  of  all 
the  routine  business  before  the  end  of 
spring.  It  seems  to  be  taken  for  granted 
that  no  other  tariff  bill  will  be  brought 
forward  in  the  House,  even  if  the  one  re- 
cently passed  should  go  through  the  Se- 
nate and  be  vetoed  by  the  President. 
This  alone  would  mean  a  great  saving  of 
time,  and  Speaker  Reed  can  be  trusted  to 
do  all  in  his  power  to  get  Congress  off  his 
hands  before  the  Republican  national 
convention  meets.  He  understands  that 
he  could  not  do  a  more  popular  thing 
than  to  secure  adjournment  before  the 
opening  of  summer.  But  he  cannot 
•*run  "  the  Senate,  and  the  old  rules,  un- 
der which  time  can  be  wasted  by  whole- 
sale, still  govern  the  upper  branch. 


The  House  bond  bill  for  the  relief  of 
the  Treasury  was  a  very  inadequate  mea- 
sure. It  was  not  at  all  adapted  to  the 
situation,  since  it  provided  only  for  the 
issue  of  bopds  at  a  lower  rate  of  in- 
terest than  could  be  sold  under  present 
conditions — that  is,  with  a  threat  of  war 
hanging  over  the  country— and  provided 
that  these  should  be  sold  only  by  what  is 
termed  a  '^popular  loan''— a  method  that 
has  no  existence  in  this  country.  Worse 
than  this,  the  House  bill  provided  that  no 
future  bond  sales,  under  any  law  or  laws, 
should  be  made  except  on  the  ** popular" 
plan.  This  bad  bill  was  not  nearly  bad 
enough  for  the  Senate.  Yet  the  imagina- 
tion of  man  could  hardly  have  conceived 
the  kind  of  substitute  that  body  is  about 
to  offer,  namely,  the  free  coinage  of  sil- 
ver. To  call  this  a  substitute  for  a  bond 
bill  is  clownish  in  the  extreme.  It  would 
be  dangerous  but  for  the  fact  that  it  will 
not  be  accepted  by  the  House  and  cannot 
possibly  become  a  law.  The  majority 
there,  though  not  composed  of  sound  finan- 
ciers, is  at  least  anti-silver.  Whatever 
happens  in  the  Senate,  and  whether  the 
Speaker  interferes  or  not,  the  chances 
are  all  against  a  free-coinage  bill  going 
to  the  President  by  a  vote  of  the  House. 
To  that  extent  the  public  mind  may  feel 
more  composed  now  than  six  years  ago. 


It  was  undoubtedly  an  apprehension  in 
the  President's  mind  that  the  Elkins  re- 
solution would  pass  Congress  that  led  to  a 
change  in  the  plan  of  the  new  $100,000,000 
gold  loan.  That  resolution  provides  that 
no  bonds  of  the  United  States  shall  l>e  sold 
by  private  contract,  but  that  all  shall  be 
advertised  and  sold  to  the  highest  bidder. 
A  Senate  resolution  does  not  possess  the 
force  of  law,  yet  if  it  should  alarm  capi- 
talists and  break  up  the  bond  syndicate, 
it  would  have  all  the  effect  of  a  law.  Un- 
doubtedly it  would  drive  all  foreign  parti- 
cipants out  of  the  field  and  scare  away  all 
but  the  most  intrepid  of  our  financiers. 
Hence  the  change  of  plan  announced  in 
Mr.  Carlisle's  circular  is  forced  upon  the 
Administration.  They  could  not  take  a 
step  which  might  be  interrupted  at  any 
time  by  a  joint  resolution  of  Congress. 
The  new  gold  loan  has  now  been  advertis- 
ed, and  we  shall  see  the  result.  If  the 
public  c6me  forward  and  take  the  bonds 
and  furnish  the  gold  without  first  with- 
drawing it  from  the  Treasury,  so  much 
the  better.  But  how  will  the  public  get 
the  gold  to  pay  for  them  ?  There  is  no 
law  to  prevent  subscribers  for  the  new 
bonds  from  drawing  the  gold  to  pay  for 
them  out  of  the  Treasury  itself.  The  syn- 
dicate could  prevent  that  operation  by 
agreement  among  themselves :  it  was 
only  necessary  to  send  notice  to  all  con- 
cerned that  no  subscriptions  would  be  re- 
ceived which  were  to  be  paid  with  gold 
drawn  from  the  Treasury.  *•  The  public  " 
cannot  be  controlled. 


SenatoV  Sherman,  by  his  speech  on  Fri- 
day, added  as  much  confusion  to  the  na^ 
tional  finances  as  it  was  possible  for  oni 
man  to  do.  Most  of  hi^  old  misrepresen- 
tations were  repeated.  These  it  is  not 
necessary  to  notice  again.  He  has  fur- 
nished some  new  ones,  however,  that  pos- 
sess a  curious  kind  of  interest.  For  ex- 
ample, he  chides  the  Administration  for 
not  withholding  all  appropriations  -not 
made  mandatory  by  Congress.  *'  All  ap- 
propriations which  are  not  provided  to 
carry  into  effect  existing  laws,"  he  says, 
**  are  permissive,  but  not  mandatory." 
Mr.  Sherman  holds  that  if  the  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  had  refused  to  pay  any 
appropriations  that  were  not  mandatory 
in  form,  *'  there  would  have  been  no  diffi- 
culty about  the  gold  reserve."  This  will 
be  an  invaluable  guide  for  future  Secreta- 
ries,until  Congress  impeaches  one  of  them 
for  following  it.  Mr.  Sherman's  next  dis- 
covery is  that  although  there  is  an  actual 
surplus  in  the  Treasury  of  $178,000,000, 
the  deficiency  of  revenue  is  the  cause  of 
the  decline  of  the  gold  reserve,  and  that  all 
that  is  needed  to  bring  it  up  to  its  normal 
figure  is  to  increase  the  revenues  by  a 
tariff  on  wool  and  some  other  things.  It 
is  humiliating,  he  says,  to  read  that  the 
Government  is  negotiating  for  money  with 


associated  bankers,  and  that  gold  has 
been  offered  to  it  by  a  friendly  power 
(which  is  officially  denied),  ss  though  it 
were  tottering  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy. 
To  avoid  this  humiliation  it  is  only  neces- 
sary to  increase  the  taxes,  and  meanwhile 
to  borrow  what  you  need  from  the  people 
of  the  United  States;  Mr.  Morgan  and  the 
associated  bankers  being,  in  Mr.  Sher- 
man's view,  foreigners. 


There  are  indeed  many  humiliating 
things  nowadays.  Among  them  must  be 
counted  a  speech  from  an  ex- Secretary  of 
the  Treasury  abounding  in  such  non- 
sense as  this.  But  we  have  not  come  to 
the  end  of  it,  or  anywhere  near  it ;  for 
Mr.  Sherman  makes  a  new  suggestion 
for  protecting  the  Treasury  gold,  and 
that  is  to  require  the  national  banks  to 
keep  their  reserves  in  legal-tender  notes 
exclusively.  In  other  words,  they  should 
not  be  allowed  to  count  their  gold  as  a 
part  of  their  legal  reserve.  These  banks, 
he  says,  are  the  creation  and  instruments 
of  the  Government,  and  they  should  not 
be  allowed  to  discredit  the  greenbacks  by 
showing  a  preference  for  gold.  Nor  should 
the  Government  itself  pay  out  gold  for 
current  expenses,  because  that  tends  to 
weaken  the  confidence  of  the  people  in 
the  greenbacks.  Immediate  action  should 
be  taken  by  Congress  to  prevent  this,  he 
exclaims.  A  bill  to  embody  these  ideas 
would  provide  that  no  national  bank 
shall  be  allowed  to  hold  gold  or  to 
draw  gold  from  the  Treasury,  and  that 
the  Treasury  shall  not  be  allowed  to  pay 
gold  to  anybody  but  exporters.  A  more 
efficient  and  intelligible  measure,  we  sub- 
mit, would  be  an  act  to  fix  the  gold  re- 
serve at  $100,000,000,  and  then  prohibit 
all  public  officers  from  paying  any  out,  and 
all  private  persons  from  drawing  or  at- 
tempting to  draw  any,  under  pain  of  in- 
stant death.  In  this  way  the  reserve 
would  be  kept  intact.  Mr.  Sherman  is 
reported  to  have  said  lately  that  the  root 
of  the  political  and  financial  trouble  is  in 
those  eight  far  Western  States  whose  en- 
tire population  and  wealth  does  not  equal 
that  of  New  York,  because  in  the  Senate 
they  cast  sixteen  votes  to  New  York's  two. 
What  a  vast  improvement  would  follow  if 
these  sixteen  Senators  were  all  like  Mr. 
Sherman  1 


Nobody  at  Washington  expects  the 
wool  tax  to  become  law,  and  the  general 
opinion  of  the  trade  seems  to  be  that  it  will 
fail  either  in  the  Senate  or  in  the  White 
House.  To  get  it  through  the  Senate  un- 
amended is  sure  to  be  a  hard  job,  if  for  no 
other  reason,  on  account  of  the  desire  of 
so  many  Senators  to  make  friends  of  the 
mammon  of  protection  in  their  own 
States  by  at  least  offering  amendments 
and  discoursing  loudly  upon  the  needs  of 
their   constituents.     The    most    seriooa 


23 


Ttie    N'atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1593 


difficulty  of  all  is  reported  hj  the  Wash- 
ington correspondent  of  the  Dry  Oooda 
Economist,  He  says  that  Senator  Bur- 
rows is  fully  persuaded  that  the  bill  as  it 
passed  the  House  is  absolutely  unworka- 
ble, as  it  leaves  rates  conflicting  in  va- 
rious schedules.  So  firmly  convinced  is 
he  ''that  it  would  be  impossible  to 
administer  the  Dingley  bill  "  that  he 
says  its  form  must  surely  be  changed, 
even  if  its  aim  and  substance  are  left  un- 
touched. As  all  depends,  in  tariff  bills, 
upon  their  being  susceptible  of  "  adminis- 
tering," Senator  Burrows's  objection  is 
certainly  fatal.  But  it  does  show  what  a 
genius  and  superior  capacity  for  legisla- 
tion the  Republicans  possess,  as  they 
themselves  admit 


Naval  authorities— especially  naval  con- 
tractors and  naval  Congressmen — agree 
that  more  ships  are  likely  to  be  voted  by 
this  Congress  than  have  been  authorized 
in  some  years.  The  Venezuelan  war  is 
good  for  large  appropriations,  they  think, 
if  for  nothing  else.  The  Chilian  war  scare 
was  thought  to  have  frightened  two  extra 
ships  out  of  a  reluctant  Congress,  and  the 
Venezuelan  business  ought  to  mean  at 
least  half-a-dozen.  Very  likely  it  may. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  building 
a  modern  navy  is  one  of  the  slowest  jobs 
known  to  man.  It  is  considered  little 
short  of  a  marvel  that  the  two  latest  battle- 
ships to  be  added  to  the  British  fleet  were 
turned  out  in  two  years'  time.  This  means 
a  vast  change  since  the  dfty  when  Pitt 
could  demand  the  creation  of  a  fleec  in 
three  months*  time,  and  threaten  to  im- 
peach the  First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty  if 
he  did  not  produce  it  on  the  day  fixed. 
But  the  two  years  necessary  to  build  a  new 
ship  is  often  enough  to  antiquate  two  al- 
ready in  commission,  and  thus  leave  the 
fieet  where  it  was  before.  Often,  in  fact, 
as  in  the  case  of  our  own  Texaa^  just 
through  with  her  trial  trip,  it  is  found 
that  a  ship  is  no  sooner  off  the  ways  than 
her  turrets  "work  badly,"  it  takes  her 
two  hours  to  discharge  a  guu,  her  bottom 
is  **  shaky,"  and  she  must  at  once  go  out 
of  commission  for  "extensive  repairs." 


The  further  one  goes  west  from  the  At- 
lantic seaboard,  the  greater  is  the  readi- 
ness for  war  with  England  over  the  Vene- 
zuelan boundary.  An  excellent  authority 
in  Indiana  informs  us  that  public  senti- 
ment in  that  State  is  substantially  unani- 
mous in  support  of  President  Cleveland's 
position.  Still  further  towards  the  Pa- 
cific the  feeling  appears  to  be  even  stronger 
in  favor  of  a  fight.  The  Portland  Orego- 
nian^  which  recently  pointed  out  that  any 
backwardness  in  supporting  extreme 
measures  on  the  Atlantic  Coast  should 
count  for  nothing  because  this  section 
was  equally  unpatriotic  in  the  last  war 
with  England,  gives  prominence  to  a  let- 
ter from  "American,"  who  argues  at 
length  that  a  war  with  England  would  be 
a  good  thing  and  would  benefit  the  United 


States.  As  an  index  to  a  good  deal  of 
public  feeling,  this  letter  is  worth  sum- 
marizing. The  correspondent  urges  that 
such  a  war  "  would  unite  all  Americans 
and  do  away  with  all  party  feeling,"  and 
"  would  unite  all  South  and  North  Ameri- 
ca, and  make  of  them  one  of  the  greatest 
nations  on  the  earth  ";  that  the  American 
people  want  a  war,  because  "they  all 
know  that  the  wealth  of  the  world  has 
got  into  the  hands  of  a  few  and  that  there 
is  no  relief  for  the  masses,"  because  "busi- 
ness is  at  a  standstill  and  will  remain  so 
until  something  happens,"  and  because 
"war  is  our  only  salvation,"  since  "we 
are  at  the  mercy  of  England  as  far  as  our 
finances  go,  and  that  is  our  only  way  out "; 
and,  finally,  because 

"  War  would  be  a  good  thiog  in  many  wajrs. 
It  would  set  every  idle  man  to  work,  either  in 
the  army  or  helping  to  supply  the  army.  It 
would  give  men  a  chaore  to  become  famous 
who  are  unknown  to-day.  Too  much  peace 
brings  strikes,  idleness,  and  all  kinds  of  crimes. 
Give  the  American  people  a  chance,  and  they 
will  drive  the  British  flag  into  the  sea,  capture 
Canada  and  all  England^s  possessions,  and 
make  America  the  greatest  nation  on  earth. 
Then  for  another  generation  basiness  will  boom 
and  confidence  will  be  restored." 


There  could  be  no  surer  indication  of 
the  scatter-brained  condition  of  the  Jin- 
goes as  regards  the  Venezuelan  contro- 
versy than  the  vast  amount  of  comfort 
they  extract  out  of  the  London  Chroni- 
cle*8  Washington  despatches.  That  pa- 
per's correspondent  is  engaged  in  reading 
the  published  documents,  apparently  for 
the  first  time,  and  his  discoveries  are  so 
novel  and  startling  to  himself  that  he  at 
once  cables  them  as  momentous  to  the 
civilized  world.  Then  they  are  cabled 
back  as  evidence  that  England  is  at  last 
"  getting  at  the  facts."  Mr.  Norman  has 
now  pushed  his  studies  up  to  the  time  of 
the  removal  of  the  posts  set  up  by  Schom- 
burgk,  and  wags  his  head  gravely  at  find- 
ing no  evidence  for  Salisbury's  assertion 
that,  when  the  p6sts  were  removed,  "  the 
concession  was  made  on  the  distinct  un- 
derstanding that  Great  Britain  did  not 
thereby  in  any  way  abandon  her  claim." 
This  may  comfort  the  Jingoes  and  fool  the 
Chronicle,  but  it  will  not  deceive  the 
Venezuelans.  They  know  that  what  Salis- 
bury said  is  strictly  true,  for  in  their  own 
statement  of  their  case  they  summarize 
the  letter  of  Lord  Aberdeen,  dated  March 
30,  1844,  as  follows : 

"  He  says,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  Oovern- 
ment  of  her  Majesty,  in  consentiog  to  the  re- 
moval of  the  marks,  did  not  cede  any  of  the 
rights  which  itmightconsider  itself  authorized 
to  claim  ia  the  future,  and  that  it  bad  been 
moved  solely  by  friendly  deference  to  the  re- 
quests of  the  Government  of  Venezaela." 

Moreover,  in  Senate  Document  No.  226, 
dated  July  26,  1888,  containing  "the  cor- 
respondence relating  to  the  pending  dis- 
pute between  the  Government  of  Vene- 
zuela and  the  Government  of  Great 
Britain  concerning  the  boundaries  between 
British  Guiana  and  Venezuela  "  (this  cor- 
respondence begins  in  1876  and  runs  on  to 
1888),  there  are  no  fewer  than  twenty-two 
refarences  to  the  matter. 


The  Evening  Post  of  Thursday  printed 
two  despatches  which  appeared  in  the 
San  Francisco  Chronicle  of  April  last, 
and  which  throw  a  flood  of  light  on  th& 
use  which  Venezuela  expects  to  make  of 
the  territory  over  which  she  is  disputing 
with  Great  Britain.  It  explains,  too,  in 
part,  the  prodigious  Jing^  racket  about 
Venezuela  which  began  early  last  year, 
and  to  which  we  unceasingly  called  th» 
attention  of  the  American  public,  as  well 
as  the  "  hollering  "  for  a  more  "vigorous 
foreign  policy  "  which  the  Tribune* 8  old 
pensioner  in  Washington  emitted  three  or 
four  times  a  week.  The  speculators,  as 
we  see,  expected  a  more  vigorous  foreign 
policy  about  this  time.  We  have  reason  to 
believe  that  some  of  them,including  United 
States  Senators  who  are  to  sit  on  these 
questions  of  peace  or  war,  waited  on  Secre- 
tary Gresham,  not  long  before  his  death, 
to  urge  this  policy  on  him;  but,  being  a 
clear-headed  man  of  peace,  he  not  only 
declined  their  proposals,  but  topk  the 
liberty  of  pointing  out  to  them  the  impro- 
priety of  their  having  anything  to  do  with 
an  affair  which  was  likely  to  become  a 
matter  of  international  controversy.  We 
are  far  from  insinuating  that  they  ever 
made  any  similar  application  to  Mr.  01ney» 
but  he  certainly  did  just  what  they  want- 
ed. The  Jingo  poison  prepares  a  man's 
system  for  the  speculative  bacillus.  It 
weakens  his  sense  of  propriety.  It  clouds 
his  understanding  and  destroys  his  fore- 
sight, as  we  see  in  the  havoc  which  Mr. 
Cleveland  played  with  his  own  financial 
plans.  In  short,  it  often  makes  Ame« 
ricans  fifty  years  old  as  thoughtless  and 
rash  and  unrefiecting  as  lads  of  twelve. 
Mr.  Cleveland's  discovery  that  patriotism 
could  not  be  made  to  take  the  place  of 
a  sound  currency  shows  the  awful  effects, 
even  on  strong  characters,  of  this  painful 
malady. 


Even  stranger  "  developments  "  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  than  those  with  which 
Mr.  Olney  has  astonished  us  may  yet  be 
brought  out  As  far  back  as  1826  and 
the  Panama  Congress,  the  Southern  Sena- 
tors were  invoking  the  Doctrine  as  a  bul- 
wark for  slavery.  Senator  Berrien  of 
Georgia  said  that  it  was  all  very  well  to 
brave  the  wrath  of  European  Powers,  but 
that  "we  must  hold  a  language  equally 
decisive  to  the  South  American  states. 
We  cannot  allow  their  principle  of  univer- 
sal emancipation  to  be  called  into  acti- 
vity in  a  situation  where  its  contagion, 
*from  our  neighborhood,  would  be  dan- 
gerous to  our  quiet  and  safety'.  .  .  . 
Will  he  [the  President]  quail  before  the 
new  republics  of  the  south  when  a  dearer 
interest  is  at  stake?"  This  shows  how 
easy  it  is  to  get  queer  things  out  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  when  you  let  your  logi- 
cal faculty  run  riot  withdut  regard  to  the 
facts.  We  may  yet  see  the  Doctrine  called 
into  play  to  prevent  the  incursions  of  the 
gold  standard  in  South  America,  or  to  de- 
mand the  abandonment  of  the  Catholic 
religion,  the  adoption  of  an  eight-hours' 


Jan.  9,  1896] 


The   ISTation, 


QS 


day  and  the  English  language,  the  buying 
of  our  newspapers  in  enormous  editions, 
and  the  acceptance  of  many  other  of  our 
peculiar  institutions.  When  you  begin  to 
argue  about  what  other  people  are  bound 
to  do  in  the  interests  of  your  peace  and 
safety,  you  never  know  where  you  may 
fetch  up. 


An  analysis  of  the  occupations  of  mem> 
bers  of  the  new  Ccngress  shows  that 
more  than  one-half  of  the  Senators  and 
Representatives  are  lawyers.  This  does 
not  vary  materially  from  the  usual  pro- 
portion. A  great  preponderance  of  law- 
yers is  also  the  rule  in  the  State  legisla- 
tures, except  in  the  purely  agricultural 
commonwealths.  In  other  words,  our  le- 
gislation is  largely,  as  it  always  has  been, 
in  the  hands  of  lawyers.  The  character 
of  the  legal  profession  is  therefore  a  mat- 
ter of  vital  importance  as  regards  the 
character  of  our  law-making  bodies,  is 
the  standard  among  lawyers  rising  or 
falling  ?  Is  the  tone  of  the  profession 
higher  or  lower  now  than  it  used  to  be  ? 
Chief-Justice  Field  of  the  Massachusetts 
Supreme  Court  made  soine  remarks  be- 
fore the  alumni  of  the  Boston  Institute 
of  Technology,  the  other  day,  which  an- 
swered these  questions,  and  answered 
them  in  a  discouraginjB^  way.  Among 
other  things  he  said  : 

**  When  I  look  upon  this  audience  and  think 
of  the  great  progress  which  has  been  made  in 
the  kcieuces  and  arts  in  this  generation,  I  can- 
not but  feel  some  shame  to  confess  that  no 
similar  triumph  or  progress  hns  been  made  in 
the  profet>8ion  to  wbicb  1  t>eloug.  The  cause 
of  legal  education  has  been  advanced;  the 
mofle  of  the  profes9i)n  in  Massachusetts  has 
been  improved:  but  the  leaders  in  the  profes- 
sion of  the  pre««nt  Keneration,  I  should  hesi- 
tate to  pay,  were  much  ia  advance  of  tbe  lead- 
ers of  the  last  generation  or  of  t  he  generation 
t>efore  that.  I  doubt  whether  there  has  been 
much  advance  in  civil  government  iq  Matti^a- 
chusetts  in  the  last  generation  or  two.  J  shall 
not  inquire  into  the  cau^s  I  doubt  very 
much  if  the  men  in  public  life  to-day  are 
wiser  than  our  fathers  or  grandfathers.'* 

The  *•  doubt "  and  ••  hesitation  "  here  ex- 
pressed seem  plainly  to  be  only  a  cour- 
teous method  of  expressing  a  conviction 
that  neither  the  legal  profession  nor  the 
standard  of  public  life  in  New  England 
now  is  as  high  as  it  was  a  generation  or 
two  ago.  Considering  the  inbred  repug- 
nance of  every  lawyer  to  making  an  admis- 
sion which  reflects  upon  his  brethren,  the 
opinions  expressed  by  the  Massachusetts 
Chief  Justice  seem  very  significant. 


Utah  is  now  a  State  in  the  Union.  The 
State  officers  were  installed  on  Monday, 
and  the  Legislature  met,  its  most  impor- 
tant duty  being  the  choice  of  two  United 
States  Senators.  The  Republicans  con*, 
trol  the  body  by  a  vote  of  more  than  two 
to  one,  but,  so  /ar  as  the  financial  issue  is 
concerned,  the  partisan  complexion  of  the 
Legislature  is  a  matter  of  no  consequence. 
The  two  Republican  Senators  will  be  **red 
hot"  for  free  coinage;  and  if  the  men 
chosen  were  Democrats,  they  would  be  of 
the  same  mind  on  this  question.  Tbe 
•ound-money  c«use  will  thua  be  put  at  a  fur- 


ther disadvantage  in  the  Senate,  where  its 
representatives  are  already  in  a  minority. 
The  next  thing  to  be  expected  is  a  strong 
movement  for  the  admission  of  Arizona, 
New  Mexico,  and  Oklahoma,  and  the  con- 
sequent strengthening  of  the  free-coinage 
element  in  the  upper  branch  by  six  more 
votes. 


The  newly  elected  Legislature  of  Mas- 
sachusetts has  begun  the  new  year  bril- 
liantly. A  caucus  of  Republican  members 
was  held,  in  which  all  the  other  officers  of 
the  last  General  Court  were  renominated 
by  acclamation  except  the  Clerk,  Mr.  Ed- 
ward  McLaughlin,  who  has  served  fifteen 
years — longer  than  any  of  his  predecessors, 
and  to  the  entire  satisfaction  of  every- 
body. He  was  defeated  for  renomination 
by  some  ten  votes,  in  favor  of  an  unknown 
and  inexperienced  person.  The  operation 
was  understood  to  be  conducted  by  A.  P.  A. 
influence,  Mr.  McLaughlin  being  a  Demo- 
crat and  a  Catholic.  Some  of  the  most 
dlitinguished  Republicans  protested  in 
tA  caucus,  but  others  declared  that  the 
wl^le  country  had  its  eyes  fixed  on  the 
Mdflsachusetts  Legislature,  to  see  if  the 
Rei^ublicans  would  stand  true.  One  mem- 
ber ^declared  he  needed  time  to  rub  his 
eye^  as  it  seemed  that  he  was  not  in  a 
Rep|iblican  caucus,  but  one  controlled  by 
Democrats  or  Mugwumps;  and  another 
characterized  those  who  proposed  to  keep 
Mr.  McLaughlin  in  office  by  tbe  elegant 
naiAe  of  '*  snivel-service  reformers."  The 
attempt  barely  succeeded  in  the  House 
itself,\  the  raw  recruit  having  only  122 
votes  out  of  232.  Mr.  McLaughlin  him- 
self pointed  out  that,  if  the  dominant  par- 
ty were  bound  to  make  a  change,  they 
might  have  promoted  the  Assistant  Clerk, 
who  was  of  the  right  party.  But  no ;  the 
same  influence  that  trampled  on  all  law 
and  decency  in  the  veterans'-preference 
bill  of  last  year,  prevailed  to  violate  pre- 
cedent, reason,  sense,  and  good  feeling  to 
turn  out  a  fit  man  from  a  place  with 
which  politics,  race,  and  religion  have  no- 
thing on  earth  to  do,  and  put  in  an  untried 
man  of  the  right  sort.*  When  Massachu- 
setts is  determined  to  disgrace  herself,  she 
certainly  knows  how. 


Mr.  Olney  informed  Lord  Salisbury  that 
it  would  be  **  preposterous  *'  for  any  Ame- 
rican state  to  involve  itself  in  a  contest 
over  **  tbe  fate  of  Turkey.*'  Nothing  can 
be  more  certain,  however,  than  that  his 
threatening  letter  and  the  President's  talk 
of  war  have  involved  us  most  closely  with 
the  Turkish  question.  We  may  not  have 
meant  to  have  anything  to  do  with  the 
fate  of  Turkey,  but  we  have,  the  best  Eu- 
ropean authorities  agree,  sealed  the  fate  of 
the  Armeniaps.  Their  rescue  and  salva- 
tion depended  upon  a  perfect  concert 
among  the  Powers  and  an  unyielding  and 
threatening  front  all  along  the  line,  espe- 
cially on  the  part  of  England.  These 
things  we  have  done  our  best  to  destroy, 
and  have,  in  a  measure,  already  destroyed. 
Tbe  Sultan'a  desper^to  play  agfinst  time, 


his  waiting  for  some  European  nation  to 
blunder,  would  all  have  been  in  vain  had 
not  the  blunder  come  from  the  great  Chris- 
tian nation  of  the  West.  Just  after  pro- 
testing and  appealing  in  the  name  of  hu- 
manity, just  after  holding  great  public 
meetings  ai^d  organizing  associations  in 
behalf  of  the  smitten  Armenians,  we 
struck  at  their  stoutest  protector  and 
strongest  hope,  and  left  them,  so  far  as  in 
us  lay,  helpless.  Mr.  Cleveland's  war 
message  could  nowhere  have  t>een  greeted 
with  such  rapture  as  when,  done  into 
choice  Turkish,  it  was  read  in  the  Tildiz 
Palace.  We  are  glad  to  see  that  a  sense 
of  the  enormous  mischief  thus  wrought  is 
beginning  to  get  into  the  American  mind. 
The  Baptist  preachers  of  this  city  have 
resolved  that,  if  we  must  have  a  war,  we 
should  cut  a  much  better  figure  fighting 
to  save  the  Armenians  than  to  kill  Eng- 
lishmen. Of  all  the  hollow  petitions  ever 
laid  before  Congress,  those  praying  for 
prompt  interposition  in  behalf  of  the  Ar- 
menians are  the  hollowest.  The  Ameri- 
can Ck>ngress  has  already  acted  on  tbe 
Armenian  question,  and  its  unanimous 
vote  has  been  that  the  Turkish  butcheries 
may  go  on. 


The  Cuban  insurgents  are  evidently  do- 
ing some  pretty  effective  raiding,  and  the 
Spanish  troops  are  active,  but  neither 
side  is  waging  war  with  anything  like  the 
fury  of  the  newspaper  correspondents. 
How  much  their  rivalry  (which  is  often 
little  more  than  a  rivalry  in  lying)  tends 
to  befog  all  foreign  news,  especially  any 
news  connected  with  war  or  rumors  of 
war,  the  general  public  is  but  dimly  aware. 
Some  three  weeks  ago  one  of  the  associa- 
tions had  Havana  all  but  captured,  and  on 
Saturday  its  fall  was  only  a  question  of 
days.  But  on  Monday  that  news  agency 
withdrew  for  a  time-  from  the  war,  ad- 
mitting that  there  was  no  likelihood  of 
the  insurgents  making  a  serious  attack 
upon  Havana.  This  left  its  competitor  a 
clear  field,  and  accordingly  it,  in  its  turn, 
was  undertaking  on  Tuesday  to  capture 
Havana  out  of  hand.  Now  it  may  be  that 
the  Spanish  generals  have  gone  utterly 
daft,  or  that  their  men  won't  fight,  or 
that  tbe  insurgents  have  invented  a  new 
art  of  war.  But  if  not,  the  chances  that 
Havana  will  be  taken,  in  the  present  stage 
of  the  conflict,  are  too  small  to  be  worthy 
of  consideration.  Admitting  the  highest 
claims  of  the  insurgents,  tbe  Spanish 
troops  outnumber  them  three  or  five  to 
one.  The  one  great  aim  of  the  Spanish 
generals  has  been  to  protect  commerce,  to 
hold  the  cities,  especially  the  seaports, 
meanwhile  praying  heaven  that  the  elu- 
sive insurgents  might  be  caught  where 
they  would  have  to  deliver  battle.  To 
guess,  therefore,  from  what  ia  probably 
only  a  daring  raid  of  fiying  guerillas  near 
Havana,  that  a  regular  and  successful  as- 
sault is  to  be  made  upon  that  city,  only 
betrays  the  nervous  strain  to  which  the 
news-gatherers  are  subjected  in  their 
determination  to  let  no  ** scoop"  escape. 


34 


The    INTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1593 


THE  VENEZUELAN  COMMISSION, 
JuDOB  Brbwbb  of  the  Supreme  Court  is  a 
man  of  solid  reputation  for  learning  and 
impartiality.  It  ie  believed  by  those  who 
know  him  that  Judge  Alvey  possesses  si- 
milar qualifications.  President  Oilman 
of  Johns  Hopkins  University  and  ex- Pre- 
sident White  of  Cornell  are  too  well  known 
to  need  description.  Mr.  Coudert  was 
one  of  the  American  counsel  in  the  Bering 
Sea  arbitration,  and  is  understood  to  be  a 
supporter  of  the  President's  contentions 
in  the  Venezuela  dispute.  Looking  at  the 
character  of  the  commission  as  a  whole, 
it  seems  to  portend  peace. 

These  commissioners  are  to  *'  investi- 
gate  and  report  upon  the  true  divisional 
line  between  the  republic  of  Venezuela 
and  British  Guiana.*'  They  are  not  to  be 
envied.  The  task  set  for  them  is  not  to 
consider  the  actual  condition  of  affairs, 
past  and  present,  and  suggest  a  fair  and 
reasonable  boundary,  with  a  view  to  re- 
conciling the  conflicting  interests  of  the 
British  colonists  and  the  Venezuelans. 
They  are  to  find  the  '*  true  divisional  line." 
They  might  as  well  search  for  the  true 
boundaries  of  Liliput;  for  there  never  has 
been  such  a  line.  If  they  could  go  as  me- 
diators, for  the  purpose  of  bringing  both 
sides  to  agree  on  a  compromise,  their  go- 
ing would  at  least  have  a  humane  and  ra- 
tional motive.  Unfortunately,  our«  Gov- 
ernment, by  its  mismanagement  of  the 
whole  matter,  has  condemned  them  to  go 
with  an  attitude  of  threatening  and  hos- 
tility towards  one  of  the  parties,  and  has 
limited  their  function  to  a  very  narrow 
•cope. 

As  regards  the  basin  of  the  Essequibo 
and  its  tributaries,  an  impartial  commis- 
sion would  probably  have  no  hesitation 
in  pronouncing  the  English  claim  well 
founded.  The  old  and  generally  accepted 
rule  that,  in  the  occupation  of  new  re- 
gions, possession  of  a  river  at  its  lower 
course  carries  with  it  the  sovereignty  of 
its  upper  waters  and  tributaries,  gives  a 
clear  principle  for  the  decision  of  the 
Cuyuni  question.  So  conscious  are  the 
Venezuelans  of  the  weakness  of  their  case 
at  this  point,  that  they  have  felt  them- 
selves compelled  to  maintain  the  obvious- 
ly untenable  contention  that  the  Dutch 
did  not  really  hold  the  Essequibo— that 
they  only  held  **  up  to  it."  Now  nothing 
can  be  clearer  than  that  the  Dutch  held 
both  sides  of  the  river.  No  reasonable 
man  can  read  even  the  Venezuelan  case 
without  seeing  that  very  clearly.  As  to 
the  title  to  the  wilderness  of  the  Esse- 
quibo basin,  then,  there  can  hardly  be 
much  difficulty.  A  boundary  based  on 
this  principle  would  undoubtedly  be  awk- 
ward for  Venezuela;  but  that  our  cpm- 
mlBsioners  are  not  to  consider. 

Unfortunately,  the  possession  of  the  up- 
per basin  of  the  *  Essequibo  is  not  the 
burning  part  of  the  controversy.  The 
real  difficulty  arises  as  to  the  line  of  divi- 
sion on  the  coast.  The  Venezuelans  ad- 
duce a  variety  of  treaties  and  records, 
with  a  labored  and  declamatory  effort  to 


show  that  they  prove  something  in  their 
favor ;  but  the  result  falls  lamentably 
short  of  a  demonstration  that  the  Vene- 
zuela claim  is  good.  Their  argument 
rests  on  an  assumption  for  which  they 
can  hardly  expect  much  favor  in  the 
United  States— the  assumption  that  the 
whole  continent  of  South  America  belong- 
ed to  the  Spaniards,  and  that  no  other 
people  could  acquire  a  legitimate  title  to 
any  part  of  it  except  by  cession  from 
Spain.  By  a  constant  use  of  this  assump- 
tion, they  ask  us  to  hold  that  Venezuela, 
as  the  heir  of  Spain,  has  a  just  title  to 
everything  in  the  region  of  the  Essequibo 
and  the  Orinoco  which  Spain  cannot  be 
shown  to  have  ceded  to  the  Dutch.  Strike 
out  this  fundamental  assumption,  and 
their  whole  case  is  gone.  If  the  contes- 
tants stand  on  equal  terms j  if  we  adopt 
the  just  principle  that  proof  of  occupation 
is  as  necessary  for  Venezuela  as  it  is  for 
British  Guiana,  in  order  to  make  good  a 
diaim,  then  we  are  forced  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  Venezuela's  contention  is  as 
empty  as  it  well  could  be. 

Evidence  of  occupation  by  Spain  of  any 
post  or  place  between  the  Orinoco  and  the 
Essequibo  is  wholly  lacking  in  their  vo- 
luminous case.  Such  evidence  of  occupa- 
tion as  this  supplies  goes  in  favor  of  the 
Dutch.  Their  papers  make  it  clear  that 
the  Dutch  bad  a  fort  on  the  Pomeroon,  a 
small  river  of  the  disputed  coast,  and  that 
they  used  the  interior  passages  between 
that  point  and  the  Orinoco.  Further,  it 
is  pretty  clear,  even  from  the  Venezuelan 
evidence,  that  the  Dutch  had  a  hold  of 
some  sort  on  the  mouth  of  the  Orinoco. 
The  Venezuelans  endeavor  to  meet  these 
facts  by  asserting  that  whatever  the  Dutch 
held  between  the  Essequibo  and  the  Ori- 
noco was  **  usurped  " ;  that  their  occupa- 
tion therefore  gave  no  title  in  the  ab- 
sence of  cession  by  the  original  owners, 
the  Spanish.  Fancy  the  smile  of  an  old 
Dutch  skipper  at  the  suggestion  that  the 
Dutch  must  humbly  ask  leave  of  Spain 
before  occupying  wild  lands  in  America. 
If  the  English  and  the  Dutch  had  pro- 
ceeded on  that  principle,  America  would 
have  been  a  very  different  country  to-day. 

The  two  treaties  on  which  the  Venezue- 
lans rest  so  much  have  simply  nothing  to 
help  our  commissioners  in  fixing  the  '*true 
divisional  line,"  because  neither  of  them 
says  anything  about  a  line.  The  treaty  of 
Munster  of  1648  was  primarily  a  very  tardy 
acknowledgment  by  Spain  that  her  rebel- 
lious Dutch  subjects  had  made  themselves 
an  independent  nation.  It  further  pro- 
vided that  both  parties  should  keep  what- 
ever territories  they  possessed  in  America 
at  the  date  of  the  treaty.  But  it  makes 
no  mention  of  the  limits  between  their 
possessions,  has  not  a  word  al^out  bounda- 
ries. It  pledges  Holland  not  to  take  any 
more  land  from  Spain,  but  it  leaves  Hol- 
land free  to  acquire  any  lands  not  occupied 
by  Spain.  To  say  that  it  binds  Holland 
not  to  extend  over  the  wild  lands  between 
the  Essequibo  and  the  Orinoco  is  to  beg 
the  whole  question,  for  it  is  to  assume  that 


Spain  was  occupying  that  territory,  and 
for  such  occupation  not  a  tittle  of  evidence 
has  been  produced. 

The  other  treaty  on  which  Venezuelans 
place  chief  reliance,  the  one  which  they 
say  has  ** insuperable  probatory  force" 
in  their  favor,  is  that  of  Aranjuez,  made 
between  Spain  and  Holland  in  1791.  This 
was  simply  an  extradition  treaty  in  which 
mutual  return  of  fugitives  is  agreed  on, 
between  the  Spanish  settlements  on  the 
Orinoco  and  the  Dutch  settlement  on  the 
Essequibo.  But  it  tells  us  nothing  as 
to  boundary  between  these  settlements. 
The  Venezuelans  profess  to  see  in  it  in- 
superable proof  that  the  Essequibo  was 
the  boundary;  and  in  this  their  patron, 
Senator  Lodge,  seems  disposed  to  follow 
them.  But  the  treaty  is  quite  as  favora- 
ble to  the  conclusion  that  the  Orinoco  was 
the  boundary.  A  case  that  needs  such 
inferences  for  its  support  must  be  in  des- 
perate need  of  materials. 

One  important  piece  of  evidence  as  to 
actual  boundary  seems  to  have  escaped 
both  the  Venezuelans,  who  offer  it,  and 
Senator  Lodge,  who  avows  his  impartial 
study  of  the  whole  matter.  It  is  found  at 
pae[e  26  of  the  Venezuelan  case,  as  pub- 
lished in  volume  ii..  Senate  documents  for 
1888.  We  will  add  that  it  is  the  only  clear 
bit  of  evidence  as  to  the  old  boundary  that 
is  to  be  found  in  the  whole  mass  of  papers 
submitted.  The  document  in  which  it 
occurs  is  a  Spanish  royal  order  of  the 
year  1780,  '*in  which  were  established 
rules  to  people  the  province  of  Guiana  and 
to  occupy  lands."  Here  is  the  opening 
sentence  of  the  Venezuelan  account  of 
this  royal  order : 

**  It  is  there  declared,  in  the  first  place,  that 
it  was  of  the  most  importance  to  secure  the 
limits  of  the  said  province,  which  commenced 
at  the  windward  of  the  fall  of  the  river  Ori- 
noco into  the  sea,  on  the  border  of  the  Dutch 
colony  of  Essequibo." 

This,  we  repeat,  is  the  only  clear  bit  of 
evidence  as  to  the  old  boundary  between 
Dutch  and  Spanish  that  can  be  found  in 
the  whole  collection  of  papers.  It  is 
therefore  somewhat  precious,  both  as  to 
its  date  and  the  source  from  which  it 
comes,  it  leaves  no  doubt  that  in  1780 
the  Spanish  Government  admitted  the  ex- 
tension of  the  Dutch  possessions  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Orinoco.  We  commend  the 
extract  to  Mr.  Lodge*s  attention. 

There  is  one  trick  of  the  Venezuelan 
spokesmen  in  which  Mr.  Olney  and  Mr. 
Lodge  diligently  copy  them.  This  is  the 
device  of  representing  every  offer  of  com- 
promise made  by  England  at  any  time  as 
her  '*  extreme  claim."  We  are  not  at  all 
concerned  to  justify  England,  but  we 
think  she  is  entitled  to  have  her  case 
truthfully  represented.  We  owe  it  to  our- 
selves, if  not  to  her,  to  state  the  case 
as  it  actually  stands  and  ha?  stood.  Eng- 
land's claim,  as  a  claim,  has  always  been 
just  what  it  is  now.  Her  claim  as  of  right 
has  always  been  that  she  was  entitled  to 
the  basin  of  the  Essequibo  and  to  the 
coast  as  far  as  the  Orinoco.  Lord  Aber- 
deen appears  to  have  stated  it  so  to  For- 


Jan.  9,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


25 


tiqae  in  1844.  It  is  true  that,  in  his  effort 
to  make  a  peaceful  settlement  with  Vene- 
luela,  he  offered  concessions  in  order  to 
fix  a  boundary  of  mutual  convenience. 
His  offer  was  open  to  Venezuela  for  six 
years,  and,  not  having  been  accepted,  was 
withdrawn  in  1860.  At  the  time  of 
making  it,  notice  was  given  that  it  implied 
no  abandonment  of  the  larger  claim  of 
right.  The  same  was  true  of  every  later 
<^er  of  a  compromise  line.  To  represent 
these  offers  as  identical  with  the  whole 
claim,  and  to  say  that  **  the  claim  *'  has 
been  enlarged,  or  ** developed"  from 
stage  to  stage,  is  only  the  trick  of  the 
pettifogger.  Mr.  OIney  ought  to  have 
left  it  to  the  Venezuelans. 


DE  DOCTRINA  and  DE  FACTO. 

Wb  have  no  doubt  many  a  simple-minded 
Jingo  will  be  surprised  to  hear  that  in  the 
negotiations  for  the  only  application  of 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  to  Spanish-American 
affairs  which  we  have  ever  made — the  ex* 
pulsion  of  the  French  from  Mexico — there 
was  no  mention  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  at 
all.  Neither  Mr.  Seward,  who  was  in  the 
State  Department*  nor  Mr.  John  Bigelow, 
who  conducted  the  correspondence  in 
Paris,  said  a  word  about  the  Doctrine. 
They  approached  the  situation  from  the 
de-facto  side  solely.  A  foreign  army  was 
imposing  on  the  Mexican  people  a  foreign 
ruler  and  a  new  form  of  gbvemment  by 
force.  Mr.  Seward  said  he  did  not  under- 
take to  dictaie  to  the  Mexican  people  what 
kind  of  government  they  should  have. 
They  might  have  Maximilian  if  they  pleas- 
ed, but  they  must  be  free  to  choose,  and 
therefore  the  French  troops  should  be 
withdrawn.  In  this  Mr.  Seward  was  ad- 
hering strictly  to  the  ground  taken  by 
Calhoun  in  1848  in  the  Senate,  when,  con- 
teeting  the  very  use  now  made  of  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine,  he  said: 

**  It  goes  ioftnitely  and  dsDgeroaaly  beyond 
Mr.  Mooroe't  declaratioD.  it  puts  it  in  the 
power  of  other  coontries  00  tbis  oontioeot  to 
make  ai  a  party  to  all  their  warn ;  and  hence  I 
■ay,  if  tbis  broad  interpretation  be  given  to 
these  declarations,  we  sball  for  ever  be  in- 
volved in  war.  But  no  seaeral  rule  can  be 
laid  down  to  guide  as  in  such  a  question. 
Every  case  most  speak  for  itself.  Every  case 
mutt  k>e  decided  on  its  own  merits.  Whether 
you  will  resist  or  not^  and  the  measure  of  your 
renstance— whether  it  shall  t>e  by  negotiation, 
remonstrance,  or  tome  intermediate  measure, 
or  t>y  a  resort  to  arms— all  tbis  must  be  deter- 
mined and  decided  on  the  merits  of  the  ques- 
tion itself.  Tbis  is  tbe  only  wise  course.  We 
are  not  to  have  quoted  on  us  on  every  occa- 
sion general  declarations  to  which  any  and 
every  meaning  may  be  attached.*' 

This  is  exactly  what  is  now  happening. 
Everybody  who  has  the  handling  of  the 
DocUine  Sm  *' developing  "  it  to  suit  him- 
■elt 

Now  there  Sm  nothing  more  dangerous, 
not  to  say  disastrous,  for  any  nation  than 
attempting  to  live  de  doctrind  instead  of 
de  facto.  Doctrinal  government  has  all 
the  inconveniences  of  theocratic  govern- 
ment, because  doctrines  do  not  change 
with  circumstances  or  make  allowance  for 
human  neoassities.    The  Qovemment  of 


Turkey  is  a  doctrinal  government,  that  is, 
is  ruled  by  a  "  sacred  law,*'  which  makes 
all  reforms  in  the  state  impossible  and 
has  led  to  the  ruin  of  the  Ottoman  Em- 
pire. Doctrinal  government,  too,  was 
tried  by  the  Puritans  in  England  and  here, 
and  perforce  abandoned  as  unsuitable  to 
modern  societies.  Its  leading  character- 
istic is  an  d'priori  rule  of  conduct  which 
leaves  no  room  for  the  play  of  convenience 
or  policy,  or  considerations  of  time  or  place, 
and  takes  no  note  of  facts.  The  Monroe 
Doctrine,  for  instance,  assumes  that  now, 
as  in  1823,  the  Spanish- American  states 
are  in  imminent  danger  of  conquest  at  the 
hands  of  European  Powers.  The  changes 
of  seventy  years  both  here  and  abroad 
make  no  more  impression  upon  it  than  on 
the  Koran.  When  the  President  hears  of 
a  dispute  between  a  European  Power  and 
a  Spanish-American  state,  it  compels  him 
to  assume  sinister  designs  on  the  part  of 
the  former,  and  make  his  preparations  for 
war  accordingly  in  advance  of  any  inquiry 
as  to  facts.  Under  de-facto  government,, 
the  first  thing  he  would  do  would  be  to 
ascertain  the  facts  and  be  guided  by  the 
result  in  his  subsequent  action.  Under 
the  Doctrine,  Great  Britain  is  a  giaour, 
whose  designs  are  always,  under  the  sa 
cred  law,  open  to  suspicion,  and  he  pro^ 
nouncee  her  guilty  before  investigation  J 
The  Doctrine  in  like  manner  produced 
Secretary  01ney*s  despatch,  which  was 
really  a  sermon,  not  treating  of  actual 
facts — ^in  truth,  full  of  statements  which 
were  not  facts  at  ali,  but  developments  of 
a  sort  of  divine  law,  such  as  one  hears  in 
the  pulpit,  and  which,  while  full  of  edifi- 
cation, is  totally  unsuited  to  the  needs 
and  risks  of  actual  life. 

If  any  one  thinks  we  are  overstating,  in  . 
this  description  of  the  position  which  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  has  come  to  occupy  in 
the  mental  furniture  of  the  average  Jingo, 
we  advise  him  to  read  the  articles  in 
the  country  papers,  and  the  occasional 
speeches  of  politicians,  and  the  resolutions 
of  Jingo  cFubs  called  out  by  the  present 
crisis.  He  will  find  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
treated  very  m\ich  like  the  Ten  Com/ 
mandments,  as  part  of  the  foundation  of 
national  life,  behind  which  no  one  can  go 
in  tracing  out  our  foreign  policy.  Not 
one  in  one  hundred  knows  what  it  is,  or 
what  it  means,  or  how  or  where  it  should 
be  applied.  But  all  agree  that  it  imposes 
on  all  rulers  an  attitude  of  hostility  U>\ 
foreign  Powers  and  calls  for  what  is  term- 
ed *'a  vigorous  foreign  policy."  Asking^ 
a  Jingo  whether  the  Monroe  Doctrine  was 
a  good  thing  to  live  under,  and  whether 
it  would  not  be  better  to  live  under  the 
facts  of  each  yeitf,  would  be  very  like 
asking  the  Sheik-ul-lslam  whether  the 
Eoglish  common  law  would  not  be  a  good 
substitute  for  the  Koran.  It  marks  you 
as  a  "  bad  American,'*  a  paid  emissary  of 
some  foreign  Power.  And  yet,  seeing  tbe 
use  that  has  been  made  of  it  by  one  of  the 
most  conservative  of  our  Preaidents  and 
by  a  corporation  lawyer  from  Boston,  one 
of  the  most  cautious  of  typatt  is  it  raah 


to  say  that  it  contains  in  it  the  seeds  of 
endless  misery  and  turmoil  for  the  Ameri- 
can people  T  As  now  used  and  interpret- 
ed, it  might  do  for  a  conquering  horde 
like  the  Ottomans,  or  a  strictly  pastoral 
people  like  the  Paraguayans,  but  for  a 
people  with  vast  commerce  and  a  huge 
edifice  of  credit,  it  contains  the  sure  seeds 
of  decline  and  destruction. 

Daniel  Webster's  test  of  the  necessity  of 
interference  in  Spanish- American  affairs 
was  **  manifest  and  imminent  danger  to 
our  essential  rights  and  our  essential  in- 
terests.*' The  notion  that  we  cannot  per- 
ceive this  when  it  arises,  and  act  accord- 
ingly, without  a  **  doctrine "  behind  us, 
would  be  diverting  if  its  consequences 
were  not  likely  to  be  so  grave.  What  these 
consequences  are  likely  to  be,  was  well 
pointed  out  by  Calhoun,  in  speaking  of 
the  interpretation  then  (1648)  put  on  the 
Doctrine  by  some,  and  now  adopted  by 
many  of  us,  when  he  said : 

*' And  if  it  should  ever  become  so  to  the  wide 
extent  to  which  these  declarations  have  been 
interpreted  to  go,  oar  peace  would  ever  be  de- 
stroyed; the  gates  of  our  Janus  would  ever 
stand  open.    Wars  would  never  cease.^ 


THE  AFRICAN  TROUBLE, 

Although  the  news  of  Dr.  Jameson's  fili- 
bustering expedition  against  the  Boers  of 
the  South  African  Republic  has  taken  the 
world  by  surprise,  it  is  very  much  what 
one  might  have  expected  from  the  history 
of  that  region  during  the  past  six  or 
seven  years.  The  Boers  have  a  restricted 
suffrage — that  is,  it  is  confined  to  males 
resident  in  the  Republic  before  1876,  or 
who  took  an  active  part  in  the  war  of 
1881  with  the  British,  and  their  children 
from  the  age  of  sixteen.  These  form  a 
class  apart,  of  *'  first-class  burghers,"  and 
elect  the  President  and  the  commandant 
of  the  militia.  The  **  second-class  burgh- 
ers" are  a  class  composed  of  nataralized 
aliens,  who  can  become  first-class  burgh- 
ers only  by  a  special  resolution  of  the 
Chamber  after  twelve  years'  residence. 
Two  years*  residence  and  the  payment  of 
$10  are  necessary  to  naturalization.  The 
total  population,  native  and  naturalised, 
in  1894  was  370,148,  about  equally  divided 
between  the  sexes;  but  no  very  reliable 
census  has  been  taken.  Now,  these  first- 
class  burghers  being  mainly  Dutch  Cal- 
vinistft,  and  excellent  fighting  men  of  the 
type  of  Joehua  and  Gideon,  it  can  be 
readily  imagined  that  they  do  not  smile 
upon  the  30,000  or  40,000  adventurers, 
mostly  Eoglish,  who  have  swarmed  into 
the  gold  and  diamond  fields  which,  un- 
fortunately for  the  Boers,  have  been  dis- 
covered in  the  territory  of  the  Republic. 
These  men,  who  have  done  great  work  in 
developing  the  resources  of  the  country, 
and  have  filled  its  treasury  to  overflowing 
with  their  taxes,  are,  however,  shut  out 
from  all  share  in  the  government,  and  are 
not  provided  by  it  with  police,  achoola, 
roads,  or  any  of  the  ordinary  inatrumen- 
talitiea  of  civiliaation.    Moreover,  they  are 


26 


Tlie   iN^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1593 


regarded  by  the  Boers  with  great  con- 
tempt, which  18  but  ill  concealed. 

The  case  is,  in  fact,  somewhat  like  our 
settlement  of  Texas — a  sudden  influx  of 
foreigners  into  a  state  held  by  a  weak 
government,  and  which  the  foreigners 
after  a  while  determine  to  seize,  and  fight 
for  it,  as  their  numbers  increase  and  their 
discontent  grows.  Moreover,  the  ante- 
cedents of  the  foreigners  are  distinctly 
bellicose.  Dr.  Jameson,  the  leader,  or- 
ganized and  successfully  led  the  first 
armed  expedition  against  the  colored  na- 
tives of  the  South  African  Company, 
whose  organization  and  operation  up  to 
this  point  recall  the  early  history  of  the 
East  India  Company,  the  only  other 
fighting  corporation  Great  Britain  has 
ever  sent  out.  The  members  of  this  ex- 
pedition were  very  proud  of  their  ex- 
ploits, and  they  have  naturally  fired  the 
imagination  of  the  more  recent  arrivals, 
who  are  generally  adventurous  spirits ;  so 
that  it  might  almost  be  said  to  be  *'on 
the  cards*'  that  the  ''Jameson  crowd," 
as  we  should  say,  would  eventually  swal- 
low up  the  Republic.  Indeed,  in  the  or- 
dinary course  of  events  nothing  was  more 
certain  than  the  ousting  of  the  Dutch 
from  power  by  the  mere  growth  of  the 
aliens,  so  that  there  has  been  no  excuse 
for  fighting.  But  the  truth  is,  that 
Jameson  has  been  reinforced  during  the 
past  two  years  by  a  very  large  number  of 
younger  sons  and  scions  of  aristocratic 
families,  who  find  nothing  to  do  at  home, 
and  much  prefer  fighting  to  mining  and 
agriculture.  They  were  as  eager  for  an 
encounter  with  somebody  as  our  Jingoes 
here,  with  this  difference,  that  they  were 
ready  to  serve  in  the  field,  while  our  Jin- 
goes mostly  intended  to  confine  them- 
selves, in  case  of  war,  to  reading  the  *'  ex- 
tras." The  imagination  of  this  class  in 
England  is  kept  in  a  blaze  from  childhood 
up  by  the  stories  of  Clive  and  Rajah 
Brooke,  and  the  exploits  of  Wellington  and 
other  Indian  heroes  against  inferior  races. 
If  they  could  have  ousted  the  Boers,  they 
would  all  have  become  rulers  of  the  Re- 
public, and  their  fame,  like  that  of  Rhodes 
and  Jameson,  would  have  filled  all  the 
land  at  home,  and  especially  the  football 
teams  in  the  public  schools.  The  Boers 
were  an  unfortunate  selection,  however, 
as  materials  for  fame  and  dominion. 
They  are  probably  as  tough  fighting-men 
as  ever  took  the  field,  and  will  probably 
be  hereafter  avoided  by  amateur  empire- 
builders. 

The  latest  advices  show  that  the  expe- 
dition has  been  defeated  and  the  survivors 
locked  up.  They  will  probably  be  treated 
leniently  or  kindly,  for  it  would  be  very 
foolish  for  so  small  a  community  as  the 
Boers  to  embitter  the  rising  foreign  host 
which  stands  behind  these  men.  Their 
only  salvation  would  lie  in  the  prohibition 
of  immigration,  but  this  is  no  longer  pos- 
sible. The  flood  of  English  adventurers 
is  rising  higher  every  day  in  the  Transvaal. 
If  the  Boers  continue  to  deny  them  repre- 
sentation and  a  fair  share  in  the  govern* 


ment,  attempts  like  Jameson's  will  be  re- 
peated on  a  greater  ecale  than  ever,  and 
the  Boer  domination  be  certainly  over- 
thrown. If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Boers 
admit  the  foreigners  to  the  franchise  on 
equal  terms,  they  will  soon  be  outvoted 
and  ousted  from  the  administration  of 
their  own  country,  and  annexation  to  the 
Cape  Colony  would  speedily  follow.  In 
fact,  there  is  only  too  much  reason  for  be- 
lieving that  Jameson's  attempt  was  se- 
cretly instigated  by  Rhodes.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  account  for  his  making  it  in  any 
other  way.  This  attempt  was  probably 
made  only  by  the  more  adventurous 
spirits.  In  the  next  a  large  number  of 
the  more  sober  -  minded  "  uitlanders " 
would  probably  participate.  The  disap- 
pearance of  the  Boers  as  a  community 
would  be  very  regrettable,  for  they  are  a 
race  with  great  qualities  and  a  splendid 
history,  though  archaic  and  non- progres- 
sive in  their  ways ;  but  their  doom  was 
sealed  when  gold  was  discovered  in  their 
territory.  Neither  thrones,  principalities, 
nor  powers  can  stand  up  agatnt  a  rush  of 
Anglo-Saxon  gold-hunters. 

The  German  Emperor  has  sent  a  de- 
spatch to  the  Boers  over  the  heads  of  the 
British  authorities,  who,  by  the  conven- 
tion of  1884,  are  the  sole  representatives  of 
the  Transvaal  in  foreign  affairs,  congratu- 
lating them  on  the  repulse  of  a  bund  of 
British  malefactors.  This  in  England  is, 
excusably  enough,  considered  insulting, 
and  might  cause  a  war  between  him  and 
his  grandmother,  in  which  he  would  un- 
questionably get  the  worst  of  it.  In  the 
first  place,  his  little  navy  would  either 
have  to  venture  out  to  sea  and  fight — in 
which  case,  it  would  be  promptly  destroyed 
^-or  it  would  have  to  shut  itself  up  in  port 
In  either  case  the  German  ports  would  be 
all  blockaded,  and  their  foreign  commerce 
destroyed,  except  what  could  reach  the 
sea  through  other  countries.  In  the  next 
place,  he  could  not  bring  a  regiment  of  his 
fine  army  into  play  against  the  British 
anywhere,  and  could  not  get  within  two 
thousand  miles  of  the  Boers.  In  the  third, 
he  would  promptly  lose  all  tbe  German 
colonies  abroad,  including  the  principal 
one,  New  Guinea,  which  the  Australians 
are  only  too  ready  to  seize.  He  would  be 
unable  to  defend  his  colonies  in  Africa, 
which  Rhodes  and  his  men  would  be  too 
happy  to  appropriate.  The  only  contin- 
gency in  which  he  could  make  even  a  de- 
cent struggle  would  be  through  an  alli- 
ance with  France,  but  to  get  this  he  would 
have  to  surrender  Alsace  and  Lorraine. 
France  is  the  only  Power  in  Europe  which 
has  a  navy  that  could  successfully  stand 
up  against  that  of  Great  Britain,  but  in 
the  next  naval  war  most  of  the  ships  en- 
gaged will  probably  be  sunk  on  the  spot, 
leaving  the  Power  with  most  ships  mistress 
of  the  seas,  and  that  Power  will  probably 
be  Great  Britain,  who  would,  after  a  gene- 
ral war,  in  all  likelihood  occupy  the  posi- 
tion in  Europe  she  occupied  after  Trafal- 
gar. All  persons  proposing  to  attack  her 
ought  to  consider  all  these  thiogs  serious- 


ly. She  is  never  such  a  dangerous  enemy 
as  in  the  face  of  a  combination  against 
her. 

LA  UREA  TES  AND  POETS, 

The  general  sense  of  disappointment  at 
the  choice  of  Mr.  Alfred  Austin  as  Poet 
Laureate  is  not  wholly  personal  to  him- 
self. If  better  men  >vere  passed  over,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  some  of  them 
at  least  were  not  eligible  to  the  office. 
Swinburne  and  Morris  are  not  the  sort  of 
men  to  be  moved  to  lyrics  by  a  Queen's 
great-grandchild;  certainly  neither  of  them 
could  be  expected  to  burst  into  unpreme- 
ditated song,  as  Mr.  Eric  Mackay  did,  over 
the  Duke  of  York's  marriage,  apropos  of 
which  heroic  feat  he  wrote : 

"  He  has  fulfilled  new  duties,  not  set  down. 
Bui  done  for  pride  of  Country  And  of  Crown !  •• 

Among  the  eligibles,  Mr.  Austin  was  per- 
haps as  well  qualified  as  any.  He  had  se- 
rious disqualifications  in  his  political  and 
journalistic  relictions  to  Lord  Salisbury 
(he  is  the  principal  leader-writer  of  the 
Standard)^  but  the  impropriety  of  over- 
looking these  is  the  Premier's,  not  Mr. 
Austin's.  The  slight  shock  of  surprise 
which  his  appointment  caused  was  partly 
due  to  the  rude  ending  of  the  hope  which 
had  come  to  be  generally  cherished  that 
no  appointment  at  all  would  be  made.  It 
was  partly  due,  no  doubt,  to  the  revived 
sense  of  Tennyson's  loss,  which  the  choice 
of  a  new  Laureate  will  make  vivid  in  many 
minds.  But  this  is  not  the  whole  of  it — 
not  that  Mr.  Austin  takes  the  laurel 
greener  from  the  brows  of  him  who  utter- 
ed nothing  banal.  A  good  part  of  the  dis- 
satisfaction arises  from  an  enlarged  con- 
ception of  poetry  in  the  modem  world, 
from  the  more  exacting  demands  made 
upon  it,  and  from  a  feeling  that  a  man 
who  might  bave  done  well  enough  as  Lau- 
reate fifty  or  a  hundred  years  ago  is  no 
longer  of  the  stature  required.  If  Scott 
lived  to  say  that  it  was  lucky  for  him  that 
he  had  written  his  poetry  in  a  time  when 
poetical  taste  was  unformed,  if  Southey 
and  N.  P.  Willis  could  be  ranked  among 
the  immortals  on  the  strength  of  poems 
which  are  now  almost  absolutely  unreada- 
ble, it  can  scarcely  be  denied  that  the 
standards  have  become  higher,  the  de- 
mands severer. 

That  we  should  demand  the  best  in 
poetry,  and  be  content  with  nothing  less, 
was  Matthew  Arnold's  frequent  word  of 
exhortation.  But  what  it  meant,  as  a  poet, 
to  produce  his  best,  he  tells  us  in  a  strik- 
ing passage  in  his  *  Letters.' 

*'  People  do  not  understand/'  he  writes  to  bis 
Fister,  '*what  a  temptation  there  is,  if  yon 
cannot  bear  anything  not  ntry  good^  to  trans- 
fer  your  operations  to  a  region  where  form  is 
everything.  Perlection  of  a  certain  kind  may 
there  be  attained,  or  at  least  approached,  with- 
out knockiug  yourself  to  pieces;  but  to  attain 
or  approach  perfection  in  the  region  of  thought 
and  feeling,  and  to  unite  this  with  perfection 
of  form,  demands  not  merely  an  effort  and  a 
labor,  but  an  actual  tearing  of  one's  self  to 
pieces,  which  one  does  not  readily  consent  to  (al- 
though one  is  sometimes  forced  to  it)  unless  one 
can  devote  one's  whole  life  to  poetry.  Words- 
worth could  give  bis  whole  lire  to  it,  6heUey 


Jan.  9,  1896] 


Th.e   N"atioii. 


Q7 


and  Bjrron  both  could,  and  were  besides  driven 
by  their  demon  to  do  so.  Tennyson,  a  far  in- 
foior  natural  power  to  either  of  the  three, 
can;  but,  of  the  modemis  Goethe  is  the  only 
one»  I  think,  of  those  who  have  had  an  exis- 
tenoe  aatuiettie^  who  has  thrown  himself  with  a 
great  result  into  poetry.** 

Now,  it  is  altogether  certain  that  such  a 
standard,  accepted  as  it  is  doubtless  com- 
ing more  and  more  to  be,  is  giving  a  new 
meaning  to  the  phrase,  **  po^ie  oblige," 
and  is  proving  fatal  to  at  least  two  types 
of  poetry  and  poets.  One  of  them  is  what 
we  may  call  the  business  poet,  who  pro- 
duces his  poems  in  the  spirit  of  the  Eng- 
lishman who  said  to  Canova's  son  that  he 
supposed  he  would  carry*  on  his  father's 
*'  business."  Southey  is  perhaps  the  best 
example  of  the  plodding,  industrious  poet, 
doing  his  daily  stint  with  the  conscien- 
tiousness and  set  face  of  a  bicycler  com- 
pleting his  **  century."  He  always  gave 
good  measure — not  a  line  scamped,  bis 
butter- woman's  jog  trot  never  easing  down 
into  a  walic  for  twelve  thousand  verses. 
He  would  lay  out  his  Roderick  the  Qoth 
or  his  Madoc  the  Celt  with  the  precision 
of  a  military  engineer,  and  would  plough 
bis  way  through  to  the  bitter  end  without 
remorse.  Seizing  his  pen  before  break- 
fast (as  if,  as  Bagehot  pays,  anv  man  could 
write  poetry  before  breakfast  f),  he  would 
go  on  for  hours  turning  out  a  good,  sound, 
honest,  perfectly  business-like,  and  deadly 
dull  article  of  poetry.  If  we  have  not 
changed  all  that,  we  have  at  least  made  it 
impossible  that  such  a  man  should  longer 
be  called  a  great  poet.  Not  of  such  a  poet 
or  such  poetry  was  Matthew  Arnold  think- 
ing when  he  asserted  that  the  future  of 
poetry  is  immense. 

Nor  was  he  thinking  of  another  and 
larger  class  of  poets,  more  numerously  and 
assertively  with  us.  We  mean  those  of  a 
certain  natural  poetic  sensitiveness,  who 
often  charm  us  in  their  youth  with  their 
fine  perception-,  their  responsiveness  to  na- 
ture and  art,  and  who  lure  us  on  to  expect 
great  things  of  their  maturer  powers.  But 
this  early  promise  they  never  fulfil.  They 
remain  at  forty  or  fifty  essentially  imma- 
ture, always  in  search  of  external  sensa- 
tions, of  novel  and  taking  themes,  singing 
not  because  they  must,  but  because  they 
want  to.  Nowhere  in  their  verse  do  we 
find  the  '*  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  know- 
ledge." All  too  seriously  as  they  take 
themselves,  they  fail  because  they  do  not 
take  the  poetic  calling  seriously  enough. 
They  imagine  that  good  intentions  may  do 
in  place  of  strenuous  thought  and  self- 
discipline,  that  poems  to  uplift  and  sustain 
may  be  struck  off  extempore,  or  in  the  in- 
tervals of  restless  activities,  professional, 
social,  or  philanthropic. 

Bir.  Austia  appears  to  be  a  union  of 
both  typea.  He  has  written  a  lot  of  long 
poems  of  good  marketable  texture,  but 
you  have  to  rummage  the  dictionary,  not 
your  memory,  to  find  even  their  titles.  In 
the  course  of  a  long  existence  usavjettie 
he  has  produced  much  descriptive  and 
mildly  exclamatory  verse.  Of  the  tearing 
himself  to  pieces  in  order  to  unite  perfec- 
tion of  thought  and  feeling  with  perfect 


tion  of  form,  of  being  **  happy  in  the  toil 
that  ends  with  song,"  of  poetry  as  a  criti- 
cism of  life,  he  appears  to  be  innocent.  It 
b  something,  then,  to  find  from  his  ap- 
pointment as  Laureate  that  the  public 
taste  has  advanced  so  far  as  to  see  that 
the  appointment  should  not  have  been 
made. 


THE  EASTERN  QUESTION. 

Rome,  December  22, 1885. 
Thk  sudden  halt  in  the  English  action  in  the 
Armenian  redemption  has  surprised  every  one, 
and  irritated  some  of  the  political  agencies 
which  had  hoped,  for  various  and  different 
reasons,  to  see  England  plunge  into  the  solu- 
tion of  the  interminable  and  insoluble  Eastern 
question,  and  are  correspondingly  eithen  dis- 
mayed or  disappointed  by  the  sudden  and 
hitherto  unaccountable  recoil  from  the  ad- 
vanced position  Lord  Salisbury  had  taken.  It 
is  well  known  that  Russia  had  at  all  times  op- 
posed the  English  plans,  because  they  promised 
a  solution  of  the  problem  of  what  to  do  with 
the  Sick  Man,  by  eliminating  the  cause  of 
the  malady,  viz.,  the  gangrene  of  Mussulman 
misrule— deposing  the  Sultan  and  imposing  a 
ruler  who  would  have  to  admit  the  right  of 
Europe  to  diptate  the  conditions  of  govern- 
ment where  it  had  the  duty  and  the  charge  of 
protection;  or  of  finally  dividing  the  country 
according  to  the  general  interests  of  the  pro- 
tecting Powers  and  of  the  populations.  I  sup- 
pose that  it  may  be  taken  as  indisputable  that 
there  were  those  among  the  powerful,  if  not 
among  the  Powers,  who  desired  that  England 
should  precipitate  the  eternally  impending 
conflict  in  Europe,  to  give  them  a  chance  to 
settle  some  outstanding  accounts  of  their  own; 
and  others  who  really  desired  the  final  regula 
tion  of  the  Eastern  question  in  the  real  inte- 
rests of  European  tranquillity.  Others  there 
were  who  fully  expected,  without  any  especial 
interest,  that  England,  having  put  her  hand  to 
the  plough,  woulff  go  through  the  furrow. 
All  were  alike  surprised  at  the  sudden  halt. 
Writing  to  an  esteemed  correspondent  in  Lon- 
don, one  of  the  oldest  and  best  informed  jonr- 
nalists  of  England,  I  had  expressed  some  of 
these  feelings  as  entertained  here  and  by  my- 
self, as  warmly  interested,  through  past  expe 
riences,  in  the  Turkish  problem,  and  was  sur- 
prised  to  receive  from  him  the  following  reply : 

*'  It  is  never  of  much  use  to  prophesy  in  poli- 
tics, but  I  venture  to  differ  with  you  about 
Turkey.  It  is  the  old  story.  England  is  always 
defeated,  as  she  was  at>out  Egypt,  until  sud. 
denly  she  strikes  some  tremendous  stroke,  and 
then  tbe  world  says,  Who  would  have  thought 
it  ?  Of  course  if  Mr.  Cleveland  is  seeking  war 
with  us,  all  calculations  are  vein;  but  if  not,  1 
venture  to  say  that  nothing  but  the  removal 
of  this  Sultan  can  save  Turkey  from  partition. 
Very  slowly  and  very  sileotly  the  English  are 
getting  to  their  white  beat.  However,  it  is 
uf  eleiw  arguing  about  tbe  future.  At  present 
the  only  thing  certsin  is  that  we  are  going  to 
add  two  millions  a  year  to  the  grant  for  the 
navy." 

Not  having  been  looking  westward  for  some 
time,  absorbed  in  E^astem  questions,  I  had  no 
knowledge  of  the  controversy,  rather  than  ne- 
gotiations, going  on  between  the  United  States 
of  America  and  England  with  regard  to  Vene- 
zuela, and  I  replied,  supposing  I  knew  some- 
thiog  of  public  opinion  in  America,  that  there 
could  be  no  danger  of  such  a  fire  m  the  rear, 
and  that  nothing  in  the  Venezuelan  question 
justified  a  fear  that  the  United  Btetes  would 
provoke  a  quarrel  when  this  so  important 
question  was  panding  of  the  sxistence  of  mil- 


lions of  Christians  in  Turkey,  whose  only  hope 
was  in  the  efi!cacy  of  Engltth  intervention.  I 
could  not  k>elieve  that  Cleveland  could  so  far 
melt  into  the  Jingo  as  to  join  in  the  hullabaloo 
of  the  shallow-pated  crowd  whose  highest  ao»- 
bition  seems  to  be  to  *'  twist  the  lion's  uil.*' 

It  seems  that  I  was  mistaken,  and  now  I  re- 
cur to  an  earlier  letter  of  the  same  respected 
correspondent,  written  in  Novemt>er,  in  which 
occurs  the  following  passage: 

**  If  you  will  read  attentively  tbe  latter  part 
of  the  speech  of  Lord  Salisbury  at  the  Man- 
sion House,  you  will  see  that  in  his  own  mind 
he  has  doomed  the  Ottonuin  Empire,  and  he 
has  a  majority  of  152.  I  dare  say  you  know, 
better  than  I  do,  that  the  confidential  reports 
to  this  Government  represent  tbe  massacres  in 
a  much  worse  light  than  the  papers  do.*  The 
Sultan  has  resolved  on  tbe  extermination  of 
the  Armenian  people.  I  expect  some  *  inci- 
dent* hourly  which  will  bring  matters  to  a 
head— perhaps  a  Rreat  massacre  of  American 
missionaries,  in  which  esse  we  should  act  in- 
stantaneously, even  if  all  Europe  opposed  and 
threatened  us.  Inferior  Turks  know  nothing 
of  America,  and  are  furious  with  the  missiona- 
ries." 

The  writer  of  the  above  is  an  eminent  Libe- 
ral, not  a  partisan  of  Salisbury,  a  consistent 
and  devoted  Christian,  and,  like  the  greater 
part  of  tbe  English  people,  interested  in  the 
work  of  our  missionaries  and  in  the  pure  hu- 
manity of  the  Turkish  problem.  The  position 
of  the  English  nation  was  greatly  controlled 
by  this  sentiment,  and  perhaps,  of  all  the  late 
great  movements  of  English  public  opinion, 
this  was  the  least  selfish  and  profoundeet  in  its 
appeal  to  the  best  part  of  the  English  nature. 
Adequately  supported,  it  must  have  settled  the 
question  of  how  long  Christian  Europe  would 
let  the  slaughter  of  unoffending  Christians  be  , 
carried  on  by  a  fanatic  Sultan,  served  by  a 
bloodthirsty  mob  and  an  equally  bloodthirsty 
and  fanatical  soldiery,  under  the  protection  of 
the  Christian  Powers.  From  Russia  nothing  was 
to  be  hoped  for,  as  the  Russian  (people  or  Gk>v. 
ernment)  detests  the  Armenian  only  less  than 
does  tbe  Turk;  and  as  the  Armenian  is  the 
most  civilized  and  teachable  of  the  many  races 
in  Asia  Minor,  he  is  that  one  who  will  most 
easily  be  brought  to  the  work  of  putting  in 
order  the  reformed  Empire — which  does  not 
suit  the  schemes  of  Russia. 

Thanks  to  President  Cleveland  and  his  fire 
in  the  rear,  England  has  been  stopped  in  her 
benefaction,  and  it  is  Christianity,  not  English 
interests,  which  must  pay  the  bill;  for,  with 
this  nefarious  attack  at  such  a  critical  mo- 
ment, it  is  out  of  the  question  that  England 
could  allow  herstlf  to  be  engaged  in  any  Tliffl- 
ctilty  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  Eng- 
land has  only  to  do  her  best  that  the  attempted 
solution  shall  not  lose  ground  and  human  in- 
terests go  backward,  and  hope  In  the  spring  to 
be  able  to  resume  tbe  action  where  it  was  left 
off,  with  the  tide  perhaps  at  the  ebb,  while  it 
was  before  at  the  fiood,  with  Russia  thoroughly 
prepared  and  her  ascendency  over  the  Hultan 
af  sured  beyond  any  contest.  The  missionaries 
are  not  murdered  because  tbe  Power  that  could 
have  protected  the  Armenians,  and  would  not, 
would  have  the  missionaries  protected  for  fear 
of  tbe  intervention  becoming  more  prompt  and 
effectual;  but  the  murdering  and  outrage  go 
on  as  steadily  if  not  as  muliitudinously  as  be> 
fore,  and  the  extermination  of  a  Ctiristian 
people  goes  on  from  day  to  day  systematically 
and  deliberately,  though  in  such  a  way  as  to 
permit  the  great  Powers  not  to  be  driven,  de- 
spite themselves,  to  recognize  the  fact  that  no- 
thing has  been  done  to  retieem  th«»  situatloo. 


•IbUIdldknow.  Tb«  ooiifl<1«AMAl  reports  rec«lv«d 
Ui  Rome  far  excerd  sli  utAt  Ui«  gor«raJU«ou  tuiv«  al- 
lowed to  appear  Ui  prink 


38 


Tlie    IN^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1593 


and  that  when  the  spring  comes  with  the  Rus- 
sian intenrention  ready,  there  will  be  the  new 
pretext  that  the  remnant  of  the  Armenian 
population  is  not  large  enough  to  justify  the 
chance  of  war  on  their  behalf. 

This  is  the  triumph  of  Mr.  Cleveland.  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  say  that  throughout  Italy, 
where  there  are  no  enemies  of  the  United 
States,  but  mostly  warm  friends,  the  voice  of 
condemnation  for  this  unprovoked  and  unne- 
cessary crisis,  which  disturbs  the  best  inten- 
tions  of  Italy  as  well  as  England,  is  universal. 
Not  a  single  journal  or  public  man  speaks 
otherwise  than  in  condemnation  of  the  course 
of  our  Government ;  and  in  a  land  where  con 
stitutional  law  has  a  special  study,  not  a  con- 
stitutional lawyer  can  frame  an  excuse  for  the 
same.  X. 


SUDERBiANlTS  "  LOVE  IN  A  COTTAGE.*' 
Leipzig,  December  16, 1895. 

SuDXRMANN^S  latest  play,  now  running  with 
fair  success*  in  several  German  theatres,  is  a 
matrimonial  drama  which  is  saved  from  a 
tragic  ending  by  the  forbearance  of  the  hus. 
band ;  a  forbearance  which  some  will  call 
Christian,  others  Philistine. 

Imagine  a  handsome  girl,  of  passionate  but 
noble  nature,  left  a  penniless  orphan  in  the 
hands  of  aristocratic  relations.  She  is  passed 
about  from  one  to  the  other  like  an  ownerless 
commodity,  until  she  longs  for  a  home  and— 
an  owner.  She  becomes  the  guest  of  her  friend 
Bettina,  Baroness  von  ROcknitz,  a  dullish  wo- 
man, who  is  neglected  by  her  horsey  lik>ertine 
of  a  husband  and  seeks  nepenthe  in  sleep. 
While  Bettina  dozes  out  the  long  summer  eve- 
nings, Elizabeth  talks  intelligently  with  the 
Baron  of  his  plans.  The  pair  fall  in  love  with 
each  other,  and  presently  the  inflammable 
Baron  makes  advances  which  cause  her  to  run 
away  from  him  in  alarm.  As  she  is  weeping 
alone  in  the  castle  garden,  she  is  found  by  the 
Baron*s  old  tutor,  Wiedemann,  an  elderly 
widower  with  three  children.  Wiedemann 
comforts  her  and  asks  her  to  be  his  wife.  She 
accepts,  and  they  are  married.  This  much  is 
presupposition.  The  play  opens  three  years 
later. 

The  humdrum  schoolmaster  and  his  whilom 
aristocratic  wife  are  living  happily  together  in 
their  humble  cottage.  At  least  they  call  them- 
selves happy,  and  look  with  sovereign  con- 
tempt upon  the  busy  bodies  who  have  not  yet 
ceased  to  wonder  how  such  a  woman  could  be 
content  with  such  a  lot.  Wiedemann  teaches 
a  common  school  with  devotion,  and  Elizabeth 
looks  after  the  little  garden  and  makes  things 
meet  at  the  butcher's  and  grocer's.  She  is 
idolized  by  her  stepdaughter.  In  secret,  how- 
ever,  Wiedemann  has  his  misgivings.  Then, 
one  day,  Rdckniiz  and  his  wife  come  and  quar- 
ter themselves  upon  the  schoolmaster  for  a 
visit.  The  Baron  blurts  out  his  opinion  that 
Wiedemann  is  much  too  good  for  the  life  he  is 
leading,  and  that  Elizabeth  cannot  be  happy 
in  such  a  place.  In  short,  he  is  going  to  Par- 
liament, and  he  would  like  a  good  and  trusty 
man  like  Wiedemann— man  of  ability  and  cha- 
racter—for manager  of  his  tsstates.  The  school- 
master sees  a  chance  of  bettering  his  position 
and  nibbles  at  the  bait,  but— he  must  consult 
his  wife.  Tbe  Baron  attks  that,  after  a  prepar- 
atory hint,  the  task  of  persuadiog  her  be  left 
to  himself.  Then  comes  tbe  great  scene  of  the 
play.  Received  coldly  by  Elizabeth,  tbe  Baron 
remonstrates  and  recalls  their  pleasant  ac- 
quaintance at  his  castle  She  asks  him  bluntly 
why  he  had  wished  to  make  her  his  mistress, 


her  of  all  women  in  the  world.  He  demurs  ; 
for  two  years  he  had  been  madly  in  love  with 
her,  but  had  understood  her  perfectly,  had 
known  that  dishonor  would  be  death  to  her. 
At  last  he  had  brought  himself  to  the  point  of 
**  sending  his  good  wife  to  the  devil,"  but  she, 
Elizabeth,  had  misunderstood  him,  refused  to 
see  him,  and  returned  his  letters  unopened. 
Now  he  implores  her  to  save  him  from  himself. 
Without  her  he  has  been  growing  mean  and 
rough.  He  works  hard,  but  his  life  signifies 
nothing.  He  promises  with  a  solemn  oath 
never  to  speak  to  her  of  love ;  he  only  wishes 
to  see  her  now  and  then,  to  have  her  near  him 
as  an  inspiration  to  better  living.  Elizabeth 
replies  with  desperate  calmness  that  this  is  all 
very  alluring,  but  out  of  the  question,  because 
she— still  loves  him .  Losing  control  of  herself 
for  an  instant,  she  throws  herself  into  bis  ai'ms 
with  expressions  of  passionate  endearment,  and 
then  recoils  with  horror  when  she  realizes  what 
she  has  done.  The  Baron  thinks  he  has  her  in 
his  power,  and  urges  his  proposal  with  fierce, 
almost  brutal,  importunity.  There  shall  be  no 
more  resistance  ;  he  wiU  have  her,  and  what 
he  wills  he  puts  through.  FinaUy,  he  gives 
her  until  evening  to  decide  **yes  or  no,'*  and 
leaves  her  with  a  vague  threat  of  awful 
revenge  if  she  refuses. 

The  third  act  opens  upon  an  evening  party 
given  by  the  Wiedemanns  in  honor  of  their 
guests.  The  Baron  is  present^  and  takes  occa- 
sion to  press  his  brutal  ** yes  or  no"  as. Eliza- 
beth is  pouring  his  coffee.  She  has  resolved 
to  drown  herself,  and  asks  him  to  wait  until 
morning  for  an  answer.  The  manner  of  her 
leave-taking  alarms  Assistant  Dangel,  who 
communicates  to  Wiedemann  his  suspicion 
that  she  is  about  to  run  away.  Wiedemann 
sits  up  alone  after  the  guests  are  gone.  As 
Elizabeth  emerges  from  her  room  he  receives 
her,  of  course  not  aware  of  her  suicidal  pur- 
pose, with  infinite  sadness,  but  without  a  word 
of  reproach.  If  she  has  tired  of  him  she  shall 
go— the  door  is  open.  But  why  creep  away  in 
the  night  without  a  word  of  farewell,  when 
they  have  lived  so  happily  togeth^?  This  re- 
calls the  night  of  his  wooing,  and  she  tells  him 
that  she  is  fleeing  now  from  the  same  man  who 
had  frightened  her  then.  '^Then  this  house 
should  be  your  best  protection,"  he  urges. 
**That  protection  I  have  forfeited,"  she  an- 
swers. Then  she  confesses  her  indiscretion, 
and  tells  the  story  of  her  long  pent  up  love  for 
Rdcknitz  which  had  burst  forth  in  one  moment 
of  uncontrollable  passion.  **Now  drive  me 
from  the  house,"  she  says.  The  answer  is: 
"  WiU  youstay  with  us  ?"  *•  How  can  I,"  she 
asks,  **  with  this  stain  upon  my  soul  f  "  Then 
it  is  his  turn  to  confess— that  he  had  married 
her  fully  believing  that  she  had  been  betrayed 
by  some  member  of  her  aristocratic  circle. 
The  play  ends  with  the  exclamation  of  Eliza- 
beth: **  It  is  as  if  I  saw  you  now  for  the  first 
time." 

The  German  title,  Daa  Qluck  im  Winkel^ 
literally  **  Happiness  in  a  Corner,"  invites  us 
to  suppose,  apparently,  that,  after  the  confes- 
sions of  tbe  final  scene,  the  clouds  that  have 
lowered  o'er  the  house  are  to  vanish,  and  the 
happiness  of  the  ill-mated  pair  is  to  enter  upon 
a  new  and  better  era.  Can  we  easily  suppose 
this?  the  German  critics  are  just  now  asking. 
The  question  has  an  ethical  and  an  artistic 
upect.  In  a  common-sense  view  of  the  mat- 
ter there  is  00  reason  why  the  heroine  should 
drown  herself,  or  leave  her  home  in  the  style 
of  Itisen's  Nora.  To  be  sure,  ber  husband  has 
misunderstood  her  character  in  a  rather  hu- 
miliating way,  but  for  all  that  he  has  treated 
her  with  unvarying  tenderness.    It  will  be  so 


in  the  future.  What  is  she  to  do  if  she  leaves 
him?  As  a  '*  dutiful  nature,"  she  can  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  Baron,  whose  character 
she  has  now  come  to  understand,  without  a 
triple  treachery  that  would  make  existence 
un  bearable.  If  she  leaves  her  home  and  avoids 
Rdcknitz,  she  returns  to  a  worse  mUdre  than 
that  from  which  she  has  been  glad  i^  escape. 
And,  finaUy,  the  river  is  a  gruesome  bed  or  a 
young  wife  who  has  for  three  years  been  find- 
ing life  quite  livable  in  spite  of  the  blighted 
buds.  What  wonder,  then,  if  she  is  won  by 
the  gentle  appeal  of  her  husband,  who  says,  as 
he  caresses  her :  **My  youth,  indeed,  I  cannot 
give  back  to  you.  But  your  youth,  too,  will 
slowly  pass  away.  The  wishes  will  become 
more  quiet,  the  longing  will  fall  asleep.  Every 
one,  even  the  happiest,  must  learn  resignation. 
And  perhaps  there  may  yet  be  happiness  in 
our  familiar  nook."  It  is  the  old  problem  of 
Goethe's  ''  Prometheus" :  *'  Shall  I  hate  life  be- 
cause the  dream- blossoms  do  not  all  ripen!" 
Tbe  distracted  wife  answers  wisely. 

But  how  about  the  husband  ?  one  asks.  Is 
it  probable  that  a  humble  schoolmaster,  com- 
monplace, but  not  sordid,  would  marry  a 
poor  aristocrat  of  whose  purity  he  had  doubts  ? 
This  rather  delicate  point,  which  is  vital  to 
the  denouement,  is  managed  by  Sudermann 
with  a  skill  of  portraiture  which  all  but  car- 
ries the  day.  Wiedemann  ha%  been  unable  to 
get  on  in  the  world,  and  is  beset  by  a  gnawing 
consciousness  of  mediocrity.  His  friends  look 
upon  him  as  a  man  of  ability.  They  tell  of 
others,  he  sees  others,  who  have  outstripped 
him  on  less  of  intellectual  capital.  But  it  is  of 
no  use.  After  a  youth  spent  as  private  tutor, 
he  secures  a  position  where  he  can^  earn  his 
bread  as  teacher  of  a  common  school,  and 
there  he  stops.  He  has  not  even  been  able  to 
pass  the  examinations  which  would  admit  him 
to  teach  in  a  gymnasium.  He  appears  at  the 
Rdcknitz  house  as  a  tolerated  guest,  the  mat- 
ter's old  tutor.  He  becomes  acquainted  with 
Elizabeth  and  looks  up  to  her  as  to  a  madon- 
na.* As  he  finds  her  weeping  alone  one  night, 
the  suspicion  that  she  has  been  betrayed  seems 
to  bring  her  nearer  to  him,  and  to  make  it 
possible  to  win  her  for  a  wife.  He  too  has 
something  to  conceal.  His  failure  to  rise  off- 
sets in  his  mind  her  supposed  fall.  And  so 
they  marry  under  a  mutual  pledge  of  silence 
in  regard  to  the  past. 

As  I  intimated  a  moment  ago,  the  drawing 
almost  saves  the  denouement  from  the  appear- 
ance of  an  inartistic  concession  to  the  popular 
preference  for  happy  endings.  The  play  is  in- 
teresting to  the  very  end.  The  small  realism 
is  cleverly  managed,  and  the  characters  of 
Rdcknitz  and  Elizabeth  are  noteworthy  addi- 
tions to  the  repertory  of  the  German  theatres, 
although  neither  of  them  quite  equals  in  dra- 
matic interest  the  superb  flg^ure  of  Magda  in 
Sudermann's  "Home"— the  most  powerful 
creation  known  to  me  in  the  recent  dramatic 
literature  of  Germany.  When  all  has  been 
said,  however,  this  last  play  does  not  leave  a 
perfectly  satisfactory  impression.  Melpomene 
presides  austerely  over  the  first  two  acts,  and 
then  turns  over  her  sceptre  to  Common  Sense, 
who  had  no  reputation  as  af  dramatic  muse. 
Rdcknitz,  the  real  hero,  is  not  well  disposed  of. 
Just  before  tbe  end,  Wiedemann  rises  to  heroic 
height  and  exclaims:  ** To-morrow  our  house 
shall  be  purified;  trust  me  for  that."  That  is, 
Rdcknitz  is  to  becnokedoff  as  a  baffled  vUlain. 
But  nothing  has  prepared  us  for  this  sudden 
exhibition  of  manly  vigor  on  the  part  of  the 
schoolmaster.  It  sounds  stagey  and  hollow. 
One  does  not  **  trust"  him,  but  feels  that  he 
will  be  overborne  by  the  stronger  nature  and 


Jan.  9,  1896J 


Tlie    Nation. 


29 


will  Dol  to  easily  get  rid  of  the  impenoos  and 
self-willed  Baroo— at  least  not  without  the  aid 
of  thepoUca. 

It  is  t07  earlj  for  a  judgment  of  the  work  as 
Ittaraturat  since  it  has  not  yet  appeared  on  the 
book-market.  But  this  much  seems  to  be  cer- 
tain: it  must  put  an  end  to  the  notion  that 
Sndermann  is  nothing  unless  a  preacher  and  a 
social  reformer.  In  a  last  year's  book  by  Prof. 
Litunann  of  Bonn,  which  lies  before  me  as  I 
writa«  he  is  described  as  **  a  born  satirist,  not 
one  of  the  tame  sort  who  only  tickle  and  scratch, 
but  one  of  the  stamp  of  Juvenal,  who  swings 
his  scourge  with  fierce  satisfaction  so  that  the 
blood  starts  from  the  soft  voluptuous  flesh,** 
etc.  The  first  plays  of  Sudermann  gave,  per- 
haps, a  little  color  to  this  characterization,- 
though  it  is  much  too  strong  even  for  them. 
'* Honor"  is  directed  against  conventional 
ideas  of  that  subject.  **Tbe  Destruction  of 
Sodom.*'  which  the  Berlin  wiU  mistakenly 
thought  would  be  the  destruction  of  Suder- 
mann, is  the  tragedy  of  genius  ruined  by  a  vi- 
cious social  environment.  *'Home"  has  for 
heroine  a  young  women  who  runs  away  from 
her  father's  tyranny,  rises  through  sin  and 
shame  to  great  distinction  as  a  singer,  and 
then  returns,  *'  greater  than  her  sin,"  to  assert 
her  imperious  personality  with  tragic  results  in 
her  narrow  provincial  home.  In  all  of  those 
one  can  see  a  little  of  the  preacher,  perhaps, 
but  nothing  of  the  bloody  scourge.  But  the 
next  play,  •*  The  Battle  of  the  Butterflies,"  was 
a  comparatively  good-natured  portrait  of  the 
vulgar  mamma  with  marriageable  daughters, 
while  in  this  latest  of  all  one  can  find  no  trace 
whatever  of  the  war  against  society.  Suder- 
mann is  a  man  of  the  world,  a  psychologist, 
and  an  artist,  not  a  voice  crying  in  the  wilder- 
nesf.  The  immortality  of  Juvenal  or  Jere- 
miah would  not  be  to  bis  taste.  He  has  learned 
some  things  from  Ibsen,  but  has  a  more  genial 
artistic  temper,  and  thinks  the  influence  of 
Ibsen  upon  German  literature  has  been  upon 
the  whole  baneful.  Calvin  Thomas. 


THE  FRENCH  ACADEMY.-II. 

Paris,  December  10,  1895. 
As  soon  as  the  States- General  met  in  1789, 
the  French  Academy  was  attacked  as  an  oli- 
garchical institution.  On  the  16th  of  August, 
1790,  Lebrun,  speaking  In  the  Finance  Com. 
mittee,  proposed  to  continue  for  the  cur- 
rent year  the  appropriation  of  25,217  livree  al- 
lotted for  the  expenses  of  the  Academy.  He 
propoaed  also  to  assign  a  sum  of  1,200  litres  for 
an  annual  prize.  Lanjuinais  attacked  the  pro- 
position. **  Privileged  academies,"  said  he, 
•'  are  centres  of  a  literary  aristocracy."  Mira- 
bean  was  charged  with  the  mission  of  making 
a  report  on  the  academies  (there  were  other 
academies  than  the  so-called  French  Acade- 
my), and  he  charged  Chamfort  with  the  prepa- 
ration of  his  report  Mirabeau  died  before  he 
could  use  this  report.  Chamfort  published  it, 
and  though  he  bad  been  for  ten  years  a  mem- 
ber of  the  French  Academy,  he  denounced  that 
body  in  the  most  sarcastic  manner,  as  a  school 
oC  flattery;  of  servitude,  speaking  of  '*the 
struggle  of  small  interests,  of  low  rivalries,  of 
the  play  of  all  those  motley  vanities  between 
IsOnSs,  mUrH,  iitris:'  Chamfort  added  that 
tba  work  of  the  Academy  was  simply  nil.  He 
Anally  propoeed  its  suppression.  The  last  meet- 
tng  of  the  Academy  took  place  on  the  5th  of 
AugtMt,  1796.  Very  few  Academicians  were 
preaent;  the  great  majority  were  out  of  France 
or  In  hiding.  The  Convention  had  already  sup- 
I  all  the  aoademies,  and  this  last  meeting 


was  informal.  In  November,  1798,  one  of  the 
Academicians,  Bailly,  was  guillotined.  Males- 
herbes  and  Nicolal  soon  followed  him.  Con- 
dorcet  poisoned  himself.  Vicq  d'Asyr  died  of 
terror.  Several  other  Academicians,  the  Duke 
de  Nivemais,  the  Bishop  of  Senlis,  Lom^nie  de 
Brienn^,  Roquelaure,  the  Abb4  Barth^lemy, 
La  Harpe,  were  thrown  in  prison. 

The  Constitution  of  the  year  m.  created  a 
*' National  Institute."  This  Institute  was  or 
ganized  by  the  law  of  the  third  Brumaire,  year 
IV.  It  was  divided,  and  the  division  still  sub 
sists,  into  classes,  though  the  denominations  and 
objects  of  the  classes  have  been  altered.  The 
first  class,  with  its  many  sections,  was  assigned 
to  the  mathematical  and  physical  sciences;  the 
second  to  political  and  moral  sciences  (analysis 
of  sensations  and  ideas,  morals,  social  science, 
legislation,  political  economy,  history,  geo- 
graphj) ;  the  third  class  was  dedicated  to  lite- 
rature, and  was  at  the  same  time  the  class  of 
the  fine  arts.  The  old  French  Academy  had 
not  yet  revived  with  Its  actual  name  of  Aca- 
demy of  Letters,  but  it  had  reappeared  in  the 
various  sections  of  Class  II.  and  Class  III. 
The  work  of  the  Convention  was  founded 
upon  a  classification  of  all  human  knowledge, 
and,  with  some  changes,  it  has  survived;  the 
representation  of  letters  has  become  more 
homogeneous,  but  the  moral  and  political 
sciences  have  preserved  their  special  represen- 
tations. 

The  executive  power  chose  the  first  mem- 
bers of  the  new  academies.  Article  8  of  the 
law  of  the  third  Brumaire  confided  to  the 
Directory  the  nomination  of  48  members,  two 
in  each  section,  who  should  elect  96  other 
members,  as  the  Institute  was  to  be  com- 
posed of  144  members.  The  Directory  did 
not  choose  a  single  living  member  of  the 
old  French  Academy ;  it  chose,  in  the  sec- 
tion of  poetry,  Cb^nier  (not  Andr4,  his  bro- 
ther Marie-Joseph)  and  Lebrun;  in  the  sec- 
tion of  grammar,  two  men  now  forgotten. 
In  the  class  of  moral  and  political  sciences  we 
find  Voloey,  Bemardin  de  St.  Pierre,  author  of 
'  Paul  and  Virginia,'  Cambac^r^s,  Siey^.  I 
have  said  that  the  Institute  had  to  complete 
itself  by  the  election  of  ninety-six  members. 
Curiously  enough,  the  definitive  choice  was  to 
be  made  by  the  whole  Institute — a  very  bad 
system,  as  the  judges  bad  not  all  the  special 
knowledge  which  would  have  been  a  proper 
guide ;  the  litterateurs  did  not  know  the  sci- 
entists nor  the  archaeologists.  This  incon- 
gruity distinctly  appeared  in  the  first  solemn 
meeting  of  the  Institute ;  a  memoir  on  chemis- 
try followed  an  **  Ode  on  Enthusiasm." 

Camot  was  elected  to  the  section  of  Me- 
chanics, and  in  1797  occurred  the  election  of 
Gen.  Bonaparte.  He  appeared  for  the  first 
time  on  the  5th  of  January,  1798;  he  entered 
In  a  simple  gray  coat,  and  took  his  place  be- 
tween the  two  famous  mathematicians  La- 
g^range  and  Laplace.  When  Bonaparte  soon 
afterwards  started  for  Egypt,  he  took  with 
him  several  savants— mathematicians,  geo- 
grapbers,  artists;  he  signed  his  letters  of  the 
time  '*  Bonaparte,  Member  of  the  National  In- 
stitute.  General."  During  the  campaign  of 
Marengo,  Lucien  Bonaparte,  who  was  Home 
Minister,  proposed  a  reorganization  of  the 
Institute  and  the  reSstablishment  of  the  French 
Academy.  Napoleon  on  his  return  did  not 
show  himself  very  favorable  to  the  idea.  The 
transformation  took  place  only  when  Bona* 
parte,  under  the  name  of  First  Consul,  became 
a  real  sovereign. 

"D^ii  Nspolteo  per^alt  aoos  Doaaparto.** 
On  the  23d  of  January,  1809,  appeared  the  de- 


cree of  the  Consuls  which  organised  a  new  In- 
stitute. The  system  of  the  rlsi>e<  was  changed; 
the  class  of  the  moral  and  political  sciencee  was 
suppressed.  The  second  class,  without  being 
exactly  the  old  French  Academy,  and  without 
bearing  its  name,  was  almost  the  counterfeit 
of  it.  The  elections  were  to  be  made  by  the 
classes,  not  by  tbe  whole  body  of  the  Institule; 
this  last  innovation  was  of  the  highest  Im- 
portance. 

The  second  class  soon  considered  Itself  tba 
legitimate  heir  of  the  old  French  Academy, 
and  resumed  all  its  traditions;  but  Napoleon 
would  not  tolerate  the  old  name  of  French 
Academy.  There  were  four  classes  instead  of 
three;  the  physical  and  mathematical  sciences 
formed  the  first,  the  French  language  and 
literature  the  second,  history  and  ancient  lite- 
rature the  third,  the  fine  arts  tbe  fourth.  All 
the  members  of  the  new  Institute  were  ap- 
pointed by  tbe  Government.  Tbe  Academy 
of  the  Empire  did  not  compare  well  with  the 
old  French  Academy;  it  had  no  great  Ulustrt^ 
lions  in  its  ranks.  Its  principal,  function 
seems  to  have  been  to  sing  the  praises  of  *'the 
great  genius  who  presided  over  the  destinies 
of  France."  The  eulogy  of  the  sovereign  be- 
came a  necessary  part  of  all  the  speeches  of 
the  Academicians.  The  new  master  would  be 
placed  above  Alexander,  Csesar,  and  Charle- 
magne. *^ Quia deus nobis hsBcotia fecit?"  ask- 
ed one  in  Virgil's  phraseology,  in  his  reception 
speech.  Adulation  never  went  further  than 
Cardinal  Maury,  when  he  spoke  of  *' something 
greater  than  nature,  which  does  not  seem  to 
belong  to  time,  as  it  is  neither  uncertain  nor 
inconstant." 

Napoleon  kept  his  eye  on  the  Academy,  even 
during  his  campaigns.  He  disliked  the  alln- 
sioQS  made  to  the  events  of  the  Revolution, 
and  wrote  to  Fouch^  from  Finkenstein: 
'Don't  allow  any  reaction.  Mirabeau  ought 
to  be  well  spoken  of.  There  are  many  things  in 
this  session  of  the  Academy  which  don't  please 
roe  [this  was  after  the  reception  of  Maury]. 
When  shall  we  be  wi^?  When  shall  we  ab- 
st^n  from  reviving  painful  memories?"  Cha- 
teaubriand read,  as  usual,  his  reception  speech 
before  a  committee  of  the  Academy ;  he  tells, 
in  his  'M^moires  d'Outre-Tombe,*  how  his 
speecb  displeased  the  majority  of  the  commit- 
tee: ''Liberty,"  said  Chateaubriand,  "is  so 
naturally  tbe  friend  of  science  and  of  letters 
that  it  tokes  refuge  with  them  when  it  is  ban- 
ished from  the  midst  of  the  people."  Napo- 
leon asked  to  read  the  speech;  he  declared  that 
it  was  of  the  utmost  extravagance  and  would 
not  allow  it  to  be  delivered.  He  said  to  Fon- 
tanes,  a  friend  of  Chateaubriand  and  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Academy:  "Since  when,  sir,  does 
the  Institute  consider  itself  a  political  body? 
Tell  it  to  write  verses  and  correct  faults  of 
grammar,  and  not  go  out  of  the  domain  of  the 
muses.  .  .  .  Am  I  a  usurper  [Chateaubriand 
had  made  a  faint  allusion  to  Louis  XV1.]>  I  de- 
throned nobody,  sir;  I  found  the  crown  in  the 
mud,  and  the  people  put  it  on  my  head.  .  .  . 
If  you  missed  me  to-morrow,  there  would  only 
be  new  massacres."  Chateaubriand  refused  to 
correct  his  speech,  and  the  confirmation  of  his 
election  was  suspended.  He  could  not  take  his 
place  among  his  coUeaguei,  but  bis  election  re- 
mained valid. 

A  new  age  of  Augustus  Is  tbe  dream  of  abeo- 
lute  monarchs;  if  such  was  the  dream  of  Na- 
poleon, it  was  never  realized,  and  the  imperial 
epoch  left  no  great  poetical  or  literary  work. 
Mme.  de  Stafil  and  Chateaubriaud  preserved 
the  power  of  their  genius  only  by  establishing 
themselves  in  an  entirely  independent  position. 
In  vain  did  Napoleon  multiply  pensions  and 


30 


Tlie   ISTatlon. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1593 


academical  prizes;  he  refused  to  the  Academy 
what  letters  need  above  all— liberty.  In  1804 
he  established  the  great  prizes,  to  the  number 
of  22  (9  of  10,000  francs,  13  of  5,000  francs)  des- 
tined for  the  best  works  and  inventions  which 
had  honored  the  sciences,  letters,  and  the  arts 
in  a  period  of  ten  years.  He  was  to  award 
these  prizes  with  his  own  hand,  but  he  really 
never  did  so.  In  1800  he  instituted  new  prizes, 
but  he  gave  to  the  Institute  merely  a  consulta- 
tive  power.  The  prizes  were  to  be  bestowed  by 
an  imperial  decree.  The  function  of  the  Insti- 
tute was  reduced  to  the  drawing  up  of  reports 
and  to  propositions  made  to  the  Emperor.  Na- 
poleon probably  found  that  the  productions  of 
those  who  competed  for  the  prizes  were  un- 
worthy  of  the  greatness  of  his  reign;  he  did 
not  distribute  them  in  person,  and  a  list  of 
them  would  show  that  he  was  right.  He  was 
more  fortunate  when  he  granted  important 
sums  to  the  new  edition  of  the  Dictionary  of 
the  French  language,  to  a  '  Dictionary  of  the 
Language  of  the  Fine  Arts,'  and  to  the  conti- 
nuation of  the  ^Histoire  litt^raire  de  la 
France,*  which  the  Benedictines  had  begun. 

The  first  return  of  the  Bourbons  did  not 
cause  any  change  in  the  regulation  of  the  In- 
stitute. The  literary  life  of  the  country  was, 
so  to  speak,  in  suspense  during  the  Hundred 
Days  and  after  the  disasters  of  France.  The 
second  Restoration  made  some  changes  in  the 
organization  of  the  Institute.  By  the  royal 
ordinance  of  March  21, 1816,  the  Institute  was 
preserved  as  a  whole,  but  the  French  Academy 
reassumed  its  former  name  and  its  old  status  ; 
some  new  members  were  elected  by  the  royal 
ordinance,  and-  eleven  Academicians  were  ex- 
cluded—Bassano,  Garat,  Cambac^r^  Cardi- 
nal Maury,  Merlin,  Siey^  Koederer,  Lucien 
Bonaparte,  Arnault,  Regnault  de  St..Jean- 
d'Ang^ly,  ^Uenne.  The  Institute  by  the  ordi- 
nance  of  1816  was  composed  of  four  acade- 
mies, the  French  Academy  taking  precedence ; 
afterwards  came  the  Acad^mie  des  Inscrip- 
tions  et  Belles  Lettres,  the  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences,  the  Academy  of  Fine  Arts.  All  tfiese 
denominations  still  stand,  but  a  fifth  academy 
was  created  later  with  the  name  of  Academy 
of  the  Moral  and  Political  Sciences.  The 
academies  were  to  have  each  its  independent 
statutes  and  constitution  ;  they  were  bound  to 
have  every  year  a  public  sitting,  at  which  all 
were  to  be  represented. 

The  four  academies  reorganized  by  the  or- 
dinance of  Ifarch  21,  1816,  had  their  inaugu- 
ral session  on  the  24th  of  April.  The  presi. 
dency  of  the  first  assembly  of  the  new  Insti- 
tute belonged  by  right  to  the  French  Acade- 
my, and  consequently  to  the  President  chosen 
by  this  Academy.  By  a  curious  coincidence, 
it  happened  to  be  the  Duke  de  Richelieu; 
thus  reappeared,  at  the  moment  of  a  new 
transformation,  the  name  of  the  famous  found- 
er of  the  Academy.  Fontanes,  elected  Vice 
President,  said  in  a  speech  which  he  made  on 
that  occasion: 

*^  Physical  and  mathematical  sciences  surely 
have  a  very  great  importance.  ...  It  is 
to  their  application  that  industry,  commerce, 
the  arts  owe  so  many  ingenious  contrivances; 
but  these  arts,  as  Bacon  energetically  says, 
are  rooted  in  the  needs  of  man,  and  develop 
themselves  by  the  efforts  of  interest  and  cu- 
pidity. The  increase  of  wealth  and  of  the 
commodities  of  life  is  a  great  benefit,  it  cannot 
be  denied;  but  our  heart  has  nobler  instincts 
which  have  to  be  satisfied.  Letters,  viewed  in 
their  general  relations,  have  a  more  direct 
infiuence  on  the  moral  and  sensitive  part  of 
man.  I  am  not  afraid  to  say,  'A  people  which 
should  be  only  savant  might  remam  barba- 
rous;  a  lettered  people  is  necessarily  sociable 
and  polite.' " 

The  preeminence  of  the  Academy  of  Letters 


over  the  others  was  thus  asserted,  and  it  must 
be  said  that  generally  it  has  not  been  contest- 
ed  by  public  opinion.  The  members  of  the 
French  Academy  have  preserved  the  name  of 
^*  Immortals,"  though  the  word  is  often  pro- 
nounced ironically,  and  the  irony  would  be 
well  justified  in  going  over  the  list,  already 
very  long,  of  those  who  have  received  this 
brevet  of  immortality.  This  list  would  show 
you  the  ^*rari  nantes  in  gurgite  vasto."  The 
mind  is  its  own  place,  and  you  cannot  easily 
force  it  into  categories. 

Whoever  may  be  interested  in  the  questions 
relative  to  the  organization  of  the  Institute 
and  to  the  prizes  it  has  to  distribute,  will  do 
well  to  consult  the  following  work :  *  L'lnsti- 
tut  de  France:  Lois,  statu ts  etr^glen&ents  con- 
cemant  les  anciennes  Academies  et  Tlnstitut, 
de  1685  k  1880.  Tableau  des  f ondations.  Col- 
lection  public  par  M.  L^on  Aucoc'  (Paris : 
Imprimerie  Nationaie.  1889).  The  '*  Tableau 
des  Fondations,"  which  occupies  pages  330-384, 
indicates  the  prizes  which  the  Institute  dis- 
tributes annually. 


Correspondence. 


THE  MAIN  QUESTION. 
To  THB  Editob  of  The  Nation: 

Bib  :  80  far,  perhaps  because  of  the  pressure 
of  the  more  important  aspects  of  the  Venezue- 
lan matter,  I  have  seen  no  condenmation  of  a 
certain  happening  which,  it  seems  to  me, 
marks  accurately  the  depth  of  imbecile  rage  to 
which  we  have  reduced  ourselves.  I  refer  to 
the  dragging  forth  of  Lowell's  letter  written  in 
1865  in  which  he  says  (I  quote  from  memory), 
*' There  is  but  one  thing  worse  than  war  with 
England,  and  that  is,  to  be  afraid  of  war,"  etc. 

There  are  no  present  weapons  effective 
enough  for  us,  and  so,  forsooth,  we  bring  dead 
men  from  their  graves,  and  essay  a  feeble  fiou- 
rish  of  mouldering  documents  which  by  no 
means  represent  later  convictions  under 
changed  conditions.    It  is  a  brava  deed. 

CSLIA  A.  M.  CURRIICB. 
Iowa  Citt,  Iowa,  December  88.  1896. 

[Juflt  60  we  are  disentombing  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine  **  under  changed  conditions.'* 
—Ed.  Nation.] 

To  THE  Editob  of  Thb  Nation  : 

SiB:  May  the  wild  West  dare  offer  you 
thanks  and  congratulations  for  voicing  such 
Americans  as  think  with  their  brains?  It 
seems  queer  to  thank  people  for  being  sane, 
maybe,  but  it  stirs  me  to  find  truth  and  wis- 
dom and  patriotism  in  these  days  of  the  Jingo, 
so  much  that  I  wish  I  could  go  and  shake  your 
band.  It  has  not  just  the  charm  of  novelty  to 
find  the  Nation  safe  and  sound,  but  custom 
does  not  stale  the  delight  of  it,  perhaps  because 
more  and  more  we  have  to  suffer  from  those 
who  peddle  their  mouths. 

I  am  young  enough  still  to  like  fighting,  and 
rather  to  believe  in  it,  too— but  not  as  an  elec- 
tive means  of  grace.  The  frontier  may  not 
exactly  teach  a  Quaker- like  abstinence  from 
strife,  but  it  certainly  never  develops  Jingoes. 
The  gentlemen  who  looked  upon  indiscriminate 
quarrels  as  good  for  the  blood  and  muscle,  have 
all  joined  some  other  graveyard  than  the  ones 
which  they  respectively  sought  to  swell.  Pew 
grieve  for  them;  yet  they  were  more  virile,  at 
any  rate,  and  less  venal  than  the  persons  who 
aim  to  sell  papers  by  getting  their  substitiitea 


killed.  And  as  between  their  intellectual  hori- 
zon  and  that  of  those  who  would  dress  a  nation 
in  the  discarded  togs  of  the  Bad  Man  from 
Bodie,  I  can  find  little,  to  choose. 

A  Republican  when  my  party  will  allow  me, 
a  Westerner  by  every  fibre  of  choice,  I  often 
find  things  in  the  Nation  whose  letter  I  cannot 
keep.  But  its  spirit  is  one  of  the  things  I  love 
and  venerate  and  am  proud  of  every  day  thai 
I  am  an  American;  and  with  all  my  heart  I 
wish  it  godspeed.  L. 

Los  AnocuES,  Cal..  December  87. 1805. 


To  THE  Editob  of  The  Nation: 

Sib:  For  thirty  years  now— that  is,  from 
the  foundation  of  the  paper— I  have  been  a 
constant  reader  of  the  Nation.  Long  ago  I 
fell  into  the  habit  of  reading  nearly  the  whole 
of  every  number — a  larger  percentage  than  of 
any  other  periodical.  In  shaping  my  habits 
of  thought  and  such  intellectual  training  as  I 
have  been  able  to  give  myself,  I  recognize  the 
Nation  as  one  of  the  most  potent  influences. 
Perhaps  that  is  the  reason  why  your  recent  de- 
nunciations of  the  folly  and  savagery  of  the 
President  and  the  Congress  appeal  so  power- 
fully to  my  reason.  If  I  may  judge  from  my 
own  case,  you  have  largely  formed  the  intellects 
you  address,  and  that  is  the  secret  of  your 
power.  But  may  I  not,  on  the  other  hand, 
congratulate  myself  on  having  assisted  to  cre- 
ate the  power  that  has  made  me  what  I  am? 
But  more  (and  this  is  the  fact  of  which  I  am 
proud),  in  creating  the  power  that  has  made 
me,  I  have  helped  to  build  one  of  the  bulwarks 
that  shall  stem  and  roll  back  the  tide  of  bar- 
barism now  sweeping  over  the  land. 

The  country  must  be  saved.  It  is  a  gigan- 
tic but  not  impossible  task.  I  suggest  the 
need  of  immediate  organization  and  prompt 
action.  In  every  city,  village,  and  township 
there  must  be  a  few  sane  and  sober-minded 
men  opposed  to  war  under  the  present  circum- 
stances or  any  conditions  likely  to  ari^e.  Xet 
them  unite,  without  regard  to  party  or  creed. 
Let  them  speak  in  unmistakable  tones.  Above 
all,  let  us  be  prompt.  The  ''howling  savages  " 
are  on  top  at  present ;  and  the  longer  they  re- 
main  on  top,  the  more  difficult  it  will  be  to 
dislodge  and  overthrow  them. 

In  the  war  upon  war  and  savagery  every 
man  may  be  a  hero  without  rapine  or  murder. 
Forward  the  light  brigade  of  peace  and  ci-* 
vilization  t  '*  The  path  of  duty  is  the  way  to 
glory."  A.  F.  Hamilton. 


To  the  Editob  of  The  Nation: 

Sm:  While  I  agree  with  the  general  tenor  of 
your  comment  on  the  recent  war  scare,  it 
strikes  me  you  are  too  despondent  in  your 
view  of  the  general  outcome  of  it.  In  the  first 
place,  though  I  am  no  adept  in  such  questions, 
do  you  not  greatly  overestimate  the  financial 
loss  already  incurred  through  the  panic?  No 
doubt  there  have  been  heavy  transfers  of  se- 
curities, in  some  cases  out  of  hands  which 
could  ill  afford  to  part  with  them;  but  what 
positive  destruction  of  values  has  yet  taken 
place? 

Then,  how  healthful,  if  the  evil. exist,  has 
been  the  revelatioi^  of  the  thinness  of  the  ve- 
neering or  varnish  of  our  civilization,  and  of 
how  much  yet  remains  in  us  of  the  ape  and 
tiger— the  ^me  brutal  nature  seen  in  thelynch- 
ings  prevalent  over  a  large  part  of  our  land. 

But  what  an  uprising,  too,  of  the  better  por- 
tion of  the  people  in  both  countries,  with  the 
willingness  manifested  to  suffer  ' '  humiliation  " 
if  need  be,  in  retreating  from  a  false  position 
and  acknowledging  an  error,  or  even  wrongs 


Jan.  9,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


31 


oommitted*  One  coald  almost  be  glad  of  the 
excitement  if  it  shall  teach  us  that  nations  are 
amenable  to  the  same  principles  of  honor  and 
integrity  which  govern  indiTiduals:  that  it  is 
DO  more  dishonorable  for  a  nation  to  acknow- 
ledge mistaJces  and  make  reparation  than  for 
an  individual :  and  that,  as  the  duel  with  its 
code  is  fast  becoming  obsolete,  so  war  must  one 
day  pass  away. 

It  will  be  no  small  gain,  too,  if  the  Monroe 
Doctrine,  so  often  invoked,  yet  evidently  so  im. 
perfectly  understood  or  defined,  shall  have 
its  place  and  value  in  the  world^s  code  formal- 
ly determined. 

And  worthy  of  mention,  also,  may  be  the 
impetus  given  to  the  restoration  of  good  feel- 
ing between  North  and  South  among  our  own 
people. 

We  must  deplore  the  wild  and  almost  wicked 
talk  which  followed,  though  it  did  not  begin 
with,  the  war  message;  but  it  is  worth  while 
to  note  some  compensating  benefits  which  have 
also  followed.— Respectfully  yours, 

H.  D.  C. 
Eastfokt,  Kk. 


[The  address  adopted  by  the  New  York 
Chamber  of  Commerce  on  Thursday  last 
does  not  make  light  of  *'  the  financial  loss 
already  incurred."  This  loss,  ''caused 
by  the  rude  derangement  of  business  and 
by  the  fall  in  the  value  of  merchandise 
and  of  securities,  is  too  painfully  fresh  to 
require  discussion  at  our  hands.*'  If  our 
correspondent  will  further  take  account 
of  prospects  as  well  as  of  current  values, 
of  the  cheek  given  to  all  long-term  enter- 
prises as  well  as  to  the  common  confident 
calculation  from  year  to  year,  he  will  dis- 
cover a  widespread  loss  which,  if  it  can- 
not be  calculated,  can  hardly  be  exagge- 
rated. War  devastates  by  repression  as 
well  as  by  destruction.— Ed.  Nation.] 


POINTERS  FOR  THE  COMMISSION. 
To  THB  EnrroR  of  The  Nation: 

Sib:  Although  it  is  difficult  to  see  how 
American  safety,  interests,  or  honor  can  be 
affected  by  the  boundaries  of  any  of  the  insig- 
nificant despotisms  of  South  America,  yet  one 
can  scarcely  help  noting  certain  facts  and 
principles  of  a  general  character  which  must 
present  themselves  at  the  beginning  of  any  in- 
vestigation of  boundary,  however  cursory. 

The  territorial  rights  of  nations  are  based  on 
discovery  and  occupation,  on  cession  or  on  con- 
quest. Since  Venezuela  discovered  nothing, 
and  conquered  nothing,  except  in  so  far  as  by 
successful  rebellion  she  constrained  a  cession 
from  Spain,  her  rights  rest  exclusively  on  such 
cession,  and  carry  no  title  except  such  as 
Spain  possessed.  But  the  only  paper  title  of 
Spain  is  derived  from  the  Pope*s  bull  of  1493, 
when  his  Holiness,  possessing  no  knowledge  of 
the  New  World  t)eyond  the  discovery  of  one 
American  island  during  the  preceding  year, 
took  it  upon  himself,  as  vicegerent  of  Gk>dand 
owner  of  the  world,  to  grant  to  Spain  all  lands 
that  had  been  or  might  be  discovered  west  of 
the  Asores.  If,  therefore,  Spain  derived  title 
to  anything  from  that  source,  it  is  not  confined 
to  Venescuela,  but  extends  to  all  the  islands 
and  both  continents  of  America,  including 
New  York  and  Philadelphia,  and  even  that 
bed  of  justice  and  seat  of  patriotic  virtue,  the 
capital  at  Washington*  Mr.  Cleveland's  new- 
ImrD  and  expensive  seal  ior   partl-colored 


American  autocracies  masquerading  as  **  re- 
publics*'should  therefore  not  be  confined  to 
pampering  them  at  the  sole  expense  of  Great 
Britain,  but  should  prompt  him  to  hand  over 
to  the  g^rantees  of  Spain  the  whole  United 
.  SUtes;  and  if  it  is  right  to  do  it  at  all,  it  should 
be  done  at  once,  because,  if  the  grantees  of 
Spain  hold  anything  under  the  bull  of  his 
Reverence,  they  hold  equal  title  to  all  of  both 
Americas. 

Descending  from  record  to  possessory  title, 
it  is  an  acknowledged  principle  of  internation- 
al agreement  (which  agreement,  when  univer- 
sally accepted,  is  called  international  law)  that 
the  incipient  occupation  of  new  countries  is 
chiefiy  defined  and  ascertained  by  their  natu- 
ral drainage  systems.  Thus,  a  settlement  made 
in  the  valley  of  a  river  having  its  own  inde- 
pendent debouchure  at  the  sea,  accompanied 
with  a  corresponding  claim  of  right,  is  held  to 
extend  to  all  the  territory  drained  by  such 
river  and  its  tributaries,  whether  immediately 
and  fully  occupied  by  such  claimant  or  not; 
but  to  no  more  than  such  drainsge  system^ 
If  another  valley  is  claimed,  that  also  must  be 
visibly  occupied  by  at  least  one  post  or  settle- 
ment, or  will  remain  open  to  new- comers.  Any 
other  rule  would  be  intolerable  to  the  world, 
because  it  would  enable  the  nation  making  the 
first  puny  settlement  to  claim  and  exclude 
others  from  an  entire  continent  by  establish- 
ing a  single  post  of  a  dosen  men. 

It  is  a  matter  of  history  that  the  Spanish  oc- 
cupation of  what  is  now  known  as  Venezuela 
was  for  generations  confined  to  the  north  side 
of  the  Orinoco  basin,  while  the  Dutch  occupa- 
tion (now  pcused  to  Great  Britain  by  treaty) 
covered  both  banks  of  the  Essequibo  and  cer- 
tain points  on  the  south  side  of  the  Orinoco 
basin,  as  shown  by  official  maps  of  all  the  par- 
ties. There  was  some  doubt  as  to  the  Dutch 
or  English  right  to  the  posts  held  by  them  in 
the  Orinoco  basin,  and  they  were  consequent- 
ly long  ago  abandoned  to  Venezuela  on  the 
condition  of  Venezuelan  protection  of  the  na^ 
tive  inhabitants,  although  such  points  have 
never  been  reduced  to  actual  occupation  by 
Venezuela.  England  now  claims,  as  she  has 
always  claimed,  the  entire  basin  of  the  Esse- 
quibo, and  nothing  else,  and  most  of  it  is  and 
has  long  been  occupied  by  her  settlers.  Vene- 
zuela claims  the  entire  basin  of  the  Orinoco, 
which  was  long  since  conceded  to  her,  and  a 
large  part  of  the  basin  of  the  Essequibo,  no 
part  of  which  has  ever  been  occupied  either  by 
her  or  her  Spanish  predecessor,  and  which 
England,  who  is  in  actual  possession,  cannot 
surrender  without  yielding  her  plain  rights  by 
all  the  tenets  of  international  law,  her  duty  to 
forty  thousand  of  her  settlers  now  occupying 
the  territory,  and  suffering  an  unprecedented 
debasement  before  the  world.  She  is  demand- 
ing no  new  territory,  but  claims  only  what  she 
or  her  predecessor  held  before  Mr.  Monroe  was 
bom.  It  is  a  question  whether  it  would  not 
be  to  our  interest  if  she  should  claim  new  ter- 
ritory, since  her  occupation  would  be  equiva- 
lent  to  the  introduction  of  free  institutions 
and  the  dominion  of  settled  industry  and  law 
into  an  uninhabited  wilderness  which  may  oth- 
erwise fall  into  the  clutches  of  the  cruel,  cor- 
rupt, and  irresponsible  despots  who  succeed 
each  other  by  revolution,  every  few  months,  in 
the  plunder  of  one  of  the  most  despicable  of  all 
the  Spanish  rendua  in  either  America. 

If  it  be  true  that  intelligent  diplomacy  as 
hitherto  defined  is  the  art  of  making  it  easy 
for  the  other  party  to  do  what  one  wfshes  him 
to  do,  then  Mr.  Cleveland's  burst  of  reckless 
zeal  has  succeeded  only  in  making  an  honora- 
ble adjustment  well-nigh  imiMMiible.   Withoot 


troubling  himself  to  ascertain  the  rights  of  the 
parties  who  are  alone  concerned,  he  has  in- 
fiicted  on  a  friendly  nation  of  our  own  blood, 
and  the  only  one  that  has  never  objected  to 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  an  insulting  threat,  be- 
fore which  no  free  government  can  yield  with- 
out being  overthrown  by  the  passions  of  its 
own  people. 

It  is  now  too  late  for  the  great  republic  of 
the  world  to  escape  this  absurdity  of  schoolboy 
ill-temper,  or  the  loss  of  hundreds  of  millions  of 
its  capital  already  destroyed,  but  the  profound, 
er  ruin  of  national  bankruptcy  and  the  bloody 
destruction  of  war  may  yet  be  averted;  and 
unless  Mr.  Cleveland  is  willing  to  stand  for 
ever  in  the  pillory  of  history,  it  devolves  00 
him  to  discover  an  honorable  way  of  allaying 
the  passions  of  the  ignorant  rabble  on  both 
sides  before  they  are  irremediably  aroused. 

L  J.  W. 

Philadsu>hia,  JanuMT  4, 1890. 


To  THE  EnrroR  of  The  Nation  : 

Sir  :  In  the  Boston  Public  Library  is  a  little 
volume  entitled  *  A  Voyage  to  the  Demerary, 
containing  a  statistical  account  of  the  settle- 
ment there  and  of  those  on  the  Essequibo,'  etc., 
**  by  Henry  Bolingbroke,  Esquire,  of  Norwich, 
Deputy  Vendue  Master  at  Surinam.*'  I  have 
examined  the  book,  and  it  purports  to  be  a 
minute  account  of  the  author's  personal  exami- 
nation of  the  territory,  the  productions,  the 
people,  and  the  history  of  the  colony  then 
lately  taken  by  the  English  from  the  Dutch. 
The  book  was  published  in  London  in  1809, 
but  a  note  in  it  states  that  it  is  a  reprint.  It 
was  written  after  the  occupation  by  the  Eng- 
lish in  1796,  however,  for  there  is  frequent 
reference  to  the  English  occupation,  and  the 
correspondence  between  the  EInglish  Govern- 
ment and  its  officers  who  took  possession  of  the 
colony  is  given. 

I  quote  from  it  as  follows  :  **Tbe  west  coaot 
of  Pomaroon  juts  on  the  boundary  of  the  Ori- 
noco where  there  is  a  military  post  established. 
.  .  .  Since  the  English  took  possession  of 
the  colonies  they  have  cultivated  the  whole  of 
that  coast,  extending  upwards  of  fifty  miles^ 
and  are  now  making  estates  on  the  banks  of 
the  Pomaroon  "  (p.  273) .  The  author  mentions 
as  situate  on  the  Pomaroon  River  **  Fort  Zea- 
land, which  the  English  destroyed  in  1666; 
Middleburg,  which  at  the  same  period  was 
plundered  and  abandoned  ''(p.  378).  *'  The  ee- 
lates  already  made  between  the  Essequibo  and 
Pomaroon  Rivers  are  variously  valued  from 
five  to  eighty  thousand  pounds  sterling,  each 
according  to  the  extent  of  cultivatioo,  number 
of  buildings,'*  etc.  (p.  279). 

These  are  only  part  of  a  number  of  facta 
stated  by  the  author,  showing  that  the  region 
between  the  Moroco  and  Essequltw  Rivers, 
part  of  the  territory  now  claimed  by  Vene- 
zuela, bad  been  occupied  for  many  years,  and 
had  been  under  the  actual  jurisdiction  of  the 
Dutch  and  their  English  successors.  There  is 
no  mention  or  suggestion  of  any  question  as  to 
the  right  to  this  jurisdiction.  The  book  con- 
tains a  map  of  the  whole  colony,  showing  also 
the  old  sites  of  New  Zealand  and  New  Middle- 
burg on  the  Pomaroon  River,  roads  along  the 
coast,  and  a  military  post  on  the  east  bank  of 
the  Moroco  River.  It  does  not  show  any  ter- 
ritory west  of  the  Moroco,  nor  does  it  indi. 
cste  a  boundary  line  of  the  colony  in  the  in- 
terior. 

I  have  not  seen  this  book  referred  to  in  any 
of  the  newspaper  or  magazine  discussions  upon 
the  subject  of  the  Venezuelan  boundary  dis- 
pute, and  it  is  quite  evident  from  the  speech  of 
Senator  Lodge  in  the  Senate^  delivered  a  fav 


SQ 


The   K^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1593 


days  ago,  that  he  was  ignoraat  of  the  infor- 
mation that  it  contains. 

In  the  same  library  there  is  also  a  book,  pub- 
lished by  Sir  Robert  H.  Sohomborgk,  entitled 
*A  Description  of  British  Ouiana,  (^eographi. 
cal  and  Statistical,'  etc.  It  was  published  in 
London  in  1840,  and  contains  a  mi4>.  The  pre- 
face by  the  author  states  that  it  contains  **  the 
result  of  my  personal  examinations  .  .  . 
during  successiye  years  from  1885  to  1839."  At 
page  62  there  is  a  **Li8t  of  Estates'*  in  the  par- 
ishes  of  St.  John  and  Trinity,  which  shows  that 
in  1832  and  in  1889  there  were  forty-nine  '*  es- 
tates''  in  sugar,  coffee,  cotton,  etc.,  in  those 
two  psrishes.  On  a  previous  page  the  author 
states  that  the  whole  colony  is  divided  into 
parishes,  and  that  the  two  parishes  just  men- 
tioned take  in  the  territory  between  the  Esse- 
quibo  and  Pomaroon  Rivers,  west  of  the  Esse- 
qmbo.  In  a  list  of  towns  and  villages  within 
the  colony  the  author  mentions  two  villages  on 
the  west  tmnk  of  the  Essequibo:  Williamstown, 
**  with  fifteen  houees,  a  good  mercantile  store, 
and  a  church  capable  of  holding  five  hundred 
persons.  .  .  .  About  seven  miles  higher 
up  is  a  village  called  Catharinesburg,  with 
about  fifteen  houses,  a  Wesleyan  chapel,  a 
store,  and  an  apothecary's  shop."  All  of  these 
settlements  were  within  the  disputed  territory. 
Chables  H.  Hartshorns. 

JxasxT  Cmr,  January  8, 1890. 


THE   HOT-BED   OF  JINGOISM.      ' 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation  : 

Sm:  One  explanation  of  the  extraordinary 
bellicose  attitude  of  a  large  portion  of  the  citi- 
zens of  the  United  States  will  undoubtedly  be 
found  in  the  false  and  pernicious  teaching  of 
history  which  they  had  in  their  youth.  It  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that,  twenty  years  ago, 
the  only  part  of  United  States  history  that 
was  well  taught  in  the  public  schools  was  war. 
The  French  and  Indian  wars,  the  Revolution, 
the  War  of  1812,  and  the  Rebellion  were  the 
only  oases  in  the  dreary  desert  of  American 
history.  The  internal  development  of  the 
country,  the  progress  of  the  useful  arts,  our 
national  experiments  in  political  economy  and 
finance,  our  foreign  relations,  were  all  slighted 
in  the  text-books  in  American  schools  twenty 
years  ago,  and  the  only  time  when  the  woman, 
who  generally  taught  history  to  the  present 
generation,  felt  she  was  on  firm  ground  was 
when  the  class  followed  up  and  witnessed  vi- 
cariously the  barbarous  slaughter,  destruction, 
rapine,  and  brutality  of  sea  and  land  engage- 
ments. With  us  Americans  the  average  citi- 
zen never  goes  to  a  high  school  He  **  quits'* 
study  when  he  "quits"  the  grammar  school, 
and  about  all  that  he  recollects  of  his  school 
history  is  the  wars;  and  about  all  he  brings 
away  from  the  little  "red"  school-house  ia  a 
blind  hatred  of  the  country  with  which  his  an- 
cestors fought. 

The  inability  of  the  American  people  to 
profit  by  the  economic  and  financial  blunders 
of  the  previous  generation  has  often  been 
commented  on.  The  explanation  is  that  they 
know  nothing  about,  and  have  never  been 
taught  in  school,  our  financial,  economic,  and 
industrial  history.  Furthermore,  it  may  be 
said  without  exaggeration  that  the  masses  of 
our  people  who  got  their  education  in  the 
grammar  schools  departed  from  those  schools 
with  the  idea  that  there  was  really  no  other 
history  worth  knowing  except  American,  bar- 
ring a  dim  idea  that  away  back  in  the  abyss 
of  time  there  were  such  countries  as  Greece 
and  Rome.    The  only  existing  foreign  country 


of  whose  history  the  masses  of  America  know 
anything  at  all  is  England,  and  of  her  history 
they  know  very  little,  and  that  little  is  alto- 
gether bad.  E.  L.  M. 


INSIDIOUS   MONARCHISM. 
To  the  Editor  of  Thb  Nation: 

Sir:  I  have  failed  to  see,  in  all  the  dis- 
cussions of  the  **  Schomburgk  line,"  any  men- 
tion of  perhaps  the  most  interesting  result  of 
Sir  Robert  Sohomburgk's  explorations.  On  the 
first  of  January,  1887,  he  discovered,  in  the 
River  Berbice,  a  new  and  magificent  water 
plant,  specimens  of  which  he  sent  to  England, 
where  it  was  propagated.  At  the  time  of  the 
discovery  William  IV.  was  King,  but,  before 
it  received  recognition  from  naturalists,  his 
niece  had  succeeded  to  the  throne,  so  that  the 
new  water-lily  was  named  Victoria  Regia,  and 
is  now  cultivated  under  that  designation. 
Surely  this  was  a  high-handed  attempt  to  ex- 
tend monarchical  institutions  to  the  Western 
"hemisphere.  American  botanists  have  been 
very  supine  in  this  matter;  they  ought  to  hold 
a  conference  at  once  at  the  Smithsonian  rooms 
and  have  the  name  changed  to  Monrovia  01- 
neyensis.  As  a  popular  designation,  **  Lodge's 
lily '/  might  answer.  W.  E. 

Jasuabt  6,  1890. 


"GALLO." 
To  THJB  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  In  a  review  of  a  book  entitled  '  Among 
the  Pueblo  Indians'  in  your  issue  of  December 
19,  189S,  you  say: 

*' There  is  nothing  new  in  the  story,  unless 
the  account  of  the  game  of  *gallo'  which 
they  saw  played  on  San  Juan's  day,  in 
the  village  of  Cocbiti,  can  be  so  considered.  In 
one  portion  of  the  game  *  a  living  rooster 
igallo}  was  buried  in  tne  sand'  up  to  the  neck, 
and  the  object  of  the  player  as  he  rode  by  was 
to  *  catch  the  bird'  and  bear  it  off  to  his  home. 
Evidently  this  is  the  game  of  *  gander-pulling,' 
well  known  in  early  times  in  portions  of  the 
South  and  West;  the  only  difference  6eing  that 
with  us  the  bird  was  hung  by  the  legs  to  a 
cross  pie^e  and  the  riders  *  grabbed  for  the 
head'  as  they  galloped  by  under  the  pole. 
Whether  the  Indians  borrowed  the  game  from 
their  Spanish  neighbors,  if  indeed  they  had  it, 
or  from  ourselves,  we  cannot  say,  but  that 
they  did  borrow  it,  is,  we  thinlc,  beyond  all 
question." 

The  game  is  mentioned  by  many  writers, 
travellers,  novelists,  etc.,  who  treat  of  life  in 
countries  once  owned  by  Spain;  but  at  present 
I  can  give  you  only  one  quotation  referring  to 
it.  In  Bret  Harte's  poem  of  **  Concepcion  de 
Arguello"  (which  is  a  picture  of  life  in  Cali- 
fornia during  the  days  of  Spanish-American 
occupancy),  we  find  the  following  lines: 

"  Vainly,  leaning  from  their  saddles,  caballeros,  bold 

and  fleet. 
Plucked  for  her  the  burled  chicken  from  beneath  their 

mustang's  feet." 

The  game  was  probably  introduced  from 
Spain.  It  certainly  could  not  have  existed  in 
America  previous  to  the  discovery  by  Ck>lum- 
bus,  for  both  horses  and  roosters  "were  unknown 
in  our  continent  before  that  time.        W.  M. 

Washdiotoh,  D.  C,  Jannarj  8, 1806. 


ADDinON  AND  SUBTRACTION. 
To  THX  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  To  your  admirable  review  of  *The 
Psychology  of  Number,'  by  McLellan  and 
Dewey,  in  the  issue  of  November  28,  this  addl- 
tion  may  be  seasonable. 

We  read  of  a  scholastic  discussion  as  to  how 


many  angels  could  stand  on  the  point  of  a 
need^.  Suppose  that  some  investigator  had 
decided  that  the  true  number  was  exactly  one 
hundred  and  eleven,  and  had  recorded  this  re- 
sult in  a  text-book.  Suppose  that  all  subse- 
quent text-book-makers  had  adopted  this  con- 
dusion,  until  ISnally  some  one  thought  out 
and  published  '*The  Psychology  of  the  Ange- 
lico-humanistic  Interrelations,  founded  on  the 
Number  *One  Hundred  and  Eleven.'"  Un- 
doubtedly, we  should  be  interested  in  it  as  an 
instance  of  mental  ingenuity,  but  should  con- 
sider that  its  purely  arbitrary  foundation 
rendered  it  of  slight  practical  value. 

As  regards  one  phase,  at  least,  of  the  work 
under  discussion,  the  above  illustration  would 
be  a  fair  parallel— the  phase  which  treats  of 
*' addition"  and  "subtraction,"  wherein  the 
authors  travel  a  purely  arbitrary  path.  To 
illustrate:  In  the  school-room,  a  child's  atten- 
tion is  directed  to  two  groups  of  blocks,  and 
he  is  asked  to  tell  the  total  number  in  both. 
Ck>unting  those  in  either  group,  he  g^oes  on 
oountiog  from  that  point  till  he  has  the  sum  of 
both  sets.  He  is  now  asked  to  tell  the  dif- 
ference between  the  two  sets  of  blocks.  Again 
he  counts  from  the  number  in  the  larger  set 
backwards  till  be  comes  to  the  number  in  the 
smaller  set,  or  from  the  smaller  number  for- 
ward; in  either  case,  finding  the  same  differ- 
ence. If  he  wishes  to  record  on  paper  each  of 
these  steps,  he  arranges  the  symbols  represent- 
ing the  number  of  blocks  in  each  set  in  con- 
venient position  to  aid  him  in  his  counting,  by 
custom  (not  by  necessity)  one  under  the  other. 
He  still  finds  sums  or  differences  wholly  by 
counting  or  by  memory  of  previous  countings. 

In  an  evil  day  of  the  long  ago,  some  genius 
determined  to  call  it  **  addition '-  when  count- 
ing totals,- "  subtraction"  when  counting  dif- 
ferences. Not  only  was  this  purely  arbitrary, 
but  its  effect  was  to  completely  obscure  and 
keep  out  of  the  arithmetics  the  real  addition 
and  subtraction  as  we  know  them  in  our  daily 
experience.  The  child,  e.  (;.,  could  have  really 
added  blocks  to  the  place  where  either  group 
was  situated,  but  he  could  have  done  it  only 
by  a  simultaneous  subtraction  from  some  other 
place.  He  could  have  subtracted  any  block 
from  its  place  in  either  set,  but  he  must  have 
added  it  at  once  to  some  other  place.  Addition 
and  subtraction  form  Inseparable  parts  of  one 
operation,  and  the  child  would  have  represent- 
ed this  operation  on  paper  in  very  different 
fashion  from  his  representation  of  the  artificial 
*' addition"  and  *' subtraction." 

In  arithmetic,  where  the  so  called  "  subtrac- 
tion "  is  confined  to  counting  from  a  smaller 
number  to  a  larger,  the  mischief  was  confined 
to  a  wrong  order  of  development,  and  to  the 
suppression  of  the  equation  that  follows  at  once 
the  true  addition  and  subtraction.  When  it 
came  to  counting  from  a  larger  number  to  a 
smaller— calling  it  "subtracting"  a  larger 
number  from  a  smaller— the  mischief  was  com- 
plete; for  the  scholars,  at  any  rate,  thought 
the  attending  concepts  applicable  to  dollars  and 
other  material  objects,  instead  of  being  purely 
inuiglnative.  It  is  unfortunate  that  these  con- 
ventional terms,  with  their  affixed  conven- 
tional meanings,  should  have  been  so  long  fol- 
lowed by  the  text- books;  a  careful  examina- 
tion, so  far,  revealing  but  one  honorable  ex- 
ception, which  is  worth  noting.  In  a  little 
text-book,  published  at  Exeter,  N.  H.,  in  1845, 
by  Z.  Jones,  principal  of  Hampton  Academy, 
the  common  use  of  the  terms  ^^  addition  "  and 
** subtraction"  is  noted,  but  the  author  stu- 
diously avoids  them,  choosing  more  exact 
terms. 

It  is  stUl  more  unfortunate  that  two  author 


Jan.  9,  1896] 


The   Nation. 


33 


of  luch  repute  as  Metsn.  McLollan  and  Dewey 
•bou]d  have  incorporated  into  their  ^Psy- 
chology '  a  fundamental  arbitrary  concept. 
Had  they  searched  carefully,  they  would  have 
found  it  the  source  of  many  contradictions  and 
absurdities  in  our  mathematics,  and  might 
have  changed  some  of  their  own  psychological 
eondusioos.  WiuuIam  D.  Mackintosh. 

OiucircT  Hall  School,  Bonoti,  Mass.,  Jao.  8,  IBM. 


USE  AND  ABUSE. 
To  THs  EDrroB  of  Tec  Nation: 

8tr:  Among  recent  abuses  of  the  word  wo- 
man, the  worst  is  the  curious  trick  of  substi- 
tuting the  plural  of  the  substantive  form  for 
that  of  the  adjective,  as  loomen  writers,  wo- 
men students,  women  graduates,  women  bicy- 
clists, women  prisoners.  I  have  not  the  time 
nor  do  I  care  to  verify  quotations,  but  may  I 
say  that  I  have  within  six  months  seen  this 
error  committed  twice  in 'my  home  daily, 
twice  in  the  ofiBcial  report  of  the  State  Super- 
intendent of  Prisons,  once  on  the  title-page  of 
a  semi  official  and  once  in  the  body  of  an  offi- 
cial publication  of  Cornell  University,  once  in 
a  Uterary  letter  of  Mr.  Zangwill^s  to  the  Cos 
mopolitan,  and  once  in  the  columns  of  the 
New  York  Evening  P^H  f  Would  it  occur  to 
those  who  take  women  in  such  connection  for 
an  apposition  to  praise  the  valor  of  our  sailare 
boys  or  to  refer  with  a  touch  of  pride  to  their 
eoldiere  ancestors  ? 

If  woman  is  going  to  be  aupra  grammatioam^ 
like  King  Sigismund,  her  progress  is  back- 
wards. Folk  grammar,  to  be  sure,  admits 
••teeth- brushes."— Yours  very  truly, 

Alfbxb  Emkbson. 
imoA,  N.  T..  Decem^r  80, 1805. 


[80  long  M  WA  lay  ^^men  folk(8) "  and 
"  women  folk(8),"  and  Sbakspere  ia  not 
•oouted  for  writing  "Bring  forth  men- 
children  only,"  and  "Will  you  not  go 
the  way  of  womenALind  ? "  the  "abuse** 
pointed  out  by  Prof.  Emerson  will  perhajw 
not  appear  such  to  the  majority.  We  can- 
not admit  his  analogy  in  the  case  of  '*  aailr 
ora  boys."  It  lacks  the  essential  feature 
of  "mutation"  (man,  men),  which  folk 
grammar  (or  should  we  say  idiom  f )  has 
preeenred  in  <ee< A- brushes.  We  might 
in  English  have  had  the  word  "teeth- 
brush"  as  the  Germans  say  Augenglas 
(eyeglass),  BUcherachrank  (bookcase),  etc. 
Their  ^Mdnnerchor  corresponds  to  our 
"  men  folk."— Ed.  Natiok.] 


Notes. 


If  AOiOLLAK  &  Co.  announce  •  Jewish  Ideals, 
and  Other  Essays,'  by  Joseph  Jacobs ;  a  volume 
00  the  evidences  of  Christianity  from  Brown- 
ing's point  of  view,  by  Dr.  Berdoe  ;  a  transla^ 
tion  of  Erdmann's  •  Qrundriss  der  Logik  und 
Metaphyslk,*  by  Dr.  B.  C.  Burt  of  Ann  Arbor; 

•  The  Number  Concept ;  Its  Origin  and  Deve- 
lopnent^'  by  Prof.  Levi  L.  Conant ;  an  •  Atlas 
of  Nerve  Cells,'  by  Dr.  M.  Allen  Starr ;  and 

•  Plant  Breeding,*  by  Prof.  L.  H.  Bailey,  which 
wlU  tn  September  introduce  the  ••Garden* 
Craft  Series.'* 

T.  Y.  CroweU  &  Co.  enlarge  their  *•  Library 
of  Economics  and  Politics"  with  •Propor- 
tional Representetion,'  by  Prof.  John  R.  Com- 
moos  of  Syraoose  Universl^,  and  •  The  Inter- 


nal  Revenue  System  of  the  United  States,'  by 
Dr.  Frederic  C.  Howe  of  Cleveland,  Ohio. 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons  have  in  press  •  The 
Near  East,'  by  Henry  Norman,  and  •  One  Hun- 
dred (fames'  for  social  amusement. 

Roberts  Bros,  will  soon  issue  the  •Family 
Letters  of  Dante  Gabriel  Roesetti,'  with  a 
memoir  by  W.  M.  Rossetti;  and  •Modern 
Women.' 

Effl ogham  Wilson  &  Co.,  London,  besides  a 
new  and  revised  edition  of  Alexander  Del 
liar's  •  Science  of  Money,'  will  issue  a  •  Handy 
Guide  to  the  Patent  Laws,'  by  G.  F.  Emery. 

We  have  received  the  printed  catalogue \)f 
the  Avery  Architectural  Library,  the  sub-title 
of  which  sets  forth  that  it  is  a  memorial  librar 
ry  of  architecture,  archieology,  and  decorative 
art,  and  that  it  is  connected  with  the  library 
of  Columbia  College.  The  book  is  a  massive 
quarto  of  1,139  pages,  with  an  introduction 
and  a  few  illustrations  at  the  beginning;  it  is 
sumptuously  printed,  and  the  matter  of  com- 
position and  proofreading  seems  to  have  been 
attended  to  witb  much  more  than  usual 
thoroughness.  It  is  not  possible  to  ascertain 
from  the  text  how  many  volumes,  or  how  many 
separate  works,  the  library  contains,  but  the 
introduction  states  that  there  were  about  13,000 
volumes  when  the  catalogue  went  to  press,  and 
reminds  the  reader  that  so  many  volumes  de- 
voted  £0  a  branch  of  the  fine  arts  are  of  more 
pecuniary  and  actual  consequence  than  the 
same  number  devoted  to  history  or  literature. 
Of  course,  the  majority  are  richly  illustrated, 
and,  again  of  cours^  either  a  majority  or  a 
large  minority  are  of  folio  sise.  The  intxoduc 
tion  is  signed  by  the  commission  of  purchase, 
which  is  composed  of  the  professor  of  architec- 
ture in  the  School  of  Mines  ex  ofiBcio,  now  Wil- 
liam R.  Ware;  the  librarian  of  Columbia  Col- 
lege ex  officio,  now  George  H.  Baker,  and  Rus- 
sell Sturgis  of  New  York.  It  was  in  April, 
1890,  that  Henry  O.  Avery  died,  and  his 
parents,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Samuel  P.  Avery,  short- 
ly afterward  founded  in  his  name  and  to  his 
memory  this  great  benefaction  to  students. 
The  foundation  has  been  increased  and  its 
range  extended,  until  now  it  consists  of  the 
important  collection  of  books  above  named 
and  an  invested  fund  of  $15,000  for  further  ac- 
quisitions. 

If  we  were  to  pick  out  the  most  timely  read- 
ing from  the  doeed  volume  28  of  the  Century 
(May-October,  1895),  we  should  designate  the 
account  of  the  naval  battle  of  the  Yalu  in  the 
late  Sino-Japanese  war.  It  is  a  peace  tract  of 
the  first  quality  written  by  an  American  par- 
ticipant. Besides  Prof.  Sloane's  continuing 
Life  of  Napoleon  (which  also  has  its  peace  les- 
sons), and  the  serials  that  have  already  become 
books— Crawford's  •Casa  Bracdo,'  Mrs.  Har- 
rison's •Errant  Wooing,'  and  •Life  in  the 
Tuileries  under  the  Second  Empire '—there  is 
nothing  significant  that  we  have  not  touched 
upon  in  our  monthly  notioea.  Stilly  we  will  re- 
call Mr.  Janvier*s  graphic  story  of  the  Com6- 
die>Fran^se  in  the  old  amphitheatre  at 
Orange,  France;  and,  among  the  illustrations, 
the  several  portraits  of  Rubinstein,  Bryant, 
Clay,  and  floats. 

The  two  volumes  of  SoribHm'e  for  1895  have 
also  their  books  in  embryo— Meredith's  'Amas- 
ing  Marriage,'  Mra.  Ward's  •  Story  of  Bessie 
Costrell,'  and  Robert  Grant's  •  Art  of  Uving,' 
to  say  nothing  of  President  Andrews's  un- 
finished scrap-book  •  History  of  the  Last  Quar 
ter^iiJentury,'  begun  in  the  March  number. 
The  papers  on  Golf  and  on  Posters,  French, 
English,  and  American,  bespeak  attention  to 
current  fads.  Theodjre  iioo«evelt*s  •^Six 
Tears  of  Civil  Service  Reform  "must  now  be 


read  with  melancholy  reflections  on  the  fine 
gold  that  has  become  dimmed.  The  biographi* 
caLcritical  sketches  of  wood-engravers  have 
been  worthily  continued.  It  is  well  to  remem- 
ber the  late  portrait  of  Huxley,  and  to  forget 
certain  eccentricities  of  illustration,  which  will 
be  found  in  the  second  volume. 

CTontinuing  its  standard  edition  of  papers 
read  before  it,  the  Massachusetts  Military  His- 
torical Society  has  published,  through  Hough, 
ton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  another  fine  octavo  volume 
entitled  •  The  Virginia  Campaign  of  1862  under 
General  Pope.'  The  papers,  fourteen  in  num- 
ber, were  nearly  all  read  before  the  Society  in 
1877,  and  have  a  double  interest:  first,  of 
course,  for  the  historical  and  critical  ouitter 
contained  in  them,  but,  second,  for  the  in- 
structive evidence  of  the  change  of  sentiment 
and  judgment  which  has  come  to  intelligent 
military  men  in  the  progress  of  twenty  years. 
Half  of  the  papers  show  the  strong  predilections 
(not  to  say  prejudices)  which  were  rife  among 
army  men  at  the  close  of  the  war.  The  publi- 
ofktion  of  the  Official  Records  by  the  Gh>vem- 
ment  has  made  obsolete  such  ardent  advocacy 
of  favorites  and  sweeping  condemnation  of 
others.  There  is  also  another  portion,  calm 
and  judicial  in  character,  which  has  not  lost  in 
weight  or  influence.  Noteworthy  among  these 
are  the  papers  of  Mr.  John  C.  Ropes  and  Col- 
onel  Thomas  L.  Livermore.  Outside  of  the 
controversial  list  are  admirable  descriptive 
papers,  like  Gen.  Walcotrs  ••Revisit  to  the 
Field  of  Chantilly,"  and  Gen.  Andrews's  ••  Bat- 
tle of  Cedar  Mountain." 

In  spite  of  rather  careless  style  and  way- 
ward punctuation,  Mr.  Bernard  C.  Steiner's 
monograph  on  •Citisenship  and  Suffrage  in 
Maryland'  (Baltimore:  Cushing  &  Ck).)  is  like- 
ly to  be  useful  to  several  classes  of  persons. 
Historical  students  will  probably  be  most  in- 
terested in  the  earlier  pages,  dealing  with  citi- 
senship and  suffrage  during  the  early  colonial 
period,  and  based  on  diligent  study  of  early 
laws  and  records;  the  summaries  of  important 
cases  in  State  courts  involving  the  suffrage 
and  election  laws  ought  to  be  of  some  value  to 
lawyers;  while  the  dark  picture  which  Mr. 
Steiner  draws  of  the  political  and  judicial 
corruption  attending  elections  in  Baltimore 
from  time  to  time  during  the  past  thirty 
years,  though  presenting  nothing  new,  is  never- 
theless a  fordble  illustration  of  the  conditions 
against  which  munioipiU  reform  has  to  con- 
tend. 

The  ••  verse  renderings  of  typical  passages  " 
of  •  The  Song  of  Roland  :  A  Summary  for  the 
Use  of  English  Readers,'  by  Arthur  Way  and 
Fred^o  Spencer  (London  :  Nutt:  New  York  : 
Maomillan),  are  not  of  such  a  quality  as  to 
distinguish  the  little  pamphlet  which  serves 
as  an  excuse  for  printing  them.  And  if  we 
admit  that  ••small  service  is  true  service,"  we 
must  add  that  with  little  trouble  a  much 
greater  help  oould  have  been  rendered.  If  in- 
terest is  to  be  aroused  in  the  •  Chanson  de  Ro- 
land,' the  English  reader  might  at  least  be 
directed  to  the  most  convenient  curiginal  text- 
say,  L6on  Gautier'iswith  its  parallel  translation 
into  modem  French  prose,  line  for  line,  and  all 
its  apparatus.  Our  editors  would  aUo  ha v  e  doc  e 
well  to  borrow  freely  from  Prof.  Gautier  s 
full  introduction  as  calculated  to  whet  the 
student's  appetite. 

It  will  be  strange  li  some  Jingo  Furioso  does 
not  speedily  translate  into  pure  American-Eng- 
lUb  Paulo  Fumbri^s  'La  Ginnastica  Beliica' 
(Rome:  Casa  Editrice  Itaiiana).  Its  brawny 
giant  of  an  author  examines  Galen's  thr^e  di- 
visions of  gymnastics,  namely,  ''medica,  sive 
sapiens,  beUic<i,  eive  palrioiiea,  athletic  sive 


84 


Tlie    It^ation 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1593 


histrionica";  likens  the  first  to  the  Swedish 
system^  the  third  to  the  G^rmao,  and  makes 
them  over  to  invalids  and  acrobats  respective- 
ly; and  adopts  the  third  as  apt  to  render  the 
youth  of  the  country  strong  and  formidable, 
ready  for  self-defence  and  for  attack— warlike 
and  therefore  patriotic.  He  holds  up  to  scorn 
the  wretched  bodies  of  the  annual  volunteers 
from  the  Italian  student  class  as  compared 
with  the  peasantry,  and  calls  for  a  training 
that  will  form  soldiers  capable  of  timely  rally- 
ing (tempestivamente  arrivare)  and  impetuous 
fighting  (tempeatuosamente  comhattere).  His 
chief  reliance  is  upon  the  art  of  fencing,  which 
he  has  ingeniously  made  applicable  to  teaching 
in  classes  (metodo  cotlettivo  schermistico). 

M.  J.  Cruppi's  book  on  *Linguet:  un  avocat 
joumaliste  au  18*  si^le'  (Paris:  Hachette  & 
Cie.)  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  the  litera- 
ture bearing  on  that  period.  Linguet  himself 
is  not  a  sympathetic  personage,  *'a  viper  of 
the  worst  kind,  a  slanderous  pamphleteer,  a 
venal,  snarling,  evil.worklng  barrister,*'  but 
he  was  a  power  in  his  day,  wielding  an  influ- 
ence and  enjoying  a  celebrity  which  have  long 
since  vanished.  M.  Cruppi  has  resurrected 
him  and  his  times  in  a  thick,  closely  printed 
book  which  amply  repays  perusal. 

To  those  who  are  interested  in  the  "Chat 
Noir,"  the  **  Ane  Rouge,"  and  other  cabarets 
aHistiques  of  that  type,  M.  H.  ValbeFs  *  Les 
Chansonniers  et  les  cabarets  artistiques  *  (Paris : 
Dentu)  will  be  welcome.  The  story  of  each 
cabaret  and  of  every  composer  and  **  artist " 
is  told  brightly  and  intelligently.  The  illus- 
trations are  apposite. 

Haphette  &  Co.  have  brought  out  a  new  and 
revised  edition  of  M.  Ferdinand  Bruneti^re*s 
'  Les  ^poques  du  Tb^4tre.Fran<^B,  1636-1850.' 
The  book  has  already  been  noticed  in  these 
columns,  and  its  value  is  well  known  to  every 
student  of  French  literature. 

That  Kdnneck's  '  Bilderatlas  zur  Geschichte 
der  deutf  Chen  Nationallitteratur '  has  been  ap- 
preciated is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the  first 
edition  of  6,000  copies  has  been  for  some  time 
exhausted.  The  new  edition,  which  has  been 
appearing  during  the  past  year  in  Lieferung 
fashion,  is  improved  in  many  respects,  espe- 
cially in  the  text  accompanying  the  illustra- 
tions, which  has  been  revised  to  date.  Five 
hundred  new  pictures  have  been  added.  The 
whole  work  now  contains  2,200  reproductions 
of  the  most  varied  kind,  but  all  dealing  in 
some  way  with  the  development  of  German 
literature.  Particular  attention  has  been  giv. 
en  to  the  history  of  the  drama  from  Roswitha 
down  to  the  end  of  the  classical  period,  and  to 
the  development  of  the  theatre  and  stage  de- 
vices. The  *Nibelungenlied'  is  emphasized 
by  a  specimen  from  every  known  manuscript 
or  fragment  of  manuscript.  Writers  in  other 
than  purely  literary  lines  are  represented  so 
far  as  they  have  been  connected  mitb  litera- 
ture. The  gallery  of  authors'  portraits  is 
brought  down  to  Sudermann  and  Hartmann. 
Facsimiles  are  abundant,  showing  the  develop- 
ment of  German  script,  printing,  and  illustra- 
tion. Many  of  the  portraits  and  autographs 
have  been  reproduced  for  the  first  time.  The 
portraits  of  recent  men  are  for  the  most 
part  very  satisfactory,  but  it  seems  as  though 
better  photographs  could  have  been  found  of 
Hejse,  Mommsen,  and  Scherer.  In  addition 
to  the  2,200  illostrati^as,  there  are  fourteen 
inserts  with  fine  portraits  of  Luther,  Hans 
Bacbs,  Goethe,  Schiller,  together  with  several 
colored  reproductions  from  the  Heidelberg 
<  Liederhandschrift.'  The  book  is  published  in 
the  large  folio  form  (12x16  inches)  of  the  for- 
mer'edition,  at  the  low  price  of  twenty-two 


marks,  or  twenty -eight  marks  if  bound.  It 
forms  an  excellent  companion  for  any  history 
of  German  literature,  and  should  be  in  every 
library  that  pays  any  attention  to  this  sub- 
ject. 

If  we  may  judge  of  the  two  volumes  of  Gus- 
tav  Holzmiiller's  *Methodiscbes  Lehrbuch  der 
Elementar-Mathematik'  (Leipzig:  Teubner)  by 
the  present  one,  which  seems  to  form  a  sort  of 
supplement,  they  must  be  both  pleasant  and 
profiUble.  Taken  by  itself,  this  third  part 
will  be  very  useful  to  tho^e  who  sometimes 
^ake  use  of  mathematics  without  being  ac- 
complished mathematicians.  It  treats  in  a 
clear,  simple,  and  fundamental  way  of  pro- 
jective geometry,  stereometry,  and  the  calcu- 
lation of  moments,  spherical  trigonometry,  al- 
gebraical analysis,  and  equations  of  higher  de- 
grees; the  whole  in  224  pages. 

The  State  Def>artment  at  Washington  has 
just  issued,  as  a  Bulletin  of  its  Bureau  of  Rolls 
and  Library,  an  index  to  the  calendar  of  the 
correspondence  of  James  Madison. 

The  thirteenth  volume  of  the  Collections  of 
the  Wisconsin  Historical  Society  has  reached 
us.  It  is  the  last  of  a  triennial  series.  Hence- 
forth a  new  volume  will  appear  biennially.  In 
the  present  instalment  long  and  important  ar- 
ticles, hitherto  existing  only  in  single  manu- 
scripts,  are  preserved.  One  of  thes^,  filling 
more  than  a  hundred  pages,  relates  to  the  hold- 
ing of  Wisconsin  as  a  conquest  or  field  of  bat- 
tle after  peace  had  been  concluded  at  Ghent 
December  24,  1814.  Five  months  after  that 
date,  the  British,  still  ignorant  of  the  peace, 
attacked  an  American  post.  Sixty  pages  in- 
clude the  log-book  of  a  canoe  voyage  from 
Detroit  through  Lake  Superior  to  the  Missis- 
sippi and  down  it  to  Prairie  du  Chien,  which 
in  1820  took  some  three  months.  The  census 
of  the  region  in  a  pre- Territorial  era  has  sur- 
vived with  so  many  personal  names  as  to  fur- 
nish  a  precious  bead  roll  for  local  genealogists. 
Two  other  papers,  however,  will  be  of  more 
general  interest.  One  deals  with  the  Belgian 
immigration  of  1853,  and  its  growth  to  20,000 
persons— a  history  full  of  romantic  vicissi- 
tudes. The  other  is  on  lead- mining  and  shot 
manufacture.  Lead  had  as  much  to  do  with 
the  settlement  of  Wisconsin  as  codfish  with  the 
colonization  of  Massachusetts.  Lead,  too,  was 
a  potent  factor  in  uniting  the  Souchemers  who 
brought  slaves  intx>  mines  along  the  Mississippi 
with  free  State  men  on  Lake  Michigan.  Be- 
sides, it  turned  the  current  of  transportation 
from  the  great  river  and  New  Orleans  to  the 
great  lakes,  the  Erie  Canal,  and,  later,  the  iron 
rivers  eastward  that  never  freeze  or  dry  up. 

The  Nova  Scotia  Historical  Society  has  pub- 
lished as  volume  eight  of  its  Collections  the 
History  of  Halifax  City,  by  the  late  Dr.  Tho- 
mas B.  Akins.  It  is  a  reprint  of  a  paper  pub- 
lished in  1847,  with  much  additional  matter, 
and  covers  a  period  of  about  seventy  years 
from  the  settlement  in  1749.  A  treasury  of 
facts,  many  of  them  quaint,  it  contains,  be- 
sides the  annals  of  the  city,  biographical 
sketches,  descriptions  of  streets  and  buildings, 
and  valuable  lists  of  early  settlers.  In  another 
volume  are  papers  upon  the  voyages  of  the 
Cabots,  the  towns  of  Louisbourg  and  Onslow, 
together  with  an  entertaining  account  of  an 
early  Attorney- General  of  the  Province,  R.  J. 
Uniacke. 

D.  B.  Updike,  6  Beacon  Street,  Boston  (The 
Merrymount  Presf),  has  arranged  with  G. 
Napier  &  Co.,  Birmingham,  for  an  American 
edition  of  the  Quest  magazine,  of  which  a  new 
series  began  with  the  December  number  of 
1886.  This  periodical  is  an  apostle  of  book- 
making  (including  ilhistratioo)  in  the  spirit  of 


William  Morris  and  the  Kelmsoott  Press,  and 
deserves  attention  from  those  who  are  interest- 
ed in  the  movement  directed  by  that  artist  So- 
cialist, and  still  more  in  what  may  permanent- 
ly come  of  it. 

Biddeford,  Maine,  is  not  exactly  the  soil  out 
of  which  one  might  expect  a  Franco-American 
Figaro  to  spring  and  blossom;  but  French  Ca- 
nadians are  not  unknown  in  Maine  any  more 
than  in  the  rest  of  New  England,  and  M.  Ur- 
bain  J.  Ledonx  issued  his  comic  monthly  in 
December  last  with  an  eye  to  support  in  all 
parts  of  the  United  States  and  Canada.  Con- 
tributions  to  it,  he  gives  notice,  must  be  "in- 
^dites,  humoristiques,  etsurt out  morales,"  and 
there  is  nothing  in  the  first  number  that  goes 
counter  to  this  standard  of  excellence.  There 
is  a  woman's  page  and  a  children's  page. 

With  the  first  of  December  last  the  Paris 
Figaro  changed  its  form,  becoming  a  six- page 
paper.  The  Wednesday  and  Saturday  supple- 
ments have  been  suppressed,  and  the  critical 
and  literary  articles  which  used  to  appear  in 
them  will  now  be  found  in  the  daily  edition. 
Forain  continues  his  biting  series  of  sketches, 
**Doux  Pays,"  and  to  him  has  been  added  Ca- 
ran  d'Ache  as  a  regular  Monday  contributor. 
The  Figaro  in  other  ways,  too,  shows  much 
improvement.  M.  Alphonse  Daudet  leads  ofl^ 
in  a  feuilleton,  and  M.  Paul  Bourget  follows 
him  worthily  in  some  admirable  memories  of 
the  end  of  the  Commune,  **  Pendant  la  Ba- 
taille."  Nothing  better-observed  or  more  di- 
rectly  and  forcibly  told  has  been  written  about 
this  often- described  period.  It  is  delightful  to 
find  M.  Bourget  reminding  the  world  that  he 
possesses  qualities  as  a  writer  which  he  did  not 
permit  to  appear  in  his  later  studies  of  erotic 
hysteria. 

In  his  address  to  the  students  at  the  opening 
of  the  lectures  of  the  faculty  of  letters  in  the 
Sorbonne,  M.  E.  Lavisse  spoke  with  enthusiasm 
of  the  new  departure  under  which  diplomas 
for  advanced  work  in  history  and  geography 
were  for  the  first  time  given  by  tfie  facuUy  to 
thirteen  students  in  June  last.  He  dwelt  upon 
the  important  results  to  be  expected  from  these 
independent  studies  in  the  history  and  geogra- 
phy of  France,  and  in  other  fields  to  which  the 
system  will  no  doubt  be  extended.  Already 
the  faculty  of  letters  have  decided  upon  the 
establishment  of  a  special  library  for  the  ool« 
lection  of  these  treatises.  Another  consequence 
of  the  new  plan  will  be  what  amounts  to  a  sort 
of  univeraf  ty  extension,  in  so  far  as  it  will  stimu- 
late persons  outside  of  the  regular  university 
course  in  the  provinces  as  well  as  in  Paris,  in- 
cluding foreign  students,  to  special  labor  in 
lir.es  of  study  in  which  they  are  interested;  for, 
a  bachelor's  degree  not  being  requisite  to  ob- 
tain the  diploma,  "  il  suffit  detravailler.'*  The 
speaker  also  referred  to  the  new  regulation  for 
the  examination  for  the  master's  degree  {li- 
cence H  lettres)  to  be  instituted  this  year.  It 
consists  in  allowing  the  various  faculties,  with- 
in certain  limits,  to  determine  the  material  for 
examinations — ^to  choose,  «.  p.,  the  authors  to 
be  submitted  to  candidates— whereas  hereto- 
fore the  programmes  have  been  identical  for 
all  France.  Add  to  these  a  third  innovation, 
viz.,  greater  freedom  in  the  choice  of  studies 
for  university  students,  and  the  tendency  to- 
wards educational  decentralization  in  France 
becomes  evident. 

The  last  word  of  educational  reform  comea 
from  Hungary,  whose  Liberal  ministry  has  is- 
sued a  decree  which  provides  for  the  admission 
of  properly  qualified  women  to  the  Universitiea 
of  Buda  Pesth  and  Klausenburg  (founded  1878), 
and  which  duly  authorizes  the  training  of  ifi>- 
men  **  for  the  professions  of  teadiani  in  ■»- 


Jan.  9.  1896] 


condary  female  schools,  as  physicians  for  wo- 
men  and  childreni  and  as  dispensing  drug- 
gi»U." 

Ttie  committee  of  the  Hebdomadal  Council, 
Oxford,  England,  which  is  expected  to  report 
this  term  on  the  subject  of  university  degrees 
for  women,  has  received,  among  other  favor- 
able memorials,  two  from  representative  edu- 
cational bodies,  the  Girls'  Public  School  Com- 
pany,  whose  petition  was  signed  by  S4  out  of  a 
total  of  36  head-mistresses,  and  the  Church 
Schools  Company,  18  of  whose  24  head- mis- 
tresses signed  the  memorial. 

Non>collegiate  graduate  study  has  taken  a 
new  departure  in  the  London  School  of  Econo- 
mics, under  the  joint  control  of  the  Chamber 
of  Commerce  and  the  Society  of  Arts.  This 
school  opened  lately  with  over  200  students, 
men  and  women  employed  in  mercantile  offices, 
in  Government  and  municipal  civil  service,  and 
as  teachers,  journalists,  and  high-grade  crafts- 
men. The  classes  are  in  economics,  commercial 
and  industrial  law,  taxation,  political  science, 
and  commercial  history  and  geography. 

It  appears  from  the  Milan  Corriere  delta 
Sera  that  Baccelli,  Minister  of  Public  Instruc- 
tion after  a  long  absence  from  official  life—in 
the  course  of  which  he  isolated  the  Roman 
Pantheon  and  inscribed  on  it  in  bronze  letters 
Agrippa  fecU — refuses  to  sanction  the  teach- 
ings  of  excavations  made  four  years  ago  at  the 
base  of  the  rotunda.  These  revealed  a  marble 
pavement  much  lower  than  the  present  one, 
and  the  foundations  of  a  rectangular  temple, 
built  by  Agrippa,  upon  which  Hadrian,  more 
than  a  century  afterward,  erected  the  rotunda. 
There  was  recently  exhibited  at  the  Istituto 
di  Belle  Arti  a  fine  array  of  drawings  made 
most  carefully  after  the  excavations,  and  prov- 
ing to  a  demonstration  this  double  construc- 
tion upon  the  swampy  site  of  the  Pantheon. 
But  the  Minister  will  not  undo  his  inscription. 

—Among  the  purely  literary  articles  in  the 
current  number  of  the  Atlantic,  Miss  Rep- 
plier's  **F6te  de  Oayant**  more  than  holds  its 
own  in  style  and  finish  of  expression,  while  as 
a  matter  of  fact  her  skill  in  the  difficult  art  of 
essay- writing  is  a  better  proof  of  the  mental 
power  of  her  sex  than  that  **  vainglorious  "  as- 
sertion of  which  she  again  takes  the  opportu- 
nity to  emphasize  her  disapproval.  Dr.  Blrk- 
beck  Hiirs  article,  to  which  the  Johnson  Club 
supplies  a  title  and  a  connecting  thread,  is  lei 
snrely,  formless,  and  attractive.  **One  of 
Hawthorne's  Unprinted  Note  Books'*  will 
probably  be  interesting  to  the  general  reader 
chiefly  as  an  example  of  the  ordinary  material 
for  observation  out  of  which  men  of  imagina- 
tion have  been  able  to  make  their  extraordina- 
ry creations.  On  the  practical  side.  John  R. 
Proctor's  **  Emancipation  of  the  Post  office** 
contains  a  clear  outline  of  what  every  intelli- 
gent reader  should  know  about  the  importf&nt 
extension  of  the  merit  system  made  on  the  8th 
of  November  last,  when  the  President  signed 
the  order  which  opens  the  way  for  inclusion 
within  civil-servioe  rules^  of  the  minor  or 
fourth-class  post-offices,  where  *Hhe  spoils  sys- 
tem has  had  its  greatest  stronghold.**  **Jo- 
siah  Flynt**  has  told  before  sad  facts  concern- 
ing the  **  Children  of  the  Road,**  but  not  so 
systematically  as  here;  neither  has  he  else- 
where  indicated  so  clearly  the  duty  of  legisla- 
tion to  protect  the  most  impressionable  of  chil- 
dren from  **  desperadoism  **  thrust  upon  them 
**  from  the  shop  windows  through  the  picture- 
covered  dime  novels  and  the  flaring  faces  of 
the  Police  Gazette,'^  nor  so  convincingly  point- 
ed out  the  ^*  rare  usefulness  **  that  awaits  gifted 
young  ineD  and  women,  sucb  av  now  QU  the 


Tlie   IN'ation. 

University  Settlements,  whenever  they  are 
ready  to  apply  themselves  to  the  scientific  ma- 
nagement of  reformatories,  where  at  present, 
under  raw  and  untrained  hands,  many  chil- 
dren take  their  first  serious  lessons  in  vice. 

— For  readers  who  prefer,  to  the  study  of 
human  nature  in  the  mass,  impressions  of 
unique  individualities  that  distinctly  detach 
themselves  from  the  mass,  the  best  pages  of 
the  January  Scribner^swQl  be  the  few  in  which 
Augustine  Birrell  describes  the  late  Frederick 
Locker,  or  Locker  Lampson.  Bir.  Locker  was 
the  possessor  of  a  delicately  accentuated  per- 
sonality, the  mere  unjarred  preservation  of 
which  is  an  appreciable  service  in  a  dull  world, 
and  Mr.  Birrell  has  done  well  in  approaching 
him  from  this  side,  rather  than  from  that  of 
bis  considerable  actual  achievement  as  a  writer 
of  accomplished  vers  de  soci^ti.  Probably  Mf . 
Locker  was  never  seen  to  greater  advantage 
than  in  his  private  library  at  Rowfant,  Sussex, 
modestly  exhibiting  his  famous  collection  of 
rare  books,  and  Mr.  Birrell  will  find  cordial  re- 
sponse to  his  sentiment,  **  Woe  worth  the  day 
when  tbey  come  to  be  scattered  over  half  the 
town.**  A  second  paper  in  the  number  invitee 
attention  to  the  pleasures  and  dangers  of  to- 
bogganing in  the  Engadine,  where  the  humble 
local  method  of  winter  locomotion  was  first 
elevated  to  the  dignity  of  a  sport  by  the  late 
Jobn  Addington  Symonds,  at  Davos,  in  1888. 
Tobogganing  now  ranks  as  an  art  among  its 
votaries,  with  rival  English  and  American 
claims  to  championship,  and  with  headquar- 
ters at  St.  Moritz,  where  the  remarkable 
**  Cresta  run  ^  is  a  feat  of  skilful  eng^eering 
in  snow  and  ice.  Reproductions  from  instan- 
taneous photographs  give  a  capital  idea  of  tbe 
headlong  speed  with  which  riders  make  the 
descent  of  this  run,  while  the  anonymous 
author  of  the  paper  brings  to  bear  on  his  sub- 
ject every  qualification  that  is  needed  to  give 
it  interest  and  importance.  In  **  Water  Ways 
from  the  Ocean  to  the  Lakes'*  Thomas  Curtis 
Clarke  makes  conservative  opposition  to  Gov- 
emment  expenditure  for  a  ship  canal  between 
the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Atlantic,  and  presses 
the  argument  that  steel  barges,  the  electric 
trolley,  and  Niagara  Falls  dynamos  wUl,  with 
the  proposed  deepening  to  nine  feet  of  the  Erie 
Canal,  afford  all  needed  conmiercial  facilities. 

—An  article  in  Harper'a  by  Prof.  T.  R. 
Lounsbury  exposes  first  the  mortifying  shab* 
biness  of  our  educational  equipment  at  Anna- 
polis, and  next  supports  the  view,  which  in 
i^y  country  but  our  own  would  not  be  open 
to  discussion  outside  tbe  limits  of  a  schoolboy 
debating  club,  that  **it  ought  to  be  the  aim 
of  the  nation  to  attract  to  the  Naval  Academy 
the  very  fiower  of  its  youth  who  are  fitted  by 
nature  and  inclination  to  enter  the  naval  ser- 
vice.** Tbe  reasons  that  make  this  last  a  prac- 
tical and  not  an  academic  question  are  the 
low  standard  of  admission  and  the  system  of 
apportionment  by  Congressional  districts.  The 
percentage  of  failures  to  pass  the  entrance  ex- 
aminations, notwithstanding  their  incredible 
disparity  with  those  of  civilian  institutions, 
and  the  percentage  of  failures  to  graduate, 
compared  likewise  with  the  percentages  of 
other  institutions,  furnish  eloquent  comment 
on  the  wisdom  of  the  low  standard  and  on 
tbe  judgment  of  Congressmen  in  selecting 
their  candidates.  Tbe  writer  of  the  article,  a 
member  of  the  Bosrd  of  Visitors  of  1895,  is, 
however,  not  blind  to  the  fact  that  Congress 
has  something  better  to  do  tban  remedy  faults 
in  tbe  training  of  youths  to  an  important  na- 
tional service.    Mr.  and  Mrs.  Pennell  are  al- 


35 


most  equally  happy  in  their  united  picturing 
and  describing  of  tbe  Metropolitan  and  Dis- 
trict Railways  of  London.  Mrs.  Pennell,  be- 
side giving  useful  stati8tic9,remember8  to  sym- 
pathize with  the  feelings  of  a  novice  in  the 
underground  labyrinth.  Her  remark  that 
*Hhe  marvel  is  that  the  artist  has  but 
just  discovered  the  underground,**  may  ex- 
cite painful  apprehensions  of  realistic  and  im- 
pressionist  canvases  on  the  walls  of  future 
exhibitions;  but  her  own  use  of  darkness, 
steam,  and  flaming  posters,  in  producing  a 
picture  of  the  lines,  is  restrained  and  effective. 
Prof.  Woodrow  Wilson  contributes  a  somewhat 
florid  historical  study  of  the  making  of  men 
and  manners  in  colonial  Virginis,  and  William 
Black  continues  the  serial  *'  Briseis.** 

—Readers  of  an  earlier  number  of  tbe  Cen- 
tury (the  June  issue)  will  this  month  be  glad  to 
be  introduced  again,  by  Thomas  A.  Janvier,  to 
the  company  of  the  F^libres,  of  whom  Mr. 
Janvier  has  the  honor  to  be  enrolled  as  one.  A 
boatload  of  Provenyal  poets,  with  their  col- 
leagues in  other  arts,  en  route  for  their  bien- 
nial festival  of  tbe  SaintewEstelle,  is  as  frankly 
joyous  an  assemblage  of  returning  exiles  as 
modem  life  can  show.  In  describing  their 
journey  from  Lyons  to  Avignon,  with  trium- 
phal stoppages  at  Tournon  and  Valence,  Mr. 
Janvier  falls  in  with  the  genial  temper  of  tbe 
occasion,  writing  in  a  vivid  style  which  proves 
fully  adequate  to  the  favorable  auspices  under 
which  it  has  been  bis  good  fortune  to  see  the 
banks  of  the  Rh6ne.  The  illustrations  to  this 
article,  by  Louis  Loeb,  have  both  character  and 
grace.  Marion  Crawford*s  '*  Kaleidoscope  of 
Rome**  is  an  article  of  'the  automatic  type  of 
production;  while  less  easily  turned  in  phrase, 
but  probably  more  profitable  reading,  is  C.  G. 
Borcbgrevink's  narrative  of  personal  adventure 
in  skirting  tbe  antarctic  continent,  where  a 
first  landing  was  made  in  January,  1895,  from 
the  Norwegian  whaler  Antarctic.  Commer- 
cially the  expedition  is  pronounced  a  failure, 
but  its  importance  in  emphasizing  the  possibili- 
ty of  extended  exploration,  through  the  agen- 
cy of  steam,  cannot  yet  be  adequately  esti-  ' 
mated.  **  Responsibility  among  the  Chinese" 
is  a  brief  p«per,  full  of  data  for  the  social  stu- 
dent who  is  striving  to  adjust  measures  of  in- 
dividual and  official  responsibility.  With  a 
system  of  locating  responsibility  for  public  and 
private  offences  that  puts  our  own  laxness  to 
the  blush,  the  Chinese  are  nevertheless  living 
witnesses  to  the  suspicion  and  barbarous  lack 
of  mutual  helpfulness  that  are  tbe  outcome  of 
a  rigid  and  unreasonable  personal  accounta- 
bility. We  commend  to  Southern  governors 
striving  to  suppress  lyncbing  by  assessing  tbe 
costs  on  the  community,  tbe  Chinese  example 
here  cited  of  holding  tbe  merchants  of  a  street 
responsible  for  a  theft  committed  upon  it. 

—Tbe  third  volume  of  the  Berlin  Pan  shows 
{>ut  little  left  to  recommend  the  periodical.  As 
an  example  of  book-making,  it  fails  utterly. 
Its  ample  proportions  (it  is  a  large  folio)  and 
thick  paper  merely  emphasize  this  failure. 
There  is  akisolutely  no  feeling  for  the  beauty  or 
the  harmony  of  tbe  page.  Various  types  are 
used,  with  apparently  no  good  reason  to 
account  for  the  discord  they  create.  An  occa- 
sional psge  is  decorated— or  disfigured,  we 
might  almost  say— by  an  enclosing  border  that 
has  no  special  relation  to  it,  and  t>etrayi  on 
the  part  of  the  designer  a  striving  after  the 
strange  or  the  mystic  or  tbe  eccentric,  rather 
than  honest  decorative  intention.  The  same 
tendency  to  be  striking  at  any  cost,  the  same 
disregard  of  beauty,  oharacterizes  manj  of  the 


36 


Tlie    ISTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1593 


foil-page  iUnstrations  as  welL  Once  it  was  the 
arti3t*s  game  in  life  to  do  something  good:  now 
it  is  to  devise  something  new,  and  his  eiforta 
here  are  undeniably  irritating.  Eyen  M.  Tou- 
louse-Lautrec, in  a  lithograph  printed  in  color, 
seems  to  be  sacrificing  the  simplicity  that  once 
was  the  charm  of  his  work,  to  the  grotesque 
and  to  the  self-conscious  cult  of  ugliness. 
Even  Khnopff  threatens  to  sink  his  individual, 
ity,  often  so  delightful,  in  the  endeavor  to  copy 
the  pre- Raphaelitee,  whom  Belgian  and  French 
writers  are  now  busy  extolling.  For  the  contri- 
butions that  have  legitimate  claim  to  artistic 
merit  you  must  turn  to  the  woodcuts  after  Mr. 
Frederick  Sandys,  first  published  in  Once  a 
Week  and  some  o(  the  other  English  illustrated 
magazines  that  saw  their  greatest  days  be- 
tween 1860  and  1870.  When  the  modem  pheno- 
menon is  not  forthcoming,  giants  of  earlier 
generations  are  pressed  into  service.  The  re- 
productions of  Besnard  also  have  their  interest, 
though  there  are  few  painters  whose  work  fares 
less  well  in  black-and-white.  A  good  piece  of 
color  printing  by  Gerhard  Munthe,  really  the 
beet  thing  in  the  number,  a  full-page  in  ehia- 
rosouro  by  Franz  Naager,  and  an  excellent 
head  by  Peter  Halm  should  also  be  mentioned. 

— The  meeting  of  the  American  Psychologi- 
cal  Association  in  Philadelphia  during  the  holi- 
days was  a  notable  OQe,  chiefly  because  it  was 
the  first  Joint  meeting  with  the  American  Na- 
turalists. The  psychologists  have  not  affiliated 
with  the  naturalists  formally,  but  their  meet- 
ing with  them  this  year  was  so  evidently  to 
their  advantage  that  it  may  well  be  their  set- 
tled policy  hereafter.  The  rapprochement 
between  psychology  and  biology  was  celebrat- 
ed in  a  special  way  on  Saturday  morning  (De- 
cember 28),  when  the  whole  half-day  was  given 
up  to  a  set  discussion  on  **  Consciousness  and 
Evolution,"  in  which  well-known  speakers  on 
both  sides  took  part.  The  size  of  the  audience 
and  the  presence  of  representatives  from  other 
societies  showed  the  general  Interest  the  topic 
aroused.  The  speakers  for  biology  were  Prof. 
Cope  of  Philadelphia  and  Prof.  Minot  of  Bos- 
ton, and  the  psychologists  on  the  programme 
were  Prof.  James  of  Harvard  and  Prof.  Bald- 
win of  Princeton.  Besides  these,  others  also 
spoke  from  the  floor,  notably  Prof.  Ladd  of 
Tale  and  Prof.  Strong  of  Chicago.  In  all  the 
speeches  the  reality  of  the  alliance  between  the 
two  branches  of  inquiry  was  abundantly  evi- 
dent, and  this  may  be  made  clearer  from  the 
mere  statement  of  two  positions  which  seemed 
to  be  assimied  by  the  speakers  generally.  In 
the  first  place,  there  seemed  to  be  no  question 
in  any  one's  mind  as  to  the  application  of  the 
evolution  doctrine  to  consciousness.  It  was 
taken  for  granted  that  genetic  psychology  sets 
a  problem  of  race  growth  in  the  same  way  that 
genetic  or  evolutionary  biology  does;  and  se- 
condly, it  was  about  equally  clear  from  the 
utterances  of  the  two  biologists  and  of  one< 
at  least  of  the  psychologists  (Prof.  Baldwin), 
that  the  two  sciences  are  coming  to  think 
that  their  historical  ground  is  common  in 
all  its  extent,  i.  e.,  that  consciousness  is  co- 
ordinate with  life.  Two  important  steps  were 
taken  by  the  psychologists  looking  toward  en- 
larged activity.  A  committee  was  appointed 
to  consider  the  matter  of  formulating  a  series 
of  mental  and  physical  tests  to  be  made  on  stu- 
dents in  the  colleges— the  idea  being  to  secure 
material  for  practical  utility  to  the  teaching 
profession,  and  also  to  reach  scientific  results 
of  a  statistical  kind.  The  other  move  was 
made  in  the  direction  of  forming  a  section  for 
philosophical  discussion.  This  latter  matter, 
however,  was  left  in  the  hands  of  the  exe- 


cutive council  for  report  at  the  next  meeting. 
Abstracts  of  the  proceedings,  together  wit^ 
the  debate  on  **  Consciousness  and  Erolntion  ** 
in  full,  are  to  appear  in  the  PByohologieal  Re- 
view  for  March. 

—The  eleventh  annual  meeting  of  the  Ame- 
rican Historical  Association  was  held  at  Wash, 
ington  on  December  36  and  27,  and  was  attend- 
ed by  many  representative  historians  and  pro- 
fessors of  history  from  all  parts  of  the  country. 
At  the  opening  session  Senator  Hoar  of  Massa- 
chusetts, President  of  the  Association,  delivered 
his  inaugural  address.  His  subject  was ' *  Popu- 
lar Discontent  with  Representative  Gk)veni- 
ment,''  and  in  the  course  of  his  remarks  he  took 
occasion  to  rebuke  the  tendency  of  some 
modem  writers  to  exaggerate  the  weak  points 
of  American  institutions  and  to  depreciate  the 
characters  and  services  of  the  great  men  of  the 
past.  At  the  second  session,  on  the  morning 
of  the  27th,  many  papers  were  read  upon  Ame- 
rican colonial  and  political  history,  among 
them  a  scholarly  monograph  by  Prof.  W.  H. 
Siebert  of  the  Ohio  State  University,  entitled 
*' Light  on  the  Underground  Railway.*'  The 
afternoon  session  was  devoted  to  papers  on 
European  history,  and  the  evening  session  to 
papers  of  generid  interest.  Among  the  latter 
may  be  selected  for  special  comm«>ndation  the 
paper  by  Dr.  Frederic  Bancroft  of  Columbia 
College,  on  "The  French  in  Mexico,  and  the 
Monroe  Doctrine.**  The  fact  that  Seward 
made  no  mention  at  all  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
during  his  correspondence  with  the  French 
Gk)vemment  was  clearly  proved,  and  Dr.  Ban- 
croft evoked  the  only  round  of  applause  dur- 
ing  the  evening  by  his  incidental  remark  that 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  better  understood  in 
the  days  of  Seward  than  it  is  now.  After  the 
reading  of  the  papers  some  important  resolu 
tions,  having  for  their  aim  the  promotion  and 
encouragement  of  historical  work,  were  sub- 
mitted to  the  members  present  by  the  Execu- 
tive Council  and  unanimously  adopted.  It  was 
resolved  to  institute  an  Historical  Manuscripts 
Commission  for  the  preparation  or  supervision 
of  a  calendar  of  original  manuscripts  and  re- 
cords of  national  interest  relating  to  the  co- 
lonial  and  later  history  of  the  United  States. 
It  was  voted  to  offer  a  prize  of  $100  for  the  best 
monograph,  based  upon  original  investigation 
in  history,  submitted  to  the  Council  during  the 
coming  year,  university  dissertations  excluded, 
and  to  print  the  five  or  six  monographs  thus 
submitted  if  of. an  approved  degree  of  excel- 
lence. It  was  also  voted  to  establish  a  gold 
prize-medal  of  the  valae  of  $100,  to  be  awarded 
at  suitable  intervals  for  the  best  work  of  re- 
search  in  history  published  in  this  country 
through  the  ordinary  channels  of  publication. 
The  proceedings  closed  with  the  election  of  Dr. 
Richard  S.  Storrs  of  Brooklyn  as  President  of 
the  Association  for  the  ensuing  year ;  of  Dr. 
James  Scbouler  of  Boston  and  of  Prof.  (George 
P.  Fisher  of  Yale  as  Vice-Presidents ;  of  Frot, 
Herbert  B.  Adams  of  Johns  Hopkins  Uni- 
versity as  Secretary ;  of  Dr.  Clarence  W. 
Bo  wen  of  New  York  as  Treasurer;  and  of 
Prof.  George  B.  Adams  of  Yale,  Dr.  G.  Brown 
Qoode  of  Washington,  Prof.-  H.  Morse  Ste- 
phens of  Cornell,  and  Prof.  F.  J.  Turner  of  the 
University  of  Wisconsin,  as  members  of  the 
Executive  Council.  It  was  resolved  to  hold 
the  next  meeting  of  the  Association  in  New 
York  on  December  ^  to  81, 1896.  Advantage 
was  taken  of  the  meeting  of  the  Association  to 
call  together  the  guarantors  of  the  new  Ams' 
rican  Historical  Review^  when  entire  satisfac- 
tion was  expressed  with  the  work  already 
done,  and  the  former  board  of  editors  was  re- 


elected.  As  upon  previous  occasions,  the 
social  side  of  the  meeting  was  most  successful. 
The  Cosmos  Club  of  Washington  extended  the 
privileges  of  membership  to  the  visitors,  and 
much  pleasant  intercourse  took  place  within 
its  hospitable  walls  between  the  historical 
students  from  all  parts  of  the  United  States 
who  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  present  at  the 
eleventh  annual  meeting  of  the  American  His- 
torical Association. 

—An  almost  unexampled  sight  in  literature, 
and  surely  one  of  the  strangest  and  saddest, 
is  the  publication  of  the  posthumous  works 
of  a  living  man.  This  is  being  shown  to  the 
world  by  Naumann,  the  Leipzig  publisher,  who 
has  just  sent  out  the  first  two  volumes  of  the 
works  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche,  *8chriften  und 
Einwftrfe  (1869-1878).*  The  tragic  story  of 
Nietzsche*s  long  agony  has  been  told  lately  by 
M.  T^odor  de  Wyzewa  in  the  Temps.  Seven 
years  ago  he  began  to  be  affected  by  a  general 
paralysis.  He  was  at  first  sent  to  a  maison  de 
sanU^  but  afterward  was  taken  back  to  his 
paternal  home,  where  he  has  been  cared  for  by 
his  mother  and  sister.  Little  by  little  bis  mind 
and  even  his  reason  have  faded  out,  and  he  has 
sunk  beneath  the  level  of  the  lower  animals. 
Until  lately,  although  he  had  become  dumb 
and  all  thought  was  extinct  in  him,  still  he  was 
able  to  walk  about,  and  to  sit  at  table,  and 
when  his  name  was  spoken  he  would  sometimes 
look  up.  Now  the  last  ray  of  intelligence  is 
gone,  and  what  was  once  one  of  the  keenest 
and  strongest  philosophic  minds  of  our  day  is 
merum.  silentium,  A  group  of  his  admirers 
and  disciples  have  gathered  in  the  little  city 
where  he  still  breathes,  and  are  devoting  them- 
selves to  the  pious  work  of  maintaioing  and 
spreading  abroad  his  fame.  Under  the  direc- 
tion of  his  sister,  Mrs.  Elisabeth  Foerster,  they 
have  founded  at  Naumburg  a  sort  of  academy, 
or  institute,  the  Archives-Nietzsche,  where  they 
occupy  themselves  in  collecting,  arranging, 
and  publishing  all  the  papers  left  by  their  un- 
happy master;  in  watching  o^r  the  republi- 
cation of  his  books;  and  in  gathering  materials 
for  a  complete  and  definitive  biography  of  him. 
The  two  volumes  the  title  of  which  has  just 
been  g^ven  are  the  first  fruits  of  their  work- 
two  great  volumes  of  five  hundred  pages  each, 
where  are  to  be  found  gathered  together  and 
put  in  chronological  order  fragments  of  unfi- 
nished works,  sketches,  and  notes  that  date 
from  the  first  years  of  the  sojourn  of  Nietzsche 
at  the  University  of  B&le.  It  is  a  pious  work, 
certainly,  that  these  ardent  disciples  are  en- 
gaged in,  and  a  pathetic  work— none  the  less 
pathetic,  perhaps,  when  one  refiects  how  much 
wood  and  hay  and  stubble  they  must  be 
gathering  up  together  with  the  grains  of 
Nietz8che*s  gold. 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON. 

The  Novels^  Travels,  Essays,  and  Poems  of 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson.  Thistle  Edition.  In 
sixteen  volumes.  New  York:  Scribners.  1895. 
Thz  appearance  of  two  sumptuous  editions  of 
Stevenson*s  collected  works  in  a  single  year 
brings  up  the  inevitable  inqub*y.  How  many  of 
these  volumes  will  live  ?  To  "  appreciate,**  as 
the  phrase  goes  now,  a  writer  of  one^sown  time 
is  undoubtedly,  in  most  cases,  to  store  up  mer- 
riment for  the  time  to  come.  Still,  the  ques- 
tion is  pertinacious  and  may  reckon  on  getting 
its  answers,  hit  or  miss.  Without  addressing 
ourselves  to  it  directly,  we  shall  perhaps  do 
well,  in  a  rapid  review  of  some  points  in  Ste- 
venson's literary  activity,  to  keep  it  in  mind 


Jan.  9,  1896] 


Tlie   IN'ation, 


87 


MattMidying  inflaenoe.  Some  such  check  is 
DMctfnl,  apfwrently,  in  difcnniiig  Steventon, 
not  00I7  becsQse  he  it  In  himself  so  attimctiye 
m  a  writer  and  as  a  man,  but  because  every^ 
bodj  is  io  8Tiitefnl  to  him  for  leading  his  gene- 
ration away  from  the  aridities  of  **  realism." 
Admiration  and  gratitude  are  his  just  due,  but 
tb«7  haye  of  late  been  uttered  in  a  somewhat 
dithTimmbic  measure. 

In  two  characters  has  Steyenson  endeared 
fiioself  to  his  contemporaries— as  a  romancer 
and  {9U  venia  vtrbi)  as  an  egotist.  In  his  rdle 
of  amiable  egotist  (not  Montaigne  egotist,  how. 
erer,  if  the  reader  pleases)  he  has  giye n  us  an 
account  of  a  matter  closelj  connected  with  the 
question  of  his  literary  permanence— we  refer 
to  the  formation  of  his  style.  From  this  ac- 
count, frank  with  something  of  a  doctrinaire*8 
candor,  we  learn  that  this  artful  and  exquisite 
diction,  which  some  do  not  scruple  to  say  has 
evoked  new  harmonies  from  our  language,  was 
in  inception  and  elaboration  essentially  book- 
ish. It  was  formed  by  a  long  process  of  tenta- 
tiye  imitations,  each  abandoned  when  it  had 
Ted  its  turn,  but  all,  of  course,  leaving  their 
I  on  the  finished  product.  We  learn,  also, 
from  later  and  casual  utterances,  that  ezpres 
sioo  remained  to  the  last  with  Sterenson  the 
conscious,  almost  the  self-conscious,  practice 
of  a  complicated  handicraft.  To  the  last  he 
felt  keen  pleasure  in  the  clever  collocation  of 
syllables,  in  point,  in  the  quaint  or  unusual 
turning  of  a  phrase,  in  felicitous  jingle  (it  is  his 
own  word,  so  that  we  need  not  ask  pardon  for 
It).  **  I  am  discontented  with  '  The  Ebb  Tide,'  ** 
be  wrote  to  Mr.  Colvin,  *'  there  seems  such  a  veil 
of  words  over  it;  and  I  like  more  and  more 
naked  writing;  and  yet  sometimfs  one  has  a 
longing  for  full  oolor  and  there  comes  the  veil 
again.*'  In  judging  this  whole  matter  it  would 
be  stupid  not  to  reckon  with  the  Stevensonian 
Irony;  it  would  be  doubly  stupid  to  forget  that 
the  most  mannered  of  styles  may  be  or  may 
Inve  become  the  natural  vehicle  for  the  ex 
prearion  of  a  quaint  but  unaffected  nature. 
Bot,  when  all  deductions  have  been  made  on 
these  heads,  thus  much  remains  indubitable: 
the  style  of  Stevenson  was  as  truly  a  mqde 
style  as  the  style  of  Spenser,  end  It  carries,  in 
many  of  his  workv,  as  distinct  characters  of  its 
making.  A»S0Mr  has  odious  connotations,  and 
besides  it  says  more  than  one  can  possibly 
mean;  but,  if  some  such  term  could  be  so  sub- 
limated as  to  lose  its  drossy  and  offensive 
qualities,  it  might  serve  us  here.  Better,  per- 
haps,  10  take  refuge  in  the  delicate  reticence 
of  a  phrase  of  Mr.  Cohin's— **a  slender,  boyish 
presence,  with  a  graceful,  somewhat  fantastic 
bearing,  and  a  singular  power  and  attraction 
Io  the  eyes  and  smile.  **  Written  of  Stevenson's 
personal  appearance  in  youth,  the  words  admit 
of  easy  traasferenoe  to  the  style  of  almost 
•vary thing  of   his  that  preceded  ^Treasure 


Food  as  we  may  be  of  the  travels  and  essays 
that  Stevenson  wrote  before  he  reached  this 
turning-point  in  1^  career,  we  are  forced  to 
admit  that  they  are  'prentioe-work  after  all. 
The  three  American  volumes,  *  The  Amateur 
Soilgrant,*  'Across  the  Plains,*  and  *  The  SU- 
vsrado  Squatters,'  are  interesting  as  auto- 
biograpfay,  but  the  most  ardent  worshipper  of 
Stevenson  will  hardly  claim  a  place  for  them 
In  literature.  'The  Inland  Voyage*  (1878), 
with  all  Its  beauties,  is  manifestly  labored,  and 
baa  too  mnoh  immature  moraliaiog  about  no- 
thing In  particular.  *The  Travels  with  a 
Donkey*  (1879)  has  bsen  descritted  as  ''  charm- 
logly  vagabondlsh  **;  but  vagabonds  do  not 
post  up  their  note-books  at  each  day*s  end. 
"For  my  part,**  says  the  donkey's  master,  ** I 


^vel  not  to  go  anywhere,  but  to  go.  I  travel 
for  travel's  sake.  The  great  affair  is  to  move; 
to  feel  the  needs  and  hitches  of  our  life  more 
nearly,  to  come  down  off  this  feather-bed  of 
civilization  and  find  the  globe  granite  under 
foot  and  strewn  with  cutting  flints."  But  the 
landlady  at  Bouchet  knew  better,  for  she 
sketched  what  the  traveller  was  to  put  into 
his  book  when  he  got  home:  "  Whether  people 
harvest  or  not  In  such  or  such  a  place;  If  there 
were  foreets;  studies  of  manners;  what,  for 
example,  I  and  the  master  of  the  house  say  to 
you ;  the  beauties  of  Nature,  and  all  that."  A 
keen-eyed  hostess,  who  understood  the  young 
wrjter  a  thought  better,  perhaps,  than  he  un- 
derstood himself. 

*  Virginibus  Puerisque '  (1874-1879)  is  clever 
to  distraction,  but  self-conscious  altogether. 
The  advocatua  juvtentutU  may  command,  for  a 
time,  the  delighted  attention  of  all  who  are  not 
pastflve^md  twenty,  whether  in  fact  or  heart; 
but,  without  upholding  the  old  paradox  that 
"youth  can  be  comely  but  by  pardon,"  we 
must  admit,  however  reluctantly,  that  the 
author  was  right  in  his  judgment  of  these 
papers.  The  point  of  view  is  maintained  with 
some  effort ;  the  interest  Is  ephemeral ;  the 
style  is  completely  enjoyable  by  those  only 
who  have  a  fancy  for  the  smell  of  the  lamp. 
Of  similarly  transient  interest  are  the  early 
critical  and  biographical  essays  that  make  up 
a  large  part  of  the  volume  of  *  Familiar  Por- 
traits.' Stevenson  was  both  too  impulsive  and 
too  ethical  to  be  a  great  critic,  nor  had  he  in 
any  degree  the  judicial  temper.  Besides,  all 
criticism  except  the  greatest  Is  a  very  transi- 
tory form  of  writing. 

If  these  early  works  Uve,  it  must  be  by  virtue 
of  the  amiable  personality  which  they  reveal, 
and  in  this  regard  they  have  a  powerful  rival 
in  the  familiar  letters.  These,  so  far  as  they 
have  been  published,  promise  to  express  that 
personality  without  the  veil  of  lamp-haze— 
perfumed  or  not— which  shrouds  (however 
faintly)  the  essays  and  travels. 

Is  it  not  significant  that,  In  Stevenson's  last 
period,  when  be  was  fully  committed  to  the 
exercise  of  his  genius  in  its  truest  Activity,  he 
found  sketches  of  travel  impossible?  His 
fridnds  ftiad  hoped,  we  are  told,  for  such  an  ac- 
count of  what  they  called  his  Odyssey  in  Poly- 
nesia as  should  reproduce.  In  terms  of  his 
greater  maturity,  the  charm  of  the  *  Inland 
Voyage.'  But  the  *  South  Sea  Letters' turned 
out  mere  journalism,  with  which  neither  he 
nor  they  were  contented.  Yet  out  of  this  hope- 
lees  struggle  to  write  in  a  manner  long  outlived 
and  hardly  worth  recovering,  came  of  a  sud 
den  and  almost  without  refiection  what  Is,  in 
spite  of  one  or  two  obvious  defects,  almost  as 
good  a  story  as  ever  was  written—*  The  Beach 
of  Falesd.'  It  is  not  hard  to  see  what  this 
means.  Sketch-book  travels  were  mere  train- 
ing. The  businees  of  Stevenson's  life  was  ro- 
mance. And  when  he  was  once  engaged  in  the 
business  of  his  life,  he  could  not  turn  back  and 
play  the  clever  apprentice.  This  was  as  It 
should  have  been,  and  nothing  is  made  for  the 
honor  of  a  great  genius  by  insisting  on  the 
eternal  quality  of  his  juvenile  attempts. 

As  the  '  Travels'  and  *  Virginibus  Puerisque' 
were  but  essays  of  an  apprentice,  so  also  of  the 
tales  written  in  this  preparatory  time— the  col- 
lection caUed '  The  New  Arabian  Nights*  (1878), 
*The  PaviUon  on  the  Links'  (1880),  and  'The 
Story  of  a  Lie'  (1879).  In  'The  New  Arabian 
Nights'  Stevenson  plays  with  incidents  and 
characters  as  in  'Virginibus  Puerisque*  and 
the  *  Travels '  he  played  with  style  and  moral 
reflections  and  scenery.  One  does  not  feel  that 
the  story  is  the  thing— it  is  rather  the  dever- 


nesB  of  the  story  that  is  the  thing;  and,  though 
the  cleverness  is  unsurpassable,  it  never  rises 
into  imagination.  The  characters,  with  one  or 
perhaps  two  exceptions,are  marionettee— as  Ste- 
venson himself  felt  them  to  be— and  the  scenery 
Is  bizarre.  We  are  dealing  with  the  sportive 
athletics  of  a  great  romantic  talent  as  yet  unde- 
veloped. 'The  Pavilion  on  the  Links*  comes 
nearer  to  serious  art,  especially  in  the  portion 
that  precedes  the  arrival  of  the  CaHfonaTi^ 
but  the  motive  of  the  tale  is  strained  and  the 
denouement  lU-maoaged.  As  for  *  The  Story  of 
a  Lie,'  it  is  a  sketch  of  no  great  consequence, 
written  in  a  style  as  nearly  faultless  as  is  vouch- 
safed to  man,  but  with  a  rather  clumsHy  pre- 
cipitated catastrophe.  The  provincial  editor 
who  is  forced  into  the  part  of  deu9  ex  maehina 
reminds  onf»,  by  his  mechanical  fashion  of  play- 
ing it,  of  the  Scotch  uncle  in  'The  Wrecker,* 
who  dies  in  the  nick  of  time,  and  of  the  oppor- 
tune tmt  unaccountable  blackamoor  in  *The 
Merry  Men.'  We  are  not  sure  that  the  the- 
atrical Attwood  in  'The  Ebb  Tide'  has  not  as- 
sociations with  the  same  troop  of  amateurs, 
though  his  characterization  shows  aU  the  power 
of  Stevenson's  later  manner.  The  tiresome 
Seoundra  Dass  hi  *The  Master  of  Ballantrae' 
is  certainly  a  runaway  from  the  same  com- 
pany. 

In  '  Treasure  Island,'  then,  Stevenson  had  at 
last  got  into  the  true  path  of  his  genius,  and 
no  critic  can  perceive  this  more  clearly  than 
he  perceived  It  himself.  Here  for  the  first 
time  his  style  ceased  to  bear  the  marks  of  ar- 
tificiality, gaining  enormously  in  vigor  with- 
out losing  anything  of  its  subtle  charm.  Here 
for  the  first  time  he  showed  that  he  could 
treat  the  incldeots  of  a  story  seriously— other- 
wise,  that  is  to  say,  than  as  the  squibs  and 
fireworks  of  a  pretty  wit.  Nothing  could  have 
been  more  fortpnate  than  the  circumstances 
under  which  *  Treasure  Island'  was  produced. 
It  was  meant  for  boys,  and  the  hero,  who 
speaks  in  the  first  person,  is  himself  a  boy. 
Now  boys  are  singularly  and  even  unreasona- 
bly intolerant  of  posturing  or  "manner.*' 
Without,  affectation  themselves,  they  are 
satanically  keen  In  detecting  It  in  others. 
Even  fitting  cleverness,  unless  '*  craftily  quail- 
fled,"  appears  to  them,  in  their  sturdy  barbar- 
ism, a  highly  suspicious  trait,  and  verbal  cle- 
vemess  is  downright  unbearable.  A  whole- 
some control  was  thus  exercised  over  the  style 
of  the  romance.  Again,  the  tale  had  to  de- 
pend for  its  main  interest  on  bare  incident, 
and  this  requisite  not  only  acted  salutarily  on 
the  style,  but  kept  down  Stevenson's  innate 
tendency  to  moralizing  and  to  playing  with 
character  delineation.  And,  flually,  no  freak- 
ishness  of  incident  was  admissible.  Verisimi- 
litude is  rigorously  demanded  by  a  boy— above 
all  in  such  weighty  concerns  as  pirates  and 
bidden  treasure.  These  subjects  are  not  to  be 
handled  with  levity  ;  there  must  be  no  suspi- 
cion  of  a  wink  at  the  audience.  All  this  Ste- 
venson knew  as  well  as  anybody,  for  he  com- 
prehended a  boy's  nature  thoroughly  ;*indeed, 
in  some  things  he  never  ceased  to  be  a  boy 
himself,  albeit  a  boy  "with  a  gleeful  and 
somewhat  fantastic  bearing.*'  Besides,  there 
was  his  dramatic  sense— the  instinct  of  putting 
himself  in  the  place  of  his  characters.  There 
was  also  the  presence  of  the  elder  Stevenson, 
who  made  the  tale  so  real  that  be  insisted  on 
drawing  up  the  Inventory  of  Bones's  estate  in 
the  sea-chest— a  very  salutary  presence  in- 
deed. 

For  all  these  reasons  the  book  wrote  itself 
easily— "it  flowed  from  me  like  small  talk"; 
and,  looking  back  on  his  exploit  after  twenty 
years,  the  author  hardly  perceived  that  the 


38 


Tlie   !N"atiorL. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1593 


question  of  stjle  bad  entered  into  its  composi- 
tion. Henceforward,  apparently,  the  coast 
was  clear.  That  exquisite  diction,  so  easily 
beguiled  into  airy  quaintness  when  the  author 
•chose  to  write  about  trifles,  that  almost  un- 
•canny  skill  in  the  technique  of  narration  which 
had  often  betrayed  him  into  mere  fantasia,  had 
only  to  be  kept  under  the  control  imposed  by 
the  requirements  of  a  long  story.  Almost  the 
perfection  of  art  in  both  respects  was  reached 
in  *  Kidnapped '  (1886).  The  tale  is  nearly  as 
good  as  a  tale  can  be,  and  the  style  seems  so 
inevitable  that  we  are  staggered  to  remember 
what  years  of  elaborating  toil  it  had  cost. 
Still,  the  time  between  'Treasure  Island '  and 
*  Kidnapped'  was  a  period  of  uncertainty. 
'Prince  Otto*  (1885),  despite  its  inUngible 
charm,  could  not  be  taken  seriously.  It  re- 
Tert<*d  to  the  admirable  fooling  of  *  The  New 
Arabian  Nights,'  nor  is  the  mention  of  Prince 
Florizel  of  Bohemia  without  significance. 
Stevenson  himself  says  that  the  book  was 
"half  play."  'The  Dynamiter*  (1883)  is  a 
frank  return  to  extravaganza.  'The  Black 
Arrow'  (1888)  is  mere  task- work,  Stevenson's 
one  flat  failure:  the  trouble  was  that  he  had 
no  real  comprehension  or  enjoyment  of  the 
period  with  wbich  the  book  deals. 

♦Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,'  despite  the  uni- 
fying eflTect  of  its  strong  and  serious  art,  bears 
unmistakable  testimony  to  what  we  have 
vaguely  called  the  uncertainty  of  this  middle 
period.  The  book  is  at  once  an  apologue,  a 
wonder-story,  and  a  genuine  romantic  fiction  of 
a  high  type.  Fables  are  out  of  fashion,  and  we 
should  prefer,  therefore,  to  call  'Dr.  Jekyll  * 
a  psychological  fiction;  but  this  would  be  mere 
juggling  with  names.  '  Markheim  '  is  openly 
an  apologue,  and  '  Dr.  Jekyll '  carries  as  pa- 
tent and  intentional  a  moral  as  *  Markheim.' 
The  curiously  comparative  might  even  con- 
struct a  form  .of  proportion  with  the  nine- 
teenth century  and  'Dr.  Jekyll'  on  one  side 
and  on  the  other  the  eighteenth  century  and 
'  The  Vision  of  Mirzah.'  The  plot  itself  com- 
bines extravaganza  with  serious  romance.  In 
those  parts  in  which  the  work  is  genuine  and 
impressive,  '  Dr.  Jekyll '  marks  a  high  state  of 
Stevenson's  romantic  power.  The  weak  point, 
at  once  detected  by  the  critics,  is  a  mere  bit 
of  fantastic  detail,  worked  into  the  inmost 
structure  of  the  fiction.  We  refer  to  the  che- 
mical hocus-pocus— a  desperate  expedient,  not 
quite  consistently  carried  out.  The  fact  is,  the 
author  was  in  diflSculties  much  like  those 
which  beset  him  in  'The  Beach  of  Falead.'  For 
the  latter  he  had  conceived,  in  a  flash,  while 
at  work  in  the  Samoan  bush,  a  plot  requir- 
ing a  large  concession  to  the  supernatural, 
but  the  reality  of  his  characters  and  the  verity 
of  the  romantic  principles  that  he  wished  to 
follow  forbade  his  cutting  the  knot  of  the 
story  in  this  fashion.  After  some  delay  and  a 
moment  of  real  despair,  he  hit  upon  a  simple 
device.  He  kept  the  supernatural,  but  re- 
duced it  to  a  complicated  course  of  knavish 
trickery  on  the  part  of  the  villain  of  the  piece. 
This  was  proK>ably  well,  for  the  genuine  super- 
natural would  be  intolerable  in  'The  Beach,' 
and,  in  any  case,  the  ^lan  of  the  narrative 
hurries  one  over  the  dangerous  place.  In 
'Dr.  Jekyll,'  however,  no  such  device  was 
possible.  The  transformation  had  to  be  a  fact; 
and  accordingly  the  impossible  was  dared.  The 
trick  of  "transcendental  medicine*'  was  per- 
haps  the  only  trick  that  would  do  the  business, 
but  it  was  a  poor  trick.  Jekyll  changing  into 
Hyde  in  his  sleep, he  knows  not  how,  is  terrific; 
Jekyll  taking  the  draught  is  not  even  impress- 
ive. One  wishes  that  the  means  of  the  trans- 
formation  had  l>e^  left  unexplained.  But  this 


was  not  Stevenson's  way.  He  is  habitually 
complaisant  to  the  reader  who  "wants  to 
know  " — witness  the  epilogue  to  '  Prince  Octo,' 
in  which  the  history  of  the  characters  is  drain- 
ed to  the  ^ery  tea- dregs.  In  spite  of  this  single 
weakness,  however,  *Dr.  Jekyll '  remains  un- 
surpassed  in  its  kind.  Its  popularity  is  un- 
equivocal, but  we  doubt  if  most  readers  care 
much  for  the  chemicals. 

With  the  appearance  of  *  Kidnapped '  the 
uncertain  time  was  over.  The  history  of  Ste- 
venson's activity  between  1881  and  1886  had 
made  it  clear  that  his  permanent  contribution 
to  literature  was  not  to  be  criticism,  or  vaga- 
bondiziog,  or  fantasias  in  style  or  in  narration 
—these  were  but  the  small  talk  of  his  genius — 
but  serious  romantic  fiction  of  a  high  ioiagina- 
tive  type.  His  own  views,  as  expressed  in  "  A 
Gossip  on  Romance  "  and  "  A  Humble  Remon- 
strance," form  a  bound  Romantic  creed,  and 
he  brought  to  his  task  a  style  which  no  Bng. 
li»h  novelist  has  surpassed.  It  is  superfluons 
to  insist  on  the  merits  of  *  Kidnapped.'  With  its 
sequel  or  second  part,  '  David  Balfour '  (1898), 
it  is  undoubtedly  Stevenson's  best  book,  and 
much  of  his  inferior  work  will  "live  with  the 
eternity  of  its  fame."  The  second  part  suffers 
a  little  from  the  usual  malady  of  continua- 
tioDS,  but  it  has  its  own  peculiar  merits,  too. 
The  author,  who  had  for  the  most  part  a  pret- 
ty correct  idea  of  the  comparative  excellence 
of  his  writings,  wrote,  not  long  before  he  died: 
"  I  believe  the  two  together  make  up  much  the 
best  of  my  work  and  perhaps  of  what  is  in 
me."  The  temptation  to  compare  the  adven- 
tures of  David  with  some  of  the  Waverley 
Novels  is  hard  to  resist;  tnit  the  utility  of  such 
a  comparison  is  not  apparent.  80  far  as  it  has 
been  attempted,  the  result  seems  to  be  merely 
that  Stevenson  reached  a  kind  of  perfection  in 
detail  for  which  Scott  never  strove,  and  that) 
in  addition,  some  scenes  and  characters  in  Ste- 
venson are  not  unworthy  of  the  great  master, 
but  that  in  those  indefinable  qualities  which 
we  vaguely  suggest  by  the  words  "breadth" 
and  "greatness"  Scott  still  stands  without  a 
rival.  The  fact  is,  the  hour  for  such  a  parallel 
has  not  yet  come.  By  the  middle  of  the  next 
century,  men  may  perhaps  look  at  both  writers 
from  a  sufiScient  distance  of  time  to  measure 
their  comparative  eminence.  At  present, 
Scott's  supremacy  in  romantic  fiction  appears 
to  be  almost  as  unassailable  as  Shakspere's  su- 
premacy in  dramatic  poetry.  It  is  not  suffi- 
cient, however,  to  observe  that  Stevenson  with- 
holds his  hand  from  great  historical  charac- 
ters. This  seems  to  be  a  rather  artificial  test 
of  power,  nor  is  it  certain  that  Stevenson 
would  not  have  succeeded  as  well  with  such 
characters  as  with  his  David  or  his  Alan  Breck, 
to  say  nothing  of  Prestongrange  or  Cluny 
Macpherson.  True,  his  work  fell  off  after  the 
appearance  of  'Kidnapped';  but  this,  too,  is 
not  decisive  of  what  he  might  have  done  if  he 
had  lived.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that '  Da- 
vid Balfour '  and  *  The  Beach  of  Fales4,'  which 
are  hardly  inferior  to  *•  Kidnapped,'  were  writ- 
ten shortly  before  his  death,  and  that  he  left 
behind  him  the  unfinished  '  Weir  of  Hermis 
ton,'  which  Mr.  Colvin  rates  very  highly. 

The  stories  that  followed  '  Kidnapped '  and 
preceded  '  David  Balfour  '  did  undeniably 
show  some  falling  off.  '  The  Master  of  Bal- 
lantrae '  is  not  uniformly  good.  Up  to  the 
moment  when  the  old  lord  is  wakened  by  Mac- 
kellar  to  hear  the  news  of  the  duel,  the  tale  is 
not  surpassed  in  power  by  any  other  of  Ste- 
venson's romances.  But  this  duel  is  the  cli- 
max  of  the  tale.  The  resuscitation  at  the  end 
is  a  false  climax.  The  Master  has  returned 
from  parts  unlpiQwn  too  often— 90  often  a8  tQ 


suggest  trivial  comparisons— and,  at  the  end, 
in  spite  of  the  art  with  which  the  closing  scene 
is  written,  the  thought  intrudes  itself  that, 
after  all,  the  chief  point  is  the  perversity  of 
the  Master,  who  is  determined  to  come  back 
to  his  reluctant  family,  even  from  the  grave. 
The  whole  of  this  second  part  is  a  recurrence 
to  the  fantastic.  The  Master  working  as  a 
botcher  reminds  one  of  Prince  Florizel  behind 
the  counter  of  the  cigar-divan,  and  there  are 
other  points  of  contact  between  these  eeseif- 
tially  incongruous  characters.  The  story  should 
have  ended  with  the  duel,  even  if  it  had  re- 
mained a  frag^ment.  In  this  way  we  should 
alK)  have  been  rid  of  Secundra  Dass,  about 
whose  genuineness  we  have  our  suspicions; 
certainly  he  was  but  an  amateur  at  the  fakir's 
trick  of  burying  a  man  alive. 

'The  Wrecker'  0891)  and  'The  Ebb  Tidei 
(1893)  are  closely  associated,  not  only  by  the 
cooperation  of  Mr.  Lloyd  Osbourne  in  both, 
but  by  certain  painful  resemblances.  Both  are 
powerfully  interesting,  but  both  give  the  im- 
pression of  misapplied  strength.  *  The  Wreck- 
er'  is  by  no  means  a  unit,  and  the  reader  feels 
some  indignation  at  being  forced  to  sympa- 
thize with  the  crew  of  murderers  who  are  the 
heroes  of  the  main  adventure.  Carthew,  with 
all  he  had  on  his  conscience,  need  not  have 
selected  the  commercial  Topelius  for  special 
favor.  As  for  •  The  Ebb  Tide,'  it  is  just  what 
Stevenson  once  caUed  it — "a  rancid  yam," 
with  perhaps  the  worst  ending  that  ever  a 
story  had. 

Of  the  rest  of  Stevenson's  works  we  need 
not  speak.  His  verses  entitle  him  to  rank 
among  the  mindr  poets;  the  Samoan  book,  the 
*  Memoir  of  Fleeming  Jeokin,'  and  the  plays 
written  with  Mr.  Henley  consumed  precious 
time  which  posterity  will  begrudge.  "I  am 
not  a  novelist  alone,"  said  Stevenson  in  his 
account  of  the  writing  of  '  Treasure  Island.* 
"  But  I  am  well  aware  that  my  paymaster,  the 
great  public,  regards  what  else  I  have  written 
with  indifference,  if  not  aversion."  The  lan- 
guage was  too  strong,  but  it  had  its  basis  of 
truth.  It  was  as  a  novelist  (or  romancer)  alone 
that  his  really  great  work  was  done,  and  it 
was  in  that  capacity  that  the  world  was  look- 
ing  eagerly  for  still  greater  works  from  bis 
pen  when  his  sudden  death  came  as  a  calamity 
to  our  letters  and  a  personal  loss  to  thousands 
who  knew  the  man  only  in  his  books. 

The  present  edition  consists  of  sixteen  vol- 
umes—eleven for  the  novels  and  tales,  four  for 
the  essays,  and  one  for  the  poems  :  '  Samoa,' 
'  Fleeming  Jenkin,'  and  the  dramas  are  exclud- 
ed. In  mechanical  execution  it  is  a  model  to 
publishers.  The  volumes  are  light  and  easy  to 
hold;  the  paper  is  fine,  dead- white,  and  opaque; 
the  typography  (by  De  Vinne)  is  admirable, 
the  types  being  well  designed  and  thick  enough 
in  their  lines  to  give  an  effect  of  blackness  and 
distinctness  very  agreeable  to  tired  eyes.  E^ch 
volume  has  a  frontispiece  in  photog^vure 
or  etching.  That  prefixed  to  vol.  xiii.  is  a 
copy  of  an  excellent  photograph  of  the  author 
by  Notman.  Of  the  others,  Mr.  Pyle's  illustra- 
tion  of  Alan  Brock's  defence  of  the  cabin  is 
particularly  spirited.  We  oould  wish  that  the 
concluding  volume  contained  a  list  of  the  origi- 
nal dates  of  publication,  since  these  are  not^ 
as  in  the  Edinburgh  edition,  given  at  the 
head  of  each  separate  work.  The  cloth  bmd- 
ing  is  rather  profusely  gilded,  but  that  is  a 
detail  easily  remedied.  The  edition  is  sold 
only  by  subscription,  and  the  price  is  remark- 
ably low. 


Jan.  9,  1896] 


The   INTation. 


39 


LORD  ACTON. 

A  Lecture  on  the  Study  of  Hittort/^  delivered 
At  Cambridge  June  11^  1895.  By  Lord  Ac- 
too,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.,  Regias  Professor  of  Mo- 
dem  History.    MacoiillMi.    Pp.  143. 

Thx  newly  appointed  Regius  ProfesMr  of  Mo- 
daro  History  in  the  University  of  Cambridge  is 
one  of  the  most  interesting  figures  in  English 
society.  The  old  Catholic  gentry  of  England 
have  honorable  and  pathetic  traditions  of  loy- 
alty to  a  lost  cause  which  give  them  a  place 
apart  from  the  humdrum  conformities  of 
neighboring  squires;  and  from  such  a  family 
in  Shropshire  is  Lord  Acton  descended.  When 
the  time  came,  these  Catholic  gentry  were 
faithful,  from  interest  and  sentimenti  to  that 
other  lost  cause,  the  Stuart  monarchy;  and  it 
was  from  Charles  I.  that  an  ancestor  of  Lord 
Acton  received  his  baronetcy.  And  to  these 
Camily  memories  have  been  added  others 
equally  remote  from  the  conmionplacd.  His 
grandfather  was  prime  minister  and  com- 
maoder-in  chief  of  the  forces  of  Naples  under 
the  Booapartes;  his  father  married  the  heiress 
of  that  Duke  of  Dalberg  who  throve  on  the 
favor  of  the  first  Napoleon^  acted  as  his  go- 
between  with  the  court  of  Vienna,  and  aban- 
doQ0d  him  with  the  turn  of  the  tide;  his  cou- 
sins  have  been  generals  and  ministers,  or  have 
married  generals  and  ministers,  for  the  last 
balf-eentnry  of  Italian  history. 

Out  of  such  a  family  one  might  look  either 
for  a  d/vot  or  a  diplomat.  That  Lord  Acton 
Is  neither,  must  be  ascribed  to  the  fortunate 
chance  or  wise  choice  which  brought  him  in 
his  early  years  under  the  inflaence  and  into 
the  companionship  of  Dr.  Ddllinger,  then  at  the 
height  of  his  reputation  at  Munich.  Ddlllng. 
er's  teaching  made  of  him  a  scholar  and  a 
liberal,  and  it  is  said  to  have  been  Lord  Ac* 
Ion  who  organized  the  opposition  in  Rome  and 
Germany  in  1870  to  the  acceptance  of  papal 
infsllibDity  by  the  Vatican  Council;  and  when 
his  friend  Bir.  Gladstone— from  whom  he  had 
received  his  peerage  in  I860— attacked  some- 
what later  '*  the  Vatican  decrees,**  Lord  Ao- 
too  boldly  placed  himself  by  his  side.  He  has 
remained  within  the  Roman  communion;  the 
strangth  of  family  tradition  has  probably  kept 
him  from  joining  In  the  heroic  but  hopeless 
Old  Catholic  movement,  but  his  intellectual 
attitude  towards  the  church  of  his  fathers  on 
the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  towards  the 
world  of  free  historical  investigation  in  which 
he  habitually  lives,  has  continued  to  present 
a  curious  psychological  enigma.  As  Browning 
makea  one  of  his  shrewdest  characters  remark, 

"Our Interest's  on  the  dsnfferoas  edge  of  things"; 

and  Lord  Acton  draws  to  himself  the  same  sort 
of  curious  attention  as  Mr.  Mivart. 

Lord  Acton  had  long  been  known  for  bis  ex- 
haostive  acquaintance  with  historical  litera- 
ture when.  In  1886,  he  contributed  the  opening 
article,  on  *' German  Schools  of  History,"  to 
the  first  number  of  the  English  Historical  Re- 
view, Of  that  unique  piece  of  work— those 
thlrty^^ix  pages  of  brilliant  characterization 
and  comment,  bristling  with  epigratn,  caviare 
to  the  vulgar  alike  from  their  all-pervading 
aUosiveness  and  a  style  as  of  a  George  Mere^ 
dith  turned  historian— this,  only  need  be  said 
here,  that  it  is  perhaps  the  only  magazine  arti- 
cle that  has  ever  served  as  a  justification  for 
appointment  to  a  chair  in  a  great  university. 
When  In  18M  the  filling  of  Sir  John  Seeley's 
chair  became  the  task  of  her  Majesty's  Gov. 
tmoMnt,  it  was  not  unnatural  that,  if  Mr. 
Gladstone  hinted  at  Lord  Acton*s  willingness 
to  accept  tho  honor,  Earl  Rosebery  should  feel 


a  certain  gratitude  towards  one  of  the  scanty 
band  of  home-rule  peers.  Bat  those  who 
cared  for  historical  scholarship  rather  than 
for  historical  pedagogy  recognized  that  a 
choice  had  been  made  which  was  not  likely  to 
do  discredit  to  the  reputation  of  Cambridge. 

And  now  Lord  Acton*s  inaugural  address  is 
before  us.  Considering  what  difficulties  have 
arisen  with  the  Church  of  Rome  in  many  a 
university  over  the  teaching  of  history,  con- 
sidering  that  a  Roman  Catholic  was  iiere 
stepping  into  the  only  professorship  of  mod- 
era  history  in*a  university  still  almost  com- 
pletely Protestant,  there  was  abundant  occa- 
sion for  curiosity.  The  impression  produced 
was,  in  many  quarters,  one  of  mystification 
and  bewilderment.  At  first  reading— and  few 
will  give  more  than  a  first  reading- there 
seems  no  clear  pronoancement  on  anything. 
Many  of  the  paragraphs,  and  still  more  of  the 
separate  sentences,  look  as  if  they  had  no 
connection  with  what  precede  or  follow;  and 
the  London  Times  confessed  solemnly  that  to 
some. passages  it  could  assign  no  probable  in- 
terpretation. Moreover,  when  a  proposition 
does,  apparently,  stare  us  in  the  face,  it  is  a 
mere  commonplace— say  other  critics.  But 
any  one  who  bad  considered  Lord  Acton's 
career  and  his  essay  of  1886  might  have  antl^ 
cipated  that  he  would  be  careful— to  use  a 
convenient  colloquialism— not  **to  give  him- 
self away**;  that  he  would  see  both  aspects 
of  every  question,  and  try  to  express  them  at 
the  same  time ;  and  that  the  expressing  of 
them  in  sentences  packed  with  thought  and 
unassisted  by  connecting  particles  would  not 
make  easy  reading. 

It  is,  however,  after  all,  not  so  very  hard, 
on  a  second  reading,  to  catch  the  drift  of  the 
discourse.  After  distinguishing  **modem*'  his- 
tory from  **  contemporary,*'  and  claiming  a 
broader  field  for  history  than  mere  politics, 
for  **  Politics  and  history  are  interwoven,  but 
not  commensurate"  (p.  5),  he  argues  that  mod- 
em history  is  clearly  distinguished  from  me- 
diaeval by  that  sudden  ** forward  movement** 
which  Initiated  modern  progress  towards  liber- 
ty  of  thought  and  action.  Modem  history  is 
intensely  interesting  because  it  **  touches  us  so 
nearly  *'  (p.  74),  and  affects  our  vital  interests 
~first  among  them  Religion  (p.  21).  *'  What 
ever  a  man's  notions  of  these  later  centuries 
are,  such,  in  the  main,  the  man  himself  will  be. 
Under  the  name  of  History,  they  cover  the 
articles  of  his  philosophic,  his  religious,  and 
his  political  creed  *'  (p.  73).  ReUgion,  further- 
more,  has  played  a  great  positive  part  in  rela- 
tion to  **  the  significant  and  central  feature  of 
thehistoric  cy cle  before  us  *'—*^  the  progress  of 
the  world  towards  self-government"  (p.  27). 
For,  **but  for  the  strength  afforded  by  the 
religious  motive  in  the  seventeenth  century,** 
that  progress  would  have  been  arrested.  Lord 
Acton  fails  not  to  give  a  passing  word  to 
those  who  refuse  to  see  progress  in  increasing 
liberty;  but  his  own  opinion  is  clear  enough. 
The  constancy  of  progrei^s  is  the  tribute  of 
modern  history  to  the  theory  of  Providence 
(p.  28) ;  it  is  "the  action  of  Christ  who  is  risen  " 
(p.  31).  After  showing  how  the  modem  His- 
torical Movement  arose  *' directly  and  Indi- 
rectly, by  development  and  reaction  "  (p.  30), 
from  the  storm  of  the  French  Revolution,  he 
describes  the  characteristics  of  **the  present 
order  of  things'*  in  historical  writing— the 
use  of  orig^inal  sources,  the  application  of  criti- 
cism,  and  the  dogma  of  impartiality ;  and  this 
leads  up  to  a  criticism  of  the  method  of  Ranke, 
"  the  representative  of  the  age  which  institut- 
ed the  modem  study  of  history,"  and  **  taught 
it  to  be  critical,  to  be  colorless,  and  to  be  new  '* 


(p.  48).  He  ends  with  a  powerful  and  even 
touching  appeal  to  the  men  before  him  not 
to  yield  to  the  modem  temptation  to  identify 
explanation  with  justification.  *' The  weight 
of  opinion  is  against  me  when  I  exhort  you 
never  to  debase  the  moral  currency  or  to 
lower  the  standard  of  rectitude,  but  to  try 
others  by  the  final  maxim  that  governs  your 
own  lives,  and  to  suffer  no  man  and  no  cause 
to  escape  the  undying  penalty  which  history 
has  the  power  to  infiict  on  wrong  "  (p.  63). 

These,  then,  are  the  '^commonplaces'*  of  Lord 
Acton*s  address:  That  liberty,  on  the  whole, 
means  progress;  that  in  the  past,  as  In  the  pre- 
sent, black  is  black  and  white  white.  Is  it  ob- 
jected that  the  only  significance  in  the  first 
proposition  lies  in  its  coming  from  a  Roman 
Catholic  f  Surely  it  is  something  that  a  man  of 
sixty  years,  one  who  has  seen  **  many  men  and 
cities,**  one  who  is  bound  by  strong  ties  to  the 
past,  and  who  knows  all  that  can  be  said  of  the 
seamy  side  of  modern  life,  should  thus  confirm 
the  faith  that  we  indolently  suppose  ourselves 
to  hold.  And  as  to  the  second,  no  one  who  has 
immersed  himself  in  historical  literature  will 
refuse  to  recognize  the  grave  dangers  which  do 
in  sober  eamest  beeet  our  moral  judgment. 

Lord  Acton  is  not,  so  far  as  we  are  aware,  an 
original  investigator;  he  is  contented  to  read 
and  ponder  with  all  the  shrewdness  of  a  man  of 
affairs  and  of  the  world,  over  the  historical 
works  ot  others;  and  he  is  as  far  as  possible  re- 
moved from  the  popular  lecturer  or  entertain- 
ing essayist.  But  there  is  certainly  need  of 
men  of  his  type ;  and  if  he  does  not  exactly 
stimulate  Cambridge  undergraduates  either  to 
begin  to  read  or  to  begin  to  make  research,  he 
will  probably,  to  those  who  have  already  made 
some  way  with  reading  and  research,  be  a  wise 
counsellor  and  a  helpful  critic. 


SHALER»S    DOMESTICATED    ANIMALS. 

Dofnesticated  Animals :  Their  Relation  to  Man 
and  to  bis  Advancement  in  Civilization.  By 
Nathaniel  Boutbgate  Shaler.  New  York: 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons.  1895.  Large  8vo, 
pp.  xii,  267,  many  illiutrations. 
All  who  know  how  well  Prof.  Shaler  can  write 
on  a  wide  rang^  of  topics,  and  especially  those 
who  were  interested  in  his  sketches  of  animals 
lately  to  be  read  in  Scribner's  Magazine,  will 
be  glad  that  these  have  been  gathered  in  a 
convenient  volume,  with  some  additions— note- 
bly  of  two  concluding  chapters,  on  the  Rights 
of  Animals  and  the  Problem  of  Domestication. 
These  latter  sum  up  the  author's  case  in  its 
ethical  and  ethnological  aspects;  they  accente- 
ate  the  general  tenor  of  his  humane  discourse, 
which  is  sympathetic  without  a  trace  of  mere 
sentimentalism,  and  written  in  a  large  way, 
with  keen  discernment  of  animal  nature,  and 
full  sense  of  the  res^ionsibility  assumed  by  man 
in  bending  or  breaking  the  will  of  animals  to 
his  own.  In  these  chapters  particularly,  but 
throughout  the  work,  as  the  author  sajs,  ''  an 
effort  is  made  to  direct  attention  to  the  impor- 
tance of  the  problem  of  man*s  relation  to  the 
lower  life  which  is  about  him,  and  which  in 
the  future  far  more  than  in  the  past  is  to  be 
helped  or  hindered  by  his  rule.  Our  life  is 
made  up  of  large  problems;  but  there  seem  few 
that  are  greater  than  this,  which  concerns  our 
duty  by  the  creatures  which  share  with  us  the 
blessings  of  existence,  and  over  which  we  have 
come  to  rule."  Prof.  Shaler  is  far  from  con- 
fining  himself  to  mere  zoological  facts,  or  even 
to  simply  a»thetic  or  utilitarian  cou»ideration 
of  the  pleasure  or  profit  man  derives  from 
this  association;  from  his  scientific  and  phllo- 


40 


Tlie    N"atiorL. 


[Vol,  62,  No.  1593 


1 


Bophic  standpoint,  it  will  "  enlarge  our  concep- 
tions of  our  own  place  in  the  order  of  this 
world." 

The  several  essays  are  at  high- water  mark  of 
popular  natural  historj,  as  distinguished  from 
what  is  popular  because  it  is  unnatural  and 
non-historical  It  is  nothing  Uke  a  *'  history  of 
my  pets  "  or  a  collection  of  staple  **  anecdotes." 
Every  one  of  us  perceives  intuitively  the  close 
relation  of  aoimal  instincts  to  our  own,  and 
draws  those  comparisons  which,  however  flat- 
tering to  our  own  intellectual  supremacy, 
credit  beasts,  birdp,  and  the  rest  of  our  **  poor 
relations"  with  certain  human  traits.  Under 
wise  and  kindly  treatment,  the  kinship  can  be 
made  to  serve  high  moral  purposes,  besides 
affording  endless  entertainment  and  instruc- 
tion ;  we  come  to  understand  ourselves  better 
when  we  see  ourselves  in  the  side-lights  which 
the  brute  creation  affords.  Thus  fables  of  the 
right  sort,  which  invest  the  lower  animals 
with  human  traits,  put  them  in  human  envi- 
ronment,  and  make  them  thinlc,  talk,  and  act 
as  we  should  under  the  same  circumstances, 
are  legitimate  fiction  of  the  utmost  interest  and 
positive  value— say  La  Fontaine's  for  instance, 
or  those  commonly  ascribed  to  Mio^y  or  any 
of  the  legends  of  sound  zoological  folk  lore.  It 
is  probably  not  too  much  to  say  for  Vxot. 
Shaler,  that  he  does  in  sober  prose,  on  the  basis 
of  actual  fact,  and  in  strictly  scientiflc  method, 
what  the  wit  and  wisdom  of  some  other  philo- 
sophers have  accomplished  by  appealing  to  the 
imagination  to  enlist  our  sympathies  and  im- 
prove our  acquaintance  with  our  fellow-crea- 
tures. 

Perhaps  the  last  word,  "fellow-creatures," 
strikes  the  keynote  of  the  book.  The  author*s 
own  sense  of  fellowship  makes  him  kindly, 
reasonable,  and  impartial  in  estimating  ani- 
mal traits,  and  he  is  too  good  a  naturalist  not 
to  show  great  discernment  and  penetration. 
We  have  seldom  seen  animals  so  fairly  treated, 
and  have  never  known  them  to  be  more  re- 
liably characterized,  either  in  their  own  na- 
tural dispositions  or  in  the  artificial  modifica- 
tions which  a  few  of  them  have  undergone 
through  domestication  or  other  contact  with 
the  human  species.  As  a  consequence  of 
bringing  sound  judgment  and  intimate  know- 
ledge to  bear  upon  the  case,  our  ^traditional 
snap- judgments  are  in  many  instances  shown 
to  be  wrong,  despite  the  core  of  truth  they 
may  and  generally  do  contain.  Shaler's  de- 
cisions regarding  relative  sagacity,  docility, 
or  other  evidences  of  mental  development  in 
animals,  are  marked  by  acute  insigh^.  The 
dog  and  the  cat  he  leaves  in  statu  qito^  about 
as  they  are  rated  by  consensus  of  opinion; 
but  he  puts  many  things  in  a  clearer  light 
than  usual.  For  example,  everybody  knows 
the  attachment  of  dogs  for  persons  and  of 
cats  for  places ;  but  he  traces  this  back  to  the 
fact  that  the  wild  caninesAre  gregarious,  and 
roam  in  pack?  to  hunt  their  prey,  whUe  the 
felines  lurk  in  solitary  lairs.  The  horse  goes 
down  several  pegs  in  his  estimation  of  general 
intelligence,  as  compared  with  public  opinion, 
and  rightly  so.  The  merit  of  the  horse  is  more 
in  his  hoof  than  in  his  head  ;  and  in  tracing  the 
evolution  of  this  animal  organism  from  the 
Eocene  the  well-trained  palaeontologist  is  at 
his  best.  Other  beasts  of  burden,  and  all 
those  which  come  under  the  head  of  flocks  and 
herds,  go  below  the  horse— pretty  near  to  the 
foot  of  the  class.  But  the  mule  finds,  as 
everybody  who  understands  a  mule  knows 
that  it  should  find,  not  only  the  apologist  for 
paternal  ancestry,  but  the  eulogist  of  the 
spindle  side  of  the  equine  house.  The  mule  is 
a  shining  light,  better  than  either  its  sire  or 


its  dam ;  it  has  the  virtues  of  both  and  the 
vices  of  neither,  happily  blended  with  personal 
peculiarities  of  its  own.  Almost  the  only 
** anecdote"  in  the  book  is  the  mule  story,  and 
that  is  simply  irresistible — we  wish  we  had 
space  to  tell  it. 

The  pig  comes  off  handsomely  in  Prof.  Sha- 
ler's  court  of  equity;  he.is  much  more  than  a 
pork  factory— he  is  a  stalwart  Democrat,  with 
strong  socialistic  tendencies,  some  decided  al- 
truism, and  a  quickwittedness  which  removes 
the  stock  stories  of  "learned  pigs"  from  the 
domain  of  fiction  into  the  fold  of  sober  fact. 
We  expected  to  find  the  author  fortifying  hii 
judgment  in  this  case  from  the  peccary,  and  he 
might  have  scored  a  point  there;  but  perhaps 
his  case  is  good  enough  as  it  stands.  The  camel 
is  abused  for  the  hateful  beast  he  is,  with  a 
savingclause  for  the  gastric  arrangement  which 
mainly  determines  his  peculiarly  limited  use- 
fulness. As  for  the  "noblest  Roman  of  them 
all,**  the  elephant,  palmam  qui  meruit  ferat; 
for  strength  of  mind  and  body  that  noble  ani- 
mal stands  at  the  head  of  all  those  which  man 
has  made  to  subserye  his  own  purposes.  The 
esse  of  the  elephant  is  all  the  more  remarkable 
in  that,  as  the  author  points  out,  he  has  never 
been  domesticated,  in  the  usual  sense  of  the 
term.  The  elephant  is  so  long-lived,  so  slow  in 
attaining  maturity,  and  numerically  so  infe- 
cund,  that  almost  all  the  individuals  man  has 
ever  used  have  been  caught  wild.  The  whole 
training  of  the  species  has  thus  been  a  series  of 
fresh  experiments  with  wild  brutes,  which  in 
one  lifetime  can  be  brought  to  display  a  degree 
of  intelligence  beyond  that  shown  by  any  other 
animals  after  uncounted  generations  have  been 
subjected  to  educational  infiuences.  The  men- 
tal equipment  of  the  elephant  would,  therefore, 
seem  to  be  a  natural  gift;  and  it  is  one  of  a  high 
order,  to  be  properly  called  intellectual.  This 
animal  has  positively  a  Promethean  touch;  he 
refiects  and  reasons;  he  adapts  means  to  ends 
understandingly,  devises  rational  expedients 
in  emergencies,  shows  forethought,  makes  fine 
discriminations,  has  a  sound  memory,  and  on 
the  whole  is  more  of  a  man  than  any  other 
brute.  His  average  intellectuality  is  surpassed 
only  by  the  exceptional  attainments  of  the  por- 
cine prodigies;  and  here  it  is  interesting  to 
note  that  these  two  pachyderms  of  the  Cuvier- 
ian  classification  have  actually  closer  zoologi- 
cal affinities  than  those  subsisting  between 
some  of  the  other  domesticated  animals. 

Birds  are  not  so  fully  treated  as  mammals, 
though  the  author  lias  many  pleasant  things 
to  say  of  poultry,  and  points  out  some  inte- 
resting facts  not  generally  appreciated  at  their 
true  value;  what  he  says  of  falconry  is  par- 
ticularly to  the  point.  In  the  nature  of  the 
case,  wo  have  no  dominion  to  speak  of  over 
reptiles  and  fishes;  both  may  be  subdued,  even 
tamed  and  to  some  little  extent  taught,  but 
their  living  world  remains  apart  from  ours. 
Insects  sustain  a  peculiar  relation  to  man. 
Their  numerical  disproportion  to  all  other 
forms  of  animal  life  is  inestimably  enormous; 
more  than  three-fourths  of  the  technical  species 
of  animals  are  insects,  and  probably  we  know 
but  a  relatively  small  fraction  of  all  that  exist, 
while  their  individual  numbers  are  practically 
inconceivable,  like  the  distances  of  the  fixed 
stars  or  the  multitudes  in  the  milky  way. 
Tet  these  myriads,  in  their  relations  to  man, 
are,  almost  without  exception,  either  neutral, 
or  annoying,  or  noxious.  Practically,  the  bee 
and  the  silkworm  are  the  only  ones  we  have 
reduced  to  some  sort  of  domestication;  cochi- 
neal and  cantharides  are  useful;  but  if  we  add 
to  these  four,  which  the  author  treats,  a  very 
few  others,  which  make  wax  or  are  eaten  by 


some  people,  we  come  about  to  the  end  of  the 
direct  utility  of  the  insect  world  to  man,  and 
the  question  of  purpose  in  such  cases  as  those 
of  files,  fieas,  lice,  mosquitoes,  and  the  like 
ranges  itself  alongside  the  standard  problem 
of  the  origin  of  evil  in  the  universe. 

We  have  left  ourselves  no  room  to  do  more 
than  mention  one  important  thing  which  runs 
through  this  ndtable  book,  and  that  is  the 
plasticity  of  animal  organization  which  domes- 
tication brings  into  such  strong  light.  This,  it 
will  be  remembered,  was  the  cornerstone  of 
the  whole  evolutionary  edifice  which  Darwin 
reared  when  he  first  raised  the  question  of -the 
origin  of  species.  Prof.  Shaler  handles  it  ably, 
and  goes  a  step  further  In  showing  )iow  our  asso- 
ciation with  animals  reacts  upon  ourselves  to 
modify  human  nature  appreciably.  This  is  in- 
teresting as  an  abstract  scientiflc  study;  but  it 
assumes  also  an  ethical  aspect  when  viewed  in 
all  its  bearings,  and  becomes  distinctly  a  moral 
question  of  grave  import,  under  the  author's 
handling  in  the  chapter  on  the  rights  of 
animals.  We  have  said  enough  to  show  that 
this  book  is  one  to  which  we  may  give  not  only 
an  easily  held  attention,  but  also  some  very 
serious  reflection ;  for  it  is  written  with  a 
noble  purpose. 

The  type  is  large  and  the  lines  are  heavily 
leaded,  yielding  a  very  open  page,  suitable  for 
eyes  whose  owners  have  passed  from  the  mere- 
ly observant  to  the  reflective  age ;  and  the 
illustrations  are  numerous  and  effective. 


Th e  RiviercL,  Ancient  and  Modem .  By  Charles 
Lenth^ric,  Ing4nieur-en-chef  des  Ponts  et 
Chauss^es.  Translated  by  Charles  West, 
M.D.  With  maps  and  plans.  London :  T. 
Fisher  Unwin  :  New  York  :  Q.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons.  1895.  Pp.  x,  464. 
This  work,  under  the  title  of  *  La  Provence 
Maritime  Ancienne  et  Modeme,*  has  been  be- 
fore the  world  for  fifteen  years,  and  the  other 
two  by  the  same  author,  *  Les  Villes  Mortes  da 
Golfe  de  Lyon '  and  *  La  Qr^ce  et  TOrient  en 
Provence,'  for  a  still  longer  period.  They  are 
for  the  French  Mediterranean  coast  something 
what  Lenormant's  *  La  Grande  Gr^ce '  is  for 
the  coast  of  Southern  Italy  :  they  hold  up  to 
you  enticing  pictures  of  a  new  and  beautiful 
world  to  be  seen,  and  then  furnish  you  with  all 
sorts  of  knowledge  toward  the  proper  enjoy- 
ment of  it.  M.  Lenth^ric  is  perhaps  not  an 
arcbeeologist  of  the  force  of  the  lamented 
Lenormant,  but  he  is  enough  of  one  to  rectify 
the  exuberances  of  some  of  his  brethren,  and 
to  make  sound  use  of  monuments,  inscriptions, 
and  documents.  He  tells  more  about  Ligu- 
rians,  Phcenicians,  Greeks,  Romans,  and  Sara- 
cens than  about  the  people  who  have  succeeded 
them  ;  the  special  office  of  the  book  is  to  con- 
nect the  past  with  the  present,  and  to  make 
the  two  live  together  upon  the  same  scene. 
Many  later  writers,  says  Dr.  West,  have  help- 
ed themselves  out  of  M.  Lenth^ric's  pages,  but 
while  they  may  have  bettered  their  own  state, 
they  have  in  no  way  diminished  his  riches. 

In  the  days  of  the  Empire,  the  hills  about 
Cannes  and  Nice  were  covered  with  Roman 
villas,  as  taday  they  are  with  those  of  all  the 
world  ;  and  from  the  time  of  the  Roman  con- 
quest  of  Gaul,  along  the  coast  to  Marseilles, 
there  were  both  naval  stations  and  harbors  of 
refuge.  These  especially  are  the  points  about 
which  the  author  gathers  everything  that  can 
be  learned  from  documents,  ancient  ruins  or 
inscriptions,  noting  also  the  changes  that  have 
accrued  from  alluvial  deposits  or  otherwise. 

From  Marseilles  to  Toulon  this  coast  is  al- 
most unknown  to  travellers,  and  but  little  even 


Jan.  9,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


41 


to  Frenchmen.  For  most  of  the  w«7  the  rail- 
road keeps  at  a  distance  from  the  sea,  and  the 
good  harbors,  of  which  there  are  several,  are 
consequently  neglected  bj  commerce.  The 
ship^boilding  yards  of  the  Messageries  Mari- 
times  suffice  to  make  an  important  place  of 
Ciotat,  but  that  is  alL  And  yet,  tinder  Roman 
rule,  and  earlier  under  Greeks  and  Pbceniclans, 
these  waters  were  animated  by  the  sails  not 
only  of  war  galleys,  but  also  of  merchantmen, 
of  the  fishing  craft,  and  of  the  coral  divers. 
Along  the  land  are  traces  of  towns,  camps, 
castles,  where  now  perhaps  is  some  decayed 
village.  The  ruins  of  Tauroentum,  to  which 
IL  Lenth^ric  gives  a  chapter,  are  to  day  in 
part  half-buried  in  a  waste  of  land,  in  part 
covered  by  the  waters  of  the  Gulf  of  L^ues. 
In  the  year  49  b.  c.  a  battle  took  place  here  be- 
tween the  fleets  of  Ciesar  and  Pompey,  where- 
in that  of  the  latter  was  discomfited,  and  the 
fate  of  Southern  Gkiul  (the  **  provinoia,*^  or 
Provence)  decided.  The  archsBologist  now  has 
to  fight  with  the  shifting  dunes  in  order  to  lay 
bare  temporarily  the  scant  remains  of  that 
time.  A  few  huts  at  a  distance  (the  nearest 
village  is  more  than  a  mile  inland)  are  all  that 
look  upon  what,  for  Pboenicians,  Greeks,  and 
Romans,  was  one  of  the  best  anchorages  off 
this  coast. 

In  the  parts  left  one  side  by  the  railway, 
there  is  much  that,  independent  of  history  or 
archiBology,  is  worth  knowing  and  seeing. 
Between  Marseilles  and  Ciotat  there  is  a 
stretch  of  limestone  cliflTs,  indented  by  lonely 
gulfs  running  deep  into  the  land — a  region 
that,  but  for  its  sun  and  vegetation,  might  be 
Norwegian,  but  is  utterly  dissimilar  to  any 
Southern  coast.  Then  among  the  wooded 
granite  slopes  of  the  Mountains  of  the  Moors 
are  nooks  where  the  date-palm  ripens  its  fruit 
as  in  Africa,  though  no  enterprising  physician 
has  as  yet  tried  to  establish  there  a  new  sta- 
tion d^hiver.  The  flora  of  the  Est^rel,  the  vi- 
gorous bits  of  landscape  here  and  there,  an 
occasional  tradition  or  the  survival  of  pagan 
customs  and  beliefs  in  the  Christian  practice 
of  to-day,  all  are  noted ;  the  book  is,  in  short, 
an  admirable  companion  for  the  visitor  to 
these  shores. 

From  Cannes  to  the  Italian  frontier,  the 
Cdte*  d'Azur,  the  Rives  d'Or^  of  the  Parisian, 
the  pleasure-ground  of  all  the  world,  is  a 
region  so  well  known  that  it  would  seem  that 
nothing  remains  to  be  told  of  it.  In  despite 
of  pilferers,  however,  M.  Lenth^ric  has  still 
something  of  interest  to  tell  us  about  the  L^ 
rins,  or  of  Mice  and  Cimiez,  or  of  La  Turbie. 
The  fourteenth  division  of  the  last  chapter  in 
the  book  may  be  recommended  as  an  absolute- 
ly unique  account  of  the  way  that  Monaco 
gains  iu  living.  The  satire  is  so  light  that  one 
may  almost  doubt  if  it  exists  at  all ;  in  any 
case,  the  simple  statement  of  facts  is  a  suffi- 
cient irony.  How  could  it  be  otherwise  when 
you  start  from  the  Monegasqne  saying, 

"  Son  Monaco  aoprft  on  ■cocllo, 
Non  lemloo  e  noo  racougllo, 
B  por  miingiT  Toglio" 

—neatly  translated  by  Dr.  West:  ''I  am  Mo- 
naco 00  a  rock  by  the  shore;  I  neither  sow  nor 
reap,  but  all  the  same  I  mean  to  eat." 

The  present  sightly  octavo  is  an  improvement 
on  the  dumpy  duodecuno  of  the  French  edition, 
and  secures  the  advantages  of  larger  print  and 
more  convenient  reference  for  the  maps.  In 
the  origmal  these  are  generally  across  the 
volume,  and  any  one  who  has  experience  of  the 
tightness  of  ordinary  French  bindings  will  at 
once  perceive  that  it  cannot  be  always  easy  to 
see  the  middle  of  the  map.  Then,  too,  Dr. 
Wsst*8  index  is  an  improvement  on  that  of  M. 


Lentb^c.  As  for  the  translation,  it  must  be 
called,  on  the  whole,  a  very  good  one.  One 
may  say  that  the  translator  wears  his  coat  as 
if  it  were  his  own,  and  not  borrowed;  and  one 
may  add  that  he  has  here  and  there  adapted  it 
to  himself.  One  or  two  examples  will  suffice 
to  show  how  this  has  been  done: 

"In  those  days  the  two  headlands,  the  Cape 
of  Ceuta  and  that  of  Gibraltar*  were  joined  to- 
gether and  then  formed  part  of  the  same  moun- 
tain chain,  and  the  sea  was  then  a  lake^*  (p. 6). 

The  words  in  italics  may  be  called  a  patch  of 
new  stuff  added  to  the  original  garment. 

**The  at)eolute  good  taste  of  this  crowding 
together  of  orange  groves,  of  clumps  of  olives, 
and  of  palms  may  perhaps  be  a  little  question- 
able ;  but  all  the  same  it  goes  on  year  bv  year, 
and  one  is  scarcely  inclined  to  criticise  this 
assemblage  of  all  that  is  bright  and  beauti- 
fuL  the  result  of  which  is  so  charming^'' 
(pTkS). 

That  is  an  audacious  patch :  this  is  how  it 
was  in  the  beginning  : 

".  .  .  les  bois  d^orangers,  lee  massifs  de 
palmiers  et  d'alo^s  encbevetr^s  dans  un  p61e- 
mdle  confus  et  d'on  Kodt  pent-dtre  douteux, 
mais  dont  raccumuTation  d^eordonn^  et 
V  exut)6rante  richesse  suivent  depuis  pr^  d'  un 
demi-si^le  une  progression  rapide  josqu*  ici 
non  interrompue  "  (p.  403). 

One  might  suspect  the  translator  of  having  a 
garden  of  the  sort  here  described,  and  not  hav- 
ing the  heart  to  repeat  words  that  might  seem 
in  its  dispraise.  He  might  take  courage  from 
the  number  of  those  who  keep  him  company  : 
on  the  Riviera  we  all  sin  in  the  same  way. 

There  is  in  the  translation  of  the  preface  a 
case  of  adaptation  still  more  amusing;  but,  as 
it  is  too  long  for  quoting  here,  we  leave  any 
one  who  has  sufficient  curiosity  to  look  it  up 
for  himself.  The  best  of  translations  is  never 
faultless,  but  this  one  is  so  good  that  it  is  de- 
cidedly not  worth  while  to  note  the  rare  slips 
that  diligent  comparison  has  discovered.  Two 
only  call  for  remark:  **  CTest  qu'en  effet  aucun 
pays  au  monde  ne  poss^de  un  climat  compara- 
ble i:  celui  de  Cannes.*'  This  is  translated: 
**  Thsre  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  ClJanoes  pos- 
sesses a  climate,"  etc.  The  not  very  elegant 
formula  in  italics  is  used  over  and  over  again 
to  represent  various  French  locutions.  It  ends 
by  exasperating.  It  may  be  noted,  in  passing, 
as  to  the  statement  about  the  climate  of  Can- 
nes, that  M.  Lentb^ric  may  well  have  dared  to 
make  it  flf  teen  years  ago,  when  there  were  but 
five  or  six  Riviera  towns  to  contest  it.  But 
today? 

Dr.  West^s  worst  blunder  is  in  the  title  he 
has  chosen.  Tbe  book  concerns  the  coast  of 
Provence;  the  last  chapter  in  it  alone  treats  of 
the  Riviera,  which  is  properly  the  Genoese 
coast  from  Monaco  to  Porto  Venere  (Spenda). 
Foreigners  nowadays  talk  of  the  Riviera  loose- 
ly  as  including  Nice  and  Cannes— which  for 
them,  and  socially  speaking,  it  mayf  but  no 
one  pretends  to  call  the  region  from  Cannes  to 
Marseilles  the  Riviera.  Dr.  West's  title  may, 
from  a  commercial  point  of  view,  be  held  as 
more  inviting,  but  a  book  of  the  value  of  this 
does  not  need  pushing  by  claptrap  devices. 


In  a  Walled  Garden.    By  Bessie  Rayner  Bel- 

loc.  Macmillan  &  Ck>.  1895. 
Rmadkbb  of  George  Eliot's  *Life'  wiU  per- 
haps remember  that  she  had  a  friend  Bessie 
Parkes,  afterwards  Madame  Belloc,  who  was 
loyal  to  her  through  ail  tbe  changes  of  her  do- 
mestic life,  and  they  will  thus  identify  tbe  au- 
thor of  this  volume  of  somewhat  random 
sketches  and  studies.  It  takes  its  name  from 
a  garden  which  has  freshened  and  faded  for 


two  centuries  and  more,  close  to  the  remains 
of  an  Elizabethan  cottage,  and  hard  by  a 
church  whose  foundation  stone  was  laid  by  St. 
Anselm.  Such  a  place  is  naturally  baunted, 
and,  in  a  brief  introductory  chapter,  Madame 
Belloc  describes  a  ghostly  procession  that  she 
saw  walking  there,  making  less  than  we 
should  expect  of  a  good  opportunity.  Nor  does 
her  next  chapter,  *' Dorothea  Casaubon  and 
George  Eliot,"  do  much  better,  considering 
the  writer's  advantages.  She  met  George 
EUot  flrst  in  1850,  and  received  thn  last  letter 
that  she  ever  wrote,  but  she  does  not  tell  us 
much  about  her.  What  she  does  is  to  connect 
*  Middlemarch '  with  Coventry  in  a  pleasant 
way,  find  Dorothea's  situation  unreal  in  1828, 
and  touch  the  relations  of  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Lewes  In  a  manner  that  has  not  much  illumi- 
nation. Madame  Belloc  is  a  Roman  Catholic 
"pervert,"  and  says,  ** Surely  only  those  who 
hold  the  sacramental  view  of  marriage  would 
have  any  right  to  condemn  her'* — a  way  of 
putting  things  rather  common  to  the  region  of 
ecclesiastical  amenities.  *'  It  would  be  unjust 
to  judge  her  by  a  Christian  law  which  she 
repudiated."  But  what  confounds  her  is  that 
Miss  Evans  worshipped  Lewes,  and  she  even 
prophesies  disclosures  which  will  prove  him  to 
have  been  unworthy  of  her  trust  and  love. 

'*  Joseph  Priestley  in  Domestic  Life"  is  quite 
the  most  interesting  and  important  chapter  in 
the  book.  It  has  seldom,  if  ever,  been  the  for- 
tune of  Priestley  to  be  treated  in  this  genial  man- 
ner. His  personality  for  most  people  is  as  eva- 
sive as  his  own  oxygen.  When  the  Birmingham 
statue  of  Priestley  was  erected  in  1874,  the 
writer's  mother,  **  who  was  born  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, was  probably  the  only  person  living  in 
England  who  could  recall  bim."  Some  tie  of 
blood  between  her  and  her  subject  is  suggested 
by  this  and  other  passage^  but  the  suggestion 
is  not  definitely  confirmed.  The  estimate  of 
Priestley  is,  for  a  Roman  Catholic  writer,  very 
sympathetic.  Evidently  he  joined  a  beautiful 
piety  to  his  mechanical  theology.  Another 
good  subject  is  '*  Mary  Howitt,"  and  still  an- 
other,  **  The  Montagus  and  Proctors,"  but  tbe 
treatment  of  Mrs.  Proctor,  the  wife  of  Barry 
(Jomwall,  is  strangely  disappointing  in  view  of 
her  reputation  for  the  most  brilliant  and 
eccentric  conversation.  An  unpublished  letter 
of  Lowell's,  which  was  much  more  to  the  point, 
is  recalled  by  this  chapter.  "  A  Chapter  of 
War"  gives  us  an  inside  view  of  Paris  during 
the  German  siege  and  occupation.  **  Dr.  Man- 
ning at  Bajs water"  affords  a  few  glimpses  of 
the  Cardinal  at  different  stages  of  his  career 
subsequent  to  his  secession  from  the  Anglicans. 
The  first  impressions  were  not  agreeable.  *^  He 
spoke  with  tbe  most  measured,  chilly  calm- 
ness." But  he  comforted  our  author  with  the 
story  that  after  his  first  Roman  communion  he 
said,  **  Now  my  career  is  ended."  **  But  where 
1  once  worked  on  an  acre,"  he  added,  "I  now 
work  on  a  square  mile."  Nothing  is  said  about 
his  most  characteristic  and  successful  work — 
bis  pushing  for  the  declaration  of  infallibility. 
That  his  name  *'  was  literally  unheard  of  in 
public  for  ten  years  after  his  secession,"  is  cer- 
tainly  an  exaggeration.  The  breadth  and 
sympathy  of  Madame  Belloc's  dealings  with 
religious  opinions  and  sentimenu  different 
from  her  own  are  exceptionally  beautiful.  For 
(Catherine  Booth  of  the  Salvation  Army  she 
has  the  warmest  word  of  aU. 


Methods  of  Mind  Training:  Concentrated  At- 
tention and  Memory.  By  Catherine  Aiken. 
New  York:  Harpers.    I8d5. 

A  0O1IKWHAT  striking  little  book,  this.    Tbe 


42 


Tlie    lN"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1593 


author  proposes  that  of  each  school  daj  twenty 
minutes  at  the  outset  should  be  sacrificed  to 
attention-gymnastics— in  other  words,  to  in- 
ducing the  most  intensely  rigorous  effort,  un- 
der stimulation  of  active  rivalry.  She  trains 
her  scholars  at  remembering  columns  of  num. 
bers,  a  blackboard-full  of  shapes  nearly  alike 
yet  all  different,  etc.,  seen  for  three  seconds. 
The  whole  thing  must  be  recalled  seven 
minutes  later  in  all  its  details.  She  trains 
them  to  recite  verbatim,  after  seven  or  ten 
minutes,  a  whole  page  of  prose  read  to  them  a 
single  time,  having  first  trained  them  in  a 
method  for  doing  this.  One  example  that  she 
gives,  from  *Tom  Brown  at  Rugby,*  is  very 
loose  and  rambling  prose,  almost  as  bad  as, 
*'  So  she  went  into  the  gparden  to  cut  cabbages.** 
Some  are  the  most  inane  extracts  from  the 
Court  Journal,  and  still  more  nauseating  stuff 
about  New  York  society,  paragraphs  about 
meetings  in  country  towns,  with  a  lot  of  names 
of  supreme  mediocrity,  price  lists,  etc.  Then 
mixed  with  these  are  superb  pieces  of  prose  and 
verse.  She  compares  the  proceeding  to  open- 
ing the  day  with  dumb-bell  exercise.  Some- 
thing like  this  has  been  practised  before,  but 
here  are  elementary  methods  fully  set  forth, 
and  others  will  suggest  themselves.  If  teachers 
will  only  put  them  into  practice,  not  fearing  to 
expose  their  own  stupidity,  but  keeping  before 
their  minds  the  beneficent  results  to  be  attain- 
ed, they  will  assuredly  do  something  to  **  make 
the  next  age  better  for  the  last.*' 

Let  us  add  that  Miss  Aiken  quotes  an  excel- 
lent passage  from  Ribot*s  little  book  on  at- 
tention, and  that  she  incidentally  leads  us  to 
believe  that,  in  the  remainder  of  the  school 
hours,  she  is  guided  by  an  intelligent  use  of  the 
principles  of  scientific  psychology  upon  which 
effective  teaching  must  be  founded. 


Some  Ancient  English  Homes  and  their  Asso- 
ciations, Personal,  Archaeological,  and  His- 
torical. By  Elizabeth  Hodges.  Illustrated 
by  S.  J.  Loxton.  London:  T.  Fisber  Un- 
win;  New  York:  G.  P.  Putnam*8  Sons. 
1895. 

Nine  essays  make  up  this  volume,  of  which  the 
first  is  devoted  to  the  two  mansions  of  Wotton- 
underEdge  and  Bradley  Ck)urt;   the  first  a 
large  house  which  has  been  almost  wholly  de- 
stroyed, and  the  second  a  small  country  house 
half  a  mile  distant  from  Wotton,  and  not  of 
special  importance.     Another  chapter  deals 
with  two  housee— Kingsbury  Hall,  near  Bir- 
mingham,   and   Hurley   Hall,    not  far  from 
Kingsbury,  and  connected  with  it  in  the  family 
history.    These  two  buildings  are  good  exam- 
pies  of  the  very  small  English  manor-house 
common  in  central  England.    In  each  case  the 
house  is  described  in  a  sketchy  way,  with  but 
brief  mention  of  details  which  seem  interest- 
ing if  one  could  know  more  of  them.     In  each 
case,  also,  a  single  slight  drawing  explains  the 
general  character  of  the  structure.    The  other 
chapters   treat  each  of  one  manor-house  or 
castle.    The  only  illustration  which  gives  any- 
thing interesting  about  the  general  design  of 
the  house  is  that  of  Little  Sodbury  at  page  193, 
but  there  are  several  slight  drawings  of  stair, 
cases,  gateways,  and  the  like  which  are  attract- 
ive.   In  each  case  we  get  a  rather  informal  ac- 
count of  family  history  and  of  family  tradi- 
tions, including  ghost- stories,  in  preference  to 
any  architectural  study.    Being  what  it  is,  and 
being  simply  written,  the  book  is  fw  entertain- 
ing as  one  need  wish,  and  one  who  reads  it  with 
care  will  have  added  a  good  deal  to  his  sense  of 
historical  verity.    The  modem  school  of  histo- 
rians are  inclined  to  reject  archaeology,  but  the 


historical  student  who  makes  excursions  into 
archaeology  will  certainly  understand  his  his- 
tory the  better  for  it. 


Science  and  Art  Drawing:   Complete  Geomet- 
rical Course,  consisting  of  Plane  and  Solid 
Geometry,  Orthographic  and  Geometric  Pro- 
jection.  Projection  of  Shadows,  the  Princi- 
ples of  Map  Projection,  Graphic  Arithmetic, 
and   Graphic   Statics.      By   J.    Humphrey 
Spanton.    Macmillan.    1S95. 
The  idea  of  teaching  geometry  to  draughtsmen 
while  their  pencils  are  in  their  hands  is  in  itself 
an  excellent  one,  and,  were  it  only  well  carried 
out,  would  seduce  them  into  real  mathematical 
thinking  before  they  knew  it.    Moreover,  some 
of  the  subjects  here  treated  bear  such  stamps 
of  the  great  geometers  who  established  their 
theories  as  it  would  require  a  mind  of  more 
ingenuity  than   Mr.  Spanton*s  to  obliterate. 
Descriptive  geometry  and  graphical  statioi,  let 
the  teacher  do  his  worst,  cannot  but  inculcate 
some  genuine  mathematics.    With  map  projeo 
tion  it  is  different.   The  whole  subject  has  never 
been  very  well  treated,  except  by  Herz,  whose 
work  is  probably  unknown  to  Mr.  Spanton; 
and  to  call  the  few  items  here  given  "Princi- 
ples **  is  ridiculous.    The  chapters  on  Elemen- 
tary Metrical   Geometry  could  not   well  be 
worse  than  they  are.    Thus,  for  the  construe 
tion   of  a  regular  heptagon,  three  different 
methods  are  given.    For  one  of  these,  the  in- 
formation is  vouchsafed  that  it  is  not  mathe- 
matically exact.    That  the  problem  itself  is 
insoluble  by  rule  and  compass,  the  author, 
though  a  gold-medallist,  does  not  seem  to  sus- 
pect    The  Pythagorean  proposition,  to  say 
nothing  of  such  theorems  as  the  d5th  of  tha  3d 
Book  of  Euclid,  will  be  sought  in  vain.    The 
problems  that  are  solved  rightly  are  often 
solved   clumsily.     Let  us  say  to  the  young 
draughtsman.  If  you  want  to  be  a  master  of 
your  art,  take  the  trouble  to  study  geometry. 
You  will  be  terribly  handicapped  in  problems 
upon  which  bread  and  butter  depend  if  you 
content  yourself  with  any  such  smattering  as 
this  book  affords. 


The  Soil:  Its  Nature,  Relations,  and  Funda- 
mental  Principles  of  Management.  By  F. 
H.  King,  Profesior  of  Agricultural  Phjsics 
in  the  University  of  Wisconsin.  Macmillan 
&Co.    1895. 

Within  the  compass  of  about  three  hundred 
pages.  Prof.  King  has  brought  together  a  vast 
amount  of  important  and  interesting  informa-' 
tion  regarding  the  origin  and  behavior  of  soils. 
With  a  right  sense  of  perspective,  he  has 
dealt  fairly  with  the  older  as  well  as  with  the 
very  latest  results  of  research,  and  has  ar- 
ranged all  his  facts  in  a  convenient  manner. 
The  marvellous  relations  which  soils  sustain 
to  water  and  the  atmosphere,  to  the  lowest 
and  the  highest  forms  of  vegetable  life,  and, 
indirectly,  to  all  animal  life,  are  dealt  with  in 
an  attractive  way. 

A  few  of  the  engravings  cannot  be  truthfully 
called  illustrations,  for  they  themselves  require 
to  be  explained.  For  instance,  in  the  figure 
designed  to  show  "the  work  of  the  common 
earthworm  during  a  single  night  after  a  heavy 
rain,**  there  is  a  picture  of  a  good  hunting-case 
watch  lying  on  the  disturbed  surface  of  the 
ground.  In  close  proximity  to  the  watch  the 
soil  is  rather  less  disturbed  than  at  a  little  dis- 
tance,  perhaps  to  be  interpreted  that  the  earth- 
worms were  more  or  less  frightened  by  the 
ticking  of  the  watch;  but  it  is  unlikely  that  a 
watch  would  be  left  out  over  night  in  a  heavy 


rain.  It  is  probably  inserted  to  show  the  size 
of  the  eai'thworm  casts.  Other  cuts  which 
leave  much  to  be  desired  are  those  which  at- 
tempt to  show  the  distribution  of  roots.  It  is 
possible  that  some  of  the  obscurity  of  the  oats 
comes  from  the  reduction  in  size  by  a  photo- 
graphic  process.  Aside  from  these  engravings 
and  two  bits  of  good  poetry  which  are  rather 
out  of  place,  the  book  can  be  heartily  praised. 
Examination  of  it  will  ensure  a  comprehensive 
view  of  the  present  condition  of  its  many, 
sided  subject. 


BOOKS  OP  THE  WEEK. 

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Richard  IL    Twelfth  Night.    [The  irdea  Sh2npM^ 

Boetoo  :  D.  C.  Heath  ft  Co.  Each  400/  °™*"**''"> 
Bwson.  Rev.  L.  W     Irenica  and  Polemics,  with  Stmdrr 

Eiwaya  Id  Church  History.    ChrlatlanTSer»ta5?oo 
Barlow,   Jane.     Strangeri    at   LIsconnSpASioSid 

Series  of  Irish  IdyluT  Dodd.  M^ad*  Co  f  1.^^*"* 
Bender's  L«wyert  DUiy  and  Directory  for  the  State  of 
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^H^th'ikcb.'^26^*  Hoch^^ltarelse.  Boston':  D.  C. 
Brace,  Wallace.    Clover  and  Heather.    EdlnborKh* 

Blackwood ;  New  York :  Bryant  Union.  "*"""'*^"  • 
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Sixteenth  Century.    Boston :  oXnn  ft  Co.   f  iT 
^iSSknSf'  M^*™*   *"**  ^^^^  **'  Literary  Study. 
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and  Carmen  Saecuiare  of  Horace.   TransiatStoto 

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dlanapolls :  Bowen  Merrill  Co.  "^ 

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BUhnen.  1894.  Leipzig :  Breltkopf  ft  BKrteL  •■*'™" 
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Hasell's  Annual  for  1600.   London :  Haaell.  Wataoa  ft 

UeaAXej.V.W,   The  Structure  and  Ufe  of  Birds.    Mao. 

mlUan.   v*.  ^^    ^»— »»- 

Hole.  Rer.  8.  R.  A  Little  Tour  In  America.  Edward 
I^g^Henrlk.  Prose  Dramas.  2  vols.  *  LoTell,  CoryeB 
Ishwn.  N.  M.  ^Early  Rhode  Island  Houses  :  An  Hlstorl. 

g^wjdArohltectural Study.    Providence :Pr3ISmft 

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KJnmley,  Charles.  Yeast:  A  Problem-  Macmillan.  76c 
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^o    alScT  ^^    Boston:  Houghton. MuSln ft 

^MSf&ftC^o.VKSJ^"*^'^***-  Boston:  Houghton. 
^JgJter^CaroUne.   The  BhutUe  of  Pate.    F.  Wame  ft 

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Kansas  City :  Hudson-Klmberly  Publlshlngfio 

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'^kcS?  ^'^'   ^**''  ^^     ^^^^-     Boston:   Boston 

The  King  of  Alberla:  A  Romance  of  the  Balkans.  O.W. 

The  Marvellous  Adventures  of  Sir  John  Maundavllla 

fo%k°Kiulkn.^r°°=  ^  Constable^rS2.!SS? 

^?f*?i^lyi?^f"**J^*8***«»::^  ^8««*-  Boston:  Unlveraal- 
Ist  Publishing  Bouse.    80c  '»«•• 

^^J^'^^'^'  The  Father  of  the  Ftorest,  and  Other 
^«mu^  London:   John  Lane;  Chicago:    Stone  ft 

^ISif'K^'^J^^iBjPO'^Heath  and  Blue  Bells :  Beliig 
Sketches  of  Scotland.   Macmillan.   760T  »«»«• 


The    Nation. 


NEW  YORK,   THURSDAY,  JANUARY  16,  1896 


The  Week. 


Two  or  three  weeks  ago  a  number  of 
bankers  in  this  city  were  invited  separate- 
ly to  the  office  of  one  of  them,  and  asked 
the  question  how  much  money  they  could 
withdraw  from  their  ordinary  business 
and  invest  in  Government  bonds  for  the 
purpose  of  avoiding  a  suspension  of  spe- 
cie payments.  Each  one  was  told  that  it 
was  a  matter  of  life  and  death,  and  that, 
unless  the  requisite  amount  was  made  up, 
they  and  their  customers  and  the  Govern- 
ment would  all  go  to  financial  smash  to- 
gether. They  all  knew  this  before  they 
went  to  the  rendezvous.  Accordingly 
each  one  of  them  made  a  statement  of 
the  amount  he  could  take  and  pay  for. 
Soon  afterwards  the  understanding  was 
reduced  to  writing  and  signed,  but  it  was 
not  an  agreement  in  law  because  the 
terms  of  the  subscription  were  not  settled, 
and  because  the  other  party,  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States,  had  not  as- 
sented to  it.  It  was  binding  in  honor 
only,  and  would  remain  so  as  long  as  the 
necessity  which  gave  birth  to  it  con- 
tinued. If  the  necessity  should  cease  for 
any  reason,  the  members  would  be  re- 
leased. If,  for  example,  the  gold  reserve 
of  the  Treasury  should  increase  as  it  did 
a  few  years  ago  without  bond-selling,  or 
if  other  persons,  either  foreign  or  domes- 
tic subscribers,  should  come  forward  and 
take  the  loan,  the  members  of  the  syndi- 
cate would  ba  released. 


By  reason  of  the  preponderance  of  bla- 
therskites in  the  newspaper  press  and  in 
Congress,  the  public  were  induced  to  be- 
lieve that  those  bankers,  instead  of  being 
hauled  up  to  this  agreement,  and  forced 
to  sign  it  by  necessity,  were  eager  to  get 
the  bonds.  The  transition  from  this  view 
to  that  of  highway  robbery  was  easy 
and  natural.  By  copious  blackguardism 
the  public,  or  the  unthinking  portion  of 
it,  were  led  to  consider  these  men  in 
the  light  of  public  enemies,  simply  and 
solely  because  they  were  willing  to  lend 
the  Government  the  money  to  tide  it  over 
a  crisis.  And  now  we  are  told  from  day 
to  day  that  the  syndicate  is  dissolved,  or 
is  about  to  dissolve,  in  obedience  to  public 
disapprobation  of  its  cormorant  propen- 
sity to  grab  all  the  Government  bonds  in 
eight  and  to  prevent  the  poor  man  from 
getting  any,  whereas  in  truth  there  is 
nothing  to  dissolve.  The  only  thing  that 
ever  existed  was  the  willingness  to  sub- 
scribe. That  exists  still.  It  exists  not 
by  virtue  of  a  signed  paper,  but  by  virtue 
of  the  needs  of  the  Government. 


on  Thursday  into  an  enormous  success  on 
Monday  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
events  in  financial,  and  eke  in  journalistic, 
history.  The  intention  was,  of  course,  to 
have  the  bonds  taken  up  by  the  plain 
people,  in  denominations  of  $50,  so  that 
banks,  plutocrats,  corporations,  syndi- 
cates, and  especially  foreigners,  should 
get  none  of  the  enormous  profits.  For 
some  days  the  subscriptions  dragged,  and 
it  began  to  look  as  if  WalT  Street  had  us 
again.  But  the  strong  and  patriotic  ap- 
peals to  the  plain  people  at  last  told,  and 
they  began  to  bring  out  their  hard* won 
savings.  First  a  life-insurance  company 
emptied  its  stocking  and  offered  to  put 
its  little  accumulations,  laid  up  against  a 
rainy  day,  into  bonds  to  the  amount  of 
$10,000,000.  Two  other  small  investors  in 
the  same  business  heard  of  the  $50  bonds 
in  reach  of  the  poorest,  and  fished  out  of 
their  old  clothes  and  worn  pocket-books 
enough  to  take  (only  **  estimated  J*  how- 
ever) $15,000,000.  Banks,  suddenly  trans- 
muted from  cormorants  and  sharks  into 
**the  people,**  offered  to  take  $15,000,000 
more.  Even  German  bankers,  by  the 
most  sudden  sea  change  on  record,  figure 
in  the  patriotic  list  of  toiling  and  thrifty 
Americans,  putting  their  little  all  at  the 
disposal  of  the  Government,  to  the  amount 
of  $40,000,000.  Borne  away  by  the  infec- 
tious enthusiasm  and  love  of  country, 
plain  people  like  Mr.  Russell  Sage  have 
now  come  forward  to  make  this  issue  of 
bonds  to  the  simple,  honest  Poor  Rich- 
ards of  the  land  a  great  success,  and  to 
complete  the  confusion  of  all  syndicates 
and  blood-suckers.  The  boasted  thrift 
of  the  French  peasantry  is  nothing  to 
this.  What  French  peasant  ever  ripped 
open  his  mattress  and  brought  out  $3,000,- 
000,  as  did  our  Jacques  Bonhomme,  Mr. 
Sage? 


The  lightning   transformation   of   the 
*'  popular  loan  *'  from  a  miserable  failure 


The  Republican  scheme  for  raising  more 
revenue  by  increasing  tariff  rates,  and  thus 
diminishing  imports  and  the  duties  col- 
lected thereon  at  present,  hangs  fire. 
Speaker  Reed  carried  the  bill  through  the 
Hou^  with  ease,  and  Senator  Quay  con- 
cluded that  it  would  be  **  good  politics  *' 
for  the  Republicans  in  the  upper  branch 
to  concur.  A  resolution  declaring  that 
the  finance  committee  should  report  the 
bill  to  the  Senate  as  it  passed  the  House 
was  readily  accepted  by  the  Republican 
caucus  on  Wednesday  week,  and  the  mana- 
gers begv^  congratulating  themselves  on 
having  solved  a  difficult  problem  so  quick- 
ly. But  it  soon  appeared  that  the  de- 
cision of  the  question  rested  with  a  man 
who  no  longer  accepts  the  decrees  of  Re- 
publican caucuses  as  binding.  Senator 
Jones  of  Nevada  holds  the  balance  of 
power  in  the  committee,  and  Senator 
Jones  is  nowadays  a  Populist,  who  thinks 
that  raw  sugar  should  share  in  the  in- 
crease of  15  per  cent,  provided  in  other 


schedules.  The  Republican  Senators 
generally  are  said  to  believe  that  Mr. 
Jones  will  finally  relent  and  act  with 
them.  This  is  by  no  means  impossible, 
but  it  is  safe  to  predict  that  the  Nevada 
Senator  will  insist  that  the  relenting  shall 
not  all  be  on  one  side.  If  the  silver  men 
must  yield  something  to  the  high- tariff 
men,  they  will  demand  something  in  re- 
turn. 


It  is  good  news  that  many  of  the  Re- 
publican Senators  from  the  silver  States 
are  resolved  to  make  a  straight-out  fight 
for  free  coinage.  Mr.  Teller  of  Colorado 
told  the  caucus  last  week  that  he  proposed 
to  assist  in  placing  a  free-coinage  amend- 
ment on  the  pending  tariff  bill,  and  on 
every  future  tariff  bill,  until  such  a  mea- 
sure should  become  a  law.  He  declared  that 
it  was  his  intention  to  endeavor  to  have 
such  an  amendment  placed  on  a  tariff  bill 
in  the  next  Congress  if  the  Republicans 
should  control  both  branches  of  Congress 
and  the  executive.  If  the  other  Republi- 
can silver  Senators  sustain  Mr.  Teller  in 
this  position  now  and  during  the  next 
six  months,  the  Republican  national  con- 
vention will  hardly  be  able  to  **  dodge  *' 
the  issue.  It  is  on  every  account  earnest- 
ly to  be  desired  that  the  party  shall  make 
up  its  mind  "  where  it  is  at,*'  and  take  a 
firm  stand  on  the  silver  question.  If  the 
sound-money  men  are  inclined  to  be  dis- 
ingenuous, the  soft-money  men  will  render 
a  public  service  by  pushing  the  fight  un- 
til they  force  a  decision. 


The  apparently  official  announcement 
that  the  English  Government  will  pub- 
lish, even  in  advance  of  the  meeting  of 
Parliament,  all  the  documents  in  theit 
possession  bearing  on  the  Venezuelan  dis- 
pute, removes  the  last  doubt  that  the 
outcome  of  the  whole  affair  will  be  peace- 
ful. Those  of  our  dogs  of  war  who  are 
not  already  muzzled  can  work  off  their 
superfluous  valor  by  taunting  Salisbury 
with  **  backing  down,**  and  thus  prepare 
themselves  for  the  question,  which  they 
will  soon  be  indignantly  asking,  '*What 
has  become  of  the  crazy  fools  who  were 
talking  at>out  the  possibility  of  a  war 
with  England  ?"  What  the  English  case 
will  prove  to  be,  no  man  knows  in  ad- 
vance except  Lodge,  and  he,  of  course, 
knows  that  it  will  be  worthless.  He 
astutely  pointed  out  long  ago  that  the 
Pre8ident*s  message  had  carelessly  left  a 
possibility  of  peace  in  the  admission  that 
Great  Britain  and  Venezuela  might  com- 
pose their  differences  amicably,  without 
our  interference;  and  now  he  and  the 
Senate  committee  on  foreign  affairs  are 
trying  to  turn  out  a  form  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  which  will  insure  to  us  and  our 
posterity  the  blessings  of  countless  wars. 
They  admiti  however,  that  they  are  sore- 
ly handicapped  by  the  President's  blun- 


44: 


Tlie   N"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1594 


der  in  not  making  war  inevitable  while 
he  wae  about  it.  This,  with  Salisbury's 
craven  offer  of  all  the  documents  in  the 
case,  makes  the  outlook  for  senatorial 
warriors  most  discouraging.  The  wonder 
with  many  minds  will  be  why  it  never 
occurred  to  Mr.  Olney  to  ask  for  the  evi- 
dence which  the  English  are  now  going 
to  submit  without  being  asked.  He  might 
have  had  it  at  any  time  for  the  asking. 
He  might  himself  have  appointed  an  in- 
vestigating committee,  paid  them  out  of 
the  secret  fund  at  his  disposal,  and 
avoided  all  the  fanfaronade  and  clap- 
trap. Why  did  he  not?  The  only  ra- 
tional answer  is  that  his  letter,  the  mes- 
sage, and  the  pretence  of  war  were  for 
politics  only. 


The  Venezuela  dispute  did  not  reach  an 
acute  stage  until  the  beginning  of  July, 
1895.  It  was  on  the  20th  of  that  month 
that  Mr.  Olney  wrote  his  despatch  to  Lord 
Salisbury  asserting  the  sovereignty  of  the 
United  States  over  the  whole  of  this  con- 
tinent, and  so  forth.  It  is  a  curious  fact 
that  the  grant  to  the  Manoa  Company, 
which  had  been  declared  void  in  1886,  was 
renewed  on  the  17th  of  June,  1895,  just 
thirty-two  days  before  Mr.  Olney *s  de- 
spatch was  written.  The  latest  prospect- 
us of  the  company  records  this  fact.  The 
eastern  boundary  of  the  grant  of  land  is 
described  as  a  line  running  from  a  point 
where  the  Imataca  Mountain  range 
touches  the  limit  of  British  Guiana,  and 
**from  this  limit  and  along  it,  toward  the 
north,  to  the  shore  of  the  Atlantic 
Ocean."  This  limit  being  the  very  point 
in  dispute  between  Great  Britain  and 
Venezuela,  the  tracing  of  it  was  under- 
taken by  the  Manoa  Company  itself,  with 
the  result  of  carrying  its  operations  a  long 
distance  beyond  the  boundary  claimed  by 
Great  Britain.  In  fact,  the  present  Vene- 
zuelan Commission  is  expected  to  deter- 
mine, so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  the  very 
question  which  the  Manoa  Comi>any  de- 
termined for  itself  in  1885  by  occupying 
the  disputed  territory.  The  correspond- 
ence between  our  Government  and  that 
of  Venezuela  shows  that  the  latter  pressed 
us  very  strenuously  about  that  time  (1885) 
to  induce  Great  Britain  to  consent  to  ar- 
bitration of  the  boundary  dispute,  but 
only  in  case  the  United  States  should  be 
the  arbitrator.  No  other  kind  of  arbitra- 
tion was  ever  proposed  by  her.  Mr. 
Bayard  was  then  Secretary  of  State,  and 
he  replied  that  we  could  not  push  our  ser- 
vices as  arbitrator  upon  Great  Britain,  nor 
act  as  such  unless  requested  by  both  par- 
ties. Then  the  Venezuelan  authorities, 
apparently  finding  the  Manoa  Company 
of  no  service  in  a  political  way,  declared 
its  charter  forfeited  (September  8,  1886), 
and  did  not  renew  it  until  they  fancied  that 
there  was  a  prospect  of  embroiling  our 
Grovernment  in  the  dispute.  If  this  fancy 
turns  out  to  be  a  miscalculation,  the 
Manoa  grant  will  probably  be  declared 
void  again.    It  is  as  easy  to  upset  a  land 


grant  in  Venezuela  as  it  is  to  upset  a 
government,  and  nothing  is  easier  than 
that.       

Recent  Venezuelan  despatches  put  in  a 
charming  light  the  kind  of  government 
this  country  is  asked  to  go  to  war  to  ex- 
tend over  40,(X)0  British  subjects.  There 
is  a  revolution  going  on,  of  course— there 
always  is;  that  is  the  way  all  elections  are 
held  and  Presidents  chosen  in  Venezuela. 
But  President  Crespo,  who  himself  got 
his  office  by  a  revolution,  has  issued  a  de- 
cree affirming  that  this  revolution  is  par- 
ticularly heinous  on  account  of  pending 
international  complications;  that  it  is,  in 
fact,  treason,  and  that  all  persons  caught 
in  it  will  be  shot  out  of  hand.  Eminent 
lawyers  in  Caracas  say  the  decree  is  illegal. 
This  will  make  it  Crespo's  painful  duty  to 
shoot  the  eminent  lawyers,  too.  The  jails 
are  already  overflowing  with  political  pri- 
soners, and  the  school-buildings  are  now 
being  used  as  prisons.  This  will  not  check 
the  great  work  of  Venezuelan  education, 
as  the  students  are  all  enlisting  for  the 
war,  anyhow.  An  awful  suspicion  is 
abroad  that  the  *'  illustrious  American," 
Guzman  Blanco,  is  in  England  arranging 
a  little  treaty  of  his  own,  with  his  pockets 
full  of  British  gold.  This  report  was  a 
hard  blow  to  the  patriots,who  are  usually 
in  the  fix  of  the  Georgia  free- silver  patriot, 
certain  that  '*  we've  got  the  gold-bugs 
down  unless  they  buy  us  up."  But  a 
shrewd  counter-stroke  was  made  by  assert- 
ing that  the  $100,000,000  in  gold  which 
the  United  States  are  now  trying  to  bor- 
row was  all  to  be  passed  on  to  Venezuela 
to  aid  her  in  her  war  against  England. 
This  aroused  tremendous  enthusiasm  for 
*'  the  immortal  Monroe";  and  **the  busts 
of  Washington,  Monroe,  Cleveland,  and 
Bolivar  were  entwined  with  rare  flowers." 
And  yet  there  are  those  who  say  that  re- 
publics are  ungrateful ! 


Senator  Morgan  is  clearly  of  the  opinion 
that  the  Monroe  Doctrine  can  be  extended 
over  the  Transvaal,  otherwise  his  resolu- 
tion expressing  "  the  satisfaction  of  the 
United  States  at  the  successful  stand  of 
the  Boer  Government,"  and  **  directing 
President  Cleveland  to  transmit  a  message 
to  this  effect  to  the  President  of  the 
Transvaal  Republic,"  has  no  cause  of 
being.  The  Tribune  asks  anxiously  whe- 
ther Gkeat  Britain  **  will  resent  this," 
but  we  really  think  there  is  no  cause  for 
alarm.  She  must  be  **  on  to  "  Morgan  by 
this  time,  for  he  has  been  roaring  at  her 
steadily  now  for  many  years.  The  only 
persons  who  are  likely  to  be  distressed  by 
this  latest  outbreak  are  Lodge  and  Chand- 
ler, who  will  be  alarmed  lest  Morgan  get 
ahead  of  them  as  haters  of  England  and 
apostles  of  the  doctrine  of  *'  the  immortal 
Monroe."  Morgan  has  a  great  advantage 
over  the  latter,  for  he  is  a  member  of  the 
committee  on  foreign  relations,  and  can 
thus  have  his  own  resolutions  considered 
seriously  and  possibly  reported. 


Major  Ricarde-Seaver  writes  in  the  last 
Fortnightly  forecasting  the  course  of 
events  in  the  Transvaal.  What  he  predicts 
is  that  the  patience  of  the  40,000  Uitland- 
ers  will  soon  be  exhausted ;  that  there 
will  soon  be  a  hostile  demonstration  against 
the  Boer  Government ;  that "  Paul  KrOger 
and  his  Hollander  friends  "  will  be  "  sent 
to  enjoy  themselves  on  the  banks  of  the 
Amstel "  (Amsterdam),  and  then  will  come 
in  a  new  regime.  He  quotes  from  a  late 
speech  of  a  progressive  Boer  in  the  Volks- 
raad  to  the  effect  that  the  Uitlanders  have 
built  Johannesburg,  which  in  a  few  years 
will  contain  150,000  inhabitants;  that 
they  pay  three-qu^ters  of  the  taxes ;  that 
they  cannot  be  naturalized,  nor  their 
children,  under  fourteen  years  of  resi- 
dence, and  that  the  settlement  of  their 
claims  has  been  relegated  to  a  convention 
to  be  held  in  1905.  Major  Ricarde-Seaver 
adds  that  a  *'  few  Hollanders  and  Germans 
at  Pretoria  lead  Krtlger,  while  Krttger 
leads  his  Dopper  Boer  population,  and 
'owns*  their  representatives  in  Parlia- 
ment." It  is  plain  from  all  this  that  an 
armed  attempt  at  revolution  has  been 
running  in  the  Uitlander  head  for  some 
time,  and  that  Dr.  Jameson  was  not  call- 
ed  on  unexpectedly  to  go  to  the  assistance 
of  the  Johannesburgers. 


Gov.  Morton's  appointment  of  Greorge 
P.  Lord  as  a  member  of  the  State  Civil- 
Service  Commission  is  shockingly  bad. 
Not  only  is  Lord  an  unfit  man  for  the 
place,  but,  in  order  to  get  him  into  it,  the 
Grovemor  forced  out  Mr.  McKinstry,  a 
faithful  and  efficient  Commissioner,  who 
has  performed  valuable  service  in  abolish- 
ing political  influences  from  the  public 
service  of  the  State.  Lord,.whose  chief 
backer  is  Senator  Raines,  and  who  is  a 
thoroughgoing  Piatt  spoilsman,  will  use 
all  his  powers  as  Commissioner  to  undo 
the  work  which  his  predecessor  and  his 
associates  have  performed.  It  is  said 
that  the  Grovemor  has  appointed  him  in 
accordance  with  a  political  '*  deal "  which 
has  for  its  object  the  control  of  the  com- 
mission by  Piatt ;  and  whether  this  be  so 
or  not,  there  is  no  question  that  this  will 
be  the  outcome,  unless  the  Governor  shall 
decide  upon  recalling  Lord's  name  from 
the  Senate.  Unless  he  does  recall  it,  it 
will  be  impossible  to  treat  seriously  his 
professions  of  empathy  with  civil-service ' 
reform.  He  already  has  a  Piatt  editor  on 
the  connnission,  and  if  he  persists  in  put- 
ting a  Piatt  politician  there  with  him, 
leaving  Col.  Burt  in  a  hopeless  minority 
of  one,  he  will  turn  the  service  of  the  State 
over  to  Piatt's  mercy  with  all  that  this  im- 
plies. 

Judge  Barrett's  special-jury  bill,  which 
is  now  before  the  Legislature,  ought  not 
to  be  allowed  to  fail  of  passage.  No  mea- 
sure has  ever  gone  to  Albany  which  can 
be  more  properly  described  as  the  outcome 
of  experience  and  the  product  of  expert 
ability  than  this.  It  was  drawn  by  Judges 
Barrett,  Ingraham,  and  Beekman,  and  is 


^m^ 


Jan.  i6j  1896] 


Tiie   !N"atiori. 


45 


deaurned  to  remedy  defects  in  our  jury 
vystem  which  their  experience  has  shown 
to  exist.  Its  primary  object  is  to  give  us 
competent  juries  for  the  trial  of  accused 
persons  whose  performances  have  become, 
either  through  political  or  other  associa- 
tions, a  matter  of  great  notoriety.  As 
Judge  Barrett  says,  the  experience  in  our 
courts  with  the  recent  police  cases  is  a 
striking  illustration  of  the  need  of  the  new 
system.  Not  only  was  a  conviction  ob- 
tained with  great  difficulty,  but  the  time 
consumed  in  the  successive  trials  congest- 
ed the  courts  and  entailed  great  expense 
upon  the  city.  So  discouraging  was  the 
result  of  the  McLaughlin  trials  that  the 
other  police  indictments  were  dismissed. 
The  consequence  of  this  was  very  demo- 
ralizing, both  upon  the  police  force  and 
upon  the  public  mind,  for  it  gave  the  im- 
pression that  little  had  been  accomplished 
by  the  Lexow  inquiry  towards  real  reform 
in  police  matters.  This  result  was  only 
too  typical  of  what  has  happened  repeat- 
edly in  other  cases  ;  and  unless  something 
is  done  to  prevent  such  qutcomes  in  fu- 
ture, we  must,  as  Judge  Barrett  says,  face 
the  fact  that  criminal  justice  in  this  coun- 
ty is  a  failure.  The  Legislature,  we  are 
sorry  to  say,  is  not  a  body  which  is  likely 
to  pass  a  measure  of  this  sort  of  its  own 
free  will.  There  is  nothing  in  the  measure 
for  *' politics,'*  and  the  Piatt- Tammany 
combine  which  is  in  control  at  Albany  has 
no  interest  in  pure  justice.  The  Bar  As- 
sociation should  take  the  leadership  in 
pushing  the  bill  through,  and  in  arousing 
such  public  sentiment  in  its  support  that 
the  Legislature  will  not  dare  to  refuse  its 
passage. 

The  appointment  of  Dr.  John  S.  Bil- 
lings, now  rector  of  the  Department  of 
Hygiene  in  the  Pennsylvania  University, 
as  librarian  of  the  new  consolidated  li- 
braries in  New  York,  has  been  formally 
confirmed,  and  its  importance  for  the  new 
enterprise  cannot  be  overrated.  Not  only 
is  Dr.  Billings*s  fame  as  a  medical  man 
world-wide — he  has  been  loaded  with 
foreign  scientific  honors — but  he  has  done 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  pieces  of  cata- 
loguing ever  known,  in  making  the  Index 
Medicus  and  the  Catalogue  of  the  Sur- 
geon-Qeueral's  Library  at  Washington. 
The  Index  Medicus  is,  in  fact,  a  marvel 
of  skill,  industry,  and  accuracy.  His  ge- 
nius is  specially  shown  in  his  capacity  for 
organization— that  is,  forgetting  the  right 
men  for  particular  work.  He  has  valua- 
ble gifts  in  other  ways  than  cataloguing 
— his  knowledge  of  books,  his  experience  in 
collecting,  his  knowledge  of  building — and 
they  all  tend  towards  making  him  singu- 
larly fit  for  the  place  he  is  taking.  The 
selection  of  the  librarian  was  the  crucial 
point  in  the  consolidation  scheme.  The 
wrong  mab  would  have  deprived  it  of 
half  of  its  value.  With  Dr.  Billings  its 
success  is  assured. 


Lloyd  Lowndes,   the    new  Eepublicgn 
(hftmof  of  Maryland,  makes  a  good  start. 


In  his  inaugural  address  he  takes  pains  to 
acknowledge  that  he  could  not  have  been 
elected  but  for  the  support  of  many  inde- 
pendents, and  declares  that  **  while  I  shall 
try  to  do  my  duty  towards  my  party,  I  shall 
also  remember  I  am  the  Governor  of  the 
whole  people  of  Maryland,  and  as  such 
give  all  due  consideration."  This,  of 
course,  is  only  a  general  statement,  but 
he  was  specific  also.  Under  the  Gorman 
machine  the  appointing  power  of  the  Gov- 
ernor in  Maryland  has  been  increased  to 
an  extent  equalled  in  no  other  State,  so 
that  there  is  an  immense  number  of 
**  plums  "  for  a  Republican  Governor  to 
deal  out.  But  Mr.  Lowndes  comes  out 
in  favor  of  restoring  to  the  people  the 
right  of  selecting  public  officers  '*  wher- 
ever it  can  be  done  with  due  regard 
for  public  interest,  this  being  in  harmony 
with  our  theory  of  government  and  a 
safeguard  against  centralization  of  po- 
litical power  in  the  hands  of  the  Gov- 
ernor." He  also  declares  against  any- 
thing like  a** clean  sweep."  While  ad- 
mitting that  some  of  the  State  officials 
should  give  way  to  those  more  closely  al- 
lied in  principle  to  the  party  in  power,  he 
holds  that  **  we  should  heed  the  demand 
for  civil-service  reform,  and  extend,  wher- 
ever practicable  in  this  State  and  its  prin- 
cipal cities,  the  merit  system  of  appoint- 
ments to  office."  He  discusses  the  use  of 
money  at  elections,  which  he  says  is  in- 
creasing in  Maryland  so  rapidly  as  to  de- 
mand the  especial  attention  of  the  new 
Legislature.  **Our  election  laws,"  he 
says,  **  should  be  amended  and  so  framed 
as  to  insure  to  the  people  absolutely  fair 
registration;  to  guarantee  to  every  voter 
the  inestimable  privilege  of  casting  his 
vote  with  the  right  to  have  that  vote  hon- 
estly counted,  and  to  secure  to  the  people 
honest  machinery  of  elections  without  any 
advantage  to  the  party  in  power  ";  "  vio- 
lations of  these  laws  should  be  clearly  de- 
fined, the  method  of  proof  facilitated,  and 
prompt  and  severe  punishment  should  fol- 
low con  vi9tion."  Altogether,  Gk)v.  Lowndes 
talks  like  a  really  independent  man,  and 
in  Congress  twenty  years  ago  showed  that 
he  could  live  up  to  independent  princi- 
ples when  the  pinch  came. 


Texas  Populists  have  made  what  is  to 
them  a  saddening  discovery,  that  there 
are  alleged  evils  or  discriminations  in 
railroad  transportation  rates  which  even 
the  State  Railroad  Commission  cannot 
remedy.  The  Populist  mind  cannot  com- 
prehend why  freight  rates  should  not  be 
uniform  per  mile,  regardless  of  the  length 
of  the  haul.  A  through  rate  from  Waco 
to  Boston  for  85  cents,  against  59  cents 
from  Waco  to  Houston,  they  denounce  as 
an  unjust  discrimination,  and  the  Texas 
Commissioners  echo  the  opinion.  But 
when  it  is  learned  that  the  Commission 
itself  has  made  the  rate  for  the  500  miles 
from  Gainesville  to  Houston  the  same  as 
the  rate  for  the  140  miles  from  Cameron 
to  Houston,  the  Populists  wonder  wheth- 
er   they  have   gained  anything   by  the 


adoption  of  a  constitutional  amendment 
providing  for  the  election  of  Commission- 
ers by  the  people.  As  the  Commissioners 
are  Democrats,  it  is  felt  to  be  incumbent 
upon  the  Democratic  party  to  defend  or 
explain  their  acts,  lest  converts  be  made 
to  the  Populist  plank  of  State  ownership 
of  railroads.  The  task  is  a  difficult  one, 
for  complaints  come  from  all  quarters  of 
the  State.  Southern  Pacific  alleged  dis- 
crimination against  south  Texas  ports  is 
matched  by  alleged  discriminations 
against  Dallas  and  common  points  in 
north  Texas  by  the  Gould  and  other  lines, 
and  at  Austin  there  is  a  bunching  of  law- 
suits and  investigations  involving  the 
rights  of  the  railroads  and  the  powers  of 
the  Railroad  Commission.  Out  of  it  all 
may  come,  the  Texas  Democrats  hope,  an 
educational  influence  on  the  Texas  rural 
mind,  to  change  the  conception  of  what 
constitutes  wrong  in  railroad  charges,  and 
the  equally  fallacious  conception  of  what  a 
Railroad  Commission  is  constituted  to  do. 


Pope  Leo's  appeal  to  Christendom  for 
union  with  the  Catholic  Church  did  not 
meet  with  the  warmest  response  from  the 
Protestant  world,  but  for  absolutely  chilly 
reading  one  should  turn  to  the  reply  of 
the  Holy  Catholic  and  Apostolical  Ortho- 
dox Church  of  .the  East.  A  translation 
of  the  encyclical  letter  on  the  subject 
sent  out  by  the  Patriarchs,  all  of  them 
**  loving  brothers  in  Christ  and  well- 
wishers,"  has  just  been  published,  and 
certainly  shows  that  the  Greeks  are  still 
ready  to  prove  their  doctrine  orthodox  by 
apostolic  blows  and  knocks.  The  Bishop 
of  Rome  is  sternly  exhorted  by  them  to 
(•shake  off,  once  and  for  all  time,  the 
many  and  divers  innovations  which,  con- 
trary to  the  Gospel,  have  been  stealthily 
introduced  into  the  Church."  Until  he 
is  prepared  to  do  that,  and  to  abide,  in 
company  with  the  Orthodox  Church, 
**by  the  divine  apostolic  traditions  and 
by  the  rules  of  the  first  nine  centuries  of 
Christianity,"  all  his  *•  proposals  of  re- 
union are  vain  and  empty  words."  The 
document  is  a  long  one,  and  filled  with 
vigorous  argumentation  to  show  the  Pope's 
*'  manifest  contradiction  with  himself," 
his  "  side- re  treat  and  admission,"  etc. 
The  Patriarchs  make  a  square  offer  to 
leave  the  question  to  arbitration,  as  it 
were,  asserting  their  readiness  to  submit 
to  Rome  if  she  can  prove  her  doctrines 
*'  out  of  the  teaching  of  the  F'athers  and 
of  the  divinely  assembled  Oecumenical 
Councils.^  They  close  with  an  exposure 
of  the  '*  vain  device  of  the  Bishop  of 
Rome"  in  pretending  to  refer  them  to 
**  original  sources,"  intimating  that  they 
know  a  thing  or  two  themselves  about 
original  sources.  All  told,  the  Pope's  sin- 
cere and  praiseworthy  efforts  to  bring 
about  the  reunion  of  Christendom  have 
resulted  in  nothing  except  a  strong  reaf- 
firmation by  each  division  of  its  willing- 
ness to  unite  with  all  the  others  whenever 
they  wish  to  surrender  unconditionally 
to  It. 


4=3 


Tlie   [NTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1594 


AMERICAN  HATRED  OF  ENGLAND. 
No  one  who  has  taken  the  trouble  during 
the  present  crisis  to  look  into  the  Jingo 
mind,  can  have  failed  to  find,  behind  all 
irritation  about  the  Monroe  Doctrine  or 
the  Venezuelan  boundary,  a  deep  hatred 
of  England  and  a  strong  desire  to  do  her 
some  kind  of  harm.  As  the  same  feeling 
is  very  rife  in  other  countries — ^France  and 
Qermany,  for  instance — it  is  worth  while 
to  examine  its  nature  and  causes. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  account  for  it  in  Eu- 
rope. No  nation  there  quite  likes  the  men 
of  any  other  nation.  International  hates 
or  dislikes  are  the  natural  result  of  500 
years  of  wars,  carried  on  until  very  recent- 
ly with  great  atrocity,  about  boundaries, 
about  titles,  or  for  mere  glory,  or  to  pre- 
serve **  the  balance  of  power.*'  Then  dif- 
ferences of  manners,  of  standards  of  mo- 
rality, and  of  religion,  and  trade  jealou- 
sies, help  to  keep  alive  the  old  prejudices 
arising  out  of  these  wars.  It  is  only  ninety 
years  since  Nelson  taught  his  middies  to 
*'fear  Qod,  honor  the  King,  and  hate 
Frenchmen,'*  as  the  whole  duty  of  young 
Englishmen. 

The  great  increase  in  intercourse  be- 
tween England    and  the  Continent  has 
done  a  good  deal  to  allay  these    antipa- 
thies, but  it  has  supplied  other  causes  of 
English  unpopularity,  notably  a  more  ex- 
tensive contact    with   English   manners. 
That  these  are  good,  even  the  warmest 
admirers  of  England  will  not  venture  to 
assert.    They  have  for  a  century  played  a 
leading  part  among  the  sources  of  Anglo- 
phobia.   The  most  provocative  feature  in 
them  is  the  English  habit  of   ignoring 
strangers   in    places   where    people   are 
brought  into  close  oontact,  such  as  caf6s, 
restaurants,  hotels,   and    public  convey- 
ances.   In  all  such  places  few  foreigners 
ever  fail  to  acknowledge  the  presence  of 
others,  not  as  either  gentle  or  simple,  but 
as  human  beings.    The  foreigner  either 
bows,  or  speaks,  or  indicates  by  tones  or 
looks  or  behavior  of  some  sort  that  he  is 
conscious  of  the  presence  of  fellow-men. 
Englishmen  are  very  apt,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  affect  absolute  ignorance  that 
they  are  not  completely  alone.     By  keep- 
ing a  close  watch  on  them  they  may  often 
be  caught  taking  a  peep  at  you,  by  way 
of  curiosity,  but  they  instantly  avert  their 
gaze  as  if  taken  en  flagrant  dilit  in  a 
low  act,  like  reading  private  letters.    All 
this,  to  a  Frenchman  or  Italian  or  South 
German,  is  very  galling  or  irritating.    It 
is  partly  due  to  shyness,  but  also,  partly, 
to  the  English  fear  of  making  undesira- 
ble acquaintances ;  or,  to  put  it  different- 
ly, to  an  Englishman's  assumption  of  su- 
periority to  everybody  whom  he  does  not 
know.    To  this  must  be  added  an  unde- 
niable superiority  to  the  mass  of  Conti- 
nentals in  the  matter  of  personal  cleanli- 
ness and  comfort.     Of  this  matter  the 
English  have  for  a  century  made  a  careful 
study,  and  foreigners  of  the  upper  class 
widely  imitate  it,  but  it  enrages  a  great 
many  of  the  other  kind  when  forced  by  I 
English  travellers  00  their  notice. 


The  English  differ,  too,  from  the  Conti- 
nentals in  this,  that  their  code  of  man- 
ners makes  no  provision  at  all  for 
strangers.  That  is,  it  does  not  "run,"  as 
the  conveyancers  say,  with  the  individual 
himself,  but  with  his  acquaintances.  An 
Englishman  does  not  know  how  to  behave 
to  you  till  he  knows  who  you  are.  He 
owes  nothing  to  himself  in  his  way  of 
treating  you.  To  a  Continental,  on  the 
other  hand,  his  manners  are  part  of  his 
personal  equipment,  like  his  gloves  or  his 
cane.  An  Austrian  or  French  gentleman 
is  extremely  polite  to  every  one  he  meets, 
as  something  due  to  himself.  He  behaves 
this  way  because  this  is  the  way  gentle- 
men ought  to  behave.  The  Englishman, 
on  the  other  hand,  considers  only  what 
the  stranger  is  entitled  to  in  the  way  of 
consideration,  and  what  this  is  he  cannot 
tell  till  he  finds  out  who  he  is,  and  in  the 
meantime  he  treats  him  with  no  consi- 
deration at  all. 

Most  of  these  observations,  however, 
will  hardly  apply  to  the  American  dislike 
of  England,  for  America  has  the  same 
language,  and.  If  not  the  same  religion, 
the  same  religious  ideas ;  and,  if  not  whol- 
ly of  the  same  race,  thinks  she  is,  and 
has  had  only  one  short  war  with  England 
since  the  beginning  of  the  century.  Wars, 
too,  which  are  carried  on  between  peoples 
3,000  miles  apart  do  not  breed  the  intense 
hates  excited  by  an  enemy  on  one's  own 
borders.  Then  Americans  have  but  very 
slight  familiarity  with  English  travellers. 
Comparatively  very  few  visit  this  country, 
and  they  are  apt  to  be  a  picked  class  who 
come  over  to  marry  our  rich  girls.  While, 
too,  our  commerce  with  England  is  enor- 
mous, we  have  little  or  no  commercial 
rivalry  with  her,  because  the  protectionist 
policy  which  has  prevailed  for  the  past 
thirty  years  has  substantially  withdrawn 
us  from  the  great  foreign  markets,  or  at 
all  events,  has  caused  us  to  treat  them  as 
undesirable  objects  of  search. 

The  usual  answer  a  Jingo  makes  to  in- 
quiry as  to  the  cause  of  his  desire  to  fight 
England,  is  that  she  is  '* grabbing"  and 
'*  insolent."  There  is  a  certain  truth  in 
both  these  charges.  But  her  <*  grabbing" 
since  1815  has  been,  in  general,  of  bar- 
barous countries,  as  in  India  and  Egypt, 
or  of  savage  countries,  as  in  Africa.  In 
all  these  cases  it  has  resulted  in  the 
covering  with  law  and  justice  and  security 
of  vast  populations  who  have  for  ages 
known  nothing  of  these  blessings.  What 
is  of  more  importance  for  the  purpose  of 
this  discussion  is,  that  she  has  grabbed 
no  territory  to  the  benefits  of  which  she 
has  not  admitted  all  nations  on  an  equal 
footing.  She  has  not  in  recent  times  at- 
tempted to  apply  to  any  of  her  possessions 
the  old  theory  that  colonies  exist  for  the 
benefit  of  the  mother  country.  Trade 
and  protection  are  offered  in  them  all  on 
equal  terms  to  Americans  as  well  as  to 
Englishmen.  In  every  one  of  them  the 
American  enjoys  all  the  rights  and  privi- 
leges which  would  be  given  him  by  Ame- 
rican dominion,     A  British  conquest  is 


substantially  an  American  conquest  with- 
out the  expense  and  worry.  Moreover, 
nothing  has  been  **  grabbed  "  from  Ame- 
rica. There  is,  and  has  been,  no  boun- 
dary dispute  which  has  not  been  settled 
amicably.  The  British  in  Canada  have 
been  peaceable  and  unobjectionable  neigh- 
bors. Any  unpleasantnesses  that  have  oc- 
curred have  been  caused  by  tariffs,  and 
have  been  easily  adjusted  by  retaliation. 
The  newspapers  occasionally  interchange 
-incivilities,  but  they  have  always  been  re- 
cognized as  strictly  **  journalistic,"  and 
therefore  harmless.  So  that  it  is  hardly 
possible  to  find  in  the  ''grabbing"  charge 
a  real  catsiis  belli — that  is,  one  of  the  mo- 
tives which  make  men  wish  to  kill  their 
enemies,  destroy  their  property,  and  fill 
their  land  with  mourning. 

We  think  it  likely  that  if  the  secrets  of 
all   hearts  were  known,  the  hostility  to 
England  would  be  found  in  the  sort  of 
ambition  with  which  our  immense  mate- 
rial development  has  filled  so  many  peo- 
ple, and  which  makes  even  writers  like 
Capt  Mahan  call  for  a  Gibraltar  or  Malta 
of  our  own,  and  for  **  keys "  in  all  sorts 
of  out-of-the-way  places  by  sea  and  land. 
The  revelation   which    has   come   to  us 
since  the  rebellion  of  the  extent  of  our  re- 
sources has  spread  the  idea  that,  to  be  a 
great  nation,  as  Great  Britain  is  admitted 
to  be,  we  must  have  a  large  number  of 
outlying  dependencies   and    a    very    big 
navy  as  she  has.    These  things  seem  to 
thousands,  if  -not  millions,  the  only  visi- 
ble signs  of  national  success,  like  the  rich 
man*s  furniture  and  "  costly  mansions." 
The  jealousy  of  Great  Britain  expresses 
itself,  therefore,  in  the  eager  expectation 
of  every  Jingo,  when  he  is  going  to  seize 
something    himself,    that    England    will 
come  forward  and  try  to  take  it  from  liim. 
It  will  have  been  observed  that  for  a  long 
time  past  every  politician  who  was  advis- 
ing annexation  or  acquisition  of  any  place, 
has  confidently  predicted  that,  if  we  did 
not  take  it,  England  would  surely  do  so. 
The    "  insolence "    complained  of  has 
not  been  shown  in  diplomatic  correspon- 
dence, so  it  must  be  found  in  "social  in- 
tercourse."   Social  intercourse  is  mainly 
limited  to  persons  who  go  to  England  in 
search  of   society  or  acquaintances,  and 
who,  no  doubt,  often  encounter  snubs  or 
depreciation,  covert  or  open.      But  the 
remedy  for  this  is  not  war,  but  staying  at 
home.     It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that 
we  take  no  pains  to  present  our  best  na- 
tional side  to  foreigners.    In  the  choice  of 
our  consular  and  diplomatic  representa- 
tives, for  instance,  we  often  seem  to  invite 
their  contempt,  and  the  impression  our 
newspapers  give  of  us  may  be  guessed 
from  Matthew  Arnold's  talk  about  them 
in  his  letters.    The  prosperity  of  these  de- 
lineators of  our  life  and  manners  natural- 
ly leads  strangers  to  suppose  that  they 
faithfully  represent  us,  and  they  create  a 
view  of  America  which  is  not  flattering 
and  is  difficult  to  conceal.    But  the  cure 
for  all  this  is  not  throat-cutting  and  house- 
burning,  but  self-respect  and  self -improve* 


Jan.  1 6,  1896] 


Th.e    [N'atioii. 


47 


ment.  Better  legiBlators  and  better  ad- 
ministrators would  do  more  for  the  na- 
tional fame,  and  comompd  more  foreign 
deference,  than  a  thousand  battle-ships. 


''NATIONAL   honor:' 

Thk  Boston  Herald  asked  the  other  day, 
with  much  point,  apropos  of  the  new  navy 
for  which  enormous  sums  are  being  appro- 
priated, what  the  navy  was  for.  The  ua- 
vies  of  the  great  naval  Powers  are  meant 
to  carry  on  wars  with  each  other,  which 
their  past  history  and  ezperieoce  lead 
them  to  expect.  They  expect  to  have  to 
fight,  as  they  have  fought  for  hundreds  of 
years,  for  prestige — that  is,  to  decide 
which  is  the  leading  Power.  In  the  past 
this  leading  Power— that  is,  the  Power 
whose  word  weighed  most  with  the  small- 
er states— has  been  either  England  or 
France.  Under  Louis  XIV.  and  Napoleon 
it  was  France.  After  1815  it  was  Eng- 
land. Under  Louis  Napoleon  it  was  France 
again.  Then  Germany  appeared  on  the 
scene,  and  it  became  Germany.  Ever 
since  the  peace  of  1815,  too,  Russia  has 
lowered  on  the  horizon  as  a  possible  com- 
petitor for  the  place,  and  at  all  events  a 
very  important  ally  for  any  of  the  more 
active  competitors.  In  the  last  century, 
England  and  France  contended  for  India 
and  North  America.  England  succeeded 
in  both  cases.  She  drove  France  out  of 
India  and  out  of  America.  In  this  cen- 
tury, England,  France,  and  Germany  are 
contending  for  the  continent  of  Africa, 
and,  besides  thie,  the  long-impending 
break-up  of  the  Turkish  Empire  seems  to 
be  at  hand,  and  it  is  well  understood  that 
there  will  have  to  be  a  division  of  the  ter- 
ritory. So  that  it  may  be  said  that  only 
one  old  bone  of  contention  between  the 
Powers  (Italy)  has  been  removed  within 
this  century,  while  a  very  considerable  one 
(Africa)  has  been  added. 

We  see  here  clearly  enough  why  all 
these  Powers  need  a  navy.  They  have  in 
view  numerous  causes  of  quarrel.  The 
big  ones  need  large  navies  in  order  to  in- 
timidate or  subdue  their  rivals.  The 
smaller  ones  need  small  ones  in  order  to 
make  their  alliance  worth  the  courting  by 
the  big  ones  when  the  general  scrimmage 
begins.  And  this  has  gone  on  for  ages — 
ever  since,  in  fact,  Europe  came  out  of 
the  mediaeval  darkness.  The  United  States 
of  America  was  founded  in  order  to  get  a 
portion  of  the  civilized  world  out  of  this 
Donnybrook  fair,  to  provide  a  corner  of 
the  earth  in  which  men  could  live  without 
having  constantly  enemies  to  watch  and 
suspect. 

There  does  not  exist  in  our  case  a  sin- 
gle one  of  the  reasons  which  excuse  large 
navies  in  Europe.  We  have  no  hostile 
neighk>ors.  We  have  no  foreign  posses- 
sions. We  have  no  interest  in  European 
quarrels.  Since  181S— that  is,  since  we  be- 
came a  moderately  large  community — no 
foreign  state  has  shown  any  disposition  to 
quarrel  with  us.  In  all  the  disputes  with 
foreignef*     which    looked    serious,  (our 


known  resources,  and  the  plain  difficulty 
of  getting  at  us  for  purposes  of  mischief, 
have  been  sufficient  for  our  protection. 
In  no  foreign  question  have  we  been  baf- 
fled or  overborne  or  worsted;  witness  the 
Mexican  trouble  and  the  Alabama  trou- 
ble. In  fact,  there  is  not  in  our  past  the 
smallest  support  for  the  theory  that  we 
need  a  large  navy.  The  prediction  that 
we  shall  need  one  in  the  future  must  rest 
either  in  the  belief  that  the  stronger, 
larger,  and  richer  we  grow,  the  more  dis- 
posed European  Powers  will  be  to  attack, 
or  in  the  belief  that  we  meditate  great 
transpontine  contests.  No  Jingo  holds 
any  such  belief.  He  wilt  not  affirm  that 
every  time  we  add  10,000,(XX)  to  our  popu- 
lation, or  $1(X),000«0(X)  to  our  revenue,  for- 
eigners will  feel  more  moved  to  invade  us 
or  bombard  our  ports.  In  fact,  the  rea- 
son which  a  Jingo  always  falls  back  on, 
when  hard  pressed,  for  wishing  to  live  in 
complete  armor,  is  that  somebody  may  as- 
sail our  "  honor  "—that  is,  say  something 
offensive,  or  refuse  to  submit  to  some  de- 
mand of  ours,  or  resent  some  of  our  lan- 
guage. It  is  impossible  beforehand  to  de- 
scribe or  define  injuries  to  honor,  because 
honor  is  an  impalpable  thing.  Invasion, 
seizure  of  territory,  blockade  of  ports,  in- 
juries to  trade,  maltreatment  of  citizens, 
as  causes  of  quarrel  are  easily  estimated 
and  understood,  but  nstional  honor  is  a 
creature  of  the  mind. 

In  Europe  it  may  be  said  that,  as  a 
rule,  national  honor  means  what  indivi- 
dual honor  used  to  mean  in  duelling  cir- 
cles— that  is,  the  belief  among  other  peo- 
ple that  you  were  not  physically  afraid ;  or 
that  if  anybody  did  anything  to  annoy 
you,  he  would  have  to  fight  you.  An  of- 
fence against  your  honor  was  therefore 
something  which  indicated  that  somebody 
else  might  annoy  you  in  some  way  with- 
out having  to  fight  you ;  that,  in  short, 
he  doubted  your  courage.  If,  for  in- 
stance, he  called  you  a  liar  or  a  thief,  his 
offence  lay,  not  in  these  aspersions  on 
your  truthfulness  or  honesty,  but  in  the 
assumption  that  you  would  put  up  with 
them.  Your  remedy,  therefore,  was  not 
to  disprove  his  charge,  but  to  try  to  kill 
him.  This  inconsequential  character  of 
the  duel  between  individuals  has  often 
been  exposed.  It  accounts  for  the  pre- 
valence of  the  duel  in  barbarous  ages  and 
countries.  There  has  never  been  more 
honor  at  the  South  than  at  the  North, 
or  in  France  than  in  England  ;  there  has 
simply  been  more  fear  on  the  part  of  each 
man  that  other  men  would  think  he  was 
deficient  in  physical  courage.  According- 
ly each  person  was  the  sole  judge  of  what 
concerned  his  own  honor.  Nok>ody  but 
himself  knew  in  what  his  honor  consisted 
or  what  was  injurious  to  it. 

The  adoption  of  this  private  code  of 
honor  by  the  European  nations  is  not  sur- 
prbing.  It  is  of  the  last  importance  to 
each  that  the  other  should  think  it  very 
fierce  and  touchy.  This  keeps  them  from 
attempts  on  each  other's  possessions,  and 
keeps  the  small  ones  in  proper  awe  of  the 


big  ones.  If  one*intimates  in  some  way 
that  it  thinks  the  other  reluctant  to  fight, 
it  is  an  imputation  on  the  national  honor, 
and  has  to  be  avenged.  If  this  suspicion 
is  pushed  too  far,  it  has  to  be  quelled  by 
wsr — that  is,  by  an  immense  destruction 
of  life  and  property. 

That  we  shall  suffer  substantial  damage 
from  any  power,  such  as  invasion  or 
physical  injury,  we  do  not  suppose  any 
one  in  his  senses  believes.  The  use  of  the 
navy  is  to  punish  people  who  think  we  are 
afraid  to  fight  Our  honor  will  be  in  charge 
of  somebody  in  Washington  whom  no  indi- 
vidual would  intrust  with  his  own  honor 
and  he  will  say  when  the  national  honor 
has  been  hurt,  and  whether  the  injury 
calls  for  destruction  of  life  and  property. 
Our  honor,  too,  after  the  war  is  over,  will 
remain  in  precisely  the  same  condition  as 
before.  No  apology  will  be  made  on  ac- 
count of  it.  The  two  parties  will  simply 
compare  the  number  of  their  dead,  and 
their  losses  of  property,  make  peace,  and 
go  on  as  before.  In  short,  when  we  get 
our  navy  and  send  it  round  the  world  in 
search  of  imputations  on  our  honor,  we 
shall  have  launched  the  United  States  on 
that  old  sea  of  sin  and  sorrow  and  ruffian- 
ism on  which  mankind  has  tossed  since 
the  dawn  of  history.  We  shall  have 
formally  made  the  duellist's  code  part  and 
parcel  of  American  polity,  just  as  the  old  , 
slave  States  are  abandoning  it.  We  shall 
have  abandoned  as  a  failure  the  greatest 
experiment  any  government  ever  made. 


''ONE-MAN  POWER''  IN  AMERICA. 

The  London  Economist,  in  discussing  the 
course  of  the  President  regarding  the  Ve- 
nezuelan controversy,  treats  his  action  as 
**a  severe  object-lesson  in  the  weak  places 
of  the  Constitution."  It  holds  that  "  the 
recent  interruption  to  the  calm  progress  of 
the  republic  "  was  caused  by  Mr.  Cleve- 
land alone,  and  it  finds  in  the  incident  an 
illustration  of  '*  the  dangerous  ascendency 
which  the  system  gives  to  a  single  officer, 
whose  competence  is  as  little  secured  by 
the  mode  of  choosing  him  as  it  is  by  the 
hereditary  principle."  It  asks  Americans 
to  consider  **  whether  their  Constitution 
has  not  a  fault ;  whether  it  does  not,  like 
a  despotism,  render  it  possible  for  one 
man,  in  his  own  interest,  or  out  of  his  own 
defect  of  judgment,  to  work  injury  to  his 
own  people  upon  the  most  colossal  scale  T  " 
The  Economist  admits  that  the  Presi- 
dent cannot  really  act,  in  any  question  of 
internal  politics,  in  opposition  to  the  na- 
tional sentiment,  that  his  messages  are  of 
no  weight  unless  the  people  endorse  them, 
and  that  Congress,  by  refusing  money, 
can  arrest  the  course  of  the  most  self- 
willed  or  ambitious  of  Presidents.  But  it 
holds  that,  nevertheless,  our  system 
allows  the  national  executive  to  cause 
** volcanic  shocks"  as  regards  external 
affairs  without  any  effective  sesponsi- 
bility,  and  that  "  if  a  President  is  ambi- 
tious or  vain,  or,  which  ia  ©ven  more 
dangerous,  under  the  dominion   of  ideal- 


48 


TKe   IN'ation. 


[Vol.  62.  No, 


ogues,  he  is  able  at  any  moment  to  make 
as  great,  and  it  may  sometimes  be  as  dis- 
astrous, a  commotion  as  any  absolute 
king." 

The  subject  thus  opened  up  is  both  inte- 
resting and  important.  In  establishing 
the  system  of  checks  and  balances,  the 
framers  of  the  Constitution  demoted  espe- 
cial attention  to  the  problem  of  making 
the  executive  efficient  without  giving  him 
absolute  power.  He  was  made  command- 
er in-chief  of  the  army  and  navy  of  the 
United  States  and  of  the  militia  of  the 
several  States  when  called  into  the  service 
of  the  nation,  but  the  dimensions  of  the 
federal  army  and  navy  are  determined  by 
Congress,  and  those  of  the  militia  by  the 
States.  He  was  given  the  power  to  formu- 
late treaties  with  other  nations,  but  such 
treaties  do  not  become  operative  with- 
out the  concurrence  of  two-thirds  of  the 
Senate.  He  was  authorized  to  make  nomi- 
nations for  a  great  number  of  important 
offices,  but  his  nominations  must  be  ap- 
proved by  the  Senate  in  order  to  become 
effective.  As  regards  the  tremendous  pre- 
rogative of  declaring  war,  that  was  ex- 
pressly committed  to  Congress,  for  reasons 
thus  stated  by  Story: 

"  The  power  to  declare  war  might  have  been 
vested  in  the  President.    Id  monarch  ies  the 

g)wer  is  ordinarily  vested  io  the  executive, 
at  certainly  in  a  republic  the  chief  magistrate 
ought  not  to  be  clothed  with  a  power  so  sam- 
mary,  and  at  the  same  time  so  full  of  dangers 
to  the  public  interest  and  the  public  safety.  It 
would  be  to  commit  the  liberties  as  well  as  the 
rights  of  the  people  to  the  ambition,  or  resent- 
ment, or  capnce,  or  rashness  of  a  single  mind." 

The  truth  is,  that  the  Constitution 
leaves  but  one  way  open  for  a  President 
to  take  action  which  might  necessarily  in- 
volve the  nation  in  war.  It  is  provided 
that  '*  he  shall  receive  ambassadors  and 
other  public  ministers.*'  Story,  writing 
in  1840,  was  of  the  opinion  that  this  is  a 
far  more  important  and  delicate  function 
than  it  was  deemed  by  the  frarrers  of 
the  Constitution.  While  conceding  if  t 
it  might  properly  be  confided  to  the  e:^^- 
cutive  alone  in  times  of  profound  peace 
throughout  the  world,  he  pointed  out 
that,  in  cases  of  revolution,  the  acknow- 
ledgment of  an  ambassador  or  minister 
might  lead  to  an  open  rupture,  and  the 
receiving  or  the  refusal  to  receive  one 
«»may  even  provoke  public  hostilities.'* 
For  example,  if  the  Cuban  insurgents 
were  to  send  a  minister  to  Washington, 
and  Mr.  Cleveland  were  to  accept  him  as 
the  representative  of  the  ruling  power  in 
that  island,  Spain  would  undoubtedly  re- 
gard the  act  as  practically  equivalent  to 
a  declaration  of  war  against  her.  Story 
himself  had  seen  **  abundant  examples  of 
the  critical  nature  of  the  trust,"  and  he 
inclined  to  the  view  that  some  check 
ought  to  be  imix)6ed  upon  the  unlimited 
discretion  given  the  executive  by  the 
Constitution. 

But  Mr.  Cleveland  was  not  guilty  of  any 
abuse  of  this  power  in  the  Venezuelan 
matter.  All  that  he  did  was  to  **  recom- 
mend to  the  consideration  of  the  Congress 
such  measures  as  he  shall  judge  necessary 


and  expedient."  His  message  of  Decem- 
ber 17  recommended  the  passage  by  Con- 
gress of  an  act  establishing  a  commission 
to  determine  the  true  divisional  line  be- 
tween Venezuela  and  British  Guiana.  He 
made  plain  his  own  belief  that,  if  the  com- 
mission should  determine  that  Great  Bri- 
tain had  trenched  upon  the  rights  of  Vene- 
zuela, we  ought  to  notify  her  that  she 
must  back  down  or  fight  us.  But  he  did 
not  and  could  not  commit  the  Govern- 
ment to  this  position.  He  could  not  even, 
as  a  leader  of  one  party,  by  taking  the 
course  he  did,  carry  his  proposition 
through  Congress  as  a  partisan  measure, 
for  his  party  controlled  neither  branch. 
What  caused  the  panic  and  precipitated  a 
crisis  was  the  surrender  of  all  responsi- 
bility by  Congress,  and  the  readiness  of 
both  houses  to  make  the  President's  atti- 
tude their  own. 

We  hardly  see  how  the  Venezuelan  in- 
cident can  be  considered  to  show  a  weak- 
ness in  our  written  Constitution.  The 
weakness  is  rather  in  the  men  who  com- 
pose Congress.  A  national  executive 
must  have  some  power,  and  the  President 
of  the  United  States  could  hardly  be  in- 
trusted with  less  than  he  now  possesses 
unless  some  check  were  put  upon  his  ab- 
solute discretion  in  the  matter  of  receiv- 
ing ambassadors.  The  whole  tendency 
of  our  governmental  development  has 
been  towards  an  acceptance  of  the  theory 
that  executive  responsibility  insures  de- 
liberation and  caution.  What  the  Econo- 
mist calls  **Mr.  Cleveland's  escapade" 
shows  not  so  much  an  unsuspected  weak- 
ness in  our  frame  of  government  as  in  its 
present  executive  head.  It  is  one  of  those 
risks  which  we  must  run  under  the  wisest 
possible  system  of  checks  and  balances. 


POPULAR     LOANS    AND     SYNDICATE 
LOANS. 

Current  discussion  of  the  impending 
$100,000,000  Government  loan  has  reveal- 
ed a  vast  amount  of  ignorance  as  to  the 
nature,  principles,  and  necessary  ma- 
chinery of  Government  borrowing.  Vague 
recollections,  or  hasty  and  imperfect 
generalizations,  have  largely  taken  the 
place  of  clear-headed  reasoning  from  ex- 
isting conditions;  and  this  is  true,  unfor- 
tunately, not  alone  of  self -advertising 
newspapers  and  obstructive  Congressmen, 
but  of  many  fair-minded  private  citizens. 
We  believe  it  to  be  true  that  there  are 
thousands  of  people  who  do  not  sympa- 
thize with  sensationalism,  and  would  per- 
sonally be  glad  to  see  the  loan  placed  with 
a  compact  and  powerful  syndicate,  but 
who  nevertheless  believe  that  the  Govern- 
ment sacrifices  its  credit  by  such  an 
award. 

Classifying  them  roughly,  it  may  be 
said  that  Government  loans  are  issued  for 
three  distinct  purposes — to  raise  capital 
for  immediate  expenditure,  as  in  the  case 
of  war  loans ;  to  replace  maturing  high- 
rate  bonds  with  bonds  at  a  lower  interest 
rate,  as  in  *< conversion  loans";  and  to 


provide  gold  for  maintopiEce,  through 
Treasury  reserves,  ysj^the  standard  of 
value.  We  sbalL^ee  very  readily  that  the 
conditionj/9#¥wiing  the  issue  of  a  loan 
depend  Entirely  on  the  class  to  which  it 
belongs.  The  huge  loans  of  the  civil  war, 
for  example,  belong  unmistakably  to  the 
class  first  mentioned.  They  were  issued 
simply  to  l>orrow  capital,  and  to  borrow 
it  for  Government  expenditure  far  beyond 
current  income.  From  this  fact  it  result- 
ed, first,  that  subscriptions  to  a  loan 
might  be  continuous  without  any  perma- 
nent disturbance  of  the  money  market. 
When  the  funds  were  taken,  either  direct- 
ly or  indirectly,  from  bank  deposits,  they 
were  so  promptly  disbursed  to  soldiers  or 
contractors  that  they  were  back  in  the 
bank  reserves  again  within  a  month — cre- 
dited, indeed,  to  other  owners,  but  equally 
available  for  the  general  money  market. 

This  was  not  the  only  peculiarity  of  the 
Jay  Cooke  loans  of  the  war  period,  if  those 
can  be  called  popular  loans  in  which  a 
commission  was  paid  to  a  banking-house. 
The  circulating  medium  had  expanded 
enormously,  the  net  increase  in  the  year 
preceding  July,  1863,  being  $260,000,000,  or 
more  than  75  per  cent.  This  increase  had 
been  effected  chiefly  by  issues  of  Govern- 
ment notes  in  vast  quantities.  Now  the 
6  per  cent,  bonds  offered  in  the  loan  of 
1863  were  sold  at  par  for  Government 
notes.  Since  the  notes  were  at  a  discount, 
then,  of  35  per  cent.,  and  since  the  bonds 
were  payable,  interest  and  principal,  in 
coin,  the  offer  was  very  tempting.  In  sub- 
stance, the  citizen  was  invited  to  exchange 
on  even  terms  a  non-interest-bearing  obli- 
gation of  the  Government  for  another  obli- 
gation paying  about  10 per  cent.,  consider- 
ing the  premium  on  gold  in  which  the  in- 
terest was  paid,  plus  the  probable  increase 
in  the  value  of  the  principal.  The  success 
of  Jay  Cooke  and  his  sub-agents  in  float- 
ing this  enormous  loan  in  all  the  cities 
and  towns  of  the  United  States  was  hard- 
ly surprising,  under  such  conditions.  But 
it  is  not  at  all  difficult  to  see  how  little 
analogy  that  situation  bears  to  the  prob- 
lem of  1896. 

By  the  act  of  February  26,  1879,  the 
sale  at  par  of  4  per  cent.  **  refunding  cer- 
tificates," convertible  into  the  regular  4' 
per  cent,  bonds  of  1907,  was  authorized; 
these  certificates  to  be  issued  in  denomi- 
nations of  $10  only,  and  to  be  sold  to  pri- 
vate individuals  over  the  counter  of  all 
sub- treasuries,  national  banks,  post-offi- 
ces, and  other  Government  agencies. 
Specie  payments  had  been  resumed,  and 
the  rush  to  buy  these  bonds  was  one  of 
the  sensational  episodes  of  the  year.  The 
city  agencies  were  literally  overwhelmed, 
and  the  incident  is  often  quoted  as  a 
proof  of  what  can  be  accomplished 
through  a  genuine  popular  loan.  But 
there  was  very  good  reason  for  the  success 
of  the  popular  loan  of  1879.  The  certifi- 
cates were  sold  at  a  fixed  price  actually 
below  the  market  for  the  4  per  cents  into 
which  they  were  convertible.  They  were 
sold  for  currency  at  the  very  same  price 


Jan.  1 6,  1896] 


The    ItCation. 


49 


at  which  in  18T7,  before  reeumptioD,  a 
block  of  the  same  4  per  cents  had  been 
sold  to  a  syndicate  of  international  bank- 
ers who  paid  in  fifold.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  Treasury  officers  had  reason  to  believe 
that  the  greater  part  of  the  $iO,000,000 
"refunding  certificates**  of  1879  were 
snapped  up  by  speculators  who  went  so 
far  as  to  hire  "repeaters**  to  stand  in 
line  for  the  subscription,  and  who  sold  the 
certificates  at  an  advance  in  the  open 
market  as  soon  as  they  got  them  in  their 
hands. 

This  explains  why  the  loan  was  so  im- 
mediately successful ;  but  it  was  feasible, 
from  the  Treasury's  point  of  view,  for  an- 
other reason.  By  the  terms  of  the  act  au- 
thorizing the  popular  loan  of  1879,  its  pro- 
ceeds were  to  be  applied  "  only  to  the  pay- 
ment of  the  bonds  l>earing  interest  at  a 
rate  of  not  less  than  5  per  cent."  In  other 
words,  this  was  a  refunding  operation  pure 
and  simple,  and  the  funds  received  on  sub- 
scription to  the  loan,  like  those  received 
for  the  loan  of  1863,  were  promptly  dis- 
bursed through  Treasury  purchases,  and 
reappeared  on  the  general  money  market. 

Now  a  loan  to  raise  gold  for  the  perma- 
nent reserves  of  GK>vernment  is  clearly  a 
very  different  operation  from  the  two  al- 
ready described.  If,  indeed,  the  currency 
of  a  nation  were  gold  alone  or  chiefly,  then 
a  popular  loan  would  be  paid  as  naturally 
in  gold  as  it  would  be  here  in  notes.  But 
the  very  fact  of  the  existence  of  such  a 
Qurrency  would  preclude  the  necessity  of 
such  a  loan.  A  Government  has  no  need 
to  supply  itself  with  gold  reserves  unless 
it  has  been  engaging  in  the  banking  busi- 
ness through  circulating  its  own  redeema- 
ble notes  as  currency.  By  the  very  fact 
of  such  note  issues — if  they  are  redundant 
—  the  Government  will  itself  have  pre- 
vented free  circulation  of  gold  in  its  peo- 
ple's hands.  Every  one  knows  that  this 
is  our  own  situation.  There  is  plenty  of 
easy-going  talk  about  the  "  hoarded  gold  *' 
in  the  people's  possession  which  will  come 
out  immediately  under  a  bond  subscrip- 
tion. The  idea  seems  to  l>e,  if  we  may  be- 
lieve the  advocates  of  the  popular  loan, 
that  individuals  the  country  over  have 
their  gold  laid  away  in  old  tea-pots  or 
stockings,  ready  to  appear  when  bidden. 
How  great  an  illusion  this  notion  is,  was 
sufficiently  proved  by  the  total  failure 
of  the  people  at  large  to  bid,  under  the 
popular-loan  advertisements  of  January 
and  November,  1891 

Another  widespread  error  is  the  idea 
that  the  bankers  in  the  syndicate  want 
these  new  bonds  at  106  or  thereabouts, 
and  that  they  hope  that  the  "popular 
loan  '*  will  be  a  failure.  Nobody  can  hold 
this  opinion  who  has  mingled  with  the 
members  of  the  syndicate  during  the  pen- 
dency of  the  loans  of  the  past  two  years, 
including  the  one  now  pending,  and  who 
has  known  how  reluctant  they  were  and 
are  to  take  these  bonds.  The  reason  is 
perfectly  plain  to  anyl>ody  who  under- 
stands the  banking  businesi.  Every  dol- 
lar of  cash  iu  a  bank  forms  the  basis  of 


four  or  five  dollars*  worth  of  discounts, 
upon  which  the  bank  draws  interest  in 
the  same  way  as  from  money  loaned. 
Take  the  quarterly  statement  of  any  bank, 
or  of  all  the  banks  together,  and  you  will 
see  that  the  loans  and  discounts  are  four 
or  five  times  as  large  as  the  amount  of 
cash  on  hand.  This  is  true  of  State  banks 
and  private  banks  exactly  as  it  is  of  na- 
tional banks.  The  converse  of  the  propo- 
sition is  true  also,  viz.,  that  for  every  dol- 
lar of  cash  subtracted  from  their  reserves 
and  handed  over  to  the  Government,  they 
must  curtail  $4  worth  of  discounts.  Not 
only  must  they  incommode  their  custom- 
ers in  that  ratio,  but  they  must  forfeit 
their  own  gains  in  like  proportion  until 
they  can  sell  the  bonds  and  get  their 
money  back,  and  with  it  their  power  of 
discountlDg  commercial  paper.  The  truth 
is,  that  this  Government  loan  is  in  all  es- 
sential particulars  a  forced  loan,  and  thcf 
members  of  the  syndicate  would  hail  it 
as  a  boon  to  l>e  relieved  of  it  altogether. 


PRESS    AND    GOVERNMENT    IN    OER 
MANY. 

PRES8  proeecutions  for  the  offence  known  as 
^M^se-majest^  "  have  been  so  frequent  in  Ger- 
many of  late  that  it  becomes  of  interest  to  in- 
quire into  the  press  laws  of  the  Cterman  Em 
pire.  A  condensed  account  of  the  various 
ways  in  which  German  newspapers  are 
brought  under  the  control  of  the  authorities 
has  just  been  published  by  Dr.  E.  P.  Ot>er 
holtzer  of  the  Philadelphia  Evening  Telegraph, 
in  a  pamphlet  of  180  pages,  entitled  *  Die  Besie- 
hungen  zwischen  dem  Staat  und  der  Zeitungs- 
presse  im  Deutaohen  Reich*  (Berlin:  Mayer  & 
Muller). 

The  principal  object  which  the  Continental 
press  laws  of  Europe  have  in  view  is  tb  restrict 
j  Dumalistic  criticism  of  the  Government  and 
of  privileged  persons,  rather  than  to  protect 
private  citizens  in  general  from  invasions  of 
their  privacy.  The  liberalizing  tendencies 
which  date  from  the  revolutionary  period  of 
1848  have  had  for  one  result  the  abolition  of 
the  censorship  of  the  press,  which  now  sur- 
vives in  Russia  only.  The  libel  laws  of  Ger- 
many, so  far  as  offences  against  private  per- 
sons are  concerned,  can  hardly  be  regarded  as 
excessively  stringent.  The  truth  of  a  publica- 
tion may  be  pleaded  as  a  sufficient  defence 
in  criminal  as  well  as  in  civil  proceedings.  It 
may  be  assumed,  however,  that  if  German 
new»papers  were  to  follow  the  lead  of  our  sen- 
sational journals  and  make  it  a  practice  to 
drag  private  matters  into  print,  the  lawmak- 
ing power  would  grant  more  effective  re> 
dress  than  is  enjoyed  by  oor  helpless  pub- 
He.  When  it  comee  to  resenting  newspaper 
attacks  on  the  authorities,  there  is  no  lack 
of  energy  in  the  legislation  of  Germany. 
The  publication  of  any  statements  or  reports, 
whether  true  or  false,  which  may  be  construed 
as  offensive  or  insulting  to  certain  privileged 
persons,  is  prohibited  under  stringent  penal- 
ties. Criticism,  anecdotes,  rumors,  any  ex- 
pression of  opinion  which  may  have  a  tenden- 
cy to  degrade  or  ridicule  such  persons,  will 
render  the  perpetrator  liable  to  prosecution. 
At  the  head  of  such  privileged  persons  stands 
the  Emperor,  and  joined  with  him  are  the 
other  reigning  monarchs  of  Germany.  The 
families  of  the  various  rulers  are  likewiw  pro- 
tected, but  the  penalties  for  an  offence  against 


them  are  not  quite  so  severe.  A  third  catego- 
ry U  composed  of  foreign  potenUtec,  among 
whom,  however,  presidents  of  republics  and 
the  Pope  are  not  included.  Then  follows  a  de- 
scending scale  of  functionaries,  through  foreign 
ambassadors,  members  of  the  federal  councO 
(Bundesrath),  etc. 

Aside  from  libels  and  other  offences  against 
individuals,  the  press  is  restricted  from  pub- 
lishing anything  which  may  be  offensive  to 
the  community  by  reason  of  immorality,  inde- 
oency,  or  blasphemy;  or  which  may  be  regard- 
ed as  an  incitement  to  rebellion  or  to  resistance 
against  the  law;  or  which  may  stir  up  classes 
of  the  population  to  acta  of  violence  against 
each  other.  A  newspaper  may  not  publish  fic- 
titious or  distorted  news  which  may  throw 
contempt  on  governmental  institutions;  or 
false  reports  concerning  foreign  countries 
whereby  German  citizens  may  be  misled  to 
emigrate;  or  fraudulent  statements  made  for 
the  purpose  of  inducing  the  public  to  buy  shares 
in  the  stock  of  a  company  or  calculated  to  in- 
fluence stock  quotations.  A  curious  law  is 
that  which  prohibits  newspapers  from  opening 
subscriptions  for  the  public  payment  of  a  fine 
imposed  by  a  court  of  law,  or  even  from  pub- 
lishing  reports  of  moneys  contributed  for  such 
a  purpose. 

In  addition  to  prescribing  what  a  newspaper 
may  not  publish,  the  law  also  provides  that 
there  are  some  things  which  a  newspaper  must 
publish.  In  certain  cases  it  must  publish  a 
reply  from  persons  who  feel  aggrieved  by  an 
article  containing  a  misstatement  of  facts. 
The  reply  must  confine  itself  to  facta,  must  be 
signed  by  the  writer,  and  must  be  free  from 
offensive  expressions.  If  it  exceeds  in  length 
the  article,  or  the  parts  of  an  article,  to  which  - 
it  replies,  the  additional  room  which  it  fills 
must  be  paid  for  at  the  usual  advertising  rates 
of  the  journal  conceroed.  The  reply  must  be 
printed  at  once,  without  any  alteration  of  the 
text  or  any  misleading  head-lines,  and  it  must 
appear  in  the  same  part  of  the  paper  and  in 
the  same  style  of  type  as  the  original  article. 
Newspapers  are  also  required  to  publish  official 
announcements  sent  to  them  by  the  public  au- 
thorities, but  are  paid  for  them  as  advertise 

^^  v«i  in  libel  «iut-. 

.  Ill  orJer  that  tt«.  .  *}  ""  »i<-*  f^n.-'  u  * 
re?pon*iu|i.'Ty  for  an  infrnainu  of  the  various 
laws  we  have  referred  to,  it  is  provided  that 
every  newspaper  mutt  print  in  every  number 
the  name  and  residence  of  its  **  responsible 
editor";  and  in  order  to  prevent  the  setting 
up  of  a  dummy  for  this  purpose,  it  is  further 
provided  that  the  responsible  editor  must  ac- 
tually  be  employed  as  one  of  the  editors,  and 
must  be  vested  with  authority  to  determine 
the  contents  of  the  paper.  In  the  eye  of  the 
law  he  is  the  author  of  the  entire  journal,  or 
of  that  part  of  it  which  falls  within  his  pro- 
vince,  for  a  newspaper  may  appoint  one  editor 
for  ito  political  part,  another  for  the  literary 
feuilleton,  for  the  advertisements,  etc.  A 
failure  to  comply  with  this  regulation,  or  any 
false  represenUtion,  will  render  the  paper 
liable  to  summary  confiscation.  The  publish- 
er's name  and  that  of  the  printer  must  also 
appear  in  every  issue.  A  copy  of  every  num- 
ber must  be  delivere<i  to  the  local  pohce  autho- 
rities as  soon  as  the  distribution  of  the  paper 
begins.  The  power  of  summary  confiscation, 
which  we  have  ju>t  siwken  of,  Is  a  very  effec- 
tive weapon  in  the  hands  of  the  authorities, 
and  even  if  it  extends  only  to  a  single  issue, 
and  for  a  few  hours,  may  do  serious  if  not  ir- 
reparable Injury  to  a  daily  paper.    It  may  be 


50 


Tlie   IN'ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1594 


exercised  in  certain  contiogencies  by  the  police 
authorities  without  the  intervention  of  a  judi. 
cial  order  or  judgment^  and  there  appears  to 
'  be  no  practical  redress  for  its  abuse. 

Quite  peculiar  is  the  (German  system  of  deli- 
vering newspapers  to  subscribers  outside  of 
the  place  of  publication.  Within  a  radius  of 
ten  miles  thereof  a  paper  may  be  delivered  in 
any  manner  the  publisher  prefers;  outside  of 
that  it  must  be  sent  by  mail  or  by  special 
messenger— that  is,  newspapers  cannot  be  for- 
warded as  freight  or  by  express.  The  post- 
ofBce  claims  a  monopoly  of  the  business,  and 
acts  not  only  as  a  carrier  or  forwarder,  but 
also  as  subscription  agent.  Every  postmaster 
throughout  the  realm  receives  subscriptions 
for  every  newspaper,  and  delivers  papers  to 
subscribers.  The  postmaster  of  the  town  in 
which  the  paper  is  published  informs  the  pub- 
lisher how  many  copies  are  wanted,  and  they 
are  then  regularly  delivered  in  bulk  and  for- 
warded to  their  respective  destinations.  The 
publisher  does  not  know  the  names  and  ad- 
dresses of  his  subscribers,  which  are  known 
only  to  the  postmaster  of  the  place  where  they 
live.  As  a  matter  of  favor  a  publisher  may 
learn  how  many  copies  go  to  each  place,  but 
nothing  further.  The  publisher  fixes  the  price 
at  which  he  is  willing  to  sell  his  paper  to  the 
Post- office  Department;  to  this  the  latter  adds 
25  per  cent,  to  pay  for  its  service,  including 
postage,  and  thus  arrives  at  the  charge  to  be 
made  to  subscribers.  In  December  of  each 
year  the  Berlin  post-office  issues  a  price-list 
of  newspapers  for  the  coming  7  ear,  and  sends 
a  copy  of  it  to  every  postmaster  to  guide  him 
in  receiving  subscriptions,  which  may  be  for 
three,  six,  or  twelve  months.  There  is  a  de- 
tailed system  of  regulations  according  to  which 
the  business  is  conducted.  For  instance,  a 
limited  number  of  free  or  **  sample  "  copies  and 
of  exchanges  is  carried  as  a  matter  of  courtesy, 
charging  the  regular  tax  of  25  per  cent. ;  when 
papers  are  delivered  at  residences  by  letter- 
carriers  there  is  an  additional  charge,  amount- 
ing, in  the  case  of  dally  papers,  to  40  cents  a 
year.  While  this  method  has  some  conve- 
niences, they  are  counterbalanced  by  draw- 
backs.  Its  principal  recommendation  is  that 
it  is  cheaper  than  mailing  each  copy  in  a  sepa- 
rate wrapper  at  the  regular  rate  of  postage 
for  printed  matter,  which  is  the  alternative 
oflr,;''ed  tc  publib4i«r8. 

Some  of  the  hindrances  to  which  newspapers 
are  subject  in  Germany,  and  which  would 
seem  intolerable  to  Americans,  are  the  inci- 
dental  result  of  the  general  scheme  of  legisla- 
tion. Thus,  newsdealers  and  newsboys  must 
have  a  license,  but  so  must  all  itinerant  ven- 
dors ;  a  newspaper  may  not  post  a  bulletin  of 
its  contents,  because  the  Prussian  law  prohi- 
bits the  exhibition  of  placards.  More  serious 
consequences  arise  from  the  fact  that  in  Qer- 
many  the  telegraph  and  the  telephone  are  a 
monopoly  of  the  Gk>vernment,  which  claims 
and  exercises  the  right  of  refusing  to  forward 
any  messages  which  the  officials  consider  de- 
trimental or  objectionable. 

In  the  matter  of  copyright  for  newspaper 
articles  the  law  does  not  seem  to  be  entirely 
settled.  News  is  considered  as  public  property 
and  not  copyrightable.  On  the  other  hand, 
literary  productions  and  scientific  discussions 
may  not  be  reprinted  without  permission,  and 
as  a  general  thing  any  article  of  any  length 
can  be  brought  under  the  same  protection  by 
printing  a  notice  to  that  effect  at  the  bead  of  it. 

From  the  hasty  view  here  presented,  and 
which,  of  necessity,  could  take  into  account 
only  the  salient  points  of  the  law  and  custom, 
it  will  be  seen  that  the  press  laws  of  Germany 


partake  of  the  paternalism  and  of  the  faith  in 
bureaucratic  guardianship  characteristic  of  the 
country.  It  should  be  remen^bered  that  there 
was  a  time,  not  so  very  long  ago,  when  Eng- 
lish newspapers  almost  had  the  life  taxed  out 
of  them,  and,  to  go  further  back,  when  editors 
risked  imprisonment  and  the  pillory  if  they 
presumed  to  report  the  proceedings  of  Parlia- 
ment. In  Germany,  France,  and  Italy  there 
has  been  a  gradual  relaxing  of  the  severity  of 
the  press  laws  during  the  past  half  centiury, 
and  where  the  letter  of  the  law  has  retained  its 
old- time  harshness  it  has  been  mitigated  in 
practice  by  the  milder  spirit  of  the  age.  There 
is  a  German  proverb  to  the  effect  that  no  broth 
is  ever  eaten  as  hot  as  it  is  cooked;  the  actual 
condition  of  the  German  press  is  by  no  means 
so  abject  as  one  might  infer  who  looks  only  at 
what  might  legally  be  done  to  it  by  the  offi- 
cers of  the  Government. 


PROHIBITION  IN  MAINE. 

BBUirswiOK,  December  28, 1805. 

It  is  now  nearly  forty  .five  years  since  the 
first  prohibitory  liquor  law  was  enacted  in 
Maine.  The  act  "  for  the  suppression  of  drink- 
ing-houses  and  tippling-shops*'  was  approved 
June  2,  1851,  and  with  it  began  in  the  United 
States  the  era  of  attempted  regulation  of  the 
liquor  traffic  by  prohibitory  legislation.  The 
law  of  1851  was  no  sooner  on  the  statute-book 
than  it  was  found  to  be  insufficient,  and  down 
to  the  present  time  some  fifty  additional  or 
amendatory  acts  have  been  passed.  In  1884  an 
amendment  to  the  Ck>nstitution  was  adopted, 
prohibiting  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  in- 
toxicating liquors,  except  for  medicinal  and 
mechanical  purposes  and  the  arts.  The  gene- 
ral features  of  this  mass  of  legislation  are  prob- 
ably well  known.  Severe  penalties  are  pro- 
vided for  the  illegal  sale  of  liquor  and  for 
drunkenness.  The  possession  of  a  United 
States  internal-revenue  license  is  to  be  taken  as 
evidence  that  liquor  is  illegally  kept  for  sale; 
and  druggists  are  not  authorized  to  sell.  Offi- 
cers of  the  law  are  given  large  powers  of  search 
and  seizure,  extending  in  some  cases  to  seizure 
without  a  warrant.  The  sale  of  liquor  for 
medicinal,  mechanical,  and  scientific  purposes 
is  provided  for  by  a  system  of  town  agencies, 
their  stock  being  furnished  by  a  State  liquor 
commissioner  appointed  by  the  Governor.  The 
establishment  of  a  town  agency  is  optional  with 
the  selectmen,  and  at  present  less  than  twenty 
of  these  agencies  are  in  operation.  The  law 
now  requires  an  analysis  by  a  competent  che- 
mist of  the  liquors  actually  sold  by  the  agents; 
and  the  State  commissioner  is  limited  by  statute 
in  the  percentage  of  profit  he  may  exact  in  his 
dealings  with  the  towns. 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  and  written  about 
the  "  Maine  Law  "  by  both  advocates  and  oppo- 
nents. So  far  as  the  principle  of  the  body  of 
legislation  commonly  referred  to  as  the  **  Maine 
Law  '*  is  concerned,  probably  that  is  no  longer 
open  to  serious  question  ;  for  while  we  may  de- 
cline to  admit  that  everything  a  people  does  is 
right,  we  cannot  now  deny  the  abstract  right 
of  a  people  to  prohibit  a  traffic  which  it  deems 
dangerous  to  peace  and  prosperity.  Discussion 
nowadays  rightly  turns,  not  on  the  theoreti- 
cal rightfulness  of  prohibition,  but  upon  its 
practical  usefulness  in  attaining  a  desired  or 
desirable  end.  The  Maine  Law  undertakes  to 
stop  the  sale  of  intoxicating  liquors  as  a  bever- 
age, and  in  consequence  to  lessen  or  put  an  end 
to  the  habit  of  liquor-drinking ;  and  in  these 
aspects  not  only  has  it  been  much  talked  about, 
but  many  of  its  provisions  have  been  copied  in 


other  States.  Yet  the  real  test  of  a  law  is  not 
at  all  the  amount  of  interest  it  excites,  but 
rather  the  degree  of  success  with  which  it  does 
what  it  was  designed  to  do,  and  its  resulting 
effects  upon  the  habits  and  modes  of  thought 
of  the  people  subject  to  its  infiuence. 

As  to  the  practical  effect  of  the  Maine  Law 
in  suppressing  the  sale  and  limiting  the  use  of 
liquor,  testimony  is  very  confiicting.  Some 
temperance  agitators,  a  few  ministers,  and 
public  officials  when  speaking  for  the  State,  as 
a  rule  uphold  the  Law,  and  claim  that  it  has 
been  a  success— that  liquor  is  much  less  used 
than  formerly,  and  that  the  open  saloon,  fiaunt- 
ing  its  temptation  in  the  face  of  passers-by,  has 
disappeared.  On  the  other  hand,  one  hears  it 
asserted,  with  equal  positiveness,  that  the  Law, 
so  far  as  its  primary  object  is  concerned,  is  a 
patent  failure;  that  in  every  considerable  com- 
munity liquor  is  still  sold,  if  not  openly,  yet 
with  but  a  thin  screen  between  it  and  the  pub- 
lic; that  the  use  of  liquors  has  not  greatly  di- 
minished, and  that  drunkenness  is  common. 
About  a  year  ago  a  correspondent  of  a  Boston 
daily  paper  made  an  extended  study  of  the 
question,  embodying  his  observations  in  a  se- 
ries of  articles  that  were  widely  read  and  com- 
mented upon;  yet  it  may  be  doubted  if  the 
articles  changed  many  persons*  opinions.  The 
friends  of  the  Law  insisted  that  the  reported 
instances  of  *' general  violation"  were  isolated 
and  microscopic,  such  as  any  detective  might 
ferret  out,  while  the  opponents  of  the  Law,  of 
course,  pointed  to  the  articles  as  sustaining  all 
they  had  ever  charged.  In  ordinary  discussion 
it  is  quite  Impossible  to  reconcile  these  oppos- 
ing arguments,  for  the  very  practical  reason 
that  one  specific  instance  of  positive  badness 
will  effectually  offset  a  great  deal  of  general 
assertion  of  prevailing  goodness. 

It  seems  clear  that  in  this  nuitter,  as  in  so 
many  others,  the  truth  does  not  lie  at  either 
extreme.  In  the  small  villages  and  remote 
country  districts  the  Law  is  genei^lly  well  en- 
forced, and  illegal  selling  is  not  extensive.  In 
the  cities  and  larger  towns,  with  some  few  ex- 
ceptions, the  Law  is  either  spasmodically  en- 
forced, or  more  or  less  openly  violated.  As  a 
rule,  hotels  either  have  liquor  on  the  premises 
for  sale,  or  will  obtain  it  for  their  guests ;  In  a 
few  cases  hotel  bars  are  maintained,  with  but 
slight  pretence  of  concealment.  Druggists 
commonly  do  not  hesitate  to  sell  to  persons 
whom  they  know  and  can  trust.  But  illegal 
sales  are  almost  invariably  made  with  at  least 
a  show  of  secrecy,  the  elaborate  and  preten« 
tious  fittings  of  the  typical  saloon  are  lacking, 
and  a  person  must  often  make  considerable  in- 
quiry before  finding  a  place  where  a  purchase 
can  be  made.  There  are  of  course  '*  dives'*  and 
**  joints"  in  all  the  larger  centres  ;  but  as  there 
is  always  a  lo  ^  stratum  of  wickedness  which 
no  legislation  can  remove,  the  existence  of  such 
places  should  not  in  itself  be  urged  against  the 
efficacy  of  the  Prohibitory  Law.  With  the 
exception  of  the  better  class  of  hotels  and 
drug-stores,  the  liquors  Ulegally  sold  are  often 
of  the  poorest  quality.  In  no  part  of  the 
State  is  drunkenness  unknown. 

More  to  the  present  purpose,  however,  than 
these  facts,  obvious  enough  to  any  candid 
person  who  keeps  his  eyes  and  ears  open,  is 
the  question  as  to  the  state  of  public  feeling  in 
Maine  in  reference  to  the  Prohibitory  Law ; 
and  on  this  point  there  are'  two  or  three  con- 
siderations which  seem  to  me  to  be  of  some 
importance,  but  to  which  attention  has  usual- 
ly not  been  much  directed.  To  begin  with, 
one  cannot  know  Maine  very  long  without  re- 
marking the  absence  of  a  steady  and  constant 
sentiment  in  favor  of  the  enforcement  of  the 


Jan-  16,  1896] 


The   Nation. 


51 


Law.  There  b  a  noticeable  lack  of  firm  pres- 
■ore  in  this  dirertion.  It  aeems  to  be  generally 
aammed,  as  a  sort  of  fundamental  proposi- 
tioo,  that  the  Law  either  cannot  or  will  not 
be  enforced;  and  so,  as  long  as  violation  is 
not  flagrant  or  notorious  or  otfensive,  there  is 
a  difposition  to  dose  the  eyes  to  its  quiet  but 
general  erasion.  On  the  other  hand,  public 
feeling  on  the  subject  gets  a  good  deal  of  spas- 
modic expression.  Every  few  months  a  wave 
of  reform  sweeps  over  a  community  :  sermons 
are  preached,  mass- meetings  held,  law-and- 
order  leagues  are  revived,  and  **  Lezow  com- 
mittees^* investigate  and  report.  City  and 
town  officials,  with  sheriffs  and  policemen,  are 
of  course  quick  to  note  the  new  drift,  and  to 
meet  it  with  a  series  of  liquor  raids  and  sei- 
sores,  and  sweeping  imposition  of  fines  upon 
sellers.  But  such  tension  on  the  moral  sensi- 
tiveness  cannot  be  long  maintained,  and  in  a 
few  weeks  the  excitement  is  over,  and  sales 
and  evasions  go  on  as  before.  There  is  hard- 
ly a  considerable  town  or  city  in  Maine 
that  has  not  at  one  time  or  another  been 
through  such  an  experience.  The  agitation 
does  no  good,  but,  rather  curiously,  it  also 
does  no  harm  :  the  last  state  of  the  commu- 
nity, while  not  better,  is  certainly  not  worse 
than  the  first.  And  the  explanation  seems  to 
lie  in  what  has  just  been  Mid,  that  a  certain 
appreciable  degree  of  violation  of  the  Law  is 
expected,  and  public  feeling  is  aroused  only 
when  that  normal  point  is  passed. 

Partly  in  consequence  of  these  periodical  agi- 
tations, partly  also  as  a  result  of  the  prevail- 
ing sentiment,  the  so-called  "Prohibitory" 
Law  is  in  numy  places  simply  a  license  law. 
Every  six  months  or  so  the  proprietors  of  ho- 
tels, drug-stores,  and  other  places  where  it  is 
known  that  liquor  is  illegally  sold— and  such 
places  are  well  enough  known— are  brought 
before  a  court,  either  in  person  or  by  attorney, 
and  fined;  the  fines  paid,  the  persons  are  not 
again  molested  until  the  time  comes  round  for 
the  next  regular  raid.  The  amount  of  liquor 
floes  paid  into  the  several  county  treasuries 
aggregates  many  thousands  of  dollars  annual- 
ly, affording  a  striking  example,  as  some  one 
has  put  it,  of  a  revenue  legally  obtained  under 
false  pretences.  A  few  years  ago  an  attempt 
was  made  to  punish  illegal  selling  by  both  fine 
and  imprisonment;  but  juries  refused  to  con- 
vict, and  the  former  method  of  punishment  by 
fine  alone  had  to  be  resumed.  A  judge  of  one 
of  the  State  courts  told  me  the  other  day  that 
to  imprison  a  well-known  and  respectable  oiti- 
aeo  for  violating  the  liquor  laws  would  in 
many  places  almost  provoke  a  riot.  The  m  ean- 
Ing  of  all  this  seems  to  be  that  the  fzreat  ma- 
jority of  the  people  are  not  sufficiently  anxious 
to  have  the  Law  strictly  enforced  to  tolerate 
measures  stringent  enough  to  secure  that  result, 
but  are  satisfied  with  an  administration  that  at 
oooe  prevents  the  running  of  open  saloons, 
drives  the  liquor  traffic  into  semi-retirement, 
and  swells  the  oolumn  of  receipts  in  the  balance- 
sheet  of  the  county  treasurer.  In  this  aspect 
Maine  has  **  prohibition  for  revenue  only." 

One  test  of  a  prohibitory  law  is  the  extent 
to  which  it  has  diminished  or  changed  the 
habit  of  liquor-drinking.  It  is,  of  course,  ob 
vious  that  on  such  a  point  one  cannot  quote 
statistics  or  make  statements  that  are  very 
exact  or  in-edse.  There  is  still  a  good  deal  of 
bard  drinking  in  country  places  m  Maine,  and 
the  stuff  consuosed  is  often  of  the  deadliest 
kind.  In  the  cities  and  towns  a  certain  por- 
tiMi  of  the  population,  always  accustomed  to 
drink  ia  moderation,  now  drink  at  home  in- 
stead of  In  public  places.  80  far  as  the  great 
masa  off  the  population  is  concerned,  I  think 


there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  general  absence 
of  open  saloons,  and  the  consequent  round- 
about and  belittling  methods  that  must  usual- 
ly be  resorted  to  in  order  to  get  liquor,  have 
appreciably  lessened  the  consumption  of  all 
kinds  ef  liquors,  and  have  even  tended  to  put 
the  drinking  habit  itself  on  the  defensive;  and 
no  one  will  deny  that  the  removal  of  saloon 
influence  from  a  community  is  a  very  great 
gain  to  good  order,  morals,  and  health.  As 
for  social  drinking  among  the  well-to-do,  there 
seems  to  be  good  ground  for  thinking  that  it 
has  somewhat  declined.  Ck)mparatively  few 
persons,  even  among  those  who  make  occa- 
sional or  even  regular  use  of  liquor  in  their 
own  families,  would  care  to  offer  it  to  their 
guests  at  table,  except  to  intimate  friends ; 
and  the  majority  of  public  or  semi-public 
** functions"  of  one  sort  or  another  somehow 
contrive  to  get  on  without  alcoholic  embellish- 
ment. iSome  social  clubs  have  liquors  for  the 
use  of- their  members ;  but  in  general,  so  far  as 
the  use  of  liquors  is  concerned,  there  is  no 
** social  law"  to  which  any  one,  whatever  his 
social  position,  need  conform.  In  public  as  in 
private  life,  society  leaves  each  man  free  to 
decide  whether  he  will  drink  or  whether  he 
will  not ;  and  probably  most  men  in  Maine  de- 
cide that  they  will  not. 

Any  impartial  observer  would,  I  think,  have 
to  admit  that  the  success  of  the  Prohibitory 
Law  in  this  State,  although  significantly  quali- 
fied, is  after  all  considerable.  But  I  cannot 
think  that  the  experience  of  Maine  affords 
any  warrant  for  the  belief  that  a  similar  sys- 
tem would  have  equal  or  greater  success  else- 
where. I  am  of  course  aware  that  that  kind 
of  argument  is  common  with  professional  ad. 
vocatesof  prohibition;  nevertheless,  the  posi- 
tion seems  to  me  to  be  at  once  dangerous  and 
unsound.  The  Prohibitory  Law  has  been  as 
successful  as  it  has  in  BCaine,  not  because  of 
anything  especially  good  either  in  the  general 
principle  or  in  this  particular  application  of 
it,  but  very  largely  because  of  certain  social 
conditions  peculiar  to  the  State.  Maine  is  a 
thinly  settled  State,  with  a  population  chiefiy 
engaged  in  agriculture,  lumbering,  and  the 
fisheries.  Its  cities  have  all  less  than  40,000 
inhabitants,  and  all  but  one  have  less  than 
25,000;  there  is  no  massing  of  population,  and 
no  overwhelming  foreign  element.  The  great 
manufacturing  industries  of  New  England  are 
not  largely  represented  in  Maine.  It  is  ap. 
parent  that  conditions  such  as  these  greatly 
simplify  all  problems  of  law  and  order,  and 
g^ve  any  kind  of  sumptuary  legislation  a  fa 
vorable  field.  Moreover,  even  rigid  enforce- 
ment of  the  Prohibitory  Law  would  not  neces- 
sarily prevent  any  individual  from  obtaining 
liquors  for  his  own  use,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  adjoining  States,  not  under  the  prohlbi 
tory  regime,  at  once  become  sources  of  supply. 
If  Maine  could  not  obtain  an  abundant  supply 
of  liquors  from  Boston  or  some  other  conve- 
nient point,  I  am  decidedly  of  the  opinion  that 
the  enforcement  of  the  Inhibitory  Law  here 
would  be  very  much  less  efficient  than  it  is 
now.  That  is  to  say,  even  with  the  aid  of  fa- 
vorable local  conditions  the  success  of  prohi- 
bition in  one  State  depends  very  greatly  upon 
the  absence  of  prohibition  in  neighboring 
States;  and  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  in 
this  country  the  system  has  always  been  tried 
under  these  conditions.  To  insist  upon  the 
universal  practicability  of  prohibition  as  a 
method  of  regulating  the  liquor  traffic,  point- 
ing meanwhile  to  the  operation  of  the  law  in 
Maine  as  an  illustration  of  "how  it  works,"  is 
both  idle  and  misleading  unless  these  vital 
qualifications  be  also  made. 


With  the  Prohibitory  Law  become  in  many 
places  a  license  law,  and  with  considerabla 
general  violation  and  evasion,  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  every  little  while  the  repeal  of  the 
Law,  or  the  resubmission  of  the  Ck)n8titutional 
amendment,  should  be  advocated.  But  any 
one  who  should  suppose  that  such  action  is  at 
all  probable,  at  least  for  a  long  time  to  come, 
would,  I  fancy,  entirely  misinterpret  public 
feeling  on  the  subject.  Certainly  the  agitation 
to  that  end  receives  but  scanty  support.  Not- 
withstanding the  palpable  weaknesses  of  the 
system,  both  in  theory  and  in  practice,  the  mass 
of  the  people  undoubtedly  are  satisfied  with  it; 
there  is  no  desire  to  reopen  the  question  and 
precipitate  another  volume  of  discussion  and 
agitation;  and  there  is  no  general  feeling  of 
incongruity  in  the  spectacle  of  a  license  sys- 
tem masquerading  as  prohibition.  In  practloe, 
such  a  state  of  mind  does  less  harm  than  might 
be  supposed.  As  a  live  political  issue,  prohibl- 
tion  is  no  longer  of  importance;  but  professed 
adherence  to  the  principle  is  still  a  test  of  poli- 
tical orthodoxy,  and  alleged  "public  senti- 
ment "  is  used  as  a  club  with  which  to  terror- 
ize politicians.  Politically,  however,  prohibi- 
tion  is  in  Maine  only  a  name  to  conjure  with. 
William  MacDonald. 


SPANISH   ART   IN   LONDON. 

London,  December  90, 1895. 

If  Velasquez  was  forgotten— if,  as  Mr.  R.  A. 
M.  Stevenson  puts  it,  his  genius  slumbered  for 
two  hundred  years— certainly  he  is  now  hav. 
ing  his  revenge;  for  to-day,  when  there  is  re- 
ference to  the  art  of  Spain,  it  is  usually  sup- 
posed to  mean  Velasquez,  and  Velasquez  only, 
as  if  he  were  the  one  artist  who  ever  lived  and 
worked  in  the  land  lying  south  of  the  Pyre- 
nees. And  inasmuch  as  the  master  can,  notori- 
ously, be  really  studied  as  he  should  solely  in 
Biadrid,  to  organize  a  show  of  Spanish  art  in 
London  might  be  thought  to  court  failure. 
But,  after  all,  though  Velasquez  does  tower 
head  and  shoulders  above  them,  there  were 
other  painters  in  Spain,  and,  moreover,  paint> 
ers  often  of  decided  originality,  as  may  be 
learned  in  the  Prado^s  cellars,  or  half*  divined 
in  many  a  Toledan  dimly  lit  church  and  chapel; 
while,  in  the  more  purely  decorative  arts,  the 
Moor.inspired  craftsman  and  the  artisan  of 
the  Spanish  Renaissance  stand  well-nigh  unri- 
valled. Though  the  masterpieces  of  Velasquez 
can  still  be  claimed  by  Madrid's  gallery,  though 
only  in  Toledo  can  II  Greco's  greatness  \hs  real- 
ized, though  there  have  been  nmny  to  think 
with  Qautier  that  even  Murillo  is  not  to  be  ap- 
predated  until  seen  in  the  cathedral  and  mu- 
seum of  his  native  town,  it  is  as  true  that  much 
else  of  Spain's  great  art-work  is  to  be  found 
nowadays  more  fully  represented  almost  any- 
where abroad  rather  than  in  Spain  itself;  per- 
haps nowhere  to  better  advantage  than  in  Eng- 
land. For,  if  that  beautiful  grove  of  elms  on 
the  Alhambra's  hill  is  held  up  as  proof  of  the 
English  conqueror's  benevolence,  there  can  t>e 
no  doubt  that  the  Great  Duke  amply  repaid 
himself  for  his  trouble  with  the  art  treasures 
which  he  and  a  multitude  in  his  train  carried 
borne  with  them  from  the  pacified  Peninsula. 
When  these  facts  are  rememt>ered,  in  the  sue- 
cess  of  the  show  of  Spanish  art  just  opened  in 
the  New  Gallery  there  will  seem  leM  cause  for 
wonder.  Without  question,  it  is  so  far  the 
most  interesting  and  delightful  in  the  winter 
series  of  historical  exhibitions  given  at  this 
same  gallery. 

The  first  impression,  as  you  enter  the  cen- 
tral hall,  is  one  of  unwonted  sumptuonsneas. 


52 


The    :Nratioii. 


[Vol.  62,  i4o.  1594 


Even  the  splendor  of  last  year's  Venetian  deco- 
ration pales  by  comparison.  Here,  indeed, 
is  something  that,  at  a  glance,  reminds  you, 
not  of  the  tawdry  modem  Spanish  palace,  but 
rather  of  Seville's  Capilla  Real,  for  instance, 
if  yours  has  been  the  good  fortune  to  see  it 
when  resplendent  with  gorgeous  hangings  and 
shining  with  precious  plate  and  jewels,  in 
honor  of  St.  Ferdinand.  There  may  be  an  ele- 
ment of  barbarism  in  the  wealth  and  exube- 
rance of  Spanish  ornament,  and  yet  it  never 
lacks  the  touch  of  austerity  that  chastens  and 
refines,  and  that  is  so  eminently  characteristic 
of  the  country 's  art  in  its  best  periods.  Tapes- 
tries, rich  in  their  faded  beaury,  bang  from  the 
four  sides  of  the  hall's  high  balcony.  Frames 
of  embroidered  and  jewelled  priestly  garments, 
chests  elaborately  carved  and  gilded  are  set 
against  the  walls.  Arranged  with  some  feel- 
ing for  the  general  effect  are  cases  filled  with 
rare  pottery  and  gold  and  silver  plate,  and  ex- 
quisitely chased  daggers  and  rapiers,  breast- 
plates and  helmets;  and  in  the  hall's  very  cen 
tre,  well  raia^  stands  a  horse  in  complete  war 
harness  of  the  fifteenth  century;  at  its  feet 
tulips  and  other  flowering  plants,  so  that  it 
looks  like  the  horse  that  steps  among  blossoms 
in  so  many  an  old  tapestry. 

To  speak  of  all  these  things  In  detail  would 
be  quite  impossible,  since  in  the  two  large  gal- 
leries, as  well  as  in  the  hall,  are  cases  of  exqui- 
site embroideries  and  rare  stuffs  and  laces  and 
fans  and  jewels  and  combs  and  ivories,  and 
still  more  pottery  and  glass  and  plate.  Besides, 
for  collector  and  amateur,  there,  is  a  very 
thorough  catalogue  to  supply  all  illuminating 
facts  and  dates;  while  the  finest  pleasure  is  re- 
served for  those  who  can  revel  in  the  loveli- 
ness of  color  that  everywhere  leaps  to  the  eye, 
in  the  loveliness  of  design  that  everywhere 
reveals  itself  upon  closer  study.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  seems  as  impossible  to  speak  of  the 
collection  as  a  whole  without  pointing  out  how 
surprisingly  few  examples  of  Moorish  work  it 
contains.  The  Spanish  Renaissance  is  the  pe- 
riod most  largely  drawn  upon.  The  Moor*s 
own  design,  or  evidence  of  his  direct  infiuence, 
which  in  Andalusia  long  survived  the  Con- 
quest, is  found  only  here  and  there  in  the  arms 
and  armor,  and  more  often  in  the  pottery. 
One  vase,  covered  with  the  familiar  arabesques, 
comes  from  the  famous  Malaga  works,  and 
dates  as  far  back  as  the  eleventh  century,  its 
interest  being  enhanced  by  the  fact  that  a  foot 
supporting  it  was  made  by  Fortuny.  There 
are,  besides,  numerous  specimens  of  Hispano- 
Moresque  ware  w^ich  show  to  what  admirable 
advantage,  blue,  the  color  thought  by  some 
painters  so  impossible  in  a  picture,  can  be  used 
in  the  conventional  ornament  of  dishes  and 
jars.  But  then  it  is  in  the  pottery,  especially 
of  the  South,  that  Moorish  influence  perhaps 
lingered  most  persistently.  In  the  very  coarsest 
made  for  the  people  to-day  in  Malaga  and 
Seville,  you  may  still  see  the  old  Moorish 
shapes,  and  traces  of  the  old  Moorish  color 
schemes,  just  as  you  see  the  old  Moorish  blood 
in  the  faces  of  so  many  of  the  men  and  women. 

In  the  pictures,  of  course,  rne  does  not  look 
for  any  suggestion  of  the  Moor,  who  is  respon- 
sible for  so  much  that  is  best  and  finest  in 
Spain.  Here  must  be  sought  all  that  is  most 
characteristic  of  the  Spaniard  himself;  for  the 
painter,  unlike  the  potter  or  the  decorator,  was 
ever  independent  of  Moorish  principles  and 
tradition.  The  exhibition  gives  a  fair  idea  of 
the  measure  of  bis  accomplishment,  from  his 
first  efforts  down  to  his  most  recent  perform- 
ances. It  is  inevitable  that  some  periods  and 
some*  avtists  should  have  less  justice  done  to 
them  than  others;  inevitable  that  masterpieces 


have  not  in  every  case  been  forthcoming. 
But,  as  a  whole,  the  collection  is  unexpectedly 
complete.  The  Primitives  appear  in  small 
numbers,  but  yet  in  su£Bcient  force  to  assert 
that  sound  and  somewhat  original  decorative 
talent  which  they  display  so  impressively  in 
the  Prado's  cellars,  to  recall  the  golden  glory 
with  which  they  shine  from  shadowy  altars  in 
Cordova's  mosque,  or  from  the  chapel  of  many 
a  forgotten  monastery.  Zurbaran*s  sombre 
penitents  and  monks  have  been  found  to  fill 
the  appropriate  space  upon  the  walls,  and  Ri- 
bera*s  more  exuberant  saints  and  virgins.  If 
there  be  little  by  such  men  as  El  Mudo  and 
Herrera  the  elder,  this  little  is  so  unusually 
good  as  to  justify  the  reputation  they  once  en- 
joyed better  than  the  more  extensive  showing 
they  may  make  in  Spanish  galleries.  Indeed, 
in  El  Mudo's  portrait  of  Dofta  Maria  Padilla 
there  is  a  rich,  warm  glow,  a  softness  in  the 
fieeh  tints,  that  one  is  more  inclined  to  attri- 
bute to  the  kindness  of  time  than  to  the  genius 
of  the  painter.  But  if  Herrera  really  painted 
the  marvellous  little  partridge  on  the  wing 
here  ascrit>ed  to  him,  as  delicate  and  subtle  a 
bit  of  modelling  as  if  it  were  by  the  master  of 
to-day,  he  must  count  for  more  than  one 
fancied  as  a  factor  in  the  development  of 
Velasquez,  who  was  bis  pupil.  And  there  is 
really  no  reason  except  its  excellence,  the  al- 
moat  unprecedented  naturalism  of  the  paint- 
er's method,  to  doubt  the  picture's  authenti- 
city. It  is  the  property  of  Sir  Clare  Ford, 
and  once  belonged  to  Richard  Ford,  author  of 
the  indispensable  Handbook  to  Spain,  who 
bought  it  for  the  work  of  Herrera  at  Seville 
in  1881. 

Again,  of  n  Greco,  who  fortunately  seldom 
figures  under  his  full  name  of  Domenico  Theo 
tocopuli,  there  is  enough  to  explain  the  sudden 
interest  lately  aroused  in  him.  His  greatness 
has  been  so  obscured  in  the  dim  sanctuaries  of 
Toledo's  churches,  or  so  hopelessly  bidden  in 
Toledo's  monasteries,  across  whose  thresholds 
no  laic  foot  was  allowed  to  pass,  that  there  has 
been,  and,  for  that  matter,  is,  small  chance  to 
study  his  pictures  in  the  very  town  where  so 
much  of  his  worK,  as  painter  as  well  as  sculptor 
and  architect,  was  done;  out  of  Toledo  there 
is  scarcely  any  chance  at  all.  In  the  Prado 
itself  he  is  quite  inadequately  represented. 
Here,  in  the  National  Gallery,  there  is  but  one 
example  of  him,  and  this  one  is  a  recent  acqui- 
sition. The  Spanish  exhibition  boasts  some 
half  dozen  of  bis  pictures,  a  St.  Mai-tin,  a 
Christ  with  the  cross,  a  Christ  chafing  the 
money-changers  out  of  the  Temple,  and  one  or 
two  portraits.  In  his  treatment  of  religious  sub- 
jects there  is  a  primitiveness  more  naive  than 
that  of  the  men  who  preceded  him,  and  the  re- 
sults are  at  times  unpleasantly  flat  and  hard, 
without  a  premonition  of  the  triumph  of  the 
master  who  dipped  his  brush  in  air  and  light. 
But  there  is  in  them  a  dignity  of  composition, 
an  effective  color  mosaic,  and  an  individuality 
in  the  way  of  seeing  things  and  expressing 
them,  together  with  occasional  wonderful 
drawing  and  modelling,  that  make  him  as  dis- 
tinguished among  his  contemporaries  who 
painted  saints  and  Christs  according  to  rule, 
as  a  Sargent  seems  in  the  Academy,  a  Carri^re 
in  the  Salon. 

I  have  always  wondered  at  Gautier's  delight 
in  the  Murillos  at  Seville.  There,  above  all 
places,  I  thought  the  overdone  sentiment  and 
the  mawkish  prettiness  of  the  painter  sadly 
emphasized,  though  there  is  not,  as  at  Madrid, 
a  Velasquez  to  set  the  standard.  Whatever 
vigor,  whatever  personal  element  is  in  his  art, 
makes  itself  felt  now  on  the  walls  of  the  New 
Gallery  far  more  than  in  rooms  that  are  filled 


with  his  fiamboyant  Assumptions  and  ecstatic 
monks.  For  the  well-known  "Beggar  Boys" 
has  been  borrowed  from  Dulwich;  several  of  bis 
portraits  are  included,  among  them  one  of  him- 
self,  its  prosaic  homeliness  of  presentment  a 
curious  contrast  to  the  swagger  with  which 
Velasquez  ever  painted  his  own  portrait;  and 
there  is  also  a  landscape,  bathed  in  atmosphere, 
though  not  in  southern  sunlight,  to  which  the 
old  Spanish  painter  waa  deliberately  blind— in 
the  foreground,  a  group  of  trees  somehow  sug- 
gestive  of  Corot— which  is,  without  doubt,  the 
most  genuinely  observant  and  poetically  ex- 
pressed Murillo  I  have  seen. 

Alonso  Cano  is  another  painter  who  pleases 
here  more  unreservedly  than  in  his  native 
town  If  I  except  a  little  statue  of  a  saint  in 
the  Cartuja,  I  remember  nothing  of  his  in 
Granada  to  equal  the  stately  group  of  well- 
posed  figures  in  his  "Assumption,"  and  the 
well  balanced  composition  of  his  "  St.  Francis 
in  Ecstasy,"  which  both  come  from  private 
English  galleries. 

But  when  all  is  said,  interest  now,  as  when- 
ever Spanish  painting  is  in  question,  centres 
about  Velasquez.  I  must  admit  my  disappoint- 
ment upon  discovering  that  some  of  his  most 
important  canvases  owned  by  Englishmen 
have  been  omitted.  There  are  few  things  in 
the  Prado  that  surpass  bis  marvellous  "Venus," 
belonging  to  Mrs.  Morritt  and  hung  with  the 
Academj^sOld  Masters  of  1890;  but  for  this  oc- 
casion it  has  not  been  lent.  A  small  sketch  for 
"  Las  Meninas,"  of  private  ownership  at  King- 
ston  Lacy,  is  likewise  missing.  Nor  have  seve- 
ral portraits  from  royal  galleries  been  allowed 
to  add  to  this  collection's  importance.  It  is 
again  a  disappointment  to  know,  without  the 
aid  of  the  new  critic's  foot-rule  and  photo- 
graphs, that  so  many  canvases  to  which  the 
catalogue  tags  on  the  name  of  Velasquez  could 
not  possibly  be  his  work.  There  is,  for  in- 
stance,  a  replica  of  the  incomparable  Doria 
Pope  which,  though  if  measured  up  scientifi- 
cally it  might  be  proved  irrevocably  his,  leaves 
one  sceptical  simply  because  it  lacks  the  mas- 
terly elegance  of  his  touch,  the  subtlety  of  bis 
modelling;  while  one  is  as  positive  that  the 
other,  from  Apsley  House, though  it  has  been  de- 
clared not  his  by  complacent  authorities,  could 
not  have  been  painted  by  any  one  else,  save 
another  genius  as  great.  Masterpieces  may  not 
abound,  save  in  copies,  but  there  are  sufl9cient 
good  examples  to  make  the  collection  of  enor- 
mous use  to  the  student  of  Velasquez,  viz.,  seve- 
ral of  his  very  early  water  carriers  and  boys 
of  Seville,  powerful  in  their  uncompromising 
realism,  though  without  those  qualities  which 
mark  his  later  work  and  which  have  made  the 
modern  painter  look  to  him  as  the  first  impres- 
sionist; the  little  Don  Carlos  from  Buckingham 
Palace,  the  Prince  on  his  prancing  horse  in  the 
courtyard,  the  King  and  Queen  looking  down 
from  the  balcony;  the  portrait  of  his  slave 
Pareja— it  may  be  the  very  one  he  sent  about 
with  Pareja  himself  to  show  what  a  swell  he, 
the  most  daring  of  all  innovators,  really  was 
as  a  portrait  painter;  the  Quevedo  in  specta- 
cles from  Apsley  House;  a  little  sketch  of  Saint 
Sebastian,  a  good  strong  study  of  the  nude 
which,  it  is  curious  to  note,  belongs  to  Mr. 
Holman  Hunt;  the  Philip  from  the  Dulwich 
Gallery,  said  not  to  be  his.  But  it  is  needless 
to  name  them  all;  excepting  Madrid,  probably 
there  is  no  place  the  world  over  where  Velas- 
quez is  to  be  seen  so  satisfactorily  as  just  now 
in  London,  thanks  to  this  Spanish  exhibition, 
supplemented  by  the  National  Gallery. 

The  modem  Spaniards  fare  less  weU.  Of 
Goya,  in  his  way  another  fearless  innovator, 
there  are  but  two  or  three  indifferent  por* 


Jan.  1 6,  1896^ 


Iriie   Nation. 


69 


traita,  and  one  or  two  more  characteristic 
sketcbet  and  lithographs  of  the  bulls  and  bull- 
flgfatt  which  were  bis  chief  delight.  Fortuny, 
third  among  Spanish  painters  if  ranked  by  the 
extent  of  bis  inflaence,  is  more  fortunate.  Be- 
tides the  etchings,  which  every  one  knows  so 
well,  there  are  several  of  his  water-colors,  a 
singularly  beautiful  unfinished  ''Acrobats  at 
Tetuan  **  which,  may  be,  would  have  lost  in 
color  and  charm  had  it  been  carried  further, 
and  a  picture,  •*  Transport  of  Arab  Prisoners," 
a  wide  sweep  of  hillside  broken  by  the  curv 
ing  line  of  the  long  train  of  flying  draperies, 
with,  beyond,  a  glimpse  of  a  blue  sea :  a  com- 
position full  of  a  beauty,  rightly  felt,  rightly 
expressed,  which  Fortuny  too  often  sacrificed 
to  clever  tricks  of  technique  and  brilliant 
manoerisms.  The  few  unimportant  Ricoscould 
easily  be  overlooked,  which  is  a  pity,  for  the 
collection  would  have  gained  in  usefulness 
had  the  modem  Spaniards,  as  eager  to  paint 
sunlight  as  the  old  men  were  to  ignore  it,  been 
granted  a  more  appreciative  recognition. 
Vierge  is  omitted  altogether,  and  so  is  Casa 
nova,  though  Madrazo,  with  his  clever  yet 
vulgar  portraits,  finds  a  place.  But  if  the 
show  is  not  entirely  beyond  criticism,  it  still 
remains  the  most  notable  held  in  London  for 
many  a  long  day.  N.  N. 


Correspondence. 


THE  MAIN  QUESTION. 
To  THE  EDrroR  of  Thje  Nation: 

Sib  :  Allow  me  to  express  to  you  the  sin- 
cere gratitude  which  I  feel  for  the  admirable 
editorials  which  appeared  in  a  recent  issue  of 
the  Nation  upon  the  course  followed  by  Presi- 
dent Cleveland  in  the  Venezuelan  controversy. 
Before  I  read  that  series  of  articles  denounc- 
ing the  much- applauded  message,  and  show, 
ing  what  a  ridiculous  and  unstable  position 
Mr.  Cleveland  had  taken,  I  was,  from  a  sense 
of  patriotism  and  a  feeling  that  the  United 
States  ought  to  protect  Venezuela  in  her 
rights,  a  hearty  and  admiring  supporter  of 
that  position.  When  I  first  read  the  articles 
referred  to,  I  was  slightly  prejudiced  against 
them  by  their  rather  bitter  and  violent  lan- 
guage—I like  sober  discussion;  it  carries 
much  more  weight  than  rabid  denunciation  or 
scathing  sarcasm.  But  the  arguments  which 
were  submitted,  after  careful  perusal  and 
thought,  and  laying  aside  the  prejudice  creat- 
ed by  the  heated  language,  pressed  themselves 
upon  my  mind  as  reasonable,  logical,  and  true. 

The  articles  referred  to,  understand,  are 
those  upon  the  course  taken  by  the  President, 
and  not  those  regarding  the  right  and  wrong  of 
the  controversy.  I  do  not  think  either  one  of 
us  is  able  to  reach  a  conclusion  on  that  point. 
But  allow  me  to  again  thank  you  for  the  light 
which  you  have  shed  upon  this  important 
matter.— Sincerely  yours, 

Robert  A.  Allen. 

Bioinc  Orrr,  Iowa.  Jaoasry  4, 1890. 

To  THE  Editob  of  Ths  Nation: 

SiB:  I  cannot  refrain  from  congratulating 
you  upon  the  just  and  fearless  and  Christian 
tone  of  your  editorials  upon  the  Venezuelan 
question.  While  I  speak  only  for  myself,  I 
have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  the  almost 
universal  opinion  in  western  Canada,  and,  in. 
deed,  throughout  the  whole  Dominion,  is  one 
of  deepest  regret  that  even  the  possibility  of 
war  between  the  two  great  brother  nations 


should  be  considered  by  any  wise  men  as  any- 
thing but  utterly  deplorable. 

The  talk  of  the  Jingoes  in  American  news- 
papers seems  to  us  quite  absurd,  and— were  it 
not  so  wicked— almost  amusing;  and  our  hope 
is  that  this  talk  does  not  represent  the  sober 
common  sense  of  the  great  mass  of  the  Ameri- 
can people,  whose  keen  commercial  inttincts 
and  Christian  sentiment  must  make  evident, 
after  a  second  thought,  the  ruinous  folly  and 
wicked  barbarity  of  war  on  such  a  plea. 

Your  remarks  upon  the  Jingo  chaplain's 
prayer  (sic)  appear  to  me  singularly  felicitous. 
It  is  difficult  to  understand  the  notion  of  the 
Deity  out  of  which  such  a  prayer  could  arise. 
The  best  judgment  of  the  best  men  is  on  your 
p&per^s  side,  and  this  the  future  will  make 
abundantly  plain.  While  Canada  is  devotedly 
loyal  to  the  Empire,  and  would  willingly  send 
her  last  son  to  defend  it,  she  has  only  the  kind- 
est feeling  for  the  people  of  the  United  States. 

I  hope  you  will  pardon  this   note.    With 

hope  and  prayer  that  both  nations  may  be 

guided  to  do  the  right  and  wise  thing,  I  am 

yours,  etc.,  Charles  W.  Gordon. 

Britisf  Canadiah  Nob'-Wrst  Missions, 
WnniiPBo,  Janaary  8. 1896. 


To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  Waiving  for  the  present  the  further 
threshing  out  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine— al 
though  I  am  with  Prof,  von  Hoist  in  bis  ana- 
lysis of  the  same — two  points  occur  to  my  mind 
that  ought  to  be  carefully  considered. 

(1.)  In  round  figures,  the  total  population  of 
the  world  is  estimated  to.  be  1,400,000,000. 
About  10  per  cent.,  or  say  140,000,000,  com- 
prise the  English-speaking  people,  united  by 
ties  of  blood,  trifditions,  literature,  laws,  and 
religious  aspirations.  Are  not  the  English- 
speaking  people  rapidly  encroaching  upon  the 
slower-moving  members  of  the  human  race  ? 
Is  it  not  the  proud  boast  of  every  member 
of  the  Anglo  Saxon  family  that  we  are  the 
dominant  factors  in  repressing  the  unruly,  and 
making  civilization,  culture,  and  progress  a 
reality  and  not  a  dream  f  Separate  or  t^plit 
in  two  the  British  Empire  and  the  United 
States,  and  say  what  will  be  the  fate  or  fu- 
ture of  either  nation,  assuming  that  the  sug- 
gested and  much.talked.of  war  were  finally 
precipitated.  Do  political  leaders  in  either 
country  fully  realize  what  mischievous  doc- 
trines, like  Russian  thistles,  are  being  scat- 
tered broadcast,  inciting  people  to  cultivate 
hatred,  cruelty,  and  bloodshedding  f 

(2.)  Land  and  gold-mine  grabbing  and  boom 
ing  during  the  last  twenty  five  years  has 
gone  on  at  an  accelerated  pace  in  all  portions 
of  the  globe.  The  average  American  citizen 
differs  in  no  wise  and  in  no  respect  from  the 
average  enterprising  Englishman  or  Europe- 
an. Electric  and  steam  motive  power,  plus 
the  efficient  cable  and  telegraphic  service,  has 
made  it  possible  for  quick- wit  ted  men  the 
world  over  to  forestall  markets  and  make  for- 
tunes for  many  with  great  rapidity.  Excessive 
and  unlimited  confideLce  in  America  and  its 
marvellous  resources  has  enabled  us,  through 
the  use  of  foreign  capital,  to  build  and  operate 
in  the  United  States  alone  almost  one-half  of 
all  the  railway  mileage  of  the  world.  The  tc- 
tal  railway  mileage  of  the  world  was  recently 
placed  at  850,000  miles,  and  our  system,  exclu- 
sive of  sidings,  embraces  about  170,000  miles. 
British  capital  to  the  extent  of  $2,000,000,000— 
or  about  twa  thirds  of  the  toUl  indebtedness 
against  our  line^  held  in  Europe — has  come  to 
us  since  the  war  of  the  Rebellion.  Did  any 
of  us  sneer  at  the  British  during  the  period 
of  track-laying    when   Englishmen    lent    us 


their  money  f  Did  not  our  leading  citizens  in 
every  State  cry  out  for  more  money  to  build 
new  roads  f  Did  not  our  own  State  of  Iowa 
get  its  one-twentieth  of  our  total  mileage  re- 
ferred to  from  money  borrowed  from  London  f 
'*  Sell  more  bonds  in  London  and  extend  our 
road*^  was  the  lofty  talk  of  the  promoter. 
How  many  more  millions  of  British  money 
have  come  to  us  for  loans  upon  our  breweries, 
mills,  factories,  and  whatnot?  Can  all  this 
enterprising  talk  be  so  quickly  forgotten,  and 
our  young  people  inspired  to  bate  England  and 
the  people  who  so  generously  trusted  in  our 
good  intentions,  our  honesty,  our  integrity, 
and  our  sense  of  justice  f 

I  am  sick  at  heart  as  I  observe  the  prevail- 
ing sentiment  suggesting  war.  It  is  my  earnest 
hope  that  thoughtful  people  will  **keep  in 
memory  "  all  our  fair  talk  and  promises  in  our 
interrelated  fii^ancial  dealings  with  foreigners. 
Joseph  Sampson. 

Sioux  Citt.  Ia..  Janaary  Q.  ISQA. 


A  WAR  AGAINST  CIVILIZATION. 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  Among  the  recent  utterances  reported 
in  regard  to  the  excitement  occasioned  by  the 
message  of  President  Cleveland,  I  have  been 
particularly  impressed  with  the  language  em- 
ployed by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Huntington  of  Grace 
Church,  New  York,  who  says  **  that  he  would 
not  shrink  from  a  war  if  it  were  for  the  right, 
but  asking  on  what  grounds  some  Americans 
propose  to  go  to  war  with  the  civilizers  of  the 
world." 

England  is  truly  a  civilizer  of  the  world. 
Who  that  has  travelled  in  the  Elast  can  fail  to 
be  impressed  with  the  truth  of  this  statement? 
Every  one  recognizes  the  striking  contrast  be- 
tween the  condition  of  things  at  Gibraltar  and 
the  little  Spanish  town  just  across  the  **  neu- 
tral ground."  A  writer  with  whom  I  travelled 
last  winter,  in  describing  a  visit  to  the  latter, 
says:  **  We  came  back  through  the  begging 
rabble  of  ragged  children  and  filthy  women, 
passed  the  line  of  Spanish  sentries,  and  in  a 
few  more  steps  we  entered  the  line  of  English 
sentries,  and  were  again  in  a  civilised  coun- 
try." No  one  can  spend  a  little  while  in  Cairo 
without  observing  the  helpful  and  elevating 
infiuence  which  England  is  exerting  over 
Egypt  In  Palestine,  England's  civilising 
power  is  specially  exhibited  in  towns  such  as 
Nazareth,  Tiberias,  and  the  like,  where  Eng- 
lish  chapels  and  schools  are  established. 

England  is  **a  civilizer  of  the  world." 
Wherever  she  exerts  her  infiuence,  it  results  in 
the  uplifting  of  the  people  and  th<i  benefiting 
of  humanity  at  large.  W.  D.  Morgan. 

RALTiiiOMt.  January  10. 1996. 


SEWARD   VERSUS   CLEVELAND. 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation  : 

Sir:  In  support  of  the  position  taken  in 
your  editorials  that  the  recent  declaration  of 
the  President  is  not  warranted  by  the  Monroe 
Doctrine,  I  beg  to  cite  a  passage  from  the  in- 
structions of  Mr.  Seward,  Secretary  of  State, 
to  Mr.  Kilpatrick,  June  2,  1866: 

"The  Government  of  the  United  States  will 
maintain  and  insist,  with  all  the  deci&ion  and 
energy  which  are  compatible  with  our  existing 
neutrality,  that  the  republican  s\»tem  which  is 
accepted  by  any  one  of  those  [South  American] 
States  shall  not  be  wantonly  assailed,  and  that 
it  shall  not  l>e  subverted  as  an  end  of  a  lawful 
war  by  European  powers;  but  beyond  this  po- 
sition the  United  Sutes  Government  will  not 
gO|  nor  will  it  consider  itself  hereby  bound  to 


54 


Tlie    N'ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1594 


take  part  in  wars  in  which  a  South  American 
republic  may  enter  with  a  European  sovereign 
when  the  object  of  the  latter  is  not  the  estab- 
lishment,  in  place  of  a  subverted  republic,  of  a 
monarchy  under  a  European  prince." 

Tours  respectfully, 

Fkancis  McLsnnan. 
MoxTSKAL,  January  6. 1806. 


JINGO  GEOGRAPHY. 
To  TBI  Editor  of  Ths  Nation: 

Sir  :  Prof.  McMaster,  in  bis  exposition  of 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  published  in  the  New 
York  Times,  would  have  us  believe  that 
''Great  Britain  is  to-day  attempting  to  take 
from  Venezuela  not  30,000  square  miles,  as  is 
commonly  stated,  but  109«000  square  miles,  to 
which  she  has  no  just  claim  whatever.*^  As 
109,000  square  miles  represents  the  area  of  the 
whole  of  the  undisputed  British  possessions 
and  the  disputed  territory  combined,  we  must 
conclude  that  Prof.  McMaster's  interpretation 
of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  is  that  we  should  make 
it  retroactive,  go  back  of  1823,  and  drive  the 
British  invaders  clear  into  the  ocean,  not  leav- 
ing them  an  inch  of  foothold  which  might 
serve  as  a  ''base  of  operations"  to  disturb 
Secretary  01ney*s  repose.  80  much  for  Jingo 
geography  running  umuck.  We  trust  that 
Prof.  McMaster  will  institute  proceedings 
against  our  wicked  and  un  American  publish- 
ers of  school-books,  who,  ever  since  be  first 
conned  his  Primary  Geography,  have  been  try- 
ing to  make  innocent  little  children  believe 
that  British  Guiana  does  not  stop  short  of  the 
sixty,  first  meridian.  Louis  Hxilprin. 

Bumut,  N.  J..  JaniuuT  11. 1»06. 


THE  ATHENIAN  FORUM. 
To  THE  Editor  of  Thb  Nation: 

Sir:  An  excavation  was  begun  here  to  day 
which  is  likely,  whether  its  result*  be  positive 
or  negative,  to  prove  of  highest  importance 
for  the  determination  of  Athenian  topography. 
Dr.  Ddrpfeld  baa  long  been  convinced  that  the 
Stoa  Basileioe,  which  Pausanias  saw  "on  the 
right-hand  side"  (i.,  8,  gl)  as  he  entered  the 
Kerameikos  Agora—- the  central  town  square 
of  Athens  in  the  classical  period— was  located 
close  against  the  eastern  slope  of  the  Kolanoe 
Agoraioe,  the  knoll  upon  which  stands  the  so- 
caUed"The8eion."  The  identification  of  this 
"Theseion"  wfth  the  temple  of  Hephaistoe, 
described  by  Pausanias  (i  ,  14,  §6)  as  standing 
"above  the  Kerameikos  and  the  Stoa  called 
Basileios,"  lends  added  precision  to  the  loca- 
tion. Combining  this  interpretation  of  our 
ancient  guide-book  with  what  recent  excava- 
tions about  the  southwestern,  western,  and 
northwestern  comers  of  the  Areiopagos  have 
shown  concerning  the  general  direction  and 
levels  of  the  ancient  street  leading  toward  the 
Acropolis,  Dr.  DOrpfeld  has  brought  his  archie, 
ologlcal  faith  to  a  conviction  which  he  is  will- 
ing to  test  in  terms  of  drachmas.  As  public 
means  are  not  forthcoming  for  the  work,  he 
has  purchased  with  private  money,  partly  his 
own,  two  house- lots  on  the  west  side  of  Posei- 
don Street,  a  street  running  parallel  with  the 
face  of  the  "Theseion  "  knoll,  and  there  he  be- 
gan  to  day  tearing  down  a  dwelling-house  pre- 
paratory to  the  excavation  which,  within 
three  weeks  or  a  month,  is  likely  to  furnish  an 
unmistakable  answer  to  the  central  question 
in  Athenian  topography.  It  is  esUmaied  that 
the  foundations  of  the  building  sought  must  lie 
under  about  twenty-five  feet  of  earth.  WhUe 
this  greatly  increases  the  difliculty  of  the  work, 


especially  In  view  of  the  narrow  space  open  to 
excavation,  it  Involves  a  compensating  assur- 
ance that  under  the  protection  of  the  earth 
much  has  been  preserved  Particularly  is  this 
to  be  hoped  for  the  numerous  legal  inscriptions 
which  are  believed  to  have  existed  upon  the 
walls  of  the  Stoa.  Though  the  wooden  o^ortv 
andxvp/Scif  containing  the  laws  of  Solon,  which 
formerly  stood  here,  had  gone  to  decay  prob- 
ably before  the  end  of  the  fifth  century  B.  c, 
it  is  known  that  copies  of  at  least  portions  of 
the  Draconian  and  Solonian  codes  were  set  up 
here  in  stone. 

If  the  excavations  just  beginning  should  re- 
sult in  the  discovery  of  traces  of  the  Stoa  Ba- 
sileioe, the  Greek  Government  would  undoubt- 
edly proceed  directly  to  exappropriate  enough 
land  in  the  vicinity  to  admit  of  search  for  the 
Stoa  Poikile,  the  Stoa  Eleutherios,  the  temjAe 
of  ApoUon  PatroOs,  the  Metroon,  the  Bouleu- 
terion,  and  the  Tholos.  Ail  these  buildings 
can  readily  be  located,  once  the  clue  has  been 
given  by  the  discovery  of  the  Stoa  Basileioe. 
Much  zeal  and  much  money  have  been  expend- 
ed in  past  years  in  uncovering  relics  of  post- 
classical  buildings  in  the  later  market  places  to 
the  east,  such  as  the  Hadrian  Stoa  and  the 
Attaloe  Stoa,  but  the  real  thing,  the  forum  in 
which  the  characteristically  Athenian  life  was 
manifested  and  was  made,  has,  strange  to  say, 
been  hitherto  left  to  a  shadowy  and  somewhat 
restless  existence  in  the  vague  or  ill-compre- 
hended allusions  of  the  ancient  writers, 

BsNJ.  Ids  Whselxr. 
▲MSftiCAK  School,  Athkks,  December  97, 1806. 


INSTITUTES  AND  NOVELLA. 
To  the  Iiditor  of  The  Nation  : 

Sir:  Mr.  Frederic  J.  Stimson  has  rendered 
such  immense  service  to  his  profession  and  the 
public  by  his  monumental  collation  of  'Ameri- 
can Statute  Law,*  that  when  he  would  recreate 
himself  by  an  excursion  into  airier  and  lighter 
fields  of  literature,  every  one  owes  him  the 
tribute  of  good-will.  He  has  begun,  in  the 
January  Atlantic,  what  seems  likely  to  be  a 
capital  story,  "  Pirate  Gold."  But  it  begins 
(p.  73)  with  a  special  deposit  in  a  Boston  bank 
of  a  bag  labelled  as  containing,  on  the  24th  of 
June,  1829,  besides  Spanish  doubloons,  "four 
hundred  and  twenty- three  American  twenty- 
dollar  gold  pieces.^*  Now,  inasmuch  as  that 
coin  appears  to  have  been  struck  for  the  first 
time  by  virtue  of  the  act  of  Biarch  8, 1849  (9  U. 
S.  Stat,  at  Large,  397),  is  not  this  just  "  a  little 
too  previous "  ?  And,  considering  whom  it 
comes  from,  should  it  not  serve  as  an  encou- 
ragement to  some  of  the  rest  of  us  who  slip  up 
now  and  then  in  our  history  and  our  law? 

When  the  professor  of  mnemonics  had  de- 
parted from  the  hotel,  after  gathering  about 
him  his  bags  and  bundles,  the  porter  came 
rushing  to  the  clerk,  exclaiming  in  wide-eyed 
wonder:  "The  memory- man  has  forgotten  his 
umbrella  I  **  T.  B. 

RocHnris,  January  7, 1896. 


A  TESriMONUL  TO  KIRCHHOPF. 
To  the  Editor  of  The  Nation  : 

Sir:  Many  Americans  who  in  days  gone  by 
have  had  the  privilege  of  sitting  at  the  feet  of 
Prof.  Adolf  Kirchhoff  of  the  tTniversity  of  Ber- 
lin will  doubtless  be  pleased  to  learn  that  a  com- 
mittee, including  many  distinguished  names, 
has  been  organized  in  Berlin  for  the  purpose  of 
honoring  this  great  classical  scholar  upon  the 
occasion  of  his  seventieth  birthday  and  the  fif- 


tieth anniversary  of  his  doctorate,  to  be  cele- 
brated on  February  4,  1896.  It  is  proposed  to 
present  to  Prof.  Kirchhoff  a  bronze  (or,  if  the 
subscriptions  prove  sufficiently  large,  a  marble) 
bust  of  himself,  executed  by  Martin  Wolif. 
Heliotype  copies  will  be  furnished  to  all  sub- 
scribers. 

The  undersigned,  having  been  requested  by 
the  committee  to  solicit  subscriptions  in  this 
country,  hopes  that  the  appeal  herewith  made 
will  meet  with  a  ready  and  speedy  response, 
realizing  a  substantial  sum,  as  a  visible  proof 
of  the  esteem  and  admiration  which  the  Ame- 
rican pupils  of  Prof.  Kirchhoff  entertain  for 
their  illustrious  teacher.  Subscriptions,  of 
whatever  amount,  should  be  accompanied  by 
the  full  address  and  present  occupation  of  the 
donor,  and  should  be  sent  in  not  later  than 
February  1.— Yours  respectfully, 

Alfred  Gudeman. 

UmTKBsrrr  or  PxinnTi.TAj(i4, 

PBIUa>KLPHIA,  Pa. 


Notes. 


D.  Appleton  &  Ck).'s  announcements  for  the 
current  month  include  Prof.  G  Frederick 
Wrighfs  'Greenland  Ice-Fields,  and  Life  in 
the  North  Atlantic*;  'The  Monroe  Doctrine, 
and  Other  Studies  In  American  History,'  by 
Prof.  J.  B.  McMaster;  'Studies  of  Childhood,* 
by  Prof.  James  Sully; 'Criminal  Sociology,* 
by  Prof.  E.  Ferri;  'The  Story  of  the  Solar 
System,*  by  George  F.  Chambers;  and  largely 
rewritten  editions  of  'California  and  the 
South,*  by  Dr.  Walter  Lindley,  and  'The  Sun,* 
by  Prof.  C.  A.  Young. 

A  uniform  subscription  edition  of  the  works 
of  the  late  Eugene  Field,  in  prose  and  verse, 
vrill  be  at  once  undertaken  by  Charles  Scrib- 
ner*s  Sons,  in  a  truly  elegant  manner,  even  to 
such  a  refinement  as  using  "a  superior  deckle- 
edged  paper,  containing,  in  water- mark,  Mr. 
Field's  initials  on  every  page.**  Each  of  the 
ten  volumes  will  have  a  photogravure  frontis- 
piece on  Japan  paper.  One  h  undred  numbered 
sets  will  be  printed  on  Japan  paper. 

'  A  Handbook  of  Greek  Sculpture,*  by  Ernest 
Gardner,  will  usher  in  a  series  of  "Handbooks 
of  Archseology  and  Antiquities  **  projected  by 
Macmillan  &  Co.  They  also  announce  a  second 
series  of  '  Legends  of  Florence,*  by  Charles  G. 
Leland,  and  'Richelieu,*  in  their  "Foreign 
Statesmen  *'  series,  by  Prof.  Lodge  of  Glasgow. 

An  interesting  series  is  promised  in  the 
"Warwick  Library  of  English  Literature,** 
edited  by  Prof.C.  H  Hertford.  Each  volume  U 
to  trace,  by  means  of  a  critical  introduction 
and  chronologically  ordered  selections,  a  single 
" literary  growth**  or  genre.  The  one  volume 
now  in  hand  treats  of  the  '  English  Pastoral,* 
and  is  competently  edited  by  Eklmund  K.Cham- 
bers. His  introduction,  conceived  in  the  broad- 
est spirit  of  comparative  criticism,  is  (although 
necessarily  summary)  clear  and  full  of  sugges- 
tion. We  should  like  to  see  the  outlines  filled 
out  into  a  more  detailed  study.  The  selections 
comprise  only  the  verse  Pastoral,  and  are 
chosen  mainly  from  the  Elizabethans,  who 
alone  among  Englishmen,  according  to  Mr. 
Chambers,  have  taken  the  Pastoral  seriously. 
This  limited  life  of  the  bucolic  genre  gives  the 
present  volume  a  completeness  and  unity  which 
cannot  but  be  wanting  in  the  next  promised 
issues  of  the  series — 'Literary  Criticism,*  'Let- 
ter-Writers,*  'Tales  in  Verse,*  'English  Es- 
says,' and  'English  Masques*;  nevertheless, 
the  study  of  genres  is  an  inevitable  outcome 
of  the  conception  of  literary  evolution,  and 


Jan.  1 6,  1896] 


Tlie   nSTation. 


55 


«*gakto'booln'*  like  tha  •* Warwick  Library*' 
most  proTv  invaluable  to  the  teacher  and  to 
the  independent  student  distant  from  library 
ceo  tree. 

Way  &  Williame,  Chicago,  are  about  to 
fame  *  Hand  and  Soul/  by  Dante  Gabriel  Roe- 
•etU,  reprinted  from  the  Oerm  by  William 
Morris  at  the  Kelmscott  Press.  Three  fifths 
of  the  limited  edition  has  been  reserved  for 
this  eoun  try. 

Macmillan  &  Co.  have  added  Marryat's  'Pe- 
ter Simple  *  and  Disraeli's  *  Sybil*  to  their  ex- 
cellent series  of  illustrated  standard  novels; 
*  Bug^nie  Orandet*  to  their  Balzac;  and  '  Due 
Preparations  for  the  Plague  *  and  *  The  King 
of  the  Pirates*  to  their  Defoe,  which  is  now 
brought  to  a  conclusion,  and  which,  typogra- 
phically and  in  the  matter  of  editing,  ranks 
among  the  most  satisfactory  series  uudertaken 
daring  the  past  year.  The  bookmaking  here, 
•s  in  the  case  of  Balzac,  is  Dent's. 

We  have  already  noticed  the  first  volume 
of  Mr.  E.  8.  Hartland*s  *  Legend  of  Perseus,*  in 
which  he  discussed  the  supernatural  birth  of 
the  hero.    Since  then  a  second  volume,  nearly 
twice  the  size  of  the  first,  has  appeared  (Lon 
don:  David  Nutt),  devoted  to  the  ''life-token.** 
It  will  be  remembered  that  in  fairy  tales  the 
Ufe  of  the  hero  is  often  connected  with  some 
sympathetic  object  which  indicates  his  danger 
or  death.    This  object  has  either  some  original 
connection  with  the  hero  (as  where  he  is  bom 
from  a  portion  of  a  fish,  and  the  sympathetic 
object  a  roee-tree,  from  another  portion),  or 
is  merely  arbitrary,  as  where  the  hero  plants  a 
tree  which  indicates  his  fate.  I^e  belief  which 
underlies  these  tales  i>  the  basis  of  witchcraft 
sympathetic  magic,  philters,   etc.),  and  ex- 
plsins  the  ceremonies  observed  at  sacred  wells 
and  trees.    With  it  are  also  connected  totem- 
ism  and  the  funeral  rites  involving  the  eating 
ot  a  ceremonial  meal,  and  the  similar  observ- 
ances at  marriage.    As  the  author  truly  says, 
the  discussion  of  the  '* life- token**  goes  down 
to  the  very  foundations  of  the  savage  philoso- 
phy of  life.    He  might  have  added  that  it  also 
ooooems  vitally  the  basis  of  our  own  religious 
beUef.    In    comparison    with    the    questions 
raised  in  the  present  volumes  and  the  infer- 
onoes  which  may  possibly  be  drawn  from  the 
enormoos  mass  of  custom  and  belief  presented 
from  all  parts  of  the  world,  the  discussions  of 
Um  "higher  criticism**  shrink  into  absolute 
insignificance.    Mr.  Hartland  intended  to  com- 
idete  his  work  with  the  volume  before  us,  but 
a  third  will  be  required  to  deal  with  the  two 
remaining  incidents  of  the  legend — the  dragon- 
slaying  and  the  Medusa -witch.    A  supplement- 
ary bibliographical  list  and  an  index  are  also 
promieed  with  the  final  volume. 

A  nomber  of  papers  contributed  to  Scrib- 
iMr's  Magazine  during  the  last  two  or  three 
yean  have  been  collected  and  published  by  the 
Scriboers  under  the  title  *  The  Poor  in  Great 
Cifclea*  London,  Paris,  Naples,  Boston,  New 
Torfc,  and  Chicago,  all  have  furnished  mate- 
rial  for  thene  essays,  which  are  largely  narra- 
tive in  character,  and  are  of  varying  merit 
The  Tohune  Is  profusely  Illustrated,  mainly  by 
prints  from  photographs,  so  that  it  appeals  to 
the  eye  of  the  oareleM  reader.  But  we  appro- 
bend  that  tba  chief  effect  of  theee  descriptions 
was  accomplished  by  their  original  publica- 
tion, and  that  careful  students  of  the  condition 
of  tba  poor  will  demand  somewhat  more  syste- 
Boatic  and  scientific  treatment  of  the  subject 
than  la  here  attained. 

Somewhat  In  the  line  of  Herbert  Spencer*s 
*  Kdiirat^4?« '  is  *  Nursery  Ethics,*  by  Florence 
Hall  Wintarbum  (New  York  :  The  Memam 
Co.)*     Thla    llttla   book,  however,  Is  rather 


more  practical  than  Mr.  8pencer*s,  and  is 
adapted  for  earlier  stages  of  education  than 
his,  dealing  even  with  pre-natal  iofiuences. 
We  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the  parent 
who  can  read  it  without  benefit  must  either 
have  attained  perfection  or  be  beyond  the 
reach  of  grace.  Most  of  us  will  find  our  pa- 
rental sins  of  omission  and  commission  very 
clearly  described  in  these  pages,  and  few  that 
have  the  care  of  children  will  fail  to  derive 
from  them  some  valuable  suggestions.  The 
book  is  marked  throughout  by  good  sense,  and 
its  dominating  principle  is  the  importance,  to 
both  parents  and  children,  of  a  constant  regard 
for  justice  in  the  exercise  of  control  over  the 
young.  As  to  some  of  the  specific  rules  and 
maxims  here  laid  down,  opinions  may  differ  ; 
but  these  are  insignificant  masters.  Such  a 
book  as  this  should  find  a  place  in  every  house 
where  young  children  are  growing  up. 

Mr.  Hamblen  Sear8*8  *  (jK)vemments  of  To- 
Day*  (Meadville:  Cbautauqua-Century  Press) 
is  offered  as  '*  an  outline  for  the  use  of  news- 
paper readers.**  This  class  has  certainly  never 
been  by  implication  credited  with  a  denser 
ignorance  than  by  Mr.  Sears,  and  one  example 
shall  confirm  our  statement  On  page  S96, 
treating  of  the  riots  against  the  abolitionists, 
we  are  told  that  *Mn-  Pennsylvania  a  man 
named  Hall  of  Philadelphia  was  burned,  and 
another  named  Love  joy  in  Illinois.**  What 
was  burnt  was  the  building  known  as  **  Penn- 
sylvania Hair*  in  Philadelphia,  in  1888,  and 
Lovejoy*s  printing-office  in  Alton,  in  defence 
of  which  he  was  shot  down  at  Alton  in  1887. 
The  sooner  the  Chautauqua  directors  *'  fill  up** 
this  ** outline**  with  the  Russian  censor's  cavi- 
are,  the  better  for  their  reputation. 

Armand  Colin  8c  Cie.,  Paris,  are  cultivating 
that  cosmopolitanism  in  literature  for  which 
we  have  lately  been  taught  to  k>e  especially 
tbaukful  to  Rousseau.  Their  English  works 
newly  taken  over  into  French  include  a  trans- 
lation of  Morley*s  '  Critical  Essays  *  and  Emer- 
son's  *  Representative  Men*  CLes  Sur-Hu- 
mains*),  by  Georges  Art  and  Jean  Izoulet  re- 
spectively, the  latter  having  performed  a  simi 
lar  service  for  Carlyle's  *  Heroes.* 

A  pretty  compliment  has  been  paid  to  our 
countryman,  Mr.  Thomas  A.  Janvier.  From 
**Avignoun**  (J.  Roumanille)  there  comes  to 
us  a  translation  of  his  *  Saint  Antonio  of  the 
Gardens*  into  Provencal  by  Miss  Mary  Girard, 
Queen  of  the  Fdlibres,  prefaced  with  a  '*  bon 
astru,**  or  godspeed,  from  Fr^^c  Mistral. 
Mr.  Janvier  is  an  honorary  member  of  the 
F^librige.  The  English  faces  the  Provencal, 
and,  as  page  is  made  to  offset  page  exactly,  it 
is  noticeable  that  the  Proven<;al  version  is 
often  more  condensed  than  the  original. 

Although  Chantilly  and  all  its  treasures  are, 
after  the  demise  of  its  munificent  owner,  to 
become  the  property  of  the  French  Academy, 
and  thus,  in  a  measure,  of  the  public,  few  col- 
lections  are  at  present  so  difficult  of  access. 
Great  interest  attaches,  therefore,  to  the 
splendid  quarto  just  published,  which,  bulky 
though  it  is,  catalogues  only  the  non- French 
pictures  belonging  to  the  Due  d*  Aumale  ( *  La 
Peinture  &  Chantilly,  ^oles  ^trang^ree,*  by 
F.  A.  Gruyer.  Paris:  Plon,  Nourrit  &  Cie.). 
The  text  need  not  occupy  us,  as,  apart  from 
merely  iconographic  information  and  indica- 
tions of  size,  vebicle,  etc.,  it  is  positively  with- 
out interest  or  value.  What  gives  a  real 
importance  to  this  heavy  tome  is  its  forty 
magnificent  heliogravures,  which  reproduce 
many  of  the  most  precious  pictures.  A  few  of 
these  may  here  be  mentioned :  two  Raphaels, 
which  are  both  early,  the  tiny  **  Three  Graces  ** 
being  one  of  his  very  first  achlevementi^  while 


Timoteo  ViU  was  still  guiding  his  boyish  hand; 
a  fascinating  profile  of  a  young  woman  with 
the  attributes  of  Cleopatra,  painted  by  Pier  di 
Cosimo,  which  bears  the  following  inscription, 
**Simonetta  lanvensis  Vespvccia,**  the  civil 
name  of  the  "  Bella  Simonetta**;  a  ^'St  Francis 
Wedding  Poverty,  Humility,  and  Chastity,** 
which  has  the  acutely  tender  feeling  and  deco- 
rative  beauty  of  Pietro  di  Sano  of  Siena;  a 
long  cassone  panel  representing  the  Story  of 
Esther,  the  masterpiece  of  some  nameless  great 
Florentine  akin  to  Botticelli;  a  number  of  re- 
productions of  pictures  attributed  to  Van 
Eyck,  Roger  van  der  Weyde,  Dierick  Bouts, 
and  Memling.  Even  the  English  school  is 
represented  by  some  fine  Sir  Joshuas. 

A  book  by  M.  Paul  Stapfer  is  always  wel- 
come; his  ^LaFamille  and  les  Amis  de  Mon- 
taigne* (Paris:  Hachette)  as  much  as  any  of  its 
predecessors.  A  delightful  subject  is  here  ably 
treated.  Montaigne*s  parents  and  close  friends, 
La  Bottle,  Mile.  Goumay,  De  Brach,  Charron, 
and  of  course  the  captivating  essayist  himself, 
are  the  very  living  personages  about  whom  M. 
Stapfer  chats— for  his  book,  he  expressly  states, 
is  a  series  of  ^'causeries,**  as  is  fitting,  in  view 
of  the  real  hero  of  it. 

Great  men  have  come  out  of  Brittany — Cha- 
teaubriand and  Renan  will  suffice  as  samples — 
and  the  Breton  rsce  has  literary  aptitudes  and 
an  army  of  literary  men,  not  as  great  as  the 
two  named  above,  yec  worthy  to  have  found 
a  biographer  in  M.  Joseph  Rousse,  who,  in 
*La  Po^sie  bretonne  au  19e  si^de*  (Paris: 
Lethielleux),  has  related  their  deeds  in  the  field 
of  verse.  The  book  is  not  particularly  well 
written;  the  portraits  are  of  the  newspaper 
class,  and  the  subject,  capable  of  being  made 
very  interesting,  does  not  become  so  in  the 
author*s  hands;  but  altogether  We  have  a  use- 
ful work  of  reference. 

Under  the  guise  of  a  novel,  with  the  thinnest 
thread  of  a  story,  M.R.  de  Bonni^res  gives  us, 
in  'Lord  Hyland*  (Paris:  Ollradorff),  an  at- 
tractive account  of  the  humanising  and  broad- 
ening of  a  fanatical  English  nobleman  who 
has  a  mania  for  converting  heathens,  whether 
Christian  or-  pagan.  There  is  much  boldness 
in  the  treatment  of  the  theme,  which  involves 
questions  that  cause  even  now  considerable 
discussion,  usually  acrimonious;  but  it  would 
be  hard  indeed  to  take  offence  if  the  book  is 
read  without  prejudice.  It  is  distinctly  into- 
restmg  in  itself  and  as  indicative  of  the  grow, 
iog  trend  of  thought  in  French  literary  circles. 

Dahms*s  *  Das  Litterarische  Berlin'  is  a 
rather  peculiar  book.  It  gives  the  history  of 
every  newspaper  and  periodical  in  the  city 
and  in  the  suburbs,  with  such  minute  items 
regarding  each  as  policy,  contents,  frequency 
of  issue,  names  and  addresses  of  the  editors, 
rates  for  subscriptions  and  advertisements, 
office  hours  of  the  editors.  In  the  majority  of 
instances  portraits  of  the  editor-in-chief  and 
frequently  of  many  of  his  associates  are  ex- 
hibited. There  are  numerous  articles  specially 
prepcu^  by  men  prominent  in  various  kinds 
of  newspaper  work,  such  as  criticism  of  the 
theatre,  of  music,  of  the  Government;  the 
critic's  place  in  the  theatre,  in  the  art  exhibi- 
tions, in  the  music  hall,  and  in  the  Board  of 
Trade;  together  with  an  article  on  the  press 
ball.  Theee  articles  are  accompanied  by  good 
illustrations,  the  one  accompany  lug  the  de- 
scription of  the  ball  being  large  enough  to 
contain  about  one  hundred  portraits  of  Berlin 
society  leculers.  The  whole  book  is  admirably 
prepared  and  contains  a  large  amount  of  well- 
clasbifled  knowledge. 

Mr.  John  Rae  communicatee  to  the  London 
Athenimtm  a  hitherto  nnpublished  letter  from 


66 


The   ISTatidti. 


[Vol.  62,  l^Io.  1594 


Adam  Smith  to  the  Duke  de  La  Rochefoucauld, 
written  in  1785,  and  preserred  in  the  public 
library  of  Bfantee.  The  letter  was  in  part 
occasioned  by  a  promise  on  the  part  of  Smith, 
subsequently  fulfilled,  to  correct  in  a  new  edi- 
tion of  his  'Theory  of  Moral  Sentimente^  an 
injustice  committed  by  him  in.that  work,  when 
he  ansociated  the  distinguished  ancestor  of  his 
correspondent,  the  author  of  the  *  Maxims,* 
in  the  same  condemnation  with  Mandeville. 
It  appears,  also,  in  answer  to  an  inquiry  of  the 
Duke*s  for  letters  from  Turgot,  that,  in  spite  of 
their  friendship,  Turgot  and  Smith  had  had  no 
correspondence.  Smith  mentions  incidentally 
the  subjects  of  the  two  works  upon  which  he 
was  engaged  during  the  later  years  of  his  life 
and  which  he  had  destroyed  shortly  before  h^ 
died.  One  was  **  a  sort  of  Philosophical  Hi«to 
ry  of  all  the  different  braocbes  of  Literature,  of 
Philosophy,  Poetry,  and  Eloquence."  The  other 
was  **  a  sort  of  Theory  and  History  of  Law  and 
Ooyernment."  The  materials  of  both,  he  says, 
were  in  great  part  collected,  and  to  some  ex 
tent  put  in  tolerable  order.  But,  he  continuef , 
**the  indolence  of  old  age,  tho*  I  struggle  vio 
lently  against  it,  I  feel  coming  fast  npon  me, 
and  whether  I  shall  ever  be  able  to  finish  either 
is  extremely  uncertain."  Posterity  might  per- 
haps dispense  with  the  former  of  these  treati  es, 
but  even  in  incomplete  form  the  latter  would 
have  been  an  inestimable  legacy. 

An  admirable  scheme  for  enabling  the  public 
which  bujs  books  to  make  its  choice  with  in- 
telligence (and  at  the  same  time  for  increasing, 
no  doubt,  largely  the  number  of  books  which 
it  makes  up  its  mind  to  buy)  has  lately  been 
put  in  operation  in  London.  The  Library  Bu- 
reau has  opened  a  Publishers*  Central  Show- 
room, to  which  the  principal  English  publish 
era  will  send  all  of  their  publications  for  inspec- 
tion. No  books  will  be  sold  at  the  showroom, 
and  no  orders  taken— a  regulation  which  is 
obviously  essential  to  giving  the  proper  cha- 
racter to  the  undertaking. 

A  very  useful  work  has  been  issued  by  the 
Library  Bureau  (Boston)  in  *  A  List  of  Books 
for  Girls  and  Women  and  their  Clubs,'  put 
together  by  various  different  writers  who  are 
more  or  less  authoritative  in  their  different 
fields.  The  books  are  for  the  most  part  such 
as  would  be  eq*ia]Iy  interesting  for  men  as 
well,  but  its  special  adaptation  to  women  is 
emphasized  by  the  large  number  of  titles  giv- 
en under  the  heads  of  Domestic  Economy, 
Home  Sanitation,  and  Women's  Clubs.  The 
text-books  under  the  head  Education  are  ap- 
parently chosen  upon  no  principle  whatever. 
Particularly  valuable  are  Parts  I.  and  111 , 
Fiction,  and  Art  (Fine  Arts  by  Russell  Sturgis 
and  Music  by  H.  E.  Krehbiel).  The  former 
especially  is  delightful  reading,  and  one  can- 
not but  wonder  that  so  many  acute  and  witty 
things  can  be  said  about  two  hundred  and  fifty 
novelists  without  any  sacrifice  of  sound  judg- 
ment or  accurate  characterization.  These  two 
parts  (as  well  as  the  other  three)  may  be  bad 
separately  for  a  very  modest  price,  and  they 
deserve  a  wide  circulation. 

Portugal  is  about  to  follow  the  example  of 
some  greater  Powers,  and  celebrate  a  quater. 
centenary  of  its  own.  At  the  request  of  the 
Geographical  Society  of  Lisbon  the  Govern- 
ment  has  just  determined  to  celebrate,  with 
much  pomp,  in  1897,  the  four  hundredth  anni- 
versary of  the  expedition  which,  on  July  8, 
1497,  set  out,  under  the  command  of  Vasco  da 
Gama,  for  the  discovery  of  the  route  to  India 
round  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  Few  details  of 
the  celebration  have  as  yet  been  settled  upon, 
but  it  is  expected  that  special  expositions  will 
be  opened  at  Lisbon,  and  many  scientific  con- 


gresses held,  to  which  the  world  will  be  in- 
vited. 

« 
— We  have  alretdy  reported  the  contents  of 

the  second  number  of  the  American  Histori- 
cal Review  (Macmillan),  and  shall  confine  our 
present  notice  to  the  **  Documents.''  The  very 
valuable  Diary  of  Riohard  Smith  of  New  Jer- 
sey, in  the  Continentsl  Congress  (1775 1776),  of 
which,  by  the  way,  the  historian  Bancroft  bad 
the  benefit,  has,  for  its  most  significant  entry, 
under  date  of  September  26,  1775:  "Com** 
bronght  in  a  Letter  to  [query  from  f]  Qen 
Washington,  in  the  CTourse  of  it  E  Rutledgn 
moved  that  the  Gen.  shall  discharge  all  the 
Negroes  as  well  Slaves  as  Freemen  in  his 
Army,  he  (Rutledge)  was  strongly  supported 
by  many  of  the  Southern  Delegates,  but  so 
powerfully  opposed  that  he  lost  the  Point.*' 
On  January  16,  1776,  *'A  Report  passed  from 
the  Cora''  on  Gen.  Wash-'  Letters,  ...  to 
allow  Him  to  reinlist  the  free  Negroes,"  etc. 
Ne.xt  ia  interest  is  a  letter  from  Lincoln  to  N. 
J.  Rockwell,  in  the  nature  of  a  circular  to  bis 
political  friends,  dated  Springfield,  January 
21,  1846:  "You,  perhaps,  know  that  Gen' 
Hardin  and  I  have  a  contest  for  the  Whig 
nomination  for  Congress  in  this  District.  He 
has  had  a  turn ;  and  my  argument  is  that 
*  Turn  about  is  fair  play.'  I  sliall  be  pleased 
if  this  strikes  you  as  a  sufficient  argument." 
The  sufficiency  of  this  argument  for  what 
used  to  be  called  rotation  in  office  is  still  re- 
cognized by  the  majority  of  Lincoln's  conn 
trymen.  The  holding  of  office  is  still  a  matter 
of  personal  aggrandizement  as  opposed  to  a 
public  trust,  the  competent  and  faithful  dis 
charge  of  which  should  be  a  bar  to  envy  or 
jealousy  on  the  one  hand  and  to  insecurity  on 
the  other. 

— Most  timely  of  all  is  an  inedited  letter  of 
John  C.  Calhoun's  to  Waddy  Thompson,  dated 
October  29,  1847.  The  whole  of  it  deserves  to 
be  read  and  pondered  in  this  war-crazed  time, 
but  we  can  make  room  only  for  the  following 
extract,  for  its  parallel  to  our  present  false 
and  hypocritical  situation: 

"  In  deciding  that  question  [how  to  bring  the 
Mexican  war  to  an  end]  it  must  not  be  over- 
looked that  both  parties,  by  large  majorities, 
stand  committed  by  their  recorded  votes,  not 
only  to  the  war,  but  [to  the  contention]  that 
the  war  is  a  war  of  aggression  on  the  part  of 
the  Republic  of  Mexico— aggression  by  inva- 
sion and  spilling  American  olood  on  American 
soil;  and  thul committed  also  to  the  Rio  Grande 
being  the  western  boundary  of  the  State  of 
Texas.  It  is  true  that  very  few  of  either  party 
believed  that  there  was  any  just  cause  of  war, 
or  that  the  Rio  Grande  was  the  western  boun- 
dary of  Texas,  or  that  the  Republic  of  Mexico 
bad  made  war  on  us  by  the  invasion  of  our 
territory,  or  any  other  way;  but  it  is  equally 
true  that,  by  an  act  of  unexampled  weakness 
(to  use  the  mildest  terms),  both  stand  by  admis- 
sion on  record  to  the  veiy  opposite  of  their  be- 
lief. And  what  is  worse,  they  have,  bv  this 
act  of  unpar[all]eled  weakness,  committed  l^rge 
portions  of  both  parties  out  of  Congress  to  the 
war,  as  justand  unavoidable  on  our  part.  .  .  . 
The  fatal  error  of  the  Whigs  in  voting  for  the 
war  has  rendered  them  impotent,  as  a  party, 
in  opposition  to  it." 

—The  meeting  of  the  Modem  Language  As- 
sociation at  New  Haven  during  the  holidays 
was  an  unusually  pleasant  one,  the  charm  of 
the  place  and  the  cordial  hospitality  of  the 
Graduates'  Club  and  other  organizations  doing 
more  to  produce  this  effect  than  the  general 
excellence  of  the  papers  read.  Of  the  latter 
there  were,  in  fact,  too  many;  suitable  discus- 
sion being  impossible.  The  subjects  treated 
are  a  fair  index  to  the  relative  activity  in  the 
various  departments  of  modem-language  study 
in  this  country.    Of  the  twoscore  papers  pre- 


sented, nearly  three- fourths  pertained  to  Ger- 
manic subjects  and  less  than  one-fourth  to  Ro- 
mance.  Of  the  twenty  seven  Germanic  papers, 
fully  half  were  English,  ten  German,  and  three 
Scandinavian,  etc.  A  majority  of  the  seven 
Romance  papers  treated  of  French  subjects. 
Of  the  English  papers,  but  two  concerned 
strictly  linguistic  matters:  Dr.  Belden's  paper 
on  Anglo-Saxon  prepositions,  and  Mr.  Grand- 
gent's  paper  on  the  p  in  words  like  "warmpth." 
The  remaining  English  papers  dealt  with  the 
modem  period,  with  the  exception  of  five  that 
fell  in  Middle-English  times.  It  is  remarkable 
that,  of  these,  four  were  devoted  to  Chaucer. 
E*rof.  Price  of  Columbia  made  an  elaborate 
presentation  of  the  story  of  Chaucer's  **  Troi- 
lus  and  Crysseyde" ;  Prof.  Manly  of  Brown 
proved  that  in  writing  the  "Squire's  Tale" 
Chaucer  was  not  indebted  to  Marco  Polo;  Prof. 
Boston  of  Philadelphia  presented  many  inte- 
resting features  of  Chaucer's  versification; 
while  Prof.  Hemplof  Michigan  made  thesesame 
facts  throw  new  light  upon  Chaucer's  literary 
workmanship  and  the  chronology  of  his  writ- 
ings. The  evidence  presented  made  it  more 
than  likely  that  the  **Pa]amon  and  Arcite" 
was  written  in  the  heroic  couplet,  and  that  we 
still  have  a  large  part  of  it  but  slightly  revised 
in  the  **  Ejiight's  Tale."  A  somewhat  less  soho- 
lastic  character  was  given  the  meetings  by  cer- 
tain papers  of  a  more  general  literary  flavor: 
*'  The  Conventions  of  the  Drama,"  by  Prof. 
Brander  Matthews  of  Columbia;  **  Fiction  as  a 
College  Study,"  by  Prof.  Bliss  Perry  of  Prince- 
ton; *'  The  Comparative  Study  of  Literature," 
by  Prof.  Marsh.of  Harvard;  *^The  Significance 
of  Pastoral  Literature, "^  by  Dr.  Smith  of  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania;  as  also  by  one  or 
two  papers  on  politico  social  movements  rather 
than  on  literature— for  example,  the  paper  of 
Dr.  Baker  of  Johns  Hopkins  University  on 
*'Das  junge  Deutschland"  in  America.  By  the 
election  of  Prof.  Calvin  Thomas  of  Ann  Arbor 
to  the  presidency  of  the  association,  this  dis- 
tinction falls  for  the  first  time  to  a  West- 
ern man,  and  for  the  first  time  to  a  teacher  of 
German.  The  choice  is,  however,  regarded  as 
a  peculiarly  happy  one  in  that  Prof.  Thomas 
not  only  is  distinguished  for  his  familiarity 
with  Germanic  and  Indo-European  philology, 
but  is  also  generally  regarded  as  foremost 
among  American  students  of  German  litera- 
ture. He  is  at  present  engaged  in  the  Goethe 
archives  at  Weimar,  in  the  preparation  of  hia 
edition  of  the  second  part  of  "  Faust." 

^Minerva,  "  Jahrbuch  der  gelehrten  Welt," 
continues  to  grow  in  size.  The  fifth  volume, 
which  has  just  appeared  (Strassburg:  K.'^J. 
Trfibner;  New  York:  Lemcke  &  Buectmer), 
contains  sixty  pages  more  than  the  preceding 
one.  This  year  the  editors  do  honor  to  Italian 
educators  by  choosing  for  their  frontispiece  a 
portrait  of  V.  G.  Schiaparelli,  director  of  the 
Royal  Astronomical  Observatory  in  Milan.  In 
numerous  respects  the  book  is  more  complete 
than  heretofore,  especially  in  regard  to  Ame- 
rican institutions.  Important  additions  are  al«o 
observable  in  the  case  of  institutions  of  western 
Europe— witness  the  description  of  the  French 
archives  at  Paris  and  of  the  a  rchives  of  Holland. 
The  Papal  institutions  at  Rome  are  for  the  first 
time  adequately  represented.  Owing  to  the 
difficulty  in  presenting  to  Europeans  a  clear 
idea  of  American  colleges  and  univerBities, 
quite  an  essay  has  been  introduced  in  the  early 
part  of  the  work,  calling  attention  to  the  main 
differences  between  the  German  system  and 
our  own.  The  outline  of  the  historical  dora- 
lopment  of  our  institutions,  and  the  danlAcA- 
tion  of  them,  are,  on  the  whole,  very  jott      In 


Jan.  1 6,  1896] 


Tlie    Nation. 


the  flttimatioD  of  the  editors  of  Minerva,  the 
foUowiog  are  entitted  to  the  name  of  uniTer- 
lity:  Hanrardi  Johni  Hopkins,  Columbia,  Yale, 
Cornfll,  Chicago,  Michigan;  others  likely  to 
heoome  worthy  of  the  name  after  a  few  more 
years  of  development  are  Wisconsin,  Minne- 
sota, Colorado,  California.  The  University  of 
the  Bute  of  New  York  is  carefully  distin. 
gaitbed  from  all  the  others,  and  if  compared  to 
the  University  of  France.  It  is  somewhat 
sorpriiing,  however,  that  the  University  of 
Indiana  and  Washington  University  in  St. 
Loms  are  the  only  ones  added  to  last  yearns 
list  The  book  is  divided  into  four  parts:  (I) 
a  classification  of  institutions  according  to 
their  geographical  location ;  (2)  an  alphabetical 
list  of  institationa,  with  a  description  of  each 
and  a  list  of  faculties;  (3)  an  alphabetical  list 
of  iostmctors,  with  a  reference  to  the  place 
where  the  institution  with  which  each  is  con- 
nected ia  described.  The  number  of  students 
attending  the  great  universities  is  thus  set 
down:  Paris  11,010  (10,643),  figures  in  parenthe- 
ses being  for  the  previous  year;  Berlin  8,052 
(8,343),  V^ienna  6,714  (4,856),  Madrid  5,829 
(5,807),  Munich  a56l  (3,408),  Leipzig2,957 (3.067). 
Harvard  8  290  (8,156),  Michigan  2,772  (2  695), 
Yale  2,350  (2,202),  Cornell  1,686  (1,801).  Chicago 
1,587  (87K).  These  figures  are  probably  for 
18M*'9ft,  although  the  book  states  that  they  are 
for  the  winter  term  189S-'94— exactly  the  same 
statement  that  stands  at  the  head  of  the  list  for 
the  preceding  year. 

—The  time  has  come  to  make  what  we  may 
call  a  topographical    survey  of  painting   in 
Bnrope,  at  least  as  far  as  the  older  schools  are 
concerned.    Public  galleries  have  already  gar- 
nered in  most  of  the  masterpieces,  and   the 
few  pictures  of  note  still  remaining  in  private 
hands  are  fairly  well  known  and  readily  cata- 
logued.   At  the  same  time,  good  reproduction 
has  become  so  cheap  that  such  a  survey  as  we 
speak  of  can  afford,  with  but  slight  addition  to 
the  selling  price,  to  include  fairly  adequate  il- 
lustrations after  at  least  the  most  important 
picinrea.     An  undertaking  of   the   kind   we 
have  jost  outlined  has  been  begun  by  MM.  La 
feoestre  and  Richtenberger  in  *La  Peinture 
eo  Korope'  (Paris:  Quantin).    The  firbt    two 
volumes  of  the  series,  dealing  with  the  Louvre 
and  with  Florence,  left  much  to  be  desired  in 
the  waj  of  accuracy  of  statement  and  ac- 
qoaintance  with  the  latest  research.    We  are, 
however,  happy  to  give  unstinted  praise  to  the 
third  volume,    just   published,    which   deals 
with  tbft  paintings  in  public  and  private  col- 
lectioiia,  chtirches,  and  other  lay  and  secular 
fooodatioDS  in  Belgium.    Perhaps  the  easiest 
way  to  convey  an  idea  of  the  nature  of  the 
volume  wiU  be  to  name  the  more  important  of 
the  worfca  reproduced.     At  Brussels:  Dierick 
Bouto*!  *•  Penitence  of  Otto."  Petrus  Cristus's 
"  Descent  from  the  Cross,"  V'an  Eyck*s  •^Adsm 
mod  Ere,"   Quentin  Matsys's    '*  Story  of  St. 
AAne,**  a  ''  Crucifixion'^  and  the  ''  Portrait  of 
Barbani   Vlaenderberch,"  by  Memling,  Pati- 
air's  ^*  Rest  in  the  Flight,''  and  Roger  van  der 
WeydeD*a   ••Charles  the    Bold."    From    Lou 
vmia  we  have  reproductions  of  Bouts's  '*Mar- 
tynlom  of  HI.  Erasmus";  from  Antwerp,  An. 
toneUo  da  Mesdna's    ••Crucifixion,*'   Titian's 
remarkable  early  picture  <  ootaining  the  por- 
trait of  Pope  Alexander  VL,  Jehan  Fouquet's 
••SUaonna,"  Mabuse's  **Four  Marys,"  Quen. 
Un  Mataja'a  **  Entombment,"  Memling's  •'  Por- 
trait   of    a    Canon,"   little   ••Madonna,"  and 
•'Cbrijit  and  the  AngelSi"  and  Roger  van  der 
Waydeo*a  ** Seven  Sacraments";  from  Ghent, 
Van  Ryck'a  •*  Adoration  of  the  Myotic  I^mb"; 
from  Bru^Mi  th«  shutters  of  Gerhard  David's 


••Baptism"  and  his  •'Cambyses  and  Sisam- 
nus,"  and  of  course  several  of  the  Memlings 
in  the  Hospital.  We  scarcely  need  add  that 
the  best  of  Rubens  and  of  other  later  masters 
is  also  reproduced. 

— A  young  savant,  M.  Abel  Le franc,  secre- 
tary  of  the  (?oll^ge-de  France,  has  come  upon 
a  manuscript  in  the  Bibliotb^que  Nationale 
which  contains  the  whole  of  the  later  work  in 
every  kind  of  Marguerite  of  Navarre.  If  any- 
thing might  be  taken  as  certain,  it  would  seem 
to  be  that,  after  so  many  learned  researches 
and  so  many  careful  studie.",  both  in  regard  of 
Marguerite  herself  and  of  her  time,  our 
knowledge  of  herwritings  was  complete.  And 
jet  we  now  find  that  she  left  behind  her  in 
poems,  dramas,  dialogues,  "chansons  spiritu- 
elles,"  letters,  and  light  poetry,  about  twelve 
thousand  unpublished  verses.  By  what  strange 
chaace  such  a  mass  of  literature  has  lain  hid, 
and  by  what  train  of  circumstances  the  maou- 
script  which  contains  it  has  escaped  the  re- 
searches of  the  learned  during  the  hundred 
years  that  it  has  lain  in  the  Bibliothi^'que  Na- 
tionale, can  hardly  be  explained.  M.  Abel  Le- 
franc  is  himself  as  much  astonished  at  this  as 
anybody,  and  as  little  able  to  clear  up  the 
problem .  Strangest  of  all,  the  title  of  the  manu- 
script is  duly  inscribed  in  the  catalogue,  *  Les 
Demi^res  Oeuvres  de  la  Reine  de  Navarre, 
lesqaelles  n*ont  pas  encore  est^  imprim^es.' 
The  volume  has  the  elegant  and  characteristic 
c*overing  of  the  celebrated  collection  of  the 
learned  Bouhier  (1673.1746),  prHxdent  d  mor- 
tier  of  the  Parlement  of  Dijon,  and  member  of 
the  Academy— a  collection  which  was  broken 
up  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution  and  divided 
among  many  public  libraries.  M.  Abel  Le- 
franc  happened  to  pick  up  the  manuscript  by 
the  merest  chance  at  the  BibIiotb6que  Na- 
tionale, and  opened  it,  and  the  discovery  was 
made.  In  the  Figaro  of  December  27, 1895,  he 
btates  that  several  of  the  compositions  show 
erasures  and  interlineations  which  greatly  add 
to  the  difficulty  of  deciphering.  The  necessity 
of  these  appears  from  what  is  told  us  by  Bran. 
t^>me  of  the  literary  habits  of  the  Queen.  He 
ttays  that  she  most  often  either  dictated  or 
wrote  in  her  litter,  as  she  went  on  journeys. 
There  are  two  dramatic  compositions  in  the 
collection,  ten  letters  in  verse  to  Margue- 
r  ite*s  daughter,  Jeanne  d'Albret,  with  three  of 
that  princess's  answers,  dialogues  and  lyric 
pieces,  and  two  long  poems,  ••  Le  Navire"  and 
•'  Les  Prisons,"  the  latter  being  of  about  five 
thousand  verses,  and  the  most  extended  work 
of  the  royal  poet.  It  appears  evident  that  all 
these  were  written  at  the  same  period  of  Mar. 
guerite's  life,  that  is  to  say,  during  its  last  f  otir 
or  five  years.  The  whole  of  the  new- found 
«vorks  will  be  published  as  soon  as  may  be, 
under^  the  auspices  of  the  Soci<5t6  d'histoire 
litt^raire  de  la  France. 

—An  important  monograph,  by  Mr.  Samuel 
Oar  man,  of  *  The*  Cyprinodonts '  of  the  entire 
eaith  has  been  published  as  one  of  the  ••Me- 
moirs of  the  Museum  of  Comparative  Zoolo- 
gy "  (vol.  xix..  No.  1).  The  so  called  Cyprino- 
donts constitute  a  family  of  fishes  related  to 
the  pikes:  the  species  about  New  York  are  gene- 
rally called  killifishes  and  mummicbogs.  All 
are  of  small  size,  and  some  among  the  smallest 
of  fishes;  the  largest  are  the  ••  four  eyes  "  of 
tropical  America.  Most  have  the  sexes  exter- 
nally well  differentiated  and  are  viviparous. 
The  sexes  of  the  four-eyes  (^na6/epj)  are 
*•  rights  and  lefts,"  that  is,  ••a  dextral  male 
pairs  with  a  sloidtral  female,"  or  viw  versa. 
It  is  noteworthy  that  while,  in  the  species 


with  plain  or  moderately  bright  males,  the 
females  are  larger— often  very  much  larger— 
as  among  fishes  generally.  In  one  genus  {MoHie- 
nisia),  the  males,  which  are  very  ornate  repre- 
sentatives of  that  sex,  reach  larger  dimensions 
than  the  females,  and  thus  falsify  a  generali- 
zation extended  to  all  teleott  fishes.  Mr.  Oar- 
man  displays  an  unusual  acquaintance  with 
the  literature  of  the  subject.  In  reviving  the 
old  name  Cyprlnodontes  for  the  family,  how. 
ever,  he  will  not  be  followed  by  all  ichthyolo- 
gists. He  has  shown  that  Wagner  was  the  first 
to  distinguish  the  family,  but  he  proceeds  to 
state  that  Wagner's  name  ••  Cyprinoldae  Is 
incorrectly  written;  etymologically  corrected, 
it  is  identical  with  Cyprinidce.^*  Cyprinol- 
(/ir,  however,  is  what  was  intended  by  Wag- 
ner, and  was  given  because  he  wanted  to 
imply  likeness,  but  not  pertinence,  to  the  Cy- 
prinids:  Cyprinoldae  is  a  compound  with  clAof, 
'  form ' ;  Cypt  inidce  with  -idae,  the  patronymic 
suffix  Ichthyologists  will  certainly  be  greatly 
helped  by  the  very  numerous  references  to  the 
widely  scattered  literature  brought  together 
in  Mr.  Gar  man's  historical  survey  and  syno- 
nyms of  the  groups  and  species.  About  134 
suecies  are  recognized  and  distributed  among 
82  genera. 


WHITE'S  MONEY  AND  BANKING. 

Money  and  Banking^  Ulustrated  by  American 
History.  By  Horace  White.  Boston  :  Ginn 
&  Co.  1895.  Pp.  488. 
&Jr.  White's  book  is  not  a  systematic  treatise 
on  money  and  banking,  and  does  not  aim  to 
give  an  elaborate  account  of  theories,  or  a  re- 
fined criticism  of  conflicting  views.  Apart 
from  a  few  short  chapters,  the  exposition  of 
principles  has  the  appearance  of  being  brought 
in  incidentally,  as  though  suggested  by  the 
events  of  the  story,  rather  than  as  constituting 
the  central  object  of  the  work.  This  mode  of 
tjvatment  will  not  be  found  fully  satisfactory 
by  the  economic  student  who  may  go  to  this 
b  )ok  with  a  view  to  finding  a  compact  body  of 
doctrine ;  but  it  has  evidently  been  adopted 
\%  ith  a  view  to  attracting  the  general  reader, 
unaccustomed  to  economic  reasoning,  but  in- 
tolligently  interested  in  those  questions  of  cur- 
r^'ucy  and  banking  which  are  now  of  such  pre- 
dominating interest  in  our  national  affairs. 

The  keynote  of  the  book  is  given  In  the  fol- 
io wing  passage  in  the  preface: 

•'It  is  the  aim  of  this  work  to  recall  atten- 
ti  n  to  first  principles.  For  this  purpose  it  has 
L>een  deemed  best  to  begin  at  the  beginning  of 
civilized  life  on  this  continent,  and  to  treat  the 
►ubj«-ct  historically.  The  science  of  money  is 
njuch  in  need  of  something  to  enliven  It.  If 
ai  yihing  can  make  it  attractive,  it  must  be  the 
story  of  the  struggles  of  our  ancestors  with  the 
same  problems  that  vex  us.  The  reader  will 
find  an  abundance  of  these  in  the  following 
Images.  Indeed,  a  complete  and  correct  theory 
or  money  might  be  constructed  from  events 
ni  d  experiences  that  have  taken  place  on  the 
American  c^ontinent,  even  if  we  had  no  other 
hources  of  knowledge.  This  ma  v  be  xaid  of  the 
science  of  banking  also.  All  the  witKlom  and 
all  the  folly  of  the  ages,  as  to  these  two  re- 
lated subjertrt,  have  been  exploited  on  our 
bbures  within  the  space  of  le^  than  three  hun- 
dred years." 

There  are,  in  fact,  few  who  will  not  be  as- 
tonished at  the  abundance  of  illustration  which 
our  financiil  history,  as  here  unfolded,  fur- 
nishes of  almost  every  conceivable  point  con- 
nected  with  money  and  banking.  We  are  cer- 
tainly, for  instance,  not  in  the  habit  of  think- 
ing of  old  Peter  Stuyvesant  as  a  well  of  wisdom 
from  which  we  may  profitably  rerommend 
some  of  our  frce-coiiiaije  friends  to  draw  Jji- 


58 


Tlie   N'atlon. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1594 


stmction.  Tet  here  we  find  him,  a  quarter  of 
a  mflleoniamago,  grappliog  masfally  nvith  the 
doable-itaodard  question  on  Manhattan  Island. 
Beaver- skins  and  wampum  were  used  as  cur- 
rency, as  well  as  metallic  money,  and  the  little 
colony  got  hot  over  the  question  whether  bea- 
ver should  be  rated  at  six  florins  or  eight  to 
the  skin,  and  wampum  at  eight  beads  to  the 
stiver  or  ten  But  Stuy  vesant  declared  that 
it  was  immaterial  whether  the  legal  rate  was 
eight  for  a  stiver  or  ten,  '*  because  the  dealer 
marks,  holds,  or  sells  his  goods  according  to 
the  abundance  of  wampum  and  the  price  he 
has  to  give  for  beavers." 

Only  a  small  portion  of  the  book,  however, 
is  occupied  with  the  curious  details  of  the 
history  of  wampum,  beaver,  and  tobacco 
money,  instructive  as  theto  are  ;  and  we  soon 
come  to  the  doleful  history  of  the  paper  cur- 
rencies of  the  separate  colonies  and  of  the 
Continental  Congress.  Of  course,  every  one 
knows  how  these  paper  substitutes  for  money 
went  rapidly  down-hill,  and  how  each  new 
issue  made  confusion  worse  confounded.  The 
phrase  **not  worth  a  Continental"  still  sur- 
vives to  remind  the  descendants  of  the  men  of 
the  Revolution  how  worthless  the  currency  of 
the  united  colonies  became.  But  this  general 
impression  is  apt  to  be  a  shadowy  one ;  and 
the  vivid  and  interesting  detailed  account  in 
this  book  will  come,  after  all,  more  or  less 
with  the  force  of  a  revelation  to  most  readers. 
Not  only  are  we  given  the  startiing  figures 
which  tell  the  story  of  the  depreciation  in  the 
paper  money  of  one  after  another  of  the  colo- 
nies, and  in  the  Continental  currency  ;  but  we 
are  made  to  realize  what  desperate  and  futile 
expedients  were  resorted  to  in  the  attempt  to 
avert  the  inevitable  consequences  of  financial 
foUy.  On  the  first  head,  we  are  told,  for  in- 
stance, that  *4n  176S  the  value  of  the  New 
Hampshire  shilling  was  a  little  less  than  a 
half-penny;  in  1771  it  vanii>hed  altogether. 
Rhode  Island  old-tenor  bills  in  1770  were 
worth  26  for  1."  It  is  interesting,  too,  to  learn 
that  **the  bills  of  the  middle  colonies  were 
kept  within  reasonable  bounds— a  result  due 
mainly  to  the  stubbornness  of  their  Gov. 
emors."  Though  Mr.  White  draws  no  paral- 
lel here,  not  a  few  readers  will  be  reminded  of 
a  similar  service  rendered  by  executive  firm- 
ness nearer  to  our  own  day.  Of  Continental 
money  the  amount  issued,  between  1775  and 
1779,  was  two  hundred  and  forty  two  million 
dollars,  and  '*  in  1781  the  whole  mass  became 
worthless."  An  act  of  the  United  States  Con- 
g^ress  passed  In  1790  provided  for  the  funding 
of  the  bills  in  6  per  cent,  bonds  *'at  the  rate 
of  one  hundred  dollars  in  the  said  bills  for  one 
dollar  in  specie!"  Only  $7,000,000  was  pre- 
sented in  response  to  this  not  very  tempting 
offer. 

As  regards  the  means  resorted  to  by  the  gov- 
ernments of  the  separate  colonies,  and  by  the 
Continental  Congress,  to  make  water  run  up- 
hill, the  account  of  them  makes  picturesque, 
even  if  melancholy,  reading.  We  have,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  legal-tender  acts,  struggles 
with  the  home  Government  over  their  validity, 
repudiation  (more  or  less  complete)  of  old 
issues,  emission  of  new  bills  giving  rise  to  such 
distinctions  as  old  tenor,  middle  tenor,  new 
tenor  first,  and  new  tenor  second;  but  we 
have,  in  addition,  efforts  to  force  the  currency 
of  these  precious  bills  on  those  who  had  prop< 
erty  for  sale,  at  the  value  which  the  legislative 
fiat  put  upon  them. 

**  We  find  in  nearly  all  the  colonies  severe 
penalties  on  those  who  charged  more  for  their 
goods,  lands,  or  services  in  bills  of  credit  than 
in  hard  money.    In  some  caaea  the  penalty 


was  a  fine,  in  others  imprisonment,  in  others 
confiscation  of  the  property  offered.  There  is 
no  recorded  ini^tance  in  colonial  history  where 
the  penalties  bad  any  effect  to  reduce  the 
prices  of  property,  or  to  equalize  paper  prices 
and  silver  prices,  althougU  there  are  many 
cases  where  individuals  were  outrageously 
robbed." 

The  Continental  Congress  resorted  to  im- 
pressment,  on  a  large  scale,  to  procure  army 
supplies,  at  arbitrary  prices,  for  the  almost 
worthless  paper  money;  and  finally,  in  1779, 
against  the  protest  of  Robert  Morris,  the  Su- 
perintendent of  Finance,  it  endeavored  to  cut 
the  knot  of  the  currency  difficulty,  so  far  as 
providing  for  the  army  was  concerned,  by 
resorting  to  the  plan  of  raising,  from  the 
several  States,  ** specific  supplies"  for  the 
army,  t. «.,  avoiding  the  intervention  of  money 
altogether  by  making  requisitions  for  beef, 
pork,  and  so  forth.  The  result  was  an  experi- 
mental demonstration  of  the  necessity  of 
money  as  part  of  the  machinery  of  civilised 
life.  ^^Inptantiy  there  was  a  tangle  of  the 
public  accounts  which  nobody  could  unravel. 
In  some  cases,  flour  collected  for  the  army 
was  not  forwarded  because  there  was  no 
money  to  pay  teamsters.  It  remained  at  the 
place  of  collection  till  it  was  spoiled.  Other 
consignments,  which  were  actually  sent,  ar- 
rived too  early  or  too  late,  and  were  left  on  the 
ground  exposed  to  the  weather."  The  whole 
experiment  was  a  diurnal  failure.  In  August, 
1780,  Washington,  writing  to  Congress,  said: 
**The  present  mode  of  obtaining  supplies  is 
the  most  uncertain,  expensive,  and  injurious 
that  could  be  devised."  Mr.  White's  account 
of  the  history  of  colonial  and  Continental 
money  is  interspersed  with  an  abundance  of 
instructive  comment  and  discussion.  In  con- 
cluding his  chapter  on  Continental  money,  he 
refers  to  the  **  pa  per- money  debauchery"  of 
several  of  the  separate  States  after  the  Revo- 
lutionary war,  and  quotes  from  Judge  Story 
the  following  declaration  as  to  the  Revolu- 
tionary and  post- Revolutionary  legal- tender 
laws  :  **They  entailed  the  most  enormous 
evils  on  the  country,  and  introduced  a  system 
of  fraud,  chicanery,  and  profligacy  which  de- 
stroyed all  private  confidence  and  all  industry 
and  enterprise." 

The  next  subject  taken  up  is  the  paper-money 
legislation  of  the  Civil  War.  Naturally,  the 
prevailing  note  here  is  one  of  deep  regret  that 
the  experience  of  our  fathers  did  not  avail  to 
keep  us  away  from  the  maelstrom  of  irredeem- 
able  paper  money.  Mr.  White  points  out  with 
great  effectiveness,  both  by  the  examples  of 
history  and  by  intrinsic  considerations,  that 
the  notion  of  the  necessity  of  irredeemable 
paper  for  the  carrying  on  of  wars  is  a  delu- 
sion.  Referring  to  the  fact  that  in  many  wars 
quite  as  trying  to  the  resources  of  the  countries 
concerned  as  was  our  Civil  War,  and  notably 
in  the  wars  of  France  under  the  first  Napole- 
on, specie  payments  were  not  suspended,  he 
remarks  :  **  Yet  sane  people  talk  as  though 
there  bad  never  been  a  war,  from  the  siege  of 
Troy  till  now,  without  the  use  of  depreciated 
paper,  whereas  this  is  only  a  modem  device  of 
slovenly  financiers.''  And  he  avails  himself  of 
the  assertion  made  in  several  reports  by  Mr. 
Memminger,  the  Confederate  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  **  that  it  was  impossible  to  carry  on 
a  modem  war  by  means  of  taxes  alone,"  to 
point  out  the  fallacy  of  this  view,  and  to  ex- 
plain  how  the  issue  of  paper  money  merely 
veils  the  true  nature  of  the  operation  of  taxa- 
tion, and  distributes  the  cost  of  the  war 
among  the  people,  only  not  according  to  a 
Bound  or  equitable  system.  *' Every  country," 
says  Mr.  White,  **  pays  the  coat  of  a  war  at 


the  time  of  the  war  "  (of  course,  money  bor- 
rowed from  abroad  is  here  left  out  of  the  ac- 
count), and  he  continues  as  follows : 

**The  Southern  Confederacy  presents  an 
easy  illustration  of  this  maxim,  because  it  was 
for  the  most  part  isolated,  having  littie  com- 
munication  with  the  outer  world,  and  because 
all  of  its  debts  were  obliterated  at  the  end  of 
the  war.  Obviously  somebody  paid  the  coat. 
It  was  not  paid  by  foreigners  (except  the  tri- 
fiine  sum  of  $15,000,000  borrowed  abroad),  nor 
didlt  fall  from  the  moon.  There  being  nobody 
else  to  pay  it  the  people  of  the  Confederacy 
must  have  paid  it,  and  must  have  paid  it  dur- 
ing the  time  of  the  war  and  not  a  moment 
later.  To  levy  taxes  sufficient  to  pay  the  whole 
of  each  year's  expenses  within  the  year  would 
not  have  made  the  burden  any  greater  than  it 
actually  was.  The  Confederacy,  by  following 
Mr.  Memminger's  conception  that  taxes  to  pay 
interest  on  loans  would  be  sufficient,  did  not  get 
rid  of  heavier  ones.  It  only  took  them  in  a 
different  way." 

This  quotation  affords  an  illustration  of  the 
way  in  which,  throughout  the  book,  discos- 
Bions  of  a  general  character  are  brought  in  at 
such  points  as  the  current  of  the  narrative 
suggests ;  a  method  which  will  doubtiess  cause 
them  to  be  read  by  very  many  to  whom  aya- 
tematic  economic  exposition  is  insupportably 
dreary.  In  this  particular  instamce  one  point 
is  overlooked  as  regards  the  general  thesis, 
though  it  does  not  apply  to  the  case  of  the 
Confederacy.  If,  during  a  war,  paper  money 
were  issued  only  in  such  quantity  as  not  to  be 
depreciated,  and  if  this  paper  money  were  re- 
deemed after  the  war,  its  issue  would  have 
acted  as  a  bona-fide  loan,  and  would  have  ope- 
rated to  defer  payment  of  the  corresponding 
part  of  the  cost  of  the  war  until  after  its  con- 
clusion. Of  course,  it  would  have  done  so 
through  the  expulsion  of  a  corresponding 
amount  of  gold,  which  would  have  been  set 
free  for  purchases  abroad  (in  so  far  as  it  was  not 
hoarded). 

We  have  perhaps  devoted  too  much  space  to 
giving  an  idea  of  the  contents  of  that  portion 
of  the  book  which  relates  to  money  ;  and  even 
of  this  portion  we  have  not  indicated  the  parts 
which  deal  with  the  gold  and  silver  standards 
(including  a  long  account  of  the  successive  in- 
ternational congresses  which  have  struggled 
with  the  question  of  silver),  nor  the  brief 
chapters  relating  to  the  currency  of  foreign 
countries.  The  history  of  our  coinage  legisla- 
tion and  of  our  actual  experience  in  regard  to 
gold  and  silver  money  is  of  especial  pertinence 
to  current  questions.  Thus,  the  circumstances 
t)earing  on  the  well  known  fact  that  we  have 
bad  the  single  gold  standard  de  facto,  though 
not  de  Jure,  ever  since  18d4,  are  of  decided  inte- 
rest  just  now.  The  story  of  how  France  canoe 
to  the  gold  standard  is  instructively  told. 
Some  interesting  points  are  mentioned  bearing 
on  the  question  of  the  effects,  in  India,  of  the 
fail  of  silver  ;  the  most  striking  being  the  fact 
that  rice,  the  chief  food  product  of  Bengal,  has 
*'more  than  doubled  in  price  since  the  rupee 
began  to  fall."  The  chapter  on  **  the  crime  of 
1873"  is  conclusive  on  a  matter  which  we 
should  be  glad  to  think  was  no  longer  likely  to 
be  heard  about,  but  which,  at  all  events,  is  far 
from  being  the  burning  question  it  seemed  to 
some  in  the  palmy  days  of  Jones  and  Stewart 
and  **Coin."  The  concluding  chapter  of  the 
part  of  the  book  devoted  to  money  deals  with 
our  present  financial  situation,  points  out  w^h  j 
and  to  what  extent  the  Government  keeps  oar 
various  other  dollars  at  par  with  the  gold  dol- 
lar, shows  the  evils  of  flat  money,  explains  the 
inelasticity  of  a  Treasury  currency,  owins  to 
the  necessary  non-poeaeeaion  by  the  Treaaur  j 
of  the  machinery  of  banking,  and  tonebSB  on 
other  matters  of  preaent-day  interast^  Iiio1qi|- 


Jan.  1 6,  1896] 


The    N'atibn. 


59 


ing  an  account  of  how  the  contract  made  with 
the  Morgan  syndicate  last  February  saved  our 
monetary  system.  It  cloeee  with  some  discus- 
sion of  the  Supreme  Court  decisions  in  the 
legal-tender  cases. 

The  second  half  of  the  book  is  devoted  to 
banking.  With  this,  though  perhaps  as  inte. 
resting  and  certainly  as  important  as  the  first 
half,  we  shall  have  to  deal  much  more  briefly. 
It  is  less  easy  here  to  pick  out  salient  points 
and  to  convey,  in  brief  space,  an  idea  of  the 
matters  dealt  with.  The  first  chapter  gives  a 
short  statement  of  the  functions  of  a  bank,  the 
second  describee  the  operation  of  the  clearing- 
bouse,  and  the  remaining  seventeen  chapters 
follow,  for  the  most  part,  historical  lines  in  the 
treatment  of  the  subject.  The  history  of  the 
two  Banks  of  the  United  States  is  full  of  inte- 
rest and  instruction,  and  the  personal  and  po- 
litical side  of  the  struggle  between  Andrew 
Jackson  and  the  second  Bank  is  vividly  pre. 
sented.  Successive  chapters  deal  with  the  va- 
rious classes  of  State  banks;  and  their  rise  and 
fall,  as  well  as  the  legislation  affecting  them, 
is  made  the  occasion  for  impressing  upon  the 
reader  the  general  principles  which  underlie 
the  operation  of  banking.  Thus,  we  have,  in 
the  chapter  on  **  Some  Notable  Banks,  *^  a  full 
account  of  the  development  of  the  Wisconsin 
Marine  and  Fire  Insurance  Company  (started 
by  the  Scotchman,  George  Smith)  into  the 
great  issuer  of  paper  money  for  the  Northwest* 
and,  in  this  somewhat  unexpected  place,  we 
find,  under  the  head  **  Ad  vantages  of  *  George 
Bmith*B  Money,'  '*  perhaps  a  fuller  explanation 
of  the  nature  and  benefits  of  an  elastic  banking 
currency  than  anywhere  else.  The  history  of 
ante-bellum  banking  in  the  United  States  con- 
tains much  in  the  way  of  example  as  well  as  of 
warning;  and  if  the  story  of  **wild.cat*'  bank- 
ing presents  a  state  of  things  almost  incredibly 
bad,  the  history  of  the  Suffolk  banking  system 
of  Massachusetts,  the  Bank  of  South  Carolina, 
the  Bank  of  Indiana,  and  many  others,  shows 
how  safe  and  beneficent  a  banking  system  is 
when  bcued  on  sound  principles. 

After  a  chapter  on  the  national-bank  system 
come  the  three  final  chapters  of  the  book, 
which  again  deal  with  general  matters,  the 
first  being  devoted  to  **  The  Quantity  Theory,** 
the  second  to  **Tbe  Mechanism  of  Exchange,** 
and  the  third  to  a  number  of  points  related  to 
banking  problems  of  to-day.  Mr.  White  em- 
phasises everywhere  the  fact  that  credit  is 
the  thing  with  which  banks  are  essentially 
concerned.  A  passage  which  occurs  in  the 
chapter  on  the  mechanism  of  exchange  is 
worth  quoting  as  a  specimen  of  the  author's 
style.  Referring  to  Mr.  Hepburn's  definition 
of  the  discount  of  commercial  paper  as  **the 
swapping  of  well-known  credit  for  less  known 
credit,"  he  says: 

*'The  banker,  if  he  understands  his  trade, 
enables  the  most  deserving  persons  in  the  com- 
munity to  get  possession  or  the  tools  and  ma- 
terials of  industry  without  the  use  of  money. 
The  most  deeerving  persons  in  the  commercial 
sense,  are  those  who  can  make  the  most  profita- 
ble use  of  tools  and  materials,  and  who  are  be- 
lieved to  be  honest.  By  swapping  its  well- 
known  credit  for  their  less-known  credit,  the 
bank  performs  a  service  to  societv  by  econo- 
mizing tools  and  materials.  Anything  which 
puts  these  things  into  the  right  bands  and  keeps 
them  out  of  the  wrong  hands  is  a  gain  to  the 
world.  The  continuea  existence  of  a  bank  is 
conclusive  and  incontestable  proof  that  it  is 
doing  this  thing,  for  if  it  were  not,  its  own 
losses  and  expenses  would  soon  eat  it  up." 

Mr.  White's  book  is  not  devoted  to  the  pro 
pagation  of  any  special  views,  but  is  designed 
to  enlighten  readers  of  ordinary  intelligence 
in  reptfd  to  tl»e  liistory  apd  the  eesentlal 


principles  of  money  and  banking.  In  its  the- 
oretical arguments  and  its  statements  of  doc- 
trine, while  they  are  not  always  hedged 
about  with  such  caution  and  particularity  as 
would  be  expected  in  an  economic  text-book, 
there  is  rarely  anything  that  we  can  find 
fault  with;  and  there  is  a  refreshing  vigor 
and  frequently  even  pungency  in  the  expres- 
sion, which  is  not  often  met  with  in  books  on 
this  class  of  subjects.  The  treatment  of  the 
** quantity  theory"  is  not  to  our  mind  satis- 
factory  ;  it  fails  in  that  highest  requirement 
of  controversial  writing,  the  stating  of  the 
doctrine  you  oppose  in  the  best  form  of  which 
it  is  capable.  Moreover,  Mr.  White's  views, 
as  expressed  in  this  chapter,  seem  to  be  con- 
tradicted by  bis  own  remarku  on  page  197, 
touching  the  fall  in  the  value  of  greenbacks 
between  1874  and  1875,  of  which  he  says  **the 
explanation  is  that  there  was  a  greater  de- 
mand for  instruments  of  exchange  in  the  for- 
mer year  than  in  the  latter.  Consequently 
they  would  buy  more  goods  per  dollar  and 
therefore  more  gold." 

Nothing  could  be  more  timely  than  this  book. 
It  ought  to  have  the  effect  of  making  thousands 
of  intelligent  persons  who  are  interested  in  the 
burning  financial  questions  of  the  day,  but 
who  feel  that  they  see  them  **  through  a  glass, 
darkly,"  take  the  trouble  to  equip  themselves 
with  an  understanding  of  the  problem  and  of 
its  history. 


GROSVENOR'S  CONSTANTINOPLE 

Constantinople.  By  Edwin  O.  Grosvenor.  2 
vols.,  illustrated.  Boston:  Roberts  Bros. 
1895. 
Mr.  Grosvenor,  now  professor  of  European 
history  at  Amherst,  was  for  many  years  pro- 
fessor of  history  at  Robert  College,  Constanti- 
nople. He  improved  the  opportunities  there 
afforded  for  the  study  of  the  history  of  the 
antiquities  of  that  city,  and  these  two  large 
volumes  are  the  result  of  his  work  and  inves- 
tig^tions.  In  his  preface  he  acknowledges  his 
indebtedness  to  various  **  distinguished  gentle- 
men," so  many  and  so  distinguished  that  tha 
list  sounds  very  much  like' a  **  recapitulation 
of  glittering  names,"  to  use  his  own  words. 
But  the  two  to  whom  he  considers  himself  most 
of  all  indebted  are  Alexander  G.  Faspatis  and 
Gen.  Lew  Wallace.  The  latter,  whom  Prof. 
Grosvenor  designates  as  *Hhe  foremost  writer 
of  America,"  furnishes  a  commendatory  in- 
troduction to  the  work. 

Prof.  Grosvenor's  style  has  a  somewhat  By- 
zantine tinge,  which  may  be  due  to  his  long 
and  careful  study  of  Byzantine  writers,  the 
evidence  of  which  one  finds  on  every  page  of 
these  volumes.  For  be  is  no  mere  second-baud 
student,  but  one  who  has  read  the  tedious 
tomes  of  the  little-known  Greek  writers  of  the 
Byzantine  Empire.  Moreover,  he  is  a  member 
of  the  Hellenic  Philologic  Syllogos  and  the 
Society  of  MedlsBval  Researches  of  Constemti- 
nople,  as  well  as  of  the  Syllogos  of  Parnassos 
of  Athens.  Through  bis  membership  in  these 
societies  he  has  been  for  many  years  in  close 
contact  with  every  one  in  Constantinople  who 
is  interested  in  or  has  studied  the  ancient  or 
mediaeval  history  of  that  city,  and  has  thus 
been  able  to  draw,  as  it  were,  upon  a  common 
stock  of  information.  Whoever  in  Constanti- 
nople finds  an  object  of  interest  or  discovers 
new  facts,  reads  a  paper  at  the  Syllogos,  and, 
in  conveying  bis  own  new  information,  obtains 
in  return  the  information  and  the  criticisms  of 
scholars  interested  like  himself  in  the  same  re- 
searches,   The  language  of  the  Sfllogos  and 


its  publications  is  naturally  Greek,  for,  with 
the  exception  of  a  very  few  Englishmen  and 
Americans,  it  is  almost  exclusively  the  Greeks 
who  are  interested  in  the  study  of  the  former 
history  of  Constantinople. 

But  it  is  not  meiely  that  Prof.  Grosvenor  has 
been  able  to  draw  on  the  accumulated  infor- 
mation of  all  those  who  are  interested  in  the 
antiquities  of  Constantinople;  in  the  many 
years  of  his  residence  he  appears  to  have  visit- 
ed every  church,  every  mosque,  every  cistern, 
and  to  have  explored  every  region  of  the  city 
for  remains  of  ancient  Constantinople  or  By- 
zantium, and  in  these  explorations  be  has  made 
discoveries  and  formed  opinions  of  his  own 
which  constitute  un  original  contribution.  Now 
and  then,  however,  he  seems  to  propound  a 
theory  or  opinion  as  though  it  were  a  well- 
attested  and  generally  accepted  fact.  For  in- 
stance, on  the  capitals  of  the  three- tiered  col- 
umns which  support  the  roof  of  Bin  BIr  Derek 
cistern  there  are  a  number  of  monograms, 
some  of  them  repeated  several  times,  some  of 
tbfm  upside  down  and  some  of  them  wrong- 
side  foremost.  Prof.  Grosvenor  assumes  that 
these  are  monograms  of  senators  of  the  time 
of  Constantine,  and  that  Pbiloxenos,  who,  we 
are  told,  gave  this  cistern  to  the  city,  did  not 
himself  bear  the  entire  cost,  but  that,  the  un- 
dertaking being  too  great  for  any  one  man  to 
accomplish,  various  senators  contributed  in 
larger  or  smaller  amounts,  the  monogram  of 
each  contributor  being  inscribed  on  one  or 
more  capitals,  in  proportion  to  the  amount  of 
his  contribution.  The  rude  or  careless  workmen 
who  did  the  stone-cutting  cut  these  monograms 
in  the  capitals  in  any  fashion,  frequently  up- 
side down  and  wrong-side  foremost.  So  far  as 
we  are  aware.  Prof.  Grosvenor  has  no  other 
ground  for  this  hypothesis  than  the  fact  that 
there  are  monograms  of  various  Individuals  on 
the  capitals.  History  or  tradition  ascribes  the 
cistern  to  Pbiloxenos  only.  Now,  however  plau- 
sible his  theory.  Prof.  Grosvenor  has  no  right 
to  state  it  as  a  fact  on  such  evidence  as  this. 
He  makes  no  mention,  by  the  way,  of  the  cross 
on  a  ball  which  is  to  be  found  on  at  least  two 
of  the  columns  in  the  Bin  Bir  Derek  cistern, 
and  which  evidently  belongs  to  the  period  of 
Justinian.  In  his  description  of  another  cis- 
tern. Yeri  Batan  Serai,  Prof.  Grosvenor  as- 
serts as  a  fact  that  **  it  still  serves  its  original 
purpose,  supplying  water  from  the  aqueduct 
of  Valens  in  as  copious  measure  as  of  old." 
This  may  be  true,  but,  inasmuch  as  other  au- 
thorities declare  that  the  source  of  supply  is 
unknown,  it  is  regrettable  that  Prof.  Grosvenor 
does  not  inform  us  definitely  of  the  source  of 
bis  information. 

The  plan  of  the  book  seems  to  be  to  present 
a  panoramic  view  of  Constantinople  in  all  the 
epochs  of  its  existence.  This  is,  perhaps,  best 
illustrated  in  the  chapter  on  the  Hippodrome, 
which  was  first  published  some  five  years  ago 
in  separate  form  as  a  pamphlet.  In  this,  after 
restoring  the  Hippodrome  from  its  ruins, 
Prof.  Grosvenor  endeavors  to  make  it  live  by 
bringing  before  the  mind's  eye  picture  after 
picture  of  stirring  events  which  have  occurred 
there:  the  revolt  of  the  Nika;  the  extraordi- 
nary history  of  the  famous  or  infamous  Theo- 
dora, wife  of  Justinian,  who,  making  her  first 
appearance  as  the  orphan  of  the  deceased 
keeper  of  the  bears  of  the  faction  of  the  Green, 
a  pitiable  little  child,  vainly  l)egging  at  her 
mither's  bidding  from  the  patrons  of  the  fao- 
tioo  which  had  employed  her  father,  becomes 
at  last  the  real  ruler  of  the  world,  and  wreaks 
her  vengeance  in  the  same  place  on  those  who 
then  scorned  and  insulted  her.  Again,  we 
have   the  picture   of  Basil,  the  groom,    b^ 


eo 


The    !N^  a  t  i  o  II . 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1594 


striding  and  controlling  the  wild  Arabian 
steed  which  no  one  else  could  manage,  and  by 
bis  courage  and  dexterity  so  approving  him- 
self to  Emperor  and  people  that  he  finally^ 
in  his  turn,  ascends  the  imperial  throne.  No 
panorama  of  any  other  spot  can  be  stranger  or 
more  picturesqae  than  this  panorama  of  the 
Hippodrome.  The  book  is  not  a  guide-book, 
however,  and  he  who  wishes  to  know  the  chro- 
nological order  of  events  and  the  precise  history 
of  each  occurrence  must  look  elsewhere.  No 
authorities  are  cited.  The  reader  must  accept 
Prof.  Grosvenor's  word;  and  if  he  doubt  that, 
he  will  find  it  an  exceedingly  difficult  matter 
to  check  the  accuracy  of  the  information  given. 
Perhaps  for  the  purpose  which  Prof.  Grosve 
nor  had  in  mind  this  method  is  the  best,  pro- 
vided that  the  author  is  always  sufficientiy 
careful  regarding  his  facts.  After  reading  the 
chapter  on  the  Hippodrome,  for  example,  one 
has  a  very  vivid  impression  both  of  the  general 
life  of  the  Hippodrome,  and  also  of  the  im- 
mense part  which  the  Hippodrome  played  in 
the  history  of  Constantinople.  One  can  even 
restore  fairly  well  the  general  appearance  of 
the  enormous  structure. 

In  another  chapter  we  are  taken  up  and 
down  the  Golden  Horn,  and  then  up  and  down 
the  Bosphorus,  going  on  one  side  and  returning 
on  the  other,  and  completing  our  trip  at  the 
Princes'  Wands.  As  we  come  to  each  village 
we  are  told  by  our  cicerone  of  the  most  strik- 
ing events  connected  with  that  village,  of  the 
part  it  played  in  Byzantine,  and  sometimes  in 
Turkish,  history,  and  of  the  great  buildings 
which  stood  or  still  stand  there.  Sometimes 
the  Btories  are  romantic,  sometimes  gruesome. 
On  the  island  of  Proti,  one  of  the  Princes' 
Islands,  where  so  many  princes  and  princesses, 
mutilated  or  with  shorn  beads,  were  cast  into 
monastic  cells,  after  being  torn  from  their 
thrones  by  palace  conspiracies,  we  meet  among 
others  the  entire  family  of  the  Emperor  Leo  V. 
*' A  leathern  sack  lying  at  the  Empress's  feet 
contained  the  headless  remains  of  her  husband 
Leo.  .  .  .  The  roughly  shaven  head  of  the 
EmpreFS  Theodosia  testified  to  the  violence 
with  which,  in  the  euphemistic  language  of  the 
Byzantines,  she  had  just  been  made  *a  citi- 
zeness  of  heaven,  wearing  the  raiment  of  the 
angels,'  or,  in  other  words,  a  black  robed  nun. 
At  her  side  cowered  her  four  grown-up  sons  in 
the  agony  of  a  just^ performed  and  nameless 
mutilation."  Eight  years  before,  this  same 
Leo,  the  Armenian,  had  turned  Michael  I.,  bis 
wife,  and  his  children,  into  monks  and  nuns  on 
that  same  island.  Through  fiuch  pictures  as 
this  with  which  these  pages  abound,  we  obtain 
a  vivid  conception  of  the  intrigues  and  vicissi- 
tudes of  the  Byzantine  court. 

Having  explored  the  shores  of  the  Golden 
Horn  and  the  Bosphorus,  we  are  next  taken 
through  all  parts  of  ancient  Constantinople 
itself— that  is,  the  modem  Stambul.  At  each 
bath,  each  forum,  each  palace,  each  church, 
each  cistern,  each  prison,  and  each  antiquity, 
we  are  told  some  story  of  its  founder,  its  re- 
storer, its  destroyer,  or  of  those  who  have  in 
any  way  connected  themselves  with  its  history. 

The  second  volume  is  devoted  almost  entire- 
ly to  the  churches,  mosques,  and  turbehs.  The 
section  dealing  with  the  churches  is  designated 
*^  Still  Existing  Antiquities,'*  and  begins  in  the 
first  volume.  Besides  Sancta  Sophia,  the 
churches  which  receive  most  minute  and  af- 
fectionate mention  are  '^Kntchouk  Aya 
Sophia,  the  ancient  Church  of  Sts  Sergius 
and  Bacchus,"  built  by  the  Emperor  Justinian 
before  he  ascended  the  imperial  throne,  in  527 
A.D  ;  and  the  **Kachrieh  Djami,  the  Church 
of  Chora."    The  former  of  these  doee  not  re- 


ceive from  the  ordinary  visitor  to  Constanti- 
nople the  attention  which  it  deserves.  As 
Prof.  Grosvenor  says : 

**No  other  building  in  Constantinople  has 
exerted  equal  influence  in  subsequent  Byzan- 
tine churcb  architecture.  The  towering  Sancta 
Sophia,  acme  of  Byzantine  attainment,  has 
served  as  a  model  for  almost  every  Moslem 
masque,  whatever  its  proportions,  which  has 
been  erected  since  the  conquest.  Apparently 
the  Christians  shrank  from  imitation  of  Sancta 
Sophia,  their  proudest  architectural  achieve- 
ment but  the  Church  of  Sergius  and  Bacchus 
has  been  the  honored  pattern,  copied  with 
greater  or  less  fidelity  in  every  Orthodox  sanc- 
tuary of  the  East." 

Prof.  Grosvenor  is  the  first  to  point  out,  we 
believe,  the  meaning  of  an  apparent  irregu. 
larity  in  the  architecture  of  the  southern  side 
of  this  church,  and  to  show  that  the  private 
entrance  to  the  imperial  palace  of  Justinian 
was  at  that  point.  **■  The  clear  cut  monograms 
of  Justinian  and  Theodora"  are  still  visible  on 
the  capitals  of  the  columns  in  this  hitherto  un- 
explained niche  on  the  southern  side.  The 
latter  of  these  two  churches,  the  .'^Eachrieh 
Dj«mi,"  although  in  a  much  more  outofthe- 
way  situation,  is  better  known  to  the  ordinary 
visitor  on  account  of  the  beautiful  mosaics 
which  are  still  to  be  seen  there.  It  is  called  by 
the  guides  the  **  Mosaic  Mosque."  Prof.  Gros- 
venor gives  us  welcome  illustrations  of  all  the 
better  preserved  of  these  mosaics 

As  one  reads  the  account  of  the  ancient 
Christian  churches,  now  all  of  them  mosques, 
except  the  Church  of  *'the  Theotokos,  the 
Moucbliotissa,"  and  Saint  Irene,  which  is  a 
museum  of  arms,  one  realizes  that  the  Moslems, 
after  conquering  Constantinople,  did  not  treat 
the  Christi&n  religion  with  that  moderation 
and  liberality  which  some  apologists  pretend. 
It  is  true  that  all  of  the  churches  were  not 
converted  into  mosques  at  once,  but,  little  by 
little,  the  covetous  conqueror  wrenched  them 
from  the  hands  of  his  powerless  Christian  sub- 
jects. In  describing  **Fetibieh  Djami,  the 
Church  of  Pammakaristos,"  Prof.  Grosvenor 
tells  of  the  fetva^  or  religious  decision  of  the 
Sbeikul  Islam,  in  1530,  almost  eighty  years 
«fter  the  conquest,  declaring  that  *'in  a  city 
won  for  Islam  by  the  sword,  the  Christians 
had  no  right  to  any  religious  property  whatso- 
ever," and  of  the  method  by  which,  through 
bribery  and  indirection,  thisfetva  was  circum. 
vented  by  the  Patriarch  Jeremiah  L  ard  the 
Grand  Vizier,  Ibrahim  Pasha.  Nevertheless, 
in  1586,  the  Patriarch  was  ousted  from  this 
church  also  and  the  church  itself  converted 
into  a  mosque  by  Sultan  Murad  III.,  after  the 
Christians  bad  already  been  compelled  to  re- 
move the  cross  from  the  dome  by  Sultan 
Sulf  iman,  in  1547. 

But  while  Prof.  Grosvenor  thus  points  out 
incidentally  the  oppression  which  the  Chris- 
tians have  undergone  in  Constantinople  at  the 
bands  of  their  Turkish  conquerors,  he,  with  all 
modern  writers,  shows  that  the  half-century 
of  Latin  rule,  1204  to  1261,  was  more  destruc- 
tive of  the  antiquities  of  Constantinople  than 
the  four  and  i.  half  centuries  during  which  the 
Turlts  have  governed  the  city,  and  that  the 
treatment  of  the  conquered  Greeks  by  the 
Venetians  and  Franks  at  the  capture  of  the 
city  in  1904  was  more  brutal,  in  view  of  the 
circu  distances,  than  their  treatment  at  the  cap- 
ture of  the  city  by  the  Turks  in  1453.  He  thus 
shows  what  were  the  grounds  of  the  bitterness 
which,  from  the  Latin  conquest  onward,  the 
Greeks  have  felt  towards  Rome,  and  also  how 
extreme  that  bitterness  became,  so  that,  when 
the  choice  was  between  Latins  and  Turks,  there 
were  many,  if  not  the  majority,  who  preferred 
the  latter.    The  pathetic  attempt  of  Constan- 


tino Xin.  to  secure  assistance  from  the  west 
by  submission  to  the  Pope  alienated  a  portion  of 
his  own  subjects,  while  it  brought  him  no  assistp 
ance  from  without.  In  the  section  on  *'ZeIrek 
Djami,  the  Church  of  Pantokrator,"  Prof. 
Grosvenor  tells  us  that  when,  on  the  12th  of 
December,  1453,  Constantine  **  proclaimed  the 
ecclesiastical  union  of  the  Orthodox  ESastem 
Church  with  the  Church  of  Rome,  monks  and 
nuns  crowded  here  before  the  cell  of  Genna- 
dios,  imploring  his  advice,"  and  then  at  bis  in- 
stigation **  anathematized  the  union  and  all 
who  favored  it.  After  that  event  Constantine 
could  no  longer  count  upon  the  support  of  his 
own  subjects  in  resistance  to  the  Ottomans." 
Six  months  later,  when  the  Turks  had  captured 
the  city,  Gennadios  was  made  Patriarch. 

Outside  of  the  Church  of  Saint  Lrene,  with- 
in the  iron  railing,  are  several  great  sarco- 
phagi. One  of  these,  of  porphyry,  is,  Prof. 
Grosvenor  tells  us, 

'^of  all  sarcophagi  cut  from  a  single  block, 
the  vastest  in  the  world.  Its  inner  cavity  or 
receptacle  is  eight  feet  nine  inches  long,  four 
feet  one  inch  wide,  and  three  feet  eleven  and 
one-quarter  inches  deep.  Hence  it  was  evi- 
dently designed  (or  the  reception,  not  of  one 
coflin,  but  of  two,  one  resting  upon  the  other. 
Not  a  single  monogram  or  character  of  any 
sort  breaks  the  sphinx-like  plainness  of  its  in- 
ner or  outer  surface.  A  chain  of  collateral 
evidence,  which  it  is  impossible  to  doubt,  dem- 
onbtrates  that  this  sarcophagus  was  the  sepul- 
chral chamber  wherein  the  co£Bns  of  Constan- 
tine the  Great  and  of  his  mother  Saint  Helena, 
removed  from  her  earlier  tomb  at  Rome,  were 
placed  together  in  filial  and  maternal  nearness 
for  their  final  rest.*' 

Nevertheless,  good  antiquarians  not  only 
doubt  such  an  identification,  but  even  posi- 
tively affirm  that  this  cannot  be  the  sarco- 
phagus of  Constantine.  This  is  another  exam- 
ple of  Prof.  Grosvenor's  readiness  to  accept 
hypotheses  as  proved  facts.  We  are  afraid 
that  it  must  be  said  that  be  is  not  an  alto- 
gether reliable  authority,  although  his  work  is 
by  far  the  most  satisfactory  on  Constantinople 
that  has  yet  appeared  in  English. 

There  is  one  chapter  which  is  not  only  unre- 
liable, but  which  must  seem  to  any  reader, 
in  view  of  recent  events,  extremely  offensive, 
and  that  is  chapter  iv.,  entitled  **  His  Imperial 
Majesty  the  Present  Sultan."  After  speaking 
of  his  exalted  rank  and  "  that  lordly  dynastic 
line  of  which  he  is  heir  and  representative," 
Prof.  Grosvenor  adds:  *'  But  a  still  siucerer  re- 
spect and  homage  are  due  the  present  Sultan 
because  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  qualities 
which  characterize  him  as  a  ruler  and  a  man. 
.  .  .  The  new  Sultan  manifested  unusual 
talents  in  organization  and  administration. 
There  was  no  problem  too  humble  or  detail  too 
minute  to  receive  his  careful  consideration. 
Sympathetic,  generous,  and  large-hearted,  he 
endeavored  to  benefit  as  well  as  rule  his  peo- 
ple." And  again:  *'The  many  political  evils 
existent  in  the  Ottoman  state,  incurable  be- 
cause of  their  very  nature,  are  not  his  crea- 
tion, but  his  inheritance.  These  he  endeavored 
to  mitigate  and  reform.*'  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid 
has  shown  himself  peculiarly  skilful  in  winning 
sympathy  through  personal  interviews.  His 
method  in  these  interviews  is  somewhat  the 
same  as  that  which  be  attempted  in  the  now 
famous  letter  to  Lord  Salisbury.  He  throws 
himself  upon  the  mercy  of  his  hearer.  He  tells 
him  confidentially  of  the  great  difficulties  of 
his  situation,  bis  earnest  desire  to  make  his 
nation  great  and  glorious  and  place  it  in  the 
forefront  of  progress,  and  how  impossible  he 
has  found  the  execution  of  these  noble  designs. 
He  begs  counsel  and  advice,  and  flatters  his 
auditor  by  praising  the  latter's  country  and 
asking  him  to  tell  him  in  what  manner  its  ru|e|:9 


Jan.  1 6,  1896] 


The   !N"ation. 


61 


bave  succeeded  in  achieving  such  woudepful 
results;  and  especially  be  makes  much  of  the 
part  which  bis  auditor  has  played  in  that 
which  has  been  done.  He  asks  about  railroads, 
and  steam,  and  electricity,  and  arms;  and  dis- 
plays considerable  and  minute  knowledge  in 
regard  to  some  recent  discoveries  and  inven- 
iions.  It  must  be  said  frankly  that  he  is  in- 
sincere,  and  that  the  representations  of  his  in- 
tentions which  he  makes  in  these  interviews 
are  falsehoods.  He  is,  however,  an  able  and 
skilful  flatterer,  and  has  completely  cajoled 
one  or  two  distinguished  Americans,  from 
whom  Prof.  Grosvenor  has  derived  his  ideas. 
The  revelations  of  the  Sultanas  real  character 
and  of  his  views  of  government  which  have 
been  made  in  the  last  few  months  are  surely 
enough  to  enlighten  the  rest  of  the  world,  if 
not  these  gentlemen.  Abdul  Hamid  has  de- 
prived his  Grand  Visier  and  other  ministers  of 
all  power,  and  the  government  of  Turkey  un- 
der him  has  been  a  government  not  of  the 
Porte,  but  of  the  palace.  The  palace— that  is, 
the  Sultan— is  therefore  responsible  for  all 
that  occurs. 

In  the  transcription  of  Turkish  names,  Prof. 
Grosvenor  follows  somewhat  unnecessarily  the 
French  system,  writing  "dj"  for  "j,"  "ou" 
for  "  u,**  etc.  The  book  is  well  and  profusely  il- 
lustrated«  but  it  is  not  sufficiently  supplied  with 
maps.  The  numerous  references  to  the  various 
regions,  hills,  etc.,  are  difficult  to  understand 
and  follow  for  lack  of  fuller  maps.  The  index, 
also,  is  poor.  The  outward  api>earance  of  the 
volumes  is  flne.  Within  we  are  treated  to  heavy 
and  luxurious  paper  and  large  open  print;  but 
unfortunately  the  paper  is  so  highly  glazed 
that  the  print  cannot  be  read,  especially  by 
artificial  light,  without  trying  even  the  strong- 
est and  most  youthful  eyes. 


RECENT  NOVELS. 

Gray  Rogea,  By  Henry  Harland.  London: 
John  Lane;  Boston:  Roberts  Bros. 

Into  the  Highways  and  Hfidges,  By  F.  F. 
Montr^sor.    D.  Appleton  &  Ck). 

Forward  House.  By  William  Scoville  Case. 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 

OnthePbint.  By  Nathan  HaskeU  Dole.  Bos. 
ton:  Joseph  Knight  Co. 

A  Truee,  and  Other  Stories,  By  Mary  Tap- 
pan  Wright.    Charles  Soribner's  Sons. 

Doty  Donteare,  By  Biary  Farrington  Foster. 
Boston:  Estes  &  Lauriat. 

Ths  Story  of  Bahette,  By  Ruth  McEnery 
Stuart    Harper  &  Bros. 

Melting  Snows,  By  Prince  Schoenaicb.Caro- 
lath.  Translated  into  English  by  Margaret 
Symonds.    Dodd,  Mead  A  Co. 

When  Love  ie  Done.  By  Ethel  Davis.  Boa- 
ton:  Estes  &  Lauriat 

l%e  Wise  Woman,  By  Clara  Louise  Bum- 
ham.    Boston:  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 

The  Coming  of  Theodora.  By  Eliza  Ome 
White.    Boston:  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 

The  Red  Star.  By  L.  McManus.  G.  P.  Put- 
nam's  Sons. 

Name  ThU  Child;  A  Story  of  Two.  By  WU- 
frid  Hugh  Chesson.  New  York:  Frederick 
A.  Stokes  Co. 

Arx  we  not  a  little  tired  of  the  high-minded 
damsel  of  the  Latin  Quarter  who  disbelieves  in 
marriage  but  is  devoted  to  her  children  P  Or 
has  this  lady  come  to  stay,  and  must  we  expect 
b«r  in  every  style  at  the  pen  of  every  novelists 
Mr.  Harland  now  has  the  floor,  and  portrays 


her  as  well  as  another  does.  Upon  the  mind 
of  the  broken-spirited  reviewer  of  fiction  she 
palls  ;  nor  do  we  hold  him  literarily  guiltless 
who  helps  to  create  a  new  lower  standard  in 
story  for  the  prima-donna.  The  virtue  of  wo- 
man, as  an  adorning  grace  in  the  heroines  of 
fiction,  will  soon,  if  the  writers  keep  up  their 
present  pace,  be  relegated  to  that  amused  esti- 
mation in  which  we  now  hold  the  plaints  of 
Amanda,  the  rounded  periods  of  Evelina- 
things  gone  by  and  therefore  funny.  Those 
stories  of  Mr.  Harland's  which  are  without 
this  mark  of  the  beast  are  full  of  his  own  par- 
ticular attraction— the  light  touch,  the  ingenu- 
ity, the  delicately  tantalizing  swaying  of  the 
balance  between  poetic  and  realistic.  "  Mer- 
cedes,"  a  story  of  white  mice,  is  a  graceful 
trifle ;  **  The  Reward  of  Virtue,"  a  really  pow- 
erful sketch.  Mr.  Harland's  English  needs 
looking  after,  and  the  Latin  Quarter  has  driven 
him  to  quite  unnecessary  Gallicisms.  **  I  must 
have  been  hoping  that  he  would  speak  quand 
m^me,"  and  *'he  felt  a  little  bewildered  about 
the  mot  juste,"  remind  one  of  those  travelling 
Americans  who  ask  if  one  can  cross  the  Mer 
de  Glace  on  a  mulet. 

*Into  the  Highways  and  Hedges'  is  the  som- 
bre story  of  an  itinerant  preacher  and  his  high- 
bom  wife.  It  is  a  novel  built  on  free  and  fine 
lines  and  in  a  lofty  and  ample  spirit.  The  un- 
premeditated,  almost  accidental  marriage  be- 
tween these  seemingly  iU-matched  persons, 
their  strange  home-coming,  the  development 
of  their  lives  into  a  culmination  which  the  read- 
er will  best  enjoy  in  finding  it  for  himself, 
form  the  first  nucleus  of  interest;  the  second 
bangs  on  a  trial  for  life,  with  striking  pictures 
of  Newgate  as  it  was  when  the  day  of  Elizabeth 
Fry  was  but  dawning.  There  are  lover-like 
sketches  of  the  salt  marshes  of  the  English 
coast,  and  there  are  keen  and  deep  portrayals 
of  character  which  give  the  book  distinction; 
there  is  strength  with  restraint,  and  natural- 
ness with  delicacy;  the  theology  is  old-fash- 
ioned but  glowingly  alive,  and  the  modern 
spirit  has  its  manifestation  in  the  absence  of 
** story-book"  satisfactions  and  retributions. 
This  is,  all  in  all,  a  book  of  unusual  scope  and 
dignity. 

Of  course  it  was  to  be  expected  that  follow- 
ers of  Stanley  Weyman  would  arise  and  try  to 
shine.  The  time  Is  ripe  and  they  are  here.  Mr. 
Case  is  one  of  them,  and  has  written  a  romance 
full  of  mystery,  fighting,  and  explosion,  paying 
Mr.  Weyman  the  further  tribute  of  imitating 
that  style  of  his  that  is  compounded  of  archa- 
ism and  sentiment.  The  lovable  ruffian  is  here, 
and  the  fair  lady  of  numy  perils  and  stanch 
heart,  with  the  goodly  band  of  attendant  fight- 
ers, pirates,  and  disappointed  lovers.  They  are 
wholesome  company,  and  we  will  not  quarrel 
with  them  on  the  trifling  ground  of  having 
met  them  several  times  before  in  the  past  three 
years. 

Mr.  Dole's  story,  or  **  Summer  Idyl,"  as  he 
calls  it,  shows  a  distinct  gain  in  coheslveness 
over  a  previous  novelette  of  his.  For  this  re- 
lief, much  thanks.  But  it  is  so  slight  mild, 
childlike,  and  bland  that  one  wonders  how  ever 
it  came  to  stand  alone.  A  few  illustrations 
from  photographs  of  New  England  coast  scene- 
ry serve  as  a  prop  to  this  infant  life,  which  is 
blameless,  but  hardly  promising  considered  as 
a  book.  As  a  **  booklet"  it  is  far  superior  to 
much  of  the  twaddle  published  under  that 
name,  and,  in  so  classifying  it  one  recommends 
it  to  a  large  number  of  readers  who  will  find 
herein  the  evidences  of  wide  reading,  intimate 
love  of  the  sea,  a  good  command  of  English, 
and  a  home  brewed  humor. 

Mrs.  Wright*8  tales  are  also  of  the  coast  and 


are  full  of  the  mysterious  weirdness  of  the  sea. 
But  the  scenery  is  lamentably  profuse;  it  for 
ever  breaks  in  on  incident  and  talk,  and  is,  as 
Schopenhauer  said  of  life,  a  needlessly  inter- 
rupting episode.  The  worm  will  turn,  and 
landscape-writing  is  becoming  a  pest  whose 
counteractive  bacillus  the  nations  pray  for. 
The  reader  of  these  stories  is  impressed,  first 
of  all,  however,  with  their  unusual  quality, 
and  this  not  so  much  because  they  are  more  or 
less  indeterminate,  since  that  is  the  order  of 
the  day,  but  because  of  the  originality  shown 
in  their  construction,  their  situations,  and 
their  conversations.  They  have  some  tragic 
force,  tnuch  emotional  turbulence,  and  an  odd 
juxtaposition  of  the  realistic,  the  spectral,  and 
the  humorous.  With  the  development  of  their 
best  traits,  strong  work  may  well  be  looked  for 
from  their  author  in  future.  On  the  other 
hand,  they  now  hover  dangerously  near  the 
region  where  power  is  caricatured  into  affec 
tation  and  originality  Into  formlessness. 

The  genuineness  of  *Doty  Dpntcare'  falls 
comfortingly  upon  the  nerves.  Here  is  a  real 
and  interesting  place,  the  Island  of  Santa 
Cmz ;  landscape  drawing  which  illustrates 
and  does  not  persecute ;  human  beings  with 
modes  of  speech  and  of  living  tropically  pictu- 
resque, with  uncomplicated  passions  like  love, 
jealousy,  and  revenge ;  here  is  a  situation  full 
of  interest  both  historic  aUd  ethnologic,  and 
finally,  here  is  tragedy,  culminating,  indeed,'in 
revolution,  but,  alas!  never  absent  from  the 
daily  lives  of  those  with  whom  even  one  drop 
in  sixteen  fiows  dark  in  the  blood.  This  is  a 
small  book,  and  the  story  is  somewhat  stiff, 
jointed,  but  it  commands  attention  at  once  by 
its  obvious  faithfulness  of  description  of  a 
lovely  island  garden  and  of  a  striking  episode 
in  West  Indian  history. 

From  Santa  Cruz  and  its  many  races  an 
easy  transit  is  made  by  way  of  Mrs.  Stu- 
art's story  to  New  Orleans  and  its  mixed 
population,  where,  besides  the  usual  creole  ele- 
ment, we  meet  Italians  and  gypsies.  *Ba- 
bette '  is  a  story  of  a  little  creole  girl  written 
for  young  readers;  the  melodrama  is  well 
adapted  to  them,  and  the  ever-absorbing  theme 
of  a  stolen  child  is  sure  to  awaken  and  hold 
their  interest  In  the  working  out  of  this  good 
old-fashioned  plot  we  are  perfectly  willing  to 
be  met  by  the  most  amazing  coincidences,  recog- 
nitions, and  resuscitations.  Why  not?  Let 
the  deaf  mute  learn  to  talk,  the  idiot  to  think, 
the  child-stealer  to  repent  Such  marvels  are 
of  the  right  and  natural  kind  for  childhood, 
and  will  help  them  into  a  lova  of  larger 
romance. 

The  scene  of  *  Melting  Snows'  is  laid  in  Ger- 
many, where  one  naturally  expects  to  find 
Charlotte's  bread-and-butter  side  by  side  with 
Werther's  suicide,  so  that  in  this  story  the  air 
of  the  kindergarten  mingles  easily  with  that 
of  the  tragic  stage.  One  Is  prepared  for  the 
naive  and  submits  to  it;  and  the  tragedy  has 
a  cumulative  force  as  it  marches  which  is  un- 
expectedly effective.  The  translation  is  good, 
yet  in  quoting  Scripture  it  might  be  better  to 
use  the  existing  versions.  When  we  read,  **  one 
deep  calleth  another  because  of  the  noise  of  the 
water-pipes,"  we  are  made  to  feel  that  the 
psalmist  was  thinking  lees  of  the  sea  than  of  a 
system  of  plumbing— an  impression  probably 
erroneous.  The  printing  and  paper  are  admi- 
rable and  make  reading  a  pleasure. 

*When  Love  is  Done'  is  clearly  conceived 
but  clumsily  written.  The  author  has  bad 
something  definite  and  wise  to  say,  but  has 
said  it  in  a  way  borrowed  from  bad  models,  in 
which  the  didactic  poses  for  the  serious  and 
the  awkward  for  the  simple.    The  pages  are 


62 


Tlie   l^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1594 


marred  by  crudities  of  all  sorts,  and  the  style 
offends  with  involations,  sentences  within 
sentences,  and  '*  loops,  whorls,  and  arches"  (as 
if  Oalton*s  fingerprint  classifications  had 
stmck  through  the  printer's  ink).  It  is  a 
tribute  to  the  matter  of  the  book  that  its  man- 
ner does  not  utterly  condemn  it.  Upon  the 
subject  of  woman's  work  and  her  need  to  work 
in  a  systematic  way,  a  door  is  opened,  letting  * 
in  a  fresh  and  bracing  air,  which  blows  neither 
hot  with  modem  excess  of  zeal  nor  cold  with 
antiquated  conservatism.  True,  the  tone  is 
one  of  bitterness  against  the  conventions  which 
make  caste  even  in  republican  America,  and 
against  the  men  who  live  by  these  conventions 
instead  of  by  their  affections;  but  on  the  whole 
it  is  a  tonic  bitterness,  and  far  better  for  young 
readers  than  the  stories  where  the  governess 
marries  the  earl.  We  commend  this  book  to 
love-sick  girls  as  a  somewhat  melancholy  bit 
of  reading,  but  one  full  of  suggestion  as  to 
sources  of  recuperation  and  health.  It  will  be 
a  pleasing  novelty  to  them  not  to  be  told  that 
their  only  salvation  is  to  teach  the  orphan  boy 
to  read,  the  orphan  girl  to  sew.  The  fathers, 
too,  who  think  that  that  is  the  only  alternative 
to  marriage  are  respectfully  invited  to  pause 
and  consider;  though  we  confess  to  a  private 
conviction  that  the  fathers  of  to  day  are  in  a 
fairly  docile  attitude  towards  their  ambitious 
daughters.  That  jibe  higher  education  of  wo- 
men should  lead  them  not  necessarily  to  doing 
men's  work,  but  women's  work  in  a  larger 
way,  is  so  simple  an  idea  that  the  novelists 
have  hitherto  let  it  alone. 

A  kindred  problem,  the  sacred  right  of 
woman  to  be  a  milliner  and  a  swell,  is  treated 
in  Clara  Louise  Bumham's  novel,  *  The  Wise 
Woman.*  There  is  a  great  deal  of  village 
sputter  and  feud  as  to  the  existence  of  this 
right;  then  the  milliner,  when  Lord  Orville 
looms^  is  advised  by  the  Wise  Woman  (one  of 
Miss  Bumham's  idolized  and  apotheosized 
spinsters)  to  prevaricate  about  the  millinery 
business  and  to  chant  her  Long  Island  ances- 
try. Thus,  when  the  moment  is  ripe  for  Lord 
Orville,  his  blushing  fiancee  is  no  longer  a  mil- 
liner (a  thought  Oilbertian,  this),  and  is  pa- 
raded before  society  by  her  friends,  leagued  in 
counsels  of  hypocrisy,  as  having  merely  played 
at  the  trade,  hobby- wise.  The  wedding  takes 
place,  but  the  problem  falls  to  the  ground. 
This  is  merry,  but  is  it  ingenuous?  We  have 
always  thought  Miss  Bumham's  books  be- 
longed to  the  department  of  guileless  sport 
rather  than  to  literature;  but  if  she  begins  to 
espouse  causes  and  do  it  in  morganatic  fash- 
ion,  we  shall  question  if  her  boola  carry  their 
own  excuse  for  being,  notwithstanding  their 
cheery,  chatty,  fun-loving  tone.  Her  Long 
Island  proverb,  **  A  child  in  the  hand  is  worth 
two  on  the  beach,"  is  perhaps  better  than  con- 
sistency. 

*The  Coming  of  Theodora*  shows  how  in- 
tolerable the  cardinal  virtues  may  become  in 
the  hands  of  a  person  who  does  not  know  how 
to  manage  them.  In  fact,  they  dt  so  uneasily 
on  the  pages  that  the  pages  sit  uneasily  on  the 
reader,  who  spends  an  uncomfortable  hour 
over  the  book  and  wonders  just  why  it  was 
written.  Its  excellent  English  and  the  clever 
delineation  of  the  happy-go-lucky  Edward, 
the  tender  wife  Marie,  the  fiercely  excellent 
Theodora,  hardly  atone  for  the  feeling  im- 
parted of  an  ever  present  pea-in-the-boot. 

*The  Red  Star*  is  a  little  story  of  military 
life  during  the  Napoleonic  wars  in  Russia. 
The  hero  ia  an  officer  in  the  Emperor  of  Rus- 
8ia*8  horse  guards ;  the  heroine,  a  Polish  girl  of 
high  rank.  The  story  begins  with  a  marriage 
of  convenience  between  the  two,  till  that  mo- 


ment strangers  to  each  other.  The  ceremony 
is  obnoxious  to  both,  and  also  to  the  reader, 
upon  the  disclosure  that  the  bridegroom  has 
another  and  a  hated  wife.  But  how  he  earns 
the  little  Pole's  forgiveness  and  the  reader's,  is 
told  in  a  spirited  recital  which  carries  us  from 
camp  to  field,  into  battle  and  siege,  through 
hardships  and  narrow  escapes.  We  see  the 
Russians  fly  from  Eylau,  and  we  retreat  with 
Murat  from  Kdnigsberg.  The  desolateness  of 
the  Russian  plains,  the  horrors  of  war,  the 
honor  of  patriots,  the  fulness  of  moral  cow- 
ardice and  of  physical  bravery,  and  the  dai-ing 
of  woman  when  she  goes  a-soldiering — all  have 
an  animated  recording  in  the  pages  of  this 
slender  volume.  It  is  the  fifth  in  order  of  the 
Autonym  Library,  a  series  of  which  the  clear 
printing  rejoices  the  eye,  and  the  convenient 
little  shape  at  once  puts  itaelf  insinuatingly 
into  the  hand. 

'  Name  this  Child  *  is  the  sickly  story  of  a 
sickly  boy  who  addled  his  brain  by  reading,  at 
dead  of  night,  the  secretly  discovered  manu- 
script diary  of  a  lunatic,  and  who  in  conse- 
quence did  many  foolish  things,  of  which  the 
most  foolish  was  incessant  analysis  of  himself. 
Narrowly  escaping  suicide,  he  settles  down 
into  a  quiet  married  life,  not  **a  cynic,"  we 
learn,  but  "the  grand  deprecator,"  with  a 
"peculiar  mentality,"  which  leads  a  former 
schoolmate  to  observe,  "I  would  not  be  those 
thinking  people  for  ten  thousand  pounds."  "  I 
leave  you,  reader,  with  a  smile,"  says  the  au- 
thor in  closing.  The  sweet  sorrow  of  this  part- 
ing is  likely  to  be  mutual  if  any  eye  save  the 
patient  reviewer's  ever  sees  these  final  words. 
The  madness  of  the  theme  is  sanity  itself  com- 
pared with  the  madness  of  method.  To  do 
what  the  French  critic  accused  Shakspere  of 
doing— "  trying  all  styles  but  the  simple'*— 
seems  to  have  been  the  author's  aim.  The  out- 
come is  a  wild-eyed,  rumple-haired,  dictionary- 
fed  anarchy  of  language  which  creeps  and 
oozes  and  crawls  upon  the  spirits.  It  is  quite 
true  that  under  all  is  a  grain  of  sense  and  a 
flash  of  power  that  extenuate  but  do  not  re- 
deem. For  ourselves  we  should  freely  forgive 
one  who,  reading  the  book,  should  exclaim 
with  Marcus  Aurelius,  "  I  thank  the  gods  that 
I  did  not  make  more  proficiency  in  rhetoric, 
poetry,  and  the  other  studies." 


A  Oyclopcedia  of  Works  of  Architecture  in 
Itali/t  Greece^  and  the  Levant  Edited  by 
William  P.  P.  Lpngfellow.  Charles  Scrib- 
ner*8  Sons.  1895.  4to,  pp.  xxxii,  546. 
This  very  handsome  book  contains  twelve  pho- 
togravures, one  of  them  from  a  drawing  of  the 
interior  of  Sancta  Sophia  in  Constantinople, 
and  the  others  from  direct  photographs  of  im- 
portant buildings  and  groups  of  buildings.  It 
contains  also  256  text  illustrations,  of  which 
the  greater  number  are  half-tones,  the  others 
being  plans  or  photographic  copies  of  plates 
in  other  books.  Credit  is  given  to  the  books 
from  which  all  these  are  taken.  The  preface 
calls  attention  to  the  photogravure  of  Sancta 
Sophia  as  having  been  prepared  from  a  draw- 
ing, because  the  large  photographs  of  that 
wonderful  interior  are  made  up  of  several 
pieces  each,  which  cannot  be  rightly  adjusted. 
It  also  names  the  carefully  constructed  picture 
on  page  412  of  St.  Peter's  from  the  chancel  end, 
a  view  which  other  buildings  prevent  the  stu- 
dent from  obtaining  in  the  presence  of  the 
church  itself,  although  it  is  only  right  to  say 
that  Alinari  publishes  a  very  large  picture 
which  is  almost  equally  complete,  showing  all 
but  the  base  of  the  wall,  and  of  course  far  more 
valuable  as  record.  The  other  illustrations  are 


good  and  well  chosen,  and  in  many  instances 
at  least  are  somewhat  unfamiliar,  either  be- 
cause the  building  itself  is  less  well  known  or 
because  the  point  of  view  chosen  is  novel.  A 
glossary,  purporting  to  deal  only  withthoee 
technical  terms  which  are  used  in  the  text, 
and  a  bibliography  very  complete  and  good,  so 
far  as  the  author  and  title  alone  are  concerned, 
precede  the  dictionary  proper.  This,  which 
constitutes  the  entire  body  of  the  book,  is  com- 
posed of  a  list,  with  deecriptioQS  and  com- 
ments, of  the  buildings  thought  most  note- 
worthy in  the  towns,  villages,  and  ancient 
sites  of  the  countries  indicated  in  the  title. 
The  list  is  alphabetical,  first  as  to  the  geogra- 
phical names,  second  as  to  buildings  in  each 
locality.  The  space  allowed  the  different 
towns  and  other  places  is  carefully  measured 
according  to  the  architectural  importance  and 
the  number  of  the  buildings  considered  worthy 
of  treatment.  Thus  Rome  has  nearly  one  hun- 
dred pages,  Ravenna  ten,  and  Brindlsi  half  a 
page. 

The  book,  it  will  be  seen,  is  built  upon  the 
lines  of  a  guide-book.    Those  who  are  familiar 
with  the  Oerman  guide-books  for  Italy  written 
by  Dr.  Osell-Fels  will  have  a  fair  conception 
of  the  way  in  which  the  buildings  are  brought 
before  the  reader.    The  amount  of  space  given 
to  a  building  in  G«ell-Fels's  book  for  its  archi- 
tecture  alone  without  its  contents  is  not  so 
very  different  from  the  amount  of  space  given 
to  It  in  the  Cyclopssdia;  the  Oerman  work  is 
often  fuller  in  the  account  of  classical  build- 
ings, and  gives   valuable  maps   and  sketch- 
plans,  but  in  mediaeval  and  later  work  the  ad- 
vantage is  with  the  Cyclopaedia.     Moreover, 
the   latter   is   superior  in  the  critical  judg- 
ment and  insight  shown  in  its  descriptions. 
The  same  treatment  has  been  given  compara- 
tively to  the  architecture  of  lands  where  Osell- 
Fels's  guides  do  not  run.    That  which  the  tra- 
veller or  the  would-be  traveller  will  welcome 
the  most  kindly  is  perhaps  the  extending  of 
first-rate  guide-book  service  to  the  towns  of 
the  Dalmatian  shore,  of  Syria,  of  the  coast  of 
Asia  Minor,  and  of  the  Mediterranean  isles. 
To  many  of  these  localities  there  is  no  fitting 
aid  whatever,    the  guide-books  being  inade- 
quate and  extremely  vague  in  their  statements, 
and  these  and  the  books  of  classical  geogra- 
phy often  antiquated  and  greatly  needing  the 
mention  of  recent  discoveries.  The  three  pages 
devoted  to  Pergamon,  for  instance,  are  a  real 
gain  to  every  student  as  summing  up  the  ac- 
cessible knowledge   of  that  most  important 
site.    The  two  pages  and  a  half  devoted  to 
Assos  give  an  excellent  account  of  this  inte- 
resting town,  brought  to  the  knowledge  of  men 
by  the  American  explorers  of  about  1880.    The 
little  known  ruins  of  Palmyra  are  treated  as 
thoroughly  as  the  subject  admits,  in  the  pre- 
•sent  state  of  our  knowledge,  in  the  two  pages 
devoted  to  it,  and  the  other  sites  of  Roman  ruins 
in  Syria  and  its  back  country  are  taken  up, 
each  in  its  turn,  and  our  very  slight  and  im- 
perfect knowledge  of  them  is  presented  in  a 
compact  form.    The  centre  of  Asia  Minor  is 
as  little  known  as  Syria;  what  there  is  to  give 
is  weU  given  here.    The  Balkan  peninsula  has 
received  careful  treatment,  and  the  world  of 
students  will  welcome  this  new  and  valuable 
source  of  information   about  its    important 
ancient  structures. 

As  for  Italy,  the  latest  researches  of  stu- 
dents of  early  pointed  architecture  have  jus- 
tice done  them,  as  is  seen  under  Casamari, 
Fossanuova,  San  Galgano,  Ceccano^  VaXviscio- 
lo,  and  Santa  Maria  d'Arbona ;  the  later 
Gk>thic  architecture  is  treated  very  fairly  un- 
der the  jiames  of  the  well-known  towns  where 


Jan.  1 6,  1896] 


Tlie   !N*atioii. 


63 


It  bMM  flooriflbed ;  the  earliest  BaDaiMmce  b 
well  hADdled,  as  under  Florence  and  under  the 
minor  beads  Capelia  Pazsi,  Palasao  Btroszi, 
and  the  cbnroh  of  B.  Lorenzo.  In  fact,  tbe 
whole  deTelopment  of  the  architecture  of  mo- 
dem Europe  from  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire to  tbe  French  Revolution  is  to  be  found 
here  by  those  who  know  where  to  look.  Of 
dasiical  remains  the  treatment  is  peculiarly 
satisfying.  What  is  most  needed,  and  what  is 
well  ascertained,  is  presented  in  a  perfectly 
comprehensible  way.  The  articles  on  build- 
ings in  Pompeii  seem  to  be  quite  unsurpassable 
as  lucid  and  brief  description.  Herculaneum 
is,  however,  set  forth  in  an  article  hard  to  un- 
derstand, because  it  is  not  made  clear  how 
much  the  largest  part  of  the  explored  remains 
is  still  deep  under  ground,  accessible  by  wells 
and  galleries  only,  and  because  the  immense 
and  celebrated  villa  in  which  were  found  so 
much  important  sculpture  and  the  library  of 
scrolls  which  are  being  slowly  unrolled  and 
deciphered,  is  only  hinted  at  under  the  name 
of  House  of  Aristides. 

This  brings  us  to  tbe  mention  of  what  Is  per- 
liaps  the  greatest  disappointment  that  this 
book  has  for  the  student,  namely,  the  absence 
of  allusion  to  tbe  little-known  towns  where 
■omething  very  interesting  is  to  be  found,  and 
^here  more  might  be  found  if  students  were 
•ent  to  them  in  greater  number.  It  is  a  disap- 
pointment not  to  find  any  mention  of  Pomposa 
in  the  Venetian  flat  country,  and  Oavanana 
in  the  Apennines  above  Pistoja,  CoUe  di  Val 
d'Elsa  in  Western  Tuscany,  and  Santa  Maria 
di  Falleri  not  far  away  to  the  southeast 
(although  of  this  the  Etruscan  walls  are  men- 
tioned), Pipemo  near  Rome,  and  San  Marino 
near  Rimini,  Pietra  Santa  and  Monte  Oliveto. 
Bat  these  would  not  rightly  be  classed  as  omis- 
sions; they  are  places  left  unnamed  because 
thtfe  is  not  room  to  name  all.  More  doubtful 
is  tbe  propriety  of  leaving  unnamed  numy 
valuable  buildings  in  towns  where  many  oihisr 
buildings  are  described.  Perhaps  on  looking 
up,  say,  Florence,  and  on  finding  only  a  partial 
list  of  the  buildings  there  which  are  dear  to 
students,  one  has  more  reason  to  complain. 
Again,  however,  let  it  be  urged  that  no  cyclo- 
psBdia  was  ever  complete,  or  even  consistent 
and  uniform  in  its  system  of  admission  and  re- 
jection of  topics.  Fortunate  and  meritorious 
indeed  the  book  which  is  so  nearly  consistent 
as  this  one. 

The  tone  of  criticism  is  uniformly  just  and 
moderate,  without  excess  or  partisanship  of 
any  sort.  Mr.  Charles  A.  Cummings  and  Prof. 
A.  L.  Frothingham,  jr.,  are  credited  with  most 
of  the  articles  on  Italian  buildings  since  the 
fall  of  tbe  Roman  Empire.  The  late  Thomas 
W.  Ludlow  prepared  most  of  the  articles  on 
dassioal  architecture,  and  thoee  who  have 
noted  his  extraordinary  achievements  in  the 
way  of  compiling  and  marshalling  informa* 
tion,  as  in  the  architectural  definitions  of  tbe 
'  Century  Dictionary,*  wtU  be  prepared  for  the 
good  work  there  is  In  the  book  before  us.  The 
question  must  be  asked,  however,  what  is  tbe 
authority  for  calling  the  smaller  temple  at 
Baalbek  *'  Temple  of  the  Sun,*'  and  giving  the 
larger  one  to  Jupiter,  thus  reversing  the  usual 
attributions,  while  the  photogravure  at  page 
144  gives  columns  of  tbe  smaller  temple  as  of 
tbe  "Temple  of  Jupiter,**  according  to  tbe 
common  practice  ? 


Vergil  in  the  Middle  Agee,  By  Domcnico 
Comparetti,  Professor  in  the  University  of 
Florence.  Translated  by  £.  F.  M.  Benecke, 
with  an  introduction  by  Robinson  Ellis, 


M.  A..  Corpus  Professor  of  Latin  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford.  Macmillan  &  Co.  1806. 
QooD  wine  needs  no  bush,  and  Comparetti*s 
*  Vergilio  nel  medio  evo*  is  Chianti  of  the  best. 
It  was  published  twenty-three  years  ago  at 
Leghorn,  and  at  once  gained  for  its  author 
world-fame  among  students.  Its  character 
and  contents  are  so  well  known  that  it  really 
does  not  require  either  our  notice  or  our  praise. 
However,  it  is  a  pleasure  to  introduce  the  late 
Mr.  Benecke*s  exoeUent  translation  to  those 
of  our  readers  who  are  not  familiar  with 
Italian,  or  have  been  unable  to  procure  the 
rather  scarce  Leghorn  edition.  Prof.  Robin- 
son Ellis,  Mr.  Benecke*s  sponsor,  has  sought 
for  years  to  have  Comparetti  done  into  Eng- 
Ush.  His  efforts  are  at  last  successful,  and  a 
much  wider  circle  will  now  have  access  to  one 
of  the  soundest  and  most  engaging  products  of 
modem  scholarship. 

The  work  is  divided  into  two  parts,  each  of 
which  deals  with  an  important  aspect  of  medi- 
eval culture.  The  first  section  Is  occupied 
with  the  vicissitudes  of  Virgil*s  literary  fame 
during  the  centuries  which  intervene  between 
Propertius  and  John  of  Hauteseille,  the  author 
of  the  *  Dolopathos.*  The  second  examines  the 
fame  of  Virgil  in  popular  legend,  and  in  the 
medium  of  the  new  popular  literature  which 
was  independent  of  classical  tradition.  Com- 
paretti has  steeped  himself  in  classical  and  ro- 
mance writers  alike.  Nothing  escapes  him 
which  relates  to  VirgU.  Nor  is  this  all.  He  is 
the  historian  of  whole  phases  of  medieval 
thought  and  feeling.  His  theme  Is  so  much 
wider  than  Is  implied  by  the  title  that  one  can 
read  for  pages  together  in  the  first  part  of  his 
book  without  encountering  any  direct  refer- 
ence to  Virgil  at  all.  His  aim  is  not  only  to 
present  medieval  conceptions  of  Virgil,  but  to 
use  these  conceptions  as  a  means  of  gauging 
the  medieval  mind.  He  gives  us  both  text  and 
gloss;  and  even  when  he  seems  to  go  far  afield 
— for  instance,  in  the  chapters  on  **  Medieval 
Latin  Poetry  in  Classical  Form**  and  '*The 
Causes  which  led  to  the  Renaissance**— he  has 
always  a  sufficient  reason,  vis.,  the  desire  to 
adjust  this  particular  study  to  whatever  else 
is  known  of  the  character  of  literary  pursuits 
and  attainments  during  the  Middle  Ages.  Later 
on  he  accumulates  marvellous  stories  about 
Virgil  till  the  limit  of  the  grotesque  Is  reached. 
But  here  the  reason  is  the  same.  He  says,  in 
explaining  his  copious  reference  to  myth  and 
legend:  '*  It  must  not  be  supposed  that  my  ob- 
ject is  merely  to  surprise  and  amuse  by  narrat- 
ing curious  facts  and  follies.  What  led  me  to 
interest  myself  in  these  studies,  and  to  devote 
much  time  and  labor  to  them,  was  the  consi- 
deration of  how  noteworthy  a  part  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  human  mind  was  refiected  in  the 
varied  and  various  phenomena  of  which  the 
subject  is  composed.** 

*'  Felix  qui  poColt  renun  oocnotoere  oaof  mm, 
Atqa*  metus  omnet  et  inexorsbUe  fatmn 
Subjaelt  p6<llbas,  ■treplnamqae  ActaeronUi  stsH." 

Here  in  the  midst  of  one  of  the  finest  passages 
of  all  verse,  the  historical  Virgil  reveals  him- 
self. The  poet  of  the  *Georgics*  is  no  thau- 
maturge. He  has,  rather,  the  spirit  of  an  ex- 
perimental  philosopher.  But  when  once  the 
fourth  Eclogue  had  been  wrested  into  a  pro- 
phecy of  the  birth  of  Christ,  VirgU  easily  be- 
came  exalted  by  connection  with  **  quelle 
Roma  onde  Cristo  b  Romano.**  The  '.Aneid,* 
with  its  constant  glorification  of  Rome,  did  tbe 
rest  **Unde  etiam  In  antiquis  invenimut 
opus  hoc  appellatum  esse  non  ^neidem,  sed 
Oesta  populi  Roman!.**  The  Middle  Ages 
could  not  be  expected  to  make  more  difficulty 
about  turning  racial  legend  into  authentic  his- 


tory than  did  the  predecessors  of  Servius. 
These  are  the  two  main  factors  in  tbe  trans, 
formation.  The  prophet  becomes  a  mage : 
the  poet  who  had  most  nobly  treated  the  des. 
tinies  of  the  last  kingdom  of  the  vision  of 
Daniel,  became  inseparably  connected  with  it 
in  the  memory  and  imagination  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  Already,  under  the  Flavians,  Virgil 
towers  above  other  Latin  authors  like  Saul  in 
Israel.  Macrobius  regards  him  as  onmisdent 
and  infallible.  Priscian  cites  him  1,200  times. 
At  the  moment  when  the  Lombards  entered 
Italy  he  is  almost  the  sole  exponent  of  classical 
culture.  Comparetti,  in  summing  np  the  first 
five  chapters  of  his  book,  presents  Virgil  to  us 
as  he  stood  on  the  threshold  of  the  era  of  in* 
cubation  which  produced  the  modem  nationali- 
ties : 

*'  As  supreme  centre  of  the  literary  tradition 
left  by  the  Romans,  as  representative  of 
classical  learning,  as  interpreter  of  that  Ro- 
man sentiment  which  survived  the  downfall 
of  the  Empire,  the  name  of  Virgil  acquired  in 
Europe  a  significance  well-nigh  equivalent  to 
that  civilization  itself.  Such  was  his  charge 
to  the  nations  of  the  future,  committed  to  him 
by  paganism  as  it  died.  Centuries  before, 
Dante  spoke  of  Virgil  as  *  virtti  somma,*  Jus- 
tinian bad  said  almost  as  much  when.  In  tbe 
most  perfect  monument  of  the  practical  wis- 
dom  of  tbe  Romans  which  has  survived,  he 
puts  Virgil  by  the  side  of  the  divine  Greek  epic 
poet  who  was  to  him  *the  father  of  every 
virtue.*** 

We  cannot  undertake  to  follow  Comparetti 
through  either  part  of  his  book--through  the 
allegorical  interpretations  of  Fulgentius,  Ber- 
nard of  Chartres,  and  John  of  Salisbury,  or 
through  the  legends  of  Conrad  von  Querfurt 
and  Gtorvase  of  Tilbury.  Tbe  subject  involves 
endless  detail,  and  an  adequate  treatment 
would  require  pages.  We  wish,  however,  to 
touch  upon  one  point  in  his  remarks  concern- 
ing the  relations  between  Dante  an^  Virgil,  a 
theme  of  much  more  permanent  interest  than 
Neapolitan  folk-lore,  with  its  bronse  flies, 
floating  casUes,  and  magic  mirrors  which  re- 
vealed approaching  danger.  The  main  thesis 
which  Comparetti  seeks  to  establish  is  that  the 
choice  of  Virgil  as  guide  **  is  not,  as  Is  generally 
considered,  a  mere  freak  of  the  imagination  de- 
termined by  external  causes,  but  has  just  as 
true  a  psychological  reason  as  the  choice  of  tbe 
other  guide,  Beatrice.**  He  clears  away  the 
reasons  which  might  have  inclined  Dante  to 
choose  Aristotle  rather  than  Virgil.  Dante  saw 
Virgil  much  more  truly  than  the  average  me- 
dieval scholar.  He  die  not  regard  him  as  om- 
niscient. The  Stagyrite  is  to  him  **  il  maestro 
di  color  che  sanno.**  But  Dante,  in  so  far  as 
he  was  creative,  was  a  poet  and  not  a  philoso- 
pher. Virgil  was  his  favorite  author,  his  mas. 
ter  in  stjle,  the  singer  of  the  glories  of  Italy. 
Dante*s  idealized  theory  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire  rested  on  a  Virgil ian  basis,  for  in  the 
*De  Monarchia*  be  treats  the*^Qeid*as  au* 
thentlc  hidtory.  Furthermore,  the  *^neid* 
was  to  Dante  an  allegory  which  traced  the 
soul*8  progress  towards  perfection.  Ha  derived 
his  main  idea  and  many  details  from  it.  But, 
most  of  all,  Virgil  had,  by  reason,  attained  to 
the  one  great  truth  which  made  him  of  all  pa* 
gans  appear  to  the  Middle  Ages  "the  purest 
and  the  nearest  the  Christ  of  whom  he  had 
been  unconsciously  the  prophet.'*  Comparetti 
does  not,  however,  insist  on  one  fact  which 
seems  to  us  particularly  clear.  Every  virtue  as- 
cribed by  Dante  to  VirKll  but  makes  him  the 
more  a  foil  to  her  who  leads  the  way  through 
the  heavens  of  the  "  Paradiso.'*    Beeide  V  xx^\ 


at  bis  best,   Beatrice  "sUcks  fiery 


off.'^ 


^er 


reprimand  to  Dante,  when,  in  the  ^!j;*^^ryX» 
radis^  be  lamenU  the  lossoT  Vlr«u,   »«m»»- 


64 


Tlie    !N"ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1594 


volumes  for  the  superiority  of  things  spiritual 
over  things  rational  and  things  ethical. 

Prof.  Robinson  Ellis,  in  his  introduction,  can 
suggest  only  *^  a  single  point  in  Prof.  Compa- 
rettrs  sketch  of  the  growth  and  history  of  the 
Virgilian  legends  upon  which  something  might 
be  urged  on  the  other  side.**  This  relates  to 
the  influence  of  Naples  in  the  formation  and 
diffusion  of  the  legends  connected  with  Virgil's 
name.  Soundness  of  judgment  is,  indeed,  the 
crowning  merit  of  Comparetti's  book— sound- 
ness of  judgment  firmly  based  on  thorough  in- 
vestigation. We  have  already  spoken  of  the 
excellence  of  Mr.  Benecke^s  translation.  The 
conclusion  of  his  labors  was  almost  immediate- 
ly followed  by  that  accident  in  the  Ldtschen- 
thai  which  cost  him  his  life. 


Bookbindings^  Old  and  New:  Notes  of  a 
Book-Lover,  with  an  Account  of  the  Grolier 
Club  of  New  York.  By  Brander  Matthews. 
MacmiUan  &  Co.  1895.  Pp.  xiii,  342. 
This  volume,  which  is  one  more  of  the  Ex- 
libris  Series,  is  a  pleasant  and  very  readable 
account  of  old  and  recent  bookbinding.  It  is 
illustrated  by  more  than  a  hundred  photo- 
graphic pictures,  in  the  text  or  on  the  separate 
leaves  inserted.  The  text  is  divided  into  five 
books,  though  they  are  not  called  **  books** — 
five  departments,  entitled  severally  Bookbind- 
ings of  the  Past,  Bookbindings  of  the  Present, 
Commercial  Bookbinding,  Books  in  Paper 
Covers,  and  the  Grolier  Club  of  New  York. 
Each  book,  as  we  have  called  it,  or  each  di- 
vision, is  divided  into  chapters,  each  with  its 
separate  title ;  but,  in  spite  of  this  appearance 
of  system  and  the  abundance  of  technical 
terms  which  are  used  (and,  it  is  fair  to  say,  ex- 
plained), it  is  chiefly  as  agreeable  talk  about 
the  coverings  of  books  that  this  volume  will 
be  kno^n  and  remembered.  In  the  second 
department,  called  Bookbindings  of  the  Pre- 
sent, one  chapter  is  entitled  **The  Technic  of 
the  Craft,**  and  under  this  heading  a  very 
good  brief  account  of  the  processes  of  binding 
and  decorating  the  modem  book  is  given. 
This,  however,  has  been  done  before,  and  more 
fully,  and  the  chapter  entitled  the  '*  Outlook 
for  the  Future  **  contains  little  beyond  a  series 
of  jocose  suggestions  as  to  binding '  Two  Years 
before  the  Mast*  in  fishskin,  and  *Dr.  Johnson  * 
in  bearskin,  and  similar  devices,  some  of  which 
seem  to  have  that  doubtful  kind  of  humor 
which  is  known  as  twitting  on  facts.  More 
important,  we  think,  is  the  chapter  entitled 
*'The  Merits  of  Machine  Binding,**  and  with 
this  are  to  be  reckoned  the  other  chapters  of 
the  same  division. 

The  distinction  between  all  kinds  of  com- 
mercial bookbinding,  on  the  one  hand,  and  all 
kinds  of  **  extra  "  bookbinding  on  the  other,  is 
clearly  marked,  and  it  is  explained  that  com- 
mercial bookbinding  is  not  binding,  in  a  strict 
sense,  but  *'  casing  **;  that  is  to  eay,  the  covers 
are  prepared  in  advance,  and  the  stitched 
books  are  put  into  them.  All  our  readers  will 
have  noticed  the  great  number  of  quaint  and 
novel  faccies  which  American  and  other  de- 
signers have  worked  up  in  stamps  to  be  im- 
pressed upan  cloth  covers,  and  in  the  fancy  of 
the  cloth  coverings  themselves.  Mr.  Mat- 
thew8*s  chapter  on  the  search  for  novelty  deals 
with  many  of  the  strange  whims  which  have 
been  embodied  in  some  of  these  cloth  covers. 
The  chapter  on  '♦  Stamped  Leather  '*  deals  with 
the  more  elaborate  class  of  edition  binding— 
namely,  that  to  which  belong  the  pretty  covers 
of  Mr.  Pyle*8  *  Robin  Hood,'  and  the  Harper 
edition  of  the  *  Quiet  Life*  with  the  iUustrar 
tions  of  Abbey  and  Parsons.  The  subject  is  car- 


ried  on  in  the  chapter  upon  **  Paper  Covers.** 
Designs  for  the  printed  decoration  of  these, 
from  the  early  days  of  Harper's  New  Monthly 
Magazine^  when  it  was  new,  to  the  very  recent 
and  very  vigorous  design  by  Mr.  Low  for  the 
Bookbuyer^  are  given,  and  among  them  are  one 
of  Mr.  Walter  Crane's  when  he  was  a  lees 
mannered  designer  than  he  has  since  become, 
and  one  of  the  inimitable  drawings  of  Calde- 
cott. 

The  reader  would  be  glad  of  a  little  more 
critical  discrimination.  Bookbinding  In  lea- 
ther is  a  decorative  art  of  rather  strict  limita- 
tions, and  there  is  much  in  the  modem  at- 
tempts to  introduce  novelty  in  design  which 
cannot  be  thought  successful  in  result,  how- 
ever original  in  conception.  The  designs  for 
commercial  book-covers  seem  to  challenge  criti- 
cism in  their  very  character  of  a  new  depar- 
ture, and  it  is  the  more  important  that  they 
should  be  looked  into  with  a  critical  eye-glass. 
The  volume  before  us,  in  its  simple  jacket  of 
dull  green,  a  little  glossy,  and  with  plain  gold 
letters,  is  non-conmiittal. 


Dixie ;  or,  Southern  Scenes  and  Sketches.    By 

Julian  Ralph.  Harpers.  1805. 
There  is  sufllcient  reason  in  their  statistical 
value,  apart  from  their  readable  style,  for  the 
consolidation  into  a  volume  of  Mr.  Ralph*B 
I>apers  contributed  to  his  publishers*  periodi- 
cals. Unfortunately  for  the  statistics  them- 
selves, the  very  progress  that  they  represent 
the  new  South  as  making  will  soon  leave  them 
behind,  as  of  historical  rather  than  of  present 
interest.  They  are,  however,  in  the  tale  of 
mills,  of  furnaces,  of  refineries,  and  especially 
of  diversified  agriculture,  astonishing  and  cap- 
tivating to  all  who  have  the  true  interests  of 
the  whole  country  at  heart ;  ai\d  the  very 
vivid  descriptions  of  places  and  nuumers  that 
belong  only  below  the  line,  and  that  must  be 
witnessed  to  be  described,  add  an  element  of 
romance  which  is  the  more  attractive  in  not 
being  fictitious.  The  description  is  flecked 
with  close  observation  and  shrewd  comment, 
as  when,  for  instance,  Mr.  Ralph  alleges  that 
the  cause  of  the  Creoles*  dislike  for  Mr.  Cable  is 
not  his  portrayal  of  their  life  but  of  their 
English  ;  and  at  the  same  time  it  betrays  the 
tourist  and  not  the  resident  in  speaking  of 
shell-stone  for  coquina  (in  St.  Augustine)  and 
depot  (in  Atlanta)  for  car-shed.  It  is  hard  to 
tell  whether  the  writer*s  alleged  ignorance  of 
*' toddy,**  which  he  professes  to  have  first 
seen,  and  by  implication  first  heard  of,  on  the 
Arkansas  in  the  Territory,  is  real.  But  if  it 
was,  the  Grecian  Porson's  classical  pun,  when 
he  found  himself  stranded  at  a  wayside  inn 
without  whiskey  or  candle,  and  disappeared 
up  stairs  grumbling  ov^^  rdac,  ov6i  rdAAo,  would 
be  lost  upon  him.  But  such  ignorance  is 
venial,  if  not  commendable,  in  one  who  knows 
so  much  that  is  better  and  tells  so  much  that 
is  more  fascinating.  Mr.  Ralph  notes  the  im- 
munity in  late  years  of  New  Orleans  from 
yellow  fever,  but  fails  to  recognize,  or  at  least 
to  report,  the  importance  of  the  Louisiana 
disinfection  stations,  the  so-called  quaran- 
tines, at  the  jetties  and  above,  to  which,  with 
the  greater  cleanliness  of  the  city,  exemption 
is  due.  Whenever  the  opportunity  offers,  he 
combats  the  idea  that  the  waste  lands  of  the 
South  are  steiile  or  the  worked  lands  exhaust- 
ed, and  he  cites  example  after  example  of  suc- 
cessful truck-farming  on  abandoned  cotton- 
fields,  and  is  especially  enthusiastic  as  to  the 
possibilities  of  white  labor  in  Mississippi.  It 
is  a  little  odd  that,  having  ran  the  rake  of  his 
observation  over  so  much  of  the  South,  he 


failed  to  draw  anything  out  of  G^rgia  below 
Atianta,  omitting  beautiful  Savannah  and  its 
great  cotton  mart  and  the  rice  fields,  with  no 
hint  of  their  existence.  Alabama  is  concen- 
trated about  Birmingham — what  patience  can 
one  have  with  this  appropriation  of  foreign 
names,  in  a  flattery  that  usually  has  no  sign!- 
ficance,  and  which  might  have  been  discarded 
here  for  native  nomenclature  I  (Birmingham 
does  echo  its  original,  but  it  might  so  easily 
have  found  a  Cherokee  designation  of  its  own.) 
It  is  too  much  to  expect  for  the  whole  South 
such  a  description  as  Mr.  Ralph  has  given  of 
Biloxi  on  the  Gulf  and  of  the  Teche,  but,  as  a 
part  of  the  renaissance  of  which  he  is  the 
herald,  at  least  a  few  pages  might  have  been 
spared  for  Tuskegee,  the  wonderful  outgrowth 
of  Hampton,  where  the  negro  is  learning  to 
use  his  brain  and  his  hands  together. 


Lectures  and  Essays,    By  Henry  Nettleship. 

Second  Series.    Oxford:   Clarendon  Press; 

New  York:  Macmillan.  1805.  Pp.  xliii,  366. 
This  volume  is  a  sequel  to  one  of  the  same 
name  published  in  1885.  •  With  the  exception 
of  a  lecture  on  Madvig  and  a  Memoir  of  Mr. 
Nettleship  by  his  wife,  all  the  articles  in  it  are 
republications.  Those  upon  Latin  topics  are 
already  well  known  to  the  scholars  whom  they 
interest;  the  others  are  so  inferior  that  one  re- 
grets their  revival,  for  which,  however,  the 
author  is  responsible,  since  he  thought  them 
worth  publishing  in  his  life- time— thus  once 
more  exemplifying  the  purblind  partiality  of 
literary  men  for  their  weakest  productions. 
The  world  of  scholarship  owes  much  to  Nettle- 
ship. His  work  in  the  line  of  minute  investi- 
gation, for  which  he  was  specially  qualified 
both  by  nature  and  by  his  training,  is  always 
excellent.  The  articles  in  this  volume  which 
involve  the  examination  of  details  must  long 
remain  papers  of  great  value  to  the  student  of 
Latin.  But  when  he  leaves  that  range  of  sub- 
jects which  gives  scope  for  this  kind  of  treat- 
ment he  is  fragmentary,  inconclusive,  in  every 
way  unsatisfactory.  When  he  approaches  some 
educational  or  ethical  subject,  it  is  with  an  ex- 
tremely  limited  fund  of  ideas— not  bad,  per- 
haps,  in  their  way,  but  altogether  inadequate. 
Nevertheless  he  takes  up  the  subject  as  broadly 
as  possible,  and  raises  expectations  of  a  com- 
prehensive treatment;  but  when  he  has  shot  off 
his  small  supply  of  ammunition,  he  leaves  a 
disappointed  reader,  and  a  subject  partly  over- 
discussed  and  partly  neglected  and  ignored. 
Thus,  in  the  essay  on  classical  education,  after 
promising  a  history  of  the  subject,  he  quite 
leaves  out  the  extremely  interesting  period  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  frankly  confessing  that  he  is 
not  competent  to  speak  of  it.  Why,  then, 
write  on  a  subject  so  imperfectly  studied? 
There  is  no  lack  of  books  In  which  he  might 
have  found  sufficient  material  to  bridge  such  a 
deplorable  gap. 

There  is  also,  in  these  parerga,  a  sad  want  of 
structural  unity  and  definite  purpose.  The 
writer  goes  rambling  through  many  pages  of 
diffuse  writing  without  bringing  out  any  new 
thing  which  seems  worthy  of  so  many  words. 
The  impression  left  on  the  reader*s  mind  is 
that  of  an  article  written  to  fill  up  an  hour,  or 
so  many  pages  of  a  magazine.  This,  however, 
would  not  be  a  fair  conclusion.  Mr.  Nettle- 
ship was  quite  incapable  of  any  such  purpose. 
Nor  will  any  one  tax  him  with  indolence.  His 
chief  merit,  indeed,  was  industry^laborious, 
pcdnstaking  industry.  We  repeat,  he  is  ad- 
mirable in  the  accumulation  of  details  in  his 
own  special  field.  He  is,  in  this  respect,  al- 
most a  German;  and  his  admiration  of  the 


Jan.  1 6,  1896] 


The    N'ation. 


65 


■hallow  0«niian  theoriei  aboat  epedaliziog 
edacatioo,  though  perhaps  heightened  by  his 
residence  at  a  German  University,  mnst  have 
oome  to  him  through  something  in  his  own  na- 
ture. But  when  we  have  done  justice  to  his 
accuracy  and  diligence  in  his  specialty,  which 
is  the  garnering  of  minutitp^  and  have  paid  a 
passing  tribute  to  his  high  motives  and  correct 
moral  principles,  though  this  it  not  precisely 
literary  praise,  we  have  said  all  that  can  be 
said  for  him  as  a  man  of  letters.  Some  of  his 
failings  are  not  very  noticeable  when  he  is  on 
his  own  ground.  Tet,  even  there,  he  has  se. 
rious  faults  both  as  a  thinker  and  as  a  writer. 
He  is  prone  to  generalize  on  an  insufficient 
number  of  particulars;  he  is  prejudiced;  and 
when  he  has  approached  a  subject  under  a  bias, 
he  refuses  to  see  anything  that  crosses  his  pre- 
conceptions, as,  for  example,  in  his  judgment 
of  Juvenal,  in  whom,  from  a  literary  point  of 
view,  he  cannot  see  anything  but  a  declaimer. 
This  also  is  very  German.  He  is,  moreover, 
eccentric  as  only  an  Eaglishman  can  be.  For 
example,  he  has  discovered  a  correct  poetic 
judgment  and  insight  in  Cicero,  whose  bad 
taste  in  poetry  made  him  an  object  of  deridon 
to  his  contemporaries,  while  he  declares  that 
**  it  would  be  difficult  to  quote  from  Juvenal 
one  really  poetical  line."  This  shows  that  Mr. 
Nettleship  had  just  about  as  much  taste  in 
poetry  as  Cicero  had;  and  also  that,  whatever 
came  into  his  head,  no  matter  how  crude,  he 
would  say  it  without  respect  of  persons. 

It  will  be  observed  that  tiiese  defects  hang 
together.  They  all  flow  from  a  want  of  com- 
prehensiveness, an  inability  to  take  in  the 
whole  of  a  large  subject  in  one  general  view, 
without  which  no  structural  unity,  no  propor- 
tion or  measure,  and  therefore  no  literary  art 
is  possible.  And  literary  flirt  Mr.  Nettleship 
had  none.  He  begins  his  essay  on  classical 
education  with  a  definition  of  the  term.  His 
definition  is  inept  and  infufficient;  but  writers 
have  a  large  latitude  on  this  point  in  the  inte- 
rest of  clearness.  Only,  Mr.  Nettleship  soon 
forgets  all  about  his  definition,  and  the  same 
thing  is  referred  to  in  subsequent  pages  as 
**  literary*^  and  as  *' liberal"  education.  When 
be  is  analyzing  Cicero^s  style  of  criticism,  he 
gives  several  pages  of  quotations  from  that 
author  without  any  indication  ss  to  what  they 


GERMAN  LITERATURE. 

MESSRS.  HBNRY  HOLT  d  CO., 
39  WMta3d  St.,  New  York. 

W01  tend  Crae  vpon  appUcstlcni  their  new  dasorlptlTe 
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•re  eoppUed  with  btographlee  of  the  anthon  and  Rng- 
tlsh  notes  by  repreeentatlTe  American  acholars,  eeTeral 
^rlih  portratta  and  other  Ulustratloni.  A  number  of  the 
plays  and  ibort  stories  are  to  be  had  neatly  boand  In 
boards  at  from  15  to  40  cents  each. 

ORIENTAL  LANGUAGES. 


s.  SAMPSON  LOW,  M ARSTON  A  COMPANY, 
BngliBh.  American,  and  Oriental  Publishers, 
St.  Dunstan's  House,  Fetter  Lane,  London,  Eng  , 
will  be  happy  to  send,  post  free,  on  application, 
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LIBRARIAN. 

Wanted,  a  position  as  Librarian,  Assistant  IJbrarlan, 
or  Befersoee  Librarian,  by  a  yoaog  man  thirty  years 
oM,  a  oall«B0  gradoate.  and  a  graduate  of  the  New  York 
•lau  Library  School,  with  sereral  years'  experience  In 
Ubrarywerk.  AtfdreM  UBRARIAN. 

Office  of  The  Nation. 


are  expected  to  prove.  When  these  quotations 
are  at  last  read  through,  he  claims  this  and  that 
quality  for  Cicero  as  a  critic;  and  the  reader, 
if  he  would  verify  the  claim,  must  go  baclt  and 
read  them  all  over  again.  But  a  worse  thing 
comes  of  this  want  of  grasp,  so  natural,  after 
all,  in  one  whose  intellectual  vision  was  of  the 
microscopic  sort;  and  that  worse  thing  is  ob- 
scure and  confused  thinking.  Clear  thinking 
on  a  large  subject  demands  the  ability  to  keep 
in  view  a  considerable  number  of  things,  in 
order  to  see  their  relations,  and  especially  their 
relative  importance.  Of  this  quality  Mr. 
Nettleship  bad  as  little  as  anybody  can  get 
along  with.  But  confused  thinking  leads  to 
obscure  writing,  and  to  the  profusion  of  words 
which  are  merely  vox  et  praeterea  nihil. 
There  are  many  periods  in  these  essays  which 
are  capable  of  any  meaning  that  an  ingenious 
reader  may  be  able  to  read  into  them.  A  defi- 
nite meaning  of  their  own  they  have  not. 

That  a  man  who  possessed  one  field  so  well 
should  jield  to  what  is  sometimes  regarded  as 
the  clerical  vice  of  attempting  to  teach  all 
things,  merely  shows  that  this  is  a  temptation 
to  be  guarded  against  by  all  who  are  accus 
tomed  to  be  listened  to  with  respect  when 
speaking  ex  cathedra.  The  penalty  is  a  general 
loss  of  credit;  but  the  fair  minded  reader  nho 
loves  truth  better  than  revenge  will  not  claim 
the  forfeit  from  Mr.  Nettleship,  because  the 
man  is  essentially  honest  and  earnest.  He 
often  recognizes  the  flimsiness  of  what  he  gives, 
aEd  refers  to  his  efforts  as  **  fragmentary,'' 
"scattered,"  ** inadequate  "  remarks.  But 
what  he  fails  to  see  is  that  no  one  compels  bim 
to  publish  anything  in  that  condition.  Stil), 
nobody  doubts  his  motives  nor  his  earnest- 
ness. Of  the  latter,  indeed,  there  is  more  than 
enough;  his  seriousness  is  something  appalling. 
There  lurks  no  smile  between  the  covers  of 
the  book;  to  lambent  gleam  of  wit  such  as 
even  Cicero,  to  say  nothing  of  the  inimitable 
Plato,  contrives  to  flash,  now  and  then,  on  the 
driest  subjects,  as  an  incentive  and  reward  to 
the  attentive  reader.  One  cannot  without  ef- 
fort believe  that  the  author  of  these  pa]>ers 
can  be  the  person  of  whom  Mrs.  Nettleship 
could  say  (p.  xlii): 

"  His  sense  of  humor  was  keen  and  delicate, 
and  often,  by  some  witty  remark,  he  would 


The  Key  of  the  Pacific, 
The  Nicaragua  Canal. 

By  ARCHIBALD  ROSS  COLQUHOUN. 

Indian  PubUo  Works  Department  (retired).  First 
Administrator  of  Mashonaland;  F  R  OS.,  etc., 
etc.;  author  of  ** Across  Chrysd,''  '*  Amongst  the 
Shans,^*  etc..  etc.,  etc.  Large  deiny  8vo.  pp. 
zvii-443.  With  Numerous  Illuslrations,  Maps, 
and  Plans,  $7.00. 

LONGMANS,    GREEN.  &   CO., 

IS  East  i6th  Street,  New  York. 


Do  me  the  favor  to  ask  your  wine- mer- 
chant, or  Park  &  Tilford  (wholesale 
agents),  for  my  '*Picart7io"  natural 
sherry,  and  ^*  Manzanilla  Pascuia.*' 

OUILLBBXO  DOBLACHS, 

Puerto  de  Santa  Maria. 


give  an  unexpected  turn  to  a  conversation  that 
threatened  to  become  too  serious.  He  told 
anecdotes  well,  having  a  retentive  memory, 
and  a  knack  of  reproducing  other  people^s  ges- 
tures and  intonations.  .  .  .  He  would  invent 
rhymes  or  pour  out  a  torrent  of  puns  and 
jokee,  till  every  one  was  infected  with  his  high 
spirits.  He  wrote  a  good  many  parodies  and 
jeux  (Tenprit  in  prose  and  verse,  some  of  which 
were  privately  printed,  but  the  secret  of  their 
authorship  never  divulged.'^ 

Such  is  the  testimony  of  his  biographer, 
whose  memoir  is  by  far  the  most  readable 
thing  in  the  book— we  mean,  of  course,  as  lite- 
rature. After  wading  through  so  much  pon- 
derous solemnity,  it  is  almost  with  a  sense  of 
injury  and  wrong  that  we  learn  that,  after  all, 
this  extreme  prosiness  was  not  unavoidable. 

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Batn.  R.  N.    CaarlesXlI  and  the  Collapse  of  the  Swe- 

dUh  Empire.    Putnams.    9150. 
Ball.  W.  W.  R.    K  Primer  of  the  History  of  Matho- 

mallcs.    MucmlUan.    65c. 
Chbhnlm.  Q.  C.    Lontnijans' Gazetteer  of  the  WorkL 

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Claretle.  Jules.    La  Front l^re.    W.B.  Jenkins.    85c. 
Drachmann.  Holser.     Paul  and  Virginia  of  a  Northern 

Zone.    Chicago:  Way  &  Williams.    •1.26. 
Eastwlck.  James.    The  New  Centurion :  A  Tale  of  Auto 

matlc  war.    Ix>ngman8,  Green  A  Co.    40c. 
Foulke.  E.  E.    Twillgbt  Stort*'8.    Sliver.  Burdett  ft  Co. 
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ton.  N.  J.:  RIverton  Prets. 
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ampton. Mass. :  Picturesque  Publishing  Co. 

~      The  Ottotnan  Dynasty.    New  York : 
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The  Japan-Clilna  War.    Yokohama : 
;  New  York  :  Scrlbners.    96. 
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Bldden,  A.  w. 

N.  W.  Hidden. 
Inouye,  Jukicbl. 

Kelly  ft  Walnh 
Jacobs.  Jo*  CDh. 


nardtheFox.    Macmillan.    92. 
Kent,  Prof.  C  F.    The  Wike  Men  of  Ancient  Israel  and 

thi  Ir  Proverbs.    SUver.  Burdett  ft  Co.    «l  86. 
KlnizBlev,  Charles.  The  Water  Babies.  Macmillan.  T&c 
Kukula.  R..  and  Trilbner,  K.     Minerva     Jahrbuch  der 

Gelol<rten  Welt      1H05-18Q6.    tttrassburg :  Trilbner ; 

New  York  :  Wefttermann.    $2. 
Lee,  Sidney.     Dlcilon»ry  of  National  Biography.     VoL 

XLV.    Perelra— Pockricb     Macmillan.    tS.TS. 
Luce,  Morton.    A  Handbook  to  the  Works  of  Alfred 

Lord  Tennyson.    London  :  Bell ;  New  York :  Macmil- 
lan.   fl.TJL 
Lukens.  H.  T.    The  Connection  between  Thought  and 

Mem-  ry.    Boston :  D.  C.  Heath  ft  Co    90c. 
Maolaren,  Ian.    Beside  the  Bonnie  Brier  Bush.    M.J. 

IversftCo.    25c. 
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Powell.  G.  U.    Excursions  In  Llbrarla :  Being  Retro- 
spective Reviews  and  Biographical  Notea.  Scrlbners. 

as  25. 
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Roman  Citizen.    London :  Uodder  ft  Stoughton ;  New 

York:  Putnams.    $3. 
Stoddart.   T.   T.     The   Death- Wake;    or.    Lunacy.     A 

Necromaunt.    London :  John  Lace ;  Chicago ;  Way  ft 

Williams     91  50. 
Tallevrand's  Letter  to  the  Pope.     New  York:  Peter 

Kckler.    25c. 
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Cbrlsllon   Church.     Vol.  IL     London  :    Williams  ft 

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YALE  MIXTURE 

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[Vol.  62,  No.  1594 


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NEW   YORK,   THURSDAY,  JANUARY  23,  1890. 


The  Week. 


Thb  Venezuelan  OommiBsion  has  ad- 
dressed to  Mr.  Olney  a  letter  which 
ought  to  have  been  written  and  signed  by 
him  and  addressed  to  Sir  Julian  Paunce- 
fote  on  the  20th  of  July  last,  and  have 
taken  the  place  in  this  correspondence  of 
his  despatch  of  that  date  to  Mr.'  Bayard. 
Had  it  done  so,  some  hundreds  of  mil> 
lions  of  money  would  have  been  saved, 
and  the  national  reputation  for  peace- 
ableness  and  rationality  would  have  re- 
mained intact.  It  is  a  document  evident- 
ly emanating  from  men  of  sound  mind 
and  disposing  memory.  It  points  out  that 
an  ez-parte  body  like  the  Commission, 
seeking  to  report  on  a  controversy  to 
which  it  is  not  a  party,  cannot  get  on 
very  well  without  help  from  the  dis- 
putants in  the  shape  of  evidence  or 
«*data  and  arguments.'*  So  it  proposes 
that  Mr.  Olney  should  ask  the  grabbing 
British  for  '*  documentary  proof,  histori- 
cal narrative,  unpublished  archives,  and 
the  like.*'  They  even  ask  for  Van  attor- 
ney or  agent**  to  appear  before  them. 
Secretary  Olney  has  replied  that  he  has 
done  so.  Now  we  sincerely  hope,  in 
the  interest  of  peace,  that  the  British 
will  comply.  But  in  the  interest  of 
future  peace,  and  in  the  interest  of 
American  self-respect,  we  must  remind 
our  readers  that  this  admission  of  the 
Commission  of  its  own  ignorance  and  help- 
lessness follows  close  on  the  President's 
**  protest"  in  his  annual  message  to  Con- 
gress against  *'the  enlargement  of  the 
area  of  British  Guiana,  in  derogation  of 
the  rights  and  against  the  will  of  Vene- 
zuela," which  is  a  plain  finding  that  the 
British  were  in  the  wrong,  first  in  enlarg- 
ing thfiir  boundaries,  and  secondly  in  re- 
fusing to  submit  to  arbitration  any  claim 
the  Venezuelans  might  choose  to  set  up. 
It  follows  close,  too,  on  his  declaration 
that  we  should  find  out  the  true  line  of 
frontier  for  ourselves  and  force  Great  Bri- 
tain to  accept  it,  if  need  be  by  war.  To 
go  now,  after  causing  enormous  loss  of 
property  and  filling  two  nations  with 
anxiety,  and  confess  to  the  British  that 
we  not  only  do  not  know,  but  have  never 
known,  whether  they  had  wrongfully  en- 
larged their  borders  or  not,  and  thiit  the 
commission  we  appointed  to  find  the  true 
line  cannot  get  on  without  their  help,  is 
right,  but  is  something  which  no  honest 
and  patriotic  man  ought  to  hear  of  with- 
out deep  and  vindictive  indignation.  It  is 
virtually  the  confession  of  a  crime  against 
civilization,  and  can  the  perpetrators  of  it 
think  over  it  without  bitter  self-reproach  ? 


A  great  many  Republican  journals  are 
at  last  showing  signs  of  recovery  from  the 


lunacy  of  Jingoism  by  disapproving  of  the 
Davis  resolution.  They  say  we  have  had 
enough  of  Monroe  for  the  present.  Secre- 
tary Olney  assumed  sovereignty  for  us 
over  the  whole  American  continent — 
about  half  the  habitable  globe — and  this, 
of  course,  carried  with  it  all  the  claims  of 
every  description  embodied  in  the  Davis 
resolution.  This  resolution  is  simply  no- 
tice that  wilful  annoyance  to  us  as  sove- 
reigns will  be  considered  '*  unfriendly," 
which  sounds  very  like  public  notice  from 
an  individual  that  any  open  pulling  of  his 
nose  will  be  taken  in  bad  part.  Having 
proclaimed  ourselves  rulers  of  the  western 
hemisphere,  and  nobody  having  arisen  in 
rebellion,  we  ought  to  be  content.  But 
both  the  performances  of  Mr.  Olney  and 
Mr.  Cleveland  and  the  Davis  escapade 
show  the  extreme  inconvenience  of  having 
to  live  by  "doctrine,"  instead  of  by  plain 
'common  sense. 


An  interesting  article  on  the  Venezue- 
lan boundary,  by  Mr.  H.  R.  Mill,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  a  geographer,  ap- 
pears in  Nature  of  January  2.  He  ob- 
jects to  all  the  lines  that  have  been  drawn 
or  proposed  as  **an  outrage  on  geography," 
inasmuch  as  they  '*  cut  natural  features 
and  mathematical  lines  at  all  angles,  and 
in  irregular  curves  which  it  would  be  im- 
possible either  to  describe  verbally  or  to 
lay  out  accurately  on  the  ground  without 
a  survey  as  minute  as  for  a  railway." 
The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  any  survey 
whatever  in  the  disputed  territory  are 
enormous.  Precisely  there  are  to  be 
found  the  richest  and  densest  tropical 
forests  of  the  world,  and  a  recent  explor- 
er of  the  Barima  River  testifies  to  the  se- 
vere labor  required  to  force  one's  way 
into  the  woods  at  all.  This  will  make  it 
certain  that  our  Venezuelan  Commission 
will  not  go  to  the  spot,  axe  in  hand,  to 
blaze  the  true  lines  through  the  forest, 
which  we  are  thereafter  to  defend  ferro 
et  igne.  Such  patriotic  rail-splitting 
must  be  done  in  youth  to  make  a  man 
eligible  to  the  Presidency.  Mr.  Mill  just- 
ly argues,  from  the  defiance  of  all  the 
principles  of  scientific  political  geography 
shown  in  the  various  suggested  bounda- 
ries, that  the  case  is  eminently  one  for 
arbitration,  and  the  drawing  of  a  conven- 
tional line  in  such  a  way  as  to  give  a  fixed 
and  easily  ascertainable  frontier.  He  as- 
serts, what  we  believe  to  be  true,  that  the 
boundaries  of  every  South  American  re- 
public are  disputed.  If  Uncle  Sam  is  to 
take  the  job  of  siirveyor-general  for  all 
that  region,  with  the  office  of  infallible 
arbitrator  of  metes  and  bounds  thrown 
in,  he  had  better  prepare  for  roughing  it 
for  some  time  to  come. 


Bir.  Balfour's  speech  at   Manchester, 
last  week,  on  England's  foreign  complica- 


tions, was  that  of  a  civilized  man  as  well 
as  of  a  member  of  the  Government.  His 
assertion,  in  the  latter  capacity,  that 
Great  Britain  has  no  cause  for  quarrel 
with  any  nation  on  the  face  of  the  earth, 
is  timely  and  will  be  most  reassuring; 
while  his  strong  words  about  the  "  unna- 
tural horror  "  of  a  war  with  the  United 
States  show  that  he  does  not  keep  hia  love 
of  civilization  as  a  thing  for  display  mere- 
ly in  books  and  academic  discoursep.  He 
put  his  finger  upon  our  deepest  shame 
and  disgrace  in  the  whole  flurry,  however, 
when  he  referred*to  the  **  newspaper  arti- 
cles," extracted  from  the  American  press, 
which  **  appeared  to  regard  a  war  with 
England  as  a  thing  to  be  lightly  indulged 
in,  an  exhilarating  exercise,  a  gentle 
stimulus."  A  philosophic  observer  like 
Mr.  Balfour  cannot  be  blamed  for  regard- 
ing such  barbarism  as  **  distressing,"  but 
it  is  doubtful  if  any  foreign  observer  can 
understand  the  phenomenon.  It  takes  a 
native,  long  inured  to  the  charming  ways 
of  the  press  in  this  country,  to  perceive 
that  not  a  mother's  son  of  the  journalistic 
shriekers  for  war  had  the  faintest  idea 
that  there  would  be  any  war.  It  was  only 
the  shouting  for  war  that  they  found  ex- 
hilarating ;  and  their  real  **  exercise,"  in 
case  of  actual  war,  would  consist  in  run- 
ning away  as  far  and  as  fast  as  possible. 
Even  in  such  pot-valor,  moreover,  they 
grossly  misrepresent  and  outrage  the  cities 
and  towns  in  which  they  vegetate.  This 
is  a  thing  that  a  foreigner  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  know,  but  evidence  accumulates 
4hat  the  papers  and  politicians  completely 
misunderstood  the  prevailing  and  respect- 
able sentiment  of  the  country,  even  of  the 
West.  Fortunately,  war  does  not  go  on 
silliness  any  more  than,  as  Bismarck  said, 
on  hatred;  otherwise  we  should  be  con- 
stantly at  war. 


Senator  Lodge  appears  to  be  giving  his 
thoughts  to  the  purchase  by  this  country 
of  the  Danish  West  India  Islands.  There 
is  not  the  slightest  evidence  that  Den- 
mark has  made  any  overtures  to  us  signi- 
fying a  desire  to  part  with  them.  But 
inasmuch  as  they  are  really  worthless,  and 
a  source  of  expense  to  her,  it  may  be  that 
an  offer  on  our  part  to  pay,  say,  $7,600,000 
for  them,  or  even  to  take  them  for  nothing, 
would  be  favorably  received.  It  may 
be  worth  while  to  note  what  took  place 
in  reference  to  the  island  of  St.  Thomas 
in  the  winter  of  1868- '69.  Mr.  Seward 
was  then  Secretary  of  State.  He  was 
possessed  with  the  idea  of  territorial  ex- 
tension. In  a  note  at  the  bottom  of  page 
328,  voL  iv.,  of  Pierce's  *  Life  of  Sumner,* 
we  read  that  **  he  [Seward]  once  said  at 
Sumner's  tsble,  in  1868,  that  in  thirty 
years  the  City  of  Mexico  would  be  the 
capital  of  the  United  SUtes."  (The  time 
will  have  expired  in  two  years  from  now.) 
Mr.  Seward  entered  into  a  negotiation  for 


68 


The    INTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1595 


the  purchase  of  St  Thomas  Id  1867.  The 
price  to  be  paid  was  $7,500,000.  **  It  is  a 
worthless  island,"  says  Mr.  Pierce,  ••  re- 
markable for  hurricanes,  earthquakes, 
and  droughts,  destitute  of  productions, 
and  inhabited  by  a  miserable  population.'* 
No  wonder  Denmark  was  eager  to  clutch 
that  sum  of  money  for  a  possession  that 
she  would  not  accept  as  a  free  gift  if  it 
belonged  to  anybody  else.  When  the 
treaty  of  purchase  came  before  the  Senate 
committee  on  foreign  relations,  it  was  re- 
jected unanimously.  The  committee  con- 
sisted of  Sumner,  Fessenden,  Cameron, 
Harlan,  Morton,  Patterson,  and  Oasserly. 
Not  one  of  them  would  consent  to  it,  nor 
would  anybody  else  in  Washington  ex- 
cept Seward.  The  House  of  Representa- 
tives, by  a  two-thirds  vote,  passed  a  reso- 
lution against  any  further  purchases  of 
territory. 


President  Grant,  when  he  came  into  of- 
fice, in  March,  1869,  threw  the  treaty  out 
of  the  window  at  once,  so  far  as  the  exe- 
cutive department  was  concerned.  Soon 
after  its  rejection  the  island  was  shaken 
by  an  earthquake,  which  nearly  demolish- 
ed the  town  of  St.  Thomas  and  the  ships 
which  happened  to  be  in  the  harbor. 
One  of  the  effects  of  this  earthquake  was 
to  transfer  the  centre  of  West  Indian  com- 
merce to  Barbados,  where  it  has  remained 
ever  since.  Those  of  our  statesmen  who 
want  to  acquire  the  island  now,  want  it 
for  war  purposes  solely.  In  this  way  it 
would  possess  many  advantages.  Being  an 
outlying  possession,  it  would  enable  us  to 
get  into  war  more  easily  than  we  can  now. 
Being  easily  exposed  to  blockade  and 
bombardment,  it  would  require  expensive 
fortification  and  the  presence  of  a  con- 
siderable fleet.  Large  naval  appropria- 
tions would  be  called  for  expressly  on  ac- 
count of  St  Thomas.  Much  stress  is  laid 
on  its  advantages  as  a  coaling  station,  but 
it  should  not  be  overlooked  that  we  can 
get  all  the  coal  we  want  at  St.  Thomas  in 
time  of  peace  by  paying  a  fair  price  for 
it,  whereas  if  we  were  engaged  in  a  war, 
St.  Thomas  would  belong  to  us  only  on 
condition  that  we  had  a  stronger  naval 
force  than  the  Power  we  were  fighting 
with. 


Senator  Hale  called  up  his  Hawaiian 
cable  bill  on  Thursday,  for  the  purpose  of 
making  a  speech  upon  it.  The  present 
scheme  is  to  drop  the  Grovemment  build- 
ing and  control  of  the  cable-^for  which, 
in  the  last  Ongress,  Senators  Hale  and 
Lodge  were  for  some  days  willing  to  die 
in  their  tracks— and  to  fall  back  on  the 
good  old  plan  of  a  subsidy  of  $250,000  a 
year  to  a  private  corporation.  We  do 
not  know  how  fully  Senator  Hale  ex- 
plained the  contract  already  made  by 
this  corporation  with  the  Hawaiian 
Government  At  the  time,  it  caused 
no  small  outcry  in  Honolulu.  The  con- 
cessionaire, Mr.  Spalding,  ex-United 
States  Consul,  and  his  counsel,  ex-Min- 
ister  Thurston  (how  naturally  these  exes 


go  in  for  subsidies!),  were  charged  with 
putting  through  a  secret  and  monopolis- 
tic contract.  The  company  was  to  have 
exclusive  rights  for  twenty  years,  and 
to  be  given,  as  one  Grovemment  organ 
complained,  **  the  whip  hand  in  making 
terms  with  Australia,  Japan,  or  any 
other  country  of  the  Pacific."  How- 
ever, as  the  $40,000  a  year  subsidy  from 
Hawaii  was  contingent  upon  getting  six 
times  as  much  from  the  United  States,  it 
was  thought  safe  to  put  the  act  through 
even  with  the  onerous  conditions.  In 
other  words,  Hawaii  gave  the  company 
a  sort  of  crowbar  with  which  to  break 
into  the  United  States  Treasury.  But 
Senator  Hale  was,  of  course,  equal  to 
turning  this  corner  with  grace  and  skill. 
Objection  to  a  subsidy  to  a  monopoly?  He 
hoped  Senators  would  understand  that  if 
this  country  abandoned  the  project,  the 
British  would  at  once  rush  in  .and  fairly 
cover  the  Pacific  with  their  devilish  mili- 
tary cables.  To  this  there  could  be  no 
answer,  and  the  bill  **went  to  the  calen- 
dar." It  ought  to  go  to  the  Greek 
Kalends. 


It  appears,  from  a  circular  issued  last 
week  by  Mr.  J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  that 
the  suggestion  for  a  public  subscription 
in  place  of  the  syndicate  subscription 
was  communicated  by  him  to  the  Presi- 
dent in  a  letter  dated  January  4 — that  is, 
two  days  before  Secretary  Carlisle's  cir^ 
cular  was  issued.  In  this  letter  Mr.  Mor- 
gan held  the  opinion  that  less  distur- 
bance of  the  money  market  would  result 
from  a  loan  made  through  and  by  the 
syndicate,  but,  in  view  of  the  legislation 
proposed  and  the  dicussions  that  had  al- 
ready taken  place  in  Congress,  if  the 
President  should  think  best  to  call  for  a 
public  loan,  he  would  cheerfully  co- 
operate to  that  end.  He  urged  his  fellow- 
members  to  join  in  it,  and  dissolved  the 
syndicate  in  order  that  they  might  be  free 
to  do  so,  and  he  has  pledged  his  firm  to 
join  others  in  taking  whatever  portion  of 
the  loan  may  be  left  over  after  the  sub- 
scriptions close.  It  is  fair  to  presume  that 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  would  not 
have  issued  the  call  so  promptly  (although 
he  might  have  done  so  eventually)  without 
the  assurances  conveyed  in  Mr.  Morgan's 
letter,  since  it  would  have  been  a  serious 
responsibility  to  give  a  bird  in  the  hand 
for  one  in  the  bush — to  reject  the  offer  of 
responsible  parties  for  all  the  gold  he 
wanted,  on  the  chance  of  getting  a  small- 
er but  indefinite  amount  from  some  other 
unknown  source.  Indeed,  the  codpera- 
tion  of  the  syndicate  was  the  essential 
prerequisite  of  the  success  of  the  loan, 
and  it  is  that  cooperation  which  makes  it 
a  success  to-day. 


The  small  premium  on  gold  existing  at 
the  present  time  in  conjunction  with  an 
open  Treasury  and  daily  redemption  of 
the  Gk)vemment's  legal-tender  notes  in 
gold,  is  a  phenomenon  which  needs  some 


explanation.  It  is  due  to  the  prevailing 
superstition  that  it  is  not  patriotic,  or  at 
all  events  is  not  good  manners,  to  draw 
gold  from  the  Treasury  with  which  to  pay 
for  the  forthcoming  issue  of  the  United 
States  bonds.  For  this  reason  people  will 
go  to  bullion  dealers  and  offer  them  one- 
half  per  cent,  or  some  other  premium  for 
gold,  and  then  the  bullion  dealers  will  buy 
sterling  exchange  and  import  the  yellow 
metal.  Those  who  sell  sterling  have  to 
export  gold  to  make  their  balances  good 
on  the  other  side,  and  this  they  must  ob- 
tain from  the  Treasury.  This  explains 
the  phenomenon  witnessed  last  week  of 
gold  imports  and  exports  passing  each 
way  on  the  ocean — all  in  obedience  to  the 
prevailing  superstition.  The  premium  on 
gold  in  the  Street  is  simply  the  cost  of 
cartage  and  shipping.  It  would  be  much 
easier  and  more  rational,  and  likewise  de- 
void of  expense,  if  the  buyers  of  bonds 
would  wait  till  the  time  comes  to  pay  for 
them,  and  then  go  to  the  Treasury  with 
any  legal-tender  money  they  have  and  pass 
it  in.  If  the  Treasury  officers  say  they 
must  have  **  coin  "  for  the  bonds,  it  is 
only  necessary  for  the  bond-buyer  to  de- 
mand coin  for  his  greenbacks,  and  when 
it  is  given  to  him  pass  it  back  in  payment 
for  his  bonds. 


The  idea  prevailing  in  Congress,  and  in 
the  country  to  some  extent,  that  the 
shrinkage  of  the  gold  reserve  is  due  to  a 
shrinkage  of  revenue  or  an  excess  of  dis- 
bursements over  receipts,  is  a  mistake.  It 
overlooks  two  facts.  One  is,  that  the 
Treasury  actually  has  an  enormous  sur- 
plus on  hand,  more  than  $100,000,000.  In 
the  matter  we  are  now  considering,  the 
source  of  this  surplus  is  quite  immaterial, 
whether  from  bond  sales,  or  internal 
taxes,  or  customs  duties,  or  what  not. 
The  money  is  there,  and  it  is  applicable 
under  existing  law  to  all  ordinary  govern- 
mental uses.  The  other  forgotten  fact  is» 
that  between  July,  1890,  and  October, 
1893,  the  Government  forced  into  circula- 
tion $156,000,000  of  Treasury  notes,  be- 
sides 36,000,000  silver  dollars,  or  a  total  of 
nearly  $200,000,000  of  currency,  for  the 
greater  part  of  which  there  was  no  busi- 
ness demand  or  requirement.  That  there 
was  no  such  demand  is  evidenced  by  the 
fact  that  we  exported  $141,000,000  of  gold 
during  the  time  that  we  were  putting  out 
this  new  lot  of  fiat  money.  The  panic  of 
1893  had  its  origin  here,  and  not  in  any 
deficiency  of  revenue.  Senator  Sherman 
naturally  prefers  to  look  in  some  other 
quarter  of  the  heavens  for  the  cause  of 
that  financial  crash.  The  fatal  act  of 
1890  bQars  his  name.  That  he  is  not 
wholly  unmindful  of  the  truth,  however, 
is  made  plain  by  the  terms  of  his  recent 
resolution  and  speech  in  the  Senate,  in 
which  he  proposes  to  imprison  all  the 
greenbacks  and  Treasury  notes  that  are 
sent  in  for  redemption,  and  not  to  pay 
them  out  except  in  exchange  for  gold. 
This  would  not  be  a  bad  idea  in  itself,  be- 
cause it  would  amount  to  a  retirement  of 


Jan.  23,  1896] 


Th.e    !N"atioii. 


69 


greenbacks  pro  tanto.  It  would  curtail 
the  banking  functions  of  the  Qoyemment 
to  some  extent.  It  moves  the  St.  Paul 
Pioneer  Press  to  the  sarcastic  remark 
that  Senator  Sherman's  affection  for  the 
greenbacks,  as  the  best  paper  currency 
ever  in  Tented,  moves  him  to  take  them 
out  of  harm's  waj  by  putting  them  be- 
yond the  reach  of  a  rude*  unfeeling 
world. 


The  venerable  ez-Speaker  Grow  made 
last  week  a  vigorous  assertion  of  the  pre- 
rogatives of  the  House  against  the  dan- 
gerous encroachments  of  the  Executiye. 
It  was  an  awful  thing  to  have  a  financial 
bill  laid  before  members  known  as  "the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury's  bill."  Lib- 
erty was  on  its  last  legs  when  a  letter 
from  the  President  could  be  read  in  the 
House  just  before  a  vote  was  to  be  had  on 
a  tariff  bill.  The  ex-Speaker  was  eloquent 
on  the  duty  of  the  House  to  itself  in  the 
matter  of  making  the  President  keep  his 
place.  But  the  question  arises,  Where 
was  Bir.  Grow  on  December  18  last  ?  Had 
the  House  no  prerogatives  then  ?  Was  he 
sitting  by,  frightened  and  dumb  like  the 
rest,  when  a  President  practically  usurped 
the  power  of  Congress  to  declare  war,  and 
not  a  voice  was  raised  to  assert  the  privi- 
leges and  dignity  of  the  House  ?  The  ex- 
Speaker  had  a  glorious  chance  then  to 
assert  the  constitutional  rights  of  the 
House ;  and  his  argument  would  not  then 
have  .seemed  to  assert,  as  it  does  now, 
that  it  is  usurpation  to  ask  Congress  to 
pay  the  country's  debts  or  reform  taxa- 
tion, but  strict  constitutional  patriotism 
and  propriety  to  urge  it  blindfold  into 
war. 


Bill  Chandler  is  quite  as  zealous  a  sup- 
porter of  Speaker  Reed  for  the  Presidency 
as  is  Matt  Quay,  and  the  New  Hampshire 
Senator  has  taken  to  writing  articles  in 
favor  of  the  Speaker's  nomination.  The 
most  novel  feature  of  Chandler's  argu- 
ments is  that  he  presents  the  former 
*'  czar  "  in  the  light  of  a  compromise  can- 
didate, who  is  neither  out-and-out  for 
sound  money  nor  bitterly  opposed  to  soft 
mon^.  It  may  be  that  Eastern  Republi- 
cans, who  believe  in  the  gold  standard,  and 
silver-State  Republicans,  who  believe  in  a 
GO-oent  dollar,  will  rally  with  enthusiasm 
to  the  support  of  a  man  who  stands  on 
such  a  platform;  but  it  is  hard  to  recog- 
nize in  this  **  wobbling  "  candidate  for  a 
Presidential  nomination  the  man  whose 
friends  used  to  boast  of  his  courage  and 
podtiveness. 


It  is  not  wonderful  that  the  victory 
which  Representative  Bartlett  won  last 
week,  single-handed,  over  the  whole 
school  of  pension  sharks  gathered  in  the 
House  of  Representatives  and  its  lobby, 
has  attracted  wide  attention.  The  pub- 
lic Treasury  can  always  supply  itself  with 
watch-dogs  of  the  Hoi  man  variety  in  Con- 
gress; any  member  can  win  cheap  fame 


by  becoming  a  chronic  objector,  and 
blocking  all  legislation  which  does  not 
seek  an  outlet  for  expenditures  in  his  own 
district.  But  it  requires  a  higher  order 
of  courage  to  defy  malicious  misrepre- 
sentation and  vulgar  personal  abuse  from 
one's  own  colleagues,  by  taking  a  stand 
alone  against  an  army  of  time-servers 
bent  on  holding  the  soldier  vote  at  any 
cost.  There  was  not  a  point  made  by 
Mr.  Bartlett  during  the  debate  to  which 
every  honest  citizen  will  not  assent.  The 
blatherskites,  on  his  own  side  of  the 
House  as  well  as  on  the  other,  had  to  ap- 
peal to  the  lowest  instincts  of  the  mob  be- 
hind them  in  order  to  find  material  for 
their  speeches  in  response.  The  deserv- 
ing veterans  have  a  better  champion  in  a 
Representative  who  tries  to  protect  their 
reputations  against  the  taint  of  fraud, 
than  in  one  who  is  willing  to  rob  the 
Treasury  for  the  sake  of  shielding  himself 
from  a  false  charge  of  disloyalty. 


The  choice  of  Chicago  as  the  place,  and 
the  7th  of  July  as  the  time,  for  the  meet- 
ing of  the  Democratic  national  conven- 
tion is  significant  and  encouraging  be- 
cause the  free-coinage  element  in  the  com- 
mittee desired  St.  Louis,  as  a  headquar- 
ters of  silver  sentiment,  and  a  date  a 
month  earlier,  because  they  thought  they 
would  be  stronger,  the  shorter  the  preli- ' 
minary  discussion.  Precedent  dictates 
the  holding  of  its  convention  by  the  party 
in  control  of  the  Administration  before 
that  of  the'  Opposition,  but  the  Demo- 
crats are  now  in  a  minority  in  each 
branch  of  Congress  six  months  before 
Presidential  nominations  are  to  be  made, 
for  the  first  time  since  1872,  and  they  feel 
little  like  taking  the  initiative.  A  more 
striking  sign  of  party  demoralization  is 
the  almost  complete  absence  of  any  se- 
rious discussion  of  candidates,  or  of  any 
organized  movement  for  the  nomination 
of  any  man.  It  is  quite  without  prece- 
dent that  the  party  which  elected  the 
President  at  the  last  election  should  enter 
a  Presidential  year  without  any  general 
expression  of  opinion  in  favor  of  any  can- 
didate for  the  next  term,  and,  indeed, 
without  evidence  that  anybody  is  very 
anxious  to  secure  the  nomination.  This 
extraordinary  situation  only  refiects  a  ge- 
neral feeling  ten  months  before  the  elec- 
tion that  the  Republican  candidate  is  sure 
of  success.  Yet  so  sudden  and  great  have 
been  the  revolutions  in  public  sentiment 
of  late  years  in  the  United  SUtes  that  it 
is  foolish  to  regard  the  result  of  the  vot- 
ing next  November  as  already  settled. 


Philadelphia  Republicans  always  elect 
their  delegates  to  the  national  convention 
very  early,  and  the  custom  was  maintained 
this  year  by  conventions  in  the  five  Con- 
gressional districts  last  week.  A  touch  of 
humor  was  lent  to  the  occasion  by  the 
adoption,  in  a  convention  controlled  by 
the  Senator*s  friends*  of  a  resolution  de- 


claring that  their  delegates  *' should  fa- 
vorably consider  the  name  of  Pennsylya- 
nia's  representative  Republican  for  the 
Presidency,Hon.  Matthew  Stanley  Quay," 
and  instructing  them  to  vote  for  him  if 
his  name  shall  be  presented  to  the  conven- 
tion. Of  more  significance  was  the  reso- 
lution adopted  in  another  convention 
which  was  run  by  one  of  Quay's  lieute- 
nants, '*  recognizing  the  splendid  abilities, 
the  masterful  leadership,  the  wise  and 
safe  statesmanship,  and  the  distinguished 
public  rccprd  of  the  Hon.  Thomas  B.  Reed 
of  Maine,"  declaring  him  *'  the  l)e#t  expo- 
nent of  our  party  in  council  and  in  action," 
and  instructing  the  delegates  to  *'  earnest- 
ly labor  and  consistently  vote  for  the  nomi- 
nation of  that  matchless  man  of  the  people 
as  the  standard-bearer  of  our  patriotic 
party."  Philadelphia  is  the  first  city  in 
the  country  to  elect  and  instruct  delegates, 
and  the  Speaker  of  the  House  is  thus  en- 
tered in  the  race  ahead  of  all  rivals.  This 
fact  illustrates  one  advantage  of  being  the 
favorite  of  a  party  boss— but  there  are 
also  disadvantages  in  enjoying  such  favor. 


There  has  been  a  good  deal  of  talk  about 
the  exact  nature  of  the  control  of  Great 
Britain  over  the  foreign  relations  of  the 
Transvaal,  and  the  general  impression  has 
been  that  the  Boers  could  hold  no  inter- 
course with  foreign  Powers  except  through 
the  British  Government.  But  this  con- 
tention does  not  seem  to  be  sustained  by 
the  text  of  the  treaty  of  1884.  This  treaty 
was  a  sort  of  revision  of  the  Sand  River 
Convention  of  1862,  which  first  guaran- 
teed the  independence  of  the  Boers.  Here 
is  the  article  which  is  supposed  to  cut 
them  off  from  foreign  intercourse  except 
through  the  British  Foreign  Office: 

"The  South  African  Republic  will  conclude 
no  treatv  or  engagement  with  any  state  or  na- 
tion other  than  the  Orange  Free  State,  nor 
with  any  native  tribe  to  the  eastward  or  west- 
ward 01  the  republic,  until  the  same  has  been 
approved  by  her  Majesty  the  Queen.  Such  ap- 
proval shall  be  considered  to  have  been  grant- 
ed if  her  Majesty's  Oovernment  shall  not« 
within  six  months  after  reoeiviog  a  copy  of 
such  treaty  (which  shall  be  delivered  to  them 
immediately  upon  its  completion),  have  noti- 
fied that  the  conclusion  of  such  treaty  is  in 
conflict  with  the  interests  of  Great  Britain,  or 
of  any  of  her  Majesty^s  possessions  in  South 
Africa." 

Under  this,  treaties  have  been  concluded 
with  both  Portugal  and  Holland,  with 
British  approval.  But  this  plainly  does 
not  prohibit  anything  except  the  conclu- 
sion of  treaties  with  foreign  powers  with- 
out British  sanction.  Treaties  must  be 
negotiated,  and  negotiation  means  a  great 
deal  of  intercourse,  which  must  be  in  the 
main  friendly,  and  may  include  various 
sorts  of  friendly  expressions.  A  govern- 
ment which  might  negotiate  a  treaty  with 
Germany  must  surely  be  allowed  to  re- 
ceive congratulations  from  Germany  on 
any  piece  of  good  fortune,  including  the 
repulse  of  a  party  of  filibusters.  In  fact, 
it  does  not  appear  that  Oom  Paul  is  cut 
off  from  any  sort  of  correspondence  with 
any  power  which  is  not  openly  unfriendly 
to  Great  Britain. 


70 


Tlie    :N"atioii 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1595 


THE  BOOT  OF   THE    TROUBLE. 

Ths  finanoee  and  currency  of  a  great  and 
very  rich  nation  are  and  have  been  for  ten 
jeara  in  such  disorder  that  the  Gk)Yem- 
ment  is  borrowing  money,  with  immense 
hubbub,  every,  three  or  four  months  to 
keep  its  own  paper  at  par  in  a  time  of 
profound  peace.    In  the  midst  of   this 
hubbub  all  branches  of  the  Government 
have  agreed  with  wild  acclamation,  al- 
though possessing  neither  army  nor  navy, 
to  challenge  the  greatest  maritime  power 
fn  the  world  to  an  armed  conflict  concern- 
ing a  boundary  dispute  on  foreign  soil  be- 
tween this  maritime  power  and  a  small 
and  semi-barbarous  community  consisting 
mainly  of  Indians  and   negroes.    When 
this  act  of  folly  has  shaken  the  whole 
edifice  of  national    and    private    credit, 
nearly  all  the  public  men  of  the  nation  in 
question  have  thrown  the  blame  on  the 
persons  most  interested  in  national  pros- 
perity, the  bankers  and  brokers,  and  de- 
nounced them  as  public  enemies,  while 
some  have   rejoiced  in   the  prospect  of 
having  the  leading  commercial  cities  laid 
in  ashes  by  a  foreign  fleet.    Others  have 
gone  still  further,  and  accused  foreigners 
of  selling  their  own  property  cheap  for 
the  purpose  of  annoying  their  enemies. 
In  the  meantime  neither  branch  of  the 
National  Legislature  shows  the  smallest 
capacity  to  pass  bills  concerning  domestic 
affairs,  while  one  of  them  is  principally 
occupied  in  drafting  defiances  to  peaceful 
neighbors,  and  in  proposing  schemes  of 
taxation  and  finance  which  the  rest  of 
the  civilized  world  looks  on  as  insane. 

Along  with  this  state  of  things  at  the 
capital,  all  the  large  cities  and  many  of 
the  large  States  are  given  over  to  the  gov- 
ernment of  bosses,  who  control  all. legisla- 
tion by  means  of  money  derived  from 
blackmail  levied  on  corporations  as  the 
price  of  exemption  from  confiscatory  at- 
tacks. In  this  way  the  attempts  made 
by  persons  of  acknowledged  intelligence 
and  integrity  to  improve  social  conditions 
are  invariably  frustrated,  and  the  com- 
ments of  these  persons  on  public  affairs 
treated  with  hilarity.  In  fact,  in  what- 
ever direction  we  look,  we  see  the  classes 
which  civilized  men  have  hitherto  agreed 
to  consider  bad  because  venal,  or  danger- 
ous because  ignorant  and  inexperienced, 
in  full  control  of  affairs.  If  the  public 
men  are  wise  and  skilled  and  pure,  then 
the  experience  of  the  human  race  touch- 
ing statesmanship  and  morals  is  not  worth 
a  farthing  rushlight. 

The  name  of  this  country  is  the  United 
States  of  America.  What  is  the  cause  of 
all  these  troubles  ?  It  was  given  last  week 
in  terse  language  by  Prof.  Wheeler  of 
Yale  College  in  a  lecture  on  the  Monroe 
Doctrine.    Said  he : 

"We  say  that  the  message  was  called  out  by 
the  danger  to  our  institations.  Why  don't  we 
take  them  in  oat  of  the  wet  and  not  let  them 
remaia  out  over  night?  Oar  danger  does  not 
lie  in  Venezuela,  nor  in  the  land  south  of  the 
frost  line.  It  lies  not' in  contact  with  England, 
whosA  institutions  are  as  free  as  our  own.  The 
liberties  of  our  fathers  are  in  peril.  The  dan- 
ger liee  in  the  degeneracy  of  our  public  men, 


and  in  the  failure  of  the  attempt  to  get  a  de- 
cent municipal  government.  Republican  gov- 
ernment has  often  been  a  corse.  The  ballot 
has  no  virtue,  and  under  certain  circumstances 
it  is  a  source  of  great  corruption." 

Now,  if  this  be  not  true,  what  is  the 
matter  with  us  ?  Why  are  we  in  this 
wretched  condition  ?  If  these  men  at 
Washington  are  competent,  why  do  they 
not  get  us  out  of  our  present  slough  ? 
Why  did  they  ever  let  us  get  into  il? 
Why  do  we  have  to  borrow  money  to 
keep  our  paper  at  par  ?  Why  do  we  all 
wear  the  "  shackles  of  the  money  power*'? 
Why  has  not  something  been  done  long 
ago  to  break  **  the  power  of  Wall  Street  "T 
Why  are  foreigners  able  to  annoy  us  by 
selling  their  own  property  at  fifty  cents 
on  the  dollar?  Why  have  we  so  many 
tons  of  silver  stored  at  Washington  ? 
Why  is  it  not  made  to  circulate  freely 
among  an  impoverished  people  ?  Why  is 
Spanish  America,  over  which  we  claim 
dominion,  left  in  such  a  condition  of 
ignorance  and  barbarism  ?  Why  are  the 
bulk  of  our  intelligent  classes,  who  do 
the  principal  work  of  our  civilization,  so 
discontented  and  anxious?  If  they  are 
mistaken,  why  are  they  such  dreadful 
fools?  Prof.  Wheeler  answers  all  these 
questions,  and  many  more  which  we  do 
not  ask.  The  cause  of  all  our  troubles  is 
the  rapid  deterioration  of  our  public 
men.  When  a  ship  runs  on  a  mudbank 
in  broad  daylight,  with  the  charts  un- 
rolled and  the  instruments  of  navigation 
in  good  order,  the  cause  is  not  the  ship 
herself,  nor  the  passengers,  nor  the  mud- 
bank,  nor  the  daylight,  but  the  captain 
or  the  pilot. 

An  anti-war  sermon  delivered  in  Phila- 
delphia during  **the  scare  "by  the  Rev. 
Joseph  May,  Dr.  Fumes8*s  successor, 
contains  one  tremendous  passage,  which 
we  quote  in  full : 

**  I  have  lived  through  two  generations.  I 
recall  vividly  the  shameless  btxlies  which  sat 
in  our  congressional  halls  and  laid  the  spirit  of 
the  North,  the  principles  of  our  government, 
the  safety  of  the  Union,  prostrate  before  the 
slaveholding  oligarchy.  But  I  know  of  no  Con- 
gresB  that  ever  sat  before  in  which  there  was 
not  at  least  one  righteous  man  to  raise  his  voice 
against  national  folly  and  national  danger; 
against  the  usurpation  of  the  executive  and  in 
warning  of  the  perils  to  which  clumsy  diplo- 
macy, acute  technicality,  and  rash  and  parti- 
san speech  were  exposing  our  people.  Alas, 
that  we  have  allowed  such  a  class  to  take  pos- 
session of  our  affairs,  that  when  the  most  dan- 
gerous word  of  this  century  was  recklessly 
spoken,  not  one  man  had  the  virility,  the  pa- 
triotism, the  mere  practical  wisdom  to  rise  in 
his  place  in  stem  rebuke,  in  solemn  warning  I 
We  have  little  hope  from  our  politicians  of 
anything  good,  or  wise,  or  patriotic." 

This  refers  to  the  wild  vote  of  approval 
given  to  the  President's  sudden  declara- 
tion of  war  by  both  houses  of  Congress, 
for  it  was,  we  think,  the  first  time  since 
man  invented  the  bow  and  arrow  that  a 
nation  declared  for  war  without  delibera- 
tion. There  is  no  African  tribe  so  low  in 
civilization  as  not  to  deliberate  or  hold 
some  kind  of  council  before  putting  the 
community  in  peril  through  a  challenge 
to  a  powerful  enemy.  We  care  not  what 
the  cause  may  be,  it  is  human  to  delibe- 
rate before  fighting,  bestial  to  bite  with- 


out caring  what  follows.  It  was  no  Mug- 
wump who  said,  two  thousand  years  ago, 
*'What  king,  as  he  goeth  to  encounter 
another  king  in  war,  will  not  sit  down  first 
and  take  counsel  whether  he  is  able  with 
ten  thousand  to  meet  him  that  cometh 
against  him  with  twenty  thousand  ?  Or 
else,  while  the  other  is  yot  a  great  way 
off,  he  sendeth  an  ambassage,  and  asketh 
conditions  of  peace." 

Therefore,  we  think  it  may  fairly  be  said 
to  the  young  men  of  the  country  that  they 
will  study  in  vain  sociology,  and  econo- 
mics, and  statecraft,  and  vainly  get  their 
patriotism  on  the  boil  for  war,  unless  they  ' 
can  put  a  better  order  of  men,  more  ra- 
tional, more  instructed,  and  more  upright, 
in  charge  of  our  public  affairs.  We  can- 
not go  on  very  long  out  of  all  intellectual 
relations  with  the  rest  of  Christendom, 
calling  wise  what  they  call  foolish,  wrong 
what  they  call  right,  and  treating  as  male- 
factors the  men  whom  they  treat  as  bene- 
factors. There  has  been  no  special  crea- 
tion either  of  men  or  things  for  the  bene- 
fit of  America.  Human  reason  and  human 
experience  work  here  in  just  the  same  way 
as  elsewhere.  Two  straight  lines  cannot 
enclose  a  space  in  any  part  of  this  conti- 
nent. It  cannot  be  true  here,  any  more 
than  elsewhere,  that  people  whom  no  wise 
man  would  think  of  consulting  about  any 
private  affair  are  fit  to  regulate  the  affairs 

of  a  nation  of  70,000,000  in  peace  or  war. 

/Cehind  the  currency  question,  and  the 
;ariff  question,  and  the  Monroe  question, 
ind  every  other  question  which  agitates 
:his  community  to-day,  lies  the  question 
>f  more  honest  and  competent  national 

i  ^d  State  legislators. 


THE   NEW    ''AMERICAN''    DOCTRINE, 

Sbn ATOB  Sbwsll  of  Ncw  Jersey  introduc- 
ed resolutions  on  Thursday  affirming  that 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  originally  pro- 
pounded as  a  warning  to  the  allied  Powers 
of  Europe  not  to  attempt  to  subdue  the 
revolting  colonies  of  Spain ;  that  the 
true  ground  on  which  it  is  based  is  our 
interests,  and  our  interests  only ;  that 
neither  by  the  Monroe  Doctrine  nor  any 
official  declaration  have  we  ever  come  un- 
der  any  pledge  to  any  Power  or  estate  on 
this  continent  that  binds  us  to  act  merely 
for  their  protection  against  invasion  or 
encroachment  by  any  other  Power;  and 
that  when  a  case  arises  in  which  a  Euro- 
pean Power  proposes  to  acquire  territory 
by  invasion  or  conquest,  it  is  then  for  us 
to  determine  whether  our  safety  and  our 
integrity  demand  that  we  shall  resist  such 
action  by  armed  force  if  necessary.  * 

These  affirmations  are  not  left  by  Mr. 
Sewell  to  stand  as  mere  abstractions.  He 
goes  on  to  connect  them  with  the  imme- 
diate crisis  by  affirming: 

*'  That  the  Executive  has  pressed  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  beyond  what  was  contemplated  at  the 
time  of  its  announcement,  and  that  the  resul- 
tant sequence  of  the  positions  thus  taken 
seems  to  be  a  committal  of  this  Government 
to  a  protectorate  over  Mexico  and  the  Central 
and  South  American  States.  That  this  woold 
be  mo9t  unwise  and  dangerous,  and  would  vlo> 


Jan.  23,  1896] 


Tlie   INTation. 


71 


lato  the  aoand  and  well-«8tabli8bed  policy  that 
we  should  avoid  all  entangliDg  alUanoeft  with 
foreign  Powers,  whether  they  be  European  or 
American.  That  this  action  was  premature, 
looking  to  the  history  of  the  controversy,  and 
Inopportune  in  view  of  the  bnslnen  and  finan- 
cial condition  of  the  country. 

**That  neither  Congpress  nor  the  country 
can  be,  nor  has  been,  committed  by  the  action 
or  position  of  the  Executive  Department  in 
reference  to  the  Venezuelan  boundary  contro- 
versy, as  to  the  course  to  be  pursued  when  the 
time  shall  have  arrived  for  a  final  determina- 
tion. It  will  then  be  our  province  and  our 
dul7  to  adopt  such  a  line  of  policy  and  to  take 
such  action  as  may  be  then  demanded  by  our 
sense  of  duty  to  the  country,  and  by  a  due 
regard  for  its  honor  and  dignity,  the  welfare 
and  safety  of  our  people,  and  the  integrity  of 
our  instit^ons.'* 

If  8emtor  Seweirareeolutiona  had  been 
introduced  a  year  ago,  when  there  was  no 
particular  excitement  on  hand,  they  would 
probably  have  been  adopted  without  de- 
bate, or,  if  objected  to  at  all,  would  have 
been  opposed  on  the  ground  of  being  a 
needless  affirmation  of  the  undisputed  po- 
licy of  the  Gk)y6mment.  In  the  absence 
of  any  particular  stirring  of  the  war  spirit, 
founded  upon  misinformation,  everybody 
who  paid  any  attention  to  the  matter  (ex- 
cept, perhaps,  the  Manoa  Company)  would 
have  said  that  Mr.  Sewell  was  right  in  his 
interpretation  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine, 
but  that  its  reaffirmation  was  perhaps 
needless  and  a  waste  of  time.  His  reso- 
lutions derive  their  chief  significance  from 
the  change  of  public  opinion  that  has 
taken  place  since  the  President's  mes- 
sage was  sent  in.  They  would  have  found 
no  place  in  the  Senate's  proceedings  un 
less  there  had  been  abundant  popular  sup- 
port for  them.  How  many  recruits  Mr. 
Sewell  may  find  among  his  Republican 
colleagues  it  is  impossible  to  predict. 
Probably  most  of  them  would  come  to  his 
support  if  they  had  not  made  such  a  dis- 
graceful exhibition  when  they  allowed 
themselves  to  be  stampeded  by  the  Presi- 
dent They  will  naturally  seek  refuge  in 
the  other  resolution  reported  on  Monday 
by  the  committee  on  foreign  relations, 
which  reads  as  follows : 

**  Resolved,  That  the  United  States  of  Ame- 
rica rsaffirms  and  confirms  the  doctrine  and 
principles  promulgated  bv  President  Monroe 
in  his  message  of  December  2,  1828,  and  de- 
clares that  it  will  assert  and  maintain  that  doc- 
trine and  those  principles,  and  will  regard  any 
infringement  thereof,  and  particularly  any  at- 
tempt by  any  European  Power  to  take  or  ac- 
quire any  new  territory  on  the  American  con- 
tioent,  or  any  island  adjacent  thereto,  or 
any  right  of  sovereignty  or  dominion  in  the 
same,  In  any  case  or  instance  as  to  which  the 
United  States  shall  deem  such  attempt  to  be 
dangerous  to  its  peace  or  safety,  by  or  through 
force,  purchase,  cession,  occupation,  pledge, 
colonization,  protectorate,  or  by  control  of  the 
easement  in  canal  or  any  other  means  of 
transit  across  the  American  isthmus,  whetheV 
under  unfounded  pretension  of  right,  in  cases  of 
alleged  boundary  disputes,  or  under  any  other 
unfounded  pretensions,  as  the  manifestation  of 
an  unfrisodly  disposition  towards  the  United 
Statea,  and  as  an  interposition  which  it  would 
be  Impossihle,  in  any  form,  for  the  United 
Stales  to  regard  with  indifference.*' 

As  there  ia  no  boundary  in  certain  re- 
gions between  Great  Britain  and  Vene- 
inela,  and  as  the  boundary  is  disputed  in 
other  places,  this  is  virtually  an  invita- 
tSoD  to  Venezuela  to  claim  any  line  she 
piesaes,  even  the  whole  of  British  Quiana, 
if  the  Dictator  for  the  time  being  ahouki 


see  fit  to  do  so,  and  a  prohibition  to 
Great  Britain  to  dispute  any  such  claim 
on  pain  of  war  with  the  United  States. 
It  overrules  the  position  taken  in  this 
matter  by  successive  Secretaries  of  State 
during  twenty  years  of  controversy,  and 
also  that  taken  and  solemnly  promulgat- 
ed by  the  President  within  the  last  two 
months  in  a  message  which,  as  it  stood, 
was  considered  sufficiently  warlike.  It 
overrules,  also,  Monroe's  admission  of  the 
legitimacy  of  the  European  colonies  al- 
ready existing  on  this  continent  at  the 
time  he  compounded  his  doctrine — for  a 
notice  to  a  colony  that  it  must  not  dis- 
pute any  territorial  claim  which  any 
Spanish-American  neighbor  may  make, 
is  virtually  notice  to  quit.  It  makes  that 
colony's  existence  illegitimate  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes. 

This  notice,  too,  which,  if  addressed  to 
us,  would  be  considered  an  insult  of  the 
most  flagrant  character,  that  would  range 
even  the  most  peaceable  of  us  on  the  side 
of  war  in  spite  of  want  of  preparation,  is 
addressed  to  one  of  the  strongest  Powers 
in  the  world,  certainly  also  one  of  the 
proudest  and  most  warlike,  and  most 
famed  for  tenacity  and  resources,  which 
is  already  in  a  state  of  irritation  over  this 
very  question;  and  it  is  addressed  by  a 
nation  which  is  borrowing  money  quarter- 
ly to  keep  its  demand  notes  at  par,  has  no 
army  at  all  and  only  a  very  smalL-aavy; 
and  it  is  addressed  in  defiance  of  the  pro- 
tests of  the  great  body  of  intelligent,  so- 
ber-minded, and  religious  persons  of  all 
callings,  who  may  be  considered  the  mind 
and  conscience  of  **  this  our  nation."  We 
lean  recall  no  case  in  history  in  which  any 
government,  big  or  little,  has  submitted 
to  such  terms  except  after  complete  de- 
feat in  a  bloody  conflict.  They  might  have 
been  presented  to  Thiers  by  Bismarck,  but 
only  after  Sedan  and  the  capture  of  Paris. 

We  do  not  need  to  comment  on  them  at 
any  length,  or  indeed  to  comment  on  them 
at  all,  as  far  as  the  readers  of  the  Nation 
are  concerned.  Upon  Jingoes  any  com- 
ment or  argument  would  be  wasted.  We 
have  for  the  past  two  months  read  the  re- 
marks of  a  large  number  of  their  papers 
on  this  Venezuelan  dispute  and  the  Pre- 
sident's message,  and  have  never^/ound 
in  one  of  them  any  ratiocinative'  defence 
either  of  the  ^onroe  Doctrine  or  of  the 
Cleveland  Doctrine^  All  objections  to  it^ 
made  by  sober-minded  people  are  generally 
met,  by  a  Jingo,  with  loud  yells,  and  pro- 
fuse vituperation,  and  invitations  to  quit 
the  countf|r  if  you  do  not  like  it.  "  Do 
you  not  see,"  you  say  to  him,  **  that  such 
and  such  consequences  will  follow  your 
attempt  to  put  your  Doctrine  in  force  as 
you  understand  it  f "  **  I  don't  care  a 
rap,"  he  replies,  *' about  consequences; 
that's  the  way  I  feel.  Huroo,  huroo ! " 
and  then  he  jumps  about  like  a  maniac, 
and  tries  to  stand  on  his  head. 

We  need  hardly  remark  that  most  of 
the  emanations  from  Congress  touching 
fdreign  policy  just  now  are  to  be  judged 
by  much  the  samejulea  of  interpretation 


we  should  apply  to  the  resolutions  of  one 
of  D  ••  s's  or  Sovereign's  assemblies.  We 
must  not  consider  them  as  acts  of  govern- 
ment or  expressions  of  national  policy. 
We  must  examine  them  as  agencies  for 
the  delusion  of  home  voters — as  part,  in 
fact,  of  the  general  humbug  of  campaigns. 
Each  party  just  now,  within  six  months 
of  the  •Presidential  nomination,  cannot 
bear  to  let  this  dispute  with  England  pass 
away  without  getting  some  capital  out  of 
it.  A  peaceful  settlement  at  this  moment 
would  leave  all  the  profits  of  the  escapade 
with  Cleveland  and  Olney.  Something 
has,  therefore,  to  be  done  to  extract  from 
it  a  reasonable  usufruct  for  the  Republi- 
cans. So  they  are  *' going  him  one  bet- 
ter." Mr.  Gresham  said:  *'You  will 
surely  arbitrate  this  matter."  Mr.  Olney 
said :  '*  You  must  arbitrate  or  you  will  be 
killed."  Mr.  Cleveland  said:  **Therespon- 
sibiiity  of  this  is  awful,  but  I  can  bear  it" 
Now,  Lodge  &  Co.  say :  '*  You  must  get 
out  of  this  continent  before  the  conven- 
tion meets."  This  is  the  precise  way  in 
which  Debs  approaches  great  questions. 
They  have  no  difficulties  for  him. 

All  we  have  to  say  about  it  to-day  is  to 
ask  patriotic  Americans  whether  they  be- 
lieve that  it  is  possible  for  free  govern- 
ment, if  carried  on  by  such  men  on  such 
lines,  to  be  permanent  or  peaceable.  This 
is  the  question  of  the  hour.  It  is,  we  ven- 
ture to  assert,  present  to  the  mind  of 
every  thinking  man  and  woman  in  the 
country.  The  late  chairman  of  the  com- 
mitf  ee  on  foreign  affairs  of  the  Senate,  and 
a  present  member  of  the  committee,  was 
present  at  a  public  dinner  in  this  city 
within  a  month,  intoxicated,  and  delivered 
himself  of  an  incoherent  speech,  part  oral, 
part  written,  which  lasted  one  hour  and 
fifty  minutes,  and  was  hiccoughed  out  to 
a  deriding,  hooting,  abd  msultmg  audi- 
ence. Yet  this  man  is  one  of  those  who 
have  charge  of  the  **  national  honor  "  at 
Washington  to-day,  and  was  sent  abroad 
in  1892  as  our  representative  to  sit  with 
gentlemen  aAd  scholars  in  a  great  inter- 
national tribunal  1 


DANGER  SIGNALS  IN  NOVELS. 

Mb.  TfBpis  Hardt*b  latest  novel  has 
been  condemned,  on  moral  grounds,  by 
critics  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  with 
a  unanimity  quite  unparalleled  in  the  case 
of  a  writer  of  his  deserved  repute.  As  to 
the  justice  of  the  strictures  made  on  his 
*  Jude  the  Obscure '  we  will  not  here  ex- 
press an  opinion;  but  the  defence  which 
he  sets  up,  or  which  his  friends,  at  any 
rate,  set  up,  is  worth  examining.  Ob- 
jectors to  the  propriety  of  many  things  in 
the  novel  are  referred  to  the  preface  of 
the  u^expurgated  edition.  There  it  is 
distinct^  stated  that  the  book  is  *'a 
novel  aci^ressed  by  a  man  to  men  and 
women  of  full  age,"  and  that,  this  being 
remembered,' the  author  is  **not  aware 
that  there  is  any.thing  in  the  handling  to 
which  exception  can  be  taken."  In  other 
words,  the  inference  is  that  l^  openly  f 


72 


Tlie   IN^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1595 


pudiating  the  obligations  of  a  writer  vir- 
ginibus  puerisque,  you  succeBsfuIly  es- 
cape them. 

Ad  obvious  difficulty  with  this  infer- 
ence, at  the  start,  is  that  the  repudiation 
is  not  open  enough.  It  appears  in  a  pre- 
face. But  the  majority  of  novel-readers 
are  as  impatient  a^  Bacon  of  **  prefaces 
and  passages  and  excusations.'*  Many 
young  women  invariably  begin  reading 
their  novel  at  thf»  last  chapter;  some  be- 
gin in  the  middli^  and  read  both  ways; 
but  who  ever  heard  of  one  reading  a  pre- 
face ?  The  danger-sigDal,  to  be  truly  ef- 
fective, should  have  been  placed  conspicu- 
ously on  the  cover.  Parents  should  have 
been  warned  in  large  type  to  keep  the 
book  under  lock  and  key ;  or  dealers  re- 
quired to  demand  a  certificate  from  all 
purchasers  that  they  were  **  of  full  age.*' 
With  such  precautions,  no  awkward  mis- 
takes would  have  been  popsible.  The 
apothecaries  do  these  things  better.  On 
their  poisonous  prescriptions  they  put  a 
suggestive  skull  and  cross-bones,  or  take 
pains  to  sell  their  carbolic  acid  only  in  a 
roughened  bottle,  so  that  a  man  reaching 
out  in  the  dark  for  a  sedative  dose  will 
not  get  one  far  too  effective. 

But  a  more  serious  objection  is  that  any 
warning  of  the  kind,  however  emphatic 
and  plain-«poken,  cannot  fail  to  be,  under 
a  system  of  perfectly  free  buying  and  sell- 
ing, provocative  and  alluring  rather  than 
preventive.  For  every  parent  put  on  his 
guard,  for  every  ingenuous  youth  turned 
away,  ten  buyers  and  readers  will  be  at- 
tracted who  might  have  let  the  book  en- 
tirely alone  but  for  the  hint  that  it  was  no 
better  than  it  should  be.  The  way  in 
which  human  nature,  being  what  it  is~ 
especially  youthful  human  nature,  being 
what  it  is— reacts  under  such  hinted  pro- 
hibitions and  obscure  intimations  of 
danger,  is  perfectly  well  known.  The 
warning  is  always  read  as  a  challenge. 
Old  experience  may  wag  its  head  as  sage- 
ly as  it  pleases,  and  advise  hot  blood  to 
wait  till  it  is  cooled  before  doing  or  read- 
ing certain  things;  but  it  is  of  the  nature 
of  hot  blood  to  want  to  do  and  read  things 
immediately,  the  sooner  the  more  risky. 
To  prescribe  the  reading  of  books  is  a 
much  more  certain  way  of  insuring  their 
neglect,  with  a  kind  of  settled  repugnance, 
than  to  forbid  their  reading. 

The  futility  of  such  warnings  in  other 
fields  of  literature  than  fiction  has  often 
been  demonstrated.  Take  a  theological 
book  like  « The  Kernel  and  the  Husk.' 
The  author,  Dr.  E.  A.  Abbott,  in  his 
.  preface,  warns  away  all  those  not  troubled 
by  doubts  about  the  supernatural.  He 
would  disturb  no  one's  faith.  But  how  is 
such  a  notice  certain  to  operate?  As- 
suredly by  making  many  a  careless  turner 
of  the  leaves  say  to  himself,  «•  Why  should 
there  be  any  doubts  about  the  superna- 
tural? If  some  people  have  them,  why 
shouldn't  I?  Let's  see  what  this  man  has 
to  say."  Thus  the  book  gets  a  wider 
hearing  through  the  very  fact  of  profess- 
ing to  be  addressed  only  to  a  narrow  circle. 


Every  one  knows,  also,  how  such  warnings 
fail  to  work,  or  in  a  little  while  lose  all 
their  terror,  in  the  case  of  suspicious  for- 
eign novels.  "  French  novels  "  may  have 
been  for  a  time  a  red  flag  to  make  a  Saxon 
reader  reverse  and  put  on  the  brakes.  We 
say  nothing  about  the  difficulties  of  a  for- 
eign tongue  as  helping  on  the  temporary 
taboo,  for,  of  course,  we  know  that  every- 
body except  ourselves  is  perfectly  at  home 
in  French.  But  it  was  not  long  before  the 
age  of  the  translator  dawned,  and  now 
the  masterpieces  of  French  and  Russian 
fiction  are  found  everywhere,  their  inde- 
cencies covered  with  nothing  except  a 
garb  of  unintelligible  English.  In  fact, 
danger  signals  of  this  sort  are  very  like 
those  which  the  sagacious  McKinley  had 
put  upon  foreign-made  goods.  He  was 
convinced  that  patriotic  and  virtuous 
shoppers,  seeing  the  legend  "Made  in 
France  "  stamped  upon  otherwise  seduc- 
tive articles,  would  turn  away  in  hdtror 
and  call  loudly  for  American  products  at 
twice  the  price.  But  it  did  not  work  that 
way;  and  the  student  of  books  should 
learn  from  this  profound  student  of  mar- 
kets that  to  stamp  goods  or  books  '*  haute 
nouveaut6  da  Paris"  is  not  to  deter  but 
to  incite  buyers. 

We  cannot  but  think  that  it  is  a  serious 
loss  with  which  the  English  novel  is 
threatened  in  going  over  to  French  fash- 
ions. In  France,  novels  and  series  are 
stamped  **pour  lea  jeunes  fiUes,"  and  no 
one  thinks  anything  of  it,  because  every- 
body understands  that  all  novels  not  so 
marked  are  distinctly  not  for  '*les  jeunes 
fiUes."  Such  discriminations  have  not 
been  necessary  in  English  fiction  until 
lately.  The  English  novel  began  in  in- 
decency, because  it  began  in  an  age  of 
loose  manners  and  speech,  and  also  be- 
cause it  was  understood  to  be  written  for 
men  and  clubs,  not  for  women  and  girls. 
The  Rev.  Laurence  Sterne  had  no  satis- 
factory answer  to  give  when,  asking  a 
lady  if  she  had  read  his  '  Tristram  Shan- 
dy,' he  was  told,  "I  have  not,  Mr.  Sterne, 
and,  to  be  plain  with  you,  I  am  informed 
it  is  not  proper  for  female  perusal."  Few 
novels  at  that  time  were  ccmsidered  fit 
for  female  perusal.  But  the  important 
English  fiction  of  this  century  has  been, 
until  within  a  decade,  of  a  kind  that 
might  safely  be  left  to  free  publishing 
and  reading  without  the  intervention  of 
censorship,  either  governmental  or  paren- 
tal. We  neither  affirm  nor  deny  thlit  this 
has  resulted  in  a  limited,  a  truncated  Eng- 
lish fiction,  as  compared  with  fcnreign 
work  in  the  same  field.  We  leave  it  an 
open  question  whether  a  change  from  the 
old  custom  may  not  signify  a  gain  for  art; 
but  we  are  certain  that  it  means  a  loss  to 
our  comfort,  to  our  traditions,  to  our 
manners. 


A  BRITISH  GUIANA  COLONIST  UPON 
THE  VENEZUELAN  BOUNDARY  QUES- 
TION. 

GaoBOBTOWH,  Jaxmary  0, 18Q6. 

To  -aaBDoiato  t^  name  of  the  Great  Republic 


with  that  of  a  British  coloDy,  in  a  question  of 
intematioDal  politics,  may  sound  like  the  cou- 
pling of  Alexander  the  Great  wdth  Alexander 
the  Ck>pper8mith.    AH  the  same  is  it  a  fact 
that  the  most  friendly  relations  have  for  many 
years  pest  subsisted  betwen  the  eftizens  of  the 
United  States  and   the  colonists  of   British 
Guiana.    This  good  understanding  is  the  result 
of  a  loDg-continaed  trade  between  the  two 
comitries,  to  their  mutual  advantage.    That 
trade  was  at  first  carried  on  between  Dutch 
coloDists  in  what  was  in  those  days  a  part  of 
Dutch  Guiana,  and  British  colonists  in  what 
afterwards  became  the  United  States  of  Ame- 
rica.   With  Portland  (Me.),  Boston,  New  York, 
Philadelphia,  and  Baltimore,  and  with  Feman- 
dina  (Fia.)  and  other  ports  in  the  South,  Brit- 
ish  Gaiana  has  for  years  had  commercial  trans- 
actions, exchanging  its  sugars  for  cargoes  of 
breadstuffs,  lumber,  tobacco,  i(«  and  iced  pro- 
visions, mules  and  other  animals,  liardware, 
notions,  and  things  in  general.    The  tariff  of 
the  colony  does  not  impose  any  discriminating 
duties  upon  American  goods,  which  enter  the 
colonial  market  00  the  same  terms  as  do  Brit- 
ish goods.    Money  matters  between  the  com- 
mercial men  of  the  two  countries  are  liqui- 
dated with  hardly  a  reference  to  a  court  of 
justice.    Should  the  American  citizen  need  to 
assert  his  rights  by  legal  process,  he  would  find 
equal  justice  meted  out  to  him  in  the  courts  of 
the  colony;  and  so  would  a  Venezuelan.    In 
colonial  society,  the  American  is  w^comed  as 
a  kinsman.    He  may  travel  from  one  end  of 
British  Guiana  to  the  other  and  find  himself, 
everywhere,  at  least  as  safe  as  if  he  were  in 
the  United  States;  and  so  might  a  Venezuelan, 
and  he  would  find  even  more  safety  and  free- 
dom than  in  his  own  country.    Among  thoee 
who  have  taken  a  share  in  the  infantile  gold 
industry  of  the  colony,  are  some  American 
citizens  and  one  or  two  Venezuelans.    Not  a 
single  soldier  is  stationed  in  British  Guiana; 
and  yet  in  no  South  American  republic  does 
order  reign  so  peacefully  as  in  this  quiet  colony. 

The  people  of  British  Guiana  have  gone  on 
developing  (very  slowly,  it  is  true)  the  re- 
sources of  their  land;  living  at  peace  with 
their  neighbors— the  Dutch  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  Venezuelans  on  the  other.  Although 
they  have  been  from  time  to  time  subjected  to 
insult  from  the  Venezuelans,  no  difference  was 
shown  in  the  treatment  of  persons  of  the  latter 
nationality  living  in  the  colony  or  coming 
there  to  do  business  with  its  inliabitants.  The 
British  colonists  have  taken  no  part  in  sup- 
porting the  ever-recurring  revolutions  of  that 
unsettled  republic.  On  the  contrary,  for  many 
years  a  provision  has  appeared  in  the  colonial 
customs-duties  law  that  duty  shall  be  paid 
upon  gunpowder  upon  its  landing  in  the  colo- 
ny, and  that  no  drawback  of  duty  upon  gun- 
powder should  be  allowed.  This  special  pro- 
vision originated  in  the  wish  of  the  Govern- 
ment of  British  Guiana  to  discourage  the  ex- 
portation of  gunpowder  to  Venezuela  during 
the  troublous  times  that  so  often  befall  that 
state.  This  is  not  urged  as  any  vef y  virtuous 
act,  but  it  is  certainly  not  an  uufriendly  one. 
Then,  the  Venezuelan  State  of  Guiana,  which 
adjoins  the  British  colony,  has  often  been  in 
revolt  against  the  authority  of  the  President 
for  the  time  being  of  the  central  Government; 
but  no  British  Sam  Houston  has  appeared  upon 
the  scene  to  repeat  the  precedent  of  Texas,  al- 
though British  subjects  have  for  years  been 
numerous  in  that  State,  numbers  of  persons 
having  gone  thither  from  the  West  Indian 
Islands  to  work  at  the  rich  gold-fields  in  that 
country. 

The  British' colonists  have  suddenly  had  1 


Jan.  23,  1896] 


The    IN^ation. 


73 


attflotioii  distracted  from  the  nuUdiig  of  their 
worUI-famout  sugar,  the  **I)emerara  crystals,** 
from  catting  their  splendid  timber, the  **green. 
heart,**  and  from  the  working  of  their  gold- 
fields^  by  learning  that  they  stand  charged 
with  patting  themselyes  in  contrayeotion  of 
the  Monroe  Doctrine*  which,  it  appears,  gives 
a  mysterioos  power  to  the  people  of  the  United 
Htates  to  take  away  from  British  colonists 
territory  to  which  they  consider  themselres  as 
rightfnUy  entitled  as  were  the  British  colonists 
of  North  America  to  the  colony  of  New  York 
in  the  old  days  before  the  Beyolation  of  1778. 
Haying  been  carefully  taoght  the  ten  com- 
mandments in  their  youth,  those  colonists  are 
much  shocked  by  the  pronounced  determina- 
tion of  Brother  Jonathan  to  outrage  the 
eighth,  for  ''Thou  shalt  not  steal  I*'  would 
seem  to  apply  to  lands  as  weU  as  to  goods.  Of 
course,  the  coJonists  know  that  Americans 
haye  been  led  to  take  up  a  hostile  position 
upon  the  question  of  the  Venezuelan  boundary 
by  the  importunacy  with  which  it  has  been 
misrepresented  to  them  that,  in  this  matter, 
the  colonists  of  British  Ouiana  have  not  them- 
selyes obseryed  the  eighth  commandment, 
despite  their  early  instruction.  But  here  we 
haye  the  case  that  Victor  Hugo  pithily  de- 
scribed, where  an  unfounded  charge  is  taken  to 
be  true  if  repeated  often  enough.  **If  some 
one  accused  me  of  stealiog  the  towers  of  Notre 
Dame,  and  repeated  the  accusation  often,  I 
should  haye  to  run  away  from  Paris,  eyen 
though  the  towers  were  to  be  seen  standing; 
for,**  added  Victor  Hugo,  '*  no  one  would  be. 
lieye  in  my  innocence.**  80  it  is  that,  after 
lustily  crying  **8top  thief  1*'  for  some  years, 
the  Venezuelans  have  led  the  Americans  to  be- 
lieye  that  British  colonists  have  been  robbing 
that  nation  of  part  of  its  territory. 

That  there  must  be  two  sides  to  this  question 
can  easily  be  seen  by  two  items  relating  to  it 
that  appeared  in  the  Daily  Chronicle^  a  news- 
paper of  Georgetown,  the  capital  of  British 
Oniana,  in  December  last.  On  the  34th  of 
that  month  was  published  a  cutting  from 
an  American  journal,  in  which,  telegraph- 
ing from  Washington,  on  the  4th,  to  New 
York,  a  correspondent  reported  the  brave 
words  of  Representatiye  Liylngston  of  Geor- 
gia upon  the  situation  in  the  terms  follow- 
ing: 

"Representative  Livingston  of  Georgia, 
who  introduced  the  joint  resolution  yesterday 
looking  to  the  formation  of  a  Congressional 
oommittee  to  investigate  the  boundary  qoea- 
tion,  was  asked  to-day  what  the  United  States 
ought  to  do  if  Great  firiuin  declines  to  arbi- 
trace.  *  Why,  flght  her,  of  course,*  was  the 
emphatic  reply.  'No  other  course  will  com- 
port  with  our  dignity  and  self-respect.  Vene- 
suela  is  not  to  be  considered  in  this  matter. 
Or^ai  Brilain  has  violated  th€  Monroe  Doc* 
trine.  She  U  continually  acauirina  addition- 
al territory  in  South  America.  We  cannot 
and  must  not  permit  this.  We  should  tto  to 
warflrst.*** 

There  yon  have  in  the  words  italicised  the 
rssolt  of  Venenelan  misrepresentations.  Rep- 
rssentative  Livingston  says  :  '*  Great  Britain 
has  violated  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  She  is  oonti- 
sually  acquiring  additional  territory  in  South 
America.**  Representative  Livingston  has  been 
misinformed. 

The  sscond  item  that  has  been  referred  to 
appeared  in  the  Georgetown  daily  paper  al- 
rsady  mentioned^  on  the  27th  of  December 
last*  and  took  the  form  of  a  public  news  tale- 
gram  from  New  York  to  British  Guiana,  as 
follows: 

♦•  Niw  York,  December  36. 

"latalligeooefrom  Madrid  announces  that 


the  nawspaper  El  Naekmal  pubUahea  an  arti- 
cle strongly  advocating  the  establishment  of 
an  entente  between  Spain  and  the  United 
States  regarding  Venezuela,  arguing  that 
Venetmewe  elaime  against  British  Guiana  are 
identieal  with  the  ancient  onee  of  ^min 
against  England. 

'*  The  London  Standard  publishes  a  despatch 
from  Madrid  in  which  it  asserts  that  the  arti- 
cle appearing  in  El  Naeianal  is  an  inspired  one 
and  Is  causing  considerable  sensation.^ 

Now,  here  we  have  the  Spanish  statement, 
one  clearly  hostile  to  England  in  motive,  and 
made  with  the  intention  of  currying  favor  with 
the  United  States;  with  self-interest  at  the  bot- 
tom  of  it,  as  regards  possible  intervention  by 
America  on  behalf  of  Cuba.  And  what  is  the 
effect  of  this  unfriendly  pronouncement  of  the 
**  inspired  **  iVocionat^  This,  that  Venezuela's 
claims  against  British  Guiana  **  are  identical 
with  the  ancient  ones  of  Spain  against  Eng- 
land.** Surely,  this  statement  of  the  case, 
given  with  all  the  weight  of  the  evidence  of  a 
hostile  witness,  does  not  suf^rt  the  allegation 
of  Representative  Livingston,  that  Great  Bri- 
tain "  is  continually  acquiring  additional  terri- 
tory in  South  America.**  The  Spanish  state* 
ment  shows  that  the  **  claims**  are  '* ancient** 
ones;  that  the  " claims *'  are  ** identical'*;  and 
that,  while  Great  Britain  was  in  possession, 
which  used  to  be  regarded  as  being  nine  points 
of  the  law,  the  Spanish  nation  '* claimed** 
against  Great  Britain*s  possession.  The  alleged 
'*  claims  **  of  Spain  were  never  asserted  against 
Great  Britain  except  on  Spanish  maps.  But, 
long  years  before  Great  Britain  possessed  the 
land  now  known  as  British  Guiana,  the  Dutch 
had  owned  it,  and  there  hi^  been  international 
contests  over  its  possession  between  France 
and  England,  of  which  further  notice  will  be 
taken  later  on  in  these  notes.  Meanwhile,  let  it 
be  noted  that,  so  far  from  Great  Britain  merely 
acting  in  this  matter  the  cowardly  part  of  a 
bully  towards  a  weak  nation,  the  British  Gov^ 
emment  enjoyed  its  right  to  the  possession  of 
the  territory  of  British  Guiana  unquestioned, 
diplomatically,  by  a  powerful  nation  such  as 
Spain  then  was,  with  her  then  vast  dependen- 
cies in  the  New  Wwld,  and  at  a  time  when  the 
Spaniards  had  the  power  of  the  great  Napo- 
leon at  their  back.  To  enforce  these  claims, 
with  aU  their  **  ancient  and  fish-like  smell,'* 
the  Venezuelans  would  bully  the  colony  of 
British  Guiana,  but  that  the  whole  power  of 
the  British  empire  is  at  the  back  of  the  colony. 
The  Venezuelans  assert  ** claims**  that  Spain 
never  made  against  Great  Britain  when  what 
is  now  Venezuela  belonged  to  Spain. 

The  British  Government  has  expressed  its 
willingness  to  submit  to  arbitration  the  ques 
tion  of  the  boundary  of  British  Guiana,  out- 
side of  the  Schomburgk  line;  and  to  this  deci- 
sion the  colonists  willingly  bow.  To  give  up 
territory  witliin  the  Schomburgk  line  would 
lead,  step  by  step,  to  a  demand  for  the  surren- 
der of  the  whole  colony,  as  the  application  of 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  might  from  time  to  time 
be  capriciously  stretched.  To  make  clear  to 
the  world  how  just  is  the  title  of  Great  Britain 
to  territory  in  its  possession,  it  will  be  well  to 
take  note  of  the  several  occasions  on  which 
those  territories  were  captured  from  the 
Dutch. 

On  four  several  occasions  did  England  take 
from  the  Dutch  that  pari  of  the  territory  now 
claimed  by  Venesoela.  In  1665  England  and 
Holland  beiog  at  war.  Lord  Willoughby,  the 
Governor  of  Barbados,  sent  an  expedition 
against  the  Dutch  colonies  in  Guiana.  The 
success  of  the  English  was  at  first  complete. 
What,  at  that  time,  was  regarded  as  the  boun- 
dary on  the  left  side  of  the  Essaqoibot    Letooe 


of  those  who  took  part  in  the  expedition  an- 
swer: 

**  This  yeare  {IWbl  the  English  could  boast  of 
the  pospession  of  all  that  pMt  of  Ouiana  abut- 
ting on  the  Atlantick  Ocean,  from  Cayan  on 
the  South  East  to  Oronoque  on  the  North 
West  (except  a  small  colonic  on  the  River 
Berbishees),  which  is  noe  lesse  than  six  hun- 
dred miles.** 

The  colony  in  Berbice  remained  in  posses- 
sion of  the  Dutch.  France  joined  Holland  in 
the  war  against  England,  and  it  is  spedfically 
mentioned  by  the  same  authority  that  the 
settlements  of  Essequibo,  Pomeroon,  and  Mo- 
nica, **  indured  great  misery,  in  a  long  siege 
by  the  French.^  The  manuscript  account  of 
the  expedition  by  Major  Soott  is  prsserved  in 
the  British  Museum  (Sloane  MS8.  8662). 

In-the  end,  the  Dutch  recaptured  their  set- 
tlements, and  also  took  the  colony  of  (Surinam, 
which  up  to  that  time  had  been  an  English 
colony.  By  the  third  article  of  the  Treaty  of 
Breda,  in  1667,  it  was  provided  that 

**  each  party  shall  bold  for  time  to  come,  In 
full  right  of  sovereignty,  propriety,  and  pos- 
session, all  such  countries,  isles,  towns,  forts, 
places,  and  colonies  as,  whether  during  this 
war  or  before,  have  been  taken  and  kept  from 
the  other  by  force  of  arms  and  in  what  man- 
ner soever,  and  that  as  they  possessed  and  en- 
joyed them  the  10th  day  of  May  last.** 

In  this  manner  were  the  Dutch  confirmed  in 
their  rights  to  their  ancient  settlements  be- 
tween the  Corentyne  and  the  Orinoco.  Neither 
France  nor  England  dreamed  of  asking  for  the 
assent  of  Spain  to  these  transactions.  Spanish 
claims  had  not  been  asserted  during  the  mili- 
tary operations  between  the  contending  na- 
tions, in  those  settlements  in  Guiana.  How 
solemnly  Enghuid  felt  herself  bound  by  the 
terms  of  article  8  of  the  Treaty  ,of  Breda,  his- 
tory attests.  Sir  John  Harman,  the  English 
admiral,  and  Gen.  Willoughby  not  being  at 
the  time  aware  of  the  fact  that  a  treaty  had 
been  ent*ired  into,  had  actually  retaken  Suri- 
nam from  the  Dutch,  and  that  colony  had 
again  come  under  an  English  governor.  On 
news  of  this  reaching  Eaglaod,  the  Eling  sent 
out  orders  to  restore  Surinam  to  the  Dutch, 
and  this  was  promptly  done.  England,  having 
acted  with  such  scrupulous  good  faith  in  her 
observance  of  the  rights  in  Guiana  acquired  by 
the  Dutch  under  the  Treaty  of  Breda,  cannot 
be  expected  to  ignore  those  rights  now  that  by 
the  cbaDces  of  war  she  has  herself  succeeded  to 
the  enjoyment  of  a  itbare  In  them. 

Nor  roust  we  lose  sight  of  the  important  fact 
that,  while  the  Dutch  were  confirmed  in  the 
poMession  of  their  colonies  in  Guiana  by  the 
Treaty  of  Breda,  the  Euglish,  under  the  same 
treaty,  were 'confirmed  in  the  possession  of 
New  Netherlands,  which  became,  thereupon, 
the  colony  of  New  York.  One  of  the  events 
of  the  war  bad  been  the  capture  of  New  Nether^ 
lanrls  by  the  EDgli»b.  It  is  illostrattve  of  the 
point  of  view  from  which  colonies'  were  then 
regarded  in  England,  that  the  keeping  of  New 
York,  in  place  of  Surinam,  *»at  that  lime  was 
looked  upon  by  many  as  a  bud  exchange  ** 
(*  European  Settlements  in  America,'  London, 
1757,  vol.  li.,  p.  179).  The  Dutch  bad  not  ob- 
tained  the  sanction  of  the  Spaniards  for  their 
settlement  at  New  York.  The  English  did 
not  think,  for  a  moment,  of  asking  Spain  to 
ratify  the  exchange.  The  original  title  by 
which  New  York  formed  part  of  the  United 
Colonies  was,  in  fact,  exactly  the  same  as  that 
under  which  the  old  Dutch  settlements  between 
Surinam  and  the  Amacura  now  form  part  of 
the  British  Empire.  Has  the  Government  at 
Washington  ever  doubted  the  validity  q<  the 


74= 


Th.e    Nation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1595 


tiUe  bj  which  the  IJoited  States  bold  the  Em- 
pire State  7  Papal  bulls  and  Spanish  *' claims'' 
notwithstcmdiofC)  Americans  possess  themselves 
in  peace,  assured*  as  to  their  right,  that  Pope 
and  Spaniard  could  not  trouble  it. 

The  second  occasion  on  which  the  Dutch  set- 
tlements were  captured  by  the  English  was  in 
February,  178 L,  when  Oreat  Britain  was  at  war 
with  Holland,  Spain,  France,  and  the  North 
American  colonies.  In  1782  the  colonies  were 
taken  from  tbe  EogltAh  by  a  strong  expedi- 
tion sent  from  France  for  the  express  purpose 
of  thpir  capture.  On  the  peace  of  1783  France 
restored  tbe  colonies  to  Holland.  As  the  Eng 
lish  had  again  been  turned  out  of  the  Dutch 
colonies,  the  evidence  of  an  English  official  as 
to  the  boundary  on  the  E^sequibo  side  of  the 
Dutch  possessions  In  Guiana  might  be  regarded 
as  being  that  of  a  not  too  friendly  witness. 
Such  evidence  is  to  be  found  in  a  chart  pub- 
lished in  London,  on  the  6th  of  October, 
1783,  by  William  Faden,  Geographer  to  the 
King.  The  chart  is  one  of  **  tbe  coast  of  Guy 
ana  from  the  Oronoko  to  the  River  of  Ama- 
sons."  It  was  executed  by  De  la  Rochette, 
from  the  observations  of  Captain  Edward 
Thompson  of  the  Royal  Navy,  made  in  his 
Majesty's  vessel  Hycsnoy  when  Captain  Thomp- 
son **  commanded  in  the  Rivers  Berbice,  Esse- 
quebo  and  Demerari,  and  governed  those  colo 
nles  after  their  oonquest  from  the  Dutch.''  The 
boundary  line  given  in  this  chart  includes  the 
Amacura  River,  which  is  that  set  down  by 
Schomburgk.  There  is  a  curious  error  in  this 
and  in  at  all  eveots  one  other  chart  of  the 
Guiana  coaft  published  about  this  time.  It  is 
this:  that  tbe  Barima  River  is  given  as  the  ex- 
treme northern  line  of  the  Dutch  settlements, 
within  which  the  Amacura  is  placed,  wrongly, 
to  the  south  of  tbe  Barima.  As  is  well  known, 
the  B«rima.runs  southerly  of  the  Amacura. 
This  lapse  shows  tbe  ignorance  of  the  draughts- 
man, but  strongly  testifies  that  the  Amacura 
was  within  the  Dutch  possessions.  It  Is  well 
to  repeat  that  the  Dutch  boundaries  in  1665 
and  1783,  as  testified  to  by  Englishmen,  were 
held  to  be  such  by  persons  who  had  been  in  au- 
thority in  the  expeditions  that  captured  those 
colonies,  and  tbat  their  testimony  was  given 
after  the  Eoglish  had  suffered  the  mortifica- 
tion of  expulsion  from  those  possessions,  and 
when  there  could  not  be  any  prospect  of  re- 
covering them. 

It  was  in  1796  that  England  became,  for  the 
third  time,  possessed  of  the  Dutch  colonies.  On 
this  occasion  the  British  Government  is  said  to 
have  informed  the  Government  of  Spain,  in  a 
friendly  manner,  what  the  Dutch  held  to  be 
the  boundaries  of  their  possessions  bordering 
upon  those  of  Spain.  No  protest  was  made  by 
Spain  against  that  representation,  in  any  of  iu 
details.  On  the  6tb  of  October  of  the  same 
year  the  King  of  Spain  declared  war  against 
the  King  of  England,  bis  kingdom,  and  vas- 
sals. Among  the  many  reasons  for  war  alleg- 
ed by  his  Majesty—who,  be  it  remembered,  was 
forced  into  this  war  by  his  French  allie8(?)— was 
the  following : 

**  The  conquest  which  she  [Great  Britain]  has 
made  of  the  Colony  of  Demerary,  belonging  to 
the  Dutch,  and  whose  advantcggeous  ]^}aition 
puU  her  in  a  position  to  get  possession  of  posts 
siill  more  important.^* 

It  will  be  observed  tbat  the  name  Demerary 
is  here  used  to  include  the  colonies  of  Berbice 
and  Essequibo,  wbicb  had  been  captured  by 
the  English  at  the  same  time.  Not  a  word  is 
said  therein  of  any  offence  taken  at  the  Eng- 
lish representation  of  the  boundaries  of  tbe 
Dutcb  settlements  I  As  tbe  French  had  them- 
selves been  in  possession  of  those  very  colonies 


in  1782-88,  they  do  doubt  knew  what  the  Dutch 
boundaries  were.  Is  it  not  reasonable  to 
conclude  that,  had  they  been  able  to  question 
the  correctness  of  the  claim,  they  would  have 
procured  that  the  King  of  Spain,  whom  they 
were  forcing  into  the  war,  should  specifically 
resent  an  invasion  of  his  territorial  rights? 
The  advantageoits  position  of  the  Dutch  set- 
tlements to  which  the  King  of  Spain  referred 
was,  no  doubt  their  proximity  to  the  Orinoco. 
The  posts  still  more  important  were,  in  all 
reason,  the  Orinoco  and  its  neighborhood. 

The  colonies  remained  in  British  possession 
from  1796  until  1802,  when  they  were  given  up 
to  tbe  Dutch,  in  accordance  with  the  terms  of 
the  Peace  of  Amiens.  During  the  British  occu- 
pation  the  Spaniards  had  sent  a  military  expe- 
dition against  that  part  of  the  Dutch  settle- 
ments called  Moruca,  where,  for  many  years 
previotisly,  the  Dutch  had  established  a  fort. 
The  Spaniards,  having  at  that  time  but  the 
scantiest  of  population  in  any  part  of  the  right 
bank,  collected  their  force  on  the  left  bank  of 
that  river  when  the  expedition  set  out.  They 
landed  at  night  on  the  19th  of  January,  1797. 
Tbey  were  received  by  Dutch  troops  who,  on 
the  surrender  of  the  colonies,  had  taken  ser- 
vice under  the  British  Government.  The 
Spaniards  were  completely  defeated,  and  but 
few  escaped.  Capt.  Rochelle,  the  brave  com- 
mander of  the  Dutch  soldiers,  died  of  wounds 
received  in  this  engagement.  On  account  of 
his  services,  the  Legislature  of  the  then  United 
Colony  of  Demerara  and  Essequibo  voted  pen- 
sions for  the  support  of  his  children. 

For  the  fourth  time  the  colonies  with  their 
dependencies  {en  anderhoorige  distrieten)  came 
into  the  possession  of  Great  Britain  on  the  17th 
of  September,  1808,  and  their  cession  by  the 
Dutch  was  completed  by  the  convention  of  the 
18th  of  August,  1814.  Some  time  after  the 
capture  of  the  colonies  in  1808,  and  before  their 
cession  in  1814,  a  chart  of  the  colony  was  pub- 
luhed.  It  was  prepared  by  an  officer  of  engi 
neers  named  Walker.  Having  no  copy  of  this 
chart  at  hand,  one  can  only  say,  from  memory, 
tbat  it  gives  the  Amacura  as  within  the  Dutch 
limits.  Tbe  Schomburgk  boundary  line  was 
not  evolved  out  of  Sir  Robert  Sohomburgk's 
imagination. 

From  the  foregoing  statements  it  will  be  seen 

that,  for  280  years.  Englishmen  have  borne 

public  testimony  to  tbe  fact  that  the  Dutch 

were  in  possession  of  territory  as  far  as  the 

Amacura.     It  should  be  clearly  understood 

that  Great  Britain  does  not  claim  up  to  the 

point 

"  Where  Orlnooo.  In  his  pride, 
BOII0  to  tbe  main  no  tribute  tide." 

It  is  said  that  the  Orinoco  receives  the  waters 
of  436  rivers,  and  of  more  than  2,000  rivulets 
and  streams.  It  does  not  however,  receive 
one  drop  of  water  from  the  little  Amacura. 

But,  it  will  be  asked,  where  were  the  Span- 
iards all  this  timer  The  answer  is  simple. 
They  had  some  petty  settlements  high  up  the 
Orinoco.  Being  men  capable  of  taking  extend- 
ed views,  tbey  '*  took  possession  "  of  Guiana, 
that  vast  country  of  800,000  or  900,000  square 
miles,  between  the  Orinoco  and  the  Amazon, 
by  saying  they  did  so,  when  they  first  made  a 
tiny  settlement  up  the  Orinoco.  The  Portu- 
guese, the  French,  and  the  Dutch,  being  prac- 
tical people,  entered  upon  the  land  and  pos- 
sessed themselves  of  it,  while  Spain  asserted 
its  **  claims  "  to  Guiana  by  making  maps  that 
included  tbe  vast  regions  occupied  by  the  na- 
tions mentioned.  Will  any  one  t>e  bold  enough 
to  assert  that  the  Spaniards  ever  had  a  colony 
on  any  part  of  the  coast  of  Guiana,  or  that 
the  Spaniards  ever  had  any  settlement  there, 


as  a  settlement  would  be  imderstood  among 
nations  t  On  the  other  hand,  the  Portuguese, 
French,  Dntch,  and  the  English  all  had  colo- 
nies and  settlements  in  some  part  or  other  of 
Guiana.  And  yet,  among  the  gprounds  of 
**  claim"  set  forth  for  the  information  of  the 
world  by  the  Venezuelan  Government  is  the 
following  fatuous  declaration,  in  a  despatch 
written  on  the  26th  of  January,  1887,  by  their 
Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs,  Sefior  Urba- 
ne ja,  to  the  British  Minister  at  Car^Usas: 

'*  According  to  the  order  issued  by  the  King 
of  Spain  in  1768,  the  province  of  Guiana  was 
bounded  on  the  south  by  tbe  Amazon  and  on 
the  east  by  the  Atlantic  Ocean:  so  that  the 
acquisitions  of  other  Powers  within  those  limits 
were  not  valid  until  they  were  made  lawful  by 
the  consent  of  said  monarch." 

How  one  would  like  to  have  the  opportunity 
of  reading  the  orders  of  his  most  Catholic  Ma- 
jesty as  to  the  boundaries  of  Mexico  and  Flo- 
rida in  1768  I  How  far  would  those  regarding 
Mexico  be  respected  by  tbe  United  States  f 

A  great  deal  still  remains  to  be  said  aa  to  the 
history  of  the  European  settlements  in  Guiana, 
and  of  the  Dutch  and  English  settlements  espe- 
cially, but  tbat  botmdaries  of  the  space  in  an 
American  journal  may  not  be  transg^ressed 
any  more  than  thoee  of  a  British  colony,  under 
the  Pcuc  Britannica, 

Perhaps  the  cogency  of  the  British  caae  may 
be  best  put  to  Americans  by  setting  forth  the 
historical  fact  that  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  ac- 
tually contemplated  making  their  settlement 
in  the  New  World  in  Gkdana  rather  than  in 
North  America.  These  forefathers  of  the 
great  republic  would,  to  Spaniards  of  that 
period,  have  been  regarded  as  fit  objects  for 
the  application  of  the  system  de  hoeretico  com^ 
burendo.  Will  any  reasonable  man  say  that, 
seeking  a  place  where  they  might  worship  God 
according  to  conscience,  those  persecuted  exiles 
would  have  contemplated  settling  in  any 
country  under  the  dominion  of  Spain  or  with- 
in measurable  distance  of  Spanish  dominion  ? 
Let  an  old  writer  of  the  history  of  the  settle- 
ments in  New  England  be  heard.  Prince,  un- 
der the  year  1617,  and  between  the  dates  Sep- 
tember 15  and  November  4,, makes  the  follow, 
ing  statements : 

**  This  year.  Master  Robinson  and  his  Church 
begin  *to  think  of  a  remove  to  America,  for 
several  weighty  reasons,  as  1 

2 

3 

Upon  their  talk  of  removing,  sundry  of  note 
among  the  Dutcb  would  have  them  go  under 
them,  and  make  them  IftJI^e  offers;  but,  choos- 
ing to  go  under  the  English  Government, 
where  they  might  enjoy  their  religious  pri- 
vileges without  molestation,  after  humble 
prayers  to  God,  they  first  debate,  *  whether 
to  go  to  Guiana,  or  Virginia  f '  And  though 
some,  and  none  of  the  meanest,  are  eameet 
for  the  former,  they  at  length  .determine  for 
the  Utter:  so  as  to  settle  in  a  distinct  body, 
but  under  the  General  Government  of  Vir- 
ginia." 

"  And  the  yomiK  and  strong  Reiral>llo  was  by  these  In 
Tlrtae  bred. 

She  was  cradled  In  adTentura*  she  was  nursed  In  good- 
men's  dread, 

The  young  and  strong  RepnbUo  that  has  filled  tbe 
world  w.th  fame. 

And  with  great  praise  and  marvel  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
name." 

N.  Dabnxll  Davis. 


LAFENESTRETS   LA   FONTAINE. 

Pabib,  January  9, 1806. 
He  who  writes  for  children  is  assured,  if  he 
does  his  work  well,  of  a  longer  immortality  (if 
the  two  words  admit  of  collocation)  than  any 
other  writers.  The  *  Fables*  of  La  Fontaine 
and  the  *  Ck>ntes '  of  Perraul  t  will  be  reed  as 
long  as  the  French  language  is  spoken  end  1 


Jan.  23,  1896] 


The   !N"ation. 


75 


denfeood.  Victor  Hugo,  who  bad  an  inordi- 
Data  Taoitj,  said  that  he  was  Dot  jealous  of 
any  French  poet,  but  confessed  that  be  was 
enyioDS  of  La  Fontaine.  No  French  poet  ever 
attained  the  extraordinary  fluidity  and  ease 
of  style  characteristic  of  La  Fontaine*s '  Fables  * 
and  *Contes,'  except,  perhaps,  Moli^re  in  his 
**  Amphitryon."  M.  George  Lafenestre,  who 
is  a  distinguished  art  critic,  has  been  chosen,  I 
do  not  know  for  what  reason,  to  write  the  vol- 
ume  on  La  Fontaine  in  the  *'  Grands  ^riyaios 
Fran^ais,"  and  has  acquitted  himself  very  well 
of  his  task. 

I  enter  my  protest,  however,  as  I  have  done 
before  on  other  occasions,  against  the  cut  and- 
dried  method  adopted  in  these  essays  on  our 
French  writers,  which  consists  in  making  a 
sort  of  icientiflc  analysis  comparable  to  a 
chemical  analysis.  I  cannot  help  finding 
something  artificial  as  well  as  monotonous  in 
a  method  which  induces  the  critic  to  give  such 
headings  to  the  successive  chapters  of  his  book. 
In  speaking  of  La  Fontaine  as  **r6crivaln*' 
after  having  spoken  of  him  as  "Thomme,** 
M.  Lafenettre  subdivides  bis  subject  into 
•'rcBuvre,*"  'TimaginatiOD,''  ''la  seDsibiUt6," 
**Upens6e,'»  "le  style^"  "IMnfiuence."  Taine 
is  answerable  for  this  new  method  of  criti- 
cism. 1  need  not,  I  suppose,  show  that  it  is 
impossible  thus  to  decompose  the  human  mind 
as  the  molecule  is  decomposed  into  its  compo- 
nent atoms.  It  seems  to  me  a  pity  that  this 
analytical  criticism  should  have  become  a 
fashion  in  the  new  generation*  which  has  been 
greatly  inspired  by  the  teachings  of  Taine. 
The  colkctton  of  **  Grands  ^crivains  Franks'* 
would  gain  much  in  variety  and  in  interest  if 
the  same  pattern  was  not  applied  to  its  critical 
essays. 

There  is  little  to  be  said  about  La  Fontaine 
as  a  writer,  and  he  need  hardly  be  explained 
as  such ;  there  is  more  to  be  said  about  his 
life  and  the  relations  of  his  life  to  his  writings. 
In  this  respect,  M.  Lafenestre's  volume  be- 
oomes  very  interesting,  and  will  be  found  very 
readable.  The  house  where  La  Fontaine  was 
bom  at  ChAteau-Thierry  od  July  8,  1021,  is 
still  Id  existence.  His  father  was  a  King's 
councillor,  master  of  woods  and  forests,  and 
eapitaine  des  chcuaeM  in  the  Duchy  of  Cha- 
teau-Thierry. At  the  age  of  nineteen,  he 
studied  law,  spent  a  little  time  at  the  Palais, 
and,  feeling  no  vocation  for  chicanery,  return- 
ed to  ChAteau-Thierry  towards  1644.  For  ten 
years  he  led  the  ecuy  and  lacy  life  of  the  pro- 
vince, hunting,  riding  (he  was  still  a  hard  rider 
at  the  age  of  seventy),  dreaming,  reading,  and 
making  at  times  a  visit  to  his  friends  in  Paris. 
He  wrote  verses,  and  paid  court  to  the  ladies 
of  his  neighborhood ;  his  love  ailairs  were 
more  in  the  style  of  Boccaccio  and  of  Rabelais 
than  in  the  dramatic  and  sentimental  style. 
His  only  real  passion  was  poetical.  He  was  a 
great  dreamer,  and  La  Bruy^re  said  of  him 
afterwards :  *'  The  man  seems  coarse,  heavy, 
stupid ;  he  cannot  speak  nor  tell  you  what  he 
has  just  seen.  When  he  begins  to  write,  how- 
ever, be  becomes  the  model  of  good  story-tell- 
ers :  there  is  nothing  but  lightness,  elegance, 
fine  delicacy  in  his  works. '^  His  first  work  was 
a  translation  of  Terence's  "Eunuchus.*'  He 
studied  all  the  great  writers  of  antiquity,  and 
delighted  also  in  the  eonteurM^  French  and  Ita- 
lian, of  the  Middle  Ages  and  of  the  Renaissance. 

His  father  left  him  his  office  and  chose  a 
wife  for  him,  Marie  H^ricart,  daughter  of  the 
iUuttnant'Criminel  of  La  Fert^Mllon.  He  ac* 
ospted  the  oflice  and  the  wife,  to  please  his 
father;  but  he  neglected  the  wife  as  well  as  the 
offios^  and  very  openly.  He  conducted  the 
affairs  of  the  community  so  badly  that  his 


wife  obtained  in  1600  a  separation  of  property. 
Tallemant  des  Rtenx,  speaking  of  this  strange 
union,  says:  **  His  wife  says  that  he  dreams  so 
that  he  sometimes  remains  for  three  weeks 
without  believing  himself  married**;  and  this 
applies  to  the  first  period  of  his  marriage. 
Mme.  de  la  Fontaine  was  lettered— too  much 
so  for  the  taste  of  her  husband,  who  objected 
to  her  criticisms.  The  only  letters  of  La  Fon. 
taine  to  his  wife  which  we  possess  were  wriir 
ten  to  her  during  a  journey  which  he  made  in 
1663  to  Limoges.  They  are  very  characteristic 
of  the  state  of  their  relations  after  fifteen 
years  of  marriage,  and  sound  more  like  the 
letters  which  a  gay  companion  would  write  to 
one  of  bis  gay  friends  than  like  the  letters  of  a 
husband  to  his  wife.  They  show,  at  the  same 
time,  that  Mme.  de  La  Fontaine  was  not  a- 
prude  nor  a  bigueule,  to  use  the  words  of  M. 
Lafenestre,  and  allowed  ber  husband  all  pos- 
sible liberties. 

The  famous  turintendant  Fouquet,  who  was 
a  great  patron  of  letters,  offered  a  pension  to 
La  Fontaine,  who  became  one  of  the  visitors 
and  parasites  of  the  little  court  of  Saint  Mand^ 
and  of  Vaux.  He  wrote  for  Fouquet  the  *  Ado- 
nis,* a  poem  in  which  is  found  a  tender  love 
for  nature's  beauties  quite  unknown  in  the  se- 
venteenth century.  In  it  occurs  this  verse, 
which  has  become  proverbial: 

*'N1  Is  grtoe.  plus  beUe  encor  que  Is  besattf.** 

Andrd  Cb^nier  used  to  say  that '  Adonis '  was 
the  poem  which  he  had  read  with  the  greatest 
profit.  It  is  singular  to  find  the  man  who 
was  at  times  so  Rabelaisan,  writing  such  deli- 
cats  and  almost  melancholy  verses  as  these  on 
voluptuousness: 

*'  O  Tons,  trlfltM  plalfln  oft  lenr  tme  se  nole. 
Vatu  et  demtera  efforts  d'ane  Impsrfslte  Jole.** 

The  friends  of  Fouquet,  even  the  Marquise 
de  S^vigo^,  liked  something  lighter  and  gayer 
than  *  Adonis,*  and  La  Fontaine  was  quite  able 
to  satisfy  them.  One  of  his  great  successes  in 
the  salon  of  Fouquet  was  a  very  light  epistle 
on  an  adventure  of  a  nun,  a  gay  badinage 
which  charmed  Madame  de  S4vign6  so  much 
that  she  placed  La  Fontaine  at  once  **  among 
the  gods.**  Every  three  months  La  Fontaine 
had  to  give  a  quittance  for  his  pension  in  the 
shape  of  some  madrigaL  We  do  not  under- 
stand such  relations  in  our  time,  but  they 
seemed  quite  dktural  In  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury; all  poets  were  the  pensioners  of  some 
king,  prince,  or  gpreat  lord.  It  seemed  as  na- 
tural to  La  Fontaine  to  fiatter  Fouquet  as  It 
,  seemed  natural  afterwards  for  him  to  fiatter 
Madame  de  Montespan,  Louis  XIV.,  Colbert, 
the  Dauphin.  It  ought  to  be  said,  also,  that 
he  really  liked  Fouquet,  who  was  able  to  in- 
spire great  friendships,  and  who  was  a  very 
intelligent  and  able  man.  It  was  in  Fouquet*8 
house  that  he  became  acquainted  with  Chape- 
lain,  Mademoiselle  deScuddry,  and  Moli^re,  of 
whom  he  said  at  once,  **  C*est  mon  homme.** 

La  Fontaine  spent  lasily  three  years  of  his 
life  on  the  *  Songe  de  Vaux,*  a  work  written 
in  honor  of  his  patron  and  his  magnificence, 
which  was  left  unfinished  and  ought  never  to 
have  been  begun,  though  here  and  there  you 
may  find  in  it  some  fine  verses.  There  is 
not  much  more  to  be  said  about  ^Elym^ne.* 
When  Fouquet  was  arrested  and  thrown  in- 
to prison.  La  Fontaine  had  the  courage  to 
stand  by  him  and  to  make  an  eloquent  appeal 
to  the  clemency  of  the  King.  **  Et  c*est  6tre 
innocent  que  d*6tre  malheureux,**  one  of  the 
verses  of  hjs  fine  ode,  has  become  proverbial. 
La  Fontaine  was  exiled  to  Limoges,  with  bis 
uncle,  and  it  was  from  there  that  he  wrote  to 
his  wife  the  letters  which  I  have  already  men* 


tioned.  In  1664  La  Fontaine  had  returned  to 
Paris,  and  he  spent  his  time  between  the  capi- 
tal and  the  house  of  the  Duchess  of  Bouillon  at 
ChAteau-Thierry.  The  Duchess  wa^  one  of  the 
celebrated  nieces  of  Masarin,  Marie  Apne 
Mancini.  During  this  period  he  wrote '  Psyche  * 
and  the  ** Quinquina**  (after  an  illness  of  the 
Duchess,  who  had  been  cured  by  qulnioe).  He 
also  wrote  his  **  Joconde,**  the  first  of  his  fa- 
mous *  Con  tee*;  and,  after  "Jooonde,**  seven 
other  contes  in  verse  on  subjects  taken  from 
Boccaccio.  The  volume  of  the  **Nouvelles  en 
vers  tiroes  de  1*  Arioste  et  de  Boccace,**  without 
any  signature,  had  an  immense  success.  A 
new  edition  came  out  with  other  eonUs,  On 
Bfarch  31, 1668,  appeared  the  first  six  parts  of 
the  '  Fables,*  dedicated  to  the  Dauphin.  From 
that  date  La  Fontaine  may  be  said  to  have  en- 
tered into  immortality.  His  bookseller,  Bar- 
bin,  had  to  princ  immediately  new  editions, 
and  soon  afterwards  published  another  series 
of  Fables. 

La  Fontaine  was  at  this  time  in  a  very  pro- 
ductive vein,  for  be  published  also  the  *Amours 
de  Psycb6  et  de  Cupidon.*  He  had  announced 
this  work  in  the  second  series  of  'Fables* in 
this  way: 

**  Bornoat  Id  notre  csrrMre: 
Les  loon  oarragM  me  font  pear. 
Loin  d'6puiMr  one  matiA«« 
On  n'ea  dole  prendre  qne  la  Hear, 
n  t'en  ra  temps  que  ie  repr**nne 
Un  pen  de  forces  et  d^batolne 
Poor  foamlr  k  d'autree  projeta. 
Amoor,  oe  tyran  de  ma  Tie. 
Vent  que  Je  change  de  tojets ; 
n  f ant  oontenter  ion  envfe : 
Retoomona  4  Paych^" 

With  the  versatility  of  his  character  and  of 
his  talent,  he  wrote,  in  1691,  a  psalm  in  verse 
(a  very  feeble  production,  by  the  by)  in  a  Jan- 
senist '  Receuil  de  Po6sies  Chr6tiennes,*  and  at 
the  same  moment  some  new '  Fables  *  and  some 
new  *  Contes.'  Two  years  afterwards,  he  writes 
at  the  same  time  a  poem  on  chastity,  *  Saint- 
Malo,*  and*a  new  series  of  *  Contes,*  the  most 
licentious  of  the  whole  series.  The  two  books 
were  interdicted  at  the  same  moment— the  first 
because  La  Fontaine  bad  imprudently  called 
the  Cardinal  de  Bouillon  *'  Altesse  s^r^nissime  ** 
(a  Utle  to  which  the  Cardinal  had  no  right), 
and  the  second  on  account  of  its  bold  immo- 
rality. La  Fontaine  always  needed  some  pro- 
tection end  some  material  help;  he  found,  at 
this  period,  a  new  Providence  in  Madame  de 
la  Sabli^re,  an  amiable  woman,  who  was  fami- 
liarly called  '*  La  Tourterelle  **  (the  Dove),  the 
wife  of  a  rich  fermier-giniral.  She  was  the 
friend  (I  use  a  mild  expression)  of  the  Marquis 
de  la  Fare.  La  Fontaine  spent  seven  or  eight 
years  in  the  house  of  this  amiable  woman, 
which  was  called  the  Folie-RambooiUet;  he 
remained  there  in  a  state  of  complete  freedom, 
writing  as  he  pleased  and  when  he  pleased. 
La  Fontaine  was  elected  a  member  of  the 
French  Academy  after  Boilean.  He  followed 
Biadame  de  la  Sabli^re  to  Paris,  where  she  said 
she  had  taken  with  ber  **  only  her  dog,  her 
cat,  and  La  Fontaine.**  He  led  to  the  end  the 
life  of  a  parasite  and  of  an  epicurean,  and  he 
remained  also  to  the  end  a  sort  of  Polyphile, 
writing  on  the  most  various  subjects,  always 
with  the  same  ease  and  graceful  fluidity  of 
style,  at  times  with  a  curioui  vein  of  sadness 
and  melancholy,  which  was  very  rare  in  his 
Ume.  In  1692  he  fell  iU.  Madame  deUSa- 
bli^re  was  in  a  convent,  but  he  found  a  new 
protector  in  the  person  of  Bf.  d*Hervart,  a 
ma\tr€  des  rtqutUs^  who  had  a  large  and 
splendid  h6tel.  He  lived  there  till  he  died,  on 
April  13,  1606,  at  the  age  of  seventy-four. 


7^ 


76 


Tlie   Nation, 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1595 


Correspondence. 


ENEMIES  OF  MANKIND. 
To  THB  Editor  of  The  Nation  : 

Sib:  In  ooDnection  with  the  **late  UDplea- 
santness  *'  it  may  interest  some  of  jour  readers 
to  recall  the  opinion  expressed  some  fifty  years 
ago  by  such  a  distinguished  writer  as  the  late 
Judge  Haliburton  (''Sam  Slick'")  in  his  'Wise 
Saws*  (c.  26),  as  to  the  relations  which  ought 
to  exist  between  the  two  greatest  branches  of 
the  English  people,  and  the  punishment  that 
ought  to  be  meted  out  to  wilful  disturbers  of 
the  peace.    If  so,  here  it  is : 

"Now  we  are  two  great  nations,  the  greatest 
by  a  long  chalk  of  any  in  the  world— speak 
the  same  language,  have  the  same  religion, 
and  our  constitutions  don't  differ  no  great 
odds.  We  ought  to  draw  closer  than  we  do. 
We  are  big  enough,  equal  enough,  and  strong 
enough  not  to  be  jealous  of  each  other.  United 
we  are  more  than  a  match  for  all  the  other 
nations  put  together,  and  can  defy  their  fleets, 
armies,  and  millions.  Single  we  couldn't  stana 
against  all,  and  if  one  was  to  fall  where  would 
the  other  be  ?  Mourning  over  the  grave  that 
covers  a  relative  whose  place  can  never  be 
filled.  It  is  authors  of  silly  books,  editors  of 
silly  papers,  and  demagogues  of  silly  pajties 
that  helps  to  estrange  us.  I  wibh  there  was  a 
gibbet  high  enough  and  strong  enough  to 
hang  up  all  these  enemies  of  mankind  on.** 

Yours,  etc.,  J.  M.  Gkldkbt,  Jr. 

Haufax,  N.  S..  JaaoAiy  17, 1806. 


A  NATIONAL  UNIVERSITY  AT  WASH- 
INGTON. 

To  thb  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  There  are  many  objections  to  estab> 
lishing  a  national  university  at  Washington, 
but  the  strongest  of  all  is  the  inoompatibility 
of  the  pursuit  of  truth  with  responsibility  to 
politicians.  During  the  past  few  weeks  we 
have  had  a  striking  indication  of  what  would 
happen  at  a  national  university.  Many  emi- 
nent professors,  exercising  their  right  as  citi- 
zens, have  spoken  and  written  on  the  Venezue- 
lan question,  and  immediately  Jingoes  in  the 
press  and  elsewhere  have  assailed  those  pro- 
fessors as  if  they  were  traitors,  idiotp,  or  flun- 
keys. It  makes  no  difference  that  Prof,  von 
Hoist  of  Chicago,  or  Prof.  Moore  of  Ck)lumbla, 
or  Profs  C.  E.  Norton  and  Wm.  James  of 
Harvard,  happen  to  plead  for  a  sober  consider 
ation  of  the  Venezuelan  quarrel  and  to  de- 
nounce war  as  uncivilized,  up  jump  the  Jin- 
goes, led  by  the  loquacious  Theodore  Roose- 
velt, and  scream,  "  What  business  have  these 
college  professors  to  meddle,  anyway?  They 
don't  know  anything  about  the  subject,  and  if 
they  did  they  ought  to  hold  their  tongues." 

Of  course,  only  editors,  or  other  persons  with 
a  magnified  sense  of  their  own  importance 
and  a  lack  of  humor,  who  print  three  articles 
a  month  in  the  magazines  and  grant  inter- 
views to  newspaper  reporters  every  day,  on 
any  subject,  would  pooh-pooh  the  opinions  of 
men  like  Norton,  and  Von  Hoist,  and  Wm. 
James,  who  think  more  than  they  talk.  But 
should  not  this  episode  serve  as  a  warning 
against  any  proposed  national  university, 
whose  teachers  would  be  at  the  mercy  of  every 
crank  in  Congress  or  out  of  it— for  they  would 
be  regarded  as  public  servants,  unpermitted  to 
say  their  souls  were  their  own  ?  If  one  of  them 
dared  to  affirm  that  war  is  a  crime,  how  quick- 
ly would  Senator  Lodge— whom  Milton,  with 
prophetic  genius,  described  so  admirably  in 
•Paradise  Lost,'  Book  IL,  10^112— have  him 
impAushed  or  arrested.    And  if  another,  in 


lecturing  on  economics,  felt  it  hit  duty  to 
point  out  the  fallacies  of  protection  or  free 
silver,  he  would  be  squ^ched  by  McKinley  or 
Teller. 

The  truth  is,  that  most  of  the  most  impor- 
tant topics  would  be  ruled  out.  Political  eco- 
nomy could  not,  for  reasons  just  suggested,  be 
taught ;  nor  the  history  of  the  Reformation, 
because  that  would  offend  the  Catholics;  nor 
the  history  of  England,  which  would  rouse  the 
Jingoes;  nor  criminology,  for  that  would  bring 
lout  some  unpleasant  statistics  about  the  Irish, 
land  80  alienate  the  **  Irish  vote  ";  nor  the  his- 
tory of  the  United  States,  for  if  the  Mexican 
war  were  truly  narrated,  it  would  anger  the 
present  disciples  of  President  Polk;  and  the 
Rebellion  could  not  be  taught  so  as  to  satisfy 
both  Northerners  and  Southerners;  nor  could 
Evolution,  because  all  the  orthodox  would  cry 
out  against  a  doctrine  which  deprives  them  of 
the  pleasure  of  believing  that  unbaptized  in- 
fants are  damned. 

Perfect  freedom  is  the  indispensable  condi- 
tion for  the  discovery  and  imparting  of  truth; 
and  at  Washington  that  condition  could  not 
exist.  The  advocates  of  the  scheme,  which 
would  give  easy  berths  to  a  good  many  office- 
seekers,  protest,  of  course,  that  care  would  be 
taken  to  maintain  freedom  of  speech.  But 
there  are  many  ways,  besides  gagging,  of  si- 
lencing  the  preacher  of  unpopular  doctrines, 
and  we  cannot^  doubt  that  they  would  all  be 
used.  Probably  no  self-respecting  professor 
would  accept  such  a  position  of  servitude;  cer- 
tainly the  most  eminent  professors,  to  whom 
free  speech  is  dearer  than  preferment,  could 
never  be  enticed  into  such  a  trap.  T. 

JAjnjAXT  11,  1809. 


THE   COLORS   OP  MARYLAND. 
To  the  Editor  of  Thx  Nation: 

Sm:  I  see  by  the  morning's  papers  that  the 
medal  recently  presented  to  the  Long  Island 
Historical  Society  is  garnished  with  a  special- 
ly prepared  ribbon,  combining  the  colors  of 
Brooklyn  with  '*the  colors  of  the  State  of 
Maryland — orange  and  blackw" 

The  colors  of  the  State  of  Maryland  are  not 
orange  and  black,  but  gold  (or  yellow)  and 
black.  They  are  the  colors  of  the  Calvert 
arms,  which  have  been  used  in  the  seal  and  on 
the  flag  of  Maryland  from  early  colonial  times. 
They  can  be  seen  on  the  original  exempliflca- 
tion  of  arms  to  George  Calvert  (1623)  in  the 
possession  of  the  Maryland  Historical  Society, 
in  Gwillim  or  any  manual  of  heraldry,  or  on 
the  State  flag  in  the  City  Hall,  Baltimore. 
Orange  is  not  a  heraldic  color. 

The  colors  of  the  Baltimore  Baseball  Club 
are,  I  believe,  orange  and  black;  but  that  is 
not  the  State  of  Maryland. — I  am,  sir,  etc., 
Wm.  Hand  Browne. 
Martlahd  Hibtorigal  Socxbtt. 


THE  REASON  FOR  GLAZED  PAPER. 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  In  your  review  of  (Jrosvenor's  *  Con- 
stantinople,' in  No.  1504,  I  flnd  this  sentence: 
**  Unfortunately  the  paper  is  so  highly  glazed 
that  the  print  cannot  be  read,  especially  by 
artificial  light,  without  crying  even  the  strong, 
est  and  most  youthful  eyes."  This  is  no  new 
complaint,  but  one  frequently  heard  in  your 
columns,  and  many  readers  of  the  Nation  must 
be  left  in  a  state  of  wonder  at  the  obstinacy  of 
publishers  in  using  such  paper  in  spite  of  re- 
peated protests.  Yet  the  reason  for  so  doing 
is  simple.    I  have  not  seen  Prof.  Orosvenor's 


book,  but  I  understand  that  it  is  elaborately 
illustrated.  Now  it  is  perfectly  understood  by 
artists,  engravers,  printers,  and  publishers 
that  decent  printing  of  text  cuts  is  possible 
only  on  this  highly  calendered  paper  to  which 
your  critic  objects;  and  if  such  cutr  are  to  be 
used  at  all,  they  must  be  printed  on  such  paper 
or  ruined  in  the  printing.  To  me  it  seems  that 
the  publisher  is  praiseworthy  rather  than 
blameworthy  for  determining  to  print  his  cuts 
properly,  but  this  is  the  judgment  of  an  artist. 
A  literary  critic  may  be  of  the  opposite  opi- 
nion,  but  ought  he  not  to  recog^ze  the  reason 
for  the  publisher's  choice,  even  in  blaming  it, 
and  not  leave  it  to  be  understood  by  the  public 
that  it  is  a  mere  matter  of  whim,  or  worse,  of 
economy?  The  rough,  hand-made  paper  which 
is  the  delight  of  bibliophiles  is  the  despair  of 
the  poor  designer  of  illustrationB,  and  its  use 
would  probably  lead  to  the  abandonment  of  all 
illustration,  or  its  restriction  to  such  purely 
archaic  adornment  as  Mr.  Morris  uses  in  the 
publications  of  the  Kelmsoott  Press. 

KsNYON  Cox. 
Nxw  You,  Jmnnmrf  19. 1806. 


[We  were  perfectly  aware  of  the  cause  of 
the  uee  of  glazed  paper.  The  abuse  we  owe 
partly  to  the  change  in  the  mode  of  wood- 
engraving  in  the  quest  for  tint  and  half- 
tone, and  especially  to  the  advent  of  cheap 
"  process."  Often,  for  the  sake  of  a  small 
number  of  cuts  in  the  text,  the  entire 
readability  of  a  book  (hygienically  speak- 
ing) is  destroyed.  The  effect  on  text-books 
for  the  young  in  particular  is  deplorable 
when  we  consider  all  the  temptations  of 
that  age  to  overtax  the  eyes. — Ed.  Na- 
tion.] 

SCHOOLS  IN  FRANCE  BEFORE  THE 
REVOLUnON. 

To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sib:  The  sweeping  conclusion,  impliedly  en- 
dorsed by  you  in  your  recent  note  on  public 
instruction  in  ante-Revolutionary  France,  to 
the  effect  that  the  French  peasantry  of  the 
aneien  regime  were  in  the  full  enjoyment  of 
an  excellent  system  of  primary  education, 
needs  much  qualification. 

The  number  and  quality  of  rural  schools  va- 
ried widely  from  province  to  province— Mr. 
Stanley  Weyman*s  low  view  of  the  mental 
condition  of  the  peasant  being  perfectly  correct 
as  to  Brittany  and  the  central  provinces,  and 
approximately  so  as  to  Gascony  and  the  Ton- 
lousian;  while  your  reviewer^s  opinion  holds 
good  as  to  the  northern  and  northeastern  pro- 
vinces, where  simple  primary  schools  were 
abundant. 

You  point  to  the  fact,  as  confirmatory  of 
your  general  position,  that  in  the  districts  now 
forming  the  department  of  the  Meurthe-et-Mo- 
selle  there  were,  in  1789,  599  communes,  in  566 
of  which  were  one  or  more  schools.  As  an 
offset  to  this,  permit  me  to  say  that  records  of 
the  time  (cited  by  M.  Taine)  show  that  in  Gas- 
cony *'  most  of  the  rural  districts  are  without 
schoolmasters,*'  while  in  the  Toulomian  only 
"  ten  parishes  out  of  fifty  have  schools."  And 
in  Brittany  and  the  central  provinces  matters 
were  even  worse  than  in  the  south.  M.  Al- 
bert Babeau,  whom  you  cite  approvingly,  ga- 
thers, from  an  Inspection  of  marriage  registers 
of  the  period,  that  in  the  Nivemois  only  ''IS 
per  cent,  of  the  men  and  nearly  6  per  cent,  of 
the  women*'  could  sign  their  names.  Taking, 
then,  the  average  of  these  extremes,  consider- 
ing the  kind  of  instruction  likely  to  be  ikded 


Jan.  23,  1896] 


Tlie   N'ation. 


77 


oot  to  the  lower  clanes  by  the  French  clergy 
in  Voltaire's  century,  and  not  forgetting  the 
bestial  oie  made  by  Jacques  Bonhomme  of  his 
newly  acquired  liberty  in  1789,  it  would  seem 
that  the  condudons  of  yonr  reviewer  on  *'  the 
uniTersality  andefflcieocy  of  Tillage  schools  in 
France  under  the  aneUn  riginu**  need rerlsal. 

W.  R.  Z. 
MiLWAiTUU,  Wm.,  Jsansiy  6, 1690. 

[We  can  oot  prolong  this  diBCussion.  No 
monograph  on  the  hif  tory  of  primary  edu- 
cation in  Brittany  exists,  to  our  know- 
ledge, but  M.  Allain  quotes  M.  L^on 
Maitre  for  the  district  of  Nantes,  in  which 
sixty- four  out  of  eighty-one '  parishes  had 
schools  in  the  eighteenth  century.  We 
hare  further  knowledge  of  the  fact  that 
La  Chalotais,  the  famous  Breton  procu- 
reur-giniral  of  the  Parlement  of  Rennes, 
published  his  *  Essai  d'  Education  nation- 
ale  *  in  1763,  in  which  he  complained,  pre- 
sumably from  acquaintance  with  the  con- 
dition of  things  in  his  own  province,  that 
**  the  Brothers  of  Christian  Doctrine,  who 
are  termed  ignor^ntins^  teach  reading 
and  writing  to  people  who  ought  only  to 
learn  how  to  draw  plans  and  to  handle 
the  file  and  the  plane,  but  who  will  no 
longer  do  so.  .  .  .  The  laborers  and 
artisans  send  their  children  to  the  local 
colleges."  An  echo  to  the  complaints  of 
La  Chalotais  is  found  in  the  complaints 
made  to  the  Bishop  of  8t.-Di6  in  1779 : 

**  There  will  never  be  any  good  popular  edu- 
cation until  the  oountrv  schoolmssters,  who 
depopulate  alike  the  fields  and  workshops,  are 
driven  away.  The  complaints  that  the  fields 
are  left  wiUiout  workers,  that  the  number  of 
artisans  is  diminishing,  and  that  the  class  of 
vagabonds  is  Increasing,  are  due  to  the  fact 
that  our  towns  and  villages  are  filled  to  over- 
flowing  with  a  multitude  of  schools.  There  is 
no  hamlet  without  Its  grammairieny 

With  regard  to  central  and  southern 
France  it  may  be  allowed  that  in  sparsely 
populated  districts,  like  the  mountains  of 
Auvergne  and  the  sandy  wastes  of  the 
Landes,  scho6ls  were  f^w  and  far  between 
in  the  last  century,  as  they  are  at  the  pre- 
sent time ;  but  even  in  the  Landes  there 
were,  before  the  Revolution,  235  schools, 
though  unequally  distributed,  in  330  com- 
munes. These  statements  of  facts  are 
mainly  derived  from  the  work  of  M.  Allain 
CD  primary  education  in  France  before  the 
Revolution,  cited  in  the  Aa^ton  for  De- 
cember 26,  1895. 

M.  Albert  Babeau  treats  the  whole 
question  briefly,  with  references  to  au- 
thorities, in  the  first  chapter  of  his  *  £coles 
de  village  pendant  la  Revolution,'  in  which 
he  shows  that  he  had  formed  a  higher 
opinion  of  the  extent  of  rural  education 
in  ante-Revolutionary  France  than  in  his 
earlier  works,  *Le  Village  sous  I'ancien 
r^me'  and  *La  Ville  rurale  dans  I'an- 
cienne  France.'  He  arrived  at  the  conclu- 
sion endorsed  by  our  correspondent,  that 
primary  education  was  more  widely  dif- 
fused in  the  north  and  east  than  in  central 
and  southern  France,  but  his  conclusions 
need  to  be  modified  in  a  more  favorable 
sense  ainoe  the  publication  of  numerous 
local  monographs  by  Fayet,  Combarieu, 
Allain,  and  others. 


As  to  the  nature  of  the  education  given 
in  the  village  schools,  it  is  true  that  it  did 
not  much  exceed  reading,  writing,  arith- 
metic, singing,  and  the  catechism;  but 
even  this  amount  of  education  must  have 
raised  the  French  peasants,  and  did  raise 
them,  from  the  condition  of  absolute 
savages,  which  still  remains  the  legendary 
belief  and  is  endorsed  by  Weyman  in  his 
latest  novel.  ** Bestial"  is  an  absurdly 
strong  word  to  apply  to  the  action  of  the 
French  peasants  in  1789  in  attacking  the 
ch&teaux  of  the  nobility.— Ed.  Nation.] 


Notes. 


An  elaborate  '  Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and 
Psychology,'  edited  by  Prof.  J.  Mark  Baldwin 
of  Princeton,  will  be  Issued  by  Maomillan  & 
Co.,  together  with  a  treatise  on  *The  Architec- 
ture of  Europe:  An  Historical  Study,'  by  Rus- 
sell Sturgis;  *The  Anatomy  of  the  Human 
Body/  by  Drs.  John  Cleland  and  John  Tule 
Mackay,  of  Glasgow  and  Dundee;  *  The  Princi- 
ples of  the  Transformer/  an  electrical  work, 
by  Dr.  Frederick  Bedell  of  Cornell;  and  *Stu. 
dies  in  Structure  and  Style,'  by  W.  T.  Brew, 
ster  of  Columbia.  The  same  publishers'  spring 
list  embraces  *  The  United  States  of  America, 
1766-1865,'  by  Bdward  Channing  of  Harvard; 
*The  Child  and  ChUdhood  in  Folk-Thought,' 
by  Alexander  F.  Chamberlain  of  Clark  Uni- 
versity; *  Vocal  Culture  in  iU  Relation  to  Lite- 
rary and  (General  Culture,'  by  Prof.  Hiram 
Corson  of  Cornell;  *  A  Brief  History  of  Eng- 
lish,' by  Prof.  Oliver  F.  Emerson  of  Cornell; 

*  Woman  under  Monasticism:  Chapters  in 
Convent  Life  and  Saint  Worihip»'  by  Lina 
Eokenstein;  *The  Empire  of  the  Ptolemies,'  by 
Prof.  J.  P.  Kahaffy;  Dante's  *  Divine  Comedy,' 
rendered  in  the  nine-line  metre  of  Spenser  by 
George  Musgrave,  M.A.,  Oxford;  Friedrlch 
Ratsel's  '  History  of  Mankind,'  translated  by 
A.  J.  Butler;  the  Works  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche, 
in  eleven  volumes,  edited  in  Euglish  by  Alex- 
ander Tllle;  Georg  Brandes's  'William  Shak- 
spere:  A  Critical  Study,'  translated  by  WU- 
liam  Archer;  a  posthumous  volume  of  *  New 
Poems,'  by  Christina  Rossetti;  and  a  *  History 
of  Nineteenth-Century  Literature,'  by  Prof. 
Saintsbury. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons  announce  *Tbe  Histori- 
cal Development  of  Modem  Europe  from  1815 
down  to  1880,'  by  Prof.  Charles  M.  Andrews  of 
Bryn  Mawr;  *Tbe  West  Indies  and  the  Span- 
ish Main,'  a  history  of  settlements,  by  James 
Bod  way;  *The  Nicaragua  Canal:  iU  History 
and  its  Future,'  by  Prof.  Lindley  M.  Keasbey; 
*A  History  of  Modem  Banks  of  Issue,'  by 
Charles  A.  Conant;  'Early  Long  Island,'  by 
Martha  Bocb^  Flint;  '  The  Perambulation  of 
the  Forest  of  Dartmoor,'  by  Samuel  Rowe,  with 
numerous  illustrations;  and  a  new  edition  of 
Dasent's  *  Tales  of  the  Fjeld,'  with  100  illustra- 
tions by  Moyr  Smith. 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons  have  nearly  ready 

*  The  Love  Aifairs  of  a  Bibliomaniac,'  by  the 
late  Eugene  Field.  We  should  have  mentioned 
last  week  that  they  are  the  American  publishers 
of  the  **  Warwick  Library  of  English  Litera- 
ture," of  which  we  gave  some  account. 

T.  T.  Crowell  &  Co.  have  in  preparation 

*  Sbakspere's  Heroes  on  the  Stage,'  by  Charles 
E.  L.  Wingate. 

Ginn  &  Co.  will  publish  next  month  '  Selec- 

tkms  from  Keats's  Poems,'  by  Prof.  Arlo  Bates. 

In  his  'Short  Historical  Latin  Grammar' 


(Oxford:  Clarendon  Press;  New  York:  Mao- 
millan), Mr.  W.  M.  Lindsay  presenU  a  book 
based  upon  his  large  work  called  'The  Latin 
Language'  (lately  reviewed  in  these  columns), 
and  containing  the  main  doctrines  of  that 
work  without  the  detail  of  evidence  upon 
which  they  are  founded.  It  is  a  oonvenient 
little  volume  of  some  200  pages;  the  matter  is 
well  arranged  and  clearly  expounded.  It  is 
intended  for  beginners  in  the  study  of  the  de- 
velopment of  Latin  declension  and  conjugation. 
The  language  of  it  is  simple,  avoiding  all  but 
the  most  necessary  technical  terms,  and  the 
book  may  be  highly  reconmiended  to  those  for 
whom  it  was  compiled. 

In  April,  1883,  Mr.  Timothy  Hopkins  of  the 
Southern  Pacific  Company  (of  Kentucky)  pre- 
sented his  railway  books  to  Stanford  Uni^ 
verrity,  and  made  generous  provision  for  their 
increase.  In  order  that  the  collection,  which, 
by  September,  1896,  had  grown  to  9,245  books 
and  pamphlets,  might  be  mide  immediately 
useful  to  those  interested  in  the  subject— if 
they  be  railroad  men  they  may  get  passes  to 
CaUfomia— and  that  the  increase  of  the  coU 
lection  might  be  facilitated,  the  library  of  the 
Stanford  University  recently  put  forth,  as 
number  one  of  its  publications,  a  *  Catalogue 
of  the  Hopkins  Railway  Library,'  by  Frede- 
rick J.  Teggart,  A.B.  It  is  a  quarto  of  241 
double-columned  pages,  arranged  on  a  simple 
classification  with  an  index  of  personal  names. 
It  appears  to  be  accurately  made.  The  most 
striking  features  of  the  library  evident  upon 
cursory  examination  of  the  catalogue  are  the 
large  pamphlet  collections  on  the  Erie  and  on 
the  Pacific  Railways,  and  the  lamentable  in- 
completeness of  the  sets  of  periodicals  and  re- 
ports. On  page  191  curiosity  is  piqued  by  the 
entry,  s.  v.  Southern  Pacific  Company,  of  "  A 
collection  of  740  pieces  of  stationery  in  use  by 
the  company.    Album,  folio." 

The  eighth  biennial  report  of  the  Bureau  of 
Labor  Statistics  of  Illinois,  on  tiie  subject  of 
taxation,  has  been  recently  Issued.  It  is  a 
thoroughgoing  single-tax  document,  and  de- 
void of  any  new  ideas  on  the  subject;  but  it 
contains  elaborate  statistics  of  land  and  build- 
ing values  and  assessments  in  Chicago,  which 
are  not  without  value.  The  method  by  which 
the  figures  were  ascertained  for  all  the  tables 
is  described  with  praiseworthy  fulness. 

The  ultra-conservative  spirit  of  M.  Ferdi- 
nand Bmneti^re's  treatise,  'Education  et  In- 
straction'  (Paris:  Firmin-Didot),  will  be  a  sur- 
prise even  to  thoee  long  familiar  with  the  au- 
thor's stanch  adherence  to  the  Latin  tradition 
in  French  literature  and  education.  In  a  field 
where,  though  not  a  stranger,  be  is  evidently 
not  as  much  at  home  as  in  his  own,  the  less 
agreeable  traits  of  the  great  literary  critic  are 
so  strongly  marked  as  to  become  repellent.  We 
cannot  imagine  that  his  acrimony  and  "  terri- 
ble assurance"  will  change  the  opinions  of 
many  as  to  the  relative  educational  value  of 
Latin  and  the  sciences,  or  aid  bis  colleagues  in 
strengthening  the  educative  infiuence  of  their 
work.  The  subject  of  the  treatise  itself  is  im. 
portant  enough,  and  M.  Bruneti^rs's  contribu- 
tion to  it  will  interest  members  of  the  faculties 
of  our  higher  institutions. 

Mailer's  'VademecumfiirStudierende'  will 
prove  attractive  to  all  interested  in  German 
student  life,  and  especially  so  to  those  who  ex- 
pect  to  become  students  in  Germany.  The  first 
part  of  the  book  Is  devoted  to  fraternities,  and 
a  brief  historical  sketch  is  given  of  the  foar 
general  clsstes  Into  which  these  fraternities 
naturally  group  themselves:  the  Corps,  the 
Landsmannschaft,  the  Burschenschaft,  and  the 
new  or  free  Burschenschaft,  which  dates  from 


78 


The   l!Tatlon. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1595 


1883,  and  whose  aim  is  to  ooimteract  some  of 
tbe  apparently  degenerating  influences  of  the 
older  fraternities,  0.  g,,  duelling,  oonrt  of 
honor,  etc  Besides  this  historical  sketch, 
the  characteristics  of  each  class  at  the  present 
time  are  also  set  forth,  with  statistical  tables 
showing  at  what  universities  the  Tarioos  fra- 
ternities are  represented,  the  colors,  date  of 
founding,  and  motto  of  each.  Another  chap- 
ter exhibits  all  the  scientific  societies  connect- 
ed with  the  universities;  another  is  devoted  to 
fraternities  and  societies  of  all  kinds  connect- 
ed with  technical  schools.  A  chapter  on  duel- 
ling shows  how  this  practice  has  arisen  in  the 
universities,  describes  the  instruments  used, 
gives  the  regulations  governing  it,  and  demon- 
strates how  little  the  laws  have  succeeded  in 
restraining  it.  The  drinking  customs  are  ex- 
plained somewhat  in  detail,  and  a  number  of 
student  sports  or  games  are  elucidated.  Final- 
ly, a  collection  of  students'  songs  makes  the 
book  serviceable  for  the  "  Ck>mmers.^ 

After  a  very  deliberate  and  careful  piece- 
meal  publication.  Dr.  Moriz  Heyne's  '  Deutsch- 
es  Wdrterbuch*  has  been  brought  to  a  con- 
clusion (Leipzig :  8.  Hirsel ;  New  York  : 
Lemcke  &  Buechner).  It  is  attractively  print- 
ed, and  employs  the  Gothic  letter  for  tbe 
editorial  definition,  etc.,  and  the  Roman 
(without  substantive  capitalisation)  for  tbe 
illustrative  quotations  which  lend  the  work 
its  special  distinction.  The  alphabetical  se- 
quence is  interfered  with  by  an  arrangement 
of  which  the  method  is  not  clear,  as  witness 
these  examples:  Trauen  introduces  a  para- 
graph, of  nearly  two  columns,  ending  with 
Traualtar  (which  should  have  preceded  not 
only  TraueHf  but  Traube),  Traugebfkhr  ,  .  . 
Trauteuge;  the  next  paragraph  is  Introduced 
by  Trauer,  So  Tropfen  (sub.)  must  be  sought 
under  Tropfbar,  together  with  a  series  of  com- 
pounds closed  by  Tropfenweiae ;  tbe  next 
paragraph  reverts  to  Tropfen  (verb).  The 
literary  quotations  are,  as  we  have  heretofore 
pointed  out,  very  rich  in  drafts  upon  Goethe 
and  Schiller,  and  also  upon  such  recent 
sources  as  Ranke,  Moltke,  and  Bismarck  in 
particular.  The  first  page  of  the  final  volume 
cites  not  less  than  sixteen  authors ;  the  last 
(and  it  is  a  short  page)  some  twenty.  About 
thirty-five  quotations  are  found  under  Sr^rom 
(to  choose  an  instance  at  random).  This  fea- 
ture, with  the  shades  of  meaning  implied, 
makes  Heyne  a  very  desirable  companion  for 
students  bent  on  something  more  than  bare 
translation,  and  an  interesting  browsing- 
ground  for  those  who  have  mastered  the  lan- 
guage. Tbe  etymologies  are  compact  yet  not 
sUnted. 

Lemcke  Sc  Buechner  send  us  also  the  con- 
cluding parte  of  the  eighth  edition  of  *  Bitter's 
Geographisch-Statistisches  Lexlkon,'  edited  by 
J.  Penzler.  The  two  volumes  number  1,0W 
and  1,202  pages  respectively,  in  condensed  but 
clear  typography,  displayed  in  double  columns 
in  the  Roman  letter.  This  gazetteer  has  a 
solid  reputation  for  accuracy,  and  its  range  of 
inclusion  is  very  great,  especially  for  Ger- 
many, where  every  place  having  a  hundred  in- 
habitants is  admitted ;  for  Austria  and  Swit- 
zerland the  lowest  limit  is  LV),  and  for  the  rest 
of  Europe,  800  to  500.  Abundant  details  as  to 
postal,  telegraphic,  railway,  and  industrial  fa- 
cilities are  given,  and  the  claim  is  not  rashly 
made  that  for  every  place  in  the  world  of 
commercial  significance  this  work  is  valuable 
for  reference.  It  is  finished  just  as  an  Eng- 
lish  work  of  large  dimensions,  *  Longmans' 
Gazetteer  of  the  World,'  makes  its  appearance, 
and  as  Levasseur's  *  Lexique  (S^graphique  du 
Honde  Entier'  is  beginning  to  put  out  its 


fascicules.  But  of  gazetteers  there  cannot  be 
too  many,  if  good,  and  each  will  supplement 
all  the  rest  by  its  peculiar  copiousness. 

From  the  same  firm  we  have  received  the 
fifth  issue  of  the  Spruner.Sieglin  Hand-At- 
las for  the  history,  of  antiquity,  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  of  modem  times,  in  its  first  division, 
containing  maps  of  the  Persian  Empire  and  of 
the  Macedonians  in  Alexander's  time,  the  Par- 
thian dominions,  the  north  African  seaooast, 
and  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  second  and  third 
centuries  ▲.». 

Dr.  Harrison  Allen's  article,  of  forty  pages 
and  four  plates,  **  On  the  Embryos  of  Bats," 
is  No.  2  of  vol.  i.  of  the  '  Ckmtributions  from 
the  Zoological  Laboratory  of  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania.'  About  a  dozen  genera  are  rep- 
resented, in  more  than  thirty  figures.  The 
material  was  not  all  that  was  desired,  but,  ac- 
cording to  the  author,  it  shows  the  differences 
between  fcetal  and  adult  stages  in  bats  to  be 
greater  in  kind  and  degree  than  in  other  mam- 
mals, and  that  the  numerous  contrasts  between 
embryonic  and  adult  forms  may  be  accepted 
as  evidence  of  tbe  relatively  low  g^rade  of  tbe 
entire  order,  the  high  degree  of  specialization 
notwithstanding. 

In  a  November  extra  from  the  American 
JoumcU  of  Sciene^t  vol.  1.,  Prof.  O  C.  Marsh 
treats  of  **  Restorations  of  some  European 
Dinosaurs,  with  suggestions  as  to  their  place 
among  the  Reptilia."  The  plates  contain  re- 
storations of  Compeognathus,  Scelidoeaurus, 
Hypeilophodon,  and  Iguanodon.  In  a  second 
paper  from  tbe  same  volume,  December,  he 
considers  the  **  Affinities  and  Classification  of 
the  Dinosaurlan.  Reptiles."  On  the  plate, 
twelve  restorations  are  figured  for  comparison. 
The  Dinosaurs  are  placed  as  a  sub- class  of  the 
Reptiiia  and  distributed  among  three  orders, 
Theropoda,  Sauropoda,  and  Predentata,  with 
twenty-six  families  and  sixty-eight  genera. 
The  affinities  of  the  exceptional  genus  Cera- 
tosaurus  on  tbe  one  hand  and  ArchsBopteryx  on 
the  other  bring  these  Saurians  and  the  birds 
near  together.  Remoter  affinities  are  traced 
through  the  Hallopoda,  Zanclodon,  AStoeaurus 
and  Belodon  to  the  Crocodilia,  by  way  of  com- 
mon ancestry.  The  same  volume  of  the  Jour* 
nal  contains  a  notice,  by  Prof.  J.  B.  Wood- 
worth,  of  his  discovery  in  the  Newark  Group, 
at  Avondale,  New  Jersey,  of  foot-prints  simi- 
lar to  those  of  the  Dinosaurs  of  the  Connecti- 
cut valley. 

In  a  recent  circular  sent  out  by  Prof.  Pick- 
ering, we  learn  that  an  interesting  examina- 
tion of  variable  stars  has  been  in  progress. 
Prof.  8.  I.  Bailey,  in  charge  of  the  Harvard 
station  at  Arequipa,  Peru,  has  made  nume- 
rous photographs  of  globular  clusters,  which 
have  proved,  upon  examination,  to  contain  an 
extraordinary  number  of  variable  stars— not  a 
general  condition  of  stellar  clusters.  The  pho- 
tographs used  in  this  discussion  were  taken  at 
Arequipa  with  the  18-inch  Boyden  telescope. 
In  one  cluster  (Canes  Venatici),  no  less  than 
eighty-seven  stars  Jiave  been  found  to  be  varia- 
ble. That  this  is  unmistakable  is  proved  by  an 
independent  examination  of  the  plates  by  Prof. 
Pickering  and  Mrs.  Fleming  as  well  as  Prof. 
Bailey.  Anotiier  cluster  shows  forty-six  varia- 
bles, while  others  show  three,  four,  or  five 
each.  In  general,  no  variables  have  been 
found  within  about  one  minute  of  the  centre 
of  the  clusters,  on  account  of  the  closeness  of 
the  stars;  and  none  of  those  found  are  more 
than  ten  minutes  distant  from  the  centres  of 
the  clusters.  Some  of  tbe  variable  stars  have 
short  periods,  of  not  more  than  a  few  hours. 
The  individual  stars  in  close  clusters  can  be 
readily  found  only  from  photographic  or  other 


charts  on  which  they  are  marked.  The  Har- 
vard Observatory  la  preparing  to  publish 
charts  of  this  kind,  and  meantime  marked 
photographs  will  be  sent  to  astronomers  de- 
siring to  study  them. 

We  learn  from  Soisnoe  that  a  new  star  has 
been  found  by  Mrs.  Fleming  in  the  constella- 
tion  Centaums,  from  a  comparison  with  tbe 
Draper  Memorial  photographs.  Its  spectrum 
is  monochromatic,  and  closely  resembles  that 
of  the  adjacent  nebula.  Like  tbe  new  stars  in 
Cygnus,  Auriga,  and  Norma,  it  appears  to 
have  changed  Into  a  gaseous  nebula.  It  is  al- 
ready beginning  to  fade. 

As  an  indication  of  the  recognition  which 
women  are  beginning  to  receive  in  German- 
speaking  countries,  it  may  be  mentioned  that 
upon  the  occasion  of  the  discussion  of  the  bill 
for  the  admission  of  women  to  universities*  a 
member  of  the  Austrian  Parliament  said  of 
Frau  von  Gizycki  (whoee  husband  was  the  well- 
known  writer  on  ethics  and  professor  at  the 
University  of  Berlin),  referring  to  her  recent 
speeches  in  Vienna,  that  she  would  be  an  honor 
to  any  parliament  in  the  world,  and  that  of 
the  three  hundred  and  fifty-three  members 
then  present  there  were  not  many  who  could 
measure  themselves  against  her  for  eloquence, 
culture,  or  learning. 

A  significant  enterprise  has  just  been 
launched  in  Vienna  by  the  ArcbsBological  Com- 
mittee for  the  gymnasia  in  that  capitaL  A 
series  of  permanent  photographic  prints  from 
approved  plaster  casts  of  sculpture  that  has 
come  down  to  us  from  antiquity,  will  be  issued 
for  school  use  in  connection  with  Greek  and  Ro- 
man  history  and  mythology*  at  a  price  averag- 
ing fifteen  cents  a  folio  plate.  The  first  of  six 
instalments  is  now  before  us  (Vienna:  Carl 
Graeser;  New  York:  Westermann),  consisting 
of  the  well-known  Augustus  from  Prima 
Porta.  Zeus  from  Otricoli,  Laoko5n  group 
(Vatican),  Pericles  (British  Museum),  Homer 
Sanssoucl),  and  a  less  familiar  has  relief  of 
Orpheus,  Eurydioe,  and  Hermes  (Villa  Al- 
bani).  The  prints  share  the  inferiority  of  the 
material  they  counterfeit,  but  on  the  other 
band  it  has  been  possible  to  control  the  light- 
ing so  as  to  bring  out  the  details  of  the  statu- 
ary. Though  some  retouchmg  is  inevitable  in 
all  these  mechanical  reproductions,  the  present 
series  Is  on  the  whole  very  satisfactory  as  well 
as  cheap.  There  would  appear  to  be  no  limit 
to  it.  A  text-book  of  moderate  compass  will 
accompany  tiie  complete  portfolio. 

Mr.  Unwin's  new  venture,  the  monthly  Coa^ 
fnopolis  (New  York:  International  News  Ca), 
is  a  handsome  large  octavo,  and  justifies  its  sub- 
title, **an  international  review,"  by  printing 
three  tiers  of  articles  in  as  many  languages, 
English,  French,  and  German.  Stevenson's 
posthumous  **  Weir  of  Hermiston "  leads  the 
table  of  contents,  and  is  bracketed  with  arti- 
cles by  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  Henry  James,  and 
Edmund  Gosse.  Paul  Bourget  ushers  in  the 
French  section,  followed  by  Anatole  Franca, 
&douard  Rod,  Georg  Brandes,  and  Francisqne 
Saroey.  Ernest  von  Wildenbruch,  Monunsen, 
Erich  Schmidt,  Spielhagen,  and  Helferich  form 
the  German  contingent,  and  these  nationalities 
reappear  among  the  editors  of  the  condnding 
chronicles.  This,  as  will  be  seen,  is  a  brave 
showing  of  names,  and  it  would  be  a  narrow 
intellect  that  could  not  find  interesting  read- 
ing in  each  division.  Perhaps  a  first  nontiber 
calls  for  no  further  remark. 

Tbe  London  music-halls,  to  which  we  owe,  if 
not  the  invention,  the  suggestion,  of  the  snb- 
stantive  **  Jingo,"  some  time  ago  undertook  to 
fix  the  pronunciation  of  **  Rhodesia,"  tbe  aama 
of  the  ambitious  South  African  prealar^  Ti- 


Jan.  23,  1896] 


The    iSTation. 


79 


sionary  domain,  uncomfortably  ftdjaoenito  the 
Trnnarmal.  Themuto  e  proving  troublesome 
for  g«ogTmphic  rb  jming,  it  was  boldly  sounded, 
M  foUowt: 

**  TIm  boom,  the  boom,  the  boom,  boys, 
IiiralrRbo<lMU. 
Hurrah  for  Odl  Rhodes,  boys, 
Tb*  friend  of  Zambetta  t 
▲  ebe*r  for  Willie  Recan.  boys, 
And  one  for  Jameeon  I 
But  a  t'ger  for  Bama«o.  bojra, 
▲nd  the  land«  of  LlTingitone.'* 

A  correspondent  writes:  "  In  two  different 
editions  of  tbe  one-Tolume  edition  of  Loireirs 
Poems  I  find  a  singular  misreading  of  a  word. 
The  yeraes  *  To  a  Pine-Tree,*  stansa  four,  read 
in  the  first  line, 

*  To  tbe  alnmberer  aaleep  *neath  tby  glooming ' ; 

certainly  a  *  damnable  iteration.'  Tbe  early 
editions  have  *  lumberer.*  **  The  error  has 
happily  not  been  perpetuated  in  tbe  ten 
Tolume  Riverside  Edition  of  Lowell's  Works. 

Tbe  Department  of  State  has,  as  our  readers 
know,  hopefully  begun  a  series  of  calendars 
wbich  will  help  to  extend  the  proper  basing  of 
American  history  on  documents.  An  agency 
lika  the  English  Historical  Bianuffcripts  Com. 
mission,  formed  to  deal  with  historical  mate 
rials  not  poweied  by  the  Department,  was 
still  needed,  and  the  establishment  of  such  a 
commission  was,  as  we  have  already  announced, 
the  most  important  step  taken  by  the  Ameri- 
can Historiod  Association  at  its  late  meeting 
in  Washington.  We  are  now  able  to  report 
the  Commission  constituted,  and  ready  to  be- 
gin its  inquiries.  It  consists  of  Prof.  J.  F. 
JameaoD  of  Brown  University  as  chairman; 
Dr.  Douglas  Brymner,  archivist  of  the  Domi- 
nion of  Canada;  Mr.  Talcott  Williams  of  Phi- 
ladelphia; Prof.  Wm.  P.  Trent  of  the  Universi- 
ty of  the  South;  and  Prof.  Frederick  J.  Turner 
of  the  University  of  Wisconsin. 

—We  call  attention  to  the  communication, 
on  another  page,  from  British  Guiana.  It  is 
from  the  pen  of  the  Hon.  N.  Darnell  Davis, 
C.M.O.,  Collector  of  the  Port  of  Georgetown, 
and  a  well-known  historical  student  and  writer. 
Mr.  Davis  posse asos  a  strong  affection  for  the 
United  States,  and  is  unusually  weU-informed 
as  to  its  earlier  and  later  history.  He  has  for 
many  years  been  a  oontributOT  to  the  Nation, 

—The  Devfl  cannot  complain  that  he  has  not 
his  due  in  the  current  issue  of  the  Oxford  Eng- 
lish  Dictionary  (Development- Diffluency).  Six 
pages,  or  eighteen  columns,  are  allotted  to  him 
under  his  proper  rubric,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
derivatives  from  the  Latin  and  French  roots. 
His  elusive  and  metamorphic  character  is  evi. 
denced  by  the  long  catalogue  of  spellings  of 
his  name,  tirom  diobul  to  del^  and  his  alias  the 
dickens  ;  by  his  vacillating  gender  in  Old  High 
German  and  Old  English— from  masculine  to 
neuter  ;  and  by  the  numerous  shapes  popular- 
ly ascribed  to  him  over  and  above  the  conven- 
tional likenev  to  Pan  and  the  satyrs.  Even  in 
tbe  Scriptures,  Jerome  must  needs  restore  the 
Hebrew  Satan  in  place  of  the  iUfio\ot  of  the 
Beptuagint  and  the  diaboluM  of  the  Old  Latin 
version.  Wyclif,  with  his  Sathan,  followed 
the  Vulgate  except  in  one  of  the  Pkalms,  where 
be  let  in  **the  deuell.*'  The  Devil*s  proverbial 
averdoD  to  holy  water  was  recognised  as  early 
as  1570 ;  he  was  not  so  black  as  painted  in  1590; 
be  made  his  appearance  when  talked  of  in  1672; 
and  be  was**  to  pay**  in  1711.  A  **  poor  devU** 
excited  pity  in  1006.  Moxon,  etymologising  in 
168S,  explained  tbe  name  **printer*s  devil  **  by 
tbe  fact  that  **tbese  Boys  .  .  .  in'a  Print, 
iag  House  commonly  black  and  Dawb  them- 
•sEvee.**  An  nnfetd  junior-counsel,  however,  is 
a  **  deva  "  irrespective  of  color,  like  his  brother 


fag  the  n^gre  of  the  French  art  ateliers.  Finally, 
to  have  done  with  his  Majesty,  we  remark  that 
deviltry^  an  Americanism  for  devUry^  is  sup- 
ported by  dialectal  English.  Another  vocable 
possessing  an  obvious  interest,  in  this  instal- 
ment, is  Dictionary,  *a  repertory  of  dte^iones, 
phrases  or  words.*  The  word  is  traced  {circa 
1225)  to  Joannes  de  Garlandia,  a  native  of 
England,  who  adopted  the  form  diclionarius, 
while  Petrus  Berchorlus,  who  died  in  Paris  in 
1362,  preferred  dteftonartum.  Sir  Thomas 
Elyot  arrived  with  bis  dictionary  in  1538,  as, 
across  the  Channel,  R.  Estienne  with  diction- 
aire  in  1539.  The  earliest  works  of  this  kind 
were  bilingual  or  polyglot. 

—Much  curiosity  attaches  to  the  substantive 
devoir^  which  in  Middle  English  was  spelt 
dever,  and  stressed  on  tbe  last  syllable  (de 
vair),  then  on  the  penult  (dev'ver),  with  the 
spellings  devour^  devor^  deavour^  and  presently, 
by  Caxton*8  powerful  aid,  devoir  as  in  French, 
though  retaining  the  penultimate  stress.  The 
English  traditional  form  completely  died  out 
after  1600,  and  by  degrees  the  French  pronun- 
ciation got  and  retained  the  upper  hand.  The 
*8ong  of  Roland*  {circa  1400)  has:  **Tristus 
neuer.  If  we  in  this  mater  do  not  our  deuour**; 
and  Tom  Hood  in  1845  revived  this  archaism 
for  the  sake  of  a  pun—**  He  went  to  pay  her 
his  devours.  When  he*d  devoured  his  pay.** 
Dicker^  too,  has  a  singular  history,  as  coming 
from  the  Latin  decuria,  *a  parcel  of  10,*  and 
being  in  vogue  among  our  Teutonic  ancestors 
in  their  skin  tributes  to  the  Roman  conquer, 
ors,  just  as  later  in  this  country  in  our  fur 
dealings  with  the  Indians.  The  most  Protean 
of  all  words  in  the  present  section,  as  respects 
meanings,  is  perhaps  dicky,  which  denotes 
seven  distinct  articles  of  apparel,  as,  a'  de- 
tachable  shirt-front,  a  collar,  a  bib,  a  petti- 
coat, an  apron,  an  oil-skin  suit,  besides  a 
rag-bag,  a  driver's  seat,  and  a  naval  officer. 
Diaper  has  nothing  to  do,  etymologically,with 
**d*Tpre8,"  in  spite  of  aU  that  town*s  napery. 
The  verb  dictate,  we  are  told,  is  now  usually 
accented  on  the  last  syllable  in  England,  but 
Byron  and  SbeUey  consistently  accented  the 
first,  as  does  certainly  tbe  best  American  usage. 
Pope,  Thomson,  Toung,  Cowper,  Keats,  and 
Tennyson  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding, 
diamond  tends  to  become  trisyUabic,  as  Shak- 
spere  made  it;  but  metrical  license  will  doubt- 
less keep  the  pronunciation  from  **  crystallis- 
ing.'* With  different  *'  tbe  usual  construction 
is  now  with  from;  that  with  to  (after  unlike, 
dissimilar  to)  is  found  in  writers  of  all  ages, 
and  is  frequent  colloquially,  but  is  by  numy 
considered  incorrect  The  construction  with 
than  (after  other  than)  is  found  in  Fuller,**  etc., 
to  Dasent,  as  Dr.  Fitcedward  Hall  has  shown. 
A  euphemistic  American  sense  of  diffictUty,  *a 
quarrel,  assault,  homicide,*  is  unnoticed  under 
this  word.  Longfellow*s  ^^diapaeon  of  the 
cannonade  "  is,  we  venture  to  think,  misappor- 
tioned  under  the  strictly  musical  definition;  it 
belongs  rather  under  tbe  '*  more  or  less  vague- 
ly extended,  with  the  idea  of  *  all  the  tones  or 
notes.' "  The  poet  chose  it  for  its  polysyllabic 
dignity,  heightened  in  effect  by  its  infrequent 
use  and  consequent  obscurity  of  meaning— 
omne  ignotum  pro  magnifieo, 

—The  coincident  progress  towards  comple- 
tion  of  Pottier's  Daremberg-Saglio  and  of  Wis- 
sowa's  rewritten  edition  of  Pauly's  classical 
encyclop»dia  in  ten  volumes  (Stuttgart: 
Metsler),  which  has  maintained  its  ascendency 
as  the  standard  work  of  reference  of  classical 
philologians  and  antiquarians  for  more  tlian 
half  a  century,  wears  the  tmpect  of  an  interna- 


tional handicap  match  of  polyhistoric  scholar- 
ship. The  new  Pauly,  like  the  old,  is  without 
illustrations,  although  volume  i.  containsamap 
of  the  Lacus  Albanus  region,  a  plan  of  Alex- 
andria, and  a  map  of  the  Oropian  Sanctuary  of 
Amphiaraos.  Unlike  the  old,  it  is  printed  in 
two-column  large  octavo  pages  in  Latin  type, 
and  on  good  paper.  Unlike  Daremberg  Saglio's 
*  Dictionnaire  des  antiquity  grecques  et  ro- 
maines,*  its  strongest  point  is  nomenclature,  so 
that  it  confiicts  neither  with  its  French  rival 
nor  with  Iwan  von  Miilier's  great  *Handbuch 
der  philologisohen  Wissenschaften.'  Its  edit- 
or's reputation  as  a  critical  scholar  in  the  do. 
mo  in  of  Latin  ity,  of  Roman  mythology  and 
arcbflBology  is  well  established.  He  occupies 
the  chair  of  classical  philology  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Marburg,  and  is  an  industrious  con- 
tributor  to  Roscher's  uncompleted  'Lexikon 
der  griechiscben  und  rdmischen  Mythologie.* 
A  characteristic  article  of  the  first  semi-vol- 
ume, which  stops  in  the  middle  of  the  article 
Alexandras,  is  the  multiple  one  under  Aeliue, 
Including  Adia^  it  embraces  no  less  than  one 
hundred  and  eighty-four  individual  subjects, 
down  to  Aelia  Verrina,  wife  of  Emperor  Leo  I. 
The  chief  of  all  the  AeUi  is  of  course  Emperor 
Hadrian,  whose  biography  is  given  under  No. 
64.  Nothing  more  convincingly  proves  the 
enormous  setback  in  civilization  which  ttie 
Orient  has  labored  under  since  the  days  of  the 
Roman  Empire  than  Von  Robden's  rehearsal  of 
Hadrian*s  joumeyings  from  Rome  to  Athens, 
from  Athens  by  way  of  Ephesus,  Lycia,  and 
Cilida  to  Antioch,  thence  to  Palmyra,  Da- 
mascus, Gaza,  and  back  from  Antioch  by 
way  of  Jerusalem  and  Arabia  to  Egypt, 
up  and  down  the  Nije  with  the  Empress, 
thence  into  Libya,  where  he  hunts  lions, 
back  to  Antioch,  north  again  to  Adrianople, 
Moesia  (now  Bulgaria),  and  Dacia  (now  Ru- 
mania), through  the  Vale  of  Tempo  to  Dodo- 
na,  swiftly  again,  at  the  news  of  the  rebellion 
of  Barcocheba,  to  Jerusalem,  and  home  by  sea 
to  Rome— for  such  is  the  abundantly  verified 
itinerary  of  one  of  bis  fifteen-thousand-mile 
journeys.  In  his  ascents  of  Mts.  Casius  and 
Aetna,  **  to  see  the  sunrise,*'  in  his  artistic  di. 
lettanteism,  and  in  his  constant  professions  of 
unselfish  doYotion  to  the  good  of  his  people, 
the  first  Reisekaiser  is  indeed  quite  up  to  the 
last.  Kaerst's  accoimt  of  Alexander  the  Great 
leaves  something  to  be  desired  in  the  absence 
of  any  allusion  to  his  physical  appearance,  or 
to  his  important  relation  to  Greek  art  as  a  sub- 
ject of  portraiture;  also  in  the  manner  in  which 
the  lasting  effects  of  his  conquests  on  the  In- 
dian ^ntier  are  ignored. 

—Specialists  cannot  afford  to  Ignore  the 
data  collected  under  Absrglaube  by  Dr.  Ernst 
Riess,  now  a  resident  of  Philadelphia,  under 
Achaia  by  Brandis,  who  takes  little  note  of 
the  arcbsaological  evidence  of  the  high  civili- 
zation  of  the  Achsoans  before  the  Dorian 
conquest,  under  Aera  by  Kubitschek,  who 
gives  a  six.page  synchronistic  table  of  astro- 
nomical and  Julian  years  compared  with  the 
Greek  Olympiads  and  supplemented  by  the 
Byzantine  indictions,  and  under  Arithmetica 
by  Hultsch.  The  latest  and  fullest  informa- 
tion on  Aphrodite  has  been  collected  by 
Gfimpel,  who  favors  a  purely  Hellenic  origin 
of  the  cult  and  Kretschmer's  etymology 
J^p-U^nf  ^  foam  traveller,  **an  epithet  deriv- 
iog  from  Greek  hymnology,"  rather  than  Prel- 
ler's  from  a  hypothetical  Phoenician  aph^ru- 
det  —  the  dove.  The  immense  antiquity  and 
the  continuous  use  throughout  Graeoo-Italic 
antiquity  of  nude  images  not  destitute  of  sexu. 
al  signifloanoe,  as  the  imaginatioo  of  a  Haw. 


80 


The    !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No,  1595 


thorne  conceived  the  Venas  of  the  Medici  and 
her  congeners  to  be,  is  clearly  shown.  In  two 
long  articles  of  the  third  aemivolame,  on 
Apollo  and  Artemis,  Wernicke  takes  the  ad- 
yanced  ground  of  denying  the  primary  con- 
nection of  either  deity  with  fH>lar  and  lunar 
worship.  His  Apollo  Is  an  earth  spirit,  and 
his  Artemis  a  sort  of  apsani,  or  dew  fairy,  out 
of  which  aspects  the  vegetal,  pastoral,  genital, 
tribal,  purificatory,  and  other  sides  of  the  cult 
of  both  originally  unconnected  deities  develop 
plausibly  under  his  hands.  The  last  semi- 
volume  is  especially  rich  in  important  subjects 
pertaining  to  the  history  of  Greek  literature, 
criticism,  and  science:  Archllochus,  Archi- 
medes, Aristarchus,  Aristophanes,  Aristotle. 
In  Cru8iu8*s  article  on  Archllochus  and  in 
KaibeVs  on  Aristophanes,  as  in  Kaerst^s  on 
Alexander,  no  allusion  is  made  to  the  extant 
antique  portraits,  or  to  the  silver  cup  lately 
exhumed  near  Pompeii  on  which  the  skele- 
ton of  the  Parian  poet,  with  the  inscription 
APXIAOX02,  appears  in  company  with  those  of 
the  foremost  other  poets  du  temps  jadis.  The 
revised  edition  of  Pauly,  comprising  14,400 
P*S^  ^iU  appear  in  twenty  s^mi-volumes 
at  the  uniform  price  of  15  marks,  and  also 
in  150  numbers  of  6  signatures  at  2  marks 
each. 

—The  Journal  of  the  Society  of  Arts  (Lon- 
don :  Gleorge  Bell  Sc  Sons)  of  December  0  gives 
an  account  of  a  paper  and  discussion  on  a  re- 
Tival  of  the  wateivglass  method  of  mural 
painting  which  has  been  used  by  Mrs.  Lea 
Merritt  in  the  decoration  of  the  little  church 
of  St  Martin's,  Wonersh.  This  method,  which 
depends  on  the  fixing  of  the  colors  by  q[>raying 
with  certain  **  soluble  silicates  and  metaUio 
oxides^  (water-colors  being  used),  was  invented 
in  Glermany,  and  was  in  great  favor  at  the 
time  of  the  decoration  of  the  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment. Madlse's  enormous  pictures  of  Waterloo 
and  Trafalgar  were  painted  in  this  manner, 
hut  he  does  not  seem  to  have  been  much 
pleased  with  the  process  or  its  results,  and  we 
believe  it  has  not  been  used  since  his  time  untO 
now.  Permanence  and  resistance  to  cUmate, 
even  in  exterior  decoration,  are  the  merits 
claimed  for  it.  It  seems  characteristically 
English  that  the  discussion  should  have 
brought  out  the  expression  of  great  hopes  for 
the  enlarged  use  of  decorative  painting  in 
England  based  upon  the  revival  of  a  process. 
Here,  we  should  be  likely  to  consider  a  process 
of  little  importance,  and  to  think  that  a  de- 
sire for  painted  decoration  on  the  part  of  the 
public  and  an  abUity  to  design  it  on  the  part 
of  the  artists  were  the  essentials.  It  may  be 
doubted  whether,  in  the  epochs  when  art  was 
really  living,  any  one  has  cared  much  for 
permanence.  The  external  walls  of  Venice 
were  covered  with  frescoes  by  Titian  and 
Giorgione  as  we  cover  ours  with  red  paint  and 
white  •*  pointing''— because  it  suited  the  taste 
of  the  Venetians  ;  and  the  work  was  as  little 
expected  to  last  for  ever.  The  English  sense 
of  **  commercial  integrity,''  as  Sizeranne  calls 
it,  places  great  stress  upon  permanence,  and 
English  painters  makethtir  work  distressingly 
ugly  with  a  glowing  sense  of  virtue  in  the 
knowledge  that  it  will  always  remain  so. 
When  we  really  want  art  we  can  have  it  even 
in  so  ephemerbl  a  thing  as  the  poster.  Why 
should  we  not  paint  our  walls  in  the  same 
spirit,  leaving  our  successors  to  treat  theirs  in 
their  own  way  ?  The  permanence  of  bad  art 
and  bad  decoration  is  one  of  the  melancholy 
things  in  this  world,  and  for  one  lost  master, 
piece  that  we  regret  there  are  thousands  of 
daubs  that  we  cannot  get  rid  of. 


—An  article  in  the  InUmational  Journal  of 
Ethics  on  '*  National  Prejudices"  is  of  a  time- 
ly interest,  which  its  author,  an  Englishman, 
could  not  have  anticipated  when  he  wrote  it. 
Whatever  the  amount  of  slumbering  dislike 
and  misconception  that  may  exist  between 
European  nations  now,  it  is  nothing  like  the 
brutal  ignorance  and  the  harsh  hatred  which 
the  beet  of  men  felt  only  a  few  generations  ago 
for  people  of  a  different  race  from  themselves. 
The  quotations  which  this  writer  gives  are  in- 
teresting landmarks,  from  which  one  can  Infer 
how  much  brotherly  love  between  nations  will 
surpass  its  present  development  fifty  years 
from  now.  For  instance,  Coleridge  writes 
that  he  had  never  met  a  (German  clergyman 
who  was  a  Christian;  the  Russians  he  pro- 
nounced brutal;  the  Dutch,  he  said,  were  ani- 
mals; and  the  Belgians,  as  Impudent  as  they 
were  iniquitous,  consisted  of  four  million  res- 
tive asses.  For  the  French  he  had  this  in 
reserve:  **  Frenchmen  are  like  grains  of  gun- 
powder— each  by  itself  smutty  and  contempti- 
ble, but  mass  them  together  and  they  are  ter^ 
rible  indeed."  Dr.  Johnson  said  of  the  Ame- 
ricans in  1769 :  **  Sir,  they  are  a  race  of  convicts, 
and  ought  to  be  thankful  for  anything  we  allow 
them  short  of  hanging.'*  Of  the  French  he 
says:  "What  do  you  expect,  dear  sir,  from 
fellows  that  eat  frogs?"  When  asked  whether, 
after  an,  Qod  had  not  made  Scotland,  he  re- 
plied: "  Certainly  he  did,  but  he  made  it  for 
Scotchmen;  and  we  must  remember  that  God 
made  hell."  When  in  particularly  good  humor, 
he  was  willing  to  love  all  mankind,  except  a% 
American.  Swift  wrote:  "The  greatest  In- 
ventions were  produced  in  times  of  Ignorance; 
as  the  use  of  the  Compass,  Gunpowder,  and 
Printing;  and  by  the  dullest  Nation,  as  the  Ger- 
mans." And  the  prototype  for  all  this  is  the 
yet  earlier  proverbial  saying,  "  Can  any  goed 
thing  come  out  of  Nassreth  ? "  A  Franco- 
English  alliance  has  been  formed  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  removing  the  false  views  of 
the  manners,  customs,  teelings,  and  history  of 
each  of  those  two  nations  which  prevail  in  the 
other.  Such  an  organization  may  easily  be- 
come a  powerful  means  for  good. 

—A  bit  of  archsBological  news  of  some  im- 
portance was  announced  on  December  21  by 
M.  Paul  Delombre,  in  his  report  on  the  erMUs 
suppUmentaires  asked  for  by  the  French  Gk)v- 
emment.  Among  these  is  an  item  of  60,000 
francs  to  pay  for  the  exclusive  priTilege  of 
making  archsBologlcal  diggings  in  Persia.  M. 
Delombre  gives  the  hitherto  unpubli»hed  text 
of  the  agreement  which  has  been  made  between 
the  French  (Government  and  the  Shah.  The 
chief  points  in  this  agreement  are  theee:  On 
account  of  the  scientific  eminence  of  the 
French,  and  the  friendly  relations  which  for 
so  long  a  time  have  happily  existed  between 
Iran  and  France,  the  Persian  Government 
grants  to  the  French  the  exclusive  privilege  of 
making  diggings  throughout  the  whole  extent 
of  the  empire.  All  sacred  places,  like  mosques 
and  cemeteries,  however,  are  to  be  exempt 
from  disturbance;  and  the  French  excavating 
parties  are  held  to  respect  the  habits  and  cus- 
toms of  the  country,  and  to  do  nothing  to  vex 
them.  All  expenses  of  whatsoever  sort  are  to 
be  at  the  charge  of  the  Government  of  the  Re- 
public. If  valuable  objects  in  gold  or  silver 
are  found,  or  if  any  jewels,  these  are  to  be  the 
private  property  of  the  Persian  Government; 
yet,  in  consideration  of  the  cost  and  trouble  of 
the  diggings,  one-half  of  such  objects  will  be 
yielded  to  the  French  at  a  fair  price;  and, 
whenever  the  rest  shall  be  sold,  if  ever,  the 
French  shall  be  given  the  first  chance  to  pur- 


chase it.  As  to  works  of  scul  pture  of  all  sorts, 
and  inscriptions,  they  are  to  be  divided  evosly 
between  the  two  (Governments,  but  the  French 
delegates  are  to  have  the  right  of  making 
sketches  or  models  of  whatever  may  be  found. 
FinaDy,  "in  recognition  of  the  preference 
which  the  Persian  Government  accords  to  it, 
the  Government  of  the  Republic  will  make  to 
his  Majesty  the  Shah  a  present  of  10,000 
francs."  It  cannot  be  said  that,  as  diggings 
go,  the  French  have  paid  an  undue  price  for 
their  privilege.  Everybody  will  wish  them 
good  luck  in  the  exercise  of  it,  and  many  disco- 
veries in  this  relatively  new  and  certainly  most 
interesting  and  promising  field. 


SHERMAN'S  RECOLL^CTIONa 

John  Sherman^  Recollections  of  Vortj  Tears 
in  the  House,  Senate,  and  Cabinet.  An  Auto- 
biography.   Two  volumes,  illustrated.    (3hi. 
cago:  The  Werner  0>.    1896. 
Mb.  Sherman's  recollections  derive  interest 
from  two  sources— first,  the  importance  of  the 
events  in  which  he  has  played  a  part;  second, 
from  their  presenting  a  picture  of  the  man 
himself.    As  a  literary  performance  the  book 
has  no  character  whatever,  but  as  the  picture 
of  a  successful  politician  drawn  by  his  own 
hand  it  is  instructive.    No  doubt  the  success 
would  have  been  more  marked  if  the  great 
ambition  of   Mr.  Sherman's  life,  the   Presi- 
dency, had  been  attained  (we  infer  from  these 
volumes  that  he  has  fl^ven  it  up) ;  but,  compared 
with  that  of  most  of  his  contemporaries,  it  has 
been  very  remarkable.    In  the  world  of  poli- 
tics success  means  remaining  in  office,  and  the 
question  which  has  interested  us  in  reading 
theee  volumes  has  been  to  make  out  the  sort  of 
character  and  mind  required  for  the  task  dur- 
ing  the  past  forty  years.    The  answer  is  deai^ 
ly  that  the  first  requisite  has  been  a  conviction 
that,  no  matter  what  one's  party  decides,  the 
iirst  duty  of  a  statesman  is  to  vote  with  it,  and 
not  set  up  his  Individual  judgment  against  it; 
the  second,  that  all  differences  of  opinion,  no 
matter  whether  they  involve  moral  questions 
or  not,  can  be  compromised  in  some  way ;  the 
third,  that  a  public  measure,  no  matter  how 
good  in  itself,  is  worthless  unless  it  satisfies  the 
popular  demand  for  the  time  being;  the  fourth, 
that  when  a  statesman  does  not  know  in  which 
of  two  opposite  directions  the  popular  current 
is  moving,  the  thing  for  him  to  do  is  to  **hedge  " ; 
the  fifth,  that  speech  is  capable  of  many  uses 
besides  the  bald  and  childish  one  of  expressing 
one's  thoughts.    Mr.  Sherman  is  a  brilliant  ex- 
ample of  what  would  be  called  in  France  an 
"  opportunist,"  and  that  he  does  not  mind  at 
least  being  criticised  as  such,  seems  a  fair  de- 
duction from  his  quoting  in  extenso  (pp.  81(^ 
811)  an  article,  by  Don  Piatt,  in  which  he  is 
complimented  on  a  symmetry  of  inteUect  which 
"  leaves  nothing  to  regret  except  the  thought 
that  its  perfection  excludes  the  blemish  of  a 
soul."    We  shall  not  attempt  to  review  Mr. 
Sherman's  career  in  detail,  but  shall  merely 
endeavor  to  show  how  his  "recollections"  of 
some  of  the  leading  events  in  it  fllustrate  his 
character. 

A  marked  feature  of  lir.  Sherman's  person- 
al recollections  is  their  insipidity,  and  this  is 
evidently  due  to  his  disinclination  to  recollect 
anything  unpleasant  or  anything  which  might 
give  offence.  The  stormy  period  of  Grant's 
first  term,  for  instance,  ending  in  the  revcdt  of 
1872  and  the  nomination  of  Horace  Greeley  hy 
the  Democrats,  is  passed  over  almoat  in  il* 
lence.  We  are  told  of  the  deposition  of  Hr* 
Sumner  from  the  Foreign  Relations  ^ 


Jan.  23,  1896] 


Tlie   IN"atioii. 


81 


we  are  told  that  it  was  **a  period  of 
aod  •candal,''  and  that  in  the  coune 
of  it  the  author  himfelf  wai  faleely  accuted  of 
haying  made  money  cormptly ;  also,  that  be 
went  to  California  and  saw  the  Yosemite  and 
the  big  trees— bnt  this  is  pretty  much  alL 
Of  course,  in  the  personal  recollections  of  a 
flnanci<»r.  it  is  unfair  to  expect  a  full  history 
of  his  times;  and  this  may  account  for  the 
fact  that  there  seems  to  be  no  mention  of  the 
long  controTersy  over  the  distribution  of  the 
AUMbama  claims  money,  as  well  as  for  the 
statement  that  the  only  reason  for  the  defeat 
of  Blaine's  nomination  in  1876  was  **  antago- 
nisms "^  between  him  and  Conkling  (p.  550), 
and  that  in  1880  he  was  defeated  because  nine 
delegates  from  Ohio  yoted  for  him  instead  of 
for  the  author— this  desertion  preventing  a 
subsequent  unanimous  transfer  of  the  delega- 
tion from  Sherman  to  Blaine  (p.  778).  The 
Belknap  and  Schenck  aflTairs  are  not  discussed, 
nor  is  the  Cr^it  Hobilier  scandal,  which  at 
the  time  conyulsed  the  country. 

Mr.  Sherman's  first  political  contest  of  im- 
porunce  was  that  for  Speaker  of  the  House  in 
1850>*60.  His  attitude  in  it  was  characteristic 
of  the  man.  Helper's  *  Impending  Crisis '  had 
appeared,  and  a  pamplilet  had  been  made 
from  it  by  P.  P.  Blair.  Mr.  Sherman  had  been 
aakcd  during  the  previous  Congress  by  a  friend 
of  his,  Mr.  E.  D.  Morgan,  to  sign  a  recom 
mendation  for  the  circulation  of  such  a  pam- 
phlet. Mr.  Sherman  warily  replied  that  he 
**  had  not  time  to  examine  the  book,'*  but  that 
**  if  there  was  nothing  olTensive  in  it"  he  (Bfr. 
Morgan)  might  use  his  name.  So  far  from 
there  being  nothing  offensiye  in  it  to  the 
Southern  half  of  the  country,  from  which 
the  ^'incendiary**  work  emanated,  the  mo- 
ment Mr.  Sherman  was  put  in  nomination  for 
Speaker,  a  Missourian  introduced  a  resolution 
denouncing  the  book,  and  declaring  that  no 
member  of  the  House  who  had  recommended  it 
was  fit  to  be  Speaker  (p.  160).  The  candidate 
was  at  once  able  to  say  that  he  had  never  read 
the  book,  nor  the  compendium  founded  upon 
it ;  that  he  had  authorised  his  name  to  be  used 
only  in  case  there  was  nothing  **  olTensive  **  in 
the  book;  that  if  there  was  anything  ofTensive 
in  it,  he  repudiated  it,  and  that  his  attitude  on 
the  slavery  question  was  a  matter  of  record. 
Hia  manly,  straightforward  speech  on  the  sub- 
ject brought  him  within  three  votes  of  an  elec- 
tion. Strange  to  say,  there  are  people  to  ttiis 
day  ill-natured  enough  to  think  that  Mr.  Sher- 
man avoided  reading  the  *  Impending  Crisis  * 
in  order  to  be  prepared  to  stand  by  his  signa- 
ture or  repudiate  all  knowledge  of  the  book,  as 
the  oat  might  jump.  But  the  air  at  the  time 
waa  full  of  suspicion  and  distrust.  Thaddeus 
Btevens,  Mr.  Sherman  tells  us,  said  he  would 
never  vote  for  any  other  candidate  until  the 
crack  of  doom,  and  afterwards  explained  his 
change  of  mind  by  saying  that  he  thought  he 
•*  heard  it  cracking.** 

One  great  advantage  of  Recollections  is  that 
the  author  can  recollect  things  pretty  much 
as  be  pleases,  provided,  at  least,  that  he  has 
Mr.  Sharman*s  caution  of  statement.  For  in- 
■taocei,  what  he  recollecti  about  Johnson's  im- 
peachment is  that  the  latter  was  simply  guilty 
of  a  plain  violation  of  a  penal  statute,  and 
tliat  no  substantial  constitutional  question  was 
Invotved  (pp.  480,  481) ;  consequently  he  **  felt 
bound  "  to  vote  guilty,  but  *'  was  entirely  sa- 
tMled  with  the  result  of  the  vote,  brought 
aboot  by  the  action  of  several  Republican 
Senators.'*  At  page  144  be  gives  what  he  calls 
tba  '^  wh(^  caee  "  as  to  the  French  Spoliation 
Clatms»  and  declaree  their  payment  to  be  **  the 
most  atziUng  evidence  of  the  improvidence  of 


Congress  in  dealing  with  antiquated  claims 
against  the  Oovemroent."  He  mentions  that 
they  were  **  referred  to  the  Court  of  Claims," 
but  seems  to  have  wholly  forgotten  that  this 
court— the  Government's  own  court— bed  the 
whole  case  before  it,  and  solemnly  decided  that 
the  Government  ought  to  pay  the  claims,  and 
that  the  money  thus  far  paid  has  been  paid 
under  this  decision. 

Again,  his  account  of  the  legal-tender  acts  is 
most  peculiar.  In  a  speech  made  in  1876  we 
find  him  laying  down  in  the  most  positive 
terms,  as  a  *^  universal  law  of  political  econo- 
my," that  **  whenever  two  metals  or  two  mo- 
neys are  in  circulation,  the  least  valuable  will 
drive  out  the  most  valuable ;  the  latter  will  be 
exported  "  (p.  541).  But  when  Mr.  Sherman  ex- 
plains his  action  with  regard  to  the  law  by 
which  Government  notes  were  made  legal- 
tender  (pp.  255,  288),  he  forgets  all  about  this 
*'  universal  law,"  and  lays  down  a  quite  differ- 
ent one— that  the  disappearance  of  coin  is  **tbe 
universal  result  of  great  wars  long  protracted," 
and  that  **  gold  and  silver  flee  from  a  state  of 
war";  that  consequently  what  had  to  be  done 
was  to  provide  some  currency  in  advance  to 
take  its  place  when  it  should  go.  Hence  it 
was  necessary  to  make  the  new  currency  a  le- 
gal-tender  between  individuals.  But  Mr.  Sher- 
man is  altogether  too  cautious  to  state  such  a 
non-sequitur  baldly;  the  legal- tender  act  also 
provided  that  the  bonds  should  be  paid  in  gold, 
and  that  the  customs  revenue  should,  for  this 
purpose,  be  collected  in  gold.  This  of  course 
strengthened  the  public  credit,  and  consequent- 
ly the  greenbacks;  and  Mr.  Sherman  is  able  to 
say,  **The  legal- tender  act,  with  its  provision 
for  coin  receipts  to  pay  interest  on  bonds^ 
whatever  may  be  said  to  the  contrary  by  theo- 
rists, was  the  only  meuure  that  could  have 
enabled  the  Government  to  carry  on  success- 
fully the  vast  operations  of  the  war."  This 
confuses  a  very  simple  question — Did  the 
Government's  declaration  that  the  greenback 
should  be  a  legal- tender  for  a  dollar  make  it 
worth  a  cent  more  in  the  market  than  if  it  had 
been  simply  a  promise  to  pay?  On  this  point 
Mr.  Sherman  brings  forward  no  proof.  It  is 
very  significant  that  he  makes  no  argument  to 
show  that  the  legal-tender  quality  of  the  silver 
dollar  increases  its  value  in  any  way. 

It  is  the  vice  of  a  mind  given  to  compromise 
that  it  generally  ends  in  thinking  that  com. 
promise  is  an  end  in  itself;  and  men  having 
this  bent  will  generally  plume  themselves  on 
advocating  some  evU  at  war  with  all  their 
profeaions  and  calculated  to  prodnoe  the 
greatest  public  disasters,  beoauee,  as  they 
maintain,  they  have  by  this  means  averted 
some  other  otII,  which  they  of  course  insist 
would  have  been  far  worse.  They  do  not 
seem  to  peroeive  that^  though  they  may 
acquiesce  in  and  submit  to  such  evils,  they  ad- 
vocate them  at  the  risk  of  their  reputation  not 
only  for  consistency  but  for  sincerity,  lir. 
Sherman*s  attitude  with  regard  to  the  "  Sher- 
man  silvei'  law"  of  1800  is  an  illustration  of 
this.  Mr.  Sherman  is  opposed  to  inflation, 
and  yet  reported  this  bill  authorixing  the  pur- 
chase of  4,500,000  ounces  of  silver  every  month; 
how  does  he  reconcile  his  action  with  his  pro- 
fessions ?  By  showing  that  a  large  majority 
of  the  Senate  favored  free  coinage,  that  it  was 
feared  that  the  House  might  yield  and  agree 
to  it,  that  if  a  bill  for  free  coinage  should  have 
passed  both  houses,  Harrison  might  have 
signed  it,  and  that  free  coinage  was  a  worse 
evil  than  the  stiver-purchase  scheme.  Conse- 
quently, Mr.  Sherman  did  what  he  could  to 
pass  the  latter.  The  difficulty  with  this  view 
is  that  instead  of  being  a  genuine  compromise, 


the  act  was  merely  a  sop  to  the  free-silver 
men,  and  would  no  doubt  have  ultimately  led 
to  free  coinage  if  the  total  collapse  of  the 
scheme  to  buoy  up  the  price  of  silver  by 
Government  purchases  bed  not  brought  the 
Government  to  the  verge  of  bankruptcy.  But, 
apart  from  this,  how  can  a  man  with  any  real 
convictions  on  the  subject  advocate  and  father 
a  bill  which  he  holds  to  be  radically  vicious, 
because  something  worse  is  proposed  by  some 
one  eke  ?  On  this  principle,  the  candid  patriot 
may  advocate  anything  he  pleases,  provided 
he  announces  that  he  is  oppo«ed  to  it.  Suppose 
the  msjority  of  the  House  are  in  favor  of  an 
act  for  the  Immediate  murder  of  all  adult 
Chinamen  or  Indians,  while  the  Senate  is  in 
favor  of  killing  aU  the  children  as  well.  The 
first  is  obviously  the  lesser  evil;  but  Mr.  Sher- 
man would  hardly  like  to  report  it  from  a  con- 
ference committee  and  favor  its  adoption. 
On  these  principles  we  might  be  called  upon 
to  listen  to  arguments  in  favor  of  an  act  legal- 
ising burglary  as  a  lesser  evil  than  an  act 
permitting  murder,  or  of  an  act  authorizing 
larceny  as  preferable  on  the  whole  to  bur- 
glary. The  matter  is  clear  enough  where  acts 
universally  recognized  as  wicked  are  concern, 
ed ;  but  to  an  experienced  financier  (the  whole 
book  emphasizes  this)  inflation  is  only  a  dis. 
guised  species  of  wickedness,  designed  to  ena. 
ble  the  debtor  to  cheat  his  creditor.  And  now 
mark  the  result.  The  **  compromise,"  once 
made,  immediately  becomes  a  good  and  wise 
measure,  and  although  now  Mr.  Sherman 
thinks  that  '*  the  day  it  became  a  law  "  be  was 
"ready  to  repeal  it"  (p.  1070),  this  is  one  of 
those  points  on  which  his  recollection  is  at 
fault,  for  what  he  actually  thought  at  the 
time,  as  appears  by  a  prepared  speech  which 
he  prints  (p.  1112),  was  this: 

**  What  we  ought  to  do,  and  what  we  now 
do  under  the  silver  law  of  the  last  Congress, 
a  conservative  Rtpubliean  measurej  is  to  buy 
the  entire  product  of  silver  mined  in  the 
United  States  at  iU  market  value,  and,  upon 
the  security  of  that  silver  deposited  in  the 
Treasury,  issue  Treasury  notes  to  the  full 
amount  of  the  cost  of  the  bullion  "  (p.  1116). 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  we  have  the 
slightest  desire  to  belittle  the  reputation 
which  Mr.  Sherman  gained  by  means  of  the 
operations  that  led  to  the  resumption  of  spe- 
cie payments.  His  career  as  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  is  the  brilliant  page  in  his  life.  His 
country  no  doubt  owes  him  a  debt  of  gratitude 
on  that  sobre,  while  for  cleverness,  ingenuity, 
taot>  and  adroitness  there  is  probably  not  his 
equal  in  Washington ;  but  his  passion  for  ar- 
rangement of  difflcultiee  by  way  of  compro- 
mise has  unfortunately  ended  in  connecting 
his  name  with  the  measure  just  referred  to, 
passed  by  inflationists,  and  which  has  ever 
since  made  the  possibility  of  the  honest  pay- 
ment of  its  debts  by  the  Government  an  open 
question.  His  whole  discussion  of  the  cur- 
rency question  shows  that  he  wishes  to  per. 
suade  us  that  it  may  be  settled  by  means  of  a 
perfectly  honest  compromise  between  those 
who  want  to  cheat  the  creditors  of  the  Gov- 
emment  and  their  own,  and  those  who  want 
Government  and  private  debts  honestly  paid. 
He  is  consequently  opposed  to  all  contraction 
of  the  currency  and  retirement  of  the  green- 
backs, and  even  thinks  that  the  volume  of  the 
currency  may  be  increased  as  the  volume  of 
business  increases  (pp.  755-756).  To  the  fact 
that  a  Government  currency  keeps  alive  a  per- 
petual political  agitation  for  dishonest  infla- 
tion Mr.  Shennan  seems  totally  blind,  though 
for  thirty  years,  in  one  form  or  other,  such  an 
agitation  has  existed. 


83 


Tlie   IN^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1595 


One  thiDg  we  mira  sadly  In  these  volames, 
and  that  is  some  account  of  the  actual  means 
by  which,  through  all  the  difficulties  which 
haye  surrounded  him,  Mr.  Sherman  has  ma- 
naged to  retain  his  foothold  at  Washington  for 
forty  years.  In  any  country  it  would  be  an 
enormously  long  term  of  service— in  America 
especially  so— (he  mentions  with  pride  that  his 
Senatorial  career  is  the  longest  on  recor(^ ;  and 
behind  his  action  on  the  public  stage  which 
exhibits  him  rather  as  an  adroit  manipulator 
of  legislation  than  anything  else,  there  must 
have  been  forty  years  of  management  of  the 
local  politics  of  Ohio'  no  less  adroit,  to  prevent 
his  younger  and  bolder  rivals  from  ousting 
him.  In  this  sort  of  manoBUvring  Mr.  Sherman 
is  no  doubt  a  master,  but  of  himself  as  a  ma- 
nager he  does  not  give  us  a  fair  view,  for  he 
generally  represents  himself  as  avoiding  as  far 
as  possible  all  dealings  with  the  offices.  An 
anecdote  of  the  impression  which  bis  arts  made 
upon  Lincoln  is  curious.  It  seems  that  Mr. 
Sherman  wished  to  dissuade  Lincoln  from 
making  too  many  Wliig  appointments  in  Ohio, 
and  requested  an  interview.  He  found  the 
President  in  excellent  humor,  but  when  he 
began  to  complain  about  appointments,  the 
expression  of  Lincoln^s  face  '*  changed  to  one 
of  extreme  sadness."  He  did  not  say  a  word, 
but  placed  his  feet  on  the  table  and  began  to 
look  the  "  picture  of  despair.'^  Mr.  Sherman 
**took"atonce.  He  began  to  reproach  him- 
self for  bringing  up  so  unimportant  a  subject 
as  local  offices  when  the  country  was  in  the 
throes  of  revolution,  and  finally  he  apologized 
for  it,  and  declared  that  *^  he  would  not  bother 
him  again  with  them."  Mr.  Lincoln's  face 
brightened,  **  his  whole  manner  changed,  until 
finally  he  almost  embraced  me"  (p.  269).  It 
appears  that  in  1888  Mr.  Sherman  lost  the 
nomination  for  the  Presidency  through  a  "  cor- 
rupt  New  York  bargain,"  and  he  gives  a  pic- 
ture of  **  bossism"  in  Hamilton  County,  Ohio, 
which  shows  that  offices  play  the  same  part 
there  that  they  do  here  in  New  York;  but  he 
declares  that  no  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
was  ever  '*so  utterly  Indifferent  to  the  dis- 
tribution of  patronage"  (p.  760);  and  per. 
haps  as  an  illustration  of  this  he  mentions 
that  he  **  severed  all  connection  between 
his  duties  in  the  Treasury  "and*  the  business 
of  getting  himself  nominated  for  President, 
by  setting  up  his  Presidential  "headquarters" 
in  another  building  (p.  767). 

Mr.  Sherman  is  fond  of  a  phrase  wi^h  which 
one  is  more  familiar  in  the  mouths  of  domestic 
than  of  public  servants.  The  highest  com- 
mendation that  he  can  accord  any  measure  is 
that  it  "gives  satisfaction."  What  he  plumes 
himself  upon  in  bis  political  career  is  that  he 
has  himself  given  satisfaction.  There  is  every 
proof  that  he  has  done  so.  He  has  seen  and 
deeply  pondered  the  terrible  fate  of  those  in 
public  life  who  do  not  give  satisfaction,  and  he 
has  steered  clear  of  the  pitfalls  which  beset 
those  who  try  to  be  independent  of  party,  or 
to  determine  their  action  by  considerations  of 
public  interest  solely.  Not  that  he  avows  any- 
thing  of  the  kind;  the  whole  book  is  written  on 
the  theory  that  all  the  legislation  of  the  past 
generation  is  the  result  of  the  deliberations  of 
true  representatives  of  the  people  (excepting, 
of  course,  the  Democrats  in  Congress,  for  when 
Mr.  Sherman  speaks  of  the  People,  what  he  has 
in  mind  is  always  his  own  party) — a  most  con- 
venient theory,  for  it  enables  the  author  to 
overlook  the  fact  that  in  all  important  crises 
public  opinion  has  been  in  advance  of  legisla- 
tive opinion,  and  that  what  most  of  the  mem- 
bers of  Congress  and  the  Senate  have  been 
trying  to  do  has  been  to  keep  their  jdaces  or  to 


get  better  ones.  Mr.  Sherman's  notion  of  giv. 
ing  satisfaction,  as  already  explained,  is,  rough- 
ly, in  all  cases  of  division  of  opinion  within  the 
party,  to  arrange  some  compromise  on  which 
the  Democrats  can  be  voted  down;  this,  if  it 
involves  a  sacrifice  of  conviction,  makes  it  all 
the  more  creditable.  The  great  advantage  of 
this  view  of  political  duty  is  that  under  it  the 
successful  retention  of  place  becomes  proof  of 
devotion  to  the  good  cause;  it  is  only  selfish  or 
obstinate  or  dull  people  who  think  themselves 
called  upon  to  set  up  their  "conscience" 
against  their  party. 

When  Augustus  was  about  to  die,  he  asked 
those  about  him  whether  he  had  "  played  bin 
part  well"  ;  and  on  their  replying  that  he  had, 
asked  them  to  give  him  their  applause.  It  is 
becoming  the  fashion  for  modem  statesmen  to 
anticipate  a  deathbed  or  posthumous  verdict 
by  the  aid  of  a  contemporary  publisher.  When 
the  statesman  feels  that  the  flat  has  gone 
forth;  that  the  great  Prise  for  which  be  has  so 
long  struggled  is  not  to  be  his;  that  the  time  is 
rapidly  drawing  nigh  when  all  place  must  be 
given  up,  he  displays  no  emotion,  but  prepares 
himself  calmly  to  meet  the  inevitable  end. 
Wrapping  his  toga  about  him,  with  a  firm  voice 
and  unruffied  front  he  dictates  his  ReooUec- 
tions  to  his  typewriter.  The  plan  has  much  to 
recommend  it,  though  from  what  we  have 
said,  it  will  be  seen  that  we  hardly  think  that 
in  the  long  run  the  RecoUections  of  Bir.  Sher- 
man will— if  we  may  venture  upon  a  financial 
metaphor— pass  current  at  their  face  value. 
All  the  more  reason,  he  would  reply,  that  he 
should  do  what  he  could  to  keep  them  at  par 
now  by  declaring  that  they  are  to  be  received 
and  circulated  by  everybody  with  full  faith 
and  credit.  This  helps  to  float  them,  and 
though  there  is  no  Gresham's  law  under  which 
they  will  drive  more  accurate  and  honest  recol- 
lection out  of  the  minds  of  the  author's  con- 
temporaries or  successors,  he  will  probably 
always  feel,  as  in  the  case  of  the  legal-tenders, 
that  there  was  really  no  other  way  to  accom- 
plish  what  he  had  in  view,  while  the  public  at 
large  «will  have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing 
that  these  last  Sherman  Notes  will  in  the  end 
be  taken  everywhere  for  exactly  what  they 
are  worth. 


THREE  BOOKS  ABOUT  IRELAND. 

Pagan    Ireland,     By   W.    G.  Wood-Martin. 

Longmans.  1895. 
A  Letter  by  Capt,  Cuellar  of  the  Spanish  Ar- 
mada to  Philip  the  Second.  Translated  by 
H.  D.  Sedgwick,  Jr.  G.  H.  Richmond  &  Co. 
1895. 
T?ie  Ldfe  of  Patrick  Sar^ldy  Earl  ofLuean. 
By  John  Todhunter.  London:  T.  Fisher 
Unwin  ;  New  York:  Putnams. 
The  first  of  the  above  trio  is  by  a  well-known 
antiquarian  and  author  of  other  similar 
works.  It  is  an  exhaustive  account  of  the 
prehistoric  antiquities  of  Ireland,  copiously 
illustrated,  and  its  compilation  must  have 
been  the  work  of  many  years.  There  is  no  fail- 
ing to  which  antiquarian  observers  are  more 
liable  than  seeing  too  much;  but  the  ordinary 
observer  sees  too  little,  and  needs  to  have  his 
attention  drawn  to  mounds,  heaps  of  stones, 
and  rock-scribings,  all  of  which  have  neither 
interest  nor  meaning  for  him  unless  they  are 
interpreted  by  a  skilled  antiquarian.  We  can 
only  conjecture  what  manner  of  men  the 
dwellers  in  Irish  caves,  mounds,  and  "  cran- 
nogs"  were;  they  left  no  remains  except  bones 
of  animals  which  served  for  food,  rude 
crockery,    primitive  stone  implements,   and 


canoes,  usually  hoUowed  from  a  single  tree. 
In  the  primitive  stage  of  his  existence  man 
was  scarcely  distinguishable  from  the  brute 
creation,  and  in  Ireland  very  little  advance 
was  made  until  after  the  Christian  era.  Mr. 
Wood-Martin  finds  it  impossible  not  to  accuse 
the  aboriginal  Inhabitants  of  habitual  canni- 
balism, and  thinks  that  a  careful  analysis  of 
obscure  customs  still  extant  in  Ireland  throws 
some  light  on  this  subject.  Regarding  the 
fabled  early  civilization  of  the  island  he  re- 
marks: 

"  We  possess  many  assertions  as  to  the  past 
glories  of  the  land,  but  these  assertions  are  not 
supported  by  material  remains.  It  is  dear 
that  when  the  East  was  at  the  height  of  its 
civilization  our  ancestors  were  mere  savages, 
and  were  but  little  better  in  later  times,  when 
Rome  was  at  the  zenith  of  her  fi^lory.  .  .  . 
The  description  of  the  ancient  glories  of  Erin, 
as  given  by  enthusiastic  historians,  may  be 
compared  to  the  mirage  of  the  desert,  the  mere 
refiecUon  of  distant  scenes  and  the  phantasma- 
goria of  Roman  and  Eastern  civilization,  which 
the  writers,  imagining  it  ought  to  have  exist- 
ed, finally  depicted  as  if  actually  existing." 

Our  author  does  not  agree  with  the  few  anti- 
quarians who  hold  that  the  Ogham  inscrip- 
tions indicated  "alphabetical  knowledge." 
For  this,  as  for  other  moot  topics,  one  may 
consult  the  bibliography  at  the  end  of  the 
volume.  The  number  of  authorities  quoted 
and  referred  to  in  the  text  is  enormous.  Al- 
though Irish  archcBolog^y  has  betsn  at  a  stand- 
still for  years,  there  is  a  vast  amount  of  ma- 
terial to  be  found  in  the  journals  of  learned 
societies,  pamphlets,  and  uncollected  notes  and 
letters,  and  this  handbook,  certainly  one  of 
the  best  in  Irish  antiquities,  can  hardly  fail  to 
give  a  fresh  impetus  to  research. 

The  first  of  the  Spanish  Armada  tracts  con- 
tains a  graphic  account  of  Capt.  Cuellar's 
misadventures  after  the  dispersion  of  the 
Spanish  fieet.  Wrecked  on  the  coast  of  Ire- 
land, he  spent  seven  months  "in  mountains 
and  woods  amongst  savages,  for  in  that  part 
of  Ireland  where  we  were  wrecked  they  are  all 
such."  He  wrote  to  justify  himself  with  the 
King,  for  he  had  been  condemned  to  death 
when  oif  Calais  for  some  dereliction  of  duty. 
He  hopes  that  his  Majesty  may  occupy  himself 
"a  little  by  way  of  amusement  after  dinner  by 
reading  this  letter."  There  was  not  much 
amusement  for  the  Spaniards,  for  the  greater 
number  (about  one  thousand)  who  were 
wrecked  with  Cuellar  were  killed  as  they  came 
ashore,  or  wherever  they  were  found  by  the 
English  troops  and  their  adherents.  The  na- 
tive Catholics  plundered  but  sheltered  them. 
At  that  time  Ireland  was  but  partly  subdued ; 
and,  after  many  hairbreadth  escapes,  Cuellar 
reached  some  mountains  "behind  which  lay  a 
friendly  country  that  belonged  to  a  great  lord 
who  was  a  good  friend  to  the  King  of  Spain." 
On  his  way  be  was  sheltered  by  a  young  man 
who  "knew  Latin,"  and  with  whom  he  con- 
versed.  Stripped  of  his  clothes  and  wrapped 
in  straw,  be  at  last  reached  the  house  of  the 
friendly  lord,  by  name  "  de  Ruerge,"  evidently 
"  O'Rorke."  "  Although  he  isa  savage,"  wrote 
Cuellar,  "he  is  a  very  good  Christian."  Here 
he  made  himself  acceptable  to  his  hosta  by 
telling  their  fortunes,  becoming,  be  says,  a 
"  gipsy  among  the  savages."  Here  is  his  ac- 
coimt  of  the  natives,  who  were  always  at  war 
with  the  English : 

*  *  They  live  in  huts  made  of  straw.  The  men 
have  biK  bodies,  their  features  and  limbs  are 
well  maae,  and  tney  are  as  agile  as  deer.  They 
eat  but  one  meal  a  day,  and  their  ordlnarv 
food  is  oaten  bread  and  butter.  They  drink 
sour  milk,  as  they  have  no  other  beverage,  bnt 
no  water,  although  it  is  the  best  in  the  world. 
They  dress  in  tight  breeches  and  goatskin  jade- 


Jan.  23,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


83 


•ti  cat  tbort  bot  rerj  big,  and  wear  their  hair 
down  to  their  eyes.** 

Brery  OathoUo  appean  to  hare  been  an  ene- 
my in  the  eyee  of  the  English^  and  such  dvili- 
ntloQ  aa  the  Catholic  Chorcb  had  introduced 
among  the  savages  had  been  obliterated,  for 
**  almost  all  their  churches,  monasteries,  and 
hermitages  have  been  destroyed  by  the  sol- 
diers from  the  English  garrisons.  **  Cuellar  es- 
caped at  last  to  Scotland  and  thence  to  Hoi- 
land.  This  interesting  and  admirably  printed 
little  book  is  most  creditable  to  both  translator 
and  publisher. 

Hr.Todhnnter's  'Life  of  Sarsfleld'  is  a  good 
addition  to  the  New  Irish  Library.  It  is,  how. 
ever,  rather  an  account  of  the  Jacobite  wars  in 
Ireland  than  a  biography  of  Sarsfleld,  for  but 
litUe  is  known  of  the  details  of  bis  life.  He 
was  a  loyal,  gallant  soldier,  and  a  devoted 
lover  of  his  country.  Bom  in  Ireland  and 
educated  in  France,  he  first  saw  war  in  the  ser- 
vice of  Louis  XIV.  Rumor  nys  that  he  was 
one  of  the  ''Gentlemen  of  the  Guard''  of 
Charles  II.  The  accession  of  James  II.  brought 
him  into  active  service,  and  he  took  part  in  the 
battle  of  Sedgemoor  in  1085.  He  remained 
faithful  to  James  when  all  the  leading  English 
soldif  rs  joined  William  of  Orange,  and  land- 
ed at  Kinsale  in  1689  with  James's  Court.  He 
sat  in  the  ''Patriot  Parliament''  as  member 
for  Dublin;  and  while  William's  forces  occu- 
pied the  northeast  of  Ireland,  he  preserved 
Connaught  for  the  King.  At  the  battles  of 
the  Boyne  and  Augfarim  Sarsfleld  was  present, 
but  took  no  prominent  part;  his  name  is  chiefly 
connected  with  the  two  sieges  of  Limerick, 
where,  though  not  in  command,  he  was  the  life 
and  soul  of  the  Irish  pcuty.  At  both  the  de- 
fence was  heroic,  and  though  the  terms  of  capi- 
tulation were  not  observed  by  the  English,  it 
was  due  to  the  stubborn  defence  that  they  were 
sacnred.  Sarsfleld,  created  Earl  of  Lucan  by 
James  and  a  marshal  of  France  by  Louis,  died 
at  Landen  fighting  against  William  of  Orange. 
Whether  true  or  not,  what  are  said  to  have 
been  his  last  words  as  the  blood  flowed  from  a 
mortal  wound,  are  characteristic  of  the  man : 
•*  Would  to  God  this  were  shed  for  Ireland." 

The  greater  part  of  this  book  is  occupied  by 
a  general  account  of  the  campaigns  between 
James  and  William,  and  conveys  a  very  clear 
oonception  of  the  various  battles  and  sieges 
with  the  exception  of  that  of  Derry,  which 
does  not  come  into  the  plan  of  the  work. 


FOLKLORE,  TALES  AMD  FABLES. 

An  Imtrodueiion  to  Folk  Lof.  By  Marian 
Roalfe  Cos.  London:  David  Nutt;  New 
York  :  Scribners.    1806.    8vo,  pp.  xv,  820. 

8maw  Bird  and  ths  Water  Tiger^  and  other 
American  Indian  Tales.  By  Margaret  Comp- 
ton.  With  drawings  by  Walter  Conant 
Oreenough.    Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.    1896.    8vo, 

pp.  an. 

Natural  HitAory  Lore  and  Legend.  By  F. 
Edward  Hnlme.  London:  B.  Quaritch. 
1896.    8vo,  pp.  360. 

/ViMss  and  Fdbuliete^  Andent  and  Modem. 
By  Thomas  Newbigging.  Frederic  A.  Stokes 
Co.    8vo,  pp.  169. 

Xm  spite  of  the  large  number  of  works  in 
erary  department  of  folk-lore  published  with- 
in the  last  few  years,  no  general  treatise  on  the 
whole  subject  for  the  general  reader  hasap 
paared  until  Miss  Cox's  book.  As  the  author 
bcnrif  statss,  '*This  little  bo>k  pretends  with- 
out arrogance  to  answer  a  question  not  infre* 
qoently  heard,  namely:  What  is  folk-lore?" 


The  standpoint  is  exclusively  the  anthropo- 
logical one  elaborated  by  Tylor,  Lang,  Fra- 
ser,  and  Hartland,  and  the  explanations  of 
other  schools  are  only  glanced  ttt.  No  fault 
can  be  found  with  this,  for,  whatever  may  be 
the  shortcomings  of  the  anthropological  theo- 
ry, it  is  the  best  working  hypothesis  yet  ad- 
vanced, and  without  it  the  great  work  in  this 
department  of  research  could  hardly  have 
been  produced.  It  needed  the  human  interest 
of  anthropology  to  impart  a  fresh  charm  to 
the  old  myths,  and  to  afford  the  connecting 
link  between  myth,  ritual,  and  religion.  Miss 
Cox  begins,  in  an  introductory  chapter,  with 
the  primitive  savagery  of  man,  and  gives  in- 
stances of  the  survival  of  savage  belief  in  ha- 
bitual expressions  and  irrational  practices  of 
the  civilized.  The  most  important  features  of 
folk-lore  are  then  grouped  and  discussed  in  six 
chapters,  treating  of  the  Separable  Soul,  An^ 
mal  Ancestors,  Animism— Ghosts  and  Gods, 
the  Other-World,  Magic  and  Myths,  Folk. 
Tales,  etc. 

The  author  is  herself  a  distinguished  folk-lor 
ist,  having  published  through  the  English  Folk* 
Lore  Society  an  admirable  monograph  on  the 
story  of  Cinderella,  and  is  well  equipped  for  her 
present  work.  She  has  not,  however,  wholly 
avoided  a  difficulty  almost  inseparable  from 
the  theory  she  advocates.  One  of  the  main  ar. 
guments  of  the  theory  being  universality  of 
observance,  a  large  number  of  illustrations 
gleaned  from  all  parts  of  the  world  become 
necessary.  These,  however,  are  apt  to  obscure 
the  point  in  question,  and  the  repetition  of  the 
same  details  becomes  tiresome.  In  works  like 
those  of  Fraser  and  Hartland  this  is  unavoida- 
ble; but  in  works  intended  for  the  general 
reader  a  judicious  relegation  of  a  certain  num-, 
ber  of  examples  to  the  footnotes  would  be  wise. 
In  spite  of  this,  Miss  Cox  has  made  an  emi- 
nently  readable  and  viiluable  work.  The  se- 
lected list  of  books  at  the  end  is  inadequate, 
and  should  be  replaced  in  a  subsequent  edition 
by  a  classifled  list,  which  might  profltably  be 
made  pcut  of  an  appendix  on  methods  of  study 
in  the  fleld  of  folk  lore. 

After  the  scientiflo  collection  of  folk- tales 
comes  their  rewriting  for  the  general  public 
In  the  original  the  characters  are  often  un- 
named  and  the  incidents  are  narrated  in  the 
baldest  form.  It  was  a  happy  idea,  therefore, 
for  Miss  Compton  to  present  a  certain  number 
of  American  Indian  tales  for  the  amusement  of 
the  young,  and  she  has  executed  her  task  so  as 
to  produce  a  pleasant  and  entertaining  volume. 
Unfortunately  she  does  not  mention  her  sources 
otherwise  than  to  state  that  "she  has  had  ac- 
cess to  Government  reports  of  Indian  life,  upon 
which  and  the  folk-lore  contained  in  the  stan- 
dard works  of  Schoolcraft,  Copway,  and  CatUn 
these  stories  are  founded."  This  delightfully 
vague  acknowledgment  will  arouse  the  ire  of 
the  conscientious  reviewer,  who  feels  that 
where  materials  are  borrowed  an  exact  state- 
ment at  least  of  the  whereabouts  of  the  origi- 
nal matter  should  be  made.  The  fn'esent  re- 
viewer has  had  time  to  look  up  but  a  few  of 
the  unnamed  sources,  and  mentions  them  for 
the  beneflt  of  others  who  may  like  to  know 
whether  the  book  is  trustworthy  or  not.  The 
story  of  "The  Bended  Rooks,"  p.  67.  is  from 
'  Myths  of  the  Iroquois,'  by  Erminnie  A.  Smith 
(Smithsonian  Institution,  Bureau  of  Ethnology, 
voL  ii.,  1888,  pp.  48-116),  p.  64.  "The  Great 
Head,"  p.  116,  is  from  the  same  collection,  p. 
69,  as  is  (p.  100)  "The  Uland  of  Skeletons,"  p. 
148.  "The  Great  Wisard,"  p.  169,  U  psirUy 
from  the  same  collection,  p.  09.  A  comparison 
of  the  above  stories  with  the  originals  shows 
that  Miss  Compton  has  made  skilful  use  of  her 


materials,  and  has  introduced  no  important  or 
inoongruous  changes,  but  has  preserved  very 
successfully  the  spirit  of  the  original,  and  pro- 
duced a  version  much  better  suited  to  thoee 
whose  interests  are  literary  and  not  scientiflo. 

It  Is  difficult  to  explain  the  use  of  such  a 
work  as  Mr.  Hulme's,  or  to  determine  the 
^  class  of  readers  for  whom  it  is  intended.  It 
seems  like  the  stray  notes  of  a  scientist  who 
has  amused  his  leisure  hours  in  turning  over 
the  pages  of  old  works  on  natural  history,  and 
is  surprised  that  they  contain  aujrthing  ap- 
preaching  the  truth.  The  author's  object  is 
stated  in  the  following  words:  "We  propose 
to  consider  at  some  little  length  the  state  of  so- 
ological  knowledge  in  the  Middle  Ages,"  and 
the  title  page  expressly  says  **  examples— gath- 
ered  in  from  divers  authorities,  ancient  and 
medisBvai."  It  is  remarkable,  then,  toflnd  that 
the  flrst  work  cited  was  published  in  1566,  and 
that  the  majority  of  the  books  quoted  are  of 
the  sixteenth,  seventeenth,  and  even  eigh- 
teenth  centuries.  There  is  very  little  that  is 
•medisBval  in  the  volume  beyond  occasional 
references  to  the  Beast  books,  and  these  are 
altogether  inadequately  treatod.  An  orderly 
account  of  medisBval  zodlogy  would  be  valua- 
ble and  interesting,  and  we  believe  does  not 
exist  in  English,  although  the  Germans  have 
an  excellent  work  of  that  nature  by  Cams. 
The  book  before  us  deals  with  animals  real 
and  mythical;  and  pygmies,  mermaids,  wehr- 
wolves,  lions,  elephants,  bears,  the  phoBuix, 
roc,  barnacle  goose,  basilisk,  salamander,  and 
leviathan  crowd  each  other  in  these  desultory 
pages.  It  would  be  wrong  to  give  the  impres- 
sion that  the  book  is  entirely  valueless  or  un- 
interesting. Many  quaint  conceits  may  be 
found  scattered  through  it,  and  the  reader 
will  have  another  proof  of  the  universality  of 
Shakspere,  whose  references  to  the  xo61ogical 
beliefs  of  bis  day  are  cited  on  every  page  of 
the  present  work. 

Mr.  Newbigging  has  attempted  to  do  for  the 
fable  what  Archbishop  Trench  did  for  the 
fu^verb  in  his  ctiarming  lectures  on  *  Proverbs, 
and  their  Lessons.'  The  result  is  a  very 
readable  little  book,  marred,  unfortunately,  by 
superflciality  and  inaccuracy.  The  flrst  part, 
in  which  the  author  deflnes  and  characterises 
the  fable  and  discusses  its  moral  and  lessons, 
is  the  best  The  historical  r4sum6  which  fol. 
lows  is  slight  and  inadequate.  This  is  eepe- 
ciaUy  the  case  with  the  lisU  on  pages  128-129. 
The  mediaeval  French  fabulist  is  usually  known 
as  Marie  (and  not  Maria)  de  France,  F^nelon 
is  not  generally  termed  the  Abb6  F6nelon. 
The  ancient  "fabulists,"  on  p.  128,  are  all  me- 
dinval,  and  one,  Pogglo,  is  of  the  flfteenth 
century.  There  are  many  misprints  in  the 
list:  Boursalt  for  Boursault,  Guinguene  for 
Guinguen^,  Armoult  for  Arnault.  Le  Grand, 
on  the  same  page,  is  probably  intended  for  the 
Legrand  d' Aussy,  editor  of  the  French  fabliaux, 
etc.  The  name  of  La  Motte  is  omitted  from 
the  list  of  French  fabulists,  and  there  are  other 
omissions.  La  Fontaine  died  April  18,  1696, 
and  not  March  16,  as  the  author  states  in  the 
text,  or  February  18,  as  In  the  note,  on  the  au- 
thority of  "  Geruses  "  (G^rusez.)  There  is  also 
a  brief  account  at  the  end  of  the  volume  of  the 
modem  illustrators  of  fables. 


Antonio  AUegri  da  Correggio;  His  Life,  his 
Friends,  and  his  Time.  By  Corrado  Ricci« 
From  the  Italian  by  Florence  Simmonds. 
London:  Wm. Heinemann;  New  York :  SiTib- 
ners.  4to,  pp.  xxil,  408.  1896. 
Th«  form  in  which  Dr.  Ricci's  •  Correggio '  is 
presented  makes  its  publisher's  intention  ob- 


84. 


The   !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1595 


yioQS.  The  elegance  of  the  binding,  the  at- 
traotive  pages,  ttie  pretty  illuttrationi,  were 
evidently  deeigned  for  the  public  which,  once 
a  season,  loves  to  buy  a  book  wherewith  to 
adorn  the  parlor  table.  To  this  public  we  can- 
not too  highly  recommend  it.  They  will  de- 
light in  the  reproductions  in  green,  blue,  yel- 
low, brown,  pink,  violet,  and  other  colors, 
primary  and  derived,  which  have  been  em- 
ployed with  a  justice  most  laudable,  although, 
in  truth,  we  are  reminded  of  the  proverb  that 
Justice  is  blind.  But  the  more  esoteric  art- 
lover  will  be  disappointed  with  this  publica- 
tion when  it  falls  into  his  hands.  His  eyes 
will  be  annoyed  by  the  rainbow  splendor  of 
the  illustrations;  and  his  memory  shocked  by 
their  faithlessness.  We  venture  to  say  that, 
excepting  the  frontispiece,  not  one  of  the 
illustrations  does  the  original  even  mediocre 
credit;  while  many  are  positively  libellous,  as, 
for  instance,  the  reproduction  of  Lord  Ash- 
bumham*B  altar  piece,  of  the  Ulfizi  pictures, 
the  Hampton  Ck>urt  **  Madonna,"  and  the 
''  Ecce  Homo**  of  the  National  Gallery.  Few 
of  the  reproductions  in  the  text  are  clear 
enough  to  be  of  use  to  students,  and  the  pho- 
togravures, when  not  already  rpoUed  by  being 
printed  in  color,  are  valueless  from  loss  of  mo- 
delling. For  the  student,  we  may  here  say 
parenthetically,  two  kinds  of  books,  and  two 
only,  have  a  purpose:  cheap  books,  with  un- 
pretentious illustrations  intended  as  mere  mne. 
monies;  or  works  de  grand  luxe^  with  faultless 
reproductions.  For  him,  the  preeent  *Cor- 
reggio*  has  scarcely  any  utility;  it  will  not 
save  him  from  buying  the  photographs;  and 
for  the  price  of  the  present  volume  he  could 
buy  most  of  the  photographs  themselves,  so 
much  better  than  any  poasible  reproductions 
after  them.  We  regret,  in  this  connection,  to 
have  to  rectify  a  slight  mifltatement.  The 
publisher  announces  00  the  back  of  the  title- 
page  that  the  Hampton  Court  "Madonna" 
and  Lord  Ashbnmbam*s  altar-piece  are  here 
reproduced  for  the  first  time.  They  have  al- 
ready appeared  in  much  better  form  in  the 
'  Illustrated  Catalogue  of  Works  of  the  School 
of  Ferrara-Bologna,'  Burlington  Fine  Arts 
Club,  189i.  And  now,  having  expressed  our 
disappointment  with  the  publisher*s  part  of 
the  undertaking,  let  us  turn  to  the  somewhat 
pleasanter  task  of  examining  the  author's 
share. 

Dr.  Rtcci  had  before  him  a  problem  of  ex- 
ceeding simplicity.  Correggio  has  not  been  a 
neglected  artist,  and  few  problems  of  a  tech- 
nical nature  regarding  his  career  have  re- 
mained unsolved.  To  speak  only  of  more  im- 
portant writers,  Fungileoni,  Meyer,  and  Mo- 
relli  have  done  all  the  preliminary  work. 
Morelli  did  even  more  :  he  made  clear,  to  the 
satisfsction  of  all  competent  critics,  from  just 
what  branch  of  the  secular  tree  of  Italian  art 
Correirgio  bad  sprung,  thus  putting  into  the 
hands  of  the  future  writer  the  most  essential 
of  all  data  for  the  study  of  the  artist's  devel- 
opment. There  was,  in  t^hort,  no  lack  of  ma- 
terial, and  no  need  for  controversy,  since, 
excepting  the  few  writers  who  in  every  field 
of  research  /ure  bound  to  lag  behind,  a  happy 
concord  reigned  on  the  subject  of  Correggio. 
Dr.  Ricci  had  therefore  a  splendid  opportu- 
nity. Availing  himself  of  all  the  material 
ready  for  use,  he  might  have  written  a  mono- 
graph on  Correggio  that  would  have  recon- 
structed bis  artistic  personality,  and  painted 
his  imaginary  portrait  for  the  eternal  delecta- 
tion of  those  who  love  art  and  are  led  to  its 
enjoyment  by  sympathetic  interpretation  and 
U  mot  jtute.  Perhaps  Dr.  Ricci  felt  himself 
unfit  for  thig  task— indeed,  his  chapter  on 


"Correggio*s  Qenius,''  although  betraying 
that  the  writer  was  at  times  aware  of  Correg- 
gio*s  master  quality,  is  prolix,  meandering, 
and  never  penetratingly  illuminating.  At  all 
events,  Dr.  Ricci  has  declined  the  undertaking. 

He  would  have  us  believe  that  he,  too,  has 
new  material  to  contribute  to  the  subject,  and 
to  some  slight  degree  this  is  the  case.  Dr. 
Hicci  is  among  the  first  to  draw  attention  to 
the  fact  that  the  town  of  Correggio,  where 
Antonio  AUegri  was  bom  and  brought  up,  was 
by  no  means  the  least  in  the  region  of  Emilia, 
but  that,  on  the  contrary,  it  was  a  seat  of  cul- 
ture. Dr.  Ricci  had  already  said  all  that  need- 
ed saying  on  this  subject  in  a  short  essay  in  his 
charming  volume  *  Santi  ed  Artisti.'  But,  led 
astray  by  the  superstition  that  a  writer  on  art 
must  needs  add  new  facts,  he  makes  much  of 
this  small  contribution  in  the  volume  before 
us.  Dr.  Ricci  revels  in  ** environment"  as  if 
he  had  discovered  it  but  yesterday.  A  chapter 
romanticaUy  entitled  '*The  Two  Princesses" 
is  whoUy  devoted  to  a  lyrical  account  of  Vero- 
nica Gambara  and  Beatrice  d*£ste,  two  great 
ladies  with  whom  Correggio  was  probably  on 
terms  of  distant  acquaintance.  Our  author 
still  labors  under  the  delusion  that  it  is  necee- 
sary  to  give  fiorid  deecriptions— **  moral,  poli- 
tical, social,  and  religious*'— of  every  spot  for 
which  Correggio  painted  a  picture,  and  of 
every  person  who  employed  him.  Ail  this, 
however,  is  interesting,  and  even  pertinent, 
compared  with  the  refutation  of  foolish  ped- 
ants long  dead,  and  with  the  scores  of  pages 
devoted  by  the  author  to  a  chronicle  of  the  ro- 
mantic vicissitudes  undergone  by  Correggio's 
still  existing  works,  and  to  thrilling  accounts 
of  how  the  others  miserably  perished.  To  be 
brief,  Dr.  Ricci  had  the  chance  of  giving  us  an 
i6iaginary  portrait  of  Correggio  such  as  the 
late  Mr.  Pater  left  of  Plato.  Fancy,  however, 
instead  of  that  volume  of  subtle,  illuminating, 
and  cultivating  interpretation,  a  book  most  of 
which  was  filled  up  with  accounts  of  the  vari- 
ous manuscripts  and  how  they  came  down  to 
us,  with  rhapeodies  on  Athens,  Megara,  and 
Syracuse,  on  Dion  and  Diotima  and  Dionysus, 
and  you  will  have  a  fair  notion  of  what  Dr. 
Ricci  has  achieved  in  his  volume  on  Correggio. 

Happily,  for  the  comparatively  few  pages 
wherein  he  is  writing  of  Correggio  the  artist, 
we  have  little  but  praise.  His  estimates  are 
rarely  wrong  ;  in  controversy,  almost  without 
exception  on  the  right  side.  In  spite  of  all  our 
reservations.  Dr.  Riccfs  *  Correggio'  is  the 
ablest  monograph  on  any  single  painter  that 
has  yet  t>een  written  by  an  Italian.  And  we 
could  wibh  to  end  on  this  note,  but  unfortu- 
nately the  translation  does  not  permit  it.  A 
translator  from  Italian  into  English  should 
bear  in  mind,  as  this  translator  has  not  done, 
that  the  sonorous  and  vo  welled  nature  of  the 
one  language  allows  of  phraseology  which, 
translated  literally  into  the  other,  sounds  like 
so  much  balderdash.  Once  in  a  while,  the 
sense  even  is  not  quite  clear.  **  Other  writers 
of  artistic  syntheses  "  is  a  queer  phrase.  Man- 
tegna  is  almost  invariably  spoken  of  as  "the 
great  Vincenzan."  We  protest  that  if  we 
must  write  Gibbonese,  the  word  should  at 
least  be  Vicenzan,  The  translator  seems  un- 
acquainted with  the  simple  English  word 
"  works,"  and  insists  on  speaking,  to  our  great 
discomfort,  of  **  Correg^o^s  osuvres.*^  A  fault 
of  constant  recurrence,  to  which  we  must  draw 
particular  attention,  is  the  use  of  plurals  like 
"Gonzaghi,"  "MaUtesti,"  ••  Sforzi  "—plurals 
which,  of  course,  are  not  English,  and  certain- 
ly not  Italian.  When  possible,  proper  names 
should  be  Englished  :  Gonzsgas,  Malateetas, 
Sf orzas— why  not  ? 


Chronicleg  of  Uganda,    By  the  Rev.  R.  P. 

Ashe.     With  portrait  and  26  illustrations. 

A.  D.  F.  Randolph  &  Co.    1895.    Pp.  xiv, 

480,  8vo. 
The  future  historian  of  Uganda  will  not  suffer 
from  lack  of  original  material  for  his  account 
of  the  events  immediately  preceding  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  British  protectorate  in  that 
country.   The  official  part  is  fully  shown  in  the 
report  of  Sir  Gerald  Portal  and  the  recently 
published  work  of  Capt  Lugard.    The  French 
missionaries  have  given  their  version  to  the 
world  through  the  Catholic  Union  of  Great 
Britain.    The  native  point  of  view  is  to  t>e 
found  in  tha  *  Wars  of  the  Ba-ganda,'  a  work 
written  in  the  language  of  Uganda  by  the 
present  Prime  Minister,  a  prominent  actor  in 
the  events  which  he  describes.    Of  the  accounts 
written  from  tbe  standpoint  of  the  English 
missionaries  the  *  Chronicles'  of  Mr.  Ashe  is 
the  latest  and  most  authoritative.    A  resident 
in  the  country  for  the  greater  part  of  the  ten 
years  preceding  18d8,  he  has  been  a  close  ot>- 
server  of  events  and  an  eye-witness  of  many  of 
the  most  important.    But  the  main  object  of 
his  book  is  apparently  not  so  much  to  narrate 
the  history  of  the  religious  wars  as  to  criticise 
the  accounts  of  other  writers,  and  refute  their 
statements  when  they  seem  to  conflict  with  the 
truth.    It  should  be  said,  however,  that  though 
he  severely  condemns  much  of  the  policy  and 
action  both  of  the  English  oflicers  and  of  the 
French   missionaries,    no    personal    hostility 
towards  them  is  to  be  detected.    He  takes  fre- 
quent occasion  to  commend  the  energy  and 
courage  of  Capt.  Lugard  and  his  associates, 
and  bears  pleasant  testimony  to  the  unbroken 
friendly  intercourse  between  the  representa- 
tives  of  the  two  great  churches  of  Rome  and 
England. 

It  is  too  soon  to  write  a  perfectly  impartial 
and  trustworthy  history  of  the  events  of 
Mwanga*s  troubled  reign,  but  one  or  two  things 
are  plsin  from  Mr.  Ashe's  narrative.  The 
most  important  is  the  utter  impotency  of  a 
trading  company  to  deal  with  the  situation 
which  existed  in  Uganda  when  the  Imperial 
British  East  Africa  Company  appeared  on  the 
scene.  Had  Capt.  Lugard  possessed  the  ability 
of  a  Warren  Hastings,  he  could  not  have  suc- 
ceeded in  maintaining  peace  between  the  hoe- 
tile  factions  into  which  the  people  were  di- 
vided, considering  the  small  force  at  his  dis- 
posal, the  anomalous  position  which  he  occu- 
pied, and  the  uncertainty  which  characterized 
the  action  of  the  British  Gk>vemment  in  regard 
to  the  evacuation  or  retention  of  Uganda.  It 
is  no  less  evident  that  the  French  priests,  who 
came  two  years  after  the  English  miasionariee, 
were  in  fact,  though  possibly  unconadonsly, 
political  agents,  who  used  every  means  in  their 
power  to  bring  the  kingdom  under  the  ixifln- 
ence  of  France.  This  fsct  renders  the  much- 
lauded  policy  of  neutrality  towards  the  Catho- 
lic and  Protestant  natives  assumed  by  tbe 
company's  officers  absurd  and  impossible  to  be 
maintained,  since  these  gentlemen  were  in  the 
country  simply  to  confirm  the  supremacy  of 
England.  We  cannot  speak  so  confidently  of 
the  other  actions  of  these  officials  condemned 
by  Mr.  Ashe,  the  bringing  into  Uganda  the 
remnants  of  Emin  Pasha*s  Sudanese  garri- 
sons, the  war  against  King  Unyoro,  and  otber 
minor  hostile  expeditions  in  which  the  Maxim 
g^un  played  a  conspicuous  and  deadly  part. 
They  seem,  however,  to  have  been  tbe  un- 
fortunate results  of  an  unwillingness  to  profit 
by  the  knowledge  and  experience  of  the  mis- 
sionaries in  dealing  with  the  natives  and  a 
curious  contempt  for  their  judgment. 

In  the  course  of  his  interesting  narraiivia 


Jan.  23,  1896J 


Th.e    IN"atioii. 


85 


Hr.  Ashe  gives  many  strikiDg  pictures  of 
toeiies  and  incidents  which  throw  much  light 
on  the  life  and  customs  of  the  Ba-ganda. 
Among  these  is  a  short  reference  to  Lubare- 
Itm,  the  national  religion  of  the  country. 
This  consists  fMirtly  of  hero-worship,  and  the 
mammies  of  two  of  their  ancient  heroes  are 
■till  carefully  preserved  and  guarded  by  vir- 
gin priestesses  honored  as  their  wives. 

**Budo  is  the  corpse  of  a  gigantic  man 
wrapped  in  bark  cloth,  all  except  the  head, 
which  is  bare.  He  has  long  hair,  and  his  eyes 
are  closed,  and  he  is  in  a  sitting  posture.  .  .  . 
On  certain  days  drums  are  beaten,  when  he  is 
brought  from  behind  the  curtains  to  hold  a 
reception  in  his  temple,  at  which  the  neigh- 
boring chiefs  and  important  people  attend.** 

In  the  opening  and  closing  chapters  the  au- 
thor describes  his  last  journey  to  and  from  the 
coast.  Among  its  noteworthy  incidents  was 
one  which  at  that  time  was  probably  unique  in 
the  annals  of  African  travel.  Mr.  Ashe  was 
riding  a  bicycle  on  a  native  footpath  far  ahead 
of  his  porters  when  his 

**  attention  was  suddenly  attracted  by  bear- 
ing some  large  animals  galloping  by  my  side. 
I  was  marking  my  path  carefully  at  the  time, 
but,  on  looking  to  my  right  hand,  where  the 
animals  were,  I  discovered  that  the  creatures 
which  were  accompanying  me  were  three  mag- 
nificent lions.  Though  i  h%d  heard  the  roar 
of  lions  clo^e  at  band  in  the  darkness  I  bad 
never  before  seen  one  face  to  face.  My  novel 
companions  kept  up  with  me,  going  parallel 
with  me  for  about  a  hundred  yards.  They 
were  distant  some  twenty  or  thirty  yards. 
Presently  they  stood  still,  looked  at  me  for  a 
moment,  and  then  slowly  bounded  off  at  a 
right  angle,  from  time  to  time  stopping  and 
looking  b^k,  till  thev  finally  disappeared  in 
the  long  grass,  while  I  held  on  my  way." 

There  are  a  number  of  illustrations,  among 
the  most  interesting  being  views  of  the  great 
church  at  Mengo,  finished  in.  1892,  whose 
thatched  roof,  forty  feet  high  along  the  ridge 
pole,  is  supported  by  some  three  hundred  tree- 
trunks. 

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histories  have  become  something  more  than  a  chroni- 
cle of  great  battles  Latter-day  historians  give  more 
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HISTORY  OF 

THE  UNITED  STATES. 

It  does  not  advocate  a  "tomahawk  clvUizatlon."— 
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Tlie    IN"atiorL. 


[Vol.  62,  No,  1595 


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The  Week. 


Thb  outcome  of  the  Goyemment  loan  for 
$100,000,000  seems  to  be  something  like 
this:  The  **  popular "  branch  of  it  will 
fall  considerably  short  of  making  up  the 
total.  These  bids  are  coming  in  from  day 
to  day,  but  the  public  cannot  know  what 
they  amount  to  until  the  5th  of  February. 
Although  the  Morgan  syndicate  has  been 
dissolved,  some  of  the  members  have  put 
in  bids  for  a  part  of  the  loan,  and  others 
•tand  ready  to  take  what  is  left.  Whether 
■any  pai  t  of  the  loan  goes  abroad  will  de- 
pend upon  the. price  at  which  this  remain- 
der can  be  bought.  Some  of  the  bidders 
in  the  '*  popular  '*  branch  are  vociferously 
demanding  that  the  Gk>vemment  itself  fix 
a  price  on  the  bonds,  although  they  have 
been  offered  to  highest  bidder  not  less 
than  par.  Unfortunately,  this  cannot  be 
done.  The  Secretary  may  reject  any  or 
mX\  bids,  but  that  does  not  enable  him  to 
iasue  a  general  order  to  A,  B,  and  C  to 
•come  up  and  take  the  bonds  at  any  price 
he  chooses  to  fix  upon  them.  Moreover, 
aome  people,  moved  by  what  they  call 
patriotism,  or  a  desire  for  notoriety,  will 
put  in  bids  for  small  amounts  at  rates 
equal  to  a  3  per  cent,  loan,  while  the 
money  market  in  general  declines  to  lend 
«t  that  rate.  Then  there  will  be  a  certain 
amount  of  **  squealing,*'  as  often  happens 
in  Wall  Street  when  the  speculators  find 
themselves  loaded  with  stocks  that  they 
-cannot  get  rid  of  without  loss.  ' 


though  politically  unavoidable,  was  finan- 
cially a  mistake. 


We  assume  that  the  whole  $100,000,000 
will  be  taken  at  rates  varying  somewhat, 
but  not  below  that  which  the  syndicate 
was  prepared  to  bid.  The  next  question 
is  whether  that  sum  will  suffice.  In  the 
-absence  of  any  new  disturbance,  such  as 
another  war  scare  or  a  tidal  wave  of  silver 
lunacy,  which  is  not  to  be  looked  for,  it 
is  probable  that  this  loan  will  carry  us 
beyond  the  Presidential  election.  It  is 
not  to  be  assumed,  however,  that  it  will 
put  the  gold  reserve  permanently  be- 
yond danger.  We  must  remember  that 
three  bond  sales  have  taken  place  pre- 
Tiously  for  this  same  purpose,  amounting 
in  the  aggregate  to  $162,000,000.  The 
plan  proposed  by  the  syndicate,  to  take 
$100,000,000  firm  and  give  the  Government 
the  option  of  $100,000,000  more,  was  much 
the  best,  because  that  would  have  quieted 
all  apprehensions  and  have  given  time  for 
business  interests  to  make  plans  for  the 
future.  This  was  and  is  the  immediate 
problem  of  finance,  the  remoter  one  being 
some  method  of  relieving  the  Government 
of  the  necessity  of  providing  and  main- 
taining the  gold  reserve  of  commerce. 
The  **  popular  "  loan  which  intervened,  al- 


The  Treasury  officials  say  they  are  much 
puzzled  over  the  falling  off  in  internal-re- 
venue receipts,  particularly  in  the  returns 
from  the  tax  on  whiskey.  This  tax  the 
new  law  increased  from  90  cents  a  gallon 
to  $1.10.  It  was  a  simple  sum  in  arith- 
metic for  our  wise  legislators  to  figure 
out  that  an  increase  of  20  per  cent,  in  the 
tax  would  necessarily  mean  an  increase  of 
20  per  cent,  in  the  revenue.  Nothing 
could  be  clearer  than  that.  No,  nothing 
could  be  clearer,  except  that  it  has  been 
proved  over  and  over  again  in  fiscal  expe- 
rience that  such  expectations  are  never 
realized.  Taxes  cut  in  two  sometimes 
double  the  revenue,  but  taxes  doubled 
usually  come  nearer  to  halving  the  reve- 
nue. Ever  since  William  Pitt's  day  this 
has  been  almost  axiomatic  with  English 
Chancellors  of  the  Exchequer.  It  should 
have  been  axiomatic  in  this  country  at 
least  ever  since  Mr.  Wells*s  practical  de- 
monstrations in  this  very  matter  of  the 
whiskey  tax.  But  no,  our  cheerful  legis- 
lators are  never  so  cheerful  as  when  disre- 
garding all  human  experience  in  finance 
and  taxation.  They  violate  well-known 
laws,  and,  when  they  get  hurt,  look 
around  with  a  half-pained,  half-angry  air, 
and  say,  **  Hang  it  all !  Who  would  have 
thought  the  thing  would  work  in  this 
way  ?  "  The  classical  authority  in  Ame- 
rican taxation  is  not  Turgot,  or  Adam 
Smith,  or  Pitt,  or  Gladstone,  or  WeHs,  or 
McCulloch,  but  the  Congressman  with 
his  famous  dictum,  *'Do  not  tell  me  that 
a  government  which  has  put  down  a  great 
rebellion  cannot  collect  a  tax  of  two  dol- 
lars a  gallon  on  whiskey ! "  But  it 
couldn't,  and  the  tax  of  $1.10,  laid  with 
similar  patriotic  snorts,  appears  to  be  fall- 
ing into  line  with  universal  experience  in 
the  most  disgusting  way. 


The  chaplain  of  the  House  continues 
his  blasphemous  prayers.  As  a  way  of 
calling  the  Almighty's  attention  to  the 
wickedness  of  Jones  of  Nevada  in  "  hold- 
ing up"  the  tariff  bill  in  the  Senate 
finance  committee,  he  '*  prayed "  last 
week  for  "  additional  protection  to  Ame- 
rican manufacturers,"  so  that  they  might 
*'put  an  end  to  the  privations  of  Ame- 
rican workingmen."  Washington  corre- 
spondents are  making  merry  over  the 
chaplain's  performances,  and  they  surely 
can  plead  that  there  is  a  difference  be- 
tween laughing  at  religion  and  laughing 
at  these  who  make  religion  ridiculous. 
But  the  thing  has  already  passed  beyond 
the  stage  of  ridicule,  and  become  a  ques- 
tion of  how  to  put  an  end  to  sacrilege. 
What  is  the  use  of  talking  of  a  great 
cathedral  in  Washington,  if  this  spectacle 
of  hideous  impiety  is  to  be  allowed  in  the 


national  legislature?  It  is  high  time  that 
**  the  church  vote "  made  itself  felt,  in 
connection  with  this  public  scandal,  not 
to  let  the  Jingo  vote,  the  high-tariff  vote, 
the  Cuban  vote,  the  generally  quarrel- 
some and  repulsive  and  underbred  and 
Heaven-defying  vote,  have  everything  their 
own  way  in  congressional  devotions. 


Quorum-counting  by  the  Speaker  has 
now  been  quietly  abandoned  by  the 
Speaker  who  introduced  it  without  au- 
thority, and  who  gloried  in  it  throughout 
the  Fifty-first  Congress  as  his  chief  title 
to  fame  and  all  the  good  things  that  go 
with  fame.  Mr.  Reed's  offence  in  1890 
was,  as  Mr.  Crisp  pointed  out  on  Thurs- 
day, not  in  counting  a  quorum  after  the 
rules  of  the  House  authorized  him  to  do 
BO,  but  in  seizing  the  power  to  do  so  be- 
fore the  rules  were  adopted.  In  short,  he 
usurped  authority  in  order  to  get  a  rule 
giving  him  authority.  But  even  that 
rule  he  now  thrors  over,  thereby  practi- 
cally confessing  that  it  could  not  be 
made  to  work  without  gross  unfairness 
and  mistakes,  and  goes  back  to  a  form  of 
the  rule  first  proposed  years  ago  by  a 
Democratic  Congressman,  Mr.  Tucker. 
Under  the  rule  as  now  adopted,  the  ser- 
geant-at-arms  is  to  bring  in  absent  mem- 
bers, and  their  presence  is  to  be  noted  by 
the  clerk  on  the  roll-call.  Thereafter 
they  are  to  be  considered  as  present  and 
helping  to  make  a  quorum  even  if  they 
refuse  to  vote.  This  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  letting  the  Speaker's  fallible 
eye  wander  about,  guessing  who  is  in  the 
cloak-rooms  and  corridors,  and  counting 
as  present  members  who  were  (as  hap- 
pened more  than  once  in  1890)  in  the 
opposite  end  of  Washington  or  actually 
in  Baltimore.  The  new  method  is  certain 
to  be  more  orderly  and  accurate,  and  its 
adoption  with  so  little  clamor,  with  the 
quiet  "handing  over  to  oblivion  of  the 
great  constitutional  right  of  the  Speaker 
to  do  the  counting  himself,  probably 
marks  a  general  acquiescence  in  it  as 
the  best  solution  of  the  difficulty. 


It  would  be  well  if  the  tomfoolery  which 
goes  on  at  Washington  never  took  a  more 
harmful  guise  than  that  which  the  Con* 
gressional  Jiecord  of  January  20  pre- 
sents, ten  pages  of  which  are  occupied 
with  facts  sent  in  by  the  President  in  an- 
swer to  the  House  resolutions  calling 
for  information  touching  certain  speeches 
made  by  Thomas  F.  Bayard  in  England. 
First  we  have  a  letter  from  Mr.  Olney, 
enclosing  one  from  Mr.  Bayard,  enclosing 
his  speech  of  November  7, 1896,  before  the 
Edinburgh  Philosophical  Society.  The 
speech,  he  says,  was  made  to  a  society 
of  a  non-political  character,  which  soci- 
ety had  been  addressed  by  his  predeces- 
sors in  office,  Mr.  Lowell  and  Mr.  Phelps, 
in  response  to  invitations.    The  opinions 


88 


The   [NTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1596 


expressed,  Mr.  Bayard  says,  are  his  opi- 
nions, "formed  by  me  after  careful  de- 
liberation." He  adds  ominously  that 
**  when  Congress  shall  have  concluded  its 
action  on  the  subject,  it  is  possible  that  I 
may  desire  to  submit  a  further  state- 
ment." The  speech  itself  is  then  printed 
at  length,  filling  eight  columns  of  the 
Record.  That  comes  under  date  Lon- 
don, December  12,  but  is  only  the  begin- 
ning. Under  date  of  January  3  a  cable 
despatch  was  sent  by  Olney  to  Bayard 
saying  that  the  House  wanted  informa- 
tion about  an  earlier  speech,  which  re- 
ferred to  the  President  as  one  who  "stood 
in  the  midst  of  a  strong,  self-confident, 
and  oftentimes  violent  people — men  who 
sought  to  have  their  own  way."  The 
speech  referred  to,  Mr.  Bayard  says,  was 
delivered  at  the  opening  of  the  Boston 
Grammar  School  in  August  last.  He  tells 
what  the  Boston  Grammar  School  is, 
and  how  he  was  invited  to  attend  the 
opening  exercises,  and  how  he  joined 
the  others  in  a  dinner  after  the  ex- 
ercises, where  toasts  were  given  and  re- 
sponded to  extemporaneously,  he  being 
one  of  the  responders.  Then  he  encloses 
a  newspaper  containing  a  report  of  the 
whole  proceedings,  including  a  list  of  the 
scholars  who  took  prizes,  reports  of  the 
examinations  in  the  classics  and  mathe- 
matics, all  the  speeched,  including  his 
own,  to  the  extent  of  fourteen  columns  of 
the  Beeord,  We  hope  that  the  House 
will  derive  profit  from  this  report.  By 
giving  their  entire  time  to  it  for  the  re- 
mainder of  the  session  they  would  relieve 
the  country  very  much. 


The  two  Senators  from  the  new  State 
of  Utah  were  sworn  in  on  Monday,  and 
the  seats  in  the  upper  branch  are  now  all 
filled,  except  one  from  Delaware,  which 
will  doubtless  soon  be  awarded  to  the 
Republican  claimant.  The  full  Senate 
now  consists  of  ninety  members — almost 
twice  as  many  as  sixty  years  ago,  and 
one-third  more  than  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  civil  war,  while  almost  one-sixth  have 
come  in  during  the  last  half-dozen  years. 
The  Senate  was  never  so  large  a  body  as 
now,  and  it  never  stood  lower  in  the  pub- 
lic esteem.  The  most  striking  feature  in 
the  development  of  Congress  during  the 
past  quarter  of  a  century,  and  particular- 
ly during  the  last  ten  years,  has  been  the 
steady  and  of  late  rapid  decline  in  the 
Senate,  as  compared  both  with  its  own 
past  and  with  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives at  the  present  time.  Until  a  com- 
paratively recent  period,  the  upper  branch 
of  Congress  maintained  to  a  great  extent 
its  ancient  hold  upon  the  public  mind  as  a 
far  more  dignified,  conservative,  and  able 
body  than  the  House — a  body  which  could 
be  trusted  to  resist  a  popular  craze,  as  in 
1868  it  defeated  the  wild  scheme  for  de- 
posing Andrew  Johnson  through  an  abuse 
of  the  impeachment  power.  This  position 
has  now  been  entirely  forfeited.  The  Se- 
nate to-day  is  a  less  conservative  body 
than  the  House,  and  it  is  more  easily  car- 


ried for  any  wild  scheme.  Not  only  has  it 
lost  its  old  hold  upon  the  public,  but  it  is 
regarded  with  a  growing  contempt. 


Mr.  Sewell  of  New  Jersey  is  one  of  the 
last  members  of  the  Senate  from  whom 
the  country  is  wont  to  expect  either  the 
presentation  of  a  notable  proposition  or 
an  argument  that  deserves  attention.  But 
the  anti-Jingo  resolution  which  he  intro- 
duced a  fortnight  ago  was  striking  in  it- 
self, and  it  was  supported  last  week  in  a 
speech  that  was  full  of  good  sense  and 
sound  reasoning.  The  New  Jersey  Sena- 
tor began  by  tracing  the  origin  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  and  setting  forth  the 
limitations  that  were  then  put  upon  it,  in 
contrast  with  the  attempts  now  made  to 
extend  it  over  half  the  globe.  He  pointed 
out  that  the  position  taken  by  the  Presi- 
dent and  the  Secretary  of  State  in  the 
Venezuelan  matter  '*  practically  means 
that  this  Government  must  assume  a  pro- 
tectorate over  Mexico,  Central  America, 
and  all  the  South  American  states,  and 
that,  no  matter  whether  these  states  be 
right  or  wrong,  in  any  case  of  a  conflict 
with  a  European  Power  we  pledge  our- 
selves as  an  ally  to  furnish  men  and  mu- 
nitions of  war,  and  force  enough  to  pro- 
tect the  weaker  American  Power  against 
the  stronger  European  Power."  What 
such  a  policy  would  mean  in  the  case  of 
Venezuela  he  shrewdly  showed  by  quot- 
ing the  remark  of  Mr.  Olney  in  his  corre- 
spondence, that  "  in  1848  Venezuela  en- 
tered upon  a  period  of  civil  commotions, 
which  lasted  for  more  than  a  quarter  of 
a  century,  and  the  negotiations  thus  in- 
terrupted in  1844  were  not  resumed  until 
1876." 


The  closing  passages  of  Mr.  Sewell's 
speech  were  rendered  particularly  note- 
worthy by  the  fact  that  he  showed  some 
perception  of  the  condition  of  the  country, 
and  of  the  folly  of  unnecessarily  precipi- 
tating an  international  controversy  now — 
and  such  an  attitude  of  mind  has  unhap- 
pily become  a  rarity  in  the  Senate.  He 
expressed  his  conviction  that  a  matter 
which  has  been  slumbering  so  many  years 
in  a  state  of  diplomatic  repose  might  have 
been  delayed  at  least  a  few  months  longer, 
and  reminded  his  colleagues  that  "  if  we 
address  ourselves  to  the  proper  ordering 
of  our  domestic  economies,  we  have  quite 
enough  now  to  engage  our  full  time,  and 
upon  which  to  exert  our  best  mental  ener- 
gies.'' While  believing  that  the  execu- 
tive ought  to  uphold  the  honor  of  the  na- 
tion, he  holds  that  *'we  have  a  right  to 
expect  that  discretion  and  good  judgment 
will  be  exercised  in  bringing  to  a  culmina- 
tion an  issue  so  grave  and  serious  ^b  that 
now  presented,"  and  he  pronounced  the 
President's  action  "  in  this  respect  alike 
unseasonable  and  premature,"  in  view  of 
the  facts  that  the  country  is  yet  "in  a 
state  of  convalescence  from  the  financial 
malady  of  1893,"  and  that  "the  still  un- 
settled and  troublous  condition  of  its 
financial  affairs  is  too  strongly  in  evidence 


to  warrant  the  putting  of  any  further  un- 
necessary strain  upon  it."  In  short,  Mr» 
Sewell's  speech  was  full  of  words  of  truth 
and  soberness.  The  wonder  is  that  the 
Shermans  and  Merrills  and  other  veterans 
of  the  Senate  should  have  left  the  utter- 
ance of  such  words  to  a  member  whose 
standing  does  not  lend  them  the  added 
weight  that  they  would  receive  coming 
from  a  leader  of  national  reputation  and 
influence. 


Senator  Frye  of  Maine  is  a  nice  man  ta 
make  an  uproar  about  the  Armeniaik 
massacres.  He  is  the  calm,  sensible  legis- 
lator who  expressed  his  regret  that  Spain 
apologized  for  the  Allianga  incident. 
War  for  war*s  sake  has  no  warmer  friend^ 
and  war  produces  everywhere  the  state  of 
things  which  we  are  deploring  in  Arme- 
nia. It  makes  widows  and  orphans  by  the 
thousand;  it  destroys  towns,  cities,  and 
villages,  and  spreads  famine  and  pesti- 
lence and  destroys  crops,  and  in  fact  re- 
duces the  seat  of  operations  to  the 
condition  in  which  Armenia  is  to-day. 
Part  of  the  reluctance  of  the  Powers  to 
tackle  the  Turk  is  due  to  the  dread  of  re- 
ducing large  regions  of  Europe  to  a  similar 
condition.  This  is  not  an  unworthy  fear. 
Of  course  it  is  a  reproach  to  our  civilisa- 
tion that  there  should  be  any  occasion  for 
it — that  the  Powers  should  not  be  able  to 
agree  to  abate  the  terrible  nuisance  known 
as  Turkey  without  falling  out  among- 
themselves;  but  we  who  are  afraid  that 
an  agreement  between  Great  Britain  and 
Venezuela  about  a  boundary  line  may  en- 
danger our  institutions,  are  hardly  in  a 
position  to  find  fault  with  them.  Every 
country  contains  its  Jingoes,  and  there  is 
nothing  like  the  Jingo  imagination  for 
detecting  danger  from  foreign  machina- 
tions. If  the  Powers  had  one-quarter  the 
suspicion  of  each  other  that  an  American 
Jingo  has  of  Great  Britain,  they  would  be 
fighting  like  demons  all  the  time.  The 
way  our  Senate  is  going  on  just  now, 
without  either  army  or  navy,  gives  one, 
we  fear,  but  a  faint  idea  of  the  way  it 
would  go  on  in  meddling,  threatening,^ 
and  '*  claiming"  if  it  had  the  great  navy 
which  so  many  of  us  are  longing  for. 
Fancy  such  an  instrument  of  destruction 
in  the  hands  of  men  like  Senators  Frye 
and  Morgan  and  Davis.  The  true  respon- 
sibility for  what  is  happening  in  Armenia 
rests  with  Russia  and  Germany — with 
Russia  for  not  offering  to  restore  order  in 
Armenia  under  a  *'  mandate,"  as  the 
French  did  in  Greece  in  1828,  and  in 
Syria  in  1860,  and  Austria  in  Bosnia  and 
Herzegovina  in  1877 ;  and  Grermany  for 
not  sustaining  England  in  the  recent  de- 
monstrations. The  notion  that  we  can 
apply  pressure  to  the  Porte  which  Eng- 
land cannot  or  will  not  apply,  is  one  of 
the  whimsies  of  the  day. 


The  Boston  Herald  says : 

**Same  of  the  greatest  men  of  our  ooontry 
have  had  this  habit  of  drinking  heavily-^t  baa. 
gone  into  history  as  a  weakness  in  their  dbm* 


Jan.  30,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


89 


racten ;  but  when  there  has  been  no  public 
dteplay,  the  mantle  of  oharity  has  been  cast 
oTer  it  by  their  contemporarie*.  It  is  better 
to  answer  the  anroment  of  Senator  Morgan 
than  to  abnae  him  for  hii  penonal  hablti.^ 

Well,  the  **  mantle  of  charity  "  was  groaaly 
mlaiiMd  when  it  was  cast  over  this  **  weak- 
ness." Anyhow,  whatever  excuse  a  pub- 
lic man  may  have  had  for  '*  drinking 
heavily  *'  fif  ^  years  ago,  he  has  none  to- 
day. If  he  cannot  stop  it,  he  ought  to 
get  out  of  public  life.  It  is  preposterous 
to  make  abstinence  a  condition  of  em- 
ployment in  an  engineer  of  a  locomo- 
tive, or  in  a  captain  of  a  liner,  and 
allow  a  statesman  whose  blunders  may 
any  day  bring  on  a  bloody  war,  to  get 
drunk  as  often  as  he  pleases  and  then 
whine  for  the  **  mantle  of  charity." 
We  believe  we  are  the  only  civilised 
people  to-day  who  allow  men  high  in  office 
to  roll  in  the  gutter  with  impunity.  In 
the  early  part  of  the  century  it  was  not  so. 
Everybody  got  drunk  occasionally.  But 
there  has  been  an  immense  change  in 
manners  since  then,  and  the  nation  ought 
to  get  the  benefit  of  it,  as  well  as  rail- 
roads, steamboats,  and  factories.  It  is 
monstrous  that  drunkards,  should  be  in- 
capacitated for  every  service  but  the 
public  service.  As  to  Senator  Morgan's 
*'  arguments,**  we  shall  answer  them  when 
we  see  them.  We  know  of  none  at  pre- 
sent. With  his  blatherskite  we  are  very 
familiar,  but  blatherskite  is  not  refutable. 


Ck>mmodore  Sicard  made  some  remarks 

last  Thursday  about  the  condition  of  our 

navy  which  are  likely  to  call  down  upon 

him  the  rebukes  of  the  Jingoes  who  are 

eager  for  immediate  war  with  England: 

**  The  abipa  we  have  to  far  are  good  onee.  hot 
we  reaUy  are  only  upon  the  threshold  of  the 
development  of  aooh  a  navy  as  we  sboold 
have.  We  have  a  number  of  good  croisers, 
bat  it  is  the  battle^ips  that  are  really  neces- 
sary in  war.  We  need  about  fifteen  or  twenty 
more  ships— good  battle-ships.  It  takes  foor 
or  five  years  to  build  a  battle-ship,  and  that  is 
time  enough  to  be  beaten  many  times  oveiv* 

Lodge  and  Chandler  ought  to  introduce 
a  resolution  at  once  expressing  in  stem 
terms  their  disapproval  of  a  naval  officer 
who  will  admit  that  we  have  only  the  be- 
ginning of  a  navy,  that  cruisers  are  really 
of  small  account  in  a  war,  and  that  before 
we  could  get  an  efficient  navy  constructed 
we  might  be  **  beaten  many  times  over.** 
What  Commodore  Sicard  says  is,  it  is 
true,  what  every  competent  and  frank 
naval  officer  has  been  siting  in  private 
for  weeks  past;  but  what  do  the  Jingo 
warriors  care  about  that?  Naval  officers 
are  aware  that  cruisers  would  be  of  small 
use  to  us  in  a  war  with  England,  because 
the  two  nations  which  sell  coal  are  Eng- 
land and  America,  and  our  cruisers  would 
not  be  able  to  replenish  their  supply  if 
they  were  to  get  away  from  American 
ports.  They  know  also  that  what  is  need- 
ed to  protect  American  seaboard  cities  is 
bmttle-shipe,  of  which  we  have  only  a  few 
at  preeent,  and  theee  would  offer  small 
resistance  to  England's  powerful  ships. 
Bat  what  do  the  Jingoes  care  for  lit- 
tle things  like  these  ?    They  do  not  pro- 


pose to  fight,  but  to  stay  at  home  and 
read  about  the  war  in  the  **  extras.**  They 
believe  that  war  is  necessary  **  to  develop 
the  manhood  of  the  nation  **;  but  it  is  not 
their  manhood  which  needs  development, 
but  that  of  some  other  fellow.  Theirs  is 
all  right  It  flinches  at  no  danger  which 
somebody  else  will  have  to  encounter. 


The  coming  season  ought  to  be  an  un- 
usually profitable  one  for  the  ocean  steam- 
ship companies,  as  there  is  to  be  an  im- 
mense and  enforced  emigration  of  Ameri- 
cans. Already  the  numbers  are  porten- 
tously large  of  those  upon  whom  notice 
has  been  served  by  the  Jingo  press  that 
they  cannot  stay  in  this  country,  but  must 
go  at  once  to  England,  where  they  belong; 
and  the  list  is  extending  every  day.  The 
college  professors  as  a  body  will  have  to 
go,  under  the  terms  of  this  new  alien  and 
sedition  act,  together  with  the  great  ma- 
jority of  the  clergy,  the  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce, most  merchants  and  bankers,  and 
a  few  (we  are  thankful  to  say  only  a  few) 
editors.  It  appears  to-day  that  the  "  pro- 
English  party  **  is  now  in  the  majority  in 
the  United  States  Senate,  prepared  to 
side-track  the  Davis  resolutions.  So  at 
least  fifty  Senators  will  have  to  emigrate. 
The  House  foreign  affairs  committee  is 
pro-English  too,  and  of  course  must  go 
also,  along  with  the  Speaker  and  a  ma- 
jority of  the  House,  All  these  classee 
come,  by  their  actions,  under  the  head  of 
''pernicious  foreigners**  whom  newspa- 
pers have  the  constitutional  right  to  ex- 
pel the  country  on  thirty  days*  notice.  In 
a  crisis  like  the  present  they  only  weaken 
us.  We  must  offer  a  united  front  to  the 
enemy.  We  must  not  allow  foreigners  to 
suspect  for  a  moment  that  there  is  a  sin- 
gle man  in  this  country  who  ever,  thinks, 
or  asks  the  reason  why  he  must  do  and 
die,  or  does  anything  but  bellow  and  foam 
at  the  mouth. 


Nobody  will  be  surprised  to  learn  that 
the  McKinley  boom  is  encountering  ob- 
stacles in  Ohio.  All  his  enemies  among 
the  Republican  managers  in  his  State, 
and  they  are  neither  few  nor  weak,  have 
declared  over  and  over  again  that  they 
are  for  Ohio*s  Favorite  Son,  heart  and 
soul,  and  yet  McKinley  is  not  happy  nor 
are  his  friends  at  ease.  The  radical  trou- 
ble seems  to  be  that  no  Republican  poli- 
tician in  Ohio  trusts  any  other  Republi- 
can politician,  and  all  of  them  expect 
**  treachery  **  as  a  matter  of  course.  Fora- 
ker,  for  example,  has  taken  occasion  pub- 
licly to  declare  that  Ohio  must  support 
McKinley  with  enthusiasm,  and  yet  Mc- 
Kinley organs  announce  that  '*  ill-advised 
persons  **  in  various  sections  of  Ohio  who 
**  pretend  to  be  friends  of  Foraker*'  are 
seeking  to  "  inject  him  hi  to  the  Presiden- 
tial race.**  Wicked  Democratic  organs  go 
much  further,  and  insist  that  Foraker  is 
bent  on  *«knifing**  McKinley,  and  that 
the  Ohio  delegation  to  the  St.  Louis  con- 
vention will  be  made  up  of  men  who  vrill 


shout  for  McKinley  in  public,  but  will 
drop  him  the  first  moment  they  can  find 
any  excuse.  At  best  the  situation  is  not 
promising  for  *'  the  logical  candidate  *' ; 
at  worst,  his  chances  of  getting  the  nomi- 
nation will  be  no  better  than  Sherman*s 
have  so  often  proved  to  be. 


The  inaugural  address  of  the  new  Oov* 
ernor  of  New  Jersey  would  be  a  striking 
document  in  itself,  even  if  had  not  the 
advantage  of  being  in  such  sharp  contrast 
with  the  floods  of  inanity  or  folly  with 
which  other  governors  have  been  inun- 
dating their  Legislatures.  Mr.  Griggs's 
description  of  the  plague  of  over-legisla- 
tion from  which  New  Jersey  (and,  he 
might  have  said,  every  State  and  the 
wholo  nation)  is  suffering,  strikes  home. 
The  mass  of  hasty,  ill-considered,  ill-ex- 
pressed, and  conflicting  laws  on  all  sub- 
jects that  stuffs  the  general  statutes  is 
appalling.  No  lawyer  can  find  his  way 
through  the  jungle;  the  courts  can  but 
contradict  each  other  and  themselves  in 
interpreting  the  hotch-potch.  When  the 
general  statutes  of  New  Jersey,  under  a 
Constitution  supposed  to  prevent  all  spe- 
cial or  class  legislation,  fill  three  large 
volumes  of  1,000  pages  each—or  twice  as 
much  space  as  the  revised  statutes  of  the 
United  States— the  greatness  of  the  evil  is 
apparent.  Nothing  but  endless  litigation, 
uncertainty,  waste,  destruction  of  proper- 
ty, and  contempt  for  government  and 
courts  can  result  from  this  huge  conflict 
of  laws.  Against  the  general  and  perni- 
cious superstition  that  all  the  ills  of  hu- 
manity can  be  cured  by  law,  Gk>v.  Griggs 
squarely  arrays  himself,  and  flatly  says 
that  he  will  veto  every  law  which  has  not 
some  positive  and  convincing  reasons  to 
justify  it.  Laws  enacted  out  of  mutual 
complacence  will  find  no  toleration  from 
him,  he  serves  notice. 


For  years  the  sugar  interests  of  the  Ar- 
gentine Republic  have  enjoyed  the  bene- 
fit of  a  high  protective  tariff  on  imported 
sugars.  With  cane  cheaper  than  in  any 
other  country,  with  no  duty  to  pay  on  im- 
ported machinery,  and  with  labor  under 
perfect  control  at  low  wages,  the  price  of 
sugar  in  that  country  has  been  more  than 
double  the  cost  of  the  imported  article 
minus  the  duty.  This  condition  of  things 
naturally  caused  overproduction  until  the 
demand  was  exceeded  by  many  thousand 
tons.  To  avert  the  logical  result— a  low- 
ering of  prices— the  sugar-makers  are 
forced  to  export  and  dispose  of  their  sur- 
plus in  the  open  market.  To  recoup  them 
for  the  loss  involved,  a  pliant  minister  of 
finance  has  considerately  submitted  to  the 
Chambers  a  project  to  levy  an  internal  tax 
of  4  cents  a  kilogramme  on  all  sugars  sold 
in  the  republic,  and  to  devote  the  fund  so 
acquired  to  a  bounty  of  12  cents  a  kilo- 
gramme to  the  producers  for  every  kilo- 
gramme exported.  Here  we  have  the  doc- 
trine of  protection  '^developed  *'  with  the 
severe  logic  of  an  OIney  mind  getting  out 
of  a  doctrine  ««all  there  is  in  it.'* 


90 


Tbe   IN"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1596 


'  i 


THE  *' doctrine:' 

Now  that  we  are  neariog  the  close  of  the 
Jingo  craze,  it  is  impossible  for  the  calm 
observer  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  it 
owed  much  of  its  gravity  and  extent  to  the 
fashion  of  calling  the  policy  recommended 
by  President  Monroe  by  the  name  of  "doc- 
trine." When  it  was  first  called  a  "  doc- 
trine," we  are  not  yet  able  to  say  with 
positiveness,  but  it  was  apparently  long 
after  1823.  The  expression  was  not  used 
during  the  discussion  in  Congress  of  a 
proposition  to  send  delegates  to  the  Pa- 
nama Congress  in  1826,  which  involved 
frequent  references  to  Mr.  Monroe's  state- 
ment. A  passage  in  a  speech  of  Daniel 
Webster's  made  on  April  14,  in  the  course 
of  that  debate,  shows  that  the  term  **  doc- 
trine" had  not  then  become  fixed,  and 
that  there  was  in  Mr.  Webster's  mind, 
and  probably  in  that  of  the  public,  a' 
clear  appreciation  of  the  fact  that  Presi- 
dent Monroe  was  not  teaching  a  doctrine, 
but  was  making  a  declaration  of  policy 
with  regard  to  our  own  interests  exclu- 
sively, when  he  issued  his  celebrated  mes- 
sage. Here  it  is,  and  we  have  italicized 
the  expressions  which  confirm  our  view : 

"  It  is,  doubtless,  true,  as  I  took  occasion  to 
observe  the  other  day,  that  this  declaration 
must  be  considered  as  founded  on  our  rights, 
and  to  spring  malnlv  from  a  regard  to  their 
preservation.  It  did  not  commit  us,  at  all 
events,  to  take  up  arms  on  any  indication  of 
hostile  feeling  by  the  Powers  of  Europe  towards 
South  America.  If,  for  example,  all  the  States 
of  Europe  had  refused  to  trade  with  South 
America  until  her  states  should  return  to  their 
former  allefnance,  that  would  have  furnished 
no  cause  of  interference  to  us.  Or.  if  an  arma- 
ment had  been  fiumished  by  the  Allies  to  act 
against  provinces  the  most  remote  from  us,  as 
ChUi  or  Buenos  Ayres.  the-  distance  of  the 
scene  of  action,  diminishing  our  apprehension 
of  danger,  and  diminishing,  also,  our  means 
of  effectual  interposition^  mi^ht  still  have  left 
us  to  content  ourselves  with  remonstrance. 
But  a  very  different  case  would  have  arisen  if 
an  army,  equipped  and  maintained  by  these 
Powers,  had  been  landed  on  the  shores  of  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  commenced  the  war  in  our 
own  immediate  neighborhood.  Such  an  eyent 
mieht  justly  be  regarded  as  dangerous  to  our- 
selves, and,  on  that  ground,  to  have  called  for 
decided  and  Immediate  interference  by  us. 
The  sentiments  and  the  policy  announced  by 
the  declaration  thus  understood  were,  there- 
fore, in  strict  conformity  to  our  duties  and 
our  interests^* 

In  1848  President  Polk  sent  to  Con- 
gress a  message,  regarding  affairs  in  Yuca- 
tan, which  provoked  a  debate  that  in- 
volved frequent  references  to  Mr.  Mon- 
roe's position,  and  in  this  debate  we  find 
the  expression  "doctrine"  used  more 
than  once.  •*  The  President,"  said  Mr. 
Holmes  of  South  Carolina,  "had  taken 
the.  opportunity  of  reiterating  a  doctrine 
which  was  said  to  be  the  doctrine  of  Mr. 
Monroe;  and  there  never  was  a  more  in- 
appropriate time  for  the  assertion  of  that 
doctrine,  even  if  it  did  apply."  Mr.  Bag- 
by  of  Alabama  "  did  not  think  that  the 
doctrine  contained  in  the  declaration  of 
Mr.  Monroe  either  sanctioned  or  discoun- 
tenanced this  measure."  But  even  at 
that  time  doctrine  was  not  universally  ac- 
cepted as  the  proper  term,  and  Mr.  Root 
of  New  York  referred  to  an  assertion  that 
"Mr.  Monroe  had  committed  us  by  his 


declaration  in  1823."  Whether  called  a 
declaration  or  a  doctrine,  it  had  not  yet 
acquired  the  sacroscant  character  now 
ascribed  to  it.  Mr.  Root  declared  that 
Mr.  Monroe  had  no  authority  to  commit 
succeeding  generations  by  his  declaration, 
and  even  went  so  far  as  flippantly  to  re- 
mark :  "  It  was  sometimes  very  conve- 
nient, when  gentlemen  hftd  a  pomt  to 
carry,  to  resort  to  some  of  Mr.  Monroe's 
old  musty  letters." 

At  all  events,  "doctrine"  is  an  unfor- 
tunate term — in  the  first  place,  because 
it  is  not  strictly  descriptive.  But  the 
second  objection  to  it  is  more  serious.  It 
is  that  the  term  fell  among  a  people  bred 
in  theological  discussion,  and  accustomed 
to  use  doctrine  as  a  term  of  mystery  and 
divine  authority.  Webster  gives  various 
definitions  of  it,  such  as  "teaching," 
"  instruction,"  like  "  Christ's  doctrine," 
or  "a  body  of  principles  of  faith,"  like 
the  "  doctrine  of  atoms,"  or  "  the  doctrine 
of  gravitation,"  or  "the  doctrines  of  the 
Bible."  He  mentions  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine, but  he  gives  no  definition  of  "doc- 
trine" which  will  cover  Monroe's  recom- 
mendation. In  fact,  in  popular  use,  both 
in  Monroe's  time  and  down  to  our  own 
day,  a  doctrine  was  something  with  super- 
human authority  behind  it,  and  which 
could  not  be  approached  from  a  purely 
mundane  point  of  view.  To  the  ordinary 
*'  plain  American,"  adoctrine  is  something 
different  from,  and  much  more  serious 
than,  an  opinion,  or  theory,  or  recommen- 
dation;  something  to  be  handled  more 
reverently  and  to  be  accepted  with  less 
question.  He  finds  it  diflScult  to  believe, 
therefore,  that  Monroe's  advice  to  inter- 
fere in  the  affairs  of  the  Spanish- Ameri- 
can states  if  they  are  attacked  by  a 
European  Power  is  a  piece  of  political  ad- 
vice, to  be  examined  (like  every  other)  as 
a  piece  of  policy  with  reference  to  time, 
place  and  circumstances,  and  probable 
result. 

If  any  one  doubts  this,  we  advise  him 
to  make  an  experiment  with  any  of  hie 
older  neighbors  by  propounding  to  him, 
for  acceptance,  separately  and  apart  from 
the  others,  any  one  of  the  "develop- 
ments" of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  to  be 
found  in  Secretary  Olney's  despatch  of 
July  20,  for  example.  Ask  him  whether, 
when  a  community  of  ''yellow-bellied 
Dagoes"  down  there  quarrels  with  a 
European  Power,  we  ought  to  take  it 
for  granted  that  the  European  Power  is 
in  the  wrong  and  the  Dagoes  in  the  right; 
or  whether  the  Dagoes  ought  to  be  allow- 
ed to  choose  a  European  arbitrator  in 
any  of  their  quarrels;  or  whether  a 
Dago  ought  to  be  allowed  to  accept  the 
boundary  claim  of  a  European  colony 
to  his  own  detriment,  or  to  enter  into 
an  alliance  with  a  European  Power  against 
one  of  his  sister  republics;  whether  the 
Dago  states.  Chili  or  Peru,  for  example, 
by  "natural  sympathy,  by  similarity 
of  governmental  institution,'*  were  "our 
natural  friends  and  allies,  commercially 
and    politically,"    more    so    than    Eng- 


land; whether  we  were  "practically 
sovereign  on  this  continent  and  our  fiat 
law  "  in  any  matter  about  which  we  choose 
to  concern  ourselves.  Ask  him  these  ques- 
tions without  letting  him  perceive  your 
object,  and  he  will  undoubtedly  laugh  a 
merry  laugh,  and  ask  you  for  whom  you 
take  him,  or  request  you  "  to  give  him  an 
easier  one."  But  if  you  then  go  on  and 
tell  him  that  all  these  things  are  part  and 
parcel  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  that  they 
flow  out  of  it,  he  will  at  once  become  grave 
and  reverential,  and  say :  "  Ah,  that  is  a 
different  matter.  If  it  is  all  in  tke  Monroe 
Doctrine,  I  have  nothing  to  say.  I  am  for 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  every  time."  And 
he  will  support  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  and 
"  stand  behind  "  any  one  who  recommends 
its  application,  without  discussion  or  ex- 
amination, just  as  a  Mussulman  rallies  to 
the  sacred  standard  in  a  holy  war.  The 
Monroe  Doctrine,  like  all  doctrines  firm- 
ly held,  is  fundamental,  above  criticism, 
something  to  fight  for  and  die  for,  like  all 
articles  of  religious  faith. 

The  inconvenience,  for  a  great  commer- 
cial state,  of  having  a  doctrine  of  this  sort, 
which  intimately  concerns  not  our  eternal 
but  our  temporal  welfare,  is  not  discussa- 
ble, and  has  to  be  enforced  without  regard  ,j 
to  consequences,  has  been  made  very  plain 
during  the  past  few  weeks.  If  Monroe's 
opinion  were  called,  not  a  doctrine  but  a 
policy,  we  think  there  is  hardly  a  doubt 
that  the  appointment  of  a  commission 
like  that  now  serving  to  report  on  the 
boundary  between  Great  Britain  and  Vene- 
zuela would  have  taken  place  in  a  quiet 
and  gentlemanly  way,  as  the  result  of 
friendly  communication  with  Great  Bri- 
tain. Policy  is  something  intended  for 
human  happiness,  and  to  be  considered 
with  reference  to  human  comfort  and  con- 
venience, *  while  doctrine  concerns  the 
things  of  the  spirit,  the  unknown  or  un- 
knowable concerns  of  the  individual  soul. 
A  nation  which  lives  by  doctrine  is  neces- 
sarily, like  Turkey,  somewhat,  at  least,  of 
a  theocracy.  It  has  often  to  pursue 
courses  in  obedience  to  the  doctrine  which  . 
are  full  of  misery  for  man  as  a  member  of 
human  society.  A  nation  which  lives  by 
policy  or  expediency,  on  the  other  hand, 
asks  itself  at  every  step,  "  Does  this  make 
for  justice,  for  peace,  for  law?  Is  it  rea- 
sonable? Will  it  increase  the  burdens  or 
promote  the  comfort  of  the  poor?  Will  it 
cherish  the  great  interests  of  civilization, 
the  spread  of  knowledge,  the  rule  of 
science,  the  feeling  of  brotherhood  among 
the  sorely  tried  and  much  puzzled  nations 
of  the  earth?"  Of  all  the  misfortunes 
which  can  overtake  a  Society,  the  greatest 
is  having  to  live  under  a  dominion  which 
cannot  be  discussed,  and  which  cannot  be 
judged  by  its  probable  results. 

For  these  reasons,  and  many  others  for 
which  we  have  no  space  here,  we  think 
the  chances  of  future  peace  and  order  on 
this  continent  would  be  much  improved 
if  we  got  into  the  way  of  talking  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  as  the  Monroe  Policy, 
and  taught  the  coming  generation  that. 


Jan.  30,  1896] 


Tlie    iN'atiorL. 


91 


far  from  being  a  thing  to  die  for,  it  was 
a  thing  to  examine  when  the  time  came 
for  its  use,  juet  like  taxation,  or  the  liquor 
question,  or  good  roads,  or  judicial  orga- 
nization. This  Grovernment  was  founded 
first  and  foremost  for  the  benefit  of  citi- 
zens of  the  United  States,  and  not  for  that 
of  Venezuelans,  Guatemalans,  Costa  Bi- 
cans,  or  Chilians.  Monroe  meant  his  doc- 
trine avowedly  to  subserve,  before  all  else, 
the  safety,  honor,  and  welfare  of  his  own 
country. 


HOMCEOPATIir  IN  GOVERNMENT. 

Whsn  the  Jingo  craze  was  at  its  height, 
the  story  reached  us,  through  an  excellent 
channel,  that  the  excuse  for  Mr.  Cleve< 
land*s  message  was  that  he  had  learned 
that  the  Republicans  in  Congress  were 
preparing,  and  would  surely  pass,  a  war- 
like resolution  directed  against  England, 
and  that  he  felt  compelled,  as  a  politician, 
to  forestall  them,  in  his  own  interest  and 
that  of  his  party.  On  Thursday  the  Eve- 
ning Post  printed  a  despatch  from  its 
Washington  correspondent,  containing  an- 
other version  of  the  same  story,  on  still 
better  authority.    This  ran  as  follows : 

**We  all  knew  it  [the  Davis  resolotion]  as 
long  ago  as  last  f  priog.  The  scheme  was  care- 
folly  hatched,  UDdoabtedly  for  political  pur- 
poses and  Dothiog  higher.  The  President  sim. 
plv  headed  it  off.  The  public  furor  which  this 
action  of  Congress  woidd  have  brought  about 
has  simply  been  discounted,  and,  now  that  the 
Jingo  resolution  is  before  the  people,  it  is  found 
to  have  spent  its  force.  The  people  found  all 
they  wanted  in  the  President's  message,  and 
have  no  use  for  the  Senate  resolution.  The 
Senate  has  already  discovered  this.  As  a  re- 
sult the  Davis  resolution  won't  pass  the  Senate. 
Mark  my  prophecy.  It  is  losing  friends  every 
day.  .  .  .  Had  Congress,  however,  actiog 
by  itself,  paired  such  a  measure  as  the  Davis 
resolution  on  the  eve  of  Oreat  Britain's  asser. 
tion  of  her  claim  in  Venezuela,  it  would  have 
been  equivalent  to  a  declaration  of  war.  I  con- 
tend,  therefore,  that  the  President  performed 
a  valuable  public  service  in  the  ioterests  of 
peace  in  forestall ing  Congress  and  robbing  it 
of  its  hostile  ammunition." 

Here,  as  will  be  seen,  the  President  acts 
simply  in  the  interest  of  peace,  and  not 
in  that  of  party.  He  hears  that  Congress 
is  -disposed  to  declare  war,  so  he  deter- 
mines to  declare  it  in  advance  of  them,  in 
the  belief  that  his  war  would  not  be  taken 
so  seriously  as  the  congressional  war,  and 
would  be  more  readily  got  rid  of. 

There  are  two  weaknesses  in  this  story. 
One  is  that  Congress,  far  from  leaving  him 
to  fight  the  British  alone,  immediately 
*' stood  behind  him,"  and  endorsed  hia 
war  measure  without  debate — an  incident, 
we  think,  without  parallel  in  the  history 
of  parliamentary  government.  The  cra- 
ziest war  venture  of  any  modern  nation 
was  that  of  France  in  1870,  but  that  pro- 
ject waa  before  the  Chambers  and  under 
discussion  for  nearly  two  weeks— that  is, 
from  July  6  to  July  19.  What  frightened 
the  country  and  the  world  in  December 
waa  not  what  Congress  said  or  did,  but 
what  the  President  said  and  did,  for  he 
held  the  confidence  of  the  country  for 
steadiness  and  self-control  and  courage 
and  rationality,  in  a  remarkable  degree. 
Cungrras,  speaking  alone,  would  not  have 


made  much  excitement,  because  its  action  | 
would  have  been  set  down  to  '*  politics," 
and  Mr.  Cleveland  would  have  been  relied 
on  to  prevent  any  mischievous  result.  It 
was  Mr.  Cleveland,  therefore,  and  Mr. 
Cleveland  alone,  who  made  the  panic,  and 
he  virtually  confessed  in  his  second,  hys- 
terical message,  that  he  had  not  duly  con- 
sidered the  possible  consequences  of  the 
step  he  was  taking. 

The  second  weakness  of  the  story  is 
more  serious.  It  is  a  confession  that  our 
sanest  statesman  was  ready  on  a  pinch 
to  administer  the  GU>vernment  on  homoe- 
opathic principles;  that  is,  when  he  heard 
that  a  codrdinate  branch  was  going  to 
engage  in  an  enterprise  injurious  in  the 
highest  degree  to  the  national  interests, 
he  was  prepared  to  anticipate  it  by  ad- 
ministering to  the  unfortunate  people  a 
smaller  dose  of  the  same  stuff.  Foresee- 
ing that  Congress  would  shortly  get 
drunk,  he  determined,  by  way  of  cure,  to 
anticipate  their  bout  by.  one  of  his  own, 
feeling  that  his  own  recovery  would  be 
speedier  than  theirs  and  less  costly.  But 
the  result  was  that  they  joined  him  in  his 
carouse,  and  they  both  went  to  work  to 
smash  the  national  furniture  and  crock- 
ery. We  have  not  a  word  to  say  against 
the  homoeopathic  system  as  a  therapeutic 
agency  for  the  human  body,  but  in  daily 
life  no  one  calls  in  a  homoeopathic  doctor 
without  knowing  what  he  is  about,  and 
the  nature  of  the  remedies  to  be  prescrib- 
ed to  him.  r  The  President  of  the  United 
States  has  no  license  to  practise  it  on  the 
people  of  the  United  States.  It  would  be 
impossible  to  find  in  any  debate  or  discus- 
sion of  the  Constitution  the  smallest  au- 
thority for  the  doctrine  that  the  President 
may  head  off  anticipated  folly  on  the  part 
of  Congress  by  minor  folly  of  his  own. 

The  framers  of  the  Constitution  had 
evidently  never  dreamed  that  any  such 
theory  of  the  President's  powers  or  duties 
would  ever  see  the  light,  much  less  be  ac- 
cepted. Hamilton  says  in  the  Federalist: 

**The  republican  principle  demands  that  the 
deliberate  sense  of  the  community  should  gov. 
ero  the  conduct  of  those  to  whom  tbey  intrust 
the  maimgement  of  their  affairs;  but  it  does 
not  require  an  unqualified  complaisance  to 
every  sudden  breeze  of  passion,  or  to  every 
transient  impulse  which  the  people  may  re. 
ceive  from  the  arts  of  men  who  flatter  their 
prejudices  to  betray  their  interests.  It  is  a 
just  observation  that  the  people  commooly 
intend  the  public  good.  This  often  applies  to 
their  very  errors.  But  their  good  sense  would 
despise  the  adulator  who  should  pretend  that 
they  always  reason  right  about  the  means  of 
promoting  it.  They  know  from  experience 
that  they  sometimes  err;  and  the  wonder  is 
that  they  so  seldom  err  as  they  do,  beset,  as 
they  continually  are,  by  the  wiles  of  parasites 
and  sycophants,  by  the  snares  of  the  ambitious, 
the  avaricious,  the  desperate,  by  the  artifices 
of  men  who  possess  their  confidence  more  than 
they  deserve  it,  and  of  those  who  neek  to  pos- 
sess rather  than  to  deserve  it.  When  occa- 
sions  present  themselves  in  which  the  interebts 
of  the  people  are  at  variance  with  their  iocli. 
nations,  it  is  the  duty  of  the  persons  whom 
they  have  appointed  to  be  the  guardians  of 
those  interests,  to  withstand  the  temporary 
delusion  in  order  to  give  them  time  and  oppor^ 
tunity  for  more  cool  and  aedate  reflection. 
Instances  might  be  cited  in  which  a  conduct  of 
this  kind  has  saved  the  people  from  very  fatal 
consequences  of  their  own  mistakes,  and  has 
procured  lastiog  monuments  of  their  grati* 
tttde  to  men  who  had  courage  and  magnani** 


mity  enough  to  serve  them  at  the  peril  of  their 
displeasure.** 

With  the  position  which  Mr.  Cleveland 
had  before  the  country  in  November  last 
he  could  well  have  waited  calmly  for  any 
act  of  folly  the  majority  in  Congress  could 
commit.  He  was  waiting  in  that  attitude 
for  their  financial  or  fiscal  follies.  He  ex- 
pected, and  the  public  expected  him,  to 
meet  them  with  a  veto.  Nay,  his  enemies 
in  Congress  used  the  certainty  of  a  veto 
as  a  reason  for  not  being  so  foolish  as  they 
would  have  liked.  He  was  put  in  the  Pre- 
sidency to  stand  guard  against  such  things 
as  the  Davis  resolution,  as  much  as  against 
a  free-silver  bill  or  a  McKinley  tariff.  There 
was  no  likelihood  that  Congress  would 
exercise  the  war-declaring  power.  What 
was  to  be  anticipated  waa  a  blatherskite 
concurrent  resolution,  like  the  one  now 
before  the  Senate,  and  that  he  could  have 
met  with  a  veto  which  would  have  given 
him  the  opportunity  of  his  life,  and  sent 
him  out  of  office  with  a  reputation  follow- 
ing close  on  that  of  Washington  and  Lin- 
coln. He  might  in  such  a  veto  have  ex- 
plained the  exact  condition  of  the  Vene- 
zuelan negotiations,  and  have  revealed  our 
own  ignorance  of  the  merits  of  the  contro- 
versy, have  announced  his  plan  for  seeking 
light  on  the  subject,  have  defined  the 
nature  and  scope  of  the  *'  Monroe  Doc- 
trine," the  rights  it  proclaims  and  the 
duties  it  imposes,  and  have,  at  the  same 
time,  formulated  the  American  view  of 
war  as  a  means  of  settling  controversiee 
among  nations,  in  a  way  that  would  have 
made  one  of  the  great  state  papers  of 
American  history,  and  have  substituted 
the  Cleveland  Doctrine  for  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  in  the  popular  mind  and  memory. 
This  is  what  those  who  meet  admired  him 
and  have  longest  supported  him,  expected 
of  him. 

Their  bitter  disappointment  is  due  to 
that  most  pernicious  legacy  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  that  fatal  '*relic  of  barbarism,"  the 
idea  that  even  for  us— '*  foremost  in  the 
files  of  time  "as  we  consider  ourselves— 
war  is  a  thing  not  to  be  pondered  or  dia- 
cussed;  that  when  contemplating  the  moat 
awful  action  that  man  can  take  against 
the  peace  and  dignity  of  his  fellow-man, 
it  is  base  to  refiect,  to  reaaon,  to  take 
counsel,  to  seek  the  better  way;  that  in 
such  crises  the  nearer  we  get  to  the  enrag- 
ed tiger  or  bulldog,  the  more  reaaon  we 
have  to  be  proud  of  ourselves.  If  there 
waa  one  man  in  the  country  whom  last 
November  we  conaidered  superior  to  thia 
sad  delusion,  we  should  have  said  it  waa 
Mr.  Cleveland.  We  consider  his  subser- 
viency to  it,  next  to  the  wild  '*  standing 
behind"  him  when  he  issued  his  chal- 
lenge, the  saddest  sight  this  century  has 
witnessed. 


TARIFF  LEUISLATION 

Colorado  held  the  attention  of  the  coun- 
try on  Wednesday  of  last  week  in  rather 
an  impressive  way.  In  addition  to  Sena- 
tor Wolcott*s  brilliant  speech  on  the  Da- 


93 


Tlie   ItTatioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  T596 


▼IB  resolution,  Senator  Teller  delivered 
one  on  the  tariff  bill  and  the  financial 
situation  generally,  which  made  a  decided 
stir  and  is  likely  to  have  important  conse- 
quences. Mr.  Teller's  speech,  like  that 
of  his  colleague,  was  effective  in  telling 
the  truth  at  a  critical  moment,  and 
knocking  over  a  lot  of  humbugs  that  had 
been  leaning  against  each  other  ever  since 
the  session  began,  maintaining  an  uncer- 
tain equilibrium,  and  sure  to  fall  if  any- 
body should  give  them  a  front  blow. 

The  centre  of  Mr.  Teller's  attack  was 
the  House  tarifif  bill  which  is  still  in  the 
Senate  committee  on  finance.  The  histo- 
ry of  this  bill  is  pretty  well  known.  It 
was  concocted  by  the  Ohio  wool-g^wing 
triumvirate— the  same  who  laid  the  foun* 
dation  for  the  McKinley  tariff  in  1889  '90. 
This  interesting  clique  came  to  Washing- 
ton before  the  present  session  began,  and 
took  steps  to  commit  the  Republican  par- 
ty to  the  enactment  of  a  tariff  on  wool,  not 
now,  but  a  year  or  two  hence,  provided 
the  party  should  be  successful  in  the  com- 
ing Presidential  election.  It  was  a  garnet 
that  these  people  were  very  familiar  with. 
They  had  played  it  often.  Revenue  for 
the  Government  had  nothing  to  do  with 
it ;  but  the  Republican  leaders,  when  the 
measure  was  forced  upon  them,  put  the 
revenue  pretence  forward  as  a  stalking- 
horse.  They  passed  the  bill  through  the 
House  as  olie  of  the  happy  financial  con- 
ceits of  thft  hour,  along  with  the  Venezu- 
ela Commission  bill  and  the  bond  bill.  It 
reached  the  Senate  simultaneously  with 
the  bond  bill,  and  both  were  referred  to 
the  finance  committee,  which  is  a  free- 
silver  committee  presided  over  by  the  most 
pronounced  gold-bug  in  the  Senate. 

This  committee  promptly  substituted 
a  free-coinage  bill  for  the  bond  bill,  and 
then  sat  upon  the  tariff  bill,  waiting  to 
see  what  would  be  the  effect  on  the 
temper  of  the  House.  The  effect  being 
nil,  mutterings  began  to  be  heard  in  the 
free-silver  camp  to  the  effect  that  the 
tariff  bill  was  a  measure  for  the  protec- 
tion of  wool-growers,  that  it  was  for  reve- 
nue not  to  the  Qovernment  but  to  private 
individuals,  and  that  silver-miners  were 
just  as  much  entitled  to  a  tax  for  their 
benefit  as  wool-growers  or  anybody  else. 
Yet  the  McKinley  organs  were  hopeful 
that,  as  Senator  Jones,  who  held  the 
balance  of  power  in  the  committee,  had 
been  a  good  Republican  before  he  went 
over  to  the  Populists,  he  would  allow  free 
t>lay  to  his  natural  instincts  and  let  this 
little  bill  pass  without  a  free-silver  amend- 
ment. Such  an  amendment,  if  securely 
fastened  to  the  wool  bill,  would  kill  the 
whole  measure  in  the  House.  Hence  the 
importance  of  getting  it  past  the  danger 
point  of  the  finance  committee. 

It  has  not  yet  passed  that  point  when 
Mr.  Teller  pounces  upon  it  and  shakes  it 
as  a  terrier  would  shake  a  rat.  His  opin- 
ion of  it  was  expressed  in  the  following 
vigorous  terms: 

»» I  know  very  well  that  the  free  silver  bill 
will  not  become  a  law.    Bat  I  am  tired  of  be- 


ing lectured  by  Benaton  who  know  equally 
well  that  the  revenue  bill  will  not  become  a 
]a«7.  There  has  never  been  the  alightest  ex- 
pectation of  its  becoming  a  law.  Even  if  it 
should  be  broaght  before  the  Senate  and  final- 
ly passed  by  the  aid  of  two  or  three  Popalist 
votes,  it  would  be  sure  to  meet  with  an  ezecu- 
live  veto.  Had  you  the  slightest  expectation 
of  its  ever  becoming  a  law  it  would  have  been 
framed  on  very  different  lines.  It  was  ju^t 
put  in  to  Congress  as  a  political  move,  and  for 
no  other  purpose.  As  this  is  to  be  a  political 
play,  we  will  play  politics  on  our  side.*^ 

This  is  something  more  than  a  hint  that 
the  Republican  silver  Senators  are  not  to 
be  coaxed  or  coerced  into  passing  the 
tariff  bill  merely  to  give  the  wool-growers 
a  good  position  at  some  future  time. 
What  the  latter  want  is  the  chance  to  say, 
whenever  the  RefTublican  party  comes 
into  full  power:  **You  passed  our  bill 
when  you  could  not  get  the  approval  of 
the  executive  ;  you  committed  yourselves 
to  us  then,  and  you  cannot  go  back  now  ; 
therefore  please  to  pass  it  again."  The 
free-silver  Republicans  have  no  particular 
objection  to  the  wool  bill  per  ae.  They 
simply  want  to  force  their  own  measure 
along  with  it.  This  they  cannot  do,  and 
they  know  that  they  cannot,  but  neither 
will  they  allow  any  other  measure  for  the 
private  interest  of  a  class  to  go  through 
while  theirs  is  kept  behind,  especially 
when  its  object  is  not  of  a  practical  nature 
at  present,  but  is  merely  to  commit  the 
party  to  pass  some  similar  bill  at  some 
future  time. 

It  is  in  the  interest  of  good  government 
that  Mr.  Teller  and  those  who  stand 
with  him  should  stand  firm.  The  wool 
bill,  besides  being  a  bad  measure,  is  a 
game  of  false  pretences.  The  leading 
Republicans,  in  fact,  do  not  want  it  to 
pass.  The  woollen  industry  of  the  coun- 
try has  scarcely  yet  adjusted  itself  to  free 
wool,  and  now  it  is  asked  to  turn  a  second 
summersault  and  adjust  itself  to  a  high 
tariff  on  its  raw  material.  Of  course 
this  will  not  be  the  last  of  it.  A  new 
tax  on  wool  will  lead  to  renewed  efforts 
to  throw  it  off,  and  these  efforts  will  be 
successful  eventually.  Meanwhile  the 
business  will  be  **all  torn  up."  There 
can  be  no  settled  trade,  no  steady  em- 
ployment. It  is  bad  enough  to  have 
all  our  industries  based  on  the  rolling 
stone  of  an  uncertain  standard  of  value. 
The  woollen  industries,  if  we  set  out  on 
a  new  tariff  adventure,  will  have  to  bear 
the  silver  trouble,  which  is  common  to 
all,  and  another  one  special  to  them- 
selves. It  will  be  something  of  a  paradox 
if  they  find  relief  from  the  latter  at  the 
hands  of  those  who  are  producing  the 
former. 


THE  STL  VER  PARTY'S  PL  A  TFORM, 

Thb  silverites,  in  their  preliminary  con- 
vention at  Washington  on  Thursday, 
adopted  a  preliminary  platform  with  seve- 
ral preambles,  one  of  which  recites  that 
the  demonetization  of  silver  in  1873  caused 
a  fall  in  the  prices  of  all  kinds  of  property 
"except  in  peculiarly  favored  localities." 
It  proceeds  to  say  that  "such  fall  of  prices 


has  destroyed  the  profits  of  legitimate  in- 
dustry, injuring  the  producer  for  the  bene- 
fit of  the  non- producer,  increasing  the 
burden  of  the  debtor,  and  swelling  the 
gains  of  the  creditor,  paralyzing  the  pro- 
ductive energies  of  the  American  people, 
relegating  to  idleness  vast  numbers  of  will- 
ing workers,  sending  the  shadows  of  de- 
spair into  the  home  of  the  honest  toiler, 
filling  the  land  with  tramps  and  paupers, 
and  building  up  colossal  fortunes  at  the 
money  centres."  In  connection  with  this 
misstatement  of  the  causes  of  the  present 
stringency  we  call  attention  also  to  an- 
other, which  Senator  Sherman  had  the 
hardihood  to  make  in  his  debate  with 
Senator  Teller  on  Wednesday.  The  sub- 
ject under  debate  was  the  pending  sale  of 
bonds,  and  Mr.  Teller  remarked,with  per- 
fect simplicity  and  perfect  truth:  "  You 
are  not  selliog  bonds  to  meet  deficiencies 
[of  revenue].  You  are  selling  bonds  to 
accumulate  gold."  To  which  Mr.  Sher- 
man replied: 

**  If  there  was  no  deficiency,  there  would  be 
no  demand  for  gold.  For  fourteen  years  that 
$100,000,000  of  gold  stood  there  in  the  Trea- 
sury, a  standard  of  credit,  and  no  one  ap- 
proached it  or  diminished  it.  But  the  moment 
the  deficiencies  occur,  then  they  say  they  sell 
the  bonds  to  keep  the  gold  reserve  good;  but  it 
is  to  meet  the  deficiencies,  because  to  meet  the 
deficiencies  they  take  the  gold.^ 

It  is  very  convenient  for  Mr.  Sherman 
to  overlook  the  operation  of  the  act  of 
July  14,  1890,  otherwise  called  the  Sher- 
man act,  which  added  nearly  $200,000,000 
to  the  fiat  money  of  the  country,  and 
alarmed  the  public  on  both  sides  of  the 
water  to  such  an  extent  that  they  began 
to  withdraw  capital  from  this  country, 
and  continued  to  do  so  until  the  panic  of 
1893  occurred  and  it  became  necessary  to 
repeal  that  fatal  measure.  The  operation 
of  the  Sherman  act  was  coincident  with  a 
deficiency  of  revenue,  but  it  was  itself  a 
cause  contributing  to  the  deficiency,  be- 
cause it  required  the  purchase  of  4,600,- 
000  ounces  of  silver  bullion  each  month, 
or  more  than  twice  as  much  as  had  been 
required  before.  The  purchases  were  made 
in  a  deceitful,  or  at  all  events  misleading, 
way.  The  Qovernment  paid  for  the  silver 
with  Treasury  notes;  but  as  the  notes 
were  redeemable  on  demand  in  gold,  it 
might  as  well  have  paid  gold  directly  for 
the  silver  bullion  so  bought.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  exports  of  gold  from  the  coun- 
try during  the  time  the  Sherman  act  was 
in  operation  were  just  about  equal  to  the 
emission  of  Treasury  notes.  The  author 
of  the  act  in  question  has  reasons  enough 
for  ignoring  that  feature  of  the  panic  of 
1893  and  the  subsequent  misery;  but  the 
business  men  who  were'  ruined  by  it,  and 
the  multitudes  who  were  thrown  out  of 
employment  in  consequence  of  it,  have 
too  many  reasons  to  remember  it. 

Senator  Aldrich,  too,  was  harping  oA 
the  gold  reserve  and  the  fact  that  it  never 
fell  below  $100,000,000  until  the  present 
Administration  came  into  power.  Mr. 
Teller  was  quite  well  aware  of  this.  Mr. 
Aldrich  explained,  further,  that  there 
were  fluctuations  up  and  down,  but  i 


Jan.  30,  1896] 


The    Nation. 


93 


until  this  fatal  AdminiBtration  came  in, 
did  it  fall  below  the  sum  mentioned.  Then 
this  colloquy  ensued : 

*'  Mr.  Teller— That  if  a  fact  which  everj  hod  j 
understands  We  did  not  break  into  the  re- 
serve of  $100,000,000  until  after  the  present  Ad 
ministration  came  into  power.  To  be  fair,  I 
am  bound  to  say  that  I  have  not  the  slightest 
doubt  but  that  we  should  have  broken  into  it 
if  Mr.  Harrisoq,  had  been  reelected.  It  was  not 
the  Democratic  party  that  came  into  power 
that  made  it;  it  was  the  condition  of  tbe 
country. 

**  Mr.  Sherman— It  was  a  Democratic  law. 

**  Mr.  Teller— It  was  not  a  Democratic  law. 
There  was  not  any  law  and  had  not  been  any 
law.    That  was  long  after." 

The  law  that  Mr.  Sherman  referred  to 
was  tbe  Wilson  tarifif,  which  was  not 
passed  until  July,  1894,  whereas  the  gold 
reserve  fell  below  $100,000,000  in  April, 
1893,  or  fifteen  months  earlier.  Every  day 
we  have  fresh  evidence  that  Mr.  Sherman 
is  losing  his  wits.  Senator  Aldrich,  how- 
ever, is  not  in  his  dotage.  He  knows  per- 
fectly well  that  President  Harrison's  Sec- 
retary of  the  Treasury,  Mr.  Charles  Fos- 
ter, in  his  last  annual  report  (December, 
1892),  predicted  an  early  decline  of  the 
gold  reserve  below  the  $100,000,000  line, 
saying : 

**  One  of  the  embarrassments  to  the  Treaeu- 
ry«  in  the  opinion  of  the  Secretary,  is  the  ina- 
bility, with  the  limited  amount  of  cash  on 
hand  above  the  $100,060,000  reserve,  to  keep  up 
a  sufficient  gold  supply.  When  the  demand 
comes  for  the  exportation  of  gold,  the  Treasury 
is  called  upon  to  furnish  it.  If  this  demand 
should  prove  to  be  as  large  the  cominji:  year 
as  it  has  been  for  the  pciat  two  years,  gold  in 
the  Treasury  would  be  diminished  to  or  below 
the  reserve  line." 

But  to  return  to  the  silverites,  the 
condition  of  trade  and  industry  which 
they  bewail  in  their  platform  is  mainly 
their  own  work.  They  caused  the  Sher- 
man act  to  be  passed.  Ite  consequences 
were  an  alarm  in  the  public  mind  and  a 
withdrawal  of  capital  from  the  country. 
When  a  scarcity  of  capital  began  to  be  no- 
ticed, they  said  that  it  was  caused  by  the 
demonetization  bf  silver  which  had  taken 
place  twenty  years  earlier.  They  over- 
looked the  years  of  prosperity  that  had 
intervened.  They  ignored  the  fact  that 
an  era  of  great  business  activity  began  in 
1879,  when  specie  payments  were  resumed, 
and  continued  ^th  slight  interruptions 
until  the  Sherman  act  was  passed,  and 
until  its  operation  had  had  a  marked 
effect  in  the  expulsion  of  gold  from  tbe 
country.  Then  they  said  the  evil  dated 
back  to  1873,  and  many  of  them  believe  so 

DOW. 

It  is  perhaps  hopeless  to  reason  with 
people  who  go  back  to  ancient  history  to 
find  the  cause  of  troubles  that  their  own 
immediate  misconduct  has  brought  upon 
them;  yet  he  must  be  a  very  ignorant  man 
who  cannot  see  that  a  withdrawal  of  capi- 
tal from  the  country  is  an  adequate  cause 
of  all  the  evils  complained  of.  Every  one 
of  these  evils  is  explainable  by  the  single 
phrase  *Mack  of  capital.**  This  will  deOne 
and  describe  not  only  the  general  badness 
of  trade,  but  the  badness  of  every  in- 
diTidual's  trade,  his  want  of  profit,  or 


his  loss  of  employment  It  is  immaterial 
whether  the  capital  withdrawn  is  native 
or  foreign.  It  is  immaterial  whether 
the  owners  of  it  are  Americans  or  Eu- 
ropeans. Nor  is  it  of  any  importance 
whether  the  motive  impelling  them  to 
withdraw  their  money  is  fear  of  a  change 
of  the  money  standard  or  a  war  scare.  The 
effect  is  the  same,  fiad  trade,  scarcity  of 
money,  higher  rates  of  interest,  curtail- 
ment of  loans  must  follow,  and  when  they 
come,  some  leatherhead  who  has  done  all 
in  his  power  to  drive  capital  away  by 
threatening  us  with  the  silver  standard 
or  with  a  foreign  war,  declares  that  tbe 
<*  money  i>ower"  is  producing  all  the 
misery  by  "cornering  gold."  First  tell 
every  man  who  has  a  dollar  that  you  are 
going  to  fix  things  so  that  it  will  be  worth 
only  fifty  cents,  and  when  he  takes  it  to 
a  place  where  you  cannot  work  this  trans- 
formation, accuse  him  of  maliciously 
causing  a  scarcity  of  money.  O  Liberty, 
how  many  sins  are  committed  in  thy 
name! 


THE    ARMENIAN    RESOLUTIONS. 

There  has  been  more  debating  in  the 
House  and  Senate  over  the  Armenian  re- 
solutions than  there  was  over  the  Venezu- 
elan correspondence,  but  no  more  real 
taking  of  counsel.  The  discussion  in  the 
House  on  Monday  had  the  aerial  character 
which  usually  marks  the  fiery  utterances 
of  young  men's  debating  clubs.  Where 
else  but  in  the  proceedings  of  such  a  body 
would  one  find  it  solemnly  resolved  that 
**  it  was  an  imperative  duty,  in  the  inte- 
rests of  humanity,  to  express  an  earnest 
hope  "  that  somebody  else  would  behave 
properly  ?  What  other  body  would  order 
the  Secretary  to  send  this  resolution  to 
six  first-class  Powers  as  an  encouragement 
to  execute  one  of  their  own  treaties  to 
which  we  are  no  more  a  party  than  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.?  We  may  imagine  the  hilari- 
ty with  which  it  will  be  received  in  tbe 
various  European  chancelleries,  and  the 
mock  solemnity  with  which  its  receipt 
will  be  acknowledged.  We  doubt  whether 
it  is  worth  whiie  to  notice  that  the  resolu- 
tions abandon  that  part  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  which  denies  our  right  '*  to  take 
part  in  the  wars  of  European  Powers  in 
matters  relating  to  themselves  *'^  also 
Secretsry  OIney's  recent  interpretation  of 
the  Doctrine,  which  shuts  us  out  from 
**  wars  or  preparations  of  wars  with  whose 
causes  or  results  we  have  no  direct  con- 
cern,*' and  which  closes  with  the  remark: 

*'If  all  Europe  were  to  suddenly  fly  to  arms 
over  the  fate  of  Turkey,  would  it  not  be  pre- 
posterous that  any  American  state  should  And 
itself  inextricably  involved  m  tbe  miseries  and 
burdens  of  the  contest  t  If  it  were,  it  would 
prove  to  be  a  partnership  in  the  cost  and  losses 
of  the  btruggle,  but  not  in  any  ensuing  bene 
fltu.*' 

In  fact  it  would  not  be  easy  to  make  up, 
by  inference,  a  more  complete  repudiation 
of  our  doctrine  of  non-interference  in  Eu- 
ropean matters,  as  the  complement  of  the 
non-interference  of  Europe  in  ours. 


The  new  revised  Doctrine  now  is,  that 
we  may  interfere  in  European  affairs  when 
we  see  the  European  Powers  plainly  ne- 
glecting their  duty  to  each  other,  or  when 
in  any  part  of  Europe  "  the  hand  of  fanati- 
cism and  lawless  violence  ''seems  to  us 
too  strong,  or  when  **  men  and  Chris- 
tians "  in  any  part  of  Europe  seem  to  us 
to  be  deprived  of  due  legal  protection. 
But  surely  we  ought  not  to  refuse  this 
sympathy  to  *<men  and  Jews,"  and  yet 
we  have  never  threatened  Russia  for 
expelling  her  Jewish  population  under 
circumstances  of  great  cruelty.  Lastly, 
how  are  we  to  assert  this  right  to  look 
after  the  manner  in  which  European  Pow- 
ers discharge  their  domestic  duties,  with- 
out granting  them  the  right  to  pass  reso- 
lutions and  address  exhortations  to  us 
about  our  negligences  and  failures — about 
our  mob  law,  for  instance,  as  expressed  in 
the  unpunished  murder  of  the  Italians  in 
the  jail  in  New  Orleans  a  few  years  ago ;  in 
the  massacre  of  the  Chinamen  in  Wyo- 
ming; in  the  numerous,  continued,  and 
horrible  lynchings  all  over  the  country? 
Are  we  prepared  to  accept  meekly  resolu- 
tions of  reprobation  on  these  topics  from 
the  British  Parliament,  and  the  Reichstag, 
and  the  Russian  Chancellery,  and  the  re- 
tort courteous  from  the  Sultan?  We 
doubt  it  greatly,  and  yet  the  probability 
that  we  shall  have  to  put  up  with  it,  on 
principles  of  reciprocity,  was  never  men- 
tioned in  the  debate. 

This  vain  talk  was  followed,  as  usual, 
by  a  stern  resolve  to  '*  stand  behind  "  the 
President  in  **the  most  vigorous  action 
he  may  take  for  the  protection  and  secu- 
rity of  American  citizens"  in  Turkey. 
What  would  or  could  **our  most  vigor- 
ous action  "  be?  The  whole  of  our  fleet 
put  together  would  not  be  more  than 
sufficient  to  force  its  way  up  to  Constan- 
tinople, if  all  the  Powers  agreed  to  atand 
aside  and  let  it  be  done.  Some  of  our 
ships  would  be  sunk  in  the  process.  The 
others  would  arrive  in  a  dilapidated  con- 
dition. Both  banks  of  the  Bosphorus 
would  be  in  possession  of  the  enemy, 
and  that  enemy  a  hostile  and  fanaticml 
population,  which  fights  Christians  with 
great  fierceness.  Without  a  land  foroe, 
where  would  our  coal  and  supplies  come 
from,  and  how  would  the  ships  get  back 
again  after  the  Turks  had  time  to  pre- 
pare for  their  return?  Suppose  the  Sul- 
tan, under  threat  of  bombardment,  were 
to  agree  to  restore  order  in  Armenia,  how 
would  this  benefit  the  Armenians?  They 
are  hundreds  of  miles  away  from  Constan- 
tinople, and  they  are  being  massacred  by 
local  Mussulmans  who  pay  no  attention  to 
the  Sultan's  orders.  The  Sultan  ha9  ai- 
readff  made  to  the  Powers  all  the  pro- 
misea  which  we  could  possibly  extract 
from  him  by  any  action^  however  vig^ 
orou9^  without  helping  the  Armenians  in 
the  smallest  degree.  Moreover,  there  is 
no  proof  that  we  have  received  any  injury 
from  the  Sultan,  except  the  destruction 
of  property,  and  for  this,  according  to  ail 
accounts,  he  is  willing  to  pay. 


94= 


The   N'ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1596 


If  we  were  talking  to  practical  men  of 
business,  or  serious  diplomatists,  and 
not  mere  Jingoes,  we  should  point  out 
that  there  are  only  two  ways  in  which  we 
can  do  anything  for  the  Armenians.  One 
is  to  threaten  Russia  with  war  if  she,  the 
only  Power  which  can  act  promptly  and 
efTectively  in  the  matter,  does  not  occupy 
Armenia  and  restore  order.  The  other  is 
to  offer  to  support  Great  Britain  in  any 
measures  she  may  take  to  carry  out  the 
Treaty  of  Berlin.  She  has  undoubtedly 
been  checked  in  her  recent  attempt  to  co- 
erce the  Sultan  by  the  fear  that  she 
might  find  herself  acting  alone  or  in  the 
face  of  a  powerful  opposition,  for  she  is 
not  a  general  favorite,  and  France  wants 
Egypt,  and  Russia  Constantinople.  But 
such  support,  to  be  really  effective,  would 
involve  the  despatch  to  the  Mediterranean 
of  a  i)owerful  naval  squadron  and  say  50,- 
000  men  of  a  land  force.  We  have  little 
doubt,  speaking  under  naval  and  military 
correction,  that  this,  with  the  troops 
which  England  could  assemble  from  Eng- 
land and  India,  would  carry  everything 
before  it  in  Asia  Minor,  and  that  the  spec- 
tacle of  the  two  great  Anglo-Saxon  Pow- 
ers acting  together,  not  for  aggrandize- 
ment but  for  order  and  civilization,  would 
be  one  of  the  finest  the  modern  world  has 
seen.  But,  Jingo  brethren,  it  would  in- 
volve the  abandonment  of  the  sacred  Doc- 
trine of  '*  the  immortal  Monroe,"  and  it 
would  commit  you  to  the  cares  and  re- 
sponsibilities and  dangers  of  European 
politics,  and — harder  than  all — it  would 
compel  you  to  be  civil  to  the  odious  "  Bri- 
tishers." If  you  are  not  ready  for  some- 
thing of  this  sort,  the  less  you  vapor  and 
threaten,  the  more  the  civilized  world  will 
respect  you. 


POLITICAL  DEVELOPMENT  IN  JAPAN. 
Tokyo,  December  28,  1895. 

The  course  of  affairs  in  Japan  since  the 
treaty  of  peace  with  China  has  been  on  the 
whole  different  from  what  might  have  been 
expected  six  months  ago.  The  immediate  ef- 
fect of  the  peace  upon  the  foreign  relations  of 
Japan  has  been  comparatively  slight.  Not 
even  the  Corean  troubles  have  proved  to  be 
so  fruitful  of  immediate  consequences  as 
seemed  likely  at  first.  With  Russia  and  other 
countries  her  relations,  at  least  for  the  present, 
have  assumed  all  the  smoothness  and  cordiality 
of  the  period  before  the  war.  Nor  is  it  likely 
that  in  the  near  future  this  status  will  be  dis- 
turbed. So  many  terrific  contingencies  lie 
concealed  in  the  present  situation  that  no  gov- 
ernment, however  eager  for  success  or  expan- 
sion, will  dare  to  rouse  them. 

The  reflex  action,  however,  of  the  war  and 
its  train  of  circumstances  has  given  a  most 
distinct  impulse  to  the  internal  political  devel- 
opment of  Japan.  It  will  be  remembered  that 
party  politics  in  this  country  has  always 
been  in  a  state  of  confusion.  At  least  three 
parties  have  existed  between  whom  it  is  not 
easy  to  distinguish  any  essential  political  prin- 
ciple. All  have  been  against  the  Qovemment, 
all  have  been  opposed  to  the  Satcbo  combina- 
tion, all  have  advocated  a  strong  foreign 
policy,  all  have  stood  for  the  revision  of  trea- 
ties, for  the  reform  of  local  government,  for 


the  expansion  of  commerce,  and  for  a  large 
number  of  equally  desirable  objects.  But 
while  these  parties  have  had  so  many  objects 
in  common,  t^eir  attitude  toward  each  other, 
except  when  a  common  enemy  waa  to  be  at- 
tacked, has  been  auT  thing  but  friendly.  Each 
party  has  occupied  its  time  either  in  attacking 
the  GK>vemment  or  in  denouncing  the  opposing 
parties. 

A  new  step  has  lately  been  taken,  how. 
ever,  which  promises  to  put  both  the  Govern- 
ment and  the  parties  in  a  somewhat  different 
position.  It  may  be  fairly  said  that  no  party 
in  Japan  can  have  much  chance  for  success 
that  is  not  opposed  to  the  Satcho  and  strongly 
in  favor  of  responsible  party  cabinets.  The 
answer  that  the  various  statesmen  in  power, 
and  e8i>ecially  Marquis  (formerly  Count)  Ito 
have  made  to  all  demands  for  popular  govern- 
ments, is  that  the  ministers  are  responsible 
not  to  the  Parliament  but  to  the  Crown.  The 
weakness  of  the  argument,  however,  has  been 
apparent  probably  even  to  the  present  pre- 
mier. He  must  be  aware  that-,  under  present 
circumstances,  it  is  not  the  Emperor  who 
summons  a  new  cabinet  when  the  old  resigns, 
but  a  few  statesmen  who  form  an  oligarchical 
faction  in  the  state.  Nevertheless,  the  means 
of  fighting  this  system  of  government,  power- 
ful in  its  resources,  ability,  and  past  record, 
have  not  been  within  reach  of  the  popular 
parties,  and  up  to  the  present  time  all  parlia- 
mentary warfare  has  attacked  it  in  vain. 

Early  in  November  a  rumor  spread  of  a 
reconciliation  between  the  Radical  or  Liberal 
party  <  Jiyuto)  and  Marquis  Ito.  It  was  stated 
that  the  party  leaders  of  the  Jiyuto  had  ap- 
proached the  premier  with  a  view  to  harmo- 
niziog  the  differences  which  had  so  long  sepa- 
rated the  representatives  in  Parliament  and 
the  Government.  Among  all  the  statesmen 
of  national  reputation  who  have  in  recent 
years  held  the  reins  of  Government,  the  Libe- 
rals could  not  have  approached  a  more  tracta- 
ble man  than  the  present  premier.  Of  a  com- 
promising disposition,  by  nature  disinclined  to 
continual  bickerings  between  the  Parliament 
and  Gh>vemment,  he  has  doubtless  come  to  the 
conclusion,  especially  since  the  close  of  the 
war,  that  the  old  measure  of  dissolving  Parlia- 
ment  was  no  longer  practicable.  Japan  is 
certain  to  have  a  serious  time  of  it  in  the  next 
few  years,  even  under  the  most  favorable 
circumstances  ;  and  with  an  irreconcilable  po- 
litical system  the  danger  of  successfully  work- 
ing the  Government  and  guiding  the  country 
through  its  difficulties  would  be  immensely  in- 
creased. Whatever  the  motives  actuating 
him  may  have  been,  it  is  known  that  Ito  did 
not  long  hesitate  to  accept  the  proposals,  of 
the  Jiyuto.  The  latter  agreed  to  support  the 
Government  in  the  next  parliamentary  session, 
and  thus,  for  the  first  time  since  the  adoption 
of  the  Constitution,  the  Government  is  to  have 
an  avowed  supporter  among  the  representa- 
tives of  the  people  in  the  lower  house. 

The  Kaishinto  and  other  enemies  of  the 
Jiyuto  interpret  this  political  alliance  in  a  most 
unfavorable  sense.'  Their  principal  charge 
is  that  the  Jiyuto,  long  deprived  of  the  re- 
wai'ds  of  office,  have  at  last  fallen  a  victim  to 
the  wiles  and  bribes  of  the  Government.  In 
this  and  other  ways  the  Opposition  are  trying 
to  discredit  the  Liberals  in  tbe  country.  But  it 
is  doubtful  whether  these  charges  will  have 
much  effect.  Most  of  the  local  i>olitical  asso- 
ciations have  cordially  supported  the  action  of 
the  representatives  of  the  party,  and  two  or 
three  members  who  have  tried  to  play  a  double 
game  by  carrying  on  negotiations  with  the 
Opposition  in  case  the  alliance  of  their  party 


with  the  Gk>vemment  proved  unpopular,  have 
been  promptly  expelled  from  the  ranks  of  the 
Liberal  party.  TVhatever  faults  may  be  attri- 
buted to  the  Jiyuto,  it  can  scarcely  be  said  that 
they  are  double-faced,  or  ambitious  for  Gov- 
ernment posts  beyond  the  usual  human  mea- 
sure. Their  leader.  Count  Itagald,  has  been 
called  a  political  dreamer,  a  theorist;  but  no 
one  has  ever  charged  him  with  being  other  than 
a  singularly  honest  and  uprigUt  man.  It  is  bard 
to  say  how  far  he  controls  the  action  of  bis 
party— in  some  cases  his  advice  is  certainly 
not  accepted;  but  in  the  present  instance  it  is 
almost  certain  that  he  wholly  approves  of  the 
step  taken  by  his  party.  His  assurance  on  this 
point  is  almost  a  guarantee  that  the  coalition 
between  the  Government  and  the  Jiyuto  is 
free  from  any  political  bargaining  or  personal 
gain  to  the  leaders' of  the  party. 

Two  motives  are  mentioned  by  the  Liberals 
themselves  for  the  coalition.  The  first  of  these 
is  the  obvious  one  that  the  Government  work 
can  be  immensely  expedited  by  the  loyal  sup- 
port of  a  strong  popular  party  in  the  lower 
house.  Hitherto  the  Jiyuto,  though  at  times 
It  has  given  the  GK>vemment  a  grudging  ad- 
herence, has  for  tbe  most  part  j<rined  in  the 
cry  against  the  (Government.  But  for  this  re- 
fusal of  the  party  several  years  ago  to  vote 
any  bills  introduced  by  the  ministers,  the  po- 
sition of  the  Government  would  have  been  im- 
mensely  stronger  than  it  was  in  the  late  war. 
More  than  once  measures  to  increase  the  army 
and  navy,  especially  the  latter,  failed  to  pass 
because  of  the  implacable  temper  of  the  popu- 
lar representatives  towards  any  measure  bear- 
ing the  Government  stamp.  It  is  generally 
agpreed,  both  by  the  Japanese  themselves  and 
by  foreigners  who  are  in  a  position  to  know, 
that  had  the  Gk>vemment  succeeded  in  putting 
the  navy  in  the  state  of  efficiency  it  proposed 
four  years  ago— had  the  Japanese  navy,  for  in- 
stance,  had  two  first-class  battle-ships— the 
Japanese  would  have  been  at  Pekin  six  months 
before  the  war  actually  ended.  That  the 
Government  was  so  bitterly  opposed  by  the 
various  parties  was  one  of  tbe  reasons  why  the 
Chinese  were  so  eager  for  war,  and  why  they 
were  so  confident  of  victory  in  the  k)eginning 
of  the  struggle.  Hereafter  tbe  Gk>vemment  is 
less  likely  to  be  placed  in  this  predicament.  As 
one  of  the  spokesmen  of  the  Jiyuto  declared  in 
a  speech  some  days  ago,  **It  does  not  require 
any  uncommon  intelligence  to  see  that  nothing 
could  be  more  disastrous  to  the  interests  and 
dignity  of  the  Empire  than  that  the  people 
should  be  engrossed  in  petty  party  disputes 
and  contentions  among  themselves." 

Another  reason  which  the  Jiyuto  assign  for 
their  action  -is  the  infiuence  their  coalition 
with  the  Government  will  have  in  promoting 
true  party  government.  Naturally  their  op- 
ponentf,  who  are  themselves  aiming  to  intro- 
duce government  by  party,  ridicule  this 
assertion  of  tbe  Liberals.  It  is  declared  to  be 
absurd  on  its 'face  that  any  party  can  give  its 
support  on  this  ground  to  what  is  not  a  national 
but  a  clan  government.  Tet,  in  spite  of  an 
apparent  self-contradiction,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  Jiyuto  have  a  strong  case  in  this  con- 
tention. Hitherto  the  Government  has  stood 
aloof  from  all  parties.  It  has  claimed  to  be 
the  impartial  arbiter  between  the  conflicting 
demands  of  the  popular  representatives.  To 
whatever  extent  in  fact  the  Government  may 
not  hare  acted  up  to  this  assumption,  yet  it 
logically  could  present  a  strong  front  so  long 
as  it  did  not  deviate  grossly  from  this  self-im- 
posed r61e.  But  hereafter  the  cabinet  minis- 
ters cannot  fairly  claim  to  be  independent  of 
party  demands,  for  the  simple  reason  that  thay 


Jan.  30^  1896] 


The   N'ation. 


95 


haro  openly  admitted  a.  definite  party  to  inp. 
port  them*  If  they  fail  to  get  tuffldent  yotee 
from  their  friends,  it  ii  difficult  to  tee  how 
they  can  continue  in  power.  Marquis  Ito  must 
hare  understood  this  contingency  from  the 
moment  he  agreed  to  receive  the  Jiyuto  as  a 
OoTemment  party.  Probably  he  even  acted 
deliberately  in  this  matter,  believing  that  the 
time  had  come  when  the  country  would  no 
longer  brook  the  present  Satcho  administra- 
tion. To  quote  another  of  the  spokesmen  of 
the  Liberals  in  a  recent  speech: 

'*It  is  oar  conviction  thaL  by  taking  this 
step  (i.  «.,  coalition  with  the  Government),  we 
shall  effectually  promote  the  mtroduction  of  a 
svstem  of  responsible  cabinets~a  consumma- 
tion which  has  ever  been  the  cherished  hope  of 
the  Liberal  party.  For  the  attainment  ot  that 
hope  we  have  si]3fered  much,  but  the  sole  re- 
sult of  our  endeavor  has  hitherto  been  to 
strengthen  the  Government's  resistance  to  the 
realisation  of  our  object.  To  continue  the 
fruitless  struggle  at  the  present  juncture 
would  be  not  only  to  th  ^art  the  carrying  out 
of  various  measures  of  paramount  importaoce, 
but  also  to  retard  the  attainment  of  our  long* 
obarished  object.  We  are  confident  of  victory 
in  the  coming  session  of  the  Diet.  But,  should 
we  be  defeated,  we  should  be  ready  to  hand 
over  the  government  of  the  country  to  our 
opponents,  if  they  faithfully  represent  the 
seaftUments  of  the  people.^ 

A  last  and  most  important  point  for  con- 
sideration  is  how  far  the  Jiyuto  can  give  ef- 
fectual support  to  the  Government  in  the  com- 
ing seesion.  If  the  party  had  a  clear  majority 
over  all  other  parties  in  the  lower  house,  there 
would  be  little  difficulty,  either  for  the  Gov- 
ernment or  for  the  Liberals.  But  the  latter 
cannot  claim  more  than  100  or  110  party  repre- 
aentatives  out  of  a  total  number  of  800.  The 
Progressionists,  who  are  the  most  active  oppo- 
nents of  the  Government,  claim  fifty-three, 
and  the  National  CJnionists  thirty- two;  while 
the  Independents,  together  with  other  minor 
political  organizations,  make  up  the  remainder. 
It  is  conceded  that  the  Jiyuto  can  count  upon 
at  least  twenty  or  twenty-five  of  the  independ- 
ant  vote,  while  the  Kaishinto  claim  as  many  as 
seventy  or  seventy- five.  From  these  figures  it 
follows  that  the  National  Unionists,  with  a  fol- 
lowing of  only  thirty-two,  hold  the  balance  of 
power  between  the  two  larger  parties.  The 
Progressionists  have  made  strenuous  efforts  to 
get  this  party  to  join  them  in  opposing  the 
Qovemment,  but  so  far  without  success.  The 
National  Unionists  have  little  sympathy  with 
the  statesmen  now  in  power;  on  the  contrary, 
they  are  hostile  to  both  the  compromising  tem. 
per  and  the  personnel  of  the  present  cabinet. 
Bat  they  are  backed  by  the  military  classes  of 
tiM  emigre,  and  cannot  join  with  a  party  eager 
to  antagonize  the  Government  even  in  its  mili- 
tary and  naval  policy.  Hence  the  National 
Unionists  are  on  the  horns  of  a  dilemma  from 
which  they  cannot  at  present  find  any  es- 
cape. Common  rumor,  has  it  that  they  will 
vote  with  the  Opposition  on  condition  tliat 
the  latter  agree  to  the  necessary  military  and 
naval  bills. 

Under  the  circumst  inces  the  present  Gknrem- 
ment  is  not  in  a  position  of  .security.  It  will 
probably  be  authorized  to  carry  out  large  do- 
sdgns  for  the  country's  welfare,  but  by  the  same 
antbority  it  will  be  declared  unfit  for  the  pur- 
pOM  of  carrying  on  the  administration.  Should 
the  Jiynto  and  their  friends  have  the  requisite 
nnmber  of  votes  to  save  the  Government  from 
the  attacks  of  the  Opposition,  the  present  cabi- 
net win  be  more  certain  of  its  position  than  it 
has  been  for  a  number  of  years.  But  the  op- 
posing parties  are  already  gathering  their 
strength  for  an  address  to  the  throne,  in  which 
the  whole  policy  of  the  Government  will  ba 


censured.  If  this  succeeds  in  passing  the  House, 
the  cabinet  must  neceasarlly  dissolve  the  pre- 
sent Parliament  and  make  an  appeal  to  the 
country.  If  a  hostile  majority  is  returned,  no 
other  escape  seems  possible  but  for  the  present 
ministers  to  hand  in  their  resignations.  Even 
if  a  friendly  majority  should  be  returned,  the 
Government  will  stand  committed,  and  thus 
in  either  case  party  government  would  be  an 
accomplished  fact  in  Japan.  G.  D. 


TASMANLA.. 

HoBART,  November  2d,  1895. 

Tasmania,  somewhat  smaller  than  Ireland,  is 
the  least  in  size,  though  not  the  least  interesting, 
of  the  Australasian  colonies.  Most  of  its  sur- 
face is  mountainous  and  rocky  and  is  not  likely 
ever  to  be  brought  under  cultivation.  There 
are  twenty-one  mountain  peaks  8,000  to  4,000 
feet  high,  eighteen  4,000  to  5,000,  and  two 
slightly  over  5,000.  Unless  where  cleared,  and 
with  exception  of  the  mountains  over  3,000 
feet  in  altitude,  it  is  covered  with  forests  con- 
stituted principally  of  different  species  of  euca- 
lyptus. There  are  coal  mines;  and  gold,  silver, 
and  tin  are  being  discovered  in  considerable 
quantities  in  the  northern  districts.  Fruit 
farming  is  becoming  a  considerable  industry. 
After  ninety-one  years*  settlement,  the  popula- 
tion is  but  155,000;  less  than  one-third  of  the 
surface  has  been  alienated,  and  but  four  per 
cent,  thereof  has  been  brought  under  cultiva- 
tion. 

It  is  practically  an  independent  State,  hav- 
ing an  ambassador,  under  the  name  of  an 
agent-general,  in  London,  and,  under  the 
sBgis  of  the  British  Empire,  is  relieved  from 
the  necessity  of  maintaining  an  army  and 
navy.  Its  upper  house  consists  of  eighteen,  its 
lower  of  thirty,  seven  members— the  one  elected 
by  a  somewhat  restricted  and  psrtly  educa- 
tional, the  other  by  a  general,  franchise.  The 
public  debt  has,  within  the  last  few  years, 
largely  under  labor  and  sectional  infiuences, 
been  run  up  from  £8,200,000  to  £7,600,000.  It 
now  stands  at  £50  per  head  of  the  population, 
nearly  twice  tbe  national  debt  of  the  United 
Kingdom.  But  then  it  has  large  effects  to 
show,  mainly  in  railways — not  merely  prestige, 
honor,  and  glory,  as  with  us  at  home.  These 
state-owned  and  state- worked  single-track 
railways  cover  476  miles,  and,  beyond  work- 
ing expenses,  return  little  over  one  per  cent, 
on  capitaL  The  main  roads  are  excellently 
maintained,  also  by  the  state.  The  fiscal  poll, 
cy  of  the  country  is,  under  the  plea  of  revenue 
requirements,  mildly  protective.  To  a  certain 
extent,  but  in  a  lesser  degree  than  her  sister 
colonies,  Tasmania  is  passing  through  a  wave 
of  oonm)ercial  depression,  consequent  upon  in- 
fiated  dealings  and  engagement  in  unproduc- 
tive works  upon  borrowed  capital.  *'  She  has," 
to  use  a  nautical  term,  '*been  brought  up 
with  a  round  tum,^*  and  artisans  recruited 
from  country  districts  and  drawn  from  other 
countries  have  had  to  look  for  work  elsewhere. 
The  severe  lesson  is  being  learned  that  if  there 
are  l>om  more  sons  and  daughters  than  the 
country  can,  by  a  natural  process  of  expansion, 
support,  it  is  wiser  that  they  should  follow  na- 
turally expanding  industries  abroad  than  that 
they  should,  at  the  cost  of  others,  find  occupa- 
tions at  home  by  building  up  unnatural  trade 
barriers.  Cheap  ocean  transit  has  worked 
radical  changes.  Wheat  land  has  gone  out  of 
cultivation,  and  ruins  are  to  be  met  both  of 
water  and  of  wind- mills. 

It  was  a  delightful  change  from  the  heat  and 
bustle  and  wide  extent  of  Meltxmme  and  from 


the  low-lying  shores  of  Port  Phillip,  to  find 
ourselves,  after  a  sea  voyage  of  twelve  houn. 
steaming  up  the  beautiful,  winding,  thickly 
wooded  shores  of  the  Tamar.  Launoeston, 
with  a  population  of  17,000,  is  pleasantly 
situated  thirty  miles  up  this  river.  A  railway 
connects  with  the  capital  Hobart,  of  25,000,  on 
the  Derwent,  at  the  south  of  the  island.  Both 
these  are  regularly  laid-ont,  quiet  cities,  with 
more  of  an  Old  World  air  about  them  than 
others  we  have  seen  in  the  southern  hemi- 
sphere. The  line  connecting  Launoeston  and 
Hobart  may  be  said  to  roughly  divide  the 
country  into  two-thirds  and  one-third.  The 
two-thirds  portion,  lying  to  the  west,  is  for  the 
most  part  mountain,  lake,  and  waste;  that  to 
the  east  comprises  most  of  the  settled  districts. 
The  mountainous  character  of  the  country  is 
expressed  in  the  Tasmanian  railway  time- 
tables, which  give,  in  addition  to  the  ordinary 
information,  columns  showing  the  height  of 
the  stopping-places  above  the  sea.  The  main 
line  between  Lauaceston  and  Hobart  attains 
an  elevation  of  1,400  feet.  We  never  travelled 
on  such  a  tortuous  line  apparently  without 
su^cient  cause.  The  explanation  afforded  is 
that  it  was  constructed  for  a  lump  sum  by  a 
British  firm  which  acted  in  the  double  capacity 
of  engineers  and  contractors,  and  to  which 
cheapness  of  construction,  without  regard  to 
the  future  cost  of  working,  was  the  main  con- 
sideration. 

On  the  more  than  one  hundred  miles  of  smooth 
waters  of  D^Entrecasteaux  Channel,  Derwent 
estuary  and  river,  and  Norfolk  Bay,  there  is 
some  really  fine  and  much  charming  scenery. 
The  eucaljTptus  forests  at  a  distance  appear 
somewhat  sombre  and  uninviting;  but,  once 
in  their  leafy  depths,  a  world  of  delight  is 
opened  up  to  the  traveller.  We  spent  many 
days  lingering  by  the  lakes  and  exploring  the 
recesses  of  their  ferny  valleys.  Now,  in  spring, 
the  undergrowth  of  shrub  and  heath  is  bright 
with  blossom;  the  air,  redolent  with  scents,  is 
fresh  and  pure;  the  coloring  of  the  young  trees 
is  varied  in  different  tints  of  green.  To  one 
subjected  for  long  years  to  the  storm  and  stress 
of  public  affairs  there  is  a  feeling  of  almost 
intoxicating  delight  in  these  leafy  primeval 
shades.  Fine  strands  are  to  be  found  on  the 
shores  of  the  Tasman  peninsula  ind  on  the- 
east  coast— strands  where  the  pellucid  waters 
of  the  Pacific  break  on  long  reaches  of  sand, 
upon  curiously  formed  terraces  of  basalt, 
against  noble  forest-crowned  cliffs  and  pro« 
montories.  Upon  Maria  Island,  which  we 
reached  by  a  four-bours*  crossing  in  an  open 
boat,  from  Spring  Bay,  we  found  magnificent 
scenery.  Ten  miles  long  by  an  average  width  of 
five  miles,  clothed  in  forest  and  thick  scrub,  it 
is  the  abode  of  countless  numbers  of  a  small 
species  of  kangaroo.  There  are  only  two 
families  residing  upon  it,  amid  the  ruins  of  a 
former  penal  settlement  and  of  extensive  works 
connected  with  abandoned  speculations  in  the 
direction  of  vine-culture  and  cement  manu- 
facture. 

We  have  been  most  favorably  impressed  by 
tbe  Tasmanians.  There  is,  outside  the  towns, 
where  there  continue  to  be  arousing  grada- 
tions, much  of  that  equality  of  class  fl^ng 
and  simplicity  of  dress  and  natural  dignityof 
bearing  to  be  met  with  in  Switxerland^l  com* 
bined  with  perhaps  gentler  manners  bred  of  a 
milder  climate.  We  found  travelling  cheap 
and  dealings  open  and  fair.  Drink-shops  are 
neither  many  in  number  nor  intrusive  in  ap- 
pearance, and  we  have  seen  no  drunkenness. 
Through  several  weeks  of  railway,  coach,  boat, 
steamer,  and  pedestrian  travel,  often  glad  to 
put  up  at  simple  inns  where  accommodation 


■  1 


96 


Ttie   IN^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1596 


was  not  always  of  the  best^  we  have  heard  nei- 
ther coarse  nor  even  harsh  language. 

In  the  history  of  this  interesting  oonntry 
there  has  been  much  of  the  tragic.  Upon 
a  small  scale,  but  seldom  elsewhere  in  a  greater 
degree,  have  the  horrors  of  the  impact  of  civi- 
lized with  uncivilised  man  been  here  illostrated. 
Seven  or  eight  thousand  aborigines  inhabited 
the  islands  when  it  was  settled  in  the  early 
years  of  the  century.  Bunk  in  a  low  condition 
of  barbarism,  they  went  unclothed.  But  all 
competent  authorities  agree  in  testifying  that 
they  were  endowed  with  many  good  qualities, 
and  were  capable,  if  fairly  treated,  of  living 
harmless  upon  the  borders  of  civilization.  The 
desires  of  successive  early  governments  that 
this  should  be,  were  frustrated  by  the  intolera- 
ble outrages  inflicted  upon  the  aborigines  by 
escaped  convicts  and  semi- barbarous  whites. 
The  aborigines,  unable  to  discriminate,  made 
reprisals  alike  upon  the  peaceful  settler  and 
the  murderous  bushranger.  The  Government 
felt  itself  driven  into  a  war  of  capture  or  ex- 
termination. The  few  who  survived,  taken  by 
force  or  decoyed  by  false  promises,  were  de 
ported  to  the  islands  in  Bass's  Straits.  Changes 
in  modes  of  life,  drink,  disease,  and  neglect 
soon  did  their  work.  A  miserable  remnant 
were  brought  back  to  a  settlement  near  Ho- 
bart.  The  last  full-blooded  native,  a  woman, 
passed  away  twenty  years  ago.  Her  skull, 
along  with  the  bones  of  other  extinct  Tasma- 
nian  mammals,  is  preserved  in  the  Hobart 
museum.  A  few  half-  castes  live  on  the  islands, 
where  they  make  a  living  by  cunng  fish  and 
mutton-birds. 

Tasmania  was  settled  by  the  United  King- 
dom mainly  as  a  penal  colony.  Here  were  de- 
ported alike  hardened  offenders  as  well  as 
persons,  of  both  sexes  and  often  of  tender  years, 
who  had  committed  offences  for  which  now  a 
few  days\  or  at  most  a  few  weeks\  imprison- 
ment might  be  considered  sufficient  punish- 
ment. The  wretched  Irish  peasantry,  driven 
to  outrage  and  violence  under  the  iron  heel  of 
class  and  landlord  rule,  contributed  in  no 
small  number  to  this  latter  class.  Here  settled 
down,  after  the  Napoleonic  wars,  many  British 
officers,  who  received  grants  of  land  upon  easy 
terms.  Among  other  advantages  held  out  to 
these  and  other  free  settlers  was  the  assign- 
ment to  them  of  convict  labor.  The  mission- 
ary  labors  of  James  Backhouse  and  George  W. 
Walker  have  left  the  marks  of  Quakerism  upon 
^  the  society  of  the  island.  The  convict  system 
was  here  extended  as  it  became  apparent  that 
it  could  not  be  maintained  in  the  other  colo- 
nies. Upon  the  Tasmanian  Peninsula,  at  Mac- 
quarie  Harbor,  at  liaria  Island,  and  at  Norfolk 
Island,  a  far-away  dependency,  the  system  was 
carried  out  in  its  concrete  and  severest  form, 
unmitigated  by  the  safeguards  of  a  numerous 
surrounding  free  population.  £scape  was  all 
but  impossible :  there  was  nothing  available 
for  the  support  of  life  m  the  forests.  There 
are  authentic  instances  of  oannibcUism  among 
parties  who  did  make  the  attempt.  Chain- 
gangs  were  subjected  to  the  severest  labor  in 
swamp  and  forest,  cutting  and  deporting  tim- 
her  and  mining  coal.  The  lash  was  freely 
used.  To  the  gallows  were  constantly  con- 
signed  victims.  Suicide,  even  among  convict 
children,  was  not  imcommon.  A  case  caught 
our  eyes  in  an  old  Hobart  paper  of  a  clergy- 
man magistrate  sitting  alone  on  the  bench, 
sentencing  an  unfortunate  to  thirty  lashes  and 
three  years  in  a  chain-gang  for  altering  an 
order  for  sixpence  into  one  for  two  shillings 
and  sixpence.  This  system  has  long  been 
swept  away— all  save  the  remembrance,  and 
ruined  walls  and  vacant  barracks,  and  open 


ceUs  once  impervious  to  light  and  sound,  where 
men  graduated  for  the  madhouse  or  were  done 
to  death.  The  forest  grows  in  upon  them,  and 
the  lizards  creep  over  them.  **  Such  of  us  as 
were  not  bcui  were  made  bad,*'  remarked  to  us 
an  aged  survivor  of  the  system.  At  Port 
Arthur,  a  locality  almost  rivalling  Killamey 
in  beauty,  we,  the  other  day,  rowed  across  to 
a  lovely  island  where,  in  unmarked  graves,  lie 
1.000  convicts.  This  syitem  has  found  its 
'  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin '  in  Marcus  Clarke's  '  For 
the  Term  of  his  Natural  Life,'  a  book  the 
name  of  which  is  here  in  every  one's  mouth. 
Those  who  have  lived  through  the  scenes  there- 
in described,  assure  us  that  while  they  nearer 
could  all  have  occurred  in  the  experience  of 
one  connected  set  of  characters,  they  are  baaed 
on  truth  and  have  occurred  **one  hundred 
times  over.^'  By  the  upper  classes  here,  many 
of  whom  have  sprung  from  *'old  hands," 
everything  is  done  to  erase  the  memory  of 
those  times.  Records  have  been  destroyed, 
the  names  of  places  altered,  conversation  upon 
the  subject  is  discouraged.  Among  the  people 
the  system  is  with  loathing  freely  spoken  of, 
and  the  escapes  and  adventures  of  Martin  Cash 
and  other  outlaws  give  interest  to  many  a  lo- 
cality and  form  the  subject  of  many  a  story. 
To  Irishmen,  Port  Arthur,  Maria  Island,  Lake 
Sorell,  Bothwell,  and  other  localities  will  ever 
be  associated  with  the  names  of  W.  Smith 
O'Brien,  Mitchel,  Martin,  Meagher,  and  their 
compatriots,  the  exiles  of  1848.  There  are  sad 
and  bitter  memories  connected  with  the  history 
of  Tasmania,  but  fortunately  their  continuity 
has  been  completely  broken.  In  a  certain 
sense  Tasmania  is  the  Ireland  of  the  Austral- 
asian colonies,  for  the  most  enterprising  and 
vigorous  of  her  sons  are  likely,  for  a  long  time 
to  come,  to  find  wider  scope  for  the  exercise  of 
their  abilities  abroad  than  at  home.  But  this 
arises  from  natural  and  economic  conditions. 
She  is  mistress  of  her  own  resources  snd  of  her 
own  destiny,  and  has  doubtless  a  happy  future 
before  her.  D.  B. 


Correspondence. 


SECRETARY  SEWARD  AND  THE  MON- 
ROE DOCTRINE. 

To  THE  Editor  of  Ths  Nation: 

Sib:  You  early  called  attention  to  the  fact 
that 

**in  the  negotiations  for  the  only  application 
of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  to  Spanish.  American 
affairs  which  we  have  ever  made— the  expul- 
sion of  the  French  from  Mexico— there  was  no 
mention  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  at  all.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Seward  said  he  did  not  undertake  to  dic- 
tate to  the  Mexican  people  what  kind  of  gov- 
ernment they  should  have.  They  might  have 
Maximilian  if  they  pleased,  but  they  must  be 
free  to  choose;  and  therefore  the  French  troops 
should  be  withdrawn." 

Mr.  Seward  not  only  felt  himself  not  bound 
by  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  but  on  several  occa- 
sions expressly  repudiated  it,  being  justified 
by  a  resolution  of  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives, passed  in  1825  (when  the  matter  was 
fresh),  which  was  surely  intended  to  be  a  cor- 
rect interpretation  of  the  Doctrine.  It  reads 
as  follows: 

**That  the  United  States  ought  not  to  be- 
come a  party  with  the  Spanish-American  re- 
publics, or  either  of  them,  to  any  joint  decla- 
ration for  the  purpose  of  preventing  interfer- 
ence by  any  of  the  European  Powers  with 
their  independence  or  form  of  government,  or 
to  any  compact  for  the  purpose  of  preventing 
eolonixation  upon  the  oontmenta  of  America; 
but  that  the  people  of  the  United  States  should 


be  left  free  to  act  in  any  crisis  in  such  manner 
as  their  feelings  of  friendship  towards  those 
republics  and  as  their  own  honor  and  policy  at 
the  time  dictate." 

In  other  words,  the  United  States  should  not 
be  fettered  by  any  doctrine  or  programme  (no 
true  statesman  ever  acted  on  a  doctrine  or 
dogma),  but  were  to  be  left  free  to  act  as  occa- 
sion might  require.  Mr.  Calhoun,  one  of  the 
advisers  of  Mr.  Monroe,  who  had  taken  most 
interest  in  the  declaration,  speaking  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  in  the  debate  about  the  ac- 
quisition of  Yucatan,  asserted  most  emphati- 
cally  that  the  United  States  was  under  no 
pledge  to  intervene  against  intervention,  but 
was  to  act  in  each  case  as  policy  and  justice 
required  (see  note  80,  p.  97,  Wheaton's  *  Inter- 
national Law,'  Dana's  edition). 

A  resolution  introduced  by  Mr.  Clay,  January, 
1834,  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  *'  depre- 
cating European  combinations  to  reeubjugate 
the  independent  American  States  of  Spanish 
origin,  and  thus  giving  support  and  emphasis 
to  the  declaration  in  the  message  of  Deoember 
a,  1833,"  seems  never  to  have  been  acted  -upon, 
and  was  not  referred  to  any  committee. 

Now  what  were  the  views  of  Mr.  Seward 
when  France  had  invaded  Mexico  in  1862 1  In 
a  dispatch  (October  0,  1863)  to  Mr.  Motley, 
the  American  Bfinister  at  Vienna,  who  had 
expressed  great  alarm  at  the  expedition  of 
Maximilian,  and  sought  instructions  as  to 
asking  the  Emperor  of  Austria  for  explana- 
tions in  allowing  recruiting  for  Maximilian's 
army  to  go  on  in  his  states,  and  had  referred 
Mr.  Seward  to  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  Mr.  Sew- 
ard instructed  him  not  to  interfere,  using 
these  remarkable  words: 

*'  France  has  invaded  Mexico,  and  war  ex- 
ists between  the  two  countries.  The  United 
States  hold  in  regard  to  those  two  states  and 
their  confiict  the  ssme  principles  as  they  hold 
in  relation  to  all  other  nations  and  theu*  mu- 
tual wars.  They  have  neither  a  right  nor  any 
disposition  to  interfere  by  force  in  the  inter- 
nal affairs  of  Mexico,  whether  to  establish  or 
maintain  a  republican  or  even  a  domestic 
Oovemment  there,  or  to  overthrow  an  im- 
perial or  foreign  one.  if  Mexico  shall  choose 
to  establish  or  accept  it." 

Mr.  Seward  sent  oopies  of  this  dispatch  to 
our  ministers  at  Paris,  Madrid,  and  Brunelr, 
undoubtedly  for  the  purpose  of  advising  the 
Governments  to  which  they  were  accredited  of 
his  views.  But,  even  before  that  dispatch  to 
Mr.  Motley,  the  writer  of  these  lines  was  made 
acquainted  with  Mr.  Se?rard*8  views  regarding 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  by  a  dispatch  received 
by  him  in  April,  1863.  The  French  expedition 
was  very  unpopular  in  Spain,  and  just  at  that 
time  the  Biadrid  press  was  full  of  articles  de- 
nouncing bitterly  the  policy  of  Louis  Napoleon. 
In  an- entirely  unofllclal  and  friendly  conversa- 
tion with  Marshal  Serrano,  Minister  of  Foreign 
Affairs,  we  spoke  about  the  Mexican  trouble, 
and  in  the  course  of  our  talk  I  mentioned  that 
the  present  events  were  quite  parallel  with 
those  happening  in  1838,  and  that  I  thought 
that  the  Monroe  Doctrine  would  be  quite  ap- 
plicable. Serrano  did  not  seem  to  know  much 
about  this  doctrine,  which  I  explained  to  him. 
In  reporting  my  official  conversation  with  the 
Foreign  Minister  to  Mr.  Seward,  I  also  spoke 
of  our  unofficial  one,  mentioning  that  I  had 
brought  the  Monroe  Doctrine  to  the  recollec- 
tion of  Marshal  Serrano.  It  was  not  long  be- 
fore I  received  a  dispatch  from  Mr.  Seward, 
that  the  President  had  approved  of  what  I  had 
discussed  with  Marshal  Serrano  officially,  bot 
he  regretted  to  have  to  say  that  the  President 
had  by  no  means  approved  of  what  I  had  to  aay 
in  relation  to  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  and  thAt 
he  desired  me  to  at  once  call  upon  Mavthttl 


Jan.  30,  1896] 


Tlie   N'ation. 


07 


86rr«D0  and  anure  him  that  what  I  had  said 
rogardiDg  the  Doctrine  was  only  my  private 
Tiavr,  and  did  not  expi*e89  that  of  my  Qov^ 
ernment.  Before,  ho^rever,  I  received  this  dii- 
pateb«  the  ministry  of  which  Serrano  had  been 
a  member  was  dismissed.  I  at  once  had  con. 
eluded,  on  readiog  the  dispatch,  that  it  wa9 
not  written  for  me,  but  for  the  French  Govern 
ment,  and  so  I  dropped  the  matter;  and,  sure 
enough,  I  found  in  the  dipljmstic  corre8p'>nd. 
ence  of  1863,  published  by  the  Btate  Depart- 
ment, in  a  di«patch  from  Mr.  Washburn,  our 
Minister  to  PMis,  the  following  passage :  **I 
read  your  dispatch.  No.  51,  to  Mr.  Koerner, 
our  Minister  at  Madrid,  to  Mr.  Drouyn  de 
Lhuys  (Minister  of  Foreign  Affair*),  aud  he  ex- 
pressed his  extreme  satisfaction  with  it." 

Let  me  add  that  Mr.  Cslboun  has  been  re- 
ported to  have  s&id  that  when  the  draft  of 
Mr.  Monroe's  message  was  laid  before  the  Cabi- 
net for  consideration,  it  did  not  contain  the 
oolooizatlon  clause;  ^at  that  passage  was  in- 
serted by  Mr.  Adams,  and  had  never  been  .con- 
sidered and  approved  by  the  Cabinet.  The  fact 
that  this  clause  occurs  early  in  the  message, 
and  is  followed  by  much  other  matter  before 
the  non-intervention  passage  is  reached,  lends 
great  probability  to  Bfr.  Calhoun's  remarks,  as 
certainly  thoee  two  subjects  in  the  message 
logically  would  belong  together. 

In  conclusion,  I  desire  to  make  another 
point.  Great  stress  has  been  laid  of  late  on 
the  fact  that  the  English  Government  received 
the  message  of  Mr.  Monroe  with  very  great 
satisfaction— that  the  Liberal  press  rejoiced  at 
It;  and  we  are  favored  with  extracts  to  that 
affect  from  English  journals  of  that  time.  This 
is  all  very  true,  for  it  conformed  to  the  views 
of  the  English  Government;  but  it  is  equally 
true  that  Mr.  Canning  remarked  to  Mr.  Rush, 
our  Minister  at  the  Court  of  St.  James's,  that 
he  was  very  much  displeased  with  the  coloni- 
sation clauses  as  being  built  on  false  premises; 
that  the  southern  part  of  the  continent  was 
not  settled  by  Christian  nations,  so  as  to  ex. 
elude  all  further  European  coloniaation,  but 
was  the  abode  of  roaming  savages.  Such  coun- 
triee  had  always  been  considered  as  a  field  for 
civilized  colonisation.  In  some  of  his  speeches 
he  expressed  his  dissatisfaction  with  that  part 
of  the  message,  while  he  enthusiastically  ap 
proved  of  the  non- intervention  clsujie.  That 
the  other  great  Powers  of  Europe  which  had 
just  planned  Intervention  do  not  accept  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  as  binding  upon  them  needs 
no  proof.  GusTAV  Koebiobr. 

Bcuaviixs,  III.,  Jsaoary  90. 1800. 


JINGO  HISTORY. 
To  THB  Editor  or  Thx  Nation  : 

Sib  :  In  Mr.  Cabot  Lodge's  late  speech  on 
the  Venexuelan  question  are  some  statements 
that  should  not  go  unchallenged  : 

(1.)  Speaking  of  the  bill  for  the  military 
occupation  of  Yucatan,  to  prevent  its  becom- 
ing  a  British  colony,  he  says :  **The  war  in 
Yucatan  came  to  an  end,  and.  the  bill  never 
reached  a  vote." 

Mr.  Polk  (1848)  sent  a  message  to  Congress 
stating  ttiat  Yucatan  had  declared  its  inde 
pendenoe  of  Mexico,'and  had  offered  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  country  either  to  the  United 
States  or  to  England ;  he  further  stated  that 
the  Indians  there  were  conducting  a  destruc- 
tive war  against  the  whites,  and  he  declared 
that  the  occupation  of  Yucatan  by  England 
would  be  an  infringement  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  and  that  we  should  resist  it.  Our 
amy  was  then  in  Mexico,  and  there  was  no 


more  necessity  for  an  act  of  Congress  to 
authorisd  it  to  protect  the  inhabitants  from 
Indians  than  to  storm  Cbapultepec.  As  the 
debate  in  the  Senate  shows,  the  real  object  of 
the  message  was  to  prevent  England  from 
occupying  the  country.  When  Mr.  Hannegan 
saw  the  bill  would  be  beaten,  he  let  himself 
down  easy  by  moving  its  postponement ;  alleg- 
ing the  very  inadequate  reason  that  the  In- 
diant  had  stopped  killing  the  white  people. 
Mr.  Calhoun,  John  Davis  (Senator  from 
Massachusetts),  and  others  denied  that  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  had  any  application  to  the 
case.  Mr.  Niles  said  there  was  no  evidence 
that  the  designs  of  England  bad  been  aban- 
doned, if  they  ever  existed  ;  the  argument  of 
humanity  had  been  given  up  -  the  argument 
of  policy  remained.  The  appeal  to  humanity 
was  a  mere  makeshift,  and  was  not  made  an 
issue  in  the  debate. 

(2.)  Mr.  Lodge  says  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
that  "Mr.  Calhoun  is  the  only  American 
statesman  of  any  standing  who  has  tried  to 
limit  its  scope." 

If' he  will  read  Mr.  Adams's  messages  ex- 
plaining  the  object  of  the  Panama  mission,  and 
the  debates  in  Congress  upon  it,  he  will  see  that 
all  of  the  statesmen  of  that  day  repudiate  the 
construction  now  put  upon  Mr.  Monroe^  de- 
claration by  Mr.  Lodge.  In  his  *  Life  of  Web 
ster,'  speaking  of  his  speech  on  the  Panama 
mission,  Mr.  Lodge  says:  **He  made  a  full  and 
final  exposition  of  the  intent  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine."  True,  he  did  make  a  full  exposi 
tion  of  it,  and  he  gave  it  the  same  limited 
scope  and  interpretation  that  Mr.  Calhoun  did 
in  his  Yucatan  speech.  It  was  not  final,  how- 
ever, for  Mr.  Lodge  has  given  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent exposition  of  it.  Both  say  that  there  is 
no  general  rule  as  to  the  circumstances  that 
will  justify  armed  intervention  in  the  conflicts 
of  other  nations.  Both  Calhoun  and  Webster 
say  that  nothing  but  manifest,  imminent  dan- 
ger can  justify  such  interference.  Mr.  Web- 
ster thought  that  if  a  European  armamefat 
were  sent  against  Chili  and  took  possession  of 
the  country,  It  would  not  be  a  casus  belli  with 
us  because  Chili  is  so  distant,  but  that  it  would 
be  different,  by  reason  of  Its  proximity,  if  it 
landed  in  Cuba.  Mr.  Calhoun  said  the  same 
thing.  Mr.  Lodge  says  if  Eoglapd  takes  a 
strip  of  land  in  Venezuela  to  which  the  United 
States  thinks  she  is  not  entitled,  it  would  justi- 
fy war.  It  is  all  the  same  to  him  whether  she 
is  near  or  far  away. 

(8.)  Mr.  Lodge  quotes  the  two  declarations 
of  Mr.  Monroe's  message  and  joins  them  to- 
gether,  as  if  they  related  to  the  same  subject- 
matter.  He  thereby  perverts  and  distorts  Mr. 
Monroe's  meaning  and  creates  a  false  impres- 
sion. If  read  in  oonnectlon  with  their  context, 
it  will  be  seen  that  they  relate  to  entirely  dif- 
ferent subjects— one  to  the  designs  of  the  Holy 
Alliance  in  Spanish  America,  the  other  to  the 
negotiation  then  pending  with  Russia  about 
the  Northwest  (Oregon)  Territory.  It  is  sup- 
posed  by  many  that  Mr.  Monroe  said  that  -the 
United  States  ywuld  not  permit  any  European 
Power  to  ooloniaeon  either  of  these  continents. 
He  said  nothing  of  the  kind.  He  did  say  that 
there  was  no  longer  auy  territory  subject  to 
colonisation  by  a  European  Power.  Now,  as 
Mr.  Adamses  correspondence  with  the  Ameri- 
can Minister  to  Russia,  and  his  special  mes> 
sages  to  Congress  explanatory  of  the  objects 
of  the  Panama  mission,  and  Mr.  Cla;*B  dis- 
patch to  Mr.  Poinsett,  show,  the  declaration 
simply  meant  that  the  whole  eminent  domain 
of  the  two  continents  had  become  vested  in  in- 
dependent civilised  nations,  and  was  no  longer 
subject  to  colonisation  by  right  of  prior  dls- 


oovery  and  occupation.  But  this  would  not 
exclude  the  right  of  acquisition  by  treaty  or 
conquest. 

(4 )  Mr.  Lodge  says  that  slavery  was  the 
cause  of  the  failure  of  the  Panama  Congrees. 
It  may  have  inspired  some  of  the  opposition  to 
the  mission;  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  its  tall- 
ure.  Bolivar  had  put  the  same  interpretation 
on  the  Monroe  message  that  Mr.  Lodge  does, 
vis.,  that  It  implied  a  promise  of  a  defensive 
alliance  and  protectorate  over  Spanish  Ameri- 
ca. Hence  the  United  States  were  Invited  to 
participate  In  the  Congress.  The  disavowal  of 
any  such  purpose  by  the  friends  of  the  mission 
in  the  United  States  destroyed  the  illusion. 
The  South  American  deputies  never  attended 
it;  the  American  ministers  went  and  found 
nothing  but  yellow  fever  and  mosquitoes.  One 
of  them  died.  The  mission  was  an  abortion. 
Jno.  S.  M08BT. 

%AM  WajJKsaco,  Jaauarx  16, 1896. 


AMERICAN  HATRED  OF  ENGLAND. 
To  ths  Editor  of  Tbm  Natiok: 

Sib:  Your  editorial  on  American  hatred  of 
England  omits  two  or  three  factors.  Onecf 
these  is  the  influence  of  the  school  histories  in 
use  a  generation  and  more  ago.  Every  one  of 
these  books  that  I  read  in  my  youth  was  per- 
vaded  with  a  distinct  anti-British  animus. 
The  conduct  of  Great  Britain  in  the  Revoln. 
tionary  war  and  the  war  of  1812  was  placed  In 
an  odious  light.  It  cannot  be  said  that  they 
were  incorrect;  but  when  the  facts  were  pre- 
sented without  reference  to  the  civilisation  of 
the  times,  the  Inevitable  conviction  produced 
in  our  minds  was  that  every  British  soldier 
was  a  flend  of  a  peculiarly  malignant  type,  and 
that  every  British  officer  was  his  abettor. 
When  the  antipathy  thus  engendered  had 
somewhat  subsided,  the  attitude  of  the  Eng- 
lish ruling  class  towards  the  North,  and  their 
outspoken  sympathy  with  the  South  in  the 
late  rebellion,  did  much  to  kindle  it  afresh. 

Again,  Irish  influence  in  this  country  is  a 
perennial  instlfi^tion  to  our  hatred  of  the  Ehig- 
lish.  Nobody  need  be  told  what  a  powerful 
factor  the  Irish- Americans  are  in  our  politics, 
and  five-sixths  of  them  are  animated  by  the 
most  intense  animosity  against  the  English 
(Government  and  the  English  people.  How 
far  this  animosity  is  justifiable  it  does  not  here 
oonoem  us  to  inquire— the  fact  is  patent  to  the 
most  superficial  observer.  There  is,  I  imagine, 
hardly  a  community  in  any  of  the  Northern 
States  in  which  the  Irish  are  not  making  an 
active  propaganda  of  hatred  against  the  Eng- 
lish both  by  lectures  and  by  newspapers.  As 
our  sympathies  are  always  with  the  injured 
party,  the  effect  of  this  crusade  of  words  is  easy 
to  predict  As  the  defence  is  but  feebly  repre- 
sented, or  not  at  all,  the  resulting  menUl  state 
of  our  public  would  be  easy  to  imagine  even  If 
we  did  not  see  it.  Cbas.  W.  Supkr. 

jAXUAar  80, 1806. 

To  thx  Editob  of  Tax  Nation: 

Sir:  Might  I  suggest,  as  an  additional  reason 
for  the  hatred  of  England  in  the  United  SUtes, 
the  Englishman's  habit  of  giving  his  critical 
faculties  full  sway  wherever  he  goes?  He 
comes  to  this  country  for  the  first  time  under 
the  impression  that  he  is  visiting  his  nearest 
relations,  and  may  therefore  speak  as  freely  as 
if  he  were  dealing  with  things  at  home.  Only 
time  teaches  him  that  Englishmen  are  foreign- 
ers in  America,  whUe  Americans  in  England 
are  always  Amerieana-tbe  term  **  foreignar  " 


98 


Tlie    USTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1596 


being  geoerally  reserved  for  non  English-speak- 
ing peoples.— I  am,  sincerelj  yours, 

Herbert  BioNirsR. 
Colorado  Snuvos,  Col  .  Januftir  90. 1800^ 


ADAM  SMITH  ON  PROHIBITORY  DUTIES. 

To  THE  EOITOB  OF  THE  NATION: 

Sir:  In  spite  of  Mr.  Rae*8  care,  he  has  over- 
looked some  interesting  letters  of  Adam  Smith. 
Among  them,  I  think  the  following  is  of  the 
highest  interest.  Much  as  he  had  written  on 
bounties  and  prohibitions,  I  know  of  no  con- 
fession of  ignorance  so  pertinent  as  his  di»- 
ooyery  that  not  a  rag  of  his  clothing  was  on 
his  back  legally,  bat  in  defiance  of  the  law,  I 
belieye  this  letter  has  been  in  print,  and  on  my 
copy  is  marked  ^^Athenceum,  7  April,  I860'*; 
but  it  is  sufficiently  interesting  to  be  again 
printed.  •  Wobthikotok  C.  Ford. 

WAsmKOTOir,  JAniurx  90. 1800. 

ADAM  SMITH  TO  WM.  EDEN. 

EonrBUBOH,  8rd  of  January,  1780. 
DkabSir: 

It  gives  me  Tery  great  pleasure  to  hear  of  the  suc- 
cess of  your  letters  to  Lord  Carlisle.  I  acknowledge 
I  was  not  a  little  anxious  about  the  success  of  a 
pamphlet  which  abused  no  party  and  no  person,  and 
which  represented  the  state  of  public  affairs  as  less 
desperate  than  it  is  commonly  belicTed  to  be.  The 
nation,  I  hope,  is  cominic  both  into  better  humour 
and  better  spirits  than  I  believed  it  to  be.  Besides 
the  editions  you  mention,  your  letters  have  gone 
through  an  edition  even  in  this  narrow  country. 

I  do  not  know  how  to  thank  you  for  the  rery  hon- 
ourable mention  you  have  made  of  me.  It  does  not 
occur  to  me  that  much  can  be  added  to  what  you 
have  already  said.  The  difficulty  of  inventing  new 
taxes,  or  increasing  the  old,  is,  I  apprehend,  the 
principal  cause  of  our  embarrassment  Besides  a 
strict  attention  to  economy,  there  appears  to  me  to 
be  three  very  obvious  methods  by  which  the  public 
revenue  can  be  iocreased  without  laying  any  new 
burthen  upon  the  people.  Ihe  first  is  a  repeal  of 
all  bounties  upon  exportation.  These  in  Scotland 
and  England  amount  to  about  800,0001.  a  year,  ex- 
clusive of  the  bounty  upon  com,, which,  in  some 
years,  has  amounted  to  a  sum  equal  to  all  the  other 
bounties.  It  will  probably  amount  to  a  veiy  con- 
siderable sum  this  year.  When  we  cannot  find  taxes 
to  carry  on  a  defensive  war,  our  merchants  ought 
not  to  complain  if  we  refuse  to  tax  ourselves  any 
longer  in  order  to  support  a  few  feeble  and  languish- 
ing branches  of  their  commerce. 

The  second  is  a  repeal  of  all  prohibitions  of  im- 
portation, whether  absolute  or  circumstantial,  and 
the  substitution  of  moderate  and  reasonable  duties 
in  the  room  of  them.  A  prohibition  can  answer  no 
purpose  but  that  of  monopoly.  No  revenue  can 
arise  from  it  but  in  consequence  of  its  violation 
and  of  the  forfeiture  of  the  prohibited  goods.  In- 
stead of  encouraging,  it  commonly  prevents  the 
improvement  and  extension  of  the  branch  of  indus- 
try it  is  meant  to  promote.  Dutch  cured  herrings 
cannot  be  imported,  upon  forfeiture  of  ship  and 
cargo.  They  are,  however,  vastly  superior  to  Bri- 
tish cured  ;  you  can  scarce  imagine  the  difference. 
The  price  of  a  barrel  of  British  cured  herrings  is 
about  a  guinea,  and  that  of  the  Dutch,  I  imagine,  is 
nearly  the  same.  Instead  of  the  prohibition,  lay  a 
tax  of  half-a  guinea  a  barrel  upon  Dutch  herrings. 
Dutch  herrings,  will,  in  this  case,  sell  in  Great  Bri- 
tain at  83».  or  Ms. ;  a  circumstance  which  will  con- 
fine them  altogether  to  the  tables  of  the  better  sort 
of  people.  The  British  curers  will  immediately  en- 
deavour to  get  this  high  price,  and,  by  superior  care 
and  cleanliness,  to  raise  their  goods,  to  an  equality 
with  the  Dutch,  and  this  emulation  will,  probably, 
in  five  or  six  years'  time,  raise  the  manufacture  to 
a  degree  of  improvement  which  at  present  I  de 
spair  of  its  attaining  to  In  fifty  or  sixty  years. 
Our  fisheries  may  then  rival  the  Dutch  in  foreign 
markets,  where  at  present  they  cannot  come  into 
competition  with  them,  and  the  manufacture  may 
not  only  be  much  improved,  but  greatly  extended. 


Prohibitions  do  not  prevent  the  importation  of  the 
prohibited  goods.  They  are  bought  everywhere.  In 
a  f  ah:  way  of  trade,  by  people  who  are  not  in  the 
least  aware  that  they  are  buying  them.  About  a 
week  after  I  was  made  a  Conuntasioner  of  the  Cus- 
toms, upon  looking  over  the  list  of  prohibited 
goods  (which  is  hung  up  in  every  Custom  House, 
and  which  is  well  worth  your  considering),  and  upon 
my  examining  my  own  wearing  apparel,  I  found, 
to  my  great  astonishment,  that  I  had  scarce  a 
stock,  a  cravat,  a  pair  of  ruflles,  or  a  pocket-hand- 
kerchief, which  was  not  prohibited  to  be  worn  or 
used  in  Great  Britain.  I  wished  to  set  an  example, 
and  burnt  them  alL  I  will  not  advise  you  to  ex- 
amine either  your  own  or  Mrs.  Eden's  apparel  or 
household  furniture,  lest  you  be  brought  into  a 
scrape  of  the  same  kind.  The  sole  effect  of  a  pro- 
hibition is,  to  hinder  the  revenue  from  profiting  by 
the  importation.  All  those  high  duties,  which  make 
it  scarce  possible  to  trade  fairly  in  the  goods  upon 
which  they  are  impoaed,  are  equally  hurtful  to  the 
revenue,  and  equally  favorable  to  smuggling,  as  ab- 
solute prohibitions  It  is  difficult  to  say  what  such 
a  repeal  of  all  prohibitions,  and  of  such  exorbitant 
duties  as  are  scarce  ever  fairly  paid,  might  pro- 
duce. I  Imagine  it  would  produce  a  stai  greater 
sum  than  the  repeal  of  all  bounties,  provided  a 
reasonable  tax  was  always  substituted  in  the  room 
both  of  the  exorbitant  tax  and  of  the  prohibition. 

The  third  is,  a  repeal  of  the  prohibition  of  ex 
porting  wool,  and  a  substitution  of  a  pretty  high 
duty  in  the  room  of  it  The  price  of  wool  is  now 
lower  than  in  the  time  of  Edward  the  Thhrd,  be- 
cause now  It  is  confined  to  the  market  of  Great  Bri- 
tain, whereas  then  the  market  of  the  world  was  open 
to  it.  The  low  price  of  wool  tends  to  debase  the 
quality  of  the  commodity,  and  may  thus  hurt  the 
woollen  manufacture  in  one  way  aa  much  as  it 
may  benefit  it  in  another.  By  this  prohibition,  be 
sides,  the  interest  of  the  grower  is  evidently  sacri- 
ficed to  the  interest  of  the  manufacturer.  A  real 
tax  is  laid  upon  the  one  for  the  benefit  of  the  other. 
In  old  times  a  duty  upon  the  exportation  of  wool 
was  the  most  important  branch  of  the  customs. 

I  heartily  congratulate  you  upon  the  unexpected 
good  temper  of  Ireland.  I  trust  in  God  that  Adml 
nistration  will  be  wise  and  steady  enough  not  to  dis- 
appoint that  people  in  any  one  thing  they  have  given 
them  reason  to  expect  Give  them  as  much  more 
as  you  will,  but  never  throw  out  a  single  hint  that 
you  wish  to  give  them  anything  less.  Remember 
me  to  all  friends,  and  believe  me  to  be,  with  great 
esteem  and  regard,  dear  sir,  most  entirely  yours, 

AoAM  Smtth. 


CARELESS  MAGAZINE  WRITING. 
To  THS  Editor  or  The  Nation: 

Sir:  In  Harper's  Magazine  for  NoTember, 
which  arrived  here  yesterday  morning,  I  have 
just  read  Julian  Ralph*s  second  story  of 
Anglo  •  Chinese  life,  entitled  "Flumblossom 
Beebe^s  Adventures,"  illustrated  by  C.  D. 
Weldon.  The  tale  touches  the  seamy  side  of 
life  in  a  Treaty  Port,  and  to  the  great  unini- 
tiated public  of  America  it  will  probably  seem 
a  picturesque  and  accurate  delineation  of 
facts.  Julian  Ralph  is  a  clever  journalist, 
well  practised  in  taking  superficial  notes  of 
what  he  sees,  and  in  holding  his  pitcher-ear 
wide  open  for  the  yams  he  may  hear,  all  with 
a  view  to  working  up  literary  material  of  his 
own.  I  give  him  full  credit  for  what  he  has 
accomplished,  but  it  is  the  merest  hack.work 
at  best.  We  have  all  been  laughing  at  his 
**  pidgin  English"  out  here— we  call  it  Ralph- 
eee,  for  it  is  nowhere  spoken  in  China  as  his 
characters  speak  it 

Pidgin  English  is  not  in  the  least  like  **  Eng- 
lish baby  prattle,"  as  Julian  Ralph  states  on 
page  946  of  the  magazine.  Of  course,  to  a 
globe-trotter  it  may  soimd  so  for  a  few  days, 
but  as  soon  as  he  tries  to  obtain  a  serious 
knowledge  of  it,  he  should  not  fail  to  see  that 
it  is  a  very  valuable  compromise  between 
Chinese  grammar  and  phonetics  and  those  of 


European  nations.  It  is  not  a  baphasard, 
meaningless  babble,  invented  to  soothe  small 
children;  it  has  regular  rules  of  construction, 
and  is  not  left  to  the  individual  whim  of  a 
globetrotter. 

'  On  the  first  page  of  his  story  Ralph  exhausts 
his  smattering  of  the  lingo,  and  says  in  excuse, 
*'The  pidgin  English  is  too  confusing  to  follow 
farther."  Why  did  he  begin?  Let  me  give 
the  Ralphese  and  the  real  pidgin-English  of 
page  942  of  the  magazine,  in  parallel  colunms  : 


RALPHKSB. 

**  He  comes  some  other 
side,  in  countly,"  said 
the  go-between.  •*  He 
belong  kidnap  girl— aome 
man  have  tief  her.*  Been 
tlained  singsong  girl,  but 
no  can  do:  no  gottecRood 
voice.  He  velly  good 
g^\--€Mn  plomiset  he  alle 
time  have  been  velly 
good." 

''  But  she  is  not  allve,^* 
said  Sam.  ''No  belong 
girl  — belong  wooden 
t*ing.  What  for  she  no 
move  no  laugh  no  belong 
alive  girl  ?  Have  makee 
die  ?  My  wantschee  one- 
piece  gal  can  makee 
pl»y- pidgin,  makee 
laugh  makee  chin-chin." 


pmora-ERGUSH. 

**He  have  come  other 
side  counUee.  He  belong 
stealum  girlee— sometlef 
man  catchee  he.  Have 
teacbee  he  do  sing  song 
girlee  pidgin,  he  no  good, 
no  can  sing  ploper.  That 
girlee  heart  velly  good— 
can  secure  he  alio  time 
have  velly  good." 

**  He  no  belong  'live." 
"No  belong  girlee— be- 
long one  piecee  wood. 
What  for  he  no  makee 
move,  no  makee  laugh, 
no  belong  *live  girlee? 
He  have  makee  die  ?  Bfy 
wantcheeone  piecee  girt- 
ee  can  makee  play,  mak- 
ee laugh,  can  talkee- 
talkee.** 


•Nominative  and  object- 
ive cases  are  Identical  In 
Chinese,  therefore  In  pid- 
gin Enff llsh .  There  Is  only 
one  tbtrd-personal  pro- 
noun, which  In  Chinese  Is 
"  Uit**  translated  he  In  Ens- 
lUb,  bat  In  reality  mascn- 
llne  or  feminine  accord- 
ing to  context. 

f'Plomlse'*  Is  n<M  pidgin- 
English  but  Ralphese.  The 
word  Is  secure,  pronounced 
"  secnah." 


It  is  high  time  that  the  up-to-date  journalist 
abroad  were  taught  not  to  dabble  in  what  he 
knows  nothing  of.  On  i)age  046  there  is  near- 
ly a  column  of  utterly  uncalled  for  vituperar 
tion  of  foreign  residents  in  China  as  a  class. 
They,  however,  entertained  him  hospitably 
when  he  was  here,  filled  him  with  food  and 
drink  and  his  literary  knapoack  with  proven- 
der, which  he  has  shamefully  wasted.  It  is 
not  true  that  we  **  repeat  the  silliest  and  most 
cruel  lies  that  can  be  found  In  books  upon 
China,'*  such,  for  instance,  as  "that  all  Chi- 
nese eat  dogs  and  rats,  slaughter  or  sell  their 
girl  babies,  beat  their  wives  and  often  kill 
them,  have  no  hearts,  never  show  affection, 
never  loathe  or  wash,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum,^ 
These  statements,  it  is  true,  appear  in  most 
books  about  China,  because  most  books  about 
China  are  written  by  folk  who  have  spent 
three  or  four  months  in  the  country. 

James  Paynes  *By  Proxy*  is  absurd,  so  far 
as  accuracy  is  concerned,  and  so  is  Hannan*s 
'  A  Swallow's  Wing';  but  both  those  stories  of 
China,  written  many  years  ago,  are  excellent 
literature  compared  with  Ralph^s  realistic  ro- 
mances. Jules  Verne's  *  Tribulations  of  a  Chi- 
naman' is  also  superior.  D.  T. 
Shaxohai.  December  19, 1805. 


THE  EXPLORATION  OP  CORINTH. 
To  THE  Editob  of  Thb  NATION: 

Bib:  Since  completing  the  excavations  at  the 
Argive  Heraion  and  at  Eretria,  the  American 
School  at  Athens  remains  without  a  field  for 
explorations.  The  Germans  are  occupied  with 
their  work  on  the  supposed  site  of  the  ancient 
agora  of  Athens;  the  French  are  still  busy  at 
Delphi;  and  the  English  are  likelj  to 


Jan,  30,  1896] 


The   Nation. 


99 


•zoftTatioiis  the  oomisg  spring  on  the  island  of 
Melos.  As  yet  the  explorations  of  the  Ameri- 
cans hare  not  identified  theroselyes  with  any 
of  the  chief  centres  of  ancient  Greek  life.  The 
work  at  Assos,  Thorikos,  Anthedon,  Sikyon, 
Ikaria,  Eretria  was  all  of  it  admirably  suc- 
oessfnl,  and  yielded  results  which  are  of  per. 
manent  ralne.  Hie  excarations  at  the  Argiye 
Heraion  were  the  most  extensive  and  the  most 
complete  of  any,  and  very  rich  in  results,  but 
they  involved  the  exploration  of  a  single  cult- 
site,  isolated  from  the  city  which  names  it  by 
a  distance  of  several  miles.  Though  this  comes 
nearest  to  being  a  site  of  first  importance  of 
an  which  the  Americans  have  undertaken  to 
explore,  it  cannot^  of  course,  rank  with  the 
Olympia  of  the  Germans  nor  the  J)elphi  of  the 
French. 

In  looking  about  for  a  place  for  further  work. 
Dr.  Richardson  has  been  attracted  to  Corinth. 
Though  the  second  city  in  general  importance 
in  ancient  Greece,  practically  nothing  has  as 
yet  been  done  toward  its  exploration.  The 
Germans  some  years  ago  dug  about  the  founda- 
tions of  the  ancient  Doric  temple,  of  which 
several  columns  are  stfll  standing,  sufficiently 
to  determine  its  ground  plan.  Nothing  what- 
soever has  been  done,  however,  to  fix  the  topo- 
grmphy  of  the  ancient  city,  nor  to  locate  with 
certainty  even  one  of  the  many  temples  and 
monuments  which  Pausanias  saw  in  the  agora 
and  its  neighborhood.  There  is  not  so  much  as 
a  well-established  theory  as  to  even  the  ap- 
proximate location  of  the  agora.  The  theatre, 
usually  the  easiest  thing  to  identify  among  the 
miss  of  an  ancient  city,  has  not  yet  been  found, 
though  Fausanias  speaks  of  it  twice,  and  lo- 
oatea  it  definitely  between  two  temples  stand- 
Ing  outside  and  in  general  to  the  west  or  south- 
west of  the  agora.  The  ancient  Doric  temple 
mentioned  above  is  frequently  called  a  temple 
of  Athena,  but  utterly  without  authority  or 
competent  reason .  The  entire  site  of  this  great 
city,  whose  walls,  according  to  Strabo,  involved 
a  circuit  of  forty  stadia,  remains  a  totally  un- 
explored field.  And  yet  there  are  abundant 
evidences  that  excavations  would  be  rewarded 
by  immediate  results.  The  ancient  fountains 
of  which  Pausanias  makes  emphatic  mention, 
and  which  he  treats  as  landmarks,  are  sUU  to 
be  seen,  together  with  the  colossal  aqueducts 
hewn  out  of  the  solid  rock  which  conveyed 
their  water  supply.  At  one  place  on  the  vast 
tarrace  which  probably  formed  the  site  for  the 
central  part  of  the  city,  there  can  be  seen  the 
ontllnes  of  the  foundations  of  some  great  edi- 
fice making  still  a  hillock  in  the  midst  of  a 
wheat- field;  dose  beside,  there  protrudes  from 
the  earth,  as  if  tempting  investigation,  a  co- 
loaeal  column-drum. 

Most  of  the  territory  which  would  invite  the 
first  exploration  is  free  from  dwellings.  The 
ancient  agora  lies  perhaps  partly  under  a 
group  of  shabby  huts  grouped  about  an  an- 
cient fountain  that  may  well  represent  the 
fountain  which  Pausanias  speaks  of  as  being  in 
the  agora.  The  only  difficulty  which  could  at- 
tood  an  attempt  at  excavation  would  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  the  land  is  private  property; 
bat,  undoubtedly,  permiieion  to  dig  at  diflTer- 
aot  points  in  the  fieldi  can  be  readily  obtained 
anfllciently  to  make  a  beginning  of  the  work 
and  to  secure  the  first  orientations  in  the  to- 
pography. The  Greek  Government  and  the 
local  authorities  have  shown  themselves 
friendly  to  the  undertaking,  and  seem  ready 
to  help  in  every  way. 

The  only  question  seems  to  be  the  one  of 
wi^ys  and  means.  The  school  has  but  $500 
•Tmilable  for  excavations  this  year.  If  it  un- 
dartakss  Corinth,   it  ought  to  have  12,000  a 


year  for  five  years.  The  German  and  French 
Schools  depend  for  such  funds  upon  their  re- 
spective Governments.  We  have  a  better  and, 
I  believe,  a  safer  reliance  in  the  generosity  and 
public  spirit  of  our  citizens.  It  is  a  great  op- 
portunity and  worthy  to  be  ranked  as  a  na- 
tional cause. 

The  address  of  the  treasurer  of  the  School  is 
Mr.  Gardiner  M.  Lane,  No  44  State  Street, 
Boston,  Mass.  Ben  J.  Ide  Wheeler. 

Thb  Amkbicak  School. 

ArmBMS,  Orekcx.  January  8, 18M. 


Notes. 


An  anonymous  reply  to  Max  Nordau,  *  Regene- 
ration,* is  on  the  eve  of  publication  by  G.  P. 
Putnam^s  Sons.  Dr.  Nicholas  Murray  Butler 
furnishes  an  introduction. 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons  announce  *  Comedies 
of  Courtship,*  short  stories  by  Anthony  Hope, 
and  *  A  Lady  of  Quality,'  in  Queen  Anne's  time, 
by  Mrs.  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett. 

Macmillan  &  Co.  will  publish  Alfred  Aus- 
tin's new  poem,  *  England's  Darling';  'Social 
Interpretations  of  the  Principles  of  Mental 
Development,'  by  Prof.  J.  Mark  Baldwin  of 
Princeton;  *An  Outline  of  Psychology,'  by 
Prof.  £.  B.  Titchener  of  Cornell;  and  *An 
Ethical  Movement,*  by  W.  L.  Sheldon. 

In  view  of  the  approaching  revival  of  the 
Olympic  games  at  Athens,  a  quarto  album, 
•Die  Olympischen  Spiele  776  v.  Cb.— 1896.' 
beautifully  and  copiously  illustrated  in  the 
text,  and  edited  by  Profs.  Lambros  and  Politis 
and  Dr.  Christomanos,  has  been  undertaken  by 
the  University  bookseller  in  Athens,  C.  Beck 
(New  York:  Lemcke  &  Buechner).  The  two 
parts  into  which  the  work  is  divided  deal  with 
ancient  and  modem  athletics  respectively. 

A  second,-  revised  and  greatly  enlarged  edi- 
tion of  Potthast's  *  Wegweiser  durcb  die  Ge- 
sctkichtswerke  des  Europ&iscben  Mittelalters 
bis  1500'  wUl  be  issued  in  August  by  W. 
Weber,  Berlin  (New  York:  Dyrsen  &  Pfeiffer). 
The  Roman  letter  will  be  used,  and  the  page 
will  be  remarkably  clear  for  ready  reference. 
The  Bollandist  'Acta  Sanctorum,'  Bouquet*s 
'Rerum  Gkdlicarum  et  Francicarum  Scrip- 
tores,'  the  Abb6  Migne's  '  Patrologie,'  the 
*Monumenta  GermanisB  Historica,'  Muratori's 
collections,  etc.,  are  some  of  the  labyrinths 
threaded  by  this  «« pathfinder." 

Mrs.  Darmesteter's '  Froissart '  (CharlesBcrib- 
ner's  Sons)  is  a  graceful  sketch  of  a  literary 
life  five  hundred  years  ago.  By  careful  study, 
Froissart's  poems  along  with  the  chronicles  are 
made  to  yield  the  slender  thread  of  narrative, 
and  contemporary  illustrations  are  reproduced. 
Through  the  scholarly  courtesy  of  M.  Lon- 
gnon,  the  author  is  able  to  give  an  account  of 
Froissart's  long-lost  poetic  romance  of  chivaU 
ry,  *M61iador.'  This  work  disappeared  in 
1440,  and  nothing  was  known  of  it  until  M. 
Longnon,  by  a  combination  of  sagacity  and 
good  fortune,  unearthed  it  in  the  National  Li- 
brary in  November,  1893.  Mrs.  Darmesteter 
belieTes  that  M.  Longnon  and  herself  enjoy  the 
singular  but  hardly  enviable  distinction  of  be- 
ing the  only  persons  in  400  years  who  have  fol- 
lowed its  ** linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out" 
to  the  bitter  end  of  its  80,600  lines. 

Prof.  J.  Shield  Nicholson  has  made  some  ad- 
ditions to  his  *  Treatise  on  Money  and  Essays 
on  Monetary  Problems,'  in  the  third  edition 
which  now  appears  (Macmillan).  The  addi- 
tions are  directed  to  the  further  explanation  of 
the  ''quantity  theory  "  in  the  light  of  the  great 
increase  of  the  production  of  gold  and  its  ac- 


cumulation in  the  vaults  of  the  Bank  of  Eng- 
land.  This  ought  to  bring  about  a  higher  level 
of  prioes,  which  in  Prof.  Nicholson's  opinion 
has  not  been  attained  because  of  the  continued 
depreciation  of  silver.  In  order  to  give  room 
for  this  additional  matter,  two  e«ays  which 
had  little  relation  to  monetary  sdence  have 
been  omitted. 

In  *  Missions  and  Mission  Philanthropy,'  by 
John  Goldie  (Macmillan),  we  have  an  ill- writ- 
ten but  suggestive  book.  The  author  gives  it 
as  his  conclusion,  after  twenty  years  of  chari- 
table work  and  meditation  upon  charitable 
theory,  that  what  he  calls  **  natural  phi- 
lanthropy" (which  is  philanthropy  based  on 
natural  law  and  dispensed  by  individuals,  not 
organizations)  oflTers  the  only  hope  there  is  for 
the  elevation  of  the  needy  poor.  All  organised 
charities,  he  maintains,  create  more  impostors 
than  the  worthy  they  relieve.  The  philanthro- 
pic impulse  he  finds  in  general  to  be  too  sen- 
timental and  subjective,  and  philanthropists 
more  in  need  of  instruction  than  the  poor.  The 
air  of  paradox  which  these  contentions  wear, 
together  with  Mr.  Goldie's  very  untrimmed 
style  and  decided  weakness  in  exposition  of 
what  he  thinks  the  true  theory  and  practice  of 
philanthropy,  will  doubtless  repel  the  readers 
who  would  most  profit  by  his  critical  chapters. 

Many  efforts  at  elaborate  illustration  of  a 
volume  by  a  number  of  associated  artists  have 
been  made,  but  few  of  them  have  been  very 
successful.  The  latest  of  these,  *A  London 
Garland'  (Macmillan),  is,  on  the  whole,  no 
exception  to  the  rule.  We  noticed,  some 
weeks  ago,  the  list  of  distinguished  names 
among  the  draughtsmen  who  have  contributed 
to  this  venture  of  the  London  Society  of 
Illustrators,  and,  as  might  be  expected  from 
them,  the  volume  contains  much  excellent 
work;  as  might  also,  perhaps,  have  been 
expected,  it  is  quite  lacking  in  unity  and 
decorative  harmony.  The  illustrations  are 
not  only  in  many  styles  and  many  mediums, 
but  of  very  various  sizes  and  of  different 
relations  (or  no  relation)  to  the  page.  We 
have  here  a  large  etching  by  Seymour  Haden, 
ruthlessly  shorn  of  margin,  and  near  it  a 
little  one  by  W.  L.  Wyllie,  which  is  an  island 
in  a  sea  of  white  paper ;  a  long  upright  by 
E.  H.  New,  and  an  oblong  landscape  by  A.  R. 
Quinton,  each  more  awkwardly  placed  than 
the  other  on  the  square  page;  and  the  ex- 
tremes  of  hard  precision  and  vague  softness 
in  the  drawings  of  Sandys  and  of  Whistler 
and  Arthur  Tomson.  The  result  is  interesting, 
but  it  is  not  good  book-making.  What  we 
like  best  in  the  volume  is  the  truly  decora- 
tive headings  designed  by  Mr.  R.  Anning'Bell. 

The  December  Portfolio  (Macmillan)  is  de- 
voted to  a  monograph  on  the  early  Dutch 
painter  and  miniaturist,  Gerard  David,  by 
W.  H.  James  Weale,  that  artist's  discoverer. 
This  monograph  is  as  dry  reading  as  a  cata. 
logue,  being  crammed  with  little  but  exact 
and  detailed  description  of  David's  works  and 
some  discussion  of  their  authenticity.  As  art 
criticism  it  has  no  existeuce,  but  it  should 
prove  a  useful  collection  of  facts.  The  illus. 
trations  show  us  in  David  an  interesting  artist 
of  about  the  rank  of  Van  der  Weyden. 

The  third  and  concluding  volume  of  Dr. 
Heinrlch  von  Poscbinger's  'VUnt  Bismarck 
und  die  Parlaraentarier '  (Breslau:  Trewendt) 
consists  chiefly  of  Bismarck's  remarks  during 
some  twenty  sessions  of  the  Imperial  Diet  and 
the  Prussian  Assembly  from  1879  to  1890.  The 
last  sixty- three  pages  contain  addenda  to  the 
second  volume,  the  results  of  recent  researches 
touching  the  career  of  the  Gorman  statesman 
from  1847  to  18T9.    There  is  a  full  index  of 


lOO 


Tlie   I^atlon^ 


[Vol  62,  No.  1596 


proper  names  and  another  of  topics  to  all 
three  volames. 

The  last  volnme  of  Brockhans^s  'Konversa- 
tions-Lexikoa'has  just  appeared,  completing 
the  fourteenth  edition,  which  is  publidied  in 
celebration  of  the  hundredth  anniyersary  of 
the  Lexikon.  The  encyclopsBdia  of  one  hon- 
dred  yeafs  ago,  with  its  six  small  volumes 
without  illustration,  has  grown  to  sixteen  vol- 
umes, each  of  which  is  twice  as  large  as  th'ote 
of  the  first  edition,  making  the  whole  thirty- 
two  times  as  large  as  the  originaL  The  pre- 
sent edition  is  in  every  sense  up  to  the  times, 
and  the  efforts  of  the  publishers  and  the  four 
hundred  contributors  have  made  it  a  monu- 
ment to  German  scholarship  and  art  It  con- 
tains more  than  126,000  articles,  about  10  000 
illustrations  in  the  text  and  on  080  inserts, 
and  dOO  maps  and  charts.  Throughout  the 
work  special  attention  has  been  given  to  Ger- 
many, Austria-Hungary,  and  Switzerland. 
Among  the  most  interesting  articles  of  the 
last  volume  may  be  mentioned  **  Vereinigte- 
8taaten,*'  with  five  maps,  ''Uebersicht  dee 
Weltverkehrs,'*  *»  Vierwaldstattersee,"  and 
"Wien,*^  with  several  maps  and  inserts. 

Meyer's  'Ndmberger  Faustgeschichten  *  is 
the  publication  of  several  stories  which  were 
recently  found  by  Mr.  A£eyer  in  a  manuscript 
of  the  library  at  Karlsruhe.  This  manuscript 
was  prepared  by  the  Nuremberg  schoolmaster 
Rossblrt,  who  died  in  158d>  and  it  contains  some 
Faust  stories  which  Rosshirt  wrote,  according 
to  the  Nuremberg  tradition,  and  which  give 
us  an  insight  into  the  manner  in  which  the 
Faust  ssga  developed  from  the  death  of  Faust 
(1540)  to  the  publication  of  the  first  FauMtbuch 
(1587).  Especially  attractive  is  the  story  of 
how  Faust,  while  lecturing  at  the  university 
in  Ingolstadt,  took  several  of  his  companions 
on  a  journey  through  the  air  to  the  wedding 
of  the  King  of  England.  There  is  also  a  new 
version  of  the  events  just  before  Faust's  de- 
scent into  hell.  In  these  stories  Faust  has  the 
given  name  Georg,  as  in  the  case  of  some  of 
the  earlier  traditions.  By  way  of  introdaction, 
Mr.  Meyer  reviews  the  history  of  the  historical 
Dr.  Faust  and  of  the  older  Faust  traditions,  in 
which  he  brings  out  many  points  entirely  new 
or  heretofore  not  sufficiently  emphfisized. 

The  first  parts  of  an  illustrated  history  of 
Swedish  literature  by  H.  Schuok  and  K.  War- 
burg have  recently  appeared  in  Stockholm. 
The  general  treatment  is  similar  to  that  of 
Koenig*s  German  and  P.  Hansen's  Danish 
work.  A  special  feature  is  the  division  of  the 
labor  between  the  two  authors;  Prof.  Schiick, 
who  contributed  the  article  on  early  Swedish 
literature  to  PauVs '  Grundriss,'  treating  of  the 
periods  before  1718,  and  Prof.  Warburg,  who  is 
the  author  of  an  excellent  short  history  of 
Swedish  literature  besides  a  number  of  critical 
biographies,  having  charge  of  the  periods  since 
1718.  The  names  of  the  authors  are  a  sufiicient 
guarantee  that  this  work  will  be  not  mere 
compilation,  but  a  real  contribution  to  Swe- 
dish thought. 

Bime.  Edgar  Quinet,  in  *  La  France  Id^ale ' 
(Paris:  CJalmann  L^vy),  has  set  a  worthy  ex- 
ample of  conjugal  devotion  and  of  love  of 
country.  Her  high  regard  for  the  opinions  of 
her  husband  (who  died  twenty  years  ago,  at 
the  age  of  seventy- two)  is  shown  on  nearly 
every  page,  if  now  and  then  to  the  disparage- 
ment of  other  men  of  letters  (as  Fustel  de  Cou- 
langes  and  Renan).  The  tone  of  the  essays  is 
moralizing  throughout,  serious  but  in  the  main 
hopeful,  liberal  as  to  political  and  religious 
matters;  and  reminds  one  in  various  ways  of 
the  **  Immortel  Absent "  from  whom  the  writer 
draws  so  much  of  her  inspiration.    In  spite  of 


several  strange  incongruities  and  inconsisten- 
cies, the  author's  evident  desire  to  contribute 
to  the  moral  eleyation  of  the  growing  genera- 
tion in  France  is  likely  to  be  f  ulfiUed  by  this 

•book. 

Readers  and  students  at  the  Biblioth^ue 
Nationale  in  Paris  have  rather  a  gloomy  out- 
look before  them  in  respect  of  the  new  cata- 
logue. They  have  just  been  told  that  they 
will  be  very  lucky  if  the  year  1900  finds  them 
in  possession  of  it.  For  more  than  twenty-five 
years  the  whole  force  at  the  library  has  been 
engaged  in  this  enormous  work.  The  subject - 
catalogues  have  already  been  finished;  the 
present  question  is,  in  what  way  these  should 
be  fused  into  a  whole.  Unhappily  there  has 
been  much  disagreement  among  the  librarians 
on  this  point.  It  was  determined  at  last,  more 
than  a  year  ago,  to  appoint  a  commission  of 
eminent  men  of  letters  and  of  science,  to  whom 
should  be  submitted  all  the  different  plans,  and 
the  documents  were  placed  in  its  hands.  No 
report  has  yet  been  made  by  this  commission, 
for  the  simple  but  somewhat  astonishing  rea- 
son that  it  has  not  as  yet  held  a  single  meeting. 
Among  the  new  periodicals  of  the  new  year 
we  remark  American  Re9orU,  published  at 
No.  50  Dearborn  Street,  Chicago,  on  the  15th 
of  each  month,  with  abundant  illustrations; 
and,  in  quite  another  vein,  Terrtttrial  Mag- 
netism^ an  international  quarterly  journal 
emanating  from  the  Ryerson  Physical  Labora 
tory  of  the  University  of  Chicago.  All  lan- 
guages capable  of  being  printed  in  the  Roman 
letter  will  t>e  admitted.  No  journal  of  the 
kind  is  now  in  existence. 

In  the  current  number  of  the  Virginia 
Magazine  of  History  and  Biography  Mr.  Ed- 
ward W.  James  has  another  slaTe-holding  cen- 
sus to  exhibit,  for  Abingdon  Parish,  Gloucester 
Co.,  Va.,  April,  1786.  The  largest  num^  of 
slaves  held  by  a  single  owner  was  160,  and  148 
and  116  are  also  recorded.  For  06  owners  there 
were  1«151  slaves.  We  notice  also  an  account 
of  a  judicial  burning  of  a  female  slave  for  poi- 
soning her  master,  in  Orange  Co.,  Va.,  in  1745; 
and  a  list  of  Virginia  portraits  by  St.-M4min 
in  the  Corcoran  Art  Gallery  at  Washington. 

Africa  is  the  absorbing  topic  in  t^e  Scottish 
Geographical  Magazine  for  January.  Mr.  H. 
S.  Cowper  gives  an  account  of  a  recent  jour- 
ney in  Tripoli  made  for  the  purpose  of  examin- 
ing the  remains  of  its  ancient  megalithic  tem- 
ples. In  a  comparatively  small  district  he  dis 
covered  nearly  sixty  sites,  and  learned  of  the 
existence  of  numerous  others.  The  oldest  struc- 
tures are  trilithonic  in  shape,  the  only  monu- 
ments now  standing  which  parallel  them  being 
the  great  trilithons  of  Stonehenge.  The  sug- 
gestion is  made  that  they  are  **the  work  of 
Libyan  races  largely  infiuenced  by  contact 
with  the  arts  and  crafts  of  Phoenician  civiliza- 
tion." There  is  also  a  description  of  Ashantee 
and  the  Gold  Ck>ast,  and  an  interesting  notice 
of  Hausaland  by  the  Rev.  C.  H  Robinson, 
who  states  that  the  Hausa  language  is  spoken 
by  fifteen  millions  of  people,  and  is  one  of  the 
four  great  languages  of  the  continent.  Al- 
though  this  race  is  superior,  both  intellectually 
and  physically,  to  all  other  natives  of  Equa- 
torial Africa,  there  is  no  place  in  the  world 
*'  where  slavery  and  slave-raiding  are  being 
carried  on  on  so  large  a  scale."  This  assertion 
is  borne  out  by  the  writer's  observations  dur- 
ing  a  journey  through  the  country  in  1894.  ^*  In 
the  course  of  our  march  from  Kano  to  Bida, 
we  lAssed  so  many  towns  and  villages  that  we 

I  ceased  to  keep  count  of  them,  all  of  which  had 
been  recently  destroyed,  their  inhabitants  hav- 
ing  been  sold  as  slaves,  and  this  not  by  any 
foreign  invader,  but  by  the  chief  in  whose  ter- 


ritory the  places  themselyes  were  situated." 
To  Kano,  the  Manchester  of  Central  Africa, 
come  two  million  people  annually,  chiefly  for 
the  cotton  clothing  woven  there,  and  which  is 
to  be  bought  even  in  the  Mediterranean  ports. 

The  Mouvemsnt  Oiographique  publishes  an 
interesting  letter  by  BC  Wauters  giving  an 
account  of  the  new  house  which  was  disinterred 
at  Pompeii  last  December.  BL  Wauters  con- 
siders this  house  to  be  the  most  important  of 
all  that  have  been  exhumed.  The  atrium  and 
the  peristyle,  the  mural  paintings,  the  sta- 
tuettes on  their  pedestals,  and  the  marble  for- 
nishings  are  perfectly  preserved.  The  peristyle 
is  the  chief  and  most  interesting  part.  The  in- 
terior court  is  remarkably  large;  its  portico 
is  decorated  by  eighteen  fine  Corinthian 
columns,  supporting  an  ornamented  cornice, 
which  is  almost  intact.  The  walls  are  painted 
in  black  and,  red.  Between  the  colunms  are 
set  nine  magnificent  basins  of  white  marble, 
four  tables  on  chimeras'  feet,  and  nine  statu- 
ettes representing  Bacchnses,  Fauns,  and 
Loves,  holding  geese.  The  mural  painting  of 
the  principal  room  shows  a  charming  frieze  of 
little  Loves  engaged,  some  in  striking  medals, 
others  in  glass  or  coral  work,  and  others  still 
in  pouring  libations  or  driving  chariots  drawn 
by  antelopes.  The  Directory  of  the  ruins  has 
determined  to  leave  all  these  objects  in  place, 
and  not  to  send  them,  as  is  usually  done,  to  the 
museum  at  Naples. 

The  opening  article  in  Petermann^s  MateU- 
ungen  for  December  consists  of  notes  by  Dr. 
Philippson  on  his  map  of  the  Peloponnesus, 
showing  the  cultivated  land,  vineyards,  or- 
chards, gardens,  forests,  underbrush,  meadows, 
and  deserts.  He  draws  rather  a  melancholy 
picture  of  the  increasing  sterility  of  the  land 
through  the  cutting  down  of  the  forests  and 
the  destruction  of  the  small  growth.  The 
map,  though  drawn  from  observations  made 
only  from  six  to  eight  years  ago,  does  not  rep- 
resent present  conditions.  The  cause,  for  which 
he  can  suggest  no  practical  remedy,  arises  chief- 
ly from  the  exclusive  use  of  charcoal  as  fuel,  and 
from  the  great  number  of  goats  kept  by  the 
peasantry.  Prof.  Ruge  describes  the  monu- 
mental work  published  by  the  Italian  Gk>vem- 
ment  commemorative  of  Columbns.  It  is  in 
six  parts  in  fourteen  volumes,  the  last  being  a 
bibliography  of  all  Italian  works  on  Columbus 
and  America.  There  is  also  the  usual  interest- 
ing survey  of  geographical  literature  for  the 
past  year.  The  number  of  works  important 
enough  to  be  noticed  wss  870,  a  little  over  a 
hundred  more  than  last  year;  the  chief  gain 
being  in  works  about  Europe.  America  and 
Africa  also  show  considerable  gains,  while 
there  is  a  surprising  falling  off  in  works  on 
Asia.  A  supplemental  number  is  devoted  to 
an  account  of  a  journey  by  Dr.  Radde  in  the 
summer  of  1804  in  Daghestan  on  the  northern 
slopes  of  the  Caucasus.  From  it  we  learn  that 
the  recently  built  railroad  connecting  the  Rus 
sian  system  with  the  Caspian  at  Petrovsk  had 
not  at  that  time  developed  the  business  which 
bad  been  confidently  expected  from  it.  The 
new  oil  wells  of  Grosny  were  also  proving 
something  of  a  disappointment,  though  the 
daily  shipment  by  rail  was  said  to  be  over  half 
a  million  pounds  of  crude  petroleum. 

The  latest  university  to  open  its  doors  to 
women  is  the  University  of  Atben?.  Five 
women  were  enrolled  for  the  winter  term,  yet 
not  without  violent  objection  from  some  of 
the  students.  It  was  with  difficulty,  we  leam 
from  the  Accuiemische  Revue  of  December, 
that  the  authorities  could  restore  order.  Tlia 
question  divided  the  students  into  hoatllo  jMtf- 
ties,  and  two  of  them  went  from  words  Id 


Jan.  30,  1896] 


Tlie   IN'ation. 


101 


blowi,  until  finally  one  shot  the  other  with  a 
rerolTer  at  the  entrance  to  the  chemical  lec- 
tnre-room.  Strange  conjunction  of  the  bar- 
bariim  of  the  East  and  of  the  West  at  a  tern- 
pie  of  science  in  Athens ! 

The  last  monthly  sammary  of  the  *  Finance, 
Commerce,  and  Immigration  of  the  United 
States'  (Not.,  1895,  corrected  to  Jan.  10,  1806) 
contains,  in  addition  to  the  usual  statistical 
matter,  a  large  diagram  of  our  foreign  com- 
merce for  the  years  1791-1885.  The  items  given 
for  each  year  are:  the  domestic  exports  and 
the  total  imports  (with  a  per  capita  summary 
for  1796-1896  by  decades),  the  impoHe  free  of 
duty,  and  the  imports  and  exports  of  gold  and 
of  silyer.  The  choice  of  a  larger  scale  for  pre- 
senting imports  and  exports  of  the  precious 
metals  than  that  used  for  presenting  general 
exports  and  imports  on  the  same  chart  \b  un- 
fortunate. It  does  all  that  an  appeal  to  the 
eye  can  do  to  emphasize  the  mischievous  notion 
that  exports  of  gold  were  somehow  a  matter 
of  relatively  greater  importance,  even  before 
1890,  than  were  exports  of  pork  or  of  cotton. 
Fdr  the  rest,  the  diagram  is  admirably  clear. 

—A  movement  is  now  on  foot  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  Cambridge  in  favor  of  admitting  daly 
qualified  women  to  degrees.    It  is  felt  that  so 
long  as  women  are  without  status  in  the  Uni- 
versity, they  lose  the  moral  support  which  the 
University  is  able  to  give ;  that,  without  the 
dignity  of  the  degree,  intellectual  efforts  di 
rected  towards  it  are  discouraged ;  and  that 
all  the  benefits  which  the  University  has  in  its 
power  to  bestow  upon  education  and  learning 
should  be  made  freely  accessible  to  all  stu- 
dents.   A   series  of  joint  meetings  between 
the  Girton  Executive  Committee,  a  committee 
of  the  Council  of  Newnham,  and  certain  resi 
dent  members  of  the  Senate  have  been  held 
recently,  and,  as  a  result,  a  memorial  has  been 
agreed  upon  **  requesting  the  Council  of  the 
Senate  to  nominate  a  Syndicate  to  consider  on 
what  conditions  and  with  what  restrictioDS,  if 
any,  women  should  be  admitted  to  Degrees  in 
the  University."    This  memorial  is  now  in  cir- 
culation among  the  members  of  the  Senate 
and  has  received  many  signatures.    The  meet- 
ings were  presided  over  by  Dr.  Henry  Sidg- 
wick,  Knightsbridge  Professor  of  Moral  Fhl. 
loeopby  in  the  University,  and  by  Dr.  Peile, 
the  Master  of  Christ's  College,  who  are  guiding 
the  movement.    The  success  of  the  women 
ftudents  at  both  Oxford  and  Cambridge  makes 
the  question  of  admitting  them  to  degrees 
daily  more  pressing,  and,  with  a  like  agitation 
going  on  at  this  time  at  Oxford,  the  prospects 
of  full  University  membership  for  women  in 
England  are  brightening.    Logically,  there  is 
but  one  solution  of  this  problem—to  admit  wo- 
men to  degrees ;  but  whether  the  fulness  of 
time  has  arrived,  it  remains  for  this  well  or- 
ganized  and  §bly  conducted  effort  to  deter- 
mine. 

—In  a  book  of  a  hundred  pages,  *  Social 
Changes  in  England  in  the  Sixteenth  Century, 
as  reflected  in  Contemporary  Literature:  Part 
L,  Rural  Changes,'  Prof.  E.  P.  Cheyney  has 
collected  and  arranged  the  material  to  be 
found  in  contemporary  literature  for  the  his- 
tory of  the  agrarian  revolution  in  Tudor  Eng- 
land. This  monograph,  one  of  the  publica- 
tloDS  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  issued 
by  Oinn  &  Co.,  would,  perhaps,  have  presented 
a  mora  scholarly  appearance  if  its  author  had 
made  more  dear  to  his  readers  the  extent  to 
which  he  builds  on  the  works  of  previous 
writer*,  and  if  he  had  explained  more  explicit- 
ly the  character  of  his  own  contribution.    And 


even  if  he  did  not  deem  it  wise  to  enter  into 
a  discussion  of  the  very  difficult  legal  ques- 
tions raised  by  the  eviction  of  the  customary 
tenants,  it  would  have  been  well  to  indi- 
cate what  the  problems  are  which  still  re- 
main for  solution.  But  the  collection  of  pas- 
sages he  has  here  brought  together  and  printed, 
mostly  in  full,  will  be  very  hendy  for  the  stu- 
dent of  ecocomic  history.  It  certainly  shows 
that  but  little  more  light  on  the  subject  is  to 
be  expected  from  the  study  of  Tudor  litera- 
ture. Mr.  Cheyney  has  reaped  that  field  pretty 
thoroughly;  later  gleanings  are  not  likely  to 
add  much  to  our  knowledge,  and  we  must  now 
turn  to  **  sources"  of  another  kind.  The  stu 
dent  of  literature  also— to  whom,  perhaps,  the 
monograph  more  particulsrly  appeals— will  be 
thankful  to  get  so  clear  and  untecbnical  an  ac- 
count of  a  movement  which  vitally  affected 
the  life  and  thought  of  the  English  people. 

—A  French  scholar  of  eminence,  a  really 
erudite   critic,    M.    H.    d'Arbois  de   Jubain- 
ville,  member  of  the   Institute  and  of  many 
learned  societies,  makes  a  somewhat  remarka- 
ble confession  in  a  recent  number  of  the  Remie 
Critique,    He  says  that  he  had  often  heard 
tell  of  Freeman,  and  many  times  had  read  in 
the  English  reviews  high  praise  of  bis  qualities 
as  an  historian,  but  that  not  one  single  word  of 
his  had  ever  come  before  his  eyes  until,  hap- 
pening by  chance  one  day  to  be  at  the  office 
of  the  Bevue  CrUiqve,  he  saw  lying  on  the 
table  the  first  volume  of  the  *  History  of  Sicily,' 
by  the  great  English  writer.    This  was  not 
the  original  text,  but  the  German  translation 
published  last  year  at  Leipzig  by  Teuboer. 
M.  d'Arbois  opened  the  volume  and  ran  through 
some  pages  of  it,  and  was  **  ravl  par  le  talent 
de  I'auteur,  qui,  chose  extraordinaire,  ^tait  k 
la  fois  un  ^rudit  et  un  grand  hlstorien."    And 
so  he  asked  the  editor  to  intrust  the  volume 
to  him  for  review,  and  carried  it  away  with 
him.    Mingled  with  the  pleasure  that  he  found 
in  his  new  acquaintance,  he  found  in  himself 
also  a  certain  sense  of  shame  that  he  had  not 
sooner  known  so  remarkable  a  work,  and  that 
he  was  reading  for  the  first  time— in  a  German 
translation  published  at  Leipzig  in   1895— a 
book  which  had  appeared  at  Oxford  in  1891, 
and  which  covered,  in  part,  ground  which  be 
himself  had  traversed  in  various  studies  and 
writings.    A  visit  to  the  library  of  the  Insti- 
tute and  to  that  of  the  University  brought  bim 
some  slight,  but  rather  sad,  consolation.     He 
found  in  each  the  *  History  of  Sicily '  in  Eng- 
lish,  but  the  two  publics  which  frequent  these 
libraries  had  been  as  remiss  in  the  study  of 
Freeman  as  he  himself.    At  both,  the  volumes 
were  intact :  not  a  leaf  had  been  cut.    This  is 
a  story  which  one  word  of  comment  would 
mar ;  but  one  may  permit  himself  to  imagine 
what  would  be  said  of  an  English  or  American 
scholar  who  confessed  entire  ignorance  of  any 
French  writer  who  could  be  considered  any- 
thing like  Freeman's  equivalent.    With  all 
the  gain  in  patient  work,  and  the  accuracy 
that  comes  from  patient  work,  which  French 
scholars  and  writers  have  shown  during  the 
past  five-and-twenty  years,  it  is  still  Candide's 
maxim  that  they  follow  most.    They  cultivate 
their  garden,  but  without  looking  over   its 
hedge  very  much  ;  and  they  seem  not  so  con- 
sdoiis  as  it  would  be  wise  to  be  of  its  true 
breadth  and  length. 

—A  recent  discovery  made  by  the  distin- 
guished physicist.  Prof.  Wilbelm  Conrad 
ROntgen  of  the  University  of  Wttraburg,  is 
now  exciting  considerable  interest  in  Germany, 
where  it  is  being  subjected  to  a  thorough 


mination  by  sc{«»ntiflc  men.  By  means  of  the 
rays  proceeding  from  Crookes's  radiometer 
under  the  infiuence  of  electrical  induction. 
Prof.  R5ntgen  succeeded  in  photographing  on 
ordinary  photographic  plates.  These  rays 
which  are  wholly  imperceptible  to  the  eye,  and 
the  existence  of  which  has  been  hitherto  unsua- 
pected,  have  the  power  of  penetrating  all  kinds 
of  wood  and  other  organic  substances  and  solid 
bodies,  except  metals  and  bones,  which  are 
alone  capable  of  resisting  them.  Thus  the 
photograph  of  a  wooden  box  in  which  iron 
weights  are  enclosed,  shows  only  the  Iron 
weights;  the  box  leaves  no  impr^Bsion  what- 
ever on  the  photographic  plate,  the  electric 
rays  passing  through  it  just  as  the  ordinary 
rays  of  light  psss  tbrough  the  air  or  any  per- 
fectly transparent  object.  The  same  is  true  of 
flesh.  A  photograph  of  the  hand  or  the  leg 
shows  only  the  hopes;  the  photograph  of  a 
man,  whether  clothed  or  naked,  is  merely  a 
human  skeleton  with  a  watch  or  a  ring,  if  he 
happens  to  wear  them.  Neither  his  clothing 
nor  his  flesh  offers  the  slightest  resistance  to 
the  rays,  which  are  also  unaffected  by  sun- 
light, so  that  the  photographic  process  can  be 
carried  on  anywhere  in  the  daytime.  The  im- 
portance of  this  discovery  in  its  application  to 
surgery  as  an  aid  to  diag^nosis  In  cases  of  dis- 
ease or  fracture  of  the  bones  is  apparent.  The 
photograph  would  reveal  immediately  and  un- 
mistakably the  nature  of  the  disorder  without 
the  long  and  often  painful  examination  which 
the  patient  is  now  obliged  to  undergo.  In  a 
case  of  complicated  fractures  another  photo- 
graph can  be  taken  after  the  bones  have  been 
set,  in  order  to  ascertain  whether  the  disloca- 
tion has  been  properly  reduced  or  the  broken 
parts  have  been  rightly  replaced.  The  exact 
position  of  a  bullet  or  the  splinter  of  shell  can 
also  be  easily  found  without  the  use  of  a  sur- 
geon's probe.  In  all  probabUity  the  proce« 
can  be  perfected  and  modified  so  as  to  photo- 
graph the  heart,  lungs,  liver,  and  other  inter- 
nal organs,  and  thus  determine  their  precise 
condition;  at  present,  however,  these  organs 
offer  no  resistance  to  the  rays,  and  therefore 
leave  no  impression  on  the  plate.  Some  months 
ago  Prof.  RGntgen  read  a  paper  on  this  subject 
entitled,  **  t^ber  eine  neue  Art  von  Strahlen,'* 
and  printed  in  the  proceedings  (SiteungB- 
beriehte)  of  the  Wdrzburg  Physikalische  Medi- 
cinische  Gesellschaft  This  report  has  now 
been  issued  in  pamphlet  form  by  the  university 
publisher,  Stahel,  id  Wfirzburg. 

—A  striking  periodical,  entitled  Biograpk' 
ische  BlaeiUr,  edited  by  Dr.  Anton  Bettelheim 
of  Vienna  and  published  by  Ernst  Hofmann  it 
Co.  in  Berlin  (New  York:  Lemcke  &  Buech- 
oer),  has  just  completed  the  first  year  of 
its  existence.  It  is  a  quarterly  magazine  of 
180  octavo  pages,  dealing  with  the  art,  or,  as 
we  mu)»t  henceforth  call  it,  science,  of  bio- 
graphy, its  methods  of  inquiry,  its  raw  mate- 
rial, and  its  literary  form.  The  list  of  asso- 
ciates who  have  pledged  Dr.  Bettelheim  their 
permanent  support  contains  many  of  the  best- 
known  names  among  the  historians  and  lita- 
rary  men  of  Germany,  and  gives  to  the  work 
an  assurance  of  substantial  value.  The  pros- 
pectus groups  the  subject-matter  under  four 
general  heads:  (1)  treatises  on  the  theory  and 
historical  development  of  biography  and  auto- 
biography, with  critical  analyses  of  the  ma- 
thods  pursued  by  the  great  masters  of  bio- 
graphical wiijting;  (2)  biographical  and  auto- 
biographical studies  and  essajs ;  (3)  confea- 
sions  derived  from  unprlnted  or  not  easily 
accessible  sources,  in  so  far  as  they  serve  to 
illustrate  the  history  of  clvUiiation  and 


103 


Tlie    [N'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1596 


nera  {OuUurge$chichU) ;  (41  biographical  mis- 
oellanies,  necrologies,  and  a  full  bibliography 
of  current  publications  relating  to  biography 
and  autobiography,  together  with  short  re- 
views of  the  most  important  works.  From  the 
first  three  numbers,  which  are  now  before  us, 
we  may  form  some  estimate  of  the  value  and 
scope  of  the  undertaking,  and  it  is  much  to  be 
able  to  state  that  the  rich  promise  of  the  am- 
bitious prospectus  is  in  large  measure  fulfilled. 
The  enterprise  seems  to  have  had  its  origin  in 
the  conviction  that  the  art  of  writing  biogra- 
phies, hitherto  practised  in  all  the  irresponsi- 
ble confidence  of  ignorance  by  any  henchman 
of  letters,  should  be  scientifically  formulated, 
and  the  laws  of  biographical  technique  be  de- 
fined and  established.  With  this  purpose  in 
view,  Dr.  Ludwig  Stein  of  Berne  has  discussed 
in  a  tentative  and  modest  way  the  **  Metho- 
denlehre  der  Biographik.*'  Limitations  of 
space  forbid  us  to  go  into  detail  concerning 
other  excellent  articles.  Of  special  interest 
to  the  English  reader  are  the  personal  recol- 
lections of  the  Anglo-G^man  artist,  Rudolf 
Lehmann,  who  relates  what  he  saw  of  men 
■o  widely  separated  in  their  walks  of  life  as 
Liszt,  Sir  William  Siemens,  Pius  IX.,  and 
Robert  Browning.  But  to  the  student  the 
most  valuable,  and  henceforth  indispensable, 
feature  is  the  extensive  biographical  biblio- 
graphy. This  on  the  German  and  the  Spanish 
side  is  particularly  full,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  the  other  literatures  will  be  taken  up  in 
due  course. 

—The  third  section  of  Konrad  Miller's  *  Die 
Altesten  Weltkarten '  (Stuttgart:  Roth;  New 
York:  Lemcke  &  Bdchner)  covers  the  smaller 
maps  of  the  Middle  Ages,  dating  before  the 
circumnavigation  of  Africa  and  the  explora- 
tion of  the  Western  Atlantic.  The  reproduc- 
tions are  some  in  sketches,  others  in  photo- 
graphic  representations,  and  a  few  are  in 
colored  delineations  on  folded  sheets.  Most  of 
them  are  already  more  oi*  less  familiar  to  such 
as  have  access  to  the  atlases  of  Santarem,  Le- 
lewel,  and  E^retschmer;  but  they  are  nowhere 
else  so  systematically  arranged  together.  Mil- 
ler  has  a  further  advantage  over  most  of  the 
earlier  editors  in  that  he  has  availed  himself  of 
the  exactness  of  the  camera,  though  it  must  be 
confessed  that  the  photographic  reproductions 
of  such  old  maps  are  a  sore  trial  to  all  but  the 
expert  in  the  deciphering  of  names  and  le- 
gends. Dr.  Miller  does  all  that  could  be  hoped 
for  in  aiding  the  student  in  this  respect,  and 
his  collation  of  the  inscriptions  gives  a  dis- 
tinctive character  to  his  work  for  completeness 
and  accuracy.  Most  of  his  originals  are  found 
in  difFerent  copies,  almost  wholly  as  illustra- 
tive adjuncts  of  manuscript  treatises,  which  are 
scattered  over  Europe  in  the  larger  libraries. 
While  the  author  enumerates  these  various 
copies,  as  a  rule,  he  commonly  selects  but  one 
of  each  kind  for  his  annotations.  The  series 
begins  with  a  map  from  a  Saint  Jerome  MS. 
of  the  fourth  century  in  the  British  Museum. 
For  the  next  century  we  have  the  type  of  discs 
used  by  Macrobius;  for  the  sixth,  those  fash- 
ioned  after  the  C^mas  figure.  Beginning 
with  the  tenth  century  the  specimens  are  more 
frequent.  We  find  them  annexed  to  psalters, 
like  one  of  the  thirteenth  century  in  the  British 
Museum;  to  encyclopedic  treatises,  like  that 
of  Canon  Lambert  of  the  twelfth  century; 
to  chronicles,  like  those  of  Matthew  of  Paris 
(thirteenth  century)  and  Higden  of  Chester 
(fourteenth  century) ;  and,  among  Various  other 
sources,  to  codices  of  Sallust.  The  only  one 
which  Miller  gives  that  has  any  direct  interest 
for  the  student  of  the  age  of  exploration  west- 


ward from  Europe  is  t^e  map  of  Andrea 
Bianco,  of  1436,  which  has  long  been  perhai)8 
the  most  familiar  of  the  entire  series. 

—The  impetus  given  to  the  study  of  the 
Italian  dialects  by  Ascoli  and  the  foundation 
of  the  Archivio  Olottologico  has  resulted  in  a 
long  series  of  works  most  creditable  to  Italian 
scholarship.  A  recent  publication  belonging 
to  this  class  may  be  briefly  mentioned  here, 
especially  as  it  possesses  a  more  general  lite- 
rary interest  than  usual.  The  popular  sacred 
drama  has  always  flourished  in  Italy,  and  it 
is  one  of  the  few  countries  in  Europe  where 
it  still  survives.  How  extensive  these  survi- 
vals are  may  be  seen  in  the  second  edition  of 
D'Ancona's '  Origin!  del  teatro  italiano.'  These 
popular  sacred  plays  are,  however,  rapidly 
dying  out  everywhere,  and  must  be  collected 
at  once  if  collected  at  alL  One  of  the  few 
relics  of  the  Piedmontese  popular  sacred  drama 
has  been  rescued  from  oblivion  by  Rodolfo 
Renier  in  a  volume  before ns,  entitled,  *  n  **  G^ 
llndo,'*  drama  sacro  piemontesa  della  Nativi- 
th  di  Cristo*  (Turin:  Carlo  Clausen).  This 
play  on  the  subject  of  the  Nativity  probably 
originated  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  has 
since  undergone  many  changes  to  suit  it  to 
the  taste  and  dialect  of  the  various  places  in 
which  it  was  performed.  The  body  of  the  play 
(which  is  made  up  of  the  legend  of  Ara  coeli, 
the  adoration  of  the  shepherds,  the  adoration 
of  the  Magi,  and  the  slaughter  of  the  Inno- 
centf>)  is  in  Italian,  but  the  seven  shepherds 
and  shepherdesses  use  the  dialect  of  Upper 
Montferrat.  It  is  well  known  that  in  the  me- 
dieval sacred  drama  a  large  place  was  allotted 
to  the  comic  element.  In  the  present  play 
there  was  no  opportunity  for  it  except  with 
the  shepherds,  who  are  represented  as  typical 
Piedmontese  peasants,  carried  back  eighteen 
centuries  into  the  miraculous  life  of  Palestine. 
It  is  with  the  dialect  of  these  characters  that 
the  editor  deals  in  sixty-seven  pages  of  illus- 
trazione  linguisticoj  treating  phonetics,  mor- 
phology, syntax,  and  lexicography  in  the  most 
approved  scientific  manner.  This  is  counter- 
balanced  by  a  literary  disquisition  on  the  popu- 
larity of  the  play  (which  takes  its  name  from 
one  of  the  shepherds  who  has  become  prover- 
bial in  Piedmont),  its  performance  (it  is  still 
acted  every  winter),  various  versions,  chro- 
nology, and  sources.  Incidentally  the  repre- 
sentation  of  the  Nativity  in  Art  is  touched 
upon,  and  the  book  closes  with  an  appendix  on 
the  relics  of  the  popular  sacred  drama  in  Pied- 
mont. The  whole  work  is  marked  by  the  fine 
scholarship  which  distinguishes  recent  Italian 
work  in  the  fields  of  philology  and  literary 
history. 


ENGLISH'S  CONQUEST  OF  THE  NORTH- 
WEST. 

Conquest  of  the  Country  Northwest  of  the 
River  Ohio^  1778-1783,  and  Life  of  General 
George  Rogers  Clark,  etc.    By  William  Hay- 
den  English,  President  Indiana   Historical 
Society.      Indianapolis,    Ind.,    and  Kansas 
City,  Mo.:    The   Bo  wen  Merrill  Company. 
1$96.   2  vols.,  royal  8vo,  pp.  1,186,  more  than 
125  illustrations. 
The  "  Northwest "  is  a  fugitive  term  of  widely 
varying  connotation  at  different  times.    The 
American  Northwest  has  receded  to  Alaska 
since  Revolutionary  times,  when  it  first  ac- 
quired political  definition  in  the  style  of  the 
"  Territory  of  the  U.  S.  N.  W.  of  the  River 
Ohio,''  as  on  the  seal  of  July  IS,  1787--that 
great  region  which  in  due  course  became  Ohio, 
1806;  Indiana,  1816;  Illinoii,  1818;  Michigan, 


1887;  Wisconsin,  1848;  and  a  part  of  Minneso- 
ta, 1858.  Across  la  belle  rivUre  in  those  days 
was  the  Virginian  county  of  Kentucky.  On 
both  sides  of  the  same  stream  was  George  Ro- 
gers Clark,  conqueror  of  the  Northwest  and 
founder  of  Louisville,  hero  of  that  great  dra- 
ma whose  denouement  nearly  doubled  the  area 
of  the  United  States.  The  exploit  was  unpre- 
cedented, and  has  been  but  once  repeated  in 
that  magnificent  stroke  by  which  Jefferson  re- 
doubled the  United  States  from  the  Mississip- 
pi to  the  Pacific.  The  conquest  of  the  North- 
west of  1778  •'88  is  only  another  name  for  the 
life  and  times  of  Clark,  who  first  finds  his  ade- 
quate biographer  in  the  author  of  this  great 
work.  The  materials  were  copious;  their  rich- 
ness was  almost  embarrassing;  and  Mr.  Eng- 
lish has  utilized  them  all  to  the  utmost  advan- 
tage. The  result  is  a  noble  historical  and  bio- 
graphical work  of  permanent  value,  which  at 
once  takes  first  rank.  The  story  is  told  with 
precision  and  in  great  detail;  it  abounds  in 
contemporaneous  documentary  material  of  the 
highest  value,  and  is  enriched  with  a  great 
many  facsimiles  of  letters  and  autographs, 
besides  portraits,  views,  maps,  and  other  illus- 
trations. 

George  Rogers  Clark  was  born  November 
10, 1752,  on  Rivanna  River  in  Albemarle  Coun- 
ty, Va.  We  have  much  of  his  ancestry  and 
early  days,  introducing  us  at  once  to  the  style 
of  the  author's  narration— biography  and  his- 
tory  in  minute  detail,  necessarily  somewhat 
discursive  and  even  diffuse  in  working  up 
such  a  mass  of  materials,  but  always  returning 
to  the  main  thread  after  each  digression.  The 
famous  Illinois  campaign  was  authorized  by 
Patrick  Henry,  Governor  of  Virginia,  January 
2, 1778.  His  private  instructions  are  given  in 
facsimile,  together  with  the  long  and  eagerly 
sought  letter  of  the  Privy  Council  of  next  day, 
signed  by  G.  Wythe,  G.  Mason,  and  Th.  Jef- 
ferson. The  falls  of  the  Ohio  to  which  Clark 
repaired  existed,  of  course;  but  Louisville  did 
not.  With  the  opening  of  the  campaign  there 
we  are  told  not  a  little  about  the  Bowmans, 
especially  Major  Joseph,  who  died  August  14, 
1779,  of  injuries  received  at  the  capture  of  Vin- 
oennes;  of  the  Harrods,  and  many  other  local 
worthies.  Clark  wanted  500  men,  but  muster- 
ed only  some  150.  He  reached  the  falls  about 
May  27, 1778,  and  camped  on  Corn  Island  to 
organize  his  force;  the  small  guard  he  left 
there  became  the  germ  of  Louisville.  Four  of 
his  captains  were  already  Bowman,  Helm, 
Harrod,  and  Montgomery;  Ruddell,  Lynn, 
and  others  were  there  added.  There  were  some 
desertions  when  his  destination  was  made 
known.  Reckoning  35  or  40  additions,  and  10 
left  as  a  guard,  he  prepared  to  move  with 
about  175  men,  and  his  very  weakness  spurred 
him  to  take  desperate  chances.  He  embarked 
June  24,  at  the  moment  of  the  nearly  total 
eclipse  of  the  sun  of  1778,  reached  Fort  Massac 
in  four  days,  and  went  overland  to  Kaskaskia, 
July  4.  The  town  and  fort  were  captured 
without  firing  a  gun,  and  Philip  Rochblave 
made  prisoner;  Fort  Gage  became  Fort  Clark; 
Simon  Kenton  appears  on  the  scene,  and  so 
does  the  patriotic  priest  Pierre  Gibault. 

Clark  then  sent  a  force  under  Bowman  to 
'*Parra  de  Rushi"  (Prairie  du  Rocher,  near 
the  celebrated  Fort  Chartres);  to  St.  ••Phil- 
lips" (Philippe);  to  "Cohos"  or  ••Cauhow" 
(Cahokia),  whoee  fort  became  Fort  Bowman 
on  its  capture.  The  whole  line  of  posts  and 
settlements  along  the  Mississippi  thus  fell  into 
his  hands.  At  the  time  of  this  invasion  of  the 
Illinois  country,  CoL  Henry  Hamilton  was 
Lieutenant-Governor  at  Detroit— the  "hair- 
buyer  general,"  as  Clark  called  him— wlio  te* 


Jan.  30,  1896] 


The    ISTation. 


103 


oAiii*  the  most  odious  and  detested  of  all  the 
Britlib  oflBoen  ooooenied  in  these  operations. 
The  news  of  the  rebel  iovasion  reached  him 
August  8 ;  be  left  Detroit  October  7,  with  meq 
said  to  bare  been  179  in  number,  went  down 
the  rirer,  across  the  lake,  up  the  Maumee  to 
'*Ome''  (Indian  village  "aux  Miamis,'' site 
of  Fort  Wayne),  over  to  the  *'Ouabacbe'* 
(Wabash),  and  so  on  to  Fort  Sackville  in  seven- 
ty-two days.  This  was  the  important  Post 
St.  Vincents,  in  the  present  Vincennes,  Ind., 
which  Clark  had  meanwhile  garrisoned  with  a 
detachment  under  Capt  Helm,  then  reduced 
to  twenty.one  men,  whUe  Hamilton's  force 
bad  increased  to  several  hundred  British, 
French,  and  Indians.  Helm  surrendered  with 
honors  of  war  December  17,  and  Hamilton 
held  the  fort 

Rochblave,  the  last  of  his  Majesty^s  com. 
manders  in  the  Illinois,  had  been  sent  captive 
to  Virginia  August  4.  The  Governor  commu- 
nicated the  news  of  Clark's  successes  to  the 
delegates  in  Congress  November  16,  and 
that  body  voted  a  resolution  of  thanks  No- 
vember 28,  -to  which  Clark  replied  March 
lOi,  1779.  Virginia  promptly  organized  the 
"County  of  Illinois,''  under  John  Todd,  De 
cember  12,  1778 ;  Gov,  Henry  also  wrote  to 
Clark  the  same  day,  and  again  January  1. 
1779,  but  Clark  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
advised  of  these  communications  February 
3,  when  he  reported  the  whole  situation  to 
the  Gk>vemor,  and  outlined  his  proposed  Vin- 
cennes campaign;  for,  as  he  said,  *'we  must 
either  qtiit  the  country  or  attack  Mr.  Hamil- 
ton." 

At  Kaskaskia,  Clark  had  but  a  few  more 
than  one  hundred  men,  and  could  not  have 
moved  but  for  assistance  from  Francis  Vigo 
(1747-1836),  who  furnished  the  sinews  of 
war  in  an  amount,  $8,616,  which  became  with 
interest  over  1149,808  when  finally  settled  in 
1875.  On  February  4,  1779,  the  Willing 
dropped  down  from  Kaskaskia  with  forty  six 
men,  under  Lieut  Rogers :  the  land  force  was 
of  four  or  five  companies,  in  all  about  170 
men.  The  latter  left  next  day  under  Clark,  by 
the  trail  sometimes  styled  the  "  Appian  Wa/ 
of  Dlinois,"  en  route  to  Vincennes,  via  present 
SparU,  Coultersville,  Oakdale,  Nashville,  Wal- 
nut Hill,  Salem,  Maysville,  and  Lawrence- 
vUle,  a  distance  of  some  160  to  170  miles,  then 
called  240.  The  Wabash  was  crossed  just  be- 
low  the  mouth  of  Embarras  River  February 
21,  and  Clark  was  on  the  heights  back  of  Vin- 
ossmea  oo'tbe  evening  of  the  23d,  after  a  terri- 
ble march,  in  part  over  country  flooded  with 
Icy  waters. 

It  is  disputed  whether  the  fort  which  Clark 
took  is  of  1713,  named  for  one  Jean  Sacque- 
TiUe^  or  1760,  for  a  Lord  Sackville;  there  may 
easily  have  been  two  of  different  dates,  with 
atmilar  names.  The  one  captured  stood  on 
the  east  bank  of  the  Wabash,  between  that 
and  First  Street  and  between  Vigo  and  Baro- 
net Streets,  at  the  foot  of  Church  Street 
doae  to  the  St  F.  Xavier  Church  of  that  time, 
in  present  Vincennes,  Ind.  A  night  attack 
was  made  00  the  23d;  apM^mptory  demand 
for  surrender  next  morning;  a  truce  for  three 
days  was  rejected,  a  conference  held,  and  Post 
St  Vincent  capitulated,  the  garrison  marching 
out  on  the  25th.  Clark  changed  the  name  to 
Fort  Patrick  Henry.  The  boat  WUling  ar- 
rived two  days  later.  Insignificant  as  may 
•esm  to  us  now  the  forces  in  action,  this 
completed  the  conquest  of  the  Northwest 
in  a  short,  spirited,  and  almost  bloodless 
campaign,  fraught  with  far-reaching  conse- 
quences of  great  magnitude.  It  is  sad  to  be 
obUged  to  add  that  the  capture  of  Vincennes 


proved  to  be  the  culminating  point  of  Clark's 
career. 

Chapter  xii.  continues  with  various  impor- 
tant events  on  the  Wabash  in  1779.  The  cher- 
ished project  of  a  campaign  against  Detroit 
was  in  abeyance,  but  one  important  expedition 
up  the  Wabash  captured  seven  British  boats 
and  about  forty  men,  with  supplies  intended 
for  Fort  Sackville.  Bowman  was  dead.  Clark 
returned  to  the  falls  of  the  Ohio  and  divided 
his  troops  between  Vincennes,  Cahokia,  Kas- 
kaskia, and  the  falls,  by  general  orders  of 
August  5,  1779,  thus  establishing  possession  of 
the  country  which  had  been  for  ever  wrested 
from  the  British.  The  appendix  to  Volume  I. 
is  rich  with  contemporaneous  documents  of 
extreme  value,  relating  to  the  events  just 
sketched,  some  of  them  here  appearing  for  the 
first  time  in  print  ^^^  >^  being  additional  to 
such  as  we  have  in  the  main  text  They  in- 
clude, among  other  letters  and  reports,  Bow- 
man's journal  of  January-March,  1779;  Clark's 
own  diary  of  December  25,  1776-November 
22,  1777;  the  roll  of  officers  and  men  captured 
at  Fort  Sackville,  etc. 

Volume  II.  opens  with  chapter  xiv.,  pp. 
605-663,  giving  a  long  and  circumstantial  ac- 
count of  the  captivity  in  Virginia  of  Hamilton 
and  other  prisoners,  harshly  treated  in  retalia- 
tion for  cruelties  to  American  prisoners  in 
other  quarters.  By  the  end  of  the  summer  of 
1779  the  little  garrison  Clark  had  left  on  Com 
Island  bad  removed  to  the  mainland  on  the 
Kentucky  side  and  built  a  stockade  in  present 
Louisville,  probably  at  the  foot  of  Twelfth 
Street  thus  laying  the  f oundition  of  the  city 
agreeably  with  Clark's  plans.  Meanwhile,  Jef- 
ferson had  succeeded  to  the  governorship  of 
Virginia,  June  1, 1778.  On  September  30, 1779, 
Clark  issued  orders  for  a  fort  on  the  Mississippi 
near  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio,  and  Fort  Jefferson 
was  built  early  in  1780,  when  Clark  went  with 
a  few  men  to  Iron  Banks,  in  present  Bullard 
County,  Ky.  The  American  position  was  still 
endangered  by  Indian  hostilities,  and  insecure 
by  reason  of  an  invasion  of  the  British  from 
Michilimackioac.  The  latter  was  repelled  by 
Clark,  who  made  a  counter  raid  from  his  ren- 
dezvous at  the  mouth  of  the  Licking,  on  to  the 
old  Indian  town  of  Chillicothe,  with  less  than 
1,000  men,  and  attacked  Piqua,  August  8, 1780. 
This  same  autumn  De  la  Balme's  expedition, 
with  a  few  men  from  Kaskaskia,  Cahokia,  and 
Vincennes,  against  British  posts  on  the  lakes, 
was  defeated  by  the  Miami  chief  Little  Turtle, 
in  the  vicinity  of  the  present  Fort  Wayne. 
Such  operations  brought  up  again  Clark's  long- 
cherished  plan  of  an  expedition  against  De- 
troit Jefferson  approved.  (IHark  was  made  a 
brigadier,  and  arrangements  were  perfected 
by  which  he  expected  to  leave  Fort  Pitt  with 
2,000  men  in  June,  1781.  But  he  failed  to  se- 
cure Continental  troops,  and  the  failure  of  700 
others  reduced  his  total  force  to  about  400.  He 
was  to  have  been  reinforced  by  Col.  Lochry; 
but  this  officer  reached  Wheeling,  August  8, 
one  day  after  Clark  left  '^^  be  was  cut  off  by 
the  Indians,  who  killed  or  captured  his  entire 
force.  This  was  disaster  in  itself,  and  it  also 
frustrated  thp  Detroit  campaign— probably  the 
most  bitter  disappointment  of  Clark's  life. 

Cornwallis  surrendered  at  Torktown,  Va., 
October  19,  1781.  Indian  troubles  lessened 
when  the  natives  were  no  longer  instigated  or 
led  by  the  British;  the  provisional  treaty  of 
peace  ensued,  November  30,  1782;  cessation  of 
hostilities  was  agreed  upon  at  Versailles,  Janu- 
ary 20,  1783,  proclaimed  by  Congress  April  11, 
concluded  at  Paris  September  3,  and  ratified 
January  14,  1784.  The  cession  by  Virginia  of 
all  her  lands  northwest  of  the  Ohio  was  effect- 


ed Mardi  1,  1784,  and  the  Territory  of  the 
Northwest  became  organised  under  the  ordi- 
nance  of  1787.  The  seal  bears  date  of  July  18, 
1787,  with  the  motto,  **  Meliorem  lapsa  locavit" 
But  before  the  great  drama  was  ended,  Clark 
was  ordered  off  the  stage  of  events.  He  was  re- 
lieved of  his  command  July  2,  1783— that  is,  he 
was  simply  dropped.  He  had  never  been  an 
officer  of  the  Continental  aimy,  and  on  the  ne- 
cessary reduction  of  Virginia  troops  he  was 
thrown  out  *'  with  thanks,"  but  without  the  de- 
cencies or  even  the  necessaries  of  life.  He 
retired  to  Kentucky  to  neglect  to  humiliation, 
to  dire  stress  of  poverty,  with  the  most  in- 
jurious effect  upon  his  health  and  morals.  At 
that  time  the  State  actually  owed  him  money; 
fifty  years  afterward  there  was  judged  over 
130,000  due  the  administrators  of  his  estate;  it 
was  not  till  twenty  years  after  his  dismissal, 
and  six  before  bis  death,  when  he  had  become  a 
maimed  paralytic,  that  he  was  allowed  a  pen* 
sion  of  $400  a  year.  In  1783  we  have  the  spec- 
tacle of  the  conqueror  of  the  Northwest  in 
Richmond  to  beg  for  bread.  In  1792  he  was 
still  struggling  with  poverty;  a  letter  written 
to  bis  brother  Jonathan,  May  11,  1792,  speaks 
of  his  account  against  the  State  as  being  *'  as 
just  as  the  book  we  swear  by";  and  bitter 
must  have  been  the  refiections  of  one  who  could 
then  say  with  truth,  '*  I  have  given  the  United 
States  half  the  territory  they  possess." 

No  kindly  light  ever  led  Clark  on  after  1783. 
In  1786  he  was  put  in  command  of  some  opera- 
tions against  Indians  which  resulted  fruitless- 
ly and  ignominiously,  by  opei}  revolt  of  his 
men  from  his  authority.  He  retired  to  Vln- 
cennes,  overwhelmed  by  this  fresh  disaster;  his 
habits  grew  worse,  and  he  did  things  which 
most  have  pained  his  friends  then,  even  as  they 
still  make  the  judicious  historian  grieve. 
"  Clark  is  playing  hell,"  was  the  word  on  De- 
cember 12,  1786;  and  though  Jefferson  re- 
mained his  staunch  fiiend,  and  tried  in  1791  to 
bring  him  up  again,  it  was  impossible  to  do  so. 
In  1793  Clark  made  probably  the  greatest  mis- 
take of  his  life,  enabling  his  enemies  to  affix  a 
stigma  of  dishonor  and  even  treason  to  a  name 
already  tarnished  by  private  bad  habits.  He 
accepted  a  commission  with  the  high  sounding 
title  of  **  Major  General  in  the  armies  of 
France  and  Cooomander- in-chief  of  the  revo- 
lutionary legion  on  the  Mississippi  River,** 
against  the  S|)anish,  in  violation  of  interna- 
tional law  and  under  governmental  condemna. 
tion.  He  may  never  have  meditated  action 
against  his  own  country^  but  any  such  expedi- 
tion as  he  had  in  view  waa  stopped  by  act  of 
Congress  of  June  5, 1794,  and  proclamation  of 
March  24,  1795,  declaring  the  proposed  opera- 
tions unlawfuL  Clark's  military  career  closed 
for  ever,  under  a  cloud. 

The  remainder  of  this  extremely  copious  and 
intensely  interesting  work  is  largely  occupied 
with  minute  details  of  the  '*  Clark  Grant'*  by 
acts  of  the  Virginia  Legislature  of  January  2, 
1781,  and  of  1783,  locating  about  149,000  acres 
of  ground  for  allotment  in  severalty  to  the 
officers  and  soldiers  of  the  Illinois  regiment. 
The  survey  of  this  land  by  one  William  Clark 
brings  up  the  question  of  the  three  persons  who 
bore  that  name,  and  Mr.  English  has  succeed- 
ed in  identifying  them  all.  Surveyor  William 
Clark,  son  of  Benjamin  Clark,  brother  of  Mar- 
ston  Green  Clark,  and  cousin  of  George  Rogers 
Clark,  deceased  November  or  December,  1791, 
was  not  the  jurist  William  Clark,  who  died  at 
Vincennes  November  11,  1802,  nor  yet  the  Wil- 
liam Clark  of  "Lewis  anc  Clark  "fame.  A 
facsimile  of  the  patent  issued  by  Edmund  Ran* 
dolph,  Governor  of  Virginia,  December  14, 
1786,  is  given,  and  also  another,  of  the  original 


±04= 


T  hi  e    !N"  a  t  i  o  11 . 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1596 


oflBcial  plot,  oertifled  by  Snryeyor  William 
Clark,  with  a  roll  of  the  men,  aketchee  of  the 
comminioDers,  and  other  biographical  data  of 
the  greatest  poesible  value.  It  seems  that  Oen. 
O.  R.  Clark  attended  the  meetings  of  the  board 
from  1784  to  March  14, 1810,  the  date  of  his  last 
signature,  after  he  had  become  paralytic.  This 
grant  was  the  origin  of  ClarksviUe,  Ind  ,  and 
various  other  towns  along  the  Ohio  opposite 
Louisville  and  thence  upward.  The  old  gene- 
ral there  dragged  out  many  lonely  years,  in 
oblivion  and  intemperance.  He  was  stricken 
with  paralysis  after  a  drinking-bout,  fell  in  the 
fire,  and  so  burned  one  of  his  legs  before  re- 
covering consciousness  that  erysipelas  set  in 
and  amputation  became  necessary.  This  was 
early  in  1809,  before  the  days  of  ansBsthetics, 
and  the  grisly  old  warrior  lost  his  leg  to  the- 
mnsic  of  drum  and  fife,  played  to  distract  his 
attention  from  the  misery  of  such  an  operation. 
One  of  the  most  persistent  myths  which  have 
reached  us  is  that  when  General  Clark  was  pre- 
sented with  a  sword,  he  cried,  **  Damn  the 
sword  I '-  etc.,  or  said,  **  When  Virginia  needed 
a  sword  I  gave  her  one.  She  sends  me  now  a 
toy.  I  want  bread."  Mr.  English's  analysis 
of  the  traditions  shows  about  as  much  truth 
in  them  as  in  the  still  more  celebrated 
story  of  the  **litUe  hatchet"  of  Washington. 
General  Clark  was  twice  presented  with  a 
sword  by  the  Virginia  Legislature— June  12, 
1779,  and  February  20,  1812— at  which  latter 
date  he  was  placed  on  the  pension  list.  He  died 
at  the  house  of  his  sister,  Lucy  Croghan,  at 
Locust  Grove,  Ky.,  February  18, 1818. 

Much  more  than  we  can  possibly  outline  here 
is  given  in  estimation  of  Clark^s  life  and  ser- 
vices; sketches  of  many  men  who  served  under 
him;  and  a  full  account  of  the  handsome 
monument  erected  at  Indianapolis  February 
2S,  1896,  mainly  through  the  distinguished  au- 
thor's own  efforts  to  that  end.  We  have  also 
much  Clark  genealogy,  especially  full  regard- 
ing the  brothers  and  sirters  of  G.  R.  Clark. 
The  appendix  to  this  volume  contains  a  great 
variety  of  interesting  matter,  including  in  full 
Clark's  account  against  the  State  of  Virginia, 
and  the  strange  history  of  the  bill  in  chancery 
over  his  alleged  will,  filed  May  6, 1885,  and  not 
dismissed  tUl  November  20,  1865.  It  also  ap 
pears  that  the  present  work  is  but  an  instal- 
ment of  that  which  the  author  has  in  hand, 
and  we  trust  sincerely  that  he  will  elaborate 
his  other  materials  in  the  same  fruitful  man- 
ner. 


STEPNIAK'S   LAST   WORK. 

King  Stork  and  King  Log :  A  Study  of  Mo- 
dem Russia.  By  Stepniak.  London  :  Dow- 
ney &  Co.;  New  York :  Charles  Soribner's 
Sons.    1895. 

Whatevbb  else  can  be  said  about  the  late 
Stepniak's  writings,  it  can  never  be  asserted 
Uiat  they  are  not  interesting  as  to  matter  and 
trenchant  as  to  style.  The  very  title  of  the 
book  before  us  furnishes  a  proof,  though  some 
readers  may  question  the  propriety  of  call- 
ing the  late  Alexander  III.  **King  Stork,'' 
and  feel  startled  at  the  temerity  which  can 
decree  to  Nicholas  II.,  after  a  reign  of  less 
than  a  year,  the  epithet  of  **  King  Log."  If  it 
is  regarded  as  a  valid  excuse,  in  the  case  of 
Lord  Salisbury,  that  a  new  Government  in- 
evitably inherits  the  policy  and  political 
debts  of  its  predecessor,  and  must  be  allowed 
time  to  initiate  gradual  changes,  it  certainly 
is  not  unreasonable  to  claim  some  small  mea- 
sure of  the  same  excuse  for  the  corresponding 
autocrat  in  Russia.  In  fact,  our  author  sajs 
in  one  place :  **  Alexander  IIL  was  not  the 


founder  of  that  system,  and  cannot  be  held 
responsible  for  it."  However,  we  will  defer 
further  consideration  of  that  point  until  we 
have  made  a  brief  examination  of  what  pre- 
cedes it. 

The  fact  seems  to  be,  with  regard  to  this 
book,  that  it  is  composed  of  articles  published 
at  various  times  during  the  last  five  years. 
The  internal  evidence  proves  this,  but  as  no 
direct  hint  is  given  of  this  state  of  affairs,  for 
the  benefit  of  non- experts,  the  constant  as- 
sumption that  the  whole  has  been  written  in 
the  immediate  present  is  frequently  mislead- 
ing to  a  serious  degree;  as,  for  example,  when 
**  the  present  Emperor  "  stands  for  Alexander 
III.  instead  of  the  actual  occupant  of  the 
throne.  Stepniak  admits  that  matters  change 
so  rapidly  in  Russia  that  it  is  not  possible  for 
the  revolutionists  who  live  abroad  to  direct 
operations;  they  cannot  even  understand  the 
conditions  from  the  other  side  of  the  border. 
Consequently,  a  difference  of  five  years,  or 
even  of  much  less  time,  plainly  renders  certain 
utterances  less  valuable,  when  it  does  not  nul- 
lify them  altogether. 

Very  few  writers  are  as  insidiously  persua- 
sive as  Stepniak.  He  has  the  art  of  engaging 
our  sympathies,  and  convincing  us  of  whatever 
he  pleases,  unless  we  chance  to  be  able  to  pin 
him  down  on  one  incontestable  point,  and  so 
obtain  the  proper  gauge  of  confidence  which 
we  must  give  to  his  arguments  and  illustrative 
anecdotes.  It  is  very  unfortunate  that,  in  the 
hastily  written  first  chapter,  designed  to  in- 
troduce and  bind  together  the  scattered  papers 
which  form  the  book,  he  should  have  fallen 
into  t^e  grievous  error  of  telling  that  anec- 
dote about  Count  L.  N.  Tolstoy's  drama,  "  The 
Dominion  of  Darkness."  Stepniak's  **  trust- 
worthy source"  has  furnished  him  with  a 
Tery  good  story,  which  runs,  briefiy,  to  the 
following  effect:  Alexander  III.  read  and  liked" 
**  The  Dominion  of  Darkness."  His  daughter, 
Xenia  Alexandrovna,  who  is  the  wit  and  lite- 
rary critic  of  the  family,  liked  it  still  more, 
and  she  proposed  that  the  play  should  be  pri- 
vately performed  in  one  of  the  halls  of  the 
Anitchkoff  Palace.  After  the  actors  had  been 
engaged,  and  all  the  arrangements  made, 
Count  Dmitry  Tolstoy,  Minister  of  the  Inte- 
rior, agreed  with  the  Head  Censor  that  its  per- 
formance must  be  prohibited  on  the  gpround  of 
its  *^  immorality,"  and  the  imperial  perform- 
ance was  stopped.  When  Xenia  Alexan- 
drovna mentioned  the  matter  at  a  family 
party,  at  which  some  of  the  ministers  were 
present,  expressing  her  surprise,  the  Czar  turn- 
ed to  his  ministers  and  merely  exclaimed, 
with  a  meek  astonishment  one  does  not  asso- 
ciate with  the  idea  of  an  all-powerful  despot: 
**  Tes,  imagine  I  the  play  has  been  prohibited !" 
The  date  of  this  extraordinary  tale  is  not 
given,  but,  as  Xenia  Alexandrovna  was  only 
fourteen  years  old  when  Count  Dmitry  Tol- 
stoy died,  in  April,  1889,  its  apocryphal  cha- 
racter is  plain  enough;  an  American  girl 
would  not  be  allowed  to  read  that  play  at  that 
age,  much  less  a  Russian  girl.  Thereafter  the 
reader  involuntarily  questions  the  accuracy  of 
every  emphatic  utterance,  and  all  the  utter- 
ances are  emphatic.  The  anecdote  is  enlighten- 
ing in  another  direction  also,  namely,  as  to 
the  author's  habit  of  using  all  arguments,  no 
matter  how  contradictory,  to  assail  the  object 
of  his  dislike.  He  has  already  said  of  Alexan- 
der  III. :  **  He  had  not  the  masterfulness  of  his 
grandfather,  Nicholas  I.,  a  typical  despot,  and, 
unlike  his  father,  he  had  a  great  respect  for 
the  laws  passed  by  himself.  His  reign  was  the 
most  lawless  we  have  had  since,  perhaps,  the 
time  of  the  adventurers  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 


tury ";  and  then  he  criticises  him  for  submit- 
ting to  the  law  like  an  orderly  person  and  for 
an  example.  The  interpretation  given  to  the 
anecdote  about  the  thanksgiving  mass  at  the 
Kasan  cathedral  offers  another  instance  of 
seeing  things  in  diametrically  opposite  ways, 
according  as  one  has  a  point  to  prove  or  is 
merely  a  disinterested  spectator. 

Nevertheless,  with  all  our  involuntary  doubts, 
it  is  of  the  highest  interest  to  have  these  clear 
statements  as  to  important  events  and  mea- 
sures, as  viewed  by  the  revolutionary  party. 
Some  of  them  are,  it  is  true,  utterly  irrecon- 
cilable with  everything  which  has  been  au- 
thoritatively stated  hitherto— such  as  the  na- 
ture of  the  document  which  Alexander  II.  was 
on  the  point  of  promulgating  when  he  was 
assassinated.  In  this  connection,  it  is  rather 
surprising  that  Stepniak,  while  mentioning  the 
Princess  Dolgoruky- Yurievsky's  pamphlet,  does 
not  also  refer  to  the  answering  pamphlet  which 
was  written  by  one  of  the  Court  dames,  and 
which  might  have  furnished  him  with  some 
telling  poiuts  against  the  Princess,  who  mis- 
represented, as  he  thinks,  his  friends  and  the 
circumstances.  His  elucidation  of  the  Slavo- 
phile doctrines  is  very  good,  and  his  exposition 
of  the  workings  of  the  new  District  Command- 
ers is  extremely  useful,  and  the  most  complete 
that  is  accessible.  But  why  did  he  not  do  jus- 
tice to  the  Government  by  stating  the  reason 
for  the  change  contained  in  the  appointment 
of  these  District  Commanders  t  While  no 
linded  proprietor.  In  anticipation  or  in  prac- 
tice, approves,  unreservedly,  of  that  reform, 
it  is  certain  that  not  one  proprietor  could  be 
found  who  would  not  frankly  admit  that  some 
radical  change  was  necessary,  owing  to  the 
peasants'  abuse  of  electoral  rights.  Abuses  of 
the  same  sort  occur  even  in  advanced  repub- 
lies,  and  it  is  not  always  easy  to  decide  upon 
the  best  remedy  for  them  under  the  most  fa- 
vorable circumstances— which  is  not  the  proper 
description  for  the  Russian  circumstances,  it 
must  be  confessed. 

t*The  establishment  of  the  District  Com- 
manders is  one  of  the  sorest  grievances  of 
rural  Russia.  The  emancipation  of  the  serfs 
was  not  a  great  success.  Even  the  partisans 
of  the  Government  admit  that  now.  It  did 
not  improve  the  material  condition  of  the 
masses.  But  the  former  serfs  became  citizens ; 
they  recovered  their  personal  independence 
and  immunitnr  from  interference  in  their  pri- 
vate affairs.'' 

Americans  who  are  conversant  with  the 
negro  problem  at  the  South  will  find  no  diffi- 
culty in  understanding  this. 

More  difficult  to  reconcile  are  such  state- 
ments as  those  on  pages  119,  120,  in  regard 
to  the  recent  great  famine,  and  the  Govern- 
ment's efforts  to  keep  it  secret.  '*  The  editors 
of  the  papers  received  stringent  orders  not 
to  publish,  under  the  fear  of  suppression  and 
other  administrative  penalties,  any  news  about 
the  famine  likely  to  *  disturb  the  public  mind.* " 
Yet  it  is  asserted  that  Count  L.  N.  Tolstoy*s 
letter  calling  upon  the  Government  to  state 
plainly  whether  or  not  there  was  sufficient 
com  in  the  country  to  keep  the  Russian  people 
until  the  next  harvest,  and  to  provide  it,  in 
case  there  was  not,  was  not  only  printed  but 
**  quoted  and  endorsed  by  the  whole  preas," 
and  **  Vyshnegradsky  found  it  necessary  to 
give  it  a  reply." 

Among  the  topics  with  which  Stepniak  dealt 
is  that  of  the  Jews.  **  The  classes  which  are  at 
the  head  of  the  Russian  anti- Jewish  movement 
have  long  ago  outlived  the  period  of  religious 
fanaticism,"  he  says. 

*'  With  them  the  hostility  towards  the  Jews 
is  purely  raciaL    With  the  masses,  also^  tlM 


Jan.  30,  1896] 


The    ISTatioii 


105 


racial  antipathy  is  also  a  much  stroDg«r  inicre- 
dient  in  the  anti-Jewish  feeling  than  relif^ion. 
Thus  we  may  fairly  describe  the  anti  Jewish 
moTement  as  racial.  .  .  .  Everywhere  the 
Jews  almost  monopolize  the  most  lucrative 
calling  in  the  community— that  of  middlemen. 
They  come  to  constitute  a  class  apart  as  well 
as  a  race  apart,  and  racial  hostility  comes  to 
embitter  the  struggle  between  the  classes. 
...  In  the  Pale  of  Settlement  the  Jews, 
although  forming  but  one-seventh  of  the  popu- 
lation, nave  concentrated  in  their  hands  one- 
half  of  the  wholesale  trade  of  the  region,  and 
have  almost  monopolized  the  retail  trade." 

This  is  the  explanation  of  a  friendly  writer, 
it  is  to  be  noted.  Very  curious  is  the  explana- 
tion  of  the  anti-Jewish  riots,  A  year  before 
tbeee  occurred,  the  Emperor  issued  a  manifesto 
denouncing  the  Nihilists,  and  calling  upon  all 
bis  faithful  subjects  to  assist  the  police  in  ex- 
terminating them.  The  official  name  for  Nihi- 
lists is  kramolnikl^  which  means,  in  Russian, 
rebels,  state  criminals.  But  in  the  south  of 
Russia  the  peddlers  and  retail  traders,  who 
are  all  Jews,  are  popularly  called  kramorniki. 
The  Illiterate  peasants,  not  unnaturally,  got 
tiM  two  words  mixed,  and  believed  that  the 
Jews  were  at  the  bottom  of  the  trouble.  Not- 
withstanding this,  they  behaved  in  a  friendly 
manner,  as  Btepniak  relates,  to  Jews  who  had 
been  friendly  to  them. 

Naturally,  Btepniak  has  a  good  deal  to  say 
with  regard  to  the  political  exiles  in  Siberia, 
and  his  narratives  are  of  the  most  thrilling 
sort.  But  he  is  not  quite  just,  in  many  in- 
stances; men  whose  sentences  were  pronounced 
in  1874-6  can  hardly  be  regarded  as,  primarily, 
oppressed  by  Alexander  III.,  whose  reign  dated 
only  from  1681.  At  one  point,  also,  he  speaks 
of  an  exile  having  died  at  Beresoff,  and,  imme- 
diately afterwards,  remarks:  **But  under 
Alexander  III.  it  (leniency]  was  entirely 
thrown  aside,  and  the  practice  of  exiling  peo- 
ple to  places  utterly  unfit  for  human  habita- 
tion was  introduced  on  a  large  scale.**  Beresoff 
Is  included  in  that  category,  as  recently  intro- 
dooed,  whereas  it  was  used  as  a  place  of  exile 
in  the  middle  of  the  last  century^for  Prince 
Mentchikoff  and  for  Ostermann,  among  others. 
8tepniak*s  disregard  of  his  country^s  history 
does  not,  of  course,  mitigate  the  horrors  of 
Beresoff,  but  it  increases  the  uninitiated  read- 
«r*s indignation  against  Alexander  III.  An- 
other  very  confusing  result  of  carelessness  in 
writing  and  proof-reading  arises  from  the  dif- 
ferent dat^s  assigned  to  various  events:  for 
example,  the  Emperor  Nicholas  II.'s  wedding 
manifesto  is  set  down  as  ha  zing  been  issued  on 
January  26,  instead  of  on  November  2^  there- 
by ruining  the  argument  of  comparison  be- 
tween it  and  another  manifesto.  Again,  on 
p.  170,  it  is  said:  *' Politically,  the  speech  of 
December  20  [1894]  marks  an  epoch  in  the  his- 
tory of  our  opposition  movement."  On  p.  200 
this  speech  is  referred  to  as  having  been  made 
on  January  20  (1805).  We  must  also  allude  to 
the  errors  which  arise  from  Stepniak's  imper- 
fect mastery  of  the  English  past  tenses  of  the 
verbs.  Astonishing  as  was  his  knowledge  of 
our  language,  he  unwittingly  I'eads  the  ordi. 
nary  reader  astray  by  inaccurate  use  of  those 


Among  the  other  topics  of  vital  moment 
which  are  here  treated  are:  the  situation  in  Fin- 
land and  Poland ;  the  character  of  the  Russian 
peasants,  to  whom  Btepniak  pays  the  high  tri- 
bute which  is  their  just  due,  but  which  they 
rarely  receive  from  foreign  writers;  Nihilism, 
of  which  he  gives  the  first  and  t)est  summary,  in 
Its  strikingly  varied  phases,  from  its  inception 
to  the  present  day;  and  the  revolutionary  view 
of  Nicholas  II.,  and  his  brief  reign  to  date^  As 
to  the  spirit  of  the  latter,  it  can  only  be  said 


that  the  judgment  must,  of  necessity,  be  super- 
ficial and  hasty ;  that  it  Is  not  softened  by  even 
so  much  as  the  suggestion  that  a  vast  empire 
cannot  be  switched  to  another  track  in  the 
course  of  a  few  months ;  and  that,  while  the 
author  hotly  champions  the  cause  of  the  pea- 
sants, he  blames  the  Emperor  for  paying  too 
much  heed  to  them  as  well  as  for  oppressing 
them.  **  Relentless,  implacable  hostility  to- 
ward the  whole  of  enlightened,  educated  Rus- 
sia,  and  patriarchal  benevolence  toward  the 
peasants,  such  is  the  policy  of  the  new  Czar,'^ 
he  says,  just  as  he  has  violently  attacked  Alex- 
ander III.  for  being  **the  Peasant  Czar ^*  and 
upholding  the  peasants  by  entirely  different 
methods.  In  short,  it- is  unjust  irrevocably  t3 
condemn  Nicholas  II.  as  **Klng  Log^'  for  in- 
action,  and  Alexander  III.  as  **  King  Stork," 
the  devourer  of  his  people,  when  it  is  plain 
that  no  consistent  canon  of  conduct  exists 
even  in  the  mind  of  the  implacable  judge  who 
seeks  thus  to  sentence  them  to  eternal  oppro- 
brium. 

We  return,  last  of  all,  to  our  former  asser- 
tions, that  the  two  volumes  are  interesting  and 
enthralling  to  the  highest  degree,  but  that  we 
dare  not  accept  them  as  finally  authoritative, 
either  as  to  concrete  statements  or  as  to  the 
general  impression  produced,  after  the  sped- 
mens  of  inaccuracy  which  we  have  selected  for 
illustration. 


Chess  Sparks.     By  J.  H.  Ellis.    Longmans, 

Green  &  Co.    1895. 
Chess  Novelties,     By  H.  E.  Bird.     Frederic 

Warne  &  Co.  1895. 
In  a  letter  about  chess  written  some  years  ago, 
John  Ruskin  remarked:  **  I  may  tell  you  one 
thing  much  in  my  mind^the  possibility  of  as- 
signing value  to  games,  primarily  by  the  few- 
ness of  moves,  secondly  by  the  fewness  of  cap- 
tures. Exchange  games,  where,  after  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  moves,  the  victor  wins  by  an 
odd  pawn,  may  contain  calculations  enough 
for  next  year*s  almanac,  but  they  are  quite  out 
of  my  horison  of  chess."  Impelled,  no  doubt, 
by  similar  views,  Mr.  Ellis  has  made  a  most 
fsscioating  collection  of  games  in  which  a  win- 
ning position  was  attained  in  twenty  moves  or 
less.  Many  of  these  games  were  played  by 
celebrated  masters,  and  are  more  or  less  well- 
known  specimens  of  brilliancy,  while  others 
are  perhaps  more  remarkable  for  brevity  than 
scientific  skllL  Among  the  examples  of  eigh- 
teenth-century play  is  a  delightful  giuoco  piano 
of  sixteen  moves,  won  by  Jean  Jacques  Rous- 
seau in  1760  from  the  Prince  de  Contl,  another 
proof— if  proof  were  needed — of  the  versatility 
of  that  remarkable  intellect.  Abundant  dia- 
grams make  it  easy  for  the  reader  to  follow 
the  more  complicated  games,  and  Mr.  Ellis  has 
further  supplied  him  with  an  index  of  players, 
a  table  of  solutions,  and  a  chronicle  giving  the 
results  of  all  the  important  chess  matches  and 
tournaments  from  1824  to  1894.  Typographi- 
cal errors,  of  the  kind  so  common  in  chess 
books,  are  pleasantly  lacking. 

This  particular  merit  is  not  shared  by  Mr. 
Bird's  book,  which  contains  plenty  of  in- 
stances  of  K  instead  of  Kt,  and  even  K  to  Q3 
instead  of  Kt  to  Q  Bd.  Other  merits,  how- 
ever,  it  certainly  possesses.  In  the  first  place, 
the  veteran  author  is  an  interesting  personage 
in  the  chess  world.  As  long  ago  as  1847  he 
was  playing  matches  with  that  admirable 
performer  Buckle,  the  historian.  In  1851  be 
played  on  even  terms  with  the  great  Anders- 
sen,  and  in  1858  he  made  a  very  fair  showing 
against  the  invincible  Paul  Morphy.  From 
that  time  up  to  the  Hastings  tournament  of 


this  year  he  has  constantly  taken  part  in  tour- 
naments and  matches,  and,  while  never  in  the 
very  first  rank  of  players,  he  has  met  with 
enough  success  to  entitle  him  to  a  hearing  on 
behalf  of  his  particular  theories.  At  the  outset 
he  disavows  any  claim  to  atMolute  originality 
in  his  chess  ideai>,  but  he  has  always  been  known 
as  a  believer  in  certain  irregular  openings— par- 
ticularly  P  to  K  B4 — and  his  book  is  a  some- 
what rambling  but  decidedly  entertaining 
plea  for  such  openings,  and  in  general  for 
brilliant  as  opposed  to  ** drawing-master's" 
chess.  He  points  out  that  whereas,  in  the 
great  match  between  Labourdonnais  and  Mc- 
Donnell in  1833,  no  less  than  sixteen  different 
openings  were  tried,  the  modern  masters 
rarely  venture  beyond  the  Ruy  Lopez  or  the 
queen^s  gambit.  This  lack  of  variety  he  at- 
tributes to  the  high  stakes  now  played  for, 
which  give  an  undue  importance  to  the  mere 
fact  of  winning,  with  a  resulting  unwilling- 
ness on  the  part  of  the  players  to  risk  any  but 
the  safest  and  most  deeply  analyzed  openings. 
It  is  certainly  curious  that  so  little  that  is 
novel  has  been  attempted  in  the  openings  dur- 
ing the  last  fifty  years.  In  the  *  Modem  Chess 
Instructor,'  published  by  Steinitz  in  1889,  the 
only  two  original  suggestions,  viz:  PtoQS 
in  the  Ruy  Lopfz,  and  Kt  to  K  R  3  in  the 
Two  Knights  Defence,  have  not  stood  the  test 
of  practice,  and  have  been  abandoned  by  their 
author.  On  the  other  hand,  it  seems  very 
doubtful  whether  Bir.  Bird's  elaborate  argu- 
ments in  favor  of  his  special  openings  will 
carry  conviction  to  the  minds  of  other  players. 
Writing  before  the  recent  meteoric  appearance 
of  young  Pillsbury,  Mr.  Bird  evidently  regard- 
ed  himself  as  almost  the  sole  survivor  of  the 
school  of  Anderssen  and  Morphy,  who  aimed 
to  mate  or  win,  while  the  other  players  of  the 
day  had  become  imbued  with  the  theories  of 
Steinitz,  who  aims  to  avoid  losing  and  to  be 
certain  of  a  draw.  But^  since  this  book  was 
printed,  a  second  Morphy  has  astonished  the 
chess  world,  and  the  St.  Petersburg  tourna- 
ment just  over  proved  that  some  of  Mr.  Bird's 
theories  will  probably  require  revision.  None 
of  the  four  masters  engaged  in  that  tourna- 
ment will  be  found  to  have  offered  a  P  to  K  B 
4  opening. 


Two  Years  on  the  Alabama,  By  Arthur  Sin- 
clair. Boston :  Lee  &  Slf epard.  1895. 
This  book  has  a  right  to  exist.  Written  by 
one  of  the  line  officers  of  the  Alabama  after  a 
service  coincident  with  the  cruise  of  the  ves- 
sel, it  has  certain  advantages  over  Semmes's 
narrative  in  consequence  of  the  subsidence  of 
war  passions  and  the  settlement  with  England 
of  the  Alabama  question.  Semmes's  narri- 
tive  was  in  a  turgid  and  infiated  style,  and 
bitter  in  partisanship  and  denunciation  of  the 
North.  Sinclair,  it  is  true,  professes  only  to  give 
a  personal  narrative  of  the  cruise,  but  this 
practically  includes  all  that  is  of  general  or 
professional  interest,  while  in  narration  of 
facts  he  writes  more  pleasantly  as  well  as  more 
correctly  than  Semmes.  He  has  taken  con- 
siderable trouble  to  verify  his  statements,  and 
he  has  also  profited  by  data  and  criticisms  that 
were  probably  unknown  to  Semmes. 

After  all  that  can  be  said  as  to  the  grett 
vexation  and  pecuniary  loss  brought  about 
during  the  civil  war  by  the  cruise  of  the  Ala- 
bama,  the  fact  remains,  and  stands  out  in  clear 
light,  that  her  career  had  no  vital  effect  upon 
the  course  of  the  war.  Semmes  saw  this,  and 
laments  it  in  his  book,  whUe  Sinclair  in  turn 
remarks  that,  parallel  with  the  success  of  the 
Alabama  in  her  latter  days,  was  the  steady 


106 


Tlie   iN^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1596 


failure  of  the  war  against  the  Union  and  the 
approaching  downfall  of  the  Southern  Con- 
federacy. Too  much  prominence  cannot  be 
given  to  the  policy  of  Secretary  Welles,  steadi- 
ly persisted  in  and  so  well  justified  by  rcwilts, 
not  to  weaken  the  pressure  of  the  blockade  on 
the  Southern  States  by  a  large  diversion  of 
force  against  the  Confederate  cruisers.  The 
maintenance  of  this  great  naval  operation  was 
a  vital  element  in  the  subjugation  of  the  Con- 
federacy,  by  destroying  its  commerce  and  de- 
priving an  agricultural  country  of  manufac- 
tured articles  which  included  military  supplies 
of  all  kinds,  and  also  gradually  closing  to  it 
the  market  for  its  staple  article,  cotton,  upon 
the  sale  of  which  it  relied  for  outside  aid  and 
assistance— financial,  political,  military,  and 
naval.  The  commerce  destroying  of  the  AUu 
bama  was  insignificant  in  its  results  compared 
to  this  commerce  suppression;  and  the  com- 
mand  of  the  sea  always  with  the  North,  de- 
spite the  raids  of  the  Confederate  cruisers,  not 
only  kept  the  blockade  intact,  but  brought  the 
pressure  from  the  sea  responsive  to  that  by 
land  which  encircled  the  States  in  rebellion 
and  caused  the  success  of  the  Union  cause. 

Lieut.  Sinclair  brings  out  more  forcibly 
than  moat  writers  the  English  character  of 
the  crew  of  his  veaeel.  The  sympathy  of 
English  officials  and  of  colonial  authorities  is 
an  old  story,  but  it  is  interesting  to  note  what 
is  said  on  page  146: 

**The  English,''  he  says,  **  the  foster-fathers 
of  the  Alabama,  are  naturally  proud  of  their 
creation,  and  they  appear  to  be  also  in  sym- 
pathy with  us  and  our  cause.  Our  crew  are 
about  one  half  English  man-of-war's  men,  and 
have  found  among  the  sailors  of  the  Enii:lish 
squadron  here  many  old  shipmates,  and  doubt- 
less they  have  already  planned  a  glorious  time 
together  on  shore  the  first  liberty  day." 

The  author's  criticism  of  the  neglect  of  our 
Navy  Department  to  station  a  vessel  at  suc> 
salient  points  as  the  vicinity  of  Cape  St.  Roque, 
the  Cape  of  Oood  Hope,  Singapore,  and  similar 
positions,  is  well  founded,  and  the  neglect  re- 
flects upon  the  good  judgment  and  wisdom  of 
the  naval  advisers  of  Secretary  Welles.  Credit 
is  given  to  Capt  C.  H.  Baldwin,  commanding 
the  Vanderbilt,  for  the  best  display  of  judg- 
ment in  the  pursuit  of  the  Alabama.  Human- 
ly speaking,  had  it  not  been  for  the  detention 
of  the  Vanderbilt  by  Admiral  Wilkes,  and  (at 
•  later  time)  for  the  enormous  consumption  of 
coal  by  the  Vanderbilt,  the  captor  of  the  Ala- 
bama would  have  been  Baldwin  instead  of 
Winslow,  and  its  fate  met  off  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  or  in  the  Indian  Ocean  rather  than  in 
the  English  Channel  off  Cherbourg.  The 
greater  part  of  the  cruising  and  most  of  the 
captures  of  the  Alabama  were  made  under 
saiL  Excellent  sailing  vessel  that  she  was, 
her  powers  of  keeping  thq  sea  far  exceeded 
those  possessed  by  the  cruiser  of  to^ay— the 
so-called  commerce  -  destroyer  —  whose  sail 
power  has  disappeared,  and  whose  coal  con- 
sumption, reduced  by  modem  improvements, 
is  newly  taxed  by  the  daily  domestic  demands 
for  distilling,  heating,  electric  lighting,  and 
auxiliary  engines.  We  prophesy  that  the  next 
great  war  will  witness  the  commerce-destroyer 
principally  occupied  with  the  duty  of  scout  and 
convoy,  commerce  itself  being  duly  convoyed 
or  carried  by  vessels  having  swift  pairs  of  heels. 

Agreeing  with  Bullock,  the  author  pays  a 
high  tribute  to  the  special  qualifications  of 
Semmes  for  the  work  upon  which  his  fame 
rests.  One  of  these  special  qualifications  was 
his  knowledge  of  international  law,  which 
stood  him  in  good  stead  in  the  many  contro- 
versies he  was  engaged  in  during  bis  cruise.  It 
is  probable,  as  the  writer  states,  that  Senunes, 


having  made  an  especial  study  of  this  branch 
of  naval  training,  had  no  equal  in  either  navy. 
As  a  requisite  for  a  well-educated  naval  officer 
it  has  not  lost  its  importance  in  these  later 
times,  either  in  time  of  war  or  in  the  more  ex- 
tended period  of  peace. 

The  account  of  the  final  engagement  of  the 
Alabama  is  excellent.  It  is  the  best  that  we 
know  of  and  is  without  hyperbole  or  exaggera- 
tion. The  intention  of  Semmes  to  board  the 
Kearsarge  is  dwelt  upon,  and  the  advantage 
that  the  superior  speed  of  the  Kearaarge  gave 
in  the  avoidance  of  this  purpose  is  well  brought 
out.  The  failure  to  board,  and  the  damaged 
condition  of  the  ^{a6ama's  powder,  the  author 
seems  to  think  were  the  principal  causes  of  the 
defeat.  The  statement  of  the  master  of  the 
Dterhoundy  the  yacht  which  picked  up  Semmes, 
was,  however,  that  **  it  was  a  fair  stand-up 
fight.  The  two  vessels  were  constructed  of  the 
same  materials,  and  the  chances  at  first  seemed 
to  be  even  enough."  As  to  the  use  of  the 
anchor  chain  of  the  Kearsarge  for  protection 
amidship,  the  author  frankly  acknowledges 
that  Semmes  knew  of  this  use  of  the  chain 
cable  of  the  Kearaarge,  and  also  that  he  could 
have  adopted  the  same  scheme  from  his  own 
resources  had  he  so  desired.  But  the  protec- 
tion thus  afforded  was  insignificant,  as  a  peru- 
sal of  Winslow's  reports  and  the  appendices 
giving  the  hits  made  and  their  localities  will 
show.  In  regard  to  the  mistake  made  by 
Senunes  in  consenting  to  an  engagement, 
which  in  a  large  sense  may  be  called  a  strategic 
mistake,  the  writer  professes  ignorance  of  its 
purpose.  It  was  probably  the  mistake  of  a 
brave  man  stung  by  taunts  as  to  want  of  cou- 
rage to  meet  an  equal.  It  is  quite  certain,  too, 
as  the  author  mentions,  that  a  long  detention 
for  repairs  at  Cherbourg  would  have  brought 
about  that  port  a  fleet  of  Union  cruisers  which 
would  have  prevented  her  safe  departure. 

The  story  of  the  cruise  is  as  a  whole  well 
written,  clear,  and  consecutive,  excepting  a 
pardonable  repetition  on  page  114.  This  vol- 
ume, with  Bullock's  account  of  the  Alabamans 
origin  and  Semmes's  account  of  her  career, 
will  probably  constitute  the  definitive  presen- 
tation of  the  remarkable  cruise  of  the  Alabama 
from  the  side  of  those  who  cruised  in  her. 


P^sonal  Reminiscences  of  Notable  People, 
By  Charles  K.  Tuckerman.  2  vols.  Dodd, 
Mead  &  Co.  18d5. 
Thess  two  costly  volumes  purport  to  be  only  a 
richavffi  of  what  has  already  appeared  in 
various  magazines.  They  cover  very  different 
ground,  the  first  dealing  with  the  reminiscen- 
ces of  the  author's  earlier  life,  encountering 
various  great  men  in  America;  the  second 
founded  on  his  diplomatic  experience  in  the 
East,  at  Athens  and  Constantinople.  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  latter  series 
of  anecdotes  is  much  more  novel  and  inte- 
resting than  the  former.  The  chapters  which 
show  the  incurable  procrastination  and  chi- 
canery of  the  Turkish  Gk>vemment  are  well 
worth  reading  at  the  present  day,  when  the 
great  Powers  of  Ehirope  and  America,  untaught 
by  the  experience  of  generations,  are  waiting 
for  the  Sultan  to  keep  his  engagements— in 
other  words,  for  the  Bosphorus  to  run  dry. 
The  rest  of  the  book  is  gossipy,  and  of  but 
little  permanent  value.  A  large  number  of 
stories,  e.  g.,  that  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
(i.  271),  are  distinctly  stale;  others,  as  that  of 
Butler  (i.  89),  pretty  flat.  But  the  whole  book 
produces  an  uneasy  feeling  from  the  frequent 
insertion  of  anecdotes  leaving  a  mean  impres- 
sion of  the  individuals  to  whom  they  relate, 


with  little  or  nothing  to  counteract  it.  Mr. 
Seward  is  almost  the  only  person  who,  after 
passing  uuder  Mr.  Tuckerman's  eye,  has  not 
had  some  rip  or  tear  in  his  moral  garb  expos- 
ed, or  what  is  meaiit  to  appear  such.  Some- 
times this  effect  is  produced  at  the  price  of 
very  inadequate  knowledge.  To  say  that  Ed- 
ward Everett  **felt  the  leaden  weight  of 
disappointed  ambition"  (i.  33),   that  Abbott 

Lawrence  (indicated  as  Mr.  L )  acquired  his 

manner  by  **  studying  his  Talleyrand,"  is  to 
convict  Mr.  Tuckerman  of  the  most  superficial 
knowledge  of  these  eminent  men. 

There  volumes,  though  generally  written  in 
good  English,  contain  some  disgraceful  blun- 
ders—whether of  author  or  printer  is  not  al- 
ways clear.  **  Blaine  Washbume"  appears 
(i.  84)  as  one  person,  between  Thaddeus  Stevens 
and  Reverdy  Johnson.  Lord  Ronald  Gower 
becomes  (i.  127)  Lord  Gower,  by  the  eternal 
American  blunder  in  similar  titles.  Two  pages 
further  on  we  have  statu  quo  in  the  nomina- 
tive for  statue  quo.  A  well-known  quotation 
has  its  point  nearly  spoilt  by  being  given, 
*'From  grave  to  gay,  from  serious  to  se- 
vere "  (i.  1 53) .  *'  Sonnambula  "  is  twice  printed 
'< Somnambula"  (i.  164, 190).  ** Maria Stuarda" 
becomes  '*  Maria  Stuarea  "  (i.  181) .  The  famous 
answer,  **  Qn'il  mour^t,"  which  our  author  pots 
into  the  mouth  of  Rachel,  as  Camiito,  belongs 
to  the  part  of  the  old  Horatius  (i.  186).  The 
French  word  embonpoint  is  wrongly  used 
(i.  806),  and  Simon  Fure  (i.  310) .  Joaquin  Mil- 
ler is  printed  Joachim,  as  if  it  were  a  real 
name  (it  13),  ^^PetUs  Lundis^  loses  an  «  (ii. 
105),  **Le  Japan''  becomes  *'La  Japan""  (IL 
166),  *'Jeunesse  dorie""  loses  iU  final  e  (ii.  24^. 
The  phrase  genus  homo  is  used  as  equivalent 
to  the  male  sex  (ii.  281).  *' Grande  i?ue"  is 
altered  to  '*  Orand  Rue"'  (ii.  341).  When  one 
has  to  pay  five  dollars  for  two  small  volumes, 
this  is  an  extra  allowance  of  mistakes. 


ifars.  By  Perdval  Lowell.  Boston  :  Hough- 
ton, Mifflin  &  Co.  1805. 
Mr.  Lowell's  book  is  charming  in  more  ways 
than  one.  His  facile  pen  would  make  easy 
reading  of  the  driest  subject;  and  when  it 
deals  with  a  theme  so  fascinating  as  that  of 
the  conditions  of  life  on  another  planet,  hard- 
hearted indeed  must  be  the  critic  who  does 
not  find  himself  ready  to  embrace  conclusions 
which  he  would  have  contemptuously  rejected 
if  reached  by  a  rougher  path.  The  author's 
enthusiasm  for  his  subject  is  shown  even  more 
strongly  by  the  enterprise  on  which  the  book 
is  based  than  by  what  the  latter  sets  forth.  It  is 
no  commonplace  spectacle,  that  of  a  man  of  not 
very  easy  leisure,  perhaps  in  a  situation  where 
the  ordinary  mortal  would  have  been  com- 
pletely engrossed  in  business,  abandoning  his 
home  for  nearly  a  year,  and  fitting  up  at  no 
little  expense  an  establishment  in  the  deeerta 
of  Arizona,  for  the  sole  purpose  of  seeing  from 
the  best  point  of  view  what  is  going  on  in 
Mars.  We  feel  that  such  an  enterprise  de- 
serves some  good  result,  and  some  more  cheer- 
ing  word  than  that  of  the  astronomer  who  re- 
marked that  Mr.  Lowell  had  been  very  suc- 
cessful in  discovering  what  he  had  announced 
his  intention  of  finding  before  he  set  out. 

From  our  guide  over  the  oceans  and  conti- 
nents of  Mars  we  learn  that  our  neighboring 
planet  really  has  an  atmosphere,  though  serious 
confiict  with  Prof.  Campbell's  opposite  view  is 
avoided  by  that  atmosphere's  being  rarer  than 
ours  is  at  the  tops  of  the  Himalayas.  Clouds 
rarely  .obscure  the  sunny  skies,  yet  there  Is 
enough  of  watery  vapor  to  condense  into  a 
snow- cap  around  either  pole  during  its  winter* 


Jan.  30,  1896] 


Tlie   :N"ation. 


107 


At  ipriog  adyacces,  the  cap  ilowlj  begiDS  to 
melt  away  and  form  an  ocean  of  blue  water 
aroond  iU  contracting  boundary.  Water  is 
?ery  icarce  on  the  planet,  and  is  growing 
■career  from  age  to  age,  owing  to  itt  absorp- 
tion Into  the  body  of  the  planet  The  inhabi. 
tants  ba^e  uUliied  the  diminishing  supply  by 
an  elaborate  system  of  irrigation.  *  Canals  are 
dug  which  annually  convey  the  water  melting 
at  either  pole  to  the  equatorial  regions.  A 
broad  belt,  thui  watered  into  fertility,  skirts 
each  canal,  and  these  belts,  distinguished,  by 
their  yegetition,  from  the  arid  plains  which 
form  all  the  rest  of  the  planet*s  surface,  are 
seen  from  the  earth  as  a  network  of  fine  lines. 
The  author  cannot  be  charged  with  ignoring 
any  obvious  objections  to  his  views.  The  lat- 
ter are  sustained  by  a  wealth  of  illustration 
and  a  completeness  of  argument  which  leave 
nbthing  to  be  desired  except  credibility  of 
foundation  and  conclusion.  We  do  not  object; 
we  only  feel  that  we  know  so  little  of  the  pos- 
sible conditions  on  the  surface  of  Mars  that  the 
chances  are  scores  to  one  against  any  theory 
we  can  now  frame  l)eing  a  true  one.  While 
commending  Mr.  Lowell's  production  to  the 
general  reader,  we  cannot  deny  that  astrono- 
mers would  everywhere  have  felt  more  ooofl- 
dence  in  his  observations  if  he  had  been  sati'-- 
fled  to  confloe  himself  to  describing  and  pic- 
turing what  he  8%w,  without  attempting  to 
frame  any  theory,  even  in  the  innermost  re- 
cesses of  his  mind.  Without  this  precaution 
the  most  careful  observer  is  liable  to  become  a 
dupe  of  the  ** expectant  attention**  of  the  p^- 
chologists,  and  to  see  things  in  accord  with  bis 
preconceived  notions  rather  than  with  the 
facts.  Especially  is  this  the  case  in  tracing 
markings  so  faint  and  shadowy  as  those  on  the 
surface  of  our  neighboring  plsnet. 


New  Orhan* :  The  Place  and  the  People.    By 

Grace  King.  New  York:  Macmillan. 
Tbx  historian  who,  with  impartial  acumen, 
sifts  a  mass  of  documents  in  order  to  form  a 
clear  judgment  of  events  long  past,  mu«t 
speak  with  soberness  of  detail  of  the  actors  in 
a  nation^s  life;  their  personality  is  lost  sight 
of  in  the  importance  of  the  part  they  play. 
Yet  if  he  confine  himself  exclusively  to*  the 
broad  lines  of  his  subject,  he  will  make  his 
history  very  dry  reading;  if,  running  into  the 


other  extreme,  he  attempts  to  delineate  indi 
vidual  character  on  too  extensive  a  scale,  his 
work  will  be  little  better  than  a  voluminous 
compilation  of  biographies.  The  history  of  a 
city— especially  of  a  relatively  young  city- 
presents  a  more  circumscribed  field;  but  if  the 
first  danger  is  minimized,  to  avoid  the  last  is 
still  more  difficult ;  the  founders,  the  actors  in 
the  development  of  the  city  are  so  near  to  us 
that  the  story  of  their  deeds,  transmitted  by 
word  of  mouth  from  one  generation  to  an- 
other, has  all  the  charm  or  force  of  actuality. 
Tradition  has  not  had  time  to  become  legen- 
dary. Corroborative  evidence  is  not  lacking. 
Hence,  the  temptation  to  write  of  individuals 
rather  than  of  events  must  be  great. 

Miss  Grace  King  has  avoided  both  dangers 
in  her  new  work  on  New  Orleans.  The  accu- 
racy of  the  historical  part  of  the  book  is  unim- 
peachable, and  the  documentary  proofs  testify 
to  the  industrious  researches  of  the  author. 
But  the  facts  are  presented  in  Miss  King's 
usual  graceful  style,  and  there  is  nothing  dry 
about  them.  Nor  does  the  history  proper  form, 
as  it  were,  a  separate  chapter,  a  narrative, 
soon  ended,  to  introduce  biographical  compi- 
latioDS— as  is  the  case  with  some  other  books 
on  New  Orleans.  Here,  from  beginning  to 
end,  fr3m  the  first  exploration  of  the  Missis- 
sippi to  the  present  day,  we  see  a  succession 
of  panoramic  views,  of  tableaux  vivantM,  in 
which  the  dramatis  personse- be  they  LaS  ille, 
It>erville,  John  Law,  the  Regent,  Louis  XV., 
O'Reilly,  Viller^,  Napoleon,  Jackson,  Lafitte 
the  pirate,  or  Ben  Butler,  be  they  far  or  near 
—appear  in  a  life-like  delineation.  It  is  his- 
tory acted,  not  told.  And  while  the  eventful 
growth,  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  old  French 
city  and  its  new  life,  are  thus  faithfully  por- 
trayed, the  place  itself,  with  its  fading  land, 
marks,  its  gayetiee  and  days  of  mourning,  its 
local  celebrities  and  quaint  characters,  its  he- 
roes and  benefactors,  is  described  with  a  light- 
ness of  touch,  a  pathos  and  humor,  which  keeps 
the  interest  awake.  The  reader  is  loath  to  lay 
aside  this  handsome  volume,  profuseiy  illus- 
trated, with  rare  fidelity,  by  Frances  B.  Jones. 

The  Creoles  are  noted  for  their  enthusiastic 
attachment  for  their  city,  and  Miss  King,  her- 
self a  native,  may  be  charged  with  partiality 
by  those  who  do  not  know  New  Orleans;  but 
to  those  who  do,  her  book  bears  the  stamp  of 
truthfulness  as  well  as  of  a  generous  enthusi- 


asm.  It  will  please  the  general  reader  also  by 
the  piquant  show  of  manner^and  custonos  with 
which  it  abounds.  Admirers  of  General  But- 
ler and  of  the  carpetbag  regime,  however,  had 
better  skip  chapter  xiii.— the  only  one  which 
treats  of  **our  late  uuple 


BOOKS  OP  THE  WBSK. 

Andreft^.  Percy.     Stftnbope  of  Chester.    Rand,  Mo- 

NallyftCo.    ASc 
Baisac.  H.  de.   Unnle  Ulrouit.   London :  Dent^  Kew 

York :  Macmlllao.    91.00. 
Blniur.  PauL    Old  Btorles  Retold..   Syracose:  C.  W. 

Bardeen.    8dc 
Bruce.  PblUp  \    Eoonomlc  Hlstorr  of  Virginia  In  the 

SeTenteenth  Centory     Srola.   Mscmlllao.    96. 
Chamberlsl'*,  A.  F.   The  Child  and  Childhood  In  FV>lk- 

ThoQvht.   Macmillan    tS. 
Daseot,  Sir  George.   Tales  from  the  Field.   Vnm  the 

Norse  of  P.  Ch.  Awbjornien.    Mew  ed.   London :  Olb- 

blngn  A  Co ;  New  York :  Pnnnarot.   91.75. 
Field    Eugene.     The  Love  Affairs  of  a  Bibliomaniac. 

Scrlbnerf.    91.80. 
F(  !  ^  -11,..,  ,j,  W.    Lni.ti,:.ru„..^.    ,i.,j„;i^i,  i,.i,,,t  A.M-mJ 

>t;,.'i    |^.•1n        n>i^. 

Fr.Lik   '    Ainu.  M.    TDonBtiiiltKfftKmiTJit  'Thnraft'* 

Go'lntrL  HiirlofT.    An  OtitUEi<!>  maily  ot  LTblird  Slam 

aiJr.^"«rT.    Syracuii-:  O.  W,  Hafdem.    J^Ot. 
Orai'-'V.  w.  V.   Tc^a^lhiD^  In  Three  C^nlln^uu :  Pi«f»$tia1 

Sr>h -^   "f   tiie    F!iiiir-aiTUiri4l  SjnteiiM   of   the  Wofid. 

■5-.^  r  <     i^(      I  .  '^V.  narriiH'f!      Sl.iiil^ 
H!l!i-.  ^^  -T       A  Mrf  rioiJ  H  If  lory  at  tln'  Uf*  aad  Tlm«a 

ii[  N.Hii'U-'iUj  TiMriD^iJartf      Putrintiii.    99, 
Holoiwi,  s.  W.    comttulatlon  Rule*  and  Loianthina, 

Jtnie^.  B  vv.     Ki?tioej  of  n«it]»,    FlitlftdeJplifa :  a.  T. 

Coitw  A  Cow    US- 
Lftbouchcre.    Kortia,     I.ji^1iv'  Pi>3k  plalei.      Loii4aD : 

Bi>M ;  New  tvtu :  Maemllfaci.    $i\. 
"Ltt   ijr*rleii«'"      BtMJcJtti'qne   Eofaatlnv.     lu  ^ola. 

Miet^i'li  iinil  j!*i?fS<Hpr^  Tbi>nia»  Mora» :  Ut'plit,  llAteliir 
jsrt'lu'  L-iiterai;ur-dfiiltri.ttl**r  dea  IV.  qucT  3EVI,  Jlahr* 
Iiufl'ierUl    Kprlln:  Wfldmathnpcttfl  BucbbaadlunK^ 

Nlix»Jt.  W.  H  TlieSeffiPH  WortTii  frtvinPth*?  Ct'^&m.  DtB- 
iin-at  H odder  k  ^tututrJitan;  Sew  Vork:  Bo<Jd.  Metid  Jfe 
Co.    5<*c. 

Peftii^eU,  J'>M?p11.  TI1Q  rilu^trotf^D  of  Booka.  Ltm6vB  t 
Unwm  ;  Svve  Tark  r  Ceiiiurr  Uo.    IU 

Proihero,  B  V^  Lett^n  atid  Ver^ei  of  Arthur  Feftrhye 
StoTilty     ftf?iibiipr»,    9*. 

Piih^'U  E,  3     Ufeof  €ArdlnaI  MaiiiilDi,    1$  Tola,    MJM- 

Qmll^T  Couch  A, T.  Wandering fle«tbt  t   urfei, Stodlet, 

Ruj  nur,  TH^il.     Ttio  tipfnst^r'a  Scrip,     ^acraUlan,    11. 
Rtnaii,  Ern«r.      Life  of  JeiUfe.     TrAn»l*tii:ni  newly  rw. 

RuioaLl,  C  K.    Bluti^fiaiLi  of  TbougbL    tkiiEcni:  Arena 

pqhllahlnir  Co. 
Bala,  i*.  A      Llffl  and  AdTODtureA.    8  wnU*   JScrfkmef*. 

Bhyov,  Prof.  A.  E,    Tixe  Eaypi  of  tb«  Sebrewii  and  Be> 

r-lni  -^     Maenolilaii.    ta. 
8c  uiuiMT,    Tbf^  JlercAuUle  fiytCeiEi  [EjDotiOfiild 

UaomDlHti.     iS^e. 
St  .' ,  aud  WLMinlbprry,  O,  R.    Thy  Work*  of 

i.iii  P0*',     VoU   VI  -X      eiJltfagW'  «ione  * 
1  ai  h  tlfiH, 
St  ij.ut.    fitijijc-pjiftttirea.    App\HQn,    ?Jlc, 

V<  n   «]iF'.    K  us«  Ian  Port  r^ltK      Putnuni.    &0c« 

W.^   u  0!.  Irpfifiwuil.    Thi  Uremi  afH^nlUK  of  Metaaoda, 

'iJN.>ma^  WMttaitrr.    9L 
Wii^rorrl,  L.  K    ButXH-ftturs  UMlH?  TiHe.   AppLctout,   #1. 
WiitMMv.    U*v-   .Toim    i^'laii    llrLAftn**u     Tto«   Upper 

Jt<K»m.    ikHjKl,  Mt^d  a  I'w.     Stk'. 
Wt'itk.    W.    U.   J.      tierjird    liflvy.    [ntrtfolto  Mopo^ 

Krnpijft-1    Ma*  ml  Man. 
^ebbiVplw,  Kev.  H.  W.    The  Vlotorlom  Uf#.    Baler 

dtTayk^rCo,    91.^^ 
\!Vh  If,  A     M-     Out  I  It  CI  i^r  teg^al   nifttgij.    Lotid*ja  r 

FUjnhrntM'tii'tfi ;  iNi'w  Yorfe  t  lUat^niHlBD.    ti. 
WIchftTt  ErusU    AH  drr  MaJcmt-^Lk^.     Rrnry  JtoJI  S 

Co.    800. 


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Volume  111.  of  tlie   Economic  Studies 

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THE  HISTORY 

OF  THE 

Indiao  Silver  Correocy 

By  KARL   BLLSTABTTER. 

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OFFICE  OF  THE 


Atlantic  Mutual 

INSURANCE  COMPANY. 

Nbw  Yosk.  January  81. 1806. 

The  Trustees,  in  eonformity  with  the  Charter 
rf  the  Company,  submit  the  following  State- 
ment of  its  affairs  on  the  jrst  of  December, 
'893' 
Premiums   on   Marine  Risks  from   1st 

January.  1890.  to  81st  December  1890.  •8,092.878  48 
Premiums  on  Policies  not  marked  off 
Itt  January.  1800 .".     1.047.101  41 


Tctal  Marine  Premiums •3.600.083  83 


Premiums  marked  off  from  1st  January, 

1800,  to  8 1st  December,  1800 08.040,748  88 

Losses  paid  during  the 

same  period 01.818,407  00 

Returns  of  Pre-  ^— — ^— 

mlums    and 

Expenses....  •608.410  88 

The  Company  has  tbe  following  Assets,  vis  : 

United  8Utes  and  City  of  New  York 
Stock:  City  Banks  and  other  Stocks. . . .  •8.000.100  00 

Loans  secured  by  S  ocks  and  otherwise. .    1,8 16,000  00 

Real  Estate  and  Claims  due  the  Compa- 
ny, estimated  at 1,000004  00 

Premium  Notes  and  BUU  Receivable 800  431  88 

Cash  in  Bank 908.0  8  83 


Amount •11.374.060  11 


81x  per  cent  Interest  on  the  outstanding  certifloates 
of  profits  will  t>e  paid  to  the  holders  thereof,  or  their 
legal  representatives,  on  and  after  Tuesday,  the  fourth 
of  Fetouary  next. 

The  ouistanding  oertlflcates  of  the  issue  of  1800  will 
be  redeemed  and  paid  to  the  holders  thereof,  or  their 
legal  representatives,  on  and  after  TueMlsy,  the  fourth 
of  February  next,  from  which  date  all  Interest  thereoa 
will  cease.  The  certtficates  to  be  produced  at  the  lima 
of  pajrment,  and  cancelled. 

A  dividend  of  FORTY  PER  CENT.  Is  declared  on  the 
net  earned  premiums  of  tbe  Company  for  the  year  end- 
ing 3*  st  December.  1890.  for  which  oerUfloatea  will  be 
Issued  on  and  after  Tuesday,  the  fifth  of  May  next. 
By  order  of  the  Board. 

J.  F.  CHAPMAN.  Secretary. 

TBUSTEEa. 
George  Bliss. 
John  L.  Rlkcr. 
,  C.  A.  Hand, 
John  D.Hewlett, 
Oustav  Amslnck. 
N.Denton  Smith. 
Chas.  H.  Marshall. 
Chas  D.Leverich. 
Edw*d  Floyd-Jones. 
George  H  Macy. 
Lawrence  Tumure. 
Wsldron  P.  Brown. 

W.  H.  H.  MOORF.  President. 

A.  A.  RAVEN.  Vtee^Presldent. 

F.  A.  PARSONS.  9d  Vice-Preftldent. 


W.  H.  H.  Moore. 
A.  A.  Raven. 
Jos.  H.  Chapman, 
James  Low, 
Jas.  O.  DeForest, 
WllllamDegroo\ 
Willam  H.Webb. 
Horace  Gray, 
C.  de  Thomsen. 
Chas  P.  Bnrdett, 
Henry  E.Hawley, 
Wm  E  Dodge, 


Anson  W.  Hard. 
Isaac  Bell, 
Joseph  Agostlnt, 
Vernon  H.  Brown, 
Leander  N.Lovell, 
Everett  Frasar. 
Wm  B.  B  <ultoa. 
Geo.W  Quintard, 
PanlL.Thebaud, 
Jco  B. Woodward, 
George  Coppell, 


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Samples  sent  for  25  cents. 

TUB  SURBRUQ  CO.,  Makers,  37  Dey  St.,  N.  Y. 


The    Nation. 


NEW  YORK,  THURSDAY,  FKBRUARY  6,  18WJ. 

The  Week. 

AvTEB  what  the  Senate  has  shown  itself 
capable  of  in  the  way  of  resolutions  re- 
specting Venezuela,  fln-de-siicle  Monroe- 
ism, and  Armenia,  its  deliverances  about 
Cuba  cannot  fail  to  strike  one  as  unez- 
pectedlj  and  gratefully  rational.  True, 
the  Cuban  resolutions  are  as  wanting  in 
grammar  as  the  Venezuelan  resolutions 
were  in  sanity,  or  the  Armenian  in  a  sense 
of  humor.  The  decay  of  statesmanship 
has,  in  fact,  reached  the  point  of  inability 
•Ten  to  draft  a  law  or  resolution  in  proper 
terms.  But  in  this  Cuban  business  it 
must  be  confessed  that  the  Senate  com- 
mittee's report  and  resolutions  show  that 
their  heart  is  right,  like  the  camp-meeting 
preacher's,  and  that  they  are  bound  for 
the  kingdom,  even  if  the  auxiliary  verbs 
are  too  much  for  them.  In  refraining^ 
from  urging  the  recognition  of  the  Cuban 
insurgents  as  belligerents,  they  display 
good  sense.  That  the 'Cuban  insurrec- 
tionists have  not  as  yet  succeeded  in  at- 
taining the  actual  status  of  belligerents 
is  generally  admitted,  and  must  be  the  opi- 
nion of  the  Senate  committee.  Senators 
must  have  considered,  moreover,  the  em- 
barrassments to  our  own  commerce  with 
Cuba  which  Would  be  certain  to  result 
from  the  grant  of  belligerent  rights  to  the 
insurrectionists,  and  doubtless  have  found 
therein  fresh  reason  for  moving  with 
caution.  They  have,  accordingly,  limited 
themselves  to  deploring  the  unnecessary 
barbarities  of  the  Cuban  war,  and  to  re- 
questing Spain,  if  the  war  must  go  on,  to 
grant  the  insurgent  armies  the  rights  to 
which  humanity,  if  not  the  abstract  law 
of  war,  entitles  them.  The  accompanying 
report  is  couched  in  moderate  and  humane 
terms.  Concerning  the  actual  posture  of 
affairs  In  the  island  the  Senate  committee 
wisely  say  little.  They  do  not  affirm  that 
the  Spanish  troops  have  been  guilty  of 
wanton  cruelties.  The  charge  that  they 
have  been  has  been  widely  circulated  in 
the  press,  and  has  been  held  to  be  self-evi- 
dent by  many  political  conventions  and 
orators.  But  the  Senate  report  says  no- 
thing on  this  head,  nor  does  it  maintain 
that  the  rebel  commanders  have  reepected 
the  lives  and  property  of  non-combttants. 


There  still  remains  a  chance  that  the 
nation  may  be  spared  the  full  measure  of 
humiliation  threatened  by  the  absurd  de- 
liverance of  the  Senate  and  House  of 
Representatives  on  the  Armenian  ques- 
tion. The  resolutions  as  passed  attempt 
to  ••  lay  down  the  law  "  for  Great  Britain, 
Germany,  Austria,  France,  Italy,  and 
Russia,  reciting  what  the  Senators  and 
Representatives  consider  **an  imperative 
duty  "  in  the  premises;  but  these  Powers 


will  never  be  informed  of  what  our  law- 
makers think  they  ought  to  do  unless  the 
President  complies  with  the  provision 
that  he  be  ''requested  to  communicate 
these  resolutions  to  the  Governments " 
of  the  six  European  nations.  The  en- 
couraging report  comes  from  Washing- 
ton that  this  request  does  not  meet  with 
the  favor  of  the  Administration,  and 
that  the  President  will  exercise  his  discre- 
tion by  doing  nothing  in  the  premises. 
It  is  to  be  hoped  on  every  account  that 
this  report  will  prove  true.  The  transmis- 
sion of  the  resolutions  would  do  no  good  to 
the  Armenians,  would  make  the  Sultan 
less  disposed  to  protect  Americans  in  his 
dominions,  and  would  simply  secure  us  a 
number  of  snubs  from  the  Powers  whom 
we  attempt  to  instruct  in  their  duty.  The 
worst  thing  about  the  **  fooling  "  of  the 
politicians  with  foreign  questions  like 
this  is,  that  it  publishes  the  shame  of  our 
Congress  to  the  world.  So  long  as  Sena- 
tors and  Representatives  **  play  politics" 
with  our  domestic  questions,  nobody 
abroad  pays  any  attention  to  them  ;  but 
when  they  try  to  regulate  the  rest  of  the 
\iniverse,  they  disgrace  the  United  States 
in  the  eyes  of  foreigners. 


In  1890  that  part  of  the  country  which 
lies  north  of  the  Potomac  and  the  Ohio 
and  east  of  the  Missouri  and  the  Red  River 
of  the  North  had  a  population  of  thirty- 
five  and  a  half  millions.  There  are  in  the 
Senate  now  thirty-five  members  from  that 
section  (one  Delaware  seat  being  vacant), 
each  of  whom,  therefore,  represents  on  an 
average  something  over  a  million  people. 
Of  these  thirty-five  Senators  twenty-three 
are  Republicans  and  twelve  Democrats. 
On  Saturday  last  thirty-two  of  them  voted 
or  were  paired  against  the  Jones  free-sil- 
ver substitute  for  the  House  bond  bill. 
The  three  who  voted  for  it  were  Senators 
Cameron,  Turpie,  and  Voorhees.  The  four- 
teen States  south  of  the  Potomac  and  the 
Ohio  are  represented  by  twenty-eight 
Senators,  two  of  whom  are  Republicans, 
one  a  Populist,  and  twenty-five  Democrats. 
The  population  of  these  States  in  1890 
was  21,000,000.  They  therefore  send  to 
the  Senate  one  member  for  every  750,000 
of  their  people.  One  of  the  Republicans, 
Senator  Elkins,  and  five  of  the  Democrats, 
Faulkner,  Martin,  Caffery,  Mills,  and 
Lindsay,  had  themselves  recorded  against 
free  coinage,  while  the  remaining  Repub- 
lican, Senator  Pritchard,  and  the  one 
Populist,  Senator  Butler,  and  twenty 
Democrats  were  amoog  its  supporters. 
tFrom  the  trans-Missouri  States  there  come 
kwenty-six  Senators,  five  of  whom  are 
Topulists,  two  Democrats,  and  nineteen 
Republicans.  This  whole  region,  includ- 
ing Oklahoma,  New  Mexico,  and  Arizona, 
had  in  1890  a  population  of  6,000,000.  It 
therefore  has  one  vote  in  the  Senate  for 
every  234,000  of  its  inhabitants.    Three  of 


the  Republican  Senators,  namely,  Thurs- 
ton, Baker,  and  McBride,  opposed  the 
free- silver  substitute,  but  the  remaining 
twenty-three  of  the  trans-Missouri  Sena- 
tors were  all  among  its  supporters.  In 
other  words,  eleven-twelfths  of  the  Sena- 
tors from  the  States  which  in  1890  had  a 
majority  of  eight  and  a  half  millions  of 
the  entire  population  of  the  country  are 
opposed  to  silver  monometallism,  while  its 
apparent  majority  is  due  entirely  to  the 
fact  that  it  has  among  its  advocates  more 
than  three-fourths  of  the  Senators  from 
the  South  and  more  than  seven-eighths  of 
those  from  the  far  West.  In  short,  the 
two  free-silver  sections  taken  together 
have  upon  an  average  one  Senator  for 
every  500,000  people,  the  an ti- free-silver 
section  one  for  every  1,000,000. 


It  is  worth  while  to  notice  also  the  pro- 
gress of  public  opinion  on  this  subject  in 
recent  years.  On  the  17th  of  June,  1890, 
Senator  Plumb  of  Kansas  offered  the  fol- 
lowing section  as  an  amendment  to  a 
House  bill  on  the  same  subject : 

"  That  hereafter  anv  owner  of  silver  or  gold 
bullion  may  deposit  the  same  at  any  mint  of 
the  Ucited  States  to  be  formed  into  standard 
dollars  or  bars  for  his  benefit  and  without 
charge ;  but  it  shall  be  lawfal  to  refuse  any 
deposit  of  less  value  than  $100,  or  any  bullion 
soba^e  as  to  be  unsuitable  for  the  operations 
of  the  mint ;  and  said  coins  shall  be  a  leg^ 
tender  for  all  debts,  public  and  private,** 

This  amendment  was  adopted,  and  the 
bill  passed  the  same  day  in  the  Senate  by 
a  vote  of  42  to  25,  the  majority  for  free 
coinage  being  17.  The  number  of  votes 
for  free  coinage  on  Saturday  last  was  ex- 
actly the  same,  42.  but  the  negative  had 
grown  to  35 ;  that  is,  ten  votes  had  been 
gained  for  sound  money  in  five  years,  not- 
withstanding the  admission  of  Utah,  Wyo- 
ming and  Idaho,  with  six  votes  gained  to  the 
other  side  in  an  undemocratic  way.  Even 
this  does  not  represent  the  whole  strength 
of  the  sound-money  forces.  In  1890,  too, 
one  vote  from  Pennsylvania  was  given  for 
free  silver,  that  of  Cameron,  who  will 
give  place  to  an  anti-silver  man  next  year. 
The  State  of  Kentucky  also  is  to  be  put 
in  the  anti-silver  column  soon.  So  it  ap- 
pears that  the  vote  just  taken  is  quite  in- 
consequential, representing  not  only  a 
minority  of  the  people,  but  a  rapidly  de- 
creasing minority.  For  these  reasons  the 
vote  in  the  Senate  cannot  have  any  ad- 
verse infiuence  on  the  bids  for  the  new 
bonds.  The  effect  has  been  already  dis- 
counted, and  the  present  prospect  is  that 
the  bidding  will  be  higher  than  the  price 
offered  by  the  Morgan  syndicate.  Of 
course  nobody  can  epeak  with  confidence 
on  this  point  until  the  bids  are  opened, 
but  the  opinion  prevails  that  the  bulk  of 
them  will  be  between  108  and  110.  The 
higher  price  is  most  gratifying,  and  is  un- 
doubtedly due  to  the  passing  away  of  the 
war  scare. 


no 


Tlie   [N'atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1597 


A  correspondent,  writing  to  us  from 
Santa  Barbara,  Cal.,  asks  whether  it  is 
true  that  Senator  Stewart  of  Nevada  was 
an  advocate  of  the  single  gold  standard  in 
1874,  as  stated  in  the  volume  of  John  Sher- 
man's *  Recollections.*  He  was.  In  the 
Congressional  Record  for  that  year  (page 
1392),  the  subject  under  debate  being  an 
amendment  to  the  national  banking  act, 
Senator  Stewart,  replying  to  a  question 
from  Senator  Logan,  said: 

"  I  want  the  standard  gold,  and  no  paper 
money  not  redeemable  in  gold ;  no  paper  money 
the  value  of  which  is  not  ascertained ;  no  paper 
money  that  will  organize  a  gold  board  to  specu- 
late in  it."  e  «»  *~ 

The  "gold  board"  referred  to  was  the 
Gold  Exchange  in  New  York,  which  exist- 
ed during  the  suspension  of  specie  pay- 
ments. Mr.  Stewart  very  properly  desired 
that  steps  should  be  taken  to  "knock  out** 
this  institution  by  resuming  specie  pay- 
ments. This  debate  on  the  national-bank 
amendment  was  somewhat  protracted. 
Mr.  Stewart  came  back  to  it  on  the  20th 
of  February  (page  1678).  Senator  Logan 
had  stated  that  we  could  not  get  the  gold 
to  resume  specie  payments  with.  To 
which  Stewart  replied: 

"  When  gold  is  invited  to  a  country  like  this, 
with  such  an  industrious  people  as  we  have,  with 
our  industry  and  our  resources,  I  say  there 
will  be  no  difficulty  about  getting  sufficient 
•gold.  ...  If  you  are  going  to  have  gold  in 
this  country,  you  must  make  a  demand  for 
gold  by  using  it.  .  .  .  You  have  legislated 
gold  out  of  your  country.  Invite  it  back,  and 
forty  million  people  will  get  you  all  the  g^ld 
you  want." 

And  much  more  of  the  same  tenor,  show- 
ing that  the  only  kind  of  specie  payments 
Stewart  thought  of  or  desired  was  gold 
payments. 


The  degradation  of  the  Senate  already 
seemed  complete,  but  Tillman*s  perform- 
ance on  Wednesday  week  showed  that  in 
the  lowest  deep  a  lower  deep  was  still  left 
to  be  touched.  A  worse  outbreak  of 
blackguardism  and  incendiarism  has 
never  been  witnessed  in  the  upper  cham- 
ber, and  it  is  a  melancholy  reflection  that 
the  country  has  six  years  of  such  dia- 
tribes to  look  for  from  the  same  source. 
All  of  the  conservative  traditions  of  the 
Senate  are  now  gone,  and  the  new-comer 
no  longer  hesitates  to  begin  talking  with 
the  frequency  and  profuseness  of  a  Mor- 
gan before  he  has  been  two  months  in  his 
seat  Even  before  Tillman*s  outburst,  a 
terrible  bore  had  been  revealed  in  one  of 
the  new  Senators  from  North  Carolina, 
and  the  growth  in  numbers  of  the  body 
makes  the  development  of  every  fresh 
speechifier  of  this  sort  a  sad  infliction. 
The  correspondents  report  that  the  Re- 
publican veterans  from  New  England, 
like  Morrill  of  Vermont  and  Hoar  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, appeared  shocked  and  wound- 
ed by  the  evidence  of  the  decadence  of 
the  Senate  that  was  afforded  by  "  the 
spokesman  of  the  new  and  degenerate 
South."  But  the  Republican  Senators  of 
New  England  are  not  free  from  blame  in 
this  matter.    It  was  Mr.  Hoar  who  wel- 


comed a  repudiator  from  Virginia  fifteen 
years  ago  as  an  evangel  of  a  new  South, 
and  Massachusetts  Republicans  have 
regarded  favorably,  when  they  have  not 
actively  helped,  the  movements  that  have 
brought  into  the  Senace  Butler  and 
Pritchard  of  North  Carolina  and  Till- 
man and  Irby  of  Sjuth  Carolina. 


Senator  Thurston  assures  the  country 
that  Nebraska  is  ready  for  the  horrors 
of  a  naval  war,  and  this  will  surely  make 
England  think  twice  before  ordering  her 
flying  squadron  to  Omaha.  He  also  an- 
nounces, with  Roman  firmness,  that  he 
is  ready  to  sacrifice  his  son  on  the  altar 
of  country,  so  long  as  he  remains  in 
Washington  to  vote  the  family  a  pension. 
Such  sound  and  fury  serve  a  good  pur- 
pose in  the  country  at  large  by  making 
the  whole  Davis-resolution  intrigue  ridi- 
culous. In  the  Senate  itself,  however, 
the  accession  of  a  new  incendiary  will 
encourage  all  the  others.  Canning  said 
that  he  did  not  dread  the  entrance  of  a 
firebrand  member  into  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, because,  he  declared,  "  firebrands 
as  soon  as  they  touch  this  floor  hiss  and 
expire.*'  But  that  was  because  the  gen- 
eral sense  and  conservatism  of  the  House 
fell  upon  the  firebrand  like  a  dash  of 
cold  water.  In  our  Senate  the  case  is 
now  vastly  different.  The  fioor  of  the 
Senate  chamber  is  already  filled  with  fire- 
brands, and  every  new  one  that  falls  on 
the  heap  makes  the  flames  leap  higher. 
Instead  of  water  it  is  oil  which  the  old 
members  fling  on  each  new  brand.  There 
is  indeed  an  immense  hissing,  as  Canning 
said,  both  of  the  reptilian  and  anserine 
kind,  but,  unluckily,  it  shows  no  sign  of 
expiring. 


It  is  evident  that  the  popularity  of 
the  Monroe-Davis-Lodge  resolutions  is 
rapidly  on  the  wane.  An  attempt  was 
made  to  assert  them  patriotically  in  the 
New  Jersey  Senate  on  Monday  evening, 
but  the  motion  was  quickly  laid  on  the 
table.  In  last  Sunday's  Boston  Herald^ 
the  Hon.  Greorge  S.  Bout  well,  whose  stiff 
Republicanism  will  not  be  questioned, 
had  a  searching  review  of  the  whole  con- 
duct of  the  Venezuela  business,  in  which 
the  President  and  Secretary  Olney,  to- 
gether with  Lodge  and  the  other  New 
England  representatives  whom  Mr.  Cleve- 
land stampeded,  come  in  for  weighty  re- 
buke. Mr.  Boutwell*s  Republicanism  and 
ideas  of  public  policy  date  back  to  the 
time  when  filibustering  principles  and 
highwByman*s  methods,  such  as  Frye  and 
Lodge  advocate,  were  denounced  in  Re- 
publican platforms,  and  he  is  within  his 
rights  in  calling  the  rash  innovators  of 
the  present  day  to  order.  To  give  the 
finishing  touch  of  farce  to  the  whole 
business,  it  is  now  announced  that  the 
Senate  will  have  the  rest  of  the  debate 
on  the  Davis  resolutions  held  behind 
closed  doors.  This  seems  incredible. 
Can  patriotism  be  hidden  under  a  bush- 


el? What  would  **the  immortal  Monroe** 
think  of  Senators  who  were  afraid  to 
mention  his  name  except  with  bated 
breath  an  1  in  secret?  If  there  is  a  sense 
of  humor  beyond  the  grave,  we  fear  he 
would  smile  a  pitying  smile,  especially 
when  he  remembered  how  short  a  time  it 
was  since  these  same  subterranean  Sena- 
tors were  riding  the  whirlwind  and  direct- 
ing the  storm  of  war  with  what  Dr.  John- 
son would  call  **  easy  volubility.** 


Mr.  Harrison's  announcement  that  his 
name  must  not  be  presented  or  used  in  the 
St.  Louis  convention  calls  attention  to  the 
extraordinary  condition  of  our  politics 
within  half  a  year  of  the  time  when  the 
two  great  parties  must  present  their  plat- 
forms and  candidates  in  a  Presidential 
campaign.  The  situation  was  vividly 
portrayed  in  this  answer  by  Senator  Brice 
of  Ohio  to  a  recent  question  by  the  corre- 
spondent of  the  Chicago  Timea-Herald^ 
as  to  what  was  going  to  be  the  outcome  of 
pending  attempts  at  legislation: 

**  Nothing,  nothing.  We  are  going  to  drift 
aloog,  that^s  all.  The  Senate  is  drifting,  the 
Admmistration  is  drifting,  the  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives is  drifting,  the  Democratic  party 
is  drifting,  the  Republican  party  is  drifting, 
the  Populists  are  drifting.  Everybody  and 
everything  is  drifting." 

Yes ;  '*  everybody  and  everything  is  drift- 
ing.** So  far  as  parties  are  concerned,  no 
one  need  worry;  the  country  can  get 
along  if  either  of  them  disappears.  But 
how  long  can  the  government  of  a  great 
nation  drift  without  danger  of  shipwreck? 
Mr.  Harrison,  who  now  takes  himself  out 
of  the  contest,  has  sometimes  been  called 
**  the  logical  candidate  **  of  his  party;  but 
where  is  the  logic  in  nominating  for  an- 
other term  the  man  who,  in  his  first  term, 
favored  a  tariff  law  which  his  own  party 
is  not  now  ready  to  revive,  a  silver-pur- 
chase act  which  his  party  had  to  help  re- 
peal within  three  years,  and  a  force  bill 
which  no  member  of  his  party  would  now 
hear  of?  McKinley,  too,  is  sometimea 
called  the  logical  candidate,  but  the  logic 
of  taking  a  man  whose  policy  has  once 
been  rejected  by  the  country  is  only  clear 
when  at  least  his  own  party  is  unitedly 
and  enthusiastically  for  trying  it  again. 


Mr.  Reed  continues  to  be  a  tongue-tied 
candidate  for  the  Presidency.  What  he 
thinks  about  the  currency,  about  the 
tariff,  about  foreign  policy,  the  public 
does  not  have  the  faintest  idea.  We  are 
compelled,  therefore,  to  infer  his  views 
from  what  he  does  and  from  the  charac- 
ter of  the  men  who  are  fighting  his  bat- 
tles. In  Louisiana  his  **  manager"  is  the 
notorious  ex-Gk)v.  Kellogg,  and  the  con- 
vention which  he  controlled  was  in  favor 
of  sugar  bounties,  free  silver,  and  the 
Populist  creed  in  general.  Eight  of  the 
Louisiana  delegates  are  reported  to  be 
certain  for  Reed.  The  question  is,  can  he 
go  on  dumbly  receiving  and  working  for 
such  support  without  alarming  his  friends 
in  the  North  and  East?    If  this  Soutli«m 


Feb.  6,  1896] 


Tjh.e   !N"atioii. 


Ill 


•apport  were  given  him  in  the  face  of  open 
declarationB  against  Southern  financial 
hereeiee,  the  case  would  be  different.  But 
Mr.  Reed  has  not  committed  himself  on  a 
single  point,  except  that  he  consumedly 
wants  to  be  President. 


The  Republican  rising  against  Piatt 
closely  resembles,  in  cause  and  course,  the 
Democratic  rising  against  Hill  four  years 
ago.  There  were  exactly  the  same  objec- 
tions to  pushing  that  movement  which 
Mr.  Root  makes  to  the  punishment  of 
Piatt  at  this  season.  To  the  honor  of  the 
independent  Democrats  be  it  said,  these 
objections  made  no  impression  on  them. 
They  said  that  the  time  to  punish  ftraud 
was  always  the  time  when  it  was  found 
out;  that  stays  of  proceedings  were  un- 
known in  the  forum  of  morals;  that  they 
would  not  let  Hill  alone  in  order  to  sha^e 
his  plunder.  They  accordingly  went  ahead, 
and  Providence,  who  generally  smiles  on 
courage  working  in  the  service  of  honesty, 
rewarded  them  with  complete  success.  It 
will  not  do  for  Republican  moralists  to 
have  lower  standards  and  fainter  hearts 
than  the  Democrats.  If  parties  are  never 
to  be  purified  in  the  Presidential  year, 
the  fate  of  this  Government  is  certain,  for 
all  real  power  is  rapidly  passing  into  the 
hands  of  the  men  who  boss  the  nominating 
conventions,  and  the  Presidential  year  is 
always  the  one  in  which  the  chief  frauds 
are  committed.  Mr.  Root's  plea  for  delay 
is  very  like  a  proposal  never  to  punish 
housebreaking  during  the  long  nights;  to 
wait  always  before  arresting  thieves  for 
the  pleasant  summer  weather,  when  they 
are  off  **  tramping  "  in  the  country.  Bet- 
ter news  for  the  political- rogues  than  that 
the  laws  of  morality  were  suspended  be- 
fore every  Presidential  campaign  there 
could  hardly  be. 


The  report  of  the  committee  on  the  Dun- 
raven  charges  is  most  thorough  and  con- 
vincing. One  knows  not  which  more  to 
admire,  the  acute  sifting  of  the  flimsy  evi- 
dence upon  which  Dunraven  based  his 
monstrous  accusations,  together  with  the 
overwhelming  array  of  rebutting  testimo- 
ny, or  the  tone  of  courteous  restraint  and 
Impartiality  In  which  the  whole  is  pitch- 
ed. There  is  not  a  word  of  fretting  or 
fury,  no  calling  of  names  or  bristling  of 
ears  or  mane.  In  a  very  excess  of  polite- 
ness, the  committee  express  their  convic- 
tion that  Dunraven  himself,  if  he  had 
stayed  through  the  investigation  and 
heard  all  the  evidence,  would,  of  his  own 
motion,  have  withdrawn  the  charges  which 
originated  in  -a  mistake.  The  only  man 
who  comes  in  for  ^'ar^igning"  in  the 
whole  report  is  the  owner  of  the  Herald, 
who  is  rebuked  for  the  dishonorable  ac- 
tioa  of  that  paper  in  stealing  a  part  of  the 
evidence  taken,  and  who,  we  believe,  un- 
der the  rules  of  the  New  York  Yacht  Club, 
la  liable  to  expulsion  therefor.  The  best 
of  all  is  that  this  report  will  convince  the 
world  that  we  still  have  gentlemen  left  in 


this  country,  who  know  how  to  conduct 
an  international  controverqr  as  gentlemen 
should.  To  hear  both  sides  patiently  and 
exhaustively,  to  seek  every  ray  of  light 
possible,  and  then  to  sum  up  the  whole 
without  a  particle  of  passion,  is  the  first 
instinct  of  a  gentleman,  and  ought  not  to 
seem  a  wonderful  thing  at  all.  It  does 
seem  so  only  by  contrast  with  the  horrible 
manners  and  wretched  ill-breeding,  to  go 
no  further,  which  our  professional  diplo- 
mats have  lately  displayed.  The  thanks 
of  the  country  are  due  to  Messrs.  Phelps, 
Morgan,  Whitney,  Mahan,  and  Rives,  not 
merely  for  their  excellent  work  In  the  mat- 
ter immediately  in  hand,  but  for  the  great 
example  they  have  set  us  of  gentlemanly 
methods.  They  will  have  gone  far,  In  the 
eyes  of  Europeans,  towards  rehabilitat- 
ing the  American  character,  and  towards 
making  the  boorishness  of  Messrs.  Cleve- 
land and  Olney  appear,  as  it  was,  a  break 
with  our  best  traditions  and  wholly  unrep- 
resentative of  the  country. 


It  is  hard  to  know  whether  to  laugh  or 
weep  over  the  picture  of  the  great  Chi- 
cago editors,  comparing  notes  after  a 
year's  experience,  and  finding  that  the 
net  result  of  all  their  mad  antics  in  the 
way  of  prizes  and  lotteries  and  guessing- 
contests  and  colored  pictures  and  general 
endeavor  to  make  the  public  buy  what  it 
did  i|ot  want,  was  $600,000  thrown  away^ 
stationary  circulations,  and  degraded  pa- 
pers. They  now  swear  they  are  cured, 
and  beg  to  be  let  out  of  the  madhouse. 
The  great  trouble  with  them,  and  all 
their  frenzied  kind,  is  that  they  have 
been  keeping  their  eyes  on  each  other 
instead  of  on  the  newspaper-reading  pub- 
lic. One  lunatic  editor  excites  another 
to  more  extravagant  madness,  and  the 
poor  forgotten  public  suffers  and  grows 
unutterably  weary.  No  man  who  has 
any  means  of  finding  out  what  his  ra- 
tional fellows  think,  can  doubt  that  **  the 
average  man  in  every  American  city*' 
would  gladly  and  gratefully  welcome  **a 
newspaper  that  should  give  him  only  the 
news,  and  the  news  prepared  in  such  a 
way  as  to  make  the  marvellous  enterprise 
of  its  publisher  in  getting  it  a  secondary 
matter."  What  a  blessed  relief,  too, 
would  it  be  to  thousands  to  dispense  with 
**the  witty  reporter,"  who  thrusts  his 
gibes  and  flouts  In  your  face  insteac^of 
telling  you  what  actually  occurred  or  ^a^ 
said  ;  to  find  a  paper  that  preferred  to  be 
acctsi^e  ^i|ther  than  to  startle;  that 
would  'luresent  general  and  trustworthy 
newp  in  place  of  ** exclusive"  misinfor- 
mation and  indecency;  that  should  be 
written  for  its  readers,  not  for  its  rivals — 
that  should,  in  short,  display  simply  or- 
dinary intelligence,  manners,  and  moral- 
ity. The  opportunity  for  such  a  morning 
paper  in  New  York  is  just  now  immense. 
The  fleld  for  the  other  kind  is  more  than 
full,  as  we  understand  those  papers  are 
flnding  out  to  their  cost  which  are  trying 
to  trumpet  their  way  Into  it 


It  has  long  been  the  opinion  of  those 
who  knew  Lord  Salisbury  well  that  he 
was  not  a  man  of  action;  that  his  admin- 
istration would  never  produce  a  jmllcy  in 
any  direction  except  towards  Ireland;  that 
serious  dealing  with  any  other  problems 
of  the  day  was  not  and  never  would  be 
his  forte.  He  is,  and  always  has  been,  a 
skilful  critic,  especially  of  Mr.  Gladstone 
and  the  **  Rads  "  and  the  Home-Rulers,  a 
powerful  dialectician,  and,  as  Mr.  Disraeli 
once  said  of  him,  **  a  master  of  flouts  and 
sneers  ";  but  he  has  really,  in  spite  of  the 
Tory  confidence  in  him  and  admiration  of 
him,  never  shown  the  slightest  disposition 
to  tske  great  responsibilities  on  himself. 
Consequently  none  were  so  much  amused 
by  the  extravagant  promises  made  in  his 
behalf  by  the  Conservative  orators  at  the 
last  election  as  those  who  were  best  ac- 
quainted with  his  character.  He  has  un- 
doubtedly led  the  English  public  during 
the  last  six  months  to  believe  that  he  was 
going  to  bring  the  Turks  to  reason,  that 
he  had  the  means  of  stopping  the  Arme- 
nian horrors,  that  the  Berlin  Treaty,  which 
he  and  Lord  Beaconsfield  brought  home 
in  such  triumph,  did  assure  peace  and 
protection  to  the  Christians  of  Asiatic 
Turkey.  He  now  cynically  announces 
that  it  meant  nothing  at  all  for  them  ex- 
cept England's  approval  of  any  reforms 
the  Sultan  chose  to  undertake;  that  Eng- 
land, since  she  cannot  attack  the  problem 
from  the  land  side,  is  utterly  powerless  to 
help  them,  without  the  concurrence  of 
the  Powers,  and  that  the  Powers  will  not 
concur. 


This  is  all  solemn  truth,  as  we  have 
been  pointing  out  in  these  columns  for 
months.  England  is  and  always  has  been 
powerless  of  herself.  No  Power  can  of 
its  own  motion,  and  unaided  by  others, 
do  anything  for  the  Armenians  except 
Russia.  But  such  an  open  avowal  of  im- 
potence and  helplessness,  on  behalf  of  a 
great  nation,  we  presume,  was  never  be- 
fore made  by  an  English  minister.  The 
feebleness  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  foreign 
policy  used  to  be  a  favorite  theme  of  Con- 
servative orators,  but  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
a  fiaming  son  of  Mars  compared  to  Lord 
Salisbury.  The  worst  thing  Mr.  Glad- 
stone ever  did  in  this  direction  was  to 
make  peace  with  an  interesting  and  brave 
little  people,  the  Boert,  whom  the  Jingoes 
were  trying  to  rob  of  their  independence. 
What  would  they  have  said  if  he  had  va- 
pored fdr  a  year  and  then  confessed  to 
mankind  that  there  was  no  fight  in  him  T 
There  is  no  doubt  that  this  astonishing 
speech  will  lower  English  prestige.  Lord 
Salisbury  cannot  help  the  Armenians — 
granted.  But  to  tell  the  Sultan  and  the 
world  that  he  never  thought  he  could,  and 
tell  the  Turks  that  Christendom  in  the 
nineteenth  century  is  powerless  against 
them,  is  the  worst  of  those  **  blazing  in- 
discretions" of  which  John  Morley  has 
said  Lord  Salisbury  is  guilty  every  time 
he  opens  his  mouth.  It  Is  enough  to  make 
Pitt  turn  in  his  grave. 


112 


Tlie    [N'atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1597 


SOME  RESULTS  OF   THE  TARIFF. 

Twenty  years  ago  the  oppoDeDts  of  the 
protective  policy  were  just  as  convinced 
as  they  are  to^ay  that  it  would  in  some 
way,  but  they  could  not  exactly  say  in 
what,  work  enormous  damage  to  this 
government,  if  it  did  not  sow  in  it  the 
seeds  of  positive  decay.  We  think  the 
precise  way  is  now  pretty  clearly  traced 
out.  It  was  plain  enough,  a  priori^  at 
the  period  we  mention,  that  the  complete 
absorption  of  the  leading  political  party 
in  tari£f  legislation,  its  sacrifice  of  every 
other  public  interest  to  the  tarflf,  and 
the  rigorous  use  of  the  tariff  test  as  a 
condition  of  admission  to  public  life  and 
office,  would  end  in  driving  out  of  politics 
nearly  all  the  thinking  force  of  the  nation 
— the  class  of  men  who  were  occupied 
with  larger  questions  than  the  protection 
of  manufactures,  or  who  were  capable  of 
dealing  with  them.  How  many  such  men 
are  left  in  public  life  to-day  ?  Who  is 
there  in  Senate  or  House  whom  any- 
body listens  to  with  confidence  and  re- 
spect on  any  subject  at  all,  and  notably 
the  great  issues  of  war  and  peace  ?  Who 
is  the  international  lawyer  in  public  life? 
Who  is  the  great  authority  on  currency 
and  finance?  Who  expounds  the  Constitu- 
tion, and  stands  for  jurisprudence,  and 
science,  and  art,  or  any  of  the  great  hu- 
manizing agencies?  Who,  in  fact,  has, 
on  a  pinch,  a  word  to  say  for  civilization 
itself  ?  We  shall  be  glad  to  call  atten- 
tion to  any  such  gentlemen  if,  in  the 
opinion  of  their  admirers,  we  have  over- 
looked them. 

Now  why  should  this  be?  The  explana- 
tion is  very  easy.  Legislation  which 
enables  a  large  body  of  rich  men  all  over 
the  country  to  calculate  and  enter  in  their 
ledgers  the  exact  sum  which  a  certain  act 
of  Congress  will  put  into  their  individual 
pockets,,  is  probably  the  greatest  indirect 
incentive  to  corruption  ever  devised.  No 
popular  government  could  resist  it  for  ten 
years.  Not  only  does  it  give  every  manu- 
facturer a  direct  commercial  interest  in 
the  return  of  one  type  of  man  only  to 
the  Legislature,  and  that  not  a  very  high 
one,  but  it  makes  it  a  matter  of  business 
with  him  to  resist  and  wage  war  on  every 
other  type.  More  than  this,  in  a  country 
of  universal  suffrage,  it  drives  the  em- 
ployers of  labor  irresistibly  into  teaching 
not  only  their  own  employees,  but  all  the 
poor  and  ignorant,  that  the  chief  function 
of  Government  is  the  making  of  profits 
and  raising  of  wages,  and  causes  all  its 
other  business  to  seem  insignificant.  Let 
a  generation  or  two  grow  up  under  this 
teaching,  and  you  soon  have  the  devil  let 
loose.  You  set  esetj  man  who  is  not  rich 
at  work  devising  plans  for  making  the 
Government  give  him  more  of  the  money' 
which  he  thinks  is  due  to  him.  You 
stimulate  hatred  and  envy  of  the  rich,  be- 
cause you  make  the  masses  think  that 
they,  through  governmental  carelessness 
and  apathy,  have  got  more  than  their 
share.  You  give  all  the  manufacturers 
and  corporations,  too,  an  interest  inestab-  ' 


lishing  the  boss  system  in  all  the  States, 
so  as  more  easily,  ttirough  the  boss,  to 
control  the  nominating  machinery  and 
prevent  men  hostile  to  their  interests  from 
getting  into  office.  In  fact,  the  march  of 
our  politics  under  this  system  to  its  pre- 
sent condition  has  almost  the  order  and 
sequence  of  a  natural  agency. 

The  recent  extraordinary  phenomenon 
known  as  "standing  behind  the  President" 
in  an  ill-mannered,  sudden,  and  unex- 
pected attack  on  a  friendly  Power,  accom- 
panied and  followed  by  a  great  outpour- 
ing of  popular  hate  of  a  foreign  nation, 
with  disastrous  effects  on  trade  and  com- 
merce and  public  credit,  is  another  direct 
result  of  the  protective  policy.  In  order 
to  maintain  the  high  tariff  and  justify  the 
twenty- five  increases  of  it,  culminating  in 
the  McElinley  bill,  which  we  owe  to  the 
Republican  party,  hatred  and  suspicion  of 
foreigners  had  to  be  embodied  in  the  party 
creed  and  made  the  leading  feature  in 
popular  education.  Foreigners,  and  par- 
ticularly Englishmen,  had  to  be  repre- 
sented as  constantly  watching  and  plot- 
ting against  the  United  States,  as  trying 
to  influence  our  elections  with  money,  and 
meditating  designs  against  our  prosperity. 
From  this  to  rejoicing  in  the  misery  caused 
among  foreigners  by  the  loss  of  our  trade, 
and  predicting  that,  as  our  commerce 
grows,  we  shall  have  to  keep  a  large  navy 
for  the  purpose  of  fighting  them,  and 
finally  to  the  development  of  deep  hatred 
and  desire  to  kill  them  in  battle,  among 
people  who  had  never  seen  Englishmen  at 
all,  was  a  short  step,  and  it  was  easily 
taken.  Out  of  this,  too,  has  grown  the 
widespread  delusion  that  America  ought 
to  be  sufficient  unto  herself,  ought  to  have 
a  civilization  of  her  own  and  currency  of 
her  own,  and  live  apart  from  the  rest  of 
mankind  on  her  own  literature  and  ideas. 
It  has  been  growing,  curiously  enough, 
just  as  the  great  Eastern  eippire  of  China 
is  slowly  laying  this  system  of  isolation 
aside,  as  a  failure,  after  several  thousand 
years  of  trial,  and  after  the  experience  of 
many  nations  had  shown  that  isolation 
ends  in  stagnation,  and  that  contact  with 
a  variety  of  ideas  and  institutions  is  the 
first  condition  of  progress. 

Though  last  not  least,  the  protective 
policy  has  brought  on  us  the  silver  craze 
and  its  accompanying  barbarisms.  The 
plan  of  bringing  in  a  number  of  small, 
scantily  peopled  silver  States  to  keep 
down  and  counterbalance  the  rising  anti- 
protective  ideas  of  the  East,  or,  as  they 
frankly  expressed  it,  to  make  sure  of  the 
McKinley  tariff  for  ten  years,  was  a  de- 
vice of  the  Republican  majority  in  the 
Reed  Congress  of  1890.  This  plan,  which 
really  involved  the  submergence  of  our 
government  under  a  tide  of  semi- barba- 
rism from  the*  mining  towns,  has  now 
been  followed  for  six  years,  and  here  is 
the  result  (we  quote  from  the  Evening 
Post)', 

**  Nevada,  with  only  45,761  people,  aad  most 
of  them  a  harum  scaram  lot,  has  as  many 
votes  as  New  York  with  5,997,853;  Wyoming's 
60,705  as  Pennsylvania's  5,358,014;  and  Idaho's  ' 


84,885  as  Ohio's  8,672,316.  The  ten  States  of 
North  Dakota,  South  Dakota,  Montana,  Wyo- 
ming, Colorado,  Utah.  Nevada,  Idaho,  Ore- 
gon, and  Washington,  in  one  section  and  with 
a  common  interest,  with  only  one- thirtieth  of 
the  population  of  the  nation,  have  twenty  of 
the  ninety  Senators,  or  two-fifths  of  a  ma- 
jority." 

These  men,  reinforced  by  like-minded 
legislators  from  other  States  west  of  the 
Mississippi,  while  representing  only  a 
quarter  of  the  population,  are,  when 
united,  within  eight  of  commanding  a 
majority  of  the  Senate.  Most  of  them 
have  brought  with  them  the  protective 
idea  in  its  last  and  crudest  and  most  vio- 
lent form,  for  they  are  in  favor  of  protect- 
ing even  native  money  from  foreign  com- 
petition. They  avow  that  they  are  not 
only  in  favor  of  the  excision  of  America 
from  the  civilized  world,  but  of  enhancing 
in  every  way  they  can,  by  legislation,  the 
silver  which  they  wish  to  make  the  me- 
dium of  exchange.  The  medieval  mo- 
narchs  used  to  prohibit  the  exportation  of 
the  precious  metals  because  they  wanted 
them  to  be  cheaper  at  home,  and  we  laugh 
over  it;  but  our  barbarians  "  go  them  one 
better,"  for  they  propose  to  keep  them  at 
home  to  make  them  dearer.  In  fact,  any- 
body who  is  lecturing  at  a  Circle  like 
Chautauqua,  or  any  summer  school,  on 
the* history  of  civilization,  could  not  do 
better  than  take  his  class  down  to  Wash- 
ington, and  converse  with  a  Western  silver 
Senator  on  currency,  credit,  and  interna- 
tional exchange,  as  a  means  of  getting  a 
glimpse  of  the  mind  of  Clovis,  or  Merovig, 
or  any  of  the  great  barbarian  chiefs  of  the 
fifth  and  sixth  centuries.  They  will  thus 
acquire  more  knowledge  of  the  mediaeval 
world  in  a  couple  of  hours  than  by  a  year's 
study  of  chronicles  or  records.  The  silver 
craze,  in  fact,  in  its  trans-Mississippian 
development,  as  well  as  the  degradation 
of  the  Senate,  which  is  now  exciting  so 
much  alarm,  is  as  direct  a  result  of  the 
Republican  policy  of  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century  as  if  it  embodied  it  all  in  a  single 
act  of  Congress. 


THE  POCKET    VS,  PATRIOTISM, 

A  Bosrroif  paper  reported  the  President  as 
marvelling  greatly,  in  a  letter  to  a  banker 
of  that  city,  that  New  England  business 
men  should  have  shown,  in  the  Venezue- 
lan flurry,  so  much  more  concern  for  their 
pockets  than  for  patriotism.  We  know, 
at  any  rate,  that,  in  the  deadly  rebuke  of 
the  Harvard  professors  levelled  at  them 
by  the  eminent  youth  who  has  more  un- 
derstanding than  all  his  teachers,  severe 
things  were  said  of  **  stock- jobbing  timi- 
dity— the  kind  of  statesmanship  which  is 
clamored  for  at  this  moment  by  the  men 
who  put  monetary  gain  before  national 
honor.'*  It  is,  indeed,  a  loathsoma  pic- 
ture of  the  sordid  spirit  which  is  thus 
drawn  for  us — thousands  of  merchants 
and  manufacturers,  with  good  red  blood 
to  spill,  meekly  putting  up  with  national 
insult  and  disgrace  for  the  sake  of  a  few 
miserable  dollars.  Contrasted  with  them, 
we  are  asked  to  admire  the  band  of  gon*» 


Feb.  6,  1896] 


Th.e   iN'ation. 


113 


roufl  and  full-souled  men,  thirsting  for 
honor  and  despising  the  jingle  of  the 
guinea,  who  follow  their  country's  flag 
right  or  wrong,  and  count  all  the  rest  the 
Tile  dross  it  is. 

Everybodj  must  feel  indignant  as  he 
looks  on  that  picture  and  then  on  this. 
What  man  so  low  as  not  to  blush  for  the 
crsTens  who  weigh  their  pocket-books 
against  their  country?  But,  to  be  con- 
sistent, and  to  insist  upon  making  and 
keeping  our  patriotism  entirely  pure,  we 
shill  have  to  go  farther.  We  shall  have 
totfoonsider  the  case  of  those  who  throw 
tbiir  pocket-books  into  the  same  scale 
with  their  country — who  throw  in  a  rery 
flat  and  gaping  pocket-book,  in  the  hope 
of  getting  it  back  again  plump  and  sleek. 
In  other  words,  if  sordidness  is  at  deadly 
enmity  with  patriotism,  nobody  must  be 
allowed  to  go  to  war  or  advocate  war  who 
will  not  solemnly  agree  in  advance  to 
come  out  poorer  than  he  goes  in.  This 
would  at  once  rule  out  all  naval  contrac- 
tors, one  of  whom  was  lately  heard  to  say 
that  he  hoped  to  Heaven  there  would  be 
a  war  to  give  him  a  chance  to  make  a 
fortune.  It  would  prevent,  also,  all  fur- 
nishing of  supplies  except  at  lesp  than 
cost,  all  pensions,  all  promotions  with 
higher  pay,  all  paying  of  debts  in  the  de- 
fu'edated  currency  which  war  would  be 
certain  to  bring.  We  must  not  have  any 
scandalous  getting  rich  out  of  the  coun- 
try's troubles,  such  as  plagued  us  in  the 
civil  war.  No  one  should  be  permitted  to 
speak  or  vote  for  war  who  will  not  put  on 
flle  an  inventory  of  all  his  worldly  goods, 
and  give  a  bond  to  bring  no  more  out  of 
the  war  than  he  carries  in.  Only  in  this 
way  can  we  get  a  Gideon's  band  of  ab- 
solutely disinterested  patriots  before 
whom  no  enemy  could  stand. 

Then  we  must  revise  our  histories,  and 
stop  making  patriots  of  our  forefathers 
who  went  to  war  for  their  pockets'  sake. 
It  will  never  do  to  say  that  it  is  honora- 
ble to  go  to  war  for  a  few  dollars,  but  das- 
tardly to  try  to  avert  war  for  the  same 
reason.  The  American  Revolution  was, 
as  a  philosophic  historian  tersely  defines 
it,  "  a  money  war."  The  colonists,  as 
Burke  said,  had  no  such  wonderful  love 
of  liberty  in  the  abstract,  but  were  like 
the  sordid  Euglish  in  having  that  love 
*' fixed  and  attached"  on  the  point  of 
control  of  their  own  property.  Now  it 
cannot  be  at  the  same  time  patriotic  to 
go  to  war  for  the  sake  of  keeping  the 
money  that  belongs  to  you,  and  recreant  to 
country  and  all  that  is  sacred  to  wish 
to  avoid  war  from  the  same  motive.  His- 
torically, all  wars  originate  in  a  desire  to 
plunder  or  to  escape  being  plundered. 
Bat  we  have  changed  all  that,  and  made 
war  simply  the  nursery  of  manhood  and 
all  gradous  and  heroic  qualities.  As  Se- 
nator Thurston  and  Mr.  Roosevelt  main- 
tain, a  base  ** money-changer"  cannot 
live  in  the  pure  atmosphere  of  disinterest- 
ed war.  But  this  view,  we  repeat,  will 
make  our  Revolutionary  sires  little  better 
than  stock-jobbers,  and  will  go  far  to  ac- 1 


count  for  Washington's  complaint  that 
his  ranks  could  not  be  kept  full  because 
the  war  was  so  mercenary  in  spirit  and 
was  carried  on  with  so  little  patriotism. 

How  cleanly  our  off-hand  instructors  in 
war  and  love  of  country  beg  the  whole 
question  by  their  epithets  about  "the 
pocket,"  would  be  clear  even  to  them  if 
they  would  stop  and  ask  themselves  what 
is  really  meant  by  their  pet  phrase,  the 
pocket.  Does  it  mean  a  miserly  clutching 
of  creature  comforts?  Do  the  men  who 
ask  to  be  shown  the  reason  and  justice  of 
war,  before  being  driven  madly  into  it, 
think  only  of  eating  and  drinking  and 
good  clothes  and  social  enjoyments,  and 
cry  out  with  the  Persian,  **  Ah,  take  the 
cash  and  let  the  credit  go  "?  Nothing  of 
the  kind.  What  staggers  and  dismays 
them  in  the  thought  of  war,  what  out- 
rages them  in  the  wild  war- talk  of  raw 
and  silly  boys,  is  the  perception  of  the 
fearful  blow  to  the  whole  fabric  of  civili- 
zation which  war  would  strike.  **The 
pocket,"  in  a  rational  mind,  means  the 
most  complicated  and  interdependent  sys- 
tem of  trade  and  commerce  and  industry 
the  world  ever  saw;  it  means  the  daily 
bread  of  millions  of  men  and  women  whom 
a  great  war  would  throw  at  once  into  beg- 
gary or  burglary ;  it  means  the  progress 
of  art  and  literature  and  general  refine- 
ment ;  the  founding  and  support  of  col- 
leges and  churches  and  missions — in  short, 
the  chief  things  that  make  life  worth  liv- 
ing and  the  evolution  of  society  aught  but 
a  terrible  mockery.  Tet  it  is  the  man  who 
asks  his  fellows  to  stop  and  think  of  the 
imperilling  of  these  great  proofs  and  forces 
of  civilization,  who  is  to  be  held  up  as  a 
selfish,  spiritless,  miserly  wretch  cumber- 
ing the  earth ! 

But  what  about  national  honor  and  dig- 
nity?   Yes ;  what  about  them ! 

**They  tell  you,  sir."  Mdd  Burke  Id  the  Eog- 
liih  Parliament,  speaking  of  the  mad  rush  into 
war  with  America,  **tbey  tell  you  that  year 
dignity  Is  tied  to  it.  I  know  not  bow  it  hap- 
pens, but  this  dignitv  of  yours  is  a  terrible  en- 
cumbrance to  you  ;  for  it  has  of  late  been  ever 
at  war  with  your  interest,  your  equity,  and 
every  idea  of  your  policy.  Show  the  thing  you 
oootend  for  to  be  reason  ;  show  it  to  be  com- 
moo  sense ;  show  it  to  be  the  means  of  attain- 
ing some  useful  end  ;  and  then  I  am  content  to 
allow  it  what  dignity  you  please.  But  what 
dignitv  is  derived  from  the  perseverance  in  ab 
surdity,  is  more  than  ever  i  oould  discern.*' 

There  is  the  true  answer  to  the  raging 
of  the  heathen  about  *' national  honor." 
Honor  that  has  no  relation  to  justice,  or 
good  faith,  or  our  own  highest  self-inte- 
rest, or  the  only  reason  of  government  and 
national  life  at  all,  is  but  another  name 
for  what  is  base  and  savage.  Between 
that  kind  of  false  and  fraudulent  '*  honor," 
and  '*  the  pocket "  that  really  means  the 
fairest  fruits  of  civilisation  and  Christian- 
ity! rational  men  will  not  long  hesitate 
how  to  choose. 


VENEZUELAN  GOLD  FIELDS. 

Iv  we  may  judge  from  paragraphs  in  the 
newspapers,  there  is  a  large  stock  of  mis- 
information touching  ths  gold  mines  in  I 


Venezuela,  or  British  Guiana,  whichever 
the  country  they  may  belong  to.  An  im- 
pression certainly  exists  that  the  desire  to 
possess  those  mines  is  the  ruling  motive 
in  Great  Britain  in  the  boundary  contro- 
versy. A  morning  paper  in  this  city,  for 
example,  says  that  the  production  of  gold 
there  reached  £376,000  in  1891,  and  had 
risen  to  £510,000  in  1894,  and  then  tells  iU 
readers  that  **  these  gold  fields  are,  of 
course,  the  whole  cause  of  the  quarrel  be- 
tween England  and  Venezuela,  and  the 
prospect  of  their  increasing  production 
constitutes  the  chief  difficulty  in  the  way 
of  arbitration."  Turning  to  Lord  Salis- 
bury's despatch  of  November  26,  upon 
,  which  Mr.  Cleveland  founded  his  bump- 
tious message  of  December  17,  we  read 
this: 

**Tbey  [her  Majesty^s  Gk>vemment]  have,  on 
the  contrary,  repeatedly  expressed  their  readi- 
ness to  submit  to  arbitratton  the  conflicting 
claims  of  G'-eat  Britain  and  Venezuela  to  large 
tracts  of  territory  which  from  tbeu*  auriferous 
nature  are  known  to  be  of  almost  untold 
value." 

He  went  on  to  say  that  they  could  not 
submit  to  arbitration  territory  which  had 
long  been  settled  by  British  subjects,  who 
were  accustomed  to  a  quiet  life  and  well- 
ordered  government,  and  thus  expr>se  them 
to  the  chance  of  frequent  revolutionary 
disorder.  In  other  words,  the  very  terri- 
tory which  mapy,  perhaps  most,  of  our 
people  consider  the  bone  of  contention, 
the  British  Gk>vernment  has  always  been 
ready  to  submit  to  arbitration.  Now, what 
do  these  gold  mines  amount  to  in  esie^ 
not  in  posie  f 

The  recognized  authority  en  gold  fields, 
foreign  and  domestic,  is  the  United  States 
Mint,  which  publishes  each  year,  in  addi- 
tion to  the  regular  Mint  report,  a  volume 
on  the  *'  Production  of  the  Precioua  Me- 
tals." Turning  to  this  volume  for  1884,  we 
find  the  latest  information  then  available 
concerning  these  mines.  They  are  grouped 
under  the  head  of  British  Ouiana,  which 
shows  that  our  own  officials,  at  a  time 
when  there  was  no  boundary  oontroverqr 
raging,  considered  these  mines  to  be  in 
British  territory.  That  these  are  the 
mines  referred  to  in  the  current  stoolc  of 
misinformation  is  made  clear  by  the  statis- 
tical retuma  of  the  output  as  tabulated 
in  the  Mint  report,  which  are  nearly  iden- 
tical with  those  quoted  above.  There  are 
other  gold  mines  in  Venesuela  proper,  but 
their  total  production  In  1894  was  only 
$851,000,  that  of  British  Guiana  being 
«8,310,100. 

The  most  important  and  direct  infor- 
mation touching  the  mines  of  Guiana 
comes  from  Mr.  Louis  8.  Delaplaine, 
United  States  Consul  at  Georgetown, 
Demerara.  He  tells  us  that  there  are 
five  separate  and  distinct  gold  fields  '*  in 
the  colony,"  each  of  which  is  difficult  to 
reach,  there  being  no  regular  means  of 
transportation  in  that  region.  Not  only 
is  transportation  difficult,  but  there  are 
no  roads.  There  is  not  even  a  bridle-path, 
there  is  not  even  a  footpath  to  the  min- 
ing districts.    The   only    way    to  reaoh 


114 


Tlie   IN^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1597 


them  ifl  by  open  boats  poled  along  the 
rivers  by  native  Indians.  **The  fall  of 
the  rivers,"  he  says,  '*  is  very  steep,  and 
there  are  numerous  falls  and  cataracts 
to  be  passed  which  make  the  journey  •la- 
borious and  expensive,  and  also  very  un- 
pleasant, with  the  hot  sun  continually 
beating  down  on  the  traveller's  head; 
provisions  and  supplies  of  all  kinds  must 
be  transported  in  the  same  way.'*  It 
takes  three  weeks  to  reach  one  of  these 
districts  which  is  only  one  hundred  miles 
from  G^eorgetown. 

These  are  only  a  minor  part  of  the  diffi- 
culties to  be  encountered  in  getting  the 
gold  out  of  the  ground.  The  country  is 
about  in  the  centre  of  the  tropical  rains, 
which  fall  incessantly  "for  months  at  a 
time,"  says  Mr.  Delaplaine.  One  conse- 
quence is  that  the  vegetation  is  dense  and 
almost  impenetrable,  requiring  a  vast 
deal  of  digging  and  grubbing  to  get  into 
the  ground  at  all.  Another  is  that  the 
climate  is  unhealthy.  Fevers  are  preva- 
lent, and  only  the  hardiest  constitutions 
can  long  survive  there.  There  is  no  white 
labor  to  be  had  there,  and  no  intelligent 
labor  of  any  color.  The  negroes,  who  are 
employed  to  do  manual  work,  *'are  about 
as  worthless  and  lazy  as  can  be  imagined, 
not  to  speak  of  their  moral  and  mental 
deficiencies,  which  are  matters  of  no 
slight  importance."  There  was  only  one 
quartz  mill  in  operation  there  at  the  time 
when  Mr.  Delaplaine  wrote,  but  another 
one  had  been  ordered.  The  ore  is  not  so 
rich  generally  as  that  of  California,  but 
it  may  prove  richer  when  means  are  found 
to  go  deeper  below  the  surface.  It  is  es- 
timated roughly  that  up  to  this  time  the 
gold  taken  out  has  not  repaid  the  cost  of 
getting  it,  but  there  is  good  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  there  will  be  a  credit  balance 
soon.  Gk>ld  mines  exercise  a  powerful  in- 
fluence on  the  imagination,  not  only  of 
the  miner,  but  of  the  capitalist  who  never 
sees  the  mine.  Only  an  insignificant  part 
of  the  gold-bearing  region  has  yet  been 
explored. 

Mr.  Delaplaine  neither  advises  Ameri- 
cans to  try  their  luck  in  these  gold  fields, 
nor  dissuades  them.  He  thinks  upon  the 
whole  that  a  man  who  thoroughly  under- 
stands the  business,  and  who  can  com- 
mand a  capital  of  not  less  than  $2,500,  and 
who  has  a  sound  constitution,  and  who 
does  not  drink  alcoholic  or  malt  liquors, 
may  go  there  with  a  reasonably  fair  pros- 
pect of  success  even  under  present  condi- 
tions. The  future  prosperity  of  the  mining 
districts,  however,  depends  upon  the  in- 
troduction of  capital,  the  maintenance  of 
order,  the  making  of  roads,  the  educa- 
tion of  the  blacks,  and,  in  short,  the  civi- 
lization of  the  country.  What  progress 
Venezuela  is  likely  to  make  towards  these 
ameliorations  we  may  judge  from  what 
she  has  done  in  the  past.  There  is  a  re- 
volution overdue  in  that  country  now, 
which  the  intending  reformers  tell  us  is 
suspended  only  on  account  of  the  boun- 
dary dispute.  When  this  is  settled  they 
will  clean  out  Crespo  in  short  order. 


WILLIAM  HENRY  FURNES8. 

Thb  earliest  living  graduate  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege, pastor  emeritus  of  the  First  Unitarian 
Church  of  Philadelphia,  died  without  wamiog 
in  that  city  on  Thursday  last.  His  faculties 
were  practically  unimpaired,  and  he  had  made 
elaborate  public  addresses  within  the  last 
three  months. 

Dr.  Fumess  was  bom  in  Boston,  April  20, 
1802.  His  earliest  education  at  one  '*  darnels 
school^  after  another  was  in  company  with 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  who  was  a  year  young- 
er than  himself.  A  happy  consequence  of 
this  is  the  charming  recollections  of  Emerson's 
childhood  and  youth  in  Cabot^s  *Life  of 
Emerson.*  Dr.  Fumess  says  they  were  babies 
together,  and,  indeed,  they  were  that  at 
school.  Before  his  third  birthday  we  find 
Emerson's  father  complaining  that  be  did  not 
read  very  well.  Later  they  went  to  the  Latin 
School  together  and  to  a  private  school  at  the 
same  time  to  learn  to  writA.  and  Dr.  Fumess 
tells  how  his  companion's  tongue  worked  up 
'and  down  with  his  pen,  and  thanks  heaven 
that  "  he  never  had  any  talent  for  anything— 
nothing  but  pure  genius,  which  talents  would 
have  overlaid."  Inspired  by  the  naval  vic- 
tories of  the  war  of  1812,  young  Emerson 
wrote  a  romance  in  verse  called  ^^Fortus," 
and  young  Fumess  furnished  the  illustrations. 
It  was  a  work  of  mutual  admiration,  and  is 
still  preserved  by  an  appreciative  friend. 
Anothes  schoolfellow  of  the  earliest  times 
was  Mr.  Samuel  Bradford.  Emerson,  in  the 
seventies,  wrote  that  the  three  *'  had  agreed  not 
to  grow  old,  at  least  to  each  other.  ^  The  agree- 
ment was  well  kept.  Dr.  Fumess  and  Emerson 
had  ever  a  very  great  affection  for  each  other, 
but  had  little  correspondence.  There  is  a 
story  current  to  the  effect  that  once,  when 
Fumess  had  broken  the  long  silence,  Emerson 
regretted  it— It  had  been  so  pleasant  to  be 
sure  of  mutual  recollection  without  any  sign. 

From  the  Latin  School  Dr.  Fumeas  went  to 
Harvard  College  and  was  graduated  in  1820; 
from  the  Cambridge  Theological  School  in 
1823.  Preaching  as  a  candidate  in  various 
churches  in  and  around  Boston,  he  received  no 
call,  and  was  well  pleased— "such  a  hearty 
dread,"  he  says  in  his  fiftieth  anniversary  di»- 
course,  the  most  considerable  bit  of  autobi- 
ography he  has  left  for  our  instruction,  **  had 
I  of  being  settled  in  Boston,  whose  church- 
goers had  in  those  days  the  reputation  of  being 
terribly  critical;  and  rhetoric  then  and  there 
was  almost  a  religion."  Afterwards,  while 
preaching  in  Baltimore  for  a  few  Sundays, 
he  received  an  invitation  to  preach  in  Phila- 
delphia on  his  way  to  Boston,  and,  doing  so, 
was  invited,  before  he  left,  to  return  and  be 
the  minister  of  the  society.  He  had  ever  a 
suspicion  that  the  committee  which  invited 
him  comprised  nearly  the  whole  meeting  they 
professed  to  represent.  Philadelphia  was  a 
great  way  from  Boston,  the  Unitarian  centre, 
and  ordinations  were  a  solemn  business  in 
those  days,  so  that  six  months  were  consumed 
in  making  the  necessary  preparations;  but 
finally  Mr.  Fumess  was  ordained,  January  12, 
1825.  Those  taking  part  in  the  service  were 
mostly  young  men,  but  one  of  them  was  Dr. 
Aaron  Bancroft  of  Worcester,  Mass.,  father  of 
the  late  Oeorge  Bancroft,  one  of  the  Unitarian 
pioneers,  then  in  his  seventieth  year.  Dr. 
Fumess  was  the  first  regular  pastor  of  the 
Philadelphia  society,  though  in  1825  it  was 
already  twenty.nine  years  old.  It  had  been 
organized  in  1796  by  Dr.  Joseph  Priestley,  who 
had  come  to  this  country  two  years  before. 
He  was  living  at  that  time  in  Northumberland, 


Pa.,  and  had  gone  to  Philadelphia  to  deliver 
certain  lectures  on  the  evidences  of  Christian- 
ity. The  interest  excited  by  these  lectures 
led  to  the  organization  of  a  Unitarian  society, 
the  first  organized  as  such  in  the  United 
States,  though  King*s  Chapel,  Boston,  had 
fallen  away  from  Episcopacy  into  Uni- 
tarianism  nine  years  before.  Priestley  could 
not  be  persuaded  to  remain  in  Philadelphia 
and  become  the  pastor  of  the  new  society, 
but  advised  the  regular  lay  reading  of  Uni- 
tarian literature,  and  this  was  kept  up,  with 
some  lav  and  clericaal  preaching,  until  1825.  A 
small  brick  octagon  church  was  built  in^ia, 
which  in  1828  was  displaced  by  the  ple^v  at 
and  commodious  building  in  which  Dr.  F  r- 
ness  preached  till  the  conclusion  of  his  active 
pastorate  in  1875. 

Dr.  Fumess  had  several  qualities  that  made 
for  his  success  in  the  ministry :  a  fine  face  and 
noble  presence,  a  voice  remarkable  for  depth 
%nd  melody,  a  style  of  great  simplicity.  His 
was  **a  standard  of  pulpit  reading  which  he 
himself  exemplified  without  a  peer,**  and  no 
higher  standard  has  been  known  among  us. 
His  work  as  a  minister  of  religion  was  pro- 
foundly individual.  Though  his  ministry  be- 
gan in  the  most  heated  period  of  the  Unitarian 
Controversy,  his  own  preaching  was  seldom  ne- 
gative or  controversial.  Its  doctrinal  part  was 
mainly  incidental.  When  he  had  occasion  to 
oppose  ideas,  there  was  seldom  a  descent  to  per- 
sonal polemics.  Channing  himself  was  not 
more  unsectarian  than  he,  or  Isss  denomina- 
tional. Personally  he  kept  himself  aloof  from 
all  denominational  organizations— a  circum- 
stance not  a  little  irritating  to  Dr.  Bellows  and 
others  with  a  like  passion  for  organized  activi- 
ties; and  his  society  followed  his  example.  He 
could  never  be  induced  to  attend  the  meetings 
of  the  National  Conference  until  it  came  to 
Philadelphia,  and  fairly  '*  roped  him  in,"  when 
he  was  eighty-se  ve  n  years  old.  His  ecclesiasti- 
cal aloofness  never  prejudiced  his  Unitarian 
standing  in  the  least  degree;  he  was  oountedin 
while  counting  himself  out,  and  the  warmth 
of  his  personal  affections  made  good  the  lack 
of  formal  fellowship.  His  friendship  with  Dr. 
Hedge  was,  perhaps,  the  closest  of  many  that 
enriched  bis  life.  For  many  younger  men  he 
had  the  warmest  heart;  and  while  he  had  some 
pride  in  his  discovery  of  Robert  Collyer,  Mr. 
Collyer  was  especially  grateful  to  him  as  **the 
first  minister  in  good  standing  who  didn't  pat- 
ronize him."  In  Philadelphia  as  a  citizen  and 
neighbor  his  associations  had  no  bounds  of  sect 
or  creed.  Orthodox  liberality  was  always  fur- 
nishing some  fresh  encouragement  of  his  faith 
in  the  essential  unity  of  all  believing  souls, 
and  the  Roman  Catholic  bishop  was  a  favorite 
companion,  and  furnished  him  with  some  of 
the  kiest  stories  in  a  repertory  that  was  always 
full  and  overfiowing. 

Dr.  Fume68*s  preaching  was  not  a  circle  with 
one  centre,  but  an  ellipse  with  two,  from  the 
inception  of  the  anti-slavery  conflict  till  the 
end  of  the  civil  war.  The  two  centres  were 
the  naturalness  of  Jesus  and  his  miracles,  and 
the  abolition  of  slavery.  His  interest  and  en- 
grossment  in  the  anti-slavery  cause  cost  him 
much  broken  friendship  and  social  disesteem; 
some  that  he  loved  and  trusted  most  doing 
their  best  to  keep  him  back  from  manly  oppo- 
sition to  the  nation*s  sin.  But  they  could  not 
do  it.  His  courage  grew  with  opposition,  and, 
let  who  would  hear  him  or  forbear,  his  convic- 
tions found  frequent  and  unmistakable  exi»«s- 
sion  in  his  Sunday  speech.  Maria  Weeton 
Chapman  speaks  of  him  as  coming  at  length 
'*into  practical  fellowship  with  the  American 
abolitioniBts."    Ty  more  than  that,  with  his 


Feb.  6,  1896] 


The    Nation. 


115 


dlftmit  of  All  organizations,  he  could  not  at- 
tain. The  prondett  recollection  of  his  life  was 
of  the  meeting  of  the  American  Anti-SIayery 
Society  in  New  York  in  1850,  signalized  bj  the 
Rynders  mob.  He  saw  it  aU,  and  was  a  part 
of  it  as  one  of  the  speakers  of  the  day.  *  *  Ney  er 
before  or  since,**  wrote  Dr.  Fnmess,  **haTe  I 
been  so  deeply  moved  as  on  that  occasion. 
Depths  were  stirred  in  me  never  before 
reached." 

The  other  centre  of  Dr.  Fomess^s  enthusiasm 
as  a  preacher  became  the  only  one  when  slav- 
ery was  at  length  abolished.  Even  before  that 
it  seemed  to  him,  as  he  reviewed  his  life,  that 
his  interest  in  the  anti-slavery  cause  did  not 
divert  him  from  his  interest  in  the  historical 
value  of  the  Four  Qoepels,  but  rather  made  it 
more;  helped  him  better  to  appreciate  the 
human  dignity  of  Jesus  and  the  spirit  of  his 
work.  Few  lives  have  been  so  unified  by  a 
course  of  study  flowing  with  unabated  energy 
from  first  to  last  for  more  than  fifty  years. 
Six  or  eight  major  books,  and  scores  of  lesser 
books  and  pamphlets,  were  the  literary  pro- 
ducts which  this  current  bore  along.  All  these 
had  but  a  single  two-fold  theme  :  the  histori- 
cal validity  of  the  Gospels  proved  by  the 
naturalness  of  their  contents;  and  the  natural- 
ness of  Jesus,  without  exception  on  account  of 
the  miracles  ascribed  to  him,  and  without 
questioning  their  actual  occurrence.  With 
each  new  volume,  as  he  went  on  '*  still  xlutch- 
ing  the  inviolable  shade,  with  a  free  onward 
impulse,"  he  thought  he  had  done  it  better 
than  before,  only  to  become  soon  dissatisfied 
and  set  out  on  another  queet.  For  many  of 
his  later  years  he  seldom  preached  on  any- 
thing but  one  or  another  aspect  of  his  favorite 
theme.  '*  I  suppose  you  write  many  sermons," 
he  said  to  a  young  friend  about  1870;  "I 
Vrite  only  one,  but  I  keep  on  writing  it  over." 
There  was  something  pathetic  in  this  long  in- 
sistence, especially  when  more  and  more  he 
failed  to  command  the  assent  or  even  to  catch 
the  ear  of  his  coreligionists  or  others,  until  at 
length  the  unique  impressiveness  of  his  serene 
and  beautiful  old  age  won  for  him  the  fresh 
attention  of  the  younger  generations. 

The  impulse  of  Dr.  Fumess^s  method  proba^ 
bly  came  from  Faulus's  *  Life  of  Jesus,'  pub 
lished  in  Germany  in  1828,  or  from  his  *  Bxe- 
getical  Hand-book,' published  in  1880-88.  The 
fundamental  rationalism  was  the  same  in  either 
case,  but  Dr.  Fumess's  handling  of  the  prin- 
ciple was  that  of  a  poet,  while  Faulus*s  was 
that  of  a  man  absolutely  prosaic  and  devoid  of 
taste.  Many  of  Dr.  Furness's  interpretations 
are  real  helps  to  a  better  understanding  of  the 
Gospels  and  the  character- of  Jesus,  and,  where 
they  are  not,  their  ingenious  subtlety  and  their 
unfailing  beauty  are  a  great  delight.  It  is 
generally  agreed  that  the  volumee  of  1888  and 
1888  contain  the  best  he  had  to  give,  though 
some  of  the  other  volumes,  and  especially 
*  Thoughts  on  the  Life  and  Character  of  Jesus 
of  Nasaretb,*  have  very  interesting  and  sug- 
gestive pasM^^es. 

Dr.  Fumess  was  married  August  20,  182S,  to 
Annls  Pulling  Jenks  of  Salem,  Mass.,  and  she 
outlived  by  several  years  the  conclusion  of  his 
pastorate  in  1875.  She  was  a  lady  of  great 
beauty,  and  her  portrait  by  Bully,  painted  in 
her  early  wonianhood,  is  one  of  the  most  at. 
tractive  examples  of  his  art.  Her  face  was 
imaged  in  her  mind  and  in  her  heart.  Their 
oldest  son,  William,  a  painter  of  great  promise, 
died  in  his  early  manhood.  The  other  children 
have  all  won  dittinction  in  their  separate  fields, 
Dt,  Horace  H.  Fumees  as  a  Shakspere  scholar, 
Mr.  Frank  Fumess  as  an  architect,  Mrs.  Annis 
Lee  Wister  as  a  translator  of  German  novels. 


The  happiness  of  Dr.  Fumess  in  his  children 
was  his  crowning  joy.  After  his  retirement 
from  the  regular  duties  of  the  ministry  he  was 
regarded  by  his  former  people  as  their  pastor 
emeritus,  and  often  preached  for  them,  and  in 
a  few  years  was  formally  invested  with  the 
office.  His  successor,  the  Rev.  Joseph  May,  a, 
son  of  the  Rev.  Samuel  J.  May,  with  a  full 
portion  of  his  father's  spirit,  was  as  well  quali- 
fied as  any  one  could  be  to  take  up  Dr.  Fur- 
ness's work  and  carry  it  on  with  all  the  quiet 
eameetness  and  public  spirit  of  the  patriarch 
who  laid  it  down. 


THE    ROYAL    ACADEMY'S    NEW     DE- 
PARTURE. 

London,  January  6,  1886. 

There  has  been  much  talk  lately  of  the 
honor  done  to  the  Royal  Academy  by  the 
bestowal  of  a  peerage  upon  its  President;  but 
the  Academy's  true  distdnction  just  now  is  the 
presence  upon  its  walls  of  the  work  of  the 
French  Romanticists,  whose  existence  it  has 
hitherto  ighored.  Their  appearance  at  Bur- 
lington House  is  certainly  a  concession  to 
those  critics  who,  for  long,  have  inveighed 
against  the  indifference  shown  to  the  great 
modem  French  painters  by  official  represen- 
tatives of  art  in  England.  Landseers  and 
Friths  may  litter  the  walls  of  the  National 
Gallery,  but  space  never  yet  has  been  found 
for  a  Corot  or  a  Millet;  apparently,  Directors 
labor  under  the  delusion  that  French  art  came 
to  an  end  with  Claude,  and  Poussin,  and  Wat- 
teau.  Year  after  year,  in  its  winter  exhibi- 
tion,  the  Academy  has  resurrected  ''  deceased 
masters  of  the  British  School "  who  had  better 
have  been  allowed  to  remain  in  peaceful  ob- 
scurity; but  to  the  dealers  has  been  left  the 
far  pleasanter  task  of  presenting  the  modem 
French  masters  to  the  English  public.  This 
might  seem  the  more  unaccountable  since 
it  is  to  the  English  Constable  that  these  men, 
in  large  measure,  owed  their  inspiration,  were 
it  not  remembered  that  Constable  himself  was 
misunderstood  by  the  Academy,  of  which  he 
was  a  member. 

All  these  things  considered,  the  new  depart- 
ure strikes  one  as  little  less  than  revolutionary 
within  such  conservative  waUs.  But  indeed, 
recently,  Academicians  have  given  several 
signs  of  a  sensible  desire  to  amend  their  ways, 
and  to  make  the  Academy  something  more 
than  a  pleasant  club  for  genial  gentlemen  who 
happen  to  paint.  Artistic  discrimination  has 
been  manifested  in  the  election  of  at  least  two 
or  three  Associates.  Last  winter  a  gallery 
devoted  to  the  goldsmith's  work  was  practi- 
cally the  first  formal  recognition  of  decorative 
or  industrial  art,  which  has  been  an  unknown 
quantity  in  an  Academy  suppoeed  to  include 
all  the  Arts.  The  same  sort  of  work  was 
prominent  in  the  spring  exhibition;  once  more, 
in  the  winter  show  just  opened,  the  sculptor- 
goldsmith  is  to  the  fore,  now  almost  as  a 
matter  of  course.  And,  as  strongest  proof  of 
the  ytrivlng  after  a  more  liberal  policy,  comes 
the  present  admission  into  Academical  head- 
quarters of  the  Romantic  School  so  persistent- 
ly overlooked.  If  the  National  Gallery  but 
follow  suit,  the  official  reparation  for  years  of 
inexplicable  neglect  will  be  complete. 

Let  me  say  at  once  that  the  chief  interest  of 
the  French  pictures  now  collected  together  liee 
in  the  fact  of  their  being  here  at  alL  There 
can  tw  small  doubt  that  a  better  selection 
could  easily  have  been  made.  At  many  of  the 
dealers',  at  Boutsod  &  Valadon's,  at  Mr.  Van 
Wisselingh's,  at  Mr.  Laurie's,  I  have  seen  far 


finer  and  more  representative  series  of  Barbi- 
zon  masterpieces.  It  would  seem  as  if  the 
Academy  had  half-repented  of  its  unaccustom- 
ed liberality,  and,  even  while  admitting  the 
Bomantidsts,  had  refused  to  show  them  in 
their  most  distinguished  moods  and  moments. 
Besides,  to  hang  just  a  chance  Pater  or  Wat> 
teau,  Boucher  or  Fragonard,  charming  as  each 
may  be,  or  just  an  occasional  Meissonier  or 
Bastien  Lepage,  is  to  introduce  distracting  ele- 
ments without  a  sufficient  compensating  gain. 

However,  to  imply  that  all  the  examples 
chosen  are  unimportant  would  be  to  give  a 
false  impression.  Probably,  among  artists, 
few  pictures  of  the  Romantic  jmiod  produced 
a  greater  sensation  than  Millet's  **  Wood- 
Sawyers,"  lent  to  the  Academy  by  Mr.  lonides. 
To  the  public,  the  **Angelu8,"  with  its  touch  of 
obvious  sentiment,  may  ever  have  been  Mil- 
let's most  notable  achievement.  But  the 
artist  who  prizes  certain  technical  qualities  in 
a  picture  more  highly  than  sentiment,  could 
see  in  the  **  Wood-Sawyers,"  when  first  ex- 
hibited, a  successful  defiance  to  those  academic 
restrictions  that  make  for  banality  and  com- 
monplace. Judged  by  academic  standards, 
the  figures  might  be  out  of  drawing,  the  action 
expressed  by  illegitimate  means,  the  color, 
scheme  a  challenge  to  all  tradition,  and  the 
indifference  to  detail  might  amount  to  an 
offence.  To-day  so  much  more  daring  have 
been  the  innovators  that  such  a  picture  would 
create  no  special  excitement  in  the  studios. 
There  seems  no  reason  to  question  means  when 
an  impression  of  movement  is  so  admirably  re- 
corded, when  the  mystery  and  rich  shadowy 
depths  of  a  forest  background  are  so  delight* 
fully  suggested.  But,  I  must  confess,  to  me 
the  blue  trousers  of  the  central  figure  are  so 
needlessly  aggressive  that  there  are  times 
when  Mr.  Hole's  quite  wonderful  black-and- 
white  interpretation  is  more  satisfactory  than 
the  original  itself.  However  this  may  be,  it  is 
fortunate  that  the  ''  Wood-Sawyers," of  all  the 
many  Millets,  should  have  been  forthcoming 
when,  for  the  first  time,  the  Romanticists 
make  their  weleome  intrusion  into  an  Academy 
exhibition. 

Of  the  other  painters  in  the  little  group, 
there  is  nothing  of  equal  significance,  though 
the  four  Corots  have  the  advantage  of  helping 
to  explain  the  successive  phases  tkirough  which 
the  artist  passed  before  the  final  development 
of  the  style  now  most  intimately  associated 
with  his  name.  To  mark  his  earliest  period, 
there  is  a  tiny  **  Rome,"  the  trimmed  trees  of 
the  Pincian  forming  a  Bomk)re  frame  to  the  fa- 
miliar, almost  hackneyed,  view  of  St.  Peter's 
—a  view  here  fiooded  with  sunlight  as  brilliant 
as  any  that  ever  shone  on  the  canvases  of 
Fortuny  and  Ids  followers.  Already  Corot's 
methods  had  broadened  in  a  lovely  "Avignon," 
town  and  river,  and  the  vast  plain  that 
stretches  to  the  horizon's  low  hills,  seen  from 
a  near  height— a  harmony  in  the  sad  grays, 
pale  silvery  greens,  and  sunlit  blues  that  fill 
the  strange  olive,  clad  land  of  Provence.  But 
it  is  in  the  "Evening,"  a  sketch  probably  for 
the  large  picture  of  the  same  name,  and  in  the 
**  Ville  d*Avray,"  one  of  innumerable  versions 
of  the  landscape  Corot  never  wearied  of  paint- 
ing, that  he  reveals  himself  the  great  master 
of  tone,  the  idyllic  poet  whose  medium  was 
paint  Rousseau  also  is  here,  in  a  stately  Val- 
ley of  the  Seine  as  he  saw  it  from  the  terraces 
of  St.  Cloud;  and,  with  him,  are  Courbet  and 
Troy  on—most  inefficiently  represented— Dias 
and  Daubigny,  Delacroix  and  Decamps,  Ingres 
and  G^ricault;  in  a  word,  all  the  men  who 
brought  to  Romanticism  its  glory  and  its  wide- 
extended  infiuence  for  good. 


116 


Tlie    !N"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1597 


The  descriptdonB  of  tbeee  canvaset,  since 
they  are  mostly  well  known,  would  be  super- 
fluous.  It  is  really  more  useful  to  note  the 
▼alue  of  the  opportunity  now  offered  for  a 
very  suggestive  oomparatire  study.  In  an 
adjoining  room  hang  three  large  Ck>nBtables, 
and  by  referring  to  these  not  only  may  you 
measure  the  debt  of  the  Barbizon  men  to  the 
most  original  of  all  English  landscape-paint- 
ers, but  you  cannot  mistake  the  tremendous 
advance  upon  the  old  methods  which  they,  in 
their  turn,  made.  To  emphasize  still  further 
the  difference  between  the  old  and  new  schools 
of  landscape-painting*  two  large  Claudes  are  in 
the  immediate  Ticioity  of  the  Constables.  In 
the  Claudes,  both  nominally  with  a  Scriptural 
theme,  the  classical  convention  is  seen  in  its 
perfection.  Here  is  the  arrangement  of  rocks 
and  rivers  and  classical  architecture  that 
never  existed  save  on  the  classicist's  canvas— 
perhaps  it  most  nearly  approcushed  realization 
in  the  Chicago  Exhibition;  here,  the  light  that 
never  was,  on  sea  or  land.  To  look  from 
them  to  the  Constables,  is  to  be  confronted 
with  the  work  of  a  man  who  felt  the  weakness 
of  the  classical  convention,  who  objected  to 
looking  at  nature  for  ever  through  the  spec- 
tacles of  the  schools,  and  who,  seeing  things 
for  himself,  endeavored  to  record  them  as 
they  are,  not  as  they  may  compose  by  rule 
and  compass.  The  naturalism  of  Constable  is 
evident  in  **The  Jomplng  Horse,**  the  **  Strat- 
ford Bfill,**  the  "  Landscape,"  now  exhibited. 
But  evident,  too,  is  that  which  is  the  great  de- 
fect of  many  of  bis  large  landscapes — his  un- 
due, if  conscientious,  elaboration  of  detail 
until  his  canvas  contains  a  dozen  pictures 
instead  of  one  only.  You  need  go  no  further 
than  to  the  stairway  leading  to  the  Academy's 
Diploma  Galleries—all  too  seldom  visited  by 
the  crowds  who  would  not  miss  the  spring's 
show  or  the  winter's  Old  Masters— to  be  re- 
minded what  an  incomparable  master  Con- 
stable was  when  he  sketched.  But  he  had  a 
tendency,  when  it  came  to  painting  a  larg^ 
picture,  to  arrange  upon  one  canvas  half  a- 
dozen  or  more  of  his  marvellous  little  studies. 
The  effect  of  the  composition  as  a  whole  is 
thus  sacrificed  to  parts  having  all  too  little 
relation  to  each  other,  and  the  result  is  a  cer- 
tain restlessness  that  fatigues  the  eye.  This 
the  French  Romanticists  recognized  to  be  a 
mistake,  though  their  early  canvases  prove 
that  they  too  could,  and  did  for  a  time,  de- 
vote to  detail  all  the  mioute  observation  and 
elaboration  of  a  Constable.  But  in  their  best 
work  they  carried  his  naturalism  to  its  legiti- 
mate conclusion,  and  sought,  not  merely  to 
render  a  landscape,  but  to  render  it  as  they 
saw  it,  preserving  on  their  canvas  the  unity 
of  their  actual  impression.  To  follow  with 
intelligence,  as  you  can  now  at  the  Academy, 
the  development  of  landscape- painting  from 
Claude  to  Corot,  through  Constable,  is  one 
way  to  finding  a  clue  to  what  to  so  many 
people  is  still  the  enigma  of  modem  impres- 
sionism. 

I  have  dwelt  upon  this  section  of  the  Exhi- 
bition because,  in  other  respects,  the  collection 
is  much  as  it  was  last  winter  and  the  many 
winters  preceding.  There  is  a  room  full  of 
Primitives,  a  so-called  Oiorgione  conspicuous 
for  the  benefit  of  the  foot-rule  critic  whose 
least  concern  is  beauty  in  a  picture.  There 
are  portraits  by,  or  after,  Velasquez  and  Titian 
and  Tintoretto  and  Vandyck.  There  are  seve- 
ral very  lovely  Turners :  one,  a  **  Monte 
Aventino,"  in  which  the  color  seems  still  fairly 
fresh  in  contrast  to  another  called  **Tbe  Blue 
Lights,"  which,  like  the  great  majority  of 
Turners,  has  so  suffered  by  the  effect  of  time 


upon  bad  pigments  that  its  name  becomes 
meaningless.  And,  as  usual,  there  is  an  im- 
posing array  of  Romneys,  Gainsborougbs,  and 
Sir  Joshuas,  a  few  especially  famous :  Gains- 
borough's **Blue  Boy"  from  the  Duke  of 
Westminster's  gallery,  the  painter's  bold  pro- 
test against  academicial  color-schemes ;  Sir 
Joshua's  ** Tragic  Muse"  from  the  same  col- 
lection, and  a  number  of  his  portraits  of  chil- 
dren, charming  in  themselves,  but  responsible 
for  a  vast  progeny  of  sentimental  and  silly 
babies ;  while  preeminent  in  the  chief  centre 
of  honor  is  Gilbert  Stuart's  portrait  of  Wash- 
ington, who,  by  his  timely  presence,  seems  to 
be  holding  out  the  olive  branch.  As  agent  of 
peace,  the  Academy  was  not  to  be  outdone 
by  the  Society  of  Authors.  N.  N. 


PAINTINGS  AT  CHANTILLY. 

Paris,  January  10, 1886. 

Ok  the  occasion  of  the  centenary  of  the  foun- 
dation of  the  Institute,  a  visit  to  Chantilly 
was  made  by  the  members  of  the  Institute, 
and  each  of  them  was  presented,  on  his  arrival 
at  the  Cb&teau,  with  a  tiny  volume,  published 
at  the  charge  of  the  Duke  d  Aumale,  bearing 
this  tiUe:  *  Chantilly:  Visite  de  I'Institut  de 
France,  36  Octobre,  1895;  Itio^raire.'  The  vol- 
ume was  to  serve  the  recipient  as  a  guide,  and 
gave  a  succinct  account  of  all  the  works  of  art 
to  be  seen  in  each  room  in  the  galleries,  the 
towers,  the  staircases,  the  chapel,  the  vesti 
bules,  the  room  which  goes  under  the  name  of 
**  Appartement  de  M.  le  Prince,"  the  library, 
etc.  This  pretty  volume,  published  by  Plon,  is  a 
real  guide-book,  which  will  be  of  great  use  to 
all  who  are  allowed  to  visit  Chantilly,  as  the 
arrangement  of  all  the  works  of  art,  pictures, 
statues,  and  tapestries  may  now  be  considered 
as  definitive.  But  this  catalogue  wiU  be  some 
day  supplemented  by  detailed  works  on  all 
the  valuable  works  of  art  at  Chantilly.  The 
series  has  been  begun  by  a  very  magnificent 
volume,  *  La  Peinture  au  Ch&teau  de  Chantil 
ly**  written  by  M.  Gruyer,  member  of  the 
Academy  of  Fine  Arts  of  the  Institute,  who 
long  ago  achieved  a  great  notoriety  in  the  ar- 
tistic and  literary  world  by  his  volumes  on 
Raphael,  which  are  standard  works  of  artistic 
criticism.  He  lived  for  many  years  in  Italy, 
was  for  some  time  one  of  the  **  conservateurs" 
of  the  Museum  of  the  Louvre,  and  is  an  occa- 
sional contributor  to  the  Revue  dee  Deux 
Mondes,  Living  at  Chantilly,  and  honored 
with  the  friendship  of  the  Duke  d' Aumale,  he 
was  better  qualified  than  anybody  to  give  a 
description  of  the  galleries  of  pictures  formed 
by  the  Prince. 

The  volume  just  published  is  full  of  beauti- 
ful illustrations  made  by  modem  processes 
from  fine  photographs  by  Braun,  and  is  devot- 
ed to  the  foreign  schools,  chiefiy  the  Italian 
and  Flemish.  A  second  volume  will  be  conse- 
crated to  the  French  school.  The  notices  writ- 
ten by  M.  Gruyer  concerning  each  painter 
have  been  placed  by  him  in  chronological  or- 
der, and  they  may  thus  be  said  to  belong  to 
the  history  of  art,  of  which  they  are  successive 
fragments.  We  cannot  here  follow  such  a 
chronological  order,  and  we  can  draw  attention 
only  to  certain  pictures  which  niay  be  called 
the  gems  of  the  collection.  **  A  tout  seigneur, 
tout  honneur,"  says  a  French  proverb.  Who 
would  not,  if  he  had  only  a  few  moments  to 
spend  at  Chantilly,  ask  to  see  first  the  Rar 
phaels  ?  They  are  to  be  found  in  a  small  cabi- 
net  which  goes  under  the  name  of  the  *'  San- 
tuario."  One  is  the '*  Virgin  of' the  House  of 
Orleans,"  a  small  panel,  painted  about  1506, 


which  is  absolutely  intact  and  has  never  been 
touched  by  any  painter's  hand  but  Raphael's. 
It  was  placed  by  the  Regent  in  the  Gallery  of 
the  Palais-Royal.  The  other  represents  the 
"Three  Graces"  ;  it  was  painted  by  Raphael 
about  1505.  In  1503  Raphael  was  occupied  in 
Siena  in  helping  Pinturicchio  decorate  the 
liJbreria  of  the  cathedral  with  ten  frescoes 
which  represent  the  principal  traits  of  the  life 
of  .^hieas  Sylvius  Picoolomini,  who  became 
Pope  under  the  name  of  Pius  IL  In  this  libre- 
ria  was  at  the  time  an  old  group  of  the  Three 
Graces,  which  had  been  found  in  the  excava- 
tions made  for  building  the  cathedrmL  Ra- 
pbael  was  inspired  by  this  group,  and  first 
made  a  drawing  of  two  of  the  Graces  (which  is 
now  in  the  collection  of  the  Academy  of  Fine 
Arts  at  Venice).  A  year  afterwards  he  made 
the  admirable  picture  in  which  the  Graces  are 
seen  in  a  landscape  which  recalls  the  shores  of 
Lake  Thrasymene  and  the  neighborhood  of 
Spoleto.  This  small  masterpiece  belongs  to 
what  may  be  called  the  Umbrian  manner  of 
the  painter.  This  picture,  after  having  made 
a  part  of  the  Borghese  Gallery,  went  success- 
ively through  the  hands  of  Rebonl,  Fabre.  Sir 
Thomas  Lawrence,  Woodbume,  and  Lord  Dud- 
ley. It  was  sold  to  the  Duke  d' Aumale  in  1885 
for  the  price  of  626,000  francs. 

The  ** Virgin  of  the  Regent"  possesses  a 
marvellous  simplicity  and  freshness.  It  be- 
longs without  a  doubt  to  the  Florentine  man- 
ner or  period  of  the  immortal  master.  It  was 
nevertheless  most  probably  painted  at  Ur- 
bino,  where  it  remained  tUl  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  It  was  taken  then  to 
Flanders,  and  a  legend  will  have  it  that 
David  Teniers  substituted  for  an  open-air 
background  the  interior  background  which  is 
now  seen.  This  legend  has  no  justification. 
The  small  vases  on  a  shelf  which  are  seen 
in  the  background  have  Italian  forms.  We 
lose  sight  for  a  time  of  the  picture;  it  reap- 
peflu*s  in  the  eighteenth  century  in  the  Crozat, 
Tassart,  and  Decamp  collections,  and  then 
enters  the  gallery  of  the  Regent.  During  the 
Revolution  it  emigrates  to  Brussels,  and  re- 
mains in  the  hands  of  M.  Laborde  de  M^r^ 
ville.  In  1798  M.  Hibbert  buys  it  for  12,500 
francs;  it  was  owned  afterwards  by  M.  Ver- 
non, M.  Delamarre,  M.  Aguado,  M.  Francois 
Delessert.  After  the  death  of  M.  Delessert, 
the  Duke  d' Aumale  bought  it  in  1860  for  150,- 
000  francs.  If  it  was  for  sale  now,  lir.  Gruyer 
thinks  that  it  would  fetch  a  million,  and  there 
is  no  exaggeration  in  this  statement. 

Between  the  two  exquisite  Raphaels  stands  a 
panel  of  a  marriage-coffer,  painted  over  by 
Filippino  Lippi.  It  represents  the  story  of 
Esther  and  Ahasuerua.  Filippo  Lippi,  com- 
monly called  Filippino  to  distinguish  him  from 
his  father,  was  bom  in  1457  at  Prato.  He  be- 
came the  pupil  of  Sandro  BotticeUi,  and  it  is 
impossible  not  to  see  a  deep  relation  between 
their  works.  In  1484  Lippi  was  chosen  for 
continuing,  in  the  famous  chapel  of  Brancaccio, 
the  work  of  Masolino  da  Panicale  and  of  Ma- 
saccio,  which  had  been  interrupted  for  nearly 
half  a  century.  M.  Gruyer  says  that  **  if  Ra- 
phael admired  Masaccio  enough  to  borrow 
from  him  the  figures  of  Adam  and  Eve  for  the 
Loggie,  he  marked  also  his  esteem  for  Filippi- 
no by  being  inspired  by  the  figures  of  St.  Pe- 
ter and  St.  Paul  in  the  cartoon  of  the  tapestry 
of  Saint  Paul  at  Epheeus.  We  could  almost 
say  that  among  the  latest  of  the  Florentine 
quattrocentisti  there  is  perhaps  none  who  can 
be  considered  the  immediate  precursor  of  Ra- 
phael so  much  as  Filippino  Lippi."  Ha  bad 
two  manners;  the  picture  of  ** Esther  and 
Ahasuerus"  belongs  to  the  first)  which  wm  va* 


Feb.  6,  1896] 


The   I^ation. 


117 


doubtedly  the  best,  at  the  teoond  manner  was 
tpoiled  by  oetestation  of  knowledge  of  clawJcitl 
antiquity.  •  The  yonnger  works  of  the  master 
were  unaffected,  and  had  a  natural  grace  and 
poetry  which  is  unparalleled.  On  a  simple 
easaone,  decorated  for  some  noble  daughter 
of  Florence,  Filippino  Lippi  has  made  a  com 
position  which  is  an  admirable  illustration  of 
the  story  of  Esther.  In  the  background  is  seen 
the  great  repast  given  by  Ahasuems  for  his 
court;  the  rwidence  of  Shushan  is  represented 
by  one  of  those  charming  Florentine  palaces 
which  were  built  by  the  Brunelleschis,  the  Mi- 
chalonis,  the  AJbertif,  with  their  porticos  and 
their  high  columns.  In  the  central  portico 
sits  the  old  Abasuerus;  he  half  rises  to  greet 
Esther,  who  is  bowing  to  him.  He  is  sur- 
rounded by  the  wise  men  of  his  eouncO.  Six 
virgins,  guided  by  the  guardians  of  the  wo- 
men, accompany  Esther;  three  are  behind  her, 
on  the  left  of  the  picture,  three  are  before  her, 
and  have  already  passed  before  the  King.  The 
grace  and  angelic  beauty  cannot  be  sufficiently 
praised. 

Fifty  years  ago  the  coffer,  on  one  of  the  sides 
of  which  is  this  graceful  composition,  was  still 
complete  in  the  Palazzo  Torrigiani,  at  the  time 
when  Luigi  Torrigiani  was  beginning  his  col- 
lection. The  panels  had,  however,  been  all  de- 
tached, and  were  hanging  like  pictures  in  the 
gallery,  and  were  afterwards  dispersed.  In 
1877  the  panel  of  **Esther  and  Abasuerus**  was 
sold  by  Prince  Torrigiani  to  a  French  engineer, 
M.  Leclanch^,  who  made  a  fair  fortune  by  the 
aid  of  an  electric  pile  which  bears  his  name. 
In  1803  Leclanchd  died,  and  the  Duke  d*Au 
male  bought  the  panel,  which  was  a  part  of 
the  very  remarkable  collection  that  hsid  been 
formed  by  the  French  electrician.  I  remem 
ber  visiting  the  collection  at  the  time  It  was 
sold,  and  I  was  struck  by  the  extraordinary 
taste  which  Leclanch^,  a  scientific  man,  had 
shown  in  the  choice  of  the  objects  which  he 
had  collected  and  bought  with  his  savings; 
there  was  hardly  an  indifferent  object  in  his 
ooUeotiott. 

The  w<»«hippers  of  the  oldest  Italian  schools 
will  find  much  to  admire  at  Chantilly.  I  will 
notice  only  the  portrait  of  Slmonetta  Vespucci, 
one  of  the  most  seductive  women  of  her  time, 
by  Pallajuolo,  who  was  one  of  the  best  sculp- 
tors of  bis  time  as  well  as  a  painter  and  en- 
graver. This  is  the  true  Bimonetta  (we  see  her 
name  in  small  capitals  painted  on  the  lower 
margin  **  Bimonetta  Januensis  Vespuccia**), 
and  the  Bimonetta  of  the  Palazzo  Pitti  has 
nanrped  the  name.  Perugino  is  represented  by 
a  fine  Virgin,  called  the  **  Glorious  Virgin,'* 
sitting  with  the  infant  Jesus  on  a  throne,  with 
Baint  Jerome  on  one  side  and  Saint  Peter  on 
the  other.  The  picture  was  made  in  the  youth 
of  Perugino,  when  he  still  kept  the  habit  of 
modelling  with  lines,  like  an  engraver.  This 
picture  left  the  Church  of  Saint  Jerome  to  enter 
the  oolleotion  of  the  Duke  of  Lucquee,  and 
afterwards  the  Northwick  collection. 

Botticelli  shows  us  a  life-sized  figure  of  "  Au- 
tumn**; a  young  woman  with  two  young  chil- 
dren.  This  **  Autumn  **  has  all  the  qualities  as 
well  as  the  defects  of  the  great  Florentine 
master.  Bernardino  LuinI  has  an  **  Infant 
Jesus,  Saviour  of  the  World**  which  has  all 
the  grace  of  a  Leonardo,  so  much  so  that,  for 
a  time,  it  was  attributed  to  Da  Vind,  and 
catalogued  as  such  in  1828  In  the  gallery  of 
FonthUI  Abbey.  It  was  bought  by  M.  Fr«d6- 
ric  Beisel  and  after wardt  by  the  Duke  d*Au 
male.  I  know  no  finer  picture  by  Primaticcio 
than  the  portrait  of  Odet  de  Coligny,  cardinal 
of  CbAtUlon.  It  is  weU  in  place  in  the  old 
hooae  of  the  Montmorencys.    It  was  painted  in 


1548,  when  Ck>l{gny*s  broker  was  thirty-one 
years  old;  but  is  the  portrait  really  by  Prima- 
ticcio? M.  Oruyer  has  doubts  and  would  rather 
attribute  it  to  the  Florentine  masters,  to  Bron- 
zino  or  Pontormo.  Another  fine  portraH  is  the 
portrait  of  an  unknown  gentleman  by  Scipione 
Pulzone,  commonly  called  Scipione  Gaetano. 

In  the  Flemish  school^  we  must  notice  the 
magnificent  portrait  of  the  great  Bastard  of 
Burgundy  by  Roger  van  der  Weyden,  a  disci- 
ple of  Van  Eyck,  and  one  of  the  glories  of  the 
school  of  Bruges.  This  portrait  of  the  natural 
son  of  Philippe  Le  Bon  was  painted  about  1460. 
It  belonged  to  Gaigni^res,  the  celebrated  col- 
lector, and  was  afterwards  in  the  Duke  of 
8utherland*8  gallery  till  it  was  bought  by  the 
Duke  d*Aumale.  I  can  only  mention  rapidly 
some  important  pictures  of  the  foreign  schools : 
the  **  Virgin  and  the  Infant  Jesus  appearing 
before  Jeanne  of  France,**  by  Memling;  a  por- 
trait of  the  Cardinal  of  Bourbon  by  an  un- 
known Dutch  master;  a  portrait  of  Elisabetb 
Stuart,  Queen  of  Bohemia,  by  Mierevelt;  a 
life  size  portrait  of  Gaston  of  France,  Duke  of 
Orleans,  by  Van  Dyck.  The  same  master  is 
represented  by  two  beautiful  portraits  of  Count 
Henri  de  Bergbe  and  of  Marie  de  Barban<^n, 
Duchess  of  A  remberg.  A  charming  poi  trait  of 
the  great  Cond6,  made  by  David  Teniers  dur- 
ing the  long  sojourn  of  the  Prince  in  Flanders, 
was  added  not  long  ago  to  the  collection.  We 
see  in  it  Cond^  as  a  young  man;  the  portraits 
of  Cond^  in  later  years  are  very  numerous  at 
Chantilly.  I  cannot  mention  a  number  of 
other  portraits  which  are  all  interesting  in  an 
artistic  and  in  an  historical  sense. 

There  are  few  landscapes  of  the  Flemish 
school,  but  two  of  them  are  masterpieces— the 
shore  of  Scheveningen,  by  Ruysdael;  a  calm 
sea,  by  Van  der  Velde,  and  a  tempest  by  Ever- 
dingen.  The  English  school  has  but  few  repre- 
sentatives—a portrait  of  Philippe  iftgalit^  in 
the  uniform  of  colonel  of  hussars,  by  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds;  the  "TwoWaldegravee,**  by 
the  same;  and  Francis  I.,  Emperor  of  Austria, 
by  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence. 


Correspondence. 


••LIGHT**:  A  DISCRIMINATION. 
To  THK  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Snt:  Attention  should  be  called  to  Prof. 
MQnsterberg*s  account  in  Science  of  the  new 
kind  of  invisible  light.  It  is  in  many  respects 
the  most  comprehensible  that  has  yet  appeared. 
The  agent  is  so  new  and  so  wonderful  that  it 
is  difilcult  to  find  correct  terms  in  which  to 
speak  of  it.  Should  it  be  called  light  or  not 
light  ?  This  is  an  instance  of  a  state  of  things 
which  is  of  not  uncommon  occurrence  in  those 
portions  of  science  which  do  not  reach  the 
popular  ear— of  the  necessity,  namely,  for  re- 
vising what  the  logicians  call  the  ••  formation 
of  the  concept.**  Our  naive  ancestorsi  in 
making  language,  did  not  distinguish  be- 
tween light  as  an  external  something  brought 
to  us  by  the  sun  and  candles  and  firefiies,  and 
light  as  an  internal  sensation.  The  distinction 
was  not  very  essential  so  long  as  the  two 
things  always  coincided;  and  the  cases  of  the 
sensation  being  produced  by  a  push  of  the 
eye-ball,  or  by  a  fall  on  the  Ice  (when  one 
'•sees  stars**),  were  not  of  sufllclent  practical 
interest  to  be  taken  account  of,  at  a  time  when 
mankind  was  too  busy  In  living  to  waste  time 
in  useless  speculations.  But  there  came  a 
time  when  it  was  necessary  to  prici9«r  the 
meaning  of  the  word  more  fully;  it  was  found 


that  there  was  something  which  was  invisible 
as  subjective  light,  bat  which  was  exactly  like 
objective  light,  except  that  it  passed  beyond  a 
given  limit  in  the  swiftness  of  its  motion. 
Objectively,  green  light  is  a  more  rapid  wave- 
motion  in  the  ether  than  red,  and  blue  than 
green,  and  violet  than  blue;  here  was  some- 
thing that  differed  from  a  color  only  as  one 
color  differeth  from  another;  should  it  be 
called  light  or  not  ?  By  a  weak  evasion  of  the 
difficulty,  this  thing  has  been  called  nothing 
but  ••the  ultra-violet  rays.**  Rays  of  what— 
rays  of  light,  or  •^rays**  of  wave-motion  in 
ether  ?  Rayt,  by  itself,  means  nothing  except 
that  which  moves  in  straight  lines. 

The  new  rays  that  have  been  discovered  by 
Prof.  R6ntgen  are  not  cathode  rays,  as  they 
have  been  said  by  the  newspapers  to  be,  but 
they  are  what  the  cathode  rays  are  turned  into 
as  they  pass  through  glass;  their  discoverer 
has  had  the  happy  idea  to  call  them  X-rays 
until  more  is  known  about  them.  The  most 
probable  hypothesis  in  regard  to  their  nature 
is,  according  to  Prof.  Milosterberg,  that  they 
are  longitudinal  vibrations  in  the  same  me- 
dium (the  ether)  whose  transverse  vibrations 
give  us  light  rays  and  infra  red  rays  and  ultra- 
violet rays.  The  existence  of  such  rays  has  for 
a  lorg  time  been  suspected  by  physicists;  re- 
searches are  in  progress  which,  it  is  hoped,  will 
prove  that  they  have  now  been  found. 

I  do  not,  of  course,  propose  to  discuss  the 
question  what  this  new  thing  shall  be  called; 
Rdntgen  vibrations  might  perhaps  not  be  a  bad 
name  for  it.  But  I  do  submit  that  it  is  no  w  time 
to  give  a  little  consideration  to  the  sense  in 
which  the  word  light  ought  to  be  used,  and  not 
to  let  the  question  be  settled  in  the  hit-or-miss 
fashion  that  too  often  prevails  among  scientists. 
To  use  the  one  word  light  for  (1)  ether  vibra- 
tions that  affect  the  eye,  (2)  ether  vibrations 
that  do  not  affect  the  eye,  (8)  the  affections  of 
consciousness  tliat  are  due  to  ether  vibrations, 
and  (4)  also  those  that  are  due  to  a  pull  on  the 
optic  nerve,  and  to  an  electric  current  passing 
through  it,  is  to  permit  a  degree  of  hopeless 
confusion  which  those  who  love  exact  think- 
ing ought  to  blush  for.  The  Germans  have 
already  adopted  the  compound  word  light  sen- 
sation for  the  affections  of  consciousness,  and 
nothing  better  could  be  desired.  The  ••spirit 
of  the  English  language**  is  a  very  backward 
spirit,  and  it  is  very  averse  to  the  formation  of 
compound  words;  but  this  is  an  aversion  which 
must  be  overcome  if  speech  is  to  keep  pace  with 
knowledge.  Who  knows  bat  that  the  English 
might  have  been  as  great  metaphysicians  as 
the  Germans  if  they  had  given  themselves  the 
same  liberty  in  the  formation  of  long  wordsf 

The  best  use  to  make  of  the  word  light  is  to 
reserve  it  for  those  ether  vibrations  which 
cause  the  sensation  of  light ;  any  other  use  of 
it  which  should  avoid  its  present  vagueness 
would  interfere  with  the  wealth  of  poetical 
associations  which  attach  to  the  word.  We 
should  then  saj^  when  we  receive  a  blow  on 
the  head,  not  •*!  see  a  light,*'  but  ••I  feel  a 
sensation  of  light,**  or,  better,  *•  I  feel  a  light- 
sensation.**  And,  on  the  other  band,  the  phy- 
sicist would  cease  to  say  that  ether  waves  are 
not  light  while  they  are  on  their  way  to  us 
from  the  sun. 

The  term  ••ultra-violet  rays**  should  be 
given  up,  and  the  terqa  tUtra-violet  ether  ri- 
brations  should  be  exclusively  used  in  its 
stead.  The  term  rays  is,  moreover,  being  dis- 
carded by  the  new  scientist  on  other  grounds, 
and  the  thing  mesnt  by  it  is  being  discussed  In 
terms  of  wave  and  wave  front ;  it  is  therefore 
useless  to  attempt  to  preserve  it  for  the  ultra- 
violet rays.    There  is  no  help  for  it  bat  to  use 


118 


Tlie   ]N"ation. 


[Vol.  62,  Na  1597 


the  term  ethtr  vibfxiUons  (as  the  general  name 
for  heat,  light,  ultra  violet  rays,  and  R6ntgen 
rays)  in  common  parlance  as  freely  as  it  is  al- 
ready nsed  in  scientific  language.  The  news- 
paper men  would  certainly  find  no  difficulty  in 
adopting  this  newly  arisen  requirement  for  ac- 
curacy, and  then  the  whole  thing  would  be  set- 
tled for  us,  as  far  as  popular  language  goes. 

The  reform  that  I  propose  is  therefore,  in 
brief,  this : 

(1.)  For  the  psychologist,  the  use  of  the  term 
light'tenaatumy  instead  of  light,  when  the  sen- 
sation is  referred  to. 

(2.)  For  the  physicist,  the  use  of  the  term 
ultra-violet  vibrationa,  instead  of  ultra-violet 
rays. 

(8.)  For  the  common  man,  the  use  of  the  term 
ether  ffibratiane,  instead  of  light,  for  light  plus 
invisible  light,  when  it  is  meant  to  speak  in- 
definitely of  the  various  phenomena  which  fall 
under  this  head.  Chr.  Ladd  Fbaitklin. 
BAunioaK,  Febnuuy  8, 1806. 


AN  UNPUBLISHED  LETTER  OF  THOMAS 
PAINE. 

To  THE  Editor  of  Thk  Nation: 

Sib  :  The  subjoined  letter  was  purchased 
many  years  ago,  at  an  auction  sale  in  London, 
by  Mr.  Joseph  Cowen  of  Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
formerly  member  of  Parliament,  to  whom  I 
am  indebted  for  its  use.  There  is  no  indica- 
tion in  the  original  of  the  person  to  whom  it 
was  written,  but  it  was  certainly  to  Colonel 
John  Fellows,  the  bookseller  in  New  York  who 
had  there  copyrighted  Part  I.  of  *  The  Age  of 
Reason.*  It  will  be  remembered  that  Paine,  on 
his  way  to  prison  in  Paris,  managed  to  see 
Joel  Bu'low,  and  intrusted  to  that  ex.parson 
his  MS.,  which  was  forwarded  to  his  (Barlow's) 
own  publisher  in  New  York. 

PAais,  January  90, 1707. 

81B,  Tour  friend  Mr.  Caritat  being  00  the  point  of 
his  departure  for  America  I  make  it  the  opportu- 
nity of  writing  to  you.  I  received  two  letters  from 
you  with  some  pamphlets  a  considerable  time  ago 
in  which  you  inform  me  of  your  entering  a  copy 
right  of  the  first  Part  of  the  Age  of  Reason;  when  I 
return  to  America  we  will  settle  for  that  matter. 

As  Doctor  Franklin  has  been  my  intimate  friend 
for  thirty  years  past  you  will  naturally  see  the  rea- 
son of  my  continuing  the  connection  with  his 
grandson.  I  prfaited  here  (Paris)  about  fifteen 
thousand  of  the  second  Part  of  the  Age  of  Reason, 
which  I  sent  to  Mr.  F[ranklin]  Bache.  I  gave  him  no- 
tice of  it  in  September,  1796,  and  the  copy  right  by 
my  own  direction  was  entered  by  him.  The  books 
did  not  arrive  till  April  following,  but  he  bad  adver- 
tised it  long  before. 

I  sent  to  him  In  August  last  a  manuscript  letter 
of  about  seventy  pages,  from  me  to  Mr.  Washing- 
ton to  be  printed  in  a  pamphlet  Mr.  Barnes  of 
Philadelphia  carried  the  letter  from  me  over  to 
London  to  be  forwarded  to  America.  It  went  by 
the  ship  Hope,  Capt.  Harley,  who  since  his  return 
from  America  told  me  that  he  put  it  in  the  post 
office  at  New  York  for  Bache.  I  have  yet  no  cer 
tain  account  of  Its  publication.  I  mention  this  that 
the  letter  may  be  enquired  after,  In  case  It  has  not 
been  published  or  has  not  arrived  to  Mr.  Bache. 
Barnes  wrote  to  me  from  London  20  August  in- 
forming me  that  he  was  offered  three  hundred 
pounds  steriing  for  the  manuscript.  The  offer  was 
refused  because  it  was  my  intention  it  should  not 
appear  till  It  appeared  in  America,  as  that,  and  not 
England,  was  the  place  for  its  operation. 

You  ask  me  by  your  letter  to  Mr.  Caritat  for  a 
Ust  of  my  several  works,  in  order  to  publish  a  col- 
lection of  them.  This  is  an  undertaking  I  have 
always  reserved  for  myself.  It  not  only  belongs  to 
me  of  right,  but  nobody  but  myself  can  do  It;  and 
as  eveiy  author  is  accountable  Cat  least  in  reputa- 
tion) for  his  works,  he  only  is  the  person  to  do  it. 
If  he  neglects  it  in  his  I'ie  time  the  case  is  altered. 
It  is  my  intention  to  return  to  America  in  the 


course  of  the  present  year;  I  shall  then  [do]  it  by 
subscription,  with  historical  notes.  As  this  work 
will  employ  many  persons  in  different  parts  of  the 
Union,  I  will  confer  with  you  upon  the  subject,  and 
such  part  of  it  as  will  suit  you  to  undertake  will  be 
at  your  choice.  I  have  sustained  so  much  loss  by 
disinterestedness  and  inattention  to  money  matters, 
and  by  accidenta  that  I  am  obliged  to  look  closer 
to  my  affairs  than  I  have  done.  The  printer  (an 
Englishman)  whom  I  employed  here  to  print  the 
second  part  of  the  Age  of  Reason,  made  a  copy  of 
the  work  while  he  was  printing  it,  which  he  sent  to 
London  and  sold.  It  was  by  this  means  that  an  edi- 
tion of  it  came  out  in  London. 

We  are  waiting  here  for  news  from  America  of 
the  state  of  the  federal  elections.  You  will  have 
heard  k>ng  before  this  reaches  you  that  the  French 
government  has  refused  to  receive  Mr.  Pinckney  as 
minister.  While  Mr.  Monroe  was  minister  he  had 
the  opportunity  of  softening  matters  with  this  gov- 
ernment* for  he  was  in  good  credit  with  them, 
though  they  were  in  high  indignation  at  the  In- 
fidelity of  the  Washington  Administration.  It  is 
time  that  Mr.  Washington  retire,  for  he  has  played 
off  so  much  pmdent  hypocriiy  between  France  and 
Ekigland  that  neither  government  believes  anything 
he  says.  Your  friend,  etc. 

Thomas  Paisb. 

I  cannot  forbear  a  few  further  words  on  this 
remarkable  letter— not  about  the  animadver- 
sion  on  Washington,  for  in  my  third  yolume 
of  Paine's  Writings  there  are  documents 
enough  to  make  tiiat  case  dear— but  oonoem- 
ing  the  strange  outcome  of  Palne's  purpose  of 
publishing  all  his  works.  When  he  returned  to 
America,  near  the  close  of  1802,  the  Federal- 
ists, furious  at  the  election  of  Jefferson,  and 
the  parsons,  furious  over  the  *  Age  of  Reason,' 
united  on  Paine  for  a  scapegoat.  Amid  the 
storm  that  broke  oyer  him  he  could  not  publish 
his  old  works,  and  still  less  the  two  he  had  in 
manuscript  These  were  Part  III.  of  the  *Age 
of  Reason '  aud  *  An  Answer  to  the  Bishop  of 
Llandaff.*  These  he  bequeathed  to  Madame 
BonneviPe,  who  in  Paris,  with  her  husband, 
had  nursed  him  in  illness,  and  shared  with  him 
their  home  for  nearly  eight  years.  She  was 
then  an  enthusiastio  disciple  of  Paine's  ideas, 
but  no  sooner  was  Paine  dead  than  she  began 
to  revert  to  her  original  ^pe— Catholicism. 
Strange  irony  of  fatet  The  two  large  works 
to  which  Paine  had  devoted  the  best  part  of 
nine  years  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  Roman 
Catholic  devotee,  who  did  penance  for  her  pre- 
vious heresies  by  mutilating  and  erasing 
Paine's  ideas,  so  that  his  two  important 
volumes  were  well-nigh  ruined.  Madame^s 
pious  destructiveness  was,  however,  in  some 
degree  limited  by  her  need  of  money.  It  is  due 
to  the  enterprise  and  means  of  John  Fellows, 
to  whom  the  above  letter  was  written,  that  a 
number  of  important  fragments  were  rescued, 
and  in  a  good  many  cases  he  was  able  to  re- 
cover striking  passages  despite  the  erasures  of 
the  zealous  French  woman. 

MoNCURK  D.  Conway. 
LoxDOM,  Janaary  SO,  1800. 


PROTECTION-BY   ANNEXATION. 
To  THX  Editor  of  Thk  Nation  : 

Sir  :  Senator  CuUom's  speech  at  Springfield 
yesterday  throws  a  new  light  ipon  the  Vene- 
zuelan question.  Speaking  of  the  British  pos- 
sessions of  Canada,  BriUsh  Ouiana,  British 
Honduras,  etc.,  and  of  the  American  posses- 
sions of  Spain,  Denmark,  France,  and  Hol- 
land, he  says : 

'*  But  all  these  possessions  lie  within  a  radius 
of  a  few  hundred  miles  from  southern  Florida 
and  are  naturally,  by  position  and  commercial 
relationship,  of  greater  importance  to  the 
United  States  th^  to  any  other  nation.** 

In  the  next  paragraph  he  reoommends  the 


annexation  of  Hawaii  to  the  United  Statea. 
Further  on  he  says,  referring  to  Cuba: 

**  Why,  fellow  citizensL  when  the  day  oomes 
that  the  possession  of  Cuba  by  any  other  Power 
bears  adversely  upon  the  interests  and  welfare 
of  the  United  States,  we  shaU  cut  the  Gordian 
knot  and  take  such  action  as  will  make  Cuba 
an  annex  to  this  country.  It  naturally  ^politi- 
cally, and  commercially  belongs  to  the- United 
States.** 

And  again,  near  the  close  of  his  speech,  he 
says,  after  recommending  many  more  annexa. 
tions: 

**  We  have  never  made  a  bad  bargain  In  any 
of  our  acquisitions  of  territory.  We  acquired 
Florida,  and  what  a  gem  she  u  and  bow  great 
she  bids  fair  to  become.  We  bought  Louinana 
and  the  Northwest  territory,  the  greatest  and 
brightest  Jewel  in  our  possession.  Stata  after 
State  have  been  carved  out  of  her  territory. 
Then  California,  portions  of  the  very  garden 
of  Eden,  Texas,  an  empire  of  itself.  New  Mexi- 
co, Oregcm,  and  Alaska  have  come  to  us.  What 
would  we  have  been  without  these  principali- 
ties and  empires  which  we  now  possess  ?  It  is 
to  be  the  duty  of  the  great  Republican  party 
to  look  into  the  future  and  snape  our  policy 
with  wisdom  and  care,  and  to  build  up  to  its 
proper  height  and  breadth  the  splendid  nation 
committed  to  our  care.** 

This  speech  is  quite  touching  in  its  innocent 
and  simple  dishonesty.  Now  we  understand 
the  noble  and  self-sacrificing  anxiety  of 
Jingoes  to  protect  '*6ur  brother  republics'* ; 
their  canting  platitudes  about  the  oppressionr 
of  a  weak  by  a  stronger  Power ;  their  indigna- 
tion against  the  covetousness  and  '* grabbing" 
of  Englapd.  Their  real  meaning  seems  to  be  : 
**  Hands  off  Veneznela  !  Some  day  we  h<^>e  to 
annex  it  ourselves.  We  are  not  quite  ready 
yet,  because  we  are  first  going  to  appropriate 
a  number  of  other  places,  including  Canada 
and  your  possessions  in  the  West  Indies.  In 
the  meantime,  in  the  language  of  Bret  Harte*s 
BiU  Nye, 

***Thli  poor  IDJOB  we  protects  from  sueh  sharps  as 
jon  be,*  ** 

When  Uncle  Sam  is  w^  out  of  this  Vene- 
zuelan business,  we  trust  he  may  not  be  found 
with  *' a  dollar  greenback  in  his  hand**  worth 
twenty  cents  in  coin.— Tours  truly,      X.  Z. 
Chicago,  January  99, 1800. 


"THE  SQUIRRBL  GIRL." 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  a  friend  in  New  York  senda  me  a  cut- 
ting from  a  local  paper  stating  that  a  girl  who 
has  captivated  the  squirrel  population  of  Cen- 
tral Park  has  had  to  ask  for  a  home  in  the 
workhouse  of  YorkviUe,  having  no  home  and 
apparently  no  subsistence.  That  such  a  phe- 
nomenon should  excite  rather  amusement  than 
interest  in  the  busy  population  of  New  York  Is 
not  surprising,  but  it  is  one  which,  toalllovaa 
of  nature  and  {tsychology,  ought  to  be  very  in- 
teresting. If  I  were  Mayor  of  New  York  I 
would  give  her  a  salaried  position  as  Keeper  of 
the  Squirrels,  with  lodgings  in  the  midst  of 
her  pets,  and  I  think  that,  merely  for  the  poet- 
ry of  the  thing,  the  Society  for  the  PreventioD 
of  Cruelty  to  Animals  should  take  note  of  itb 
As  a  lover  of  that  most  beautiful  and  intelli- 
gent of  our  lesser  quadrupeds,  and  in  default 
of  the  proper  official  action,  I  should  like  to 
open  a  subscription  for  the  benefit  of  Mary 
Lyons  to  enable  her  to  devote  herself  to  the 
squirrels;  and  I  beg  you  to  putmy  nan»  down 
for  $5  a  year  as  long  as  I  live.  I  would  capi- 
talize it  if  I  had  the  means. 

Yours  truly,  W.  J.  Stillmak. 

ROMS,  Janaary  SI,  1890. 


Feb.  6,  1896] 


Tlie   ITation. 


119 


Notes. 


HouQBTOir,  MiFFLDf  A  Oo.  have  in  prrM 
*  Joan  of  Arc,'  bj  FnaOB  C.  LoweU;  '  Vifiom 
aad  Sanrioe,'  college  chapel  dieoonrses  by 
Biehop  Lawrenoe  of  Maaachneette;  *The8pi. 
lil  ill  Literature  and  Life,*  college  lectnree  by 
the  Rey.  Dr.  Coyle;  *  The  Pareon*s  Proxy,*  by 
Mrs.  Kate  W.  HamUUm;  and  'Bayard  Tay- 
lor,' by  A.  H.  Smyth,  tn  the  American  Man  of 

Maomillan  &  Co.  haTeinprena  *HiBtoryof 
the  Postal  Packet  SerTlce  during  the  French 
War,  from  1798  to  1816,'  by  Arthur  H.  Nor- 
man,  and  Mr.  William  Aetcn'Chanler's  account 
of  hie  exploring  expedition  to  northeastern 
Africa  with  Lient.  yon  HOhnel,  Ohistrated  by 
photographs. 

'  Biblical  Character  Sketches,'  by  Dean  Far- 
rar  and  other  preachers,  and  *  Curiosities  of 
Olden  Times,*  by  &  Baring-Oould,  will  be  pub- 
Ikhed  directly  t^  Thomas  Whittaker. 

'The  Song  of  Songs  which  is  Solomon's, 
being  a  Reprint  and  a  Study,'  by  Elbert 
Hubbard,  will  ime  in alimited  edition  from 
the^oycroft  Printing  Shop,  Esst  Aurora, 
5.Y. 

S.  C  Qriggs  A  Co.,  Chicago,  announce  'The 
Non-Heredity  of  Inebriety,'  by  Leslie  E.  Zee- 
ley,  M.D. 

Mme.  Arsfene  Darmesteter,  it  is  announced, 
is  pushing  to  completion  the  edition  of  the  en- 
tire works  of  her  lamented  husband.  The  last 
of  these  was  an  esMy  towards  the  reoonstruo- 
tion  of  the  Champenoise  dialect  of  the  eley- 
enth  tMitury.  Darmesteter  had  gathered  for 
this  purpose  nearly  four  thousand  >lM#s,  most 
of  which  will  be  published.  Mme.  Darmeste- 
tsr,  who  is  an  excellent  painter,  has  Just  finish- 
ed a  portrait  of  her  husband  which  is  to  go  to 
the  Sorboone  as  a  memorial  of  the  life  of  one 
of  iti  most  esteemed  profesM»rs. 

The  Hungarian  Academy  of  Sdencahas  de- 
cided to  poUish  a  dictionary  of  the  national 
language  af  it  is  now  used  in  Hungary.  It  is 
esthneted  that  twenty  years  will  be  devoted  to 
the  preliminary  work  alone. 

A  splendid  facsimile  of  William  Bradford's 
Journal,  made  from  the  original  in  the  Bishop 
of  London's  library  at  Fulham  Palace,  has  just 
Its  cost  predudes  the  hope  of 
I  one  might  wish,  that  it  should 
find  a  place  in  every  public  library  in  this 
oountry. 

•The  Most  IMectable  History  of  Reynard 
the  Fox,'  edited  with  notes  by  the  well-known 
folk-kMirt,  Joeeph  Jacobs,  is  the  latest  addi- 
tion to  Maemillan*s  dainty  Cranford  Series. 
The  text  is  based  upon  Caxton's,  adapted  for 
the  use  of  children  by  the  late  Sir  Henry  Cole, 
•^Fslix  Summerly,"  and  modified  but  ilightly 
by  the  present  editor.  An  introduction,  ad- 
dinned  to  adult  readen,  briefiy  summarises 
the  latest  results  of  phUologioal  rsssarch  con- 
eeming  the  origin  and  history  of  this  old 
•«  Weltbibel,'*  whose  rascally  hero,  in  spite  of 
his  mwinnw  and  duplicity,  yet  commands  our 
rsspect  because,  to  adopt  Fronde's  explanation, 
"  he  can  do  what  he  Mts  to  work  to  do.''  Nu- 
msrous  illnstratlons  by  Frank  Calderon,  in  the 
manner  of  F.  S.  Church,  add  to  the  charm  of 
this  pietty  volume. 

Charles  8cribner*sSons  have  reistued  George 
Augustus  Bala's  'Life  and  Adventures,'  writ- 
ten by  himself.  There  is  nothing  on  the  title- 
page  to  show  that  this  is  a  second  edition,  but 
the  votnmes  are  somewhat  smaller,  and  clothed 
la  brown  instead  of  red.  The  price  is  also  re- 
daoed,  but  the  valne  is  unchanged  by  the  fact 


that  Mr.  Sala  has  joined  the  majority  since 
the  previous  issue. 

Mr.  Frank  Preston  Steams  thinks  his 
'  Sketches  from  Concord  and  Appledore'  (Put- 
nams)  win  not  have  been  written  in  vain  if, 
among  other  aohievementB,  they  "  succeed  in 
restoring  to  Wendell  Phillips  a  portion  of  the 
fame  he  lost  by  the  wayward  coune  of  his  de- 
clining  years."  Save  us  from  our  friends!  On 
p.  906  Mr.  Steams  says  of  Bir.  P^lUps  that 
"  he  never  ai^)eared  as  an  advocate  of  woman 
suffrage  before  the  public,  but  he  is  said  to  have 
approved  of  it*' !  Had  Mr.  Steams  turned  to  the 
first  series  of  Mr.  Phillips's  collected  speeches 
he  would  have  found  one  delivered  in  October, 
1861,  placed  as  nearly  in  the  forefront  of  the 
volume  as  the  Lovejoy  speech  would  permit, 
based  on  a  resolution  of  his  own  writing,  in 
these  words :  "That  while  we  do  not  under  vidue 
other  methods,  the  right  of  suffrage  for  women 
is,  in  our  opinion,  the  comer  stone  of  this  [wo- 
man's rights]  enterprise."  On  the  same  page 
Mr.  Steams  stotes  that  Mr.  Phillips  would  not 
vote  because  of  his  scruples  against  upholding 
a  government  maintainiog  an  army  and  navy. 
But  notoriously  Mr.  Phillips  never  adopted  Mr. 
Garrison's  non-resistanoe  views,  and  in  the 
second  series  of  his  speeches  occurs  that  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  oration  which  Bir.  Steams  de- 
scribes without,  apparently,  having  read  it, 
and  in  which  dynamite  and  the  dagger  are  pro- 
nounced necessary  and  proper  substitutes  for 
peaceful  agitation  in  an  absolute  monarchy 
like  Russia. 

Some  picturesque  legal  antiquities  are  lightly 
sketched  by  Mr.  Francis  Watt  in  a  rather 
dainty  little  volume  entitled  'The  Law's 
Lumber  Room'  (London:  John  Lane;  Chica- 
go: A.  C.  McClurg  &  Co.).  To  use  his  own 
metaphor,  the  author  brushes  the  dust  from  a 
number  of  antiquated  customs  and  legal  fic- 
tions, and  shows,  not  without  a  pleasant  hu- 
mor, how  they  arose,  what  uses  they  served, 
and  how  they  came  to  be  discarded.  Such  to- 
pics as  Benefit  of  Clergy,  Deodands,  Sanctu- 
ary, Trial  by  Ordeal,  Wager  of  Battle,  etc., 
are  treated  with  sufficient  detail  for  all  oi> 
dinary  requirements,  and  at  the  same  time 
in  a  way  to  make  their  true  significance  ap- 
preciated. 

Of  'Congressional  Currency,'  by  Armis- 
tead  C.  (Gordon,  which  appears  in  the  Put- 
nams'  "  QuesUons  of  the  Day  "  Series,  we  need 
say  little  more  than  is  said  in  the  preface. 
"  An  outline  of  the  genesis,  growth,  and  con- 
dition of  the  exittiDg  currency  system  of  the 
United  States,  a  short  aoooont  of  each  of  the 
various  kinds  of  '  mooey '  or  circulating  me- 
dium now  in  use,  and  a  consecutive  statement 
of  the  most  conspicuous  or  important  acts  of 
legislation  in  connection  therewith,  concluding 
with  a  sketch  of  the  judicial  interpretation 
which  such  legislation  has  received  at  the 
hands  of  the  Supreme  Court,"  is  certainly  a 
timely  publioation.  It  is  also  a  well-written 
one,  and  the  author  deservee  credit  for  setting 
forth  clearly  a  confusion  which  is  steadily 
growing  worse  confounded. 

The  general  interest  manifested  in  the  im- 
provement of  our  highways  will  be  increased 
and  intelligently  guided  by  Qen.  Alfred  P. 
Roekweirs  treatise  on  *  Roads  and  Pavements 
in  France'  (John  Wiley  &  Sons).  It  gives  in 
a  condensed  form,  but  clearly,  all  the  neces- 
sary information  as  to  the  best  materials  for 
roads,  their  cost,  maintenanoe,  and  repair,  to- 
gether with  numerous  diagrams,  thus  making 
a  valuable  vade>mecum  for  persons  having  the 
care  of  highways  and  streets.  It  is  interesting 
to  note  that  wood- pavement  is  now  the  fa- 
vorite in  Paris,  because  "  it  is  smooth,  noise- 


less,  agreeable  to  drive  over,  easily  kept  clean, 
and  is  rapidly  relaid  when  worn  out." 

Dr.  Daniel  Denison  SUule  of  Harvard  Uni. 
ver^ity  adds  to  his  many  accomplishments  a 
knowledge  of  horticulture.  His  interest  in  this 
has  led  him  to  review  the  early  history  of  the 
art  in  New  England,  and  to  embody  the  results 
of  his  wide  reading  in  a  dainty,  old-fashioned 
book  of  about  two  hundred  pages  ( '  Evolution 
of  Horticulture  in  New  England,'  Knicker- 
bocker Press,  1805).  The  paper,  binding,  and 
general  impression  carry  the  volume  back 
about  as  many  years  as  it  has  pages,  and  this 
effect  is  not  lenened  when  one  finds  that  the 
work  is  copyrighted  at  Stationers*  Hall,  Lon- 
don. The  citations  from  the  early  records  are 
well  chosen  and  accurate,  and  render  the  hock 
convenient  for  reference.  The  allusions  to 
very  recent  horticultural  suoceeses  in  New 
England  are  meagre  and  unsatisfactory  and 
the  omissions  many,  but  the  latter  may  be  over- 
looked, since  the  author  speaks  in  a  kindly 
manner  of  those  whom  he  does  mention.  He 
deals  with  the  past  rather  than  with  the  pre- 
sent, with  evolution  and  not  with  the  evolved. 
We  thank  him  for  giving  us  a  pleasant  excur- 
sion into  the  days  when  the  streets  of  Boston 
were  leisurely  assuming  their  unaocount^iile 
and  unexpected  directions  under  the  feet  of 
kine  excluded  from  the  fair  flower-beds  on  Bea- 
con Hill,  and  forced  to  wander  to  the  Neck,  or 
to  the  salt  marshes  on  the  Charles  where  now 
is  to  be  seen  that  masterpiece  of  municipal 
horticulture  and  treasury  of  sculpture  known 
as  the  Public  Oarden. 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  why  Dr.  M.  C. 
Cooke's  'Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Fungi* 
(London:  A.  &  C.  Black;  New  York:  Maomil- 
Ian)  was  ever  written.  The  author  says  that 
"  the  pages  are  the  result  of  an  effort  to  sup- 
ply an  acknowledged  want,"  but  this  statsment 
is  ambiguous.  It  may  mean  that  the  author 
feels  the  want,  or  that  certain  other  people  do. 
It  sometimes  happens  that  an  author  feels  the 
necessity  of  preparing  a  book  for  people  already 
well  supplied  with  the  same  class  of  treatises, 
while  ^e  people  themselvee  do  not  feel  the 
ssme  want  at  all.  The  present  work  is  not  suffi- 
ciently comprehensive  and  fresh  to  meet  the 
demands  of  specialists,  while  it  is,  on  the  other 
hand,  not  particularly  attractive  to  beginners 
or  general  readers.  The  defect  lies  in  the  plan 
and  not  in  the  treatment  Mr.  Cooke  has  done 
too  much  excellent  systematic  work  in  myoo- 
logjf  And  has  been  an  editor  too  long,  not  to 
express  himself  clearly  and  positively  in  print. 
If  he  had.ilivided  the  volume  into  two  parts, 
relegating  all  the  popular  descriptions  to  an 
elementary  work,  leaving  the  rest  to  he 
brought  rather  nearer  the  present  time  and 
illustrated  with  drawings  of  a  better  character, 
the  issue  would  probably  have  been  more  satis- 
faotory  to  two  classes  of  readers  who  may  have 
some  want  as  yet  unstipplied.  The  whole 
work,  as  it  stands,  would  be  easier  for  reading 
and  for  reference  if  the  chapters  had  been 
broken  up  more  f  ree^,  and  the  discrete  para- 
grsphs  provided  with  headings  to  catch  the 
eye. 

The  '  Book  of  the  Secrets  of  Enoch '  (Oxford: 
Clarendon  Press;  New  York:  Mscmillan),  edit- 
ed by  W.  R  MorflU  and  R.  H.  Charles,  is  an 
interesting  addition  to  pre-Christian  pseudepi- 
graphic  literature.  Though  abundantly  olted 
by  early  Christian  writers,  it  exists  at  present, 
so  far  as  is  known,  only  in  Slavic  versions.  It 
appears  to  have  been  written  by  an  orthodox 
but  free-minded  Jew,  who  not  only  sets  down 
current  Jewish  opinions  about  religion,  but 
adopts  ideas  from  the  Persian,  Egyptian,  and 
Greek  thought  of  bis  time  (between  B.  c  50 


ISO 


The   l^Tatlon. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1597 


and  A.  n.  60).  He  imiUtes  the  form  of  the 
Book  of  Enoch,  but  hat  noteworthy  opinions 
of  his  own  on  the  soul,  the  origin  of  death,  the 
millenniam,  angels,  Seraphim  {Chalkidri^  ooe- 
mography,  and  ethics,  lir.  Morflll  has  given 
an  English  translation  based  on  a  text  care- 
fully constmcted  from  the  various  Slavic  ver- 
sions, and  lir.  Charles  (the  well-known  trans- 
lator of  Enoch)  has  added  Critical  and  his- 
torical notes  and  a  general  introduction.  The 
names  of  these  two  gentlemen  are  a  guaran- 
tee of  the  good  performance  of  the  editorial 
work. 

The  quarterly  statement  for  January  of  the 
Palestine  Exploration  Fund  contains  the  report 
of  Dr.  F.  J.  Bliss  on  the  excavations  at  Jerusa- 
lem, and  a  paper  on  the  site  of  the  Temple, 
both  of  which  are  illustrated  by  diagrams.  An 
account  of  a  journey  east  of  the  Jordan  in  the 
spring  of  1805  by  Mr.  Gray  Hill  is  interesting 
mainly  from  its  picture  of  the  disturbed  oondi- 
tion  of  tbe  country,  which  made  it  impossible 
for  him  to  visit  Petra,  as  he  had  intended. 
Every  tribe  seemed  to  be  at  war  with  its 
neighbors,  and  tbe  Turks  were  apparently  pas- 
sive, if  not  powerless,  spectators.  In  the  wil- 
derness to  tbe  southwest  of  the  Dead  Sea  he 
passed  through  some  hills  of  daszingly  white 
chalk  by  an  **  extraordinary  winding  passage 
of  several  miles  in  length,  and  in  most  parts  of 
only  the  width  of  a  very  narrow  lane.  It  is 
sometimes  only  6  to  10  feet  across,  and  the 
sides  stand  up  on  either  hand  as  precipitous  as 
the  walls  of  a  castle,  varying  from  00  to  ISO  feet 
in  height.**  There  is  also  an  account  by  CoL 
Conder  of  inscriptions  in  the  Sjrian  language 
discovered  a  few  years  ago  by  German  ex- 
plorers in  the  extreme  north  of  Syria,  and  now 
published.  Transliterations  of  two,  dated 
about  800  B.C.  and  780  B.C.,  and  throwing  some 
light  on  the  Book  of  Kings,  are  given. 

The  last  quarterly  instalment  of  vol.  iv.  of 
tbe  BoUHn  <U  la  Soeiedad  Oeogrdfioa  de 
lAma  (Peru)  is  of  more  than  usual  interest.  In 
addition  to  the  contributions  of  members, 
which  have  for  the  most  part  been  of  a  high 
order,  the  Society  has  now  undertaken  to  make 
its  official  publication'  the  medium  for  pre- 
senting to  the  world  certain  works  of  value 
which  otherwise  would  remain  entirely  un- 
known, or  hidden  from  all  save  a  few  select 
scholars.  The  current  issue  contains  the  first 
of  a  series  of  notes  of  travel  by  the  savant  An- 
tonio Raimondi.  The  great  work  on  Peru  by 
this  distinguished  scientist  having  been  cut 
short  by  want  of  funds,  tbe  Society  has  deemed 
it  expedient  to  cull  out  from  his -literary  re- 
mains the  more  important  material  intended 
for  the  future  volumes  of  his  opu9  magnum^ 
and  publish  tbem  at  once.  This  enterprise  is 
particularly  commendable,  not  only  as  giving 
to  the  world  desirable  information,  but  as  re- 
vealing the  importance  of  the  labors  of  Rai- 
mondi In  the  sadie  issue  appears  a  transla- 
tion into  Spemish  of  the  introduction  to  Dr.  E. 
W.  Middendorfs  masterly  work  entitled  *  Das 
Runa  Slmi,  oder  die  Keshua-Sprache,*  a  trea- 
tise  which  had  the  merit  of  being  written  after 
the  studies  of  a  lifetime  in  Peru,  during  which 
its  author  enjoyed  the  advantage  of  friendly 
and  familiar  intercourse  with  tbe  people  of  all 
classes  in  every  part  of  the  republic.  Other 
notable  articles  in  this  number  of  the  Boletin 
are  **  Plants  and  Other  Products  of  China  In- 
troduced into  Peru,"  by  Manuel  Garcia  y  Me- 
rino, and  a  **  Contribution  to  the  Study  of  the 
Flora  of  the  Cordillera  of  Peru,  with  Observa- 
tions on  the  History  and  Origin  of  the  Flora 
of  the  Andes,"  by  John  Ball. 

Personal  reminiscences  of  General  Grant 
during  the  war,  by  Gen.  Horace  Porter,  are  to 


appear  in  the  Century  Magatins  and  will  be 
profusely  illustrated. 

This  month  sees  the  starting  of  a  new  illus- 
trated  magazine  in  this  city,  the  Potrtsian, 
published  by  M.  L.  Dexter  at  Carnegie  HalL 
It  will  be  devoted  chiefly  to  the  reproduction 
in  English  of  contemporaneous  articles  from 
the  leading  French  and  other  Continental  pe- 
riodicals, with  a  regular  review  of  current 
European  literature.  The  issue  will  be  quar. 
terly  till  August,  when  it  will  be  monthly. 
The  February  number  has  a  wholesome  and 
serious  aspect,  and  possesses  an  agreeable 
variety. 

A  new  series  of  the  NcUional  Oeographie 
MagoMins  begins  with  tbe  January  number. 
It  is  henceforth  to  be  an  illustrated  monthly, 
with  a  special  concern  for  the  geography,  phy- 
sical, political,  and  commercial,  of  this  conti- 
nent. The  principal  article  is  a  comprehensive 
account  of  European  Russia  by  Mr.  G.  G. 
Hubbard,  interwoven  with  some  personal  ex- 
periences of  an  extensive  journey  in  that 
country.  This  is  followed  by  an  interesting 
sketch  of  tbe  Arctic  cruise  last  summer  of  the 
United  States  revenue  cutter  Bear,  Her  prin- 
cipal employment,  besides  the  prevention  of 
smuggling  by  the  whaling  fleet,  seems  to  be 
carrying  supplies  to  the  different  stations  in 
Northern  Alaska,  succoring  the  shipwrecked, 
and  transporting  domestic  reindeer  from  Sibe 
ria  to  Alaska.  The  remaining  contents  consist 
of  Gen,  Greely's  address  on  Arctic  exploration 
before  the  London  Geographical  Congress, 
notes  and  notices  of  new  books  and  maps,  exe- 
cutive reports,  and  the  proceedings  of  the  Na- 
tional Geographic  Society  of  Washington. 

The  evidence  that  the  spirit  of  enterprise 
has  received  a  new  impulse  from  the  recent 
war  is  indicsted  not  only  in  the  oommeroe  of 
Japan  but  in  her  journalism.  During  the  war 
two  periodicals,  edited  in  English,  were  started 
by  Japanese.  The  first  is  the  daily  Torodzu 
ChohOf  which  has  a  few  columns  of  English 
matter  three  times  a  week.  The  editor,  Mr. 
Muramatsu,  does  not,  however,  possess  a  suffi- 
ciently thorough  acquaintance  with  the  Eng. 
lish  language  to  make-  his  articles  readable  to 
English-speaking  people.  Tbe  second  is  the  Tat- 
yo  {Sun)^  a  monthly  magazine  edited  by  Prof. 
N.  Kanda.  It  is  of  a  much.higher  grade  than 
the  Yarodzu  Choho,  and,  while  the  style  is  not 
free  from  occasional  errors,  it  has  a  character 
of  strength  and  maturity  that  few  writers  can 
hope  to  attain  to  whom  English  is  not  the 
mother  tongue.  A  new  venture  is  the  Far 
Easty  an  English  edition  of  the  Kokumin^no- 
Tcmo,  The  latter  periodical  was  started  in 
1887  as  a  monthly,  was  soon  after  made  a  fort- 
nightly, then  a  tri-monthly,  and  recently  a 
weekly.  Its  general  plan  is  confessedly  on  the 
lines  of  the  Nation.  The  English  edition  is  to 
be  a  monthly  publication  for  the  present.  Its 
editor  is  Bir.  E.  Fukai,  a  graduate  of  the  Do- 
shisha.  Though  Japanese  will  write  the  bulk 
of  the  matter  for  the  Far  East,  many  Ameri- 
cans and  English  have  promised  to  contribute, 
especially  those  living  in  Tokyo,  where  the  pe- 
riodical is  to  be  published. 

The  Siberian  University  at  Tomsk,  which 
was  opened  in  1880,  is  to  be  enlarged  by  the  es- 
tablishment of  faculties  of  law,  of  mathe- 
matics and  natural  science,  and  of  history  and 
philology.  At  present  the  only  faculty  is  that 
of  medicine. 

The  Trustees  of  the  British  Museum  have  be- 
gun the  publication  of  autographs  in  the  de- 
partment of  manuscripts.  They  are  repro- 
duced by  photo-lithography,  in  the  full  size  of 
the  originals,  in  plates  measuring  about  lO^x 
17  inches,  and  can  be  had  for  threepence  per 


The  first  series,  comprising  thirty 
plates,  has  just  been  issued  in  a  book,  price  six 
shillings.  Tbe  first  is  a  letter  written  Septem- 
ber 10, 1518,  by  E^atharine  of  Arragon  to  her 
husband,  Henry  VIIL  (then  in  France),  with 
tbe  news  of  tbe  battle  of  Flodden.  Other 
royal  personages  represented  are  Edward  VI., 
Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  Queens  Elizabeth  and 
Victoria,  Charles  I.  and  II.,  William  III^  and 
G^rge  IIL  From  tbe  Duke  of  ICarlborough 
there  is  a  French  letter  to  G^rge  Louis,  Elector 
of  Hanover,  afterwards  George  I.  of  England, 
giving  an  account  of  the  victory  at  Ramillies. 
G^rge  Washington,  in  a  letter  to  the  Earl  of 
Buchan,  April  22, 1798,  writes:  **  I  believe  it  is 
the  sincere  wish  of  United  America  to  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  political  intrigues  or  the 
squabbles  of  European  nations ;  but,  on  the 
contrary,  to  exchange  commodities  and  live 
in  peace  with  all  the  inhabitants  of  the 
earth."  There  are  nine  literary  autographs, 
from  Dryden,  Addison,  Coleridge,  Words- 
worth, Keats,  Dickens,  Thackeray,  Cariyle, 
Browning.  11iackeray*s  is  a  most  beautiful 
specimen  of  penmanship.  Browning  says:  *'I 
never  designedly  tried  to  puzzle  people,  ss 
some  of  my  critics  have  supposed.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  never  pretended  to  offer  a  sub- 
stitute for  a  cigar,  or  a  game  at  dominoes,  to 
an  idle  man.*^ 

Mme.  Calmann  L6vy*s  purchasing  of  Re- 
nan's  books  and  presenting  tbem  to  the  French 
National  Library  is  probably  a  delicate  way 
of  easing  her  conscience  on  account  of  the 
hard  bargain  which  her  late  husband  must 
have  driven  with  the  simple-minded  (in  money 
matters)  Ernest  Renan.  For  that  the  shrewd 
publisher  must  have  got  the  best  of  tbe  ar- 
rangement by  which  Renan  handed  over  to  the 
L^vys  all  his  writings,  past,  present,  and  fu- 
ture, there  can  be  little  doubt;  otherwise  the 
French  Government  would  not  ha /e  felt  called 
upon  to  grant  the  late.  Mme.  Renan  a  pension, 
and  M.  Airy  Renan  would  be  able  to  devote  all 
his  time  to  his  brush  and  not  have  to  give  up  a 
good  part  of  it  to  art  criticism,  which  brings 
in  readier  cash.  Considering  the  plain  way 
the  Renans  lived,  the  intellectual  activity  of 
the  head  of  the  family,  tbe  wide  sale  of  his 
books,  and  tbe  regular  stipends— small  though 
some  of  them  were,  when  viewed  from  the 
American  standpoint— which  he  received  from 
tbe  University,  the  Academy,  etc.,  Bmeet  Re- 
nan should  have  left  behind  him  a  snug  little 
fortune  for  a  Frenchman  and  a  scholar,  where- 
as he  may  be  said  to  have  bequeathed  to  his 
son  and  daughter  next  to  nothing,  if  we  except 
bis  library,  worth  probably  three  or  four 
thousand  dollars,  and  his  great  reputation, 
which  has  opened  to  them  many  doors  that 
would  otherwise  have  been  shut  against  them. 

The  unfavorable  action  last  November  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  London,  on  a  peti- 
tion from  the  London  School  of  Medicine  for 
Women,  praying  for  the  admission  of  medical 
women  to  its  examinations,  has  just  been  re- 
versed at  a  meeting  of  tbe  fellowa,  by  em- 
phatic endorsement  (47  to  10)  of  the  following 
resolution,  *^that,  in  the  opinion  of  tbe  fellows 
of  this  college,  women  should  be  admitted  to 
the  diplomas  of  the  college.^  As  the  Council, 
the  governing  body  of  the  college,  is  elected 
by  votes  of  fellows  only,  their  declsiration  in 
favor  of  granting  diplomas  to  properly  quali- 
fled  women  practically  settles  yet  another  case 
of  educational  discrimination  against  women 
students.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  the 
Royal  College  of  Physicians  will  also  soon  be 
stricken  with  a  change  of  heart 

Since  Dr.  Wheeler  wrote  to  us  regarding  flM 
proposed  excavations  at  Corinth  by  thm  i 


Feb.  6,  1896J 


The   K"ation 


1^1 


can  School,  we  laani  that  formal  permiMion  to 
coiKlact  tbem  hat  heen  granted  by  the  Greek 
Goyemment)  and  work  wUl  be  begun  next 
month. 

At  is  well  known  to  all  the  archeologioally 
minded,  the  architrave  of  the  eatt  front  of  the 
Fartbenon  used  to  bear  an  inicription  in 
bronie  letters  fattened  on  by  nails,  of  which 
now  only  the  nails  or  stubs  remain.  At  the 
suggestion  of  Dr.  D5rpfeld,  an  attempt  It  be- 
ing made  by  two  students  of  arobseology  at 
Athens,  one  from  the  German  Institute,  the 
other  from  the  American  School  to  de- 
cipher this  inscription.  One  Is  using  photo- 
graphy to  obtain  an  exact  representation  of 
the  nail  holes,  the  other  Is  making  squeeses, 
being  hauled  up  for  the  purpose  some  forty 
feet  from  the  ground.  The  inscription  may 
date  from  the  time  of  Alexander  the  Great, 
and  the  archssological  world  wiU  await  with 
much  interest  the  results  of  this  attempt  to 
decipher  it. 

— Eren  the  most  cursory  of  magazine  readers 
will  be  disposed  to  linger  over  some  illustra- 
tions, in  the  current  8eribner%  of  Miss  8.  T. 
Prideaux*s  bindings  for  books,  and  will  be 
amply  repaid  for  doing  so,  whether  the  fasci- 
nating designs  that  have  been  so  admirably  re- 
produced In  black  and  white  come  as  a  fresh 
disclosure  of  Miss  Prideaux's  graceful  art,  or 
merely  serre  to  recall  examples  that  have 
been  seen  in  frequent  London  exhibitions^ 
The  text  that  accompanies  the  dosen  pictures 
of  ornamented  morocco  bindings,  though 
worth  perusal,  shows  that  lilss  Prideaux  Is  by 
no  means  so  much  at  home  In  expounding  as 
In  applying  the  principles  of  artistic  decora- 
tion. In  the  selection  of  the  remaining  ar- 
ticles for  the  month,  account  seems  to  hare 
been  taken  rather  more  than  ordinarily  of  the 
prevalent  restless  fancy  for  going  to  and  fro 
In  the  earth— If  not  bodily,  at  least  by  means 
of  copious  views  and  descriptions  of  miscel- 
laneous localities.  A  faithful  but  not  graphic 
account  of  the  fourteenth  ascent  of  Mt.  Ara- 
rat, by  an  Englishman,  H.  F.  B.  Lynch,  and 
an  article  on  life  In  the  Colorado  health  pla 
teau,  by  Lewte  M.  Iddings,  respond  to  the  de- 
mand made  for  tbem  by  the  taste  of  the  mo- 
ment Frank  Russell's  '*  Hunting  Musk-Ox 
with  the  Dog  Ribs,**  a  compact  and  swiftly 
developed  history  of  an  expedition  into  the 
remote  Barreo  Ground  lying  to  the  northeast 
of  Great  Slave  Lake,  has  qualities  which  are 
likely  to  appeal  to  a  perennial  fondness  for 
narratives  of  adventure  well  seasoned  with 
danger.  A  snooewful  appeal  to  the  same  per- 
manent Instinct  Is  made  by  the  story  of  '*  A 
Long  Chase,**  of  which  the  donnH  is  an  es- 
cape from  a  pack  of  wolves,  on  a  fifteen-mile 
ride  across  a  frocen  forest  In  Manitoba— be- 
lieved by  the  writer,  Owen  Hall,  to  be  in  the 
**  north wetfe"  of  Canada.  The  facts  that  the 
heroes  moont  is  a  bicycle,  and  that  his  deadly 
shots  at  his  pursuers  are  supposed  to  be  made 
as  it  spins  over  the  snow,  give  novelty  to  the 
storr,  and  secure  a  respectable  place  in  current 
flctloQ  for  «*  the  wheel.** 

'In  Harper' B  the  boa  ting  of  the  muak-ox  is 
the  partial  theme  of  the  Uilrd  instalment  of 
Caspar  W.  Whltney*s  **0n  Snow-Shoes  to  the 
Barren  Grounds.**  Although  this  Is  one  of 
the  most  readable  papers  in  a  number  which 
has  no  special  features  of  distinction,  it  suffers 
by  comparison  with  the  corresponding  paper 
in  Scribner'M,  through  lack  of  directness  and 
slnglenass  of  aim.  *'A  Mother  In  Israel**  Is 
Interesting  as  a  posthumous  story  of  Prof.  Boye- 
ssn*s,  and  as  a  study  of  the  two  oonflicting  ra- 


cial  elements  of  cupidity  and  Intellectuality 
which  the  Jews  transplant  to  this  country 
from  the  Ghettos  of  Old  World  cities.  Henry 
Loomis  Nelson*s  **  Passing  of  the  Fur-Seal,** 
though  not  a  new,  Is  a  stirring  story,  whether 
told  from  the  standpoint  of  humanity  or  of 
commercial  interest.  Mr.  Nelson  contends  that 
for  nearly  eight  years  the  Dominion  of  Canada, 
In  the  Interest  of  a  few  pelagic  sealers,  **  has 
been  able  to  oppose  successfully  the  interests  of 
the  United  States,  Great  Britain,  and  Russia 
in  the  seal  herds.** 

—In  the  Century  the  article  on  Puvis  de 
Chavannes,  by  Eenyon  Cox,  Is  not  only 
charming  to  the  eye  on  account  of  its  illustra- 
tions, and  timely  on  account  of  Puvis  de  Cha- 
vanne8*s  connection  with  the  Boston  Public 
Library,  but,  if  thoughtfully  read,  is  an  aid  to 
general  culture  as  well.  Mr.  Cox  has  not  con- 
tented himself  with  cataloguing  and  eulogizing 
the  several  series  of  great  decorations  painted 
by  bis  subject,  but  has  furnished,  in  comments 
on  their  quality,  tests  for  the  valuation  of  mu- 
ral painting  that  may  be  applied  to  the  work 
of  Abbey  or  Sargent  equally  as  well  as  to 
that  of  the  famous  decorator  of  the  Sorbonne, 
the  Panth^n,  and  the  Hdtel  de  Ville.  The 
fundamental  principle  of  Mr.  Cox*s  teaching, 
that  **the  highest  aim  of  art  is  to  make  some 
useful  thing  beautiful,**  is  one  on  which  the 
changes  cannot,  here  and  now,  be  rung  too 
often.  Readers  who  find  a  peculiar  satisfao- 
tion  in  penetrating  the  privacy  of  persons  high 
In  place  will  be  gratified  by  views  of  the  sleep- 
ing  and  other  apartments  of  the  Pope.  Ma- 
rlon Crawford  writes  of  the  Vatican  house- 
bold  in  the  pleasantly  rounded  periods  that  of- 
fend no  ear  and  carry  little  thought,  leaving 
the  intrinsically  interesting  features  of  the  ar. 
tide  the  two  portraits  of  Leo  XIIL,  In  youth 
and  old  age,  each  of  which  presents  a  face  that 
no  student  of  physiognomy  could  pass  without 
admiration.  "  Perdita*s  Candle,**  by  Martha 
Toung,  is  a  decidedly  pretty  little  dramatic 
sketch,  turning  upon  the  feast  of  Candlemas ; 
and  Henry  M.  Stanley's  r6sum^  of  the  deve- 
lopment of  equatorial  Africa  Is  a  useful  addi- 
tion to  the  encyclopeedic  information  of  the 
general  reader. 

—In  the  AtlantiCf  Henry  James  has  con- 
tented himself  with  being  ambiguous  merely 
in  the  tiUe  of  his  story,  '*  Glasses,**  and  has, 
happily  for  the  reader,  been  unusually  clear 
and  <^>en  in  his  dealings  with  him.  Nat  only 
has  he  vouchsafed  to  carry  his  three  charac- 
ters to  a  dtoouement  of  the  drama  in  which  he 
shows  them  engaged,  but  he  has  made  them 
known  with  an  intimacy  that  enriches  the 
reader's  acquaintance  with  types  of  human 
nature.  To  be  dealt  with  in  this  way  by  Mr. 
James  Is  to  receive  as  rare  a  pleasure  as  the 
novel-reader  can  expect ;  and  when,  in  addi- 
tion, Mr.  James's  style  becomes  almost  as  per- 
spicuous as  it  Is  distinguished  and  subtle,  an 
equally  rare  literary  pleasure  Is  added  to  that 
of  the  novel-reader.  The  result  of  theee  fortu- 
nate conditions  in  the  story  of  **  Glasses  '*  Is  a 
piece  of  fiction  that  bears  no  relation  to  maga- 
sine  standards,  and  that  will  not  easily  be  for- 
gotten by  any  one  who  comes  under  the  spell  of 
its  masterliness.  A  second  pleasure,  of  a  qua 
lity  which  the  average  literary  capacity  of 
contributors  does  not  permit  a  magasine  to 
furnish  each  and  every  month,  is  to  be  found  in 
Leon  H.  Vincent's  clever  essay,  '*The  Biblio- 
taph.**  This  * '-portrait  not  wholly  imaginary  '* 
shoirs  the  second-hand  bookshops  and  odd 
restaurants  of  Boston,  Philadelphia,  and  even 
Chicago^  as  harboring  an  habitu6  whose  combi- 


nation of  whimsicality  and  ripe  taste  is  of  just 
the  right  stripe  for  literary  portraiture.  It 
was  a  delicate  and  difficult  task  to  interpret 
by  description,  anecdote,  and  quoted  epigram  a 
figure  so  eccentric  and  delightful  as  that  of 
this  scholarly  and  genial  vagabond  among 
books,  but  fortunately  a  competent  pen  has 
undertaken  It.  Rose  Hawthorne  Lathrop^s 
memories  of  her  father,  as  consul  at  Liverpool, 
promise,  In  their  first  part,  a  continued  attrac- 
tion to  readers  of  the  Atlantic, 

— Scheffel's  *  Ekkehard '  has  been  republished 
so  frequently  that  one  loses  count  of  the  editions 
somewhere  in  the  middle  of  the  second  hun- 
dred. Two  more  have  recently  appeared  in 
this  country,  one  In  the  original,  the  other  In 
English.  From  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  comes  a  com- 
pact, well  printed  volume  in  German,  edited 
by  Prof.  Ccmruth  of  the  University  of  Kan- 
sas. The  first  part  of  the  introduction  Is 
reprinted  from  the  Chicago  Dial^  and  deals 
with  the  Historical  Novel.  Palgrave's  denun- 
ciation of  this  form  of  fiction  as  **the  most 
harmful  of  eeml-poetic  hybrids,"  and  How- 
ells*8  remarks  In  a  similar  vein,  are  seriously 
discussed.  It  Is  a  pity  that  this  should  be 
necessary  in  the  century  which  began  with 
Scott  and  whose  last  decades  are  marked  by 
the  appearance  of  some  of  the  great  master- 
pieces of  historical  fiction,  the  Polish  novels 
of  SienkiewicE.  While  the  philosophers  were 
denying  motion,  the  artists  have  been  walk- 
ing to  and  fro.  SchefTel,  in  his  own  charming 
preface  to  '  Ekkehard,*  states  his  belief  that 
*' neither  history  nor  poetry  will  lose  anything 
by  forming  a  close  alliance.'*  But  it  Is  not 
the  nature  of  the  elements,  it  Is  the  genius  of 
him  who  unites  them,  upon  which  success 
depends.  What  a  Scheffel  or  a  Slenkiewlcs 
has  joined  together,  neither  documentary 
history  nor  dogmatic  criticism  can  put  asun- 
der, for  such  men  create  living  works  of  art| 
which  continue  to  exist  in  defiance  of  their 
own  defects.  Plain  men  may  still  venture  to 
enjoy  in  *  Ekkehard*  the  vivid  and  poetic  pre- 
sentation of  a  picturesque  and  interesting  age, 
without  danger  either  of  blunting  their  aes- 
thetic perceptions  or  of  confusing  their  his- 
torical facts.  An  English  translation  of  this 
novel,  revised  and  furnished  with  a  biograph- 
ical sketch  of  the  author  by  Nathan  Haskell 
Dole,  has  been  published  by  Crowell  &  Co. 
The  work  is  in  two  handy  volumes,  displaying 
the  beautiful  ^pography  of  the  University 
Press,  and  mounted  in  cheap  but  attractive 
form.  Both  these  editions  are  welcome  evi- 
dence of  the  book's  unwaning  popularity  after 
more  than  forty  years. 

—The  Goethe  Geeellschaft  of  Weimar  marks 
the  end  of  the  first  d»oade  of  its  history  by  Is- 
suing to  its  members  a  portfolio  of  sketches 
and  portraits.  They  are  from  the  ample  trea- 
sures of  the  Goethe  National  Museum,  and,  of 
the  twenty-four  sheets,  nine  are  by  Goethe*s 
own  hand.  A  similar  portfolio  was  published 
in  1888,  consisting  of  an  album  of  drawings, 
selected  by  himself,  to  exhibit,  as  he  said,  '*my 
competence  and  my  incompetence.**  It  should 
be  frankly  admitted  at  the  outset  that  Goethe's 
drawings  possets'  little  artistlo  value.  Having 
thus  rid  the  mind  of  cant,  one  can  derive  much 
pleasure  from  a  study  of  this  amateurish  work. 
Emanating  from  one  who  stands  In  the  fore- 
most rank  of  the  world's  great  men,  the  sketches 
have  an  Interest  for  us  of  the  human  sort;  they 
serve  as  marginal  notes  to  the  fascinating  story 
of  a  many-sided  life.  With  reference  to  the 
sketch  of  Schloss  Kochberg,  Frau  von  8tein*s 
estate,  there  is  a  jotUng  in  Ooethe*s  diary,  al- 


122 


Tlie    !N"atiorL. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1597 


most  pathetic:  **  Began  to  hope  I  had  a  little 
talent.**  Up  to  the  time  of  his  return  from 
Italy,  he  secretly  believed  that  paiatins  was 
his  tme  vocation.  Besides  two  littl»  known 
portraits  of  Goethe,  the  portfolio  contains 
several  sheets  from  the  Schmeller  Album. 
This  was  the  collection  of  150  crayon  portraits 
which  Gk>ethe  brought  together  by  the  flatter- 
ing device  of  requiring  his  friends  and  emi- 
nent visitors  to  sit  to  his  Weimar  prot^6, 
Joseph  Schmeller.  Here  are  the  fine  heads  of 
Von  Knebel  and  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt,  a 
striking  portrait  of  Bettina  von  Amim,  and 
finally  the  delicately  moulded  features  of  the 
greatest  poet  of  a  singularly  gifted  race,  Adam 
Hiokiewics.  There  is  also  a  reproduction, 
from  a  preliminary  sketch,  of  the  Arcadian 
plctore  of  the  Gk>ethe  family,  painted  by  See- 
kats  in  1762,  and  now  in  the  possession  of  Her- 
man Ghrimm,  which  will  remind  the  Goethe 
student  of  the  amusing  but  kindly  description 
of  the  odd  old  Darmstadt  painter  in  *Dichtung 
und  Wahrheit.'  Other  portfolios  are  promised, 
to  be,  like  this,  under  the  editorial  care  of  Dr. 
Carl  B.uland,  which  will  eventually  give  a 
fairly  comprehensive  idea  of  the  rich  collec- 
tions of  engravings,  and  other  artistic  memora- 
bilia, around  which  the  guests  used  to  gather 
in  the  Juno  room  of  the  Goethe  house  three- 
quarters  of  a  century  ago. 

—The  fourth  edition  of  Dr.  George  Bruce 
Halsted's  translation  of  Bolyai^s  *  Absolute 
Science  of  Space*  (The  Neomon,  2407  Guada- 
lupe Street,  Austin,  Texas),  is  enriched  with 
many  interesting  particulars  about  the  lives  of 
the  celebrated  author  of  the  Non-Euclidean 
Geometry,  Bolyai  Jdnoe,  and  of  his  father, 
Bolyai  Furkas.  If  we  admit,  that  there  is  any 
natural  and  important  distinction  between 
men's  mental  constitutions  corresponding  to 
the  words  genius  and  talent— if  the  man  of 
genius  is  anything  more  than  a  man  of  high 
talent,  plus  a  bold,  adventurous  spirit— then 
the  father  must  be  ranked  high  up  on  the  list 
of  men  of  talent;  and  not  the  smallest  proof  of 
this  was  his  instant  appreciation  of  that  dis- 
covery of  his  son's  which  superseded  his  own 
principal  life-work.  The  son,  on  the  same 
system  of  parcelling,  must  be  called  a  genius, 
though,  being  a  man  of  one  idea  (for  he  sur- 
vived his  one  revelation  by  thirty-seven  years 
without  any  other  remarkable  achievement),  he 
cannot  be  rated  as  an  exalted  genius.  He  in- 
herited a  valuable  imaginative  element  from 
his  mother.  Lombroso  sets  him  down  as  in- 
sane; but  we  find  nothing  in  Dr.  Halsted's 
present  account  to  support  that  charge,  un- 
less it  be  the  circumstance  of  his  -fight- 
ing thirteen  duels  the  same  day  with  as 
many  cavalry  officers,  playing  on  the  violin 
between  every  two  successive  duels,  and 
getting  cashiered  for  the  performance.  Dr. 
Halsted  surmises  a  psychological  connection 
between  the  muscular  precision  of  the  man, 
as  fencer  and  violinist,  and  his  mathema- 
tical precision.  Even  in  this  day  of  hardy 
psychological  classifications,  such  a  guess 
startles  us.  It  is  stated  quite  in  the  Lom- 
broso-Nordau  style  of  assurance.  Would  the 
muscular  strength  exhibited  in  the  thirteen 
duels  be  connected  with  bis  mathematical 
strength?  There  is  a  winningly  enthusiastic 
letter  from  Bolyai  Jdnos  to  his  father,  telling 
him  of  the  great  step.  He  says :  **  I  have  dis- 
covered such  magnificent  things  that  I  am  my- 
self  astonished  at  them.  It  would  be  damage 
eternal  if  they  were  lost.  When  you  see 
them,  my  father,  you  will  yourself  acknow- 
ledge it.  At  present  I  cannot  say  more  than 
that  from  nothing  I  have  created  a  wholly  new 


world.**  Dr.  Halsted  announces  a  life  of 
Bolyai  from  unused  Magyar  documents.  Our 
oonntryman  as  littie  shrinks  from  the  Magyar 
tongue  as  from  the  Russian,  in  che  pursuit  of 
his  valuable  researches. 

— A  true  poet  passed  away  when  Paul  Ver- 
laine  died  on  January  8.  He  found  life  so  hard 
and  so  unkindly  that  those  who  might  wish  to 
say  many  things  of  him  may  feel  a  certain 
sense  of  restraint  now,  as  if  any  words  would 
only  seem  to  stretch  him  out  longer  on  the 
rack  of  the  tough  world  that  he  has  quitted. 
In  France  he  is  truly  mourned.  Nothing  is 
more  noticeable  than  the  note  of  sincere  grief 
that  is  heard  in  all  that  is  said  of  him.  The 
least  sympathetic  say :  **  He  was  an  enfant 
terrible^  but  still  always  an  enfant,"  Copp6e, 
his  earUeet  friend— for  whom  he  called,  as  he 
was  dying,  ** Francois !  Francois !**— took  up 
the  same  strain  beside  his  grave :  **  He  was  a 
child,  a  child  always,  a  child  and  a  poet.**  He 
had  no  concealments.  Shelley,  even,  shows  us 
less  of  himself .  Every  emotion  of  his  storm- 
swept  soul  was  revefded  in  his  verse,  and  in  it, 
too,  were  refiected  his  brief  hours  of  serenity 
and  his  higher  moods  of  religious  devotion. 
His  infiuence  was  great.  Every  young  poet  in 
France  looked  to  him  as  to  a  master  and  leader 
in  his  art  To  him,  more  than  to  any  other, 
the  present  and  increasing  freedom  of  French 
verse  is  due.  He  struck  the  hardest  blow  at 
classicism.  He  struck  with  all  his  might,  too, 
at  the  artificiality  and  rhetoric  which  have 
been  besetting  sins  of  the  French  muse.  Preach- 
ing in  verse  he  fiouted,  and  oratory,  and  even 
eloquence— that  good  thing  which  in  poetry  is 
the  enemy  of  the  beet  '*  Take  eloquence  and 
wring  its  neck  I  '*  he  said.  Of  his  own  achieve- 
ment in  poetry  it  is  perhaps  too  early  to  speak. 
We  cannot  yet  tell  how  great  the  next  age  will 
count  him,  but  that  he  will  not  wholly  die  ap- 
pearsto  be  certain.  His  friends  parted  from 
him  in  the  cemetery  of  BatignoUes,  and  left  him 
in  possession  of  the  blessing  that  he  needed 
most^  requiem  cetemam. 


ORIGIN      OF     THE      FRANCO  GERMAN 
WAR.-I. 

Die  BegrHndung  dee  Devtsohen  Reiche  durch 
Wilhelm  I.  Von  Heinrich  von  SybeL  Sie- 
benter  Band.  Munich:  R.  Oldenbourg;  New 
York:  Westermann. 
In  the  concluding  volume  of  his  *  Founding  of 
the  German  Empire,*  the  great  Gterman  histo- 
rian who  passed  away  in  the  summer  of  1885 
presented  his  view  of  the  genesis  of  the  Franco* 
German  war.  Soon  after  the  appearance  of 
this  volume,  an  anonymous  book  was  pub- 
lished entitled  *Aus  dem  Leben  K5nig  Karls 
von  Rum&nien,*  obviously  consisting  of,  ex- 
tracts  from  the  diary  of  Charles— at  the  time 
Prinoe,  since  1881  Kiti^  of  Rumania— and  con- 
taining letters  from  his  father.  Prince  Antony. 
This  book  threw  much  new  light  on  the  candi- 
dacy of  Charleses  elder  brother  Leopold  for  the 
Spanish  throne.  It  was  largely  on  the  strength 
of  the  information  furnished  by  this  book  that 
SybePs  narrative  of  the  events  of  1809  and  1870 
was  promptiy  attacked,  not  in  France  only, 
but  in  Gernumy.  Sjbel  responded  to  his  cri- 
tics in  a  pamphlet  published  in  the  early  part 
of  last  summer,  maintaining  and  defending  the 
positions  taken  in  his  book.  Simultaneously 
with  this  last  publication  of  Sybel*s,  or  but 
littie  later,  there  appeared  the  'Souvenirs  mili- 
taires*  of  Gen.  Lebrun,  with*  interesting  and 
important  revelations  regarding  the  negotia- 
tions between  France  and  Austria  in  1870.  In 
October,  180S,  after  Sybel's  death,  Delbri&ck, 


the  editor  of  the  Preussieche  Jahrbucher, 
published  in  hia  magazine  an  elaborate  criti- 
cism  of  Sybel*s  theory  of  the  origin  of  the 
war— a  criticism  based  mainly  on  the  two 
books  we  have  just  mentioned.  Delbrfick 
also  sets  forth  his  own  thearj,  Briefiy  stated, 
Sybel*s  explanation  is  that  the  war  was  due 
to  the  hostile  temper  of  the  French  people^ 
stirred  by  the  politicians  to  an  unreasoning  and 
unreasonable  jealousy  of  Prussia,  and  to  the 
stubborn  folly  of  the  Due  de  Gramont,  Minis- 
ter of  Foreign  Affairs,  who^  supported  (and 
himself  urged  on)  by  the  popular  passions  he 
had  awakened,  dragged  his  colleagues  and  Na- 
poleon into  a  needless  war,  in  which,  as  Napo- 
leon knew,  France  would  have  no  foreign  sup- 
port. He  maintains  that  the  Emperor  at  no 
time  wished  for  war;  that  it  was  Gramont*s 
treatment  of  the  Spanish  candidacy  that  forced 
the  war.  Delbrildc  holds  that  it  was  really 
Napoleon*s  war;  that  the  Spanish  candidacy 
was  a  mere  pretext— although  a  better  pretext 
than  Sybel  is  willing  to  admit;  that  Napo- 
leon had  good  reason  to  believe  that  he  would 
have  the  support  of  Austria  and  Italy  if  he 
needed  it;  and  that  he  would  have  had  it  Imt 
for  the  unexpected  rapidity  with  which  the 
North  G^erman  forces  were  thrown  upon  tha 
Alsatian  frontier. 

The  first  half  of  Sybel*s  book  is  largely  da- 
voted  to  showing  that  there  was  nothing  in 
the  internal  conditions  of  the  two  countries  to 
jnecessitate  war,  and  that  France  could  not 
count  upon  either  Austria  or  Italy  as  ^  ally 
against  Prussia,  The  preceding  volume  brought 
the  sketch  of  German  affairs  down  to  the  year 
1868.  In  the  first  and  fourth  chapters  of  the 
present  volume  Sybel  describes  the  political 
struggles,  from  1868  to  1870,  in  the  Customs 
Parliament  of  all  Gtermany,  in  the  North^Ger- 
man  Parliament,  and  in  the  Prussian  Diet; 
and  he  shows  that,  in  spite  of  constant  fric- 
tion and  temporary  setbacks,  the  Prussian 
Gk>vemment  secured,  in  one  form  or  another, 
the  acceptance  of  its  most  important  projects. 
Irksome  midisBval  restrictions  upon  industry 
and  commerce  were  swept  away  by  federal  le- 
gislation; a  modem  and  humane  criminal  code 
was  adopted;  a  compromise  was  reached  upon 
the  troublesome  question  of  the  military 
budget;  the  first  steps  were  taken  to  develop  a 
German  navy;  and  the  federal  finances  were 
placed  upon  a  satisfactory  basis.  On  the  20th 
of  May,  1870,  King  William  closed  the  last  ses- 
sion of  the  first  Federal  Parliament  with  a  re- 
capitulation of  these  achievements  and  with 
warm  words  of  appreciation  and  gratitude  in 
behalf  of  the  German  people  and  the  allied 
governments.  These  facts,  the  historian  urges, 
dispose  of  the  assertion  made  by  a  number  of 
French  writers  that  Bismarck  kindled  war 
with  France  **in  order  to  escape  from  his  in- 
ternal difficulties  and  embarrassments.** 

In  France  the  relation  between  the  Crown 
and  the  people  was  much  less  satisfactory. 
The  fear  of  anarchy,  to  which  the  Empire 
owed  its  establishm^t,  had  diminished,  and 
the  best  and  most  intelOgent  portion  of  the 
French  people  were  growing  increasingly  im- 
patient of  absolute  government.  The  prestige 
derived  from  a  vigorous  and  successful  foreign 
policy,  **  which  had  suddenly  placed  France  at 
the  head  of  the  European  system  of  states,** 
had  been  seriously  impaired  by  the  establish- 
ment of  the  kingdom  of  Italy,  and  was  nearly 
destroyed  by  the  unlucky  Mexican  expedition 
and  the  formation  of  the  North  German  con- 
federation. Two  courses  were  open  to  the 
Emperor,  each  of  which  was  urged  upon  him 
by  infiuential  advisers.  He  might  make  peace 
with  h* s  people  by  liberal  reforms,  by  aban- 


Feb.  6,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


133 


doming  abaolute  nil«  and  introdaoing  oonttita- 
tkmtd  gOTMiunenU  or  be  might  onoe  more 
•Uile  intemal  dl9D0DteDt  by  tacoeisfiil  war. 
The  latter  coiine  wae  more  popular  with  hit 
Dearest  ooonaellor^  bat  it  was  distattefiil  to 
KapoleoD  hlmeeir.  The  sight  of  the  battle 
fields  of  Italj  bad  left  in  his  mind  an  inefface- 
able horror  of  war.  The  eetablUhment  of 
oonstitntional  government  bad  been  urged 
upon  him  by  the  ablest  of  all  his  adrisers,  his 
half-brother  De  Ifomy;  and  De  Homy  had 
dlsoorered  the  man  who  was  to  lead  the  more 
moderate  Liberals  to  the  support  of  a  consti- 
toUonal  empire— the  Republican  Deputy  Olli- 
Tier.  It  seemed  to  Napoleon,  however,  that 
sooh  a  change  in  the  form  of  government 
woold  imperil  the  future  of  bis  dynasty.  Be- 
tween these  opposite  policies  he  wavered  for 
several  years,  adopting  neither  unreservedly. 
The  historian  (who  was  personally  acquainted 
with  the  Emperor,  but  refrains  from  mention- 
ing the  fact)  ascribes  this  hesiUtion  partly  to 
Napoleon's  character,  partly  to  the  painful 
disease  which  developed  itself  in  1805  and 
afterwards  repeatedly  prostrated  him.  During 
acnte  attacks  he  was  incapable  of  thought  or 
will,  without  desire  save  for  resC 

For  a  number  of  years,  from  1866  to  1860, 
Napoleon  cherished  t^e  hope  of  escaping  from 
the  dilemma  by  acquiring  foreign  territory 
without  war.  His  attempts  in  this  direction 
Sybel  has  deeoribed  in  the  preceding  volumes. 
After  his  faUure  to  secure  Luxemburg,  he'en- 
tertained  the  hope  of  so  extending  French  in- 
fluence over  Belgium  as  at  least  to  pave  the 
way  for  annexation.  The  half-forgotten  story 
of  the  purchase  of  Belgian  railways  by  a 
French  company,  in  1860^  of  the  refutal  of  the 
Belgian  Government  to  permit  the  execution 
of  the  contract,  and  of  Napoleon's  abandon- 
ment of  the  scheme,  is  well  and  clearly  told  in 
pagea  83-06.  With  the  oollapee  of  this  venture, 
certain  nebulous  plans  for  a  customs  union 
with  Belgium  also  disappeared. 

Bifflultaneonsly  with  these  schemes.  Napo- 
leon took  up  again  the  negotiations  for  a  triple 
alliance  between  the  three  great  Catholic  Pow- 
ers—France, Austria,  and  Italy.  In  1867  the 
French  and  Austrian  Emperors  bad  reached 
some  sort  of  an  understanding  at  Salzburg.  In 
1868  Italy  had  offered  to  ally  herself  with 
France,  or  with  Austria  and  France,  if  the 
protection  of  the  Pope  were  intrusted  to  th9 
Italian  Oovemme nt.  Napoleon  found  this  con- 
dition unacceptable.  Now  (in  1869)  Napoleon 
proposed  an  offensive  and  defensive  alliance 
between  the  three  Powers  to  resist  the  aggree- 
sioosof  PriMBia.  In  case  of  war,  Austria  was  to 
be  restored  to  her  old  place  in  Qermany.  The 
suggestion,  aooording  to  Sybel,  was  not  favor- 
ably received  at  Vienna.  A  German  war,  it  was 
plainly  stated,  would  not  be  popular  among 
Austria's  German  subjects.  All  that  Francis 
Joseph  would  agree  to  was  a  defensive  alii, 
anoe.  Victor  Emmanuel  at  first  insisted  upon 
the  same  condition  as  in  1808 ;  he  would  not  Join 
even  a  defensive  alliance  unless  a  date  were 
fixed  for  the  withdrawal  of  the  French  troops 
from  the  Papal  territory.  Austrian  media- 
tion, however,  persuaded  him  to  accept  an  in- 
definite promise  from  Napoleon,  and  the  draft 
treaties  of  alliance  were  prepared.  At  this 
point  it  was  discovered  that  the  Italian  cabi- 
net would  not  ttBdorse  the  King's  agreonent. 
With  the  restriction  of  the  alliance  to  recipro- 
cal defence  Napoleon  had  lost  intra-est  in  it, 
and  the  matter  was  dropped.  The  only  result 
of  the  negotiation  was  an  interchange  of  per- 
sooal  letters  between  the  three  sovereigns, 
pledging  themselves  to  concerted  diplomatic 
aetloo.    In  the  spring  of  187Q,  Archduke  Al- 


bert of  Austria  submitted  to  Napoleon  a  plan 
of  campaign,  to  tie  followed  in  case  an  alliance 
should  be  concluded.  It  provided  for  a  con- 
centration of  French,  Austrian,  and  Italian 
troops  in  South  Germany.  Napoleon  promised 
to  send  an  officer  to  Vienna  for  further  con- 
ference. In  May  he  laid  the  plan  before  his 
cabinet;  it  was  discussed  and  criticised.  Gen. 
Lebrun  was  sent  to  Vienna;  a  new  plan  was 
worked  out,  but  not  definitively  agreed  upon. 
On  the  6th  of  June  the  OenerAl  had  an  inter- 
view with  Francis  Joseph.  According  to  Sybel, 
the  Emperor  assured  Lebrun  that  he  desired 
peace,  and  warned  him  that  France  could  not 
count  on  assistance  from  Austria. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  Delbruck  first  takes 
issue  with  S j bel.  He  believes  that  the  dual  un- 
derstanding of  1867  and  the  triple  agreement  of 
1860  went  much  further  than  Sybel  indicates. 
He  shows,  on  Lebrun's  authority,  that  the  Aus- 
trian Emperor's  conversation  with  Lebrun  was 
by  no  means  so  pacific  /ui  Sybel  represents.  It 
appears  that  the  Austrian  Emperor  did  express 
his  desire  for  peace,  but  that  he  did  not  say 
that  France  was  in  no  event  to  count  upon 
Austrian  help.  On  the  contrary,  he  said  that 
if  Napoleon  appeared  in  South  Germany  not 
as  an  enemy,  but  as  a  liberator,  public  opi- 
nion in  Austria  would  force  the  Gk>vemment 
into  war.  It  also  appears  that,  in  the  discus- 
sion between  Lebrun  and  the  Austrian  milita^ 
ry  men,  a  definite  plan  of  concentration  was  ar- 
ranged. If  the  French  troops  could  make 
their  w|iy  into  Bavaria,  they  were  to  be  Joined 
by  the  Austrian  and  Italian  forces  at  Nurem- 
burg.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  Austria 
would  proclaim  neutrality,  but  only  for  the 
purpose  of  completing  the  mok>ilisation  of  her 
army.  Lebiun,  however,  tells  u»— and  this  is 
a  point  which  Delhi  fick  does  not  mention— that 
the  Austrian  military  men  insisted  that  war 
must  be  declared  not  later  than  April;  and 
that,  since  it  was  already  too  late  to  aooom- 
plish  this  result  in  1870,  the  outbreak  of  the 
war  was  planned  for  April,  1871 . 

To  return  to  Sybel's  narrative:  Napoleon, 
unable  to  restore  his  prestige  by  any  peaceful 
extension  of  the  French  boundary  or  of  the 
French  sphere  of  iofiuence,  was  forced  t>ack 
upon  the  path  of  constitutional  reform.  OUi- 
vier  had  left  the  Republicans  and  formed  a 
Centre  party  as  early  as  1865.  In  1867  the 
Emperor  had  made  a  bid  for  the  support  of 
this  group,  but  had  not  offered  sufficiently 
liberal  conceMiona.  In  the  elections  of  1860 
the  Centre  and  the  Left  obtained  a  majority  of 
seats  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies.  In  1870, 
after  convincing  himself  that  nothing  less 
would  be  accepted,  Napoleon  acceded  to  01- 
livier's  demand  for  a  reeponsible  ministry,  and 
charged  the  ex-republican  with  its  formation. 
The  necessary  changes  in  the  Constitution  were 
voted  by  the  Senate  and  submitted  in  May, 
1870,  to  popular  vote.^  While  the  ostensible 
question  was  the  approval  of  the  **  liberal  re- 
forms," a  proclamation  of  the  Emperor  called 
for  a  vote  of  cpnfidence  in  himself  and  of  at- 
tachment to  the  dynasty.  The  answer  was 
overwhelmingly  favorable;  seven  million  votes 
in  the  affirmative  to  one  and  a  half  in  the  ne- 
gative. The  future  of  the  dynasty,  the  suo- 
ceesion  of  the  Prince  Imperial,  Qpon  which  the 
proclamation  had  laid  especial  stress,  seemed 
assured,  without  war,  by  the  concession  to  the 
people  of  a  voice  in  the  government 

On  the  80th  of  June,  when  the  military 
budget  for  1871  was  under  consideration,  the 
Minister  of  War  announced  to  the  Deputies 
tha^  he  wouM  be  content  with  a  levy  of  00,000 
men  instead  of  the  usual  100,000 ;  and  Ollivier 
declared  that  "the  preservation  of  peace  was 


never  better  assured."  At  the  same  time*  as 
Sybel  points  out,  the  German  Parliament  had 
adjourned:  King  William  was  taking  the 
baths  at  Ems ;  Bismsrck  was  undergoing  a 
"  Carlsbad  cure  "  at  Varzin ;  Moltke  and  Boon 
were  both  rusticating,  the  one  in  SUf  sia,  the 
other  in  Brandenburg  ;  and  Camphausen,  the 
Finance  Minitter,  was  visiting  his  relatives  in 
the  Rhine  province.  On  neither  side  of  the 
Rhine,  therefore,  was  there  any  expectation  of 
war.  Within  less  than  a  week,  nevertheless, 
France  was  in  a  fiame  of  patriotic  wrath  over 
what  was  considered  an  act  of  aggression  on 
the  part  of  Prussia  ;  deep  indignation  was 
slowly  gathering  in  Germany  because  of  what 
were  deemed  insolent  demands  on  the  part  of 
France  ;  and  on  the  15th  of  July,  after  the  im- 
mediate cause  of  the  quarrel  had  disappeared, 
France  declared  war  to  avenge  her  insulted 
national  honor. 

The  different  explanations  given  by  Sybel 
and  Delbruck  have  already  been  noted.  In  his 
fifth  chapter  Syl>el  lays  a  strong  foundation  for 
-the  development  of  his  theory.  He  shows  how 
the  French  war  party,  the  '* Arcadians,"  had  la- 
bored since  1866  to  excite  and  Intensify  the  na- 
tional distrust  and  dislike  of  Prussia  and  of 
her  leading  statesman;  how  they  represented 
Bismarck  as  the  omnipresent  di8turk>er  and 
evildoer,  restlessly  busied,  in  every  part  of 
Europe,  in  subterranean  operations  for  the  de- 
struction of  the  supremacy  of  France.  He 
also  notes  the  peril  that  lay  in  the  appoint- 
ment of  the  Due  de  Gramont,  in  May,  1870,  to 
the  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs.  He  shows 
how  little  reputation  Gramont  enjoyed  in 
France,  how  little  confidence  Napoleon  had  in 
his  ability  or  bis  discretion.  For  several  years 
Gramont  had  been  Ambassador  at  Vienna;  but 
not  only  were  the  negotiations  for  an  alliance  in 
1860  carried  on  over  his  head,  but  Nnpoleon  ex- 
pressly cautioned  the  Austrian  negotiators  not 
to  let  Gramont  into  the  secret.  He  was  ap- 
pointed, Sybel  thinks,  at  the  desire  of  Ollivier, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  his  sympathies  were 
with  the  Right  and  not  with  the  Centre.  He 
wss  appointed  because  Ollivier  desired  as  Min- 
ister of  Foreign  Affairs  a  man  in  sympathy 
with  his  policy  of  protecting  the  deliberationa 
of  the  Vatican  Council,  and  a  man  who  would 
take  a  firmer  attitude  against  Pru«ia.  In 
both  respects  Gramont  met  bis  needs.  The 
Duke  was  ultra- clerical  and  a  known  hater  of 
Bismarck.  In  his  strong  anti-Prussian  feeling 
and  in  his  personal  characteristioa— in  the  com- 
l>ination  of  an  active  imagination  with  de- 
fective Judgment,  of  ignorance  with  arrogance 
and  of  impulsiveness  with  obstinacy— lay,  in 
Sybel's  Judgment,  the  greatest  peril  to  the 
peace  of  Europe.  Napoleon,  he  suggests,  may 
have  accepted  the  nomination  **  in  the  opinion 
that  a  man  of  so  little  intelligence  would  be 
easily  guided;  forgetting  the  fact  that  thick 
heads  have  at  Umee  proved  to  be  hard  and  hot 
heads,  and  that  by  tirtue  of  theee  qualitiea 
they  have  often  dragged  irresolute  wisdom 
along  with  them." 

Among  the  perils  to  peace  in  June^  1870^ 
Sybel  does  not  include  the  candidacy  of  Prince 
Leopold  of  Hohenzoliem  for  the  throne  of 
Spain,  although  it  was  in  this  month  that  Leo- 
pold finally  accepted  the  offer  of  the  Spanish 
ministry  to  propose  to  the  Cortes  his  election. 


TWO  NOVELS. 

Jude  the  Obaeurt,  By  Thomas  Hardy.  Har- 
per &  Brothers. 

The  Emancipated,  By  George  Oissing  Chi- 
cago :    Way  &  Williams. 

That  hopefulneas  which  perpetually  affirms, 


134 


Ttie   ]N^atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1597 


eyen  out  of  evil  good  must  come,  seldom  meets 
with  such  immediate  jnstiflcation  as  in  the 
clamor  of  disapproyal  raised  against  Mr. 
Hardy*8  novel  *Jude  the  Obscure.'  He  ap- 
pears to  have  done  a  thing  so  repugnant  to 
modem  Bnglish  sentiment  and  taste  that  the 
extent  of  our  supposed  revolt  against  Puritan- 
ism may  well  be  doubted— so  far,  at  least,  as 
the  word  is  a  symbol  for  manners  that  correct 
and  restrain  animal  instincts,  and  for  a  decent 
reticence  of  speech.  The  toleration  extended 
to  inferior  novelists  who  have  for  several 
years,  under  various  hypocritical  pretexts, 
been  engaged  in  the  glorification  of  sensuality, 
if  not  lust,  may  be  ascribed,  in  view  of  this 
outburst  of  wrath,  partly  to  surprise  at 
their  audacity,  and  partly  to  a  belief  that 
no  permanent  harm  could  be  done  by  let- 
ting such,  very  poor  players  strut  their  lit- 
tle hour  upon  the  stage  and  prance  off 
into  secure  oblivion.  Mr.  Hardy's  'Tess' 
made  some  people  feel  and  say  that  our 
literature  was  in  danger  of  corruption.  The 
vehement  denial  by  a  serious  and  extremely 
competent  novelist  of  some  principles  upon 
which  rests  as  successful  a  social  system  as 
poor  human  nature  has  so  far  been  able  to 
evolve,  was  thought  worth  consideration  and 
rational  protest.  Still,  there  was  but  little 
frank  denunciation.  The  drama  in  *  Teas '  was 
easily  separable  from  the  argument,  and  made 
a  direct  appeal  to  passionate  emotion  well 
adapted  to  confuse  judgment,  and  even  strong 
enough  to  win  adherents  to  the  author's  un- 
equivocal expression  of  belief  that,  in  the 
question  of  society  ag^ainst  Tess,  society  was 
flagrantly  in  the  wrong.  In  *  Jude '  the  author 
makes  no  special  plea  for  the  righteousness  of 
conduct  which  long  experience  has  qualified 
as  depraved— and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  'Jude,' 
judged  by  the  strongest  impression  made  on 
the  mind,  is  a  less  immoral  book  than  *  Tess ' ; 
but  it  is  slightly  coarser,  many  degrees  colder; 
and  therefore  the  average  intelligence,  un- 
clouded by  emotion,  perceives  its  offenslveness 
and  proclaims  dissent. 

Excepting  pronounced  hostility  to  mar- 
riage, whether  regarded  as  a  Christian  sacrar 
ment  or  a  permanently  binding  legal  contract, 
the  authoi^s  attitude  towards  the  problems  in- 
volved in  his  story  is  as  obscure  as  Jude.  He 
is  very  bitter  about  matrimony.  When  Jude 
and  Arabella  are  swearing  eternal  fidelity  be- 
fore the  parson,  he  remarks:  **What  was  as 
remarkable  as  the  undertaking  itself  was  the 
fact  that  nobody  seemed  at  all  surprised  at 
what  they  swore."  When  Arabella  makes  a 
hideous  scene,  which  there  is  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose she  would  not  have  made  cheerfully  and 
with  great  spirit  even  if  unmarried,  Mr.  Hardy 
thus  interprets  Jude's  thoughts:  '* Their  lives 
were  ruined;  ruined  by  the  fundamental  error 
of  their  matrimonial  union— that  of  having 
based  a  permanent  contract  on  a  temporary 
feeling  which  had  no  necessary  connection  with 
afltoities  that  alone  render  a  life*long  com- 
panionship tolerable."  Again,  when  Arabella 
is  parading  her  second  victim  at  a  fair,  the 
author's  genial  comment  is,  that  *'they  left 
the  tent  together  in  the  antipathetic,  recrimi- 
natory mood  of  the  average  husband  and  wife 
of  Christendom."  Many  more  sentences  might 
be  quoted  to  show  his  fierce  contempt  for  mar- 
riage, and  we  would  believe  that  no  more  de- 
grading condition  could  be  imagined,  were  it 
not  that  he  goes  on  to  illustrate  the  pains  and 
penalties  of  an  illegal  union  and  the  madness 
of  divorce.  Therefore,  he  seems  to  stand  as 
an  advocate  for  celibacy  and  the  extinction  of 
the  race.  In  this  position  we  shall  have  no  fur- 
ther  occasion  to  worry  about  him;  he  may  be 


permitted  to  cherish  his  oonviotiotts  unenvled 
and  undisturbed. 

Equally  enigmatic  are  his  opinions  about 
the  effect  of  modem  education  and  modem  op- 
portunity on  the  masses.  He  seems  to  say 
that  people  who  have  ceased  to  be  as  dumb, 
driven  cattle  in  inteUigehce  remain  so  in  in- 
stinct, and  that,  finding  Uieir  intelligence  in- 
adequate to  compete  with  power,  wealth,  and 
tradition,  they  fall  back  for  satisfaction  on 
their  instincts,  and  are  not  to  be  pitied  but  ad- 
mired  for  the  relapse.  He  may  not  mean  that 
at  all,  and,  in  a  book  so  cleverly  planned  to 
pass  for  a  particular  instance,  generalization 
is  largely  conjecturaL  His  g^roup  of  charac- 
ters is  singularly  well  chosen  to  bear  the  whole 
responsibility  for  its  heresies,  sufferings,  and 
iniquities.  In  early  youth  both  Jude  and  Sue 
Bridehead  are  detached  by  temperament  and 
intelligence  from  the  class  in  which  they  were 
bom,  and  they  never  come  in  contact  with 
any  other  class  which  might  have  tempered  to 
advantage  their  feeling  of  ability  to  enlighten 
and  guide  the  universe.  The  pity  of  such  iso- 
lation is  clearly  seen  in  Jude's  career,  the 
evil  of  it  in  Sue's.  All  the  poetic  imagination 
and  tenderness  which  novelists  used  (by  mis 
take  or  civility,  of  course)  to  attribute  to  wo- 
men, are  by  Mr.  Hardy  bestowed  on  Jude,  and, 
added  to  these,  a  man's  ability  to  know  when 
he  is  beaten,  and  his  strength  to  keep  up  the 
fight  when  dreams  are  dust  and  hope  is  dead. 
A  man  of  large  nature  and  fine  ambitions,  not 
a  weakling  doomed  from  the  beginning;  to  dis 
aster,  it  is  a  pity  that  Mr.  Hardy  could  not 
have  used  him  to  nobler  purpose.  Sue  Bride- 
head  differs  only  superficially  from  many  of 
the  author's  women.  She  is  not  what  he  most 
admires,  **  a  complete  and  substantial  female 
human,"  but  a  graceful,  ethereal  person,  pos- 
sessed of  an  appreciable  quantity  of  intellect, 
a  taste  for  literature,  and  a  theory  that  chas- 
tity is  best  preserved  by  roaming  about  the 
country  and  living  temporarily  with  men 
whose  conversation  and  tastes  are  oongeniaL 
After  the  tragedy  brought  about  by  a  child 
from  Australia  the  dreadful  offspring  of  Jude 
and  Arabella,  Sue  presumably  went  mad;  oth- 
erwise  her  acute  remorse  and  self-reproach 
might  have  driven  her  to  a  convent  or  death, 
never  back  to  the  loathed  divorced  and  adapta- 
ble Phillotson. 

We  find  this  return  of  all  the  divorcees  to 
their  original  legal  mates  a  humorous  conceit, 
the  only  one  in  the  book.  Time  was  when  Mr. 
Hardy  had  a  gift  for  humor,  acrid  and  ironic 
but  efficient.  Perhaps  a  too  constant  eye  on 
the  miseries  and  infamies  of  Wessex  has  de- 
stroyed his  perception  of  the  comic  as  it  has  of 
the  relative  position  of  a  few  English  counties 
to  the  rest  of  the  world.  Some  Norwegians 
vindicate  Ibsen's  atrocities  by  the  contention 
that  actual  parallels  abound  in  Norway,  and 
that,  through  the  people  of  whom  he  writes, 
he  is  striving  to  elevate  the  people  for  whom, 
first  of  all,  he  writes.  If  Mr.  Hardy  has  come 
to  believe  that  as  it  is  in  the  *^  Ancient  King, 
dom  "  so  it  is  in  the  rest  of  the  English-speak- 
ing  world,  he  may  be  excused  of  deliberate  in- 
tention to  shock  or  to  offend;  but  before  we 
could  acquit  him  of  traducing  we  should  have 
to  know  what  Uiey  think  about  it  in  Wessex. 

If  we  admit  that  Mr.  Hardy's  conclusions 
have  any  general  significance,  we  must  agree 
with  that  genial  but  irascible  old  gentleman 
who  said:  **  It's  a  damned  wicked  world,  and 
the  fewer  people  we  think  well  of  in  it  the  bet- 
ter." If  we  permit  Mr.  Oissing's  restricted  ob- 
servation to  tinge  our  .view  of  life  at  large^  we 
can't  escape  the  depressing  conviction  that  it's 
a  dull  world,  that  the  times  are  indeed  out  of 


joint,  also  rotten,  and  that  we  are  all  going 
fast  to  the  "demnition  bow-wows."  The 
scene  of  Mr.  Gissing's  *  Emancipated'  is  far 
removed  from  the  somewhat  dingy,  commer- 
cial  British  home  to  which  he  has  hitherto  been 
bound  in  bonds  not  of  affection;  most  of  the 
action  taking  place  in  Italy,  particularly  in 
Naples.  Change  of  scene  has  not  perceptibly 
enlivened  his  sombre  soul,  nor  has  the  blue 
Italian  ether  driven  off  grim  spectres  whose 
native  element  is  smoke  and  fog  and  suburban 
gloom.  He  has  unquestionably  tried  to  cheer 
up  and  get  rid  of  his  bogies,  but  is  overbome 
by  the  pessimistic  temperament  whose  watcb= 
word  is  despair.  Though  not  indifferent  to 
the  charm  of  southern  landscape,  bis  pen 
cannot  express  iU  His  descriptions  ajre  dry 
and  chill,  suggestive  of  phylloxera  in  the  vine- 
yards and  frost  upon  the  oranges.  He  per- 
ceives the  softening  effect  of  Greek  art  and 
Latin  manners  on  rigid  British  prejudice  and 
self-sufficiency,  but  does  not  succeed  in  trans- 
forming the  stem  patroness  of  a  dissenting 
chapel  in  Barths,  Mrs.  Miriam  Baske,  either 
into  a  gay  figure  symbolic  of  intelleotual  free- 
dom, or  a  gracious,  kind,  and  honorable 
woman. 

There  are  a  great  many  people  in  the  novel: 
some  emancipated  from  the  beginning,  and 
some  seen  undergoing  the  painful  process  of 
emancipation.  Among  the  latter  Mrs.  Baske 
is  the  most  conspicuous.  When  introduced, 
she  •believes  art  to  be  but  a  diversion  of  the 
profane,  and  literature,  except  in  the  form  of 
lurid  tracts,  a  device  of  the  Evil  One.  The 
'Improvisatore*  and  the  'Golden  Treasury'  have 
to  be  brought  to  her  notice  by  craft.  Her  de- 
velopment is  slow,  even  ponderous,  but  appears 
to  be  thorough.  In  the  last  stages  she  has  a 
preference  for  the  more  liberal  of  the  Latin 
poets,  and  marries  Mr.  Mallard,  an  artist  who 
frequently  forgets  to  brush  bis  hair  and  to  lift 
his  hat  to  women,  and  who  is  tremendous  in 
denunciation  of  those  who  are  squeamish  about 
the  nude.  The  awakening  of  nsthetic  sensibi- 
lity effects  no  improvement  in  Mrs.  Baske's 
character.  Her  inhumanity  to  her  sinful  bro- 
ther, Reuben  Elgar,  rages  unmodified,  and  her 
treachery  to  his  wife  commits  her  to  hopeless 
dishonor.  We  are  led  to  suppose  that  Mr. 
Mallard  would  be  able  to  humanize  her  by 
giving  her  a  taste  of  the  happiness  of  '*  submis- 
sion to  a  stronger  nature  than  herself,"  but  we 
feel  that  he  would  soon  come  to  understand 
her  ability  for  flicking  the  bloom  off  any 
kind  of  happiness. 

The  contrasting  flgure  to  Mrs.  Baske  is 
Cicely  Doram,  beautiful  in  body,  free  in  mind, 
and  gay  in  spirits;  blessed,  moreover,  with  a 
wealthy  aunt,  who  "devoted  herself  with  ar- 
tistic zeal  to  her  niece's  training  for  the  world." 
We  expect  much  from  this  flne  modem  flower, 
familiar  alike  with  *<  Latin  classics  and  Pari- 
sian  feuilletons."  Great,  therefore,  is  our  dis- 
appointment when,  quite  after  the  manner  of 
the  silly,  old-fashioned  girl,  she  elopes  with 
Reuben  Elgar,  an  unattractive  man  who  she 
perfectly  well  knew  was  impecunious  and  dis- 
reputable. Here  Mr.  Gissing  faces  the  much- 
vexed  marriage  question,  and  it  cannot  be  said 
that  he  offei^  either  enlightenment  or  oonsola- 
tion.  From  passion  the  pair  pass  to  disliksb 
and  thence  through  a  series  of  degrading  epi- 
sodes to  separation.  Mr.  GiasiDg's  arguments 
against  religious  and  social  systems  are  most 
disingenuous.  The  Mosaic  di^nsation  is  not 
responsible  for  the  appearance  of  Elgars  on 
the  earth.  They  are  essentially  weak  and 
vicious,  and  doubtless  flourished  in  Rome  un- 
der the  Caesars.  There  never  was  a  social 
under  the  old  order  or  the  new  whioh,  cogBK 


Feb.  6,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


135 


aat  of  Cigar's  grom  infldeUtj,  would  not 
haye  apfiroTtd  of  Cioely't  leaTinghim  without 
caremotty.  It  Ib  nonteiiie  for  Mr.  Oiving  to 
My  that  the  was  forced  to  stay  with  him  by 
tha  opdiaoeniing  rigor  of  society;  and  the  un- 
kampt  Mr.  Mallard  shows  himself  barren  of 
expedients  when  he  declares  that,  short  of  kill* 
tng  herself,  there  was  no  way  out. 

In  drawing  Mrs.  Baske  and  CMoely,  Mr. 
Oissiag's  limitations  are  dearly  defined.  Far 
greater  facility  than  his  for  expressing  mental 
UMXMls  and  spiritual  crises  is  needed  to  make 
them  acceptable  and  ccmyincing.  In  many  of 
the  minor  characters,  especially  the  Denyer 
ftanOy,  he  shines  more  brightly.  The  Denyers 
are  among  his  best  characterintions.  Like 
th«  Frenches  in  the  *  Year  of  JubUee,*  he  knows 
them  throagh  and  through,  and  detests  as 
deeply  as  he  knows. 


BOOKS  ABOUT  THE  LEVANT. 

CoHMiantinopU:  The  City  of  the  Sultans.  By 
Clara  Erskine  Clement.  Illustrated.  Bos- 
ton: Estes  &  Lauriat. 
CimMantinopt§.  By  F.  Marion  Crawford. 
Dlostrated  by  Edwin  L.  Weeks.  Charles 
Scribner's  Sons.  1895. 
ifsntone,  Cairo,  and  Corfu,  By  Constance 
Ftoimore  Woolson.  Illustrated.  Harper  & 
Broe.  18Q6. 
Almost  anything  which  bears  the  name  of 
Constantinople  on  its  title-page  attracts  atten- 
tion at  the  present  moment.  The  Turkish  capi- 
tal is  the  centre  of  curiosity  to  erery  one  who 
takes  any  interest  in  foreign  lands  and  foreign 
politics,  snd  all  the  world  is  eager  to  learn 
whatever  it  can  about  the  city  of  the  sultans, 
proTided  it  can  do  so  without  too  much  mental 
effort  or  too  g^reat  an  expenditure  of  time. 
At  first  appearance,  *  Constantinople :  The 
City  of  the  Sultans,'  looks  as  though  it  were 
the  yery  book  to  give  the  desired  information 
in  the  most  satisfactory  manner.  In  outside 
appearance  it  is  strikingly  Leyantine— bril- 
liant, gaudy,  adorned  with  stars  and  crescents 
and  golden  domes  and  minarets.  Within  it  is 
equaUy  charming  so  far  as  appearance  is  con- 
oemed.  It  is  clearly  printed  on  uoglaxed 
paper,  soft  to  the  eye,  and  illustrated  with 
twenty  admirably  executed  full-page  half- 
tones, reproduced,  if  we  are  not  mistJiktru, 
from  pliotographs  of  Sebah  and  Joaillier  of 
Constantinople  and  Cairo.  There  are,  how- 
eyer,  some  inaccuracies  in  the  titles  of  these 
illustrations.  The  plate  facing  page  164  is  in- 
correctly entitled  "  Dolmabatcbke  [sic]  Palace 
and  Mosque  of  Sultan  Abdul  Medjid.''  Then 
b  no  palace  visible  in  the  picture,  but,  if  there 
were,  it  would  be  the  palace  of  Cheragan. 
Dolmabaghtshe  is  a  mile  or  two  further  down 
the  Bosphorus.  The  plate  entitled  * '  The  Mosque 
of  Sultan  Ahmed**  would  be  more  properly 
designated  *'The  Built  Column,**  that  being 
the  main  feature  of  the  photograph,  while  the 
moeque  is  rather  an  incident  of  the  back- 
gro«md.  A  **  Street  Scene,**  facing  page  286, 
fa  called  in  Sebah  and  JoaiUier*s  series  of  pho- 
tographs, where  it  is  No.  217.  **Caf«  Turc,** 
which  correctly  deecribes  the  picture. 

The  contents  of  the  volume  are  by  no  means 
equal  to  its  outward  form.  The  style  is  bad  and 
iUogieal,  and  the  statements  inaccurate  and 
unreliahle.  Tbehistoryof  the  reigns  of  the  last 
three  snltaas,  Abdul  Azix,  Murad,  and  Abdul 
Hamid,  degenerates  into  the  merest  gossip, 
garnished  after  the  pattern  of  the  *  Arabian 
Nights.*  Even  in  the  transcription  of  Turkish 
words  the  author  is  careless  and  unmethodical, 
writing  in  one  i^ace  lfec(/wf,  and  in  another 


U$jid^  on  page  162  fer^tih^  and  on  page  24<S 
f^ridji.  With  similar  negligence  she  tells 
you  in  two  consecutive  sentences  that  **  there 
is  no  longer  a  spectacle  of  the  Selanelik 
[misprint  for  Stlamlikl  in  Constantinople. 
It  can,  however,  be  seen  by  applying  for 
an  order  at  one  of  the  embassies**  (p.  164). 
Still,  she  makes  some  oonmients  upon  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  present  Sultan  which  are  worth 
reading  by  his  apologists:  **  We  perceive  that 
nothing  of  importance  can  occur  in  the  Otto- 
man Empire  without  the  knowledge  of  Sultan 
Abdul  Hamid  II.  What  are  we,  then,  to  think 
of  him  when  by  general  consent  it  is  admitted 
that  bis  government  is  of  the  very  worst? 
Even  the  glimmers  of  light  that  had  dawned 
upon  Ottoman  darkness  before  his  accession 
have  been  extinguished.**  The  first  two  parts 
of  the  book  are  devoted  to  the  history,  the  last 
to  the  present  life  of  Constantinople,  meaning 
the  objects  of  interest  to  the  tourist,  and  the 
life  and  habits  of  the  people.  This  part  is 
somewhat  better  than  the  other  two,  but  the 
author's  acquaintance  with  Constantinople  is 
too  evidentiy  superficial  and  inaccurate  to 
make  even  this  part  of  any  value.  In  the  clos- 
ing chapter  she  pays  a  well-deserved  tribute  to 
the  admirable  educational  institutions  estab- 
lished in  Constantinople  by  Americans,  and 
the  remarkable  results  achieved  through  them. 
F.  Marion  Crawford*s  'Constantinople'  is  a 
book  of  a  very  different  type.  It  does  not 
profess  to  be  a  history  of  Constantinople  or  a 
guide  to  the  objects  of  interest.  It  is  a  grace- 
ful littie  work,  meant  to  lie  on  your  table,  not 
to  stand  in  your  book-case,  as  even  its  outer 
form  declares.  It  is  light  literature,  the  jot- 
tings of  a  lover  of  the  curious,  the  outlandish, 
and  the  pictureeque,  of  a  literary  man  who 
studies  men  and  places  with  a  view  to  their 
possible  utilization  in  some  novel  or  magazine. 
You  ramble  about  in  out-of-the-way  places ; 
sit  in  a  queer  little  caf6  and  study  the  Galata 
bridge ;  bargain,  haggle,  and  drink  coffee  in 
the  bazaar;  eat  Turkish  dishes  and  drink 
Turkish  drinks  in  genuine  unadulterated 
Turkish  cook-shops;  fioat  up  and  down  the 
blue  Bosphorus  in  pictureeque  kaiks ;  saunter 
through  quaint  cemeteries ;  and,  wherever 
you  go,  Mr.  Edwin  L.  Weeks  goes  with  you 
and  makes  a  sketch  of  the  queer  people  that 
you  see  and  the  odd  scenee  which  surround 
you,  to  keep  you  mindful  of  them  always.  It 
is  a  delightfully  irresponsible  book,  looking  at 
men  and  things  from  i^e  point  of  view  of  the 
man  away  from  home  and  its  social  and  re- 
ligious standards,  awake  to  the  artistic,  the 
strange,  and  the  effective,  indifferent  to  the 
moral  aspect  One  is  not  surprised,  therefore, 
when  Mr.  Crawford  sighs  to  think  that  the 
Turk  must  soon  give  way  to  civilization,  nor  to 
hear  him  abuse  the  progressive  and  mercantile 
Greeks  and  Armenians.  Massacree  are  blood- 
curdling and  exciting,  trade  and  industry  are 
idebeian,  conmionplaoe,  and  tiresome.  One 
is,  however,  somewhat  astonished  to  learn 
that  the  Turk  **  is  naturally  a  fair  man,  with 
blue  eyes  and  of  fresh  complexion,  well  grown, 
uncommonly  strong,  and  very  enduring,**  and 
that  the  **  Greeks,  Armenians,  Persians,  and 
Africans**  ars  responsible  for  the  bad  gorem- 
ment  of  his  country,  having  outwitted  and 
robbed  him,  although  **he  himself  is  a  fine 
fellow  and  belongs  to  the  superior,  dominant 
races  of  the  world.**  Or  again,  that  while  the 
Greeks  and  Armenians  and  foreigners  secure 
all  the  eonosstions,  grants,  and  monopolies,  the 
Turk  must  **  ultimately  pay  for  all  these 
things.**  In  point  of  fact,  nin^tenths  of  all 
the  Turks  in  Constantinople  live  from  the 
public  crib,  as  officials,  sinecurists,  or  pension- 


ers. The  Ottoman  Turks  are  not  producers, 
but  consumers.  It  is  the  various  subject  peo- 
ples. Christian  and  Moslem,  who  do  the  pro- 
ducing and  pay  the  bills. 

Owing  to  the  Turkish  method  of  marriage 
with  Circassians,  Christians,  negroes,  and  all 
the  outside  world,  the  Turks  of  the  upper 
classes  have  become  such  a  mixed  race  that  it 
is  difficult  to  predicate  of  them  any  national 
type.  For  this  purpose  you  must  go  far  afield 
among  the  TurUsh  peasantry  and  small  towns- 
people in  Asia  Minor.  There  you  do  not  find 
the  Turk  fair-haired  and  blue-eyed,  it  is  true, 
but  you  do  find  him  a  good  fellow,  honest, 
sober,  stupid,  and  kindly.  He  conquered  and 
endeavored  to  appropriate  a  civilized  govern- 
ment while  he  was  still  a  barbarian.  He  has 
remained  a  barbarian,  and  his  governing 
classes  have  appropriated  the  vicee  and  cor^ 
ruption  without  the  virtues  of  the  government 
which  they  conquered. 

Miss  Woolson's  *  Mentone,  Cairo,  and  Corfu ' 
takes  us  away  from  Constantinople  to  travel 
and  sojourn  in  other  parts  of  the  great  Medi- 
terranean basin.  **  The  substance  of  this  col- 
lection,** as  we  are  told  in  a  publisher's  note, 
**  originally  appeared  in  Harper's  ifagfourine  " 
at  different  times  between  the  years  1884  |md 
1802.  Now  that  the  author  is  gone,  the  different 
articles  are  gathered  together  and  published  in 
book  form;  and  they  are  well  worth  it.  The 
first  of  these  sketches,  which  is  also  the  longest 
and  the  best,  is  entitied  **  At  Mentone,"  and 
you  cannot  read  it  without  feeling  that  you 
are  there,  living  an  out-door  life  in  a  balmy, 
lemon-scented  atmosphere,  without  cares  or 
duties  of  any  sort  but  to  amuse  yourself,  meet- 
ing and  associating  intimately  with  other 
holiday-makers  and  health-seekers,  to  separate 
from  them  suddenly  and  completely  when  the 
year  grows  warm  again.  Physicians  who  can- 
not send  tj^eir  patients  to  the  Riviera  should 
give  them  this  book.  It  will  make  them  think 
that  they  are  there.  It  is  a  combination  of 
guide-book  and  story,  so  clever  and  so  just 
that  neither  part  injures  the  other,  and  you  ob- 
tain your  information  without  being  aware, 
unless  you  are  a  professional  critic,  that  you 
are  being  informed. 

**  Cairo  in  1890  **  has  not  the  added  charm  of 
being  a  story  as  well  as  a  sketch  of  travel, 
but  it  is  a  charming  and  graceful  record  of 
the impresdonsand  experiences  of  an  intelli- 
gent, obeervant,  well-informed  woman  in  one 
of  the  most  fascinating  cities  in  the  world.  It 
is  both  interesting  and  profitable  reading.  We 
notice  a  few  slight  slips  in  Arabic  words,  as, 
for  instance,  at  the  foot  of  page  156,  where 
Miss  Woolson  transcribes  and  translates  a  part 
of  the  familiar  muezzin  call,  and  in  doing  so 
translates  what  she  has  not  transcribed.  Some 
of  the  descriptions  are  delightful,  as,  for  ex- 
ample, where  she  undertakes  to  hunt  down 
Assiut  ware  to  its  store-rooms,  and  finds  her- 
self in  a  lodging-house  of  native  Cairo  (pp. 
224  ft).  *'  Corfu  and  i^e  Ionian  **  is  not  quite 
equal  in  interest  to  the  other  two  sketches, 
perhaps  because  Corfu  is  not  in  itself  so  inte- 
resting as  Cairo  and  the  Riviera.  Neverthe- 
less, this  also  was  well  worth  republication. 


THE   NICARAGUA   CANAL. 

Th€  K9y  of  the  Pacific  i  The  Nicaragua  Canal. 

By  Ross  Colquhoun.    Longmans,  Green  & 

Co. 
Thb  second  part  of  the  titie  tells  what  this 
book  is.    It  is  a  description  of  the  Nicaragua 
Canal,  with  some  account  of  the  country  which 
the  canal  wiU  traverse  and  of  the  business 


136 


Tlie   iN^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1597 


which  it  may  be  expected  to  accommodate. 
The  author,  whose  life  has  combined  that  of  a 
civil  engineer,  a  Gk>Ternment  commissioner, 
and  a  newspaper  correspondent,  has  devoted 
somewhat  more  than  800  pages  of  well- printed 
matter  to  this  general  subject.  He  begins  by 
considering  the  three  nudn  schemes  which  of 
late  years  have  been  proposed  for  the  passage 
of  the  American  isthmus— the  Panama  Canal, 
the  Nicaragua  Canal,  and  the  Tehuantepec 
Ship- Railway.  Panama  and  Tehuantepec  are 
quickly  dismissed.  The  former  lost  whatever 
merit  it  may  have  had  when  the  tide- level 
canal  was  abandoned;  the  latter  ended  with 
the  life  of  its  illustrious  promoter.  The  Nica- 
ragua route  remains,  and  the  author  regards 
this  as  the  sole  practicable  line  of  isthmian 
transit.  Two  chapters  are  devoted  to  conces- 
sions and  organizations,  and  the  author  con- 
cludes that  **  it  is  certain  that  the  project  must 
be  under  the  auspices  of  some  strong  Govern- 
ment, and  without  doubt  that  Gk>vemment 
must  be  the  United  States.''  Two  chapters  are 
devoted  to  the  engineering  problem,  including 
therein  both  the  construction  and  the  physical 
conditions  which  affect  construction;  two  more 
are  of  an  historical  character;  four  relate  to 
the  general  features  and  resources  of  Nicara- 
gua;  one  chapter  takes  up  the  general  subject 
of  ship-canals,  and  the  two  last  confirm  the 
value  of  the  canal  and  its  far-reaching  effects. 
While  written  by  an  Englishman,  and  in  fact 
an  English  publication,  printed  idso  in  Ameri- 
ca under  the  international  copyright  provi- 
sions, the  work  is  apparently  intended  for 
American  readers  quite  as  much  as  for  English, 
and  it  is  an  interesting  and  readable  account 
of  a  subject  of  very  great  importance  which  is 
but  imperfectly  understood. 

The  Nicaragua  Ship-Ccmal  differs  very  ma- 
terially from  the  other  great  ship-canals  of  the 
world.  The  Suez  Canal  is  simply  a  level  cut 
from  the  Mediterranean  to  the  Red  sea,  open- 
ing an  artificial  strait  between  two  great  bodies 
of  salt  water.  The  Corinth  Canal  is  of  the 
same  nature.  The  Panama  Canal,  as  original- 
ly projected,  was  of  the  same  kind.  The  North 
Sea  Canal,  though  provided  with  guard-locks 
at  both  entrances,  is  constructed  on  a  single 
level  from  the  Baltic  to  the  North  Sea.  All  of 
these  canals  are  throughout  salt-water  ^canals. 
At  Nicaragua,  on  the  other  hand,  a  fresh  water 
lake  of  an  area  of  nearly  8,000  square  miles 
and  about  100  feet  above  the  level  of  either 
ocean,  lies  midway  between  the  Atlantic  and 
Pacific.  The  problem  consists  in  connecting 
this  fresh  inland  sea  with  the  oceans  which  are 
so  close  at  hand.  The  present  outlet  of  the 
lake  is  by  the  San  Juan  River  to  the  Caribbean 
Sea,  though  there  are  reasons  to  believe  that 
the  outlet  was  once  in  a  northwesterly  direc- 
tion to  the  Bay  of  Foneeca  on  the  Pacific  The 
lake  is  a  beautiful  sheet  of  water  surrounded 
by  mountains  and  embellished  with  volcanoes, 
some  of  which  rise  as  islands  in  the  lake. 

Although  the  outlet  is  to  the  Atlantic,  the 
chief  diflScuIties  in  construction  lie  on  the  At- 
lantic side.  The  distance  from  the  lake  to  the 
Pacific  is  only  eighteen  miles,  and  this  portion 
of  the  canal  presents  no  difficulties  of  an  unu- 
sual nature.  The  Pacific  terminus  would  be  at 
Brito,  which  is  at  present  barely  worthy  to  be 
called  a  roadstead,  but  a  fairly  good  harbor  can 
be  constructed  there  by  artificial  breakwaters. 
On  the  Atlantic  side  the  case  is  very  different: 
the  air-line  distance  from  the  lake  to  the  ocean 
is  about  seventy  miles,  and  the  general  course 
of  the  San  Juan  River  seems  to  be  the  only 
feasible  route.  The  early  plans,  which  con- 
templated a  canal  of  much  less  capacity  than 
is  now  proposed,  were  based  upon  a  system  of 


slack- water  navigation  on  the  San  Juan  River. 
The  plans  adopted  by  the  Nicaragua  Canal 
Construction  C<Nnpany  are  of  a  radically  dif- 
ferent character :  they  contemplate  the  con. 
strucUon  of  a  great  dam  across  the  San  Juan 
River  at  Ochoa,  which  shall  not  only  raise  the 
present  level  of  the  river  above  the  dam  to 
that  of  Lake  Nicaragua,  but,  by  extending 
this  summit  level  through  other  valleys  north 
of  the  San  Juan,  carry  it  to  within  twelve 
miles  of  the  Caribbean  Sea.  Not  only  is  it 
proposed  to  extend  the  lake  by  means  of  the 
Ochoa  dam,  but  it  is  expected  to  raise  its  pre- 
sent level  about  four  feet,  so  that  the  lake 
would  become  a  great  fresh- water  basin  reach- 
ing within  a  dozen  miles  of  either  ocean. 
The  principal  diflSculties  of  this  scheme  lie  in 
the  extension  of  the  basin  eastward.  The 
Ochoa  dam  is  in  itself  a  work  of  great  magni- 
tude, but  the  range  of  hills  which  would  con- 
fine the  southern  boundary  of  the  extended 
basin  are  not  continuous,  requiring  a  long  se- 
ries of  embankments,  some  of  them  of  great 
dimensions,  to  sustain  the  basin;  besides  which, 
it  is  proposed  to  cut  through  a  divide  between 
the  drainage  of  the  San  Francisco  and  Deeea- 
do  Rivers,  both  tributaries  of  the  San  Juan, 
involving  a  cut  of  a  maximum  depth  of  more 
than  three  hundred  feet  The  Ochoa  dam 
would  be  about  seventy- five  feet  high,  and 
some  of  the  vaUeys  on  the  San  Francisco  em- 
bankment are  crossed  at  almost  an  equal 
height.  Three  locks  of  unusual  dimensions, 
exceeding  any  yet  constructed,  make  the  de- 
scent On  either  side  from  the  great  fresh- water 
summit  basin  to  the  ocean.  After  leaving  the 
basin  on  the  Atlantic  side,  except  the  magni- 
tude of  the  locks,  no  special  difficulties  are 
found.  The  Atlantic  terminus  would  be  at 
Greytown,  which  was  once  one  ol  the  best  har- 
bors in  Central  America,  but  is  a  fearful  illus- 
tration of  the  dangers  of  shifting*  sands.  One 
of  the  most  uncertain  problems  which  the 
builders  of  this  canal  will  have  to  face  is  the  re- 
opening and  preservation  of  Greytown  harbor. 

The  climate  of  Lake  Nicaragua  is  delightful, 
and  the  general  features  all  that  are  needed 
to  make  a  tropical  climate  attractive.  Be- 
tweoi  the  lake  and  the  Caribbean  Sea  the  rain- 
fall  is  excessive;  the  rainy  season  extends 
through  the  whole  year  and  the  total  rainfall 
is  nearly  800  inches  annually.  While  this  ex- 
cessive  rainfall  is  less  objectionable  in  the  tro- 
pics than  in  a  colder  zone,  it  adds  to  the  diffi- 
culties of  a  task  which  at  best  requires  the 
most  careful  examination  and  the  most  skilful 
engineering. 

The  general  idea  of  a  canal  of  this  kind  is 
most  attractive.  In  a  few  hours  after  leaving 
the  ocean,  a  ship  would  pass  through  the  three 
locks  and  reach  the  great  interior  lake.  The 
passage  through  this  lake  would  have  the 
same  charm  that  belongs  to  the  Inland  Sea  of 
Japan,  while  delightful  watering-places  would 
be  built  around  this  great  fresh-water  harbor. 
But  the  attractiveness  of  a  tropical  lake  is  an 
unimportant  incident:  the  real  questions  are, 
whether  the  plans  now  proposed  are  feasible, 
what  they  will  cost,  and  whether  the  results 
will  justify  the  cost.  * 

So  far  as  the  feasibility  of  the  plans  is  con- 
cerned, the  author  accepts  them  as  thoroughly 
satisfactory.  The  only  features  in  which  he 
sees  any  difficulties  are  the  Ochoa  dam,  the 
East  Divide  cut,  and  Greytown  harbor.  As  to 
the  dam,  he  is  simply  not  fully  prepared  to  ac- 
cept the  plans  already  made  as  the  best;  the 
East  Divide  cut  may  require  flatter  slopes,  and 
possibly  a  tunnel  may  be  desirable;  of  Grey- 
town harbor  he  feels  more  doubt.  The  next 
question  is  that  of  cost,  and  Uie  writer  doubles 


the  estimates  of  the  canal  company,  consider- 
ing it  probable  that  the  cost  of  the  enterprise 
may  be  $160,000,000.  As  to  the  value  of  the 
completed  work,  the  author  has  no  doubts 
whatever;  he  believes  it  reasonable  to  estimate 
the  net  income  two  years  after  the  opening  of 
the  canal  at  about  10,000,000,  which  would  be 
6  per  cent,  on  the  $150,000,000  which  he  thinks 
the  canal  may  cost,  and  this  income  he  expects 
to  increase  from  year  to  year,  as  has  been  the 
case  at  Suez.  But  the  mere  income  is  by  no 
means  the  whole  value  of  the  canal;  its  value 
from  a  strategic  point  of  view  in  enabling  n»- 
val  vessels  to  pass  from  one  ocean  to  another 
in  a  minimum  time,  and  its  value  from  a  com- 
mercial point  of  view  in  enabling  coasting  ves- 
sels of  one  ocean  to  be  utilized  on  the  other,  are 
of  the  utmost  importance. 

All  this  is  very  interesting  and  very  impor- 
tant. The  book,  however,  is  in  many  respects 
superficial,  and  the  reader  feels  that,  before 
accepting  the  conclusions,  he  ought  to  verify 
some  of  the  facts.  One  special  defect  should 
be  pointed  out :  any  book  of  this  character 
should  be  accompanied  by  a  full  and  accurate 
map  which  may  be  carefully  studied  by  the 
reader.  A  number  of  sketch-maps  are  printed 
in  the  body  of  the  book,  and  a  very  poor  fold- 
ing map  is  placed  at  the  end;  profiles  in 
rather  inconvenient  form,  with  no  vertical 
scale  and  apparently  not  very  accurate,  are 
given  of  the  two  canal  sections  between  the 
Ochoa  dam  and  the  Caribbean  Sea,  and  be- 
tween the  lake  and  the  Paci^,  while  a  small  , 
profile,  with  no  scale  whatever,  giveran  un- 
satisfactory  view  of  the  entire  canal.  A  few 
inaccuracies  may  be  cited  which  show  the 
carelessness  with  which  the  book  is  prepared: 
on  page  40  it  is  stated  that  the  Maritime'  Canal 
Company  of  Nicaragua  has  the  only  charter 
which  Congress  has  ever  granted  except  that 
of  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad,  whereas  at 
least  two  other  railroads  now  running  are 
operated  under  charters  from  the  general 
Government;  on  page  74  the  Quaker  Bridge 
dam,  which  appears  to  be  ninety  feet  higher 
than  any  dam  ever  built,  is  included  in  a  Hst  of 
constructed  works;  on  page  107  the  statement 
is  made  that  on  the  Atlantic  and  Gulf  coasts 
practically  only  at  the  mouth  of  the  Missis- 
sippi have  American  engineers  succeeded  in 
deepening  the  channel  into  a  harbor,  ignoring 
the  fact  that  the  depth  on  Sandy  Hook  bar 
has  been  increased  until  there  is  now  thirty 
feet  at  low  water^  that  the  depth  on  the  bar  at 
GkUveston  has  been  doubled,  and  that  equal- 
ly great  improvements  have  been  made  at 
Charleston  and  at  the  mouth  of  the  St.  John*s 
River.  On  page  278  occurs  the  extraordinary 
statement  that  a  canal  a  thousand  miles  long 
to  connect  the  Baltic  with  the  Black  Sea,  fol- 
lowing up  the  Dwina  and  down  the  Dnieper 
Rivers,  would  be  without  lockn  Such  state- 
ments cannot  fail  to  shake  the  reader's  confi- 
dence in  the  accuracy  of  the  whole  book. 


An  Old  New  England   Town:  Sketches  of 
Life,  Scenery,   and  Character.    By  Frank 
Samuel    Child.     Charles    Scribner's  Sons. 
1805. 
Books  that  relate  to  life  in  New  England 
towns  are  always  interesting  to  New  Eiugland- 
ers,  wherever  the  latter  may  abide.    This  book 
is  no  exception,  though  in  many  respects  it  is 
of  a  somewhat  slight  and  sketchy  character. 
It  is  exceptionally  neatly  printed,  and  tiie 
binding  is  in  good  taste,  even  in  what  is  term- 
ed the  **  regular  ^  (i.  e.,  cheaper)  edition.    The 
author  evidently  worked  oon  amoref  and,  la 
the  lectures  which  preceded  and  formed  Iha 


Feb.  6.  1896J 


Th.e    N"atioii. 


137 


original  material  of  the  book,  he  was  applaud- 
ed by  the  approval  of  the  local  communitj. 
Both  text  and  illoitratioiiB  are  largely  taken 
np  with  the  natural  scenery  of  the  **  grand  old 
town."  Many  of  these  descriptions  might 
have  been  omitted,  for,  however  grand  the 
town  might  have  been  in  the  past,  or  may  be 
at  preeent,  .in  many  features,  the  natural 
scenery  is  not  imposing.  Besides,  whatever 
quiet  beauties  it  may  present  are  oil  visible  to 
Uie  preeent  generation  as  they  were  to  those 
who  have  passed  away. 

While  the  book  is  often  pleasing  and  in- 
structive, we  think  it  might  easily  have  been 
made  more  so  by  giviog  a  fuller  account  of 
some  of  its  former  inhabitants,  especially 
those  who  were  distinguished  in  their  day. 
The  only  notable  biographical  sketch  in  the 
work  is  that  of  Roger  Minot  Sherman,  whose 
portrait  is  the  frontispiece  to  the  volume.  But 
the  sketch  of  this  distinguished  gentleman  is, 
to  say  the  least,  somewhat  imperfect.  He  was, 
for  at  least  thirty  years,  the  most  accomplished 
lawyer  at  the  Connecticut  bar,  and,  as  an  ad- 
vocate and  jurist,  he  had  few  equals  in  the 
United  States.  No  one  would  claim  for  him 
the  ** majestic  intellectual  power"  often  dis- 
played by  Mr.  Webster,  but  few  who  are  com- 
petent to  speak  on  the  subject  would  hesitate 
to  say  that  Mr.  Sherman  was  the  more  accom- 
plished and  thoroughly  equipped  lawyer  of 
the  two.  The  author  cites  President  Woolsey 
(no  mean  judge) -as  sajiog  that  **  Roger  Minot 
Sherman  came  nearer  his  conception  of  Cicero 
than  any  other  human  being  he  had  ever 
heard  speak.'*  Then  occurs  the  following : 
**He  [President  Woolsey]  said  Mr.  Sherman 
was  unwilling  to  speak  anywhere  but  in  court 
in  his  own  county.**  The  authority  for  this  is 
Senator  Hoar,  cited  by  the  author.  Though 
the  Senator  is  a  distant  relative  of  Mr.  Sher- 
man, either  he  or  President  Woolsey  (one  of 
the  exactest  of  men)  was  mistaken.  Very 
likely  Bfr.  Sherman  declined  all  invitations  to 
address  public  bodies  or  miscellaneous  audi- 
ences on  literary  or  historical  themes.  He 
was  not  singular  in  this.  His  relative,  Roger 
Sherman  Baldwin,  one  of  the  ablest  and  most 
finished  lawyers  of  Connecticut,  habitually  re- 
fused to  employ  his  talents  in  that  field  of  in- 
tellectnal  labco*.  A  few  legal  opinions  and 
briefs  and  one  or  two  great  arguments  are 
about  all  that  has  come  down  to  us  from 
either  of  these  eminent  lawyers.  But  the  state- 
ment attributed  to  President  Woolsey,  that 
'*Mr.  Sherman  was  unwilling  to  speak  any- 
where but  in  court  in  his  own  oounty,*'  is 
clearly  erroneous.  The  reports  of  cases  and  the 
records  of  litigation  in  Connecticut  from  as 
early  as  1810,  at  least,  tUl  1889,  conclusively 
show  that  Mr.  Sherman  was  constantly  argu- 
ing causes  in  nearly  every  county  in  the  State. 
Like  the  English  lawyers,  he  **rode  the  cir- 
onit,"  trying  causes  whenever  he  was  offered 
retainers,  which  was  very  often.  This  was  in- 
evitable, for  his  fame,  both  as  an  advocate  and 
a  jurist,  transcended  that  of  any  lawyer  In  the 
State.  Though  not  a  fiorid  or,  perhaps,  in  the 
popular  sense,  a  brilliant  forensic  orator,  he 
was  a  finished  advocate,  both  on  matters  of 
fact  to  the  jury  and  on  the  most  intricate  and 
subtle  questions  of  law  presented  to  the  court. 
An  eminent  Chief  Justice  of  Connecticut  (now 
deceased)  once  told  the  writer  of  this  notice 
that  Sherman's  logic  was  so  cogent  and  fault- 
less that  the  most  distinguished  of  the  judges 
before  whom  he  sppeared  felt  it  unsafe  to  fail 
to  examine  carefully  his  premises,  or  to  remit 
for  a  moment  their  attention  to  the  course  of 
his  argument,  lest  they  might  be  lured  to  a 
wroog  condoiloiu 


After  referring  to  the  fact  that  Sherman  de. 
dined  a  nomination  for  Congress,  the  author 
remarks:  **At  a  later  date  the  opportunity 
came  when  the  State  would  have  been  glad  y> 
choose  him  to  represent  her  in  the  United 
States  Senate;  but  certain  views  which  Judge 
Sherman  held  were  not  agreeable  to  his  party, 
and  he  was  not  willing  to  compromise  his  posi- 
tion." Now  we  apprehend  that  the  real  reason 
why  he  was  not  elected  to  the  United  States 
Senate  was  because  be  had  been  a  member  of 
the  Hartford  Convention,  a  body  which  the 
Democrats  had  for  years  denounced  as  trea- 
sonable. Ortain  small  men  in  the  Whig  party 
were  afraid  to  elect  Mr.  Sherman  to  the  Senate 
for  fear  that  it  would  hurt  the  party,  so  that 
once  august  legislative  chamber  lost  the  ser- 
vices of  one  who  would  have  been  one  of  its 
most  useful  members  as  well  as  one  of  its 
brightest  ornaments. 

Mr.  Child,  after  stating  that  in  1823  a  *'young 
man  by  the  name  of  *  Ellsworth'  wrote  to 
Sherman  for  advice  about  the  choice  of  a  pro* 
fession,"  and  giving  the  substance  of  his  reply, 
adds  :  '*  It  is  pleasant  to  remember  that  Mr. 
Ellsworth  continued  to  shine  with  the  light  of 
Christian  manhood  in  the  legal  profession,  and 
that  he  became  famous  as  professor  of  law, 
member  of  Congress,  Gtovemor  of  Connecticut, 
and  J%utice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States.^^  This  is  rather  an  unfortunate  slip. 
The  writer  does  not  give  the  full  name,  but, 
clearly,  he  refers  to  the  late  Hon.  Wm.  W. 
Ellsworth,  who  wss  a  member  of  Ckmg^ess, 
Governor  of  the  State,  and  judge  of  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  Errors  of  0>nnecticut ;  but  he 
was  never  a  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States.  His  father,  Oliver  Ells- 
worth, was  for  a  time  Chief  Justice  of  the  lat- 
ter court,  a  man  of  great  intellectual  endow- 
ments. He  drafted  what  is  known  as  the 
**  Judiciary  Act  of  1789,"  which  to  this  day  is 
the  foundation  and  framework  of  our  Federal 
jurisprudence,  it  was  a  masterly  piece  of  ju- 
dicial legislation,  second  only  in  usefulness  to 
the  lucid  and  luminous  expositions  of  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States  by  Chief  Justice 
Marshall. 

We  are  rather  surprised  that  no  more  is  said 
in  this  book  of  Gen.  Gold  Selleck  Silliman  of 
Fairfield.  He  was,  especially  during  the  Re 
volutionary  war,  one  of  the  moat  conspicuous 
figures  in  Connecticut.  He  was  a  man  of  un 
tiring  energy,  and  his  discreet  and  efficient  ma- 
nagement of  the  military  posts  assigned  to  him 
won  the  lasting  confidence  and  approval  of 
Governor  Trumbull.  His  wife  was  scarcely  in- 
ferior to  him  in  skill,  energy,  and  force  of  cha- 
racter. They  were  the  head  of  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  families  in  the  State,  their 
descendants  including  two  eminent  psofessors 
at  Tale.  The  senior  Professor  Silliman  won  a 
fame  not  only  in  his  native  State,  but  in  the 
whole  country,  as  well  as  abroad.  The  fa- 
mily is  well  represented  at  this  dsy  in  the 
person  of  the  Hon.  B.  D.  Silliman,  an  eminent 
lawyer  in  this  city,  a  resident  of  Brooklyn, 
where  he  is  enjoying  a  green  and  cheerful  old 
age. 

This  book,  pleasing  as  it  is  In  many  of  its 
features,  reminds  us  that  Connecticut  still  lacks 
any  adequate  history  or  biographical  record 
of  its  distinguished  men.  Some  son  of  hers 
who  may  combine  the  industry  of  a  Dryasdust 
with  the  literary  gifta  of  a  true  historian, 
might  well  undertake  the  task  which  has  thus 
far  remained  unperformed. 


A  History  of  Money  and  PriceSt  being  an  in- 
quiry  into  their  relations  from  the  thirteenth 


century  to  the  present  time.    By  J.  Schoen- 

hof.    G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.    1890.    12mo,  pp. 

xvii,  853. 
In  his  latest  book  Mr.  Schoenhof  renews  his 
attack  upon  the  theory  that  the  quantity  of 
money  in  circulation  determines  money  prices. 
His  present  argument  is  chiefly  historical. 
Many  figures  from  Thorold  Rogers,  D'Avenel, 
and  Beissel  are  cited  to  prove  that  prices  **from 
the  thirteenth  century  to  the  present  time" 
have  not  increased  proportionately  to  the  con- 
temporaneous increase  in  the  volume  of  money. 
The  fact  is  indisputable,  but  it  is  not,  as  Mr. 
Schoenhof  asserts,  conclusive  against  the  quan- 
titative theory.  Completely  stated,  that  theory 
is  complicated  to  the  verge  of  unintelligibility. 
In  practice  it  is  simj>lified  into  the  truism  that 
quotient  equals  divisor  into  dividend;  or,  in 
other  words,  that  the  supply  of  money  and  the 
demand  for  money — Walker's  "money- work*' 
— determine  the  goods  price  of  money,  and 
therefore  the  money  price  of  goods.  The  for- 
mula  is  perhaps  true,  it  is  certainly  useless. 
Nobody  has  measured  the  supply  of  money 
more  accurately  than  to  say  that  it  is  the  num- 
ber of  pieces  multiplied  by  the  (indeterminate) 
rapidity  of  their  circulation.  Nobody  has  ever 
pointed  out  a  way  of  ascertaining  how  great 
the  ** amount  of  money- work"  may  be.  Until 
these  preliminary  steps  in  defining  the  quanti- 
tative theory  of  money  shall  be  taken,  no  ap- 
peal to  statistics  or  to  history  can  either  prove 
or  disprove  it.  At  present  we  have  not  .the 
materials  for  testing  its  applicability  during 
even  the  last  twenty-five  years,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  thirteenth  century. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  book,  dealing  with 
**the  true  price- making  factors,"  namely,  the 
material  and  intellectual  processes  of  produc- 
tion, Mr.  Schoenhors  knowledge  of  business 
enables  him  to  support  his  contentions  by  much 
fresh  and  apposite  illustration.  These  pages 
are  distinctly  stronger  than  the  more  theoreti- 
cal  portions. 


Elementary  Physical  Geography.  By  Ralph 
S.  Tarr,  B.8.,  F.G.S.A.  Macmillan  &  Co. 
1895. 
This  book  is  in  part  an  attempt  to  carry  out 
the  suggestions  which  were  made  by  the  ma- 
jority of  the  Committee  of  Ten,  but  the  aut  hor 
has  deemed  it  unwise  to  attempt  to  do  m  ore 
than  partly  follow  out  those  suggestions.  In 
his  preface  he  very  frankly  says  that  he  antici. 
pates  much  criticism,  and  in  a  measure  he  fore- 
stalls unfavorable  comment  by  confessin  gthat 
he  is  far  from  being  satisfied  with  his  attempt. 
In  its  treatment  of  *'The  Land"  the  book  is  a 
decided  advance  upon  any  physical  geography 
heretofore  published.  The  various  physiogra- 
phic  processes  which  have  shaped  the  earth's 
surface  are  described  in  some  detail.  The 
cycle  of  erosion,  in  connection  with  the  de- 
velopment of  a  river  system,  is  well  brought 
out,  and  the  various  accidents  which  oomm  only 
interrupt  the  normal  cycle  are  well  described. 
The  author  has  apparently  been  reluctant  to 
use  terms,  suchas**peneplaio,"  "river  piracy," 
and  others,  which,  although  new  to  many 
teachers  of  geography,  nevertheless  have  be- 
come well  established  in  scientific  literature. 
He  has,  we  may  add,  put  himself  in  opposition 
to  the  authority  of  the  best  geologists  in  dis- 
cussing  weathering  and  erosion  as  two  separate 
and  coordinate  processes.  It  would  have  been 
more  in  accord  with  the  best  usage  to  have 
discussed  weathering  as  one  of  the  elements  of 
erosion,  and  to  have  used  the  term  *'  oorraslon  ' 
in  many  cases  where  he  has  used  "erosion." 
Mr.  Tarr's  treatment  of  lakes  is  Inade^jnate  in 


138 


Tlie    !N"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1597 


that  he  has  failed  to  emphasize  the  place  which 
lakes  occupy  in  the  cycle  of  river  develop- 
ment, some  types  heing  characteristic  of  the 
youth  and  others  of  the  maturity  or  old  age  of 
a  river  system.  Much  the  same  criticism  may 
be  made  of  the  author's  discussion  of  plateaus 
and  mountains. 

The  book  contains  a  few  errors  which  ought 
to  be  corrected.  Hadley's  inaccurate  explana- 
tion of  the  deflective  force  of  the  earth*s  rota- 
tion is  repeated  by  Mr.  Tarr.  As  has  been 
shown  by  Ferrel,  this  force  is  dependent  solely 
upon  the  latitude  and  the  momentum  of  the 
moving  body,  and  not  at  all  upon  the  direction 
of  motion,  whereas  Hadley^s  explanation  de- 
mands that  there  be  no  deflection  in  the  case 
of  bodies  moving  in  an  east-and-west  direction, 
and  that  the  amount  of  deflection  diminish 
with  the  departure  from  a  north-and-BOuth 
direction.  According  to  the  diagram  on  page 
49,  the  temperature  in  the  southern  hemi- 
sphere is  higher  in  June  than  in  December,  an 
error  probably  due  to  carelessness  in  prepara- 
tion. The  text  seems  to  have  been  hastily 
written,  and  in  places  it  is  marred  by  careless 
expressions,  such  as,  **a  river  valley  trans, 
formed  into  a  lake'*  (p.  299),  and  *^  we  have  in 
this,  the  Malaspina  glacier,  an  instance  of  a 
well  developed  forest''  (p.  318).  The  illustra- 
tions are  profuse  and  in  general  well  chosen, 
many  of  them  being  new  to  text-booiu.  Un- 
fortunately not  a  few  of  them  are  poorly  re- 
produced. 

But  praise  much  more  than  censure  is  due  to 


the  work  as  a  whole,  which  is  of  the  nature  of 
a  pioneer.  The  author  has  in  preparation  a 
larger  work,  which  wiU  be  awaited  with  much 
interest. 


English  Essays  from  a  French  Pen.  By  J. 
J.  Jusserand,  Ministre  I*l6nipotentiaire.  Lon- 
don: Unwin;  New  York:  Putnams.    1895. 

M.  JussxRAND  is  certainly  one  of  the  most  vi- 
vacious of  antiquaries.  A  book  from  his  pen 
is  sure  to  be  curiously  instructive  and  not  to 
be  heavy,  and  we  hope  be  may  long  continue 
to  keep  to  bis  present  average  of  a  volume  a 
year.  Of  the  essays  brought  together  in  the 
little  volume  before  us,  **Tbe  Forbidden  Pas- 
times of  a  Recluse  "  is  by  all  odds  the  most  en- 
tertaining. It  consists  of  a  string  of  extracts 
from  a  manual  for  anchoresses  written  in  the 
twelfth  century  by  the  Englishman  Ailred, 
Abbot  of  Rievaulx,  for  the  guidance  of  his 
sister.  The  manual  has  interesting  points  of 
comparison  with  the  well-known  *Ancren 
Riwle*  of  the  following  century.  Some  of  the 
scenes  depicted  are  highly  characteristic — par- 
ticularly that  of  the  tattling  old  woman  at  the 
recluse's  window,  telling  tales  and  keeping  her 
informed  of  the  town  gossip.  The  second  paper 
is  a  brief  and  lively  account  (from  an  unpub^ 
lished  manuscript)  of  the  journey  of  Regnault 
Qirard  to  Scotland  in  1435.  Girard's  errand 
was  to  fetch  the  little  Lady  Margaret,  the  be- 
trothed of  the  Dauphin,  and  he  had  some  amus- 
ing experiences.  We  are  glad  to  learn  that  Mr. 


Andrew  Lang  is  preparing  an  edition  of  this 
important  manuscript  for  the  Roxburghe  Club. 
Two  other  visits  to  England—that  of  Sorbites 
in  1663  and  that  of  Voltaire  in  1726— are  briefly 
treated.  The  longest  paper  in  the  volume  is 
that  on  Scarron,  which  is  reprinted  froni  the 
Lawrence  &  Bullen  edition  of  *The  Comical 
Romance.' 

BOOKS  OF  THE  WEEK. 

La  Jeunene  de  BougalaTllle  et  la  Ouerre  de  Sept  int. 

[Leg  Fraii<;ai8  au   Canada.]    Paris:  Daupeiey-Oou- 

vemeur. 
Lees,  Prof.    The  Claim  1  of  Greek.    Syracuse:  C.  W. 

Bardeen.   85o. 
Lleber.  B.  F.   standard  Telegraphic  Code.   Lleber  Pub- 
lishing Co.   $1U. 
Marcou.  J.    Life.  Letters,  and  Works  of  Louis  Agatwli 

8  vols.   Macmfllan  ft  Co. 
Meade.  L.  T.    A  Princess  of  the  Gutter.    Putnams.   tl. 
Musgrave,  Geor«e.    Dante's  Inferno  :    A  Version  In  the 

Nloe-Une  Metre  of  Spenser.    Maomillan.    $1.50. 
Powell.  LleutCol.  W.  U.   The  Fifth  Army  Corps  (Army 

of  the  Potomac).    Putnams.   f7.50. 
Robb,  Russell.    Electric  Wiring.    Macmlllan.   $2  50. 
Roosevelt,  Theodore,  and  Grlnnell.  O.  B.    Htrntliur  In 

Many  Lands  l^bresc  and  Stream  Publishing  Co.  $9.50. 
Rossettl.  W.  M.    New  Poems  by  Christina  BossettL 

Mscmtllan.   $1.75. 
Sears.  Prof.  Lorenzo.    The  History  of  Oratory.   Cbl. 

cago :  S.  C.  Griggs  ft  Co. 
Bewail,  J.  B.   The  Tlmoa  of  Ludan.   Boston :  Glnn  ft 

Co.    66c. 
Tllle.  Alexander.    German  Songs  of  To-Day.    Maomll* 

Ian.    $1. 
Waugb,  Arthur.    Alfred  Lord  Tennyson:  ▲  Study  of 

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Welch.  Desbler.   The  Bachelor  and  the  Cbaflng  Dish. 

F.  T.  Neely. 
Wentworih.  G.  A.    Syllables  of  Geometry.    Boston: 

Glnn  ft  Co. 
Williams.  R.  P.   Chemical  Ezoerlments.  General  and 

Analytical.    Boston  :  Glnn  ft  Co.    00c. 
Wood,  Gen.  Sir  Evelyn.    Cavalry  In  the  Waterloo  Cam- 
_patgn.    Boston :  Robertt  Bros.   $1  95. 
Wood.   Henry.    Studies  In  the    Thought  World;  or. 

Practical  Mind  Art.     Boston :  Lee  ft  ^bepard.    $1.85. 
Toimg,  W.  T.    The  Art  of  Putting  Questions.    New  ed. 

Syracuse :  C.  W.  Bardeen.    15c 
Zola.  £mlle.   The  Fat  and  the  Thin   .F.  T.  Neely. 


SIR  QUIXOTE  OF  THE  MOORS 

By  John  Buchan.    Buckram  Series.    75c. 

"Is  full  of  humor  and  vitality,  and  deserves  to  be 
successful  .  .  .  there  Is  an  individual  quality  In  his 
work,  and  a  certain  bewitchment  which  belongs  to  the 
higher  forms  of  Imagination  .  .  .  the  heruloe  be- 
comes  a  llviog  memory  long  after  the  book  Is  closed 
.  .  .  told  HUh  great  delicacy  and  grace  of  diction 
.  .  .  thepowerof  reserve  which  Is  evident  on  every 
page  makes  us  hope  great  things  of  tae  author."— I/i« 

HEriRY  HOLT  &  CO.,  N.  Y. 


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The    Nation. 


NEW   YORK,   THURSDAY,    FEBRUARY    18,   1896. 

The  Week. 

Turn  reference  in  the  Queen's  speech  to 
the  Venesuelan  difSculty  is  pacific  enough. 
Parliament  is  informed  that  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  have  **  express- 
ed a  wish  to  co<^perate  in  bringing  to  a 
close  '*  the  Guiana  boundary  dispute,  and 
that  *'I  have  expressed  my  sympathy 
with  the  desire  to  come  to  an  equitable 
arrangement.'*4  This  seems  to  give  ample 
confirmation  to  the  rumors  that  negotia- 
tions ha?e  been  going  on  between  Wash- 
ington and  London  since  the  bellicose 
message  of  December  17,  and  have  been 
much  more  amicable  in  tone.  '  Certainly 
no  ministry  could  describe  the  Olney- 
Cleveland  threat  to  settle  the  whole  thing 
ourselves  as  the  expression  of  **  a  wish  to 
codperate.*'  It  must  be,  then,  that  our 
Washington  fire-eaters,  after  their  thea- 
tric display,  went  quietly  back  to  the  me- 
thods of  Evsrts  and  Frelinghuysen  and 
Bayard  and  Blaine  and  Gresham,  and 
tried  the  effect  of  good  offices  instead  of 
bludgeons.  This  will  be  hailed  as  good 
news  on  both  sides  the  Atlantic,  and  all 
will  hope,  .with  the  Queen's  speech,  that 
"  further  negotiations  will  lead  to  a  satis- 
factory settlement." 


The  speeches  of  Mr.  Balfour  and  Lord 
Salisbury,  as  well  as  those  of  Sir  William 
Harcourt  and  Lord  Rosebery,  following 
the  Queen's  speech  at  the  opening  of  Par- 
liament, further  indicate  that  the  Vene- 
suela  controversy  is  in  a  fair  way  of  peacea- 
ble settlement.  The  sense  of  the  English 
nation,  like  that  of  the  American  people,  is 
clearly  sgainst  even  the  thought  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  war  between  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States.  Mr.  Balfour  reiterat- 
ed in  the  Commons  his  hope  that  out  of 
the  late  evil  the  great  good  misy  come  of 
a  permanent  arbitration  agreement  be- 
tween the  two  countries.  Certainly  this 
is  the  auspicious  time  to  strike  for  such  a 
consummation ;  and  the  Washington  au- 
thorities cannot  bring  forth  works  more 
meet  for  repentance  than  a  hearty  closing 
with  any  and  every  advance  made  to  them 
along  this  line.  Mr.  Ohiey's  extremely 
polite  and  gracious  note  of  February  3, 
though  a  little  late,  was  received  with 
equal  gradousness ;  and  nothing  seems 
now  to  remain  exoept  an  exchange  of  com- 
pliments and  a  speedy  adjustment  of  the 
whole  miserable  Venesuelan  dispute,  with 
our  Commission  probably,  and  to  their 
own  great  satisfaction,  left  high  and  dry 
to  one  side.  Of  far  greater  interest  to 
Pteliament  and  the  British  nation  is  the 
Turkish  situation.  Ail  Lord  Salisbury's 
skill  in  dialectics  cannot  save  him  from 
the  appearance  of  having  suffered  a  great 
dipkmiatio  defeat  in  this  affair. 


President  Washburn  of  Robert  College, 
Constantinople,  has  an  interesting  article 
in  last  week's  Independent  on  the  Arme- 
nian deadlock.  He  seems  to  be  convinced 
that  Salisbury  could  not  have  done  any 
more  than  he  has  done  without  imminent 
danger  of  bringing  on  a  European  war. 
That  danger  President  Washburn  thinks 
should  have  been  faced  with  **  faith  in 
God  and  the  Right."  But  that,  on  mere- 
ly political  and  statesmanlike  grounds, 
Salisbury  could  not  have  gone  forward 
without  the  Powers  at  his  back,  appears 
to  be  admitted.  When  he  has  threatened, 
or  intimated,  as  he  did  last  summer, 
armed  intervention,  he  meant  interven- 
tion, perhaps  by  England  alone,  but  with 
the  consent  and  moral  support  of  the 
Powers  always  understood.  Mr.  Wash- 
burn is  fair  and  frank  enough  to  concede 
that  the  «<  difficulty  with  the  United 
States  "  must  have  hampered  Lord  Salis- 
bury enormously.  The  depression  which 
our  brief  war  madness  of  December  last 
wrought  in  thoughtful  Americans  living 
abroad  is  well  expressed  by  the  President 
of  the  American  ooUege  in  Constantinople, 
when  he  says : 

'*  The  present  hope  of  the  world  is  in  Ameri. 
ca;  but  we  have  more  reason  to  fear  than  to 
boast.  I  know  both  countries  very  well,  and 
I  should  not  like  to  say  that  the  standu^  of 
morality  and  Christian  livingls  any  higher  in 
America  than  in  EDgland,  or  that  the  worship 
of  Mammon  is  more  frantic  in  London  than  in 
Chicago,  or  that  our  ooorts  administer  justice 
more  fairly  and  sorely  than  hers,  or  that  our 
moneyed  aristocracy  is  of  purer  morals  or 
more  unselfish  spirit  than  her  hereditary  no- 
bility. But  as  a  nation  we  have  made  no  final 
choice  of  evil.  I  thought  we  had  a  month  ago 
when  I  read  the  Preridenf  s  msesage,  and  heard 
of  the  enthusiastic  cheers  which  went  op  all 
over  the  land  at  the  prospect  of  war.  I  am 
glad  to  believe  that  I  was  mistaken,  that  the 
President  did  not  mean  what  he  seemed  to  say, 
and  that  the  cheers  for  war  were  only  an  un- 
happy way  of  expressing  our  patriotism." 


The  Hio  News  has  some  striking  and 
truthful  remarks  about  the  total  confu- 
sion of  mind  of  many  of  our  public  men, 
with  Secretary  Olney  :at  their  head,  in  re- 
gard to  what  we  ought  to  think  of  South 
American  institutions,  and  what  South 
Americans  themselves  really  think  of  us. 
The  power  of  words  to  mislead  mankind 
was  never  more  conspicuously  shown 
than  by  the  effect  on  the  imagination  of 
the  term  **  republic  "  chosen  to  describe 
governments  which  are  truly,  for  the 
most  part,  nothing  but  military  oligar- 
chies. England,  a  republic  in  everything 
but  name,  we  must  hate  as  the  home  of 
*•  alien  insUtuUons,"  but  South  Ameri- 
can governments,  which  are  republican 
in  nothing  but  name,  we  must  hail  as  sis- 
ters on  the  strength  of  what  we  call  them, 
not  what  they  actually  are.  Equally  fac- 
titious is  the  idea  that  the  South  Ameri- 
cana have  any  especial  fondness  for  us, 
either  as  republicans  or  human  beings. 
The  Eio  NewB  tells  the  exact  truth  on 
this.point;  and  so  does  the  Boenoa  Ajrea 


Herald  when  it  affirms  that  the  Argen- 
tines are  of  *'  a  different  race,  of  different 
language,  customs,  and  interests,  having 
no  sympathy  with  American  thought  or 
commerce,  having  neither  affection  nor 
any  especial  friendship  for  Americans." 
Ah,  but  these  are  the  opinions  of  jealous 
foreigners,  violently  suspected  of  having 
their  pockets  filled  with  British  gold. 
Not  at  all.  Both  the  NewB  and  Herald 
are  edited  by  Americans — only  they  hsp- 
pen  to  be  Americans  who  have  lived  long 
in  the  countries  they  write  of,  keep  their 
eyes  open,  and  speak  the  thing  they 
think,  unsffected  by  the  fumes  either  of 
a  Presidential  ambition  or  of  the  after- 
dinner  wine-cup  too  long  looked  upon. 


It  appears  that  the  advocates  of  the  ad- 
mission of  Arizona  and  New  Mexico  as 
States  have  about  half  of  the  House 
committee  on  Territories  on  their  side,  and 
are  hopeful  of  pushing  the  scheme  through 
Congress  at  this  session.  Public  senti- 
ment ought  to  pronounce  so  emphatically 
against  this  proposition  that  Congress 
will  drop  it  Neither  of  the  two  Territo- 
ries is  fit  for  statehood.  The  only  effect 
of  admitting  them  will  be  to  strengthen 
the  champions  of  every  financial  folly  by 
four  more  votes  in  the  Senate.  Sound- 
money  Representatives  and  Senators 
ought  to  be  notified  that  their  constitu- 
ents will  not  pardon  them  if  they  help  to 
consummate  such  an  outrage. 


There  is  a  sort  of  poetic  justice  in  the 
action  of  the  Senators  from  the  silver- 
mining  States  who  have  voted  to  substi- 
tute a  free-coinage  bill  in  place  of  the 
House  tariff  bill.  Those  States  were  ad- 
mitted to  the  Union  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  keeping  the  Republicans  in  control 
of  the  Senate  and  of  preserving  the  blessed 
tariff.  Both  of  these  dishonest  aims  have 
failed,  but  the  republic  has  received  no 
detriment  in  consequence.  The  House 
tariff  bill  is  a  bill  of  false  pretences  from 
beginning  to  end.  It  was  not  expected  to 
become  a  law  when  it  was  passed  in  the 
House,  but  merely  to  commit  the  party  to 
passing  it  at  some  future  time  when  the 
party  should  be  strong  enough  to  shape 
legislation  at  its  own  pleasure.  The  sil- 
ver extremists  have  said,  through  Sena- 
tors Teller  and  Jones,  that  in  any  such 
game  they  hold  the  winning  cards.  The 
country  is  much  benefited  by  non-action 
at  the  present  time  on  the  tariff  as  well  as 
on  the  silver  question.  It  would  be  even 
more  benefited  if  Congress  would  adjourn 
as  soon  as  the  necessary  appropriation 
bills  cau  be  passed.  But  if  it  is  to  remain 
in  session  for  purposes  of  general  legisla- 
tion, it  can  do  nothing  less  harmful  than 
to  substitute  a  free-silver  bill  for  the  tariff 
biU  and  than  kill  the  former. 


130 


Ttie   !ISratioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1598 


The  address  of  Mr.  Wharton  Barker  to 
the  manufacturers  on  the  subject  of  silver 
and  the  tariff  is  not  a  very  weighty  docu- 
ment. It  amounts  to  saying  that  there 
will  be  no  more  protective-tariff  bills 
passed  unless  the  free  coinage  of  silver  is 
made  a  part  of  the  measure.  But  this 
threat  carries  no  terrors  to  any  manufac- 
turers who  are  satisfied  with  the  present 
tariff,  and  we  have  heard  of  no  movement 
for  increased  duties  except  among  the 
Ohio  wool-growers,  who  are  hardly  to  be 
classed  as  manufacturers.  Accompany- 
ing Mr.  Barker's  manifesto  is  a  paper 
signed  by  sixteen  Republican  Senators 
(all  of  them,  except  Cameron,  from  States 
west  of  the  Missouri  River),  saying  that 
they  favor  rescuing  the  people  of  the 
United  States  from  the  impending  danger 
of  being  overwhelmed  by  the  industrial 
competition  of  China  and  Japan,  **by  re- 
moving the  difference  of  exchange  between 
gold-standard  countries  and  silver-stan- 
dard countries  by  the  only  method  possible, 
which  is  the  free  and  unlimited  coinage 
of  silver  at  the  ratio  of  16  to  1  by  the  in- 
dependent action  of  the  United  States.'* 
This  is  not  exactly  the  same  thing  in 
terms  as  Mr.  Barker's  pronunciamiento, 
but  it  probably  means  the  same  thing. 
If  00,  it  means  that  the  House  tariff  bill 
will  not  pass  the  Senate  at  this  session  of 
Congress,  and  probably  not  at  any  ses- 
sion. Yet  it  is  possible  that  the  manu- 
facturers may  not  tremble. 


We  are  glad  to  record  the  practical  de- 
feat of  the  movement  in  the  Senate  to 
divide  up  the  appropriation  bills  among 
a  lot  of  committees,  instead  of  giving  the 
control  of  nearly  all  of  them  to  a  single 
committee.  The  object  of  this  attempt  to 
destroy  a  centralized  and  responsible  over- 
sight of  the  national  expenditures  was 
scarcely  concealed.  Much  fine  talk  was 
put  forward  about  the  need  of  relieving 
the  committee  on  appropriations  from  a 
part  of  its  arduous  labors,  and  of  securing 
more  deliberate  consideration  for  impor- 
tant bills ;  but  behind  all  this  was  an  evi- 
dent plan,  both  to  increase  the  power  of 
other  committees  and  other  chairman- 
ships, and  to  make  raids  on  the  Treasury 
easier  of  execution.  The  very  character 
of  the  men  engineering  the  affair  was 
enough  to  make  it  extremely  suspicious ; 
and  though  they  began  with  great  confi- 
dence and  with  an  apparent  large  majori- 
ty of  the  Senate,  the  sober  sense  of  the 
older  members,  together  with  a  little 
manoeuvring  of  their  own,  appears  to 
have  squelched  the  whole  scheme.  It 
would  surely  be  a  pity  to  abandon  one  of 
our  few  remaining  checks  on  reckless  and 
extravagant  legislation,  and  to  make  our 
system  of  voting  money  in  and  out  of  the 
Treasury  still  more  chaotic  than  it  is. 


Senator  Lodge's  $100,000,000  bUl  for 
coast  defences,  about  which  he  has  been 
BO  long  mewing  and  caterwauling  on  our 
roof^  was  stranded  worse  than  th^  steam- 


er St  Paul^  on  Saturday  week,  and  will 
not  be  got  afloat  again  so  easily,  we  think. 
He  had  hie  scheme  nicely  prepared  and 
printed,  to  be  offered  as  an  amendment  to 
the  House  bond  bill.  It  proposed  to  au- 
thorize the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  to 
issue  bonds  to  the  amount  of  $100,000,000, 
drawing  interest  at  3  per  cent,  the  prin- 
cipal payable  twenty  years  from  date  in 
**coin,"  with  an  annual  sinking  fund  of 
$3,000,000,  the  proceeds  of  the  bonds  to  be 
kept  in  a  separate  fund  and  applied  solely 
to  the  fortification  of  the  seacoast  and 
lakes  of  the  United  States,  for  the  manu- 
facture of  guns,  the  purchase  of  sites,  and 
the  erection  of  forts  and  batteries  accord- 
ing to  plans  to  be  hereafter  prepared  by 
the  War  Department.  When  this  amend- 
ment WS8  offered,  Senator  Teller  moved 
to  lay  it  on  the  table.  Mr.  Lodge  called 
for  the  yeas  and  nays.  To  order  the  yeas 
and  nays  a  vote  of  one  fifth  of  the  Sena- 
tors present  is  required.  Only  three  or 
four  votes  were  cast  for  this  motion. 
Senator  Teller's  motion  to  lay  on  the  table 
then  prevailed  without  a  division. 


The  debate  in  the  House  on  Thursday 
showed  that  the  silver  element  among  the 
Republicans  in  the  lower  branch  of  Con- 
gress is  as  bent  on  declaring  itself  as  is 
the  case  with  Republican  Senators  who 
believe  in  free  coinage.  Mr.  Johnson  of 
California  openly  and  strongly  denounced 
the  Reed  programme  of  inaction.  He  de- 
clared that  **a  do-nothing  policy,  or  a 
policy  confined  to  action  on  non-essentials, 
such  as  self-constituted  leaders  of  the 
House  say  is  proper,  will  not  serve,"  and 
he  criticised  Chairman  Dingley  of  the 
ways  and  means  committee  for  offering 
nothing  as  an  alternative  to  free  coinage, 
urging  that  at  least  provision  be  made  for 
the  coining  of  American  silver.  **The 
silver  Republicans,"  he  announced,  **are 
ready  to  set  lance  in  rest  now  or  at  any 
time  upon  this  question."  In  taking  this 
position  Mr.  Johnson,  and  the  silver  Re- 
publicans who  stand  with  him,  feel  that 
they  have  their  constituents  behind  them. 
Upon  the  passage  by  the  Senate  of  the 
free-coinage  substitute  for  the  bond  bill, 
the  Denver  Republican  declared  that 
'*the  Republican  majority  in  the  House 
ought  to  have  sufficient  intelligence  and 
patriotism  to  pass  the  bill  exactly  as  it 
went  through  the  Senate."  Although  it 
is  generally  assumed  that  there  is  a 
'*goldite"  majority  in  the  House,  the 
Republican  questioned  the  correctness 
of  that  conclusion,  and  wanted  to  see  a 
fair  test  made  in  order  that  every  member 
may  be  forced  to  go  on  record.  It  ex- 
pected that  Speaker  Reed  and  the  Re- 
publican members  who  favor  his  Presi- 
dential aspirations  would  attempt  to  smo- 
ther the  measure  in  committee  or  else- 
where, but  insisted  that  this  should  not 
be  permitted,  but  that  the  bill  should  be 
forced  to  a  vote  on  its  merits,  **in  spite  of 
the  opposition  of  possible  Presidential 
candidates,  and  the  jugglery  of  two-faced 
representatives  who  profess  to  b^  bimetal- 


lists  at  home  and  act  as  the  tools  of  the 
Money  Power  in  Washington." 


A  significant  speech  was  delivered  in 
the  House  on  Saturday  by  Mr.  Hall,  a 
Democratic  Representative  from  Missou- 
ri, who  has  hitherto  been  a  strong  free- 
coinage  man,  but  now  declares  his  con- 
version to  the  cause  of  sound  money.  Mr. 
Hall  made  the  interesting  statement  that 
eight  of  the  Senators  who  voted  for  free 
coinage  a  few  days  ago  have  said  private- 
ly that  they  believe  the  adoption  of  this 
policy«woiild  destroy  the  commercial  pros- 
perity of  the  country.  This  is  entirely 
credible;  indeed,  nobody  has  ever  been 
able  to  believe  that  all,  or  a  large  propor- 
tion, of  the  Senators  who  have  voted  for 
free  coinage  were  such  fools  as  to  believe 
in  it.  It  is  impossible,  for  example,  to 
suppose  that  such  a  man  as  Wolcott  of 
Colorado  seriously  thinks  that  the  pros- 
perity of  the  United  States  would  be  pro- 
moted by  the  adoption  of  this  policy;  but 
he  Inaew  that  anybody  who  questioned  its 
wisdom  would  have  stood  no  chance  of 
being  elected  a  Senator  from  Colorado. 
Many  other  Senators  who  voted  on  the 
same  side  have  had  less  excuse  for  their 
attitude,  since  their  constituents  have  no 
selfish  interest  in  silver  mines,  and  might 
have  been  shown  the  folly  of  the  silver 
delusion  if  the  public  men  whom  they 
trusted  had  done  their  duty.  One  of  the 
most  striking  signs  of  the  decadence  of 
the  Senate  is  the  readiness  of  its  members 
to  shirk  responsibility,  as  evidenced  by 
the  willingness  of  many  who  believe  that 
free  coinage  would  ruin  the  nation  to  vote 
for  it  l>ecause  ^^y  think  it  popular  with 
their  constituents,  and  leave  the  House 
of  Representatives  or  the  President  to 
block  a  scheme  that  they  ought  to  have 
defeated  themselves. 


People  may  freely  speak  their  mind,  as 
they  are  speaking  it,  about  the  wretched 
incapacity  and  recreancy  of  Congress  in 
all  matters  of  domestic  legislation.  No- 
thing is  commoner  than  to  hear  the  Se- 
nate, especially,  denounced  as  a  collection 
of  knaves  and  imbeciles,  a  fearful  incubus 
00  the  country  which  it  totally  misunder- 
stands and  misrepresents.  The  vast  ma- 
jority of  the  intelligent  citizens  of  the  na- 
tion would  be  indignant  if  told  that  they 
must  not  question  the  wisdom  of  Congress 
about  the  currency,  about  taxation,  about 
copyright,  about  banking.  What!  that 
body  of  adventurers  and  trucklers  repre- 
sent the  country  ?  We  must  all  *'  stand 
behind"  it?  Treason  to  talk  against  it? 
But,  excited  brother,  is  not  this  just  what 
you  were  saying  about  the  action  of  Con- 
gress on  the  vastly  greater  question  of 
peace  or  war  ?  Were  you  not  almost  ready 
to  mob  anybody  who  said  that  Congress 
was  as  ignorant  and  cowardly  in  that  mat- 
ter as  you  now  admit  it  is  in  all  others  f 
It  would  be  strange,  indeed,  if  a  Coogress 
which  has  shown  itself  wholly  incapable 
of  It^iog  ta^ee  or  ordering  tbe  Ofvrepcify 


Feb.  13,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


131 


■hoold  suddenly  develop  tb«  loftiest  p«- 
triotism  and  purest  wisdom  in  a  crisis  %t* 
feeling  the  verj  life  of  the  nation.  Men 
are  not  built  that  way.  If  they  are  trim- 
■lers  or  incendiaries  in  that  which  is  least, 
th^  will  be  io  that  which  is  much.  No 
one  suddenly  becomes  wise  and  virtuous, 
mny  more  than  base.  The  men  at  Wash- 
'ingtoa  whom  we  now  speak  of  with  dis- 
rgust  and  loathing,  are  the  very  men  who, 
we  were  told  six  weeks  ago,  accurately 
trepreoented  the  deliberate  judgment  of 
this  nation.  They  were  precisely  the  same 
■mea  then  that  they  are  now,  and  they 
trifled  with  the  vast  issues 'of  peace  and 
"war,  with  the  very  destiny  of  the  country, 
in  the  same  reckless  and  barbaric  spirit 
*which  they  now  display  in  dealing  with 
•the  national  credit.  They  did  not  put 
more  character  or  intelligence  into  that 
work  than  they  are  putting  into  this, 
though  in  the  frensy  of  the  moment  tbey 
passed  as  wise  patriots.  Luckily,  that 
frensy  is  now  overpassed,  and  thousands 
of  shamefaced  people  are  ready  to  admit 
that  their  worshipped  heroes  of  la<)t  De- 
cember were  really  the  same  ignoble  and 
incapable  set  that  they  now  despise. 


That  the  proper  study  of  mankind  is  war 
is  maintained  with  great  power  in  the  last 
yoHh  American  Review  by  Capt.  H.  C. 
Taylor  of  the  Naval  War  College.  He  is 
pained  at  the  widespread  **  prejudice 
against  its  study,'*  admits  with  shame  that 
**  soldiers  and  sailors  hardened  in  battle*' 
have  called  war  **  unnatural,"  just  as  if 
they  were  no  clearer  eyed  than  *'philoeo- 
phers  of  a  certain  ability,**  and  points  out 
that  the  ravages  of  **  the  auti-war  spirit 
during  the  nineteenth  century  **  have 
gone  to  such  an  alarming  extent  that  some 
men  can  **  soberly  suggest  the  possi- 
bilities of  the  nations  of  the  earth  ceasing 
to  war  with  each  other.**  Against  such  a 
horrible  thought  he  lifts  a  manly  voice. 
War,  he  maintains,  is  necessary  to  the 
whole  man— to  "the  artistic  spirit,"  to 
*'  the  moral  nature,"  to  **  the  fervor  of  re- 
ligion." It  is  a  serious  mistake  to  think 
of  Christ  as  the  great  non-resistant;  for 
**  the  willing  effaoement  of  the  stubborn 
ego  in  the  flood  of  fellow-humanity  which 
the  head  of  Christianity  demands,*'  is 
possible  through  war  alone.  The  duty  of 
a  Christian  nation,  mindful  of  **  the  dig- 
nity of  her  high  estate,*'  is  clearly,  there- 
fdre,  to  keep  flghting  as  constantly  as 
possible,  so  that  we  may  retain  **  the  idea 
of  war  as  a  permanent  factor  of  life,'*  and 
prevent  peace  from  "generating doubts  as 
to  the  wisdom  of  the  Providence  that 
sways  the  universe."  All  this  makes  the 
plan  of  salvation  plain  and  beautiful,  but 
Capt.  Taylor  seems  to  confuse  matters  by 
a  weak  admission  that  "  war  is  cruel  and 
brutal,  disposing  men  to  a  state  of  savage- 
ry." We  do  not  see  that  he  saves  himself 
1^  adding  that  "  the  corrupt  ease,  the 
luxurious  immorality  of  life,  towards 
which  a  total  absence  of  war  always  leads 
national  has  in  it  SQmething  more  degrad- 
luf  lor  lb*  )inm»  r«oe  thsn  timpla  a^T- 


agery."  If  war  makes  us  savages,  and 
the  absence  of  war  something  worse  than 
savages,  it  would  seem  to  be  all  up  with 
us.  But  it  must  be  confessed  that  Capt. 
Taylor's  thesis  that  war  disposes  men  to 
a  state  of  savagery,  he  certainly  proves  in 
his  own  person. 


The  last  New  York  Legislature  paseed 
an  act  which  places  the  12th  of  February, 
the  anniversary  of  Lincoln*B  birth,  on  the 
same  footing  as  New  Year's, Washington's 
Birthday,  Decoration  Day,  the  Fourth  of 
July,  Labor  Day,  Election  Day,  Thanks- 
giving, and  Christmas.  The  States  of 
New  Jersey,  Illinois,  and  Washington 
have  taken  similar  action, while  Connecti 
cut  has  established  a  Lincoln  holiday  in 
the  month  of  October.  It  is  k  mistaken 
policy.  A  general  observance  of  two 
holidays  within  ten  days  of  each  other  in 
February  is  impossible,  while  the  Con- 
necticut idea  of  picking  out  a  day  that 
has  no  relation  to  any  event  in  Lincoln's 
life  is  absurd.  The  consequence  must  be 
that  the  anniversary  will  secure  but  small 
recognition,  while  it  introduces  a  fresh 
disturbance  of  business.  Lincoln  himself, 
with  his  shrewd  common  sense,  would 
have  put  a  quietus  on  the  suggestion  if  be 
could  have  had  his  way  about  it.  The 
mischief  is  that,  as  revolutions  do  not  go 
backward,  holidays  are  not  revolced,  and 
that  the  granting  of  them  seems  as  easy 
to  procure,  and  as  difficult  for  legislators 
to  resist,  as  the  generality  of  demagogical 
measures. 


John  Morley  gave  a  definition  of  the 
Jingo,  in  his  speech  at  Arbroath  the  other 
night,  which  has  a  philosophical  neatness 
and  accuracy  about  It.  He  rightly  said 
that  your  Jingo  is  known  to  the  fauna  of 
all  countries,  infesting  Great  Britain  as 
well  as  America.  The  "  born  Jingo,"  said 
Mr.  Morley,  evidently  having  in  mind  the 
many  artificial,  for- this*  campaign-only 
Jingoes,  is  "  a  man  overflowing  with  the 
old  Adam  of  violence  and  force,  who 
would  not  be  a  bad  fellow  if  he  could  only 
recognize  two  things — first,  that  there  is 
a  relation  between  cause  and  effect,  and, 
second,  that  there  is  a  difference  between 
right  and  wrong."  It  is  almost  cruel  now  to 
recall  the  aptness  with  which  our  Jingoes 
have  lately  illustrated  the  definition.  To 
shriek  for  war  one  day  and  bewail  a 
smashed  stock  market  and  chilled  busi- 
ness the  next,  could  be  possible  only  in 
beings  of  a  deficient  sense  of  causal  re- 
lations. Great  Heavens,  they  said,  we 
never  meant  that !  But  godlike  reason  is 
given  to  mortals  precisely  that  they  may 
foresee  the  consequences  of  their  own 
acts.  The  difference  between  right  and 
wrong  is  a  subtler  thing,  which  bluff 
Jingo  minds  perhaps  ought  not  to  be  ex- 
pected to  grasp  on  all  occasions ;  but  even 
they  ought  to  find  it  incredible  that  we 
should  always  be  right,  and  the  other  fel- 
k>ws  alwaya  wrong,  and  that,  anyhow,  wo 
C»B  whip  them« 


The  Anglo-French  convention,  aignsd 
January  15,  relating  to  8iam,  appears  to 
have  given  satisfaction  on  both  sides  of 
the  Channel.  Its  effect  is  not  so  much  to 
partition  Siam  as  to  determine  the  respec- 
tive English  andFren';h  "spheres  of  influ- 
ence," and  to  neutralize  the  Menam  val- 
ley—say, one  third  of  the  entire  territory 
of  Sism.  In  this  region  each  country  will 
enjoy  th*e  same  commercial  rights,  and 
Lord  Salisbury  made  it  clear  in  his  letter 
to  the  Marquis  of  Dufferin,  that  he  did 
not  doubt  the  ability  of  English  mer- 
chants and  traders  to  compete  with  the 
French  on  even  terms.  No  one  seems 
to  have  inquired  how  the  Siamese  would 
like  the  arrangement.  It  was  apparently 
thought  superfluous  to  question  Siam's 
perfect  willingness  to  be  cut  up  into  spheres 
of  influence  and  neutralized  regions.  Any- 
how, it  is  now  reported  that  the  Siamese 
authorities  are  quite  content.  They  may 
be  making  a  virtue  of  necessity,  or  reflect- 
ing how  much  worse  it  might  have  been. 


Protection,  masquerading  as  hygienic 
regulations,  is  taking  a  novel  turn  in  Ger- 
many. The  demand  is  made  that  Russian 
grain  be  excluded  on  the  ground  that  it  is 
a  deadly  vehicle  of  infection.  A  professor 
has  found  in  one-tenth  of  a  gramme  of 
Russian  oats,  barley,  and  rye,  anywhere 
from  500,000  to  1,000,000  bacilli,  and  from 
400  to  12,000  mould  fungi.  This  is  enough 
for  Count  Kanitz  and  the  Agrarians,  who 
are  loudly  demanding  that  the  national 
health  (not,  of  course,  their  farm  products) 
be  protected  against  the  new  danger. 
Meanwhile,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  all  at- 
tempts of  bacteriologists  to  put  German 
grain  under  the  microscope  will  be  severe- 
ly frowned  upon.  Such  a  thing,  on  a 
pinch,  could  be  made  out  Use majeslL 


What  a  serious  business  the  trade  of 
Emperor  hss  become  in  the  modern  world 
may  be  inferred  from  some  statistics  re- 
cently published  in  the  German  papers 
regarding  William  II.'s  distribution  of  his 
time  during  the  past  year.  He  spent  158 
days  away  from  Berlin.  Of  these, 52  were 
taken  up  by  hunting  parties,  38  by  visits 
to  allied  princes,  and  28  by  military 
parades  and  army  manoeuvres — what  has 
been  called  the  "defilirium  tremens*'  of 
the  Kaiser.  The  remaining  days  of  his 
absence  from  the  capital  were  passed  in 
different  German  cities,  haranguing  the 
burgomasters,  and  in  various  royal  ch&- 
teaus,  doing  "suthin*  in  the  pastoral 
line."  Even  when  in  Berlin,  William 
keeps  up  his  pathological  activity^  count- 
ing that  day  lost  whose  low  descending 
sun  has  not  s€.en  a  garrison  alarmed,  a 
minister  rebuked.  Socialists  threatened 
with  the  sword  of  the  Lord's  anointed,  or 
an  imperial  finger  thrust  into  some  inter- 
national pie.  To  such  a  life  a  young  man 
most  feel  that  he  has  a  "aerious  call'* 
before  daring  to  undartake  it  in  this  de- 
genarataaga. 


133 


Tlie    Nation. 


[Vol.  62.  No.  1598 


THE  BOND  SALE, 
Ths  tucoefls  of  the  new  GoverDmant  loan 
has  flurpasaed  the  expectations  of  everj- 
body,  in  both  the  amount  offered  and  the 
price  obtained.  The  oldest  and  most  ex- 
perienced heads  in  Wall  Street  were  as 
much  astonished  as  the  neophytes.  The 
whole  amount  subscribed  for  was  in  ex- 
cess of  $600,000,000.  This  casts  in  the 
shade  everything  else  previously  at- 
tempted. The  loan  of  February,  1804, 
was  practically  forced  upon  the  New  York 
city  banks  after  the  public  had  failed  to 
subscribe.  The  5  per  cent,  bonds  it  of- 
fered were  taken  at  117.223,  a  rate  which 
made  the  interest  equal  to  3  per  cent 
The  purchasers  lost  money  on  them.  The 
loan  of  November,  1894,  was  of  the  same 
kind,  and  the  results  were  the  same.  The 
syndicate  loan  of  February,  1886,  was  a 
sale  of  4  per  cents  at  104.60,  which  made 
the  interest  equal  to  3^  per  cent.  The 
present  bide  averaging  about  111,  the  rate 
of  interest  will  be  about  3%,  which  is 
more  favorable  to  the  Government  than 
the  syndicate  loan  of  last  February,  but 
not  so  favorable  as  the  loan  of  February, 
1894.  Nor  must  we  fail  to  remark  that 
the  credit  of  New  York  city  is  higher  than 
that  of  the  United  States.  On  the  26th 
of  February  last  year,  $3,266,000  city 
bonds  sold  above  par,  the  bids  ranging  as 
high  as  103.26.  These  were  3  per  cents, 
but  they  were  specifically  payable  in  gold. 
This  accounts  for  the  solecism  that  the 
nation's  credit  is  inferior  to  that  of  one 
of  its  cities  which  contains  not  more  than 
a  fortieth  part  of  its  population.  If 
we  look  abroad  for  comparisons,  we  find 
that  British  consols  bearing  2%  per  cent, 
interest  are  selling  at  108^,  or  nearly  as 
high  as  our  4  per  cents.  When  the  Gov- 
ernment bond  contract  was  pending  in 
February,  1896,  the  syndicate  offered  to 
take  the  lot  at  a  price  equal  to  3  per  cent, 
if  the  loan  were  made  payable  in  gold,  but 
Congress  refused  to  pass  an  act  to  that 
effect.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  if  such 
a  law  were  now  in  force,  the  present  sale 
would  have  been  made  on  far  better  terms 
for  the  Government.  The  bid  would 
probably  have  been  as  high  as  126. 

Of  course  this  sale  will  be  drawn  into 
comparison  with  that  of  February,  1896, 
and  to  the  disparagement  of  the  latter. 
It  should  be  borne  in  mind,  however, 
that  the  syndicate  contract  was  made  at 
a  time  when  the  Government  was  within 
three  days  (some  say  three  hours)  of  sus- 
pension. It  was  made  in  the  very  teeth 
of  a  panic.  The  Government  came  as  a 
borrower  at  a  time  when  ordinary  bor- 
rowers could  not  get  money  on  any  terms. 
To  have  delayed  thirty  days  then  would 
have  involved  both  public  and  private 
bankruptcy.  Under  circumstances  of  that 
appalling  kind  it  was  impossible  to  wait, 
and  we  think  still  that  the  offer  at  the 
time  was  a  reasonable  one,  considering  the 
syndicate's  engagement  to  protect  the 
Treasury  gold  reserve  for  ten  months,  and 
their  actual  protection  of  it  for  a  year. 
Jt  ebould  be  remembered,  also,  that  the 


elections  of  last  autumn,  so  disastrous  to 
the  silverites  in  parts  of  the  country 
where  they  were  supposed  to  be  strong, 
have  had  an  improving  effect  on  the 
public  credit,  so  that,  barring  any  war 
scare,  the  bonds  ought  to  sell  higher  now 
than  then.  If  we  make  a  further  compa- 
rison with  the  recent  offer  of  the  Morgan 
syndicate  to  take  $100,000,000  at  106,  we 
must  bear  in  mind  that  that  offer  was 
made  in  the  shadow  of  a  panic  caused  by 
Mr.  Cleveland's  Venezuelan  message, 
which  has  since  been  measurably  cleared 
away.  On  certain  days  after  that  mes- 
sage was  sent  to  Congress,  no  bid  could  be 
obtained  for  Government  bonds  in  Wall 
Street.  Nobody  could  have  anticipated 
then  that  there  would  be  such  a  clearing 
up  of  the  financial  atmosphere  within  so 
short  a  time. 

The  effect  of  what  has  happened  on  the 
silverites  must  be  blighting.  When  the 
business  interests  of  the  country  come 
forward,  at  thirty  days*  notice,  and  offer 
to  bet  five  hundred  million  dollars  that 
the  gold  standard  will  be  maintained,  and 
to  put  up  20  per  cent,  of  that  sum  as  a 
pledge  of  good  faith,  the  bragging  and 
blackguardism  of  the  silver  majority  in 
the  Senate  disappear  like  loose  straw  in 
a  hurricane.  It  would  be  impossible  to 
produce  by  any  other  means  such  a  pro- 
found moral  effect  It  was  only  a  few 
weeks  ago  that  their  chief  men  assembled 
in  Washington  and  prepared  a  political 
programme  for  the  Presidential  year. 
They  called  a  national  convention  to  meet 
at  St  Louis  on  the  same  day  as  that  of  the 
Populists.  They  declared  it  to  be  their 
purpose  to  compel  one  of  the  great  politi- 
cal parties,  if  not  both,  to  adopt  a  plat- 
form in  favor  of  free  coinage  at  the  rate 
of  16  to  1,  by  this  country  alone,  failing  in 
which  they  would  nominate  a  Presiden- 
tial ticket  and  create  a  new  party  in  all  the 
States,  based  upon  that  single  idea.  They 
could  have  done  pothing  more  gratifying 
to  the  friends  of  sound  money.  The 
strength  of  the  silver  faction  all  along  has 
consisted  in  their  ability  to  pose  as  a  ba- 
lance of  power  between  Republicans  and 
Democrats.  In  this  way  a  minority  as 
small  as  one-tenth  may  exercise  a  pre- 
ponderating influence  over  a  wide  region 
of  country  and  over  national  affairs, 
whereas  if  they  should  take  the  field  as  a 
separate  force,  relying  on  their  own  num- 
bers and  the  merits  of  their  particular 
scheme,  they  would  win  nothing  but  ridi- 
cule. This  will  be  the  situation  of  the 
silverites  as  soon  as  they  begin  a  separate 
16-to-l  campaign. 

The  **  first  gun  "  in  this  campaign  has 
been  fired.  It  is  a  far  more  telling  shot 
than  the  numbers  of  the  persons  concern- 
ed would  imply.  Its  force  consists  in  the 
demonstration  that  the  capital  of  the 
country  is  determined  that  the  gold  stan- 
dard shall  be  maintained,  is  ready  to  put 
up,  not  $100,000,000  merely,  but  as  much 
money  as  may  be  needed  at  any  future 
time.  The  effect  of  such  a  demonstration 
upon  political  parties  must  be  very  great 


and  very  beneficial.  It  must  also  serve 
to  brace  up  the  financial  nerve  of  the  Ad- 
ministration if  it  needed  any  bracing,  and 
it  may  lead  to  a  still  further  accumulation 
of  gold.  Indeed,  it  would  have  been  bet- 
ter if  the  loan  had  been  for  $200,000,000 
instead  of  half  that  sum.  With  the  gold 
now  in  hand,  that  would  have  given  the 
Treasury  a  reserve  of  nearly  $270,000,000, 
which  is  not  too  large  for  the  total  amount 
of  fiat  money  outstanding.  When  the 
gold  reserve  was  collected  preparatory  to 
specie  resumption  in  1878,  it  was  about 
30  per  cent,  of  the  legal-tender  notes  to 
be  redeemed.  Since  that  time  we  have 
added  to  the  stock  of  fiat  money,  in  round 
numbers,  $400,000,000  of  silver  and  $150,- 
000,000  of  Treasury  notes,  bringing  the 
total  up  to  $900,000,000.  If  30  per  cent 
was  the  proper  proportion  of  reserve  to 
demand  liabilities  in  1879,  it  must  be  con- 
sidered so  now.  In  fact,  that  percentage 
is  much  smaller  than  is  held  by  the  great 
banks  of  Europe  which  are  charged  with 
the  duty  of  keeping  the  ultimate  gold  re- 
serve of  their  respective  countries. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  $100,000,000  of 
greenbacks  now  in  the  Treasury  vaults 
should  be  deducted  from  the  total  amount 
of  fiat  money.  It  is  true  that  as  long  as 
they  remain  there  they  cannot  be  used  to 
draw  gold  from  the  Treasury,  but,  since 
they  are  liable  to  be  paid  out  in  conse- 
quence of  any  excessive  appropriations  by 
Congress,  and  must  be  so  paid  if,  for  any 
reason,  the  Government's  expenses  exceed 
its  receipts,  they  cannot  be  ignored.  They 
are  liable  to  be  rushed  into  the  circulation 
at  any  time,  and  hence,  in  any  prudent 
calculation  of  the  future,  must  be  consid- 
ered as  a  part  of  the  nation's  demand  lia- 
bilities. The  $110,000,000  or  more  of  gold 
to  be  realized  from  the  new  bond  sale, 
added  to  the  stock  in  hand  previously, 
will  carry  us  to  the  end  of  the  present 
year,  without  any  commotion  resulting 
from  financial  causes;  but  if  the  reserve 
should  faU  below  the  traditional  $100,000,- 
000  at  any  time  during  the  term  of  the 
present  Secretary,  he  will  be  justified  by 
public  opinion  in  making  a  new  loan  ^qual 
to  the  present  one,  which  would  be  large 
enough  to  constitute  a  permanent  infalli- 
ble reserve,  needing  no  further  additions 
and  dispensing  with  all  further  anxiety. 


NATIONAL  INSANITY. 

Thsbb  is  a  story  told  of  Bishop  Butler, 
the  author  of  the  *  Analogy,'  that,  walking 
in  his  garden  one  night  with  his  chaplain, 
he  asked  him  whether  **  public  bodies 
might  not  go  mad  as  well  as  individuals," 
adding  that  "  nothing«eIse  could  account 
for  most  of  the  transactions  in  history." 
The  question  is  an  exceedingly  interesting 
one,  and  seems  to  grow  more  so  with  the 
passage  of  time  and  the  increase  of  intel- 
lectual activity;  and  yet  there  has  bean 
but  little  discussion  of  it  by  either  histo- 
rians or  alienists.  For  instance^  if  wo 
were  to  examine  Socialism— or  rathor  ifaa 
varipus  pchem^s  which  are  Uld 


Feb.  13,  1896] 


The   !N"ation. 


133 


the  world  under  that  name — with  the  aid 
of  teats  and  atandarda  which  a  profea- 
aional  alienist  appliea  to  signs  of  mental 
diaeaae  in  individuals,  it  would  be  almost 
impossible  to  avoid  placing  it  in  the  cate- 
gory of  morbid  symptoms.  It  may  be  true 
that  men  would  behave  under  a  So- 
oialiat  r^me  in  the  manner  which  its 
champions  predict,  and  in  which  they 
must  behave  in  order  that  it  ahould  sue* 
ceed,  but  there  is  nothing  whatever, 
either  in  our  experience  of  human  nature 
in  the  paat,  or  in  our  observation  of 
the  human  nature  we  see  around  ua,  to 
warrant  us  in  expecting  anything  of 
the  kind.  Approached  from  the  point 
of  view  from  which  we  approach  all 
the  ordinary  affairs  of  life,  and  examin- 
ed under  the  same  guidance,  nearly 
all  Socialist  proposala  appear  to  be  the 
product  of  a  disordered  imagination.  If 
the  Socialists  are  sane,  the  rest  of  man- 
kind ia  inaane,  or  vice  versa^  and  yet  an 
immense  body  of  people,  all  told,  who  are 
leading  ordinary  lives,  are  given  up  to  this 
(apparent)  delusion,  and  hold  it  with  a 
oertain  morbid  fierceneas. 

The  Crusades,  the  extermination  of  the 
Albigenses,  the  wars  of  Edward  III.  with 
France,  the  French  Revolution,  and  the 
recent  sudden  outbreak  of  war  worship 
among  ourselves,  are  all  historical  illus- 
trationa  of  the  theory  that  large  maaaes 
of  men  may  be  seized  with  mental  dis- 
turbance, which,  examined  as  individual 
aberrations  are  examined,  yields  undoubt- 
ed proofs  of  what  alienists  call  mania — 
such  aa  expectation  of  things  which  there 
is  no  experiential  ground  for  expecting, 
absence  of  that  regard  for  consequences 
which  is  the  leading  regulator  of  indi- 
vidual conduct,  great  suspicion  of  the  de- 
signs of  some  neighbor,  great  fear  of  stu- 
pendous and  calamitous  events,  and  great 
dislike  of  the  ordinary  pursuita  of  life, 
such  as  steady  induatry. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  Crusades,  a 
movement  in  which  whole  nations  took 
part,  and  mqbs  600,000  strong  started  for 
the  Holy  Sepulchre,  the  mental  condition 
of  the  crowd  undoubtedly  closely  resem- 
bled that  of  our  Jingoes.  They  had,  in 
the  first  place,  a  **  doctrine,"  and  this 
doctrine  forbade  them  to  discuss  the 
probability  of  success  or  the  possible  ef- 
fect of  their  enterprise  on  their  own  lives 
or  on  their  own  country.  In  the  second 
place,  they  suspected  and  hated  every  one 
who  tried  to  disauade  them,  as  either 
"heretics"  or  ** infidels,"  which  was  the 
medinval  equivalent  for  Mugwumps  or 
Anglomaniacs.  There  is  in  Joinville  an 
Interesting  account  of  the  way  in  which 
the  reign  of  reason  began  slowly  to  return 
among  the  Crusaders.  The  very  first  sign 
of  it  was  a  consideration  of  oonaequences, 
of  what  had  happened  at  home  after  the 
first  Crusades,  and  of  what  would  probably 
happen  after  another  one.  This  is,  in 
both  national  and  individual  madness,  the 
earliest  sign  of  recovery.  Joinville  was 
tnged  to  go  OQ  the  second  crusade.  Sayahe: 

*•  The  King  of  France  urged  me  strongly  to 


go  cruiading  and  follow  the  road  of  the  pil* 
ftrimage  of  the  croes.  But  I  answered  him, 
that  while  I  was  abroad  in  the  King^s  service, 
the  King's  officers  had  so  levied  00  and  op- 
pressed my  people  that  they  were  impove- 
rished to  sach  a  degree  that  I  did  not  think 
either  they  or  I  should  ever  recover  from  it. 
I  saw  clearly  that  if  I  went  on  another  pil- 
grimage of  the  cross,  it  would  be  the  total  de- 
structfon  of  my  poor  subjects,  and  I  have 
since  heard  many  say  that  those  who  advised 
it  did  great  wrons  and  committed  mortal  sin. 
As  long  as  the  King  remained  in  France,  all 
the  kingdom  lived  in  peace  and  Justice  reigned. 
But  as  soon  as  he  went  abroad,  everything  be- 
gan to  decline  and  run  down.** 

Now  Joinville,  in  refuaing  to  go  cru- 
sading for  these  reasons— that  is,  in  order 
to  prevent  the  impoverishment  of  his 
people  and  the  desolation  of  hia  territory 
—was  doing  the  exact  thing  which  our 
Jingoes  call  **  considering  the  pocket  be- 
fore patriotism."  He  was  bound  to  cru- 
sade by  the  same  order  of  considerations 
which  bind  ua  to  fight  for  the  Monroe 
Doctrine;  and  in  aacrificing  the  Holy 
Sepulchre  for  a  life  of  quiet  peace  and  in- 
dustry, he  was  giving  up  honor  for  com- 
fort But  he  was  nevertheleaa  recovering 
his  sanity  in  the  sense  in  which  the  word 
is  used  by  mental  pathologiata. 

It  is  impossible  not  to  look  on  the  sud- 
den longing  for  war  as  a  meana  of  moral 
culture  or  amusement  which  has  taken 
hold  of  large  masses  of  people  among  us, 
as  another  remarkable  outbreak  of  the 
same  disease.  War  differa  as  an  agency 
for  the  elevation  of  character  from  all 
other  agenciea  for  a  similar  end.  Every 
other  meana  of  human  culture  is  as  per- 
manent aa  the  race  itself— religion,  science, 
art,  literature,  inatruction,  diacovery,  in- 
vention, social  intercourse,  trade,  com- 
merce, industry,  family  affection.  Some 
of  these  thinga  began  their  work  as  soon 
as  man  became  self-conscious;  all  of  them 
will  continue  their  work  as  long  as  the 
globe  lasts.  War  alone  can  do  its  bene- 
ficent work  by  fits  and  atarta  only,  and  at 
long  iutervals,  and  has  to  kill  large  bodiea 
of  the  people  it  ia  trying  to  improve.  There 
is  no  fact  in  human  hiatory  better  known 
than  thia.  Every  Jingo  ia  perfectly  aware 
that,  owing  to  the  enormoua  coat  of  war 
in  life  and  treasure,  no  nation  can  use  it 
for  educational  purposes  for  more  than  a 
year  or  two  at  a  time;  but  aomehow  the 
fact  does  not  make  the  least  impression 
on  him.  He  tells  you  that  he  feela  a  pro- 
cess of  moral  deterioration  going  on  With- 
in him  which  nothing  but  war  can  arreat, 
and  though  he  acknowledges  that  a  very 
short  period  of  war  ia  all  he  can  get,  and 
that  tens  of  thousanda  of  men  muat  die  to 
give  him  a  few  montha  of  elevation,  he 
yeama  for  it  Juat  the  aame.  Now,  la  there 
not  in  thia  a  striking  resemblanoe  to  that 
form  of  inaanity  known  as  alooholiamf 
The  dipsomaniac  knowa  hia  pleasure  will 
be  short,  that  the  ultimate  reault  will  be 
frightful  auffering,  that  aome  of  the  worat 
consequences  will  fall  on  hia  family;  but 
none  of  these  coneiderationa  turn  him 
aaide. 

Another  atriking  symptom  ia  the  disre- 
gard of  human  experience.  No  Jingo  can 
point  to  any  war  which  haa  had  the  re- 


sult which  he  saya  his  war  ia  going  to 
have.  He  haa  only  to  open  the  hiatory  of 
any  of  the  great  military  nations  to  see 
what  the  ordinary  reaulta  of  war  have 
been,  in  the  following  order:  (1)  great 
lose  of  life  among  the  younger  and  more 
vigoroua  men;  (2)  tremendoua  destruc- 
tion of  property  ;  (3)  great  disorder  in  the 
financea  and  currency ;  (4)  wide  diffuaion 
of  the  spirit  of  speculation  and  aleatory 
gains,  and  diataate  for  steady  induatry 
among  the  population ;  (5)  increased  con* 
tempt  for  legality  and  for  thinkera,  writ- 
era,  speakera,  and  for  all  scientific  men, 
except  inventors  of  explosives ;  (6)  great 
increase  of  trampe  and  of  crimes  of  vio- 
lence; (7)  greatly  aggravated  hatred  for 
the  particular  people  againat  whom  the 
war  haa  been  waged,  and  great  rejoicing 
over  any  calamity  that  may  overtake 
them ;  (8)  wide  diffusion  of  the  belief  that 
.a  young  man  who  wears  a  sabre  and 
spurs  all  day,  and  paases  his  time  training 
himself  to  fight,  is  a  nobler  young  man 
than  one  who  labors  daily  to  increase  the 
stock  of  human  comfort,  to  advance  the 
arte,  and  support  helpless  people. 

These  are  among  the  moat  notorioua 
facta,  as  we  have  aaid,  of  human  expe- 
rience. If  total  indifference  to  them  be 
not  a  very  important  phenomenon  for  any 
one  who  ia  attempting  a  diagnosis  of 
mental  diseaser,  whether  in  the  public  or 
the  individual  mind,  then  all  the  re- 
searchea  that  have  ever  been  made  into 
the  pathology  of  the  brain  are  worthless. 
We  may  depend  upon  it  that  auch  mani- 
featationa  as  we  are  now  witneaaing  in 
politics  mean  aome  lesion  of  the  nervoua 
system  in  the  nature  of  an  epidemic,  and 
Crookea'a  tubes  could  not  be  better  em- 
ployed than  in  locating  it 


INTERNA  TIONA  L    A  RBJTRA  TION, 

A  LvrrsB  written  by  the  late  Secretary 
Greaham  on  December  31,  1891,  impliea 
that  he  then  expected  that  a  permanent 
treaty  of  arbitration  with  Great  Britain 
would  be  reduced  to  terms  and  be  ready 
for  ratification  within  aix  montha  of  that 
time.  As  nothing  came  of  it,  we  muat 
conclude  either  that  Great  Britain  de- 
clined to  enter  into  it,  or  that  the  death 
of  Mr.  Greaham  waa  followed  by  a  change 
of  policy,  or  that  the  matter  became  com- 
plicated with  the  Venezuelan  boundary 
diapute  and  waa  therefore  laid  aaide.  If  the 
Venesuelan  queation  interfered,  the  un- 
toward result  may  be  chargeable  to  either 
side  or  to  both.  That  must  be  left  to  con- 
jecture, yet  we  can  easily  aee  how  the 
most  hopeful  negotiations  may  have  been 
brought  to  a  standstill  if  it  were  sought  to 
bring  in  other  countries  which  were  not 
partiea  to  the  negotiation. 

Whatever  may  have  caused  the  auapen- 
aion  or  failure  of  the  plan  which  Secretary 
Greaham  had  on  foot,  and  notwithatand- 
ing  the  Venesuelan  difliculty,  we  are  con- 
vinced that  there  never  waa  a  time  when 
both  countriea  were  better  disposed  to 
auch  a  treaty  than  now.    Certainly  there 


134 


^Tlie    [N^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1598 


never  was  a  time  when  so  much  popular 
interest  was  felt  in  it  on  this  side  of  the 
water  as  now,  and,  apart  from  the  Vene- 
suelan  dispute,  we  do  not  believe  that  any 
ministry  in  England  could  long  sustain 
itself  if  it  should  refuse  to  ent^r  into  such 
a  treaty  on  fair  terms.  Arbitration  cannot 
deal  with  all  the  questions  that  may  arise 
between  nations.  One  nation  may  claim 
the  hitherto  undisputed  territory  of  an- 
other, or  may  make  a  demand  inconsistent 
with  the  other's  sovereignty.  For  such 
cases  there  must  be  reservations.  The 
Pan-American  conference  reserved  all 
cases  where,  in  the  judgment  of  the  coun- 
try concerned,  its  independence  was  at 
stake.  In  order  to  give  the  principle  of 
arbitration  a  fair  start  it  would  probably 
be  necessary  to  name  distinctly  the  class  of 
questions  which  the  two  Powers  concerned 
would  agree  to  submit  to  such  a  tribunal, 
leaving  them  free  to  deal  with  other  cases 
as  they  should  see  fit  at  the  time  when 
they  arise.  It  would  probably  be  found 
in  practice  that  no  questions  could  arise 
which  would  not  be  susceptible  of  such 
treatment,  and  which  the  public  opinion 
of  the  two  countries  would  not  insist  upon 
referring  to  impartial  judges,  rather  than 
go  to  war  over  them. 

The  last  arbitration  we  had— the  one  on 
the  Bering  Sea  question — was  hinted  at 
by  Lord  Salisbury  in  his  dispatch  on  the 
Venezuelan  boundary  in  a  tone  which  im- 
plied that  he  had  not  much  faith  in  arbi- 
tration anyway.  He  said  that,  after  its 
decisions  were  made,  the  execution  of 
them  was  not  exempt  from  difficulty;  re- 
ferring, no  doubt,  to  the  refusal  of  our 
Congress  to  appropriate  the  sum  of  $450,- 
000  to  pay  the  damages  agreed  upon  by 
Secretary  Gresham.  This  was  not  a  good 
argument  against  arbitration,  even  in  that 
particular  case.  The  Paris  tribunal  did 
not  fix  any  sum  to  be  paid  as  damages. 
It  did  provide  a  means  of  determining  the 
sum  in  case  the  two  ffovernments  could 
not  agree  upon  the  amount.  By  the  two 
governments  is  meant,  of  course,  the 
branches  of  government  in  each  whose 
concurrence  is  necessary.  One  of  these 
was  our  Congress,  which  refused,  as  it 
had  a  right  to  do,  to  adopt  the  short  path 
to  a  final  settlement  which  was  recom- 
mended by  our  own  Department  of  State. 
If  Congress  should  further  refuse  to  pay 
the  money  for  the  final  award,  then  the 
nation  would  be  deeply  humiliated,  and 
the  cause  of  arbitration  might  be  properly 
made  a  butt  of  ridicule  by  anybody. 

It  may  be  said  that  it  is  not  a  propi- 
tious time  for  bringing  up  the  question 
of  an  arbitration  treaty  with  Great  Bri- 
tain when  the  relations  of  the  two  coun- 
tries are  strained  as  they  are  now.  On 
the  contrary,  we  think  that  this  is  the 
beet  of  all  times,  when  the  eyes  of  the 
people  on  both  sides  of  the  water  have  had 
a  glimpse  of  the  awful  chances  of  war. 
The  losses  caused  by  the  mere  penumbra 
of  that  calamity  have  amounted  to  an  in- 
calculable sum — more,  probably,  than  was 
bid  for  Government  bonds  at  the  sale  laat 


week.  The  anxious  days  and  sleepless 
nights  that  men  have  passed  since  that 
dreadful  pall  fell  upon  us,  have  quickened 
the  consciences  of  men,  and  have  aroused 
the  better  classes  of  society  and  of  the 
press,  the  clergy,  and  all  God-fearing  men 
and  women,  to  a  more  active  interest  in 
public  affairs  than  they  have  taken  in 
many  years.  They  have  seen  on  what  a 
slender  thread  haog  the  most  momentous 
issues,  and  how  a  few  reckless  words  may 
set  the  country  on  fire  without  any  re- 
spectable reason,  and  perhaps  without  the 
intention  of  the  person  uttering  them. 
What  has  happened  once  may  happen 
again.  The  circumstances  the  next  time 
may  be  less  favorable  to  composition  or 
pacification.  Therefore  no  time  should 
be  lost  in  putting  the  relations  of  the  two 
countries  on  a  better  b^is  if  one  can  be 
found.  The  common  opinion  on  both 
sides  of  the  water  is  that  a  better  basis 
may  be  found  in  a  permanent  treaty  of 
arbitration. 

The  opponents  of  such  a  treaty  tell  us 
that  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  negotiat- 
ing it  are  so  great  that  in  a  majority  of 
cases  war  would  probably  be  a  preferable 
solution.  The  answer  is  that  the  latter 
solution  is  always  open.  International 
arbitration  cannot  prevent  a  nation  from 
fighting  if  it  really  wants  to.  It  only  di- 
minishes the  chances  of  war.  Its  great 
merit  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  gives  time  for 
thought  and  discussion,  which  in  most 
cases  is  all  that  is  needed  to  bring  about  a 
pacific  solution.  It  gives  '*the  whip  hand*' 
to  the  sober-minded  classes.  It  puts  a 
new  obstacle  in  the  pathway  of  Jingoes, 
demagogues,  and  madmen.  In  any  given 
case  it  starts  a  discussion  of  the  question 
whether  the  difficulty  in  hand  is  a  suita- 
ble one  for  arbitration,  and  whether  it 
falls  within  the  established  rules  or  not. 
In  most  cases  it  would  be  found  perfectly 
adapted  to  such  treatment,  and  in  all 
doubtful  cases  it  would  give  the  advantage 
to  the  friends  of  peace  by  establishing  a 
national  habit  of  mind  in  favor  of  arbitra- 
tion. While  not  absolutely  interdicting 
war,  it  would  put  greater  responsibilities 
on  any  country  resorting  to  it,  and  this 
would  of  course  diminish  the  chances  of 
war. 

We  trust  that  the  movement  so  auspi- 
ciously begun  in  this  country  may  be  ear- 
nestly and  systematically  pushed  till  we 
have  a  society  for  the  promotion  of  inter- 
national arbitration  in  every  county  in  the 
United  States  intent  upon  realizing  what 
Mr.  Blaine,  in  the  Pan-American  Congress, 
called  **  the  new  Magna  Charta,  which 
abolishes  war  and  substitutes  arbitration 
between  the  American  republics  " — a  con- 
dition which  is  equally  fitted  for  all  na- 
tions, and  is  desirable  exactly  in  propor- 
tion to  their  powers  of  destruction. 


THE  GERMAN  QUARTER-CENrENNIAL. 
Bkbun,  January  20,  1896. 

Thb  imperial  capital  hat  juBt  been  celebrating 
on  a  grand  scale,  with  parades,  iliimiinations, 


religions  exeroiies,  and  tpeecb-making,  what 
the  (German  nation  very  properly  regards  as 
its  twenty-fifth  birthday.  It  was  on  the  18th 
of  January,  1871,  that  the  King  of  PruBtia,. 
through  a  proclamation  read  by  Bismarck  to  a^ 
company  of  men  awembled  in  the  Hall  of  Mir> 
rors  at  VersatUee,  formally  assnmed  the  impe^ 
rial  title,  pledging  himself  "to  protect  the> 
rights  of  the  Empire  and  of  its  members,  to* 
guard  the  peace  and  independence  of  Oermany^ 
and  to  strengthen  the  strength  of  the  people"; 
and  praying  devoutly  that  he  and  his  snoces- 
sors  might  be  **  at  all  times  increasers  of  the 
Empire,  not  by  military  oonqnests,  but  by  the 
goods  and  gifts  of  peace,  in  the  domain  of  na- 
tional prosperity,  freedom,  and  morality.*'  At 
that  time  there  was  much  doubt,  both  in  Ger- 
many and  datside  of  it,  as  to  the  durability  of 
the  structure  thos  ideally  called  into  being. 
The  memory  of  the  old  Empire,  the  long  his- 
tory of  impotent  disanion,  the  fiasco  of  1848, 
the  well-known  prejudices  of  the  South  Ger- 
mans, all  seemed  to  bode  ill  for  the  future  of  a 
federal  state  under  Prussian  hegemony.  But 
it  was  eren  as  Friedrich  Wilhelm  IV.  had 
prophesied  and  Bismarck  had  foreseen  :  blood 
and  iron— Sadowa  and  Sedan— had  done  the 
work.  The  problem  of  federal  consolidation, 
which  a  few  years  before  would  have  been, 
endlessly  difficult,  had  become  so  easy  that, 
the  history  of  it  forms  perhaps  the  least  in- 
teresting chapter  in  the  annals  of  the  New- 
Empire. 

To  day,  whatever  one  may  think  of  the  pre». 
sent  status  of  European  politics,  and  of  Ger^ 
many*s  share  in  bringing  it  about  and  main- 
taining it,  the  founding  of  the  Empire  stands^ 
out  clearly  as  the  most  momentous  politicals 
event  of  the  century.  Even  Waterloo  must, 
yield  to  it  in  far- reaching  importance  and  ini 
dramatic  interest.  In  creating  a  powerful  and 
united  Germany,  with  Bismarck  for  a  Chancel- 
lor, it  shifted  the  political  centre  of  gravity  and 
led  to  a  new  grouping  of  forces.  At  the  same 
time  It  profoundly  affected  the  national  cha- 
racter of  the  Germans  themselves.  It  t>rought 
them  under  the  sway  of  a  powerful  sentiment 
to  which  they  had  long  l>een  unused,  save  as 
something  to  dream  of  and  write  verses  about. 
It  turned  their  energies  and  aspirations  in  a 
new  direction,  opened  fresh  avenues  for  their 
industry  and  art,  and  furnished  new  criteria 
for  judging  both  present  and  past.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  the  recent  jubilee  filled  them  with 
enthusiasm. 

I  shall  not  write  of  the  celebration  itself 
further  than  to  s«y  that  it  was  sufficiently  in- 
teresting in  spite  of  bad  weather  and  the  ab- 
sence of  Bismarck.  My  purpose  is  rather  to 
conunent  briefly  upon  the  span  of  history  which 
closed  on  Saturday.  The  view- point  is  that  of 
an  American  scholar  who  has  a  warm  regard 
for  the  German  people,  but  stands  aloof  from 
their  partisan  politics. 

The  proclamation  of  1871  professed  to  restore - 
a  name  and  dignity  that  had  existed  before. 
In  fact,  however,  there  was  to  be  little  re- 
semblance between  the  new  fabric  and  the- 
one  which  had  fallen  to  pieces  in  1800;  and,  as- 
if  to  dispel  illusions  on  this  subject,  the  first, 
serious  problem  of  the  '*  German"  Empire  was- 
te make  clear  that  it  would  be  neither  **  holy" 
nor  '*  Roman."  The  Kulturkampf  probably^ 
settled  that  question  for  good,  in  spite  of  the* 
subsequent  relaxation  of  the  Falk  laws.  There 
was  no  surrender  in  essentials.  The  new  gov- 
ernment had  shown  its  will  and  its  power,  but 
it  had  also  discovered  that  the  clericals  wer» 
too  strong  to  be  kept  safely  in  a  state  of  ehroole 
exacerbation  against  the  Empire.  And  naUty^ 
it  is  one  thing  to  '*  go  to  Canossa*^  as  tt«  ionm- 


Feb.  13,  1896] 


Tlie    IN"atioii. 


135 


tain  bMMi  of  all  authority,  and  quite  another  to 
kc«p  Canona  in  sight  ai  a  quarter  whence 
Totee  may  be  had  in  a  parliamentary  exi. 
gency.  Imperial  stateemanshlp  will  yet  hare 
to  learn  the  tame  leflnon  with  respect  to  the  80. 
cial  Democrats. 

Aside  from  the  KuHurkampf,  the  history 
of  the  New  Kmpire  is  most  infltructive  along 
the  lines  of  its  military  policy,  its  attempts  to 
deal  with  socialism,  and  its  measures  of  in- 
ternal consolidation.  In  this  last  direction  a 
remarkable  success  has  been  achiered.  To  an 
Amerioan  or  an  Englishman,  accustomed  to 
see  the  political  situation  dominated  by  the 
one  or  the  other  of  two  great  parties,  the 
constitution  of  the  German  Reichstag,  repre- 
senting, as  it  now  does,  no  less  than  fourteen 
difTerent  parties,  with  contingents  ranging  from 
one  to  ninety. five  votes,  is  apt  to  suggest  a 
dangerous  inoohesiTeness.  And  yet  I  venture 
to  express  with  some  confidence  the  opinion 
that  the  federal  sentiment  is  to  day  as  strong 
throughout  Germany  as  in  the  United  States. 
Jealousy  of  Prussia,  the  danger  most  dreaded 
in  the  early  days,  still  exists  to  a  degree  in  the 
South  and  Middle  German  States,  but  it  cuts 
no  figure  as  an  element  of  disuniou;  \b  in  fact 
less  ominous  than  our  own  well-known  sec 
tional  antipathies.  The  military  successes  of 
Prussia,  the  elimination  of  Austrian  intrigue, 
the  mingling  of  North  and  South  German 
blood  upon  the  battlefield,  the  conciliatory  at- 
titude of  Prussian  statesmen  in  reference  to 
federal  representation  and  reserved  rights— all 
tended  from  the  outset  to  disarm  suspicion  and 
spread  the  feeling  that  Prussia  deserved  her 
primacy,  and  would  use  it  not  to  overreach  her 
sister  states  but  to  bind  them  together  for  mu- 
tual benefit  and  safety.  Even  the  decisive 
vote  of  1877  in  favor  of  Leipzig  as  the  seat  of 
the  Imperial  Chamber  of  Justice  was  directed 
not  so  much  against  Prussia  as  against  Berlin. 
Other  centrifugal  forces  of  a  sectional  charac- 
ter are,  in  a  broad  view  of  the  matter,  hardly 
worth  considering.  The  **  Polish  **  faction  in  the 
Reichstag  has  averaged  pretty  steadily  about 
sixteen  votes  and  now  stands  at  nineteen.  The 
'*  Alsatian  *'  contingent  remained  constant  at 
fifteen  down  to  \990,  when  it  dropped  to  ten. 
It  now  stands  at  eight;  that  is,  the  time  has 
already  come  when  the  representatives  of  the 
annexed  provinces  are  no  longer  as  a  matter 
of  course  *'  Alsatians.'* 

The  real  Alsatian  danger  proceeds,  as  is  well 
known,  from  another  qusrter,  namely,  from 
Prance.  Was  it  then  a  mistake  to  annex  Alsace 
and  Lorraine  in  1871  f  It  seemed  to  many  at 
the  time,  and  no  doubt  many  still  think,  that 
for  onoe  Bismarck  was  short-sighted  in  urging 
this  particular  demand  at  the  peace  of  Prank- 
fort.  The  argument  was  that  the  Germaniza- 
tion  of  the  provinces  after  their  two  centuries 
of  French  allegiance  would  be  a  slow  and  difB- 
eult  task,  which  in  the  end  could  bring  little 
strength  to  the  Empire  and  would  meanwhile 
furnish  Freneb  ** patriotism"  with  a  standing 
pretext  for  war.  It  seemed  to  cast  doubt  from 
the  start  upon  the  sincerity  of  Bismarck's 
vaunted  peace  policy  that  he  should  delibe- 
rately put  his  countrymen  in  a  position  which 
would  require  them  to  keep  saying  constantly 
(the  present  Emperor  has  lately  been  saying 
it  again)  r  **  We  want  peace,  but  we  will  defend 
to  the  last  man  what  our  swords  have  won." 
Was  it  not  an  occasion  for  the  waiving  of  an- 
dent  historical  claims,  or  at  least  for  letting 
the  people  of  the  two  provinces  decide  for 
themselves  to  whom  they  would  t)elong,  even 
if  it  thus  became  necesary  to  draw  entirely 
new  boundary  lines  f 

To  an  outaldar,  especially  to  an  American, 


this  might  seem  to  have  been  the  Just  and  also 
the  politic  view  of  the  matter;  but  there  is  an- 
other view  which  is  taken  by  the  great  mass  of 
the  German  people.  They  believe  that  they 
must  be  prepared  to  fight  the  French  any  way. 
It  was  a  home-thrust  of  Bismarck  when  he 
drew  attention  to  the  fact  that  within  200 
years  French  armies  had  invaded  Germany 
thirty,  five  tiroes.  This  showed  that,  wUh  Al- 
sace and  Lorraine,  a  pretext  for  war  upon  Ger- 
many had  never  been  wanting  to  the  French 
kings;  and  the  cries  of  *'  Revenge  for  Sadowa," 
in  18t{6,  and  ''On  to  Berlin,"  in  1870,  demon- 
strated the  same  important  fact  for  the  French 
populace.  The  Iron  Chancellor  foresaw  that, 
make  what  terms  he  might,  Germany  would 
have  to  face  continually  the  danger  of  a 
French  war  of  revenge,  if  not  for  Alsace  and 
Lorraine,  then  for  the  milliards,  for  the  bom- 
bardment  of  Paris,  for  anything  or  for  nothing. 
And  this  danger  would  not  be  lessened,  but 
rather  increased,  by  the  establishment  of  the 
republic.  The  nobler  spirits  of  France  might 
be  touched  by  the  memory  of  generous  treat- 
ment at  the  hands  of  a  conqueror  who  had 
them  in  his  power;  but  the  nobler  spirits  of  a 
nation  seldom  determine  its  war  policy,  and 
there  was  no  counting  either  upon  a  long 
memory  or  upon  a  high  degree  of  chivalrous 
susceptibility  in  the  Parisian  populace.  Add 
to  this  that  the  historical  claim  of  Germany  to 
Alsace  and  Lorraine  is  perfectly  sound  if  you 
only  go  back  far  enough,  and  consider  also  the 
immense  strategic  importance  that  conld  be 
given  to  Metz  and  Strassburg  in  ttie  event  of 
another  war,  and  we  have  justification  enough, 
from  the  German  .point  of  view,  for  the  dras- 
tic policy  which  was  adopted.  And  the  Ger- 
mans t)elieve  that  this  kind  of  peace  policy 
has  vindicated  itself  after  atrial  of  twenty.five 
years;  in  proof  whereof  they  refer  to  the  Bou- 
langer  scare  of  1886-7,  and  the  promptness 
with  which  it  subsided  after  the  overwhelming 
vote  in  favor  of  the  septennate  by  the  newly 
elected  Reichstag  in  the  spring  of  1887.  The 
only  way  we  can  keep  France  from  our  throats, 
they  say,  is  to  be  ready  for  her  and  to  let  her 
know  that  we  are  ready  for  her. 

Speaking  as  a  humane  idealist,  to  whom  war 
is  savagery,  militarism  calamitous  folly,  and 
Jingoism  the  abomination  of  desolation,  I  con- 
fees  with  pain  that,  in  the  preeent  stage  of 
civilization,  this  seems  to  me  also  the  only  safe 
course  for  the  Germans.  One  may  pine  for 
better  days,  but  one  must  not  blink  the  facts ; 
and  for  Germany  the  most  momentous  of  all 
facts  is  the  danger  to  which  it  is  exposed  from 
its  neighbors,  but  especially  from  France.  Jt 
has  had  experience  of  the  weakness  of  dis- 
union,  and  out  of  that  experience  grew  the 
New  Empire.  Centuries  of  invasion  and  de- 
vastation by  hostile  armies,  of  impoverish 
ment,  invult,  humiliation,  self-contempt^all 
this,  and  not  the  illusion  of  military  glory, 
formed  the  real  soil  from  which  grew  that  in- 
tense desire  for  national  unity  which  carried 
everything  before  it  twenty-five  years  ago. 
No  doubt  some  were  captivated  by  the  glamour 
of  the  medisval  empire;  and  no  doubt  mill- 
tarism  has  begotten  a  class— not  all  of  them 
Prussian  officers,  either— to  whom  the  rdle  of 
bully  would  be  acceptable  for  its  own  rake. 
Bi|t  thene  persons  are  in  a  refreshing  minority ; 
what  the  great  majority  of  Germans  want  is 
to  be  let  alone.  They  have  had  more  of  war  at 
home  than  any  other  great  civilized  nation, 
with  the  possible  exception  of  Italy,  and  in 
consequence  are  less  open  to  illusions  on  the 
subject.  There  are  Jingoes  among  them,  but 
their  warriors  of  mouth  and  pen  are  less  nu- 
merous  and  less  hysterical  than  in  France^ 


England,  or— alas  that  it  should  be  sot— the 
United  States  of  America. 

During  the  past  few  months  I  have  read  a 
pretty  large  amount  of  jubilee  literature  in 
books  and  pamphlets  and  in  newspapers  of 
every  shade,  and  I  can  testify  to  the  modera- 
tion that  has  pervaded  it  Very  little  of  belli- 
cose mouthing  lias  come  to  my  attention. 
Everywhere  prominence  is  given  to  the  fact 
that  peace,  the  peace  of  Germany  and  of  Eu- 
rope, has  been  from  the  first  the  great  aim  of 
imperial  statesmanship.  The  Germans  believe 
heartily  in  the  candor  of  Bismarck's  peace 
policy  and  in  the  pacific  intentions  of  the  pre- 
sent Emperor.  Even  during  the  recent  Trans- 
vaal excitement  they  kept  ttieir  heads  remark, 
ably  well.  There  were  fire-eaters  here  and 
there,  but  the  prevailing  tone  was  one  of  satiri- 
cal amusement  at  the  bad  logic  of  the  English  * 
press.  For,  they  said,  the  Biitish  Government 
itself  repudiates  Dr.  Jameson  as  a  lawless  in- 
vader; how,  then,  can  the  Emperor's  telegram 
be  reasonably  construed  as  an  act  of  hostility 
to  Great  Britain  f  And  is  there  not  a  measure 
of  sanity  in  this  view  of  the  matter  f 

But  if  the  Germans  want  peace,  they  also 
believe  that  an  iron  necessity  requires  them  to 
be  prepared  for  war,  and  that  their  army  is 
their  only  sure  guarantee  of  safety.  In  re- 
spect to  this  subject  the  Emperor  fairly  repre- 
sents an  overwhelming  majority  of  the  people, 
although  there  are,  of  course,  wide  diiferences 
of  opinion  as  to  how  much  is  the  least  that  will 
suffice.  This  accounts  for  the  hostile  attitude 
of  the  Gk>vemment  towards  the  Social  Demo-, 
craoy,  and  for  the  wildly  absurd  proposal  of 
last  year  to  disttirb  the  boasted  LehrfrHheit 
of  the  German  universities.  Official  circles 
would  not  so  dread  the  ventilation  of  radical 
ideas  concerning  the  "sacred  foundations''  of 
society  if  they  did  not  fear  that  the  gradual 
spread  of  sociaUstic  doctrines  would  presently 
undermine  the  bulwark  of  national  defence. 
And  this  fear  is  well  grounded,  if  we  accept  as 
a  finality  the  doctrine  that  the  bigger  your 
army  and  navy  are,  the  lees  is  the  likelihood 
that  you  will  have  to  use  it.  For  of  late  the 
Socialists  have  l>een  turning  their  guns  more 
and  more  upon  militarism,  which  they  cha- 
racterize as  the  systematic  fleecing  of  the  work- 
logman  in  the  interest  of  a  soldier  class.  They 
are  about  right.  Whatever  we  may  think  of 
their  Utopian  programme  in  general,  we  must 
give  them  credit  for  the  sagacity  of  this  par- 
ticular discovery;  and  so  it  is  hardly  too  much 
to  say  that  international  socialism  is  at  present 
about  the  most  promising  influence  that  is 
making  for  the  disarmament  of  Europe.  If 
the  time  shall  come— and  the  thing  does  not 
appeal"  unthinkable— when  capable  representa- 
tives of  real  workiogmen,  with  their  minds 
cleared  of  cant  and  chimeras,  shall  meet  In  In- 
ternational congresses  for  the  calm  discussion 
of  their  own  interests,  the  idea  can  hardly  fail 
to  gain  ground  that  those  interests  are  in  no 
way  subserved  either  by  war  or  by  the  main- 
tenance of  enormous  armies  and  navies. 

What,  then,  is  the  plain  lesson  of  experience 
for  the  New  Empire  with  regard  to  the  Social 
Democrats?  It  is  that  they  are  not  to  be  put 
down  by  the  sop  to-Cerberus  method,  and  still 
lees  by  persecution.  Their  contingent  in  the 
Reichstag  has  steadily  riben  from  nine  in  1874 
to  forty  flve  in  1893,  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that 
the  Emperor's  recent  passionate  deliverance 
against  them  may  net  them  a  few  more  seats 
at  the  next  election.  They  thrive  best  under 
the  operation  of  laws  specially  aimed  at  their 
particular  propaganda.  This,  if  nothing  else, 
should  suggest  that  it  will  not  do,  in  a  country 
where  men  sre  to  vote  at  all,  to  treat  a  large 


136 


Tlie   ^STatlon. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1598 


body  of  Toten  as  enemies  of  the  country  and 
**  without  a  fatherland,'' because  of  opinions 
which  they  honestly  hold  respecting  the  sanc- 
tity of  existing  social  and  economic  arrange 
ments.  Their  -propaganda  must  be  met  with 
argument,  and  not  with  force,  or  blind  denun- 
ciation, or  annoying  police  intervention.  The 
foolish  muzzling  of  the  press  and  abolition  of 
unions  must  cease.  The  Socialists  must  be  re- 
cogni»>d  as  a  legitimate  party,  having  the  same 
right  to  its  opinions  that  other  parties  have. 
In  other  words,  the  party  must  be  made  re- 
spectable by  being  treated  as  if  it  were  respect 
able.  With  increased  prestige  will  come  a 
heightened  sense  of  responsibility,  a  better 
leadership,  and  a  keener  sense  for  the  practica- 
ble in  legislation.  It  is  a  matter  of  general  ex- 
perience that  nothing  tames  a  radical  like  re- 
sponsibility. 

But,  above  all,  as  the  best  means  of  meeting 
the  Socialists,  and  for  other  and  broader  rea- 
sons, imperial  statesmanship  should  begin  to 
use  its  influence  for  the  mitigation  of  the  dis- 
graceful condition  of  affairs  in  which  Ehirope 
is  now  living.  Oranted  that  (Germany  cannot 
disarm  alone,  and  cannot  disarm  first ;  still,  it 
can  show  a  little  more  unequivocally  that  it 
desires  peace,  and  only  peace,  and  it  can  exert 
itself  by  diplomatic  means  for  a  general  re 
duction  of  the  peace  footing  of  European 
armies.  It  can  make  a  little  less  conspicuous 
its  reliance  upon  force  and  the  show  of  force. 
It  can  take  a  firm  stand  for  international  ar- 
bitration. It  can  work  for  the  extension  of 
the  Triple  Alliance  to  a  general  European  al- 
liance for  the  preservation  of  peace  on  the 
basis  of  the  status  guo.  It  has  shown  that  it 
is  not  afraid,  and  that  it  can  take  care  of 
itself,  and  has  made  a  winged  word  out  of 
Bismarck's  famous  saying  in  his  great  speech 
of  1888  :  ''  We  Germans  fear  God  and  nothing 
else  in  the  world.''  This  was  not  a  bad  motto 
for  the  Empire  in  the  first  quarter-century  of 
,  its  existence  :  but  a  better  one  for  the  second, 
would  be  :  **  We  Germans  fear  God  alone,  and 
the  God  that  we  fear  is  the  God  of  humanity  " 
Calvin  Thomas. 


THE  EASTERN  QUESTION  IN  CRETE 
Boston,  January  20, 1886. 
At  the  partition  of  the  Eastern  Empire,  Crete 
fell  to  Boniface  of  Montferrat,  who  sold  it  to 
Venice ;  and  from  Venice,  after  twenty-four 
years  of  bittf'r  resistance,  in  1609,  the  Turks 
wrested  it.  Under  the  Turk  its  fortunes  have 
been  varied,  but  they  have  always  been  stormy 
and  the  state  of  things  unsettled.  The  Vene^ 
tians  left  some  accounts  of  their  rapacity  in 
Crete,  and  an  English  adventurer  of  the  seven- 
teenth oentury  had  a  stirring  experience  there. 
In  the  eighteenth  we  hear  little  about  the 
island.  There  was  a  great  insurrection  in 
1821,  lasting  some  years;  in  1880,  France,  Eng. 
land,  and  Russia  intervened  to  place  Crete 
under  the  rule  of  Mehemet  Ali,  viceroy  of 
Egypt.  In  1840,  back  it  went  to  the  Sultan. 
Heralded  in  1859  by  a  slight  revolt,  in  1866 
began  the  great  revolution  which  lasted  three 
years  and  exhausted  both  parties.  For  this 
struggle,  the  book  of  Mr.  Stillman,  then  Ame- 
rican consul,  is  the  authority.  In  it  and  in  a 
little  Greek  volume,  *  Outrages  in  Crete  in 
the  Year  1867,'  by  an  English  volunteer,  Mr. 
Hilary  Skinner,  you  may  read  stories  like 
those  of  Armenia—the  usual  incidents  of  Turk- 
ish warfare;  insult,  rape,  and  massacre.  In 
1870  a  new  era  began.  Pressure  from  the 
Powers,  and  the  narrow  escape  from  losing 
Crete  entirely,  compelled  the  Porte  to  reforms 


which  have  resulted  in  a  kind  of  constitution, 
the  appointment  of  Greek  governors  over 
Greek  districts,  etc..  Notwithstanding,  there 
have  been  occasional  risings— in  1889,  in  par 
ticular,  a  rather  threatening  Smeute;  and 
these,  I  believe,  are  likely  to  continue. 

So  much  of  history  seems  necessary  for  an 
underetanding  of  the  present  condition  of 
things,  and,  brief  as  this  sketch  is,  it  contains 
nearly  all  the  characteristic  history  of  the 
isle— a  record  of  changing  masters  and  of 
steady  opposition  by  the  subjects.  The  va- 
rious foreign  masters  have  conquered,  but  the 
islanders  have  nev^  submitted.  The  physi- 
cal character  of  the  place  has  much  to  do  with 
this.  Three  great  mountain  ranges  form  the 
backbone  of  the  island,  and  in  a  length  of  160 
miles  there  is  only  one  plain  of  any  extent. 
Mountains  and  their  ready  refuge;  the  proved 
courage,  world-wide,  of  mountaineers;  the 
very  isolation— assist  the  struggle.  Crete  is 
hard  to  conquer,  hard  to  keep. 

The  traveller  from  Europe  meets  at  Candia 
the  old  order.  A  steamer  bears  him  there,  but, 
on  landing,  he  enters  a  life  framed  in  an  Old- 
World  walled  city,  innocent  of  this  era  and  of 
modem  improvements.  The  population  is  two- 
thirds  Mohammedan,  but  the  Greek  third  is  a 
select  body,  the  best  of  the  isle.  In  a  sense,  the 
Greeks  are  the  masters  of  affairs,  the  mer- 
chants, landholders,  physicians  of  the  town. 
PoliticaUy  it  is  another  thing.  The  Greeks  are 
energetic  and  prosperous;  the  Turk  is  willing 
enough  to  have  his  work  done  for  him.  Many 
of  the  Greeks  are  graduates  of  the  fine  uni- 
versity at  Athens;  some,  of  the  European  uni- 
versities; and  all,  eager  for  progress  with  the 
intellectual  keenness  of  their  race.  Numeri- 
cally a  small  body,  they  are  the  real  eUitena  of 
the  town,  their  infiuence  preponderating  in 
nearly  every  way.  A 11  that  may  be  called  *  *  so- 
ciety "  is  Greek.  To  this  element,  continually 
restless  and  progressive,  is  opposed  the  slug- 
gish, unyielding  mass  of  Turkish  population, 
with  its  leaders  of  the  official  class,  Mussul 
mans  from  various  parts  of  the  empire  who 
are  billeted  in  Crete.  The  Greeks  are,  in  all 
respects,  European,  western,  in  education,  life 
(so  far  as  is  possible),  religion,  aims.  Their  in- 
tellectual outlook  is  westward;  Islam  faces  for 
ever  to  the  East.  Such  facts  as  follow  may 
show  how  it  happens  that  a  Christian  popula- 
tion can  never  dwell  in  peace  with  a  Moham- 
medan, most  of  all  if  the  latter,  whose  creed 
knows  no  tolerance,  is  in  the  saddle.  A  Turk 
may  come  to  your  house,  may  see  your  wife 
and  family.  His  wife  you  may  not  even 
allude  to;  and  while  she  is  within,  you  cannot 
step  across  his  threshold.  Your  Sunday  is  on 
the  first  day  of  the  week;  his  is  on  the  sixth. 
All  the  progress  and  history  of  Europe  \b  your 
heritage;  he  remembers  the  day  when  his 
armies  k>eat  at  the  gates  of  Vienna— the  day 
when  the  Sultan  lost  the  fair  province  of 
Greece.  The  whole  harem  system,  with  its  se- 
clusion of  women,  makes  any  fusion  of  sects  or 
mutual  sympathy  impossible.  By  the  Turks 
themselves  it  is  even  felt  to  be  a  burden;  in 
Crete  the  rule  is,  one  wife.  To  maintain  the 
lawful  four  wives  and  attendants  almost  im- 
plies a  city  house  and  a  large  income.  In  the 
country,  where  the  Turkish  peasants  have  to 
work,  both  sexes  in  the  fields  together,  any 
real  seclusion  of  women  is  impracticable.  They 
have  had  to  compromise.  Before  men  of  the 
same  village  women  do  not  veil  themselves, 
but  only  on  the  approach  of  a  stranger. 

The  life  of  the  Greek  women  is  still  more 
constrained.  Those  of  the  upper  class  rarely 
step  upon  the  street.  On  winter  evenings 
they  are  taken  to  the  performances  at  the 


Greek  theatre ;  in  summer,  to  a  small  espla- 
nade to  hear  the  garrison  band  play.  In  the 
early  morning,  while  the  streets  are  empty, 
they  attend  church.  Veiled  Turkish  women 
throng  the  bazaars,  but  I  remember  the  sen- 
sation caused  by  the  appearance,  one  day,  of 
a  lady  in  European  dress  in  the  square.  It 
was  the  wife  of  the  Austrian  consul.  Two 
facts  of  daily  life  connote  much  in  this  con- 
nection. The  ladies  never  go  to  walk  because 
of  the  risk  of  insulting  remarks  by  passing 
soldiers ;  at  the  theatre  they  never  enter  the 
body  of  the  house,  to  which  Turks  of  the 
upper  olass  resort,  but  sit  alone  in  a  gallery. 
The  monotony  of  their  life  is  appalling.  Their 
recreations  are  domestic  only,  and  the  years 
pass  away  in  trifling  pleasures,  in  the  absence 
of  all  that  is  considered  indispensable  by  the 
modem  woman  in  free  lands. 

In  the  country  the  proportion  of  the  races 
changes,  and  the  Greek  is  vastly  in  the  majori- 
ty. In  Crete  the  real  Oriental  Turk  sticks  to 
the  cities;  the  country  Turk  is  nearly  always 
the  descendant  of  Grcitok  renegades.  Oriental 
only  in  his  creed.  Ethnically  the  eparchies  or 
districts  are  checkered  by  villages  of  the  two  re- 
ligions. Some  are  wholly  appropriated  by  one 
party ;  others  contain  distinct  settlements  of 
both.  Rarely  a  Turk  lives  in  a  Greek  village; 
but  the  converse,  I  believe,  never  happens. 

The  life  of  the  Cretan  peasant  is  civilization 
at  its  lowest  degree.  To  strike  the  average,  I 
take  a  typical  family.  The  village,  say,  is 
situated  inland  twenty  mUes  from  the  city. 
There  are  no  roads.  All  communication  must 
be  by  horse  or  donkey  over  a  rough  trail.  If 
it  is  near  the  shire  town  of  the  eparchy,  our 
village  will  receive  a  weekly  mail  brought 
from  the  city  by  a  mounted  soldier.  But  this 
service  is  liable  to  frequent  interruption,  and, 
in  time  of  trouble,  is  remitted  entirely.  The 
village  itself  is  built  of  stone,  unceroented  and 
unplastered,  the  interiors  with  dirt  floors  and 
unglazed  windows  :  in  short,  it  consists  of  rude, 
smoky,  dim  hovels  alive  with  vermin.  In 
most  houses  there  is  no  bed.  A  low  platform 
of  masonry  and  coverings  of  dirty  rugs 
serve.  The  occupants  sleep  in  their  clothes, 
and  personal  cleanliness  is  disregarded.  Our 
typical  family  rise  at  four  daily,  and  go  out  to 
the  fields  at  some  distance  from  the  village  to 
care  for  the  vineyard,  the  olive  grove,  or  the 
barley-field.  By  these  they  live.  Their  food 
is  black  bread,  olives,  vegetables,  wine,  coffee. 
At  night  the  lamp  is  a  wick  fiickering  and 
smoking  in  a  cup  of  oil.  Pleasures  there  are- 
none.  Perhaps  the  place  has  its  school.  Out 
of  their  scanty  store  the  folk  support  what 
they  call  a  **  Hellenic  school "  ;  t.  e.,  one  where 
elements  of  ancient  and  pure  modem  Greek 
are  taught.  The  Government  discourages  but 
does  not  positively  forbid  such  schools,  but  the 
text-bo6ks  have  to  be  smuggled  in  from  Athens. 

The  effect  of  religion  on  a  people  is  i^t  to 
tally  with  the  character  of  the  clergy.  Apart 
from  the  cities,  the  Greek  Church  in  Crete 
does  not  appear  to  advantage.  The  bishops 
and  higher  clergy  are  men  of  sanctity  and 
learning.  With  the  exception  of  an  hereditary 
hatred  of  Rome,  their  views  are  broad  and 
liberal.  Throughout  the  country  the  priests 
are  of  the  peasant  class,  illiterate,  dirty,  and 
unrespected.  Some  are  even  criminals  who 
have  taken  sanctuary  in  the  profession.  Oth- 
ers deal  openly  in  magic.  Churches  are  very 
common  in  the  country-side.  Every  moun- 
tain-top and  desert- place  has  its  shrine^  built 
ages  ago,  and  often  opened  only  on  the  saint's 
anniversary.  The  village  churches  are  built 
afield,  usually  at  some  distance.  Services  ara 
held  before  sunrise.    The  men  seldom  go;  <h» 


Feb.  13,  1896] 


The   !N"ation. 


187 


wcaMfD,  M  the  world  over,  are  regular  attend- 
•Ota.  There  are  no  teata  aod  no  preacbiog. 
The  serrice  is  a  mumbled  ritual,  lasting  but  a 
few  minutes.  Religious  teaching  and  its  effect 
on  character,  the  doctrine  of  good  works,  the 
ethical  Talue  of  the  Christian  faith,  are  unre- 
flected  in  the  lives  of  the  peasantry.  The 
Greek  mind  has  been  and  is  practical  and  un- 
eoK>tional  with  respect  to  religion.  This  ap- 
pears in  the  Greek  rite,  which,  although  high- 
ly ritualistic  in  many  ways,  is  jet,  ascompared 
with  the  Roman,  austere  and  Puritan.  The 
Greek  attitude  is  distinctly  intellectual,  unmo- 
ral. The  real  value  of  the  Church  to  the  peo- 
ple has  been  ethnical— to  unite  the  race  in  a 
solid  front  against  the  Turk.  In  actual  fight- 
ing, the  priests  have  often  held  command;  and 
the  cross,  in  default  of  a  country  and  a  flag, 
has  been  the  symbol  to  rally  under. 

The  resultant  character  of  the  peasantry  is 
better  than  the  environment.  The  Cretan  vir 
tues  are  courage,  intelligence,  hospitality;  the 
defects— superstition,  hard-heartedness,  and  an 
Ineradicable  lust  for  blood.  In  a  life  of  misery 
and  uncertainty  men  grow  callous,  lack  sym- 
pathy for  others,  and  do  not  expect  it  for 
themselves.  For  centuries  the  people  of  Crete 
have  lived  under  oppressive  and  despotic  aliens. 
Masters  not  of  their  choosing  have  been  forced 
upon  them,  and,  although  the  Venetians  were 
hard  drivers,  the  latest  comer  has  been  the 
worst.  At  no  period  has  the  tennre  of  life  been 
secure.  Every  passer  upon  the  road  might 
prove  an  enemy.  The  mountains  and  Turkish 
justice  are  lenient  to  the  murderer.  Like  all 
southern  races,  the  Cretans  are  quick  to  anger; 
the  knife  flashes  cloee  upon  the  word.  Their 
antecedents  have  made  them  fighters.  Male 
children  are  ardently  desired  by  parents,  not 
so  much  as  bread-winners  as  defenders  of  the 
eauae.  The  skirmish  is  the  only  excitement 
The  extraordinary  value  attached  to  the  name 
palikiri,  **  flghting-man,**  and  the  habit  of 
bearing  arms,  are  significant.  We  have  the 
middle  ages  here.  Accustomed  to  frequent 
uprisings  and  the  sacking  of  his  home,  the  pea- 
sant does  not  care  for  improvement.  Men  and 
women  move  in  a  sad  world— where  there  is 
no  hope  and  no  great  desire  for  life;  their  cou- 
rage is  partly  that  of  indifference  and  despair. 
In  the  case  of  the  Sphakiote,  the  western 
mountaineer,  into  whose  precipitous  province 
no  Turkish  army  has  ever  forged,  it  becomes 
aggressive  and  picturesque.  **  Sphakiote,'*  as 
an  epithet  in  Crete,  is  almost  as  great  a  com- 
pUmentaa  ''palikiri.*' 

The  trade  of  the  island  to-day  is  trifling,  and 
consists  chiefly  in  the  exportation  of  crude 
olive-oil  to  Italy  and  England.  The  imports 
are  from  Trieste,  a  traffic  built  up  and  main- 
tained  by  the  Austrian  Lloyd  Company.  Un- 
der good  management  Crete  could  become  the 
most  prosperous  of  the  Greek  islands,  being 
especially  adapted  to  vine-culture,  and,  in- 
deed, famous  80  recently  as  Shakspere's  time 
for  the  Malmsey  wine.  As  yet  the  phylloxera 
has  given  little  trouble.  Improvements  that 
are  of  prime  necessity  are  a  system  of  roads, 
the  dredging  of  the  harbors,  regular  mail-ser- 
vice,  and  a  railway  inland.  At  present,  steam- 
ers cannot  enter  the  haven  at  Candia,  and 
whenever  the  wind  blows  hard  from  the  north, 
as  it  does  pretty  regularly  in  winter,  they  can- 
not even  anchor  off  the  port.  At  Can^,  the 
small  political  capital  at  the  western  end  of 
Crete,  the  Bay  of  Suda  creates  a  natural  har- 
bor. Consequently  the  Cao^  mail  is  landed 
with  regularity,  but  letters  for  Candia,  for 
lack  of  roads,  cannot  be  brought  overland. 
Thus  the  largeet  city  of  Crete  and  centre  of 
cqnm«roe>  altbongh  but  thirty-six  houn  from 


the  Pirseus,  is  often  without  a  mail  for  seven- 
teen or  eighteen  days.  Post-offices  are  main- 
tained both  by  the  Government  and  by  the 
Austrian  Company;  at  each  office  only  one 
clerk  distributes  the  mail  of  24,000  people. 
The  Eastern  Cable  Company  has  a  station  at 
Candia, but  no  messages  may  be  in  cipher  or  in 
terms  unintelligible  to  the  Turkish^  censor. 
Can^a  and  Candia  each  issue  fortnightly  a 
tiny  Greek  newspaper,  rigidly  muszled  by  the 
authorities,  a  mere  straining  of  expurgated 
news.  Newspapers  from  abroad  and  books, 
even  school-books,  are  nominally  contraband : 
but  they  usually  make  their  way  through  the 
mails. 

None  of  these  things  can  be  bettered  until 
security  of  life  and  property  is  established. 
Revolutions  and  disturbances  occurring  every 
few  years  preclude  any  material  advancement. 
The  rising  of  1880,  as  described  to  me  by  many 
participants,  is  a  type  of  these  affairs.  Pre- 
cipitated largely  by  the  jealousies  of  local 
politics,  the  Turks,  however,  soon  turned  it 
into  a  race  quarrel.  Men  were  found  murder- 
ed in  the  fields  about  the  city,  and  reprisals 
by  both  parties  immediately  began.  On  the 
outgoing  steamers  the  Greeks  of  the  upper 
class  hurried  their  vrives  and  daughters  off  to 
Athens  for  safety.  All  shops  conducted  by 
them,  with  the  exception  of  one,  were  closed, 
and  street  fighting  was  of  daily  occurrence. 
Under  the  fiags  of  the  consuls  hundreds  of  wo- 
men and  children  took  shelter.  The  principal 
nations  of  Europe,  much  to  the  Turks*  diggust, 
are  represented  in  Candia,  nearly  all  the  con- 
suls being  Greek.  For  the  moment  these  are 
the  only  persons  secure  in  the  dty.  As  a  re- 
sult, consulships  are  eagerly  sought,  but  they 
are  obtained  only  after  great  difficulties.  The 
present  representative  of  Spain  waited  eight 
years*  for  recognition,  and  the  accomplished 
gentleman  appointed  two  years  ago  as  the 
representative  of  the  United  States,  at  this 
writing  has  not  received  his  exequatur.  In 
spite  of  consuls,  in  1880  no  European  was  safe 
on  the  street  An  Italian  from  a  ship  in  port 
strolling  up  town,  was  shot  at  sight  by  a  pass- 
ing Turk.  An  indemnity  was  paid  to  Italy, 
the  murderer  sent  to  the  Turkish  prison  in 
Rhodes,  and  pardoned  out  at  the  next  celebra- 
tion of  the  8ultan*s  birthday.  Ex  uno  discs 
omnes  ! 

In  this  difficulty  the  Government  troops, 
for  the  first  time,  took  no  open  pculu  A  mob 
of  lower-class  Turks,  armed  surreptitiously 
with  military  rifles,  controlled  the  city  and 
even  sallied  out  to  attack  the  flne  Greek  vil- 
lage of  Arkhinis,  nine  mUes  away.  After 
some  sharp  flghting  they  were  repulsed. 
Meanwhile,  the  influential  Greeks  were  hag- 
gling at  Constantinople,  a  new  Pasha  was  set 
over  the  island,  and  a  kind  of  truce  was 
arranged.  It  is  all  quite  conventional  in 
Crete.  A  few  villages  sacked,  much  rape  and 
bloodshed,  appeals  to  the  Porte,  indemnities 
and  reforms  promised,  and  life  goes  on  as 
before. 

In  February,  1804,  the  Government,  for  the 
first  time  since  I860,  decided  to  execute  some 
of  the  murderers  with  whom  the  jails  were 
crowded.  And  so,  one  night,  five  criminab 
—picked  apparency  at  random,  except  that 
four  were  Christian  and  one  Ottoman— were 
taken  out  and  hung  in  the  midnight  hours. 
At  Candia,  only  one  of  the  five  suffered— the 
gallows  being  a  tree  in  the  central  square, 
where  all  must  pass  on  their  business;  and 
here,  in  tt.e  morning,  the  astounded  and  en- 
raged Greeks  found  their  countryman  swing- 
ing, without  any  mitigating  circumstance  of 
black  oap,  his  aentenoe  in  Greek  and  Turkish 


pinned  upon  his  breast.  When  this  cama  to 
the  ears  of  the  country,  there  was  great  ex- 
citement. Within  a  week  the  bodies  of  three 
Turks  were  found  murdered  by  the  wayside, 
and  once  more  the  account  was  squared. 

Turkey  will  never  willingly  let  Crete  go. 
Pride  and  policy,  the  clinging  of  the  '*  Sick 
Man**  to  his  diminishing  dominions,  forbid 
that.  Since  1880  he  has  also  strengthened  his 
hold  by  erecting  barracks  in  each  province 
and  a  military  telegraph,  the  use  of  which  is 
practically  prohibited  in  Greek  districts,  since 
all  messages  must  be  in  Turkish.  The  island  is 
heavily  garrisoned  by  about  eighteen  thou- 
sand trocf^  including  regulara  and  the  local 
forces  of  gendarmes.  A  party  in  Crete,  mov«  d 
by  the  fine  things  done  by  England  for  Cyprus, 
are  all  for  English  occupation;  another  goes  so 
far  as  to  prefer  the  Turk  to  the  Englishman. 
*'Once  here,^  they  reason,  **  England  will  im- 
prove, develop,  fortify;  but  she  will  never 
looee  her  grasp."  And  yet  they  might  remem  • 
ber  the  Ionian  Isles.  The  great  majority  are 
for  Greece,  as  Greece  is  for  Crete,  although 
aware  of  the  present  impossibility  of  their  de- 
sire. '*  Greece  wants  Crete  but  cannot  get 
her,**  a  Cretan  said  to  me  on  the  steamer,  aod 
it  is  the  keynote  of  the  situation.  "  Manifest 
destiny,*'  to  use  a  phrase  of  the  politicians, 
points  to  the  union  of  two  peoples  alike  in 
race,  religion,  and  speech,  still  more  clo«ely 
bound  by  a  common  experience  of  Turkish  op- 
pression; and  to  the  revived  glories  of  the 
Byiantine  Empire,  the  **  great  idea  **  in  «  hich 
all  good  Greeks  live,  Crete  as  well  as  Coostan 
tinople  will  be  indispensable.  As  the  c*se 
stands,  a  European  war  and  the  dismember- 
ment of  Turkey,  so  likely  to  follow,  is  the 
ho|>e  of  the  island.  While  Europe  hesitates 
and  wavers  at  the  frontiers,  Crete  awaits  her 
hour.  John  Alden. 

Correspondenceo 

THE  RECOGNITION  OF  CUBA:  GRANT'S 
PRECEDENT. 

To  THS  EDrroR  or  Thx  Nation: 

Sib:  No  doubt  a  great  pressure  is  being 
brought  to  bear  upon  President  Cleveland  to 
make  him  take  strong  action  regarding  the 
Cuban  revolution.  The  great  sympathy  of 
our  people  with  the  Cubans  who  desire  inde- 
pendence forms  the  groundwork  for  this  press- 
ure. But  as  to  what  the  Presideut  should  do 
there  is  considerable  difference  of  opinion. 
Some  friends  of  the  Cubans  propose  the  recog- 
nition of  belligerency  only,  others  insist  on  re- 
cognising at  once  the  independence  of  the  re> 
volutionary  Government,  the  seat  of  which 
appears  to  be  at  present  in  the  city  of  New 
York.  Some  go  so  far  as  to  advocate  imme- 
diate annexation,  whether  the  Cubans  wish  it 
or  not 

The  action  of  President  Grant  in  1875  in  re. 
gard  to  Cuban  troubles  is  frequently  referred  to 
as  a  correct  precedent,  which  President  Cleve- 
land should  take  for  an  example.  Surc^ly  those 
who  thus  point  to  it  must  be  little  acqusinted 
with  its  history.  It  may  not  be  without  inte- 
rest to  make  a  brief  review  of  the  proceedings 
at  the  time  regarding  events  in  the  islscd  of 
Cuba;  and  in  the  first  place  it  may  be  as  well 
to  compare  the  situation  then  and  the  condi- 
tion of  things  now.  The  Cuban  revolt  at  the 
time  Grant  brought  the  matter  before  CoDgrefts 
(December,  1874)  had  lasted  otar  ly  se\tn  y«  ar^ 
during  which  time  Spain  1  ad  acted  very  pro- 
vokingly,  had  oonfisoated  pro|ieriy  ol  inoffen- 
sive  American  oitiians,  had  arrested  American 


138 


Tlie   ^STation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1598 


citixeDs  suspected  as  flIibiuterB,  bad  tried  tbem 
by  court-martUil  and  bad  sbot  tbem.  Botb 
parties,  Spaniards  and  Cabaos,  bad  carried  on 
tba  war  most  craellj,  and  bad  laid  waste  great 
parts  of  tbe  beautiful  island.  Tbe  struggle  is 
DOW  carried  on  in  aboot  tbe  same  way  Mar- 
tinez de  Campos  was  tben,  and  was  until  a 
sbort  time  ago,  tbe  commander  of  tbe  Spanisb 
forces.  Bnt  tbe  present  outbreak  is  not  quite 
one  year  old,  and  tbe  cbances  of  success  are 
quite  uncertain  as  jet,  tbe  bulletins  of  botb 
parties  deserring  but  sligbt  credence. 

Now  as  to  tbe  facte  of  tbe  case  as  tbey  trans- 
pired in  1875  and  1876.  In  bis  message  Presi- 
dent Grant  briefly  stated  bit  views  of  tbe 
question  of  Cuba,  transmitting  at  the  same 
time  a  dispatcb  to  tbe  Bpanbb  (jtovemment 
written  by  Hamilton  Fisb,  Secretary  of  State, 
a  copy  of  wbicb  (as  stated  in  tbe  dispatcb)  was 
also  sent  to  tbe  principal  European  Powers, 
inriting  tbem  to  cooperate  witb  tbe  United 
'  States  in  putting  an  end  to  tbe  cruel  war  tben 
raging  in  tbe  island  of  Cuba.  Tbe  message 
and  dispatcb  were  ratber  coolly  received,  par- 
ticularly on  account  of  tbe  invitation  to  for- 
eign Powers  to  join  tbe  United  States  in  an 
intervention  in  tbe  war  between  Spain  and 
tbe  Cubans.  Tliis  request  was  considered  as 
against  our  well-established  principle  to  keep 
aloof  from  foreign  alliances.  Secretary  Fish 
appeared  before  tbe  committee  on  foreign 
relations  of  tbe  House  of  Representatives  to  ex- 
plain bis  dispatcb.  Tbe  newspapers  at  tbe 
time  publisbed  substantially  tbe  dispatcb  it- 
self. It  alleged  that  tbe  insurrection  in  Cuba 
bad  lasted  tome  seven  years;  that  Spain  bad 
been  entirely  unable  to  suppress  it;  that  tbe 
President  was  convinced  that  the  final  issue 
would  be  to  break  up  tbe  bonds  wbicb  attached 
tbe  Cuban  colony  to  Spain  (this  view  of  tbe 
case  was  in  various  ways  repeated  over  and 
over  again  in  the  dispatcb) ;  that  tbe  American 
people  naturally  deeply  sympatbijsed  witb  the 
Cuban  people,  who  desired  independence;  that 
no  effective  steps  bad  been  taken  to  reform 
abuses:  that  material  interests  of  trade  and 
oommfrceof  tbe  United  States  in  tbe  mean- 
time bad  been  impaired  to  a  degree  wbicb 
called  for  remonstrAUce,  if  cot  for  another  line 
of  conduct,  on  tbe  part  of  all  commercial  na- 
tions; that  the  United  States  were  tbe  princi- 
pal customers  for  Cuban  products,  and  there- 
fore more  interested  in  arresting  tbe  wanton 
destruction  of  property;  that  it  bad  become  a 
serious  question  how  long  this  condition  of 
things  should  be  allowed  to  exist,  and  whether 
the  point  had  not  been  reached  when  longer 
endurance  would  be  impossible;  that  In  tbe 
opinion  of  tbe  President  the  time  had  arrived 
when  the  interests  of  this  country  demanded 
tbe  speedy  and  satisfactory  end  of  the  strife 
which  was  devastating  Cuba;  that  a  disastrous 
conflict  of  more  than  seven  years*  duration  had 
demonstrated  the  inability  of  Spain  to  main, 
tain  peace  on  an  island  lying  at  our  door.  Tbe 
dispatcb  tben  referred  particularly  to  the 
celebrated  case  of  the  Virginiusj  which,  while 
professedly  sailing  under  American  colors,  was 
seized  by  tbe  Spaniards;  American  citizens 
being  taken  out  and  shot  by  judgment  of  a 
court  martial.  The  President  hopes  (continued 
tbe  dispatch)  that  Spain  will  spontaneously 
adopt  measures  looking  to  a  reconciliation  and 
speedy  restoration  of  peace;  but,  iu  tbe  absence 
of  any  prospect  of  a  termination  of  tbe  war  or 
any  change  in  the  manner  in  which  it  has  been 
conducted  on  either  side,  he  feels  that  the  time 
is  at  band  when  it  may  be  the  duty  of  other 
governments  to  intervene.  He  bad  accord- 
ingly submitted  the  subject  in  this  light  to  tbe 
consideration  of  Congress. 


Secretary  Pish  fnrtherstated  to  the  commit- 
tee that  the  foreign  Powers  had  been  invited 
to  exercise  only  their  moral  influence  to  set- 
tle the  troubles  in  Cuba  as  soon  as  possible. 
At  tbe  same  time  the  Secretary  said  the  for- 
eign Powers  had  been  assured  that  nothing 
was  further  from  the  President  than  the  idea 
of  an  annexation  of  Cuba,  as  the  President 
believed  that  such  annexation  would  have  a 
very  injurious  effect  on  his  own  country;  that 
tbe  foreign  Powers  had  received  tbe  request 
of  the  United  States  kindly,' and  had  promised 
their  moral  support,  except  Austria,  which 
had  declined  any  sort  of  interference. 

Spain  did  not  long  delay  an  answer  to  Mr. 
Pish*s  dispatch  to  Oen.  Cushing,  our  Minister 
at  Madrid.  This  answer  appears  only  in  Uie 
journals  of  that  day.  It  would  seem  that 
neither  the  dispatch  nor  the  reply  was  ever 
published  in  the  diplomatic  correspondence  of 
our  State  Department.  Mr.  Fish  is  reported 
to  have  stated  to  the  committee  that  Spain  had 
replied  in  a  manner  **  quite  inoffensive.-'  Tbe 
language  may  have  been  very  polite,  but,  if 
the  papers  give  the  reply  correctly,  it  was 
really  a  sharp  one.  It  set  out  with  the  allega- 
tion that  the  statement  in  Mr.  Ffsh's  dispatch, 
that  material  Interests  as  to  trade  and  com- 
merce had  been  ao  impaired  as  to  call  for  re- 
monstrance if  not  for  another  line  of  conduct, 
was  not  founded  on  fact;  that,  on  tbe  contrary, 
tbe  trade  with  Cuba,  as  concerned  both  im- 
ports  and  exports,  bad,  since  tbe  insurrection, 
not  decreased,  but  greatly  increased,  thus  strik- 
ing at  the  very  basis  of  the  principal  complaint 
of  tbe  United  States.  (This  fact,  as  stated  by 
Spain,  was  admitted  by  some  of  our  leadiog 
commercial  papers.)  The  reply  is  said  to  have 
further  alleged  that  Spain  had  tried  to  satisfy 
all  just  demands  that  had  been  made  by  people 
who  had  suffered  from  tbe  disturbances  in 
Cuba;  that  the  Virginivs  incident  had  been 
already  amicably  settled;  Uiat  no  important 
question  was  pending  between  tbe  two  coun- 
tries, and  that  therefore  tbe  action  of  tbe  Pre- 
sident was  wholly  inexplicable;  that  the  in- 
surrection was  confined  to  tbe  mountainous 
regions  of  the  island,  which  were  almost  inac- 
cessible,  sterile,  and  without  any  commerce; 
that  but  for  the  sympathy  shown  by  tbe  Ame- 
rican people  and  the  active  help  which  tbe  in- 
surgents  bad  received  from  North  American 
filibusters,  peace  would  long  ago  have  been 
restored;  that  Spain  would,  however,  make 
every  effort  to  pacify  tbe  country. 

Here  tbe  matter  appears  to  have  been  quiet- 
ly dropped.  Martinez  de  Campos  not  long 
afterwards  succeeded  in  settling  tbe  seven 
years*  struggle.  It  would  seem,  theo,  that 
President  Grants  intervention  was  not  a  suc- 
cess, and  certainly  in  many  respects  cannot  be 
commended  as  a  precedent  to  President  Cleve- 
land. It  is  well  known  that  the  latter  some 
time  ago  expressed  his  opinion  that  tbe  recog- 
nition of  the  insurgents  as  a  belligerent  Power 
would  be.  of  no  benefit  to  tbe  Cubans  or  to  our 
country.  We  have  every  confidence  that  tbe 
President  will  carefully  consider  tbe  question 
of  recognition,  for,  should  he  decide  in  favor 
of  independence,  it  would,  if  Spain  felt  herself 
strong  enough,  be  certainly  followed  by  a  de- 
claration of  war.  G.  K. 


BALTIMORE  UP  TO  DATE. 
To  THE  Editor  or  The  Nation: 

Snt:  Something  may  be  allowed  for  the  time 
wbicb  evidently  elapsed  between  the  writing 
of  Mr.  Stephen  Bonsai's  article  on  "  New  Balti- 
more** and  its  appearance  in  the  February 


issue  of  Harper^t  Magazine.  This  will  account 
for  tbe  reference  to  the  old  court-house  as  still 
standing,  and  to  tbe  long  term  of  office  of  our 
late  Mayor  as  still  continuing.  It  will  not  ac 
count,  however,  for  tbe  negro  hackmen  and 
policemen  whom  the  writer  has  been  able  to 
discover  at  tbe  Camden  station  of  tbe  Balti- 
more and  Ohio  Railroad,  nor  for  souse  of  his 
statements  regarding  several  of  our  institu- 
tions. I  read  twice  the  account  of  tbe  lik»*ary 
with  which  I  am  connected,  to  be  sure  that  the 
writer  was  not  intending  to  be  humorous.  The 
beautiful  picture  of  the  400,000  books  to  which 
**  the  readers  of  Baltimore  have  had  access** 
for  **  seven  years,**  and  of  the  **  supply 
wagons  **  of  the  library  *' dashing  through  the 
streets  of  Baltimore,  like  express  wagons  dur- 
ing tbe  Christmas  season,**  is  very  effective, 
but  it  is  not  quite  accurate.  We  have  not,  and 
never  have  bad,  any  ** supply  wagons'*;  conse- 
quently, there  is  no  danger  that  any  citizen 
will  be  run  over  by  these  wagons  *' dashing 
through  the  streets.**  We  have  bought  books 
more  rapidly  than  any  other  public  circulating 
library  in  tbe  world,  to  tbe  best  of  my  know- 
ledge ;  but  although  we  have  collected  tbem 
and  circulated  them  for  ten  instead  of  **  seven  ** 
years,  we  possess  only  about  165,000  volumes 
instead  of  400,000.  Mr.  PraU*s  gift  to  the  city 
was  made /ouWeen  and  not  *'some  ten  years 
ago.**— Yours  respectfully, 

Bernard  C.  Stein kk. 

Thk  Rkoch  Pratt  Prkb  Libkabt 

or  BALTmoas  Citt,  Janoair  23,  1890. 


THE  NEED  OF  A  NEW  REVIEW. 
To  the  Editor  or  The  Nation: 

Sir  :  Permit  me  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  tbe  new  American  Historical  Review  has 
already  been  obliged  to  print  a  second  edition 
of  ittf  initial  number.  Before  it  was  issued, . 
one  of  its  most  sanguine  promoters  said  it  was 
hoped  that  in  two  years  a  subscription-list  of 
one  thousand  might  possibly  be  secured.  Evi- 
dently, tbe  willingness  of  the  American  people 
to  support  what  is  clearly  shown  to  be  the  best 
of  its  kind  was  as  much  underestimated  as 
was  ib*  willingness  to  subscribe  for  Govern- 
ment bonds  last  year. 

If  such  men  as  Profs.  Lounsbury,  Shorey, 
Kittredge,  Woodberry,  (Jayley,  Marsh,  Win- 
chester, and  others  would  but  formulate  a 
plan  for  an  **  Inter-University  Review  of  Lite- 
rature,'* tbe  money  to  guarantee  it  for  a  few 
years  would  easily  be  found,  and  within  that 
time  its  proper  clientele  would  gather  to  its 
support  as  soon  as  it  showed  its  claim  upon 
tbem.  Wm.  C.  Lawton. 

ADELPm  Academy,  Bbookltx,  Febmary  9, 1896. 


Notes. 


It  is  announced  that  the  Dunlap  Society  of 
this  city  has  been  reorganized  under  the  presi- 
dency of  Douglas  Taylor.  The  treasurer  is 
Daniel  Frobman,  and  the  secretary  Evert  Jan- 
sen  Wendell,  No.  8  East  Tbirtyeigbth  Street. 
Its  first  publication  will  be  issued  from  tbe  De 
Vinne  Press  in  tbe  spring,  and  will  probably 
be  a  paper  upon  Early  American  Theatres  by 
the  Hon.  Charles  P.  Daly. 

S.  S.  McClure  is  about  to  publish  a  Life  of 
Lincoln  baaed  upon  the  material  already  accu- 
mulated in  McClure^s  Magojsine^  but  much  ex- 
tended. The  number  of  portraits  will  be  very 
large. 

The  Life  of  Phillips  Brooks  undertaken,  but 
left  unfinished,  by  his  brother,  the  lato  Bar; 


Feb.  13,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


189 


Arthur  Brookt,  will  be  completed  by  Prof. 
A.  V.  G.  Allen,  of  Cambridge,  MaM  ,  and  pub- 
Uebed  by  B.  P.  Datton  &  Co. 

We  are  to  have  from  Charles  Scribner's  Sons 
a  new  Life  of  Madame  Roland^  by  Miss  Ida  M. 
Ikrbell;  'The  Jewish  ScHptures,' in  the  light 
of  the  latfst  criticismf  by  Amos  K.  Fiske; 
'Sunrise  Stories,*  essays  on  the  literature  of 
Japan,  by  Toeo  Takayanagi  and  T.oger  Rior- 
dan;  and  *  The  Book  of  a  Hundred  Games,*  by 
Miss  Mary  White. 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.  promise  *  The  Life 
and  Letters  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,*  by 
John  T.  Morse,  jr  ;  '  WlUiam  H.  Seward,*  by 
Thornton  K,  Lathrop;  *  The  Life  of  Thomas 
Hutchinson,*  by  James  K.  Hosmer;  *The  Life, 
Public  Services,  Addresses,  and  Letters  of 
Elias  Boudlnot,*  by  J.  J.  Boudinot;  the  fourth 
Tolume  of  the  'History  of  Prussia,*  left  un- 
ilnished  by  the  late  Prof  Herbert  Tuttle  of 
Cornell,  and  treating  of  the  early  part  of  the 
Seven  Tears*  War,  with  a  biographical  intro- 
duction by  Prof .  Herbert  B.  Adams;  'Quaint 
Nantucket,*  by  William  Root  Bliss;  '  In  New 
England  Fields  and  Woods,*  by  Rowland  E. 
Robinson:  'Spring  Notes  from  Tennessee,*  by 
Bradford  Torrey ;  '  Four-htnded  Polk,*  by 
Mrs.  OUve  Thome  Miller;  *  Kokoro:  Hints  and 
Echoes  of  Japanese  Inner  Life,*  by  Lafcadio 
Heam:  'The  Browning Phrase-Book,'  by  Marie 
Ada  Molineuz,  M.  A..  Ph.D.,  uniform  with  the 
Riverside  Browning;  'Moral  Evolution,*  by 
Prof.  George  Harris  of  Andover;  '  The  Expan- 
sioD  of  Religion,*  by  E.  Winchester  Donald, 
D.D.;  '  Pirate  Gold,*  by  F.  J.  Stimson;  <Tom 
Orogan,*  by  F.  Hopklnson  Smith;  and  theCotn 
plete  Works  of  Bums,  edited  by  W.  E.  Hen 
ley  and  T.  F.  Henderson,  a  centenary  edition 
in  four  volumes,  limited  to  ISO  copies. 

One  cannot  too  much  congratulate  the 
schools  on  the  ever- extending  "  Riverside  Li- 
terature Reries  **  of  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.; 
the  quadruple  numbers  forming  Quaker- like 
linen- bound  duodecimo  volumes  in  the  best  of 
print,  and  extremely  moderate  in  price.  Five 
of  the  latest  of  these  are  '  Robinson  Crusoe,* 
'  Uncle  Tom*s  Cabin,* '  Ivanhoe,* '  Tom  Brofrn*s 
School  Day^'  and  Dana*s  'Two  Years  Before 
the  Mast.*  But  the  public  at  large  is  equally 
interested  in  knowing  of  these  editions,  which 
meet  all  conditions  except  the  luxurious. 

Another  series  deserving  attention  in  and 
out  of  school  is  the  "  Arden  Shakspere,**  of 
which  the  American  publishers  are  D.  C. 
Heath  &  Co.,  Boston.  Half-a  doMU  volumes 
are  before  us.  They  are  convenient  to  the 
hand  or  pocket,  clearly  if  compactly  print- 
ed, and  very  fully  annotated — not  for  the 
yotmgest  minds. 

Macmillans  continue  their  little  reprint  of 
Charles  Kingsley*s  novels  with  'Teast,*  and 
of  Dickens*s  novels,  edited  by  his  son,  with  '  A 
Tale  of  Two  Cities  and  the  Mystery  of  Ed 
win  Drood,*  after  the  editions  of  1860  and  1870 
respectively.  The  younger  Dickens  vouches, 
in  his  introduction,  for  the  story  that  Carlyle, 
in  response  to  a  request  from  the  author  of  '  A 
Tale  of  Two  Cities  *  for  the  loan  of  a  few  au- 
thorities on  the  French  Revolution,  sent  him 
two  cartloads.  Dickens  repaid  this  courtesy 
in  his  preface  by  averring  that  *'no  one  can 
hope  to  add  anything  to  the  philosophy  of  Mr. 
Carlyle's  wonderful  book.**  He  cherished  the 
Tain  idea  of  having  the  story  dramatized  for 
representation  in  France  in  the  first  decade  of 
the  Second  Empire.  As  to  '  Edwin  Drood,*  the 
editor  sets  at  rest  any  speculation  that  the  hero 
of  the  story  was  not  actually  murdered.  His 
oomments  on  Mr.  Forster  as  a  literary  executor 
<in  ooonection  with  both  stories)  are  consonant 
with  aarUar  ones  in  this  same  notable  atriee. 


From  the  same  firm  we  have  Peacock's 
'Headlong  HsU,  and  Nightmare  Abbey,*  in 
the  one. volume  reprint  of  standard  novels  of 
the  early  part  of  the  century.  Mr.  Saintsbury 
furnishes  an  introduction. 

The  wtloome  to  be  accorded  to  a  new  edition 
of  Sir  George  Dasent's  'Tales  from  the  Fjeld* 
(Putnanos)  is  not,  in  our  opinion,  because  of  Mr. 
Moyr  Bmith*s  "more  than  a  hundred  illustra- 
tions.*' These  we  cannot  praise  in  gross  or  in 
detail.  It  is  the  "  mother  English  *'  into  which 
the  translator  "  tried  to  turn  his  Norse  origi- 
nal** which  has  made  and  will  preserve  this 
collection  a  classic,  remarkable  among  all 
translations  for  its  idiomatic  parity. 

By  omitting  episodes  and  detailed  descrip- 
tions, and  replacing  them  occasionally  by 
brief  summaries  in  smaller  type,  Mr.  A.  de 
Rougemont  of  Chautauqua  University  has  com- 
pressed Victor  Hugo's  'Les  Mis^rables*  into 
one  volume,  leaving  the  story  intact  (New 
York:  W.  R.  Jenkins).  Five  hundred  pages 
of  large  print  are  sufflcient  for  this  achieve- 
ment, and  there  are  twenty  pages  of  notes. 

Books  about  book-plates  approach  very  near 
the  category  of  biblia  cUfiblia^  consisting  as  they 
do,  in  the  main,  of  formal  and  mformal  lists 
diversified  only  by  exemplary  illustrations. 
The  latest  is  'Ladies*  Bookplates,  for  Collec- 
tors and  Book.lovers,*  by  Noma  Labouchere 
(London:  (George  Bell  &  Sons;  New  Yorx: 
Macmillan).  General  considerations  and  de- 
tailed descriptions,  quite  unreadable  except  by 
way  of  reference,  occupy  .two- thirds  of  this 
pretty  volume.  Formal  alphabetical  lists  fol 
low  English,  foreign,  and  "joint**  plates— these 
Isst  of  husband  and  wife.  The  reproduced  de 
signs  are  abundant  and  suggestive;  many  of 
them  beautiful.  Not  a  few  are  by  women  as 
well  as  for  them. 

Three  periodicals,  each  excellent  and  unique, 
reappear  on  our  table  in  a  bound  volume  for 
the  past  year— namely,*  the  eighth  of  Garden 
and  Forest  (New  York),  the  seventh  of  the 
Oreen  Bag  (Boston  Book  Co ),  and  the  eleventh 
of  Ba6yAood  (New  York).  They  are  all  capa- 
ble of  profiting  those  who  do  not,  as  well  as 
those  who  do,  profess  a  special  interest  in 
things  suburban  and  horticultural,  legal  and 
infantile. 

Two  more  volumes,  xllv.  and  xlv.,  of  the 
' Dictionary  of  National  Biography*  (Macmil- 
lan) extend  the  work  from  Paston  to  Pock- 
rich,  and  are  peculiarly  rich  in  great  names,  as 
Peel,  the  Pitts,  William  Penn,  St.  Patrick,  the 
Plantagenets;  besides  William  Peterson,  found, 
er  of  the  Bank  of  England,  Sir  W.  Petty,  Isaac 
Penington,  Birs.  Piozzi,  Gen.  Picton,  Mark 
Pattison,  Walter  Pater,  and  Samuel  Pepyp, 
who  (like  Mrs.  Piozzi)  falls  to  Leiilie  Stephen, 
and  is  treated  with  delicacy  and  characteristic 
pungency.  Another  excellent  example  of  re- 
straint is  shown  in  the  sketch  of  that  shady 
character,.  Cora  Pearl:  and  another  adventur- 
ess, Teresia  Couktantia  Phillips,  is  commemo- 
rated not  without  reason,  as  her  memoirs  -'ex- 
erted a  considerable  infioence  upon  Bentbaro's 
youthful  imagination,  especially  their  account 
of  the  chicanery  incidental  to  law  proceedings.** 
The  American  section  is  unusually  strong,  era- 
bracing— in  addition  to  Penn  and  Chatham 
and  Shelburae— Sir  William  Pepperell,  Sir 
William  Phippa,  Hugh  Peters,  George  PhilliiM 
(ancestor  of  Wendell  Phillips),  Abraham  Pier- 
son,  founder  of  Newark,  N.  J.,  George  Percy, 
one  of  the  founders  of  Virginia  with  Capt. 
John  Smith,  and  the  Pennsylvania  pilgrim 
Pastorius,  whoee  inclusion  in  the  Dtctiobary 
seems  somewhat  difficult  to  account  for.  The 
Irish  forger  Pigott  is  among  the  baser  cbarao- 
ters  admitted  to  this  equal  iky. 


It  has  been  to  the  advantage  of  the  public, 
as  it  must  be  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  author, 
that  a  new  edition  of  Col.  George  R.  Waring*B 
'  How  to  Drain  a  House,*  originally  published 
in  1885  (D.  Van  Nostrand  Co.),  is  brought  up 
to  the  standard  of  to-day  by  a  few  annotations, 
not  by  rewriting,  the  last  chapter  excepted. 
This  little  book,  whose  sub-title  is  "Practical 
Information  for  Householders,**  is  in  the  au- 
thor's clear  and  practical  style.  He  wastes  no 
time  in  the  discussion  of  varieties  of  method, 
but  dogmatically  expresses  his  opinion  as  to 
the  best.  That  is  what  the  ordinary  house- 
owneo  wants,  and  as  this  opinion  is^e  out- 
come of  intelligence  and  experience,  he  is  per- 
fectly safe  in  adding  it  to  his  library  of  practi- 
cal economics  as  an  un technical,  straight- 
forward, useful  book. 

'Outlines  of  Legal  HUtory*  (Macmillan)  is 
the  title  of  a  manual  prepared  by  Mr.  Archer 
M.  White,  an  Eogllslr  birrister  who  has  not 
only  fitted  large  numbers  of  pupils  for  legal 
examinations,  but  has  also  passed  many  him- 
self with  distinguished  success.  The  amount 
of  information  which  Mr.  White  has  contrived 
to  pack  into  a  duodecimo  of  less  than  250  pages 
is  cert-iioly  extraordinary.  The  book  Is  of 
course  unreadable  except  by  those  over  whom 
examination  impends,  but  it  answers  the  pur- 
pose of  an  encyclopsBdia  of  courts  and  proce- 
dure, while  C3ntaining  much  detail  concerning 
the  development  of  law.  The  method  adopted 
is  to  describe  first  the  legal  system  now  exist- 
ing, then  the  conditions  out  of  which  it  de- 
veloped, and  then  to  trace  the  history  of  some 
of  the  more  important  doctrines  of  the  law. 
The  severe  compression  necessary  is  not  al- 
ways favorable  to  the  clearest  exposition,  but 
we  have  noted  little  obscurity  except  that  due 
to  condensation.  For  its  chief  end  the  work 
must  be  regarded  as  remarkably  well  adapted, 
as  it  will  be  foimd  valuable  by  others  as  well 
as  students  cramming  for  examination. 

'  The  Child  and  Childhood  in  Folk-Thought  * 
(Macmillan)  is  a  voluminous  collection  of  every- 
thing that  has  been  said  about  children  by  the 
anthropologists,  in  the  first  instance,  and  by 
writers  of  every  sort  after  that.  Children  ap- 
pear under  the  head  of  magi  and  medicine* 
men,  priests  and  oracle- keepers,  physicians 
and  healers,  teachers  acd  judgs,  saints  and 
heroes,  poets  and  musicians.  The  influence  of 
the  child  idea  and  its  accompaniments  upon 
sociology,  mythology,  religion,  and  language 
is  matter  for  discussion.  The  subject  is  of  pe- 
culiar interest  now  that  the  scientists  have  in- 
formed us  that  the  child  alone  possaasea  io  their 
fulness  the  distinctive  features  of  humanity, 
that  the  highest  human  types  as  represented  in 
men  of  genius  present  a  striking  approxima- 
tion to  the  child  type,  and  that  adolescence  is 
to  some  extent  progress  in  degeneration  and 
senility.  There  is  an  index  to  this  volume 
which  should  be  the  emulation  of  all  future 
makers  of  books. 

Brentano  sends  us  a  French  whimaey,  a 
child's  library  of  inch  high  volumes  in  a  glass 
cabinet  '* style  Louis  XV.**— fables  from  Per- 
rault.  La  Fontaine,  F^oelon,  and  Florian,  talea 
from  Canon  Schmid  and  Moreau,  'Aladdin,* 
» The  ForlT  Thieves,* '  The  Wandering  Jew  *  in 
verse,  etc.  Happily  the  type  of  these  Lilipu- 
tian  volumes  is  not  proportionate  to  their  rin, 
but  is  readable  without  straining  of  the  eye». 

In  the  Temp*  of  January  9  there  is  an  ac- 
count of  an  interview  with  M.  Ary  Renan, 
which  throws  some  pleasant  lighten  the  life 
of  his  Illustrious  father  among  his  books.  Ke- 
nan was  a  book-lover,  but  not  in  the  least 
a  bibliophile.  He  cared  nothing  for  rare 
ediUons.     He  lored  books,  no4  for  any  bea»- 


14:0 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1598 


tj  of  print  or  binding,  but  for  their  con- 
tents aione.  They  were  his  tools,  which  he 
used  every  day.  It  was  with  great  reluctance 
that  he  ever  sent  any  of  them  to  the  binder. 
He  could  not  get  on  without  them  even  for  a 
day,  and  it  is  remembered  that  once,  when  he 
was  absolutely  obliged  to  send  a  volume  to  be 
bound,  he  bought  another  copy  of  it  to  use 
during  the  few  days  of  its  absence.  All  his 
life,  books  surrounded  him,  overwhelmed  him, 
shut  him  in.  They  gradually  overflowed  from 
one  room  to  another  untH  the  whole  story  on 
which  he  lived  was  full.  M.  Ary  Renan  says 
that  he  still  remembers  with  horror  the  seve- 
ral occasions  when  the  family  removed  from 
one  house  to  another,  and  especially  one  dread- 
ful time  when  the  d4nUnagiBwr9  heaped  the 
books  together  in  a  vast  ntmiber  of  baskets, 
having  classified  them  cleverly,  as  it  seemed, 
in  accordance  with  their  siae. 

The  priority  in  the  method  of  photographing 
through  solid  bodies  recently  discovered  by 
Prof.  ROntgen  is  now  claimed  by  the  Hunga- 
rian physicist  Lenard,  who  in  1894  succeeded 
in  photographing  through  pasteboard  by  means 
of  the  rays  emanating  from  the  cathode  or  ne- 
gative pole  of  a  galvanic  battery.  He  publish- 
ed an  account  of  tiis  experiments  at  that  time 
in  the  Annalm  fKkr  Phyaik  und  Chimie  (vol. 
li.,  p.  d25)  with  plates  showing  the  results, 
but  does  not  seem  to  have  pursued  the  sub- 
Ject  further  or  to  have  made  any  practical  ap- 
plication of  his  discovery.  Prof.  ROntgen  ex- 
plains the  purely  accidental  manner  in  which 
£is  discovery  was  made,  and  denies  that  he  is 
under  any  indebtedness  whatever  to  the  re. 
searches  of  Prof.  Lenard. 

Dr.  Parker  of  Harvard  gave  the  result  of 
some  interesting  experiments  on  the  sea  ane- 
mone at  the  recent  meeting  of  the  Morpholo- 
gical Society,  as  reported  in  Science.  The 
oesophagus  of  this  little  animal  is  lined  with 
cilia  whose  constant  wavy  motion  causes  the 
food  to  pass  onward  from  the  mouth  into  the 
stomach.  But  their  action  can  be  reversed 
when  occasion  arises,  and  by  this  means  innu- 
tritions substances  can  be  tlirown  out  from  the 
stomach.  If  an  anemone  is  fed  with  fragments 
of  meat  and  pieces  of  paper  soakfd  in  meat 
juice,  both  are  taken  into  the  stomach,  but  the 
paper  fragments  are  afterwards  thrown  out 
by  means  of  the  backward  action  of  the  cilia. 
More  than  this,  the  organ  of  sense  in  the  ten- 
tacles is  capable  of  a  certain  degree  of  educa^ 
tlon.  After  a  number  of  trials  (seventeen  or 
more)  the  animal  learns  to  discriminate^  the 
paper  being  rejected  and  the  meat  swallowed. 
The  memory  is,  however,  short-lived,  for  on 
the  following  day  the  lesson  must  be  learned 
anew. 

—The  question  of  the  admission  of  women 
to  the  University  for  the  study  of  medicine 
has  lately  excited  considerable  discussion  in 
Vienna.  The  well-known  professor  of  surgery, 
Dr.  B.  Albert,  being  no  longer  able  to  ignore 
this  movement,  published  a  pamphlet  against 
it,  entitled  *  Die  Frauen  und  das  Btudium  dcr 
Medicin*  (Vienna:  Holder),  and  written  with 
the  same  spirit  that  animated  John  Knox  more 
than  three  centuries  ago  when  he  blew  *The 
First  Blast  of  the  Trumpet  against  the  Mon- 
strous Regiment  of  Women.*  He  begins  with 
the  assertion  that  all  works  of  the  human  hand 
which  we  see  around  us  and  which  minister  to 
our  comfort,  were  made  by  man.  When  we 
rise  in  the  morning,  be  adds  In  illustration  of 
this  proposition,  all  the  dishes  in  which  our 
breakfast  is  served  we  owe  to  masculine  in- 
genuity and  invention;  hence  the  female  is 
iatelleotuaUy  disqualified  for   the   study  of 


medicine.  Not  only  is  the  logic  of  this  syllo- 
gism exceedingly  faulty,  but  also  the  premises 
are  false  or  at  least  highly  problematicaL 
All  prehistoric  researches  tend  to  prove  that 
woman  contributed  more  than  man  to  the 
growth  of  primitive  civilization.  It  was  her 
feeble  attempts  to  cultivate  the  soil  and  to 
raise  grain  that  gradually  effected  the  transi- 
tion from  nomadic  to  sedentary  life;  it  was 
because  she  learned  to  spin  and  weave  that 
doth  was  substituted  for  skins  as  raiment,  and 
there  is  hardly  any  doubt  that  the  first  rude 
pottery  was  formed  by  her  hands.  A  clear  and 
cogent  reply  to  Albert^s  inconsequent  lucu- 
bration is  Prof.  Dr.  Emanuel  Hannak*s  *Die 
Frauen  und  das  Studium  der  Medicin  kritisoh 
beleuchtet'  (Vienna:  Holder),  in  which  the 
author  shows  the  injustice  of  excluding  women 
from  the  most  efficient  means  of  culture  and 
then  censuring  them  for  being  uncultivated 
He  reviews  Dr.  Albert's  pamphlet  in  detail, 
and  proves  that  the  objections  urged  by  him 
simply  beg  the  whole  question  at  issue,  and 
declares  in  conclusion  that  it  is  the  duty  of 
the  state  to  furnish  every  facility  for  academi- 
cal and  professional  education  without  distinc 
tionof  sex. 

—Many  strange  things  have  been  done,  first 
and  last,  in  the  way  of  devising,  and  adapting, 
and  modernizing  some  of  the  great  books  of 
the  world.  Shakspere  has  been  Bowdlerized 
and,  lees  offensively,  Hudsonized.  The  '  Bum- 
ma  *  of  Thomas  Aquinas  has  been  put  into  dog- 
gerel Latin  verse  to  be  used  as  a  cram  book. 
Dante  has  been  turned  into  quatrains,  and 
Moli^re's  **L*Avare''  has  been  versified;  the 
*Contes'  of  Voltaire  have  been  put  into  alex- 
andrines, and  the  *  Profession  de  f oi  du  Vioaire 
Savoyard '  has  been  arranged  in  chapters  and 
verses,  like  a  Bible.  The  late  Bishop  Hopkins 
was  once  inspired  to  write  a  church  history  in 
the  "  common  metre  '*  of  the  hymn-books.  But 
the  latest  venture  of  this  kind,  and  the  Strang- 
est,  is  surely  that  of  a  certain  M.  Boizomont, 
who  has  just  produced  an  expurgated  Rabelais 
—for  the  use  of  Sunday-schools,  perhaps.  Two 
or  three  times  before  now  Rabelais  has  been 
put  into  modem  French— once  by  the  Cheva- 
lier Lureau,  in  1849,  and  again  by  Prof.  Mar- 
tial Lureau.  But  these  versions,  it  would  seem, 
are  completely  overwhelmed  and  sunk  when  set 
beside  the  work  of  M.  Boizomont,  if  one  may 
judge  from  extracts  from  it  which  were  given 
lately  in  the  Jour.  We  can  give  but  one  spe- 
cimen of  it,  and  that  shall  be  the  well-known 
jest  about  Panurge*s  means  of  living.  Rabelais 
says:  **  Toutefois,  il  avait  soixante  et  trois mar 
nitres  d'en  trouver  toujours  k  son  besoing, 
dont  la  plus  honorable  et  la  plus  commune 
estoit  par  fagon  de  larcin  f urtivement  faict." 
This  M.  Boizomont  turns  thus :  *'  C*6tait,  toute 
fois,  un  invidu  rempli  de  ressources,  dont  quel- 
quea-unes  frisaient  Tinddlicatesse.'*  This  is  the 
converse  of  a  sea-change.  Prof.  Sophocles 
used  to  say  sometimes  that,  if  VirgU  were 
obliged  to  restore  what  he  had  conveyed  from 
Homer,  there  would  be  nothing  left  of  him  but 
the  proper  names ;  M.  Boizomont  leaves  to 
Rabelais  even  a  scantier  residuum. 

—The  dynasty  of  the  Mikados  of  Japan  is 
the  oldest  in  the  world,  being  sentimentally 
2556,  and  in  historic  certainty  1600  years  old. 
A  conspectus  of  their  names,  age  at  death, 
dates  of  reign,  and  order  of  succession  may  be 
seen  on  page  123  of  *The  Mikado's  Empire.' 
Now,  however,  it  is  possible  at  a  glance  of  the 
eye  to  see  the  graphic  counterfeits  of  six  score 
or  more  men  and  women  who  have  borne  the 
title  of  Mikado.    We  have  before  us  a  sheet  of 


heavy  brocade  paper  (42x21  in.),  on  which  are 
engraved  the  vignettes  of  129  mikados;  the 
ruling  Emperor,  Empress,  and  Crown  Prince 
being  in  the  centre.  The  sixteen  divine  pro- 
genitors of  the  line  are  set  on  either  side  of 
Ten  ShO  Dai  Jin,  or  the  sun-goddess,  at  the 
top,  and  all  under  the  golden  disc  and  rays  of 
the  sun.  The  portraits  are  printed  on  paper 
which  has  been  first  printed  upon  in  buik- 
note  style  with  an  engraved  plate  bearing 
tracery-work  of  clouds,  dots  and  the  Kiri 
{Bauioumia  ItnperkUi^  leaf  and  flower— the 
Emperon*  insignia.  From  the  artistic,  his- 
toric, arohaeologic,  and  purely  contemporary 
points  of  view  this  publication  is  interesting 
and  marks  an  epoch.  The  beings  of  '*  the  di- 
vine age,"  as  well  as  the  flrst  thirteen  of  the 
seventeen  mikados  to  whom  Occidental  criti- 
cism refuses  to  ascribe  historic  reality,  wear 
around  their  necks  the  magatama,  or  carved 
jewels  which  belong  to  the  prehistoric  era. 
These,  now  fossil  or  in  museums,  were  often 
made  of  jade,  which  is  not  found  in  Japan,  but 
only  in  China.  The  sun-goddess  and  the  divine 
beings  wear  also  the  eight-pointed  mirror  on 
their  breasts ;  and  beneath  the  central  lady, 
aurecded  and  flower  surrounded,  the  ancestress 
of  Everlasting  great  Japan,  are  the  three  sa- 
cred jewels  or  palladia— sword,  crystal  sphere, 
and  metal  mirror.  Between  the  Empress  of 
▲.D.  1809-*96,  in  golden  crown,  low  neck  and 
short  sleeves,  Parisian  coiffure,  bodice,  sash 
jewels  and  decorations,  and  the  aureoled  lady 
in  magatama  and  unbound  hair,  there  is 
suggestive  but  not  unpleasing  contrast.  Con- 
sidering the  antiquity  of  JKpKDOte  art  in  both 
sketching,  painting,  and  carving,  credence  can 
be  given  to  most  of  these  representations  as 
portraits. 

— ^The  mutations  of  government,  religion, 
and  partisan  politics  are  shown  in  the  helmet 
and  maQ-ciad  warriors,  the  cowled  and  shaven- 
pated  monks,  the  baby  puppets,  the  girls  and 
women,  and  in  the  varied  degrees  and  insignia 
of  rank  and  office  held  when  intMnotion  to 
the  throne  came.  Ifine  of  the  mikados  were 
women,  the  first  (if  we  except  Jingu— 261- 
269  ▲.  D.),  being  Suiko  (50S-628  a  d.),  and  the 
last  Oo-Sakuramachi  (1768-1770);  two  of  the 
female  emperors  reigning  twice.  The  Consti- 
tution of  1889  limits  succession  to  the  male 
line.  The  head-dresses  and  bust-costumes  are 
a  study  to  the  archaeologist,  but  the  most  strik- 
ing point  is  the  addition  of  the  six  **  Northern  " 
or  *^  false  emperors.*^  These  were  the  nomi- 
nees of  the  Ashikaga  shoguns  during  the  civil 
war  ('*  the  war  of  the  chrysanthemums 'O  which 
desolated  Japan  from  the  year  1896  to  1992. 
Heretofore  by  most  Japanese  historians  denied 
legitimacy,  and  their  names  printed  in  various 
styles  of  odium  typographieum  in  the  books, 
it  is  a  sign  of  the  times  to  see  them  here  set 
with,  though  beneath,  the  recognized  dynasty, 
and  this  with  the  permission  of  the  censor. 
We  hail  it  as  a  sign  of  increasing  national 
pride,  indeed,  but  of  improved  ethics  in  histori- 
ography. The  number  (121)  of  regular  occu- 
pants of  the  throne  is  reached  by  omitting  the 
names  of  Jing^  the  Amazonicm  Empress  and 
legendary  conqueror  of  Korea,  and  one  of  the 
twice-reigning  empresses.  The  average  length 
of  the  reigns  in  the  whole  line  is  twenty-one 
years,  or  in  the  historic  portion,  fourteen  years. 

—The  latest  number  of  the  BtUUtinde  Ocrre- 
spondance  Hell^nique  shows  that  a  pause  in 
discovery  at  Delphi  has  been  reached.  There 
is,  however,  a  rich  harvest  of  material  stUl  to 
be  threshed  out;  and  of  this  process  M.  H6> 
molle  gives  a  valuable  specimen  in  his  ] 


Feb.  13,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


141 


tioo  and  difoudon  ol  an  inscription  ol  the 
fifth  oantorj  B.  o.,  which  it  h«re  photo- 
gimphad.  It  oontnlni  the  regulationB  of  the 
Delphio  phrntrjr  of  the  LabyacUe,  the  conditions 
of  admission  into  the  commnnitj,  the  pre- 
scriptions for  sacrificial  ceremonies  and  for 
funeral  rites,  embracing  eyen  such  details  as 
the  expense  of  funerals,  the  manner  of  laying 
out  the  dead,  the  times  and  places  in  which 
lamentation  may  be  permitted  during  the 
burial  ceremony.  The  inscription,  with  M. 
Homolle^s  discussion,  throws  new  light  on  the 
Attic  festiral,  the  Apaturia,  at  which  young 
men  and  married  women  were  admitted  to 
formal  dtisenship  in  their  reepectiye  phratries; 
the  most  characteristic  part  of  the  ceremony 
being  the  cutting  and  the  consecration  of  the 
hair— a  rite  practised  by  Semitic  tribes  on 
similar  occasions.  The  language  of  the  in- 
scription is  a  highly  interesting  example  of 
Delphic  Dorian,  illustrating  certain  forms  in 
Heeiod,  in  Pindar,  and  in  Theocritus,  and  re- 
tainmg  the  digamma  at  the  beginning  of  some 
words  as  well  as  a  special  sign  for  the  rough 
breathing.  M.  de  Kidder's  elaborate  report  on 
the  excavations  at  Orcbomenus  should  be  men- 
tioned, but  does  not  admit  of  summary.  We 
may  note,  howeyer,  M.  Chamounard*s  into- 
reedng  description  of  the  friese  of  the  temple 
of  Hecate  at  Lagina  in  Caria,  on  account  of 
its  relation  to  the  well- known  sculpture  of  Per- 
gamum.  The  fragments  have  been  lately  con- 
yeyed  to  the  museum  at  Constantinople.  They 
reyeal  an  evident  but  awlcward  imitation  of 
the  famous  Oigantomachy.  The  poses  are 
borrowed  from  this;  but  the  arUst,  not  daring 
to  attempt  the  bold  and  original  pell-mell  ar- 
rangement of  the  combatants,  has  reverted  to 
the  old-fashioned  device  of  isolated  groups  of 
two  adversaries.  The  monotony  of  this  device 
is  repeated  in  the  details  of  armor,  of  gesture, 
and  of  costume.  The  workmanship  is  also 
somewhat  rude  and  clumsy  in  many  particu- 
lars. Tlie  date  may  be  referred  to  the  early 
part  of  the  first  century  b.  o.,  when,  in  all 
probability,  the  temple  was  repaired  and  re- 
stored, after  the  invasion  of  Ifithridates,  to 
commemorate  8ylla*s  successes  and  to  symbol- 
ise the  protection  of  the  Roman  people  toward 
the  Carians,  who  had  suffered  for  their  fidelity 
to  the  Republic. 

—The  after-dinner  amusements  of  the  Greeks 
of  the  sixth  century  are  suggested  by  a  curi- 
ous toy  preserved  in  the  Louvre  and  described 
and  figured  by  M.  E.  Pettier.  It  consists  of  a 
seated  satyr  holding  in  front  a  crater-shaped 
vase,  of  Corinthian  style  and  polychrnmy 
The  satyr  has  small  perforations  on  the  head 
and  back,  and  his  interior  is  so  connected  with 
the  vase  that  his  owner,  whose  name,  Kolodon, 
is  iDSCribed,  could,  by  stopping  one  orifice  or 
another  with  the  flioger,  represent  the  satyr  as 
altsmately  absorbing  the  wine  or  restoring  it 
to  the  crater.  This  performance  doubtless 
afforded  a  surprise  and  entertainment  to  his 
guests  less  likely  to  strain  their  intellects 
than  the  Platonic  symposium;  but  it  is  fur- 
ther interesting  as  showing  that  some  slight 
knowledge  of  the  effects  of  air-pressure  had 
reached  the  artisan  class  within  a  century  of 
the  date  of  Thales.  A  link  in  the  history  of 
ceramics  is  contributed  by  M.  Joubin*8  discus- 
sion of  a  groop  of  painted  sarcophagi  from 
Clasomenss,  two  fine  specimens  of  which  are 
contained  in  the  Louvre.  They  are  decorated 
with  animals  painted  in  silhouette  in  a  style 
resembling  the  early  pottery  of  Camlrus  and 
Haooratis.  Though  belonging  to  the  sixth 
century,  they  represent  an  Ionian  tradition  of 
anlmtl  decoration  and  painting  in  transparent 


silhouette  which  fiourished  as  early  as  the 
eighth  or  ninth  century,  and  was  itself  a  de 
velopment  of  the  Mycensan  motives  and  tech- 
nique. This  Ionian  style  finally  prevailed 
over  the  taste  for  geometric  decoration,  and 
restored  the  **  Oriental  style  ^  to  Rhodes,  to 
Corinth,  to  Athens  and  Bceotia ;  and  the  sar- 
cophagi of  Claxomensd  may  thus  be  regarded 
as  the  forerunners  of  the  P^ngois  vase. 


HANS  VON  BOLOW'S  LETTERS. 

Brief e  und  Sehriften.  Von  Hans  Von  Billow. 

Vols.  I.,  II.    Leipzig  and  New  York :  Breit- 

kopf  &  H&rteL 
Although  Hans  von  Billow  was  considered 
one  of  the  foremost  pianists  of  his  time,  his 
beet  work  lay  in  the  line  of  orchestral  and  ope- 
ratic conducting.  Thirty  years  ago  Wagner 
referred  to  him  as  the  only  conductor  then 
living  in  whom  he  had  full  confidence,  and 
showed  that  he  meant  what  be  said  by  choos- 
ing him  to  preside  over  the  first  performances 
ever  given  of  **  Tristan  und  Isolde  *'  and  **  Die 
Meistersinger.'*  In  later  years  BQlow  achieved 
unique  fame  in  the  concert  hall  by  taking  an 
ordinary  orchestra  and  training  it  so  thorough- 
ly that  he  could  play  on  it  at  will  as  on  a  piano. 
To  posterity  he  will  be  chiefly  known— since 
his  own  compositions  are  of  no  lasting  value- 
as  a  pedagogue,  by  his  admirable  editing  of 
various  classical  and  romantic  masters,  and  as 
a  wit  and  letter- writer.  In  the  latter  capacity 
he  has  just  become  extensively  known  through 
the  publication  of  two  volumes  of  his  corre- 
spondence, under  the  editorial  supervision  of 
his  widow,  the  actress  Marie  Schanser,  whom 
he  married  twelve  years  after  his  divorce  from 
Cosima  Lisxt,  who  subsequently  became  Wag- 
ner's wife.  These  volumes  extend  only  from 
Bfilow*s  eleventh  year  to  his  twenty-fifth  (1841 
to  1855),  but  it  is  announced  that  two  further 
volumes,  containing  the  beet  letters  of  the  re- 
maining thirty-nine  years  of  his  life,  and  a 
selection  of  his  newspaper  articles  and  musical 
essays  will  appear  in  the  autumn.  The  editor 
not  only  has  prefaced  the  first  volume  with  a 
biographic  i^tch,  but  has  added  an  occa- 
sional page  of  conunent  and  footnotes  where 
needed,  so  that  this  correspondence  has  the 
aspect  and  value  of  a  complete  autobiography. 

Inasmuch  as  BiUow  wrote  enough  letters  in 
fourteen  years  to  fill  900  printed  pages  (and 
many  have  been  omitted  or  abbreviated),  it  is 
amusing  to  find  him  apologizirg  to  Raff  for  his 
<*  unbounded  indolence  in  letter- writing,**  in 
which  indolence  he  boasts  of  having  reached 
**  a  high  degree  of  virtuosity."  During  all  these 
years  the  world  showed  so  little  appreciation 
of  his  talent  that  he  can  hardly  have  thought 
that  his  letters  would  ever  be  printed,  and 
there  is  no  evidence  anywhere  that  he  wrote 
with  an  eye  to  such  a  contingency.  He  is 
known  to  have  kept  a  diary,  to  which  there 
are  several  allusions,  but  no  trace  of  it  re- 
mains. He  was  repeatedly  urged  to  write  bis 
memoirs,  but  always  replied  that  life  was  too 
short,  and  that  it  was  better  to  let  the  past  be 
past  and  devote  one's  time  to  new  labors.  The 
majority  of  the  letters  in  these  two  volumes 
are  addressed  to  his  parents  (who  were  di- 
vorced after  1849);  other  recipients  are  Lisst, 
Raff,  Uhlig,  ComeUus,  Pohl,  Radecke,  E>olU 
Rltter,  Wieck.  There  are  also  printed  here  a 
few  letters  of  Berllos  to  BQlow,  and  of  Wagner 
and  Liszt  to  Bfilow's  parents.  Those  written 
in  French  are  printed  in  that  language.  The 
footnotee  are  not  obtrusively  numerous;  in 
one  case,  at  any  rate,  an  addition  to  their 
number  would  have  been  welcomed.    Biilow 


states,  under  date  of  January  21, 1853,  that  be 
was  carrying  on,  partly  on  his  own  behalf  and 
partly  for  the  busy  Liszt,  **a  not  very  brisk 
but  continuous  correspondence  with  Wagner.** 
What  has  become  of  these  letters?  Is  the 
widow  Cosima  guarding  them  at  Bayrenth, 
together  with  the  three-volume  autobiography 
of  Wagner  and  other  Nibelung  treasures  ? 

As  might  have  been  expected,  the  most  in- 
teresting letters  in  the  present  oolleoti<m  are 
thoee  relating  to  Bfilow*s  intercourse  with 
Wagner,  whom  he  simply  worshipped.  It  was 
Wagner*s  operas  that  induced  him  to  give  up 
the  study  of  law  and  devote  himself  to  music, 
even  though  by  so  doing  he  alienated  the  affec- 
tion of  bis  mother,  so  that  she  broke  off  all  cor- 
respondence  with  him  for  half  a  year.  He 
was  only  twelve  yekn  old  when  Wagner's  mu- 
sic, in  **Riensi,**  first  made  an  impression  on 
him.  At  that  time  Italian  opera  was  still  a 
fashionable  monopoly  in  the  cities  of  Germany; 
from  Stuttgart  Bfilow  wrote  to  Wieck  (Schu- 
mann's father-in-law)  that  **  classical  taste  pre- 
vails here  as  little  as  in  Dreeden.  Mozart, 
Beethoven,  Weber,  can  be  performed  only  in 
the  absence  of  the  King.**  Hans,  as  a  boy, 
did  not  dislike  the  operas  of  Bellini  and  other 
Italians—indeed,  he  frequently  refers  to  the 
*' heavenly  **  pleasure  they  gave  him;  but  at 
fourteen  he  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
Mozart's  "  Don  Jucm  **  *is,  after  all,  the  opera  of 
operas.**  Then  followed  his  growing  adorati<m 
of  Wagner,  to  which  there  are  numerous  refer- 
ences.  At  seventeen  he  seems  to  have  sent 
some  of  his  own  efforts  at  composition  to  Wag- 
ner, who  delighted  bim  with  this  amiable 
reply: 

**Your  pieces,  my  dear  Mr.  BtUow,  have 
given  me  much  pleasure;  I  was  loath  to  send 
them  back  to  you  through  your  friend  Ritter 
without  enclosing  a  word  of  encouragement. 
A  criticism  I  do  not  wish  to  add,  nor  is  it  neces- 
sary ;  you  will  find  plenty  of  others  readv  to 
criticise  you,  and  I  feel  the  less  disposed  to 
enumerate  fiaws  and  details  I  do  not  like,  be- 
cause I  can  see  from  all  the  rest  that  you  will 
soon  be  quite cspable  of  criticisingyour own 
early  efforts.  Persevere  in  your  efl^>rts,  and 
let  me  hear  from  you  again  soon.** 

To  Ritter,  Wagner  said  pers6nally  that 
Bfilow*s  work  showed  **  unmistakable  talent.** 
Such  recognition  from  his  idol  was  oil  on  the 
fiames  of  his  enthusiasm.  In  a  letter  to  his 
mother  he  g^ves  vent  to  his  indignation  on 
hearing  that  the  famous  poet  Tieck  had  ut- 
terly condemned  **  Lohengrin  '*  as  a  poem.  If 
he  remembered  this  indignation  in  later  years, 
it  must  have  gratified  him  to  know  that  every 
child  in  Germany  now  knows  **  Lohengrin  ** 
by  heart,  and  Tieck  by  name  only,  if  at  all. 
His  friends  did  not  share  his  admiration,  for 
he  tells  us,  on  one  occasion,  how  **  Llvia  of- 
fered to  go  over  *TannhAuser'  with  me,  but 
she  finds  everything  bad  or  crazy,  while  Wal- 
demar  usually  leaves  the  room— in  haste.** 
Letter  87  (to  his  mother)  is  largely  filled  with 
lamentations  because  **Tannh&user  **  was 
given  in  Dresden  while  he  was  in  Leipzig.  He 
would  gladly  have  walked  to  Dresden  had  it 
been  possible;  and  he  adds: 

*'I  thank  God  that,  unlike  the  Pharisees,  I 
am  able  to  feel  the  holiness  and  divinity  of 
the  art  of  music  as  exemplified  bv  this  work, 
and  to  understand  Wagner*8  mission  as  its 
apostle.  I  do  not  despise  Wagoer*s  enemies 
for  this  reason*  unless  they  are  guided  by  a 

Krsonal  prejudice;  but  I  pity  them  for  not 
ing  able  to  rise  from  the  dust.** 

A  few  months  later  he  again  wrote  to  his 
mother,  who  had  missed  an  opportunity  or 
two  to  hear  "Tannh&user  **:  ^'You  wiU  pardon 
me  for  saying  so,  but  if  I  should  hear  that  you 


142 


The   Nation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1598 


had  misted  it  agaio,  I  should  be  furious.'*  On 
learniDg  that  ^^Lobeogrin**  might  possibly 
have  its  first  performance  at  Weimar,  be 
wrote:  *'If  that  should  happen,  it  «rould  be  a 
colossal  thing,  and  Weimar  would  become  the 
capital  of  the  world"!  In  September,  1&50, 
he  went  to  Weimar  to  hear  that  op^ra,  and 
when  he  found  that  the  performance  was  post- 
poned, be  wrote:  **Tou  cannot  possibly  con- 
reive  my  mortification;  I  wept  in  my  disap. 
pointment  and  rage,  and  not  in  the  privacy  o( 
my  room,  but  right  before  Kroll's  eyes  **  At 
last  he  heard  the  opera,  and  that  sealed  his 
fate.  He  took  the  diligence  for  Zurich,  bad 
an  interview  with  Wagner,  returned  to  his 
father,  fell  on  his  knees  before  him,  and  begged 
to  be  allowed  to  become  a  musician,  under 
Wagner's  guidanca  The  father  consented  on 
condition  that  bis  mother  also  would  approve 
the  step.  80  he  wrote  her  a  long  letter,  in 
which  he  explained  that  Wagner  had  proposed 
to  him  to  come  to  Zurich  and  take  part  as 
pianist  at  the  concerts  and  as  assistant  con- 
ductor at  the  opera  there.  Wagner  himself 
wrote  a  long  letter  to  his  mother  pleading  for 
Hans.  **I  have  observed,"  he  says,  'Hhat 
your  son's  love  for  art,  and  especially  for  mu- 
sic, is  not  a  mere  fancy,  but  is  based  on  great, 
nay,  exceptional  talent,"  adding  th«it  be  bad 
advised  bim  also  to  continue  bis  scientific  stu- 
dies, "because  nothing  is  more  unsympathetic 
to  me  than  a  learned  nrusician  without  general 
culture."  Lisst,  too,  pleaded  for  bim,  yet  the 
mother  remained  obdurate;  she  feared  that 
the  rebel  and  revolutionist  Wagner  might  cor. 
rupt  her  son's  character.  His  father,  in  con 
sequence,  forbade  him  to  even  visit  Wagner  at 
Zurich.  Wagner  heard  of  this,  and  wrote  Uf 
the  father  that,  nevertheless,  since  he  bad 
discovered  in  Hans  "an  extraordinarily  gifted 
and  precocious  artist,"  he  symp%thized  with 
bis  desire,  and  was  willing  to  risk  his  (the  fa- 
ther's) displeasure,  feeling  sure  that  he  would 
some  day  thank  bim  for  it  Hans  bad  in  the 
meantime  been  almost  persuaded  by  his  fa- 
ther's counsel  to  return  to  bis  legal  studies  in 
Berlin,  when  a  letter  from  Wngner,  which 
Ritter  brought  him,  finallv  decided  bim. 
With  Ritter  he  returned  to  Zurich,  going  on 
foot  for  two  days  and  avoiding  the  public 
conveyances  for  fear  of  being  pursued  by  bis 
father. 

Wagner  welcomed  bis  young  pupil  cordially 
and  invited  him  daily  to  dinner,  "which  was 
always  very  good,"  Btilow  writes,  "as his  wife 
is  an  accomplished  cook."  She  also  made  her- 
self ufeful  by  mending  things  for  him,  etc. 
He  went  to  work  at  once  rehearsing  operas, 
concerning  which  he  says:  "It  is  not  such  an 
easy  thing  as  it  might  seem;  it  requires  a  tho- 
rough study  of  the  scores,  amounting  almost 
to  a  complete  memorizing  of  them,  and  that 
is  exhausting  work."  In  another  plsce  he 
states  that  be  is  memorizing  the  "  Freischutz," 
because  such  a  work,  where  every  detail  is  of 
importance,  can  be  properly  interpreted  only 
if  the  conductor  knows  by  heart  every  note, 
and  does  not  need  to  look  at  the  score.  Some 
months  later  bis  placated  father  bad  the  plea- 
sure of  seeing  him,  a  youth  of  twenty,  con- 
ducting an  opera  in  that  way  without  any  as- 
sistance from  the  score ;  but  the  mother  per- 
sisted in  her  resentment,  as  already  stated, 
half  a  year,  before  the  reports  of  bis  pro- 
gress reconciled  her  partially  to  his  chosen 
career. 

That  career,  however,  was  by  no  means  a 
l»ed  of  roses.    There  was  a  great  deal  of  hard 
work  to  be  done,  in  which  Wagner  usually  took 
the  lead.    For  instance,  they  devoted  three  I 
daji  apd  ^y^njnipi  to  coirecting  and  arranging  ' 


the  score  of  "  Don  Juan  "  for  performance.  On 
this  occasion  Billow  was 

"overcome  wjtb  indignation  in  recollecting 
how  Wagner's  enemies  at  Dresden  had  said 
that  be  *  intentionally  conducted  Mozart's  ope- 
ras badlv  because  be  did  not  like  them,  but 
cared  only  for  bis  own  music'  I  say,  on  the 
contrary,  that  none  of  these  pseudo  adorers  of 
Moz%rt  will  ever  be  able  to  manifest  such  a 
warm,  vital  admiration  and  artistic  intelli- 
geoce  as  Wagner  bas  shown  by  bis  unselfiob 
devotion.  It  is  clear  that '  Don  Juan,'  as  given 
to  dav  everywhere,  cannot  produce  the  effect 
of  which  it  is  capable  if  his  reforms  are  carried 
out." 

In  another  place  he  writes  regarding  Wag- 
ner's editing  of  Oluck's  "  Iphlgenia  in  Aulis  "  : 

"If  he  had  never  done  anything  but  this 
work,  eo  admirable  from  every  point  of  view, 
his  name  would  deserve  to  be  held  in  the  high- 
est honor.  To  discover  and  learn  to  appreci- 
ate the  signifioance  of  the  details  of  his  editing 
is  in  itself  a  rare  pleasure.  80  far  from  show- 
ing a  lack  of  respect  for  the  great  master 
whom  he  revised.  Wagner  has,  on  the  con- 
trary, given  by  bis  deed  the  noblest  and  most 
positive  proof  of  his  resp*ct  for  him.  True, 
the  old  maxim.  Quod  licet  Jovi  non  licet  bovi^ 
remains  in  force." 

Columns  might  be  filled  with  similar  out- 
pourings of  enthusiasm  for  Wagner  as  an  artist 
and  as  a  man — "  the  noblest,  most  amiable  and 
adorable  of  men."  He  declares  that  his  Wag- 
ner-worship is  the  best  trait  of  bis  character; 
that  he  is  proud  of  having  been  one  of  the 
first  to  recognise  the  genius  and  historic  im- 
portance of  the  greatest  artist  of  the  cen- 
tury ;  that  the  possibility  of  being  such  a 
man's  apostle  gave  an  object  and  goal  to  his 
own  life.  "I  love  and  respect  him  more  every 
hour."  "  He  bas  behaved  toward  me  in  such  a 
kind,  noble,  fatherly  way  that  I  shall  be  eter- 
nally indebted  to  him.  .  .  .  In  no  case  can 
my  separation  from  Wagner  be  more  than 
temporary."  Unfortunately  be  was  not  able 
long  to  enjoy  this  friendly  intercourse  and 
artistic  guidance.  The  most  important  singer 
in  the  Zurich  company  quarrelled  with  the 
young  conductor,  and  her  ultimatum  was  that 
one  of  the  two  must  leave.  So  BiUow  went 
to  St.  Oallen,  where  be  presided  over  a  small 
opera  company,  which  gave  bim  a  great 
deal  more  experience  than  pleasure.  The  or- 
chestra, it  appears,  consisted  largely  of  ama- 
teurs—honest men,  but  poor  players— and  the 
hall  used  for  rehearsing  could  not  be  heated, 
for  economic  reasons.  The  result — a  perform- 
ance of  "The  Daughter  of  the  Regiment " — as 
described  by  him,  is  so  amusingly  and  cha- 
racteristically Bulowesque  that  it  must  be 
quoted  in  bis  own  words: 

"I  had  been  unable  to  get  a  sufficient  num- 
ber of  rehearsals,  or  all  the  necessary  instru- 
meats,  so  that  I  had  to  make  various  changes 
to  fill  up  the  gaps.  I  was  frightened  to  death 
as  I  stood  at  my  desk,  expecting  every  moment 
a  fiasco,  which  did  not  fail  to  appear,  not  in 
the  form  of  a  collapse  but  of  an  ear-splitting 
cat's  am<»ic.  I  refused  stubbornly  to  conduct 
the  second  act  and  was  with  difficulty  persu'ad- 
ed  to  go  on.  After  the  performance  I  bad  a 
disafrreeable  scene  with  the  manager,  to  whom 
I  declared  I  was  too  good  for  such  a  piggerv. 
.  .  .  Such  oxen  as  I  bad  to  deal  with  in 
this  orchestra  is  beyond  human  experience  to 
imagiue.  If  I  could  only  have  made  myself 
understood  by  these  brutes!  I  would  gladly 
have  learned  to  grunt  or  bellow,  but  even  that 
would  have  been  useless." 

His  one  consolation  was  that  "  one  can  learn 
more  from  a  bad  orchestra  than  from  a  good 
one."  But  he  soon  gave  up  this  job  and  went 
to  Weimar  to  study  the  piano  with  Liszt.  The 
greater  part  of  the  two  volumes  is  devoted  to 
accounts  of  his  intercourse  with  that  great  mu- 
sician,  who,  as  he  told  his  mother,  loved  him 
like  a  son  (long  before  be  became  hit  father-in- 


law),  and  to  his  (Bfilow's)  pitiable  and  pathetic 
efforts  to  make  his  mark  as  a  pianist.  But  we 
have  quoted  enough  to  show  how  entertaining 
these  volumes  are.  It  may  be  added  that  they 
are  adorned  by  two  portraits  of  Billow,  a  fac- 
simile of  one  of  his  letters,  and  several  pro- 
grammes. There  is  also  a  good  ^dex.  and  the 
book  is  beautifully  printed;  but  it  should  not 
be  bought  unbound.  Why  do  German  pub- 
lishers persist  in  putting  together  their  un- 
bound (and  usually  expensive)  volumes  so  that 
they  come  to  pieces  after  a  few  hours'  use? 
The  ten-cent  books  of  our  department  dry. 
goods  stores  are  better  stitched. 


ORIGIN  OF  THE   FRANCO  GERMAN 
WAR.— II. 

Pie  Bfgriindung  des  Deutschen  Reichs  durch 
Wilhehn  I.  Von  Heinrich  von  Sybel.  Sie- 
benter  Band.  Munich  :  R.  Oldenbourg ; 
New  York :  Westermann. 

Thb  French  have  always  maintained  that  the 
candidacy  of  Prince  Leopold  was  the  result  of 
a  Prussian  intrigue;  that  Bismarck  started  it 
in  order  to  provoke  France  to  war.  All  the 
evidence,  as  Sybel  points  out,  goes  to  show 
that  the  first  thought  of  the  candidacy  was 
purely  Spanish.  He  shows  also  that  the  offer 
of  the  crown  was  three  times  refused  by  the 
Prince,  with  the  assent  of  his  father  and  the 
approval  of  King  William;  that,  in  1869,  Bi;*- 
marck  also  advised  refusal;  that  Leopold's  ac- 
ceptance of  the  fourth  offer,  in  June,  1870, 
was  given  without  King  William's  knowledge 
or  approval,  although,  when  notified  of  the 
Prince's  decision,  the  King  declared  that  he 
would  interpose  no  objection.  Sybel  also  in- 
sists, as  the  Germans  have  always  insisted,  on 
the  fact  that  the  authority  of  King  William 
over  this  remotely  related  South  German 
branch  of  the  family  was  not  such  that  be 
could  forbid  Leopold's  acceptance  of  a  foreign 
crown.  On  the  other  hand,  Sybel  himself 
states  that  when  a  "family  council"  was  held 
at  Berlin,  in  March,  1870,  to  consider  the  third 
offer,  Bismarck  strongly  urged  the  accpptanoe 
of  the  candidacy;  that  its  rejection  for  the 
third  time,  early  in  May,  when  be  was  lying 
ill  at  Varzin,  was  a  disappointment  to  him; 
that  he  wrote  to  Qen.  Prim,  at  the  end  of  May, 
that  the  candidacy  was  an  excellent  thing 
which  must  be  kept  in  view,  but  that  negotia- 
tions should  not  be  carried  on  with  the  Prus- 
sian Government  but  with  Prince  Leopold. 
Sybel  leaves  it  to  be  inferred  that  the  fourth 
offer  was  due  to  this  encouragement,  and  he  in- 
dicates that  the  Prince's  acceptance  was  large- 
ly due  to  Bismarck's  arguments.  The  Ruma- 
nian revelations  do  not  in  any  way  contradict 
Sybel's  story.  They  simply  sive  additional 
evidence  of  Bismarck's  interest  in  the  candi- 
dacy. In  March,  1870,  Prince  Charles  of  Ru- 
mania notes,  in  bis  diary,  that  Bismarck  has 
submitted  to  King  William  a  memorial  urging 
the  acceptance  of  the  candidacy.  On  the  26th 
of  March,  Prince  Antony  writes :  "  Bismarck 
is  very  ill  content  with  the  failure  of  the  Span- 
ish combination."  Early  in  Jtme  Prince  Cbarlee 
notes  that  Leopold  is  beginning  to  regard  it  at 
his  duty  to  accept  the  Spanish  crown.  Prince 
Antony  has  informed  the  Prussian  Crown 
Prince  of  this  change  of  sentiment,  with  the 
suggestion  that  it  be  made  known  to  Bismarck. 
The  latter,  on  receiving  this  information,  bas 
written  to  Prince  Antony  urging  him  to  per- 
suade his  son  to  accept.  Privy  Councillor  Bu- 
cher  and  liajor  von  Versen  "have  bronght 
back"  very  satisfactory  accounts  of  the  proa- 
pacts  of  the  candidacy  in  tf^e  Spfmish  Cortu 


Feb.  13,  1896] 


The   Nation. 


143 


And  in  the  countrj.  The  final  offer  and  ac* 
ceptanee,  DelbrQck  concludee,  were  obyioutly 
the  work  of  theee  Prussian  agents.  Writing  for 
Germans,  DelbrQck  does  not  think  it  neceraary 
to  point  out  that  Lothar  Bacher,  the  ez-reyo- 
lutionist,  was  one  of  Bismarck^s  most  trusted 
assistants  in  the  Prussian  Foreign  Office. 

Sybel  holds  strongly  to  the  position  that  the 
candidacy  was  really  a  family  matter,  with 
which  Prussia  and  the  Prussian  Government, 
as  such,  had  nothing  to  do.  DelbrQck  admits 
that  this  is  technically  true,  but  maintains  that 
the  opposite  view,  the  French  view,  is  sub- 
stantially just.  Sybel  insists  that  the  matter 
was  never  laid  before  the  Prussian  ministry ; 
Bismarck  was  called  into  the  family  council 
not  as  Prussian  Premier,  but  as  King  William's 
personal  adviser.  DelbrQck  points  out  that 
at  the  most  important  meeting  of  this  family 
council  not  only  Bismarck,  but  his  under-sec- 
retiry,  three  other  Prussian  ministers,  and 
MoHke  were  present,  all  of  whom  favored  the 
acceptance  of  the  candidacy. 

As  regards  Bismarck*s  motives,  Sybel  de. 
Clares  himself  incompletely  informed .  He  says, 
however,  that  Bismarck  explained  his  change 
of  views  by  pointing  out  that  in  1869  Spain 
was  in  a  very  disturbed  condition;  that  the 
subsequent  suppression  of  the  Carlist  and  Re> 
publican  movements  had  strengthened  the  Gov- 
ernment and  created  a  firmer  basis  for  a  new 
throne.  Sybel  conj<*ctoree  that  Bismarck  an- 
tidpated  political  and  commercial  advantiges 
from  the  est%blishment  of  a  German  prince 
upon  the  Spanish  throne— a  conjecture  which 
Ftince  Antony's  letters  show  to  be  correct. 
That  Bismarck  did  not  expect  that  the  candi- 
dacy would  cause  war  between  France  and 
Germany  la  affirmed  by  both  Sybel  and  Del. 
brfick.  As  they  both  point  out,  there  was 
really  reason  to  anticipate  that  Leopold  might 
secure  the  throne  without  decided  opposition 
from  Napoleon.  The  Sigmaringen  princes 
were  more  closely  connected  with  the  Bona- 
partes  than  with  the  house  of  Prussia,  and  the 
French  Emperor  was  well-disposed  towards 
them.  He  bad  supported  the  candidacy  of 
Charles  for  the  throne  of  Rumania.  He  had 
indicated  no  personal  opposition  to  Leopold's 
candidacy,  although  he  was  awai-e  of  the 
negotiations.  He  had  only  indicated,  through 
Benedetti,  that  the  French  people  would  resent 
it.  The  French  people,  however,  bad  already 
resented  many  things  which  Napoleon  had  de- 
cided to  tolerate  Confronted  with  the  fait 
accompli^  he  might  accept  it :  the  more  will- 
ingly because  the  only  important  rival  candi- 
dacy, that  of  the  Orleanist  Due  de  Montpen 
sier,  was  regarded  by  him  as  '*anti  dynastic." 
Should  he  object,  however,  there  need  be  no 
trouble.  Bismarck's  treatment  of  the  whole 
question  as  a  matter  between  the  Spanish 
Oovemroent  and  Prince  Leopold,  in  which  the 
Prussian  King  was  interested  only  as  head  of 
the  house  of  Hohensollem,  and  in  which  he 
had  only  advice  to  give,  not  commands,  left 
the  road  open,  as  DelbrQck  reminds  us,  to  a 
withdrawal  by  the  Prince  himself,  in  which 
Prussia  would  appear  as  little  concerned  as  in 
his  candidacy. 

Further  than  this  Delbrfick  does  not  go,  cmd 
it  is  hardly  to  be  expected  that  a  good  Prussian 
should  go  further.  Outsiders,  however,  may 
naturally  inquire  whether  Bismarck's  mind 
was  not  probably  running  beyond  this  point. 
It  would  be  absurd  to  attribute  to  him  any  ac- 
curate forecast  of  the  extraordinary  blunders 
of  which  the  French  Government  was  after- 
wards guilty ;  but  It  does  not  seem  too  much  to 
say  that  be  must  have  realiied  that,  if  Franoe 
(Seoidad  to  object,  tha  coDtrorarsy  would  rt- 


quire  careful  handling  by  the  French  Govern- 
ment,  and  might  be  mismanaged.  Of  Napo- 
leon's ability  Bismarck  had  a  low  opinion; 
years  before  he  had  confidentially  described 
the  French  Emperor  as  *'  une  grande  incapacity 
m^connue."  Of  Gramont  he  had  frankly  re- 
marked in  I860,  *'  He  is  the  greatest  blockhead 
(DiimmXeop/)  in  Europe."  The  appointment  of 
Gramont,  of  course,  was  made  after  the  Ber- 
lin **  family  council,"  but  it  was  prior  to  Bis- 
marck's successful  effort  to  revive  the  candi 
dacyand  to  secure  Prince  Leopold's  acceptance 
of  the  fourth  offer.  If,  as  Bismarck  had  steadily 
declared  since  1866,  he  believed  war  with  France 
to  be  inevitable;  if,  as  DelbrUck  insists,  and  we 
may  readily  believe,  he  apprehended  an  alliance 
between  France,  Austria,  and  Italy,  and  the 
outbreak  of  war  at  the  time  and  on  the  issue 
which  should  best  suit  these  Powers,  it  is  not 
incredible  that  it  seemed  to  him  good  policy  to 
create  a  situation  from  which  Prussia  could 
not  well  draw  disadvantage,  and  which  might 
cause  France  to  strike  prematurely  and  under 
circumstances  which  would  alienate  the  sym- 
pathies of  Europe.  Such  a  line  of  reasoning 
would  have  required  no  greater  foresight  and 
power  of  combination  than  were  exhibited  by 
Bismarck  in  the  Schleswig  Holstein  imbroglio 
in  1864.  If  he  considered  these  possibiliUes,  it 
is  most  improbable  that  he  discussed  them;  and 
it  m%y  be  set  down  as  certain  that  be  did  not 
unbosom  himself  to  King  William.  Sybel  and 
Delbriick  agree  that  in  the  '^family  council" 
no  mention  was  made  of  a  possible  objection 
from  the  French  Government. 

In  describing  the  events  from  the  8d  to  the 
15th  of  July,  Sybel  maintains  that  neither  Na- 
poleon nor  OUivier  desired  war;  and  that  Gra- 
mont, although  the  intemperance  of  his  de- 
clarations and  despatches  made  the  preserva- 
tion of  peace  extremely  difficult,  probably 
desired  at  the  outset  only  to  infiict  upon  Prus- 
sia a  diplomatic  defeat.  This  he  really  had  in 
his  grasp  when,  in  the  absence  of  Prince  Leo- 
pold.  Prince  Antony  withdrew  his  son's  candi- 
dacy. It  was,  of  course,  a  disappointment  that 
King  William  had  refused  to  command  or 
even  counsel  the  withdrawal;  but  the  King's 
complaisance  in  discussing  the  matter  with 
Benedetti— a  course  which  Bismarck  strongly 
disapproved— the  King's  admission  that  he  had 
given  a  passive  approval  to  the  candidacy,  his 
further  admission  that  he  was  in  communicap 
tion  with  Prince  Antony,  and  his  statement 
that  if  Leopold  withdrew  he  would  approve 
the  withdrawal— concessions  which  caused  Bis- 
marck to  think  of  resigning— all  this  left  it 
open  to  France  to  assert  and  to  Europe  to  be 
lievethat  Prince  Antony's  action  was  really 
the  result  of  the  pressure  brought  to  bear  on 
King  William.  At  tbis  point  Gramont  made 
his  great  blunder.  Instead  of  contenting  him- 
self with  what  be  had  gained,  be  undertook  to 
increase  his  diplomatic  triumph  over  the  good- 
natured  and  pacific  King.  He  suggested  to 
Werther,  the  Prussian  Ambassador  at  Paris, 
that  the  King  should  send  to  the  Emperor  a 
letter  explaining  that  he  had  not  imagined  that 
the  candidacy  would  arouse  such  opposition  in 
France,  and  he  gave  Werther  a  draft  of  such 
a  letter.  Gramont  afterwards  protested  against 
this  being  called  a  *Mettre  d'excuse";  but  he 
prints  the  draft  in  his  book,  and  it  is  not  easy 
to  see  how  it  could  be  regarded  as  anything 
else.  He  then,  with  the  concurrence  of  Napo. 
leon— obtained,  according  to  Sybel,  only  be- 
cause the  Emperor  was  prostrated  by  one  of 
the  attacks  to  which  he  was  subject— directed 
Benedetti  to  obtain  from  Kisg  William  a  dis- 
tinct pledge  that  he  would  not  permit  the  can* 
didaoy  to  ba  renewed.    la  view  of  the  King's 


repeated  declarations  that  he  oould  not  forbid 
the  candidacy,  it  seems  impossible  that  Qn^ 
mont  should  have  expected  to  obtain  mch  a 
pledge.  He  asserted,  however,  that  he  did  ex- 
pect it.  Meanwhile,  the  news  of  theee  addi. 
tional  demands  had  produced  a  decided  revul- 
sion in  the  sentiment  of  Europe,  which  up  to 
this  point  bad  b#en  almost  wholly  in  favor  of 
France.  The  English  ambassador  protested; 
the  Aus^rUn  premier,  Beust,  sent  an  energetic 
remonstrance.  At  this,  Gramont  himself 
wavered,  and  the  French  cabinet  had  virtually 
decided  to  abandon  the  demand  for  guarantees 
of  the  future,  when  the  news  of  Bismarck's 
action  turned  the  scale  for  war. 

Bismarck,  as  we  have  seen,  was  far  from 
satisfied  with  King  William's  diplomacy.  He 
solicited  and  received  a  summons  to  join  the 
King  at  Ems.  Reftching  Berlin  on  tbe  12th, 
he  was  met  by  the  news  of  the  withdrawal  of 
the  candidacy.  Regarding  tbe  episode  as 
dosed,  he  decided  to  remain  in  Berlin,  at  least 
for  the  night.  On  the  13th  he  received  infor- 
mation of  the  additional  satisfaction  required 
by  France.  He  at  once  explained  to  the  Eog- 
lish  Ambassador,  Lord  Loftus,  that  tbe  action 
of  tbe  French  Government  clearly  showed 
that  the  candidacy  of  Leopold  had  been  mere- 
ly the  pretext  for  a  quarrel ;  that  Prussia 
must  now  demand  explanation,  satisfaction, 
and  guarantees  from  France.  He  telegraphed 
to  Werther  that  his  conduct  in  entertaining 
Gramont's  demand  for  an  apology  was  not  ap- 
proTed,  and  directed  him  to  take  leave  of  ab. 
sence  on  the  ground  of  ill-health.  At  six  in 
the  evening,  sitting  at  dinner  with  Moltke  and 
Roon,  he  received  a  telegram  from  Ems,  an- 
nouncing the  presentation  of  the  French  de- 
mand that  King  William  should  not  permit 
the  renewal  of  tbe  candidacy,  and  the  King's 
refusal  to  bind  himself  **&  tout  jamais."  Af- 
ter this  interview,  the  King  had  received  from 
Prince  Antony  the  formal  notice  of  the  with- 
drawal of  the  candidacy.  As  the  King  had 
promised  Benedetti  to  inform  him  of  any  such 
communication,  a  consultation  was  held  as  to 
whether  the  French  Ambassador  should  be 
admitted  to  another  interview.  In  view  of 
what  had  passed  in  the  morning,  it  was  decid- 
ed that  the  news  from  Prince  Antony  should 
be  conveyed  by  an  adjutant,  who  should  in- 
form Benedetti  that  the  King  had  nothing 
more  to  say. 

The  despatch  closed  with  the  suggestion,  on 
the  part  of  the  King,  that  Benedetti's  new 
demand  and  tbe  King's  refusal  should  be  com- 
municated to  the  Prussian  legations  and  to  the 
press.  This  suggestion  Bismarck  proceeded  to 
carry  out  in  tbe  most  literal  fashion,  drafting 
a  report  which  recited,  with  perfect  accuracy, 
BenedetU's  demand  and  the  King's  refusal  to 
grant  a  further  audience.  The  omission  of  all 
the  intermediate  details  contained  in  the  tele, 
grams  of  course  gave  Bismarck's  abstract  a 
very  different  tone.  There  was  a  suggestion  of 
a  more  abrupt  termination  of  intercoiurse  than 
had  really  occurred.  Hoon  said :  '*  That  sounds 
better."  Moltke  added:  ''It  sounded  before 
like  a  signal  for  parley  {chamadt);  now  it 
sounds  like  a  fanfare."  Delbruck  adds  that 
when,  the  n^*'^norning,  King  William  saw 
BismarcV>?Jje^--h  on  ^e  bulletin  board,  he 
re^*^fr  fCeTolly  twice,  and  baid:   *  That  meana 

mv*^ Sybel  and  DelbrQck  agree  in  treating 
the  French  charge  of  ''forgery "  with  con- 
tempt Sybel  remarks  that  the  detaih  tele- 
graphed from  Ems  were  for  Bismarck's  infor- 
mation only;  that  It  would  have  t>een  impro- 
per  to  publUh  them.  DelbrQck  t«kes  higher 
ground;  he  maintains  that  Bismarck's  report 
gave  •  truer  picture  of  what  h»d  ha|>p«»«l 


144 


Tlie   i^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1598 


than  the  longer  original  telegram.  The  King 
and  the  Ambassador  had  of  com-se  condacted 
themselyes  like  gentlemen.  Champions  of  op- 
posed causes  do  not  open  a  conflict  to-day,  as 
the  Homeric  heroes  did,  with  reciprocal  dis- 
courtesies. In  the  broader  sense,  however, 
Benedetti's  famous  statement  that  nobody  was 
insulted  at  Ems  is  untrue.  The  (German  na- 
tion was  insulted  by  the  substance  of  the 
French  demands.  The  attitude  of  the  French 
Government  throughout  the  controversy  rep. 
resented  the  tradition  of  a  French  primacy  in 
Europe,  and  this  tradition  Germany  oould  no 
longer  a<Scept.  Under  the  form  of  a  question 
of  national  etiquette  lay,  in  reality,  the  ques- 
tion that  had  been  awaiting  solution  since 
Sadowa. 

On  the  18th  the  French  Cabinet  was  informed 
of  King  William's  refusal  to  give  the  desired 
pledge ;  but  this  refusal  had  already,  so  to  say, 
been  discounted ;  and  it  seems  that  the  Minis- 
ters as  well  as  the  Emperor  were  still  disposed 
to  accept  the  situation  and  terminate  the  con. 
troversy.  On  the  14th  such  a  course  seemed 
to  them  impossible.  The  compulsory  furlough 
given  to  Werther,  the  publication  of  King 
William's  refusal  to  hold  further  conference 
with  Benedetti,  had  abruptly  changed  the  as- 
pect of  affairs.  It  was  no  longer  possible  to 
regard  Prussia  as  having  Submitted  to  a  diplo- 
matic humiliation.  The  use  which  Bismarck 
had  made  of  Gramont's  mistakes  had  com- 
pletely turned  the  tablee.  To  preserve  peace, 
France  must  now  back  down,  as  was  clearly 
indicated  in  Bismarck's  conversation  with 
Lord  Loftus.  Had  the  French  Ministers  al- 
ready heard  of  this  conversation  f  Sorel  long 
ago  conjectured  that  they  had.  Sybel  thinks 
the  assumption  impossible.  *  Delbrfick  gives 
reasons  for  thinking  that  the  report  might 
have  come  to  them  by  way  of  Vienna.  With 
or  without  this  last  incentive,  the  Government 
resolved  upon  war,  and  on  the  following  day 
war  was  declared. 

Ever  pince  this  war  the  French  have  been 
looking  for  a  scapegoat.  Bybel's  whole  narrar 
tive  seems  intended  to  direct  their  choice  to 
Gramont.  He  maintains  that  Gramont  with- 
held important  information  from  his  colleagues 
and  the  Emperor;  that  at  one  critical  moment, 
at  least,  he  disregarded  their  decision;  that  he 
made  false  statements  to  thd  Deputies.  There 
were  moments,  Sybel  thinks,  at  which  he  shrank 
from  the  responsibility  he  was  incurring,  but 
the  popular  passions  which  he  had  been  largely 
instrumental  in  arousing  were  too  strong  for 
him  to  resist.  Gramont  started  his  brief  and 
disastrous  diplomatic  campaign  on  the  assump- 
tion that  the  Spanish  candidacy  was  the  work 
of  Prussia;  he  concluded  it  and  plunged  France 
into  war  on  the  assumption  that  Austria  and 
Italy,  although  bound  by  no  formal  treaty, 
would  take  up  arms  for  France.  Both  of  these 
assumptions  Sybel  regards  as  baseless,  and 
ascribes  to  Gramont's  **  constructive  imagina- 
tion." 

Delbriick  insists  that  both  assumptions  were 
justified.  As  regards  the  first  point,  we  can- 
not but  agree  with  him.  As  regards  the 
second  and  more  important  point,  Delbrfick 
not  only  maintains,  as  we^<*^  seen,  that  the 
understanding  between  the  %MRP«^oyereigns 
was  a  complete  one,  but  asserts  that,  eve?  «if  ter 
the  declaration  of  war,  it  was  in  Napole^a's 
power  to  convert  the  informal  understai'ding 
into  a  binding  treaty.  Why,  then,  was  this 
not  done?  Bismarck  once  said  that,  even  after 
the  declaration  of  war,  Prussia  could  have 
made  peace  with  France  if  the  Prussian  €k>v. 
emment  had  been  willing  to  sacrifice  Belgium. 
In  return  for  this  concession,  Pruflsia  would 


have  obtained  free  hand  in  South  Germany. 
With  a  million  of  men  under .  arms,  the  two 
Powers  could  have  imposed  their  will  upon 
Europe.  This,  Delbriick  believes,  was  really 
Napoleon's  plan,  and  this  explains  his  post- 
ponement of  a  definite  agreement  with  Aus- 
tria. He  wished  to  hold  himself  free  to  the 
last  possible  moment  for  such  an  arrangement 
with  Prussia.  For  all  this,  however,  Del- 
briick has  no  other  evidence  than  Bismarck's 
statement,  which  does  not  go  nearly  so  far. 
Even  if  Bismarck  meant  to  say  that  a  propo- 
sition of  this  sort  was  actually  made  by  Napo- 
leon, it  does  not  follow  that  Napoleon's  whole 
policy  was  meant  to  lead  up  to  and  culminate 
in  such  a  proposal.  Delbrfick's  theory  would 
do  very  well  in  an  historical  romance;  in  the 
present  state  of  our  knowledge  it  is  out  of 
place  in  an  historical  essay. 

As  regards  the  serious  part  of  Delbrfick's 
criticism,  the  difference  between  his  views  and 
Sybel's  rests  mainly  on  their  different  interpre- 
tations of  the  material  furnished  by  Beust, 
Vitfthnm,  Prince  Napoleon,  (General  Lebrun, 
and  others  of  less  note.  Lebrun's  recent  reve- 
lations, published  since  Sybel  wrote,  tend  to 
support  Delbriick's  contentions,  but  they  are 
not  conclusive.  They  are  not  irreconcilable 
with  Sybel's  theory  that  the  Austrian  Govern- 
ment, though  really  resolved  upon  peace,  was 
temporizing  with  Napoleon,  ready  to  join  him 
if  victory  seemed  assured,  but  determined  not 
to  be  involved  with  him  in  a  common  disaster. 
As  to  Italy,  both  writers  agree  that  Victor 
Emmanuel  wished  to  support  Napoleon,  but 
that  his  ministers  were  of  a  different  opinion; 
and  both  agree  that  Italy's  action  was  practi- 
cally dependent  upon  Austria's.  Delbr^ck,  we 
think,  underrates  the  infiuence  of  the  Roman 
question  in  preventing  concerted  action  by  the 
three  Powers— an  influence  which  Prince  Na- 
poleon declares  to  have  been  decisive.  DeU 
briick  also  makes  too  little  of  the  restraint  im- 
posed upon  Austria  by  the  menacing  attitude 
of  Russia.  ' 

In  this  concluding  volume  of  Sybel's  great 
work,  as  in  the  sixth,  we  miss  the  certainty  of 
tone  which  characterized  the  first  five,  and 
which  resulted  from  the  use  of  the  Prussian 
archives— a  privilege  accorded  to  him  until 
1890  and  then  withdrawn.  We  find,  however, 
the  same  breadth  of  view  and  felicitous  clear- 
ness of  presentation;  and  these  two  last  vol- 
umes will  always  have  the  value  of  a  contem- 
porary account  by  an  historian  of  the  first 
rank,  to  whom  sources  of  information  were 
open  that  were  inaccessible  to  nearly  all  others. 
In  these  volumes,  for  example,  he  cites  verbal 
communications  from  persons  of  no  less  conse- 
quence than  the  Crown-Prince  Frederick  and 
the  Emperor  Napoleon. 


The  Pilgrim  FatherB  of  New  England  and 
their  Puritan  Successort.  By  John  Brown, 
B.A.,  D.D.  Fleming  H.  Revell  Co.  1895. 
Pp.  V,  868. 
English  writers  have  naturally  essayed  the 
story  of  Congregational  beginning^-  less  fre- 
quently than  American  students;  and  a  volume 
^n  this  theme  by  a  prominent  English  Congre- 
gationalist  therefore  appeals  to  a  home  public 
less  acquainted  with  the  details  of  colonial  his- 
tory than  are  readers  on  this  side  of  the  Atlan- 
tic, while  its  angle  of  view  is  likely  to  be  suffi- 
ciently unfamiliar  to  awaken  the  interest  of 
the  American  into  whose  hands  it  falls,  even 
though  the  facta  that  it  presents  are  for  the 
most  part  well  l^own.  Such  a  volume  is  that 
in  which  Dr.  Brown  of  Bedford  traces  the  Con- 
gregational movement  down  to  the  union  of 


the  four  New  England  colonies  in  164d.  Its  at- 
tractiveness has  been  enhanced  by  a  number  of 
illustrations  of  scenes  and  buildings  associated 
with  the  English  experiences  of  the  Plymouth 
Pilgrims,  drawn  by  Charles  Whymper;  and  the 
printed  sheets  imported  by  the  American  piil>- 
lishers  are  prefaced  with  an  introduction  by 
the  Rev.  Dr.  A.  E.  Dunning  of  Boston  as  the 
volume  is  put  forth  in  this  country. 

Dr.  Brown's  work  is  an  exceedingly  readable 
narrative,  written  in  a  style  that  sometimes 
savors  a  little  of  the  lecture-platform,  bat  is 
never  dull.  It  exhibits,  especially  in  the  por- 
tion which  has  to  do  with  experiences  in  En^;- 
land,  wide  reading  and  much  skill  in  the  pre- 
sentation of  facts.  The  chapters  which  set 
forth  the  life  that  centred  about  Scrooby  and 
the  persons  engaged  in  founding  the  Pilgrim 
church  are  noteworthy,  and  evidence  much 
acquaintance  with  the  scenes  described.  The 
early  experiences  of  the  Plymouth  colonists, 
including  the  not  very  remarkable  adventures 
of  their  first  exploring  parties,  are  told  with 
fulness  from  the  pages  of  Mourt's  'Relation' 
and  Bradford's  History.  Indeed,  by  far  the 
greater  portion  of  Dr.  Brown's  book  is  devoted 
to  the  story  of  Pilgrim  life— no  less  than  225 
of  the  343  pages  of  his  text  being  occupied  with 
the  narrative  of  the  Scrooby  company  from  its 
beginnings  to  De  Rasi^ree's  visit  in  1627. 

This  apportionment  compresses  the  sections 
of  Dr.  Brown's  volume  which  relate  to  the 
Puritan  colonies  into  disproportionate  narrow, 
ness,  and  these  chapters  are  the  least  satisfac- 
tory in  the  book,  probably  because  the  author 
is  on  less  familiar  ground.  A  New  Englander 
will  be  provoked  to  a  smile  when  Dr.  Brown 
tells  him  that  '^  no  one  living  now  "  can  read 
Eliot's  Indian  Bible,  or  that  the  Concord  of 
which  Peter  Bulkeley  was  the  first  minister 
was  **on  the  banks  of  the  Merrimac."  But 
such  slips  are  not  many,  and  the  volume  may 
be  commended  as  a  vivacious  presentation  of 
the  external  features  of  the  early  Congregar 
tional  movement. 

What  the  reader  misses  most  in  Dr.  Brown's 
pages  is  a  clear  presentation  of  the  causes 
of  that  movement  itself.  Congregationalism 
was  something  much  more  definite  than  **  the 
struggle  for  spiritual  freedom  on  English  . 
soil,"  though  Dr.  Brown  fails  to  make  it  evi- 
dent that  such  was  the  case,  and  begins  his 
account  of  the  precursors  of  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  with  the  weavers  condemned  by  the 
Council  of  Oxford  in  1165,  William  of  Occam, 
and  Wyclif .  The  nearest  approach  to  a  state- 
ment of  the  religious  principles  which  under- 
lay  the  Pilgrim  enterprise  is  in  his  summary 
of  Robinson's  controversial  volumes  in  the 
chapter  on  Robinson's  writings,  and  in  his 
account  of  the  formation  of  the  Salem  church 
after  the  story  of  Plymouth  has  been  fully  told. 
Such  an  omission  is  a  distinct  loss  of  force  to 
the  impression  which  the  narrative  makes. 

In  his  preface.  Dr.  Brown  remarks,  **  Where 
one  has  been  making  notes  extending  over  a 
lengthened  period,  it  is  not  always  easy  to  re- 
member the  source  from  which  many  points  of 
detail  were  taken."  The  discriminating  read- 
er)  without  thereby  refusing  hearty  recogni- 
tion to  the  substantial  merits  of  the  volume 
under  review,  will  regret  the  absence  of  the 
customary  signs  of  quotation  from  some  pas- 
sages where  they  might  appropriately  have 
been  employed. 


T ' — : 

RecollectionM  of  Lord  Coleridge,    By  W.  P. 

Fish  back.    Indijanapolis:  The  Bowen-Merrill 

Company.    1899. 
The  circumstances  under  which  the  author  of 


Feb.  13,  1896] 


The   l^ation. 


145 


ihli  Tolume  establMied  an  acquaintaDce  with 
tlw  late  Lord  Coleridge  hare  never  hitherto 
been  clearly  understood  by  the  world.  Indeed, 
U  it  highly  probable  that  the  existence  of  this 
acquaintance  was  known  to  few,  and  in  a  short 
time  it  might  have  become  impossible  to  pro- 
core  sufficient  evidence  to  establish  it  as  an  his- 
torical event,  whQe  its  details  would  have  been 
irretrievably  lost.  This  danger,  we  can  assure 
oor  readers,  is  now  averted.  Mr.  Fishback 
lays  before  us  an  array  of  facts  sufficient  to 
strike  scepticism  dumb.  The  acquaintance  was 
hrought  about  by  means  of  a  letter  of  intro- 
duction from  Mr.  Justice  Harlan  of  the  United 
States  Supreme  Court,  to  whom  Mr.  Fishback 
very  properly  dedicates  this  book.  The  pre- 
sentation of  this  letter  drew  forth  a  reply  from 
Lord  Coleridge  which  is  printed  in  the  text  and 
a  facsimile  of  which  appears  in  the  appendix, 
including  the  letterhead  of  crest  and  motto. 
This  must  be  accepted  as  conclusive  proof  of 
the  existence  of  the  letter,  as  well  as  of  the 
invitation  to  dinner  that  it  contained. 

It  may  well  be  that  future  historians  would 
not  have  hesitated  to  infer  on  general  prinoi- 
plee  that  such  an  invitation  was  accepted;  but 
tha  array  of  facts  is  enough  to  make  it  unne- 
cessary to  resort  to  presumptions.  The  very 
hour  of  the  dinner  is  named,  and  the  fact  that 
the  Lord  Chancellor  was  late,  owing  to  his  hav- 
ing been  kept  at  the  House  of  Lords  until  the 
Doke  of  Argyll  yielded  the  floor,  is  a  most  con- 
vincing bit  of  circumstantial  evidence.  Then 
it  is  quite  incredible  that  in  a  spurious  narra- 
tive Lord  Coleridge  should  be  represented  as 
answering  the  inquiry—"  Was  Mr.  Arnold  true 
to  his  teachings  as  the  apostle  of  the  gospel  of 
sweetness  and  light  ?  ""—with  **  Perfectly  and 
always.**  Such  conversation  as  this  cannot 
have  been  invented.  We  could  easily  point  out 
a  number  of  other  details  of  most  persuasive 
character,  but  it  would  require  the  patience  of 
a  Paley  to  demonstrate  the  cogency  of  these 
cumulative  probabilities.  On  the  whole,  we 
incline  to  think  that  when  posterity  shall  un- 
dertake to  reconstruct  our  life,  the  Fishback- 
Ccleridge  intimacy  will  be  recognised  as  one  of 
the  beet  authenticated  facts  in  history. 

We  cannot  let  it  be  supposed  that  Mr.  Fish- 
back dined  with  Lord  Coleridge  but  once. 
Thrice,  as  we  reckon,  did  they  dine,  and  twice 
take  luncheon  together.  Moreover,  the  num. 
ber  of  notes  and  letters  received  by  Mr.  Fish- 
back from  Lord  Coleridge  must  have  been  at 
least  ten,  besides  one  from  his  brother-in-law— 
the  letters  themselves  in  great  part  being  pro 
dnoed  In  evidence.  On  one  or  more  occasions 
Mr.  Fishback  occupied  a  chair  beside  Lord 
Coleridge  as  he  sat  on  the  bench,  and  by  his 
special  invitation.  We  are  bound  to  add  that 
Mr.  Fishbsck  reports  some  conversations  with 
the  Chief  Justice  which  are  interesting,  and 
that  he  has  some  good  stories  to  tell,  new  as 
well  as  old. 

We  have  perhaps  said  enough  to  suggest  that 
entertainment  is  to  be  had  from  this  book,  and 
we  cannot  find  it  in  our  heart  to  speak  alto- 
gether harshly  of  any  writer  who  promotes 
hilarity  among  mankind .  Whatever  his  weak- 
nesses may  be,  Mr.  Fishback  is  an  intelligent 
observer,  and  many  of  his  reflections  on  ways 
American  and  English  indicate  a  broad  and 
genial  nature.  His  style  is  clear  and  flowing, 
his  book  is  charmingly  printed,  and  the  Cole- 
ridge crest  and  motto  are  stamped  on  its  cover. 


Early  Rhode  laland  Houaea:  An  Historical 
and  Architectural  Study.  By  Norman  M. 
Isbam,  A.M.,  Instructor  in  Architecture, 
Brown  University,  and  Albert  F.  Brown, 


Architect.    Providence:  Preston  &  Rounds. 

1805.  Small  4to,  pp.  100  and  60  plates. 
The  preface  of  this  very  interesting  book  doses 
with  an  expression  of  the  hope  that  it  will  be 
found  to  supplement,  by  **  accurate  measured 
drawings,**  what  are  properly  called  the  *^ague 
descriptions  of  too  many  of  our  town  histories.** 
This  it  will  surely  do.  It  will  also  serve  to 
supplement  and  complete  the  rather  numerous 
books  on  "old  colonial**  architecture  which 
have  been  published  within  a  few  years.  Those 
books  are  almost  wholly  confined  to  free-hand 
drawings  of  details  intended  chiefly  for  daily 
consumption  in  the  architect's  office,  and  pho- 
tographic  process  prints  of  exteriors.  They 
are  also  devoted  to  the  more  elaborate  struc- 
tures of  the  period  before  1800.  The  book  be- 
fore us,  however,  is  devoted  to  serious  study  of 
humbler  and  therefore  more  purely  traditional 
and,  in  a  sense,  autochthonous  buildings.  It 
takes  up  two  houses  of  the  period  before  1675, 
five  of  the  next  twenty- five  years,  and  four 
more  of  the  quarter-century  before  1725— all 
in  the  region  of  northern  Rhode  Island ;  and 
these  it  treats  in  an  exhaustive  manner  with 
drawings  of  what  exists,  drawings  of  restora- 
tion, and  descriptive  text. 

'^ Northern  Rhode  Island**  is  not  a  large 
district,  and  none  of  the  old  houses  which  our 
authors  have  discovered  there  are  elaborate, 
or  offer  details  which  the  modern  architect  is 
likely  to  convey.  Their  interest  for  the  stu- 
dent of  architecture  is  in  the  simplicity  and 
freedom  of  their  design,  the  traditional  and  un- 
schooled work  of  the  village  carpenter.  In  this 
respect  they  are  a  most  valuable  help  to  an 
understanding  of  the  natural  evolution  of 
architecture,  and  of  the  architecture  that  was 
so  brought  into  being,  whether  before  or  after 
the  fifteenth  century.  Besides  the  houses  of 
the  Providence  region,  to  which  the  book  is 
especially  devoted,  those  of  Newport  are 
treated  in  chapter  v.,  and  those  of  "the  Nar- 
ragansett  country**  in  chapter  vi.  Chapter 
vii  is  given  up  to  construction.  In  this  the 
analysis  of  the  framing  in  the  old  houses  is  of 
extraordinary  value,  and  the  seven  plates 
which  illustrate  it,  Nos.  54  to  60,  are  excellent 
in  their  intention  and  almost  all  that  could 
be  asked  in  execution.  This  book  is  probably 
the  most  valuable  historic  architectural  trea- 
tise that  has  as  yet  appeared  in  America. 


The  Utopia  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  in  Latin 
from  the  edition  of  March,  1518,  and  in  Eng- 
lish from  the  first  edition  of  Ralph  Robyn- 
son*s  translation  in  1551,  with  additional 
translations.  Introduction  and  notes  by  J. 
H.  Lupton,  B.Dt  Oxford:  Clarendon  Press; 
New  York:  Macmillsn.    1895. 

Thomtia  Morua  Utopia.  Herausgegeben  von 
V.  Michelis  und  T.  Ziegler.  Beriin:  Weid- 
mann.    1895. 

Thx  unfailing  interest  of  Thomas  More's  bril- 
liant sketch  of  the  ideal  state  is  again  proved 
by  the  appearance  almost  simultaneously  of 
an  English  and  a  Oerman  edition.  The  former, 
in  a  stately  volume  of  three  hundred  and  fifty 
pages,  gives  the  text  from  the  Basle  edition  of 
Frobenius  published  in  March,  1518.  The  edi- 
tor explains  his  choice  of  this,  the  third,  edi- 
tion as  that  one  among  the  very  earliest  which 
most  nearly  represents  the  author's  own 
wishes.  On  the  other  hand,  he  has  taken  the 
earliest  edition  of  Robynson*s  translation  for 
two  apparently  very  good  reaso.<s— one,  that 
it  has  never  before  been  repr  ^td,  and  the 
other,  that,  just  because  it  is  the  earliest,  it 
beet  e^?es  the  flavor  of  antiquity  *  hich  is  its 


especial  charnu  We  have  here  also  a  short 
but  carefully  written  introduction,  giving  a 
sketch  of  More*s  life  and  of  the  drcumstancea 
under  which  the  *  Utopia'  was  produced,  to. 
gether  with  an  account  of  the  several  editions, 
and  a  comparison  of  the  ^Utopia*  with  other 
sketches  of  ideal  commonwealths,  both  earlier 
and  later.  The  editor  comes  to  a  very  sensi- 
ble conclusion  in  regard  to  the  seriousness  of 
More*s  intentions.  So  far  as  the  general  idea 
of  bringing  out  into  bold  relief  many  of  the 
political,  religious,  social,  and  economic  evils 
of  his  own  time  is  concerned,  the  purpose  is  a 
perfectly  serious  one.  To  suppose,  however, 
that  More  wished  to  present  a  serious  solution 
of  these  difficulties,  such  as  might  be  put  into 
execution  by  practical  reformers,  is  to  ignore 
the  character  of  the  man  and  the  real  signlfl. 
cance  of  bis  place  in  literature.  His  serious- 
ness is  that  of  the  man  of  imagination,  whose 
vision  of  the  future  wanders  on  in  half -playful 
fancies,  which*  are  seen  to  be  prophetic  only 
when  they  have  been*realized  by  the  very  un- 
imaginative logic  of  events. 

Besides  the  letters  about  the  *  Utopia,*  which 
were  given  in  translation  by  Robynson,  Mr. 
Lupton  priots  and  translates  three  others,  one 
by  Erasmus  to  the  printer  Frobenius,  one  by 
BudsBUB  to  Thomas  Lupset,  a  young  English- 
man, who  had  published  a  rather  hastily  pre- 
pared edition  of  the  *  Utopia*  in  Paris  in  1517, 
and  one  by  Busleyden  to  More.  The  text,  es- 
pecially that  of  the  translation,  is  beautifully 
printed,  and  is  acoompanied  by  very  full  and 
scholarly  notes.  A  glossary  of  old  English 
words  and  a  thorough  index  are  added  to  make 
this  the  most  complete  and  useful  edition  of 
the  *  Utopia  *  now  to  be  had. 

Quite  different  in  outward  appearance  is  the 
modest  German  edition,  a  cheap  little  paper 
volume  containing  only  the  Latin,  and  that 
from  the  earliest  edition  of  1516,  corrected, 
however,  by  comparison  with  that  of  Frobe- 
nius. The  editors  agree  with  Mr.  Lupton  in 
thinking  that  this  later  edition  had  probably 
the  advantage  of  More*s  personal  corrections. 
A  careful  introduction  concerns  itself  chiefly 
with  the  question,  how  far  More  was  an  imita- 
tor of  Plato,  and  how  far  he  was  an  independent 
and  even  a  distinctly  modem  man ;  with  a 
very  decided  leaning  toward  the  latter  view. 
The  text  is  neatly  printed,  uniform  in  its  style 
with  the  series  of  **  Lateinische  Litteratur- 
denkm&ler  des  xv.  and  xvi.  Jahrhunderta,**  of 
which  it  forms  a  part. 


The  Last  Cruise  of  the  Miranda.  By  Henry 
CoIUdb  Walsh.  New  York:  Transatlantic 
Publishing  Co.  1896.  8vo,  pp.  282.  With 
many  illustrations. 
In  1894  Dr.  F.  A.  Cook  organized  an  excursion 
party  to  Greenland  from  New  York,  purposing 
to  visit  the  glaciers  and  Melville  Bay,  touch  at 
Peary *s  camp,  hunt,  study  Eskimo,  and  have  a 
good  time  generally.  The  plan  was  a  good  one, 
provided  proper  attention  had  been  given  to 
details  necesssry  for  such  a  cruise.  First  of 
all  a  suitable  vessel  was  needed.  When  it  is 
explained  that  an  iron  tramp  steamer  was  se- 
lected, no  one  who  knows  anything  about  na- 
vigation in  Arctic  waters  will  be  surprised  at 
the  subsequent  experiences  of  the  party.  The 
Miranda  left  New  York  July  7  with  a  large 
company  on  board,  including  several  well, 
known  men  of  science,  geologists,  zoologists, 
literary  men,  and  travellers.  They  touched 
at  North  Sydney  and  St.  John's,  Newfound- 
land, and  on  the  17th  ran  Into  an  iceberg, 
crushing  in  the  bows  of  the  vessel  and  necee- 
siUting  a  return  to  St.  John's  for  repairs. 


146 


Tlie    IN^ation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1598 


Some  of  the  party  decided  to  con  floe  their  ez- 
ploratioDB  to  dry  land  for  the  rest  of  the 
seasoD,  bat  on  the  28th  of  Jnly  the  Miranda 
with  the  others  made  a  fresh  start  for  South 
Greenland.  After  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to 
reach  Frederikshaab,  the  expedition  brought 
up  at  Sukkertoppen,  where  several  days  were 
spent  agreeably.  In  endeayoring  to  proceed 
to  Disco  the  Miranda  ran  upon  a  reef  and 
seriously  injured  her  bottom.  By  great  good 
luck  the  American  fishing  schooner  Rigel  of 
Gloucester  was  finally  communicated  with  and 
induced  to  give  up  her  voyage,  take  the  party 
on  board,  and  accompany  the  unseaworthy 
steamer  to  a  port  of  repair.  For  this  service 
the  sum  of  $4,000  was  agreed  upon,  being  a  fare 
of  about  $68  per  head.  On  the  2l8t  of  August 
the  two  vessels  left  Greenland.  Two  days  later 
the  steamer  was  abandoned  in  a  sinking  condi- 
tion, and  with  her  loss  the  legal  claim  of  the 
rescuing  fishermen  for  remuneration  also  van- 
ished. On  the  5th  of  September  the  party  were 
landed  in  North  Sydney  by  Capt.  Dixon,  who 
seems  to  have  done  all  that  man  could  do  for 
his  unfortunate  patsengers.  The  owners  of  the 
Miranda  stood  on  their  legal  rights  and  de- 
clined to  pay  the  salvage,  but  contributed  $250 
to  a  subscription  which  was  made  by  the  party, 
the  total  amounting  to  about  half  the  original 
contract.    Mr.  Walsh  states: 

**  This  little  volume  has  been  issued  in  the 
hope  that  the  profits  arising  from  its  sale  may 
at  least  amount  to  a  fair  portion  of  the  ba- 
lance morally,  if  not  legally,  due  to  the  Cap- 
tain and  the  crew  of  the  BigeU^ 

The  party  divided  at  North  Sydney,  a  por- 
tion of  them  leaving  Halifax  for  New  York  00 
the  steamer  Portia^  and,  as  if  their  previous 
advi^ntures  were  not  enough,  off  Cuttyhunk  in 
a  fog  the  Portia  rim  down  and  sank  the 
schooner  Dora  French^  by  which  four  lives 
were  lost. 

Fourteen  of  the  party,  including  Professors 
Brewer  of  Yale  and  G.  F.  Wright  of  Oberlin, 
have  contributed  to  the  book,  which  is  pro- 
fusely  illustrated.  While  rather  a  record  of 
adventui^  than  a  contribution  to  geography, 
Mr.  Walsh's  narrative  is  lively  and  interesting, 
and  many  of  the  pictures  are  excellent.  In  an 
Arctic  library  the  book's  chief  use  will  be  to 
point  the  very  obvious  moral  implied  in  the 
inscription  said  to  have  adorned  a  sawmill, 
**  Don't  monkey  with  the  buzz-saw." 


From  ManasBoM  to  Appomattox :  Memoirs  of 
the  Civil  War  in  America.  By  James  Long- 
street,  Lieutenant  •  General  Confederate 
Army.  Illustrated.  Philadelphia :  J.  B. 
Lippincott  Co.  8vo,  pp.  xxii,  690. 
Fkw  if  any  corps  commanders  on  either  side  in 
our  civil  war  had  so  long  or  so  continuous  field 
service  as  Gen.  Longstreet.  He  was  command- 
ant of  a  brigade  in  the  first  battle  of  Bull  Run, 
and  more  than  half  of  all  who  surrendered 
with  Lee  at  Appomattox  were  under  his  orders. 
With  Stonewall  Jackson  he  shared  the  honor 
of  being  Lee's  principal  subordinate,  and  for 
energy  in  field  fightmg  he  was  brilliantly  con- 
spicuous throughout  the  war.  He  served  con- 
tinuously with  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia 
except  when  sent  to  reinforce  Bragg  prior  to 
the  battle  of  Chickamauga,  and  in  that  san- 
guinary engagement  be  commanded  the  left 
wing  of  the  Confederate  army,  whose  fortune 
it  was  to  break  and  roll  back  Rosecrans's  right. 
The  winter  campaign  in  East  Tennessee  against 
Burnside,  in  which  Knoxville  was  besieged, 
was  made  by  Longstreet  with  a  small  army 
detached  from  Bragg.  This  was  Longstreet's 
only  servioe  at  an  independent  commander; 


and  though  unsuccessful,  it  is  doubtful  if  sue 
cess  in  the  peculiar  task  assigned  him  was  pos- 
sible for  any  one.  The  spring  of  1864  found 
him  close  to  the  Virginia  boundary,  and  he 
was  recalled  to  Lee's  army  In  the  general  con- 
centration of  forces  preliminary  to  the  great 
campaigns  which  were  to  end  the  war. 

In  this  long  and  arduous  service  Longstreet 
established  a  reputation  for  impetuous  courage, 
united  with  cool-headed  composure  and  tacti* 
cal  Judgment  on  the  field,  second  to  none.  His 
capacity  to  command  as  general-in -chief  of  a 
large  army  was  not  tested  fully,  and  no  discus- 
sion is  more  useless  than  that  which  deals  with 
the  probable  success  in  independent  commands 
of  men  whose  work  has  been  subordinate. 
When  peace  came,  he  established  himself  as  a 
cotton-factor  in  New  Orleans,  and,  for  a  time, 
business  success  seemed  likely  to  compensate 
him  for  the  loss  of  his  military  position.  In 
1867,  however,  he  declared  in  favor  of  Southern 
acceptance  of  the  logical  results  of  the  war,  in- 
cluding the  political  enfranchisement  of  the 
f reedmen.  This  was  followed  by  ostracism  on 
the  part  of  his  old  friends,  which  quickly 
caused  his  business  ruin.  His  conscientious- 
ness was  proved  by  the  fact  that,  both  then 
and  since,  he  showed  no  political  aspirations, 
nor  has  he  sought  to  make  profit  by  his  change 
of  party  associations.  The  modest  ofllce  of 
Surveyor  of  Customs  was  bestowed  upon  him 
by  Gen.  Grant  unasked,  moved  by  his  personal 
generosity. 

To  the  political  enmities  thus  engendered, 
Gen.  Longstreet  attributes  the  attacks  upon 
his  military  fame  which  have  since  been  made 
by  oflSoers  who  served  with  him  in  the  Confe- 
derate army  ;  and  the  circumstances  seem  to 
Justify  him  in  doing  so.  The  form  of  these 
attacks,  however,  has  generally  been  that  of 
depreciation.  No  one  has  ventured  to  deny  his 
lion-like  courage,  his  power  to  discipline  his 
troops  and  to  infuse  his  own  invincible  energy 
into  them,  or  his  devotion  to  the  cause  he  was 
almost  the  last  to  despair  of.  But  they  say 
he  was  slow  in  the  beginnings  of  action,  that 
he  was  stubborn  in  sticking  to  his  own  ideas, 
and  that  thus  he  thwarted  his  chief  and  was 
the  proximate  cause  of  disaster  on  notable  oc- 
casions, especially  at  the  battle  of  Gettysburg. 

While,  therefore,  (General  Longstreet's  me- 
moirs cover  the  whole  period  of  his  military 
career,  we  find,  as  we  might  expect,  that  his 
vindication  from  aspersion  becomes  the  most 
stimulating  part  of  his  book.  As  to  the  battle 
of  Seven  Pines  in  front  of  Richmond,  his  chief 
critic  was  General  G.  W.  Smith,  who  suc- 
ceeded to  the  Confederate  command  in  the  in- 
terval between  the  disabling  of  General  John- 
ston and  the  appointment  of  Lee  to  the  vacant 
place.  Longstreet,  who  commanded  the  right 
wing,  not  only  narrates  fully  the  progress  of 
the  battle  from  his  standpoint,  and  argues  for 
the  intelligent  generakhip  with  which  the 
plans  of  the  Generalin-chief  were  carried  out 
on  the  right,  but  he  uses  his  old  aggressive 
tactics,  and  turns  the  tables  on  his  critic  by 
asserting  that  it  was  the  feeble  and  timid  con- 
duct of  the  left,  where  Smith  commanded  in 
person,  that  prevented  a  decisive  success  for 
the  Confederate  arms. 

As  to  Gettysburg,  the  dispute  hinges  upon 
the  orders  for  the  second  day,  when,  it  is  as- 
serted, Lee  commanded  an  attack  at  sunrise  by 
Longstreet,  who  did  not  make  it  till  afternoon. 
Longstreet  peremptorily  denies  that  such  an 
order  was  issued,  asserts  that  Lee  knew  that 
the  troops  could  not  possibly  reach  the  field 
and  attack  at  any  such  hour,  gives  evidence 
that  the  contingency  on  which  Lee  ordered 
any  attack  did  not  ocoor  till  late  in  the  fore- 


noon, and  that  Lee  personally  and  by  his 
staff  controlled  the  preliminary  movements, 
which  extended  far  beyond  the  time  at  which 
it  was  pretended  the  attack  was  to  be  made. 
Events  on  other  parts  of  the  field  are  made  to 
throw  light  upon  and  to  support  his  case.  His 
principal  critics  here  have  been  Gtons.  Early, 
Pendleton,  and  Fitchugh  Lee. 

In  the  West  he  condemns  the  generalship  of 
Bragg  at  and  after  Chickamauga,  and  espe- 
cially the  separation  of  his  own  troops  from 
Bragg's  army  when  Grant  was  preparing  for 
the  aggressive  campaign  of  Missionary  Ridge. 
The  forces  with  him,  he  asserts,  were  too 
few  for  a  quick  and  successful  coup  de  main 
against  Burnside,  yet  so  many  as  to  imperil  by 
their  absence  the  position  of  the  main  army, 
and  so  gave  to  Grant  double  chances  of 
victory. 

As  the  criticiims  upon  Longstreet  impugn 
the  value  of  his  services  to  his  chief,  it  was  na- 
tural that  he  should  give  the  evidence  of  Lee's 
confidence  in  him  as  a  soldier  and  his  trust  in 
him  as  a  faithful  odfairade  and  friend.  The 
frank  and  free  correspondence  between  them 
seems  to  establish  this  beyond  reasonable  con- 
troversy. It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  Lee 
had  fullest  faith  in  Longstreet's  ability  and 
character.  He  listened  to  his  subordinate's 
suggestions  with  respect,  and  continuously  in- 
trusted to  him  large  responsibilities  in  the  exe- 
cution of  his  plans.  When  Longstreet  had 
been  separated  from  the  Virginia  army,  Lee 
welcomed  him  back  to  his  old  place  with  a  cor- 
diality which  left  no  room  to  doubt  the  confi- 
dence between  them.  At  Appomattox  itself 
Lee  delayed  his  own  consent  to  consider  the 
necessity  of  surrender  till  Longstreet  was  con- 
vinced that  the  last  hope  was  gone. 

The  memoir  is  a  work  without  which  the 
literature  of  the  war  would  be  incomplete. 
The  personal  views  of  so  prominent  a  charac- 
ter are  part  of  the  evidence  which  cannot  be 
spared.  The  revelations  of  his  own  character 
are  a  great  help  in  Judging  of  every  event  in 
which  he  had  a  pcut.  His  methods  of  action 
and  of  thought,  his  canons  of  military  judg- 
ment, his  influence  upon  ofScers  and  men,  are 
all  worthy  of  careful  study,  because  his  promi- 
nent position  made  them  all  factors  in  the 
results  of  the  campaign  in  which  he  fought. 
It  is  impossible  within  the  limits  of  this  notice 
to  examine  all  the  evidence  which  the  official 
records  contain,  and  to  attempt  to  judge  ade- 
quately the  controversies  between  Longstreet 
and  his  critics.  That  will  be  the  work  of  his- 
torians in  the  future.  But  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  no  investigator  will  fail  to  reckon  the 
memoir  among  the  most  important  sources  of 
information  on  which  the  history  of  the  Con- 
federacy  must  be  built. 

It  is  evident  that  Longstreet  has  not  availed 
himself  of  literary  help  as  much  as  in  some 
former  papers  of  his  which  have  been  pub- 
lished. His  book  is  not  as  smooth  in  style  as 
those  papers,  but  it  gains  as  a  personal  pre- 
sentation of  himself.  His  very  mannerisms 
are  characteristic  and  snciack  at  the  camp. 
Blunt^  careless,  sometimes  even  egotistic,  he 
*'8ays  his  say"  with  a  kind  of  defiant  earnest- 
ness which  commands  attention  and  rouses 
sympathy.  Tht^fefsreDces  in  footnotes  to  the 
official  records  are  naa39*4iB^<^^  ^®  name  of 
'Rebellion  Record,'  whichi^'sSnME^*^  ™^ 
leading,  since  there  is  a  well-known 
luminous  private  publication  with  thaTb-^.. 
and  the  author's  intention  is  to  refer  to  thi 
'Official  Recordsof  the  Union  and^^e^*^ 
Armies,'  published  by  the  Govemme^ 


\ 


Feb,  13,  1896] 


Th.e    Nation. 


147 


MoiseuUs  and  the  MoUctLlar  Theory  of  Mat- 

Ur,    Bj  A.  D.  Risteen.   Boston:  Ginn  &  Co. 

1805.  Pp.2d8. 
Mb.  RiSTKKif'8  object  is  to  g^ye,  in  elementary 
form,  a  oompleta  and  connected  accoant  of 
what  is  known  of  the  constitution  of  matter. 
Boch  a  book  has  long  been  wanting,  for  a  very 
good  reason—namely,  that  there  are  few  physi- 
cists who  are  not  painfully  aware  how  far 
ftbey  fall  short  of  competence  to  produce  such 
a  treatise.  In  the  main,  Mr.  Risteen  has  done 
Tery  well.  He  has  taken  account  of  almost  all 
the  greater  contributions,  mathematical  and 
experimental;  he  has  so  put  them  together  as 
to  render  his  pages  intensely  interesting,  by 
Tirtne  of  the  thread  of  cunning  reasoning  and 
appoeita  obseryation  that  surely  leads  to  the 
heart  of  the  great  puszles  which  be  follows 
out;  and  he  argues  some  points  with  real 
power.  The  work  will  proye  extremely  useful 
to  all  who  wish  to  know  what  the  scienUflc 
theory  of  molecules  is  in  detail,  and  what  are 
the  grounds  upon  which  it  rests. 

The  great  memoir  of  Helmholtz  upon  the  con- 
seryation  of  force  assumes  that  all  material 
forces  are  between  pairs  of  particles— in  shrrt, 
are  attractions  and  repulsions.  But  measure- 
ments upon  the  elasticity  of  bodies  baye  thrown 
graye  doubts  upon  that  assumption;  and  some 
writers  upon  elasticity  profess  to  demonstrate 
that  the  forces  between  the  parts  of  solids 
cannot  be  of  that  description.  In  reprinting 
bis  memoir,  Helmholtz  undertook  to  modify  his 
expressions,  so  as  to  giye  roo^  for  the  modem 
doctrine;  but  such  modi&cations  leaye  his  ar- 
guments without  much  force,  and  depriye  the 
theory  itself  of  the  greater  part  of  its  signifi- 
cance. It  is  on  account  of  those  obsenred  facts 
about  the  elasticity  of  solids  that  KeMn  inya- 
riably  expresses  himself  with  reserye  about 
molecules— saying  that  he  belieyee  that  matter 
**has  some  kind  of  grained  structure.''  It  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  this  question  is  the 
principal  question  of  to-day  in  natural  philoso- 
phy. If  central  forces  will  suffice,  so  that  the 
oooeeryation  of  energy  is  to  retain  its  full 
meaning,  then  the  Boscoyitchian  conception  (it 
ooght  not  to  be  called  a  hypothesis)  is  the  only 
rational  way  of  thinking.  But  if  central  forces 
will  not  suffice,  we  are  driyen,  it  would  appear, 
to  oonoeiye  of  matter  as  continuous,  and  there- 
fore  as  a  fluid  in  some  respects  homogeneous, 
throughout  space.  Thus  we  come  to  that  order 
of  ideas  about  media  for  the  action  of  forces, 
the  attraction  of  force-lines,  etc.,  which  baye 
marked  the  physics  of  Great  Britain  since  the 
time  of  Faraday.  Here  we  find  a  rational  mo- 
tiye  for  the  yortex  theory  of  atoms.  Some- 
thing of  this  great  discussion  might  well  baye 
been  allowed  to  appear  in  the  introductory 
chapter  of  a  work  on  the  constitution  of  mat- 
ter; but  Mr.  Risteen  finds  no  place  between  his 
coyers  for  any  portion  of  it.  Though  he  touch- 
es upon  crjTstals,  be  neyer  speaks  of  any  doubts 
as  to  the  sufficiency  of  central  forces.  He  neyer 
mentions  the  name  of  Boscoyitch.  He  speaks 
of  the  yortex  theory,  but  does  not  show  in  wh^t 
its  real  peculiarities  consist,  nor  where  the  sug- 
gestion really  came  from. 

The  kinetical  theory  of  gases,  which  now  be* 
gins  to  take  on  the  highest  do«r^A  of  3«irtitude 
and  something  like  cr --vloteness,  is  very  well 
elocidatedio  ^'  --liteen's  second  chapter;  yet 
we  air  ■'■"*  ^^'^  ^*>«  ^»»t  researches  of  Ama- 
..afaoold  be  paesed  by  without  menUon  (except 
Jiat  one  consUnt  is  borrowed  from  him). 

la  tbe  molecular  theory  of  liquids  nothing  is 
Mid,  aitber  pro  or  cow,  in  regard  to  the 
theorem  of  the  yirial  of  aausius,  which,  it 
•eems  to  us,  ought  to  be  the  cynosure  to  guide  our 
ipacnlations  upon  this  subject.    In  one  passage 


we  are  said  to  be  ignorant  what  the  quadratic 
mean  of  the  molecular  translational  yelodtiee 
in  a  liquid  may  be  at  a  giyen  temperature;  in 
another  place  it  would  seem  to  be  assumed 
that  the  yelocities  in  liquids  and  solids  are  less 
than  in  the  gases  of  the  same  constitution  at 
the  same  temperature.  If  the  theorem  of  the 
yirial  is  true,  this  question  is  easily  answered ; 
if  it  is  not  admitted,  the  objections  to  it  ought 
to  be  stated.  A  strong  attraction  between  the 
molecules  of  a  liquid  Is  manifest  in  its  surface- 
tension,  its  heat  of  yaporization,  etc.  Its  de- 
finite density  is  an  effect  of  equilibrium  be- 
tween this  attraction  and  the  translational  ye- 
locitlee  of  the  molecules.  It  would  thus  seem 
to  be  evident  that  the  velocities  of  molecules  in 
the  liquid  cannot  be  less  than  they  are  in  its 
satiurated  vapor  above  it.  Mr.  Risteen  yery 
promisingly  commences  an  explanation  of  the 
inoompressibility  of  liquids,  by  attributing  it 
to  the  centrifugal  force  of  the  molecules.  No 
doubt  he  is  right,  as  far  as  he  goes;  but  a  more 
precise  elucidation  is  desirable. 

The  molecular  theory  of  solids  appears  to  be 
beyond  Mr.  Rlsteen's  present  powers.  At  all 
evente,  he  has  not  entered  into  the  considera- 
tions which  are  prerequisite  to  any  serious  at- 
tempt at  an  outline  explanation  of  the  proper- 
ties of  these  bodies. 

In  a  chapter  on  the  size  of  molecules,  the 
author  calls  attention  to  the  extreme  vague- 
ness of  the  idea  of  the  size  of  a  molecule.  One 
might  as  well  attempt  to  measure  in  inches  the 
diameter  of  a  crowd  of  people  before  a  street 
show.  It  has  no  definite  limits.  We  measure 
the  length  of  a  bar,  because  if  we  attempt  to 
compress  it  we  meet  with  a  counter  pressure 
which,  before  we  have  sensibly  reduced  its 
length,  exceeds  any  force  we  can  bring  to  bear 
upon  it.  But  it  is  not  likely  that  molecules 
have  this  property  to  anything  like  the  same 
degree.  When  we  speak  of  their  size  we  do 
not  know  what  we  mean;  and  one  method  of 
determination  might  perfectly  well  give  one 
result,  and  another  a  widely  different  result, 
and  yet  both  might,  in  their  several  senses,  be 
correct.  It  is,  therefore,  a  very  remarkable 
fact  that  diiTerent  calculations  of  the  size  of 
molecules  based  upon  the  most  widely  diverse 
considerations  turn  out  to  agree  yery  well. 
Nobody  eyer  supposed  that  in  asking  how  large 
a  molecule  was,  he  was  asking  anything  much 
more  definite  than  if  he  had  asked  what  the 
average  size  of  an  ordinary  portable  object  is. 
The  answer  in  the  latter  case  might  be,  its  size 
is  somewhere  from  a  fraction  of  an  inch  to  a 
few  yards.  The  size  of  molecules  seems  to  be 
known  quite  as  definitely.  The* diameter  is 
somewhere  about  a  ten-millionth  or  hundred, 
millionth  of  an  inch. 

A  final  chapter  is  devoted  to  speculations  in 
regard  to  the  constitution  of  molecules.  Mr. 
Risteen  defends  very  ingeniously  the  equation 
by  which  the  number  of  **  degrees  of  freedom" 
of  a  molecule  is  supposed  to  be  determined. 
He  has,  on  the  whole,  proved  that  be  has  the 
power  to  produce  a  treatise  upon  the  subject 
adequate  to  the  needs  of  students;  and  if  the 
weak  spots  of  his  first  essay  receive  the  neces- 
sary attention,  we  may  hope  that  a  perfected 
edition  will  meet  every  desideratum. 


Egyptian  Decorative  Art :  A  Ck>urse  of  Lec- 
tures delivered  at  the  Royal  Institution. 
By  W.  M.  Flinders  Petrie,  D.C.L.,  Edwards 
Professor  of  Egyptology,  University  College, 
London.  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1885.  12mo, 
pp.  ix,  128. 

Pbofbssob  Petrie  is  the  most  active  popular- 
izer  of  Egyptological  subjects  at  the  present 


time,  and  is,  in  this  Una,  a  worthy  sueceesor  of 
the  late  Amelia  B.  Edwards,  for  whom  his 
professorial  chair  is  named.  He  lacks  some- 
thing of  the  literary  charm  which  belonged  to 
his  patron,  but  the  greater  stores  of  his  special 
and  detailed  knowledge  make  ample  atone- 
ment in  the  mind  of  those  who  desire  first  hand 
facts  more  than  figures  of  speech.  His  own 
diction,  moreover,  bis  often  a  personal  ond 
rugged  character,  resembling  a  natural  con- 
versational tone,  which  is  not  lacking  in  at- 
tractiveness. 

Professor  Petrie  won  his  spurs  as  an  explorer 
and  excavator  rather  than  as  a  professor,  and 
has  paid  special  attention  to  the  forms  of 
characters,  signv,  art-motives,  and  architectu- 
ral designu,  with  a  view  to  disc  over  ing  their 
origin  and  genesis.  We  are  all  familiar  with 
most  of  the  artistic  forms  and  devices  por- 
trayed  by  him  in  this  volume,  and  the  charm 
of  his  treatment  U  to  be  found  in  the  tracing 
of  artistic  motives  from  their  historical  origi- 
nation down  through  their  successive  stages 
of  development  and  then  into  the  art  of  other 
lands.  This  last  is  done  to  only  a  limited  de- 
gree, yet  sufficiently  to  show  that  a  wide,  va- 
ried, and  interesting  field  is  opened  to  view. 
The  stages  of  decoration  treated  are  the  geo- 
metrical, the  natural,  the  structural,  and  the 
symbolic.  In  each  case  the  text  is  well  illus- 
trated with  appropriate  drawings  taken  from 
printed  books,  public  and  private  collections, 
and  from  a  fund  of  personsl  knowledge  which 
has  resulted  from  long-continued  and  yarded 
observation  at  home  and  afield. 

The  office  of  the  critic  is  very  circumscribed 
in  connection  with  the  actual  contents  of  such 
a  work  as  this.  It  is  the  fruit  of  investigation 
in  which  the  author  stands  well-nigh  alone,  and 
the  reader  must  almost  of  necessity  stand  in  the 
place  of  the  learner.  Nevertheless,  the  reader 
cannot  but  wish  that  the  author  had  seen  fit  to 
go  into  greater  detail  at  some  points,  and  one 
feels  sure  that  far  more  of  fact  and  informa. 
tion  might  have  been  added  had  the  call  been 
made.  Much  of  the  information  might  be 
found  Bcatteied  through  other  works,  but  that 
which  is  new  is  welcome  and  valuable.  The 
principcd  difficulty  is  that  the  subject  announced 
in  the  title  is  nat  exhausted,  and  more  remains 
to  be  told  than  here  comes  to  expression.  For 
instance,  a  most  interesting  observation  upon 
scarab  decoratior,  made  in  the  first  volume  of 
his  *  History  of  Egypt  *  (p.  119),  is  not  so  much 
as  mentioned,  though  it  is  one  of  the  most  sug- 
gestiye  that  have  been  made  in  any  book  in  re- 
cent times.  One  may  therefore  be  justified  in 
criticising  the  author  for  failing  to  take  his 
task  seriously  enough,  and  for  being  satisfied 
to  put  forth  a  book  that  skims  the  surface, 
rather  than  a  treatise.  At  the  tame  time  it 
must  be  acknowledged  that  Mr.  Petrie  was 
writing  for  popular  reading  rather  than  with 
the  purpose  of  instructing  specialists.  Those 
to  whom  this  is  sufficient  excuse  may  read  the 
volume  with  profit  and  interest. 


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Harper'a  MontMy.    1895.    2  Tols.    Harpers. 
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The    Nation. 


NEW    YORK,    THURSDAY,    FEBRUARY   20,    J8W. 


The  Week. 


Ths  final  vote  in  the  House  on  the  free- 
coinage  issue  on  Friday  was  considerably 
larger  than  in  committee  of  the  whole  on 
the  previous  day— 305  on  both  sides,  as 
against  270— but  equally  disastrous  to  the 
Bilverites,  who  fell  considerably  short  of 
polling  one-third,  only  90  out  of  305.  An 
analysis  of  the  vote  shows  how  deceptive 
Is  the  apparent  strength  of  free  coinage 
in  the  Senate  as  an  index  of  popular  sen- 
timent. The  nine  States  in  the  Rocky 
Mountain  region  and  on  the.  Pacific  Slope 
— Colorado,  Wyoming,  Montana,  Idaho, 
Utah,  Nevada,  California,  Oregon,  and 
Washington — were  solid  for  free  coinage 
in  the  Senate  save  for  one  nay  vote  from 
Oregon  ;  and  those  nine  States  have  one- 
fifth  of  all  the  Senators.  The  same  nine 
States  were  solid  on  the  same  side  in  the 
House  on  Friday,  but  they  have  altogether 
only  one-twentieth  of  the  Representatives. 
The  utter  hopelessness  of  the  silver  cause 
is  demonstrated  by  the  fact  that  the  great 
States  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and 
north  of  the  Ohio  and  Potomac,  which 
dominate  the  popular  branch,  are  already 
overwhelmingly  against  it,  and  growing 
more  pronounced  against  it  in  each  Con- 
gress. Even  in  the  Senate  the  changes 
already  assured  will  deprive  the  silverites 
of  their  present  narrow  majority  after  the 
4th  of  March,  1897. 


^ 


Senator  Davis  of  Minnesota  has  made 
his  speech  in  favor  of  the  Davis  resolu- 
tion reported  by  the  committee  on  for- 
eign relations.  This  resolution  has  fallen 
so  deajd  in  the  country  at  large  that  few 
people  now  remember  its  existence.  Mr. 
Davis  has  drawn  attention  to  the  rea- 
sons for  its  early  demise  and  speedy  in- 
terment. The  resolution,  of  course,  had 
its  rise  and  its  very  raison  d^itre  in 
the  Venezuelan  boundary  dispute.  But 
as  this  dispute  was  over  a  question  of 
fact,  viz.,  Where  did  a  certain  boun- 
dary run  ?  and  did  not  necessarily  in- 
volve the  acquisition  of  new  territory  by 
a  European  Power,  still  less  the  intro- 
duction of  a  European  system  on  this 
continent,  the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  not 
concerned  in  the  matter  one  way  or  the 
other.  Mr.  Olney  and  the  President 
lugged  it  in,  however.  In  order  to  leave 
themselves  a  line  of  retreat,  they  said 
that  if  Venezuela  and  Great  Britain 
should  come  to  an  agreement  as  to  the 
boundary,  of  course  we  should  have 
nothing  to  say  against  it.  **  What*s 
that?*'  exclaims  Davis.  **  Beg  your  par- 
don; that  gives  away  Monroe  completely. 
Venezuela  must  not  be  allowed  to  cede 
her  territory.  It  is  the  getting  of  the 
t9rri^>7»  iMid  Do(  the  method  of  getthig 


it,  that  threatens  our  security."  That 
notion  shuts  off  one  method  of  end- 
ing the  dispute.  What  is  the  alterna- 
tive? Arbitration,  says  Davis.  But  sup- 
pose the  arbitrators  should  give  away 
the  very  same  territory  that  Venezuela 
offered  to  give  without  arbitration.  It 
is  still  the  giving  of  the  territory,  and 
not  the  method  of  giving,  that  threatens 
our  security.  So  there  is  logically  no  way 
of  settling  the  question.  After  you  have 
once  introduced  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
where  it  does  not  belong,  then  in  order  to 
reach  any  solution  whatever  you  must  go 
back  to  the  beginning  and  reexamine  your 
premises.  You  pitchforked  it  in  and  now 
you  must  pitchfork  it  out.  It  is  gratify- 
ing to  learn,  however,  from  the  author  of 
the  Davis  resolution  that  there  will  be  no 
war. 


Congress  cannot  stop  to  debate  about 
going  to  war,  but  it  can  spend  days  in  de- 
nouncing attempts  to  save  money  and  put 
an  end  to  governmental  abuses.  The  agri- 
cultural appropriation  bill  is  making  slow 
progress  in  the  House  on  account  of  the 
mad  rush  of  speakers  who  want  to  expose 
Secretary  Morton  for  cutting  down  their 
supplies  of  seeds.  Things  have  reached 
such  a  pass  that,  as  one  indignant  mem- 
ber said,  he  had  but  fifteen  grape  cuttings 
and  twenty-five  strawberry  plants  to  dis- 
tribute among  216,000  constituents.  Can 
the  Government  long  continue  or  conven- 
tions be  packed  under  such  a  system  ? 
The  only  remedy  was  pointed  out  by  Mr. 
Livingston  of  Georgia.  Get  a  Secretary 
•*in  touch  with  the  people  "—above  all, 
with  the  people  that  plough  all  the  week, 
then  unhitch  their  mule  and  ride  him  ten 
miles  on  Saturday  night  to  get  their  mail 
in  which  they  find  a  few  papers  of  Gov- 
ernment seeds,  and  cry  out,  '*  I  am  a  citi- 
zen of  a  great  country,  and  I  am  not  for- 
gotten, though  never  so  humble  I  '*  There 
is  no  answering  this,  but  the  trouble  is 
that  Mr.  Livingston  and  his  kind  have  so 
many  other  awkward  and  expensive  ways 
of  reminding  the  plain  people  that  they 
are  citizens  of  a  great  country.  A  little 
while  ago  he  was  having  us  declare  war 
with  England  for  this  purpose;  and  for 
the  same  end  he  says  we  must  build  the 
Nicaragua  Canal,  spend  millions  on  a  navy, 
and  debase  the  currency.  If  seeds  alone 
would  do  it,  we  might  not  object;  but  the 
entire  process  of  making  us  citizens  of  a 
great  country  is  certain  to  be  so  ruinous 
that  we  had  better  draw  the  line  firmly 
even  at  worthless  and  expensive  seeds. 


The  movement  for  a  treaty  of  arbitra- 
tion with  Great  Britain  is  gaining  ground 
rapidly,  and  many  newspapers  which 
were  hot  for  war  on  the  subject  of  Ve- 
nezuela a  few  weeks  ago,  are  now  urging 
the  negotiation  of  such  a  treaty.  One  of 
th0  sdYfiptagee  of  iirbitr»tioD|  whic))  bt^ 


not  received  the  attention  it  deserves,  is 
that  it  would  largely  dispense  with  the 
need  of  fieets  and  fortifications.  The 
only  object  of  battle-ships  and  heavy 
guns  is  fighting.  The  object  of  arbitra- 
tion is  to  avoid  fighting.  Fighting  is  ex- 
pensive, while  arbitration  is  cheap.  It 
may  be  assumed  that  a  treaty  of  arbitra- 
tion with  England  would  enable  as  to 
dispense  with  90  per  cent,  of  the  forts 
and  fleets  that  the  Jingoes  are  calling 
for,  because  none  of  them  ever  talk  of 
war  with  any  other  country.  /We  never 
hear  any  speeches  from  Lodge  or  Frye 
about  war  with  France  or  Germany  or 
Russia.  If  the  Jingoes  were  deprived  of 
the  chance  of  war  with  England,  they 
would  be  reduced  to  silence  or  compelled 
to  address  themselves  to  the  arts  of 
peace.  i^A  chance  occasion  might  arise 
two  o(  three  times  in  a  century  for 
trouble  with  second  or  third-rate  Powers 
like  Spain  or  Chili,  but  these  would  not 
serve  ss  a  basis  for  a  permanent  Jingo 
party,  or  for  extensive  seacoast  defences 
and  a  corresponding  increase  in  the  regu- 
Jar  army.  We  are  glad  to  learn  that  a 
conference  of  the  friends  of  arbitration  is 
soon  to  be  held  at  Washington  city,  at 
which  the  various  branch  societies  will 
be  represented  and  the  work  of  organisa- 
tion laid  out  on  a  large  scale. 


The  Evening  Post  has  taken  some 
pains  to  procure  a  history  of  the  Vene- 
zuelan concessons  to  American  citizens 
which  have  cut  some  figure  in  the  boun- 
dary dispute  with  British  Guiana.  We 
are  glad  to  be  able  to  say  that  at  no  pe- 
riod in  the  history  of  the  Manoa  Compa- 
ny, or  of  its  successor,  the  Orinoco  Com- 
pany, so  far  as  these  researches  go,  has  the 
existence  of  American  interests  in  Vene- 
zuela had  any  influence  with  our  Govern- 
ment in  the  premises,  or  any  bearing  in 
the  dispute.  On  the  contrary,  it  appears 
that  when  Mr.  01ney*s  attention  was  at- 
tracted to  those  interests  by  a  rather  loud- 
sounding  newspaper  interview  or  letter  of 
one  of  the  Manoans,  he  took  pains  to  let 
the  Government  of  Venezuela  know  that 
such  interests  could  in  no  way  affect  the 
treatment  of  the  boundary  question  by  us. 
The  late  Secretary  Gresham,  we  have  rea- 
son to  believe,  went  a  little  further  and 
warned  certain  persons  in  official  life  not 
to  connect  themselves  privately  with  mat- 
ters in  which  the  Government  might  be 
publicly  concerned.  While  it  appears 
that  our  Government  was  entirely  dear  of 
influence  or  bias  on  this  score,  it  is  equally 
plain  that  the  Venezuelan  authorities  ex- 
pected to  enlist  political  influence  in  this 
country  by  grants  of  land  with  indeflnlte 
boundaries,  and  that  the  grantees,  con- 
struing **  the  limits  of  British  Guiana  " 
to  suit  themselves,  entered  upon  the  dis- 
puted territory;  that  when  the  British  au* 
thpritlef  waro^  tb^m  off,  Gen.  Gusmsn 


150 


'Pile    Nation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1599 


Blanco  complained  of  this  act  as  an  as- 
sumption of  British  authority  over  the 
territory  in  question,  in  violation  of 
the  agreement  to  consider  it  neutral 
ground,  and  ignored  completely  the  fact 
that  the  concessionaries  had  first  invaded 
it  and  were  acting  under  Venesuelan  au- 
thority; that  Blanco  was  himself  a  stock- 
holder of  the  Manoa  Company;  that  when 
he  found  out  in  1886  that  the  Manoans 
were  without  influence  at  Washington, 
the  land  grant  was  cancelled  and  given  to 
George  TurnbuU;  and  that  Mr.  TurnbuU 
went  to  work  to  develop  the  property  or 
some  portion  of  it.  Affairs  ran  on  in  this 
way  until  last  June,  when  the  TurnbuU 
concession  was  revoked  and  that  of  the 
Manoa  Company  revived.  It  was  then 
turned  over  to  a  Wisconsin  corporation 
called  the  Orinoco  Company,  in  which 
Mr.  Donald  Grant  of  Faribault,  Minne- 
sota, was  the  most  important  partner. 
The  stock  of  the  new  company  was  fix- 
ed at  $25,000,000,  but,  aside  from  this 
rather  imposing  capitalization  and  one  or 
two  journeys  to  Venezuela  by  the  new 
proprietors,  nothing  of  much  interest  has 
been  done.  It  is  said  that  the  Govern- 
ment of  Venezuela  agrees  that,  in  case 
the  disputed  territory  goes  eventually  to 
British  Guiana,  it  will  grant  territory  of 
equal  extent  and  value  to  the  concession- 
aries, but  in  view  of  the  frequent  revolu- 
tions in  that  country  such  a  promise  can- 
not be  considered  a  very  safe  one  for  the 
investment  of  money. 


One  of  the  pending  proposals  of  the 
Senate  is  to  kill  all  the  seals  on  the  Pri- 
byloff  Islands,  to  save  them^  from  the 
pelagic  sealers — evidently  a  reminiscence 
of  the  famous  policy  of  the  beasts  which 
'*  committed  suicide  to  save  themselves 
from  slaughter."  The  seals  are,  however, 
not  to  be  saved  in  this  way  without  an 
attempt  to  get  Great  Britain  to  agree  to 
more  stringent  regulations.  It  is  difficult 
to  see  what  Great  Britain  can  do,  how- 
ever, in  view  of  the  fact  that  we  have 
found  out,  since  the  Bering  Sea  arbitra- 
tion, that  a  large  proportion  of  the  early 
sealers  who  made  the  trouble  were  Ameri- 
cans. Will  not  these  wicked  Americans 
continue  their  operations  no  matter  what 
Great  Britain  can  say  or  do  ?  We  fear 
they  will,  and  therefore  the  seals  must  go. 
We  shall  be  only  too  thankful  if  they  go 
without  causing  war.  We  were  very  near 
saving  these  interesting  beasts  by  a 
slaughter  of  men  which  would  have  beaten 
that  of  the  pelagic  villains  hollow  in  num- 
bers and  atrocity. 


We  are  now  within  four  months  of  the 
Republican  national  convention,  and  the 
choice  of  delegates  has  already  begun, 
<*8nap**  conventions  having  been  held  in 
some  Congressional  districts  of  New  York, 
Pennsylvania,  and  two  or  three  Southern 
States.  The  time  has  therefore  arrived 
when  the  political  arithmeticians  begin  to 
construct  tables  of  the  probable  totals  for 
the  various  candidates,  and  the  outlook  is 


really  becoming  sufficiently  clear  to  justify 
an  opinion  as  to  the  probable  outcome. 
The  most  striking  feature  of  the  situation 
is  the  strength  of  McKinley,  particularly 
in  the  West.  The  Chicago  Tribune  and 
some  other  lesding  Republican  newspa- 
pers in  that  section  have  made  canvasses 
in  several  important  States  which  seem  to 
leave  no  doubt  that  the  Ohio  candidate 
has,  at  present,  more  support  than  all  his 
rivals  together.  In  Indiana  he  seems  like- 
ly to  secure  two-thirds  of  the  delegation; 
in  Illinois,  ^  out  of  151  editors  of  Repub- 
lican organs  throughout  the  State,  includ- 
ing the  country  weeklies,  which  usually 
refiect  correctly  local  sentiment,  are  for 
him  against  the  field;  in  Wisconsin,  out  of 
53  well-known  Republicans  in  different 
parts  of  the  State  questioned  by  the  Mil- 
waukee Sentinel^  34  are  for  McKinley,  as 
against  10  for  other  candidates  and  9  who 
express  no  preference;  in  Michigan,  Re- 
publican editors  in  34  counties  report  him 
first  choice  in  22;  in  Missouri  out  of  57 
Republican  editors  51  favor  him.  A  curi- 
ous and  somewhat  unexpected  feature  of 
the  canvass  is  the  fact  that  McKinley  is 
stronger  in  the  agricultural  States  of  the 
West  than  in  the  manufacturing  States  of 
the  East.  This  is  due  in  part,  of  course, 
to  the  facts  that  New  England  has  a  can- 
didate in  Reed,  and  that  the  New  York 
and  Pennsylvania  delegations  are  going  to 
St.  Louis  nominally  for  Morton  and  Quay 
respectively;  but  even  as  second  choice 
the  Ohio  aspirant  is  less  of  a  favorite  in 
the  East  than  might  have  been  expected. 


McKinley*s  prominence  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  a  high  tariff  gives  him  a  tre- 
mendous advantage  over  his  rivals  in 
**  the  sinews  of  war."  Since  slavery  was 
abolished,  and  a  small  class  of  rich  plant- 
ers in  the  South  ceased  to  have  an  im- 
mense pecuniary  interest  in  the  control 
of  the  Government,  we  have  never  seen  a 
time  when  so  much  capital  saw  its  own 
advantage  in  the  election  to  the  Presi- 
dency of  one  man  as  the  protected  inte- 
rests have  to-day  in  the  elevation  of  Mc- 
Kinley. His  managers  consequently  can 
spend  money  with  profusion  in  all  of  the 
many  ways  that  contribute  to  the  control 
of  caucuses  and  conventions,  and  to  the 
holding  in  line  of  delegates  at  St  Louis. 
This  last  is  a  matter  of  great  importance 
as  regards  delegates  from  the  South,  who 
oftentimes  can  be  bought  more  than  once. 
In  any  such  contest  the  representative  of 
the  protected  interests  is  pretty  sure  to 
come  out  ahead^  Already  the  Reed  men 
complain  that  some  of  the  delegates  from 
Louisiana  whom  ex-Gov.  Kellogg  sup- 
posed that  he  had  '* fixed"  for  the 
Speaker,  are  out  for  McKinley.  The  lat- 
ter has  still  another  advantage  ovor  his 
rivals  in  the  fact  that  he  is  now  out  of 
office,  and  can  be  '*  all  things  to  all  men," 
without  being  compelled  to  make  choice 
between  claimants  for  the  privileges  that 
the  Speaker  of  the  House  dispenses,  or  to 
vote  either  for  or  against  the  silver ites,  as 
the  Iowa  Senator  had  to  do  the  other 


day,  or  to  decide  whether  he  will  stand 
with  the  boss  or  with  the  people,  as  the 
Governor  of  New  York  will  soon  be  re- 
quired to  do.  As  regards  silver  especially, 
this  helps  McKinley  in  the  silver  States, 
which  have  delegates  enough  to  be  worth 
considering. 


There  is  no  question  whatever  of  the 
truth  and  accuracy  of  the  Tribune* s  state- 
ment of  Platt*s  Greater  New  York  plans. 
No  other  scheme  of  political  rascality  ever 
planned  against  the  people  of  this  city 
equals  this.  Lauterbach  was  so  delighted 
with  it  when  Piatt  unfolded  it  to  him  that 
he  could  not  keep  still  about  it,  but  at  once 
told  the  Republican  Boys  of  it.  It  means 
political  places  and  plunder  to  an  extent 
never  dreamed  of  before,  and  for  that  rea- 
son not  only  the  Republican  politicians  of 
this  city,  but  those  of  all  parts  of  the 
State,  will  be  in  favor  of  it.  This  is  the 
danger  which  confronts  the  city.  Piatt's 
power  over  the  Legislature  is  absolute. 
He  holds  up  before  all  the  Republican 
members  and  politicians  from  the  rural 
districts  the  prospect  of  rule  by  Republi- 
can commissions  of  the  great  cities  of 
New  York  and  Brooklyn  for  an  indefinite 
period,  and  they  cannot  resist  its  at- 
traction. Then  he  proposes  to  create, 
with  his  liquor-tax  bill,  a  State  machine 
with  **  places  "  for  hundreds  of  men,  with 
control  of  the  vast  liquor  interests  of  the 
whole  State,  and  with  the  large  cities 
taxed  for  the  benefit  of  ^he  rural  sections. 
In  the  presence  of  all  this  gain  for  the 
rural  sections,  the  **  hayseed "  legislator 
does  not  '*  stand  dumb,"  but  becomes  vo- 
ciferous with  enthusiasm  for  Piatt. 


It  must  be  realized  by  all  opponents  of 
Piatt's  designs  that  he  is  by  far  the  most 
powerful  boss  this  State  has  ever  seen. 
Tammany  bosses  have  had  merely  local 
power.  They  have  had  no  strength  be- 
hind them  outside  this  city.  Piatt  has 
the  State  behind  him,  with  a  large  Re- 
publican majority,  for  it  is  in  the  rural 
sections  that  his  machine  is  most  power- 
ful. For  the  first  time  now  he  has  full 
control  of  the  city  machine,  and  his  con- 
trol of  the  Legislature  is  making  it  possi- 
ble for  him  to  plunder  the  cities  for  the 
benefit  of  the  country.  There  has  been 
much  talk  about  Republican  opposition 
to  him  in  Brooklyn,  but  it  is  suspected 
that  he  has  been  able  to  overcome  this 
during  the  past  week.  In  fact,  a  boss 
with  such  a  magnificent  programme  of 
plunder  as  he  is  unfolding  is  invincible  in 
his  own  party.  No  politician  can  hold 
out  long  before  so  dazzling  a  vision.  If 
the  programme  is  to  be  carried  out,  if  all 
the  plunder  is  to  be  gathered  into  the 
hands  of  the  boss  for  distribution,  the 
first  thought  of  every  practical  politician 
is  not  to  be  " left"  when  the  distribution 
begins.  It  behooves  all  inhabitants  of 
the  two  cities  who  do  not  wish  to  have 
their  power  to  govern  themselves  filched 
froin/,them,  to  wake  up  to  the  danger 


Feb.  20,  1896] 


Th.e    ISTation. 


151 


which  menaces  them  and  prepare  at  once 
to  ward  it  off. 


The  proposal. to  abolish  the  institution 
of  a  Congressional  and  legislative  chaplain 
of  course  encounters  the  opposition  of  con- 
servatives who  always  stand  for  the  main- 
tenance of  old  traditions,  but  it  is  really 
not  so  radical  a  suggestion  and  not  so 
unlikely  to  be  accepted  as  was  the  idea  of 
abolishing  Fast* Day  in  Massachusetts 
when  it  was  first  brought-  forward  a  few 
years  ago.  Indeed,  it  is  entirely  in  keep- 
ing with  the  whole  tendency  of  the  age 
towards  the  disappearance  of  the  public 
prayer.  Col.  T.  W.  Higginson,  in  the 
Christian  Register^  notes  the  revolution 
that  has  come  about  within  his  recollec- 
tion in  the  matter  of  saying  grace  at  the 
table,  or**  asking  the  blessing,'*  as  it  is 
commonly  called  in  New  England,  and 
having  family  prayers.  In  his  boyhood 
there  was  scarcely  a  family  in  the  First 
Parish  of  Cambridge  which  did  not  ob- 
serve each  of  these  customs ;  he  thinks 
that  twenty  would  be  a  large  estimate  of 
the  number  which  still  keep  up  the  prac- 
tice. At  a  public  dinner  over  which  Col. 
Higginson  presided  last  winter,  he  asked 
**one  of  the  most  eminent  of  Unitarian 
clergymen,**  who  sat  near  him,  whether 
he  had  better  invite  anybody  to  say  grace, 
and  was  promptly  informed  that  it  was 
ceasing  to  be  customary,  and  advised 
against  it.  Last  summer  **  another  emi- 
nent Unitarian  minister  '*  dined  with  him, 
and  the  host,  as  a  matter  of  courtesy  to 
him,  requested  him  to  ask  a  blessing. 
**  He  did  so ;  but  it  seemed  as  if  he  did  not 
expect  it,  and  I  thought  it  would  be  bet- 
ter not  to  take  the  thing  for  granted 
again.**  Col.  Higginson  adds  that  in  a 
somewhat  frequent  stay  at  private  houses 
on  lecturing  trips  he  has  been  very  much 
struck  with  the  almost  entire  disappear- 
ance of  these  external  signs  of  devoutness 
among  Unitarians,  and  their  diminution 
among  orthodox  Christians. 


Mr.  Cbaml^rlain*s  dispatch  of  Febru- 
ary 4  to  the  High  Commissioner  for 
South  Africa,  reference  to  which  has 
been  made  in  telegrams,  and  which  has 
played  an  important  pait  in  the  Parlia- 
mentary debates  on  the  Transvaal  ques- 
tion, was  published  in  full  in  the  Lon- 
don papers  of  February  8.  It  is  certainly 
an  extraordinary  document,  and  that  it 
should  have  wakened  the  Calvinistic 
wrath  of  President  KrOger  is  not  won- 
derful. It  consists  of  two  parts,  the  first 
being  a  long  explanation  of  the  attitude 
of  the  Colonial  Office  towards  the  Jame- 
son raid,  which  Mr.  Chamberlain  easily 
shows  to  have  l>een  at  once  correct  and 
vigorous.  But  he  thereupon,  directly 
after  declaring  that  the  South  African 
Republic  is  **a  free  and  independent 
government  as  regards  all  its  internal 
affairs,'*  goes  on  to  suggest  a  number 
of  sweeping  changes  in  the  Transvaal 
oonstitatloo  and  laws,    These  relate  not 


only  to  naturalization  and  the  franchise, 
but  to  the  conduct  of  the  finances  and 
to  taxation ;  to  the  hardships  of  the 
working  classes  ;  the  **  resentment  *' 
caused  by  monopolies ;  the  **  grievances  ** 
in  connection  with  the  **  labor  question  *'; 
and,  to  crown  all,  Mr.  Chamberlain  ra- 
ther imperiously  advises  KrOger  to  give 
the  Rand  district  at  once  **a  modified  lo- 
cal autonomy.**  This  unprecedented  in- 
terference with  **  a  free  and  independent 
government '*  Mr.  Cbaml>erlain  defended 
in  the  Commoos  as  the  untrammelled 
methods  of  a  fresh  and  direct  mind  ap- 
plied to  diplomacy,  going  straight  to  the 
point  without  regard  to  musty  conventions. 
However,  if  President  Krtiger  was  offend- 
ed, he  would  withdraw  his  remarks.  No 
thing  could  be  handsomer.  Meanwhile,  it 
will  be  gratifying  to  the  bewildered  friends 
of  Chamberlain,  the  ex-social -reformer,  to 
find  him  enthusiastic  in  enforcing  a  social 
programme  in  the  Transvaal,  no  matter 
how  England  may  suffer  from  his  neglect, 
and  to  learn  that  he  is  strong  for  home 
rule  in  the  Rand,  whatever  be  the  fate  of 
Ireland. 


An  interesting  discussion  is  in  progress 
in  England  as  to  the  exact  time  at  which 
a  man  can  be  said  to  become  a  candidate 
for  office.  The  question  has  arisen  at  the 
trial  of  election  petitions  under  the  cor- 
rupt-practices act,  which  makes  certain 
the  unseating  of  any  candidate  who  can 
be  shown  to  have  used  influence  of  any 
kind  to  promote  his  own  election.  In  one 
case  the  Justice  conducting  the  inquiry 
held  that  '*  no  definite  period  could  be 
stated  as  to  when  an  election  began.'*  In 
another,  the  Justice  held  that  the  elec- 
tion began  **  when  it  was  first  known  that 
the  candidate  had  announced  his  inten- 
tion to  present  himself  as  a  candidate  at 
the  next  ensuing  election.**  In  another, 
the  Justice  held  that  **  an, election  begins 
as  soon  as  a  candidate  begins  to  hold 
meetings.*'  A  correspondent  of  the  Lon- 
don TimeB^  citing  these  somewhat  con- 
fiictiog  rulings,  asks  if  any  gentleman  is 
at  liberty,  in  every  possible  way,  and  for 
any  length  of  time  before  the  actual  day 
of  issuing  an  election  address,  to  **  nurse  " 
a  constituency  with  a  view  to  having  a 
field  well  prepared  when  he  takes  the  field 
formally  later.  There  have  been  many 
decisions  under  the  English  act  which 
have  unseated  members  of  Parliament  for 
**  nursing  *'  which  was  followed  by  a  can- 
didacy later,  but  in  all  instances  a  con- 
necting link  has  been  established  between 
the  preliminary  work  and  the  subsequent 
campaign.  In  this  country  the  **  nursing** 
begins  very  early,  and  is  at  once  univer- 
sally recognized  as  the  preparatory  step 
to  a  candidacy,  prompting  some  such  gene- 
ral inquiry  as  **  What's  his  game?**  or 
**  What  is  the  old  man  running  for  now?" 


There  is  a  doleful  account  in  the  Con- 
temporary Review^  from  Mr.  Eubule 
Evans,  of  ths  existing  condition  of  the 


government  in  Germany  as  the  result  of 
the  great  military  triumph  of  1870.  Edi- 
tors guilty  of  Use-majeat^  are  no  longer 
allowed  out  on  bail  pending  their  trial. 
They  are  brought  up  for  trial  in  prison 
dress,  in  heelless  slippers,  to  prevent  their 
running  away,  and  with  metal  numbers 
on  their  breasts.  Liee-mojcsti,  or  Ma- 
Jcstdtsbeleidigung^  is  a  queer  thing. 
A  man  in  Cologne  last  October  was  dis- 
cussing the  American  Constitution.  He 
had  just  returned  from  this  country,  and 
was  eloquent  in  praise  of  our  system  of 
government,  and  then  was  going  on  to 
discuss  the  Kaiser,  and  said :  **  As  for  the 
Kaiser  "—when  he  suddenly  realized  his 
danger,  and  stopped  short.  But  he  was 
overheard  and  denounced  to  the  police, 
arrested,  tried,  and  sentenced  to  three 
months'  imprisonment  for  what  he  was 
evidently  going  to  say.  At  Danzig,  a  man 
was  called  on  to  appraise  a  plaster  bust  of 
the  Empress.  He  said  it  was  not  worth  a 
mark.  Majest&tsheleidigung,  He  was 
tried  but  acquitted.  Last  summer,  at 
Bonn,  a  man  in  a  pleasure  party  said : 
**  What  a  fool  that  Kaiser  is!**  He  was 
overheard.  Majestdtsbeleidigung,  He 
was  arrested  and  taken  to  the  police  sta- 
tion, but' was  able  to  show  that  he  meant 
a  man  named  ** Kaiser.** 


A  common  mode  of  concealing  Majes- 
tdtabeleidigung  in  conversation  from  the 
servants  is  to  allude  to  the  Kaiser  as 
**Herr  Mdller.**  Speech  was,  in  fact, 
freer  under  Louis  the  Great  in  France 
two  hundred  years  ago  than  it  is  in  Ger- 
many today  under  William  the  Wise. 
And  it  must  be  remembered  that  a  great 
people  have  been  brought  into  this  condi- 
tion through  war.  The  tremendous  mili- 
tary successes  of  1866  and  1870  have  turn- 
ed the  state  into  an  army,  turned  a  large 
portion  of  the  talent  of  the  country  into 
the  invention  of  quicker  modes  of  killing 
people  and  destroying  property,  have 
made  the  writers  and  thinkers  and  debat- 
ers seem  paltry  fellows,  who  ought  not  to 
be  listened  to,  and  have  converted  a  ra- 
ther light-beaded  young  man,  who  in  a 
private  station  would  be  an  unsuccessful 
**  crank,*'  into  a  terrible  **  war-lord,*'  who 
has  to  be  protected  from  even  a  breath  of 
obloquy  by  all  the  terrors  of  penal  justice. 
If  we  became  a  warlike  military  nation  we 
should  lay  in  a  supply  of  Majtatdtabelei' 
digung  much  quicker  than  the  Germans. 
We  should  go  twice  as  crazy  over  victories, 
because  we  train  ourselves  in  excitability; 
and  we  should  lock  up  or  expel  from  the 
country  pcx>ple  who  differed  from  us  or 
criticised  our  madness  far  more  readily 
than  the  Germans,  for  a  similar  reason. 
We  should  soon  have  a  young  man  like 
Mr.  Roosevelt  for  a  **  war-lor<l,**  and  he 
would  keep  us  fighting  continually  and 
lock  us  up  whenever  we  said  we  did  not 
want  to  l>e  killed.  **  Dogs,'*  he  would  say 
to  us,  as  Frederick  the  Great  said  to  his 
soldiers  when  they  shrank  from  a  desperate 
chargep  **do  you  want  to  live  always?*' 


15S 


Tlie    [N^ation* 


[VoL  62,  No.  1599 


THE  VENEZUELAN  SURPRISE. 
Thb  speeches  in  Parliament,  combined 
with  Mr.  Olney's  application  for  British 
assistance  for  our  commission,  show  that 
after  much  trouble  we  have  at  last  got 
back  to  the  position  in  which  we  stood 
before  Mr.  OIney  wrote  his  despatch  on 
the  20th  of  July  last — or,  if  any  one  pre- 
fers it,  in  which  we  stood  before  the 
president  wrote  his  message  on  the  17th 
of  December.  A  gentlemanly  note,  such 
as  Mr.  Bayard  wrote  the  other  day  to 
Lord  Salisbury,  would  have  undoubtedly 
secured  the  information  we  are  now  ask- 
ing for,  without  the  alarm  and  loss  which 
have  since  intervened.  In  fact,  if,  as  we 
suggested  in  December,  the  President 
had  taken  the  threat  out  of  the  message 
by  a  letter  of  pacific  instruction  to  the 
newly  appointed  commission,  the  trouble 
might  have  been  allayed  at  once. 

The  speeches  in  Parliament  show  clearly 
that  there  is  a  strong  desire  on  both  sides 
not  to  quarrel  with  the  United  States  on 
any  subject,  and  least  of  all  on  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine.  They  show,  also,  the  great 
surprise  which  both  sides  have  felt  on 
hearing  that  the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  in- 
volved in  the  Venezuelan  dispute.  But 
their  surprise  was  probably  no  greater 
than  ours  here.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  the  appeals  of  the  Venezuelans  to  us 
to  take  part  in  the  controversy  began  in 
1870  and  continued  with  little  intermission 
down  to  last  year.  Six  American  secre- 
taries answered  these  appeals  over  a  period 
of  twenty-five  years,  both  through  corre- 
spondence with  Great  Britain  and  with 
Venezuela,  and  not  one  of  them  ever  sug- 
gested that  Great  Britain  was  infringing 
on  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  Every  one  of 
them  took  up  the  attitude  of  the  common 
friend  of  two  quarrelling  Powers.  The 
discovery  that  Great  Britain  was  threat- 
ening Venezuela  with  a  violation  of  the 
Doctrine  was  made  suddenly  by  Secretary 
Olney  immediately  after  his  accession  to 
office.  The  American  public  had  no  idea 
of  what  was  impending.  It  is  true  that 
for  nearly  a  year  Lodge,  Chandler,  Frye, 
the  Tribune's  Old  Pensioner,  and  one  or 
two  others,  had  been  engaged  in  a  sort  of 
antiphonal  caterwauling  about  Venezuela, 
but  as  they  caterwauled  in  just  the  same 
way  about  the  Nicaraguan  affair  and  the 
Allian^a  incident,  the  general  impression 
was  that  they  were  merely  preparing  the 
country  for  a  Jingo  Presidential  canvass. 
Few  or  none  imagined  that  the  State  De- 
partment was  taking  them  seriously. 
Senator  Lodge  and  the  Pensioner  tried  to 
give  an  air  of  seriousness  to  their  labors 
by  frequently  describing  the  true  Anglo 
Venezuelan  boundary  line  in  print,  and 
the  exact  nature  and  extent  of  Great 
Britain's  encroachments,  but  nobody  paid 
them  much  attention.  If  Senator  Lodge 
knew  as  much  about  the  matter  as  he 
said  he  did,  it  was  to  him,  and  not  to 
Great  Britain,  that  the  Commission  should 
have  addressed  itself  for  *^  documentary 
proof,  historical  narrative,  unpublished 
archives,  and  other  eyidenge,"    B«t  no- 


body supposed  that  the  State  Department 
was  paying  any  more  heed  to  him  than 
were  other  sensible  people. 

The  whole  affair  having  now  got  back 
to  the  region  of  civility  and  friendliness, 
it  will  do  immense  good  if  it  brings  home 
to  our  public  the  uselessness  and  unseem- 
liness of  what  the  Pensioner  used  to  call 
a  *'  vigorous  foreign  policy  '* — that  is,  the 
plan  of  addressing  violent,  menacing,  if 
not  ruffianly,  despatches  to  foreign  Powers. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  field  of  interna- 
tional politics  better  established  than  the 
readiness  of  European  Powers  to  put  up 
with  anything  from  us  except  direct  and 
palpable  insult  or  seizure  of  ships  or  ter- 
ritory. A  quarrel  with  us  is  something 
from  which  they  all  shrink,  because  it 
promises  no  advantage  and  plenty  of  ex- 
pensive fighting.  Everything  which  has 
happened  since  Monroe's  day,  except  the 
invasion  of  Mexico  during  the  civil  war, 
proves  this.  The  stories  the  news  agen- 
cies invent  every  now  and  then  of  a  de- 
termination of  Great  Britain  to  sssume  a 
bellicose  attitude  towards  us,  by  pur- 
chasing Cuba  from  Spain,  or  seizing 
Hawaii  from  the  missionaries,  are  child- 
ishly silly.  There  is  nothing  which  prac- 
tical men  in  Europe  view  with  more  won- 
derment than  our  naval  preparations  and 
our  apparent  desire  to  fight  somebody, 
because  the  ocean  which  surrounds  us  is 
in  itself  worth  four  of  the  largest  fleets 
and  four  of  the  largest  armies  in  the 
world.  We  cannot,  in  fact,  have  a  quar- 
rel except  by  undertaking  war  as  an  edu- 
cational agency.  Consequently  there  is 
no  nation  which  needs  less  to  vapor  and 
threaten  or  crow  in  its  diplomatic  corre- 
spondence. 

Our  State  Department  might  safely  and 
ought  always  to  illustrate  to  the  world  the 
majesty  of  moderation,  the  dignity  of  good 
manners.  The  great  difficulty  in  the  way 
of  such  a  consummation  is  the  press,  which 
with  few  exceptions  is  apt  to  call  for  vio- 
lent language  in  terms  which  shake  the 
nerves  of  secretaries  of  state.  Worse  than 
this,  it  does  its  best  to  prevent  the  settle- 
ment of  any  international  dispute  on  terms 
which  will  not  hurt  the  foreigner's  self- 
respect  by  always  representing,  when  he 
meets  us  half  way,  that  it  was  our  *' vigor** 
— that  is,  our  insolence,  abusiveness,  and 
brutslity — that  brought  him  to  terms.  It 
is  at  this  devil's  work  at  this  moment,  by 
proclaiming  that  it  was  Mr.  Cleveland's 
coarse  threat  which  has  *' brought  Eng- 
land to  her  knees,'*  that  it  is  our  swagger 
which  has  drawn  forth  the  pacific  and 
friendly  language  of  both  the  Ministry  and 
Opposition  in  England,  and  the  civil  treat- 
ment accorded  to  our  Commission;  that, 
in  short,  in  international  affairs  the  ruf- 
fianly way  is  the  more  excellent  way.  It 
is  impossible,  when  one  reads  this  stuff, 
to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  the  wide- 
spread desire  for  war,  the  existence  of 
which  there  is  no  denying  —  war  with 
somebody,  but  especially  with  England — 
is  largely  newspaper  work;  and  we  know 
of  nothing  which  reflects  or  has  reflected 


more  discredit  on  our  civilization — ^not 
slavery,  not  lynching,  not  corruption,  not 
lawlessness.  We  do  not  believe  there  is 
anything  which  has  during  the  last  cen- 
tury done  so  much  to  discourage  the  be- 
lievers in  human  progress  as  the  revela- 
tion that  **  Time's  noblest  offspring  "  was 
as  full  of  desire  to  kill  and  wreck,  for  the 
fun  of  the  thing,  as  the  savsge  races  on 
the  site  of  whose  corn-patches  and  tor- 
ture-stakes we  are  erecting  churches  and 
colleges. 


THE  FUNCTION   OF  DISCUSSION. 

Now  that  the  Venezuela  question  has, 
after  fesrful  uproar,  passed  into  the  field 
which  it  should  never  have  left,  that  of 
investigation  of  facts,  it  is  time  to  ask 
who  is  hereafter  to-  discuss  these  differ- 
ences with  foreign  natioiis.  There  can  be 
DO  doubt  that  our  government  is  framed 
on  the  assumption  that  it  will  be  carried 
on  by  discussion — that  is,  by  the  practice 
of  oral  or  written  persuasion.  The  Presi- 
dent is  elected  by  a  majority  vote,  after 
prolonged  discussion.  Both  houses  of  Con- 
gress are  supposed  to  resolve  and  enact 
after  discussion.  The  regulation  of  dis- 
cussion has  become  an  important  art, 
known  as  parliamentary  procedure,  in 
which  every  American  youth  is  proud  to 
be  versed.  The  duty  of  hearing  both  sides 
has  become  an  elementary  principle  of 
public  morality.  We  take  pains  to  teach 
our  young  men  in  colleges  the  art  of  de- 
bate— that  is,  the  art  of  producing  the 
two  views  which  may  t>e  taken  of  nearly 
every  social  and  political  problem.  All 
this,  too,  is  done  not  as  a  means  of  sharpen- 
ing the  wits,  like  the  controversies  of  the 
Schoolmen,  but  as  a  means  of  preparation 
for  action  of  some  kind.  To  discussion 
which  does  not  pretend  to  prepare  for  ac- 
tion, we  give  the  name  of  *'  academic,'*  and 
everybody  who  wishes  to  be  considered 
practical,  or  a  man  of  business,  declines  to 
engage  in  it.  And  in  discussing  as  a  prepa- 
ration for  action,  we  are  following  an  un- 
broken tradition  of  the  human  race  since 
governments  were  first  founded.  The 
Greeks  and  Romans  debated  on  public 
affairs  much  as  we  do,  and  even  the  Oriental 
despots  were  apt  to  have  an  inner  council, 
whose  advice  they  sought,  which  con- 
tained men  who  would  produce  the  cons  as 
well  as  the  pros  of  aqy  undertaking  on 
which  the  sovereign  was  inclined  to  enter. 
That  very  ancient  and  much  quoted  say- 
ing, that  **  in  the  multitude  of  counsellors 
there  is  safety,**  does  not  mean  that 
everything  that  a  large  number  of  men 
kurrah  for  is  sure  to  be  wise,  but  that 
what  many  men  have  decided  on,  after 
discussion  from  different  points  of  view, 
is  likely  to  be  a  good  thing  to  do. 

The  thing  which  our  Government  seem- 
ed to  consider  wise  in  December  last,  a 
challenge  to  a  first-class  Power  to  fight 
over  the  untraced  boundary  of  a  semi- 
barbarous  state  in  a  tropical  wilderness, 
was  the  third  most  solemn  and  serious 
proposal  ever  made  in  tl^e  paqi«  o(  tbo 


Feb.  20,  1896] 


The   Nation. 


153 


American  people.  The  first  was  the 
DeclaratioD  of  lodependence.  The  se- 
cond was  the  opening  of  the  war  for  the 
subjugation  of  the  South  in  1861.  The 
two  former  were  the  result  of  great  and 
protracted  debate.  The  war  of  inde- 
pendence was  prepared  for  by  about  ten 
jears'  discussion  ;  that  of  1861  by  about 
thirty  years*  discussion.  The  challenge 
of  last  December  received  no  discussion 
at  all*  The  framers  of  the  Constitution 
copied  many  things  from  the  European 
monarchies,  and  in  some  particulars 
made  the  President  more  powerful  than 
the  King  of  England.  But  one  power 
possessed  by  all  European  monarchs  they 
denied  him — that  of  declaring  war.  This 
was  something  they  refused  to  trust  to 
any  one  man's  judgment  or  caprice. 
They  gare  it  to  the  Legislature,  with  the 
STident  design  of  making  war  a  debatable 
subject — that  is,  of  insuring  public  deli- 
beration on  it  before  it  took  place.  To 
give  a  power  to  a  legislature  means  that 
it  shaU  be  exercised  only  through  public 
discussion,  for  in  no  other  way  can  a  le- 
gislature act 

But,  oddly  enough,  although  the  framers 
of  the  Constitution  made  the  change,  it 
seems  never  to  have  been  fully  accepted 
mentally  by  the  American  public.  It  held 
on,  and  holds  on  to  this  day,  to  the  old 
monarchical  idea  that  when  the  King 
decides  to  go  to  war,  it  is  no  business  of 
his  subjects  whether  he  is  right  or  wrong. 
All  they  have  to  do  is  to  *'  stand  behind 
htm  "  when  he  is  defying  the  foe,  and  to 
follow  him  to  the  field  when  hostilities 
have  begun.  In  all  our  recent  disputes 
with  foreigners,  Congress  and  the  politi- 
cians and  the  pr^ss  have  acted  on  this 
view.  It  found  full  expression  in  the  Chi- 
lian trouble,  in  the  Bering  Sea  dispute, 
and  the  other  day  in  the  Venezuelan 
affair.  We  were  all  expected  either  to 
keep  silent  when  these  controversies  were 
being  carried  on,  no  matter  what  might 
be  our  opinion  of  their  merits,  or  to  take 
aides  as  vehemently  as  we  could  with 
our  own  Government.  The  Executive 
waa  to  be  allowed  to  occupy  whatever 
positions  it  pleased,  provided  they  were 
likely  to  promote  hostilities,  and  our  busi- 
ness was  simply  to  help  it  to  defend 
them.  During  the  Chilian  trouble  the 
press,  both  daily  and  monthly,  teemed 
with  curious  and  absolutely  novel  doc- 
trines of  law  and  ethics,  concocted  solely 
as  weapons  of  war.  In  the  pending  Vene- 
sueian  trouble,  too,  although  we  have  seen 
hundreds  if  not  thousands  of  newspsper 
comments,  we  cannot  recall  more  than 
three  or  four  which  admitted  that  ther» 
was  any  question  about  the  right  or  wrong 
of  the  matter,  or  that  Great  Britain  had 
a  leg  to  stand  on.  In  fact,  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  the  newspapers  contented  them- 
selves with  roundly  abusing  people  who 
thought  the  President  ought  not  to  fight 
England  on  a  week's  notice. 

It  is  plain  to  be  seen  that  under  this 
system  the  relegation  of  the  war-making 
power  to  Congress  does  us  no  good  what- 


ever. For  all  practical  purposes  the  Con- 
stitution might  a^  well  have  empowered 
the  President  to  declare  war  for  such  rea- 
sons as  might  seem  good  to  him,  and  to 
procure  from  Congress  as  much  money  as 
he  might  think  necessary  for  the  expenses 
of  the  fight.  But  a  state  of  things  wMch 
would  entail  no  great  inconvenience  on  the 
community  under  Edward  III.  or  Henry 
v.,  when  the  nation  was  made  up  of  small 
farmers,  and  had  neither  commerce  nor 
credit,  has  very  serious  inconvenience  in 
modern  times,  when  every  great  nation 
has  vast  dealings  with  all  others,  and 
when,  instead  of  hoarding  gold,  it  relies 
on  its  credit  to  supply  it  with  funds  for 
emergencies.  To  such  a  nation  no  event 
is  so  grave  as  a  war  with  a  Power  of  near- 
ly its  own  strength.  Nothing  can  occur 
in  its  daily  life  needing  so  much  debate. 
Its  readiness  for  the  contest,  and  the  pos- 
sible consequences  of  defeat,  are  among 
the  most  serious  concerns  of  a  civilized 
community.  Instead  of  "standing  be- 
hind "  a  man  who  proposes  such  a  thing, 
and  egging  him  on,  the  place  of  the  pa- 
triot is  in  front  of  him,  so  as  to  demand  a 
full  account  of  his  reasons.  The  more 
Congress,  too,  refuses  or  fails  to  discuss 
the  situation,  the  more  incumbent  on  the 
press  is  it  to  step  into  the  gap  and  take 
up  the  neglected  work  of  the  Legislature; 
but  it  seems  to  be  the  last  thing  our  press 
thinks  of.  What  it  has  for  the  most  part 
done  during  the  late  excitement  is  to 
*' holler"  that  everything  that  anybody 
did  which  made  for  war  was  wise  and  good, 
and  that  whatever  anybody  did  that  made 
for  peace  was  asinine,  or  corrupt,  or  Eng- 
lish. This  may  be  true,  but  such  deci- 
sions should  be  reached  through  discus- 
sion— that  is,  after  hearing  what  was  to 
be  said  for  peace.  No  man  who  advocates 
peace  is,  ipso  facto,  foolish.  Peace  is  so 
earnestly  desired  by  the  bulk  of  men  that 
there  must  always  be  some  excuse  for  it 
which  will  bear  stating. 


A  SPECIMEN  SPANISH-AMERICAN  RE^ 
PUBLIC. 

At  the  close  of  last  year  appeared  a  work, 
*  II  Guatamala,'  by  Tommaso  Caivano,  a 
Florentine  lawyer  who  has  spent  many 
years  in  Central  and  South  America, 
and  has  written  several  works  which  have 
had  a  wide  circulation  among  Spanish- 
Americans.  We  count  it  timely  that  by 
the  publication  of  this  latest  volume, 
Sig.  Caivano  enables  us  to  see  exsctly 
what  a  Spanish- American  republic  is  like 
to-day.  Recent  experience  shows  that  we 
may  be  plunged  without  warning  into  dif- 
ficulties, perhsps  even  into  war,  through 
entanglements  with  one  or  other  of  the 
sanguinary  governments  to  the  south  of 
us ;  it  is  fortunste,  therefore,  that  we 
should  have  put  within  our  reach,  by  an 
intelligent  and  impartial  foreigner,  infor- 
mation which  strips  off  illusions.  During 
the  past  few  months  we  have  heard  a 
great  deal  of  effusive  praise  of  our  noble 
fellow-republicans  in  Venesuela   and  in 


other  parts  of  Latin  America*  and  of  con- 
demnation for  British  monarchists.  Let 
us  see  what  one  of  these  republics  really 
is. 

After  giving  a  rapid  history  of  Guate- 
mala from  the  time  of  its  conquest  down 
to  last  summer,  Sig.  Caivano  describes 
very  clearly  the  various  elements  of  popu- 
lation by  which  the  destiny  of  the  coun- 
try has  been  determined.  These  elements 
are  three  in  number, viz.:  (1)  the  Creoles,  or 
pure-blooded  descendants  of  the  Spanish 
settlers,  who  now  form  only  about  6  per 
cent,  of  the  whole;  (2)  the  ladinoa  or  mes- 
tizoB,  half-breeds,  sprung  from  the  inter- 
mingling of  the  Spaniards  and  Indians, 
and  numbering  about  15  per  cent;  (3)  the 
Indians,  virtually  serfs,  who  make  up  the 
remaining  80  per  cent.  In  1821  Guate- 
mala declared  herself  independent  of 
Spain,  and  called  herself  a  republic. 
With  Salvador,  Honduras,  Nicaragua,  and 
Costa  Rica  she  formed  a  confederation 
whose  character  can  be  sufficiently  in- 
ferred from  the  fact  that  she  and  her 
confederates  fought  143  battles  with  one 
another  in  the  course  of  twenty  years. 
Then  the  league  was  dissolved.  From 
1842  to  1871  the  government  was  in  the 
hands  of  the  Creoles,  who  succeeded  not 
only  in  maintaining  order,  but  in  engraft- 
ing on  the  country  some  of  the  rudiments 
of  civilization.  But  in  1871  the  ladinoa, 
or  half-breeds,  stirred  up  a  revolution 
which  resulted  in  the  overthrow  of  the 
Creoles,  and  the  establishment  in  power 
of  the  mongrel  race  which  still  dominates 
Guatemala. 

The  champion  of  this  race  was  Rufino 
Barrios,  who  soon  made  himself  President, 
and  remained  tyrant  of  Guatemala,  until 
killed  by  a  beneficent  bullet  in  1885,  in  a 
fight  with  the  Salvadorians.  The  atroci- 
ties committed  by  this  human  tiger  equal 
any  recorded  of  ancient  Roman  despots, 
or  of  Renaissance  Eccelinos  and  Viscon- 
tis,  or  of  modern  Turks.  He  proposed  to 
wipe  out  the  Creoles,  who  alone  had  given 
Guatemala  a  veneer  of  law  and  decency. 
He  had  hundreds  of  them  arrested  and 
cast  into  loathsome  dungeons,  where  they 
were  daily  given  fifty  or  a  hundred  lashes, 
until  some  died  and  others,  mutilated  for 
life,  by  confessing  imaginary  plots,  impli- 
cated new  victims.  For  his  afternoon 
amusement,  he  caused  many  of  his  enemies 
to  be  publicly  shot  in  the  principal  square 
of  the  capital ;  in  three  days,  seventeen 
persons  were  thus  destroyed.  Not  content 
with  wreaking  his  ferocity  on  men,  he  had 
the  wives  and  daughters  of  his  enemies 
exi>o6ed  stark  naked  in  cages.  He  revived 
the  old  Spanish  tnandamientoB^  or  de- 
crees, which  reduced  the  Indian  popula- 
tion to  slavery.  Needless  to  say,  he  levied 
taxes  snd  emptied  the  treasury  for  his 
personal  enriching.  Such  was  the  *'  pan- 
ther of  San  Marcos,"  as  the  Guatemalese 
nicknamed  him  from  his  native  village. 

His  nephew.  Reins  Barrios,  the  present 
President,  began  life  as  a  street-sweeper; 
then  was  promoted  by  his  uncle  to  super- 
intend the  flagellation  of  prisoners;  then, 


164 


Tlio   [NTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1599 


on  the  death  of  Rufino  Barrios,  fled  the 
country,  and  was  leading  a  dissolute  life 
in  what  Sig.  Caivano  euphemistically  calls 
an  appartement  meubU  at  Saratoga,  when 
be  was  called  back  in  1892  to  govern  Gua- 
temala. He  is  not  charged  with  such  in- 
human crimes  as  his  uncle,  possibly  be- 
cause the  latter *s  purging  was  so  thorough 
as  to  render  the  Creoles  henceforth  too 
weak  to  be  persecuted;  but  his  tyranny 
has  been  equally  absolute.  He  makes  and 
breaks  the  laws  at  will;  he  controls  taxa- 
tion; he  grants  and  revokes  concessions  to 
monopolists;  he  sets  aside  the  decisions  of 
the  courts.  Every  department  of  govern- 
ment, the  judiciary,  the  bureaus  of  admi- 
nistration and  police,  are  but  organized 
blackmailing  agencies;  but  the  suitor  wbo 
would  be  sure  of  satisfaction  must  bargain 
with  the  President  himself.  What  a  con- 
temptible creature  that  President  is,  with 
his  mixture  of  braggart  and  coward,  Sig. 
Caivano  describes  with  vivid  strokes.  The 
spectacle  of  the  Qeneral-in- Chief  of  Gua- 
temala needing  a  chair  to  mount  his  horse 
before  reviewing  his  tatterdemalion  army 
would  draw  a  smile  from  even  the  fiercest 
Jingo. 

Sig.  Caivano  closes  his  book  with  an 
account  of  the  great  ** public  works** 
which  President  Barrios  and  his  satellites 
have  been  engaged  in  for  several  years  in 
the  hope  of  luring  foreign  capitalists  to 
put  more  millions  within  their  grasp. 
They  promise  before  1898  to  complete  a 
railroad  between  the  capital  and  Puerto 
Barrios,  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  which  will 
bring  the  city  of  Guatemala  within  easy 
reach  of  tourists  from  the  United  States 
and  Europe ;  but  the  line  of  this  road  has 
been  surveyed  through  an  almost  impass- 
able mountainous  region,  150  miles  across, 
which  must  not  only  make  its  construc- 
tion enormously  expensive  (to  the  grief  of 
the  foreigners  who  are  to  provide  the 
funds),  but  also  preclude  it  from  earning 
running  expenses,  should  it  ever  be  finish- 
ed. At  the  capital,  Guatemala,  a  city  of 
70,000  inhabitants,  there  is  projected  a 
park  968  hectares  (about  1,000  acres)  in 
extent,  with  artificial  lakes,  grottoes,  and 
fountains,  besides  drives  and  walks, 
shrubberies,  gardens,  and  a  race-course ; 
the  whole  connected  with  the  town  by  a 
magnificent  boulevard  two  miles  and 
three-quarters  long.  In  the  city  itself  a 
grand  hotel,  with  300  splendid  suites  of 
rooms,  a  theatre,  baths,  etc.,  etc.,  is  to 
make  the  astonished  millionaire  tourists 
of  the  United  States  and  Europe  forget 
Paris  and  New  York.  The  ulterior  motive 
of  these  grandiose  schemers  is  to  establish 
a  gambling  hell  which  shall  eclipse  that 
of  Monte  Carlo. 

Sig.  Caivano  ironically  contrasts  this 
project,  designed  to  dazzle  foreign  lenders 
of  money,  with  the  squalor  and  filth  of 
Guatemala  itself — a  town  which  has  no 
sewers  nor  drainage  and  very  few  cess- 
pools; which  depends  solely  upon  thou- 
sands of  zopilotes,  or  buzzards,  to  rid  it 
of  the  carrion,  garbage,  and  ordure  heaped 
in  the  streets  and  courtyards;   a  town  in 


which  typhus  fever  and  smallpox  are 
endemic,  and  where  assasains  and  robbers 
make  going  out  after  dark  unsafe;  a  town 
where  most  of  the  houses  are  only  one 
story  high,  and  correspondingly  primitive 
in  their  internal  arrangements.  This  is 
the  place  which  Barrios  plans  to  transform 
into  a  resort  for  the  rich,  the  fastidious, 
and  the  dissipated  pleasure-seekers  of  two 
continents! 

We  have  left  no  space  for  speaking  of  the 
other  subjects  which  Sig.  Caivano  treats 
of,  such  as  the  beauty  of  the  scenery, 
the  manners  and  customs  of  the  people, 
the  difficulties  of  travel,  the  oppression  of 
the  Indians,  etc.,  etc.  He  is  an  observant 
traveller  and  an  entertaining  writer;  but 
at  the  present  crisis  his  great  merit,  as  we 
have  remarked,  lies  in  his  furnishing  us 
with  a  truthful  picture  of  a  Spanish- 
American  government.  Volumes  of  Jingo 
rhodomontade  over  "our  sister  repub- 
lics "  are  powerless  against  a  page  of  his 
facts.  His  book,  which  has  recently  been 
issued  in  Italian  and  in  Spanish,  ought  to 
be  translated  into  English,  and  widely 
read  by  those  of  our  people  who  want  to 
know  what  sort  of  cattle  our  Government 
is  asked  by  the  perverters  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  to  go  to  war  for. 


THE  REAL    CONQUESTS   OF  SCIENCE. 

Thb  extraordinary  rapidity  with  which 
the  R5ntgen  discovery  has  been  taken  up 
in  a  thousand  laboratories  all  over  the 
world,  and  eagerly  tested  in  its  various  ap- 
plications and  possibilities,  is  one  of  the 
most  striking  things  about  it.  It  has 
clearly  set  the  scientific  as  well  as  the 
popular  imagination  on  fire.  The  routine 
work  of  hundreds  of  trained  observers  and 
experimenters  has  been  dropped,  and  they 
are  giving  their  days  and  nights  to  ardent 
exploration  of  the  apparently  illimitable 
new  province  opened  before  them  in  in- 
dustry and  medicine,  as  well  as  in  higher 
physical  theory. 

By  the  very  existence  of  so  great  a  body 
of  scientific  minute- men,  ready  for  skilled 
service  in  any  quarter  on  short  notice,  we 
are  enabled  to  measure  the  assured  march 
and  achievements  of  science.  Its  thorough 
organization  and  its  successful  use  of  the 
codperative  method  now  give  to  every  new 
discovery  the  certainty  of  speedy  investi- 
gation by  expert  hands,  unlooked-for  ex- 
tensions, and  the  widest  application. 
This  goes  far  to  make  up  for  the  dying  out 
of  great  all-round  naturalists.  One  of  the 
addresses  before  the  Ipswich  meeting  of 
the  British  Association  lamented  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  type  of  scientific  mind 
like  Darwin's  or  Dana*s,  which,  in  addi- 
tion to  special  researches  and  distinction 
in  some  branch  or  branches,  possesses 
wide-ranging  knowledge  and  enormous 
power  of  generalization.  But  many 
smaller  minds  intelligently  cooperating 
can  do  the  work  of  one  great  mind.  It  is 
as  if  the  brain-cells  were  simply  scattered 
through  many  heads,  instead  of  being 
housed  in  a  single  skull.    In  thia  way 


science  holds  her  attainments  and  makes 
the  future  secure.  The  present  revelation 
of  the  powerful  and  flexible  instrument 
which  she  has  at  her  disposal  in  the  shape 
of  trained  investigators  in  all  civilized 
lands,  waiting  only  for  a  hint  in  order  to 
surprise  the  world  with  new  secrets  of  na- 
ture, must  dispel  all  doubts  of  the  perma- 
nency of  Bcientiflc  enthusiasm  and  of  the 
services  of  science  to  mankind. 

But  vast  as  the  practical  benefits  of  the 
Rdntgen  photography  promise  to  be,  we 
are  inclined  to  rate  their  indirect  and 
what  may  be  called  their  theoretic  bene- 
fits higher.  We  mean  their  effect  on  the 
general  attitude  towards  science  and  sci- 
entific methods.  Utilitarian  science  is 
enormously  valuable,  is  indispensable,  but 
the  scientific  temper — the  fronting  of  the 
universe  with  the  calmness,  the  sobriety, 
the  honesty  of  a  scientific  experimenter 
— is  the  great  thing  to  aim  at,  and  the 
utility  of  science  is  most  useful  when  it 
promotes  this.  Leslie  Stephen  says  with 
great  truth  and  force: 

**  We  may  deoounoe,  and  very  rightly,  those 
coarse  forms  of  utilitarianism  which  imply  an 
excessive  love  of  mere  material  advantages; 
but  it  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that  the  prestige 
acquired  by  modem  science  depends  io  great 
meastire  upon  its  application  to  purposes  of 
direct  utility.  Railways  and  telegraphs  are 
not  every  thing.  Most  true  I  but  the  prospect 
of  bringing  the  ordinary  creeds  of  mankind 
into  harmony  with  scientific  conclusions  de- 
pendSf  in  no  small  degree,  upon  the  general  re. 
spect  for  men  of  science;  and  that  respect, 
again,  depends  materially  upon  the  fact  that 
men  of  science  can  point  to  such  tangible  re- 
sults as  railroads  and  telegraphs.  We  need  not 
fear  to  admit  that,  if  there  is  a  greater  chance 
now  than  formerly  of  the  ablest  intellects  ac- 
quiring a  definite  supremacy,  and  resisting  the 
constant  tendency  of  mankind  to  lapse  into 
superstition,  it  is  in  great  degree  because  such 
conquests  over  the  material  world  can  be  ap- 
preciated even  by  the  ignorant  and  reflect 
credit  upon  that  system  of  thought  with  which 
they  are  associated." 

It  is  this  increasing  power  of  science 
over  the  general  imagination,  this  unper- 
ceived  but  sweeping  change  in  the  mental 
attitude  of  whole  nations  wrought  by  it, 
which  makes  it  the  great  solvent  and  con- 
queror that  it  is.  Its  kingdom  cometh 
without  observation.  There  are  no  violent 
cataclysms,  no  fierce  struggles,  no  one 
deadly  contest  from  which*  dates  a  new 
way  of  looking  at  the  world.  By  insensi- 
ble gradations,  by  subconscious  mental 
processes,  the  old  passes  away  and  the 
new  is  ushered  in.  Historians  note  with 
surprise,  at  one  interval  after  another, 
that  persistent  superstitions  lose  their 
power — now  the  belief  in  witchcraft,  now 
in  the  royal  touch.  Definite  causes  for 
their  abandonment  cannot  be  assigned; 
they  seem  silently  to  drop  to  the  bottom 
of  the  stream  of  thought,  by  their  own 
weight.  All  we  know  is,  that  one  genera- 
tion trembles  before  them,  the  next  one 
flouts  them.  Such  subtle  changes  it  is 
the  peculiar  province  of  science  to  bring 
about;  and  the  secondary  effects  in  this 
direction  of  every  great  quickening  of  the 
life  and  imagination  of  science,  like  the 
happy  accident  of  Prof.  Rdntgen,  are  cer- 
tain to  be  great. 

Dr.  Johnson  used  to  maintain  in  hk 


Feb.  20,  1896] 


The    IN"  a  t  i  o  11 . 


156 


fine  regal  way  that  the  study  of  external 
nature  oould  never  be  "  the  great  and  fre- 
quent buBineas  of  the  human  mind.*'  The 
**  moral  and  religious  discrimination  of 
right  and  wrong  *'  was  the  great  affair; 
and  he  had  characteristic  words  of  con- 
tempt for  those  troublesome  *Mnno- 
▼ators*'of  his  own  day  who  thought  that 
the  growth  of  plants  or  the  motions  of 
the  stars  had  anything  to  do  with  educa- 
tion. Futile  and  barren  enough  has  that 
position  been  made  by  the  flight  of  a  hun- 
dred years.  The  discriminators  between 
right  and  wrong  are  just  about  where 
they  were  in  Johnson's  time — except  as 
social  STolution  and  scientific  sdvance 
have  opened  up  entire  kingdoms  of  mo- 
rals then  unknown.  But  the  *'  innovat- 
ors"  have  gone  on  watching  plant  and 
star,  interrogating  the  heavens  above  and 
the  earth  beneath,  until  the  whole  mate- 
rial condition  and  mental  outlook  of  the 
race  has  been  changed. 

We  are  far  from  asserting  that  all  is 
now  clear  sailing.  The  stubborn  power 
of  ignorance  to  wrest  every  new  scientific 
scripture  to  its  own  destruction  is  already 
beginning  to  display  itself  in  connection 
with  the  wonderful  Rdntgen  discovery. 
Quack  doctors  are  quick  to  say,  *'Aha, 
this  shows  that  our  electric  rings  and 
mesmeric  belts  and  psychic  brushes  and 
oombs  are  just  what  we  claim  them  to  be." 
The  mysterious  cathode  rays,  invisible  but 
powerful,'  will  doubtless  renew  the  faith  of 
many  a  despairing  brother  who  carries  a 
potato  in  his  pocket  for  rheumatism.  What 
the  theological  apologists  will  argue  from 
the  apparent  need  of  readjusting  the  theory 
of  light,  those  of  our  readers  who  are 
skilled  in  their  methods  of  reasoning  can 
guess.  The  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch, the  reasonableness  of  prayer  for 
rain,  the  duty  of  instantly  subscribing 
both  to  the  creed  and  for  the  religious 
weekly  of  the  able  editor  making  the  ar- 
gument, will  be  among  the  very  least  of 
the  things  conclusively  proved  by  the  new 
photography*  But  even  this  folly,  with 
which  the  gods  themselves  contend  in 
vain,  ;nust  yield  in  the  end  to  the  slow 
attrition  of  time,  to  the  steady  blowing  of 
the  wind  by  which  science  at  last  clears 
the  densest  minds  of  fog. 


OONDfi  AND  THE  REVOCATION  OF  THE 
EDICT  OP  NANTES. 

Pabis,  January  29,  1896. 

Thx  Duke  d*  Aamald  has  brought  to  the  eod 
he  had  marked  for  himself  the  *  History  of  the 
Princes  de  Cond^.*  He  can  say  dow  his  ''  Bxegi 
moDumentom."  The  last  volume  of  his  great 
work  is  quite  worthy  of  the  great  hero  whose 
actions  he  has  taken  so  much  trouble  to  de- 
scribe minately,  and  whom  he  represents  spend- 
ing the  last  years  of  a  troubled  life  in  the 
calm  of  Chantilly.  It  will  interest  aU  those 
who  have  visited  Chantilly  to  read  the  pages 
descriptive  of  the  U/e  of  the  Prince  de  Cond^ 
(*'le  h^ros,*"  as  he  was  called  by  Mme.  de 
86rign^)  in  his  splendid  retreat. 

There  is  a  chapter  which  gives  quite  un- 
known details  abont  Condi's  conduct  doting 
the  period  of  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of 


Nantes.  Speaking  of  this  year  1685,  which 
was  marked  by  several  considerable  events  In 
the  life  of  Cond4  (the  death  of  Cardinal  de 
Retz,*  to  whom  Cond4  had  become  attached, 
the  death  of  La  Rochefoucauld,  the  death  of 
Guitant,  his  great  friend),  the  Duke  d^Aumale 
adds: 

**  Why  must  this  year  also  have  been  one  of 
the  shameful  dates  in  the  history  of  France 
and  have  witnessed  a  real  mutilation  of  our 
country  ?  The  work  of  Henri  IV.  and  of  Riche- 
lieu  was  sacriflocd  to  the  scruples  of  a  narrow 
and  blind  conscience,  to  the  abstract  concep 
tion  of  a  power  without  limits,  to  the  passion 
for  uniformity  which  (even  to  our  day)  has 
always  been  confounded  with  unity  by  French 
minds;  source  of  errors  and  of  faults  !  Certain 
modern  schools  have  preserved  the  brutal  tra- 
ditions of  Lou  vols,  the  pitiless  leveller.  How 
many  industries  ceased  to  flourish  I  Some 
disappeared  for  ever;  and  it  is  by  hundreds  of 
thousands  that  we  must  reckon  the  French- 
men, and  some  of  the  best  among  them,  who 
were  ruined,  dispersed,  destroyed  1  There 
are  wounds  which  never  heal.** 

The  Duke  d*Aumale  found  in  his  rich  ar- 
chives the  letters  of  two  regular  correspond- 
ents of  the  Prince  de  Cond^,  who  gave  him 
exact  accounts  of  what  was  going  on,  one  in 
the  west  of  France,  the  other  in  the  south. 
Already  in  1682— three  years,  therefore,  before 
the  final  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Toleration 
— the  intendants  in  the  west  were  trying  to  put 
an  end  to  the  Reformed  churches.  M.  de  Mo- 
rin,  one  of  the  cdrrespondents, who  writes  from 
Poitou,  tells  of  nothing  but  of  churches  shut, 
ministers  arrested,  women  thrown  into  prison. 
Already  all  the  inhabitants  of  Sables  d'Olonne 
have  emigrated;  others  are  hindered  by  force 
from  emigrating,  and  obliged  to  undergo  con- 
version. Cond6  bad  among  his  friends  a  M. 
de  Lussan,  who  had  been  wounded  by  his  side 
in  the  wars;  a  brave  officer,  but  an  intolerant 
Catholic.  Lussan  is  delighted  when  the  dra- 
goons are  sent  against  the  Protestants  and 
lodged  in  their  houses,  **  where  they  are  the 
masters  as  in  time  of  war.**  He  writes  to 
Cond6  in  1688:  **Now  is  the  time  to  finish 
these  wretches  and  to  destroy  completely  these 
Huguenots  and  their  religion;  the  ministers 
think  of  nothing  but  fiight,  and  their  churches 
will  be  rased  to  the  ground.**  From  Langue- 
doc  Mile,  de  Port^  a  relation  of  Cond^, 
writes  to  him  that  she  is  alarmed— the  Hugue- 
nots are  preparing  for  a  struggle.  But  she  is 
soon  reassured ;  the  times  are  past  when  Rohan 
conducted  a  long  war  in  that  province.  Mile, 
de  Port^  announces  in  later  letters  that  Viva, 
rais,  one  of  the  old  strongholds  of  the  Protes- 
tants, has  made  a  complete  submisilon. 

The  Edict  of  Revocation  is  proclaimed ;  its 
effects  are  terrific.  Gourville,  the  old  and 
sceptical  friend  of  Condd,  writes  to  him: ''  The 
Huguenots  of  Montpellier  and  of  the  diocese 
have  been  converted  in  a  body;  in  three  weeks 
there  will  not  be  a  single  Huguenot  in  I^angue- 
doc**  The  Prince  receives  similar  news  from 
Alais,  from  the  C^vennes,  from  Sancerre,  once 
an  impregnable  citadel  of  the  Reformation. 
The  Bishop  of  Autun  writes  to  Condd  that  in 
Burgundy  the  conversions  take  place  without 
the  help  of  the  dragoons;  there  is,  however, 
here  and  there,  some  resistance.  **  Mo  progress 
has  been  made  with  M.  de  Jaucourt  (the  Jau- 
courts  have  remained  Protestants  to  this  day), 
nor  with  Madame  de  Saint  Andr4  Montbmn. 
This  lady  has  declared  that,  at  the  age  of  sev- 
enty-two, people  cannot  change  their  religion.** 
From  Rouen,  Cond^  received  many  letters 
from  a  certain  Father  Tixier,  a  Benedictine 
charged  with  the  mission  of  oaring  for  the  last 
of  the  Longuevilles,  who  had  lost  his  reeson 
and  who  was  living  In  the  Abbey  of  Saint- 
Georges  at  BocherviUe,  near  Rouen.    Cond6 


was  the  uncle  and  goardtan  of  this  unfortunate 
young  man.  The  letters  which  Father  Tixier 
wrote  regularly  to  Condd  are,  says  the  Duke 
d*AumaIe,  **  more  striking  in  their  severe  sIbb- 
plicity  than  the  passionate  accounts  of  the  Pro- 
testants. Full  of  facts,  free  from  declamation, 
they  form  a  crushing  indictment  against  the 
revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantee.**  Father 
Tixier  is  perfectly  sincere  and  truthful.  He 
writes,  for  Instance,  that  a  poor  shopkeeper  of 
Rouen,  who  had  to  quarter  and  feed  in  his 
house  four  cuirassiers  in  order  that  the  fear  of 
ruin  might  induce  him  to  be  converted,  said: 
**  My  life,  as  well  as  my  fortune,  belongs  to  the 
King;  my  conscience  belongs  to  God.**  Father 
Tixier  says  also:  *'The  new  converts  are 
greater  Huguenots  than  they  were  before.'* 
Many  poor  people,  frightened  at  first,  became 
converted,  but,  after  a  while,  torn  with  re- 
morse, they  forsook  the  mass  and  returned  to 
the  prSche;  then  they  were  proclaimed  relapt 
and  prosecuted,  and  if,  on  their  death  bed,  they 
refused  the  sacraments,  their  property  was 
confiscated. 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  what  effect  such  inci- 
dents produced  on  the  mind  of  Cond6;  he  oould 
not  forget  that  his  ancestors  had  been,  in  the 
hereic  times  of  the  Reformation,  the  great 
military  leaders  of  the  Huguenots,  and  that 
some  of  them  had  died  for  their  cause  on  the 
battlefield.  His' father,  to  be  sure,  had  been 
brought  up  a  Catholic,  and,  after  having  for 
a  time  given  some  hopes  to  the  Protestants, 
had  finally  turned  against  them  with  all  the 
violence  of  a  convert,  had  become  their  avowed 
enemy,  the  personal  adversary  of  the  Duke 
de  Rohan,  the  last  great  military  leader  of  the 
Huguenots.  But  Conde  had  never  espoused 
the  fervor  of  his  father;  he  had  been  notorious 
in  his  youth  for  bis  infidelity;  he  bad  sur- 
rounded himself  in  his  earlier  years  with  men 
who  were  called  Hb$rtin8.  Many  of  these  had 
died  in  the  wars;  when  Cond6  came  back  to 
Chantilly  he  kept  in  his  household  those  ^ho 
had  survived.  He  had  around  him  a  number 
of  gentlemen  and  domestics  who  were  Pro- 
testants, and  they  lived  in  harmony  and  on  a 
footing  of  perfect  equality  with  the  Jeenits 
whom  Cond^^s  father  had  established  in  Chan- 
tilly.  The  Edict  of  Revocation,  therefore, 
touched  Cond^  personally.  He  was  eminently 
tolerant,  whether  deriving  his  tolerance  from 
old  traditions  or  from  his  philosophical  views. 
He  had  studied  Spinosa,  be  was  a  philosopher; 
he  could  not  bring  himself  to  obey  the  tyranni- 
cal proscriptions  of  the  edict.  He  remained 
passive,  and  took  no  measures  against  the  Pro- 
teetants  established  for  a  long  time  In  the 
barony  of  Montmorency,  nor  against  those 
of  Villiers-le-Bel  and  £kK>uen.  An  old  aer* 
vant  at  Chantilly,  named  Lafont,  could  not 
be  induced  to  change  his  religion.  He  was  at 
the  time  with  his  family  at  Vcmeuli.  We 
read  in  a  letter  addressed  to  the  Prince:  **Tbey 
put  the  grenadiers  in  his  house;  so  be  deter- 
mined to  follow  M.  de  Vemeuil  to  the  chapel. 
He  knelt  before  the  altar;  the  curate  read  him 
the  formula  of  what  be  had  to  believe;  he  rose 
without  saying  a  word.  The  grenadiers  left 
his  house,  and  be  returned  to  Chantilly.**  This 
conversion  seemed  a  little  summary,  but  Con. 
d^,  judging  that  Lafont  had  conformed  to  the 
edict,  ordered  that  he  should  be  let  alone. 

We  find,  in  the  Duke  d*Aumale*s  iMXik,  many 
dramatic  episodes  of  the  terrible  persecution. 
We  see,  for  instance,  how  much  interest  Con- 
d6  took  in  the  case  of  an  old  client  of  his 
house,  M.  de  Morln,  the  son  of  a  president  of 
the  Parlement  of  Quyenne,  and  of  his  brother, 
a  councillor  of  the  chambrt  de  P^it  at  the 
Parlement.    The  Councillor,  having  re. 


156 


Tlie    l^ation. 


[Vol  62.  No  1599 


lolyed  not  to  roDouDce  his  religion,  be  hid 
himself  in  Puris;  his  wife  foond  an  asylum 
in  the  ch4tean  of  Ch^ntillj.  Morin  bad  a 
child,  whom  be  thought  well  hidden  with  him; 
but  his  son  was  taken  from  him,  as  the  edict 
did  not  allow  tiie  obstinate  Huguenots  to 
keep  tiieir  children.  With  much  difBculty, 
Morin  succeeded  in  haviog  his  child  placed  in 
the  house  of  his  tutor,  M.  de  Mondion.  He 
himself  departed  for  Neuch&tel,  where  he  was 
recommended  by  Cond^  to  the  authorities. 

**  Let  us  not  forget,**  tays  the  Duke  d*  Aumale, 
**  that  wh«n  Cond^  gave  to  Morin  and  to  others 
the  means  of  crowing  the  frontier  of  the  king- 
dom, when  heasBuredthem  by  hisrecommenda. 
tions  an  asylum  in  foreign  parts  as  well  as  a 
liyeliliood,  he  performed  an  act  of  courageous 
hamanity,  an  infraction  of  the  orders  of  the 
King,  which  be  was  accustomed  to  respect  so 
scrupulously  :  for  the  severest  punishments 
were  decreed  against  Huguenots  who  should 
attempt  to  fly,  or  those  who  should  favor  their 
flight.  It  was  later  that  the  King  relaz<Ki  his 
•everi^  on  this  point  and  tolerated  tb^depar> 
tnre  01  so  many  unfortunates  for  whom  the 
kingdom  had  been  transformed  into  a  prison ; 
and  then  began  the  fatal  exodus  which  deprived 
the  country  of  so  many  good  citizens,  ana  filled 
foreign  countries  with  irreconcilable  enemies 
of  France." 

Morin  did  not  remain  long  at  NeucbAtel^  he 
left  for  Holland,  where  the  French  Protestants 
had  begun  to  group  themselves  round  the  Prince 
of  Orange.  They  recognised  as  a  sort  of  a  chief 
a  son  of  La  Force,  the  marquis  who  had,  many 
years  before,  followed  Cond^  in  exile  and  had 
never  returned  to  France.  In  Holland,  Morin 
continued  to  receive  a  pension  from  Cond4. 

Louis  XIV.  allowed  only  one  Huguenot  to 
leave  France  with  a  passport;  it  was  the  Mar- 
quis de  Rnvigny,  who  had  long  been  the  de- 
puty-general of  the  Reformed  churches  of 
France  at  the  court,  a  sort  of  ambassador  near 
the  King.  Rnvigny  had  played  a  great  part 
in  the  times  of  the  troubles,  and  was  personally 
liked  by  the  King,  but  he  refused  to  conform 
to  the  Edict  of  Revocation.  Before  leaving 
France,  Ruvigny  wished  to  give  to  Cond^  a 
public  mark  of  his  deference  and  of  the  grati 
tude  of  the  Protestants  who  had  experienced 
his  kindneas  and  his  tolerance.  He  asked  p^r. 
mission  to  stop  on  his  way  to  exile  at  Chan  til- 
ly  with  his  family,  and  he  spent  there  a  day 
and  a  night.  Ruvigny  recommended  the  Hu- 
guenots to  Cond^  before  departing.  He  was 
to  see  him  no  more;  Condd  was  old,  broken  by 
the  fl^ut,  and  already  thinking  of  putting  "*'  an 
interval  between  life  and  death,**  and  meditat- 
ing how  he  should  make  his  own  conversion  be- 
fore dying.  He  had  never  been  in  the  habit 
of  receiving  the  communion,  he  was  what  we 
to-day  should  call  a  free-thinker.  The  Jesuits 
who  lived  in  his  house  had  been  carefully 
chosen  among  the  most  cultured  and  refined 
men  of  the  order;  they  were  treated  as  friends 
by  Cond4— they  were  not  his  spiritual  guides. 
Nothing  can  be  more  interesting,  for  those  who 
wish  to  penetrate  the  depths  of  the  human 
soul,  than  the  final  chapter  in  which  the  Duke 
d*Aumale  tells  us  in  what  manner  Cond6  pre- 
pared  himself  for  his  latter  end :  what  thoughts 
engaged  him,  what  were  his  preoccupations 
before  leaving  the  stage  which  he  had  filled 
with  so  much  glory,  and  on  which  he  had  led 
such  a  checkered  life. 


Coirespondenceo 

JEFFERSON'S   DRAFTS   OF   THE    KEN- 
TUCKY  RESOLUTIONS  OF  1T98. 

To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 
Sib:  There  is  a  certain  absurdity  in  imagin- 


ing that  anything  material  on  the  doctrine  of 
nullification  can  still  be  added  to  the  elaborate 
discussions  of  nearly  one  hundred  yearc,  after 
the  entire  disappearance  of  the  question  as 
one  of  practical  value  in  our  politics.  Yet  in 
the  whole  of  these  discussions,  both  political 
and  historical,  no  mention  has  been  made  of 
Jefferson's  first  or  rough  draft  of  the  Ken- 
tucky Resolutions,  though  it  throws  important 
light  on  the  completed  fair  copy  so  frequently 
quoted,  and  also  on  the  resolutions  as  adopted 
by  the  Kentucky  Legislature.  There  is  a 
story  to  the  effect  that  a  minister  troubled  his 
deacons  by  unguarded  speeches,  and  was  ac- 
cordingly waited  on  by  them,  with  the  request 
that  he  would  be  morecarefuL  '*0b,  breth- 
ren,** he  replied.  **lf  you  only  knew  what  I 
didn*t  say!**  What  Jefferson  said  in  his  first 
draft  and  omitted  in  his  second  seems  to  me 
important  if  not  essential. 
In  the  first  clause,  after  the  claim— 

**  That  to  this  compact  each  state  acceeded 
as  a  state,  and  is  an  Integral  party,  its  co- 
states  forming,  as  to  itself,  the  other  party  **~ 

Jefferson  wrote  the  following  clause,  which 
he  struck  out  in  tiie  rough  draft: 

**  That  the  constitutional  form  of  action  for 
this  commonwealth  as  a  party  with  respect  to 
any  other  party  is  by  it*s  organised  powers 
&  not  by  it*s  citizens  in  a  body.** 

Equally  illustrating  Jefferson*s  temporary 
want  of  faith  in  the  people  was  an  alteration 
in  the  eighth  section;  and  how  far  his  cooler 
Judgment  toned  down  the  threat  is  most  inte- 
resting in  the  comparison : 

[srasTmrrx  clausk.] 
''But  that  they  [the 
CO  states]  will  concur 
with  tbiscomm.  in  con- 
sideriog  the  said  acts  so 
palpably  against  the 
const,  as  to  amount  to 
an  undisguised  declatn. 
that  that  compact  is  not 
meant  to  be  the  measure 
of  the  powers  of  the  genl. 
govmt.,  but  that  It  wiU 
proceed  in  the  exercise 
o?er  these  states  of  all 
powers  whatsoever,  that 
they  will  view  this  as 
seizioK  the  rights  of  the 
states  &  consolidatinE 
them  in  the  hands  of  the 
genl  gon.  with  power 
assumed  to  bind  the 
states  (not  merely  in  the 
cases  made  federal)  but 
in  all  cases  whatsoever, 
by  laws  made  not  with 
their  consent  but  hy 
others  against  their  con- 
sent, that  this  would  be 
to  surrender  the  form  of 
govmc.  we  have  chosen  & 
to  live  under  one  deriv- 
ing it's  powers  from  It's 
own  will  and  not  from 
our  authority,  and  that 
the  co-states  recurring  to 
their  natural  right  in 
cases  not  made  federal 
will  concur  in  declaring 
these  acts  void  and  of  no 
force,  &  will  each  take 
measures  of  it's  own  pro- 
viding that  neither  these 
acts  nor  any  others  of 
the  government  not 
plainly  and  intentionally 
authorized  by  the  coun- 
try to  the  genl.  govmt. 
shall  be  exercised  within 
their  respective  terri- 
tories.'* 


[cKAsan  cLAUSc.] 
**But  that  however 
confident  at  other  times 
this  commonwealth 
would  have  been  in  the 
deliberate  judgment  of 
the  CO  states  and  that  but 
one  opinion  would  be  en 
tertained  on  the  unjusti- 
fiable character  of  the 
acts  herein  specified,  yet 
it  cannot  he  insensible 
that  circumstances  do  ex- 
ist, &  that  passions  are 
at  this  time  afloat  which 
may  give  a  bias  to  the 
judgment  to  be  pro- 
nounced on  this  subject, 
that  times  of  passion  are 
peculiarly  those  when 
precedents  of  wrong  are 
yielded  to  with  the  least 
caution,  when  encroach 
meats  of  powers  are  most 
usually  made  &  princi- 
ples are  least  watched. 
That  whether  the  coinci- 
dence of  the  occasion  & 
the  encroachment  in  the 
present  case  has  been 
from  accident  or  design, 
the  right  of  the  conmion- 
wealth  to  the  government 
of  itself  in  cases  not  [ti- 
legible]  pcuted  with,  is 
too  vitally  important  to 
be  yielded  from  tempo- 
rary or  secondary  con- 
siderations: that  a  fixed 
determination  tberefore 
to  retain  it,'requires  us 
in  candor  and  without 
reserve  to  declare  &  to 
warn  our  co-states  that 
considering  the  said  acts 
to  be  so  palpably  against 
the  constitution  as  to 
amount  to  an  undisguis- 
ed declaration  that  that 
compact  is  not  meant  to 


be  the  measure  of  the  powers  of  the  general  gov- 


ernment, but  that  it  is  to  proceed  in  the  exercise 
over  these  states  of  any  &  all  powers  whatever, 
considering  this  as  seizing  the  rights  of  the  states  A 
consolidating  them  in  the  hands  of  the  general  gov- 
ernment, with  power  to  bind  the  states  Cnot  merely 
in  the  cases  made  federal  [comwi  federiti]  but)  in  all 
cases  whatsoever  by  laws  not  made  with  their  con- 
sent, but  bv  other  states  aicainst  their  consent;  con- 
sidering all  the  consequences  as  nothing  in  compari- 
son with  that  of  yielding  the  form  of  government 
we  have  chosen  &  of  living  under  one  [ttruck  ouf] 
deriving  it^  powers  from  it's  own  will  and  not  from 
our  authority,  this  commonwealth,  as  an  integral 
party,  does  in  that  case  protest  against  such  opinions 
and  exercises  of  undelegated  &  unauthorized  power, 
and  does  declare  that  recurring  to  it^  natural  right 
of  jodgini?  A  actinia  for  itself,  it  will  oe  constrained 
to  take  care  of  itself,  A  to  provide  bj  measures  of  it's 
own  that  no  power  not  fdainly  A  intentionally  dele- 
gated by  the  constitution  to  the  general  govern- 
ment, shall  be  exercised  within  the  territory  of  this 
commonwealth. ' ' 

These  are  the  only  material  differences  be- 
tween the  rough  draft  and  the  fair  eopy;  but 
while  on  this  subject,  I  wish  to  call  attention 
to  one  hitherto  unnoted  fact.  In  the  two  Jef- 
ferson drafts  the  words  ** nullification**  and 
•'nullify**  each  occur  once,  close  together,  ba- 
ing  the  earliest- known  use  of  the  words  in  the 
political  sense  in  which  they  were  afterwards 
employed.  The  resolutions  as  voted  by  the 
Kentucky  Legislature  omitted  these  words, 
and  only  by  the  use  of  the  word  **iuillifioi^ 
tion  **  in  the  supplementary  resolutions  of  1799 
did  that  word  pass  into  political  literature. 
Many  historians  (Benry  Adams,  *  History  of 
U.  S.*  i.,  205;  Schouler,  i.,  424;  McHaster, 
ii.,  422;  and  HUdreth,  v.,  275)  state  that  this 
was  a  tempering  of  Jeffer8on*s  extreme  plan  of 
action  by  the  more  moderate  legislative  body, 
and  Von  Hoist  (i.,  149)  goes  even  further,  stat- 
ing: 

^  That  Jefferson  was  not  only  an  advocate, 
but  the  father,  of  the  doctrine  of  nullification, 
is  thus  well  established.  It  may  be  that 
Nicholas  secured  his  assent  to  the  striking  out 
of  these  sentences,  but  no  fact  has  as  yet  neen 
discovered  in  support  of  this  assumption.  Still 
less  is  there  anv  positive  ground  for  the  alle- 
gation that  Jefferson  had  k)egun  to  doubt  the 
position  he  had  assumed.  Various  passages 
in  his  later  letters  point  decidedly  to  the  very 
opposite  oonclusion.*' 

How  far  the  **fair  copy**  on  which  these 
various  writers  based  their  statements  was 
fair  evidence  always  seemed  to  me  question- 
able,  since  the  mere  existence  of  the  paper  in 
the  Jefferson  manuscripts  was  proof  positive 
that  it  was  not  the  copy  given  by  Jefferson  to 
Nicholas  Fortunately  I  have  discovered  a 
brief  note  from  Jefferson  to  Nicholas,  written 
after  the  resolutions  had  been  put  into  his 
hands,  to  the  following  effect : 

**  The  more  I  have  reflected  on  the  phrase  in  the 
paper  you  shewed  me,  the  more  strongly  I  think  it 
should  be  altered .  Suppose  you  were  instead  of  the 
invitation  to  cooperate  in  the  annulment  of  the  acts, 
to  make  it  an  invitation  '  to  concur  with  this  com- 
monwealth in  declaring,  as  it  does  hereby  declare, 
that  the  said  acts  are,  and  were  ab  initio,  null,  void 
and  of  no  force,  or  efff ct.'  I  should  like  it  better. 
Health,  happiness,  and  Adieu.'* 

As  the  word  ** annulment**  occurs  nowhere 
in  the  Jefferson  drafts,  it  is  obvious  that  the 
striking  out  of  the  word  **  nullification  **  was 
done  at  Jefferson*s  request,  and  from  the  man- 
ner  in  which  Nicholas  utilized  the  suggested 
change,  the  inference  is  strong  that  the  copy 
of  the  resolutions  he  had  received  from  their 
author  was  radically  different  from  the  fair 
copy  which  has  been  so  often  quoted  as  repre- 
senting Jefferson*s  final  opinion. 

Paul  Lkiokstsb  Foan, 


Feb.  'o,  1896] 


The    N'ation. 


157 


THE   FACULTY   OP  THE   UNIVERSITY 
OF  HALLE. 

To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  The  notice  of  the  last  liyraison  of  Pau- 
ly^s^Reai-Eocyklop&die*  in  a  recent  number 
of  the  Nation  assigns  its  editor-in  chief.  Prof. 
Qeorg  Wiasowa,  to  the  University  of  Marburg. 
It  may  be  of  interest  to  some  of  your  readers 
to  know  that  this  eminent  scholar  and  inte- 
resting lecturer  has  succeeded  the  late  Prof. 
Keil  at  the  University  of  Halle^ Wittenberg, 
entering  upon  his  duties  last  October.  His 
Accession  to  the  faculty  of  Halle  makes  its  corps 
of  classical  instructors  again  one  of  the  strong- 
est in  Germany.  The  transfer  of  Prof.  Blass 
from  Kiel,  a  few  years  ago,  and  this  latest  ap- 
pointment shows  that  it  is  the  intention  of  the 
Prussian  Ministry  of  Instruction  to  maintain 
at  Halle  the  noble  traditions  that  have  made  it 
one  of  the  most  notable  centres  of  classical 
scholarship  in  Germany.  Blass,  Dittenberger, 
and  Wissowa  in  dassical  philology ,  Robert  in 
archsBology,  Pischel  in  Sanskrit,  and  Bduard 
Meyer  in  ancient  history,  not  to  speak  of  the 
able  younger  men,  are  names  that  are  sure  to 
allure  an  increasing  number  of  American  stu- 
dents, especially  those  who  wish  to  avoid  the 
crowds  of  Americans,  too  often  on  pleasure 
rather  than  on  study  bent,  who  throng  the 
lecture,  halls  and  the  pensions  of  the  larger 
dtiee.  Edward  Cappb. 

OmcAOO.  February  10.  1800. 


THE    FIRST    UNITARIAN   CHURCH   IN 
ABCERICA. 

To  THx  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  Permit  me  to  question  a  statement  in 
the  sketch  of  Dr.  Fumess  in  your  issue  of 
February  6,  in  which  his  church  in  Philadel- 
phia, dating  from  1796,  is  spoken  of  as  **tbe 
first  organized  as  such  [Unitarian]  in  the 
United  Stateii.**  In  the  Unitarian  church  at 
Northumberland,  Pa.,  of  which  I  was  for  four 
years  the  pastor,  there  is  a  mural  tablet  to  Dr. 
Priestley  which  states  that  the  church  was 
founded  by  him  in  1794.  The  only  point  in 
question,  for  the  settlement  of  which  I  believe 
DO  documents  are  extant,  is  whether  it  was  or- 
ganised *^asa  Unitarian  Church»*^  But  when 
we  remember  that  Priestley  had  already  adopt- 
ed the  name,  and  that  he  was  refused  recogni- 
tion by  the  other  clergymen  of  Northumber- 
land and  the  neighborhood,  there  would  seem 
to  be  little  room  for  doubt  that  the  church  he 
founded  there  in  1794  was  a  Unitarian  church 
in  name  as  well  as  in  fact. 

Respectfully  yours,  H.  D.  C. 

EAMmmr,  Ms. 

[Oar  correBpondent'8  inference  BeemB  to 
be  valid.  It  is  certainly  an  interesting  fact 
that,  whether  in  Northumberland  or  in 
Philadelphia,  the  first  Unitarian  church 
organized  as  such  in  America  was  drgan- 
ised  by  Dr.  Priestley,  the  leading  English 
Unitarian  of  the  eighteenth  century. — 
Ed.  Natioii.] 


THE  AMERICAN  SCHOOL  IN  ROME. 
To  thr  Editor  of  Ths  Nation  : 

Sir:  Permit  me,  through  your  columns,  to 
correct  an  error  that  may  otherwise  lead  to 
misapprehensions  touching  the  resources  of  the 
new  American  School  in  Rome.  In  my  just- 
printed  annual  report,  for  the  sake  of  express- 
ing my  appreciatioD  of  the  School  and  of  oonw 


mending  it  to  the  public-spirited  as  deserving 
the  most  liberal  pecuniary  support,  I  referred 
to  its  organisation  and  projected  work.  In 
reproducing,  however,  certain  statements  from 
a  document  issued  by  the  Archaeological  Insti- 
tute of  America,  I  inadvertently  credited  tiie 
Institute  with  two  or  three  appropriations  to 
the  School  in  Rome  when  they  had  really  been 
made  to  the  School  in  Athens.  I  find  no  ex- 
cuse for  the  oversight  except  that  of  inevitable 
haste  at  the  time  I  wrote,  and  the  fact  that 
the  school  last  named  in  the  original  document 
before  the  statements  quoted  was  **the  newly 
founded  American  School  of  Classical  Studies 
in  Rome.*^  While  I  much  regret  the  f>lip,  it  is 
with  some  sense  of  relief  that  I  remember  that 
this  correction  is  likely  to  reach  many  hun- 
dreds more  than  the  error,  and  that  to  all  of 
these  it  will  carry  one  more  endorsement  and 
commendation  of  a  most  worthy  enterprise 
projected  for  the  improvement  of  American 
scholarship. — Tours  respectfully, 

William  F.  Warren. 

BoROif  nHiTKBSiTT,  FebnuuT  18,  1896. 


♦•HIRED  MAN." 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  Little  as  the  fact  of  rendering  service 
is  thought  to  be  derogatory,  we  often  find  it 
needful,  in  order  that  our  fellow.sovereigns 
may  live  in  perfect  charity  with  us,  to  be  par- 
ticular how  we  style  a  person  by  whom  service 
is  rendered.  Americans  at  large  acqaiesclng, 
th»  servant-man,  accompanied  by  his  old-fash- 
ioned master^  if  he  has  not  indeed  gone  the 
way  of  the  dodo  and  the  dinotherlum,  has,  at 
least,  retired  on  indefinite  leave  of  absence,  his 
substitute  in  office  being  the  hired  man. 

Of  this  expression,  a  strange  seeming  oce, 
its  meaning  considered,  what  is  tl)e  history? 
Ordinarily,  I  believe,  it  is  regarded  as  a  eu. 
pbemism  ;  and  such  it  now  is,  unquestionably. 
It  appears,  however,  to  have  been,  with  us, 
originally,  som  thing  quite  different.  Our 
cis-atlantic  forefathers,  even  in  the  days  when 
they  were  British  subjects,  had  their  hired 
men;  and  the  following  passage,  extracted 
from  a  dissertation  written  in  Pennsylvania  in 
1751,  shows  who  were  formerly  thus  designat- 
ed : 

**  Why,  then,  will  America  purchase  slaves  ? 
Because  slaves  may  be  kept  as  long  as  a  man 
pleases,  or  has  occasion  for  their  lam)ur ;  while 
hired  men  are  continually  leaving  their  mas- 
ter (often  in  the  midst  of  his  business)  and  set- 
ting up  for  themselves." 

Male  slaves  being  unhired  tit  en,  the  term 
hired  men^  if  we  bear  in  mind  the  circum- 
stances under  which  it  was  employed,  was 
strictly  appropriate  as  distingutehing  labour- 
ers or  domestics  who  were  not  slaves.  Servant- 
men^  in  its  stead,  since  the  appellation  would 
have  comprehended  bondm^n^  would  have 
failed  in  preciseness  of  description. 

Was  it  the  custom,  prior  to  the  War  of  Inde- 
pendence, to  speak  of  hired  woTnen,  hired  boys, 
and  hired  maids  or  girls,  as  well  as  of  hired 
menf  Presumably  it  was.  The  point  could 
be  ascertained  by  turning  over  old  records. 

Our  colonial  grandsires  of  course  stressed 
the  first  syllable  in  hired  man,  while  we  make 
the  phrase,  in  its  altered  acceptation,  a  spondee. 
And  in  so  doing  we  observe  analogy.  Wit- 
ness, for  instance,  black-sheep,  'reprobate,^ 
like  which  we  should,  moreover,  supplying  a 
hyphen,  wr\tt  hired- man. 

The  quotation  given  above  is  taken  from  the 

volume  of  the  Annual  Register  for  1760. 

P.H. 
llASi.foap,  WsQt.iSP,  Fabnaaiy  6»  1890. 


HEINE'S  SOLITUDE. 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  Tour  mention,  among  the  autograph 
letters  in  the  British  Museum,  of  Washing, 
ton's  letter  to  the  Earl  of  Buchan— it  is  in  the 
first  case  to  the  left,  as  you  enter  from  the 
Orenville  Library— reminds  me  of  another 
letter  in  the  same  collection  written  by  Heine 
from  Boulogne,  under  date  of  July  15, 1884 ;  it 
is  characteristic:  **Depuis  10  jours  je  suis 
id,  jouipsant  d'une  parfaite  solitude,  car  je 
suis  entourr^  de  la  mer,  de  hois,  et  d* Anglais, 
qui  sont  aussi  muet  que  le  hois — ^je  ne  veux  pas 
dire  aussi  h&ltem  **— Yours  very  truly, 

Robert  H.  Marr. 

Nkw  OBLSiUV.  Febnisnr  II,  18ee. 


Notes. 


Whitens  *  Natural  History  of  Selbome'  is  to 
be  edited,  with  an  introduction  and  notes,  by 
Prof.  Edward  S.  Morse,  for  Oinn  &  Co.*s 
''  Classics  for  Children  "  series. 

D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston,  have  nearly 
ready  a  translation,  by  Will  S.  Monroe,  of 
Comenius^s  *  School  of  Infancy,'  with  por- 
trait, introduction,  notes,  and  bibliography. 

Mkcmillan  Sl  Co.  announce  *Art  and  Hu- 
manity in  Homer,'  by  Prof.  Wm.  Cranston 
Lawton ;  a  translation,  by  Dr.  Alexander 
Bruce,  of  Tboma's  *Text.book  of  Oeneral  Pa- 
thology and  Pathological  Anatomy';  and  a 
collection  of  the  traditional  hynms  of  the  An- 
cient GhMlic  Church  in  Scotland,  by  Alexander 
Carmichael 

Henry  Holt  &  Co.  announce  for  speedy  issue 
*  On  Parody,'  an  essay  on  the  art,  with  humor- 
ous selections  from  its  masters,  beginning  with 
the  Greeks  and  Romans,  by  Arthur  Shadwell 
Martin. 

Roberts  Bros,  have  ready  for  immediate  issue 
No.  8  of  Prof.  Todd's  '*  Columbian  Knowledge 
Series."  enUtled  *  A  Hand-book  of  Arctic  Dis- 
coveries,' by  Gen.  A.  W,  Greely,  U.  S.  Army, 
a  compact  volume,  exhibiting  such  acoomplish- 
ed  results  as  may  answer  the  inquiries  of  the 
busy  man  who  often  wishes  to  know  what, 
when,  and  where  rather  than  how.  Maps  and 
bibliographies  have  not  been  neglected. 

The  first  century  of  the  French  Institute  is 
to  be  commemorated  by  Count  de  PranquevUle, 
a  member  of  that  body,  in  two  quarto  volumes 
of  elegant  manufacture,  *  Le  Premier  Sitele  de 
I'InsUtut  de  France:  25  Octobre  1706-1805' 
(Paris:  J.  Rothschild;  New  York:  Lemcke  & 
Bfichner).  The  history  and  biography  of  the 
Institute  and  its  titulary  members  form  one 
divifion;  in  the  second  a  like  service  is  per- 
formed for  the  **  membres  Uteres,"  the  foreign 
and  non-resident  associates,  correspondents, 
etc.,  and  it  will  contain  lists  of  foundations, 
prizes,  and  the  like.  Rubricated  initials  and 
an  abundance  of  photographic  illustrations  in 
the  text  adorn  and  elu'^idate  the  narrative. 

Tbe  panorama  of  the  year  is  unrolled  as 
usual  in  the  bound  volume  of  Harper* s  Weekly 
for  1B05.  The  war  between  China  and  Japan 
determines  the  illustrations  at  the  beginning; 
the  menace  of  war  on  account  of  Venecnela,  at 
the  end.  Between  these  events  oomes  the  un- 
lucky death  of  Secretary  Gresham,  whose  por- 
trait is  succeeded  by  that  of  Secretary  Olney, 
President  Cleveland's  Ame  damnie  so  far  as 
we  can  now  judge.  This  change  of  ofitcers  is 
certainly  tbe  most  momentous  event  recorded 
in  the  Weekly,  beside  which  the  reversal  of 
the  inoome-tax  decision  counts  for  the  merest 
trifle.    Th«^  is  a  page  of  portraits  of  new 


158 


1?lie    !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  Ko.  1599 


United  States  Beaaton,  a  choice  assortment. 
For  the  rest,  we  pass  in  review  the  Lezow 
Committee,  the  Brooklyn  strike,  the  grand 
combination  Astor-Lenoz-Tilden  library  of 
New  York,  the  Boston  Public  and  the  Con- 
gressional Liibraries  with  their  respective  deco- 
rations, the  city  shows,  the  yacht  races,  the 
Atlanta  Exposition.  Mr.  Weyman's  'Red  Cock- 
ade *  is  the  chief  serial,  but  the  iUustrations  to 
Mr.  Bangs*s  '  House- boat  on  the  Styx*  can  be 
studied  only  here  at  their  original  scale  and 
with  full  enjoyment  of  Mr.  NewelFs  clever- 
ness. 

The  twenty-eighth  volume  of  Harper' a  Ba 
sar  furnishes  data  enough,  with  its  bewilder- 
ing array  of  feminine  costumes,  for  the  expert 
in  such  things  to  calculate  the  curve  which 
sleeves  and  skirts  are  now  following.  From 
such  mysteries  we  refrain,  to  note  only  the  less 
technical  contents:  serial  fiction  provided  by 
Maarten  Maartens,  Mrs.  Rebecca  Harding 
Davis,  and  Mr.  Howells;  notes  on  contempo- 
rary music;  reproductions  of  contemporary 
art,  with  an  occasional  harking  back  to  Gains- 
borough or  Sir  Joshua  for  types  of  female 
loveliness;  *'T.  W.  H.'s"  column,  **  Women 
and  Men,''  running  through  the  year  and 
covering  things  literary  and  moral  in  Blr.  Hig. 
ginson's  well  known  style. 

Mr.  William  Woodville  RockhiU,  the  newly 
appointed  First  Assistant  Secretary  of  State 
and  one  of  the  roost  distinguished  of  living 
Asiatic  travellers,  has  given  us  an  account  of 
.  his  second  Journey  to  Thibet,  in  the  form  of  a 
*  Diary  of  a  Journey  through  Mongolia  and 
Tibet,'  published  by  the  Smithsonian  Institu- 
tion. The  bulky  volume  will  be  of  much  value 
and  interest  to  specialists,  as  the  author,  who 
speaks  both  Chinese  and  Thibetan,  had  great 
advantages  over  any  rivals  in  the  same  region, 
and  knew  how  to  make  the  most  of  them.  The 
public,  however,  will  find  the  mass  of  uncouth 
names  and  minute  geographical  information 
rather  formidable,  and  be  more  inclined  to  ad- 
mire than  to  re&d.  Although  Mr.  Rockhill 
did  not  succeed  in  following  out  his  original 
plan  of  pushing  through  to  India,  but,  like  so 
many  others,  was  forced  to  turn  back,  he  went 
over  much  new  ground,  and  has  added  mate- 
rially to  our  knowledge  of  one  of  the  lesst  ex- 
plored countries  in  the  world. 

♦  The  Fifth  Army  Corps,'  by  Lleut.Col.  W. 
H.  Powell,  nth  U.  S.  Infantry  (G.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons),  is  a  book  sure  to  be  very  attractive  to 
the  veterans  of  the  civil  war  who  were  mem 
bers  of  that  corps  organisation  in  the  Army  of 
the  Potomac.  For  the  general  reader,  who 
naturally  thinks  that  in  a  stout  octavo  he 
should  And  a  complete  history  of  the  cam- 
paigns mentioned,  it  has  the  defect  of  being 
limited  to  the  standpoint  of  a  minor  fraction 
of  the  army  in  Virginia.  A  more  serious 
fault  is  that  the  author,  in  his.  laudation  of 
McClellan  as  a  commander,  pays  no  attention 
to  the  definite  criticisms  of  that  general's 
campaigns  which  are  based  on  the  fuller 
knowledge  gained  since  1862,  and  especially 
upon  the  established  fact  that  his  army  was 
greatly  superior  in  numbers  and  equipment  to' 
the  Confederates.  He  also  shows  a  confusion 
of  ideas  with  regard  to  the  relations  of  the 
President,  the  Cabinet,  and  Congress  to  the 
army  which  is  simply  astonishing. 

The  importance  of  the  aid  of  photography  in 
modem  science-teaching  Is  admirably  illus- 
trated in  »An  Atlas  of  the  Fertilization  and 
Karyokinesis  of  the  Ovum,'  by  Edmund  B. 
Wilson,  Ph.D.,  with  the  cooperation  of  Edward 
Learning,  M.D.  (New  York:  For  the  Columbia 
University  Press  by  Macmlllan  &  Ca.).  Sub- 
jects beyond  the  reach  of  any  but  the  most  ex- 


pert microscopistfl  and  the  best  of  apparatus 
are  shown  as  they  appeared  in  the  most  per- 
fect results  of  long  continued  observations  and 
in  the  mo'it  successful  of  many  attempts  at 
representation.  The  atlas  exhibits  forty  stages, 
in  maturation,  fertiliz&tion,  and  cleavage,  to 
the  Blastula  of  sixteen  cells,  photographed  di- 
rectly from  sections  of  minute  eggs.  The  fig- 
ures set  forth  the  phenomena  exactly  as  seen 
by  original  investigators,  and  are  sufficiently 
numerous  to  trace  the  courses  of  reasoning  by 
which  accepted  conclusions  have  been  attained. 
The  many  diagrammatic  figures  corresponding 
to  the  phototypes  reduce  necessary  textual  ex- 
planations to  the  smallest  compass.  The  tech- 
nical  terms  are  clearly  defined.  In  the  second 
part— that  is,  the  Atlas  proper^the  natural  or 
der  hsB  been  followed,  but  in  the  gen<*ral  In- 
troduction the  sequence  is  fertHisation,  deav 
age,  maturation,  and  **  fertilization,  the  cycle 
completed."  This  arrangement  presents  no 
difficulty  for  an  embryologist,  but  in  the  case 
of  a  student  beginning  the  study  it  leads  to 
confusion  which  has  no  compensating  excuse 
for  its  existence.  It  is  a  slight  blemish  in  a  work 
which  in  general  is  well  adapted  to  the  purpose 
for  which  it  was  constructed.  The  Atlas  is 
worthy  of  a  good  reception. 

To  persons  desiring  a  moderately  compre* 
hensive  knowledge  of  animal  life  below  the 
vertebrates,  to  teachers  of  high  or  granmiar 
schools,  or  of  such  courses  in  zodlogy  as  do  not 
include  exhaustive  special  investigations,  and 
to  students  under  such  instructors,  Arthur  £. 
Shipley's  *  Zo51ogy  of  the  Invertebrata '  (Lon 
don  :  Black  ;  New  York  :  Macmillan)  has  much 
to  recommend  it.  The  material  has  been  care- 
fully selected,  the  arrangement  is  good,  the 
text  is  clear  and  concise,  and  the  abundsnt 
illustratjons  are  of  excellent  quality.  The  au- 
thor has  laid  particular  stress  on  morphology, 
rather  than  on  histology,  embryology,  or 
natural  history.  He  has  chosen  an  example  of 
each  of  the  larger  groups,  one  typifying  the 
whole  g^up,  for  dissection.  Illustration,  and 
discussion,  and  also  has  given  special  promi- 
nence to  intermediate  forms  which  by  their 
affinities  are  placed  between  the  larger  groups. 
Absence  of  bibliographical  references,  com- 
monly  so  numerous,  and  of  the  multitudinous 
footnotes  ordinarily  complicating  the  text  and 
perplexing  the  inexperienced  student,  renders 
the  matter  more  easy  to  grasp,  and  really 
makes  the  pages  more  attractive  for  the  classes 
it  is  intended  to  reach.  A  work  better  suited 
to  the  needs  of  those  for  whom  it  was  pre- 
pared is  not  easily  found. 

We  are  in  the  midst  of  an  active  period  of 
production  of  German  dictionaries.  The  fourth 
edition  of  Fliigel's  *  Universal  English-German 
and  German- English  Dictionary '  is  only  four 
years  old,  but  already  we  have  a  namesake 
rival,  Flugel-Schmidt-Tanger's  *  Dictionary  of 
the  English  and  German  Language  for  Home 
and  School,'  *<  with  special  reference"  to  the 
foregoing  (Brunswick:  George  Wester mann; 
New  York:  Lemcke  &  Biichner).  The  super 
flcial  differences  are  FlQgers  three  volumes  as 
against  the  triumvirate*s  two,  and  fine  and 
open  type  respectively.  In  this  latter  particu- 
lar the  newcomer  should  be  decidedly  wel- 
comed. The  gain  in  space  lies  in  the  English- 
German  portion,  and  as  this  will  be  much  less 
used  than  the  German- English  by  an  English- 
speaking  buyer,  he  will  be  apt  to  prefer  the 
triumvirate's  one  volume  to  Flfigel's  two.  It 
is  but  fair  to  add,  however,  that  the  literary 
features  of  Fliigers  English-German  section, 
as  shown  in  the  illustrative  quotations  from  a 
wide  range  of  English  sources,  are  wholly 
wanting   in   the   newer  work.    Between  the 


German- English  portions  it  is  hard  to  choose, 
and  we  can  only  counsel  the  procuring  of 
both  if  one's  means  permit.  Neither  deals  at 
all  in  etymologies. 

Whatever  be  here  the  choice,  the  more 
scholarly  and  philological  dictionary-seeker 
will,  on  examination,  decidedly  wish  to  own 
also  the  new  *  Deutsches  Wdrterbuch '  of  Prof. 
Hermann  Paul,  of  which  the  first  instalment 
(A~Gebahr)  is  to  hand  (Halle:  Max  Nie- 
meyer  ;  New  York  :  Lemcke  &  Biichner).  Its 
plan  is  sufficiently  novel.  It  does  not  aim  to 
furnish  an  exhaustive  vocabulary  or  a  com- 
plete series  of  definitions.  It  deals  with  the 
speech  of  the  present  day,  and  with  the  older 
only  by  way  of  comparison,  to  show  the  sig- 
nificant departures  from  classic  usage  in  the 
eighteenth  century  and  from  the  Biblical. 
Hence  the  references  are  principally  to  Goethe, 
Klopstock,  Lessing,  Luther,  Pestalozzi,  and 
Wieland.  Take  the  word  biUig  for  an  example 
of  the  author's  treatment.  He  notes  its  MHG 
form  of  bilUeh^  and  the  prolongation  of  the 
ending  ch  into  tiie  seventeenth  century;  its 
root  bit-;  Its  synonymy  with  recht,  but  with  an 
aspect  not  towards  statutes  but  towards  natu- 
ral  perception  of  right;  its  sense  of  *  cheap' 
(*not  dearer  than  it  should  be '),  originating  in 
the  last  century.  In  this  brief  exposition  there 
is  a  single  (proverbial)  illustration.  Ein  is  dis- 
cussed in  two  pages.  The  work  will  be  com- 
plete in  October.  It  is,  as  German  books  go, 
clearly  printed  in  a  handsome  (Gothic  letter, 
but  it  would  have  been  an  immense  conde- 
scension to  a  foreigner  if  the  phrases  and  ex- 
amples had  been  picked  out  (as  in  Heyne)  in 
Roman  characters.  It  will,  however,  find  a 
ready  welcome  as  it  is. 

Veihagen  &  Klassig,  well  known  for  their 
excellent  series  of  popular  illustrated  books, 
have  undertaken  one  of  artists'  monographs, 
the  purpose  of  which  is  to  give  in  popular  form 
a  scholarly  history  of  classic  and  modem  art. 
The  series  is  under  the  direction  of  Prof.  H. 
Knackf  uss,  author  of  the  excellent  *  Deutsche 
Kunstgeschichte'  published  by  the  same  firm, 
and  he  has  written  many  of  the  monographs 
himself.  Thus  far  the  series  contains  volumes 
on  Raphael,  Rubens,  Rembrandt,  Michelange- 
lo, Diirer,  Velasquez,  Menzel,  Teniers,  A.  v. 
Werner,  Knaus,  Murillo.  They  are  all  printed 
on  good  paper,  handsomely  bound,  and,  al- 
though  arranged  in  a  series,  each  volume  is 
complete  in  itself.  The  price  ranges  from  two 
to  three  marks,  but  a  Prachtausgabe,  limited 
to  100  copies  and  numbered,  has  been  provided 
at  twenty  marks  per  volume.  The  volumes  on 
Menzel,  by  Knackfuss,  and  on  Werner,  by 
Adolf  Rosenberg,  lie  before  us,  and  are  indeed 
very  attractive.  They  contain  about  130  pages 
each,  and  the  former  has  141  reproductions 
from  paintings  and  drawings,  while  the  latter 
is  ornamented  with  125.  Those  from  paintings 
cannot  fail  to  be  pleasing  to  every  eye;  those 
from  drawings  and  from  studies  have  a  special 
value  for  artists. 

Signor  Angelo  Lupatelli's  *  Storia  della  Pit- 
tura  in  Perugia'  (Foligno:  F.  Campitelli)  wiU 
be  of  service  to  such  students  as  have  no  ac 
cess  to  libraries  stocked  with  the  numberless 
publications,  old  and  new,  on  Italian  art.  Si- 
gnor Lupatelli  has  compiled  from  good  souroes, 
and  with  a  certain  intelligence;  but  neither  in 
his  bibliography  nor  in  his  text  do  we  find 
mention  of  Morelli's  writings,  so  epoch-mak- 
ing in  the  study  of  Umbrian  art.  ^  Le  Petit 
Guide  de  P^rouse,'  by  the  same  author,  can  be 
safely  recommended.  ' 

The  Observer  (Portland,  Conn. :  Bigelow)  haa 
been  enlarged,  and  bids  fair  to  be  a  verypopu* 
lar  as  well  as  valuable  magazine  for  outdoor 


Feb.  20,  1896] 


The   N"atioii. 


159 


rvcTMitioQ  and  education.  The  depart iient  of 
binU  is  tmder  the  o«re  of  ICr.  John  H.  Sege, 
eod  will  have  eeries  of  articles  by  Florence  A. 
Merriam  and  Olive  Thome  Miller.  The  de. 
partment  of  microscopy  will  be  conducted  by 
Miss  M .  A.  Booth;  that  of  astronomy  by  Mfts 
Mary  Proctorf  daughter  of  the  lately  deceased 
astronomer;  and  that  of  botany  by  Miss  C.  A. 
Bhepard.  There  will  also  be  series  of  articles 
by  Dr.  Henry  C.  McCook,  Anna  Botsford  Com* 
stock,  Eliiabeth  O.  Britton,  and  Dr.  Alfred 
C.  Stokes.  These  are  all  experienced  writers, 
and  confidence  may  be  felt  in  both  their  science 
and  their  English.  It  is  to-be  hoped  that  it  is 
not  the  editorial  hand  that  is  responsible  for 
the  announcement  that  practical  microscopy 
**wiU  take  a  high  stand,  worth  more  than 
double  the  price  of  the  Ob$0rver,** 

An  illustrated  account  of  a  recent  visit  to  the 
Faroes  opens  an  unusually  interesting  numlier 
of  the  Oeoijropibicai  Journal  for  January.  This 
is  followed  by  Capt.  Vaughan's  narrative  of 
his  journeys  in  central  Persia,  and  k  discussion 
by  Ck>l.  Holdich  of  the  origin  of  the  Kafir  of. 
the  Hindu-Kush.  This  interesting  race,  whose 
independence  is  now  threatened  by  Afghanis 
tan,  claims  to  be  of  Greek  descent,  and  their 
Appearance  is  of  a  distinct  Aryan  type,  with 
low  forehead,  prominent  aquiline  features,  and 
m  relatively  fair  complexion.  While  the  most 
natural  hypothesis  is  that  they  are  the  **mo 
dem  representatives  of  a  very  mixed  race, 
chiefly  of  Tajak  origin,*'  jet  some  curious  facts 
are  given  which  seem  to  show  their  connection 
srith  the  legendary  subjugation  of  India  by 
Dionysus  mentioned  by  Arrian.  Some  yet 
andedphered  inscriptions  found  in  their  valley 
**  recall  a  Greek  alphabet  of  archaic  type,**  and 
m  hymn  to  their  war- god,  of  which  a  transla- 
HoQ  is  given,  is  a  Bacchic  hymn,  wanting  only 
tlie  **  accessories  of  vine-leaves  and  ivy  to 
make  it  entirely  classical.**  A  very  creditable 
piece  of  exploration  in  the  Canadian  Rockies 
by  a  party  of  Tale  students  is  described  by 
one  of  their  number,  Mr.  W.  D.  WUoox.  It  is 
accompanied  by  two  contour  maps  and  some 
reproductions  of  photographs  of  Lake  Louise 
mad  the  neighboring  mountains.  A  useful 
■ket<^  map  of  British  Guiana  is  given,  so 
sbaded  as  to  show  at  a  glance  the  territory  not 
in  dispute  and  the  extreme  claims  of  both  Ve- 
iMtuela  and  Great  Britain.  The  Journal  for 
April,  180ft,  we  will  remind  our  readers,  con- 
tain* an  admirably  clear  map  of  the  whole  re- 
gion, indicating  plainly  the  Schombnrgk  line, 
tlte  gold  districts,  the  various  stations,  settle- 
ments, and  trails. 

Among  the  articles  of  general  interest  in  the 
Aw>iale$  d4  OSographU  for  January  is  an  ac- 
ooont  of  the  trade  of  Tripoli  with  the  Sudan. 
There  are  three  principal  routes  across  the 
desert,  and  the  caravans,  starting  generally 
la  the  autumn,  carry  out  cloths,  hardware, 
Ulass,  arms,  ammunition,  sugar,  and  essences. 
They  bring  back  gold,  from  Bomu  and  Darner^ 
gn,  ostrich  feathers,  skins,  ivory,  gum,  wax, 
and  civet.  The  caravan-men  are  either  part 
owners  of  the  goods,  or  more  frequently  are 
birsd  by  the  merchants,  receiving  in  payment 
a  part  of  the  proceeds.  The  attempts  of  the 
Flrencfa  and  English  to  divert  this  trade  to  Al. 
geria  and  the  Niger  have  so  far  proved  unsuo- 
oessfuL  Following  this  is  a  study  of  the  little, 
known  region  to  the  west  of  the  Nile  affected 
by  the  Franco-Congo  treaty  of  IBM,  and  a 
anmming  up  of  the  results  of  the  war  between 
China  and  Japan.  The  writer  believes  that 
tbe  harder  terms  of  the  first  treaty  of  peace 
would  have  been  in  the  end  better  for  China, 
fvhich  has  apparently  sunk  again  into  the  le- 
thargy thAt  most  end  in  the  fall  of  the  empire. 


Since  we  noticed  the  forcible  and  not  too 
amiable  onslaught  of  M.  Bspinas  on  Rousseau^s 
social  ** system**  in  the  Revue  Internationale 
de  V EnBeignement  of  October  16  and  Novem- 
ber 15,  189fi,  we  ought  sooner  to  have  called  at 
least  equal  attention  to  the  editorial  reply  of 
M.  ^.  Dreyfus-Brisac  in  the  number  for  De- 
cember 15.  It  is  a  warm  defence  of  Rous- 
seau's veracity  as  well  as  of  his  oonsisteocy, 
and  is  fairly  conclusive  on  the  main  point  at 
which  M.  Espinss  is  controverted,  namely,  the 
divergences  between  the  rough  draft  of  the 
*Contrat  Social*  and  its  definitive  form  in 
print.  Indeed,  M.  E«pinas  is  expoeed  to  the 
charge  of  very  careless  if  not  grossly  unfair 
comparison  and  use  of  these  documents,  and  is 
roundly  scored  by  M.  Dreyfus- Brisac.  The 
discussion  over  the  ** system**  is  perhaps  not 
ended,  but  the  question  hat,  in  our  opinion, 
very  little  interest  for  the  present  generation. 
It  were  much  to  be  wished  that  what  is  ad- 
mirable, charming,  and  salutary  in  Rous8eau*8 
writings  might  be  enjoyed  without  reference 
to  his  philosophy  or  his  reputation. 

M.  Anatole  France's  recent  address  before 
the  Association  G^n^rale  des  6tudiants  de- 
serves mention  as  being  graced  with  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  tributes  to  Science  that  ever 
came  from  tbe  lips  of  a  man  of  letters.  Some 
of  the  sentences  are  apothegms:  **  Elle  soutlent 
notre  curiosity;  nous  devons  l*en  aimer.  Bile 
ne  r^puise  pas;  nous  devons  Ten  aimer  encore.** 
*'£lle  fait  leur  [men*0]  vie  moinsbr^ve,  plus 
sfire,  plus  abondante  et  plus  varies.  EUe  tea 
abrite  pour  peiiser.**  Such  homage,  coming 
from  the  opposite  camp,  is  beneficial  at  a  time 
when  BO  many  minds  the  civilized  world  over 
are  kept  at  a  tension  in  adjusting  the  rival 
claims  of  the  sciences  and  the  letters. 

Hitherto  only  the  leisurely  traveller  through 
Italy  has  been  acquainted  with  one  of  tiie  most 
lovable  creations  of  Italian  genius,  Moretto's 
Virgin,  the  most  motherly  of  Madonnas,  in 
the  mountain  shrine  of  Paitone,  near  Brescia. 
But  recentiy  this  masterpiece  has  been  pbo. 
tographed  by  Alinari  Bros.,  who  at  the  same 
time  made  reproductions  of  all  Moretto*s  pic 
tures  at  Brescia.  This  town,  so  rich  in  works 
by  this  master  of  delicate  feeling  and  exquisite 
tone,  is  rich  also  in  works  by  his  splendid  rival 
Romanino,  and  in  the  gallery  are  a  number  of 
fine  canvases  by  the  best  known  member  of 
this  school,  the  great  portrait-painter  Moroni. 
Among  the  other  paintings  at  Brescia  pho- 
tographed by  Alinui  is  the  **  Annunciation  *' 
by  the  rare  and  precious  Jacopo  Bellini,  fasci- 
nating "Nativities**  by  Lotto  and  Savoldo,  a 
**Salvator  Mundi**  by  the  young  Raphael, 
and  a  fine  head  by  his  Urbinate  master  Timo- 
teoViti 

The  students  of  the  Slade  School  of  Art,  Ox- 
ford, England,  are  shortiy  to  issue  a  new  quar. 
terly,  tbe  Quarto.  By  permission  of  Mr.  Leo- 
pold  de  Rothschild,  a  photogravure  reproduc- 
tion of  **  A  Holy  Family,**  by  Andrea  del  Sarto, 
will  serve  as  frontispiece  to  the  first  number. 
A  tempting  feature  of  this  new  art  magaxine 
is  to  be  a  **  oollector*s  edition**  of  twenty  cop 
ies,  on  Japanese  paper  and  bound  in  vellum. 
With  ecush  of  these  copies  there  will  be  dis- 
tributed, in  addition  to  an  original  etching  by 
Mr.  Wm.  Strang,  **  a  small  original  autograph 
sketch,  ...  no  two  alike,**  by  one  of  the 
contributors.  Among  these  appear  tbe  names 
of  the  late  Lord  Leighton,  Mr.  Geo.  Fred. 
Watts,  and  Mr.  Joseph  Pennell. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  the  late  Dr. 
William  H.  Fumess  of  Philadelphia  would  faU 
to  have  a  place  in  Mr.  F.  Outekunst*s  photo- 
graphic gallery  of  celebrities.  The  '*  imperial 
panal,**  in  fact,  of  this  eminent  preacher  is 


among  tbe  mo»t  successful  of  tbe  long  array, 
and  has  the  merit  of  being  nearly  if  not  quite 
**  untouched.**  Thus  all  the  fine  lines  of  tbe 
skin  combine  with  the  usual  marks,  not  only 
of  age  but  of  geniality  and  benevolence,  to 
produce  a  speaking  likeness  which  will  be 
cherished  by  a  large  circle  of  Dr.  Furness's 
friends  and  admirers. 

— *  American  Book-Prices  Current,*  compiled 
from  auctioneers*  catalogues  by  Luther  S. 
Livingston,  and  published  by  Dodd,  Mead  & 
Co.,  wisely  adopts  the  form  and  style  of  the 
Britbh  *  Book-Prices  Current,*  of  which  the 
ninth  volume  b  before  us  (London :  Elliot 
Stock  &  Co.).  In  both  these  indispensable 
works  the  arrangement  b  by  sales,  preceded 
by  a  tabular  list;  the  entries  are  progressively 
numbered  (0,025  in  the  American,  0,748— a  fall- 
ing off —in  the  British) ;  an  index  groups  the 
scattered  authors  or  anonymous  works;  and  a 
preface  reviews  the  features  of  the  year's  sales 
as  to  rarity,  prices,  etc.  There  b  much  food 
here  for  study  and  international  comparison, 
the  principle  of  inclnsion  (a  pound  value  as  a 
customary  minimum)  being  about  tbe  same  in 
both  cases.  We  have  roughly  computed  the  * 
number  of  separate  entries  in  some  two  dozen 
inttances,  showing  the  respective  American 
and  Britbh  transactions  in  Almanacs,  10,  3, 
Bibles(printed),  78,  61;  Boccaccio,  0,  10;  Cer- 
vantes, 18,  16;  Dibdin,  28,  6;  Balsac,8, 1.  Ame- 
rican interest  in  Borrow  surpasses  Britbh,  5, 
2;  as  in  Browning,  80,  10,  Dickens,  40,  84,  Ten- 
nyson, 88,  28,  Thackeray,  86,  21,  and  Walton, 
81,  17.  Even  Cruikshank  sUnds  82,  89,  but 
Bewick  only  5,  28.  Bacon  items  are  Ameri- 
can 8,  Britbh  11.  Ifatthew  Arnold  b  tied,  4, 
4.  With  American  authors  tbe  disparity  b 
great  indeed:  Audubon,  7,  1;  Emerson,  81,  1; 
Hawthorne,  89,  1;  Holmes,  26,  1;  Longfellow 
(and  thb  b  singular),  49,  2  only;  Lowell,  24,  0; 
and  Whittier,  46,  1.  But  tbe  rage  for  first 
editions  has  been  catered  to  by  Mr.  Living- 
ston in  admitting  sales  below  the  five-dolbr 
mark.  It  will  be  men  that  with  our  Ame- 
rican collectors  the  order  of  favoritism  b 
Longfellow,  Whittier,  Hawthorne,  Emerson, 
Holmes,  Lowell.  We  should  notice  that  the 
'  American  Book. Prices  Current*  is  handsome- 
ly printed  from  type  in  a  limited  edition  of  400 
copies,  which  must  surely  appreciate. 

—At  the  suggestion  of  Dr.  S.  A.  Green,  and 
as  an  addendum  to  hb  '  List  of  Early  Ameri- 
can Imprints  belonging  to  the  Library  of  the 
Massachusetts  HistoHcal  Society  *  recentiy  no- 
ticed by  us,  Nathaniel  Paine  has  prepared 
*A  List  of  Early  American  Imprints,  1640- 
1700,  belonging  to  the  Library  of  the  Ameri- 
can Antiquarian  Society,*  and  printed  two 
hundred  copies.  The  books  falling  within 
the  scope  of  thb  bibliography  number  three 
hundred,  of  which  one-half,  approximately, 
were  already  catalogued  in  tbe  three  hundred 
tiUes  printed  in  Dr.  Green's  Ibt,  and  are  there- 
fore not  repeated  here,  only  a  mere  reference 
to  the  fuller  tiUe  being  given.  We  thus  have 
In  the  two  works  a  Ibt  of  four  hundred  and 
fifty  separate  issues  of  the  early  American 
presses,  and,  as  not  more  than  twenty- five 
were  printed  ouUideof  Cambridge  and  Boston, 
a  long  step  has  been  made  towards  a  complete 
Ibt  of  Massachusetts  incunabula.  Mr.  Paine, 
indeed,  goes  so  far  as  to  iay  that  **  the  two 
lists  probably  contain  the  titles  of  nearly  all 
the  known  publications,  now  extant,  issued 
from  the  press  in  Britbh  North  America  from 
1640  to  1700  inclusive.*'  In  thb  we  can  hardly 
agree,  for  Haven*s  very  imperfect  list  gives 
607  tiUes  for  thb  period,  and  whUe  copies  of  a 


160 


The   Nation 


[Vol  62,  No.  1599 


few  of  theae  are  UDknowo,  tbey  are  balanced 
five  timee  over  by  the  new  discoveries  of  Mr. 
HUdeburfr  in  Pennsylyania  and  New  York  im- 
prints. Indeed,  the  Prince  and  Lewis  collec- 
tions of  the  Boston  Pablic  Library  alone  give 
nearly  100  additional  tiUes,  and  the  Lenox  Li. 
brary  and  the  Historical  Society  of  Pennsyl- 
vania could  also  supply  many  additions.  Prob- 
ably there  are  actually  extant,  at  the  present 
writing,  about  1,000  issues  of  the  Massachusetts 
press  before  1701,  and  these  are  not  more  than 
two  thirds  of  the  actual  issues.  Th^e  facts, 
however,  do  not  lessen  the  value  of  the  present 
work.  As  in  Dr.  Greenes  list,  the  larger  part  of 
the  titles  fall  among  almanacs,  laws,  and  the 
typical  New  England  thecdogico  political  tracts, 
the  most  interesting  being  a  copy  of  '  Gospel 
Ordinance  Revived*  (which  played  so  curious  a 
part  in  the  attempt  carried  on  by  the  Mathers 
to  restrict  the  freedom  of  the  press),  with  seve- 
ral of  the  broadside  "Advertisements'*  and 
**  Depositions'*  relating  to  the  contest  bound 
in;  a  copy  of  Cotton  Mather's  carious  *  Rules 
for  the  Society  of  Negroes,'  1608,  which  ranks 
second  in  date  of  our  slave  literature;  and  a 
copy  of  the  Bay  Psalm  Book,  the  earliest  book 
'of  the  Massachusetts  press.  The  work  has 
been  carefully  done,  and  is  a  most  acceptable 
a(ldition  to  the  subject. 

—When  the  ravages  of  the  *•  downy  mildew  ♦» 
were  checked  for  the  first  time  in  American 
vineyards  by  means  of  tiie  **  Bordeaux  mix- 
ture,"  spraying  was  hailed  by  orchardists  and 
planters  as  a  deliverer  and  a  panacea.  After 
wasting  much  hard  work  in  spraying  the  right 
bugs  at  the  wrong  time,  the  farmers  have 
thrown  down  the  noszle  to  learn  from  scien- 
tists and  college  men  something  about  bugs 
and  the  fungous  diseases  of  plants.  Economic 
Entomology  has  come  into  existence  to  cope 
with  the  annual  destroyers  of  one-tenth  of  all 
our  agricultural  products.  ** Watch  and  spray" 
is  now  the  facetious  war-cry  of  farmers  and 
fruit-growers.  The  practical  advice  offered 
by  the  experiment  stations  to  farmers  is  scat- 
tered in  the  deciduous  literature  of  bulletins 
and  newspapers.  All  this  material  has  been 
sifted  by  a  competent  specialist  in  combina- 
tion with  his  own  experiments,  and  the  result 
is  a  book  of  400  pages  of  practical  things  ar- 
raoged  in  the  helpful  form  of  a  pocket  diction- 
ary, *  The  Spraying  of  Plants,'  by  E.  G.  Lode- 
man,  Instructor  in  Horticulture  in  Cornell 
University  ( Macmillan) .  It  tells  what  to  spray, 
when,  and  why.  It  can  be  consulted  under 
vines  and  fig-trees,  and  offending  objects  can 
be  compared  with  pictures.  Nor  are  prescrip- 
tions  Ucking,  together  with  seductive  cute  of 
wonderful  nozzles,  pumps,  and  spraying  para- 
phernalia. The  familiar  old  cut  of  the  codlin 
moth  that  has  for  half  a  century  been  an 
object  of  odious  interest,  at  last  gives  way  to 
a  new  engraving  that  is  positively  artistic 
by  comparison,  and  of  greater  scientific  accu 
racy.  The  early  history  of  spraying  is  detailed 
in  the  painstaking  manner  of  the  investigator 
and  contributor  to  science.  These  288  pages  of 
history  and  principles  may  be  useful  to  those 
farmers  only  who  are  troubled  with  insomnia 
(If  there  be  any  such),  and  in  future  editions 
this  matter  could,  as  far  as  the  farmer  is  con- 
cerned, be  compressed  into  200  less  pages ;  but 
of  the  value  of  the  specific  directions  for  spray, 
ing  cultivated  plants  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
It  is  a  remarkable  adaptation  of  science.  There 
is  nothing  else  on  the  subject  so  new,  com- 
plete, accurate,  and  available. 

—In  1870,  at  the  age  of  thirty,  five,  Bfr.  Al- 
fred Austin  published  a  book  entitied  *  The 


Poetry  of  the  Period,'  consisting  of  eight 
articles  which  had  previously  appeared  in  the 
Temple  Bar  magazine.  The  first  of  them  is 
concerned  with  Mr.  Austin^s  immediate  prede 
cessor  in  the  oflSce  of  Poet  Laureate  of  Eng- 
land. Mr.  Austin  sets  out  with  the  announce- 
ment that  he  intends  to  expound,  with  a  confi- 
dence not  the  growth  of  yesterday,  but  of 
long,  delil>erate,  and  ever- deepening  convic- 
tion, the  opinion  that  Tennyson  has  no  sound 
pretensions  to  be  called  a  great  poet,  and  will 
of  a  certainty  not  be  esteemed  such  by  an  un- 
biassed posterity.  He  thinks  it  is  high  time 
that  somebody  should  speak  out;  the  conven- 
tional sense  of  the  majority  so  overpowers  the 
critical  sense  of  the  discriminating  minority 
that,  as  a  rule,  no  one  ever  expends  his  energy 
in  the  attempt  to  reverse  an  opinion  which  has 
once  got  itself  accepted  by  a  preponderance  of 
voices.  80  has  it  been  with  Tennyson.  His 
fkme  has  steadily  increased  precisely  as  his 
genuine  poetical  power  has  steadily  waned. 
Mr.  Austin's  proposition  is,  that  Tennyson  is 
not  a  c^eat  poet,  unquestionably  not  a  poet  of 
the  first  rank,  all  but  unquestionably  not  a 
poet  of  the  second  rank,  and  probably— though 
no  contemporary  perhaps  can  settle  that— not 
even  at  the  head  of  poets  of  the  third  rank, 
among  whom  he  must  ultimately  take  his 
place.  Posterity  will  not  hear  him,  save  in 
littie  snatches  or  breaks  of  voice,  as  it  still 
hears  Cowley  or  Falconer.  It  will  not  allow 
the  "Talking  Oak"  or  '*  Locksley  Hall"  to 
die,  but  **In  Memoriam"  will  assuredly  be 
handed  over  to  the  dust.  In  the  whole  range 
of  bis  poetry  there  is  not  to  be  found  even  a 
solitary  instance  of  a  sublime  thought  sub- 
limely expressed.  He  is  the  poet  crossed  by 
the  man  of  scientific  thought  and  intelligence, 
and  producing  a  species  of  metrical  emulsion. 
Browning  does  not  find  more  favor  in  Mr. 
Austin*s  eyes  than  Tennyson.  The  assertion 
that  Browning  is  our  great  modem  seer  Js  the 
most  astounding  snd  ludicrous  pretension  ever 
put  forward  in  literature.  A  passage  from 
**  Sordello  "  is  pronounced  to  be  not  only  not 
poetry,  but  detestable  gibberish  even  as  prose. 
Browning  is  the  real  M.  Jourdain^  who  has 
been  writing  prose  all  his  life  without  know- 
ing it  He  has  no  voice,  and  yet  he  wants  to 
sing;  he  is  not  a  poet,  and  yet  he  would  fain 
write  poetry.  These  choice  specimens  of  Mr. 
Austin's  critical  acumen  must  suffice  for  the 
present  purpose,  but  his  whole  volume  may  be 
profitably  studied  by  the  brood  of  youngsters 
who  are  deluging  us  with  a  bhower  of  littie 
four-by-six  magazines  in  which  every  precious 
contribution  of  a  hundred  words  is  signed  with 
its  author's  name.  Mr.  Austin,  they  will  find, 
is  just  as  ''smart,"  and  epigrammatic,  and 
*'  fearless,"  and  self-confident  as  they  are. 

—Were  we  to  watch  the  labor  of  Sisyphus, 
we  should  probably  be  much  interested  the  first 
time  we  saw  him  roll  the  stone  up  the  slope, 
and  grieve  with  him  as  it  dashed  down  just 
before  reaching  the  top.  We  should  admire 
the  perseverance  with  which  he  ran  after  it, 
and  agam  puffed  and  tugged  and  pushed  to 
wards  the  goal.  But,  after  watching  several 
of  these  failures,  we  should  conclude  either 
that  Sisyphus  had  undertaken  the  impossible, 
or  that  he  lacked  the  necessary  strength  and 
skill.  A  similar  conclusion  forces  iteelf  upon 
us  as  we  review,  year  after  year,  the  efforts 
of  one  scholar  after  another  to  translate  the 
'  Divine  Ck)medy '  into  English  verse,  and  we 
believe  that  in  this  case  failure  must  be  charged 
to  the  task  itself,  and  not  to  the  incompetence 
of  those  who  undertake  it.  The  latest  of  these, 
Mr.  George  Musgrave,  has  produced  a  version 


of  the  *' Inferno"  in  Spenserian  metre  (Mac- 
millan) which  deserves  tiie  commendation  due 
to  good  but  futile  intentiona— and  no  more. 
Mr.  Mnsgrave  declares  that  the  nine  line  stan- 
za  of  the  *  Fa6rie  Qneene '  is  the  nearest  equi- 
valent to  Dante*s  terza  rima;  a  littie  while  ago 
Mr.  Lancelot  Shadwell  assured  us  that  the  me- 
tre  of  Marvell*s  great  Horatian  ode  would 
alone  serve;  and  before  him  how  many  others 
have  taken  different  roads  to  failure  1  Dante's 
verse,  we  need  hardly  say,  flows  like  a  mighty 
unhindered  river;  to  imagine  tliat  any  stansaic 
divisions  can  represent  it,  is  like  imagining  that 
a  canal,  cut  up  into  sections  by  regularly  re- 
curring locks,  can  represent  the  freedom,  the 
sweep  and  variety  and  life  of  the  river.  Inevi- 
tably, therefore,  before  we  have  read  a  dozen 
of  lir.  Mnsgrave's  stanzas,  we  are  obliged  to 
admit  that  they  do  not  reproduce,  even  fainUy, 
the  metrical  effect  made  by  Dante,  and  further 
testing  merely  confirms  the  suspicion  that  this 
version,  so  far  as  its  form  goes,  has  no  justifi- 
cation as  a  possible  equivi^lent  of  the  *  Divine 
Comedy.'  But  perhaps,  we  think,  Mr.  Mus- 
grave  may  have  made  a  good  English  poem, 
whatever  may  be  its  inferiority  to  the  Italian, 
We  read  again,  with  this  in  view,  and  again 
are  disappointed.  The  * 'linked  sweetness,  long 
drawn  out"  of  this  stanza  as  used  by  Spenser 
nowhere  appears;  nor  is  there  aught  to  suggest 
that  Byron,  Shelley,  and  Keats  could,  each  in 
a  different  way,  get  many  fine  qualities  out  of 
it.  To  Mr.  Musgrave's  touch  it  is  an  instru- 
ment which  is  neither  sweet,  nor  sonorous,  nor 
fluent,  nor  emphatic.  So  we  are  driven  to  con- 
sider the  translation  simply  as  a  tour  de  force^ 
and  from  this  standpoint  it  has  its  interest. 
That  any  one  should  be  able,  in  a  given  num- 
ber of  syllables,  to  give  the  English  equiva- 
lents  of  a  given  number  of  Italian  words,  k, 
however  inadequate  the  general  result  may  be, 
a  scholarly  pastime  which  may  amuse  the  look- 
er on.  But  after  a  while  the  elisions  and  inver- 
sions of  syntax,  the  strange  words,  and  the  un- 
limited license  in  rhymes  tire  us.  What  plea- 
sure can  any  one  get  from  such  rhymes  as 
♦  Italy,"  "lie,"  •' I,"  and  *'  wistfuUy  "  f  What 
proflt  from  having  eonoseiuto  translated  '*  ag- 
nised,"  k>ecause  Mr.  Mnsgrave  could  not  make 
" recognized "flt  his  metre?  Doubtless,  he  had 
satisfaction  in  wrestling  with  difficulties  which 
are  indeed  insuperable;  but  tiie  beet  that  can 
be  said  of  his  achievement  is  that  we  wonder 
that  he  has  done  as  well  as  he  has,  and  this  is 
very  far  from  saying  that  he  has  produced  a 
work  worth  reading  as  a  specimen  of  English 
poetry,  or  worth  studying  as  means  to  a  better 
knowledge  of  Dante. 

— The  second  and  concluding  volume  of  Dr. 
Karl  Heinemann's  *  Goethe'  (Leipzig:  See- 
mann)  begins  with  the  publication  of  the  first 
collective  edition  of  the  poet's  works  in  1787-'9Q, 
and  ends  with  his  death,  March  26,  1882,  thus 
comprising  the  best  forty' five  years  of  his  life. 
His  sojourn  in  Italy  from  1786  to  1788  had  re- 
leased him  from  the  petty  and  prosy  routine  of 
official  duties  at  Weimar,  and,  through  the 
study  of  the  antique,  had  perfected  his  taste  by 
purging  his  mind  from  the  last  dregs  of  the 
storm-and-stress  period  and  the  morbid  senti- 
mentality of  Wertherism,  which  could  be  only 
a  passing  episode  in  the  development  of  a  nature 
so  robust.  Dr.  Heinemann  gives  an  excellent 
appreciation  of  these  infiuences  as  traceable  in 
Gk>ethe's  writings,  followed  by  a  chapter  en- 
titied '*  House  and  Hearth,"  in  which  his  rela 
tions  to  Christiane  Vulpius  are  explained  and 
extenuated,  but  by  no  means  approved.  At 
that  time  concubinacy  was  neither  foreign  nor 
offensive  to  the  **  best  society  "  in  Weimar  and 


Feb.  20,  1896] 


The   N'atiori. 


161 


•lMwb«re  in  Oermany.  The  an  wonted  clamor 
and  malicious  goesip  excited  by  Goetbe*8  simi- 
lar feran^pr«sBion  were  dae  less  to  the  moral 
ModtlTeneM  than  to  the  wounded  canity  of 
the  noble  ladies  of  Weimar,  and  particularly 
to  the  fierce  jealousy  of  Frau  von  Stein,  who 
even  wrote  a  play  called  **  Dido**  for  the  pur- 
pose  of  ventinfc  her  wrath  upon  her  former 
lover,  and  calumniating  the  *Mow  creature" 
by  whom  she  had  been  supplanted.  According 
to  onr  author,  Ooethe^s  reasons  for  not  marry, 
ing  Christiant  at  once  were  a  deep-rooted 
aversion  to  the  ''fetters  of  matrimony,**  a 
strong  antipathy  to  the  outward  forms  of  the 
Christian  Church,  and  a  '*  Julianic  hatred'*  of 
the  current  teachings  and  tendencies  of  the 
Christian  religion.  In  his  own  bitter  expe- 
rience he  was  made  to  feel  the  full  force  of  the 
doctrine  of  retribution  taught  in  Wilhelm 
Meister*s  Lehrjahre :  *'  Denn  alle  Schuld  rftcht 
sich  auf  Erden.**  A  valuable  contribution  to 
the  literary  history  of  the  time  is  the  section 
of  150  pages  devoted  to  Schiller  and  other 
friends  and  contemporaries  of  Goethe.  In  the 
succeeding  chapters  we  have  a  full  account  of 
Goethe*8  poetic  productivity  during  the  danger 
and  distress  caused  by  the  French  invasion, 
his  rather  questionable  pstriotism  in  the  war 
of  emancipation,  and  his  later  scientific  re- 
searchea.  Although  the  reader  may  not  al- 
ways accept  the  author's  conclusions,  be  will 
find  in  this  biography  a  complete  and  impar- 
tial presentation  of  facts  and  citation  of 
sources,  upon  which  to  base  an  independent 
judgment.  It  is  written  in  an  attractive  style 
that  renders  it  entertaining  as  well  as  instruc- 
tive reading.  The  present  volume  contains 
more  than  a  hundred  illustrations  and  an  ex- 
cellent general  index. 


PUKCELL'S  CARDINAL  MANNING. 

lAfe  of  Cardinal  Manning^  Archbishop  of 
Westminster.  By  Edmund  Shendan  Purcell, 
Member  of  the  Roman  Academy  of  Letters. 
In  two  volumes.  MacmiUan  &  Co.  1896. 
80  far  was  Cardinal  Manning  from  seeking  to 
prevent  the  writing  of  his  Life  by  taking  that 
of  Mr.  Purcell  that  be  chose  him  as  his  bio- 
grapher, and  put  in  his  hands  a  mass  of  diaries, 
notes,  and  correspondence,  of  portentous  bulk, 
and,  moreover,  poured  himself  out  very  freely 
in  conversation,  construing  his  own  acts  and 
those  of  his  contemporaries  in  a  manner  satis- 
factory to  himself.  But  seldom  has  a  bio- 
graphy added  to  death  a  terror  of  such  mag- 
nitude as  Mr.  Purcell*s  book  will  prove  to  per- 
sons of  distinction  who  are  contemplating 
some  biographical  extension  of  their  high  re- 
pute. The  wiser  of  them  will  at  once  resolve 
that  they  will  trust  no  one,  however  loyal  and 
friendly  he  may  vaunt  himself,  to  do  the  difll- 
colt  work,  and  go  about  to  do  it  with  their 
own  hands.  For  Mr.  Pnrcell*s  book  could 
hardly  be  more  damaging  to  Cardinal  Man* 
ning's  reputation  if  it  had  been  written  by  one 
of  the  many  who  distrusted  him  or  hated  him 
when  he  was  alive  and  would  like  to  damn  his 
memory.  Froude*s  treatment  of  Carlyle  was 
eulogistic  in  comparison  with  Ur,  Puroell's  of 
his  distinguished  friend.  It  is  true  that  he 
says  many  fine  things  about  him,  from  first  to 
last,  but  they  make  no  such  impression  on  the 
reader  as  the  scores  and  hundreds  of  deroga- 
tory and  minimising  things.  So  often  those 
glide  swiftly  into  these  that  we  get  into  the 
way  of  expecting  something  bad  whenever 
there  is  something  good. 

The  excuses  are,  perhaps,  more  damaging 
Itos  th»  diTM^t  «naalts,    Tb«  writer  l«  not  by 


any  means  unconscious  of  the  line  that  he  is 
taking  or  of  the  impression  he  is  likely  to 
create.  Over  and  over  again  he  announces  his 
determination  to  tell  the  simple  truth.  Had 
not  Manning  approved  this  method,  and  the 
Pope  also,  instancing  the  New  Testament 
frankness  about  Judas  Iscariot  as  an  example 
of  it?  Manning  had  not  the  art  of  making 
friends,  but  he  bad  a  few,  and  bis  executors 
have  already  denounced  Mr.  PurcelPs  book 
and  pledged  themselves  to  procure  a  wor- 
thier biography.  The  attempt,  however,  is 
not  promising,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  Mr. 
Purcell  has  been  extremely  careful  to  jus- 
tify bis  inferences  by  direct  quotations  from 
Manning's  journals  and  letters.  At  the  same 
time  it  is  true  that  he  has  not  been  content  to 
let  these  speak  for  tbemselves,  but  has  been 
careful  to  bring  out  their  significance;  and 
where  Manning's  recollections  were  at  vari- 
ance with  the  facts  of  his  career,  the  differ- 
ence is  pointed  out.  Nor  can  it  be  denied  that 
he  seems  to  take  a  certain'  pleasure  in  putting 
Manning  in  an  evil  light.  His  damnatory 
clauses  are  innumerable,  and  while  some  of 
them  are  frank  enough,  others  are  insinuated  in 
a  manner  hard  to  understand  in  a  biographer 
discharging  a  fric^ndly  office.  For  example, 
we  read  (vol.  i.,  p.  294):  *'The  judicious  and 
venerable  Archdeacon  of  Chichester  had  no 
sympathy  with  Ward  or  his  book";  and,  in  a 
foot-note,  that  Ward  said,  ''When  I  hear 
men  called  judicious  I  suspect  them,  but  when 
they  are  called  judicious  and  venerable  they 
are  scoundrels."  Prudence,  caution,  tact,  are 
the  qualities  which  Mr.  Purcell  attributes  to 
Manning  with  an  iteration  that  is  wearisome, 
with  others  lower  in  the  moral  scale. 

His  own  character  cannot  be  admirable  if  he 
had  any  idea  at  the  outset  how  his  biography 
would  turn  out  and  yet  accepted  the  commis* 
sion  to  write  it  from  Manning's  hands.  We 
are  bound  to  believe  that,  with  all  the  docu- 
roents  in  his  possession,  he  became  fascinated 
by  the  doubtful  elements  in  Manning's  charac- 
ter, and  found  himself  impelled  to  make  tiiem 
as  prominent  in  his  book  as  he  found  them  in 
the  Cardinal's  life.  A  different  explanation 
suggests  itself  in  the  first  volume,  which  deals 
exclusively  with  the  Anglican  period,  while  the 
second  deals  exclusi  vely  with  the  Roman.  It  is 
thatBir.  Purcell  is  painting-in  a  dark  Anglican 
background  for  his  picture  of  Manning's  Roman 
virtues.  This  seems  the  more  likely  when,  in 
1847,  Manning  has  a  long  sickness  and  takes  to 
morbid  self-examination,  and  imagines  himself 
revolting  from  the  secular  ambitions  which 
had  recently  possessed  his  soul.  Moreover, 
Mr.  Purcell  writes  as  if  he  underwent  some 
serious  spiritual  change,  and  we  think  we 
know  what  he  is  after— one  of  those  contrasts 
of  youthful  levity  and  later  saintlineas  in 
which  the  hagiography  of  the  Roman  Church 
so  much  at>ounds.  But  this  promise  to  the  eye 
is  broken  to  our  hope  as  we  go  on.  Manning 
is  much  the  same  person  after  his  recovery  as 
before,  and  those  aspects  of  his  character 
which  are  most  painful  in  bis  Anglican  career 
are  emphasised  in  the  Roman  Catholic  church- 
manin  a  much  grosser  fashion. 

Manning  did  not  distinguish  himself  at  Har- 
row, and  hardly  more  at  Oxford,  except  as  a 
debater  at  the  Union,  where  his  succestes 
stirred  in  him  visions  of  a  seat  in  Parliament 
and  a  political  career.  Destined  for  the  Church 
by  his  father,  he  was  not  in  the  least  attracted 
to  it.  A  few  years  later,  when  the  Tractarian 
Movement  had  begun,  it  might  have  been  differ- 
ent. He  had  to  do  something  for  a  living,  his 
father's  fortune  having  been  suddenly  wrecked, 
and  he  went  ioto  the  Colonial  OiBce.    As  co*o- 


pared  with  his  irksome  duties  there,  the  Church 
soon  cam^  to  look  inviting,  the  more  naturally 
because  tbe  melancholy  of  a  lover's  disappoint- 
ment persuaded  him  that  he  was  getting  more 
religious.  Mr.  Purcell's  first  difference  with 
him  is  in  regard  to  the  relative  amount  of 
Diehtung  und  Wahrheit  in  bis  account  of  bis 
motives  for  entering  the  ministry.  The  ques- 
tion is  one  that  frequently  recurs,  and  might 
much  oftener  if  Msnning  bad  not  deleted 
large  portions  of  his  diaries  before  handing 
them  over.  Notwithstanding  this  precaution, 
Mr.  Purcell  finds  them  much  closer  to  the  facts 
than  Manning's  idealizing  notes  and  recollec- 
tions in  the  lait  years  of  his  life. 

After  a  few  months  of  theological  study. 
Manning  went  to  Lavington  in  Sussex  as  a 
curate  of  the  Rev.  John  Sargent,  and  shortly 
married  his  daughter  and  succeeded  him  as 
rector  of  the  perish.  There  he  remained  until 
he  left  the  English  Church  in  1851,  in  1841  be- 
ing made  Archdeacon  of  Chichester.  By  his 
marriage,  says  Mr.  Purcell,  "the  designs  of 
Providence  in  regard  to  the  future  Cardinal  of 
the  Holy  Roman  Church  seemed  to  have  been 
frustrated.  But  Providence  has  a  long  arm, 
and  Gkxi  in  his  wisdom  took  to  himself  in  the 
fourth  year  of  her  marriage  the  wife  of  Henry 
Edward  Manning,  the  cardinal  priest  to  be." 
In  all  Manning's  diaries  and  correspondence 
there  is  but  one  allusion  to  his  marriage,  and 
that,  written  in  1880,  is  a  purely  formal  one. 
His  love  and  sorrow  were  both  very  great, 
but  "so  effectually  was  the  story  of  his  mar- 
riage suppressed  that  on  his  death  Catholics, 
with  one  pr  two  exceptions,  as  well  as  the  gene- 
ral public,  knew  nothing  about  his  married 
life."  The  motive  for  this  suppression  was  the 
fear  of  "an  unpleasant  impression  derogatory 
to  his  high  ecoleeiastioal  dignity  and  position." 

The  interesting  thing  about  Manning's  seces- 
sion from  the  English  Church  is  that  it  was  not 
an  incident  of  the  Tractarian  Movement.  It  is 
astonishing  how  little  that  affected  him.  There 
are  few  traces  of  it  in  his  letters  when  it  was  at 
the  fiood  from  1888  to  1888.  His  original  bent 
was  strongly  evangelical,  and  the  Low  Church- 
men counted  him  as  one  of  them  against  all 
comers.  His  first  essay  in  controversy,  'The 
Rule  of  Faith'  (1888),  was  about  equally  severe 
on  popular  Protestantism  and  Romanism,  while 
avoiding  the  extremes  of  both  the  High  and- 
Dry  and  the  Tractarian  parties.  But  the  Pro- 
testantism of  his  reproof  was  the  loose  jointed 
contemporary  Dissent,  not  the  historic  move- 
ment of  Luther.  For  some  years  his  valiant 
stand  for  this  marked  him  off  from  the  Trac- 
tarians  more  definitely  than  anything  else. 
They  were  always  girding  at  the  Reformat 
tion,  he  defending  it.  In  his  *  Rule  of  Faith,' 
Papal  infallibility  got  some  hard  knocks.  It  is 
one  of  Mr.  Purcell's  innumerable  insinuations 
that  Manning's  new  departure  refiected  the 
temper  of  his  new  Bishop,  Otter,  in  whose' 
name  the  waggish  found  an  omen  of  his  opi- 
nions, "  neither  fish,  fiesh,  nor  fowl."  The  male- 
dictions of  the  Low  Church  press  and  clergy 
made  it  easier  for  Manning  to  respond  to  the 
approaches  of  the  Tract arians,  who  were  dis- 
posed  to  make  the  most  of  his  inclination  to 
their  side.  But  through  all  the  inconsistencies 
of  his  Anglican  career  runs  like  a  thread  of 
steel  his  opposition  to  the  encroachment  of  the 
civil  power  upon  the  Church,  culminating  in 
his  opposition  to  the  Gorham  decision,  which 
was  his  excuse,  if  not  his  reason,  for  secession. 
This  opposition  made  him  prominent  in  1838, 
soon  after  his '  Rule  ot  Faith.'  and,  while  com- 
mending him  to  the  Tractarians,  condoned  to 
some  extent  bis  late  offence  against  the  Evan- 
gelicals,   A  UtUf  K^r  IW  weo^  to  Italy  with 


163 


Tlie    IN'atioii 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1599 


Gladstone,  and  found  the  sordidnees  of  Roman 
worship  as  little  attractive  as  Newman  fonnd 
it  on  his  first  visit.  With  serioas  breaks,  Man- 
niog*s  friendship  with  Gladstone  was  the  most 
lasting  of  his  life,  and  Mr.  Purceirs  exhibition 
of  their  various  relations  is  one  of  the  most  in- 
teresting features  of  his  book.  It  is  an  exhibi- 
tion much  more  creditable  to  the  statesman  than 
to  the  priest.  In  Home  they  met  Wiseman,  and 
walked  with  him,  Wiseman  as  little  dreaming 
that  Manning  was  the  youiSg  Protestant  who 
had  recently  impugned  his  veracity  as  that 
they  would,  in  succession,  be  archbishops  and 
cardinals  of  the  reconstructed  Roman  hie- 
rarchy in  England. 

Great  was  the  mortality  of  Manning's  bish- 
ops, and,  when  Shuttleworth  succeeded  Otter, 
he  at  first  looked  upon  Manning  as  '*a  Roman- 
iser  in  disguise.**  Manning  hastened  to  dis- 
abuse him,  and  succeeded  so  well  that  he  was 
made  Archdeacon  of  Chichester.  Mrs.  Shut- 
tleworth seems  to  have  been  a  kind  of  Mrs. 
Proudy,  and  "stormed  like  a  fury"  over  the 
appointment,  but  to  her  also  Manning  soon 
made  himself  persona  grata,  *^  Manning  was 
the  last  man  to  forget  that  he  was  now  himself 
a  Church  dignitary,  and  bound  as  such  to  show 
reserve  and  moderation  in  his  religious  opi. 
nions."  The  publication  of  *  Tract  90 '  bad  got 
the  Tractarians  into  deeper  water  than  Man- 
ning dared  attempt,  such  was  *'his  habit,  in 
part  natural,  in  part  acquired,  of  never  com- 
mitting himself,  if  he  could  help  It,  to  an  un- 
popular movement,  or  of  taking  his  stand  on  the 
side  of  a  falling  cau^e."  In  a  charge  of  1841, 
and  more  positively  in  1842,  when  the  Tracta- 
rians were  in  worse  repute,  he  cleared  himself 
of  all  complicity  with  their  Romanizing  ten- 
dencies. **Tbe  blessed  results  of  the  Reforma- 
tion** were  the  staple  of  his  cry.  He  had 
dodged  the  test  question  of  Isaac  Williams*s 
election  as  professor  of  poetry,  but  the  mis- 
fortunes of  the  Tractarians  demanded  a  more 
positive  opposition  if  he  was  not  going  to  l>e 
tainted  with  their  ill  odor.  Hence  bis  *No 
Popery*  sermon  at  Oxford  on  Guy  Fawkes 
Day,  1848.  Newman  had  already  resigned  St. 
Mary *s  and  gone  to  Littlemore,  and  there  Man. 
ning  called  on  him  the  dsy  after  his  ultra-Pro- 
testant manifesto.  Newman,  who  could  not 
reconcile  this  with  Manning*s  steady  approxi- 
mations to  him  since  1838  in  private  corre- 
spondence, was  "not  at  home,**  and  such  is 
the  irony  of  circumstance  that  J.  A.  Froude 
brought  Manning  thisrebufi",  and,  to  soothe  his 
feelings,  walked  half  way  back  to  Oxford  with 
him  before  he  discovered  that  he  was  without 
a  hat.  Mr.  Purcell's  imputation  of  the  meanest 
motives  to  Manning  at  this  juncture  will  seem 
excessive  to  many  of  bis  readers,  seeing  that 
at  this  time  bis  faith  in  the  English  Church  as 
ProtesUnt  and  yet  Catholic  bad  not  begun  to 
fail. 

Manning's  own  account  of  the  years  1843  to 
1846  is  '' Declension— secularity,  vanity  and 
anger."  Full  of  ecclesiastical  ambition,  what 
he  did  not  want  was  offered  him,  and  what  be 
wished,  the  preachersbip  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  he 
could  not  get,  though  be  had  Gladstone  to 
manage  his  canvass.  From  secular  ambition 
he  reacted  to  morbid  self  examination,  from 
which  '*a  judicious  hpi ritual  director  would 
have  saved  bim, '  gajs  Mr.  Purcell.  This  be- 
came  more  intense  in  the  course  of  a  dreadful 
sickness  and  slow  recovery  in  1847.  With  re- 
markable inconsistency  his  biographer  dates 
from  this  sickness  a  higher  spiritual  life, 
and  then  goes  on  to  show  by  his  correspond- 
ence with  Robert  Wilberforce  that  from  this 
time  forward  he  was  a  Roman  Catholic  in  his 
mind  M^d  heart,  whUe  still  ha  was  stoutly  in- 


sisting in  public  that  the  Anglican  had  all  the 
notes  of  a  true  church.  It  is  strange  that  what 
has  been  so  often  charged  against  Newman  in 
this  respect,  and  proved  untrue,  should  be 
proved  against  Ifanning,  ag^ainst  whom  it  has 
never  until  now  been  charged.  The  G^rham 
judgment,  which  permitted  an  Anglican  priest 
to  deny  the  doctrine  of  baptismal  regeneration, 
has  always  been  assigned  as  the  cause  of  Man- 
ning's change  of  base.  According  to  Mr.  Pur- 
cell, it  was  simply  the  last  straw  that  broke 
the  back  of  his  prolonged  duplicity.  From 
this  point  of  view  we  understand  Manning*s 
intense  engrossment  in  Romisn  worship  when 
he  was  abroad  in  1848,  and  why  he  knelt  in  the 
street  to  Pius  IX. — an  act  which  was  the  germ 
of  much  ecclesiastical  good  fortune.  Gladstone 
was  completely  deceived  by  the  reticence  of 
his  friend,  and  imagined  the  Gorham  judg- 
ment to  be  the  true  cause  of  his  secession  to 
the  Roman  camp.  Meantime,  says  Mr.  Pur- 
cell, bis  **  touching,  beautiful  little  sermons 
.  .  .  did  not  express,  and  were  not  meant 
to  express,  his  own  belief.  .  .  .  Such  ex- 
hortations were  formal  utterances  which  he 
considered  it  his  duty  as  their  spiritual  direc- 
tor to  address  to  his  penitents.** 

The  Gorham  decision  was  fulminated  in 
March,  1850,  and  in  March,  1851,  Manning  en- 
tered the  Roman  Church,  and  in  ten  weeks,  by 
the  special  grace  of  Cardinal  Wiseman,  he  was 
again  a  priest.  The  old  ambition  soon  awoke 
again,  and  with  more  violence  than  ever,  but 
for  several  years  he  found  himself,  as  he  ex- 
pressed it,  **  in  the  shallows,**  his  founding  of 
the  Oblates  of  St.  Charles  at  Bayswater  being 
bis  most  important  work.  But  his  intimacy 
with  Cardinal  Wiseman  and  Pius  IX.  steadily 
increased,  and  at  the  Papal  court  he  had  an 
invaluable  friend  in  Mgr.  Talbot,  the  Pope*s 
private  chamberlain.  The  atmosphere  of  these 
chapters  is  as  hot  and  stifling  as  that  of  pcuty 
politics.  From  the  start.  Manning  was  a 
Roman  Catholic,  not  an  English  one,  not  a 
Gallic  one,  and  before  long  a  fight  arose  be- 
tween him  and  the  old  English  Catholics  and 
Gallicans  who  we^e  jealous  of  his  growing  in- 
fiuence.  The  first  battle  was  over  Wiseman's 
coadjutor,  Errington,  who  had  to  be  got  rid  of 
or  he  might  come  in  for  che  succession.  A 
more  instructive  chapter  in  ecclesiastical  poli- 
tics it  would  be  hard  to  find  than  that  relating 
to  this  business,  or  one  more  disabusive  of  the 
illusion  that  the  Roman  family  is  a  happy  one. 
Mr.  Purcell  does  not  hesitate  to  ascribe  the  vic- 
tory to  Manning's  **  somewhat  unscrupulous 
methods";  but  Pius  IX  called  it  '*a  coup 
d'Hat  of  the  Lord  God."  Mgr.  Talbot  could 
^ee  the  divine  and  human  side  at  once.  When 
the  next  battle  was  on,  and  the  victory  was 
Manning's  succession  to  Wiseman  as  arch- 
bishop, Talbot,  in  a  letter  boasting  of  his  suc- 
cessful working  of  the  Pope,  adds,  "Never- 
theless I  believe  your  appointment  was  special- 
ly directed  by  the  Holy  Ghost."  Manning -was 
sometimes  awkward  in  availing  himself  of  the 
privileges  of  his  intimacy  with  the  Pope,  and 
Mgr.  Talbot  found  it  necessary  to  instruct  him 
that  neither  a  solemn  secret  nor  an  oath  was 
binding  when  the  Pope  was  concerned. 

Manning*s  relations  to  Newman  are  explicat- 
ed at  great  length,  and  no  doubt  is  left  upon 
the  reader*s  mind  that  in  their  bitter  contro- 
versy Manning  was  "the  worser  spirit,  color'd 
ill.**  In  the  letter  which  brought  their  corre- 
spondence  to  an  end,  Newman  wrote,  "I  do 
not  know  whether  I  am  on  my  head  or  heels 
when  I  have  active  relations  with  you.**  It  is 
simply  impossible  to  understand  Manning's 
interpretation  of  Newman's  wishes  when  the 
Cftrdli^a^te  was  oDTered  him.     It  has  every 


appearance  of  an  attempt  to  hinder  his  ad- 
vancement by  downright  dishonesty,  but  prob- 
ably his  wish  was  father  to  his  thought— a 
common  trick  with  men  of  his  Imperious  wiU. 
Quoting  entire  lfanning*s  eulogy  on  Newman, 
Mr.  Purcell  pronounces  its  claim  of  life-long 
friendship  radically  false.  "Instead of  friend- 
ship, there  was  life-long  opposition.'*  They 
had  different  ideals  of  Catholic  development 
in  England:  Manning  was  fierce  for  the  dog- 
ma of  infallibility,  Newman  against  it;  but 
the  trouble  at  bottom  was  that  Newman  found 
Manning  "diificult  to  understand,**^  his  profes- 
sions being  contradicted  by  his  acts. 

In  the  Vatican  council  of  1870,  Manning's 
part  was  so  important  that  the  Italians  named 
him  "II  Diavolo  del  Concilio."  No  other  in- 
dividual did  so  much  to  bring  about  the  decla- 
ration of  infallibility.*  It  was  not  all  that  he 
wanted,  his  appetite  for  infallibility  being  al- 
most as  ravenous  as  W.  G.  Ward*s,  who  want- 
ed a  papal  bull  for  breakfast  every  morning 
with  his  Timet,  The  decree  was  not  a  day  too 
soon.  The  day  following  came  the  declaration 
of  war  between  Germany  and  France.  If 
Manning  had  not  succeeded  in  averting  diplo- 
matic Intervention,  this  event  would  have 
found  the  dogma  still  undeclared,  and  its  inde- 
finite postponement  might  have  been  for  ever. 

Mr.  Purcell*s  volumes  count  1,534  pages,  and 
it  is  only  a  meagre  summary  of  their  contents 
that  can  be  given  in  a  brief  review.  There  are 
great  deductions  from  the  reader's  pleasure  in 
them  in  the  continual  turning  of  Mr.  PurcelVs 
narrative  upon  itself,  and  in  the  absolute  lack 
of  any  charm  in  Manning*s  diary  and  letters. 
He  is  better  in  his  notes,  in  which,  with  intense 
self- consciousness,  he  poses  as  he  would  like  to 
stand  in  history.  His  sympathy  with  the  la- 
boring poor,  if  not  always  well  directed,  is  the 
most  agreeable  aspect  of  his  life.  For  all  his 
caution  he  was  capable  of  extreme  haste  and 
rashness.  If  Mr.  Purcell  wishes  us  to  admire 
his  character,  his  laborious  work  cannot  be 
considered  a  success.  His  praise,  which  some- 
times is  mere  fustian,  is  perfunctory  and  un- 
real in  comparison  with  his  direct  and  care- 
fully insinuated  blame.  The  general  impres- 
sion that  frees  itself  from  the  multitude  of 
details  is  that  of  a  man  of  hard  and  brilliant 
intellect,  without  imagination  or  insight,  of 
great  ambition  and  unbending  will,  sensitive 
to  public  opinion,  loving  the  winning  side,  ex- 
tremely engaging  in  his  voice  and  manner, 
lively  in  conversation,  eloquent  in  public 
speech,  without  spontaneous  affection  and  mak- 
ing  few  friends,  treating  some  of  the  best  of 
these  unhandsomely,  using  others  and  then 
forgetting  them  alive  or  dead,  arriving  at 
length  at  an  almost  complete  personal  isola- 
tion, living  in  a  world  of  tradition  and  logo- 
machy unvisited  by  any  breezes  of  the  modem 
spirit;  a  figure  dignified  and  imposing  but 
most  melancholy  on  its  lonely  height.  There 
are  modifications  of  this  general  impression, 
but  they  do  not  seriously  affect  its  impact  on 
the  reader's  mind. 


Vera  Barantzova.  From  the  Russian  of  Sony  a 

^Kovalevsky.    With  an  Introduction  and  a 

Memoir  of  the  Author  by  Sergius  Stepniak 

and  William  Westall.    London :   Ward  & 

Downey.    1895.    Pp.281. 

This  novel  of  the  gifted  mathematician,  Sonya 

Kovalevsky,  which   has  been    awaited  with 

great  interest  by  English- speaking  people,  will 

not  disappoint  expectation.    It  is  hardly  to  be 

called  a  novel;  it  is  rather  a  swifts  incisive, 

dramatic  sketch  of  Russian  life  at  the  moment 

of  th^  9m/uicipation  of  the  ^erfs,  and  during 


Feb.  20,  1896] 


Tlie   Nationl 


163 


(and  at  the  end  of)  the  period  of  political  calm 
which  followed  the  Polish  insorreotion,  Kara- 
kaeofTt  attempt  to  aasastiDate  the  Csar,  and 
the  banishment  of  Tchem jsbevtky.  The  cen- 
tral figure  of  the  scene,  Vera  Barantsova,  was 
the  jovtngeet  daaghter  in  a  family  belonging  to 
the  nobility,  and  living  with  luxury  and  free- 
dom from  care  upon  a  large  estate ;  the  eman. 
cipation  of  the  s<af  s  not  only  brought  it  to  the 
verge  of  ruin  financially,  but  turned  its  mem. 
bers  into  disappointed  and  irritable  beings, 
with  whom  it  war  no  pleasure  to  live.  Vera 
was  left  wholly  to  herself,  and  grew  up  quite 
untamed  and  untrained,  but  with  the  seeds 
planted  for  a  future  life  of  devotion  by  the  one 
book  which  was  her  constant  study— the  lives 
of  the  martyrs.  Finally  a  university  professor, 
forced  to  return  to  his  estate  for  political  rea- 
sons, took  her  education  in  charge,  and  taught 
her  not  only  the  leamicg  of  books,  but  also 
that  it  was  not  necessary  to  go  to  the  ancient 
Romans  or  to  China  to  find  martyrs  in  holy 
causes. 

With  this  preparation,  a  woman  like  Vera, 
with  all  the  beauty  and  fiery  spirit  for  which 
the  Barantsova  family  had  long  been  famous, 
and  in  a  country  which  makes  such  strong 
claim  upon  its  noble  women  for  a  life  of  for- 
getf  ulness  of  private  weal  and  woe,  was  sure 
of  the  fate  of  many  another  Russian  patriot. 
We  shall  not  follow  out  the  train  of  events 
which  end  with  her  departure  for  Siberia,  not 
as  a  prisoner,  but  as  the  wife  of  the  convicted 
leader  of  a  litUe  band  of  NihilisU.  The  read- 
er has  come  to  be  fully  in  sympathy  with 
Vera*slast  words: 

**I  saw  my  future  life  before  me  as  on  a 
map.  I  should  live  among  the  exiles,  comfort 
and  console  them,  and  minister  to  their  needs, 
and  become  the  intermediary  of  their  corre- 
spondence. .  .  .  How  strangely,  and  yet 
how  simply,  it  has  all  oome  about  I  I  am  so 
happy,  dear,  so  happy. ^* 

The  simplicity  of  the  mtse  en  sc^e,  the 
swiftncw  with  which  events  move  onward  to 
the  inevitable  end,  the  single^mindedness  of 
the  heroine,  combine  to  produce  an  effect  of 
great  truthfulness  and  power,  and  one  cannot 
but  lament  the  loss  of  a  great  novelist  as  well 
as  a  brilliant  mathematician  in  the  early  death 
of  Sonya  Kovalevsky. 

The  novel  is  preceded  by  an  aocouut  of  the 
author,  by  Stepniak,  which  offers  nothing  new 
to  thoee  who  have  already  read  her  Life,  recent- 
ly reviewed  in  these  columns.  But  the  present 
condition  of  discussion  in  regard  to  her  is  in- 
teresting. None  of  the  great  Russian  writers 
have  been  more  generally  admired  or  more 
sincerely  mourned  in  their  native  land.  After 
her  death  Russian  literature  was  flooded  with 
articles  on  her  life,  her  personality,  and  her 
work,  tx>th  as  scientist  and  authoress.  Very 
soon  the  radical  opinions  which  she  bad  held 
became  known;  her  name  became  a  watchword 
for  the  Liberal  party,  and  an  expression  of 
sympathy  with  her  work  was  equivalent  to  a 
declaration  of  liberal  aspirations.  So  round- 
about a  way  of  proclaiming  opinions,  strange 
as  it  may  appear  in  the  countries  of  free  speech, 
is  merely  a  natural  device  in  Russia,  but  in 
this  instance  it  became  a  matter  of  such  mo- 
ment that,  as  we  are  told,  the  Qovernment  hss 
deemed  it  expedient  to  issue  a  secret  order  to 
the  press  forbidding  any  further  mention  of 
Mme^  Kovalevsky*s  name. 


Tweiv  Hundred  MiU»  in  a  Waggon.  By 
Alice  Blanche  Balfour.  With  illustrations 
by  the  Author.  New  York  :  Edward  Arnold. 
lflQ5.    Pp.  xix,  W5.    8vo. 

Tntt»  sprightly  narratirr  of  a  ''trek"  Ihropgh 


the  territories  of  the  BriUsh  South  Africa 
Company  has  a  peculiiur  interest,  for  several 
reasons.  The  writer  is  the  sister  of  the  leader 
of  the  House  of  Commons  and  prospective 
prime  minister  of  Great  Britain.  The  modeof 
travelling,  by  ox-wagon,  is  fast  disappearing 
before  the  steady  advance  of  the  railway;  and 
the  regions  visited  are  just  now  dividing  the 
attention  of  the  civilised  world  with  Armenia 
and  Venezuela.  Its  literary  merit  consists  in 
the  simple  and  unpretentious  way  in  which 
Miss  Balfour  tells  her  story.  Avoiding  all 
labored  descriptions  of  scenery,  and  discussions 
of  political,  social,  and  ethnographical  topics, 
she  wisely  confines  herself  to  narrating  the  or- 
dinary incidents  of  a  singularly  uneventful 
journey.  Although  she  has  no  startling  expe- 
riences with  lions  or  Matabele,  nor  any  mishap 
beyond  the  occasional  breaking  of  a  wagon 
pole,  yet  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  more 
graphic  account  of  life  in  an  ox-wagon  on  the 
high  veldt. 

Cape  Town  was  reached  in  April,  1894,  and 
the  next  few  weeks  were  spent  in  making  va- 
rious excursions  by  raiL  One  was  to  Basuto- 
land,  a  Crown  colony  in  which  white  settlement 
is  prohibited.  The  natives  are  very  numerous 
and  apparently  prosperous,  many  l>eing  '*  ex- 
tremely rich  ^'  in  cattle.  Their  land  is  suffer- 
ing from  the  water-courses,  which  cut  deep 
ravines  (^alled  dongas)  in  the  soil.  They  inter- 
sect the  plains  in  every  direction  and  are  rapid- 
ly increasing  in  size  and  number.  The  plant- 
ing of  trees  would  check  them,  but  the  natives 
dislike  trees  because  of  their  attraction  to  doves 
and  pigeons,  who  **  congregate  and  multiply 
80  enormously  wherever  there  is  any  wood,  that 
they  almost  destroy  the  neighboring  crops.** 
At  Johannesburg  Ifiss  Balfour  found  there 
were  **  two  absorbing  topics  of  interest— gold- 
mining  and  politics.**  The  latter,  indeed,  was 
then  the  most  prominent,  **  the  ever- smoulder- 
ing irritation  of  the  English  at  the  inequality 
of  treatment  they  suffer  under  the  Boers  being 
ready  to  burst  into  a  blaze  at  the  prospect  of 
the  commandeering  for  the  war  with  the  na- 
tives.** The  inability  of  this  singular  people 
to  accommodate  themselves  to  new  ideas  and 
circumstances  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that 
many  of  them  refuse  to  destroy  locusts,  **on 
the  ground  that,  like  the  plagues  of  Egypt^ 
they  are  the  direct  visitation  of  Gk)d.**  A  re- 
solution against  their  destruction,  *^on  account 
of  religious  scruples.**  was  carried  in  the  Folks- 
raad  of  the  Orange  Free  State  at  the  time  of 
Miss  Bal/our*s  viiit. 

The  wagons  were  taken  at  the  terminus  of 
the  railroad  which  is  to  connect  Cape  Town 
with  Mashonaland,  and  the  route  lay  through 
Rhama*B  town  to  Bulawayo,  the  Chartered 
Company^s  headquarters.  **  I  have  Sir  John 
Willougbby's  room,**  writes  Miss  Balfour. 

"This  is  a  true  and  faithful  description  of 
it.  It  has  mud  walls,  mud  fioor,  thatched  roof 
with  no  ceiling,  doors  made  of  two  packing- 
case  lids,  and  an  unglazed  window  with  shut 
terof  rough  boards.  Furniture:  a  bedstead, 
one  box  up««lde  down,  some  wooden  shelves,  a 
»mall  strip  of  matting,  an  empty  whiskey  bot- 
tle doing  duty  as  a  candlestick,  and  (ob,  luxu- 
ry!)  a  table.  Br.  Jameson's  room,  occupied  by 
Mrs.  Grey,  is  much  the  same,  only  it  has  a  six- 
inch  square  looking-glass  as  well." 

From  Salisbury,  the  farthest  northern  point 
of  the  journey,  the  travellers  turned  eastward 
and  reached  the  sea  at  Beira.  Here  a  steamer 
was  taken  for  Dar  es  Salaam,  the  capital  of 
German  Bast  Africa. 

**  The  town  is  a  remarkable  production  to  be 
the  work  of  only  ttiree  years,  but  somehow  it 
looks  more  like  a  German  watering-place  than 
aty thing  else;  and  in  the  European  quarter 
there  js  hardly  any  sign  of  trade  or  b})9iae9i 


going  on.  O^e  cannot  help  contrasting  it  wiih 
such  a  place  as  Bulawayo,  where  vou  have  a  few 
mud  huts,  a  few  iron  roofs,  officials  in  shirt- 
sleeves, and  a  general  air  of  bustle  and  *  go- 
ahead  ness.*  Here,  on  the  contrary,  are  many 
large  buildings,  concrete  roads,  ornamental 
gardens,  officers  in  spotless  uniforms,  much 
clicking  of  heels  ana  bowing,  but  nothing 
else.  ...  It  was  also  a  shock  to  our  Eng- 
lish ideas  to  see  numbers  of  native  women 
working  on  the  roads,  and  being  driven  to 
their  work  by  a  white  man  carrying  a  large 
raw- hide  whip.  I  became  daily  more  astonish- 
ed at  the  number  of  convicts  or  prisoners. 
Everywhere  jou  came  upon  gangs  of  four  to 
eight — often  women — chained  together  by  the 
necks  and  hounded  along  by  a  black  policeman 
or  soldier.  I  should  think  there  were  fewer 
prisoners  in  all  the  Chartered  Company*s  terri- 
tories than  in  this  one  little  town.*' 

After  this  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  under- 
stand why  Germany  makes  so  little  progress 
in  Africa. 

The  attractions  of  the  book,  which  is  an  ad- 
mirable specimen  of  typography,  are  increased 
by  numerous  illustrations,  from  sketches  by 
the  author.  There  is  an  outline  map  to  show 
the  route,  but  no  index. 


The  First  Chapter  of  Noncegian  Immigration ^ 
1821-1840  :  Its  Causes  and  Results.  With  an 
Introduction  on  the  Services  Rendered  by 
the  Scandinavians  to  the  World  and  to  Ame- 
rica. By  Rasmus  B.  Anderson,  LL.D.  Ma- 
dison, Wis.:  The  Author.  1895. 
This  book  was  written  to  chronicle  the  first 
six  Norwegian  settlements  in  the  United 
States.  There  is  not  a  page  in  it  but  will  be 
read  with  avidity  by  a  certain  class.  Three- 
score pioneers,  some  of  whom  came  on  the  first 
vessel,  are  here  shown  in  **  counterfeit  present- 
mentf>,*'  while  not  one  likeness  of  any  Mayflow^ 
er  passenger  has  survived.  Many  Norse  read- 
ers will  be  attracted  by  local  and  personal  de- 
tails far  back  of  their  own  memories,  and  will 
ascirrtain  genealogical  minutise  otherwise  be- 
yond their  reach.  Each  of  the  eight  prominent 
leaders— each  a  man  sui  y^nertf— is  honored 
with  a  monograph.  All  who  are  interested  in 
the  American  types  of  Scandinavian  Chris- 
tianity will  here  read  concerning  its  vicissi- 
tudes what  they  would  be  sorry  to  miss.  The 
introductory  chapter  would  not  have  been  in- 
fierted  save  by  way  of  catering  to  Scandinavian 
race-pride.  That  section  is  a  notable  specimen 
of  holding  a  button  so  near  the  eye  that  it 
bides  the  sun.  As  Douglas  Campbell  proves 
that  we  owe  everything  to  Scotch- Irish  or 
Scotch  or  Dutch— just  as  many  before  him  had 
made  the  same  claim  for  the  English  Puritan 
—and  as  Pascal  traced  all  the  world*s  cultura 
t)  Rome,  Athens,  and  Jerusalem,  so  Mr.  An- 
derson *s  great  first  cause  in  world- history  is 
the  old  Norse  Viking  or  Berserker.  Too  many 
are  now  captivated  by  such  a  hemming  into 
one  single  race  of  the  legacies  to  which  all 
races  have  contributed.  This  chapter  accord- 
ingly befits  the  lecture- platform,  where  it  has 
no  doubt  done  yeoman  service,  rather  than  a 
sober  history. 

But  to  the  general  reader  Prof.  Anderfon^s 
book  will  be  of  interest  and  value  for  its  ac- 
counts of  the  Norwegian  settlements  above 
enumerated,  which  were  all  that  existed  within 
the  United  States  in  1840-  a  date  up  to  which, 
according  to  the  Census  Commissioner,  the  Scan- 
dinavian immigration  was  "of  no  Importance.** 
To  elucidate  the  genesis  and  exodus  of  these  co- 
lonies—the first  in  Western  New  York  (Orleans 
Count;),  the  second  and  third  in  Illinois  (La- 
Salle  County  and  Chicago),  and  the  other  three 
in  southeastern  Wisconsin— is  the  chronicler's 
end  and  aim.  He  felt  that  In  thew  ♦'  seeds  and 
weak  beginnings'*  there  Uy  vislbla  in  minis- 


164 


Tlie    IN^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1599 


tore  to  a  prophetic  eye  the  occult  forces  which 
within  sev^enty  years  have  brought  into  our 
country  a  million  and  a  quarter  (p.  40)  of  im- 
migrants from  a  region  whose  largest  census 
never  amounted  to  eight  millions  This  Scan- 
dinavian upheaval  has  been  far  more  extensive 
in  Norway  than  in  Denmark  or  even  in  Sweden. 
Partly  on  this  account,  but  still  more  as  being 
himself  the  son  of  an  early  Norwegian  emi- 
grant, Prof.  Anderson  has  limited  himself  to 
Norwegian  settlements.  Regarding  these  there 
is  much  of  pith  and  validity  in  his  book. 
Through  his  position  as  United  States  Minis- 
ter to  Denmark,  through  travel  in  Norway, 
through  conversations  with  eight  survivors  of 
the  pioneers  on  the  first  ship  and  correspond- 
ence with  others,  through  personal  familiarity 
with  the  colonial  sites,  through  knowledge  of 
wliatever  had  been  written  on  his  theme— and 
thanks  to  Norwegian  as  half  his  own  vernacu- 
lar—he had  become  preeminently  fitted  for  his 
task.  Rather  it  is  plain  on  every  page  th%t  it 
was  for  him  no  task,  but  a  labor  of  love. 

The  reasons  for  Scandinavian  emigration 
are  singularly  similar  to  those  which  brought 
the  first  Puritans,  Quakers,  and  Huguenots 
across  the  Atlantic,  and  so  the  children  of  all 
these  religionists  can  claim  descent  from  the 
noble  army  of  martyrs.  Though  aware  that 
history  repeats  itself,  we  read  with  surprise  of 
a  Norwegian  imprisoned  frqm  1804  to  1814  for 
** advocating  the  right  of  laymen  to  preach'* 
(p.  48) ;  of  **  people  who  had  no  voice  in  select- 
ing their  own  pastors  "  (p.  308) ;  of  Quaker  chil- 
dren baptized  by  force,  and  of  yet  more  harsh 
persecutions  (pp.  50,  eta).  At  length  several 
Norwegian  dissenters  resolved  on  a  new  de- 
parture.  They  clubbed  together,  and,  getting 
a  favorable  report  from  prospectors  they  had 
sent  to  America,  in  1825  bought  a  sloop  of 
forty-five  tons,  for  which  and  a  ballast  of  iron 
they  paid  $1,800.  Their  leader  was  the  man  at 
whose  house  the  first  Quaker  meeting  had  been 
held.  On  this  small  craft  fifty-two  persons 
were  crowded,  only  two  of  them  seamen.  They 
embarked  and  were  driven  south  to  the  Azores, 
picking  up  a  pipe  of  wine  on  the  way.  On  the 
ninth  of  Octolwr,  1825,  after  a  passage  of  four- 
teen weeks,  they  arrived  in  New  York,  and 
were  welcomed  by  Quakers.  Through  Quaker 
kindness,  transportation  at  six  dollars  a  head 
was  paid  for  them  on  the  canal,  opened  that 
same  year,  to  Rochester,  as  well  as  cheap 
lands  on  long  credit  in  that  neighborhood. 
These  colonists  bettered  their  condition,  but 
kept  the  noiseless  tenor  of  their  way,  and  it 
was  eleven  years  before  any  other  tmigrtait 
ship  followed  on  their  track.  The  notices  of 
the  first  Norwegian  arrival  in  contemporary 
American  newspapers,  among  them  the  New, 
York  Evening  Post  (p.  7^,  oddly  enough  Prof. 
Anderson  found  of  service  in  determining  seve- 
ral pointo  in  his  narrative.  But  in  1885,  when 
the  first  of  their  number  returned  to'  Norway, 
he  was  received  by  the  simple  folk  as  one  alive 
from  the  dead.  He  spoke  of  high  wages  to 
men  whose  yearly  wage,  in  addition  to  food 
and  clbthing,  was  five  dollars;  of  land  for  all 
land,  lovers  to  those  who  despiiired  of  such  a 
boon  where  no  more  than  one  acre  in  121  is 
arable,  and  where  primogeniture  doubled  hope 
lessness.  A  stampede  filling  two  brigs  at  once 
ensued.  Good  mechanics  gladly  bound  them- 
selves  to  pay  two  years'  service  for  the  ocean 
transit. 

Before  the  second  party  arrived  it  was 
learned  that  in  lUinois  better  land  could  be 
had  for  ten  shillings,  and  often  for  four,  than 
had  cost  five  dollars  in  Kendall  where  the 
pioneers  had  settled.  Hence  the  newcomers 
ft04  PQ99  9(  th^  9I4  wm  iwarine4  tQ  l^ 


Salle.  Thence,  many  of  them,  and  other  new 
arrivals,  in  hopes  to  eecape  the  "chills'*  and 
afterward  cholera  epidemic  in  1849-50,  set 
tbeir  faces  towards  Wisconsin.  By  1840  three 
Norwesian  hamlets  had  there  been  formed, 
which  in  half  a  century  have  grown  to  a  popu- 
lation of  65.006  surviving  Norwegian  immi- 
grants in  1890.  In  1895  the  combined  number 
of  native  Norwegians  and  Swedes,  according 
to  the  State  census  was  106,468.  But  in  1890 
the  native  Swedes  numbered  20,157,  so  that 
the  total  of  Norwegian-bom  Wisconsians  can- 
not be  more  than  86,811,  even  if  there  has 
been  no  increase  whatever  of  native- bom 
Swedes.  The  census,  however,  of  Norwegians 
in  Wisconsin,  as  given  by  our  author,  is  130,- 
737  (p.  42).  By  this  number  he  cannot  mean 
the  total  of  Wisconsin  Norwegians  and  tbeir 
children,  for  he  sets  that  multitude  down 
as  no  less  than  596,131  in  1894.  Both 
statements  are  specimens  of  those  exaggera- 
tions to  which  Norsemen,  in  extolling  their 
own  people,  are  rather  prone.  In  point  of 
fact,  between  1880  and  1890  the  Wisconsin 
percentage  of  increase  in  Swedish  immigrants 
was  248  per  cent.,  and  that  of  Norwegians  was 
less  than  14  per  cent.  The  truth  is  that  the 
census  of  native  Norwegians  in  that  State  has 
reached  its  maximum.  Immigrants  long  ago 
passed  it  by  for  Minnesota,  and  then  for  the 
Dakotas,  where  farms  could  be  secured  at 
cheaper  rates.  Such  a  trans- Wisconsin  move- 
ment has  been  most  prevalent  among  Norwe- 
gians because  more  of  them  proportionally 
are  tillers  of  the  soil  than  can  be  found  among 
any  other  nationalities.  Hence,  their  per- 
centage is  small  in  New  York  and  Illinois, 
where  they  first  planted,  and  smaller  in  Wis- 
consin than  in  newer  States  beyond.  In  1890, 
Wisconsin  native  Norwegians  were  one  twen- 
ty fifth  of  the  population;  in  the  Dakotas 
they  were  one-eleventh.  The  quality  of  Nor- 
wegian immigrants  is  on  the  whole  so  excel- 
lent  that  their  quantity  cannot  be  too  great. 
We  see  them  to  be  so  good  that  we  would 
gladly  believe  them  as  multitudinous  as  Prof. 
Anderson  reckons  them.  In  our  judgment 
they  will  become  so. 


The  Natural  History  of  Plants  :  Their  Forms, 
Growth,    Reproduction,    and   Distribution. 
From  the  G^erman  of  Anton  Kemer  von  Ma- 
rilaun.  Professor  of  Botany  in  the  University 
of  Vienna,  by  F.  W.  Oliver,  M.  A.,  Quain  Pro- 
fessor of  Botany  in  University  College,  Lon 
don,   with   the  assistance  of  Marion  «Busk, 
B.Sc.,  and  Mary  Ewart,  B.Sc.    Half  volumes 
8  and  4.    Henry  Holt  ^  Co.    1895. 
When  we  noticed  the  first  two  half^volumes 
a  short  time  ago,  we  hardly  dared  to  hope  for 
the  immediate  completion  of  this  translation. 
We  feared  that  its  publication  would  drag,  and 
that  interest  in  the  first  parts  would  fiag  t>e- 
fore  the  second  and  concluding  portions  should 
appear.    In   this  we  have  been  happily  dis- 
appointed. The  final  volume  is  now  in  hand, 
and  its   character  makes   it   in    every  way 
a   fitting  companion  to  the   first.     The    au- 
thor evidently  planned  at  the  outset  to  take 
every  attractive  feature  of  plants  of  all  grades, 
and  place  these  attractive  features  in  the  very 
best  light.    For  this  purpose  he  has  skilfully 
employed  a  brilliant  style  of  expoeition,  and  he 
has  not  hesitated  to  use  illustrations  in  black 
and  in  color  with  the  freest  hand.  The  purpose 
has  been  attained.    He  has  succeeded  in  con- 
structing a  popular  work  on  the  phenomena  of 
vegetation  which  is  practically  without  any 
rival.    The  German  edition  has  been  accepted 
from  th«  first  at  a  useful  treatise  |or  ^e  in- 


struction of  the  public;  in  fact,  some  of  its  il- 
lustrations have  been  taken  bodily  from  the 
volumes  by  museum  curators,  to  enrich  exhi- 
bition cases  designed  for  the  people.  With  two 
exceptions,  the  full-page  colored  plates  leave 
little  to  be  desired,  and  might  well  find  a  place 
in  every  public  museum  in  which  botany  has  a 
share.  Most  of  the  minor  engravings  are  un- 
exceptionable Tbey  are  clear,  and  are  almost 
wholly  free  from  distracting  details  which  ren- 
der worthless  so  many  illustrations  in  popular 
works  on  natural  history.  Prof.  Keraer's  style 
in  (German  is  seldom  obscure— it  is  what  one 
might  fairly  call  easy  reading;  but  it  is  no  dis- 
paragement to  him  and  his  style  to  state  that 
the  translation  is  clearer  than  the  original 
throughout.  Many  a  long  sentence  in  the 
original  has  been  broken  into  small  and  readily 
handled  fragments,  with  strict  regard  to  Eng. 
lish  and  not  to  German  usage  and  idiom.  We 
repeat  what  was  said  in  the  notice  of  the  ear- 
lier  volumes,  that  the  translators  have  been 
unusually  successful  in  every  part  of  their 
task. 

In  the  first  two  issues,  the  author  was  en- 
gaged chiefly  with  the  study  of  the  stracture 
of  the  plant  and  its  adaptation  to  its  surround- 
ings. In  this  concluding  volume  he  considers 
the  plant  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  rela- 
tions to  others.  Therefore  he  begins  with  a 
full  and  absorbingly  interesting  account  of  re- 
production in  the  vegetable  kingdom,  and  then 
passes  to  an  examination  of  species.  Under 
this  head  he  takes  up  in  succession  the  nature 
of  species  and  alterations  in  the  form  of  spe- 
cies, opening  up  the  grave  questions  of  in- 
heritance, mutilation,  and  the  genesis  of  new 
forms.  This  prepares  the  way  for  the  subject 
of  derivation  of  existing  species  and  their  re> 
lations  to  one  another.  At  this  most  natural 
point  the  author  deals,  in  a  manner  partly 
original  and  wholly  suggestive,  with  the  claasi- 
fication  of  plants  of  all  degrees.  After  this 
comes  the  distribution  of  species  by  offshoots, 
by  fruits  and  seeds,  and  there  follows  then  an 
examination  of  the  limits  of  distribution.  Just 
here  special  stress  is  laid  on  the  possibility  of 
defining  plant  communities  and  floras,  which, 
having  been  done  to  the  author's  satisfaction, 
leaves  the  matter  of  floras  themselves  to  be 
dealt  with  on  a  climatic  and  genetic  bai>is.  On 
this  basis  he  defines  thirty-five  fioras,  of  which 
we,  in  our  geographical  limits,  have  the  fol- 
lowing: Canadian  and  Columbian,  just  south 
of  the  Arctic  fiora;  Misaissippi,  Missouri,  Pa- 
cific, Texas,  Mexican,  and  Atitilles.  But  our 
author  would  willingly  admit,  no  doubt,  that 
these  divisions  are  rather  arbitrary  and  pro- 
visional, being,  in  fact,  mere  makeshifts.  As 
he  says,  *'  There  is  nothing  for  it,  therefore, 
for  the  present  but  to  grope  along  with  the 
help  of  the  little  that  has  been  ascertained.** 

The  closing  chapter,  on  the  extinction  of 
species,  is  one  of  the  most  suggestive  in  the 
whole  work.  It  attacks  certain  problems  which 
belong  partly  to  the  domain  of  geology  and 
partly  to  the  field  of  biology,  maldog  allowable 
use  of  facts  which  have  k>een  acquired  by  the 
observation  of  glacial  advance  and  recession. 
It  would  be  most  unfair  to  omit  speaking  of 
the  excellent  glossary  and  the  copious  index. 
With  these  the  work  becomes  a  most  conve- 
nient and  trustworthy  treasury  of  material  for 
teachers  of  elementary  botany,  and  a  handbook 
for  ready  reference  by  all  who  desire  to^know 
something  about  vegetation.  A  very  learned 
teacher  of  botany  used  to  tell  his  classes  that 
he  did  not  want  the  old  saying  to  be  applicable 
to  them,  namely,  that  **one>half  the  world 
does  not  know  how  the  other  half  lives."  With 
this  tKK>k,  ther^  is  no  excute  for  97^  busy 


Feb.  20,  1896] 


Th.e   !N"atioii. 


165 


jMopto  to  be  iffoorant  of  bow  the  other  half ,  the 
plastbalf,  IWee. 


Rtcord$  of  th0  Clan  and  Nawu  of  F^rgu§aon^ 
FtrgumHf  and  Fmyu».  Edited  for  the  Clan 
Fergue(t)oii  Society  bj  Jainee  Ferguson  and 
Robert  Menxiee  FergoMoo.  Edinburgh : 
Darid  Douglas.    1805. 

Tbs  aim  oi  the  editors  of  this  sumptuous  vol- 
ume  is  best  stated  in  their  own  words.  *'  As 
original] J  contemplated,**  they  say  in  their 
prefatory  note,  **the  publication  did  not  pro- 
poee  to  supply  a  full  and  detailed  history  of 
the  Tarious  families  of  the  name,  but  rather  to 
place  on  record  materials  yet  preserved  in  the 
recollection  of  individuals,  or  in  MSB.,  which 
might  otherwise  disappear;  to  collect  scattered 
notices  of  the  name,  and  to  give  a  general  view 
of  the  fortunes  of  the  dan  in  different  districts 
of  Scotland  and  ebewhere.**  Unexpected  abun- 
dance of  material  has  carried  the  undertaking 
beyond  the  limits  at  first  intended;  but  it  may 
be  said  at  once  that  the  result  is  a  book  which, 
notwitfastanding  some  obvious  defects,  is  likely 
to  be  of  permanent  value  to  both  the  historian 
and  the  genealogist. 

It  is  with  Fergus  Mor  MacEarca,  who  came 
to  Scotland  from  Ireland  in  the  year  486, 
rather  than  with  the  mythical  King  Fergus, 
that  the  clan  and  name  of  Ferguson  are  to  be 
connected.  Throughout  the  early  history 
of  Scotland  and  the  Scottish  church  the  name, 
under  one  form  or  another,  is  of  frequent  oc- 
currence. But  the  early  families  scattered 
widely  over  Scotland,  and  between  these  fa- 
milies **  no  definite  link  of  proved  relationship 
can  be  Established,**  although  *«  interesting 
traditiovs  and  customs  suggest  that  all  may 
originally  have  come  from  a  common  source.** 
Tradition  assigns  to  the  Fergusons  a  promi- 
nent part  in  the  battle  of  Bannocd^bum,  and 
connects  the  Athole  clan  with  the  fortunes  of 
Robert  Bruce.  Athole  was  the  chief  seat  of 
the  Highland  Fergusons,  who  were  described 
in  1687  as  an  **  unruly  clan** ;  they  were  prob- 
ably among  the  followers  of  Montrose,  and 
'*  formed  the  original  nucleus**  of  the  Cavalier 
army ;  later  they  were  involved  in  the  strug- 
1^  of  1745. 

The  absence  of  assured  historical  connection 
between  the  various  f  amillee  of  Fergusons  in 
the  early  period  is  probably  the  reason  which 
led  the  editors  to  group  the  members  of  the 
dan  by  districts;  and  they  have  been  success- 
ful in  bringing  together  a  large  amount  of  in- 
teresting  and  valuable  material,  drawn  partly 
from  official  records,  partly  from  family  pa- 
pars  and  personal  recollections.  Perhaps  this 
arrangement  is  the  best  that  could  have  been 
adopted  under  the  drcumstances;  but  in  this 
case,  at  least,  the  arrangement  emphasises  the 
diversity  of  origin  at  the  same  time  that  it  in- 
creases the  difficulty  of  tracing  such  connec- 
tion as  actually  exists  between  Fergusons  of 
different  districts.  Fortunately  for  those  who 
will  use  the  book,  there  isa  good  index.  In  the 
accounts  of  the  more  prominent  members  of  the 
dan  the  noteof  prmiM  is  of  courss  not  want- 
ing, and  repetitions  are  inevitable;  but  the 
grouping  of  material  is  on  the  whole  orderly, 
and  personal  claims  to  distinction  are  not  un- 
duly pressed.  Considerable,  Irat  hardly  dis- 
proportionate, space  is  naturally  given  to  those 
bearers  of  the  Ferguson  name  who  have  be- 
come widely  known:  Adam  Ferguson,  profes- 
sor of  natural  phikMopby  at  Edinburgh,  secre- 
tary to  the  coomiission  sent  out  in  1778  to  ne- 
gotiate with  the  American  colonies,  and  who 
dropped  the  second  »  from  his  name  **  on  the 
ground  that  it  was  unnecessary,  and  therefore 


unworthy  of  a  philosopher**;  Sir  Adam  Fer- 
guson, eldest  son  of  the  professor,  dubbed  by 
Scott  «*the  merry  Knight,**  and  Col.  James 
Ferguson,  with  whom  Scott  drank  **  rather  a 
cheerful  glass**;  Robert  Ferguson,  the  pbyii. 
clan;  Jsmes  Ferguson,  Lord  Pitfour,  one  of 
the  most  popular  lawyers  of  bis  day;  Robert 
Ferguson,  the  poet;  James  Ferguson,  the 
astronomer,  and  James  Fergusson,  the  archi- 
tect. Scott,  as  is  well  known,  was  on  inti 
mate  terms  with  several  of  the  Fergusons, 
especially  those  at  Huntlybum;  and  their  in- 
tercourse  is  the  subject  of  several  interf  sting 
contributions. 

A  chapter  is  devoted  to  Fergusons  in  Ire- 
land, another  to  Fergusons  in  England,  and  a 
third  to  those  in  Holland,  Poland,  and  Ceylon. 
There  are  several  references  to  Fergusons  in 
America,  but  apparently  no  attempt  was 
made  to  trace  in  detail  tbe  history  of  the  clan 
representatives  in  this  country.  The  father  of 
Dr.  Robert  Ferguson  was  born  in  America, 
where  his  father  had  settled,  and  was  with  tbe 
British  army  until  1782,  being  for  a  time 
'*  clerk  of  it  sues**  in  the  commissary  depart- 
ment. Captain  James  Ferguson  was  in  com- 
mand of  a  frigate  of  thirty-two  guns  during 
the  early  part  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  and 
was  especially  commended  by  Lord  Howe  for 
bis  '*ability.teetifled  in  the  direction  of  many 
difficult  and  fatiguing  services  **  in  the  opera 
tions  about  New  York.  There  is  an  interest- 
ing account  of  the  services  of  Co).  W.  O.  Fer- 
guson in  South  America  under  Gkn.  Bolivar. 
In  the  case  of  James  Frederick  Ferguson,  the 
Irish  antiquary,  son  of  Jacques  Fr^^ric  (not 
Jaques  Frederic,  as  at  p.  470)  Jaquemain,  it 
would  seem  to  have  been  worth  while  to  men- 
tion the  fact  of  bis  birth  in  South  Carolina,  as 
well  as  his  great  work  of  indexing  the  Irish 
Exchequer  records. 

About  fff ty  pages  are  devoted  to  a  biblio- 
graphy of  writings  by  and  about  Fergusons, 
prepared,  the  editors  say,  **  after  a  careful  ex- 
amination of  the  catalogues  of  the  leading 
libraries,  and  in  several  cases  with  the  personal 
assistance  of  the  authors.**  It  is  to  be  regretted 
that  the  work  at  this  point  could  not  have  been 
better  done :  the  editors  were  plainly  on  unfa- 
miliar ground,  and  the  result  is  a  list  whose 
aoouraoy  cannot  be  depended  on.  We  note  a 
few  instances  only.  *' Seven  editions**  of 
Adam  Fergu8on*s  *  Essay  on  the  History  of 
Civil  Society '  are  spoken  of  (p.  518) ;  an  eighth 
edition  was  published  in  Philadelphia  in  1819  ; 
there  are  also  translations  in  French  and  Ger- 
man. In  the  body  of  the  work  (p.  145),  this 
book  is  said  to  have  been  published  in  1766;  the 
bibliography  gives  the  date  as  1767.  Brewster's 
edition  of  James  Ferguson*s  *  Astronomy  ex- 
plained upon  Sir  Isaac  Newton*s  Principles  *  is 
omitted.  There  was  another  eiition  of  Robert 
H.  Ferguson's  *Electridty*  in  1878.  Rev. 
David  Fergusson*s  *  Answer  to  Ane  Epistle*  was 
reprinted  in  1860  by  the  Bannatyne  Club ;  but 
the  fact  is  not  noted,  although  the  volume  con- 
taining the  reprint  is  duly  entered.  The  titles 
of  early  printed  books  are  not  always  accu- 
rately given  :  it  is  a  bibliographical  common- 
place that  if  the  original  spelling  and  punctua- 
tion are  to  be  followed  at  all,  they  should  be 
followed  consistently  and  exactly.  A  curious 
instance  of  abbreviated  title  occurs  in  the  body 
of  the  work  (p.  810),  where  what  appears  to  be 
the  full  title  of  David  Fergusson*8  *Epithala- 
minm  MysUcum  Solomonis  Regis  sive  Analy- 
sis,* etc,  is  given,  but  with  the  words  ''Solo- 
monis  Regis**  omitted;  in  the  bibliography 
the  name  appears  as  Ferguson,  and  the  title  is 
given  as  *  Analysis  Critioo-Practica  Cantici 
Canticorum.*    In  some  cases  it  is  to  be  feared 


that  titles  have  been  takeQ  bodily,  without  ve- 
rificatioo,  from  '*the  catalogues  of  leading 
libraries**  :  on  page  543,  for  example,  is  the 
entry,  *  On  the  Antiquity  of  the  Kilie.  or  Boo- 
merang. (In  V.  19.)  1841.*  What  "In  V.  19** 
means  does  not  appear  from  anything  in  the 
text ;  "catalogues  of  leading  libraries**  indi* 
cate  a  reference  to  the  publications  of  the 
Royal  Irish  Academy,  which  are  noted  in  con- 
nection with  another  title  on  the  succeeding 
page. 

There  is  a  valuable  chapter  on  Ferguson 
heraldry.  The  colored  heraldic  plates  are  ex- 
tremdy  wdl  done.  The  full-  page  Illustrations, 
most  of  them  from  portraits,  are  creditable ; 
but  the  smaller  ones  are  as  a  rule  inferior. 


Essay*  in  Taxation,  By  Edwin  R.  A.  Selig- 
man.  Macmillan  &  Co.  1805.  8vo,  pp.  x,  484. 
DtTBiNO  the  past  Ave  years,  Prof.  Seligman 
has  been  publishing  in  various  economic  pe- 
riodicals articles  upon  taxation,  especially  upon 
American  taxation,  whoee  solidity,  vigor,  and 
accuracy  have  challenged  admiration.  A  num • 
ber  of  these  articles,  revised  and  brought  down 
to  date»  s  re  now  reprinted  in  a  handsome  volume. 
Tbe  chapters  are  entitled :  The  Development  of 
Taxation,  the  General  Property  Tax,  the  Sin- 
gle Tax,  Double  Taxation,  the  Inheritance 
Tax,  the  Taxation  of  Corporations  (three  chap- 
ters), the  Classification  of  Public  Revenues, 
Recent  Reforms  in  Taxation,  tbe  Betterment 
Tax,  Recent  European  Literature  in  Taxation, 
and  American  Reports  on  Taxation.  These  thir- 
teen  essays,  though  nominally  disconnected,  are 
so  uniform  in  treatment  and  so  interpenetrated 
by  well-matured  convictions,  that  they  may 
almost  be  said  to  constitute  a  treatise  on  taxa- 
tion. They  do  not  form,  to  l>e  sure,  a  compre- 
hensive treatise,  since  many  subjects  of  prime 
importance— e.  9.,  customs  duties  and  other  in- 
direct taxes  upon  business  and  consumption, 
the  income  tax,  progressive  taxation,  the  shift- 
ing of  taxes,  tax  administration,  and  the  rela- 
tion  of  various  taxes  to  one  another— recdve 
but  inddental  discussion.  Indeed,  to  speak  in 
terms  of  our  own  tax  system,  the  whole  subject 
of  federal  taxation  is  almost  Ignored.  Within 
their  field,  however,  the  *  Essays  *  are  far  supe- 
rior to  the  tax-commission  reports  which,  in 
their  original  or  in  some  vamped  form,  have 
served  heretofore  as  our  chief  sources  of  in- 
formation —  and  misinformation — concerning 
taxation  in  American  States  and  dties. 

Throughout  Prof.  Seligman*s  book  his  wide 
acquaintanoe  with  the  literature  of  finance  is 
evident.  He  knows  the  Germans,  but  he  is  not 
their  slave.  Their  Infiuence  never  misleads 
him,  as  it  did  Bastable,  into  the  use  of  un- 
English  terms  like  **  subject  of  taxation  **  and 
"  object  of  taxation  **  for  tax-bearer'and  thing 
taxed,  nor  yet  into  elucidating  the  expres- 
sion "  political  sciences  **  by  a  parenthe- 
siicd  ''^8taaUwis9enscht^f^4n):'  Mr.  Seligman, 
on  the  contrary,  has  really  mastered  Wagner 
and  Cohn  and  Scb&ffle.  His  grasp  upon  tbe 
economic  and  upon  the  legal  prindples  exhi- 
bited in  the  field  of  taxation  Is  strengthened 
thereby,  while  he  still  exercises  independent 
judgment,  and  does  not  mistake  analogies  from 
Continental  conditions  for  descriptions  of 
American  or  even  of  English  taxation.  Against 
such  misapprehensions  there  could.  Indeed,  be 
no  better  bar  than  the  frequent  investigations 
which  he  has  made  Into  the  history  of  our  own 
taxes.  The  facts  thus  brought  out  give  the 
reader  greater  confidence  in  the  suthor's  con- 
clusions than  could  even  tbe  most  rigid  deduc- 
tion frc4n  such  unverified  assumptions  as  lie 
Jit  the  basis  of  much   -tconomictliought" 


166 


Tlie   N'ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1599 


The  introductory  eisaj  eropbaMzes  "the 
slow  and  laborious  growth  of  staodards  of  jus- 
tice in  taxation,  and  the  attempt  on  the  part 
of  the  community  as  a  whole  to  realize  this 
justice."  This  growth  inyoWes  a  progresdye 
recognition  of  ability  to  pay  and  of  benefit 
received  as  bases,  each  in  its  place,  for  the 
distribution  of  taxation.  It  invoWes  also  a 
gradual  transition,  due  to  the  development  of 
novel  sorts  of  intangible  property,  from  posi- 
tion to  acquisition— that  is,  from  property  to 
income— as  the  only  adequate  index  of  ability 
to  pay.  In  the  second  essay  the  history  of  the 
general  property  tax  is  sketched.  That  history 
in  Rome,  France,  Germany,  England,  and 
America  is  the  same  : 

<*  As  soon  as  the  idea  of  direct  taxation  has 
forced  Itself  into  recognition,  it  assumes  the 
practical  shape  of  the  land  tax.  This  soon  de- 
velope  into  the  tax  on  general  property,  which 
[meaning  property,  not  the  tax]  long  remains 
the  index  of  ability  to  pay.  But  as  soon  as  the 
mass  of  property  splits  up,  the  property  tax 
becomes  an  anachronism.  The  various  kinds 
of  personalty  escape,  until  finally  the  general 
property  tax  completes  the  cvcle  of  its  develop- 
ment and  reverts  to  its  original  form  in  the 
real  property  tax." 

England,  and  Continental  Europe  general- 
ly, long  ago  recognized  the  injustice  of  the 
general  i^roperty  tax  as  the  sole  or  'even  the 
chief  means  of  raising  revenue,  and  frankly 
turned  it  into  a  land  tax,  supplemented  by 
taxes  on  persons,  on  business,  on  house-rent, 
on  incomes,  etc.  Only  in  the  advanced  de- 
mocracies does  the  old  property  tax  still 
survive,  in  Switzerland,  Australia,  and  the 
United  States.  In  these  countries,  too,  its 
imperfections  have  finally  been  realized,  and 
•ach  is  gradually  developing  the  supplemen- 
tary taxes  most  obviously  workable  under  its 
conditions— the  United  States  first  introducing 
corporation  taxes,  and  afterwards  adding  the 
inheritance  taxes  with  which  the  Australian 
colonies  began,  while  the  Swiss  cantons  first 
of  all  developed  the  income  tax,  a  late-comer 
in  Australia,  and  are  now  beginning  to  follow 
our  example  in  taxing  corporations.  To  this 
same  question  of  the  taxation  of  corporations 
more  than  a  quarter  of  Frof .  Seligman's  book 
is  devoted,  and  nowhere,  so  far  as  we  know, 
are  the  economic  aspects  of  this  complicated 
and  diflScult  subject  treated  with  such  fulness 
of  knowledge  and  such  keenness  of  analysis  as 
here.  On  the  law  of  corporation  taxes  an 
enormous  amount  has  been  written  ;  but,  after 
all,  it  is  the  economic  rather  than  the  legal 
factor  which  must  ultimately  determine  their 
fate. 

Not  the  least  interesting  chapter  is  that  on 
recent  reforms  in  taxation,  especially  in  Eng- 
lish, Dutch,  and  Prussian  taxation.  Alike  in 
Sir  William  Harcourt's  famous  **  democratic 
budget"  of  1894,  in  the  reforms  of  Mr.  N.  G. 
Pierson  and  in  those  of  Dr.  Miquel,  "  the  same 
tendency  is  unmistakable,  the  trend  to  greater 
justice  in  taxation."  The  Prussian  reform  of 
189M893  is  further  notable  for  bringing  about 
a  segregation  of  source  between  state  and  local 
revenues— a  policy  earnestly  recommended  to 
our  own  commonwealths. 

We  pass  to  mention  a  few  points  from  which 
it  is  possible  to  dissent.  Unquestionably  some 
personal  property  escapes  taxation  for  want  of 
uniformity  in  the  laws  determining  its  situs. 
Pending  interstate  agreement  upon  this  point, 
*•  it  may  be  possible,"  says  Prof.  Seligman  (p. 
114),  **to  reach  intangible  personalty  through 
some  form  of  national  taxation,  the  general 
Government  then  to  apportion  the  proceeds  to 
the  States."  Not  only  is  this  remedy,  as  Prof. 
Seligman   recognizes,  impracticable,  in  view 


of  the  last  income-tax  decision,  but  to  many 
people  it  will  seem  distinctly  worse  than  the 
disease.  We  hope  never  again  to  see  the  States 
the  fiscal  benefidariee,  even  in  appearance,  of 
the  federal  Treasury.  Again,  we  cannot  help 
thinking  Prof.  Seligman  Ill-advised  in  his  use 
of  the  assertion  that  the  ** single  tax"  cannot 
raise  wages.  If  real  wages,  and  not  mere 
money  wages,  are  intended,  t^e  assertion  may 
very  plausibly  be  disputed ;  at  any  rate,  his 
cogent  and  convincing  arguments  against  the 
single  tax  do  not  need  the  assertion  even  if  it 
is  true,  while  they  suffer  from  it  if  it  be  false. 
Finally,  in  the  highly  technical  chapter  enti- 
tled '*The  Classification  of  Public  Revenues," 
the  discussion  with  Bastable  runs  into  a  style 
which  reminds  us  of  the  beginnings  of  a  Ger- 
man '*  Plrofessorenzank,"  a  kind  of  squabble 
which  we  may  well  leave  to  the  universitieB  of 
the  Father iMid.  In  spite  of  occasional  ble- 
mishes, however.  Prof.  Seligman's  book  is  ca- 
pable ol  holding  its  own  with  the  best  writing  on 
taxation  in  the  better  known  languages— a 
book,  too,  which  legislator  and  citizen  alike 
puLj  read  with  alternate  complacency  and 
mortification,  but  with  uniform  profit. 


Labor  in  it$  Relation*  to  Lata.    By  F.  J. 

Stimson.  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.  1895. 
This  little  book  consists  of  four  lectures  de- 
livered at  the  Plymouth  School  of  Ethics,  and 
it  is  quite  probable  that  the  character  of  the 
audience  addressed  had  its  infiuence  on  the 
treatment.  Presumptively  Mr.  Stimson's  hear- 
ers were  neither  economists  nor  lawyers,  and 
tiie  task  of  instruction  and  conversion  must 
have  been  far  from  easy  ;  but  it  has  been  per- 
formed with  great  skill  and  judgment.  Some 
unpalatable  truths  had  to  be  administered,  but 
they  have  been  so  dexterously  concealed  in  a 
vehicle  of  persuasive  argument  as  to  leave  no 
bitter  taste  behind.  By  frankly  professing 
sympathy  with  laborers,  Hr.  Stimson  disarms 
opposition,  and,  having  complied  with  the  first 
maxim  of  the  forum— to  create  a  favorable 
impression  towards  the  speaker  in  the  minds 
of  his  hearers— he  leads  them  gently  away 
from  the  lotos  groveaof  sentimentalism  to  the 
sober  realms  of  reason  and  common  sense. 

Occasionally,  however,  Mr.  Stimson  is  him- 
self quite  too  mild.  The  barbarous  legislation 
which  prohibits  the  inmates  of  prisons  from 
productive  labor  draws  from  him  only  the  fee- 
ble complaint  that  "our  sentimental  altruism" 
should  not  carry  us  so  far  as  to  object  to  the 
employment  of  our  criminals  in  healUiy  out- 
side work.  Why  should  it  carry  us  so  far  as 
to  object  to  their  employment  in  healthy  in- 
side  work  f  And  why  should  Mr.  Stimson  par- 
ticularly recommend  their  employment  in  en- 
terprises which  private  capital  avoids  as  unre- 
munerative  f  Must  not  the  convicts  be  some- 
how supported  f  And  if  they  are  not  to  be  sup. 
ported  by  their  own  labor,  must  it  not  be  by 
the  labor  of  free  citizens  ?  Here  was  an  oppor- 
tunity missed  to  administer  a  wholesome  cor- 
rective to  our  sentimental  altruism. 

The  statement  of  the  law  relating  to  the 
contracts  between  master  and  servant,  and 
to  such  special  episodes  as  strikes  and  boycotts, 
is  very  lucid  and  succinct.  In  fact,  the  book 
will  serve  very  well  as  a  manual  of  what  is 
called  labor  legislation.  The  policy  of  many 
of  these  laws  is  well  meant,  and  receives  suit- 
able commendation  from  Mr.  SUmson,  while 
the  futility  and  unconstitutionality  of  a  con- 
siderable class  of  statutes  are  plainly  exposed. 
He  looks  forward  to  the  attainment  of  peace 
in  the  industrial  world,  or  at  least  of  progress 
toward  peace,  through  the  development  of  the 


trade-unions.  Doubtless  the  members  of  these 
tmions,  if  they  combine  with  their  masters, 
can  secure  many  things  for  both  parties,  but 
the  fate  of  the  outside  laborers,  who  are,  even 
in  England,  probably  nine-tenths  of  the  whole 
number,  deserves  some  consideration.  A  com- 
bination of  this  kind  may  create  an  invincible 
monopoly,  which  is  something  that  no  be- 
liever in  freedom  can  look  forward  to  with 
gladness. 


Socratta^  and  Athenian  Society  in  hie  Day: 
A  Biographical  Sketch.  By  A.  D.  Godley, 
M.A.,  Fellow  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford. 
Macmillan  &  Co.  1896.  Pp.  vi,  282. 
This  book  is  not  intended,  its  author  tells  us, 
"  for  classical  scholars  or  professed  Platonlsts, 
but  rather  for  the  large  and  increasing  class 
of  students  who  do  not  wish  to  be  debarred 
altogether  from  an  acquaintance  with  Greek 
literature  by  their  ignorance  of  the  Greek 
language."  In  other  words,  it  is  another  of 
the  many  attempts  to  begin  an  acquaintance 
with  those  productions  which  are  preeminently 
the  masterpieces  of  form  and  beauty,  by  cast- 
ing away  the  beautiful  form  itself;  to  learn 
what  the  Greeks  said,  leaving  out  how  they 
said  it— tiiat  is,  to  learn  Greek  without  Greek. 
Mr.  Godley  proposes  to  effect  this  object  by 
a  series  of  i>assages  translated  chiefly  from 
Plato,  pcurtly  from  Aristophanes  and  Xeno- 
phon,  accompanied  by  some  account  from 
other  sources  of  the  position  of  Athens  and  the 
Athenians  during  the  life-time  of  Socrates. 
His  versions  are  spirited  and  accurate,  and 
may  be  compared  with  those  of  Jowett,  not  at 
all  to  the  advantage  of  the  latter ;  which  is  re- 
markable in  the  work  of  an  Oxonian.  The 
principle  of  selection  is  not  so  commendable. 
There  is  far  too  much  space  given  to  the 
myths;  the  Atlantis  and  the  story  of  £r, 
however  striking  in  themselves  and  necessary 
for  a  knowledge  of  Plato,  take  up  much  space 
in  a  life  of  Socrates  which  had  far  better  be 
given  to  the  *Crito,'  the  '  Phsedms,' and  the 
*  Thesetetus.'  It  may  not  be  easy  to  decide  the 
exact  ratio  of  Plato's  intimacy  with  Socrates 
to  that  of  Xenophon ;  but  Mr.  Gk>dley  seems 
yet  in  the  fetters  of  the  English  traditional 
belief  that  because  Plato's  Socrates  has  much 
greater  literary  charm  and  richness  of  thought 
than  Xenophon's,  therefore  it  is  more  correct 
as  a  picture. 

The  material  of  the  book  has  been  so  long  be- 
fore  the  world,  and  been  so  thoroughly  thrashed 
over,  that  there  is  not  much  chance  for  ori- 
ginal research;  but  the  author  has  made  one 
discovery,  namely,  that  the  attack  on  Socrates 
in  the  **  Clouds"  is  just  such  scandal  as  arises 
in  any  small  town,  e.  g„  Tennyson's  Lincoln- 
shire village.  Considering  the  position  Athens 
occupied  in  the  civilized  world  in  428  B.  c,  and 
the  crowds  that  were  likely  to  assemble  at  the 
city  Dionysia,  all  eager  to  see  the  comedies  to 
which  the  truce  was  admitting  them  for  the 
first  time  in  eight  years,  such  a  reduction  of 
Athens  to  the  level  of  Chichester  or  Medicine 
Lodge  is  indeed  novel.  There  are  some  points 
in  Athenian  society  which  all  classical  scholars 
know  can  never  be  explained  to  readers  of 
English;  and  Mr.  Godley*s  reserved  para- 
phrases are  as  unsuccessful  as  his  predecessors'. 
We  also  are  favored  with  the  repetition  of  the 
favorite  English  blunder,  as  follows:  "In  a 
large  society,  abstention  from  politics  Is  a  mat- 
ter of  choice.  No  one  is  seriously  blamed  for 
being  what  Americans  call  a  *  Mugwump.'" 
A  Mugwump,  Mr.  Godley  is  respectfully  in- 
formeds  is  anything  but  an  abstinent  from 
politics. 


Feb.  20,  1896] 


Th.e    [N'ation. 


167 


The  book  is  extremely  elegant  in  all  points  of 
oatward  dress,  and  is  generally  correct  in 
printing;  bnt  on  page  196  there  is  a  bad  mis- 
print of  labens  for  labem  in  the  quotation  of 
Virgii's  *  JEneid/  vi.,  746. 


Old  Chester:  Etched  and  described  by  H. 
Hovell  Crickmore.  Charles  Scribcer's  Sons. 
1806.    Pp.183. 

The  city  of  Chester,  frith  its  well>preserved 
ancient  walls,  its  interesting  cathedral,  and  its 
admirable  old  houses,  is  one  of  the  most  at- 
tractive places  in  England  to  American  travel- 
lers. It  is  proportionally  attractive  to  Eng- 
lishmen, and  has  been  the  subject  of  many 
publications,  some  of  them  of  value.  The 
present  work  is  a  chatty  and  discursive  ac- 
count of  old  buildings  and  of  the  ^wo  neigh- 
boring country  houses,  Eaton  Hall  and  Ha- 
warden  Castle,  the  seats  of  the  Duke  of 
Westminster  and  Mr.  Gladstone,  respective- 
ly.  It  is  illustrated  by  eleven  etchings  and 
twenty  reproduced  pen-drawings^  not  very 
masterly  considered  as  renderings  of  archi- 
tecture, although  two  or  three  of  the  etch- 
ings are  much  superior  (in  this  respect  and 
also  in  value  as  a  record)  to  the  other  etchings 
and  the  pen-drawings.  The  chapter  on  **  Bridge 
St.  and  Lower  Bridge  St."  shows  evidence  of  a 


considerable  personal  knowledge  of  the  old 
houses  which  are  as  yet  unmarred  by  restora- 
tion, and  the  few  words  given  to  the  cathedral 
and  to  St.  John*s  Church  are  much  to  the  pur 
pose  and  argue  a  Uyely  sense  of  essential  dif- 
ferences in  architecture.  Much  the  greater 
part  of  the  text  is  given  to  a  semi- jocose  treat- 
ment of  the  legends  and  partly  historical  tra- 
ditions connected  with  the  buildings  of  the 
city  and  the  city  itself.  The  constant  use  of 
exclamation  marks,  combined  with  the  little 
exclamatory  clauses,  "Oh,  dear!"  **  Ah  well!*' 
and  the  rest,  emphasizes  the  extremely  modem 
language  employed  in  many  of  the  pages. 
Popular  slang  and  funny  writing  need  the  ex- 
clamation points,  OS  also  do  the  bits  of  senti- 
ment which  are  freely  applied  to  the  sad 
records  of  the  past,  and  both  are  used  in  this 
presentation  of  ancient  adyentures  and  ancient 
miseries  to  modem  readers.  In  spite  of  much 
bad  taste,  the  book  is  readable  and  an  aid  to 
the  understanding  of  history. 

BOOKS  OF  THE  WBBK. 

Anderasg  Prof.  Frederick,  and  Roe.  Prof.  B.  A.   Trig o- 

nometry  for  Schools  and  Ck>Ilege8.   Boston :  ainn  ft 

Co.   8O0. 
Aa«tlii.  Alfred.   BncUmd's  Darling.  Macmlllan.  91.25. 
Berenson,  Bembard.  The  Florentine  Painters  of  tbe 

Renaissance.   Wltn  an  Index  to  their  Works.   Pat- 

nams.   91. 
DaTls,    Mrs.    Rebecca    Harding.     Doctor    Warrick's 

Daoghters.    Harpers.   91.60. 


Bi'li>'ri'^l*,-1M.  1-i[Hi       WMniiin  iiniltT  MnaKitlcliiiii     Caoi- 

hHrlw:.'-  r'ijlv,-r^iiy  I'n-^.;,  N.*w  Vnfk :  MBcmllJiui.  #4 

r\*^u\,  r:-iu„r4.    Tuj,  T.Urrinf  tlif  Tnwn  *vf  ProylitaDcv 

Hnl.kiiir.J.  I  If-  rT      rti'^  s  luwrvf  Rooifii-  A  Rftrriot  iti^l  a 

Miiti.      hit  .Viin.ru.  S    V.;  Kajefofi  j'rlqtlriK  !Sbton 

JS,..Ur-,  .liiMii.U    Jiivi-.tj  T'J^^'aM,  and 'Hhi't  EstAti    Mjic- 

KIntj,   Ur.  r.  ft.    J.lf*«  i^nd  Com'Kinti^tlt^oc^  of  Itu/iii 

K ( n K     Vol  III.     I  71ICH hu } ,    Putn ainM. 
La  N ou V e lift  ^emiiie     "J    \V.  mm ny^ii am-    70e 

Mnhiif; V .  .f  K     Thf  K m 1 1 1 ri>  of  t b*?  FtoJemlf « .    MAemll - 

la  II,    9^54.1. 
Murcb,  TUojiUMt,    Thf  Qlttury  of  thv  Ptuia  rorriiTiurjf;  of 

1H71.    rjDnflim:  Soniirli#rliHli:    HvW  Yt>rh:    Mftrmil' 

lao.    ftf 
Moult*>ii,    Ppiff.    ft.    II.     E*>:lealnrt|i"iiii.     [Tb*  Horfpm 

lWAd<<'r'»  EUhl" J    MacmTllan     fiUe. 
Norway.  A.  H.    FTinrrtfy  of  Uir»  T'^wr  {jmN^*-  I'Aihet  Btf~ 

vlri%  nB!l-IWJS.    KaiTillMan.    tiUMh 
Ohiif  t,  iitMjTjTMi,    X.I' Cbiiiit  ihi  C^VKTitfi.     liniriiprtL  Mer* 

P»-*n.,.f  li,T,  r.     H€«4d!«iiig  llitH  rtH.l  Nl|t»ifir>ar*^  Atiijcy. 

Jrtii-  Mil' kill.    ii,a,l. 
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.Inn  1  Jtjiill'  ri%  TintUll  *  i'o*  ;    V«  w  Vufh  :    rqtuams. 

Pt-tiibi'rtua.  Mni.    Tlit*  Sivi  Wotvea.     lund,  l^feNAlty  Ar 

t  'it. 
Pr-w.^ytt,  W.  FT,     Thi'  iWmijiff*^!  nt  liUxirn-  Abiidfad. 

IJnvnfifil,  :^ti-rrni  v4;  tv      :*(k' 
Rf-irnjf  ruMin  =  A  lUpU    to  Mux  NunlftiJ.    l.^li(Jfici:  A. 

Limi-KiWi^  A  ('ill  ;  N%^w  V'oflt  ;  PilthamiL    11  ?a. 
R<»Hiitii1.  .I*']iii.    f^Tiift  Ifi*  0&li»nH     Pftrl*  .  cmu  «  PIp 
R*i-nr»f\  IL  K  .  Hill)  Hurdpii,  Artbiir    A  New  Vl(*w  of  the 

!  nrlffin  nf  L^n1ti>iri!  Ah>(nli'  thtii«r>  .    M Mrmlllan    ILtlO. 
BtviiMrc.  It.  D.,  M]*!  Quuf>r,  51  rn.  A.  C.   m»Uubnu  Sfipi»t' 

lu  (irt,    n»i(nM  PuLltMltltiiur  i*<i. 
8<  lijiniTiii^ni.  F'r<»f.  .ri'haDiic#.    l-^^i-inU  or  ^iirniSD,  B*^ 

rcitH  or  tbi?  MliUlU-  Ah^-h.  MnyDiurrt.  Mi^rrlJI  A  in.  4n«. 
Thpi>l«iiit,  F,  V,    foNf*  I  tAti>    A  Sh.irt  AcOf»unr  nf   tti^ 

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IhUfU  *  {  (J 
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Courirti*  I     V<il   I,    F.  T,  S*'eiy. 
WTi^c'Iht  r I  fill  W      hlf^frli^4  tlir  My«TJ»-    A  Niiv*<f.     H.W. 


Prof.  N.  5.  SHALER  of  Harvard  says  of 

GEOLOGICAL  BIOLOGY, 

By  Prof.  H.  8.  Willxamb  of  Tale.  8to,  895  pp.,  98-80  net: 
"  Likely  to  proire  Interesting  and  helpful  to  every  In- 
telligent person.  I  know  of  no  other  text-book  which 
Is  so  well  adapted  to  the  end  It  seeks  to  attain,  which  is 
to  show  the  student  the  development  of  animals  In  the 
soocesslTe  stages  of  the  earth^s  history  and  to  teach 
him  the  principles  which  hare  controlled  tbe  on  going. 
Tbe  book  seems  to  me  to  be  a  Taloable  addition  to  the 
resources  of  the  teacher  of  geology." 

HENRY  HOLT  &  CO.,  N.  Y. 


Yale 
Mixture. 

A  QE^r^LeMAN's  smoke. 

You  won't  know  the  luxury  of 
Pipe-Smoking  until  you  uae  Yale 
Mixture. 

A  two  OS.  trial  package,  postpaid,  for  2S  eta. 
MARBURQ  BR03., 

•me  A-i.rl«»  Tobi«:o  Cog^JJ«e.Bor^^ 


Waltsb  Baker  ft  Co..  Ldotbd  DoaoHimB  Mam.. 
the  weUknown  mannfaeturers  of  Breakfast  Cocoa  and 
other  Cocoa  and  Chocolate  preparations  hare  an  ex- 
traordinary collection  of  medalB  and  diplomas  award 
ed  at  the  great  In t«r  national  and  other  exhibitions  In 
Europe  and  America.  The  house  has  had  uninterrupted 
proapertty  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  quarter,  and  Is 
now  not  only  the  oldest,  bnt  the  largest  esUbUshment 
of  the  kind  on  this  continent.  The  hlf  h  degree  of  per- 
fection which  the  Company  ba«  attained  in  Its  manu- 
factured products  is  the  result  of  long  experience  com- 
bined with  an  Intelligent  use  of  the  new  forces  which 
are  constantly  being  Introduced  to  Increase  the  power 
•and  Improve  the  quality  of  production,  and  cheapen 
tbe  ooat  t9  tbe  consumer.^  ^  ^^        .       .  ^  - 

The  full  strength  and  the  exquisite  na'ural  flavor  of 
Che  raw  material  are  preserved  unimpaired  In  all  of 
Waltsb  Bakkb  St  Compamt's  preparations ;  so  thst  their 
products  may  truly  oe  said  to  form  the  standard  for 
purity  and  excellence.   ...         ,  ^^  ,  .    , 

U  view  of  the  many  ImlUtlons  of  the  nanne.  labels, 
and  wrappers  on  their  goods  consumers  shf  uld  ask  for 
and  be  sure  that  they  get  tbe  genuine  arUdes  made  at 


Do  me  tbe  faror  to  ask  yoor  wine-mer- 
chant,  or  Park  &  Tilford  (wholesale 
agents),  for  my  ^' Picarillo  ^*  natural 
sherry,  and  '' ManzanUla  Pdsada." 

OCILLBBMO  DOBLACHB, 

Paerto  de  Santa  Maria. 


Pall  Mall  Magazine. 

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OP  REPUOB,**  and  oontrlbntlons  from  SIR  LEWIS 
MORRIS  (Uanstephan).  J.  HOLT  SCHOOLINO  (Secrets 
In  Cipher.  IQ.).  MRS  HERON  MAXWELL  (Rose  Fan- 
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Tk  Cid  Campeador. 

A  HISTORICAL  ROMANCE. 

By  D.  Antonio  dx  Truxba  y  La  Quintana. 
Translated  from  the  Spanish  hy  Henry  J. 
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*'  The  '  Cid  CSampeador  *  has  been  for  centuries  the 
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torical romances  in  their  literature.  It  is  founded 
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pie:es,  extant  in  Spain  for  centuries,  and  on  a  very 
old  work  named  'The  Chronicle  of  the  Cid.*'*— 
Extract  from  Preface. 


LONGMANS,    GREEN.  &   CO., 

gr-gj  Fifth  Avttttu,  New  York, 

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14th  year.   Personally  conducted  by  Dr.  and 
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idrcss  H.  S.  PAINF.  M.P.,  Qlens  Falls,  N.  Y. 


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Ornamenting 

It  recently  occurred  to  Tiffany 
&  Co»,  Ae  New  York  iewelers, 
to  ornament  a  bicycle  elabo- 
rately with  gold,  silver,  and  pre- 
cious stones,  believing  that  some 
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so  handscnne  a  mount*  They 
preferred  to  pay  $100  each  for 

G)Iumbia 
Bicycl^ 

For  their  purpose 
to  using  any 
other  make  of  Jf» 
wheel^Theremust 
be  no  question  of 
quality  in  a  bicycle 
selected  for  such 
ornamentation*  jf» 
Therefore  they  chose  G)lumbfas 

STANDARD  OF  THE  WORLD 

UneqtiaHedt  Unapproached* 

Beautiful  Art  Catalo«nie  of  Columbia  and  Hart- 
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atampa. 


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Epps's  Cocoa 

BREAKFAST— SUPPER. 


"  By  a  thorough  knowlo 


EOTem  the  operations  of 
7  a  careful  apolloatlon  c ^__, 

selected  Cooo^  Mr.  Bpps  has  provided  for  our  breakf est 


of  the  natural  laws  which 

BStlon  and  nuMtlon,  and 

fine  properties  of  well- 


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use  of  such  articles  of  diet  that  a  constltvtioa  may  be 
gradually  built  up  until  strong  enough  to  resist  every 
tendency  to  disease.  Hundreds  of  subtle  maladies  are 
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weak  point.  We  may  escape  many  a  fatal  shaft  by 
keeping  ourselves  wen  tbrtlfled  with  pore  blood  and  a 
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_„ Sold  only 

by  Grocers,  labelled  thus: 


Made  simply  with  boiling  water  or  milk 
In  ha4f-pound  ^*      "  .-^-..- 

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London,  England. 


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The    Nation. 


NEW   rOBK,   TBUBSDAT,   FEBRUARY   97.   1800. 

The  Week. 

Thx  retolutioos  adopted  at  the  meeting  in 
this  city  last  week  to  promote  interna- 
tional arbitration  do  not  commit  anybody 
to  any  particular  modus  operandi^  but 
merely  to  **  some  wise  method  of  arbitra- 
tion.'* By  afoiding  the  plan,  which  is 
(sTored  by  some,  of  a  permanent  high 
court  of  arbitration,  the  codperation  may 
be  secured  of  all  persons  who  favor  the 
settlement  of  international  disputes  by 
peaceful  means,  leaving  the  method  to 
future  negotiations  and  adjustment 
There  are  serious  obstacles  to  a  perma- 
nent high  court  of  arbitration,  the  chief 
ci  which  is,  that  a  court  must  act  under 
rules,  and  that  rules  for  its  guidance  can- 
not be  fixed  in  advance  of  the  disputes 
which  have  to  be  adjusted.  For  example, 
the  rules  applicable  to  the  Geneva  arbitra- 
tion {Alabama  claims)  would  not  have 
answered  for  the  Paris  arbitration  on  the 
Bering  Sea  question,  while  neither  of 
these  would  have  Qtted  the  Venezuelan 
boundary  dispute.  Therefore  the  only 
practicable  and  safe  approach  to  an  agree- 
ment for  arbitration  as  a  rule  of  national 
life  is  to  treat  each  case  as  it  arises.  The 
important  thing  is  to  get  the  nation,  and 
eventually  the  world,  into  a  habit  of  mind 
— that  of  regarding  international  differ- 
ences as  things  to  be  settled  in  some 
other  way  than  by  fighting.  Fortunately 
much  has  been  done  to  bring  us  to  that 
state  of  mind  by  the  two  great  examples 
mentioned — those  of  Geneva  and  of  Paris. 
The  fbrmer  especially  was  an  affair  of  im- 
meoce  importance,  settling,  as  it  did,  a 
most  irritating  question  at  a  cost  of  only 
two  or  three  days'  expenses  of  a  modern 
war. 

The  meeting  on  Washington's  Birthday 
in  Independence  Hall,  for  the  same  object, 
•was  a  great  success,  and  its  tone  and  spirit, 
together  with  the  infiuence  of  many  simi- 
lar meetings  held  on  the  same  day  in  dif- 
ferent cities,  will  contribute  much  towards 
making  the  projected  arbitration  conven- 
tion at  Washington  a  true  demonstration 
of  national  sentiment  Kipling's  recent 
story,  ••  How  the  Ship  Found  Herself," 
makes  the  first  use  of  the  steamer's  true 
voice  to  exclaim,  "What  a  fool  I  have 
been  I"  That  is  practically  the  confes- 
sion which  this  country  is  making,  by  the 
mouth  id  these  eminent  Jurists,  clergy- 
man, educators,  and  military  men,  who 
unite  in  a  public  protest  against  the  need- 
Icssness  and  barbarity  of  a  resort  to  war 
to  settle  international  disputes,  and  in  a 
demand  for  a  '*  permanent  system  of  Judi- 
dml  arbitration"  between  America  and 
England.  Bishop  Potter  Justly  said  that 
the  missrable  Veneiuelan  imbroglio  would 


be  worth  all  it  cost  if  it  led  to  "a  truly 
great  and  widespread  movement  for  some 
common  basis  of  understanding  and  action 
that  shall  minimise  to  the  utmost  possible 
extent  the  possibilities— between  the  two 
peoples  that  more  than  any  other  in  all 
the  world  hold  in  their  hands  the  future 
of  a  higher  civilization — of  the  madness, 
the  savagery,  the  brutality  of  war.'' 
President  Cleveland's  expression  of  his 
"hearty  sympathy  with  any  movement 
that  tends  to  the  establishment  of  peace- 
ful agencies  for  the  adjustment  of  inter- 
national disputes,"  was  certainly  all  that 
could  have  been  expected,  and  we  are  not 
disposed  to  scrutinize  too  narrowly  the 
phraseology  by  which  this  distinguished 
convert  gives  in  his  adhesion. 


A  very  striking  and  encouraging  evi- 
dence of  a  healthy  change  in  public  sen- 
timent in  this  State  towards  war  was 
seen  in  the  action  of  the  Assembly  at 
Albany  on  Monday  evening.  A  resolution 
was  pending  before  it  urging  Congress 
to  increase  the  navy,  construct  elaborate 
coast  defences,  form  a  closer  alliance 
with  other  republics  on  this  continent, 
and  "acquire  Cuba,  preferably  by 
purchase."  When  this  came  up  for 
consideration,  Mr.  Kempner  offered  as  a 
substitute  a  series  of  resdutions  saying 
that  the  true  grandeur  of  nations  lay  in 
the  arts  of  civilization  rather  than  in  the 
wasteful,  bitter  violence  of  war,  declaring 
that  the  Legislature  earnestly  desires  Con- 
gress and  the  President  to  make  permanent 
provisions  for  some  wise  method  of  interna- 
tional arbitration,  and  requesting  the  Gov- 
ernor to  forward  a  copy  of  the  resolutions  to 
the  Governors  of  other  States  in  the  Union 
asking  them  to  codperate  in  the  move- 
ment for  a  national  conference  upon  the 
subject  at  Washington.  This  substitute 
was  adopted  with  only  one  dissenting 
vote,  that  of  the  author  of  the  first  reso- 
lution. Members  of  both  parties  thus 
went  upon  the  record  against  Jingoism, 
and  their  action  gives  unmistakable  evi- 
dence that  the  "  war  party  "  in  this  SUte 
is  a  very  insignificant  minority. 


During  the  past  week  a  plan  of  settle- 
ment of  the  Venezuelan  controversy, called 
"  the  Smalley  plan,"  has  made  its  appear- 
ance in  the  columns  of  the  London  Timett, 
Mr.  Smalley  being  the  New  York  corre- 
spondent of  that  paper.  That  the  Times 
should  have  a  plan  of  its  own  naturally 
irritates  other  papers,  especially  the  Chro- 
nicle, Moreover,  the  Times  correspond- 
ent, probably  shrinking  from  this  resent- 
ment, says  the  plan  is  not  his,  but  one 
prepared  by  the  American  Government 
for  submission  at  the  proper  time.  But 
our  State  Department,  doubtless  foresee- 
ing the  consequences  of  an  admission  that 
it  has  told  more  to  the  Times  than  to  the 


PhroniclCt  the  Olobe,  or  the  SLJames*s^ 
stoutly  maintains  that  Mr.  Smalley  is  in 
error,  and  that  it  has  neither  prepared 
nor  proposed  any  plan.  There  is  only  one 
way  out  of  this  imbroglio,  and  that  is  the 
communication  to  more  newspapers — say 
twelve — of  the  real  secret  of  the  negotia- 
tions. Delays  are  proverbially  dangerous. 
In  the  multitude  of  newspapers  there  is 
safety,  and  no  plan  which  has  only  one 
newspaper  behind  it  can  command  the 
confidence  of  a  great  people. 


The  venerable  Jules  Simon  has  a  strik- 
ing letter  on  arbitration  in  the  February 
Cosmopolis.  He  says  that  war  was  never 
so  likely  as  at  the  present  moment,  and 
yet  never  so  impossible— never  so  likely, 
on  account  of  the  many  casus  belli  pil- 
ing up  in  various  parts  of  the  world; 
never  so  impossible,  on  account  of  the 
fearful  nature  of  any  great  war  and  of  its 
inevitable  results.  The  improvements  in 
the  art  of  war  are  such  as  to  make  it  as  fa- 
tal to  victors  as  to  vanquished,  to  neutrals 
as  to  belligerents.  The  dread  of  war's  enor- 
mous catastrophes  no  doubt  stays  many  a 
rash  hand,  and  is,  in  a  sense,  of  itself  a 
guarantee  of  peace.  But,  as  M.  Simon 
says,  is  living  in  this  state  of  armed  ap- 
prehension a  tolerable  way  for  civilized 
nations  to  live?  If  all  profess,  as  all  do, 
a  love  of  peace  and  a  horror  of  war,  why 
not  take  prompt  steps  to  make  peace  all 
but  certain  ?  That  is  the  question  which 
the  advocates  of  international  arbitration 
are  asking  to-day  with  redoubled  empha- 
sis, and  the  only  answer  they  get  from  the 
Jingoes  is  that  war  is  a  glorious  spectacle, 
and  a  sport  worthy  to  be  named  even 
above  the  prize-fighting  which  they  love 
and  praise  almost  equally.  There  can  be 
no  doubt  that  in  this  country,  %A  in  Eng- 
land and  France,  the  mass  of  the  people 
are  ready  to  accept  arbitration  more 
swiftly  and  completely  than  are  their 
rulers.  In  this  situation,  as  M.  Simon 
asserts,  "  If  diplomacy  stumbles  at  tech- 
nicalities in  the  presence  of  such  perils, 
let  public  opinion  force  its  hand." 


The  laurels  gathered  by  Mr.  Hannis 
Taylor  in  the  field  of  diplomacy  have  not 
attracted  general  admiration  heretofore, 
and  his  latest  exploit  will  not  add  much 
to  his  fame  or  that  of  the  United  States. 
A  Spanisii  naval  officer  read  a  paper  be- 
fore the  Geographical  Society  of  Madrid, 
in  which  he  expressed  certain  opinions, 
sufficiently  absurd,  no  doubt,  of  this 
country  and  its  inhabitants.  Among 
other  things  he  had  observed  here  was  a 
company  of  young  ladies  drilling  for  mili- 
tary service,  from  which  he  drew  the  in- 
ference that  the  future  defenders  of  the 
republic  were  to  be  of  the  female  sex — 
the  men,  perhaps,  supporting  themselves 
by  needlework  or  taking  in  washing.  *  He 


170 


Tlie   [NTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1600 


had  probably  seen  some  school-girls  prac- 
tisiog  the  Delsarte  system,  and  reached 
that  extraordinary  conchisioD.  No  matter 
how  he  came  by  them,  his  comments  are 
not  more  extraordinary  than  some  that 
we  are  accustomed  to  see  in  the  gravest 
French  publications.  Minister  Taylor 
was  ruffled  by  this  commuoication  to  the 
Madrid  geographers,  and  addressed  a  note 
to  the  Spanish  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs. 
There  are  various  accounts  in  the  news- 
papers of  the  import  and  tenor  of  this 
note.  It  is  not  important  to  anybody  ex- 
cept Mr.  Taylor  himself  what  he  said, 
but  that  he  should  have  taken  any  notice 
at  all  of  a  paper  read  at  a  private  gather- 
ing ought  to  be  mortifying  to  American 
pride,  and  would  be  were  we  not  so  accus- 
tomed to  the  gaucheriea  of  our  represen- 
tatives abroad  and  so  hardened  by  them. 
It  appears  that  Capt.  Concas,  the  offender 
of  Taylor,  was  not  attached  in  an  official 
capacity  to  the  Spanish  visitors  to  the  Ck>- 
Inmbian  Exposition. 


Senator  Morgan  "  went  gunning  *'  for 
Spain  in  the  Senate  on  Thursday,  in  com- 
pany with  Lodge  of  Massachusetts.  After 
they  had  finished  there  was  not  much  to 
choose  between  them  and  Capt  Concas 
on  the  score  of  good  manners.  Mor^^an 
said  that  Spain  was  daily  committing  out- 
rages on  humanity  itself  by  its  treatment 
of  prisoners  taken  in  Cuba.  "  Spain  fills 
to  repletion  her  prison  in  Africa,"  he  said, 
"  with  persons  captured  out  of  the  army 
of  the  rebels.  •  •  •  Spain  inflicts  upon 
them  penalties,  under  the  name  of  law, 
which  their  crimes  would  not  deserve  even 
if  they  were  individuals  engaged  separate 
and  apart,  or  in  little  squads,  in  insurrec- 
tion against  the  Gk>vemment  of  Spain.'* 
Morgan  wanted  to  have  belligerent  rights 
accorded  to  them  by  our  (Government. 
Lodge  went  farther.  '*  I  should  like  to 
see  some  more  positive  action  taken  than 
that,"  he  said.  What  more  positive  action 
could  we  take  unless  we  should  interfere 
in  Cuban  affairs  by  force — that  is,  make 
war  against  Spain?  We  refer  to  these 
speeches  merely  to  point  out  the  insigni- 
ficance of  the  offence  which  called  out 
Mr.  Taylor's  note  to  the  Spanish  Minister 
of  Foreign  Affairs  in  comparison  with  the 
afl^nts  publicly  put  upon  a  friendly  gov- 
ernment by  some  of  the  highest  officials 
of  our  own. 


All  expectation  of  passing  the  tariff  bill 
in  the  Senate  has  been  abandoned,  and  it 
is  now  said  that  the  free- coinage  bill  that 
was  sent  by  the  Senate  to  the  House  (as 
a  substitute  for  the  bond  bill  of  the  lat- 
ter) will  not  receive  the  compliment  of  a 
conference  committee.  This  is  a  satisfac- 
tory disposition  of  both  measures.  Senator 
Smith  said  the  other  day,  with  keen  dis- 
cernment and  retrospection,  that  the  best 
thing  Congress  could  do  would  be  to  ad- 
journ. This  sentiment  was  heartily  ap- 
plauded by  the  country,  but  since  Con- 
gress will  Dot  tnke  tbe  bint  ^d  ftdjouri^ 


immediately,  the  next  best  thing  is  for  the 
House  to  reject  all  the  Senate  bills  and 
the  Senate  to  reject  all  the  House  bills 
except  the  regular  appropriations.  The 
special  appropriations,  of  which  there  is  a 
formidable  mass  looming  up,  such  as  bills 
for  new  battle-ships,  coast  fortifications, 
the  Nicaragua  Canal,  the  Pittsburgh  and 
Lake  Erie  ship-canal,  etc.,  ought  to  be 
solemnly  knocked  in  the  head  as  fast  as 
they  show  themselves.  It  would  be  a  sav- 
ing of  time  if  all  these  measures  were 
given  the  coup  de  grdce  in  che  House 
first,  but  the  probability  is  that  they  will 
first  see  the  light  in  the  Senate  as  amend- 
ments to  ordinary  appropriation  bills,  in 
which  case  we  hope  that  Speaker  B^ 
will  have  a  long  knife  whetted  and  ready 
for  each  of  them. 


Against  the  protests  of  the  chairman  of 
the  House  committee  on  agriculture,  and 
apparently  in  defiance  of  a  rule  of  the 
House  which  provides  that  no  amendment 
to  an  appropriation  bill  shsll  change  exist- 
ing law,  the  agricultural  bill  was  passed 
last  week,  with  a  clause  making  it  manda 
tory  upon  Secretary  Morton  to  buy  and 
distribute  $150,000  worth  of  seeds.  The 
existing  statute  requires  that  such  seeds 
must  be  **rare  and  uncommon,"  but  this 
is  now  explicitly  repealed— whether  legally 
or  not,  it  may  yet  be  for  the  Attorney- Ge- 
neral and  the  courts  to  decide.  But  there 
was  at  least  debate  enough  to  make  tne 
unblushing  nature  of  the  performance  per- 
fectly clear.  The  arguments  for  the  (Gov- 
ernment's going  into  the  seed  business 
were  just  three.  Secretary  Morton  is 
against  silver,  and  weMl  make  him  dis- 
tribute seeds  whether  he  wants  to  or  not, 
law  or  no  law.  Secondly,  Wall  Street  and 
the  gold-bugs  hmve  corrupted  this  Con- 
gress and  bought  so  many  favors  from  it 
that  we  must  make  a  show  of  doing  some- 
thing for  the  farmer,  whether  it  is  what 
he  wants  or  not.  Thirdly,  those  seeds  are 
ours,  and  we  are  going  to  have  them  allot- 
ted to  us  personally;  and  no  usurper  shall 
be  allowed  to  override  the  majestic  and 
inalienable  privilege  of  every  Congressman 
to  have  thirteen  packages  of  turnip  seed 
go  with  his  seat  In  the  name  of  Jehovah 
and  the  Continental  Congress,  seeds ! 


The  discussion  in  the  House  last  week 
over  the  question  of  the  proper  pay  of 
five  Indian  inspectors  concerned  a  petty 
matter,  so  far  as  the  amount  of  money  at 
issue  went,  but  it  involved  the  whole 
matter  of  economy  in  appropriations. 
The  point  was  whether  the  salary  of  these 
five  men  should  be  made  a  few  hundred 
dollars  apiece  larger  than  it  has  been,  but 
the  chairman  of  the  appropriations  com- 
mittee and  other  prominent  Republicans 
treated  it  as  a  test  of  party  policy  on  the 
question  of  economy.  Mr.  Grosvenor  of 
Ohio,  for  example,  said : 

**  I  stand  here  for  one  to  make  a  record  that 
will  show  to  mankind  that  in  this  year,  in  the 
great  depression  of  business,  in  a  time  when 
everybody  is  suffering,  and  appeals  ar9  comin^^ 


to  Ck>ngres8  from  every  direction,  I  will  not 
vote  to  increase  salaries  at  a  ratio  of  25  per 
cent.,  or  nearly  that  amoont,  in  an  appropria- 
tion. I  warn  yoa,  gentlemen  of  the  House  of 
Representative^  on  both  sides,  that  the  people 
of  this  country  have  their  eye  on  this  puticn- 
lar  CoDgress,  and  ooe  of  the  things  they  are 
looking  to  is  to  see  whether  we  are  willing  to 
create  new  offices  and  give  exaggerated  saluies 
to  existing  officers.*' 

Despite  such  appeals,  however,  enough 
Republicans  joined  with  the  Democrats 
to  carry  the  increase.  The  Democrats,  of 
course,  think  it  *'  good  politics  '*  to  have 
another  **  billion-dollar  Congresa*'  for  a 
campaign  argument  against  the  Republi- 
cans, if  they  can  get  it,  and  there  are  a 
good  many  Republicans  who  do  not  seem 
to  be  afraid  to  run  the  risk. 


Fortunately,  Speaker  Reed  is  concedf  d 
by  everybody  to  stand  firm  on  this  ques- 
tion, and  while  there  are  signs  of  revolt 
against  him,  his  influence  is  still  tremen- 
dous and  may  prove  decisive  on  more  im- 
portant issues  than  the  one  decided  last 
V  eek.  The  welcome  announcement  is 
made,  on  what  seems  to  be  good  authori- 
ty, that  the  Republican  managers  of  the 
House  will  not  let  downHhe  bars  even  for 
the  sake  of  appropriating  large  sums  for 
new  war-ships.  The  Jingo  element  has 
urged  that  the  money  for  new  ships  need 
not  be  appropriated  this  year,  but  all  that 
will  be  necessary  will  be  for  the  House  to 
sanction  their  building  and  appropriate 
the  money  to  start  the  work.  The  House 
leaders  reply  that  such  legislation  would 
be  in  the  nature  of  a  promise  to  pay,  and 
that  although  the  money  in  bulk  should 
not  be  appropriated  this  year,  this  Con- 
gress would  be  held  responsible  for  the 
legislation  and  the  spending  of  the  money. 
Mr.  Dingley,  chairman  of  the  ways  and 
means,  maintains  that  the  Republican 
leaders  are  doing  the  best  they  can,  for 
both  the  country  and  the  partyj  when 
they  take  this  stand,  and  he  is  quite 
right  So  far  as  Speaker  Reed  is  concern- 
ed, economy  is  undoubtedly  the  best  card 
that  he  can  play  in  the  game  for  the  Re- 
publican nomination. 


A  petition  addressed    to   members  of 

Congress  has  been  sent  out  for  signature 

by  the  President*  of  the  Woman's  Ciiris- 

tian  Temperance  Union,  at  Mansfield,  O. 

It  is  in  these  terms : 

**  The  introduction  of  any  measure  in  your 
honorable  body  looking  towards  military 
training  in  the  public  schools  of  this  country 
19  sincerely  regretted.  We  believe  it  will  prove 
one  of  the  mistakes  of  the  century  just  closing 
to  utilize  in  any  way  our  cherished  educations 
system  for  war  necessities.  We  earnestiy  ask 
you  to  work  and  vote  against  all  bills  and  re- 
solutions that  aim  to  accomplish  such  a  pur- 
pose.*^ 

We   do    not    believe    any  such  petition 

unaccompanied  by  argument  will  produce 

any  effect  on  any  member  of  Congress. 

We  are  in  the  midst  ot  an  attempt,  long 

prepared,  to  convert  this  into  a  military 

nation,  with  hostility  to  foreigners  as  the 

leading  motive  in  its  politics  and  in  the 

education   of   its   youth.    This   attempt 

was  begun,  and  io  continued,  VM^J  M  % 


Feb.  27,  1896] 


Tlie   INTation. 


171 


•opport  to  hi^h- tariff  legUUtioD.  As  long 
M  the  leading  party  in  the  country  makes 
the  enactment  of  high  tariff  its  main  con- 
oem,  to  the  neglect  of  nearly  every  other 
gorernmental  interest,  this  motive  will 
continue  to  be  cherished  in  every  way 
possible^  including  military  drill  in  the 
schools.  Nor  will  the  drill  be  taught  as  a 
means  of  physical  culture.  It  will  be 
taught  as  a  preparation  for  war,  that  is, 
for  the  slaughter  of  certain  people — parti- 
cularly the  British— sod  the  deetructloi) 
of  their  houses  and  ships.  Every  canvass 
in  promotion  of  the  tariff  will  consist 
largely  in  abuse  of  foreigoers,  and  ex- 
posures of  their  designs  against  our  peace, 
prosperity,  and  security,  and  out  of  this 
will  come  constant  preparations  for  de- 
fence against  attacks  by  them  on  our 
coasts  and  navy.  Therefore,  there  is,  in 
our  opinion,  little  use  in  trying  to  cure  the 
war  fever  without  attacking  it  at  its 
source,  which  is  the  protectionist  mania. 


Twenty-five  Republican  Congressmen 
from  Pennsylvania,  '*  having  seen  men- 
tion in  the  newspapers  **  of  the  fact  that 
Matt  Quay  might  possibly  be  a  candidate 
for  the  Republican  Presidential  nomina- 
tion, have  ** taken  this  opportunity'*  to 
request  him  to  be  one,  and  to  assure  him 
that  **  from  the  numerous  expressions  of 
sentiment  in  our  respective  districts  by 
leading  Republicans  the  mention  of  your 
candidacy  is  received  with  great  favor  and 
that  you  will  obtain  their  support"  They 
remark  that  it  is  some  time  since  Pennsyl- 
vania had  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency, 
but  they  hold  that  **  there  is  no  reason 
why  our  great  Republican  State  should 
longer  be  ignored,  and  we  believe  that  the 
man  and  the  occasion  unite  in  making 
your  candidacy  available  at  the  present 
time."  In  reply,  Mr.  Quay  informs  his 
correepondents  that  some  days  before, 
*^in  deference  t6  friends  whose  wishes 
ooukl  not  be  disregarded,"  he  had  signi- 
fied his  willingness  that  his  name  should 
go  before  the  Republicans  of  the  country 
*'in  the  high  connection  you  mention," 
and  that  the  **  kind  coincidence  "  of  the 
Congressmen  in  this  suggestion  wss  '*  ex- 
ceedingly gratifying."  He  concluded, 
**  Believing  that  they  and  you  are  equally 
sincere,  I  remit  my  candidacy  in  all  good 
faith  to  the  wisdom  of  the  delegates  who 
will  assemble  at  St.  Louis  on  the  I6th  of 
June  next."  Being  asked  by  a  corre- 
spondent of  the  Philadelphia  Pr€»9  what 
his  ** campaign  slogan**  would  be,  Mr. 
Quay  replied  *•  without  hesitation*': 
**  More  protection,  more  money,  more 
public  improvements,  and  municipal  re- 
form." 


The  first  effect  of  all  this  was  to  take 
away  the  breath  of  the  editor  of  the 
Prf99t  and  make  him  "stand  dumb," 
and  dumb  he  has  remained  in  his  own 
paper.  In  this  city  he  was  heard  to  say 
that  **of  course  the  purpose  of  Mr. 
Qua/'s  ciiQdida(7  wm  to  Md  ^ud  fo|^  I 


dify  the  Pennsylvania  delegation."  He 
seemed  to  have  no  views  to  express  about 
the  possible  shsme  which  a  delegation 
solidified  for  a  candidate  of  such  charac- 
ter might  bting  upon  the  State.  No  can- 
didacy quite  equal  to  this  in  cynical  de- 
fiance of  the  moral  sentiment  of  the  coun- 
try has  ever  been  put  forward  in  either 
party,  backed  as  this  is  by  the  apparently 
solid  support  of  a  great  State.  Senator 
Gorman's  candidacy  in  1892  came  nearest 
to  it,  but  he  had  only  a  small  State  behind 
him,  and  was  morally  Quay's  superior. 


How  much  of  the  money  paid^ver  for 
the  late  (Government  loan  has  come  from 
home  reserves,  and  how  much  from  for- 
eign markets  ?  At  least  167,000,000  has 
been  paid  on  bond  subscriptions.  Now 
there  has  been  imported,  since  the  open- 
ing of  the  yeift,  exclusive  of  coin  in  tran- 
sit, not  more  than  $15,000,000  gold.  This 
sum  must  represent  the  maximum  of  the 
bond  subscriptions  which  up  to  date  have 
been  actually  drawn  from  European  mo- 
ney reserves.  In  other  words,  ignoring 
all  payments  left  on  deposit  with  the 
banks,  at  least  $50,000,000  has,  since  the 
8th  of  February,  been  withdrawn  from 
the  domestic  market  and  absolutely  lock- 
ed up  from  public  use.  Now  let  us  see 
what  has  been  the  effect  on  the  market  of 
this  withdrawal.  In  the  opening  week  of 
January,  when  the  bond  issue  was  an- 
nounced, call  money  rose  in  New  York  to 
35  per  cent.  Two  weeks  later,  6  per  cent, 
was  virtually  the  lowest,  and  time  loans 
brought  as  high  as  12.  This  clearly  arose 
from  uncertainty  as  to  how  much  money 
was  being  withheld  by  lenders  in  view  of 
a  possible  genuine  and  heavy  over- sub- 
scription to  the  bonds.  That  the  extreme 
high  rates  were  caused  by  this,  and  not 
by  misgivings  over  the  actual  withdrawal 
of  $111,000,000  in  five  months,  was  proved 
after  the  bond  allotments,  when  all  the 
money  markets  promptly  receded,  until 
the  present  rates  for  two-months'  loans 
are  down  to  4  per  cent,  with  call  loans 
correspondingly  easy.  A  similar  result 
has  for  a  fortnight  past  been  perceptible 
in  other  domestic  money  markets. 


One  of  the  odd  things,  to  the  American 
eye,  in  English  journalism,  is  the  enormous 
hospitality  accorded  to  the  views  of  Mr. 
Moreton  Frewen  on  American  affairs, 
especially  on  American  money  and  finance. 
If  any  one  here  on  the  spot,  where  his 
tales  can  be  verified,  attaches  any  iiApor- 
tance  to  them,  we  have  yet  to  hear  of 
him.  And  yet  they  reach  the  London 
Times  in  ceaseless  stream.  It  now  appears 
that  he  has  been  seeking  support  from  the 
eminent  Lodge,  and  Lodge  feeds  him  in  a 
letter  from  which  Mr.  Frewen  makes  the 
following  extract : 

**  I  tee  Balfour  comments  on  the  astonishlDg 
outbartt  of  feeling  against  Bngland  here.  The 
bottom  of  it,  in  reosnt  timet,  is  England's 
attitude  on  the  monsy  qaeetton,  and  tbs  way 
in  which  the  has  sn^bed  all  oar  efforts  to  do  I 
an/thini  for  silver.    Po^oi^  nof  let  ^ha^  gold,  ' 


which  you  have  been  flKhtlng  for  for  yean,  is 
reslly  at  the  bottom  of  all  this  butinsM  r  I 
quite  agree  that  we  are  not  going  to  hb  made 
prosperous  by  borrowinc:  but  we  can  check  the 
outflow  of  gold  by  prudent  legislaUoo.** 

Now  it  is,  of  course,  a  great  shame  for 
Massachusetts  that  she  should  have  a 
man  like  Lodge  sitting  in  the  chair  of 
Daniel  Webster  and  Edward  Everett. 
There  is  no  covering  that  up.  But  Mr. 
Frewen,  when  he  quotes  Lodge  to  the 
English  public,  fails  to  mention  that  he 
has  no  financial  authority  whatever;  that 
nobody  minds  what  he  says  about  curren- 
cy, or  gold,  or  silver;  that  he  is  a  "  friend 
of  silver"  simply  because  he  is  a  dema- 
gogue, and  thought  for  a  while  that  his 
party  was  rushing  into  the  silver  slough. 
He  clamors  for  silver  or  bimetallism  Just 
as  he  clamors  for  war  with  England  about 
Venezuela,  or  for  a  big  navy  or  for  coast 
fortifications. 


That  the  troubles  of  Prince  Ferdinand 
of  Bulgaria  will  be  brought  to  an  end  by 
the  **  conversion "  of  his  infant  son, 
Prince  Boris,  and  baptism  in  the  Holy 
Orthodox  Church,  is  a  consummation 
which  that  prince  may  desire,  one  would 
think,  rather  than  confidently  expect 
The  difficulties  which  have  beset  Prince 
Ferdinand  since  his  accession  to  power 
have  been  of  many  sorts,  and  they  seem 
to  have  weighed  upon  him  almost  in  in- 
verse ratio  to  their  real  gravity.  The 
downfall  and  murder  of  Stambuloff  he 
bore  (if  indeed  he  did  not  plan)  with  a 
light  heart;  while  the  later  disturbances, 
domestic  and  political,  which  have 
arisen  over  the  baptism  of  his  son 
seem  to  have  thrown  him  into  great  per- 
plexity. He  had,  to  be  sure,  promjsed 
at  the  time  of  his  marriage  that  his 
children  should  be  brought  up  in  the 
Roman  Catholic  faith;  but  such  promisee 
are  not  always  kept,  especially  in  royal 
households.  Prince  Ferdinand  desired 
to  conciliate  the  Csar,  and,  perhaps  even 
more,  to  smooth  away  the  prejudices  of 
his  own  people,  and  make  more  solid  the 
foundations  of  his  dynasty  by  conform- 
ing it  to  the  national  religion.  Hot  dis- 
sensions at  once  sprang  up  inside  and 
outside  his  palace.  His  most  earnest 
opponents  were  those  of  his  own  house- 
hold. Then  he  took  the  unwise  course 
of  endeavoring  to  obtain  the  Pope's  con- 
sent to  the  carrying  out  of  his  wishes. 
Very  queer  dispensations  have  at  one 
time  or  another  been  granted  at  Rome, 
but  the  Holy  Father  evidently  thought 
this  an  extreme  case,  and  also  perhaps 
**  bad  politics,"  and  refused  his  sanction. 
Since  then  Prince  Ferdinand  has  been 
letting  **I  dare  not"  wait  upon  **  I 
would,"  until  at  last  he  has  come  to  a 
feeble  and  hesitating  decision,  and  the 
baptism  of  the  Prince  has  taken  place. 
When  Henry  IV.  made  up  his  mind  that 
Paris  was  worth  a  mass,  we  may  be  sure 
that  he  did  not  consult  the  Huguenot 
ministers  on  the  question,  or  send  the 
Dauphin  as  a  proxy  to  assist  at  mass, 
instead  of  yoin|[  hlipiolft 


172 


Tlie   JSTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1600 


A  DISaUISED  REVOLUTION, 
Thx  latest  Piatt  performaDces  at  Albany 
and  in  this  city  serve  a  useful  purpose  in 
illustrating  the  nature  of  the  very  great 
change  which  is  now  going  on  in  the  gov- 
ernment of  a  good  many  of  the  States,  and 
notably  and  especially  of  this.  This  change 
would  excite  more  alarm  and  apprehen- 
sion if  it  were  not  disguised  under  the  old 
forms.  But  it  is  in  this  State  so  great 
that,  as  a  shrewd  observer  remarked  to  us 
the  other  day,  the  description  of  the  work- 
ing of  a  State  government  contained  in 
Tocqueville  or  Bryce  is  here  to-day  a  veri- 
table political  romance.  There  is  no  set 
of  facts  in  existence  corresponding  to  this 
description.  Nothing  remains  of  the  old 
government  except  the  power  of  the  voters 
to  transfer  the  offices  from  one  set  of  rulers 
to  another,  somewhat  after  the  manner  of 
a  Central  American  revolution.  This  trans- 
fer can  still  be  made  at  the  polls  whenever 
the  voter  pleases,  but,  having  made  it,  he 
i9  functus  officio.  He  has  literally  no  in- 
fluence on  legislation  or  administration. 
His  approval  or  disapproval  has  lost  all 
force. 

It  has  been  a  favorite  theory  of  publi- 
cists for  the  last  fifty  years  that  the  si- 
lent, un perceived  modifications  which  in 
former  days  so  often  changed  democracies 
into  oligarchies  or  dictatorships,  as   in 
Greece,  Rome,  Venice,  and  other  Italian 
states,  were  no  longer  possible,  owing  to 
the  vigilance  and  activity  of  the  modern 
press.    But  this,   in  the  States  of  New 
York  and  Pennsylvania  at  least,  is  proving 
a  complete  delusion.    The  press  in  both 
these  States  is  almost  wholly  controlled 
by  promoters  of  the  revolution.    Outside 
of  N^w  York  city  there  are  only  two  Re- 
publican newspapers  in  the  State  opposed 
to  Piatt.    The  rest  of  the  party's  editors 
are  in  some  way  in  his  employ,  and  print 
the  matter  which  he  sends  them  as  sub- 
missively as  if  he  exercised  military  rule. 
Except  in  this  city  and   in  Buffalo,  no 
citizen  throughout  the  State  could  find 
means  of  expressing  dissatisfaction  with 
the  new  regime  except  through  a  pam- 
phlet.   Open  discussion  of  public   mea- 
sures or  men  has  ceased  in  the  interior. 
The  simulacrum  of  it  which  exists,  closely 
resembles  that  which  prevailed  in  Franpe 
in  the  early  days  of  the  Second  Empire. 
It  differs  in  that  there  were  many  French 
editors   at  that    time  who    would    have 
spoken  out  if  they  had  dared,  while  there 
are  apparently  no  Piatt  editors  who  would 
do  differently  even  if  they  coufd.    The 
most  alarming  thing  about  them,  too,  is 
the  facility  with  which  they  have  suc- 
cumbed.   An  editor  who  quails  before  mi- 
litary force  can  still  retain  his  self-respect ; 
but  to  close  one's  mouth   and  repeat  a 
master's  words  solely  for  a  little  office  or 
a  small  loan,  is  too  much  for  human  dig- 
nity. 

The  legislative  situation  is  a  counter- 
part to  that  of  the  press.  There  is  no 
more  connection  between  the  public  and 
the  great  majority  of  the  legislators  than 
between  the  public  and  the  newspapers. 


Here  again  the  parallel  between  our 
plight  and  that  of  the  French  between 
1851-60,  jumps  into  our  faces.  There  were, 
during  most  of  that  period,  five  men  in 
the  French  Chambers  who  opposed  or 
criticised  the  Government,  but  they  were 
themselves  well  aware,  as  was  everybody 
else,  that  their  talk  was  mere  parade. 
No  one  paid  attention  to  them  or  answer- 
ed them.  Their  presence  simply  enabled 
the  ministers  to  say  that  freedom  of 
speech  still  existed.  There  is,  in  like 
manner,  a  small  minority  at  Albany  which 
professes  independence  and  says  what  it 
pleases,  and  keeps  Up  a  pretence  of  de- 
bate, but  its  words  are  quite  idle.  It  in- 
fluences no  votes,  and  does  not  modify 
the  plans  of  the  Boss. 

The  power,  too,  which  the  Boas  possesses 
to  prescribe,  promise,  and  even  sell  legis- 
lation, not  on  any  particular  class  of 
subjects,  but  on  all  subjects  whatever 
which  lie  within  State  jurisdiction,  is  ab- 
solutely novel  in  the  sphere  of  parliamen- 
tary government.  A  similar  power,  un- 
doubtedly, is  possessed  by  the  British 
minister,  and.  was  grossly  abused  through 
a  large  part  of  the  last  century,  but  the 
minister  was  a  member  of  Parliament  and 
was  a  recogniz9d  functionary  of  the  state. 
The  peculiarity  of  our  condition  is,  that 
our  Legislature  and  press  are  controlled 
by  a  private  person,  unknawn  to  the  law 
or  the  Government,  who  does  not  defend 
his  schemes  or  answer  charges,  and  whom 
there  is  no  legal  way  of  calling  to  account. 
We  are  here  giving  a  description  of  the 
state  of  things  in  New  York.  But  this 
description  would  be  true  also  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, where  the  reigning  Boss  has  just 
been  invited  to  become  a  candidate  for  the 
Presidency  by  his  admirers  in  Congress. 
This  is  a  striking  illustration  of  the  rapidi- 
ty and  depth  of  the  descent  which  we 
have  been  trying  to  portray. 

The  cause  of  this  descent  is  not  difficult 
to  explain.  Our  nominating  system,  which 
started  into  existence  seventy  years  ago 
only,  has  in  two  generations  been  con- 
verted into  a  machine  which  threatens 
the  destruction  of  popular  government  in 
two  more.  Nothing  seemed  more  harm- 
less, sensible,  and  even  satisfactory  in  the 
beginning  than  a  convention  of  elected 
delegates  to  select  candidates  for  the 
party.  But  the  contrivance  unhappily 
came  into  use  just  as  the  popular  vote  was 
assuming  enormous  proportions.  The 
bringing  of  it  to  the  polls  soon  became  a 
task  of  great  difficulty,  making  work  for 
professionals,  and  developing  a  peculiar 
kind  of  talent,  although  not  of  the  highest 
order.  The  more  difficult  it  became  to  or- 
ganize the  nominating  convention,  the 
more  powerful  became  the  organizers,  the 
more  necessary  their  favor  to  any  one 
wishing  to  enter  public  life.  When  once 
this  was  perceived,  their  progress  towards 
complete  possession  of  the  Government  was 
very  rapid.  There  is  only  one  check  to- 
day on  their  control  of  it,  and  that  is  the 
possibility  of  putting  the  other  part>^  in 
power;  but  as  the  other  party  has  a  Boss 


also,  the  situation  cannot  be  really  changed 
by  an  election.  There  is  a  change  of  per- 
sons, but  not  of  system.  Piatt  is  substi- 
tuted for  Oroker,  or  Croker  for  Piatt,  but 
the  people  do  not  recover  possession  of 
their  administrative  miEichinery.  In  other 
words,  our  nominating  system  has  swal- 
lowed up  the  very  thing  for  which  the  no- 
minating system  was  created.  It  no  longer 
selects  candidates  only:  it  selects  officers. 
Nor  does  its  activity  cease  when  the  elec- 
tion is  over.  It  takes  possession  of  the 
officer  after  he  is  elected,  and  prescribes 
his  duties,  whether  legislative  or  adminis- 
^ative.  It  is  permanent,  while  the  officer 
is  transient.  Piatt  and  Ciroker  live  and 
rule  through  many  Legislatures,  while 
every  legislator  comes  to  them  every  year 
to  ask  for  a  continuance  in  public  life. 

We  have  no  substitute  to  propose  for 
this  system.  We  point  out  simply  that, 
whatever  its  original  merit  or  convenience, 
it  is  now  rapidly  destroying  American  gov- 
ernment as  imagined  and  framed  by  its 
founders,  so  that  change  of  some  kind  is 
not  a  matter  of  choice,  but  of  necessity, 
and  out  of  the  necessity  we  must  believe 
that  some  substitute  wUI  emerge.  Of  the 
collateral  effects  of  Bossism  on  the  cha- 
racter of  public  men,  on  the  condition  of 
public  life,  on  the  credit  of  legislative 
bodies,  and  on  the  quality  of  legislation, 
we  say  nothing  to-day.  What  these  things 
will  be,  any  intelligent  man  may  work  out 
for  himself  with  a  pencil  and  bit  of  paper 
in  half  an  hour.  The  progress  of  the  evil 
within  two  or  three  years  has  been  star- 
tling indeed.  As  we  saw  in  this  city  recent- 
ly, the  Bosses  no  longer  have  the  decency 
to  ele^t  the  delegates  to  the  conventions 
honestly.  They  used  to  content  them- 
selves by  securing  the  choice  of  their 
henchmen;  they  now  do  not  even  take  the 
trouble  to  have  votes  cast  for  them.  They 
throw  in  bogus  ballots,  and  say  that  this 
will  do  well  enough  for  the  "Presidential 
year,"  which  is  rapidly  becoming  the  ap- 
pointed season  for  licensed  political  vil- 
lany.  The  matter,  therefore,  cannot  be 
let  alone.  We  invite  to  it  the  attention  of 
all  men  who  love  their  country  and  believe 
in  the  future  of  popular  government. 


THE    FAILURE     OF    REPUBLICAN 
MORALITY. 

EvEBT  observer  must  be  struck  by  the 
similarity  between  the  political  situation 
in  this  State  to-day  and  that  which  exist- 
ed in  1892.  There  was  then,  as  now,  a 
Boss  with  a  powerful  following,  in  control 
of  the  Grovernor  and  the  Legislature.  He 
then,  as  now,  shaped,  hindered,  or  sold 
legislation.  Then,  as  now,  the  chief  city 
and  State  officers  either  held  office  at  his 
mercy  or  wdre  very  much  afraid  of  him. 
Then,  as  now,  he  either  levied,  or  was  be- 
lieved to  levy,  blackmail  on  corporations 
and  rich  men  as  the  price  of  protection 
from  some  sort  of  confiscation  or  annoy- 
ance. Then,  as  now.  the  charters  of  the 
leading  cities  were  treated  as  instruments 
wif^  which  the  legislative  majorify  ooold 


Feb.  27,  1896] 


The   N'ation. 


178 


amuse  tbemselvM  by  alteriDg  at  pleasore, 
▼acatiog  or  aboliahiog  the  offloee  to  suit 
the  Boee*B  ooDTeoieoce  or  profit.  Then, 
as  now,  there  was  a  small  minority  of  the 
Boes*s  party  which  protested  against  the 
Boss's  doings,  which  defied  his  power, 
exposed  his  fraads,  and  asked  judgment 
on  him  from  the  party  conscience. 

Bat  here  the  parallel  ceases.  The  Demo- 
cratic minority  who  were  disgusted  by 
Hiirs  and  Croker*s  fraud  and  corruption, 
broke  with  them  absolutely.  They  re- 
fused all  compromise.  They  stopped  din- 
ing with  them  and  ** harmonizing**  with 
them.  They  did  everything  that  was  ne- 
cewary  to  be  done  to  convince  the  public 
and  the  party  that  they  were  in  earnest ; 
that  their  fight  was  not  a  sham  battle. 
They  did  not  admit,  or  allow  any  one  to 
suppose,  that  they  considered  **  the  Presi- 
dential year  *'  a  year  in  which  fraud 
should  be  condoned,  and  thimbleriggers 
feasted,  and  open  enemies  of  the  Ameri- 
can form  of  government  treated  as  patri- 
ots and  statesmen.  The  Boss  had  all  the 
delegates  to  the  national  convention  and 
the  whole  party  machine  in  the  State,  and 
in  truth  as  fine  a  **  lay-out  '*  as  any  cheat 
or  criminal  could  desira  Nothmg  was 
wanting  to  make  the  reform  movement 
seem  to  the  ordinary  politician  a  tho- 
roughly visionary,  crack-brained  scheme, 
the  only  palpable  result  of  which  would 
be  the  loss  of  the  State  at  the  Presiden- 
tial election.  But  the  reformers  carried 
out  their  programme  with  what  used  to 
be  considered  RepublicaD  firmness  and  in- 
tegrity. They  made  a  new  enrolment; 
they  called  another  State  convention;  they 
went  to  the  national  convention  strong, 
not  in  numbers,  but  in  truthfulness,  hon- 
esty, and  decency,  and  they  made  such  an 
impression  that  their  candidate  was  no- 
minated, and  was  overwhelmingly  elected, 
and  received  in  this  State  a  majority  of 
nearly  45,000!  The  battle,  as  Patrick 
Henry  said,  is  not  always  to  the  strong 
alone  ;  it  is  to  the  active,  the  vigilant,  the 
brave.  **True  Americanism,**  true  patri- 
otism, does  not  consist  solely  in  fighting 
England.  It  consists  mainly  in  fighting 
the  domestic  thieves,  runagates,  impos- 
tors, and  blatherskites  who  are  constant- 
ly trying  to  take  possession  of  the  govern- 
ment 

The  State  Republicans  are  face  to  face 
to-day  with  a  crisis  exactly  resembling 
that  with  which  the  Democrats  had  to 
deal  in  I89S.  They  are,  too,  if  we  are  to 
believe  their  newspapers  and  their  clergy- 
men, equipped  for  it  as  the  Democrats 
have  not  been  in  forty  years.  They  are 
supposed  to  include  moat  of  the  virtue  and 
intelligence  of  the  community  in  their 
ranks.  The  Christian  people,  and  the 
temperance  people,  and  the  law-abiding 
people,  are  all  supposed  to  be  on  their 
side.  Theirs  mainly  is  public  cooscieuce 
and  theirs  are  the  high  standards.  It  is 
they  who  must  govern  the  State  and  na- 
tion if  America  is  to  fulfil  her  high  mis- 
sion. **MCuiica,  miisica,'*  as  the  Span- 
iards say.    There  is  no  sign  of  any  such 


Republican  party  among  us.  There  is  no 
sign  of  a  single  refbrmer  with  the  courage 
or  high  principle  of  a  Fairchild  or  Shep- 
ard.  Far  from  putting  the  Boss  away 
from  them,  they  feast  him.  Far  from  de- 
claring war  on  him,  they  coddle  and  ca- 
jole him  and  keep  up  friendly  relations 
with  him.  Nay,  they  tremble  before  him. 
Far  from  treating  the  Presidential  year  as 
the  year  of  all  years  for  the  display  of  the 
highest  American  morality,  for  lifting  the 
government  into  the  air  and  light  of  pure 
reason,  they  treat  it  as  a  peculiarly  appro- 
priate season  for  the  condonation  of  fraud, 
for  the  passage  of  pinchbeck  money,  for 
serving  up  stale  fish  and  putrid  mutton, 
and  giving  thieves  the  run  of  the  public 
ofSoes. 

One  thing  alone  in  which  the  Republi- 
can Boss  imitates  the  Democratic  Boss 
ought  to  shut  him  out  of  the  houses  of 
honest  men,  good  citizens,  and  siocere 
Christians.  It  is  no  worse  for  Croker  to 
levy  blackmail  on  corporations  and  indi- 
viduals and  sell  legislation  than  for  Piatt. 
It  is  no  worse  indication  in  Croker  than 
in  Piatt  The  men  who  condone  or  over- 
look it  or  make  light  of  it,  are  far  worse 
enemies  of  the  United  States  than  those 
foreign  foes  on  whom  the  Senate  has  its 
eye.  The  place  where  **  supine  submis- 
sion to  wrong,  injustice,  and  consequent 
loss  to  national  self-respect  and  honor,*' 
is  going  on,  is  not,  begging  the  President's 
pardon,  the  banks  of  the  Essequibo  or  of 
the  Orinoco,  but  in  or  about  49  Broadway. 
It  is  not  in  tropical  pampas  or  forests  that 
our  ruin  is  being  worked,  but  in  express 
offices  and  bar-rooms  and  hotel  parlors. 
Our  most  dangerous  foes  are  not  great 
monarchs  or  famous  generals,  but  a  rag- 
ged army  of  shabby  hypocrites  and  ad- 
venturers, who  live  on  our  weakness  and 
cowardice. 

Some  of  the  Republican  reformers  ex- 
cuse their  Plattism  by  assuring  us  that 
Piatt,  unlike  Croker,  keeps  none  of  his 
blackmail  for  himself.  Oh  my,  na  The 
good  man  uses  it  all  for  the  benefit  of  **the 
party  " — that  is,  for  buying  up  editors  and 
relieviog  impecunious  legislators.  But 
what  do  they  know  about  it?  In  what 
other  branch  of  human  activity  would  any 
one  venture  to  tell  us  that  a  man  who  re- 
ceives money  freely  and  renders  no  ac- 
counts, retains  none  of  it  for  his  own  use? 
Should  we  not  laugh  in  the  face  of  any 
one,  lay  or  clerical,  who  in  any  business, 
civil  or  ecclesiastical,  charitable  or  com- 
mercial, asked  us  to  trust  him  with  a 
large  income  without  even  telling  us  what 
he  does  with  the  money?  Is  it  not  the 
oddest  incident  of  American  politics  to- 
day that  a  small  lot  of  adventurers,  with- 
out financial  standing  or  public  character, 
should  daim  exemption,  under  extremely 
suspicious  circumstances,  from  the  ac- 
countability which  we  impose  upon  every 
man,  no  matter  how  long-tried  or  how 
much  respected,  in  every  calling?  It 
would  be  odd  even  if  they  made  a  show  of 
using  the  money  for  the  support  of  crip- 
pled children.     It  is  absurd  when  they  den 


dine  to  describe  a  single  item  in  their  ex- 
penditure. Every  one,  no  matter  what 
his  professions,  who  helps  in  the  main- 
tenance of  this  system,  either  by  acqui- 
escence, silence,  harmony,  or  cooperation, 
shares  its  guilt  and  is  an  enemy  of  his 
country. 


RECOOSIZISO    BELLIGERENCY, 

Thb  '  Recognition  of  Cuban  Belligerency  ' 
is  the  title  of  a  pamphlet  by  Prof.  J.  H. 
Beale,  jr.,  of  the  Harvard  Law  School, 
reprinted  from  the  Law  Review,  It 
contains  a  review  of  the  action  of  our 
Government  in  its  dealings  with  foreign 
governments,  as  to  insurrectionary  move- 
ments within  their  borders,  and  points 
out  that  the  right  to  recognize  belligeren- 
cy rests  upon  two  circumstances — the  ex- 
btence  in  fact  of  what  in  international 
law  is  regarded  as  legal  War,  and  the  ne-\ 
cessity  on  the  part  of  the  nation  which 
acts  of  recognizing  the  existence  of  the 
fact  The  first  is  really  the  cause  of  the 
second.  When  an  insurrectionary  move- 
ment is  carried  on,  as  ours  was  during  the 
Revolution,  by  a  regular  government  hav- 
ing a  definite  territorial  extent,  and  with 
a  military  and  political  organization,  with 
a  legislature,  courts,  an  executive,  etc.,  it 
becomes  a  necessity  for  nations  having 
commerdal  relations  with  the  inhabitants 
of  the  portion  of  the  country  in  insurrec- 
tion to  recognise  the  facts  of  the  case.  It 
is  impossible  to  go  on  treating  as  rob- 
bers or  pirates  people  who  have  for  the 
time  being  created  an  independent  mili- 
tary and  political  society.  We  tried  the 
experiment  at  the  time  of  the  Rebel- 
lion, and  insisted  upon  it  for  two  or 
three  years  that .  Jefferson  Davis  and 
all  the  whites  in  the  South  were  rob- 
bers and  murderers,  and  that  the  officers 
and  crew  of  the  Alabama  and  other 
rebel  cruisers  were  pirates ;  that  England 
should  not  have  recognised  the  belligeren- 
cy of  the  South,  and  that  the  South  was 
not  a  belligerent.  Nevertheless  we  ulti- 
mately had  to  abandon  this  position,  ad- 
mit the  fact  of  belligerency  and  legal  war, 
and  abandon  all  idea  of  hanging  Davis 
and  his  co-conspirators,  simply  because 
the  facts  were  against- us.  We  still  dung 
to  the  point  that  England  had  t)een  over- 
hasty  in  recognising  the  belligerency  of 
the  Southern  States;  but  this  was  tnere- 
ly  raising  the  question  as  to  when  bel- 
ligerency became  established— another 
question  simply  of  fact. 

The  reason  why  it  is  never  for  the  in- 
terest on  the  part  of  a  neutral  or  friendly 
nation  to  recognize  belligerency  when  it 
does  not  exist  is,  that,  just  as  long  as  the 
insurrection  remains  an  insurrection,  the 
government  risen  against  (in  this  case 
Spaio)  is  responsible  for  all  injury  which 
lawlessness  may  produce  affecting  the  in- 
terests of  the  citizens  of  the  friendly  state 
(in  this  case  the  United  SUtes).  It  is 
only  when  the  insurrectionary  party  form 
a  de  facto  state  that  this  responsibility 
disappears,  and  when  this  rerpoosibiiity 


174: 


Tlie   ^N^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1600 


is  no  longer  of  any  value  it  must  be  recog- 
nised. If  Gomez  and  Maceo  were  to  drive 
General  Weyler  and  his  troops  into  the 
sea,  and  organise  Cuba  as  an  independ- 
ent state,  it  would  be  of  no  use  to  go  on 
pretending  that  Spain  was  in  control. 
We  should,  for  our  own  interests,  need  to 
rely  on  the  responsibility  of  those  actually 
in  control. 

To  apply  these  remarks  to  the  present 
situation  of  affairs  is  not  difficult.  The 
insurrection  has  neither  regular  army,  nor 
navy,  nor  courts,  nor  legislature,  nor  ex- 
ecutive. Its  seat  is  said  to  be  on  top  of  a 
remote  and  inaccessible  mountain,  and  the 
reason  why  we  hear  of  its  **  operations*' 
near  the  capital  is  that  its  forces  are  ma- 
rauding bands  "operating'*  in  the  way 
Bob  Hoy  used  to  operate  in  the  Highlands. 
Any  point  where  there  are  negroes  or  white 
patriots  out  of  work,  and  where  there  is 
anything  to  lay  hands  on,  becomes  a  cen- 
tre of  insurrection,  a  centre  which,  the 
moment  the  booty  is  ''touched,**  fades 
away. 

The  favorite  argument  with  the  news- 
papers seems  to  be  that  because  the 
Spaniards  are  cruel,  therefore  we  ought 
to  recognise  the  belligerency  of  the  Cu- 
bans. No  amount  of  cruelty  on  the  part 
of  the  Spaniards,  however,  will  produce 
belligerency  if  none  exists.  What  those 
who  are  indignant  at  the  Spanish  cruelty/ 
want  is  not  a  recognition  of  belligerency,' 
but  intervention,  and  this,  as  Mr.  Beale 
points  out,  is  a  totally  different  matter. 
When  we  have  made  up  our  minds,  if  we 
come  to  such  a  conclusion,  that  the  inte- 
rests of  humanity  demand  intervention, 
then  our  course  is  plain  enough.  We 
warn  Spain  off,  of  course  taking  the  risk 
of  war.  We  also  should,  if  our  cry  is  hu- 
manity, carefully  consider  how  much  bet- 
ter off  Cuba  would  be  free  than  under 
Spanish  dominion,  whether  there  exist 
any  materials  for  self-government  on  the 
island,  and  whether  we  desire  to  have  the 
races  which  inhabit  it  as  fellow- citizens. 
Forcible  intervention  is  an  intelligible  po- 
licy; but  what  we  or  any  one  else  should 
gain  by  pretending  that  the  Cubans  are 
belligerents  when  they  are  not,  is  what  no 
one  has  explained.  The  length  of  time 
during  which  lawlessness  exists  has  little 
or  nothing  to  do  with  it.  The  last  insurrec- 
tion in  Cuba  lasted  ten  years.  There  have 
been'at  various  times  parts  of  Italy  entire- 
ly in  the  hands  of  banditti,  against  whom 
the  Government  has  been  able  to  do  no- 
thing; but  it  never  occurred  to  any  one 
to  recognize  them  as  belligerents.  Yet 
ail  banditti  are  in  favor  of  freedom  and' 
foes  of  governmental  interference. 

Still  another  reason  has  been  advanced 
for  recognizing  Cuban  belligerency.  Some 
one  has  unearthed  a  doctrine  of  interna- 
tional law  that  no  government  is  respon- 
sible for  not  giving  protection  if  it  is  phy- 
sically impossible  to  do  so,  and  the  argu- 
ment for  the  recognition  of  belligerency 
then  proceeds  as  follows:  Parts  of  the 
island  are  in  insurrection,  and  the  proper- 
ty of  American  citizens  is  at  the  mercy 


of  the  revolutionists;  the  Spanish  com- 
mander cannot  protect  this  property; 
therefore  we  must  abandon  any  claim  for 
indemnity  against  Spain,  and  look  to 
Maceo  and  Gomez.  Such  is  said  to  be 
the  reasoning  of  the  House  committee  on 
foreign  affairs,  who  feel  that  it  removes 
the  last  argument  against  the  recognition 
of  Cuban  belligerency.  We  take  the 
liberty  of  doubting  that  Spain  has  ever 
announced  its  intention  not  to  protect 
foreign  citizens.  The  trouble  with  the 
House  committee  is  that  it  feeds  too  ex- 
clusively upon  doctrines  and  principles 
of  law— a  windy  diet— to  the  oversight  of 
facts. 


PIGEON-HOLED    KNOWLEDGE. 

Hazlfit  told  the  story  of  West,  the  painter, 
that,  when  asked  if  he  had  ever  been  in 
Greece,  he  replied:  *'  No,  but  I  have  read 
a  descriptive  catalogue  of  the  principal 
objects  in  that  country,  and  I  believe  I 
am  as  well  conversant  with  them  as  if  I 
had  visited  it."  This  snggests  one  of  the 
most  terrible  intellectual  temptations  of 
our  day,  one  which  has  a  fatal  power  over 
many  minds.  We  mean  the  temptation  to 
make  of  one's  head  nothing  but  a  ledger, 
in  which  all  one*s  knowledge  must  be 
neatly  and  precisely  classified  and  written 
up  every  night  It  is  peculiarly  a  beset- 
ting sin  of  critics,  especially  of  literary 
critics,  who  must  reduce  all  the  literature 
of  a  given  age,  no  matter  how  miscellane- 
ous and  refractory,  to  one  "  movement,'* 
group  all  the  writers  of  any  one  period 
into  a  "  school  *'  or  schools,  and,  in  short, 
make  literary  criticism  into  a  sort  of  old- 
fashioned  desk,  with  little  parcels  of  opi- 
nions, nicely  labelled  and  docketed,  stowed 
away  in  the  pigeon-holes. 

Classification  is,  of  course,  the  beginning 
of  wisdom  in  many  branches  of  science, 
but  it  must  be  a  classification  into  which 
the  facts  fall  easily  and  magically,  not  one 
into  which  they  have  to  be  forced  maimed 
and  bleeding.  In  what  is  so  essentially 
free  and  elastic  a  process  as  the  intel- 
lectual development  of  a  generation,  or 
the  evolution  of  a  national  literature 
throughout  a  century,  the  insistence  upon 
exact  and  rigid  classification  eiuily  runs 
into  confusion  and  absurdity.  Taine's 
'  English  Literature  *  illustrates  the  mad- 
ness that  lies  this  way,  and  a  recent  ad- 
dress of  Brunetidre's  on  "The  Renais- 
sance of  Idealism  "  seems  to  us  another 
example  of  it.  The  schedules  are  too 
hard-and-fast,  the  iabels  too  confidently 
stuck  on,  the  accounts  too  accurately 
footed  up,  and  the  balance  too  miracu- 
lously correct.  M.  Brunetidre  compresses 
the  whole  field  of  intellectual  activity  into 
his  formula,  and  makes  science,  music, 
art,  literature,  religion,  and  government 
alike  bear  testimony  to  the  progress  of  the 
age  away  from  materialism,  naturalism, 
realism, or  whatever  you  call  it,  into  ideal- 
ism— whatever  you  mean  by  that^  and 
Brunetidre  expressly  refused  to  be  bound 
by  a  "  too  strict  **  definition. 


Now,  the  human  mind,  not  of  the  Dry- 
asdust order,  instinctively  rebels  at  this. 
One  might  ackoowledge  the  science,  or 
the  music,  or  the  religion  separately ;  but 
all  of  them  at  once;  with  art  and  litera- 
ture thrown  in,  and  each  and  all  ticketed 
"Renaissance  of  Idealism  "—this  is  too 
much.  If  it  were  all  as  clear  and  true  as 
this,  there  would  surely  be  no  need  of  de- 
livering an  eloquent  "  conference  '*  about 
it,  for  everybody  would  be  convinced  of  it 
on  sight.  It  would  be  easy,  moreover,  to 
show  more  than  one  detail  in  wliich  Brune- 
ti^re'is  far  from  making  out  his  case.  Sci- 
ence, for  example,  he  says,  has  become 
idealistic  because  "the  promises  which 
savants  have  publicly  made  in  its  name  " 
have  failed  of  fulfilment.  But  when  you 
ask  what  savants,  he  admits  that  he  does 
not  mean  the  authorized  exponents  of 
science,  the  Darwins,  the  Pasteurs,  the 
Helmholtzes,  but  the  second  or  third-rate 
men,  the  very  churlatans  of  science.  The 
retort  is  obvious  that  if '  science  has 
gone  "  bankrupt,"  in  Bruneti^re's  famous 
phrase,  idealism  has  not  likewise  gone  so 
only  because  all  it  promises  to  pay  fall  due 
in  the  new  heavens  and  the  new  earth 
which  it  is  yet  to  create.  And  when  the 
lecturer  finds  his  proof  of  the  coming  of 
political  idealism  in  the  spread  of  Social- 
ism, one  can  only  wonder  how  he  would 
discriminate  idealism  from  fanaticism  or 
the  most  rabid  doctrinairianism. 

But  it  is  not  so  much  on  details  like 
these  that  we  intended  to  dwell  as  on  the 
perils  of  the  mania  for  classifying  which 
they  exemplify.  One  cannot  go  through 
an  age  labelling  and  pigeon-holing  know- 
ledge in  this  way.  Mark  Pattison  denied 
that  it  was  possible  to  do  so  even  in  a 
past  century;  much  less  in  one  whose  re- 
cords are  not  yet  imade  up.  By  falling 
back  on  our  little  lists  and  schedules  we 
all  the  while  increase  the  danger  of  tak- 
ing our  eyes  off  the  stubborn  facts  to  let 
them  rest  on  our  graceful  classifications. 
Rousseau  tells  us  how  he  felt  this  danger, 
and  how  he  finally  surmounted  it  by  de- 
termining, instead  of  squeezing  all  he 
read  into  his  own  pet  formulas,  to  open  his 
mind  freely,  as  "a  magazine  of  ideas,*' 
and  let  the  classification  come  later  as  best 
it  might.  In  this  way  he  certainly  saved 
himself  from  the  reproach  that  has  l>een 
brought  against  Guizot,  that  he  had  all 
knowledge  reduced  to  a  beautiful  catO' 
logue  raisonn^y  but  was  not  a  whit  the 
wiser  for  it. 

The  way  things  are  actually  done — lite- 
rature actually  produced,  for  example— ^is 
often  ludicrously  unlike  the  theory  of  the 
way  they  are  done.  When  a  modem 
novelist  falls  to  work,  does  he  say  to  him- 
self, "Now  I  am  a  realist,  a  symbolist,  a 
dicadent,  an  idealist,  or  what  not,  and 
must  live  up  to  my  '  school,*  so  as  not  to 
baffle  the  critics  '*  ?  Hardly.  If  he  did, 
he  would  not  get  on  much  faster  than 
Bismarck  said  he  should  if  he  did  every- 
thing "on  principle*' — "principles"  be- 
ing, he  affirmed,  like  a  long  pole  held 
crosswise  in  your  teeth  when  you  wanted 


Feb.  27,  1896] 


Tlie    !N"atioii. 


175 


to  ran  along  a  narrow  path  in  the  dense 
forest.  Wordeworth,  it  is  true,  wrote 
•ome  poems  to  illustrate  his  poetical  theo- 
ries, as  Blair  preached  sermons  built  on 
the  strictest  principles  of  the  rhetorical 
art ;  but  the  poems  rifalled  the  sermons 
in  wooden  and  deadly  dulness.  Dr.  John- 
son gave  his  idea  of  this  kind  of  literary 
classification  when  asked  if  the  sermons 
of  Dr.  Dodd  were  not  **  addressed  to  the 
pMsions.*'  '•  Bir,"  he  replied,  •«  they  are 
Bolhing,  be  they  addressed  to  what  they 
may. "  What  noTelists  write  for  may  rough- 
ly be  set  down  as  (1)  money,  (2)  reputation, 
principally  as  a  means  to  more  money,  (3) 
recognitloo  and  good  will  of  contempora- 
ries, (4)  dim  and  dubious  hope  of  posthu- 
mous fame.  All  the  rest  is  vanity ;  the 
anxieties  and  embarrassments  of  pigeon- 
hole cdtics  oyer  the  question  of  what  cate- 
gory to  put  them  in,  vanity  of  vanities. 


THE  THIRTY.PIFTH  ANNIVERSARY  OF 
CARDUCCrS  PROFESSORSHIP. 

Bologna.  Febmary  9, 1896. 
Rabslt,  if  ever,  dace  Petrsrch*ttime  has  a 
Urisg  poet  reoeilred  rach  oTerwhelmiog  tokens 
of  lore  and  reverence  as  Carduccl  has  to  day 
on  this  thirty.flfth  anniyersary  of  bis  first  lec- 
toie  as  professor  of  belle  leitere  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Bologna.  The  homage  rendered  by  all 
Ilaly  is  to  the  noble  genios  of  the  poet  who  has 
never  stooped  to  flatter  princes  or  people,  who 
has  said  to  Italy,  to  her  rulers,  to  her  parties, 
the  hardest,  bluntest  things  that  can  well  be 
Imagined,  and  at  the  same  time  has  kept  the 
plebs  informed  that  squalor  and  misery  alone 
do  not  give  them  a  title  to  the  world^s  commise- 
ration. The  special  homage  of  Bologna,  how. 
ever,  Is  to  the  professor  who  has  educated 
several  generations  In  the  worship  of  Intel- 
lectoal  greatness  and  civic  virtue.  The  idea 
originated  with  one  of  his  present  pupils,  a 
Sicilian,  Rodolioo,  who  proposed  to  present 
an  album  with  the  names  of  all  the  students 
who  have  frequented  Cardacct*s  clafsee  from 
1861  till  now,  with  the  photographs  of  as  many 
as  were  obtainable;  and  this  family  festival 
took  place  on  February  2,  the  real  **  first  day.** 
Then  the  Syndic  of  the  city,  very  proud  of  the 
fsct  that  C^rduod  in  the  communal  electious 
had  polled  more  votes  than  any  t>om  Bolo- 
gnsss,  bethought  himself  of  a  municipal  com- 
iDSOiormtioo«  Cardaccfs  colleagues  could  not 
be  left  out  In  the  cold,  nor  bis  publishers,  the 
broibers  Zanichelli,  be  neglected.  King  Hum 
bert,  wbo»  your  readers  will  remember,  came 
with  the  Queen  and  heir  apptrent  to  listen  to 
his  commemoration  of  the  fifth  centenary  of 
the  University  of  Bologna,  sent  him  the  medal 
as  Commeodatore  of  the  Order  of  8.  Maurlzio 
e  Lanaro  with  a  really  hearty  letter,  praying 
^  that  the  poet  may  be  spared  for  many  years 
to  the  studious  youth  who  cherish  him  with 
love  and  gratitude.**  Both  the  King  and  Queeu 
sent  telegrams  which  were  read  by  the  Syndic 
daU*  Olio  with  great  gusto  in  the  reading-room 
of  the  Arriginnasio,  where  some  five  hundred 
of  the  4liU  of  Bologna  were  assembled,  one 
row  being  reserved  for  the  lady  students  who 
throng  his  lectures.  The  Hyndic  spoke  from 
his  heart: 

**  Bvso  before  the  communal  decree  that  con- 
ferred on  you  the  rights  of  dtisenship,  we  oon- 
sldcrsd  you  as  our  own  son;  and  if  we  have 
sought  oat  the  best  possible  wav  of  conferring 
OB  you  the  greatsst  Imaginabls  honors,  it  is 
I  you  have  given  us  such  proofs  of  love 


end  devotion  to  our  city  by  refusing  the  high 
position  which  other  cities  wished  you  to  ao- 
oept  [in  allusion  to  the  Dante  chair  at  Rome, 
which  Carduoci  refused  in  order  to  remain 
falth/ul  to  Bologna],  that  the  city  opens  its 
maternal  arms  to  embrace  the  son  beloved  who 
has  so  loved  and  honored  his  mother.  7ou 
came  to  us,  when  you  were  quite  young,  from 
gentle  Tuscany,  just  when  Bologna  had  thrown 
off  the  double  yoke  of  priest  and  foreigner ; 
and  though  you  possessed  the  qualities  that  in- 
sure  fame— lofty  genius,  profound  and  multi- 
form knowledge,  a  thirst  for  all  high  and  no- 
ble things— fame  was  not  yet  assured  to  you 
Your  fame  dates  from  Bologna,  and,  as  it  grew 
and  expanded,  the  name  or  our  city  was  ever 
associated  with  it.  Nor  did  fame  come  sud- 
denly as  a  gift  from  heaven;  on  the  contrary 
you  won  it  gradually,  and  never  to  any  one 
was  it  given  so  grudgingly.  The  first  songs  of 
*  Enotrio  Rooaano  *  were  a  challenge  flung  down 
to  the  academical  softnesses  in  which  Italian 
poetry  delighted.  The  public  and  the  critics, 
accustomed  to  linger  in  the  pleasant  paths  of 
the  garden  of  the  Muses,  were  frightened  at  a 
poet  who  forcibly  drew  them  up  the  steepest 
of  mountain  paths ;  and  protested  and  blamed 
the  audacious  pioneer  who  led  them  away 
from  beaten  tracks,  trusting  that  anathemas 
would  silence  the  importunate  voice.  But  the 
Toice,  which  was  the  lofty,  solemn  Toloe  of  poe- 
try, was  not  silenced;  silence  it  could  not  keep, 
and  it  was  from  Bologna  that  *  Enotrio  *  no 
more,  but  Glosod  Carduoci,  continued  his 
courageous  work  of  innovation.  Still  the 
critics  censured,  but  they  were  no  longer  lis- 
tened to;  the  public,  subaued,  joyfully  yielded 
to  the  resistless  fascination;  began  by  forgiv- 
ing the  poet  his  conquest,  then  from  day  to 
day  loved  him  more  passionately,  and  would 
have  him  not  only  loved  but  acclaimed  in  this 
city,  which  had  been  faithful  to  him  in  hi<4 
struggles,  and  is  now  witness  and  sharer  in  his 
glory.** 

The  Syndic  next  devoted  his  renmrks  to 
Oiosod  as  professor,  showing  the  influence  he 
has  had  in  leading  his  disciples  to  real  love, 
appreciation,  and  reverence  for  their  great  an- 
cient writers,  to  the  worship  of  classical  tradi- 
tion tempered  by  an  acute  sense  of  present  mo- 
dern life  '(this  is  the  keynote  to  Carducci*s 
originality),  and  in  interpreting  history,  of 
which  be  is  indeed  a  master.  At  this  point  he 
presented  Carducd  with  a  magnificent  gold 
medal,  with  his  portrait  on  one  side  and  a 
Latin  inscription  on  the  other,  ending  with  an 
invocation  to  Italy  the  beloved— Italy  as  she 
was,  not  as  she  is  to-day.  Then  Prof.  Bertolino, 
in  the  name  of  the  University  and  the  Minis- 
ter of  Public  Instruction,  gave  him  the  wel- 
come of  the  Alma  Mater  Uudiorum — the 
frank,  hearty  salutations  of  his  collesgues, 

*'who,  thanks  to  you,  with  joyful  hearts, 
see  again  one  of  the  days  of  the  Renaissance, 
when  the  religion  of  senius  and  of  science  had 
the  divine  virtue  or  disarming  enemies,  of 
burying  hatreds  which  in  the  past  had  niade 
them  foes.  Such  a  dav  as  this  was  seen  in  Rome 
in  1341,  when  the  Roman  people,  forgetting 
civic  t)attles,  crowded  round  Francis  Fetrarcb, 
bringing  bim  crowns  of  flowers,  and  the  Or- 
sin  is  and  the  Colon  nas  imposed  on  their  ani- 
mosities the  truce  of  Ood  In  order  together  to 
garland  the  brow  of  the  grand  poet  whom  you 
hailed  as  the  poet  of  the  Renaissance.  .  .  . 
But  whereas  the  old  Renaissance  could  not 
prevent  lit>erty  from  being  exiled,  while  the 
literature  inspired  by  it  inflicted  cruel  wounds 
on  the  principle  of  morality,  the  Renaissance 
to  which  you  lead  our  country  has  its  founda- 
tions in  reason  and  in  liberty,  and  draws  its 
prime  inspiration  from  a  moral  principle.** 

After  Bertolino  came  the  illustrious  Latin- 
ist,  the  genial,  gimpaileo  Oandino,  who,  after 
a  brief,  bright  speecli,  recited  an  eloglnm  in 
rouflioal  Latin.  *'  Tou  see,**  he  said  to  the  pub- 
lic, **  that  l>esidee  our  reverence,  appreciation, 
gratitude,  we  all  so  love  this  Oiosui  CarduccL 
Perhaps  the  aureole  that  surrounds  his  brow 
dases  some,  but  to  his  colleagues  he  appears  in 
all  the  brightness  of  a  sunny  day : 


*  Sdndlt  M  nabes. 


olMqae  la  laoe  rsTnlssC*' 


Gandino  continued  truly: 

''  Your  method  of  teaching  proves  the  truth 
of  the  saving  of  the  Greek  poet,  that  the  Muses 
possess  the  science  of  things  universal,  so  that 
if  to  each  one  is  assigned  a  special  part— here 
poetry,  there  history,  there  again  other  arts- 
all  form  A  polio*  s  chorus,  all  are  united  in  close 
bonds  of  sisterhood.  So  in  your  school  the  se- 
vere examination  of  the  philosopher  is  admir- 
ably united  with  the  divine  spirit  of  the  poet 
the  diligent  research  of  the  historian,  the  rapid 
intuition  of  the  artist.** 

So  hearty  were  Qandino^s  encomiums  that 
poor  Carduccl,  who  before  the  ceremony  had 
said  to  us,  **0f  course  I  feel  much  honored, 
but  it*8  a  fearful  ordeal  to  go  through,**  never 
once  lifted  his  eyes.  When  it  was  ended,  they 
kissed  and  hugged  each  other  just  like  two 
schoolboys. 

Very  short  and  simple  was  the  speech  of 
CosimoFUippi,  Syndic  of  Pietrasanta,  the  poet's 
birthplace.  **  Pietrasanta,  which  had  the  good 
fortune  to  give  thee  birth,  sends  this  [a  splen* 
did  parchment]  as  a  token  of  gratitude  to  the 
son  who  has  illuminated  the  obscurity  of  our 
village.**  After  this.  Count  Pier  DeddeHo 
Pasolini,  who  is  ever  certain  to  be  seen  when 
Carducci  can  be  honored,  sprang  up  from 
some  corner  and  gave  him  a  spray  of  laurel. 

**  Child  of  ancient  Ravenna,**  he  said  reve- 
rently, ••!  bring  to  thee.  Oiosud  Carducd, 
this  branch  of  laurel  whicn  grew  close  to  the 
tomb  of  Dante  Alighieri,  thy  teacher,  thy 
father.  Without  him  thy  fame  would  not  be 
so  great,  and  perhaps  we  should  not  be  here  to 
manifest  such  loving  and  cordial  reverenoe  to 
thee.  This  laurel  branch  is  all  that  now  can 
come  from  him  to  thee;  receive  it  with  affeo- 
tion  and  keep  it  with  reverence.** 

And  I  noticed  that  when  we  went  home  with 
his  wife  and  daughter,  who  were  intensely 
moved,  Carducci's  flrst  care,  on  going  into  his 
study,  was,  not  to  look  at  his  medals  or 
presents,  but  to  place  the  laurel  wprig  in  the 
tunic  of  Dante*s  bust  which  stands  in  the  cen- 
tre of  bis  bookshelves— the  sad  Maixlni  look- 
ing down  life-size  from  above. 

Carducci*s  thanks  commenced  in  a  voice  so 
low  and  broken  that  we  asked,  **  Will  even  he 
break  downf *  But  after  a  few  minutes  the 
clarion  tones  rang  nut,  and  every  word  could 
be  heard  all  over  the  halL 

'**  I  thank  you  reverently.  Tour  benevolenoe 
has  made  or  me  something  that  exists  in  your 
idea,  not  in  my  reality.  But  whatever  I  am  (and 
indeed  I  wish  I  were  like  your  portrait),  every 
bit  of  me  belongs  to  this  city  and  to  this  Uni- 
versity. To  your  city  I  came  with  Italy  and 
with  unity  ;  J  came  as  a  youth,  poor,  obscure, 
and  with  trepidation.  The  city  received  me 
with  encouragement;  the  University,  ia  the 
sbsdow  of  its  glory,  aided  and  protected  me. 
In  the  University  I  found  flrst  fathers,  then 
brothers,  who  taught  me  by  example  and  both 
facilitated  and  bettered  my  teaching.  In  the 
city  I  found  wise  and  warm  friends,  who  now 
spurred  me  on,  now  restrained  me,  and  I 
found  what  your  grand  ssoutobeon  promises — 
LibtrUu !  Yes,  tne  lit>erty  of  solitude  and  of 
study  ;  lit>erty  In  the  flight  and  aim  of  my 
thoughts,  liberty  of  ideas,  independence  upon 
all  narrow  little  pinching,  sharp-angled  cir- 
cumstsnces  which  fetter  the  healthy  progress 
of  a  writer.  Yei^,  and  here  let  me  say  to  the 
Syndic  of  Pietrasanta,  on  tbe  beautiful  coast 
which  runs  *twixt  sea  and  mountain,  which 
gave  me  birth  and  noble  traditions,  and 
whence,  alas,  I  was  taken  all  too  young,  and 
whose  memory  I  revere  and  love— here  in 
Bologna  I  found  a  second  country.  Here,  al- 
though  I  hold  that  we  can  serve  our  country 
in  all  times  and  places  by  wholly  giving  our- 
selves to  her  and  claiming  nothing  in  return 
for  this  privilege  of  giving— nevertheless  here 
service  was  made  easy  for  me,  here  the  hearti- 
ness of  the  citiwns  helped  me,  the  glories  of 
Aidrovandus,  of  Zanotti,  of  GalvanJ  inspired 
me.  At  this  moment  I  recall  the  past  and 
forefeel  the  future.  I  remember,  and  these 
honors  showered  on  me  almost  excite  remorse ; 
I  want  to  ask  the  pardon  of  those  holy  shades 


176 


TKe   INTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1600 


^thoae  great  masters  of  our  f atherland-^who 
passed  away  anknown,  neglected,  who  grew 
old  in  sad  poverty,  or  were  extinguished  in 
the  desolation  of  exile.  I  remember  the  divine 
wisdom  of  Vico,  the  human  omniscienoe  of 
Romagnosi,  the  poetic  radiance  of  Ugo  Fos- 
colo.  Those  were  times  of  Italian  servitude. 
Now,  oh  youths  I  see  what  priases  country  and 
liberty  are  offering  to  those  who  strive  after 
intellectual  good.  This  shows  that  Italian  re- 
novation, even  in  ideal  and  moral  arts,  is  ma- 
turing. Prepare  the  way  for  the  Loird  who 
cometh ;  for  the  genius  of  Italy,  great,  free, 
just  good,  useful  to  humanity  ;  for  the  genius 
of  whose  wings  I  hear  the  fluttering.  In  that 
time,  which  we  hope  is  near,  the  holy,  pure  age 
of  the  Italy  of  the  future,  the  glory  of  Bologna 
will  grow  ever  brighter,  the  glory  of  this  mo- 
ther of  study,  this  loving  inspirer  of  the  studi- 
ous. Let  her  gather  the  flowers  and  the  ^its 
of  the  happy  time,  and,  in  the  words  of  the 
poet> 

" '  £  trovl  aom  degno  ptrf  che  d  I'onora.'  ** 

When  he  had  flnished,  Carducci  was  swept 
away  by  the  tumult  of  loving  welcomes  that 
surrounded  him.  Then  we  crowded  to  look  at 
the  gifts.  His  publishers  presented  him 
with  an  exquisite  illuminated  edition  of  Pe- 
trarch's sonnets  of  the  fourteenth  century. 
The  missives  of  the  municipality  of  Bologna 
and  Pietrasanta  are  real  works  of  art.  The 
portrait  of  the  poet  on  the  gold  medal  is  like 
him,  but  still  more  resembles  the  Roman  em- 
perors. 

If  I  were  to  narrate  the  tales  told  by  his  stu- 
dents (many  now  professors),  I  should  never 
end.  One  Pascoli  interested  me  most.  He  was 
wrt  tchedly  poor,  as  bis  father  had  been  mur 
dered  and  his  eldest  brother  had  to  bring  up  a 
family  of  nine.  He  thought  this  one  had 
genius,  so  sent  him  with  a  few  francs  to  Bo- 
logna to  compete  for  the  six  scholarships  the 
generous  city  accords.  When  the  lad  heard  he 
was  to  be  examined  by  Carducci,  all  his  cou- 
rage waned,  as  Father  Donati,  who  kept  the 
poet's  picture  in  his  cell,  had  told  him  he  was 
**  the  greatest  and  noblest  and  highest  being  on 
earth.''  He  fumbled  and  stumbled  in  his  an- 
swers, and  in  his  written  theme  felt  he  had 
not  done  his  best;  but  the  poet  saw  what  was 
In  him,  and,  with  the  consent  of  the  faculty, 
his  name  came  out  flrst  of  the  six.  *'  Carducci 
smiled,"  he  said ;  **  just  an  instant  his  smile 
rested  on  me,  and  I  would  not  change  that 
memory  for  any  other  in  this  world." 

J.  W.  M. 


Correspondence. 


THE  GOOD  NAME  OF  GUATEBiALA. 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sm:  My  attention  has  been  called  to  an  arti- 
cle which,  under  the  heading  **A  Specimen 
SpaniBh- American  Republic,"  appeared  on  the 
editorial  page  of  your  valued  paper  of  the  20th 
inst. ,  which  article  contains  statements  deroga* 
tory  and  false  with  respect  to  the  government 
and  country  which  I  have  the  honor  to  repre- 
sent at  this  port. 

In  view  of  the  statements  therein  made,  it 
becomes  my  duty  to  inform  you  and  cause  to 
be  known  that  the  assertions  of  the  author  of 
the  book  *  II  Guatamala,'  who,  it  is  said,  is 
named  *^  Tommaso  Caivano,"  are,  in  their  en- 
tirety, inaccurate  and  advanced  solely  to  gra- 
tify selfish  motives.  On  June  20,  1805,  Mr. 
Caivano  presented  himself  at  the  ofHce  of  this 
Consulate- General  soliciting  financial  aid  that 
he  publish  a  book  in  favor  .of  Guatemala  and 
its  Government,  and  on  such  financial  aid  be- 
ing denied  him  he  took  offence,  became  very 
•xoited,  and  stated  that  he  would  publish  the 


book,  not,  however,  in  favor  of  my  country, 
but  decidedly  against  it.  Consequently,  the 
publication  compiled  by  Mr.  Caivano  is  the 
result  of  actual  spite  and  for  revenge  in  not 
having  obtained  the  money  he  solicited.  ^ 

I  appeal,  therefore,  lir.  Editor,  to  your  im- 
partiality that  you  give  equal  prominence  to 
the  publication  of  this  letter  in  the  columns  of 
your  valued  paper,  so  that  the  sensible  public 
may  judge  as  to  the  merit  which  can  attach  to 
the  book  published  by  Mr.  Caivano. 

Believe  me,  sir,  with  the  highest  considera- 
tion, very  reqiectfully  yours, 

Dr.  Joaquin  Ybul,  Je., 

Acting  Consul-General. 

New  YoEK,  Febmarj  81,  1890. 


[We  have  received  also  tbe  following 
communication  from  a  gentleman  who 
knew  Gaatemala  well  under  the  elder  Bar- 
rios. We  ought  to  add  that  such  personal 
knowledge  as  we  had  of  Sig.  Caivano  was 
wholly  favorable  to  his  character  and  credi- 
bility; and  that  the  Italian  edition  of  his 
work,  on  which  we  commented,  was  al- 
ready printed  (but  not  published),  and 
was  read  by  us,  before  Sig.  Caivano*s  arri- 
val in  this  country  in  June  last.— Ed. 
Natiok.] 

'*  Barrios  was  bad  enough  in  fact,  without 
retorting  to  fiction  and  misrepresentation. 
Some  persons  were  put  in  the  Penitenciario 
and  thrashed  to  death— perhaps  a  dosen  all 
told;  not  more.  Barrundia  (who  was  after- 
wards shot  on  board  an  American  vessel)  was 
really  the  author,  as  he  was  the  perpetrator, 
of  these  outrages.  Two  friends  of  mine  were 
among  the  victims. 

''It  is  altogether  a  myth  about  Barrios 
wanting  to  wipe  out  what  Sig.  Caivano  calls 
the  Creoles.  There  is  no  such  class.  There 
are  a  few  old  families  who  pride  themselves  on 
their  blue  blood,  all  reactionaries  of  a  Bour- 
bon stripe;  but  thev  do  not  meddle  with  poli- 
tics, and  I  don't  believe  one  of  them  was  shot 
by  Barrios. 

*'The  story  of  his  exposing  the  wives  and 
daughters  of  his  enemies  stark  naked  in  cages 
is  an  astounding  legend,  founded  on  the  report 
that  Barries  ordered  two  ladies  of  some  of  the 
old  families,  suspected  of  making  clothing  for 
the  rebels  during  the  first  revolution  in  his 
time,  to  be  put  in  a  large  net  which  is  much  in 
use  in  that  part  of  the  country,  and  swung  to 
the  ceUing  of  his  room  until  they  told  all  they 
knew;  but  they  were  fully  dressed,  as  no  man 
in  Guatemala,  of  any  kind,  would  expose  a 
woman  stark  naked.  This  reputed  action  of 
Barrios's  was  never  authenticated,  and  al- 
though I  knew  one  of  the  ladies,  she  would 
never  admit  its  truth. 

**Thi8  author  is  equally  given  to  exaggera- 
tion in  saying  that  Barrios  had  men  shot  for  his 
amusement.  For  a  vftry  long  time  no  Presi- 
dent in  that  countrv  had  so  few  of  his  enemies 
shot  at  all.  He  did,  however,  finally  resort  to 
this  method  of  punishment,  but  I  tfalnk  an  im- 
partial investigation  would  show  that  as  few 
persons  were  shot  in  his  time  as  in  that  of  any 
other  ruler  there,  except  Cema  perhaps.  His 
successor.  Barillas,  did  quite  as  many  brutal 
things,  and  had  three  very  dear  old  friends  of 
mine  shot  under  very  brutal  circumstances. 
Summary  shooting  has  been  the  most  conve- 
nient way  of  quelling  revolutionary  move- 
ments ever  since  Spanish  America  was  freed 
from  Spanish  rule,  and  the  rebels  themselves 
are  usually  more  sanguinary  than  the  Gk>vem- 
ment,  as  is  actually  the  case  in  Cuba. 

*^  As  to  Reyna  Barrios,  he  is  since  my  time. 
He  lived  in  New  York  many  vears,  and  is  mar- 
ried  to  an  American  lady.  My  friends  report 
him  a  good  man  of  business,  a  good  President, 
and  a  man  of  moderate  ideas. 

*'  But  the  name  Republic  applied  to  any  of 
these  countries  is  a  gross  libel  on  the  word.  It 
is  a  one-man  power,  and  the  one  man  is  always 
more  or  less  brutal,  and  always  surrounds  him- 
self with  people  fit  for  the  particular  work  he 
wants  done.  They  do  not  all  get  rich.  Carrera, 
after  being  President  for  nearly  twenty  years, 
died  (on  the  same  day  President  Lincoln  was 


shot)  a  oomparativelv  poor  man.  His  sno- 
oessor,  Cema,  after  being  President  for  six 
years,  retired  abeolutelv  poor,  and  his  minis- 
ters  were  poorer  than  himself.  Barrios  stole 
and  blackmailed  right  and  left,  and  in  thirteen 

Sears  saved  about  as  many  million  dollars, 
arillas  did  the  same  kind  of  thing  and  is  now 
wealthy.  The  first  two  and  their  ministers  be- 
longed to  and  represented  the  Conservative  or 
Church  party;  the  latter  two  called  themselves 
Liberals,'* 


WHERE   WAR   SHOULD   ELEVATE. 
To  THx  Editor  of  Thk  Nation: 

Snt:  Not  enough  pains  have  been  tnkeai  by 
the  advocates  of  war  as  a  means  of  ennobling 
tbe  character  to  set  forth  its  advantages  as 
they  deserve.  The  case  can  be  put  in  a 
stronger  and  more  convincing  light  than  it  has 
been.  Possibly  something  is  held  in  reserve, 
but  so  far  the  argument  has  not  been  illustrat- 
ed as  it  should  be;  it  has  not  been  adequately 
and  variously  presented. 

I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the  theory  Is 
capable  of  application  in  many  agrioultnral 
communities,  and  of  undisputed  ai^lication  in 
all  thinly  settled  districts.  There  are  usually 
fair  opportunities  for  moral  and  intellectual 
culture  in  the  cities  and  large  towns  of  tbe 
East— it  is  astonishing  that  anybody  there 
should  want  to  fight;  but  in  some  of  the  West- 
em  States  the  situation  is  quite  different,  and 
this  is  especially  true  of  the  semi-arid  regions 
of  Kansas,  Nebraska,  and  other  States  where 
the  widely  scattered  stockmen  and  farmers 
make  slow  progress,  whether  material  or  ethi- 
cal. The  fine  virtues  need  more  encourage- 
ment tiian  they  receive.  There  are  no  great 
libraries,  no  handsome  opera-houses,  no  collec- 
tions of  sacred  arl>  no  beautiful  church  archi- 
tecture. An  these  things  are  lacking.  But 
could  not  such  deprivations  be  made  tolerable 
— hardly  missed,  indeed,  as  agencies  of  moral 
inspiration— if  the  inhabitants  had  suflSoient 
discernment  to  fight  occasionally  among  them- 
selves ?  Why  don't  the  men  go  to  war  ?  How 
quickly  the  sense  of  justice  and  honor,  the 
feeling  of  gentleness  and  pity,  would  revive. 
No  matter  if  they  have  no  grievance  against 
each  other.  The  purpose  is  something  nobler 
than  the  redress  of  wrongs;  it  is  the  elevation 
of  the  character. 

Such  compensaticms  as  war  offers  for  the 
lack  of  other  advantages,  or  as  an  addition  to 
them,  have  not  been  duly  considered.  They 
are  within  easy  reach  of  many  whose  hard  lot 
we  are  sometimes  weakly  disposed  to  commise- 
rate. H.  D. 

LAwaaHcx,  Kaji..  Febmsir  17. 180e. 


THE    FIRST    UNITARIAN   CHURCH   IN 
AMERICA. 

To  THB  EnrroR  of  Thx  Nation: 

Sir:  There  is,  of  course,  no  doubt  that  the 
church  at  Northumberland,  Pa.,  was  organised 
by  Dr.  Priestley  before  that  in  Philadelphia. 
But  your  correspondent,  **H.  D.  C,"  assumes 
the  point  at  issue,  namely,  whether  it  took  the 
Unitarian  name.  As  that  fact  does  not  appear 
on  the  mural  tablet  referred  to,  and  as  the 
church  records  do  not  exist  to  show  it,  it  is  by 
no  means  certain  that  the  name,  then  so  odious, 
was  adopted  by  the  Society. 

When  the  Philadelphia  church  was  founded, 
there  was  correspondence  over  this  vary  point 
between  its  ^nembers  and  sotne  of  the  Eastern 
churches  which  had  become  Unitarian  in  fact 
—or,  at  least,  with  the  most  notable  of  Ules^ 
King*s  Chapel  in  Boston;  and  the  rector  of 
the  latter  strongly  advised  the  PhilartslylilaBi 


Feb.  77,  1896] 


The  ITation, 


177 


againM  taklBf  the  UnltArlaD  iMune.  I  gWe 
this  on  Um  atitboritj  of  Dr.  FuroMt,  who  took 
mocb  prido  in  the  fact  that  the  advice  was  not 
heeded,  and  that  the  fonnden  of  his  ohnreh 
planted  themaelTes  openly  upon  the  unpopokur 
po»iUoD.  He  always  claimed  that  the  Phila- 
delphia church  was  thns  the  first  ^^organiM§d 
at  rnitarian  **  in  the  coantry. 

I  hare  heard  a  statement  that  a  company 
of  persons  in  New  York,  at  an  earlier  date, 
called  their  society  Unitarian,  but  1  have  not 
been  able  to  verify  it.  If  it  is  true,  the  move- 
ment probably  came  to  nothing. 

It  may  be  interesting  to  some  of  your  read- 
ers to  know  that,  at  the  approaching  centen- 
nial celebration  of  the  Philadelphia  church,  a 
bust  of  Priestley  will  be  placed  upon  the  noble 
monument  erected  to  him  there,  some  years 
ago,  by  the  Unitarians  of  America.       J.  M. 

PmLAi>BLnaA«  Fetonuur  SI.  IBM. 


"CARRY." 
To  THX  BDrroR  of  Ths  Natiok: 

Bnt:  In  a  recent  English  review  of  an  Ame- 
rican work,  the  critic  asked:  '*  What  can  be 
the  meaning  of  a  *  carry,'  which  is  certainly 
not  found  in  any  accepted  author?"  That  an 
Englishman  should  be  unfamiliar  with  a  word 
which  is  found  only  in  books  (whether  by  Bri- 
tish or  by  American  writers)  dealing  with  ex- 
{^orations  or  with  outdoor  life  in  America,  is 
not  surprising;  but  it  is  of  course  well  known 
among  us  that,  in  navigating  rivers  and 
streams  in  America,  obstructions  are  often 
encountered  which  render  it  necessary  to 
take  the  canoe  or  bateau  out  of  the  water 
and  '*  carry  "  roond  the  obstruction,  or  to  an- 
other stream  or  lake  near  by.  Several  terms 
have  been  employed  to  designate  the  place 
thus  carried  over,  but  chiefly  these  three: 
Carry,  earrying-plaoe^  and  poriag:  Of  these, 
the  second  has  been  in  use  sinoe  early  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  third  for  certainly 
a  century  and  a  half,  while  carry  seems  to 
have  originated  in  Maine  abouii  sixty  years 
ago.  Attention  was  first  called  to  the  term  by 
Lowell  in  the  AUantie  Monthly  tor  November, 
1860:  but  the  only  examples  which*  seem  to 
have  been  yet  adduced  are  from  AU  the  Year 
Round  (I860)  and  T.  W.  Higginson  (18S4)  in  the 
'Oxford  Dictionary';  from  J.  C.  AbboUaSOO), 
in  De  Vere*8  *  Americanisms*;  and  from  T.  O. 
Appleton  (1878)  in  the  *  Standard  Dictionary.* 
Those  which  follow  are  of  an  earlier  date: 

**  Having  determined  to  visit  Moosehead 
Lake,  before  proceeding  to  the  St.  John 
waters,  I  continued  up  the  west  branch  to  the 
lower  carry  into  that  lake.  .  .  .  The  upper 
carry  is  about  eight  miles  above  the  lower, 
and  between  them  are  rapids  and  falls."  1888, 
J.  T.  Hodge,  in  C.  T.  Jackson's  Second  Report 
on  ths  Qeology  of  the  Public  Landa  of  Masea^ 
ch%t$ette  aiui  Maine,  58,  54. 

**  This  portage  probably  followed  the  trail  of 
an  ancient  Indian  carry  round  these  falls." 
1848.  IL  D.  Thoreau,  Maine  Woods  (18M),  89. 

''The  end  of  the  Carry  was  reached  at  last 
.  .  .  The  birch,  it  se^ms,  was  strained  at  the 
Carry."  1858,  J.  R.  Lowell,  A  Moosehead 
Journal,  Prose  Works  (1890),  L,  80,  85. 

"The  fourth  morning  you  will  make  the 
carry  of  two  miles  to  Mud  Pond  (AUegaah 
Water)~and  a  very  wet  carry  it  is— and  reach 
Chamberlain  Lake  by  noon,  and  Heron  Lake, 
perhaps,  that  night,  after  a  couple  of  short 
carries  at  the  outlet  of  Chamberlain."  1868, 
H.  D.  Thoreau,  in  FamiUar  LeUers  (1894),  883. 

Since  1880  the  term  has  been  in  frequent  use, 
but,  so  far  as  the  writer  is  aware,  it  Is  confined 
to  New  Bogland  and  the  Adirondack  region* 
Albbbt  Matthkwb. 
^BosfTos,  f^bemrj  90,  lioe. 


"HCREO   GIRLS." 
To  THS  BDrroB  or  Ths  Nation  : 

Sir:  Tour  correspondent  **  F.  H."  inquires, 
**  Was  it  the  custom,  prior  to  the  War  of  Inde- 
pendence, to  speak  of  hired  women,  hired  boys^ 
Kad  hired  maids  or  girls,  as  well  as  of  hired 
menf*  What  may  have  been  the  custom  so 
long  ago  I  cannot  say,  but  in  eastern  Vermont 
and  the  contiguous  part  of  New  Hampshire,  so 
long  as  I  lived  there,  up  to  18M,  it  was  practi- 
cally  the  universal  usage  to  speak  of  young 
women  engaged  in  domestic  service  as  '*  hired 
girls."  We  read  about  servants  in  books,  but 
never  saw  them. 

In  most  oases  the  hired  girl  was  the  daugh- 
ter of  a  farmer  of  small  means.  She  often  took 
her  meals  with  the  family,  and  mingled  with 
them  on  terms  of  equality.  Thespecies  is  now 
pretty  much  extinct.  I  do  not  suppose  the 
custom  was  by  any  means  confined  to  that 
region.  It  is  my  impression  that  it  prevailed 
in  a  place  in  eastern  New  York  where  I  once 
spent  a  winter;  but  my  memory  is  not  definite 
on  that  point  W.  L.  Wobobstkr. 

▲STLUM  SVATlolf,  MASS.,  F^bruai7  24, 1890. 


Notes. 


D.  Applbton  &  Co.'s  immediate  announce- 
ments include  '  A  History  of  the  Warfare  of 
Science  with  Theology  in  Christendom,'  by 
Andrew  D.- White  ;  *Teaohing  the  Language 
Arts,'  by  B.  A.  Hinsdale;  *  Greenland  Ice- 
fields, and  Life  in  the  North  Atlantic,'  by 
Prof.  G.  Frederick  Wright  and  Warren  Up- 
ham  ;  *  Voice- Building  and  Tone-Placing,'  by 
H.  Holbrook  Chirtis,  M.D.;and  «The  Reds  of 
the  Midi,'  by  F^lix  Gras. 

A  series  of  handbooks  in  classical  arohsBology 
and  antiquities,  beginning  with  '  Greek  Sculp- 
ture,' by  Ernest  A.  Gardner;  an  annotated 
edition  of  Hood's  Poems  by  Canon  Ainger; 
*  Browning  and  the  Christian  Faith,'  by  Dr. 
Edward  Berdoe ;  *  The  Coming  Individualism,' 
by  A.  Bgmont  Hake ;  and  *  The  Pilgrim,  and 
Other  Poems,'  by  "Ellen  Burroughs"  (Miss 
Sophie  Jewett),  are  further  spring  announce- 
ments  by  Macmillan  &  (]k>. 

FrederidcWame  &  Co.  have  nearly  ready 
*The  Right  Hon.  Joseph  Chamberlain,'  by  S. 
H.  Jeyes,  editor  of  the  **  Public  Men  of  To- 
day" series,  and  *  Sport  in  Ashanti;  or,  Me- 
linda  the  Cabooeer,'  a  tale  of  the  Gold  Coast, 
^y  J.  A.  Skertchly. 

*  Studies  in  Historical  Method,'  by  Mary 
Sheldon  Barnes,  of  Leland  Stanford  Junior 
University,  is  in  the  press  of  D.  C.  Heath  & 
Co.,  Boston. 

Way  &  Williams  will  issue  *The  Lamp  of 
G(^d,'  a  sequence  of  forty-nine  sonnets  in  seven 
parts,  by  Miss  Florence  L.  &iow,  president  of 
the  Kansas  Academy  of  Language  and  Litera- 
ture; a  reprint,  worked  over,  of  William 
Sharp's  Portfolio  monograph,  *  Fair  Women ' ; 
and  a  new  Irish  novel,  *  The 'Wood  of  the 
Brambles,'  by  Frank  Mathew,  grand-nephew 
of  Father  Mathew,  the  **  Apostle  of  Tempe- 
rance." 

*  The  Story  of  Turkey  and  Armenia '  is  to  be 
published,  with  illustrations,  by  the  H.  Wood- 
ward Ca  of  Baltimore. 

Benslger  Bros.,  No.  88  Barclay  Street,  are 
the  American  agents  for  the  costly  folio  '  Vie 
de  Notre  Seigneur  J^sus-Christ,'  consisting  of 
806  oompositions  (aquarelles)  by  J.  J.  Tissot, 
baaed  on  the  four  evangels  (Tours:  Alfred 
Biame  ft  Fils).  The  artist's  work  represents 
the  labor  of  tan  years.    Baohof  the  first  twen- 


ty copies,  on  Japan  paper,  is  priced  at  $1,000; 
^00  will  secure  a  copy  on  vellum  paper. 

Roberts  Bros.,  Boston,  have  republished 
*  Cavalry  in  the  Waterloo  Campaign,'  by  Gen- 
eral Sir  Evelyn  Wood,  V.C.  This  little  book 
is  a  contribution  to  the  argument  in  favor  oi 
the  use  of  cavalry  even  in  the  changed  condi- 
tions  of  modem  warfare  brought  about  by  im. 
provements  in  infantry  arms.  The  cavalry  for 
which  he  argues  is  the  true  horseman,  armed 
with  sword  or  lance,  manoBUvred  in  an  open 
country,  and  depending  upon  the  weight  of  the 
shock,  charging  home  against  footmen.  Be- 
sides its  technical  interest,  the  book  is  a  lively 
sketch  of  the  Waterloo  campaign,  and  of  the 
previous  career  of  the  noted  cavalry  leaders  of 
the  diflTerent  nations  who  met  on  the  famous 
field. 

A  novel  work  has  just  made  its  appearance 
in  Germany  under  the  title  of  'FQrstliche 
Schriftsteller  dee  neunsehnten  Jahrhunderts,' 
by  Georg  Zimmermann.  Selections  from  the 
writings  of  thirty-six  royal  personages,  with  a 
biography  of  each,  are  presented.  The  book 
is  richly  illustrated  and  handsomely  bound. 
Emperor  William's  *Sang  an  Aegir'  is  the 
first  selection,  and  after  his  name  come  the 
others  in  alphabetical  order.  Among  those 
who  have  won  especial  renown  in  letters  may 
be  mentioned  Prince  George  of  Prussia,  Prin- 
cess Therese  of  Bavaria,  and  Duke  Elimar  of 
Oldenburg;  Alexander  III.  of  Russia,  too,  has 
made  a  very  promising  beginning. 

*Die  Geschichte  des  Erstlingswerkes'  (Ber- 
lin: Concordia  Verlag)  is  a  series  of  autobio- 
graphical essays  describing  the  circumstances 
attending  the  production  of  the  first  really  im- 
portant  work  of  several  of  the  leading  con- 
temporary writers  of  Germany.  These  essays 
have  been  coming  out  from  time  to  time  in 
Deutsche  Diehtung,  and  now  appear  in  book 
form,  edited  and  supplied  with  an  introduc- 
tion by  Karl  Emil  Fransos,  editor  of  that  pe- 
riodical. The  authors  here  repreeented  are 
Baumbach,  Dahn,  Ebers,  Ebner-Esohenbach, 
Eckstein,  Fontaoe,  Fransos,  Fulda,  Heyse, 
Hopfen,  Jensen,  Lingg,  Meyer,  Schubio,  Spiel- 
hagen,  Sudermann,  Voss,  Wichert,  and  Wolff. 
Each  essay  is  accompanied  by  a  portrait  of  the 
author  as  he  appeared  about  the  time  of  his 
first  important  production;  in  the  case  of 
Lingg,  Meyer,  Jensen,  and  Fransosi  however, 
one  of  a  later  period  had  to  be  used,  as  an  early 
one  was  not  to  be  had.  Similar  essays  are 
still  being  continued  in  Deutsche  Dichlwmg, 
and  they  will  probably  furnish  material  for  a 
future  volume. 

Moulin- Eckart's  *Bayem  imter  dem  Minia- 
terium  Montgelas,'  recently  published  in  Mu- 
nich, is  an  excellent  historical  work,  though 
hardly  of  world-wide  interest,  and  we  mention 
it  mo^ly  on  account  of  the  author's  statement 
that  he  was  obliged  to  make  his  reeearches  in 
Berlin  and  Paris,  because  in  the  Bavarian 
State  Archives  no  one  is  permitted  to  exam- 
ine any  politioal  document  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  As  Montgelas  died  in  1888,  the 
souroee.of  information  concerning  the  most 
important  part  of  his  life  were  rendered  inac- 
cessible by  this  illiberal  bureaucratic  regula- 
tion.  It  is  just  such  a  oteasure,  however,  as 
might  have  originated  with  the  narrow- 
minded  and  reactionary  Montgelas  himself. 

During  the  last  five  months  of  1805  some 
sixty  persons  were  condenmed  to  imprison- 
ment in  Germany  for  lese-majesty,  without 
counting  those  who  were  tried  for  the  same  of- 
fence and  acquitted.  Nearly  every  speech  of 
the  Emperor  is  followed  by  a  large  increase  of 
criminal  suits  instituted  for  the  protection  of 
his  royal  and  iipperial  dignity.    Thus,  his  da- 


178 


The   Nation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1600 


DUDciatioD  of  the  Socialists  as  a  '*  rabUe  un- 
worthy to  be  called  Germans,**  on  account  of 
their  attitude  towards  the  Sedan  festivities,  led 
to  numerous  prosecutions  in  Noyember,  twenty- 
six  of  which  resulted  in  the  condemnation  of 
the  accused.  The  courts  v  rest  the  letter  of  the 
law  to  secure  conviction,  as,  for  example,  when 
the  judge  admitted  that  in  Liebknechl*s  criti- 
cism of  certain  views  there  was  no  direct 
allusion  to  the  utterances  of  the  Emperor, 
but  added  that  some  persons  in  the  audience 
might  have  interpreted  his  words  as  referring 
to  his  Imperial  Majesty,  and  therefore  found 
him  guilty  and  sentenced  him  to  imprison- 
ment. Dr.  Fdrster,  a  man  of  excellent  cha- 
racter, and  editor  of  a  journal  devoted  to 
ethical  culture,  was  also  condemned  to  in- 
carceration in  a  fortress  for  asserting  that  the 
Socialists  are  not  all  a  wretched  rabble,  but 
thac  there  are  many  good  and  patriotic  men 
among  them,  who  act  with  the  Socialists  as  a 
protest  against  the  tyranny  of  the  police  in 
suppressing  free  discussion.  The  insult  to  Wil- 
liam II.  consisted  in  daring  to  doubt  his  infal- 
Ubility.  Prof .  DelbrQck  expressed  in  the  Octo- 
ber number  of  the  Preu99ich4  JahrMieher  the 
same  opinion,  but,  as  he  is  a  man  of  high  posi- 
tion and  considerable  influence,  the  Govern, 
ment  deemed  it  best  to  withdraw  the  indict- 
ment preferred  against  him 

No.  3  of  the  second  series  of  **  Rhode  Island 
Historical  Tracts'*  (Providence:  Sidney  8. 
Rider)  has  for  its  theme  '  A  Century  of  Lot£e- 
ries  in  Rhode  Island,  1744-1844,'  and  for  author 
John  H.  Stiness.  It  is  one  of  the  most  curious 
and  valuable  of  the  series,  being  a  chapter  in 
the  evolution  of  morals;  and,  as  all  classes, 
professions,  leamejl  and  religious  and  philan- 
thropic institutions  (along  with  many  purely 
secular  enterprises)*  were  implicated  as  benefi- 
ciaries or  chance-takers  in  the  lottery  till  it 
was  made  unlawful  and  therefore  suddenly  be- 
came *•  wrong**  or  "sinful,!*  the  story  well  re- 
pays readiog.  It  is  illustrated  by  a  great  num. 
ber  of  facsimiles  of  lottery  tickets;  and  the 
names  and  autograph  signatures  of  owners  and 
officers  among  the  first  families  in  Rhode 
Island  give  this  part  of  the  tract  a  high  genea- 
logical  interest. 

Mr.  A.  P.  C.  Griffln*s  'Bibliography  of  the 
Historical  Publications  issued  by  the  New 
England  States*  is  satisfactorily  minute  as  far 
•s  it  goes,  but  is  too  limited  in  its  scope.  The 
title  to  the  contrary,  the  republished  **  re- 
cords** of  each  State  only  are  included;  even 
the  original  issues  of  the  various  **  journals'* 
or  '*  votes  **  are  passed  over  as  if  they  did  not 
exist.  A  list  such  as  the  title  led  us  to  expect 
is  a  distinct  need.  The  careful  table  of  con- 
tents of  each  work  described  is  the  valuable 
part  of  the  present  work.  We  do  not  see  why 
Slade*8  *  Vermont  State  Papers*  and  the  *Ck>n- 
necticut  Military  Record  *  were  not  included, 
for  they  certainly  fall  within  the  narrow  class 
included  in  the  bibliography. 

The  eighth  report  of  Mr.  Robert  T.  Swan, 
Massachusetts  Commissioner  of  PuS>lic  Re- 
cords,  recurs  to  the  still  discreditable  condition 
of  these  records  in  the  State  at  large,  and  pro- 
poses the  establishment  of  a  public-record  of. 
flee,  after  the  pattern  of  the  English,  to  which 
all  the  records  to  a  fixed  date  shall  be  sent. 
On  the  subject  of  the  neglected  Proprietors* 
records,  he  speaks  of  the  confusion  caused  by 
the  names  of  plantations  (which  were  not  con- 
tinued as  the  town  name)  having  been  adopted 
for  other  towns,  and  prints  a  useful  list  of 
changes  from  the  original  designation,  in  two 
alphabets.  He  also  suggests  anew  an  act  to 
provide  for  the  custody  of  church  records  after 
a  society  has  ceased  to  hold  religious  meetings, 


which  was  reported  by  the  judiciary  commit- 
tee in  1894,  but  defeated,  and  urges  the  pass, 
age  of  a  bill  regulating  the  returning  and  re- 
cording of  births,  marriages,  and  deaths  now 
before  the  General  Court,  lir.  Swan  states 
incidentally  that  still-bom  children  are  re- 
corded  either  as  births,  deaths,  or  both,  **as 
the  clerk  considers  most  sensible." 

The  laborious  task  of  reducing  to  order  the 
chaos  of  stored  public  documents  at  Washing, 
too;  of  checking  wasteful  publications;  of  sup- 
plying  the  designated  depositories;  of  com- 
pleting oolleotions  by  exchange;  of  filling  cash 
orders;  of  cataloguing  current  documents  and 
of  working  backward  in  this  departmentt-is 
going  on  under  the  new  law  creating  a  Super- 
intendent of  Documents  with  headquarters  at 
the  Government  Printing-office.  The  progress 
made  is  evidenced  by  three  pamphlets:  the 
SupeHntendent*s  first  annual  report;  the  re- 
port of  Mr.  John  G.  Ames,  clerk  in  charge  of 
documents.  Interior  Department,  regarding 
the  receipt,  distribution,  and  sale  of  public 
documents  by  that  department  on  the  Govern- 
ment's behalf;  and  the  second  edition  of  Mr. 
Ames's  *  Check-list,*  enumerating  the  volumes 
which  constitute  the  set  of  Congressional  docu- 
ments from  the  Fifteenth  to  the  Fifty-third 
Congresses,  inclusive.  Mr.  Ames  has  had  the 
happy  thought  to  number  these  documents  con- 
secutively, thus  greatly  abbreviating  the  trou- 
ble of  describing  when  ordering.  Mr.  F.  A. 
Crasdall,  the  Superintendent  of  Documents, 
has  added  eome  valuable  features,  as,  lists  of 
exploratiotts  and  surveys,  of  Government  cata- 
logues and  indexes,  of  the  parts  and  plates  of 
the  Rebellion-Reoord  Atlas,  etc. 

On  Febmary  lOth  the  past  and  present  edi- 
tors of  the  Harvard  Lampoon  celebrated  the 
twentieth  anniversary  of  the  founding  of  that 
comic  journal.  The  event  seems  worthy  of  re- 
cord, not  only  because  the  Lampoon  was  the 
earliest  and  has  steadily  been  the  best  of  illus- 
trated  student  publications,  but  also  because  it 
is  older  t^ian  any  other  surviving  periodical  of 
the  kind  in  America.  It  preceded  Puck;  and 
Life  was,  in  a  way,  its  oflTshoot.  Of  the  origi- 
nators and  early  editors  of  the  Lampoon,  J. 
T.  Wheelwright,  Robert  Grant,  F.  J.  Stimson, 
and  E.  S.  Martin  have  long  been  well  known 
among  the  younger  school  of  American  wits ; 
and  a  survey  of  the  entire  list  of  editors  would 
show  the  names  of  other  men  who  have  al- 
ready won  distinction  in  letters  or  in  art. 

In  the  February  number  of  the  Oeographical 
Journal  the  Rev.  W.  Weston  describes  the  Ja- 
panese Alps,  a  most  attractive  region  on  the 
west  coast  of  the  main  island,  very  rarely  visit- 
ed by  travellers.  It  is  now  one  of  the  few 
places  in  the  empire  almost  uninfiuenoed  by 
modem  ideas,  and  tiie  account  of  the  moun- 
taineers* customs  and  superstitious  rites,  now 
fast  dying  out,  Is  therefore  peculiarly  interest- 
ing. Mr.  H.  S.  Cowper  gives  some  notes  on  a 
journey  in  the  hill  country  of  Tripoli,  remarka- 
ble for  the  numerous  PhcBnidan  and  Roman 
ruins  which  it  contains.  Both  of  these  papers 
have  rout^maps  and  illustrations.  The  con 
elusion  of  Captain  Vaughan*s  account  of  his 
travels  in  Persia  contains  a  description  of  the 
Daria-i.Nimak,  **asoUd  sheet  of  rock  salt  of 
varying,  but  in  places  doubtless  immense, 
thickness.  Its  area  we  estimated  at  440  square 
miles,  and  its  elevation  was  2,700  feet.** 

The  difference  between  English  and  Ameri 
can  ways  of  looking  at  the  same  subject  is 
strikingly  shown  in  two  arUcles  in  the  Boston 
Youth* i  Companion  on  *'  The  Bar  as  a  Profes- 
sion.** The  Lord  Chief  Justice,  Lord  Russell 
of  Elillowen,  describee  in  a  singularly  dear  and 
attractive  manner  the  qualities,  love  of  the 


profession,  industrious  patience,  common  s 
and  high  aims,  which  are  essential,  not  for  the 
winning  of  great  wealth,  of  which  **the  bar 
does  not  hold  out  promise^**  but  of  honorable 
success.  To  this  he  regards  "university  cul- 
ture as  almost  indispensable,**  closing  a  very 
stimulating  paper  with  a  noble  appeal  to  the 
young  lawyer  to  remember  **that  he  Is  en- 
gaged in  a  profession  which  may  well  engage 
the  noblest  faculties  of  heart  and  of  mind," 
and  that  there  are  higher  interests  than  those 
of  his  client  to  be  fought  for,  **  the  interests  of 
truth  and  of  honor."  The  main  point  of  the 
article  by  Judge  O.  W,  Holmes,  of  the  Supreme 
Judicial  Court  of  Massachusetts,  is  to  show 
that  for  a  **  fighting  success"  a  university  edu- 
cation is  not  essential— there  is  almost  a  hint 
that  it  may  be  an  impediment ;  but  that  if  a 
young  man  can  afford  **two  or  even  three" 
years  in  a  law  school  he  '*will  not  regret  a 
month  of  it  when  he  comes  to  practice."  There 
can  be  no  doubt  of  the  truth  of  this  assertion 
in  view  of  the  following  significant  figures: 
Of  the  287  lawyers  in  Congress  not  one- half 
have  been  through  college — 129  only  are  col- 
lege graduates;  50  have  spent  some  time  at  a 
college  or  a  professional  school;  108  have  re- 
ceived only  a  common-school  education. 

—It  becomes  evident  that  the  question  of  the 
hour  at  both  Oxford  and  Cambridge  is  the  ad- 
mission of  women  to  degrees.  At  Oxford  a 
memorial  in  favor  of  the  movement  Is  backed 
by  the  Vice  Chancellor,  the  president  of  Mag- 
dalen College,  and  one  of  the  two  proctors, 
and  has  been  largely  signed  by  resident  gradu- 
ates. Among  the  signers  are  the  masters  of 
Balliol  and  University  Colleges;  the  princi- 
pals of  Jesus  and  Brasenose  Colleges  and  of 
St.  Mary*s  Hall;  the  censor  of  non  collegiate 
students;  Bodley*s  Librarian;  the  keepers  of 
the  Ashmolean  and  University  Museums;  the 
Radcllffe  Librarian  and  Observer;  and  Profs. 
Dicey,  Legge,  Max  Mtiller,Pollock,Tork  POweO, 
Burden.Sanderson,  Poulton,  Wallace,  Qreen, 
and  Elliott.  At  (Cambridge  a  similar  memo- 
rial has  received  the  signatul-es  of  no  less  than 
2,200  members  of  the  Senate,  including  seventy 
professors,  readers,  and  university  lecturers 
and  more  than  one  hundred  M.A.'s  In  resi- 
dence. The  Cambridge  promoters  have  also 
circulated  the  memorial  among  **  persons  of 
distinction"  outside  the  university,  and  some 
of  those  who  have  signed  are  the  Right  Hon. 
Arthur  J.  Balfour,  Gerald  Balfour,  Chief  Se- 
cretary for  Ireland;  the  Bishops  of  Manchester, 
Sodor  and  Man,  Gloucester  and  Bristol,  Bar- 
row io  Furaess,  and  Argyll;  Sir  Walter  Be- 
sant,  Sir  Edward  Thornton,  Sir  f^bert  Ball; 
Mr.  Justice  Kennedy  and  Mr.  Justice  Barnes. 
The  opponents  of  the  measure  have  so  far  done 
nothing  except  to  protest  against  the  wording 
of  the  memorial,  which,  they  say,  assuoMS 
that  the  admission  of  women  is  a  foregone 
conclusion.  But  it  has  been  pointed  out  that 
the  wording  is  really  happy,  because,  taken 
together  with  the  number  and  the  character 
of  the  signers,  it  will  give  the  council  a  better 
idea  of  the  state  of  public  opinion  than  they 
could  otherwise  have  obtained.  Graduates  of 
Cambridge  in  the  opposition  are  reminded 
that,  during  the  fifteen  years  since  women 
were  first  admitted  by  that  university  to  its 
honor  examinations,  658  women  have  been 
classed  in  the  honor  lists,  securing  distinction 
in  such  varied  lines  of  study  as  mathematiGs, 
classics,  natural  and  moral  sciences,  theology, 
law,  history,  and  Oriental,  medisBval,  and  mo- 
dem languages. 

—Until  a  few  years  ago,  Mumiy's  'Haad* 
book  for  TraveUers  in  Japan*  (New  York: 


Feb.  27,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


179 


Dert)  as  written  bj  Satow  and  Ha  wet,  not  only 
was  by  far  the  best  work  of  its  kind,  but  was 
tolerably  up  to  date.  The  gradual  growth  of 
the  raflway  system,  by  changing  the  routes 
of  travel,  made  it,  however,  antiquated*  The 
pablisherr,  in  this  emergency,  were  so  wise— 
and  lucky—as  to  secure  the  services  of  Prof. 
Chamberlain  and  Mr.  W.  B.  Mason  for  the 
task  of  revising  it.  The  new  edition,  combin- 
ing the  labors  of  four  experts,  was  a  model 
book,  for  which  there  was  such  a  brisk  demand 
that  the  editors  felt  impelled  to  go  over  the 
ground  once  more  and  complete  what  was  left 
undone  before.  As  a  result  the  fourth  edition 
(ISM^  is  a  wprk  which  must  make  any  one  who 
visited  Japan  a  few  years  ago  sigh  that  he 
could  not  have  had  such  a  guide  in  hand  when 
he  was  there.  The  new  edition  has  about  sev. 
enty  pages  more  than  the  third,  with  fifteen 
new  routes,  in  which  the  whole  empire  is,  for 
the  first  time,  included.  The  modest  preface 
does  not  call  special  attention  to  all  the  im- 
provements, but  they  are  apparent  at  a  glance. 
This  is  especially  true  of  the  maps  and  plans, 
some  of  which  are  printed  on  the  thin  Japanese 
paper  which  ought  to  be  used  for  all  guide- 
books, to  reduce  bulk.  The  general  map  of  the 
empire  shows  that  the  main  railway  is  now 
completed  north  to  Aomori,  thus  maUng  Yeso 
more  accessible  than  heretofore.  Among  the 
new  plans  is  one  of  the  tombs  and  temples  of 
Nikko,  another  of  the  Matsushima  islands, 
while  a  third,  specially  valuable  one  gives  a 
binTs-eye  view  of  Tokyo,  colored,  showing  the 
canals,  bridges,  parks,  public  buildings,  hotels, 
etc— a  map  which  every  tourist  will  specially 
welcome  in  this  vast  and  most  confusing  city. 
Altogether  there  are  nine  new  maps  and  plans. 
The  guide  is  printed  in  Japan,  and  its  English 
origin  is  emphasized  by  a  new  introductory 
chapter  beginning  with  the  words  that  "the 
shortest  and  most  enjoyable  way  from  Europe 
to  Japan  is  by  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railway 
Line,**  of  which  a  seven-page  itinerary  is 
added. 

— *The  Mediterranean  Trip,'  by  Noah 
Brooks  (Scribners),  ii,  as  it  professes  to  be,  a 
"short  guide  to  the  principal  points  on  the 
shores  of  the  western  Mediterranean  and  the 
Levant.**  It  is  obviously  intended  for  tourists 
on  the  excursion  steamers  from  New  York, 
and  for  such  other  travellers  as  mean  to  visit 
several  places  without  remaining  long  in  any, 
and  are  too  laxy  to  spend  more  than  fifteen 
minutes  in  reading  up  about  each.  As  books 
of  its  sort  go,  it  Is  fairly  satisfactory,  for  it 
has  much  simple  information  succinctly  put. 
This  information  is  usually  correct,  but  on 
page  190  we  find  the  following  sentences: 
"  During  the  Crusades,  the  power  of  the  Byzan- 
tine empire  having  greatly  decayed,  the  tluxme 
was  occupied  by  a  Frank,  and  the  region  was 
overrun  by  Oenoeee,  Venetiaiis,  and  Flemings. 
After  a  half-centnry  of  great  turbulence,  the 
6e]  jukian  Turks,  who  had  gradually  developed 
their  power  in  Asia  Minor,  captured  the  city 
in  May,  1458,  when  Constantine  XL,  the  last 
of  the  emperors  of  the  East,  perished  in  the 
final  fight,  and  Mohammed  II.  (the  great  con- 
queror) established  in  Constantinople  the  seat 
of  OsmanU  power.  Most  of  the  important 
works  of  modem  Constantinople  date  from  the 
era  of  the  conqueror  and  his  immediate  suc- 
cessors—Mustapha  II.,  Bayezid  II.,  Boliman 
the  Magnificent,  and  Aohmet  I.**  It  is  hardly 
worth  pointing  out  that  "the  throne  was  oc 
cupied  by  a  Frank  "  (after  the  storming  of  the 
dty  by  the  French  and  Venetians)  in  1304,  and 
that  the  Greeks  reoovered  Constantinople  in 
1361,  which  Is  rathermore  than  half  A  csntnry  ' 


before  145S»  when  it  was  captured  by  Mobam- 
med  n..  Sultan  of  the  Ottoman  (not  the  Sel- 
jukian)  Turks.  Mustapha  II.  was  not  the  im- 
mediate successor  of  Mohaouned  II ,  but  reign- 
ed from  1(K)5-1703.  We  may  remark,  too,  that 
Jerusalem  was  taken  by  the  Crusaders  in  1099, 
which  is  hardly  the  middle  of  the  eleventh 
century  (pi  lt(^,  that  the  remark  about  the 
battle  of  Platsea  would  seem  to  suggest  that 
Aristides  oommanded  the  Persians  there  (p. 
142),  and  that  the  statements,  "The  kingdom 
of  Naples  was  separated  from  Sicily  by  Charles 
of  An  jou,  in  12?i,  and  the  city  became  the  capi- 
tal. The  kingdom  was  ruled  by  the  Spanish 
Bourbons,  with  occasional  stormy  intervals, 
until  the  unification  of  Italy  took  place,  in 
very  recent  years**  (p.  186),  are,  to  say  the 
least,  misleading. 

.  —The  recent  request  made  by  Harvard  Uni- 
versity to  the  municipality  of  Ravenna  for 
permission  to  make  a  photographic  reproduc- 
tion of  the  famous  manuscript  of  Aristophanes, 
recalls  a  little  history  which  was  published  by 
Mr.  W.  G.  Clark  more  than  twenty  years  ago. 
It  is  not  quite  so  romantic  as  the  story  of  the 
Sloaiticus,  but  it  affords  a  curious  illustration 
of  vagabond  fortunes  and  of  the  slender  chances 
by  which  such  treasures  are  preserved  for  us. 
The  handwriting  of  the  Ravenna  MS.  resem- 
bles  the  minuscule  of  the  Florentine  ^schylus 
and  Demosthenes.  Bekker  dates  it  as  of  the 
eleventh  century ;  but  other  excellent  experts 
refer  it  to  the  tenth.  It  is  quite  likely  that  it 
was  a  oopy  made  for  some  rich  monastery  un- 
der  the  patronage  of  the  later  Basilian  dynasty 
of  Constantinople,  at  a  time  when  classical 
learning  was  fashionable,  and  when  the  monas- 
teries were,  as  Finlay  says,  rather  like  clubs 
for  the  accommodation  of  younger  sons  of  noble 
families  than  the  lodging.plaoe  of  ascetics.  Such 
a  club  of  luxurious  bachelors  might  naturally 
interest  itself  in  the  comedies  of  Aristophanes. 
The  municipality  of  Ravenna  received  the 
manuscript  from  the  monastery  of  Clas«e, 
within  the  walls,  when  the  monastery  was  dis- 
solved  by  the  French  and  the  edifice  and  library 
were  made  over  to  the  city.  The  library  was 
founded,  probably  before  1000,  by  Cardioal 
Giulio  della  Rorere,  Archbishop  of  Rayenna. 
The  manuscript  of  Aristophanes  may  have  been 
acquired  by  a  certain  Padre  Canned,  who 
flourished  in  the  beginning  of  the  last  century, 
and  is  said  in  the  annals  of  the  Camaldolite 
order  to  have  enriched  the  library  "selectis  et 
copiosissimis  codicibus.**  The  exact  date  and 
manner  in  which  this  manuscript  was  added 
there  is  no  record  to  show;  but  there  is  a  tra- 
dition handed  down  by  the  librarians  that  it 
was  bought  for  a  very  small  sum  at  a  book- 
stall in  Rome. 

—How  came  so  precious  a  manuscript  to  be 
such  a  vagrant?  There  is  practically  no 
doubt  that  a  little  later  than  the  year  1500  it 
was  in  the  library  of  the  Duke  of  Urbino, 
Gnidobaldo  I.  It  was  not  made  use  of  by  Al- 
dus in  his  miUio  prineeps,  printed  in  1498. 
That  edition  does  not  contain  the  "  Lysis- 
trata**  or  the  "Thesmophoriszusas,**  both  of 
which  are  given  in  the  Ravenna  MS.;  nor 
does  it  appear  that  Aldus  bad  ever  heard  of 
the  latter  comedy.  But  in  1515  Bernard  Junta 
published  at  Florence  the  second  edition,  which 
contains  only  the  nine  Aldine  plays,  and  in 
the  preface  to  it  he  promised  the  other  two. 
This  promise  he  fulfilled  next  year  in  an 
edition  of  the  "  Lysistrata  **  and  the  "Thes- 
mophoriazusn,**  which  appeared  January  28, 
1510.  In  the  preface  he  mentions  that  he  has 
availed  himself  of  a  mannscript  from  the  li- 


brary of  Urbino^  "antiquitsimum  Aristopha- 
nis  exemplar.**  That  this  MS.  was  identical 
with  the  Ravenna  can  hardly  be  doubted  from 
Mr.  Clark*8  report,  who.  In  carefully  examin- 
ing the  Ravenna,  observed  faint  pencil  marks 
drawn  across  the  text  and  corresponding  with 
the  pagination  of  the  Juntine  edition.  These 
were  evidently  for  the  convenience  of  the 
printer.  The  manuscript,  once  borrowed,  was 
probably  never  restored  to  the  library  of  the 
Duke,  but  wandered  off  to  be  recaptured 
later  for  the  monastery  of  Classe.  The  reason 
of  such  oversight  is  essily  discovered.  On 
the  dOth  of  May  the  troops  of  Pope  Leo  in- 
vaded the  Duchy;  on  August  18  Lorenzo,  the 
Pope*s  nephew,  was  made  Duke  in  place' of  the 
deposed  Francesco  Maria.  In  the  midst  of 
these  changes  and  troubles  the  MS.  was 
probably  neither  reclaimed  nor  returned.  At 
any  rate  it  was  not  one  of  the  105  Greek  M88. 
which  were  in  the  library  of  Urbino  when  It 
was  transferred  to  the  Vatican  by  Alexander 
VII.  in  1658. 

— *  The  Journal  of  a  Spy  in  Paris  during  the 
Reign  of  Terror,  January- July,  1794^*  by  Raonl 
Hesdin  (Harpers),  presents  internal  evidence  of 
it«  authenticity,  but  the  editor  has  omitted  to 
state  in  his  preface  how  he  came  into  posses- 
sion of  the  manuscript,  or  where  the  manu- 
script is  preserved.  It  is  possible  for  an  expert 
in  the  history  of  the  French  Revolution  to 
make  out  a  case  for  the  non-authenticity  of 
the  Journal  on  the  strength  of  a  few  passages 
here  and  there,  and  the  editor  oould  blame  no 
critic  for  doing  this,  since  he  has  deliberately 
withheld  his  own  name  and  all  information 
about  the  manuscript.  It  would  take,  how- 
ever, too  much  space  here  to  balance  the  pros 
and  cons.  If  the  Journal  proves  to  be  a  super- 
cherie  litUrairet  It  has  certainly  been  made  up 
with  considerable  skill,  and  the  autlior  de- 
serves to  be  complimented  for  his  ingenuity. 
Apart  from  its  suspected  origin,  it  contains  no 
information  of  importance  for  students  of  the 
French  Revolution.  No  new  light  is  thrown 
upon  the  characters  of  the  members  of  the 
great  Committee  of  Public  Safety  or  upon 
the  methods  employed  in  the  government  of 
France  during  the  Terror.  The  condition  of 
things  in  Paris,  however,  is  refiected  with  con- 
siderable fidelity,  and  the  scarcity  of  food  in 
particular  ia  well  illustrated.  The  editor's 
notes  show  a  competent  knowledge  of  recent 
books  on  the  French  Revolution,  but  he  is 
rather  hard  on  Brissot,  whom  he  terms  a  prig, 
in  a  note  on  page  29,  and  there  is  no  excuse  for 
his  bringing  into  the  same  note  an  allusion  to 
the  late  Prof.  Freeman's  famous  "  Perish  In- 
dia** remark,  which  has  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  the  subject,  and  which  Freeman  to  the 
last  day  of  his  life  always  avowed  had  been 
misinterpreted. 

— Perhaps  the  most  curious  manifestation  of 
the  current  Napoleon  erase  is  the  publication 
of  *  A  Metrical  History  of  the  Life  and  Times 
of  Napoleon  Bonaparte,*  by  William  J.  HUlis 
(G.  P.  Putnam*s  Sonf).  The  compiler  is  an  en- 
thusiastic but  badly  informed  admirer  of  Na- 
poleon and  all  his  works,  and  his  admiration 
has  led  him  to  collect  as  much  verse  as  possi- 
ble, good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  relating  to 
events  in  the  life  and  career  of  his  chosen  hero. 
A  perutal  of  the  balderdash  which  Mr.  Hillis 
has  collected  together  is  sufficient  proof  that 
the  most  dramatic  subjects  do  not  necessarily 
produce  dramatic  poetry.  There  are,  of 
course,  in  this  collection  a  few  famous  poems, 
such  as  "The  Burial  of  Sir  John  Moore,** 
Campbeirs  "  BatUe  of  Hohenlindcn,**  Byroa*a 


180 


Tlie    I^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1600 


BtBDzas  OB  Waterloo  from  "Childe  Harold/' 
mixed  with  trantlatioiis  from  B^raoger,  Victor 
Hugo,  KOroer,  and  Amdt;  but  the  vast  majori- 
ty of  the  80-caned  poems  were  not  worth  draw- 
ing from  obsqurity,  and  it  is  depreMlng  even 
to  glance  at  the  feeble  prodaotions  of  Sonthey, 
Croly,  Huddeeford,  and  the  irrepreeslble  **Mr. 
Anon.'*  It  is  curions  to  note  that  the  one  poem 
which  of  all  poems  best  represents  the  feelings 
of  the  veterans  of  the  "  Grande  Arm6e  "  for  the 
general  who  had  so  often  led  them  to  victory, 
Heine's  **Two  Grenadiers,"  is  omitted,  and 
that  Thackeray's  "Chronicle  of  the  Drum" 
finds  no  place  in  Mr.  Hillfs's  anthology.  Of 
the  editor's  introductory  remarks  prefixed  to 
the  different  poems,  it  is  only  necessary  to  say 
that  for  the  earlier  periods  dealing  with  the 
French  Revolution  they  exhibit  a  stupendous 
ignorance  of  the  subject,  and  that  for  the  later 
period  they  are  marked  by  an  ill-informed 
hero-worship  which  is  rather  amusing  and 
wholly  ridiculous. 


LONGMANS'   GAZETTEER. 

Longmam^  Oazette^r  of  the  World,  Edited 
by  George  G.  Chiiholm.  London  and  New 
York:  Longmans,  dreen  &  Ca  1805. 
Thkrx  is  no  department  of  knowledge  the  pre- 
sentation of  which  becomes  more  rapidly  an- 
tiquated than  that  of  geography,  and  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  new  and  comprehensive  cydo- 
psBdia  of  geography,  containing  the  latest  in- 
formation,  must  at  all  times  be  regarded  as  a 
subject  of  gratulation.  Such  a  work  we  have 
before  us  in  'Longmans'  Gasetteer  of  the 
World.'  It  forms  a  ponderous  volume  of 
1,796  pages,  containing  on  an  average  about 
57  titles,  so  that  the  total  number  of  no> 
tices  is  about  100,000,  or  about  three-fourths 
as  many  as  in  *  Lippincott's  Gazetteer.'  Mak- 
ers of  cyclopaDdias  depend  so  largely  upon 
what  their  predecessors  in  the  same  field 
have  wrought  that  the  structure  is  generally 
weighted  down  with  a  prodigious  amount 
of  dead  matter  carried  to  meet  imaginary 
reqmrements.  Every  cydopeedia  is  defective 
for  want  of  space,  and  yet  most  cyclopsB- 
dias  are  senselessly  prodigal  with  the  space 
at  their  command.  No  end  of  worthless  in- 
formation i:i  heaped  up  about  insignificant 
places  and  administrative  subdivisions  in  ac- 
cordance with  a  scheme  dictated  by  custom 
instead  of  by  intelligent  needs.  *  Longmans' 
Gazetteer  of  the  World,'  on  the  whole,  is 
constructed  on  broad  and  independent  lines 
and  on  a  high  plane  of  scientific  treatment  It 
is  conspicuous  for  its  vigorous  presentation  of 
topics  and  for  the  freshness  of  its  information, 
as  well  as  for  its  enlightened  emancipation 
from  traditional  methods,  as  manifested  es- 
pecially in  the  exclusion  of  that  mass  of  in- 
significant details  to  which  we  have  referred. 
A  great  deal  of  trained  scholarship  has  been 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  work,  and  a  wise 
economy  of  space  has  made  it  possible  to  deal 
generously  even  with  the  less  important  sub- 
jects.  We  need  only  point  to  the  full  descrip- 
tions of  the  governmental  divisions  of  Russia 
and  the  Prussian  provinces.  Unfortunately, 
the  many  shortcomings  which  obtrude  them 
selves  even  upon  a  not  hypercritical  eye  show 
that  much  of  the  matter  has  been  assigned  to 
incompetent  hands,  and  that  the  individual 
topics  have  not  been  subjected  to  that  rigid 
editorial  scrutiny  without  which  every  cyclo- 
peedia  is  bound  to  be  faulty. 

A  high  standard  of  execution  is  by  no  means 
apparent  in  many  even  of  the  most  important 
articles.    Thus,  the  masterly  delineation  of 


the  physical  contours  of  France  is  in  strange 
contrast  with  the  abaenoe  of  orographic  details 
presented  by  the  article  on  Italy,  or  the  dry 
enumeration  of  the  geographical  features  of 
the  German  Empire.  The  fine  lines  which 
mark  the  description  of  the  Carpathians  are 
absent  in  that  of  the  Alps,  wl^Me  picturesque 
and  physiographic  aspects  (lakes,  glaciers,  etc.) 
are  sadly  neglected,  although  the  article  is  a 
scholarly  presentation  in  other  respects.  Nor 
is  the  description  of  the  Nile  as  full  as  it  should 
be  even  within  the  limited  scope  of  such  a 
work.  There  is  a  lack  of  consistency  with  re- 
gard to  the  range  of  the  topics  discussed  under 
similar  heads.  Thus,  the  subject  of  emigra- 
tion is  treated  under  Italy  and  ignored  under 
Oerman  Empire.  The  former  article  has  a 
considerable  section  devoted  to  education, 
while  in  the  latter  the  author  has  not  found 
space  for  an  enumeration  of  the  universities. 
Our  sense  of  proportion  is  not  unfrequently 
shocked,  as,  for  instance,  by  the  inordinate 
amount  of  space  in  the  description  of  Italy 
taken  up  with  the  subject  of  malaria. 

-The  volume  bears  throughout  the  appear* 
ance  of  being  up  to  date;  the  character  of  the 
articles,  the  statistical  matter,  and  the  frequent 
references  to  geographical  magazines  showing 
that  recourse  has  been  had  to  the  latest  sources 
of  information.  Especial  attention  has  been 
bestowed  in  many  cases  upon  parts  of  the 
globe  respecting  which  our  knowledge  has 
been  recently  enlarged,  or  which  have  become 
prominent  in  our  day  in  connection  with  the 
colonial  policy  of  European  states,  as  may  be 
seen  by  turning  to  such  titles  as  Pamir$, 
TongkinQt  and  South  African  Republic,  Geolo^ 
gy  claims  a  share  which  has  not  been  accord- 
ed to  it  in'  similar  publications,  and  indeed  it 
is  in  places  perhaps  too  prominent  at  the  ex- 
pense of  more  pragmatic  features.  The  natural 
resources  and  industries  of  the  various  coun- 
tries are  minutely  discussed,  and  foreign  com- 
merce receives  special  attention,  the  salient 
facta  being  given  without  recourse  to  formal 
statistical  tables.  A  most  attractive  feature 
of  this  gazetteer  is  the  amount  of  precise  di- 
matological  information  which  it  affords,  con- 
ceming  not  only  regions,  but  also  individual 
dties.  In  the  case  of  important  towns  as  well 
as  of  countries  the  statistics  of  population  at 
various  censuses  are  introduced.  Thus,  we 
are  informed  what  the  population  of  Frank- 
fort-on-the-Main  was  in  1817,  1871, 1880,  and 
1800;  that  of  Vienna  in  1 754, 1820. 1840, 1880,  and 
1890;  of  Berlin  in  1W8,  1688,  1788,  1850,  1870, 
1880,  and  1890;  of  Boston  in  1790,  1820,  1850, 
1870,  and  1890;  and  of  Paris  according  to  twelve 
enumerations  or  estimates  reaching  back  to 
1292. 

In  its  descriptions  of  cities  the  work  before 
us  is  far  from  satisfactory.  The  notice  of 
Berlin,  for  example,  is  beneath  criticism.  Flo- 
rence is  ruddy  treated  by  the  side  of  Venice. 
We  cannot  approve  of  the  omission,  in  the 
article  on  Philadelphia,  of  the  national  mint 
and  Independence  Hall.  The  statement  that 
Philadelphia  has  a  greater  area  than  any  other 
city  in  America  is  erroneous  and  is  contradict- 
ed under  Chicago.  The  city  is  not  situated  108 
miles  from  the  mouth  of  the  Delaware,  geo 
graphers  not  having  agreed  to  regard  Dda- 
ware  Bay  as  part  of  the  course  of  that  river. 
It  is  ridiculous  to  assert  that  in  1890  Philadel 
phia  ranked  after  Baltimore  in  point  of  popu 
lation,  after  both  Baltimore  and  New  Orleans 
in  1840,  and  after  Boston  in  1850,  without  the 
qualifying  statement  that  at  each  of  these  cen- 
sus  enumerations  the  actual  population,  in- 
cluding those  who  resided  without  the  limits 
of  the  munidpality  as  then  constituted,  but 


within  the  present  limits,  far  exceeded  that  of 
any  dty  (induding  suburbs)  in  the  Union  ex- 
cept New  'York.  In  the  artide  on  Paris  the 
latitude  and  longitude  have  been  overlooked, 
and  there  is  no  mention  of  the  famous  observa- 
tory. The  latitude  and  longitude  of  Amster- 
dam are  likewise  omitted.  In  the  description 
of  Frankfort-on-the-Main  the  new  railway  sta- 
tion, the  largest  in  the  world,  is  ignored. 

In  a  gazetteer,  every  topic  should  as  far  as 
possible  be  treated  individually  under  its  own 
head.  The  substitution  of  cross- references  to 
general  artides  for  separate  notices,  if  too 
fredy  indulged  in,  is  sure'to  lead  to  serious  in- 
adequacies and  omissions.  This  fault  is  con- 
spicuous in  the  work  before  us.  Thus  Matter- 
horn  and  Jungfrau  are  referred  to  Alpe,  In 
which  article  the  reader  finds  only  a  mere 
mention  of  these  peaks.  Again,  the  plan  of 
this  gazetteer  embraces  the  description  of  peo- 
ples as  well  as  of  places,  but  there  appear  to  be 
many  serious  omissions  in  this  department. 
Thus  while  we  find  Slovaks,  Slovenes,  Wendv, 
Bashkirs,  Ostyaks,  etc.,  we  fail  to  discover 
Czechs,  Wallachs,  Letts,  Livs,  Cumans,  or 
Tekke-Turkomans.  A  valuable  feature  might, 
in  our  judgment,  have  been  added  to  this  vol- 
ume by  the  insertion  (as  separate  titles)  of  the 
Latin  names,  mediaeval  as  well  as  dasdcal,  of 
modem  towns,  with  a  reference  or  explana- 
tion, such  names  being  frequently  encountered 
on  title-pages,  documents,  medals,  and  coins. 
The  laudable  example  set  in  this  respect  by  Gui- 
bert's  *  Dictionnaire  G^ograpbiqne  *  about  half 
a  century  ago  has  been  ignored  by  the  English 
and  American  gazetteers  and  cyclopeedias. 

In  the  field  of  history  (a  feature  which,  we 
allow,  may  be  regarded  as  a  vi'ry  minor  one  in 
a  gazetteer)  the  volume  before  us  is  very  de- 
fective and  untrustworthy.  Under  Marathon 
we  read  of  the  victory  of  Miltiades  over  the 
army  of  "  Xerxes."  The  massacre  of  the  Bri- 
tish at  Khurd- Kabul  did  not  take  place  in 
1841,  but  in  January,  1842,  and  they  were  not 
retreating  from  Jalalabad  to  Kabul,  but  the 
reverse.  Calais  was  not  recovered  from  the 
French  in  1557,  but  in  1558.  Under  Plaseey 
there  is  no  allusion  to  Clive*8  victory  other 
than  the  statement  that  the  place  is  a  **  battle- 
field" Under  WahlHatt  we  find  a  singularly 
lame  iaention  of  the  battle  which  arrested  the 
tide  of  Mongol  invasion  in  Europe,  and  Szi- 
getv&r  figures  without  the  Leonidasof  Hun- 
gary. Attila  and  his  Huns  should  still  receive 
a  mention  under  Chdhne-sur  Mame  even  if 
modem  scholarship  is  disposed  to  doubt  whe- 
ther the  great  battle  was  foiigbt  in  the  inmie- 
diate  vicinity.  The  ''historical  notes"  with 
which  the  articles  on  the  principal  countries 
dose  are  often  as  full  as  the  generous  lines  on 
which  the  work  is  planned  would  appear  to 
demand.  In  the  case  of  Turkey  the  historical 
sketch  is  strangely  inadequate.  In  the  survey 
of  the  territorial  development  of  France  no 
mention  is  made  of  the  acquisition  of  Provence 
in  1481.  The  history  of  Courland  and  Livonia  is 
ignored,  although  these  interesting  comers  of 
Europe  deserve  to  have  some  light  tJirown  up- 
on their  past  even  in  the  prosaic  pages  of  a 
gazetteer.  The  few  words  given  under  Sieiiy 
and  Naples  on  the  subject  will  not  satisfy  the 
reader  who  asks  to  be  enlightened  as  to  the 
precise  meaning  and  the  origin  of  the  designa- 
tion "  Two  Sicilies."  The  writer  of  the  notice 
Calabrie  forgets  to  state  that  the  Calabria  of 
the  Romans  designated  the  heel  and  not  the 
toe  of  Italy. 

Special  prominence  has  been  given  in  this 
volume  to  the  United  States,  the  criterion  of 
indusion  adopted  being  such  that  the  reader  la 
enabled  to  locate  all  but  the  very 


Feb.  27,  1896] 


Tlie   N'ation. 


181 


plsoet.  Then  it  a  man  of  fodk  eDtries  as 
Bridgtr'9  i\ijt,  Bridg^r  BoWii,  D0ath  ValleVf 
San  F§i^  Sink,  Man^fUld,  Marey,  Twin 
Lak€t^  TyndaU  Monntmn^  and  Erie  Canai, 
The  Amarloaii  portion  would,  however,  hare 
borne  a  much  more  careful  handling  than  has 
been  glT«i  it,  as  may  be  seen  by  an  inspection 
of  such  notices  as  Hudson  (the  name  Highlands 
not  mentioned  in  speaking  of  the  scenery), 
I\Uimide»  Oocifction  raguelj  defined),  Adiron- 
daekM  (the  lacustrine  feature  almost  ignored), 
OaMiUs  (no  allusion  to  the  Cloves),  Oerman- 
town  and  DorchesUr  (entirely  inadequate), 
Go«snior*s  Island  (described  as  a  **  fortified 
port,  U.  8.,  in  New  York  Harbour"),  BaltC 
mors  (no  mention  of  the  archbishopric),  CTiSfo^ 
psaks  Bay  (no  idea  given  of  its  length),  and 
Laks  Superior  (only  13  lines). 

It  is  unfortunate  that  the  pages  of  a  work 
so  well  conceived  as  the  one  under  review  and 
containing  such  a  wealth  of  excellent  matter 
should  be  marred  by  an  unpcurdonable  num- 
ber of  blemishes  of  sU  kinds,  including  the 
most  inexcusable  misprints.  We  have  space 
to  point  out  only  a  few.  By  a  typographical 
error  the  latitude  of  Philadelphia  is  given  as 
dO  degrees  in  place  of  80.  WilUamstown  is 
stated  to  bie  forty^five  miles  from  the  north- 
west comer  of  Massachusetts  instead  of  four 
miles.  Lake  (George  is  entered  as  Qeorgs  Lake 
without  a  comma.  The  central  plain  of  Chile 
is  stated,  through  an  obvious  misprint,  to 
have  a  mean  width  of  806  miles.  Under  the 
bead  of  Amtriea  we  read  that  Lake  Superior 
is  the  largest  body  of  fresh  water  on  the 
globe,  with  an  area  of  81,200  miles,  a  state- 
ment which  is  contradicted  under  Victoria 
NyoMta  (82;  167  miles),  where,  however,  the  area 
of  the  islands  is  perhaps  included.  The  location 
of  Lnsatia  is  falsely  described  (**&"*  standing 
for  '*£.,**  and  the  Brandenburg  portion  being 
ignored).  Under  the  head  of  Bermuda  we 
find  *'  Cape  Hatteras,  in  8.  Carolina."  In  the 
account  of  the  metric  system  in  the  article 
France  by  a  curious  slip  (the  non-correction 
of  which  in  proof  is  unpardonable)  the  are 
is  stated  to  be  equivalent  to  one  square  metre 
instead  d  100  square  metres.  In  the  enumera- 
tion of  the  French  forts  BriauQon  (department 
of  Hautea-Alpes)  is  included  among  those  in 
the  northeastern  part  of  the  country.  In  one 
part  of  the  article  Rhine  it  is  stated  that 
Mains  is  at  the  head  of  steam  navigation,  and 
in  another  part  that  steamboats  ascend  as  far 
as  Mannheim.  The  information  regarding 
glaciers  in  the  article  Alps  is  misleading  in  the 
absence  of  any  statement  regarding  the  Grin- 
delwald,  which  descends  much  lower  than  the 
Aletsdi.  The  Mississippi  does  not  transport 
8,<S7,20Q,000  tons  of  sedimentary  matter  year- 
ly to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  but  only  one-tenth 
of  that  amount  (the  estimated  volume  of  the 
deposit,  which  is  correctly  stated,  being  erro- 
neously converted  into  tons).  Monaco  figures 
without  Monte  Carlo,  Brie  without  ito  cheese, 
and  Dauphin^  without  its  English  name.  The 
cross-reference  Blue  Mountains  is  not  justi- 
fied. The  reader  is  referred  from  Cheronea 
to  Lebadeia  and  from  Lebadeia  to  Levadeia, 
but  under  Levadeia  not  a  word  Is  said  about 
Cheronea.  We  search  in  vain  for  the  Mer  de 
Olaoe,  and  for  Moabit,  one  of  Berlin*s  well- 
known  suburbs. 

In  the  matter  of  orthography  we  note  a 
marked  deviation  from  ordinary  usage  in  the 
substitution  oi  eh  tor  ieh  in  Russian  naoMs. 
This  may  be  well,  but  it  is  a  mistake  to  have 
omitted  cross  references  under  Teh,  There 
should  also  have  been  references  under  Yek  to 
Russian  names  entered  twder  Ek,  The  editor 
has  adopted  several  new  characters  into  the  al- 


phabet in  the  spelling  of  names  belonging  to  lan- 
guages not  using  the  Roman  alphabet.  The 
Spanish  1i  is  introduced  in  such  Russian  names 
as  Kazan  and  Ryazafi,  and  5  and  fi  are  em- 
ployed in  the  transliteration  of  Oriental  names. 
It  is  a  pity  that  a  modified  I  has  not  been  pro- 
vided to  meet  such  cases  as  are  presented  in 
Russian  names  ending  in  peH.  The  editing  has 
been  extremely  careless  in  the  matter  of  French 
and  Spanish  accents,  the  most  telling  example 
being  afforded  by  the  French  names  beginning 
with  accented  E^  some  of  which  are  printed 
with  the  accent  and  some  without.  This  is  not 
a  pronouncing  gazetteer,  although  oocasionslly 
the  pronunciation  is  indicated  where  it  is  strik- 
ingly  at  variance  with  the  orthography.  We 
cannot  find  fault  with  the  publishers  for  not 
having  attempted  what  is  a  practically  impos- 
sible task,  in  spite  of  the  very  commendable 
measure  of  success  achieved  in  this  direction 
by  *  Lippincott^s  Pronouncing  Gasetteer.' 

With  all  its  shortcomings  *  Longmans*  Ga- 
setteer  of  the  World,'  as  a  treasury  of  geo- 
graphical information,  derived  from  the  latest 
sources— information  much  of  which  is  not 
easily  accessible— must  be  regarded  as  a  valua- 
ble addition  to  encydopSBdic  literature,  and 
deserves  a  place  on  the  shelves  of  every  library. 


RECENT  FICTION. 

Dorothy^  and  Other  Italian  Stories,  By  Con- 
stance Fenimore  Woolson.    Harper  &  Bros. 

The  Life  of  JVaitey,  and  Other  Tales,  By  8a. 
rah  Ome  Jewett.    Houghton,  MiflUn  &  Co. 

The  Cup  of  Trembling^  and  Other  Stories,  By 
Mary  Uallock  Foote.  Houghton,  Mifliln  & 
Co. 

The  Mystery  of  Witch-Faoe  Mountain,  and 
Other  Stories.  By  Charles  Egbert  Crad- 
dock.    Houghton,  Mifliln  &  Co. 

Red  Men  and  WhiU,  By  Owen  Wister.  Har- 
per &  Bros. 

Clarence.  By  Bret  Harte.  Houghton,  Mifflin 
&Co. 

Amos  Judd.  By  J.  A.  MitcheU  (Editor  of 
Life),    Charles  Soribner's  Sons. 

The  Oypsy  Christ,  and  Other  Tales,  By  Wil- 
liam Sharp.  Chicago:  Stone  &  Kimball. 

Black  Spirits  and  WhiU:  A  Book  of  Ghost 
Stories.  By  Ralph  Adams  Cram.  Chicago: 
Stone  &  Kimball. 

Lovers'  Saint  Ruth*s,  and  Three  Other  Ttdes, 
By  Louise  Imogen  Guiney.  Boston:  (]k>pe- 
land&  Day. 

His  Father's  Son,  By  Brander  Matthews. 
Harper  &  Bros. 

The  Days  of  Autd  Lang  Syne,  By  Ian  Mao- 
laren.    Dodd,  Mead  &  Co. 

The  King  of  Andaman,  a  Saviour  of  Society, 
By  J.  Maclaren  Cobban.  D.  Appleton  & 
Co. 

A  Monk  of  Fife :  A  Romance  of  the  Days  of 
Jeanne  d*Arc.  By  Andrew  Lang.  Long- 
mans, Green  &  Co. 

The  Wattef's  Mou\  By  Bram  Stoker.  D.  Ap- 
pleton &  Co. 

A  COMPUU8OK  between  a  number  of  our  cur- 
rent short  tales  and.  novels  shows  that  the 
great  stream  of  fiction  has  been  cleft  in  two, 
and  that  the  branches  are  as  sharply  defined 
and  essentially  diiferent  as  are  thefabliaua!  of 
the  Bfiddle  Ages  and  the  Romances  of  Chival- 
ry. While  the  novelists  are  rivalling  the  de- 
nunciatory prophets,  running  them  dose  in 
gloom  if  not  in  power,  the  story-tellers  culti- 
vate a  gracious  intention  to  entertain,  and  an 


amiable  desire  to  give  pleasure  rather  th^n 
pain.  The  novel  has  become  a  criticism  (not 
often  illuminative)  of  the  vexed  and  unhappy 
problems  of  life,  but  the  story  remains  a  nar- 
ration  of  incidents  not  limited  to  the  unplea- 
sant  or  offensive;  an  imaginative  transcription 
of  bits  of  life  not  necessarily  saturated  with 
woe;  and  an  illustration  of  sentiment  and 
passions  not  exclusively  hopeless  or  vicious. 
The  novelists  have  generally  discarded  the  im- 
aginative and  finely  ideal,  believing  such  quali- 
ties to  be  frivolous  and  unholy;  but  the  story- 
tellers fiaunt  these  ancient  and  discredited  ban- 
ners of  their  calling,  and  may  come  to  be  con- 
sidered as  the  best  poets  of  our  generation. 
As  craftsmen  they  are  far  m<»^  skilful  than 
their  serious  and  discursive  brethren.  Ap- 
pearing to  know  what  they  want  to  do,  they 
make  steady  way  to  their  foreseen  conclusion, 
and  convey  a  clear  impression  of  their  mean- 
log.  They  have,  as  a  rule,  grasped  the  prin- 
ciples of  concentration  and  economy  of  atten- 
tion, and  many  show  an  admirable  talent  for 
observing  the  characteristic  and*  for  inventing 
or  adopting  the  phrase  that  reveals  a  chapter. 

Among  those  who  have  brought  their  agree- 
able art  nearly  to  perfection  are  several 
women,  who  should  be  highly  prised  as  com- 
pensation  for  the  preponderance  of  their  sex 
in  the  ranks  of  the  amazing  novelists.  Their 
work,  with  the  exception  perhaps  of  Miss 
Murfree's,  is  distinctively  feminine,  not  in  the 
way  of  being  sentimental,  or  didactic,  or 
squeamish,  but  for  its  decency,  grace,  and  re- 
finement. If  they  have  ever  had  any  tempta- 
tion to  dally  with  impurities  for  the  sake  of 
notoriety,  they  have  resisted  It,  perceiving 
that  there  are  certain  subjects  which,  if  a 
yroman  sinks  to,  she  sinks  with.  In  the  whole 
of  Miss  Woolson*s  work,  for  instance,  though 
there  Is  no  shirking  of  physical  passion  and 
the  dire  complications  for  which  it  may  be  re- 
sponsible, there  is  not  a  hint  of  coarse  sensu- 
ality or  a  touch  of  grossnesB.  On  the  other 
hand,  her  lovers  do  not  become  phantasma 
through  attenuation  of  the  force  of  physical 
attraction.  In  *  Dorothy,'  the  second  volume 
of  Italian  tales  and  her  last  work,  most  of  her 
lovers  are  fervent  and  persistent  rather  than 
fiery.  The  scene  of  the  love-making  is  usually 
the  terraced  garden  of  an  Italian  villa  tempo- 
rarily occupied  by  a  wealthy  American  widow 
and  her  charming  daughter  or  niece.  The 
lover  may  belong  to  any  nation,  but  he  is  al- 
ways, as  it  were,  on  the  wing:  at  the  slightest 
tiif  with  his  adored  one  he  takes  the  first  ex- 
press, and,  prodigal  of  railway  fares,  exhausts 
his  ire  in  an  inconsequent  whirl  over  Europe. 
These  stories,  even  as  the  life  from  which  they 
are  drawn,  are  more  pleasing  than  exciting, 
and  depend  for  charm  on  the  congeniality  be- 
tween scene  and  temperament.  They  express 
ripe  social  experience  and  an  eye  keen  to  ob- 
serve significant  trifies,  but  have  neither  the 
vigor  nor  depth  of.  the  author's  tales  of  Ameri- 
cans seen  in  a  land  where  they  do  not  con- 
spicuously dawdle  about  terraces,  jesting  with 
pretty  women  and  drinking  copiously  of  tea. 

Miss  Jewett  is  content,  and  most  heartily 
contents  us,  with  the  American  at  home,  al- 
most  restricted  to  the  New  Englander  working 
his  unproductive  farm,  fishing  on  the  more  re- 
sponsive sea,  and  gossiping  up  and  down  tba 
village  streets.  The  incidents  in  the  volume 
entitled  'The  Life  of  Nancy'  are  simple  al- 
most to  bareness,  but  they  are  exalted  by  a 
sympathetic  revelation  of  human  nature  and 
by  an  exquisite  literary  representation.  The 
fussy  old  maids,  Idnd  or  cross,  the  unconscious- 
ly humorous  and  self- complacent  seafaring 
men,  the  taciturn  husbands  and  loquaoious, 


183 


The   Nation. 


[Vol  62,  Na  1600 


frrtit/wmat  widow*,  afl  are  in  a  wmj  cfaanc- 
tarisUcmOy  of  Ifaw  EoglMid,  bot  Mia  J«w«tt 
goOT  deep  eootigli  to  Ifolc  them  with  a  wider 
woiid  and  to  iaenre  them  greetiog  as  Uo,  ir- 
rtvpeetiTe  of  geogimphical  Hmltetion  and  local 
acddeot.  Wbeo  a  thing  it  perfectly  well 
done,  it  Is  profftlem  to  try  to  explain  bow  and 
why,  NatuiVt  fpedal  endowmeota  defy  analy* 
fte,  and  those  corione  about  leemfngly  wonder- 
ful acbieTemeiite  are  restricted  to  goesiiog 
what  iiaa  been  added  by  care  and  industry  to 
the  original,  Inexplicable  faculty,  the  unknown 
and  Incalculable  quantity.  What  Miss  Jewett 
appears  to  have  gained  by  ber  sincere  and 
loriog  application  to  letters  is  facility  of  ex* 
pression  which  shows  neither  haste  nor  waste, 
and  a  classic  beauty  of  form  and  serenity  of 
manner,  flhe  has  certainly  proclaimed  that 
beauty  and  truth  are  not  antagonistic,  and 
that  the  real  and  the  ideal  are  Inextricably  wo- 
ven in  the  warp  of  human  life. 

Mrs.  Footers  talent  Is  smaller  and  less  mys- 
terious than  Miss  Jewett^s,  and  it  is  easier  to 
discern  the  increase  from  cultivation.  She 
gives  us  the  appearance,  the  effect,  and  leaves 
us  to  Infer  the  true  inwardness  or  to  give 
It  up.  Her  stories  are  drawn  from  the  moun- 
tains, plains,  and  cafions  of  the  very  far 
West— places  Where,  when  anything  happens, 
It  startles,  terrifies,  frequently  Icills  somebody. 
The  event  has  great  self-reliance  and  speaks 
for  itself,  Indifferent  to  the  character  of  the 
people  Implicated.  It  loves  a  tragic  mask  and 
identifies  itself  with  naturals  vastnets  and  de- 
soUUoD.  In  the  tale  of  **  Maverick ""  the  last^ 
log  Impression  is  not  that  of  pity  for  a  young 
girl  flying  from  life  made  intolerable  by  the 
blackguardism  of  male  relatioos  and  the  too 
great  solicitude  of  an  ugly  lover,  but  of  hor- 
ror  of  the  Black  Lava  fields  eager  to  grant 
death  to  any  who  enter  their  hideous  solitudes. 
80,  in  the  title  story,  no  great  compassion  is 
felt  for  the  fate  that  overtook  a  very  frail 
woman,  but  a  penetrating  realisation  of  the 
awfulness  of  the  avalanche  biding  its  time  t6 
hurl  Ood*s  judgment  upon  the  sinful.  The  sen- 
timent of  the  dreary  isolation  of  miners  on 
the  mountain  slopes  when  work  has  stopped 
and  winter  closed  in,  is  vividly  rendered  in  the 
same  story,  and  the  author's  phrase  has  a  sad, 
poetic  quality  very  inspiring  to  imagination. 
The  local  element  in  Mrs.  Footers  stories  is  all 
supplied  by  the  event  and  scene.  With  the 
natives  she  does  not  concern  bervelf,  perhaps 
because  there  are  none,  except  a  lone  Skitwish 
Indian,  an  unmalleable  being.  At  all  events, 
her  people  have  always  come  from  somewhere 
else,  and  one  feels  sure  that,  if  they  are  per- 
mitted to  live  long  enough,  they  will  go  home 
again. 

MissMurfree,  on  the  contrary,  is  rigidly  local. 
Her  Tennessee  mountains  are  purpler,  bluer, 
and  yellower  than  any  other;  tbey  are  at  times 
more  remote  and  forbidding,  at  times  more 
close  and  tender,  than  the  peaks  and  summits 
of  other  ranges;  their  moon  is  distinctly  su- 
perior, and,  unlike  other  moons,  constant. 
Their  inhabitants  bear  little  resemblance  to 
the  natives  of  othar  altitudes  and  gorges,  but 
they  make  up  for  variation  from  the  type  by 
close  family  likeness.  The  occasional  stranger 
who  invades  these  fastnesses  is  a  revenue  offi- 
cer, a  bailiff,  or  a  handsome  adventurer  seek- 
ing game,  gold,  or  health.  If  be  is  handy  with 
bis  pistol,  he  has  a  chance  to  get  away  and  re- 
pent of  his  rashness,  but  he  frequently  meets 
one  who  is  handier,  and  bis  bones  bleach  in  the 
eternal  moonlight.  We  do  not  mean  to  dis. 
parage  Miss  Murfree  for  an  inaccurate  obser- 
vation of  mountains,  moon,  and  natives,  but 
rfttbw  to  $^Mr^  hw  creative  pow^r,    Hw 


brilliant  drapiatic  imagiaatioo  is  Datnrally 
accompanied  by  a  tendency  to  reckless,  pic- 
turesque statement,  and  it  Is  through  the 
strength  and  the  def  ecto  of  these  qualities  that 
her  stories  always  appear  more  Uka  the  work 
of  a  man  than  of  a  woman.  *' The  Mystny  of 
Witch-Face  Mountain''  is  full  of  vreird,  fan- 
tastic toucfaee  and  deseriptioa  that  excites  but 
does  not  describe.  The  tale  is  not  well  held  to- 
gether, and  suffers  in  Interest  by  opening  with 
an  event  so  dramatic  that  all  the  rest  seems 
tame.  The  lecond  story,  which  describes  the 
competition  for  the  Bine  Ribbon  offered  to 
the  best  rider  at  the  KUdeer  County  f^ir,  goes 
splendidly,  and  Is  as  good  as  anything  in  Mim 
Murf ree*s  first  famous  volume.  By  his  tender 
unselfishness  Justus  Hoxoo,  in  **  The  Casting 
Vote,**  is  doomed  to  failure  as  a  mountaineer. 
The  terrestrial  globe,  In  fact,  Is  but  a  poor 
place  for  such  a  noble  spirit.  His  sacrifices 
for  bis  **fambly,''  his  pride  in  its  progress,  and 
hb  betrayal  by  the  best  loved  brother,  make 
a  sequence  of  miseries  intolerable  to  follow 
were  it  not  for  the  comic  interludes  which 
mitigate  the  pathos  without  jarring  it  too 
roughly.  The  robustness  of  Miss  Murfree's 
comedy  has,  like  her  imagination,  a  noticeably 
masculine  quality,  and  she  is  the  only  woman 
who  has  been  able  to  give  expression  to  that 
grim,  ironical  humor  which  Is  as  abundant  as 
ozone  in  outlandith  America. 

Bret  Harte  has  used  up  a  good  deal  of  it,  but 
not  all,  for  it  smiles  all  through  the  volume 
*  Red  Men  and  White,'  by  Mr.  Owen  WIster,  a 
new.comer  In  fiction.  These  stories  are  about 
adventurers,  soldiers,  and  Indians,  and  describe 
what  they  were  all  doing  west  of  the  Missouri 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  They  were  gene- 
rally doing  what  they  should  not  have  done, 
except  the  soldiers,  who  went  astray  only  when 
acting  under  direct  orders  from  the  gentlemen 
of  the  War  Office  in  Washington.  **8pecimen 
Jones, '^  who  appears  in  several  of  the  tales,  is 
a  most  attractive  vagabond,  with  a  reserve  of 
sentiment  uttering  itself  at  odd  moments 
through  the  medium  of  old  English  songs. 
Full  of  expedients  as  well  as  of  strange  oaths, 
army  discipline  represses  his  impulsiveness 
without  quenching  his  ingenuity.  The  trick 
by  which  he  effects  **The  Second  Missouri 
CompromiM  "  is  as  clever  as  It  is  unexpected. 
This  tale  of  a  deadlock  between  the  Oovemor 
of  Idaho  and  his  Legislature  is  indeed  delight- 
ful. The  situation  is  most  serious,  but  the  at- 
tendant circumstances  are  so  humorous  that 
even  the  Governor  and  his  treasurer  must  liave 
been  spsred  the  bare  horror  of  impending 
death.  Barring  a  slight  defect  in  construction 
(a  superfluous  scene  between  the  captain,  his 
wife,  and  the  surgeon),  *^The  Second  Missouri 
Compromise  "  is  as  good  a  frontier  tale  as  has 
ever  been  written,  and,  apart  from  the  general 
excellence  of  the  other  stories,  makes  the  vol- 
ume memorable. 

In  the  story  of  *  Clarence,'  which  is  neither 
short  nor  very  long,  the  veteran  sponsor  for 
the  pioneers,  Bret  Harte,  goes  back  to  the  days 
that  tried  men's  souls  and  women's  faith. 
Several  old  friends  reappear  on  the  scene— Cla- 
rence Brant,  who  gives  the  tale  a  name;  Jim 
Hooker,  dirty,  swaggering,  and  dishonest  as 
of  old ;  and  Colonel  Starbottle,  still  extrava- 
gant in  shirt  ruffles  and  rhetoric.  The  story 
turns  on  the  implication  of  Brant  in  the  plots 
of  bis  Southern  wife,  an  inveterate  conspirator. 
The  first  part,  which  narrates  the  gathering 
and  dispersal  of  the  conspirators  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, is  swift,  clear,  and  dramatic  ;  the  second 
wavers  and  drag?,  with  such  confusion  of  sig- 
nals, disguises,  and  other  paraphernalia  of  the 
spy  bv9i|iess,  such  a  mizinn;  up  of  a  ^u^ht^ 


Soothem  girl,  a  mysterioos  mnlattn,  mmd  Mrs. 
Brant,  that  Prerident  Lincoln's  VBrrnvriliv  is 
more  cooflrmatory  of  his  i 
anecdota  that  his  biographers  have 
to  provide.  The  President  is  reported  to  hare 
said  to  Brant,  *'  In  Illinois  we  woaldn^t  hang  a 
yellow  dog  on  the  evidence  before  the  depart- 
ment  "—which  is  creditable  to  the  adasiBifrtim- 
tfonof  justice  in  niinoK  bat  we  feel  that  the 
State  woold  stand  within  its  rights  in  declining 
to  examine  sodi  evidence  eves  if  the  altema- 
tive  were  the  hanging  of  a  tboosand  yeUow 
dogs. 

Local  color  again  and  a  Sam  suck  personali- 
ty, qnaint,  shrewd,  eccentric,  sententioos,  and 
ungrammatiral.  are  among  the  expectatkna 
awakened  by  the  title  of  Mr.  MitcheU's  tale, 
'Amos  Judd.'  The  editor  of  Li/e  may  be  ac- 
cused of  deliberately  midesding  the  public, 
but  not  of  disappointing  it.  Cold  is  the  imagi- 
nation  that  cannot  forget  the  improbability  of 
the  Incident  in  appreciation  of  its  romantic 
beauty,  and  dull  the  mind  untouched  by  the 
surprising  contrast  between  the  manner  and 
the  matter,  the  clever  adaptation  of  a  light, 
neat,  pointed,  modem  style  to  the  narrationof 
circumstances  including  both  tlie  mystic  and 
the  wonderfuL  What  these  circumstances  are 
nobody  should  tell,  but  every  one  should  read. 
Criticism  of  bold  experiments  in  literature,  as 
in  life.  Is  sOenccd  by  unequivocal  success.  To 
our  ndnd  there  is  but  one  flaw  in  Mr.  Mitcheirs 
story,  and  that  is  the  means  employed  to  bring 
about  the  inevitable  end.  His  expedient  here 
IstoohterallyactuaL  We  can  bear  to  let  Amos 
Judd  go  t>ecause  we  must;  but  the  manner  of 
his  going  adds  to  the  pang  of  sorrow  an  emo. 
tion  of  resentful  horror,  throwing  us  back  for 
ocmsolation  on  the  reflection  that,  after  all,  it 
is  only  a  story,  therefore  we  must  pluck  up 
courage  to  go  about  our  business,  and,  after  a 
decent  interral,  smile  again. 

No  easier  way  could  be  tried  for  determin- 
ing  the  differences  between  original  and  imi- 
tative flction  than  that  of  reading,  after  *  Amos 
Judd,'  *  The  Gypsy  Christ,  and  Other  Tales.' 
No  other  reason  for  commending  Mr.  Sharp's 
volume  occurs  to  ns.  The  title  story  echoes 
Edgar  Allan  Poe— «  disorderly,  intoxicated 
echo ;  "  Madge  o*  the  Pool  "  brings  back  to  us 
modernized,  brutalized  in  unromantic  naked- 
ness, Dickens's  Bird  of  Prey  and  Lizzie  Hex- 
ham ;  * '  The  Coward  "  is  the  sort  of  thing  Pierre 
Loti  might  do  without  the  aid  of  his  tem- 
perament, and  every  one  can  imagine  how 
valuable  that  sort  of  thing  would  be  ;  *'  The 
Lady  in  Hosea "  is  as  old  as  the  story  of  an- 
other Biblical  dame,  Potipbar*s  wife,  but  it  has 
a  novel  touch  at  the  end  with  which  Mr. 
Sharp  must  be  credited,  assuming  that  he 
means  to  be  quite  savagely  sarcastic.  Paral- 
lels  for  the  remaining  tales  abound,  and  all 
their  labored  obscurity  and  artificiality  cannot 
disguise  the  antiquity  of  their  origin. 

Mr.  Cram,  the  author  of  *  Black  Spirits  and 
White,'  is  as  careful  as  Mr.  Sharp  in  guarding 
us  from  the  agitation  of  hearing  new  things. 
His  originality,  however,  asserts  itself  by  the 
discarding  of  the  author's  preface  (endeared  to 
us  by  time  and  custom)  and  the  substitution  of 
a  postscript.  Here  he  disclaims  ownership  of 
the  germs  of  the  things  we  have  been  reading, 
and  defines  these  things  as  **  norms,"  telling 
us  that  he  is  more  than  content  if  he  has  suc- 
ceeded in  clothing  the  norms  in  new  vesture. 
A  reviewer  of  fiction  must  pass  the  germs  and 
norms,  knowing  that  his  opinions  on  these  sa- 
cred objects*  would  justly  excite  contempti  if 
not  derision.  Again,  having  in  mind  the  little 
wherewith  Mr.  Cram  may  be  contented,  a  hn- 
m«ne  reviewer  must  desist  eveo  fir^mtftipptB| 


Feb.  27,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


183 


tbe  *'  Tcslure  **  too  doMly.  Bat,  tUndlng  welt 
off  uid  giving  heed  only  to  the  general  effect 
of  Ibte  ▼arture,  there  cannot  be  much  harm 
in  MTing  that  its  novelty  is  not  dazzling,  that 
tti  ornament  is  ont  of  proportion  to  ite  utility, 
and  that  it  is  almoet  volnminous  enough  effeo- 
toally  to  conceal  the  elutive  norm. 

MJm  Ouiney  furnishes  '  Lovers*  Saint  Ruth's ' 
with  a  preface  about  as  modest  as  Mr.  Cram's 
postMript,  but  1e«  mystical.  Tbe  title  tale  is 
a  sort  of  medieval  norm  built  into  an  ecclesl- 
aatioal  ruin  which  is  described  by  a  soulful 
curate  as  a  **  darling  bit  of  early  decorated." 
Miss  Ouiney  says  that  she  dreamed  this  tale 
and  publishes  it  with  reluctance,  appearing  to 
have  been  urged  thereto  by  friends.  In  the 
question  of  publishing  a  book,  it  is  safer  to 
^e  counsel  with  enemies  than  with  friends, 
because  a  little  animosity  is  often  more  pro- 
ductive of  critical  taste  than  is  a  cordial  af- 
fection. Nothing  in  the  volume  makes  us  feel 
that  BCiss  Ouiney  is  wise  in  deserting  verse  for 
proee.  Her  way  of  telling  things  is  either 
tedious  and  involved  or  melodramatic,  and  the 
good  qualities,  showing  chiefly  in  descriptions 
of  nature,  are  those  which  most  brightly  shine 
in  poetry.  The  sad  episode  of  **  the  provider  ** 
is  almoet  the  same  as  the  suicide  of  Father 
Time— a  very  ghastly  incident  in  *Jude  the 
Obscure.*  Miss  Ouiney  says  it  was  written 
several  years  ago,  and  founded  on  an  actual 
occurrence.  Her  unhappy  child  is  much  more 
human  thui  Mr.  Hardy's,  and  the  manage- 
ment of  the  narrative  is  less  inapt  than  that  of 
the  preceding  tales.  The  blundering  phonetic 
Irish,  however,  detracts  from  intrinsic  strength 
and  pathos. 

*  His  Father's  Bon*  is  a  sad  dog.  Nota  touch 
of  mirth  or  frivolous  fancy  is  permitted  by  Mr. 
Matthews  to  disturb  the  serious  record  of  his 
Ignominious  existence.  "This,**  tbe  author 
seems  to  say,  "is  life,  not  fooling.  Let  us 
treat  our  awful  subject  awfully.**  The  fldelity 
to  tmct  of  the  repreeentation  of  the  father, 
Eira  Pierce,  need  not  be  questioned.  Almost 
any  one  who  reads  the  newspapers  could  rattle 
off  a  recognisable  deecription  of  a  mighty  po- 
tentate of  Wall  Street  with  a  fair  criticism  of 
his  methods,  also  conveying  an  impression  of 
his  character,  derived  from  the  daily  press, 
very  similar  to  that  given  by  Mr.  Matthews 
and  not  a  bit  more  engaging.  The  son,  Wins- 
low,  his  wife  and  mother,  are  presuroablj^ 
equally  true  to  life,  but  rarer.  The  impotence 
of  the  whole  three  before  the  most  familiar 
problems,  the  utter  inadequacy  of  the  women 
to  stretch  out  a  saving  hand  to  a  boy  whom 
they  love  and  who  Is  rapidly  going  down  to 
death,  betray  a  hopeless  stupidity  which  Mr. 
Matthews  never  could  have  imagined,  and  the 
obeervation  of  which  must  have  given  him 
many  unhappy  hours.  It  is  a  pity  that  he  pro. 
longed  this  pain  by  writing  down  in  detail  the 
ineptitudes  of  those  Incompetent  women ;  admi- 
ration of  his  courage  is  lost  in  an  overwhelm- 
ing sense  of  Its  uselessnese  for  either  instruc- 
tioa  or  reproof.  Besides,  the  result  of  the  la- 
bor (probably  contrary  to  the  author's  inten- 
tion) Is  to  move  us  to  pity  the  weak-headed 
Win^w,  .and  to  understand  perfectly  the 
temptations  offered  by  a  volatile  and  expensive 
Daisy  Fostelle.  The  dreariness  of  these  people 
has  weighed  on  Mr.  Matthews's  style,  and  we 
wish  be  would  consent  to  throw  truth  to  the 
winds  and  take  on  once  more  the  gay  irre- 
sponsibllity  of  a  writer  of  plain,  uncompromis- 
ing fiction. 

The  tide  of  popular  favor  for  £ngli»h  fiction 
which  is  chieiSy  Scotch  appears  still  to  rest 
oonveoiently  at  flood,  and  the  authors,  plenti- 
foD7  Wdowed  with  D»tloiua  Ctoolo^fs,  ftre  not 


backward  in  working  an  advantageous  cir- 
cumstance  for  all  it  is  worth.  A  sober,  reti- 
cent Scot  must  be  deeply  perplexed  by  the 
wild  interest  apparently  taken  in  all  that  he 
does,  says,  and  thinks,  and  considerably  irri- 
tated by  the  publicity  thrust  upon  him.  It  Is  not 
altogether  a  flattering  fame,  and  he  doubtless 
sees  clearly  that  the  authors  are  not  so  much 
concerned  about  proclaiming  his  virtues  as 
they  are  eager  to  expose  his  eccentricities  and 
make  capital  of  his  harmless  peculiarities.  No 
one  is  a  more  reckless  Invader  of  parish  privacy 
than  the  minister  who  writes  over  the  name  Ian 
Maclaren.  It  ifi  true  that  his  exhaustive  dis- 
closures of  stinginess,  bigotry,  and  trivial  pug- 
nacity are  offset  by  tributes  to  sturdy  honesty 
and  deep  feeUng.  Nevertheless,  we  anticipate 
the  day  when  exasperated  elders  will  under- 
take to  discipline  garrulous  literary  Paul  Prys 
masquerading  as  ministers.  In  characteriza- 
tion the  volume  entitled  *The  Days  of  Auld 
Lang  Syne*  is  more  vague  and  shallower 
than  the  author's  preceding  work,  and  that 
sentiment  which  captured  so  many  readers 
degenerates  into  sentimentality —indeed,  comes 
perilously  near  to  twaddle. 

*■  The  King  of  Andaman,'  a  long,  romantic 
novel,  very  loosely  constructed,  involves  much 
larger  issues  than  are  leases,  roups,  and  bicker- 
ings between  the  Establishment  and  the  Free. 
The  scene  is  in  a  Scotch  community  of  weavers 
just  after  the  hapless  Chartist  movement  and 
before  the  general  introduction  of  machinery. 
The  "  Maister  of  Hutcheon  **  hardly  strikes  ut 
as  real  and  substantial;  but  as  a  large  hearted 
poesibility,  capable  of  seeing  visions  of  perfec- 
tion, he  is  well  conceived.  The  French  manu- 
facturer and  the  Irish  scalawag  are  more  cre- 
dible figures  and  naturally  much  less  admira- 
ble. All  the  detail  of  the  times  and  conditions 
is  interesting  and  well  presented,  and  the  use 
of  uncouth  dialect  is  discreetly  limited. 

In  <A  Monk  of  Fife*  Mr.  Lsng  shrewdly 
utilizes  two  fashions,  the  acceptability  of 
Scotch  character  and  the  revived  interest  In 
Jeanne  d*Arc.  His  tale  assumes  to  be  a  trans- 
lation of  a  fifteenth  century  IfS.  We  frankly 
avow  complete  ignorance  of  the  lAber  Pfusear- 
densiB,  but  know  enough  about  Mr.  Lang  to 
feel  sure  that,  wherever  he  may  have  got  his 
facts,  he  is  responsible  for  the  fiction,  and  that 
the  fiction  much  exceeds  tbe  facts.  Since  he 
must  have  a  Scot,  we  are  glad  he  has  resisted 
the  fascinations  of  the  weaver  and  farmer, 
and  has  chosen  a  fighter,  a  free*lance,  one  who 
had  the  foresight  to  learn  the  **  Southron*s 
tongue  *'  at  his  mother's  knee.  The  adventures 
of  Norman  Leslie,  in  spite  of  bis  proclivity  for 
receiving  deadly  wounds  and  swooning  away 
at  a  critical  moment,  are  stirring,  and  the 
mystic  maid  is  not  absolutely  removed  from 
human  comprehension  and  sympathy.  Mr. 
Lang  has  taken  a  great  deal  of  pains  with 
the  descriptions  of  historic  battles  and  sieges- 
pains  that  are  perhaps  wasted,  for  the  shades 
of  difference  in  the  actual  events  escape  the 
most  faithful  narrator,  and  to  the  reader  who 
is  not  a  boy  it  seems  as  if  one  as  a  sample 
would  have  done  for  all.  But  the  book  is  a 
boy's  book,  and  it  wiU  slake  his  thirst  for 
blood  and  slaughter  without  vitiating  his 
mind  or  impairing  his  morals. 

There  is  only  one  rational  excuse  for  the  use 
of  dialect  in  stories,  and  that  is  when  the 
dialect  helps  out  the  story— when,  In  fact, 
you  couldn't  have  the  story  without  It.  No 
such  limitation  has  embarrassed  the  mind  of 
the  author  of  *The  Watter's  Mou*.*  The 
smuggler's  daughter,  her  father  and  brothers 
and  friends,  would  be  just  as  theatrical  and 
OCOTmtiooal  In  EngUib  ps  Um/  ^re  in  Uk(«r- 


mittent  Aberdeenshire  Scotch.  The  central  in- 
cident has  a  thrill  In  its  heart  which  loses 
force  by  the  author's  arUflcial  treatment,  and 
never  have  sky,  sea,  and  wind  lowered,  raged, 
and  roared  with  more  aoiaziog  specttcular 
effect,  not  only  o'ersteppiog,  but  quite  putting 
to  shame,  the  modesty  of  nature. 


Rteonttruetion  during  the  Civil  War  in  the 
•    United  States  of  America.    By  Eben  Oreen- 

ough  Scott.    Houghton,  Mifliin  &  Co.    1895. 

Pp.483. 
Wb  have  here  a  work  which  is  said  by  its 
author  to  be  preliminary  to  a  political  history 
of  tbe  period  of  Reconstruction,  which  he  in- 
tends to  write.  Such  a  history  might  be  a  very 
instructive  and  valuable  book,  but  its  value 
will  largely  depend  on  the  standpoint  of  the 
writer.  This  preliminary  volume  Is  useful  as 
enunciating  the  author's  interpretation  of  the 
Constitution  and  applying  his  principles  to  tbe 
civil  war  Itself. 

When  Jefferson  Davis  devoted  a  large  part 
of  his  book  on  the  Confederate  States  to  an 
elaborate  argument  that  the  South  had  the 
right  under  the  Constitution  to  secede,  and 
that  the  United  States  had  no  constitutional 
power  to  put  down  the  rebellion,  all  the  world 
laughed.  If  the  first  part  of  his  contention 
had  any  force,  and  secession  was  a  fact,  he  and 
all  who  believed  with  him  were  completely 
estopped  from  claiming  anything  from  that 
Constitution  In  either  the  conduct  of  tbe  war 
or  the  terms  insisted  on  afterward.  They  had 
repudiated  the  Constitution.  Feeling  the  force 
of  this,  apparently,  Mr.  Scott  carefully  avoids 
committing  himself  to  the  constitutionality  of 
secession.  He  argues  tbe  case,  rather,  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  "Northern  man  with 
Southern  principles**  who  could  oppose  the 
prosecution  of  the  war  as  unlawful,  the  aboli- 
tion of  slavery  as  revolutionary,  and  the  impo- 
sition of  any  terms  at  the  close  of  the  war  as 
tyranny. 

The  first  half  of  the  book  Is  an  elaborate 
effort  to  read  into  the  history  of  the  country 
the  fundamental  principle  that  "separate- 
nesB  **  was  the  vital  (or  mortal)  element  dom- 
inant in  all  its  development  from  Plymouth 
Rock  and  Jamestown  onward.  Union  was 
abhorrent  to  the  American  nature,  and  the 
separate  sovereignty  of  colony  and  State  was 
so  radical  a  law  of  the  country*s  growth  that, 
whether  the  States  and  people  formed  a  ''per- 
petual union  **  In  1777,  or  a  still ''  more  perfect 
union**  In  1787,  they  must  be  understood  to 
have  meant  only  the  twisting  of  a  rope  of 
sand  which  could  bind  nobody  if  any  member 
of  the  Union  chose  to  practiie  disunion.  Our 
author  therefore  finds  It  unnecessary  to  dis- 
cuss the  afllrmative  right  to  secede,  or  the 
sufficiency  of  reasons  given  for  secession.  It 
is  quite  enough  to  affirm  the  complete  abeenoe 
of  power  to  prevent  it.  He  seems  wholly 
unconscious  that  a  majority  of  the  people  of 
the  country  will  regard  his  conclusion  as 
self-destructive.  They  will  say.  Your  con- 
clusion that  the  United  States  had  not  power 
to  put  down  an  insurrection,  proves  that  either 
your  premises,  or  your  logic,  or  both,  are 
wrong.  The  absurdity  of  your  result  shows 
that  another  interpretation  of  constitutional 
power  Is  the  true  one. 

Education  of  the  public  mind  has  made  pro- 
gress  with  time,  and  intelligent  men  do  not 
now  shrink  from  clear  formulation  of  princi- 
ples which  they  did  not  care  to  discuss  in  IHAl. 
It  is  characteristic  of  political  dii»cussion  to 
seek  methods  of  conciliating  supporters,  and  to 
»vQid  tMaofntf,  lww«?v  fowd,  th^^  m^7 


184 


Tlie    N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1600 


offend  those  whose  votes  may  possibly  be  ob- 
tained. Mr.  Scott  will  find  that  such  questions 
as  that  of  the  right  to  coerce  a  State  give  little 
troable  nowadays.  The  wonder  is  that  they 
ever  troubled  anybody.  The  truth  is,  that  the 
Ckmstitution  provides  for  the  same  means  of 
coercing  a  State  that  violates  its  obligations 
that  it  does  for  a  single  citisen.  The  third  arti- 
ole  provides  for  making  a  State  either  a  plain- 
tiif  or  a  defendant  in  controversies  before  the 
courts  of  the  United  States.  Judgment  and 
execution  are  coercion.  The  principle  estab- 
lished, the  rest  is  only  a  question  of  form. 
The  willingness  to  avoid  unnecessary  issues  led 
to  distinguishing  between  the  coercion  of  a 
citizen  and  coercion  of  a  State,  but  the  logic 
of  events  taught  that  there  was  no  need  of 
making  even  a  sentimental  distinction,  and 
that  a  State  in  insurrection  should  be  coerced 
as  well  as  a  collection  of  individuals.  The 
State  is  one  of  the  political  corporations  within 
the  national  Union  and  owing  many  important 
obligations  to  it.  Either  the  State  or  its  citi. 
sens  or  both  may  be  guilty  of  violating  those 
obligations,  and  may  be  compelled  to  perform 
them  or  made  to  bear  the  penalty. 

It  was  always  part  of  the  elementary  law 
that  there  are  matters  in  which  a  party 
wronged  may  redress  his  own  injury.  If  I  am 
assaulted,  I  am  not  limited  in  redress  to  suing 
for  damages :  I  may  repel  force  with  force. 
To  say  that  this  power  is  less  in  the  nation  than 
in  a  private  person  is  to  expose  the  ridiculous 
ness  of  the  assertion.  These  are  principles  of 
interpretation  which  the  terrible  lessons  of  the 
civil  war  taught  so  cogently  that  the  old  doc- 
trine of  impotence  is  scouted.  It  never  was 
held  except  as  a  logic  chopping  method  of  up. 
holding  the  institution  of  slavery,  and  efforts 
to  revive  its  discredited  and  discreditable  so- 
phistries will  be  utterly  futile.  Mr.  Scott  says 
the  letter  of  the  Constitution  remains  to  show 
bow  far  the  people  have  been  swept  from  their 
moorings.  The  answer  is  that  no  such  thing 
was  ever  found  in  the  letter.  It  was  read  into 
it  by  partisans  of  a  wrong,  as  implied  inter- 
pretations for  which  no  solid  basis  was  ever 
shown,  contrary  to  the  natural  mecming  of  the 
instrument.  They  precipitated  upon  us  an 
unparalleled  civil  war  in  their  endeavor  to 
enforce  such  a  theory  of  the  fundamental  law, 
and  the  appeal  to  arms  was  decided  against 
them,  as  was  the  appei^  to  reason.  It  is  difficult 
to  characterize  properly  the  fatuity  of  a  fresh 
attempt  to  write  history  with  the  discarded 
doctrine  as  a  standard. 

The  subordinate  propositions  are  as  transpa- 
rently weak  as  the  leading  ones.  In  regard  to 
Reconstruction  measures  we  are  told  that  it 
was  an  "  untenable  position  that,  though  these 
States  werestlU  members  of  tiie  Federal  Union, 
and  their  citizens  had  not  ceased  to  be  citizens 
of  the  United  States,  these  citizens  had  become 
incapable  of  exercising  political  privileges." 
So  far  from  being  untenable,  it  describes  one 
of  the  commonest  things  in  ite  world.  Loss  of 
political  privileges  as  a  consequence  of  unlaw- 
ful acts  meets  us  at  every  turn.  We  see  it  in 
the  case  of  every  counterfeiter  of  the  coin.  He 
is  still  a  citizen  of  one  of  the  States,  but  the 
United  States  puts  him  in  prison,  where  his 
**  political  privileges  '^  are  denied  him.  Or  does 
Mr.  Scott  suppose  that  the  inmates  of  peni- 
tentiaries regularly  **go  home  to  vote"?  In 
certain  classes  of  offences  the  deprivation  of 
political  privileges  is  specifically  made  part  of 
the  punishment.  Now,  strange  as  it  seems  to 
appear  to  Mr.  Scott,  a  resort  to  war  is  a 
method  of  enforcing  rights  and  of  Imposing 
penalties  for  wrongs.  It  is  a  court  of  last  re- 
sort  when  peaceful  means  shall  fall.  '  It  has  its 


recognized  methods  of  procedure  and  of  en- 
forcing its  penalties.  These  penalties  may 
affect  States  as  corporate  bodies,  or  their  citi- 
zens, or  both.  Those  who  engage  in  insurrec- 
tions incur  the  well-understood  risk  of  aU  these 
results.  They  know  also  full  well  that  there  is 
n<f  other  method  of  trial  in  which  the  penalty 
is  so  largely  discretionary  with  the  party  whom 
victory  has  made  the  judge. 

It  is  the  unique  glory  of  the  United  States 
that,  when  victory  left  the  late  insurgents  at 
ita  mercy,  the  nation  did  not  raise  the  cry  of 
Vae  victis!  Having  fully  established  the  prin- 
ciple of  national  sovereignty,  and  vindicated 
both  its  right  and  its  power,  its  leniency  as- 
tonished the  world.  It  gave  the  lie  to  all  the 
prophecies  of  cruelty,  and  proved  that  the  dis- 
cretion which  it  exercised  as  conqueror  was  a 
law  of  reason  and  conciliation  to  itself.  The 
columns  of  this  journal  during  the  Reconstruc- 
tion period  show  how  ardent  Unionists  urged 
that  it  was  not  in  the  interest  of  good  govern- 
ment to  exclude  from  participation  in  it  those 
whp  represented  the  capital  and  the  intelli 
gence  of  the  South.  Such  counsels  prevailed 
more  quickly  than  was  to  be  expected,  and  of 
penalties  there  were  practically  none. 

During  the  progress  of  Reconstruction  there 
were  disputes  between  the  departments  of  the 
Government  whicfar  well  deserve  careful  study 
and  judicial  analysis.  Tliere  were  examples  of 
misgovemment  under  the  so-called  "carpet- 
bag rule  "  which  were  deplorable.  A  history 
of  these  from  the  standpoint  of  a  thorough 
Unionist  who  could  appreciate  the  difficulties 
of  the  situation,  would  be  most  valuable  and 
full  of  political  instruction.  To  have  it  writ- 
ten by  one  who  condemns  the  whole  war  as 
wicked  on  the  part  of  the  United  States,  who 
can  see  nothing  in  lir.  Lincoln  but  a  usurping 
dictator,  who  can  find  nothing  lawful  or  right 
that  Congress  could  do,  promises,  we  fear,  but 
little  profit.  A  historian  should  have  the 
faculty  of  throwing  himself  sufficiently  into 
the  position  of  parties  to  comprehend  their 
views.  He  should  be  able  to  judge  them,  not 
wholly  by  his  own  political  creed,  but  by 
theirs.  He  should  know  that  to  them  there 
would  be  some  theory  of  consistency  by  which 
their  policy  would  have  some  unity  of  purpose. 
He  should  be  above  the  vulgar  assumption  that 
all  who  oppose  him  are  scoundrelf,  and  all 
who  disagree  with  him  are  liars. 

If  lir.  Scott  were  able  to  assume  the  rdle  of 
the  judicious  critic  and  the  judicial  historian, 
the  vigor  and  clearness  of  his  style,  with  the 
evident  industry  of  his  reading,  should  insure 
a  noteworthy  book.  But  the  doctrines  of  this 
preliminary  work  give  little  hope  of  a  valuable 
result.  From  the  pen  of  one  who  affects  to 
believe  that  nothing  would  have  been  right  but 
immediate,  unqualified,  and  unconditional  re- 
storation, we  cannot  look  for  impartial  narra- 
tive or  appreciative  criticism. 


J 

Rui 


■ussia  and  the  English  Church  during  the 
Last  Fifty  Years,  Edited  by  W,  J.  Birk- 
beck,  M.  A.,  F.S.A.  Vol.L  Published  for  the 
Eastern  Church  Association.  London:  Ri v. 
ington,  Percival  &  Co. 

For  the  many  who  take  an  interest  in  the  much 
discussed  question  of  church  unity,  and  in  the- 
ological reading  in  general,  the  volume  which 
Bir.  Birkbeck  has  edited  will  be  a  timely  con- 
tribution. It  consists  of  the  correspondence — 
or,  rather,  a  portion  of  tiie  correspondence— 
between  Mr.  William  Palmer  and  Alexei  S. 
Khomiakoff .  It  forms  a  valuable  sequel  to  Mr. 
Palmer's  *Kotes  of  a  Visit  to  the  Russian 
Church,'  which  Cardinal  Newman  edited  after 


Mr.  Palmer's  death.  In  that  work  Mr.  Palmer 
narrated  his  experiences  during  a  two-yeanP 
visit  to  Russia,  which  he  made  with  the  express 
object  of  being  received  into  communion  with 
the  Russian  Church,  not  as  a  convert,  but  on 
the  ground  that,  if  the  Anglican  and  Russian 
churches  were,  in  reality,  "  catholic,"  as  they 
profess  to  be,  a  member  of  one  is,  necessarily, 
a  member  of  the  other.  His  discussions  with 
the  Russian  ecclesiastics  and  ordinary  mem- 
bers of  high  educated  society  on  the  different 
points  of  dogma  and  on  the  interpretation  of 
the  creeds  are  very  fully  reported.  To  a  cer- 
tain extent  the  failure  of  his  attempt  to  estab- 
lish church  unity  in  that  particular  direction, 
and  the  arguments  for  and  against  it,  are 
finally  summed  up  in  that  volume.  But  the 
present  volume  is,  in  no  sense,  a  repetition  of 
the  former,  though  it  treats  of  the  same  theme, 
vie,  the  assumption  that  the  Anglican,  Roman, 
and  Russian  churches  are  simply  local  forms 
of  "  the  Church." 

After  his  return  to  England  from  his  Rus- 
sian journey,  Mr.  Palmer  came  into  corre- 
spondence with  a  remarkable  Russian  who  has 
had  an  incalculable  infinence  on  the  religious 
life  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  and  even  on  the 
Church  itself,  as  Mr.  Birkbeck  explains  in  his 
"Introduction.**  Alexei  Khomiakoff  was  a 
layoian,  of  noUe,  not  of  priestly,  birth ;  an  ex- 
oificer  in  the  Ouards,  whose  chief  interest  and 
pleasure  in  life  were  his  Church  and  theology. 
The  extent  of  his  infiuenoe  can  be  accurately 
judged  only  by  thoee  who,  in  addition  to 
knowing  the  facts  which  Mr.  Birkbeck  sets 
forth,  have  had  the  opportunity  of  hearing  his 
contemporaries  speak  of  his  personality  and  of 
the  book  by  which  he  is  chiefly  known  at  home 
and  abroad— so  far  as  he  is  known  at  all  abroad 
— *L*^gli8e  Latine  et  le  Protestantisme  au 
point  de  vue  de  T^glise  de  TOrient.'  Several 
of  his  sayings  therein  have  become  part  of  the 
current  language-coin  of  the  country,  such  as 
bis  famous  retort  to  the  Protestant  accusation 
that  the  ik&ni,  or  sacred  pictures,  are  fetishes 
and  are  worshif^ped  as  such :  "  The  Protest- 
ants have  a  true  fetish  of  their  own,  the 
Bible;  they  adore  it  but  do  not  read  it" 
There  is  nothing  of  this  sort  in  the  letters 
which  Mr.  Birkbeck  collected  in  Moscow  and 
St.  Petersburg,  neither  is  there  much  to  show 
us  Ehomiakoft  in  bis  character  of  universal 
gekiius,  practical  num  of  business,  and  clear- 
headed reasoner  In  many  other  departments 
besides  theology.  He  appears,  mainly,  as  the 
gentle,  devout,  persuasive  reasoner. 

The  religious  movement  in  which  he  played 
so  prominent  a  part  was,  as  his  editor  rightly 
explains,  different  from  the  English  Tracta- 
rian  Movement  in  that  it  represented  the  re- 
ligious and  national  movements  in  combina- 
tion. **  The  great  work  of  Khomiakoff's  life 
was  undoubtedly  the  definite  direction  which 
iie  gave  to  the  Slavophile  movement  in  Russia 
in  its  relation  to  the  Orthodox  Church.  It  is 
not  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  his  theological 
writings  have  given  a  logical  form  to  the  idea 
of  the  Church  which,  although  it  has  never 
received  the  sanction  of  an  CEcumenical  Coun- 
cil, fior  even  of  a  general  council  of  ike  East- 
em  churches,  nevertheless  undoubtedly  under- 
lies the  teaching  of  the  Orthodox  Church 
wherever  she  is  to  be  met  with,"  says  Mr. 
Birkbeck,  and  he  adds:  **  If  any  one  wishes  to 
estimate  what  Khomiakoff  has  done  for  Ortho- 
dox theology,  let  him  first  read  Mr.  Palmer's 
*  Notes ' "  and  compare  the  results  of  the  schools 
of  theology  which  existed  before  Khomiakoff^ 
a&set  forth  in  those  discussions,  and  then  **let 
him  go  to  Russia  and  study  the  Church  aa  sba 
exists  there  at  the  present  day.    He  will  not  bt 


Feb.  27,  1896] 


The    !N"atioii, 


185 


long  in  realidng  how  oompleUly  the  chaonal 
iDio  which  the  Slavophiles  led  contemporary 
RuMia  in  theological  thought  oorreeponde  wiUi 
actoal  facts.** 

It  will  be  perceived  at  once  that  discussions 
between  men  of  such  exceptional  qualifications 
on  both  sides  cannot  fail  to  be  of  the  high- 
est interest.  But  that  which  particularly  im- 
presses  us  is  the  change  which  has  taken  place, 
and  is  still  taking  place,  during  the  course  of 
this  correiipondence,  in  Mr.  Falmer*s  mind. 
When  he  set  out  on  bis  Russian  trip  ('  Notes, 
etc.*),  be  seemed,  on  the  whole,  to  be  satisfied 
with  the  Anglican  Church,  and  did  not  even 
accept  the  Russian  symbol  of  faith  as  possible. 
Apparently,  he  returned  home  in  the  same 
frame  of  mind.  Later  on,  after  a  lapse  of 
years,  he  came  to  believe  that  the  Creed  with- 
out the  Jllioqne  clause  was  the  only  one  possi- 
ble, and  that  it  included  the  other,  as  many 
eminent  theologians  now  admit.  While  in  this 
mood,  he  made  a  long  visit  to  Athens,  which  is 
recorded  at  length  in  this  volume,  and  tried  to 
be  received  into  the  Qreek  Church.  But,  at 
that  time,  the  Greek  Church  required  that 
converts  should  be  rebapticed,  though  the  Rus- 
sian Church  did  not.  Although  he  had  refused 
to  enter  the  Russian  communion  otherwise 
than  unconditionally,  he  was  now  willing  to 
enter  the  Qreek  Church  by  baptism,  provided 
that  the  baptism  should  be  administered  to 
him  conditionally  **in  case  the  former  bap. 
tism  should  be  declared  invalid,**  which  he  did 
not  believe,  as  he  held  that  the  rite  could  be 
performed  and  received  only  once.  But  the 
Greek  ecclesiastical  authorities,  as  was  natu- 
ral, refused  to  administer  any  other  than  un- 
conditional baptism,  and  Mr.  Palmer  gave  up 
that  attempt  also.  He  printed  some  Disserta- 
tions, and  writes  to  Elhomiakoff  that  he  has 
sent  copies  thereof  to  Russia;  if  a  Russian 
translation  is  permitted  unaltered,  or  altered 
only  in  such  measure  as  will  not  affect  the 
theological  completeness  (which  he  does  not 
at  all  expect),  he  might  then  seek  admission 
to  the  communion  of  the  Russian  Church.  It 
will  be  seen  that  he  had  now  reached  the  point 
where  he  had  made  up  his  mind  not  to  reoudn 
in  the  Anglican  communion,  but  was  unwilling 
to  enter  any  other  where  he  would  not  be  al- 
lowed to  discuss  freely  and  publicly  matters 
wliich  were  of  essential  importance  to  religion. 
He  has  repeatedly  expressed  irreconcilable 
non-concurrence  with  the  dogmas  and  practices 
of  the  Roman  Church,  yet  he  has,  by  this  time, 
become  so  unsettled  that  he  announces  to  Kho 
miakoff :  **  After,  then,  I  have  done  all  I  can 
towards  the  Russian  as  well  as  the  Greek 
Church,  I  should  probably,  as  I  have  said,  go 
to  Rome,  with  the  hope  of  learning  something 
there  to  enable  me  to  change  my  mind  and  subN> 
mit  to  her  claims,  since  I  can  no  longer  defend 
the  Anglican  nor  find  a  satisfactory  entrance 
into  the  Eastern  Church.** 

Now,  while  there  is  not  the  slightest  doubt 
that  Mr.  Palmer  was  thoroughly  sincere  in  his 
unhappy  search  for  truth,  and  in  his  conscien- 
tious splitting  of  theological  hairs  ***twixt 
south  and  southwest  side,**  the  upshot  of  it  all, 
at  the  end  of  this  volume  (which  breaks  off  at 
the  epoch  of  the  Crimean  war  as  a  natural  di- 
vision), is  decidedly  startling: 

'*  Having  arrived  at  Rome,**  he  writes,  **  and 
having  been  persuaded  by  some  very  enthusi- 
astic frieods  of  mine  to  make  a  retreat,  I  came 
into  connection  with  a  very  distinguished  theo- 
logian. Father  PaMaglla,  who  informed  me  of 
an  *  opinion  *  which  I  bad  never  thought  of, 
and  which  served  to  facilitate  my  convtcUon— 
namely,  that  having,  as  I  had,  Greek  rather 
than  Latin  convlctimis  upon  oertain  important 
points  of  controversy,  I  oonld  all  the  same  be 


received  into  the  Roman  Catholic  communion 
by  merely  suspending  my  private  judgment, 
and  making  up  my  mind  to  affirm  nothing  con 
trary  to  the  known  dogmas  of  the  Roman 
Church,  nor  to  entertain  by  preference  any 
such  thoughts.  Accordingly  I  followed  bis 
advice  ...  I  have  obtained  from  the  step 
which  I  have  resolved  upon  a  real  peace,  and  a 
religious  position  which  I  am  able  to  defend; 
but,  as  for  my  intellectual  position,  it  has  re- 
mained almost  without  change;  only,  in  re 
spect  to  the  Ronun  See,  and,  in  general,  in 
respect  to  general  arguments  favorable  to  the 
pretensions  of  Catholicism,  I  find  it  much  more 
agreeable  to  be  on  the  side  of  the  stronger 
rather  than  on  that  of  the  lees  strong.** 

How  this  frank  confession  can  be  reconciled 
with  the  stem  intellectual  honesty  which  has 
seemed,  up  to  this  point,  to  be  Mr.  Palmer*s 
distinguishing  trait,  it  is  very  difficult  to  see. 
The  whole  book  furnishes  a  curious  psychologi- 
cal as  well  as  theological  study. 

Mr.  Birkbeck  has  performed  bi9  task  extreme- 
ly well,  and  his  foot-notes  are  very  helpful  not 
only  to  the  understanding  of  this  correspond- 
ence, but  also  to  that  of  the  subject  in  generaL 
There  are  one  or  two  trifiing  errors  which  it 
would  be  well  to  correct  on  p.  xix :  **The 
deliverance  of  the  Church  and  State  from  the 
attack  of  the  Gauls  and  of  the  twenty  na- 
tions which  accompanied  them,**  should  read 
**  twelve  nations.**  The  error  arises  from  mis- 
understanding the  unusual  word,(f tmnadssyaC. 
On.  p.  Uv,  **  throw  away  doubt**  should  read 
**  throw  any  doubt.**  There  are  one  or  two 
other  mistakes  which  it  is  not  worth  while  to 
chronicle  here. 


Anima  Foeics:  From  the  Unpublished  Note- 
books of  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge.  Edited 
by  Ernest  Hartley  Coleridge.  Boston: 
Houghton,  Miffiin  &  Ck>.    1885. 

Thx  editing  of  this  volume  Is  by  the  same  care, 
f  ul  hand  that  edited  for  us  recently  the  *  Let- 
ters of  Samuel  Taylor  Ck>leridge.*  Much  labor 
must  have  gone  to  the  preparation  of  it,  but 
the  outcome  is  its  ample  justification  and  re- 
ward.  There  is  nothing  better  here,  nothing 
more  characteristic,  than  we  have  had  hereto- 
fore in  the  *  Table  Talk  *  and  *  Friend  *  and  *  Bio- 
graphia  Literaria,*  but  there  is  a  fresh  instal- 
ment of  what  attracted  us  in  those  delightful 
books,  good  in  itself  and  calculated  to  send  one 
acquainted  with  those  books  back  to  them  for  the 
renewal  of  his  pleasure  in  them  and  to*  win  for 
them  some  new  appreciation.  From  1705  to  1882 
Coleridge  filled  more  than  fifty  pocket  note- 
books with  his  observations  and  lucubrations 
on  a  very  great  variety  of  material  and  spirit- 
ual things.  Scanty  use  has  hitherto  been  made 
of  this  great  accumulation  of  material.  Mr. 
Coleridge  gives  a  careful  list  of  the  various 
drafts  that  have  been  made  upon  it,  ending 
with  '*a  few  quotations  from  diaries  of  tours 
in  the  Lake  Country  and  on  the  Continent  *"  that 
appear  in  the  foot-notes  of  the  *  Letters.*  At 
the  risk  of  injuring  his  collection,  lir.  Coleridge 
has  omitted  from  it  what  has  been  used  al- 
ready. But  the  aim  of  the  editor  is  something 
more  than  to  give  a  selection  of  admirable  sen- 
tences and  aphorisms.  He  would  **  enable  the 
reader  to  form  some  estimate  of  those  strange 
self-communings  to  which  Coleridge  devoted 
so  much  of  his  intellectual  energies,  and  by 
means  of  which  he  hoped  to  pass  through  the 
mists  and  shadows  of  words  and  thoughts  to 
a  steadier  contemplation,  to  the  apprehension 
if  not  the  comprehension  of  the  mysteries  of 
Truth  and  Being.**  Mr.  Coleridge  has  made  it 
easy  for  the  reader  to  find  what  he  seeks  and 
to  skip  what  he  doesn't  care  for  by  a  series  of 
marginal  notes,  mmaj  of  them  brief  quotations 


from  Colcidge  and  other  poets,  the  whole  suc- 
cession being  very  happily  conceived. 

The  selections  made  could  all  without  much 
violence,  if  any,  be  brought  under  four  heads: 
observations  of  nature;  comments  upon  friends; 
self  criticism;  approaches  to  things  ethical,  re- 
ligious, theosophical.  The  observations  upon 
nature  are  occasionaUy  scientific,  but  general- 
ly »«thetic.  For  one  so  introverted  as  Cole- 
ridge  they  show  a  remarkable  intensity  of  en. 
gagement  with  things  visible  and  tangible. 
Shelley  is  generally  regarded  as  par  excellence 
our  meteorological  poet,  but  Coleridge*s  pre- 
dilection for  the  lovely  mysteries  of  the 
weather  does  not  seem  to  have  been  less  pro- 
nounced. Reading  many  of  these  observa- 
tions, it  is  evident  that  the  atmospheric  felici. 
ties  of  *The  Ancient  Mariner*  were  not  evolved 
entirely  from  his  inner  consciousness;  that  if 
he  did  not  write  with  his  eye  on  the  object, 
he  did  write  remembering  bis  emotion  in 
tranquillity.  The  precious  sonnet,  ''Fancy  in 
Nubibus,'*  is  evidently  a  genuine  report  of 
doings  to  which  Ck>leridge  was  much  addicted, 
but  in  most  of  the  examples  given  here  of  his 
dealings  with  cloud  land  be  is  content  with 
the  actoal  appearance;  only  there  must  be 
something  of  mysterious  fascination  in  it  to 
attract  and  hold  him.  In  many  of  these  ob- 
servations we  are  very  near  to  that  region  of 
the  poet*s  mind  out  of  which  came  the  skyscape 
of  the  ode  *'  Dejection*'  and  the  loveliest  of  all 
the  marginal  readings  of  *  The  Ancient  Mari- 
ner*— that  about  **the  Journeying  Moon  and 
the  stars  that  still  sojourn  and  still  move  on- 
ward.**   For  example : 

*' A  most  remarkable  sky!  The  moon,  now 
waned  to  a  perfect  ootrich  egg,  hangs  over  our 
house  almost,  only  so  much  beyond  it,  garden- 
ward,  that  I  can  see  it,  holding  my  head  out  of 
the  smaller  study  window.  The  sky  is  covered 
with  whitish  and  with  dingy  doudage,  their 
dingiest  scud  close  under  the  moon,  and  one 
side  of  it  moving,  all  else  moveless;  but  there 
are  two  great  breaks  of  blue  sky:  the  one 
stretches  over  our  house  and  awav  towards 
Castlerigg,  and  this  is  speckled  and  blotched 
with  white  cloud;  the  other  hangs  over  the 
road,  in  the  line  of  the  road,  in  the  shape  of  an 
ellipse  or  shuttle,  I  do  not  know  what  to  call  it 
—this  is  unspeckled,  all  blue,  three  stars  in  it 
—more  in  the  former  break,  all  ud moving. 
The  water,  leaden  white,  even  as  the  gray 
gleam  of  water  is  in  latest  twilight.  Now 
while  I  have  been  writing  this  and  gazing  be- 
tween whiles  (it  is  forty  uiioutes  past  two)  the 
break  over  the  road  is  swallowed  up,  and  the 
stars  gone;  the  break  over  the  house  is  narrow- 
ed into  a  rude  circle,  and  00  the  edge  of  its 
circumference  one  very  bright  star.  Seet  al- 
ready the  white  mass,  thinning  at  its  edge. 
fights  with  its  brilliance.  See !  it  has  bedimmed 
it,  and  now  it  is  gone,  and  the  moon  is  gone.*' 

Of  the  comments  upon  friends,  those  upon 
Wordsworth  are  the  most  interesting  and  val- 
uable. But  not  all  bis  readers  will  agree  with 
Coleridge's  disparagement  of  Wordsworth's 
sherter  poems  as  compared  with  *'The  Pre- 
lude*': 

**  In  those  little  poems  his  own  corrections, 
coming  of  necessity  so  often,  wore  him  out, 
difference  of  opinion  with  bis  best  friends  irri- 
tated him,  and  he  wrote,  at*times,  too  much 
with  a  sectarian  spirit,  with  a  sort  of  bravado. 
But  now  he  is  at  the  helm  of  a  nobler  bark  ; 
now  be  sails  right  onward  ;  it  is  all  open  ocean 
and  a  steady  breeze,  and  he  drives  right  before 
it,  unfretted  by  short  tacks,  reefing  and  un- 
reeflog  the  sails,  hauling  and  disentangling 
the  ropes.  His  only  disease  is  in  having  been 
out  of  his  element ;  his  return  to  it  is  food  to 
famine  ;  it  is  both  the  specific  remedy  and  the 
condition  of  health." 

This  lofty  praise,  however,  is  shortly  follow- 
ed by  this  harsh  disparagement: 

'*But  surely  always  to  look  at  thesuperfl. 
oies  of  objects  for  tbe  purpose  of  taking  delight 
in  their  beauty,  and  sympathy  with  their  real 
or  imagined  life,  is  as  deleterious  to  tbe  health 


186 


The    I^ation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1600 


of  manhood  as  always  to  he  peering  and  un- 
ravelling contrivance  may  be  to  the  simplicity 
of  the  affections  and  the  grandeur  and  nnity 
of  the  imagination.** 

The  occasion  of  this  comment  was  **  a  most 
unpleasant  dispute  with  Wordsworth  and 
HazHtt'*  on  teleology.  Hazlitt  is  punished 
even  more  severely  than  Wordsworth  for 
speaking  *'80  irreverently,  so  malignanUy  of 
the  Divine  Wisdom.*'  But  for  the  capitals  we 
might  think  Coleridge*s  wisdom  was  intended. 

"Hazlitt,  how  easily  raised  to  rage  and 
hatred  8el^projected  !  out  who  shall  mid  the 
force  that  can  drag  him  out  of  the  depths  in- 
to one  expression  of  kindness,  into  the  snowing 
of  one  gleam  of  the  light  of  love  on  his  coun- 
tenance r 

There  is  more  of  this  and  worse,  but  the  next 
day  we  find  him  sitting  to  Hazlitt  for  his  por- 
trait, which,  let  us  trust,  was  more  flattering 
than  his  portrait  of  Hazlitt.  His  own  he 
sketches  many  times,  and  there  is  a  strange 
mingling  in  this  self. portraiture  of  abject  hu- 
mility and  unconscious  pride.  But  sometimes 
the  note  of  self-esteem  is  as  frank  as  possible. 
Thus* 

**  There  are  two  sorts  of  talkative  fellows 
whom  it  would  be  Injurious  to  confound.  The 
first  sort  is  those  who  use  five  hundred  more 
words  than  needs  to  express  an  idea.  That  is 
not  my  case.  Few  men,  I  will  be  bold  to  say, 
put  more  into  their  words  than  1^  or  choose 
them  more  deliberately  and  discriminately." 

His  own  trouble  is  that  he  has  five  hundred 
times  too  many  ideas  for  his  words.  There  is 
much  insistence  on  his  need  of  the  sympathy  and 
support  of  others,  and  this  without  miscalcula- 
tion. His  evil  habit  is  barely  touched  upon, 
but  there  are  passages  that  seem  to  indicate  its 
sway.  We  find  him  studious  of  his  dreams 
and  of  the  half-light  between  sleep  and  wak* 
ing.  The  essence  of  his  character  is  nowhere 
more  apparent  than  in  a  passage  where  he 
makes  Ghod  in  his  own  image:  ** Something 
inherently  mean  in  action!  Even  the  creation 
of  the  universe  disturbs  my  idea  of  the  Al- 
mighty's greatness— would  do  so  but  that  I 
perceive  that  Thought  with  him  creates."  **A 
time  will  come  when  passivenees  will  attain 
the  dignity  of  worthy  activity,'*  when  men 
will  be  **  proud  of  having  remained  in  a  state 
of  deep,  tranquil  emotion.** 

There  are  many  incidental  touches  of  great 


beauty,  admirable  criticisms  upon  men  and 
books,  verbal  fel  cities  of  surprising  fores  and 
charm.  He  is  vexed  that  "■  he  must  admire, 
ay,  greatly  admire,  Richardson.  His  mind 
is  so  very  vile  a  mind,  so  oozy,  hypocritical, 
praise-mad,  canting,  enyious,  concupiscent.** 
He  contemplates  a  poem  on  bells  and  sets  down 
several  hints  for  it,  but  with  no  word  about 
Schiller's  **Song  of  the  Bell,**  of  which  he 
probably  knew  and  was  unconsciously  remi- 
niscent. The  attempts  at  humor  are  duller 
than  the  leaden  bell  which  Froude  imagined 
that  he  heard  In  Browning*s  verse.  The  reli- 
gious parts  are  generally  impressive  so  long 
as  they  are  predominantly  ethical.  When  they 
are  merely  speculative  they  are  filmy  and  in- 
tangible, but  will  undoubtedly  commend  them- 
selves to  those  who  thrill  to  an  idea  in  propor* 
tion  to  its  incomprehensibility.  There  is  a 
noble  passage  upon  iomiortality  (pp.  170,  171), 
in  the  course  of  which  occurs  a  remarkable 
anticipation  of  the  idea  that  was  central  to 
Prof.  Huxley*s  anti-supematuralist  position: 
**  If  a  miracle  merely  means  an  event  before 
inexperienced,  it  proves  only  itself  and  the  in- 
experience of  mankind.**  Huxley's  statement 
of  the  matter  was  that  a  day-fly  had  more  rea- 
son to  think  a  thunder-storm  supernatural 
than  we  to  think  so  the  most  exceptional  thing 
we  can  imagine. 


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[Temple  ShskspereJ  London:  Dent;  New  York: 
Macmillan.   Bach4Se. 

Gumplowlca.  Prof.  Louis.  Precis  de  Soolologle.  Paris : 
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Halsey.  J.  L.,  and  B.  D.  Thomas  Halsey  of  Hertford- 
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1679,  wltn  bis  American  Descendants  to  the  Eighth 
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Jermyman. 

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Homaday.  W.  T.  The  Man  Who  Became  a  Savage. 
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Hombrook,  A.  R.  Concrete  Geometry  for  Beginners. 
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Homung,  E.  W.    Irralle's  Bushranger.  Scrlbners.   75o. 

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Johnson.  Prof.  Franklin.  The  Quotations  of  the  New 
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Kenyon,J.B.   An  Oaten  Pipe.   J.  Selwln  Tait  ft  Sons. 

Llndley,  Dr.  Walter,  and  Wldney,  Dr.  J.  P.  California 
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Monahan,  Michael.   Youth :  A  Poem  of  Soul  and  Sense, 

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Moncrteff,  Hon.  Frederick.   The  X  Jewel :  A^^ttlsh 

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MARCH  S,   1896. 


The  Week. 

Ohs  bat  only  to  read  the  debate  in  the 
Senate  of  Februarj^  27  to  see  bow  abso- 
lutely in  the  dark  tbe^  whole  blundering 
belligerency  work  was  d6oe.  Senator  Sher- 
man gravely  introduced  as  bia  first  evi- 
dence a  pamphlet  written  by  a  representa- 
tive of  the  CNiban  insurgents.  This  ex- 
parte  document  **  seems  to  be  fairly  and 
frankly  written,**  said  Mr.  Sherman,  and 
hence  the  Senate  could  implicitly  accept 
all  its  statements.  But  even  these  state- 
ments, thus  gui^ranteed,  had  nothing  to 
say  about  the  actual  situation  of  the  in- 
surrection, or  whether  the  fact  of  belli- 
gerency existed.  Senator  Morgan  here  in- 
terposed to  strengthen  the  case  by  read- 
ing a  letter  just  received  **  from  a  gentle- 
man with  whom  I  have  no  acquaintance 
whatever.  *'  The  writer  was  ready  to  make 
oath  that  ••57,000  Cubans  bit  the  dust  *> 
in  the  last  insurrection,  and  what  other 
evidence  could  be  demanded.  Senator 
Morgan  would  like  to  know,  that  the  in- 
surgents in  the  present  insurrection  had 
all  the  recognised  marks  of  belligerentsf 
Senator  Sherman  went  on  to  refer  to  a 
mysterious  book  in  Spanish.  He  was 
sorry  he  had  not  had  time  to  get  it  from 
the  Library  to  awe  the  Senate  with, 
but  perhaps  it  did  not  matter,  as  he  could 
not  read  Spanish  anyhow.  Luckily,  ex- 
tracts from  it  had  been  translated  "by 
one  of  the  great  journals,"  and  those  he 
would  read.  They  showed  a  horrible 
state  of  things  in  1870,  and  who  could 
doubt  that  conditions  were  even  worse  in 
1886f  To  make  the  case  absolutely  com- 
plete. Lodge  interposed  to  read  "  the  last 
proclamation  of  Gen.  Weyler."  What 
he  really  read  was  a  newspaper  guess  at 
what  a  proclamation  was  going  to  be— so 
stated  on  its  face,  and  a  guess  promptly 
belied,  at  that.  There  has  been  no  such 
proclamation.  Lodge  must  have  known 
this  at  the  time,  but  it  would  be  a  poor 
sort  of  Massachusetts  Senator  who  would 
not  stretch  the  truth  a  little  in  order  to 
help  bring  on  a  glorious  war  for  the  im- 
provement of  our  decaying  morals.  With 
no  surer  facts  to  go  upon  than  this  col- 
lection of  guesses  and  irrelevancies,  the 
Senate  rushed  blindfokl  on  to  what  might 
be  war. 


No  better  was  the  performance  of  the 
House  on  Monday.  In  the  speech  by 
which  Mr.  Hitt  (the  chahrman  of  the 
House  committee  on  foreign  relations,  be 
it  remembered)  introduced  the  resolu- 
tions, we  look  in  vain  for  evidence  of  in- 
surgent belligerency  in  the  shape  of  offi- 
cial reports,  or  other  testimony  equally 
goody  showing  what  territory  the  insur- 
genti  hold,  the  seat  of  their  Government, 


and  the  points  of  the  coast  at  which  for- 
eign Powers  can  communicate  with  them, 
the  nature  of  their  Qovemment,  and  their 
armament  on  land  and  sea.  These  are  the 
facts  which  constitute  belligerency.  Of 
these  facts  Mr.  Hitt  had  not  a  particle  of  < 
proof.  What  he  said  was  that  belligerency 
was  proved  *'no(  by  the  newspaper  reports 
8 lone,  but  by  the  reports  of  the  United 
States  consuls.'*  Nothing  of  the  sort  has 
appeared  in  any  published  consular  report 
or  in  any  newspaper.  Cuban  belligerency, 
in  the  sense  in  which  the  term  is  used  in 
diplomacy,  is  an  invention  of  his  own. 
He  fortified  himself  by  alleging  on  his 
own  authority  that  Spaniards  held  only 
one-third  of  the  island,  that  125,000  troops 
had  been  sent  to  Cuba,  that  the  Captain- 
General  had  issued  two  long  proclama- 
tions which  **had  been  read  with  horror," 
that  guerilla  warfare  had  proved  too  much 
for  the  French  in  Spain,  under  Napoleon, 
of  which  the  Spaniards  are  very  proud, 
and  that  the  belligerency  of  the  Confede- 
racy had  been  recognised  by  Spain  three 
months  after  the  war  broke  out,  as  if 
belligerency  were  a  question  of  time  and 
not  of  circumstances. 


We  presume  no  American  whois  proud 
of  his  country,  and  has  any  acquaintaAce 
with  the  part  she  has  played  in  building 
up  the  code  of  international  morals  which 
now  prevails  in  Christendom,  has  read  the 
debate  which  ensued,  without  a  good  deal 
of  humiliation,  or  without,  under  all  the 
circumstances,  much  gratitude  to  the 
gentlemen,  Messrs.  Turner,  fiputelle,  Mc- 
Call,  and  Tucker,  who  treated  the  House 
to  a  few  doses  of  law  and  common  sense. 
From  most  of  the  supporters  of  the  reso- 
lutions nobody  expected  anything  but 
what  they  supplied.  Talking  interna- 
tional law  or  usage  to  them  would  be  like 
talking  it  to  a  chamber  of  >Aarchists.  But 
Mr.  Hitt  is  a  graduate  of  Yale  College 
and  has  been  Assistant  Secretary  of  State. 
Of  neither  experience  was  there  the  slight- 
est trace  in  his  speech.  For  all  that  ap- 
peared in  that  effort,  he  might  have  been 
bred  in  some  vast  wilderness,  where  ru- 
mors of  successful  or  unsuccessful  war 
reached  him  only  through  primers.  The 
most  striking  thing  in  his  speech  was  the 
assurance  he  gathered  from  the  Spanish 
Minister's  apology  for  the  Barcelona  mob, 
that  his  own  resolutions  would  cause  no 
trouble.  This  brings  out  what  is  really 
the  most  alarming  trait  in  Jingo  perform- 
ances. It  will  have  been  observed  that 
whenever  Jingoes  indulge  in  violent  lan- 
guage which  imperils  peaceful  relations, 
and  the  Power  to  which  it  is  addressed 
answers  with  astonished  politeness,  and 
shows  anxiety  to  avoid  a  quarrel,  the  Jingo 
always  sets  it  down  to  fear,  turns  calmly 
to  his  followers,  and  says:  "Tou  see;  I 
told  you  there  would  be  no  war.  That  is 
the  way  to  talk  to  these  suckers.    Thay 


understand  now  how  we  feel,  and  what  a 
big  country  this  is,  and  they  won't  forget 
it  soon  either." 


The  difficulty  of  hammering  even  ele- 
mentary notions  of  international  law  into 
the  heads  of  some  of  the  inland  sages  was 
well  illustrated  in  the  debate  on  the  Senate 
resolution  in  recognition  of  Cuban  bel- 
ligerency between  Senator  Gray  and  Sena- 
tor Vest  of  Missouri.  Senator  Gray  was 
contending  for  the  elementary  proposition 
**  that  recognition  of  the  independence  of 
a  people  is  the  recognition  of  a  fact." 
Is  Cuba  independent  or  notf  The  reason 
for  thinking  she  is  not  is  that  the  Cubans 
have  no  ports,  no  fixed  territorial  area,  no 
regular  government,  no  organised  army. 
What  difference  does  that  make  f  said  Mr. 
Vest.  **  Will  the  Senator  from  Delaware 
permit  me  to  ask  him  whether  the  cause 
of  the  American  colonies  was  not  more 
desperate  than  that  of  Cuba  to-day  when 
France  recognised  our  independencef" 
When  the  French  recognised  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  United  States,  the  rebels 
had  had  through  the  whole  contest  thir- 
teen regularly  organised  colcmial  govern- 
ments. They  had  had  the  leading  port  of 
the  Union  in  their  possession  for  two  years 
before  the  French  recognition.  Boston 
was  surrendered  to  Washington  March  17, 
1776.  French  recognition  came  on  Febru- 
ary 6, 1778.  But  what  is  more  important 
than  all  is  that  the  leading  British  army 
in  the  field,  that  of  Gen.  Burgoyne,  sur- 
rendered to  the  rebels  October  17,  1777, 
which  was  really  the  determining  cause  oi 
the  French  alliance. 


The  discussion  of  the  silver  question  in 
the  Senate  on  Wednesday  week  served  still 
further  to  dear  the  air.  For  many  years 
the  managers  of  the  Republican  party 
have  been  playing  what  Mr.  Teller  of 
Colorado  rightly  styled  a  **  bunco  game  " 
on  the  silver  States.  This  policy  was  in- 
augurated in  1888,  when  Mr.  McKinley,  as 
chairman  of  the  committee  on  resolutions 
in  the  Republican  national  convention,  re- 
ported the  now  famous  plank  "  condemn- 
ing the  Democratic  Administration  for  its 
efforts  to  demcmetiae  silver."  What  the 
Democratic  Administration  had  done  in 
this  matter  from  1885  to  1888  was  simply 
to  urge  the  pame  policy  that  its  Republi- 
can predecessor  had  urged  from  1881  to 
1885.  We  place  skis  by  side  the  final  re-, 
commendation  cm  this  subject  of  Presi- 
dent Arthur  in  1884  and  the  first  recom- 
mendation of  President  Cleveland  in  1886: 


I  oonour  with  the 
Secretai^  of  the  Trea- 
sury in  recommending 
the  immediate  siiipeo- 
•ion  of  the  ooinege  of 
silver  dollars  and  of  the 
issoanoe  of  silver  oer- 

Itifloates.  —  Fr^HtUni 
Arthur.  D0O§mb€r  i, 
M4. 


I  reoommeod  the 
suspension  of  the  com. 
pouory  coinage  of  sil- 
ver dollars  directed  by 
Uie  law  passed  in  Feb- 
mery,  1878.  —  Prti- 
dent  Cltveland,  Z>s- 
C€mb0r  8t  i&85. 


188 


Tlie   ITation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1 601 


The  McKinley  resolution  was  intended 
to  mean,  and  could  mean,  only  that  the 
Republican  party,  if  restored  to  power, 
would  turn  its  back  upon  its  consistent 
record  up  to  1885,  and  show  more  favor 
to  the  silverites.  This  pledge  was  re- 
deemed by  the  taking  at  the  first  oppor- 
tunity of  that  "long  step  towards  free 
coinage,"  as  the  Indiana  Republicans 
styled  the  silyer- purchase  act  of  1890— an 
act  urged  by  Mr.  McKinley,  as  leader  of 
the  House,  on  the  ground  that  **  it  does 
what  the  present  law  has  not  done:  it 
takes  every  dollar  of  silver  bullion  that  is 
produced  in  the  United  States  and  places 
it  at  the  disposal  of  the  people  as 
money  " ;  and  that  '*  we  cannot  have  free 
coinage  now  except  in  the  manner  as  pro- 
vided in  the  bill."  The  attempt  to  play 
the  bunco  game  was  continued  in  the  na- 
tional platform  of  1892,  with  its  declara- 
tion in  favor  of  *' bimetallism,"  which 
Mr.  Teller  and  Mr.  Jones  of  Nevada  were 
assured  meant  what  the  silverites  want- 
ed. Mr.  Carter,  Mr.  Teller,  and  the 
other  Republican  Senators  from  the  sil- 
ver States  who  stand  with  them,  are  ren- 
dering a  national  service  in  exposing  this 
whole  policy  of  deception  upon  which  the 
Republican  managers  entered  in  1888,  and 
in  insisting  that  no  more  of  these  Mc- 
Kinley games  shall  be  played.  For  an 
organisation  that  used  to  pride  itself 
upon  being  the  party  of  moral  ideas,  the 
record  of  the  Republicans  on  the  silver 
question  during  the  last  eight  years  has 
been  most  contemptible.  McKinley  him- 
self is  apparently  ready  to  continue  the 
policy  of  evasion  and  deception,  but  Car- 
ter, Teller,  and  their  associates  have  ren- 
dered this  impossible. 


The  multiplying  signs  that  free  silver  is 
going  to  cut  through  both  parties  and 
make  itself  the  controlling  issue  in  the 
next  Presidential  election,  will  give  gene- 
ral satisfaction— they  certainly  will  to  the 
friends  of  sound  money.  The  great  peril 
now  is,  two-faced  platforms  and  doughface 
candidates.  The  silver  Republicans  are 
apparently  prepared  to  fight,  and  the 
sound- money  Democrats  are  also  stripping 
for  the  contest — none  too  soon.  Secretary 
Carlisle  boldly  said  last  week  that  the 
conflict  was  now  an  irrepressible  one,  and 
the  issue  of  a  kind  that  could  not  be 
avoided  even  by  trimmers,  and  would  not 
be  by  men  of  character.  A  silver  party, 
pure  and  simple,  is  by  all  means  to  be  de- 
sired. If  all  the  16-to-l  men  and  the 
international  *  agreement  men  and  the 
straddlers  and  dodgers  in  either  party 
could  be  forced  to  go  off  with  the  Popu- 
lists, where  they  belong,  the  country  would 
first  rise  up  and  call  them  blessed,  and 
then  rise  up  and  smite  them  hip  and 
thigh.  It  seems  almost  too  much  to  hope 
for  such  a  result,  but  we  may,  for  the 
present,  hope  for  it  with  fear  and  trem- 
bling. 

Speaker  Reed's  obstinate  silence,  in  the 
face  of  n  threatened  and  probable  split 


in  his  party,  is  highly  inopportune,  as  he 
has  before  philosophized  a  great  deal 
about  such  matters.  In  his  Old  Orchard 
speech  of  August  25,  1891,  he  explained 
how  the  Democratic  party  was  destined 
to  fail  because,  ^nlike  the  Republican 
party,  it  "  had  no  underlying  principle  on 
which  it  was  united  from  one  end  of  the 
country  to  the  other."  The  present  de- 
lightful harmony  of  the  Republicaos  on 
the  currency,  from  one  end  of  the  country 
to  the  other,  would  be  most  profitable  for 
reproof  and  instruction  if  commented  up- 
on by  such  a  philosopher.  While  about 
it,  he  could  also  discourse  solidly  on  the 
way  in  which  his  own  aphorisms  upon 
another  matter  have  come  home  to  roost. 
He  said  that  the  Democrats  could  keep 
up  a  semblance  of  being  a  party  when  in 
opposition,  but  that  when  '*  they  endeavor 
to  combine  and  to  take  positive  action 
themselves,"  we  at  once  see  **  the 
tremendous  diversity  of  opinion  which 
was  masked  under  seeming  unanimity." 
Would  the  Speaker  admit  that  Republi- 
can Hamlet  and  Laertes  have  since  ex- 
changed rapiers  f 


The  public  debt  statement  for  March 
shows  the  receipts  and  expeoditures  for 
eight  months  of  the  fiscal  year.  The  de- 
ficit was  only  $17,500,000.  During  the 
same  period  of  the  previous  year  it  was 
136,300.000,  showing  a  gain  of  nearly 
$19,000,000.  At  this  rate  of  progress  it 
is  a  reasonable  anticipation  that  in  the 
next  fiscal  year,  beginning  July,  1896,  the 
receipts  will  equal  the  expenditures. 
The  only  thing  that  can  prevent  this  is 
the  continual  beating  of  war-drums  at 
Washington.  If  Congress  would  adjourn, 
or  would  take  up  its  proper  business  and 
stop  meddling  with  foreign  affairs  and 
getting  us  into  unnecessary  broils,  there 
would  be  a  period  of  renewed  prosperity 
in  all  parts  of  the  country,  the  effects  of 
which  would  be  immediately  perceptible 
in  the  public  revenues.  The  maintenance 
of  the  gold  standard  is  now  assured,  not 
only  by  the  accumulation  of  that  metal 
in  the  Treasury,  but  still  more  by  the  pur- 
pose shown  by  the  public  in  the  recent 
bond  sale  to  furnish  all  that  may  be  need- 
ed for  that  purpose  hereafter.  The  only 
cloud  upon  the  business  horizon  is  that 
which  has  been  wantonly  created  by  reck- 
less politicians. 


Attention  should  be  called  to  the  figures 
issued  by  the  Bureau  of  Statistics  for  the 
calendar  years  1891  to  1895  on  the  subject 
of  wool.  The  period  covered  is  practically 
four  years  under  the  tariff  act  of  1890  and 
one  year  under  that  of  1894.  In  1892, 
which  was  the  year  of  largest  imports  of 
woollen  manufactures  under  the  McICin- 
ley  tariff,  the  amount  of  duties  collected 
was  $36,560,539  on  a  valuation  of  imports 
of  $37,557,037.  This  was  equivalent  to  an 
ad  valorem  of  97.36  per  cent.  In  1895  the 
duty  collected  was  $28,102,648  on  a  value 


of  Imports  of  $61,018,579— the  equivalent 
ad  valorem  being  46  per  cent.  This  shows 
that  with  the  rate  of  duty  reduced  more 
than  one-half,  the  revenue  was  reduced 
only  23  per  cent.  It  is  an  impudent  de- 
mand to  ask  Congress  to  reimpose  the 
high  duties  on  raw  wools  to  gain  a  reve- 
nue of  six  or  seven  millions  of  dollars,  and 
to  increase  to  an  even  greater  degree  the 
duties  on  manufactures  of  wool  for  a  simi- 
lar sum.  At  the  end  of  February  the  de- 
ficit in  the  national  account  was  only 
$900,000  more  than  it  was  at  the  end  of 
November.  The  Government  is,  there- 
fore, very  nearly  paying  its  expenses  out 
of  current  revenue,  and  there  is  no  rea- 
sonable ground  for  tinkering  with  the 
tariff,  and  least  of  all  in  the  direction  of 
higher  duties  on  raw  wools  and  manu- 
factures of  wool,  where  the  consumer  loses 
two  dollars  every  time  the  Qovernment 
gains  one. 


A  meeting  was  held  at  Cooper  Institute 
on  Friday  evening,  under  the  call  of  the 
Central  Labor  Union,  to  protest  against 
the  introduction  of  militarism  as  a  gov- 
rning  force  in  this  country.  The  meet- 
ing was  a  great  success  in  point  of  num- 
bers and  enthusiasm.  The  speeches  were 
made  by  plain-talking  men,  who  knew  ex- 
actly what  they  wanted,  and  the  resolu- 
tions were  of  the  most  decisive  character, 
declaring  that  the  participants  would  vote 
against  every  man,  in  either  house  of  Con- 
gress, who  should  support  the  pending 
bills  to  add  to  the  permanent  military 
force  of  the  nation  by  fortifications  or 
otherwise.  The  Tribune^  in  its  menda- 
cious account  of  this  meeting,  suppresses 
all  the  ideas  presented  by  the  speakers 
except  one.  It  suppresses  the  resolutions 
also.  The  one  idea  which  it  allows  to  go 
before  its  readers  is  that  the  proposed  for- 
tifications and  the  increased  army  are  in- 
tended to  put  down  strikes  rather  than  to 
fight  foreign  enemies.  The  truth  is  that 
the  meeting  was  a  protest  against  war  and 
all  its  belongings,  the  facilities  for  deal- 
ing with  domestic  insurrection  being  one 
of  several  reasons  for  opposing  this  new 
development  of  **  Americanism."  The 
idea  oftenest  put  forward  by  the  speakers 
was  that  war  means  bloodshed  and  penury 
for  the  laboring  classes,  the  glory  and  the 
profits  being  monopolized  by  a  few  officers 
and  contractors.  Is  not  this  true  of  all 
wars?  Another  idea  prominently  pre- 
sented was  that  the  taxes  to  pay  for  this 
military  equipment  must  be  paid  chiefiy 
by  laboring  men,  which  is  true  also. 


The  ordering  of  ships  to  Corinto  by  Sec- 
retary Olney,  to  protect  Americans  while 
the  usual  revolution  is  going  on,  will  puz- 
zle the  international  lawyers  a  good  deal. 
They  were  told  by  Mr.  Olney  last  July 
that  '*our  fiat  is  law  "  on  this  continent. 
This  they  of  course  believed,  for  they 
didn't  want  their  heads  blown  off  lor 
doubting  it.     But  how  much  myatiflad 


March  5,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


189 


tho7  will  be  now  to  see  men-of-war  reeorted 
to  when  a  aimple  **fiat*'  could  do  the 
bueinees  so  easily.  Your  true  **  fiat  '*  is 
self-executing.  When  the  Creator  said, 
**Fiat  lux/'  there  was  no  need  of  casting 
about  for  some  means  of  producing  light, 
but  immediately  '*  there  was  light.*'  This 
is  the  way  Secretary  Olney  should  haye 
proceeded.  He,  too,  shou'd  have  shown 
that  he  could  speak  and  it  was  done,  he 
could  command  and  it  stood  fast.  Instead 
of  a  war-ship,  a  cablegram  should  have 
been  sufficient.  Addressed  to  **  Dagoes, 
Corinto,  via  Galveston,"  it  would  have 
needed  only  to  say,  **My  fiat  is  peace. 
Olney.*'  Instantly  the  machetes  would 
have  been  beaten  into  ploughshares,  and 
a  vast  and  lucrative  trade  have  been  built 
up  with  this  country.  But  cumbrous 
ships  and  guns  instead  of  this  swift  King- 
Canute  method !  Fie  on  that  kind  of  a 
fiat! 


Mr.  Sanger  has  introduced  in  the  New 
York  Assembly  what  seems  to  be  a  de- 
sirable measure  supplementary  to  our  in- 
adequate corrupt-practice  law.  It  pro- 
vides for  the  filing,  within  ten  days  after 
election,  of  itemized  accounts  of  all  re- 
ceipts and  expenditures  by  candidates, 
committees,  agents,  corporation*,  associa- 
tions, and  everybody  else  who  has  paid, 
or  advanced,  or  promised  to  pay  money  to 
aid  in  an  election.  We  wish  we  could  say 
that  there  is  hope  of  this  or  some  similar 
measure  becoming  a  law.  The  Republi- 
cans were  pledged  in  favor  of  it  when  they 
came  into  power,  an  i  Oov.  Morton  sought 
to  hold  them  to  their  pledge  in  his  first 
messsge.  The  last  Legislature  refused  to 
pay  any  attention  either  to  him  or  to  the 
pledge,  and  this  year  he  neglected  to  say 
anything  whatever  on  the  subject.  Of 
course  the  rigid  enforcement  of  such  a 
law  would  be  the  destruction  of  Piatt,  for 
it  would  expose  his  entire  system  of  ma- 
chine control  by  revealing  the  sources  of 
his  income  and  the  uses  which  he  made 
of  it.  Not  only  would  the  amount  of  each 
oorporation*s  contribution  be  revealed, 
but  the  share  each  candidate  received  to 
aid  him  in  his  election,  or  the  price  for 
which  he  sold  himself  to  the  boss,  would 
also  be  exposed.  This  would  be  an  ap- 
palling catastrophe  to  the  boss  system, 
and  we  look  for  a  very  chilling  legislative 
reception  to  Bir.  Sanger's  proposal. 


Echoes  of  the  income-tax  agitation  are 
growing  fainter  in  the  South.  The  action 
of  the  Kentucky  Legislature  in  adopting 
a  resolution  looking  towards  a  constitu- 
tional amendment  under  which  such  a 
tax  could  be  assessed  is  more  than  offset 
by  the  rejection  in  the  South  Carolina 
House  of  a  spedflc  income-tax  bill,  which 
commanded  the  votes  of  only  about  one- 
third  of  the  Representatives.  Many  who 
voted  in  opposition  were  influenced  by 
the  argument  that  an  income  tax,  while  a 
good  thing  when  applied  to  the  whole 


country,  might,  when  confined  to  a  single 
State,  be  disastrous  by  its  effect  in  driv- 
ing out  capital.  The  offering  of  such  a 
reason  may  be  accepted  as  evidence  that 
even  the  Populists  are  learning  not  only 
that  capital  is  very  useful,  but  also  that 
its  rights  must  l>e  given  some  considera- 
tion. When  a  Legislature  whose  members 
applaud  Tillman's  tirade  takes  this  posi- 
tion on  the  income  tax,  that  proposal  may 
be  considered  to  l>e  as  dead  as  Dingley's 
tariff  bill. 


The  verdict  of  the  jury  in  South  Carolina 
acquitting  of  murder  last  week  the  lynchers 
of  an  old  colored  woman  is  symptom- 
atic of  a  lower  stage  of  humanity  than 
prevailed  in  the  old  slavery  days.  A 
Charleston  correspondent  of  the  Eve- 
ning Po8t,  in  a  recent  letter  relating 
the  outrage  for  which  these  men  were 
tried,  pointed  out  that,  even  before  the 
war,  white  men  were  sentenced  to  death  in 
that  State  for  killing  negroes  when  the 
negroes  were  nothing  but  chattels  in  the 
eye  of  the  law.  The  lynchers  just  acquit- 
ted dragged  a  negro,  his  wife,  and  mother 
from  their  house  at  night,  and  beat  them 
so  terribly  that  the  man  and  his  mother 
were  found  dead  the  next  morning.  One 
of  these  lynchers  was  a  prominent  physi- 
cian of  the  neighborhood.  The  defence  re- 
lied almost  entirely  on  the  evidence  of  a 
doctor  who  testified  that  the  old  woman 
(for  whose  murder  this  trial  was  held)  died 
from  asphyxiation — that  is,  was  drowned 
in  water  not  a  foot  deep,  aod  not  from  the 
effects  of  the  beating  received.  The  pro- 
secution seems  to  have  been  in  earnest  to 
secure  the  conviction,  and  this  **  medical 
testimony  "  was  torn  all  to  pieces  on  cross- 
examination;  but  the  modern  South  Ca- 
rolina jury  seems  incapable  of  punishiog 
a  white  man  when  a  negro  is  his  victim. 
The  accused  are  still  to  be  tried  for  the 
murder  of  the  negro  man,  and  it  is  encou- 
raging to  hear  that  the  Judge,  after  their 
acquittal,  refused  to  admit  them  to  bail. 


The  literary  output  of  1895,  as  footed  up 
in  the  Publiahers*  Weekly ^  showtf  a  total 
of  5,469  new  books  and  new  editions  (368 
of  the  latter),  as  against  4,484  in  1894. 
The  greatest  increase  was  in  fiction  (385), 
with  lesser  gains  in  law,  theology,  educa- 
tion, and  nearly  every  category  except 
political  and  social  science ;  as  to  the  fall- 
ing off  in  the  latter  department,  theorists 
may  well  be  excused  for  waiting  for  prac 
tice  to  catch  up.  Some  light  is  thrown 
by  the  statistics  on  the  working  of  the 
copyright  law.  It  appears  that  there  were 
3.396  books  by  American  authors  manu- 
factured in  the  United  States,  as  com- 
pared with  847  books  by  English  and 
other  foreign  authors,  while  1,226  books 
were  imported,  in  sheets  or  bound.  The 
American  novelist  shows  up  badly.  He 
produced  but  287  volumea  to  689  by  pau- 
per foreign  authors,  manufactured  in  this 
country,  and  238  imported.    As   it  was 


American  fiction  that  the  simultaneous- 
publication  and  American  -  manufacture 
clauses  of  the  copyright  law  were  going 
especially  to  protect  and  develop  glorious- 
ly, it  looks  as  if  Mr.  M.  D.  Conway  had 
Eome  ground  for  asserting  that,  from  a 
financial  point  of  view,  the  act  of  1891  was 
the  most  disastrous  thing  that  ever  befell 
American  authors.  We,  of  course,  have 
no  patience  with  those  cynics  who  main- 
tain that  the  fault  is  not  in  our  copyright 
stars,  but  in  our  fiction  itself,  that  it  is  an 
underling. 


Measured  on  a  scale  of  the  scornful 
laughter  which  reference  to  them  in  Par- 
liament produces,  bimetallism,  protection, 
the  Tory  social  programme,  and  the  Poet 
Laureate  would  rank  in  about  the  order 
named.  Rosebery  in  the  Lords  vied  with 
Harcourt  in  the  Commons  in  jests  about 
**  the  favorite  ttm^j  of  the  First  Lord  of 
the  Treasury,  which  that  right  honorable 
gentleman,  as  First  Lord  of  the  Treasury, 
finds  himself  precluded  from  applying — 
bimetallism,**  and  Olympian  laughter  fol- 
lowed in  either  house.  A  similar  tribute 
was  paid  to  every  mention  of  protection  ; 
and  when  Lord  Rosebery  alluded  to  the 
way  the  Duke  of  Devonshire  had  gone 
round  during  the  recess  '*  as  a  universal 
refrigerator,"  to  turn  an  ley  spray  upon 
every  bud  or  blossom  of  hope  of  social  le- 
gislation by  the  Tories,  the  Lords  had  to 
look  to  their  waistcoat  buttons.  Poor  Mr. 
Austin  must  have  thought  his  laurel  had 
been  inadvertently  taken  from  a  thorn- 
tree.  His  eulogistic  verse  on  the  Jameson 
raid  convinced  Lord  Rosebery  that  the 
laureateship  was  not  only,  as  he  always 
thought,  an  obsolete  office,  but  also  a  dan- 
gerous one.  Hard  hitting  Sir  William 
Harcourt,  when  referring  to  the  attitude 
which  sober-minded  Englishmen  should 
observe  towards  lawlets  compromisers  of 
the  English  name,  like  Jameson,  remark- 
ed with  huge  disdain  :  **  I  am  not  speak- 
ing of  music-halls  or  of  poets  laureate." 
The  cheers  and  roars  of  laughter  that  fol- 
lowed were  enough  to  suggest  that  the 
next  official  poem  should  begin  :  '*  Who 
would  not  be  jeered  at  for  England  f  '* 


As  anti-Semitism  goes  down  in  Berlin 
it  goes  up  in  Vienna.  That  pious  Jew- 
baiter,  Dr.  ^giooker,  is  In  disgrace,  re- 
pudiated by  his  erstwhile  enthusiastic 
admirer,  the  Emperor,  and  reduced  to 
a  practical  nullity  politically.  But  in 
Vienna  the  new  Municipal  Council  is 
more  sweepingly  an ti  Semite  than  the 
last  one,  which  the  Emperor  had  to  dia- 
solve  in  November.  It  will  doubtless  elect 
its  chosen  agitator.  Dr.  Lueger,  Burgo- 
master again,  and  bring  on  a  fresh  con* 
test  with  the  Crown.  Stormy  times  are 
presaged  for  Austrian  politics,  not  only 
by  this  insensate  race  prejudice,  but  by 
the  socialistic  and  lal)or  agitation  as  well, 
which  is  already  leading  to  scenes  of  un- 
precedented violence  in  the  Plet 


190 


Tlie   iN^ation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1 601 


MILITARISM  IN  A  REPUBLIC. 
Ths  embroilment  with  Spain  has  come 
upon  the  commercial  world,  as  the  Presi- 
dent's Venezuela  message  did,  like  thun- 
der out  of  a  clear  sky.  The  former  is  one 
of  the  indirect  consequences  of  the  latter. 
Congress  was  so  dumfounded  and  de- 
moralized by  the  tone  of  that  message 
that  it  has  had  no  steadiness  or  stamina 
since.  It  was  panic-stricken  with  the  idea 
that  Mr.  Cleveland  and  his  party  would 
gain  an  advantage  by  being  greater  Jin- 
goes than  the  Republicans.  The  latter, 
through  their  leading  politicians  and  news- 
papers, had  been  demanding  a  '*  vigorous 
foreign  policy,"  and  when  Mr.  Cleveland 
gave  them  rather  more  of  it  than  they 
wanted  or  expected,  they  felt  compelled  to 
**  stand  behind  him.*'  This  was  a  situa- 
tion they  had  never  contemplated.  They 
have  ever  since  been  trying  to  get  in  front. 
They  first  tried  to  rally  under  the  banner 
of  Armenia,  and  for  this  purpose  tbey 
passed  a  resolution  lecturing  the  Powers 
of  Europe  for  not  carrying  out  the  Treaty 
of  Berlin— a  treaty  to  which  we  were  not 
a  party.  This  was  rather  ridiculous,  be- 
sides which  Armenia  was  too  far  away. 
The  rebellion  in  Cuba  was  near  at  hand, 
and  was  the  only  other  thing  that  offered 
a  chance  of  getting  in  front  of  Cleveland 
instead  of  bringing  up  the  rear.  This  is 
the  reason  why  the  business  world  was 
plunged  into  fresh  trouble  last  Friday,  and 
why  it  is  to  be  harassed  for  an  indefinite 
time  to  come.  This  is  the  reason  why  an 
excitable  people  on  the  other  side  of  the 
water  are  mobbing  American  consulates 
in  their  chief  cities,  and  why  the  Ameri- 
can Minister  is  protected  against  insult  or 
perhaps  violence  only  by  a  strong  police 
force  at  Madrid. 

All  these  doings  are  wicked,  and  they 
point  to  a  reign  of  militarism  the  end  of 
which  no  man  can  foresee.  They  will  give 
rise  to  a  new  demand  for  forts,  battle- 
ships, big  guns,  war  material,  and  all  the 
things  that  go  to  make  a  hell  upon  earth. 
Because  we  shake  our  fists  at  Spain,  and 
a  mob  in  consequence  pulls  down  our  flag 
at  Barcelona,  it  is  made  plausible  to  say 
that  our  seacoaat  is  defenceless,  and  that 
any  third-rate  Power  can  come  into  our 
harbors  and  lay  our  cities  under  contribu- 
tion. A  great  many  catchwords  can  be 
constructed  out  of  such  rotten  material, 
yet  the  whole  argument  for  forts  and 
battle-ships  rests  upon  the  false  assump- 
tion that  foreign  Powers  (third-rate  Pow- 
ers, forsooth)  are  going  to  attack  us  with- 
out provocation.  Such  a  wild,  nonsensical 
assumption  does  not  deceive  any  human 
being  who  stops  to  think.  The  United 
States  of  America  unarmed  is,  for  all  pur- 
poses of  self-defence,  the  strongest  Power 
in  the  world  to-day — strong  in  resources, 
strong  in  intelligence,  strong  in  distance 
from  other  Powers,  and  strongest  of  all  in 
moral  greatness  if  it  chooses  to  exercise 
its  strength  that  way.  No  nation  will 
ever  attack  us  unless  first  provoked  by  us. 
The  object  and  purpose  of  forts  and  battle- 
ships is  to  enable  us  to  give  such  provoca- 


tion or  to  become  aggressors.  But  we  can- 
not do  this  without  changing  our  charac- 
ter and  entering  the  lists  with  other  mili- 
tary nations. 

What  we  shall  become  in  the  course  of 
another  hundred  years  after  we  have  got 
ourselves  in  readiness  '*  to  meet  the  world 
in  arms,'*  as  the  blatherskites  are  always 
Mying,  we  may  dimly  infer  from  the  an- 
tics of  the  present  Congress.  This  collec- 
tion of  demagogues,  the  most  dangereus 
we  have  had  since  the  civil  war,  and  ra- 
pidly becoming  the  most  odious,  has  been 
in  session  three  months,  and  during  that 
time  has  put  itself  in  fighting  attitude 
three  times.  Although  we  have  no  army, 
no  navy,  no  fortifications,  although  we 
have  a  Treasury  deficit  and  have  been 
near  to  suspension  and  the  silver  stan- 
dard, this  Congress  has  ''stood  behind 
Cleveland "  in  his  unnecessary  quarrel 
with  Great  Britain,  has  threatened  Tur- 
key and  denounced  Europe  for  not  dis- 
membering her,  and  is  now  threatening 
Spain  about  a  matter  which  does  not  con- 
cern us,  under  pretence  of  a  regard  for 
humanity.  If  all  this  is  done  in  the  green 
tree,  what  shall  be  done  in  the  dry  f  If 
this  is  the  measure  of  our  common  seuES 
when  we  have  neither  soldiers,  ships, 
forts,  nor  money,  what  will  happen  when 
we  have  all  of  them  f 

Of  one  thing  we  may  be  sure — militar- 
Jim,  if  we  adopt  it,  will  have  a  profound 
influence  on  the  national  character,  and 
the  effect  will  be  less  wholesome  than  it  is 
among  the  military  nations  of  the  Old 
World,  where  each  is  under  the  restraints 
imposed  by  strong  neighbors.  The  bal- 
ance of  power  exists  expressly  to  prevent 
any  one  of  them  from  playing  the  part  of 
a  bully  toward  the  others.  We  have  no 
strong  neighbors,  and  accordingly  we  are 
under  the  temptation  to  drop  good  man- 
ners in  our  dealings  with  other  countries. 
We  have  had  some  recent  specimens  of 
such  insolence  which  lead  us  to  appre- 
hend more.  Unfortunately  we  can  say 
things  as  a  nation  which,  if  said  by  one 
European  Power  to  another,  would  cause 
armies  to  be  mobilized.  This  is  a  misfor- 
tune to  us  because  it  deteriorates  the  na- 
tional character,  multiplies  bad  manners 
in  private  circles,  and  creates  lawlessness 
at  home,  of  which  we  already  have  an 
over-supply.  It  is  impossible  to  say  what 
would  be  the  course  of  the  national  life  if 
we  were  once  armed  as  strongly  as  we 
might  be,  but  it  would  be  something  dif- 
ferent from  its  present  course.  We  know 
what  happened  to  the  Roman  republic 
when  it  became  all-powerful.  Rome  was 
forced  to  be  a  military  republic  in  the  first 
instance.  That  was  the  condition  of  her 
life;  for  in  ancient  times,  says  Mommsen, 
it  was  necessary  to  be  either  the  hammer 
or  the  anvil.  80  long  as  Rome  had  strong 
rivals,  she  kept  her  ancient  discipline  and 
preserved  the  boon  of  liberty  regulated  by 
law.  When  she  no  longer  had  rivals  to 
engage  her  strength,  her  militarism  en- 
gulfed her.  One  civil  war  followed  an- 
other, until  she  found  relief  in  a  monarchy 


which  gave  her  peace  in  exchange  for 
liberty.  The  military  republic  which  grew 
out  of  the  French  Revolution  ran  nearly 
the  same  course,  except  that  the  monarch 
took  away  the  nation's  liberty  without 
giving  her  peace. 

We  are  told,  as  though  it  were  some- 
thing important,  that  there  is  no  inten- 
tion to  use  these  new  implements  for  any 
other  purpose  than  self-defence.  The  in- 
tention of  the  promoters  is  of  no  conse- 
quence. What  Senator  Lodge  is  looking 
for  is  the  votes  of  unrefiecting  persons  and 
the  applause  of  other  Jingoes  like  himself. 
The  question  is  not  what  is  intended  by 
these  preparations,  but  what  they  are 
adapted  for.  They  will  stay  after  Mr. 
Lodge  is  gone.  He  will  disappear  like  an 
ignU  fatuus  in  due  time.  The  Roman 
legions  were  not  recruited  and  drilled  to 
butcher  their  own  citizens,  but  they  were 
found  well  suited  to  that  purpose  when 
they  had  no  foreign  foe  to  exercise  their 
weapons  upon.  We  do  not  apprehend 
anything  of  that  kind  here.  We  dread 
the  reflex  influence  of  militarism  upon 
the  national  character,  the  transforma- 
tion of  a  peace-loving  people  into  a  nation 
of  swaggerers  ever  ready  to  take  offence, 
prone  to  create  difficulties,  eager  to  shed 
blood,  and  taking  all  sorts  of  occasions 
to  bring  the  Christian  religion  to  shame 
under  pretence  of  vindicating  the  rights 
of  humanity  in  some  other  country.  De- 
pend upon  it,  this  means  putting  the 
United  States  on  a  new  pathway  and 
altering  the  national  character  for  the 
worse.  Three  months  ago,  nobody  could 
have  imagined  such  an  outlook,  and  if 
anybody  had  predicted  it,  he  would  have 
been  considered  mad. 


OOOD  AMERICAN  SALVATION, 

Mb.  Dspew,  who  has  a  remarkable  gift 
for  putting  the  gist  of  a  complicated  sul>- 
ject  into  a  few  terse,  graphic  words,  says 
of  the  troubles  in  the  Salvation  Army: 

**  Americans  want  to  get  their  salvation  by  ^ 
way  of  Bunker  Hill  and  Faneull  Hall  and  the 
old  gun  at  LezlDgtoo,  instead  of  by  way  of 
LoDoon.    If  they  can*t  get  it  that  way,  they'd 
just  run  their  chances  of  getting  to  heaven." 

It  is  well  that  this  should  be  said  •'right 
here  "  before  the  controversy  over  Balling- 
ton  Booth's  withdrawal  from  the  Army 
goes  any  further,  for  it  brings  our  think- 
ers face  to  face  with  the  question,  •'  Do 
we  want  English  salvation  or  American 
salvation?"  That  is  the  fundamental 
issue  in  the  controversy.  Certain  persons, 
who  are  prone  to  take  an  un-American 
view  of  every  international  oomplicaticm 
which  arises  between  us  and  Great  Bri- 
tain, have  been  trying  to  shift  the  issue  by 
saying  that  the  real  question  is  whether 
or  not  Ballington  Booth  is  guilty  of  in- 
subordination in  refusing  to  relinquish 
command  of  the  American  branch  of  the 
Salvation  Army  and  return  to  England  f6r 
orders.  It  is  not  worth  while  to  pay  much 
attention  to  persons  of  this  calibre*  Any* 
body  who  will  hold  that  discipline  fit  d 


March  5,  1896] 


Th.e    3?^atioii. 


191 


more  importance  in  a  Salvatioo  Army  thap 
patriotism,  ia  Dot  a  good  Americao,  what- 
OTer  else  he  may  be.  He  would  prefer  to 
have  hie  Salvation  by  way  of  London 
rather  than  through  the  old  gun  at  Lex- 
ington, and  the  American  republic  hai  no 
use  for  him. 

It  ia  the  utter  failure  of  Qen,  Booth,  the 
head  at  once  of  the  Booth  family  and  the 
Salvation  Army,  to  comprehend  the  Ame- 
rican view  which  has  precipitated  the  pre- 
sent troubles.  Ballington  Booth,  as  Com- 
mander of  the  American  branch  of  the 
Army,  has  cut  away  from  British  usages 
in  Salvation  campaigning  and  has  Ameri- 
can ited  his  force.  His  British  censors 
make  this  the  ground  of  their  demand 
for  his  removal.  He  has  raised  the 
Army  here  from  poverty  to  such  afflu- 
ence that  it  has  paid  off  thousands  of 
dollars  of  debt  and  has  sent  thousands 
of  dollars  to  other  branches  of  the 
Army  in  Europe,  ^e  and  his  family 
not  only  live  comfortably  in  their  own 
house,  but  many  of  his  subordinate 
officers  have  been  acquiring  homes  of  their 
own  on  the  instalment  plan,  others  have 
been  coursing  luxuriously  about  on  bi- 
cycles, either  owned  or  hired«  and  one  has 
been  riding  from  post  to  post  with  a  horse 
and  buggy  oiyned  by  himself.  Further- 
more, Commander  Booth  has  induced 
many  wealthy  persons  to  become  interested 
In  the  Army  to  such  an  extent  that  they 
have  become  "Auxiliaries*' — that  is,  per*, 
sons  outside  of  its  ranks  who  contribute 
regularly  to  its  support.  These  have  been 
so  generous  that  the  Army  has  been  able 
to  erect  a  fine  building  as  headquarters  in 
this  city,  and  one  of  the  demands  on  Com- 
mander Booth  is  that  he  shall  turn  this 
property  over  to  the  Army  on  relinquish- 
ing his  American  command.  This  de- 
mand, coming  upon  the  heels  of  demands 
for  the  giving  up  of  homes,  and  bicycles, 
and  the  horse  and  buggy,  has  started  a 
wave  of  true  American  feeling  which  may 
lead  to  the  establishment  of  an  Indepen- 
dent American  Salvation  Army.  Alarm 
about  this  has  reached  England,  leading 
the  London  Daily  News  to  remark  that 
'*  America  may  yet  have  a  Salvation  Army 
Fourth  of  July." 

It  is  pointed  out  by  the  most  intense 
Americans  who  have  given  thought  to  this 
matter,  that  the  usual  British  traits  are 
discernible  in  this  effort  to  oust  Balling- 
ton  Booth.  These  say  that  the  other  mem- 
bers of  the  Booth  family,  and  there  are 
many  of  them,  who  have  Army  posts  in 
various  parts  of  pauper-ridden  Europe, 
have  discovered  that  Ballington  has  a  par- 
ticularly '*soft  thing"  of  it  here,  and,  being 
truly  British  in  their  instincts,  they  are 
trying  to  **grab  it."  Not  content  with 
tsJcing  thousands  of  dollars  in  good  Ame- 
rican money  which  he  has  raised  and  sent 
to  them,  they  wish  to  get  possession  of  his 
offloe  and  its  property  and  run  the  Ameri- 
can Army  in  British  interests.  These 
keen-eyed  critics  assure  us  that  the  most 
liberal  of  the  Auxiliaries  are  '*  on  to  "  this, 
and  are  not  going  to  allow  it.   They  quote 


an  Auxiliary  as  saying  that  their  money 
was  contributed  *'  solely  with  the  idea  of 
carrying  on  the  work  in  this  country,  not 
in  Kamtchatka  or  New  Zealand  " ;  that 
the  "  donors  intended  that  it  should  be 
speat  right  here  in  the  United  States  "  ; 
that  they  **  will  not  consent  to  a  transfer  to 
British  control  of  the  property  which  their 
money  has  bought,"  and  that  "  if  a  re- 
fusal to  transfer  means  a  split  in  the  Army, 
let's  have  the  split.  Let's  have  a  pure,  un- 
adulterated American  Army,  with  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Ballington  Booth  at  its  head." 

It  must  be  admitted  that  this  is  a  good 
American  case.  We  are  surely  entitled  to 
have  only  American  Salvation  secured 
with  our  own  American  money.  We  have 
our  own  tariff  system,  our  own  monetary 
system,  our  own  boss  system,  and  our 
own  journalism;  why  should  we  not  have 
our  own  Saltation  system?  We  will  stand 
no  British  meddling,  or  dictation,  or  gral>- 
bing  in  reference  to  our  other  systems 
and  institutions;  why  should  we  in  this? 
It  is  claimed  by  the  British  Booths  that 
Ballington  has  departed  from  the  original 
and  fundamental  idea  of  the  Army's  work, 
which  was  to  carry  religion  and  salvation 
to  those'  classes  of  society  which  the 
churches  and  charitable  organizations 
never  reach.  How  British  that  is!  Be- 
cause they  have  pauper  labor,  the  outcome 
of  British  free  trade,  in  England,  with  all 
the  misery  and  poverty  which  accompany 
it,  they  think  we  have  the  same  thing 
here.  They  do  not  know  the  blessings  of 
McKinleyism,  and  the  comparative  luxury 
which  has  ensued  to  all  clas^  of  Ameri- 
cans. Here  Salvation  and  comfort  can  go 
hand  in  hand  with  no  harm  to  the  cause. 
Our  lowliest  classes  can  be  exhorted  from 
a  buggy  or  a 'bicycle  as  effectively  as  from 
the  pavement,  and  we  can  have  great  Sal- 
vation meetings  in  Carnegie  Hall,  with 
millionaires  thickly  congregated  on  the 
platform  and  well  distributed  through  the 
audience,  and  Chauncy  M.  Depew  as  pre- 
siding officer  and  chief  exhorter.  This  is 
clearly  an  American  brand  of  Salvation, 
and  it  should  be  embodied  in  a  genuine 
American  Army. 


PL  ATT  S  LEGAL  POSITION. 
No  excuse  Is  needed  for  criticising  the 
social  as  well  as  political  recognition  of 
Thomas  C.  Piatt  by  the  leading  mem- 
bers of  the  Republican  party  In  this 
State,  including  high  officers  of  the  State 
(Government.  He  is,  in  fact,  treated  ha- 
bit uaily  by  such  officers  as  an  import- 
ant public  personage,  whose  advice  is  de- 
sirable, if  not  necessary,  not  only  with 
regard  to  party  policy,  but  with  regard  to 
State  and  municipal  legislation.  That  he 
himself  has  been  cheated  into  some  such 
view  of  his  position,  is  shown  by  an  excuse 
he  sent  the  other  day  for  non-attendance 
at  a  public  dinner  in  Detroit.    He  sakl: 

**  I  have  not  married  a  wife  or  bought  a 
joke  of  oxen,  bat  I  have  made  an  ass  of  my- 
telf  by  assuming  certain  political  burdens 
which  I  must  carry  out  at  that  time.*' 

He  evidently  believes  himself  to  be— and 


it  is  not  an  unnatural  belief  for  a  man  of 
his  mental  and  moral  calibre  under  all  the 
circumstances — a  person  exercising  Im- 
portant and  legitimate  functions  of  a 
quasi-legal  character,  who  is  legitimately 
and  reasonably  summoned  Into  consulta- 
tion by  high  State  officers  touching  mat- 
ters of  public  concern. 

It  is  not  to  be  disputed  that  the  treat- 
ment accorded  to  individuals  by  men 
occupying  conspicuous  public  positions, 
whether  in  the  professions  or  in  political 
offices — that  is,  by  all  men  whose  conduct 
the  public  has  a  right  to  criticise,  or  from 
whom  it  has  a  right  to  seek  lessons  In 
morals  and  propriety,  and  whose  exam- 
ples or  standards  are  likely  to  influence 
young  people,  or  ignorant  people,  or  to  en- 
courage or  discourage  vice — is  a  matter  of 
great  importance  in  any  community  gov- 
erned by  universal  suffrsge.  The  com- 
pany kept  by  any  public  officer,  or  any 
prominent  judge  or  lawyer  or  minister,  or 
any  conspicuous  person  whose  name  In 
the  popular  eye  stands  for  a  good  cause, 
or  is  closely  connected  with  some  great 
public  interest,  is  therefore  a  matter  of 
serious  and  legitimate  public  concern.  It 
means  to  the  world  at  large  approval  or 
disapproval  of  some  course  of  action  or 
line  of  life,  and,  as  such,  is  likely  to  have 
marked  though  unseen  effects  on  popu- 
lar morals,  both  in  politics  and  society. 

Thomas  C.  Piatt  follows  a  trade  of  which  ^^ 
no  one  of  whom  we  have  yet  heard  denies 
the  criminality.  If  it  were  proposed  at  a 
constitutional  convention  to  create  a  State 
office  charged  with  the  work  he  does,  it 
would  be  received  with  either  laughter  or 
indignation.  It  would  rank  with  a  pro- 
posal to  have  a  State  Receiver  of  Stolen 
Goods,  or  a  State  Inspector  of  Brothels, 
or  a  State  Abortionist.  For  what  are 
these  '*  political  burdens  "  which  he  says 
he  has  taken  on  himself  f  Are  they  not 
the  collection  from  rich  men  and  corpo- 
rations of  money,  by  way  of  blackmail, 
for  protection  against  "striking  "  legisla- 
tion, or  in  aid  of  corrupt  legislation— that 
is,  either  for  protection  from  extortion  or 
assistance  in  evading  lawful  obligations  f 
And  is  not  this  money  used  systematically 
to.  corrupt  legislators,  by  causing  them  to 
violate  their  oaths  and  cheat  their  consti- 
tuents by  voting,  not  In  obedience  to 
their  consciences,  but  in  obedience  t6 
another  will  than  their  own  f6r  ends 
which  they  dare  not  avow  ? 

If  this  were  a  lawful  calling,  it  might  be 
carried  on  as  openly  as  the  collection  of 
taxes.  Piatt  might  have  his  office  hours 
for  the  reception  of  blackmail,  and  the 
officers  of  the  corporations  could  send 
their  checks  to  him  and  get  their  receipts 
just  as  they  send  them  to  the  Receiver  of 
Taxes.  Moreover,  he  might,  and  probably 
would,  either  publish  his  ^accounts,  or  at 
all  events  keep  them  open  for  the  inspec- 
tion of  any  citizen  who  cared  to  examine 
them.  The  mere  fact  that  although  the 
effect  of  the  business  on  public  affairs  is 
great  -and  far-reaching,  touching  nearly 
every  department  of  our  social  activity. 


193 


Tlie   IN^ation* 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1601 


notably  our  chief  municipal  concerns)  the 
business  is  kept  strictly  secret,  combined 
with  the  fact  that  it  is  unknown  to  the 
law,  is  prima-facie  evidence  of  crimi- 
nality. Piatt  is  just  as  careful  to  conceal 
his  receipts  as  his  customers  are  their 
payments.  They  know  they  are  employ- 
ing him  in  an  unlawful  and  disreputable 
business,  highly  injurious  to  public  and 
private  m<»als,  and  he  knows  that  he 
would  no  more  dare  publish  the  particu- 
lars of  his  business  than  if  he  kept  a  bro- 
thel or  a  gambling-house.  Both  of  them 
rely  for  immunity  on  the  fact  that  it  is 
impossible  to  furnish  legal  proof  of  his 
guilt,  because  it  is  impossible  to  show  the 
direct  effect  of  his  blackmail  on  legisla- 
tion, and  he  is  not  a  public  ofl3cer.  The 
Penal  Oode  contains  several  provisions 
which  would  cover  Platt*s  career  if  he 
were  a  public  officer,  or  could  be  taken 
flagrante,  delicto.  Section  552  defines 
extortion  as  '*  obtaining  of  property  from 
another,  with  his  consent,  induced  by  a 
wrongful  use  of  force  or  fear. ' '  Piatt  does 
not  do  this  exactly,  but  he  plays  on  the 
fear  which  he  knows  exists,  and,  though 
not  in  office,  puts  himself  forward  as  the 
representative  of  the  persons  who  have 
excited  the  fear,  so  that  the  moral  guilt  is 
plain  though  the  legal  guilt  be  not 
provable. 

Now  we  hold  that  nothing  is  so  neces- 
sary to  the  success  and  stability  of  repub- 
lican institutions  as  the  exaltation  and 
perpetuation,  by  all  known  means,  of  the 
art  of  persuasion  as  a  political  force.  It 
is  by  this  we  must  stsnd  or  fall.  In  so  far 
as  elections  are  affected  and  legislation 
produced  by  other  influences  or  instru- 
mentalities than  the  voice  and  pen,  so  far 
is  the  permanence  of  popular  government 
endangered.  For  some  years  past  this 
open  persuasion  has  ceased  in  this  State 
to  have  any  serious  influence  on  legisla- 
tion. Bills  are  framed  and  passed  by  agen- 
cies of  which  the  public  knows  nothing, 
and  often  in  defiance  of  public  opinion. 
Unless  all  human  experience  is  at  fault, 
the  man  who  introduces  and  maintains 
such  a  system  in  a  democratic  state,  is  a 
far  worse  enemy  of  the  Government  than 
if  he  rose  in  arms  against  it  as  they  do 
in  Central  America.  Now  Piatt  is  a  man 
who  has  done  and  is  doing  this  very  thing. 
And  he  does  not  do  it  as  a  '*bold  bad 
man,'*  or  as  a  demagogue  who,  by  open 
distribution  of  largess,  or  by  winning 
ways,  or  a  reckless  eloquence,  cheats  the 
people  into  forgetfulness  of  the  conditions 
of  political  success.  He  does  it  by  secret 
methods,  which  every  man  in  the  commu- 
nity acknowledges  to  be  dangerous  and 
corrupt,  and  therefore  criminal.  The  very 
fact  that  his  methods  are  secret,  and  that 
there  is  no  possibility  of  bringing  him  to 
criminal  justice,  should  make  every  one 
who  loves  his  country  and  cares  for  pure 
government,  all  the  more  eager  to  use 
every  other  means  of  discountenancing 
him,  of  bringing  him  into  disrepute,  of 
impressing  the  children  in  the  schools  and 
the  young  men  in  the  stores  and  offices 


with  horror  of  his  ways,  with  the  danger 
to  American  institutions  of  the  system 
of  government  which  he  is  establishing 
among  us. 

As  long  as  he  is  not  only  recognized  as 
a  law-abiding  citizen,  but  treated  with 
honor  as  a  person  exercising  a  legitimate 
influence  on  public  affairs,  and  not  avoid  • 
ed  as  a  public  criminal,  there  will  not  be 
much  use  in  teaching  government  in  the 
schools,  or  lecturing,  on  **  Civics,"  or 
preaching  Thanksgiving  sermons  on  love 
of  country.  His  success,  his  currency, 
his  impudence,  shall  we  sayf  are  doing  to 
our  political  system  what  all  the  armies 
and  navies  in  the  world  would  be  power- 
less to  effect.  They  are  shaking  popular 
faith  in  the  manly  political  arts,  in  pul>- 
lic  eloquence,  in  reason,  in  law,  in  all  the 
agencies  which  work  on  the  human  mind 
and  the  human  conscience,  as  distin- 
guished from  human  greed,  covetousness, 
and  cunning.  Would  it  be  possible  to 
find  a  young  man  in  the  State  who  has 
caught  from  Piatt's  career  one  generous 
impulse,  one  noble  aspiration,  whose 
standard  of  public  duty  has  not  been 
lowered  by  watching  him  bribing  legisla- 
tors to  despise  public  opinion? 


THE  BRITISH  IN  THE  TRANSVAAL, 

M.  PiRRBB  Lebot-Bsaulibu,  brother  of 
the  more  celebrated  Paul,  has  an  article 
in  the  last  number  of  the  Bevue  dea  Deux 
Monde 8  on  the  late  events  in  the  Trans- 
vaal, which  is  the  first  account  we  have 
seen  from  a  competent  and  impartial  ob- 
server. He  reached  the  Transvaal  from 
Australia  early  in  December,  in  company 
with  250  emigrants  rushing  to  the  gold 
fields,  and  at  Capetown  met  500  more 
coming  from  England  on  the  same  errand. 
Johannesburg  by  train  is  fifty  hours  from 
Capetown,  a  distance  of  about  1,000  miles. 
What  struck  him  fi^st  was  the  extraordi- 
nary solidity  of  the  buildings,  which,  there 
being  little  or  no  wood  in  the  country, 
have  had  to  be  constructed  of  stone  or 
brick— a  fact  which  has  rather  increased 
the  alarm  of  the  Boers,  who,  in  the  begin- 
ning, were  in  hopes  that  the  mining  ex- 
citement would  speedily  die  out  and  the 
Uitlanders  pass  away.  The  population 
he  estimates  at  2,000  to  3,000  Dutchmen, 
who  hold  most  of  the  offices;  6,000  to 
12,000  Americans;  20,000  G^er a.  ans,  proba- 
bly an  exaggeration;  a  few  hundred  Rus- 
sian Jews,  and  a  few  of  nearly  every  race 
and  nation  under  heaven.  There  were 
9,000  British  in  1890,  but  the  number  has 
more  than  quadrupled  since  then.  The 
English  and  Americans  do  most  of  the 
mining.  The  Germans  keep  stores,  and 
the  Jews  creep  into  the  little  crevices  left 
by  the  other  races,  while  the  Boers  stick 
to  their  cattle-raising. 

What  is  most  interesting  in  his  narra- 
tive ip,  however,  his  account  of  the  events 
preceding  Jameson's  raid,  of  which  he 
was  an  eye-witness.  Certain  important 
facts  he  brings  out  clearly  for  the  first 
time,  as  far  as  we  know.    The  Uitlanders 


have  a  *'  Mining  Chamber,"  or  exchange, 
in  Johannesburg,  at  the  opening  of  which 
in  November  last  the  President,  a  Mr. 
Phillips,  delivered  a  violent  harangue, 
threatening  the  Boer  Government  with 
insurrection  unless  it  made  immediate  re- 
forms ;  and  he  was  supported  by  the  Bri- 
tish press.  M.  Leroy-Beaulieu  found 
three  parties  or  sets  in  the  field  at  this 
moment :  revolutionaries,  with  the  finan- 
ciers at  their  head,  mainly  English  and 
Jews,  who  wished  to  annex  the  Transvaal 
to  Capetown,  and  were  very  hostile  to 
the  Boers ;  moderates,  mainly  Americans, 
Africans,  and  Johannesburg  shopkeepefis, 
who  wanted  peaceful  reform,  headed  hj 
Brown;  and  lastly  all  other  foreigners 
who  wanted  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
any  agitation. 

By  the  27th  of  December  a  proclamation 
was  issued  by  the  **  National  Union  "  de- 
manding a  whole  string  of  radical  reforms, 
and  calling  on  the  people  to  say  how  thej 
should  be  secured.  A  local  journal  pro- 
nounced this  appeal  too  **  moderate."  On 
the  following  day,  the  28th,  the  women 
and  children  began  to  leave  Johannes- 
burg, and  the  crowds  of  men  of  the  non- 
combatant  sort  began  to  follow  them. 
On  the  30th,  business  ceased  at  Johannes- 
burg, and  the  **  Reform  Committee,"  com- 
posed of  twenty-five  persons,  including 
Leonard  Bboden,  the  brother  of  Cecil,  sit- 
ting at  the  headquarters  of  the  *'  Consoli- 
dated Gk>ld  Fields  Company,"  took  charge 
of  the  government  of  the  town,  began  to 
distribute  rifles,  and  produced  three 
Maxim  guns,  which  had  been  previously 
concealed.  The  working  miners  were  com- 
pelled to  take  these  arms  or  be  discharged. 
Some  negotiation  with  President  Krtlger 
was  started  at  the  same  time,  but  the  con* 
cessions  he  agreed  to  make  were  pro- 
nounced insufficient 

Regular  corps  then  began  to  appear  in 
arms  for  drill,  each  with  a  cockade  of  its 
own.  There  was  even  a  corps  of  cavalry, 
with  fine  horses,  which  caracoled  about 
the  streets  showing  the  fine  *' hunting 
seats  "  of  the  riders.  The  women  formed 
a  band  of  hospital  nurses  and  appeared 
clad  in  white.  Every  day,  notices  appear* 
ed  in  the  newspapers,  saying  all  was  ready, 
and  that  all  *'  the  measures  which  strategy 
and  the  military  art  could  suggest  had 
been  taken."  On  the  30th  of  December, 
things  being  in  this  position,  the  news 
came  that  Jameson,  with  700  trained 
troops  of  the  Chartered  Company,  was  en- 
tering the  Transvaal.  It  was  then  gene- 
rally believed  at  Johannesburg  ^that  this 
settled  the  matter.  To  the  question  whe- 
ther the  Boers  would  not  resist,  the  an- 
swer was  that  "  the  Boers  had  degenerat- 
ed; that  they  were  no  longer  the  men  they 
were  fifteen  years  ago;  besides,  they  were 
surprised  and  would  not  fight,  and  that, 
anyhow,  the  chiefs  had  been  bought  up." 
A  crowd  stood  in  the  street  in  front  of  the 
Gold  Fields  office,  hearing  telegrams  with 
news  of  Jameson's  progress  read  out  from 
the  windows.  On  the  1st  of  January  ha 
was  twenty  miles  from  Johannesburg*  th^ 


.iJik. 


March  5,  1896] 


The    N"atioii. 


193 


Boeni  haring  tried  in  vain  to  atop  him. 
He  was  to  be  in  the  town  on  the  morrow. 
On  the  morrow  the  place  was  en  fSte,  wo- 
men sitting  in  the  balconies  in  fall  dress 
to  welcome  him,  and  soup  being  kept  hot 
for  his  men  when  they  arrived.  People 
with  glasses  at  last  began  to  see  him  on 
the  hills  outside  the  town,  and  men  went 
out  in  landaus  to  meet  him.  A  little  after 
twelve  came  the  news  that  the  Boers  had 
captured  him  with  arms  and  baggage. 

What  happened  was  that  he  was  so 
confident  of  settling  everything  by  a 
forced  march  and  a  covp  de  main  that 
he  started  without  provisions  and  without 
reserves  of  ammunition.  The  Boers  were 
taken  somewhat  by  surprise,  but  they 
followed  their  usual  tactics  with  their 
usual  Dutch  phlegm.  They  joined  their 
colors  in  small  parties,  as  they  got  notice 
on  their  outlying  farms.  These  small 
parties  hung  on  the  enemy's  flank,  follow- 
ing him  closely  and  watching  him.  As 
the  numbers  increased,  they  began  to 
sting  him,  and  when  they  reached  the 
position  chosen  to  fight  in,  they  began  to 
play  on  him,  their  fire  increasing  every 
minute  by  the  arrival  of  fresh  men. 
When  they  first  came  into  touch  with 
Jameson  they  had  only  400  men  to  his 700. 
The  next  day  they  were  more  than  bis 
match.  One  of  Jameson's  officers,  who 
escaped,  told  M.  Leroy-Beaulieu  that  the 
day  of  the  fight  they  did  not  see  a  single 
enemy.  The  only  sign  of  him  was  puffs 
of  smoke  coming  out  of  crevices  in  the 
rocks.  '*  The  minute  the  white  flag  was 
hoisted,  men  seemed  to  swarm  out  of  the 
ground  like  ants.*'  The  English  lost  65 
killed,  37  wounded,  and  23  missing. 

The  scenes  in  Johannesburg  on  the  ar- 
rival of  the  news  were  somewhat  comic. 
At  the  first  moment  the  mob  were  dispos- 
ed to  lynch  the  Reform  Committee  for  not 
marching  to  Jameson's  assistance.  But 
the  Committee  sneaked  away,  after  hav- 
ing told  a  good  many  lies,  just  like  any 
ordinary  Jingo  who  has  been  '*  hollering  '* 
for  war.  The  Cornish  miners  who  had  left 
the  town  before  the  fight,  with  *' Cowards' 
Van  "  posted  on  their  wagons  by  the  en- 
raged Jingoes,  now  got  the  laugh  on  the 
warriors.  The  smart  cavalry  disappeared; 
so  did  the  hospital  nurses.  M.  Leroy- 
Beaulieu's  summing  up  is  this  : 

"The  events  which  accompanied  and  follow 
•d  the  attempt  at  revolutton  show  clearly  that 
it  was  not  the  result  of  a  popular  movemeut, 
hut  that  of  an  agitation  set  up  by  the  great 
financial  houses  of  Johannesburfc  to  seize  the 

Sivemment  of  the  Transvaal  and  establish  an 
ogllsh  protectorate— an  object  which  they 
dared  not  avow,  lest  they  should  alienate  not 
only  the  foreigners,  other  than  Anglo  Haxons, 
who  had  always  been  opposed  to  the  move- 
ment, but  also  the  Americans  and  Africanders, 
who  were  afraid  of  falling  into  the  hands  of 
the  Chartered  Company.  That  Mr  Rho<)es 
knew,  approved,  and  helped  to  prepare  Dr. 
Jameson^s  expedition  is  generally  admitted  by 
the  pnblic  in  spite  of  the  diplomatic  denials." 

fie  gives  various  corroborative  proofs 
of  the  correctness  of  this  belief,  and  sug- 
gests, as  the  explanation  of  the  insuffi 
ciency  of  Jameson's  preparations,  the  de- 
ception practised  on  Rhodes  by  the  Johan- 
nesburg  financiers   touching    both    the 


corruptibility   of    the    Boers    and    their 
military  value. 


THE   CARIB8   OF   OUIANA. 

GvoROSTOWiff,  February  8, 1896. 

In  fixing  the  boundaries  of  English,  French, 
and  Spanish  possessions  in  North  America,  re- 
gard was  shown  to  the  alliances  which  those 
nations  respectively  had  with  their  neighbor- 
ing Indians.  Thus  it  was  that  the  St.  Mary's 
River  became  the  dividing  line  between  the 
colony  of  Georgia  and  the  Spaniards,  in  1736 
(Bancrofts  *  History  of  the  United  States,'  1876, 
vol.  it,  pp.  571-7^.  In  like  manner,  the  al- 
liances with  the  natives  of  Ouiana  extended  or 
restricted  the  spheres  of  dominion  of  the  se- 
veral European  nations  that  made  settlements 
in  that  region  of  South  America.  The  notes 
following  will  show  that  the  Caribs,  the  domi- 
nating race  of  aborigines  in  Guiana,  were  inde- 
pendent  of  the  Spaniards,  were  enemies  of  the 
Spaniards,  and  were  allies  of  the  Dutch.  It 
was  one  consequence  of  these  several  relations 
that  the  Spaniards  never  got  a  foothold  on  the 
coast  of  Guiana  between  the  Corentyne  River 
and  the  Amacura,  while  the  Dutch  were  able 
to  settle  at  several  places  within  that  area, 
even  up  to  the  Barima  district,  and  to  exercise 
dominion  over  it. 

In  1768  a  New  England  colonist  named  Ban- 
croft, a  medical  man,  was  living  in  the  Dutch 
settlements  of  Demerara  and  EssequilK),  in  the 
practice  of  his  profession.  He  wrote  letters 
during  his  residence.  These  were  published  in 
LfOndon  in  1769.  How  very  slight  was  the 
foothold  of  the  Spaniards  in  Guiana  at  that 
time  can  be  realized  from  the  following  state- 
ment made  by  the  New  Englander: 

**  Several  revolutioos  ha?e  happened  In  the  prop- 
erty of  Quiana,  since  Its  discovery  ;  but  it  is  now 
divided  between  the  Spaniards,  Dutch,  French,  and 
Portuguese  ;  the  Spaniards,  however,  have  no  other 
possessions  in  this  country,  except  their  settlements 
on  the  Eastern  side  of  the  river  Oronoque,  near  the 
confines  of  its  limits,  and  therefore  ean  hardly  be 
iDclad<)d  among  the  proprietors  of  Guiana/'— JVia/tt- 
rcU  HUiory  of  Ouiana  (p.  ^. 

Of  the  Cariba,  of  their  chief  stronghold  on 
the  coast  between  the  Essequibo  and  the  Ori- 
noco, and  of  their  lingering  tradition  of  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh,  our  New  Englander  wrote 
thus: 

'*  The  Caribhee9  are  the  most  numerous,  brjtve, 
warlike,  and  Industrious  of  all  the  known  tribes  in- 
habiting Ouiana.  They  reside  chiefly  on  the  sea- 
ooast  between  Etaequebo  and  the  Great  River  Oron- 
o^u«"  (pp.  868,  SM). 

**  The  Caribbee  Indiana  are  at  perpetual  varisnoe 
with  the  Spaniard*,  and  frequently  commit  hostili- 
ties on  their  settlements  at  the  River  Oronoque 
They  retain  a  tradition  of  an  English  chief  who 
many  yesrs  since  landed  amongst  them,  and  en- 
couraged them  to  persevere  in  enmity  to  the  Span- 
iards, proniisiDg  to  return  and  settle  amongst  them 
and  afford  them  sssistance,  and  it  is  said  that  they 
fctill  preserve  an  English  Jack,  which  he  left  them 
thst  they  might  distinguish  his  countrymen.  This 
was  undoubtedly  Sir  WcUter  Raleigh^  who,  in  the 
year  1&05.  made  a  descent  on  the  coast  of  Ouiana 
in  search  of  the  fabulous  older  city  of  Manoa  del 
Dorado,  and  conquered  Fort  Joaevh  [in  the  Island 
of  Trinidad] ,  on  the  River  Oronoqtte  "  (pp.  »H,  280). 

So  far,  therefore,  from  the  Spaniards  being 
in  possession,  in  1768,  of  the  territory  between 
the  Essequibo  and  the  Orinoco,  that  region 
was  then  independent  of  them,  and  the  Caribs, 
who  inhabited  it  along  with  the  Dutch,  were 
'*at  perpetual  variance  with  the  Spaniards, 
and  frequently  committed  hostilities  on  their 
settlements  at  the  River  Oronoque,*' 


That  Bancroft  wrbte  truly  is  amply  certifled 
by  whatfias  been  published  to  the  world  by 
Spanish  and  Venezuelan  authoritiea.  Under 
the  title  of  *  Venezuelan  International  Law — 
British  Boundaries  of  Guayana,*  by  Sefior 
Rafael  Sei jas,  the  Venezuelan  Government  has 
issued  a  statement  of  its  case  with  regard 
to  its  boundary  dispute  with  Great  Britain. 
In  this  bulky  volume  of  588  pages,  there  are 
numerous  facts  illustrating  the  complete  inde- 
pendence of  the  Caribs  of  the  Guiana,  and 
their  undying  enmity  to  the  Spaniards.  There 
are  also  indications  in  some  of  thoee  statements 
of  the  alliance  that  existed  between  the  Caribs 
and  the  Dutch;  but  upon  that  point  a  hiffik 
Spanish  authority  shall  now  be  quoted. 

In  1786-^  was  published  in  Spanish  «The 
Geographical  and  Historical  Dictionary  of 
America  and  the  West  Indies,'  by  Colonel  Don 
Antonio  Alcedo,  a  member  of  the  Academy  of 
History.  This  work  was  translated  into  Eng- 
lish, and  published  in  London  in  181d-15.  It  ia 
from  the  English  Uvnalation  that  the  following 
quotations  have  been  taken.  They  are  set 
forth  below  in  their  alphabetical  order.  The 
italics  are  not  ufed  in  the  originals: 

**  AauAOAs,  a  bark>arous  nation  of  Indians  who  in- 
habit the  $.  e.  of  the  River  Orinooo,  descendants  of 
the  Charibbes.  They  are  very  numerous,  and  in- 
habit the  country  between  the  river  Berbioe  and  the 
mountains  of  Guayana:  they  have  no  fixed  habita- 
tions, and  therefore  wander  aDout  those  mountains: 
they  are  the  friends  and  allies  of  the  Dutch  of  ihs 
colonies  of  Berbice,  Esquibo,  and  Surinam.*^ 

*'  Carues,  a  barbarous  and  ferock>us  nation  of 
Indians,  who  are  cannibals,  inhabiting  the  provinoe 
which  by  them  is  called  Caribana.  They  are  divided 
under  the  titles  of  the  Bfaritimosand  Mediterrineos: 
the  former  live  in  plains  and  upon  the  Coast  of  the 
Atlantic,  are  contiguotts  to  the  Dutdi  and  FYench 
coloniesy  and  follow  the  laws  and  customs  iff  ths 
former,  with  whom  they  carry  on  a  commerce.  They 
are  the  most  cruel  of  any  that  infest  the  settle- 
ments of  the  missions  of  the  river  Orinoco,  and  are 
the  same  as  those  called  Galibis.  The  MedltefrA* 
neos,  who  inhabit  the  s.  side  of  the  source  of  the 
river  Caroni,  are  of  a  more  pacific  nature,  and  began 
to  be  reduced  to  the  faith  by  the  regular  order  of 
the  abolished  society  of  the  Jesuits  in  1788.  The 
name  of  Caribes  is  given  not  only  to  these  and  other 
Indians  of  the  AnUlles,  but  to  all  such  as  are  canni- 
bals** (Vol  1.,  p.  817). 

Mark  the  precise  statement  of  Alcedo,  that 
the  Caribs  **  follow  the  laws  and  customs"  of 
the  Dutch! 

**Cabibama.  .  .  .  It  takes  iU  name  from  the 
Caribes  Indians,  who  inhabit  it,  and  who  are  very 
fierce  and  cruel,  although  upon  amicalUe  tenns  with 
the  Dutch  .  .  .  The  coast,  inhabited  by  Euro- 
peans, forms  the  greater  part  of  this  tract  of  coun- 
try, of  which  an  account  will  he  found  under  the 
respective  articles**  (Vol.  I,  p.  818). 

*'  Ctmni,  or  Cuyuni,  a  large  river  of  the  provinoe 
of  Guaysna  and  Government  of  Cumana.  Its  origin 
is  not  known  for  certain;  but,  from  the  account  oi 
the  Caribes  Indians,  it  Is  somewhere  near  the  lake 
Parime,  in  the  interior  of  the  province,  and  to  the 
n.  e  of  the  said  lake.  It  runs  nearly  due  from  n.  to 
a.  making  several  turnings,  imtll  it  enters  the  Es- 
quibo.  By  this  river  the  Dutch  merchants  of  tMs 
colony,  assisted  by  the  Caribes^  go  to  entrap  the 
Indians,  to  make  them  labor  In  the  esUtes;  and 
they  have  built  two  forts  on  either  side  of  the  mouth 
of  the  Hver.'* 

It  should  be  noted  that  and  voce  Pabdob, 
Alcedo  says:  *'On  the  n.  a.  «.  the  Cujnni  riaea 
from  this  lake,  and  laves  the  territory  of  the 
Dutch  Colonies,  and  afterwards  unites  itMlf 
with  the  Essequibo  "  (vol.  iv,  p.  57). 

**MikaAaoM.  Maxaruini,  or  AUparan,  a  large 
and  abundant  river  of  the  province  of  Quajana 
and  government  of  (Humana.  It  rises  in  the  In- 
terior of  the  province,  and  runs  nearly  from  s, 
to  n.  until  it  enters  the  gsssgnibo  Just  close  to 


194 


Tlie    IN'ation. 


[Vol  62,  Na  1601 


where  this  ntoa  Into  the  na.  The  Dutch,  protected 
by  the  Caribe*,  Darigate  this  river  to  pilla^  the  In- 
dians of  the  proylnoe«  whom  tbej  make  slaves  to 
work  in  their  estates;  nor  are  there  anj  stratagems 
whkh  avarice  and  tyranny  can  Invent  that  are  not 
adopted  for  the  purpose  of  entrapping  those  un- 
happy wretches.  It  i$  from  thi$  pcUci/  that  the 
DiOcharein  altiance  and  friendOUp  with  the  Co- 
fibe*:' 

Alcedo^s  work  was  tranaUted  into  English 
bj  A.  O.  Thompson,  whOf  in  oonsequence,  was 
familiarly  known  as  **Alc6do"  Thompson. 
Besides  translating  Alcedo'i  own  work,  Thomp- 
son, in  his  edition,  added  materially  to  it,  mak. 
ing  his  own  quite  an  up  to- date  pablication. 
As  the  British  Dntch  case  Is  a  yery  complete* 
one,  its  party  can  afford  to  draw  the  atten- 
tion of  the  advocates  of  Veneznelan  claims  to 
Thompson's  own  statement-^iot  Alcedo*s,  be 
it  noted— that  the  boundary  between  the  Spa 
nish  and  the  then  recently  acquired  British 
possessions  was  the  Essequlbo  River,  ** accord 
ing  to  the  Treaty"  o^  1814.  Of  course,  the 
Treaty  did  not  say  anything  about  boundaries, 
and  Alcedo  himself  flatly  contradicted  Thomp- 
son by  giving  the  boundary  at  the  River  Po- 
meroon.  Here  are  the  Spanish  author's  own 
words: 

**  FooMABOir,  a  river  of  the  province  of  Ghiayana,  In 
the  part  called  Dutch  Quayana.  It  rises  In  the 
utrarua  of  Inataca,  runs  n.  e.  and  enters  the  sea  107 
miles  from  the  mouth  Grande  or  de  Hanos  Navios 
of  the  Orinoco.  It  Is  the  boundary  of  Dutch  Oua- 
yana.  Is  at  Its  mouth  half  a  league  wkle,  and  the 
territory  of  Its  shores  Is  low  and  covered  with 
trees.  .  .  .  The  e.  point  which  It  forms  Is  the 
Cape  of  Nassau,  and  at  six  lesgues  from  henoe  the 
Dutch  built  upon  its  shore  a  fort  with  the  name  of 
Nueva  Zelanda;  and  a  little  higher  up  Is  the  settle- 
ment of  Ne#  MIddleburg,  surrounded  with  planta- 
tions and  cultivated  lands.  The  mouth  of  this  river 
Is  in  lat.  70  deg.  81  min.  f».,  long  68  deg.  47  min  10  ** 
CVoL  I  v.,  p.  «16). 

Having  said  thus  much  of  **  Alcedo  "  Thomp. 
son,  and  having  shown  that  he  cannot  in  any 
wise  be  considered  as  having  harbored  any 
hostile  spirit  against  the  Spaniards,  let  us 
quote  his  testimony  upon  the  value  of  Spanish 
** claims"  to  the  territory  lying  between  the 
Orinoco  and  Cape  Nassau,  near  the  Pomeroon. 
His  statements  bear  internal  evidence  of  being 
founded  mainly  upon  Spanish  authorities. 
Under  the  heading  0%ayana^  Thompson  says: 

"Surinam,  Essequebo,  and  Demerara,  though  now 
belonging  to  the  English  (having  been  taken  in  the 
present  war),  were  Dutch  settlements,  and  were 
bounded  to  the  e.  by  the  sea,  to  the  «.  by  the  river 
Maronl,  to  the  n.  by  the  river  Essequebo,  according 
to  the  treaty  (though  they  have  since  made  Cape 
Nassau  the  n.  boundary),  and  to  the  w.  by  Spanish 
Quayana. 

**  What  remains  of  Ouayana  for  the  Spaniards  Is 
bounded  on  the  e.  by  the  sea,  from  Cape  Nassau  to 
the  mouth  of  the  Orinoco,  which  are  80  leagues  dis- 
tant from  each  other. 

**The  missionaries  charged  with  bringing  the  In- 
dians to  a  social  life  by  means  of  C!hristlanlty,  began 
their  work  Xify  this  part  of  Ouayana.  Twenty-seven 
villages  built  to  the  e.  of  the  river  CaronI  bespeak 
the  success  of  the  Calonlan  Capuchin  fathers 
They  have  not,  however,  approached  the  coast  by 
above  80  leagues ;  because  it  is  inhabited  by  the 
(Taribes,  the  most  fefocious  and  courageous  of  all 
the  Indians,  who  have  invariably  made  martyrs  of 
the  apostles  who  have  endeavoured  to  convert  them 
to  Christianity.  It  Is  true  that  the  ferocity  of  the 
Oaribes  would  have  been  softened  by  the  morality 
of  the  missionaries,  if  the  Dutch  of  Surinam,  wish 
ing  to  extend  their  trade  to  Spanish  Guiana,  had 
not  made  it  a  part  of  their  politics  to  protect  the 
vagabond  life  of  the  Caribee,  whj  prevent  the  Spor 
niards  approaching  their  coast.  It  ia  certain  that 
Spanish  Ouayana  appeart  upon  the  mape  to  occupy 
90  league$  of  coast  from  the  mouth  of  the  Orinoco  to 


Cape  Xataaw,  but  might  it  reality  i>e  aa  d  not  to 
occupy  an  inch  ;for  the  natives  have  defersd/ed  their 
independence  so  well  that  they  have  never  been  con- 
vertedt  reduced,  nor  conquer^ ;  and  are,  in  fact, 
as  free  as  they  vtere  before  the  discovery  of  America, 
It  Is  lamentable  that  the  barbarous  use  they  make 
of  their  liberty  obliges  the  philoeopber  to  wish 
rather  that  they  shoukl  lose  than  that  they  shoukl 
preserve  it.  *^ 

*'  The  most  considerable  of  the  Indian  Nations  of 
Guayana  are  the  Oaribee,  the  Arvaques,  the  Taoa, 
and  the  Gallbis.  These  are  well  proportioned,  fo^ 
the  most  part,  are  swarthy,  and  go  naked.  The 
Caribes  are  enterprising,  and  so  cautious  of  surprise 
that  they  post  out-guards  and  seating  with  as 
much  care  and  art  as  the  Europeans.  The  (Taribes 
of  Guayana  stiU  fondly  cherish  the  tradition  of  fflr 
Walter  Raleigh's  alliance,  and  to  this  day  preserve 
the  English  colors  which  he  left  with  them  at  part- 
ing, above  800  years  since. 

*'  The  Dutch  have  been  thought  to  be  much  more 
vigilant  and  solicitous  about  the  protection  of  their 
•ettlements  in  thia  quarter  than  the  Spaniards;  for 
the  letter  have  no  €uivanced  posts  on  the  frontiers 
of  the  former,  whilst  the  Dutch  have  on  the  coast  a 
body  of  guards,  and  occupy  a  fort  called  the  Old 
Castte,  at  the  junction  of  the  Hver  Maswrimi  with 
the  Es'equibo;  they  also  keep  cut  advanced  guard  of 
twenty-five  men  upon  the  river  CuyunL 

**Bf  means  of  these  precautions,  th^y  are  not 
only  respected  on  their  own  territory,  but  they  over- 
run with  safety  all  the  neighboring  Spanish  posses- 
sions. They  remove  their  limits  whenever  their 
Interest  Invttes  them,  and  maintain  their  usurpation 
by  force. 

''The  natural  result  of  this  is  that  the  Spaniards 
and  Dutch  live  at  Guayana  not  like  very  good  neigh- 
bors. They  reproach  each  other  with  Injuries,  some 
of  which  are  very  serious.  The  Spaniards  pretend 
that  the  Dutch  constantly  encroach  upon  their  ter- 
ritory, and  respect  no  limits;  that  they  destroy  the 
Spanish  trade  to  Guayana  by  the  contraband  goods 
they  introduce;  that  they  cootinually  excite  the 
Oiribes  against  them,  and  prevent  their  subjection 
by  the  advice  they  give  them  and  the  arms  with 
which  they  furnish  theuL  The  Dutch,  on  their  part, 
impute  to  the  Spaniards  the  desertion  of  their  slaves, 
who  meet  at  Guayana  with  a  hospitable  reception, 
with  tlieir  liberty  and  the  protection  of  the  govern- 
ment. It  is  true  that  the  Spaniards  have  for  a  long 
time  protected,  more  from  a  principle  of  vengeance 
than  of  humanity,  all  the  slaves  of  Surinam  who 
have  sought  an  asylum  among  them.  They  have 
even  peopled  with  these  fugitives  two  very  consi- 
derable villages  upon  the  banks  of  the  river  Caura, 
where  they  receive  likewise  the  Indians  who  are 
forced  by  the  Caribes  to  fly  from  the  slavery  of  the 
Dutch. 

*'Inoneof  the  treaties  between  the  Dutch  and 
Spaniards,  previously  to  the  taking  of  Dutch  Guay- 
ana by  the  English,  It  was  stipulated  on  the  part  of 
the  Spaniards  to  give  up  to  the  Dutch  all  the  slaves 
who  might  have  retired  into  the  Spanish  territory, 
or  to  pay  their  value,  and  Indeed,  if  this  condition 
was  always  a9  faithfully  fulfilled  as  it  was  latterly, 
it  would  re-establish  between  the  two  countries  a 
harmony  most  decidedly  in  favour  of  the  Spaniards; 
in  as  much  as  this  Is  undoubtedly  the  weaker  party.  ** 

The  concluding  paragraph  describee  the 
Spaniards  of  Guiana  as  undoubtedly  *Hhe 
weaker  party.*'  There  could,  indeed,  be  no 
comparison  between  the  grip  the  Dutch  held 
of  Guiana— from  the  Maroni  to  the  Amacura— 
and  the  feeble  foothold  of  the  Spaniards.  Ac- 
cording to  the  New  Englander  Bancroft,  al- 
ready quoted,  the  Spaniards  bad  no  other  pos- 
sessions in  Guiana,  *' except  their  settlements 
on  the  Eastern  side  of  the  river  Oronoque^ 
near  the  confines  of  its  limits,  and  therefore, 
can  hardly  be  included  among  the  proprietors 
of  Guiana." 

This  is  not  the  occasion  to  speak  of  the  Eng- 
lish connection  with  Guiana.  It  will  be  noted, 
however,  that  both  Bancroft  and  **  Alcedo" 
Thompson  make  mention  of  the  tradition  pre- 
served among  the  Caribs  of  the  coming  to 
Guiana  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  and  of  the  flag 
he  left  with  them.     Thertf  is,  in  the  Public 


Record  Ofllce,  London,  an  official  letter  from 
(Captain  Thompson  of  the  Rpyal  Navy,  who 
governed  the  colonies  when  they  were  taken 
from  the  Dutch  in  1781,  in  which  he  reported  to 
Lord  Gteorge  Germain,  then  a  principal  secra. 
tary  of  state,  about  the  newly  captured  settle- 
ments. Therein  (}aptain  Thompson  said  that 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  <*  in  his  expedition  up  the 
Oroonoko  after  the  city  ICanon  del  Dorado 
and  the  golden  lake  of  Parima,  got  by  some 
creek  into  Cajonle  [Ouyuni]  and  Essequebo 
Rivers,  wher^  he  stimulated  the  Carribee  In- 
dians against  the  Spaniards,  exchanged  with 
them  presents  and  a  flag,  anuring  them  he 
would  return— which  flag  and  tradition  the  In- 
dians retain  to  this  day,  as  weU  a$  their  wm- 
conquerable  avtrtion  to  f  As  Spaniards**^  Mark 
the  concluding  statement,  here  italicised. 

The  foregoing  authorities  testify  to  the  fact 
that,  when  Great  Britain  came  into  possession 
of  the  Dutch  settlements  to  the  east  of  the 
Orinoco,  Spain  did  not  occupy— had  not  occn- 
pied— any  part  of  the  lands  where  the  Caribs 
dwelt,  and  did  not  exercise  any  dominion  over 
that  region.  It  is  dear  that  the  rules  of  inter- 
national law  quoted  by  Dr.  Sei jas  on  page  188 
of  the  *  Statement  of  Venezuela's  Case'  apply 
forcibly  to  the  case  of  the  Carib  allies  of  Hol- 
land. Were  there  not  the  rights  of  possession, 
occupation,  and  the  exercise  of  dominion? 
Surely  the  following  should,  in  view  of  the  hia- 
torical  facts  above  set  forth,  be  enough  to  jus- 
tify the  title  of  Holland  and  of  Great  Britain 
in  succession  to  the  lands  of  Guiana  between 
the  Moruoa  and  the  Amacura  : 

''  Now,  as  regards  the  Indians  of  this  Continent,  It 
Is  a  well  known  fact  that  no  European  nation  has 
ever  looked  upon  them  as  a  State,  and  for  this  rea- 
son there  was  no  obstacle  to  occupyitig  the  lands 
vhich  they  possessed.  Even  as  regards  the  United 
States,  who  were  In  the  habit  of  buying  them,  the 
most  modem  publicists  are  of  opinion  that  they 
have  a  legitimate  and  Indisputable  right  of  domin- 
ion overall  lands  occupied  by  the  Indian.tribes  situ- 
ated on  the  frontiers  of  the  thirteen  SUtes  that 
esUblished  the  Bepublic.    .    .    . 

''  It  is  necessary  furthermore  to  bear  In  mind  that 
all  things  included  in  a  country  belong  to  the  na- 
tion, and  as  only  she  or  the  person  in  whom  she  has 
deposited  her  rights  Is  authorised  to  dispose  of  theee 
things,  If  places  uncultivated  or  deserted  have  been 
left  in  the  country,  no  one  has  the  right  to  take 
possession  of  them  without  the  consent  of  the  na- 
tion. Although  she  may  not  actually  use  them 
these  places  are  none  the  less  her  property ;  it  is 
her  interest  to  preserve  them  for  future  use,  and 
she  Is  responsible  to  no  one  for  the  manner  in  which 
she  may  use  her  property  **  C  Venezuelan  Interna- 
tional Law,'  p.  18SO 

N.  Darnsll  Davis. 


GRUCKER'S  LESSING. 

Pabib,  February  18,  18M. 
Foreign  literature  cannot  be  said  to  ba  neg> 
lected  at  the  present  moment  in  France;  Eng- 
lish novels  are  translated;  we  hear  constantly 
of  Ibsen,  of  Annunzio.  But  since  the  war  of 
1870,  little  has  been  heard  of  Germany  and  of 
German  literature.  We  have  become  Wagne- 
rian, but  it  seems  as  if  ttie  domain  of  music 
had  no  frontiers.  The  German  language  is 
taught  in  our  colleges,  but  very  few  (German 
books  are  read  or  translated.  In  our  univer- 
sities (I  ought  rather  to  say  our  faculties)  there 
are  a  few  eminent  men  who  c^ve  lectures  on 
German  literature,  but  they  c^ve  them  before 
a  very  sparse  public.  Nancy,  the  capital  of 
Lorraine,  has  such  a  Faculty  whose  lectures  on 
foreign  literature  are  given  by  M.  Gmcfcer,  a 
native  of  Alsace,  who  emigrated  after  the  war 
from  Strasbourg  to  Nancy.    M.  Gmcker  pob^ 


March  5,  1896] 


tbbcd  In  1888  an  tmporUnt  ▼oloine  andar  the 
«Hla  of  'HiAoiT  of  Lttanury  and  JErtbetio 
Doctrteet  in  OermaBy/  which  extended  from 
the  leventoenth  to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
centorjr.  M.  Orocker  dcecribed  with  mionte 
detnik  the  Tnrkmt  phaeee  of  the  etrnggle  be- 
tween Ootteobed  end  the  8wi«  wiitert,  and 
•ho  wed  how  vhe  Utter  proToked  the  movement 
of  literary  emancipation  and  oppodtion  to  the 
abtolntkm  of  Ootteched. 

We  have  now  before  ni  another  rolnme  bj 
II .  Omcker,  on  Letsing.  All  the  efforts  made 
in  rarious  directions  before  him  were  wanting 
In  nnitj,  in  directness ;  they  were  isolated  and 
fragmentary: 

**  It  was  necesfanr,**  says  M.  Grocker,  "that 
a  man  t>aperior  by  bis  intellect,  bis  scienc*,  and 
his  cbsracter,  a  master  of  criticism,  should 
take  in  hand  the  interest*  of  the  German  mind, 
to  deliver  it  from  all  that  stopped  its  march 
and  paralysed  it*  action;  to  give  it  its  full 
liberty;  to  make  it  free  and  at  the  same  time 
to  discipline  It,  to  assure  eyeirwhere  the  tri- 
umph of  criticism  and  free  tnought;  to  lay 
down  new  laws  for  poetry  and  the  drama:  and 
thus  to  prepare  the  advent  of  a  national  litera- 
ture. LesiAng  was  that  man;  the  work  of  re- 
form and  emancipation  was  his  work." 

Leasing  was,  aboTe  all,  a  critic  Criticism,  in 
the  highest  sense  of  the  word,  was  in  him  ana- 
tural  function;  and  his  actiylty  covered  all 
branches  of  literatnre— art,  the  theatre,  philo- 
sophy, theology.  It  is  Intoreeting  to  note  how 
his  mental  activity  changed  Ito  sphere  of  action 
according  to  the  changes  which  took  place  in 
his  private  life;  and  thus  his  biography'  is  In- 
timately connected  with  the  development  of 
his  critical  work. 

Leasing  was  bom  at  Camens  in  the  province 
of  Upper  Lnsatia  January  29, 1729,  one  of  the 
twelve  children  of  a  Lutheran  minister.  He 
was  allowed  to  enter,  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  the 
Pftrstenschule  of  Saint-Afra  at  Meissen,  one 
of  three  schools  which  the  Elector  Maurice  of 
Saxony  had  fonnded  with  the  funds  of  the 
suppressed  convents.  This  school  was  oele- 
brmtcd  as  a  centre  of  rising  theologians  and 
writers,  and  preserved  something  conventual 
in  lU  organintion.  Lessing  finished  his 
stodiea  at  the  University  of  Leiprig,  which 
was  already  one  of  the  most  important  cities 
of  Germany,  and  a  sort  of  capital  (Gk)ethe 
ealte  It  a  little  Paris,  in  the  tevern  scene  in 
** Faust**).  Leipsig  had  a  good  theatre,  where 
the  young  student  spent  much  of  his  time,  so 
much  that  his  fnther  became  alarmed,  and  just- 
ly so,  as  Lessing  had  Imit  money  to  some  of 
the  actors  and  become  enamoured  of  a  young 
actress.  He  consented  to  go  to  Wittenberg, 
the  cradle  of  Luther's  Reformation,  which  had 
then  a  university,  but  there  he  became  111,  and, 
feeling  that  he  could  not  remain  in  such  a 
dead  place,  he  started  one  day  for  Berlin,  leav- 
ing all  his  books  and  clothes  behind  him. 

He  was  only  nineteen  years  old,  he  had  not 
taken  any  academic  degree,  his  studies  were 
Incomplete,  he  had  no  private  means;  still,  he 
confided  in  his  own  energy;  he  was  determined 
to  be  neither  a  theologian,  nor  a  doctor,  nor  a 
professor,  nor  a  functionary-  any  kind  of  offl. 
dal  servitude  was  repugnant  to  him.  His  poor 
father  sent  blm  a  littie  money  to  buy  new 
doibea,  and  he  was  so  fortunate  as  to  be  intro- 
duced by  one  of  his  former  profeaM>rs  to  one  of 
the  principal  booksellers  of  Berlin,  Rfidiger, 
who  edited  the  most  Important  newspaper  in 
Prusaia,  the  B€riini9ehe  FHviUgUrU  StaaU> 
und  CftUhrUrZ^Uung.  He  wrote  for  the  paper 
and  made  translations  from  French  and  Span- 
ish authors.  He  began  at  the  same  time  some 
comedies.  He  left  Berlin  for  a  short  space  to 
retam  to  Wittenberg,  but  only  In  order  to  ob- 


Tlie   N'ation. 

tain  bis  degree  of  MagitUr  Ariium, whereupon 
he  immediately  went  bade  to  Berlin,  which  be- 
came for  about  twenty  years  the  centre  of  his 
activity.  This  period,  which  was  interrupted 
by  a  sojourn  of  some  duration  In  Lelpdg,  was 
characterind  by  the  publication  of  the  ^Letters 
on  Recent  Literature.*  I  cite  this  capital  work 
as  representetive  of  this  first  period,  as  It 
would  be  almost  impoMlble  to  analyse  aU  the 
writings  of  that  Berllnian  phase  of  Lessing*s 
development.  These  *'  Briefe  die  neneste  Litte- 
ratur  betreffend**  appeared  from  1750  to  1785, 
and  form  twenty-three  volumes.  (There  were 
coUaborators,  bat  Leseiog*s  part  is  predomi- 
nant. )  They  were  supposed  to  be  written  to  an 
officer  of  the  Prussian  army,  wounded  at  the 
battle  of  Z'tmdorf  (August  25, 1758),  by  a  friend 
who  wished  to  divert  him: 

**  These  letters,**  says  M.  Grucker,  **modestiv 
profess  merely  to  pronounce  iudgment  in  all 
liberty  and  frankness  on  the  literary  produc- 
tions of  the  period  of  the  Seven  Tears*  War. 
But,  in  connection  with  works  which  are 
judged,  the  author  lets  us  pM*ceive  the  ideas 
and  principles  which  guide  him  ;  we  see  a  new 
spirit,  a  new  form  of  literary  criticism.  We 
are  not  so  much  interested  by  the  object  as  by 
the  manner  of  the  judgment.  The  critic  be- 
comes more  important  than  the  writers  criti- 
cised. We  are  struck  by  the  Independence  of 
thought^  the  disinterested  and  (so  to  speak)  im- 
personal manner.*' 

Lessing  says  of  himself :  "What  I  have  to 
say  to  people  I  say  to  their  faces,  even  If 
they  split  with  rage  (van  Zom  berBten)^  Was 
it  because  T<essing  was  found  too  trenchant, 
too  unyielding,  that  he  left  Berlin  for  Breslau 
and  accepted  there  the  modest  post  of  secretary 
of  the  Prussian  Government  under  Gen.  Ton 
Tauensien,  who.  was  commander-in-chief  of 
the  town  ?  We  do  not  know  for  a  certainty 
what  his  reasons  were;  but  he  was  naturally 
fond  of  a  change;  he  liked  new  faces,  new  peo- 
ple, and  at  Breslau  he  was  in  an  entirely  new 
scene,  in  a  camp,  at  the  most  critical  moment  of 
a  long  war.  His  administrative  correspondence 
took  half  of  his  time;  the  other  half  was  re- 
served for  his  literary  work.  In  his  new  life, 
among  the  officers  who  had  become  his  com- 
panions, he  found  time  to  collect  the  materials 
not  only  for  his  **  Minna  von  Bamhelm  "  (the 
first  truly  original  German  play,  says  M. 
Grucker,  which  was  to  deliver  the  national 
stage  from  too  servile  imitetion  of  the  foreign 
stage),  but  also  of  the  famous  *Laokoon,'  in 
which  he  fixed  the  domain  of  poetry.  Its  limits, 
ite  laws,  and  lU  rights.  At  Breslau  we  see 
him,  after  an  evening  spent  in  passionately 
playing  cards,  reading  S^dnosaand  the  fathers 
of  the  primitive  church.  The  'Laokoon'  is 
still  considered  as  a  standard  work  in  Ger- 
many. Hugo  Bliimner  published  in  1880  at 
Berlin  a  volume  on  It  in  which  he  gave  a  sort 
of  coomientary  on  the  SBsthetic,  historical  bib^ 
liographical  questions  capable  of  throwing 
light  on  all  parte  of  the  w<n*k.  Lessing  gave 
In  the  *Laokoon'  his  views  and  theories  not 
only  on  poetry,  but  on  the  plastic  arte;  he  ex. 
plained  the  differences  which  distinguish  them, 
and  traced  the  llmite  which  separate  them. 
The  *Laokoon'  Is  the  first  systematic  treaty 
on  what  we  call  to-day  asthetics. 

Lessing  was  inceasantiy  tonnented  by  the 
need  of  money.  He  had  hoped  for  a  moment 
to  be  i4>po(nled  librarian  to  the  Eling.  The 
place  had  been  offered  first  to  WInckelmann, 
who  was  then  In  Rome;  but  he  asked  for  a 
very  large  salary,  and  besides  be  did  not  like 
to  leave  Rome.  Frederick  did  not  choose  Les- 
sing, partiy  because  he  was  determined  to  have 
a  Frenchman,  and  partiy  because  he  remem- 
bered Lsaslng*s  quarrels  with  Voltaire.    Les- 


195 


sing  was  invited  to  help  in  the  creation  of  a  new 
theatre  In  Hamburg.  He  writes  to  a  friend 
(quoting  Juvenal): 

"Qood  non  dsnt  proo«ret.  dablt  hlslHo." 

He  became  the  literary  adviser,  the  official 
critic  of  the  new  theatre,  with  a  salary  of  8,200 
marks,  an  important  sum  at  the  time.  Of  all 
the  cities  of  (Germany,  Hamburg  was  the  best 
chosen  fOT  the  estebllshment  of  a  national 
and  permanent  theatre.  Lessing  always  had 
a  predilection  for  the  theatrical  art ;  he 
sketched  an  enormous  number  of  plays  and 
finished  a  few.  This  period  of  his  life  is  chiefiy 
marked  by  the  production  of  **  Minna  von 
Bamhelm**  and  of  "Emilia  Galotti,"  and  by 
the  publication  of  the  'Dramaturgic,'  his 
capital  work  as  a  dramatic  critic. 

The  'Dramaturgic*  has  not  the  form,  the 
dogmatic  tone  of  a  treatise  of  dramatic  sastbe- 
tics.  It  is  polemical,  sometimes  humorous, 
always  unconstrained  and  capricious.  At  the 
same  time.  It  must  not  be  compared  with  our 
modem  analysis  of  new  plays.  Lesiing  rises 
constantly  above  the  works  of  which  he  Is 
giving  an  account;  they  are  to  him  a  mere 
theme,  and  he  makes  long  digressions  on  pointe 
of  history  or  of  erudition.  Lessing  was  not  an 
ordinary  theatrical  reporter,  he  had  too  philo- 
sophical a  mind,  and  the  more  he  advances 
in  his  '  Dramaturgic  *  the  more  he  shows  his 
growing  contempt  for  the  drama  of  the  day 
and  for  the  dramatis  personcB.  He  is  writing, 
in  fact,  tar  posterity  more  than  for  bis  contem- 
poraries; and  posterity  has  found  in  his  *  Dra- 
maturgie*  the  elemente  of  a  dramatic  school. 
Posterity  has  not  agreed  with  all  his  judg- 
men  to;  we  do  not  admire  the  plays  of  Diderot 
as  Lessing  did;  we  place  Comellie  higher  than 
he  did;  but  we  share  his  admiration  for  Shak- 
spere,  and  we  all  feel  like  him  towards  Voltaire 
as  adramatist.  '*£milia  Galotti**  is  the  ex- 
ample after  the  precept.  It  Is  a  tragedy  such 
as  Lessing  #lshes  it  to  be,  a  model  tragedy; 
different  from  the  French  tragedy,  as  well  as 
from  the  more  modern  drama.  The  subject  is 
the  story  of  the  Roman  Virginia  transported 
to  a  vague  Italian  principality,  which  might  as 
well  be  a  German  principality. 

Lessing*s  nature  was  eminentiy  elastic  and 
ubiquitous ;  the  theatrical  critic  and  the  play- 
wright had  not  quite  killed  in  him  the  theolo- 
gian; the  list  of  his  theological  writings  is 
long.  In  1760,  tired  of  the  theatre  at  Ham- 
burg, and  always  in  money  difficulties,  he  ac- 
cepted the  post  of  librarian  of  the  Ducal  Li- 
brary  of  WolfenbfitteL  The  hereditary  prince 
of  the  Duchy  of  Brunswick,  nephew  of  the 
great  Frederick,  had  distinguished  himself  in 
the  Seven  Years*  War;  he  was  fond  of  art 
and  of  Uteratnre.  In  1771  we  find  Lessing  at 
his  poet.  His  life  at  Wolfenbfittel,  we  may 
easily  conceive,  was  very  duU.  ''Ich  ver- 
tr&ume  mein  Leben,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend. 
He  bad  become  HI ;  he  found  his  only  solace  in 
his  literary  work.  In  October,  1778,  he  mar- 
ried Madame  Eva  KOnig,  his  old  friend,  ''  a 
distinguished  mind  and  a  stout  heart,'*  says 
M.  Grucker,  **  with  a  very  practical  soise,  lov- 
ing without  sentimentality  ;  quite  the  woman 
he  needed,  and  worthy  to  associate  her  life 
with  his.**  Twelve  months  afterwards  they 
had  a  child,  who  died  in  twenty-four  hours, 
and  a  fortnight  afterwards  the  poor  mother 
died  also.  It  is  no  wonder  if,  in  this  dark  end 
of  his  life  at  Wolfenbfittel,  Lessing  devoted 
himself  more  to  religious  and  theological  pre- 
occupations. His  latter  years  were  occupied 
with  philosophical  works  and  with  great  theo- 
logical discussions.  On  the  8d  of  February, 
1781,  he  was  stricken  with  apoplexy  at  Bruna- 


196 


Tlie   JSTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1601 


wick.    He  died  on  February  15,  at  the  age  of 
flf ty-two  years. 


Correspondencee 


THE   PRESENT   COTTON   CROP. 
To  THK  Editor  op  Thb  Nation: 

Sir:  The  cotton  year  begins  at  about  the 
time  the  cotton  is  ready  to  be  picked.  Instead 
of  starting  in  January,  it  begins  September  1. 
The  present  cotton  crop  has  been  gathered,  and 
is  now  out  of  the  growers^  hands ;  therefore  its 
effect  on  the  locality  where  it  wa^  grown  can 
be  estimated. 

For  twenty- five  years  or  more  the  planter*s 
method  of  raising  cotton  has  been  to  buy  on 
credit  everything  he  used,  and  devote  all  his 
energies  to  the  crop  alone.  So  successful  has 
he  been  that  in  recent  years  he  has  made  cot- 
ton greatly  in  excess  of  the  world's  wants. 
The  price  has  fallen  accordingly.  The  last 
crop-year  saw  cotton  selling  on  the  plantation 
at  43^  cents— a  price  below  the  cost  of  produc- 
tion. Those  who  still  continued  ^  grow  cot- 
ton did  so  with  a  view  to  selling  it  the  next 
year  at  five  cents.  Only  those  could  plant  at 
this  figure  for  a  profit  who  made  at  home 
eTerjTthing  they  used.  With  them  cotton  was 
to  be  a  surplus  crop.  If  it  brought  nothiog, 
they  would  not  starve.  Cotton  is  the  best  sur. 
plus  crop  to  grow.  It  is  not  perishable  as  are 
fruits  and  vegetables.  The  planter  can  take  it 
to  his  nearest  town  and  sell  it  immediately  for 
its  market  value.  He  does  not,  as  in  the  case 
of  vegetables,  have  to  ship  and  await  the  re 
turns  from  the  market  with  the  usual  discounts 
deducted  on  the  account  pales  for  decay.  As  a 
result  of  the  method  necessary  for  growing  the 
present  crop,  there  has  been  a  shortage  in  the 
number  of  bales  amounting  to  about  88)^  per 
cent  compared  with  the  previous  year. 

The  business  of  the  country  stores  has  been 
on  the  wane  for  three  years.  Only  a  opinimum- 
amount  of  dry  goods,  clothing,  boots,  and 
shoes  has  been  sold  ;  what  business  there  was, 
being  principally  in  staple  groceries.  Many 
people,  especially  the  negroes,  were  nearly 
naked  and  bare-footed.  "Free  silver"  was 
discussed  in  the  shade  of  fence  corners  while 
in  the  field.  The  value  of  cotton,  it  was  decid- 
ed, depended  not  so  much  on  supply  and  de- 
mand as  on  the  price  of  silver.  *' Silver  and 
cotton  were  wedded  ^  and  went  hand  in  hand 
in  price.  Cotton  opened  up  the  season  at  eight 
cents,  a  figure  nearly  twice  as  large  as  the 
grower  expected  to  realize.  The  people  had 
done  little  "trading"  for  three  years.  With 
their  first  cotton  money,  they  swarmed  to  the 
country  stores  like  a  consuming  cloud  of  lo- 
custs. They  swept  the  counters  clean.  The 
wholesale  houses  of  the  cities  worked  day  and 
night  aod  yet  fell  many  days  behind  their 
orders.  Business  held  its  extraordinary  pro- 
portions until  late  in  November,  when  it  fell 
off,  although  still  remaining  very  large. 
*'  Free  silver,"  instead  of  being  the  absorbing 
topic,  almost  entirely  vanished.  The  deposits 
of  the  country  banks  doubled  and  often  trebled. 
Rents  rose  and  lands  increased  in  value. 

Many  people  fear  the  South  will  go  back  to 
the  old  system  of  "all  cotton,"  and  that  the 
immediate  benefits  caused  by  the  low  price  of 
cotton,  viz.,  diversification  of  crops  and  grow- 
ing home  supplies,  will  be  forgotten.  The  large 
sales  of  mules  and  agricultural  implements, 
and  the  renting  of  lands  that  have  been  lying 
out,  strengthen  the  opinion  that  a  very  large 
cotton  acreage  is  to  be  planted.    Others  be- 


lieve, and  I  think  rightly,  that  the  "all  cot- 
ton "  system  is  gone  for  ever.  These  persons 
hold  that  the  very  large  sales  of  mules  were 
caused  by  the  fact  that,  during  the  past  three 
years,  an  enormous  number  of  liens  have  been 
foreclosed  on  mules.  Now  is  the  first  time  the 
people  have  had  the  money  to  replace  them, 
and  this  they  have  done.  As  to  agricultural 
implements,  every  one  for  at  least  three  years 
has,  as  far  as  possible,  abstained  from  purchas- 
ing them.  As  a  consequence,  all  have  come 
in  the  market  to  buy  together. 

In  expectation  of  the  planting  of  an  enor- 
mous crop,  the  price  has  declined  sharply. 
This  will  help  to  reduce  the  aclreage.  The 
South,  however,  because  of  abundant  home- 
grown meat,  meal,  and  molasses,  is  able  to 
make  an  extraordinarily  cheap  crop.  The 
American  Cotton  Growers'  Protective  Associa- 
tion is  a  powerful  agency  against  the  return  to 
the  "all  cotton  "  system.  In  their  recent  con- 
vention at  Memphis,  the  central  idea  was, "  Let 
the  people  plant  all  the  cotton  they  will;  but 
also  let  them  grow  the  supplies  at  home  to  do 
it.  Let  cotton  be  a  surplus  crop."  There  can 
be  no  more  philosophical  or  effectiTe  way  than 
this  for  reducing  the  cotton  crop.  The  planters 
are  imbued  with  the  idea  of  cotton  as  a  surplus 
crop.  This  will  make  cotton  growing  profita- 
ble, almost  irrespective  of  price. 

The  South's  future  was  never  so  bright. 
Never  has  there  been  so  much  "home  money '' 
seeking  investment.  The  outlet  is  obviously 
in  manufacturing— to  take  advantage  of  the 
South's  cheapness  of  effective  labor,  her  cheap 
fuel  and  raw  material,  and  of  their  nearness  to 
each  other.  W.  Collier  Estes. 

ItmrPis.  TBHif.,  February  80, 1806. 


LORD  LEIGHTON. 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  The  Chicago  Tribune  of  Febmarv  16 
contains  a  paragraph  suggesting  that  *'the  late 
Lord  Leighton  must  have  been  very  extrava- 
gant" to  have  left  so  little  of  this  world*8 
goods  "when  we  consider  the  vast  sums  he 
must  have  received  for  his  works."  Firstly,  I 
doubt  if  Leighlon  ever  received  "vast  sums" 
for  his  works.  Those  halcyon  days  are  limited 
to  the  4^henian,  not  to  the  nineteenth-century, 
period  of  art.  Secondly,  it  is  due  to  the  me- 
mory of  Leighton,  and  upon  the  authority  of  a 
life- long  friend,  to  state  that  more  than  half  of 
his  annual  income  was  devoted  to  his  Ipss  pros- 
perous brethren  in  art.  No  artist  ever  appeal 
ed  in  vain  to  Lord  Leighton  for  aid.  Well  do 
I  remember  that,  so  long  ago  as  1858,  wben 
Leighton  was  making  his  studies  in  Rome  for 
his  picture  of  Cimabue  and  Giotto,  and  before 
fortune  had  in  any  way  smiled  upon  him,  his 
name  was  synonymous  with  helpfulness  and 
kindness  to  those  less  fortunate  than  himself. 
And  so  it  was  to  the  end.  It  was  enough  for 
Leighton  to  know  that  others  were  in  greater 
want  than  himself— and  his  purse  was  theirs; 
and  it  was  this  ever-kindliness  and  generosity  of 
heart— this  first  quality — «rhich  endeared  him 
to  his  friends,  and  which  excited  their  admira- 
tion far  more  than  even  his  most  brilliant 
achievements.  Harriet  G.  Hosker. 

Cricaoo,  February  25. 1806. 


book  of  the  Drama,  its  Philosophy  and  Teach- 
ing,' by  P.  J.  Cooke,  Lecturer  In  Elocution  and 
the  Drama  to  the  Battersea  Polytechnic,  the 
London  College  of  'Music,  Science,  and  Art, 
Highbury  Institute,  etc.,  etc.  In  the  preface  the 
"author"  makes  a  general  acknowledgment 
to  the  work  of  his  American  predecessor,  Mr. 
Hennd^uin's  *Art  of  Playwriting,'  published 
by  Houghton,  Mifilin  &  Co.,  in  the  following 
words :  "The  author  is  indebted  for  much 
valuable  information  contained  in  *Henne- 
quin*s  Play  writing,'  and  other  works  of  a 
similar  nature,  which  he  now  comprehensive- 
ly acknowledges."  Another  reference  to  Hen- 
nequin  is  contained  in  the  index  :  "  Henne. 
quin,  his  definition  of  a  play,  p.  119,"  and  on 
the  latter,  or  rather  on  p.  120,  the  only  refer- 
ence reads  :  "In  the  broader  sense,  according 
to  Hennequin,  a  play  is    .    .    .    ." 

What  is  our  surprise  to  discover  that  aU  the 
matter  from  page  117-181  is  tK>dily  stolen 
from  Mr.  Hennequin*s  work,  with  here  and 
there  the  addition  of  a  word.  The  last  sen^ 
tence  is  characteristic : 


A  TRANSATLANTIC  PLAGIARIST. 
To  the  Editor  of  The  Nation  : 

Sir  :  A  k>old  case  of  plagiarism  has  come 
under  my  notice,  which  demands  public  cen- 
sure.   There  has  lately  appeared   *A  Hand- 


HmwntqviK. 
Others,  and  by  far  the 
greatest  number,  must 
be  absolutely  recon- 
structed, the  characters 
altered  and  re  named, 
the  mioor  Incidents  in- 
vented anew,  the  whole 
play  deoationalized  and 
worked  over  on  the  Ame- 
ritan  plan. 


OOOKB. 

Others,  and  by  far  the 
greatest  number,  roust 
be  absolutely  recon- 
structed, the  chvacters 
altered  and  re-named, 
the  minor  Incidents  cre- 
ated anew,  the  whole 
play  denationalised  and 
worked  over  on  the  Brit- 
toAplan. 


Thus,  with  the  exception  of  a  page  and  a 
half,  the  whole  of  the  chapter  on  "Play writ- 
ing"  is  bodily  taken  from  Hennequin.  It 
would  not  at  all  surprise  us  to  discover  that 
even  tbe  rest  of  the  book  has  been  similarly 
pilfered,  for  does  not  the  author  make  the  same 
"comprehensive  acknowledgment"  to  un- 
named authors  as  to  Hennequin  ?  And  to  this 
dishonest  compilation  the  "author"  had  the 
courage  to  prefix  his  photograph,  that  we 
might  the  better  know  him.  and  he  bad  the 
further  courage  to  dedicate  it  to  Sir  Henry 
Irving.  Leo  Wiener. 

NnW  BSOLAND  Ck>IIBKRTATORT  OT  MUSIO. 

Boston,  February  85, 1800. 


THE   COLLEGE   TERM. 
To  the  Editor  of  The  Nation  : 

Sir:  Does  not  President  Eliot's  latest  annual 
report  suggest  a  possible  solution  of  a  problem 
which  is  at  present  furnishing  much  trouble  to 
the  Harvard  Faculty  f  It  appears  there  (page 
271)  that  the  average  age  of  the  students  en- 
tering the  freshman  class  in  1865  was  about 
ISyi  years,  while  in  1895  it  was  only  1S%,  with 
a  marked  decreasing  tendency  during  the  last 
eight  years — and  this  in  spite  of  very  much  in- 
creased requirements  for  admission  since  1865. 

This  showing  la  evidently  brought  about  by 
better  work  on  the  part  of  schools.  But,  ac- 
cording to  competent  critics  such  as  Prof. 
Goodwin,  our  American  schools  do  not  now 
accomplish  anything  like  what  foreign  schools 
of  the  same  nominal  rank  do.  Cannot,  then, 
better  schools  make  it  possible  for  a  student  to 
be  prepared  for  college  at  an  earlier  age  than 
at  present,  or  to  be  admitted  to  advanced  stand- 
ing, and  thus  take  an  uncheapened  bachelor's 
degree  seasonably  enough  not  to  entrench  upon 
the  time  that  should  be  devoted  to  purely  pro- 
fessional study?  Even  at  present,  under  far 
vorable  circumstances,  a  student  may  be  ready 
to  begin  the  practice  of  a  profession  at  from 
twenty-three  to  twenty-five.    That,  surely,  U 


March  5,  1896] 


The   N"ation. 


19'r 


M  jonng  u  tbe  public  oares  to  have  ito  doo- 
torm  And  Uwyen.  O.  W.  Latham. 

AVBUmv.  M.  T.,  r»bnutf7  90, 1806. 


**  CARRY,"  A8  A  NOUN. 

To  THB  Editob  of  Thb  Natioit: 

Bib:  I  happen  just  now  to  be  working  upon 
tbe  1188.  of  one  Alexander  Henrj,  Jr.,  a  fur- 
trader  of  tbe  N.  W.  Co.,  wboee  journal  extends 
from  1799  to  1814.  Fbrtuge  and  ite  equivalente 
occur  to  incefitantlj  in  this  narrative  that  I  am 
•ometinies  put  to  it  for  synonyms  to  vary  the 
monotony  of  tbeee  locutions.  Tbe  same  will  be 
found  tb«»  case  with  all  tbe  narratiTes  of  voy- 
aging on  tbe  old  trade  routes  in  British  Ame- 
rica, where  tbe  highways  were  invariably 
waterways,  usually  with  repeated  interrup- 
tions to  canoe  navigation.  I  think  it  most 
probable  that  portc^ft^  as  a  French  word  for 
any  place  where  tbe  canoe  and  its  load  had  to 
be  taken  out  of  tbe  water,  and  for  the  act  of 
such  land-transportation,  was  used  by  the 
voyageurs  from  the  very  beginning  of  finding 
the  obstructions  and  doing  tbe  thing;  and  that 
it  passed  into  English  unchanged  as  soon  as  it 
fell  upon  English  ears.  Also,  that  it  could  not 
have  been  long  before  earrying-plaet  suggested 
Itself  spontaneously  as  an  English  translation 
of  tbe  word.  Carrying-plate  soon  appeared 
as  a  phrase,  Carrying  Place,  capitalind  as  a 
locative  geographical  term.  It  was  so  conunon 
as  to  be  often  abbrevfaUd  C.  P.  in  itineraries; 
C.  P.  being  of  frequent  occurrence,  for  exam- 
ple, in  tbe  inedited  MSB.  of  David  Thompson, 
before  and  after  1799.  Carry,  verb,  translated 
portager  from  tbe  start;  and  carry,  noun, 
would  be  likely  to  assert  itself  immediately, 
for  both  the  place  and  the  act.  Tbe  *  Century 
Dictionary*  rightly  gives  carry,  n.,  for  tbe 
place  and  for  tbe  act,  without  remark;  but 
enters  no  carrying-place.  I  have  not  hesitated 
to  use  also  carriage,  for  the  act. 

Thoae  old  voyageurs  had  a  full  French  vo- 
cabulary of  their  business,  and  aU  tbe  terms 
got  English  translations  in  their  si>ecial  senses, 
in  the  H.  B.  Co.,  N.  W.  Co.,  X.  Y.  Co.,  and 
other  associations  of  fur  traders.  One  of  the 
moat  special  is  discharge,  from  F.  dicharge,  as 
distinguished  from  carry  =:portage.  Tbe  die» 
charge  was  a  carry  where  only  a  part  of  the 
freight  had  to  be  unloaded,  tbe  rest  of  the 
cargo  and  the  canoe  beiog  floated  through; 
also^  tbe  act  of  so  dcrfng  was  a  discharge.  If 
the  thus  lightened  canoe  had  to  be  let  down 
rapids  with  a  rope,  It  was  said  to  be  handed 
down;  to  pull  it  up  with  a  rope  was  to  track— 
what  we  call  cordelling,  out  West,  though  I  do 
not  think  I  have  found  to  cordel  among  the 
writers  in  English  who  were  so  closely  associ- 
ated with  tbe  French  voyageurs.  Those  peo- 
ple went  so  constantly  by  water  that  they  had 
a  number  of  terms  we  consider  applicable  only 
to  land-travel.  Thus,  they  marched  when  they 
paddled  their  canoes,  and  extra  good  time  was 
made  at  a  trot.  But  I  have  occupied  too  much 
space  already  for  some  samples  of  a  curious 
vocabulary  which  could  be  displayed  to  advan- 
tage only  in  several  columns  of  the  Nation, 
EluottCoubs. 
WAsamoTov.  Febniary  97,  iMe. 


''HIRED   MEN   AND   WOMEN." 

To  Tax  Editor  of  Ths  Nation: 

Bib:  To  inquire  into  the  origin  and  use  of 
tbe  terms  '*hired  girls"  and  "hired  men" 
•earns  to  me  like  inquiring  into  tbe  origin  of 
the  English  language  I    As  soon  as  man  and 


women  are  **  hired,'*  of  oourse  the  term  would 
be  used.  It  can  be  found  in  old  wills,  con- 
tracts, and  in  tbe  early  town  and  church  re- 
cords of  Maine,  Massachusetts,  and  New 
Hampshire.  I  have  found  it  in  old  family 
letters  and  the  earliest  almanacs,  and  consid- 
ered It  so  inevitable  that  I  should  not  remem- 
ber it  if  it  were  not  associated  with  some  mis- 
demeanor. From  the  earliest  times,  there 
were  "apprentices*'  and  "hired  men,**  and 
later,  **  slaves.** 

I  cannot  here  quote  papers,  but  I  remember 
that  Harlakenden  Symonds  of  Ipswich,  son  of 
the  Deputy  Governor  of  Massachusetts,  bom,  I 
think,  in  1688  (who  was  once  up  before  the 
auth<Hities  tor  some  such  heinous  offence  as 
driyiog  his  "ox  or  his  ass**  to  pasture  on  Sun- 
day), made  use  in  a  letter  elsewhere  quoted  of 
th&  phrase  "hired  man**  in  connection  with 
that  event.  There  were  "hired  men**  and 
"hired  women**  on  my  grandfather's  farm  in 
Kensington,  N.  H.,  long  before  the  Revolution, 
and  probably  would  be  to-day  if  men  could  be 
** hired"  on  any  terms  to  go  into  a  "far 
country.**  Cabulinb  H.  Dall. 

WASHmoTOS,  D.  0.,  Feb.  97, 1906. 


Notes. 


Thb  Robert  Clarke  Co.,  Cincinnati,  have  in 
press  the  fourth  volume  of  *  Sketches  of  War 
History,  1861-6S,*  edited  by  W.  H.  Chamber- 
lin  for  the  Ohio  Commandery  of  the  Loyal  Le 
gion;  and  *  Queen  M6o  and  tbe  Egyp'ian 
Sphinx,*  by  Dr.  Augustus  Le  Plongeon. 

The  Levy  type  Co.,  Philadelphia,  will  publish 
this  month  *  Cuba  and  the  Cubans,*  Uvnslated 
by  Laura  Guiteras  from  the  eighth  edition  of 
Raimundo  Cabrera*s  *  Cuba  y  sus  Jueoes,*  with 
numerous  illustrations  and  a  map  of  the  island. 

A.  Blanck,  Na  4  WestTwenty-eighth  Street, 
will  puUish  immediately  *  Sarah  Bernhardt, 
Artist  and  Woman,*  by  A.  la.  Renner,  with 
numerous  illustrations. 

A  volume  of  Verses  by  Miss  Mary  Wright 
Plummer,  of  Broc^yn,  N.  Y.,  is  on  the  point 
of  being  issued  in  an  edition  of  800  copies  by 
Messrs.  Paul  Lemperly,  F.  A.  Hilliard,  and 
Frank  B.  Hojrftins  associates  as  widely  sepa- 
rated in  reddenoe  as  Cleveland  and  New  York. 
Orders  may  be  sent  to  Mr.  Hopkins  at  the  De 
Vinne  Press,  12  Lafayette  Place,  where  tbe 
volume  will  be  manufactured. 

Among  the  attractive  serial  reprints  we  note 
tbe  progress  of  Balzac's  "  Comddie  Humalne,** 
edited  by  George  Saintsbury,  with  two  vol- 
umes, *Ursule  Miroudt*  and  *  The  Quest  of  the 
Absolute*  (London:  Dent;  New  York:  Mao- 
millan);  tbe  "  Ttenple  Shalupere,**  with  *Corio- 
lanns*  and  *Troilus  and  Cressida*  (same  pub- 
Ushers);  and  Kingsley's  stories,  with  *  Water 
Babies*  (Maomillan). 

After  an  Interval  of  seven  years,  Drs.  Und- 
ley  and  Widney  have  prepared  a  renovated 
(third)  edition  of  their  'CaUfornU  of  tbe 
South*  (Appletoos).  In  this  period  tbe  lower 
part  of  tbe  State  has  undergone  great  changes, 
with  marked  progress,  In  spite  of  "booms** 
that  ooUapsedS  Los  Angeles,  for  example,  has 
Increased  its  population  from  50,000  to  80,000, 
equal  to  that  of  Boston  sixty  years  ago.  New 
settlements  have  sprung  up  demanding  recog- 
nition for  the  sake  of  tourist,  invalid,  and  in- 
vestor. In  every  way,  in  short,  the  old  infor- 
mation needed  to  be  corrected  and  supple- 
mented, and  this  has  been  done  by  rewriting 
and   not  by  simple  patching  of  stereotype 


With  muoh  labor  and  aoonrate  historical  In- 


vestigation, Mr.  William  8.  Appjeton  of  Boston 
has  recovered  the  names  of  the  848  Senators  in 
the  first  fifty  Congresses,  and  conveniently  dis- 
played them  In  folded  tables  entitled  *  A  Centu- 
ry of  the  SenaU  of  the  United  States  *  (Boston : 
Little,  Brown  ft  Co.;  New  York:  Putnams). 
It  appears  that  the  first  half-oentury  is  a  doaed 
book,  as  no  Senator  of  that  period  is  now  liv- 
ing, or  indeed  of  the  next  decade,  except  that 
three  Senators  of  the  Thirtieth  Congress  sur> 
Vive ;  and  these  with  four  others  are  the  only 
ones  who  sat  in  the  Senate  before  March  4, 
1861.  Benton's  term  of  fifteen  Congresses  has 
not  been  equalled.  The  great  majority  of  tbe 
names  are  now  quite  forgotten,  and  this  tradi- 
tion is  notoriously  In  a  fair  way  to  be  main- 
tained. Ten  Senators  and  one  Senator-elect 
(Garfield)  were  also  Presidents;  fourteen  were 
Presidents  in  peUo  and  defeated  candidates. 
The  end  of  each  term  Is  marked  by  a  star,  and 
deaths,  resignations,  expulsions,  and  unseat- 
ings  are  also  Indicated.  If  each  State  had  re- 
ceived a  number  to  be  repeated  in  each  column, 
reference  would  bava  been  greatly  facilitated; 
and  we  are  even  so  unreasonable  as  to  wish 
that  the  blank  space  in  tbe  chart  had  been  em- 
ployed for  an  alphabetical  list  of  the  848,  with 
full  name  and  with  State  affixed. 

The  *  Catalogue  of  tbe  Foasll  Fishes  in  the 
BriUsh  Museum  (Natural  History),  Part  in.,* 
by  Arthur  Smith  Woodward,  F.G.3.,  F.Z.S., 
is  one  of  the  most  Important  scientific  publica- 
tions of  the  year  just  elapeed.  It  is  indispensa- 
ble to  all  pUsB^ntologitts  or  geologists  who 
have  to  do  with  tbe  fossils  of  these  vertebrates. 
It  includes  the  Actinopterygian  Teleostomi  of 
the  orders  Chondroatei  (concluded),  Protospon- 
dyli,  Aetheospondyll,  and  Isospondyli  (in  part). 
According  to  the  preface,  It  carries  us  through 
the  great  series  of  the  Actinopterygian  Fishes 
of  the  Chondrostean  type,  and  completes  the 
Catalogue  to  the  end  of  the  Jurassic  series,  in- 
eluding  also  some  of  the  later  survivors  of 
these  older  forms.  In  approxioiation  to  the 
natural  order,  it  traces  the  phases  of  develop- 
ment and  tbe  variations  of  these  Mesosoio 
fishes  at  the  time  of  their  dominance,  and  as 
they  were  gradually  replaced  in  the  Cretaceous 
by  advances  toward  modem  teleoetean  types. 
Tbe  work  is  not  merely  a  catalogue;  it  con- 
tains a  great,  amount  of  important  new  mat- 
ter, resulting  from  the  author's  reeearches 
during  the  four  years  that  have  passeri  since 
the  appearance  of  Part  II.  Besldei  those  in 
the  plates  there  are  nnmerons  illustrations  in 
the  text  The  book  is  of  the  class  that  does 
most  to  rmider  science  available,  and  the 
many  students  whose  labors  are^  lightened  by 
its  aid  will  rejoice  at  its  author's  success. 

The  Annual  Report  of  the  New  York  Forest 
Commission  for  the  year  1804,  just  published, 
is  well  calculated  to  win  sympathy  and  en- 
couragement for  the  Commission  under  its  new 
title.  It  is  a  volume  of  268  pages  and  about  25 
plates,  with  shapes  and  growths  of  trees,  log- 
ging processes,  forest  scenes,  camps  in  the 
woods,  etc  Altogether  it  forms  a  valuable 
treatise  on  forestry.  Besides  pointing  out  the 
best  directions  for  efforts  in  preservation  of  the 
forests,  it  indicates  the  most  judicious  methods 
of  treatment  for  purposes  of  income.  In  con* 
nection  with  reports  on  tbe  destruction  by  fires 
in  the  State,  the  needs  of  legislative  precau- 
tions are  vividly  brought  forward  by  means  of 
accounts  of  the  terrible  effieets  of  tbe  fires  in 
Minnssota,  Wisconsin,  Michigan,  and  else- 
where during  the  latter  part  of  18M,  by 
which  so  many  lives  were  lost  and  such  a  vast 
amount  of  property  blotted  out  of  existence. 
The  laws  relating  to  matters  in  tbe  province 
of  the  CoounlMkm  are  Included.    On  April  98^ 


198 


The   ISTatlon. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1 601 


1885,  this  Commission  was  consolidated  with 
the  Fish  and  Game  Commission  under  the  pre- 
sent name.  Fisheries,  Oame,  and  Forest  Com- 
mission. 

The  sixteenth  annual  report  of  the  IT.  S. 
Geological    Barney  for    1894.*0K,    Part    III. 

*  Mineral  Resources  of  the  United  States; 
Metallic  Products  *  (Dayid  T.  Day,  geologist  in 
charge),  has  for  its  object  to  show  the  use 
made  of  the  mineral  deposits  of  the  United 
States,  and  particularly  the  amount  of  each 
useful  mineral  produced  and  its  Talue.  It 
also  summarises  the  additions  made  to  the 
known  mineral  deposits  of  the  United  States. 
As  is  shown  by  the  titles  of  the  various 
papers,  not  only  have  the  resources  of  this 
country  been  considered,  but  much  valuable 
information  has  been  collected  from  other 
countries,  by  which  interesting  comparisons 
can  be  made.  The  different  papers  have  been 
prepared  by  specialists  of  recognized  standing 
in  their  respective  fields,  and,  in  connection 
with  the  statistics,  form  a  valuable  addition  to 
our  mining  literature.  Full  bibliographies  ac- 
company several  of  the  papers.  In  accordance 
with  a  recent  act  of  Congress,  the  former 
nominal  charge  for  this  report  is  no  longer 
made.  The  edition  is  now  distributed  to  such 
as  may  desire  copies  through  the  Senators  and 
Representatives  in  Congress. 

The  eighth  part  of  Mr.  William  C.  Harrises 

*  Fishes  of  North  America'  (New  York:  The 
Harris  Publishing  Co.)  continues  its  descrip- 
tion of  the  sucker  tribe,  with  the  aid  of  ten 
illustrations  in  the  text.  The  large  plates, 
colored  from  life,  which  accompany  each  part, 
are  in  this  instance  the  Blueflsh  and  the  Loog- 
mouthed  Black  Bass.  The  editor  has  a  good 
word  for  the  gamey  qualities  of  some  at  least 
of  the  suckers. 

When  all  is  said  and  done,  nothing  could 
have  justified  the  recent  sensitiveness  of  this 
country  regarding  the  confines  of  Venezuela 
but  a  thorough  knowledge  of  and  lively  inte- 
rest in  the  facts  of  the  case.  It  is  not  too 
late  now  for  Senators  and  Representatives 
to  cram  with  a  view  to  a  show  of  know- 
ledge whenever  what  remains  of  the  dispute 
comes  before  them;  nevertheless  we  do  not  ex- 
pect  to  see  them  pester  their  librarian,  lir. 
Spofford,  with  calls  for  books,  charts,  or  maga- 
zine articles.  That  another  portion  of  the 
public  may  like  (or  ought  to  wish)  to  be  in- 
structed, was  evidently  the  thought  of  lir. 
William  E.  Foster,  head  of  the  Public  Library 
of  Providence,  R.  I.,  when  he  devoted  the 
26th  reference  list  of  his  Monthly  Bulletin 
(January,  1896)  to  ** Venezuela  and  its  Bounda- 
ries.*^ Nine  pages  are  thus  occupied,  with  co- 
pious annotations,  and  one  finds  itemized  not 
only  the  ill  starred  Address  of  the  English  men 
of  letters,  Mr.  Watson's  cabled  verse  to  the 
"  towering  daughter,  Titan  of  the  West,"  but 
also  the  origin  of  the  term  Jingo,  in  *Hhe 
song  sung  in  [London]  music-halls  by  McDer- 
mott  "—"We  don't  want  to  fight,"  etc. 

Mr.  James  Means's  AeranauticcU  AnnutU 
for  1896  (Boston:  W.  B.  Clarke  &  Co.),  "de- 
voted to  the  advancement  of  the  neglected 
science, "  contains  a  large  amount  of  interest 
ing  matter  well  illustrated,  beginning  with 
that  persevering  and  progressive  man  flyer. 
Otto  Lilienthal,  who  describes  and  pictures  his 
own  aims  and  achievements  in  mid-air.  lir. 
Maxim  too  is  beard  from  again  respecting  his 
machine,  and  records  incidentally  some  very 
interesting  and  original  obtorvations  on  the 
flight  of  birds  as  well  as  on  the  movement  of 
the  atmosphere.  Kite-flying  is  another  leading 
topic  of  the  Annual. 

The  CalMidar  of  the  Imperial  University  of 


Japan  in  Tokyo  for  18M-'96  shows  depth  and 
strength  in  the  older  faculties  and  departments 
and  bright  promise  in  those  that  are  newer. 
In  December,  1894,  there  were  1,468  students  in 
the  various  colleges  of  Law,  Medicine,  Engi. 
neering.  Literature,  Science,  and  Agriculture. 
Taking  the  year  1878  as  that  in  which  the  pre- 
viously existing  school  reached  the  grade  of  a 
European  university,  we  find  that  781  graduates 
in  fuU  course  (not  counting  158  deceased  per- 
sons) have  gone  into  active  life  well  prepared 
for  varied  usefulness.  The  evident  thorough- 
ness of  the  curricula  in  the  newer  departments 
of  science  and  agriculture,  and  the  happy  com- 
bination  of  the  theoretioal  and  practical,  are 
striking  facts  in  the  higher  education  as  here 
given.  The  eighteen  pages  which  set  forth  the 
titles  and  contents  of  sdentiflc  monographs, 
mostly  by  native  authors  and  investigatgrs, 
are  idso  very  suggestive.  Almost  every  de- 
partment of  human  knowledge,  with  its  ap- 
propriate apparatus  of  books,  instruments, 
laboratories,  and  observing  stations,  is  or- 
ganised  in  this  Teikoku  Daigaku  (Imperial 
University  of  Japan).  To  study  this  modest 
pamphlet  in  the  perspective  of  the  past  quarter 
of  a  century  is  to  understand  largely  the  secret 
of  Japan's  life  and  power  on  the  threshold  of 
the  year  1896. 

The  question  of  university  reform  in  France, 
and 'more  espedallv  of  the  substitution  of  a 
certiflcikte  of  maturity  for  the  bachelor's  de- 
gree, is  discussed  with  great  warmth  by  M.  F. 
Bruneti^re  in  the  Rewu  des  D9ux  Monde*  tor 
February  1.  This  threatened  innovation  would, 
in  the  writer's  opinion,  be  a  serious  blow  to 
the  free  (i  e.,  non-state)  secondary  schools,  in 
which  he  sees,  in  the  present  juncture,  the 
"last  bulirark"  of  classical  studies.  The 
complete  equivalence  of  "modem"  and  of 
classical  instruction  would  be  a  further  conse- 
quence, much  to  be  dreaded  on  account  of  the 
"gross  utilitarianism"  of  the  former.  This 
writer  also  argues  strongly  in  f^vor  of  a  more 
heterogeneous  membership  of  the  Superior 
Ck>uncU  of  Public  Instruction. 

The  latest  step  in  the  liberalization  ef  British 
educational  institutions  is  the  decision  of  the 
authorities  of  the  Royal  Irish  University  to 
throw  open  the  scholarships  and  prizes  at  Bel- 
fast, Cork,  and  (jhdway  to  students  of  both 
sexes.  A  recent  M.A.  graduate  (with  honors 
in  political  economy)  of  this  Irish  University, 
Miss  Rita  Oldham,  has  been  awarded  the  Jo- 
seph Hume  scholarship  of  £60  at  University 
College,  London;  this  scholarship  is  open  to 
students  of  either  sex  who  have  attended  for 
at  least  one  session  the  lectures  on  political 
economy. 

In  answer  to  an  inquiry  made  by  the  Italian 
Ministry  of  Agriculture  and  Commerce  as  to 
the  necessary  expenses  incurred  by  students  of 
law  and  medicine  in  the  University  of  Berlin, 
the  Akademiache  Revue  publishes  the  follow- 
ing statements  derived  from  ofBdal  sources. 
The  cost  of  matriculation  is  18  marks;  exami- 
nation  fees  in  the  medical  faculty  are  242 
marks;  promotion  or  graduation  fees  in  the 
law  faculty  855,  and  in  the  medical  faculty  440 
marks;  for  courses  of  lectures  obligatory  in 
order  to  pass  the  "Staatsexamen"  and  thus 
be  admitted  to  practice  or  to  hold  office  under 
the  Government— in  the  law  faculty  400  to  500, 
and  in  the  medical  faculty  900  to  1,200  marks; 
for  printing  doctor's  dissertation,  150  marks; 
for  the  books  of  a  law  student  800,  of  a  medi- 
cal student,  including  instruments,  at  least  500 
marks.  These  items  would  make  the  expenses 
of  a  law  studenti  for  fees  of  all  kinds,  in  round 
numbers,  1,300  marks,  while  tboee  of  a  medical 
student  would  be  about  twioe  as  much.    In 


Erlangen  and  Giessen  they  are  estimated  re- 
spectively at  1,200  and  1,800  marks  for  a  law 
student,  and  at  2,200  and  2,500  marks  for  a 
medical  student,  and  this  is  probably  the  ave- 
rage for  other  German  universities.  To  this 
amount  must  be  added  the  cost  of  food,  lodg- 
ing, and  clothing,  making  a  total  of  5,000  marks 
for  a  law  student  during  a  course  of  four 
years,  and  7,600  to  8,000  marks  for  a  medical 
student  during  a  course  of  four  and  a  half 
years.  The  entire  expenses  of  a  student  of 
civil  engineering  during  a  course  of  four  years 
are  about  6,000  marks;  those  of  a  student  in 
the  philosophical  faculty  during  a  three  years' 
course  of  study  are  considerably  less.  Indigent 
young  men  are  exempted  from  fees  by  pre- 
senting a  proper  certificate  from  the  authori- 
ties of  their  native  place,  and  in  some  cases  are 
even  furnished  with  a  "Freitisch,"  or  free 
dinner. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  present  year  there 
were  16,606  students  at  the  Russian  uniVersi- 
Ues,  divided  as  follows :  Moscow  3,888,  St. 
Petersburg  2.625,  Kiev  2.244,  Helsingfors  (Fin- 
land) 1,875,  Dorpat  t654,  Warsaw  1,335,  Khar- 
kov  1,200,  Kazan  826,  Odessa  555,  and  Tomsk 
405. 

Hermann  Sudermann,  whose  novels  have 
been  found  by  some  to  be  rather  uninteresting 
reading,  but  who  has  some  force  and  vigor  as 
a  writer  of  plays,  has  just  begun  a  series  of 
little  dramas,  in  one  act,  in  which  he  proposes 
to  study  "  how  men  behave  some  hours  before 
going  to  certain  death."  He  has  just  read 
some  scenes  from  the  first  of  these  dramas  at  a 
meeting  of  representatives  of  the  Berlin  press. 
From  a  sketch  of  the  play  g^ven  in  the  Tage- 
blatt  one  receives  an  impression  which  at  this 
distance  is  less  than  overwhelming  The  play 
does  not  come  to  any  real  conclusion,  nor  does 
it  seem  to  treat  with  thoroughness  the  problem 
which  the  writer  set  for  himself.  But  the 
journalists  to  whom  it  was  read  appear  to 
have  been  satisfied,  and  they  applauded  the 
reader  vigorously. 

Lemcke  &  Buechner  send  us  the  first  number 
(for  January,  1896)  of  the  CentrcUblaU  f%ir 
Anthropologies  EUknologie  und  Urgeeehiehte; 
the  editor  being  Dr.  G.  Buschan,  and  the 
German  publisher  Max  Mflller  at  Breslau.  It 
is  another  of  the  numerous  publications  design- 
ed to  keep  specialists  in  touch  with  what  is 
being  done  in  their  lines,  through  bibliography 
and  reviews  embracing  the  products  of  all 
languages.  Each  number  will  also  contain  a 
short  original  contribution.  There  are  112 
signed  notices,  or  prieie,  in  this  number.  These 
are  followed  by  two  reports  of  anthropological 
meetings  and  conventions,  a  list  of  lectures 
announced  to  be  delivered  in  the  high  schools 
of  Germany,  Austria,  and  Switzerland,  and  a 
Chronik, 

The  SeoUUh  Oeographieal  Magazine  for 
February  contains  an  account  of  the  towns  of 
northern  Mongolia  by  Dr.  A.  Markoff,  who 
was  attached  to  one  of  those  "commercial  ex- 
peditions which  are  often  dispatched  by  rich 
Russian  merchants  to  inquire  into  the  markets 
of  Asia."  His  forecasts  of  the  future  of  the 
trade  between  this  region  and  Russia  are  not 
very  encouraging,  as  Japan,  "  whose  aim  is  to 
destroy  the  foreign  trade,"  is  seriously  threat- 
ening its  existence.  In  view  of  the  danger  to 
"  European  trade  and  Christian  principles,"  an 
alliance  is  earnestly  advocated  between  Great 
Britain  and  Russia— the  greatest  naval  and 
the  greatest  militcu*y  Power^-«ui  alliance  which 
would  also  be  "the  surest  guarantee  of  Euro- 
pean peace."  There  is  also  in  this  number  a 
useful  map  of  the  boundary  lines  of  British 
Ghiiana* 


March  5,  1896] 


Th.e   ]N"atioii. 


199 


— AHhoogh  Ser{bn/$f*§  MagoMin*  for  the  ciir> 
rent  mooUi  It  by  no  oiMuit  a  bad  nomber  to 
kiU  time  with,  there  le->berrliig  dieooMioo  of 
the  InetelmeBt  of  Mr.  Berrle'e  *' Sentimental 
Tommy**— little  or  nothing  In  It  to  detain  at- 
tention or  call  forth  eerlons  comment.  Dlne- 
tration  and  text  are  fairly  well  matched  In 
Taloe  thronghont,  the  balance  Inclining,  per- 
haps, In  faTor  of  the  former.  Carnations, 
whether  *«flrsti,**  «*  extras,**  or  «' fancies,**  or 
howerer  prettily  dlrersifled  their  gronplng, 
look  onoommonly  alike  In*  process-pictures, 
STen  when  theee  are  printed  In  blae,  and  it 
needs  an  unotaally  lively  Interest  In  their 
growing  and  marketing  to  bear  one  out  to  the 
end  of  the  space  allotted  them  In  the  letter- 
press. *' Florentine  Villas**  are,  eadi  in  par- 
ticolar,  a  channing  subject  for  either  Illustra- 
tor or  writer  to  dilate  upon,  yet  the  chances 
are  many  to  one  that,  If  passed  in  summary 
review,  their  history  or  structural  features, 
rather  than  their  peculiar  charm,  will,  as 
happens  here,  find  a  way  into  picture  and  page. 
H.  C.  Bunner*s  sketch  of  *«The  Lost  ChUd** 
sets  out  with  a  promising  flourish  of  circum- 
stantiality and  novelty,  but  wanes  by  degrees 
Into  a  sUghtness  which  Is  not  to  be  covered  up 
by  either  the  general  readableness  of  the 
whole  or  a  final,  sentimentally  arranged  peep 
at  suburban  trampdom.  Miss  Mary  Caseatt 
has  been  given  the  frontispiece  for  her  "  Child 
Picking  Fruit,"  and  William  Walton  for  critic 
and  commentator.  For  the  profit  of  this  num- 
ber's contents  to  the  reader,  It  Is  probably  ssfe 
to  select  as  foremost  Miss  Prideaux's  bird*s>eye 
view  of  *'  French  Binders  of  To-day.** 

—The  secretary  of  the  New  York  Tenement- 
house  Commission  contributes  to  the  Century 
an  article  oo  **  Stamping  out  the  London 
Blums^  which,  in  view  of  the  battle  royal 
pending  between  the  base  and  civUised  f  la- 
ments in  modem  cities,  Is  as  interesting  as  Ic  Is 
instructive.  Although  Mr.  Edward  Marshall 
writes  here  of  the  work  successfully  under- 
taken by  the  London  County  Council  In  ac- 
quiring and  rebuilding  fifteen  acres  of  plague- 
spot  in  the  notorious  parishes  of  Bethnal  Qreen 
and  Shoreditch,  he  is  forced  to  point  to  the 
diMstroQS  results  which  would  fiow  from  In- 
trusting such  a  work  to  any  of  our  own  moniol* 
pal  corporations.  His  facts  and  figures,  how- 
ever, are  strong  appesls  to  the  Individual  en 
terprise  for  which  we  are  fortunately  almost 
as  oonsplcuons  as  for  stupid  blundering  In  our 
methods  of  dty  government.*  As  a  matter  of 
business,  and  leaving  out  of  consideration  the 
saving  In  poor  rates,  in  the  cost  of  police  and 
health  boards,  and  the  unfigurable  saving  in 
the  morals  of  a  community,  sanitary  tenements 
are  shown  to  be  a  remunerative  Investment, 
even  when,  as  In  Bethoal  Oreen,  a  park  and 
generously  wide,  shaded  streets  are  included  in 
the  provldoos  for  outdoor  life.  In  ** A  Person- 
ally Conducted  Arrest  In  Constantinople**  F. 
Hopkinson  Smith  deals  attractively  with 
moeques  and  Moslems,  depicting  several  of  the 
former  in  graceful  drawings,  and  describing 
with  humor  some  characteristics  of  the  latter 
as  he  studied  them  in  dragoman  and  police  of- 


— Prof.  Woodrow  Wilson,  beddee  a  brief 
essay  In  the  Century  on  **  An  Author's  Choice  of 
Company,**  supplies  in  Harpef*$  an  example  of 
the  way  in  which  an  author  may,  in  his  own 
words,  *' write  himself  back  to  his  mtsters,** 
since  both  vocabulary  aod  phrasing,  in  the 
somewhst  freely  named  peper  "  Colonel  Wash 
Ington,**  admit  of  little  doubt  wliat  his  own 
immediate  choice  of  company  has  been  while 


writing  It.  In  this  account  of  the  Incipient 
stages  of  the  French  war,  the  ploturesqueness 
of  the  novelist  so  Interfuses  the  precision  of 
the  historian  that  there  is  often  small  difllonlty 
In  Imagining  that  a  posthumous  chapter  oi 
'  The  Virginians,*  rejected  by  George  Warring- 
ton*s  literary  executors  as  out  of  proportion  to 
the  rest  of  his  narrative,  has  at  length  found 
Its  way  into  the  omnivorous  contemporary 
magaslne.  Sxcept  this  paper,  after  subtract- 
ing the  large  proportion  of  serial  matter,  there 
is  little  of  significance  In  the  number.  Owen 
Wlster*s  story  «*  Where  Fancy  was  Bred,*» 
though  laid  In  the  region  of  which  he  has 
become  the  Interpreter,  lacks  the  stronger 
features  of  his  delineation  of  the  Western 
borderland  of  civilization;  somewhat  more 
force,  although  It  is  unpleasantly  harsh  in 
character,  is  to  be  found  in  the  bleak  story 
of  *' Jane  Hubbs*s  Salvation,**  by  Helen  Hunt- 
ington. 

—In  the  AUantie^  John  Fiske  writee  about 
the  brave  earliest  beginnings  of  our  national 
life,  and  Henry  Childs  Merwin  about  some  of 
the  imforeseen  and  unprepared-for  complica- 
tions that  have  arisen  from  the  Introduction 
Into  It  of  a  single  one  of  the  several  unasslmi- 
lated  alien  elements  of  population.  It  is  en- 
couraging and  stimulating  to  look  with  Mr. 
Fiske,  In  **A  Seminary  of  Sedition,**  away 
from  the  sorrier  aspects  of  to-day  to  the  time 
when  the  last  defenders  of  the  London  Com- 
pany*s  rights  In  Virginia  made  their  deter- 
mined stand  against  King  and  Privy  Council, 
losing  their  cause  in  the  mother  country,  It  is 
true,  but  passing  it  on  to  Indomitable  younger 
hands  in  the  colony.  Mr.  Fiske*s  sympathetic 
portraiture  of  the  men,  Nicholas  Ferrair  and 
his  colleagues,  who  played  the  last  round  in 
the  match  with  King  James,  imparts  to  this 
fresh  chapter  of  history  from  his  pen  the  vivid- 
ness of  recent  events.  Mr.  Merwin,  far  from 
appearing  as  the  antagonist  of  the  Irish,  in 
**The  Irish  In  American  Life,**  does  cordial 
justice  to  their  vivaddus  Celtic  qualities,  and 
forecasts  the  probable  advantages  of  these 
qualities  In  fusion  with  the  more  sober  Anglo- 
Saxon  basis  of  the  nation.  Nevertheless,  his 
summing  up  on  the  political  side  is  depressing 
reading.  In  this  connection  it  is  worth  while 
to  remark  another  of  the  Instances,  more  and 
more  frequently  to  be  met  with,  where  oppor- 
tunities of  observation  in  the  Old  World  have 
produced  a  frank  seoeder  from  the  ranks  of 
self-congratulatory  patriots  who  believe  we 
have  the  best  possible  conditions  of  existence, 
In  the  best  possible  world.  This  time  It  Is 
Mary  Hartwell  Catherwood,  who,  through 
force  of  contrast,  is  reminded  by  the  excellence 
of  the  dustless,  smooth,  ribbon-like  '*  French 
Roads**  of  the  **  IndiiTerenoeof  a  rich  nation  to 
its  bestial  mire,**  and  of  the  "  bottomless  ways  ** 
through  which  we  fiounder  In  **  open  winterer 
wet  suouner.** 

—Those  who  are  Interested  in  the  theory  of 
Weismann  will  not  fall  to  study  with  the  atten- 
tion that  it  deserves  a  paper  by  Prof.  Minot, 
which  appeared  first  in  the  BiologiaoheM  Oen- 
tratblaU,  and  then  In  the .  ilmeriooa  Natw- 
raUai,  and  has  now  been  issued  as  a  separate 
reprint.  His  theory  (which  is  not  here  brought 
forward  for  the  first  time)  is  naturally  sug- 
gested by  the  remarkable  capacity  for  the  re- 
generation of  lost  parts  which  Is  common 
among  the  lower  animals,  which  exists  In  man, 
and  which  has  lately  been  found  to  be  a  prop- 
erty also  of  unicellular  orgsnisms.  It  foK 
lows  from  this  that  every  cell  Is  furnished  in 
some  way  with  the  pattern  of  the  complete  orw 


ganism,  and  with  the  power,  more  or  lew  < 
plete,  to  reproduce  that  pattern  when  occa- 
sion arises.  Inheritance  is  therefore  not  an 
Isolated  phenomenon,  and  the  Idea  that  a  con- 
tinuity of  germ  plasm  is  eesentlal  to  Its  carry, 
ing  out  is  a  pure  fiction,  wholly  unsupported 
by  fact.  It  is  not  a  special  substance,  but  a 
spedal  eondUion  which  any  cell  may  come  Into, 
which  Is  the  basis  of  reproduction  and  regenera- 
tion ;  this  condition  may  be  recognised  anato- 
mically by  the  fact  that  the  protoplasm  preeent 
is  small  In  amount  relatively  to  the  else  of  the 
nucleus,  and  also  highly  undilTerentlated.  Phy- 
siologically such  ceDs  are  known  by  the  fact 
that  they  multiply  rapidly.  But  he  who  runs  as 
he  reads  wlU  not  find  It  eesy  to  see  why  Prof. 
Minot  regards  the  continuity  of  the  germ  plasm 
as  a  conception  **  which  we  prise  so  highly  ** 
when  It  is  in  the  hands  of  Nnssbaum  (p.  91),  and 
which  we  should  unhesitatingly  reject  when  it 
Is  urged  by  Weismann,  nor  yet  in  what  way 
the  theory  of  **panplasm**  Is  fundamentaUy 
different  from  Darwin's  theory  of  pangenesis. 
The  '*  pattern,**  which  each  cell  carries  with  It, 
it  cannot  carry  in  its  head;  if  It  is  there,  there 
must  be  some  phydcal  substratum  for  It,  and  if 
so,  why  may  it  not  be  called  a  collection  of 
gemmnles?  But  these  are  points  which  no 
doubt  Prof.  Minot  would  very  readily  be  able 
to  make  plain. 

—Of  recent  German  works  deeerlptlve  of 
African  exploration  and  colonlMttion,  three 
deserve  special  mention.  In  '  Nama  nnd  Da- 
mara*  (Magdeburg:  Baensch)  Lieut.  H.  von 
FranQois  gives  a  full  account  of  what  Is  known 
as  ^'German  Southwest  Africa,**  including, 
geography,  botany,  soOlogy,  climate,  agricul- 
tural productions,  domestic  animals,  moral 
character  and  intellectual  oapadty  of  the 
native  tribes,  their  religious  conceptions  and 
cults,  family  and  social  life,  political  instito- 
tions,  prevailing  customs,  and  the  infiuence  of 
European  dvillsation.  The  mape  and  lUua- 
tratloos  are  excellent  and  there  is  a  good 
Index.  Oscar  Leni*s  *  Wanderungen  in  Afri- 
ka*  (Vienna:  LItterarlsche  G^eeellschaft)  is  a 
careful  and  condensed  record  of  studies  and 
experiences  made  by  the  author,  now  pro- 
feesor  In  the  Univerdty  of  Prague,  during 
extended  travels  In  the  dark  continent.  The 
first  of  theee  expeditions  was  undertaken  in 
1874  and  the  last  some  ten  years  ago.  The 
most  Interesting  and  instructive  chapter  for 
manufacturers  and  merchants  is  that  on 
*'Geld  und  Waare  in  Afrlka,**  whUe  that  on 
*'  Thierische  Kleinarbelt  in  den  Tropen**  Is  a 
cleverly  written  and  valuable  contribution  to 
the  Important  subject  discussed  by  Darwin  in 
his  dissertation  on  worms.  There  is  an  im- 
jMurtial  and  not  altogether  favorable  chapter 
on  missionaries,  and  another  on  the  Cmigo 
State,  for  the  edification  and  instruction  of 
European  colonial  politicians.  Finally,  we 
have  a  statdy  volume,  *  Adamana*  (Berlin : 
Reimer),  by  Dr.  Siegfried  Passarge,  who  ac- 
companied, as  physidan  and  scientist,  the 
expedition  organised  and  sent  out  by  the 
**(9erman  C^ameroon  Committee**  in  180a4H 
and  conducted  by  Von  Uechtrits.  Although 
the  expedition  was  undertaken  chiefiy  from 
political  motives,  for  the  purpoee  of  enlarging 
the  sphere  of  German  Influence  In  the  coun- 
tries bordering  on  (Cameroon,  the  sdentiflo 
results  attained  through  the  energy  and  abil- 
ity of  Dr.  Passsrge  are  alone  sufllcient  to  jus- 
tify the  difficult  enterprise.  The  clear  and 
comprehensive  manner  In  which  they  are  pre- 
sented is  alto  highly  commeodable.  Besldee 
several  excellent  maps  and  geological  and 
ethnographical    charts,    the    work    oontaint 


200 


Tlie    !N"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1 601 


twenty-one  tables  and  nearly  three  hundred 
illnttrations. 

'A  consptcnoas  feature  of  theee  recent  re- 
cords of  African  exploration  is  a  more  or  less 
hostile  attitude  to  missionary  efforts,  both 
Catholic  and  Protestant  Dr.  Pv sarge  is  espe- 
cially fierce  in  bis  denunciation  of  all  attempts 
to  diffuse  among  the  negro  tribes  the  Christian 
religion  and  even  ChHstian  HTilization.  The 
timely  application  of  twenty-five  lashes  with 
the  hippopotamus  whip  he  deems  a  far  better 
means  of  education  and  enlightenment  than  all 
the  talk  of  missionaries  abont  equality  before 
Ood  and  brotherhood  in  Christ,  which  only 
serves  to  turn  the  head  of  the  poor  black  and 
to  make  him  an  insolent  and  utterly  useless  in- 
dividual. The  spread  of  Islam,  however,  he 
regards  as  highly  desirable,  and  thinks  it  should 
be  encouraged  by  the  European  Powers  as  a 
mediating  influence  between  negroes  and 
whites,  and  an  efficient  aid  to  the  maintenance 
of  governmental  authority.  The  republic  of 
Liberia  be  charaot^ses  as  tbe  *' incredible 
abortion  of  philanthropic  lunacy.**  In  tbe 
German  colonies  the  aborigines  should  have  no 
opportunity  of  learning  the  (German  language, 
since  this  knowledge  would  bridge  tbe  gulf  be- 
tween rulers  and  subjects  and  undermine  the 
supremacy  of  the  former.  Slavery,  or  rather 
serfdom  (Hdrigkeif),  he  declares  to  be  the 
proper  condition  of  the  African,  and  that  it 
ought  not  to  be  abolished.  Slave  hunting 
should  be  limited  and  controlled,  unless  such 
restraint  should  prove  to  be  disadvantageous 
from  an  economical  point  of  view.  German 
capital  is  sent  to  Africa  to  be  productive,  and 
not  to  be  squandered  in  humanitarian  schemes. 
Dr,  Passarge  ridicules  the  German  Frauenv^ 
reine  on  account  of  their  liv^  interest  in  the 
welfare  of  their  dark  sisters.  As  the  chief  aim 
of  these  associations  is  to  prevent  the  debauch- 
ery of  native  women  by  German  officials,  for 
which  one  of  these  gentlemen  was  recently 
tried  and  dismissed  from  the  service,  are  we  to 
infer  that  the  author  approves  of  such  oonduotf 
That  a  man  of  superior  culture  should  in  these 
days  advocate  such  methods  of  dealing  with 
the  lower  races  is  certainly  a  very  strange  and 
anachronistic  phenomenon.    • 


DEAN  STANLEY'S  LETTERS. 

Letters  and  Verses  of  Arthur  PiBnrh)/n  Stan' 
ley,  D.D.,  between  the  years  1829  and  1881. 
Edited  by  Rowland  E.  Prothero,  M.A.,  Bar- 
rister-at-Law,  late  Fellow  of  All  Souls 
College,  Oxford,  author  of  *The  Life  and 
Letters  of  Dean  Stanley.'  Charles  Scrib- 
ner's  Sons.    1805.    8yo,  pp.  454. 

The  name  of  Arthur  Peorhyn  Stanley  was 
once  great  in  the  theological  world  of  Eng- 
land, and  to  a  strange  degree  terrible  to  the 
orthodox;  but  he  has  left  little  trace  of  his  in 
fluence  on  thought.  In  truth,  he  was  not  a 
thinker.  He  was  a  Liberal,  perhaps  a  ration- 
alist, but  he  did  not  come  to  definite  conclu- 
sions. As  a  religious  philosopher  he  was  more 
dubitative  than  even  his  illustrious  yoke  fel- 
low Jowett  He  was  not  deep  in  research. 
He  was  not  an  accurate  scholar.  From  want 
of  accuracy  bis  edIUon  of  the  EpisUee  to  the 
Corinthians  was  almost  a  failure.  His  Ser- 
mons and  Essays  on  the  Apostolic  Age  were 
saved  from  failure,  not  by  their  value  as 
historical  criticism,  but  by  their  power  of 
awakening  interest  and  by  the  graces  of  his 
style.  His  weakness  as  a  scholar  was  seen  when 
t^9  entered  the  lists  of  controversy  against  ^ 


man  like  Pusey,  truly  learned,  however  irra- 
tional and  narrow.  Stanley's  great  gift,  as 
was  truly  said,  was  his  picturesque  sensibility. 
Id  painting  historic  characters,  scenes,  and  oc- 
casions, be  might  almost  have  looked  in  vain 
for  his  peer.  Apart  from  his  biography  of 
Arnold,  his  best  work  is  bis  '  Sinai  and  Pales- 
tine';  his  next  beet  is  his  work  on  the  *  Eastern 
Church.*  But  in  historical  topography  he  was 
always  excellent.  If  he  infiuenced  theology,  it 
was  not  by  his  theological  writings  so  much  as 
by  the  humaLising  realism  with  which  he  trejst 
ed  Scripture  characters  and  events.  In  this 
way  he  may  be  said  to  have  produced  a  oon- 
Biderable  and  lasting  effect. 

The  best  letters,  accordingly,  in  this  collec- 
tion are  descriptions  of  historical  scenes  or  of 
memorable  occasions  in  France,  Italy,  Spain, 
Portugal,  Egypt,  the  Holy  Land,  Asia  Minor, 
Constantinople,  Athos,  Scotland,  Sweden,  and 
Rufsia.  The  description  of  Camac  is  particu- 
larly  vivid  and  impressive.  Full  of  interest  are 
all  the  notes  of  travel  in  Palestine,  with  the 
topography  of  which  Stanley  was  so  familiar 
beforehand  from  his  studies  that  he  was  able 
to  guide  his  guides.  Here,  as  in  the  'Sinai 
and  Palestine,'  he  is  curiously  uncritical,  and 
devouUv  traces  the  locality  of  events  which 
science  has  long  since  consigned  to  the  region 
of  myths.  If  he  was  a  rationalist  in  religion, 
in  sacred  topography  he  was  none.  He  fully 
believes  that  he  has  identifled  the  spot  at 
which  Abraham  parted  with  Lot,  and  we  al- 
most expect  to  find  that  he  has  identified  the 
pillar  of  salt.  About  the  scene  of  Jacob's 
rest,  JacoVs  well,  or  the  graves  of  the  Patri- 
archs, he  has  no  sceptical  misgivings,  and  he 
stops  short  only  at  the  graves  of  Seth  and 
Noah.  He  is  the  Boswell  of  historical  topogra- 
pby,  and  distances  all  competitors  by  his 
unique  possession  of  gifts  somewhat  akin  to 
those  of  the  unapproachable  biographer.  He 
deecribes  occasions  not  leas  vividly  and  sytn- 
pathetically  than  scenes :  witness  his  descrip- 
tions in  this  volume  of  the  All  Saints'  service 
in  the  Sistine  Chapel  and  the  **Doseh,"  or 
festival  of  the  nativity  of  Mahomet,  at  Cairo. 
Catholic  and  Mahometan  specimens  are  equal 
ly  welcome  to  his  ecclesiastical  and  historical 
museum.  Stanley  it  was  who  discovered  Am- 
mergau. 

Not  all  the  fieas  and  robbers  of  Asia  Minor 
could  deter  the  enthusiast  from  going  to  the 
theatre  at  Ephesus  where  the  worshippers  of 
Diana  shouted  against  Paul.  Not  all  the  risks 
of  a  revolutionary  crisis  could  deter  him  from 
making  his  way  to  Paris  in  1848.  In  the  out- 
ward signs  of  difference  he  was  rather  disap- 
pointed, though  he  saw  tricolors  and  trees  of 
liberty  everywhere.  Gardes  Mobiles  in  their 
white  blouses  shouldering  muskets  which  they 
seemed  too  young  to  bear,  and  the  windows  of 
the  Tuileries  occupied  by  patriots  in  r^  night- 
caps under  the  glitter  of  royal  chandeliers,  as 
well  as  shot- marks  and  other  traces  of  the  con- 
fiict.  Inquiring  into  opinion,  he  found  much 
misgiving  about  the  Republic  and  a  general 
feeling  that  it  would  be  transient.  His  hero 
was  Lamartine— a  weak  hero,  as  events  showed. 
He  had  interviews  with  GKiizot,  whom  he  found 
inclined,  if  events  had  not  been  so  serious, 
to  sit  down  and  laugh  over  the  follies  of 
the  people.  •  Stanley  remarks  that  a  states- 
man •  had  little  chance  of  exercising  infiu- 
ence  over  a  people  whose  follies  he  did  not 
share.  Had  he  said  **  whose  follies  he  did 
not  affect  to  share,"  the  remark  would  have 
been  true. 

Arnold,  of  course,  appears.  Hi^  influence 
over  Stanley  never  ceased  even  after  his  death. 
Those  w|>o  heard  Arnold's  inaugural  lecture  at 


Oxford  can  witness  to  the  truth  of  the  follow- 
ing: 

*'  Imagine  that  beautiful  building  [the  Shel- 
donian  Theatre]  with  the  whole  of  the  area 
and  the  whole  of  tbe  lower  gallery  oompletelf 
fliled  ;  the  Vice-Cbaneellor  in  state ;  the  Pro- 
fessor himself  distinguished  from  the  rest  by 
his  full  red  doctoriaf  robes.  It  was  certainly 
.one  of  tbe  most  glorious  days  of  mv  life.  To 
listen  once  more  to  that  clear,  manly  voice  in 
the  relation  of  a  pupil  to  a  teacher,  to  feel  that 
one  of  the  most  important  professorships  was 
fliled  by  a  man  with  genius  and  energy  capa^ 
ble  of  discharging  its  duties,  to  see  him  stand- 
ing in  his  proper  place  at  last  and  receiTing  the 
homage  or  the  assembled  universitv,  was  roost 
striking  and  most  toucbinK.  Tbe  lecture  last- 
ed ju«t  an  hour.  It  was  listened  to  with  tbe 
deepest  attention,  and  began  and  closed  with  a 
burst  of  general  applause.  I  will  not  describe 
it  because  it  is  to  be  printed  ;  but  every  one 
seemed  perfectly  satisfied.  The  most  cautious 
man  in  Oxford  was  heard  to  break  into  an  en- 
thusiastic declaration  that  the  two  ideas  which 
tbe  siffht  of  Arnold  always,  and  especially  on 
that  day,  suggested,  were  the  ideas  of  truth 
and  power." 

To  feel  the  full  force  of  this  we  must  remem- 
ber that  Arnold's  name  was  the  bugbear  of 
High  Church  Oxford,  so  that  the  impressive- 
ness  of  the  homage  was  doubled  by  its  being  an 
involuntary  tribute  to  a  hero.  A  true  Chris- 
tian hero  Arnold  was,  in  his  death  as  through 
his  lif  Ci  The  account  in  this  volume  of  his  death 
is  very  touching.  He  died  of  angina  pectoris 
in  gre!it  pain.  '*Mary,"  he  said  to  bis  wife,  *'  I 
feel  that  Gk)d  has  l)een  very  good  in  sending 
me  this  chastisement.  I  felt  such  a  rush  of  love 
towards  Goi  for  the  last  two  or  three  days." 
There  is  something  in  Amold*s  deathbed  which 
recalls,  though  remotely,  the  deathbed  of 
CromwelL 

A  very  curious  passage  in  Stanley's  life  is 
his  intercourse  with  Jenny  Lind,  bi^  adoration 
for  whom  seems  to  have  gone  the  utmost 
length  of  purely  Platonic  love.  This  was  the 
more  remarkable,  as  her  singing  made  no  im- 
pression on  him,  be  being,  like  Johnson,  devoid 
of  an  ear  for  music.  *' Jenny  Lind's  arrival  at 
Norwich,"  he  says,  '*made  a  sensation  not  in- 
ferior to  that  made  by  the  arrival  of  the  Queen 
at  Cambridge.  But  it  was  nothing  compared 
with  Jenny  herself." 

**  However,  all  this,  interesting  as  it  was, 
was  nothing  compared  with  the  interest  of 
Jenny  Lind  herself.  Her  first  appearance,  ex- 
cept for  its  extreme  simplicity  and  retiring 
bashfulness,  is  very  plain  and  homely,  much 
more  so  than  you  would  suppose  from  the  por- 
trails  of  her.  She  was  very  much  fatigued, 
and  spoke  but  little  at  first,  and  was  alto- 
gether so  much  occupied  in  preparing  for  the 
concert  that  tbe  first  day  we  saw  but  little  of 
her.  It  was  her  appearance  at  the  concert 
that  first  showed  her  extraordinary  powers— 
I  do  not  say  of  singing,  for  that  produced  no 
impression  upon  me— but  of  the  fascination  of 
her  manner,  of  her  attitude,  of  ber  curtseys, 
above  all  of  her  wonderful  smile;  and  M- 
though  this  was  all  through  most  conspicuous 
in  the  animation  of  singing,  yet  it  w^s  to  be 
seen  more  or  less  always  when  she  became 
more  familiar  with  us,  and  when  we  saw  more 
of  her.  If  I  wei^  to  fix  on  the  one  epithet 
which  cbaracterizes  ber  I  should  say  it  was 
gifted.  Of  course  it  is  not  often  that  one  sees 
any  one  possessed  with  what  is  obviously  a 
gift,  and  with  all  the  circumstances  of  ex- 
treme delicacy  and  sensibility  of  organization 
corresponding;  but  it  is  still  more  rare  to  see 
any  one  possessed  with  such  a  perfect  con- 
sciousness that  it  is  a  gift— not  her  own,  but 
given  her  by  God.  Hence  the  deep  conviction  . 
of  responsibility,  of  duty  of  using  it  for  the 
good  of  others;  hence  the  gn*eat  humility. 
Conceive  a  voung  girl  having  now  for  ten 
years  lived  in  this  whirlwind  of  enthusiasm 
and  applause,  and  yetap 
least  spoiled  by  it,  but  ar 

lowest  place,  like  a  servant  < __,  __^ 

same  time  there  were  a  dignity  and  reaotoHOA 
about  her  by  which  one  oould  eaail;  ^  '^ 
what  an  immeasurable  distanoo  M 


jriwiua  01  enuiusiasm 
apparently  not  in  tbe 
always  retiring  to  tba 
ant  or  a  child.    Altba 


March  5,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


301 


woold  be  kept  which  must  be  otherwise  con- 
■tantly  in  her  wej.  *C*Mt  an  doo,  pas  on 
m^rite*;  end  when  my  mother  spoke  to  her,  on 
the  lest  dey.  of  her  hope  thet«  after  haring 
now  sncoeesfnUy  oyercome  the  difflcnIUes  of 
ten  yean,  she  was  for  the  futore  safe,  *  Par  la 
grftoe  de  Dien,*  she  seid,  *oaL'  "^ 

In  the  United  States  Stanley,  notwithstand- 
ing some  misgirings,  had  a  good  time,  found 
Ihe  hotels  not  bad  and  the  society  pleasant. 
He  met  the  notabilities,  Winthrop,  Phillips 
Brooks,  Longfellow,  Endicott^  and  others, 
and  saw  the  historical  places.  He  also  studied 
American  history  for  the  first  time  in  his  life 
enough  to  be  able  to  tell  the  meanings  of 
Democrat  and  Republican.  **  Democrat,'*  he 
informs  his  sister,  **is  Liberal,  and  Republi- 
can is  Conserratiye ;  and,  at  the  time  of  the 
war.  Democrat  was  for  slavery  and  Republi- 
ean  against  it.**  He  was  particularly  struck 
by  some  speeches  which  he  heard  at  Salem, 
in  which  the  political  follies  and  corrup- 
tioDc  of  the  United  States  were  denounced 
with  a  Tigor  that  he  would  have  thought  im- 
possible, amidst  a  profound  attention  which 
seemed  to  him  eyen  more  significant  than  the 
burst  of  enthusiasm.  It  is  singular  that  the 
sight  of  the  f  ree-church  system  operating  per- 
fectly well  In  the  United  States  should  have 
had  no  effect  in  curing  him  of  the  inveterate 
eetablish men tarianism  which  be  inherited  from 
Arnold,  though  both  of  them  were  latitudi- 
narians,  and  which  he  carried  to  the  length  of 
half-sympathising  with  a  persecuting  estab- 
Usbmeotarian  like  ''bloody  Mackensie.**  In 
America  he  might  have  seen  the  cburchee 
living  peacefully  side  by  side,  and  even  co- 
operating in  good  worin,  without  the  state 
control  which  he  i^iparently  believed  to  be  in- 
dispensable not  only  to  harmony  but  to  order, 
though  in  his  own  country  it  was  too  plainly 
leading  not  only  to  unseemly  litigation,  but 
sometimes  to  indecent  strife. 

Stanley's  Life  having  already  appeared,  Mr. 
Prothero  and  his  coadjutors  have  judidously 
given  the  greatest  space  in  this  volume  to  let- 
ters of  general  interest.  Tet  there  is  enough 
to  recall  to  the  minds  of  the  few  survivors  of 
Stanley's  circle  bis  personal  lovableness  and 
social  charms.  If  any  one  could  have  effectu- 
ally poured  oil  on  the  waters  of  theological 
strife,  Stanley  would  have  done  it;  but  the 
waves  were  running  too  high.  In  fact,  his  own 
indifference  to  dogmatic  (if  not  to  definite) 
conviction  led  him  to  underrate  the  value  set 
upon  it  by  others.  Nor  could  he  understand 
the  natural  alarm  of  Protestants  at  the  at- 
tempt of  Newman  and  his  followers  to  convert 
a  national  establishment  into  an  engine  for 
restoring  the  dominion  of  the  priest.  At 
length  he  was  himself,  as  a  leading  Liberal, 
inevitably  drawn  into  the  fray,  in  which  he 
fought  as  hard  as  the  rest,  though  always  like 
a  Christian  and  a  gentleman. 

Stanley's  •'Gipsies"  to  the  best  of  aU  the  Ox. 
ford  prise  poems,  Heber's  "  PelesUne**  not  ex- 
cepted ;  but  the  specimens  of  bis  later  poems  in- 
cluded in  this  volume,  while  they  show  his  grace 
and  feeling,  do  not  fulfil  the  early  promise. 


RECENT   POETRY. 

Ekkbsoji  once  wrote  to  a  youth  who  had  dar- 
ingly submitted  some  verses  to  him  for  the  last 
volume  of  the  Dial,  *'They  have  truth  and 
earnestness,  and  a  happier  hour  may  add  that 
asternal  perfection  which  can  neither  be  com- 
maaded  nor  deecribed."  The  perpetual  conun- 
drum. What  oonstittttes  a  good  poem  or  deter- 
mines which  poem  should  be  called  good?  never 
oame  nearer  solution  than  by  this  seemingly 
▼agoe  formula.    The  merit  which  constitutes 


it  can  neither  be  conmtanded  nor  described. 
Mr.  Sled  man  may  select  well  among  his  Victo- 
rian poets,  or  even  criticise  well;  but  when  he 
gives  a  course  of  lectures  to  enunciate  the 
positive  laws  of  poetry,  he  succeeds  no  better 
than  the  rest.  Even  the  laws  of  painting  and 
sculpture  are  far  less  elusive.  The  much  de- 
rided defence  of  the  ignorant,  **  I  know  what 
pleases  me,"  becomes,  when  sublimated,  the 
eesence  of  meet  of  the  criticism  of  the  wise. 
**Toute  discussion  litt^raire  revient  k  ceci;  j'ai 
plus  de  goi!it  que  vous."  How  can  the  critics 
be  expected  to  agree  about  the  poets  when  the 
poets  do  not  agree  among  themselves?  How  can 
the  critics  assign  their  position  whpu  the  poets 
cannot?  Southey  ranked  his  'Madoc'  with 
the  'Odyssey '  and  *'Coriolanu8,"  and  thought 
that  his  poetry  was  to  that  of  Wordsworth  as 
turtle  soup  to  '*  sparagrass  with  plain  butter.-' 
Matthew  Arnold,  in  his  letters,  assigns  himself 
a  place  between  Tennyson  and  Browning,  with 
certain  advantages  over  either.  Even  in  his 
judgment. of  individual  poems,  the  author's 
preference  usually  traverses  that  of  the  pub- 
lic or  of  the  critics.  Dr.  Emerson  tells  us 
that  his  father  was  with  difficulty  induced  to 
retain  in  bis  volume  tboee  fine  early  versee, 
"Goodbye,  proud  world,  Pm  going  home"; 
and  Whitmin  looked  askance  at  his  one  poem 
which  comes  nearest  to  a  classic,  ''O  Cap 
tain  I  my  Captain  f  and  did  not  like  to  be  asked 
to  copy  it;  it  doubtless  seemed  to  him  too  much 
of  a  concession  to  the  ordinary  laws  of  metre 
and  rhythm. 

All  this  is  worth  remembering  in  presence 
of  a  row  of  new  volumes  of  verse,  when  we 
consider  how  much  each  meant  to  the  author, 
and  what  a  different  thing  it  may  represent 
to  the  reader.  In  William  Watson's  new  vol- 
ume, for  instance,  *  The  Father  of  the  Forest, 
and  Other  Poems'  (Chicago:  Stone  A;  Kimball), 
American  readers  will  note  chiefiy  the  coura- 
geous sonnet  in  which  he  called  England  to  ac- 
count for  the  forsaking  of  Armenia  (p.  45)— a 
sonnet  which  lost  him  the  laureatesbip,  as  an 
apocryphal  rumor  said,  and  thereby  forfeited 
for  him  the  honor  of  singing  the  glory  of  the 
Jameeon  raid.  Yet  the  rest  of  the  thin  volume 
offers  little  to  vindicate  the  early  hopes  which 
Watson  created  and  which  were  enhanced  per- 
hape  by  his  period  of  illness;  and  the  final 
Apologia  shows  a  morbid  oonscioutness  rather 
than  that  simple  joy  of  living  which  a  chaste 
and  healthy- minded  young  poet  should  feeL 

A  new  English  poet,  C.  W.  Daimon,  in  his 
'Song  Favours'  (Loudon:  John  Lane;  Chi- 
cago: Way  &  Williams),  has  a  good  deal  of 
the  fiavor  of  his  immediste  sect,  and  also  of 
that  which  belongs,  ever  welcome,  to  English 
country  lanes.  But  he  also  has  a  stroke  that 
must  rather  astonish  Americans  when,  in  cele- 
brating young  English  poets,  "The  Sussex 
Muse"  mentions  Richard  Realf,  and  thus  cu- 
riously mistakes  his  position  (p.  55) : 

**  Reslf  I  loTed  too,  and  fondljr  hoped  tbst  be 


Would  •tng  for  me  slone,  and  In  my  ns 

Plante  all  Um  worid,  but  rtrj  aoon  be  left 

My  arma  to  so  and  seek  another  fame; 

Leavlnn  me  of  my  latnt  bard  bereft. 

Still,  be  la  dear  to  me. 

And  I  waa  DTood.  wben  In  America, 

He  tlruck  for  liberty  wltb  old  John  Brown, 

Fljrbtlng  healde  him  wben  be  took  the  town 

OfBarper't  Ferry,  In  Vlrflnia.'* 

The  peculiar  inappropriatenees  of  this  appears 
to  be  that  Richard  Realf  was  not  with  Brown 
at  Harper's  Ferry. 

The  endless  love  of  variety  which  marks  Mr. 
Andrew  Lang  has  now  brought  back  to  light 
one  of  the  most  utterly  frightful  books  that 
ever  appeared  in  print  and  then  dropped  out 
of  it.  '  The  Death- Wake,  or  Lunacy,  a  Necro- 
maunt  In  Three  Chimeras,'  by  Thomas  T.  Stod- 
dart  (London  :   John  Lane  ;   Chicago  :    Way 


&  Williams),  was  first  printed  in  1830,  and 
is  now  reprinted  as  a  tribute  to  a  man  who 
combined  the  merits  of  being  a  Scotchman,  a 
man  of  genius,  and  an  angler.  The  power  of 
the  book  in  its  phrasing  and  csdences  is  per- 
fectly undeniable.  It  is  carious  to  note  how 
prolific  Scotland  has  been  in  men  of  genius 
manquis,  each  of  them  imperii  oapax  nisi  im- 
perdsssf,  just  falling  short  of  the  crown.  Stod- 
dart  belonged  to  this  class,  as  clearly  as  did  the 
Sydney  Dobell  and  Alexander  Smith  of  a  later 
day;  and  Mr.  L%ng's  critics  would  perhaps  pre- 
dict that  another  name  might  yet  be  added  to 
tbe  list.  The  story  itself  has,  as  the  editor 
himself  points  out,  *  leprosies  and  lunacies" 
enough ;  and  Professor  Wilson  rated  it,  on  its 
first  appearance,  somewhere  between  "the 
weakest  of  Shelley  ani  the  strongest  of  Barry 
Cornwall,"  although  the  analogy  to  this  last 
author  is  not  clearly  m  &nif  est.  Those  who  were 
brought  up  on  OrahanCs  Magazine  may  re> 
member  this  fearful  poem  as  audaciouvly  re- 
printed by  Louis  Fitzgerald  Tasistro,  under 
bis  own  name,  in  that  magazine  for  January, 
1842  (and  following),  with  tbe  tiUe  **  Agath^  a 
Necromaunt";  tbe  theft  being  discovered  by 
Poe,  who  condemned  it,  while  praising  the 
poem,  although  it  beat  him  in  his  own  line  of 
horrors. 

Whatever  may  be  said  for  good  or  evil  about 
tbe  various  men  whose  poems  emanate  from 
the  Bodley  Head,  there  can  be  no  doubt  what- 
ever about  the  high  quality  of  the  women. 
*  Veepertilia '  (London  and  Chicago)  offers  no 
ballads  of  such  extraordinary  power  as 
those  printed  in  'The  Bird  Bride'  under  the 
name  of  Graham  R.  Tomson— although  **Tbe 
Wrecker  of  Priest's  Cove"  comes  near  them ; 
but  the  new  book  has  the  special  quality  which 
it  shares  with  *  A  Summer  Night,'  by  the  same 
author— that  of  making  the  London  streets 
thoroughly  and  essentially  poetical.  This,  for 
instsnce  (p.  48)  : 

NOCTURN. 

O  tbe  long,  long  street  and  the  sweet 
Sense  of  the  night,  of  the  Sprtnf ! 
Lamps  tn  a  glHterlng  string. 

Pointing  a  path  for  our  feet. 

Pointing  and  beckoning— where  7 
Far  out  of  thought,  ont  of  view. 
Deep  through  the  dusk  and  tbe  dew : 

What  but  seems  possible  there ! 

O  the  dark  Bprlng  night  and  the  bright 
Glint  or  the  lamps  In  the  street  f 
Strange  la  thdr  summons,  and  sweet, 

O  my  beloved,  to-night ! 

This  lady  inscribes  her  volume  **to  Alice 
Meynell!*— formerly  Alice  Thomi$son— and  the 
latter,  also  from  the  Bodley  Head,  ifsues  a 
reprint  of  her  remarkable  early  volume  *  Pre- 
ludes,' with  some  additions  and  subtractions, 
under  the  general  name  of  'Poems'  (Lon- 
don: John  Lane;  Boston:  Copelaod  &  Day). 
The  two  poems  that  drew  especial  atten- 
tion to  her  on  their  earlier  publication  are 
both  here.  Rossetti  pronounced  her  **  Re- 
nunciation" to  be  one  of  tbe  three  most  per- 
fect sonnets  ever  written  by  a  woman.  It 
has,  however,  been  quoted  so  often  that  we  will 
cite  by  preference  tbe  beginning  and  end  of 
what  Mr.  Ruskin  called,  with  some'exuberance, 
»'that  perfectly  heavenly  *  Letter  of  a  Girl  to 
Her  Own  Old  Age '  "—a  conception  so  wholly 
imaginative  and  tender  as  to  recall  some  of  the 
verses  of  that  unique  and  fascinating  child  of 
genius,  the  Ellen  Hooper  of  the  old  Emersonian 
days— she  who  wrote  ''  I  slept,  and  dreamed 
that  life  was  Beauty."  The  Eoglish  poem  runs 
thus  (placed  witb  an  appropriateness,  perhaps 
accidental,  on  pp.  17-20) : 

A  LBTTBR  FROM  A  OIKL  JO   HER  OWN  OLD  AO"- 

Listen,  and  when  thy  hand  this  paper  presses. 
O  time- worn  woman,  think  of  her  wbo  bieases 
What  thy  thia  flngtrs  touch,  with  ber  carr ssw- 


202 


Tlie   IN^ation. 


[Vol  62,  Na  1 601 


O  motber,  for  the  welfdit  of  years  that  break  thee! 
O  daughter,  for  slow  ume  muBt  yet  awake  thee. 
And  from  toe  ehangee  of  my  heart  most  make  thee. 

O  falntloff  trareller.  mom  la  gray  In  heaven. 
Doet  thoa  remember  how  the  oloods  were  drlTen? 
And  are  they  calm  about  the  fall  of  even? 

Pause  nf  ar  the  ending  of  thv  long  migration. 
For  this  one  sudden  hour  of  desoiatlcm 
Appeals  to  one  hour  of  thy  meditation. 

Suffer.  O  silent  one,  that  I  remind  thee 

Of  the  great  hUls  that  stormed  the  sky  behind  thee. 

Of  the  wild  winds  of  power  that  have  resigned  thee. 

Know  that  the  mournful  plain  where  thou  must  wan- 
der 
Is  but  a  gray  and  silent  world,  but  ponder 
The  mls^  moimtalns  of  the  mondng  yonder. 

Oh,  hush :  oh.  hush!   Thy  tears  my  words  are  steeping. 
Oh,  hush,  hush,  hush  I  80  full,  ttie  fount  of  weeping? 
Poor  eyes,  so  quickly  moved,  so  near  to  sleeping? 

Pardon  the  girl ;  such  strange  desires  beeet  her. 

Poor  woman,  lay  aside  the  mournful  letter 

That  breaks  thy  heart ;  Uie  one  who  wrote,  forget  her. 

^  he  one  who  now  thy  faded  features  guesses. 

With  filial  fingers  thy  gray  hair  caresMs. 

With  morning  tears  thy  mournful  twilight  blesses. 

*  Fleet  Street  Eclogues,'  bj  John  Dsyidson 
(Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.),  is  a  reprint  of  a  book  first 
published  two  years  ago;  aad  it  now  comes  to 
us  in  a  form  so  simple  and  attractive  exter- 
nally, with  such  quiet  distinction  of  paper, 
typography,  and  presswork,  as  instantly  to 
suggest  to  the  prejudiced  mind  a  London  ori- 
gin, until  a  further  glance  rereals  the  imprint, 
now  quite  as  trustworthy,  of  the  University 
Press  at  Cambridge,  Mass.  The  poetry  itself 
has  a  more  disappointing  London  flavoi^-that 
slipshod  and  whimsical  handling  now  so  com- 
mon there.  Yet  the  conception  is  good  enough 
— a  long  series  of  conversations,  on  or  before 
holidays,  among  a  group  of  young  journalists, 
some  longing  for  the  country,  some  bound  re- 
lentlessly on  toil.  Here  and  there  are  charm- 
ing  bits  of  wayside  landscape,  like  this  (p.  107) : 

**  Brian—Who  has  been  out  of  London  ? 
Basil--Onoe  In  Jime 
Upstreams  I  went  to  h^ar  the  summer  tune 
The  birds  sing  at  Long  Dltton  In  a  va'e 
Sacred  to  him  who  wrote  his  own  heut's  tale. 
Of  singing  birds  that  hollow  Is  the  haunt : 
Never  was  such  a  place  for  singing  In ! 
The  valley  overflows  with  song  and  chaunt. 
And  brimming  echoes  spill  the  pleasant  din. 
High  In  the  oak  trees  where  the  fresh  leaves  sprout, 
The  blackbirds  with  their  oboe  voices  make 
The  sweetest  broken  muslo  all  about 
The  beauty  of  the  day  for  beauty's  sake." 

Then  we  slip  into  such  sing-song  as  follows, 
which  is  at  least  interesting  to  Americans  (p. 

64): 

*'  Sandy— And  when  the  soul  of  England  sleptr- 
Ba§a—St.  George  for  foolish  Bngland  theiu-- 
StMMiy— Lo!  Washington  and  Lincoln  kept 

America  for  Englishmen! 
fiatU—Bumhl  The  English  people 

Across  the  wide  Atlantic  flood! 

It  could  iipt  bind  Itself  In  chains! 

For  Tanlie  blood  Is  English  blood!** 

Another  admirable  piece  of  typography  from 
the  Cambridge  University  F^-ess  is  *  Esther, 
A  Young  Man^s  Tragedy:  together  with  the 
Love  Sonnets  of  Proteus,'  by  Wilfred  Scawen 
Blunt  (Boston :  Copeland).  There  are  no  love- 
sonnets  in  the  English  language,  since  Shak. 
apere— not  even  Roesetti's^flner,  profounder, 
or  of  nobler  cadence  than  some  of  these  by 
Proteus,  and  they  deserve  their  sumptuous 
setting.  Whether  they  speak  of  longing,  of 
happiness,  or  of  remorse,  such  poems  as  those 
entitled  **  Qp  a  Lost  Opportunity,"  »•  To  One 
on  her  Waste  of  Time,**  "Sibylline  Books,'* 
"Morte  d'Arthur,"  and  "What  have  I  done? 
what  gross  impiety  F  are  entitled  to  this 
praise.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  they  are 
prefaced  by  the  sonnets  called  "Esther,  A 
YouDg  Man's  Tragedy,"  which  are  on  a  dis- 
tinctly inferior  plane,  though  not  without 
merit. 

We  cannot  say  so  much  for  still  another 
superb  piece  of  bookmaking  from  this  same 
press,  »PriDgilla,  or  Tales  in  Verse,'  by  Rich- 
srd  Doddridge  Blackmore,  M.A.  Oxon.,  with 
sundry  decorative  picturings  by  Will  H.  Brad- 


ley (Cleveland :  Burrows  Bros.) .  Mr.  Br  idley 's 
long  black-and-white  women,  although  a  shade 
less  brutal  in  expression  than  Mr.  Beardsley*s, 
are  not  less  ugly;  and  it  will  be  a  standing 
wonder,  a  few  years  hence,  that  such  beauti- 
ful typography  should  have  been  thus  dis- 
figured. The  letter-press  of  the  book  is  a  bit  of 
whim,  like  the  illustrations,  the  "tales  in 
verse"  being  written  as  prose.  It  contains 
many  pretty  descriptions,  but  the  mode  of 
printing  does  nothing  to  enhance  them,  except 
in  the  few  humorous  ones  at  the  end. 

American  critics  are  now  disposed  to  take 
tiie  view  that,  while  habits  and  manners  tend 
to  assimilate  in  the  different  English-speaking 
countries,  we  must  expect,  at  least  for  a  time, 
"a  continued  divergence  in  our  literatures." 
This  was  the  phrase  used  by  Mr.  Warner,  a 
dosen  years  ago,  in  an  acute  paper  on  Bngland 
in  the  Century  magazine,  the  opinion  being 
based  on  the  steady  accumulation,  on  this  side 
of  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  of  a  body  of  asso- 
ciations, traditions,  and  studies  of  nature 
which  no  Englishman  who  has  not  lived-  long 
in  America  can  even  comprehend.  Other  au- 
thors, as  Lowell,  Higginson,  Howells,  Scndder, 
and  Matthews,  have  at  different  times  com 
mitted  themselves  to  similar  statements.  If 
we  were  asked  by  an  Englishman  to  show  him 
the  latest  American  volume  that  illustrates 
this  view,  we  should  select  without  hesita- 
tion the  'Poems'  of  Ernest  McGaffey  (Dodd, 
Mead  &  Co.).  It  Is  not  that  the  author  writes 
^and  writes  well— of  crow  and  meadow-lark 
instead  of  nightingale  and  skylark;  it  is  not 
that  he  describes  Indians  and  fronttersmen; 
but  that  there  U  a  broad  outlook  as  over  prai- 
ries and  sierras,  a  wideness,  as  between  ocean 
and  ocean,  a  vast  inland  flavor,  unmistak- 
able as  the  smell  of  the  sea.  The  author's  very 
name  is  new  to  us— there  Is  no  key  to  his  dwell- 
ing-place except  one  poem  which  seems  to 
place  it  in  Missouri;  the  volume  has  some  of 
the  crudeness  of  a  first  book,  but  also  of  its 
frankness  and  freshness.  Mr.  MoOaffey  Is  free 
from  the  tnrgidness  and  imltativeness  of  Mr. 
Cawein,  and  from  the  self-conscious  pose  which 
Is  spoiling  the  fine  promise  of  Mr.  Ghurland; 
but  he  has  the  sense  of  American  atmosphere 
and  American  life,  and  produces  something 
indigenous  and  true.  Moreover,  what  he 
writes  is  terse,  and  leaves  a  picture  on  the 
retina,  as  in  this  example  (p.  244) : 

OVERLAND. 

A  treeless  stretch  of  grassjr  plains. 
r  the  sum '- 


Blue  bordered  by  t , , 

Where  past  our  swaying,  creaking  stage. 

The  buffaloes  go  thundering  hj. 
And  antelope  In  scattered  bands 
Feed  In  the  breesy  pralrle-lands. 

Far  down  the  west  a  speck  appears, 

That  falls  and  rises,  on  and  on. 
An  Instant  to  the  vision  clear, 

A  moment  more,  and  It  Is  gone— 
And  then  It  dashes  Into  sight, 
Swift  as  an  eagle's  downward  flight. 

A  ring  of  hoofs,  a  flying  steed. 

A  shout— a  f  aoe-a  waring  hand— 
A  flake  of  foam  upon  the  grass 

That  melts— and  then  alone  we  stand. 
As  now  a  speck  against  the  gray 
The  pony-rtder  fades  away. 

To  tills  theory  of  diverging  literatures  Mr. 
Wallace  Bruce  would  not  be  a  convert  With 
a  name  of  double-barrelled  Scotch  patriotism, 
combined  with  a  Yale  diploma  of  Bachelor  of 
Arts  and  four  years  of  residence  In  Edinburgh, 
he  is  surely  that  "star-spangled  Scotchman" 
whom  Mr.  Black  created  out  of  another  gen- 
tleman similarly  situated.  One  of  his  poems 
was  read  at  the  Scotch-Irish  celebratian  at 
Columbia,  Tennessee ;  he  addresses  verses 
equally  to  Longfellow  and  Blackie,  and  strikes 
an  average  between  the  Hudson  and  the 
Tweed.    His  verse  is  not  Inspired,  but  is  what 


may  be  called  bi  patriotic ;  and  perhaps,  after 
all,  the  function  of  such  verse  is  as  essential 
as  that  of  genius.  Mr.  Charles  Reekie,  who 
was  bom  in  Scotland,  Is  also  pleasantly  hi- 
patriotic  in  his  '  Day  Dreams'  (New  York:  L. 
D.  Robertson  &  Son). 

It  is  due  to  Mr.  Cawein  to  say  that  he  has 
taken  the  very  best  way  to  remedy  his  own 
early  defects  by  cultivating  the  habit  of  trans- 
lation, and  especially  by  dealing  with  German 
lyric  poetry,  as  in  his  volume,  'The  White 
Snake,  and  Other  Poems,*  translated  in  the 
original  metres  (Louisville:  Mortem).  The  title- 
poem  fails  to  interest  us,  but  the  other  transla- 
tions show  ability,  and  as  the  class  of  poetry 
with  which  he  deals  is  usually  simple  and  brief, 
it  is  a  capital  discipUne.  Yet  we  find  sUll  bet- 
ter  translations  from  a  wholly  different  source. 
Bishop  Spalding  of  the  Peoria  (lU.)  diocese, 
whose  prose  work  has  long  had  more  of  the 
literary  note  than  that  of  any  Roman  Catholic 
ecclesiastic  in  this  country,  has  published  *Songs, 
chiefly  from  the  German '  (Chicago:  McClurg). 
The  poems  are  varied,  and  though  he  has  had 
the  indiscretion  of  publishing  many  new  at- 
tempts at  the  old  untranslataUe  Heine  favor- 
ites, yet  many  are  both  new  and  good.  Some 
are  from  Hugo,,  too;  and  there  is  shyly  in- 
serted at  tiie  very  end  this  sonnet,  apparent- 
ly untranslated,  and  well  worth  quoting: 

BUBLUfS  FOLLY. 

BubUmest  folly  l^from  their  camps  uprise 
Two  mighty  armies,  eager  for  the  tray; 
The  drumbeat  rolls,  the  bracen  trumpets  bray. 

And  guns  and  bayonets  flash  against  the  skies. 

How  shall  be  shown  on  which  side  riotory  lies; 
Swords  gleam,  the  booming  cannon  hurl  dismay. 
The  quick,  sharp  rifle-shots  for  death  make  way. 

On  high  the  bird  of  erll  omen  cries. 


Men  faU  as  In  the  field  the  fuU  ripe  grain 
Where  bendlns  reapers  swing  the  sickle's  blade. 

In  ranks  they  fsIL  nerer  ti  rise  again— 
But  wherefore  the  dread  hotooaust  thus  made  ? 

That  past  all  doubt  man  may  make  this  truth  plain. 
On  honor,  more  than  life,  his  heart  Is  stayed. 

In  Messrs.  Copeland  &  Day's  new  «*  Oaten 
Stop  Series  "  the  first  volume  is  handicapped 
by  a  self-  contradictory  name.  *  Dumb  in  June* 
is  a  bit  of  complaint  that  would  be  piquant 
enough  for  a  verse  or  two,  but  becomes  de- 
pressing when  carried  at  the  head  of  every 
other  page  through  even  a  miniature  volume; 
we  feel  at  last  that  the  poet  has  been  dumb  too 
garrulously.  The  poems  themselves  are  medi- 
tative, sometimes  arch,  always  neat»  and  occa- 
sionally graceful;  under  a  more  felicitous  name 
they  might  even  have  a  charm  when  collected. 
This  ii  a  good  example  (p.  29): 

YBSTBRDAT. 

Mj  friend,  he  spoke  of  a  woman  face; 

It  pussled  me  and  I  paused  to  think. 
He  cold  of  her  eyes  and  mouth,  the  tcaoe 

Of  prayer  on  her  brow,  and  quick  as  wink 
I  said :  *-  Oh  yes,  but  you  wrong  her  years. 
She's  only  a  child,  with  faiths  and  fears 

That  ohildbood  lit.   IteUtheenayi 

She  was  a  girl  Jns|  yesterday." 

^"Ilie years  are  swift  and  sure,  I  trow" 
(Quoth  he).  *'YonM>eskof  thelongago." 

Once  I  strolled  In  a  garden  spot 

And  every  flower  upralsed^a  head 
(80  It  seemed),  for  they,  I  wot, 

Were  nates  of  mine;  each  bloom  and  bed. 
Their  hours  for  sleep,  their  merry  mood. 
The  Ures  and  deaths  of  the  whole  sweet  brood. 

Were  known  to  me;  It  was  my  way 

To  Tlslt  them  but  yesterday. 

Bpake  one  red  rose.  In  a  language  low: 
'*  We  saw  you  last  In  the  long  ago.** 


'TIS  tb/B  same  old  tale,  though  It  comes  to  me 
ByjL  hundred  paths  of  pam  and  |tee,     • 

Till  I  guess  the  truth  at  last,  and  know 

That  Yesterday  Is  the  Long  Ago. 

The  second  volume  4>f  the  Oaten  Stop  8e> 
ries  is  *A  Doric  Reed,'  by  Miss  Zitella  Oockie; 
it  has  the  attraction  of  some  good  Soatbam 
landscape,  with  a  local  coloring  quits  i^nerii  to 
us;  indeed,  her  **  Sunrise  in  an  i 
brake''  has  mnoh  of  tha  Itevur  «C  '< 


March  5,  1896] 


Th.e   !N"atioii. 


203 


wbil*  ibis  child  picture  is  graceful  enough  for 
Anstiii  Dobeon  (p.  6^ : 

WHKN  POLLY  TAKB8  THB  AIR. 

▲  Uttle  wtoker  bMket  roll! 

Alone  Che  paT«nMi(  walk. 
And  at  the  fight  the  yonng  and  old 

Begin  to  laugh  and  talk. 
And  ware  fair  bands,  and  ktcsee  throw. 

Anderj:   ••Loofchwel"   *'4ee there!'* 
"This  war  It  comet  I  "—and  all  becaose 

Sweet  FfAlj  takes  the  air ! 

The  newtboTi  run  and  shout  with  glee. 

And  follow  on  behind : 
The  coachman  and  the  footman  gase 

As  If  they  had  a  mind 
To  do  the  same :  the  aood  old  priest 

Stands  still  with  solemn  stare- 
As  down  the  shady  aTenue 

Sweet  Polly  takes  the  air ! 


And  all  the  while  tweet  Polly  sltt 

In  dainty  gown  and  hat, 
And  tmllet  on  one  the  loret  the  bett— 

Her  pretty  Maltese  cat— 
And  softly  coos,  when  pussy  purrt. 

Without  a  thought  or  care 
Bow  all  the  town  tarns  uptlde  down 

When  PoUy  takes  the  air. 

*  Under  the  Pinee,'  by  Mrs.  Lydia  Ann 
Cooley  (Chicago:  Way  &  WilUami),  has  lome 
good  touches  of  local  coloring  here  and  there, 
ftom  Eftst  to  Weet^  and  also^  rather  unexpect- 
edly, a  Harvard  claae-day  poem  in  honor  of 
the  author's  ion.  Bhe  has  also  this  bit  of  terse 
philoeophy,  worth  more  than  many  that  are 
longer  (p.  15) : 

HBRBDITT. 

Why  bowett  ttiou,  O  tonl  ot  mine. 

Cmthed  by  ancestral  tin  ? 
Thou  batt  a  noble  heritage 

That  bids  thee  Tlotoiy  win. 

The  tainted  patt  may  bring  forth  flowers 

At  blostomed  Aaron's  rod. 
9o  legacy  of  tin  annuls 

Heredity  from  Ood. 

*  Pebbles  and  Shells,'  by  Clarence  Hawkes 
(Northampton:  Picturesque  PuUishing  Co.), 
is  remarkable  as  being  the  work  of  a  young 
bund  poet,  who,  of  course,  speaks  of  "  seeing  " 
nature  with  that  curious  and  touohiog  fa- 
miliarity the  blind  employ.  The  portrait  and 
biography  precede,  the  latter  expressing  an 
admiration  which  the  reader  perhaps  cannot 
wholly  folloir,  eren  if  assured  that  "the 
taierits  of  some  part  of  its  [the  book's]  contents 
have  been  so  signal  as  to  elicit  an  autograph 
letter  of  approbation  from  Hon.  Robert  T. 
Lincoln,  ex-Secretary  of  the  Nary."  Mr.  J.  E 
Hayes's  book  *The  Old-Flsshioned  Garden' 
(Philadelphia:  Winston)  comes  dangerously— 
but  perhaps  unconsciously— near  to  trespass- 
ing on  the  title  of  a  volume  by  Mrs.  Deland; 
it  has  pleasing  descriptions,  a  tranquillity  as 
of  the  Society  of  Friends,  and  is  inscribed  to 
Bwarthmore  College.  *  Nature  in  Verse,'  by 
Mary  L  Lovejoy,  is  a  rather  meritorious 
'* Poetry  Reader  for  Children"  (SUver,  Bur- 
dett  &  Co.). 

Mr.  WiUiam  W.  Newell,  in  his  « Words  for 
Music'  (Cambridge:  Sever),  gives  a  vivid  bit  of 
local  coloring  in  what  follows  (p.  45) : 

THX  SOABLBT  TANAOEB. 

A  flame,  a  wandering  fire, 
with  waTerIng  desire 

From  bough  to  bough. 
Thou  wIngM,  wondrout  thing  I 
Of  glad,  OK  golden  tprtng 

The  toul  art  thou. 

A  flame,  a  wandering  lire. 

Thy  strange,  thy  toarlet  gleam 
Wul  gUsten  through  my  dream 

The  Urelong  year ; 
O  pure,  O  holy  May  I 
O  bUthe.  O  ble«ed  way 

I  travel  here ! 

A  flame,  a  wandering  flrs. 

Dr.  Frank  W.  Gunsaulus  of  Chicago  issues  a 
volume,  *  Sengs  of  Night  and  Day '  (McClurg), 
which  is,  like  his  previous  volumes,  thought- 
ful and  cultivated,  as  well  as  high  in  tone,  bat 
wldoh  has  not,  perhaps,  enough  of  free  and 
lyric  movement  to  justify  its  title.  **  Between 
Mine  Eyelids  and  Mine  Eyes"  (p.  86)  has  per- 
bmpB  the  most  of  this  desirable  qtiality. 

The  late  Eugene  Field  has  undergone  the 


fatality  that  follows  any  literary  oian  much 
beloved  and  admired,  in  the  immediate  publi 
cation  and  exaggerated  praise  of  his  slightest 
works.  In  this  case  the  *  Eohoesfrom  a  Stbine 
Farm'  (Scribaers),  by  himself  and  his  brother. 
Is  reprinted  in  costly  style,  with  illustrations 
—m  dress,  in  bhort,  which  reveals  the  intrin- 
sic  poverty  and  triviality  of  theee  parodies 
on  Horace,  which  might  have  been  far  more 
tolerable  if  seen,  a  scrap  at  a  time,  in  the 
comer  of  a  Chicago  paper.  We  might  then, 
by  a  bare  possibility,  have  found  some  fun  in 
the  following,  which  we  take  at  random  and 
which  Is  founded  on  Horace's  '*  Persioos  odi " 
(1.88): 

TH£  PRXFBRBNCB  DBCLARSD. 

Boy,  I  detest  the  Perttan  pomp; 

rhate  those  linden-bark  derloet; 
And  as  for  ro<es,  holy  Moses! 

They  cant  be  got  at  Urine  prices! 
Myrtle  Is  good  enou^  for  us— 

For  yout  as  bearer  of  my  flagon: 
For  me,  supine  beneath  ibi$  Tine, 

Doing  my  best  to  get  a  Jag  on! 

If  there  is  fun  in  the  slang  of  the  bar-rooms, 
might  it  not  permissibly  stop  this  side  of  the 
masterpieces  of  the  world's  literature? 

To  revert  once  more  to  the  Bodley  Head, 
Miss  E.  Nesbit,  befcn^  well  known  by  her 
*  Lays  and  Legend?,'  gives  us  a  volume  under 
the  title  of  *A  Pomander  of  Verse*  (London: 
John  Lane;  Chicago:  A.  C.  McCiurg  &  Co ), 
a  fairly  pretty  conceit,  yet  not  quite  substan- 
tial enough  for  a  volume  containing  so  many 
good  things.  These  she  classiflee  under  the 
several  iogredients  of  Ambergris,  Lavender, 
Rose,  Rosemary,  Myrrh,  Musk,  and  Bergamot; 
and  we  dose  with  one  of  her  gayer  touches, 
which  must  chime  with  the  impulse  of  many 
feminine  f ellow-sufferers  (p.  88) : 

THB  LASTDITOH. 

I/»Te,  tluongh  your  Tarled  views  on  Art 

Untiring  have  I  foUowed  you. 
Content  to  know  I  had  your  heart 

And  was  your  Art-Ideal,  too ; 

At.  dear.  I  wat  when  flrtt  we  met. 

(■Twat  at  the  time  you  worshipped  Ltlghton, 
And  were  attempting  to  forget 

Your  Foster  aad  your  Koel  Paton.) 

"  Lores  rhymes  with  Art,*'  tald  your  dear  roloe, 

And  at  my  crude,  uncultured  age. 
I  could  but  blnshtngly  rejoice 

That  you  had  passed  tr 


When  Madoz  Brown  and  Morris  swayed 


Tour  taste,  did  I  not  drctt  aad  look 
ly  Middle  Aget  maid 
kted  book  r 


Like  any  1 
InanUli 


I  wore  ttraage  garmentt,  without  thame. 
Of  formlett  form  and  tonelett  tones, 

I  might  hare  stepped  out  of  the  frame 
Of  a  BossettI  ot  Bume-Joaes. 

I  stole  soft  f rlUt  from  Marcus  Stone, 
My  waist  wore  Herkomer's  disguise, 

1^  slender  purse  wat  strained.  Town, 
But— my  tUk  lay  at  Sargeaf  s  llet. 

And  when  you  were  abroad— la  Prague— 
'Mid  Chareto  I  had  thoae,  a  ttar; 

Then  for  your  take  I  grew  at  rague 
At  Mr.  Whittlert  ladles  are. 

But  now  at  latt  you  tue  In  Tain, 
For  here  a  life's  submlvlon  ends; 

Not  eren  for  you  will  I  grow  plain 
At  Aubrey  Baardtley 't  **  lady  friendt." 

Here  I  renounce  your  hand— unlett 
Tou  find  your  Art-Ideal  eltewhere; 

I  wiU  noi  wear  the  kind  of  dreis 
That  Laurence  Housman's  people  wear  I 


WcUerloo:  A  Narratife  and  a  Critidam.    By 
£.  L  8.  Horsburgh,  B.A.,  (^een*s  College, 
Oxon.    London :   Methuen  Sc  Ck>.    12mo,  pp. 
812  with  msps. 
Tbs  study  of  military  history  at  Oxford  is  one 
of  the  interesting  features  of  university  de- 
velopment.   The  demand  would  naturally  arise 
out  of  the  sest  with  which  educated  English, 
men  have  taken  hold  of  their  volunteer  system, 
as  well  as  from  the  fact  that  a  university  edu- 
catioD  helps  to  open  the  door  to  i^oes  in  the 
regular  army.    In  conformity  with  the  modem 
tandsaoy  to  specialise  one^s  eourse  of  study 


from  an  early  stage  in  it,  young  men  looking 
for  army  commissions  have  sought  Inttruction 
in  subjects  connected  with  a  military  career. 
Modern  authorities  in  military  science  are  of 
one  accord  in  assertiog  that  generalship  is  to 
be  learned  only  in  a  diligent  and  intelligent 
analysis  of  military  history.  More  than  one 
course  of  lectures  upon  this  subject  have  been 
delivered  by  university  teachers,  and  Mr.  Hors- 
burgh^s  book  is  the  outgrowth  of  such  a  course 
upon  the  campaign  of  1815. 

His  aim,  as  he  tells  us,  has  been  to  give,  in  a 
form  easily  intelligible  to  the  ordinary  reader, 
a  comparative  study  of  the  events  of  the  Wa> 
terloo  campaign,  with  the  criticisms  of  com- 
mentators  upon  them,  reaching  his  independ- 
ent oondusioas  when  he  finds  expert  authori- 
ties in  collision.  The  task  has  been  perforoMd 
with  admirable  temper  and  judicial  s|4rit. 
The  author's  knowledge  o&  the  prlndplce  of 
strategy  is  sound,  and  as  he  differs  or  agrees 
with  one  or  another  of  the  critical  historians 
he  gives  weighty  reasons  for  his  conclusions. 
The  presentation,  therefore,  of  a  candid  and 
competent  stmmiing  up  of  the  latest  opinions, 
in  a  great  controversy  which  has  lasted  eighty 
years,  will  find  a  welcome  among  all  who  lo?e 
historical  investigation,  wheUier  th^  be  spe- 
cial students  of  the  military  art  or  of  history 
in  general.  AniMican  students  wHl  partlon- 
larly  enjoy  it  because  the  author  joins  issue, 
on  several  of  the  bumlDg  questions  of  the 
campaign,  with  Mr.  Ropes,  whose  book  has  al- 
ready taken  rank  in  Europe  as  a  notable  coo- 
tribution  to  the  great  debate.  They  wiU  be 
able  to  compare  with  great  ease  the  arguments 
on  both  sides  of  such  points  of  controversy, 
and,  as  both  books  are  full  of  statements  of 
the  ground  taken  by  other  authorities,  a  very 
lucid  understanding  of  the  whole  dlscussloo 
may  be  got  from  theee  two  works  alone. 


RambU*  in  Japan,    By  H.  B.  Tristram,  D.D. 

Fleming  H.  ReveU  Co.  1805. 
BxTOKD  the  allotted  period  of  three-score 
years  and  ten,  but  full  of  that  sunny  philoso- 
phy which,  comes  from  long  travel  in  many 
lands,  the  Canon  of  Durham,  whose  name  we 
associate  with  the  Land  of  Moab,  has  visitsd 
the  Land  of  the  Rising  Bun.  In  modsst  and 
unassuming  style  he  tells  us  of  his  ramblee 
over  what  for  the  most  part  are  well-beateo 
tourist  tracks.  Like  the  average  writer  on 
Japan,  he  deecrlbes  *'  some  parts  of  the  country 
seldom  visited  by  foreifpers,"  and,  of  course, 
he  **had  special  advantages,"  etc  The  vahie 
of  the  book  does  not  consist  in  any  novelty  of 
experiSnces  or  observatiaiis,  but  is  welcome 
and  important  because  Canon  Tristram  is  a 
naturalist.  He  loves  life  in  all  forms,  wheCber 
of  plant,  fish,  bird,  beast,  or  man.  His  daugh- 
ter, a  missionary,  was  his  cicerone  and  inter- 
preter. His  simple,  limpid  style  makes  his  ten 
chapters  pleasant  and  easy  to  read.  A  lam- 
bent humor  plays  over  his  pagee.  When  a 
native  gentleman  given  to  tall  stories  tells  of 
the  growth  of  bamboo,  as  discernible  between 
measurements  made  before  and  after  bis  break- 
fast on  the  same  morning,  the  Canon  suspects 
that  clogs  have  been  changed  for  sandals,  and 
that  the  case  was  one  of  human  shrinkage 
of  stature  rather  than  of  vegetable  growth. 
There  are  not  a  few  inaccuracies  of  statement 
and  some  mistakes  in  the  book,  but  theee  are 
of  no  consequence,  for,  with  the  wisdom  of  the 
genuine  scholar  and  keen  observer,  the  Canon 
builds  no  high  towers  of  speculation  on  scant 
observation  of  facts. 

The  work  Is  liberally  niustrated  by  Edward 
Whymper,  from  sketches  and  photographs. 


204: 


The   illation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1 60 1 


Some  of  these  provoke  So  the  reader  the  delight 
of  noveltj  and  are  very  effectiye.  Others, 
though  we  are  boand  to  say  hut  few,  are  old 
stagers  npon  which  the  cnrtain  ought  long 
since  to  have  been  mog  down.  Hr.  Whym- 
per's  fault  is  that  of  Anglicizing  the  faces  of 
Japanese  in  a  way  that  will  certainly  please 
any  natire  Anglomaniaos  who  may  he  strut- 
ting around  Tokio  or  Osaka—which  latter  city 
the  Canon  calls  "  the  Manchester  of  Japan." 
The  naturalist  will  enjoy  the  book  for  its  many 
informing  references  to  birds,  shells,  flowers, 
and  fauna.  The  Canon  explodes  false  theories 
as  well  as  adds  knowledge  of  facts.  Showing 
that  resemblance  is  not  identity,  he  pricks  the 
Ikibblee  of  rhetoric  and  science  so  called.  The 
shells  on  the  shore  of  the  Sea  of  G^alilee  and  in 
Japan  are  not  the  same.  Much  of  interest  is 
told  about  the  missionary  and  natire  Christian 
work  in  the  empire.  The  Canon,  like  a  true, 
philosopher,  believes  there  is  no  real  anti^ 
Christian  popular  sentiment  in  Japan,but  only 
an  antipathy  to  things  foreign  and  to  a  Chris- 
tianity that  smacks  of  tiie  Yankee,  Briton,  and 
.  Frenchman,  ratiier  than  of  the  Christ  himself. 
The  ho6k  has  a  tolerable  map  and  index.  It 
is  well  worthy  of  its  excellent  ink,  paper,  print, 
and  binding.  The  cover  decoration  in  gray 
and  silver,  dashed  with  red,  reminds  one  of  a 
pretty  Quakeress  with  enough  color  on  her 
cheeks  to  blend  all  tints  into  a  unity  of  charms. 


The  Booh'hwnter  in  London :  Historical  and 
Other  Studies  of  Collectors  and  Collecting. 
With  numerous  portraits  and  illustrations. 
By  W.  Roberts.  Chicago :  A.  C.  McClurg 
ftCa    18d5.    Pp.  xxi,888. 

Bare  Books  and  their  Prices:  with  Chapters 
on  Pictures,  Pottery,  Porcelain,  and  Postage 
Stamps.  By  W.  Roberts.  Longmans,  Green 
A  Co.    1890.    Pp.  xxvili,  156. 

LoiTDON  is  so  important  a  book-market,  and 
has  been  for  2S0  years  such  a  place  of  resort 
for  all  who  h«ve  books  to  sell  or  to  buy,  that 
any  treatise  on  the  subject  is  sure  to  contain  a 
great  deal  which  wiU  be  interesting  to  any 
reader.  Such  a  treatise  is  hard  to  arrange  in 
any  logical  way,  and  almost  as  hard  to  index 
in  a  satisfactory  manner.  The  reader,  there- 
fore, finds  that  he  must  dip  into  it  here  and 
there,  that  he  cannot  select  with  certainly  the 
chapter  he  desires  to  examine,  and  that  this 
desultory  way  of  reading  has  its  own  reward. 
Many  curious  bits  of  information  which  ex- 
actly answer  some  of  his  requirements  wiU 
come  in  his  way  in  the  course  of  his  casual 
reading  of  Mr.  Roberts's  *  Book-hunter  *  which 
it  would  never  occur  to  him  to  look  for. 
This  is  the  good  side  of  a  book  composed 
like  the  present  one,  but  it  is  also  necessary 
to  state  that  the  'Book-hunter'  is  rambling 
enough.  The  author  keeps  close  to  the  subject 
of  bis  chapter,  the  subject  be  has  announced, 
whether  ''Book  auctions aod  sales,''  or  '* Book- 
hunting  localities,"  or  another ;  but  beneath 
such  title  almost  anytbiog  may  be  written 
down.  Thus,  in  the  chapter  on  book  auctions, 
we  are  reminded  that  the  first  one  known  to 
have  taken  place  in  London  was  held  on  the 
last  day  of  October,  1670,  or,  in  other  words, 
just  at  the  time  when  EJng  Philippe  war  was 
past,  for  the  American  colonists,  and  whsn 
Charles  IL  was  feeling  rich  with  the  first  in- 
stalment in  his  pocket  of  the  pension  which 
Louis  XIV.  had  to  agree  to  pay  him. 
The  chapter  on  Bookstalls  is  the  natural 
place  for  anecdote,  and  accordingly  anec 
dotes  abound  in  it.  The  favorite,  of  course, 
is  the  one  which  relates  the  purchase  of  a 


ten.  pound  book  for  **  thruppence,"  and  the 
finding  of  a  rare  tract  in  the  sixpenny  box 
outside  "Old  Brown*s  do3r"  after  the  pro- 
prietor had  stated  that  he  possessed  no  copy 
and  that  it  was  very  dear.  Curious  if  sadden- 
ing anecdotes  are  gathered  together  under  the 
heading  "Book  Thieves,  Borrowers,  and 
Knockouts,"  but  these  are  in  no  way  more  ex- 
traordinary than  the  stories  wliich  any  old 
bookseller  can  tell  from  his  own  experience. 
Under  "Humors  of  Book  Catalogues"  we 
come  upon  the  following  entry  : 

**  Shelley— Prometheus,  unbound,  etc. 

" another  copy,  olive  morocco,  etc." 

A  very  considerable  number  of  illustrations 
are  inserted  in  the  volume,  some  of  them  **  por- 
traits" which  no  man  could  recognise,  but 
some,  also,  interesting  pictures  of  interiors  and 
exteriors  of  shops.  Further  examination 
shows  that  there  are  a  few  half-tone  portraits 
which  must  look  something  like  the  originals, 
and  one  of  Mr.  Quaritch  that  certainly  does  so. 

The  same  author's  'Rare  Books'  is  taste- 
fully printed  and  bound,  and  is  pleasant  to 
handle  and  to  read.  Fifty  pages  are  devoted 
to  the  book-market  and  as  many  to  pictures, 
old  and  new.  Pottery  and  porcelain  have  half 
as  much  Qiaoe,  and  postage  stamps  occupy  as 
mudi  space  as  oeramios.  The  preface  states 
that  parts  of  the  different  chapters  have  ap- 
peared in  the  Fortnightly  Beview  and  the 
Nineteenth  CejUury.  So  small  a  book  cannot 
be  asked  to  serve  as  an  encydopsBdia  of  prices, 
even  qt  thoee  obtained  at  auction  sales.  The 
chapters  are  essays  on  the  subject  of  the  con- 
stantly changing  money  value  of  works  of  art 
and  curiosity,  a  subject  very  interesting  to 
many  people,  and  rather  closely  connected 
with  tiie  rsal  or  intrinsic  value  of  thoee  ob- 
jects. It  is  agreeable  to  find  that  our  author 
never  forgets  to  insist  opon  rsal  value  as  dis- 
tinguished from  price,  and  the  personal  cha- 
racter of  many  of  his  <3iticisms,  although  they 
may  have  the  air  of  obiter  dicta,  or  opinions 
for  which  he  was  not  asked,  adds  immensely  to 
the  interest  of  the  book.  The  opinions  thus 
set  forth  will  command  attention  as  being 
well  founded  and  based  upon  a  large  know- 
ledge of  the  subjects  under  consideration.  The 
only  exception  we  should  take  is  to  the  dissatis- 
faction which  Mr.  Roberts  expresses  at  high 
prices  for  rare  pieces.  It  seems  to  him  that  a 
Gubbio  plate  at  a  thousand  pounds  is  a  case  of 
misunderstood  valuation.  But  the  great  ease 
with  which  a  thousand  pounds  is  gathered  in 
by  many  a  "  captain  of  industry,"  and  the 
abeolute  impossibility  of  duplicating,  in^any 
really  complete  sense,  the  GKibbio  plate,  go  to 
make  the  bargain  less  absurd  than  the  bare 
statement  of  it  may  sound.  Why  should  not 
the  Masarin  Bible  bring  four  thousand  dollars  ? 
Many  more  people  have  the  money  to  spare 
than  can  possibly  own  the  book.  On  the  other 
hand,  Mr.  Roberts's  remarks  on  the  exact 
amount  of  good  sense  there  is  in  the  broad- 
margin  craze  and  the  first-edition  craze  are 
most  judicious.  It  need  not  be  said  that  the 
book  is  extremely  entertsining. 


The  Land  of  the  Nile  Springs,  By  Colonel 
Sir  Henry  Colville.  New  York:  Edward 
Arnold. 
Thx  literature  about  Uganda  is  considerable 
and  increasing,  but  additions  to  it  are  still 
welcome,  especially  when  they  are  as  well  writ- 
ten as  the  present  one.  CoL  Colville  succeeded 
to  the  special  mission  of  the  late  Sir  Gerald 
Portal  as  representative  of  Great  Britain  in 
Uganda,  and  it  was  he  who  definitely  pro- 


claimed the  English  protectorate.  His  duties 
as  resident  were  of  the  most  varied  kind.  Thus, 
he  not  only  had  to  go  campaigning  against 
Kaba  Rega  of  Unyoro,  who  has  given  so  much 
trouble  to  every  European  in  these  regions 
from  Sir  Samuel  Baker  down;  he  also  in  Ugan- 
da itself  had  to  put  pressure  on  tiie  wretched 
King  Mwanga,  besides  with  difliculty  prevent- 
ing the  outbreak  of  a  new  religious  war  between 
the  Catholic  and  the  Protestant  factions  of  the 
country.  He  had  by  turns  to  act  as  judge,  di- 
plomat, house^  builder,  general— in  short,  in  the 
various  capacities  demanded  of  a  European 
ruling  over  inferior  races,  and  requiring  all  the 
qualities  which  Englishmen  have  shown  to  so 
high  a  degree  in  building  up  their  empire.  He 
has  narrated  his  experiences  and  adventures 
under  these  circumstances  in  a  very  "  breesy  " 
manner.  If  at  times  the  wit  is  a  little  elabo- 
rate and  fatiguing,  it  is  generally  amusing 
enough.  Here  is  the  account  of  his  first  ar- 
rival in  his  province: 

"As  we  descended  into  the  valley  on  the 
farther  side  of  which  Kampala  fort  is  situated, 
I  saw  the  troops  turning  out  ready  to  receive 
me;  and  feeling  that  I  was  not  looking  my  best, 
either  as  regsirds  clothes  or  features,  began 
polishing  myself  up  as  well  as  I  could,  and  was 
just  beginning  to  feel  that,  although  I  was  not 
exactly  smart,  an  imaginative  man  might 
guess  at  the  possibility  of  better  things  beneath 
the  dirt,  when  my  horse  gave  a  fiounder  in  a 
boggy  stream  which  I  had  been  too  preoccu- 

Eied  to  notice,  and  landed  me  fair  on  my  head 
1  a  pool  of  black  mud.  Two  minutes  after- 
wards, with  bugles  sounding,  drums  beating, 
and  the  troops  presenting  arms,  I  entered  the 
headquarters  of  my  conunand,  returning  the 


salute  with  what  dignity  I  could,  and  then 
hurriedly  rushed  into  Arthur's  hut  and 
my  head  into  a  basin  of  clean  water." 


In  his  campaign  against  Unyoro  the  only 
reliable  portion  of  his  troops  were  some 
Sudanese: 

"When  about  an  hour's  march  from  tbe 
fort,  I  came  upon  the  band  of  the  Sudanese 
regiment  drawn  up  along  the  roadside.  After 
presenting  arms  (bandsmen  carry  rifles  in 
Uganda),  they  turned  to  the  right  and  followed 
me,  whacking  their  drums  and  tootling  on 
their  old  cracked  bugles  at  their  loudest.  I 
wish  I  could  have  seen  that  proceesion— it 
must  have  been  a  very  funny  one.  First,  a 
big  Sudanese  soldier  carrying  a  Union  Jack; 
then  a  very  seedy-looking  Englishman  in  an 
old  karkee  coat,  dilapi&ted  breeches  and 
gaiters,  his  feet  bandaged  in  dirty  rags,  limp- 
ing along  with  the  help  of  a  walking  stick; 
then  a  small  Sudanese  boy  laden  with  a  field- 
glass,  a  camp-stool,  and  a  big  bunch  of  ba- 
nanas: and  lastly  the  full  band  of  the  regiment 
in  single  file,  swaggering  on  with  that  sense  of 
importance  which  only  comes  to  those  whose 
good  stars  lead  them  in  the  way  of  hitting 
drums." 

Later  he  was  enabled  to  add  to  them  some 
recruits  who  had  been  in  tiie  service  of  the 
Congo  Free  State: 

**  I  have  said  before  that  our  troops  presented 
a  curious  appearance,  and  although  I  had  got 
accustomed  to  rather  strange  turn-oats,  I  con- 
fess I  was  fairly  startled  by  the  bewildering 
variety  of  these  warriors'  costumes,  equii^ 
ments,  and  appearance.  To  begin  with,  they 
were  of  all  possible  ages,  colors,  and  siaes— 
doddering,  grey-bearded  old  men,  fine  strap- 
ping youths,  and  pigmies,  apparently  from 
Btanlev's  forest,  Abyssinian.  Egyptian,  and 
pure-blooded  negroes,  and  strange  crtMses  of^ 
each  and  all  of  them.  The  varte^  o^4heiiC 
clothing  was  infinite,  ranging  from  the  nearest 
approach  to  nothing  in  which  a  militaiy- 
minded  person  will  appear  before  his  com- 
manding officer,  to  cherry-colored  trousers  and 
blue  frock-coats  with  gold  braid.  And  then 
their  arms  1  breech-loaders,  muzzle-loaders, 
double-barrelled  *  scatter*  gui^  some  with 
looks  and  some  without,  all  were  duly  brought 
to  the  present  on  my  arrival,  and  ah  their  own- 
ers seemed  equally  satisfied  that  Way  were  in 
possession  of  highly  effective  ireaiNM.'' 

CoL  Colville  has  not  attempted  to  prodaat 


March  5,  1896] 


Tlie    !N"ation. 


205 


a  work  fall  of  Taluabla  informatioD;  ho  hai 
maroly  written  a  record  of  hii  experiencet  and 
the  chtof  eyonti  that  took  place  during  the 
time  of  hie  role,  until  it  was  brought  to  an 
abrupt  end  by  a  andden  atteck  of  fever.  He 
hae  giren  us  a  very  readable  book.  The  paper 
and  print  are  excellent,  perhapii  too  excellent 
Bspedallj  in  a  work  of  thii  eort,  one  would  be 
willing  to  hare  thinner  pages,  less  margin,  and 
even  a  little  smaller  print  in  order  to  obtain  a 
lighter,  more  convenient  Tolome. 


OrywlaUography:  A  Treatise  on  tiie  Morpholo- 
gy of  Crystals.  ByN.8tory.Maskelyne,M.A., 
F.R.B.,  ProfeBsor  of  Mineralogy,  Oxford. 
Macmillan  &  Ck>.    Sto,  xii,  5S1. 

This  first  part  of  the  long-expected  *  Crystal- 
lography' of  the  veteran  Oxford  professor, 
treats  of  the  morphology  of  crystals  **  in  the 
simplest  form  compatible  with  strict  geome- 
trical  methods,''  and  with  such  fulness  as  to 
make  it  the  best  book  in  the  English  lan- 
guage from  which  to  obtain  a  full  knowledge 
of  the  forms  of  crystals,  their  classification, 
their  measurement^  and  their  delineation.  It 
is  everywhere  precise  rather  than  concise,  but 
for  one  who  must  help  himself  rather  than  de- 
pend upon  teachers,  ttod  who  will  master  crys- 
tallography, but  is  not  able  to  use  Oerman  or 
Prench  books,  the  work  is  admirably  fitted. 

Advanced  students  will  generally  prefer 
the  more  logical  method  which  deduces  all 
the  forms  of  crystals  directly  from  the  one 
law  of  rational  indices,  as  developed  in  the 
last  edition  of  Oroth*s  '  Physicalische  Krystal- 
lographie.'  Most  teachers,  on  the  other  hand, 
win  sympathize  with  the  author,  who  takes 
account  of  hemihedrism,  or  mero-symmetry, 
as  a  second  law,  and  so  reaches  a  natural 
grouping  of  the  many  forms  of  crystals  in  a 
way  more  easily  appreciated  by  the  beginner. 
It  is  significant  of  the  conservative  position  of 
Prof.  Maskelyne  as  a  crystallograpber  of  the 


old  school  that  a  second  volume,  treating  of 
the  physical  problems  connected  with  crystals, 
is  to  folUno  this;  in  a  modem  G^erman  work 
this  order  would  be.  reversed.  The  definition 
of  the  crystals,  also^  as  **  polyhedra  with  plane 
faces  and  without  reentrant  angles,"  stands  in 
contrast  to  the  definitions  which  put  in  the 
foreground  the  differences  of  elasticity  of  the 
crystal  in  different  directions. 

After  a  very  brief  statement  of  the  physical 
properties  of  crystals,  the  author  proceeds  to 
develop  the  geometrical  groundwork  for  the 
consideration  of  the  crystal  as  a  complex  of 
planes  obeying  the  law  of  rationality  of  in- 
dices and  the  law  of  mero-symmetry,  and  pro- 
poses many  theorems,  several  of  which  are 
new,  relating  to  axes  and  the  change  of  axes, 
the  rotation  of  planes,  the  relations  of  zones, 
and  the  stereographic  projection  of  the  faces. 
Then  follows  a  full  treatment  of  the  measure- 
ment and  drawing  of  crystals,  with  an  ex- 
ceptionally large  series  of  illustrative  examples. 
Next  comes  the  fullest  and  the  most  interesting 
and  original  portion  of  the  book,  the  treatment 
of  crystal  symmetry,  and  a  thorough  discus- 
sion, from  the  point  of  view  of  this  symmetry, 
of  the  six  systems,  their  whole  forms,  their  half- 
forms,  their  combinations,  and  their  twins. 
The  schoolmen's ''Deus  cogltat  mathematice  " 
is  exemplified,  if  anywhere,  in  the  growth  of  the 
crystal,  to  the  study  of  which  the  student  will 
not  easily  find  a  more  attractive  guide  than 
the  book  before  us.  Prof.  Maskelyne  writee 
not  as  one  searching  for  the  shortest  methods 
to  obtain  the  name  of  a  mineral  for  further 
use,  but  rather  as  aiming  to  bring  forward  all 
the  questions  his  subject  suggests,  and  to  de- 
vise the  most  elegant  methods  for  their  solu- 
tion within  the  mathematical  limits  he  has  set 
himself. 


BOOKS  OF  THE  WKBK. 

Adam.  Paul.    Le  Force  da  MmL    Paris :  Colin  ft  Cle. 
Allen,  Ethan.     Waablngton:  or.   The  ReTolutlon:  A 
Drama.   Particoond.  F.T.  Neely. 


ArrowsmtUi,  Prof.  Robert,  and  Knap^  Charles.  Se- 

iHstlona  from  VIrt  Romae.    American  Book  Co.   78e. 
Catalogue  of  Sclentlflo  Papers  (1874-88).   Comnlled  hw 

theRoyal  Society  of  London.   Vol.  XI.  Pet^-ZyZ 

London :  C  J.  Clay  A  Sons;  New  York :  MacmlllanT 
Clark.  Mra.  8.  R.  u.    Hetbert  Oardenell,  Jr.;  or.  Ten- 

sle^t  Oldest  Son.    Boston:  Lothrop  Publiahlng  Co. 

81  00. 
Commirai*   Prof,  J.   U     rtuiorttchaAl    lt«ttr'?  Mmtatlon. 

■  t    V ,  Cro  *rr  I  (  *  Co     ♦  1  TJk 
FiilrTiita.  U,  €.     Thv  Thlfil  WorlU  :  A  Tttlr  of  lx>re  and 

fc'tr]itj]|(c<»  Arlvfaturn.    11-4^11114  it  a  ntVr  I*uT»Ti«fiirjgCo. 
Fl'^k*'..  A.  K.     Thf'Jt^l^lfth  £k^r)l)tUrt^.     S^r|l>M'M      81-00. 

Gkribdii,  l>3wufd.    Tho  Dc^Hli]<<  iioil  Full  *^t  u^m  Roman 
Euihlr^-      lAiUduJi  :    Helbtirti  A  Co  ;,  Mt.a\  Vutk:   Ifao- 

OidtUii^.  Pmf.  W.   a.    The  FrtntHt^LtH  of  Soctolocy. 

MAcmUian.    Sfl. 
GouLd,  Prof.  E-  F,    Conmie^lary  oq.  St  Haft's  Goepet. 

flriOfrnAtloual     Critical     Coirubetit&ry.]     Siolbnen. 

•^  30. 
H&ke,  A .  E^  Mat]  WetKlatL*  O.  K.     The  CooiUib  1  DdlvMu- 

Kiinm.    Min'lonr    i,  Coniitable  A  Ock;  Hr\w  York: 

HAmniivi.  Pruf.  W.  O,  A.    OtHMTvatton  SlSfit£«  In  Pl^. 

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Co 
Hojrlt.  Praf.CIeuFiii!'.  Morel  Kvolutlun.  Bd*tiMi  :  Hoogil- 

tiiii^  Mirnin  A  Oq,    t£. 
Hope.   Antlianj,     Colni?<U«B  of  COUTtHklp.     H^rrttmen. 

Bmmvt,  3.K     Tt3.p  Life  of  Tboraaa  0via4llb*i>a.  Royal 

U I  rv  priior  <  'f  tbo  Fro vlnc-e  of  HaMAPbaii^ltt  hiij.   liot- 

(r.n     Ilmtiehuiii^  Mifflin  ft  Co.    §4. 
Hi.iiiiL[i|[ire]^t^4   tlev.   t\  l^     The  EvoluUw)   nf  Church 

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KiL'l«£'r,  K  R.    LatKiTRtory  Work  In  ChtxaiafTy     Amerl- 

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Lorn,  R.  C     A  Hiitorr  of  Aqrlralar  Ctonfi'iwjun  and  In- 

rJuLir«tae^  In  tb^  Laiin  cbarrH.     Voi,  h     ^hlladel- 


Lfujct,  J.  LV.    Euanrphi 


nrphii;  or,  Tbe  End  of  Earih.     8d  ed. 

■  (ncrTiofctl .  RotM,*rt  CiiJke  Co.   fa. 
Loiubq.ri)  Loula.     ObeerTStlonm  of  a  Racbelur     Utloa, 

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[Vol.  62,  No.  1 60 1 


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NEW  TORK,  TBUR8DAT,  MABCH  12,   1806. 

The  Week. 

On  Monday  the  Senate  showed  signs  of 
recoTering  from  the  fit  of  emotional  in- 
sanity to  which  it  fell  a  victim  two  or 
three  weeks  ago,  when  it  dropped  the  af- 
fairs of  Venezuela  in  order  to  take  up 
those  of  Cuba.    The  speech  of  Senator 
Hale  in  opposition  to  the  resolutions  now 
pending  was  the  first  outright  declaration 
of  truth  that  has  been  heard  in  that  body. 
He  smote  the  heap  of  lies,  piled  up  by 
Sherman,  Morgan,  and  others,  by  which 
the  ear  of  the  country  has  been  so  grossly 
abused,  and  knocked  it  into  bits.    He 
has   furnished  a  rally ing-point   for   the 
higher  intelligence  of  the  country,  and  he 
was  not  in  the  least  degree  daunted  by 
the  mob  in  the  galleries,  who  attempted 
to  infiuence  the  course  of  debate  by  signi- 
fying their  disapproval  of  what  he  said. 
The  most  popular  untruth  now  afloat  is  a 
statement  endorsed  and  promulgated  by 
Senator  Sherman,  although  not  first  set 
going  by  him,  that   Qen.    Weyler,    the 
Spanish  commander  in  Cuba,  is  a  brute 
and  a  butcher  of  defenceless  men,  women, 
and  children,  an  enemy  of  the  human 
race  sent  out  by  Spain  expressly  for  the 
possession   of   these   qualities.     Senator 
Hale  exposed  this  falsehood  in  a  manner 
most  painful  to  those  who  have  propagat- 
ed it.    When  he  sent  to  the  clerk's  desk, 
to  be  read,  a  newspaper'  statement  made 
by  the  Spanish  Minister  at  Washington, 
which  convicted  Senator  Sherman  of  glar- 
ing error-,  to  call  it  by  no  worse  name, 
there  was  a  deal  of  squirming  on   the 
Jingo  side.    Objections  were  raised  to  the 
reading  of  the  statement  because  it  af- 
fected  the   character  of  a   Senator— as 
though  his  character  could  be  affected  by 
an  interview  in  a  newspaper  if  it  were  not 
true.    Objections  were  made  on  the  score 
of  the  undiplomatic  character  of  the  com- 
munication—as though  Mr.  Sherman  were 
exposed  to  injury  from  bad  form  rather 
than  on  the  score  of  veracity.    Finally, 
however,  the  newspaper  extract  was  read 
at  the  clerk's  desk,  so  that  the  answer  to 
the  charges   made  against  Gen.  Weyler 
goes  into  the  record  along  with  the  charges 
themselves. 


The  cablegram  published  by  the  World 
on  Saturday  from  Sefior  C&novaa,  the 
Prime  Minister  of  Spain,  is  well  calcu- 
lated to  soften  the  asperities  that  have 
been  aroused  lately  by  the  resolutions 
passed  by  our  Congress,  and  especially  by 
the  intemperate  language  used  by  Sena* 
tors  and  Representatives  in  debate.  The 
substance  of  Sefior  C&novas's  dispatch  is 
that  Spain  considers  her  relations  with 
the  United  States  unbroken  until  some 
act  of  hostility  is  committed.    While  the 


present  status  continues  she  will  avoid 
everything  that  tends  to  a  rupture,  and 
will  suppress  every  demonstration  in  her 
own  territory  that  can  be  considered  in- 
sulting to  the  United  States.  She  has 
already  closed  the  universities  at  Madrid, 
Grenada,  Barcelona,  and  Valencia,  where 
the  students  have  made  hostile  demon- 
strations, and  will  close  all  universities, 
schools,  and  establishments  where  like  de- 
monstrations take  place.  This  repressive 
action  on  the  part  of  the  Spanish  authori- 
ties is  so  contrary  to  all  our  ideas  and 
practices  that  it  may  not  be  appreciated 
here,  yet  it  is  customary  and  necessary  on 
the  Continent  of  Europe,  where  countries, 
by  reason  of  their  nearness  to  each  other, 
are  in  danger  of  taking  fire  from  the 
thoughtless  acts  of  irresponsible  persons. 
Reference  is  made  to  the  false  charges  of 
inhumanity  against  Gen.  Weyler  an^l  the 
Spanish  authorities  in  Cuba.  Sefior  Ca- 
novas  says  also  that  the  insurgents  have 
set  at  defiance  the  rules  of  civilized  war- 
fare, have  repeatedly  violated  the  treaties 
between  Spain  and  the  United  States,  and 
especially  that  of  18T7,  respecting  the 
lives  and  property  of  American  citizens  in 
Cuba.  Finally,  he  repeats  what  Sefior 
Castelar  said  the  other  day,  that  no  gov- 
ernment could  exist  in  Spain  which  should 
tolerate  foreign  intervention  in  the  affairs 
of  Cuba  by  a  government  which  had  pre- 
viously recognized  the  rebels  as  belli- 
gerents. 


We  see  evidences  of  some  resentment  on 
the  part  of  those  who  think  we  ought 
to  confine  our  hostility  to  England  and 
not  fritter  away  our  energy  by  extending 
it  to  Spain.  Admiral  Meade  is  one  of 
these.  He  delivered  a  lecture  at  Chick- 
ering  Hall  on  Wednesday  week  illustrated 
by  bloodthirsty  stereopticon  views.  He 
had  primed  himself  for  Great  Britain,  and 
was  evidently  disturbed  to  find  Spain 
filling  so  large  a  part  of  the  Jingo  hori- 
zon. For  this  reason  he  gave  a  coneider- 
able  part  of  his  time  to  showing  that  the 
action  of  Congress  on  Cuban  affairs  was 
unjustifiable  and  ill-timed.  If  we  grant 
belligerent  rights  to  the  Cuban  rebels, 
he  said,  we  give  the  Spaniards  th^  right 
to  board  and  overhaul  and  capture  on  sus- 
picion American  vessels  anywhere  out- 
side a  marine  league  of  our  coast.  The 
exercise  of  this  right  would  so  exasperate 
our  citizens  that  it  might  lead  to  a  war 
with  Spain.  Indeed!  We  fancy  we  hear  Bill 
Chandler  asking  why  that  should  be  consi- 
dered an  objection.  Some  Princeton  stu- 
dents, with  a  lack  of  taste  that  ought  to  be 
rebuked  by  the  professor  of  sesthetics,  on 
Thursday  evening  hanged  in  ePgy  the 
heir  to  the  throne  of  Spain,  who  s  about 
nine  years  of  age.  A  crowd  of  ir**iers  in 
Leadville,  Colorado,  built  a  bcunro  in  the 
street  in  order  to  bum  the  Si  nish  flag. 
They  had  great  difficulty  in  identifying 


it  in  the  stock  of  a  dry-goods  dealer  in 
that  town,  but  they  found  something  that 
answered  the  purpose  and  they  put  it  on 
the  funeral  pile.  These  students  and 
miners  will  be  much  surprised  to  learn 
that  Admiral  Meade  is  not  in  favor  of 
a  war  with  Spain.  Isn't  war  the  thing 
we  have  been  ramping  and  raving  for,  ever 
since  the  middle  of  December?  But  we 
ought  to  discriminate,  says  Meade,  be- 
cause Spain  was  friendly  to  us  during  the 
Revolution  and  during  the  civil  war.  She 
did  not  sent  out  any  Alabamaa  or  any 
blockade-runners.  Chandler  and  the  stu- 
dents and  miners  might  very  well  reply 
that  that  was  probably  because  she  didn't 
have  any,  and  at  all  events  that  Great 
Britain  paid  for  her  fun  with  $15,000,000 
gold.  Would  you  take  her  money  and 
then  fight  her  for  the  same  score  after- 
ward ?  No,  Mr.  Meade,  you  cannot  divert 
us  from  the  Hidalgoes  and  the  Inquisition 
by  any  such  chaff  as  that 


"What  is  the  war  news  to-day?"  is 
the  inquiry  which  citizens  habitually  ask 
each  other  nowadays.  On  Friday  it  was 
this,  according  to  the  Tribune*8  Old 
Pensioner  at  Washington : 

*'  The  f eeliog  of  irritation  with  the  President 
and  bis  sssociatee  baa  been  growiog  more  and 
more  acute  at  tbe  capitol  for  Bome  time.  Thos 
far  tbere  has  been  notbing  but  talk  on  t^e  sub- 
ject. Bitter  speeches  have  been  made  in  both 
Donses,  and  stm  more  bitter  talk  bas  been  In- 
dalged  in  tbe  doak- rooms.  Tbe  general  dis- 
conteDt  bas  ripened,  and  the  sitoation  seems 
favorable  for  a  direct  issue  to  be  made,  now 
tbat  Mr.  Cleveland  indicates  a  purpose  to  dis- 
regard tbe  practically  unaoiBMos  expression  of 
opinion  by  both  houses  on  tbe  Cuban  question. 
By  the  most  oatspoken  opponents  of  tbe  Presi- 
dent it  is  now  said  that  if  the  Administration 
pockets  tbe  Caban  concurrent  resolutions,  a 
joint  resolution  will  be  passed  and  renaased 
over  tte  Presidential  yeto,  and  tbat  if  Mr. 
Cleveland  sUUfortber  persists  in  ignoring  tbe 
wisbes  of  Congress,  the  proper  remedy  will  be 
found  in  the  instttntion  of  proceedings  for  im- 
It." 


We  CHUiDt  think  of  anything  more  whole- 
some at  the  present  tioM  than  an  im- 
peachment of  somebody  fbr  something. 
Anything  which  will  draw  attention  away 
from  foreign  countries  and  fix  it  strongly 
on  our  own  concerns  will  be  a  great  bless- 
ing, and  we  can  imagine  nothing  so  wnll 
calculated  to  cure  the  prevailing  hysteria 
and  to  cause  introspection  and  searching 
of  hearts  as  an  impeachment  of  the  Presi- 
dent. The  grounds  for  impeachment  are 
unimportant  Nothing  could  be  more  silly 
than  the  idea  of  impeaching  him  for  the 
exercise  of  a  discretion  committed  exclu- 
sively to  the  executive.  But  that  is  of  no 
oonsequence— nothing  is  of  any  conse- 
quence in  these  times.  What  we  need  is  a 
change  of  excitement.  We  have  become 
raw  on  our  foreign  side,  and  we  want  to 
be  bruised  in  a  new  place.  Give  us  an 
impeachment  by  all  means,  if  not  of  the 
President,  then  of  Secretary  Carlisle  for 
awarding  the  leavings  of  the  bond  sale  to 
Mr.  Morgan,  or  of  Secretary  Morton  for 


208 


Tlie   IN^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1602 


stopping  the  free  distribution  of  cabbage 
seeds. 

The  furious  (or  feigned)  indignation  of 
Western  Congressmen  over  the  President's 
home-mtssionary  address  is  truly  comic. 
Mr.  Cleveland's  remarks  were  but  the  or- 
dinary platitudes  of  such  occasions,  only 
made  a  little  more  wooden  and  meaning- 
less than  ordinary.  He  drew  it  exceedingly 
mild  compared  with  many  an  impassioned 
address  on  the  same  subject.  The  usual 
form  of  appeal  is  to  picture  the  West  as 
hotly  contended  for  by  the  devii  and  good 
angels,  with  the  chances  decidedly  in  fa- 
vor of  the  devil  unless  the  mission  debt  is 
speedily  paid  off  and  contributions  in- 
creased. Home-missionary  gatherings  are 
so  accustomed  to  having  the  battle  of 
Armageddon  fought  before  their  very  eyes, 
with  horns,  hoofs,  and  forked  tail  well  in 
evidence,  that  the  President's  gentle  ar- 
raying of  **  tendencies  *'  and  **  disposi- 
tions" against  each  other  seems  tame 
enough.  Moreover,  the  free-silver  West- 
erners are  ludicrously  ignorant  of  Presby- 
terian home-mission  work  if  they  think  an 
endorsement  of  it  means  a  fling  at  their 
benighted  condition.  Quite  the  majority 
of  Presbyterian  home  missionaries  are,  we 
believe,  laboring  east  of  the  Mississippi. 
Some  are  in  New  England,  many  in  New 
York,  hundreds  in  Ohio  and  Indiana  and 
Illinois.  How  do  the  raging  Montana  and 
Idaho  statesmen  know  that  the  President 
did  not  refer  to  the  need  of  converting  the 
gold-bugs  of  the  East  from  the  error  of 
their  way? 


How  completely  public  interest  in  the 
legitimate  work  of  Congress  has  had  to 
give  way  to  the  artificial  excitement  over 
congressional  fireworks,  is  well  instanced 
by  the  general  indifference  to  the  highly 
important  amendments  to  the  legislative 
appropriation  bill  passed  by  the  House 
last  week.  These  amendments  involved  a 
complete  readjustment  of  the  salaries  of 
United  States  Marshals  and  District  At- 
torneys. It  is  estimated  that  a  saving  to 
the  Government  of  $200,000  a  year  will  be 
effected  by  the  changes.  The  labor  ex- 
pended in  drawing  the  bill  was  arduous, 
and  the  task  of  piloting  it  through  the 
House  most  difficult.  Yet  the  men  who 
did  this  important  work,  and  the  whole 
discussion,  in  fact,  were  all  but  ignored 
by  the  press.  The  Washington  corre- 
spondents report  eagerly  and  minutely  all 
the  pyrotechnics,  send  out  all  sorts  of 
rumors  about  wars,  and  dissensions  in  the 
cabinet,  and  partisan  and  Presidential 
manoeuvring,  but  have  only  to  say,  weari- 
ly and  with  an  air  of  huge  disgust,  of  this 
real  work  of  Congress,  **  The  House  then 
resumed  consideration  of  the  legislative 
appropriation  bill." 


The  memorial  of  the  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce, addressed  to  thecommercial  bodies 
and  business  men  of  the  United  States, 
on  the  subject  of  sound  money  may  have 


the  effect  possibly  of  hstping  some  of  the 
Presidential  candidates  to  make  up  their 
minds  on  the  question.  It  invites  the  co- 
operation of  the  bodies  and  persons  ad- 
dressed **  in  an  effort  to  create  a  strong 
public  opinion  in  behalf  of  an  unequivocal 
declaration  by  the  political  conventions  of 
both  of  the  great  parties  in  favor  of  the 
maintenance  of  our  existing  standard,  and 
of  the  elimination  of  all  doubtful  expres- 
sions in  respect  to  the  reopening  of  the 
mints  of  the  United  States  to  the  free 
coinage  of  silver."  All  citizens  are  urged 
to  exert  themselves  in  favor  of  the  elec- 
tion of  delegates  to  the  national  conven- 
tions who  will  favor  such  a  platform  de- 
claration. An  organized  movement  of 
this  kind  by  the  men  who  represent  the 
business  interests  and  property  of  the  land 
cannot  fail  to  have  a  beneficial  effect  both 
upon  the  conventions  and  upon  candi- 
dates. The  spectacle  of  ten  or  a  dozen 
Republican  candidates  **  standing  dumb" 
upon  what  is  the  leading  issue  of  the  day 
is  one  which  is  not  to  be  contemplated 
with  indifference.  No  man  can  be  trusted 
to  withstand  bad  financial  legislation 
after  he  has  been  elected  President  who 
has  not  the  moral  courage  to  say  he  was 
opposed  to  it  before  election. 


The  Cincinnati  Commercial  Oazette 
had  a  most  tempting  headline  on  Monday 
week— "The  Financial  Question:  Views 
of  the  Leading  Republican  Candidates  for 
the  Presidency."  At  last,  then,  we  said 
to  ourselves,  the  dumb  have  found  their 
voice.  The  Gazette  went  on  to  say  that 
it  had  telegraphed  to  all  the  candidates 
for  **  a  clear  definition  of  your  position  on 
the  money  question,"  and  that  the  replies 
would  be  found  below.  Below  was  found 
a  telegram  from  Quay  saying  that  "if 
possible  we  must  preserve  the  unity  of  the 
party  '^ ;  one  from  Elkins  declaring  that 
he  was  "  in  favor  of  sound  money  " — and 
that  was  all.  In  derision  of  its  own 
tongue-tied  candidate,  the  Oazette  pub- 
lished a  telegram  from  McKinley  perfect- 
ly blank;  another  from  the  bold  Reed,  also 
blank;  Davis,  Manderson,  Allison,  Cul- 
lom,  and  Morton — all  blank.  Such  scorn- 
ful treatment  is  well  deserved.  As  far  as 
the  country  knows,  the  minds  of  all  these 
candidates  are  as  blank  as  their  telegrams 
on  the  money  question.  They  are  all  your 
true  metaphysicians'  tabula  rasa  on 
which  the  majority  of  the  convention  can 
write  whatever  it  pleases — 16  to  1,  or  60 
to  1,  gold,  silver,  or  lead.  If  their  views 
do  not  suit,  they  can  be  altered.  But  was 
there  ever  before  a  party  of  great  moral 
ideas,  only  three  months  away  from  its  na- 
tional convention,  left  absolutely  in  igno- 
rance of  the  opinions  of  its  leading  men 
and  Presidential  candidates  on  the  one 
great  question  at  issue  ? 


Secretary  Hoke  Smith's  wise  action 
in  regard  to  forest  preservation  is  worthy 
of  the  heartiest  commendation.  He  has 
called  upon  the  first  forestry  experts    in 


the  land,  with  Prof.  Charles  Sprague 
Sargent  at  their  head,  to  make  a 
thorough  personal  investigation  of  the 
present  condition  of  our  preserves  and 
report  to  Congress  the  results  of  their  in- 
quiry, including  in  their  report  a  compre- 
hensive forestry  policy  for  adoption  by  the 
Gk>vernment.  This  is  the  use  of  expert 
ability  which  we  have  so  often  advocated 
in  reference  to  matters  of  much  less  public 
importance,  and  which  is  to  be  hailed  with 
joy  wherever  it  appears.  In  the  face  of  a 
report  from  such  a  committee,  Congre^ 
will  have  no  excuse  for  listening  to  the 
specious  arguments  of  the  champions  of 
timber  thieves,  railway  grabbers,  and 
other  depredators  of  our  forest  preserves^ 
but  will  be  obliged  to  adopt  for  the  coun- 
try a  scientific  and  adequate  policy  which 
will  protect  and  develop  the  preserves  for 
the  enjoyment  and  benefit  of  the  whole 
country.  Secretary  Smith  has  performed 
a  genuine  public  service  which  will  be  re- 
membered in  his  favor  long  after  he  has- 
passed  out  of  office.  It  is  so  seldom  that 
anything  in  the  way  of  really  enlightened 
public  policy  comes  out  of  Washington 
that  one  feels  like  appointing  a  day  of 
thanksgiving  when  it  appears. 


Mr.  Joseph  Nimmo,  jr.,  formerly  Chief 
of  the  Bureau  of  Statistics,  publishes  a 
pamphlet  on  the  subject  of  the  Nicaragua 
Canal  which  ought  to  gain  some  attention 
in  Congress.  He  says  first  that  there 
"  has  never  been  any  investigation  made 
by  a  committee  of  Congress,  nor  by  the 
executive  branch  of  the  Government  in 
pursuance  of  any  order  of  Congress,  for 
the  purpose  of  ascertaining  the  amount  of 
tonnage  which  would  annually  pasa 
through  the  proposed  Nicaragua  Canal." 
This  is  true.  In  like  manner  the  pro- 
moters of  the  Corinth  Canal  in  Greece 
went  on  without  making  any  inquiry  of 
this  kind,  and  now  that  their  work  i» 
completed  they  find  that  the  traffic  is  not 
sufficient  to  pay  the  cost  of  keeping  the 
canal  in  operation^  It  is  true  that  the 
two  cases  are  not  parallel,  since  the  jour- 
ney around  Cape  Malea  is  an  affair  of 
only  a  few  days,  while  around  Cape  Horn 
it  is  an  affair  of  months.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  is  a  Panama  canal  in  actual 
progress,  which  is  pronounced  feasible  on 
the  present  plan  of  lockage,  and  which 
will  be  in  competition  with  that  of  Nica- 
ragua. Therefore  the  whole  traffic  can- 
not be  assigned  to  one  of  them.  Mr.  Nim- 
mo estimates  the  whole  amount  of  ship- 
ping passing  through  the  isthmus  at  not 
more  than  500,000  tons  annually.  He 
says  that  in  the  year  1890  the  Nicaragua 
Canal  Company  asked  the  New  York 
Chamber  of  Commerce  to  endorse  their 
project  on  the  basis  of  a  statement  that 
their  traffic  would  be  six  to  eight  million 
tons  annually.  "  This  statement  having 
been  referred  to  me,"  he  continues,  "  I 
found  it  to  be  the  merest  statistical  juggle. 
I  have  a  copy  of  that  statement  and  should 
be  glad  to  submit  it  to  an  official  invasti^ 


March  12,  1896] 


Tlie   IN"atioii. 


209 


gmtloQ,  In  making  up  their  protpectus, 
the  Nicaragua  Canal  Company  appeara  to 
hare  diTided  the  ooet  of  their  project  by 
two  and  to  hate  multiplied  the  tonnage 
likely  to  pa«  through  it  by  twenlyJ"^ 


Other  objections  cited  by  Mr.  Nimmo 
are  that  the  calm  belt  on  either  side  of 
Nicaragua  forbida  that  sailing  reaeels 
ahall  ever  be  employed  on  the  Nicaragua 
Canal  route;  that  no  analogy  exists  be- 
tween the  Suei  Canal  and  that  of  Nica- 
ragua, because  the  former  is  a  sea-level 
canal  and  has  no  railway  competitors, 
while  the  latter  requires  220  feet  of  lock- 
age and  will  have  thirteen  railway  com- 
petitors; that  all  fast  freight  and  nearly 
all  passenger  traffic  between  the  Atlantic 
and  the  Pacific  Coasts  of  America  must 
continue  to  go  by  rail;  that  none  of  the 
commerce  of  Europe  with  Asia  will  seek 
the  Nicaragua  route  since  the  distance  ia 
greater  than  via  Suez;  and  finally  that 
*'  a  fair  investigation  of  the  supposed  po- 
litical and  military  aspects  of  the  Nica- 
ragua Canal  scheme  will  prove  that  it  is 
of  very  small  importance  from  thoee  points 
of  view.*'  Accordingly,  Mr.  Nimmo  pro- 
poses that  before  the  €k>vernment  is  com- 
mitted in  any  way  to  extend  pecuniary 
aid  by  lending  its  mofiey  or  its  credit  to 
the  Nicaragua  Canal,  it  shall  order  an  in- 
veatigation  embracing  the  whole  question 
*  of  traffic  and  cost,  set  forth  in  detail,  so 
that  the  figures  can  be  tested  by  ktatisti- 
ciana  and  engineers.  This  is  surely  a  rea- 
sonab!e  request,  but  Congress  is  laboring 
under  emotional  insanity  to  such  a  de- 
gree that  nothing  whicl)  looks  like  de- 
liberation, if  it  relates  to  foreign  affairs, 
has  much  chance  of  success. 


Agitatk>n  in  the  South  against  the  homi- 
cklal  pistol-carrying  habit  makes  slow 
progress  against  the  prevailing  sentiment 
which  would  not  deprive  a  citlsen  and  a 
*' gentleman*'  of  the  right  '*to  carry  a 
gun.*'  To  date  there  is  to  be  recorded 
the  passage  by  the  Mississippi  Legislature 
of  a  law  increasing  the  penalties  for  carry- 
ing concealed  weapons,  and  the  defeat  in 
the  South  Carolina  Legislature  of  a  some- 
what similar  bill.  The  current  belief  at 
the  South  ia  that  the  law  against  the  pia- 
tol-pockat  places  the  law-abiding  citizen 
at  the  mercy  of  the  lawless.  This  belief 
finds  expreasion  in  newspaper  editorials 
and  in  the  published  views  of  officers  of 
the  law,  and  now  it  has  been  given  place 
in  the  report  of  the  grand  jury  of  the 
Criminal  Court  of  New  Orleana.  The 
judge  having  directed  the  attention  of  the 
jury  to  tlie  subject,  that  body  declares 
that,  although  the  eleven  cases  of  shoot- 
ing which  came  before  them  emphasized 
the  truth  of  the  opinions  expressed  by  the 
judge,  yet  they  believe  that  **the  best 
good  to  the  community  can  be  done  by 
the  repeal  of  the  law,"  and  **  by  allowing 
any  man  the  right  to  carry  weapons,  con- 
cealed or  not,  the  right  which  the  Con- 
sfitutioQ  of  the  United   States  granted 


him  in  token  of  hia  indiTkloal  freedom 
and  responsibility  as  a  citiien."  The  law 
should  be  aboUahed,  the  jury  urges,  be- 
cauae  it  **  does  not  protect  the  law-abiding 
citizen,  but  the  criminal."  Only  as  an 
alternative  proposition,  "  if  the  law  muat 
stand,"  is  there  a  suggestion  of  more  ri- 
gorous penalties.  Thsre  is  no  doubt  that 
this  presentment  of  the  New  Orleans 
grand  jury  expresses  the  sentiment  of  very 
many  people  of  that  and  of  other  places 
in  the  South— people,  too,  who  would  be 
offended  if  told  that  they  were  not  good 
citizens.  It  is  a  manifestation  of  that  lack 
of  respect  for  and  reliance  upon  the  law 
which  has  its  more  emphatic  expression 
in  the  execution  of  the  judgments  of  the 
mob. 

We  regret  to  have  to  say  that  the  out- 
look for  a  peaceable  settlement  between 
the  American  and  British  contingents  of 
the  Salvation  Army  is  gloomy.  Balling- 
ton  Booth  has  opened  a  headquarters  for 
the  new  American  Army  in  this  city,  and 
is  now  looking  for  a  name  for  it.  Se- 
ceders  from  the  British  ranks  are  report- 
ed daily,  aod  they  will  be  put  into  a  new 
uniform  as  soon  as  the  style  of  it  can  be 
decided  upon.  In  the  meantime  the  re- 
lations between  the  rival  camps  hsTS 
been  much  strained  by  the  arrival  from 
England  of  a  Salvation  Commissioner 
who  is  said  to  be  the  "  ablest  financier  in 
the  whole  Army."  He  is  going  to  examine 
the  accounts  and  to  see  to  it  that  all  the 
property  of  the  American  Salvation 
branch  is  transferred  to  the  British  au- 
thorities. There  is  something  decidedly 
ominous  in  this  proceeding.  Everybody 
familiar  with  the  Britiah  character  knows 
that  there  will  be  a  desperate  fight  for 
every  penny  of  that  property.  Not  a  cent 
will  be  yielded  without  a  struggle,  no 
matter  how  good  American  its  quality 
may  be.  In  fact,  its  American  quali^ 
will  add  fury  to  the  pursuit  of  it. 


If  the  Italian  diaaster  serves  no  other 
purpose,  it  is  to  be  hoped  it  will  help  to 
call  the  attention  of  modem  nations  to  the 
results  of  the  military  mania  which  is  now 
disturbing  the  Ckiristian  world.  Italy  is 
ons  of  ths  poorest  countries  in  Europe. 
Taxation  has  there  reached  the  last  limit 
of  endurance.  After  the  unification  of 
the  kingdom,  there  was  sverything  to  be 
done  in  the  way  of  reforms  in  education, 
administration,  taxation,  and  communica- 
tion, for  Italy  came  out  of  the  hands  of 
her  oppressors  a  hundred  years  behind 
the  rest  of  Europe  in  many  of  the  es- 
sentials of  civilization.  But  shs  had 
hardly  got  free  and  independent  when 
she  set  up  an  army  of  600,000  men,  and  a 
navy  of  12  battle-ahips,  4  **  port-defence  " 
ships,  61  armored  cruisers,  and  147  tor- 
pedo*lx>ata,  and  joined  the  great  military 
••Triple  Alliance."  We  know  all  that 
may  be  aaid  for  this,  as  matter  of  public 
policy— the  uae  of  the  army  in  assimilating 
the  population,  and  the  danger  from 
French  jealousy.     We  will  admit  that  it 


may  be  defended ;  but  we  beg  our  Jingoes 
to  mark  what  followed.  Finding  herself 
in  possession  of  the  army  and  navy,  just 
like  a  poor  man  who  has  moved  into  a 
large  house,  she  concluded  she  must  have 
what  other  nations  possessing  the  same 
armed  force  had,  in  the  way  of  •*  colonial 
expansion.'*  She  must  have  some  **  na- 
tives*' to  fight  and  subjugate,  as  the 
French  and  Germans  and  Russians  and 
English  had.  She  must  have  **  colonial 
expansion,"  as  the  medieval  kings  had  to 
have  their  wars,  and  as  our  Jingoes  must 
have  *'  keys  "  and  islands  and  canals  and 
trembling  Dago  dependents.  So  she  went 
into  Africa  to  found  colonies.  She  estab- 
lished by  hook  and  by  crook  an  Italian 
protectorate  of  Menelek,  King  of  Shoa,  in 
May,  1889,  and  in  October  of  the  same 
year  •*  a  mutual  protectorate."  But  Me- 
nelek is  warlike,  has  secured  plenty  of 
rifles  since  then,  has  a  powerful  and  fairly 
disciplined  force,  and  does  not  want  to  be 
protected.  To  make  a  long  story  short, 
he  thinks  he  can  clear  the  Italians  out  of 
Africa,  and  he  has  defeated  them  in  seve- 
ral serious  encounters,  and  now  in  a  great 
battle,  with  a  serious  loss  in  men,  guns, 
and  above  all  in  prestige  and  self-confi- 
dence. All  is  dismay,  confusion  at  home, 
the  Crispi  Ministry  is  overthrown,  and  the 
kingdom  is  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy; 
but  reinforcements  are  rushing  forward, 
and  there  will  probably  be  other  battles 
and  more  defeats.  It  is  no  longer  suffi- 
cient for  a  people  to  be  happy,  peaceful, 
industrious,  well  educated,  lightly  taxed. 
It  must  have  somebody  afraid  of  it.  What 
does  a  nation  amount  to  if  nobody  is  afraid 
of  it  ?  Not  a  ••  fico  secco,"  as  King  Hum- 
bert would  say. 


The  thing  which  is  making  the  Italian 
Oovemment  most  uneasy  is  the  effect  of 
the  Abyssinian  defeat  on  the  Triple  Alli- 
ance. Seeing  how  Menelek  tasks  their 
powera,  (Germany  and  Austria  may  well 
.aak  what  they  could  do  against  France 
and  Russia.  It  is  the  more  annoying  and 
depressing  because  Italy  has  not  been 
able  to  achieve  a  aingle  military  or  naval 
triumph,  email  or  great,  since  she  became 
a  kingdom.  She  was  defeated  at  Custoa- 
za,  ths  one  land  battle  of  1866,  and  at 
Lissa,  the  one  naval  battle,  and  though 
the  army  is  a  vary  fine  one  as  far  as  phy- 
sique goes,  there  is  said  to  be  wanting 
that  atemness  of  temper  which  gives  a 
fighting  force  its  edge.  It  has  been  re- 
marked that  the  stories  and  essays  of  De 
Amicis,  who  is  the  leading  military  writer 
in  Italy,  deal  almost  exclusively  with  the 
tender  side  of  army  life— the  love  of 
mothera  and  aisters,  the  longing  for  home, 
the  affection  between  officer  and  orderly, 
the  loneliness  of  the  conscript,  the  friend- 
liness of  the  people  for  the  soldier;  in 
fact,  nearly  every  emotion  but  the  martial 
ones.  The  grim  side  of  war  does  not 
seem  to  present  itself  to  the  rank  and  file 
till  they  see  the  enemy  coming  down  od 
them. 


210 


Tlie   USTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1602 


THE  JINGOES  AND  THE  BRITISH  CASE. 
Thb  reception  of  the  British  Case  bj  our 
Jiogo  contemporaries  reminds  us  of  a 
story  told  by  Gen.  Thi^bault,  in  his  re- 
cently published  Memoirs,  of  his  recep- 
tion at  one  of  the  Paris  barriers  when  re- 
turning to  the  city  during  the  Terror.  At 
that  time  everybody  moving  about  had  to 
be  furnished  with  a  passport  certifying 
to  a  number  of  qualifications  necessary  to 
constitute  good  citizenship.  He  present- 
ed his  with  a  cheerful  confidence,  and  the 
officer  scrutinized  it  carefully.  There  was 
not  a  flaw  in  it,but  the  observation  of  the 
functionary  was,  *'  Canaille,  tu  es  trop  en 
rdgle;  je  t'arrfite  "  ( •*  Rascal,  you're  too 
regular;  I  arrest  you  ").  In  like  manner 
the  chief  fault  found  with  the  Case  is 
that  it  is  too  good.  Some  papers  main- 
tain that  it  **  proves  too  much  *';  others 
say  that  it  is  good  till  the  other  side  is 
heard.  As  it  consists  almost  wholly  in 
the  citation  of  historical  documents  pur- 
porting to  come  from  public  archives,  if 
the  other  side  upsets  it  it  must  be  in  the 
main  by  showing  that  the  documents  in 
question  are  forged  or  garbled,  or  have 
not  come  from  che  place  from  which  the 
British  say  they  have  come,  or  have  been 
overridden  by  other  documents  lying  in 
Venezuelan  archives,  and  nowhere  else. 
As  a  general  rule,  in  default  of  actual  oc- 
cupation, the  only  proof  of  ownership  of 
territory  is  long  undisputed  claim;  but, 
of  course,  where  the  territory  is  largely 
wilderness  the  question  of  constructive  oc- 
cupation arises— that  is,  the  question  how 
much  wilderness  does  occupation  of  one 
part  carry  with  it.  This  has,  we  believe, 
come  before  our  own  courts  more  than  once 
with  regard  to  the  territory  transferred  to 
us  by  Mexico  on  the  Pacific  Coast — such 
a  question,  for  instance,  as  whether  the 
ownership  of  the  mouth  of  a  river  carries 
with  it  the  ownership  of  the  headwaters. 
Such  questions  are,  however,  compara- 
tively easily  settled. 

We  have  no  intention  at  present  of  go- 
ing into  any  examination  of  the  merits  of 
the  Case.  We  merely  wish  to  point  out 
the  light  which  the  general  acknowledg- 
ment of  its  goodness  throws  on  the  way 
in  which  we  have  been  carrying  on  this 
controversy  for  the  past  year.  It  is 
now  plain,  as  we  pointed  out  last  fall, 
that  not  one  of  our  writers  on  the 
Venezuelan  side  knew  anything  about 
the  merits  of  the  case.  The  articles 
in  the  newspapers  and  magazines  were 
all  a-priori  concoctions,  that  is,  de- 
ductions from  the  writers'  conceptions  of 
the  general  disposition  of  the  English 
to  **grab"  territory  and  oppress  small 
Powers.  Whether  the  English  were  doing 
so  in  this  particular  case,  neither  Lodge, 
nor  Chandler,  nor  Morgan,  nor  Roosevelt 
had  the  smallest  idea.  But  they  argued 
away  as  if  they  were  in  full  possession  of 
all  the  British  could  say  for  themselves. 
Mr.  Roosevelt  furnishes,  in  an  article  in 
the  last  number  of  the  I^  ache  lor  of  Arte, 
an  amusing  illustration  of  the  muddle- 
headed  way  in  which  they  did  their  work. 


Writing  on  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  he  main- 
tains throughout  two  contradictory  theses, 
one  that  '*  the  Monroe  Doctrine  is  not  a 
question  of  law  at  all,  but  a  question  of 
policy,"  and  the  other  that  there  is  a 
right  and  wrong  in  the  matter,  and  that 
the  facts  might  **  show  England  to  be  in 
the  right "  in  the  Venezuelan  matter,  in 
which  case  "  well  and  good."  He  adds, 
too,  with  delightful  gravity  : 

**  A  very  able  member  of  the  New  York  bar 
remarked  the  other  day  that  he  had  not  ;et 
met  the  lawyer  who  agreed  with  Secretary 
Oloey  as  to  the  legal  interpretation  of  the 
Ifonroe  Doctrine.  Phis  remark  was  chiefly 
interesting  as  showing  the  lawyer's  own  limi- 
taUona.*' 

He  further  remarks  that  this  dictum  of 
'*  the  very  able  lawyer  "  had  **  little  more 
significance  than  if  he  had  said  that  he 
had  not  yet  met  a  dentist  who  agreed 
with  Mr.  Olney."  It  is  difficult  to  treat 
these  enfantillages  seriously.  They  make 
one  sorry  for  a  very  useful  and  upright 
man,  but  as  they  appear  in  print  they 
compel  the  observation  that  if  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine  were  all  policy  and  no  law, 
the  Venezuelan  Arguments  and  Commis- 
sions and  Caaea  would  be  as  ridiculous  aa 
the  Jingo  articles.  All  the  argumenta- 
tion on  both  sides  is  an  attempt  to  ex- 
tract a  rule  of  right  from  a  heterogeneous 
mass  of  facts. 

The  true  rule  for  volunteer  and  amateur 
publicists,  when  turning  their  attention 
to  international  questions,  would  seem  to 
be,  to  avoid  rigidly  the  assumption  of  two 
differing  characters.  If  you  appear  as  an 
advocate  of  your  country  or  a  defender  of 
her  policy,  and  a  promoter  ofjustifiable 
hostile  feeling  to  some  other  country,  you 
should  not  also  appear  as  a  jurist,  and 
profess  to  know  the  law  of  your  own  pre- 
tensions. It  is  vary  rare  indeed  that 
policy  and  law  can  be  argued  in  the  aame 
breath.  When  a  man  says,  I  care  no- 
thing about  your  law,  my  policy  is  to  do 
so  and  so  no  matter  what  you  say,  you 
meet  him  with  one  set  of  arguments. 
You  denounce  him,  and  if  need  be  fight 
him.  When  he  says  this  matter  is  one  of 
law,  and  my  case  is  so  and  so,  you  meet 
him  with  another  set.  He  appeals  to  a 
tribunal,  seen  or  unseen,  at  which  he 
must  be  met  with  facta,  and  before  which 
abuse  of  his  character  and  aspersions  on 
his  designs  are  out  of  place.  For  over  a 
year,  men  occupying  a  position  which 
ought  to  be  high  and  semi- judicial,  that 
of  United  States  Senators,  have  been  en- 
gaged in  quasi-legal  attempts  to  settle  a 
dispute  about  property  between  two  for- 
eign Powers  —  without,  as  now  appears, 
even  slight  knowledge  of  the  evidence  in 
the  case — through  newspapers,  magazines, 
and  stump  speeches,  in  which  they  main- 
tained that  Qreat  Britain  could  not  be 
the  legal  owner  of  certain  territory  in 
South  America,  because  we  disliked  to  see 
European  settlements  on  this  continent 
and  had  said  so  freely  seventy  years  ago. 

If  there  were  any  use  in  talking  to  our 
esteemed  contemporaries  on  the  same  sub- 
ject, we  would  point  out  how  much  our 


press,  and  our  mental  apparatus,  which 
is  known  to  foreigners  mainly  through 
the  press,  are  discredited  by  this  same 
application  of  our  vituperative  processes 
to  quasi-judicial  questions.  Invective  is 
ruled  out  of  all  courts  in  the  world  which 
sit  on  questions  of  law,  and  it  is  not  ask- 
ing too  much  of  newspapers  to  confess 
their  incompetency  to  pass  on  the  legal 
rights  of  even  the  most  disliked  and  de- 
spised foreign  nation  by  means  of  general 
denunciation.  As  we  have  heretofore 
more  than  once  pointed  out.  Great  Brit- 
ain and  Venezuela  stood  before  us,  as  re- 
garded their  historical  claims,  on  pre- 
cisely the  same  footing  morally.  Lord 
Saliabury  was  entitled  to  exactly  as  much 
credit  as  Sefior  Crespo,  but  no  more. 
G^at  Britain  was  just  as  likely  to  be 
right  as  Venezuela — most  travellers  would 
say  more  so;  but  we  were  not  travellers, 
we  were  simple  observers  or  mediators. 
Weakness  has  no  more  to  do  with  right 
than  strength.  The  big  man  is  just  as 
much  entitled  to  his  watch  and  purse  as 
the  little  one. 

These  are  the  obvious  moral  objectiona 
to  our  goings  on  about  Venezuela  during 
the  last  twelve  months.  The  political 
onea  are  still  stronger.  We  have,  while 
nominally  trying  to  see  justice  done, 
roused  the  greatest  of  all  enemies  to  jus- 
tice, the  one  which  cares  least  for  the  dis- 
tinction'between  right  and  wrong,  the  war 
spirit.  We  have  seriously  dimmed  in  the 
minds  of  a  large  body  of  the  American 
people  the  idea  of  our  own  subjection  to 
the  moral  law  in  our  international  rela- 
tions. We  have  developed  a  fierce  desire 
to  display  any  wiiere,  and  for  any  reason, 
our  power  to  do  violence,  to  drown  argu- 
ments, to  silence  law,  to  strengthen 
throughout  the  world  the  reverence  for 
might  as  against  right,  and  to  treat  the 
services  or  uses  of  foreign  nations  to  civi- 
lization and  humanity  as  of  small  conse- 
quence compared  to  the  demonstration  of 
our  ability  to  destroy  their  commerce, 
ruin  their  cities,  shut  up  their  colleges, 
and  slaughter  their  young  men,  without 
similar  damage  to  ourselves.  This,  and 
more,  we  owe  to  our  pinchbeck  jurists, 
and  they  ought  to  be,  and  we  hope  are, 
ashamed  of  their  work. 


CHANGE  WITHOUT  VARIETY. 

Thbbb  was  a  general  expectation,  which 
we  confess  we  shared,  that  the  present 
Congress  would  be  a  great  improvement 
on  its  predecessor,  to  which,  on  account 
of  its  ignorance  and  obstinacy,  we  gave 
the  name  of  **  brutish  Congress."  We 
were  compelled  to  admit  that  the  country 
had  made  a  great  mistake  in  expecting 
more  from  the  Democrats  than  it  got  from 
Mr.  Reed's  business  Congress  which 
passed  the  McKinley  bill.  The  Fifty- 
third  Congress  turned  out  to  be  made  of 
just  the  same  material  as  the  Fifty-first 
It  differed  simply  in  having  a  different  di- 
rection for  its  evil  activity.  Instead  dt 
devoting  itself  to  levying  enormous  trfimta 


March  12,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation, 


211 


from  the  community  for  the  benefit  of  the 
manufacturers,  it  devoted  iteelf  to  playing 
trldn  with  the  currency,  and  trying  to 
flaeoe  people  who  had  more  than  $4,000  a 
year.  But  each  of  theee  linea  of  action 
having  turned  out  disastrously  for  the 
party  which  pursued  it,  we  felt  sure  that 
the  Fifty-fourth  Congress  would  either 
hit  on  some  middle  course,  or  do  nothing 
at  all,  and  adjourn  early. 

There  were  signs  early  last  year  that  an 
attempt  would  be  made  to  get  excite- 
ment out  of  foreign  questions,  but  the 
promoters  of  this  policy  made  little  im- 
pression on  the  popular  mind.  The  total 
failure  of  the  Hawaiian  enterprise  showed 
how  little  prepared  the  country  was  for 
any  sort  of  Jingo  activity.  The  way  in 
which  the  President  dealt  with  that  ques- 
tion, which  we  happen  to  know  was  the 
conception  of  Mr.  Gresham's  thoroughly 
upright  and  Iqyal  mind,  gave  the  public 
a  most  comforting  assurance  of  four  years 
of  peaceful  and  legal  relations  with  for- 
eign nations,  and  of  stem  preoccupation, 
as  far  as  the  executive  could  command  it, 
with  our  own  sadly  muddled  domestic 
concerns.  Had  Mr.  Qresham  lived,  we 
feel  very  certain  these  expectations  would 
have  been  realized.  We  should  have  sat 
in  tranquillity  under  the  shadow  of  inter- 
national law,  of  American  precedents, 
and  of  a  decent  regard  for  the  good  opi- 
nion of  mankind. 

We  are  bound  to  presume  that  when 
lir.  Olney  wrote  his  despatch  in  July  last, 
he  was  under  the  impression,  as  we  were, 
that  the  new  Congress  was  in  some  way 
better  than  the  previous  one,  made  up  of 
better  material,  and,  in  virtue  of  a  longer 
experience,  filled  with  more  concern  for 
the  real  interests  of  the  country.  But  #e 
can  hardly  make  this  excuse  for  Mr. 
Cleveland's  message  in  December.  Con- 
gress was  then  sitting,  and  the  President 
must  have  known  how  little  it  differed 
from  its  predecessors,  how  small  a  stock 
of  knowledge  of  public  affairs,  or  credit, 
or  finance,  or  currency  it  brought  to  the 
work  of  legislation,  and  how  ready  it  would 
be  to  drop  such  things  for  a  prize-fight,  a 
bull-fight,  a  cock-fight,  or  a  war,  and  how 
difficult  it  would  be,  if  it  once  got  away 
on  a  Junket  of  this  kind,  ever  to  bring  it 
back  to  sober  business.  There  is  a  story 
in  the  lifb  of  the  Vicar  of  Morwen,  a  wild 
Cornish  parish,  of  the  impossibility  in  the 
last  century  of  keeping  a  congregation  in 
church  on  Sunday,  after  the  news  came 
in  that  there  was  a  wreck  ashore.  All 
the  clergyman  asked  under  these  condi- 
tions was,  that  they  would  give  him  a 
fair  chance  l^  waiting  till  he  got  down 
tnm  the  pulpit  When  Mr.  Cleveland 
sent  in  his  Venezuela  massage,  he  virtu- 
ally announced  that  there  was  a  wreck 
ashore,  but  he  has  found  out  that  he  must 
take  his  chance  of  getting  down  to  the 
beach  with  the  rest  There  is  no  con- 
sideration for  him  on  account  of  his  pas- 
toral character. 

We  hope  he  now  sees  the  character  of 
tba  body  into  which  ha  flung  this  tsrribls 


firebrand.  He  suggested  to  a  body  of  idle, 
ignorant,  lazy,  and  not  very  scrupulous 
men  an  exciting  game,  which  involved  no 
labor  and  promised  lots  of  fun,  and  which 
would  be  likely  to  furnish  them  with  the 
means  of  annoying  and  embarrassing  him. 
They  are  richly,  as  he  must  see,  availing 
themselves  of  their  opportunity.  They 
are  determined  to  find  somebody  to  threat- 
en or  challenge,  and  even  if  he  gets  Spain 
away  from  them,  they  will  find  another 
victim.  They  are  out  for  a  lark,  and  if 
they  can  do  nothing  else  will  **  clean  out 
a  saloon.**  We  are  scurry  for  him  in  his 
trouble  about  these  concurrent  and  joint 
resolutions,  but  we  should  have  been 
sorrier  if  he  had  got  off  without  any  trou- 
ble. It  would  be  a  bad  thing  for  our 
government  if  the  "digging  of  holes" 
were  pure  pastime.  €k>vemments  cannot 
be  carried  on  for  any  great  length  of  time 
in  this  way.  We  cannot  convert  our  whole 
territory  into  a  rabbit  warren,  with  Presi- 
dents and  Congressmen  sticking  out  of 
the  ground  here  and  there.  Agriculture, 
trade,  and  commerce  and  all  the  serious 
business  of  life  have  to  be  attended  to. 

But  one  thing  is  certain,  neither  the 
Fifty-fifth,  nor  the  Fifty-sixth,  nor  the 
Fifty-seventh  Congress  will  be  any  better 
than  these  Ikst  three,  or  so  good  as  these 
last  three,  if  there  is  not  a  strong  and  ge- 
neral effort  by  all  classes  and  conditions, 
and  above  all  by  those  who  have  the  ear 
of  the  public,  with  voice  and  pen,  to  re- 
vive the  practice  of  honest  and  frank 
popular  discussion.  There  is  not  much  use 
in  correcting  the  errors  of  the  present 
Congressmen  with  regard  to  war,  because 
thsy  are  sure  to  begin  to  commit  fresh 
ones  in  some  other  field.  Their  goings  on 
about  war  are  the  products  of  precisely 
the  same  mental  conditions  as  the  goings 
on  about  currency  and  taxation.  Childish 
in  ons,  childish  in  all.  The  reason  why  a 
Congressman  is  so  ready  to  fight  England 
or  Spain  is  ths  reason  why  he  thinks  the 
Almighty  has  put  silver  and  gold  in  the 
ground  in  the  proportion  of  16  to  1,  and 
why  he  thinks  credit  is  an  invention  of  the 
money  power  for  the  oppression  of  the 
poor.  We  are  not  contending  with  political 
errors  so  much  as  with  sheer,  crass  igno* 
ranee,  with  imperfect  civilization,  and  in- 
complete mental  development.  And  the 
next  Congress  will  be  just  as  bad  as  this 
ons,  and  some  great  calamity  will  overtake 
us  if  everybody  does  not  get  into  the  way 
of  speaking  out  his  honest  thought. 

Our  present  Congressmen  are  the  pro- 
duct of  thirty  years  of  government  by  in- 
trigue, concealment,  and  bribery.  Open 
discussion,  in  which  public  men  say  sx- 
actly  what  they  think  without  tear,  seems 
to  have  died  out  with  slavery  and  the  war. 
There  are  many  men  in  Congress  who 
think  about  all  this  tomfoolery  exactly  as 
the  dvUized  world  thinks,  but  either  hold 
their  peace  about  it  or  pretend  to  admire 
it,  because  they  fear  that  if  they  did  not 
«'  take  a  hand  in  the  racket,"  they  wouk) 
lose  their  influence.  -  There  are  others, 
lika  Mr.  GUiarman,  who  ezeuae  themselvsa 


for  fathering  some  monstrous  folly,  like 
his  silver  bill  or  the  Cuban  resolutions, 
by  pretending  that  they  did  it  to  ••  head 
off  '*  somsthing  far  worse.  The  result  is 
that  both  Congress  and  the  public  are 
left  without  that  instruction  on  the  great 
topics  of  the  day,  from  competent  men  in 
public  life,  without  which  no  government 
of  a  great  nation  can  go  on.  Those  who 
speak  out  among  us  are  a  mere  handful, 
and  generally  do  it  with  bated  breath  and 
many  placatory  clauses.  Our  present 
Government,  for  instance,  is  simply  im- 
possible for  a  community  with  an  immense 
system  of  credit  and  foreign  trade.  To 
have  an  assembly  of  breech-clouted  war- 
riors, who  are  daily  shaking  thsir  toma- 
hawks at  all  strangers,  presiding  and  legis- 
lating for  a  nation  which  has  a  stock  ex- 
change and  banks  in  every  town,  and  in 
which  the  poorest  man  is  interested  in  the 
condition  of  the  money  market,  is  an  ab- 
surdity. No  such  regime  can  last.  But 
we  shall  have  no  change  for  the  better  as 
long  as  our  leading  men  are  afraid  to  let 
the  warriors  know  that  we  have  defini* 
tively  broken  with  the  old  savage  life,  live 
by  trade  and  industry,  and  take  no  scalps. 


A  CUBAN  CATECHISM. 

(L)  Q.  What  is  belligerency  T  A.  Wag- 
ing war. 

(2.)  Q.  What  is  a  belligerent  state  T 
A.  A  state  waging  war. 

(a)  What  is  a  state  T  A.  Any  sove- 
reign political  organization  having  a  defi- 
nite territorial  extent,  regularly  organized 
military  forces,  and  an  established  gov- 
ernment. 

(4.)  Q.  Does  it  matter  what  the  origin 
of  this  organization  is  T  A.  Not  at  all. 
It  may  originate  in  the  peaceful  division 
of  one  state  into  two,  or  it  may  be  estab- 
lished by  revolutionists,  cut-throats,  and 
pirates. 

(6.)  Q.  Does  it  matter  whether  the  or- 
ganization has  been  lawful  aa  regards  the 
original  state  from  which  the  new  state 
has  become  separated  T  A.  Not  at  all. 
If  unlawful,  the  new  state  is  a  state  de 
factOf  or  in  fact ;  otherwise,  it  is  a  state 
dejure^  or  legally.    It  may  be  both. 

(6.)  Q.  Why  must  such  a  state  have 
the  features  described  in  the  answsr  to 
Question  3  to  be  recognized  as  a  belli- 
gerent T  A.  Because  without  such  fea- 
tures other  states  cannot  have  any  deal- 
ings with  it. 

(7.)  Q.  How  is  that  ?  A.  Without  po- 
litical organization,  at  the  head  of  which 
soms  human  being  or  body  of  human  be- 
ings stands,  it  is  impossible  to  communi- 
cate with  it;  without  a  definite  territorial 
extent,  it  is  impossible  to  find  it;  without 
regular  militaiy  organization  there  is  no 
discipline  or  responsibility,  and  acts  of 
violence  become  robbery  on  land  and  pi- 
racy on  the  seas. 

(a)  Q.  What  difference  does  aU  this 
make  to  another  state  T  A.  It  cannot 
compel  justice  to  \^  own  citlasns  who 
may  reside  or  transact  business  there. 


213 


Tlie   N'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1602 


(9.)  Q.  Explain  this.  A.  Unless  it  can 
collect  taxes,  it  can  pay  no  claims  against 
it ;  unless  it  has  efficient  machinery  for 
the  administration  of  justice,  it  can  re- 
dress no  wrong,  enforce  no  contract, 
and  protect  no  property;  unless  it  has 
a  regular  army,  it  cannot  insure  domes- 
tic tranquillity  or  obedience  to  its  com- 


(10.)  Q.  SupjKMing  an  insurrection  not 
to  have  military  and  political  organization, 
who  is  responsible  for  it  to  other  states  ? 
A.  The  state  against  which  the  insurrec- 
tion is  made. 

(11.)  Q.  In  case  of  such  an  insurrection 
in  Cuba,  who  is  responsible  for  destruc- 
tion of  American  property,  the  lives  of 
American  citizens,  and  the  interests  of 
such  citizens  having  business  relations 
with  the  island  ?    A.  Spain. 

(12.)  Q.  If  Cuba  were  recognized  as  a 
belligerent?    A.  Nobody. 

(13.)  Q.  If  the  United  States  should 
recognize  Cuba  under  such  circumstances 
as  a  belligerent,  what  would  its  own  posi- 
tion become?    A.  That  of  a  neutral. 

(14.)  Q.  Would  the  obligations  of  our 
citizens  be  increased  or  diminished?  A. 
Increased. 

(15.)  Q.  flow?  A.  By  the  fact  that 
whereas  now  we  can  sell  arms  and  muni- 
tions of  war  to  any  purchaser  in  Cuba, 
such  arms  and  munitions  would,  in  case 
of  a  recognition  of  belligerency,  become 
contrabrand  of  war,  and  liable  on  any  at- 
tempt at  importation  to  seizure  and  con- 
fiscation by  Spain. 

(16.)  Q.  Might  American  vessels  be  con- 
fisoated?  A.  They  might  under  certain 
circumstances. 

(17.)  Q.  What  redress  would  American 
owners  have  ?    A.  None  whatever. 

(18.)  Q.  Is  there  any  proof  that  a  bel- 
ligerent state  now  exists  on  the  island  of 
Cuba  ?    A.  None  whatever. 

(19.)  Q.  Assuming  that  to  be  the  fact, 
to  whom  can  we  look  for  protection  to 
American  interests,  or  redress  for  wrongs 
to  American  citizens,  if  belligerency  is  re- 
«cognized  ?    A.  To  nobody. 

(20 )  Q.  Why  ?  A.  Because  the  recog- 
nition of  belligerency  releasee  Spain  from 
responsibility,  without  putting  any  one  in 
her  place. 

(21.)  Q.  Why  does  it  release  Spain  from 
responsibility  ?  A.  Because  it  is  an.  an- 
nouncement by  us  that  we  believe  Cuba 
is  a  government  capable  of  assuming  the 
responsibility  that  we  demand  of  every 
state.  If  Cuba  is  not  such  a  government, 
so  much  the  worse  for  us. 

.(22.)  Q.  What  is  the  statement  that  the 
Cubans  form  a  belligerent  state?  A.  If 
made  knowingly,  a  falsehood. 

(23.)  Q.  That  being  the  case,  what  can 
you  say  of  the  Senators  and  Bepresenta- 
tivea  who  pass  a  resolution  that  the  fact 
exists  ?  A.  Some  have  made  a  false  state- 
ment, and  embodied  it  in  a  solemn  public 
act ;  some  have  behaved  like  fools ;  some 
have  done  both. 

(21)  Q.  To  give  this  resolution  practi- 
cal effect,  is  what  they  have  done  suffi- 


cient ?  A.  No;  their  resolutions  are  mere 
words. 

(25.)  Q.  What  more  is  necessary  to  ac- 
complish recognition  ?  A.  Action  by  the 
President. 

(26.)  Q.  Upon  whom,  then,  does  the  re- 
sponsibility now  rest  ?    A.  Upon  him. 

(27.)  Q.  Would  recognition  by  him  lead 
to  war  ?    A.  Very  likely. 

(28.)  Why?  A.  Because  the  commerce 
between  the  United  States  ports  and 
those  of  Cuba  is  constant,  and  some  col- 
lision between  Spanish  and  American 
ships  would  almost  certainly  occur.  An 
armed  collision  having  occurred,  it  might 
easily  become  impossible  to  restrain  the 
war  feeling  excited  on  both  sides  by  Con- 
gress and  the  press.  When  two  countries 
go  to  war,  it  is  not  generally  the  result  of 
a  deliberate  act  on  both  sides. 

(29.)  Q.  What  is  the  most  terrible  re- 
sponsibility that  any  one  can  assume? 
A.  That  of  involving  his  country  in  a 
needless  war. 

(30.)  Q.  Is  there  any  reason  for  think- 
ing that  the  President  wiU  do  this?  A. 
No. 

(31.)  A.  Why  ?  Q.  Because  he  knows, 
first,  that  Cuba  is  not  a  belligerent  state; 
second,  that  Congress  knows  it;  third, 
that  the  object  of  Congrear  in  passing 
belligerency  resolutionB  bad  nothing  to  do 
with  Cuba. 

(32.)  Q.  What  was  their  object?  A. 
To  **  put  Grover  Cleveland  in  a  hole.*' 

(33.)  Q.  Have  they  tried  this  before? 
A.  Yes. 

(34.)  Q.  Have  they  ever  succeeded  in 
doing  it  ?    A.  No. 


8TYLI8H  OPINIONS. 

AoAUf  have  we  an  example  of  how  much 
better  they  do  these  things  in  France.  To 
the  lucidity  and  logic  of  a  Frenchman, 
M.  Pierre  Lalo,  does  the  world  owe  the 
discovery  that  we  as  much  need  a  manuml 
of  fashionable  opinions  as  we  do  of  eti- 
quette and  dress.  He  has  accordingly 
issued  proposals  for  a  *  Petit  Quide  des 
Opinions  £legantes  pour  1896.'  Instead 
of  following  the  praiseworthy  *'  society  " 
editor  of  the  Tribune  into  such  discua- 
sions  as  «<  What  Men  are  Wearing  to  After- 
noon Teas,"  he  addresses  himself  to  the 
much  more  needed  task  of  telling  them 
what  they  shall  talk  about,  and  what 
views  they  shall  mllintain,  after  they  get 
to  afternoon  teas.  Clearly  perceiving 
that  a  last-year's  opinion  is' really  more 
damning  in  the  eyes  of  truly  cultivated 
people  than  a  last-year's  hat,  he  applies 
himself  to  the  work  of  giving  opinions,  to 
go  with  clothes,  of  the  latest  cut. 

A  few  samples  of  the  literary  and  artis- 
tic trousseau  he  stands  prepared  to  fur- 
nish will  show  the  merit  and  usefulness 
of  his  plan.  Shakspere,  he  tells  his 
French  patrons,  you  will  still  do  well  to 
praise  moderately;  all  you  need  to  know 
is  that  Lear  was  not  a  gay  young  lover, 
and  that  Lady  Macbeth  was  for  some 
reason  desperately  anxious  to  wash  her 


hands.  This  amount  of  knowledge,  with 
assorted  epithets,  will  amply  fit  one  for 
moving  in  the  most  select  circles.  As  for 
Gkiethe's  works,  all  you  need  to  remember 
is  that  they  contain  "a  complete  philo 
sophy  of  life  "  ;  to  read  the  books  them- 
selves would  be  a  wholly  unnecessary 
trouble.  At  the  mention  of  Ibsen's  name 
a  sacred  enthusiasm  should  glow  upon 
your  face,  and  broken  interjections — 
**  What  daring!"  •<  What  force!  "--should 
fall  from  your  lips.  It  will  be  considered 
quite  the  thing,  this  year,  to  call  him 
Henrik  the  Northman,  and  to  speak  of 
the  '*  vast  intellect "  of  this  modern  sea- 
king.  D'Annunzio  la  going  out,  and  this 
season  they  will  not  speak  of  him  in  the 
most  refined  society.  Shelley  and  Swin- 
burne will  be  casually  mentioned,  but 
only  in  certain  drawing-rooms — which,  it 
will  take  no  little  social  tact  for  you  to 
make  sure  of  in  advance.  The  Russians 
are  quite  gone  out,  and  so  you  need  not 
trouble  yourself  to  know  even  their  names. 

We  cannot  follow  M.  Lalo  through  his 
descriptions  of  musical  and  artistic  fash- 
ions, valuable  as  they  are.  They  are  di- 
rected to  French  readers,  and  hence 
scarcely  fitted  for  columns  so  carefully 
guarded  from  foreign  contamination  as 
these.  But  his  idea  is  eminently  worthy 
of  praise  and  imitation,  with  such  modifi- 
cations as  may  be  needed  to  fit  it  for  this 
climate.  Americans  are  certainly  like 
Frenchmen  in  not  being  born  with  a  full 
set  of  literary  and  artistic  opinions. 
These,  with  their  changing  styles,  have  to 
be  acquired,  even  in  this  country  of  un- 
surpassed opportunities,  just  as  knowledge 
of  fashions  in  dress  and  furnishings  has 
to  be  acquired.  With  labor-saving  guides 
and  royal  roads  to  knowledge  provided  so 
abundantly  in  the  one  ease,  why  should 
they  not  be  introduced  in  the  other  ?  It 
may  be  too  late  to  catch  this  year's  mar- 
ket, but  a  *  Guide  to  Polite  Opinions  for 
1887,'  prepared  betimes,  would  be  sure  to 
meet  with  an  enormous  sale.  We  throw 
out  the  hint,  with  characteristic  gene- 
rosity, for  what  it  is  worth. 

Such  a  guide  would  be  only  a  fit  recog- 
nition of  the  way  in  which  literature  and 
art  have  become  socialized,  so  to  speak. 
We  refer  to  the  great  truth  that  books  are 
now  valued  mainly  for  their  social  func- 
tion. They  are  read  only  because  they 
are  talked  about,  and  only  in  order  to  talk 
about  them.  Even  so,  and  with  the  limits 
thus  happily  narrowed,  an  unpleasant 
deal  of  reading  has  to  be  done  by  those 
who  aim  to  acquit  themselves  creditably 
in  the  best  society.  Buf.  a  safe  and  con- 
densed guide  would  serve  all  purposes  and 
save  much  valuable  time.  Index- learning 
of  this  kind,  that  makes  no  student  pale, 
would  recommend  itself  mightily  to  those 
who  are  compelled  to  give  as  much 
thought  to  their  complexion  as  to  their 
conversation.  This  is  the  age  of  literary 
pemmican— of  books  about  books,  con- 
densed masterpieces,  shortened  college 
courses,  and  learning  while  you  wait — and 
why  should  we  not  have  the  thing  carried 


March  12,  1896] 


Th.e    N"atiorL. 


Q13 


to  it«  logical  conclusion,  and  ready-made 
opinions  put  within  reach  of  the  humbleat 
puree? 

It  in«y  be  demanded  that  we  should 
ourselvea  essay  an  outline  of  the  kind  of 
manual  we  have  in  mind.  But  we  can- 
not prophesy  so  far  before  the  eyent. 
We  can  only  ssy  what  we  wish  might  be 
fashionabls.  If  it  were  in  our  power, 
most  gladly  would  we  ordain  the  literary 
fashions  f6r  1887  as  follows:  Criticism  this 
year  wUl  all  be  *•  genial";  all  book-notices 
will  be  ••handsome";  fdreign  fiction  will 
not  be  so  much  as  mentioned  in  good 
society;  the  k>ng-sought  American  novel 
will  be  found^  twenty  or  thirty  strong—. 
But  we  forbear.  •*  The  apprehension  of 
the  good  gives  but  the  greater  feeling  to 
the  worse."  Such  a  millennium  can 
scarcely  be  due  next  year. 

But  though  our  courage  and  capacity 
are  unequal  to  the  task,  we  can  see  in  the 
work  of  others  bright  promise  of  just  the 
sort  of  thing  needed.    Here  is  Prof.  Mat- 
thews's  *  Introduction  to  American  Lite- 
rature,* for  instance,  which  needs  but  a 
slight  extension  in  order  exactly  to  meet 
the  case.    He  has  a  '*  brief  chronology  " 
at  the  end,  in  which  we  learn  that  the 
leading  literary  events  of  1896  were  the 
publication  of  Fuller's  '  With  the  Proces- 
sion,' Howells's  •  My  Literary  Passions,' 
Roosevelt  and    Lodge's    'Hero  Tales  of 
American  History,'  and  Stockton's  '  Cap- 
tain Horn.'    This  seems  primarily  design- 
ed to  show  how  far  we  have  got  on  since, 
say,  1841,  when  such  crude  pioneers  as 
Cooper,  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  and 
Poe  were  all  we  had  to  boast  of  in  the 
publishers'  lists.    But  it  is  clear  that  a 
little  jump  forward  in  this  *'  brief  chrono- 
logy "  would  at  once  land  us  in  1806  or 
1897,  and,  by  simple  expansion  and  due 
provision  of  graded  adjectives,  give  us  in 
American   socio-literatnre  just  what  M. 
Lalo  proposes  to  furnish  in  French.    We 
have  Mr.  Roosevelt's  word  for  it  that  this 
work  of  Prof.  Matthews's, which  we  should 
like  to  see  extended  in  this  way,  is,  as  it 
would  need  to  be,  thoroughly  American. 
(It  should  be  said,  in  passing*  that  Messrs. 
Lodge  and  Roosevelt  are  just  as  firmly 
determined  to  found  a  patriotic  literature 
as  they  are  to  have  a  patriotic  war.)    Mr. 
Bunner,  too,  has  lately  explained  how  this 
author  got  his  truly  American  culture 
direct,  as  it  were,  and  not  in  the  painful 
and  roundabout  way  via  England  which 
Lowell  and  Hawthorne  had  to  pursue. 
That  Mr.  Bunner  is  an  authority  is  clear 
from   his  figuring  in   Prof.  Matthews's 
••  brief  chronology."    Se  does  Mr.  Roose- 
velt more  than  once.    Hence,  of  his  warm 
oommendation  of  Prof^  Matthews,  we  can 
say  with  Dr.  Johnson,  **  This,  if  not  cri- 
ticism, is  at  least  gratitude." 


prwenti  itMlf  it  the  BoU  of  Pope  Alexander 
VL,  dated  May  4, 1498,  in  which  that  Pontiff 
fixed  the  line  of  demarcation  of  the  domains 
of  the  Crowns  of  Spain  and  Portugal  in  Ame- 
rica. Of  Roderigo  Borgia,  who  filled  the  Holy 
See  at  that  time,  the  world  hai  held  but  spoor 
opinion;  bat  this  particalar  act  of  his  has 
rendered  him  famous,  while  other  acts  have 
proved  him  Infamous.  The  manner  in  wbicb 
the  historian  Robertson  characterizes  the 
granting  of  the  Bnll  is  sooh  as  will  not  t>e  dis- 
sented from  by  Americans.    The  following  are 

Dr.  Robertson's  words : 

• 

'*Ttie  Pope,  as  the  Vkssr  sod  reprewnUttTe  of 
Jesus  Christ,  was  supposed  to  have  a  right  of  doini- 
nioo  over  all  the  Idnsdoiiis  of  the  earth.  Alexander 
VI.,  a  pontiff  infamous  for  every  crime  which  dis- 
graces humanity,  filled  the  papal  throne  at  that 
time.  As  he  was  bom  Ferdinand's  subject,  and  rery 
solicitous  to  secure  the  protection  of  Spain  in  order 
to  facUiUto  the  execution  of  his  ambitious  schemes 
in  faTor  of  his  own  family,  he  was  extremely  will- 
lag  to  gratify  the  Spanish  monardL  By  an  act  of 
liberally  which  oost  him  nothing,  and  that  served 
to  establish  the  Jurisdiction  and  pretensions  of  the 
papal  see,  he  granted  in  full  right  to  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella  aU  the  countries  inhabited  by  Infidels  which 
they  had  discovered  or  should  discover;  and,  in  vir- 
tue of  that  power  which  he  derived  from  Jesus 
Christ,  he  conferred  on  the  Crown  of  Castile  vast 
regions,  to  the  possessioo  of  which  he  himself  was 
so  far  from  having  any  title  that  he  wasunaoquaint- 
ed  with  their  situation  and  ignorant  even  of  their 


POPS  ALEXANDER  VI.'S  BULL,  A5D 
THE  TREATY  OF  MUNSTER. 

OBoaoBTOWv,  February  11, 1806. 
Oir  opening  the  volame  entitled  *  Venesoelaa 
latsmatlonal  Law,*  the  Arsi  dooomeat  that 


Pope  Alexander  haying  glren  to  Spain 
what  did  not  belong  to  him,  one  cannot  be  sur- 
prised that  the  other  European  sovereigns  did 
-not  admit  the  exclnsiye  right  of  the  most 
CathoUc  Eang  to  the  New  World.  When 
Cabot  went  forth  from  England  in  14S7,  he  was 
commlBsioned  by  King  Henry  VII.  (a  very 
good  son  of  the  Church)  to  take  possession  of 
such  lands  as  he  might  discoTer  in  the  New 
World  and  to  set  op  the  royal  standard  there. 
King  Frauds  the  First  of  France  not  only  de- 
sired to  *'  see  the  clause  in  Adam's  will  which 
entitled  his  brothers  of  Castile  and  Portugal 
to  divide  the  New  World  between  them,"  but 
sent  out  VeiTassano^  in  1528,  to  prosecute  dis- 
ooveries  in  the  northern  parts  of  America, 
whence  came  the  oolony  of  New  France.  The 
Dutch  traded  to  South  America  while  yet  they 
were  subjects  of  Spain.  When  the  Dutoh 
threw  off  the  yoke  of  Spain  they  were  *'  not 
Christians,  but  Hollanders,**  as  they  are  said 
to  have  told  a  sovereign  of  Japan.  As  early 
es  1561  the  States-General  of  Holland  passed 
rewolutiofiM  (June  10  and  14  and  July  7  and  22) 
declaring  certain  persons  privileged  to  trade 
to  the  coast  of  Guiana. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  sixteenth  century 
and  in  the  early  part  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury,  the  three  maritime  nations  set  to  work 
in  eameet  to  found  colonies  in  the  New  World. 
This  movement  was  not  confined  to  North 
America.  It  was  in  active  operation  in  South 
America  at  the  same  time.  There  it  was  con- 
fined to  Guiana,  which  was  also  known  as  the 
Wild  Coast.  While  Englishmen,  Frenchmen, 
and  Dutchmen  were  severally  building  up  a 
New  England,  a  New  France,  and  a  New 
Netherlands,  in  North  America,  their  respec- 
tive countrymen  were  engaged  in  making  set- 
tlements in  various  places  in  Guiana.  In  the 
case  of  England,  it  was  one  and  the  same  man, 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  who  promoted  colonies  in 
Virginia  and  at  the  same  time  hankered  after 
establishing  English  rule  in  Guiana.  Owing  to 
the  difference  in  the  conditions  of  life  (notably 
as  todimato),  the  results  were  unequal;  but 
the  colonising  intention  was  identical  in  the 
two  regions.    In  either  case  settlements  were 


made  in  despite  of  Pope  and  Spaniard.  It  is 
to  the  absoluto  repudiation  of  the  Spanish  pre- 
tension to  an  exclusive  right  to  North  America 
that  the  republic  of  the  United  Stetes  owes  its 
existence.  The  odonies  whence  it  sprang  were 
mainly  founded  at  a  time  when  Spain  claimed 
the  whole  of  North  America.  Did  not  Spain 
threaten  to  send  ships  to  Virginia  to  remove 
the  English  colonisto  f  (Bancroft's  *  History  of 
the  United  Stetes,*  1870,  vol.  i.,  p.  111.)  The 
Spaniards,  Indeed,  recogniJEed  the  Dutoh  set- 
tlemente  in  Guiana  before  they  recognised 
those  of  the  English  in  North  America.  Even 
the  Venesuelans  admit  that,  by  the  Treaty  of 
Muoster,  the  Spaniards  were  good  enough  to 
permit  that  the  Dutoh  might  keep  such  colo- ' 
nies  as  tbey  held  in  Guiana.  The  Treaty  of 
Munster  was  made  in  1648.  Now  what  does 
Bancroft  say  as  to  Spanish  recognition  of  Eng- 
lish colonies  in  North  America?  Here  are  his 
very  words: 

**  The  first  treaty  relating  to  England  and  Ameri- 
ca between  Spain  and  England  was  ratified  in  1067 
and  made  more  general  in  1070.  Before  that  time, 
Spain  had  claimed  not  the  territory  of  the  Carolines 
only,  but  that  of  Virginia,  New  England—in  short, 
of  all  North  America.  By  this  convention  she  re- 
cognized as  English  the  colonies  which  England 
then  poesesMd;  but  the  boundaries  in  the  South  and 
West  were  not  determined."  (*  History  of  the 
United  States,'  1876.  vol.  L,  p.  6S8.) 

There  cannot  be  one  standard  for  judging 
the  rightfulness  of  making  setUemente  in  North 
America  and  another  for  making  setUemento 
in  South  America.  If  it  was  wrong  for  Euro- 
pean nations  to  colonise  in  Guiana,  it  was 
equally  wrong  for  them  to  colonize  in  North 
America.  If  any  Americans  hold  that  Pope 
Alexander's  Bull  gave  the  Spaniards  an  exclu- 
sive right  to  the  New  World,  tbey  must  per- 
ceive that  the  only  logical  concluiion  to  such 
an  admission  is  that  the  great  Republic  is  pos- 
sessed of  much  territory  that  was  stolen  from 
Spain.  If  restitution  is  to  be  made  for  the 
great  wrong  done,  a  beginning  might  well  be 
made  by  handing  over  t^e  Steto  of  New  York 
to  the  republic  of  Venezuela;  for  did  not  Eng- 
land obtain  the  Dutoh  colony  whence  grew  the 
Empire  Steto  by  giving  Surinam  in  exchange 
for  it  ?  And  who  does  not  know  that  if  the 
Venesuelans  **had  their  rights,'^  Dutoh  Guiana 
(including  Surinam)  of  to>day  should  form  part 
of  that  republic  f  To  Americans  the  situation 
should  be  a  painful  one.  Tbey  have  consciences. 
The  Briton,  unscrupulous  and  unprincipled, 
**  always  grabbing  what  does  not  belong  to 
him,''  stiU  carries  a  brazen  front.  He  will 
probably  tell  you  that  when  the  Irish  in  Ame- 
rica respect  the  Papal  Bull  which  erected  Ire- 
land  into  a  kingdom  for  the  King  of  England, 
and  not  till  then,  will  he  have  reason  to  think 
of  respecting  Pope  Alexander's  authority  to 
give  away  what  did  not  belong  to  bim. 

Venesuelans  set  great  store  by  the  Treaty  of 
Munster,  in  IMS.  It  is  hard  to  see  how  that 
treaty  upholds  their  present  **  claims."  By  ite 
fifth  article,  provision  was  made  that  each 
party  should  retain  possession  of  what  it  **  held 
and  possessed."  This,  surely,  did  not  refer  to 
lands  then  unoccupied  by  any  Christian  Prince. 
Now,  what  were  the  respective  possessions  of 
the  Spaniards  and  the  Dutoh  at  that  time  in 
Guiana  t  The  Orinoco  was  ''  a  forgotten  Colo- 
ny." Putting  aside  the  missionary  settlement 
of  San  Tlioni6,  which  was  made  on  the  Orino- 
co in  1676  and  was  destroyed  by  the  Dutoh  in 
1679  (a  settlement,  be  it  noted,  only  of  Indians, 
besides  the  two  religious  fathers),  it  was  not 
until  IMl  that  Berreo's  settlement  of  ten  Span- 
iards, at  his  town  of  San  Thona^,  was  formed. 
That  was  eleven  years  after  the  Dutoh  had 


214 


Tlie   IN'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1602 


made  their  settlement  of  Nova  Ze&Iaodia,  on 
the  Pomeroon.  Before  this,  the  Spaniards  had 
eent  some  expeditions  into  the  Orinoco,  which 
had  suffered  at  the  hands  of  the  Caribs  and 
by  disease.    The  Venezaelans  say : 

''The  first  discoTeries  of  the  Spaniards  had  not, 
however,  extended  at  first  beyond  the  shores  of  the 
Orinoco,  nor  had  those  of  the  Portn^rueee  extended 
further  north  of  the  Amazone;  and  It  was  only  by 
rlrtue  of  successive  and  partial  expeditions  that 
both  countries  gradually  extended  their  dominions 
with  the  right  of  first  occupants''  CVenecoelan 
International  Law,'  p.  160>. 

But  where  is  the  proof  of  extension  of  domi- 
nion,  or  of  occupation?  The  intigniflcance  of 
'  the  Spanish  '^  holdings  and  possessions"  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  Orinoco  may  be  gathered 
from  the  subjoined  extract  from  the  well-known 
work  of  the  French  philosopher,  Raynal: 

''  In  1771,  thirteen  villages  were  seen  upon  the  banks 
of  the  Oroonoko,  which  contained  four  thousand  two 
hundred  and  nineteen  Spaniards,  Mestees,  Mulat- 
toes,  or  Negroes,  four  hundred  and  thirty-one 
plantations,  and  twelve  thousand  eight  hundred  and 
fifty- four  oxen,  mules,  or  horses/' 

After  stating  that  Ck>lumbus  had  disoovared 
the  Oroonoko,  Abb4  Rajnal  says: 

*'  The  Spaniards,  who  could  not  pay  attention  to 
all  the  regions  they  discovered,  lost  sight  of  the 
Oroonoko.  They  did  notattempt  to  sail  up  this  river 
again  till  the  year  1685,  when,  not  having  found 
there  the  mines  they  were  in  search  of,  they  ne- 
glected it.  Nevertheleas,  the  few  who  had  been 
thrown  upon  this  spot  devoted  themselves  with  so 
much  assiduity  to  the  culture  of  Tobacco  that  they 
delivered  a  few  cargoes  of  it  every  year  to  the 
foreign  vessels  which  came  to  purchase  it  This 
contraband  trade  was  prohibited  by  the  mother 
country,  and  this  weak  settlement  was  twice  plun- 
dered by  enterprising  pirates.  These  disasters  oc- 
casioned it  to  be  forgotten.  It  was  recalled  to  mind 
igain  in  1758.  The  Commodore  Nicolas  de  Ytuniga 
was  sent  there.  This  prudent  man  established  a 
regular  system  of  government  m  the  colony  that 
had  formed  itself  insensibly  in  this  part  of  the 
world  "  C'  History  of  the  European  Settlements  in 
the  East  and  West  Indies,'  by  the  AbM  Rajrnal. 
vol.  iv.,j).  78).  , 

Such  as  they  were,  the  Spanish  settlements 
were  identified  with  the  Orinoco  rather  than 
with  Guiana.  RaynaFs  view  covers  the  period 
of  the  Treaty  of  Munster  and  comes  down  to 
1771.  It  is  well  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  the 
Bcan^  settlements  of  the  latter  date  were  on 
both  banks  of  the  Orinoco,  not  on  the  Guiana 
side  only.  Raynal's  account  confirms  that 
given  by  the  New  Englander,  Bancroft,  in 

1768,  when  he  wrote  that  the  Spaniards  had 
then  **no  other  possessions  in  this  country, 
except  their  settlements  on  the  eastern  side 
of  the  River  Oronoque,  near  the  confines  of  its 
limits,  and  therefore  can  hardly  be  included 
among  the  proprietors  of  Guiana"  ('Essay 
on  the  Natural  Qistory  of  Guiana,'  London, 

1769,  p.  273). 

As  with  the  English  colony  of  Carolina,  in 
North  America,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  so, 
in  the  sixteenth,  seventeenth,  and  eighteenth 
centuries  in  South  America,  did  the  Spaniards 
deem  their  possession  of  some  isolated  place 
*'  proof  of  the  acttial  poFsession  of  an  indefinite 
adjacent  country."  In  South  America  the 
puny  settlement  at  San  Thom6,  on  the  Orinoco, 
gave  them  a  pretence  to  claim  the  whole  of 
Guiana,  a  country  of  about  900,000  square 
miles,  extending  from  the  Orinoco  to  the  Amar 
son.  In  North  America  they  clai med  Carolina, 
in  like  manner,  as  Bancroft  tells  us: 

'*It  was  included  by  the  Spanlartls  within  the 
limits  of  Florida;  and  the  Castle  of  St.  Augustine 
was  deemed  proof  of  the  actual  possession  of  an  in- 
definite adjacent  country.    Spain  had  never  formal- 


ly ackno«^  ledged  the  English  title  to  any  possessions 
in  America;  and,  when  a  treaty  was  finally  conclud- 
ed at  Ifadrid,  it  did  but  faintly  concede  the  right  of 
England  to  her  transatlantic  colonies  and  to  a  con- 
tinuance of  commerce  In  the  accustomed  seas" 
C  History  of  the  United  States,'  1878,  vol.  L,  page 
484)- 

When  the  Putch*were  establishing  their 
colony  of  New  Netherlands  in  1031-1622,  they 
were  regarded  by  the  New  Englanders  as 
''intruder*.**  The  Privy  ConncQ  in  England 
was  appealed  to  by  the  English  colonists,  and 
repreeentations  were  made  in  February,  1622, 
by  Sir  Dudley  Carleton,  the  English  Minister  at 
The  Hague  ('  History  of  the  U.  S.  A.,*  1876,  pp. 
38,  89).  All  was  done  in  vain.  The  Dutchmen 
remained  in  posseasion.  Although  North  Ame- 
rica had  been  discovered  by  a  Venetian  serv- 
log  the  Crown  of  England,  as  South  America 
was  discovered  by  a  Genoese  serving  the 
Crown  of  Spain,  it  was  physically  impossible 
for  the  English  of  that  time  to  occupy,  hold, 
or  potsees  the  whole  of  that  vast  region. 
Hence,  the  French,  the  Dutch,  the  Swedes, 
and  the  Spaniards  had  each  possessed  them- 
selves of  portions  of  the  northern  continent 
E%ch  claimed  more  than  it  did,  or  could,  poe- 
sess,  excepting,  perhaps,  the  Swedes,  whose 
settlement  on  the  Delaware  was  looked  upon 
as  an  encroachment  by  the  Dutch.  As  the 
New  England  settlers  had  not  occupied  the 
Hudson  and  its  neighborhood,  the  Dutch  had 
a  right  to  settle  there.  With  even  stronger 
rights  could  the  Hollanders  and  Zealanders 
make  settlements  in  Guiana,  where  vast  re- 
gions were  unoccupied  by  any  Christian 
prince  or  people.  They  rightly  held  that 
Spanish  possessions  in  Guiana  meant  little 
more  than  a  mere  ch&teau  in  Spain. 

N.  Da&nkll  Davis. 


NAPOLEON  AND  ALEXANDER  I. 
Paris,  February  27, 1896. 

You  see  sometimes,  at  the  end  of  a  warm 
summer's  day,  two  large  clouds  moving  slowly 
towards  each  other,  gradually  extending  and 
gettingdarker  and  dsrker ;  they  finally  meet  and 
the  first  peals  of  thunder  are  heard.  I  oould  not 
help  thinking  of  this  preparation  for  a  great 
convulsion  of  nature  while  reading  the  third 
volume  of  M.  Albert  Vandal's  great  work  on 
Napoleon  and  Alexander  I.  of  Russia.  The 
volume  has  for  its  sub-title  **La  Rupture.** 
Like  its  predecessors,  this  huge  volume  of  600 
pages  consists  of  ponderous  and  elaborate  di- 
plomatic documents,  drawn  from  our  archives; 
it  has  a  certain  sort  of  solemnity  which  easDy 
becomes  fatiguing.'  The  details  of  the  inces- 
sant negotiations  between  the  conrts  are  often 
wearisome,  and  the  author  indulges  in  a  pro- 
fusion of  considerations  which  are  almost  a 
burden  on  the  mind  of  the  reader.  The  style, 
too,  is  often  pompous  and  elaborate,  and  is  al- 
ways wanting  in  simplicity  and  alertness;  but 
you  feel,  at  the  same  time,  that  the  author  has 
great  sincerity  and  is  constantly  striving  after 
historic  truth.  He  spares  no  pains,  he  is  abso- 
lutely impartial,  and  his  seriousness  is  that  of 
a  judge. 

The  events  he  has  to  deal  with,  the  actors 
whom  he  has  to  endue  with  life,  deserve  such 
a  great  effort.  There  was  perhaps  never  in  the 
histot'y  of  our  time  a  more  extraordinary,  a 
more  solemn  hour  than  that  in  which  the  fate 
of  Europe  seemed  to  be  in  the  hands  of  these  two 
men  alone.  Napoleon  and  Alexander.  They  di- 
vided the  civilized  world  at  Tilsit;  they  formed 
an  alliance  which  for  a  time  was  irresistible. 
M.  Vandal  has  told  us  in  his  two  former  vol- 


umes how  this  alliance  was  induced  and  how 
it  was  fonned;  he  has  shown  us,  also,  what 
dangers  threatened  it  from  the  first  hour,  and 
what  secret  motives  were  actuating  the  two 
sovereigns  who,  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  had 
become  united  on  all  points.  Poland  was  the 
sore  spot,  the  cause  of  a  growing  distrust  be- 
tween Napoleon  and  Alexander.  Napoleon 
wished,  in  order  to  keep  his  hold  on  (Germany, 
to  make  of  Poland  a  sort  of  tite  de  pont^  an 
advanced  sentinel;  whereas  Alexander  looked 
upon  a  new  Poland,  rising  resuscitated  at  the 
summons  of  Napoleon,  as  a  sword  piercing 
the  vitals  of  Russia.  He  could  not  bear  the 
idea  of  the  reconstitution  of  the  ancient  king- 
dom which  had  been  dismembered  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  as  soon  as  this  dread 
entered  his  mind  lie  prepared  himself  to  put 
an  end  to  the  alliance. 

Alexander  complained  first  of  the  incorpora- 
tion of  the  Du(^y  of  Oldenburg  in  the  French 
Empire.  The  duchy  belonged  to  a  prince  who 
was  connected  with  the  Russian  imperial  fami- 
ly. **  The  true  reason,**  says  Joseph  de  Maistre, 
'*  which  induces  two  men  to  cut  each  other's 
throats,  is  almost  never  the  apparent  reason 
which  is  given.**  M.  Vandal  is  right  in  show, 
ing  that  the  true  reason  was  Poland.  **The 
monstrous  development  of  the  French  power, 
the  progress  of  a  frontier  which  moved  and 
changed  constantly,  the  recent  seizure  of  Hol- 
land and  of  the  Hanseatic  cities,  the  extension 
of  the  territory  of  the  Empire  to  the  shores  of 
the  Baltic,  the  enslavement  of  Prussia,  the 
growing  exigencies  of  the  Continental  block- 
ade, denoted  a  plan  of  universal  domination 
which  Alexander  felt  it  incumbent  upon 
him  to  resist.  But  the  Dnchy  of  Warsaw  was 
the  vanguard  of  France  in  the  north,  and  at 
contact  with  it  Alexander  lost  patience.**  In 
great  secrecy  he  sent  Prince  Csartoryski  to 
Wareaw,  offering  to  the  Poles  to  tranaform 
the  duchy  into  a  kingdom,  united  to  his  own 
empire,  if  they  were  willing  to  join  the  army 
of  200,000  men  which  he  was  silently  forming 
against  Napolaon — for  he  was  then  thinking  of 
an  offensive  war.  He  knew  that  Spain  was 
absorbing  a  great  part  of  the  French  forces; 
he  believed  that  the  Saxon,  Bavarian,  West- 
phalian,  and  other  German  troops  which  were 
mixed  up  with  the  French  troops,  would  not 
remain  faithful  if  he  could  cut  his  way  in  Ger- 
many. He  had  first,  however,  to  deal  with 
the  Duchy  of  Warsaw,  with  Sweden  and  with 
Turkey;  if  he  made  an  offensive  war,  he  could 
not  leave  enemies  behind  him.  Bemadotte 
hated  Napoleon,  but  was  not  yet  absolute  mas- 
ter in  Sweden.  Rnssia  was  carrying  on  a  war 
with  Turkey  and  negotiating  at  the  same  time. 
It  was  necessary,  farther,  for  Alexander,  if  he 
nmde  an  offensive  war,  to  secure  the  neutrality 
of  Austria;  but  since  1810  the  relations  of  Na- 
poleon with  Austria  had  become  intimate  and 
were  the  scandal  of  Europe.  The  Emperor 
Francis  had  given  his  daughter  to  Napoleon, 
and  Mettemich  was  living  in  intimacy  with 
him,  turning  a  deaf  ear  to  all  the  advances  of 
Russia. 

Alexander  soon  renounced  the  idea  of  an 
offensive  war.  CzartorysM  sent  him  a  dia* 
guised  agent  with  a  letter  full  of  objections  to 
the  plan  which  Alexander  had  confided  to  him; 
Alexander  sent  to  Czartoryski  a  second  letter. 
**The  difficulties  are  great,  I  confess;  as  I  had 
foreseen  them  in  great  part,  and  as  the  results 
are  of  such  vital  importance,  to  stop  half-way 
would  be  the  worst  thing  to  do.*'  Alexander 
in  this  second  letter  said  that  he  counted  diief- 
ly  on  "  the  general  exasperation  of  Germaoy  ** 
against  the  French  Emperor,  and  he  set  Cfftt 
against  the  150,000  French   and  allies 


March  12,  1896] 


The   N"atioii. 


Q15 


Napol«oo  could  find  in  G^rmaDj,  900«000  Ru*. 
•iAW,  180,000  Poles,  Prusdana,  and  Danet,  per- 
haps 900,000  Austriaoa.  As  for  Aoitria,  be 
was  prepared  to  buy  her  neutrality  by  the  offer 
of  Wallachia  and  Moldavia,  in  exchange  for 
Oalida.  His  own  armies  were  in  complete 
readinets;  STerythiog  was  calculated  and  com- 
.  hined ;  it  remained  for  the  Poles  of  War 
saw  to  choose  if  they  wished  to  abandon 
the  Pranch  cause  or  to  remain  on  the  side  of 
Napoleon. 

M.  Vandal  shows  us  how  Alexander  was 
prepariog  the  ground  in  Austria,  where  he 
had  accredited  a  secret  agent,  just  as  Louis 
XV.  used  to  hare  (read  the  'Secret  du  Roi' 
by  the  Duke  da  BrogUe).  This  agent  de- 
lirered  to  Btackelberg,  who  was  the  Russian 
Ambassador  in  Vienna,  letters  from  Alexan- 
der which  had  not  been  shown  to  Alexander's 
minister,  Romansoff.  A  secret  correspondence 
of  the  same  sort  was  kept  up  with  the  Prus- 
sian Court,  in  Paris,  the  official  representa- 
tive of  Alexander  was  Kurakin,  old,  infirm, 
and  of  feeble  intellect ;  behind  this  phantom 
was  young  Ck>ifkit  Tchemitoheff,  colonel  of  the 
guards,  who  had  organised  a  complete  system 
of  mOitary  information.  Tchemitcheff  was 
one  of  those  spies  of  society  with  whom  Pluis 
is  well  acquainted,  and  by  whom  it  likee  to  be 
half  deoeived  ;  he  was  a  great  favorite  in  so- 
ciety—it was  said  that  Pliuliae  Borghese,  the 
handsome  Pauline,  was  not  insensible  to  his 
homage.  He  was  in  reality  the  vigilant  eye 
of  Alexander. 

Alexander  maintained  mysterious  relations 
with  Talleyrand  after  Erfurt,  and  had  accre- 
dited near  him  young  Count  NesMlrode.  Soon 
after  the  interview,  Nesaelrode,  who  was  then 
secretary  of  the  Russian  Embassy  in  Paris, 
presented  himself  to  Talleyrand,  and  said  to 
him  in  proper  terms:  **I  am  officially  em- 
ployed under  Prince  Kurakin,  but  I  am 
accredited  to  you.  I  am  in  private  correspond- 
ence with  the  Emperor,  and  I  bring  you  a 
letter  from  him/'  Ever  afterwarda,  they  mw 
each  other  regularly.  The  secret  was  well 
kept.  The  French  Ambassador  in  St.  Peters 
burg  was  a  soldier,  Caulainconrt,  recently 
made  Duke  of  Vicenxa;  he  suspeoted  nothing. 
He  was  treated  at  court  ss  persona  gratistima, 
and  was  the  object  of  the  most  delicate  and 
constant  attentions  on  tbe  part  of  the  Emperor. 
In  the  first  days  of  1811  Caulainconrt  dined  at 
the  palaoe.  The  news  of  the  incorporation  of 
the  Hanseatic  cities  in  the  French  Empire  had 
just  arrived.  **  Do  you  know,"  merely  remark, 
ed  the  Emperor  to  Caulainoourt,  *'tbat  you 
have  again  new  departments  ?  ^  Caulainconrt 
tried  to  justify  Napoleon :  France  was  going  to 
do  a  great  work,  to  open  a  canal  between 
the  Baltic  and  the  North  Sea ;  the  commerce 
of  Russia  would  be  greatly  benefited  by  it. 
'«Well^*'  said  Alexander,  **  it  wiU  not  be  Rus- 
sia who  will  put  an  end  to  the  amicable  rela- 
tions between  the  two  countries."  A  few  days 
afterwards  Oldenburg  was  seised.  Within  a 
fortnight  Alexander  ceased  to  invite  Caulain- 
conrt; when  he  saw  him  again,  he  assured 
him  that  he  would  himself  keep  faithful  to  the 
treaties.  **If  Napoleon,*'  said  he,  **  comes  on 
my  frontier,  if  he  wishes  for  war,  he  must 
make  it,  but  he  will  have  no  cause  of  com- 
plaint against  Russia.  I  give  you  my  word  of 
hoiMH'.''  Caulainconrt  was  under  the  charm  of 
the  fimpcror.  He  did  not  understand  him  and 
perceive  that  the  grace  of  his  manner  cocceal- 
ed  a  fixed  and  resolute  purpose.  We  read  In 
tbe  memoirs  of  Countess  Trembicka  that  Alex- 
ander's eyes  never  smiled  like  his  lips:  **His 
fixed  gase,  almost  alarming  by  its  fixity,  was 
aavar  on  his  interlocutor,  and  seemed  absorbed 


in  the  contemplation  of  a  mysterious  phan. 
tom." 

Napoleon,  at  the  height  of  his  power  in  the 
beginning  of  1811,  felt,  nevertheless,  that  all 
he  had  tried  against  England  with  a  view  to 
obtain  a  general  peace  had  been  vain;  he  felt 
that  the  Continental  blockade  was  useless  so 
long  as  it  was  not  universal  and  complete. 
Masi^na  was  powerless  before  the  lines  of  Tor- 
res Vedras,  and  Napoleon  could  not  strike  a 
decisive  blow  in  Spain.  A  reconciliation  be- 
tween England  and  Russia  was  always  possi- 
ble. A  Russian  ukase,  prohibitive  of  French 
goods,  was  considered  by  Napoleon  as  a  sign  of 
hostility,  all  the  more  that  it  had  been  signed 
by  Alexander  before  the  seisure  of  Oldenburg. 
Napoleon  said,  speaking  of  Russia,  ''There 
is  a  great  planet  taking  a  false  direction." 
During  three  sleepless  nights  he  meditated  on 
the  situation,  and  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
Russia  was  preparing  for  war  and  that  he 
must  prepare  himself  also.  He  will  not 
await  an  attack,  but  forms  privily  the  plan 
of  a  campaign  in  Russia.  As  usual,  he  fixes 
all  the  details  of  bis  enterprise;  nothing 
is  forgotten.  He  has  to  conceal  carefully  the 
importance  and  the  object  of  his  preparations, 
but  this  time  his  designs  are  understood.  Al- 
exander watches  all  his  steps.  Diplomatically, 
the  advance  is  taken  by  Alexander,  who  secures 
Bernadotte  and  prepares  the  ground  in  Aus- 
tria and  in  Turkey.  H.  Vandal  enters  into  the 
minutest  particulars  regarding,  the  diplomatic 
preparations  aod  negotiations  which  preceded 
the  great  struggle.  Napoleon  was  becoming 
more  and  more  convinced  that  it  was  his  mis- 
sion to  break  the  power  of  Russia;  he  was  the 
representative  of  civmsation,  the  true  successor 
of  Ctesar  and  Charlemagne,  the  true  successor, 
also;  of  the  kings  who  had  always  felt  it  their 
duty  to  place  obstacles  in  the  way  of  Mus- 
covite  ambition,  and  to  surround  the  Slavic 
empire  with  a  chain  of  allied  Powers— Sweden, 
Poland,  Turkey.  Napoleon,  with  the  clearest 
head  and  one  most  capable  of  entering  into 
the  smallest  details,  was  also  a  man  of  imagi- 
nation; if  Alexander  would  not  be  his  obedient 
ally,  his  power  must  be  broken  for  ever. 

The  military  preparations  continued  on  both 
sides.  Napoleon  became  convinced  after  a 
while  that  Alexander  was  getting  ready  for 
wsr,  for  a  long  and  terrible  war  if  necessary. 
Tbe  French  Emperor  had  not  allowed  the  pub- 
lic to  know  anything  of  his  projects,  his  fears, 
bis  hesitations;  but,  once  having  made  up  his 
mind,  he  struck,  as  usual,  a  great  blow,  and 
felt  a  desire  to  expose  publicly  the  intentions 
of  his  rival.  The  occasion  he  chose  was  the 
15tb  of  August,  his  birthday.  On  that  date  a 
grand  reception  took  place  at  the  Tuileries. 
After  the  mass  the  diplomatic  audience  began. 
Napoleon  took  his  plaoe  on  hb  throne.  The 
princes,  tbe  great  dignitaries,  the  great  officers 
of  the  Empire  paid  their  respects  first:  then 
came  the  diplomatic  body.  Old  Prince  Kura- 
kin, who  was,  as  usual,  covered  with  diamonds 
and  decorations,  was  next  to  Prince  Schwarts- 
enberg  and  the  Spanish  Ambassadors.  The 
Emperor  made  what  is  called  "  the  circle," 
having  here  and  there  a  foreigner  presented  to 
him  by  the  Grand  Chamberlain;  on  that  day 
three  American  dtisens  were  presented.  Af- 
ter a  whOe  the  Emperor  walked  towards  Ku- 
rakin and  began  to  converM  with  him.  Tbe 
Russians  were  very  brave,  but  they  had,  be 
said,  been  obliged  to  evacuate  Rnstchulc,  their 
UU  de  p<mt  on  the  Danube.  It  was  always  lost, 
ter  to  t>e  on  both  sides  of  a  river,  as  be  had 
learned  at  Lobau.  And  why  did  tbe  Russians 
withdraw  their  troops  from  Rustchuk  r  It  was 
because  five  divisions  had  been  sent  from  Tur- 


key to  Poland.  He  did  not  understand  these 
movements  of  troops  in  Poland.  "  I  am,"  said 
he,  "  like  the  natural  man;  what  I  don*t  under- 
stand alarms  me."  Becoming  more  exdted,  he 
continued:  "It  is  not  tbe  Ducby  of  Olden- 
burg that  occupies  you;  you  think  I  have  de- 
signs on  Poland;  I  begin  to  think  that  you 
want  to  be  masters  of  Warsaw.  Don't  fiatter 
yourselves;  no,  if  your  armies  were  camped 
on  the  hill  of  Hontmartre,  I  would  not  cede  an 
iuch  of  tbe  Varsovian  territory.  I  have  gua- 
ranteed it  Ton  shall  have  not  a  village  of  it, 
not  a  mill.  I  do  not  think  of  reconstituting 
Poland— the  interest  of  my  people  is  not  bound 
up  with  that  country;  if  you  force  me  into 
a  war,  I  will  use  Poland  against  you."  He 
could  bring  800,000  men  into  line;  he  had 
every  year  260,000  conscripts  at  hb  disposition. 
Kurakin  could  not  get  in  a  word,  he  was  so 
moved  and  terrified.  "  Why  did  Rufsia,"  said 
Napoleon,  "  leave  Turkey  and  turn  on  Poland  ? 
You  are  like  the  hare  who  has  received  some 
shot;  he  riies  half  mad  on  his  hind  leg%  ex- 
posing his  whole  body  to  a  new  discharge." 
He  thus  entertained  Kurakin  for  tbree^uarters 
of  an  hour,  giving  himself  up  to  a  premedi- 
tated passion.  The  poor  Prince  went  away, 
sweating  in  bis  gilded  coat,  but  merely  mut- 
tfriog,  *♦  It  is  very  warm  at  bis  Majesty's! " 


Coirespondenceo 


CAPT.  JAMES  MACKAY. 
To  THB  Editob  or  Thb  Nation  : 

Sir:  I  am  prompted  by  the  remarks  in  tbe 
Nation  of  the  5th  inst.,  on  Prof.  Woodrow 
Wilson's  article  on  "  Colonel  Washington,"  in 
Harper^B  for  this  month,  to  mention  an  error 
which  that  w^ter  has  fallen  into  by  following 
too  closely  tbe  letters  of  Governor  Dinwiddle, 
who  always  wrote  of  Capt^  James  Mackay  and 
bi9  independent  company  as  from  South  Caroli- 
na This  statement  is  repeated  by  Prof.  Wilson. 

Capt.  Mackay  came  to  America  as  a  young 
officer  in  Oglethorpe's  regiment,  and,  after 
serving  with  that  command  for  some  time,  he 
settled  upon  a  tract  of  land  on  tbe  Ogeecbee 
River,  to  which  he  gave  the  name  Strathy 
H«ll,  bis  home  as  long  as  he  lived.  He  held 
offices  of  honor  and  tnuit  in  tbe  colony  of 
Georgia,  and  was  for  several  years  a  member 
of  tbe  CouncU  of  the  Royal  Governor,  Six 
James  Wright.  Tbe  frequent  reference  to 
him  by  Governor  Dinwiddle  as  from  South 
Carolina  is,  therefore,  rather  remarkable. 

General  Washington  was,  however,  a  little 
more  careful;  for,  in  replying  to  a  letter  from 
Robert  Sinclair,  a  Scotch  relation  of  the 
Mackays,  in  1792,  he  wrote: 

**My  acquaintance  with  Captain  Mackav 
commenced  in  tbe  vear  17M,  when  I  command- 
ed the  troops  which  were  sent  to  prevent  tbe 
encroachments  of  the  French  upon  tbe  Western 
boundaries  of  tbe  tben  colonies.  Captain 
Mackay  tben  commanded  an  Independent  Com- 
pany, either  from  Georgia  or  South  Carolina, 
and  was  captured  with  roe  by  an  army  of 
French  and  Indians  at  a  pUce  called  the  Great 
Meadows.  In  1765  be  left  the  service,  sold  out. 
aod  went  to  Georgia,"  etc.  (See  \Writingsof 
Washington,'  edited  by  Sparks, vol.  xii,  p.  803.) 

Captain  Mackay  died  at  Alexandria,  Va., 
early  in  December,  1785,  and  bis  death  was  thus 
noticed  in  the  Georgia  Oazttte,  Thursday,  De- 
cember 20,  1785:  *'DUd  UUly,  at  Alexandria, 
Virginia,  James  Mackay,  E*q.,  of  this  Bute." 
Wm.  Harden, 
Librarian  Ga,  Hist.  Society. 
HAYAMHAm,  Msrch  7, 1«9«. 


216 


Tlie   N'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No,  1602 


THOMAS  HUTCHINSON^S  •  BTRICTTJRES.' 
To  Tmt  Editor  of  Tax  Nation: 

Sib:  In  his  masterly  and  noble-minded  *  life 
of  Thomas  Hntchinson/  just  published  by 
Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  Prof.  James 
K.  Hosmer  gives,  on  pages  88^-389,  some  ac 
count  of  an  anonymous  pamphlet  issued  in 
London,  in  the  autumn  of  1770,  entitled  'Stric 
tures  upon  the  Declaration  of  the  Congress  at 
Philadelphia;  in  a  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,  etc.* 
Very  properly,  this  pamphlet  is  attributed  to 
Hutchinson  by  Prof.  Hosmer.  **The  docu- 
ment, though  unsigned,  gives  indisputable  in- 
ternal evidence  of  its  authorship.*'  **That 
Hutchinson  was  the  author  is  also  the  opinion 
of  Dr.  George  E.  Ellis.''  I  have  in  my  h^id  at 
this  moment  the  means  of  placing  Hutchin- 
son-s  authorship  of  the  pamphlet  beyond  the 
need  ot  mere  inference  from  internal  evidence, 
namely,  the  very  copy  of  it  which  was  pre- 
sented at  the  time  by  Hutchinson  to  his  prede- 
cessor in  office,  and  bearing  on  the  title-page 
the  inscription,  **  To  Sir  Francis  Bernard  Bar't 
From  the  Author."  These  words  are  in  the 
well-known  handwriting  of  Hutchinson. 

Yours  faithfully,         Mosss  Corr  Ttlxb. 

LiBRABT  or  CoBmBix  UsiVHWiTr,  March  9, 1890. 


Notes. 


Chablks  SoRiBinER'8  Soifs  announce  *My 
Confidences,'  the  autobiography  of  Frederick 
Locker-Lampeon;  a  new  biography  of  Madame 
Roland,  by  Miss  Ida  M.  TarbeU;  *  A  Handbook 
to  the  Labor  Law  of  the  United  States,'  by 
F.  J.  Stimson;  *  Agnosticism  and  Religion,'  by 
President  Schurman  of  Cornell:  a  *  Hebrew 
History,'  by  Dr.  Charles  F.  Kent  of  Brown 
University;  "Shakspere  and  his  Predecessors 
in  the  English  Drama,'  by  Prof.  F.  L.  Boas  of 
Oxford;  and  a  Walton  edition  of  Dr.  Van 
Dyke's  '  Little  Rivers,'  limited  to  150  copies  of 
exquisite  make. 

*  Books  and  their  Makers  during  the  Middle 
Ages,'  by  Oeo.  Haven  Putnam,  A.  M.,  in  two 
Tolumes;  a  second  edition  of  this  writer's 
'Question  of  Copyright';  *The  History  of 
Oratory  and  Orators,'  by  Henry  HardwicKe; 
the  fourth  and  concluding  volume  of  the 
Writings  of  Thomas  Paine,  edited  by  Moncure 
D.  Conway,  together  with  a  popular  edition  of 
the  *  Age  of  Reason ';  and  a  new  and  enlarged 
edition  ot  *  The  American  Crisis,'  by  Frederick 
D.  Greene,  are  soon  to  be  issued  by  G.  P.  Put- 
nam's Sons. 

Frederick  Warne  have  nearly  reedy  *By 
Tangled  Paths:  Stray  Leaves  from  Nature's 
Byeways,'  essays  by  H.  Mead  Briggs,  arranged 
in  a  sort  of  monthly  conspectus. 

'  Russian  Politics'  is  the  title  of  a  work,  by 
Herbert  M.  Thompson,  shortly  to  be  brought 
out  by  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  Each  chapter  will 
conclude  with  bibliographical  references. 

T.  Y.  Crowell  &  Co.  will  publish  *  Southern 
Side-lights,'  a  picture  of  social  and  economic 
life  in  the  South  during  a  generation  before 
the  war,  by  Edward  Ingle;  *  State  Railroad 
Control,'  with  a  history  of  its  development  in 
Iowa,  by  Frank  H.  Dixon  of  Michigan  Uni- 
versity;  'TaxaUon  and  Taxes  in  the  United 
States  under  the  Internal  Revenue  System,' 
by  Frederic  C.  Howe;  and  *  Proportional  Rep- 
resentation,' by  Prof.  John  R,  Commons  of 
Syracuse  University. 

A  volume  of  translations  from  Euripides, 
Theocritus,  Anacreon,  and  Sappho,  by  Miss 
Jane  Minot  Sedgwick,  is  in  the  press  of  George  I 
H.  Richmond.  * 


D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.  promise  a  '  Compendium 
of  United  States  and  Contemporary  History,* 
by  Annie  E.  Wilson. 

A  volume  of  psychological  sketches,  *Six 
Modem  Women,'  by  Laura  Marbolm  Ramsden, 
will  be  issued  by  Roberts  Bros.  I>us^  Bash- 
kirtseff,  Kovalevsky,  are  three  of  the  six. 

William  Doxey,  San  Francisco,  announces 
'  Some  Representative  Poets  of  the  19th  Qsn- 
tury,'  by  Prof.  Melville  B.  Anderson;  *  A  Son- 
net-Book: Being  Sonnets  about  the  Sonnet,' 
selected  by  Prof.  Anderson;  *  Four-Leaved 
Clover,'  Stanford  University  rhymes  by  Caro- 
lus  Alger;  'Na-Kupuna:  The  Hawaiian  Le- 
gend .of  Creation,'  a  poem  in  three  parts;  *  Ha- 
waii: A  Missionary  Republic,'  a  history  from 
1820  to  the  present  day;  a  *Guide  to  San  Fran- 
cisco,' by  Arthur  B.  Barendt;  and  *  The  Wild 
Flowers  of  California:  Their  Homes  and  Hab- 
its,' described  by  Mary  Elisabeth  Parsons  and 
illustrated  by  Margaret  Warriner  Buck. 

The  Hubbard  Publishing  Co.  have  nearly 
ready  'Turkey  and  the  Armenian  Atrocities,' 
by  the  Rev.  Bdwin  M.  Bliss  and  others,  with 
many  illustrations. 

The  Public  Opinion  Co.,  New  York,  will 
shortly  begin  publication  of  **  The  Hamilton 
Facsimiles  of  ManuacriptB,"  documents  which 
in  part  at  least  have  a  bearing  on  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  and  the  Cuban  question. 

The  first  gun,  so  to  speak,  in  the  literary 
celebration  of  the  Gibbon  centenary  is  a  new 
edition  of  the  *  Decline  and  Fall'  in  seven  vol- 
umes, edited  by  J.  B.  Bury,  M.  A.,  Professor 
of  Modem  History  in  Dublin  University  (Lon- 
don :  Methuen  &  Co.;  New  York  :  Macmillan). 
The  form  chosen  is  a  handy  duodecimo ;  the 
type,  large  and  clear  in  a  broad  and  somewhat 
condensed  page.  Mr.  Bury  has  not  abused 
his  prerogative,  either  by  undue  expansion  of 
bis  introduction  or  by  his  annotations  and  cor- 
rections. He  adduces  some  interesting  exam- 
ples of  Gibbon's  painstaking  alterations  of  the 
second  edition  both  for  greater  accuracy  and 
with  reference  to  rhetorical  improvement,  and 
in  a  broad  way  reviews  the  quality  of  this  clas- 
sic work  in  the  light  of  recent  scholarship. 

That  not  more  instructive  than  agreeable 
work,  *Tbe  Burman:  His  Life  and  Notions' 
(Maonillan),  which  f<M*  pure  eiftertainment 
would  worthily  find  a  place  on  the  same  shelf 
with  the  elder  Kipling's  *  Beast  and  Man  in 
India,'  has  just  been  issued  in  a  second  edition 
substantially  unchanged,  and  in  a  single  volume 
instead  of  two.  We  spoke  our  praise  of  it 
fourteen  years  ago,  and  we  shall  only  add  that 
it  merited  a  well-chosen  set  of  photographic 
illustrations,  in  harmony  with  the  elegant  let- 
terpress. 

A  new  and  enlarged  edition  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  E. 
C.  MitcheU's  *  Critical  Handbook  of  the  Greek 
New  Testament'  (Harpers)  has  jnstbeen  issued, 
advantage  having  been  taken  of  the  completion 
of  Dr.  Gregory's  ^Prolegomena*  toTlschendorfs 
Greek  Testament,  and  of  the  recent  publication 
of  Miller's  fourth  edition  of  Scrivener's  *  Intro- 
duction,' to  improve  the  first  edition,  publish- 
ed in  1880.  The  same  general  plan  has  been 
observed;  the  several  parts  treating  of  the  au- 
thenticity, the  canon,  and  the  text  of  the  New 
Testament.  Part  iv.,  about  one-half  of  the 
volume,  oondsts  of  thirteen  tables  and  dia- 
grams for  reference;  the  lists  of  both  the  un- 
cial and  cursive  manuscripts  being  very  com- 
plete, with  fifteen  facsimiles.  It  may  surprise 
some  readers  to  learn  how  many  manuscripts 
are  owned  in  this  country.  In  noticing  the 
Apostolic  Fathers,  as  Clement  and  Polycarp, 
we  miss  any  mention  of  the  late  Bishop  of 
Durham's  notable  editions,  and  there  is  a  great 
dearth  of  references  to  (](erman  works  of  criti- 


cism.  We  have  obeerved  some  misprints  in 
proper  names,  as  Eden$heim  (p.  6^,  H,  B, 
SweeU,  and  M.  R,  Joneg  (p.  78).  The  book 
will  prove  useful  to  the  student  unprovided 
with  more  extensive  works. 

In  1871  Count  Benedetti  published  a  volume 
entitled  *  Ma  Mission  en  Prusse.'  It  contained 
the  most  important  of  his  dispatches  as  French  • 
ambassador  at  Berlin,  and  his  entire  corre- 
spondence with  the  Duke  de  Gramont  (Napole- 
on's Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs)  during  his 
mission  at  Ems,  in  July,  1870.  Attacked  by 
De  Gramont,  who  declared  his  explanations  to 
be  "inexact,"  and  contested  his  claim  to  have 
succeeded  in  the  prime  object  of  his  mission, 
Benedetti  prepared,  in  1873,  a  new  and  in  some 
points  fuller  statement  of  his  negotiations  with 
the  King  of  Prussia.  This  statement,  which  he 
decided  to  hold  bsck  at  the  time,  because  of  the 
death  of  De  Gramont,  now  appears  as  the  con^ 
duding  essay  in  his  volume  of  *  Studies  in  Di- 
plomacy' (Macmillan);  a  large  portion  of  a 
long  preface  is  also  devoted  to  the  same  histo- 
rical episode.  Nothing  of  importance  in  added 
to  th)  disclosures  that  BenedetCi  made  in  1871. 
The  rest  of  the  volume  contains  articles  on  the 
movement  of  European  politics  before  and 
after  the  Franco-German  war,  reprinted  from 
the  IUvu£  des  Deux  Monde».  The  translation 
is  faithful,  but  not  idiomatic. 

In  his  new  novel,  *  Dernier  Refuge'  (Paris: 
Perrin  &  C^e.),  M.  lidouard  Rod  again  sho#s 
himself  a  vigorous  and  clever  writer.  The 
subject  of  the  story  is  the  favorite  one  of 
French  novelists,  but  the  share  allowed  to  soul- 
life  is  large,  preponderating  even;  and  con- 
science is  assigned  a  serious  rftle.  The  plot  is 
simple,  and  the  characters  are  few,  but  strong- 
ly nuurked.  At  times  the  account  of  the  inner 
struggles  of  the  hero  and  the  heroine  is  draim 
out  to  a  dangerous  length,  but  the  story  as  a 
whole  is  interesting  and  not  lacking  in  true 
pathos. 

"  Contributions  to  Biology  from  the  Hopkins 
Laboratory  of  Biology,"  lU.,  published  jointly 
by  Stanford  University  and  the  California 
Academy  of  Science,  is  a  paper  of  70  pagea 
and  29  plates  on  *  The  Fishes  of  Pnget  Sound,* 
by  Prof.  D.  S.  Jordan  and  Edwin  C.  StariES. 
The  work  is  one  of  importance.  In  connection 
with  the  names  in  tiie  list  many  notes  ara 
given.  Mainly  the  work  is  descriptive;  four- 
teen  new  species  and  eight  new  genera  are  de- 
scribed, and,  besides,  there  are  six  new  gene- 
ric names  applied  to  other  species.  It  is  to  be 
questioned  whether  some  of  the  types  are  suffi- 
ciently distinct  to  warrant  separation  and 
higher  rank.  For  instance,  the  new  genus  Zch 
large*  is  founded  on  a  form  which  from  figure 
or  description  is  hardly  separated  from  Ma^ 
rolicus,  of  Ck>cco,  1838 ;  and,  judging  from  the 
data  given,  the  four  new  genera,  PodotheeuMf 
StelgiBy  AverruncuSy  and  XysUs^  will  on  re- 
vision probably  be  run  together. 

No.  2  of  the  *'  Hopkins  Seaside  Laboratory 
Ck)ntributions,''  Stanford  University,  is  an  able 
article  of  thirty-seven  pages  and  fourteen  plates 
on  *  The  Cranial  Characters  of  the  Rock-Fish- 
es, SebaUodeSy^  by  Frank  Cramer.  The  author, 
as  a  result  of  his  investigation,  rightly  dises- 
tablishes quite  a  number  of  the  genera  and 
species  into  which  the  genus  has  heretofore 
been  divided;  but  he  leaves  us  to  wish  his  com- 
parisons had  been  carried  further,  among  the 
differences  seen  in  the  skulls  of  the  sexes, 
for  instance.  His  statement  that  these  fishes 
abruptly  disappear  to  the  southward  of  the 
United  States  to  reappear  in  the  temperate  and 
oold  waters  of  western  South  America,  it 
somewhat  incorrect;  they  retire  to 
deptiis  under  the  tropics— that  is  alL 


March  12,  1896] 


T.lie   N*atiorL. 


Q17 


Tb«  ^CaUlofiM  of  Sde&tiflc  Papen*  com* 
piled  by  the  Royal  Sode^ of  London  (London: 
C.  J.  Clay  &o  Bom;  New  York:  llnmnillan)  is 
oondnded  in  tha  newly  ieened  elerenth  Tolmne 
(Pet-Zyb).  We  may  remind  onr  readers  that 
the  papers  here  Indexed,  by  author- title  solely, 
are  for  tiie  decade  1874-1888.  Among  the 
weightiest  English  names  is  that  of  Lord  Kel- 
▼tn  <dir  William  Thomson),  and  a  large  num- 
ber of  entries  occnr  under  the  names  of  our 
countrymen,  the  late  C  V.  Riley,  and  Henry 
A.  Rowland,  J.  A.  Ryder,  N.  B.  Shaler.Charles 
A.  White,  Burt  O.  WQder,  etc.  A  few  pages 
are  deroted  at  the  end  to  anonymous  writers, 
and  thus  the  000th  page  of  this  superb  publica- 
tion is  orerpaased. 

Legislation  by  States  in  189S,  briefly  summa- 
rised and  daaeifled  and  thoroughly  indexed, 
forms  the  New  York  State  Library  Bulletin 
**  Legislation  No.  (S,**  a  rolume  of  more  than 
800  pages.  This  incomparably  useful  annual 
oomparisoo  is  a  perfect  key  to  the  more  or  less 
blind  and  wayward,  largely  imitatiTe,  and 
saringly  if  sparingly  original  and  beneficent 
law-making  in  tfairty-seren  States  and  two 
Territories  for  the  year  just  past  The  student 
of  tendenciee  could  have  no  handier  compen- 
dium, and  it  ought  to  be  a  check  on  all  con- 
templated legislation.  It  will  be  sent  to  any 
address  from  the  State  Library  at  Albany  for 
86  cents.  A  new  feature  is  a  list  of  consti- 
tutional amendments  roted  on  in  1804  and 
1806,  as  well  as  thoee  now  pending. 

Attention  has  heretofore  been  called  in  tbeee 
columns  to  the  merits  of  the  (German  literary 
periodical  i^j»Aorum.  The  firstnumber  for  1886 
(third  rolume)  is  fully  equal  to  its  predecessors 
in  wealth  and  variety  of  material.  There  are 
contributions  relating  to  Geibel,  Fischart,  Le-' 
nau,  Jean  Paul,  and  sereral  minor  writers;  a 
flrst  instalment  of  a  series  of  papers  on  W.  yon 
Humb<^t  (including  some  hitherto  unpubUsh- 
ed  letters  to  Schiller),  by  Albert  Leitamann  of 
Weimar;  some  flftrf  pages  are  deroted  to 
Ooethe— Richard  M.  Meyer,  one  of  his  ablest 
recent  biographers,  contributing  a  number  of 
**  notes,**  and  (Teorg  Witkowski  of  Leipsig, 
rerlews  (not  all  complimentary)  of  fire  recent 
books  on  Ooethe.  As  many  as  two  hundred 
periodicals,  journals,  "  Beilagen,*'  etc.,  hare 
been  ransacked  for  articles  on  subjects  per- 
taining to  (German  literature,  yielding  a  bar- 
rest  so  rich  and  raried  that  it  would  be  strange 
if  erery  student  of  that  literature  did  not  find 
something  of  especial  interest  for  him.  The 
number  of  theee  titles  and  references  cannot 
be  far  from  a  thousand.  We  renounce  the 
task  of  eren  giving  a  complete  summary  of 
the  contents  of  the  number. 

The  Archivio  Starioo  dM  ArU  for  Septem- 
ber-October, 1806,  makes  up  for  less  than  usual 
wealth  of  reading- matter  by  a  large  number  of 
reproductions  after  unhadmeyed  works  of 
worthy  masters.  Sereral  of  Oaudenslo  Fer- 
rari's altar-pieces  are  published  as  illustrations 
to  an  article  by  Stgnor  Oinlio  Bonola,  on  a 
triptych  at  Borgomanero.  Signer  Supino  con- 
tianca  his  admirable  study  of  the  Pisan  sculp- 
tors with  a  paper  on  Nino  and  Tommaso.  Big. 
Calsini  draws  attention  to  the  ducal  palace  at 
Gubbio,  now  dilapidated— its  best  earrings 
carried  off  to  South  Kensington— tottering, 
like  the  splendid  town  it  once  commanded,  to 
a  squalid  ruin,  but  originally  bnUt,  with 
scarcely  less  splendor  than  its  more  fortunate 
rival  at  Urbino,  for  tiie  same  Duke  Frederic 
and  by  the  tame  arctiitect,  Luciano  Laurano. 
An  eren  more  sumptuous  structure,  built  some 
sixty  years  later,  the  castle  at  Trent,  still  re. 
mains  Intact,  with  its  exquisitely  carved  co- 
lumns of  Verona  marble,  its  gorgeout  ceilings, 


and  its  brilliant  frescoes  by  Doeso,  Romanino, 
and  Oirolamo  da  Treriso,  cared  for  by  the 
Austrian  authorities,  who  now  use  it  as  a  bar- 
racks, in  a  way  that  should  be  a  lesson  to  tiie 
fussy  and  slovenly  art-oommissioners  of  Italy. 
Signer  H.  Semper  publishee  a  number  of  docu- 
ments furnishing  the  names  of  most  of  the 
artists  employed  on  this  structure,  and  the 
precise  date  of  their  emf^oyment.  Several 
book  notices,  with  copious  reproductions  after 
Borgognone,  Cossa,  and  Oirolamo  da  Treviso, 
complete  the  number. 

Some  weeks  ago  we  noted  the  discovery  at 
Pompeii  of  the  finest  and  most  richly  furnished 
hopse  which  the  excavations  there  ha^e  brought 
to  light.  Oood  representations  of  some  of  the 
pictures  on  its  walls  appear  in  a  late  number 
of  V Illustration,  One  of  these,  a  '*  Flying 
Group,"  compoeed  of  the  figures  of  two  women, 
half  nude,  veiled  only  by  floating  drapery,  is 
most  remarkable.  It  is  full  not  only  of  grace, 
but  of  character  and  strength.  Most  of  the 
paintings  at  Pompeii  are  no  more  than  copies 
of  celebrated  pictures  reproduced  by  clever 
hands;  but  this  last  fresco  appears  to  be  the 
original  work  of  a  serious  artist.  The  house, 
which  belonged  to  the  opulent  family  of  the 
Vettii,  is  to  be  pre«erved  with  all  its  luxury  of 
decoration  untouched.  The  pictures  will  be 
protected  against  rain  and  sun  by  glasses  and 
awnings;  the  statues  will  be  left  on  their  pe- 
destals, and  the  furniture  and  other  objects 
will  rmnain  as  they  were  found.  It  isexpected 
that  the  same  rule  will  be  applied  to  all  houses 
discovered  hereafter,  and  this  will  add  greatly 
to  their  interest 

The  first  volume  of  Henri  Rochefort^s  *  A  ven- 
tures de  ma  Vie'  has  been  published  by  Paul 
Dupont,  and  within  five  days  reached  its 
eleven^  edition.  This  is  one  of  the  greatest 
9ueeM  de  libraire  for  long  years.  The  buyers 
oi  the  volume  can  hardly,  one  would  say,  have 
followed  its  chapters  as  they  have  appeared 
daily  in  Le  Jowr,  There  is  a  distinct  lack  in 
them  of  the  rivadty  and  wit  which  character- 
ise other  writings  of  M.  Bochefort,  and  they 
contain,  too,  a  good  deal  of  padding.  M.  Roche- 
fort  means  to  stretch  his  memoirs  out  to  the 
extent  of  four  volumes,  and  he  usee  his  ma- 
terial with  a  sparing  hand. 

Scholars  who  have  consulted  at  Venice  the 
catalogue  of  manuscripts  in  the  Mercian  Li- 
brary, hare  been  aware  at  least  of  a  menu- 
script  appendix  summarily  describing  the 
Greek  codices  acquired  since  1740.  These  codi- 
cee  have  now,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Minis- 
ter of  Public  Instruction  and  the  direction  of 
Castellani,  prefect  of  the  library,  begun  to 
be  deecribed  bibUographically  in  print  The 
first  volume  to  appear  takes  up  No.  78,  being 
the  MSB.  relating  to  the  Bible  and  its  inter- 
preters. It  is  provided  with  an  index  of  codi- 
ces and  another  of  names.  Such  of  the  codi- 
ces as  are  dated  have  their  characters  f acstmi 
led,  with  obvious  advantage  to  the  study  of 
palsBography. 

The  Museum  of  Natural  History  at  Vienna 
has  for  a  long  time  been  in  possession  of  an 
Egyptian  mummy  which  was  a  -pussle  to  the 
savants.  Its  case  resembled  doeely  thoee  which 
contain  human  remains,  and  yet  the  inscrip- 
tions upon  the  outside  gave  reason  to  suppose 
that  it  was  the  mummy  of  an  ibis.  It  was  so 
rare  an  object  that  the  authorities  of  the  mu- 
seum were  disinclined  to  open  It  and  unroU  its 
bandages  Recently,  however,  the  idea  seised 
them  of  taking  it  to  the  new  school  of  pho- 
tography, or  **  skiagraphy,**  whereupon  the 
KOntgen  rays  revealed  very  clearly  the  figure 
of  the  skeleton  of  a  great  binL 

A  national  Hungarian  MfOenBium  Exhibition 


will  be  opened  on  May  2  at  Budapest  by  the 
Emperor-King  in  person,  who  will  also  be 
among  the  exhibitors  in  this  display,  in  two 
sections,  of  "  the  intellectual  and  commercial 
condition  of  Hungary  in  past  ages  and  at  the 
present  time."  The  Sultan  of  Turkey,  by  a 
certain  irony,  will  also  be  a  contributor. 
Fdtes  and  historical  pageants  within  the  walls 
of  the  Exhibition,  in  connecUon  with  a  peasant 
village,  will  heighten  the  general  interest 
The  architecture  of  the  great  building  will 
be  commemorative.  Tourists  may,*  therefore, 
well  direct  their  steps  to  an  htotoric  city 
which  in  itself  amply  repays  a  visit 

—A  remarkable  collection  is  to  be  offered 
the  coming  week  by  auction.  It  is  known  as 
**The  Froesard  Revolutionery  Collection, "and 
includes,  among  other  things,  the  so-called 
Trumbull  collection  of  sketches,  with  a  large 
addition  of  arms,  relics,  and  mementoes  be- 
longing to  Trumbull,  the  artist,  and  to  Gen. 
Washington  and  his  family.  We  looked  with 
some  curiosity  at  the  owner's  **  proem  **  to  the 
catalogue,  hoping  to  find  some  proofs  of  the 
authenticity  of  theee  relics.  They  have  been 
in  the  market  for  some  years,  and  all  efforts  to 
trace  them  through  a  rather  doubtful  financial 
operation  to  Trumbull  have  failed.  The  in- 
ternal evidence  is  against  their  being  genuine 
productions  of  Trumbull's  pen  or  brush ;  their 
historical  value  is  worthless,  as  they  represent 
impoesible  scenes  and  depict  indiriduals  in 
grotesque  forms  and  situations.  Astonishing 
as  are  the  claims  made  in  behalf  of  the 
sketches,  still  more  astonishing  are  the  deecrip- 
tlons  of  the  relics  and  mementoes,  each  one  of 
which  seems  to  have  been  carefully  deecribed 
by  Trumbull  himself,  as  if  he  had  prepared  a 
full  inventory  of  all  his  effects,  however 
minute  or  insignificant  As  examples  :  '*  Brass 
fire  pan,  brought  to  this  country  by  General 
Lafayette,  and  used  by  him  during  the  war. 
He  presented  it  to  General  Lee,  who  afterwards 
gave  it  to  me.  J.  T.**  An  old  tray  brought 
from  Scotland  by  P.  Henry's  father  was  pre- 
sented to  Trumbull  by  Patrick  Henry,  as  was 
a  brass  blunderbuw.  An  old  lock,  preeented 
by  Gen.  Washington  to  J.  T.,  purports  to  have 
been  **brought  from  England  from  his  (G. W.'s) 
father's'*  houw  1  This  is  but  one  degree  re- 
moved from  Mark  Twain's  Fragment  of  a 
Russian  GtoeraL  We  are  treated  to  Gen. 
Washington's  wash-pan  ;  also  to  three  locks  of 
hair  ;  and  an  even  more  remarkable  drawing 
in  oil  of  Martha  Dandrldge  at  the  age  of  eight 
and  a  half  years,  painted  by  John  Smybert  in 
1741  t  Any  one  who  has  even  a  smattering  of 
Revolutionary  history  and  knowledge  of 
the  relations  which  existed  between  Gen. 
Washington  and  his  staff  and  generals,  will 
find  great  amusement  from  a  study  of  this 
catalogue,  and  may  be  recommended  to  obtain 
a  copy. 

—Of  late,  honors  are  being  lavished  upon 
Herr  Adolf  Meniel,  both  at  home  and  abroad ; 
tardy  recognition  of  his  greatness  as  an  artist, 
as  well  as  of  the  infiuence  he  has  had  upon 
the  development  of  modem  fllnstration.  The 
most  recent  distinction,  his  election  as  hono- 
rary foreign  member  of  the  English  Royal 
Academy,  is,  of  all,  the  most  unexpected, 
sinoe  the  Academy  has  always  ignored  black- 
and-white,  and  Mensel,  distinguished  Illus- 
trator as  he  is,  cannot  be  thought  anything 
but  a  most  indifferent  painter.  However,  the 
Important  point  is  that  the  attention  he  de- 
serves has  been  called  to  him,  so  that  his  name 
is  enjoying  a  prominence  never  granted  to  it 
before.     No    moment,    therefore,    could    be 


Q18 


Tlie    N'atiorL. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1602 


more  appropriate  for  the  appearance  of  the 
Tolume  on  Menzel  in  the  KunUler-Moruh' 
graphien  series  (Leipzig:  Velhagen  &  Kladng), 
prepared  by  Professor  Knackfnss,  the  bat 
little  known  artist  who  suddenly  blossomed 
into  notoriety  by  his  collaboration  with  the 
Oerman  Emperor  in  that  well-adyertised, 
mnch-talked-abont  allegorical  picture.  What- 
ever may  be  one's  opinion  of  the  painting, 
there  is  certainly  no  question  that  the  mono- 
graph is  admirably  done.  No  other  book 
about  Menzel  contains  such  a  representative 
series  of  his  drawings,  and  these  are,  after  all, 
the  best  and  most  significative  record  of  his 
life's  work.  They  begin  with  his  early  and 
not  very  interesting  lithographs,  done  in  the 
days  before  he  had  found  French  wood-engra- 
vers, and  had  trained  Qerman  artiste,  who 
could  reproduce  his  designs  on  the  wood  block. 
Then  follow  illustrations  from  the  Works  and 
History  of  Frederick  the  Great,  which  must 
ever  remain  the  chief  monument  to  his  genius. 
There  are  a  munber  of  his  wonderful  battle- 
fields, and  of  his  portraits  of  famous  men; 
above  all,  that  little  masterpiece  which  shows 
the  famous  round  table  at  Bans-Souci,  with 
Frederick  and  Voltaire  sitting  side  by  side. 
There  are  single  figures  from  *  The  Uniforms 
of  Frederick  the  Great.'  There  are  numerous 
studies,  leaves  torn  from  his  sketch-book. 
There  is,  in  a  word,  enough  to  give  those  who 
have  not  semi  the  original  books  he  illustrated 
some  idea  of  his  knowledge,  his  power,  his 
conscientiousness,  and  his  infinite  variety  as  a 
draughtsman.  The  reproductions  by  process 
are  fairly  well  done  and  excellently  printed, 
while  all  necessary  facts  and  dates  are  duly 
chronicled  in  the  text  by  Professor  Knackfuss. 
To  its  other  merits  the  little  book  adds  that 
of  cheapness :  it  costs  but  three  marks  in  Ger^ 
many.  Altogether,  it  will  serve  as  a  useful 
catalogue  to  all  students  of  Menzel. 

—The  French  Academy,  upon  the  motion  of 
its  venerated  doyen,  M.  Legouv^  has  just  re- 
vived what  is  known  as  "la  discussion  des 
titres.*'  When  a  candidate  presents  himself  to 
the  Acad^mie  des  Sciences  or  the  Acadtoie 
des  Inscriptions,  it  is  the  custom  to  discuss  his 
qualifications  for  membership  in  the  Institute. 
Then,  at  a  second  meeting,  bis  name  is  voted 
on.  Thj^  has  not  hitherto  been  the  rule  at 
the  French  Academy.  Candidates  for  the 
Academy  have  made,  as  a  matter  of  rigorous 
custom,  a  call  upon  each  of  the  actual  Immor- 
tals  to  ask  his  suffrage ;  at  the  time  of  elec- 
tion the  names  proposed  were  voted  on  with- 
out debate.  This  will  be  changed  in  the  fu- 
ture,  and  the  title  of  candidates  to  member- 
ship io  the  Academy  will  be  discussed  before 
the  vote  is  taken.  This  is  not  the  first  time 
that  M.  Legouv^  has  put  forward  the  present 
plan  of  discussion,  nor  in  fact  the  first  time  that 
he  has  carried  it.  He  proposed  the  change  in 
1868,  and  it  was  adopted  in  spite  of  the  opposi- 
tion of  Guizot,  who  afterwards,  however, 
changed  his  mind  upon  the  subject.  While  it 
was  in  force,  the  names  of  four  candidates 
came  up,  each  of  which  gave  occasion  to  fierce 
debates.  Violent  opposition  was  made  to  the 
election  of  Littrd,  of  Renan,  of  Taine,  and  of 
Alexandre  Dumas.  If  there  is  to  be  a  French 
Academy  at  all,  it  would  certainly  seem  that 
such  men  as  these  should  be  members  of  it; 
but  M.  Legouv6  appears  to  think  that  unless 
there  had  been  free  discussion  of  their  titles  to 
membership,  not  one  of  them  would  have  been 
elected.  This  discussion  was  given  up  some 
time  about  1879,  after  the  elecUon  of  the  Due 
d'Audiffret-Pasquier,  and  just  before  that  of 
M.  Maxime  Du  Camp.    **  Cest  trop  tard  ou 


trop  t^t,"  a  wit  said.  M.  Legouv^  had  at  the 
Academy  the  support  of  M.A.  M^zi^res,  who 
was  his  seconder,  and  of  MM.  Gr^ard,  Brune- 
tidre,  and  Jules  Simon;  but  the  literary  men, 
as  a  whole,  were  against  him—why,  one  does 
not  exactly  see;  or  at  least  one  sees  no  good 
reason.  It  was  said  that  they  feared,  since  few 
of  them  are  good  speakers,  that  they  would  not 
be  very  well  able  to  back  their  friends  in  the 
debates. 

— M.  Legouvd  supported  his  proposition  In  a 
speech  full  of  interest  and  of  charm,  which 
has  since  been  printed  at  length  in  the  Temps. 
He  has  just  passed  his  eighty-ninth  birthday, 
and, has  been  a  member  of  the  Academy 'for 
more  than  forty  years.  But  the  only  sign  of 
age  which  his  speech  shows  lies  in  its  ripe  wis- 
dom and  in  the  tolerance  and  understanding 
which  length  of  days  ought  to  bring.  It  is  de- 
lightful to  read  what  he  has  to  say  of  Littr^ 
and  of  Dupanloup  as  well ;  of  De  Sacy  and 
Guizot,  as  well  as  of  Renan,  Taine,  and  Du- 
mas. Towards  the  end,  he  rises  to  a  noble 
eloquence ;  pleading  for  a  deeper  feeling  of 
confraternity  among  members  of  the  Acade- 
my, and  for  a  wider  tolerance  of  younger  men 
still  outside  it,  and  for  at  least  some  desire  to 
understand  and  appreciate  their  work.  No 
more  sympathetic  words  have  been  addressed 
to  the  younger  school  of  French  writers  than 
these  of  the  venerable  and  venerated  dean  of 
the  Academy. 

— Marceau,  the  young  general  of  the  French 
Republic  who  was  killed  in  battle  at  the  early 
age  of  twenty-seven,  after  having  risen  to  the 
rank  of  general  and  distinguished  himself  in 
many  campaigns  and  many  battles,  is  one  of 
the  most  attractive  figures  in  the  military  his- 
tory of  the  French  Revolution.  Bom  in  the 
same  year  as  Napoleon,  and  but  a  few  months 
later  than  Hoche,  his  early  career  was  full  of 
promise  for  the  future,  and,  had  he  lived,  he 
might  have  attained  to  a  fame  equal  to  theirs. 
But  the  Fates  willed  otherwise,  and  the  name 
of  Marceau  recalls  rather  brilliant  promise  left 
lamentably  unfulfilled  than  splendid  achieve- 
ment. More  than  one  excellent  biography  of 
Marceau  has  been  published  in  France,  and  it 
is  with  no  desire  to  depreciate  the  good  will 
and  hard  work  of  Capt.  T.  G.  Johnson  shown 
in  his  *  Frangois  S6verin  Marceau,  1769-1T96' 
(Macmillan),  that  we  express  our  opinion  that 
a  translation  of  one  of  the  recent  biographies 
—of  that  by  M.  Parf ait,  for  instance,  or  that  by 
M.  Maze — would  have  been  more  welcome  than 
his  original  compilation  from  their  volumes. 
Capt.  Johnson  is  not  very  much  at  home  in  the 
recent  literature  of  the  French  Revolution, 
and,  indeed,  it  could  hardly  be  expected  that 
an  officer  bearing  the  letters  I.  S.  C,  indicat- 
ing that  he  belongs  to  the  Indian  Staff  Corps, 
after  his  name,  should  be  so,  and  it  would 
therefore  have  been  wiser  for  him  to  translate 
rather  than  to  attempt  an  original  work.  The 
setting  of  the  biography  is  somewhat  defective, 
and  the  author's  use  of  authorities  somewhat 
quaint,  quoting,  as  he  does,  Alison  a?  an  autho- 
rity, and  praising  the  old-fashioned  and  the- 
atrical work  of  Beauchamp  on  the  Venddan 
war  as  '*  impartial";  but  the  events  of  Mar- 
ceau's  life  are  correctly  given,  with  an  enthusi- 
astic estimate  of  his  most  attractive  personali- 
ty. Since  there  exists,  to  our  knowledge,  no 
other  biography  of  Marceau  of  any  length  in 
the  English  language,  Capt.  Johnson's  volume 
may  be  read  with  interest  and  profit  by  those 
who  are  so  unfortunate  as  not  to  be  able  to 
read«French,  but  it  is  evidently  not  intended 
to  app^  to  the  scholar  or  to  the  student,  since 


it  is  without  that  most  necessary  part  of  an 
historical  work,  an  index. 

—Excepting  an  appendix  on  Superficial  Ana- 
tomy, the  new  (tenth)  edition  of  Quain's  *  Ana- 
tomy' (edited  by  Professors  Soh&fer  and 
Thane,  and  published  by  the  Longmans)  is 
now  complete.  The  three  volumes  comprise 
eight  parts,  which  may  be  had  separately. 
Pending  a  review  of  the  entire  work,  it  may 
be  said  here  that  the  two  extremes  of  excellence 
are  represented  by  the  parts  on  the  Nerves  and 
the  Sense  Organs  respectively.  Not  that,  in 
the  former,  inaccuracies  or  omissions  are  many 
or  great,  or  that  there  are  wanting  coomienda- 
ble  features,  e.  g.,  the  diagrams  and  tables  on 
pp.  844-856.  But  there  are  fewest  evidences  of 
progress  in  respect  to  method  and  terminology. 
The  complex  cranial  nerves  precede  the  simpler 
spinal.  That  anatomic  bugbear,  the  brachial 
plexus,  is  portrayed  on  too  small  a  scale  and 
without  designation  of  fundamental  features, 
the  so-called  *^  trunks"  and  ** cords."  Instead 
of  the  brief  yet  comprehensive  designation, 
vogtM*  the  clumsy  yet  descriptively  incomplete 
pneumo  gastric  is  evidently  preferred,  al- 
though there  are  perplexing  and  inexplicable 
inconsistencies,  as  on  p.  269.  The  author  is 
apparently  in  a  state  of  toponymic  transitioD, 
for,  while  systematically  describing  the  tho- 
racic nerves  as  **  dorsal,"  and  their  ventral  and 
dorsal  roots  and  branches  as  **  anterior  "  and 
<*  posterior,"  he  nevertheless  (as  at  the  foot  of 
p.  269)  uses  the  modem  and  exact  phrases 
**ventro> lateral"  and  **dorso-latera11y,"  and 
then,  as  if  alarmed  at  his  ownexplidtness,  sud- 
denly relapses  into  the  ambiguities  that  have 
so  long  constituted  the  opprobrium  of  anato- 
mic teachers  and  the  stumbling-blocks  of  their 
pupils.  Professor  SchAfer's  account  of  the 
organs  of  sense  is  admirable  and  is  well  illus- 
trated by  178  figures,  many  of  them  new. 
The  facts  and  ideas  of  the  new  histology  are 
everywhere  apparent.  The  concluding  "  com- 
parison of  the  modes  of  arrangement  of  sensory 
cells  and  nerve  fibres  in  the  different  organs  of 
special  sense"  might  well  have  been  in  larger 
type.  Professor  Sch&fer  has  reMited  the  his- 
tologic portion  of  the  part  on  Splanchnology, 
but  the  gross  anatomy  has  been  largely  re- 
written by  Dr.  J.  Symington,  who  has  also 
added  many  excellent  figures.  The  **  RiBcent 
Literature "  of  each  subject  is  a  very  helpful 
feature  of  this  as  of  all  the  other  parts.  The 
phrases  ** alimentary  canal"  and  ** mucous 
membrane"  recur  with  wearisome  effect— 
the  latter,  for  example,  five  times  in  fifteen 
consecutive  lines.  Why  not  use  the  unmis- 
takable single  words,  enteron  and  mtusosa,  the 
latter  practically  warranted  by  the  use  of  sub- 
mucosa  on  p.  90  ? 

— We  cannot  be  too  often  reminded  that  no 
farther  away  than  the  waist  of  our  own  o(mti- 
nent  there  lies,  almost  wholly  neglected  by 
American  archsBologists,  a  vast  and  splendid 
range  of  ancient  ruins  of  the  first  class.  Few 
tourists  there  have  been  so  well  fitted  to  judge 
them  as  Wm.  H.  Holmes,  who  visited  Yucatan 
in  January  and  February,  1895.  His  *  Monu- 
ments of  Yucatan '  (Part  I.  of  **  ArchsBologioal 
Studies  among  the  Ancient  Cities  of  Mexico") 
is  of  value  as  an  authoritative  fresh  reminder 
how  important  are  the  Yucatec  remains,  and 
how  imminent  the  need  of  serious,  definitive 
study  of  them  before  the  pry  of  tropic  roots 
and  the  quarrying  paisatio  shall  have  undone 
them  past  undei  standing.  Probably  nowhere 
else  are  such  splendid  vestiges  going  to  wrack  so 
swiftly.  While  Mr.  Holmes's  tour  was  too  has^ 
and  too  conventional  to  throw  much  newUffat 


March  12,  1896] 


The   IN"ation. 


219 


00  this  imprsMi  ve  field,  he  has  done  large  serrioe 
in  reSmpbasisiog  so  clearly  the  need  of  ezami- 
Dation  00  Bandelierlan  linee — one  ruin  at  a 
tf  me  (not  necemrily  the  most  sensational  one 
first);  measurement,  excavation;  study  of  and 
through  present  natives;  all  lighted  by  the 
broadest  horif-n  of  documentary  and  field  ex 
peiienoe.  The  proof-reading  of  the  book  is 
hardly  creditoble  to  the  Field  Columbian  Mu- 
seum, of  which  it  is  publication  8;  and  there  are 
traces  of  other  carelessness.  Misspellings  like 
**Le  Plongon^  may  happen,  but  endemic  bad 
grammar  should  not  persist.  Verb  and  substan- 
tive quarrel  in  number  with  surprising  frequen- 
cy. The  Spanish  is  often  incorrect,  «.  g.,  **  Isla 
Mugeree"  (p.  67).  To  speak  of  Indians  as  **  the 
red  race**  is  no  longer  tolerable  in  a  scholar.  The 
Indian  is  brown  and  calls  ua  red,  with  a  percep- 
tion we  might  wisely  learn.  The  'tigers"  which 
figure  in  Tucatec  architecture  are  of  course  ja 
guars,  not  tigers,  and  the  author  should  hardly 
have  been  misled  by  the  loose  frontier  Spanish 
tigre.  To  use  without  quotation-points  or  other 
danger-signals  such  words  as  **  Cities,''  "  Gov- 
ernor," "Palace,"  ** Nunnery,"  with  reference 
to  the  prehistoric  Indian  economies,  is  hardly 
more  scientific  than  to  say  (p.  19)  that  the  Yu- 
catec  tribes  "finally  lost  their  status  as  na- 
tions." Nor  can  Mr.  Holmes  have  had  in 
memory  the  far  more  numerous  and  vastly 
greater  hucuxu  of  Peru  when  he  wrote  of  Yu- 
catan (p.  31) :  '*  No  nation  of  builders,  save  pos- 
sibly the  Mound-builders  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley,  has  ever  equalled  this  people  in  the 
number,  variety,  and  size  of  its  terraces  and 
pyramids."  The  illustrations  are  effective, 
though  the  panoramas  are  of  much  license. 


THE   YELLOWSTONE   PARK, 

The  FeUowsUme  National  Park:  Historical 
and  Descriptive.  Illustrated  with  maps, 
views,  and  portraits.  By  Hiram  Martin 
Chittenden,  Captain,  Corps  of  Engineers,  U. 
8.  A.  Cincinnati :  Robert  Clarke  Co. 
1806  8vo,  pp.  xvi,  897,  66  illustrations. 
A  woit  which  can  be  appropriately  dedicated 
to  the  memories  of  John  Colter  and  James 
Bridger,  "pioneers  in  the  wonderland  of  the 
Upper  Yellowstone,"  excites  our  interest  in 
these  worthies,  and  we  enter  at  once  upon  the 
historical  part  of  Capt.  Chittenden's  admirable 
monograph.  This  occupies  about  a  third  of 
the  work;  it  is  entirely  original,  the  net  result 
of  much  conscientious  research,  brings  news  to 
most  readers,  and  possesses  permanent  value. 
Most  of  the  voluminous  Park  literature  is 
merely  descriptive,  or  of  the  guide-book  order, 
iu  which  patriotism  and  politics  are  rapturously 
invoked  with  an  eye  to  business;  the  present 
work  is  distinctively  a  solid  contribution  to 
knowledge.  The  author  is  one  of  several  engi- 
neers to  whom  we  owe  the  good  roads  through 
the  Park;  he  is  thoroughly  familiar  ^ith  its 
minutest  details  of  topography;  he  has  in- 
formed  himself  fully  concerning  the  legisla- 
tion for  and  administration  of  its  affairs,  as 
well  as  of  all  the  schemes  for  spoiling  this  emi- 
nent  domain;  he  b  an  excellent  practical  geo- 
grapher, and  he  writes  so  well  that  we  might 
suppose  the  present  volume  to  be  no  maiden 
effort,  did  we  not  happen  to  know  that  it  is 
such.  By  this  single  work  Capt.  Chittenden 
makes  himself  our  highest  authority  on  the 
subject,  and,  as  we  premised,  his  special  merit 
is  that  of  the  histogeographer. 

The  origin  of  the  English,  French,  and 
Spanish  forms  of  the  name  is  set  a  little  back 
of  Lewis  and  Clark,  and  traced  to  the  Hidnt- 
san  word  p!i^i*"g  "  rock  yellow  river."    The 


obscure  trail  of  Verendrye,  about  the  middle 
of  the  last  century,  is  of  course  crossed,  but  we 
have  nothing  definite  to  go  upon  till  the  time 
when  the  traders  fin>t  came  down  from  the 
Assiniboine  to  the  Blandan  settlements  on  the 
Missouri.  The  visit  of  the  great  geographer 
Thompson,  1799,  is  a  tuming*point,  but  we 
know  that  the  N.  W.  Co.  had  sent  men  there 
before,  in  1793  or  earlier,  and  it  is  certain 
that  some  of  the  H.  B.  Co.  were  on  the  spot 
some  years  sooner.  However,  Thompson's  Man- 
dan  visit  was  the  first  that  bore  any  historical 
or  geographical  fruit ;  the  word  "  Yellow 
Stone  "  appears  in  his  unpublished  MSS.,  and 
it  seems  from  calculations  furnished  to  the 
author  by  Dr.  Coues  that  he  even  fixed  the 
source  of  the  great  river  with  approximate 
precision.  The  first  white  man  ever  in  the 
Park  was  John  Colter,  who  invaded  the 
haunts  of  the  Tukuarika,  or  Sheepeaters, 
io  1807,  and  discovered  the  two  principal  lakes 
in  the  Park,  which  Clark  in  1814  caUed  Eustis 
and  Biddle— that  is,  present  Yellowstone  and 
Jackson  Lakes.  The  map  opposite  p.  11  traces 
"  Colter's  route  of  1807,"  among  many  other 
historical  data  of  the  utmost  significance,  and 
removes  nearly  or  quite  all  the  haze  in  which 
it  was  left  even  in  the  latest  edition  of  Lewis 
and  Clark.  Colter  was  chiefiy  known  to  his 
contem^raries  as  the  colossal  liar  who  had  the 
race  for  his  life  recorded  by  Bradbury  and  im- 
proved on  by  Irving;  bat  "Colter*s  Hell"  is 
located,  and  Colter  takes  permanent  place  in 
history  for  all  that  his  Lewis  and  Clark  record 
proves  him  to  have  been  before  he  made  on  his 
own  account  his  immortal  discovery;  This 
pioneer,  of  course,  ofMued  the  whole  trapper 
and  trader  period ;  and,  passing  the  enigma  of 
"J.  O.  R.  1819,"  we  are  taken  on  to  the  times 
when  the  figure  of  "Jim  "  Bridger  looms  up. 

Bridger  was  a  remarkable  man,  who  never 
came  fully  into  his  own  while  he  lived.  He 
told  the  truth  about  "  wonderland,"  but  no- 
body believed  him  ;  he  was  called  the  "  monu- 
mental liar  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,"  and  per- 
versely took  revenge  on  his  calumniators  by 
deliberately  making  himself  such,  till  Baron 
Munchausen  must  have  turned  in  his  grave. 
Capt.  Chittenden  tells  some  of  these  stories, 
and  in  comparison  with  them  the  "  gyascutus" 
becomes  a  tame  animal  of  entire  probability  I 
But  all  that  we  can  understand;  Bridger's 
pedestal  is  secure,  and  his  further  title  to  fame 
rests  upon  the  fact  that  he  led  on  to  the  next 
period,  that  of  ofiScial  exploration  and  survey, 
when  the  soldier  and— not  the  priest,  as  usual 
in  French  and  Spanish  America,  but— the  sci- 
entist, followed  the  trapper  and  trader :  for 
Bridger  was  guide  to  Capt.  Raynolds's  expedi- 
tion of  1859-60,  which  Dr.  Hayden  aocom. 
panied  as  geologist.  A  small  map  shows  the 
sources  of  the  Yellowstone  as  understood  at 
this  time,  when  actual  discovery  was  frustrat- 
ed—fortunately, as  the  text  proceeds  to  show, 
for  reasons  we  can  hardly  find  space  to  speci- 
fy :  suffice  it,  they  appear  clear  and  cogent. 
The  prospector  followed  next,  and  the  course 
of  discovery  went  on  in  the  way  which  was  vain- 
ly expected  to  lead  to  the  yellow  sand  of  the 
gold-seeker's  restless  dreams.  This  wonderland 
does  not  exist;  and  the  awakening  was  due  to 
final  discovery  by  three  separate  parties  who 
visited  the  region  in  1860,  1870,  and  1871,  re- 
spectively. By  discovery  the  author  means, 
he  says,  "full  and  final  disclosure  to  the 
world"  of  the  Yellowstone  wonderland.  All 
the  particulars  are  given  with  minutenesr  and 
fidelity,  but  it  is  obviously  impossible  for  us  to 
follow  them  out  here ;  nor  would  it  be  fair  to 
tell  so  much  that  anybody  should  be  satisfied 
without  reading  the  book  for  himself. 


At  this  point  comes  up  the  "  park  idea."  Cap- 
tain Chittenden  bandies  this  delicate  theme  as 
the  conscientious  and  impartial  historical  critic 
should  handle  such  a  topic.  The  enthusiastic 
Catlin  is  easily  shown  to  have  suggested  some 
park,  but  not  this  one.  The  specific  idea  started 
in  camp  at  the  junction  of  Oibbon  with  Firehole 
River,  September  19, 1870,  among  members  of 
the  Washbum-Doane  expedition,  which  in- 
cluded Oen.  Henry  D.  Washburn,  Hon.  Natha- 
niel P.  Langford,  Hon.  Cornelius  Hedges  (ac- 
tually the  prime  suggester  of  what  then  shaped 
itself  in  the  minds  of  the  whole  of  them),  Hon. 
Truman  C.  Everts,  Hon.  Samuel  T.  Hauser, 
and  other  civilians,  with  Lieut.  G.  C.  Doane^ 
Second  Cavalry,  commanding  the  military  es- 
cort. The  wonders  which  those  great  moun- 
tain ranges  and  snowy  abysses  had  guarded  for 
ages  in  secret  were  by  this  time  fully  disclosed; 
the  rush  to  clutch  laurels  became  something 
that  neither  beaver  skin  nor  gold  itself  could 
have  caused— it  was  more  like  the  eruption  of 
a  geyser.  Captain  Chittenden  needed  all  his 
caution  and  calnmess  to  tread  safely  here,  but 
he  has  come  off  welL  In  following  up  the  politi- 
cal history  he  shows  that  the  bill  was  steered 
through  Congress  mainly  by  the  efforts  of  three 
men— Dr.  Hayfien,  Mr.  Langford,  and  W.  H. 
Clagett.  In  judging  the  halo  of  the  first  of 
these  three,  a  very  ungracious  duty  at  best, 
we  think  that  Captain  Chittenden  has  not 
strained  his  quality  of  mercy  in  striving  to  be 
just,  particularly  when  we  remember  that 
most  of  the  Congressional  matters  which  po- 
pular tradition  labels  "Hayden"  have  the 
ear-marks  of  "Jim"  Stevenson  and  "Black 
Jack  "  (Gen.  John  A.  Logan).  But  this  case  U 
a  peculiar  one.  In  this  part  of  his  i»sk,  and 
also  elsewhere  in  the  book,  where  the  biogra- 
phies of  Mr.  Langford,  Dr.  Hayden,  and  CoL 
Stevenson  are  sketched,  the  author  hss  ac- 
quitted himself  most  creditably;  he  has  shown 
tact,  discernment,  and  impartiality,  and  his 
verdict  must  be  regarded  as  flnaL 

After  discussing  the  reasons  why  the  Upper 
Yellowstone  remained  fortunately  so  long  un- 
known, the  author  r^idly  reviews  explorations 
subsequent  to  1871.  They  have  been  many, 
notable  for  various  reasons;  probably  the  most 
historically  significant  matters  are  those  con- 
nected with  the  Nea-Pero^  campaign,  when  that 
great  soldier  and  humanitarian.  Chief  Jqpph, 
was  pursued  by  such  worthy  foes  as  Gens.  How- 
ard, Gibbon,  Sturgis,  and  Biiles.  The  adminis- 
trative history  of  the  Park,  including  the  Park 
dedicatory  and  protective  acts,  is  set  forth  in 
sufficient  detail,  and  with  the  same  precision 
whi(^  marks  the  treatment  of  the  other  mat- 
ters upon  which  we  have  touched.  This  con- 
cludes the  formally  historical  Part  I.,  but  by 
no  means  finishes  Capt.  Chittenden's  histogeo- 
graphic  labors.  For  these  are  resumed  in  an- 
other part  of  the  book,  so  important  that  we 
wonder  why  it  was  relegated  to  the  limbo  of 
Appendix  A.  It  is  an  integral  part  of  the 
whole  performance,  being  nothing  lets  than  an 
historical  review  of  the  several  hundred  geo- 
graphical names  of  the  Park  mountains,  lakes, 
riven,  geysers,  and  miscellaneous  topographic 
and  hydrographic  features.  There  are  proba- 
bly more  names  to  the  square  mile  in  the  Plu*k 
than  in  most  of  our  settled  districts'  of  equal 
area,  though  there  is  not  a  single  town  or  even 
hamlet,  and  the  artificial  features  are  practi- 
cally restricted  to  a  military  post,  some  hotelfi 
and  the  roads  or  trails,  including,  of  course, 
bridges.  The  auUMH*  has  taken  great  pains 
with  the  always  difficult  task  of  tracing  such 
names  to  their  sources;  his  work  is  here  entire- 
ly original,  and  he  is  to  be  feUoiUted  on  the 
amount  of  accurate  information  he  has  gar- 


220 


Tlie   ilTatloii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1602 


nered.  Go  analysis  of  his  lists,  the  names  will 
be  found  to  fall  nearly  all  in  two  classes— the 
*  *  personal  '*  and  the  *  *  characteristic."  People 
had  forgotten  about  the  Oardiner  for  whom  a 
main  tributary  now  appears  to  hare  been 
named,  and  few  could  have  guessed  that 
'*  Heart**  Lake  was  named,  before  1870,  for 
an  old  hunter,  possibly  one  of  Bouneville*s 
men,  named  Hart  Hunney,  killed  by  the 
Crows  in  1872.  Bunsen  Peak  suggests  the 
great' scientist  who  investigated  geysers  and 
many  other  things;  but  how  many  of  us 
knew  that  Kepler  Cascade  was  so  called 
for  the  twelve-year-old  son  of  ex-Oov.  J. 
W.  Hoyt  of  Wyoming  ?  No  part  of  the 
book  is  better  done  than  this,  and  none  repre- 
sents so  much  information  in  equal  compass;  it 
is  admirable,  and  we  should  wonder  why  it 
was  never  done  before,  did  we  not  know  that 
in  general  admirable  things  are  slow  to  ma- 
ture.  In  some  of  these  cases,  the  author  gives 
extensive  biographical  data  respecting  the  per- 
sons concerned,  with  their  portraits  in  many 
instances.  But  long  as  is  the  list  of  claimants 
for  this  sort  of  fame,  the  author  wittily  re- 
minds us,  p.  287,  that  the  Devil  distanced  them 
all: 

*^  In  the  race  for  the  geographical  honors  of 
theParic,  the  prise  fell  neither  to  the  United 
States  Gfeological  Survev  nor  even  to  Colonel 
Norris  [the  irrepressible  second  superinten- 
dent], though  each  was  a  close  competitor. 
It  was  won  by  that  mythical  potentate  of 
whose  sulphurous  empire  this  region  is  thought 
by  some  to  be  simply  an  outlying  province.^ 

The  reaction  from  this  sort  of  thing  was 
healthy  and  in  good  taste;  it  gave  us  the 
^'oharacteristio''  names,  by  studied  efforts  to 
carry  out  a  system  of  geographical  nomencla- 
ture which  should  shun  personalities,  with 
gratifying  result  In  these  instanoes  the  trac- 
ing of  a  name  to  its  source  was  generally  ea^, 
as  it  was  mainly  a  mere  matter  of  fixing  a 
date,  easily  found  in  oiBoial  records.  The 
christening  of  the  geysers  the  antiior  regards 
as  having  been  **  singularly  fortunate.**  There 
was  no  system;  those  interesting  objects  seem 
to  have  named  themselves,  spontaneously  and 
as  a  rule  felicitously,  either  in  their  character- 
istic modes  of  action,  their  shapes,  sises,  or 
colors.  One  of  the  neatest  names  in  the  whole 
list  strikes  us  as  being  that  of  Solution  Creek, 
as  the  issue  of  Riddle  Lake;  for  the  latter  was 
never  understood  till  the  former  was  discov- 
ered. 

About  a  third  of  the  work  is  occupied  by 
Part  IL,  which  is  formally  descriptive.  It  is 
interesting  and  attractive,  particularly  when 
the  author  is  taking  us  over  the  tourist  routes 
he  helped  to  make  and  pointing  out  the  "  ob- 
jects of  interest.'*  The  Baedeker  feature  will 
commend  itself  to  the  average  reader,  and  is 
an  indispensable  pcLrt  of  the  work,  but  has  not 
the  great  value  and  significance  of  nearly  all 
the  rest,  for  in  the  nature  of  the  case  it  could 
hardly  give  us  anything  new.  It  is  strongest 
in  its  general  geography,  weakest  in  the  fauna 
and  flora,  weak  in  geology,  and  excellent  in  de- 
scribing and  explaining  the  geysers;  in  scenic 
effect,  of  course,  the  cafion  and  the  falls  take 
precedence.  This  portion  is  fully  illustrated 
with  views,  with  most  of  which  the  public  is 
already  familiar.  An  excellent  foldiog-map 
A0W8  bv  name  and  with  g^eat  accuracy  almost 
every  point  on  which  the  author  touches.  This 
is  better  than  any  other  we  have  seen,  with  the 
single  exception  of  one  of  probably  equal  ex- 
cellence issued  by  the  present  Geological  Sur- 
vey; Chittenden's  is  not  quite  so  large  a  sheet, 
but  is  plain  in  its  minutest  details,  and  these 
are  extremely  numerous.    Yet  we  must  insist 


that  the  little  page-size  **  historical  chart** 
opposite  p.  11  is  a  still  more  important  contri- 
bution to  knowledge,  and  the  most  notable 
single  feature  of  the  work. 

Part  in.  deals  with  the  future  of  the  Park. 
It  discloses  all  the  greed  and  selfishness  of  in- 
cessant scheming  to  destroy  the  place  and  de- 
feat its  purpose,  whether  by  railroad  encroach- 
ment, change  of  boundary,  **  segregation,**  or 
whatever  specious  pretext,  as  well  as  by  the 
open  lawleasness  of  poaching.  Connected  with 
this  important  matter,  we  find  In  an  appendix 
the  legislation  and  regulations  now  in  force, 
the  appropriations  made,  and  other  data  for 
correct  appreciation  of  the  political  situation. 
We  hope  Capt.  Chittenden*s  wise  and  sound 
counsels  will  be  heeded;  they  cannot  be  disre- 
garded with  impunity,  unless  the  Park  idea  is 
to  be  abandoned.  The  railroad  lobby  has  al- 
ways been  peculiarly  plausible,  persistent,  and 
pernicious;  but  it  Is  enough  to  hear  in  this  case 
the  declaration  of  the  present  able  and  fearless 
military  superintendent,  Capt.  George  S.  An- 
derson: "Six  months  from  the  entrance  of  the 
first  locomotive  within  the  limits  of  the  Park, 
there  will  not  be  one  acre  of  its  magnificent 
forests  left  unbumed.**  The  segregation  sub. 
terf  uge  is  met  by  the  author  in  italics:  *'  Never 
permit  the  boundariee  of  the  Yellowstone  PUrk 
to  be  brought  down  into  the  volleys.**.  No  one 
can  read  his  summary  of  the  present  case  and 
future  prospects  without  being  impressed  with 
its  force. 

We  can  challenge  the  date  1787  assigned  (p. 
^  to  the  old  Northwest  Company,  and  substi- 
tute 1784  with  good  reason;  we  also  suspect 
that  the  Dnchame  of  p.  41  is  one  of  the  many 
Ducharmes  who  figure  in  the  fur  trade.  But 
we  have  no  disposition  to  pick  small  holes  in 
such  a  piece  of  work  as  this.  The  Bibliogra- 
phy with  which  the  book  closes  is  in  very  bad 
form;  any  other  order  of  the  entries,  or  none 
at  all,  would  have  been  preferable  to  the  odd 
derangement  which  displays  nothing  so  clearly 
as  it  does  the  hand  of  a  novice  at  this  particu- 
lar business.  It  is  fearfully  and  wonderfully 
compounded  of  a  subject-index  by  catch-titles 
with  an  author-index  to  itself,  in  a  single  al- 
phabet, together  with  some  other  surprising 
strokes  of  misguided  genius  which  defy  descrip- 
tion. However,  it  makes  only  a  dozen  pages 
or  so,  easily  mastered  in  a  few  minutes;  and 
one  result  of  our  scrutiny  is,  that  probably 
about  250  separate  Park  publications  are  rep- 
resented by  the  182  numbered  entries  in  this 
curiously  constructed  puzzle.  Aside  from  the 
innumerable  fugitive  pieces  which  the  author 
did  not  intend  to  include,  250  publications  may 
approximate  the  total  of  special  Park  t>ooln 
and  articles  of  any  consequence;  and  in  closing 
we  may  apply  balm  to  the  wound  we  have 
jutt  made  by  saying  that  certainly  no  future 
writer  on  the  Yellowstone  National  Park  can 
appear  before  the  public  in  any  serious  per- 
formance without  having  first  reckoned  with 
Capt.  Chittenden. 


HANS  CHRISTIAN  ANDERSEN. 

Hana  Christian  Andersen :  A  Biog^phy.   By 
R.  Nisbet  Bain.    London:  Lawrence  &  Sul- 
len; New  York:  Dodd,  Mead&  Co.    1895. 
Stories  and  Fairy  Tales  by  Hans  Christian 
Andersen,   Translated  by  H.  Oskar  Sommer. 
With  100  Pictures  by  Arthur  J.  Gaskin.    2 
vols.    London:    George  Allen;  New  York: 
Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.    1805. 
"  Mt  life  is  a  beautiful  fairy  tale,  happy  and 
full  of  incident,**  wrote  Andersoi  at  the  begin- 
ning of  his  autobiography;  and  yet^  although 


it  is  twenty  years  since  he  died,  no  adequate 
life  of  the  poet  had  appeared  in  English  until 
Mr.  Baiu  took  up  the  fascinating  theme.  His 
treatment  of  the  subject  lacks,  of  course,  the 
charm  of  the  autobiographic  pen,  but  it  gives 
us  instead  a  faithful  picture  of  the  man,  in 
which,  beMnd  the  chOdish  vanity,  the  silly 
sensitiveness,  and  the  fiabby  sentimentality, 
Andersen^  genuine  worth  and  amiability  are 
steadily  apparent.  It  was  not  difficult  to  make 
the  narrative  entertaining,  but  to  preserve  a 
discriminating  balance  between  the  whining, 
gushing,  girlish  man  and  the  **  good  old  poet  ** 
whom  the  people  loved  and  kings  delighted  to 
honor,  must  have  been  no  easy  task.  So  re- 
lentless is  Mr.  Bain*s  presentation  of  the  cha- 
racter that  we  have  at  times  suspected  him  of 
a  lack  of  sympathy  with  his  hero;  but  dose  be- 
side each  instance  of  Andersen*s  folly  some 
wholly  generous  trait  appears,  and  we  are 
drawn  to  him  again,  as  when  for  a  winning 
look  or  word  we  caress  the  child  whom  we 
thought  to  punish.  The  common  source  of  all 
his  faults  and  follies  will  be  found  in  his  ex* 
cessive  vanity,  and  as  the  autobiography  of  a 
vain  man  is  the  least  trustworthy  of  human 
documents,  Mr.  Bain  has  placed  his  main  re- 
liance upon  the  extensive  correspondence  now 
available  and  upon  the  testimony  of  contem- 
poraries. 

Andersen  was  bom  In  1805  in  the  ancient 
city  of  Odense  on  the  island  of  Ffinen.  Unlike 
most  men  of  strong  imaginative  powers,  his 
<*Lust  zu  fabuliren*'  came  not  from  his 
mother,  though  she  appears  to  have  had  more 
wit  and  intelligence  than  Mr.  Bain  gives  her 
credit  for,  but  from  his  father,  whose  disap- 
pointed literary  ambition  was  realized  in  the 
career  of  his  son.  In  his  early  years  Andersen 
was  hampered  by  extreme  poverty  and  in  a 
measure  also  by  his  unprepossessing  appear- 
ance. He  passed  through  the  struggles  of  his 
youth  with  a  noble.  If  somewhat  eccentric, 
perseverance.  His  personal  appearance  he 
himself  never  regarded  as  a  disadvantage,  for 
he  thought  himself  distinguished-looking;  but 
the  vision  of  this  long,  lank,  strangely  clad 
youth,  with  his  gawky  ardor  of  speech  and  ac- 
tion, must  have  given  many  a  would-be  bene- 
factor pause.  The  first  person  to  whom  he 
appealed  In  Copenhagen,  when  he  went  to  the 
capital  to  seek  his  fortune,  thought  him  mad 
and  dismissed  him  sunmiarlly.  Even  in  later 
years  his  singular  looks  and  manner  seemed  to 
Victor  Hugo  so  suspicious  that^  In  response  to 
Andersen's  request  for  his  autograph,  Hugo 
wrote  his  name  at  the  top  of  the  sheet  of  paper. 
But,  throughout  his  career,  the  chief  stum- 
bling-block was  his  Inordinate  vanity.  His 
impatience  of  criticism,  his  blind  confidence 
in  the  infallibility  of  his  genius,  his  mad  out- 
bursts under  just  censure,  excited  the  con- 
t^npt  and  ridicule  of  his  enemies  and  threat- 
ened to  alienate  his  closest  friends.  He  had, 
it  is  true,  many  crosses  to  bear,  but  the  man 
who  wears  his  heart  upon  bis  sleeve  must  not 
wonder  if  the  daws  pedc  at  it  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  speaks  of  Andersen  as  **  thrilling 
from  top  to  toe  with  an  excruciating  vanity, 
and  scouting  even  along  the  streets  for  the 
shadows  of  offence.**  The  late  Prof.  Boyesea 
called  this  a  "cruel  observation,**  but  Boyoesn 
himself,  and  now  with  much  ampler  details, 
Mr.  Bain,  have  shown  that  Stevenson*s  cha- 
racterization was  essentially  correct,  Ander- 
sen's friends  were  obliged  to  treat  him  like  a 
sick  child,  and,  on  the  ocpaston  of  each  new 
paroxysm  of  wounded  vanity,  procure  for  him 
the  means  to  gratify  his  passion  for  Mmwl. 
Collins,  his  life-long  friend,  sometfoMi  Mik 
him  in  hand,  condemned  his  ooiioii%  «rit<MM^ 


March  i3,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


221 


•d  him  Afminil  Um  dangers  of  bjperteiiBitive- 
utm;  bot  thMe  aalutary  oooiimU  only  caused 
a  fTMh  acceM  of  *'hjs(erical  whimpering.^ 
Unfrieodlj  criticism  made  him  ** forget  his 
Ood,**  and  cherish  thoughts  '*  which  no  Chri»- 
Uan  ought  to  have."  His  first  wish  upon 
reading  an  adyerse  comment  was  to  di#,  pre- 
ferably abroad,  far  from  hated  and  unap- 
predaUre  Denmark.  To  him  the  towers  of 
Copenhagen  were  **  pointed  like  critics*  pens.*' 
Indeed,  his  native  land  fares  ill  whenever  one 
of  her  sons  fails  to  enjoy  his  poetry.  Hb  rage 
reaches  its  climax  in  a  letter  of  1843:  *'The 
Danes  are  evil. minded,  cold,  Satanic.  They 
exactly  snit  their  wet,  mooldy- green  islands. 
I  hate  and  loathe  my  country  Just  as  much  as 
my  country  hates  and  bespatters  me."  It  is 
fair  to  say,  however,  that  he  regretted  this 
outburst. 

Unfavorable  criticism  he  attributed  to  envy, 
malice,  or  stupidity;  once  he  denounced  it  as 
flat  blasphemy,  thus  impiously  to  deny  the 
gifts  which  God  had  given  him.  Although 
praise  usually  made  him  modest,  his  sensitive, 
ness  increased  with  his  fame.  He  believed  him- 
self a  great  dramatist;  his  many  failures 
taught  him  no  wisdom,  and  occasional  success 
oonflrmed  him  in  his  folly.  He  insisted  that 
he  was  the  victim  of  a  conspiracy;  that  in  his 
life-long  effort  to  obtain  a  foothold  upon  the 
stage  he  had  been  defeated  by  a  clique.  Mr. 
Bain  conclusively  shows  the  absurdity  and 
even  ingratitude  of  this  suspicion.  Never  was 
a  man  more  generously  assisted  in  his  dra- 
matic enterprises  than  was  Andersen,  but  the 
vagaries  of  his  vanity  constantly  led  him  to 
seek  the  causes  of  his  failures  outside  of  him- 
self, and  so  exposed  him  to  the  charge  of  in- 
gratitude. He  resented  the  death  of  his  kind 
benefactor,  the  good  old  King  Frederick  VL, 
as  a  personal  grievance,  because  the  pnmiire 
of  the  **  Mulatto**  had  to' be  postponed  in  con- 
sequence. Similarly,  for  all  the  praise  with 
which  his  novel  of  *0.  T.*  was  greeted  he  had 
no  word  of  thanks;  he  heard  only  the  voice  of 
one  malignant  and  anonymous  critic.  In  *  The 
Story  of  My  Life,'  Andersen  poses  as  a  man  of 
genius  made  wretched  by  cruel  neglect,  whereas 
his  letters  of  the  corresponding  dates  frequent- 
ly show  that  he  was  enjoying  some  of  the  hap- 
piest triumphs  of  his  life. 

Hie  vanity  was  the  source  of  other  foiblee. 
It  led  him,  though  one  of  the  most  refined  of 
men,  into  offences  against  good  taste  and  into 
schemes  of  self-advertisement  which  were  little 
short  of  vulgarity.  Nor  can  he  be  entirely 
cleared  of  the  charge  of  snobbishnessl  He 
loved  to  display  the  decorations  which  royal 
hands  had  placed  upon  his  bosom,  and  hb  fer- 
vid patriotism  during  the  SchleswigHolstein 
war  was  yet  not  fierce  enough  to  induce  him  to 
relinquish  the  Prussian  Order  of  the  Red  Eagle. 
He  was  delighted  when  kings  addressed  him; 
and  the  moments  he  had  spent  beside  a  Grand 
Dnka,  holding  his  hand  and  shedding  tears, 
furnished  him  with  the  sweetest  joys  of  recol- 
lection.  He  refused  to  be  classed  with  the 
common  people,  and  was  indignant  at  being 
obliged  to  sit  at  the  theatre  **  beside  the  man 
who  trims  my  hair.*'  And  when  in  his  old  age 
a  statue  was  erected  in  his  honor,  he  strongly 
objected  to  being  portrayed  as  an  old  man, 
surrounded  by  children.  **  Children  alone  can^ 
not  represent  me,**  he  exclaimed. 

'*  With  all  his  ridiculous  and  irritottngfoL 
ties  and  foibles,  Andersen  was  always  the 
most  lovable  of  creatures.*'  Thus  does  Mr. 
Bain  judiciously  temper  his  candid  statement 
of  the  man's  faults  with  a  full  recognition  of 
his  amiable  qualities.  Simple  as  Andersen's 
character  was,  it  was  yet  full  of  contradic- 


tions. With  a  nature  of  transparent  truthful- 
ness, his  autobiography  is  a  tissue  of  misrepre- 
sentations; generousand  warm  hearted  to  a  de- 
gree, he  nevertheless  censured  severely  upon 
slight  provocation  ;  of  unmistakable  sincerity, 
he  formed  ill  considered  judgments  on  all 
manner  of  .subjects,  and  his  opinions  were  for 
the  most  part  worthless ;  deeply  grateful  for 
every  kindness,  the  lightest  word  of  remon- 
strance could  turn  his  thanks  into  complaints ; 
flUed  with  a  childlike  faith  in  aU  men,  he  sus- 
pected the  motives  of  any  who  withheld  from 
him  unmeasured  praise.  He  was  fond  of  ani- 
mals, but  the  revolting  cruelties  of  the  bull- 
fight pleased  him  by  their  theatric  pictur- 
esqueness.  Himself  a  child  and  always  imma- 
ture, with  the  keenest  appreciation  of  child 
life  and  character,  he  nevertheless  had  no 
love  for  children,  was  generally  embarrassed 
in  their  company,  frequently  avoided  them, 
disliked  to  read  to  them,  and  was  in  turn 
regarded  by  them  more  with  alarm  than  affec- 
tion. His  sympathy  with  childhood  was  a 
quality  of  his  art  and  not  of  his  nstnre. 

This  man  was  the  author  of  the  Fairy  Tales, 
the  first  collection  of  which  appeared  in  1885. 
They  won  their  way  slowly.  Two  only  among 
the  leaders  of  Danish  literature  seem  to  have 
recognized  their  lasting  value.  The  author 
himself  set  no  store  by  them;  they  are  **as 
good  as  nothing,'*  he  said,  *'a  mere  sleight  of 
hand  with  Fancy's  apples.**  But  as  their  fame 
spread  through  Burope,  his  eyes  were  opened, 
and  in  later  Umes  he  professed  to  have  known 
their  merit  from  the  first.  Fairy  tales  have 
been  told  and  sung  since  speech  wss  and  fancy 
wrought,  but  never  before  had  the  whole  of 
creation,  inanimate  as  well  as  animate,  been 
invested  with  such  whimsical  individuality 
and  powers  of  appropriate  language.  And«r- 
sen*8  tales  have  the  naivete  of  the  natural  pro- 
duct with  the  beauty  of  artistic  finish.  They 
serve  one  of  the  highest  purposes  of  literature : 
they  keep  the  heart  young,  and  in  this  rejuve- 
nating power  lies  the  assurance  of  their  im- 
mortolity.  During  a  period  of  nearly  forty 
years,  Andersen  continued  from  time  to  time 
to  send  his  **  benevolent  little  house  elves*' 
into  the  world.  Though  by  no  means  the 
greatest  of  Denmark*s  poets,  he  was  the  first 
to  attain  universal  fame.  His  Tales  found 
their  way  to  farthest  India,  where  the  '*  Story 
of  a  Mother'*  was  a  special  favorite.  Ame. 
rica  hailed  them  with  delight,  and  nMn- 
formed  enthusiasm  started  a  subscription  for 
their  author,  who  was  thought  to  be  in  pov- 
erty. Old  and  young  were  alike  fascinated. 
'*  Won't  you  give  us  wee  ones  another  tale  ?** 
the  burly  Thorwaldsen  used  to  beg,  and  An' 
dersen*s  readings  of  his  own  stories  became 
one  of  the  features  of  the  social  and  literary 
entertainments  of  the  Danish  capital. 

The  Fairy  Tales  have  had  many  translators, 
but  the  dsssic  English  rendering  is  yet  want- 
ing. Mr.  Bain,  in  an  appendix  to  hb  work, 
discuMes  the  chief  EoglUh  translations;  he 
finds  them  all  inadequste,  and  especially  so  the 
version  by  Dr.  H.  Oskar  Sommer,  which  has 
recently  been  issued  by  the  same-  firm  that 
publbhes  the  life.  Dr.  Sommer  has  indeed 
missed  much  of  the  charm  of  the  original, 
which  the  German  translations  so  admirably 
preserve;  many  graceful  and  characteristic 
touches  are  suppressed;  others  are  misunder- 
stood or  misrepresented.  It  Is,  therefore,  not 
without  justice  that  Mr.  Bain  condemns  what 
he  calb  Dr.  Soomier's  '*obliterative  method  of 
interpretation.'*  It  b  well  known  that  Ander- 
sen never  mastered  the  grammar  of  hb  native 
,  tongue;  but,  as  the  nalvet6  of  hb  style  b  lb  no 
wise  dependent  upon  these  defects,  the  trans- 


lator need  be  at  no  pains  to  hit  off  the  original 
in  careless  English.  Dr.  Sommer's  version  is 
often  infelicitous  and  occasionally  disregards 
the  laws  of  Eoglbh  syntax.  As  a  whole,  how. 
ever,  the  translation  reads  smoothly  enough, 
and  some  of  the  more  serious  stories  are  even 
excellent.  In  fairness  to  the  uninformed  read- 
er, it  should  be  stated  that  thb  ooUection 
contains  only  one  hundred  of  the  tales;  no- 
thing on  the  title-page  or  elee where  indicates 
that  it  b  not  a  complete  edition.  The  illurtra- 
tions,  by  Mr.  Arthur  J.  Ga8kin,are  well  con- 
ceived, if  not  always  firmly  drawn,  and,  with 
their  quaint  mediaeval  accessories,,  pleasantly 
preeerve  the  spirit  of  fairyland. 

Mr.  Bain  has  an  interesting  chapter  on  An- 
dersen*s  religious  opinions.  ** I  grew  up  pious 
and  superstitious,'*  wrote  Andersen  himself. 
He  observed  the  Sabbath  by  doing  no  work  on 
that  day;  but  he  preferred  the  blue  sky  to  the 
stuffy  church.  The  Scotch  Sabbath  repelled 
him.  *'  All  the  houses  are  closed,**  he  writes, 
*«and  the  people  sit  inside  and  read  their  Biblee 
or  drink  themselves  blind-drunk."  He  was 
anti  clerical,  but  not  anti- Christian.  He  gloried 
in  the  material  progress  of  the  age:  *Mt  b  a 
scaffolding  on  which  the  spiritual  edifice  b  to 
be  built  up.**  And  he  refused  to  recognise 
any  antagonism  between  science  and  religion. 
**God  can  surely  endure  to  be  looked  at  with 
the  little  bit  of  sound  sense  he  has  put  into  our 
heads,"  he  writes  in  one  of  hb  letters.  In  hb 
latter  years  he  busied  himself  with  the  philo- 
sophical aspects  of  religion,  and  it  was  to  give 
the  death-blow  to  materialiftm  that  he  com- 
posed his  last  romance,  '  To  Be  or  Not  to  Be.' 
The  generous  Dickens  stood  almost  alone  in 
prabing  thb  work;  others  congratulated  the 
author  upon  its  failure. 

Andersen's  passion  for  travel  led  him  from 
end  to  end  of  Europe.  He  came  into  contact 
with  most  of  the  eminent  men  of  hb  time  and 
has  left  interesting  accounts  of  tbeuL  Mr. 
Bain's  book  b  particularly  rich  in  anecdotes  of 
this  class.  For  Heine  he  felt  a  sort  of  "  devil- 
worship,**  a  mixture  of  admiration  and  hatred 
which  even  votaries  of  Heine  will  understand. 
In  a  letter  to  Collin  he  makes  thb  drastic  cha- 
racterization:  *' Heine  b  a  witty  babbler,  im- 
pious  and  frivolous,  and  yet  a  true  post.  Hb 
books  are  elfin  girb  in  gauze  and  rilk,  which 
swarm  with  vermin,  so  that  one  cannot  let 
them  move  freely  about  the  rooms  of  respect- 
ably dressed  people.**  In  the  chapter  on  Ander- 
sen in  England,  lir.  Bain  has  given  the  first  ada- 
quate  account  of  AnderBen*s  relations  to  hb 
Englbh  friends.  Their  cordial  recognition  of  hb 
genius  he  regarded  less  as  a  personal  triumph 
than  as  a  rebuke  to  the  Danes,  who  **spat  upon 
the  glow-worm  because  it  glowed.**  Chief 
among  hb  Eoglbh  friends  was  Dickens,  and 
the  five  weeks  which  Andersen  spent  at  Gads- 
hill  in  1857  he  considered  the  happiest  period 
of  hb  life.  He  published  a  detailed  account  of 
it  in  the  Berlinjake  Tidende  of  Copenhagen  in 
1860;  thb  has  recently  been  reissued  in  thb 
country  in  German:  *Ein  Besuch  bei  Charles 
Dickens*  (Henry  Holt  &  Co.),  with  a  brief  pre. 
face  containing  three  errors  of  fact  on  the  first 

In  Mr.  Bain's  work  we  have  noticed  but  few 
errors.  Travellers  in  Saxon  Switserland  will 
scarcely  recognize  the  Bohemian  village  of 
Hermskretschen  under  the  form  of  Herrea- 
Bretchen  (p.  89).  A  singular  lapse  of  memory 
makes  Mr.  Bain  say  on  page  158  that  Ander- 
sen's novel,  '  O.  T.*  took  its  title  from  the  ini- 
tiab  of  the  hero's  name.  The  real  point  lies  in 
the  fact  that  these  letters  were  the  brand- mark 
of  the  Odente  penitentiary  (Odense  Tugtbus). 
With    the  brothers   Grimm  Mr.  Bain   deab 


222 


Tlie   IN"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1602 


rather  oayalierlj;  he  refers  to  them  as  "mere 
collectors,"  and  the  story  of  Andersen's  first 
call  at  their  house  in  Berlin  he  relates  without 
a  hint  that  there  was  more  than  one  Grimm. 
Turning  to  the  index,  we  find  only  Wilhelm 
entered,  with  a  reference  to  the  page  on  which 
this  interview  is  recorded;  but  Andersen,  in 
the  *  Story  of  My  Life,'  expressly  tells  us  that 
it  was  Jacob  whom  he  met,  and  the  sensitive 
Dane  was  indignant  when  he  discovered  that, 
although  Grimm  spoke  Danish,  he  did  not 
know  the  name  of  Andersen.  The  friends, 
however,  who  comforted  him  by  saying  that 
Jacob  Grimm  was  thirty  years  behind  the 
times,  had  a  greater  regard  for  Andersen's 
feelings  than  for  the  truth.  Mr.  Bain  might 
have  added  that  the  relations  between  Ander- 
sen and  the  Grimm  family  subsequently  be- 
came very  cordial.  Finally,  on  page  486,  we 
read:  ''July  27th,  five  days  before  his  death." 
As  the  date  of  Andersen's  death  is  not  else- 
where  stated  in  this  book,  we  are  left  to  do  our 
own  calculating,  and  arrive  at  August  1.  In 
point  of  fact  Andersen  died  on  August  4, 1875. 


Studies  in  EaHy  Vietorian  Littrature,  By 
Frederic  Harrison.  London  and  New  York : 
Edward  Arnold.    1895.    Pp.224. 

Ih  one  of  his  delicious  but  pathetic  letters 
Stevenson  confides  to  Mr.  CkHvin  a  **  hideous 
idea  "  that  perhaps,  along  with  himself  and  his 
correspondent,  Frederic  Harrison  is  now  get- 
ting old.  He  adds:  **  Oh,  this  infidelity  must 
be  stared  firmly  down."  On  finishing  Mr.  Har^ 
rison's  new  book,  we  applaud  this  sentiment. 
Nothing  in  these  brilliant  and  sensible  essays 
on  the  Victorian  prosaists  betrays  failing 
power— unless  possibly  one  were  malicious 
enough  to  infer  a  wuiing  memory  from  the 
writer's  proneness  to  repeat  his  own  eloquence: 
or  from  his  notion  that  the  word  acientisi  is 
still  a  barbarism;  or  from  his  writing  several 
pages  about  *The  Saint's  Tragedy*  and  *The 
Spanish  Gypsy '  after  promising  to  touch  "no 
book  of  poetry,  phQoeopby,  or  science."  Sixty- 
four  years  sit  lightly  on  the  prophet  of  Newton 
Hall.  He  is  the  same  vigorous  voice,  preluding 
brilliantly  upon  a  thousand  themes,  and  ad 
vancing  safely  into  the  complexities  of  a  sur- 
prising number  of  them. 

The  present  volume  attempts  a  "  mature  es- 
timate  of  the  permanent  infiuence  and  artistic 
achievement"  of  Carlyle,  Macaulay,  Disraeli, 
Thackeray,  Dickens,  BrontA,  Kiogsley,  TroL 
lope,  and  (George  Eliot.  As  a  body  of  criticism 
it  is  full  of  knowledge,  broad  in  grasp  of  histo- 
rical relations,  and  measurably  free  from  the 
bias  of  Positivism  apparent  in  ihe  writer's  for- 
mer  collection  of  literary  essays  (1886).  Mr. 
Harrison's  attention  is  first  fastened  by  the 
social  earnestness  which  colors  Victorian  prose; 
but  this  fact  does  not  prevent  him  from  reoog- 
nizing  and  reckoning  values  purely  literary. 
Far  less  exacting  in  his  critical  ideals  than 
Arnold,  and  inferior  in  technical  knowledge  to 
several  living  English  critics,  Mr.  Harrison  is 
outvied  by  no  one  in  vigor  of  sympathy.  He 
who  erewhile  sang  the  strenuous  joys  of  Au- 
guste  Comte's  library,  who  pleaded  for  a  de- 
cent hearing  for  Bunyan,  Rabelais,  and  other 
permanent  people,  now  avows  himself  an  ar- 
dent admirer  of  Mr.  Meredith  and  Stevenson. 
He  even  proves  an  appreciative  reader  of  B£rs. 
Wood,  Ouida,  Miss  Broughton,  and  Mrs.  Bur- 
nett. Notwithstanding  this  wide  range  of 
loves,  Mr.  Harrison's  valuations  are  equable, 
even  nice.  They  are  regulated  by  a  trained 
sense  of  what  permanently  interests  humanity. 
They  are  corrected  by  a  norm  too  often  set 


aside— the  settled  judgment  of  the  public.  And 
they  take  admirably  into  account  that  any 
judgment  concerning  the  absolute  value  of  a 
book  must  be  tempered  with  regard  to  the 
formative  infiuence  of  the  work  and  the  power 
required  to  produce  it  in  its  own  day. 

The  date  of  the  Queen's  accettion  forms  a 
curiously  good  dividing  line  between  two 
generations  of  the  really  great  English  writers 
of  this  century.  The  Victorian  age  again 
divides  into  two  almost  equal  parts  with  the 
year  of  Thackeray's  death,  1868,  the  first  part, 
as  our  author  shows,  being  superior  to  the 
second  in  purely  literary  product  Mr.  Har- 
rison's book  is  oonoemed  with  the  first  Victo- 
rian period,  but  his  characterization  of  the 
whole  age  Is  so  comprehensive  and  in  the  main 
so  just  that  we  quote  one  pregnant  paragraph. 
It  perhaps  over- emphasizes  a  little  the  enthu- 
siasm for  social  reform : 

**Our  literature  to-day  has  many  charac 
terittics;  but  its  central  note  is  the  dominant 
infiuence  of  Sociology — enthusiasm  for  social 
truths  as  an  instrument  of  social  reform.  It  is 
scientific,  subjective,  introspective,  historical, 
archaaological;  full  of  vitality,  versatility,  ard 
diligence;  intensely  personal,  defiant  of  all 
law,  of  standards,  of  convention;  laborious, 
exact,  but  often  indifferent  to  grace,  svmme- 
try,  or  color;  it  is  learned,  critical,  cultured; 
with  all  its  ambition  and  its  fine  feeling,  it  is 
unsympathetic  to  the  highest  forms  of  the 
imafl^ation,  and  quite  alien  to  the  drama  of 
sction." 

Am  pro-tempore  chairman  of  the  public  jury 
that  has  thought  long  and  so  has  presumably 
attained  to  think  right  concerning  each  great 
Victorian,  Mr.  Harrison  reports  the  findiuRs 
neatly,  and  usually  says  the  just  thing.  Of 
Macaulay:  *'If  he  had  less  philosophy  than 
almost  any  historian  of  the  smallest  preten- 
sion, he  has  a  skill  in  narrative  which  places 
him  in  a  fair  line  with  the  greatest"  (p.  86). 
Dimtteli  is  properly  scored  for  his  vicious  man- 
ner; but  **his  painting  of  parliamentary  life 
inr  England  has  neither  equal  nor  rival."  The 
praise  of  Thackeray's  style  will  strike  most  stu- 
dents as  excessive,  but  none  will  deny  the 
power  with  which  the  genius  of  this  great, 
though  not  supremely  great,  master  of  the  hu- 
man heart  is  brought  to  analysis.  The  con- 
tention that  in  Dickens  the  really  permanent 
thing  is  the  man's  humor,  the  greatest  of  this 
century,  really  seems  needed  in  these  days 
when  young  people  sometimes  praise  *  Copper- 
field'  for  its  taste  in  pathos.  Of  Charlotte 
BrontS  the  future  will  keep  *Jane  Eyre,'  a 
masterpiece  **in  the  rare  order  of  literary 
*  Confessions' ";  **  one  of  the  most  creative  in- 
fiuences  of  the  Victorian  literature"  (p.  102). 
Another  such  infiuence,  Kingsley,  **  was  a  kind 
of  ferment"  (p.  175);  and  **  'Yeast'  is  his  typi- 
cal  prose  work"  (p.  176).  Of  TroUope  perhaps 
only  the  Barchester  cycle  will  live,  with  •  Orley 
Farm'  and  the  two  'Phineas  Finns.'  Such 
prophecies  as  these  are  perhaps  as  safe  as 
prophecy  ever  can  be.  For  it  is  by  the  past 
that  they  judge  the  future;  and  after  aJl  a 
Comtean  eternity  is  not  so  very  long. 

The  chapter  on  George  Eliot,  if  judged  as 
the  final  word  of  a  Poeitivist  Aaron  concern- 
ing the  art  of  a  Poeitivist  Miriam,  is  a  trifle 
unbrotherly.  We  have  no  quarrel  with  the 
writer  when  he  declares,  *'  I  never  could  count 
anything  later  than  *  Silas  Mamer'  as  a  com- 
plete and  unqualified  masterpiece"  (p.  122). 
But  it  was  a  k>ad  slip  for  him  to  confess,  after 
fH5miiaa:ln£r  * Middlemarch '  as  "tedious  and 
disagreeable,"  that  **be  cannot,  after  twenty 
years,  recall  the  indefinite,  lingering  plot "  (p. 
217). 
Mr.  Harrison  has  felti  but  not  wholly  es- 


caped, the  danger  of  impulsively  magnifjring 
one  man  or  one  piece  of  work  at  the  expense 
of  another.  The  *  Cromwell'  is  '*the  greatest 
of  Carlyle's  effective  products";  'Sartor'  is 
'*the  most  original,  the  most  characteristic, 
the  deepest,  and  most  lyrical  of  his  produc- 
tions"; the  'French  Revolution'  "is  destined 
to  live  long  and  to  stand  forth  to  posterity  as 
the  typical  work  of  the  master."  Thus  far  we 
can  follow  and  assent  in  the  maze  of  superla- 
tives. But  we  lesm  with  regret  that  'Fried- 
rich'— in  which  we  had  timidly  fancied  a  cer- 
tain colossal  unity  unique  of  its  kind— "is 
not  a  book  at  all."  Again,  we  freely  acknow- 
ledge a  contrast  between  such  a  man  as 
Thackeray  and  such  a  man  as  Stevenson  in  the 
degree  of  intensity  with  which  each  drank 
from  the  cup  of  life.  But  to  class  the  latter— 
the  author  of  the  'Foot-note  to  History'— as 
one  who  looks  on  life  from  a  private  box, 
where  we  see  his  kid  gloves  and  his  opera- 
glasses,  is  to  paint  in  black  and  white.  We 
should  furthermore  like  to  think  it  something 
else  than  mere  patriotism  that  makes  us  smile 
when  the  beauty  of  Elingsley's  'Heroes'  must 
be  set  off  by  the  "sticky  dulness"  of  the 
*  Tsnglewood  Tales.'  Mr.  Harrison  is  now  and 
then  fairly  put  to  it  for  terms  to  differentiate 
the  indefectibility  he  would  ascribe.  "The 
paper  out  of  the  Spectator^^^  in  'Esmond,'  "is 
the  most  perfect  of  all  parodies  in  the  English 
language  "  (p.  114) ;  " '  Codljngsby,'  the  parody 
of  Disraeli's  '  Coningsby,'  may  be  taken  as  tbe 
most  effective  parody  in  our  language  "  (p.  115) . 
"Perfect,"  "effective";  aliud  et  idem.  The 
author's  large  knowledge  everywhere  stands 
bim  in  such  good  stead  that  when  Thackeray 
as  an  historian  is  declared  to  enter  into  rivalry 
with  Macaulay,  we  hope  it  is  meant  to  com- 
pare these  men  merely  in  mastery  of  "  the  form 
and  coloring  of  a  past  age."  For  *  Esmond '  is 
marred  by  historical  errors  that  Macaulay  in 
his  most  remiss  momenta  would  hardly  have 
made. 

Mr.  Harrison's  own  style  keeps  its  wont- 
ed strength  and  wonted  limitations.  It  is 
by  turns  witty,  rhetorical,  nobly  ealnest— 
never  languid.  Curiously  compact  of  terseness 
and  surplusage,  it  is  prolix  on  one  page,  pure 
epigram  on  the  next.  Slight  incoherences  ob- 
servable in  the  original  Forum  articles  disap- 
pear  in  the  revision.  A  few  slips  remain. 
Does  the  author  mean  mare  fatal  when  he  says 
(p.  96)  :  "Nothing  is  leae  fatal  to  true  criti- 
cism than  the  habit  of  blindly  overvaluing  the 
inferior  work  of  men  of  genius  "  ?  Mr.  Harri- 
son is  usually  free  from  otiose  short  cuts ;  but, 
"  it  is  curious  how  different  a  colour  may  be 
seen  in  the  main  current  of  English  literature 
produced  before  and  after"  the  year  1837 
(p.  10).  On  page  122  the  italics  seem  to  quar- 
rel with  the  verb  :  "  neither  Eemond  nor  The 
Newoomee,  nor  TJie  Virginiane  are  in  any 
sense  the  work  of  a  misanthrope."  From  page 
188  Dr.  Hall  might  cull  an  example  of  that 
"  gross  vulgarism,"  the  supererogatory  what : 
*  *  no  criminal  was  so  atrocious  but  what  Charles 
Dickens  could  feel  for  him  some  ray  of  sym- 
pathy." 

Studies  of  Childhood,  By  James  SuUy,  Pro- 
fessor in  University  College,  London.  D. 
Appleton  &  Co.    Pp.  viii,  527. 

Rbadbrs  of  the  Popular  Seiefice  Monthly  will 
have  become  familiar  with  many  of  the  chap- 
ters of  this  book,  which  have  beei^  reprinted 
with  little  or  no  change.  F^chdogists  will 
also  have  found  out  both  the  exoellenoss  and 
defects  of  Mr.  Sully's  work.  For  the  1 
reader  the  book  is  very  interestliig  <a  ^ 


March  12,  1896] 


The    !N"atioii. 


338 


of  the  great  honuuiity  of  cbfldreo.  F6r  the 
peyohologlet  it  it  {Mraeticallj  onaTailable—a 
judgment  which  the  following  gtetements  and 
refhrenoe  may  be  taken  to  jnetify. 

Fint,  theee  chapters  are  in  large  f>art  a  col* 
leetion  of  anecdotee  gathered  from  the  reports 
of  parents,  from  the  self-memories  of  literary 
people!  from  uncritieisedsooroes  generally.  F6r 
e»ample»  Mr.  Sully  himself,  after  a  rery  ex- 
cellent account  of  the  sort  of  sources  which  the 
child-psychologist  ought  to  treasure  in  the  pre- 
sent state  of  the  sdenoe  (chapter  L),  cites  a 
certain  **l?Vorcester  collection**  as  not  sulB- 
dently  serere  in  method  to  be  relied  on  (p.  83) ; 
and  then  goes  on  in  the  body  of  the  book  to 
make  more  use  of  this  collection  than  of  per- 
haps any  otiier  single  source,  citing  again  and 
again  a  certain  child  G,  who  was  yery  smart, 
and  whose  reported  doings  make  good  stories. 
We  may  cite  the  instances  on  pp.  60,  68,  74, 
80,  loa,  111,  114,  eta 

Second,  Mr.  Sully  confines  himself  largely 
to  the  period  of  child-life  after  the  rise  of 
speech  (see  p.  134)«  and  with  it  of  most  of  the 
functions  on  which  fruitful  obsenrations  may 
be  made  by  the  study  of  individual  children. 
It  is  notorious  that  after  the  third  or  fourth 
year  the  mental  life  of  the  child  becomes  so 
complex  that  nothing  but  very  wide  statistical 
inquiry  can  be  safely  relied  upon— and  eyen 
that  is  of  doubtful  value.  Tet  just  at  this  pe- 
riod of  boundless  variety  and  endless  possibi- 
lity  he  cites  the  occasional  smartness  or  un- 
confirmed '* conceit**  of  the  individual  child. 
Cases  of  this  may  be  seen  on  almost  any  page 
opened  at  random  (see  extraordinary  instances 
on  pp.  114,  lis,  118). 

Third,  there  is  a  lack  of  psychological  points 
of  view  and  illuminating  hypotheses  which 
makes  the  chapters  tiresome  even  to  the  appre- 
ciative reader.  The  chapter  on  the  dev^op-' 
ment  of  the  thought  of  "  Self,**  which  of  all  the 
topics  treated  in  the  book  might  have  been  ex- 
pected to  contribute  something  general,  since 
this  self -sense  is  a  late  growth,  has  the  same  old 
weight  laid  (pp.  114,  444)  on  the  child*s  use 
of  the  pronouns  of  the  first  person  (a  notion 
which  no  amount  of  criticism  seems  capable  of 
laying),  and  no  adequate  recognition  of  the  so- 
cial funotion^possibly  the  one  element  on  which 
Mr.  8ully*s  cases  might  be  expected  to  shed  some 
light.  And  where  Mr.  Sully  does  venture  on 
a  general  suggestion  it  seems  to  us  to  have  all 
the  uncertainty  which  we  should'  expect  from 
his  sources.  For  example,  he  finds  that  the 
child  reaches  an  anticipation  of  Berklevsn 
idealism  (p.  118),  and  supports  it  with  anec 
dotes  which  show  very  clearly,  if  they  show 
anything,  the  infiuence  of  social  imitation  and 
the  facts  of  spontaneous  variation  in  childish 
conceits.  See  also  the  extraordinary  aper9U 
on  children*s  ideas  of  growth,  that  **tbe 
child  cannot  accept  an  absolute  beginning  of 
things.**  .  .  .  "What more  natural, then, 
than  the  idea  of  a  rhythmical  alternation  of 
cycles  of  existencer— all  based  on  a  few  stories 
of  children  showing  that  old  men  are  some- 
times  thought  to  grow  small  again. 

Fourth,  the  anthropological  references  and 
analogies  are  extremely  meagre  and  for  the 
most  part  undocumented. 

Disappointing,  however,  as  the  book  is  to 
those  who  had  hoped  that  a  psychologiit  of 
Mr.  Sully's  reputation  would  contribute  some- 
thing to  child  study  which  would  in  a  measure 
check  the  fiood  of  superficial  ** contributions** 
to  this  M^oalled  science  in  thb  country,  yet  his 
book  has  merits  from  other  points  of  view.  It 
Is  written  in  plain  language,  the  style  is  enter- 
taining, the  children  treated  of  are  the  choice 
ones,  and  the  stories  selected  are  the  prettiest 


of  the  pretty.  Furthermore,  many  parents  and 
teachers  who  do  not  aspire  to  become  them- 
selves reporters  on  their  children  for  print,  to- 
gether  with  thoee  who  do,  will  do  well  to  catch 
the  spirit  of  humane  and  ideal  appreciation  of 
child-life  which  animates  the  book.  Wahave 
thought  it  our  duty  to  point  out  its  essential 
inadequacy  from  a  scientific  point  of  view,  since 
the  air  is  f  uU  of  *'  child  study,**  and  people  with 
no  preliminary  training  think  they  have  only  to 
jot  down  the  occurrences  of  the  nursery,  whe- 
ther at  first-hand  or  not,  and  report  them  in  a 
taking  way,  to  contribute  to  science.  That  Mr. 
Sully  should  have  lent  the  weight  of  his  autho- 
rity to  this  kind  of  science-made-easy,  by  using 
the  material  he  has  used  even  in  a  quasi-scien- 
tific and  confessedly  popular  book,  is  very  much 
to  be  regretted.  We  may  add  that  our  criticism 
of  the  work  is  mainly  a  confirmation  of  the 
following  sentence  from  the  publisher's  adver- 
tisement  of  it :  **  These  studies  ...  re- 
quire the  reader  to  follow  no  laborious  train 
of  reasoning,  and  the  reader  who  is  in  search 
of  entertainment  merely  will  find  it  in  the 
quaint  sayings  and  doings  with  which  the  vol- 
ume abounds.** 

The  strictures  which  we  have  passed  on  the 
material  of  the  book,  however,  do  not  hold 
to  the  same  degree  of  the  reports  which  the 
author  makes  of  his  own  observations  in  the 
"Extracts  from  a  Father*s  Diary**  in  chap 
ter  xi. 


An  Indian  JoumcUist :  Being  the  Life,  Let- 
ters, and  Correspondence  of  Dr.  Sambhu  C. 
Mookerjee.  By  F.  H.  Skrine,  LC.S.  Cal- 
cutta:  Tbacker,  Spink  &  Co.    1895. 

TraveU  and  Voyaget  between  CcUetUia  and 
Independent  Tipperah.  By  Sambhu  C. 
Mookerjee.  Calcutta :  Rets  db  Rayyet  Of- 
fice.   1887. 

Down  to  comp^u^tively  a  short  time  ago,  a 
work  like  *  An  Indian  Journalist  *  would  have 
been  markedly  exoeptionaL  A  noteworthy 
proof  is  afforded  by  it  of  the  change  which, 
within  the  last  two  generations,  English  edu- 
cation has  effected  in  India,  and  more  espe. 
dally  in  Bengal.  By  acquiring  a  knowledge  of 
the  English  language  and  literature,  the  na- 
tive has,  in  many  cases,  become  capacitated  to 
understand  the  rule  under  which  he  lives,  and 
the  motives  and  policy  of  the  far-off  kingdom 
which  ultimately  determines  and  shapes  that 
rule.  By  means  of  that  acquisition  he  has  also 
qualified  himself,  not  infrequently,  for  intelli- 
gent personal  intercourse  with  thoee  to  whom 
his  interests  are  immediately  intrusted;  an  ad- 
vantage, equally  to  himself  and  to  them,  of 
incalculable  value.  Enabled,  consequently, 
much  as  if  he  were  an  Englishman,  to  discuss 
the  measures  of  the  Indian  Government,  and 
wisely  left  free  to  do  so,  and  also  to  arraign 
them  within  legitimate  limits,  he  has  now  come 
to  figure  as  a  political  critic  and  counsellor, 
and  one  with  whose  deliveranoes  his  alien 
legislators  do  well  to  reckon. 

As  a  representative  of  his  fellow-country- 
men, rarely  has  any  one  hitherto  appeared  for 
whom  can  be  claimed  a  rivalry  with  the  es- 
teem which  wee  the  due  of  the  late  Dr.  Moo- 
kerjee, and  which  was  explicitly  aooorded  to 
his  manifold  merits.  Highly  appreciated  as 
he  was  by  those  for  whose  behoof  he  spent  him- 
self in  laboring,  it  was  his  condign  good  for- 
tune to  win  the  regard  of  the  leading  British 
authorities  In  India,  and  no  less  that  of  the 
numerous  persons  of  distinction,  outside  his 
fatherland,  to  whom^  as  a  letter- writer,  he  ad- 
dressed himself.  Nor,  towards  gaining  this 
regard,  waa  he  ever  known  to  bate  a  jot  of  the 


sturdiest  independence.  Tet,  at  the  same  time 
that  he  thus  respected  himself,  a  sense  of  jne- 
tioe  invariably  prompted  him  to  treat  with  be- 
fitting respect  the  opinions  of  others,  even  if 
they  were  his  most  virulent  antagonists.  A 
spirit  of  reasoned  and  reasonable  conciliatori- 
ness,  while  he  could  not  but  perceive  that,  to 
a  patriot,  it  was  the  dictate  of  expedience, 
seems  to  have  been,  with  bim,  a  second  nature. 

After  considerable  practice  as  a  miscella. 
neous  essayist.  Dr.  Mookerjee,  in  1882,  founded, 
at  Olcutta,  a  weekly  newspaper,  in  English 
throughout,  though  bearing  the  Arabico-Per- 
sian  or  Hindustani  title  of  Reis  db  Rayyet^ 
which  may  be  rendered,  not  inadequately, 
** Sovereign  and  Subjects**  or  *< Prince  and 
People.**^  Chiefiy  by  this  and  by  his  oorre- 
spondenoe,  he  has,  without  question,  merited 
lasting  and  honorable  remembrance.  In  Ben- 
gal this  is  assured  to  him;  and  his  broad- 
minded  and  discerning  biographer  was  cer^ 
tainly  justified  in  his  forecast  that,  on  the 
presentation  of  facts,  it  would  be  widely 
shared  by  those  to  whom  his  character  and 
literary  achievements  had  previously  been  un- 
known. As  depicted,  after  long  acquaintance, 
by  Mr.  Skrine,  he  was  a  man  to  challenge  all 
but  unqualified  admiration,  as  for  his  sterling 
integrity,  disinterestedness,  and  genial  dispo- 
sition, so  for  his  abUity  and  untiring  energy. 
Biany  of  these  traits  are  abundantly  evidenced, 
or  else  suggested,  by  the  letters  which  hre  ap- 
pended to  the  interesting  memoir  of  his  career, 
unfortunately  a  somewhat  brief  one,  which 
terminated,  in  his  fifty-fifth  year,  in  February, 
1894.  The  infiuential  journal  which  he  estab- 
lished, it  is  gratifying  to  be  able  to  say,  has 
been  conducted,  since  his  lamented  death,  In  a 
manner  redounding  conspicuously  to  the  credit 
of  his  successors. 

The  volume  of  travels  named  in  our  heading 
could  have  emanated  from  none  but  an  acute 
and  well-informed  obeerver.  The  region  of 
Bengal  with  which  it  has  to  do  ii  one  regard- 
ing which,  in  the  main,  hardly  anything  but 
dry  statistics  and  the  like  has  heretofore  been 
accessible.  Little  appears  to  have  escaped  the 
notice  of  the  author,  in  the  course  of  his  pere- 
grinations, with  respect  to  either  the  peculiari- 
ties of  the  people  with  whom  he  came  into 
contact,  or  the  geographical  features,  natural 
productions,  and  antiquities  of  the  territories 
which  he  visited.  He  has,  indeed,  set  in  his 
pages  an  example  which  other  Hindus  would 
do  wisely  to  copy.  That  he  occasionally  had 
experience  of  gratuitous  discourtesy  was  only 
to  be  expected  at  the  hands  of  such  as  those 
who  debased  themselves  by  it.  To  quote  tlie 
words  of  Colebrooke,  the  illustrious  Oriental- 
ist: **  It  is  not  to  be  dissembled  that  the  Eu- 
ropean,  that  the  descendant  of  the  Oothic 
race,  that  the  white  man,  and,  above  all,  the 
Englishman,  is  full  of  prejudices,  and  gov- 
erned, in  his  intercourse  with  men  of  other 
nations  and  other  complexions,  by  a  repul- 
sive dislike  of  strangers,  an  unjust  contempt 
and  deep  aversion,  amounting,  in  an  illiberal 
mind,  to  a  contemptuous  hatred  of  men  of 
dark  hue.  The  conduct  of  the  lower  British, 
in  their  dealings  with  men  of  color,  in  either 
of  the  Indies,  is  but  too  often  Infinenced  by 
such  feelings.**  To  a  deplorable  degree,  how- 
ever,  till  very  recently,  not  merely  to  **  the 
lower**  British  has  Ck>lebrooke*s  censure  been 
applicable.  That  the  indications,  are  now 
steadily  becoming  more  and  more  numerous 
and  obvious  of  a  much  kindlier  attitude  than 
of  old  to  the  people  of  India,  on  the  part  of 
the  Eoglish  functionaries  dwelling  among 
them,  Is  a  circumstance  of  auspicious  omen  to 
both  parties  indifferently. 


224: 


Tlie    !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1602 


The  Origina  of  Invention :    A  Stodj  of  In* 

dmtry  among  Primitive  Peoples.    With  il- 

lostratioDS.     By  Otis  T.  ICasoD.    8vo,  pp. 

418.    London  :    Walter  Soott ;  New  York  : 

Charles  Bcribner's  Sons.  1885. 
The  object  of  this  volnme,  so  we  are  told,  is 
**to  trace  some  of  our  industries  to  their 
origins  "~^uite  a  different  matter,  we  may 
remark  in  passing,  from  the  Origins  of  In- 
vention ;  and,  judging  the  work  from  this 
point  of  view,  it  will  be  found  to  be  thorough- 
ly satisfactory.  Especially  is  this  true  of 
what  is  told  us  of  tools,  etc.,  which,  in  a  gene> 
ral  way,  may  be  said  to  foreshadow  all  me- 
chanical progress,  since  man  could  hardly 
have  taken  the  first  step  in  his  upward  career, 
much  less  have  traversed  the  broad  expanse 
that  separates  ^*the  digging-stick  from  the 
steam-plough,*'  without  some  sort  of  an  im- 
plement to  be  used  either  in  **  cutting,  smooth- 
ing, pounding,  or  perforating."  Indeed,  so 
true  is  this  that  he  has  been  called  a  toal-using 
animal ;  and  although  the  definition  is,  per- 
haps, too  broad,  yet  the  fact  that  he  has  never 
been  found  without  a  device  of  some  kind  to 
aid  him  in  his  labors  is  so  characteristic  that 
it  has  been  made  the  basis  of  a  classification, 
in  which  the  dilferent  stages  through  which  he 
has  passed  have  been  designated  as  the  ages, 
respectively,  of  stone  and  metal. 

This  classification  is  convenient,  and,  when 
limited  to  cutting-implements,  as  by  Erans, 
Lubbock  and  others,  it  is  fairly  descriptive  of 
the  conditions  that  prevailed  throughout  west- 
em  Europe  in  early  times.  Our  author,  how- 
ever, does  not  find  it  altogether  satisfactory, 
for  the  reason  that  it  is  not  always  and  every- 
where applicable,  and  because  the  sequence  is 
not  necessary.  In  this  he  is  clearly  right,  for 
there  are  regions  (pp  110,  124,  128)  in  which 
there  is  no  evidence  that  an  age  of  stone  ever 
existed;  others,  **in  Africa,. in  Canada,  and 
perhaps  in  Michigan,  where  the  metal  age  is 
as  old  as  the  stone  age.''  And  in  some  of  the 
Pacific  islands,  where  there  was  no  mineral 
having  a  conchoidal  fracture,  the  natives, 
when  first  known  to  us,  were  living  **in  the 
polished  or  at  least  hammered-stone  age," 
though  their  language,  social  system,  etc., 
showed  that  **  they  were  low  in  the  scale  of 
culture." 

Bearing  upon  this  point,  and  to  some  extent 
confirmatory  of  it,  Ui  the  fact  that  recent  ex- 
periments by  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  in 
making  stone  implements  lead  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  neither  the  form  nor  the  method  of 
manufacture  can  be  taken  as  proof  positive  of 
the  antiquity  of  a  specimen,  or  of  the  culture- 
status  of  the  people  who  made  it;  that  in  fact 
"millions- of  roughly  chipped  stones  formerly 
thought  to  be  ancient,  on  account  of  their 
form,  are  only  the  refuse  left  by  men  who  were 
aiming  to  make  blades."  Facts  like  these  are 
far-reaching  in  their  consequences,  and,  taken 
together,  they  show  very  clearly  that  aborigi- 
nal man,  when  choosing  the  material  out  of 
which  to  make  his  arms,  implements,  etc.,  did 
not  proceed  in  any  regular  order,  or  according 
to  any  definite  plan,  but  simply  took  that 
which  was  close  at  hand,  and  then  worked  it 
up  in  the  easiest  way  possible.  They  also 
show  (p.  126)  that  the  only  safe  guide  in  deter- 
mining  the  antiquity  of  a  specimen  is  the  geo- 
logical position  in  which  it  was  found. 

Of  the  importance  of  these  considerations  to 
a  proper  interpretation  of  certain  archseolo- 
gical  phenomena  in  our  own  country  there  can 
be  no  question;  and  it  is  for  this  reason  that 
we  have  dwelt  upon  the  point  somewhat  at 
length,  when  there  are  many  matters  of  general 
interest  in  the  volume  that  might  rightfully 


claim  attention.  Prominest  among  these  is  the 
fact  that,  in  the  infancy  of  the  race,  S9  many  of 
our  leading  industries  were  carried  on  almost 
exclusively  by  the  woman,  while  to  day  there 
are  so  few.  Thus,  for  instance,  there  was  a 
time  when  she  was  the  farmer,  the  potter,  the 
weaver,  and  the  tanner.  In  a  small  way  she 
was  also  the  butcher,  oook,  shoemaker,  eta, 
etc.;  and  as  she  plodded  along  over  her  daily 
tasks,  carrying  at  her  back  a  baby  in  a  hood  or 
in  a  papoose  frame,  she  was  unwittingly  en- 
tering upon  the  path  that  led  to  the  locomotive 
and  the  sleeping-car.  Suggestive  as  is  this 
phase  of  industrial  life,  it  is  inoonplete  in  so 
far  as  it  neither  gives  us  an  idea  of  the  im- 
mense distance  that  separates  some  of  oar 
inventions  from  their  rude  prototypes,  nor 
enables  us  to  do  justice  to  the  efforts  of  our 
barbaric  ancestors  to  settle  some  of  the  prob- 
lems that  have  oome  do«m  to  oar  times.  To 
complete  the  sketch,  it  is  necessary  to  change 
the  point  of  view,  and  then  it  will  be  possible 
to  take  up  an  invention,  as,  s.  9.,  the  electric 
light,  and  follow  it  back  (p.  107)  through  the 
long  array  of  lamps,  candles,  torches,  etc, 
etc.,  to  say  nothing  of  all  the  various  kinds  of 
fats,  oils,  and  gases  that  have  been  in  use,  un- 
til we  come  to  a  beginning  in  the  pine  knot. 
It  may  also  cause  us  to  abate  somewhat  of  our 
self-sufficiency  to  learn  t^t  prehistoric  man 
(p.  66)  was  familiar  with  the  use  of  such  de- 
vices as  the  wedge,  the  lever,  and  the  inclined 
plane;  and  that  before  the  time  of  Columbus 
the  Polynesians  (p.  S6l)  **  made  canoe  voyages 
from  Tahiti  to  Hawaii,  a  distance  of  twenty- 
three  hundred  miles." 

In  view  of  such  proficiency  in  the  mechanic 
art*,  it  would  not  be  unreasonable  to  expect 
that  a  corresponding  advance,  or  at  all  events 
a  beginning,  had  been  made  in  the  learned  pro- 
fessions, in  seethetlcs,  etc.,  all  of  which  are 
classed  as  inventions,  though,  except  iocid«intal- 
ly,  they  do  not  oome  within  the  pale  of  con- 
sideration. Accordingly,  it  does  net  surprise 
us  to  be  told  (p.  208)  that  an  American  Indian 
doctor  not  only  practically  cupped  his  patients, 
but  that  he  appreciated  the  benefits  arising 
from  the  use  of  massage  and  the  Turkish  bath; 
and  that  although  he  did  not  know  it  by  the 
name  that  we  do,  yet  he  certainly  practised  the 
faith  cure.  Nothing  is  said  of  priests  and  lec- 
turers, though  they  were  to  be  found  in  every 
Indian  village,  as  were  painters  and  musicians; 
and  when  the  women  of  a  tribe,  as  was  some- 
times the  case  among  the  Iroquois,  appointed 
"a  speaker  "  or  **  an  orator"  to  represent  them 
in  the  council  and  plead  their  cause,  they  were 
simply  employing  an  attorney,  just  as  we  do 
today. 

These  are  a  few  of  the  thoughts  suggested 
by  an  examination  of  this  volume,  and,  crude 
as  they  are,  they  give  some  idea  of  the  extent 
of  ground  our  author  has  covered  and  of 
the  comprehensive  manner  in  which  he  has 
dealt  with  the  several  branches  of  his  subject. 
To  any  one  acquainted  with  his  method  of 
work,  or  who  has  an  abiding  recollection  of  a 
previous  volume  in  which  he  treated  of  *  Wo- 
man's Share  in  Primitive  Culture,'  it  is  need- 
less to  say  that  there  is  scarcely  a  page  in  the 
present  book  that  the  ethnologist  may  not 
study  to  advantage,  and  in  which  the  casual 
reader  will  not  find  something  that  is  instruct- 
ive as  well  as  interesting. 


The  Love  Affairs  of  a  Bibliomaniac,  By  Eu- 
gene Field.  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.  1896. 
Thk  late  Mr.  Eugene  Field's  humorous  poems 
are  well  known,  and  had  his  name  been  with- 
held from  this  volume  his  identity  would  jftand 


revealed  at  least  in  the  little  scraps  of  verse 
scattered  through  it.  Tlie  prose  essays  of 
which  it  consists  are  written  in  what  may  be 
called  the  mock-serious  manner,  one  of  the  va- 
rieties of  English  humor  which  are  part  of  the 
literary  inheritance  of  the  race.  The  names  of 
those  who  have  tried  it  are  legion,  those  who 
have  succeeded  have  been  few.  Just  as  every 
one  who  attempts  the  mock  heroic  must  mea- 
sure himself  in  verse  with  * Hudibras'  and  the 
*  Dunciad,'  in  prose  with  Fielding,  so  the  mock- 
serious  at  once  recalls  the  masters  of  it— Sterne, 
Lamb,  and  the  inventor  of  Hoeea  Biglow  and 
Parson  WUbur.  In  the  *Love  Affairs  of  a 
Bfbliomanlac'  we  have  all  the  machinery  of 
this  sty le— an  imaginary  friend  of  the  author's^ 
with  a  full  account  of  his  habits  and  character, 
extracts  from  his  poems,  and  statements  of  his 
opinions;  invented  authors,  fictitious  quota- 
tions,  and  nonsense  made  to  masquerade  as 
fact.  Of  course,  these  things  are  greatly  mat- 
ters of  taste,  but  for  ourselves  we  confess  to 
liking  good  nonsense  quite  as  well  as  soise; 
and  if  a  great  deal  of  it  is  apt  to  weary,  Mr. 
Field  could  plead  that  his  book  was  a  very  lit- 
tle one.  Some  of  the  humor  is  overdone,  and 
part  of  the  success  of  the  volume  is  due,  no 
doubt,  to  the  fact  that  Chicago  is  as  yet  still 
proud  with  the  pride  of  an  overgrown  village 
in  the  fact  that  it  counts  anuxng  its  inhabitants 
persons  who  can  write  something  which  other 
people  call  literature,  and  which  will  be  "writ- 
ten up  "  in  the  newspapers,  and,  best  of  all,  be 
sold  at  wholesale  and  retail,  jast  as  pork  is. 
The  pride  of  locality  has  puffed  out  the  sails  of 
many  a  reputation  less  deserving  thaJn  Uiat  of 
Mr.  Field. 

We  have  liked  best  the  account  of  the  physi- 
cal effects  produced  by  the  respiration  of 
books  (ch.  xiU.);  the  fact  that  books  breathe 
being  supported  by  the  well-known  authority 
of  William  Blades,  confirmed  by  observation, 
illustrated  by  the  condition  of  the  atmoephero 
of  the  reading  room  of  the  British  Museum, 
where  the  consumption  of  oxygen  by  each 
volume  has  been  found  to  be  several  thousand 
cubic  feet  of  air  every  twenty-f our  hours,  and 
reinforced  by  a  series  of  experiments  made 
by  Huxley.  Ringelbergius  on  the  true  method 
of  procrastination,  and  Dr.  O'Rell  cm  the 
disease  caUed  **CatalogitiB,"  c^uld  hardly  fafl 
to  make  even  a  good  woman  smile.  If  the 
humor  were  throughout  as  natural  and  un- 
forced as  in  these  passages,  Mr.  Field  would 
have  written  a  classic  A  melancholy  interest 
attaches  to  the  volume,  as  the  author  died 
almost  in  writing  its  last  lines.  > 


The  Oold  Diggings  of  Cape  Horn :  A  Study  of 
Life  in  Tierra  del  Fuego  and  Patagonia.  By 
John  R.  Spears.  Illustrated.  O.  P.  Put- 
nam's  Sons.  1895.  Pp.  xi,  319.  8vo. 
This  vivacious  account  of  a  two  months'  trip 
in  an  unfamiliar  region  is  excellent  reading. 
The  information  which  It  gives  about  the 
Cape  Horn  country,  its  people  and  resources, 
abounds  in  surprises  to  one  who  has  formed 
his  impressions  of  it  from  the  accounts  of  the 
early  voyagers.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine,  for 
instance,  that  the  land  which  they  pictured  as 
the  abode  of  snow  and  ioe,  the  home  of  storms, 
is  admirably  suited  for  sheep-raising,  with 
prairies  covered  with  luxuriant  grass,  on 
which  a  snowfall  of  six  inches  is  counted  deep, 
and  where  cold  sufilcient  to  freese  the  fresh- 
water ponds  is  rare ;  or  that  there  should  be  a 
fiourishing  town  of  8,500  inhabitants  where 
Sarmiento's  colony  starved  to  death — a  town 
in  every  respect  like  a  Western  mining  caopi 
except  that  every  sine-roofed  hat  baa  Hi  wte* 


March  12,  1S96] 


Th.e    IN"atioii. 


Q35 


dow-garden,  **and  many  houses  have  bays  and 
rooms  set  apart  for  great  masses  of  potted 
flowers  and  shmbs."  Oold-miniog  on  the  sea- 
shore, with  the  **pay  streak  "bearing  "nug- 
gets as  big  as  kernels  of  corn,^  under  water  at 
high  tide  is  no  less  a  surprise.  So,  too,  are  the 
Tahgans,  the  southernmost  of  all  the  Indians, 
who,  in  their  original  state,  were  skilful  arti- 
sans, had  many  virtues,  and  showed  such  a  re- 
markable mental  development  that  from  their 
l^nguAge  "has  been  compiled  a  vocabulary  of 
over  40,000  words!''  Their  present  degrada- 
tion and  dwindled  numbers  Mr.  Spears  attri- 
butes in  part  to  the  questionable  means  em- 
ployed  by  the  missionaries  to  civilize  them. 
Whether  his  severe  strictures  are  deserved,  we 
have  no  means  of  knowing,  but  the  tribe's  his- 
tory is  only  another  sad  proof  of  the  incom- 
patibility in  the  temperate  zone  of  the  red  and 
the  white  man.  There  is  a  somewhat  similar 
account  of  a  less  interesting  race,  the  Tehuel- 
ches,  the  giant  nomads  of  Patagonia,  and  their 
sttpplaater,  the  gaucho,  or  cowboy,  as  well  as 
of  the  strangely  successful  Welsh  colony  on 
the  Chubut  River. 

Two  admirable  chapters  on  the  Patagonian 
beasts  and  birds,  and  an  instructive  account  of 
the  rising  sheep  industry,  complete  the  sub- 
jects treated  in  this  unusually  fresh  and  en- 
tertaining book  of  travels.  Some  of  the  illus- 
trations are  very  good,  and  there  is  an  excej 
lent  index. 


Th€  House  that  Jill  BuUt  after  Jack's  had 
proved  a  Failure:  A  Book  on  Home  Archi- 
tecture.  With  illustrations.  By  E.G.  Gard- 
ner. Springfield,  Mass. :  W.  A.  Adams  Co. 
1896.    12mo,  pp.  xii.,  268.  * 

This  little  book  relates  the  experience  of  a 
young  couple  who  had  in  hand  the  money  for 
a  new  house,  and  tried  to  procure  one  which 
should  be  ideally  comfortable  and  easy  to  live 
in.  They  employed  an  architect  who  displayed 
a  great  deal  of  good  sense  in  his  advice  to  the 
building  family  in  question,  and  it  is  certain 
that  the  resulting  plans  shown  on  pages  280  and 
241  are  good  ones  and  give  the  idea  of  a  very 
comfortable  house.  In  the  course  of  the  long 
debate  to  which  the  book  is  devoted,  a  good 
deal  of  good  sense  is  retailed  to  the  reader. 
Thus,  on  page  24,  he  is  told  to  build  a  drain 
first  of  aU,  and  to  provide  a  cut  off  to  keep 
surface  water  from  the  cellar;  and  in  immedi- 


ate connection  with  this  the  importance  of 
having  the  cellar  so  high  that  a  clean  outlet 
can  be  got  below  its  bottom  is  insisted  on,  even 
"  if  this  happens  to  carry  it  above  the  surface 
of  the  ground" — in  which  case  you  are  to  "set 
the  house  on  posts  aud  hang  the  cellar  under 
the  floor  like  a  work-bag  under  the  table."  On 
page  51  the  evils  of  furring,  of  hollow  parti- 
tions, and  of  floors  hollow  between  flooring  and 
plastering  are  pointed  out,  especially  their 
mischievous  qaalities  in  the  matter  of  carry- 
ing fire  from  floor  to  floor  and  from  room  to 
room.  On  page  53  the  simple  remedy  for  this 
state  of  things  is  pointed  out  in  connection 
with  praises  of  brick  as  a  building  material, 
and  on  page  57  mineral  wool  and  such  other 
materials  for  filling  are  described.  In  this 
way  and  with  a  great  deal  of  chat  and  perhaps 
an  unnecessary  amount  of  preaching,  the  main 
principles  of  house- planning  and  house- build- 
ing are  laid  down  with  sufficient  clearness  and 
fulness.  As  it  frequently  happens  that  the 
architect  employed  to  design  a  small  bouse— or 
a  large  one,  for  that  matter — cannot  be  per- 
suaded  to  give  time  and  attention  to  the  many 
details  which  make  it  up,  it  is  well  for  the 
owners  to  have  at  least  as  much  information 
as  this  book  affords.  As  to  the  good  taste 
shown  in  the  designs  for  fireplaces,  wainscot- 
ting  trim,  and  the  like,  it  is  not  easy  to  speak 
wiCh  much  approval. 


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The  Week. 

PRBSiDSirr  Clbtblakd's  forthcoming  or- 
der, bringing  within  the  civil-seryice  rules 
all  the  places  still  remaining  outside  them, 
will  be  one  of  the  most  notable  public 
eTents  in  our  recent  political  history. 
Coming  upon  the  eve  of  a  Presidential 
campaign,  it  will  be  an  entirely  unprece- 
dented act,  and  will  go  far  to  convince  the 
practical  politicians  of  the  party  that  the 
President  is  not  a  candidate  for  a  third 
term.  No  man  with  aspirations  for  a  re- 
nomination  has  ever  dreamed  of  such  a 
thing  as  putting  for  ever  beyond  the  reach 
of  spoils  politics  such  a  list  of  places  as 
this  which  a  Washington  correspondent 
reports  as  likely  to  be  included  in  the  new 
order: 

**  The  Hint  Mrvioe.  the  excepted  places  in  the 
customs  and  iatemal-revenae  services,  all  the 
placss  in  the  Indlao  Agency  service  below  the 
phyiiclaiis,  and  all  the  plaoes  in  the  Indian 
school  service  stni  onproteoted;  the  Interstate 
Commeroe  Ckwnmission  clerical  staff,  the  deri- 
cal  force  in  the  navy-vards;  chief  clerks  of 
boreaos  and  chiefs  of  division  in  the  depart- 
mental  service;  and  a  host  of  small  groups  and 
riesiss  which  so  rarely  show  themselves  on  the 
sarfaoe  of  pabUc  affairs  as  to  have  been  gene- 
rally overlooked  in  the  planning  of  reform 
campaigns.'' 

When,  in  addition  to  this,  we  consider  that 
the  President  contemplates  including  all 
the  fourth-class  post-offices,  except  an  in- 
significant few,  in  the  same  order,  the  full 
dimensions  of  this  final  sweep  may  be 
imagined.  There  will  be  no  spoils  left 
upon  which  to  conduct  the  next  Plresiden- 
tial  campaign.  The  next  President  will 
have  only  some  large  places  to  distribute 
after  he  shall  come  into  office  on  March  4, 
1897,  and  the  business  of  the  Government 
will  be  the  chief  object  of  his  attention. 
Will  the  politicians  consent  to  fill  the  Pre- 
sidency under  these  conditions  ? 


dollar,  whether  of  silver,  gold,  or  paper,  shall 
be  at  ali  times  equal." 

At  first  sight  this  looks  like  a  mere  repe- 
tition of  the  old  juggles  with  words  that 
have  disgraced  both  parties  during  the 
whole  period. of  the  silver  and  fiat  agita- 
tion, but  in  ord^r  to  understand  it  we 
must  look  at  the  course  of  events,  at  the 
repeal  of  the  Sherman  act,  and  at  the  new 
demands  which  the  silver  men  themselves 
have  made  since  that  act  was  repealed. 


Silver  having  been  the  real  cause  of  the 
panic  of  1883,  it  behooves  all  men  of  in- 
telligance  to  see  what  sort  of  figure  it  is 
likely  to  cut  if  McKinley  reaches  the  goal 
of  his  ambition.  On  Wednesday  week  the 
Ohio  Republican  convention,  at  which  his 
**boom*'  received  all  the  impulse  that 
could  be  given  to  it  by  a  single  State, 
passed  a  resolution,  drawn  by  McKinley 
himself,  in  dose  agreement  with  a  speech 
made  by  him  at  Chicago  on  the  12th  of 
February  last    It  is  as  follows : 

"We  contend  for  honest  money,  for  a  cur- 
rency of  gold,  silTer,  and  paper  with  which  to 
msasore  our  exchanges  that  shall  be  as  sound 
as  the  Oovemmeot  and  as  untarnished  as  its 
honor;  and  to  that  end  we  faror  bimetallism, 
and  demand  the  use  of  both  gold  and  silver  as 
standard  money,  either  in  accordance  with  a 
ratio  to  be  flxed  by  an  international  agreement 
(if  that  can  be  obtained),  or  under  such  restrio. 
tioQS  and  snch  provisions,  to  be  determined  by 
legislation,  as  wlU  secure  the  maintenance  of 
tl*a  parities  of  value  of  the  two  metals,  so  that 
Hm  purchasing  and  debt-paying  power  of  the 


What  is  meant  by  favoring  bimetallism? 
One  of  the  methods  proposed  is  by  inter- 
national agreement.  This  is  intelligible, 
although  remote,  and,  as  we  think,  unat- 
tainable. The  other  method  of  reaching 
bimetallism  is  **  under  such  restrictions 
and  such  provisions,  to  be  determined 
by  legUlation^*  (i.  «.,  not  to  be  inter- 
rupted by  the  veto  power),  **  as  will  secure 
the  maintenance  of  the  parities  of  value  of 
the  two  metals,"  etc.  Those  provisions 
now  exist,  and  are.  sufficient  for  the  pur- 
pose if  administered  by  an  executive  who 
is  determined  to  maintain  the  gold  stan- 
dard at  all  haiards  and  under  all  circum- 
stances, and  is  known  to  be  so.  We  have 
such  an  executive  at  present,  and  the 
main  question,  the  chief  issue,  in  Ameri- 
can politics  now  is  whether  we  shall  have 
such  an  executive  during  the  four  years 
succeeding  Mr.  Cleveland's  term.  Mak- 
ing ail  allowance  for  humbug  and  cheat- 
ing in  platforms,  we  do  not  consider  either 
the  platform  adopted  by  Mr.  McKinley's 
friends  in  Ohio  or  the  utterances  of  Mr. 
McKinley  himself  any  such  guarantee.  If 
there  is  to  be  any  more  buying  and  coin- 
ing of  silver  under  parity  clauses,  "  to  be 
determined  by  legislation,"  there  will  be 
another  panic,  and  it  may  be  one  which 
no  executive  could  stem.  The  resolution 
does  not  propose  any  more  buying  and 
coining  of  silver,  it  is  true,  but  it  en- 
courages the  silver-men  to  expect  it.  It 
holds  out  to  them  a  hope  by  which  their 
support  is  to  be  gained  if  possible,  end  it 
leaves  the  next  and  future  Congresses  as 
much  in  doubt  as  the  present  one  is  con- 
cerning the  true  intent  and  meaning  of 
the  Republican  platform,  and  thus  leaves 
the  financed  question  in  the  air,  as  it  is 
now. 


Senate  Bill  Chandler  protests,  with 
the  alarm  of  an  expert,  against  the  cor- 
rupting use  of  money  to  promote  the  Mc- 
Kinley candidacy.  The  most  appalling 
thing  fibout  it  to  hkn  is,  that  the  McKin- 
ley managers  h^e  "invaded  Senator 
Quay's  SUte,"  with  demands  that  the 
Pennsylvania  manufacturers  give  their 
money,  not  to  their  natural  suxerain.  Quay, 
but  to  the  man  who  mada  them  rich  by 
bis  tariff  bUl  of  1800.  Pointing  out  the 
fact  that  McKinley  himself  has  no  money, 
the  Honorable  Bill  wants  to  know  where 
all  the  money  is  coming  from  that  is  now 


**  corrupting  State  and  district  conven- 
tions "in  his  interest,  and  asks,  with  the 
pain  of  an  old-fashioned  patriot,  whether 
**  our  next  President  is  to  be  controlled 
and  dictated  to  by  Mr.  Hanna  and  a  set 
of  associates  who  have  established  their 
domination  over  a  President  by  the  money 
they  have    furnished    for   him    and  his 


Theee  questions  might  better  have  come 
from  a  better  man,  but  they  are  most  perti- 
nent and  urgent  coming  from  any  source. 
The  answer  to  them  is  written  plain 
enough  for  the  wayfaring  man  in  the  elec- 
tion of  1888.  Quay  looked  after  his  own 
tributary  manufacturers  in  that  year,  and 
one  of  them  afterwards  said  openly  that 
the  McKinley  tariff  bill  was  only  their  just 
due,  as  they  had  bought  and  paid  for  it 
with  their  own  money.  They  and  the  sil- 
ver-men had  the  first  mortgage  on  the 
Fifty-first  Congress,  and  they  foredosed 
it  without  mercy.  The  men  who  are  now  \ 
so  lavishly  financing  the  McKinley  canvass 
propose  to  forestall  all  competitors.  By 
buying  the  nomination  they  get  a  clear 
first  lien  on  the  candidate.  After  the 
nomination,  all  negotiations  ia  regard  to 
the  election  will  have  to  be  conducted  with 
them.  Anybody  who  wants  tariff  favors 
will  know  what  he  has  to  do.  The  cor- 
ruption will  be  all  square  and  above- 
board,  in  the  best  tariff  manner  of  perfect 
gentlemen.  But  the  scale  on  which  the 
preliminary  operations  are  now  carried  on 
indicates  what  a  monstroaity  the  next 
tariff  bill  will  have  to  be  to  pay  off  all  the 
debts.  McKinley's  zeal  for  "  the  Ameri- 
can fireside  "  will  no  doubt  be  equal  to  it, 
but  can  the  Republican  party  be  expected 
to  escape  afterwards  even  with  such  a 
battering  as  it  got  in  1890  T  Bill  Chan- 
dler's alarm  at  the  prospect  ia  well  found- 
ed. Such  a  cynical  preparation  to  buy  the 
Presidency,  with  an  equally  cynical  prepa- 
ration to  get  the  money  back  by  legislative 
favors,  has  not  before  1>^®Q  seen.  It  por- 
tends the  permanent  retirement  to  the 
American  fireside  of  public  men  who  strike 
hands  with  the  unblushing  oorruptionista. 


The  alarm  of  a  great  many  Republicans 
at  the  probability  of  McKinley's  nomina- 
tiqp  is  due  not  alone  to  the  fiscal  and  mone- 
tary policies  for  which  he  is  supposed  to 
rftand.  What  they  dread  most  is  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  President  of  his  deadly-dull  r 
intellect  Certainly  no  President  since 
perhaps  the  first  Harrison  has  been  a  man 
of  suoh  a  shut-in  mental  horizon  as  Mc- 
Kinley. The  volume  of  his  speeches  and 
addresses  put  forth  a  covple  of  years  ago, 
in  tha  interest  of  his  candidacy,  ought  of 
itself  to  make  his  candidacy  impossible. 
To  elect  a  man  President  capable  of  say- 
ing of  the  Chicago  Ezpositk>n  that  it  was, 
«« in  its  highest  sense,  the  hallelujah  of  the 
universe  for  the  triumph  of  dvil  liberty," 


Q28 


Tlie    !N"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1603 


would  be,  as  Cardinal  Vaughan  has  said 
of  the  receot  *  Life  of  Cardinal  Manning,' 
'*  almost  a  crime."  In  the  same  volume 
the  judgment  was  expressed  of  Gren.  Lio- 
gan  (*<  Black  Jack  **)  that  his  '*  success  in 
both  careers  [military  and  legisIatiTe]  is 
almost  unrivalled  in  the  history  of  men.** 
To  place  an  intelle  :;t  equal  to  that  in  a 
position  where  it  would  have  to  pass  upon 
the  most  difficult  questions  of  personal 
character  and  public  policy,  would  be  to 
put  a  premium  upon  stupidity  and  invite 
national  calamity. 


Fresh  light  continues  to  pour  in  on  the 
r6Ie  of  the  present  Senate  in  national 
affairs.  Mr.  Hoar,  one  of  the  oldest  mem- 
bers of  the  body,  turned  it  on  last  week. 
He  said  that  the  belligerency  resolutions 
of  the  two  houses  had  no  weight  or  effect; 
that  they  were  an  attempt  to  interfere 
with  the  President's  constitutional  pre- 
rogatives. But  he  was  most  illuminating 
when  he  quoted  an  old  judge  in  East 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  as  saying,  in  a  charge 
to  a  jury: 

**  Gentlemen  of  the  jary,  circumBtantial  evi- 
dence  is  where  a  fact  that  is  known  proves  a 
fact  that  is  not  known.  If  you  see  great  ac- 
tivlty  in  the  navy-yard  over  there  to  morrow, 
it  is  not  a  proof  that  war  is  approaching,  but 
that  an  election  is  approaching." 

**And  so,"  said  Mr.  Hoar,  **  the  extraor- 
dinary excitement  shown  by  the  Senator 
from  Ohio  in  this  matter  is  not  a  proof  of 
any  great  disturbance  in  our  foreign  rela- 
tions, but  that  there  is  a  Presidential 
election  at  hand."  That  observation  car- 
ries us  into  the  very  centre  and  essence  of 
this  whole  Jingo  business,  not  as  it  is  to- 
day only,  but  as  it  has  been  for  more  than 
a  year.  Its  motive  when  Lodge  and 
Chandler  started  it  was  precisely  what  it 
is  now.  By  keeping  at  it,  these  two 
worthies  and  others  like  them  managed 
to  get  up  tho  Venezuelan  trouble,  and 
were  very  near  getting  up  a  Nicaraguan 
trouble,  and  they  are  now  trying  to  get 
up  a  Cuban  trouble.  There  has  been  no 
war,  and  we  no  not  believe  they  ever  ex- 
pected any  war,  but  they  have  done  and 
are  doing  enormous  damage  to  the  busi- 
ness interests  of  the  country.  The  kind 
of  body  into  which  they  have  converted 
both  the  House  and  the  Senate,  is  suited 
only  for  the  government  of  a  pastoral 
community,  or  an  agricultural  one  which 
produced  only  what  was  necessary  for  its 
own  use.  No  commercial  nation,  with  a 
great  system  of  credit,  could  possibly  live 
long  under  it.  For  many  months  past 
they  have  made  business  plans  for  the 
future  almost  impossible.  It  was  this 
which  led  to  the  favorable  consideration 
of  a  proposal  at  the  monthly  meeting  of 
the  Board  of  Trade  and  Transportation 
last  week  for  a  joint  petition  to  Congress 
from  the  various  commercial  bodies  of  the 
country  to  adjourn,  and  "  give  business  a 
chance." 


All  anybody  needs,  in  order  to  estimate 
the  capacity  of  the  great  men  of  the  Se- 


nate, is  to  read  the  debates  of  the  past 
few  days  on  the  Cuban  question.  These 
debates  were  started  on  a  gross  and  con* 
fessed  misquotation  from  an  unknown 
book,  some  newspaper  scraps,  and  a  mis- 
translation. These  interesting  facts  were 
brought  out  by  Mr.  Hoar,  on  Wednesday 
week.  On  Friday  the  fun  grew  more  fast 
and  furious.  Mr.  Sherman  said  the  com- 
mittee on  foreign  relations  had  been 
started  into  activity  about  Cuba  by  secret 
information  from  the  State  Department, 
communicated  through  Mr.  Lodge.  This 
naturally  produced  great  curiosity,  and 
Mr.  Lodge  rose  to  explain.  The  impor- 
tant communication  from  the  State  De- 
partment was  the  enclosure  of  a  letter 
from  Seflor  Dupuy  de  Lome,  the  Spanish 
Minister,  giving  his  views  of  the  military 
situation  in  Cuba.  This  seems  to  have 
been  converted  in  Mr.  Sherman's  mind 
into  an  argument  in  favor  of  belligerent 
rights.  Of  course  everybody  was  anxious 
to  see  how  this  psychological  process  was 
effected,  but  a  demand  for  the  letter  was 
naturally  met  by  the  reply  that  it  could 
be  read  only  in  executive  session.  We  ask 
the  public,  when  reading  these  debates, 
to  remember  that  they  are  carried  on  by 
high  officers  of  one  of  the  most  powerful 
governments  in  the  world,  that  they  have 
a  most  disastrous  influence  on  the  business 
and  finances  of  the  country,  that  they 
have  filled  the  large  towns  in  Spain  with 
mob  violence  and  hatred  of  the  American 
name,  and  are  diffusing  vague  dread  of 
America  and  contempt  for  our  government 
all  through  the  civilized  world.  More- 
over, if  Mr.  Hoar  had  not  departed  from 
the  usual  recent  practice  of  his  own  par- 
ty, and,  instead  of  sitting  silent  and  ap- 
parently approving  the  folly  of  the  Jingo 
element,  poured  hot  shot  into  them,  we 
should  never  have  known  the  depths  of 
folly  and  incompetency  to  which  they  can 
descend. 


The  current  number  of  the  Political 
Science  Quarterly  contains  a  discussion 
of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  by  two  competent 
hands.  Prof.  Moore  begins  it  and  Prof. 
Burgess  continues  it.  They  are  both  of 
the  Political  Science  Department,  and  are 
men  of  eminence  in  their  fields.  From 
Prof.  Moore  we  have  already  heard  a  good 
deal  on  this  topic,  but  nothing  as  long  or 
as  weighty  as  the  present  article  from  Mr. 
Burgess.  These  gentlemen  complete  the 
list,  as  far  as  our  observation  has  gone,  of 
those  who,  being  familiar  with,  or  autho- 
rities on,  this  class  of  questions,  have 
completely  and  argumentatively  con- 
demned both  Mr.  Olney'slaw  and  Monroe. 
We  have  not  heard.  East  or  West,  of  one 
dissenting  voice  from  this  class  (and  they 
may  be  said  to  be  the  mind,  as  distin- 
guished fron;  the  muscle,  of  America) 
concerning  international  rights  and  du- 
ties and  policy.  They  all  say  that  Mr. 
Olney's  Monroe  is  as  bad  as  his  law  in 
this,  that  his  Monroe  is  not  Monroe's 
Monroe ;  that  his  own  Monroe  is  bad  law 
and    bad    policy.    Of    course    there  are 


some,  especially  out  West,  who  put  in 
the  usual  '*  placatory  tag "  about  devo- 
tion to  the  real  Monroe  Doctrine,  and 
readiness  to  die  for  it  whenever  called 
upon,  but  this  does  not  affect  their  argu- 
ment. Let  Jingoes  consider  these  writera 
and  be  wise.  Prince  Volkonsky,  the  Rus- 
sian, lecturing  at  Columbia  College  last 
week,  quoted  from  a  Russian  writer 
the  term  **zodiogical  patriot,"  as  the 
equivalent  of  our  term  ** Jingo."  This 
means  that  this  kind  of  patriot  is  an  ani- 
mal whose  habitat  is,  say,  in  North  Ame- 
rica, and  who,  in  virtue  of  the  fact  that 
he  was  born  within  certain  parallels  of 
latitude  and  longitude,  constantly  wants 
to  bite  all  animals  of  the  same  species 
born  in  other  parallels.  When  he  sees  a 
Jingo  of  different  origin,  he  is  always 
eager  to  throttle  him,  without  rhyme  or 
reason.  Prof.  Burgess's  protest  against 
the  psychological  tendency  to  raise  a  po- 
litical ** doctrine"  to  the  position  of  a 
"  fetish,"  and  rattle  about  it  in  "excited 
gibberish,"  is  well  worthy  of  careful  Jin- 
go perusal. 


The  London  Chronicle^  which  is  busy 
picking  holes  in  the  British  Case  by 
pointing  out  inaccuracies  or  misquota- 
tions, will  probably  not  make  much  im- 
pression by  this  attack  any  more  than  by 
its  grand  exposure  of  Lord  Aberdeen 
when  Mr.  Norman  was  here.  In  fact,  it 
is  not  unlikely  that,  as  the  St  James's 
Gazette  says,  most  of  its  discoveries  are 
mare's  nests.  But  it  evidently  does  not 
share  the  opinion  of  some  of  our  contem- 
poraries here  that  the  better  the  British 
Case  is,  the  stronger  the  obligation  rest- 
ing on  it  io  arbitrate.  This  is  not  the 
way  arbitration  has  been  hitherto  looked 
at  by  the  people  who  resort  to  it.  If  this 
view  were  generally  adopted,  it  would  pro- 
duce some  droll  results— that  is,  my  obli- 
gation to  arbitrate  would  increase  in  the 
direct  ratio  of  the  strength  of  my  title. 
A  man  claims  my  watch,  for  instance,  in 
the  street,  and  demands  arbitration.  There 
is  not  the  shadow  of  doubt  as  to  my  right 
to  the  watch.  I  would  say  I  bought  it  of 
so  and  so,  and  had  worn  it  for  twenty 
yeats.  Then  why  on  earth,  the  bystander 
would  say,  do  you  refuse  to  arbitrate? 
The  decision  would  certainly  be  in  your 
favor.  Or  suppose  Spain  claimed  Florida, 
and  insisted  on  our  arbitrating  because 
the  legality  of  our  original  acquisition  of 
it  was  so  clear.  As  a  matter  of  fact  and 
long  precedent,  arbitration  always  con- 
notes reasonable  doubt,  and  the  duty  of 
arbitrating  grows  weakeri  and  not  strong- 
er, as  the  doubt  declines.  Still, we  believe 
every  nation  should  arbitrate  in  all  dis- 
putes about  facts,  when  asked  to  do  so  by 
another  state.  The  peace  and  civilization 
of  Christendom  r^st  on  the  assumption 
that  each  state  is  not  only  sovereign  but 
reasonable,  and  that  it  will  not  make 
claims  that  are  absolutely  absurd  and  do 
not  deserve  discussion  or  attention.  So 
that  even  slight  doubts  ought  to  Jnatify  in*' 
ternational  arbitration.    As  to  ttis  Jonr^ 


March  19,  1896] 


The   Nation. 


339 


nmlktie  op«r«tioDt  now  going  on  about 
thk  quMtioD,  the  time  for  patting  the 
partiM  on  either  tide  *'  in  a  hole  "  aeema 
to  haTe  gone  by.  No  newspaper  needs  to 
ezpoae  the  weak  points  of  either  case. 
The  British  hare  their  counsel,  and  the 
Venesaelans  hare  theirs,  and  we  hare  a 
commission  **  watching  the  case,"  as  thej 
saj  in  the  London  police  courts,  on  our 
behalf. 


The  Railroad  Oatette  has  a  pains- 
taking and  profound  article  on  the  Nica- 
ragua Canal,  the  immediate  subject  being 
the  Report  of  the  Board  of  Engineers  re- 
centlj  submitted  to  Congress.  The  cha- 
racter of  this  board  it  considers  of  the 
highest  type.  It  is  therefore  not  surprised 
at  the  temperance  and  restraint  with 
which  its  conclusions*  are  announced. 
It  is  only  surprised  "at  the  amount 
which  the  canal  company  does  not  know 
about  thd  Tast  work  that  it  has  under- 
taken, and  at  the  light-hear*ed  confidence 
with  which  it  has  asked  indiTiduals  and 
the  nation  to  embark  on  the  most  diffi- 
cult engineering  work  erer  undertaken 
by  men."  The  question  whether  the  work 
can  be  done  at  all  is  still  to  be  soWed. 
80  fto  as  our  knowledge  now  extends, 
all  that  we  can  say  is  that  perhaps  it  can 
be  done  for  $133,000,000  and  perhaps  not 
The  points  upon  which  information  of  the 
highest  importance  is  wanting  are  nume- 
rous, and  the  want  is  inexcusable.  It  is 
indispensable,  for  instance,  to  know  the 
variations  in  the  level  of  San  Juan  Lake, 
since  *■  every  foot  of  reduction  in  the 
minimum  will  cause  a  large  increase  in 
excavation  throughout  the  entire  sum- 
mit level,  including  the  costly  work  of 
the  San  Juan  River  and  the  east  and 
west  divides.  Yet  the  canal  company 
has  no  recorded  observations  of  the  lake 
level  or  other  data  relating  to  its  regula- 
tion, for  the  eight  years  since  it  began 
work  in  the  country."  The  means  of 
curbing  the  streams  on  the  west  side,  in 
the  San  Francisco  basin,  in  order  to  pre- 
vent the  washing  away  of  the  canal  by 
the  tremendous  rainfall  that  often  Visits 
that  region,  are  still  altogether  in  the 
dark.  So  with  the  great  Ochoa  dam,  the 
failure  of  which  **  would  leave  navigation 
stranded,  wreck  the  valley  below,  and 
possibly  wash  Greytown  into  the  sea  ";  it 
is  not  yet  known  what  foundation  this 
dam  is  CO  rest  on,  nor  have  any  detailed 
plans  or  specifications  been  made,  nor 
does  anybody  know  what  is  the  maximum 
rate  of  discharge  of  water  that  must  be 
taken  care  of.  The  company  estimates 
this  maximum  discharge  at  63,000  cubic 
feet  per  second.  The  board  estimates  it 
at  126,000  and  possibly  150,000.  It  would 
be  "stupendous  folly,"  says  the  Oatette^ 
"  to  assume  the  burden  of  this  enterprise 
without  the  further  studies  which  the 
board  advises." 


We  are  assured  by  persons  who  are  the 
\)e3t  authorities  on  the  subject,  that  the 


proposal  to  legislate  the  Niagara  Falls 
Reservation  Commissioners  out  of  office 
does  not  spring  from  a  desire  for  spoils 
alone,  but  that  there  is  behind  it  also  a 
scheme  for  getting  poeaession  of  the  wa- 
ter-power of  the. falls  for  the  benefit  of  a 
private  corporation.  The  two  objects 
would  naturally  go  together.  With  a  lot 
of  spoils  politicians  in  charge  of  the  Re- 
servation, the  improper  sale  of  its  privi- 
leges for  the  mutual  benefit  of  politics  and 
corporations  would  follow  naturally.  The 
State  has  bought  the  Reservation  for  the 
benefit  of  all  its  inhabitants.  There  has 
not  been  a  day  since  the  bargain  was 
completed  when  vandals  of  one  sort  or  an- 
other have  not  been  trying  to  break  in 
upon  it  to  impair  its  natural  beauty  and 
make  personal  profit  for  themselves  out 
of  its  wonderful  power.  The  present 
Commissioners  have  stood  like  a  rock 
against  all  these  efforts  at  depredation, 
and  it  would  be  a  public  calamity  were 
they  to  be  removed.  Senator  Ellsworth 
should  bear  in  mind  that  the  Reserva- 
tion is  not  the  property  of  Buffalo,  but  of 
the  State,  and  withdraw  his  bill  as  an 
impudent  assault  upon  the  property  of 
the  people. 


Mr.  Arnold  Foster,  M.P.,writes  a  search- 
ing article,  in  the  columns  of  the  London 
Chronicle^  on  the  Jameson  raid  against 
the  Transvaal,  on  the  South  African 
Chartered  Company,  and  against  govern- 
ment by  chartered  companies  in  general. 
The  vice  of  these,  he  says,  is  "  that  a 
chartered  company  can  only  be  established 
by  confusing  two  things  which  are  abso- 
lutely irreconcilable  and  ought  never  to  be 
associated.  I  mean  the  prerogative  of 
governing  men  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
desire  of  making  money  on  the  other. 
The  right  to  govern  men  is  one  of  the  very 
highest  duties  which  can  be  intrusted  to  a 
man  or  a  body  of  men.  The  pursuit  of 
money  cannot  be  deecribed  in  any  such 
terms."  The  pursuit  of  money  is  well 
enough  in  its  place,  but,  when  mixed  with 
the  functions  of  government,  it  becomes 
intolerable.  This  was  the  vice,  in  another 
form,  of  that  method  of  public  finance 
known  as  "  farming  the  revenue,"  which 
prevailed  in  ancient  Rome,  and,  coming 
down  to  modern  times,  was  extinguished 
by  the  French  Revolution.  The  facts  of 
importance  relating  to  this  method  of  col- 
lecting the  public  taxes  are  brought  to- 
gether in  an  interesting  way  by  David  A. 
Wells  in  the  current  number  of  the  Popu- 
lar Science  Monthly.  As  the  publican^s 
compensation  depended  upon  the  amount 
of  his  collections,  he  wss  really  invested 
with  the  power  of  state  to  extort  an  4n- 
come  for  himself  from  the  provincials. 
The  same  principle  underlies  government 
by  chartered  companies.  The  company  is 
invested  with  power  to  tax  the  inhabitants 
of  the  territory  embraced  in  the  charter 
for  the  purpose  of  making  dividends  for 
shareholders  in  another  country.  Not 
only  is  this  a  vicious  plan  per  ae,  but  it 


operates  to  deaden  the  sense  of  responsi- 
bility among  the  rulers  who  are  here  to- 
day and  gone  to-morrow,  answerable  to 
nobody  but  the  company.  It  is  not  alone 
the  South  African  Company  that  passes 
under  Mr.  Foster's  powerful  censure,  but 
the  Niger  Company  as  well. 


The  indignation  roused  in  the  Reichs- 
tag by  the  accusations  against  Dr.  Petws, 
the  former  Imperial  Commissioner  in  East 
Africa,  contrasts  refreshingly  with  the 
comparative  indifference  to  the  similar 
charges  against  Chancellor  Leist  and  As- 
sessor Wehlan.  A  thorough  overhauling 
of  the  entire  administration  of  the  Ger- 
man possessions  in  East  Africa  will  prob- 
ably result  Prof.  L.  von  Bar  of  GK^t- 
tingen,  writing  in  the  Berlin  Nation^  has 
pointed  out  that,  in  spite  of  the  cruelties 
perpetrated  by  Wehlan,  the  Imperial  Qov- 
emment  could  try  him  only  for  having 
exceeded  his  authority,  of  which  the 
limits  are  but  vaguely  defined  by  existing 
laws.  According  to  the  law  of  April  17, 
1886,  German  subjects  in  all  the  colonies 
of  the  Empire  are  amenable  to  the  crimi- 
nal code  of  Germany  if  guilty  of  infiicting 
a  personal  injury  upon  a  native  or  de- 
priving him  of  his  liberty,  but  (Government 
officials  as  such  have  hitherto  had  almost 
absolute  discretion  in  their  dealings  with 
natives.  The  legal  status  of  the  natives 
has  not  been  defined,  so  that  even  a  hu- 
mane official  would  not  know  whether  to 
treat  native  criminals  as  he  would  Euro- 
peans, or  as  German  Consuls  in  foreign 
countries  are  expected  to  treat  natives  in 
such  cases.  IVof.  von  Bar  suggests  a 
simple  code  determining  both  the  nature 
of  the  crimes  for  which  punishment  may 
be  meted  out  to  natives,  and  the  limits  of 
the  power  of  officials.  He  admits,  how- 
ever, the  difficulty  of  limiting  the  power 
of  Government  officials  in  case  of  war, 
though  he  pleads  for  at  least  more  humane 
treatment  of  native  prisoners  of  war. 


German  writers  deplore  the  decline  of 
the  Reichstag,  very  much  as  we  do  the 
degeneration  of  Congress,  and  have  very 
much  the  same  explanation  to  give.  The 
fallbg  off  in  individual  ability,  and  the 
paralysis  of  the  higher  legislative  func- 
tions, are  attributed  to  the  rush  of  selfish 
and  mercenary  interests  into  Parliament. 
With  the  private  business  of  ^  manufac- 
turers and  agrarians  to  look  after  and  to 
claim  first  place,  how  can  the  members  be 
expected  to  attend  to  the  larger  interests 
of  the  nation?  Factions  now  build  them- 
selves about  some  money-getting  scheme, 
some  bit  of  class  legislation,  not  about 
any  real  political  principle.  Machine 
methods  naturally  fbllow.  The  present 
Reichstag  is  thought  to  reach  low-water 
mark  for  unblushing  assertion  of  private 
over  public  intereats.  Protection,  and  the 
passion  for  paying  debts  in  depreciated 
currency,  appear  to  be  doing  in  Germany 
what  we  have  long  observed  them  to  be 
doing  here. 


330 


Tiie   isTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1603 


THE  VALUE  OF  DISCUSSION. 
The  course  of  events  in  the  United  States 
Senate  for  the  last  two  weeks  will  go  far 
to  recover  for  us,  in  matters  affecting  our 
foreign  relations,  what  was  rapidly  be- 
coming the  lost  art  of  discussion.  The 
Cuban  resolutions  were  passed  on  Feb- 
ruary 28  practically  without  debate — de- 
bate, as  distinct  from  great  gusts  and 
gales.  Morgan  had,  indeed,  paraded  on 
the  windy  plains  of  Troy  for  the  better 
part  of  two  days,  Lodge  had  contributed 
his  quota  of  misinformation,  and  Sher- 
man had  spoken  with  the  impetuous  pas- 
sion and  blunderiog  of  his  ardent  nature  ; 
but  of  argument  directed  to  the  vitals  of 
the  question,  there  was  none.  A  week 
later  Senator  Hale  made  his  speech,  asked 
some  strategic  questions,  submitted  some 
evidence.  Then  Senator  Hoar  began  to 
display  a  strange  desire  to  know  what  the 
facts  were,  and,  in  the  running  debate 
which  followed,  the  whole  case  of  the 
foreign-affairs  committee  fell  in  complete 
wreck.  Such  humiliating  twistings  and 
doublings  as  Lodge  and  Sherman  have 
been  driven  to,  it  would  be  hard  to  match 
in  the  annals  of  Congress. 

The  surprising  thing  is,  not  that  this 
should  have  happened,  but  that  a  week 
should  have  passed  before  it  happened. 
Senator  Hoar  was  seven  days  behind  the 
newspapers  in  finding  out  that  Mr.  Sher- 
man's argument  was  a  mass  of  guesses 
and  irrelevancies  and  falsehoods.  Yet  at 
the  time  the  Senate  eat  dumb  under  the 
transparent  imposition.  Nothing  but  the 
luck  of  delay  in  the  conference  committee, 
with  the  chance  it  gave  to  hear  from  the 
country,  prevented  a  thoroughly  un- 
sound and  fraudulent  policy  from  being 
adopted  by  the  Senate  almost  unanimous- 
ly and  without  one  word  of  effective  pro- 
test. This  would  certainly  have  been  an 
entire  surrender  of  the  right  and  duty  of 
public  discussion  of  the  most  important 
public  questions,  by  the  men  chosen  for 
the  express  purpose  of  discussing  them 
and  letting  the  country  know  what  was 
going  on,  what  the  action  proposed 
meant,  and  what  the  reasons  for  it  were. 

This  paralysis  of  debate  fell  on  this  Con- 
gress almost  at  its  opening  in  December, 
in  connection  with  the  Venezuela  up- 
heaval. The  principle  was  distinctly  laid 
down  then,  in  both  House  and  Senate, 
that  foreign  affairs  must  not  be  discussed 
—that  is,  critical  foreign  affairs,  with  war 
and  a  panic  just  round  the  corner.  Con- 
gress was  to  vote,  not  talk.  So  pleaded 
Mr.  Hitt  in  the  House,  so  it  was  main- 
tained in  the  Senate.  Representatives 
could  ask  questions  about  the  pay  of  con- 
suls, could  express  their  views  on  foreign 
tariffs  or  life-insurance  regulations,  but 
the  thing  that  became  them  when  war 
was  threatened  was  modest  stillness  and 
humility.  The  precedent  set  then  it  was 
thought  would  rule  in  the  Cuban  debate. 
It  did  rule  at  first  in  the  Senate.  In  the 
House  a  few  men  found  their  voice,  but 
debate,  in  the  good  old  parliamentary 
sense  of  give  and  take,  of  argument,  of 


sharp  inquiry,  of  raillery,  and  exposure  of 
blundering,  did  not  really  show  its  head 
until  Senator  Hoar  got  on  his  feet.  He 
has  done  the  country  a  great  service.  Not 
only  has  he  completely  shattered  the  case 
of  the  foreign-relations  committee,  but  he 
has  so  triumphantly  vindicated  the  value 
of  discussion  that  we  shall  not  soon  see 
Congress  sitting  by  again,  terror-stricken 
and  tongue-tied,  while  the  gravest  mat- 
ters of  national  interest  are  being  hurried 
through  in  silence  and  secrecy.  . 

Lodge  made  a  noble  protest  against 
effective  debate  in  the  Senate — at  least 
against  any  brother-Senator's  bringing 
in  evidence  from  the  outside  to  convict 
him  of  falsifying.  He  planted  his  feet 
firmly  on  the  Constitution  and  the  "  safe- 
guards of  the  freedom  of  the  English- 
speaking  race."  No  Senator  should  be 
questioned  elsewhere  for  language  uttered 
in  debate.  But  Story  says  of  this  consti- 
tutional provision  that  its  intent  was  **to 
secure  independence,  firmness,  and  fear- 
lessness on  the  part  of  the  members." 
This  is  a  very  different  thing  from  grant- 
ing a  Senator  immunity  when  he  runs 
away  in  a  fright  and  tells  lies.  That  is 
the  kind  of  protection  that  Lodge  wants. 
He  had  imposed  upon  the  Senate  with  a 
gross  mistranslation  and  a  non-existent 
proclamation,  yet  when  Senator  Hale 
brought  in  evidence  of  the  fraud,  he 
stormed  indignantly  about  the  most  P^- 
cious  heritage  of  the  English  race.  But 
we  may  be  sure  that  the  English  race 
never  intended  to  erect  a  bulwark  in  front 
of  a  public  representative  across  which  no- 
body must  venture  in  order  to  expose 
falsehoods.  Such  protection  Lodge  can- 
not enjoy  unless  he  becomes  Senator 
among  the  Cretans.  The  English  heritage 
is  free  and  full  debate,  and  Lodge  is  enjoy- 
ing that  as  much  as  any  man  can  who 
has  been  so  discredited  and  humiliated 
by  it. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  there  has  been 
for  some  years  a  disposition  to  hold  pub- 
lic disoussion  cheap.  Much  of  the  pub- 
lic discussion  we  have  had  it  certainly 
would  be  hard  to  hold  too  cheap.  Lord 
Salisbury  said  the  other  day  in  Parlia- 
ment that  **  discussion  has  very  little 
to  do  with  the  decision  which  nations 
come  to  upon  this  question  [protection]. 
They  are  guided  each  one  by  the  belief 
that  thip  course  or  that  will  be  favorable 
to  their  own  interests."  This  is  an  ex- 
traordinary confession  to  be  made  by  one 
of  the  most  voluminous  debaters  and  dia- 
lecticians of  modern  times.  But  what 
became  of  his  dialectics  when  he  uttered 
this  sentiment  we  cannot  guess.  The  only 
way  nations  arrive  at  a  belief  that  any 
course  will  be  favorable  to  their  interests 
is  by  public  discussion  of  that  course. 
Nations  are  not  born  with  fixed  and  un- 
alterable opinions.  They  do  not  form 
them  in  their  sleep,  or  pick  them  up  in 
the  streets,  but  base  them  upon  argu- 
ment, or  what  passes  for  such,  and  frame 
them  on  consideration  and  weighing  of 
reasons  pro  and  con.    Their  ideas  of  what 


is  their  true  interest  change  from  time  to 
time,  which  could  not  be  the  case  if  dis- 
cussion had  no  effect.  Parliaments  and 
Congresses  have  been  in  the  past  the  chief 
means  of  furnishing  argument  for  the 
people  to  form  their  judgment  upon,  and 
we  must  hail  every  indication  that  our 
own  Congress  does  not  really  mean  to 
abdicate  its  function  of  public  education 
on  the  great  questions  at  issue. 


SENATORIAL  DIGNITY. 

Thebb  have  been  various  discussions  of  a 
humorous  character  in  the  Senate  during 
the  past  year,  but  none  quite  so  humorous 
as  the  attempt  to  discipline  the  Spanish 
Minister  for  making  a  direct  answer  to  a 
senatorial  attack  on  his  own  government 
and  its  officers.  The  Senators  resent 
this  bitterly  as  an  attack  on  what  they 
call  their  **dignity."  Now  dignity  is  not 
a  thing  which  can  be  taken  on  ^r  put  off 
at  pleasure.  An  occasionally  dignified 
man  would  be  a  ridiculous  person.  Nor  is 
it  a  thing  which  can  be  supplied  from  out- 
side sources.  Each  indi vid  ual,  or  each  as- 
sembly or  tribunal,  must  be  the  sole  pur- 
veyor of  his  or  its  own  dignity.  Dignity 
runs  with  the  person,  as  the  lawyers  say, 
and  not  with  the  clothes  or  the  building; 
and  it  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  things 
in  the  world,  and  especially  in  the  modem 
world,  to  keep  up.  It  necessitates  a  great 
deal  of  form  and  much  self-restraint,  and 
it  needs,  above  all  things,  constant  atten- 
tion. All  legislative  bodies  which  try  to 
maintain  it  have  to  be  careful  about  what 
they  say  and  allow  to  be  said  or  done  within 
their  precincts.  They  have  to  have  not 
only  rules  and  regulations,  but  officers  to 
enforce  them,  to  secure  decorum  in  de- 
bate, and  to  secure  decorous  behavior  on 
the  part  of  those  whom  they  admit  to  wit- 
ness their  proceedings.  They  have  to  che- 
rish what  they  call  **  order."  They  have 
to  secure  reverence  from  other  people  by 
strict  attention  to  things  on  which  these 
otl^er  people  usually  base  reverence.  . 

Judged  by  these  standards,  the  days 
are  gone  by  when  the  United  States  Se- 
nate could  refer  to  its  dignity  without  a 
meaniog  smile.  The  Senators  have  shown 
in  a  hundred  ways  that  they  do  not  care 
about  their  dignity,  and  therefore  they 
cannot  expect  the  public  or  foreign  am- 
bassadors to  care  much  about  it.  For 
instance:  Nothing,  as  history  has  shown, 
is  more  necessary  to  maintain  public  re- 
spect for  a  legislative  l>ody  than  the 
rigid  exclusion  of  outsiders  from  partici- 
pation in  its  proceedings.  This  means 
the  exclusion  of  spectators  from  the  part 
of  the  House  occupied  by  members. 
This  is  carried  so  far  in  the  English 
House  of  Lords  and  Commons  that  a 
spectator  is  not  allowed  to  hang  his  coat 
over  the  rail  of  the  gallery  so  that  any 
part  of  it  shall  fall  within  the  House. 
Not  only  is  he  not  allowed  to  take  part  in 
the  proceedingp,  but  he  is  forbidden  to 
indicate  by  any  sign  whatever  that  he  iB  • 
conscious  that  there  are  any  prooeaflliigi. 


March  19,  1896] 


Th.e    Nation. 


231 


At  the  Mme  time  he  it  forbidden  to  read, 
write,  or  manch  food.  Theee  rulee  are 
baeed  on  principlee  of  human  nature,  and 
thej  atejuatified  by  the  experience  of  many 
afea  and  nations.  Any  legislative  assem- 
bly in  whose  doings  and  sayings  promis- 
cuous outsiders  ate  perncitted  to  take 
part,  has  begun  its  decline— decline  in 
dignity,  in  authority,  and  therefore,  in  a 
democratic  country,  in  power. 

Now  the  United  States  Senate  has  so 
twt  forgotten  all  this  that  it  not  only  al- 
lows a  crowd  to  invade  its  galleries,  but 
to  applaud  the  speeches  vociferously  or 
manually  on  any  exciting  topic.  To  set 
up  a  claim  after  this  to  have  the  proceed- 
ings regarded  as  so  private  and  strictly 
'* domestic"  that  a  foreign  minister  may 
not  notice  them  except  through  **the 
regular  channels  of  diplomacy,*'  is  simply 
preposterous.  Nothing  is  private  or  do- 
mestic which  the  general  public  is  per- 
mitted to  listen  to  or  cheer.  The  Spanish 
Miniater  has  as  much  right  surely  to  go 
into  the  gallery  and  hiss  Lodge  or  ap- 
plaud Hale  as  has  any  Washington  negro. 
We  have  not  yet  got  to  the  point  where 
the  gallery  loafer  may  arise  and  cor- 
rect the  orator,  but  we  are  surely  coming 
to  it. 

In  the  next  place,  it  is  part  of  the 
'*  order  *'  of  every  legislative  assembly  not 
to  make  personal  attacks  or  charges  against 
outsiders  who  are  not  subject  to  its  juris- 
diction, have  not  violated  the  law,  and 
cannot  reply  to  its  objurgations;  and  this 
rule  covers  particularly  the  representa- 
tives and  servants  of  ioreign  Powers.  This 
is  so  ridiculously  violated  in  Washington 
that,  as  we  have  seen  recently,  it  is  very 
common  in  both  houses  to  load  the  officers 
of  foreign  governments  with  abuse,  and  to 
make  charges  against  them  of  the  most 
atrocious  character,  without  a  particle  of 
proof,  amid  the  cheers  of  the  mob  in  the 
gallery.  Senator  Lodge  has  done  this 
over  and  over;  so  has  Senator  Morgan;  so 
have  a  score  of  others.  Any  foreign  repre- 
sentative who  is  exposed  to  this  sort  of 
thing,  is  entirely  justified  in  inferring  from 
all  the  surrounding  circumstances  that  he 
may  use  the  privilege  of  all  American  citi- 
sens  who  ate  assailed  by  these  scolds,  and 
answer  back.  He  has  no  good  reason  for 
supposing  that  they  will  take  refuge  in 
their  «« domesticity  "  or  their  <•  dignity,'' 
and  ask  him  to  make  his  complaint  to  the 
State  Department  The  State  Depart- 
ment has  no  more  jurisdictk>n  of  them  and 
their  behavk>r  than  the  Minister  himself. 
It  cannot  call  them  to  account,  and  cor- 
respondence with  it  about  them  might  last 
for  a  month,  while  the  charge  was  travel- 
ling around  the  country  and  helping  to 
influence  tile  issues  of  peace  and  war.  The 
title  of  a  Senator  to  exemption  from  the  lie 
direct  rests  on  the  assumption  that  he  will 
make  no  personal  attacks  on  anybody,  un- 
Isas  absolutely  necessary  to  the  discharge 
of  his  business,  or  without  careful  inquiry 
and  proof,  and  that  he  will  be  oourteous 
and  restrained  in  all  mention  of  the  officers 
ofloreign  Fbwers.  Dignity  and  exemptkw 


in  theee  matters  attach  to  the  Senator 
as  a  member  of  the  American  Qovern- 
ment,  with  quasi- judicial  and  quasi-diplo- 
matic functions,  and  not  to  the  Senator 
as  a  loose-tongued  and  blathering  politi- 
cian. 

Another  condition  of  senatorial  dignity, 
which  is  equally  disregarded,  is  absti- 
nence from  attacks  on  American  citizens 
about  personal  matters.  Any  legislative 
body  which  allows  members  to  settle  on 
the  floor  their  quarrels  with  outsiders 
about  their  lown  doings  or  capacity,  neces- 
sarily becomes  a  byword  and  shaking  of 
the  head.  Senator  Lodge  has  done  this 
more  than  once.  He  '*  gives  fits  "  to  his 
newspaper  and  other  critics,  in  what  he 
calls  "  tiis  place,"  and  thus  puts  on  record 
in  the  CongresBional  Record  matter 
which  may  be  just  as  scurrilous  and 
slanderous  as  that  which  he  uttered  the 
other  day  against  the  Cuban  Captain- 
General,  and  naturally  invites  retort  and 
contempt.  In  fact,  there  is  nothing  in 
the  affairs  of  men  to-day  more  calculated 
to  excite  ridicule  than  claims  to  respect 
which  are  not  justified  by  behavior.  This 
has  furnished  the  comic  element  to  hun- 
dreds of  plays  and  novels,  and  will  always 
do  so.  The  ignorant,  ill-mannered  man 
demanding  the  honor  due  to  the  polished 
and  accomplished  gentleman,  the  shyster 
wearing  the  robes  snd  wig  of  the  judge  of 
appeal,  the  skulker  recounting  his  ex- 
ploits in  the  field,  the  sneaking  politician 
asking  us  to  receive  him  as  a  Webster  or  a 
Clay,  will  amuse  the  world  as  long  as  men 
legislate,  and  print,  and  laugh.  There 
was  a  great  deal  of  comedy  in  the  French 
Convention,  which  has  largely  been  lost 
sight  of  through  the  fearful  tragedies 
with  which  it  was  mingled,  but  our  own 
Senate  is  reproducing  a  good  deal  of  it 
without  the  accompanying  horrors. 


MADE  IN  FRANCE. 

Thb  article  of  wise  patriotism  which  our 
Congress  is  now  displaying  is  flaunted  as 
a  purely  American  product.  The  truth  is, 
as  we  have  more  than  once  remarked,  that 
it  is  only  a  poor  imitation  of  a  French 
original.  Between  the  present  American 
Congress  and  the  successive  National  As- 
semblies of  France  from  1789  on,  a  very 
close  parallel  may  be  drawn ;  and  it  is  well 
worth  while  to  follow  it  out  in  some  detail. 
In  point  of  personnel  and  competence 
f6r  its  work,  the  analogy  between  our 
Congress  and  the  ruin-dealing  National 
Assembly  of  France  is  close  and  striking. 
We  cannot  do  better  than  take  Burke's 
analysis  of  the  latter : 

**  Judge  of  my  lurpriae,'^  he  wrote,  *'  when  I 
found  tost  a  very  great  proportion  of  the  As- 
sembly (a  majority,  I  believe,  of  the  number 
who  attended)  wat  composed  of  praotitioDers  in 
the  law.  It  was  oomposed,  not  of  distinguish- 
ed magistratss,  who  had  given  pledges  to  their 
country  of  their  science,  prudence,  and  in- 
tegrity; not  of  leading  advocates,  the  glory  of 
the  bar;  not  of  renowned  professors  in  univer- 
sities; but,  for  the  far  greater  part,  as  it  must 
in  such  a  number,  of  the  inferior,  unlearned, 
mechanioal.  merely  instrumental  members  or 
the  profesBioii.    There  were  distinguished  ex- 


ceptions; but  the  general  composition  was  of 
obscure  provincial  advocates,  of  stewards  of 
petty  local  jorisdictioos,  country  attorneys, 
notaries,  and  the  whole  train  of  the  mfolsters 
of  municipal  litigation,  the  fomenter*  and  con- 
ductors ot  the  petty  war  of  village  vexation." 

That  would  pass  for  a  very  accurate  d^ 
scription  of  our  House  of  Represents tivea. 
In  it  the  narrow-minded  country  lawyers 
are  in  a  large  majority.  That  we  get  no- 
thing better  from  them  than  we  do  is  not 
surprising.  The  surprising  thing  would 
be  that  we  should  get  anything  better. 
What  Burke  said  of  the  members  of  the 
French  National  Assembly  is  true  of  the 
members  of  any  legislative  assembly:  "  No 
name,  no  power,  no  function,  no  artificial 
institution  whatsoever  can  make  the  men 
of  whom  any  system  of  authority  if  com- 
posed any  other  than  God  and  nature  and 
education  and  their  habits  of  life  have 
made  them." 

But  to  the  test  not  of  individual  capaci- 
ty, but  of  achievement.  The  National 
Assembly  met  in  the  midst  of  terribly  dis- 
ordered national  finances.  In  August, 
1788,  the  Gk>vernment  had  confessed  bank- 
ruptcy, and  paid  its  debts  only  in  paper 
with  a  forced  circulation.  The  army  was 
utterly  disorganized.  The  navy,  from 
having  been  second  only  to  that  of  Eng- 
land, was  fallen  into  decay.  In  both  army 
and  navy,  obedience  and  discipline  were 
almost  unknown.  Domestic  distress  and 
anarchy  were  appalling.  At  one  time 
nineteen  departments  were  in  open  insur- 
rection. The  monthly  deficits  heaped  up, 
and  were  met  by  heaping  up  rag  money. 
In  such  a  state  of  things,  with  remedial 
measures  the  crying  need  of  the  day,  the 
Assembly  was  seized  by  a  mad  passion  for 
a  foreign  war.  Conflicts  abroad  were  ex- 
pressly urged  as  a  way  of  diverting  atten- 
tion from  threatening  bankruptcy  and 
other  domestic  difficulties.  The  sacred- 
nesa  of  treaty  obligations  was  openly  re- 
nounced. Revolutionary  and  insurgent 
subjects  of  other  governments  were  as- 
sured of  the  support  of  French  arms.  A 
causeless  war  was  declared  on  April  20, 
1792— a  war  which  drenched  Europe  in 
blood  for  twenty  years— and  only  seven 
votes  were  recorded  in  opposition  (com- 
pare the  minority  of  six  in  our  Senate). 

We  leave  the  moral  of  all  this  to  point 
itself,  and  pass  on  to  the  analogy  between 
the  methods  of  French  legislative  mad- 
nees  and  our  own.  Almost  from  the  be- 
ginning, the  National  Assembly  made  it- 
self an  instrument  for  recording  the  whims 
and  passions  of  the  mob.  Shrewd  Arthur 
Young  noted  as  early  as  1700  the  alarming 
power  of  the  galleries,  **open  to  all  the 
world."  "  The  audiences  in  these  galleries 
are  very  noisy;  they  clap  when  anything 
pleases  them,  and  they  have  been  known 
to  hiss;  an  indecorum  which  is  utterly  de- 
structive of  freedom  of  debate."  What 
came  later  everybody  knows.  Applause 
and  hissing  passed  into  ferocious  cries  and 
threats,  into  personal  violence,  into  driving 
away  large  numbers  of  members  by  gangs 
of  assassins.  The  picture  which  Burke 
givee  of  the  final  outcome  is  one  which 


232 


Tlie    [NTatioriv 


[VoL  62,  No.  1603 


•hoDld  be  printed  in  large  capitals  every 

day  in  our  Congressional  Record: 

'*Tbe  AsMmbly,  their  orKao,  acts  before 
them  the  farce  of  deliberation  with  as  little 
decency  as  liberty.  They  act  like  the  come- 
dians of  a  fair  before  a  riotoos  audience;  they 
act  amidst  the  tamaltnoos  cries  of  a  mixed  mob 
of  ferocious  men.  and  of  women  lost  to  Khame, 
who.  according  to  their  insolent  fancies,  direct, 
control,  applaud,  explode  them:  and  sometimes 
mix  and  take  their  seats  amongst  thent.  domi- 
neering over  them  with  a  strange  mixture  of 
servile  petulance  and  proud,  presumptuous 
authority.'' 

Our  Senate  and  Home  hare  not  yet 
reached  this  depth  of  hamillation,  but 
they  are  headed  atraight  down  the  de- 
cline. Speaking  to  the  gallery  ia  the 
prelimioary  of  speaking  from  the  gallery. 
Frowning  disapproval  from  the  gallery,  in- 
tended to  diemay  honeat  men  speaking 
their  honest  thought,  will,  if  tolerated, 
lead  to  kicks  and  cuffs  administered  out- 
side, and  to  a  physical  terrorism  equal  to 
the  mental  terrorism  already  in  existence. 
What  our  servile  Congress  is  preparing  for 
itself  is  the  irruption  before  long  of  Car- 
lyle*s  **  dripping  Menads "  whom  neither 
the  Vice-President  nor  Mirabeau  could  re- 
strain, and  who  '*  ever  and  anon  break  in 
upon  the  regeneration  of  France  with  cries 
of  *  Bread;  not  so  much  discoursing!*  (Du 
pain;  paa  tant  de  longs  discours.)  So 
insensible  were  these  poor  creatures  to 
bursts  of  parliamentary  eloquence!*' 

It  would  be  interesting  to  pursue  the 
analogy  further.  The  Jacobin  Club,  for 
example,  an  outside  and  irresponsible  or- 
ganization, marching  down  every  day  to 
make  the  Assembly  register  its  decrees, 
has  a  strong  family  likeness  to  our  bosses 
and  lobbyists  and  ** owners**  of  Congress- 
men, who  buy  and  sell  legislation,  put  the 
screws  on  this  man  and  make  the  other 
one  howl,  and  unblushingly  set  themselves 
up  as  absolute  dictators,  in  whose  hands 
Legislatures  and  Congresses  and  Govern- 
ors are  but  silly  puppets.  But  we  leave 
the  parallel  drawn  only  in  broad  lines.  In 
character,  in  methods,  in  seizure  by  mad 
passions— above  all,  the  passion  for  a 
brainless  war — ^in  slaviah  fear  of  the  mob, 
in  abdication  of  leadership,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  our  Congress  is  harking  back 
more  and  more  visibly  to  the  pattern  set 
them  a  hundred  years  ago  in  France — ^to 
an  Assembly  of  which  Morris  wrote  to 
Washington:  "This  unhappy  country  pre- 
sents to  our  moral  view  a  mighty  ruin. 
.  .  .  The  Assembly  at  once  a  master 
and  a  slave,  new  in  power,  wild  in  theory, 
raw  in  practice.  It  engrosses  all  functions 
though  incapable  of  exercising  any,  .  .  • 
and  the  great  interests  of  the  whole  de- 
pend on  momentary  impulse  and  ignorant 
caprice.*' 

With  Morris,  we  are  confident  that 
"  such  a  state  of  things  cannot  last.'*  But 
if  it  is  not  to  go  on  to  the  further  madness 
into  which  France  fell,  we  must  have,  and 
that  quickly,  somebody,  some  voice,  some 
leader,  some  organ  of  public  opinion,  at 
Washington,  in  every  legislature,  in  the 
press,  in  every  form  of  discussion  and  agi- 
tation, to  furnish  a  rallying  centre  for 
«  civic  manhood  firm  against  the  crowd." 


THE  MEANING  OF  McKlNLEY, 
When  one  reads  every  day  of  the  way  the 
Republican  delegations  are  rushing  for 
McKinley,  one  cannot  help  recalling  the 
fact  that  the  same  class  of  men  rushed  for 
him  and  his  policy  with  equal  impetuoeity 
at  the  election  of  1888,  and  that  he  and  his 
friends  did  in  1890  precisely  the  thing 
which  his  supporters  hope  he  will  do  in 
1886.  We  are  fully  warranted,  therefore, 
in  believing  that  if  he  is  nominated  and 
elected  with  a  corresponding  majority  in 
Congress,  he  will  do  in  1898  the  very  things 
he  did  in  1890,  and  that  the  same  results 
will  follow.  That  is,  his  protectionist  sup- 
porters will  have  such  a  keen  appetite  for 
high  duties,  and  will  feel  so  confident  that 
they  will  get  away  with  their  "  pile"  be- 
fore any  reaction  can  come,  that  they  will 
pass  another  McKinley  tariff,  the  working 
of  which  will  utterly  disgust,  not  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  Republican  party,  which  no 
high- tariff  bill  can  disgust,  but  the  large 
body  which  hates  extremes,  likes  a  quiet 
life,  and  turns  the  scales  at  elections,  and 
makes  nowadays  nearly  all  the  principal 
States  in  the  Union  more  or  less  uncertain 
at  Presidential  elections.  For  the  feeling 
which  is  gaining  ground  most  rapidly  in 
the  United  States  to-day,  whatever  Mc- 
Kinleyites  may  think,  is  not  a  desire  for 
either  a  low  tariff  or  a  high  tariff,  but  for 
stability  in  politics  and  business. 

We  believe  this  feeling  has  been  grow- 
ing, all  through  the  Northern  States  at 
least,  during  the  last  four  years,  just  as 
the  anti-slavery  feeling  grew  between  1866 
and  1860,  and  under  the  same  class  of 
influences — that  is,  the  excesses  and  exor- 
bitant pretensions  of  the  champions  of 
slavery,  which  had  kept  the  country  in  a 
continual  turmoil  for  the  previous  quarter 
of  a  century.  We  presume  no  intelligent 
observer  of  these  times  now  doubts  that 
if  the  slaveholders  had  kept  quiet,  and 
had  been  content  with  what  they  had, 
either  slavery  would  be  in  existence  to- 
day, or  they  would  before  now  have  got 
rid  of  it  by  some  peaceable  compromise, 
and  possibly  by  means  of  pecuniary  com- 
pensation. It  was  the  cloud  their  restless- 
ness cast  on  the  future  of  the  govern- 
ment and  on  business,  rather  than  pity 
for  the  blacks  pure  and  simple,  which 
finally  bred  the  Northern  determination  to 
be  rid  of  their  system  at  whatever  cost. 

The  high-tariff  men  seem  now  to  insist 
on  taking  their  place  as  disturbers  of 
government  and  business.  When  they 
get  into  power  they  set  up  a  tariff  so  ex- 
treme in  its  protection  that  the  public 
will  not  live  under  it.  When  they  are 
driven  out  of  power  by  this  very  excess, 
far  from  profiting  by  the  experience,  they 
spend  their  time  in  ascribing  every  ill 
that  folly  and  ignorance  or  the  "  act  of 
Grod  "  may  bring  on  the  country  to  the 
abandonment  of  their  experiment.  The 
first  chance  they  get,  they  set  to  work  to 
persuade  the  country  to  try  it  again,  and 
execrate  the  moderate  or  middle  course 
on  which  it  has  entered  for  the  sake  of 
peace  and  quiet. 


Nay,  they  go  further  than  they  ever 
went;  for  in  order  to  show  that  of  all  the 
problems  that  beset  the  nation,  foreign 
and  domestic,  the  only  thing  they  care 
about  is  the  tariff,  on  which  they  were  so 
tMribly  defeated  in  1892,  they  single  out 
for  the  Presidency  the  one  conspicuous 
man  in  the  party  who  has  nothing  to  re- 
commend him  except  his  connection  with 
that  tariff.  This  is  probably  the  oddest 
thing  in  the  history  of  the  party.  Every 
other  candidate  the  Republican  party  has 
nominated  since  its  first  Presidential  con- 
vention has  had  some  sort  of  fame  in  arts 
on  arms.  He  has  been  a  powerful  debater 
and  a  courageous  politician  like  Abraham 
Lincoln;  or  a  great  soldier  like  Qen.  Grant; 
or  a  respectable  soldier  and  a  man  of  cul- 
tivation like  Gen.  Hayes;  or  an  eminent 
legislator  and  soldier  like  Gfen.  Garfield; 
or  a  conspicuous  lawyer  and  soldier  like 
Gkn.  Harrison.  Major  McEanley  has  not 
one  of  the  merits  which  carried  these  men 
into  the  Presidential  chair.  He  has  no 
connection  with  anything  for  which  the 
party  has  ever  8tood7  except  the  high 
tariff ;  and  what  gives  a  touch  of  drollery 
to  his  candidacy  ia  that  the  high  tariff  to 
which  he  gave  his  name  is  the  only  one  on 
which  the  party  was  ever  defeated.  There 
is  in  his  candidacy,  however,  something 
droller  still.  It  is  proposed  to  put  him  at 
the  head  of  the  nation  in  an  hour  of  great 
financial  trial  because  of  his  views  on 
finance,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  has 
failed  in  business  and  is  a  silver-man.  It 
may  be  nothing  against  his  character  that 
he  has  failed,  but  think  of  selecting  such 
a  man  as  the^  chief  financial  adviser  of  a 
great  nation.  In  every  other  parliamen- 
tary country  a  bankruptcy  disqualifies  a 
man  even  for  a  seat  in  the  Legialature. 
McKinley 'a  elevation  to  the  Presidenpy 
will,  in  fact,  closely  resemble  the  well- 
known  op^ra-bouffe  decoration  of  the  Colo- 
nel for  his  rapid  fiight  from  the  field  of 
battle. 

The  nomination,  if  made  (and  we  still 
can  hardly  believe  that  it  will  be  made), 
will  serve  the  useful  purpose  of  showing 
how  completely  indifferent  the  party  has 
become  to  all  subjects  of  legislation  ex- 
cept the  tariff  as  a  means  of  making 
money  for  manufacturers,  and  above  all 
how  indifferent  it  has  become  to  stability 
in  business,  because  it  evidently  cares  no- 
thing about  the  reaction  which  experience 
shows  would  probably  follow  McKinley's 
election  and  the  legislation  of  his  Con- 
gress. What  the  business  men  of  the 
country  have  discovered,  or  are  daily  dis- 
covering, is  that  nothing  is  now  so  neces- 
sary to  the  United  States  as  steadiness  in 
legislation,  and  especially  in  currency  and 
taxation.  The  experience  of  recent  years 
all  points  in  this  direction.  Ask  any  busi- 
ness man  in  the  country  who  owns  any 
capital — that  ia,  who  has  any  money  to 
invest,  or  who  has  credit  enough  to  bcnr- 
row — what  his  most  ardent  desire  aa  a 
business  man  is,  and  he  will  almost  cer- 
tainly tell  you,  a  cessation  of  perturbation 
of   every   description.    He    wants 


March  19,  1896] 


Th.e    !N"atioii, 


233 


with  foreign  nmtions,  he  wante  a  poii<7  in 
finance  and  currency  that  la  pretty  sure 
to  laat— that  la,  which  will  not  excite  yio- 
lent  oppoeition  aa  aeon  aa  it  ia  entered  on, 
and  which  will  enable  people  to  calcalate 
fairly  what  the  yalue  of  their  property 
will  be  ten  yeara  hence. 

Thia  ia  the  heart'a  deaire  of  everybody 
who  wiahea  to  provide  for  hia  own  old  age 
or  for  hia  children.  It  ia  juat  now  a  grow- 
ing deaire,  and  we  believe  the  party  which 
by  the  character  of  itm  legialative  nomina- 
tUma  makea  the  best  promise  of  aatiafying 
it,  is  the  one  which  will  be  surest  of 
the  future  during  the  next  half-century. 
%  To  pick  out  a  man  who  has  failed  in  life, 
and  who  ia  noted  for  the  feebleness  of  his 
Intelligence  and  for  the  acarcity  of  hia  con- 
victiona,  is,  on  the  other  hand,  a  aort  of 
hoisting  of  a  storm-signal,  an  announce- 
ment of  atrife  and  trouble,  action  and  re- 
action, ware,  rumore  of  wars,  and  the  un- 
certainty which  always  waits  on  persistent 
attempta  to  make  men  behave  unnaturally. 
We  have  bred  amoDg  ua  a  large  body  of 
peraona  who  have  learned  the  art  of  mak- 
ing money  out  of  legislation,  and  who  re- 
sent interference  with  their  buainees  aa  the 
alaveholdera  reeented  interference  with 
property  in  alaves ;  and  the  political  work 
of  the  next  ten  years  will  probably  be  their 
pacification  and  aubjection  to  the  r^me 
of  equal  righta. 


THE  AFRICAN  TROUBLE. 

That  another  criaia  in  the  Sudan  would 
follow  the  Italian  reverses  in  Abyssinia 
haa  been  generally  expected.  The  news 
of  such  things  spreada  with  such  furious 
rapklity  in  ,the  Muasulman  world  that  it 
waa  feared  by  many  that  the  capture  of 
Khartum  in  1885  would  put  the  French  on 
the  defenaive  in  Algeria.  A  new  genera- 
tion, too,  has  grown  up  since  the  British 
attempt  to  bring  the  Mahdi  to  reaaon,  and 
there  is,  therefore,  a  freah  awarm  of  re- 
eruita  for  a  cresoentade.  If  what  Mr. 
Curzon  aaye  be  true,  that  the  Mahdi  ia 
now  able  to  put  300,000  men  in  the  field, 
the  situation  is  really  aerioua,  for  there 
are  not  many  troops  in  the  world  that  are 
able  to  resist  the  rush  of  the  Sudanese, 
who  have  the  immenae  advantage  of  want- 
ing to  die— a  quality  which  a  German  mi- 
litary writer  aaye  makes  a  man  the  most 
terrible  of  all  opponents.  They  twice 
broke  British  squarea,  and  were  overcome 
only  by  being  exterminated,  and  boys  of 
sixteen  lying  wounded  on  the  field  bit  the 
Burgeon  who  tried  to  help  them. 

That  the  Mahdi  or  Khalifa  wants  to  aid 
the  Abyasiniana,  who  are  Christians,  is  un- 
likely, but  he  knows  the  Europeana  are  in 
trouble,  and  thinka  hia  opportunity  haa 
come.  There  is  no  question  whatever  that, 
but  for  the  presence  of  the  Britiah,  he 
oould  eaaily  go  to  Cairo  and  Alexandria 
and  set  up  once  more  a  fanatical  Moham- 
medan Fdwer  on  the  ahorea  of  the  Medi- 
terranean. The  bearing  of  all  thia  on  the 
ralatlona  of  tiie  European  Powera  ia  even 
more  intereating  than  ita  bearing  on  the 


fate  of  Egypt  The  probable  eifect  of  the 
Italian  defeat  on  the  Triple  Alliance  was 
the  very  first  question  which  the  disaater 
started.  The  effect  of  it  on  Italian  pres- 
tige and  finances  waa  plain  enough.  Would 
it  aerioualy  diminish  the  Austrian  and 
German  estimate  of  the  value  of  the 
Italian  alliance?  Would  it  make  the  al- 
liance seem  lees  formidable  to  France  and 
Buaaia?  Would  it  conaequently  increase 
Russian  boldness  in  Turkey  and  China? 
Would  the  German  Emperor*s  escapades 
in  Africa  weaken  the  Britiah  disposition 
to  stand  by  Italy  in  Africa  although  his 
ally? 

These  questions  seem  to  be  now  all  fair- 
ly answered.  Austria  and  Gfermany  are  to 
maintain  their  conaideration  for  Italy, 
and  England  is  to  continue  her  support  of 
Italy,  aa  an  indispensable  ally  in  the  Medi- 
terranean. She  ia  to  be  helped  out  of  her 
acrape  in  Abyssinia  at  whatever  cost,  the 
Abyssinian  diaaster  being  regarded  in  Lon- 
don as  a  menace  to  Egypt;  to  all  of  which 
Russia  responds  by  giving  King  Menelek 
the  Grand  Cordon  of  St.  Gtoorge,  which  at 
such  a  time  is  a  very  open  expression  of 
sympathy.  If  Mr.  Curzon'e  account  of 
the  Mahdi's  force  be  true,  the  campaign 
will  be  anything  but  a  promenade.  There 
ia  considerable  uncertainty  aa  to  the  quali- 
ty of  the  native  Egyptian  troopa.  They 
are,  of  course,  immensely  improved  imder 
their  English  officers,  and  have  been  suc- 
cessful against  the  Dervishes  in  several 
small  affairs,  but  these  were  cowed  Der- 
vishes fresh  from  defeats  by  the  British. 
How  they  will  stand  the  younger  horde 
remains  to  be  seen.  If  their  placea  have 
to  be  taken  by  Britiah  troops,  the  enter- 
prise will  be  anything  but  welcome  to  the 
British  public.  The  last  campaign  in  the 
Sudan,  coupled  with  Gordon's  death,  was 
k>oth  sorrowful  and  humiliating,  which 
accounta  aomewhat  for  the  reported  lack 
of  enthuaiaam  on  the  part  of  the  London 
press.  • 

Those  who  are  at  all  familiailr  with  aocial 
conditions  in  Sicily  will  get  an  idea  of  the 
magnitude  of  the  problems  which  are  be- 
ing neglected,  perforce,  in  Italy,  in  order 
to  carry  such  Jingo  enterprises  aa  the  war 
with  Abyssinia.  Many  parts  of  Italy  are 
getting  into  a  condition  not  far  removed 
from  that  of  Sicily,  in  order  to  enable  the 
country  to  cut  a  fine  figure  in  uniform 
among  the  Kaisers,  and  show  how  much  it 
can  do  in  the  way  of  deatruction.  We  do 
not  wiah  in  any  way  to  underestimate  the 
value  of  the  work  of  civilisation  which 
the  European  Powera  have  been  doing  in 
Africa  within  the  present  century  ;  never- 
theless, it  is  plain  that  all  are  not  equally 
well  fitted  for  it.  Some,  like  the  British 
and  Dutch,  and  to  some  extent  the  Gar- 
mans,  are  oolonista  by  nature,  and  follow 
their  armies  with  swarme  of  outlandera, 
who  plant  and  reap  and  strike  roots  into 
the  soil  and  build  up  governments.  But 
others,  like  the  French  and  Italiana, 
make  colonies  which  are  seldom  more 
than  aickly  hot- house  planta  kept  up  by 
Government  aubvention  and  ruled  by  mili- 


tary men.  Italy  haa  far  more  paasion  for 
emigration  than  the  French,  but  less  paa- 
sion for  fighting.  Neither  of  them  haa 
shown  in  this  century  any  taste  or  ca- 
pacity for  founding  new  states.  Their 
efforts  to  carry  the  national  civilization 
into  savage  landa  have  been  simply  Jingo 
enterprises,  of  which  this  Abyssinian  war 
ia  the  most  inexcusable  and  the  most 
waateful. 

One  marked  peculiarity  of  the  Jingo  ia 
liis  inability  to  bear  defeat.  He  enjoys 
his  '*extraa"  greatly  while  they  bring  the 
newe  of  victoriea,  but  defeata  make  him 
load  his  own  Government  with  execra- 
tions, if  not  try  to  overturn  it,  and  cauae 
him  often  to  pack  up  hia  traps  and  leave 
the  country  if  there  be  any  danger  of  liia 
having  to  do  any  fighting  himself.  These 
expressions  of  Jingo  character  have  all 
shown  themselves  in  Italy  within  the  last 
few  weeks.  Where  the  af my  ia  to  come 
from  which  ia  to  aeek  Menelek  out  in  his 
mountaina,  and  lay  him  low,  and  enable 
Italy  to  turn  her  attentioh  to  the  work  of 
peaceful  restoration,  does  not  aa  yet  ap- 
pear. The  heart  of  the  people  is  evidently 
not  in  a  war  in  which  disasters  like  that  of 
Abba  Carima  are  probable;  but  one  of  the 
artidea  in  the  Jingo  creed  ia  that  when 
yo.u  go  to  war  you  must  not  count  the 
cost,  and  that  it  is  baae  to  consider  the 
misery  wrought  by  your  defeata.  The 
Abyssinian  campaign  will  probably  delay 
the  work  of  Italian  regeneration  twenty- 
five  yeara,  and  yet  how  long  Italy  haa 
waited  fbr  it  1 


Correspondence. 


THE  PARTHENON  INSCRIPTION. 
To  THE  Editor  or  Thx  Nation  : 

Sib:  Tour  lisae  of  February  6  oontaini  a  re. 
fereoce  to  the  attempta  at  dedpheriDg,  by  aid 
of  the  nail-printa,  the  kMronie  inacriptioD  which 
ODce  stood  apon  the  aaatem  arohltrave  of  the 
Parthenon.  Tour  readers  will  be  gratiflM  to 
loam  that  this  dU&oolt  task  has  now  been  suc- 
cessfully accomplished  by  an  American  stu- 
dent. The  initial  difficolty  lay  in  seooring  ac- 
curate representations  of  the  nail-prints.  These 
are  forty  feet  above  the  gronnd,  and  inaccessi- 
ble except  as  one  be  lowered  from  the  over- 
hanging gei^on  blocks  some  twelve  feet  above 
them.  In  spite  of  numberless  difficulties  and 
hindranceSf  and  certainly  at  some  considerable 
risk,  the  work  of  procuring  paper  prints  or 
squeeses  from  the  perilous  vantage-ground  of 
a  swing  in  mid-air  was  begun  about  the  middle 
of  January  last  by  Mr.  Eugene  P.  Andrews, 
a  member  of  the  American  School.  Great  par 
tience,  persistency,  and  technical  skill,  as  well 
as  coolness  of  head,  were  essential  to  the  work. 

The  naU.holes  appeared  in  twelve  groups  be- 
tween the  spaces  onoe  occupied  by  the  bronse 
shields,  and  only  one  of  these  groups  could  be 
copied  in  a  day.  Bometimes  the  day*s  work 
resulted  in  failure,  but  finally  three  weeks  of 
persistency  brought  the  copies  to  completion, 
and  the  first  careful  review  of  them  showed 
that  decipherment  was  only  a  question  of  sobo- 
larship  and  patience,  for  the  variety  in  the  or- 
der of  the  nail- prints  surely  betrajed  the  indl- 


234 


Tlie    [NTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1603 


▼iduAlity  of  the  letter-forms.  As  a  rale,  only 
three  nails  were  used  to  a  letter,  but  the  order 
or  relative  position  of  the  holes  proved  to  be 
much  the  same  in  all  the  different  occurrences 
of  the  same  letter. 

The  first  word  to  emerge  was  mvrompiropa.  It 
made  itself  peculiarly  vulnerable  by  its  posses- 
sion of  two  omicrons,  two  rhos,  two  taus,  and 
three  alphas  (one  of  them,  however,  obscured). 
From  this  key  Bir.  Andrews  proceeded  with 
bis  unravelling  until,  after  a  fcAtnight,  he  was 
able  to  make  a  public  report  at  a  meeting  of 
the  School,  giving  practically  a  complete  read- 
ing  of  the  inscriptioD.  Two  proper  nataies 
alone  have  not  yet  been  deciphered.  The  read- 
ing is  as  follows: 

i|  <|  *Apc^ov  viyov  0ovA^  naX  1^  /lovA^  rmr  3f  xol  i 
6^iiO%  &  * AtfifvuMr  mirrom^Topa  fidyivror  ffipmtm  Kmivmpu. 
KAav^ov  Xifiamw  rtftfLomtthv  ^ov  Y'thp  orpanfyovrrot 
hrX  rode  ^Xtrat  r^  oyZaov  rov  k«1  iwiiitKifrov  col 
yoiio$4Tov  Ti.  KXov^ov  Noviov  roi  ^iXipov  iwl  Uptim/t 

,  ,  .  (name  of  priestess)  ri^  .  .  .  (father*8 
name)  Bvy^pAt, 

The  reference  to  the  eighth  term  of  Novlus's 
generalship  fixes  the  date  of  the  inscription  at 
61  ▲.  D.  It  probably  accompanied  the  erection 
of  a  statue  of  Nero,  possibly  just  at  the  front 
of  the  Parthenon.  The  important  historical 
bearings  of  the  discovery  it  must  be  left  to 
Mr.  Andrews  to  set  forth  in  the  official  publi 
cation.  The  importance  of  the  subject,  the 
diificulty  of  the  task,  and  the  brilliant  and 
successful  method  of  decipherment,  have  com- 
bined to  awaken  here  more  general  public  as 
well  as  scientific  interest  than  has  attached  to 
any  other  archseological  event  of  the  year. 
Bbnj.  Ids  Whssleb. 
▲THoa.  February  86»  1806. 


CUBA  LIBRE. 
To  THE  Editor  or  The  Nation  : 

Sib:  Everybody  knows  that  what  the  Jingoes 
are  really  aiming  at  is  the  annexation  of  Cuba. 
The  most  depressing  feature  of  most  of  the 
things  which  are  being  said  and  written  about 
Cuba  all  over  the  country  is,  not  their  f  oolish- 
ishnesB,  but  their  hypocrisy.— Yours  truly, 

X.  Z. 

CmcAOO,  Harch  li»  1800. 

[*'ODe  of  the  most  accomplished  and 
distinguished  officers  of  the  Navy,*'  as  the 
Bangor  Whig  and  Courier  avouches, 
writing  in  praise  of  Mr.  Boutelle's  opposi- 
tion to  the  Cuban  resolutions,  thus  states 
the  case. — Ed  Nation.] 

**  Free  Cuba,  which  our  people  are  so  eager 
to  bring  about,  means  in  plain  English  an  ex- 
change from  the  misrule  of  Spain  to  perpetual 
anarchy,  when  revolution  will  succeed  revolu- 
tion in  one  endless  chain.  Look  at  the  so-called 
republics  of  Central  and  South  America  for 
object-lessons.  .  .  .  Grant  the  independence 
of  Cuba  to-morrow,  and  who  would  be  Presi- 
dent of  the  new  republic  ?  Gomez,  a  fareifi:ner, 
or  Maceo,  a  mulatto  without  a  particle  ofedu- 
cation.  .  .  .  Then  would  succeed  a  reign  of 
terror.  President  Gomes  would  retain  power 
until  Gen.  Maceo,  in  commend  of  the  army, 
wanted  his  place.  Within  a  year  or  eighteen 
months  there  would  be  a  revolution.  Toe  su- 
gar and  tobacco  crops  would  be  destroyed, 
property  of  Americans  confiscated  or  burnt, 
and  this  without  redress,  for  in  the  quicksands 
of  such  political  life  there  is  no  solid  founda- 
tion of  responsibility.  This  is  no  mere  fancy 
sketch.  .  .  .  The  alternative  is  the  annexa- 
tion of  Cuba.  Humaoity  would  in  time  de- 
mand such  a  solution  of  the  question ;  but  that 
means  the  occupation  of  the  island  for  some 

?ears  to  come  by  a  strong  military  and  naval 
orce.    Are  we  prepared  for  that  f  ^ 


PERSONAL  FICTION  AND  PACT. 

To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sib:  In  the  interest  of  decorum,  and  as  a 
favour  to  one  of  your  old  contributors,  I  hope 
you  will  admit  this  letter  to  your  oolmnns. 

Thirteen  years  ago  Mr.  Gilbert  M.  Tucker, 
referring  to  an  article  of  mine  published  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  expressed  himself,  with 
respect  to  something  in  it,  as  follows : 

**  That  such  rubbish  should  be  written  by  a 


recognized  authoritv  in  philology  ceases  to  be 
surprising  when  it  is  undernood  that  the 
author  is,  not  a  Briton,  as  might  be  supposed, 
but  one  of  thoee  extraordinarv  Americans  of 
the  Henry  James,  jr.,  stripe  [stc],  who  seem  to 
regsrd  it  rather  as  matter  of  regret  than  other- 
wise,  that  they  were  not  bom  in  Europe.  But, 
that  the  editor  of  such  a  msgazine  as  that  in 
which  this  effusion  appeared  should  think  it 
worth  while  to  print,  and  presumaUy  to  pay 
for  it,"  etc.,  etc. 

In  Our  Common  Speech^  a  book  which  he 
hss  recently  brought  out,  Mr.  Tucker  repeats 
the  professed  description  of  me  given  above, 
but  embellished  by  two  significant  touches. 
To  the  words  **not  bom  in  Europe"  is  now 
added,  **and  who  commonly  out-British  the 
British  themselves  in  reviling  the  customs  of 
tbe  United  States.*^  Moreover,  for  **  the  Hen- 
ry James,  jr.,  stripe  *'  is  no#  substituted  **  the 
*  Carroll  Gansevoort'  stripe,**  with  a  fbotnote 
explaining  that  Carroll  Gansevoort  figures,  in 
a  novel,  as  a  Kew  Yorker  who  **  would  have 
considered  himself  disgraced  if  he  wore  a 
pair  of  trousers,  or  carried  an  umbrella,  that 
was  not  of  English  make.*'  To  tiie  best  of  my 
self-knowledge,  I  am  just  about  as  comparable 
to  an  anthropophagite  as  to  such  a  phenome- 
non. 

Of  my  personal  predilections,  over  and 
above  the  preference  I  have  acknowledged  for 
good  English  to  bad— as,  for  instance,  etripe 
for  stamp,  and  similar  slang  of  the  slums  and 
the  gutter— my  assailant  has  not  the  slighteet 
inkling.  As  to  my  **  reviling  the  customs  of 
the  United  States,**  he  would,  without  ques- 
tion, have  tried  to  justify  the  charge  had  it 
been  susceptible  of  even  a  semblance  of  justi- 
fication. 

Again,  his  grounds  for  talking  of  my  having 
written  '* rubbish**  consist  of  fragments  of 
two  sentences,  one  of  which,  as  he  first  quoted 
it  in  the^ort^ylmertoan  Review^  and  as  he 
requotes  it  in  his  book,  is  so  transformed,  by 
the  elision,  unindicated,  of  part  of  it,  as  to 
vitiate  its  purport  materiaUy. 

*'8aap«  Uitereunt  sUls  medUantas  aaoem." 

It  is  now  only  six  months  short  of  fifty  years 
since  I  came  to  live  among  Englishmen ;  and, 
throughout  that  somewhat  protracted  period, 
precisely  like  nearly  any  other  American,  I 
have  always  been  prompt,  and  not  seldom  at 
the  cost  of  rude  handling,  to  defend  my 
countrymen,  their  institutions,  and  their  con- 
duct, so  far  forth  as  I  have  thought  them  de- 
fensible. At  the  same  time,  dispassionate 
observation  has  convinced  me  that  there  are 
certain  ways  of  the  Old  World  which  our  com- 
patriots, here  and  there,  would  proflt  by  imi- 
tating. In  particular,  persons  of  the  type  of 
Mr.  Tucker  would  obviously  do  well  to  culti- 
vate, in  some  matters,  the  ethos  which  pre- 
vails among  the  better  classes  of  civilized 
foreigners.  The  instruction  which  seems  to  be 
alone  likely  to  weigh  with  them  may,  however, 
be  obtained  without  their  going  so  far  afield. 
At  home,  quite  as  well  as  elsewhere,  they  may 
assuredly  learn  the  simple  lessons  in  policy, 
that  coarseness  of  language  and  a  low  tone  of 
thought  will  recommend  them  to  none  but 
their  ssthetic  and  ethical  compeers,  and  that 


practices  akin  to  the  use  of  loaded  dice  are  at- 
tended with  peril  of  exposure. 
Your  obedient  servant, 

FrrzsDWABD  Hall. 
MiSTSSfOBD,  EmoulMD,  March  6, 1800. 


Notes. 


FuRTHKB  spring  announcements  by  Henry 
Holt  &  Co.  are  W.  Eraser  Rae*s  *  Life  of  Sheri- 
dan*;  Chevrillon*s  *In  India,'  translated  by 
William  Merchant;  'Animal  Symbolism  in 
Ecclesiastical  Architecture,*  by  Prof.  B.  P. 
Evans,  with  many  illustrations;  Francke*B 
'Social  Forces  in  German  Literature*;  and 
Mears*B  *Bmma  Lou,  Her  Book,*  the  humor- 
ous diary  of  a  Western  girL 

The  Merrymount  Press,  D.  B.  Updike,  Bos- 
ton, will  have  ready  before  Easter  a  costly 
folio  *  Altar  Book,*  containing  the  order  for 
the  celebration  of  the  holy  eucharist  accord- 
ing to  tbe  use  of  the  American  Church,  with 
collects,  etc.  It  wHI  be  very  elaborately 
adorned  with  borders  and  initials,  and  will  be 
bound  in  pigskin.  The  edition  wHI  be  limited 
to  860  copies. 

Southey*e  Life  of  Nelson,  edited,  with  an 
introduction  and  notes  and  a  certain  amount 
of  cbmpression,  by  Albert  F.  BlaisdeU,  will  be 
added  by  Ginn  &  Co.  to  their  *;  Claasica  for 
ChUdren.** 

Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.  invite  subscriptions  to  a 
limited  edition  of  *  The  Journal  of  Capt  Wil> 
liam  Pote,  jr.,  during  his  Captivity  in  the 
French  and  Indian  War  from  May,  1745,  to 
August,  1747,*  an  inedited  document  of  much 
interest  and  hist(nrical  and  genealogical  im- 
portance, discovered  only  six  years  ago  in  the 
manuscript,  by  Bishop  Hurst,  who  furnishes  a 
preface.  Mr.  Victor  H.  Paltsits  of  the  Lenox 
Library  will  supply  an  historical  introduc- 
tion, annotations,  and  an  index.  Illustrations 
and  maps  wiU  add  to  the  attractivensM  of  a 
luxurious  piece  of  bookmaking.  . 

Stone  &  Kimball,  Chicago,  have  hi  prepara- 
tion a  series  of  letters  from  Japan,  by  William 
B.  Curtis,  and  *The  Damnation  of  Theron 
Ware,'  by  Harold  Frederic 

Mrs.  Martha  Foote  Crowe  of  Chicago  Uni- 
versity will  edit,  and  A.  C.  McClurg  &  Ca 
will  publish  shortly,  the  first  of  a  series  of 
four  small  volumes  of  **  Elizabethan  Sonnet 
Crcles.**    The  edition  WiU  be  limited. 

In  the  autumn  we  are  to  have  from  Hough- 
ton, Mifflin  &  Co.  an  entirely  new  Riverside 
edition  of  the  Writings  of  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe,  in  some  sixteen  duodecimo  volumes, 
with  bibliographical  introductions  and  notes. 
For  a  large-paper  edition  Mrs.  Stowe  has  al- 
ready written  her  firm  and  handsome  auto- 
graph. 

The  Messrs.  Putnam's  uniform  **Mohawk  Edi- 
tion **  of  the  works  of  James  Fenimore  Cooper 
is  sure  of  a  welcome.  It  is  generously  conceived, 
the  typography  is  bold,  clear  and  elegant,  and 
the  several  works  comprised  in  the  thirty-two 
large-12mo  volumes  are  to  be  had  separately  at 
a  very  reasonable  price.  There  is  no  editorial 
apparatus.  If  we  may  judge  from  *  The  Spy,* 
which  leads  off,  there  will  be  a  frontispieos 
illustration  in  each  volume,  and  a  vignette 
upon  the  rabricated  titie-page.  The  binding 
is  in  a  tasteful  red  cloth,  and  the  new  series  is 
designed  to  range  on  the  shelf  beside  the 
'*  Hudson  Edition**  of  Irving. 

Mr.  R.  H.  Davis's  sketchy  magaslne  artielei 
remain  what  they  were,  though  now  coOeeted 
into  a  volume,  *  Three  Gringoa  in  VeneaHia 
and  Central  America  *  (Harpen).   VOb  ftMk 


March  19,  1896] 


The    "N"atioii. 


335 


audftcities  of  ignorance  about  many  matters, 
and  the  boyish  gravity  with  which  he  dis- 
penses g6od  advice  to  perplexed  statesmen, 
mnst  be  taken  as  a  part  of  the  abandon  and 
light-beartedness  which  make  up  the  main 
charm  of  his  book— and  that  it  has  a  charm  of 
its  own,  slight  as  it  is,  is  undeniable. 

A  second  edition  of  Ck>lonel  Winthrop^s 
■Military  Law  and  Precedente*  has  been  is- 
sued by  Little,  Brown  &  Ck>.,  Boston.  The 
original  work  was  recof^ised  at  once  as  a  most 
complete  and  authoritative  guide  in  courts  mar* 
tial  and  all  the  other  military  courts  and  boards 
which  have  judicitl  powers.  Great  care  has 
been  taken  to  collate  all  the  American  and 
English  authorities,  and,  in  the  new  edition,  to 
bring  down  the  law  and  the  rulings  to  the  pre- 
sent date.  This  fulness  of  treatment  results 
in  two  stout  law  octavos,  but  the  space  is  use- 
fully filled  with  matter  which  makes  the  work 
a  necessity  to  general  law  libraries,  as  well  as 
a  vade-mecum  for  judge-advocates  and  milita- 
ry tribunals.  The  same  author  has  also  pre- 
pared a  new  and  annotated  edition  of  the  *  Di- 
gest of  the  Opinions  of  the  Judge- Advocate 
General.* 

We  have  had  for  some  time  on  our  table  the 
illustrated  *  Handbook  of  the  New  Public  Li- 
brary in  Boston,'  compiled  by  Herbert  Small 
(Boston:  Curtis  &  Co.).  It  is  a  very  thorough 
and  minute  description  of  the  costly  building 
(which  is  a  monument  as  well  as  a  bookcase), 
and  should  satisfy  the  most  ardent  curiosity  of 
visitors.  An  example  of  the  editorial  pains- 
taking is  shown  in  an  identification  of  the 
printers'  marks  which  form  so  happy  a  feature 
of  the  external  decoration.  There  are  profes- 
sional chapters  on  the  Architecture  of  the  Li- 
brary, by  C.  Howard  Walker,  and  on  the  Sig^ 
niflcance  of  the  Library,  by  Lindsay  Swift. 

After  the  Yellow  Book  the  Pink.  The  editor 
of  the  Savoyy  the  newest  illustrated  quarterly 
(London  :  Leonard  Smi there),  professes  catho- 
licity. "We  have  no  formulas,"  he  says, 
**and  we  desire  no  false  unity  of  form  or  mat- 
ter. We  have  not  invented  a  new  point  of  view. 
We  are  not  Realists  or  Romanticists,  or 
Decadents.  For  us,  all  art  is  good  which  is 
good  art."  And  he  further  disclaims  original- 
ity for  originality's  sake,  and  audacity  for  the 
sake  of  advertising,  as  well  as  timidity  **  for 
the  convenience  of  the  elderly-minded. "  Of 
this  last  defect  there  is  indeed  little  in  his 
pages,  but  we  will  not  answer  for  the  ab 
■enoe  of  the  other  two.  The  general  effect 
of  the  publication  is  that  of  an  avatar  of 
the  Yellow  Book,  with  most  of  its  contribu- 
tort,  only  a  little  the  worse  for  wear.  Mr. 
Beardsley  appears  in  a  double,  or  rather  tri- 
ple, r61e,  as  artist,  poet,  and  romancer.  His 
drawings  have  lost  their  chief  charm  in  his 
abandonment  of  pure  black  and  white  and  his 
feeble  introduction  of  hatching*,  while  they 
are  as  unpleasant  as  ever  in  type  of  face  and 
forms ;  and  his  so-called  Romantic  Novel  is  en- 
tirely unintelligible  except  as  a  description  of 
his  drawings.  The  other  "artists"  of  the 
number  are  noticeable  only  for  their  utter 
incompetence.  Amid  this  rubbish  the  two 
drawings  by  Sandys  and  the  one  by  Whistler, 
which  illustrate  Mr.  Penoell's  article  on  "A 
Golden  Decade  in  English  Art"  (I860  to  1870), 
are  strangely  mismated,  and  their  sturdy 
quality  aets  one  to  wondering  what  has  hap- 
pened to  England  ainoe  such  men  illustrated 
and  Thackeray  wrote. 

"The  Decoration  of  Book- Edges,"  a  paper 
by  Cyril  Davenport,  occupies  the  post  of  honor 
In  Biblioffraphica,  Part  viit  (Scribners),  and 
deeervedly.  An  interesting  theme  is  treated 
agreeably  and  with  authority.    W.  J.  Hardy's 


"The  Bjok  Plates  of  J.  SkiuLer  of  Bath  **  is  a 
contribution  both  to  the  collector's  fad  and  to 
the  history  of  engraving  in  England,  and  Henry 
R.  Plomer  quarries  from  a  legal  document  mat- 
ter of  great  interest  for  the  printer's  art  in  dis- 
coursing of  "John  Rastell  and  his  Contempo- 
raries." Robert  K.  Douglases  "  Chinese  lUus 
trated  Books"  maintains  the  level  of  excellence 
of  the  foregoing  articles  in  a  very  even  num- 
ber, which  Austin  Dobson  enlivens  with  an 
account  of  "Pickle's  *Club.'"  Bfr.  Douglas 
points  out  what  Japanese  art  owes  to  Chinese, 
and  remarks  on  the  employment  of  our  fami- 
liar Western  device  of  showing  in  a  cloud  the 
dream  supposed  to  be  filling  the  mind  of  the 
sleeper  beneath.  His  pictorial  illustrations  are 
very  attractive. 

The  most  significant  article  in  the  Harvard 
OraduaUe"  Magazine  for  March  is  that  by  the 
Rev.  C.  F.  Dole,  which  advocates  the  merging 
of  the  Divinity  School  in  the  general  courses 
of  the  University  and  tbe  non-segregation  of 
i  ts  attendants.  This  writer's  contention  is  that 
a  clergyman  cannot  have  too  broad  an  educa- 
tion, and  that  there  is  no  special  mystery  of 
the  craft— as,  e.  g.,  pulpit  rhetoric— which 
exacta  a  profeesiooal  training;  on  the  other 
hand,  that  it  would  be  an  advantage  to  have 
the  divinity  courses  made  attractive  and  acces- 
sible to-all  the  students  of  the  University  with- 
out regard  to  their  aim  in  life.  "I  would," 
says  Mr.  Dole,  "  permit  no  course  of  study  to 
be  considered  as  for  *  ministers'  only."  As 
for  Hebrew  scholarship,  "the  average  minis- 
ter, both  for  training  his  mind  and  for  prac 
tical  benefit  and  helpfulness,  had  far  better 
make  a  study  of  music  "  The  report  of  pro- 
gress in  the  matter  of  a  Univerdty  Club  seems 
to  show  that  this  enterprise  is  assured  of  suc- 
cess in  view  of  its  generally  acknowledged 
need  and  the  character  of  the  chief  promoters 
of  it.  Portraits  of  the  late  Rev.  S.  F.  Smith 
and  of  President  Holyoke  (after  Copley)  adorn 
this  number. 

In  the  March  number  of  the  Oazetie  dte 
Beaux- ArU,  Mr.  Bemhard  Berenson,  in  dia- 
cuseing  the  Italian  pictures  he  found  in  New 
York,  Boston,  and  Newport,  draws  attention 
to  the  fact  that  within  ten  years  there  will  re- 
main scarcely  an  Italian  picture  worth  tbe 
buying,  as  all  the  better  kind  are  being  rapid, 
ly  bought  up  by  the  public  collections  of 
Europe.  Mr.  Berenson  deplores  the  inaccessi 
bility  of  the  few  Italian  masterpieces  we  are 
fortunate  enough  to  possess.  In  the  New  York 
Historical  Sooiety*s  rooms  he  instances  a  Piero 
della  Francesca,  and  other  precious  works, 
squalidly  kept  in  murky  apartments,  and,  even 
thus,  to  be  seen  only  as  a  very  special  favor, 
and  never  thrown  open  to  the  public. 

BuUetin  No.  2,  New  Seriea,  Diviaion  of  En- 
tomology,  of  the  United  States  Department  of 
Agriculture,  a  pamphlet  of  100  pages,  contains 
numerous  hints  of  importance  to  horticultu- 
rists and  farmers,  or  others  who  suffer  from 
the  depredations  of  insects  and  are  exercised 
in  finding  means  of  prevention.  The  paper  is 
entitled  "  Proceedings  of  the  Seventh  Annual 
Meeting  of  the  Association  of  Economic  Ento- 
mologists." The  topics  discussed  include  gypsy 
moths,  cutworms,  leaf  beetles,  scale  insects, 
chinch  bugs,  borers,  other  insects,  insecticides, 
sprajing  apparatus,  traps,  prospects  of  bene- 
fits from  importations  of  parasites,  etc.,  etc  ; 
and  many  suggestions  are  made  concerning 
habits,  methods,  and  results,  which  should 
prove  beneficial  in  preventing  waste  of  time 
and  labor  in  needless  experimentation  by  indi- 
vidual farmers  or  others.  Technical  Series 
No.  1  of  the  same  division  is  a  '  Revision  of  the 
Apbelininaa  of  North  America,*  by  L  O.  How- 


ard, Entomologist.  The  AphellninoB  are  hyme- 
nopterous  insects  parasitic  upon  the  scale  in- 
sects which  are  so  destructive  to  fruits,  plants, 
and  trcea.  The  parasites  have  proved  them- 
selves  efficient  aids  to  the  husbandman.  The 
paper  contains  44  pages,  on  which  are  illus- 
trations of  a  number  of  the  species.  Tbe  De- 
p«u*tment  of  Agriculture  also  publishes  "  North 
American  Fauna,  No,  10,"  a  paper  of  100  pages 
and  12  plates  on  North  American  Shrews,  by 
Dr.  C.  Hart  Merriam  and  Gerrit  S.  Miller. 
The  work  makes  a  good  appearance  ;  it  is  evi- 
dently very  carefully  done,  and  contains  much 
that  is  of  permanent  value.  The  plates  con- 
tain illustrations  of  the  skulls  and  teeth  of  dif- 
ferent species  of  the  little  mammals. 

—No  day  In  the  calendar  of  the  Wisconsin 
Historical  Society  will  be  more  red  lettered 
than  the  29th  of  February,  1806.  On  that  day 
it  received  from  Rome  a  long  desiderated  mo- 
nograph, '  Bressani's  Breve  Relatione  d'alcune 
Missioni,  editio  princeps^  (Macerata,  l(yS3,  pp. 
128).  This  book  was  one  of  those  immortals 
which  are  not  made  mechanically  but  grow 
naturally.  BressanI,  a  native  of  Rome,  la- 
bored eight  years  in  Canadian  missions,  was 
captured,  tortured  daily  for  months,  burnt  by 
inches,  then  ransomed  by  tbe  Dutch  and 
shipped  to  France.  Only  one  of  his  fingers  re- 
mained unmuUlated,  but  he  took  passage  west- 
ward in  the  first  vessel  bjund  for  C^ebec,  and 
made  hii  way  to  the  Huron  mission  on  Georgian 
Bay.  He  worked  there,  bating  no  jot  of  heart 
or  hope,  till  its  hopeless  collapse  in  1648.  His 
heart*s  dei>lre  was  to  die  preaching  on  and  on 
towards  the  Pacific,  with  his  face  thitherward, 
**had  not  the  inscrutable  decrees  of  God  dis- 
posed otherwise."  Ordered  back  to  Italy  by 
bis  Superior  in  ICfiO,  he  survived  for  two  and 
twenty  years,  "  bearing  in  his  body  the  marks 
of  the  Lord  Jesus,"  an  object-lesson  in  mar- 
tyrdom, and  provocative  of  endless  curiosity. 
His  book  is  a  mere  transcript  of  the  answers  he 
must  have  made  many  a  time.  It  was  the  more 
needed  because  the  Jesuit  Relations,  which  had 
already,  for  a  score  of  years,  brought  out  an 
annual  volume  in  Paris,  were  printed  only  in 
French,  a  tongue  not  understanded  of  the  peo- 
ple of  Italy.  Bressani's  booklet  (6x8  inches, 
in  fiexible  vellum  binding),  speaking  of  few 
things  save  what  his  own  eyes  had  seen,  was 
suited  to  the  purses  and  proclivities  of  tbe 
plain  people.  Most  copies  of  it  must  have  come 
into  the  bands  of  persons  who  had  no  other 
book,  and  who  by  continual  use  used  it  up. 
One  specimen,  obtained  from  Rome  in  1850  by 
Father  Martin  of  Montreal  and  translated  by 
him  into  French,  he  believed  to  be  the  only  one 
then  in  America.  Perhaps  it  was.  Winsor, 
however,  mentions  four,  and  some  others  ap- 
pear in  bibliographies — as  one  that  sold  in 
1892  for  $40  (Gagnan).  The  Wisconsin  copy 
shows  the  bookplate  of  a  monastery,  now  per- 
haps extinct.  Some  twenty  years  ago  Fatber 
Martinis  original,  the  unique  jewel  of  St.  . 
Mary's  library,  unaccountably  vanished,  spirit- 
ed away,  no  doubt,  by  some  one  who  had 
learned  that  atealing  relies  of  tbe  saioto  is  a 
very  pious  fraud.  But  in  reading  Bre»iani — a 
doae  given  to  work  a  long  time  after— he  waa 
cured  of  his  casuistry,  and  be  has  just  made 
restitution  of  the  stolen  goods.  Gloria  in  ex- 
celeie!  cried  the  overjoyed  librarian,  as  he 
opened  tbe  wrapper  of  tbe  Martm  BressanI 
coming  forth  to  him  in  reaurrection,  and  in- 
creasing hi*  faith  in  all  varieties  of  conscience 
money. 

—Jesuit  authorities  have  never  larked  world- 
ly wisdom.  They  showed  it  while  exacting 
frequent  and  full  reports  from  all  their  labor- 


Q36 


Tlie   !N"ation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1603 


/ 


en  in  the  Caniidiiwi  mlMioiiary  fields,  and  eyery 
year  publiBhing  the  information  thus  obtained, 
condensed  in  a  handy  duodecimo.    The  thirty- 
nine  Yolomet  thus  produced  onward  from  16SS 
embody  the  obeervations  of  able  and  well- 
trained  men,  often  the  first  explorers  of  at6rra 
incognita,  and  always  snappers  np  of  signifi- 
cant trifles  unconsidered  by  others.    A  mass  of 
material  to  serye  for  the  history  of  the  New 
Dominion  in  its  earliest  period  was  thus  aocu- 
mulated  and  fastened  in  a  sure  place.    This 
treasure  has  no  parallel  in  any  one  of  our  thir- 
teen colonies.    Nor  has  it  been  paralleled  in 
subsequent  Canadian  history,  tiiough  it  has 
been  well  supplemented  in  several  lines.   Glean- 
ings from  the  Relations  are  early  traceable 
even  in  Protestant  writers,  but  the  preeminent 
value  of  thoee  documents  was  not  plain  till 
within  the  last  half  century.      It  began  to 
dawn  on  Sparks  and  Bancroft,  and  was  still 
more  clear  to  Parkman.    Meantime,  the  §ditio 
princepa  (called  Cramoisy  from  the  name  of  the 
publisher)  was  either  entombed  in  European 
libraries,  or  worn  out  in  the  hands  of  private 
owners.    The  series  in  its  entirety  baffled  the 
endeavors  of  many  collectors,  no  matter  how 
long  their  purses.    The  first  American  who  be- 
came mi^Bter  of  a  complete  set  was  James 
Lenox.    Who  has  done  likewise?    Forty  years 
ago,  wanting  two,  the  Canadian  Government 
reprinted  the  89  Cramoisys,  rolling  1^  thirteen 
of  them  in  each  of  three  corpulent  octavos. 
This  reprint,  if  found  at  all,  is  held  at  fifty 
dollars.    It  was  followed  by  O'CaUaghan  and 
Shea  with  a  sort  of  Cramoisys,  limited,  how- 
ever, to  a  hundred  copies  of  one  and  twenty- 
five  of  the  other.    Hitherto,  however,  the  Re- 
lations have  remained  in  the  original  French, 
and  hence  continue  to  be  a  sealed  book  to  all 
students  whose  linguistics   have  not  carried 
them  further  than  the  novels  of  Zola.     Ac- 
cordingly, no  news  can  be  more  welcome  to 
students  of  history  than  the  prospectus  of  a 
Cleveland  publisher  that  he  has  in  a  good  state 
of  forwardness  a  complete  reissue  of  the  Jesuit 
Relations.      Here   will  appear    the    original 
French,  and,  page  by  page,  an  English  trans- 
lation by  a  scholar  who  has  made  a  life  study 
of  the  French,  and  especially  the  Canadian 
dialect,  of  the  seventeenth  century.    This  edi- 
tion of  750  copies  will  be  illustrated  by  every 
species  of  note  which  may  best  elucidate  the 
text;  it  will  include  Relations  of  a  kindred 
character  not  in  the  Cramoisys;  it  will  abound 
in  maps  for  lack  of  which  the  journeys  de- 
scribed have  been  obscure;  it  will  present  por- 
traits of  all  worthies  in  the  Relations  whose 
lineaments  are  known,  and  will  be  especially 
rich  in  facsimiles  of  their  most  memorable 
writiDgs.    This  historic  boon  fitly  comes  from 
Cleveland,  midway  between  the  east  and  west 
limits  of  the  Jesuits,  and  under  the  editorship 
of  Reuben  Gold  Thwaltes,  Secretary  of  the 
Wisconsin  Historical   Society,  which   stands 
without  a  peer  in  the  West,  and  possibly  in  the 
Bast,  as  a  quarry  of  material  for  building  up 
the  fabric  of  northwestern  history. 

—In  the  Journal  de»  D^hiU  of  February  19 
M.  Alfred  Rambaud  prints  an  instructive  arti- 
cle on  **  La  Russie  qui  lit.*'  His  information 
is  largely  drawn  from  a  series  of  studies  pub. 
lished  in  different  Russian  reviews  by  N.  A. 
Rubakin,  who  concerns  himself  with  Russian 
literature,  not  in  regard  to  its  writers,  who  are 
many  and  some  of  them  very  great,  but  in  re- 
gard to  its  readers,  who  present  a  far  lees  sa- 
tisfactory object  of  contemplation.  In  the  first 
place,  Russia  has  far  fewer  readers  than  any 
other  modem  nation.  In  1886  less  than  80  per 
cent,  of  her  conscripts  were  able  to  read  at  aU, 


and  the  number  of  readers  at  the  present  time 
cannot  be  higher  than  85  per  cent.    Even  this 
low  figure  does  not  fairly  represent  the  true  ra- 
tio of  the  lettered  and  unlettered,  for  the  con- 
scripts are  drawn  from  the  younger,  and  con- 
sequently the  better  educated,  portion  of  the 
male  population;  and,  besides,  there  are  in 
Russia  many  more  schools,  for  boys  than  for 
girls.    It  is  perhaps  doubtful  whether  out  of 
the  hundred  and  twenty*  five  miUions  of  the 
empire  more  than  twenty  millions  know  their 
letters.    What  have  these  twenty  millions  to 
read  ?    In  every  country  it  is  the  newspapers 
andmagasines  which  are  most  read.    Russia 
has  but  few  of  these— nine  hundred  only,  ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Rubakin*s  reckoning;  that  is  to 
say,  seven  times  fewer  than  Germany,  and  five 
times  fewer  than  France.    For  a  million  of  in- 
habitants Switierland  has  280  periodicals;  BeL 
gium,  158;  Norway,  80;  Spain,  68;  Greece,  86; 
Servia,  26;  and  Russia  only  9.    There  is  a  cor- 
rssponding  scarcity  of  books,  and  an  especial 
lack  of  new  books.    A  large  proportion  of  the 
latter  are  pirated  from  foreign  authors,  most 
of  the  native  books  being  republications.    The 
first  year  after  the  expiration  of  the  copy- 
right on  Pushkin's  works,  168  editions  were 
brought  out,  amounting  to  about  two  million 
copies.    There  is  a  great  dearth,  too,  of  public 
libraries,  there  being  hardly  more  than  in  Ja- 
pan.   The  number  of  these  is,  however,   in- 
creasing.   In  1880  there  were  but  throe    at  St. 
Petersburg,  Mosoow,  and  Odessa.  In  1866  there 
were  only  forty-nine;  since  then,  libraries  have 
considerably  increased  in  number,  but  most  of 
them  are  as  yet  but  ill  furnished  with  books.  In 
1887  there  were  in  all  Russia  only  1,271  book- 
stores.   Of  all  the  Russian  writers,  Tolstoi  is 
the  one  who  is  most  read;  TurgenefF  and  Dos- 
toyevsky  dispute  the  second  place.  .Of  trans- 
lations, most  are  from  the  French;  for  every 
German  book  that  is  translated  there  are  twp 
or  three  English  and  a  doien  or.  fifteen  French 
ones.    It  is  not,  however,  the  works  of  the 
greater  French  writers  that  are  most  in  vogue, 
but  rather  those  of  men  like  Gustavo  Aymard, 
Xavier  de  Mont^pih,  and  Ferdinand  de  Boisgo- 
bey.    Dumas  p^re,  however,  stands   well  on 
the  list;  Zola  towards  the  bottom,  but  much 
above  Cooper,  Dickens,  and  Walter   Scott. 
There  is  no   demand  for  French  or  English 
classics. 

—The  Imperial  Government  of  Japan  permit- 
ted Col.  W.  Taylor,  Army  Medical  StaflT,  de- 
tailed by  the  British  Government,  to  accom- 
pany their  army  in  the  field  in  the  late  Chi- 
nese war,  and  his  report  of  their  *  Medico  Mili- 
tary Arrangements'  in  1804-5  has  been  pub- 
lished with  a  promptness  unusual  for  public 
documents  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic.  In 
one  sense  it  was  unfortunate  for  science  that 
the  Chinese,  notwithstanding  thousands  of  the 
new  arm  were  in  their  arsenals,  preferred  the 
older  weapons,  and  in  some  instances  used  bows 
and  arrows,  and  that  the  Japanese  troops 
which  were  equipped  with  the  new  magazine 
gun  were  not  engaged.  Therefore  the  effect  of 
the  long-range  small-bore,  when  used  on  a 
large  scale,  is  not  yet  determined.  Although 
not  taxed  to  nearly  its  capacity  as  a  whole,  the 
Japanese  medical  service,  at  the  front  and  on 
the  line  of  communication  as  well  as  at  the 
base,  was  admirably  managed.  With  a  fore- 
thought that  Eoglish-speaking  nation?,  and  es- 
pecially we  ourselves,  might  well  practise,  the 
Japanese  had  given  their  officers  and  men  con- 
stant opportunity  to  master  in  time  of  peace 
every  duty,  and  to  be  practically  familiar  with 
their  entire  equipment.  It  was  owing  to  the 
careful  regard  of  that  principle  that,  as  CoL 


Taylor  expresses  it,  the  actual  work  of  the 
Medical  Department  was  "  easy,  smooth,  and 
efficient,"  and  that  that  department  was  **  able 
to  go  through  its  first  campaign  with  such  bril- 
liant success."  Notwit^istanding  the  occasion- 
al necessary  overcrowding,  '*  there  were  no 
cases  of  septicssmia."  That  speaks  vc^umes 
not  only  for  the  Japanese  but  for  the  future. 
It  establishes  a  record,  a  mark  below  which 
military  snrgery  hereafter  should  not  fall,  but 
doubtless  will.  But  to  thoee,  whether  medical 
or  lay,  who  remember  what  appeared  to  be  the 
pathological  necessities  of  the  Rebellion,  the 
surgical  millennium  would  seem  really  arrived 
when  that  could  be  truthfully  written.  Very 
singularly,  although  the  gospel  of  cleanliness 
and  of  asepsis  was  scrupulously  followed  within 
the  hospitals,  sanitation  properly  so  called  out- 
side of  them  was  not  provided  for  by  the  regu- 
lations, and  it  was  only  after  a  long  time  that 
the  Japanese  seemed  to  be  awake  to  its  impor- 
tance. When  aroused  they  acted  with  their 
usual  intelligence,  energy,  and  thoroughness, 
and,  as  in  the  case  of  Kinchow,  they  placed  in 
a  good  sanitary  state  *'  a  town  which  had  beea 
occupied  for  hundreds  of  years  by  the  filthiest 
people  in  the  world."  The  Japanese  system  is 
by  no  means  perfect.  For  instance, their  trans- 
port service  is  under  dual  control;  and  as  no 
man  can  serve  two  masters  any  more  success- 
fully in  the  nineteenth  century  than  in  the 
first,  some  of  the  disabled  who  required  moving 
suffered. 

^One  instance  of  the  gallantry  of  the  medi- 
cal  corps  is  noted  at  Wei-hai-wel,  where,  as 
a  regiment  exposed  to  the  sudden  action  of 
the  quick-firing  guns  of  seven  vessels  had  many 
men  killed  and  wounded  in  a  very  few  seconds, 
and  was  obliged  to  fall  to  the  ground  and  crawl 
to  shelter  to  escape  annihilation,  the  medical 
officers,  separately  and  accompanied  by  stretch- 
ers and  attendants,  walked  across  the  beach  in 
the  face  of  an  incessant  hail  of  bullets,  "  and 
in  twenty  minutes  stretcher-bearers,  attend- 
ants, and  medical  officers,  walking  quietly  and 
coolly  away,  had  removed  every  dead  and 
wounded  officer  and  man  from  the  beach,  the 
Chinese  ships  having  kept  up  a  continuous  and 
terrific  fire  upon  them  all  the  time."  As  the 
historian  well  remarks,  **it  was  a  splendid 
deed  of  heroism  that  can  never  be  forgotten," 
and  **  it  will  be  an  enduring  proof  of  the  effi- 
ciency in  the  field  of  the  Japanese  medical  ser- 
vice." Their  special  addition  to  the  armameida^ 
Hum  chirurgieum  appears  to  be  the  use  of 
straw  ash,  which,  free  from  grit  and  enclosed 
in  antiseptic  gauze  bags  as  devised  by  Dr.  Ki- 
kuchi,  was  applied  as  pads  to  the  wounds  and 
was  very  serviceable. 

—There  are  many  signs  that  Germany,  of  all 
countries  the  most  cobservative  as  concerns 
the  emancipation  of  woman,  Is  actively  be. 
stirring  herself.  In  a  single  recent  number 
(March  1)  of  Die  Frauenbewegung  we  find  re- 
ports of  several  public  meetings  in  various 
parts  of  the  fatherland  well  attended  by  wo- 
men and  men  of  standing,  interested  in  the 
furtherance  of  the  cause.  In  Berlin,  at  a 
large  meeting  called  by  Frau  Schulrat  Caner 
and  Frau  Rechtsanwalt  Bieber,  the  **  position 
of  woman  in  the  projected  new  dvil  code"  for 
the  German  Empire  was  discussed  with  re- 
markable ability;  of  the  speeches  given  In  full 
in  the  journal  mentioned,  that  of  Frftnlein 
Anita  Augspurg,  cand.  jor.,  deserves  eqMdal 
mention.  That  the  leaders  of  the  movement 
are  not  lacking  In  practical  sense  and  abiUtyii 
proved  by  the  measures  adopted  for  t'1wWi% 
with  the  members  of  the  Reichstag  la  teror^C 


March  19,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


Q37 


more  just  legitlation  thAO  the  present  draft 
of  the  Qew  law  proTides.  At  another  meeting 
in  the  nine  ci^,  Prof.  Dr.  Med.  Wald^er, 
formerly  noted  for  hie  hoetility  to  the  woman 
morementi  acknowledged  bis  conrersion,  and 
stated  his  oouTiction  that  man  is  not  justified 
in  denying  to  woman  an  academical  edncation; 
and  SaniUtsrat  Dr.  Kflster  upheld  the  preeent 
agitation  on  ethical  groands.  At  Stuttgart, 
Pastor  Gerok  is  reported  as  doing  good  ser?ice 
to  the  caose  of  woman  by  a  series  of  addresses 
before  steadily  increasing  aadteacei;  while  a 
high  military  officer  from  the  ranks  of  the 
nobili^,  Oberstlieutenant  yon  Egidy,  is  ad- 
rancing  most  liberal  views  at  Brunswick,  Tin- 
dicating  for  woman  the  right  enjoyed  by  men 
to  all  the  intellectual  and  material  possessions 
of  the  race. 


MR.  PUNCH. 

Th4  HUtory  of  '* Punch,'*  By  M.  fl.  Spiel, 
mann.  With  numerous  illustrations.  New 
York :  The  CasseU  Publishing  Co.  1805.  Pp. 
ZTi,603. 

Thxrb  are  families  in  which  Punch  is  not 
known,  or  is  known  only  as  a  "paper  **  to  buy 
now  and  then,  and  there  are  famillee  in  which 
the  volumes  accumulate  with  the  passing 
years,  and  prove  much  more  valuable  as  a  per- 
manent posseesion  than  they  were  in  the  form 
of  weekly  flying  leaves.  It  would  be  interest- 
ing to  search  the  writings  of  cultivated  Eng- 
lishmen  and  Americans  and  to  bring  together 
the  numerous  citations  and  allusions,  the  quot- 
ed sayings,  and  the  narrativee  confessedly  ori- 
ginal with  Mr,  Pnnch,  Many  of  his  sayings 
have  passed  into  the  language  as  bywords, 
the  true  origin  of  which  is  unsuspected.  And 
yet  it  is  not  as  an  epigrammatist  that  Punch 
is  most  successful.  Epigram  is  not  coomion  in 
English  wit,  and  humorous  fun  knows  it  not. 
Parody,  on  the  other  hand,  is  Punch^M  own 
particular  ground;  and  there  are  almost  no 
parodies  anywhere  better  than  Mr,  Pntich\ 
more  doee  to  the  original,  more  delightfully 
humorous,  or  more  poetic.  It  argues  a  wider 
reading  than  is  generally  thought  to  exist  by 
Englishmen  of  English  poetry  that  parodiee  on 
the  works  of  the  masters  of  verse,  ancient  and 
modem,  should  be  expected  to  make  their  way 
in  such  a  fashion.  The  verses  are  that  kind  of 
fun  which  clings  to  the  memory,  being  often 
escellantly  well  oompoeed,  masterly  in  rhyme 
and  metre.  Sometimes  they  have  become  fa- 
vorite poems^  even  of  the  reader  who  does  not 
know  the  originals. 

Of  original  verse  Punch  is  not  as  lavish  now 
as  in  olden  timee.  There  was  a  day  when 
Thackeray  was  a  member  of  the  stafE,  and  when 
such  poems  as  ^  Little  Kitty  Lorimer"  and 
the  ballads  of  Policeman  X,  the  Peacock  and 
the  Bul-bul,  and  **What  makes  my  heart  to 
thrill  and  glow,**  were  to  be  looked  for  from 
week  to  week.  **The  Mahogany-tree**  came 
out  in  P^amch  at  the  right  tim»— that  is  to  say, 
at  Christmas,  in  one  of  the  early  year*— and 
its  original  title  was,  appropriately,  **  Punch 
Singeth  at  Ctuistmas.**  Some  of  the  Thacka- 
ray  songs  have  never  been  reprinted,  we 
think,  but,  whether  reissued  or  not,  there  is 
not  much  better  comic  poetry  than  the**  Three 
Christmas  Waita.**  The  three  waits  are  Louis 
PhiUppe^  a  Chartist  rioter  (not  named),  and 
Smith  O'Brien  ;  need  it  be  said  that  the  year 
of  the  poem  is  1848  f  Tears  before,  at  Christ- 
mas time  184S,  the  **Song  of  the  Shirt**  ap 
peared  in  Punch  with  a  border  around  it  filled 
with  little  figures  having  no  relation  to  the  I 
posn.  Eight  pages  further  on  is  another  poem,  ' 


evidently  by  the  same  writer,  in  whose  hands 
pathos  and  humor  were  one,  **  The  Pauper's 
Christmas  CaroL**  'A  few  week*  later  is  a  lit. 
tie  poem  in  six  short  stanns,  also  by  Hood, 
when  near  his  end.  This  iscalled  **  RefiecUons 
on  New  Tear*s  Day,**  and  the  reflecting  per- 
sonage Is  evidently  a  very  poor  man  who 
thinks  that  the  wishes  offered  him  for  a  happy 
new  year  might  take  the  form  of  something 
to  wear.  To  flnd  the  equal  or  the  companion 
to  these  poems  in  force  and  pathoe  we  have  to 
turn  to  the  volume  for  1865  and  read  the  poem 
on  the  death  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  beginning 
**  You  lay  a  wreath  on  murdered  Lincoln*s 
bier.'*  Tom  Taylor  was  not  Tom  Hood,  nor  a 
poet  in  the  sense  that  the  older  man  was  a 
poet,  but,  under  the  stress  of  this  strange  event, 
which  suddenly  reminded  the  London  public 
that  there  was  pathos  and  eventful  living 
acroes  tiie  Atlantic,  a  strenuous  poem  was 
written.  The  poem  on  the  death  of  Prince 
Albert,  December,  1861,  was  in  no  way  worthy 
to  compare  with  the  last,  nor  is  it  common  in 
the  later  volumes  to  flnd  anything  serious  or 
stroQg ;  but  in  January,  1875,  there  is  soma- 
thing  fina—**  Rough  Voices  from  the  East 
End,**  which  speak  in  these  words : 

*'  Which  Psnon  uyt  It  Is 
Onr  dooQr  to  be  cret«ful, 
Bren  when  bresd^  rls. 
And  meet  no  end  a  plstefol. 

"  Now.  it's  eM7  to  like  sklttlat. 
Or  benteUe,  or  pool-boerd. 
Bat  without  a  meal  o^  wlttlee 
Tatn*t  many  walilea  Sohool-Boaid. 

"  Which  larnlns  'elpe  a  Idnohin 
If  he're  tbeheart  to  con  it, 
Bot  tliatf s  'ard,  with  hanger  iHnohln', 
▲nd  a  4>oard  with  nnffln  on  it." 

Nonsense  of  the  well-known  type  appeared 
in  Punch  as  early  as  1845,  a  year  before  the 
publication  of  Lear's  first  *  Book  of  Nonsense.' 
Long  afterwards  Mr,  Punch  began  the  publi- 
cation of  more  versee  of  the  soi^  "to  be  con- 
tinued  until  every  town  in  the  Elingdom  riiall 
have  been  immortalised."  In  fact,  each  stanza 
had  to  do  with  a  town,  e,  g,: 

**  There  was  a  young  lady  of  Birmlngliam— 
Wlien  the  bishop  came  down  there  oonOrmiag  'em, 
She  sent  hiha  some  f^ogs, 
^nd  some  nice  little  don. 
And  a  tract  about  feeding  and  worming  'an.** 

At  a  later  time  Mr.  Du  Maurier,  who  had  writ- 
ten other  moet  amusing  verse  which  it  is  sad  to 
have  to  pass  in  silence,  started  similar  verses 
in  French  under  the  general  title,  "  Vers  Non- 
sensiques."  Among  these  there  was  one  at  any 
rate  in  untntelligible  argot  unless  it  was  in 
gibberish. 

Punch* 9  prose,  like  his  verse,  was  more  litera- 
ry in  the  early  days,  and  has  been  more  a 
matter  of  current  satire  and  comment  during 
the  past  twenty  years.  In  1845,  BIrs.  Caudle*s 
Curtain  Lectures  were  going  on,  and  other 
things  only  less  celebrated  by  Douglas  Jerrold 
preceded  and  followed  them,  such  as  the 
"Story  of  a  Feather"  and  "Our  Honey, 
moon";  the  last  an  admirable  piece  of  writ- 
ing, and  more  gentle  In  its  satire  than  was  the 
habit  of  the  savage  Jerrold.  At  the  same 
time  and  later,  Thackeray's  Snob  Papers  were 
in  course  of  publication  in  Punch^ihe  same 
which  now  make  up  the  *Book  of  Snobs.* 
There  is  a  good  deal  about  Jeames,  with  some 
papers  that  have  no^been  included  in  Thacke- 
ray*s  collected  works.  There  were  the  **  Let- 
ters to  a  Toung  Man  about  Town,"  there  was 
''Punch  in  the  East"  and  Other  contributions 
by  the  Fat  Contributor,  there  were  the  Epi. 
taphs  on  the  four  Qaorges,  there  were  the 
stories  by  "  Punch* 9  Prise  Novelista,"  of  which 
••PhiL  Fogarty,  by  Harry  RoUiker,"  is  the 
most  famous,  and  there  were  many  things 
which  one  cannot  bot  suppose  to  be  Thacke- 


ray's work,  such  as  the  BashiBasook  Papers  in 
1866 and  the  "New  Portrait  of  Prince  Albert"; 
but  indeed  there  are  a  host  of  things  which 
seem  to  be  the  work  of  Titmarsh.  Sometimes 
there  were  pieces  of  solid  reading  apart  from 
Thackeray's  continued  essays.  There  was,  for 
instance,  that  queer  romance,  "The  Naggle- 
tons,"  which  ran  through  many  numbers, 
twenty  years  ago ;  and  forty  years  ago  there 
was  the  very  clever  story,  "Miss  Violet  and 
her  Lovers,"  which  the  readers  of  Punch  seem 
generally  to  neglect— the  nearest  approach  to 
a  serial  novel  that  Pumch  ever  made. 

Of  late  years,  as  we  have  intimated,  the  fun 
in  Punch*9  proee  is  more  local  and  temporary 
—more  a  part  of  the  news  of  the  day.  None 
of  it  all  is  better  than  Mr.  Lucy's  wonderful 
analysis  of  Parliamentary  doings,  beginning 
in  1881.  (It  is  to  be  feared  that  American,  and 
even  some  Bnglisli,  ideas  of  tiie  devemess  of 
repartee  of  members  of  the  House  may  be 
based  upon  the  "Diary  of  Toby,  M.  P.,"  rather 
than  upon  fact.)  But  Mr.  Anstey  and  others 
have  kept  up  the  old  traditions,  as  in  "  Voces 
PopuU"  and  in  "  Travelling  Companions." 

So  far  we  have  written  without  much  re- 
ference to  the  book  under  consideration,  but 
we  must  take  from  it  now  the  statement  that 
the  famous  dialogue,  "*  What  is  mind  r'  *No 
matter.'  *Wliat  is  matter?'  <  Never  mind,'" 
is  not  from  Punch  at  all.  To  be  sure,  nobody 
said  that  it  was,  but  it  is  a  reUef  to  know  that 
one  need  not  hunt  through  110  thin  volumes  or 
66  thick  ones  in  search  of  it  On  the  other 
hand,  it  was  a  Punch  joke,  with  an  excellent 
illustration  to  it  by  Charles  Keene  in  his  youth, 
which  expressed  the  extravagance  of  London 
in  a  few  words.  One  "  Peebles  body  "  says  to 
another:  "  E  eh,  Mac  I  ye*re  sune  hame  again." 
And  the  other  answers:  "E>eh,  it's  just  a 
ruinous  place,  thati  Mun,  a  had  na'  been 
thcerre  abunetwa  hoours  when— Bang— went 
saxpencell!"  Bfr.  Spielmann*s  volume  repro- 
duces as  the  best— that  is  to  say,  the  most 
popular— joke  in  Pttndk,  that  which  appeared 
in  the  Almanack  for  1846.  It  was  an  adver- 
tisement, at  least  in  appearance,  and  the  news- 
papers of  the  day  would  supply  the  prototype 
of  it: 

WORTHY  or  ATTKirnON. 

Advice  to  persons  about  to  marry— Don't  I 

Mr.  Spielmann  expends  two  pages  upon  this 
immortal  joke  and  on  its  origin,  and  it  appears 
that»  after  many  claimants  and  many  attribu- 
tions had  been  dismissed,  it  was  finally  agreed 
that  it  came  from  the  regular  staff  in  theregu. 
lar  way,  and  was  really  the  invention  of  Henry 
Mayhew. 

Still,  however,  it  is  illustration,  and  not  text, 
which  makee  Punch  dear  to  the  after-world 
and  the  foreign  world;  to  people  who  are  not 
of  London  and  to  those  who  open  the  volume 
years  after  its  issue.  The  pictures  do  not  often 
need  any  intimate  knowledge  of  the  political 
talk  of  the  day;  the  purely  political  carica- 
tures, including  very  many  of  the  large  "  car- 
toons,"  seem,  even  to  many  well-instructed 
students  of  Punch,  inferior  to  those  of  purely 
social  character.  There  is  in  this  great  un- 
sorted  and  non-catalogued  mass  of  illustration 
something  for  every  lover  of  pictures,  from 
the  Uttle  six-year-old  girl  who  is  delighted 
with  the  train  of  cars  which  she  finds  simu- 
lated in  the  row  of  tea-cups  drawn  apparently 
by  a  steaming  and  bubbling  teapot,  to  the 
older  connoisseur  who  loves  the  beautiful 
landscape  effects  of  Leech  or  the  strong  eha* 
racterisation  of  Charles  Keene.  To  name  the 
artists  of  Punch  is  to  name  the  most  celebrated 
and  the  most  deservedly  celebrated  draughta- 
men  of  the  modem  English  world,  always  €x- 


QS& 


The   ISTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1603 


oepting  George  Cruikshank.  John  Leech  and 
Charles  Keeoe  are  oertainly  the  moitt  artiatio 
of  them,  with  Harry  Fumise  In  a  good  second 
place.  (George  Da  ICaurier,  even  more  popular 
than  Leech,  is  narrow  in  his  art,  but  full  of 
grace  and  charm.  Richard  Doyle  was  certainly 
the  best  iilustratiye  artist  that  ever  lived  who 
could  not  draw  the  figure  under  any  circum- 
stances. Sir  John  Tenniel,  better  known  by 
his  large  cartoons  than  in  any  other  way, 
formal,  cold,  not  often  humorous,  at  least  in 
Punch,  has  yet  a  popular  charm,  hard  to  ex- 
plain. Randolph  Caldeoott  made  a  few  draw- 
ings for  PkmcA— eighteen  in  all— scattered  over 
ten  years.  Linley  Samboume  is  the  most  in- 
dividual and  independent  artist  in  all  the  world 
of  illustration ;  he  has  developed  a  style  of 
drawing  which  is  all  his  own,  but  his  gift  at 
humorous  design  seems  to  have  been  bom  in 
him,  and  even  as  early  as  1867  his  astonishing 
headpieces  and  initials,  which  were  all  he  was 
allowed  to  supply,  prepared  those  who  could 
see  originality,  under  feeble  execution,  for 
what  was  to  come  when  he  had  mastered  his 
methods.  The  celebrated  drawing  of  Punch't 
centennial  dinner,  *'The  Mahogany  Tree,** 
dated  July  18, 1891,  may  be  called  his  greatest 
achievement. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  mention  the  failures,  for 
Pttitdi  generally  abandoned  his  failures— turn- 
ed from  his  evil  ways  without  delay.  Thacke- 
ray can  hardly  be  called  a  failure,  in  spite  of 
the  hideous  ugliness  of  his  drawings  and  their 
lack  of  skill  and  knowledge,  for  they  were  at 
least  very  well  fitted  to  their  text,  and  were 
funny.  It  is  impossible,  however,  to  omit 
mention  of  the  one  long-continued  8eri€s  of 
worthless  drawings,  namely,  that  begun  in 
1866  and  known  to  be  by  Miss  Bowers.  Mr. 
Bpielmann  rightly  says  that  this  artist  had  the 
gift  to  see  a  joke ;  but  it  must  alwajs  remain 
a  mystery  that  her  feeble  artistic  work  should 
have  been  allowed  to  disfigure  Mr,  Punches 
gallery.  There  is  allusion  to  it  on  page  520 
of  Mr.  Spielmann's  volume,  with  but  a  word 
or  two  as  to  its  quality.  Finally,  the  work 
of  the  latf  St  years  finds  its  t>est  expression  in 
Mr.  J.  Bernard  Partridge  and  Mr.  Phil  May- 
real  artistp,  both  of  them. 

As  for  the  book  itself,  it  is  of  course  capital 
reading,  and  contains,  of  course,  a  vast  amount 
of  information  which  one  is  glad  to  possess. 
The  authentic  account  of  the  weekly  dinners, 
and  the  diners,  and  their  initials  and  ciphers 
cut  on  the  table-top,  is  alone  reason  enough  for 
this  book's  existence.  The  illustrations  are 
nearly  all  of  value.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
need  that  every  one  must  feel  of  a  book  of  refer, 
ence  to  Punch  is  not  well  supplied,  as  allusions 
to  any  particular  subject,  article,  writer,  or 
artist  are  scattered  throughout  these  many 
pages,  and  the  index  to  the  volume,  which 
would  need  to  be  very  full  if  it  were  to  serve 
all  its  purposes,  is  very  far  from  being  com- 
plete.  To  have  the  index  pages  interleaved, 
and  to  write  upon  the  extra  pages  your  own 
references  to  the  mention  and  description  of 
your  own  favorites,  would  be  the  way  to  uti 
lize  this  book. 


CRETAN  PICT0GRAPH8. 

Cretan    Pictographs    and    Prce  -  Phamician 
Script    By  Arthur  J.  Evans,  M.A.,  F.8.A. 
Pp.  viii,  146.    London:   Bernard  Quaritch; 
New  York:  O.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.  1885. 
The  accomplished  keeper  of  the   Ashmolean 
Museum  at  Oxford  has  published  a  book  of 
more  than  common  interest.    That  Cretan  an- 
tiquities form  the  study  of  classical  archasolo- 


gists  is  a  matter  of  course,  and  Mr.  Evans's 
travels  in  Crete  have  yielded  much  that  is 
worthy  of  close  attention  from  this  necessarily 
limited  and  exclusive  class ;  but  the  beeuring  of 
his  discoveries  and  discussions  is  wide,  and  the 
student  of  civilization  even  with  slender  ar- 
chsBological  equipment  will  be  fascinated  by 
the  suggestions  of  the  volume. 

The  kernel  of  the  matter  is  this:  Mr.  Evans 
has  discovered  in  Crete  a  large  number  of  ob- 
jects bearing  signs  somewhat  resembling  the 
Hittite,  and  others  inscribed  with  linear  cha- 
racters hitherto  unknown.  By  comparing  still 
others,  found  on  .£gean  Islands  and  remoter 
parts  of  the  Eastern  Mediterranean  basin,  he 
has  reached  highly  important  conclusions  as  to 
a  great  chapter  in  the  history  of  ideographic, 
syllabic,  and  alphabetic  signs.  These  are  put 
forward  tentatively  and  with  reserve,  but  the 
very  moderation  of  the  author  gives  his  ob- 
servations additional  weight,  and,  however  his 
facts  may  be  finally  interpreted,  they  are  sure 
to  modify  considerably  the  views  of  the  rela- 
tion of  ancient  Mediterranean  peoples  which 
have  been  recently  current  Many  of  the  ol>- 
jects  examined  are  inscribed  stones  of  small 
sise,  used  apparently  as  seals  and  ornaments; 
others  are  vases  and  jars,  of  stone  and  of  clay; 
a  few  are  implements  and  ornaments  of  metaL 
The  picture-signs,  or  ** pictographs,*'  inscribed 
on  them  represent  a  great  variety  of  common 
things— hunuui  and  animal  figures,  or  parts  of 
them;  heads,  arms,  legs,  eyes;  birds  and  fishes; 
tools,  weapons,  and  musical  instruments;  fences, 
gates,  and  doors;  household  vessels,  ships,  trees, 
and  flowers,  sun,  moon,  and  stars,  mountains 
and  valleys.  There  are  also  geometrical  fig- 
ures and  other  designis  not  easily  classified. 
These  are  so  placed  and  grouped  as  to  make 
it  wholly  probable  that  we  have  to  do 
with  a  system  of  ideographic  signs,  designed 
to  communicate  ideas  or  classes  of  ideas 
through  the  eye.  Mr.  Evans  has  found,  in  all, 
some  eighty-two  of  these  picture-symbols. 

A  comparison  between  the  Cretan  discove- 
ries and  objects  found  in  Egypt,  Asia,  several 
JEgean  Islands,  and  the  Peloponnesus  yields 
interesting  results  bearing  on  the  age  of  the 
symbols  and  on  the  extent  of  their  use.  One  well- 
established  connection  seems  to  be  that  with 
the  beet  age  of  MyoensBan  civilisation,  borne 
out  by  objects  excavated  at  Mycenae  and  at 
Hissarlik.  Another  is  with  the  art  of  the 
eighteenth  Egyptian  dynasty,  and  in  particu 
lar  with  objects  from  Kahun  and  Tel  el  Amai^ 
na,  found  hf  Mr.  Petrie.  The  Cretan  picture- 
writing  was^  then,  apparently  developed  to  a 
high  degree  prior  to  b.  c.  1500.  But  this  is  not 
all.  There  is  a  much  earlier  class  of  the  in- 
scribed stones,  resembling  in  important  re- 
spects early  Egyptian  scarabs.  For  this  com- 
parison  it  is  not  necessary  to  tread  on  £!gyp- 
tian  soil.  At  Hagios  Onuphrios,  in  Crete, 
near  the  site  of  PhsBstos,  a  deposit  has  been 
found,  in  an  ancient  necropolis,  containing 
(besides  the  inscribed  seal -stones)  figures,  pot- 
tery, implementa,  and  ornaments,  all  of  pre- 
Mycenasan  times,  and  reaching  back — on  the 
evidence  of  similar  primitive  objects  from 
Amorgos  in  the  j£gean,  and  from  the  lower 
strata  of  Hissarlik— 2,000  or  2,500  years  B.  c. 
More  conclusively  still,  while  these  Cretan  seals 
show  the  infiuence  of  Egyptian  scarabs  of  the 
twelfth  dynasty,  prior  to  b^  c.  2600,  a  consider- 
able number  of  such  scarabs  themselves  were 
found  in  the  same  deposit.  The  picture  sys- 
tem was,  then,  in  use  in  Crete  as  early  as  this 
date.  A  further  step  is  made  possible  by  the 
observation  of  a  group  of  Cretan  hieroglyphic 
seals  of  extremely  archaic  appearance,  show- 
ing no  trace  of  Egyptian  infiuence,  and  not  con- 


nected with  any  Egyptian  finds— presumably, 
therefore,  much  earlier.  In  these  Mr.  Evans 
sees  direct  evidence  of  the  prevalence  of  the 
Cretan  pictographs  nearly  or  quite  as  early  as 
b.  c.  8000,  and  their  origin  must  of  course  be 
much  earlier  stilL 

The  light  thus  thrown  on  the  relations  of  the 
Hittite  symbols  is  plain.  If,  for  1,500  or  2,000 
years,  the  .^^an  islands  and  the  Peloponnesus 
were  familiar  with  a  pictorial  script,  of  which 
some  characteristic  signs  strongly  resemble  oer. 
tain  Hittite  hieroglyphs,  the  inference  is  natural 
that  the  script  which  is  traceable  at  so  many 
points  in  Western  Asia  and  Asia  Minor  in  par- 
ticular was  not  developed  without  iTCgean  in- 
fiuence, or  at  least  was  not  without  JBgean  kin- 
ship; and  the  possibility  arises  that  a  due  to 
the  one  set  of  symbols  may  give  at  length  the 
true  clue  to  the  other. 

But  there  is  something  of  still  greater  impor- 
tance. Besides  the  pictographs  there  is  also  a 
considerable  g^up  of  linear  signs  on  seals, 
vases,  buUdiog-stones,  and  other  objects  found 
in  Crete,  at  Mycense,  and  in  places  under  the 
same  infiuence.  Some  have  been  discovered  at 
Kahun  and  Ourob  in  Egypt,  where  they  ap- 
pear as  foreign  signs.  Thirty- two  linear  cha- 
racters in  all  have  been  noted.  Some  of  these 
occur  as  early  as  the  time  of  the  twelfth  Egyp- 
tian dynasty.  Mr.  Evans  regards  them  as 
*'  quasi-alphabetic,"  or,  more  exactly,  as  sylla- 
bic. They  appear,  like  the  pictographs,  to  have 
been  in  wide  use.  They  are  relatively  abun- 
dant at  MycensB,  while  the  pictographs  are 
not,  which  is  interpreted  to  mean  that  they 
early  drove  out  the  pictographs,  while  In 
Crete,  the  proper  home  of  both,  the  two  lived 
together  for  a  long  time.  It  is  apparently  poe- 
sible,  in  a  do£en  cases  or  more,  to  trace  the  de- 
rivation of  the  linear  sign  from  the  pictograph. 
We  seem  to  have  going  on  before  our  eyes,  as 
we  examine  these  objects,  the  process  of  tran- 
sition from  picture-system  to  syllabary  of 
which  evidences  more  or  less  distinct  are  found 
in  Babylonia  and  Egy^t,  but  without  trace  of 
influence  from  either  of  them.  We  learn  also 
that  the  energetic  people  or  peoples  who  inha- 
bited the  Peloponnesus  and  the  whole  Mget^n 
basin  4,000  years  ago  were  not  destitute,  as  has 
been  often  supposed,  of  a  medium  of  written 
communication,  and  that  when  Phoenician 
traffic  brought  Phoenician  letters,  it  was  not 
as  the  supply  of  a  total  lack«  but  as  a  better 
substitute,  that  they  made  their  way. 

This  brings  us  to  the  matter  of  crowning  in- 
terest. Mr.  Evans  raises  the  question,  to  which, 
with  great  self-restraint,  he  offers  no  positive 
and  sweeping  answer,  whether  the  Phoenician 
alphabet  itself  may  not  be  largely  indebted 
to  this  linear  ^gean  script.  This  al  most  takes 
one's  breath  away.  Nothing  has  seemed  more 
certain  than  that  the  alphabet  is  OrientaL 
But  with  the  Cretan  discoveries  the  question 
becomes  inevitable.  It  cannot  be  denied  that 
on  this  point  hypothesis  has  still  a  tolerably 
free  fleld.  De  Rough's  theory  of  alphabetic 
development  from  the  Egyptian  hieratic  signs 
—plausible  and  strongly  urged— has  held  its 
ground  more  because  no  other  satisfactory  ex- 
planation was  offered  than  because  of  its  in- 
trinsic strength.  Deecke's  attempt  to  explain 
the  Phoenician  letters  from  the  Assyrian  cunei- 
form signs  failed  miserably,  and  even  Dr. 
Peters's  scholarly  endeavor  to  avoid  Deecke's 
disaster  by  substituting,  far  more  wisely, 
the  ancient  Babylonian  character,  has  not 
convinced  the  scholarly  world.  The  Tdel- 
Amama  tablets,  witnessing  to  the  cuneiform 
signs  as  the  medium  of  intercourse  between 
Egypt  and  Palestine  in  the  flf  teenth  c 
B.  o.,  have  interfered  with  all 


March  19,  1896] 


The   [N'ation. 


239 


I(  would  be  cndoos  enoogh  if  facts  should  at 
leogth  show  that  the  alphabet  welcomed  by 
Greece  as  a  foreign  gift,  is  really  the  descen- 
dant of  an  emigrant  from  Crete,  coming  back 
as  a  princely  benefactor  to  the  children  or  sue 
oessors  of  its  forgotten  ancestors. 

The  points  to  which  Mr.  Evans  calls  especial 
attention  are  these:  Of  the  32  known  signs  in 
the  Cretan  linear  script,  15  appear  in  the  Cyp. 
riote  syllabary.  Bat  Cyprus  is  very  near  to 
Syria.  Half*  a  dosen  signs  actually  oorrenpond 
in  form,  some  of  them  strikingly,  with  old 
ShemiUc  letters  (Sabean,  Moabite,  Pbcenician). 
Eight  agree  closely  with  signs  on  potsherds 
found  by  If  r.  Bliss  in  the  earliest  strata  of  Tel 
el  Hesy  (before  b.  o  1500).  The  Philistines,  in 
whose  territory  Tel  el-Hesy  lies,  came  from 
Capbtor,  and  Caphtor  is  Crete.  Indeed,  some 
of  the  early  pictographs— e.  9.,  the  figure  of  a 
kneeling  camel^point  to  ancient  commerce 
between  Crete  and  Syria,  and  the  names  of 
several  Phoenician  (Hebrew)  letters,  ^2ep^  H0, 
Cheihf  ^Ayin^  etc.,  are  names  of  objects  which 
appear  In  the  Cretan  pictographs.  The  sug. 
gestion  of  this  possible  origin  for  the  alphabet 
is  most  attractive,  and  no  serious  objection  to 
it  at  present  appears.  Mr.  Evans  sununarisee 
the  evidence  as  follows: 

**  The  Cretan  pictographs  give  us  a  good  war- 
rant for  believing— what  even  without  such 
evidence  common  sense  would  lead  us  to  ex- 
pect—that  a  primitive  mtem  of  picture-writ- 
ing had  existed  in  the  ^gean  lands  at  a  very 
remote  period.  The  antiquity  of  these  figures 
is  indeed  in  some  cases  curiously  brought  out 
by  the  fact,  already  pointed  out,  that  they  ac- 
tually exhibit  the  actions  of  a  primitive  ges 
tnre-language.  Furthermore  we  see  certain 
ideoffrapbio  forms,  no  doubt  once  widely  intel- 
ligible on  the  coasts  and  islands  of  the  eastern 
Mediterranean,  reduced  to  linear  signs  which 
find  close  parallels  in  Cyprus  and  Phoenicia. 
Finally,  some  of  the  names  of  the  PhoBuician 
letters  lead  us  back  to  the  same  pictographic 
originals  which  in  Crete  we  find  actually  ex- 
isting. 

"To  the  Phoenicians  belongs  the  credit  of 
having  finally  perfected  this  system  and  re- 
duced it  to  a  purely  alphabetic  shape.  Their 
acquaintance  with  the  various  forms  of  Egyp- 
tian writing  no  doubt  assisted  them  in  their 
final  development.  Thus  it  happened  that  it 
was  from  a  Semitic  source  and  under  a  Semi- 
tic  guise  that  the  Greeks  received  their  alpha- 
bet in  later  days.  But  the  evidence  now  ac- 
cumulated from  Cretan  soil  seems  at  least  to 
warrant  the  suspicion  that  the  earlier  ele- 
ments out  of  which  the  Phoenician  system 
was  finally  evolved  were  larg<>ly  shared  by 
the  pHmittve  inhabitants  of  HeUas  itself.  80 
far,  indeed,  as  the  evidence  at  our  disposal 
goes,  the  original  centre  of  this  system  of 
writing  should  be  sought  nearer  Crete  than 
Southern  Syria**  (p.  96). 

The  racial  connections  of  the  men  who  in- 
vented  the  pictographs  and  developed  the 
linear  script  from  them  receive  little  fresh 
light  from  these  discoveries,  although  Mr. 
Evans  seems  to  show  the  probability  that 
there  were  early  Greek  settlers  in  Crete, 
and  that  the  system  was  employed  (in  part^ 
but  not  originally)  by  those  who  spoke  Greek. 
The  language  of  the  inscribed  objects  pre- 
serred  to  us  is  unknown  as  yet. 

Certain  bye- paths  of  the  discussion  we  have 
of  necessity  left  unnoticed;  0.  9.,  the  part 
played  by  Crete  as  a  transmitter  of  Egyptian 
culture  on  its  way  to  remote  parts  of  Europe. 
The  development  of  the  midn  theme  is  cer- 
tainly sulBciettt  to  establish  the  remarkable 
significance  of  the  book. 


BOOKS  ON  ART. 

Evotuii<m  in  AH,  as  Ulustrated  by  the  Life- 
histories  of  Designs.  By  Alfred  C.  Haddon, 
ProfaMor  of  Zoology,  Royal  College  of  Sci- 


eoc«»,  Dublin,  Corrc»pocdirg  M^m^-erof  the 
Italian  Society  of  Anthropology,  etc.  Lon- 
don: Walter  Scott;  New  York:  Charles 
Scribner*8  Sots.  1805. 
RenaiM9anee  Faneie9  and  8tudU9,  By  Vernon 
Lee.  Being  a  Sequel  to  *  Eophorion.'  Lon- 
don: Smith,  Elder  &  Co.;  New  York:  G.  P. 
Putnam's  S^ns.    1896. 

The  Florentine  PainUra  of  the  Renaiseanee, 
With  an  Index  to  their  Works.  By  Bern- 
hard  Berenson,  Author  of  *  Venetian  Paint- 
ers of  the  Renaissance,***  Lorenzo  Lotto:  An 
Efsay  in  Constructive  Art  Criticism,'  etc. 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.    1896. 

La  Culture  Artiatique  en  AmMque.  Par  S. 
Bing.  Paris:  22 Rue  de Provence:  New  York: 
Dyrsen  &  Pfeiffer.    1896. 

The  lUuetration  of  Books:  A  Manual  for  the 
Use  of  Students;  Notes  for  a  Course  of 
Lectures  at  the  Slade  School,  University 
Ck>llege.  By  Joseph  Pennell,  Author  of 
*  Pen- Drawing  and  Pen- Draughtsmen,*  'Mo- 
dem Illustration,'  etc.  London  :  T.  Fisher 
Unwin ;  New  York  :  The  Century  Co. 

Studies  in  the  Science  of  Drawing  in  Art  By 
Airo^e  Osborne  Moore.  Boston :  Ginn  &  Co. 
1896. 

Thxsb  six  books  are  exempliflcations  of  the 
numerous  and  distinct  points  of  view  from 
which  the  fine  arts  may  be  regarded.  The 
first  of  them  is  the  work  of  "a  biologist  who 
has  had  his  attention  turned  to  the  subject  of 
decorative  art,"  and  deals  "  with  the  arts  of  de> 
sign  from  a  biological  or  natural-history  point 
of  view  ";  its  object  being  "to  show  that  deli- 
neations  have  an  individuality  and  a  life-his- 
tory which  can  be  studied  quite  irrespectively 
of  their  artistic  merit."  The  work  calls  for 
review  from  a  scientist  rather  than  from  a 
critic  of  art,  but  even  an  art  critic  can  feel, 
though  perhaps  he  cannot  quite  appreciate,  its 
admirable  tone  of  scientific  caution  and  un- 
biassed investigation.  The  volume  opens  with 
a  detailed  consideration  of  the  decorative  art 
of  British  New  Guinea  **  as  an  example  of  the 
method  of  study,**  after  which  more  general 
ideas  are  tsken  up,  and  **the  materials  of 
which  patterns  are  made  **  and  **  the  reasons 
for  which  objects  are  decorated**  are  illus- 
trated from  the  arts  of  various  peoples  in  va- 
rious  ages,  the  whole  concluding  with  a  state 
ment  of  **  the  scientific  method  of  studying 
decorative  art**  Many  most  interesting  ex. 
amples  of  the  change  of  patterns  through  evo- 
lution or  degeneration  are  given,  and  the 
**  life-history  "  of  many  designs  is  ingeniously 
traced.  What  is  admirable,  however,  in  Prof. 
Haddon's  treatment  of  his  subject  Is  less  the 
conclusions  he  has  drawn  than  those  he  has  re- 
frained from  drawing.  In  the  face  of  the 
liberal  theorizing  which  leads  one  arch»ologist 
to  derive  almost  all  known  patterns  from  the 
lotos,  while  another,  with  equal  assurance,  da- 
rives  them  all  from  something  else,  it  is  re- 
freshing to  find  an  insistence  that  resemblance 
is  not  necessarily  identity,  and  that  our  know- 
ledge of  facts  is  often  too  small  to  justify  cer- 
tainty in  inference.  The  point  is  often  made 
that  any  given  pattern  must  be  studied  on  the 
spot  where  it  appears,  and  all  the  ascertain- 
able  facts  about  its  origin  there  must  be  mas- 
tered before  we  can  be  sure  whether  or  not  it 
it  the  same  pattern  which  occurs  elsewhere  and 
which  it  closely  resembles.  The  final  conclu- 
sion would  seem  to  be  that  given  on  page  173, 
in  a  quotation  from  W.  H.  Holmes,  that  **we 
are  absolutely  certain  that  no  race,  no  art,  no 
motive  or  element  in  nature  or  in  art,  can 
claim  the  exclusive  origination  of  any  one  of 


the  well-known  or  standard  conventicntl  de- 
vices, and  that  any  race,  art,  or  individual  mo- 
Uve  is  capable  of  giving  rise  to  any  and  all  such 
devices**;  and  the  author's  temper  is  shown  by 
his  statement  that  he  has  **been  mainly  con- 
cerned to  provide  an  efficient  tool  for  other 
workers,**  rather  than  himself  to  **  elucidate 
the  multitudinous  designs  and  forms  which  be- 
set us  on  every  hand.** 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  a  work  otherwise  so 
laudable  should  be  marred  by  the  pestilential 
heresy,  stated  in  the  chapter  on  wealth  as  a 
cause  of  decoration,  that  "coin  Is  always  of 
less  intrinsic  worth  than  its  nominal  value;  and 
as  money  transactions  increase,  the  nominal 
value  bears  absolutely  no  relation  to  the  real 
value,  as  in  the  case  of  paper  money.**  On  the 
next  page  this  has  become  a  statement  that 
certain  objects  used  as  a  medium  of  exchange 
in  Torres  Straits  *  "cannot  be  regarded  as  money, 
as  they  have  an  intrinsic  voive.**  Nothing 
worse  than  this  has  been  seen  stnoe  the  flnan- 
cial  teaching  of  the  RoUo  Books  and  Jonas*e 
wooden  currency,  and  it  is  entirely  unnecessary 
to  the  course  of  Prof.  Haddon*8  argument. 

The  standpoint  of  Vernon  Lee  is  that  of  the 
amiable  dilettante,  interested  in  art  as  a  part 
of  general  culture.  There  is  much  charming 
writing  in  the  volume  and  some  keen- sighted 
analysis.  The  description  of  the  **hqman- 
ness**  as  of  **a  nice  chUd**  of  Fra  Angelico, 
with  his  **gayly  dressed  angels  .  .  .  lead- 
ing the  Uttle  cowled  monks— Uttle  baby  black 
and  white  things  with  pink  faces,  like  sugar 
lambs  and  Easter  rabbits— into  deep,  deep 
grass  quite  full  of  fiowers  *'— and  of  the  early 
Venetians  with  their  musicmaking  angels,  is 
very  apt  and  delightf  uL  More  serious  contri- 
butions to  criticism  are  the  ideas  that  art,  in 
its  slow  development,  takes  years  to  perfect  an 
ideal  with  which  it  started,  so  that  it  is  the 
feeling  of  the  age  of  St.  Francis  which  is 
finally  embodied  in  the  painting  of  the  epoch 
of  the  Tyrants,  and  that  often  it  is  neither  the 
personality  of  the  artist  nor  Taine*s  '*raoe,  en- 
vironment, and  moment'*  that  determine  the 
characteristics  of  a  given  art,  which  are  rather 
the  result  of  technical  processes  and  training. 
Hence  the  difference  between  Greek  and  Tus- 
can sculpture  may  be  considered  as  resulting 
less  from  the  dilTereoce  of  Greek  and  Italian 
racial  instinct,  or  of  ancient  and  medissval 
feeling,  than  from  the  fact  that  the  Greeks 
were  primarily  modellers  of  clay  and  the 
Italians  hewers  of  stone;  the  technical  methods 
proper  to  either  art  leading  the  Greeks  to  the 
realintion  of  actual  form  at  the  finger  ends, 
and  the  Florentines  to  the  suggestion  by  effect 
of  light  and  shade  on  a  church  front.  The 
book  ends  with  a  tribute  to  the  memory  of  the 
author's  master,  Walter  Pater,  one  who,  **  by 
faithful  and  self- restraining  cultivation  of  the 
sense  of  harmony,  .  .  .  i4>pears  to  have 
risen  from  the  perception  of  visible  beauty  to 
the  knowledge  of  beauty  of  the  spiritual  kind," 
thus  showing  the  possible  higher  uses  of  mere 
ly  nsthetioal  cultlvatioo. 

Mr.  Berenson  is  nothing  if  not  modem,  and 
the  views  he  has  set  forth  in  his  latest  book 
are,  at  first  sight,  bewilderingly  novel.  His 
psychology,  however,  as  has  been  said  of 
Spenser's  allegoriea,  will  not  bite,  and  one 
soon  begins  to  perceive  that  his  **taotile 
values**  are  little  else  than  our  old  friends 
significant  drawing  and  sense  of  form.  What 
his  doctrine  amounts  to  Is  that  this  significant 
drawing,  this  "realisation  of  the  material 
nature  of  things,"  was  the  vital  element  of 
Florentine  painting,  and  not  story- tslling  or 
the  excitation  of  religious  emotion  ;  that  Giot- 
to possessed  the  talent  for  it  in  the  highest 


^40 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1603 


meaeure,  but  was  hampered  by  the  lack  of 
technical  knowledge ;  that  the  study  of  tech- 
nical means  occupied  the  school  for  200  years, 
sometimes  leading  to  mere  naturalism  or  mere 
display  ;  that  occasionally  in  this  time  a  mas- 
ter arose,  comparable  to  Giotto  in  power,  and, 
with  the  new  knowledge,  achieyed  a  new  ex- 
pressiveness;  that  Michelangelo,  coming  at 
the  right  time  and  with  the  right  nature, 
pushed  significant  drawing  to  its  furthest 
limit ;  and  that,  after  him,  the  job  being  tho- 
roughly done,  nothing  was  left  for  Florentine 
art  but  rapid  decadence  and  academicism. 
The  Tiew- point,  though  not  so  new  as  it 
seems,  is  not  that  of  the  average  critic,  but  it 
appears  to  make  little  change  in  the  familiar 
perspective.  Qiotto,  Masaccio,  Leonardo,  and 
Michelangelo  still  stand  like  giants,  dominat- 
ing the  landscape,  with  Botticelli  only  a  little 
lower;  and  even  Fra  Angelico*8  permanent 
charm  is  duly  accounted  for. 

The  **  Index  to  the  Works  of  the  Principal 
Florentine  Painters**  at  the  end  is  interesting 
as  giving  the  results  of  the  latest  criticism, 
including  BCr.  Berenson's  own,  and  is  useful 
and  welcome.  In  some  cases  one  would  be 
glad  of  the  reasons  for  the  attribution,  nota- 
bly in  that  of  the  famous  "  wax  head  of  Lille," 
which  Mr.  Berenson  gives  to  Leonardo.  The 
copimon  attribution  to  Raphael  has  little  to 
sustain  it,  but  we  confess  to  an  equal  incre- 
dulity towards  ttds  later  venture.  We  do  not 
know  what  Leonardo's  work  in  sculpture  was 
like,  but  we  see  no  reason  to  suppose  that  that 
pupil  of  Verrooohio  did  anything  resembling 
the  wax  head. 

The  point  of  view— that  of  the  travelling 
foreigner  in  this  country— has  to  be  especially 
reckoned  with  in  considering  M.  Bing*s  pam- 
phlet  on  artistic  culture  in  America.  Judging 
from  a  prefatory  epistle,  M.  Bing  seems  to  have 
been  commissioned  by  the  Directeur  des  Beaux- 
Arts  to  make  a  report  on  the  development  of 
art  in  the  United  States,  and  these  hundred- 
odd  pages  are  the  result.  One  would  be  tempt- 
ed to  believe,  at  first,  that  the  report  might 
have  been  written  without  crossing  the  Atlan- 
tic,  for  the  only  American  painters  the  author 
seems  to  know  well  are  those  who  have  taken 
up  a  permanent  residence  abroad.  About  the 
home-keeping  talents  he  makes  strange  blun- 
ders, such  as  transforming  J.  Alden  Weir  into 
**Alden  Wierd,"  calling  George  Fuller  a 
**  strict  imitator  of  the  French  manner,**  and 
Inness  a  **  faithful  translator  of  the  familiar 
sites  of  his  own  country.**  Bir.  D.  W.  Tryon 
would  perhaps  be  surprised  to  find  himself 
labelled  as  a  follower  of  Inness,  and  Mr.  Wins- 
low  Homer  would  certainly  find  some  difficul- 
ty in  recognizing  himself  in  the  following  de- 
scription : 

*'  Clever  at  bringing  before  us  in  characteris- 
tic compositions  that  Uvely  people,  the  negroes, 
and  the  curious  aspects  or  their  easy  manners, 
he  is  also  fond  of  evoking,  in  a  fabulous  world, 
strange  scenes  created  by  his  imagination.** 

If  Mr.  Bing  knows  little  about  American 
painting,  he  knows  and  cares  less  about  our 
sculpture.  After  mentioning  an  *' equestrian 
statue  of  Washington"  by  Greenough,  unknown 
to  the  rest  of  the  world,  he  disposes  of  contem- 
porary sculptors,  *les  Ward,  Launt  Thompson, 
Saint-Gaudens,  Warner,  MacMonnies,  Her- 
bert Adams,'*  in  one  sentence  as  having  not 
yet  learned  »»the  art  of  animating  gesture  in  a 
natural  manner,  or  of  expressing  in  the  fea- 
tures the  sentiments  of  the  soul.**  It  is  when 
Mr.  Bing  begins  to  deal  with  architecture  thai 
he  reveals  the  reason  of  his  attitude.  He  is 
one  of  those  who  come  to  the  consideration  of 


American  art  with  a  fixed  notion  that  a  new 
people  should  produce  something  entirely  new, 
and  that  all  art  which  resembles  what  has 
been  done  in  other  countries  is  therefore  negli- 
gible. In  our  architecture  he  finds  this  new 
thing,  and  the  cold  critic  of  our  painting  and 
sculpture  becomes  the  enthnsiastio  admirer  of 
those  high  buildings  which  we,  in  our  igno 
ranoe  of  what  we  have  done  best  worth  the  do- 
ing, are  trying  to  suppress  by  act  of  legisla- 
ture. Of  one  other  form  of  American  art  is 
M.  Bing,  and  with  more  reason,  a  hearty  ad- 
mirer; but  his  praises  of  American  stained- 
glass  are,  however  unjustly,  likely  to  be  dis- 
counted as  possibly  infiuenced  by  his  commer. 
oial  relations  with  a  well-known  firm  of  manu- 
facturers, 

Mr.  Pennell  writes  of  the  "illustration  of 
books**  with  the  authority  of  an  accomplished 
illustrator,  and  as  he  is  here  giving  practical 
instruction  to  students  of  his  own  art,  his 
knowledge  is  valuable.  In  his  preface  he 
quotes,  from  a  letter  of  Mr.  Lewis  Fraser,  of 
the  OetUury^s  art  management,  that  gentle- 
man's opinion  that  it  is  "a  good,  practical 
book,  likely  to  be  of  much  use  to  the  young 
illustrator,  and  save  the  art  editor  many  a 
pang  and  many  a  sorrow.**  No  one  should 
know  better  than  Mr.  Fraser  what  is  wanted, 
and  his  endorsement  is  better  than  anything 
we  could  say.  There  are  eleven  lectures  in  the 
volume,  dealing  with  the  question,  "  What  is 
illustration ?**  with  "the  equipment  of  the 
illustrator,**  "  methods  of  drawing  for  repro- 
duction in  line  **  and  "  the  reproduction  of 
line  drawings,**  "  the  making  of  wash  draw- 
ings and  their  reproduction  by  mechanical 
process,**  "the  reproduction  of  drawings  by 
wood  engraving,**  "lithography**  and  "etch- 
ing,** "the  printing  of  etchings,**  "photogra- 
vure and  photo-lithography,**  and  "making 
ready  for  the  printing-press.**  Under  each  of 
these  heads  a  good  deal  of  technical  informa- 
tion will  be  found,  while  the  author*s  opinions 
are  little  obtruded. 

'The Science  of  Drawing  in  Art*  is  a  dis- 
course on  the  proper  method  of  teaching  draw- 
ing to  beginners,  and  the  theoretic  part,  which 
deals  with  the  laws  of  optics  and  of  perspec- 
tive and  their  application  to  primary  instruc- 
tion in  drawing,  contains  much  that  is  sound 
and  that  might  prove  useful.  Unfortunately, 
the  merits  of  a  particular  mechanical  aid  to  the 
study  of  form  in  its  perspective  representation 
are  early  insisted  upon,  and  the  praise  of  this 
invention  and  detailed  instruction  in  its  use 
soon  become  the  dominant  note  of  the  book. 
The  niaeliine  is  an  ingenious  one,  and  its  occa- 
sional use  by  an  intelligent  teacher  might  be 
beneficial,  Uiough  we  are  inclined  to  doubt  the 
efficacy  of  such  appliances,  but  insistence  upon 
it  again  and  again  savors  of  the  disguised  ad- 
vertisement. 


TJie  Works  of  Joseph  Butler,  Edited  by  the 
Bight  Hon.  W.  E.  Gladstone.  2  vols.  Ox. 
ford  :  Clarendon  Press ;  New  York :  Mao- 


Thib  fruit  of  Mr.  Gladstone*s  old  age  has  been 
many  years  ripening.  In  a  letter  to  Bfr.  James 
Knowles,  dated  November  9, 1878,  and  printed 
in  the  Spectator  of  December  18, 1873,  he  said: 
"Bishop  Butler  taught  me,  forty-five  years 
ago,  to  suspend  my  judgment  on  things  I  knew 
I  did  not  understand.  Even  with  his  aid  I 
may  often  have  been  wrong ;  without  him  I 
think  I  never  should  have  been  right.  And 
oh  1  that  this  age  knew  the  treasure  it  pos- 
sesses in  him,  and  neglects.**  A  devotion  of 
sixty-eight  years  may  well  culminate  in  an 


edition  so  complete  and  sumptuous  as  the  pre- 
sent. All  that  printer's  art  and  editor's  pains 
can  do  to  set  forth  and  make  attractive  the 
work  of  a  shrinking  and  lonely  student,  has 
now  been  done. 

In  addition  to  reproducing  Butler's  purest 
text,  and  providing  full  indexes  and  occasional 
notes,  BCr.  Gladstone  has  elaborately  "got  up** 
the  *  Analogy*  and  the  *  Sermons'  after  the  style 
of  a  skilled  coach*s  preparation  of  Aristotle. 
Bagehot  remarks  that,  "without  detracting 
for  a  moment  from  Butter's  real  merit,  it  may 
be  allowed  that  some  of  his  influence,  especial- 
ly  that  which  he  enjoys  in  the  English  univei^ 
sities,  is  partially  due  to  that  obscurity  of 
style  which  renders  his  writings  such  apt  exeiv 
clses  for  the  critical  intellect,  which  makes  the 
truth  when  found  seem  more  valuable  from 
the  difficulty  of  finding  it,  and  gives  scope  for 
an  able  lecturer  to  elucidate,  annotate,  and 
expound.**  One  might  almost  think  the  sub- 
headings with  which  Mr.  Gladstone  breaks 
up  these  pages  to  be  largely  undergraduate 
annotations,  made  with  the  fear  of  the  exami- 
ners before  the  eyes,  so  anxious  are  they  to 
show  you  just  how  the  argument  is  getting  on, 
to  put  you  on  your  guard  against  supposing 
that  something  is  being  proved  which  is  not, 
to  resume  and  anticipate  the  course  of  the  rea- 
soning. In  their  form  and  flavor,  moreover, 
there  is  something  unmistakably  donnish,  as 
may  be  inferred  from  these  specimen  titles  of 
sections:  "Sum  of  results  on  behalf  of  well- 
doing  as  such  acx«c";  **God  takes  the  side  of 
the  vir  bonus**;  "To  presume  extinction  at 
death  is  voAAaxAc  irrational.*'  It  would  seem 
that  minds  in  need  of  such  sign-i)oets  would 
need  a  more  legible  lettering,  while  those 
quick  to  take  in  the  polyglot  directions  could 
find  the  road  without  any  directions.  At  any 
rate,  and  however  it  may  be  with  the  *  Analo- 
gy *  as  still  perhaps  a  text>book  to  be  "  got  up,** 
the  same  process  carried  over  into  the  second 
volume  certainly  adds  a  new  terror  to  sermons. 
In  place  of  this  departure  from  Butler*s  own 
edition,  we  think  a  more  useful  one  would  have 
been  the  modernizing  of  his  punctuation,  which 
often  puszles  like  an  obscurity  of  thought. 
The  following  sentence,  for  example,  taken 
from  the  "advertisement**  to  the  'Analogy,* 
will  show  how  much  present-day  controver- 
sialists  have  gained  in  punctuation  if  not  in 
modesty:  "On  the  contrary,  thus  much,  at 
least,  will  be  here  found,  not  taken  for  granted, 
but  proved,  that  any  reasonable  man,  who 
will  thoroughly  consider  the  matter,  may  be 
as  much  assured,  as  he  is  of  his  own  being,  that 
it  is  not,  however,  so  clear  a  case,  that  there 
is  nothing  in  it.** 

What  may  be  called  Mr.  Glad8tone*s  prole- 
gomena to  Butler  he  has  reserved,  he  inti- 
mates, for  a  third  volume,  of  Essays^  shortly  to 
be  published.  The  scattered  notes  which  he 
has  here  provided  afm  at  little  except  illumi- 
nation of  the  text  by  Scriptural  and  patristic 
citations  and  by  references  to  Aristotle.  Oc- 
casionally w«  are  given  a  genuine  bit  of  scho- 
lastic refining,  as  in  the  explanation  of  Butler's 
undeniable  confusion  of  "  suffering "  and 
"  punishment.**  But  all  this  seems  going  un- 
necessarily far  to  get  light  on  Butler.  He  had 
his  eye  fixed  on  the  arrogant  deistic  arguments 
of  the  early  eighteenth  century.  The  wh<de 
*  Analogy,*  in  fact,  is  a  huge  argument  ear  eon* 
eessis.  Granting  all  you  say,  he  retorted  upon 
the  deists,  about  "  an  intelligent  Author  of  na- 
ture and  natural  Governor  of  the  world,"  I 
will  force  you  to  admit  that  revealed  re- 
ligion is  no  more  unreasonable  than  natural 
religion.  No  doubt  he  did  it.  His  s^xgatamA 
was  at  the  time  immensely  soooessfoL    Bt 


March  19,  1896] 


Tlie   iTSTation. 


^41 


oloMd  tlM  mootbt  tbatlM  meaDt  to  dote.  With 
the  nltimat*  qomUooM  that  onderlia  both  hit 
podtioii  and  that  of  the  deltti,  he  did  not  oon- 
eem  himteU.  Probably  he  waa  not  Tiridly 
oosaoioiis  that  thare  were  raob  qoettionf.  It 
has  been  said  that,  bedde  Hobbea  or  Home  or 
Jonathan  Edwards,  he  was  but  a  cblid  in  me- 
taphysics. His  great,  his  absorbing  aim  was 
to  answer  objections  against  CbritUanitj.  It 
Is  almost  pathetic  to  find  him,  in  his  sermon 
**Upon  the  Ignorance  6f  Man,**  dwelling  on 
the  oonsolation  that,  anyhow,  *'  our  ignorance 
is\he  proper  anmotr  to  many  things  wliich  are 
called  objeotiona  against  religion.**  He  was 
the  great  answerer  of  contemporary  objec- 
tions; and  a  mind  saturated,  like  Leslie  8t*> 
pbeo*s,  in  the  literatore  of  contemporary  ob- 
jection, has  better  illnstratiTe  and  explanatory 
resooroes  to  draw  apoo  than  Mr.  Gladstone's 
general  theological  stores. 

The  fact  that,  as  Mr.  Stephen  has  recently 
obeerred,  the  'Analogy  *  has  made  no  impres- 
sion on  European  thooght,  howeyer  esteemed 
in  England,  howerer  Tenerated  at  Oxford,  is 
no  doubt  dne  In  part  to  its  immediate  and 
practical  i>orpoee.  It  aimed  simply  to  show 
that,  jndged  by  the  standards  which  the  deists 
called  rational,  Christianity  was  not  irration- 
al. Bat  Lsssing  points  to  the  deeper  inquiries 
which  necessarily  lie  behind  Butler's,  when  he 
asks,  Does,  then,  the  reasonableness  of  Chris- 
tianity lie  wholly  in  Its  being  not  unreasonable? 
(**Also  bestaht  die  ganae  Vernunftm&sslgkeit 
der  chrlstllchen  Religion  darin,  dass  sie  nlcht 
unTcmunftig  istf  **)  To  this  the  'Analogy  *  has 
little  to  say.  MoreoTer,  the  extension  of  its 
argument  beyond  its  first  intention  has  proved 
dangerona.  Pitt  is  not  the  only  man  to  think 
it  conjures  more  scepticism  than  it  lays.  If 
revealed  religion  Is  so  completely  analogous  to 
natural,  what  becomes  of  the  evidence  that  it 
has  been  revealed  at  all  f  The  battle-ground 
has  greatly  shifted  since  Butler's  day,  and  the 
analogy  of  Christianity  to  nature>religions  Is 
now  perhaps  the  most  powerful  argument  to 
reduce  all  alike  to  one  leveL  Biltler  used 
analogy  as  a  lever  to  bring  Christianity  up  to  the 
rational  level  of  deism ;  the  modem  study  of 
comparative  religion  finds  analogy  pulling  it 
down  and  divesting  it  of  Its  supernatural  at 
tributes. 

But,  whatever  the  fate  of  Butler's  argu- 
ments, the  attractiveness  of  his  cautious,  frank, 
and  serious  mind  must  long  remain.  Never 
was  controversialist  fairer.  He  sets  up  no  men 
of  straw.  The  objections  as  he  states  them 
often  seem  more  deadly  than  as  they  were 
originally  preeented.  He  will  glide  over  no 
difllculty.  *'  It  Is  his  unique  distinction  among 
theologians  that,  whUe  writhing  in  the  jaws  of 
a  dilemma,  he  refrains  from  positively  denying 
that  any  dilemma  exists.'*  Hit  open-minded- 
ness»  his  modes^,  bis  moral  earnestness,  his 
enthronement  of  conscience  in  theory  and  in 
life,  give  him  a  personality  of  his  own.  Cha- 
racteristic phrases  show  the  manner  of  man  he 
was.  **  Everything  is  what  it  is,  and  not  an- 
other thing.**  A  writer  Is  *'not  to  form  or  ac 
oomoKMlate,  but  to  state  things  as  he  finds 
them.**  "  Things  and  actions  are  what  they 
are,  and  the  consequences  of  them  will  be  what 
they  will  be;  why,  then,  should  we  desire  to  be 
deceived f**  ''For,  af Ur  all,  that  which  is 
true  must  be  admitted,  though  it  should  show 
us  the  shortness  of  our  faculties.**  One  wonders 
what  would  have  been  the  fate  of  such  an 
honest  theologian  turned  looee  in  the  modem 
world  with  all  its  facta  undreamed  of  in  his 
phUoeopby.  We  suspect  It  would  have  been 
somethiDg  other  than  to  have  left  an  unplea- 
sant suspicion  that  he  died  a  Papist. 


Jn  New  England  FMU  and  Wood*,  By  Row- 
land B.  Robinson.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 
1806. 

It  Is  hard  to  say  whether  these  diarming 
sketches  appeal  more  to  the  dweller  In  the 
town  or  in  the  country.  As  Rlchter  said  of 
Music,  they  speak,  to  thoee  whose  lives  are 
pent  up  within  walls  of  masonry,  of  things 
that  they  have  not  seen  and  shall  not  see;  for 
Nature  is  shy  with  casual  acquaintances  and 
reveals  herself  only  to  her  constant  companions. 
Tet  few  of  thoee  who  spend  their  lives  In  the 
country  have  seen  the  sights  that  this  author 
has  seen,  or  heard  what  be  has  heard.  We  need 
not  read  far  to  be  convinced  that  he  may  justly 
claim  to  have  been  bom  in  Arcadia.  He  has 
drawn  the  chipmunk  to  him  with  his  music,  and 
enticed  him  to  frolic  with  a  herd*s>gra8s  head 
gently  moved  before  him.  He  has  seen  the  toads, 
thought  voiceless  by  common  mortals,  making 
melody  under  the  influence  of  springtime  and 
love.  The  ways  of  many  beasts  and  birds  are 
known  to  him,  and  he  has  only  gentle  words 
for  even  the  most  despised  among  them.  He 
has  not  scorned  the  friendship  of  the  bumble 
bull-frog,  and  tells  us  bow  he  has  tickled  him 
first  with  a  rush  and  then  with  fingertips 
while  "his  fiabby  sides  swelled  with  fulness  of 
enjoyment,  his  blinking  eyes  grew  dreamy, 
and  the  comers  of  his  blandly  expressionless 
mouth  almost  curved  upwards  with  an  elusive 
smile.**  He  is  a  sportsman,  and  It  Is  easy  to 
see  that  his  rod  and  gun  have  been  as  much  a 
part  of  him  as  his  clothes  or  his  books,  and  yet 
he  earnestly  entreaty  his  fallow.fportsmeu  to 
restrain  the  impulse  to  kill  with  larger  and 
kindlier  thought. 

Nevertheless,  Mr.  Robinson  knows  the 
strange  power  of  the  sportsman's  Instinct,  and 
has  felt  the  quickening  of  the  blood  when 
game  Is  at  hand,  as  well  appears  when  he  dis- 
courses of  anglers.  There  are  contemplative 
anglers,  as  out  of  reverence  to  the  master  of 
the  craft  he  admits; 

"  but  how  Is  it  with  him  who  comes  stealing 
along  with  such  light  tread  that  It  scarcely 
crushes  the  violets  or  shakes  the  dew-drops 
from  the  ferns,  and  casts  his  files  with  such 
precise  skill  upon  the  very  hand*s-breadth  of 
water  that  gives  most  promise  to  his  experi- 
enced eve  f  .  .  .  Eye  and  ear  and  every 
organ  of  sense  are  intent  upon  the  sport  for 
which  he  came.  He  sees  only  the  images  of 
the  clouds,  no  branch  but  that  which  impedes 
him  or  offers  oover  to  his  stealthy  approach. 
His  ear  is  more  alert  for  the  splash  of  fishes 
than  for  bird  songs.  With  his  senses  go  all  his 
thoughts,  and  float  not  away  In  day-dreams. 
Howsoever  much  he  loves  her,  for  the  time 
while  he  hath  rod  in  hand  Mother  Nature  is  a 
flshwoman,  and  he  prays  that  she  may  deal 
generouslv  with  him.  Though  he  be  a  parson, 
his  thoughts  tend  not  to  migion;  though  a 
savant,  not  to  science;  though  a  statesman,  not 
to  politics;  though  an  artist,  to  no  art  save  the 
art  of  angling.  So  far  removed  from  all  these 
while  he  casts  his  fly  or  guides  his  minnow, 
how  much  further  is  his  soul  from  all  but  the 
matter  in  hand  when  a  fish  has  taken  the  one 
or  the  other,  and  all  his  skill  is  Uxed  to  the 
utmost  to  bring  his  victim  to  creeL  Heresy 
and  paganism  may  prevail,  the  light  of  science 
be  quenched,  the  country  go  to  the  dogs,  pic- 
tures go  nnpainted  and  statues  unmoulaed,  till 
he  has  saved  this  fish.** 

The  essays  on  the  characteristics  of  the 
months  and  seasons  of  the  year  are  marked 
with  exquisite  appreciation,  and  impart  to  the 
reader  in  a  wonderful  degree  that  strange  sense 
of  the  onward  movement  of  life,  animate  and 
inanimate,  which  is  properly  felt  only  by  those 
who  pass  their  days  out  of  doors.  We  should 
be  glad  to  quote  from  them,  but  must  content 
ourselvee  with  noting  the  true  VlrgUian  feeling 
which  is  displayed  in  the  choice  of  epithets.  If 
they  are  sometlmee  cloying,  it  Is  not  from  In- 


eptness,  but  from  abundance.  But  to  many 
readers  the  brief  biographies  of  the  humbler 
sort  of  animals,  those  despised  by  the  sports- 
man and  frowned  on  by  the  farmer,  will  be 
not  the  least  pleasing  parts  of  the  book.  Alto- 
gether we  fe^  no  hesitation  in  advising  both 
those  who  love  Nature  and  those  who  would 
learn  how  to  love  her,  to  possess  themselves  of 
this  guide.  Every  one  who  reads  these  pages, 
and  thoee  who  have  read  the  essays  in  Fore§t 
and  Stream^  where  moat  of  them  have  ap- 
peared, will  suffer  a  thrill  of  pain  at  learning 
that  a  curtain  of  darkness  now  prevents  the 
author  from  beholding  the  scenes  that  he  so 
tenderly  appreciated,  and  the  humble  "ac« 
quaintances  with  whom  he  was  once  on  fami- 
Uar  terms,  but  who  now  and  hereafter  can  only 
be  memories.**  Tet  if  the  power  of  vision  is 
gone  from  him,  let  him  take  comfort  in  the 
thought  that  he  has  passed  it  on,  and  that 
many  will  see  who  but  for  bis  eyes  would  have 
been  blind. 


Appenxell:  Pure  Democracy  and  Pastoral  Life 
in  Inner-Rhoden.  A  Swiss  Study.  By  Ir- 
ving  B.  Riohman,  Consul-General  of  the 
United  SUtes  to  Switcerland.  With  maps. 
Longmans,  Green  &  Co.  1895. 
Swiss  constitutional  history  deeerves  all  the 
attention  which  is  paid  it,  and  the  conservative 
democracy  of  the  pastoral  cantons  ought  not 
to  be  left  out  of  sight  for  the  sake  of  experi- 
ments like  the  Initiative  and  the  Referendum. 
"Totns  mundus  se  stultisat  novas  constitu- 
tiones  demandans,**  said  Francis  IL  of  Austria 
in  the  early  part  of  the  century,  and  the  ten- 
dency has  not  yet  been  checked.  Meantime 
the  cantons  have  changed  their  constitutions, 
too,  but  without  losing  that  hold  on  the  past 
which  is  the  surest  guarantee  of  sound  political 
growths  We  have  heard  that,  In  the  canton 
of  UrI,  people  who  deny  the  authenticity  of 
the  Tell  story  are  put  in  the  stocks.  This,  per- 
haps, Is  a  little  too  conservative,  but,  at  pre- 
sent, mankind  if  in  no  danger  of  disturbing  the 
equipoise  by  such  reactionary  freaks.  Uri,  it 
must  be  remembered,  is  traversed  by  an  in- 
ternational railway,  the  St-Gotthard.  What 
must  we  expect  from  Appensell  Inner-Rhoden, 
which  has  been  for  an  equal  length  of  time  a 
paradise  of  the  Capuchins,  and  is  approached 
only  by  a  Zweigbahn  of  unusual  slowness? 
With  Uri  and  Unterwalden  Obwald  it  forms  a 
group  of  conununlties  where  conservative  de- 
mocracy can  be  better  studied  than  anywhere 
elM  In  the  world. 

Mr.  Ricbman's  study  of  pure  democracy  and 
pastoral  life  in  Inner-Rhoden  seeks  its  justifi- 
cation in  a  saying  of  Prof.  D&ndliker:  "The 
history  of  this  land  forms  a  peculiar  link  in  the 
great  chain  of  popular  risings  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  It  shows  more  essentially  than  does 
even  the  history  of  the  Forest  Cantons  the 
contrast  between  the  aristocracy  and  the  peo- 
ple, between  the  rulers  and  the  ruled.*'  Tak- 
ing  this  as  his  point  of  departure,  Mr.  Rich- 
man  proceeds  to  give  us  a  book  which  is  a-  de- 
cided success.  Life  in  the  days  of  Hilpa  and 
Shalum  might  have  enabled  one  to  read 
Zellweger's  'Geschichte  des  Appenaellischen 
Voikes*  and  the  other  voluminous  cantonal 
historiee  of  Switserland.  As  it  is,  the  thing 
cannot  be  done,  and  were  it  not  for  Blr.  Rich, 
man  we  should  probably  know  nothing  at  all 
about  Appensell  save  what  is  to  be  gathered 
from  8cheffel*s  story  of  '  Ekkehard  *  and  pic< 
turtsque  descriptions  of  Landsgemeinden.  We 
do  not  mean  to  Imply  that  Mr.  Ricbman 
is  a  mere  compiler.  He  knows  Appensell 
personally,  his  comparisons  and  oontrasU  are 


342 


TJtie    INTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1603 


inggestiTe,  and  he  obeerveB  a  just  sense  of  pro- 
portion in  handling  his  subject. 

The  book  is  divided  into  three  parts:  (1.) 
Scenery  and  Climate.  (2.)  History.  (8.)  Ck>n- 
temporary  Life.  Mr.  Richman  gives  more 
space  to  political  growth  and  institutions  than 
to  the  domestic  and  agricultural  branches  of 
bis  subject;  but  his  interests  are  not  exclusive- 
ly political,  and  the  alternative  title,  *'  A  Swiss 
Study/'  does  not  claim  too. much.  He  makes 
the  Appenzellers  stand  out  as  they  are^  from 
the  poor  burgees,  who  has  a  share  in  the  Ried, 
up  to  Herr  Landamann  Sonderegger.  His  de- 
scription of  the  Suter  case  is  the  most  graphic 
piece  of  writing  in  the  book,  and  his  discos, 
sion  of  the  Mark  system  the  most  valuable. 
Slips  are  few  and  unimportant.  A  few,  how- 
ever, may  be  mentioned.  The  111  of  the  Arl- 
berg  does  not  flow  into  the  Rhine  at  right  an- 
gles. One  should  not  state  authoritatively 
that  the  Rhetians  are  a  branch  of  the  Tuscan 
race.  S&mbtiser  sea  is  doubtless  a  slip  of  the 
pen.  Mr.  Richman,  who  is  a  great  stickler 
for  German  forms,  should  not  write  Otho  the 
Great  He  calls  Rudolf  of  Habsburg  King  of 
Germany,  rather  than  Holy  Roman  Emperor, 
whereas  he  uses  the  imperial  title  in  the  case 
of  most  of  the  German  sovereigns.  Mr.  Rich- 
man  is  mistaken  if  he  supposes  that  Freeman 
described  only  the  Landsgemeinde  of  Uri.  He, 
as  well  as  Bayard  Taylor  and  Mr.  Boyd  Win- 
Chester,  has  written  of  the  one  in  the  Ausser- 
Rhoden  at  Trogen. 

It  will  be  seen  at  a  glance  that  these  errors 
are  microscopic,  and  there  are  no  more  serious 
ones.  The  three  historical  maps  are  very  use- 
ful. Why  do  not  all  books  of  this  sort  have 
such  maps  ?  We  should  also  have  welcomed  a 
photograph  of  the  distinctive  head  drdss  worn 
by  the  Appenzell  women.  It  and  the  Capu. 
chins  at  the  Landsgemeinde  are  the  two  things 
which  take  the  traveller  in  Appenzell  most  di- 
recUy  back  to  the  days  before  the  French  Revo- 
lution. Even  the  Swiss  of  the  French  cantons 
get  along  **san8  faire  un  cas  majeur  d'une 
logomachie."  The  French  tyi:^  of  democracy 
has  not  influenced  the  Inner-Rhoden,  and  the 
above-mentioned  emblem  reminds  us  of  the 
fact 

We  cannot  refrain  from  making  this  admira- 
ble monograph  of  Mr.  Richman  an  excuse  for 
adding  a  note  about  a  discovery  of  our  own  *  in 
^  Appenzell  Inner-Rhoden.  The  Weissbad,  one 
of  the  original  whey-cure  resorts  on  the  Sitter, 
sends  out  an  announcement  of  its  attractions 
which  is  as  funny  as  *' English  as  She  is 
Spoke.*'  It  is  a  pamphlet  of  sixteen  pages, 
written  in  the  most  serious  vein,  and  doubtless 
translated  into  all  the  tourist  languages.  We 
subjoin  three  extracts  : 

'*The  friend  of  the  history  of  the  life  of  na- 
tions will  be  astonished  to  flnd  here  a  people  of 
mountaineers  that  though  so  near  the  great 
arteries  of  trade  lives  as  retiredly  and  simply, 
as  originally  and  naturally  as  the  inhabitant 
of  the  town  knows  only  from  historic  tradition 
of  our  ancestors." 

**The  Weissbad  offers  also  the  best  oc- 
casion to  the  cure-like  usage  of  the  cow's 
milk,  of  the  goat's  milk,  and  in  our  times 
also  of  the  buttermilk  so  effective  in  many 
cases.  An  authority  writes:  Many  guests 
in  the  Weissbad  who  cannot  or  only  with 
aversion  drink  neither  cow's  nor  goat's  milk  in 
pure  state  in  the  flat  land  and  in  the  most  low 
grounds,  sip  here  with  pleasure,  and  the  best 
succees  the  substantial,  aromatically  smelling 
milk  of  the  Alps  that  owes  its  origin  not  to  the 
watery  grass  of  the  plain  or  even  to  the  feed- 
ing in  the  stable  with  every  sort  of  cheap  pro- 
ducts of  agriculture  without  value,  but  only  to 
the  dry  aromatic  herbs  of  the  Alps  and  to 
flowers  and  every  kind  of  buds  and  to  the  ten- 
der resinous  sprouU  of  pines  which  the  free 
going  animals  seek  out  of  the  less  vigorous 
vegetation  in  a  free  choice^  in  a  slow,  natural 


feeding,  with  a  rapid  changing  of  the  sub- 
stances, in  a  continual  motion." 

**  It  is  a  quite  peculiarly  charming  place,  a 
most  pleasing  spot  of  the  earth  where  the 
Weissbad  is  situated.  It  is  a  whey-place  of 
the  true  stamps  Already  with  the  coming  in 
vogue  of  the  whey-cures,  it  has  known  to  pro- 
cure a  very  good  reputation  and  to  keep  it 
without  interruption,  and  it  has  well  deserved 
it.  Amons  the  guests  there  is  an  unconstrain- 
ed agreeable  commerce  far  from  that  stork- 
like stiffness  which  poisons  the  air  in  many 
such  establishments.  The  proprietors  neglect 
no  occasion  to  render  the  sojourn  in  their  estat>- 
lishment  agreeable  to  their  guests  and  care 
earnestly  for  the  wants  of  every  one.  Every 
day  brings  new  amusements,  and  he  whose  end 
of  the  cure  has  irrevocably  come  on,  parts  only 
with  difficulty  from  the  society  in  the  Weiss- 
bad that  has  become  a  large  family  to  him." 

We  confidently  claim  that  this  Appenzell 
English  does  not  suffer  by  comparison  with  the 
extracts  published  by  the  Harvard  Conmiittec. 


An  Advanced  History  of  England,  from  the 
Earliest  Times  to  the  Present  Day.  By 
Cyril  Ransome,  M.A.,  Professor  of  Modern 
History  and  English  Literature  in  the  York- 
shire College,  Victoria  University.  With 
maps  and  plans.  Macmillan.  1895.  Pp. 
XX,  1060. 

When  Alice  in  Wonderland  found  herself  the 
centre  of  a  dripping  and  draggled  menagerie, 
eager  to  get  dry  by  any  means,  the  Mouse 
commanded  attention  while  it  recited  **the 
driest  thing  I  know,"  which  proved  to  t>e  a 
Child's  History  o(  the  Norman  Conquest.  It 
would  seem  that  in  the  earlier  parts  of  Eng- 
lish history  Mr.  Ransome  had  emulated  this 
harangue,  for  he  has  reduced  them  to  a  very 
moderate  comp%88  by  the  process  of  leaving 
out  every  anecdote,  authentic  or  not,  which 
gives  life  to  bygone  ages.  In  whichever  of 
the  two  ways  offered  by  him  we  take  his  book 
•—an  **  advanced  "  treatise  for  those  who  have 
already  studied  his  *  Elements'  and  'Outlines,' 
or  a  convenient  compend  for  general  readers- 
he  is  so  determined  to  admit  none  but  the 
latest  lights  that  he  is  often  very  dim.  A  more 
jejune  and  unsympathetic  account  of  Alfred 
could  hardly  be. 

As  he  draws  near  later  times,  his  narrative  is 
better;  and  particularly  of  his  battles  there  are 
clear  descriptions  and  useful  plans.  He  aims 
particularly  at  portraying  **  character,"  and 
asks  special  attention  thereto.  Yet,  besides 
Alfred,  several  persons  of  the  first  eminence,  as 
Edward  I.  and  Hampden,  find  but  dull  por- 
trayal, and  other  of  his  judgments  are,  to  say 
the  least  paradoxicaL  When  E!d  wy  is  dragged 
back  to  the  brutalities  of  the  wedding  banquet 
by  Dunstan,  he  is  only  a  petulant  boy,  and  the 
arch-monk  Is  a  wise  statesman;  but  when  Wil- 
liam Ruf  us  is  under  discussion,  we  are  told  to 
distrust  the  traditional  blackness  of  his  nature 
because  the  monks  were  his  chroniclers.  To 
say  King  John's  character  is  **not  easy  to 
draw";  that  Cromwell  was  an  opportunist 
who  never  saw  far  ahead  in  peace  or  war;  that 
Catherine  of  Braganza  was  fitted  to  make 
Charlee  an  excellent  wife,  and  her  husband  a 
man  of  consummate  ability,  sounds  strange 
enough.  Perhaps  Mr.  Ransome  is  at  his  best 
in  his  handling  of  the  Civil  War,  though  it  is 
painfully  evident  that  he  owes  his  inspiration 
to  Prof.  Gkmliner;  while  in  the  reign  of  Wil- 
liam ni.  it  is  amusing  to  see  how  he  absorbs 
and  reproduces  Macaulay  while  trying,  by  a 
few  sporadic  touches,  to  persuade  us,  and  per^ 
haps  himself,  that  he  is  original.  With  Mon- 
trose's  campaigns  in  1044  he  inserts  a  map  of 
Scotland  **  after  1608"  which  ought  to  have 
been  given  for  1745,  and  is  hardly  useful  for  an 


earlier  period.  As  far  as  the  interest  and 
judgment  of  the  book  go,  there  are  many 
places  deserving  of  praise,  such  as  the  treat- 
ment of  the  politics  of  the  times  of  North  and 
Burke;  or  of  censure,  as  the  reactionary  han- 
dling of  Clarendon's  church  legislation.  But 
as  with  Mr.  Oman's  history  a  short  time  ago,  no 
one  without  abundant  space  at  his  command 
has  room  to  discuss  Mr.  Ransome's  literary  and 
philosophical  merits  and  demerits,  preoccupied 
and  teased  as  he  mu8t*be  by  the  mistakes,  so 
unpardonable  in  a  manual  of  history,  whidi  if 
not  rigidly  accurate  is  worthless. 

To  begin  with  errors  in  proper  names,  some 
arising  from  looseness,  some  from  mi^rints, 
and  some  from  absolute  misunderstanding: 
"  The  Pilgrims  of  1620  named  their  settlement 
*  New  Plymouth ' "  (p.  498).  The  location  of  the 
first  settlement  had  been  called  Plymouth  long 
before,  and  New  Plymouth,  like  New  Hampshire 
or  New  Jersey,  was  the  name  of  the  colony. 
*<Dublin  Cathedral"  (p.524)— which  one  ?  Christ 
Church  or  8t  Patrick's  ?  Winthrop's  emigration 
is  hopelessly  confounded  with  Endicott's;  and 
the  Massachusetts  capital  is  called  '*New  Sa- 
lem "  (p.  530),  which  preposterous  name  is  re- 
peated (p.  822)  in  discussing  the  Boston  Port  Bill. 
The  Governor  of  Massachusetts  in  1696  was  not 
Sir  Harry  Vane  (p.  581),. which  is  a  blunder 
sadly  common  among  ourselves.  Arundel 
should  be  ArundeU  (p.  626),  and  Salton  Saltoun 
(p.  647).  Lady  Russell  was  not  of  the  Winches- 
ter family  (p.  680) .  Halifax  was  not  a  Marquees 
at  the  times  indicated  (684, 638) ;  Bentinck,  im- 
peached in  1701,  was  never  Duke  of  Portland, 
nor  Montague  Earl  of  Halifax  (p.  699).  Shippen 
is  spelt  Skippen  (p.  765);  Washington's  camp 
was  not  at  Great  Meadow  (p.  790),  and  the  ad- 
jacent river  was  not  named  MononAani^ela ! 
Burgojne  of  Saratoga  was  not  Sir  John  (pp. 
825,  827).  It  was  not  "Green"  who  hemmed 
in  Comwallis  at  Yorktown  (p.  881).  Cart- 
Wright  is  spelt  Cartright  (p.  851 ) .  Mackintoah 
was  not  Sir  James  when  he  defended  Peltier 
(p.  881),  Fulton's  steamer  was  not  the  CLare- 
mont  (p.  988),  and  Sherman  Crawford  is  mis- 
spelt Herman  (p.  1009).  For  false  dates,  we 
have  the  Dutch  peace  of  16(^  put  into  1606. 
The  title  of  King  of  France  was  given  up  on 
the  union  with  Ireland  January  1, 1801,  not  >• 
here  stated,  at  the  peace  of  Amiens  (p.  876). 
William  IV.  dismissed  Melbourne  in  Novem- 
ber, 1884,  not  1885  (p.  950).  and  Gladstone  tried 
to  repeal  the  paper  duty  in  I860,  not  1861 
(p.  1009). 

To  say  (p.  646)  that  Baxter  was  a  much  wor- 
thier man  thanDangerfleld,  is  like  saying  John 
Jay  was  a  much  worthier  man  than  John  the 
Painter.  Mary  of  Modena  had  given  birth  to 
living  children  before  James  Edward  (p.  65^; 
Anne's  son  was  never  created  Duke  of  Glouces- 
ter (p.  698).  The  present  reigning  house  of 
Italy  does  not  represent  Henrietta  of  Orleans 
(p.  699).  The  Act  of  Settlement  forbids  any 
foreigner,  even  if  naturalized,  to  sit  in  Par- 
liament—a serious  omission  in  this  book. 
The  silly  old  story  of  Franklin*s  coat  is  re- 
peated (p.  822).  Washington  was  forty-three, 
not  forty- two,  in  1775  (p.  825).  Lord  Ash  bar- 
ton did  not  retire  with  Fox  (p.  886).  The  Ro- 
hilla  charge  against  Hastings  was  not  adopted 
(p.  845).  It  is  true  Lord  Ellenborough's  ap- 
pointment to  the  Cabinet  '*  was  not  drawn  into 
a  precedent";  but  it  followed  the  precedent  of 
Mansfield  nearly  fifty  years  before  (p.  888). 
Like  Mr.  Oman,  Mr.  Ransome  lumps  the  Ber- 
lin decree  with  the  Milan  decree,  as  the  Mflaa 
decrees  (890).  Like  all  English  historians,  be 
names  only  the  Shannon  and  the  ChesapecUce 
in  the  War  of  1812;  be  says  Lincoln  was  elect- 
ed as  an  Abolitionist  (p.  999),  and  that  Ooft- 


March  19,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation, 


343 


fTMi  piwef!  an  act  emancipating  the  tlavee 
(p.  1000». 

It  is  ao  nngradoQi  task  to  point  oat  lucfa 
erron;  tbej  do  not  exhaust  the  list.  They  all 
ooonr  in  the  last  half  of  the  volame,  and  they 
haTe  beeo  identified  in  a  rapid  reading  and 
without  oonsnlting  any  rare  books.  The  sen- 
sation of  weariness  produced  by  their  frequent 
and  needless  occurrence  quite  unnerTes  one  for 
grappling  with  the  more  serious  questions  in 
wbidione  would  gladly  encounter  Mr.  Ran- 
some  if  he  did  not  make  one  pay  too  high  an 
entrance  fee. 


Lakes  of  North  Ammriea,    By  Israel  C.  Rus. 

seU.  Boston:  Qinn  &  Co.  1S85. 
A  8UBJSCT  of  school  study  which  is  represented 
chiefly  by  textbooks  is  manifestly  in  a  position 
far  inferior  to  that  occupied  by  one  about  which 
a  rich  and  varied  literature  has  grown  up.  It 
is  in  great  part  from  this  difference  of  position 
that  geography  tuffers  in  oomparison  with  his- 
tory or  the  daasica.  Those  who  are  interested 
in  the  elevation  of  this  great  common-school 
subject,  now  the  target  of  so  much  well-de- 
served criticism,  cannot  do  better  than  build 
up  for  it  a  foundation  of  good  books  for  gene- 
ral reading,  addressed  to  an  audience  fairly 
represented  by  the  intelligent  high  school 
teacher.  As  a  standard  of  what  such  books 
ought  to  be,  Oeikie's  'Scenery  of  Scotland* 
may  be  named,  and  KirchhoiTs  *  L&oderkuLde 
dee  Erdtbeils  Europe,*  prepared  by  various 
collaborators,  is  a  good  example  of  ContineDtal 
work.  In  thb  country,  we  have  not  as  yet 
produced  many  books  of  the  desired  kind. 
8haler*s  writings  have  hitherto  reached  further 
towards  the  goal  than  thoee  of  any  other  au 
thor;  the  National  Geographic  Monographs 
recently  established  by  the  National  Geogra- 
phic Society  of  Washington  bid  fair  to  become 
in  time  important  resources  for  studious  geo- 
graphical reading,  if  they  can  be  maintained. 
The  many  valuable  essays  in  scientific  periodi- 
cal literature  need  not  be  here  considered,  for 
they  come  to  the  attention  of  a  very  small 
number  of  the  readers  who  need  the  informa- 
tion they  preeent. 

Russell^s  *  Lakes  of  North  America*  is  at 
present  the  best  example  in  this  country  of  the 
kind  of  books  that  geography  needs.  ^  In  the 
flrwt  place,  it  is  not  a  compilation,  but  in  great 
part  the  result  of  original  study.  The  author 
is  admirably  qualified  for  bis  task,  having  had 
wide  experience  in  exploration  and  observa- 
tion all  over  our  country ;  bis  Alaskan  jour- 
neys being  probably  better  known  than  his 
studies  in  the  far  West,  by  reason  of  their  hav- 
ing served  as  the  basis  for  some  popular  maga- 
sine  articles.  It  has  happened  that  some  of  the 
subjects  particularly  assigned  to  him  while  a 
member  of  our  National  Geological  Survey 
included  various  types  of  lakes,  namely,  those 
lying  among  the  displaced  lava  blocks  of  Ore- 
gon, in  the  glaciated  caflons  of  the  Sierra  Ne- 
vada, and  in  the  desert  troughs  between  the 
mountain  ranges  of  the  Great  Basin  of  Utah 
and  Nevada.  It  is  good  fortune  forgeographi* 
cal  readers  to  have  one  so  well  equipped  by  his 
own  researches  turn  to  their  presentation  in 
popular  form. 

An  outline  of  this  book  may  be  briefly  made. 
It  opens  with  the  origin  of  the  basins  in  which 
lake  waters  may  collect ;  a  moderate  position 
Is  here  taken  on  the  most  vexed  process,  that 
of  gladal  erosion.  The  movemenu  of  lake 
water  and  the  geological  functions  of  lakes  are 
next  discussed,  thus  leading  to  an  interesting 
chapter  on  the  topography  of  lake  shares,  in 
which,  here  as  everywhere  else,  the  treatment 


must  follow  that  of  the  classic  essay  by  Gilbert, 
to  whom  Russell  dedicates  his  book.  The  rela- 
tion of  lakes  to  climatic  conditions  follows. 
This  is  particularly  important  in  our  national 
geography,  for  in  the  East  we  have  innumera- 
ble lakes  that  result  from  former  glaciation, 
while  in  the  West  many  lakes  of  the  past  have 
been  lost  through  the  aridity  of  the  existing 
climate.  In  fuller  illustration  of  the  origin 
and  functions  of  lakes,  special  histories  are 
given  of  certain  important  examples;  those 
associated  with  the  retreating  ice-sheet  in  the 
Laurentian  basin,  and  those  connected  with 
the  humid  and  arid  climates  of  the  West,  re- 
ceiving most  attention.  All  this  supplies  pre- 
cisely that  background  of  knowledge  which  the 
explorer,  traveller,  or  teacher  should  poesess, 
and  which  at  present  he  so  generally  lacks. 
The  illustrations,  mostiy  taken  from  various 
publications  of  the  Geological  Survey,  serve 
excellently  to  point  the  moral  of  the  text. 


Korean  Games,  By  Stewart  Culin.  Phila- 
delphia: University  of  Pennsylvania;  New 
York:  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co. 
Unless  we  mistake,  this  book  marks  an  epoch 
in  the  study  of  the  games  of  the  world.  It  is 
a  serious  attempt  to  lift  the  whole  subject  out 
of  the  uncertain  region  of  folk-lore  and  to  set 
it  within  the  domain  of  science.  If  we  be  per- 
mitted to  coin  a  word  to  connote  the  fact,  kai- 
rology  would  be  the  one.  Kairos  was  the 
Greek  god  of  the  nick  of  time;  and,  being  not 
a  personality,  but  the  graphic  repreeentation 
of  an  idea,  is  enough  of  an  abstraction  for  our 
purpose.  The  bas-reliefs  represent  him  as  rid- 
ing  on  winged  wheels  (or,  in  other  words,  as 
an  ancient  bicycler)  and  holding  usually  a  pair 
of  balances.  The  diction  of  Mr.  Culin,  though 
admirably  clear,  shows  a  great  many  circum- 
locutions and  instances  of  tautology  that  might 
have  been  avoided  by  adoption  of  the  term 
kairology  or  some  similar  coinage. 

The  handsomely  printed  and  lavishly  illus- 
trated volume  is  not,  as  might  be  supposed,  a 
teacher  of  Far  Oriental  pastimes,  albeit  cater- 
ers to  our  home  pleasures  may  And  here  mate- 
rial with  which  to  enrich  our  stock  of  chil- 
dren's amusements.  On  the  contrary,  here  is  a 
profound  study  of  the  significance  of  Korean 
games.  Although  Mr.  Culin  has  never  in  the 
flesh  visited  the  Far  East,  he  knows  more 
about  the  Chinese  world  of  ideas  than  most 
aliens  dwelling  in  '*  the  Chinas.**  His  previous 
monographs  on  the  methods  of  diversion  and 
for  obtaining  luck,  as  he  has  seen  them  played 
by  the  men  of  the  cue  among  us,  show  unusual 
insight  and  ability  while  working  in  the  galle- 
ries of  this  mine.  He  has  in  this  instance 
wisely  selected  the  littie  country  of  Korea  for 
illustration  and  proof  of  his  main  thesis.  In 
the  Peninsular  Kingdom  Y>rooesses  of  thought 
that  have  become  obsolete,  even  in  China,  still 
survive.  The  mythic  concepts  underlying 
Korean  culture  are  wonderfully  vivid  and 
easily  discoverable. 

So  far  from  attributing  the  origin  of  games 
to  the  inborn  tendency  of  the  human  animal, 
akin  to  that  of  the  kitten  or  puppy,  to  amuse 
itself,  Mr.  CuliUf  correctly,  we  think,  regards 
games,  not  as  c9nscious  inventions  for  pOrposes 
of  pleasure,  but  as  survivals  from  primitive 
conditions  under  which  they  originated  In 
magical  rites  and  chiefly  as  a  means  of  divi- 
nation. There  is  a  strikiog  sameness  in  the 
widely  distributed  games  of  all  nations,  inas 
much  as  they  are  based  upon  certain  concep- 
tions of  the  universe  once  common  to  all  peo- 
ples. Among  civilized  men  tbe  religious  oH- 
'  gin  of  games  is  as  popularly  forgotten  as  is  in 


Christendom  the  evolution  of  the  theatre  from 
the  church.  In  Korea  (as  in  old  Japan,  which 
borrowed  so  freely  from  her)  the  analysis  of 
the  universe,  the  enrolment  of  the  people,  di- 
vision of  the  city  into  wards  and  of  the  coun- 
try into  provinces,  classification  of  the  seasons 
of  the  year,  of  elements,  of  colors,  and  of  mu- 
sical notes  of  the  scale,  are  all  made  on  the  ba- 
sis  of  four  and  one,  that  is,  of  the  four  cardi- 
nal points  and  the  middle.  The  fairy  and  folk, 
lore  as  well  as  the  serious  literature  of  Korea 
(end  of  old  Japan  likewise)  is  saturated  with 
notions  based  on  this  concept.  Such  science  as 
the  peoples  in  the  Chinese  world  had  was  made 
by  the  assigning  all  facts  and  ideas  in  accord- 
ance with  this  *'law  of  heaven  and  earth.** 
In  the  application,  however,  of  the  formulss 
and  categories  to  things  and  thoughts,  diflBlcul- 
ties  were  encountered  in  making  the  right  as- 
signment. An  unclassified  fact,  or  the  notion 
that  was  supposed  to  represent  one,  was  just 
as  abhorrent  to  the  Chineee-minded  man  as  an 
uncorrelated  specimen  is  to  a  modem  man  of 
science.  How  to  secure  revelation,  in  particu- 
lar instances,  of  the  place  of  the  fact  or  idea  ' 
in  the  scheme  of  the  universe,  was  the  problem 
of  the  learned.  The  solution  was  usually  ar- 
rived at  by  a  resort  to  magic.  The  processes 
made  use  of  were  at  first  religious.  Gradual- 
ly, however,  as  other  methods  prevailed,  divi- 
nation became  only  an  accessory  to  religion. 
As  the  mental  climate  changed,  the  primitive 
essays  left  the  hands  of  adults  for  those  of 
children.  Nevertheless,  in  both  SZorea  and 
Japan  to-day,  worship  and  amusement  are  still 
closely  joined,  both  as  to  time  and  place  (even 
as  summer  sanctiflcation  and  sevbathlng  join 
hand  in  hand  on  the  Kew  Jersey  coasQ.  So, 
also,  the  element  of  joyousnees  was  never 
wholly  absent  from  the  actual  divination,  and 
was  especially  prominent  when  the  answer  was 
favorable  and  the  category  reached. 

Further,  in  the  games  of  children,  which,  in 
every  land,  mirror  the  more  serious  business 
of  their  elders,  the  questions  sought  to  be  an- 
swered seem  as  relatively  important  as  in  the 
religious  divination.  Hence,  to  this  day  in  the 
games  of  Korea,  as  we  know  by  reading,  and 
those  of  Japan,  which  we  have  repeatedly 
seen,  we  can  re-read  ancient  history  and  re- 
ligion. The  games,  while  retaining  much  of 
their  original  character,  often  survive  in  two 
forms— that  of  the  rite,  with  the  element  of 
luck ;  and  that  of  the  play,  for  the  sake  of 
pure  fun. 

In  Korea,  as  in  ancient  Arabia,  the  arrow  is 
the  basis  of  the  two  principal  systonsof  divina- 
tion—one  of  the  single  and  the  other  of  the 
multiple  rod  and  flat  implement.  Mr.  Culin*s 
detailed  explanations  remind  us,  and  make  very 
clear  the, reasons,  why  so  many  natives  have 
arrow  scars  on  body,  face,  and  eyes,  which 
even  foreign  surgical  science,  much  to  their 
grief  and  injured  pride,  cannot  remove.  The 
pack  of  cards  and  bundle  of  rods  (for  divina- 
tion or  gambling)  are  but  expansions  of  the 
unit  and  mystic  number.  After  the  luminous 
and  learned  Introduction,  the  text  proper  de- 
scribes more  or  less  fully  ninety-seven  Korean 
games,  with  their  variants  and  with  illustrative 
explanations  from  Japan  and  China.  This  part 
is  full  of  tempting  bits  of  information  about 
what  every  close  observer  of  child-life  in  the 
Far  East  has  seen.  It  recalls  pleasant  memo- 
ries of  the  sunny  life  of  the  children  who  live 
•o  much  in  the  open  air  of  summer,  and  who 
find  such  plentiful  diversion  when  winter  com- 
pels in-door  and  sedentary  occupations.  As  often 
as  possible,  Mr.  C'llin  attaches  to  hit  descrip- 
tions whatever  hUtoric  data,  plaunible  theory, 
or  Uterary  reference  may  be  gleaned  from  other 


344 


The   iN'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1603 


ftuthors.  One  of  tbe  most  interestiDg  chftptera 
is  that  on  Korean  chess,  about  which  Mr.  W. 
H.  Wilkinson  has  written  in  the  Korean  Re- 
potitory.  Dominoes  and  playing-cards  are 
treated  at  length  both  descriptively  and  with 
explanations  as  to  origins  by  reference  to  the 
four  points  of  the  compass.  The  indexical  mat. 
ter  is  abundant  Besides  numerous  diagrams 
are  twenty-two  Korean  plates,  many  of  them 
in  colors. 

If  the  study  of  games  can  reach  tbe  dignity 
of  sci^ce,  this  work  deserves  the  praise  of 
being  one  of  the  first  contributions  to  kairology 
made  in  this  country.  Despite  the  lack  of  the 
promised  contribution  which  was  to  have  been 
furnished  by  Mr.  Frank  Cushiog,  this  work  is 
complete  in  itself.  Mr.  Gushing  expects  to  ex- 
pand his  running  comparison  of  the  games  of 
the  two  continents  (America  and  Asia)  into  a 
volume  more  or  less  like  the  present,  on  Ame- 
rican games  in  general. 


Krishna  Kanta'a  Will  By  Bankim  Chandra 
Chatterjee.  Translated  by  Miriam  8.  Knight. 
London:  T.Fisher  Unwin.  1896.  Pp.264. 
The  wealth  of  modem  Bengali  literature,  the 
curious  product  of  the  imposition  of  modem 
and  European  ideas  upon  an  ancient  and 
Asiatic  people,  is  hardly  realized  at  the  pre- 
sent time.  It  is  much  the  fashion,  even  in  ad- 
ministrative circles  in  India,  for  Anglo-Indians 
to  sneer  at  the  inhabitants  of  Lower  Bengal 
who  lead  busy  and  laborious  lives  round  about 
tbe  fertile  delta  of  the  Ganges  River.  Mr. 
Kipling,  for  instance,  whose  point  of.  view  of 
things  Indian  has  been  influenced  by  his  resi 
deooe  in  the  Punjab,  and  who  feels  the  con- 
tempt of  the  Punjabis  for  the  unwarlike  Ben- 
galis, delights  in  representing  Bengali  charac- 
ters in  his  stories  and  in  his  poems  as  behaving 
in  the  most  undignified  manner.  It  is  true  that 
the  Bengalis  have  no  love  for  war,  and  that 
they  form  a  race  of  peaceful  cultivators  and 
merchants;  their  fear  of  pain  is  instinctive  and 
exaggerated,  though  they  do  not  fear  death; 
•cmd  they  constantly  have  recourse  to  the  wea- 
pon of  the  weak,  dissimulation,  and  have  thus 
gained  the  unenviable  reputation  of  being  a 
race  of  liars.  Bat  though  their  physical  frames 
are  weak  and  their  dispositions  unwarlike,  the 
Bengalis  are  intellectually  by  far  the  quickest, 
the  most  versatile,  and  the  most  assimilative 
of  Western  culture  of  all  the  peoples  of  India. 
The  spread  of  Western  ideas  through  fami. 
liarity  with  English  books  has  not  extinguished 
Bengali  literature,  as  had  been  expected  by 
some  of  the  statesmen  who  opposed  Macaulay's 
scheme  of  Anglicizing  Indian  educatiop;  on  the 
contrary,  there  has  been  of  recent  years  a  vast 
revival  of  Bengali  vemaonlar  literature,  both 
in  prose  and  in  verse.  The  language  has  been 
purified  and  developed,  and  has  been  made  a 
fitting  instrument  for  the  expression  of  more 
complicated  thoughts  and  emotions  than  it  was 
before.  Modem  Bengali  literature  is  especial- 
ly rich  in  works  of  the  imagination.  Poetry, 
the  drama  and  fiction  make  up  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  1,300  books  annually  published 
in  the  province  of  Lower  BengaL  Of  the 
poems  and  plays  it  is  difficult  to  judge  because 
of  the.  absence  of  translations  into  English, 
but  several  Bengali  novels  have  now  been 
made  accessible  in  translation,  and  it  is  possible 
to  form  some  idea  of  Bengali  fiction. 

Bankim  Chandra  Chatterjee  has  been  ac 
knowledged  by  all  his  contemporaries  as  the 
most  distinguished  of  the  modem  Bengali 
novelists.  He  was  a  typical  Bengali  Babu,  was 
educated  at  the  Hugli  College,  graduated  at 
Calcutta  University,  and  entered  the  Oovem- 


ment  service.  He  rose  to  the  rank  of  a  Depu- 
ty Magistrate  and  Collector,  received  the  title 
of  Rai  Bahadur,  and  was  made  a  C.  I.  E.  His 
Government  duties  left  him  leisure  to  pursue  a 
busy  literary  life,  and  he  had  published  a  large 
aumber  of  volumes  when  his  lamented  death 
occurred  at  the  age  of  fifty  seven  in  May,  1894. 
'  Krishna  Kanta's  WiU '  is  the  fourth  of  Chat- 
terjee^s  novels  that  have  been  translated  into 
English,  and  it  is  an  excellent  ^ype  of  the  au- 
thor's strength  and  weakness.  To  Western 
minds,  the  plot  may  seem  somewhat  weak,  not 
from  lack  of  striking  incident,  for  there  are  a 
murder,  the  forgery  and  theft  of  a  will,  and 
other  complications,  but  because  of  the  de- 
scriptive matter  which  checks  the  progress  of 
the  story  as  a  story.  The  characters  defined 
are  few  and  simple,  and  the  scene  is  laid  en- 
tirely in  a  small  Bengal  vfllage.  The  human 
passion  of  which  tbe  novel  treats  is  the  usual 
theme  of  Western  novelists,  love.  The  hero,  a 
handsome  young  Bengali,  and  the  nephew  of  a 
rich  Zamindar,  who  has  been  happily  married 
in  childhood  to  an  adoring  child- wife,  falls  vio- 
lently in  love  with  that  most  unhappy  outcome 
of  Hindu  civilization,  a  girl  widow.  With 
considerable  skill,  the  author  represents  the 
deplorable  position  of  the  Hindu  widow,  Ro- 
hini,  and  the  moral  effect  of  her  enforced  de- 
gradation  upon  her.  At  the  bidding  of  the 
child.wife  of  Gobind  Lai,  she  tries  to  drown 
herself,  but  she  is  rescued  by  Gobind  himself, 
and  eventually,  after  Gobind  has  made  a  stren- 
uous effort  to  throw  off  his  infatuation  and 
has  been  disinherited  by  old  Krishna  Kanta 
for  his  supposed  infidelity  to  his  wife,  he  leaves 
the  new-made  heiress  and  goes  to  live  with  Ro- 
hini.  The  child  wife's  father  resolves  on  re- 
venge, Gobind  l£d  is  aroused  to  a  fury  of  jea- 
lousy, and  murders  Rohini,  and  the  child- wife 
herself  pines  away. 

This  is  a  tragic  tale  indeed,  but  one  that 
brings  home  the  curses  of  Bengali,  and  indeed 
of  Hindu,  civilization— child  marriage  and  the 
cruel  lot  of  widows.  IncidentaUy,  there  are  in 
this  novel  some  charming  descriptions  of  Ben- 
gal scenery  and  some  curious  illustrations  of 
the  wide  difference  between  the  European 
and  the  Asiatic  fashion  of  looking  at  things. 
The  following  vehement  attack  on  female  ser- 
vants is  sufficiently  curious,  perhaps,  to  de- 
serve quotation:  '*  Brahmananda  Ghosh  was  a 
poor  man.  He  could  not  afford  to  keep  many 
servants.  Whether  that  is  an  advantage  or  a 
disadvantage,  I  cannot  say;  whichever  it  is,  he 
who  keeps  no  women  servants  is  free  from  four 
things— cheating,  false  reports,  wrangling,  and 
dirt.  The  gods  have  embodied  these  four 
things  in  the  maidservant "  (p.  44). 


A  ColUetion  of  Historical  and  Other  Papers, 
By  Rev.  Grindall  Reynolds,  D.D.  To  which 
are  added  seven  of  his  Sermons.  Published 
by  the  Editor  at  Concord,  Massachusetts. 
1895. 
For  personal  friends  of  Dr.  Reynolds  and  his 
coreligionists  this  volume  will  have  added  in- 
terest and  value  on  account  of  the  too  brief 
sketch  of  his  own  life  and  the  longer  one  of  his 
father;  but  for  others  its  appeal  is  almost  en- 
tirely in  virtue  of  the  group  of  historical  and 
local  studies  which  take  up  about  three-quar- 
ters of  the  book.  Dying  at  the  age  of  seventy- 
two.  Dr.  Reynolds's  life  and  his  father's  covered 
one  hundred  and  thirty-nine  years,  and  per- 
haps it  was  his  personal  interest  in  so  long  a 
period— for  his  father's  life  was  as  interesting 
to  him  as  his  own— that  gave  his  mind  a  bent 
in  the  direction  of  historical  and  antiquarian 
studies.    It  is  certain  that  he  had  such  a  bent, 


and  the  judgment  of  Senator  Hoar,  who  writes 
an  introduction  to  the  volume,  is  that  if  he  had 
given  himself  wholly  to  such  studies,  he  would 
have  distinguished  himself  in  them  to  a  re- 
markable degree.  He  would  have  brought  to 
them,  as  the  papers  in  this  volume  show,  a 
searching  curiosity,  a  judicial  fairness,  a  com- 
prehensive view  of  his  subject,  and  a  very 
lucid  and  agreeable  style  of  writing. 

Four  of  the  chi4>ters  deal  with  subjects  of 
general  interest,  and  of  these  ^e  two  on  the 
northern  campaigns  of  the  Revolution  are  the 
more  valuable  because  of  their  instruction  for 
the  present  time,  showing,  as  they  do,  how  tiiese* 
campaigns  found  Canada  extremely  friend- 
ly to  the  colonies,  and  left  her  alienated  from 
them  and  in  closer  sympathy  with  England 
than  before  the  war  began.  If  Anglophobia 
could  have  its  way,  this  chapter  of  history 
might  repeat  itself.  Of  seven  Concord  chap- 
ters, two  on  the  old  Concord  church  afford  a 
good  example  of  the  evolution  of  a  New  Eng- 
land church.  One  on  the  Concord  fight  is  a 
very  careful  account  of  that  momentous  busi- 
ness, and  '*  Concord  during  Shays' ^bellion" 
is  a  valuable  contribution  to  our  understanding 
of  one  of  the  obscurer  episodes  of  **the  critical^ 
period  of  American  history."  Of  the  **  Misoel-" 
laneous  Papers,"  that  upon  "  saints  who  have 
had  bodies"  is  a  vigorous  statement  of  the 
physical  advantages  of  intellectual  activity  to 
which  the  time  since  it  was  written  has  fur- 
nished many  fresh  and  lively  illustrations. 


BOOKS  OF  THE  WBSK. 

Abbott,  T.  V.  Kant't  PuDdameDtal  PUndples  of  the 
MetapluBtc  of  Bchlct.    Longmsni,  Green  tt  Co, 

ASonTonlrof  **Trllb7."   Harpers. 

Bangs.  J.  K.  Tho  Bicyclers,  and  Three  Other  Farces. 
Harpert.    $1.86. 

Bates,  Herbert  Coleridge's  BIme  of  tbe  Ancient  Mari- 
ner.  Longmans,  Oreen  A  Co.   46c. 

Bols-Beymond,  Emll  do.  Tlerlaehe  Bewegung,  etc 
Boston:  OnnftCo 

Brooks,  Francis.  Cicero's  De  Natora  Deomm.  London: 
Metbnen  A  Co. 

Colles,  Mrs.  Julia  K.  Authors  and  Writers  Associated 
with  Morrlstown.  Sd  ed.  Morrlstown,  N.  J. :  Vogt 
Bros. 

Corson,  Prof.  Hiram.  The  Voice  and  Spiritual  Educa- 
tion.  MacmiUan.   76o. 

DUon,  F.  H.  State  Ballroad  Control.  T.  Y.  CioweU  A 
Co.   $1.76. 

Dixon,  Prof.  W.  M.  A  Tennyson  Primer;  with  aCrltioal 
Essay.   Dodd.  MeadACa  $186. 

Dnana,  W.  H.  Songs  of  the  Kingdom.  niUadelptiia : 
American  BaptiBt  Publication  Society. 

Dods,  Key.  Marcus  The  Visions  of  a  Prophet :  Studies 
inZeoharlah.   Dodd.  Mead  A  Co.   6O0. 

Bbers.  Georg.  In  the  Blue  Pike :  A  Bomance  of  Qerman 
ClTlilsatlon  in  the  ZVIth  «*entnry.    Appletons.    78o. 

Olasebrook,  R.  T.  James  Clerk  Maxwell  and  Modem 
Physics.   MacmiUan.    $1.86. 

Oreely^W.  Handbook  of  Arctic  Dlsooreiles.  Bos 
Um :  Roberts  Bros.   $1. 

Oregonr.  Rer.  J.  Puritanism  in  the  Old  World  and  in 
the  New.   F.  H.  Reyell  Co.   $8. 

Gribble,  Francis.  The  Things  that  Matter.  Pntnams.  60c 

Hale,  EB.  Independence  Day.  Philadelphia:  Henry 
Altemus.   80c 

Hall  Prof,  yrman.  The  Elements  of  Algebra.  Ameri- 
can Book  Co.   $1. 

Hamblio,  Jessie  De  F.  A  New  Woman.  Chicago  :C.H. 
Kerr  A  Co. 

Hamlet  rBoIeetIo  English  Classics.]  American  Book 
Co.   86c 

Hardy.  Thomas.    Hie  Hand  of  Ethelberta.   Harpers. 

Harrls/c.W.  A  Glance  at  Ooremment.  Philadelphia: 
J.  B.  Lippinoott  Co. 

Hlllem.  wilhelmlne  Ton.  BSher  als  die  Klrche.  Ame- 
rican Book  Co.   86c 

Lilley,  A.  E.  V.,  and  Midgley.  W.  A  Book  of  Studies  In 
Plant  Form.   Scribners.   $1 .60. 

Manson.  J.  A.  Poetical  Works  of  Robert  Bnmsw  8 
Tols.    Philadelphia:  J.  B.Ltpplncott  Co.   $8. 

Matthews.  Prof.  Brander.  An  Introduction  to  the 
Study  of  American  Literature.    American  Book  Co. 

MaaslnelU,  Alexander.  The  Office  of  Holy  Week.  Balti- 
more :  John  Murphy  A  Co.    60c 
Meagber  JRer.  J.  L.    The  Religions  of  the  World.   New 

York :  Christian  Press  Association  Publisblng  Co. 
Meakin.  Frederick.    Nature  and  Deity.   Chicago :  O.  B. 

Kerr  A  Co. 
O'Qradj.  Standish.    Ulrick  the  Ready :  A  Romaaoe  of 

Elisabethan  Ireland    Dodd,  Mead  A  Cow   $1.86. 
Prevost,  Marcel.   Le  Marlage  de  Juliette.    Paris :  Le- 

merre ;  New  York :  Meyer  irires.    60c 
Pltunmer.  Mary  W.    Verses.  Clevelaod  and  New  York: 

Lemperly,  Htlllard  A  Hopkins. 
Rlddelt.  Mrs  J.  H.   A  Rich  Man's  Daughter.   Interna* 

tlonalNewsCo.   60c 
SUtham,  H.  H.   Architecture  for  General  Readen.  8d 

ed.    Scribners.   $8. 
SyTcton,  Gabriel.     Une  Cour  et  un  ATenturler  an 

XVIII  e  Sitele.   Paris :  Leroux. 
Tbachcr.  J.  B.   OhaHecote:  or.  The  Trial  of  WHUam 

8h«kespeare.  Dod(L  Mead  A  Co.    $6. 
Vincent.  ROT.  M.  B.  The  Age  of  Hlldebrand.  Ohrtstlan 

Literature  Co.  $1.60. 
Whyte,  Rer.  Alexander.     The  Four  Temperaments. 

Dodd,  Mead  A  Co.    60c 


The    Nation. 


KKW  YORK,  TBXmSDAY,  MARCH  80.  1890. 

The  Week. 

PopULiflT  Allsm  took  a  pretty  accurate 
measure  of  Warrior  Sherman  on  Monday, 
when  he  said  that  the  Ohio  Senator,  he 
guessed,  thought  the  time  had  about 
come  for  him  to  make  his*  usual  retreat. 
Mr.  Sherman  in  fact  made  it  with  much 
muttering  and  scowling,  but  he  made  it, 
and  those  terribly  urgent  belligerency 
resolutions  which  a  month  ago  must  pass 
instantly  and  without  a  word  of  debate, 
are  all  tied  up  again  and  as  far  from  pass- 
ing as  ever.  The  net  result  up  to  date  is 
a  fresh  shock  to  business,  further  discre- 
diting of  Congress,  and  special  humilia- 
tion for  the  Foreign  Relations  Committee, 
and  Mr.  Sherman  in  particular,  but  not 
the  slightest  benefit  to  the  struggling 
Cubans.  The  struggling  Cubans,  in  fact, 
have  cut  no  figure  in  the  whole  debate. 
The  resolutions  have  been  from  the  first 
solely  for  the  benefit  of  struggling  Con- 
gressmen. Their  determination  not  to  let 
one  of  their  number  get  more  glory  out  of 
it  than  another  has  been  all  along  as  ob- 
vious as  it  has  been  heroic,  and  Monday's 
bids  for  fame  by  Senators  Mills  and  Piatt 
let  us  into  the  secret  of  the  whole  scram- 
ble* Lord  Bosebery  in  a  speech  the 
other  day  gave  a  definition  of  the  func- 
tion of  the  Cabinet,  as  made  by  Sir 
Qeorge  C.  Lewis  in  a  letter  to  the  Prince 
Consort.  Sir  Oeorge  said:  **I  find  the 
Cabinet  to  be  an  institution  intended  to 
prevent  individual  Ministers  from  im- 
mortalising themselves  at  the  expense  of 
the  country."  Our  Senate,  our  foreign- 
affairs  committees,  have  been  such  insti- 
tutions. But  they  are  now  designed 
rather  to  promote  a  free-for-all  race  for 
immortality  precisely  at  the  expense  of 
the  country.  Each  man  tries  to  out-roar 
the  other;  and  as  for  Cuba  or  our  own 
country,  why,  they  may  go  hang  them- 
selves along  with  common  sense  and  law. 


Senator  Sherman  cannot,  ope  his 
mouth  on  the  Cuban  business  but  out 
there  flies  a  blunder.  The  ignorance, 
for  a  chairman  of  the  Foreign  Rela- 
tions Committee,  he  had  before  dis- 
played, was  surpassed  on  Thursday 
last.  He  roundly  asserted  that  the  Cu- 
bans had  but  one  representative  in  the 
Spanish  Cortes.  Thereupon  Senator  Hale 
offered  to  show  him  a  list  of  the  members 
of  the  last  Cortes,  in  which  figured  the 
names  of  forty-five  Deputies  from  Cuba 
and  Porto  Rico,  together  with  those  of 
fourteen  Senators.  Anyhow,  affirmed  the 
Ohio  Senator,  waiving  that  point,  the 
Spaniards  did  not  keep  the  promises  they 
made  at  the  close  of  the  last  insurrection^ 
and  htte  is  a  letter  from  Martines  Campos 
himself  to  prove  i^    But  the  lott^r  itself; 


when  read,  spoke  of  **  promises  never  ful- 
filled" as  having  given  "  rise  to  the  in- 
surrection of  Yara."  Evidently  Senator 
Sherman  had  not  the  remotest  idea  what 
the  insurrection  of  Yara  waa  It  was  the 
beginning  of  the  former  rebellion  in  1868. 
Martines  Campos,  therefore,  was  alluding 
to  a  condition  of  things  before  that  date, 
and  innocent  Mr.  Sherman  made  him  refer 
to  events  subsequent  to  1878.  We  are 
ashamed  of  the  insurgent  agents  for  not 
having  coached  Senator  Sherman  more 
carefully.  His  frequent  and  ostentatious 
blunders  are  hurting  their  cause.  We 
cannot  say  that  anything  of  the  kind  can 
hurt  him,  for  Senator  Hoar,  at  the  very 
moment  of  exposing  him,  paid  a  tribute 
to  him  as  *'  the  most  illustrious  political 
figure  on  this  continent" 


Senator  Gray's  preference  for  the  Senate 
Cuban  resolutions  over  those  of  the  House, 
is  hard  to  understand.  He  has  defended 
them  as  more  **  courteous  "  and  *'  respect- 
ful" than  those  passed  by  the  'House. 
Now,  the  fact  is  that  the  Senate  resolu- 
tions, in  the  only  points  in  which  they 
differ  from  those  of  the  House,  are  more 
studiously  offensive.  They  affirm  that 
**  the  friendly  offices  of  the  United  States 
should  be  offered  by  the  President  to  the 
Spanish  Qovemment  for  the  recognition 
of  the  independence  of  Cuba."  Speak- 
ing to  that  very  point  in  the  House,  Mr. 
Hittpaid: 

**  Bverv  gentleman,  on  hearing  that  soggee- 
tion  made  or  that  proposition  presented  to 
him,  most  think  in  a  moment  wliat  would  be 
the  reeponte  if  a  proposition  were  made  to  our 
Government,  for  example,  by  the  British  Mi 
nister.  presenting  resolutions  adopted  by  the 
Britisb  Parliament  asking  and  desiring  us  to 
consent  at  once  to  the  independence  of  Texas, 
of  Florida,  or  of  Michigan.  How  long  would 
he  remain  in  Washington  after  preseotiDg  such 
a  proposition  as  that— after  the  self-respect  of 
our  Qovemment  had  been  thus  insulted?  I 
think,  gentlemen,  you  will  agree  with  me  that 
the  proposition  of  our  committee  is  one  far 
more  pnident  and  likely  to  be  far  more  effeo- 
ttve." 

The  House  resolutions  limited  themselves 
to  offering  '*  friendly  influence  "  to  secure 
'*  a  government  by  the  choice  of  the  peo- 
ple of  Cuba."  Resolution  for  resolution- 
and  insult  for  insult,  we  do  not  see  much 
to  choose  between  the  two.  Both  are  gra- 
tuitous and  dangerous  meddling  with 
something  with  which  Congress  has  no- 
thing to  do,  and  for  passing  upon  which 
it  has,  as  the  debate  has  shown,  neither 
the  knowledge  nor  the  fit  temper. 


It  is  impossible  to  say  how  much  im- 
portance is  to  be  attached  to  the  meeting 
between  the  free-coinage  Republican  Se- 
nators and  certain  Pennsylvania  manu- 
facturers which  took  place  at  Washington 
on  Friday,  but  obviously  it  most  tend  to 
confirm  the  free-coinage  Senators  in  their 
determination  to  resist  any  tariff  legisla- 


tion that  is  not  accompanied  by  legislation 
in  the  interest  of  silver-miners.  It  is  safe 
to  conclude,  also,  that  the  meeting  would 
not  have  taken  place  at  all  without  a  defi- 
nite purpose.  Probably  the  purpose  is  to 
bring  a  pressure  upon  the  coming  St  Louis 
convention  to  adopt  a  free-silver  platform, 
and,  failing  in  that,  to  nominate  a  candi- 
date for  the  Presidency  who  will  attract 
the  votes  of  the  Populists,  and  the  silver 
contingent  of  l>oth  the  other  partiea  The 
name  of  J.  Donald  Cameron  was  suggest- 
ed for  such  nomination.  If  the  move- 
ment goes  so  far,  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
Cameron  is  the  man  to  head  it.  He  is  a 
silver-man  of  the  most  pronounced  and 
fanatical  type.  He  is  also  a  politician  of 
long  experience,  and  he  has  sufficient 
reputation  in  the  country  at  large  to  make 
a  good  run  if  any  straight-out  silver-man 
can.  In  short,  if  there  is  to  be  a  Repub- 
lican secession,  Cameron  is  the  most  for- 
midable leader  that  could  be  found.  There 
is  a  disposition  among  the  Republican 
leaders  to  make  light  of  the  meeting,  but 
a  movement  which  can  count  the  electoral 
votes  of  several  States  as  almost  certain 
at  the  start,  is  not  a  negligible  quantity. 


At  all  events,  a  double-meaning  platform 
will  no  longer  suffice.  It  will  be  repudi- 
ated by  the  silver  wing  of  the  party  and 
by  the  gold  wing  as  well.  The  Ohio  de- 
liverance, penned  by  McKinley  himself 
the  other  day,  has  met  almost  unanimous 
disapproval  in  the  East.  The  Republican 
press  in  general  has  repudiated  it,  and  de- 
clared that  it  will  not  answer  the  purpose 
in  this  campaign,  however  well  it  may 
have  served  in  former  ones.  The  truth 
is,  that  the  Eastern  Republicans  are  just 
as  tired  of  humbug  and  uncertainty  on 
the  money  question  as  the  constituents  of 
Senators  Teller  and  Carter  are.  They  are 
in  no  better  mood  for  a  compromise  than 
the  latter;  and  even  if  their  leaders  were, 
it  would  be  unsafe  to  risk  the  vote  of  their 
States  on  an  uncertain  platform.  New 
York  in  particular  is  in  a  shaky  condition. 
There  are  so  many  local  troubles  here  that 
any  serious  misstep  regarding  the  finan- 
cial question  would  take  the  State  out  of 
the  Republican  column  if  the  Democrats 
offered  anything  better.  Will  they  do  so  t 
Looking  merely  at  the  elections  of  1894 
and  1896,  the  Democratic  party  is  already 
beaten.  Still,  it  has  *«  a  fighting  chance." 
If  it  takes  an  unequivocal  position  for 
sound  money — if  it  declares,  for  example, 
that,  in  the  absence  of  an  international 
bimetallic  agreement,  it  favors  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  gold  standard  by  the  United 
States— and  if  it  nominates  a  candidate ' 
for  the  Presidency  who  is  as  sound  as  the 
platform,  it  may  yet  carry  the  election. 


It  is  a  serious  misfortune  to  the  Repub- 
Ucan  pwrty  that  at  the  present  time  the 


34:6 


Tlie   iN'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1604 


two  great  forces  at  work  to  capture  its 
PreaideDtial    DomioatioD   are  the  boeeea 
and  the  high- tariff  interests.    Quay  and 
Piatt  are  working  to  control  the  nomina- 
tion in  the  interest  of  machine  politics. 
They  hope  to  set  up  in  Washington  the 
boss  government  which  they  are  conduct- 
ing in  Pennsylvania  and  New  York.     The 
high-tariff  interests  are  hoping  in  a  some- 
what similar  way  to  put  McKinley  in  the 
White  House,  and  thus  set  up  a  high- 
tariff  government  for  their  personal  bene- 
fit.   As  Senator  Chandler  says,  they  paid 
off  McKinley's  debts  when  he  failed   in 
business,  and  he  is  under  great  obligations 
for  that.    If  now  they  can  pay  all  the  po- 
litical   expense   of   his   nomination  and 
election,  they  will  put  him  under  fresh 
obligations  to  such  an  extent  that  if  he 
gets  into  the  White  House  he  will  be  more 
completely  **  their  man  "  than  any  Presi- 
dent we  have  ever  had.    That  they  are 
spending  money  freely  for  him,  nobody 
who  is  familiar  with  political  methods  can 
doubt  for  a  moment.    His  '*  boom  *'  has 
all  the  marks  of  a  boom  with  boodle  be- 
hind it.    It  is  making  formidable  progress, 
but  not  BO  formidable  as  appears,  for  there 
is  a  tremendous  amount  of  "claiming" 
made  in  its  behalf.    If  its  chief  opponents 
were  not  bosses  of  such  odious  character 
as  Piatt  and  Quay,  there  would  be  much 
I9SS  cause  of  anxiety  al>out  it.    The^real 
intelligence  and  character  of  the  Republi- 
can party  have  not  as  yet  taken  a  hand  in 
the  struggle,  but  it  is  high  time  they 
should  if  they  are  to  exert  much  influence 
on  the  nomination. 


the  mouth  of  the  Massachusetts  Republi- 
can convention. 


The  Boston  Transcript  thinks  that 
<*  the  chances  of  Mr.  Reed's  success  as  an 
aspirant  for  the  Republican  Presidential 
nomination  will  be  greatly  improved  by 
Massachusetts  Republicans  speaking  out 
in  their  approaching  State  convention 
boldly  and  unequivocally  for  sound  money, 
as  the  term  is  understood  by  those  who 
advocate  the  present  gold  standard," 
adding  that  **  Massachusetts  is  the  back- 
bone of  Reed's  support  in  this  section." 
We  beg  leave  to  ask  if  Reed's  own  back- 
bone has  not  something  to  do  with  the 
question,  and  to  suggest  that,  if  it  has,  it 
is  time  that  it  be  put  in  evidence.  What 
is  the  use  of  a  State  convention  **  speak- 
ing out"  in  favor  of  any  principle  if  the 
candidate  in  whose  interest  it  **  speaks  " 
is  himself  sUent?  Does  not  the  Tran- 
script know  that  Mr.  Reed  is  as  dumb  as 
an  oyster  when  the  silver  question  is  men- 
tioned to  him,  and  that  he  does  not  hesi- 
tate to  characterise  as  an  impertinence 
any  attempt  to  draw  him  out  on  the  sub- 
ject ?  Mr.  McKinley  deserves  some  credit 
for  drafting  the  currency  plank  of  his  own 
State  convention  so  that  it  can  at  least  be 
characterized,  if  it  can  be  characterized 
only  as  a  wobble.  But  where  does  Mr. 
Reed  stand  ?  If  he  too  is  a  wobbler, 
which  way  does  he  wobble  most?  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  this,  but  to 
know  it  from  the  Speaker  himaelf,  not  by 


In  signing  the  Raines  bill,  Oov.  Morton 
reviewed  several  objections  to  it  of  more 
or  less  weight,  but  he  passed  over  the  most 
serious  one  without  any  notice  whatever. 
We  have  no  doubt  that,  except  among 
liquor- dealers,  drinking  men,  and  their 
allies,  he  will  find  pretty  general  acqui- 
escence in  his  approval  of  the  restrictions 
the  bill  places  on  the  liquor  traffic,  even 
if  it  does  gobble  up  so  large  a  proportion 
of  the  revenue  derived  from  the  liquor 
tax  in  cities.  But  he  makes  the  value  of 
the  bill  to  depend  on  its  being  ''fairly 
worked  out  by  competent  and  faithful 
officers,"  and  does  not  say  one  word  as  to 
the  mode  in  which  *' these  competent  and 
faithful  officers  "  are  to  be  provided.  This, 
however,  is  the  point  on  which  the  bill 
has  excited  the  opposition  of  the  friends  of 
good  government  in  this  State,  and  it  is 
this  mode  which  is  destined  to  work  its 
failure,  if  fail  it  does,  and  in  failing,  to 
spoil  the  Governor's  fair  fame.  We  do  not 
think  we  exaggerate  or  distort,  when  we 
say  that  the  bill  makes  the  best  provision 
that  can  be  made  by  legislation,  for  the 
infidelity  and  incompetency  of  the  officers 
who  are  to  execute  it;  for  it  provides  that 
the  places  of  all  the  sixty  special  agents 
shall  be  deemed  *' confidential,"  and, 
therefore,  shall  not  be  filled  by  competi- 
tive examination  under  the  civil-service 
regulations.  Gk>vemor  Morton  must  not 
suppose  that  the  public  do  not  draw  in- 
ferences as  to  what  this  means.  It  means, 
in  their  belief,  that  these  appointments 
shall  be  made  for  political  reasons,  with- 
out regard  to  fitness,  and,  therefore,  shall 
be  made  on  the  suggestion  or  by  the  de- 
signation of  Thomas  O.  Piatt,  for  the 
strengthening  of  his  machine,  which  al- 
ready has  excited  so  much  alarm  and 
anxiety. 


The  new  corrupt-practice  law  which  has 
just  been  enacted  in  Ohio,  makes  the  tenth 
thus  far  put  on  our  statute-books.  The 
other  nine  States  having  such  laws  are 
New  York,  Massachusetts,  Colorado,  Cali- 
fornia, Missouri,  Michigan,  Minnesota, 
Indiana,  and  Kansas.  Of  these,  the  most 
comprehensive  and  rigorous  are  the 
statutes  of  California,  Missouri,  and  Min- 
nesota. The  others  are  half-way  mea- 
sures, of  varying  degrees  of  usefulness, 
whose  chief  effect  is  to  compel  a  certain 
amount  of  publicity  in  campaign  expendi- 
tures. The  Ohio  law  is  modelled  substan- 
tially upon  the  Missouri  and  Minnesota 
law,  placing  limits  to  the  expenditure 
which  candidates  may  make,  the  maxi- 
mum amounts  depending  upon  the  size  of 
the  electorate,  as  follows:  One  hundred 
dollars  for  5,000  voters;  $1.50  for  every  100 
voters  above  5,000  and  under  25,000,  and 
$1  for  every  100  voters  above  25,000  and 
under  50,000.  Any  expenditure  in  excess 
of  such  amount  is  unlawful,  and  makes 
void  the  election  of  the  violator  of  the 


law.  All  candidates  and  committees  and 
agents  are  required  to  make  sworn  item- 
ized returns  after  election  of  all  money 
received  and  spent,  under  penalty  of  $1,000 
fine.  The  law  is  an  excellent  one,  but, 
like  all  similar  laws,  it  will  depend  for  its 
enforcement  upon  public  sentiment.  None 
of  the  laws  of  the  kind  at  present  nomi- 
nally in  force  are  executed  with  much 
rigor.  -The  California  law  is  practically 
a  dead  letter,  and  the  Missouri  law,  while 
somewhat  better  observed,  is  still  not 
pressed  as  it  should  be. 


The  call  which  was  published  on  Fri- 
day, for  a  conference  to  promote  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  permanent  system  of  ar- 
bitration between  this  country  and  Great 
Britain,  may  fairly  be  considered  the  most 
wholesome  movement  of  the  present  year 
or  of  any  recent  year  in  our  history.    We 
can  think  of  nothing  better  calculated  to 
restore  confidence  to  the  business  com- 
munity and  sobriety  to  the  field  of  politics 
than  this  projected    meeting.      The  first 
name  in  the  list  of  signers  of  the  call  is 
that  of  the  Chief  Justice  of  the  United 
States,  the  second  is  that  of  the  General 
of  the  Army,  and  the  third  is  that  of  the 
ranking  Admiral  of  the  Navy.     The  other 
signers  will  be  recognized  as  among  the 
foremost  citizens  of  the  land.    The  list 
would  have  been  much  larger  undoubted- 
ly if  there  had  been  more  time  to  circulate 
it,  but  it  is  large  enough  for  the  purpose 
of  showing  that  the  intelligent,  thought- 
ful, and  God-fearing  people  of  the  United 
States  are  most  desirous  of  having  practi- 
cal steps  takeD  now  to  put  the  relatione 
of  this  country  and  Great   Britain  on  a 
basis  where  they   will  not  be  exposed  to 
war  and  war's  alar  mi  in  sudden  and  un- 
expected ways.     Arbitration  may  not  be 
suited  to  every  poseible  case  of  differeoce 
between  nationa,  although  it  ia  most  de- 
sirable that  it  should  he.     The  great  ad- 
vantage of  it  le  that  it  stands  in  aU  c^aeee 
as  a  buffer  between  hot  headsi  and  pre- 
vents a   nation    from    plaDglng  into  war 
headlong.     It  interposes  a  period  of  dia* 
cuBsion  and  refiaction.   There  is  good  rea* 
son  to  believe  that  both  ooun tries  are  now 
in  a  mood  to  enter  seriously  upon  the   na^ 
gotiation   of   eueh  a  treaty  S8  is  proposed 
in  this  call,  and  there  ia  little  doubt  tliat 
the  conference  itself  will  be  worthy  of  tlie 
exalted  inteatioQs  of  ita  promoters. 


The  social  level  of  American  Salvation, 
as  it  is  to  be  fought  for  by  Balling  ton 
Booth's  new  organization,  continues  to  be 
lifted  slightly  nearly  every  day.  The  uni- 
form which  the  leaders  designed  for  the 
lassies  has  been  changed  in  order  that  it 
may  be  more  becoming  to  the  wearers,  1 1 
was  to  be  brawn  in  color,  but  it  will  \^m 
cadet  blue,  eince  brown  is  not  only  a  try- 
ing color  to  the  complexion  of  most  Issaies, 
but  spots  easily  and  fades  quickly.  Xhe 
new  bonnet  is  thoroughly  approved  by  tlie 
lassies.  It  has  less  poke  than  the  old 
British   Salvation    bonnet,    being   muQJi 


March  26,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


24=7 


more  nattj,  and  giving  the  features  of  the 
wearer  more  publicity  and  the  advantage 
of  a  more  becoming  surrounding.  When 
Its  color  and  trimmings  are  made  to  con- 
form to  the  cadet  blue  of  the  uniform,  the 
happiness  of  the  lassies  will  be  complete. 
A  change  is  proposed  also  in  the  name  of 
the  new  army.  Objections  are  made  to 
bringing  the  name  of  the  Deity  into  the 
title,  and  it  will  be  amended  probably 
from  "Gkxi's  American  Volunteers'*  to 
simple  ''American  Volunteers."  When 
all  arrangements  are  completed,  the 
Volunteers  will  take  the  field  against  sin 
in  a  thoroughly  genteel  manner,  offering 
quite  a  contrast  to  the  noisy  and  rather 
vulgar  British  methods. 


We  do  not  think  a  better  case  for  com- 
pulsory arbitration  has  ever  occurred  or  is 
likely  to  occur  than  the  trouble  between 
Italy  and  Abyssinia.  Abyssinia  has  un- 
doubtedly ''adoctrioe"  which  excludes 
the  Italians  from  making  any  settlement 
on  that  continent,  and  has  been  held  firm- 
ly for  over  a  century  by  the  predecessors 
of  Kiog  Menelek.  Menelek  does  not  seek 
to  meddle  in  European  affairs.  He  simply 
aslto  to  beTet  alone,  and  that,  if  the  Ita- 
lians have  a  lawful  colony  on  the  coast,  its 
l>oundarieB  shall  not  be  enlarged.  Every 
fact  in  the  case  will  justify  our  asking  the 
Italians  to  arbitrate  or  take  the  conse- 
quences. If  it  be  asked  what  authority 
we  exercise  over  Menelek,  we  answer,  just 
as  much  as  we  exercise  over  the  Spanish- 
American  states.  Menelek  may  dispute 
our  sovereignty  over  him,  and  |)eny  that 
our  will  is  law  in  his  part  of  the  country; 
but  so  would  Brazil,  and  Chili,  and  the 
Argentine  Republic,  and  Mexico,  which 
does  not  prevent  our  claiming  the  right  to 
protect  them  against  foreign  sg^ression, 
and  to  supervise  their  treaties.  Besides, 
Menelek's  feelin^^s  should  not  hinder  us  in 
the  least  from  calliog  the  Italians  to  ac- 
count for  their  treatment  of  him.  It  is 
with  Italians  we  have  to  deal,  because 
they  are  apparently  stronger  than  Mene- 
lek, and  it  is  a  cardinal  doctrine  of  Ameri- 
can polity  that  in  all  disputes  between 
weak  states  and  strong  ones,  except  our- 
selves, the  strong  state  is  surely  in  the 
wrong.  We  therefore  strongly  advise  the 
appointment  of  a  commission  to  find  out 
the  rights  and  wrongs  of  this  matter,  and 
then  to  stand  by  its  judgment.  We  are 
perfectly  aware  of  the  responsibility  ne 
incur  in  giving  such  advice,  but  it  does 
not  frighten  us.  To  the  timorous  souls 
who  think  this  might  get  us  into  a  war 
with  Italy,  and  who  ask,  Are  we  ready  for 
warT  we  say  emphatically.  There  will  be 
no  war.  To  those  also  who  are  afraid  of 
the  effect  of  such  a  move  on  the  stock 
market,  we  answer  that  there  would  be  as 
much  money  made  by  private  information 
as  would  be  lost  by  the  public  news.  But 
anyhow  we  do  not  think  much  of  men  who 
set  their  pockets  before  the  glory  the 
country  would  acquire  by  the  assertion  of 
bar  Jurisdiction  over  another  continent. 


The  news  of  the  British  advance  up  the 
Nile  valley  has  created  a  great  sensation 
in  Europe,  particularly  among  the  French, 
who  profess  to  believe  that  the  reasons 
assigned  for  the  advance  by  the  British 
are  a  mere  subterfuge,  and  that  the  true 
cause  is  to  make  a  pretext  for  holding 
B^ypt  for  a  still  longer  period  and  more 
solidly.  Mr.  Curson  communicated  to 
the  House  of  Commons  on  Tuesday  week 
the  information  on  which  the  advance  is 
based,  and  which  consisted  of  reports  of 
merchants,  of  refugees  from  Khartum, 
and  of  despatches  from  the  British  Con- 
sul at  Suakim,  announcing  the  appear- 
ance of  the  Dervishes  within  fifty  miles 
of  that  place,  and  the  proclamation  of  a 
holy  war  by  the  Mahdi*s  successor,  who 
has  on  hand  one  of  the  biggest  **  doc- 
trines" in  the  world.  He  makes  out  a 
fairly  good  case,  but  the  political  observer 
who  treated  the  whole  affair  as  a  counter- 
stroke  against  France  and  Russia  in  re- 
taliation for  the  Armenian  fiasco  and  its 
British  humiliation,  would  not  be  far 
wrong.  If  such  it  be,  it  is  ably  planned. 
It  resuscitates  Italy,  and  so  far  strength- 
ens the  Triple  Alliance,  fastens  the  Bri- 
tish hold  on  Egypt  and  the  Mediterranean 
more  firmly,  and  warns  Turkey  that  she 
would  do  well  to  find  other  friends  than 
Russia.  It  helps  to  dissipate  the  queer 
belief,  which  doubtless  led  to  the  Kaiser's 
congratulations  to  Krtkger,  that  England 
would  not  go  to  war.  The  Conservatives 
are  evidently  determined  on  a  Jingo  po- 
licy. 

The  humiliating  position  in  which  Bri- 
tish diplomacy  was  left  by  the  Armenian 
failure  is  of  a  sort  that  any  ministry  would 
be  glad  to  obscure  by  some  diversion. 
Mr.  Curzon's  statements  in  Parliament  on 
March  3  confessed  the  full  measure  of  the 
triumph  of  the  Sultan.  The  Government 
accepted  a  motion  trusting  that  '*  further 
endeavors  will  be  made  to  ameliorate  the 
lot  of  the  Christian  population  in  Asiatic 
Turkey,"  but  Mr.  Curzon  distinctly  warn- 
ed the  Commons  that  it  must  not  be  sup- 
posed possible  that  such  endeavors  would 
be  made  **  by  force  of  arms."  He  depre- 
cated the  habit  of  speaking  of  the  Arme- 
nian negotiation  as  '^a  failure."  Lord 
Salisbury  had  wrung  substantial  reforms 
from  the  Sultan,  but,  if  you  pressed  Mr. 
Curzon  on  that  point,  he  would  '*  not  say 
that  we  have  any  guarantee  that  the  re- 
forms will  be  carried  out."  Mr.  Bryce 
then  read  from  the  record  to  show  that, 
even  in  the  matter  of  announcing  the  re- 
forms, the  Sultan  had  shuffled  and  pro- 
crastinatecT  from  month  to  month,  and 
finally,  on  November  7,  had  said  he  would 
not  announce  them  at  all.  That  was  thd 
whole  of  it — a  promise  insincerely  maJe 
and  then  cynically  withdrawn.  What  a 
situation  and  confession,  after  the  loud 
threats  of  Lord  Salisbury  last  summer ! 


The  emphatic  declaration  of  the  Eng- 
lish ChaQcellor  of  the  Exchequer,  that 


Great  Britain,  although  enth-ely  willing 
to  confer  with  other  nations  in  an  inter- 
national conference,  would  have  no  bi- 
metallism in  her  own  currency,  is  exact- 
ly what  was  expected  and  predicted  when 
Sir  Michael  Hicks-Beach  was  designated 
for  that  office.  This  declaration  will  go 
far  to  silence  the  bimetallic  faction  in 
Germany,  since  the  Prussian  Diet  some 
time  since  voted  that  it  would  be  in- 
expedient for  Germany  to  adopt  bi 
metallism  without  the  codperation  of 
England.  In  fact,  the  bimetallic  agita- 
tion in  Germany  has  now  so  far  subsided 
as  to  be  under  control.  It  is  still  squirm- 
ing in  France,  however;  the  agricultural 
classes  being  under  the  delusion  that  the 
price  of  wheat  is  in  some  way  connected 
with  silver,  and  that  if  this  metal  were 
remonetized,  the  farmers  would  be  more 
prosperous.  The  French  Gk>vernment,  it 
should  be  observed,  is  not  restrained  by 
any  act  of  the  legislative  body  from  try- 
ing this  experiment  at  any  time,  since  the 
law  of  1876  provided  merely  that  the  ex- 
ecutive branch  of  government  might  limit 
or  suspend  silver  coinage  at  its  discretion. 
The  Ministry  can  open  the  mint  to  silver 
to-morrow  if  it  chooses,  at  the  ratio  of 
15^  to  1.  The  effect  of  such  a  step  would 
be  the  same  kind  of  commercial  and  poli- 
tical convulsion  that  would  follow  free 
coinage  in  this  country  at  16  to  1. 


The  royal  commission  on  the  relief  of 
agriculture  in  England  has  reported  in 
the  usual  fashion  of  royal  commissions. 
There  is  a  long  majority  report,  a  strong 
minority  report,  and  a  long  setting  forth 
of  individual  views  by  two  members  who 
are  unable  to  agree  with  either  msjority 
or  minority  or  with  each  other.  This 
makes  the  plaything  nature  of  the  com- 
mission complete.  Salisbury  can  say  to 
the  embattled  farmers  that  he  gave 
them  their  commission,  and  that  if  the 
commission  had  been  able  to  agree,  he 
would  have  been  only  too  happy  to  take 
their  recommendations  into  consideration, 
and  see  if  Parliament  could  do  anything 
not  inconsistent  with  the  laws  of  trade 
and  the  duty  of  securing  a  cheap  food 
supply.  As  it  is,  he  can  only  advise 
them  to  be  patient  and  shuffle  the  cards 
and  believe  that  his  heart  is  filled  with 
the  tenderest  sympathy  for  them.  It  is 
hardly  worth  while  to  look  in  detail  at 
the  proposals  of  the  majority.  They  re- 
late chiefly  to  easing  off  the  land  tax  and 
providing  a  system  of  Government  loans 
for  agricultural  improvements.  Both  pro- 
positions are,  of  course,  stated  in  the 
conveniently  elastic  terms  that  mean  what 
you  please.  Taxation  of  land  should  not 
go  beyond  *'a  reasonable  rate."  Govern- 
ment loans  are  to  be  **  carefully  guarded,'* 
and  given  only  to  '*  encourage  thrift." 
No  one  but  a  wicked  man  would  deny 
either  proposition;  but  the  supernatur«bl 
wisdom  necessary  to  put  either  into  the 
exact  terms  of  a  statute  do^s  not  grow  on 
every  M.  P, 


S48 


Tlie   !N"ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1604 


THE  BAYARD  CENSURE. 
Mb.  Batard  will  probably  take  no  notice 
of  the  vote  of  censure  passed,  by  the 
House,  and  his  course  will  probably  re- 
ceive the  approval  of  nine-tenths  of  the 
intelligent  and  thinking  portion  of  the 
community ;  and  this  for  various  reasons. 
The  principal  one  is  that  all  censures  of  a 
public  ofBcer,  in  order  to  have  effect, 
should  plainly  have  in  view  the  good  of  the 
service,  and  should  emanate  from  some 
body  whose  judicial-mindedness  on  this 
point  is  not  open  to  suspicion.  No  one 
would  think  of  attributing  to  the  House 
any  desire  that  our  Ministers  abroad 
should  not  be  partisan,  or  should  be  se- 
lected for  their  non- partisanship.  If  a  bill 
were  introduced  to-morrow  to  make  our 
diplomacy  a  permanent  profession,  to  be 
filled  by  men  divorced  from  politics  and 
bound  to  discretion  by  the  rules  of  their 
order,  as  diplomats  are  in  European  coun- 
tries, it  would  not  have  a  chance  of  pass- 
ing. Nothing,  probably,  would  the  Repub- 
lican majority  in  Congress  resist  more 
strenuously  tiian  an  attempt  to  deprive 
them,  in  case  they  won  at  the  next  elec- 
tion, of  the  chance  of  giving  foreign  mis- 
sions to  all  leading  Republican  partisans. 
If  one  of  these  partisans  had  been  in  Mr. 
Bayard's  place  before  the  Edinburgh  Uni- 
versity and  had  protested  against  and  cri- 
ticised **  British  free  trade  "  as  something 
unsuited  to  our  country  and  prejudicial  to 
its  best  interest,  and  had  denounced  its 
advocates  here  as  '*  un-American,"  he 
would  have  been  secretly  applauded  by 
this  very  House  of  Representatives,  and 
no  notice  would  have  been  taken  of  his 
escapade.  Everybody  believes,  and  many 
know,  that  the  trouble  in  Mr.  Bayard's 
case  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  wrong  oz 
has  been  gored.  Had  he  taken  a  slap  at/^ 
free  trade  before  a  British  audience,  he' 
would  have  been  applauded  as  a  manly 
American,  who  looked  the  **played-out[ 
aristocracy  "  boldly  in  the  face. 

The  indiscretions  of  other  kinds  on  the 
part  of  our  Ministers  abroad  during  the 
past  eighty  years  have  been  very  nume- 
rous, but  they  have  never  been  noticed 
when  the  party  of  the  culprits  was  in  a 
majority  in  Congress.  In  other  words, 
there  are  two  kinds  of  indiscretion,  one 
blameworthy  and  one  praiseworthy,  and 
this  distinction  runs  through  every  de- 
partment of  the  public  service — army, 
navy,  and  post-office.  When  a  naval  of- 
ficer, for  instance,  commit^  the  out- 
rageous offence  of  criticising  the  political 
policy  of  his  superiors,  and  denouncing 
their  use  of  his  arm  of  the  service,  he  is 
loudly  applauded  by  the  party  to  which 
he  belongs  in  and  out  of  Congress,  and  his 
well-merited  punishment  is  treated  as  an 
act  of  tyranny.  In  truth,  party  feeling 
is  a  subtle  poison  which  runs  through 
every  branch  of  the  government,  but  is 
of  course  more  deadly  in  some  than  in 
others.  When  we  consider  the  tempta- 
tions under  which  our  Ministers  abroad 
labor,  to  make  themselves  offensive  to  the 
community  to  which  they  are  accredited, 


and  the  applause  which  such  conduct 
would  win  for  them  from  such  a  body  as 
our  present  Congress,  their  reserve  and 
good  manners  are  something  marvellous, 
particularly  as  but  few  of  them  have  had 
diplomatic  training. 

Another  thing  which  stands  Mr.  Bay- 
ard in  good  stead  is  the  House's  own  want 
of  discretion.  In  every  field  of  human 
activity,  a  person  clothed  with  the  right 
of  censure  is  in  some  way  the  superior  of 
the  person  censured,  either  morally  or 
officially,  and  every  such  person  is  bound . 
to  set  a  good  example.  In  all  services, 
public  and  private,  ever  since  society  was 
organized,  censure,  by  such  superior,  of 
faults  to  which  he  was  himself  addicted, 
has  been  held  to  be  indecent  and  ridicu- 
lous. The  licentious  father  lecturing  the 
fast  son  on  continence,  the  drunken  officer 
sitting  in  judgment  on  the  drunken  sol- 
dier, the  swearing  parson  preaching 
against  blasphemy,  and  the  defaulting 
bank  president  denouncing  the  pilfering 
teller,  have  furnished  the  comic  element 
to  many  a  tale  or  drama.  We  pointed 
this  out  when  the  Senate  was  raising  a 
hullabaloo  about  the  indiscretion  of  the 
Spanish  Minister  in  exposing  the  false- 
hoods and  blunders  of  some  of  its  own 
meipbers. 

Our  remarks  then  apply  with  equal  force 
to  the  House  now.  He  who  exacts  discre- 
tion from  others  must  be  himself  discreet. 
A  legislature  which  insists  that  public 
servants  must  on  all  occasions,  small  and 
great,  keep  within  their  own  sphere  and 
attend  strictly  to  their  own  business,  must 
follow  its  own  rule.  The  present  House 
of  Representatives  has  surpassed  all  its 
predecessors  in  neglecting  its  proper  busi- 
ness and  taking  up  that  of  other  people. 
It  was  its  duty,  when  Mr.  Cleveland  sent 
in  his  Venezuelan  message,  to  refer  it  to 
the  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations,  to 
get  a  careful  report  from  that  body,  and 
to  debate  fully  such  report  afterwards. 
Instead  of  this,  it  abandoned  the  duty 
committed  to  it  by  the  Constitution,,  and 
voted  without  inquiry  $100,000  for  semi- 
warlike  purposes.  It  has  neglected  an- 
other of  its  great  duties  in  doing  nothing 
to  restore  order  to  our  finances.  .  It  has 
usurped  the  constitutional  prerogative  of 
the  executive  in  passing  undebated  reso- 
lutions about  the  internal  affairs  of  four 
or  five  foreign  countries.  It  has,  in  fact, 
sought  to  censure  foreign-govemments  for 
not  cooperating  with  each  other  in  their 
foreign  policy.  There  is  hard ly  any  branch 
of  indiscretion  which  a  deliberative  body 
can  commit  that  it  has  neglected.  The 
result  is,  that  there  is  probably  no  subject 
on  which  the  public  listens  to  it  with 
more  impatience  than  the  subject  of  dis- 
cretion, because  there  is  apparently  no 
subject  about  which,  judging  from  its 
course,  it  knows  less,  and  it  is  considered 
the  most  ignorant  body  which  has  yet  met 
in  Washington.  Nothing  could  be  more 
farcical  than  its  notion  that  its  debate  on 
Mr.  Bayard  was  something  important. 
It  was  important  .in  the  gallery,  but  it 


made  the  judicious  grieve  all  over  the 
country. 

One  thing  more  must  be  said.  We  do  not 
attempt  to  deny  that  it  was  indiscreet  and 
imprudent  for  Mr.  Bayard  to  say  what  he 
did  as  to  the  effect  of  protection  on  the 
politics  of  his  own  country.  But  there  are 
degrees  in  indiscretion,  as  in  every  other 
offence  against  rules  and  regulations  of 
which  man  can  be  guilty,  and  Mr.  Bayard 
could  hardly  have  been  indiscreet  at  all 
with  so  little  damage  to  his  diplomatic 
character  as  on  this  occasion.  For  we  do 
not  believe  there  is  a  thinking  observer  of 
any  creed  or  party  in  the  United  States, 
even  if  he  be  a  protectionist,  who  can  deny 
or  explain  away  what  thirty  years,  not  of 
high  tariff  but  of  getting  high  tariffs  pass- 
ed, modified,  and  changed,  has  done  for 
the  public  life  of  our  country.  It  may  be 
a  good  thing  to  have  high  or  prohibitory 
duties,  but  that  the  annual  practice  of 
selling  the  right  to  levy  them  to  manufac- 
turers, of  enabling  whole  classes  of  men 
to  calculate  the  exact  sum  which  easily 
purchasable  legislation  will  put  in  their 
pockets,  "has  driven  men  of  eminence  from 
public  life,  has  corrupted  politics  to  a  de- 
gree hardly  known  since  the  fall  of  Rome, 
has  created  the  boss  system,  and  is  thus 
threatening  democratic  government  itself 
with  overthrow  and  eclipse,  no  reflective 
man  will  deny.  It  was  doubtlera  folly  of 
Mr.  Bayard  to  say  this  before  a  foreign 
audience,  but  it  ras  folly  of  the  sort  of 
which  Galileo  was  guilty  when  he  pro- 
mulgated the  motion  of  the  earth  round 
the  sun,  at  Rome.  Galileo  was  locked  up, 
and  Bayard  is  censured,  but  they  never- 
theless bolh  spoke  **C}od*s  truth,"  which 
shall  never  fail. 


FOREIGN  IMMIGRATION, 

Mb.  Lodge  has  been  one  of  the  prime 
movers  in  the  troubles  from  which  the 
country  now  suffers.  He  began  a  year 
ago  or  more  to  create  the  perturbation  in 
our  foreign  relations  which,  during  the 
last  few  months,  has  been  so  disastrous  to 
business,  and  has  done  so  much  to  turn 
public  attention  away  from  our  domestic 
difficulties.  He  has  always,  however,  re- 
served for  himself  a  little  shelter  in  the 
shape  of  something  of  comparatively  small 
consequence,  which  would  not  seriously 
affect  his  own  character  as  a  demagogue, 
and  yet  enable  him  to  make  a  display  of 
interest  in  our  domestic  affairs.  One  of 
these  is  civil-service  reform.  Another  is 
copyright.  Neither  of  them  seriously  at- 
tracts public  attention,  or  is  likely  to 
damage  him  or  lessen  his  influence  with 
the  class  which  he  most  cultivates.  When- 
ever one  resents  his  attacks  on  the  cur- 
rency, or  his  tariff  madness,  or  his  mili- 
tary propagandism,  all  of  which  are  likely 
Ho  affect  seriously  the  character  of  the 
;  nation,  the  answer  always  ir  to  see*  how 
faithful  he  is  to  civil-service  reform  and 
what  a  good  friend  to  international  copy- 
right To  these  political  sentry-boxea  he 
has  now  added  hostility  to  illitmateimal^ 


March  26,  1896] 


Th.e   !N"ation. 


349 


gratioD,  which  he  says  is  "a  subject  of 
the  greatest  magnitude  and  the  most  far- 
reaching  importance  "  : 

**  The  Id  jury  of  unrestricted  immigratioD  to 
American  wagee  and  American  standards  of 
liTiDg  is  sofflcteDtly  plain  and  is  bad  enough, 
but  the  danger  which  this  immigration  threat- 
ens to  the  quality  of  our  citisenship  is  far  worse. 
That  which  it  concerns  us  to  know,  and  that 
which  is  more  vital  to  us  as  a  people  than  all 
possible  questions  of  tariff  or  currency,  is 
whether  the  ouality  of  our  citizenship  is  en- 
dangered by  toe  present  course  and  character 
of  immigration  to  the  United  States.  To  de- 
termine this  question  intelligentiy,  we  must 
look  into  the  history  of  our  race.'* 

We  do  not  need  to  look  into  the  *<  his- 
tory  of  our  race  "  to  get  to  the  bottom  of 
this  matter.  The  history  of  our  own 
country  is  enough.  Every  one  must  re- 
gret ignorant  immigration.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  it  does  lower  the  quality  of  our 
citizenship,  and  that  it  has  a  tendency 
to  breed  demagogues.  But  the  question 
with  us  to-day  is  whether,  and  to  what 
degree,  it  is  responsible  for  the  evils  which 
now  afflict  us.  What  are  those  evils? 
They  are,  first,  a  tariff  which,  high  or  low, 
it  seems  impossible  to  settle  in  any  man- 
ner which  will  not  make  it  a  constant 
menace  and  disturbance  to  business  sta- 
bility. We  care  not  whether  it  be  a  high 
or  low  or  middling  tariff;  human  nature 
demands  a  stable  tariff.  Our  next  evil  is 
a  mixed,  disorderly,  and  redundant  cur- 
rency, the  various  denominations  of  which 
are  maintained  at  par  with  each  other  by 
borrowing  money  quarterly.  Our  third 
evil  is  a  widespread  popular  passion  for 
foreign  aggression,  and  the  conversion 
into  a  military  republic  of  one  which  was 
intended  to  be,  and  has  been  until  now,  a 
peaceful,  trading,  manufacturing,  agri- 
cultural republic. 

Now  to  which  of  these  evils  has  the 
foreign  immigration,  large  as  it  is,  igno- 
rant as  it  is,  contributed  anything?  The 
States  which  contain  most  foreign-bom 
citizens,  as  we  have  often  pointed  out  in 
these  columns,  have  been  soundest  on  the 
currency  question— much  sounder  than 
Mr.  Lodge  or  any  of  his  leading  com- 
panions. On  the  management  of  the 
tariff,  which  is  really  our  American  sys- 
tem of  tazatioo,  during  the  past  thirty 
years  the  foreign  population  has  exerted 
no  influence,  or  next  to  none.  It  has  been 
almost  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  Ame- 
rican manufacturers  and  their  American 
Congressional  allies.  Any  falsehoods  or 
delusions  which  have  helped  to  maintain 
it  at  an  extravagant  height,  or  have  led  to 
sudden  and  violent  cthanges  in  it,  have 
been  spread  among  the  foreign  population 
by  intelligent  and  educated  Americana 
The  irredeemable  •  greenback  movement 
and  the  silver  movement,  with  all  their 
absurdities,  are  of  purely  native  origin, 
and  are  most  deeply  rooted  to-day  in  the 
States  which  have  received  the  least  for- 
eign immigration.  The  present  prevaiiiug 
desire,  of  which  Senator  Lodge  has  been 
himself  a  chief  promoter,  to  get  up  dis- 
putes with  foreign  nations  which  would 
entaii  enormous  expense,  and,  if  persisted 
in,  seriously  change  the  character  of  our 


government,  is  absolutely  native-Ameri- 
can in  its  origin  and  maintenance.  There 
are  very  few  foreign  immigrants,  even  of 
the  peasant  class,  who  have  not  clearer 
conceptions  of  international  morality  and 
of  the  convenances  of  international  in- 
tercourse than  such  men  as  Morgan  and 
Vest,  for  example. 

The  matter  on  which  the  influence  of 
the  foreign  immigrant  has  been  most 
potent  is  city  government.  But  the  onJy 
city  in  the  Union  in  which  this  has  been 
visible,  palpable,  and  overwhelming,  is 
New  Tork.  The  government  of  New  York 
has  been  undeniably  Irish,  and  we  admit 
shockingly  bad.  But,  alas,  the  govern- 
ment of  the  other  cities,  Philadelphia  for 
example,  which  is  in  native  hands,  is  just 
as  bad  and  some  say  worse.  So  is  that  of 
St.  Louis,  Chicago,  and  Cincinnati.  In 
'all  these  cities  the  chief  leaders  in  the 
work  of  corruption  have  been  Americans 
by  birth,  and  as  a  general  rule  it  is  Ame- 
ricans who  have  taught  the  foreigners  the 
tricks  of  the  trade.  As  to  foreign  illite- 
racy! to  which  Mr.  Lodge  attaches  so 
much  importance,  we  affirm  that  it  has 
not  done  us  a  hundredth  part  of  the  mis- 
chief wrought  by  native  literacy.  Mr. 
Lodge  himself,  for  instance,  was  taught 
to  read  and  write  when  he  was  a  child, 
and  has,  in  maturer  years,  had  the  bestedu- 
cational  advantages  the  country  affords* 
But,  in  spite  of  this,  a  very  large  propor- 
tion of  the  educated  and  thinking  men  of 
the  country  look  on  him  as  a  citizen  who 
does  more  damage  to  the  nation  than  a 
hundred  thousand,  or,  we  might  say,  a 
half-million,  ignorant  Europeans.  At  no 
period  in  the  history  of  the  country  has 
so  much  damage  been  done  to  our  govern- 
ment as  within  the  last  ten  years  by  the 
Congresses  which  we  have  been  in  the 
habit  of  calling  **brutish«'*  They  have 
exhibited  ignorance  and  folly  in  al>out 
equal  proportions— ignorance  about  nearly 
everything  with  which  it  behooves  a  legis- 
lator to  be  acquainted,  trade,  commerce, 
industry,  flnance,  currency,  foreign  rela- 
tions—and yet  every  member  of  them 
knew  how  to  read  and  write,  with  differ- 
ent degrees  of  proflciency*  it  is  true,  but 
all  fairly  well.  Some  had  even  roadbooks 
and  dictionaries.  So  it^  quite  plain  that 
making  foreigners  read  and  write  at  their 
port  of  entry  would  not  necessarily  make 
them  desirable  additions  to  our  voting 
population,  or  to  our  halls  of  legislation. 

Take  again  the  boss  system,  which  is  so 
rapidly  changing  the  character  of  our  State 
governments :  Who  devised  it  ?  Who  carry 
it  on  ?  Who  are  its  main  supporters  ? 
Why,  the  native-born  country  voters  of 
New  York  and  Pennsylvania,  just  as  much 
as  the  Irish  laborers  and  liquor-dealers  of 
New  York  dty  or  Philadelphia.  It  is  not 
Paddy  or  Hans  who  is  seen  hurrying  to 
No.  49  Broadway  every  Saturday.  In 
truth,  the  most  marked  characteristic  of 
a  great  deal  of  such  lamentation  as  Mr. 
Lodge's  over  foreign  illiteracy,  and  of  a 
great  deal  of  the  legislation  of  the  day,  is 
the  desire  to  find  some  mechanical  substi- 


tute for  character,  something  which  will 
dispense  with  the  necessity  of  being 
honest  and  true  and  upright,  and  loving 
one's  country  in  other  ways  than  showing 
readineas  to  fight  foreigners  about  mat- 
ters which  do  not  concern  us.  Does  any 
one  suppose  for  one  moment  that  if  the 
ruling  passion  at  Washington  and  Albany 
to-day  were  a  sincere  desire  to  do  what 
was  best  for  the  country,  what  was  most 
likely  to  p^mote  the  comfort  of  the  poor, 
and  the  safety,  honor,  and  welfare  of  the 
nation,  as  these  terms  were  understood  by 
its  founders,  the  existence  among  us  of 
five  times  as  many  illiterate  foreigners  as 
we  now  have  could  not  be  witnessed  with- 
out concern  T 


Mckinley  in  principle  and   in 
schedule. 

SoMS  of  McKinley's  Ohio  friends  are  try- 
ing to  resssure  alarmed  Eastern  Republi- 
cans by  saying  that  their  great  man  is  no 
high-tariff  extremist,  despite  all  that  is 
said.  He  stands  committed  to  no  **  sche- 
dule," they  say,  only  to  the  general  **prin- 
ciple' '  of  protection.  His  election  to  the 
Presidency  would  not  mean,  therefore,  the 
reenactment  of  the  McKinley  tariff,  but 
simply  a  reaffirmation  of  a  general  policy 
for  this  government.  Hence  there  is  no 
reason  to  fear  that  Republican  success 
under  McKinley  would  lead  to  such  scan- 
dalous selling  of  legislation  as  shocked 
the  country  and  crushed  the  party  in 
1890. 

All  this,  instead  of  reassuring,  should 
redouble  the  alarm  of  conservative  Repub- 
licans. Nothing  is  more  dangerous  in 
politics  than  a  vague  *'  principle  "  with 
which  all  sorts  of  juggler's  tricks  may  be 
played.  The  ** schedule"  we  know:  all 
its  bargainings,  its  rotten  spots,  its  op- 
pressivenessi  its  little  hidden  traps  and 
8nare&  These  have  been  exposed  over  and 
over  again,  and  we  have,  as  it  were,  got 
used  to  them.  But  a  '*  principle  "  means 
an  entirely  fresh  set  of  intrigfues  and 
tricky  surprises  and  evils  that  we  know 
not  of.  The  original  McKinley  al>omina- 
tions  were  l>om  of  a  principle.  There 
was  no  tariff  schedule  in  the  platform  of 
1888  ;  only  a  principle  in  its  vsguest  and 
blandast  form.  But  it  proved,  when  the 
time  came  to  turn  it  into  law,  a  fruitful 
mother  of  mischisf .  Like  a  "  doctrine,"  of 
which,  in  politics,  we  have  seen  such  terri- 
ble examples  of  the  enormous  embarrass- 
ments, a  **  principle"  of  this  kind  is  more  to 
be  dreaded  than  any  conceivable  "  sche- 
dule." In  the  latter  case  we  have  an  evil, 
if  it  is  an  evil,  which  is  clear  and  definite, 
and  can  be  fought  with  the  ordinary  wea- 
pons of  political  discussion,  and  in  the 
open  daylight ;  in  the  former,  we  have  to 
do  with  a  malefic  jinn,  shut  up  in  a  bottle 
till  after  the  election,  and  then  released 
like  a  Vast  and  shifting  fog-bank,  under 
cover  of  which  all  sorts  of  foul  creatures 
come  to  birth. 

What  McKinley's  •«  principle"  really 
means  is  a  check  signed  in  blank,  and 


^50 


The   ilSratioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1604 


payable,  in  legislation,  to  every  manufac- 
turer  who  turns  in  his  check  for  the  cam- 
paign  fund.  That  is  the  way  it  worked  in 
1890,  and  that  is  the  way  it  will  work  in 
1898.  Republicans  whose  supersensitive 
stomachs  revolted  at  soihe  of  the  nause- 
ous doses  administered  to  them  in  the 
first  McKinley  bill,  had  to  listen  to  myste- 
rious whisperings  about  **  the  obligations 
of  the  party,"  *' heavy  contributors  to 
the  campaign  treasury,  you  see,"  and  that 
sort  of  thing,  besides  public  remarks 
about  '*  fat-frying."  Usually,  the  only 
defence  was  that  the  general  "  principle  " 
was,  of  course,  wise  and  beneficent,  but 
that  many  of  the  details  were  necessarily 
iniquitous;  and  would  you  sacrifice  the 
blessed  whole  for  these  petty  defects? 
There  is  no  reasonable  doubt  that  the 
same  sort  of  thing  is  now  planning,  only 
on  a  larger  scale.  The  men  whom  **  the 
unauthorized  loquacity  of  common  fame'* 
now  declares  to  be  backing  McKinley 's 
canvass  with  huge  sums,  and  some  of 
whose  names  and  letters  Senator  Chan- 
dler pledges  himself  soon  to  publish,  will 
infallibly  exact  the  uttermost  farthing  if 
their  candidate  and  his  party  are  success- 
ful. That  is  what  the  vague  talk  about 
McKinley  *s  '*  principle  "  truly  means — 
the  right  of  the  men  who  are  buying  his 
I  nomination  to  take  the  next  tariff  bill  and 
sit  down  quickly  and  write  in  it  what 
rates  they  please.  As  against  such  a  prin- 
ciple as  that,  honest  men  will  take  a  sche- 
dule, however  vicious,  every  time. 

Putting  outright  corruption  like  this 
one  side,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  a  glitteriog 
principle  like  McKinley 's  opens  wide  the 
door  to  the  most  preposterous  abuses. 
Clothe  the  greatest  outrage  in  the  garb 
of  the  principle,  and  it  must  be  admitted 
to  the  best  protection  society.  Free  sil- 
ver, bounties,  loans  to  farmers,  minimum 
wages,  the  right  to  work,  the  right  to  loaf 
and  shirk  without  starving,  insurance 
against  accident  and  old  age,  pensions  for 
the  million — any  or  all  these  schemes  have 
but  to  vindicate  their  title  to  be  classified 
under  the  principle,  and  the  party  is  pow- 
erless before  them.  Like  the  enormities 
expertly  drawn  out  of  the  bowels  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  they  will  impose  them- 
selves, not  by  their  own  merits,  for  they 
have  nothing  but  demerits,  but  by  hang- 
ing on  to  the  skirts  of  the  principle. 
Good  Republicans  will  be  saying  ruefully 
about  them,  as  they  did  about  the  terri- 
ble consequences  of  the  Doctrine,  **Well, 
of  course,  we  don't  approve  of  that  kind 
of  thing,  and  we  never  dreamed  of  seeing 
it  brought  forward ;  still,  if  it's  a  part  of 
the  *  principle,'  there's  no  help  for  us." 

This  is  no  fancy  picture.  If  the  Re- 
publican party  goes  into  the  campaign 
with  McKinley  and  his  principle,  and  elects 
him  President,  it  is  going  to  unchain  the 
most  formidable  political  passions  that 
this  country  has  seen.  It  is  going  to 
guarantee,  in  advance,  comfort  and  pros- 
perity to  every  voter,  and  to  bring  upon 
the  Treasury  raiders  ten  times  as  nume- 
rous and  ten  times  as  ugly  as  the  Goxey 


band.  The  party's  promises  to  pay  will 
be  presented  by  the  thousand,  and  no  pay- 
ment in  smooth  prophecies  will  be  ac- 
cepted. McKinley  cannot  get  off  next 
time  by  alleging  that  wages  have  been  in- 
creased to  the  amount  of  $200,000,000  of 
gold  which  never  got  into  the  country. 
Deluded  workingmen  will  angrily  demand 
to  see  the  color  of  the  cash.  All  the  shift- 
less and  unfortunate,  all  unprosperous 
merchants  and  unsuccessful  manufactur- 
eM,  socialists  and  agitators,  labor  reform- 
ers and  abolishers  of  poverty,  will  be  let 
loose  upon  a  government  that  has  under- 
taken to  care  for  them  all;  and  what 
strength  will  it  have  to  withstand  them? 
Concrete  protection  we  can  endure.  We 
have  worried  along  with  it  for  thirty  years, 
and  can  put  up  with  it  for  another  genera- 
tion if  necessary.  But  abstract,  indefinite 
protection,  a  principle  that  is  susceptible 
of  fresh  and  dangerous  application  every 
quadrennium;  protection  that  means  pa- 
ternalism in  government,  class  legislation 
without  end,  and  an  abandonment  of  the 
law-making  power  every  four  years  to 
campaign  contributors — this  is  something 
which  no  free  people  or  republican  govern- 
ment can  tolerate  and  remain  free  and  re- 
publican. 


THE  MAORIS. 

At  Ska,  March  1,  1896. 

NoTHnfO  in  New  Zealand,  which  I  am  ju9t 
leaving,  has  intereited  me  more  than  the  con- 
dition of  the  Maoris,  the  native  inhabitants 
Their  history  and  their  present  status  differ 
from  those  of  most  of  the  aboriginal  races  who 
have  beeo,  or  are  in  process  of  being,  replaced 
by  whites.  New  Zealand  is  slightly  less  in 
area  than  the  United  Kingdom.  It  was  dis- 
covered by  Tasman  in  1642.  Cooke,  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-seven  years  later,  was  the 
"first  Earopean  known  to  have  set  foot  upon  its 
shores.  The  namber  of  inhabitants  was  then 
estimated  at  from  100,000  to  150,000— the  vast 
majority  apon  the  northern,  or  the  smaller,  of 
the  two  islands,  the  climate  of  which  best 
suited  their  constitution.  There  were  evidences 
that  the  population  was  not  as  large  as  at  a 
previous  p^od.  The  decline  may  have  been 
due  to  the  extinction  of  the  moa,  which  served 
for  food,  or  to  the  increase  of  tribal  warfare. 
Tradition  points  to  the  peopling  of  the  coun- 
try from  some  of  the  northeasterly  Pacific 
groups  six  hundred  years  ago.  Hocbstetter 
and  others  are  inclined  to  place  the  date  at  a 
more  remote  period.  Similarity  in  language 
to  some  of  the  other  Polynesians  would  appear 
to  favor  the  former  theory;  divergence  of  cha- 
racter, due  to  residence  in  a  more  bracing  cli- 
mate, the  latter. 

The  Maoris^  form  one  of  the  most  important 
families  of  the  b^wn  Polynesian  stock,  that 
which  is  believed  to  have  developed  its  cha- 
racteristics to  the  highest  degree.  They  were 
skilful  hunters  and  fishers  end  good  agricul- 
turists. Their  larger  houses  and  canoes,  their 
weapons,  ornaments,  and  utensils  were  beauti- 
fully finished  and  elaborately  carved  or  paint- 
ed. Their  instruments  were  of  stone,  wood,  or 
sbeU.  With  these  they  felled  the  giant  kauri 
pine,  dog  out  and  fashioned  sea-going  canoes 
capable  of  carrying  one  hundred  warriors,  and 


,  *The,peoall*rtttos  of  the  nee  are  ably  fuininartaed 
bi  Wallace  and  Keana*! '  Anstralaala '  (London,  1884). 


scutched  and  wove  their  native  flax  into  deli- 
cate fabrics.  Their  forts,  or  pahs,  were  skil- 
fully constructed  on  commanding  sites.  Their 
beautiful  language  is  comprehensive,  delicate, 
and  expressive.  The  most  Insignificant  insects, 
the  smallest  plants,  the  principal  stars,  are 
designated.  They  had  no  writings.  Their 
songs  and  proverbs,  their  legends  and  tradi^ 
tions  and  mythology  were  transmitted  orally 
from  father  to  ton.  The  year  was  divided  into 
months  and  seasons.  They  believed  in  a  future 
stite«  and  had  an  elaborate  system  of  temples, 
priests,  omens,  and  sacrifices.  They  held 
slaves;  they  practised  cannibalisin,  believing  in 
the  transfer,  to  a  certain  extent,  of  the  quali- 
ties of  the  victim  to  his  devourer. 

The  Maoris  welcomed  the  advent  and  settle- 
ment of  Europeans.  The  usual  results  followed.  - 
Runaway  convicts  and  sailors,  rough  whalers 
and  traders  (too  many  of  them  imbued  with 
all  the  acuteness  bom  of  education  and  civili- 
zation and  the  devilry  bom  of  grasping  ava- 
rice) contributed  their  utmost  to  degrade.  De- 
voted missionaries  gave  themselves  to  the  work 
of  enlightenment ;  never  elsewhere  at  one 
period  did  the  results  of  their  labors  appear 
more  hopeful.  Settiers  purchased  wide  do- 
mains in  exchange  for  a  few  axes,  trinkets, 
and  Jew*s- harps.  Spars  for  the  British  navy, 
fibre  for  the  manufacture  of  sacking  and  cord- 
age,  were  bartered  for  spirituous  liquors,  arms, 
and  ammunition. 

In  1885  the  Maori  chiefs,  with  the  advice 
and  approval  of  the  British  Resident,  the  prin- 
cipal missionaries  and  merchants,  entered  into 
a  confederation,  issued  a  declaration  of  inde- 
pendence, hoisted  a  national  fiag,  and  institut- 
ed an  annual  assembly.  Nothing  came  of  this 
arrangement.  They  were  capable  of  adopting 
white  ways  to  the  extent  of  chartering  a  Bri- 
tish vest  el  and  conquering  and  enslaving  the 
Moriori  inhabitants  of  the  Chatham  Islands, 
500  miles  distant;  but  the  working  of  a  regu- 
lar constitution  and  a  united  assembly  was  be- 
yond their  training  and  capacity.  Increasing 
complications  arore  between  the  natives  and 
the  ever-swelling  number  of  white  'settlers  and 
traders,  until,  in  1840,  the  treaty  of  Waitangi 
was  concluded.  The  tribes  ceded  the  sove- 
reignty of  the  islands  to  the  British  Crown, 
which  guaranteed  to  them  **  the  full,  exclusive, 
and  undisturbed  pof^session  of  their  lands  and 
estates,  forests,  fisheries,  and  other  properties, 
so  long  as  it  is  their  wish  and  desire  to  retain 
the  same  in  their  possession";  but  the  chiefs 
**  yield  to  her  Majesty  the  exclusive  right  of 
preSroption  over  such  lands  as  the  proprietors 
thereof  may  be  diitposed  to  alienate."  At  this 
period  the  Maoris  are  supposed  to  have  num. 
bered  about  100.000. 

All  might  have  been  well,  a  new  chapter 
might  have  been  opened  In  the  relations  be- 
tween a  white  and  a  colored  race,  if  this  treaty 
had  been  faithfully  adhered  to.  But  it  was 
not  to  be.  In  such  relations  the  most  scoun- 
drelly whites  have  it  ever  in  their  power  to 
embroil  in  contests  with  overwhelming  force 
and  drag  down  to  ruin  the  noblest  colored. 
The  treaty  was  broken  by  the  whites  in  their 
lust  for  acres.  **Oh  !  earth,  earth,  earth  !** 
wrote  Bishop  Selwyn  from  New  Zealand, 
**such  has  been  our  cry.  The  Queen,  law,  reli- 
gion have  been  thrust  aside  in  the  one  thought 
for  the  acquisition  of  land.*'  The  wars  which 
ensued  were  perhaps  the  most  iniquitous  that 
ever  were  waged  by  a  civilized  country.  **  If 
we  cannot  keep  the  military  engaged  here  on 
one  excuse,  we  vrill  on  another,^'  said  a 
colonel  at  the  time  to  a  dignitary  of  the  church, 
who  repeated  the  speech  to  me.  Nearly  10,000 
British  were  at  one  time  in  the  field.    Tte 


March  26,  1896] 


Th.e   Illation. 


VJ51 


Maoris  fought  with  desperate  courage  and 
showed  high  military  ability.  Id  \96i,  at  the 
unsoccessful  assault  on  the  Chite  Pah,  near 
Tauranga,  I  am  told,  a  British  regiment  lost 
more  officers  than  had  any  one  regiment  at 
Waterloa  The  Maoris  upon  many  occasions 
showed  true  nobility  of  character.  They  were 
at  first  astonished  that  the  British  troops, 
mlnistarid  to  by  clergymen  who  had  taught 
them  the  Decalogue,  should  fight  on  Sunday. 
Upon  the  slain  body  of  one  of  their  principal 
generals,  Henare  Taratoa,  was  found  an  order 
of  the  day.  It  began  with  a  prayer  and  ended 
with  the  text :  **  If  thine  enemy  hunger,  feed 
him  ;  if  he  thirst,  give  him  drink.**  When  the 
Chkte  Pah  was  eventually  abandoned  by  its 
defenders  and  occupied  by  the  British,  it  was 
found  that  the  stores  of  water  had  run  out,  and 
that  the  wounded  British  who  bad  fallen  with, 
in  the  works  had  been  supplied  by  the  Maoris 
at  the  risk  of  life  by  water  carried  in  through 
tiie  besieging  lines. 

The  Imperial  OoTemment  at  length  became 
sick  of  the  business.  It  intimated  to  the  colo- 
nists that  they  should  make  and  keep  their 
p^ace  with  the  Maoris.  The  home  troops 
were  withdrawn  and  the  war  died  out.  But 
the  Maoris  had,  in  the  words  of  Bishop  Bel- 
wyn,  conceived  **an  utter  loss  of  faith  in 
everything  that  is  English—clergy  and  all 
alike."  They  withdrew  within  themseWes. 
They  fell  back  on  their  old  beliefs,  strangely 
mingled  with  the  cosmogony  of  the  Old  Testar 
ment,  in  the  form  which  became  known  as 
'*  Hauhauism.**  Miracles,  unknown  tongues, 
inspiration  from  heaven,  messages  of  angels 
were  alleged  in  support.  The  bones  of  many 
Maoris  who  had  been  interred  in  Christian 
churchyards  were  removed  to  mountain  heights 
dear  of  white  pollution. 

The  Maoris  now  number  41«000  in  the  North 
Island  and  8,000  in  other  portions  of  New 
Zealand.  The  decadence  of  the  race,  while 
partly  due  to  drink  and  to  diseases  arising 
from  vice,  is  mainly  to  be  attributed  to  other 
causes.  Freshly  introduced  diseases,  such  as 
phthisis,  work  out  with  more  deadly  effect  in 
fresh  soil.*  Surcease  of  tribal  wars  has  led  to 
the  abandonment  of  healthy  hill  habitations. 
Inexperience  in  the  use  of  clothing,  neglect  of 
tha  most  common  sanitary  precautions  bmve 
worked  out  evil.  The  principal  cause  has 
doubtless  been  the  change  in  ways  of  life  and 
thought— the  numbing  influence  of  the  impact 
with  civilisation.  Former  ambitions,  former 
incentives  to  exertion,  are  gone.  All  their  arts, 
all  their  industries  were  strained  towards  pre- 
paration for  war,  the  difficult  support  of  life. 
War  is  at  an  end.  Thanks  to  the  way  in  which 
they  fought,  they  stiU  retain  10,000,000  acres 
(not  all  of  tiie  best  land)  against  the  60.000,000 
acres  held  by  700,000  whites.  Rents  derived 
from  lands  leased  to  whites,  and  improved  me- 
thods of  agriculture  applied  to  lands  under 
their  own  care,  enable  tb^m  easily  to  supply 
the  wants  of  nature.  But  a  small  proportion 
have  as  yet  acquired  civilised  wants  or  civil- 
ised ambitioDs.  I  saw  them  under  all  condi- 
tions—from the  lowest  (yet  no  lower  than  I 
have  seen  too  many  of  the  white  inhabitants 
of  a  civilised  country  ground  down  by  long 
ages  of  oppression)  to  where  they  went  about 
well  dressed,  driving  good  buggies,  men  and 
women  riding  on  well-appointed  horses  and 
employing  approved  agricultural  machinery. 
In  the  main  they  impressed  me  as  children 
playing  with  life,  somewhat  in  the  spirit  of  the 


•  1 II  Interested  ta  ttetnbjeet  of  dUMM  m  a  factor  In 
Um  aeosdssee  or  asttve  rmem  tbimld  procarv  from  Uie 
OovansMBt  Prtnlv.  Wemncton.  Hew  ZealnnS.  RmU*- 
■ssatarrfspcr  4S.  1894. whlsii embodlM  » treatUe on 
Ike  VMetkm  by  Snfgeon  Andrews,  B.  N . 


Australian  aborigines  who  used  to  exclaim: 
*'  Plenty  big  fool  white  fellow,  make  road  for 
black  fellow  to  walk  on."  Tet  there  is  still  a 
pride  and  reserve  such  as  I  have  seen  in  no 
other  native  race.  At  a  tourist  resort  around 
which  they  lived  in  large  numbers,  I  was  but 
twice  asked  for  money,  and  then  only  by 
children  in  a  somewhat  shamefaced  manner. 
They  charged  highly  for  admission  to  view 
natural  curiosities  within  their  domains ;  but 
all  was  at  tariff  ratee,  and  there  was  no 
suggestion  of  poiir-botres.  They  offered  no- 
thing for  sale  where  much  would  gladly  be 
bought.  The  curiosities  sold  as  native  in  the 
shops  appeared  most  likely  to  be  of  white 
manufacture. 

In  remoter  districts  there  is  perhaps  some- 
thing of  the  open,  sunny  disposition  of  old 
times.  In  su^^h  dealings  as  I  had  with  them  I 
ever  felt  as  if  I  were  being  weighed  and  used, 
a  member  of  an  unreliable  race,  simply  as  far 
as  it  suited  their  convenience.  Buropean 
clothing  has  been  adopted  and  is  generally 
kept  clean  and  in  good  order.  Flowered  hats, 
in  the  newest  fashion,  are  much  in  vogue  with 
the  girls.  The-faces  of  many  of  the  older  men 
are  elaborately  tatooed.  Many  of  the  women, 
old  and  young,  are  likewise  marked  from  lip 
to  chin.  Their  demeanor  in  a  crowded  land 
court  was  as  dignified  as  that  of  a  white  gath- 
ering. There  was  no  more  intoxication  among 
the  crowd  brought  to  town  by  interest  in  the 
land  cases,  around  the  opposite  drink-shop, 
than  I  should  have  seen  at  home.  In  this 
court  and  that  drink-shop  I  seemed  to  view  in 
startling  contrast  the  opposite  poles  of  the  or- 
der to  which  they  are  now  subject.  Beyond  a 
few  lawyers  and  clerks  in  lower  grades,  none 
give  themselves  to  business,  few  to  steady  em- 
ployment. I  could  not  hear  of  a  Biaori  help, 
servant,  gardener,  or  groom.  There  is  no  cur- 
rent Maori  literature.  They  do  not  purchase 
books:  newspapers  only  upon  rare  occasions. 
Public  notices  relating  to  land  affairs  are,  in 
the  North  Island,  printed  in  Maori  as  in  Eng. 
lish. .  The  portions  of  the  Government  Ghisette 
referring  to  the  desired  sale  or  desired  parti- 
tion among  individuals  of  tribal  lands  are 
published  in  the  vernacular. 

The  Government  and  people  of  New  Zealand 
(excepting  the  liquor-dealers)  are  now  well  dis- 
posed towards  them.  At  hotels,  in  hort e-cars, 
on  railroads,  steamboats,  and  by  the  roadf  ide 
I  could  not  distinguish  any  difference  between 
the  treatment  of  white  and  Maori.  Apa^ 
from  considerations  other  than  race  or  color, 
there  is  no  feeling  against  intermarriage.  In 
a  considerable  town,  where  I  spent  some  days, 
both  postmaster  and  schoolmaster  had  Maori 
wives.  In  conversation  regarding  a  young 
man  who  had  lately  been  promoted  to  £d00  a 
year  in  the  public  service,  it  came  out  incident- 
ally thst  his  wife  was  colored.  In  the  central 
and  western  districts  of  the  North  Island, 
Government  interferes  as  little  as  possible  with 
them.  Roads,  even,  are  not  made  there  with- 
out their  full  permission.  The  Upper  House  of 
Legislature  of  New  2iealand  nambers  forty  four 
and  the  Lower  seventy<*four.  The  Maoris  have, 
under  the  Constitution,  two  repreeentatives  of 
their  own  race  in  the  former  and  four  In  the 
latter.  Like  their  white  sisters,  Maori  women 
have  the  franchise.  Maoris  are  also  eligible  as 
ordinary  representatives.  Maoris  can  elect 
whether  they  will  vote  for  the  constituted 
Maori  representatives  or  for  the  ordinary  rep- 
reseotatives  of  the  district  in  which  they  re- 
side. They  bold  annually,  after  the  manner  of 
the  Indian  National  Ck>ngrees,  an  assembly  for 
the  discussion  of  their  affairs  and  the  instruc- 
tion of  their  Parliamentary  repreeentatives. 


Temporary  wooden  buildings  are  erected  for 
the  accommodation  and  entertainment  of  the 
delegates  and  the  hundreds  of  interested  visi- 
tors who  come  from  all  parts  of  Maoriland. 
The  next  will  meet  at  Waihi  at  the  end  of  the 
present  month. 

New  Zealand  maintains  an  efficient  system 
of  State  education— in  no  department  more 
admirable  than  in  relation  to  colored  citisens. 
There  is  a  native  school  department,  and  wher- 
ever there  is  a  likelihood  of  attenders  a  native 
school  is  established  and  maintained  at  the 
cost  of  the  State.  The  teaching  is  somewhat 
more  elementary  and  practical  than  in  the  or- 
dinary schools.  There  are  sixty*five  such,  main- 
tained at  a  cost  of  £16,000,  besides  four  high 
schools  for  advanced  Maori  scholars.  Maoris 
may  attend  white  schools,  if  such  are  conve- 
nient, and,  vice-versa,  white  children  the  Ma- 
ori schools.  It  is  the  policy  of  the  Education 
Department,  as  white  settlers  increase  in  or  on 
the  borders  of  a  Maori  district,  to  merge  the 
native  schools  into  ordinary  State  schools.  I 
visited  several  of  the  pure  Maori ;  Maori  in 
which  there  were  a  few  whites ;  and  one  lately 
liaori  now  converted  into  a  State  school.  This 
last  was  especially  interesting— eighty  boys 
and  girls,  about  equally  divided  as  to  race, 
mixed  in  their  seats  and  classes.  Surely  the 
manners  and  dispositions  of  the  dark  skinned 
cannot  be  of  a  low  type,  or  the  parents  of  the 
white  would  never  submit  to  such  an  admix- 
ture. It  is  considered  inexpedient  to  attempt 
to  enforce  compulsory  attendance  on  Maori 
children  as  on  white. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  judge  as  to  the 
character  and  extent  of  religious  feeling 
among  the  race.  Doctrinal  Christianity  has 
never  recovered  its  pristine  hold.  Hauhauism 
prevails  to  a  certain  extent.  Mormonism  has 
made  some  way.  The  Maoris  are  eminently 
seekers  after  **some  new  thing.**  I  asked  a 
clergyman  as  to  the  number  belonging  to  dif- 
ferent denominations  in  a  certain  district.  He 
apportioned  so  many  hundred  to  one,  so  many 
to  the  other.  *'  But,**  I  said,  **  I  counted  only 
five  in  church,  and  five  coming  from  mass." 
'*0h,**  he  rejoined,  **it  is  doubtless  pretty 
much  the  same  as  with  whites  at  present.** 
That  is  perhaps  the  case. 

It  would  be  rash  to  dogmatise  regarding  the 
future,  where  Hochstetter,  whose  book,  writ- 
ten in  1863,  is  the  best  authority  on  the  geolo* 
gy,  fauna,  and  fiora  of  New  Zealand,  is  likely 
to  have  proved  so  far  wrong.  He  predicted 
that  by  ▲.  d.  1900  the  Maoris  would  be  reduced 
to  29,885,  and  that  they  would  be  extinct  by 
▲  D.  aoOO.  For  the  first  time  a  census  does  not 
register  a  diminution  in  numbers.  Educa- 
tional and  other  infiuences  are  perhaps  be- 
ginning to  tell  favorably.  One  of  the  enume- 
rators in  the  last  census  reports  that  there  is  a 
marked  decrease  in  general  drinking  habits, 
and  adds  that  tribal  intermarriage  the  Maoris 
'*  now  recognise  as  being  a  means  of  staying 
their  hitherto  decline.**  An  admirable  hand- 
book on  hygiene  is  used  in  the  native  schools. 
It  is  specially  directed  to  pointing  out,  in  the 
kindest  spirit,  the  respecU  in  which  Maori 
customs  are  deficient.  In  the  latest  edition  I 
remark  several  footnotes  to  the  effect—**  This 
was  true  in  1884,**  **Tbis  is  not  true  now  in 
18M,*'  etc.  Inter marriiges  will  probably  in- 
crease  in  number.  Looking  to  the  long  future, 
the  race  is  more  likely  to  be  absorbed  than  to 
maintain  its  individuality.  The  degree  in 
which  Maori  blood  may  influence  the  character 
of  the  futtire  New  Zealander  will  depend  upon 
the  extent  to  which  the  population  of  the  islands 
is  increased  by  immigration  or  by  Internal  ex- 
pansion. ^*  ^ 


352 


The   iN'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1604 


NAPOLEON  AND  ALEXANDER  I.— IL 
Pabis,  March  11. 1886. 

Immediately  after  the  famous  diplomatic 
audience  of  the  15th  of  August,  1811,  when  Na- 
poleon made  his  complaints  to  Prince  Kurakm, 
Napoleon  left  for  Saint- Cloud  and  worked 
without  interruption  with  the  Duke  of  Bassano. 
He  had  all  the  diplomatic  correspondence 
placed  before  him.  Was  he,  was  he  not,  to 
make  war  on  Russia  ?  He  examined  the  ques- 
tion as  a  mathematical  problem.  Much  was 
to  be  said  on  both  sides,  but  all  the  arguments 
led  him  finally  to  the  necessity  of  a  war,  and 
of  an  offensive  war.  At  the  same  time  the 
war  must  be  deferred,  as  many  diplomatic  ne- 
gotiations were  to  be  entered  into.  The  date 
fixed  was  June,  1812;  up  to  that  moment  time 
must  be  gained. 

The  military  preparations  were  made  as  se- 
cretly as  possible;  they  extended  from  Dant- 
zig  to  Italy.  The  Emperor,  with  the  minute- 
ness which  was  one  of  his  characteristics,  and 
which  seems  so  amazing  when  you  read  his 
correspondence,  saw  to  everything;  he  gave 
his  orders  for  his  German  allies,  for  the  army 
which  was  to  operate  on  the  northern  coasta, 
the  camps  of  Holland  and  of  Boulogne,  the 
army  of  Italy,  the  Guard;  he  prepared  every- 
thing for  the  most  formidable  campaign  which 
he  had  yet  undertaken.  Prussia  had  almost 
oeased  to  exist  as  an  independent  power;  the 
King  had  become  a  mere  vassal  of  Napoleon, 
and  was  in  mortal  fear  of  losing  his  crown. 
There  was  in  Berlin,  however,  an  ardent  anti- 
French  party.  The  Chancellor  Hardenberg 
favored  an  alliance  of  Prussia  with  Russia; 
the  King  wrote  secretly  to  the  Tsar,  on  the 
16th  of  July,  asking  him  to  come  to  his  help  if 
he  was  in  danger;  Schamhorst,  who  had  re- 
organisEed  the  Prussian  army,  left  secretly  for 
8t.  Petersburg  and  arranged  a  plan  of  cam- 
paisn  with  the  Emperor.  Military  prepara- 
tions were  made  in  Prussia  which  did  not  es- 
cape the  eye  of  Napoleon.  Nothing  could  he 
more  unpleasant  to  him,  if  he  had  a  war  with 
Russia,  than  a  sort  of  resurrection  of  the  king- 
dom of  Frederick  the  Great;  he  had  asked 
Frederick  William  to  allow  him  to  occupy 
Prussia,  and  to  give  him  a  small  auxiliary 
force,  in  case  he  had  to  enter  the  Russian  terri- 
tory—a force  which  he  considered  more  as  a 
hostage  than  as  a  help.  For  a  moment,  he 
thought  of  asking  Prussia  to  disarm,  and,  if  she 
refused,  to  suppress  her  entirely  as  an  inde- 
pendent kingdom.  With  the  army  of  Davout, 
the  garrisons  of  the  North,  the  troops  of  the 
Duchy  of  Warsaw,  of  Saxony,  and  of  West- 
phalia, he  thought  himself  able  to  do  it.  The 
King  of  Prussia  was  in  a  state  of  mortal 
anxiety. 

Would  the  Tsar  help  him?  If  not,  what  was 
he  goihg  to  do  himself?  Schamhorst  was  in 
conference  with  Alexander,  but  the  Tsar  inter- 
posed difficulties:  he  was  not  willing  to  take 
the  offensive  and  to  enter  Prussia.  A  military 
convention  was  signed  on  the  17th  of  October, 
1811,  in  which  Alexander  promised,  if  Napo- 
leon invaded  Prussia,  to  advance  his  own  troops 
towards  the  Vistula.  This  did  not,  however, 
put  an  end  to  the  perplexities  of  Frederick 
William;  how  could  he  alone  resist  Napoleon? 
He  felt  in  the  end  condemned  to  the  French 
alliance.  Davout  had  already  prepared  apian 
of  occupation,  it  may  be  said  of  annihilation, 
of  the  Prussian  kingdom.  Schamhorst  went 
from  St.  Petersburg  to  Vienna,  hoping  to  de- 
tach Austria  from  the  French  alliance,  but 
he  obtained  nothing  from  Mettemich.  On 
the  12tb  of  January,  1812,  the  King  accepted 
all  the  conditions  imposed  by  Napoleon.    An 


auxiliary  corps  of  42,000  men  for  the  Grande 
Arm^  the  occupation  of  the  cities  of  Prussia 
by  the  French  troops— such  were  the  most  im- 
portant of  theae  conditions. 

In  February,  1812,  all  the  elements  of  the 
Grande  Armde  were  ready,  and  began  to  be 
gradually  and  silently  put  in  motion.  A  gene- 
ral concentration  took  place  towards  the  Rus- 
sian frontier.  Tchemitcheff  had  spies  in  the 
various  departments  of  the  War  Office,  and  was 
aware  of  all  the  preparations.  Several  of 
these  spies  were  arrested  and  accused  of  high 
treason.  One  of  them  was  the  porter  of  the 
Russian  embassy.  Kurakin,  who  was  ignorant 
of  this  porter's  relations  with  the  secret  agents 
of  Tchemitcheff,  made  a  complaint,  but  his 
porter  had  not  been  arrested  in  the  embassy 
itself,  and  he  had  no  more  to  say.  Towards 
the  middle  of  April,  all  the  movements  ordered 
by  Napoleon  had  been  executed.  The  winter  in 
Paris  had  been  extremely  brilliant  and  ani- 
mated; but  war  with  Russia  was  in  every* 
body*s  mouth— the  negotiations  had  become  a 
mere  veil  on  both  sides.  Alexander,  having 
signed  a  treaty  of  alliance  with  Sweden,  sepa- 
rated  from  Speranski,  who  was  the  represen- 
tative  of  the  French  alliance.  The  party  hos 
tile  to  Speranski  went  so  far  as  to  accuse  him 
unjustly  of  treason.  On  the  17th  of  March, 
Speranski  had  work  as  usual  with  the  Emperor 
Alexander.  He  remained  three  hours  with 
Lim,  and,  when  the  door  opened,  Speranski 
was  seen  to  come  out,  his  eyes  full  of  tears, 
making  incoherent  gestures.  The  Emperor 
appeared  a  moment,  and  said  merely,  *'  Adieu, 
Pnnce!*'  and.  a  moment  after,  "Adieu  again, 
Michael  Mikhailovitch."  The  same  evening, 
Speranski  was  arrested,  put  in  a  kibitka,  and 
tiken  to  Nisbni.  The  court  was  in  a  state  of 
exaltation,  and  it  was  said  in  St  Petersburg 
that  the  sacrifice  of  Speranski  was  **the  first 
victory  over  the  French." 

Bemadotte  had  become  very  ardent  against 
Napoleon;  he  denounced  him  as  having  the 
wildest  projects.  **  They  wi  ite  to  me,"  said  he 
to  Suchtelen,  the  Russian  Minister,  **that  he 
hopes  to  have  done  with  Russia  in  a  couple  of 
months;  then  he  will  go  to  Constantinople;  he 
speaks  of  attacking  Persia,  of  establishing  him- 
self in  Ispahan,  and  in  three  years  from  this 
time  he  will  march  on  Delhi  and  attack  the 
English  in  India.'* 

On  the  5th  of  May,  Napoleon  showed  him- 
self at  the  Opera  with  the  Empress;  it  was 
his  farewell  to  Paris.  On  the  9th,  early 
in  the  morning,  he  took  his  departure 
from  Saint-Cloud;  hundreds  and  thousands 
of  carriages  left  Paris  on  that  day,  following 
the  imperial  carriages.  It  was  said  that  the 
Emperor  was  making  a  mere  inspection  of  his 
armies.  The  Moniteur  announced  that  "the 
Emperor  has  left  Paris  in  order  to  inspect  the 
Grande  Arm^  on  the  Vistula.  Her  Majesty 
the  Empress  will  accompany  his  Majeety  as 
far  as  Dresden,  where  she  hopes  to  have  the 
happiness  of  seing  her  august  family."  Napo- 
leon went  by  way  of  Ch&lons,  Mats,  Mainz, 
Wurtzburg,  Bamberg,  travelling  like  an  Asiatic 
potentate,  and  finding  everywhere  his  vassals. 
Thousands  of  peasants  kept  the  roads  in  per- 
fect repair  where  he  passed;  and,  in  the  night,' 
great  fires  were  kindled  near  tiie  roads.  In 
Dresden,  the  Emperor  took  possession  of  the 
Residens;  he  lived  in  the  magnificent  rooms 
which  had  once  been  inhabited  and  embellished 
by  Augustus  II.,  the  Elector  King.  The  princes 
of  the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine  arrived  one 
after  another^the  princee  of  Weimar,  of  Co- 
burg,  of  Mecidenburg,  the  Grand  Duke  of 
Wurtzburg,  the  primate  of  the  Confederation; 
then  came  Queen  Catherine  of   Westphalia, 


Prince  Eugtoe,  the  Emperor  and  Empress  of 
Austria,  Count  Mettemich,  Prince  Hatzfeld. 
For  several  days,  Napoleon  kept  a  Court  of 
Sovereigns,  but  in  the  intervals  of  the  great 
dinners  and  theatrical  repreaentaiions  he 
worked  with  the  Duke  of  Baasano  and  the 
Prince  of  NeuchAtel,  the  chief  of  staff.  In  the 
evening,  at  the  theatre.  Napoleon  could  look, 
as  he  had  been  said  already  to  have  looked,  at 
Erfurt,  on  a  **  parterre  de  rois."  He  was  in 
the  great  box,  placed  in  the  middle,  between 
the  two  Empresses;  the  kings,  princes  and  prin- 
cesses, ladies  and  gentlemen,  were  placed  ao- 
oording  to  the  rules  of  the'  protocoL  One 
night,  after  a  representation  of  an  opera  of 
Padres,  there  was  a  sort  of  apotheosis:  the 
centrepiece  was  a  revolving  sun,  with  Uie  in- 
scription **  Moins  grand  et  naoins  beau  que  luL^ 
The  Emperor  of  Austria  bowed  mildly  to  Na- 
poleon, who  said,  shrugging  his  shoulders,  **  II 
faut  que  ces  gens-Ui  me  croient  bien  bdte.** 
The  King  of  Prussia  arrived  last,  more  like  a 
victim  than  like  a  guest.  It  seemed  as  if  all 
the  sovereigns  tacitly  recognized  a  supreme 
authority)  and,  during  these  Dresden  days, 
Napoleon  appears  as  the  Emperor  of  Europe. 

On  the  morning  of  May  29,  Napoleon  took 
leave  of  the  Empress,  of  the  kings  and  princes, 
and  started  for  the  north.  Marie  Louise  left 
for  Prague,  where  she  was  allowed  to  stay 
some  time  with  her  parents.  Napoleon  went 
to  Posen,  without  stopping  an  instant  He 
reached  the  Vistula  at  Thorn,  where  he  found 
his  army  in  its  quarters  on  all  sides.  Thorn 
was  the  centre  of  a  chain  of  armies  which  was 
no  less  than  two  hundred  leagues  in  length. 
Half  a  million  of  men  were  waiting  for  his  or- 
ders. He  made  a  rapid  visit  to  DavoUt  at 
Dantzig,  and  also  to  Murat.  Seven  corps- 
d^armde  advanced  in  order  towards  the  Nie- 
men.  On  the  night  of  June  22,  Napoleon  in 
person  made  a  reconnoissance  on  the  river  with 
Berthier,  each  dressed  in  a  Polish  uniform, 
with  a  lancer's  shapska.  He  was  a  very  good 
topographer,  and  chose  a  place  near  Kovno  for 
the  passsge  of  the  river;  all  the  details  of  the 
passage  were  prepared  by  him.  The  troops 
were  arriving  on  all  sides:  the  Emperor  placed 
them.  He  had  a  fall  from  his  horse,  on  one  of 
his  excursions,  but  did  not  hurt  himself.  Can- 
lainoourt,  who  was  on  the  staff,  heard  Berthier, 
galloping  by  him,  say:  *'This  fall  is  of  bad 
omen;  we  ought  not  to  cross  the  Niemen."  On 
the  other  side  of  the  river,  no  troops,  no  sen- 
tries, were  seen.  Napoleon  expected  some  re- 
sistance, and  was  almost  disappointed  in  not 
finding  any.  He  asked  Caulainoourt:  *'Have 
the  Russian  peasants  any  energy?  Are  they  of 
the  same  stuff  as  the  Spaniards?  Do  you  think 
the  Russians  will  abandon  Wilma  to  me  with- 
out  fighting  a  battle?  "  fie  was  very  anxious  to 
have  a  battle;  he  hoped  that  the  Russian  no- 
bles  would  make  a  revolution  and  overthrow 
Alexander.  The  river  was  crossed  in  admira- 
ble order,  the  troops  marching  as  on  parade;  a 
whole  night  and  a  whole  day  were  necessary 
for  this  operation.  Napoleon  witnessed  it;  the 
soldiers  had  built  for  him  a  sort  of  throne 
made  of  branches  and  of  turf.  He  crossed  the 
river  early,  and  became  almost  intoxicated 
with  the  splendid  military  spectacle  under  his 
eyes;  he  was  very  gay,  even  jovial;  he  hummed 
between  his  teeth  the  air  of  **Malbrough 
s'en  va-t-en  guerre." 

On  the  very  day  when  Napoleon  crosasd  the 
Niemen,  Rostoptchin,  who  had  been  appointed 
Governor  of  Moscow,  wrote  to  the  Tsar: 
**  Tour  Empire  has  two  powerful  defences,  its 
extent  and  its  climate;  the  Emperor  of  Raafa 
will  be  formidable  at  Moscow,  terribto  al 
Kazan,  invincible  at  Tobolsk.**    Al€und«rMl 


March  26,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


^53 


Wiliia  on  the  17th  of  Jooe;  there  was  ronch 
dlvUion  of  opinioD  amoog  his  counciUora  and 
military  adYisers,  but  it  was  finally  resolved 
that  the  principal  Russlaa  army,  under  Bar* 
clay  de  ToUy,  shoold  retire  from  Wilna  to 
Drissa,  and  that  BagraUon,  with  a  second 
army,  should  remain  on  the  flank  of  the  French 
army.  When  it  became  known  how  superior 
the  Grande  Arm^  was  in  numbers,  Bagration 
also  was  ordered  to  retreat.  Alexander  made 
a  last  effort  Bal&khoff,  his  aide  de-camp  as 
well  as  his  Minister  of  Police,  was  sent  to  Na- 
poleon with  a  flnal  offer  of  negotiation  and  of 
peace.  Alexander  gave  him  a  letter  for  Na- 
poleon, but  instructed  him  to  say  to  the  Empe- 
ror that  negotiations  could  be  opened  only  if 
the  French  recrossed  the  Niemen.  **  80  long 
as  a  single  soldier  remained  in  arms  on  Russian 
soil,  he  would  himself  neither  pronounce  nor 
hear  a  word  about  peace.  **  fialakhoff  took  a 
few  Cossacks  and  a  trumpeter  with  him,  and 
arrived  at  the  French  line,  fle  was  conducted 
to  the  headquarters  of  the  Prince  of  EckmCihl, 
whom  he  found  occupied  with  the  routine  of 
his  work,  and  who  did  not  conceal  from  him 
the  fact  that  he  considered  his  mission  the 
means  of  gaining  a  llAle  time.  Napoleon 
exulted  when  he  heard  of  Balakhoff's  arrival. 
He  said  to  Berthier :  **My  brother  Alexander 
woull  already  like  to  come  to  terms;  he  is  afraid. 
My  manoeuvres  have  thrown  consterna- 
tion among  those  Russians;  in  two  months  they 
wHI  be  at  my  feet*^  Meanwhile,  he  was  in  no 
hurry  to  give  an  audience  to  Balakhoff,  and 
asked  Davont  to  keep  him,  as  he  wished  to  see 
him  only  after  having  entered  Wilna.  He 
hoped  to  fight  a  battle  before  Wilna,  but  was 
allowed  to  enter  it  without  meeting  with 
any  resistance.  The  Russians  had  burned  the 
bridges  and  their  storee. 

It  was  only  a  few  days  afterwards  that  Na- 
poleon  sent  for  Balakhoff,  on  the  80th  of  June. 
Their  conversation  took  place  after  Napoleon's 
breakfast,  while  he  was  taking  his  coffee.  Na^ 
poleon  as  usual  was  eloquent,  varied;  he  went 
over  all  the  incidents  which  had  preceded  the 
war;  he  complained  of  Alexander's  advisers; 
he  put  a  hundred  questions;  he  was  sometimes 
angry,  sometimes  most  amiable.  He  asked 
Balakhoff  to  dinner  in  the  evening,  with  Ber- 
thier, Duroc,  Besd^es,  and  Canlalncourt.  Af- 
ter dinner,  after  some  very  improper  questions 
about  Alexander's  sojourn  in  Warsaw  and  his 

visits  to  a  certain  Madam  8 ,  with  his  usual 

studied  versatility  he  suddenly  asked:  "Which 
is  the  road  to  Moscow?"  Balakhoff  refiected 
a  moment,  and  said:  '*8ire,  this  question  is 
meant  to  embarrass  me.  The  Russians  say,  as 
the  French  do,  that  all  roads  lead  to  Rome. 
You  can  take  which  one  you  like  to  go  to  Mos- 
cow; Charles  XII.  took  the  Poltava  road."  The 
answer  is  so  clever  that  we  ask  if  it  was  real- 
ly made;  it  is  at  any  rate  in  Balakhoff's  offl- 
cial  report  on  his  mission. 


Notes. 


CopsLAiTD  9l  Day,  Boston,  will  publish  directly 
'Lyrics  of  Earth,'  by  Archibald  Lampman; 
*  Undertones,'  by  Madison  Cawein;  *  The  Road 
to  Castaly,'  by  Alice  Brown';  *In  Soul  and 
8enB^'  by  Hannah  Parker  Kimball;  *In  the 
Village  of  Viger,'  by  Duncan  Campbell  Scott; 
and  *  The  Captured  Cunarder,'  by  William  H. 
Rideing. 

*The  House:  An  Episode  in  the  Lives  of 
Reuben  Baker,  Astronomer,  and  his  Wife 
AUoe,'  by  the  late  Eugene  Field;  *  Cinderella, 
and  Other  Stories,*  by  Richard  Harding  Davis; 


Robert  I^uis  Stevenson's  *  Poems  and  Ballads,' 
now  first  collected  in  one  volume;  and  a  series 
of  volumes  of  **  Stories  by  English  Authors," 
arranged  according  to  the  countries  which  are 
the  scene  of  the  action,  are  among  the  promised 
publications  of  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  resuming  an  old  con- 
junction with  the  house  of  John  Murray, 
London,  in  this  particular,  will  bring  out  a 
new  edition  of  Qeorge  Borrow*s  *  The  Bible  in 
Spain '  and  *  Lavengro,'  the  first  in  two  vol- 
umes.  They  announce  also,  for  speedy  publi- 
cation, the  *  Hastings  Chess  Tournament,*  the 
seventh  of  the  ten  volumes  of  Ford's  *  Writ- 
ings of  Jefferson,'  and  the  fourth  of  Roose- 
velt's *^  Winning  of  the  West' 

E^rly  spring  announcements  of  Edward  Ar- 
nold embrace  '  In  the  Far  Northwest:  A  Re- 
cord of  a  Canoe  Journey  of  4,000  miles  from 
Fort  Wrangel  to  the  Pelly  Lakes,  and  down 
the  Yukon  to  the  Behring  Sea,'  by  Warbur- 
ton  Pike,  with  illustrations;  *  The  ExploraUon 
of  the  Caucasus,*  by  Douglas  W.  Freshfield,  in 
two  volumes,  with  panoramic  and  many  other 
photographic  illustrations;  and  *Tbe  Art  of 
Reading  and  Speaking,*  by  Canon  James 
Fleming. 

Macmillan  &  Co.  have  nearly  ready  an  'At- 
las of  Nerve  Cells,'  edited  by  M«  AUen  Starr, 
M.D. 

•The  Wind's  Will,'  a  coUege  story,  by  Rey 
TillotBon;  'The  Romance  of  Guardamonte,' 
by  Arline  E.  Davis ;  *  A  Pretty  Bandit,'  by 
Frank  Bailey  Millard ;  and  '  Out  of  a  Silver 
Flute,'  by  Philip  VerriU  Mighels,  are  in  the 
press  of  J.  Selwin  Tait  &  Sona. 

Charles  H.  Kerr  &  Co.,  Chicago,  will  pub- 
lish  'A  History  of  the  American  Ttuiff,  from 
Washington  to  Cleveland,'  by  Eugene  C. 
Lewis. 

But  six  months  have  elapsed  since  we  favor- 
ably reviewed  Statham's  'Architecture  for 
General  Readers'  (Scribners),  and  we  now 
have  in  hand  a  second  edition,  revised.  This 
compact  treatise  is  attractively  printed  and 
bound,  and  freely  illustrated,  has  its  index 
and  its  list  of  plates  and  cuts,  but,  strange  to 
say,  has  no  table  of  contents,  though  the  *text 
is  unbroken  except  by  paragraphs  in  either  of 
the  two  parts  into  which  the  work  is  divided. 
Dependence  for  a  general  view  is  aolely  upon 
the  headlines. 

Lovers  of  Dartmoor  will  welcome  the  new 
edition  of  Rowe's  'Perambulation  of  Dart- 
moor,' which  has  been  issued  by  the  enter- 
prise of  an  Exeter  bookseller,  Mr.  James 
Commin,  and  published  in  this  country  by 
Messrs.  Putnam.  Samuel  Rowe,  Vicar  of  Cre- 
dlton,  was  an  excellent  specimen  of  the  anti- 
quary of  the  last  generation— learned  in  an 
old-fashioned  way,  leisurely  and  gossipy,  and 
with  a  weakness  for  Druids;  and  both  the 
original  edition  of  this  his  work  of  love,  pub- 
lished in  1848,  and  the  reprint  of  1860,  had 
become  difficult  to  procure^  It  has  now  been 
revised  and  enlarged,  by  Mr.  J.  Brooking 
Rowe;  there  are  additional  chapters  on  the 
geology  and  botany  of  the  moor  by  competent 
writers;  there  are  two-doaen  charming  en- 
gravings of  Dartmoor  scenery  from  drawings 
of  Mr.  F.  J.  Widgery;  and  the  needs  of  the 
pedestrian  are  amply  met  by  four  large-scale 
maps.  Altogether  it  is  a  solid  and  handsome 
book,  in  whose  five  hundred  pages  tourists, 
topographers,  and  antiquaries  may  all  browse 
with  pleasure;  and  it  refiects  much  credit  on 
the  "  local "  publisher  and  the  *'  local "  printer. 

The  centenary  of  Bums  is  now  *'on,"  and 
his  admirers  will  find  much  satisfaction  in  the 
uncommonly  pretty  two- volume  edition  of  the 
Poems  just  brought  out  in  London  by  CleoMot 


Wilson,  and  in  Philadelphia  by  J.  B.  Lippln- 
cott  Co.  Mr.  James  A.  Manson  proves  a  judi- 
cious  editor,  refraining  from  overloading  the 
notes,  which  are  relegated  to  the  rear  of  vol- 
ume li.  along  vdth  the  glossary  and  index  to 
first  lines,  and  furnishing  a  sufficient  introduc- 
tory sketch.  There  is  no  embellishment  besides 
the  typography,  which  is  elegant  and  not  try- 
ing to  the.  eyes,  though  condensed. 

We  have  already  noticed  the  appearance  of 
the  first  volume  of  the  Muirheads'  translation 
of  Helbig's  Guide  to  the  'Public  Collections 
of  Classical  Antiquities  in  Rome'  (Leipzig: 
Baedeker).  The  publication  of  the  itecond  (1896) 
completes  a  most  useful  book.  Intended  to 
guide  the  student  of  archseology  or  the  culti- 
vated layman  through  the  Roman  museums,  it 
takes  up  the  different  works  of  art  in  the  order 
in  which  they  naturally  meet  the  eye,  gives  a 
description  of  each,  and  refers  the  reader  to 
larger  books  in  which  n^ay  be  found  either  pic- 
torial illustration  or  fuller  verbal  treatment. 
To  each  description  is  prefixed  a  pcuragraph 
naming  the  provenance  (when  possible)  of  each 
piece  of  sculpture,  and  indicating  the  restora- 
tions which  it  ha9  suffered.  All  the  public 
museums  are  included  except  the  Faliscan  in 
the  Villa  di  Papa  Giulio.  The  accounts  of  the 
sculptures  in  the  Square  of  the  Capitol  and  of 
the  collections  in  the  Museum  delle  Terme  are 
absolutely  new.  The  volumes  are  of  the  regu- 
lation "Baedeker"  size,  are  provided  with  an 
excellent  index,  and  will  be  indispensable 
alike  to  the  student  and  to  the  intelligent 
traveller. 

The  growing  interest  in  "  sociology  "  which 
is  just  now  felt  in  France  is  illustrated  by  the 
fact  that  M.  Ch.  Baye  has  recently  taken  the 
trouble  to  translate  into  French  the  'Qrun- 
driss'  of  the  Graz  Professor,  Ludwlg  Gum- 
plowics  (which  appeared  so  long  ago  as  1885), 
under  the  title  '  Pr^is  de  Sociologie'  (Paris  : 
Challley).  The  American  reader  who  shall 
make  the  acquaintance  of  Prof.  Gumplowlcs's 
work  for  the  first  time  in  this  garb  will  find  in 
it  some  very  vigorous  and  suggestive  criticism 
of  previous  writers,  especially  of  Comte  and 
Spencer,  and  an  interesting  account  of  one  but 
little  known  save  by  professed  psychologists, 
viz.,  Bastian.  In  the  constructive  part,  he  will 
find  much  confident  theorizing  with  little  de- 
finite evidence,  and  a  principle  put  forward  as 
fundamental— that  civilisation  always  began 
in  conquest— which  looks  very  mhch  as  if  i€ 
had  been  suggested  by  the  peculiar  history  of 
the  Austro- Hungarian  monarchy.  It  is  a 
small  matter,  but  one  would  like  to  know  what 
the  circumstances  are  in  Prof.  Gumplowlcs's 
part  of  the  world  which  have  produced  a 
scorn,  so  fine  and  so  much  in  evidence,  for  any 
opinion  that  seems  to  be  tainted  by  "  BibUcal " 
or  theological  infiuences. 

*La  Force  du  Mai,'  by  Paul  Adam  (Paris : 
Colin  &  Cie.),  is  a  work  in  which  the  infiu- 
ence  of  Zola  is  visible.  It  is  not  open  to  the  re- 
proach of  obscenity,  as  so  much  of  the  work  of 
Zola  himself,  but  it  contains  passages  written 
in  the  veriest  naturalistic  vein,  for  which 
many  readers  will  feel  instant  and  instinctive 
repulsion.  The  descriptions  of  choleraic  cases 
are  no  doubt  faithful,  but  are  also  loathsome, 
however  closely  connected  with  the  story. 
But  the  book  is  strong  and  presents  strong 
characters— those  of  the  young  doctor,  who 
sacrifices  the  certainty  of  wealth  and  a  brU- 
liant  career  to  principle  and  truth,  and  of  the 
girl  who  becomes  his  wife  and  who  is  of  the 
same  metal.  The  clear  recognition  of  duty 
and  the  Brave  acceptance  of  poverty  and 
calumny  are  the  poinU  which  the  author  ap- 
pears to  emphaaias,  and  are  those  which  raise 


Q54 


Tlie   Nation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1604 


bis  work  above  the  level  of  the  average  ''  nato- 
ralistic  "  oovel. 

'*  Jean  Rolland  **  is  the  mascnline  peeudonym 
of  Margaret  Belin,  a  writer  who  woald  greatly 
improve  her  work  by  a  diminatioii  in  the 
length  of  her  analyses,  which  are  neither  snb. 
tie  enough  nor  profound  enough  to  warrant 
their  excessive  development  This  improve- 
ment is  not  found  in  her  last  book,  *  Sous  les 
Oalons*  (Paris:  Colin),  and  the  more  the  pity, 
for  she  has  a  simple  and  attaching  subject 
which,  when  she  gets  fairly  into  it,  she  makes 
distinctly  interesting.  In  this  volume  she  has 
certainly  kept  the  good  wine  for  the  last,  and 
totally  neglected  Boileau*s  wise  precept:  **Le 
Bujet  n^est  Jamais  assez  tdt  expliqu^." 

I(  any  reader  is  inclined  to  look  with  suspi- 
cion  on  Roger  Dombre^s  *Tante  Rabat- joie* 
(Paris:  Ck>lin),  because  it  is  marked  '*for 
young  girls,"  let  him  not  think  he  will 
waste  time  in  reading  it.  The  story  is  of  a 
charming  young  girl  and  is  delightfully  told, 
with  the  verve  of  Oyp,  to  whom  the  book  is  de- 
dicated, and  the^wit  of  De  la  Br^te.  It  takes 
and  keeps  the  attention,  and  **youog  girls  *^ 
whose  parents  may  buy  it  are  not  likely  to  get 
at  its  lively  pages  until  the  parents  have  read 
every  one  of  them. 

The  sixth  volume  of  Jules  Lemaitre*s  *  Lee 
Contemporains'  (Paris:  Lec^ne,  Oudin  &  Cie.) 
is  composed  mainly  of  a  long  and  appreciative 
article  on  Lunartine*  whom  the  critic  puts  on 
a  very  high  pedestal  indeed.  His  reasons  for 
so  doing  are  set  out  at  length  and  will  not  be 
accepted  as  sufficient  by  every  reader.  The 
other  important  article  is  on  **  L* Influence 
r^cente  des  litt^ratures  du  Nord,"  an  influence 
never  cordially  admired  by  Lemaitre,  and 
which  he  believes  to  have  spent  its  force  and 
to  be  on  the  point  of  disappearing  altogether, 
thanks  to  a  possibly  nearat-hand  reaction  of 
the  Latin  spirit. 

The  thin  index  to  Clkrarad^s  *  HandwOrterbuch 
der  Staatswissenschaften*  is  now  followed  by  a 
**flr8t  supplementary  volume**  (Jena:  Gustav 
Fischer)  as  thick  as  the  last  of  the  original  six. 
Although  the  supplement  contains  articles 
upon  several  new  subjects,  it  does  little  towards 
bringing  the  performance  of  the  book  as  a 
whole  into  harmony  with  the  promise  of  its 
title.  The  new  subjects  are,  for  the  most  part, 
such  as  might  well  have  been  embraced  even 
within  the  restricted  plan  of  the  original  vol 
nmes.  One  new  article,  indeed,  is  broadly  en- 
titled "The  State,**  but  the  writing  of  it  was 
intrusted  to  Adolf  Wagner,  and  he,  of  course, 
treated  the  subject  exclusively  **in  its  econo- 
mic aspects.**  Thus  the  whole  fleld  of  political 
philosophy,  like  the  flelds  of  international  and 
of  public  law,  is  still  excluded,  and  the  mis 
named  *  Dictionary  of  the  Political  Sciences* 
remains  in  fact  a  dictionary  of  political  econo- 
my, theoretical  and  practical.  The  jiistiflca- 
tion  of  a  supplementary  volume  must  be 
■ought,  therefore,  not  in  the  new  rubrics  which 
it  introduces,  but  rather  in  the  fresh  material 
with  which  it  elucidates  subjects  already 
treated  in  the  body  of  the  book.  The  publf 
cation  of  the  *  HandwOrterbuch  *  began  in 
1890.  Since  that  date  the  principal  countries 
of  tbe  world  have  taken  censuses,  whose  re 
suits  (except  our  own)  are  now  available.  Dili- 
gent use  of  these  results,  and  of  other  recent 
statistical  reports,  is  exhibited  in  not  a  few 
articles,  notably  in  those  on  population,  trades 
and  occupations,  corporations,  strikes,  and 
trade  unions.  The  articles  on  such  diverse 
subjects  as  factory  laws,  canals,  industrial  ar 
bitratioo,  paper  money,  the  social  democracy, 
and  the  German  state  pensions  give  excellent 
summaries  of  recent  legislation.    Particularly 


worthy  of  mention  are  the  account  of  the  re- 
cent reform  of  the  Austrian  currency,  by  Prof. 
Zuckerkandl  of  Prague,  and  the  description  of 
the  Italian  banks,  by  Prof.  Ferraris  of  Padua. 

Albert Bielschowdc7*s  'Goethe,  sein  Leben 
und  Werke*  (Munich:  Beck)  is  to  be  completed 
in  two  volumes,  of  which  the  first,  containing 
520p8ge«,  has  just  been  issued.  The  author 
presents  the  results  of  his  careful  researches  in 
a  compendious  and  remarkably  readable  form, 
and  enters  sufficiently  into  the  minor  details, 
which  may  often  seem  trivial,  but  which  real- 
ly invest  the  lives  of  great  men  with  human 
interest.  Especially  charming  are  his  account 
of  the  poet^s  sojourn  in  Italy,  and  the  critical 
analyses  of  **Iphigenie**  and  "Tatso**  as  the 
literary  fruits  of  Gk>ethe*8  immediate  contact 
with  classical  art  and  antiquity.  The  second 
volume  will  appear  in  the  autumn. 

As  an  evidence  of  the  general  diffusion  of 
elementary  education  in  Bavaria,  we  note  that 
of  the  99,750  men  enrolled  for  military  service 
in  that  country  during  the  years  1894  and 
1895,  only  ten  were  unable  to  read  and  write. 
In  Prussia  514  recruits  out  of  157,854  were 
found  to  be  deficient  in  this  respect. 

Interesting  from  an  ethical  point  of  view 
are  the  recently  published  statistics  of  India, 
which  show  one  convicted  criminal  out  of  every 
274  Europeans,  one  to  509  Asiatics,  one  to  709 
native  Christians,  one  to  1,861  Brahmans,  and 
one  to  8,787  Buddhists. 

There  lies  before  us  a  little  book,  'The 
Maxims  of  Chanakya,'  translated  into  English 
by  K.  Raghunathji,  author  of  *  The  Dancing 
Girls  of  Bombay,*  *The  Beggars  and  Criers  of 
Bombay,*  &c.,  ftc,  Ac.  (Bombay  :  Printed  at 
the  Family  Printing  Press).  Chanakya  was 
Prime  Minister  of  the  famous  E^ng  Sandro- 
kottos,  about  300  B.  c,  founder  of  the  greatest 
dynasty  of  Ancient  India,  and  well  known  to 
the  Greeks,  whom  he  called  Yavanas  Clifom 
or  *lMr«c.  i.  s.,  the  lonians).  Listen  now  to 
Raghunath*s  version  of  a  maxim  :  **  The  wise 
have  declared  that  tbe  Tavan  (the  Greek  or 
Muhammadan)  is  equal  in  baseness  to  a  thou- 
sand outcastes ;  and  hence  the  Muhammadan 
[why  not  at  least  **  Greek  or  Muhammadan  **  ?  ] 
is  tbe  basest  of  men.**  Here  is  Jin  de-siicle 
hatred  for  Islam  projected  back,  by  jingo,  to  a 
time  some  eight  centuries  anterior  to  the 
Hejira  I  And  what  could  surpass  this  precious 
blunder,  unless  perhaps  the  delightful  confu- 
sion of  the  venerable  Bengalee  Baboo  who 
mixed  up  Moees  and  his  Ten  Commandments 
with  the  Laws  of  the  Twelve  Tables !  Was 
it  intended  that  the  products  of  the  '*  Family 
Printing  Press**  should  not  get  outside  of  this 
Hindu  Jingo's  **  FamUy  **  t 

Mr.  Edward  Field,  one  of  the  Record  Commis- 
sioners of  the  City  of  Providence,  has  sent  out 
a  small  edition  (250  copies)  of  the  'Tax  Lists  of 
Providence  during  the  Andros  Period,  1686-89,* 
together  with  a  list  of  persons  liable  to  a  poll 
tax  in  1688.  He  has  added  some  schedules  of 
taiable  property  of  the  same  date,  making  a 
most  acceptable  contribution  to  the  history  of 
a  colony  which  has  been  very  unfortunate  in 
respect  to  its  archives. 

Tbe  quarterly  bulletin  of  the  Boston  Public 
Library  contains  a  list  of  recent  additions  ar. 
ranged  according  to  subjects  with  author  and 
subject-indexes,  and  a  chronological  list  of 
Spanish  and  Portuguese  fiction.  Its  publica- 
tion ceases  with  this  number,  and  its  place  will 
be  taken  by  monthly  lists  of  new  books,  which 
may  also  contain  special  bibliographies  and 
topical  reference  lists,  though  these  may  appear 
separately. 

The  House  of  Commons  has  finally  settled 
the  vexed  question  of  the  Sunday  opening  of 


national  collections,  by  voting  'Hhat  it  is  de- 
sirable that  the  national  museums  and  art  gal- 
leries in  London  should  be  open  for  a  limited 
number  of  hours  [on  Sundays]  after  2  p.  m., 
upon  condition  that  no  officer  shall  be  required 
to  attend  more  tiian  six  days  in  the  week,  and 
that  any  one  who  may  have  conscientious  ob- 
jections shall  be  exempt  from  Sunday  duty.** 
A  substitute  Sabbatarian  motion,  rejecting 
Sunday  opening  and  offering  the  sop  of  three 
weekly  evening  openings,  was  lost  by  a  vote 
of  178  to  98.  In  the  course  of  the  debate,  Sir 
John  Lubbock,  trustee  of  the  British  Museum, 
stated  that  its  trustees  were  in  favor  of  open- 
ing tbe  collections  to  Sunday  visitors.  The 
mover  of  the  resolution  reported  a  petition 
from  109  London  trades-unions,  and  referred  to 
the  favorable  report  of  a  committee  of  four 
bishops  and  a  dean,  who  ventured  the  opinion 
that  Sunday  opening  '*  would  not  be  a  dese- 
cration.** It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  this 
revolution  in  the  use  of  the  British  Museum, 
the  National  Gallery,  and  the  great  collections 
at  South  Kensington  should  be  conceded  by  a 
Parliament  unique  in  this  generation  for  tbe 
size  of  its  Tory  majority. 

The  University  of  Pennsylvania  has  decided 
to  establish  upon  the  **G^eorge  Leib  Harrison 
Foundation,  for  the  Encouragement  of  Liberal 
Studies  and  the  Advancement  of  Knowledge,** 
twenty- seven  new  scholarships  and  fellowships, 
of  the  aggregate  annual  value  of  $18,200.  Of 
these,  eight,  of  the  value  of  $100  a  year  and 
free  tuition,  are  open  only  to  graduates  of  the 
University.  Fourteen  fellowships,  of  the  value 
of  $600  a  year,  less  $100  devoted  to  pubUoation 
or  equipment,  are  open  to  the  graduates  of 
any  institution,  may  be  held  for  two  years,  and 
are  intended  for  candidates  for  the  degree  of 
Ph.D.  Five  Senior  Fellowships,  of  the  value 
of  $800  a  year,  may  be  held  for  three  years,  and 
are  open  only  to  those  who  have  taken  the  de- 
gree of  Ph.D.  at  the  University.  Further 
particulars  may  be  had  by  addressing  Mr.  Jesse 
Y.  Burk,  Secretary  of  the  University,  Phila- 
delphia. 

Particulars  concerning  three  fellowships  for 
1896-J97  in  the  American  School  of  Classical 
Studies  in  Rome^  and  a  necessary  blank  form 
of  application,  may  be  had  by  addreising  Prof. 
Samuel  Ball  Platner,  Temporary  Secretary  of 
the  Managing  Committee,  at  Western  Reserve 
University,  Cleveland,  Ohio.  These  scholar- 
ships, of  $600,  $600,  and  $500  (Christian  Archaeo- 
logy) respectively,  are  open  to  bachelors  of 
arts  of  universities  and  colleges  in  the  United 
States  and  other  American  students  of  similar 
attainments.  Residence  for  the  full  school 
year  of  ten  months  will  be  mainly  in  Rome, 
with  possibility  of  travel  and  study  in  Italy 
and  Greece. 

—We  are  kindly  permitted  by  Prof  Breasted 
of  Chicago  University  to  make  the  following 
extracts  from  a  private  letter  from  Mr.  W.  M. 
Flinders  Petrie,  dated  Luxor,  February  14, 
1896,  and  summing  up  this  explorer's  winter 
work  in  Egypt : 

*'  The  Ramesseum  is  of  Ramses  II.~the  only  thing 
left  unchanged.  The  chapel  of  Uasmes  was  rebnilt 
by  Amenbotep  m.,  aslils  ring  was  under  the  door- 
sill.  The  temple  next  south  is  of  Tahutmea  IV.— 
yet  unnamed  in  maps.  Next  is  a  big  tomb  of  Khonra 
ardus,  goldsmith  of  the  temple  of  Amen,  XXV.  djm. 
Then  comes  the  levelled  plain  with  a  scarp  of  rock- 
gravel  on  the  W.  and  N.,  marked  """""  |  on 

maps ;  and  on  the  plain— hot  later  than  its  levelttng 
—was  a  temple  of  Queen  Tausert  as  sole  ruler.  *  Tto- 
sert,  setep  en  Mot,  Sat  Ba,  mery  Amen,*  who  hss 
left  us  in  foundation- deposits  SOD  ftrarM>f  and  i 
of  colored  glaaes  with  cartouches,  and  1,900  | 
object*,  besides  three  slabs  with  tbe  1 
south  of  that  is  the  so-called  temple  of  4 


March  26,  i8q6] 


Th.e   !N"atiorL. 


255 


m.,  vhicii  i«reaU7  the  funerml  temple  of  MerenpUh. 
That  beest  wnaihert  up  ell  Uie  lUCueeeiid  aoulp- 
luree  of  Amenhotep  IL  Co  pot  Into  his  foondetlons, 
end  wtvcked  the  Korgeous  temple  behind  the  colotsi 
fbr  bnildlnff- materiel.  We  hare  a  few  fine  pieces  of 
Amenhotep  UL ;  and  the  upper  half  of  a  fine  black 
franlte  Hatoe  of  MerenpUh.  I  am  noir  golns  to 
dear  two  mall  templet  north  of  the  RameeMum;  10 
yoa  eee  we  are  getting  through  the  field  of  templea 
here  at  a  prettj  good  rate.  Quibell  Is  dofaig  the 
Bamesseum,  and  I  am  doing  the  others.  We  make 
complete  plans  of  all  the  buildings  and  foundations. 
This  sort  of  clearing  up  is  what  *  exploration  *  should 
be,  and  not  msrely  the  elaborate  clearing  out  of  one 
bonding.  The  whole  lot  of  half -a-dosen  temple  sites 
we  shall  dear  up,  and  fix  historicallj,  for  about 
|S.fiOO  or  $a«000.  ...  I  bought  a  piece  of  a 
stele  dedicated  by  the  'Boyal  son,  *Ahmea,  caUed 
Sapa'r/  explaining  his  name.  He  is  figured  as  a 
bo7.  Beat  anta  was  probablj  mother  of  Merenptah, 
as  her  name  occurs  in  his  temple  ruins»  but  no  other 
rslatlTes.'' 

—Mr.  E.  K,  Chamben  has  dona  good  terrice 
to  lattert  in  the  *  Poems  of  Donne,*  which  he 
has  contributed  to  *'The  Mutes  Library" 
(London:  lAwrtnce  &  Bnllen;  New  York: 
ScribDers).  Ha  has  oarefnUy  rerised  the  text 
on  tiie  basis  of  the  old  printed  copies,  very 
properly  rejecting  most  of  the  manoteript 
rtadingt  introduced  by  Dr.  Orotart  into  his 
•zatperating  edition  ;  he  has  made  an  attempt 
(raliant,  but  not  uniformly  tuccetiftil)  to  re- 
gulate the  punctuation,  and  he  bat  added  a 
body  of  notet.  Thete  notes,  though  they  000- 
tain  a  good  deal  of  bibliographical  Informa- 
tion, and  are  particularly  rich  in  details  about 
tha  persons  to  whom  Donne*t  poems  are  ad- 
dresatd,  are  very  weak  on  the  ezegetical  tide. 
Few  anthort  need  notet  more  than  Donne,  and 
Mr.  Chambers  has  passed  by  many  difficult 
placet  in  silence.  Per  contra^  he  hat  taken 
paina  to  explain  a  number  of  words  which 
most  be  familiar  to  ererybody  who  it  likely  to 
read  Donne  at  all,  and  which,  betides,  are 
perfectly  accessible  in  all  the  dictionaries. 
Nor  are  his  explanations  alwayt  free  from 
Tagneneat.  '^Mithridate,**  for  inttanoe,  it  de- 
fined at  '*  an  antidote,  so  called  from  Mithrl- 
datea  VL,  King  of  Pontus,  who  took  elaborate 
prvcauUont  againtt  poiton.'*  The  volnmet  are 
to  pretty,  however,  and  contain  so  much  that 
is  good,  that  one  is  disinclined  to  pick  flaws. 
Mr.  Salntsbnry  contributes  an  introduction 
written  in  hit  utnal  jolting  style. 

—The  preface  to  the  Rev.  William  Cunning, 
ham't  'Modem  Cifillsation  in  tome  of  itt 
Economic  Atpectt*  (London:  Methuen)  de- 
tcribet  the  book  at  **  an  elementary  treatiie  on 
political  economy.*'  It  is,  we  believe.  Dr. 
Conningham's  first  comprehensive  book  on  the 
subject,  and,  to  far  as  his  economic  notions  ap- 
pear in  this  brief  **  sketch  of  the  mechanism 
by  which  busineas  affairs  are  carried  on,'* 
they  seem  to  differ  lest,  at  bottom,  from  the 
noUons  of  other  English  economists  than  both 
he  and  they  have  at  times  assumed.  Dr.  Cun- 
ningbam*s  method  of  presentation,  however,  is 
Crtth  and  attractive.  For  example,  hit  third 
part»  oorretponding  to  the  traditiooal  book  on 
DIttribution  In  the  traditional  treatite,  it  en- 
titled not  "Waget,  Interest,  and  Rent,**  but 
**  Hiring,  Investing  and  Letting.**  In  other 
wordt.  Dr.  Cunningham,  at  beoomet  an  his- 
torical economist,  describe*  processes  instead 
of  criticising  ooncepta— his  economics  are  real- 
istic. But  economic  realism,  at  he  under- 
ttandt  it,  leadt  by  no  meant  to  economic  ma- 
ttfialitm.  On  the  contrary,  it  demandt  the 
adequate  tecognitioo,  in  addition  to  telf  inte- 
rttt,  of  oihar  real  f orcet,  such  at  family  feeU 
ing,  public  tpirit,  and  religioiit  influence,  each 
pontriboting  itt  tbare  to  that  indnttrial  telf- 


ditdpllne  which  alone  can  assure  the  fruitt  of 
material  progress.  In  his  discussion  of  the 
relative  efficiency  of  self- discipline  and  of 
legal  discipline.  Dr.  Cunningham  enters  a 
well  timed  protett  againtt  the  current  tenden- 
cy to  ppeak  of  philanthropic  legislation  at 
todalistio  whenever  it  distributes  among  the 
poor  the  taxes  collected  from  the  well-to  do, 
and  to  advocate  reformt  of  all  tortt  under 
the  name  of  **  practical  socialism.**  So  far 
from  being  tocialitra  of  any  sort  whatever, 
all  ttate  action  which  aims,  as  wise  philan- 
thropic legislation  does,  to  awaken  and  to 
strengthen  the  sense  of  responsibility,  is  dis- 
tinctly individualistic.  Such  legislation  avoids 
the  greatest  weakness  of  socialism,  the  failure 
to  furnish  an  incentive  to  persistent  exertion. 

^Every  amateur  who  chances  to  light  upon 
a  report  of  a  trial  by  the  Spanish  Inquisition 
is  so  Impressed  by  its  skilful  blending  of  cruelty 
and  injustice  that  he  hastens  to  communicate 
it  to  the  world  as  though  it  were  a  new  dis- 
covery. Thus  in  the  Revue  Bleue  of  February 
8  we  flnd  a  long  account  of  a  couple  of  cases 
against  the  dead  In  the  tribunal  of  Ci> dad- 
Real,  in  1484,  involving  the  confiscation  of  a 
large  number  of  estates  of  wealthy  New-Cliris- 
tians .  They  suffice  to  prove  the  thesis  of  the 
writer  in  contradicting  the  assertion  of  a  car- 
tain  school  of  historians  that  the  Spanish  In- 
quisition was  a  milder  institution  than  its  pre- 
decessor, but  in  themselves  (and  herein  lies 
their  only  interest)  they  are  merely  coomion- 
place  examples  of  the  daily  routine  of  the 
Holy  Office  performing  its  function  of  strip- 
ping the  descendants  of  their  property  and 
turning  it  into  the  royal  coffers.  In  admitting 
the  Inquisition  into  their  dominions,  Ferdi- 
nand and  Isabella  bad  shrewdly  reserved  the 
oonflscations  for  the  royal  treasury,  instead  of 
allowing  them,  as  in  Italy,  to  inure  to  the 
benefit  of  the  Church;  so  that  greed  and 
fanaticism  joined  hands  in  purifying  the  lands 
of  the  to-called  hereay  of  the  Judaiting  Chrit- 
tiant,  forcibly  converted  tince  the  dayt  of  San 
Vicente  Ferrer.  The  proceat  wat  neither  bet 
ter  nor  worte  than  that  which  had  been  fol- 
lowed since  the  thirteenth  century,  but  the  re- 
tultt  were  more  profitable,  for  the  victimt 
were  more  numerous  and  more  opulent.  Potsi- 
bly,  moreover,  their  persecution  may  seem  to 
us  more  odious,  for  it  is  easier  to  sympathise 
with  steadfast  adherence  to  the  ancient  faith- 
older  in  the  Peninsula  than  Christianity  itself 
—than  with  the  devotion  of  the  Albigeoses 
to  the  upstart  dualistic  Manichnism  whose 
principles  were  fundamentally  trreconcUable 
with  the  Christian  faith. 

—A  writer  in  the  Milan  Corriere  delta  Sera 
of  February  dO  inquires  what  may  be  the 
cause  of  the  rapidity  of  the  decadence  of  the 
Italian  Parliament,  amid  the  general  decline 
of  all  parliamentary  bodies.  He  would  trace 
this  decadence  beyond  1870,  which  many  con- 
sider the  date  of  its  beginning,  to  the  occupa* 
tlon  of  Rome  as  the  capital  of  united  Italy, 
and  the  temporary  adoption  of  the  Ludovisl 
palace  constructed  by  Bernini  In  1650,  and  fur- 
nished in  the  time  of  Innocent  XII.  with  a 
huge  semicircular  court-yard,  whoee  conver 
sion  into  a  hall  produced  the  present  Chamber 
of  Deputies  of  Montecitorio.  This  makeshift 
contrivance  wat  for  the  tea  ting  of  508  Depu- 
tiet,  or  for  450  in  actual  attendance  In  the  most 
exciting  times,  as  this  writer  believet.  He 
coroparet  the  dimensiont  of  the  hall  with 
public  spaces  and  with  the  projected  substi- 
tute for  the  present  French  Chamber,  to  ao- 
ooninodate  000  Depatles,  and  flndt  Montecito- 


rio twice  at  capaciout  as  the  latter  for  half  the 
seats.  He  moralizes  very  judiciously  on  the 
physical  effectt  of  tucb  vattneat  on  debate— 
the  premium  it  tett  on  mere  lung  power  and 
geeticulation,  the  exaggeration  it  perforce  im- 
poeet  on  the  timpleat  ttatementt  or  rhetori- 
cal devicet.  "The  tmile,**  hetaya,  quoting  a 
French  writer,  **  which  a  pleasantry  might 
have  provoked  in  a  parlor,  b^omes  a  sonorous 
peal  of  laughter  in  an  assembly ;  an  objection 
to  an  opponent  made  with  diffidence  in  a  small 
committee  is  transformed  into  a  violent  apos- 
trophe in  the  midnt  of  five  hundred  persons.** 
The  first  remedy  be  suggests  for  Italy*B  case  it 
of  course  a  smaller  hall,  in  which  speaking  and 
bearing  will  be  easy  and  calm  persuasion  poa- 
sible.  But  he  also  puts  his  finger  on  the  evil  of 
over  representation,  so  well  illustrated  bj  the 
number  not  only  of  our  own  Congressmen  but 
of  our  State  legi»latort— a  crowd  in  which 
mediocrity  and  corruption  fiourish,  busineas 
drags,  and  historical  and  legal  oontittency  it 
all  but  lost  sight  of. 

— It  is  gratifying  to  notice  the  prosperity  of 
the  Asiatic  Society  of  Japan,  and  it  will  be 
good  news  to  those  who  do  not  already  know  it 
that  the  invaluable  Transactions,  now  num- 
bering twenty- three  volumes,  in  fifty-eight 
numbers,  can  be  bought  for  prices  averaging 
$1.50  a  number  in  silver  yen,  which  in  Ameri- 
can money  is  really  but  half  price.  VoL  xxiii. 
contains  two  excellent  papers,  by  W.  G.  Aston 
in  English  and  by  Maurice  Courant  in  French, 
on  the  domun,  or  phonetic  alphabet  of  Korea. 
Both  writers  practically  agree  that  the  **clerk- 
metbod**  of  writing  Korean  in  abbreviated 
Chinese  ideograms  was  invented  in  the  seventh 
century,  but  that  the  true  Onmun,  a  phonetic 
alphabet  of  twenty  eight  letters,  is  the  work  of 
a  Korean  statesman  of  the  fifteenth  oenturj. 
Dr.  D.  C.  Greene  hat  an  illuminating  paper  of 
fifty-one  paget  on  the  TenrikyO,  or  the  Teach- 
ing  of  the  Heavenly  Reason.  Thit  influential 
Japanete  Shinto  sect  was  founded  by  a  woman 
named  Miki,  within  the  preeent  century.  The 
article  it  well  worth  reading  in  connection 
with  Mr.  Percival  Lowell*t  *  Occult  Japan.* 
Mr.  Clay  MacCauley  writet  felicitously  of  the 
Japanese  landscape,  but  bis  discourse  on  '*  Sil- 
ver in  Japan**  is  not  considered  orthodox 
enough  to  go  in  as  a  body  article,  and  hence  is 
printed  in  small  type  in  the  appendix.  As  a 
rule,  the  Supplements  to  the  Transactions  are 
of  even  more  value  to  special  scholars  than  the 
varied  contributions  in  the  Transactions  pro- 
per, and  that  to  voL  xxiii.  is  no  exception. 
Prof.  Basil  Hall  Chamberlain,  the  indefatiga> 
ble  traveller,  not  content  with  his  Aino  stu- 
dies, has,  after  hearing  the  Luchuan  (Loo- 
chooan)  language  in  its  own  home,  as  well  as 
discussing  it  with  educated  natives  in  Tokio, 
written  **  An  Essay  in  Aid  of  the  Grammar 
and  Dictionary  of  the  Luchuan  Language.** 
It  is  more  than  probable  that  this  study  of  a 
matter  will  bear  fruit  in  further  retearchet 
into  the  Japaneae  language  itself,  betidet 
throwing  valuable  light  on  Shinto  and  the 
archaeology  of  ancient  Japan,  especially  in  the 
tout h  wet t.  The  first  sample  of  Luchuan  speech 
given  to  the  outer  world  was  by  Otptaln  Basil 
Hall,  the  grandfather  of  this  present  distin- 
guished Anglo-Japaneae  scholar. 


FOSTER'S   COMMENTARIES. 

Commentariea  on  the  Conatitution  of  the 
United  Stat€9,HiMtorieal  and  Juridical,  By 
Roger  Foster.  Vol.1.  Preamble  to  Impeach- 
ment.   Boston:   The  Boston  Book  Co.    1896. 

Mobs  than  sixty  years  have  passed  since  th# 


Q56 


Tlie    [N'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1604 


api)earaDC8  of  Story's  *  Commentaries  on  the 
Ck>n8titation  of  the  United  SUtee,*  Changes 
of  the  atmost  importance  in  oar  constitutional 
and  political  history  have  taken  place  daring 
these  years.  The  development  of  the  slavery 
controversy,  culminating  in  secession  and  civil 
war;  the  partisan  bitterness  of  Beconstruction; 
the  experiments  with  tariffs  and  finance;  the 
expcmsion  of  interstate  commerce,  and  the  ad- 
mission of  new  States,  have  profoundly  affect- 
ed judicial  interpretation  of  the  Constitution, 
while  the  researches  of  numerous  students  in 
the  field  of  American  history  have  made  avail- 
able  a  mass  of  material  relating  to  the  origin 
and  early  growth  of  our  political  institutions 
which  was  virtually  unknown  even  a  genera- 
tion ago.  It  is  a  high  tribute  to  the  value  of 
Story's  work  that  his  *  Commentaries*  is  still 
the  classical  and  indispensable  treatise  on  the 
law  of  the  Constitution,  and  that  thus  far  the 
works  of  later  writers  have  supplemented  with- 
out superseding  it.  Nevertheless,  there  has 
long  been  need  of  a  treatise  wfai<di,  by  its  broad 
and  thorough  sarvey  of  the  whole  field  of  judi- 
cial decision  and  historical  research,  should  do 
for  American  constitutional  law  in  1896  what 
Story's  treatise  did  for  it  in  1888.  Mr.  Foster's 
*  Commentaries,'  of  which  the  first  of  three 
volumes  has  lately  appeared,  is  quite  the  most 
ambitious  of  recent  attempts  to  deal  with  the 
subject  in  a  large  way. 

There  are  certain  qualities  which  are  indis- 
pensable to  a  writer  who  would  successfully 
expound  a  national  constitution.  He  must 
have  abundant  knowledge  joined  to  power  of 
clear  and  accurate  statement.  He  ought  not 
to  parade  his  learning,  but  will  need  skill  in 
grouping  his  material  effectively;  and  to  do 
this  he  must  have  an  intelligent  sense  of  pro- 
portion. He  must  be  free  from  partisanship 
and  had  better  refrain  from  prophecy.  To 
crown  all,  he  must  have  a  certain  charm  of 
manner,  a  gift  for  easy  and  dignified  expres- 
sion, without  which  his  work,  however  valua- 
ble for  reference,  is  likely  to  be  uninteresting, 
and  may  be  dull.  How  far  Mr.  Foster  has  met 
these  requirements  can  be  judged  more  fairly 
when  the  remaining  volumes  of  his  *  Commen- 
taries '  shall  have  appeared.  He  unquestiona- 
bly has  considerable  learning;  he  has  labored 
industriously  and  accumulated  a  great  store 
of  facts.  But  he  does  not  always  wear  his 
learning  easily,  as  is  shown,  for  example,  by 
the  unnecessary  and  wearisome  length  to  which 
the  quotations  and  abstracts  from  *  Elliot's 
Debates '  are  prolonged.  Similarly,  the  appen- 
dix to  chapter  i.,  a  fourteen.page  account  of 
Lilbumeandthe  'Agreement  of  the  People,' 
is  interesting,  but  its  appropriateness  may  be 
questioned. 

One  does  not  expect  a  legal  treatise  to  be 
easy  reading;  but  Mr.  Foster  does  not  lessen 
the  natural  difficulty  by  writing  In  a  style 
which  is  almost  uniformly  dry  and  hard,  and 
not  seldom  inelegant  and  inacciirate  as  weU. 
On  page  11  we  read  that  **even  the  power  to 
regulate  trade  upon  waters  wholly  within  the 
United  States  was  vested  nowhere,  unless  in  a 
bay  or  river  entirely  within  a  single  State  ";  on 
page  824,  that  **  the  natural  imitation  of  the 
practice  in  the  mother  country  had  made  the 
colonial  legislatures  elected  directly  by  the 
people."  The  readmission  of  Georgia  after  the 
civil  war  was  delayed  by  "  a  hitch  in  the  pro- 
ceedings" (p.  25^.  Chapter  xii.  has  for  its 
titie  "The  Presidency  and  Other  Officers  of 
the  Senate."  Occasionally  the  meaning  is  ob- 
scure, as  when,  among  Constitutional  guaran- 
tees of  State  rights,  there  is  mentioned  (p.  276) 
"the  right  to  have  representaUon  in  the  Hoose 
of   Representatives  otherwise  apportioned  in 


accordance  with  population,  unless  a  State  for 
any  reason  except  crime  denies  the.  right  of 
suffrage  to  any  of  its  male  inhabitants  who  are 
twenty- one  years  of  age,  and  citizens  of  the 
United  States,  except  for  crime."  We  are  told 
on  page  8U1  that  the  blending  of  legislative  and 
executive  powers  has  "spread  into  ail  coun- 
tries where  civil  liberty  is  enjoyed,  except  a 
few  like  Germany,  .  .  .  and  perhaps  two 
or  three  countries  in  Central  and  South 
America  besides  the  United  States,  where  the 
presidential  form  of  government  prevails." 
The  most  extraordinary  example  of  loose  writ- 
ing that  we  have  noted  is  the  following  sen- 
tence on  page  160:  "By  the  Missouri  com- 
promise in  1820,  it  had  been  provided  that 
slavery  should  not  be  allowed  in  the  territory 
acquired  from  France,  north  of  the  parallel 
86^  SO',  which,  when  extended  to  the  Pacific, 
included  all  but  a  small  fraction  of  what  are 
now  the  States  of  Texas,  New  Mexico  and 
Arizona,  the  Indian  Territory,  Oklahoma,  and 
a  large  part  of  Southern  California." 

The  arrangement  of  Mr.  Foster's  work  leads 
him  to  make  brief  mention  in  the  present  vol- 
ume of  a  number  of  topics  whose  fuller  treat- 
ment is  deferred;  it  will  be  better,  therefore, 
to  withhold  judgment  in  regard  to  some  gene- 
ral subjects  until  the  later  volumes  shall  have 
appeared.  The  most  noticeable  portions  of  the 
present  volume  are  those  devoted  to  discus- 
sions of  the  doctrine  of  nullification,  the  legal- 
ity of  secession,  the  constitutional  history  of 
the  Confederate  States,  Reconslsiiction,  direct 
taxes,  and  impeachment.  Mr.  Foster  has  no 
difficulty  in  demolishing  the  theory  of  nullifi- 
cation; but  the  force  of  his  argument  against 
the  legality  of  secession  is  likely  to  be  weaken- 
ed a  little,  in  the  minds  of  some  readers,  by 
the  attempted  justification  of  Southern  feeling 
on  the  subject  (pp.  110-115).  The  section  on 
the  constitutional  history  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy,  while  by  no  means  exhaustive,  is 
a  welcome  addition  to  our  rather  scanty 
knowledge  on  that  point.  The  discussion  of 
impeachment,  which  fills  nearly  a  third  of  the 
entire  volume,  is  painstaking  and  thorough;  in 
particular,  the  history  of  impeachments  in  the 
different  States  is  here  presented  at  length, 
collected,  we  believe,  for  the  first  time.  We 
note  two  errors  in  this  connection.  On  page 
605  it  is  stated  that  "  in  Massachusetts,  judges 
may  be  removed  by  the  Governor  and  Council 
or  the  address  of  both  houses  of  the  Legisla- 
ture." The  passage  should,  of  course,  read  **  on 
the  address,"  etc.  In  commenting  (p.  687)  on 
the  absence  of  impeachments  in  Maine,  it  is 
said  that  "  the  annual  election  of  the  Gk>vemor 
and  other  State  officers  has  made  it  easier  to 
punish  their  misconduct  by  action  at  the  polls." 
Maine  no  longer  has  annual  elections,  biennial 
elections  having  been  substituted  by  the  con- 
stitutional amendment  adopted  in  1879. 

The  dealings  of  Congress  and  the  Federal 
Government  with  the  Southern  States  during 
the  period  of  Reconstruction  are  subjected  to 
a  searching  examination.  At  Mr.  Foster's 
hands  the  story  becomes  a  gloomy  tale  of 
vacillation,  intimidation,  and  fraud ;  but  he 
tells  it  with  plainness  and  directness,  and  with 
more  than  his  usual  force.  In  his  opinion, 
"the  validity  of  the  acts  of  Congress"  is 
"open  to  investigation,"  and,  "in  view  of  the 
language  of  the  Constitution,  the  decisions  of 
the  courts  on  qognate  questions,  and  the  ac 
tion  of  Congress  in  other  respects  towards  the 
States  which  were  the  seat  of  the  insurrection, 
it  seems  impossible  to  find  any  justification  for 
them  in  law,  precedent,  or  consistency.  .  .  . 
The  Reconstruction  acts  must  consequently  be 
condemned   as   unconstitutional,  founded  on 


force,  not  law,  and  so  tyrannical  as  to  im- 
peril the  liberty  of  the  entire  nation  should 
they  be  recognized  as  binding  precedents" 
(pp.  265-267).  Even  less  praiseworthy  is  Mr. 
Foster's  treatment  of  the  income-tax  law 
of  1894  and  the  action  of  the  courts  in 
reference  thereto.  He  admits  that,  "now 
that  the  dust  has  not  yet  gathered  upon 
the  papers,  it  seems  impo^ble  for  a  commen- 
tator to  discuss  the  question  without  bias"  (pp. 
422,  428);  yet  he  yields  much  to  prejudice,  and 
plays  the  part  of  advocate  rather  than  exposi- 
tor, when  he  says  (p.  421)  that  "  the  represent- 
atives of  the  new  States  in  the  West  against 
whose  action  Gouvemeur  Morris  had  warned 
the  other  members  of  the  Convention,  combin- 
ed with  those  of  the  South  to  opprew  the 
States  upon  the  North  Atlantic  coast";  as 
also,  though  in  somewhat  less  degree,  when  be 
mentions  (p.  428),  as  one  "salutary  effect"  of 
the  final  decision,  that  "it  has  defeated  an 
odious  scheme  of  class-legislation.  If  upheld, 
it  will  be  a  safeguard  to  property  from  any 
spoliation  under  the  guise  of  Federal  taxation, 
give  encouragement  to  a  new  doctrine  of  State 
rights  that  may  be  of  other  assistance  in  the 
future,  and  afford  a  check  to  waste  of  the  na- 
tional treasury.  Upon  the  other  hand  it  has 
raised  an  obstacle  against  the  further  reduc- 
tion of  an  oppressive  tariff.  It  has  shorn  the 
United  States  of  a  power  that  might  be  essen- 
tial to  their  preservation  in  case  of  war.  And 
it  has  given  a  blow  to  settled  principles  of  con- 
stitutional construction  which  makes  no  deci- 
sion  of  the  past  seem  any  longer  secure."  We 
hardly  know  whether  or  not  the  attempt  (p. 
422)  to  frame  a  definition  of  direct  taxes  is  to  be 
taken  seriously:  "  In  consequence  of  this  de- 
cision the  only  definition  of  direct  taxes  that 
can  be  formulated  with  any  assurance  is  as 
follows:  Direct  taxes  are  taxes  on  land,  poll- 
taxes,  and,  as  long  as  a  majority  of  the  Su- 
preme Court  are  of  the  same  mind,  taxes  on 
rents  and  general  taxes  upon  personal  property 
and  incomes  which  are  not  confined  to  a  spe- 
cial class,  although  with  large  classes  of  ex- 
emptions." 

It  remains  to  notice  a  few  points  on  which 
we  think  there  is  likely  to  be  dissent  from  Mr. 
Foster's  statements.  It  is  rather  extreme  to 
say  (p.  631),  in  reference  to  impeachment, 
that  "  were  the  power  absent,  we  should  have 
no  check  to  executive  or  judicial  tyranny. 
The  necessity  for  its  existence  and  for  cau- 
tion in  its  exercise  is  one  of  the  strongest 
arguments  in  favor  of  the  perpetuation  of 
the  Senate."  In  opposition  to  Mr.  Bryce, 
the  author  contends  (p.  496,  note  2S)  that 
respect  for  the  Senate  of  the  United  States 
has  not  declined  as  much  as  has  respect  for 
the  House  and  for  State  Legislatures;  but 
thoughtful  men  will  not  be  comforted  by 
learning  that  he  "attributes  the  decadence  of 
all  to  the  fact  that  of  late  years  the  oountry 
has  been  so  fortunate  as  to  have  few  political 
questions  of  sufficient  gravity  to  withdraw  the 
ablest  minds  from  business  enterprises  and  le- 
gal controversies."  The  statement  on  page  888, 
that  "a  large  number  of  the  States  allow  aliens 
to  vote  ...  as  soon  as  they  have  declared 
their  intention  to  become  citizens,  although 
they  have  npt  been  naturalized,"  while  strictly 
true,  might  better  have  taken  account  of  the 
practice  of  those  States  which  require  a  pre- 
vious term  of  residence  before  extending  the 
suffrage  to  aliens.  Mr.  Foster  finds  an  illns- 
tration  of  the  evils  that  result  from  rettrietiim 
of  the  suffrage  to  a  class  "in  the  liquor  and 
Sunday  laws,  with  which  the  inbabitaiifti  of 
the  country  districts  still  oppren  the 
classes  in  New  York  city  "  (p.  819;  Wt ! 


March  26,  1896] 


Tb.e   !N"atioii. 


Q57 


iDnftrited,  ihereforei  to  find  him  argaiog  (p. 
850)  TirtuaUf  in  favor  of  some  kind  of  suffrage 
for  foreignert.  A  slip  of  rather  more  eerious 
character  ooeort  on  page  103,  where  the  text 
■tatea  that  **  it  was  the  contention  of  the  North 
that  the  daoae  in  the  Coostitntion  which  gave 
Congress  power  to  make  all  needful  rules  and 
regulations  respecting  the  Territories  or  other 
property  belonging  to  the  United  States,  in- 
cluded absolute  power  to  regulate  their  domes- 
tic institutions.**  As  Mr.  Foster  must  know, 
the  Constitution  speaks  of  '*  Territory,**  not  of 
** Territories**;  and  note  little  of  the  slavery 
discussion  in  Congress  from  1850  onward 
turned  on  the  n^aning  of  the  word  **  Territo- 
ry **  in  this  particular  section.  Had  the  Con- 
stitution said  "Territories,**  it  is  possible  that 
the  after  history  of  the  United  States  might 
have  been  somewhat  different  from  what  it 


The  list  of  errata  is  large.  Among  obvious 
misprints,  we  note  the  omission  of  part  of  a 
word  in  a  title  at  p.  181,  note  66;  *«DarreU** 
instead  of  Harrell«  author  of  *  The  Brooks  and 
Baxter  War*  (p.  268,  notes  167  and  168);  a  life 
of  Clay,  by  Shurz  (p.  357,  note  6) ;  Cohen  v,  Vir- 
ginia (p.  270,  note  6) ;  Pollock  v.  Farmer'a  Loan 
and  Trust  Co.  (p.  270,  note  8,  p  276,  note84l  and 
48,  p.  410,  note  19);  United  States  v.  Reea  (p. 
8S4,  note  15);  EUiot*s  Debates  (p.  850,  note  12), 
also  EllioWa  (p.  500,  note  40,  p.  600,  note  48); 
Mills  e.  Green,  reserred  (p.  820,  note  27),  instead 
of  reverwed ;  and  on  page  357  the  repetition  at 
the  end  of  the  paragraph  of  a  sentence  which 
occurs  a  few  lines  above.  The  reference  to 
Hildreth*s  History  at  page  17,  note  15,  should 
be  to  vol.  iii.,  p.  46;  and  MoPher8on*B  '  History 
of  Reconstruction*  (not  of  the  Rebellion)  is 
doubtless  the  work  intended  to  be  cited  at  page 
8S8«  note  16.  Tyler's  *  Letters  and  Times  of  the 
Tylers  *  is  quoted  as  «*  Life  and  Times  **  (p.  172, 
note 27);  FVber*s  'Precedents  relating  to  Pri- 
vileges of  the  Senate*  is  changed  (p.  496,  note 
83)  to  ^'Precedents  of  Privilegesin  the  Senate**; 
and  the  title  of  Montesquieu*s  work  appears 
(0.  612,  note  2^  as  *De  TEsprit  des  Lois.*  Tbe 
name  of  the  Kansas  State  printer  (p.  708,  note 
109)  should  be  Baker,  not  Bowker,  Through- 
out the  volume  the  use  of  **  ibid.**  is  as  often  a 
hindrance  as  a  help  to  the  reader;  in  at  least 
one  case  (p.  880,  note  25)  it  is  impossible  to  tell 
what  authority  is  referred  to. 

Mr.  Foster's  work  is  dedicated  to  Chief  Jus- 
tice Fuller.  We  doubt  if  the  Chief  Justice 
will  appreciate  the  compliment  any  more 
highly  for  having  his  name  dragged  into  the 
text,  as  is  the  case  on  page  2.  We  are  bound 
to  think,  also,  that  the  references  to  the  Su- 
preme Court  (p.  278),  to  the  practice  of  law  in 
New  York  (p.  550),  and  to  the  value  of  a  well- 
koown  New  York  daily  paper  (p.  206,  note  07), 
are  inappropriate  in  a  book  of  this  character, 
and  had  better  have  been  omitted. 


THE   SUDAN   AFTER   GORDON. 

Firt  and  Sword  in  the  Sudan  :  A  Personal 
Narrative  of  Fighting  and  Serving  the  Der- 
vishes.    1870-1806.     By  Rudolf   C.    SUtin 
Pasha,  C.B.     Translated  by  Major  F.  R. 
Wingate.      Illustrated.      Edward    Arnold. 
1806.    Pp.  xtx,  636.    8vo. 
This  is  tbe  story  of  an  extraordinary  career 
which  in  romantic  incident  can  hardly  be  ex- 
celled even  in  fiction.    Slatin*s  adventures  be- 
gan early,  for  while  still  a  boy  in  his  teens  he 
made  an  extensive  and  dangerous  journey  in 
tbe  eeatem  Sudan.    At  the  close  of  the  Bos- 
nian  campaign  of  1878,  in  which  he  served  as  a 
lieutenant  in  the  Austrian  army,  he  returned 


to  Africa  at  the  invitation  of  Geo.  Gordon,  and 
was  made  Governor  of  western  Darfur,  and 
shortly  after,  at  the  age  of  twenty- five,  Gov- 
ernor- General  of  the  whole  province.  This  poet 
he  held  for  nearly  three  years,  during  which  he 
fought  twenty- seven  battles,  and  then  he  be- 
came the  slave  of  an  Arab  who  but  the  day  be- 
fore had  been  one  of  the  meanest  of  his  sub- 
jects. Eleven  years  he  served  this  master, 
now  in  favor  and  running  barefooted  at  his 
bridle-rein  or  sitting  at  his  palace  gate,  now 
loaded  with  chains  in  prison,  and  subjected  to 
every  indignity  and  hardship.  Then,  a  year 
ago,  came  the  perilous  flight  across  the  desert, 
and  to-day  he  is  in  Egypt,  a  pasha  only  forty 
years  old,  and  destined  perhaps  again  to  be  the 
ruler  of  these  lost  provinces.  Accoisding  to  the 
latest  accounts,  he  has  joined  the  expedition 
for  the  reconquest  of  the  Sudan. 

He  telU  this  strange  story  in  a  simple, 
modest  way  and  with  an  apparent  truthfulness 
which  does  not  fail  even  when  self-interest 
would  prompt  him  to  conceal  the  truth.  His 
constant  deception  of  his  master  and  his  pre- 
tended devotion  to  the  Moslem  religion  are  as 
faithfully  pictured  as  are  the  Kbalifa*8  treach- 
ery  and  rapacious  cruelty.  The  value  of  the 
book,  however,  does  not  lie  alone  in  the  per- 
sonal narrative,  but  in  tbe  fact  that  it  is  a  his- 
tory, as  well,  of  the  Egyptian  Sudan  west  of 
the  Nile  from  the  rise  of  tbe  Mahdi  to  the  pre- 
sent time.  Considering  the  multitude  of  de- 
tails of  individuals,  tribes,  and  places,  it  is  a 
remarkable  account  to  have  been  written  from 
memory,  for  during  his  captivity  tbe  author 
was  unable  to  make  any  notes  or  keep  any 
diaries. 

The  half-savage  inhabitants  of  Darfur  were 
already  ripe  for  revolt,  through  the  misrule 
and  oppression  of  their  Egyptian  rulers,  when 
Slatin  became  Gk>vemor  of  the  province.  All 
his  energies,  therefore,  were  devoted  to  at- 
tempts to  systematize  and  purify  the  govern- 
ment, to  remove  and  punish  corrupt  ofllcials, 
and  to  put  down  incipient  rebellions.  The 
Austrian  missionary.  Father  Ohrwalder,  in  his 
*Ten  Year^  Captivity,*  has  described  in  the 
following  passage  the  manner  of  man  Slatin 
was  and  the  life  he  led  at  this  time: 

**His  powers  of  endurance  were  wonderful, 
and  he  would  often  be  twenty  four  hours  in  tbe 
saddle,  constantly  flghtiog  and  with  nothing 
to  eat  or  drink.  He  slept  on  the  bare  floor  or 
ground  beside  his  native  soldiers,  and  lived  on 
d  burr  a  soaked  in  water.  He  was  just,  never 
took  bribes,  generous,  ever  ready  to  assist  the 
poor  and  needy,  and  never  refused  admittance 
to  old  and  young  who  sought  his  help.** 

His  devotion  to  his  task  was  so  entire  that, 
on  learning  that  he  had  lost  the  confidence  of 
his  soldiers  because  he  was  a  Christian,  he 
promptly  turned  Mohammedan.  Had  he  been 
but  a  few  years  earlier,  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  his  rule  would  have  been  brilliantly 
successful,  but  the  struggle  against  the  Mahdi*s 
fanatical  hordes  was  hopeless  from  the  outset. 
Tribe  after  tribe  joined  the  rebels.  His  prin- 
cipal officers  deserted  him,  and,  at  length,  the< 
annihilation  of  the  Hicks  Pasha  expedition 
having  destroyed  the  last  hope  of  rescue,  and, 
his  ammunition  being  exhausted,  in  December, 
1888,  he  surrendered. 

The  story  of  his  captivity  is  a  monotonous 
and  gloomy  record  of  suffering  and  misrule 
unenlivened  by  a  single  ray  of  light.  The 
Mahdi,  to  whom  he  took  an  oath  of  allegiance, 
gave  him  to  the  Khalifa  Abdullahi,  in  whose 
service  he  remained  till  his  escape.  During 
the  siege  of  Khartum  he  was  for  a  time  the 
medium  of  communication  with  the  garrison, 
but  he  saw  nothing  of  the  active  operations. 
At  early  dawn  on  January  26^  1885^  he  was 


"  startled  by  the  deafening  disotiarge  of  thou- 
sands of  rifiee  and  guns;  this  lasted  for  a  few 
minutes,  then  only  occasional  rifie-shots  were 
heard,  and  now  all  was  quiet  again.*'  Know- 
ing that  an  assault  had  been  planned  for  that 
night,  he  waited  in  intense  anxiety  for  news. 
At  length  he  saw  three  blacks  coming  towards 
him,  one  of  whom 

"carried  in  his  hands  a  bloody  cloth  in  which 
something  was  wrapped  up,  and  behind  him 
followed  a  crowd  of  people  weeping.  The 
slaves  had  now  approached  my  tentT  and  stood 
before  me  with  insulting  gestures  ;  Shatta  un- 
did tbe  cloth  and  showed  me  the  head  of  Gen. 
Gordon  !  The  blood  rushed  to  my  head  and 
my  heart  seemed  to  stop  beating  :  out  with  a 
tremendous  effort  of  self-control,  I  gased 
silently  at  this  ghastly  spectacle.  His  blue 
eyes  were  halt  opened  ;  tbe  mouth  was  perfect- 
ly natural ;  the  hair  of  his  head  and  hfs  short 
whiskers  were  almost  quite  white.  'Is  not 
this  the  head  of  vour  unde  the  unbeliever  f  * 
said  Shatta,  holding  tbe  head  up  before  me. 
'What  of  it r* said  I  quieUy.  'A  brave  sol- 
dier who  fell  at  his  post ;  happy  is  Jje  to  have 
fallen  ;  his  sufferings  are  over.*  ** 

Slatin  reports  the  Mahdi  as  expressing  re- 
gret  at  Gordon*s  death,  as  he  had  intended  to 
convert  him  and  then  exchange  him  for  Arab! 
Pasha,  in  the  hope  that  *the  latter  would  have 
been  of  assistance  to  him  in  helping  him  to 
conquer  Egypt** 

A  striking  account  is  given  of  the  circum- 
stances connected  with  the  death  of  the  Mahdi, 
which  took  place  soon  after  the  fall  of  Khar- 
tum, and  the  accession  of  the  Khalifa.  This 
man,  like  many  Orientals  who  have  been  sud- 
denly raised  from  an  obscure  position  to  great 
power,  has  shown  considerable  capacity  as  a 
ruler.  He  is  not  hampered,  however,  by  obli- 
gations  which' bind  other  men.  He  is  above  all 
law,  even  of  that  of  the  Koran,  as  all  of  his 
actions  are  held  to  be  directly  inspired  of  God. 
No  regard  for  life  or  considerations  of  justice 
move  him.  His  rivals  and  enemies  have  been 
destroyed,  and  he  has  surrounded  himself  with 
people  whose  interests  are  identical  with  his 
own.  The  Arab  tribe  to  which  he  belongs  has 
been  brought  from  Darfur  to  the  Nile,  and 
has  either  driven  out  or  enslaved  the  riverine 
inhabitants.  His  rule  is  one  of  pure  terrorism 
and  his  acts  are  those  of  an  ignorant  savage. 
The  whole  Nile  fleet,  for  instance,  consijiting 
of  some  000  vessels,  small  and  great,  was  de- 
clared  one  day  to  be  the  property  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, and  thousands  were  deprived  of  their 
means  of  subsistence.  The  coinage  has  become 
so  debased  that  "  the  present  dollar  is  merely 
a  heavy  copper  coin  covered  over  with  a  thin 
layer  of  silver,**  but  the  merchants  are  com- 
pelled to  accept  it  as  good  money,  under  penal- 
ty, if  they  refuse,  of  the  '*  confiscation  of  their 
property,  accompanied  by  fiogging  and  impri- 
sonment.**  Commerce,  naturally,  has  dwindled 
to  comparatively  nothing,  and  the  slave-trade, 
especially  in  women,  alone  thrives.  This,  to- 
gether  with  war,  famine,  and  disease,  is  fast 
depopulating  the  country.  The  statement  is 
made  that  75  per  cent,  of  the  whole  population 
of  the  Sudan  has  perished  since  the  advent  of 
the  Mahdi,  "while  of  the  remainder  the  ma- 
jority are  little  better  than  slaves.**  Nor  is 
there  any  hope  that  this  deeolating  rule  will 
come  to  an  end  except  through  the  reconquest 
of  the  Sudan  by  Egypt.  This  will  not  be  an 
easy  task,  for  the  religious  fervor  aroused  by 
the  Mahdi  has  not  wholly  subsided,  and  the 
Khalifa  strives  to  keep  it  alive  by  every  means 
in  his  power.  Five  times  a  day  the  faithful 
are  called  to  prayers,  and,  in  imitstion  of  the 
Mahdi,  he  frequently  harangues  them  from  the 
pulpit  of  the  mosque,  though  he  has  but  little 
of  the  eloquence  or  intelligence  which  cbarao- 
teriaed  his  master.    At  aU  these  services,  filar 


358 


The   li^ation^ 


[VoL  62,  No.  1604 


tin  and  all  sospected  men  were  compelled  to  be 
present  and  to  kneel  in  the  front  rank  of  wor. 
shippers,  an  easy  and  rare  way  of  keeping 
watch  over  them.  There  are  now  in  Omdur- 
man,  the  dervish  capital,  about  100  Cbristians, 
men  and  women,  Greeks,  Syrians,  Copts,  an 
Italian  Sister,  and  a  German. 

In  no  part  of  his  book  doec  Slatin  show  to 
better  advantage  than  in  the  story  of  his  es- 
cape. It  is  told  with  great  simplicity  and 
without  the  slightest  straining  for  effect,  but 
the  scenes  and  incidents  of  the  flight  are 
brought  very  /ividly  to-the  imagination.  The 
long  night  rides;  the  hiding  by  day  in  the  rocks 
ezposfd  to  the  pitiless  sun;  the  harassiog  de- 
lays while  awaiting  guides;  the  four-dajs' 
march  bare  footed  and  leading  the  camel  of 
his  disabled  guide,  all  are  described  with  pecu- 
liar force.  He  escaped  on  the  night  of  Fet>- 
ruary  20. 1895,  and  reached  ^ssuan  on  March 
16.  On  his  arrival  in  Cairo,  the  Khedive  con- 
ferred  upon  him  the  title  of  pasha,  and  ap- 
pointed him,  with  the  rank  of  colonel,  to  the 
Intelligence  Department. 

Major  WiDgate  has  translated  Slatin^s  nar- 
rative into  excellent  idiomatic  English,  the 
conversations  being  especially  well  done.  There 
are  some  interesting  and  striking  illustrations, 
a  plan  of  Khartum  and  Omdurman,  and  a  map 
showing  the  present  extent  of  the  Mahdist  in- 
fluence. The  work  is  so  bulky,  however,  as  to 
discourage  the  ordinary  reader,  and  many  of 
the  details  in  regard  to  obscure  tril>e8  are  un- 
interesting. An  abridged  edition,  which  should 
contain  only  the  personal  narrative,  is  there 
fore  very  desirable. 


A  Wandering  Scholar  in  the  Levant.  By 
David  G.  Hogarth,  M  A.,  Fellow  of  Magda- 
len College,  sometime  Craven  Fellow  in  the 
University  of  Oxford,  F.  8.  A.  With  illustra- 
tions.   Charles  8cribner*s  Sons.    1896. 

**  To  be  at  once  a  Scholar  and  a  Wanderer  is 
to  indulge  the  least  congruous  desires,*'  so  Mr. 
Hogarth  tells  us  in  his  opening  sentence;  and  a 
little  later  he  writes:  **  If  the  Scholar  wanders 
into  inland  Asia,  he  is  fain  to  play  the  explorer 
flrst  and  the  scholar  second.'^  We  hear,  most 
briefly,  of  the  discovery  of  the  skeleton  of  a 
dead  eity,  the  ancient  Cllician  pirate  city  Olba, 
of  Roman  camps  and  roads  and  milestones 
and  boundary  lines  and  ruins,  of  the  flnding 
of  coins  and  seals  and  Hittite  monuments,  but 
no  details  are  given;  the  interest  lies  in  the  dis- 
covery. Most  characteristic  of  Turkish  methods 
is  the  story  of  the  discovery  of  a  Hittite  monu- 
ment at  the  town  of  Bor  in  Asia  Minor.  Ram- 
say discovered  it  in  1882,  but  the  owner  would 
not  sell.  Finally,  in  1890,  she  offered  it  to  Mr. 
Hogarth  for  500  liras,  and  he,  being  pressed  for 
time  and  unable  to  bargain  at  great  length, 
offered  five  for  it,  and  finally  on  the  second  day 
secured  it  for  twenty. 

•*  We  could  not  hope  to  carry  off  so  well- 
known  a  treasure,  under  the  very  eyes  of  the 
local  governor,  unless  prepared  to  pay  as  much 
in  backshish  as  in  purchase.  .  .  .  Making, 
therefore,  an  ostentatious  virtue  of  necessity, 
we  conveyed  it  ten  miles  to  Nigdeh,  and  lodged 
it  there  in  trust  for  his  Majesty  the  Sultan. 
.  .  .  Strolling  that  night  in  the  dark  over 
the  crowded  roof  of  the  khan^l  heard  that  cer- 
tain Franks  had  tried  to  escape  with  a  stone 
worth  10,000  liras,  but  had  been  arrested  bv 
the  police  and  forced  to  disgorge  I  The  officials 
themselves  deprecated  such  wasteful  gene- 
roeitj ;  and  a  Government  Secretary  approach- 
ed us  next  day  with  a  kind  suggestion  that,  if 
our  difficulty  related  to  the  conveyance  of  the 
stone  to  the  coast,  he  could  arrange  that  we 
should  be  robbed  of  it  outside  the  town,  and 
for  a  slight  consideration  recover  it  at  the 
port." 


Mr.  Hogarih*s  story  may  be  supplemented 
by  the  statement,  from  the  Sultan's  end,  so  to 
speak,  that  his  unusual  conduct  in  purchasing 
an  antique  monument  from  its  owner  and  pre- 
senting it  to  the  Ottoman  Gk>vemment  instead 
of  smufrgling  it  out  of  the  country  rendered 
him  persona  gratissima  at  Constantinople. 
At  the  s-tme  time  it  strained  the  powers  of  the 
Ottoman  Government  to  obtain  possession  of 
the  stone,  so  firmly  did  the  provincial  governor 
hold  on  to  it  in  the  belief  that  it  was  of  fabu- 
lous value,  and  the  hope  that  he  might  himself 
have  a  share  in  the  money  which  he  supposed 
some  one  in  Constantinople  or  on  the  coast  was 
receiving  for  it.  There  is  a  sequel  equally  cha- 
racteristic It  turned  out  that  another  frag- 
ment of  the  same  monument  existed  in  the 
hands  of  another  owner.  The  latter  offered  it 
to  Mr.  Hogarth  on  condition  that  he  would 
himself  carry  it  away  and  not  give  it  to  the 
Government,  and,  when  he  refused,  destroyed 
it  rather  than  let  the  .Gk)vemment  know  of  its 
existence,  for  fear  of  imprisonment  and  black- 
maiL  Many  valuable  monuments  of  antiquity 
are  destroyed  in  the  same  manner,  because  of 
the  corrupt  and  oppressive  way  in  which  the 
law  of  antiquitiet  is  administered,  at  least  in 
the  provinces. 

But  the  most  interesting  part  of  this  little 
book  is  the  description  of  land  and  people 
through  the  almost  unknown  parts  of  central 
Anatolia  and  along  the  upper  Euphrates.  Mr. 
Hogarth  describee  the  Turk  of  this  region  as 
a  "slow-moving,  slow.thinking  rustic,  who 
limits  his  speech  to  three  tenses  out  of  the 
sixty-four  in  his  language,  and  his  interests  to 
the  price  of  barley.  Aliens,  Greek,  Arme- 
nian, Circassian,  thrust  him  on  one  side  and 
take  his  little  parcel  of  land  by  fraud  or  force- 
there  is  no  real  distinction  in  Anatolia. ...  In 
energy  and  intelligence  he  takea  rank  a  grade 
t)elow  his  dog,  who  shares  his  profound  and 
not  altogether  causeless  suspicion  of  strangers, 
but  attacks  more  vivaciously  and  is  reconciled 
more  frankly."  He  adds,  however :  **  One  is 
bound  to  like  him,  if  only  for  his  courage, 
his  simplicity,  and  his  blind  fidelity  and  his 
loyalty."  The  condition  of  the  women  among 
these  Anatolian  Turkish  peasants  is,  according 
to  his  account,  pitiable  in  the  extreme;  they 
are  '*  mere  chattels  of  the  man,  condemned  to 
the  hardest  field- work  and  to  walk  while  their 
lor<^  ride."  His  ethnological  observations  on 
the  origin  of  these  Turks  of  Anatolia  are 
worthy  of  remark.  **  Three  parts,"  he  says, 
"of  the  *  Turks*  of  Anatolia  never  came  from 
Turkestan,  but  are  children  of  aborigines, 
Carians,  Galatians,  Phrygians,  what  you 
will."  The  Turks  of  some  regions  he  finds 
identical  in  type  with  the  Armenians  by  and 
with  whom  they  live,  evidence  of  forced  con- 
versions in  the  older  time  such  as  are  horrify- 
ing the  world  to-day.  He  identifies  the  true 
Turk  by  his  inclination  to  wander,  which  dis- 
plays itself,  among  the  denizens  of  towns  and 
ciMes,  by  "the  practice  of  migrating  to  a 
yaila  in  summer."  This,  he  says,  "is  the  most 
infallible  sign  that  a  village  of  *  Turks*  is  not 
a  village  of  converted  aborigines." 

In  the  old  Seljukian  regions,  the  Seljuks 
having  been  less  fanatical  than  the  Ottomans, 
Mr.  Hogarth  found  more  and  more  ancient 
Christian  settlements.  One  curious  Greek 
community  he  visited  on  an  island  in  the  Lake 
of  Egerdlr.  There  is  "a  renmant  of  fifty 
Christian  families  with  two  priests.  Service 
is  held  only  on  the  great  festivals,  and  then  in 
Turkish,  because  neither  priest  nor  people  un- 
derstand any  other  language."  "The  priests 
told  us  that  the  families  l)eoame  fewer  every  I 
year ;  the  fathers  could  teach  their  children 


nothing  about  their  ancestral  faith,  for  they 
knew  nothing  themselves ;  the  Moslems  were 
*  eating  them  4ip.'  We  had  to  force  the  church 
door,  and  brush  dust  and  mould  from  a  vellum 
service-book  dated  1492."  Both  Turks  and 
Christians  are  dying  out  in  Anatolia,  accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Hogarth.  The  country  is  fertile  and 
rich  in  natural  resources,  and  the  climate  is  sa- 
lubrious, but  the  Government  is  execrable,  and 
constantly  growing  worse.  The  hope  of  the 
future  is  colonization  from  Europe.  Not  that 
Mr.  Hogarth  is  hostile  to  the  Turk,  however. 
He  is  decidedly  friendly  to  him,  in  the  uf ual 
manner  of  the  English  Tory,  and  deprecates 
Exeter  Hall  agitation  against  Turkish  atroci- 
ties. Mr.  Hogarth  travelled  up  the  Euphrates 
on  his  last  trip  in  1894.  shortly  before  the  mas- 
sacre of  Sassun,  passing  on  the  way  the  un- 
subdued Kurdish  strongholds  of  the  Derslm. 
He  did  not  observe  a  reign  of  terror  among  the 
Armenians  at  that  time,  although  there  was 
"repression."  What  is  ordinarily  called  the 
"  Armenian  question  "  is  to  him  the  "  Kurdish 
question." 

The  last  two  chapters  of  this  little  book  of 
206  pages  are  devoted  to  Egypt  and  Cyprus. 
The  whole  book  from  beginning  to  end  is  read- 
able, entertaining,  and  instructive.  There  are 
a  fair  map  and  a  baker^s  dozen  of  illustrations, 
mostly  hidf-tones  from  photographs.  The  vol- 
ume is  dedicated  to  Prof.  Ramsay,  under  whose 
training,  one  would  judge,  Mr.  Hogarth  be- 
came "a  wandering  scholar  in  the  Levant." 


The  Life  of  Thomas  Hutchinson^  Royal  Gov- 
ernor of  the  Province  of  Bftassachusetts  Bay. 
By  James  K.  Hosmer.  Boston:  Houghton, 
Mifflin  &  Co.  1896.  8vo,  pp.  458. 
In  this  volume  Prof.  Hosmer  has  performed  a 
public  service,  inasmuch  as  he  has  turned 
away  from  recording  the  triumphs  of  a  political 
"boss"  like  Samuel  Adams,  to  do  justice  to  a 
greater  but  unsuccessful  public  servant  Who- 
ever read^  the  history  of  Massachusetts  knows 
that  the  intelligence,  the  learning,  the  public 
and  private  virtues,  were  not  monopolized  by 
the  side  which  won  in  the  Revolution.  In 
fact,  as  may  happen  in  any  such  contest,  the 
losing  side  contained  by  far  the  greater  pro- 
portion of  conscientious  men  who  risked 
everything  for  a  principle  without  a  prospect 
of  gain  by  victory.  The  loyalists  of  Massa- 
chusetts were  not  a  faction  overthrown  for  its 
own  misdeeds,  a  dethroned  oligarchy,  but  they 
were  the  quiet,  substantial,  conservative  men, 
who  were  conscious  of  small  restraints  im- 
posed by  England  on  the  colony  and  of  great 
benefits  received  from  her  protection.  Luck- 
ily, the  Refugees  were  not  men  of  action,  and 
probably  not  one  of  the  melancholy  passengers 
in  the  fieet  which  left  Boston  for  Halifax  had 
a  drop  of  blood  upon  his  conscience.  Hence, 
the  Tories  have  been  despised  or  pitied,  but 
mainly  forgotten,  by  the  present  generation. 
Of  this  party.  Gov.  Thomas  Hutchinson  was 
not  only  the  leader  but  the  most  perfect  ex- 
ample, and  it  was  a  wise,  kindly,  and  patriotic 
task  which  Prof.  Hosmer  has  brought  to  a 
satisfactory  end. 

As  we  have  on  various  occasions  discussed 
the  life  and  character  of  Hutchinson,  we  shall 
attempt  no  sunmiary  at  this  time.  The  reader 
of  this  book  will  find  a  thorough  narrative, 
written  with  the  skill  of  a  practised  historian, 
master  of  his  subject,  pleased  with  his  theme, 
and  sympathetic  in  his  treatment.  It  is  not  a 
eulogy,  but  a  tribute  paid  to  an  honorable  an- 
tagonist. As  a  type  of  the  beat  claai  Off  Maw 
Englander  at  that  period,  HutchlanB  dHil* 
lenges  a  sincere  if  languid  a^mirfttiQa.   $/$-% 


March  26,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


359 


oitiMD,  a  poblic  Mrrant,  even  as  a  crown  ofD- 
cUl,  be  it  woithj  of  respect,  and  we  mutt  re- 
gret that  bis  native  ooontry  could  not  retain 
bis  senrioes.  If  we  may  venture  on  tbe  com- 
parison, fortonatelj  not  carried  to  so  painful 
an  ending,  Hutchinson  itood  at  a  crisis  where 
tbe  Bell-Bverett  party  stood  In  1860,  or  where 
many,  less  known,  at  tbe  South,  stood.  The 
very  virtues  of  one  year  may  seem  vices  the 
next,  when  the  rush  of  events  carries  us  far 
from  tbe  old  landmarks  Into  the  unknown 
currents  of  the  future. 

Mr.  Uosmer  has  given,  on  p.  906,  an  admira- 
ble r^sum4,  from  which  we  quote.  After  say- 
ing that  Hutchinson  hoped  and  argued  for  a 
compromise  of  tbe  views  of  the  (Government 
and  tbe  colonists,  be  adds : 

**  These  things  being  gained,  the  glorious 
empire  of  England  might  remain  undivided, 
mother  and  daughter  remaining  in  peace  to- 

Stber,  an  affectionate  headship  dwelling  in 
b  one,  a  filial  and  loving  concession  of  pre- 
cedence in  tbe  other.  To  attain  such  a  6od. 
summation  seemed  to  the  Governor  a  thing 
worth  suffering  and  striving  for.  To  bring 
this  about,  as  shown  by  all  his  acts  and  all  his 
words,  be  contended  year  after  year,  sacrific- 
ing to  bis  aim  bis  reputation,  hiB  fortune— at 
last,  hardest  of  all,  bis  dtisenship— dying  in 
exile,  of  a  broken  heart.'* 

Certainly  every  one  who  wishes  to  obtain  a 
true  view  of  tbe  beginnings  of  our  nation  will 
read  this  biography,  and  will  learn  from  it  that 
an  honest  devotion  to  principle  is  an  honorable 
legacy  to  posterity.  It  by  no  means  follows 
that  we  belittle  tbe  principles  or  the  actions  of 
our  favorite  heroes  if  we  allow  that  what  they 
did  was  revolutionary,  and  that  the  word  im- 
plies tbe  creation  of  a  new  standard  of  right  and 
wrong.  No  admirer  of  Hutchinson  will  deny 
that  tbe  world  was  the  gainer  by  his  defeat, 
nor  that  our  patriots  discovered  and  utilized  a 
new  force.  Looking  back,  we  see  that  tbe  revo- 
lutions of  Cromwell,  of  William  tbe  Third,  even 
tbe  bloody  French  Revolution,  were  immense 
steps  in  the  progren  of  mankind.  But  we  can- 
not blind  ourselves  to  their  attendant  cruelties, 
nor  refrain  from  a  sigh  over  the  Cavaliers,  the 
Jacobites,  and  tbe  old  noblesse.  Our  Tories  are 
tbe  corresponding  examples  in  American  his- 
tory, and  are  at  least  as  deserving  of  a  little 
sympathy.  It  is  to  our  national  credit  that 
not  only  was  tbe  separation  effected  with  a 
minimum  of  personal  injury,  but  that  tbe  con- 
querors  are  at  last  willing  to  concede  the  un- 
deniable merits  of  their  opponents. 


Vaeation  RamblsM,  By  Thomas  Hughes,  Q.C. 
(«•  Vacuus  Viator**),  Author  of  *  Tom  Brown*s 
School  Days.*  MacmUlan  &  Co.  1885. 
Thxbx  letters  cover  a  period  of  more  than 
thirty  years'  duration.  They  are  bright, 
cheery,  full  of  animal  spirits.  Tbe  writer  is 
observanl,  easily  pleased,  and  can  commu- 
nicate to  us  tbe  pleasures  be  himself  enjoys. 
But  time  leaves  nothing  long  the  same,  and  its 
tooth  is  very  sharp  on  letters  of  former  gene- 
rations unlew  they  chance  to  deal  with  clr- 
eomstanoes  and  events  of  special  interest  or  to 
be  written  in  a  fascinating  manner.  There  re- 
mains chiefly  an  element  of  interest  in  the  com- 
parison of  things  past  and  present,  and  in  not- 
ing to  what  extent  tbe  writer's  prophecies  and 
antlcipatioBs  have  been  justified  by  events. 

Tbe  flnt  series  of  letters  take  us  to  Constan- 
tinople and  Athens  by  way  of  the  Tyrol  and 
tbe  Danube  and  back  to  England  by  another 
route.  Mr.  Hughes's  impressions  in  Constan* 
tinople  were  extremely  favorable  to  the  Turks, 
but  even  Freaouui  would  have  allowed  all  he 
dalns  for  tba  Turk's  perwNial  morals,  and  still 


have  maintained  that  his  official  character  is 
**  unspeakable."  That,  too,  has  its  variations, 
and  Mr.  Hughes's  Sultan  and  Vister  are  now 
turned  to  dust.  Some  of  the  pictures  of  tbe 
French  coast  in  this  section  are  most  agreeable 
and  entertaining.  Tbe  next  section  following 
is  made  up  of  home  letters  written  from  Ame- 
rica in  1870,  all  the  others  having  been  writ- 
ten to  tbe  Spectator.  These  home  letters  are 
more  free  and  easy  than  the  others,  and  tbey 
have  the  attraction  which  always  inheres  in 
books  and  letters  that  enable  us  to  see  ourselves 
as  other  see  us.  Mr.  Hughes  was  as  much  im- 
pressed as  Matthew  Arnold  with  the  kindness 
showered  upon  him,  and  describes  himself  as 
**a  spoilt  child,"  and  very  naturally,  because 
in  1870  the  recollection  of  his  services  to  Ame- 
rica in  tbe  civil  war  was  still  fresh.  These 
letcers  are  extremely  personal,  and  the  substi 
tution  of  initials  and  dashes  for  the  full  names 
of  people  is  the  thinnest  possible  disguise.  A 
good  many  readers  will  be  much  pleased  with 
the  fine  things  said  about  them,  and  few  will 
be  grieved  by  the  injurious  comments.  CoL 
Higginson's  share  in  this  feast  is  mixed  of  fat 
and  lean,  whatever  the  exact  meaning  Mr. 
Hughes  intended  to  convey:  *'He  was  very 
fascinating  to  my  mind  and  the  most  refined 
man  in  manners  and  look  I  have  yet  met,  but 
I  should  say  decidedly  a  cracked  fellow  in  the 
good  sense."  There  is  about  the  usual  number 
of  misspellings  of  American  proper  names  that 
we  find  in  English  books.  Field  for  Fields, 
Hoare  for  Hoar,  and  even  **  Jef  Da  vies"  for 
**  Jeff  Davis"  in  the  John  Brown  song.  Nan- 
shon  Island,  where  Mr.  Hughes  enjoyed  with 
uncommon  sest  his  hospitable  reception  and 
tbe  company  assembled,  is  disguised  as  **  Nash- 
out."  His  comparative  impressions  of  Phila 
delphia  were  as  flattering  as  Arnold's.  He  is 
less  critical  than  Arnold  of  our  eating  and 
drinking,  and  does  not  express  the  English 
preference  for  tepid  over  cold  water  on  the 
table,  if  any  such  is  his. 

A  very  different  kind  of  interest  from  that  at- 
taching to  this  series  of  letters  belongs  to  the  se- 
ries *'  Amerioa— 1890  to  1887.**  Theee  are  con- 
cerned mainly  with  the  Rugby  settlement  in 
Tennessee,  and  are  very  graphic  in  their  ac- 
counts of  life  and  scenery  in  the  Cumberland 
Mountains.  Mr.  Hughes's  story  of  a  placard 
over  the  piano  at  a  favorite  resort  of  Texas  cow- 
boys is  a  variant  of  a  more  piquant  form— tbe 
scene,  a  Western  church;  the  placard,  '*  Don't 
shoot  the  organist,"  etc.  Still  another  series  is 
exceedingly  diversified,  with  the  emphasis  on 
the  coast  towns  of  England  and  France.  One 
of  tbe  longest  letters  here  deals  with  Lourdes, 
describing  the  place  pretty  carefully,  and  treat- 
ing the  miracle-working  of  the  spring  described 
by  Zola  as  "  a  soup  of  microbes'*  with  as  much 
sympathy  as  any  Roman  Catholic  could  desire. 
Nothing  is  more  becoming  to  Mr.  Hughes  in  this 
volume  than  his  way  of  leaving  off.  He  reserves 
for  his  last  chapter  bis  address  in  Boston,  Octo- 
ber 11, 1870,  **  John  to  Jonathan,"  as  clear  a 
statement  of  the  relations  of  England  to  our 
civil  war  as  we  have  ever  seen.  It  is  quite  as  good 
reading  now  as  then.  In  another  letter  Mr. 
Hughes  says  of  England:  **I  believe  that  on 
the  whole  there  is  not,  nor  ever  was,  a  nation 
that  kept  a  more  active  conscience,  or  tried 
more  honestiy  to  do  tbe  right  thing  according 
to  its  ligbtk"  This  is  particularly  interesting 
at  the  present  time  as  the  opinion  of  as  good  a 
friend  as  America  has  ever  had  on  English 
soil,  who  did  more  for  us  in  the  day  of  our 
distress  than  some  of  our  inverted  Anglo- 
maniacs  could  ever  do  if  tb«y  should  do  their 
best— and  whose  death  has  just  been  an- 
nounced. 


Iraninches  Namenbudi,  Von  Ferdinand  Justi. 
Qedrucktmit  Unterstfitsungder  Kdniglicben 
Akademie  der  Wissenscbaften.  Marburg  : 
N.  G.  Elwert'scbe  Verlagsbucbbandluog. 
1805. 
In  this  book  of  596  quarto  pages,  arranged  in 
double  columns.  Prof.  Justi  has  treated  4,490 
Iranian  proper  names  borne  by  0,450  persons. 
Considering  that  each  name  and  person  is  placed 
by  references  (sometimes  by  several),  an  idea 
may  be  formed  of  the  amount  of  labor  which 
tbe  book  hss  cost.  The  interesting  Introduc- 
tion discusses  the  origin  of  names,  and  also 
classifies  them.  Prof.  Justi  finds  that  tbey 
are  derived  for  the  most  part  from  litera- 
ture, being  original  only  in  a  subordinate  sense. 
As  to  the  earliest  of  Iranian  proper  names, 
they  lingered  as  the  echoes  of  tbe  *  Zend  A  vesta ' 
long  after  their  meaning  as  words  had  disap- 
peared; but,  after  the  Conquest,  Arabian  names 
ran  both  tbe  Zoroastrian  and  the  Persian  ones 
hard.  So,  later  New- Persian  names,,  many  of 
them,  were  the  result  of  the  great  epic  poedS  of 
the  'Shah  Nameh.*  The  same  tbing  has  hap. 
pened  elsewhere  in  mediaeval  and  even  modem 
times.  Since  1566  and  1614,  Romish  saints  have 
supplanted  older  heroes  in  Germany,  and  in 
Italy  the  Knights  of  the  Round  Table  found 
many  namesakes.  So  in  England,  under  Crom- 
well (Justi  recalls  Barebones  with  bis  com- 
pound "'  Christian  '*  name),  tbe  Old  Testament 
poured  out  its  quaint  tities,  and  within  this 
last  half-century  Tennyson  has  been  largely 
responsible  for  tbe  readoption  of  beautiful  Old 
English  words,  while  Wagner's  operas  have 
given  us  Elsas  and  the  like. 

We  may  mention,  in  passing,  one  curious 
device  which  is  reported  at  least  in  poetry;  it 
could,  however,  hardly  be  so  extended  as  to  be ' 
called  a  custom,  says  Firdusi.  Prince  Feridun 
(AvesticTbraetaona)  kept  bis  young  children 
nameless.  First  he  waited  till  their  characters 
had  developed,  and  then  he  thought  they  might 
be  ssfer  unchristened.  An  unnamed  prince- 
ling avoids  *' insult"  and  "tattle."  No  one 
could  *'  call "  after  a  child  without  a  name,  and 
no  one  could  malign  it.  The  same  principle 
is  partiy  apparent  in  ''throne-names,"  which 
often  displaced  originals.  We  know  more,  for 
instance,  of  Ochus  and  Codomannus  than  we 
do  of  either  Darius  the  First  or  Darius  tbe  Se- 
cond.  The  same  practice  had  appeared  in 
Egypt  and  Assyria. 

To  collect  historical  and  mythical  names  from 
Iranian  lore  was  imperative  upon  some  one, 
but  few  are  aware  tbat  in  the  proper  names  of 
human  beings  we  have  often  preserved  to  us 
our  only  trace  of  words  that  have  otherwise 
vanished,  as  of  gods  which  are  littie  remem- 
bered. As  to  the  latter,  we  know  only  of  an 
original  polytheism  among  tbe  ancestors  of 
Israel  from  their  first  (f)  name  for  God,  which 
is  tbe  plural  Elohim;  and  who  would  remem- 
ber  how  lately  the  moon  was  worshipped  if  it 
were  not  for  Monday,  or  that  Tiv  exists  in 
Tuesday,  Woden  in  Wednesday,  etc.?  As  to 
lost  words,  or  word- roots,  we  have,  in  Aria- 
bigna,  *'Tbe  Glory  of  the  Aryans,"  and  in 
Baga-bigna,  "The  Glory  of  God,"  tbe  sole 
signs  of  tbe  root  bhaigv  in  Iranian.  Rabiktas, 
"  Blessed  with  Glory,"  and  Dibiktas  (?)  show 
the  participle  of  tbe  past.  In  Frata-karA, 
'*  Tbe  Maker  of  Fire,"  the  oldest  name  of  tbe 
Kings  of  Persia,  we  have  again  a  psst  psrtici- 
ple,  this  time  of  an  Iranian  fra :  so  in  Frata- 
gune,  "Color  of  Fire,"  and  Fratapbemee, 
"  Fire's  Glory."  In  Codomannus  we  have  an 
Iranian  manntts— man,  etc.  Another  feature 
in  tbe  character  of  names  is  tbe  clear  evidence 
which  they  afford  as  to  national  traiU  actually 
present  or  once  existing  in  forgotten  ancestors. 


360 


Tlie   iN^ation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1604 


Take  even  the  ** horse-names'*  of  Iran,  they 
point  beyond  a  question  to  the  weU-acoredited 
opinion  that  Persia,  whose  cavalry  was  the 
terror  of  the  Romans,  was  the  cradle  of  horse- 
culture.  Even  a  king  could  bear  the  personal 
or  family  name  of  Vishtasp,  **  HorseK>wner.*' 
Pourushaspa  (Zarathushtra*s  father)  meant 
'*Many  Horses*';  ^  Aurvadaspa  was  "Fleet 
Horses"  (cp.  also  early  English  Hengist  and 
Horsa).  SoUshtra  shows  oamel-breeding;  Fra- 
shaoehtra  meant  "Quick  Camels'*;  Zarathush- 
tra,  ** Sorrel  Camels."  Again,  of  arms:  Be- 
rezyarshti  was  "High  Lances";  Frayadratha, 
"Swift  Chariot";  Sk&rayadratha,  "Losing 
Chariots";  Zairivairi,  "Yellow  Armor"  (po- 
lished broDze),  Bastavairi,  "  Woven  Mail,"  and 
Yukhtavairi,  "Jointed  Armor" ;  Azad-feroz, 
"  Bom  for  Victory "  (or  Prince  of  Victory) ; 
Harpates,  "the  All-shielder," and  Satrabatee, 
"Shield of  Empire." 

Coming  to  religious  and  moral  conceptions, 
we  have  only  to  follow  the  list  of  the  Amesha^ 
spdnds  of  the  (Hthfis  to  trace  an  interesting 
development.  The  name  of  God  himself  was 
used  quite  simply  as  a  proper  name.  Ormizd 
is  Ahura  Masda  spoken  as  one;  and  in  the  in- 
scriptions of  Persepolis  and  Murgb&b  we  see 
the  actual  process  of  this  change;  Aura  and 
Masda  occur  once  (and  once  only),  each  sepa- 
rately inflected;  everywhere  else  the  names 
form  one  word  inflected  at  the  end.  Ormizd 
is  shown  by  Justi  to  have  been  used  as  a  name 
by  persons  known  in  history  no  less  than  forty- 
seven  times;  it  survives  even  in  modem  use. 
Is  not  this  singularly  exceptional  if  not  unique? 
We  have  plenty  of  names  with  *Kjk>d"  in  them, 
but  here  is  **  God"  without  relief.  It  was  and 
is  used  in  profoundest  reverence.  In  com- 
pounds we  have  it,  as  in  Ohramazd  dat,  '^God's 
Creature,"  an^  Ormizdukht,  "God- daughter," 
etc ,  more  in  the  common  line.  Then  Bahman 
is  Vohu.manah,  the  "  Good  Mind,"  God's  flrst 
or  second  attribute;  Justi  gives  us  twenty-two 
instances  of  the  word  in  history  as  a  proper 
name.  In  compounds  we  have  Bahman-  dukht, 
"  The  Good  Mind's  Daughter,"  and  Bahmanyar, 
"The  (Jood  Mind's  Friend,"  etc. 

The  next  and  not  less  prominent  divine  attri- 
bute is  the  Holy  Order  of  the  Law.  This  ap- 
pears in  Astvad-ereta,  "The  Embodied  Right- 
eousness," Ukhshyad-ereta,  * 'Increasing  Right- 
eousness," Artavardiya,  **  Strong  through 
Righteousness."  Khshathra,  "the  kingly  pow- 
er," which  was  the  third  attribute,  appears  in 
Khshayftrsha,  which  is  Xerxes,  "The  Right 
Ruling,"  but  more  literally  in  Arta- Khshathra, 
which  is  Artaxerxes,  "King  of  Righteousness." 
(Ardashir  is  the  same  word  in  a  later  form.) 
Spenta  Aramaiti,  "Holy  Zeal,"  the  fourth 
Ameshaspend,  occurs  in  Ispandarmad,  while 
Ameretat&t,  Immortality,  the  fifth,  comes  out 
in  Vardanoyis,  "Increasing  the  Deathless," 
and  Sahakanus,  "Immortal  Friend."  A  final 
optimism  is  familiar  in  the  Ayestic  Haurvat&t 
(Sanskrit  Sarvatftti),  which  is  "Universal 
Weal";  it  becomes  Khurd&d  in  the  proper 
name.  Azad-bakht,  "Born  for  Fortune" 
(or  "Prince  of  Fortune"),  and  Shtgufteh- 
bakht,  "Wonderful  Fortune,"  are  hopeful  in 
the  selfsame  key.  In  the  matter  of  specific 
religious  expression,  ritual,  the  sacramental 
fire  is  a  striking  feature,  and  the  name  Ano- 
shadar,  "Unquencbed  Fire,"  may  show  at 
once  the  interesting  belief  that  the  altar-fiame 
brought  down  from  Heaven  to  Zoroaster  has 
never  faUed.  This  belief  stiU  lingers;  and 
Obaramazd-ature,  "Fire  of  Ahura,"  shows 
that  the  element  was  sacrosanct  indeed;  while 
Artasher  Atashe,  ••  Holy  Fire  King,"  shows 
"Church  and  State"  (the  King  as  a  priest). 
Buland-Akbtar,  "Lofty  Star,"  and  Farkhun- 


deh-akhtar,  "Luck- Bringing  Star,"  attest 
astrology.  Mihradar,  "Fire of  Mithra," recalls 
the  post-gAthio  sun-yod. 

Following  upon  this  extensive  ooUection  of 
proper  names  come  tables  of  descent  (pp.  890- 
479),  the  most  important  mythical  dynasties 
being  treated  as  well  as  the  historical.  The 
iconography  of  the  book  is  indexed  in  two 
pages,  containiog  396  names  of  kings,  satraps, 
pretenders,  oiBdals,  warriors,  magicians,  per- 
sons indefinable,  and  women,  whose  portraits 
appear  on  stones  or  in  statues.  In  pages  484- 
520  we  have  a  valuable  analysis  of  etymologies, 
and  pages  621-626  treat  of  the  afiixes.  Immense 
labor  hat  been  saved  in  this  work  to  all  who 
wish  to  have  their  citations  sound  and  serious. 
Several  languages  have  been  examined  in  the 
course  of  the  formidable  undertaking,  and  the 
result  does  honor  to  the  Academy  of  Sciences, 
whose  liberal  subvention  has  placed  the  book 
within  our  reach. 


The  Right  Hon,  Joseph  Chamberlain,  By  S. 
H.  Jeyes.  [Public  Men  of  Today.]  Frede- 
rick Wame  &  Co. 
Mr.  Jstx8*8  volume  is  a  brief  account  of  the 
public  career  of  Mr.  Chamberlain  seen  by  a 
friendly  eye.  His  hero,  a  man  sixty  years  of 
age,  has  already  played  many  parts,  and  played 
them  all  skilfuUy.  A  Radical,  a  Socialist,  a 
Liberal,  a  Home- Ruler,  a  Dissentient  Liberal,  a 
Liberal  Unionist^  and  finally  a  Conservative, 
he  has  boxed  the  compass  of  opinion,  and  yet 
has  maintained  a  steadily  growing  prestige,  so 
that  his  hold  on  power  seems  with  time  to  be 
increasing.  As  man  of  business,  administrat- 
or, orator,  and  diplomat  be  hat  been  equally 
successful.  He  has  won  his  success,  too,  at 
times  in  the  teeth  of  violent  opposition.  He 
hat  been  dreaded  as  a  "  Red,"  denounced  as  a 
traitor,  laughed  at  as  a  would-be  courtier; 
but,  through  all,  his  weight  and  infinence  in 
public  affairs  have  steadily  grown,  until  he  is 
to  day  one  of  the  halfdosen  foremost  men  in 
England.  Mr.  Jeyes's  volume  gives  a  brief 
and  readable  account  of  his  career;  but  evi- 
dently the  time  has  not  yet  come  for  a  full  ex- 
planation of  it.  Possibly  there  is  no  mystery; 
perhaps  Mr.  Chamberlain  is  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  appears  on  the  surface— a  versatile 
man  of  business,  with  the  knack  of  foreseeing 
the  drift  of  public  opinion  that  marks  the 
great  opportunist. 

His  biographer  thinks  that  the  one  dominat- 
ing object  of  his  life  is  "  his  desire  to  improve 
the  dally  lot  of  the  poor,  and  to  use  legislation 
for  the  purpose  of  helping  and  protecting  those 
who  cannot  help  or  protect  themselves  "  ;  but 
the  only  proof  of  this  is  that  he  began  life  as  a 
radical  with  all  sorts  of  schemes  for  remedying 
the  ills  of  life,  which  have  been  gradually  more 
and  more  relegated  to  the  background.  Whra 
people  talk  about  Socialism  in  England,  they 
continually  overlook  the  fact  that  many  things 
elsewhere  looked  upon  as  natural  functions  of 
government,  and  in  this  country  taken  as  a 
matter  of  course,  were  not  long  since  in  Eng- 
land regarded  as  doubtful  novelties.  Mr.  Cham- 
berlain, who  is  never  slow  to  take  advantage 
of  any  opening  afforded  him  by  his  opponents, 
recognises  the  opportunity  for  confusion  in  a 
word  capable  of  such  various  definitions,  and 
boldly  declares  that  he  is  a  Socialist  because 
"the  poor-law  is  Socialism;  the  education  act 
is  Socialism;  the  greater  part  of  municipal 
work  is  Socialism;  and  every  kindly  act  of 
legislation  by  which  the  oonmiunity  has  sought 
to  discharge  its  responsibilities  and  its  obliga- 
tions to  the  poor,  is  Socialism."  This  is  quite 
a  mistake.    We  support  criminals  in  prison, 


but  no  one  calls  it  Socialism.  Most  cities  in 
the  United  States  have  a  municipal  water  sup- 
ply, but  nobody  ever  regarded  the  Croton 
water-works  as  having  socialistic  tmidencles. 
Public  schools  are  based  on  the  necessity  of 
diffusing  knowledge  among  those  who  are  to 
be  citisens.  Socialism  means  something  very 
different  from  advancing  a  confessedly  public 
object  by  taxation.  It  implies  some  attack  on 
those  customs  and  institutions  on  which  our 
civilization  rests— liberty,  property,  contract, 
and  marriage.  Does  Mr^  Chamberlain  wish  to 
subvert  any  of  these  ?  His  question,  "  What 
raneom.  wiU  property  ^y  for  the  security  it 
enjoys?"  was  distinctly  socialistic;  ransom 
paid  by  property  for  security  is  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  blackmail,  to  which  there  is  no 
other  limit  than  the  pleasure  of  the  person  who 
fixes  the  sum  demanded.  If  Mr.  Chamberlain*s 
opinions  of  to  day  were  those  which  he  seemed 
to  represent  in  putting  this  question,  he  would 
be  one  of  the  most  dangerous  public  men  alive. 
But  are  they  the  same  f  This  volume  seems  to 
make  it  highly  improbable  that  they  are. 


TAe  Qrowth  of  the  Brain :  A  Study  of  the 
Nervous  System  in  Relation  to  Education. 
By  Henry  Herbert  Donaldson,  Professor  of 
Neurology  in  the  University  of  Chicago. 
[The  Contemporary  Science  Series.]  Charles 
Scribner's  Sons.  1806.  8vo,  pp.  874. 
Within  very  moderate  compass  is  here  pre- 
sented much  important  and  interesting  infor- 
mation from  many  sources  as  to  the  structure, 
development,  and  functions  of  the  brain.  There 
are  seventy-seven  illustrationB,  original  or 
from  standard  works.  The  most  notable  fea- 
ture of  the  volume  is  the  number  of  tables  em- 
bodying statistics  respecting  the  weight,  num- 
ber, and  condition  of  the  brain  and  its  visible 
or  microscopic  constituents  at  various  ages  and 
under  different  circumstances.  The  following 
topics  are  discussed  with  more  or  less  fulness: 
the  growth  of  the  nervous  system  compared 
with  that  of  the  body;  the  interpretation  of 
brain  weight  in  terms  of  cell  structure;  the 
early  limitation  of  the  number  of  nerve- cells; 
the  peculiar  relation  in  this  system  between  in- 
crease in  size  and  in  organization;  the  large 
though  variable  number  of  cells  which  have 
but  slight  importance  in  the  final  structure; 
the  dominance  of  nutritive  conditions;  the 
wide  diffusion  of  nerve  impulses;  the  incom- 
pleteness of  repose;  the  reflex  nature  of  all 
responsee;  the  native  character  of  mental 
powers;  and  the  comparative  insignificance  of 
formal  education. 

These  are  serious  matters,  and  Dr.  Donald- 
son's systematic  and  thoughtful  consideration 
of  them  is  worthy  of  attention  even  when  some 
of  his  views  may  not  commend  themselves  to 
us.  The  following  are  a  few  of  the  passages 
worthy  to  be  quoted: 

"The  aim  at  the  moment,  then,  is  to  deter- 
mine what  limitations  anatomy  places  to  tiie 
educational  powersL  and  thus  to  obtain  a  ra- 
tional basis  from  which  to  attack  many  of  the 
pedagogical  problems"  (p.  842).     , 

"On  neurological  grounds,  therefore,  nur- 
ture is  to  be  considered  of  much  less  im- 
portance than  nature,  and  in  that  sense  the 
capacities  that  we  most  admire  in  persons 
worthy  of  remark  are  certainly  inborn  rather 
than  made"  (p.  844). 

"The  demonstration  here  of  the  loss  of 
energy  in  learning  what  needs  only  to  be  un- 
learned is  very  striking,  and  if  one  experience 
produces  such  an  effect,  it  is  not  difficult  to  un- 
derstand how  habits  early  formed  and  lone 
cultivated  become  so  difiicult  of  eradloatioB" 
(p.  847). 

^*  Knowledge  comes,  for  the  hindraiioet  to 
knowledge  are  in  a  large  measure  from  wtllniil; 
but  wisdom,  as  heretofore,  contlnoeelpaHViri 


March  26,  1896] 


The   :N"ation. 


Q61 


and  ftin  to  occupy  its  place  at  the  rare  per- 
fonnanoe  of  a  balanced  Drain  **  (p.  806^. 

Prof  enor  Donaldson  hopee  that  hit  work  may 
be  useful  to  parents,  teachers,  and  phyrioians, 
and  that,  **  as  a  result  of  their  demands,  there 
may  be  supplied  an  account  far  more  extensiye 
and  luminous  than  his  otm/*  At  present  it  is 
to  be  feared  that  any  failure  upon  the  part  of 
many  educated  people  to  profit  by  the  infor- 
mation he  offers,  must  be  ascribed  less  to  any 
want  of  desirable  clearness  and  complete- 
ness in  this  work  than  to  the  non-existence  of 
an  adequate  besis  of  facts,  names,  and  ideas 
in  their  own  minds.  If  Prof.  W.  W.  Goodwin 
was  even  approidmately  correct  in  declaring 
in  these  columns  that  **  whatever  study  is  to 
be  pursued  with  effect  must  have  its  founda- 
tions laid  before  the  age  of  fifteen,"  then  it  is 
not  enough  that  (as  in  at  least  one  large  Ain^ 
rican  university)  all  undergraduates  outside 
.  the  technical  courses  supplement  the  instruo- 
tion  upon  the  brain  by  actual  dissection  of  the 
organ;  work  of  this  sort,  even  more  thorough, 
must  constitute  an  absolute  prerequisite  for 
admission  to  college. 

Dr.  Donaldson  uses  few  technical  terms,  and 
the  proportion  of  mononyms  is  notably  large. 
On  the  other  hand,  since  brain  is  a  component 
of  the  title  and  distinctly  preferred  in  the  in- 
dex, it  is  not  easy  to  aooount  for  the  frequency 
of  the  ponderous  eneephaUm^  especially  in  the 
pluraL  Why,  also,  the  indiscriminate  employ- 
ment of  fissure  and  sulcus^  gyrus  and  oonvo- 
lution  t  Due  recognition  is  given  the  achieve- 
ments of  Dana,  Hodge,  Lombard,  and  other 
American  neurologists.  The  author's  own 
valuable  observations  upon  the  brain  of  the 
blind  deaf-mute  Laura  Bridgman  might  well 
have  occupied  more  space.  The  index  is  not 
fuU  enough,  and  a  summary  of  each  chapter 
would  have  been  acceptable. 


Tht  Worship  cf  the  Remans  Viewed  in  Rs^ 
latum  to  the  Rennan  Temperamtnt.  By 
Frank  Granger,  D.Litt.  London:  Methuen 
ft  Co.  1895. 
Thx  object  of  this  book  is,  as  Dr.  Granger  puts 
it,  "to  interpret  some  of  those  thoughts  which 
U^  nearer  to  the  average  Roman  mind  than 
the  Greek  elements  in  ita  isie]  literature."  By 
these  *' thoughts"  he  means  a  set  of  beliefs  or 
practices  which  were  closely  bound  up  with  the 
religion  of  the  Romans  as  we  find  it,  and  he 
wishes  **  to  point  out  the  manner  in  which  they 
are  related  to  each  other,  and  to  justify  them 
as  a  necessary  factor  in  the  awakening  of  the 
religious  sentiment."  After  an  introductory 
chapter  which  is  entitled  *' The  Roman  Spirit," 
but  which  turns  out  to  be  rather  of  the  nature 
of  a  bootily  to  the  English  on  the  subject  how 
best  to  govern  India,  we  are  hurried,  without 
any  transition  whatever,  from  Calcutta  to  t^ 
first  of  this  group  of  beliefs— namely,  that  in 
dreams  and  apparitions.  Hence  we  pass  to  the 
"Soul  and  its  Companions"  (a  title  suggestive 
of  'Sintram,'  but  we  find  no  dread  Little  Master 
here,  only  the  genius^  deified  ancestors  and 
other  spirits);  next,  to  "The  World  Around," 
by  which  is  meant  the  supernatural  worid. 
Then  follow  accounts  of  Nature-  (including  of 
course  Tree-)  Worship,  Primitive  Thought,  Ro- 
man  Magic,  Divination  and  Prophecy,  Holy 
Places;  and  the  book  closes  with  chapters  on 
the  Divine  Victim  and  the  Sacred  Drama.  It 
will  be  evident  to  the  elect  that  we  have  here 
an  attempt  to  bring  together  into  a  small 
volume  (of  not  much  more  than  800  page^  what 
may  be  called  the  folk- lore  of  religion^  a  subject 
which  has  of  late  years  received  learned  con- 
sideration in  many  German  works,   and  In 


English  by  scholars  like  Fraser,  Baring-Gould, 
Lang,  and  others. 

Not  much  that  is  new  to  students  of  compa- 
rative religion  will  be  found  in  the  boc^.  It  is 
in  general  a  mere  account  of  the  said  beliefs 
(Dr.  Granger  is  not^  by  the  way,  possessed  by 
a  corn-demon,  for  which  we  are  grateful), 
strung  together  in  a  pleasantly  discursive  style 
~  perhaps  too  discursive  for  some  scholars, 
while  we  fear  that  the  author's  habit  of  taking 
much  for  granted  may  frighten  off  the  unin- 
structed.  He  has  a  way  of  beginning  a  storyt 
drifting  off  (Herodotus- like)  into  something 
else,  too  often  into  sermons  of  the  sort  indi- 
cated above,  and  then  coming  back  to  the  main 
thread  only  to  drop  it  {not  like  Herodotus) 
as  being  too  trite  for  further  handling.  And 
yet,  as  we  have  just  said,  his  style  is  plea- 
sant, and  the  topics  which  he  has  choeen  to 
treat  have  always  been  attractive  to  men.  To 
this  day  all  are  fascinated  by  the  supernatural 
and  the  unknown. 

The  Roman  lived  in  a  world  peopled,  as  he 
fancied,  with  spirits— his  opsniiis,  the  wraiths 
of  the  dead,  whether  showing  themselves  as 
ghosts  by  night  or  as  noonday  demons  in  the 
light— and  rendered  fearful  by  the  terrors  of 
the  evil  eye  In  man  or  by  the  prodigies  and 
portents  of  the  gods.  But  in  one  point,  at 
least,  be  had  the  advantage  of  us.  His  was  an 
age  when,  no  matter  what  the  torturing  doubt, 
there  was  always  somebody  at  hand  who  knew 
how  the  thing  really  was  and  what  must  be 
done  to  solve  the  doubt  or  to  avert  the  danger. 
Sound  and  withal  amusing  is  Dr.  Granger  on 
the  great  principle  of  primitive  philosophy, 
that  each  occurrence  has  one  cause,  and  but  one 
only.  We  may  perhaps  put  it  in  this  fashion : 
Tou  have  a  mysterious  ailoient  and  don't  know 
what  the  reason  is ;  you  are  worried  by  a  recur- 
ring dream;  you  have  seen  a  ghost  or  the 
"astral  body  "of  a  living  friend;  Panhasmet 
you  in  the  woods.  Too,  the  modem,  are  help- 
less because  you  don't  believe  that  there  is 
anybody  who  knows  what  it  all  really  means. 
But  the  Roman  had  somebody— or  thought  he 
had,  which,  after  all,  is  having.  He  yent  to 
his  medicine  man  of  the  appropriate  variety 
and  was  by  him  made  whole.  SouMthing  had 
been  left  undone,  or  something  done  which 
ought  not  to  have  been  done— it  was  always  one 
thing  (a  great  comfort  I),  easy  to  understand 
and  simple  (though  sometimes  expensive)  to 
expiate.  The  finding  out  what  this  thing  was, 
and  the  doing  of  it  on  the  one  hand,  or  paying 
the  price  of  the  past  action  on  the  other,  form- 
ed the  main  business  of  the  Roman  religion. 

Dr.  Granger,  in  his  last  chapter,  may  liave 
been  upon  the  track  of  this  great  truth;  but, 
liaving  mentioned  the  hymns  which  were  sung 
at  festivals,  and  having  committed  himself  to 
the  somewhat  surprising  statement  that  Horace 
was  one  of  the  first  Romans  to  write  poetry 
for  such  occasions,  he  is  naturally  led  away  to 
descant  upon  the  lyrics  of  the  Augustan  bard, 
and  aU  of  a  sudden  the  book  ends,  in  delight- 
fully consistent  fashion,  with  the  suggestion 
that  children  of  succeeding  generations  may 
liave  often  sung  theee  Ijrics  in  their  walks 
along  the  country  lanes.  No,  not  even  here 
ends;  for  it  is  added  that  they  were  perhaps 
"set  to  plain  and  strenuous  music  like  that  of 
the  Delphic  hymn."  Delphic  indeed,  and  Del. 
phic  the  utterance  I  StlU,  we  love  it,  for  "  we 
too  were  bom  in  Arcadia." 

But  it  would  be  unfair  to  have  treated  this 
book  altogether  in  a  sprightly— we  hope  not  in 
a  too  fiippant— vain.  It  has  in  it  much  that  is 
useful  to  know  as  well  as  interesting  to  read. 
And  among  other  valuable  suggestions  of  Dr. 
Granger's,  he  is  to  be  congratulated  upon  his 


idea  that  the  masks  of  ancestors,  the  imagines^ 
were  a  survival  of  an  original  practice  of  pre. 
serving  the  actual  heads  of  the  deceased.  He 
cites  as  a  parallel  the  preservation  of  the  skulls 
of  the  dead,  each  in  its  own  wooden  case,  in  a 
certain  church  in  Brittany.  It  seems  strange 
that  he  should  not  also  have  recalled  the  very 
similar  cu  tom  of  the  Issedones  described  by 
Herodotus  (iv.  d(Q.  The  publishers,  too,  de- 
serve thanks  for  the  dear  black  ink  upon  its 
good  white  surface,  and  above  all  for  the  light 
body  of  the  paper  used,  which  makes  the  book 
a  joy  and  not  a  burden  to  hold.  But  the  in- 
dex is  wholly  inadequate. 


Mind  and  Motion,  and  Monism.  By  the  late 
George  John  Romanes.  Longmans.  1805. 
Pp.170. 
Whkh  Mr.  Romanes  began  this  book  entitled 
*  Monism'  (to  which  a  lecture  on  *Mind  and 
Motion '  is  prefixed)  by  saying  that  it  is  estab- 
lished to  the  satisfaction  of  every  physidogist 
that  there  is  an  absolutely  exact  correspond, 
ence  between  every  mental  fact  and  some  con- 
comitant fact  of  the  brain,  he  exaggerated. 
There  are  physiologists  enough  who  regnrd 
the  correspondence,  whether  absolutely  exact 
or  not,  as  limited  to  feeling  and  sensation  cor- 
responding to  excitation  of  nerve-cells,  and  to 
volition  corresponding  to  nervous  discharges, 
while  maintaining  that  there  are  in  the  mind 
general  ideas  which  correspond  only  to  po- 
tentialities in  the  brain,  not  to  any  actual 
facts.  However,  liaving  put  out  of  court  all 
who  do  not  pin  their  faith  to  the  invariability 
and  exactitude  of  the  correspondence  between 
mental  and  material  events,  Mr.  Romanes 
proceeded  at  once  to  divide  believers  in  that 
proposition  into  Spiritualists,  Materialists, 
and  Monists,  thus  furnishing  che  last  word 
with  one  signification  the  more.  Monism 
originally  meant  the  doctrine  that  mental 
phenomena  and  material  phenomena  have  one 
substratum ;  and  monism  was  said  to  have 
three  forms.  Idealism,  or  the  doctrine  that 
material  phenomena  are  but  a  spedes  of 
ideas;  Materialism,  or  the  doctrine  that  mental 
phenomena  are  merely  a  special  variety  of 
thoee  facts  which  lie  at  the  bottom  of  material 
phenomena ;  and  Neutral  Monism,  which  was 
described  as  the  doctrine  that  material  pha. 
nomena  and  mental  phenomena  are  equally 
universal,  and  merely  different  aspects  of  any 
facts.  The  monism  of  Mr.  Romanes  seems  to  be 
a  variety  dther  of  materialism  or  of  this  neu- 
tral  monism;  for  he  says,  in  the  introductory 
essay,  that  mind  and  motion  are  substantially 
identical.  Thus,  of  the  three  elements  which 
compose  the  physical  universe,  to  wit,  matter 
(or  inertia  and  identity),  motion,  and  energy, 
he  holds  that  one  is  coextensive  with  mind. 
In  the  old  triad,  he  has  displaced  Idealism  to 
make  way  for  Spiritualism,  which  was  always 
held,  and  which  he  himself  held,  to  be  a  dusl- 
istic  and,  therefore,  not  a  monistic  doctrine, 
though  as  monistic  he  classee  it.  But  be  does 
not  mean  spiritualism  in  general ;  for  of  spi- 
ritualists and  others  who  do  not  accept  his  first 
axiom  of  the  absolute  perfection  of  the  corre- 
spondence between  mental  and  cerebral  events, 
he  takes  no  notice  whatsoever.  Upon  this 
point  he  is  explicit  (p.  48). 

What  Mr.  Romanes  wishes  to  prove  is,  that 
the  hypothesis  that  all  material  motion  has  a 
feding,  and  vice  versa,  besides  accounting  for 
sufficient  facts  to  render  it  reasonable,  leads  to 
the  propodtioo  that  all  "causality  "  (could  not 
this  antiquated  notion  have  been  replaced  by 
something  more  scientific  r)  is,  on  its  inside, 
volition,  and  gives  room  for,  as  be  at  fiist  says, 


^e^ 


TKe    iTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1604 


bat  sabsequently  (for  he  never  gave  the  work 
the  revision  necessary  to  make  its  doctrine 
quite  consistent^  that  it  "sanctions**  and  al- 
most necessitates,  the  assumption  of  a  uni- 
versal mind  of  the  world  (which  he  caUs  The. 
ism),  and,  flnallj,  that  it  reinstates  the  free- 
dom of  the  will,  and,  with  that,  moral  respon- 
sibility. Many  readers  will  seem  to  see  in  the 
book  the  phenomenon  of  a  man  setting  out 
from  materialistic  assumptions,  but  led,  under 
the  influence  of  a  broad  study  of  nature, 
toward  idealistic  conclusions,  and  going,  at 
last,  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  ultimate  reality 
is  '*  either  mental  or  something  greater.** 
Others  will  say,  with  some  justice,  that  it  is 
the  work  of  an  invalid,  so  weak  that  pages 
are  occupied  with  reasonings  and  logical  dia- 
grams to  show  that  a  universal  affirmative 
proposition  cannot  be  converted  9f mplioUer, 
and  with  another  diagram  altogether  worthy 
of  Dr.  Fludd  (except  that  it  is  a  rough  wood- 
cut, instead  of  a  beautiful  oopper-plate),  and 
full  of  the  most  puerile  propositions.  The 
style,  however,  is  as  strong  and  dear  as  any- 
thing Romanes  ever  wrote,  if  not  more  so. 
That,  if  he  had  recovered  from  his  iUness,  he 
would,  by  this^time,  have  been  advocating  an 
idealistic  theory  of  the  evolution  of  all  things, 
including  the  laws  of  causation,  there  is  hard, 
ly  room  to  doubt  Such  is  the  theory  that  the 
great  advocate  of  Darwinian  ideas  would  in- 
evitably  have  adopted  as  the  fittest  survivor 
in  the  struggle  of  theories. 


ProfeMsor  Koch  on  the  Bacteriological  Diag- 
nosis  of    Cholera^    Water-Filtration,    and 
Cholera,  and  the  Cholera  in  Germany  dur- 
ing the  Winter  of  1892-98.    Translated  by 
George  Duncan,  M.A.,  with  Prefatory  Note 
by  W.  T.  Gairdn^r,  M.D.,  LL.D.,  P.R.8. 
Edinburgh:   David  Douglas;   New  York: 
William  R.  Jenkins.    1895. 
NoTWiTHSTAKiDiNO  the  disappointment  that 
the  scientific  world  and  the  general  public  ex- 
perienced  in  the  failure  of  his  promises  for  the 
relief  of  consumption  by   inoculation,  Prof. 
£och  remains  a  great  authority  on  all  bacteri- 
ological subjects  connected  with  the  recogni- 
tion and  prevention  of  disease.    The  three  es- 
says of  the  title.page  of  this  book  give  col- 
lectively his  personal  yiews  on  the  spread  and 
the  restraint  of  that  pestilence  through  which, 
by  the  discovery  of  the  comma  bacillus,  he 
first  acquired  fame.   The  control  of  epidemics, 
like  the  management  of  any  condition  affect, 
ing  large  areas  or  many  people,  requires  popu- 
lar cooperation ;  and  it  is  by  the  absorption  of 
such  teachings  that  the  popular  mind  is  pre- 
pared  to  assist  in  the  work.    Koch  believes 
that  the  comma  (or  cholera)  bacillus  is  the 
efficient  cause  of  that  disease.    A  few  deny  it 
that  power,  but  nearly  all  recognize  in  its  pre- 
sence a  clear  indication  of  the  epidemic  varie* 
ty,  which,  under  certain  aspects,  cannot  be 
distinguished  dioically  from  cholera  morbus 
or  cholera  infantum.    At  least  to '  believe  that 
it  is  pathognomonic  is  to  be  on  the  safe  side. 

It  has  long  been  recognized  by  epidemiolo- 
gists that  the  study  of  any  outbreak  means  the 
detection  of  the  first  case,  either  at  or  after  its 
occurreooe.  But  the  recognition  of  undeve- 
loped cholera  is  a  clinical  impossibility,  al- 
though such  undeveloped  cases  furnish  the 
sparks  that  light  the  greater  flame  of  general 
infecUon.  It  it  here  that  the  bacteriologist  is 
at  his  best.  When  the  tornado  strikes  the  ship, 
every  sailor  realizss  it.  It  is  the  master's  pro- 
vince to  foretell  the  storm  while  the  disturb- 
ance  is  yet  recognizable  only  by  his  barometer. 
Koch  expresses  the  true  principle  of  all  this 


work  when  he  says:  "  The  proper  fleld  of  bac- 
teriologioal  work,  however,  is  the  beginning 
and  the  end  of  an  epidemic,  when  all  depends 
on  the  correct  judging  of  each  individual  case 
and  the  swiftest  possible  prevention  of  danger 
to  the  neighborhood."  Almost  every  cholera 
epidemic  is  like  an  extremely  flattened  ellipse 
whose  vertices  are  the  flrst  and  the  last  cases. 
Upon  determining  just  where  the  lines  that  en- 
close the  disease  begin  and  ceaae  may  depend 
the  safety  of  the  immediate  and  of  the  proxi- 
mate  communitieB.  Bacteriology  wlU  do  this; 
and  the  moral  for  us  is  to  liave  enough  skilled 
bacteriologists  and  equipped  laboratories  to 
render  an  intelligent  and  immediate  verdict. 
Barly  measures  of  control  may  thus  be  insti- 
tuted without  waiting  for  the  epidemic  to  be- 
come epidemic  in  the  one  instance,  and  the  un- 
suspected case,  held  as  a  precaution,  may  be 
restrained  from  ignorantly  spreading  the  dis- 
ease in  the  other.  For  it  is  well  established 
now  that  a  person  may  appear  and  may  feel 
perfectly  well,  and  yet  be  an  actual  dissemi- 
nator of  cholera  germs.  Certain  add  immedi^ 
ate  recognition  of  the  disease  can  be  made  in 
about  50  per  cent,  of  the  cases,  when  the  excreta 
are  examined  by  competent  observers;  and  in 
every  instance  it  can  be  determined  in  from 
six  to  ten  hours  by  means  of  the  peptone  (sup- 
plemented by  the  gelatine)  plate-cultiyation. 
lu  relation  to  detecting  the  cause  en  route 
when  water-borne,  there  is  no  pretence  that 
cholera-infected  streams  will  always  yield  bac- 
teria to  the  investigator.  The  probable  expla. 
nation  of  this  is  not  that  there  are  no  bacteria 
in  the  water,  but  that  their  distribution  has 
excluded  them  from  the  particular  specimen 
examined. 

The  essays  on  water- flltration  and  on  cholera 
in  the  winter  of  *9^'98  are  excellent  examples 
of  dear  description  and  logical  reasoning. 
An  underlying  motive  running  through  the 
whole  book  is  antagonism  toward,  or  defence 
against,  the  attacks  of  the  Pettenkofer  or 
Munich  school,  which  teaches  a  theory  of 
localism  with  special  reference  to  ground- 
water and  little  regard  to  bacteria.  The  con- 
troversy  is  not  always  in  good  taste,  and  there 
is  an  expenditure  of  energy  that  appears  more 
personal  than  sdentiflc  in  motive.  Never- 
theless the  book  is  a  good  contribution  to  the 
literature  of  public  health,  which  those 
charged  with  its  care  as  engineers  and  dvil  offi- 
cers, as  well  as  physicians,  may  well  consult, 
and  the  translation  is  in  idiomatic  and  most 
readable  English. 


A  Japanese  MarricLge,  By  Douglas  Sladen. 
London:  Black;  New  York:  Macmillan.  Pp. 
401. 

Mb.  Douglas  Bladsk^b  *  Japanese  Marriage' 
would  not  need  to  be  spoken  of  had  not  this  writ- 
er, by  a  certain  straightforwardness  and  na- 
turalness of  style,  gained  an  attention  not  usu- 
ally given  to  books  which  exhibit  such  full 
measure  of  ignorance  and  coarseness,  not  to 
add  effrontery.  There  was  no  need  of  reeort- 
ing  to  what  the  world  knows  as  fiction,  for  his 
former  books  and  artides  on  Japan  illustrated 
to  a  suffident  extent  the  writer's  power  of 
producing  pure  and  silly  inventions.  In  this 
volume,  as  usual,  the  Japanese  is  invariably  a 
'*  Jap  "  (no  other  respectable  writer  on  Japan 
ever  repaid  the  country's  hospitality  by  this 
impertinence),  and  the  foreigner  is  incapable  of 
speaking  except  in  copious  slang;  but  we 
have  also  such  passages  as  the  following  (p. 
106),  wliich  the  former  volumes  have  hardly 
equalled: 

"Bryn's  newly  formed  passion  for  Philip 


[fthe  is  his  wife's  sister,  and  lives  in  their  house- 
hold]—if  one  may  use  the  word  where  the 
question  of  sexual  feeling  did  not  enter— would 
have  carried  her  through  a  much  more  severe 
triaL  She  thought  the  grandest  sight  she  had 
ever  seen  in  her  life  was  Philip,  unarmed,  and 
in  his  night-clothes,  first  hurling  one  sworded 
assailant  over  the  banisters  .  .  .  and  then 
teiuing  the  life  out  of  the  otiier's  throat.  .  .  . 
There  was  no  more  taint  of  jealousy  than  there 
was  of  sexualism  in  her  passion  for  Philip. 
She  did  not  desire  his  caresses,  though  they 
gave  her  a  dog's  pleasure." 


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New  Tork.    1668-I8O6.   John  WlleyA  Sons. 
WheaUey,  H.  B.  The  Diary  of  Samuel  Pepys.   VoLVIL 

London:  BeU:  New  Tork:  Macmillan.   91.60. 
WUloufUbyt  w.  W.    An  Examination  of  the  Natnre  of 

the  State   Mitcmlllan.   98. 
Wordsworth,  Dore  Journal  of  a  Few  Months'  Rest- 

deaoe  In  Postugal  and  Glimpses  of  the  South  oC  taelB, 

Newed.  Tiwiginans.  Green  A  Oc  99. 


The    Nation. 


NEW  TORE,   THUnSDAT.   APRIL  2,   1896. 


The  Week. 

Ths  New  York  Republican  State  con?en- 
tion  last  week  put  the  word  gold  in  ita 
platform,  and  thoa  declared,  without 
qualification  or  subterfuge,  what  it  meant 
hj  the  phrase  sound  money.  A  declara- 
tion so  far  in  advance  of  the  usual  plati- 
tudes of  party  conventions  deserves  to  be 
quoted  in  full : 

"  The  Affitatioo  for  the  free  cointge  of  silver 
at  the  rsoo  of  16  to  1  serioualv  disturbt  all  in- 
dustrial interettflj  and  calls  for  a  clear  state- 
ment of  the  Bepablican  party's  attitude  upon 
this  Question,  to  the  end  that  the  trade  of  this 
coontry,  at  home  and  abroad,  may  again  be 
|j|aced  upon  a  sonnd  and  stable  foondation. 
We  recognise  in  the  movement  for  the  free 
coinage  of  silver  an  attempt  to  degrade  the 
long-established  standard  of  our  mooetaiy 
system,  and  hence  a  blow  to  pablio  and  pri- 
vate  credit,  at  once  costly  to  the  national 
Qovemment  and  harmful  to  our  domestic  and 
foreign  commerce.  Until  there  is  a  prospect 
of  intematioDal  agreement  as  to  silver  coin- 

Se.  and  while  gold  remains  the  standard  of 
e  United  SUtes  and  of  the  civilized  world, 
the  Republican  party  of  New  York  declares  it- 
self in  favor  of  the  firm  and  honorable  main- 
tenance  of  that  standard.** 

A  more  decided  expression  of  sound  and 
wholesome  doctrine  on  the  money  ques- 
tion it  would  he  hard  to  frame.  It  is  to 
be  welcomed  all  the  more  since  it  stands 
in  such  notable  contrast  to  the  McKinley 
deliverance,  adopted  by  the  Ohio  conven- 
tion two  weeks  ago,  in  favor  of  "gold,  sil- 
ver, and  paper  with  which  to  measure 
our  exchange,"  and  demanding  the  uae  of 
both  gold  and  silver  as  standard  money 
either  by  international  agreement  or  **  un- 
der such  restrictions  and  such  provisions, 
to  be  determined  by  legislation^  as  will 
secure  the  maintenance  of  the  parities  of 
values  of  the  two  metals,  so  that  the  pur- 
chasing and  debt-paying  power  of  the 
dollar,  whether  of  silver,  gold,  or  paper, 
ahall  be  at  all  times  equal."  Mr.  Morton 
could  hardly  have  gone  into  the  conven- 
tion as  a  candidate  on  any  other  platform, 
nor  could  his  party  have  expected  to  car- 
ry this  State  on  any  other.  No  matter 
who  is  nominated  at  St.  Louis,  the  busi- 
ness men  of  New  York  are  a  unit  in  de- 
manding that  sound  money  be  defined  and 
described  so  that  no  room  shall  be  left  for 
two  interpretations  of  it. 


The  financial  plank  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Republican  platfbrm  follows  closely 
upon  the  lines  of  that  of  the  New  York 
Republicans,  and  is  sound  and  strong.  It 
is  not  afraid  to  say  gold  when  gold  is 
meant,  and,  in  addition  to  declaring  en- 
tire opposition  to  the  *'  free  and  unlimited 
coinage  of  silver,"  opposes  "  any  change 
in  the  existing  gold  standard  except  by 
international  agreement,"  and  demandis 
that  "  every  promise  must  be  rigidly  kept, 
and  every  obligation  redeemable  in  coin 
must  be  paid  in  gold."    This  declaration 


puts  the  Republicans  of  Massachusetts 
squarely  upon  the  ground  which  Congress 
has  refused  repeatedly  to  take,  for  it  says 
that  by  '*coin"  we  mean  "gold."  If 
Congress  had  made  this  declaration  before 
our  issues  of  bonds,  the  country  would 
have  been  several  million  dollars  better  off, 
so  far  as  interest  on  the  bonds  is  concern- 
ed, and  many  hundred  millions  better  off 
in  the  way  of  improved  business  and  in- 
dustry. If  the  Republican  conventions  in 
other  Eastern  and  Middle  States  will  fol- 
low the  lead  of  New  York  and  Massachu- 
setts on  this  question,  their  party  will  be 
placed  in  a  better  position  before  the 
country  at  the  opening  of  the  Presidential 
campaign  than  it  has  occupied  for  years. 
It  may  be  that  even  Speaker  Reed  will  be 
encouraged  to  say  something  more  definite 
on  the  subject  than  that  the  *'  day  cometh 
with  the  Republican  morning  soon  to 
dawn."  As  matters  stand  now,  the^  is  a 
ludicrous  discrepancy  between  the  frank 
and  manly  financial  declaration  of  the 
Massachusetts  platform  and  his  comic- 
opera  treatment  of  the  same  subject. 


Sound  as  the  platform  is  on  the  currency 
question,  allowing  Senator  Lodge  to  draw 
it  up  and  sit  on  it  gives  it  a  touch  of  drol- 
lery. There  has  been  no  more  insidious 
friend  of  the  silver  movement  than  Lodge 
himself.  He  has  not  missed  a  single  op- 
portunity in  the  Senate  to  show  his  sym- 
pathy with  it.  Two  years  ago  he  introduced 
in  the  Senate  a  resolution  to  put  discri- 
minating duties  on  English  goods,  to  pun- 
ish England  for  not  abandoning  her  gold 
standard,  which  the  sorry  wag  now  exalts 
in  Massachuaetts.  Still  later  he  wrote  to 
Moreton  Frewen  that  the  cause  of  the 
American  hatred  of  England,  as  revealed 
in  his  Jingo  enterprise,  was  her  treatment 
of  silver— that  is,  her  refusal  to  aid  us  in 
giving  up  the  gold  standard.  There  is  no 
more  melancholy  sign  in  politics  to-day 
than  that  such  a  man  can  make  this  open 
parade  of  his  hypocrisy,  and  yet  retain  his 
infiuence  undiminished  in  a  party  like  the 
Republican  party  in  a  State  like  Massa- 
chuaetts. He  "  steered  "  the  late  conven- 
tion in  everything. 


The  Mantrfacturerot  Philadelphia  fur- 
nishes an  explanation  of  the  recent  meet- 
ing at  Wasliington  between  certain  Re- 
publican Senators  from  the  silver-mining 
States  and  certain  Pennsylvania  manu- 
facturers. It  denies,  in  the  first  place, 
that  the  initial  steps  for  the  meeting  were 
taken  in  Philadelphia.  The  movement 
began  in  some  other  place  (Pottsville,  per- 
haps). The  Philadelphia  men  were  in- 
vited by  the  Senators  to  come  to  Waah- 
ington  for  conaultation  and  an  exchange 
of  views.  When  they  came  together  the 
Senators  informed  them  that  the  Dingley 
bill  could  not  pass,  nor  could  any  other 


tariff  bill  pass  now  or  in  the  next  Con- 
gress, unless  something  were  done  at  the 
same  time  for  silver.  "  This  statement," 
it  says,  "  was  challenged,  and  a  demand 
was  made  for  proof  that  the  silver-men 
will  have  power  to  defeat  tariff  legisla- 
tion." The  Senators  said  that  "  however 
much  they  might  desire  to  sustain  a  tariff 
bill,  the  sentiment  of  their  constituents 
was  too  violently  opposed  to  such  a  course, 
unless  silver  remonetization  should  be  at 
the  same  time  supported,  to  permit  them 
to  advocate  protection  alone."  The  manu- 
facturers expressed  regret,  "  and  in  some 
instances  indignation,"  that  silver  and  the 
tariff  had  been  so  coupled  together,  and 
they  separated  not  at  all  convinced  that 
they  would  not  be  able  to  carry  their  mea- 
sures without  silver  legislation,  "but 
probably  with  some  anxiety  to  learn  posi- 
tively if  such  is  the  case." 


That  the  Manufacturers'  Club  of  Phila- 
delphia is  not  in  favor  of  the  silver  stan- 
dard, or  of  bimetallism  in  any  form,  was 
made  plain  at  its  meeting  on  Monday. 
The  official  organ  of  the  club,  for  two  or 
tliree  years  past,  has  been  advocating 
legialation  in  favor  of  silver  in  one  way  or 
another,  and  its  editor  has  been  delivering 
lectures  in  various  parts  of  the  country 
in  favor  of  bimetallism  of  one  sort  or 
another.  In  short,  the  infiuence  of  the 
club  has  run  in  the  same  direction  as  the 
speeches  of  Stewart,  Teller,  Bland,  and 
Bryan,  and  has  probably  done  more  mis- 
chief than  those  becauae  it  has  been  ad- 
dressed to  a  Republican  audience  in  the 
Eastern  States.  A  full  meeting  of  the 
club  was  held  on  Monday,  at  which  the 
subject  was  well  thraahed  out,  and  resolu- 
tions were  adopted  declaring  "  that  the 
question  of  bimetallism  can  be  permanent- 
ly settled  only  through  an  international 
agreement,  and  tliat  the  Manufacturers' 
Club  declares  its  unalterable  oppoaitionto 
the  free  coinage  of  silver  by  the  United 
States  alone,  firmly  believing  that  auch  a 
policy  will  result  in  disaster  at  home  and 
dishonor  abroad,  and  would  only  operate 
to  place  this  country  upon  the  basis  of 
silver  monometallism."  Various  attempts 
made  by  a  small  band  of  silver-men  to 
modifjr  the  resolutions  were  voted  down. 
Even  a  recommendation  that  Congress 
take  steps  for  another  international  con- 
ference was  rejected. 


The  McKinley  boom  is  in  great  force  in 
the  newspapera,  and  the  editor  who  has 
not  some  figures  of  his  own  upon  it  is  de- 
cidedly unenterprising.  Less  than  one- 
half  the  convention  has  been  chosen,  the 
total  of  delegates  elected  up  to  Saturday 
evening  being  388,  while  the  full  oonven* 
tion  will  contain  900.  The  Tribune,  which 
does  its  claiming  on  Sundays  for  some  in- 
scrutable reason,   gives   McKinley   SM. 


364= 


Tlie    [N^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1605 


Qen.  Ghroevenor,  the  Washington  manager 
of  the  McKinley  boom,  says  this  is  too 
small  a  number,  and  publishes  a  table  by 
States  giving  the  Major  255  delegates.  In 
order  to  do  this,  G^en.  Grosvenor  includes 
thirty- four  delegates  not  yet  chosen,  but 
he  says  that  these  '*  are  pretty  sure  to  be 
for  McKinley,  and  might  as  well  be  count- 
ed now."  Why  not?.  If  you  are  going 
into  the  ** claiming"  business,  why  not 
throw  your  whole  soul  into  it?  The 
Herald  makes  the  Tribune  "  look  sick  " 
by  publishing  telegraphic  estimates  from 
various  parts  of  the  country  which  show 
that  McKinley  will  have  383  votes  on  the 
first  ballot,  or  only  sixty-two  short  of 
enough  to  nominate.  This  is  good  claim- 
ing, but  the  World  beat  it  two  weeks  ago 
by  a  similar  convincing  calculation  which 
gave  him  564  votes  on  the  first  ballot, 
nominating  him  with  nine  votes  to  spare. 
The  Philadelphia  Preea^  which  is  not  a 
McKinley  paper,  gives  him  only  201  of  the 
delegates  thus  far  elected.  Per  contra, 
the  Tribune  has  held  an  election  in  New 
Jersey,  and  has  discovered  such  a  sponta- 
neous boom  for  McEIinley  there  that  it 
seems  safe  to  give  him  that  State's  electo- 
ral vote  now,  for,  whether  he  be  nominated 
or  not,  New  Jersey  is  bound  to  vote  for 
him. 


Joe  Manley  continues  to  put  forth  fig- 
ures on  this  subject,  and,  in  his  latest 
calculation,  makes  a  striking  comparison 
between  McKinley  to-day  and  Blaine  in 
1876: 

"  The  Bitoatioo  it  predseiy  as  it  was  twenty 
years  ago.  Tou  will  remember  that  three 
months  before  the  convention  met  at  Cincin- 
nati, we  were  confident  of  Mr.  Blaine's  nomi- 
nation. He  stood  then  as  the  apostle  of  pro- 
tection, bat  he  had  opposed  to  his  nomination 
Senator  Conkling  of  New  York,  Senator  Mor. 
ton  of  Indiana,  Secretary  Bristow  of  Kentucky. 
Gov.  Hayes  of  Ohio,  and  Oov.  Hartranft  of 
Pennsylvania.  We  felt  so  sure  of  Mr.  Blaine's 
nomination  that  we  regarded  it  as  settled,  and 
yet  he  was  defeated  in  the  convention,  and  the 
Maine  man  went  down  before  the  Ohio  Gov- 
ernor.** 

Another  feature  of  the  deadly  parallel 
which  Mr.  Manley  does  not  mention  is 
the  uproarious  support  of  the  Tribune, 
Mr.  Blaine  had  that  in  1876,  as  McKinley 
has  it  now,  and  it  was  given  in  the  same 
way  then  as  now,  with  calculations,  and 
tables  of  delegates,  and  whoops  and 
claims;  but  it  was  of  no  avail  when  the 
balloting  beg^n,  mainly  because  it  was 
begun  too  early  and  maintained  with  too 
much  zeal.  Of  course  Mr.  Blaine's  repu- 
tation had  something  to  do  with  hie  fail- 
ure, but  the  chilling  infiuence  of  that 
could  scarcely  have  been  more  disastrous 
than  McKinley*s  unfortunate  career  as  a 
business  man  will  be  now.  For  the  first 
time  in  the  history  of  the  country  a  man 
who  has  failed  in  business  and  has  had 
his  debts  paid  for  him,  is  proposed  as  a 
Presidential  nominee  by  the  very  men  who 
have  paid  his  debts,  and  who  would  be  the 
direct  beneficiaries  of  the  economic  policy 
which  would  be  put  into  operation  were 
he  to  be  elected.  There  are  the  elements 
ot  88  great  a  political  scandal  in  this  situ- 


ation as  there  was  in  Blaine's  public  re- 
cord. 


The  Davis  resolutions  are  now  surely 
dead,  because  Davis  himself  is  dead.  He 
lost  his  own  State  on  Tuesday  week,  and 
telegraphed  that  he  would  *'  loyally  respect 
the  wishes  "  of  the  people  of  Minnesota 
and  quit  trying  for  the  Presidency.  Thus 
vanishes  the  original  occasion  and  con- 
tinuing cause  of  the  Davis  resolutions, 
and  we  shall  hear  of  them  no  more.  For 
having  accomplished  this,  as  also  for  com- 
ing out  squarely  against  free  coinage,  the 
Minnesota  convention  deserves  all  thanks. 
On  the  question  of  peace  and  war  and  a 
fighting  navy,  its  utterances  were  of  the 
usual  incoherent  order.  It  **  believes 
thoroughly"  in  arbitration,  but  at  the 
same  time  wants  to  see  preparations  made 
for  this  country  to  become  *'  invincible  in 
war."  But  it  doesn't  want  ships  and  in- 
vincibility in  order  to  fight  with ;  oh  no, 
only  to  "  secure  peace  "  without  a  strug- 
gle, by  simply  displaying  them.  But 
havep't  we  "  secured  peace  "  absolutely 
for  eighty  years  with  the  great  naval 
powers,  without  any  navy  ourselves?  Has 
any  country  respected  us  the  less,  or  at- 
tempted to  ride  over  us  or  wrong  us? 
Have  not,  in  fact,  the  talk  and  threat  and 
actual  imminence  of  war  increased  pari 
passu  with  the  increase  of  our  navy  ? 
Everybody  except  the  Jingoes  and  the 
platform-makers  knows  that  this  is  so. 


We  must  all  be  grateful  to  Mr.  Phelps 
for  the  address  on  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
which  he  has  just  delivered  in  Brooklyn. 
It  is  a  remarkable  outburst  of  common 
sense  on  a  topic  which  has  apparently  a 
remarkable  affinity  for  folly  and  ignorance. 
We  are  the  more  grateful  for  it  because 
one  of  the  worst  phenomena  of  our  time 
(if  this  be  not  a  bull)  is  the  silence  of  our 
leading  men,  of  the  men  who  know,  and 
can  speak  with  authority,  in  times  of 
popular  excitement,  about  matters  of  na- 
tional importance.  Every  **  craze  "  and 
every  folly  which  comes  up  and  takes  hold 
of  the  popular  mind  through  the  newspa- 
pers, has  generally  a  good  run  of  a  month 
or  two  before  any  rational  person  of  weight 
or  distinction  takes  hold  of  it,  and  **  calls 
a  halt."  Lodge,  Morgan,  Chandler,  Liv- 
ingston, and  the  Old  Pensioner,  and  a  score 
of  others,  one-third  ignoramus,  one-third 
fool,  and  one-third  knave,  were  blathering 
away  about  the  Monroe  Doctrine  for 
months  before  a  policeman  could  be  found 
to  interfere  with  them.  No  nation  can  go 
on  in  this  way.  If  its  men  of  light  and 
leading  will  not  talk,  it  cannot  last  as  a 
civilized  and  free  state.  It  is  mind,  after 
all,  that  moves  the  mass.  Mass  without 
mind  means  brute  force,  and  the  moral 
decline  to  which  brute  force  always  tends. 
Speaking  out  entails  no  penalty  of  which 
the  '*  vir  Justus  et  tenax  propositi "  has 
any  reason  to  be  afraid.  A  little  newspa- 
per vituperation  is  all  he  has  to  fear,  and 
this  to  a  good  citizen  ought  to  be  as 
water  is  to  a  duck's  back. 


Mr.  Ritchie,  President  of  the  British 
Board  of  Trade,  and  a  member  of  the  cabi- 
net, said  last  week  that  overtures  looking 
to  the  establishment  of  a  permanent  court 
of  arbitration  between  this  country  and 
Qreat  Britain  had  been  laid  before  the 
United  States  Government  by  Lord  Salis- 
bury. This  news  will  be  received  with 
the  utmost  satisfaction  by  the  promoters 
of  the  conference  which  is  to  meet  in 
Washington  on  the  22d  and  23d  of  April. 
The  conversion  of  Lord  Salisbury  to  the 
doctrine  has  been  looked  upon  as  the  diffi- 
cult task  in  the  whole  proceeding.  Now 
that  it  has  been  accomplished,  there  ought 
to  be  no  difficulty  in  bringing  about  the 
desired  result,  except  such  as  is  inherent 
in  the  nature  of  the  undertaking.  The 
mode  of  constituting  the  court  and  of  de- 
fining its  procedure  will  be  the  subject  of 
discussion  after  the  principle  has  been 
agreed  to.  As  our  Government  was  00m- 
pitted  to  the  principle  by  the  unanimous 
vote  of  both  houses  of  Congress  in  1890, 
there  ought  to  be  no  remaining  obstacle 
on  this  side  of  the  water. 


The  prolonged  marching  up  hill  and 
down  on  the  Cuban  resolutions  has  at 
least  had  one  good  effect.  It  has  plainly 
notified  the  country  that  Congress  has 
not  one  spark  of  honest  conviction,  and 
only  the  dullest  gleams  of  intelligence, 
in*  the  whole  affair.  The  agreement  of 
the  conference  committee,  now  on  the 
House  resolutions,  then  on  the  Senate, 
does  not  mean  that  a  particle  of  rational 
discussion  has  been  given  to  either  set, 
but  only  that  a  desperate  and  shame- 
faced determination  to  have  resolutions 
of  some  kind  has  controlled  the  con- 
ferees. To  be  dignified,  to  act  on  full 
information,  to  weigh  the  consequences 
of  action,  to  inquire  what  our  duty  is 
under  law  and  treaty  —  none  of  these 
things  is  dreamed  of  in  congressional 
philosophy.  The  pretence  that  it  is,  has 
now  been  fortunately  dispelled  by  the 
public  display  of  insincerity  and  shuf- 
fiing  kept  up  for  a  month,  and  the  Presi- 
dent would  be  perfectly  justified  in  pay- 
ing no  more  attention  to  the  resolutions 
than  he  would  to  the  voting  of  a  mock 
Congress  in  a  grammar-school. 


The  London  Spectator  remarks  upon 
the  recent  blather  in  our  Senate  on  Cu- 
ban affairs,  that  the  Americans  imagine 
they  are  dealing  only  with  Spaiir,  but  in 
reality  they  are  risking  an  alteration  in 
the  relations  of  all  Europe.  It  says  that 
Spain  has  already  applied  to  France  for 
diplomatic  assistance  in  the  event  of  a 
war  with  the  United  States,  and  that  she 
is  able  to  offer  terms  which  will  make  it 
worth  while  for  France  to  assist  her.  One 
method  by  which  assistance  could  be  ren- 
dered' to  her  without  any  breach  of  rela- 
tions with  us  would  be  by  making  it  easy 
for  Spain  to  borrow  money  in  Paris. 
Whatever  aid  France  might  supply  would 
tend  to  detach  Spain  from  the  Tri{ile  Al* 


April  2,  1896] 


Th.e    l^ation. 


265 


liaooe,  where  her  gympathies  now  lie,  and 
place  her  on  the  side  of  France  in  the  next 
European  conflict.  In  short,  the  United 
States  cannot  attack  the  interests  of  Spain 
without  producing  grave  consequences  in 
Europe  and  causing  a  storm  which  they 
hare  no  intention  of  producing.  The 
Spectator  writes  without  the  intention 
of  influencing  opinion  here,  but  merely  to 
show  that  the  American  policy  of  non-in- 
terrention  in  the  affairs  of  Europe  cannot 
be  maintained  if  an  sgfnressiTe  policy  is 
pursued  toward  European  governments. 
Thia  is  true,  even  though  our  Senators 
have  no  intention  other  than  that  of  "hol- 
lering" fnd  proclaiming  their  readiness, 
like  Senator  Thurston,  to  spill  the  blood 
of  their  nearest  relati^ves  to  vindicate  the 
nation's  honor.  An  American  Congress- 
man does  not  concern  himself  so  much 
with  the  shifting  of  the  balance  of  power 
in  Europe  as  he  does  with  the  shifting  of 
the  balanc^  of  the  delegates  in  the  **dees- 
trick.*'  You  may  talk  tUl  all  is  blue  about 
France  and  Spain  and  the  rest  of  the 
world:  you  will  never  get  his  attention 
very  far  from  the  caucus  that  deals  with 
his  renomination. 


Secretary  Lament's  answer  to  the  in* 
quiries  of  the  Senate  committee  on  mili- 
tary affairs  for  information  as  to  the 
reason  why  the  War  Department  is  op- 
posed to  the  bestowal  of  a  lieutenant- 
generalship  on  G^n.  Miles,  seems  so  com- 
plete that  one  cannot  help  regretting 
that  it  was  not  called  for  before  the 
movement  for  Gkn.  Miles's  promotion 
was  set  on  foot.  It  is  unpleasant  to  have 
such  a  movement,  when  once  begun,  fail 
for  any  reason  whatever.  Its  failure  seems 
to  ralae  a  question  about  the  Generars 
own  merit,  when  there  is  and  can  be  no 
auch  question.  Mr.  Lamont  simply  says 
that  only  six  officers  have  held  the  grade 
of  Lieutenant-General  sioce  the  founda- 
tion of  the  (Government;  that  in  no  case 
haa  it  been  bestowed  on  any  officer  who  has 
not  commanded  an  independent  force  in 
active  service;  that  it  was  not  bestowed, 
prior  to  1870,  on  several  officers,  such  as 
Halleck,  Meade,  and  Hancock,  who  had 
fulfllled  thia  condition ;  and  that  it  was 
provided  by  positive  enactment  in  1870 
that  the  offices  then  held  by  Sherman  and 
Sheridan  should  not  be  filled  after  their 
death.  In  other  words,  the  rank  seems  to 
bereaerved,  by  a  piece  of  commendable  na- 
tional policy,  for  officers  who  command  the 
whole  army,  or  an  independent  part  of  it, 
aa  a  reward  for  successful  active  ser- 
vice. We  ought  in  many  ways  to  display 
a  good  deal  more  of  thia  reserve  than  we 
do.  It  ia  extremely  difficult  to  maintain 
any  degreea  in  our  rewards  or  eulogies,  so 
prone  are  our  Congressmen  to  get  every- 
thing there  ia  in  the  way  of  honor  or  prise 
for  anybody  whom  they  like.  It  ia  no  fault 
of  Gen.  Miles  that  he  has  not  fulfilled 
the  eonditiona  annexed  by  precedent  or 
law  to  the  bestowal  of  thia  rank.  That 
lie  would  fulfil  them  if  the  occasion  of- 


fered, no  one  who  knows  him  doubta,  but 
it  is  not  kind  of  his  friends  in  Congress 
to  compel  controversy  in  the  matter. 
Glory  is  a  thing  which  should  never  be 
haggled  over. 


The  manner  in  which  the  Greater  New 
York  bill  passed  the  Assembly  on  Thurs- 
day left  no  room  for  doubt  as  to  the  politi- 
cal influences  which  are  behind  it.  The 
Piatt  and  Tammany  forces  voted  solidly  for 
it,  under  the  leadership  of  Hamilton  Fish, 
who,  only  a  few  years  ago,  won  the  testi- 
monial of  a  set  of  diamond  shirt-studs 
from  Tammany  as  a  reward  for  his  use- 
fulness in  leading  a  similar  **  combine  " 
through  a  session  of  the  Assembly  which 
had  a  Democratic  majority.  Without 
Tammany  aupport  the  bill  would  have 
failed.  The  strongest  speeches  against  it 
were  made  by  Republicans,  although  it  is 
a  Republican  machine  measure,  and  no 
leas  than  thirty-eight  Republicans  voted 
with  the  opposition.  Nearly  all  the  Tam- 
many contingent,  twenty-two  of  them, 
voted  with  the  Piatt  men,  and  without 
thia  support  the  bill  would  have  fallen 
seven  votes  abort  of  enough  to  pass  it.  Of 
the  103  Republican  members,  only  63 
could  be  induced  to  aupport  the  bill, 
although  the  power  of  the  Piatt  machine 
was  exerted  to  whip  them  into  line.  The 
bill  is  now  under  consideration  by  the 
Mayors  of  the  three  citiea  affected.  New 
York,  Brooklyn,  and  Long  Island  City, 
and  ita  merita  will  be  discussed  at  public 
hearings.  It  is  assumed  that  the  Mayor 
of  Brooklyn  will  refuse  to  approve  it,  and 
it  is  generally  believed  that  Mayor  Strong 
will  do  the  same.  Public  sentiment  in 
Brooklyn  is  strongly  aroused  against  it, 
and  the  result  of  the  hearings  there  is 
well  known  in  advance.  The  people  of 
this  city  have  been  strangely  lethargic 
about  the  question,  but  we  believe  that 
they  are  beginning  to  awake  to  the  grave 
considerations  involved  in  it,  and  that  be- 
fore the  hearings  upon  it  are  ended  they 
will  leave  no  doubt  as  to  their  position 
toward  it. 


It  is  ao  long  since  the  Congregational- 
lata  have  had  the  pleaaant  excitement  of 
a  trial  for  heresy  that  the  recent  case  at 
Madison,  Connecticut,  waa  naturally  re- 
garded aa  an  entertaining  novelty.  The 
findinga  of  the  council,  moreover,  acquit- 
ting the  accused  clergyman,  have  a  hu- 
moroua  relish  about  them.  At  least  they 
appear  humoroua  to  inexpert  outsiders, 
though  how  they  struck  the  staid 
old  church-members  who  brought  the 
charges  we  cannot  say.  The  council 
gently  remlnda  them  of  **the  differences 
in  the  training  and  environment  of  the 
paator  and  the  complaining  members.*' 
The  paator,  that  ia,  had  been  studying 
and  assimilating  the  resulta  of  modem 
scholarahip,  while  the  sleepy  people  in 
Madiaon  had  been  fooliahly  trusting  to 
the  stabiUty  of  the  faith  once  deUvered  to 


the  sainta,  and  had  not  awakened  to  the 
necessity  of  a  new  creed  every  twenty-five 
years.  It  evidently  seemed  laughable  to 
the  learned  members  of  the  council  that 
any  one  should  be  so  old-fashioned,  at 
thia  time  of  day,  as  to  insist  upon  a  literal 
interpretation  of  the  Incarnation,  the 
Atonement,  and  Inspiration.  With  the 
honest  seal  of  politicians,  they  adviaed 
pastor  and  people  to  "  get  together,"  and 
it  is  gratifying  to  learn  that  **  a  general 
love  feast "  followed,  as  a  result  of  which 
it  ia  confidently  hoped  that  all  differences 
of  training  and  environment  will  be  here- 
after amicably  surmounted. 


The  declarations  made  in  the  Italian 
Parliament  on  March  25,  to  the  effect 
that  an  alliance  had  been  made  between 
Italy  and  Great  Britain,  not  in  a  formal 
way,  but  based  upon  common  interesta, 
are  very  important,  but  probably  are  not 
a  surprise  to  the  statesmen  of  Europe. 
The  maritime  power  of  the  Mediterrane- 
an, said  Baron  Blanc,  the  ex-Miniater  of 
Foreign  Affairs,  waa  the  effective  bond 
between  Great  Britain  and  the  Dreibund. 
The  Mediterranean  being  the  highway  to 
India  aa  well  as  to  Egypt,  England  ia 
bound  to  make  the  control  of  it  her  first 
consideration,  and  here  she  can  look  only 
to  Italy  as  an  ally.  The  Italian  navy*  is 
next  to  that  of  France,  and,  when  com- 
bined with  that  of  Great  Britain,  so  far 
outweighs  everything  else  in  those  waters 
that  little  account  need  be  taken  of  the 
remainder. 


The  protest  of  France  and  Rusala  against 
the  use  of  the  Egyptian  Reserve  Fund  for 
the  expedition  against  the  Derviahes  has 
but  little  consequence  except  as  an  ex- 
pression of  dislike  of  the  Engliah  occupa- 
tion of  Egypt  and  of  the  virtual  addition 
of  England  to  the  Triple  Alliance.  It 
could  have  importance  only  if  it  were 
likely  to  be  followed  up  by  war,  and  of 
this  there  is  no  prospect  whatever.  In 
fact,  France  may  for  the  present  be  count- 
ed out  of  the  military  game  in  Europe.  In 
case  of  a  reverse,  the  Government  would 
be  overturned,  and  we  should  have  a  repe- 
tition of  the  Commune.  In  case  of  tri' 
umph,  the  victorioua  general  would  aure- 
ly  be  carried  idlo  a  dictatorahip.  Both 
the  parties  in  France  are  fully  aware  of 
these  contingencies,  and  shrink  from  fac- 
ing them,  ao  that  the  British  will  proba- 
bly have  nothing  more  serious  to  fear  than 
energetic  diacontent  The  Porte  will  do 
nothing  more  than  make  inquiries,  and 
Italy  with  England  behind  her  will  proba- 
bly be  able  to  patch  up  a  peace  with 
Menelek  that  will  at  least  teem  honorable. 
One  of  the  most  curious  results  of  the 
Italian  disasters  is  a  great  revival  of  the 
hopes  of  the  Blacks  in  Italy  about  the 
temporal  power:  Menelek,  acting  under 
divine  guidance,  has  shaken  the  Italian 
throne,  and  prepared  the  way  for  the  res* 
toration  of  Rome  to  ita  lawful  owner, 


366 


The   JN^ation. 


[Vol.  62,- No.  1605 


FATAL  MAJORITIES, 
Amid  all  the  ups  and  dowDs  of  parties  in 
State  and  nation  for  the  past  ten  years, 
one  fact  stands  out  conspicuously — the  in- 
creasingly fatal  effect  of  a  majority.  To 
get  a  majority  is  the  great  end  of  party 
striving.  Sea  and  land  are  compassed  to 
secure  it.  When  obtained  it  is  welcomed 
with  immense  huzzaing,  and  loud-sound- 
ing talk  is  heard  of  an  *'  assured  lease  of 
power  for  twenty-five  years,"  and  so  on ; 
whereas  the  usual,  the  now  almost  invari- 
able, result,  is,  that  a  party  in  a  great 
majority  at  one  election  is  in  a  humiliat- 
ingly  small  minority  at  the  next.  And  the 
small  minority  appears  to  be  the  direct 
consequence  of  the  big  majority.  It  is  as 
if  all  the  strainiog  and  desperate  labor  to 
get  a  party  majority  were  but 'so  many 
elaborate  preparations  to  commit  party 
suicide. 

Politicians  themselves  are  dimly  aware 
of  this  law  of  political  self-destruction. 
It  is  generally  considered,  for  example,  a 
disadvantage  to  have  control  of  the  Con- 
gress just  preceding  a  Presidential  elec- 
tion. On  the  stump  the  wicked  incapa- 
city of  the  other  fellows  is  a  much  more 
inviting  theme  than  the  wisdom  and  pa- 
triotism which  you  yourself  have  dis- 
played, in  ways  too  often  past  finding  out. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  greatest  menace 
to  Republican  success  next  fall  is  the  pre- 
sent Republican  Congress.  We  know,  in 
fact,  that  Republican  leaders,  in  Congress 
and  throughout  the  country,  are  in  dis- 
tress and  dismay  over  the  performances 
at  Washington.  Some  of  the  very  Sena- 
tors and  Representatives  who  in  public 
take  on  the  loftiest  tone,  in  private  wring 
their  hands  and  almost  shed  tears  as  they 
speak  of  the  mad  passion,  the  mulishnees, 
the  greed,  the  sheer  stupidity  put  so  dis- 
astrously on  exhibition  by  the  party  in 
control  of  Congress.  To  be  sure,  they  do 
nothing  effective  to  check  the  madness. 
They  appear  to  be  themselves  as  mad  as 
the  rest  Though  they  groan  and  grieve 
over  the  reckless  imbecility  of  their  party 
following,  they  imitate  the  example  of  the 
French  leader  of  a  **  section  "  who,  stand- 
ing in  a  doorway  as  his  people  rushed  off 
to  tear  up  the  paving  and  make  a  barri- 
cade, was  heard  to  mutter  despairingly: 
"  I  must  go  along  with  them,  for  I  am 
their  chief "  (**  II  faut  que  je  les  suive, 
car  je  suis  leur  chef  '*). 

Why  is  it  that  the  triumph  of  parties  so 
swiftly  becomes  their  destruction  ?  Why 
do  Piatt  and  Croker,  Crisp  and  Reed,  so 
surely  turn  a  majority  into  a  rope  to  hang 
the  party  with  ?  What  is  the  reason  that 
a  majority  can  no  longer  be  used  for  the 
t>enefit  of  both  country  and  party,  and  so 
retained  or  made  larger  ?  One  answer  is, 
the  decline  of  political  leadership.  We 
have  more  shrewd  and  masterful  captains 
of  fifties  and  captains  of  hundreds  than 
ever  before,  but  political  commanders  of 
the  higher  ranks  are  growing  fewer.  The 
men  who  get  supreme  control  cannot  see 
beyond  their  noses.  They  have  never  been 
to  school  in  higher  politics.    They  have 


never  learned  the  first  lesson  of  govern- 
mejjt  by  majority — moderation.  We  say 
a  majority  can  do  what  it  pleases,  but  it 
cannot.  That  prime  minister  or  that  boss 
is  near  his  fall  who  says:  "  This  measure 
is  pretty  bad;  we  must  apply  our  majority 
to  it."  Moderation  is  the  last  thing  our 
party  chiefs  and  bosses  think  of.  What 
is  a  majority  for  if  not  to  be  used  for  all 
it  is  worth  ?  Hence,  one  after  the  other, 
in  dreary  succession,  they  run  the  same  old 
round.  Swept  into  power  by  the  popular 
disgust  with  the  party  last  in  the  majority, 
they  straightway  proceed  to  execute  the 
villany  the  other  side  has  taught  them, 
usually  bettering  the  instruction,  display 
wilder  partisan  fury,  excite  deeper  disgust, 
and  go  down  in  completer  wreck.  Then 
they  crawl  out  from  under  the  ruins,  and 
complain  of  the  fickleness  of  the  popular 
judgment. 

Another  deadly  element  in  a  party  ma- 
jority is  the  character  of  too  many  of  the 
men  who  compose  it.  In  every  great  po- 
litical reaction  strange  bits  of  driftwood 
are  borne  to  the  surface.  Adventurers 
who  know  that  they  are  but  the  accidents 
of  an  hour,  wretched  political  ephemeri- 
d8B  that  buzz  their  little  day  and  then  fall 
into  putrefaction,  they  make  up  a  difficult 
audience  to  which  to  preach  moderation. 
Are  they  to  miss  the  only  chance  of  a  life- 
time? Will  the  leaders  who  implore  them 
to  be  considerate  and  far-sighted  gua- 
rantee them  a  return  to  the  next  Congress 
or  Legislature  if  they  refrain  from  selling 
themselves  to  the  devil  in  this?  It  is  all 
very  well  to  remind  them  of  the  interest 
of  the  party,  but  how  about  the  interest  of 
the  party  of  the  first  part?  That  is  what 
they  have  both  eyes  on,  and  that  is  what 
they  pursue  day  and  night,  turning 
neither  to  the  right  hand  nor  to  the  left, 
and  by  log-rolling,  by  voting  as  they  are 
paid,  by  **  strikes,"  and  speculations,  and 
legislative  **  good  things,"  they  rush  mad- 
ly ahead  to  enrich  themselves  and  ruin 
their  party. 

There  is,  moreover,  something  in  the 
very  methods  and  machinery  by  which  a 
party  majority  is  won  that  carries  in  it 
the  seeds  of  death.  The  bosses  are  partly 
the  cause,  partly  the  creature,  of  the 
forces  with  which  they  work.  They  get 
a  majority  only  by  lavish  promises  right 
and  left  of  patronage  and  largess,  and 
then  they  have  to  go  to  work  to  invent 
the  patronage  and  to  swell  the  corruption 
fund.  The  pack  of  snarling,  snapping 
curs  that  is  at  the  heels  of  every  boss, 
threatening  to  bite  unless  a  bone  is 
thrown  them,  is  enough  to  embitter  the 
sweetest  temper.  No  wonder  that  so 
many  of  our  naturally  amiable  bosses 
grow  melancholy  and  irritable.  Doubt- 
less many  of  their  schemes  of  plunder  are 
resorted  to,  not  out  of  native  wickedness, 
but  only  to  still  the  clamor  of  the  greedy 
underlings  whose  support  has  been  won 
by  promises  and  can  be  kept  only  by 
spoils.  There  is  thus  an  accelerated  mo- 
tion in  a  party  majority,  as  nowadays  se- 
cured, which  hurries  it  on  ever  faster  and 


more  furiously  along  the  path  of  corruption 
until  it  crashes  into  ruin.  Imagine  Phae- 
ton McKinley  successful  in  getting  a  ma- 
jority by  the  methods  his  boodling  mana- 
gers adopt;  one  can  easily  picture  the 
terrific  party  smash  that  would  be'  certain 
to  follow  from  his  reckless  driving,  and 
the  thunderbolt  of  popular  rage  that 
would  lay  him  low. 

How  not  only  to  get  a  majority  but  to 
keep  it,  and  make  it  decent,  conservative, 
useful,  is  the  study  to  which  party  leaders 
should  give  their  midnight  vigils.  How 
not  to  do  it  is  writ  large  enough  for  even 
their  not  too  alert  minds  to  perceive,  in 
the  political  history  of  the  past  decade. 
Horrible  examples,  solemn  warnings,  they 
have  in  plenty — let  them  look  in  the  mir- 
ror if  they  see  none 'elsewhere.  But  shin- 
ing exemplars,  successful  models,  they 
also  have,  if  they  would  look  at  them,  in 
the  history  of  Anglo-Saxon  popular  gov- 
ernment. It  is  an  old  lesson,  but  one  so 
forgotten  that  it  seems  new,  that  modera- 
tion in  victory,  putting  the  public  good 
before  partisan  advantage,  building  a  ma- 
jority upon  a  political  principle,  not  upon 
greed  and  pelf,  are  the  only  ways  of  mak- 
ing a  party  majority  more  deadly  to  your 
opponents  than  to  yourself.  How  many 
more  surgical  operations  will  our  politi- 
cians need  to  undergo  at  the  hands  gf 
Doctor  Civis  Americanus  before  they  get 
that  idea  into  their  heads? 


THE  POLICY  OF  RECIPROCITY. 

CoMOBBSBMAif  HoPKiMS,  s  ^ismbor  of  the 
ways  and  means  committee  and  chairman 
of  its  sub-committee  on  reciprocity  and 
commercial  treaties,  has  sent  out  a  circu- 
lar to  manufacturers  and  others  asking 
whether  the  effect  of  the  treaties  negoti- 
ated under  the  authority  of  the  McKinley 
tariff  act  was  favorable  or  unfavorable  to 
this  country,  and  what  was  the  effect  of 
their  repeal  by  the  existing  tariff  act; 
also,  what  can  be  accomplished  by  diplo- 
matic negotiations  in  extending  the  ex- 
port trade  of  the  United  States. 

Reciprocity,  it  should  be  remarked,  was 
not  a  Republican  doctrine,  but  rather  the 
contrary,  until  the  famous  scene  took 
place  in  a  committee-room  of  the  Senate, 
where  the  late  James  G.  Blaine,  Secre- 
tary of  State,  smashed  his  hat  on  the 
table  and  denounced  the  McKinley  tariff 
in  excited  terms,  declaring  that  it  would 
not  make  a  market  in  any  part  of  the 
world  for  another  bushel  of  wheat  or 
barrel  of  pork  for  the  American  farmer. 
When  this  emphatic  declaration  became 
publicly  known.  Senator  Aldrich  offered 
a  new  clause  as  an  addition  to  the  Mc- 
Kinley bill,  which  was  known  as  the 
reciprocity  amendment.  It  provided  that 
whenever  the  President  should  be  satis- 
fied that  any  country  producing  and  ex- 
porting sugar,  molasses,  coffee,  tea,  and 
hides,  or  any  of  those  articles,  should 
impose  duties  on  the  products  of  the 
United  States  which  he  (the  PreaSdeal) 
should  deem  unreasonable  in;TidW  ol  4M 


April  2,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


367 


admitting  those  articles  free  of  duty,  he 
should  suspend  the  free  admission  of 
such  articles  from  those  countries  for 
such  time  as  he  should  deem  just,  and 
impose  upon  them  certain  specified  rates 
of  duty.  Under  this  provision,  treaties  of 
reciprocity  were  negotiated  with  Central 
America  (except  Costa  Rica),  Brazil,  Bri- 
tish Quiana,  the  British  West  Indies,  San 
Domingo,  and  Spain  (for  Cuba  and  Porto 
Rico).  Venezuela  declined  to  make  a 
treaty  with  us,  in  consequence  of  which 
her  coffee  was  subjected  by  President 
Harrison  to  a  duty  of  three  cents  per 
pound,  although  it  had  been  free  of  duty 
under  our  tariff  for  nearly  twenty  years. 
Colombia  and  Hayti  also  declined  to  make 
such  treaties,  and  their  coffee  was  sub- 
jected to  duty  in  like  manner. 

In  this  way  the  principle  of  reciprocity, 
which  has  been  called  *'free  trade  in 
spots,*'  was  lugged  into  the  party  creed 
and  received  the  sanction  of  the  Minne- 
apolis convention.  In  the  platform  of 
1892  it  was  referred  to  in  these  terms: 

**  We  point  to  the  snccees  of  the  Republictn 
policy  of  reciprocity,  under  which  our  export 
trade  has  vastly  increased,  and  new  and  en- 
larged markets  have  been  opened  for  the  pro- 
ducts  of  our  farms  and  workshops.  We  re- 
mind the  people  of  the  bitter  opposition  of  the 
Democratic  party  to  this  practical  business 
measure,  and  claim  that,  executed  by  a  Re- 
publican administration,  our  present  laws  will 
eventually  give  us  control  of  the  trade  of  the 
world." 

A  copy  of  the  Hopkins  circular  having 
been  sent  to  Mr.  James  M.  Swank,  general 
manager  of  the  American  Iron  and  Steel 
Association,  he  publishes  a  reply  to  it  in 
his  Bulletin^  saying,  however,  that  it  is 
an  expression  of  his  individual  views  only. 
His  answer  is  interesting  as  coming  from 
a  protectionist  of  the  old  school  who  has 
not  been  tainted  with  any  new-fangled 
notions  on  the  subject  of  foreign  trade. 
It  also  contains  statistics  of  our  trade 
with  the  several  countries,  covering  the 
period  immediately  before  the  treaties 
were  negotiated,  and  during  their  con- 
tinuance, and  immediately  after  their  re- 
peal. These  statistics,  since  they  em- 
brace only  eight  years,  some  of  which  were 
marked  by  financial  panics,  cannot  be 
considered  decisive,  yet  they  have  a  nega- 
tive value  in  the  way  of  diaproving  the 
claims  of  the  new-fiedged  advocates  of  re- 
ciprocity. 

They  show  that  our  export  trade  to  the 
above-named  countries  increased  during 
the  three  years  be/ore  reciprocity  went 
into  operation  from  about  |31,(XX),(XX)  to 
nearly  $42,000,000,  or  35  per  cent.;  that 
during  the  next  three  years,  while  reci- 
procity was  in  operation,  it  increased  to 
163,500,000,  or  28  per  cent;  during  the 
year  1894,  while  the  treaties  were  still  in 
operation,  it  declined  to  152,800,000,  and 
that  in  the  last  year  for  which  statiatics 
are  given,  1895,  it  declined  to  $45,500,000, 
the  decline  being  wholly  in  the  trade  with 
Cuba  and  being  due  to  the  rebellion  in 
that  island.  Although  the  treaties  were  all 
repealed,  the  trade  with  the  other  countries 
taken  together  showed  no  diminution. 


By  way  of  comparison  Mr.  Swank  intro- 
duces the  statistics  of  our  trade  with 
Canada  (with  which  we  had  no  treaty) 
during  the  same  years,  and  here  the 
changes  and  percentages  correspond  close- 
ly with  those  of  the  treaty  countries, 
showing  that  the  treaties  had  slight  effect 
if  any,  our  export  trade  being  controlled 
by  forces  of  wider  scope.  On  the  other 
hand,  Mr.  Swank  shows  that  our  exports 
to  Mexico,  with  which  we  had  no  treaty, 
increased  more  rapidly  than  to  any  of  the 
countries  where  reciprocity  existed.  In 
the  matter  of  iron  and  steel,  with  which 
Mr.  Swank  is  more  especially  concerned, 
he  says  that  our  exports  **  increased  over 
66  per  cent,  in  the  four  years  from  1887  to 
1890  without  reciprocity ;  that  from  1891 
to  1894  there  was  an  actual  decrease  under 
reciprocity ;  and  that  in  1895  there  was 
an  increase  over  1894  of  over  17  per  cent, 
without  reciprocity." 

Having  demolished  reciprocity  with  sta- 
tistics, Mr.  Swank  decries  it  on  grounds 
of  principle.  He  calls  it  **  a  fatal  error,** 
an  abandonment  of  the  policy  of  the  fa- 
thers of  the  republic,  and  a  substitution 
of  **  the  British  policy  of  commercial  trea- 
ties.** This  new  policy  was  adopted,  he 
says,  "not  to  protect  and  preserve  the 
home  market  for  home  producers,  which 
is  the  very  essence  of  the  protective  policy 
of  the  fathers,  but  that  foreign  markets 
of  less  value  than  the  trade  of  one  of  our 
great  States  might  be  captured.**  He 
thinks  also  that  a  deplorable  mistake  was 
made  when  sugar  was  put  on  the  free  list 
in  the  McKinley  tariff  and  a  bounty  voted 
to  our  own  sugar-planters.  This  feature 
of  the  bill  he  considers  the  parent  of  the 
reciprocity  clause,  since  without  free  sugar 
there  would  have  been  no  basis  for  reci- 
procity at  all. 

The  statistics  introduced  by  Mr.  Swank 
may  serve  to  refute  the  advocates  of  the 
treaties,  in  so  far  as  they  set  up  a  claim 
that  our  exports  were  largely  increased 
thereby,  ^et  they  cannot  be  considered 
conclusive.  There  were  two  disturbances 
of  trade  during  the  period  covered  by 
them,  the  Baring  crisis  in  England  in  1890 
and  our  own  panic  of  1893,  the  effects  of 
the  latter  being  still  felt  Moreover,  a 
longer  period  than  four  years  would  be  ne- 
cessary for  a  test,  even  in  normal  times. 
Mr.  Swank*s  letter  is  chiefly  significant  as 
a  protest  of  the  old  school  against  the 
schism  and  here^  which  crept  into  the 
party  as  a  consequence  of  Mr.  Blaine's 
hat-smashing  episode  in  1890. 


THE  DELAWARE  SENATORSHIF  CON- 
TEST, 

Abmb  have  been  so  much  to  the  fore  in 
the  Senate  during  the  past  two  months 
that  the  laws  have  been  silent  Tet  a 
highly  important  legal  and  constitutional 
question  has  been  under  discussion,  off 
and  on,  for  four  weeks,  to  which  the 
newspaper  correspondents,  and  therefore 
the  people  in  general,  have  given  almost 
no  attention.    We   refer  to  the  contest 


over  the  representation  of  Delaware  in 
the  United  States  Senate.  It  is  now  up 
as  a  question  of  the  highest  privilege, 
and  has  the  right  of  way  over  all  other 
business  until  it  is  settled.  The  debate 
is  still  going  on,  and  will  doubtless  go  on 
for  some  time  to  come,  though  all  the 
essentials  both  of  law  and  of  fact  have 
been  pretty  thoroughly  displayed  in  the 
speeches  already  delivered. 

The  facts  are  agreed  to  by  all  concerned. 
The  Delaware  Legislature  was  in  pro- 
longed deadlock  in  its  balloting  for  United 
States  Senator.  «*Qas*'  Addicks  had 
bought  the  State  for  the  Republicans,  and 
supposed  that,  of  course,  the  senatorship 
went  with  it;  but  a  few  ridiculously  squea- 
mish members  refused  to  vote  for  him, 
and  an  adjournment  without  election 
seemed  probable.  On  the  last  day  of  the 
session,  however.  May  9,  1895,  28  ballots 
were  taken;  30  members  were  present  in 
joint  assembly,  15  votes  being  cast  for 
Henry  A.  Du  Pont,  and  the  other  15  be- 
ing divided.  No  majority  for  any  candi- 
date appears  upon  the  record,  therefore, 
but  Mr.  Du  Pont  makes  his  contest,  and 
the  majority  report  of  the  committee  on 
privileges  and  elections  proposes  to  award 
him  the  seat,  on  the  ground  that  one 
member  present  and  voting  in  the  joint 
assembly  was  illegally  present  and  voting. 
With  this  vote  expunged  from  the  record, 
there  would  have  been  a  total  of  but  29 
votes,  and  Mr.  Du  Pont  would  have  been 
elected. 

This  member,  thus  challenged,  was 
William  T.  Watson,  the  Senator  duly 
elected  from  the  county  of  Kent,  chosen 
Speaker  of  the  Delaware  Senate  on  its 
organization,  and  becoming,  under  the 
State  Constitution,  acting-Gk>vemor  upon 
the  death  of  Gov.  Marvil  on  April  8, 1895. 
On  May  9,  the  last  day  of  the  session,  Mr. 
Watson  entered  the  Senate  chamber,  took 
his  seat  as  Speaker  (the  President  pro 
tempore  resigning  it  to  him),  and  went 
with  the  Senate  to  the  hall  of  the  House 
of  Representatives,  where  he  joined,  with- 
out protest,  in  the  balloting  for  United 
States  Senator.  It  is  contended  by  Mr. 
Du  Pont  that  the  office  of  Senator  from 
Kent  had  been  vacated  by  Mr.  Watson*s 
accession  to  the  acting-governorship,  and 
that  therefore  the  legal  number  of  the 
joint  assembly  was  29,  not  30. 

The  argum^  nt  for  the  contestant,  which 
was  presented  at  length  by  Senator  Mit- 
chell, is  based,  first,  upon  the^  common- 
law  doctrine  of  incompatibility— in  other 
words,  that  the  same  person  shall  not  si- 
multaneously exercise  incompatible  offices, 
and  that  the  offices  of  Governor  and  mem- 
ber of  the  Legislature  are  incompatible. 
It  is  also  argued  that  the  Constitution  of 
Delaware  expressly  prohibits  such  dupli- 
cation of  office.  The  right  of  the  United 
States  Senate  to  go  back  of  the  record  of 
a  Legislature  is  maintained,  not  as  to 
facts,  but  as  to  the  law  governing  the  or- 
ganisation. If  the  Legislature,  or  a  branch 
of  it,  did  not  perceive  that  the  law  and 
Constitution  of  the  State  made  a  seat  va- 


268 


The    iN'ation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1605 


cant,  that  does  Dot  eatop  the  United 
States  Senate,  so  Senator  Mitchell  con- 
tended, from  revising  the  legislatiye  record 
so  as  to  make  it  conform  to  law.  The  re- 
cord in  question  thus  revised  would  show 
that  Mr.  Du  Pont  had  received  a  majority 
of  the  votes  legally  cast  for  United  States 
Senator,  and  is  therefore  entitled  to  his 
seat. 

The  argument  for  the  minority  of  the 
committee,  which  was  ably  presented  by 
Senator  Turpie,  sets  forth,  first,  the  ab- 
solutely binding  nature  of  a  legislative 
record  upon  the  United  States  Senate. 
The  Senate  of  Delaware  is  the  sole  judge 
of  the  qualifications  of  its  own  members. 
The  uniform  practice  of  the  United  States 
Senate  was  laid  down  in  a  report  on  a 
contested-election  case  in  1873: 

**In  the  opinion  of  your  committee  it  is  not 
competent  lor  the  Senate  to  inquire  as  to  the 
right  of  individaal  members  to  sit  in  a  Legis- 
lature which  is  conceded  to  have  a  quorum  in 
both  houses  of  legmlly  elected  members.  But, 
undoubtedly,  the  Senate  must  always  inquire 
whether  the  body  which  pretended  to  elect  the 
Senator  was  a  Legislature  of  the  State  or  not, 
because  a  Senator  can  only  be  elected  by  the 
Legislature  of  a  State." 

Judicial  decisions  point  the  same  way. 
A  Kansas  Legislature  once  contained  an 
unconvicted  felon.  Under  the  State  Con- 
stitution his  seat  should  have  been  de- 
clared vacant  But  the  Legislature  re- 
fused to  act,  and  when  his  case  was 
brought  before  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
State,  Judge  Brewer,  now  of  the  Supreme 
*  Court  at  Washington,  decided  that  there 
could  be  no  interference  from  the  outside, 
holding  that  if  either  house  of  the  Legis- 
lature *' refuses  to  oust  a  membef,  his 
seat  is  beyond  judicial  challenge.'* 

It  is  denied,  further,  that  the  Speaker 
of  the  Delaware  Senate  succeeds  to  the 
"office  »•  of  Governor.  The  Constitution 
says  that  he  shall  "exercise  the  office 
until  a  Gk>vernor  elected  by  the  people 
shall  be  duly  qualified."  As  a  practical 
construction  of  the  clause  it  is  averred 
that,  historically,  every  one  of  the  five 
persons  who,  under  the  present  Constitu- 
tion of  Delaware,  have  succeeded  to  the 
governorship,  as  Speaker  Watson  did, 
"without  a  single  exception,  after  the 
expiry  of  the  time  limited-  for  the  tempo- 
rary exercise  of  executive  authority,  went 
into  the  Senate  and  completed  his  term 
as  Senator  without  protest,  without  ob- 
jectiou."  At  the  time  of  Mr.  Watson's 
participation  in  the  joint  assembly  no  pro- 
test was  made  against  his  action  until 
after  the  last  ballot  was  taken,  when,  ap- 
parently as  an  afterthought,  a  protest 
was  presented  as  a  ground  for  the  contest 
before  the  United  States  Senate. 

Without  undertaking  to  affirm  bow  the 
Senate  ought  to  or  will  decide  this  ques- 
tion, we  are  bound  to  say  that  any  at- 
tempt of  the  Senate  to  go  back  of  the  re- 
cord of  a  State  Legislature  is  certain  to 
lead  to  great  abuses.  The  qualifications 
of  electors,  as  well  as  of  legislators,  may  be 
inquired  into  on  the  same  ground ;  the 
fairness  of  elections  passed  upon;  and  thus 
the  constitutional  right  of  all  Legislatures 


to  be  the  sole  judges  of  the  qualifications 
and  credentials  of  their  own  members  in- 
sidiously undermined.  For  better  or  for 
worse,  we  must  stand  upon  the  right  and 
duty  of  the  States  to  manage  their  own 
affairs  without  federal  interference;  and 
the  election  of  a -United  States  Senator  is 
a  State  affair. 


GERMAN  AND  IRISH  CRIME  AND  DI8- 
.     ORDER, 

Ths  recently  issued  census  volume  on 
Crime,  Pauperism,  and  Benevolence  shows 
how  much  more  numerous  on  June  1, 
1890,  among  the  persons  of  Irish  birth  or 
parentage  than  among  persons  of  Qerman 
birth  or  parentage  were  the  inmates  of  pri- 
sons, almshouses,  juvenile  reformatories, 
and  benevolent  institutions.  At  that  time 
there  were  in  the  United  States  4,142,199 
persons  both  of  whose  parents  were  born 
in  Ireland,  and  5,776,186  both  of  whose 
parents  were  bom  in  Germany.  Thus 
there  were  140  persons  of  pure  German 
blood  in  the  country  for  every  100  persons 
of  pure  Irish  blood.  On  June  1,  1890, 
however,  13,490  of  the  latter  class  were 
confined  in  prison,  as  against  only  4,869 
of  the  former.  Or,  stating  the  same  thing 
in  another  way,  it  appears  that  out  of 
every  million  persons  of  Irish  birth  or 
parentage  there  were  3,257  confined  in 
prison,  and  out  of  every  million  Germans 
there  were  only  782,  or  but  little  more 
than  one-fourth  as  many. 

The  same  disproportion,  though  in  a 
somewhat  slighter  degree,  exists  among 
the  juvenile  offenders,  2,587  of  whom  had 
Irish  parents,  as  against  1,060  of  German 
parentage.  Out  of  every  million  persons 
of  Irish  parentage  there  were  624  confined 
as  juvenile  offenders,  while  out  of  a  like 
number  of  Germans  there  were  only  183. 
Among  the  paupers  in  almshouses  the 
difference  was  nearly  though  not  quite  so 
great:  15,933  of  such  paupers  were  of  Irish 
parentage,  7,793  were  of  German  parent- 
age. That  is,  there  were  3,844  paupers 
per  million  of  the  Irish  inhabitants  and 
1,349  per  million  of  the  G^erman.  Sub- 
stantially the  same  proportions  are  main- 
tained among  the  inmates  of  benevolent 
institutions:  24,147  were  Irish,  11,505  were 
German.  Out  of  every  million  inhabi- 
tants both  of  whose  parents  were  Irish, 
5,824  were  to  be  found  in  benevolent  in- 
stitutions; 1,991  out  of  every  million  of 
Grerman  parentage  were  in  like  places. 

It  thus  appears  that  out  of  every  1,000,- 
000  persons  residing  in  this  country  in 
1890,  both  of  whose  parents  were  Irish, 
13,549  were,  on  the  first  day  of  June  of 
that  year,  public  charges,  as  against  4,305 
in  every  1,000,000  persons  of  pure  German 
parentage.  In  other  words,  the  Irish  con- 
tribute to  the  dependent  and  delinquent 
classes,  in  proportion  to  their  numbers, 
something  more  than  three  for  every  one 
furnished  by  the  Germans. 

Any  complete  explanation  of  this  differ- 
ence would  be  difficult  if  not  impossible. 
But  partial  explanation  is  comparatively 


easy.  The  Irish  went  so  long  without 
popular  or  technical  education,  or  common 
social  justice,  that  the  national  character 
was  seriously  affected  by  it.  It  bred  a 
certain  disinclination  and  incapacity  for 
steady  industry,  which  is  the  leading  cha- 
racteristic of  low  civilisation.  The  ab- 
sence of  legal  protection,  in  like  manner, 
bred  disrespect  for  law  and  a  tendency  to 
protective  law-breaking.  Moreover,  the 
possession  of  a  franchise  during  the  last 
hundred  years  which  had  no  influence 
whatever  on  the  government  of  their  coun- 
try, begot  skill  in  the  use  of  electoral  ma- 
chinery, and  in  electoral  tricks  and  in- 
trigue, without  developing  any  sense  of 
political  responsibility  or  of  public  duty. 
The  love  of  drink  in  the  Irish  is  probably 
temperamental — that  is,  compounded  part- 
ly of  love  of  excitement  and  partly  of  so- 
ciability. The  disposition  of  the  Irish 
who  land  here  to  go  into  the  liquor  busi- 
ness is  due  partly  to  ignorance  of  ali  other 
kinds  of  business,  and  partly  to  want  of 
capital. 

That  the  Catholic  religion  counts  for 
something  in  their  apparent  want  of  poli- 
tical capacity  must  be  admitted,  without 
meaning  to  be  disrespectful  to  the  church, 
if  we  rely  on  historical  experience,  for  no 
Catholic  community  can  be  said  to  have 
succeeded  in  modern  politics.  The  histo- 
ries of  Spain,  France,  Italy,  and  the  Spa- 
nish-American republics,  contrasted  with 
those  of  England,  Grermany,  Holland, 
Sweden,  Denmark,  and  Norway,  strongly 
suggest,  at  all  events,  the  belief  that 
creed  has  much  to  do  with  the  ability  to 
carry  on  modern  governments.  The  Catho- 
lic creed  probably  lessens  individual  ini- 
tiative and  self-dependence  by  the  large 
part  direction  plays  in  it,  and  for  similar 
resBons  may  possibly  weaken  the  power  of 
resisting  the  temptation  to  certain  forms 
of  crime  and  social  disorder.  The  know- 
ledge of  the  English  language,  too,  has 
been  in  America  a  misfortune  for  the 
Irish,  from  which  the  Glermans  escape, 
because  it  brings  them  at  once  in  intel- 
ligent contact  with  the  worst  American 
tendencies. 

The  Germans,  on  the  other  hand,  be- 
sides the  greater  phlegm  of  their  race, 
come  here  with  a  much  better  home  edu- 
cation, with  a  much  more  widely  diffused 
training  in  handicrafts,  with  a  love 
of  beer  instead  of  whiskey,  and  with  no 
training  in  the  use  of  political  machi- 
nery. Their  relations  to  the  law  in  their 
own  country  have  always  been  normal, 
and  their  respect  for  official  and  other 
superiors  has  had  a  better  basis  than 
mere  superiority  of  force.  It  has  been 
historical  in  most  cases,  and  maintained 
by  superiority  of  knowledge  and  of 
function.  Though  last,  not  least,  igno- 
rance of  the  language  keeps  the  Glerman 
to  himself  and  his  own  people  for  some 
time  after  his  arrival  in  this  country, 
and  out  of  the  way  of  the  American 
temptations  which  foreigners  are  least 
fitted  to  bear.  Foremost  among  these  la 
the  contempt  for  the  government 


April  2,  1896] 


The    !N"atioii. 


969 


growi  out  of  observation  of  the  office- 
holders, and  is  verj  trying,  especially  to 
the  more  ignorant  immigrants.  In  truth, 
America  is  the  last  country  to  which  a 
wise  despot,  seeking  to  transplant  people 
according  to  their  defects  and  capacities, 
would  have  sent  the  Irish,  while  he 
would  probably  have  sent  a  large  propor- 
tion of  the  Qerman  population  here  in 
the  beginning  of  the  century. 


Correspondence. 


A  SINGLE-TAX  COMMUNITY. 
To  THE  Bdror  of  The  Nation  : 

Sib:  On  the  eaatem  shore  of  Mobile  Bay, 
and  some  fifteen  miles  distant  from  tbe  metro- 
polis of  Alabama,  there  is  a  growing  commu- 
nity of  men,  women,  and  children  whose  daily 
lives  are,  to  a  great  extent,  governed  by  tbe 
fiscal  theories  of  Mr.  Henry  George.  Fair- 
hope  is  tbe  name  of  this  unique  colony,  and  its 
members  appear  to  be  as  happy  and  contented 
as  one  could  expect  to  find  a  community  of  ooe 
year's  experience.  The  fundamental  principles 
of  Uie  community  are  thus  set  forth  in  the 
Fairfaope  Courier:  *'  That  which  nature  pro- 
vides is  the  common  property  of  all  OOd's  chil- 
dren; that  which  the  individual  creates  belongs 
to  the  individual;  that  which  the  community 
creates  belongs  to  the  conmiunity." 

These  enthusiastic  advocates  of  the  common 
ownership  of  land  have  chosen  for  the  site  of 
their  interesting  social  experiment  one  of  the 
loveliest  spots  in  the  South.  From  the  water* 
shed  about  two  miles  back  in  the  country  the 
ground  slopes  gently  towards  the  bay,  and 
ends  in  a  steep  bluff  of  some  fifty  feet  in  alti- 
tude, thus  affording  an  excellent  system  of 
natural  drainage,  while  along  the  entire  water- 
front a  thick  growth  of  oak,  cedar,  jrupon, 
boUy,  pine,  and  magnolia  forms  a  beautiful 
screen  of  perpetual  foliage  between  the  water 
and  the  bluff.  The  entire  water-front,  for  a 
depth  of  150  feet,  has  been  reserved  as  a  public 
park.  The  main  street  of  the  community  be- 
gins at  the  bay,  and,  climbing  the  bluff  by  easy 
stages,  runs  back  for  about  half  a  mile,  being 
lined  on  either  side  with  the  cottages  of  the 
settlers.  These  are  neat,  substantial  frame 
buildings  of  yellow  pine  (which  grows  here  in 
great  abundance),  and  are  constructed  in  a 
manner  that  speaks  well  for  the  taste  and  skill 
of 'the  occupants,  while  their  modem  fumi- 
tore  and  doorbells  are  striking  innovations  in 
Southern  farm  life.  At  the  intersection  of 
the  two  principal  streets  are  the  store,  the 
post-oiflce,  and  the  public  well.  A  school 
building  is  soon  to  be  erected.  Religions  ser- 
vices are  held  in  the  private  residences. . 

Tbe  community  owns  about  350  acres  of  un. 
encumbered  land,  and  is,  so  far,  free  from  debt 
It  has  also  constructed  a  wharf  and  pier-head. 
The  system  of  land  tenure  has  already  been 
mentiooed;  but  while  the  title  is  vested  in  the 
community,  the  members  may  obtain  parcels 
of  land  under  leases  voidable  only  at  the  op- 
tion of  the  lessee.  The  rental  of  tbe  land  is 
fixed  by  annual  appraisal,  according  to  its  na- 
tural advantages  of  fertility  and  location.  The 
unearned  increment  is  appropriated  by  the 
communi^. 

The  government  of  the  community  is  a  pure 
democracy,  and  the  administration  of  public 
affatn  is  vested  in  an  executive  council  com- 
posed of  tbe  superintendeots  of  lands  and  high- 
way^  public  servlcea,  industries,  and  public 


health,  together  with  the  treasurer  of  the  com- 
munity. In  order  to  render  all  officers  directly 
responsible  to  the  people,  the  Swiss  expedient 
of  the  initiative  and  referendum  is  incorpo- 
rated in  the  scheme  of  government.  Hence 
any  act  of  the  council  must  be  submitted  to  a 
communal  vote,  if  ten  per  cent,  of  the  voters 
petition  it,  while,  on  petition  of  twenty  per 
cent,  of  the  Toters,  the  question  of  the  dis- 
missal of  any  officer  must  be  submitted  to 
popular  vote. 

No  taxes  other  than  the  rent  of  land  are  paid 
by  the  members  of  the  community,  and  all 
State  and  local  taxes  are  paid  by  the  commu- 
nity itself.  Some  revenue  is  derived  from 
wharf  tolls. 

The  members  of  the  Fairhope  Colony  are 
mainly  from  the  Northwest,  the  moving  spirit 
in  the  experiment  being  Ernest  B.  G^aston,  a 
graduate  of  Drake  University,  Iowa.  Others 
whose  names  are  associated  with  the  venture 
are  Alfred  Wooster,  a  Western  joumaUst,  and 
J.  Bellangee,  sometime  professor  of  mathe- 
matics in  the  University  of  Nebraska. 

It  was  desired  to  found  a  community  which 
should  put  into  practice  the  principles  held  by 
its  members,  and  a  conunittee  of  two  was  sent 
out  to  find  a  favorable  location.  After  a  long 
secu-ch  through  Texas,  Arkansas,  Tennessee, 
Mississippi,  and  Alabama,  the  present  spot 
was  finally  chosen  for  the  home  of  the  Asso- 
ciation. The  land  was  purchased,  and  on 
January  14, 1895,  the  first  ground  was  broken. 
Tlie  succeeding  summer  was  mainly  taken  up 
in  clearing  the  ground,  but  a  small  crop  was 
raised  and  sold.  For  the  coming  season  the 
amount  of  land  under  cultivation  will  be  much 
greater,  and  fruits,  **  truck,**  and  grain  will  be 
grown.  Of  course  the  main  source  of  reve- 
nue is  the  sale  of  these  products,  which  are 
for  the  most  part  shipped  North  and  West. 
A  canning,  factory  is  projected  for  next  sum- 
mer. 

Curiously  enough,  very  few  of  the  colonists 
come  from  agricultural  pursuits.  Some  of 
the  callings  represented  are  medicine,  journal- 
ism, gardening,  draying,  woodworking,  and 
cigar- making.  A  detective,  a  sailor,  and  a 
*'new  woman*'  are  also  to  be  found  in  the 
community.  More  of  the  settlers  come  from 
Iowa  than  from  any  other  State.  Some  are 
from  Missouri,  Kansas,  Louisiana,  Minnesota, 
Indiana,  Florida,  Illinois,  and  Pennsylvania, 
while  even  British  Columbia  and  England  are 
represented.— Respectfully  yours, 

Gardinxb  L.  Tuckxr. 

UlfflTKBtITT  or  THI  SOUTH. 

SsWAirKX.  Tmxn^  Marcii  88,  L8(ML 


CONCERNING  ROCK  FISHES. 
To  THE  EnrroB  of  Ths  Nation: 

Sir:  In  the  Nation  of  March  12,  in  a  notice 
of  my  paper  on  the  Crania  of  Sebosfocfes,  these 
words  occur:  *'His  [Cramer's]  statement  that 
these  fishes  [the  group  of  Rock-Fishes]  abrupt- 
ly disappear  to  the  southward  of  tbe  United 
States  to  reappear  in  the  temperate  and  cold 
waters  of  western  South  America,  is  somewhat 
incorrect;  they  retire  to  greater  depths  under 
the  tropics— that  is  all.** 

This  statement  may  be  true,  but  it  is  only 
guesswork.  The  southernmost  limit  of  Sebcu- 
todes  on  the  North  American  Coast  is  found 
in  the  Gulf  of  California  {Sebastodee  sinensis). 
The  northern  limit  in  South  America  is  found 
in  the  Mejillones  Islands,  off  Southern  Peru. 
In  other  words,  not  a  specimen  has  been  taken 
between  the  tropic  of  Cancer  and  a  point  near 
that  of  Capricorn.    Until  we  have  informa- 


tion as  to  the  habits  of  the  tropical  Sehastodes, 
we  cannot  say  whether  they  retire.       F.  C. 


[There  are  now  in  print  illustrationa  of 
Pacific  Rock-Fiahee,  taken  at  points  leas 
than  ten  degrees  from  the  equator,  which 
will  before  long  enable  Mr.  Cramer  to  judge 
of  the  actual  scientific  value  of  the  posi- 
tive assertions  he  bases  entirely  on  his 
lack  of  specimens  or  of  knowledge.— Ed. 
Nation.] 


HIRED  GIRL. 
To  THS  EnrroB  of  Ths  Nation  : 

Sib  :  It  is  not  necessary  to  go  back  to  former 
generations  to  find  out  the  origin  and  use  of 
the  term^**  hired  girl,**  as,  on  Cape  Cod,  Massa- 
chusetts, it  is  uted  by  the  inhabitants  at  the 
present  time.  The  hired  girl  is  usually  the 
daughter  of  a  neighbor;  she  takes  her  meals 
with  the  family,  and  is  treated  in  every  respect 
as  an  equal— «s  she  is. 

There  are  many  other  terms  used  on  **  The 
Cape,**  which  I  have  never  heard  elsewhere. 
When  a  person  is  ill,  and  confined  to  his  bed, 
they  speak  of  him  as  being  **sick  in  his  naked 
bed.**  A  thunder-storm  is  always  called  a 
tempest,  etc.  In  'The  Raiders,*  by  S.  R. 
Crockett,  I  noticed  the  term  <*  naked  bed." 
Why  caUed"  naked  **f  P. 

Pau,  Fraiicb.  lUrch  10, 1800. 


Notes. 


GiNN  &  Co.  will  shortly  bring  out  *  A  Guide  to 
the  Study  of  American  History,'  by  Profk  Ed- 
ward Channing  and  Albert  Bushnell  Hart  of 
Harvard  University, 

Mr.  William  Astor  Chan]er*s  *  Through 
Jungle  and  Desert,'  in  northeastern  Africa, 
namely  ;  the  private  correspondence  of  Ernest 
and  Henrietta  Renan,  under  the  title,  *  Brother 
and  Sister*;  and  *The  Geographical  Distribu- 
tion of  Mammals,*  by  R.  Lyddeker,  are  just 
forthcoming  from  BiacmiUan  &  Co. 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.  are  about  to  issue 

*  Four-Handed  Folk,*  by  Olive  Thome  Miller ; 

*  Spring  Notes  from  Tennessee,*  by  Bradford 
Torrey;  the  fourth,  unfinished,  volume  of  the 
late  Prof.  Herbert  Tuttle's  '  History  of  Prus- 
sia*; *  The  Expansion  of  Religion,'  by  Dr,  Do- 
nald,  the  successor  of  Phillips  Brooks;   and 

*  Pirate  Gold,*  by  F.  J.  Stimson. 

*  Motion  Songs  for  Public  Schools,'  by  Miss 
Mabel  L.  Pray,  photographically  illustrated, 
will  be  issued  immediately  by  D.  C.  Heath  A 
Co.,  Boston. 

A  play  which  has  had  the  rare  distinction  of 
being  represented  in  this  city  within  a  few 
months  in  four  languages,  and  by  three  of  the 
most  eminent  living  actresses,  Sudermann*s 
*'  Heimath,**  has  just  been  admirably  trans- 
lated for  the  ''Sock  and  Buskin  Library*' 
of  Lamson,  Wolffe  &  Co.,  Boston,  by  Mr. 
Charles  E.  A.  Winslow.  It  has  been  beauti. 
fully  printed  at  the  University  Press  in  Cam- 
bridge, and  tastefully  bound.  The  title,  '*  Mag- 
da,**  is  that  under  which  this  very  modem 
drama  is  given  by  the  incomparable  Duse, 
whom  no  one  should  neglect  to  see  in  a  r61e 
so  well  adapted  to  her  power  to  move  and 
to  charm.  The  reading  of  Mr.  Winalow's  re. 
fined  translation  will  be  a  most  valuable  pre- 
liminary. 

Mr.  William  Kent,  author  of  *The  Mechani. 
cal  Engineer's  Pocket  Book*  (John  WOey  A 
Sons)  is  evidently  well  qualified  by  talent  and 


^iJ'O 


T  h.  e    IN"  a  t  i  o  n . 


[Vol  62,  No.  1605 


experience  for  his  task,  and  hU  book,  for  indus- 
trial engineers  at  least,  is  well  in  advance  of 
any  of  its  predecessors,  as  Molesworth,  Has- 
well,  or  Nystrom.  In  the  thousand  or  more 
oloselj  printed  pages  dealing  with  general  or 
mechanical  engineering  matters  there  seems  to 
be  little  or  nothing  either  superfluous  or  criti- 
oisable.  Wldle  the  book  deals  to  only  a  small 
extent  with  mattera  purely  electrical,  the  main 
body  of  the  matter  contained  in  it  is  of  nearly 
as  great  value  to  electrical  engineers  as  to 
their  mechanical  brethren.  It  is  unfortunate 
that  the  few  pages  (Leas  than  fifty)  which 
relate  distinctively  to  electricity  do  not  con- 
tain a  better  selection ;  and  while  we  cannot 
expect  all  knowledge  to  be  contained  in  one 
book,  we  must  regret  the  admission  of  doubt- 
ful matter  in  a  province  with  which  the  author 
can  scarcely  be  expected  to  have  an  intimate 
acquaintance.  Reward  awaits  the  man  with 
the  necessary  ability,  experience,  and  industry 
to  compile  an  electrical  engineer's  book  as  sat- 
isfactory in  its  special  field  as  is  Kent's  book 
in  the  mechanical  field.  The  typography  of 
this  volume  is  remarkably  good. 

The  appearance,  in  an  eighth  edition,  of 
Legouv^'s  'Histoire  Morale  des  Femmes' 
(Paris :  Hetzel)  reminds  us  anew  how  unfail. 
ingly  the  charm  of  literary  beauty  may  be  re- 
lied upon  to  save  from  oblivion  works  other- 
wise mainly  of  temporary  interest.  It  should 
be  said,  however,  that  only  part  of  the  claims 
advanced  in  this  eloquent  plea  for  justice  to 
woman— first  published  nearly  half  a  century 
ago— have  since  been  realized.  The  gracious 
and  high-minded  author  of  the  book,  now  the 
Nestor  of  French  Academicians,  may  therefore 
hope  to  see  its  infiuence  continue  among  the 
younger  generations.  As  a  chapter  from  the 
history  of  civilization  in  France  the  work  may 
well  be  read  with  interest  and  profit. 

That  Georges  Ohnet  is  not  a  literary  artist 
has  been  repeated  ad  nauMtim  by  every  French 
critic  who  values  his  own  reputation.  That  he 
cannot  write  like  the  author  of  *  Le  Lys  Rouge, ' 
or  the  author  of  *  Les  Demi-Vierges,'  or  the  au- 
thor of  *  La  Cendre,'  has  become  a  truism  re- 
peated in  every  chronique  lUtirairB.  He  is 
sentimental,  wishy-washy,  flabby,  namby-pam- 
by, and  all  the  rest  of  it.  Nevertheless,  his 
books  sell  nearly  as  well,  if  not  quite  as  well, 
as  those  of  Zola,  and  *  Le  Maltre  de  Forges'  is 
a  success  on  the  English  and  on  the  Ameri- 
can stage,  and  not  a  failure  on  the  French. 
Ohnet  has  written  poor  work,  it  is  true,  but  he 
has  also  done  good  work,  and  at  least  he  knows 
how  to  write  a  novel  which  is  interesting  with- 
out being  obscene  or  sensual,  which  contains 
well-drawn  characters  not  analyzed  to  weari- 
ness, and  can  tell  a  story  bright  enough  to  be 
read  from  start  to  finish  without  a  pause.  Such 
a  story,  and  forcible  withal,  is  *La  Fille  du 
Ddput6'  (Paris:  Paul  OUendorf),  somewhat 
romanesque,  and  introducing  the  now  almost 
inevitable  priest,  though  in  modest  fashion,  a 
very  charming  flg^ure  of  a  young  girl  who  does 
not  put  passion  above  duty,  a  young  French- 
man wonderfully  like  a  decent  American  or 
dean  run  Englishman,  and  a  capital  Socialist 
Deputy,  most  faithfully  depicted  as  to  his  con- 
victions and  inconsistencies. 

'Le  Roi  Ap^pi,'  by  Victor  Cherbnliez 
(Paris :  Borel),  is  a  brilliant  littl^  novel,  with 
aU  its  author's  qualities  in  evidence.  The 
subject  is  by  no  means  new:  the  rescue  of  a 
fine  young  fellow  from  the  hands  of  a  design- 
ing woman.  The  rescuer  is  a  delightful  old 
diplomat)  clever,  cool,  and  witty,  who  cir- 
cumvents intriguing  mother  and  fascinating 
daughter,  and  brings  about  their  total  discom- 
flture.    The  novel  is  not  one  to  be  read  be- 


cause it  is  naughty,  for  it  is  not  this,  but  sim- 
ply because  it  is  a  capital  story,  very  well  told 
by  a  very  clever  writer. 

The  Comtesse  de  Martel,  whom  everybody 
knows  as  '*Gyp,"  the  audacious,  the  amusing 
''Gyp,"  has  given  us  another  book,  'Le  Bon- 
heur deGinette '  (Paris:  Calmann  L^vy), which, 
however,  is  not  in  any  respect  up  to  '  Le  Ma- 
riage  de  Chiffon,'  though  the  heroine  recalls  at 
times  that  very  attractive  young  lady.  It  is  a 
work  which  disappoints  us  when  two-thirds 
read,  for  just  there  Gyp  goes  off  into  the  tire- 
some old  beaten  track  of  illicit  love,  though 
Ginette  has  up  to  this  point  shown  too  much 
force  of  character  and  individuality  to  render 
intelligible  her  fall  from  grace,  common  sense, 
and  womanliness. 

*Aus  meinem  Leben:  Erinnerungen  und 
Rflckblicke'  (Stuttgart:  N&gele)  is  the  frag^ 
ment  of  an  autobiography  by  the  eminent 
naturalist  Carl  Vogt,  who  died  in  Geneva, 
Switzerland,  on  May  5, 1895.  He  was  bom  in 
GilBssen,  July  5, 1817,  and  was  descended  from 
a  long  line  of  rough-hewn  and  sturdy  ances- 
tors, who  belonged  for  the  most  part  to  what 
he  calls  **the  honorable  guild  of  butchers." 
The  first  chapter,  entitled  "  Die  Stammfami- 
lien,"  is  a  series  of  realistic  sketches  of  these 
rude  and  robust  forefathers,  with  anecdotes 
illustrative  of  their  character.  Then  follow 
three  chapters  on  his  native  town  and  its  in- 
habitants, the  gymnasium  and  university,  and 
his  own  experiences  as  a  lad  and  a  student. 
His  strictures  on  the  methods  of  instruction 
are  severe  and  doubtless  well  deserved.  Mo- 
dern European  history  and  literature  were  ut- 
terly ignored,  and  there  was  never  the  slight- 
est intimation  given  in  the  school  that  such 
persons  as  Lessing,  Goethe,  and  Schiller  had 
ever  existed.  Vogt  joined  Agaasiz  and  Deeor 
at  NeuchAtel  in  August,  1839,  immediately  af- 
ter having  taken  his  doctor's  degree  at  Berne, 
where  his  father  was  professor  of  clinical 
medicine.  He  speaks  in  the  highest  terms  of 
Agassiz's  ability  as  a  zodlogist,  declaring  that 
he  never  met  a  man  endowed  with  equal  talent 
in  this  department  of  natural  science.  The 
volume  ends  with  Agassiz's  departure  for 
America  in  1846.  It  was  Prof.  Vogt's  inten- 
tion to  complete  this  autobiography,  giving  an 
account  of  his  sojourn  in  Paris  and  Italy,  his 
political  activity  during  the  Revolution  of 
1848,  his  subsequent  scientific  studies  at  Nice, 
and  his  life  at  G^eneva,  where  he  was  appointed 
in  1852  to  the  chair  of  geology  in  the  univer- 
sity of  that  city;  but  his  death  occurred  before 
he  found  time  to  execute  his  plan. 

Debes's  '  Neuer  Handatlas'  (Leipzig :  Wag- 
ner &  Debes),  which  for  some  time  has  been 
appearing  in  Lieferung  fashion,  is  now  com- 
plete and  becomes  a  sharp  competitor  of  the 
other  excellent  atlases  in  Germany.  That 
country  naturally  receives  the  most  attention. 
The  lands  of  the  Empire  and  those  neighboring 
from  Paris  to  Russia,  and  from  Jutland  to 
(}enoa,  are  treated  in  surprising  detail  on  ele- 
ven double- page  maps.  Each  of  the  other 
European  countries  is  represented  by  one  dou- 
ble page  map;  and  twenty-two  such  maps  are 
devoted  to  countries  outside  of  Europe,  many 
of  them  being  more  complete  and  exact  than 
are  to  be  found  in  almost  any  other  work, 
e.  g.,  Palestine,  Eastern  Asia,  and,  more  esp6> 
cially  still,  the  German  colonies.  One  map  is 
devoted  to  North  America,  one  to  the  United 
States,  and  one  to  the  Eastern  States  of  the 
Union.  The  climatological  charts  are  worthy 
of  special  mention.  The  book  is  provided  with 
an  admirable  index  having  over  150,(XK)  geo- 
graphical names.  The  mechanical  preparation 
of  the  work  is  the  very  best  in  every  particu- 


lar. Like  many  other  admirable  German 
books,  this  atlas  is  sold  at  an  astonishingly  low 
price— thirty-two  marks. 

Pure  science  predominates  in  the  Oeographu 
eal  Journal  for  March.  In  the  opening  arti- 
cle Prof.  J.  Milne  treats  of  the  movements  of 
the  earth's  crust,  with  special  reference  to  his 
observations  of  earthquakes  during  a  twenty 
years'  residence  in  Japan.  These  have  had  un- 
expectedly practical  results  in  demonstrating 
the  value  of  certain  methods  of  building,  by 
following  which  **  the  security  of  life  and  prop- 
erty is  greater  than  it  was  in  former  years" 
in  that  country.  The  Government  has  estab- 
lished  a  bureau  for  earthquake  investigation 
with  928  stations,  and  has  endowed  a  chair 
of  seismology  at  its  university.  Next  follow 
an  account  of  the  researches  of  the  Swedish 
oceanographers  on  the  movements  of  the  sur- 
face waters  of  the  North  Sea,  and  a  descrip- 
tion, by  Mr.  W.  L.  Sclater,  of  the  geographi- 
cal distribution  of  the  mammals  of  the  Ethio- 
pian region.  Each  of  these  papers  is  illus- 
trated with  diagrams  and  charts.  There  is 
also  a  map  of  Siam  showing  the  recent  treaty 
boundaries  as  well  as  the  French  and  English 
spheres  of  influence,  and  a  communication  from 
Prince  Henry  of  Orleans,  narrating  his  re- 
markable journey  from  China  to  India.  His 
route  was  the  shortest  and  most  direct  between 
the  two  countries,  and  haJB  long  been  searched 
for  by  Englishmen  without  success,  but  it 
proves,  unfortunately,  not  to  be  **  practicable 
for  trade." 

The  Scottish  OeographiocU  McLgctzine  for 
March  contains  a  vivacious  account  by  Miss 
M.  W.  Kingsley  of  some  incidents  in  her  re- 
cent extraordinary  journey  in  western  equato- 
torial  Africa.  She  gives  very  graphic  pictures 
of  the  abundant  animal  life  on  the  Ogow6 
River— hipix>s,  elephants,  and  crocodiles— of 
the  swamp  through  which  she  waded  for  two 
hours  "  up  to  our  chins  all  the  time,  and  came 
out  with  a  sort  of  astrachan  collar  of  leeches," 
and  of  her  Fan  companions,  whose  cannibalis- 
tic propensities  she  describes  with  a  cynical 
humor.  The  most  interesting  incident  was  an 
encounter  with  five  gorillas,  two  of  whom  were 
* '  well  over  six  feet."  *  *  When  they  passed  from 
one  plantain-tree  to  another  across  the  dear 
ground,  they  waddled  along  in  a  most  Inele- 
gant style,  dragfi^g  their  long  arms  knuckle 
downwards  on  the  ground.''  But  when  dis- 
turbed, tbey  displayed  an  amazing  celerity. 
"  I  have  seen  various  wild  animals  one  time 
and  another  in  their  native  wilds,  but  I  have 
never  seen  anything  so  grand  as  a  gorilla  go- 
ing through  the  forest.  It  is  a  powerful,  grac^ 
ful,  superbly  perfect  trapeze  performance." 
Sir  D.  P.  Chalmers,  recently  Chief  Justice  of 
British  Guiana,  contributes  an  interesting 
sketch  of  that  colony.  He  believes  that  its 
value  lies  *'  rather  in  its  resources  than  in  their 
actual  present  development."  Though  the  su- 
gar industry  has  declined,  yet  the  export  of 
gold  has  increased  from  250  ounces  in  1884  to 
122,935  oupces  in  1895. 

The  first  four  parts  of  Biographiaohe  BldtUr 
(Berlin :  Ernst  Hofmann  &  Co.;  New  York : 
Lemcke  &  Buechner)  compose  volume  one, 
and  prove  a  worthy  conception  to  have  been 
worthily  carried  out.  The  "portraits"  or 
sketches  are  mostly  of  Germans,  and  in  the 
table  of  contents  we  remark  one  Englishman 
(Browning),  one  American  (Holmes),  one  Rus- 
sian (Bakunin),  two  Italians  (CagUostro  and 
Pio  IX.,  queer  bedfellows),  and  half-a-doasn 
Frenchmen.  There  is  considerable  diversity 
in  the  matter.  In  part  ii.,  for  example,  is  a 
series  of  interesting  letters  from  and  to  WiUiam 
von  Humboldt,  including  one  from  Prof.  G.  F. 


April  2,  1896] 


The   N'ation. 


Q71 


Welcker  of  Bonn,  pointing  out  Rousseau's  *  H6- 

lolse  *  as  the  source  of  Scbtner's  soog  toEmma, 

and  of  the  beautiful  chapel  scene  with  the 

tOTfme  of  Ottilie  in  Qoetbe's  *  Elective  AfQ 

nities*  {Die  Wahlverwandtschaften).    In  part 

iv.  we  meet  with  two  letters  of  the  late  Karl 

Hilltfbrand  on  reading  as  a  means  of  culture, 

with  a  systematic  outline,  and  five  letters  of 

E.  M.  Arndt*s,  written  from  1844  to  1840.    The 

B.  Bl&titr  is  handsomely  printed  in  the  Roman 

letter. 

In  the  last  number  of  Cotmopoiis  there  is  a 

somewhat  curious  article  by  Herr  E.  Eogel— 

an  ** appreciation '^  of  the  French  Symbolist 

poets  which  lacks  nothing  in  point  of  severity. 

Mr.  Engel  does  not  admit  that  the  poets  of 

the  Symbolist  group  have  any  talent  what 

soever,    fie  makes,  indeed,  or  half  makes,  an 

exception  in  the  case  of  Verlaine,  since  he  ad 

mires  even  profoundly  the  poem  that  begins: 

*'  D  plMire  dans  mon  coeur 
Cjmme  11  plent  lur  la  rille.*' 

But  this  he  thinks  is  the  only  true  lyric  that 
Verlaine  ever  wrote.  As  to  the  rest,  the 
younger  men,  like  Maeterlinck,  get  but  hard 
measure;  they  are  nothing  but  so  many 
•^fumistes,"  and  their  vogue  is  due  solely  to 
the  wilful  obscurity  of  their  work. 

About  a  month  ago  the  Figaro  published  an 
enlarged  reproduction  of  the  new  model  for 
French  postage-stamps,  for  which  a  commis- 
sion was  given,  under  the  ministry  of  M.  Andr4 
Lebon,  to  M.  Grasset,  the  decorative  artist. 
This  ^owed  a  certain  dryness  in  its  design 
and  execution  which  recalled  the  work  of  some 
of  the  old  wood-engravers ;  but  its  archaism 
was  too  plainly  a  result  of  force  of  will  and  of 
main  strength  to  be  entirely  pleasing.  Since 
then  both  V  Illustration  and  the  Rews  En- 
eytHopidique  have  given  facsimiles  of  the  new 
stamp  unenlarged.  In  these  the  work  of  M. 
Gh-asset  is  seen  to  much  better  advantage:  the 
figure  of  France  in  it  losing  its  stiffness,  and 
becoming  much  more  youthful  and  graceful. 
But  this  amelioration  came  too  late  to  save  the 
stamp.  M.  Grasset's  drawing  has  been  reject- 
ed by  the  Ministry,  and  another  trial  is  to  be 
made. 

Lilies  and  morning-glories  and  passion- 
flowers, with  many  spring  flowers,  furnish 
forth  the  customary  Easter  output  of  colored 
booklets  and  cards  by  L.  Prang  Sl  Co.  They 
are  adapted  to  many  tastes  and  purses. 

The  recent  action  of  the  Congregation  at 
Oxford,  and  of  the  Senate  at  Cambridge,  in  re- 
gard to  granting  women  students  B.  A.  degrees, 
as  a  matter  of  fact  leaves  the  whole  question 
of  degrees  for  women  in  ttaiu  quo.  At  Cam- 
bridge there  was  no  opposition  to  the  resolu- 
tion providing  for  a  syndicate  to  inquire  into 
the  whole  subject,  the  opposition  liaving  gath- 
ered its  forces  to  defeat  the  'second  **  grace,** 
nominating  the  syndicate,  which  was  rejected 
by  only  186  votes  to  171,  and  this  on  the  score 
that  some  of  the  members  were  too  closely 
identifled  with  Girton  and  Newnham  Colleges. 
At  Oxford  a  more  reactionary  spirit  prevailed: 
the  various  resolutions  about  degrees,  diplo- 
mas, and  certiflcates  were  rejected  one  after 
another,  and  resolution  No.  5  (framed  by  the 
opponents  of  any  recognition  of  residence  or 
the  complete  course  of  study  for  women),  pro- 
viding for  a  diploma  for  any  and  every  exami- 
nation, was  lost  by  only  the  narrow  majority 
of  4  (140  to  136).  It  is  not  diiflcult  to  read  be- 
tween the  lines  of  resolutions,  debates,  and 
votes,  and  to  see  that  both  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge must,  in  the  near  future,  grant  their 
degrees  to  those  women  whom  they  have  in- 
structed, examined,  and  endorsed. 

It  is  annotmoed  that  the  '* Antigone"  of 


Sophocles  will  be  represented  at  Athens  this 
year,  during  the  celebration  of  the  Olympic 
Games.  It  will  be  performed  in  the  theatre  of 
Dionysoe,  at  the  foot  of  the  Acropolis,  where 
very  likely  it  may  have  been  heard  centuries 
ago.  A  committee,  composed  of  competent 
persons,  is  at  present  engaged  in  arranging  for 
the  music  of  the  play  and  the  mise  en  bc^€^  as 
well  as  in  putting  the  ruined  stage  and  amphi- 
theatre into  the  best  condition  possible  for  the 
representation.  The  tragedy  will  be  played  by 
amateurs,  students  and  composers. 

The  New  England  Historical  and  Otnea- 
logical  Register^  published  in  Boston  by  the 
Society  bearing  a  corresponding  name,  which 
was  incorporated  in  1845,  has  now  entered  upon 
its  fiftieth  volume.  Its  indispensableness  to 
all  who  engage  in  genealogical  research  is 
known  to  the  well  informed,  and  a  complete 
set  is  a  desideratum  for  every  public  library. 
Its  indexing  began  in  a  day  when  the  art  was 
ill  understood  and  littie  appreciated,  and  only 
within  the  past  half-dozen  years  has  it  been 
competent.  It  is  now  proposed  to  make  a  con- 
solidated index  to  the  whole  series,  *'  comprising 
subjects,  places,  and  persons,**  the  last  ar- 
ranged by  Christian  names  as  well  aa  by  sur- 
names. The  mere  compilation  will  cost  $3,000, 
but  the  Society  foresees  no  difficulty  in  raising 
the  funds  for  printing  if  the  preparation  is  se- 
cured. It  accordingly  invites  contributions  to 
the  sum  named  in  any  amount,  and  will  make 
a  beginning  when  $1,000  has  been  subscribed. 
Communications  and  oontributions  may  be  ad- 
dressed to  John  Ward  Dean,  editor  of  the  Ro- 
gister,  at  18  Somerset  Street,  Boston. 

—The  fine  edition  of  the  Works  of  Edgar  Allan 
Foe  (Chicago :  Stone  &  Kimball)  is  now  complete 
in  ten  volumes,  five  of  tales,  four  of  litmry 
criticism  and  miscellaneous  writings,  and  one 
of  poems.  Mr.  Woodberry*s  notes  on  the  criti- 
cisms supply  names  of  periodicals  in  which 
the  articles  appeared,  dates,  and  in  fact  all  the 
information  that  can  be  desired  by  the  most 
curious.  Longfellow's  letter,  exculpating  him- 
self from  the  charge  of  plagiarizing  Mother- 
welTs  ballad,  "Bonnie  George  Campbell,** 
shows  that  Foe  might  have  gathered  from  the 
New  England  poet  some  salutary  ideas  about 
his  own  specialty— taste  in  literary  composi- 
tion. With  the  notes  on  the  poems  a  complete 
variorum  is  printed  for  the  first  time,  the 
editors  having  thought  this  desirable,  "part- 
ly because  there  is  no  such  illustration  in  lite- 
rature of  the  elaboration  of  poetry  through 
long-continued  and  minute  verbal  processes, 
and  partiy  because  so  large  a  portion  of  the 
verse  written  by  Foe  perished  in  those  pro- 
cesses.** Mr.  Stedman's  introductions  to  these 
two  divisions  of  the  Works  are  as  interesting, 
thoughtful,  and  discriminating  as  is  that  to  the 
Tales.  For  the  preservation  of  Poe*s  critical 
writings  apart  from  those  which  deal  with 
what  it  is  art*8  function  to  express  and  the 
technique  of  expression,  he  gives  perhaps  the 
only  very  good  reason,  saying  that  though 
they  might  not  have  been  worth  much  if  pro- 
duced in  any  other  period,  "  in  consideration 
of  the  man  and  the  time— as  a  part  of  our 
literary  history— they  have  a  very  decided 
value.**  After  considering  the  nature  and 
quality  of  Foe*8  lyrical  genius  and  the  violent- 
ly diflferent  opinions  about  it  exjiressed  by 
authoritative  writers,  Mr.  Stedman  concludes 
definitely  that  "a  distinctive  melody  is  the 
element  in  Foe*s  verse  that  first  and  last  has 
told  on  every  class  of  readers— a  rhythmical 
effect  which,  be  it  of  much  or  little  worth,  was 
its  author's  own ;  and  to  add  even  one  constituent 
to  the  resources  of  an  art  is  what  few  succeed 


in  doing.**  The  bibliography  of  English  and 
foreign  editions  is  careful,  and  even  the  index 
has  not  been  slighted.  If  a  glimpse  of  the  edi- 
tion could  be  wafted  to  the  poet,  "within  the 
distant  Aidenn,**  the  perfection  of  its  make-up 
jnight  almost  persuade  him  to  forgive  the  un- 
flattering justice  of  some  of  the  comments  on 
his  life  and  works. 

—In  the  latest  Report  (180d-08)  of  the  Com- 
missioner of  Education,  which  has  just  beendis- 
tri  buted,  we  notice  some  special  features,  besides 
the  usual  elaborate  statistics  and  compilations. 
First  of  all,  the  whole  of  Part  II.,  covering  800 
pages,  is  devoted  to  "Education  and  the 
World's  Columbian  Exposition,**  under  which 
general  heading  are  given  programmes,  ad- 
dresses, papers,  and  notes  on  educational  mat- 
ters as  far  as  related  to  the  Exposition ;  fur- 
thermore, reports  and  comments  on  the  edu- 
cational  exhibits  and  topics  suggested  thereby, 
by  several  American  and  foreign  authorities. 
Among  the  latter,  Dr.  Emil  Hausknecht*8 
article  on  the  American  System  of  Educa. 
tion,  and  Prof.  A.  Riedler's  on  American 
Technological  Schools,  are  noteworthy  as 
productions  of  thoroughly  competent  and 
strikingly  impartial  observers.  Then,  the 
large  number  of  papers  read  by  eminent  li- 
brarians before  the  World's  Library  Congress 
are  here  gathered  into  a  valuable  set.  Prof. 
Hinsdale  of  Ann  Arbor  contributes  to  the 
Report  a  series  of  documents  relating  to 
earlier  American  educational  history,  deal- 
ing mainly  with  legislative  and  constitutional 
provisions— a  useful  compilation,  since  many 
of  the  documents  are  drawn  from  sources  not 
easily  accessible  to  students.  The  Commis- 
sioner has  also  incorporated  in  his  official  vol- 
umes the  now  famous  Report  of  the  "Com- 
mittee of  Ten,**  with  comments  thereon  by 
leading  educators  (vol.  iL,  chap.  2) ;  and,  con- 
sidering the  prominent  place  which  this  edu- 
cational olassio— f or  so  it  may  well  be  termed 
—assigns  to  the  study  of  geography,  it  seems 
appropriate  that  a  special  chapter  (voL  l., 
chap.  7)  has  been  devoted  to  recent  develop- 
ments in  the  teaching  of  tliat  subject  in  the 
principal  European  countries.  Finally,  a  com- 
plete subject- index  to  all  the  papers  read  be- 
fore the  National  Educational  Association 
since  its  flrst  organization  is  to  be  mentioned 
as  a  valuable  part  of  this  Government  publica- 
tion. 

—Gaston  Boisder  has  suffered  many  things 
at  the  hands  of  a  translator  of  his  '  Prome- 
nades Arch^ologiques :  Rome  et  Pomp^L*  The 
original  is  a  pleasant  book  enough,  made  up  of 
articles  contributed  to  the  Rsvus  des  Dtuw 
Mondes  between  1866  and  1876,  and  revised 
and  corrected  here  and  there  in  the  course  of 
the  three  or  four  editions  through  which  it  has 
passed  in  the  French.  In  spite  of  the  contra- 
dictions sure  to  attend  upon  such  a  plan  (for 
example,  the  excavations  of  the  temple  and 
house  of  Vesta  are  described  in  the  flrst  part 
of  the  chapter  on  the  Forum,  while  in  the  third 
we  are  told  that  the  excavations  have  not  yet 
progressed  so  far),  yet  the  book  has  a  charm 
of  its  own,  and,  without  professing  any  great 
depth,  it  is  still  both  useful  and  interesting  to 
the  general  reader.  In  particular,  the  chap- 
ters on  bhe  Catacombs,  on  Hadrian's  villa,  and 
on  Ostia  contain  matter  which  is  not  conve- 
nientiy  collected  anywhere  else  in  English.  A 
good  translation  would  therefore  have  been  wel- 
come. But  Mr.  D.  H.  Fisher*s  (under  the  titie 
of  *  Rome  and  Pompeii,'  New  York:  Putnams), 
in  its  stiffness  and  dearth  of  idiom,  reads  al- 
most  like  the  effort  of  a  schoolboy.    "  Tribune 


2T3 


Tlie   ligation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1605 


of  barangnes*'  (tribune  awe  harangues),  "aD 
iogeDioDB  machine  to  shorten  the  work  of 
plan- raising"  {une  machine  ing^ieuse  pour 
abriger  le  travail  de  la  lev4e  dee  plan^,  and 
**the  memorj  of  Caligula  is  not  less  lively 
{vivant)  on  the  Palatine**— such  things  are 
little  more  than  transliterations.  Delphic 
oracles  were  nothing  to  such  an  utterance  as 
"the  right  of  the  jolly  fullers  was  privileged 
to  amuse  the  people,"  while  Dionysius  and  the 
Dioscuri,  masquerading  under  their  French 
names  of  Denys  and  Dioscures,  awaken  the 
suspicion  that  Mr.  Foster  is  not  over- familiar 
with  ancient  literature.  This  suspicion  be- 
comes a  conviction  when  we  find  Aneyrae  for 
Aneyra^  virginie  for  Virginia  ;  and  ocuios  for 
oculie  in  Ovid^s  famous  verse— 

"  Inque  ooulla  fadniv  barbara  mater  hsbet.*' 

And  Scylla  for  Sylla  caps  the  climax— for  we 
are  willing  to  suppose  that  **  parson  **  is  a  mere 
misprint  for  "person"  in  the  description  of 
the  well-known  caricature  of  the  Crucifixion. 

— From  the  records  of  the  Roman  Inquisi- 
tion, preserved  in  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
supplemented  by  documents  in  the  Venetian 
archives,  Count  Ugo  Balsani  has  pot  together, 
clearly  and  instructiTely,  a  very  curious  and 
interesting  story  regarding  the  remains  of 
Fra  Paolo,  which  is  printed  in  the  Rendieonti 
delta  R.  Aecademia  dei  Lineei.  When  Sarpi 
died,  in  1622,  the  Signoria  proposed  to  honor 
him  with  magnificent  obsequies  and  a  monu- 
ment, but  his  Servite  brethren  preferred  to 
bury  him  secretly,  fearing,  in  view  of  some 
attempts  to  steal  the  body,  that  it  might  in  fu- 
ture be  exposed  to  indignities.  Its  place  of  in- 
terment was  forgotten  until,  at  the  end  of  a 
hundred  years,  in  1723,  it  was  discovered  and 
identified  in  the  course  of  some  repairs  to  the 
altar  of  Our  Lady  of  Sorrows  in  the  Servite 
convent.  Except  in  the  portion  of  the  head 
wounded  in  the  attempted  assassination  of 
Sarpi,  it  manifested  the  attribute  of  sancti- 
ty in  the  absence  of  decay,  and  popular  devo- 
tion was  not  slow  in  exhibiting  itself;  miracles 
speedily  began  to  multiply  as  cures  were 
sought  through  supplications  for  his  suffrage, 
and  votive  tablets  recording  them  were  hung 
up.  When  the  body  was  returned  to  its  coffin 
it  was  accompanied  with  a  parchment,  signed 
by  the  prior  and  brethren  of  the  convent,  at- 
testing its  identity  and  lauding  his  merits. 

—News  of  this  untoward  event  was  con- 
veyed to  Home,  where  the  Inquisition  and  the 
Servite  General  at  once  exerted  themselves  to 
neutralize  its  dangerous  tendencies.  The  Papal 
Nuncio,  the  Inquisitor  at  Venice,  and  the  Ser- 
vite Provincial,  Padre  BertoUi,  were  ordered 
to  use  every  infiuence  with  the  Signoria  to  put 
a  stop  to  these  uncanonical  proceedings,  and 
more  especially  to  have  the  body  transferred 
to  the  common  sepulture  of  the  brethren, 
where  its  identity  should  be  irrecoverably  lost. 
Active  correspondence  and  still  more  active  in- 
trigues were  set  on  foot,  which  were  partially 
successful.  The  Signoria  gave  the  Servites  to 
understand  that  the  miraculous  cures  must 
cease;  the  parchment  was  replaced  with  a  less 
laudatory  inscription  on  paper,  and  the  coffin 
was  securely  fastened  with  locks,  of  which  the 
keys  were  retained  by  the  authorities.  A 
woman  named  Gabrlelli,  who  bad  been  cured 
by  Sarpi's  intercession,  was  induced,  through 
her  Carmelite  confessor,  to  withdraw  a  votive 
tablet  which  she  had  suspended.  Politic  de- 
ference to  Rome  led  the  magiBtracy  to  yield 
thus  far,  but  it  steadfastly  refused  to  undergo 
the  humiliation  of  treating  with  indignity  the 


corpse  of  the  great  citizen  who  had  incurred 
the  undying  hostility  of  the  Curia  by  his  de- 
fence of  the  sovereignty  of  the  Republic.  In 
this  it  was  firm,  and,  when  the  Provincial  Ber- 
toUi made  himself  too  objectionable  by  his 
persistent  intrigues  to  effect  it,  he  received  a 
peremptory  order  to  leave  Venice.  In  com- 
municating this  to  his  General,  he  sought  to 
enhance  the  merits  of  his  persecution  by  the 
unhappy  device  of  forging  a  letter  of  condo- 
lence to  himself  from  the  secretary  of  the 
Supreme  TribunaL  A  rumor  of  this  got  out, 
the  Gk>vemment  arrested  him  in  Padua,  and, 
on  his  oonfedsing  the  forgery,  condemned  him 
to  five  years'  imprisonment  *'  in  uno  de'  quattro 
cameroti  all'  oscuro."  Venetian  dungeons 
were  not  salubrious;  he  was  released  after 
three  years,  broken  In  health  and  fortune,  to 
get  scanty  relief  from  the  Holy  See,  which  did 
not  care  at  the  moment  to  arouse  the  suscepti- 
bilities of  the  Republic. 


DODGE'S  «GUSTAVU8  ADOLPHUS.' 

Outiavus  Adolphua:  A  History  of  the  Art  of 
War  from  its  revival  after  the  Middle  Ages 
to  the  end  of  the  Spanish  Succesdon  War, 
*  with  a  detailed  account  of  the  Campaigns  of 
the  great  Swede,  and  of  the  most  famous 
Campaigns  of  Turenne,  Cond^  Eugene,  and 
Marlborough.     With    2S7    iUustrations    in 
charts,    plans   of   battle,  armor,  etc.     By 
Theodore  Ayrault  Dodge,  Bt- Lieut-Col.,  U. 
8.  A.,  retired,  etc.,  etc    [Great  Captains.] 
Boston:  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.    1885.    8vo, 
pp.  8CV4. 
Thx  *  Gnstavus  Adolphus '  is  the  fourth  in  the 
important  series  of   military  memoirs  from 
Colonel  Dodge's  pen.    Bach  has  been  a  wel- 
come contribution  to  military  history  in  Eng- 
lish  dress.    The  last  is  not  least  in  the  series, 
for  a  satisfactory  connected  treatment  of  the 
period  outlined  in  the  title-page  has  not  been 
easOy  within  reach   of   the  English  reader. 
Half  the  volume  is  devoted  to  Gustavus ;  and 
after  the  death  of  the  Swedish  King  in  the  bat- 
tle of  Lfitzen,  there  follows  a  briefer  narra- 
tive  of  the  remaining  campaigns  of  the  Thirty 
Years'  War  and  of  the  latter  half  of  the  seven- 
teenth and  the  first  decade  of  the  eighteenth 
century. 

It  is  more  or  less  an  arbitrary  selection 
which  limits  the  number  of  great  captains  to 
six.  Some  of  the  forgotten  names  of  all  ages 
may  be  quite  as  worthy  of  the  distinction  as 
Gustavus,  and  among  those  of  his  own  century 
who  are  made  subordinate  in  rank  to  Gustavus, 
it  is  fairly  debatable  whether  Turenne  and 
Marlborough  were  not  quite  as  great  generals 
as  the  Swede.  The  passion  for  classification  is 
a  universal  human  trait,  of  every  age  and 
clime.  The  sacred  numbers  were  known  before 
Pythagoras.  Trinities  are  found  in  every  de- 
partment of  nature.  We  group  things  in  sevens 
because  there  are  seven  days  in  the  week,  or  in 
dozens  or  half-dozens  on  the  pattern  of  the 
signs  of  the  zodiac  or  the  number  of  the  holy 
apostles.  There  is  something  of  sophism,  or  at 
least  of  question-begging,  in  every  such  selec 
tion  of  a  group. 

It  is  noticeable,  also,  that  each  of  the  select- 
ed half-dozen  is  a  sovereign  ruler,  except  Han- 
nibal; and  his  distant  separation  from  Car- 
thage made  his  case  very  like  that  of  an  inde- 
pendent prince  wag^g  war  on  his  own  account. 
This  means  more  than  at  first  meets  the  eye. 
Turenne's  greatness  was  in  spite  of  being  often 
thwarted  by  Mazarin  and  Louvois,  as  Marlbo- 
rough's  was  often  clipped  by  the  vetoes  of  the 
Dutch  Deputies.    The  King-General,  liM  Gus- 


tavus, or  Frederick,  or  Napoleon,  was  "The 
State"  in  Louis  the  Fourteenth's  sense,  and  his 
military  plans  ruled  the  State  policy  instead 
of  being  subordinated  to  it.  To  compare  Tu- 
renne to  Gustavus  in  any  satisfactory  way,  we 
must  make  full  allowance  for  this  subordina- 
tion to  the  civil  power,  and  estimate  his  ac- 
complishment with  careful  consideration  of  the 
limitations  on  his  power  and  his  means.  Did 
he  show  as  much  resource  and  ability  in  view 
of  these  limitations?  is  the  question.  The  prob- 
lem is  not  easy  to  solve,  but,  as  we  study  his 
action  and  his  thought,  his  executive  energy 
and  courage,  with  his  aims  and  ideas,  we  get 
to  feeling  that  Turenne  was  a  leader  one  would 
love  to  follow  with  an  enthusiastic  confidence 
to  the  full  as  great  as  could  be  felt  for  Gusta^ 
vus;  and  it  is  very  much  so  with  Marlborough 
alM>. 

Colonel  Dodge  is  of  the  opinion  that  Prince 
Eugene  has  been  belittled  by  English  writers 
in  his  association  with  Marlborough.  It  may 
be  so,  and  in  that  case  a  judicial  criticism  of 
the  actual  offenders  would  have  historical 
value.  To  carry  weight,  however,  the  criti- 
cism must  be  really  judicial.  The  Colonel 
says;/'  It  is  because  we  English-speaking  peo- 
ples slur  over  the  deeds  of  all  but  our  own 
heroes  that  we  are  wont  to  make  Marlborough 
the  only  General  of  his  day"  (p.  711),  and 
while  he  says  also  that  "all  nations  suffer 
from  want  of  perspective  in  gauging  their  own 
military  history,"  he  adds,  "but  we  Anglo- 
Saxons  are  almost  the  worst  offenders."  Our 
reading  of  military  history  does  not  bring  us 
to  the  conclusion  here  stated,  even  in  the  case 
used  as  an  illustration— that  of  Waterloo.  It 
would  seem,  rather,  that  whoever  reads  the 
French,  German,  and  English  histories,  al- 
though they  will  agree  that  there  is  a  good 
deal  of  human  nature  in  men  of  all  nations, 
will  also  conclude  that  there  is  no  specially 
bad  eminence  for  the  "Anglo-Saxon."  But 
that  discussion  would  take  us  too  far  afield. 
Colonel  Dodge's  remarks  are  apropos  of  his 
estimate  of  Marlborough's  strategy  in  march^ 
ing  from  the  Low  Countries  to  join  Eugene  on 
the  Danube  and  fight  the  battle  of  Blenheim. 
He  says: 

*'  It  is  quite  inaccurate  to  call  Marlborough's 
unopposed  march  an  unheard-of  enterprise. 
.  .  .  The  bald  fact  is  that  Marlborough 
marched  to  the  Danube  because,  as  all  the 
military  world  knew,  he  was  needed  there;  but 
he  does  not  even  appear  to  have  bad  any  im- 
mediate strategic  objective.  He  was  only,  like 
the  true  soldier  he  was,  marching  to  the  sound 
of  the  guns.  In  common  with  the  others,  he 
saw  that  the  allied  cause  could  be  best  helped 
on  the  Danube,  because  the  French  were  most 
seriously  threatening  this  section." 

This  extract  bristles  with  evidence  that,  in 
his  advocacy  of  Prince  Eugene,  the  author 
strangely  misjudges  Marlborough^s  strategy, 
and  "  suffers  from  want  of  perspective."  Histo- 
rians of  repute  do  not  generally  speak  of  Marl- 
borough's march  as  "an  unheard-of  enter- 
prise," but  they  call  it  a  very  brilliant  piece  of 
strategy,  which  proved  him  to  be  a  general  of 
the  larger  kind  and  not  merely  a  **  battle^  cap- 
tain." He  could  have  had  plenty  of  work 
nearer  his  camp.  In  the  Palatinate  and  in 
Alsace  he  could  have  found  enemies  for  the 
seeking;  but  he  chose  to  give  them  the  slip  and 
make  a  fiank  march  past  them,  half  across  Eu- 
rope,  to  reach  decisive  results  instead  of  par- 
tial ones. 

But  it  was  '*  unopposed  "  !'So  are  all  strate- 
gic marches  proper.  Was  Napoleon  opposed 
in  his  march  from  Boulogne  to  Ulm,  or  ov«r 
the  Alps  to  Marengo  f  The  strategy  in  ftBrmef 
essence  coneiets  in   the  wise  tranafar  «t  mk 


April  2,  1896] 


The  l^ation. 


373 


arm  J  **  onoppoied  *^  to  the  decftive  and  ad- 
vantageous terrain  of  battle  which  the  gene- 
ral hat  choeen  in  advance.  If  he  fonght  hii 
way  there,  it  would  lose  the  name  as  well  as 
the  character  of  a  strategic  movement.  As 
Jomini  well  states  the  principle:  **  D  est  un 
prindpe  essentiel  dont  il  ne  faut  jamais  s*6car- 
ter  ^  la  guerre:  c^est  de  marcher  au  point 
strat^gique  d^cisif  avant  de  combattre,  et  de 
n*engager  Taffaire  que  quand  on  est  parvenu  k 
s*en  rendre  maltre."  {Hist,  des  guerres  ds  la 
RH.^  U  III.,  ch.  X.). 

Again,  Marlborough  marched  **  because,  as 
all  the  military  world  knew,  he  was  needed 
tbco^":  he  saw  this  "in  common  with  the 
others.**  Then  why  did  not  the  others  meet 
him  on  the  way,  when  the  French  had  sixty 
thousand  men  along  the  Rhine  to  his  thirty 
thousand  t  It  is  rare  that  the  warmth  of  ad- 
vocacy so  blinds  an  author  that  he  contradicts 
what  he  has  said  on  the  preceding  page ;  but 
in  his  seal  to  belittle  Marlborough  CoL  Dodge 
has  done  this,  unless  the  French  were  not  in 
''  the  military  world.""    He  had  just  said : 

"  Becoming  aware  of  his  advance,  the  French 
Mtmed  to  lose  their  hsads  ;  they  grew  fearful 
for  their  Aliatian  fortresses,  particularly  Lan- 
dau, and  ouickly  concentrated  here  from  the 
Netherlands,  the  Moselle,  and  the  Middle 
Rhine  all  the  troops  of  Villeroi,  Ck>igny,  and 
Tallard,  nearly  sixty  thousand  In  the  aggre- 
gate, to  check  Marlborough,  icAose  inteidiom, 
they  could  not  divine,^ 

The  words  we  have  italicised  tell  the  story. 
BfarIborough*s  strategy  was  the  splendid  suc- 
cess **the  military  world  "  has  always  taken  it 
to  be,  and  he  marched  from  Coblentz  up  the 
Rhine  to  the  Neckar  and  thence  over  the 
watershed  into  the  Danube  valley  *'  unoppoe 
ed.*"  That  was  no  small  part  of  his  glory.  The 
victory  of  Blenheim  consummated  it. 

Col.  Dodge  knows  all  this  as  well  as  any- 
body, but  he  is  suffering  momentarily  from  the 
psychological  effects  of  warm  advocacy  of 
Eugene,  and  these  disturb  his  vision  as  to 
Marlborough.  This  becomes  still  more  plain 
if  we  compare  his  treatment  of  the  two  gene- 
rals in  their  respective  campaigns  of  1706.  The 
outline  of  Bugane's  campaign  was  this:  He 
was  ordered  to  Italy  with  $%,000  men,  to  co- 
operate with  the  Duke  of  Savoy,  who  was  with 
diCQculty  holding  the  French,  under  Blarshal 
Venddme,  at  bay  at  Turin.  The  latter  had  a 
large  army  scattered  in  garrisons,  so  that  he 
took  the  field  against  Eugene  with  inferior 
numbers,  often  with  less  than  half.  He  blocked 
the  way  against  Eugene  on  the  west  side  of 
Lake  Oarda,  between  the  mountains  and  the 
lake,  and  held  him  there  for  a  month.  Leaving 
a  subordinate  in  command,  Venddme  went 
about  other  business.  Eugene  turns  the  left 
of  the  forces  in  his  front,  and  marches  to 
Brescia  and  on  to  Romanengo.  This  brought 
Vend6me  back,  who  stopped  Eugene*s  progress. 
The  latter  did  not  offer  battle,  but  resorted  to 
mancBuvring.  Venddme  out-mancsuvred  him, 
checking  him  at  every  turn.  On  the  10th  of 
August  Eugene  stole  away  by  a  night  march, 
hoping  to  cross  the  upper  Adda  and  approach 
Turin  that  way.  Venddme  overtook  him  and 
again  barred  the  way  with  9,000  men.  Eugene 
stole  back,  hoping  to  crush  a  detachment  Ven- 
ddme had  left  at  Cassano,  but  the  latter  foiled 
him  again  and  faced  him  in  a  position  diflloult 
of  approach.  Eugene  attacked  with  more 
than  double  numbers,  but  was  repulsed  and 
himself  wounded  in  a  bloody  combat.  For 
two  months  now  the  armies  remained  face  to 
face,  when  Eugene  tried  another  flank  marcli, 
was  again  checked,  and  Venddme  captured 
Soadno  and  its  garrison  under  his  nose.    The 


Prince  now  gave  it  up,  and  early  in  November 
started  for  winter  quarters  near  Mantua.  Ven- 
ddme again  headed  him,  and  forced  him  back 
to  the  west  side  of  Lake  Qarda  where  he  be- 
gan in  the  spring. 

Col.  Dodgers  comments  on  this  are  all  apolo- 
getic. He  concludes  that  "Eugene  had  done 
well  for  the  Duke  of  Savoy.  He  had  kept  Ven- 
ddme so  busy  that  he  could  not  besiege  Turin; 
and  while  he  had  not  been  able  to  join  his  ally, 
he  had  accomplished  the  spirit  of  his  task  if 
not  the  letter."' 

Let  us  turn  now  to  Marlborough's  campaign 
of  the  same  season  in  the  Netherlands.  By  the 
plan  agreed  upon  among  the  allies,  Marlbo- 
rough and  the  Prince  of  Baden  were  to  have 
operated  together  from  the  line  of  the  Moselle 
and  Saar.  The  forces,  by  the  fault  of  the  (Gov- 
ernments, were  not  forthcoming  by  midsum- 
mer, and  Marlborough  was  called  back  to  m^ 
a  vigorous  advance  of  the  French  army  under 
Villeroi,  who  had  brilliantly  taken  the  initia- 
tive there,  capturing  Huy  by  assault  and  be- 
sieging the  citadel  of  Li^e.  On  his  approach 
the  French  raised  the  siege  and  withdrew 
within  the  *entrenched  lines  of  the  M^haigne, 
which,  according  to  the  theories  of  those  days, 
were  regarded  as  nearly  impregnable.  Marlbo- 
rough manoeuvred  to  midead  Villeroi  as  to 
his  point  of  attack,  succeeded,  and  carried  the 
lines  by  a  brilliant  assault  at  L6au.  The  French 
fell  back  behind  the  River  Dyle.  Marlborough 
planned  an  attack  there,  and  opened  with  pre- 
liminary success,  when  the  Dutch  commanders 
flatly  refused  to  go  on.  He  mancBuvred  Villeroi 
back  to  Waterloo,  and  had  issued  his  orders 
for  attack  when  the  Dutch  Deputies  interposed 
their  veto. 

Nothing  can  be  plainer  than  that  Marl- 
borough was  master  of  the  situation,  and  per- 
formed beyond  criticism  everything  devolv- 
ing upon  a  general,  but  was  thwarted  by 
the  civil  authorities,  who  ht d  a  veto  upon  his 
operations.  But  how  does  his  treatment  by 
our  author  compare  with  that  of  Eugene?  It 
must  be  said  that  it  is  studied  depreciation. 
We  are  told : 

"  This  campaign  must  be  pronounced  a  fail- 
ure.  Though  it  is  true  that  the  Duke  was  not 
to  blame  for  his  lack  of  support,  and  had  many 
things  to  contend  against,  yet  these  are  the 
same  conditions  which  neutralised  the  best 
efforts  of  many  another  general  of  his  era. 
And  though,  as  is  so  often  asserted,  it  is  true 
that  Biarlborough  never  lost  a  battle  or  failed 
to  take  a  place  he  laid  siege  to,  it  is  also 
true  that,  from  one  or  another  cause,  he  con- 
ducted as  many  barren  campaigns  as  any  of 
the  other  generals  whom  we  place  in  the  same 
rank  with  himself." 

This  is  not  judicial.  Contrasted  with  the 
apologies  for  Eugene's  campaign  of  the  same 
year,  the  bias  is  too  evident.  It  is  intimated, 
but  not  asserted,  that  this  was  a  *^  barren 
campaign "  from  some  lack  of  generalship  on 
Marlborough's  part.  Nothing  could  well  be 
further  from  the  fact.  There  is  also  a  strong 
suggestion  without  assertion  that  the  lack  of 
support  from  the  civil  authorities  was  a  more 
or  less  doubtful  apology  for  deficiencies  of  his 
own.  The  detailed  evidence  in  the  Englith 
authorities  would  make  it  impossible  for  any 
intelligent  critic  to  assert  this  openly.  Every 
military  student  has  a  warm  side  for  Prince 
Eugene,  but  it  is  doing  him  an  ill  service  to 
seek  to  make  him  Marlborough's  equal  by 
pooh  poohing  the  latter's  generalship. 

We  have  commented  on  what  is  almcst  the 
only  blemish  in  a  large  book,  full  of  most 
interesting  and  clear  narrative  of  military 
campaigns.  The  task  Col.  Dodge  has  already 
aooomplished  in  his  foor  fine  volnmee  might 


well  be  a  life-work  for  an  industrious  man. 
The  present  one  is  an  advance  upon  earlier 
ones  in  the  system  of  map  illustration.  A  ge- 
neral chart  of  central  Europe  is  folded  at  the 
back  of  the  book,  while  outline  sketch  maps  of 
each  campaign  are  found  In  the  text,  with  still 
more  detailed  plans  of  battles  numerously  in- 
terspersed. These  are  uniform  in  style  and 
artistically  neat,  adding  very  greatly  to  the 
ease  and  comfort  with  which  the  reader' fol- 
lows the  chain  of  events. 

When  so  much  valuable  material  is  given,  it 
is  almost  ungracious  to  criticise  the  composi- 
tion, and  yet  there  is  an  impression  of  haste,  if 
not  of  occasional  carelessness,  which  detracts  a 
little  from  the  weight  the  book  should  have. 
In  these  days  of  stenographers  and  type- writ- 
ers revision  is  necessary  to  prevent  the  impres- 
sion that  rapid  composition  may  mean  ill- con- 
sidered  substance.  It  is  a  little  startling  to 
find  an  event  located  **  way  beyond  the  Isar." 
The  use  of  the  singular  form  **  victual "  instead 
of  '*  victuals"  is  plainly  intentional,  but  does 
not  seem  an  im{»^vement  on  the  established 
usage.  **To  ooUect  victual,"  **hard  up  for 
victuai,"  *'  depdts  of  victual,"  are  phrases  that 
jar  on  the  ear.  For  a  general  term«  **  food "  is 
ready  for  use,  with  its  half-donn  synonyms  in 
single  words  or  phrases. 


GERMAN  AND  ENGLISH  COMMERCE  IN 
ELIZABETH'S  TIME. 

Hamburg  und  England  im  ZeitaUer  der 
Koenigin  Elisabeth,  Von  Dr.  Richard 
Ehrenberg.  Jena:  Gustav  Fischer.  1896. 
8vo,  pp.  vHi,  d83. 
Tbib  learned  monograph,  while  addressed  to 
specialists,  contains  much  to  interest  the  gene- 
ral public.  The  body  of  it  gives  a  detailed  ac- 
count of  the  devious  methods  by  which  the 
city  of  Hamburg,  in  the  second  half  of  tho 
sixteenth  century,  endeavored  to  secure  the 
benefits  of  trade  with  England  while  avoiding 
an  open  breach  with  the  other  cities  of  the 
Hanseatic  League,  which  were,  at  the  same 
time,  engaged  in  a  bitter  struggle  with  the 
English  (Government.  The  Introduction  con- 
sists of  a  graphic  recital  of  the  various  causes 
which  enabled  England  to  wrest  the  supremacy 
of  commerce  from  Germany,  the  most  impor- 
tant  of  these  causes  being  the  energy  and 
boldness  of  English  statesmen,  combined  with 
the  lack  of  unity  among  the  Germans. 

The  commercial  ascendancy  which  England 
has  enjoyed  for  now  more  than  three  centuries 
is  so  familiar  a  fact  that  most  people  will 
learn  with  surprise  that  at  the  beginning  of 
the  modem  era  (^rmany  surpassed  England 
not  only  in  culture,  but  also  in  population,  in 
wealth,  and  in  commerce.  The  reports  of  the 
Venetian  ambassadors— the  principal  authori- 
ty for  the  period— are  unanimous  in  stating 
that  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  the 
population  of  Germany  was  twice  as  dense  as 
that  of  England.  The  population  of  England 
and  Wales  was  estimated  at  two  millions  and 
a  half,  which  would  make  iU  density  about 
equal  to  that  of  European  Russia  of  to-day, 
not  including  Poland  and  Finland.  In  the 
matter  of  cash  capital  Germany  was  in  liko 
manner  superior.  The  richest  English  mer- 
chants were  estimated  to  be  worth  from  9350,- 
000  to  1300,000,  while  (German  firms  posse»ing 
that  amount  were  considered  as  being  in  the 
second  rank.  As  far  back  as  1546  the  great 
German  house  of  the  Fuggers  possessed  a  for- 
tune of  more  than  four  millions  of  dollars,  as 
appears  from  thair  account- books,  still  in 
existence.    Up  to  tba  outbreak  of  the  tronblee 


Q74= 


The   ISration. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1605 


in  the  Netherlands,  the  English  Crown  had  to 
place  itB  loans  in  Antwerp,  there  not  being 
wealth  enough  in  England.  The  (German 
merchants,  on  the  other  liand,  controlled  so 
much  surplus  capital  that  for  a  long  course  of 
years  they  supplied  the  sinews  of  war  not  only 
to  their  own  Emperor  but  to  his  enemies,  the 
kings  of  France,  as  well  as  to  most  of  the  Eu- 
ropean potentates,  including  tiie  rulers  of 
England. 

The  standard  of  living  was  much  higher  in 
(Germany  than  in  England,  and  there  was 
greater  luxury  in  dress  and  more  comfort  in 
habitation.  In  agriculture,  too,  Germany  was 
more  advanced ;  the  only  agricultural  indus- 
try in  which  England  excelled  was  sheep- 
raising,  and  that  was  promoted  by  an  ex. 
tensive  enclosure  of  commons  accompanied  by 
wholesale  evictions  of  farmers.  Still  greater 
was  the  preponderance  of  Germany  in  mining. 
Henry  VIII.  made  repeated  attempts  to  induce 
German  operators  to  come  to  England  and  de* 
velop  its  mineral  wealth.  It  was  not  till  the 
time  of  Elizabeth  that  these  efforts  resulted  in 
the  formation  of  a  company  of  Augsburg 
merchants  with  whom  were  associated  a  num- 
ber of  English  capitalists  headed  by  two  of 
Elizabeth's  greatest  statesmen,  William  Cecil 
and  Lord  Leicester.  It  was  from  the  imported 
German  mechanics  that  the  EugUsh  learned 
how  to  conduct  the  iron  industry  profitably. 
In  1528  a  German  merchant  was  appointed  by 
the  King  as  ''principal  surveyor  and  master 
of  all  mines  in  England  and  Ireland.**  In 
1560  Thomas  Gresham  induced  an  association 
of  German  merchants  to  undertake  the  urgent- 
ly  needed  reform  of  the  English  coinage. 

Germany  was,  at  that  time,  in  as  great  a  de- 
gree as  England  is  to-day,  the  land  of  ma- 
chines and  inventions.  John  Owen,  an  Eng- 
lish Latin  poet,  published  epigrams  in  1612  in 
which  he  satirized  the  Germans  as  being  high- 
ly skilled  in  pursuits  and  inventions  which  re. 
quired  manual  expertness  rather  than  in  such 
as  called  for  acuteness  of  intellect.  This  calum- 
ny elicited  a  refutation  from  a  German  doctor, 
who  extolled  the  power  and  wealth  of  GYerma- 
ny,  and  instanced  as  German  inventions  of  a 
higher  character  the  Roman  Empire,  gun- 
powder, the  art  of  printing,  the  reform  of  re- 
ligion, the  medicines  of  Theophrastus  Para- 
celsus, and  the  mysteries  of  the  Rosicrudans. 

Among  the  many  branches  of  manufacture 
in  which  Germany  surpassed  England  was  the 
cotton  industry,  which  did  not  exist  at  all  in 
England  down  to  the  time  of  Elizabeth.  What 
were  known  as  cotton  goods  were  really  light- 
weight woollens.  Cotton  goods  were  largely 
exported  from  G^ermany  to  England,  and  it 
was  at  a  later  period  that  they  were  imitated 
at  Bolton  and  Manchester  and  were  long 
known  under  the  name  of  fustians.  It  is  true 
that  England  did  a  large  export  business  in 
woollen  goods;  but  English  cloths  and  kerseys 
were  only  partly  finished  products,  and  had  to 
be  finished  and  dyed  abroad,  in  spite  of  the 
great  efforts  made  by  the  Government  to  foster 
the  industry.  From  statistics  prepared  for  Sir 
William  Cecil  it  appears  that  in  the  year  1564- 
65  the  total  exports  from  England  amounted 
to  less  than  £1,100,000,  of  which  more  than 
four.fifths  consisted  of  woollen  cloths.  Gei^ 
man  exports  were  much  more  varied.  The 
most  important  class  was  that  of  metals  and 
metal  goods,  especially  copper,  brass,  and 
brass  wire,  iron  and  steel,  together  with  a 
great  variety  of  tools  and  implements.  With- 
out going  too  far  into  particulars,  it  will  suffice 
to  say  that  down  to  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century  Germany  was  far  ahead  of  England 
along   the    whole  line  of  economic  develop- 


ment Further,  such  trade  as  England  bad 
was  to  a  great  extent  in  the  hands  of  foreign- 
ers; that  Is  to  say,  foreigners  did  forty- two  per 
cent,  of  the  doth  export,  flf ty.four  per  cent  of 
the  export  of  skins,  twenty-two  per  cent,  of  the 
importation  of  winea,  etc.  The  only  branch 
entirely  in  English  hands  was  the  export  of 
wool. 

That  England  succeeded  in  wresting  the  su- 
premacy from  Germany  Dr.  Ehrenberg  oonsi. 
ders  prindpally  due  to  three  oanses:  (1)  the  en- 
ergetic and  skilful  activity  of  the  English  Gk>v- 
emment;  (2)  the  growing  technical  and  com^ 
merdal  capadty  of  the  English  people;  (8)  the 
geographical  situation  of  England;  but  by  far 
the  most  potent  of  these  was  the  first.  Gler- 
many,  on  the  other  hand,  owed  everything 
0)  to  its  great  natural  advantages,  and  (3)  to 
the  industry  and  dexterity  of  the  middle  class 
of  •the  population.  During  the  middle  ages 
the  kings  and  princes  of  Europe  sacrificed 
the  material  welfare  of  their  subjects  in 
their  struggles  for  political  power;  the 
dties  strove  for  greater  liberties  and  be- 
came the  refuge  of  industry  and  commerce. 
If  the  cities  of  Germany  w«re  more  suocessful 
in  this  endeavor  than  thoee  of  England,  it  was 
because  the  German  dtiaen  had  reached  a 
higlier  stage  of  culture,  and  partly  because 
the  princes  of  Germany  were  even  more  inca- 
pable than  the  kings  of  England  of  pursuing 
a  wise  commercial  policy.  It  Is  to  the  free 
German  dties  and  their  union  in  the  Hanseatic 
League  that  the  conunerdal  preponderance  of 
Germany  must  be  ascribed. 

The  accession  of  the  house  of  Tudor  at  the 
doee  of  the  long  wars  of  the  Roses  marked  the 
turning  point.  The  Tndors  did  so  much  for 
England  because  their  policy  was  dictated  by 
the  wishes  and  interests  of  the  nation,  which 
recognised  them  as  its  bom  leaders  and  revered 
them  with  sentiments  which  are  but  imperfect- 
ly expressed  by  the  word  "loyalty."  The 
power  of  the  Crown  reached  its  highest  point. 
Its  financial  position  was  strengthened  by  its 
confiscation  of  church  property,  and,  later  on, 
by  the  readiness  of  the  dty  of  London  to  gua- 
rantee the  loans  which  the  Government  placed 
among  capitalists  abroad.  In  their  foreign 
policy  the  Tudors  did  not  aim,  like  their  prede- 
cessors and  the  princes  of  the  Continent,  at 
increase  of  territory  and  population,  but 
rather  attempted  to  procure  advantageous 
treaties  for  the  trade  and  industry  of  their 
people.  Through  long-continued  and  bitterly 
waged  struggles  with  the  protectionists  of  the 
Netherlands,  they  secured  for  English  doths 
the  world-market  of  Antwerp.  While  in  the 
middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  England  ex. 
ported  mostly  coarse  doths  and  imported  the 
finer  grades  from  the  Netherlands,  and  shipped 
its  surplus  stock  of  wool  there  to  be  worked  up, 
the  situation  was  completely  reversed  by  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth  century.  England  still 
got  a  few  coarse  cloths  from  the  Continent,  but 
exported  immensely  of  the  finer  sorts,  and  re- 
quired  so  much  wool  for  its  manufacturing  that 
it  had  to  import  quantities  of  it  from  abroad. 

It  would  lead  us  too  far  to  follow  the  author 
in  his  exposition  of  the  unfailing  vigilance  be- 
stowed by  the  Tudor  "dtizen  kings"  on  the 
commercial  progress  of  their  subjects.  He 
points  out,  among  many  other  things,  as  illus- 
trating the  infiuence  of  merchants  in  the  gov- 
ernment, that  Thomas  Cromwell,  Prime  Min^ 
ister  under  Henry  VIIL,  was  in  his  youth  a 
merchant,  while  Sir  Thomas  Gresham,  Cecil's 
right  hand,  was  a  merchant  all  his  life.    Con- 

I  coming  the  important  Ghiild  of  the  Merchant 
Adventurers  there  are  many  interesting  de- 
tails.   Some  of  their  regulations  still  survive 


in  commercial  usages  of  the  present  day,  in 
theoonstitutions  of  trades-unions,  in  the  rules 
of  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange.  Readers 
interested  in  such  inquiries  will  derive  much 
profit  from  Dr.  Ehrenberg's  book;  such  as  do 
not  know  German  will  find  them  treated  in 
Professor  Ashley's  *  Introduction  to  English 
Economic  History  and  Theory.' 


THE  EINGPS  PEACE. 

The  KingU  Pl§aee:  An  Historical  Sketch  of  the 
English  Law  Courts.  By  F.  A.  Inderwick. 
[Social  England  Series,  edited  by  Kenelra  D. 
Cotes.]    MaomiUan  &  Co.    1805. 

Thx  history  of  the  English  law  courts,  begin- 
ning with  the  Cfuria  Regis  and  ending  with  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Judicature,  covers  a  period 
of  eight  centuries.  Notwithstanding  all  the 
researches  of  scholars,  our  notions  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  procedure  are  mainly  con  jecturaL  As 
Mr.  Inderwick  says:  "If  A  owedB  fifty  pence, 
a  trustworthy  acoount  of  the  precise  course  of 
procedure  to  be  adopted  by  B  to  recover  his 
money  cannot  be  given."  Anglo-Saxon  law 
was  mainly  unwritten  and  customary  law,  ad- 
ministered by  ecdesiastics,  and  when  we  speak 
to  day  of  the  common  law  being  unwritten,  it 
is  because  there  once  was  a  period  when  the 
great  body  of  it  rested  in  oral  tradition  handed 
down  from  father  to  son.  This  fact  may  ex- 
plain, in  part  at  least,  the  divergence  between 
what  Mr.  Inderwick  calls  the  lawyer^  view  of 
the  English  courts  and  that  of  "the  philoso- 
phers," or,  in  other  words,  of  the  modem  stu- 
dents of  the  Anglo-Saxon  period.  The  lawyenP 
view— that  taken  by  Coke  and  the  fathers  of 
our  system— is  usually  summed  up  in  the  phrase 
that  the  King  is  "  the  fountain  of  justice."  The 
philosophers,  on  the  other  hand  (or  some  of 
them),  insist  that  he  was  merdy  an  overlord, 
whose  decrees  might  be  overridden  by  the 
freemen  of  the  county  court.  Now,  whatever 
view  may  be  held  as  to  the  podtion  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  kings,  the  important  question 
for  us  is  what  was  the  podtion  of  the  King 
after  the  Norman  conquest ;  and  that  he  then 
became  the  source  from  which  justice  fiowed, 
is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  courts  were 
established  by  him.  Every  single  important 
court  of  original  jurisdiction  of  which  we  have 
any  accurate  knowledge,  from  that  of  the 
chancellor  to  that  of  the  justice  of  the  peace, 
is  of  royal  origin.  The  courts  which  became 
established  throughout  England  after  the  Con- 
quest were  the  King's  courts.  The  peace  which 
they  established  was  the  Sling's  peace,  and  in 
process  of  time  these  courts  supplanted  the 
old  gemotes  of  the  Saxons. 

On  the  other  hand,  justice  is  older  even  than 
the  Conquest,  and  unquestionably  the  new 
courts  introduced  and  developed  by  William 
and  his  successors  took  many  of  the  principles 
of  justice  as  established  locally  throughout 
England  and  administered  them.  In  other 
words,  the  Norman  King  introduced  a  new 
judicial  machinery,  but  not  new  prindples  of 
conmion  right;  the  ancient  common  law  of 
Alfred  survived  and  was  perpetuated  by  the 
very  machinery  which  was  destined  to  blot  out 
that  of  the  Saxon  courts.  That  the  King  was  in 
the  habit  of  allowing  his  decrees  to  be  ovorid- 
den  by  the  freemen  of  the  county  court  seems 
very  unlikely ;  but  that  the  King,  dtting  as  a 
judge  at  Westminster,  might  lay  down  a  rule 
for  the  disposition  of  a  matter  of  private  right, 
while  at  the  distance  of  a  day's  journey  a  local 
custom  might  prescribe  the  exact  oppodts^  It 
not  only  highly  probable,  but  entirely  in  aoooMl 
with  everything  that  we  know  aboat  €«riikl^ 


April  2,  1896] 


Tlie   [N'atioii. 


975 


jnrispmdeiioe.  The  rtrj  notion  of  nniform 
law  oT€r  a  wide  extant  of  territory  was  a  no- 
Telty,  and  it  is  in  great  measure  to  the  Nor- 
man kings  that  we  owe  it.  This  view  of  the 
matter  seems  to  be  borne  out  by  the  recent  re-' 
searches  of  Messrs.  Pollock  and  Maitland.  Mr. 
Inderwiok  treats  the  point  as  still  open,  but 
says  thaty  for  himself,  he  holds  to  the  view  of 
the  lawyers. 

The  discussion  of  this  point  suggests  another 
which  writers  on  the  history  of  the  law  fre- 
quently overlook,  and  that  is  that  at  no  time 
during  the  whole  800  years  has  the  law  been  a 
reasooedbodyof  Jurisprudeooe.  If  we  take  the 
law  of  any  century  as  a  test- eyen  that  of  our 
own— we  diall  find  that,  side  by  side  with  prin- 
ciples based  on  reason  and  utility,  are  rules 
which  owe  their  origin  to  custom,  to  supersti- 
tion, and  to  accident,  to  say  nothing  of  others, 
imbedded  in  the  law  for  centuries,  the  expla- 
nation of  the  meaning  of  which  has  been  com- 
pletely lost  in  the  lapse  of  time.  When  we 
hear  that  one  T.,  tried  for  and  acquitted  of  the 
murder  of  Mary  A.,  has  an  appeal  of  battle 
brought  against  him  by  the  girPs  brother  in 
the  King's  Bench,  and  that  all  the  judges  or- 
der a  battle  to  be  fought  in  their  presence, 
but  that,  the  appellant  crying  craven,  judg- 
ment is  again  given  in  favor  of  T.,  we  are  car- 
ried  back  to  the  days  of  Ashby  de  la  Zouche 
and  Richard  L ;  but  all  this  actually  h^pened 
in  1818,  and  it  was  when  George  III.  was  King 
that  the  aid  of  Parliament  had  to  be  invoked 
to  change  the  law.  Even  to-day  the  imputa- 
tion of  unchastity  to  a  woman  will  not,  by  the 
common  law,  sustain  an  action  of  slander,  and 
judges  are  constrained  to  enforce  the  rule  while 
deploring  its  existence,  and  confessing  them- 
selves unable  to  explain  its  introduction.  Vice- 
versa,  in  the  most  primitive  period  we  are  con- 
tinually coming  across  proof  that  our  ancestors 
applied  rational  rules  just  as  we  do,  though 
side  by  side  with  them  we  find  practices  and 
customs  founded  upon  the  grossest  superstition. 
At  p.  19  Mr.  Inderwick  gives  some  examples  of 
ancient  oaths  in  civil  cases.  In  an  action  for 
what  we  should  call  breach  of  warranty  of  the 
soundness  of  a  horse,  the  plaintiff  swears,  "  In 
the  name  of  Almighty  Ood,  thou  didst  engage 
to  me  sound  and  clean  that  which  thou  Boldest 
to  me,  and  full  security  against  afterolaims  on 
the  witness  of  N.,  who  was  then  with  us  two.** 
N.  then  makes  oath  to  the  fact  for  which  he  is 
called  to  vouch.  Nothing  could  be  more  modem 
or  rational  than  this ;  it  is  exactly  the  kind  of 
proof  that  we  should  ourselves  resort  to  if  the 
art  of  writing  were  suddenly  lost.  Tet  with 
our  ancestors  and  their  judges  this  was  merely 
one  kind  of  proof.  Another,  equally  good,  in 
criminal  casss,  was  the  oath  of  the  accused, 
supported  by  that  of  his  friends  that  they  be- 
lieved his  oath;  another  the  ordeal  by  water, 
the  probative  effect  of  sinking  being  to  estab- 
lish innoeenoe-^f  floating,  guilt  (p.  21).  Facts 
like  these  perpetually  warn  us  against  assum- 
ing that  logical  analysis  has  ever  explained  or 
will  ever  Anally  explain  the  law  as  a  whole. 

Mr.  Inderwick*s  volume  brings  out  in  an  in- 
teresting way  the  contintdty  of  judicial  admi- 
nistration  in  England  from  the  time  of  the 
Confessor,  and  the  strictly  professional  charac- 
ter (rf  the  bar,  historically.  The  serjeant,  for 
instance,  was  the  King's  servant- at-law,  as  as- 
sistant of  the  Court  in  the  administration  of 
justioty  owing  duty  at  once  to  the  client  and 
to  the  judge.  This  fact,  which  is  the  key  to 
many  of  the  riddles  of  professional  ethics,  is  a 
sufficient  answer  to  Lord  Brougham's  remark- 
able rhodomootade  on  the  subject  of  its  being 
the  first  duty  of  a  lawyer  to  forget  every  obli- 
gation in  the  world  except  that  to  his  client. 


The  andent  professional  character  of  the  bar 
is  at  the  bottom  of  the  old  and  sound  rule  for- 
bidding lawyers  to  take  oases  on  oontingent 
fees,  and  not  to  solicit  employment— rules  en- 
tirely broken  down  in  this  community,  to  its 
own  great  loss. 

A  history  of  the  English  courts  brings  up  so 
many  interesting  points  that  it  is  impossible  in 
a  brief  notice  to  do  justice  to  a  volume  like 
Mr.  Inderwick's.  *  The  King's  Peace 'U  not  Ute- 
rally  an  alternative  title,  because  one  or  two 
ecclesiastical  jurisdictions  are  included,  while 
on  the  other  hand  the  very  important  appellate 
jurisdiction  of  the  House  of  Lords  is  not  treat- 
ed at  all.  A  chapter  on  the  obsolete  Courts  of 
the  Forest  possesses  much  curious  interest,  and 
the  subject  of  judicial  costume  furnishes  a 
topic  for  several  pages,  which,  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  we  have  begun  to  go  back  to  costume, 
even  at  the  comer  of  Eighteenth  Street  and 
Fifth  Avenue,  is  worth  the  attention  of  attor- 
neys and  counsellors.  How  many  people  are 
aware,  one  wonders,  that  the  professional  cos- 
tume of  England  tcMlay  includes  the  '*  bands 
of  the  Commonwealth"  and  the  head-dress  of 
the  Restoration,  which  have  no  more  to  do 
with  the  traditional  legal  costume  than  the 
ruffs  of  Elisabeth  or  the  lace  collars  of  Charles 
L  (p.  205)— or  that,  by  a  vtaj  perversity  of  con- 
servatism, the  head-drees  now  the  characteris- 
tic of  the  advocate  and  the  judge  was  in  the 
seventeenth  century  worn  alike  by  kings  and 
courtiers,  by  clergymen  and  by  soldiers,  by 
Jeffreys  on  the  bench  and  by  Titus  Oates  in  the 
dock  f  In  conclusion  it  may  afford  some  con- 
eolation  to  the  professional  reader  to  know 
that,  bad  as  legal  business  is  to-day,  it  was  so 
far  worse  in  the  time  of  Edward  VL  that 
Westminster  Hall  was  in  part  converted  into  a 
market;  while  during  the  reign  of  Mary  the 
Common  Pleas  had  but  one  serjeant  an(l  the 
Queen's  Bench  but  one  counsellor— a  desMtion 
of  the  courts  which  is  said  to  have  been  due  to 
the  same  causes  which  led  to  the  remarkable 
spectacle  of  learned  gentlemen  appearing  in 
court  to  argue,  it  may  be,  some  such  matter  as 
a  demurrer  or  a  plea  in  bar,  in  plate  armoi^ 
a  costume  sternly  indicative  of  the  underlying 
principle  that  the  King's  peace  must  be  pre- 
served, even  if  it  had  to  be  fought  for. 


Greenland  /oi{/leld«  and  Life  in  the  North  At- 
lantic ;  with  a  new  discussion  of  the  causes 
of  the  Ice  Age.  By  O.  Frederick  Wright 
and  Warren  Upham.  Appletons.  1896.  8vo, 
pp.xvi,  407.    niustrated. 

Handbook  of  Aretie  DiMcoverie*.  By  A.  W. 
Greely.  [Columbian  Knowledge  Series  No. 
8.]  Boston  :  Roberts  Brothers.  1896.  Small 
8vo,  pp.  X,  267, 11  maps,  1  portrait. 

Thb  larger  of  these  two  volumes,  *  Greenland 
Icefields,'  contains  material  of  three  kinds, 
which  may  be  respectively  summarised  as  a 
description,  physical  and  geographic,  of  Green- 
land  and  its  surroundings ;  an  account  of  the 
Esquimaux ;  and  contributions  to  the  founda- 
tions and  theory  of  glacial  geology.  To  the 
first  belong  chapters  L- v.  and  viL-ix. ;  chapter  x. 
is  devoted  to  the  Greenland  Esquimaux,  who 
are  curiously  designated  as  of  the  "  North  At- 
lantic," an  ocean  few  of  them  have  ever  set 
eyes  upon ;  the  remainder  of  the  work  is  00- 
cupled  with  gladal  theories  and  geology.  The 
account  of  Greenland  is  of  course  far  inferior 
to  that  which  has  been  given  by  Rink,  whose 
*  Greenland*  is  copiously  drawn  upon  for 
data ;  yet,  as  a  popular  account,  it  is  sufficient- 
ly full  and  accurate  to  convey  a  tolerably  sa. 
tisfaotory  idea  of  the  country  and  its  oondi> 


Uons.  This  has  been  frequently  done  before, 
and  the  present  account  presents  nothing 
novel  in  the  way  of  treatment,  but  indudee  a 
number  of  good  **procees'*  pictures.  The 
chapter  on  the  natives  is  superficial  regarded  * 
as  ethnology,  and  seems  to  have  been  inserted 
from  a  sense  of  duty  rather  than  for  any  other 
reason.  It  is  proper,  we  suppose,  that  a  book 
on  Greenland  should  have  a  chapter  on  the 
natives.  It  is  extremely  difllcult  for  a  casual 
traveller  to  say  anything  new  about  them, 
and  hardly  possible  for  him  to  say  old  things 
as  well  as  they  have  been  said  already.  As 
every  new  book  appeals  to  a  somewhat  differ, 
ent  circle  of  readers.  Prof.  Wright^s  account 
of  them  may  serve  a  useful  purpoee  in  spite  of 
its  mediocrity. 

When  he  gets  upon  the  ground  of  glacial 
geology,  a  subject  to  which  his  contributions 
are  well  known,  there  is  an  immediate  change 
for  the  better  both  in  interest  and  in  grasp. 
This  part  of  the  book  comprises  an  account  of 
the  exploration  of  the  inland  ice,  a  comparison 
of  the  present  and  Pleistocene  ice  sheets,  a  dia- 
cussion  of  Pleistocene  changes  of  level  around 
the  North  Atlantic  basin,  and  three  chapters 
(in  which  we  trace  the  cooperation  of  Mr.  Up- 
ham) on  the  causes  and  stages  of  the  ice  age, 
with  a  concluding  summary.  We  do  not  dis- 
cover  anything  new  in  the  way  of  fact  or 
theory— qtdte  the  contrary— but  the  summary 
is  excellent  and  readable,  though  the  stand- 
point of  its  authors  differs  from  that  of  other 
geologists,  in  matters  principally  of  detail.  In 
brief,  the  present  writers  regard  the  ice  age  as 
due  to  elevation  of  the  boreal  lands  and  coin- 
cident changes  of  ocean  currents,  boreal  hu- 
midity and  temperature.  They  consider  the 
glacial  period  as  continuous,  with  local  or 
minor  oscillations  in  the  extent  of  the  ice 
sheet.  Other  geologists  differ  chiefiy,  at  pre- 
sent, in  the  extent  and  duration  they  ascribe 
to  these  oscillations  and  in  their  estimates  of 
the  elevation  concerned.  This  is  not  the  occa- 
sion for  a  critical  review  of  the  general  topic, 
but  we  may  call  attention  to  one  i>oint  In 
which  more  precision  would  have  been  ad- 
visable. The  reader  who  is  not  a  geologist 
would  be  likely  to  suppose,  from  what  is  said, 
that  the  period  when  the  boreal  lands  were 
covered  with  forests  of  a  warm,  temperate 
fiora  immediately  preceded  the  glacial  period. 
As  is  well  known,  the  Oligocene  fiora  had  been 
extinct  for  ages,  and  the  whole  period  of  the 
Miocene  and  Pliocene  intervened  between  the 
time  of  the  forests  and  that  of  the  ice  cap. 
There  is  no  evidence  of  any  Pliocene  forests  in 
the  arctic  region. 

In  all  theee  discussions  the  painful  iteration 
of  such  phrases  as  ** it  seems,"  "it  would  ap- 
pear," **it  is  probable,"  sufficiently  indicates 
the  dis];H*oportion  between  the  observed  facts 
and  the  hypotheses  erected  upon  them.  In 
any  condensation,  such  as  is  here  presented, 
the  hypothetical  element  is  even  more  conspi- 
cuous than  usual,  for  obvious  reasons.  Bear- 
ingthis  in  mind,  the  reader  may  obtain  from 
the  present  volume  a  very  fair  idea  of  the  dif- 
ferent solutions  proposed  and  of  the  problems 
concerned.  Many  years  must  pass  before  the 
painstaking  collection  of  facts  can  reach  a 
point  where  certainty  in  more  than  the  princi- 
pal outlines  shall  be  assured.  There  is  good 
reason  to  hope  that  the  difficulties  will  not 
prove  insurmountable. 

The  latest  addition  to  the  Columbian  series 
of  handbooks,  by  Gen.  A.  W.  Greely,  con- 
denses the  history  of  arctic  exploration  into 
convenient  compass  for  ready  reference.  More 
than  50,000  pages  of  oHginal  literature  have 
been  gleaned  for  facts,  and  the  author  believes 


276 


Tlie    !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1605 


that  DO  important  addition  to  arctic  geogra- 
phy is  anrefenred  to.  While  the  scope  of  the 
volume  if  not  intended  to  indade  scientific  re- 
search, yet  the  more  important  investigations 
are  noted,  and  a  bibliography  at  the  end  of  eaf^h 
chapter  indicates  the  sources  whence  may  be 
had  further  information,  in  the  form  either  of 
narratives  of  adventure  or  of  original  research. 
The  chapters  discuss  the  subject  topically,  not 
chronologically,  beginning  with  early  north- 
west voyages  previous  to  1570,  and  continuing 
with  accounts  of  the  exploration  of  Nova 
Zembla,  the  northeast  passage,  Spitsbergen, 
Bering  Straits,  the  nortiiwest  passage  by  sea 
and  land,  Franklin^s  last  voyage,  the  Franklin 
search  expeditions  by  land  and  sea,  North 
Polar  voyages,  the  islands  of  the  Siberian  Sea, 
Smith  Sound  and  Robes  9n  Channel,  Frans 
Josef  Land,  the  international  circumpolar  sta 
tions,  and  Greenland,  concluding  with  a  chap- 
ter on  the  literature  and  an  excellent  iodex. 

In  examining  the  book  we  have  been  sur- 
prised to  flud  how  completely  Gen.  Ghreely  has 
succeeded  in  covering  the  field  in  so  small  a 
volume,  and  also,  in  spite  of  the  extreme  con- 
densation, how  well  the  ease  and  interest  of 
the  narrative  have  been  maintained.  Under 
the  conditions  laid  down  for  the  handbook  it 
would  have  been  not  unnatural  if  the  text  had 
become  dry  in  its  epitomising,  and  biblio- 
graphic rather  than  descriptive.  This  danger 
has  been  skilfully  avoided,  and  the  result  is, 
what  the  title  implies,  a  convenieot  handbook, 
suitable  for  reference  by  the  busy  man  and 
not  distasteful  to  the  inquirer  of  greater  lei- 
sure. In  all  sucli  compilations  th  •  question 
constantly  recurs  what  to  retain  or  to  omit, 
and  probably  no  two  authors  would  oome  to 
precisely  the  same  conclusion.  Bearing  this 
in  mind,  we  cordially  congratulate  the  author 
on  the  success  with  which  his  task  has  been 
performed,  and  the  editor  on  having  added  so 
creditable  a  volume  to  his  series. 


From  the  BUusk  Sea  through  Persia  and  India, 
By  Edwin  Lord  Weeks.    Harpers. 

Wk  have  to  thank  Mr.  Weeks  for  an  interest- 
ing and  entertaining  work  which  has  already 
seen  the  light  in  the  form  of  magazine  articles. 
In  company  with  the  late  Theodore  Child,  he 
started  on  horseback  from  Trebicond  to  cross 
to  India.  Although  Mr.  Child  died  of  (Solera 
in  Persia,  his  companion  pushed  on  to  Bushire 
on  the  Persian  Gulf,  from  which  he  took  the 
steamer  to  Kurracbee. 

The  first  part  of  his  book  is  made  up  of  a 
connected  aoooimt  of  his  travels;  but  after  his 
arrival  in  ludia,  where  he  was  on  better  known 
ground,  the  author  wisely  gives  us  merely  dis- 
connected chapters  on  a  variety  of  subjects. 
Even  if  at  times  the  structure  of  his  sentences 
is  not  perfect,  he  writes  decidedly  well,  for  he 
can  be  vivid  as  well  as  amusing,  and  what  he 
says  not  only  is  worth  saying,  but  is  said  in 
such  a  way  as  to  hold  our  attention.  Here  is 
a  description  of  a  landscape  in  Persia: 

**  Far  beyond  the  plain,  tufted  with  bunches 
of  dry  yellow  herbage,  gilded  by  the  setting 
sun,  this  great  plateau  rises  above  us  at  a  dis- 
tance impossible  to  estimate  in  the  clear  at 
mosphere;  its  surface  broken  up  into  little  hil- 
locks, like  the  waves  of  a  petrified  sea,  each 
crest  tipped  with  scarlet  from  the  glowing 
west,  and  each  long  shadow  correspondingly 
jiolet;  and  beyond  this  again  rises  another  and 
BtUl  higher  country  of  purple  mountaiM,  and 
through  the  gaps  of  their  serrated  skyUnes 
other  and  more  distant  ranges  may  be  discern- 
ed  famt  and  far  away.  Looking  into  the  west 
as  the  sun  sinks,  range  after  range  becomes 
visible,  each  less  purple  and  more  enveloped  in 
golden  haie,"  *^ 


The  illustrations,  too,  are  excellent,  remind- 
ing us  that  the  author  is  first  and  foremost  an 
artist— a  fact  we  might  otherwise  overlook, 
though  his  appreciations  are  certainly  artittic 
enough.  This  does  not  interfere  with  the  sound- 
ness of  his  judgment  or  the  keenness  of  his 
practical  observation  in  various  matters.  Thus 
he  shows  himself  remarkably  unprejudiced  in 
his  treatment  of  social  or  political  questions. 
Here  are  two  instances :  "  Whatever  arguments 
may  be  brought  forward,  justly  or  unjustly, 
against  the  utility  of  foreign  missions  in  gene- 
ral, there  can  be  no  shadow  of  doubt  as  to 
the  beneficent  results  of  their  work  in  Persia. 
During  the  recent  epidemic  at  Tabrees,  the 
medical  department  of  the  American  mission 
(then  under  the  direction  of  Miss  Bradford)  did 
noble  work.^  And  again:  *'Mr.  Rabino,  the 
active  head  of  the  Imperial  Bank  of  Persia, 
sayis  in  a  letter  from  Teheran,  *  I  enclose  you 
various  letters  and  reports  from  the  American 
Presbyterian  missionaries,  for  whose  coura- 
geous and  devoted  labors  I,  an  Englishman  and 
a  Catholic,  can  find  no  words  to  express  my 
admiration.  Their  hospital  was  positively  the 
only  organization  for  the  help  of  this  terribly 
visited  city.^  To  supplement  his  statement  it 
is  hardly  necessarv  to  add  that  **  these  modern 
Templars  have  had  no  incentive  in  the  shape  of 
pecuniary  gain,  no  stimulus  in  the  guise  of  so- 
cial success,  and  not  even  the  poor  reward  of 
publicity.  Their  names  will  never  be  inscribed 
in  the  Court  Gazette  of  any  local  four  hundred : 
and  the  press  of  their  own  country,  occupied 
with  the  conduct  and  bearing  of  its  social  lead- 
ers, the  presence  of  royalty,  and  other  matters 
of  vital  importance,  has  no  space  to  chronicle 
deeds  which,  if  performed  by  another  race  and 
another  age,  would  have  been  held  worthy  of 
undying  fame.*' 

Compare  with  the  foregoing  the  following: 

"Wherever  a  medical  officer  reported  on  the 
condition  of  his  men  just  returned  from  active 
service  in  Burmah  or  elsewhere,  it  appeared 
that  the  best  soldiers,  morally  and  physically, 
those  who  were  always  exempt  from  such  mala^ 
dies  as  dysentery,  fever,  cholera,  and  rheuma- 
tism, were  the  opium-eaters:  they  were  able  to 
go  longer  without  food  or  stimulants,  and  to  do 
more  work.  The  testimony  of  physicians,  both 
EUiropean  and  native,  was  almost  invariably 
in  favor  of  the  drug  when  used  moderately  in 
the  simple  form  known  to  native  consumers. 
Surgeon- General  Sir  William  Moore  said  *he 
had  often  smoked  opium,  and  really  did  not 
see  where  the  wickedness  and  immorality  came 
fn.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  one  might  see  more 
wickedness  and  immorally  in  a  London  gin- 
shop  in  half  an  hour  even  on  a  Sunday  n^ht 
than  in  an  opium-shop  during  a  whole  year.* 
It  has  been  found  that  opium  is  cheaper  than 
wine  or  spirits,  leas  detrimental  to  the  system, 
and  just  the  right  agent  to  stimulate  the  indo- 
lent Oriental  nature,  as  well  as  to  counteract 
the  weakening  effects  of  a  vegetable  diet  and 
scarcity  of  food.  Many  a  poor  *Ryot*  who 
can  hardly  pull  himself  together  for  the  want 
of  proper  nourishment,  is  enabled  by  its  aid  to 
do  a  good  day's  work,  while  at  the  same  time 
it  serves  him  as  a  specific  against  the  maladies 
resulting  from  unhealthy  surroundings.  .  .  . 
While  scientists,  philosophers,  and  empirics 
in  Europe  have  been  experimenting  for  ages  to 
find  the  Elixir  of  Life,  these  simple  Orientals 
have  contented  themselves  with  producing,  by 
homoeopathic  doses  of  opium,  effects  analogous 
to  those  hoped  for  from  the  discovery  of  Dr. 
Brown-S^quard;  and,  if  they  have  not  suc- 
ceeded in  renewing  their  youth,  have  certainly 
managed  to  make  It  last  longer." 

We  note  finally,  as  prophetic  of  coming  trou- 
bles,  in  Erzerum  in  July,  1892:  "It  seems  that 
all  Armenians  are  regarded  with  suspicion  just 
now  on  account  of  a  plot  against  the  Turkish 
authority,  recently  discovered,  in  which  many 
of  their  leading  men  were  implicated.** 


The  Ancestry  of  John  Whitney,  who,  with  his 
wife  Elinor  and  eons  John,  Richard,  Na- 
thaniel, Thomas,  and  Jonathan,  emigrated 
from  London,  England,  in  the  year  1685,  and 
settled  in  Watertown,  Massachusetts;  the 
first  of  the  name  in  America,  and  the  one 
from  whom  a  great  majority  of  the  Whit- 
neys  now  living  in  the  United  States  are  de- 
scended. By  Henry  Melville,  A.M.,  LL.B., 
of  the  City  of  New  York.  New  York :  Print- 
ed at  the  De  Vinne  Preas.    1896.    Pp.206.    - 

Thomas  Halsey  of  Hertfordshire,  England^ 
and  Southampton^  Long  Island,  1591-1679, 
with  his  American  Descendants  to  the  Eighth 
and  Ninth  Generations.  By  Jacob  Lafayette 
Halsey  and  Edmund  Drake  Halsey.  With 
an  Introduction  by  Francis  Whiting  Halsey. 
Morristown,  N.  J.    1806.    Pp.)»0. 

Thx  Whitney  genealogy  is  one  of  a  class 
of  which  we  have  few  specimens  in  American 
literature,  as  it  is  the  history  for  centuries  of 
a  family  in  England,  one  of  whose  branches 
has  taken  root  in  this  country.  It  will  be  of 
absorbing  interest  to  the  numerous  descend- 
anta  of  the  Watertown  settler,  but  wUl  find 
few  other  readers.  We  are  all  interested  in  the 
lives  of  prominent  actors  in  public  affairs, 
either  at  home  or  abroad,  but  the  minor 
agents  are  too  numerous.  The  first  and  most 
important  question  discussed  in  this  book  is 
the  parentage  of  the  emigrant  John  Whitney. 
From  the  lists  of  passengers  for  New  England, 
first  published  by  the  late  James  Savage,  and 
often  reprinted,  it  appears  that  in  April,  1636, 
in  the  Elizatfeth  and  Anne  of  London,  em- 
barked John  Whitney,  aged  thirty-five,  Ellen 
Whitney,  aged  thir^;  John,  Richard,  Na- 
thaniel, Thomas,  and  Jonathan  Whitney,  aged 
respectively  11,  9,  8,  6,  and  1.  This  list  covers 
twenty-three  names,  all  duly  licensed,  but 
without  a  note  of  their  residences.  In  a  subse- 
quent list  of  three  names  by  the  same  vessel 
the  persons  brought  certificates  from  the 
minister  at  Westminster,  England.  It  seems 
by  this  book  that  John  Whitney,  son  of  Thomas 
W.  of  Westminster,  was  apprenticed  in  1607  to 
William  Pring,  merchant  tailor,  was  made  free 
in  1614;  took  an  apprentice,  Robert  Whitney 
(probably  his  brother),  in  1624,  and  made 
Robert  free  in  1682.  Again,  the  record  of 
Isle  worth,  near  London,  shows  that  John  and 
Ellen  Whitney  had  children,  Mary,  b.  1619; 
John,  b  1621;  Richard,  b.  1623.  Moreover,  in 
the  parish  of  St.  Mary,  Aldermary,  London, 
John  Whitney  had  a  child  Mary,  buried  in 

1626,  and  a  son  Thomas,  baptized  December, 

1627.  John  Whitney  also  had  his  son  John  en- 
tered in  1631  in  Merchant  Taylors*  School,  the 
name  standing  on  the  catalogue  until  1635. 

These,  we  believe,  are  all  the  facts  obtain- 
able  as  to  the  emigrant^the  identity  of  the 
names  of  the  father,  mother,  two  sons,  John 
and  Richard,  and  possibly  a  third,  Thomas, 
and  their  order.  The  ages  in  the  list  of  emi- 
g^rants  do  not  agree  with  the  baptisms,  but  it 
is  a  well-known  fact  that  such  discrepancies 
are  almost  the  rule,  whether  from  carelessness 
or  design.  It  may  also  be  conceded  that  John 
Whitney ^s  record  in  Watertown  is  entirely  con- 
sistent with  the  theory  that  he  was  the  John 
of  London,  a  freeman  of  the  Merchant  Taylors' 
Company,  but  it  is  somewhat  strange  that  no 
evidence  is  given  that  he  was  ever  termed 
**  tailor  **  in  his  new  home.  The  identification 
is  probable,  but  by  no  means  conclusive ;  and 
the  pedigree  is,  therefore,  much  less  satisfao- 
tory  than  that  of  some  of  our  emigrants. 

The  English  pedigree  is  better  sustained.  II 
is  clear  that  John  Whitney,  the  appratttte  ti 
I6O7,  was  a  son  of  Thomas  W.  of  1 


April  2,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


377 


(M«  p.  917),  who  married  Hary  Bray  in  1583, 
and  had  nine  children,  Inoladiog  John,  bap- 
tised in  ISfiS,  and  Robert,  bapUied  in  10O&.  In 
1687  administration  was  granted  on  his  estate, 
but  John  is  not  mentioned,  though  the  young- 
er 8ons~  Francis  and  Robert— were.  This  is 
entirely  natural  if  John  was  then  in  New 
England.  The  pedigree  quoted  on  p.  209  shows 
that  Thomas  Whitney  of  Westminster  was  son 
of  Robert,  the  third  son  of  Sir  Robert  Whit, 
ney  of  Whitney.  The  main  line  of  Whitney  is 
traced  clearly  to  a.d.  1242,  taking  its  name 
from  the  parish  of  Whitney,  Co.  Hereford, 
on  the  banks  of  the  river  Wye.  It  was  an  old 
and  noted  county  family,  flourishing  in  the  di- 
rect male  line  until  1670,  when  Sir  Thomas  W. 
died.  He  was  first  cousin,  once  removed,  to 
Thomas  W.  of  Westminster,  but  his  estates, 
not  being  entailed,  passed  to  his  sisters.  It  ap- 
pears (see  p.  210)  that  John  W.  of  Westminster, 
son  of  Robert,  evidently  the  merchant  tailor, 
daimed  to  be  heir  male  to  the  whole  family,  a 
title  of  honor,  but  not  necessarily  an  heir  to 
the  land.  He  may  well  have  been  ignorant  of 
any  cousins  in  New  fiogland. 

The  English  pedigree  is  well  prepcured  from* 
sources  easily  accessible,  somewhat  overloaded 
with  general  quotations.  It  1)  evidently  pad. 
ded  tomake  a  book  of  a  siae  to  correq>ond  with 
the  elegance  of  the  printing  and  the  illustra- 
tions; but  it  is  padding  of  good  quality  and  is 
creditable  to  the  compiler.  Though,  as  al- 
ready stated,  the  proofs  of  the  affiliation  are  not 
of  the  first  quality,  they  are  plausible,  even 
probable,  and  are  far  better  than  those  given 
in  many  pedigrees  unquestioned  in  England. 

The  second  book  on  our  list,  the  Halsey 
genealogy,  is  simply  one  on  the  familiar  Ame- 
rican pattern,  giving  the  descendants  of  Thomas 
Halsey  of  Lynn,  Mass.,  in  1637,  and  of  South- 
amplon,  L  L,  in  1640,  who  died  about  1677.  It 
is  a  substantial  record,  well  prepared  in  re- 
spect to  dates,  but  disfigured  by  a  system  of 
numbering,  ''devised  by  the  Rev.  John  E. 
Todd,  which  he  has  kindly  permitted  to  be 
used.**  We  are  not  familiar  with  Mr.  Todd's 
antiquarian  work,  but  it  is  a  pity  that  his  in- 
genuity took  this  form.  Why  will  genealogists 
abandon  the  old,  tried,  and  approved  methods 
for  useless  experiments?  We  have  also^  a  coat- 
of-anns  and  an  attempt  to  identify  the  emi- 
grant—both failures.  It  seems  that  there  is  a 
family  of  the  name  in  Hertfordshire,  Eng.,  the 
present  bead  being  Thomas  F.  Halsey,  M.P. 
His  ancestor,  William  Halsey,  in  1638  received 
a  grant  of  arms  for  him  and  his  brother  James 
Halsey  and  their  descendants.  They  were 
sons  of  Robert  Halsey  of  OreatOaddesdon  Par- 
sonage, and  they  had  bsothers  Duncomb  (who 
died  before  1638)  and  Thomas,  baptised  Janu- 
ary, 1501-2.  This  Tliomas  was  living  in  Naples 
in  162L,  as  appears  t>y  a  letter  preserved  in  his 
English  home.  Without  the  slightest  evidence 
that  we  can  discover  in  this  l>ook,  he  is  as- 
snmed  to  be  the  Thomas  who  was  in  Lynn, 
Mass.,  sixteen  years  later.  In  this  book  is  a 
facsimile  of  the  letter  written  by  Thomas  Hal- 
sey at  Naples,  KGl,  and  of  the  signatures  of 
the  Long  Island  man  in  1647,  1648,  and  1677. 
The  last  three  are  alike,  and  are  totally  dis. 
similar  from  the  Naples  one,  except  that  both 
are  of  the  style  of  the  early  part  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  It  would  take  strong  positive 
srvideooe  to  overcome  this  unintentional  proof 
that  the  two  men  were  not  the  same. 

It  is  a  pity  to  see  so  much  creditable  work, 
such  a  solid  contribution  to  family  history, 
disfigured  by  an  ill- Judged  introduction  and  by 
such  an  unwarranted  scheme  of  arrangement. 
It  cannot  be  too  of  ten  repeated  that  industry, 
Dd   wealth  combined  may  aooumulat^ 


the  materials  of  a  genealogy,  but  all  may  be 
rendered  nearly  worthless  by  a  neglect  of  the 
established  rules  for  arranging  them. 


The  Strueture  and  Development  of  Mossee  and 
Feme,  By  Douglas  H.  C^ampbell,  Pb  D., 
Professor  of  Botany  in  the  Leland  Stanford 
Junior  University.  Macmillan  &  Co.  1885. 
UiTDXR  the  term  **  moss,**  In  popular  nomen- 
clature, are  included  a  great  many  sorts  of 
delicate  plants  which  to  botanists  are  not 
mosses  at  all.  For  example,  the  long  gray  or 
black  treises  which  hang  from  the  trees  at  our 
Far  South,  and  which  are  everywhere  called 
**  moes,**  are  pathetically  depauperate  members 
of  the  pineapple  family.  Anybody  who  cares 
to  do  so,  can  convince  himself  of  this  by  com- 
paring, even  superficially,  the  flowers  of  the 
Southern  **gray  moss'*  with  the  young  blos- 
soms of  its  nobler  relative.  Algae,  or  sea- 
weeds, are  generally  called  sea-mosses,  and  the 
lichens  of  our  woods  are  seldom  known  as  any- 
thing but  mosses  or  tree-mones. 

What,  then,  is  a  true  moss?  In  the  flrst 
place,  it  shares  with  the  plants  which,  in  popu- 
lar parlance,  are  improperly  denominated 
mosses,  a  certain  delicacy  of  structure  and  di- 
minutive sbse.  But  from  algae  and  lichens  true 
mosses  differ  in  the  possession  of  leaves,  al- 
though, in  at  least  one  well-known  instance, 
these  leaves  are  rudimentary.  Mosses  grow 
from  a  microsoopic  body,  known  as  a  spore, 
which  on  germination  develops  into  a  network 
of  more  or  lees  complexity.  By  and  by,  at 
some  point  of  the  network,  there  is  produced  a 
bud  which  may  bear  a  curious  resemblance  to 
the  flower  of  the  higher  plants.  In  some  in- 
stances the  likeness  is  so  close  that  bryologiits, 
the  specialists  who  devote  their  attention  to 
mosses,  are  wont  to  speak  of  this  open  bud  as  a 
flower.  Moreover,  this  *'  flower*'  contains  re- 
productive organs  which  are  analogous  to  but 
not  strictly  homologous  with  the  reproductive 
organs  in  flowers;  it  has  certain  parts  to  be  fer- 
tilised, and  others  which  are  to  provide,  at  the 
proper  time,  the  fertilizing  agent.  The  result 
of  such  impregnation  is  the  production  of  a 
capsule  fllled  with  spores,  each  and  every  one 
of  which  is  capable  of  starting  a  new  moss 
plant.  In  this  too  hasty  outline  we  have  not 
referred  to  the  singular  alternation  of  genera- 
tions which  constitutes  one  of  the  most  marked 
features  of  the  group.  Such  recondite  matters 
are  clearly  explained  in  many  works,  but  in 
few  works  any  more  clearly  than  in  the  excel- 
lent treatise  by  Prof.  Campbell.  The  lifehis 
tory,  as  it  is  the  fashion  to  call  it,  of  mosses  and 
their  immediate  allies,  has  been  given  by  him 
in  a  very  intelligible  manner,  adapted  to  the 
wants  of  the  serious  student.  Moreover,  every- 
thing has  been  brought  well  up  to  date;  and 
although  there  are  a  few  instances  of  what 
seems  improper  perspective,  nothing  in  the 
whole  section  devoted  to  mosses  is  misleading. 
There  are  two  facts  respecting  the  distribu- 
tion of  mosses  which  are  of  singular  interest, 
namely,  the  wide  dispersion  of  species  and  the 
caprice  which  determines  their  homes.  The 
minuteness  and  lightness  of  the  dry  spores  flt 
them  to  be  the  carriers  of  life  over  vast  dis- 
tances In  the  upper  air;  oceans  presenting,  in 
fact,  but  slight  obstacles  to  their  dissemina- 
tion. Hence  we  And  the  same  species  distri- 
buted over  immense  areas  and  encroaching  on 
widely  separated  continents.  Perhaps  one  of 
these  days,  when  more  attention  is  given  to 
very  minute  differences  between  different  in- 
dividuals of  the  same  species,  it  may  turn  out 
that,  after  effecting  a  safe  landing  on  a  new 
oontinenti  plants  yield  to  slight  but  neverthe- 


less decided  climatal  differences.  But  if  these 
cllmatal  differences  have  really  begun  to  act 
on  these  hardy  emigrants,  and  have  really 
initiated  natural  selection,  the  work  has  been 
thus  far  exceedingly  slight  and  practically  un- 
appreciable. 

Few  sorts  of  plants  display  as  much  deter- 
mination mingled  with  capricious  whimsicality 
in  the  choice  of  a  home  as  these  minute  mosses. 
Some  dwell  only  on  the  mortar  between  bricks 
of  a  wall,  while  others  choose  decqmposing 
bones,  and  others  still,  dean  clay  soil.  In  a 
few  esses  the  habitat  may  be  safely  used-  by 
the  beginner  as  an  aid  in  the  determination  of 
the  species. 

It  is  in  the  sections  given  to  ferns  and  their 
kindred  that  the  author  appears  to  the  best 
advantage.  For  a  good  many  years  he  has 
made  the  development  of  ferns  a  special  study, 
and  with  substantial  results.  It  is  known  in  a 
general  way  even  to  the  general  public  that 
the  story  of  a  f em*s  life  is  peculiarly  interest- 
ing. It  is  widely  iniown,  too,  that  the  mystery 
of  its  reproduction  has  been  fully  cleared  up. 
Even  elementary  students  of  botany  know 
that  the  spore  of  the  fern  does  not  produce  at 
flrst  a  fern  plant,  or  anything  that  might  be 
mistaken  for  a  femplant,  but,  rather,  a  tran- 
sitory film-like  structure,  of  minute  sise,  on 
the  earthward  side  of  which  are  developed  the 
reproductive  organs.  By  the  interaction  of 
these  there  arises  on  the  film  a  diminutive  bud, 
which  speedily  unfolds  in  one  way  or  another 
into  what  people  call  a  fern.  Meanwhile  in 
most  cases  the  transient  filoo,  on  which  this 
work  of  reproduction  has  taken  place,  perishes 
and  disappears.  Ferns  have,  therefore,  from 
their  earliest  state,  much  to  interest  botanists 
and  all  who  care  to  study  living  things. 

The  unfolding  of  the  leaves,  or,  more  proper- 
ly, the  fronds,  of  ferns,  is  one  of  the  strangest 
developments  in  nature.  For  the  most  part 
they  uncoil  in  graceful  curves,  keeping  for  a 
while  the  shape  of  a  crosier,  and  theo  extend- 
ing in  curves  of  greater  amplitude  and  more 
tender  beauty.  Even  in  the  giant  ferns  of  the 
tropics  this  gracefulness  of  outline  is  never 
wholly  lost.  From  the  tree  ferns  of  the  equa- 
torial belt  to  the  shrinking  ferns  of  our  colder 
climate  is  a  long  step,  but  in  the  structure 
of  the  one  we  can  trace  the  other,  and  by 
parity  of  reasoning  we  can  take  the  far  longer 
step  back  to  the  first  great  coal  period.  The 
record  of  development  of  ferns  and  their  kin- 
dred, although  broken  here  and  there  almost 
beyond  deciphering,  shows  us  thst  the  devious 
pathway  from  the  lower  to  the  higher  forms 
of  life  has  been  presumably  without  Interrup- 
tion of  catastrophe.  This  is  perhaps  as  well 
shown  in  the  elder  and  latter  ferns  as  anywhere 
else.  It  is  this  hint  of  steady  although  uneven 
progress  from  lower  to  the  higher,  given  by 
these  plants,  that  has  rendered  them  so  highly 
interesting  to  the  biologist.  From  start  to 
finish  they  are  full  of  interest.  Prof.  Campbell 
has  gathered  together  all  necessary  informa- 
tion respecting  this  surprising  history,  and 
although  not  casting  it  in  a  form  specially  at- 
tractive to  the  general  reader,  but  fitted  rather 
for  the  student  of  ferns,  presents  the  whole  in 
its  due  proportions*  Even  the  latest  results 
obtained  in  respect  to  the  higher  aUies  of  the 
ferns,  namely,  the  clubmosses,  are  given  in 
detail  and  correctly.  The  work  is  a  credit  to 
American  science. 


The  Epieeopate  in  America:  Bketcbes,  Bio- 
graphical and  Bibliographical  of  the  Bishops 
of  the  American  Church,  with  a  Preliminary 
Essay  on  the  Historic  Episoopate,  and  Docu- 


278 


Ttie   ItTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1605 


metftftiT  Annals  of  the  Introduction  of  the 
Anglican  Line  of  Sncceesion  into  America. ' 
By  William  Stevens  Perry,  Bishop  of  Iowa, 
and     Historiographer    of    the    American 
Church.    New  York:  The  Christian  Litera- 
ture Co.    1886.    Pp.  Ixviil,  878. 
Thx  title  of  this  handsome  volume  explains  its 
character,   but  omits  to  mention  that  each 
sketch  of  a  Bishop  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  in  the  United  States  of  America  (for 
that  is  .what  is   meant   by   **the   American 
Church")  is  preceded  by  his  portrait,  which 
adds  greatly  to  the  valne  of  the  volnme.    It 
is  surprising  that  Bishop  Perry  was  able  to 
collect  representations  of  all  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Bishops  in  this  country,  from  Bishop 
Seabury  to  Bishop  Millspaugh,  and  he  is  to  be 
congratulated  on  the  result  of  his  efforts.     He 
states  that  no  other  collection  known  is  com- 
plete. 

The  introductory  essay  traces  (1)  the  origin 
of  *'  the  historic  episcopate'*  from  the  Apostles* 
times,  chiefly  after  Lightfoot ;  (2)  its  introduc- 
tion into  this  country  after  the  Revolutionary 
War— with  facsimiles  of  some  valuable  histo- 
rical documents ;  (8)  its  introduction  into  Bri- 
tish North  America— with  a  list  of  bishops ; 
(4)  the  rise  of  the  Methodist  superintendency 
or  episcopacy  (which,  however,  has  no  connec- 
tion with  **  the  historic  episcopate  **),  together 
with  a  list  of  the  *> bishops"  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church  North  from  Coke  and  As- 
bury  on,  but  those  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church  South  are  singularly  omitted ;  (5)  the 
episcopate  of  the  Roman  Catholic  conununion 
in  the  United  States,  from  the  non-canonical 
consecration  of  Archbishop  Carroll  on,  with  a 
list  of  the  archdioceses  and  dioceses,  archbish. 
ops  and  bishops,  of  that  branch  of  the  Catholic 
Church  ;  and  (6)  a  brief  account  of  the  foreign 
churches  receiving  the  episcopate  from  the 
American  Church— that  is,  the  churches  in 
Hayti  and  Mexico— with  sketches  of  Bishops 
Holly  and  Riley,  the  latter  of  whom  resigned 
his  jurisdiction,  at  the  request  of  the  House  of 
Bishops,  in  1884. 

As  there  are  sketches  of  176  American 
bishops,  each  one  must  necessarily  be  brief, 
but  it  gives  succinctly  the  main  particulars 
in  the  ecclesiastical  life  of  its  subject.  In 
reading  some  of  these  we  have  noticed  a  few 
omissions,  inaccuracies,  and  misprints,  which 
can  easily  be  corrected.  Under  Bishop  Pink- 
ney,  his  *Life'  of  his  uncle,  William  Pinkney, 
the  celebrated  lawyer  (New  York:  D.  Apple- 
ton  &  Co.,  1858),  is  omitted  ;  also  his  essay  on 
*  Webster  and  Pinkney,'  in  reply  to  Harvey 
(privately  printed,  1878) ;  and  his  poems,  such 
as  his  'Bongs  for  the  Seasons'  (1864),  and 
others  mentioned  In  Dr.  Hutton's  'Life  of 
Bishop  Pinkney.'  The  portrait  of  the  Bishop 
here  given  is  not  as  good  as  the  one  prefixed 
to  Dr.  Hutton's  'Life.'  Under  Bishop  Whit, 
tie,  the  division  of  the  diocese  of  Virginia  is 
given  as  1893,  and  under  Bishop  Randolph, 
as  1894,  both  dates  being  incorrect;  it  was 
made  in  1892.  Bishop  Nelson's  name  is  "Kin. 
loch,"  not  •'  Kinlock."  Under  Bishop  Newton, 
"  Smith  "  should  be  "  South."  Mention  of  the 
service  in  the  C;k>nfederate  army  of  Bishops 
R.  W.  B.  Elliott,  Harris,  and  Galleher  is 
omitted,  although  it  is  duly  made  In  the  case 
of  Bishops  Polk,  Dudley,  Penick,  Peterkin, 
Johnston,  Capers,  and  Newton.  The  term 
" bishop-coadjutor"  is  an  anachronism  as  used 
by  Bishop  Perry.  It  was,  as  he  well  knows, 
first  legally  authorized  by  the  last  General  in- 
vention, which  met  in  Minneapolis  in  October, 
1895.  The  authorized  term  up  to  that  date 
was  "  assistant  bishop,"  and  some  would  have 
preferred  to  see  that  term  retained.    To  con- 


clude our  fault-finding,  we  object  decidedly  to 
the  term  *'  priested,"  which  is  no  word.  . 

Taken  as  a  whole,  the  work  will  be  welcomed 
by  Episcopalians,  to  whom  it  is  of  special  in- 
terest, and  it  adds  one  more  to  the  long  list  of 
historical  works  for  which  the  church  is  al- 
ready indebted  to  the  aothor. 


Wettmitiater.    By  Sir  Walter  Beeant.    With 

ISO  illustrations   by   William   Patten  and 

others.  Frederick  A.  Stokes  Co. 
This  book  has  been  made  ont  of  a  number  of 
papers  in  the  Pall  Mall  Magazine ;  and  it  is 
an  example  of  the  sort  of  thing  we  are  getting 
deluged  with  nowadays.  The  public  likes 
pretty  pictures,  and  modem  mechanical  pro 
cesses  have  cheapened  their  production;  and, 
as  the  public  also  likes  to  imagine  it  is  being 
instructed,  books  about  "historic  cities"  and 
the  like  are  tolerably  sure  of  a  market  if  only 
they  are  handsomely  bound,  commended  by  a 
well-known  name  on  the  title-page,  and  plenti- 
fully "illustrated."  The  volume  before  us  is 
certainly  a«faarmtng  picture^book  ;  but  about 
Sir  Walter  Beeant's  share  in  it  it  is  impossible 
to  feel  much  satisfaction.  He  undoubtedly 
knows  a  great  deal  about  London  and  West- 
minster—few men  are  so  intimately  acquainted 
with  the  older  portions  of  the  metropolis;  and 
the  drawing-room  reader  will  carry  awaj 
some  information  from  the  pages  of  this  book, 
especially  if  he  reads  only  halfa-dosen  at  a 
time.  But  the  style  is  intolerably  diffuse,  and 
the  sentiment  is  that  of  Wardour  Street. 

Westminster,  to  begin  with,  is  not  so  impor- 
tant as  London,  and  the  great  theme  of  the 
Abbey  Sir  Walter  does  not  undertake.  Yet 
he  wants  to  make  a  book  as  big,  externally,  as 
his  much  more  solid  work  on  London ;  and 
then  there  are  all  these  pictures  to  be  kept 
ftpart  by  letterpress  I  And  so  he  pads  with 
both  hands.  Sometimes  he  quotes  a  few  pages 
—like  the  nine  from  Maitland  describing  the 
Evil  May  Day  of  1517,  which  most  of  his  read 
ers  will  suppose  to  be  a  contemporary  account. 
More  usually  he  opens  the  fioodgates  of  enu- 
merative  gush  of  the  cheap  picturesque  va- 
riety. Thus,  apropos  of  the  "  uproarious  life" 
outside  the  Abbey :  "  There  were  taverns. 
.  .  .  There  was  the  clashing  of  weapons : 
there  were  the  profane  oaths  of  the  soldiers"  ; 
there  was  this  and  there  was  that,  for  half  a 
page.  Or  again  :  "  Everywhere  there  were 
stately  halls,  lofty  roofs,  tourelles  with  rich 
carving,"  and  then  follow  some  forty  other 
articles  from  the  repertoire  of  the  scene^  painter 
and  costumier.  The  trick  is  played  time  after 
time.  To  one  who  knows  his  Scott  (not  to  say 
G.  P.  R.  James  or  Harrison  Ainsworth),  and 
has  a  Stow  at  hand,  it  is  singularly  easy.  But 
even  this  Is  scarcely  more  irritating  than  the 
long  conversations  and  monologues  Sir  Walter 
puts  into  the  mouths  of  his  real  or  imaginary 
characters.  Perhaps  they  are  thought  to  en- 
liven  the  book  :  to  those  who  know  any  one 
period  at  all  well  the  happy-go-lucky  archa- 
isms of  the  modem  man  of  letters  are  only 
distressing;  Let  us  add  that,  though  in  a  se- 
ries of  "  pictures  "  it  may  not  be  unpardon- 
able to  jump  about  from  century  to  century, 
to  and  fro,  the  result  upon  most  readers  will 
undoubtedly  be  to  strengthen  the  deep-rooted 
belief  that  the  men  of  the  Middle  Ages  all 
lived  at  the  same  time.  It  is  fortunate  that 
in  bis  historical  novels  Sir  Walter  Besant  has 
to  remain  in  one  period. 

If  would  hardly  be  worth  while  to  criticise 
this  book  if  it  came  from  a  less  honored  hand. 
It  will  do  no  positive  harm— except  perhaps 
that  it  may  do  something  to  lower  the  average 


standard  of  literary  performance.  But  we 
who  in  oui  college  days  chuckled  over  'The 
Monks  of  Thelema,'  and  have  been  stirred  in 
later  years  by  *A11  Sorts  and  Conditions  of 
Men';  we  who  admire  the  authors'  champion, 
and  rejoiced  when  the  English  (jk>vemment  did 
honor  to  letters  in  his  person— feel  that  a  book 
like  'Westminster'  is  poor  work.  We  cannot 
help  hoping  that  Sir  Walter  himself  is  not  so 
blinded  by  success  and  fiattery  as  to  escape  the 
prick  of  conscience. 

BOOKS  OF  THE  WBBK. 

Andenoa,  Prof.  M .  B.  Some  Bepreflentsttre  Poets  of 
the  Nineteenth  Centair :  A  SylUbiu  of  Unlrenlty 
Eztenalon  Lectures.   Sad  Frandfloo:  WlllUm  Dozey. 

BaUsc.  H.  de.  Ls  Orsnde  Brettebe.  and  Otber  Stortet. 
London  :  Dent;  New  York :  XacmUlan.   f  1.50. 

BftrtncOonld, 8.   The Broom-Sqolre.     F. A. Stokes Oa 

Bates.  Arlo.   Poems  of  John  Keats.   Boston :  Olon  ft 

Co.   $1.10.  _      .  ^ 

Beroy.  Paul.   Key  to  Short  Selections  for  Translating 

Bngllsh  Into  French.   W.  R.  Jenkins.   75o. 
BUlNye's Sparks.    F.T.Neelr. 
Bodlagton.  O.  E.   Kelly's  French  Law  of  Maniace. 

London :  Stevens  ft  Sons;  New  York :  Baker.  Voorhlf 

ft  Co.   |8.50. 
Bottone.  S.  R.  The  Dynamo :  How  Made  and  How  Us^. 

London :  Sonnenschein;  New  Tork :  MaemUlan.    00c. 
Bralnerd.  T.  H.    Robert  Atterhnry :  A  Study  of  Lore 

andUfe.   CasselL   60c 
BrlgM.  H.  M.   By  Tansled  Paths :  Stray  LeaTss  from 

NSrare's  Byeways.   F.  Wame  ft  Co.   f  I.9S.  ^   _ 

Broglle.  Duke  de.    An  Ambassador  of  the  Vanquished : 

Vbconnt  Oontaut-Blron's  Mlaiton  to  Berlin.  1871- 


1877.   MaemUlan.   «9. 

:       .  r:Allemol 

and  Henrtette  Renan.  macmlUan.   92.90. 


Brother  and  Sister: 


nolr  and  the  Letters  of  Ernest 


Brown.  Prof.  E.  W.  An  Introductory  Treatise  on  the 
Lunar  Theory.  Cambridge:  Unlvermlty  Press:  New 
Tork:  MacmlUan.   83  75.  _ 

Buchanan.  Robert,  and  Murray.  Henry.  The  Charla- 
tan.   F.T.  Neely.   ftOo. 


Burroughs,  John.  A  Bunch  of  Herbs,  and  Other  Pi9«n. 

Boston :  Houghton.  Mllllln  ft  Co.    1 5c 
Cable,  O.W.   Madame  Delphlne.   Scrlbners.   7Sc 


stem  Question.   MacmU- 


Carieton,  WUllam.  Traits  and  Stories  of  the  Irish 
Peasantry.  London:  Dent;  New  Tork:  Maomlllan. 
81.50. 

CasseU's  Complete  Pocket-Oulde  to  Europe.  1888. 
Caasell  Publishing  Co.   81.60. 

Castlemon.  Harry.    The  House-Boat  Boys.    PhOadel- 

gfbU :  H.  T.  Coates  ft  Co.   81.95. 
Irol,  Valentine.   The  Far  EasM 
Ian.   88.50. 

Cook.  Prof.  A.  S.  Paradise  Lost,  Books  L  and  IL  Leach, 
Shewell  ft  Sanborn.   86c. 

Cowles,  Prof.  W.  L  The  Adelphoe  of  Terence.  Leach, 
She  vveU  ft  Sanborn.   25c 

Davis.  M.C.   The  Refiner's  Fire.   James  Pott  ft  Co. 

Dawson.  Sir  J.  W.  Eden  Lost  and  Won.  F.  H.  BereU 
Co.    81.25. 

Fletcher.  W.  L.  and  Bowker.  R.  R.  The  Annual  Lite- 
rary Indez^695.    New  Tork :  P%MUker»*  Wmkly. 

Ford,  P.  L.  The  Writlogs  of  Thomas  Jeffenon.  VoL 
VH.    1795-1801.   Putnams. 

Oarbe.  Richard.  The  Redemption  of  the  Brahman. 
Chicago :  Open  Omri  Publishing  Co.    26c 

Good  Reading  about  Many  Books.  Mostly  by  their 
Authors.   Second  Tear.   London :  T.  F.  Unwtn. 

Ooodhart^  Brifcoe.  Hlstonr  of  the  Independent  Lon- 
don Virginia  Rangers.  Washington:  McOIll  ft  Wal- 
lace. 

Graham,  O..  and  R.  B.  Father  Archangel  of  Sootland, 
and  Other  Essays.  London:  A.  ft  C.  Blaok;  New  Tork: 
MaemUlan.    81.76. 

Gregg.  ReT.  David.  The  Testimony  of  the  Land  to  the 
Book.    2ded.    New  Tork :  E.  BTTreat.    S6c 

Grenf  ell,  W.  T.  VUclngs  of  To-day;  or.  Life  and  Medical 
Work  among  the  Fishermen  of  Labrador.  F.  H.  Be- 
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Uardy.  Thomas.   A  Laodicean.   Harpers.   81.50. 

Hamack.  Adolf.  Christianity  and  History.  London: 
A.  ft  O.  Black. 

Hanlson.  Mrs.  Burton.  A  Daughter  of  the  South,  and 
Shorter  Stories.    CasselL    6O0 

Hanrle-Brown.  J.  A.,  and  Buckley.  T.  E.  A  Fauna  of 
the  Moray  Basin.   2  vols.   Edmburgh:  David  Doug- 


King.  R.  M.   School  Interests  and  Duties. 

nook  Co.   81. 
Laire,  Comte  M.  H.  dc    Mteiolres  du  Due  de  Perslgny. 

Paris :  Plon;  New  Tork :  Dyrsen  ft  Pfelffer . 
Macknight,  Thomas.   Ulster  as  It  Is;  or.  Twenty-eight 

Tears^  Experience  as  an  Irlih  Editor.   8  toIs.   Mao- 

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MaUock.W.H.   Classes  and  Masses;  or.  Wealth.  Wages 

and  Welfare  In  the  United  Kingdom.    London :  A.  ft 

C.BlackiNew  Tork:  MaemUlan.   81JW.  ^^ 

North,  Sir  Thomas.    Plutarch's  Uvea.    Vols  V.  and  VL 

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Shunleff.  E.  W.   Heaven  In  Easter.   Easter  In  Heaven. 

Boston :  L.  Prang  ft  Co. 
SpofTord.  Harriet  P.   A  Msster  Spirit.   Scrtbners.  7&c 
Stephen,  LesUe.    Social  Rlshu  and  Duties :  AddresMS 

to  Ethical  SodetlM.    2  vols.   London ;  Sonnenschein; 

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Swift,  Jonathan.   GulUver's  Travels.   Boston :  Bough- 
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Abraham' Uneoln.   S.S.  McOlure.   81*  

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Belgian  Writers.   Chicago:  Stone  ft  Klmhall.    81.8&. 
Vlardot,  Louis.     Reasons  for  Unbeltof.    New  Tork: 

Peter  Eckler.  ^ 

Welton,  J.   A  Manual  of  Logic    VoL  IL    London :  W. 

RCllve. 
WUIIamson,  J.  J.   Mosby's  Rangen.    New  Tork  :B.& 

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KImbalL    81.85.  ^  . 

Woodward,  B.  D.    Hugo's  Quatrevlngt-Trslaa    lf«A» 

Jenkins.  91.86. 


The    Nation. 


SEW  YORK,   THURSDAY,  APRIL   0.   1880. 

The  Week. 

The  quality  of  the  statesmen  who  are 
attend ing  to  peace  and  war  for  us  in  Con- 
grees  was  well  illustrated  by  Mr.  Hitt's  part 
in  the  debate  on  the  Cuban  resolutions  on 
Friday.  We  believe  Mr.  Hitt  is  excused 
by  some  for  his  share  in  the  follies  of  the 
House  on  foreign  sffairs,  by  alleging  that, 
in  joining  the  crazy  men,  his  main  object 
is  to  prevent  their  doing  more  serious  mis- 
chief. We  often  head  lunatics  off,  as 
every  one  knows,  by  pretending  to  share 
their  more  dangerous  delusions.  On  Fri- 
day, however,  he  seems  to  have  given  up 
the  r6l6  of  a  restraining  influence  and 
thrown  in  his  lot  with  his  patients.  When 
the  Senate  concurrent  resolutions  on 
Cuban  belligerency  came  down  to  the 
House  on  the  2d  of  March,  the  second 
was  the  following: 

**  R^folved,  further.  That  the  friendly  offlcee 
of  the  UnitAd  Sutet  should  be  offered  by  the 
Presldeot  to  the  Spanish  Oovemment,  for  the 
recognition  of  the  Independence  of  Caba.** 

Of  this  resolution  Mr.  Hitt  said,  in  the 
debate  which  followed : 

''  Bvenr  gentleman,  on  hearing  that  tnggee- 
tion  msoe  and  that  proposition  presented  to 
him,  must  thiok  for  a  moment  what  would  be 
the  response  if  a  proposition  were  made  to  our 
Oovemment,  for  eiample,  by  a  British  Minis- 
ter, presenting  reeolatioos  adopted  by  the  Bri- 
tish rarliament,  asking  or  desiring  us  at  onoe 
to  recognize  the  independence  of  Texas,  or 
Florida,  or  of  MichiKan.  How  long  would  he 
remain  in  Washington  after  presenting  such  a 
propo»ition  as  that  after  the  self-respect  of 
our  Government  had  been  thus  insulted  V^ 

And  more  to  the  aame  effect  Here  the 
chairman  of  the  House  committee  on  for- 
eign relations  is  restraining  the  crazy 
men  of  the  Senate,  and  reading  them  a 
lesson  in  international  law  and  comity. 
He  predicts  war  if  any  such  resolution  is 
passed,  and  is,  to  all  appearances,  abso- 
lutely compos  mends. 


But  the  lucid  interval  is  short.  In  one 
month  almost  to  a  day,  without  any  known 
change  in  the  situation,  except  news  which 
he  received  from  the  correspondent  of  the 
Mail  and  Exprrss,  giving  the  exact 
numbers  of  the  Cuban  army,  Mr.  Hitt 
moved  this  very  resolution  himself,  and 
supported  it  in  a  long  speech  arguing  that 
the 

**  second  resolation  as  adopted  by  the  House  was 
io  more  cautions  form  than  that  now  proposed, 
and  Bpain,  unlcst  persistently  seeking  a  quar- 
rel, could  not  bave  reftent«<i  such  a  proposi. 
tion.  while  tbe  resolution  of  the  Senate  propoe- 
ioK  independence  was  more  exposed  to  captious 
objccUott.  But  when  a  war  t>etween  a  parent 
government  and  a  dependency  had  been  going 
un  for  a  considerable  time,  and  when  separa- 
tion was  the  best  solution  of  the  war,  the  me- 
diation or  friendly  conosel  of  another  nation 
to  solve  an  existing  struggle  by  recognizing 
independence  might  be  a  truly  friendly  act; 
and  this,  in  fact,  has  often  been  done.*' 

That  is,  what  was  an  insult  on  the  2d  of 


March  becomes  on  the  3d  of  April  **a 
truly  friendly  act.*'  It  is  hardly  necessary 
to  comment  on  this  beyond  saying  that  it 
helps  us  to  understand  the  great  hesita- 
tion in  Europe  to  invest  in  American  se- 
curities. Investors  feel  as  passengers  in 
a  train  would  feel  if  they  heard  the  engi- 
neer had  handed  over  the  locomotive  to 
a  party  of  schoolboys  going  home  for  the 
holidays.  As  for  Mr.  Hitt,  we  advise 
him  to  get  out  a  text-book  of  ethics  at 
once.  We  would  guarantee  it  a  large 
sale  among  highwaymen,  who  would  be 
delighted  to  find  that  a  demand  for  a 
traveller's  purse  is  a  truly  friendly  act  if 
no  offence  is  intended,  and  that  to  be 
knocked  down  and  put  in  jail  for  it  would 
only  argue  a  captious  disposition  to  seek 
a  quarrel.  We  hope  that  Mr.  Hitt's  A. 
P.  A.  friends  will  not  fail  to  see  how  he 
adopts  the  Jesuit  doctrine  of  **  intention," 
as  explained  by  Pascal. 


Senator  Chandler's  astonishing  letter 
has  called  out  a  reply  from  the  chairman 
of  the  committee  on  resolutions  of  the 
New  Hampshire  convention,  Mr.  Putney, 
which  rescues  Bill  from  his  own  charge 
that  he  was  a  coward,  and  leaves  him  a 
simple  falsifier.  It  was  not  true,  says 
Mr.  Putney,  that  Chandler  bad  been  in- 
formed of  the  McKinley  endorsement  only 
an  hour  before  the  convention;  he  was 
told  of  it  the  previous  evening.  At  first 
he  said  he  would  fight  it,  but  afterwards 
sent  word  that  he  ** would  not  contend." 
••You  were  not  a  coward,"  writes  Mr. 
Putney  soothingly;  ••you  simply  accepted 
thb  inevitable."  This  is  prudence,  not 
cowardice.  It  is  imprudent,  however,  to 
tell  lies  when  you  are  sure  to  be  found 
out.  On  one  point,  though,  Mr.  Putney 
confesses  his  indebtedness  to  Senator 
Chandler.  *•!  am  glad,"  he  aays,  •^to 
learn  that  Mr.  Reed  is  a  bimetallist,  for 
Mr.  Lodge,  to  whom  you  make  report  of 
your  stewardship,  and  whom  you  seem  to 
recognize  as  his  manager,  has  put  him  on 
a  gold-bug  platform  in  Massachueetts." 


Here  at  last  is  Speaker  Reed's  long- 
sought  opportunity  to  declare  his  views 
on  the  money  question.  People  generally 
have  not  understood  what  a  bard  struggle 
he  has  had  with  his  own  nice  sense  of 
propriety 'in  this  matter  of  making  bis 
opinions  known.  He  has  been  fairly  ach- 
ing, even  burning,  to  como  out  in  his  own 
bold,  bluff  way  and  let  tho  country  know 
what  he  thinks.  But  would  it  be  deli- 
cate? Would  it  not  shock  refined  sensi- 
bilities? Would  it  conform  to  the  ameni- 
ties of  the  campaign?  Those  are  the 
anxious  questions  he  puts  his  friends  who 
urge  him  to  speak  out.  No  man  is  more 
eager  to  do  so  than  he;  but  just  consider 
his  position,  the  delicacy  cf  the  situation, 
tbe  fitness  of  things.    People  might  think 


he  was  a  candidate  for  the  Presklency. 
Would  that  be  dignified?  But  the  pinch 
of  his  difficulty  has  been  the  lack  of  fitting 
opportunity.  He  could  not  go  out  of  his 
way  to  make  an  occasion.  But  he  now 
has  one  made  to  his  hand  by  Chandler. 
A  grave  question  of  veracity  has  arisen 
between  Chandler  and  Lodge;  one  says 
Reed  is  a  bimetallist,  the  other  that  he  is 
a  gold- bug.  Now  we  affirm  that  it  would 
be  entirely  proper  for  a  public  man,  even 
a  shrinking,  sensitive  public  man  like  Mr. 
Reed,  to  come  forward  under  such  cir- 
cumstances and  say  which  was  right.  No 
one  would  accuse  him  of  outraging  the 
proprieties.  We  say  nothing  of  the  de- 
sirability of  his  coming  out  as  Speaker,  as 
a  candidate,  as  a  man  who  is  asking  the 
American  people  to  give  him  the  deciding 
power  over  the  currency  while  refusing  to 
let  them  know  what  kind  of  currency  be 
favors;  we  put  it  wholly  on  the  ground  of 
his  duty  to  settle  the  question  of  veracity 
between  two  eminent  statesmen.  That 
could  be  done,  we  maintain,  without  at 
all  imperilling  Mr.  Reed's  reputation  as  a 
retiring  nature,  which  instinctively  dreads 
publicity,  and  has  chcsen  a  political  ca- 
reer only  for  its  hermit-like  attractions. 


Each  day's  developments  show  more 
clearly  the  lack  of  sincerity  in  the  support 
of  Reed  for  the  Presidential  nomination 
by  New  England.  District  conventions 
in  Massachusetts  were  held  in  two  dis- 
tricts on  Thursday.  In  each  case  the 
McKinley  men  insisted  upon  making 
themselves  heard,  and  although  in  neither 
were  they  anywhere  near  a  majority,  they 
refused  in  one  district  to  support  a  mo- 
tion that  tbe  Reed  resolution  be  made  the 
unanimous  expression  of  opinion,  and  in 
tbe  other  forced  a  change  from  •'  instruct- 
ing "  the  delegates  to  support  the  Speaker 
to  ••recommending"  such  action.  Joe 
Manley  has  had  the  New  Hampshire  dele- 
gates chosen  on  Tuesday  week  sign  a 
statement  that  they  were  selected  with 
the  definite  knowledge  that  they  would 
unitedly  and  earnestly  favor  Reed's  nomi- 
nation, and  that  they  will  give  him  their 
cordial  support,  but  they  add  that,  "  if 
forced  to  make  a  second  choice,  we  shall 
try  to  represent  faithfully  the  wishes  of 
our  constituents";  and  one  of  them,  in  a 
dispatch  to  the  Boston  Journal,  says 
that  he  thhiks  ••  Mr.  Reed  has  a  fighting 
chance  for  the  nomination."  This  is  not 
the  way  that  victories  are  won.  The  most 
striking  feature  about  the  Reed  canvass 
is  the  lack  of  heart  in  it.  The  Speaker 
has  effaced  himself  during  the  past  four 
months  so  thoroughly  that  he  seems  to 
stand  for  nothing,  and  his  supporters  find 
it  hard  to  hold  their  ground  against  a 
rival  who  does  represent  something. 


An  interesting  queetion  of  fact  is  raised 
by  some  comments  c  f  the  St.  Louis  Globe* 


280 


Tlie   ItTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1606 


Democrat  on  the  recent  financial  deliver- 
ances of  the  New  York  and  MasBachuaettB 
Republicans.  The  Olobe  -  Democrat, 
which  has  always  been  an  earnest  sup- 
porter of  sound  money,  pronounces  these 
declarations  in  favor  of  the  gold  standard 
"  as  impregnable  as  the  Ten  Command- 
ments," characterizes  them  as  **  the  Apos- 
tles* Creed  of  the  Republican  party,*'  and 
maintains  that  one  or  the  other,  prefera- 
bly the  Mastachusetts  resolution,  should 
be  adopted  literally  by  the  St  Louis  con- 
vention.   It  says  further: 

"  The  Republioan  masMs  are  as  sincerely  and 
courageonajy  devoted  to  honest  money  in  1896 
as  they  were  in  1875,  when  their  representa- 
tives in  Cod'gress  passed  the  law  which  brought 
every  dollar  of  the  oouDtry*s  currency  up  to 
the  gold  level  in  1879.  They  are  as  unalterably 
opposed  to  bogns  dollars  of  silver  as  they  were 
to  depredated  dollars  of  paper/' 

If  this  be  true,  how  does  it  happen  that 
so  few  Republican  conventions  come  out 
for  the  gold  standard;  that  the  New 
Hampshire  convention,  a  week  after  the 
one  in  Massachusetts,  rejected  all  but 
unanimously  a  proposition  to  make  a  si- 
milar deliverance,  on  the  ground  that  the 
latter  was,  as  the  chafarman  of  the  com- 
mittee on  resolutions  puts  it,  '*  a  gold-bug 
platform  ";  that  the  chief  candidate  for 
the  Presidential  nomination  refuses  to 
commit  himself  on  the  question  of  the 
gold  standard;  and  that  even  **  glorious 
Tom  Reed  *'  is  declared  by  his  friends, 
without  any  protest  from  him,  to  be  that 
mysterious  thing,  a  **  bimetallist  "? 


We  contrast  in  another  column  the  at- 
titude of  Messrs.  Hayes  and  McKinley  on 
the  currency  question  in  1876  and  in  1896 
respectively.  It  is  worth  while  to  set  the 
financial  plank  adopted  by  the  convention 
which  presented  the  former  as  *'  Ohio's 
favorite  son"  twenty  years  ago,  over 
against  the  one  adopted  by  the  recent  Mc- 
Kinl^  convention  In  that  State : 


187«. 
We  reco8:iiize  gold  as 
the  true  standard  of 
value,  aod  the  only 
steady  and  safe  hasis  for 
a  circulating  medium; 
and  declare  that  that 
policy  of  finance  should 
be  steadily  pursued 
which,  without  unneces- 
sary injury  to  business 
or  trade,  will  ultimately 
equalize  the  ralue  of  the 
coin  and  paper  dollar. 


18M. 
We  contend  for  honest 
money,  for  a  currency  of 
gold,  silver,  and  paper 
with  which  to  measure 
our  exchanges,  that  shall 
be  as  sound  as  the  Gov- 
ernment and  as  untar- 
nished as  its  honor;  and  to 
that  end  we  favor  bimet- 
allism and  demand  the 
use  of  both  gold  and  sil- 
ver as  standard  money, 
either  in  accordance  with 
a  ratio  to  be  fixed  by  an 
international  agreement 
(if  that  can  be  obtained^ 
or  under  such  restric- 
tions and  such  provisions, 
to  be  determined  by  le- 
gislation, as  will  secure 
the  maintenance  of  the 
parities  of  values  of  the 
two  metals,  so  that  the 
purchasing  and  debt- pay- 
ing power  of  the  dollar, 
whether  of  silver,  gold, 
or  paper,  shall  be  at  all 
times  equaL 


The  Republican  Senators  have  found, 
much  to  their  disgust,  that  their  Populist 


allies  are  going  to  vote  against  admitting 
Mr.  Du  Pont  of  Delaware.  It  b  sus- 
pected that  the  constitutional  arguments 
against  admission  have  not  so  powerfully 
impressed  the  Populbt  mind  as  the  gold- 
bug  argument  With  Senator  Blackburn 
lost  to  the  silver  forces,  it  would  never  do 
to  let  in  a  gold  Senator.  Delaware  can 
get  along  with  one  Senator  as  well  as  Ken- 
tucky. Besides,  if  the  next  Senate  is  to 
throttle  protection  unless  something  is 
done  for  silver,  the  throttlers  cannot  be 
too  careful  how  they  keep  their  opponents 
in  a  minority.  As  we  have  before  said,  the 
argument  against  admitting  Mr.  Du  Ppnt 
seems  to  us  a  very  strong  one,  and  we  pre- 
sume that  some  of  the  strict-oonstruc- 
tionists  on  the  Republican  side  of  the 
Senate  will  not  be  sorry  not  to  be  obliged 
to  strain  a  point  and  make  a  dangerous 
precedent  under  party  pressure. 


The  Herald  published  on  Thursday  ex- 
tracts from  the  message  of  President  Diaz 
to  the  Mexican  Congress,  sent  to  that  body 
the  day  before,  which  show  that  Secre- 
tary Olney  cannot  too  soon  begin  enlight- 
ening the  Chief  Ex^utive  of  Mexico  on 
the  Monroe  Doctrine.  Gen.  Diaz  said  he 
had  steadfastly  refused  to  express  an 
opinion  on  the  Venezuelan  dispute,  though 
having  received  **  invitations  of  an  inter- 
national character"  to  do  so,  because  he 
was  *'not  in  a  position  to  presume  that 
the  claims  of  England  constituted  an  at- 
tempt at  usurpation."  This  looks  bad. 
A  man  who  wants  to  know  what  the  facts 
are  does  not  show  proper  reverence  for  the 
immortal  Monroe.  Besides,  this  pretence 
of  ignorance  on  Diaz's  part  is  evidently 
hollow,  as  a  casual  reading  of  the  Ameri- 
can press,  or  even  a  slight  attention  to  the 
opinions  of  our  school-children,  would  have 
convinced  him  that  England  was  wickedly 
putting  her  hands  on  just  where  the  im- 
mortal Monroe  had  cried,  "Hands  off!" 
Worse  and  worse.  President  Diaz  affirms 
that  England's  refusal  to  submit  a  boun- 
dary line  to  arbitration  did  not  necessarily 
make  her  out  a  bloody  villain,  inasmuch 
as  "  the  Mexican  Government  itself  had 
declared  more  than  once  that  it  would  not 
admit  arbitration  for  certain  territorial 
questions  which,  in  our  opinion,  involved 
the  honor  of  the  country."  After  this,  & 
weak  assertion  that  he  is  in  favor  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  "  properly  understood," 
will  deceive  nobody.  The  whole  thing 
looks  to  us  like  a  deliberate  insult,  but 
we  refer  it  to  the  larger  wisdom  of  Con- 
gress, in  which  the  Constitution  has  right- 
ly lodged  the  duty  of  resenting  insults  to 
this  our  nation. 


Gov.  Morton  has  thrown  the  whole  Piatt 
machine  into  spasms  by  requesting  Mr. 
Lyman,  the  State  Excise  Commissioner, 
not  to  appoint  inspectors  or  special  agents 
under  the  new  law  until  his  legal  adviser 
has  investigated  the  question  whether  or 
not  they  are  subject  to  civil-service  regu- 
lations.   The  news  of  this  request  created 


consternation  among  the  army  of  appli- 
cants who  had  assembled  at  Albany  to  get 
the  new  "  confidential "  places.  Instead 
of  fighting  for  these  places,  they  found 
themselves  compelled  to  fight  against  the 
idea  that  the  places  could  be  obtained 
only  after  competitive  examinations.  Any- 
thing more  absolutely  disgusting  than  a 
competitive  examination  for  a  "  place  "  is 
not  conceivable  to  the  mind  of  a  practical 
politician.  The  mere  sight  of  a  room  fit- 
ted up  with  desks,  like  a  school-room«  with 
pens  and  pencils  and  blank  forms  with 
printed  questions  to  be  answered  in  writ- 
liig»  gives  him  a  sinking  of  the  heart  which 
in  most  cases  produces  nausea.  He  turns 
away  with  positive  loathing,  and  declares 
that,  rather  than  submit  to  such  hu- 
miliation, he  will  leave  politics  for  ever. 
This  feeling  was  very  strong  at  Albany 
on  Thursday,  according  to  the  Herald 
correspondent,  for  that  night  "Senator 
Raines,  John  F.  Parkhurst,  and  a  host  of 
other  machine  men  were  sitting  up  with 
Mr.  Lyman,  arguing  that  civil-service  [«ic] 
would  be  folly,  and  would  be  sure  to  fill 
his  office  with  a  lot  of  college  graduates 
who  don't  know  anything  about  life  in 
great  cities  or  practical  politics." 


The  Boys  feared  that  something  of  this 
kind  might  happen,  but  they  thought  the 
Legislature  had  "  fixed  it "  by  declaring 
the  offices  "confidential."  Lieut.-Gov. 
Saxton  says  that  the  new  amendment  to 
the  Constitution  expresses  the  desire  of 
the  people  to  have  the  merit  and  fitness  of 
all  applicanta  for  office  ascertained  by 
competitive  examinations,  and  adds : 

**  The  qaestion  is,  Does  the  Le^itlatare  make 
an  exception  by  merely  declaring  a  position 
to  be  confidential  which  is  not  in  reality  con- 
fidential r  If  so,  the  Legislatore  can  entffUy 
nullify  the  civil-service  provision  of  the  Con- 
stitution by  declaring  that  all  places  under 
the  civil  service  shall  be  oonfldentiaL  We 
cannot  change  the  nature  of  the  thing  by  giv- 
ing it  a  certain  name.  The  question  is  not 
what  the  place  is  called,  but  what  it  really  is. 
I  must  say  that  I  can  see  no  real  dilfereDce 
between  the  confidential  agents  provided  for 
under  the  Raines  law  and  hundinods  of  other 
places  now  on  the  competitive  lisf 

That  is  the  view  which  is  certain  to  pre- 
vail in  the  end,  for  it  is  precisely  the  one 
which  has  been  decreed  by  the  Court  of 
Appeals,  and  if  the  Gk>vemor's  adviser 
were  to  take  a  different  one,  the  matter 
would  not  rest  there,  but  would  be  car- 
ried into  the  courts  for  final  decision. 
There  is  no  escape  for  the  Boys.  They 
must  make  up  their  minds  to  the  exami- 
nations, with  the  awful  prospect  that  col- 
lege graduates  will  run  away  with  the 
"places"  in  the  end,  and  will  execute 
the  law  in  the  cities  in  complete  igno- 
rance of  the  intricacies  and  obligations  of 
practical  politics. 


There  seems  to  be  little  doubt  that  the 
sons  of  Tom  Piatt  and  Senator  Raines 
had  a  "  straight  tip,"  a  considerable  time 
in  advance,  to  the  effect  that  some  snug 
business  for  a  surety  company  could  be 
found  when    the  Raines  liquor-tax  law 


April  9,  1896] 


Tlie   !N*atioii. 


381 


should  go  into  operation.  Whether  they 
did  or  not»  the/  were  lucky  enough  to 
hare  their  com  pan  j  all  read/  for  busi- 
neaa  when  the  law  was  passed,  and  were 
luck/  enough  to  get  the  State  Excise 
Oommissioner  to  give  notice  that  his  ap- 
pointees must  get  a  suret/  company  to 
furnish  their  bonds.  The  liquor-dealers 
must  also  have  bonds,  and,  curiously 
enough,  they  are  getting  the  idea  that  a 
surety  company  with  Boas  Piatt's  eon  at 
manager  is  undoubtedly  the  best  source 
to  go  to  for  them.  The  ratcala  really 
think  that  in  this  way  they  may  establish 
a  **  pull "  not  only  on  the  Boss  but  on  the 
Excise  Department,  which  wili  be  useful 
in  enabling  them  to  "beat  the  law"  in 
▼arioua  ways  and  escape  the  consequences. 
It  is  a  wicked  world,  and  our  liquor-deal- 
ers hare  been  educated  to  believe  that  a 
**  pull "  is  the  basis  of  our  system  of  gov- 
ernment. Their  delusion  is  likely  to  prove 
of  great  business  advantage  to  young 
Piatt  and  young  Raines,  who,  of  course, 
suspected  no  such  fortuitous  aid  when 
they  set  up  their  surety  company.  They 
would  not  mix  politics  and  business  for 
anything  in  the  world  ;  neither  would 
their  fathers  permit  them  to  do  such  a 
thing.  But  how  surprised  they  must  be 
at  their  wonderful  luck  I 


We  have  examined  with  care  the  vari- 
ous arguments  made  in  favor  of  consolida- 
tion, at  the  final  hearing  before  Mayor 
Strong  on  Monday,  to  see  if  something 
really  worth  considering  was  advanced, 
but  we  have  been  able  to  discover  nothing 
of  the  sort.  Like  all  the  arguments  of 
the  kind  that  have  preceded  them,  the 
substance  was  mainly  wind.  Take,  for 
instance,  the  speech  of  Mr.  Parker,  the 
Police  Commissioner.  According  to  the 
report  in  the  TimcM^  which  is  friendly  to 
oonsoUdation,  this  was  in  outline  as  fol- 
lows: 

**  He  laid  it  was  ratiUinated  Domeme  to  tsy 
there  was  aov  danger  of  a  tstrapy—a  govern- 
ment of  legislative  commissioD  for  New  York. 
He  said  that  it  was  folly  to  believe  the  people 
of  Kew  York  would  be  so  sapine,  so  slavish,  so 
dead,  as  to  permit  any  odious  lesislatioo  to  be 
fastened  00  them  at  any  stage  of  the  proceed- 
ings pendine  the  completion  of  the  proposed 
charier  and  the  formal  establishment  of  the 
government  of  Greater  New  York.  All  mea- 
sores,  be  said,  would  oome  before  the  Mayor, 
and  any  dtisen,  as  well  as  the  proposed  Con- 
solidation Commissioo,  could  send  bills  to  the 
T4«iilatnre  afl^oting  the  form  of  government 
of  Greater  New  York.  There  woold  be,  there 
oould  be,  no  chance  of  odioos  or  oppre«ive  or 
misrspresentstive  government  at  any  stanrs 
osrtamly  no  greater  than  now  existed  ornad 
always  existed,  onder  the  present  order.  He 
reminded  the  ICayor  that  it  took  only  fourteen 
months  to  provide  the  new  Constitanoo  for  the 
whole  State  of  New  York.  '  The  bill  does  not 
increase  New  York  taxes,*  said  Mr.  Parker. 
*  and  any  attempt  to  loot  New  York  can  be 
stopped  in  a  moment  unless  New  York  has 
gone  daft'** 

In  adrtitioo  to  this  convincing  disposal  of 
all  objections  to  the  proposition,  Mr. 
Parker  turned  upon  one  of  the  opposition 
speakers  and  witliered  him  with  this  ques- 
tkm :  '*  Are  you  afraid  to  let  the  people 
elect  olBcials  f  *'  This  dear  okl  questk>n, 
**  What  1  are  you  afrak)  to  trust  tlie  peo- 


ple T  "  has  been  roared  eteadily  during  the 
last  half- century  or  more  by  every  practi- 
cal politician  who  found  himself  at  a  loes 
for  real  arguments  in  defence  of  a  shady 
political  job.  Mr.  Parker  got  it  from  his 
old  friend  Jimmy  O'Brien,  who  has  thun- 
dered it  hundreds  of  timee,  and  has  never 
failed  to  **  shut  up  "  his  enemies  with  it 
If  that  doea  not  give  us  consolidation,  no- 
thing wiU. 


The  Mississippi  Legislature  has  ad- 
journed without  advancing  the  scheme 
for  an  inequitable  change  in  the  distri- 
bution of  the  school  funds.  Early  in  the 
session  it  was  proposed  that  only  the 
school  taxes  paid  by  the  negroes  be  de- 
voted to  the  education  of  negro  children. 
But  the  press  of  the  State  generally  op- 
posed the  change,  taking  the  position 
that  it  was  the  duty  of  the  property-own- 
ing whites,  and  a  measure  of  safety  as 
well,  to  maintain  the  efficiency  of  the  col- 
ored schools.  Presumably  because  of  this 
opposition,  the  measure  lay  upon  the 
House  table  for  weeks,  and,  when  its 
friends  had  the  temerity  to  call  it  up  near 
the  end  of  the  session,  it  was  rejected  by 
a  large  majority.  A  companion  measure, 
apparently  conceived  to  accomplish  much 
the  same  result  in  a  less  direct  and  less 
honest  manner,  also  failed  to  pass.  This 
provided  that  the  poll  taxes,  now  turned 
into  the  State  Treasury,  and  thence  dis- 
tributed pro  rata  among  the  counties  for 
school  purposes,  should  be  retained  in  the 
counties  where  collected.  Payment  of 
the  poll  tax  is  a  franchise  qualification, 
but  very  many  of  the  negroes  have  not 
the  concern  about  the  franchise  attributed 
to  them  by  contested-election  committees 
in  Washington,  and  neglect  to  pay  this 
tax.  The  result  of  the  proposed  change 
in  distribution,  therefore,  would  be  to 
reduce  the  funds  available  for  school  pur- 
poses in  the  counties  where  the  negroes 
predominate.  The  sentiment  of  the  State, 
as  represented  by  the  vote  in  the  Legisla- 
ture, favors  the  change,  on  the  ground 
that  the  present  method  is  unjust  to  some 
of  the  counties.  In  the  Senate  the  mea- 
sure received  the  necessary  two-thirds 
vote,  but  it  failed  of  two- thirds  in  the 
House,  although  a  majority  voted  for  it. 
The  newspapers  of  the  State  are  in  ad- 
vance of  the  people  on  the  aubject  of  ne- 
gro education,  and  it  is  likely  that  their 
growing  influence  will  prevent  any  fur* 
ther  attempts  to  weaken  the  aupport  of 
the  colored  achools. 


The  National  Liberal  Federation  of  Eng- 
land voted  atHuddersfleld  its  **  continued 
confidence  in  Lord  Rosebery,"  but  there- 
by hangs  a  tale  which  is  unfolded  by  Mr. 
A.  O.  Hume,  a  Radical  delegate  from  Dul- 
wich.  He  declares  that,  before  the  con- 
vention, he  wrote  to  the  Secretary,  asking 
whether  he  should  be  allowed  to  move  a 
vote  of  no  confidence  in  Lord  Rosebery. 
In  raply  he  was  told  that  auch  an  amend- 


ment would  not  be  in  order,  though  of 
course  he  would  be  at  liberty  to  vote 
against  the  resolutions  as  a  whole.  In 
other  words,  unless  a  delegate  wiahed  to 
vote  againat  a  reaffirmation  of  Lil>eral 
principles,  he  could  not  vote  against  con- 
tinued confidence  in  Lord  Rosebery. 
Against  such  gagging  tactics  Mr.  Hume 
protests,  in  a  letter  to  the  London  TimeM^ 
and  proceeds  to  give  the  reasons  why,  as 
he  says,  hundreds  and  thousands  of  Libe- 
ral electors  have  no  confidence  in  Lord 
Roeebery  as  a  leader.  The  first  is  that  a 
Liberal  leader  ahould  be  a  Commoner,  in 
favor  of  which  much  may  be  said,  though 
it  is  by  no  means  a  concluaive  reason.  The 
second  is  that  Rosebery  is  unsound  on  the 
limitation  of  the  veto  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  to  which  the  reply  might  be  made, 
What  possible  leader  is  sound,  in  the  Radi- 
cal sense?  Much  more  weighty  is  the 
third  reason,  which  is  that  Rosebery  is 
'*  wanting  in  that  earnestness  of  purposs 
and  enthusiasm  essential  in  any  leader  of 
the  popular  party."  Not  without  a  cer- 
tain justice  doee  Mr.  Hume  say  of  Lord 
Rosebery  that,  **  sandwiched  in  between 
literature  and  horse-racing,  he  holda  to 
politics  as  a  gentlemanly  and  creditable 
recreation,"  but  that  he  is  utterly  devoid 
of  a  "burning  love  of  justice"  and  a 
'*  holy  enthuaiasm  in  the  cause  of  man," 
which  alone  can  invest  a  man  with  the 
power  of  a  true  democratic  leader.  One 
has  but  to  think  of  Mr.  Qladstone*s  flam- 
ing indignation  on  Bulgaria  in  1880,  to  see 
the  point. 


Some  people  have  wondered  how  Mr. 
Balfour  could  have  so  confidently  affirmed, 
in  hia  apeech  on  bimetallism  the  other 
day,  that  the  American  people  are  **  abso- 
lutely unanimoua"  in  favor  of  the  bi- 
metallic standard.  A  philosopher  who 
knows  all  about  the  foundations  of  belief, 
should  not  be  above  knowing  something 
about  the  facts.  But  we  think  we  have 
the  explanation.  Mr.  Balfour  gets  his 
views  of  American  opinion  from  Moreton 
Frewen.  On  the  other  hand,  our  bi- 
metallists  get  their  views  of  English 
opinion  from  Moreton  Frewen.  How  do 
you  know  the  American  people  are  abso- 
lutely unanimous  for  bimetallism?  More- 
ton  Frewen  saya  so,  and  he  has  just  been 
in  Washington,  and  has  letters  every  week 
from  Senator  Lodge.  What  makea  you 
think  that  England  will  be  on  her  knees 
to  the  bimetallists  in  six  months?  More- 
ton  Frewen  told  me  so,  and  here's  the  last 
letter  I  had  from  him  about  it  Nothing 
like  this  expert  international  knowledge 
has  ever  been  seen  before.  The  funnieet 
part  of  it  is  that,  though  an  authority  on 
two  countries,  Moreton  Frewen  is  respect- 
ed in  neither.  In  England  he  is  regarded 
as  an  amiable  enthusiast.  In  the  United 
States  he  is  seen  to  know  rather  leas 
about  our  politics  than  the  Marquis  of 
Castellane  or  Capt.  Concas.  But  in  either 
country  there  are  some  eolemn  persons 
who  think  him  a  perfect  oracle  about  the 
other. 


J 


282 


Tlie   iN'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1606 


HAYES  AND  McKINLET. 
TwEZfTT  years  ago,  as  now,  Ohio  entered 
a  "  favorite  son "  in  the  contest  for  the 
Republican  nomination.  The  candidate 
was  successful  in  the  convention,  and  the 
Electoral  Commission  awarded  him  the 
Presidency.  The  national  convention  of 
1896  is  still  about  two  months  away,  but 
the  present  Ohio  candidate  is  far  ahead 
of  all  his  rivals,  and  his  success  is  con- 
fidently  predicted.  In  one  respect,  how- 
ever, and  that  the  most  important  of  all, 
McKinley  in  1896  is  as  far  removed  from 
Hayes  in  1876  as  one  pole  from  the  other. 
The  Ohio  candidate  twenty  years  ago  was 
so  sound  on  the  financial  issue  that  no- 
body in  the  country  could  question  his 
position.  The  Ohio  candidate  now  is  so 
vague  and  enigmatical  in  his  outgivings 
that  nobody  can  tell  what  he  means. 

Mr.  Hayes  came  into  national  promi- 
nence through  his  election  as  Governor 
of  Ohio  in  1875,  after  the  most  interest- 
ing, exciting,  and  important  State  canvass 
known  in  the  country  for  many  years. 
The  nation  was  then  suffering  at  once 
from  the  business  depression  that  fol- 
lowed the  panic  of  1873,  and  from  the 
demoralising  effects  of  a  depreciated  cur- 
rency. The  Democratic  managers  in 
Ohio,  and  indeed  throughout  the  coun- 
try generally,  except  in  the  extreme  East, 
thought  that  inflation  of  the  currency 
would  prove  the  most  popular  policy  on 
which  to  make  a  campi^ign.  They  there- 
fore rejiominated  the  veteran  William 
Allen  for  Governor,  on  a  platform  which 
declared  that  the  contraction  of  the  cur- 
rency already  made  by  the  Republican 
party,  and  the  further  contraction  pro- 
posed by  it  with  a  view  to  the  resump- 
tion of  specie  payments,  had  brought 
disaster  to  the  business  of  the  country 
and  threatened  general  bankruptcy  ;  and 
demanded  '*that  this  policy  be  aban- 
doned, and  that  the  volume  of  currency 
be  made  and  kept  equal  to  the  wants  of 
trade,  leaving  the  restoration  of  legal 
tenders  to  par,  gold,  to  be  brought  about 
by  promoting  the  industries  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  not  by  destroying  them.** 

The  Republican  convention  adopted  a 
guarded  declaration  that  **a  policy  of 
finance  should  be  steadily  pursued  which, 
without  unnecessary  shock  to  business  or 
trade,  will  ultimately  equalize  the  pur- 
chasing capacity  of  the  coin  and  paper 
dollar.*'  This  represented  the  cowardice 
of  many  Republican  politicians,  and,  after 
the  nomination  of  Mr.  Hayes,  he  was  ap- 
pealed to  by  many  of  his  party  friends  not 
to  oppose  an  increase  of  the  paper  cur- 
rency. But  he  refused  to  make  any  com- 
promise, and  sounded  the  real  keynote  of 
the  canvass  in  his  first  deliverance,  when 
he  came  out  openly  and  boldly  for  honest 
money  and  against  inflation.  The  cam- 
paign attracted  the  attention  of  the  whole 
coimtry  for  months,  and  the  success  of 
Mr.  Hayes  in  what  was  then  a  doubtful 
State  brought  him  immediately  within 
the  range  of  possible  choice  for  the  na- 
tional ooDveotion  the  next  summer. 


Mr.  Hayes  continued  as  outspoken  and 
emphatic  on  the  financial  issue  after  his 
election  to  the  governorship  as  before.  In 
March,  1876,  he  wrote  Gen.  Garfield  that 
*'  the  previous  question  will  again  be  ir- 
redeemable paper  as  a  permanent  policy, 
or  a  policy  which  seeks  a  return  to  coin,** 
and  added  that  '*  my  opinion  is  decidedly 
against  yielding  a  hair*s-breadth.'*  The 
Republican  national  convention  met  the 
issue  squarely.  Its  platform  recallad  the 
fact  that,  in  the  first  act  of  Congress  sign- 
ed by  President  Grant,  the  national  Gk>v- 
ernment  sought  to  remove  any  doubts  of 
its  purpose  to  discharge  all  just  obliga- 
tions to  the  public  creditors  by  solemnly 
pledging  its  faith  to  make  provision  at  the 
earliest  practicable  period  for  the  redemp- 
tion of  the  United  States  notes  in  coin, 
and  declared  that  *' commercial  pros- 
perity, public  morals,  and  national  credit 
demand  that  this  promise  be  fulfilled  by  a 
continuous  and  steady  progress  to  specie 
payments.**  Gov.  Hayes  warmly  endorsed 
this  plank  in  his  letter  of  acceptance, 
speaking  as  follows: 

**  It  is  my  conviotion  that  the  feeling  of  un- 
certainty inseparable  from  an  irredeemable 
paper  currency,  with  its  fluctuations  of  value, 
is  one  of  the  great  obstacles  to  a  revival  of  con- 
fidence and  business,  and  to  a  return  of  pros- 
perity. That  uncertainty  can  be  ended  in  bat 
one  way—the  resumption  of  specie  payments. 
But  the  longer  the  instability  of  our  money 
system  is  permitted  to  continue,  the  greater 
will  be  the  injury  inflicted  upon  our  economi- 
cal interests  and  all  classes  of  society.  If  elect- 
ed, I  shall  approve  every  appropriate  measure 
to  accomplish  the  desired  end;  and  shall  oppose 
any  step  backward.** 

President  Hayes's  financial  views  were 
put  to  the  test  within  a  few  months  after 
his  inauguration.  He  convened  Congress 
in  extra  session  on  the  15th  of  October, 
1877.  On  the  5th  of  November,  Mr.  Bland 
of  Missouri  carried  through  the  House,  by 
a  vote  of  164  to  34,  a  motion  to  suspend 
the  rules  and  pass  "an  act  to  authorize 
the  free  coinage  of  the  standard  silver 
dollar,  and  to  restore  its  legal- tender  cha- 
racter.'* During  the  following  winter  the 
Senate  amended  the  bill  so  as  to  provide 
for  the  coinage  of  silver  dollars  to  the 
amount  of  not  less  than  $2,000,000  nor 
more  than  $4,000,000  a  month.  On  the 
28th  of  February,  1878,  Mr.  Hayes  vetoed 
this  bill  in  a  most  effective  message,  on 
the  ground  that,  "  if  the  country  is  to  be 
benefited  by  a  silver  coinage,  it  can  be 
done  only  by  the  issue  of  silver  dollars  of 
full  value,  which  will  defraud  no  man**; 
and  he  declared  that  **a  currency  worth 
less  than  it  purports  to  be  worth  will  in 
the  end  defraud  not  only  creditors,  but 
all  who  are  engaged  in  legitimate  business, 
and  none  more  surely  than  those  who  are 
dependent  on  their  daily  labor  for  their 
daily  bread.** 

Such  was  the  financial  record  of  the 
Ohio  candidate  of  1876— a  record  of  which 
any  man  might  be  proud.  By  a  curious 
coincidence  the  Ohio  candidate  of  1896 
entered  Congress  at  the  same  time  that 
Mr.  Hayes  became  President.  The  first 
test  of  Mr.  McKinley  *s  financial  sound- 
ness came  on  the  5th  of  November,  1877, 


and  he  responded  by  voting  with  Mr. 
Bland  for  the  free  coinage  of  silver.  The 
second  test  came  on  the  28th  of  February, 
1878,  when  the  question  was  whether  the 
Bland-Allison  bill  should  be  passed  over 
the  veto  of  the  Republican  President,  and 
again  Mr.  McKinley  followed  the  lead  of 
Bland,  helping  to  make  up  the  more  than 
two-thirds  majority  that  overrode  the  rep- 
resentative of  his  own  State  in  the  White 
House.  The  McKinley  of  1886  is  consist- 
ent with  the  McKinley  of  1877  and  1878, 
standing  as  he  now  does  on  a  platform 
that  favors  an  undefined  *' bimetallism,** 
and  the  coinage  of  silver  under  restrictions 
and  provisions  **  to  be  determined  by  legis- 
lation,** which  holds  out  the  hope  that 
the  Ohio  candidate  of  1896  would  not  veto 
any  currency  act  that  should  get  through 
Congress. 

Can  the  Republican  party  afford  to  go 
into  the  campaign  of  this  year  under  a 
candidate  who  began  publie  life  as  the  ad- 
vocate of  free  coinage,  and  whose  position 
on  the  silver  question,  after  twenty  years 
of  service,  is  calculated  to  win  the  support 
of  the  silver  monometallists  ? 


THE  GREATER  NEW   YORK  SCHEME. 

President  Low,  in  arguing  last  week  for 
consolidation,  made  much  use  of  the  union 
of  the  States,  by  the  framing  of  the  Con- 
stitution, as  an  illustration  of  the  ad- 
vantages which  result  from  bringing  adja- 
cent communities  possessing  common  in- 
terests under  one  government    He  said: 

**What  did  they  do?  They  proposed  a 
stronger  union  as  to  the  matters  in  which  the 
Interests  of  the  States  were  one,  and  they  call- 
ed a  convention  to  prepare  a  constitution  for 
the  new  Union.  I  ask  you  to  notice  that  they 
did  not  in  1787  resolve  that  in  1789  the  United 
States  of  America  should  be  established,  trust> 
ing  to  luck  to  be  able,  in  the  meanwhile,  to 
frame  a  suitable  constitution.  They  called  to- 
gether their  wisest  men,  prepared  the  CSonsti- 
tution  with  the  most  careful  deliberation,  sub- 
mitted it  to  the  vote  of  the  people  in  every 
State,  and  thus  established  the  new  Union  upon 
a  basis  that  was  clearly  understood,  by  the  peo- 
ple to  be  affected,  before  the  Union  provided 
for  became  a  livins  fact.  I  do  not  believe  that 
it  is  possible  to  find  a  safer  model  to  follow  In 
briuging  about  the  union  that  is  aimed  at  In  this 
measure  for  the  creation  of  the  Greater  New 
York." 

It  is  a  pity  that  time  and  the  occasion 
did  not  permit  him  to  go  more  fully  into 
the  aptness  of  this  analogy,  because  there 
are  several  points  in  it  which  need  more 
clearing  up.  There  has  never  been  a  more 
striking  evidence  of  political  capacity  than 
the  founding  of  this  Gk>vernment  in  the 
way  described  by  President  Low.  On  the 
other  hand,  neither  New  York  nor  Brook- 
lyn has  given  any  sign  of  political  capaci- 
ty, but  they  have  been,  Brooklyn  through 
its  whole  history,  and  New  York  for  at 
least  forty  years,  gross  and  notorious  ex- 
amples of  municipal  disorder  and  corrup- 
tion. Brooklyn  is,  and  long  has  been,  un- 
der the  dominion  of  a  corrupt  and  igno- 
rant boss,  three  years  out  of  five.  New 
York  has  been  for  forty  years  under  a  cor- 
rupt boss  with  hardly  any  intermission. 
Total  incapacity  to  fbund  and  carry  on,  not 
efficient,  but]  even  decent  municipal  go?* 


April  9,  1896] 


Tlie   N'ation. 


983 


Mument,  has  long  been  the  distinguishing 
trmit  of  both  of  them.  So  that  the  notion 
that  by  uniting  them,  giving  them  larger 
revenues  to  be  administered,  a  larger  con- 
stituency to  i>ersuade  or  hoodwink,  more 
holes  and  corners  for  politicians  to  hide 
jobs  in,  more  laws  to  construe  and  inter- 
pret, more  places  to  distribute  among 
"workers  and  Boys,  we  shall  produce  an 
•orderly,  well-administered  municipality, 
>is,  we  will  not  say,  an  absurd  proposition, 
but  one  that  needs  far  more  elucidation 
than  President  Low  has  been  able  to  be- 
stow on  it.  There  is  nothing  in  our  ex- 
perience of  men  or  of  cities  to  warrant  us 
in  expecting  anything  of  the  kind,  and 
yet  we  will  not  assert  positively  that  it 
might  not  happen. 

Now  let'  us  come  down  to  the  modu€  in 
quo.  The  States  in  1787  sent  their  wisest 
men  to  frame  the  new  Constitution  and 
gave  them  plenty  of  time.  It  was  the 
practice  of  every  State  at  that  period  to 
employ  its  wisest  men  in  the  transaction 
of  all,  or  nearly  all,  public  business.  Itj 
legislators,  governors,  mayors  may  not 
all  have  been  very  wise  men,  but  they 
were  the  wisest  men  there  were.  In  mak- 
ing up  the  national  convention,  the  States 
simply  followed  the  local  tradition.  The 
members  of  it  became  members  because 
they  were  the  leading  men  in  their  own 
States.  They  were  men  of  character  and 
education  and  long  and  successful  experi- 
ence in  public  business.  Now  is  there  a 
vestige,  or  more  than  a  vestige,  of  this 
great  tradition  left  among  us  to-day  ?  It 
was  by  almost  superhuman  exertion  that 
we  put  a  respectable  business  man  in  the 
mayoral  chair  last  year,  as  the  successor 
of  a  Tammany  bummer.  Our  legislators 
are,  year  after  year,  the  creatures  of  a  boss, 
who  sells  their  legislation,  like  prison- 
made  goods,  to  serve  his  own  purposes. 
There  are  only  three  or  four  men,  and 
there  have  not  for  years  been  more  than 
three  or  four  men,  in  the  New  York  Legis- 
lature, who  speak  their  own  thoughts  or 
obey  their  own  convictions.  They  do  not 
need  time  even  for  such  a  measure  as  con- 
solidation, because  they  neither  discuss 
nor  deliberate  on  any  measure  small  or 
great.  They  **jam  it  through."  They 
do  not  know  any  other  way  of  making 
laws  or  framing  governments.  We  dare 
not  have  a  city  council  with  real  power, 
like  other  great  cities  of  the  world,  be- 
cause it  would,  we  fear,  be  filled  with 
ragamuffins  who  would  plunder  us  whole- 
sale. We  have,  therefore,  to  content  our- 
selves with  a  Board  of  Aldermen  which 
does  little  but  license  peddlers  and  draw 
its  salary.  Is  it  possible  that  by  bringing 
two  such  communities  together  the  re- 
sultant will  be  something  wise  and  good 
and  pure?  Is  it  in  the  least  likely  that 
we  shall  send  our  wisest  men  to  frame  the 
common  government  ?  Is  it  likely  that  if 
we  did  they  would  be  allowed  to  put  into 
execution  a  really  wise  measure,  if  one  of 
its  results  were  to  be,  as  it  would  have  to 
be  in  order  to  improve  our  condition,  the 
dostruotioQ  of  the  power  of  the  Boss  T    Is 


it  not  plain  that  before  any  union  between 
the  two  cities  can  be  properly  effected,  we 
need  a  far  more  thorough  trial  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  improving  each* city,  through 
the  instrumentalities  furnished  us  by  the 
constitutional  amendments — that  is,  by 
more  direct  appeals  to  the  intelligence 
and  consciences  of  the  citizens  on  city 
issues? 

The  truth  is,  and  it  is  a  truth  which  is 
visible  all  over  the  country,  in  Washing- 
ton as  well  as  in  the  States,  that  while  our 
problems  are  increasing  in  gravity,  we  are 
making  less  and  less  use  of  our  wisest 
men  in  their  solution.  No  Congress  we 
have  ever  had  has  had,  or  ever  made  for 
itself,  more  serious  tasks  than  the  present 
one,  but  no  Congress  has  ever  made  such 
ludicrously  ineffective  attempts  to  perform 
them.  Its  efforts  to  provide  causes  of 
war,  and  to  prepare  for  war,  have  been 
equally  feeble  and  incompetent,  and,  as  to 
domestic  troubles,  it  has  dismissed  tbem 
with  a  smile.  From  our  Albany  Legisla- 
ture we  have  got  nothing  good  for  years, 
except  by  a  lucky  accident  or  some  extra- 
ordinary pressure,  not  revealable  in  de- 
bate. All  over  the  country  our  official 
class  is  overwhelmed  by  the  increasing 
complication  of  the  work  of  government 
caused  by  our  rapid  growth,  and  although 
there  are  agencies  at  work — stern  neces- 
sity is  one  of  them — which  must  sooner  or 
later  furnish  us  with  a  better  class  of  ser- 
vants, we  have  not  yet  got  them.  The 
idea  that  Piatt  will  furnish  us  with  a 
commission  capable  of  dealing  with  the 
consolidation  question — one  of  the  weight- 
iest ever  set  before  any  community — with 
the  care,  the  forethought,  the  construc- 
tive ingenuity,  the  sense  of  justice,  the 
indifference  to  personal  motives  which  its 
gravity  calls  for,  is  so  novel,  so  startling, 
and  receives  so  little  support  f^om  ex- 
perience, that  the  community  may  well 
hesitate  for  the  moment  to  do  anything 
about  it. 

The  reorganization  of  the  government 
of  the  City  of  London,  a  few  years  ago, 
was  a  much  less  difficult  task  than  the 
consolidation  of  New  York  and  Brooklyn, 
and  it  is  a  kind  of  task  in  which  the  Bri- 
tish invariably  employ  men  of  the  highest 
training  and  ripest  experience— their 
wisest  men,  in  short — and  yet  it  took 
many  years  of  consideration  and  discus- 
sion to  bring  it  to  a  conclusion.  The  at- 
tempt to  reorganize  the  London  govern- 
ment began  in  1860,  and  a  succession  of 
bills  for  the  purpose  were  introduced  in 
Parliament  in  sybsequent  years  by  such 
men  as  Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis,  John 
Stuart  Mill,  Charles  Buxton,  Lord  Elcho, 
J.  B.  Firth,  and  Sir  William  Harcourt  in 
1884  (we  are  quoting  Mr.  Albert  Shaw). 
It  was  not  tUl  1888  that  the  final  biU  was 
passed.  In  other  words,  the  scheme  was 
debated  for  twenty-eight  years  by  the 
ablest  men  in  England,  before  it  took  final 
shape  and  came  into  operation.  We  have 
set  to  do  more  difficult  work— T.  C.  Piatt 
of  Owego  and  Clarence  Lexow  of  Nyack, 
and  given.them  one  /earl 


A  LTTERART  CRISIS. 
FiNAifOiAL  and  political  crises  have  been 
pretty  thoroughly  studied;  the  crisis  of 
a  fever  is  a  well-recognized  phenomenon; 
but  a  literary  crisis  has  not  been  careful- 
ly defined.  Hence  we  should  not  wonder 
at  the  loose  and  often  conflicting  terms 
in  which  it  is  described.  The  important 
thing  to  know  is  that  such  a  crisis  exists. 
All  the  authorities  now  agree  that  it 
does.  A  publisher's  letter  last  week  in 
the  Evening  Post  showed  that  there  is 
an  unmistakable  literary  crisis  in  the 
United  States;  Sir  Walter  Besant  has 
been  ready  to  prove  any  time  these  five 
years  that  one  is  blighting  British  letters; 
and  here  comes  M.  Ren^  Doumic  in 
France  giving  lectures  on  **  The  Existing 
Literary  Crisis.*'  M.  Doumic  is  no  ma- 
thematician to  be  lecturing  on  imaginary 
quantities. 

Agreed  as  to  the  fact,  our  authorities 
are  wide  apart  as  to  causes,  manifesta- 
tions, remedies.  Mr.  Tait  says  the  trou- 
ble with  American  literature  is  that  it 
looks  too  much  abroad ;  M.  Doumic  as- 
serts that  French  literature  must  look 
more  abroad,  or  expire  of  inanition  ;  Sir 
Walter  Besant  says — well,  he  says  a  great 
many  things,  but  they  always  lead  up  to 
the  duty  of  joining  his  Authors' Society. 
Mr.  Tait  thinks  we  ** strangle"  domestic 
authors ;  M.  Doumic  affirms  that  domestic 
authors  strangle  us.  He  seems  to  agree 
with  an  English  critic  who  asserts  that  if 
the  French  naturalistic  novel  cannot  move 
our  hearts,  it  can  at  least  turn  our  sto- 
machs. Mr.  Tait  says  we  read  too  much 
and  too  indiscriminately;  M.  Doumic 
complains  that  we  do  not  read  enough : 
France  will  soon  number  but  **  a  handful 
of  mandarins  among  an  illiterate  people." 
But  it  is  unnecessary  to  pursue  these  dif- 
ferences. A  literary  crisis  exists— that  is 
plain,  we  hope,  to  the  meanest  intelli- 
gence. It  is  marked  by  deep  dissatisfac- 
tion on  the  part  of  authors  or  publishers 
or  the  reading  public,  one  or  all.  Now 
for  the  remedies. 

The  first  one  is,  to  suppress  competition. 
It  b  not  stated  in  this  bald  way,  but  that 
is  what  is  meant  The  phrases  are:  Eman- 
cipating ourselves  from  **  the  colonial  at- 
titude ";  stopping  *'  the  adoration  of  the 
foreign  writer  " ;  getting  the  press  to  de- 
vote more  space  to  **  domestic  literature." 
All  this  means  that  there  is  a  literary  cri- 
sis because  literature  cannot  stand  com- 
petition, and  that  protection  of  the  native 
product  will  cure  the  crisis.  But  this 
remedy  is  really  a  confession  of  inferiority. 
It  is  like  dread  of  the  evils  of  competition 
in  society.  **  What  shall  we  do  with  our 
boys,"  ask  alarmed  parents,  **  in  the  face 
of  the  fierce  competition  in  all  businesses 
and  professions  T  "  This  question  really 
means,  as  Leslie  Stephen  has  remarked, 
'<  What  shall  we  do  with  our  fools?  "  A 
bright,  energetic  boy  has  everything  to 
gain  from  competition.  And  so,  it  may 
be  said,  only  dullard  books  have  anything 
to  fear  from  literary  competition.  Any- 
how, they  cannot  eaoape  it    This  remedjr 


284 


Tlie    iNTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1606 


ie  Tery  like  a  prescription  of  a  bottle  of 
port  and  terrapin  every  day  for  a  person 
on  an  income  of  13  a  week.  The  thing 
cannot  be  done. 

If  it  were  possible  to  dispose  of  living 
competitors,  what  are  you  going  to  do 
with  dead  competitors  ?  Short  of  another 
Omar  to  burn  the  British  Museum  and  all 
its  works,  the  **  dead  hand  **  of  literature 
will  continue  to  labor,  even  if  all  modem 
authors  go  on  strike.  Thb  was  rather 
brutally  put  by  a  London  publisher  in 
controversy  with  the  Authors'  Society. 
Pay  our  authors  more,  be  was  told,  or  you 
will  get  no  books  to  publish  and  will  starve. 
Not  at  all,  replied  the  publisher ;  it  is  you 
who  will  do  the  starving,  for  the  reprints  I 
can  make  from  the  stores  of  the  British 
Museum  will  last  me  long  after  every  one 
of  you  has  been  driven  to  manual  labor. 
Needless  to  say,  the  authors  shrank  from 
the  unequal  combat,  and  continued  to 
take  their  beggarly  10  per  cent,  and  be 
thankful. 

The  other  remedy  is  more  to  the  point. 
Make  literature  prosperous  by  getting 
great  writers  to  produce  it.  From  this 
no  one  can  dissent;  but  the  trouble  is  that 
when  they  say  great  writer  they  mean  great 
reputation.  '*  Scarcely  a  year  passes,*' 
saya  Mr.  Tait,  **  without  London  making 
tluree  or  four  great  literary  reputations. 
How  long  is  it  since  New  York  made 
one  ?  "  Alas,  my  masters,  how  obviously 
•«  made  "  such  reputations  are !  Here  we 
oome  upon  a  very  curious  phenomenon. 
The  public  were  never  so  eager  as  now  to 
have  a  literary  genius  to  pet  and  flutter 
about.  They  run  off  impetuously  on  false 
scents  and  at  every  hasty  cry  of  lo  I  here, 
and  lo !  there.  And  if  they  ever  do  find 
the  first  sign  or  glimmer  of  genius,  they 
straightway  do  their  best  to  extinguish  it. 
They  do  this  by  the  method  of  what  is 
called  "making  a  great  literary  reputa- 
tion." 

The  process  has  often  been  witnessed. 
An  author  produces  something  unusual, 
something  showing  an  original  turn,  giving 
promise  of  genius.  Immediately  the  sig- 
nal is  given,  and  the  whole  pack  of  de- 
stroyers of  genius  is  let  loose  upon  him. 
The  reporter  runs  him  to  earth.  The 
photographer  levels  the  deadly  camera  at 
him.  A  dinner  is  given  in  his  honor  at 
the  Aldine  Club.  He  is  invited  to  write 
for  the  Ladies*  Home  Journal  Then 
the  end  is  not  far  off.  Only  one  step 
remains.  It  is  to  be  **  syndicated." 
Gbnius  in  the  clutches  of  a  syndicate  is  a 
melancholy  spectacle.  It  soon  becomes 
subdued  to  the  medium  in  which  it  works, 
and  appears  as  dull  and  ditch-watery  as 
if  the  divine  spark  had  never  glowed  at 
all.  As  long  as  we  go  so  painstakingly 
about  the  work  of  putting  every  singer  of 
native  woodnotes  wild  in  a  glided  cage  of 
publicity,  of  denying  expanding  talent  the 
time  to  read  or  think  or  commune  with  its 
own  heart,  of  making  a  great  reputation 
by  means  of  puffery  and  wind,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  we  shall  not  get  ourselves  out  of 
perpetual  literary  crisis. 


ITALY'S  HUMILIATION  AND  PROWESS 
IN  AFRICA. 

Italy,  March  19, 1896. 

Italy  for  the  Italians,  Italy  a  pledge  of 
peace  in  Europe,  was  the  programme  of  Maz- 
zini  and  Garibaldi;  and  after  the  consolidation 
of  the  country,  with  Rome  for  its  capital,  after 
stock  bad  been  taken  of  the  moral,  materia), 
jLUd  social  condition  of  the  new  kingdom,  its 
wants,  needs,  and  necessities  were  set  forth — 
schools,  the  redemption  of  waste  but  fertile 
landst  attention  to  hygiene.  SalB,  Bertani, 
Cairoli,  and  others  of  their  stamp  were  from 
the  first  opposed  to  grandiose  public  baildings 
or  useless  railroads;  above  all,  to  the  expendi- 
ture of  increasing  sums  for  the  army  and  the 
navy.  It  was  after  the  Congress  of  Berlin  that 
the  Jingoes  began  to  murmur  that  **  every  nap 
tion  of  Europe  had  obtained  something,  Italy 
nothing.**  Then,  when  France  took  Tunis,  a 
regular  campaign  set  in  for  increased  army 
and  navy  alliances  in  Europe,  and  a  colony 
'*  somewhere.**  Bo  Italy  drifted  Into  Africa, 
from  Massowah  to  Saati;  hence  the  massacre  of 
the  five  handred  at  Dogali,  the  shrieks  for 
*^  revenge,**  the  expedition  sent  out  under  San 
Marzano,  the  treaty  of  Utchialli,  and  the 
famous  article  which,  in  the  Italian  transla- 
tion, gave  Italy  the  protectorate  over  Abys- 
sinia and  bound  the  Emperor  Menellk  to  treat 
with  no  European  Power  save  through  Italy*8 
mediation.  In  return  for  this,  Italy  armed  and 
equipped  Abyssioia,  so  thaft  it  is  absurd  now 
to  ask  who  gave  Menelik  his  weapons.  Italy 
at  the  Belgian  conference  secured  him  the  right 
of  obtaining  them  from  Europe — voild  tout ! 

After  the  fall  of  Crispi*B  first  ministry,  the 
Rudini-Nicotera  ministry,  whose  members  had 
been  opposed  to  any  military  occupation,  still 
less  extension,  in  Africa,  alfirmed  that  while 
they  should  not  propose  any  withdrawal  from 
what  was  now  called  the  Eritrean  colony,  they 
should  keep  it  well  within  the  triangle  Masso- 
wah, Keren,  Asmara.  They  reduced  the  Afri- 
can budget  from  fifteen  to  eight  millions,  sent 
out  Colonel  Oreste  Baratieri  to  make  the  colony 
self-supporting,  and  to  organize  it  modestly 
and  thoroughly,  so  that  in  the  future  it  might 
serve  as  an  outlet  for  the  surplus  peasant  popu- 
lation, which  is  now  compelled  to  seek  a  home 
in  North  or  South  America  because  the  mother 
country  cannot  or  will  not  find  lands  for  them 
to  cultivate.  How  absolutely  he  obeyed  in- 
structions, how  completely  he  reorganized  the 
colony,  I  showed  in  my  last  letter  on  Italy  in 
Africa,  a  year  ago,  in  your  columns,  and  to- 
day, as  I  recall  his  last  visit  to  me  in  Naples, 
his  calm  enthusiasm,  his  firm  belief  in  the 
future  of  the  colony,  his  full  comprehension  of 
the  dangers  and  the  difficulties  of  the  under- 
taking—with hostile  Dervishes,  Abyssinians, 
warlike  and  jealous  of  any  foreign  usurpation, 
with  France  and  Russia  seeking  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  any  Italian  blunder  on  the  Dark 
Continent^— which  transformed  the  boy  hero  of 
the  Volturno  into  a  true  heir  of  Garibaldi's 
military  principles,  I  can  il^  more  understand 
the  transformation  of  the  last  six  months*  ac- 
tion or  inaction  than  I  can  subdue  the  bit^ 
ter  grief  that,  after  the  Adua  disaster,  fate 
should  have  chosen  him  for  *Hhe  last  of  all  his 
men  that  could  not  die.** 

All  is  dear  as  daylight  until  July,  1895. 
Kaesala  was  occupied  to  prevent  the  Dervishes 
from  invading  the  colony;  and  although  aU 
the  anti-Africanists  protested  against  this  ex- 
tension of  its  western  frontier  500  kilometres 
from  Massowah,  yet  inasmuch  as  England  had 
given  permission  for  this  occupation,  **with 
due  respect  for  the  territorial  rights  of  Egypt,*' 


should  such  a  step  be  deemed  necenary  for  the 
security  of  the  Italian  possessions,  on  milita- 
ry grounds  the  occupation  was  intelligible. 
Further,  when  Baratieri  found  that  the  chiefs 
who  had  accepted  service  under  him  were  be- 
traying their  trust,  when  he  found  that  Ras 
Mangash&,  in  return  for  protection  and  assist- 
ance, was  preparing  to  invade  the  colony,  it 
was  not  only  his  right  but  his  duty  to  repel  tiie 
invasion  and  chastise  the  invader,  which  he  did 
by  his  wonderful  strategical  marches  and 
splendid  victories  of  CkMtit  and  Senaf 6.  Yet 
that  he  was  not  intoxicated  by  these  is  proved 
by  a  letter  aft«*  the  victory  to  one  of  his  most 
intimate  friends  in  Italy,  published  in  the 
IllutircLzione  Italiana  by  Ferdinand  Martini, 
late  Minister  of  Public  Instruction,  and  a  stanch 
believer  in  a  commercial  and  agricultural  colo- 
ny in  Africa.  He  knew  that  the  chiefs,  and 
especially  Ras  MangashiL,  had  not  deserted  the 
Italians  without  having  previously 'made  peace 
with  Menelik;  hence  he  wrote,  and  clearly 
with  a  keen  remembrance  of  the  detestation  of 
the  majority  of  his  countrymen  for  African 
extension:  **I  have  done  my  duty,  but  if  I 
succumb,  no  one  will  compassionate  my  death 
or  defend  me  if  I  survive.**  Then,  if  you  take 
the  documents,  meagre  as  they  are,  from  the 
Green  Book  published  in  July,  1896,  every  one 
of  them  depicts  the  strength  of  the  Abyssi- 
nians and  their  resolution  to  attack  the  colony 
when  the  rainy  season  is  over,  and  be  repeats, 
'*  To  insure  peace  we  must  be  ready  for  war.** 
The  Government  summoned  him  to  Italy  (July 
7,  '95),  and  he  remained  there  till  September, 
when  he  was  recalled  by  despatches  from  Ari- 
mondi,  warning  him  of  the  hostile  attitude  of 
the  Abyssinians.  One  of  two  paths  was  open 
to  him :  either  to  insist  on  the  total  abandon- 
ment of  the  Tigre  and  of  Agame,  Immense  pro- 
vinces of  Abyssinia  absolutely  belonging  to 
Menelik,  or  on  sufficient  money,  arms,  and  men 
to  attempt  to  hold  them.  If  his  alternative 
was  rejected  by  the  Ministry,  then,  for  his  own 
reputation  and  for  the  sake  of  his  noble  little 
army,  for  Italy*s  prestige,  he  should  have  re- 
signed, and  from  his  seat  in  the  House  given 
his  reasons. 

Ton  must  bear  in  mind  the  state  of  Italy 
during  those  months— the  galleys,  the  prisons, 
full  of  political  offenders;  every  day  fresh 
suspects  sent  by  the  exceptional  tribunal  to 
domicilio  eoatto  amid  protests  and  men- 
aces from  their  friends  and  champions ;  the 
banking  scandals  smothered,  but  resuscitating 
the  most  violent  indignation  and  clamor 
throughout  the  country,  and  in  the  House  a 
nominal  majority  for  the  Government  of  four- 
fifths  of  the  Deputies.  The  financial  difficol- 
ties,  too,  must  not  be  forgotten,  nor  now  nor 
hereafter  would  it  be  just  to  forget  that, 
but  for  this  African  episode,  Sonnino  would 
have  succeeded  in  laying  the  foundatioos  for 
a  budgetary  equilibrium  in  a  not  far  distant 
future.  To  have  asked  the  House  for  supplies 
for  extension  in  Africa  would  have  been  suW 
cide  for  the  Ministry  when  you  consider  the 
frightful  state  of  taxation,  the  misery  of  the 
populations,  the  increasing  emigration,  the 
fact  that  there  is  a  tax  on  wheat  of  7  lire  per 
quintal,  that  salt  is  40  centimes  per  kilo,  that 
commerce  is  stagnant  and  industry  gagged 
at  every  point.  During  the  last  discussion  of 
the  African  question,  when  grave  were  the 
cautions  of  the  anti-Africanists,  especially  on 
account  of  the  Russian  *' Mission,**  the  Min- 
ister for  Foreign  Affairs  answered  :  "w^  to 
reinforcements  that  might  l>e  needed  in  case 
of  necessity  for  local  defence^  our  wamiqga  to 
the  barbarians  in  Africa  are,  *Beforeycwlhm 
Shoa  come  to  raid  slaves  and  Ofttfla  Ik  te 


April  9,  1 896J 


Tlie   Nati.orL. 


985 


Tfgre,  and  joa  repeat  your  aggreniont  on 
the  ooloay,  our  iwtf t  war-thipt  and  our  ready 
battaUoos  will  have  more  thaa  time  to  help 
Oeoeral  Baratieri  inflict  freeh  chattieemente 
on  yon.***  During  tbe  examinati<Mi  of  the 
bodgoli  thongh  ecreamed  down  by  tbe  major- 
ity, tararal  Deputies  pleaded  for  prudence, 
and  Campi,  a  supporter  of  agricultural  col 
oniee,  said : 

**As  an  Italian  I  am  proud  of  our  Tictories, 
but  do  not  let  them  inebriate  uf  or  Induce  us 
to  adopt  a  proeramme  of  expansion.  One  of 
the  great  benefits  of  victory  is  that  it  gives  us 
complete  liberty  of  action.  Now  if  we  stop,  if 
we  even  retrace  a  few  steps,  no  one  can  say 
that  we  are  timid  or  pusillanimous:  our  flag 
cannot  be  humiliated  by  this  course.  Signer^ 
oh  proflt  by  this  moment  in  which  it  is  vouch- 
safed to  us  to  be  wholly  wise.** 

In  the  same  spirit,  Branca,  now  Minister  of 
Finance  in  the  new  Rudini  Ministry,  hostile 
from  the  flrst  to  expansion,  said:  **Even  if  we 
are  rietorious,  Abyssinia  will  return  to  the 
charge  whenever  we  seem  unprepared  or  com- 
plloations  recur  in  Europe."  To  several  mo- 
tions Rudini  was  opposed,  saying,  **We  sim- 
ply take  cognisance  that  the  Ministry  is  pledged 
to  permit  no  expansion  and  hold  it  respon- 
sible for  the  future.**  •*  I  accept,"  said  Crispi, 
and  the  House  dissolved. 

Baratieri  returned  to  Africa,  with  what  in- 
structions we  know  not  yet.  After  once  more 
defeating  the  rear  of  Ras  Mangash&*s  column 
at  Debra-Ailat,  he  declared  the  campaign  at 
an  end,  and  annexed  the  entire  territory 
(i.  «.,  all  of  Tigre  and  Agame  occupied  by  his 
troops).  Ergo,  either  these  were  his  instruc- 
tions or  the  home  Government  was  bound  to 
recall  him,  replace  him  with  a  more  obedient 
general,  and  court-martial  him  at  once.  The 
House  resumed  its  sittings  on  November  21, 
and  many  were  the  interpellations.  Crispins 
answers  were  curt  and  scornful.  "  We  are  on 
the  defensive,  and  if,  in  defending  ourselves, 
we  conquer,  is  this  a  crime?  Are  we  to  leave 
the  0^  open  to  the  enemy  to  defeat  uar  The 
Minister  for  Foreign  Attmin  made  the  only 
statement  which  throws  any  light  on  the  sub- 
ject: 

**When  General  Baratieri  was  with  us  we 
were  enabled  to  determine  exactly  the  reasou- 
aMe  territorial  limits  which  should  circum- 
scribe our  occupation.  .  .  .  Tbe  Govern- 
ment, accepting  these  limits,  ascertained  that 
they  could  be  reached  without  sacrifices  ex- 
eeeding  tbe  exigencies  of  the  budget  .  .  . 
Thanks  to  the  last  victory  LDebra.  Ailat],  JHgre 
is  now  incorporated  in  Uie  colony.  Tbe  legis- 
la^n  of  Eritrea  is  applied  to  Tigre,  to  the 
entire  satisfaction  of  the  native  clergy,  who 
you  know,  gentlemen,  have  for  their  chief  the 
only  legitimate  religious  head  in  all  Ethiopia." 

(This  was  a  blunder,  but  no  matter.)  There 
followed  a  long,  glowing  discourse  on  the 
glory,  advantages,  and  benefits  of  this  enor- 
mous annexation.  Ban  Giuliani  and  Franchet- 
ti,  two  of  the  greatest  authorities  on  African 
policy, w«re  "  quite  other"  than  satisfied.  Brin 
made  a  most  startling  statement.  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs  and  for  the  Navy  several 
tlmea,  as  he  is  again  to-day,  he  spoke  with  au- 
thority. After  deUneating  the  African  poUcy 
of  the  ministries  in  which  he  had  taken  part, 
he  said:  **This  poUcy  has  been  totally 
changed.  X  can  aflirm  with  assurance  that 
the  policy  agreed  upon  with  the  Governor  has 
been  utterly  altered,  against  the  opinion  of 
the  Oovemor  Mms^."  To  which  Critpi  re- 
plied: *'  If  those  petty  princes  of  Shoe  and  of 
other  localities  keep  quiet  and  do  not  attack 
08,  we  shall  leave  them  in  peace";  and  the 
Mlalslry  got  207  votes  against  181  of  the  Op- 
poeWon. 

Six  days  later  came  the  news  of  Amba-Alagi, 


where  a  detached  battalion  was  cut  to  pieces, 
and  Major  Toselli,  after  sending  a  remnant 
under  his  aide  de-camp  to  tafety,  faced  the  20,- 
000  foes  tiU  he  fell  dead  at  his  post  Twenty 
millions  of  lire  were  reluctantly  voted,  even 
the  ministerial  majority  putting  a  veto  on 
**  expansion"  ;  and  then  throughout  the  coun- 
try arose  the  cry,  ••  Withdraw  into  our  old 
colony ;  the  Shoans  are  advancing  with  all 
their  forces.**  No.  Tigre  was  pompously  an- 
nounced in  the  Almapach  de  Glotha  as  forming 
part  of  the  colony.  Agame  was  occupied,  and 
the  fine  fort  of  Adigrat  constructed  in  its  capi- 
tal. Macalle,  thirty  kilometres  south  of  thi^ 
was  garrisoned  with  some  2,000  men,  and  tbe 
Shoans  advanced.  Of  the  disaster  which  fol- 
lowed, I  need  not  speak.  It  is  summed  up  in 
the  report  that  tbe  losses  amount  to  between 
7,000  and  10,000  soldiers,  Italians  and  askars, 
and  that  more  than  200  officers  were  killed. 
The  news  plunged  Italy  into  convulsion.  *'  No 
more  soldiers  for  Africa,"  was  the  cry.  Pa  via 
tore  up  the  rails,  Milan  was  prepared  for  revo- 
lution, when  word  came\hat  tbe  King  had  ac- 
cepted  the  resignation  of  the  Crispi  Ministry 
and  that  Rudini  was  to  succeed  him.  This 
produced  comparative  calm,  which  was  in- 
creased by  tbe  amnesty  granted  on  the  14th 
for  all  those  condemned  by  the  military 
tribunals  of  January,  1894.  The  new  Ministry 
is  composed  of  the  stancheiit  opponents  of 
African  extension.  In  bis  first  speech  Rudini 
quietly  affirmed  that  an  honorable  peace  was 
being  negotiated,  and  that  the  seventeenth  ar. 
Ucle  of  the  Utchialli  treaty  would  be  aban- 
doned in  any  case,  as  detrimental  to  Italian 
interests.  The  Crispinian  newspapers  howled. 
The  Riforma  cried,  **  Peace  with  dishonor"  ; 
the  TVidunci,  '*  Dishonor  without  peace."  But 
Rudini  quietly  told  the  House  that  the  Crispi 
Ministry,  before  going  out,  had  themselves  au- 
thorised Baratieri  to  treat  for  peace  even  to 
the  abandonment  of  Adigrat  and  Kassala  I 
This  the  Crispians  deny,  and  we  must  wait  for 
the  publication  of  tbe  Green  Book  to  get  at  tbe 
truth. 

But  for  a  doud  on  the  horizon,  I  should  say 
for  the  time  affairs  may  be  tided  over.  The 
House  will  grant  the  140  millions  demanded 
by  the  present  government,  as  even  Colaiani 
the  Socialist,  says  that  **we  can*t  leave  our 
troops  defenceless  in  face  of  the  Abyssinlans"; 
and  if  Menelik  allows,  tbe  colony  will  be  re- 
duced  to  its  former  limits,  Asmara,  Keren, 
Massowab.  But  now  comes  tbe  British  Jingo 
Ism  to  stir  again  the  troubled  waters.  It  was 
presumable  that  Italy  would  withdraw  from 
Kassala,  where  it  Is  with  the  greatest  difficulty 
that  Baldissera  can  send  provisions;  but  if 
Anglo-Egyptian  troops  march  on  Dongola,  she 
will  scarcely  be  able  to  do  so.  Possibly  before 
the  EngUsh  have  time  to  start,  the  Derviihes 
may  have  compelled  the  garrison  of  Kassala  to 
retire  from  the  fort  named  by  King  Humbert 
'*  Baratieri !  **  This  would  be  a  blesstng  not  in 
disguise.  J.  W.  M. 

ROMS,  March  2ft,  1896. 
SoMX  recent  remarks  in  the  Nation  respect- 
ing the  Abyssinian  disasters  as  bearing  on  the 
qualities  of  the  Italian  army  seem  to  me  clear- 
ly erroneous.  As  to  the  battles  fought,  that  at 
Saati,  in  the  early  days  of  the  colony,  was  a  decU 
sive  victory,  though  in  that  of  Dogali  a  single 
battalion,  taken  by  surprise  on  the  march  to 
reinforoe  Saati,  was  surrounded  and  extermi- 
nated; but  it  was  said  by  the  reliefs  who  went 
out  to  bury  the  dead,  that  they  lay  in  their 
ranks  as  they  stood  fighting,  with  not  a  fugi- 
tive, while  the  Abyssinian  losses  were  such  that 
Ras  Alula,  who  commanded,  withdrew  to  the 


hills  and  left  Saati  unmolested.  In  the  next 
battle,  which  took  place  at  Agordat,  the  Ital- 
ian force  attacked  and  routed  a  Dervish  army 
three  times  its  strength  in  one  of  the  naost 
brilliant  battles  in  the  history  of  African  en- 
terprise; the  Dervish  loss  exceeding  the  num- 
ber of  the  Italian  army.  This  was  followed 
shortly  after  by  the  capture  of  Kassala,  a  for- 
tified position  taken  from  the  Egyptians  by  the 
Dervishes  several  years  before,  and  stormed  by 
the  army  of  Gen.  Baratieri,  who  has  now  been 
defeated  at  Adua. 

The  present  war  opened  with  a  revolt  of  a 
minor  chief  of  the  ceded  province,  and  a  bat- 
tle at  Halai  In  which  the  rebels  were  defeated 
and  dispersed,  with  the  loss  of  their  chief. 
Closely  following  this  came  the  attack  of 
Mangash2^  one  of  the  pretenders  to  the  throne, 
and  son,  by  a  concubine,  of  Johannes,  the  de- 
feated and  dead  rival  of  Menelik,  at  the  head 
of  14.000  Abyssinlans  armed  with  rifles  and 
4,000  spearmen.  The  battle.  In  which  leas 
than  4,000  Italian  troops,  mostly  African  bat- 
taiions  under  Italian  officers  and  organization, 
were  attacked  at  Coatit,  with  all  the  well- 
known  courage  of  the  Abyssinlans,  ended  in 
the  total  defeat  of  Mangash2^  pursued  till  the 
night  made  it  impossible  to  carry  pursuit  fur- 
ther, and  the  remnant  of  tbe  fugitives  escaped 
to  Shoe.  But  Menelik,  who  had  furnished 
and  organised  the  invasion  of  Mangaahl^  now 
set  to  work  on  the  preparation  of  an  expedi- 
tion in  which  all  the  strength  of  the  empire 
should  be  called  out,  and  gathered  an  army  of 
80,000  riflemen,  furnished  with  arms  of  the 
latest  patterns,  and  abundant  ammunition,  by 
the  French  agents  through  Obock  and  Gibnti. 
Baratieri  had  grown  careless,  and,  though 
warned  by  tbe  Gtovemment,  from  informa- 
tion received  by  its  agents  at  ZSeHa,  of  the  ex- 
tent  of  the  preparations,  left  his  outpost  at 
Amba-Alagi  unsupported,  and  delayed  tbe 
recall  until  too  late.  This  force  was  attadced 
by  the  leading  division  of  tbe  Abyssinian 
army,  numbering  40,000,  in  a  strong  but  un- 
fortified position;  and,  after  a  bard-fought 
battle  lasting  all  the  morning,  and  in  which 
the  Abyssinian  losses  were  greater  than  the 
Italian  force,  a  retreat  was  ordered.  In  the 
course  of  it  about  700  men  escaped  from  the 
field,  over  1,000  of  them  having  died  in  their 
places,  the  **flghtlngedge"  there  shown  call- 
ing out  the  admiration  of  military  critics  of 
most  European  nations,  and  even  including 
French. 

It  was  now  evident  that  Baratieri  had  become 
either  physically,  mentally,  or  militarily  so 
demoraliaed  that  he  was  unfit  for  command, 
and  the  Ministry  desired  to  recall  him,  substi- 
tuting Baldissera;  but  political  infinences  pre- 
vailed,  Baratieri  being  an  infiuentlal  Deputy 
on  whom  future  hopes  were  based  by  the  group 
of  Piedmontese  politicians  who  opposed  the 
Ministry,  and  who  had  infiuenoe  enough  in  the 
higher  regions  to  prevent  the  change.  Bara- 
tieri was  advised  to  remain  on  the  defensive 
and  hs  prudent,  while  the  Abyssinlans  took  po- 
sition at  Adua,  in  a  very  strong  position,  re- 
cognised, indeed,  by  the  General  as  impregna- 
ble, in  a  dispatch  of  tbe  morning  of  the  very 
day  before  the  battle.  The  Italian  positions 
were  equally  formidable,  a  wkie  valley  sepa- 
rating the  two  armies.  Here  the  time  passed 
in  tbe  slow  demoralisation  of  the  Italian  army; 
the  General  seeming,  aooording  to  tbe  evi- 
dence of  correspondents  pressnt  and  of  sev- 
eral t>fficers,  to  be  attacked  by  softening  of  tbe 
brain.  He  himself  in  his  report  says  that  he 
was  hardly  conscious  of  what  he  was  doing  or 
why  be  gave  the  order  to  attack.  Tbe  result 
weall  know— tbe  most  disastfous  defeat  ever 


386 


Tlie   N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1606 


koowD  in  African  wan.  But  the  **figbtiog 
edge"  iB  to  be  seen  in  the  loeses,  nearly  half 
the  army,  and  in  fighting,  for  the  pursuit  of 
the  retreating  remnant  iras  very  brief.  I  take 
from  the  report  just  printed,  drawn  up  from 
the  evidence  of  the  survivors,  a  portion,  that 
relating  to  the  Da  Bormida  division : 

«*  Cut  off,  the  enemy  having  broken  through 
the  cen^  the  Da  Bormida  brigade  remain- 
ed  alone  on  the  battlefield,  fighting  till 
night,  bravely,  heroically.  Towards  seven 
A.  M.,  Da  Bormida  had  sent  up  on  a  height  on 
the  left,  perhaps  to  sustain  Oen.  Albertone, 
the  battalion  of  irregulars  [mobilized  militia, 
Africans  under  their  own  chiefs],  which  fought 
for  a  half-hour  against  overwhelming  forces* 
and  then  was  obliged  to  retire  with  heavy  loss; 
two  battalions  sent  in  support  could  not  fire 
efficiently  without  hitting  our  own  men.  Then 
Da  Bormida,  seeing  that  great  masses  of  the 
enemy  were  moving  on  him  from  the  right 
attacked  them,  deployed,  repulsed  them,  and 
advanced  nearly  to  the  camps  of  Maconnen 
and  Mangash&  Atikin.  For  the  moment,  our 
men  believed  that  they  had  won  the  victory ; 
but,  the  enemy  always  increasing.  Da  Bormida 
ordered  a  retreat  in  a  direction  divergiog  from 
the  centre,  and  effected  it  in  4chelon  with 
counter  attacks  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet. 
The  artillery  had  fired  all  its  ammunition  and 
the  infant^  exhausted  nearly  all  its  car- 
tridges. In  this  retreat  Da  Bormida  fell  rid- 
died  with  baUs.'' 

But  this  was  at  seven  p.  M.;  the  men  had 
been  marching  all  night,  and  went  into  the 
battle  fasting.  The  officers  who  last  saw  the 
Oeneral  say  that,  when  the  retreat  was  begun, 
he  said  to  them,  *'  Gk>  on,  my  lads;  I  wiU  stay 
her^^  and,  lighting  a  cigar,  faced  the  enemy 
and  was  shot  down.  The  force  of  the  Abys- 
sinian army  was  six  times  that  of  the  Italian, 
which  had  marched  by  moonlight  twenty  miles 
over  a  country  out  up  by  ravines,  mostly  un- 
reconnoitred,  and  so  difficult  that  in  places  it 
was  necessary  to  take  the  guns  from  the  mules' 
backs  and  carry  them  by  hand;  and  as  the 
General  had,  three  days  before,  decided  to  fall 
back  from  the  positions,  the  provision  reserves 
had  been  sent  on,  and  the  whole  army  was  on 
short  allowanoe  for  the  three  days  before  the 
fight,  into  which  it  entered  without  resting.  The 
enormous  superiority  in  number  of  the  Abyssi- 
nians  enabled  them  to  fiank  the  Italians  and 
attack  the  reserve  before  it  had  formed  or  ex- 
tricated itself  from  the  ravines,  and  threw  it 
into  confusion  all  the  greater  that,  from  the 
nature  of  the  attack,  they  supposed  That  the 
main  body  in  front  had  been  annihilated;  in 
confusion  it  retreated,  being  the  only  divi- 
sion that  moved  from  its  positions  without 
the  order  o  retreat,  in  spite  of  losses  in  the 
others,  in  actual  fighting,  quite  unprecedented 
in  modem  warfare,  except  at  Amba-Alagi. 
Several  battalions  were  practically  annihilated 
without  moving  from  their  positions;  three- 
fourths  of  the  officers  falling  out  of  the  total 
number  in  the  battle.  The  Abyssinian  dead 
were  so  numerous  that  the  parUmentaire  sent 
to  Menelik  to  arrange  for  the  burial  of  the 
Italian  dead,  reported  that  the  Abyssinians 
had  not  been  able  to  bury  their  own  from  the 
number. 

Troops  without  any  fighting  edge  don't  fight 
in  that  way,  and  there  were  offers,  during  the 
few  days  succeeding  the  battle,  of  thousands 
of  volunteers  from  all  parts  of  the  kingdom  to 
go  to  Africa.  The  battle  of  Adua  was,  in  fact, 
the  repetition  on  an  immense  scale  of  the 
famous  charge  of  the  six  hundred  at  Balakla  va, 
the  blunder  as  much  more  horrible  as  the  dis- 
aster was  greater.  It  has  merely  shown  that 
Italian  troops  will  go  where  they  are  sent,  ask- 
ing no  questions,  and  the  opinion  of  competent 
critics  is  that  their  fighting  edge  is  of  the  finest 
temper.    I  have  omitted  the  affair  of  Macalle, 


where  a  thousand  Italian  troops,  white  and 
African,  resisted,  in  a  hastily  improvised  forti- 
fication, the  attacks  of  the  Abyssinian  army 
for  a  month,  and  finally  surrendered  with  the 
honors  of  war  on  the  proposition  of  Menelik, 
the  commander  having  decided  to  blow  up  the 
fort,  with  all  in  it,  rather  than  surrender. 

The  Italian  soldier  is  as  fine  as  he  can  be,  and 
the  officers,  as  a  class,  the  truest  gentlemen 
and  the  most  modest  I  have  ever  met;  disci- 
pline is  of  the  severest,  and  yet  the  soldiers  as 
a  rule  adore  their  officers,  and  will  go  where 
they  will  lead  them.  The  proof  of  their  high 
morale  is  that  the  army  in  Africa  is  as  ready 
to  fight  now  as  it  was  before  the  battle  of 
Adua,  and  better  prepared.  The  ICassowah 
expedition  was  a  blunder  from  the  beginning, 
as  Crispi  declared  it,  in  his  opinion,  when  the 
first  disaster  in  it  called  him  to  power;  but, 
after  the  defeat  of  Dogali,  military  honor  for- 
bade retreat,  and  the  same  motive  will  prob 
ably  not  permit  withdrawal  at  present.  There 
are  positions  in  which  the  honor  of  a  country 
is  worth  more  than  it»  cost,  and  in  the  Italian 
mind  this  is  one  of  them.  X. 


THE  CARLYLE  HOUSE  IN  CHELSEA. 
LONDOH,  March,  1896. 

Thx  house  in  Cheyne  Row,  Ch^sea,  where 
Carlyle  lived  has  long  been  a  place  of  pilgrim- 
age. While  it  was  still  the  dirtiest  and  shabbi- 
est in  all  the  neighborhood,  hero-worshippers 
came  to  look  upon  it  and  shed  a  sentimental 
tear.  It  needed  no  medallion  on  the  wall,  no 
statue  on  the  Embankment  Garden  beyond,  to 
remind  them  of  the  tragedy  of  which  the  little 
old  eighteenth-century  street  was  the  scene  not 
so  many  years  sinoe.  Into  the  domestic  drama 
of  the  Carlyle  household  it  is  now  impossible  to 
intrude,  that  drama  having  been  made  public 
property,  once  and  for  all,  when  the  *  Remi- 
niscences '  and  *  Letters '  were  published.  It  is 
this  which  really  has  reconciled  one  to  the  re- 
cent transformation  of  the  house  into  a  public 
museum.  Otherwise,  one  might  shrink  from 
what  would  seem -the  violation  of  a  great 
man's  privacy.  It  is  different  with  Milton's 
cottage  at  Chalfont,  for  instance,  with  Ddrer's 
house  in  Nuremberg;  Milton  and  Diirer  being 
among  the  remote  heroes  of  dead  centuries. 
But  only  yesterday  the  Carlyles  were  still  at 
No.  S,  now  No.  24,  there  struggling  in  that 
"  tearing  whirlpool  of  miseries,  anxieties,  and 
sorrows "  which  life,  alas  !  always  was  for 
them  both. 

However,  since  museum  the  house  has  now 
become,  the  more  interesting  and  complete  it 
is  made,  the  better,  so  that  most  people  will 
hear  with  pleasure  that  the  loan  exhibition, 
opened  in  December  for  a  month,  the  time 
being  then  extended  to  three,  is  to  be  continued 
indefinitely.  It  is  true  that  many  of  the  things 
on  view  at  the  present  moment— the  greater 
number  the  property  of  Mr.  Alexander  Car- 
lyle—may  eventually  be  claimed  by  their  own- 
ers.  But  it  is  hoped  that  others  will  be  sent  to 
take  their  place,  and,  at  any  rate,  the  collection 
will  remain  as  it  is  until  the  summer— a  fortu- 
nate arrangement  for  touring  Americans  apt 
to  seek  headquarters  in  London  during  May, 
June,  and  July. 

The  house,  as  by  this  time  is  well  known,  has 
been  put  in  repair  and  given  the  thorough 
cleaning  it  so  sorely  needed  after  its  temporary 
rdle  as  cheap  hotel  for  cats.  Every  effort  has 
been  made  to  restore  it  to  the  condition  in 
which  it  was  left  by  the  Carlyles,  their  wall- 
papers even  having  been  reproduced— for  in 
their  day,  in  many  of  the  rooms,  wall-paper 


there  was,  well  huog  over  the  beautiful  panel- 
ling which,  with  the  daintily  decorated  stair- 
way, was  one  of  the  chief  charms  of  their 
home,  had  they  but  realized  it.  When  possi- 
ble, the  old  furniture  has  been  arranged  in  its 
old  place,  where  they  were  accustomed  to  see 
it;  and  in  every  room  and  on  the  stairway 
pencil  sketches  by  Mrs.  Ailingham  show  the 
exact  position  of  engravings  and  pictures, 
these  in  some  cases  actually  hanging  where 
originally  they  belonged.  What  little  there  is 
down  stairs  is  found  in  the  back  dining-room ; 
Carlyle's  bookcase,  designed  by  himself,  stand- 
ing in  the  recess  by  the  chimney-  place  which 
he  meant  it  to  fill.  There  you  may  see  the- 
complete  library  edition  of  his  works,  in  the- 
familiar  red  bindings,  published  by  Chapmam 
&  Hall.  And  there,  too,  to  your  greater 
pleasure,  you  may  see  many  of  Carlyle*s  own 
books;  really  a  motley  collection,  for  yoo 
chance  upon  now  a  *  Danish  Grammar'  or  a 
*  Handbook  for  Ireland,'  now  the  works  of 
John  Knox  or  the  plays  of  Schiller,  or,  agafan, 
a 'copy  of  the  ^Earthly  Paradise,'  opened  to 
show  the  inscription,  "Thomas  Carlyle,  with 
his  Scholar  John  Ruskin's  love.  1st  January, 
1870."  Ah,  me  I  ah,  me  t  as  Carlyle  might 
have  sighed.  One  shelf  is  reserved  for  a 
pretty,  old-fashioned  cup  and  saucer  and  a 
couple  of  plates  in  white  and  gilt-— **  part  of 
breakfast  set,"  the  catalogue  explains;  and 
memory  forthwith  singles  from  out  the  long 
procession  of  nmid-servants,  lir.  Carlyle's  spe- 
cial abhorrence,  '*that  horse,"  ^'that  cow," 
*<that  mooncalf,"  and  looks  upon  the  grim 
comedy  played  one  dull  November  morning— 
**a  whole  washiog-tub  full  of  broken  thingi^  In 
the  kitchen,  all  the  china  breakfast  service 
gone  irretrievably,  save  a  mere  remnant  left 
for  the  idle  gace  of  the  sightseer.  Do  we  not 
know  those  maid-servants  of  No.  5  even  better 
than  Cromwell's  Ironsides,  than  Frederick's 
Grenadiers?  Will  they  not,  too,  be  remem- 
bered as  long  as  Carlyle's  name  is  honored,  as 
long  as  the  most  human  letters  ever  written 
are  read  by  a  sympathetic  or  prying  public  ? 

On  the  wall  opposite  are  engravings  of 
Frederick,  of  Maria  Theresa,  and  of  others 
who  had  a  part  to  play  in  that  weariest  of  all 
books  in  the  making;  and,  in  a  case,  are  frag- 
ments of  MSS.,  some  full  of  the  blue  pencil 
corrections  that  were  the  printer's  despair; 
medals  commemorating  Carlyle's  birthday,  a 
horseshoe  with  screw- cogs  for  frost,  invented 
by  him— a  horseshoe  all  too  sorely  needed,  too 
seldom  used,  in  London's  slippery  streets — and 
other  such  odds  and  ends. 

But  the  more  intimate  relics  are  above  io 
the  drawing-room.  It  is  impossible  here  to 
give  a  full  list  of  them :  of  the  portraits,  the 
pieces  of  f  umiture-*mo8t  notable  the  desk  upon 
which  all  Carlyle*s  books,  except  only  the 
Schiller,  were  written— the  miscellaneous  con- 
tents of  the  glass  case,  with  its  testirooniaJa 
from  home  and  abroad,  its  photographs,  card^ 
cases,  pencils,  fiasks.  seals,  and  the  several  trt- 
fies  once  the  most  immediate  personal  property 
of  either  Carlyle  or  Mrs.  Carlyle.  But  perhaps 
among  them  all  is  nothing  so  pathetic,  so  genu- 
inely touching,  as  the  three  little  birthday  and 
Christmas  notes.  ''  The  prophecy  of  a  waab- 
stand,"  one  says,  **to  the  neatest  of  all 
women.  Blessings  on  her  bonny  face,  and  be  it 
ever  blithe  to  me  as  it  is  dear,  blithe  or  not. 
25th  Dec.,  1850."  And  this  from  the  man  who 
hated  all  such  nonsense  as  presents,  and  shrank 
from  the  bother  of  going  into  a  shop  to  bay 
anything.  Of  his  tenderness,  in  so  trivial  a 
matter,  to  his  wife  after  her  mother's  death,  €0» 
likes  to  have  the  reminder  in  the  room 
for  all  its  distinguished  aasooiatloail  Mil 


April  9,  1896] 


TKe   Nation. 


987 


mMnben  bati  the  long,  bitttr  day*  of  herlooe- 
UiMH  and  j6«loat7,  the  long,  Md  evenings 
when  he  nt  toUUtry  over  bit  dre^rj  Pnusian 
booKB. 

On  the  Mine  floor  It  Mn.  Carlyle*8  bed- 
room, all  but  empty.  But  Its  empttnees  can- 
not help  one  to  forget  her  terrible  sleepless 
nights;  her  headaches;  her  waiting  in  the 
darkness,  with  revoWer  and  rattle  by  her  bed- 
side,  daring  the  hoosehold  cleaning,  to  her  e^er 
a  horror;  her  agony  in  the  early  morning, 
when,  awakened  by  the  crowing  of  **  infernal 
cocks'*  or  barking  of  dogs,  she  listened  for 
the  mad  stamping  and  titanic  cursing  in  the 
room  above.  **  If  we  could  only  sleep,  dear," 
she  wrote  to  him  <moe,  *^  and  what  you  call 
digewt,  wouldn*t  it  be  nice  T— and,  so  writing, 
gave  perhaps,  the  true  clue  to  the  tragedy  of 
their  life  together.  The  bed  has  been  brought 
back  to  Carlyle*s  room— «  great  gloomy  bed- 
stead, with  heavy  red  hangings,  well  calcu- 
lated to  murder  sleep.  How  often  it  figured 
in  Mrs.  Carlyle's  letters,  where  no  domestic 
detai],  however  squalid  or  lurid,  was  ever 
glossed  over->tales,  these,  which  the  squeamish 
do  not  venture  to  repeat.  But  perhaps  in- 
terest  culminates  when  still  another  flight  of 
stairs  is  climbed,  and  one  finds  one's  self  in  the 
garret  study,  with  its  double  walls  and  its 
top-light,  the  moat  disastrous  of  their  many 
failures,  where  for  the  most  part  of  thoee 
eodless  thirteen  years  Carlyle  was  **  smother- 
ed **  vodw  his  *  Frederick,*  Was  there  ever, 
since  the  world  began,  an  author  whose 
work  was  done  in  such  anguish  and  bit- 
terness of  spirit  f  The  chair  presented  to  him 
by  John  Forster  has  a  prominent  place.  On 
the  walls,  the  faces  of  Voltaire  and  Frederick 
k>ok  out  from  quaint  little  old  cheap  prints. 
There  are  portraits  innumerable  of  the  master 
himself:  most  conspicuous  a  photograph  of 
Mr.  Whistler's  picture,  a  painting  by  Linnell 
(very  early  this,  of  course),  a  sketch  by  Count 
IVOraay.  And  there  are,  above  all,  in  conve- 
nient casss,  manuscripts  and  letters,  far  more 
than  can  be  now  enumerated;  none,  however, 
of  greater  value,  I  think,  none  that  does  him 
more  honor,  than  the  brave,  manly,  fine  letter 
written  by  him  to  his  publishers  after  the 
MS.  of  the  first  volume  of  his  *  French  Revo- 
Intion,'  lent  to  Mill,  had  been  burnt  Real 
trouble  Carlyle  met  with  a  dignity  and  cou- 
rage and  strength  that  almost  make  one  wish 
his  way  through  life  had  been  less  smooth  and 
easy.  For,  rugged  as  it  seemed  to  him,  assur- 
edly  most  of  his  trials  and  tribulations  were 
of  his  own  imagining. 

80  entirely  is  the  domestic  economy  of  the 
little  house  laid  bare  to  the  curious  that  the 
basement  kitchen  may  be  visited,  where  odd 
pleose  of  the  Carlyle  dinner  service  are  set  out 
upon  the  dresser,  and  a  cat  sits  purring  in 
front  of  the  fire,  for  all  the  world  as  if  Pen 
were  still  alive.  Glimpses  there  are,  also,  into 
the  tlnr  garden,  where,  during  the  hot  sum- 
mers when  he  stayed  in  town,  Carlyle  had  his 
tent  study.  At  the  back  rises  a  bit  of  the  old 
brick  wall,  aU  that  U  left  of  Henry  VIIL's 
Chelsea  manor  house.  To  one  side  is  a  small 
green-china  garden  seat,  one  of  the  **  noble- 
men," it  may  be,  on  which  Carlyle  sat  for  his 
midnight  smoke^  **  looking  up  into  the  empy- 
rean and  the  stars."  And,  later,  grass-plots, 
and  paths,  and  bushes  are,  as  well  as  the  thing 
can  be  done,  to  be  put  in  precisely  that  order 
in  which  Mrs.  Carlyle  kept  them.  Altogether, 
the  place  has  a  homely  yet  solemn  pathos,  not 
spoiled  by  indiscreet  or  blatant  touting  for  the 
tourist.  Tbe  directors  have  shown  admirable 
jodgmeot  and  sympathy  in  the  arrangement 
oC  the  rooms  and  oaass.  There  la  nothing  to 


offend  the  most  sensitive;  much  more  than  I 
have  had  space  to  mention,  to  delight  the  stu- 
dent Indeed,  No.  ^  Cheyne  Row,  like  the 
Soane  Museum  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  will,  to 
many,  seem  far  worthier  a  special  visit  than 
the  large,  better  advertised  galleries  and  mu- 
seums. Because  I  believe  that  no  one  who  has 
read  Carlyle  with  pleasure  or  profit  can  fail 
to  be  interested,  I  am  eager  to  call  attention 
to  the  fact  that  it  is  proposed  to  make  this  ex- 
hibition of  Carlyle*s  relics  permanent. 

N.  N. 


Correspondence, 


THE  SILVER  PROPAGANDA. 
To  THs  Editob  of  Thx  Nation  : 

Sib:  In  a  business  letter  to<lay  received 
from  a  merchant  in  Denver,  Col.,  I  find  the 
enclosed  printed  slip,  which  sets  forth  a  lot  of 
the  usual  quality  of  so  called  silver  arguments. 
This  is  an  evidence  of  the  activity  of  sllverites. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  have  personal  knowledge  of 
the  refusal  of  a  large  wholesale  house  in  Geor- 
gia, whoee  partners  believe  in  sound  money,  to 
circulate  in  their  mails  anything  referring  to 
the  currency  question  in  any  way  whatever. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  it  is  the  duty  of 
any  business  concern  to  take  up  politics.  Busi- 
ness men  must  decide  this  question  for  them- 
selves.  But  if  the  sound-money  men  reaUy  be- 
lieve that  the  16- to- 1  practice  would  bring 
about  a  worse  condition  of  panic  than  we  have 
ever  experienced,  it  would  seem  that  self-inte- 
rest would  dictate  their  injecting  politics  into 
their  businesses  to  the  same  extent  at  least  as 
the  silverites  are  doing.— Very  respectfully, 

A.  T.  H.  Bbowsr. 
Crioaoo,  April  8. 1806. 


A  COLLEGE  FOR  TEACHERS. 
To  THX  Editob  of  Thx  Nation: 

Sib:  Readers  of  President  Schurman's  ar- 
ticle in  the  April  Forum  on  **  Teaching— A 
Trade  or  a  Profession  f^  will  rejoice  that  an 
old  cause  has  received  a  new  advocate.  To 
those,  however,  who,  during  the  past  decade, 
have  been  speaking  and  writing  and  bringing 
things  to  pass  in  this  field,  it  will  be  a  matter 
of  surprise  that  the  familiar  proposition  to 
establish  a  university  professional  school  for 
teachers  should  have  been  advanced  as  some- 
thing quite  novel  and,  in  a  way,  original. 
Novel  it  doubtless  is  to  the  writer  in  question, 
for  his  article  shows  that  he  is  ignorant  of —I 
will  not  say  chooses  to  ignore— some  of  the 
ideals  and  tendencies  ttiat  have  entered  into 
American  educational  history  during  recent 
years.  In  the  interest  of  simple  justice,  as 
well  as  of  truth,  it  seems  proper  to  call  atten- 
tion to  the  facts  which  have  been  slurred  over. 

In  doing  this  it  is  chiefly  important  to  note 
that  while  President  Schurman  has  been 
working  out  a  scheme,  others  have  acted,  and 
have  brought  about  the  very  thing  that  he 
presents  as  an  ideal  yet  unrealised.  It  is,  in 
fact,  several  years  now  since  it  became  pos- 
sible in  President  Schurman's  own  state  for 
students  of  college  and  university  grade  to 
pursue,  in  a  university,  courses  in  education 
leading  to  the  degrees  of  A.B.,  A.M.,  and 
Ph.D.  These  courses  include  theoretical  stu- 
dies of  the  kind  he  has  deecribed,  and  they  also 
include  praotioal  work  in  a  school  organixad 
for  the  express  purpose  of  giving  students 
of  education  an  oi^KMtunitj  to  obssrve» 
practisei  experiment,  and  apply.    They  pro- 


vide not  only  for  the  training  of  superin- 
tendents and  of  teachers  for  secondary  schools, 
but  also— a  point  which  is  a  distinct  advan- 
tage— for  the  training  of  kindergartners  and 
teachers  in  elementary  schools,  both  public 
and  private.  Further,  these  courses  have 
already  been  sought  by  students  as  candidates 
for  the  above-mentioned  degrees,  and  each 
of  tbe  three  degrees  referred  to  has  been 
given  to  such  students. 

Aside  from  the  particular  instance  just  dted, 
it  is  pretty  generally  known  that  there  have 
existed  for  some  time,  and  that  there  are  now 
springing  up  each  year,  other  agencies  for  the 
higher  training  of  teachers  that  include,  or  aim 
to  include,  some  or  all  of  the  characteristics 
just  enumerated.  I  submit  that  there  is  no  es- 
sential difference  between  these  schemes  al- 
ready in  operation  and  that  set  forth  in  the 
Forum  article.  That  President  Schurman 
may  be  able  to  develop  something  superior  to 
anything  that  now  exists,  can  easily  be  believed 
and  should  be  devoutly  hoped;  but  the  points 
wherein  his  scheme  claims  to  be  peculiar  are 
minor  matters,  relating  chiefly  to  name.  To 
claim  or  to  imply  that  such  things  are  essen- 
tial is  to  quibble. 

It  may  even  be  said  that,  in  the  points  where- 
in the  scheme  in  question  differs  from  other 
plans,  it  is  inferior  as  a  practical  measiire.  Its 
peculiarity  lies  wholly  in  its  limitations.  In 
the  flrst  place,  it  is  proposed  to  limit  the  mem- 
bership to  college  graduates  or  persons  of 
equal  scholastic  standing.  It  is  significant 
tnat  at  Cornell  the  standard  set  for  this 
ideal  professional  school  is  higher  than  the 
standard  of  that  professional  school  which  is 
already  in  existence  there,  although  the  move- 
ment for  raising  the  standards  of  professional 
schools  is  elsewhere  well  under  way.  The  sec- 
ond limitation  would  confine  the  work  of  the 
proposed  school  to  the  preparation  of  superin- 
tendents and  of  teachers  for  secondary  schools. 
The  rapidly  enlarging  fields  now  opening  to 
college  graduates  as  specialists  in  the  kinder, 
garten  and  in  the  elementary  school— in  manual 
training,  art  education,  domestic  science,  natu- 
ral science,  EogUsh,  and  other  branches— are 
ignored  or  dismissed  with  a  wave  of  the  hand. 
It  is  said  in  effect,  **  Normal  schools  are  good 
enough  to  prepare  teachers  for  the  messes, 
The  college  has  no  interest  except  in  the  sec- 
ondary school  or  In  tbe  superintendent's  of- 
fice." To  such  a  way  of  thinking  it  is  sufllcient 
to  reply  that  there  are  many  people  in  this 
country  to>day  who  know  that  such  a  position 
is  narrow  and  unworthy. 

In  writing  this  letter  I  have  had  in  mind  to 
give  credit  to  whom  credit  belongs  for  what 
has  already  been  done,  and  to  make  clear  the 
fact  that  college  men  and  women  bent  on 
learning  how  to  teach  need  not  wait  until  a 
new  pedagogic  school  shall  be  established  be- 
fore 9pek.iDg  professional  training,  and  need 
not  confine  themselves  within  the  narrow  limits 
set  for  them  in  the  article  in  question.  But  I 
have  eepecially  aimed  to  correct  the  false  im- 
pression that  would  naturally  be  created  by 
this  article:  for  while  it  purports  to  be  written 
in  the  interest  of  tbe  higher  training  of  teach- 
erst  in  reality  it  tends  to  hinder  the  movement 
at  large,  because  it  ignores  and  discredits  tbe 
results  of  progreev  already  achieved. 

Waltkb  L.  Hxbvxt. 

Tbachsm  Collxob,  Nkw  Tosk,  April  1.  ISee. 


MR.  TUCKER  AND  DR.  HALL. 
To  THX  EDrroB  of  Thx  Natioit  : 

Sib:  In  your  issue  No.  1608,  Dr.  Fitsedward 
Hall  accuses  me  of  garbling  one  of  his  sen- 


288 


Tlie   Nation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1606 


tenoetoontainiogaitatoment  which  I  diBputed, 
both  in  a  North  American  Review  article  some 
years  ago  and  in  my  little  book  ^ChirCkHnmon 
Speech,'  recently  published.  I  admit,  of  course, 
that  the  omission  of  certain  words  should  have 
been  indicated;  and,  more,  I  think  I  should 
have  been  wiser  to  give  the  whole  sentence  ex- 
actly as  he  wrote  it,  for  one  cannot  be  too  care- 
ful, in  repeating  any  statement  for  the  purpose 
of  criticising  it,  to  avoid  even  the  slightest  ap- 
pearance of  misrepresenting  what  was  actually 
said. 

This  admitted,  let  me  state  exactly  what  the 
omission  was,  since  Dr.  Hall  did  not  think  it 
worth  while  to  do  so.  The  Doctor  wrote,  in 
his  Nineteenth  Century  article,  in  severe  criti- 
cism of  the  English  of  the  late  William  Cullen 
Bryant:  **  Living  as  he  did,  among  a  people 
among  whom,  in  the  case  of  all  but  a  very  few 
writers  and  speakers,  our  language  is  daily  be- 
coming more  and  more  depraved,*'  etc.  I  left 
out  the  words,  **  in  the  case  of  all  but  a  very 
few  writers  and  speakers,"  which  words  were 
absolutely  immaterial  for  my  argument  that 
followed,  to  the  effect  that  our  language  is 
much  more  depraved  in  Great  Britain  than  In 
this  country,  inasmuch  as  that  argument  is 
based  entirely  on  common,  every-day  usage, 
and  contains  no  claim  for  the  beauty  of  dis- 
tinctly American  English  as  exemplified  by 
our  exceptionally  careful  writers  and  speak- 
ers. In  other  words,  whatever  force  the  argu- 
ment may  have  would  not  be  in  the  smallest 
degree  affected  by  the  insertion  of  the  omitted 
words.  Under  these  circumstances,  I  leave  it 
to  the  candid  reader  to  Judge  whether  my 
critic  is  justified  in  charging  me  with  "prac- 
tices akin  to  the  use  of  loaded  dice,"  or  with 
quoting  his  sentence  "so  transformed,  by  the 
elision,  unindicated,  of  part  of  it,  as  to  vitiate 
its  purport  materially."  I  might  as  well  ac- 
cuse Dr.  Hall  of  misquoting  Mr.  Bryant  by 
representing  him  to  have  written  "honour," 
which  Dr.  HaU  did,  in  a  "letter"  to  you,  Mr. 
Editor,  published  by  him  as  a  pamphlet  in 
London  in  1881,  page  22.  Whatever  other 
linguistic  crimes  Mr.  Bryant  may  have  been 
guilty  of,  he  certainly  did  not  disfigure 
"honor"  by  the  excrescent  u. 

Permit  me  to  notice  one  other  criticism  which 
Dr.  Hall  makes  of  my  little  book.  He  says  my 
phrase  "of  the  Carroll  Gansevoort  stripe"  is 
"slang  of  the  slums  and  the  gutter."  I  wish 
he  would  inform  your  readers  in  what  respect 
it  is  worse  than  bis  expression,  on  page  15  of 
the  pamphlet  just  referred  to:  "The  items 
.  .  .  are,  mostly,  quite  of  a  piece  with  the 
particulars  which  the  Evening  Post  retains." 
In  each  case  the  figure  is  evidently  that  of 
samples  of  the  same  cloth.  I  speak  of  them  as 
having  the  same  stripe;  my  critic  says  they 
are  "  quite  of  a  piece."  To  approve  the  latter 
phrase  and  call  the  former  the  "slang  of  the 
slums  and  the  gutter"  seems  to  me  juA  about 
as  consistent  as  to  spell  " favor"  with  a  u,  and 
"editor"  without  it,  as  Dr.  Hall  does  in  con- 
secutive paragraphs  of  his  pamphlet.  I  find 
him  also,  on  pages  20-21,  characterizing  cer- 
tain opinions  with  which  he  does  not  agree  as 
"old  mumpsimuses."  There  is  a  pretty  word 
for  a  writer  who  is  so  shocked  by  hearing  two 
men  spoken  of  as  being  of  the  same  stripe. — 
Respectfully  yours,       Qilbkbt  M.  Tuckeb. 

ALBAHT.  N.  Y.,  Aprtl  6.  I8«e. 


"NAKED   BED." 
To  thb  Editor  of  Thb  Nation: 

Sm:  If  your  correspondent  from  Pau  will 
"  -   '"^k  to  former  generations,"  he  will  find 


the  origin  of  the  figure  "naked  bed."  It  is  in 
common  use  in  Elizabethan  literature,  and  re- 
fers simply  to  the  custom  in  earlier  times  of 
going  naked  to  bed. 

At  this  moment,  I  recall  the  expression  in  a 
quaint  poem,  written  in  old-fashioned  fourteen- 
syllable  verse,  that  is  to  be  found  in  *The 
Paradise  of  Dainty  Devices,'  edited  by  Richard 
Edwardes,  in  1576.  The  subject,  a  weary 
mother  singing  her  baby  to  sleep  in  the  night- 
watches,  is  an  exquisitely  simple  and  graceful 
rendering  of  Terence's  epigram,  Atnantium 
irce  amorie  redintegraHo  eel,  I  quote  the  first 
stanza,  with  the  note  for  the  loiven  of  good 
poetry  that  there  is  more  of  it  where  this  came 
from : 

**  IB  (otns  to  my  iuik«d  bed.  t»  one  that 

■lepi, 
I  beard  a  wtfe  sing  to  ber  cbUd.  tbst  km 

wept; 
8be  tlcbed  tore  and  sang  full  ton,  to  bring  the  babe 

to  rest. 
That  would  not  cease,  bat  cried  stni  In  sotting  at  her 

breast: 
She  was  fnll  weaiy  of  ber  watch,  and  grieved  with 

ber  cbUd. 
8be  rocked  It  and  rated  It,  until  on  ber  It  imUed : 
Then  did  tbe  tay  now  have  I  found  the  proverb  true 

to  prove, 
Tbe  falling  oat  of  faithful  friends  renewing  Is  of 

love." 

M.  A.S. 
BALTnoBB,  April  8. 1806. 


would  have 
long  before  bad 


To  THX  Edttoe  or  Thx  Natioii  : 

Sir:  The  "naked  bed"  is  the  bed  to  which 
we  go  naked—literally  naked  in  the  olden  time, 
when  nightgowns  were  unknown.  Ck>mpare 
"idle  bed  "in  "  Julius  Ciesar"  (ii.  1, 117),  "lasy 
bed"  in  "  Troflus  and  Cressida"  (i.  8, 147),  and 
the  familiar  "  sick  bed."  W.  J.  R. 

CAMBBmoK.  MasSm  April  8. 


Notes. 


Ma.  Leokt*8  'Demo<vaoy  and  Liberty '  Is  just 
being  published  by  the  Longmans. 

*  A  History  of  Christian  Dootrine,'  by  Dr. 
George  P.  Fisher  of  Tale,  and  '  Shakspere  and 
his  Predecessors  in  the  English  Drama,'  by 
Prof.  F.  L.  Boas  of  Oxford,  are  among  the  lat- 
est announcements  of  Charles  Bcribner's  Sons. 

A  volume  of  original  poems  by  Caroline  and 
Alice  Duer,  and  *  Songs  from  the  Greek,'  trans- 
lated  by  Jane  Minot  Sedgwick,  will'  bear  the 
Imprint  of  Geo.  H.  Richmond  &  Co. 

D.  Appleton  &  Co.  announce  *  What  is  Elec- 
tricity  ? '  by  Prof.  John  Trowbridge  of  Har- 
vard. 

Maomillan  will  handle  for  the  Clarendon 
Press  the  *  Revenue  Lavin'  o^  Ptolemy  Phila- 
delphus,'  edited  by  B.  P.  Grenfell  from  a 
papyrus  in  the  Bodleian,  the  largest  and  oldest 
known  in  Greek,  with  a  portfolio  of  thirteen 
facsimiles;  and  for  the  Cambridge  University 
Press  a  fresh  translation  of  part  of  the  Sinai 
Gk»pels  brought  from  Mt.  Sinai  last  year  by 
Bfrs.  S.  S.  Lewis,  with  a  new  and  complete  edi- 
tion of  her  translation.  This  firm  will  begin 
immediately  the  publication  of  a  new  edition 
of  Byron's  Works,  in  verse  and  in  prose,  edited 
by  W.  E.  Henley ;  the  prose  consisting  of  all 
the  letters  and  the  diaries,  and  the  poems  being 
arranged  chronologically.  Soon  to  appear 
also,  is  volume  vi.  of  *  Periods  of  European 
History,'  1789-1815. 

J.  B.  Lippincott  Co.  have  in  press  *The 
Making  of  Pennsylvania,'  by  Sidney  George 
Fisher. 

Roberts  Bros,  promise  *  The  Puritan  in  Eng- 
land and  New  England,'  by  Dr.  Ezra  Hoyt 
Byington,  and  *01d  Colony  Days,'  by  May 
Alden  Ward. 

*  Stereo- Chemistry'  is  the  subject  of  a  vol. 
ume  by  Prof.  Charlotte  B.  Roberts  of  Wellea- 


ley  College  which  D.  C.  Healh  ft  Co.  wHI  Is- 
sue. 

Way  &  WilUams,  Chicago,  have  nearly 
ready  '  The  Lamp  of  Gold,'  a  sequence  of  for- 
ty-nine  sonnets,  by  Miss  Fiorenoe  L.  SDow, 
with  decorations  by  Edmund  H.  Garrett 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons  make  the  gratifying  an- 
nouncement that  they  win  follow  op  their  edi- 
tions of  Hamilton,  Franklin,  Wa^lngtcm,  Jay, 
Mason,  Paine,  JefTerson,  and  King  with  *  The 
Works  of  James  Monroe,'  edited  by  S.  M. 
Hamilton,  whose  experience  In  tiie  ar^ilvee  of 
the  State  Department  pecnUarly  qualifies  him 
for  his  task.  This  reprint  wlU  occupy  four 
volumes,  and  will  be  begun  in  1897.  The  same 
firm  will  undertake  'The  Constitutional  Deci- 
sions of  John  Marriiall,'  edited  with  an  his- 
torical introduction  and  analytioal  nofies  by 
Simon  Sterne  of  the  New  York  bar. 

Letters  of  Monroe,  Jefferson,  Madison,  and 
Richard  Rush  wHl  compose  Fiart  L  of  tbe  Ha- 
milton Facsimiles  of  MSS.  from  the  national 
archives  projected  by  the  Public  Opinion  Co., 
and  will  make  a  volume  of  which  the  edition 
will  b  5  limited  to  500  copies.  The  series  has  no 
determinate  bounds.  Communications  respect- 
ing it  should  be  addressed  to  D.  T.  Fierce^  No. 
18  Astor  Place,  New  York. 

The  Prussian  Academy  of  Sdencee  intends 
to  publish  a  complete  and  critical  edition  of 
the  works  of  Immanuel  Kant,  and  s^Hcits 
communications  from  persons  who  may  have 
in  their  possession  any  writings  of  tiie  KOnigs- 
berg  philosopher  which  have  not  yet  been 
printed.  Letters,  notes  taken  of  his  lectores 
or  found  on  the  margins  and  fly-leaves  of 
books  that  once  belonged  to  his  library,  as 
wen  as  biographical  items  and  similar  records, 
will  be  gladly  received  and  duly  acknow. 
lodged. 

A  new  wrinUe  In  the  'Annual  Literary  In- 
dex' for  1895  (New  Ybrk:  Publiehenf  TTeeMy), 
following  the  Necrology  of  deceased  writers.  Is 
an  Index  to  Dates  of  Principal  Events,  in 
which  many  more  obituaries  occur.  Abys- 
sinia, Armenia,  Australia,  Austria,  Chicago, 
Cuba,  Gold,  Great  Britain,  Lynching;  Mada- 
gascar, Manitoba,  Silver,  Strikes,  Whiskey 
Trust,  Yacht  Race,  are  typical  rubrics.  We 
have  marked  some  errors  and  diSorepanciee  In 
names,  both  in  the  index  to  periodicals  and  in 
the  accompanying  author-index;  hut  sndi  de- 
fects are  almost  unavoidable.  The  five  depart- 
ments of  this  yearly  key  to  the  best  literary 
production  are  now:  Index  to  periodicals;  In- 
dex to  general  literature  (or,  guide  to  the  con- 
tents of  books  of  essays,  studies,  and  the  like); 
author  index;  bibliographies;  necrology;  and 
dates  of  principal  events. 

Externally  and  Intrinsically,  few  reprints 
nowadays  compete  for  prior  mention  with 
North's  Plutarch  in  the  "  Tndor  Translations" 
of  David  Nutt,  London.  This  series  has  jnst 
been  brought  to  a  doee  with  volumes  v.  and 
vL,  and  fortunate  must  the  possessor  of  them 
count  liimself.  The  letter  employed  in  this 
edition  seems  to  us  one  of  the  most  sucoeMfnl 
of  the  compromises  between  the  heavy  teoe  of 
the  early  printers  and  the  styles  now  in 
vogue,  and  shows  that  ttie  balr-llne  osn  be 
abrogated  without  resorting  to  a  repulsive 
compactness.  The  red  binding  Is  In  accord 
with  the  generous  scheme  of  the  typdgn^hy. 

The  Dent-MacmiUan  Issues  are  a  good 
second  to  the  foregoing,  and  in  tiie  Bainc 
translations  we  have  'The  Atbalses  Ms«i' 
*01d  Goriot,'  and  'La  Grande  Bretteto,'  In 
their  green  livery,  and  the  first  voloNI  d 
Carleton's  classic  'Traits  and  Btoriea  «l  As 
Irish  Peasantry,'  with  an  InCMdMNM  If 
D.  J.  CFDonoghue  preUmtnary  to  tt 


April  9,  1896] 


Tlie   iTation. 


Q89 


own,  wftti  a  portndt  of  OttrieCon,  and  repro- 
dnettooi  of  foor  dMignt  by  Phii.  This,  too, 
b  In  KTMD  eoT«n,  of  a  Hgbter  shade,  as  befits 
iba  BoMrald  Itle.  Maonttlans*  name  is  linked 
with  George  Bell  &  Sons'  in  the  serentb  roU 
ooM  of  Mr.  Wbealley'B  edition  of  Pep7s*s 
Dlary~delloiti▼^  one  wonld  say,  bot  that 
some  Capl.  Burton  may  itch  and  cootrire  to 
flU  np  the  disreputable  lacan« ;  the  rather 
dun  period  here  embraced  being  from  July  1, 
1067,  to  April  80,  1608.  From  Macmillans* 
own  press  we  have  two  more  rolumes  in  their 
Btaodard  Tales  of  the  present  century,  Pea* 
cock*B  *OryIl  Orange'  and  Sorrow's  spirited 
*  LaTengro';  and  Charies  Ktngsley's  *  Heroes,' 
in  the  uniform  pocket  edition,  in  blue. 

Tbe  Harpers  are  adTaneing  rapidly  with 
their  handsome  uniform  edition  of  Thomas 
Hardy's  novels.  *A  Leodicean,*  just  brought 
out,  succeeds  'The  Trumpet  Major,'  *The 
Hand  of  Bthelberta,'  and  'The  Woodtanders,' 
to  name  only  the  more  recent. 

Scribners'  handy  ** Ivory  Series"  is  newly 
augmented  by  Cable's  *  Madame  Delphine'  and 
Mrs.  Spofford's  *  A  Master  Spirit.' 

W.  R.  Jenkins  has  added  to  his  well-known 
Wench  reprints  Victor  Hugo's  *  Quatrevingt- 
treixe,'  with  an  introduction  and  notes  by 
Benjamin  D.  Woodward.  Tbe  print  is  com- 
mendably  large  and  open. 

Fifty  numbers  of  the  Old  South  Leaflets 
(Boston)  result- in  two  Tolumes  which  daim 
a  place  in  libraries  and  in  intelligent  house- 
holds. The  documents  thus  couTenienUy  bound 
together  range  from  tbe  U.  8.  Constitution  to 
Columbus's  letter  to  Gabriel  Sanches  deecrib. 
ing  his  first  roy  age  and  discovery ;  from  Magna 
Charta  to  George  Rogers  Clarke's  account  of 
tbe  capture  of  Vinoennes;  from  Franklin's 
Flan  of  Union  to  Cromwell's  first  speech  to  his 
Ftfliament;  from  Washington's  Farewell  Ad- 
drew  to  Jefferson's  lAt^  of  Capt.  Meriwether 
Lewis;  f^rom  the  Swiss  Constitution  toStrabo's 
Introduction  to  Geography;  from  Lincoln's 
inaugurab  and  Emancipation  Proclamation  to 
Marco  Polo*s  account  of  Japan  and  Java— and 
we  hare  not  half  done.  These  volumes  should 
go  on  tbe  nme  shelf  with  Preston's  useful 
■  Documents  Illustrative  of  American  History, 
1606-1868.' 

Tboee  patriots  who  are  anxious  that  we 
should,  in  Cuba  and  in  Hawaii,  extend  our 
points  of  contact  (and  so  of  belligerency)  with 
tbe  outer  world,  would  do  well  to  ponder  the 
significance  of  the  four  maps  which  stand  like 
sentries  at  the  front  of  *  The  Statesman's  Yeai^ 
Book  for  1896'  (MacmiUan).  They  are  en- 
tltied  "^The  Frontier  Question  on  tbe  Pamirs" 
(Russian  sore  spot);  **The  Indo  Chinese  Fron- 
tier Question  "iFrench  sore  spot);  "Venexnela- 
Onlana  Boundary  Question  "  (South  and  North 
American  sore  spot) ;  and  **  Map  to  Illustrate 
Recent  Arrangements  with  resiwct  to  Bechu- 
analand"  (Dutch  and  German  tore  spot). 
Never  was  the  innovation  of  Inserting  mape  in 
this  standard  yearbook  better  justified  than 
In  tbe  current  issue,  in  which  also,  with  the 
customary  changes  in  every  part,  there  has 
been  a  special  furbishing  of  the  naval  statistics. 
It  may  be  doubted  if  Abyssinia  will  continue 
next  year  to  be  reckoned  under  Italy's  foreign 
dependencies. 

Tbe  dwell  Publishing  Co.  renew  as  in  for- 
mer years  their  convenient  little  *Oasseirs 
Complete  Pocket  Guide  to  Europe,'  familiar  to 
tourists  for  more  than  a  decade;  but  edt 
torial  prevision  has  not  cstered  to  visitors  to 
the  Olympfan  Gamee  at  Athens  and  increaiing. 
1y  to  Greece  by  adding  a  section  on  that  coun- 
try, wbfch  Is  accordingly  not  In  **  Europe." 
nat  Turkay  la  equally  counted  out  Is  perhape 


indicative  of  the  pious  wish  that  fathers  the 
thought. 

Students  of  medieval  history  who  have  been 
bewildered  by  the  all  too- rapidly  accumulating 
** literature"  of  tbe  last  five  or  six  years  deal- 
ing with  the  origin  of  tbe  German  town  con- 
stitution win  be  relieved  to  find  in  Dr.  F. 
Keutgen's  *  Uotersuchungen  fiber  den  Ur- 
•prung  der  deutechen  Stadtverfafsung '  (Leip- 
zig :  Duncker  &  Humblot)  a  brief,  sober,  and 
scholarly  review  of  the  whole  discussion.  Dr. 
Keutgen  neither  follows  the  keen-witted 
though  virulent  Von  Below  in  his  Village 
Commune  theory,  nor  doee  he  accept  the 
Market  theory  of  Sohm,  in  spite  of  that  scho- 
lar's wellnigb  overwhelming  authority  in  the 
early  constitutional  field.  He  perceives  that 
there  are  several  elements  to  be  taken  intoao- 
couot,  not  one  of  which  can  offer  a  complete 
solution  of  the  problem ;  and,  in  particular, 
that  the  question  of  the  sources  of  the  town 
population  Is  distinct  from,  though  closely  con- 
nected with,  that  of  the  town  government.  If 
any  fault  Is  to  be  found  with  his  treatment,  it 
lies  in  his  unquestioning  acoeptance  oi  the  ge- 
neral principles  of  early  constitutional  deve- 
lopment which  have  been  current  in  Germany 
for  a  couple  of  generations  past.  The  inquiry 
will  probably  have  to  go  a  good  deal  deeper 
than  the  municipal  historians  commonly  sup- 
pose. 

The  three  stories  by  the  late  John  Heard 
which  have  been  collected  in  *  Esquisses  Mexl- 
caines'  (l^aris :  Piral  Ollendorff),  are  rather 
grueeome,  as  stories,  though  they  undeniably 
oonvey  a  distinct  and  truthful  impreesion  of 
typical  nature  and  man  In  Mexico. 

An  important  work  on  physical  geography 
has  lately  been  completed  by  A.  de  Lapparent, 
an  author  eminent  among  French  geographers 
and  geologists  CLe9ons  de  G^graphie  Phy- 
sique,' Paris:  lesson).  It  Is  notable  in  two 
respects:  it  presents  much  more  fully  than  any 
other  European  work  the  principles  of  geomor- 
phdogy,  as  developed  by  various  investigators 
in  this  country ;  and  It  applies  these  princi- 
ples to  the  description  and  explanation  of  the 
geography  of  Europe,  and  more  briefiy  to  the 
rest  of  the  world.  Although  even  the  well- 
known  countries  of  Europe  must  again  be 
explored  with  these  modem  principles  in 
mind  before  they  can  be  fully  described,  the 
summary  statements  here  given  of  the  facts 
and  explanations  already  acquired  is  a  very 
welcome  contribution  to  modem  geographical 
literature.  For  American  geographers  study- 
ing Europe  at  home,  or  contemplating  a  trip 
abroad,  De  Lapparent's  work  will  prove  a  very 
serviceable  companion. 

Zola's  new  story,  'Rome,'  Is  printed  as  a 
ftutUeton  in  two  Roman  papers,  the  Tribuna 
and  another,  and  has  been  received  by  their 
readerswith  loud  cries  of  dissatisfaction.  They 
complain  that  the  book  Is  partiy  worthless  gos- 
sip and  partiy  a  heavy  compilation  of  religion 
and  politics.  With  even  less  patience  do  they 
bear  Zola's  cruel  Insistence  upon  the  poverty 
and  squalor  of  Rome,  and  his  deecriptions  of 
the  new  quarter  of  the  Prati  del  Castello,  with 
its  Immense  unfinished  palaces  with  windows 
boarded  up,  the  haunt  of  beggars  and  thievee. 
Tbe  7H6itfia  has  been  obliged  to  print  a  note 
denying  all  «« solidarity "  with  the  French 
author;  and  the  Riforma^  which  speaks  of  the 
new  novel  in  the  most  contemptuous  terms,  de- 
clares that  ''the  Insults  and  calumnies  of  M. 
Zola  do  not  merit  even  a  refutation." 

The  late  Georges  Deleaalle  was  for  years  en- 
gaged on  the  compilation  of  a  dictionary  of 
French  slang,  and  the  result  of  his  labors  ap- 
pears under  the  title   *  Dictlonnaire  Argot- 


Francs  et  Fran^ais- Argot'  (Paris:  Ollen. 
dorff),  in  which,  by  means  of  the  second  part, 
the  student  Is  enabled  to  find  readily  the  slang 
equivalents  of  the  petite  or  reoogniaed  word. 
Prefixed  to  the  dictionary  proper  Is  not  only 
a  preface  by  Jean  RIchepin— himself  a  master 
of  slang—who  lauds,  as  it  deserves,  Delesalle^s 
work,  but  an  interesting  though  too  short  study 
of  slang  from  its  origin  to  the  present  day. 
All  the  words  in  Villon's  **  jargon  '*  which  have 
any  affinity  with  modem  French  slang  have 
been  carefully  listed;  they  are  followed  by  a 
glossary  of  similar  terms  In  the  *  Vie  G4n6reuse ' 
of  lfi86,  and  by  examples  of  slang  verse  of  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  oenturiee.  Delesal* 
le's  object  was  not  merely  to  collect  a  greater 
or  less  number  of  slang  words;  he  wished  to 
work  in  the  same  field  as  Timmarmans,  and  to 
accumulate  additional  material  for  tbe  philo- 
logical study  of  oivot,  and  in  this  he  has  oer 
tainly  succeeded.  The  epigraph,  it  may  b# 
noted,  is  from  Zola's  preface  to  *  L' Assommoir.' 

The  first  volume  of  LI  vet's  *  Lexique  de  la 
Langue  de  M<^6re'  (Paris:  H.  Welter)  is  out, 
and  a  welcome  book  it  is.  The  work  was 
crowned  by  the  French  Academy  and  the 
author  awarded  one  of  its  important  priaes; 
the  book  Itself  Is  published  by  the  Government 
and  printed  at  the  Imprimerie  Nationale. 
Livet's  great  erudition  and  his  intimate  ac- 
quaintance with  the  works,  not  of  MoU^re 
alone,  but  of  seventeenth-century  writers, 
have  enabled  him  to  carry  out  in  rich  abun- 
dance bis  comparison  of  Moli^re's  tongue  with 
that  of  his  contemporaries,  and  to  add  in- 
valuable notes  and  commentaries  to  almost 
every  word  and  expression.  This  first  volume, 
of  689  pages,  takes  us  but  to  the  word  eu- 
rio9iU9, 

The  fifth  volume  of  the  "ThHtre  Complet" 
of  Edmond  Gkmdlnet  has  just  been  published 
by  Calmann  L6vy.  It  contains  two  of  his  vi- 
vacious comedies,  <*  Un  Voyage  d'Agr4ment" 
and  ** Tapageurs,"  and  a  drama  **Libres  I" 
which  is  not  as  good  reading  as  the  amusing 
thoYigh  often  absurd  lighter  pieces. 

Prof.  Furtw&ngler,  the  successor  of  Brunn  in 
the  University  of  Manich,  Is  delivering  a  course 
of  public  lectures  on  archaeology,  the  proceeds 
of  which  are  to  be  devoted  to  the  **  M&dchen- 
Gymnarium  "  about  to  be  established  In  that 
city.  The  lectures  are  rendered  additionally 
attractive  and  instructive  by  the  use  of  the  ste- 
reopticon,  and  are  largely  attended,  so  that  the 
endowment  fund  will  be  considerably  increased 
from  this  source.  They  also  show  tiie  deep  in- 
terest felt  in  the  movement  for  the  higher  edu- 
cation  of  women  by  many  of  the  most  distin- 
guished scholars  of  Germany. 

On  March  4  the  faculty  of  the  University  of 
Heidelberg  conferred  tbe  degree  of  Doctor  of 
Philoeophy  magna  cum  lauds  on  Frftuleln 
AnnaGebeer,  who  presented  an  historical  thesis 
on  **  The  Importance  of  Queen  Cunigunde  to 
the  Reign  of  Henry  U."  On  March  6  the  same 
university  conferred  the  same  academic  dis- 
tinction on  Miss  Alice  tidce,  who,  after  gradu- 
ating at  an  American  university,  devoted  her- 
self to  philology  at  Leipsig  and  Heidelberg. 
Several  other  women,  mostly  foreigners,  have 
also  announced  themselves  as  candidates  for 
examination  and  promotion.  Quite  recently 
the  diploma  of  Countess  Marie  von  Linden, 
the  first  woman  who  ever  took  a  degree  at 
Tfibingen,  was  affixed  to  the  official  **  black- 
board "  of  that  university.  This  young  lady, 
the  daughter  of  the  Wfirtemberg  Chamberlain, 
Count  Edu%rd  von  Linden,  made  a  specialty 
of  natural  science  and  was  '*  promoted"  cum 
laud;  Her  thesis  was  on  the  stnictural  evo> 
lution  and  charaoteristios  of  marine  snails. 


290 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1606 


An  interesting  contribution,  *Zur  Beurteil- 
nng  der  Frauenbewegang  in  England  und 
Deutschland/  by  Lily  von  Gizycki,  has  just 
been  published  by  Heymann  in  Berlin.  The 
authoress  is  the  widow  of  the  well-known  writ- 
er on  ethics,  Prof.  G^org  von  Gizycid,  who  died 
about  a  year  ago,  and  of  whom  an  appreciative 
•ketch  was  given  in  a  late  number  of  Biogrct- 
phUohs  BldUer,  She  is  also  one  of  the  editors 
of  the  semi-monthly  sheet  Die  Frauenbewe- 
gunff,  issued  by  Diimmler  in  Berlin. 

The  first  female  professor  in  Rus<iia  is  Mme. 
Kerschbaumer,  who  has  been  appointed  to  the 
chair  of  ophthalmology  in  a  medical  college  for 
women  at  St.  Petersburg.  She  is  a  Russian  by 
birth,  but  married  to  an  Austrian  physician, 
with  whom  she  founded  an  eye- infirmary  at 
Salzburg  in  1875  and  since  then  has  been  en- 
gaged in  conducting  this  institute.  She  pur- 
sued her  studies  chiefly  in  Switzerland. 

A  correspondent  writes  to  us:  '*An  iogenuous 
student  of  political  history  who  should  seek  in 
the  Century  or  Standard  Dictionary  for  a 
definition  of  Boy,  would  fail  to  find  it.  Pre 
sumably  the  editors  of  these  works  supposed 
the  word  in  its  political  sense  to  be  only  ephe- 
meral slang;  but  a  word  which  has  held  its' own 
for  half-a-century  may  fairly  claim  to  have 
estoblished  its  title.  In  the  New  York  Mirror 
of  Oct.  25, 1845,  we  read  as  follows:  *It  [The 
G(o6e]isa  very  handsome  and  gentlemanly- 
looking  paper,  considering  that  it  represents 
the  "unwashed  Democracy,*'  and  is  the  ac- 
knowledged organ  of  the  class  of  politicians 
known  as  *'the  boys.*'"*  Even  the  Oxford 
Dictionary  has  missed  this  definition. 

>-The  April  Atlantic  contains  numerous  pa- 
pers of  permanently  attractive  quality,  adapt- 
ed to  the  class  of  readers  who  bestow  more 
than  waste  moments  upon  their  magazines. 
The  opening  story,  by  Henry  James,  has  more 
to  gain  than  to  lose  by  deferred  reading,  since 
its  continuation  is  to  follow  next  month. 
The  Scotch  element  in  American  life,  of 
which  Prof.  Stialer  writes,  may  fortunately  be 
regarded,  not  in  the  light  of  a  threateniDg 
problem,  but  of  a  field  where  fruitful  observa 
tion  may  be  pursued  with  a  cheerfulness  of 
spirit  not  often  possible  when  immigration  is  a 
theme.  By  an  effective  device  of  grouping, 
three  articles,  not  especially  noticeable  if  con- 
sidered singly,  are  made  to  produce  composite, 
ly  a  vivid  impression  of  the  range  and  diversity 
of  American  country  life  and  scenery — from 
the  woods  of  New  England,  whose  old-time 
maple-sugar  industry  is  sympathetically  de- 
scribed by  Rowland  E.  Robinson,  to  the  West- 
em  farm,  some  financial  as  well  as  natural 
aspects  of  which  are  treated  of  in  a  short  story 
by  Octave  Thanet,  and  to  the  Okefinokee 
swamp,  a  Southern  paradise  for  the  thorough- 
going camper.out.  In  the  last  paper,  how- 
ever,  the  naturalist's  remorselessness  in  shoot- 
ing  rare  specimens  strikes  a  note  discordant  to 
the  bird-lover  and  to  the  humane  reader  alike. 
A  paper  in  which  a  large  issue  is  comprehen- 
sively discuased  is  ''China  and  the  Western 
World,**  by  Lafcadio  Hearn.  The  ultimate 
event  to  which  this  paper  points  is  the  loss  of 
supremacy  by  the  Aryan  to  a  non  Christian 
Oriental  race ;  but  the  practical  consideration 
is  that  Chinese  industrial  and  commercial  com- 
petition will  have  to  be  faced  very  much  sooner 
than  has  been  expected.  Evidence  is  drawn 
from  all  quarters  of  the  globe  to  prove  the 
formidable  capacities  of  this  race  as  competi- 
tors  in  industry  and  commerce.  The  conserva- 
tism blindly  relied  on  as  a  check  to  Chinese 
advancement  does  not  extend  to  business,  while 
tenacity  in  clinging  to  the  ancestral  simplicity, 


in  matters  domestic  and  personal,  is  a  source  of 
strength  in  the  other  direction.  In  arguing 
and  illustrating  his  points,  Bir.  Hearn  shows 
his  usual  subtlety  of  sympathy  with  an  East- 
em  people  ''disciplined  for  thousands  of  years 
to  the  most  untiring  industry,**  and  "content 
to  strive  to  the  uttermost  In  exchange  for  the 
simple  privUege  of  life.** 

— Sbrt6n0r*s  for  April  is  smartly  up  to  date, 
with  the  titles  of  most  of  its  articles  pointing 
directly  to  current  events  or  to  topics  of  cur- 
rent  interest.  A  fashionable  fad  supplies  the 
network  of  Richard  Harding  Davis's  brightly 
touched-otr  story,  "  Cinderella,"  In  which  Van 
Bibber,  somewhat  obscured  of  late,  reappears 
as  a  social  power.  Prof.  Trowbridge  describes 
briefly  "The  New  Photography  by  Cathode 
Rays,'*  and  Henry  Norman  takes  the  side  of 
solidarity  and  right  reason  in  the  "Quarrel  of 
the  English-Speaking  Peoples."  Aline  Gorren, 
using  as  a  starting-point  M.  Bruneti&re's  re- 
marks to  the  effect  that  literature  and  jour- 
nalism are  fundamentally  incompatible  con- 
ceptions, makes  an  interesting  attempt  towards 
a  philosophy  of  the  vulgarity  of  the  American 
newspaper,  and  of  its  approved  violation  of 
the  sanctities  of  private  life.  In  writing  of 
Lord  Leighton,  Coemo  Monkhouse  owns  to 
a  schoolboy  panegyric  on  a  work  of  the  artist 
exhibited  in  1855,  and  his  praise  at  the  present 
date  still  leaves  something  to  be  desired  in  the 
nice  balancing  of  artistic  less  and  more;  but 
his  paper  is  genial  and  entertaining,  and  the 
illustrations  are  the  best  of  their  kind.  An- 
other article,  profusely  accompanied  by  pic- 
tures, describee  a  day  at  the  classic  games  at 
Oljmpia.  In  spite  of  its  elaborate  attempt  at 
an  imaginative  reproduction  of  time  and  per- 
sonalities contemporary  with  Pindar,  this  ar- 
tide  may  safely  be  passed  over  in  favor  of 
Rufus  B.  Richardson*s  plain  account  of  the  re- 
storation, in  preparation  for  the  games  now 
in  progress,  of  the  stadion  at  Athens,  where 
Mr.  Richardson  is  director  of  the  American 
School  of  Classical  Studies. 

—Prof.  Marquand*s  account,  in  the  Century, 
of  the  Olympic  games  and  their  history  is  of  an 
unrelieved  seriousness  and  solidity  worthy  of 
the  *  Britannica,*  and  has  at  least  this  advan- 
tage over  the  encyclopsedia  article,  that  it  seeks 
the  reader  and  relieves  him  of  the  trouble  of 
seeking  it.  Besides  painful  reminiscences,  there 
may  be  found,  under  the  head  of  "Four  Lin- 
coln Conspiracies,**  something  new  to  most 
readers  concerning  the  details  of  the  ttiree 
abortive  plots  which  preceded  the  tragedy,  and 
the  flight  and  capture  after  it.  In  a  literal  re- 
hearsal of  events  such  as  this,  the  meanness  of 
the  incidents  of  the  assassin's  hiding,  his  disai>- 
pointed  expectations  of  recognition  as  a  hero, 
the  petty  character  of  his  uncertainties  and 
deceptions,  strip  him  of  even  the  dramatic  in- 
terest that  might  have  attached  to  him  if  he 
had  not  outlived  his  deed  by  a  fortnight.  In  a 
third  paper  W.  D.  Howells  dwells  both  humor- 
ously and  eloquently  on  the  inconsistencies  and 
inconveniences  of  the  fraternal  relationship, 
as  at  present  perforce  recognized,  and  explains 
the  essential  difference  between  the  involun- 
tary or  natural  brotherhood  and  the  brother, 
hood  that  is  voluntary  and  human,  or,  as  he 
finally  prefers  to  call  it,  the  supernatural 
brotherhood,  with  its  superior  opportunities  of 
liberty,  congeniality,  and  universality.  That 
society,  which  has  hitherto  shirked  its  duty  in 
this  respect,  shall  take  upon  itself  the  obliga- 
tions  now  unjustly  attache^  to  the  ties  of  con- 
sanguinity,  and  shall  thus  relieve  the  indi- 
vidual from  burdens  often  onerous  and  even 


odious,  and  which  cause  him  to  shrink  in  dis- 
may at  the  thought  of  any  more  brothers,  is 
the  view  this  paper  insists  on  and  the  end  it 
would  hasten.  Second  only  to  the  pleasure  of 
following  Mr.  HoweU8*s  ingenious  essay  is 
that  of  picking  holes  in  his  logic— a  feat  which 
will  put  no  especial  strain  upon  the  reader's 
powers  of  mind. 

—If  this  month's  Harper's  obtains  more 
than  the  briefest  lease  of  attention,  it  will  be 
altogether  owing  to  G.  W.  Smalley*s  interest- 
ing observations  on  James  Rusjell  Lowell,  and 
the  new  phases  of  his  character  revealed  to 
himself  and  others  during  his  residence,  as 
minister,  in  England.  It  is  flattering  to  one's 
sense  of  the  capacities  of  life  for  development 
to  learn  that  after  he  had  pasMd  the  limit  of 
three  score,  Mr.  Lowell  underwent  transfer- 
mation  from  the  reserved  student  to  the  man 
of  the  world  in  the  best  sense  of  the  term,  be- 
coming after  sixty  the  brilliant  social  per- 
sonage and  after-dinner  speaker  known  to  his 
later,  and  eepecially  his  English,  admirers. 
The  typical  quality  of  Mr.  Lowell's  American- 
ism is  a  second  theme  of  these  recollections, 
through  which  there  runs  an  element  of  de- 
fence of  him  in  this  particular.  It  was  the 
pronounced  national  character  of  his  indivi- 
duality that  won  him  a  large  part  of  hia  popu- 
larity in  England,  and  it  is  not  likely  that  the 
genuineness  of  his  Americanivi^  has  ever  been 
seriously  doubted  in  any  competent  qoarter, 
unless  by  patriots  of  the  school  of  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  ^ho  takes  occasion  in  this  same 
magazine,  in  an  article  on  Gen.  Anthony 
Wayne,  to  insist  on  such  of  his  familiar  doc- 
trines as  that  "Americans  need  to  keep  in 
mind  the  fact  that,  as  a  nation,  they  have 
erred  far  more  often  in  not  being  willing 
enough  to  fight  than  in  being  too  willing.** 
That,  united,  the  future  of  the  world  belongs 
to  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain,  di- 
vided,  to  neither,  is  the  principle  for  which 
Mr.  Lowell  is  remembered  to  have  stood  un- 
waveringly, at  home  and  abroad.  Measured 
by  the  statesmanship  of  the  author  of  the 
essay  on  Democracy,  the  propaganda  of  the 
article  on  General  Wayne  amounts  to  no  more 
than  a  harmless  expression  of  personal  idio- 
syncrasy,  or  an  example  of  the  differenoe  be- 
tween culture  and  anarchy  in  ideas. 

—The  seventh  volume  of  Paul  Leicester 
Ford's  edition  of  the  writings  of  Jefferson 
(Pntnams)  ends  with  his  farewell  to  the  Se- 
nate, as  its  presiding  officer,  on  tl|e  eve  of 
becoming  the  head  of  the  Executive.  In  the 
six  preceding  years  we  see  him  retiring 
into  his  cheese,  banishing  the  thought  of 
politics,  viewing  his  approaching  end;  rejoic- 
ing at  escaping  the  Presidency  when  Adams 
was  successful,  knowing  well  "that  no 
man  will  ever  bring  out  of  that  office  the 
reputation  which  carries  him  to  it,**  but 
cheerfully  accepting  the  Vice- Presidency, 
and  entering  at  last  with  alacrity  upon  the 
higher  office.  The  "feds**  and  Alexandrians, 
with  **Ham,'*  their  chief,  cause  him  endless 
concern ;  the  Mazzei  letter  completes  his  breach 
with  Washington;  the  "  infidelities  of  the  post- 
office  **  make  him  generally  refrain  from  sign- 
ing his  private  letters.  His  secret  authorship  of 
the  Kentucky  Resolves  is  displayed  in  his 
correspondence,  and  these  landmarks  of  seces- 
sion are  admirably  given  by  Mr.  Ford  in  fac- 
simile print,  in  rough  draft,  and  in  fair  copy. 
Notable,  again,  are  Jeffer8on*s  politioal  oraed 
on  pp.  827,  328,  with  its  many  bearing*  on  ovr 
present  situation,  and  the  memomiteB  et 
his   services  in  answer  to  the 


April  9,  1896] 


Th.e   !N'atioii. 


991 


**wbeUi«r  my  oouotrj  li  the  better  for  my 
baring  llred  et  wlh^  The  feer  of  a  bloody 
termination  of  tlarery  crope  ap  everywhere ; 
bot  on  ooeadon  of  a  negro  rising  in  Virginia 
In  180O,  be  depreoatee  ezoewlTe  hangings, 
writing  to  Monroe  :  **Tbe  other  itatee  &  the 
world  at  large  wHl  f orerer  condemn  ui  if  we 
indulge  a  principle  of  rerenge,  or  go  one  step 
beyond  absolute  necessity.  They  cannot  lose 
sight  of  the  rights  of  the  two  parties,  &  the 
object  of  the  nnsacoessfn]  one.**  Other  aspects 
of  Jefferson  in  this  typical  Tolome  are  the 
philosopher  interested  in  fosdls  and  in  Indian 
languages ;  the  manufacturer  of  nails ;  the 
inrentor  of  a  mould  board.  Mr.  Ford^s  scru* 
puloQsness,  in  the  matter  of  an  insert  respect- 
ing a  disputed  phrase  in  the  letter  of  June  U 
1796,  to  John  Taylor,  was,  to  our  mind,  wholly 
uncalled  for  by  the  context. 

—The  incidents  connected  with  the  Presi- 
dential election  of  1800  are  admirably  told  in 
the  letters  contained  in  the  third  volume  of 
*Tbe  Life  and  Correepcmdenoe  of  Rufus  King ' 
(Putnams).  The  mistakes  of  John  Adams  in 
carrying  through  his  '^unadTised**  measures, 
and  the  political  blunder  of  the  Federalists  un- 
der the  lead  of  Alexander  Hamilton,  brought 
that  party  to  a  crushing  defeat.  Hamilton's 
letter  00  Adams  destroyed  his  followers'  be- 
lief in  his  discretion,  and  did  much  to  lead  to 
the  triumph  of  the  other  party.  It  is  curious 
to  see  how  erroneous  were  some  of  the  judg- 
ments expretssd  of  leading  men.  Marshall 
was  thought  to  be  too  much  guided  by  the  re- 
finements of  theory;  to  be  temporising,  and 
even  feeble.  His  indolence  and  attachment 
to  conyiyial  habits  were  dwelt  upon,  and 
some  years  elapsed  before  his  reasoning  powers 
and  weight  of  character  were  recognised.  80 
Troup  wrote  of  Gallatin's  appointment  to  the 
Treasury:  **An  appointment  by  all  Tirtuous 
and  enlightened  men  amongst  us  considered 
as  a  violent  outrage  on  the  yirtue  and  respect- 
ability of  our  country."  The  death  of  Wash- 
ington naturally  received  attention,  and  the 
whole  nation  was  described  as  exhibiting  **all 
the  symbols  and  badges  of  grief.  Our  churches 
are  all  hung  with  black  cloth  and  our  bells 
have  long  been  muffled.  The  tongue  of  envy 
and  malice  is  dumb— and  not  a  word  and  not 
a  whisper  is  heard  from  any  mouth  but  In  the 
Generars  praise.  .  .  .  Jefferson  has  just 
arrived  in  Philadelphia.  He  has  taken  care 
to  avoid  all  ceremonies  of  respect  to  the 
memory  of  Gen.  Washington."  Turning  to 
affairs  abroad.  King  describes  the  want  of  at- 
tention paid  to  Washington's  death  by  the 
English  court.  The  death  was  announced  in 
the  newspapen,  trat  not  in  the  OaxetU. 

**  I  attended  the  next  Levee  in  full  mourn- 
ing; my  colleagues  made  me  the  customary 
oompUments  of  condolence,  but  the  King,  tho' 
he  spoke  to  me  as  usual  on  other  topics,  took 
no  notice  of  the  occasion  of  my  being  In  mourn- 
ing, A  was  silent  respecting  America.  The 
next  day,  being  the  Queen's  drawing  room,  I 
was  at  court  &  in  mourning,  as  on  the  pre- 
ceding day;  both  the  King  A  Queen  obeerved 
the  same  reeerve,  as  the  King  had  before  done. 
I  went  aeain  to  the  Levee,  still  in  mourning, 
A  the  King  still  maintained  his  former  M- 
lenoe.  The  Ministers  are  not  regular  in  their 
attendance  &  commonly  come  late;  some  of 
them  were,  however,  present  on  each  day,  but 
none  of  them  said  a  word  to  me  coocemln^ 
the  Death  of  this  great  man;  so  I  conclude,  A 
the  Preddent,  who  well  knows  the  character  of 
this  court,  will  think  I  bad  sufficient  reason  to 
do  so,  that  this  disrespectful  omission  ft,  as  I 
consider  it  want  of  magnanimity  was  a  con- 
certed neglect.'* 

—The  failttre  of  the  commission  on  damages 
jtnder  the  sixth  artiole  of  Jay's  trsaty,  and  the 


standing  grievances  on  impressment,  convoys, 
and  rights  of  neutrals,  formed  the  subjects 
which  nM>nopolised  King's  activity ;  and  so  judi- 
ciously did  he  do  wtiat  was  expected  of  him  that 
Jefferson  saw  no  reason  to  remove  him  when 
the  Federalists  had  ceased  to  be  in  power.  The 
editor  has  performed  his  task  with  discretion, 
and  adds  value  to  the  record  by  making  good 
some  omissions  in  former  volumes.  The  ex- 
tracts from  King^s  memoranda  are  interesting, 
although  it  is  sometimes  difficult  to  accept  as 
historical  the  anecdotes  he  records.  The  proof- 
reading shows  carelessness:  Hopson's  choice 
(p.  296);  the  names  oC  Stoddert  (p.  880)  and 
Truxtun  (382)  are  misspelled;  while  the  letter 
in  cipher  on  p.  898  conld  have  been  deciphered 
from  the  copy  in  the  Depertment  of  State. 
The  letter  of  Adams  to  Tench  Ck>xe  is  accessi- 
ble in  the  *  Life  of  Pinckney.'  The  word  brim- 
berion  is  described  by  Troup  as  having  been 
coined  by  John  Adams,  although  the  word 
brimborion  was  a  word  in  good  usage  in  the 
last  century  and  had  been  borrowed  from  the 
French. 

—The  inhabitants  of  Neuch&tel  have  been 
extremely  proud  of  certain  fragments  of  lo- 
cal chronicles,  which  were  held  to  be  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  and  to  have  been  written  by 
the  canons  Purry  de  Rive  and  Hugues  de 
Pierre.  They  related  the  story  of  the  battles 
of  Morat  and  of  Granson  and  other  high 
ancestral  deeds.  A  great  scandal,  therefore, 
came  to  pass  when  M.  Pioget.  a  young  archi- 
vist who  had  studied  the  chronicles  more  close- 
ly than  others,  put  fprth  the  opinion  that  they 
could  not  possibly  be  authentic.  Much  noise 
was  raised  around  him,  by  which,  happily,  be 
was  not  at  all  intimidated,  but  only  went  on 
to  a  still  closer  examination  of  the  old  texts. 
He  finds  in  them  a  great  number  of  words  and 
of  turns  of  expression  which  were  not  in  use 
till  a  century  after  the  death  of  the  pretended 
chroniclers.  Some  statementd  of  fact  also 
are  singularly  inexact,  such  as  an  allusion  to 
the  University  of  BAle  some  twenty-five  years 
before  its  foundation.  Besides  demonstrating 
the  apocryphal  character  of  the  chronicle,  M. 
Pioget  has  been  able  to  indicate  the  manu- 
script sources  from  which  it  was  drawn,  and 
almost,  if  not  quite,  to  unveil  the  fraudulent 
author  of  it.  He  must  have  belonged  to  the 
^tourage  of  the  Chancellor  de  Montmollin,  if 
it  were  not  Montmollin  himself,  who  lived  at 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The 
most  earnest  partisans  of  the  authenticity  of 
the  chronicles  have  been  obliged  to  yield  to  the 
abundance  of  M.  Pioget's  proofs,  but  they  do 
it  with  rather  a  bad  grace.  Indeed,  many  of 
the  Neuch&telois  appear  to  find  the  new  dis- 
covery disconcerting. 


PATER'S   LAST   ESSAYS. 

Jftsosl/aneovs  StudU$ :  A  Series  of  Essays  by 
Walter  Pater,  late  Fellow  of  Brazenose  CoU 
lege.  Prepared  for  the  press  by  Charles  L. 
ShadweU,  Fellow  of  Oriel  College.  Macmil- 
lanftCo.    1895. 

Thxss  final  gleanings  of  Mr.  Pater's  work  lack, 
in  some  instances,  the  latest  touch  of  his  bsnd; 
but  in  none  except  the  eesay  on  Pascal  can 
they  be  called  incomplete.  All  that  they  want 
is  unity;  they  are  so  many  codicils  to  his  stu- 
dies  in  art  or  in  literature.  The  most  pre- 
cious and  significant  are  in  the  nature  oC  auto- 
biography. Mr.  Pater*s  reader's  wlU  find  them 
ail  characteristic  and  worthy  of  preservation; 
his  admirers  will  consider  one^  at  least,  unique 


The  chapters  on  Raphael,  on  Romanino  and 
Moretto  of  Brescis,  on  the  Cathedral  of  V^se- 
lay  and  Notre  Dame  d' A  miens,  are  the  con- 
tinuation, by  a  skilled  and  matured  hand,  of 
thoee  eloquent  essays  on  Botticelli  and  Luca 
della  Robbia  and  Leonardo  da  Vinci  which  ap- 
peered  more  than  twenty  yesrs  ago.  It  is  not 
for  a  mere  layman  to  crlticiBe  these,  but  sim- 
ply to  express  the  opinion  that  fortunate  in- 
deed is  the  student  who  shall  make  his  first  ac- 
quaintance with  these  less-known  painters,  and 
with  these  cathedrals,  under  the  guidance  of 
such  a  cicerone.  Mr.  Pater  here  writes  in  the 
plain  and  direct  manner  of  one  who  has  much 
to  tell  and  has  complete  mastery  of  his  subject, 
one  who  has  eyes  to  see  what  many  cannot  see 
by  themselves,  and  who  has  all  the  historical 
equipment,  the  acquaintance  with  the  life  and 
thought  of  a  period,  without  which  even  the 
artist's  eye  cannot  see  straight  and  intelligent- 
ly. A  fsr  safer  and  less  whimsical  guide  than 
Bir.  Ruskin,  a  guide  more  poetically  sensitive 
than  Mr.  Hamerton,  we  always  feel  that  he  is 
most  inspiring,  most  felicitously  occupied,  when 
his  theme  is  art.  We  are  not  now  speaking  as 
a  connoisseur,  but  as  a  lesmer  who  has  found 
in  him  his  Virgilio,  in  some  sort— his  gracious 
and  illuminating  conductor  in  strange  regions 
to  whose  atmosphere  he  was  not  bom.  To  the 
literary  critic,  at  any  rate,  it  is  quite  clear  that 
Mr.  Pater  moves  most  easily  and  most  win- 
ning^y,  with  fewer  temptations  and  snares  for 
his  footsteps,  when,  as  we  have  ssid,  his  theme 
is  Art.  When  he  is  not  treating  of  Art  direct- 
ly, he  strays  into  it  inevitably.  His  *  Marius ' 
is  a  series  of  brilliant  and  imaginative  pictures; 
his  philosophy  is  the  philosophy  of  an  artistic 
spirit,  of  the  Platonic  lover  of  beauty. 

The  fundamental  endowment  of  his  nature 
is  most  strikingly  revealed  in  the  sketch  en- 
titled  ''The  Child  in  the  House,"  here  first 
published  in  the  collected  works.  It  was  call- 
ed originally,  when  it  appeared  iu  M<iemiUan*B 
Magazine^  **  an  imaginary  portrait";  but  it  is 
undoubtedly  a  portrait  of  Mr.  Pater's  own 
childhood.  It  has  a  singular  interest  and 
value  because  it  sums  up  all  the  peculiarities 
of  his  style  and  manner,  as  well  as  of  his  tem- 
perament. It  is  a  picture  of  an  extremely 
sensitive  artistic  temperament,  taken  with  all 
the  shades,  the  nuances,  of  some  peculiarly 
delicate  process.  This  hypenesthesia,  which 
verges  upon  disesse,  which  one  sees  dbtinctly 
reachiog  disease  In  many  pages  of  Maupas- 
sant's 'La  Vie  Errante,'  remained  with  Mr. 
Pater  simply  an  exquisite  organ,  a  superfine 
sense  with  which  he  took  in  the  world  so  vivid- 
ly  that  his  impressions  became  far  more  real 
to  him  than  any  thoughts  or  processes  of  rea- 
son. He  began  "to  assign,"  as  he  hinfself 
says,  "  very  little  to  the  abstract  thought,  and 
much  to  its  visible  vehicle  or  occasion.  He 
came  more  and  more  to  be  unable  to  care  for 
or  think  of  soul  but  as  in  an  actual  body,  or 
of  any  world  but  that  wherein  are  water  and 
trees,  and  men  and  women  look  so  or  so,  and 
press  actual  hands."  One  can  understand  from 
this  how  Bfarius  proceeded  in  his  conversion. 
He  accepted,  in  the  house  of  Cecilia,  an  ocu- 
lar demonstration  of  the  Cbrbtian  religion. 
He  saw  there  a  family  living  lives  of  sweet- 
ness and  charity,  peace  and  contentment;  he 
saw  this  life  moving  in  an  atmosphere  of  de- 
corum and  ritusl  that  appealed  to  his  taste 
and  his  sense  of  fitness:  be  looked  upon  the 
beauty  of  holinees,  and  he  surrendered  at  dis- 
cretion. It  is  not  an  intellectual  process  at 
aU.  There  is  no  inquiry  for  credentials,  no  in- 
quiry as  to  whether  this  belief  be  true  or  false. 
The  intellect  has  no  part  in  his  choice  any 
mora  than  it  has  in  the  deoisioii  whether  a 


Q93 


The   ISTatlon. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1606 


woman  it  beautifiil.  We  look  and  w«  make 
up  our  mind  without  hesitation.  From  the 
tame  natural  bent  proceeds  his  fondness  tar 
the  ritual  and  symbolinn  of  religion;  his  **  love 
for  the  comely  order  of  the  sanctuary,  the 
secrets  of  its  white  linen  and  holy  yeseels  and 
fonts  of  pure  water,  its  hieratic  purity  and 
simplicity,  became  the  type  of  something  he 
desired  always  to  hare  about  him  in  actual 
life.*'  It  is  this  same  feeling  that  gives  us  the 
wonderfully  sympathetic  and  vivid  picture  of 
the  rites  of  Aesculapius,  and  of  the  Christian 
worship  and  ceremonial  at  the  house  of  Cecilia 
^a  scene  which  shows  us  what  sort  of  familiar 
appeal  may  have  won  the  minds  of  the  early 
Christians  at  a  time  when  their  religion,  *'hard- 
ly  less  than  the  religion  of  ancient  Greeks, 
translated  so  much  of  its  spiritual  verity  into 
things  that  may  be  seen.**  As  a  final  touch  we 
have  tlie  confusion  that  this  passion  for  the 
visible  emblems  and  consolations  of  religion 
was  fed  in  the  child's  soul  by  his  early  fear  of 
death,  *'  a  fear  of  death  intensified  by  the  de- 
sire  of  beauty." 

The  essay  on  Pascal  is  a  further  revelation  of 
our  author's  temperament  and  of  his  neces- 
sary point  of  view.  It  would  have  received 
some  additions  if  he  had  lived,  but  its  general 
outline  and  drift  would  not  have  been  altered. 
He  describes  the  *Pens6es'  as  evincing  a  ma- 
lady of  genius,  a  typical  malady  of  soul,  which, 
he  observes,  anticipates  certain  modem  condi- 
Uons  of  thought— the  ailing  helplessness  of 
Obermann,  for  example.  Pascal's  malady,  he 
goes  on  to  say,  "  reassures  sympathetically,  by 
a  sense  of  good  company,  that  large  class  of 
persons  who  are  maladea  in  the  same  way." 
**  La  maladie  est  I'dtat  naturel  des  Chretiens," 
he  quotes  with  a  sort  of  acceptance,  and  adds, 
**  We  are  all  ailing  more  or  less  with  this  dis- 
ease," not  perceiving  the  irony  of  his  own  ad- 
mission  nor  the  profound  irony  of  Pascal's 
attitude  in  such  an  utterance.  For  the  *  Pen- 
edes'  present  chiefiy  the  spectacle  of  a  power- 
ful and  penetrating  intellect  which  has  stulti- 
fled  itself  by  the  acceptance  of  certain  irra- 
tional dogmas,  and  which  bears  the  conse- 
quence  in  an  agonised  endeavor  to  make  this 
attitude  square  with  the  rational  scheme  of 
things.  To  achieve  this  impossibility,  he  wrests 
and  twists  his  own  powerful  logic,  be  vilifies 
man,  he  vilifies  the  Deity  whom  he  professes 
not  to  know.  To  his  credit  be  it  said  that  his 
yoke  is  too  heavy  for  him  tb  bear,  and  it  cans- 
es  him  unutterable  misery.  With  lesser  spirits 
the  penalty  of  such  a  surrender  is  a  growing 
indifference  to  truth,  a  decay  of  conscience  that 
ends  in  dishonesty;  no  sight  is  more  pitiable  to 
the  student  of  human  nature  than  the  certain- 
ty with  which  this  degeneracy  affects  certain 
classes  of  men,  even  the  best  of  men.  But, 
for  Pascal,  sincerity  and  power  of  intellect 
were  a  supreme  endowment.  He  could  not 
quench  it  without  groaning  and  travail  of 
spirit;  he  had  made  il  gran  ri/luto,  the  abdica- 
tion of  his  own  reason,  and  so  he  necessarily 
belonged  to  the  class  he  so  pathetically  de- 
scribes  as  the  band  of  those  **qui  cbercbent 
en  g^missant."  It  is  the  tragedy  of  a  Samson 
who  has  put  out  his  own  eyes.  Yet  it  is  a  Sam- 
son who  has  not  wholly  succeeded  in  blinding 
himself;  the  light  still  glimmers,  and  the  light 
gives  pain,  the  mortal  pain  of  a  great  intel- 
ligence at  war  with  itself,  an  intelligence  made 
to  apprehend  life  and  the  world,  not  (like  Mr. 
Pater's  Marius)  chiefly  by  the  senses,  but  with 
the  inward  eye.  To  his  serious  apprehension, 
the  aesthetic  charms,  the  ritual  of  the  Catholic 
Church  were,  indeed,  as  Mr.  Pater  himself  ad- 
mits, often  weary  and  unprofitable,  **  an  extra 
trial  of   faith."     The  vision  of  things  must 


come  to  him  not  by  their  beauty,  but  by  their 
reality,  by  their  truth.  And  hence,  with  this 
fundamental  sincerity,  there  is  a  horror  of 
compromise,  a  tendency  to  paradoxes  and  con- 
tradictions, a  readiness  **to  push  all  things  to 
extremes."  He  is  ready  to  push  even  his  scep- 
ticism to  an  extreme. 

Mr.  Pater  notes  the  infiuence  of  Montaigne 
on  some  of  the  *'  Thoughts,"  tba  soepfieoJ  <a- 
fluenct  of  Montaigne  as  he  calls  it.  It  is  quite 
true  that  in  those  lata*  years  of  Illness  deecrib- 
ed  by  his  sister  with  a  naive  fidelity  of  diagno- 
sis, Pascal  has  lost  the  lelf-potse,  the  wit  of 
the  *  Lettree  Provindales ' ;  he  has  parted  com- 
pany  with  the  large  and  sane  spirit,  the 
transcendent  good  sense,  of  Montaigne,  which 
looked  so  far  and  so  serenely  beyond  the  mists 
and  prejudices  and  conventions  of  his  time. 
But  Bir.  Pater  fails  to  see  that  Pascal  is  never 
so  thoroughgoing,  so  absolute  a  sceptic  as 
when,  in  the  *  Thoughts,'  he  denies  altogether 
the  validity  of  his  own  reason  in  favor  of  a 
mystical  scheme  inspired  by  an  ecclesiaBtical 
authority.  '^Nous  ne  oonnaissons  ni  I'exis- 
tence  ni  la  nature  de  Dieu."  **  n  n'y  a  rien  de 
si  oonforme  k  la  raison  que  ce  d^saveu  de  la 
raison."  Such  phrases  go  far  beyond  the 
Pyrrhonism  of  Montaigne.  We  can  hardly 
conceive  them  as  uttered  before  that  last  pe- 
riod of  shock  and  hallncinations  and  ascetic 
pietism  which  his  sister  so  vividly  portrays. 
They  anticipate,  it  is  true,  the  language  of 
some  theologians  of  the  present  century;  yet 
they  are  the  ne  plu9  ultra  of  agnosticism,  for 
they  affirm  not  merely  that  we  do  not  know, 
but  that  we  cannot  know,  the  realities  of  the 
Universe. 

"  ApoUo  in  Pioardy  "  is  the  realisation  of  a 
conception  which  had  haunted  Mr.  Pater's 
mind  for  many  years,  the  earliest  hints  of  it 
appearing  in  the  series  of  papers  on  the  Re- 
naissance. It  Ib  a  delicate  fantasy  played 
about  a  theme  which  Heine  suggests.  The  ex- 
dtity  Apollo,  a  wanderer  to  northern  dimes, 
brings  to  the  chill  seasons  of  Picardy  an  alien 
supernatural  brightness,  and  plays  strange 
pranks  with  the  monastic  brethren  among 
whom  he  is  a  sojourner.  Masquerading  as 
Brother  Apollyon,  he  still  retains  his  lyre,  and 
helps  by  its  magic  notes  to  raise  the  rhythmical 
and  classic  lines  of  some  monastic  edifice;  he 
still  keeps  his  bow,  and  his  ancient  dominion 
over  the  creatures  of  the  forest;  and,  by  the 
spell  of  hfs  weird  and  baneful  beauty,  he  en- 
snares, as  of  old,  young  Brother  Hyacinth  to 
wrestle  and  play  quoits  with  him.  It  is  a  fatal 
game  played  on  some  late  autumn  evening, 
when  the  scene  dissolves  before  the  earliest 
blast  of  winter,  and  the  vagabond  god  at  last 
fiees  with  the  whirling  leaves,  tricksy  and  con- 
scienceless, leaving  the  stain  and  suspicion  of 
murder  on  the  innocent  mad  Prior  St.  Jean. 
The  antics  of  the  exiled  deity,  wavering  be- 
tween monk  and  wizard  and  daemon,  and  re- 
taining in  his  fallen  estate  the  relics  and  remi- 
niscences  of  his  ancient  dignities,  are  traced 
with  the  fine  and  dexterous  strokes  oi  learning 
and  imagination  which  painted  the  Amason  in 
the  »•  Hippolytus  Veiled."  It  is  a  pretty  bit  of 
moonshine,  lighting  up  the  fretwork  of  some 
old  ruin — a  fancy  which  few  writers  would 
have  dared  to  Intrust  to  the  matter-of-fact 
vehicle  of  prose. 

But  Mr.  Pater  likes  to  demonstrate  that 
prose  is  not  necessarily  prosaic,  that  it  is  an 
instrument  of  many  stops,  from  which  a  varied 
music  may  be  drawn.  The  proof  of  this  is  easy 
enough,  if  you  know  hom—ioMtwrambuXando; 
and  Mr.  Pater  does  offer  us  a  rather  convinc- 
ing solution  Yet  we  like  his  work  best  when 
he  is  not  pursuing  these  wire- drawn  fancies 


and  clothing  them  In  a  web  of  elaborate  and 
ingenious  spinning.  We  like  him  beet  when 
be  is  so  charged  with  his  subject  that  he  has 
no  time  left  to  think  of  embroidery.  Nothing 
that  he  has  since  done  moves  with  a  flow  so 
free  and  impassioned  as  thoae  early  essays  00 
the  Renaissance.  Nothing,  for  enample,  quite 
equals  his  description  of  Leonardo's  ^'La  Oio- 
conda,"  as  a  spontaneous  flight  of  sustained 
imagination  and  eloquence.  There  is  many  a 
paragraph  in  his  later  works  that  moves  with 
curious  artifice,  on  the  wings  of  Icama.  But 
the  flight  makes  us  uneasy.  There  is 
thing  in  the  movement,  tortuous, 
ineffectual;  it  affects  us  like  some  of  the 
noetnmes  of  Chopin.  These  periods  are  in- 
tended to  imitate  with  cunning  careleBsness 
the  freedoms  of  conversation,  its  digressions 
and  parentheses;  but  the  art  to  too  evident,  it 
reminds  us  of  Mr.  Pater's  favorite  oslresu. 
There  is  indeed  too  much  osAessCs  for  the 
reader;  and  readers,  with  proper  jostioe,  ob- 
ject to  any  athletios  of  the  undraetanding 
which  are  not  demanded  by  the  intrinsic 
weight  and  difficulty  of  the  theme.  Mr.  Pater 
speaks  somewhere  of  the  '*  long  victorioos  pe- 
riod"; some  oi  his  periods  are  long  and  not 
victorious  not  victorious  as  Plato's  longest 
periods,  or  like  Mr.  Rutkin's,  both  of  which 
bear  the  reader  without  fatigue  triumphantly 
on  the  wings  of  a  passionate  and  powerful  elo- 
quence. Therefore  it  is  that  we  most  admire 
Mr.  Pater  when  he  lets  himself  go,  when  he 
forgets  his  artifice  and  yields  to  the  current  of 
thought  and  emotion  of  the  moment.  He  did 
this  oftenest,  as  was  natural,  in  the  ardor  and 
abandon  of  youth. 

But  the  word  abandon  can  nerer  be  rightly 
used  of  any  period  of  Mr.  Pater's  work.  It 
was  alwajrs  under  the  control  of  an  artistic 
conscience  that  tended  to  austerity.  For, 
mingled  with  this  patlietlc  precocity  of  the 
*<  Child  in  the  House,"  that  susceptible  q>irit 
nurtured  on  delicate  and  dainty  sights  and 
sounds,  it  is  a  singular  trait  to  dtocover  an  ad- 
miration for  the  Spartan  training  of  yonth, 
whether  in  English  schools  or  in  Laeedaemon. 
The  foundation  for  this  admiration  is,  we  sup. 
pose,  the  feeling  for  restraint  and  measure  in 
art,  for  an  atikewU  which  may  emerge  in  aeceti- 
dsm;  and  the  theory  that  masculine  beauty  is 
developed  by  such  training.  This  feeUng  is 
embodied  in  the  imaginary  portrait  of  BmenUd 
Uth wart,  which  is  the  counterpart  of  the  sketch 
of  the  Laoonian  **  noble  slavery,"  one  of  the 
most  brilliant  chapters  on  the  Platonic  system 
and  ideas.  Uthwart  is  a  young  Englishman 
with  the  ideal  temperament  of  a  soldier,  the 
tastes  of  a  scholar,  and  the  susceptibilitlee  of 
Mr.  Pater's  own  childhood.  He  leaves  Oxford 
after  the  training  of  an  English  school,  and 
serves  in  a  brief  campaign  in  Flanders,  where 
he  receives  an  honoraUe  wound.  He  is  finally 
dismissed  in  disgrace  because  of  some  irregular 
exploit,  which,  though  punished  by  a  court- 
martial  of  martinets,  won,  after  later  investi- 
gation, the  applause  of  his  countrymen  and  the 
reversal  of  the  military  decision.  The  reverasl 
comes  too  late,  and  he  dies  of  the  double  wound 
at  his  heart.  Uthwart  is  the  embodiment  of 
that  atkeais  whichMr.  Pater  so  much  admires, 
of  the  monastic  discipline  and  obedience,  the 
vigorous  rule  in  play  and  study,  of  a  Rugby  or 
a  Winchester,  **a  sort  of  hardness  natural  to 
English  youths,"  crowned  by  the  subtler  in- 
fluences of  Oxford,  '*the  memory  of  which 
made  almost  everything  he  saw  after  it  1 
vulgar."  This  last  sentence  evidently 
from  Mr.  Pater's  heart.  No  one  can 
him  for  loving  that  one  ideal  abriai  fa  Hft 
world  of  exoA^t  of  scholarly  1 


April  9,  1896] 


Tlie   ITation. 


Q98 


wlMTt  wiadoin  m^  be  wonhifiped  and  panned 
in  Ideal  tempUe,  Amid  habitoliooi  whiohPUto 
hlmnlf  inlgbl  have  f oond  do  leei  flUing  than 
hii  own  Aoademy. 


8HAW^  MUNICIPAL  GOVSRNMSNT. 

MumieipcU  OcnMrmmeiil  in  CorUinmUal  Ewrt^, 
Bj  Albert  Shaw.    The  Century  Co.   1895. 

Tm  ialereet  now  to  generally  felt  in  the  im- 
proTeoMBt  ct  mnnidpal  goremment  in  the 
United  Btatee  ie  a  natural  derelopment  of  oivi- 
HwrtJon,  AmerieaaehaTebeenfor  many  yean 
oooofiied  in  eabdning  a  new  oontinent,  and 
daring  thie  centory  the  work  hat  been  poehed 
at  a  tremendooe  pace.  Moch  remains  to  be 
doDe»  bnt  the  task  if  no  longer  on  the  great 
eoale  of  the  pasti  and  oar  preeent  command  of 
the  reeooroet  of  nature  if  tooomplete  at  to  glTe 
Of  leieore  to  pay  attention  to  oar  cooqaeete 
Like  men  wbO|  having  aoonnralatcd  a  com- 
fortable property,  begin  to  think  of  improying 
their  hoofet  and  adorning  their  groande,  our 
oitict  are  awakening  to  the  poeiibUitief  of  bet. 
ter  eanitation,  tmootber  paTcmentf,  handsomer 
baildings,  and  more  beautifol  parks.  As  is 
oeoaDy  the  case,  goTtming  bodies  lag  behind 
pabUc  opinion,  and  we  are  therefore  at  preeent 
engaged  in  stimolating  oar  rolen  to  mon  en- 
lightened and  honorable  aotiTity. 

The  popularity  of  Mr.  Shaw*s  books  is  evl- 
deoce  of  the  growth  of  the  municipal  spirit  in 
this  ooantry.  The  details  of  the  administra- 
tloa  of  goTemment,  especially  of  the  govern- 
ment of  subordinate  oommnnities,  an  not  in- 
trlnsioally  of  an  interesting  character.  But 
when  the  Anglo-Bazon  conscience  is  aroused, 
as  It  is  now  aroused  concerning  municipal  im. 
proTemsAt,  the  natural  aTenlon  to  details  Is 
overcome,  and  even  statistical  tables  loee  their 
terrors.  Moreover,  it  is  only  fair  to  say,  Mr. 
Shaw  has  the  knack  of  coating  his  pills  of  in- 
f%  rmation  with  a  pleasant  style,  and  he  quick- 
ly leads  his  readen  away  from  the  analysis  of 
tedious  particulan  to  the  contemplation  of 
splendid  results.  Whatever  criticism  may  be 
passed  on  his  methods,  it  is  undeniable  that  lie 
succeeds  in  attaining  what  is  probably  his 
main  purpose— the  pressntation  to  Americans 
of  such  magnificent  ideals  of  civic  progress  as 
shall  stioralate  them  to  vigorous  effort  towards 


Perhape  the  most  striking  fact,  to  the  ordi- 
nary American  reader,  of  all  that  Mr.  Sbaw 
ptueents,  Is  that  European  cities  have  recently 
been  increasing  their  populatioi\  at  a  more 
rapid  rate  than  thoee  of  this  country.  Wean 
so  much  in  the  habit  of  expatiating  upon  our 
wonderful  pcngrtm  as  to  make  it  startling  to 
be  tokl  that  since  1870  Berlin  has  overtaken 
and  pMsed  New  York;  that  in  thirty  ytftrs 
Philadelphia  has  gained  a  half-million  souls, 
while  Berlin  hM  gained  a  million;  that  in  1875 
Hamburg  and  Boston  had  nearly  the  same 
number  of  inlmbitants,  while  in  1890  Hamburg 
had  almost  670,000  to  448,000  in  Boston;  and 
that  daring  this  period  Hamburg's  population 
has  iacreaeed  at  twice  the  rate  of  that  of  Balti- 
more. Leipslg  has  distanced  St.  Louis  and  San 
Fraadsoo;  Cologne  has  in  the  last  decade  sur- 
paMd  Cleveland,  Buffalo,  and  Pittsburgh.  Soif 
we  oompan  Munich  and  Brsslau  and  Dreeden 
and  Magdeborg  with  American  towns  of  corre- 
sponding siM-Detroit,  Milwaukee,  LouisviUe» 
Albany,  Bochester,  and  even  Minneapolis— we 
And  that  the  foreign  cities  have  grown  almost 
wHhoat  exoeption  fester  than  our  own.  Even 
Nuremberg,  which  we  associate  with  tlie  Mid- 
dle Ages,  increased  its  population  between 
1800-^  from  lees  than  100,000  to  142,000,  while 


Providence  gnw  only  from  106,000  to  182^000. 
In  some  oases,  Mr.  Shaw  observes,  the  annexa- 
tion of  territory  affects  these  comparisons,  but 
theee  cases  probably  offset  each  other.  More- 
over, if  we  take  in  the  smaller  towns,  thegeoe- 
ral  result  is  the  same,  and  if  we  wen  to  bring 
the  comparison  down  to  1806,  it  would  be  even 
mon  favorable  to  the  German  towns. 

It  is  quite  evident  that  the  plea  of  infancy, 
which  we  have  perhape  been  taught  to  make 
too  much  of  by  the  protectionists,  is  no  longer 
available  to  our  cities*  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
with  the  exception  of  an  ancient  con,  the  or- 
dinary German  city  is  newer  than  the  Ame- 
rican.  If  the  fonign  towns  have  surpassed 
our  own  in  the  quality  of  their  development, 
we  cannot  longer  excuse  ourselves  on  the 
ground  of  youth,  nor  can  we  escape  the  con- 
clusion that  our  own  backwardness  is  due,  not 
to  any  panimony  in  public  expenditure,  but 
to  lade  of  intelligence  and  honesty  in  our  gov. 
emments.  Doubtless  Mr.  Sbaw  is  somewhat 
carried  away  by  his  subject,  and  almost  all 
fonign  administration  seems  to  him  admira- 
ble. We  shall  preeently  take  exception  to 
some  of  his  statements;  but,  making  due  al- 
lowance for  the  eouUur  c/«  roie^  we  must  ad- 
mit that  in  the  art  of  mimicipal  government 
we  have  been  fairly  distanced  by  countries 
which  our  popular  oraton  generally  speak  of 
as^'effete." 

As  we  have  pointed  out  in  commenting  on 
Mr.  Shaw's  book  about  the  English  cities, 
then  appean  to  be  only  one  explanation  of 
this.  In  all  matten  directed  by  private  enter- 
prise we  need  confess  no  shameful  deficiency; 
it  is  in  the  administration  of  public  affain  that 
we  falL  At  the  same  time,  we  are  the  only 
people  whoee  municipal  affain  an  ngulated 
by  universal  suffrage.  The  argument  is  con- 
clusive that  our  form  of  government  is  one  of 
the  causes,  if  not  the  sole  cause,  of  our  back- 
wardnees.  As  we  cannot  expect  to  do  away 
with  universal  suffrage,  we  must  somehow 
manage  to  improve  its  recults.  Nothing  can  be 
cruder  than  to  suggest  that  we  have  only  to 
introduce  foreign  methods  of  administration 
in  order  to  solve  our  problems.  The  matter  is 
far  mon  difficult  than  this.  It  is  hard  to  ac- 
count for  the  slackened  rate  at  which  our  po- 
pulation  increases  unless  it  is  explained  by  the 
burden  of  misgovernment.  If  we  an  to  im- 
prove our  cities,  it  must  be  done  not  by  in- 
creasing the  rate  of  taxation,  but  by  economi- 
cal and  business- like  expenditun.  We  have 
sufUdent  intelligence  to  keep  up  with  the 
mareh  of  progress;  but  we  cannot  do  so  with- 
out adopting  the  methods  employed  in  success- 
ful private  enterprises. 

For  these  reasons  Mr.  8haw*s  book  is  dis- 
appointing. He  lavishes  praise  on  fonign 
methods  and  is  ecstatic  over  foreign  results, 
but  he  gives  us  comparatively  little  in  tlie  way 
of  precise  and  definite  statement  that  Is  useful 
for  purposss  of  comparison.  We  find  it  quite 
impossible  from  his  data  to  determine  whether 
the  administration  of  the  government  of  Paris 
is  economical  or  ruinously  extravagant  He 
expatiates  on  the  lighting  system  of  that  city— 
which  is  behind  the  times  in  its  use  of  elec- 
tricity—but he  does  not  tell  us  how  much  It 
costs  to  produce  gas,  or  how  much  the  con- 
sumer has  to  pay  for  it  But  unless  we  have 
theee  data  we  cannot  tell  whether  the  nvenue 
derived  from  taxing  the  gas  company  is  de- 
sirable nvenue  or  not.  This  revenue  is  now 
30,000.000  francs;  but  it  is  questionable  if  a  tax 
upon  light  is,  on  the  whole,  advantageous,  no 
matter  how  productive  It  may  be.  Mr.  Shaw 
thinks  U  indispuUble  that  if  the  city  wen  to 
provide  gas,  the  poor  people  of  Paris  would  get 


it  cheaper  than  now.  Perhaps  they  would  ap- 
pannUy  have  it  furnished  for  nothing,  like 
some  other  things;  but  what  would  become  of 
the  20, 000. 000  of  nvenue,  and  who  would  finally 
pay  the  piper  f 

Again,  if  we  wish  to  compan  the  results  at- 
tained at  Paris  with  those  at  Berlin,  we  must 
go  elsewhen  than  to  Mr.  Shaw*s  book.  The 
nearest  approach  to  definite  information  may 
be  found  in  the  appendixes,  when  some  scanty 
tables  an  preeented  as  the  budgets  of  theee 
citiee.  On  the  face  of  these  figures  it  would 
seem  that  the  Police  Department  of  Berlin  ooet 
8.881,000  marks,  whUe  that  of  Paris  cost 
29,520,000  francs;  that  the  can  and  manage, 
ment  of  the  streets  and  parks  of  Berlin  cost  lees 
than  4,000,000  marks,  while  in  Paris  the  corre. 
sponding  expense  was  not  far  from  ten  timee 
as  many  francs;  and  that  the  salary  account  In 
Berlin  was  a  little  over  7,000,000  marks,  against 
nothing  under  that  head  in  Paris.  In  fact, 
whenyer  we  have  attempted  to  obtain  exact 
results  from  Mr.  Shaw's  statements,  we  have 
failed  so  completely  as  to  lead  us  to  the  opinion 
that  he  has  depended  mainly  on  what  he  has 
been  told,  and  has  seldom  made  any  thorough 
investigation  for  himself. 

Perhaps  the  most  nmarkable  exhibitioa  of 
Mr.  Shaw*8  methods  is  to  be  found  in  his  study 
of  Paris,  which  occupies  one-third  of  his  book« 
We  an  there  told  that  '*  all  countriee  an  un- 
der permanent  obligations  to  the  clear  political 
philoeophy  that  furnished  the  French  Revolu- 
tion with  its  principles,''  and  it  is  intimated 
that  this  philosophy  would  requin  that  the 
administration  of  Parisian  affain  should  be 
turned  over  to  the  Municipal  Council.  Con- 
cerning this  body  Mr.  Shaw  writes  with  less 
compnhension  than  can  be  obtained  by  any 
one  from  a  file  of  Paris  newipapers.  He  says 
that  public  exactions  in  Paris  have  not  tended 
to  exhaust  the  sources  of  private  wealth,  and 
then  shows  how  rapidly  the  number  of  school 
childnn  who  cannot  afford  to  pay  for  their 
own  dinnera  has  increased,  how  from  15,000  to 
20,000  families  annually  have  their  rent  paid 
by  the  City  Council,  how  **  thousands  of  hon- 
est men  in  temporary  need"  an  boarded  by 
the  city  in  the  free  lodging-houses,  and  brings 
much  other  evidence  tending  to  prove  that 
the  number  of  people  unable  to  earn  a  living 
in  Paris  must  be  very  great  Considering 
that  the  ordinary  expenditures  of  the  govern- 
ment of  the  city  an  200,000,000  francs,  of 
which  about  111,000,000  francs  is  on  account  of 
its  indebtednees ;  that  the  extraordinary  ex- 
penses an  nearly  50,000,000  francs  mon  ;  that 
the  debt  is  now  2,000,000,000  francs,  practicaUy 
all  of  which  has  been  incurred  within  forty 
yean ;  and  that  in  addition  to  this  the  nation- 
al ehargee  an  of  a  staggering  magnitude,  it 
seems  a  hasty  conclusion  that  the  sources  of 
private  wealth  have  not  been  affected.  Un- 
doubtedly then  is  much  to  show  in  Paris  for 
all  this  expenditure,  and  Mr.  Shaw  is  quite 
confident  that  very  little  money  has  been 
wasted,  although  he  mildly  cautions  the 
authorities  to  resist  the  temptation  to  increase 
the  'l>onded  debt  But  in  what  way  the  French 
people  an  to  meet  the  charges  ol  the  war  for 
which  they  have  been  so  long  waiting,  when 
it  at  last  comes,  it  is  not  easy  to  say ;  or 
rather  it  is  clear  that  solvency  can  be  main- 
tained only  by  the  preeervation  of  peace. 

Mr.  Shaw  is  so  reeolutely  optimistic  that  we 
an  not  surprised  to  find  no  allusion  to  the 
disposition  of  the  Paris  Council  to  lubsidiie 
striken ;  a  disposition  formerly  curbed  by  the 
general  Government,  but  which  in  a  recent  case 
has  been  permitted  to  dispUy  Itself  outside  of 
Paris.    Of  the  Bourse  du  TravaU  he  has  only 


294 


Tlie    ITSTatioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1606 


commendation  to  offer,  b^ng  appparentlj  ig- 
norant of  the  capture  of  that  institution  by 
the  communists,  whose  conduct  became  to 
scandalous  as  to  compel  the  authorities  to 
close  its  doors.  We  could  multiply  instances 
of  this  kind,  which  prove  that  for  really  scien- 
tific uses  Mr.  Shaw's  book  has  slight  value ; 
but,  as  we  have  indicated,  it  has  merits  of 
another  kind.  It  will  at  least  arouse  interest 
in  matters  of  the  highest  importance,  and 
will  direct  attention  to  the  quarters  from 
which  the  information  that  we  need  may  be 
derived.  It  is  a  stimulating  and  suggestive 
essay,  or  collection  of  esaays,  and  the  way 
is  now  broken  for  some  cool  and  clecu> 
headed  observer  to  lay  before  the  Ameri. 
can  public  the  results  of  really  scientific  com- 
parison of  the  methods  of  municipal  gov. 
emment. 


The  RelUf  of  Chiiral  By  Capt.  O.  J.  Young- 
husband  and  Capt.  F.  E.  Youngbusband- 
Macmillan  &  Co.    1895.    Pp.188. 

With  KeUy  to  Chitral,  By  Lieut.  W.  G.  L. 
Beynon.    Edward  Arnold.    1896.    Pp.160. 

Hardly  a  year  passes  without  some  little  war 
being  undertaken  upon  some  part  of  the  ex- 
tensi  ye  frontier  of  the  British  Empire  in  India. 
None  of  these  little  wars  has  attracted  such 
general  interest  in  recent  times  as  the  opera* 
tions  conducted  la^t  spring  for  the  relief  of 
Chitral.  The  ordinary  Indltn  frontier  expedi- 
tion is  undertaken  for  the  punishment  of  some 
rebellious  tribe,  or  the  subjection  of  some  petty 
independent  chieftain  who  has  negl<*cted  to 
obey  the  orders  of  the  Government  of  India. 
The  Chitral  expeditions  had  a  more  dramatic 
interest  A  British  agent  was  besieged  by  an 
overwhelming  force  of  native  tribesmen  in  a 
small  hill-fort  among  the  mountains  of  the 
Hindu- Kush,  several  hundred  miles  from  the 
nearest  military  post;  it  was  known  that  he 
had  with  hini  only  a  small  force  of  Sikh  and 
Kashmir  troops.  The  season  was  the  most  un- 
propitious  for  mountain  warfare;  the  enemy 
was  brave  and  experienced,  and  the  country 
through  which  alone  relief  operations  could  be 
conducted  well-nigh  impassable  by  reason  of 
natural  difficulties;  and,  to  compare  small 
things  with  great,  the  situation  was  similar  to 
that  in  the  Sudan  in  1885,  when  the  civilized 
world  was  msrveUing  at  Gordon's  heroic  de- 
fence of  Khartum,  and  wondering  whether  the 
relieving  force  hurrying  up  the  Nile  could  ar. 
rive  in  time  to  save  him. 

It  would  take  too  long  to  narrate  the  events 
which  brought  about  the  dangerous  situation 
of  Dr.  Robertson,  the  British  agent.  It  is 
enough  to  say  that  Chitral  is  a  small,  moun- 
tainous state,  300  miles  beyond  the  borders  of 
British  India,  not  far  from  the  Pamir  region, 
and  nominally  dependent  on  Kashmir.  It  is 
exceedingly  doubtful  whether  the  British  Gov. 
emment  in  India  was  justified  in  interfering 
with  such  a  distant  and  inaccessible  country  as 
Chitral,  but,  for  good  or  for  evil,  it  had  inter- 
fered, and  as  a  consequence  its  agent  found 
himself  in  the  month  of  March,  1895,  besieged 
in  a  ruinous  hill-fort,  eighty  yards  square, 
with  a  garrison  of  99  Sikh  and  801  Kashmir  in- 
fantry, by  several  thousand  Pathans  and  Chi- 
tralis  led  by  Umra  Khan,  a  neighboring  Pathan 
chief,  and  Sher  Afzul,  a  pretender  to  the  Chi- 
tral throne.  It  wan  necessary  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  British  prestige  that  Dr.  Robertson 
should  be  rescued  at  once,  and,  as  soon  as  his 
desperate  situation  was  known,  two  expedi- 
tions were  sent  to  his  relief,  and  the  siege  of 
Chitral  was  raised  after  a  gallant  resistance  in 


which  the  garrison  lost  more  than  one-third  of 
its  numbers. 

The  volume  written  by  the  two  brothers, 
Capt.  G.  J.  Youngbusband  and  Capt  F.  B. 
Youngbusband,  gives  an  excellent  account  of 
the  defence  and  the  relief  of  Chitral.  The 
siege  lasted  from  the  4th  of  March  to  the  19th 
of  April,  and  during  the  latter  part  of  this 
period  the  garrison  had  to  subsist  on  a  scanty 
allowance  of  horse  flesh.  Umra  Khan  was  an 
expert  in  mountain  siege  operations,  and  tried 
every  method  of  attack ;  several  attempts 
were  made  to  set  fire  to  the  fortifications  ;  a 
nearly  successful  effort  was  made  to  run  a 
mine  under  the  fort,  which  was  frustrated  only 
by  a  gallant  sortie;  and  the  waUs  were  so 
weak  that  they  had  to  be  strengthened  with 
empty  boxes,  and  so  full  oi  gape  that  carpets 
had  to  be  hung  across  to  prevent  the  enemy 
from  picking  off  the  defenders.  Unceasing 
vigilance  was  necessary  to  prevent  a  surprise, 
and  there  were  only  three  British  officers 
available  for  duty.  To  add  to  the  dismay  of 
the  garrison,  information  was  received  during 
the  early  part  of  the  siege  that  two  reinforce- 
ments, the  one  escorting  a  much-needed  sup- 
ply of  ammunition,  had  been  cut  off,  and  that 
the  British  officer  commanding  one  party  had 
been  killed  with  two-thirds  of  his  men,  while 
the  British  officers  commanding  the  other 
party  had  been  captured  by  Umra  Khan. 

The  news  of  the  siege,  fcdlowed  by  the  news 
of  these  disasters,  caused  the  Government  of 
India  to  direct  a  powerful  forcetobemobiliaed 
on  the  Punjab  frontier,  which  was  ordered  to 
march  due  north  through  the  valleys  that 
formed  the  territory  ruled  by  Umra  Khan  to 
the  relief  of  Chitral.  At  the  same  time  in- 
structions were  sent  to  CoL  Kelly,  who  com- 
manded a  Sikh  regiment  which  was  making 
roads  upon  the  northern  frontier  of  Kashmir, 
to  make  an  effort,  if  an  effort  were  possible,  to 
reach  Chitral  by  advancing  thr6ugh  the  monn- 
tains  first  west  and  then  south  for  some  800 
miles.  The  larger  expedition,  which  marched 
northwards  from  the  northwestern  comer  of 
India,  consisted  of  about  15,000  men,  including 
six  British  regiments,  and  was  oonmianded  by 
Gen.  Sir  Robert  Low.  It  crossed  two  lofty 
passes  in  spite  of  determined  oppositioo,  and 
fought  several  successful  actions.  Its  opera- 
tions caused  Umra  Khan  to  give  up  the  oom- 
maud  of  the  army  besieging  Chitral,  and  tore- 
turn  to  the  defence  of  his  own  villages,  but  it 
had  not  the  honor  of  relieving  the  besieged 
garrison.  This  feat  was  accomplished  by  Col. 
Kelly,  despite  the  smallness  of  hisforce  (which 
consisted  of  only  400  Sikhs  and  some  untrained 
native  levies)  and  the  exceptional  difficulties 
of  the  country  through  which  he  had  to  pass. 
The  operations  of  both  Low  and  Kelly  are  de 
scribed  at  length  by  the  Younghusbands,  who 
acknowledge  in  no  grudging  terms  that  the 
military  honors  of  the  campaign  were  earned 
by  the  gallant  garrison  of  Chitral  and  the  in- 
defatigable officers  and  men  of  Col.  Kelly's 
colunm. 

Col.  Kelly's  operations  form  the  subject  of 
Lieut  Beynon's  narrative,  which  is  a  naive 
and  simple  record  of  the  daily  occurrences  of 
an  arduous  march.  Readers  of  Bir.  Kipling's 
Indian  stories  will  remember  the  tale  told  by 
"The  Infant"  in  "The  Conference  of  the 
Powers."  Lieut.  Beynon  is  simply  "The  In- 
fant "  in  real  life.  The  style,  the  language,  the 
allusions,  the  narrative  as  a  whole  bear  the 
unmistakable  imprint  of  a  Kipling  story.  Now 
it  can  be  taken  for  granted  that  Lieut.  Beynon 
is  not  imitating  Kipling—his  narrative  is  far 
too  artless  and  natural  for  such  a  suspicion— 
and  it  is  a  further  proof  of  Kipling's  singular 


genius  in  assimilating  the  manner  of  thought 
and  speech  of  the  British  subaltem  on  service 
in  India  that  the  words  of  Lieut  Beynon,  re- 
lating real  events,  should  read  like  the  words 
of  Mr.  Kipling  in  one  of  his  most  characteris- 
tic stories.  No  higher  praise  can  be  given  to 
Lieut.  Beynon's  personal  reminiscences  than 
this,  and  all  who  have  enjoyed  Kipling*s  tales 
of  military  life  should  make  a  point  of  reading 
them.  They  will  find  not  only  a  narrative  of 
sustained  interest,  giving  an  insight  into  the 
character  of  the  young  British  officers  of  the 
preeent  day,  but  also  an  account  of  natural 
difficulties  heroically  surmounted,  of  the  cross- 
ing of  a  pass  12,400  feet  high,  covered  by  fresh 
fallen  snow  several  feet  deep,  of  two  fights  in 
which  positions  of  the  greatest  strength  were 
successfully  stormed  by  a  handful  of  native 
troops  led  by  a  few  young  Englishmen,  and  of 
perils  and  trials  cheerfully  faced  by  both  officers 
and  men.  Both  as  a  record  of  a  gallant  feat  of 
arms  and  as  a  human  document,  few  more  fas- 
cinating volumes  dealing  with  military  action 
have  been  published  in  recent  years  than 
Lieut  Beynon's  '  With  KeUy  to  ChitraL' 


The  Owmeya  of  EarPiam.  By  Augustus  J. 
C.  Hare,  author  of  *  Memorials  of  a  Quiet 
Life,' etc.,  etc.  In  two  volumes.  London: 
George  Allen;  New  York:  Dodd,  Mead  & 
Co. 
In  these  beautiful  volumes,  enriched  with  a 
remarkable  series  of  "Gk>upil-tint"  reproduc 
tions  of  portrait  paintings  and  engravings, 
and  also  with  many  woodcuts  and  silhouettes, 
the  editor  comes  to  his  task  with  an  experi- 
enced hand,  and  if  his  success  is  less  conspicuous 
than  heretofore,  the  fault  is  less  his  own  than 
that  of  the  materials  with  which  he  had  to 
work.  To  be  virtuous  and  noble  it  is  not  ne- 
cessary to  write  a  good  epistolary  style,  but  to 
write  such  a  style  is  necessary  to  the  pros- 
perity of  a  book  made  up  largely  of  personal 
letters.  And  then,  too,  much  that,  in  its  day, 
may  be  quite  admirable,  passing  from  friend 
to  ftiend,  and  very  comforting  and  consoling 
under  life's  various  sorrows,  may  suffer  from 
the  fierce  light  of  general  publicity,  and  from 
the  changes  that  the  expression  of  religious 
thought  and  feeling  undergoes  with  the  lapse 
of  years.  Sometimes,  indeed,  the  flavor  of  an- 
tiquity  is  good.  There  is  something  quaint 
and  racy  in  the  religions  phraseology  of  the 
earlier  time  that  commends  it  to  our  apprecia- 
tion. But  as  orthodox  Quakers,  profoundly 
affected  by « the  Evangelical  Revival,  inter- 
larding  their  letters  with  its  phrases  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  the  most  characteristic  forms  of 
genuine  Quaker  speech,  while  retaining  many 
of  the  most  conventional  and  mechanical,  the 
Gumeys  often  degenerate  into  a  jargon  that 
is  wearisome  to  heart  and  mind. 

In  one  way  and  another  much  that  is  printed 
here  has  been  put  within  the  reach  of  the  read- 
ing public.  Samuel  Gurney  and  Joseph  John, 
their  sister  Elizabeth  Fry,  and  their  bro- 
ther-in-law, Thomas  Fowell  Buxton,  have  all 
had  their  biographies  written,  and  incidentally 
something  has  been  made  known  of  their  fa- 
mily connections.  But  Mr.  Hare's  predilec- 
tion is  preeminently  for  family  biography,  and 
what  he  has  attempted  here  is  to  give  a  pic- 
ture of  the  Gurney  family,  a  record  of  their 
united  experiences  of  domestic  joy  and  sorrow, 
public  service  and  reform,  and  religions  de- 
velopment and  change.  It  is  certainly  not 
strange  that  such  a  famUy  attracted  him  to  the 
attempt.  If  anything  deterred  him,  It  wort 
have  been  the  size  of  the  family,  tat  tl  aooi^ 
bered,the<^aidrepof  JobnGgnieyiilCWil 


April  9,  1896] 


The    Nation. 


295 


rint  B«U  (A  sreat'Crmoddaiighter  of  Barclay 
of  Ury),  Iw«1t«,  born  from  1T76  to  1T91.  We 
oanoot  be  too  gratefnl  for  the  taboUtioD  of 
their  namet  and  thoee  of  their  wives  and  has- 
bands»  with  the  dates  of  their  births,  mar- 
riagest  and  deaths.  Without  this  help  the  la- 
byrinth woold  be  utterly  bewildering,  espe- 
cially as  there  are  uncles,  cousins,  and  aunts, 
some  of  whom  play  a  prominent  part  upon  the 
crowded  stage.  Only  one  of  the  children  died 
in  infancy.  Three  of  the  sisters  did  not  marry, 
hot  Joseph  John  married  three  times,  his  third 
wife  acquiring  no  less  than  119  nephews  and 
nieces  by  her  marriage,  eleven  of  whom  were 
the  children  of  Elizabeth  Fry,  whose  public 
caret  imposed  no  check  on  the  prolific  habit 
of  her  bouse. 

Earlham,  the  big,  comfortable,  beautifully 
situated  house  a  few  miles  from  Norwich,  in 
which  the  children  all  passed  their  youth,  and 
several  of  them  their  chUdhood,  was  rented 
from  a  family  which  had  owned  it  for  centu- 
ries, in  17M,  and  the  Gumeys  occupy  it  still. 
With  its  spacious  rooms  and  grounds  and  its 
innumerable  cupboards,  it  was  a  perfectly  ideal 
bouse  for  eleven  children  to  grow  up  in,  and 
draw  their  lovers  to,  and  get  married  from, 
and  come  back  to,  always  thankfully,  from 
time  to  time.  Much  the  pleasantest  part  of 
Mr.  Hare*s  book  is  that  which  reflects  the  hap- 
piness of  the  household  during  the  years  while 
the  children  were  still  young.  The  Quakerism 
of  the  father  was  much  less  strict  than  that  of 
his  children  who  continued  in  the  faith,  and 
we  read  of  dances  and  gayeties  and  pomps  and 
vanities  that  in  after  years  Elizabeth  Fry  could 
not  remember  without  pain.  She  was  herself 
oce  of  the  gayest  of  them  all  until,  in  1796, 
going  to  meeting  profoundly  conscious  of  a 
pair  of  purple  bootf  with  sctrlet  ladngs,  Friend 
William  Savery  from  America  excited  in  her 
a  violent  revulsion  from  her  innocent  happi- 
ness, and  made  her  a  Quaker  of  the  plainest 
kind.  None  of  the  girls  had  taken  kindly  to 
the  Quaker  Meeting  before  this.  It  was  in 
Goat's  Lane,  and  to  write  in  their  joumali 
that  the  meeting  was  ditgusting  was  so  in- 
evitable  that  they  were  obliged  to  invent  a 
formula,  **  Goat's  was  die,**  to  avoid  laborious 
repetition. 

They  were  a  family  of  diarists,  and  the 
diarise  of  the  children  throw  much  light  on 
their  development.  If  not  all  **  over  early 
solemnised,^  soon  or  late  they  all  made  hu*ge 
atODsment  for  the  brightness  of  their  early 
years.  Even  their  marriages  were  undertaken 
in  a  portentous  and  oppressive  manner.  £li- 
nbeth's  brought  with  it  many  anxieties.  Her 
husband  had  not  the  Midas  touch  of  the  Gur- 
.  neys,  which  turned  everything  to  gold.  But 
ftainiy*',  the  richest  and  niost  genial  of  them 
an,  ooold  always  be  trusted  in  an  extremity. 
The  defection  of  her  children  from  her  Quaker 
strictness  was  a  sore  grief  to  her,  and,  when 
they  wsnt  over  to  the  Established  Church,  she 
knew  the  bitterness  of  death.  Two  or  three  of 
her  sisters  went  the  same  way,  but  with  little 
or  DO  abatement  of  their  Quaker  simplicity 
and  severity.  The  evangelicalism  of  the  Ma- 
oanlays,  Fenns,  and  Wilberforces  engrafted  on 
a  Quaker  stock  brought  forth  much  fruit  of 
morbid  self-depredation  and  distrust  of  natu- 
ral hnoMnity.  This  effect  was  more  positive 
and  lees  agreeable  in  the  case  of  Joeeph  John 
Onmey  than  with  the  others.  All  that  was 
least  simple  and  natural  in  Quakerism  and  the 
Clapham  Sect  ssemed  to  coalesce  io  hit  theo- 
logy and  piety.  He  took  himself  with  awful 
seriousness,  sometimes  mistaking  his  fondness 
for  pabUe  speech  for  a  leading  of  the  spirit, 
and  writing  letters  to  his  brother!  tnd  fietert 


in  their  affliction  so  devoid  ol  natural  sympa- 
thy that  their  elaborate  consolation  must  have 
been  hard  to  bear.  There  is  only  the  briefest 
mention  of  his  long  visit  to  America,  io  the 
course  of  which  he  devoted  hioiself  more 
earnestly  to  smashing  the  Hicksites  and  the  un 
orthodox  abolitionists  than  to  the  anti  slavery 
testimony  to  which  he  had  felt  himself  called. 
There  was  really  very  little  of  the  Quaker  left 
in  him,  although  he  accounted  him'velf  one  of 
the  strictest  of  the  strict,  and  was  so  in  the 
ordering  of  bis  speech  and  action.  But  bis 
thinking  was  that  of  the  Clapham  Sect,  his 
bibliolatry  narrow  and  intense,  with  an  in- 
sistence upon  dogmas  of  which  Fox  knew  but 
little  and  for  which  be  cared  even  less.  Now 
and  then  Mr.  Hare  is  bold  enough  to  **  hint  a 
fault  or  hesitate  dislike  **  of  his  rigid  dogma- 
tism  end  formalism,  but  his  best  criticisms 
upon  them  are  the  contrasting  qualities  of 
Samuel  Gurney. 

All  that  relates  to  Mrs.  Fry's  endeavors  to 
alleviate  the  miferies  of  prison  discipline  is  in- 
teresting,  but  gives  no  new  impression.  In  her 
«*  journey ings  often"  in  furtherance  of  these 
endeavors,  the  simplicity  of  her  nature  must 
have  been  in  frequent  danger  from  the  adula 
tion  of  nobility  and  royalty— a  tribute  in  part, 
we  are  compelled  to  think,  to  the  commercial 
standing  of  her  brothers.  She  was  not  uncon- 
scious of  this  danger,  though  when  she  wrote 
of  herself  as  * '  undermined  with  excessive  love," 
it  was  her  love  for  others  that  she  was  thinking 
of.  But  the  danger  which  she  most  feared,  and 
with  best  reason,  was  from  the  adulation  of  her 
sectarian  friends.  '*  I  have,"  she  wrote,  *  *  psss- 
ed  through  many  and  great  dangers,  many 
ways;  I  have  been  tried  with  the  applause  of 
the  world,  and  none  know  how  great  a  trial 
that  has  k>een  and  the  deep  humiliation  of  it; 
and  yet  /  fully  believe  it  is  not  nearly  to  dan- 
gerous as  being  made  much  of  in  religious  so- 
ciety. There  is  a  snare  even  in  religious  unity 
if  we  are  not  on  the  watch."  The  ita^cs  are 
presumably  Mr.  Hare's.  They  do  not  exagge- 
rate the  importance  of  the  warning  words. 

Everywhere  In  theee  volumes  we  breathe  an 
atmosphere  of  social  sympathy  and  reform. 
Sir  Thomas  Fowell  Buxton,  who  married  Han- 
nah Gurney,  was  Wilberforce's  first  lieutenant, 
and  carried  through  the  West  India  Emanci- 
pation to  its  conclusion  after  Wilberforce's 
death  (like  that  of  Moses)  in  full  vision  of  the 
promised  land.  But  this  great  business  is  not 
dwelt  upon,  much  self-denial  being  necessary 
to  an  editor  who  has  taken  so  large  a  contract 
as  the  Gurney  family  on  his  hands.  To  so 
large  a  family,  death  must  be  a  frequent  visitor, 
and  the  details  of  sickness  and  death  obscure 
many  pages  with  their  clouds  and  mournful 
light.  There  are  other  pages  that  can  be  le^s 
safely  skipped  than  these.  The  combination  of 
plain  thinking  with  high  living  which  was  cha- 
racteristic of  a  family  at  once  so  pious  and  so 
rich,  aflTords  perhaps  the  most  characteristic 
feature  pf  the  book.  There  is  much  to  admire, 
and,  even  where  our  admiration  halts,  our  in- 
terest is  sustained  by  the  exhibition  of  instruc- 
tive traits  of  character,  which,  failing  to  at- 
tract us,  warn  us  of  something  to  avoid. 


From  Blomidon  to  Smoky,  and  Other  Papers. 

By  Frank  Bollee.    Boston:   Houghton,  Mif- 

flin  &  Co.  1895.  8vo,  pp.  27H. 
Amono  these  essays  are  several  which  are 
merely  ac^counts  of  excursions;  these  are  de- 
lightful and  well  worth  preservation  in  book 
form.  It  is  not  from  them,  however,  that  the 
volume  derives  its  greatest  value;  the  title 
'  furnishes  no  hint  of  what  is  most  important  in 


the  contents.  Ten  of  the  thirteen  chapters  are 
filled  with  notes  on  birds  in  freedom  and  on 
birds  in  captivity.  In  these  there  is  much  that 
was  new,  much  that  was  necessary  before  the 
life  histories  could  be  written,  and  this  givee 
the  work  a  place  and  permanence  that  could 
not  have  been  secured  without  it.  Mr.  Bolles 
was  an  excellent  field  naturalist,  and  he  re- 
sorted to  the  haunts  of  nature's  children,  alert 
in  every  sense,  to  learn  of  them,  not  to  dose 
his  eyes  and  dream.  He  gathered  a  great  deal, 
all  of  which  was  open  to  everybody,  yet  much 
of  which  was  new  to  literature,  and  some  of 
which  was  at  first  received  with  question. 
When  he  first  announced  that  the  sapeucker  in 
chosen  groups  of  trees,  *'  orchards,"  drilled  the 
trunks  for  sap,  **bird  men"  somewhat  gene- 
rally smiled  in  a  knowing  way.  for  they  knew 
the  bird  to  be  an  insectivore,  and  certain  of 
their  number  had  shown  beyond  doubt  that 
the  little  woodpecker  was  seeking  the  insect  in 
the  tree,  and  certain  others  had  proved  con- 
clusively that  the  holes  were  bored  to  start  the 
sap  to  attract  the  insects,  that  the  bird  might 
catch  them.  '*  Oh,  yes ;  very  likely  the  bird 
was  laughing  at  him  ! "  But  the  obeerver  knew 
the  scientist  was  doing  all  the  laughing,  and, 
to  satisfy  him,  the  drills  were  watched  for 
weeks,  observations  were  taken  betimes  from 
morning  till  night,  and  besides  all  this  some  of 
the  birds  were  taken  and  kept  for  months, 
feeding  almost  entirely  upon  diluted  syrup. 
Then  it  was  admitted  as  not  at  all  improbable 
that  the  birds  in  pursuit  of  the  insects  might 
acquire  a  taste  for  sap,  and  it  was  alK>  con- 
ceded that  our  author  himself  might  be  an 
ornithologist. 

An  enthusiastic  sympathy  with  nature  per- 
vades the  text,  and  Mr.  Bolles's  style  is  so 
earnest  and  convincing  that,  after  perusal  of 
his  pages,  one  feels  as  if  he  could  never  meet 
those  birds  without  memories  of  **  Puffy,'* 
^*  Fluffy,"  and  the  others,  or  of  how  they  told 
the  author  of  their  habits  and  peculiarities  as 
he  called  them  about  him  in  the  woods.  We 
like  the  book;  we  can  only  regret  that  death 
has  denied  us  more  from  the  same  pen. 


Beautiful  Houses:  A  Study  in  House- Build- 
ing. By  Louis  H.  Gibson,  Architect.  Tho. 
mas  Y.  CroweU  &  Co.  1895.  Pp.  xi,  845. 
That  housebuilding  is  an  art,  and  that  its 
best  developments  have  arisen  from  the  needs 
of  the  future  occupants  and  their  instinctive 
sense  of  what  would  suit  them  best,  are  the 
safe  propositions  to  the  proving  of  which  one- 
half  of  this  book  is  devoted.  The  domestic 
architecture  of  the  past  is  discussed  in  ISO 
pages  with  an  abundant  supply  of  illustrations, 
and  many  of  the  pictures  in  the  second  and 
larger  division  of  the  book  also  are  available 
as  illustration  of  earlier  chapters.  The  discus- 
sion of  English  domestic  architecture,  pages  91 
to  107,  is  appreciative  and  judicious,  the  illue- 
tratlons  are  well  chosen,  and  the  reader  wishes 
for  more  of  it,  and  for  the  omission  of  the  not 
very  appropriate  or  very  well  managed  discus- 
sion of  the  transition  from  Gothic  to  Classic 
which  is  interpolated.  The  discussion  of  Ame- 
rican ♦♦Old  Colonial"  buildings,  which  foUowi 
on  page  127,  seems  very  oddly  separated  from 
the  English  chapter  above.  It  is  true  that  the 
English  domestic  architecture  of  the  Georgian 
epoch  is  not  mentioned  in  the  discussion  of 
English  examples,  but  the  American  Colonial 
architecture  is  a  variant  of  the  architecture  of 
George  II.  and  George  III.,  and  the  mention 
of  that  fact  at  page  127  would  have  steadied 
the  mind  of  the  inquirer.  The  very  curious 
conception  of  Continental  domestic  arohiteo- 


396 


Tlie    Nation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1606 


tore—oMXDeijt  that  it  is  fine  in  its  larger  and 
statelier  manifestations,  but  inferior  in  its 
simpler  forms— which  is  to  be  found  pnt  into 
words  on  page  91,  page  103,  and  elsewhere, 
natorally  sends  the  author  to  England  and 
America  for  examples  which  may  be  useful  to 
modem  builders.  It  is  in  no  way  surprising 
that  the  actual  and  the  possible  connection  be- 
tween ancient  and  modem  design  is  imperfect- 
ly made  out,  for  to  have  done  this  thoroughly 
would  have  inroived  much  serious  work;  but 
perhaps  the  reader  has  a  rfght  to  expect  some 
suggestions  of  the  reason  why  the  modem 
houses,  however  well  adapted  to  their  owners* 
wants,  are  without  artistic  merit,  while  the 
ancient  buildings  have  always  character  and 
frequently  iMauty.  In  this  respect  there  is  no 
connection  between  the  first  and  the  second 
halves  oi  this  book.  In  the  one  we  are  told 
of  the  spirited  and  interesting  buildings  of  the 
past,  and  in  the  other  we  are  shown  how  mo- 
dem houses  are  made  comfortable,  convenient, 
pleasant  to  live  in,  hygienic,  and  ugly.  Each 
of  these  is  a  good  essay  in  its  way,  and  perhaps 
it  is  hypercritioism  to  complain  that  they  are 
not  connected  by  any  comparison  of  the  sodal 
influences  which  made  for  good  art  in  the  one 
case,  and  which  make  for  unbeautiful  confu- 
sion in  the  other;  but  we  had  been  encouraged 
to  hope  for  it  by  the  generally  wise  suggestions 
of  the  first  part 

The  numerous  illustrations,  taken  from  many 
different  hookM  as  well  aa  directly  from  the 
buildings,  contain  a  great  deal  oi  valuable 
materia],  but  the  appearance  of  the  book  is 
marred  by  their  extremely  diverse  character. 

BOOKS  OF  THE  WEBK. 

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Maepheison,  Hector  O.     Thomas  Carljlc     IFavoos 

Soots  Series.]  Scribners.  75c 
Mann.  Mary  E.    Susannah:  A  NoveL    Harpers,   tl  JO. 
Sutdlffe.  HalllweU.    The  ZIth  Commandment.   New 

Amsterdam  Book  Oc 
Ma*on,  A.  E.  W.   The  Courtship  of  Morrlce  Buckler. 

Ma^nlUsn.    tl.80. 
McVickar,  H.  W.  The  Brolntion  of  Woman.    Harpvs. 

Molyneuz,  Maior-Gen.  W.  C.  F.   Campaigning  In  Booth 

Afrtea andl^pL   Macmlllan.  #4. 
Montague,  Rev.   Riohard.     Heaven:    Six 

SUTer,  BnrdeU  a  Co. 
Morris,  WllUam.     Old  French  Romanoes.    London: 

George  Allen;  New  York:  Sortbaen.   $1.00. 
Morse.  E.  S.    White's  NaturalBistory  of  Selbome. 

Abridged.  Boston:  QInn  a  Co.   00c 
Mosso.  Angelc   Fear.    Longmans.  Green  a  Co.   S1.70. 
Moulton.  Prof  R.  O.   EocleoastM  and  the  Wisdom  of 

Solomon    f  Modem  Reader^  BIblcl  MacmlUan.  oOc 
NIoolson.  Prof.  F.  W.   The  Plutus  of  Artstophanes. 

Boston :  Olnn  a  Co.   OOc 
PennelL  Mrs.  Elisabeth  B.   The  FeasU  of  Autolycui: 

The  Diary  of  a  Greedy  Woman.    London:  John  Kaas; 

New  York:  MerriamCo    gl  80 
Phelps.  W.  L.  Shakspere's  as  You  Like  It.  Longmans, 

GreenaOo. 
Pre»ton.  R.  E.    History  of  the  Monetary  Legislation  of 

the  United  States,   nuiadelphte:  J.  J.  MoYsy.    8flc 
Price,  L.  L.   Money  and  Its  Relations  to  Prices.   l4Mi- 

don  ■  Sonnenscheln;  New  York:  Soribners.  gt. 
Putnam,  O.  H.   Books  •od  their  Makers  during  the 

Middle  Ages.   Voi.L  475-1600.  Pntnama   fSOO. 
Rlddng.  W.  H.    The  Captured  Ounardar.    BosttMi: 

Copeiand  a  Day.   70c 


Robiquet,  Paul.   DIaoours  et  Opinions  de  Jules  Fsny. 

Tome  4Mmc   Paris:  Colin  a  Clc 
Rodway,  James.    The  West  Indies  and  the  l^ianlsh 


Main.   London:  Unwln;  New  York:  Pntaams.  JIl.TO. 
Rogers.  Prof  A.  E.  Our  Eqrttem  of  Goremment.  Cwooo, 

Me. :  The  Author. 
Romanes,  O.  J.    An  Examination  of  Welsmannlsm. 

Chicago :  Opem  Court  Publishing  Co.    80c 
Russell,  W.  C.    The  Romance  of  a  Transport.    CasseU. 

Saffeil.  W.  T.  R.  Records  of  the  Revolutionary  War. 

8d  ed.   Baltimore :  1*.  O.  Safftfl. 
SadUer'sCathoUcDlrectoiy.    1800.   D.  a  J.  Sadller  a 

Co.  flSO. 
Sargent,  Prof .  C.  S.   The  SUra  of  North  America.    VoL 

IX.      CnpullfersB-Salloaoem.      Boston:     Houghton, 

Mifflin  a  Co.  ^ 

Soo^D.  C.   In  the  VUlage  of  Vigor.  Boston:  Coyeland 

Smytn,  A.  H.  Bayard  Taylor.  (American  Men  of  Let- 
ters] Boston:  Houghton,  Mifflin  a  Co. 

l^>amer^  Grosser  Hand-Atlas,  leliefwnng.  Lslpalg: 
Otto  Spamer ;  New  York :  Lemcke  a  Boeohner. 

The  life  of  Benvenuto  Cdlml.  Tranwstort  by  J.  A. 
Symonds.  4th  ed.  Scribners.   iflJK). 

Younghusband,  Capt.  F.  E.  The  Heart  of  a  Continent: 
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-J 


The    Nation. 


NEW  YORK,   THUBSDAT,  APRIL    10,   1800. 


The  Week. 

Thx  plmtfbrm  of  the  Rhode  Island  Re- 
publicaDS  is  the  most  outspoken  yet  of  all 
party  utterances  on  the  money  question, 
going  farther  even  than  the  excellent  de- 
liverances of  the  Republicans  of  New  York 
and  Massachusetts.  It  declares  inflexible 
opposition  to  the  free  and  unlimited  coin- 
age* of  silyer,  pronounces  the  continued 
agitation  of  the  slWer  question  *' unpa- 
triotic and  destructive  of  all  the  interests 
of  industry  and  commerce,*'  and  adds : 

*'  The  existing  gold  standard  is  the  measure  of 
value  adopted  oy  the  nations  with  whom  the 
United  States  have  the  most  important  com- 
mercial relations,  and  the  very  suggestion  of 
a  departure  from  it  inflicts  injury  to  the  credit 
of  a  nation  whose  honor  should  never  be  ques- 
tioned at  home  or  abroad.  To  those  who  toil 
for  their  daily  bread,  a  currenev  redeemable 
in  and  of  eqoal  value  with  gold  is  essential. 
WhQe  the  capitalist  may  protect  himself  against 
the  fluctuations  even  of  silver,  the  laborer  and 
the  arUsan,  the  salaried  official  and  the  widow, 
are  powerless  to  guard  against  the  changing 
values  of  a  currency  which  a  great  and  benefl- 
eent  government  should  make  absolutely  secure 
and  unchanging  in  its  purchasing  power.^ 

It  is  refreshing  and  encouraging  to  find 
such  straightforward  talk  as  that  in  a 
party  platform  on  the  eve  of  a  Presiden- 
tial campaign.  If  we  had  a  few  Presiden- 
tial candidates  who  were  capable  of  like 
frankness  and  courage,  the  outlook  would 
be  much  better  than  it  ie.  The  Rhode 
Island  convention  did  not  declare  for  any 
candidate,  but  ite  delegates  are  said  to  be 
in  favor  of  Speaker  Reed.  McKinley's 
name  was  not  mentioned  in  the  conven- 
tion, but  the  Tribune* 8  correspondent 
says  this  was  carefully  avoided  because  to 
have  mentioned  it  **  would  have  been  just 
the  same  as  hollering  '  Fire.'  "  This  may 
be  true,  since  the  namihg  of  McKinley  on 
that  platform  would  have  been  a  perform- 
ance so  incongruous  that  the  convention 
would  have  been  justified,  had  such  a 
thing  occurred,  in  running  as  from  a  bum* 
ing  building. 


The  Maryland  Bankers'  Association  has 
followed  the  example  of  the  New  York 
State  Bankers  and  of  the  executive  ooun* 
cil  of  the  American  Bankers'  Association, 
by  adopting  a  resolution  in  favor  of  **  a 
rigid  adherence  to  the  gold  standard  of 
value."  There  is  nothing  more  encourag- 
ing than  this  attitude  of  the  bankers  on 
the  great  question  of  the  day,  for  although 
they  have  been  right  all  the  time  in  their 
own  minds,  they  have  not  heretofore 
deemed  it  prudent  to  take  a  bold  stand 
and  make  an  uggnmiwe  fight  for  the  views 
they  hold.  The  fact  that  they  do  so  now 
indicates  that  they  find  public  opinion 
backing  them  pretty  strongly.  Comptrol- 
ler Eckels  made  a  capital  speech  to  the 
Maryland  bankers,  in  which  he  said  that 


the  American  people  would  never  elect  a 
President  who  would  give  his  official  sanc- 
tion to  a  bill  for  the  free  coinage  of  silver. 
Mr.  Eckels  is  right,  and  what  he  says  had 
beet  l>e  heeded  by  both  political  parties 
when  they  nominate  their  candidates  and 
make  their  platforms  this  year.  The  tide 
is  now  running  strong  against  all  free-sil- 
ver candidates  and  all  straddlers,  both 
Republicans  and  Democrats. 


The  news  from  Washington  about  the 
Ouban  question  confirms  the  report  that 
the  Administration  does  not  purpose  do- 
ing anything  at  present  in  the  way  of  re- 
cognition, for  reasons  which  must  com- 
mend themselves  to  every  rational  person. 
The  Senate  ought  to  l>e  the  helper  of  the 
State  Department  in  maintaining  the  rules 
of  international  morality,  but  aid  from 
that  quarter  is  not  to  be  expected  at  pre- 
sent There  does  not  seem  to  be  any  rea- 
son, however,  why  a  courteous  attempt  at 
mediation  should  not  be  made.  This  is, 
of  course,  never  out  of  order.  A  civil  pro- 
posal to  both  parties  to  mediate,  with  the 
consent  of  both  parties,  would  be  a  per- 
fectly reasonable  proceeding,  now  that 
the  armed  confiict  has  lasted  over  a  year 
and  is  threatening  civilization  itself  on 
the  island.  The  ravages  of  the  insurgents 
seem  likely  to  leave  the  island  a  howling 
waste,  and  we  are  as  much  interested  as 
any  one  in  preventing  this  result.  In  fact, 
nobody  will  suiTer  as  much  as  we  shall 
through  the  loes  of  the  island  by  Spain, 
for  a  proposal  to  annex  it,  and  make  of  it 
about  three  States,  will  certainly  follow. 
Ouban  independence  we  can  stand,  but 
the  conversion  of  the  Ouban  population 
into  American  citizens  would  be  a  great 
calamity. 


It  is  comforting  to  know  that  there  are 
limits  to  the  readiness  of  the  United  States 
Senate  to  interfere  with  the  affairs  of  the 
universe  while  it  neglects  the  demands  of 
the  nation  for  which  it  is  supposed  to 
legislate.  Mr.  Call  of  Florida  introduced 
a  most  absurd  resolution  last  week  con- 
cerning the  imprisonment  of  Mrs.  May- 
brick.  This  extraordinary  resolution  re- 
cited that  the  people  of  the  United 
States  "  sympathize  with  Florence  E. 
Maybrick,  formerly  of  Mobile,  Ala.,  in 
her  sufferings  under  a  sentence  of  life  im- 
prisonment at  hard  labor  in  England"; 
that  they  ''almost  universally  believe  her 
to  be  innocent";  that  "it  would  be  an 
act  of  gracious  respect  to  the  public  opi- 
nion of  this  people,  speaking  the  English 
language,  in  large  part  of  English  descent, 
governed  by  the  same  laws,  inheriting  the 
same  love  of  law  and  order,  the  same  ab- 
horrence of  crime,  the  same  love  of  liberty 
and  the  protection  of  the  weak  and  help- 
less against  arbitrary  power,  tor  the  Qov- 
emment  of  Qreat  Britain  to*pardon  Mrs. 


Maybrick  and  restore  her  to  her  country 
and  her  family";  and  requesting  the 
President  to  communicate  this  reso- 
lution to  the  Qovemment  of  G^at  Bri- 
tain. Senator  Sherman  had  sufficient 
sense  of  the  proprieties  to  move  to  lay 
the  resolution  on  the  table,  explaining 
that  whatever  difference  of  opinion  might 
exist  as  to  Mrs.  Maybrick's  guilt  or  in- 
nocence, "  certainly  it  is  a  subject  over 
which  the  Senate  of  the  United  States 
has  no  jurisdiction."  Mr.  Sherman  final- 
ly consented  to  have  the  resolution  referred 
to  the  judiciary  committee,  and  that  com- 
mittee reported  it  back  adversely  on  Mon- 
day on  the  ground  that  the  Senate  has  no 
jurisdiction  over  the  subject.  It  is  not  to 
l>e  wondered  at,  in  view  of  previous  per- 
formances by  his  colleagues,  that  Mr.  Call 
should  have  supposed  that  the  Senate 
would  humor  him  in  this  matter,  but  it 
was  perhaps  necessary  that  absurdity 
should  be  carried  to  this  extreme  before 
the  upper  branch  of  Congress  should  re- 
cover its  senses. 


"Presidential  politics"  reaches  a  very 
low  level  when  the  admission  as  States  of 
two  Territories  notoriously  unfit  for  state- 
hood is  threatened  in  order  to  secure  dele- 
gates for  or  against  one  or  another  candi- 
date in  the  Republican  national  convention 
next  June.  That  is  what  is  explicitly 
charged  by  the  Washington  correspond- 
ents of  Republican  newsxMtpers  like  the 
Philadelphia  Presi  in  explaining  the  ac- 
tion of  the  House  committee  on  Territories 
last  Thursday,  when  it  voted  to  report  fa- 
vorably the  bill  for  the  admission  of  New 
Mexico.  There  is  absolutely  not  a  single 
sound  argument  in  favor  of  the  proposi- 
tion. The  population  of  the  Territory  is 
l>elow  the  number  required  for  a  member 
of  Congress  under  the  present  apportion- 
ment, and  the  number  of  inhabitants  is 
growing  very  slowly,  although  the  region 
was  long  ago  provided  with  good  railroad 
facilities.  Moreover,  the  raUo  of  iUite- 
racy  among  the  people  is  far  greater  than 
in  any  other  Territory  ever  brought  into 
the  Union.  At  the  beginning  of  the  ses- 
sion the  Republican  members  of  the  House 
comoiittee  were  generally  opposed  to  ad- 
mission, but  all  save  one  voted  for  it  last 
week,  the  controlling  reason  with  the 
Pennsylvania,  New  York,  and  Iowa  mem- 
l>ers  l>eing  the  desire  to  secure  the  New 
Mexico  delegates  to  the  St.  Louis  conven- 
tion for  Quay,  Morton,  or  Allison.  Simi- 
lar motives  have  since  operated  the  same 
way  in  the  case  of  Arizona.  Of  course,  if 
the  Republicans  allow  these  bills  to  pass 
the  House,  the  free-coinage  majority  in 
the  Senate  will  jump  at  the  chance  to 
strengthen  their  f6roes  by  fbur  votes. 


The   Democratic   national    convention 
will  not  be  held  until  nearly  a  month 


398 


Tlie   !N"atioii* 


[Vol  62,  No.  1607 


after  the  Bepublicao,  and  public  attention 
hitherto  has  been  almost  monopolized  by 
the  canvaBB  for  delegates  to  the  first  of 
these  great  gatherings.  The  holding  of 
conyentions  for  the  choice  of  delegates 
to  the  second  assembly  has  now  begun, 
however,  and,  from  this  time  on,  both 
parties  will  be  declaring  their  position 
in  various  States  every  week.  The  first 
Democratic  convention  has  just  met  in 
Oregon,  and  the  result  was  favorable  to 
that  element  which  insists  upon  a  free- 
coinage  deliverance  at  Chicago  next  July. 
The  friends  of  sound  money  asked  no- 
thing more  than  a  reaffirmation  of  the  cur- 
rency plank  on  which  Cleveland  ran  in 
1892,  but  the  silverites  insisted  upon  an 
out-and-out  declaration  for  "16  to  1," 
and  carried  the  day  by  a  vote  of  152  to 
91.  The  next  Democratic  State  conven- 
tion will  be  held  in  Missouri  next  week, 
and  the  free-coinage  men  have  been 
carrying  everything  before  them,  almost 
every  county  convention  having  adopted 
strong  resolutions  favoring  free  coinage, 
while  the  sound-money  men  secured  only 
10  out  of  the  68  delegates  from  the  city 
of  St.  Louis. 


Qen.  Harrison's  friend  Mr.  Michener  ex- 
plains the  circumstances  under  which  it 
may  be  necessary  to  make  the  ex- Presi- 
dent a  candidate  again.  It  is  like  calling 
in  the  best  doctor  in  an  emergency.  Or- 
dinary practitioners  may  do  as  long  as  the 
disease  runs  on  smoothly,  but  when  heroic 
measures  are  necessary,  the  best  man 
must  be  had  at  all  hazards.  Now  the  Re- 
publican party,  Mr.  Michener  finds,  is  suf- 
fering from  a  serious  complication  of  dis- 
orders. Its  brain  is  threatened  with  gold 
congestion;  its  stomach  appears  to  be  in- 
vaded by  silver  cancer;  one  foot  has  low- 
tari£F  gout,  the  other  is  afflicted  with  Mc- 
Elinleyismus  in  its  woist  form;  and  various 
peccant  humors,  in  the  form  of  a  combi- 
nation of  silver  and  tariff,  cause  darting 
pains  throughout  the  body.  It  is  a  clear 
case  for  calling  in  Dr.  Harrison,  thinks 
friend  Michener.  But  we  must  observe 
that  the  greater  the  emergency  the  greater 
the  need  of  knowing  the  standing,  the 
"school,*'  of  the  last-resort  physician. 
The  trouble  with  Dr.  Harrison  is  that  his 
record  shows  him  to  have  practised  all 
kinds  of  medicine.  A  mixture  of  diseases 
does  not  require  a  mixture  of  cures.  The 
Harrison  remedies  have  been  those  of  the 
"regular"  schools,  metaphysical  "heal- 
ers," Christian  scientists, and  faith-curists 
successively.  The  patient  will  not  know 
which  one  to  expect  from  him,  and,  un- 
less he  makes  up  his  mind  to  say  what 
treatment  he  is  in  favor  of,  we  fear  that 
Quack  McKinley  will  continue  in  charge 
of  the  case,  with  the  undertaker  in  easy 
reach  by  telephone. 


There  is  general  agreement  as  to  the 
facts  of  the  business  situation.  The  fair 
promise  of  prosperity  seen  in  nearly  all 
branches  of  trade  laet  fall  has  been  blight- 


ed. "Business  started  out  splendidly 
last  fall,"  says  President  Roberts  of  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad.  "Everywhere  I 
learned  that  there  had  been  a  general  re- 
vival of  business  in  the  fall,"  says  Presi- 
dent Depew  of  the  New  York  Central 
Railroad,  referring  to  his  trip  through  the 
West.  Against  the  background  of  those 
flattering  hopes  of  six  months  ago,  the  re- 
cord of  failures  for  the  first  quarter  of  1896 
looks  black  enough.  Both  in  number  of 
failures  and  in  total  amount  of  liabilities, 
Bradstreet's  tables  show  that  the  past 
three  months  surpassed  any  correspond- 
ing period  of  our  commercial  history. 
Those  are  the  facts,  and  there  is  no  getting 
away  from  them.  What  is  the  theory  to 
account  for  them  ?  How  does  it  happen 
that  we  are  not  sharing  in  the  prosperity 
which  English  trade  is  now  enjoying  ? 


We  know  what  the  partisan,  the  Mc- 
Kinley, theory  is.  Liast  fall's  prosperity 
was  due  solely  to  anticipation  of  the  bless- 
ings of  a  Republican  Congress.  People 
were  only  impatiently  taking  their  profits 
in  advance.  The  Wilson  tariff  was  ruin- 
ous, a  Democratic  President  in  charge  of 
the  finances  was  a  calamity,  but  still 
money  could  be  made  on  the  strength  of 
the  tariff  that  was  to  come  in  three  years' 
time.  That  was  the  orthodox  Republican 
theory  six  months  ago.  Now  it  has  been 
amended.  No  man  is  willing  to  invest  a 
dollar  or  hire  a  laborer  until  McKinley  is 
nominated.  All  the  dollars,  in  fact,  are 
being  expended  to  buy  his  nomination, 
and  none  are  left  for  trade.  If  prosperity 
comes  quickly,  it  will  be  due  to  hope 
which  radiates  from  his  noble  face;  if  not, 
it  will  show  in  what  desperate  need  of 
him  the  country  stands.  This  theory  we 
all  know.  We  might  argue  against  it,  but 
we  will  not.  Neither  will  we  argue  with 
children  under  four,  or  with  people  who 
live  in  padded  rooms.  But  it  is  well,  in 
the  intervals  of  the  insane  chorus,  to  allow 
the  voices  of  unprejudiced  business  men 
to  be  heard.  Says  President  Roberts: 
"Congress  convened,  and  that  was  the 
first  blow  to  the  business  world.  Next 
came  the  silver  craze  with  its  calamitous 
career  in  the  Senate.  And  lastly,  as  if 
to  cap  the  climax,  came  the  everlasting 
agitation  of  our  foreign  relations.  The 
Venezuelan  message  started  the  ball  roll- 
ing, and  since  then  we've  had  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine,  Armenia,  England,  Spain, 
and  Cuba."  President  Depew  testifies 
that  "all  business  was  paralyzed  by  the 
war  scares."  These  are  but  typical  in- 
stances of  the  way  the  clatter  of  the  poli- 
ticians falls  on  cynical  ears  among  busi- 
ness men.  They  are  cynical  not  only 
about  partisan  theories,  but  about  parti- 
san remedies.  What  they  do  count  upon 
and  pin  their  faith  to  is,  as  President 
Roberts  says,  a  declaration  by  both  par- 
ties in  favor  of  the  gold  standard. 


The  Engineering  and  Mining  Jour- 
nal has  made  a  special  examination  of 


two  recent  transactions  in  the  iron  market 
which  have  attracted  attention.  One  of 
these  is  a  shipment  of  Alabama  pig  iron 
to  England,  the  other  a  contract  for  10,000 
tons  of  steel  rails  for  Japan,  taken  by  the 
Carnegie  Steel  Company.  The  first  of 
these  it  finds  was  a  trial  order  for  1,000 
tons,  to  be  followed  by  larger  ones  if  the 
quality  were  found  satisfactory.  The  price 
is  supposed  to  be  about  |8  for  No.  1 
foundry  and  16.50  for  gray  forge,  or  per- 
haps a  trifle  less  than  those  figures,  which 
are  the  advertised  prices  for  domestic  de- 
liveries. The  contract  price  for  the  steel 
rails  has  not  been  made  public,  but  the 
Journal  conjectures  that  it  is  about  $20 
per  ton  at  the  mill.  The  price  charged  by 
the  steel-rail  combination  to  domestic  con- 
sumers is  $28.  Another  fact  of  some  im- 
portance is  that  the  Grand  Trunk  Railway 
of  Canada  has  placed  an  order  for  15,000 
tons  of  steel  rails  with  the  Illinois  Steel 
Company  of  Chicago,  at  prices  lower  than 
those  at  which  English  steel  can  be  afford- 
ed at  Montreal  or  Quebec.  "  The  impor- 
tant point  proved  in  the  cases  under  con- 
sideration," says  the  Journal,  "is  that  our 
works  are  able  at  the  present  time  to  turn 
out  iron  and  steel  at  costs  which  enable 
them  to  compete  with  the  English  and 
other  European  mills  on  ground  which 
they  have  always  considered  their  own." 
Not  only  is  this  the  fact,  but  it  is  equally 
true,  and  even  more  important,  that  the 
power  of  production  has  so  far  exceeded 
the  consumption  of  the  country  that  a 
foreign  market  for  the  surplus  is  indis- 
pensable. These  facts  furnish  a  rather 
discordant  note  to  the  McKinley  braying 
chorus  which  now  fills  all  ears,  but  they 
will  not  stop  the  braying.  More  protec- 
tion will  be  demanded  just  the  same,  and 
it  will  not  be  surprising  to  be  told  that  it 
is  an  advantage  to  us  to  pay  $8  per  ton 
more  for  Mr.  Carnegie's  rails  than  the 
Japanese  get  them  for. 


An  attempt  was  made  a  few  days  ago 
in  Congress  to  introduce  the  metric  sys- 
tem of  weights  and  measures  in  the  United 
States,  and  it  very  nearly  succeeded  in 
the  House,  but,  after  a  small  majority 
had  been  recorded  in  favor  of  it,  the  vote 
was  reconsidered,  and  the  bill  was  sent 
back  to  the  committee  which  had  reported 
it.  The  metric  system  was  adopted  per- 
missively  by  an  act  of  Congress  passed  in 
1866.  The  bill  proposed  by  the  commit- 
tee on  coinage,  weights  and  measures 
provided  that  all  the  transactions  of  the 
(Government  and  of  all  departments  there- 
of involving  weights  and  measures,  ex- 
cept the  surveys  of  the  public  lands, 
should  thereafter  be  effected  by  the  metric 
system,  an  exception  being  made  of  the 
surveys  of  public  lands  so  that  they  might 
continue  to  be  uniform.  A  question  was 
raised  in  the  debate  on  the  bill  whether 
the  metric  system  would  be  compulsory  on 
individuals  in  their  private  business,  the 
chairman  of  the  committee,  Mr.  Stone, 
contending  that  the  old  weights  and  mea- 
sures would^etUl  be  lawful,  white  lb* 


April  16,  1896] 


The   !N"atioii. 


399 


Parker  of  New  Jersey  maintained  that  they 
would  not  be  bo  after  January  1,  1901. 
The  language  of  the  second  section  of  the 
bill  seemed  to  sustain  Mr.  Parker's  view, 
and  the  clause  was  fatal  to  the  measure, 
and  seems  likely  to  be  so  in  any  future  at- 
tempt to  introduce  the  metric  system. 


The  spoilsmen  in  Congress  have  won  a 
Tictory  by  placing  obstacles  in  the  way  of 
the  rapid  extension  of  the  movement  for 
improving  the  postal  service  by  the  con- 
solidation of  offices  tributary  to  large 
cities.  For  some  time  the  Postmaster- 
Oeneral  hss  been  making  the  offices  in 
suburban  towns  etations  of  the  adjacent 
city,  and  their  heads  subordinates  of  the 
city  postmaster,  instead  of  independent 
officials.  The  advantages  of  this  system 
in  raising  the  standard  of  service  have 
been  made  manifest  wherever  it  has  been 
tried,  and  the  patrons  of  offices  in  the 
smaller  places  near  Boston,  Brooklyn,  and 
Baltimore  are  more  than  satisfied  with 
the  results  of  the  change.  But  Sena- 
tor Gorman  has  found  that  this  system 
in  Maryland  threatened  his  control  of 
the  village  postmasters,  and  he  rallied  the 
spoilsmen  of  both  parties  in  successful 
support  of  a  provision  prohibiting  the 
further  C9nsolidation  of  post-offices  be- 
yond the  corporate  limits  of  the  city  in 
which  the  central  station  is  located.  The 
Republicans  who  believe  in  boss  methods 
were  easily  persuaded  to  co6perate  with 
the  Maryland  Senator  by  the  argument 
that  extensions  of  the  reform  might  pre- 
vent their  control  of  the  small  offices  after 
the  expected  victory  of  their  party  in  the 
Presidential  election  next  fall;  while  men 
who  have  always  professed  to  favor  re- 
form, yielded  to  Qen.  Hawley*s  plea  that 
the  old-fashioned  village  postmaster  stood 
as  the  preserver  of  our  liberties. 


The  decision  of  the  State  Civil-Service 
Commission  to  put  Commissioner  Lyman's 
special  agents  in  the  non-competitive  sche- 
dule was  what  was  expected,  but  our  be- 
lief is  that  everybody  engaged  in  the 
enterprise  will  live  to  regret  it.  The 
Raines  act  is  a  serious  matter  for  the 
Republican  party  in  this  State.  No  mat- 
ter how  it  is  administered,  it  will  put  the 
domination  of  the  party,  in  both  city  and 
State,  in  great  peril.  All,  or  nearly  all, 
that  class  of  voters  who  turn  the  scale  at 
elections  in  the  State  are  now  persuaded 
that  the  bill  was  concocted  and  passed 
for  the  deliberate  purpose,  not  so  much  of 
regulating  the  liquor  traffic,  as  of  estab- 
lishing a  Piatt  machine.  Both  in  the  in- 
terest of  Gk>v.  Morton  and  of  the  party, 
everything  possible  should  have  been  done 
to  allay  this  suspicion.  The  most  effective 
if  not  the  only  way  of  allaying  it  was  to 
make  plainly  non-partisan  appointments 
of  the  officers  who  were  to  execute  the 
law.  This  would  have  done  much,  or,  at 
all  events,  something,  to  make  people  be- 
lieve that  the  law  is  really  a  liquor  law. 
On  ^e  oontrary,  everything  that  has  taken 


place  in  connection  with  the  bill,  ever 
since  it  was  introduced,  tends  to  confirm 
the  popular  suspicion  about  it.  It  now 
appears  pretty  clear  that  the  removal  of 
McKinstry  and  the  appointment  of  Lord 
on  the  State  Civil-Service  Commission,  in 
January,  was  a  preparation  for  what  was 
done  last  week,  as  it  put  Col.  Burt,  the 
only  civil-service  reformer  on  the  commis- 
sion, in  a  minority,  and  enabled  Lord  and 
Cobb  to  vote  him  down.  Qoy,  Morton 
would  have  done  well,  both  for  his  own 
fame  and  for  his  political  prosperity,  to 
keep  his  skirts  clean  of  all  complicity 
with  this  plot.  If  the  band  who  concoct- 
ed it  thiok  they  can  transfer  their  juggling 
apparatus  to  Washington,  they  are  mis- 
taken. Neither  they  nor  their  kind  have 
won  an  election  in  this  State  for  many  a 
day.  The  fortunes  of  politics  in  this  State 
are  in  the  hands  of  a  different  class,  who 
have  at  least  the  remnants  of  a  moral 
sense  and  some  sparks  of  patriotism. 


The  statement  of  Ballington  Booth  pub- 
lished on  Monday  shows  that  the  split  in 
the  Salvation  Army  is  the  consequence  of 
Qen.  Booth's  bad  conduct  when  in  this 
country.  "  He  objected  to  the  display  of 
the  national  fiag  upon  our  badges  and  in 
our  halls  and  homea  He  said  the  time 
had  arrived  to  cease  carrying  the  stars 
and  stripes  at  the  head  of  our  parades." 
He  is  evidently  a  bad  old  man.  More- 
over, the  books,  etc.,  were  all  revised  in 
London,  and  all  rules  and  regulations 
were  made  in  England,  and  were  enforced 
by  orders  received  from  London.  The 
organization  was  directed  from  abroad. 
Ballington  makes  a  long  statement  in 
support  of  the  above,  but  judiciously  re- 
marks, '*  I'here  will  be  denials  and  coun- 
ter-statements." Doubtless  there  will, 
but  he,  in  our  opinion,  does  not  go  far 
enough.  We  do  not  think  the  new  Ame- 
rican organization  ought  to  save  a  single 
man  or  woman  who  has  not  been  natural- 
ized. Carrying  the  flag  is  all  very  well, 
but  the  '*  Volunteers  "  and  those  saved 
by  them  ought  to  be  bona-fide  Ameri- 
can citizens  in  order  to  make  this  body  a 
really  American  organization.  Unfortu- 
nately for  Ballington,  Booth-Tucker  and 
his  wife  have  arrived  from  England,  and 
are  going  to  be  naturalized  immediately, 
and,  so  far  as  spoken  words  go,  are  as  de- 
voted to  the  fiag  as  he  is,  while  adhering 
to  the  old  organization.  Indeed,  their 
love  of  the  country  seems  to  surpass  Bal- 
lington's.  The  conflict  of  the  two  move- 
ments will  at  least  bring  us  a  great  in- 
crease of  patriotism. 


All  the  English  magazines  for  April 
have  articles,  from  the  hands  of  experts, 
on  the  Egyptian  complications.  They  all 
agree  that  the  decision  to  send  an  expedi- 
tion towards  Dongola  was  as  surprising  to 
the  public,  both  in  England  and  in  Egypt, 
as  it  was  and  remains  inexplicable  in  its 
real  motives.    Lord  Farrer  left  Cairo  on 


March  8,  Major  Griffiths  on  March  9,  and 
neither  of  them  had  heard  in  official  cir- 
cles a  whisper  of  the  need  or  of  the  pur- 
pose of  making  such  a  movement.  The 
contention  that  the  expedition  is  really 
intended  as  a  demonstration  in  favor  of 
the  Italians  at  Kassala,  is  thoroughly 
riddled  by  Major  Griffiths's  article  in  the 
Fortnightly,  He  shows  that,  from  a 
military  point  of  view,  it  is  impossible  to 
get  to  Dongola  in  force  before  next  Au- 
gust. So  the  first  glib  talk  of  a  "  dash 
on  Dongola  "  means  nothing.  This  is  ap- 
parently the  conclusion  of  the  Govern- 
ment itself.  Mr.  Curzon  first  announced 
an  expedition  to  Dongola,  later  corrected 
himself  to  an  advance  *'  in  the  direction 
of  Dongola,'*  and  finally  located  the  ter- 
minus for  the  present  at  Akasheh — ^not 
one-third  of  the  way  to  Dongola.  If 
there  is,  therefore,  any  maturely  con* 
sidered  and  far-reaching  plan  back  of  the 
movement,  it  would  seem  to  look,  as  the 
best  authorities  think  it  does  look,  to  the 
reoonquest  and  holding  of  the  Sudan. 
This  can  be  undertaken  on  the  plea  that 
it  is  necessary  to  the  safety  of  Egypt, 
since  her  present  frontier  is,  as  Major 
Griffiths  shows,  an  entirely  uncertain  line 
across  which  Dervish  raids  are  constant- 
ly pushing. 


The  result  of  the  elections  to  the  new 
Cortes  will  surprise  no  one  familiar  with 
Spanish  political  methods.  The  Govern- 
ment always  wins  in  such  elections.  If  it 
did  not,  the  order  of  nature  would  seem, 
to  the  Spanish  mind,  to  be  miraculously 
violated.  The  only  question  is  of  the 
majority.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  present 
case,  the  thing  is  overdone  and  the  ma- 
jority made  so  outrageously  large  as  to 
excite  protests.  The  Opposition  will 
stand  being  put  in  a  minority  of  one  to  - 
two  without  whining,  but  to  be  left  with 
only  one  Deputy  to  three  is  going  a  little 
too  far.  However,  there  is  not  much 
vigor  even  in  the  cries  of  rage  over  Con- 
servative greed  and  cheating  that  are  now 
going  up  from  the  Liberals.  Sagasta 
knows  that  he  has  only  to  wait  a  little 
while  for  his  turn  to  come.  The  very  dis- 
patches giving  the  news  of  the  sweeping 
Conservative  successes  add  that  **it  is 
conceded  on  all  sides  that  the  new  Cortes 
wiU  be  short-lived."  That  is  to  say, 
C&novas  will  soon  be  thrown  over  by^  his 
own  majority,  Sagasta  will  be  called  in, 
he  will  then  have  a  chance  to  dissolve  and 
get  his  infallible  majority,  and  so  the 
whirligig  will  spin  on.  Nothing  can  bet- 
ter illustrate  the  present  unfitness  of 
Spaniards  for  parliamentary  government 
than  the  wearisome  repetition  of  this  elec- 
toral farce.  The  Cuban  trouble  appears 
to  have  cut  no  figure  in  the  campaign, 
except  BO  far  as  the  Deputies  from  the 
island  itself  are  concerned.  It  cannot  be 
denied,  however,  that  this  demonstration 
of  Spanish  political  feebleness  comes  most 
inopportunely  for  a  country  insisting  upon 
its  right  and  ability  to  govern  a  distant 
colony. 


800 


The   Nation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1607 


^*  IK  CLOSE  TOUCH  WITH  THE  PEOPLE.^ 

In  his  first  term  as  a  member  of  Congress 
McKinley  voted  for  the  free  coinage  of 
silver  at  the  ratio  of  16  to  1  in  1877,  and  to 
override  President  Hayes's  veto  of  the 
Bland- Allison  act  in  1878.  As  leader  of 
the  House  a  dozen  years  later  he  earnest- 
ly advocated  the  passage  of  the  silver- 
purchase  act  in  1890,  on  the  ground  that 
«*  we  cannot  have  free  coinage  now  except 
in  the  manner  provided  in  the  bill.*'  The 
advocates  of  McKinley's  nomination  for 
the  Presidency  have  only  one  way  of  meet- 
ing the  disclosure  of  these  ugly  facts. 
They  excuse  the  course  of  their  favorite 
in  each  instance  by  the  plea  that  he  was 
no  worse  than  his  party  or  than  public 
sentiment.  As  the  Chicago  Inter  Ocean 
puts  it: 

*^  McKinley's  record  in  Congi'MS  on  the  silver 
question  really  shows  that  he  was  in  happy 
accord  with  a  great  majority  of  the  Republi- 
can party  on  that  as  well  as  on  other  great 
questions.  He  was  not  only  with  the  vast  ma- 
lority  of  the  Republican  party,  but  he  showed 
himflfelf  to  be  moving  in  close  contact  with  the 
general  public  sentiment  of  the  country- 
showed  himself  to  be  in  doee  touch  with  the 
people." 

In  this  argument  the  supporters  of  Mc- 
Kinley  have  reached  the  lowest  level  that 
can  be  reached  in  urging  the  claims  of  an 
aspirant  for  the  Presidency.  They  main- 
tain, and  seem  glad  to  maintain,  that 
their  favorite  is  a  man  without  a  spark  of 
the  statesmanlike  foresight  which  ena- 
bles its  possessor  to  discern  the  dangers 
of  a  popular  craze  that  for  the  moment 
sweeps  everything  before  it.  They  boast 
that  the  first  aim  of  their  candidate,  while 
he  was  a  member  of  Congress,  was  to 
learn  what  the  prevailing  sentiment  of 
the  public  at  the  moment  of  voting  was, 
and  then  to  array  himself  on  that  side. 
Their  argument  logically  leads  to  the  con- 
clusion that,  if  he  were  elected  President, 
he  would  not  interpose  the  executive  veto 
against  the  enactment  of  the  most  dan- 
gerous bill  passed  by  Congress,  because, 
if  he  took  such  an  attitude,  he  would  no 
longer  be  "  in  close  touch  with  the  peo- 
ple." 

The  framers  of  the  Constitution  would 
have  been  amazed  to  hear  such  a  plea, 
that  the  President  of  the  United  States 
should  be  nothing  more  than  the  mere 
echo  of  fleeting  public  sentiment.  One 
chief  reason  for  vesting  him  with  the  veto 
power  was  that  he  might  stand  as  a  bul- 
wark against  this  danger.  Hamilton  says 
in  the  '  Federalist '  of  this  prerogative  : 

**The  power  in  question  not  only  serves  as 
a  shield  to  the  executive  [from  encroachments 
upon  his  power  by  the  legislative  department], 
but  it  funiishes  an  additional  security  against 
the  enaction  of  improper  laws.  It  estamishes 
a  salutary  check  upon  the  legislative  body, 
calculated  to  guard  the  community  against 
the  effects  of  faction,  precipitancy,  or  ol  any 
impulse  unfriendly  to  the  public  good,  which 
may  happen  to  influence  a  majority  of  that 
body.  The  propriety  of  the  thing  does  not 
turn  upon  the  suppodtion  of  superior  wisdom 
or  virtue  in  the  executive,  but  upon  the  suppo- 
sition that  the  Legislature  will  not  be  infal- 
lible: that  impressions  of  the  moment  may 
sometimes  hurry  it  into  measures  which  itself, 
on  maturer  reflection,  would  condemn.  The 
primary  inducement  to  conferring  the  power 


in  question  upon  the  executive  is  to  enable  him 
to  defend  himself ;  the  secondary  one  is  to 
increase  the  chances  in  favor  of  the  commu- 
nity affainst  the  passing  of  bad  laws,  through 
haste,  inadvertence,  or  design.  The  oftener 
the  measure  is  brought  under  examination, 
the  greater  the  diversity  in  the  situations  of 
those  who  are  to  examine  it,  the  less  must  be 
the  danger  of  those  errors  which  flow  from 
wast  of  due  deliberation,  or  of  thoee  missteps 
which  proceed  from  the  contagion  of  some 
common  passion  or  interest.** 

The  theory  of  the  veto  power  is  that  the 
President  may  save  the  nation  from  dis- 
aster in  a  crisis  by  refusing  to  keep  **  in 
close  touch  with  the  people,"  by  opposing 
what  seems  to  be  the  prevailing  public 
sentiment.  As  a  rule,  our  Presidents 
have  lived  up  to  the  theory  of  the  Consti- 
tution in  this  respect,  and  in  every  such 
case  history  has  justified  their  action. 
When  they  have  fallen  to  the  lower  level 
of  not  opi)osing  any  popular  craze,  the 
nation  has  always  suiTered. 

When  Congress  passed  the  infiation  act 
in  1874,  public  sentiment  appeared  to  fa- 
vor it,  and  a  majority  of  the  Republican 
Senators  earnestly  supported  it,  among 
them  such  powerful  leaders  as  Cameron 
of  Pennsylvania,  Morton  of  Indiana,  and 
Logan  of  Illinois.  A  President  whose 
prime  object  was  to  keep  "  in  close  touch 
with  the  people  "  would  have  signed  the 
bill  without  the  slightest  hesitation. 
What  saved  the  nation  from  a  frightful 
disaster  was  the  fact  that  Qen.  Grant  re- 
cognized *'  true  principles  of  finance,  na- 
tional interest,  national  obligation  to  cre- 
ditors "  as  superior  to  what  might  prove, 
and  did  prove,  an  '*  impulse  unfriendly  to 
the  public  good,*'  such  as  the  framers  of 
the  Constitution  had  foreseen. 

When  another  of  these  dangerous  im- 
pulses was  felt  in  Congress  sixteen  years 
later,  the  incumbent  of  the  White  House 
was  apparently  a  man  who  lacked  Gton. 
Grant's  courage.  In  1890  the  passage  of 
a  free-coinage  act  was  threatened,  and 
Senator  Sherman  and  other  Republicans 
who  opposed  that  policy  were  made  appre- 
hensive, by  Bir.  Harrison's  silence,  that  he 
would  not  feel  at  liberty  to  veto  such  a 
bill  if  it  should  pass.  **Some  action," 
says  Mr.  Sherman,  **had  to  be  taken  to 
prevent  a  return  to  free  silver  coinage,  and 
the  measure  evolved  was  the  best  obtain- 
able." The  silver-purchase  act,  the  ope- 
ration of  which  within  three  years  com- 
pelled the  calling  of  a  special  session  of 
Congress  to  secure  its  repeal,  was  thus 
due  to  the  weakness  of  a  President  who 
could  not  be  depended  upon  to  resist  the 
passion  of  the  hour. 

McKinley's  record  on  the  currenpy 
question  is  bad  enough.  But  the  defence 
of  that  record  on  the  ground  that  he  was 
in  line  with  his  party,  and  the  advocapy 
of  his  election  to  the  Presidency  because 
he  will  always  try  to  be  in  close  contact 
with  public  sentiment,  uncover  fresh 
perils  to  the  country  from  his  successful 
candidacy.  An  executive  whose  highest 
aim  is  always  to  be  ''in  close  touch 
with  the  people  "  is  to  be  dreaded,  as  a 
constant  menace  to  the  safety  of  the 
nation. 


THE  DEMOCRATS  NOT  ALL  DEAD. 
Thb  news  which  has  come  to  hand  dur- 
ing the  past  week  concerning  the  results 
of  city  and  town  elections  in  various 
States  must  be  a  genuine  shock  to  the 
readers  of  Republican  newspapers.  They 
have  been  assured  that  the  Democratic 
party  was  so  nearly  extinct  that  it  was 
not  to  be  regarded  seriously  as  an  element 
in  the  next  elections.  It  might  make  a 
pretence  of  running  candidates,  but  would 
put  them  forward  in  a  purely  perfunctory 
manner,  and  with  no  expectation  of  elect- 
ing them.  The  Republicans  had  so  ''sure 
a  thing"  that  they  might  run  any  one 
they  pleased  for  the  Presidency,  on  any 
kind  of  platform,  and  elect  him  in  a  walk- 
over. Even  Mr.  McKinley,  with  an  un- 
broken silver  record  and  on  a  straddling 
platform,  could  be  elected  without  a 
struggle.  The  local  election  news  does 
not  harmonize  with  this  view.  It  shows 
not  only  that  the  Democrats  are  alive,  but 
that  the  rascals  are  voting  in  such  num- 
bers as  to  greatly  cut  down  Republican 
majorities  in  some  places  and  actually 
carry  the  elections  in  others. 

Several  weeks  ago  the  town  elections  in 
New  York  State  showed  a  marked  reac- 
tion in  favor  of  the  Democrats  because  of 
the  Raines  liquor-tax  bill.  That  measure 
had  not  then  been  made  a  law,  and  the 
popular  disapproval  expressed  towards  it 
was  not  so  strong  as  it  is  now.  Many 
other  elections  were  held  on  April  7,  and 
in  these  the  Democratic  gains  were  more 
pronounced  and  general  than  they  were 
in  those  held  earlier.  The  general  result 
is  much  the  same  as  it  was  in  1898,  when 
the  people  of  the  State  improved  their 
first  opportunity  of  passing  judgment  up- 
on the  Democratic  party's  course  under 
Hill,  Sheehan,  Maynard,  and  Flower.  The 
winter  and  spring  elections  for  supervisors 
in  many  counties  of  the  State  in  that  year 
showed  almost  uniform  gains  for  the  Re- 
publicans. The  Democrats  made  light  of 
their  loss,  but  when  the  November  elec- 
tion was  held  they  discovered  that  the 
loss  had  foreshadowed  a  Republican  ma- 
jority of  100,000  in  the  State.  The  Re- 
publican losses  now  are  fully  as  large  and 
uniform  as  were  the  Democratic  three 
years  ago,  and  they  come  from  localities 
which  are  capable  of  doing  the  party  the 
greatest  amount  of  harm.  They  are  lar- 
gest in  the  cities,  nearly  all  of  which,  so 
far  as  heard  from,  give  Democratic  gains. 
This  was  inevitable,  for  it  is  in  the  cities, 
with  their  large  and  mixed  populations, 
that  the  Raines  law  will  excite  the  greatest 
opposition.  The  country  districts  will  not 
be  much  affected  by  it,  as  the  liquor  ques- 
tion plays  a  small  part  in  their  affairs,  yet 
even  in  these  sections  there  are  distinct 
signs  of  a  Republican  reaction,  for  the 
Democrats  have  made  a  slight  net  gain  in 
the  supervisors  thus  far  elected. 

In  other  States  the  same  signs  of  Demo- 
cratic life  and  energy  are  perceptible. 
City  and  town  elections  were  held  through- 
out Michigan  on  the  above  date,  and,  ac- 
cording   to   the    Tribune*8   dispatdisii 


April  1 6,  1896] 


Th.e    IN'ation. 


301 


*'  nnoaual  iotoreet  was  manifested  *'  and  a 
**  large  Tote  was  polled  ** ;  and  **  while  the 
iflsnss,  as  a  rule,  were  purelj  local  ones, 
the  Democrats  generally  developed  un- 
looked-for strength,  and  in  many  cities 
which  for  years  have  returned  Republican 
officials  their  ticket  has  been  elected  in 
whole  or  in  part.'*  Similar  reports  come 
from  Ohio,  in  which  elections  were  held  on 
April  6.  The  Democrats  cut  down  the 
Bepublican  majorities  in  many  places,  and 
carried  others  for  the  first  time  in  several 
years.  So  too  in  Connecticut.  They 
made  a  vigorous  contest  in  all  quarters, 
and  scored  gains  in  many.  In  Wisconsin 
they  are  also  alive,  for  in  the  Milwaukee 
election  of  April  7  *' large  Democratic 
gains  were  recorded  in  all  wards  of  the 
city."  New  Jersey  bore  a  like  testimony 
on  Tuesday  last. 

We  do  not  cite  these  facts  as  convincing 
proof  that  the  Democratic  party  is  bound 
to  carry  the  next  Presidential  election,  or 
that  it  has  an  equal  chance  with  the  Re- 
publican party  in  that  election;  but  we  do 
think  that  they  give  unmistakable  evi- 
dence that  the  Republicans  cannot  afford 
to  run  unnecessary  risks.  The  Democrats 
of  the  country  are  not  dead.  They  have 
been  greatly  disheartened  by  the  failures 
of  their  party  in  Ck>ngress,  and  thousands 
of  them  have  stayed  away  from  the  polls 
in  recent  elections  on  that  account.  But 
the  conduct  of  the  present  Republican 
Congress  has  cheered  them  up  a  bit  on 
this  point,  by  showing  them  that  one  party 
is  no  worse  than  the  other  in  this  respect, 
and  they  are  beginning  to  vote  again. 
They  have  not  gone  over  to  the  Republi- 
can party,  and  the  excitement  of  a  Presi- 
dential campaign  will  bring  them  in  prac- 
tically solid  mass  into  active  politics  again. 
The  town  elections  foreshadow  this  un- 
mistakably, and  the  Republicans  will  be 
wise  to  recognize  the  fact  and  conduct 
themselves  accordingly.  New  York  is  a 
doubtful  State  for  them  to-day;  it  would 
be  a  sure  Democratic  State  with  McKin- 
ley  on  one  side  and  a  sound- money  De- 
mocrat on  a  gold-standard  platform  on 
the  other  side.  On  this  point  there  is  no 
room  for  doubt.  The  warnings  from  other 
States  are  scarcely  less  plain.  Great  and 
sudden  changes  in  popular  sentiment  are 
very  familiar  phenomena  in  our  politics, 
and  a  blunder  by  the  Republicans  now 
would  be  quite  certain  to  produce  one. 
The  business  interests  of  the  country, 
which  control  all  elections,  will  not  con- 
sent to  the  election  of  a  man  whoee  record 
on  financial  questions  is  notoriously  un- 
sound, and  whose  political  and  private 
businsM  record  is  no  better. 


''INTENTION^  IN  INTERNATIONAL 
RELATIONS, 

OoifosBBSMAN  HnT*8  defence  of  the  Se- 
nate Cuban  resolutions,  which  he  had  be- 
fore declared  to  be  indefensible,  was  based 
on  the  ground  that  international  action  of 
that  kind  can  be  offensive  only  when  '*  it 
is  on  its  face  manifestly  intended  to  of- 


fend.** We  remarked  last  week  that  this 
is  to  import  into  international  law  the 
Jesuit  doctrine  that  bad  actions  are  virtu- 
ous if  done  with  good  intentions.  One  of 
Pascal's  most  delightful  Provincial  Letters 
unfolds  the  beauties  of  this  doctrine,  and 
some  of  them  are  worth  recurring  to  for 
the  purpose  of  showing  Mr.  Hitt  and  his 
kind  on  what  a  firm  foundation  of  ethics 
they  are  building.  There  is  a  family 
likeness  discernible  in  those  who  **  cheat 
with  holiness  and  zeal,"  whether  in  reli- 
gion or  politics,  and  Pascal's  exposure  of 
insincerity  and  hjrpocrisy  in  one  sphere 
applies  finely  to  the  other  also. 

After  Pascal's  Jesuit  Father  had  ex- 
plained many  of  the  little  tricks  of  the 
casuists  in  favor  of  the  clergy,  the  sus- 
picion arose  that  the  rest  of  the  world 
might  not  come  off  so  well.  Not  at  all, 
said  the  Father;  we  provide  similar  in- 
dulgences for  all.  Take  servants,  for  ex- 
ample, and  see  what  excellent  maxims 
we  have  for  them.  They  may  steal  from 
their  masters  if  they  find  their  wages  too 
low,  and  if  they  do  it  solely  and  firmly 
for  their  own  good,  without  malice. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  occasion  for 
them  to  shrink  from  the  most  question- 
able services,  provided  they  are  well  paid 
for  the  same.  For  what  say  our  Twenty- 
four  Fathers?  "To  carry  letters  and 
presents;  to  open  doors  and  windows;  to 
aid  their  master  to  climb  in  at  the  win- 
dow, and  to  hold  the  ladder  while  he 
climbs— all  this  is  allowable  and  not  im- 
moral." But  this,  of  course,  as  our  good 
Father  Bauny  has  pointed  out,  means 
that  such  actions  are  made  innocent  by 
resolutely  fixing  the  intention,  not  at  all 
upon  the  evil  deeds  in  which  servants 
make  themselves  accomplices,  but  solely 
upon  the  reward  which  they  are  to  re- 
ceive. 

This  '*  marvellous  principle  "  of  direct- 
ing the  intention  is  capable  of  the  widest 
expansion  and  application.  It  covers  the 
whole  range  of  dubious  actions  from  si- 
mony to  stabbing  a  man  in  the  back.  By 
making  sure  that  you  have  excellent  in- 
tentions, you  may  do  anything  you  please 
with  a  good  conscience.  Of  course  it  is, 
abstractly,  wrong  to  kill  a  man;  but  if  you 
do  it,  not  to  injure  him,  but  to  maintain 
your  own  honor,  that  is  quite  another  af- 
fair. So  of  duelling.  That,  of  course,  is 
forbidden  by  the  Church;  but  our  great 
Hurtado  de  Mendoza  has  shown  how  easy 
it  is  for  a  good  Catholic  to  fight  a  duel. 
Is  there  any  possible  sin,  he  ssys,  in  going 
out  to  the  fields  to  take  a  walk,  while  you 
are  waiting  for  a  man,  and  to  defend  your- 
self if  he  attacks  you  ?  That  is  a  very 
different  thing  from  accepting  a  chal- 
lenge, since  your  intention  is  directed 
to  other  circumstances  of  the  affair  al- 
together. In  fact,  by  being  extremely 
careful  about  your  intention,  you  may 
yourself  challenge  to  a  duel;  you  may  kill 
a  man  from  ambush,  unless  a  very  firm 
friendship  {arctior  amicitia)  exists  be- 
tween you  and  him;  you  may  kill  a  man 
for  an  insulting  word  or  even  gesture;  may. 


according  to  our  great  and  incomparable 
Molina,  kill  a  man  for  six  or  seven  ducats. 
These  are  but  examples  of  the  way  in 
which  the  method  of  fixing  the  intention 
takes  all  the  awkwardness  out  of  the 
common  principles  of  morality,  and  makes 
life  tolerable  and  agreeable  to  perfect 
gentlemen. 

All  this  makes  clear  the  source  of  the 
Hitt  doctrine  of  "  intention  "  ip  interna- 
tional relations.  It  is  simply  carrying  the 
Jesuit  casuistry  into  public  life.  Congress 
passes  resolutions  which,  if  they  mean  any- 
thing, mean  an  affront  to  a  friendly  nation, 
with  the  threat  of  war  in  the  background. 
But  Father  Hitt  steps  in  with  his  mild  pro- 
test that  this  is  all  a  mistake;  that  our  in- 
tention is  fixed,  not  on  insults  or  war,  but 
on  the  most  harmless  and  peaceable  things 
in  the  world.  Unless  Spain  is  determined 
to  fasten  a  quarrel  upon  us,  she  has  no 
right  to  look  at  our  words  or  our  acts, 
which  are  public,  but  only  at  our  inten- 
tions, which  are  hidden  away  in  our  own 
pure  bosoms.  What  Mr.  Hitt's  intention 
really  was,  he  did  not  say.  We  hazard  a 
shrewd  guess  that  it  was  the  same  that 
justified  the  valet  in  helping  his  infamous 
master — i.  e.,  a  fixed  contemplation,  not 
of  the  wickedness  in  hand,  but  of  his  own 
personal  gain.  Congressmen  use  insult- 
ing words;  they  intend  only  personal  popu- 
larity with  the  baser  sort.  They  bluster 
about  war;  they  mean  only  a  renomina- 
tion.  They  swell  and  explode  with  patri- 
otic rage;  their  intention  is  but  to  be  first 
in  the  war  of  words,  and  to  distance  dan- 
gerous competitors.  This  is  really  to  out- 
Jesuit  the  Jesuits.  They  had  the  grace 
to  guard  their  doctrine  with  the  limita- 
tion :  '*  Care  must  be  taken  lest  the  use  of 
this  maxim  result  in  danger  to  the  state." 
Father  Hitt  forgot  that,  but  we  do  not 
greatly  blame  him  in  these  days  when  the 
old  phrase,  *'  that  the  republic  take  no 
harm,"  sounds  so  silly  and  obsolete. 

The  question  remains.  What  will  for- 
eigners think  of  this  new  doctrine  of  ''in- 
tention "  in  international  relations?  That 
they  will  like  it,  or  assent  to  it  for  an  in- 
stant, is  conceivable  only  on  the  ground 
that  Johnson  was  right  when  he  confided 
to  Boswell  his  opinion:  **  Foreigners,  so 
far  as  I  can  see,  are  fools."  They  surely 
must  be  if  they  think  it  possible  to  regu- 
late their  treatment  of  us,  not  by  our 
public  acts,  our  official  language,  our  me- 
nacing attitude  and  gesture,  but  by  our 
secret  intentions.  They  will  quote  to  our 
Jingo-Jesuit  diplomats  the  obvious  com- 
ment of  Pascal,  "  L'intention  de  celui  qui 
blesse  ne  soulage  point  celui  qui  est 
bless^." 


THE  EDUCATION  QUESTION  IN  ENO. 
LAND. 

Altbouoh  the  bill  introduced  into  the 
House  of  Commons  by  Sir  John  Qorst, 
the  President  of  the  committee  of  council 
for  education,  radically  changes  the  or- 
ganization of  the  elementary  education 
system  in  England  as  it  has  existed  since 
1870,  the  various  changes  are  compara- 


303 


Th.e    !N"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1607 


tivelj  easy  to  follow.  While  the  principal 
object  of  the  bill  is  to  afford  further  fiDan- 
cial  help  to  the  schools  of  the  Church  of 
EDfifland  and  the  Roman  Catholics,  and  to 
bolster  up  a  system  which  had  its  begin- 
nings long  before  Parliament  turned  its 
attention  to  education,  several  of  the 
changes  are  undeniably  in  the  interest  of 
education,  and  have  been  shown  to  be 
necessary  by  twenty-five  years'  experience. 
The  dual  plan  of  board  schools  and  schools 
ostensibly  maintained  by  the  churches  is 
continued.  There  now  seems  no  getting 
away  from  it.  But,  in  strengthening  the 
church  schools,  at  least  something  is  to  be 
done  for  the  poorer  grade  of  board  schools. 
These  poorer  schools  under  the  boards  are 
in  rural  communities.  They  have  been 
established  where  the  church  schools  have 
broken  down;  and  scores  of  them,  espe- 
cially where  the  boards  are  small  and  in 
the  hands  of  farmers  and  village  mer- 
chants, are  as  understaffed  and  as  inade- 
quate as  any  of  the  church  schools  in 
similar  localities,  the  management  of 
which  is  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the 
Church  of  England  rector  or  vicar  of  the 
parish. 

If  the  bill  now  before  the  House  of 
Commons  is  passed,  the  county  council 
will  become  the  supreme  local  authority 
for  elementary,  secondary,  and  technical 
education,  and  the  Education  Depart- 
ment in  London  will  be  relieved  of  some 
of  its  duties  with  regard  to  the  inspec- 
tion of  schools  and  the  distribution  of 
grants  from  the  imperial  Treasury.  Each 
county  council  will  elect,  or  elect  and 
appoint,  as  it  may  determine,  its  statu- 
tory education  committee,  much  as  it 
now  elects  its  police  committee.  It  will 
be  at  the  discretion  of  the  council  whe- 
ther all  the  members  of  the  committee 
are  chosen  from  the  council,  or  whether 
the  council  will  go  outside  its  own  mem- 
bership and  appoint  men  or  women  emi- 
nent in  the  local  education  world.  It 
will  also  be  possible  for  counties  to  group 
themselves  together,  and  elect  joint  com- 
mittees to  exercise  powers  and  distribute 
grants  under  the  various  education  acts. 

The  county  councils  will  employ  corps 
of  school  inspectors  who  will  do  most  of 
the  work  now  done  by  inspectors  from  the 
Education  Department;  and  it  will  be 
from  the  shire  house  at  the  county  town, 
instead  of  from  London,  that  the  schools, 
board  and  voluntary,  will  receive  their  an- 
nual grants  from  imperial  funds.  School 
boards  will  continue  to  raise  their  local 
funds  as  heretofore,  and  in  the  case  of 
school-board  districts  in  which  the  local 
tax  plus  the  grant  per  scholar  from  the 
Treasury  does  not  meet  expenses,  the  dif- 
ference will  come,  not,  as  now,  from  Lon- 
don, but  through  the  county  council.  The 
grant  to  meet  this  deficiency  is  limited  by 
the  bill  to  four  shillings  per  scholar.  In  the 
past  this  doling  out  of  extra  funds  from 
the  Treasury  has  been  restricted  to  boards 
whose  incomes  from  local  taxes,  when  the 
maximum  tax  allowed  by  the  law  had 
been  levied,  was  not  sufficient,  with  the 


ordinary  Government  grant  per  scholar, 
to  meet  expenses.  Under  the  Gorst  bill, 
this  extra  poor-district  grant  will  be  paid 
to  Church  of  England,  Roman  Catholic, 
and  other  voluntary  schools. 

The  difficulty  of  granting  additional 
public  money  to  the  church  schools  with- 
out throwing  their  control  into  the  hands 
of  popularly  elected  boards,  has  been 
adroitly  got  over  by  giving  the  education 
committee  of  the  county  councils  the 
right  to  delegate  some  of  their  local  au- 
thority to  local  managers.  The  London 
School  Board  has  long  delegated  some  of 
its  authority  in  this  way  to  managers  of 
groups  of  schools,  and  the  Salisbury  Gk)v- 
ernment  has  made  the  London  plan  gene- 
ral with  the  county  councils  in  order  to 
save  the  fullest  measure  of  local  control 
of  the  voluntary  schools  to  the  clergymen 
of  the  Church  of  England  and  the  priests 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  The 
London  School  Board  appoints  hundreds 
of  these  local  managers  of  schools  under 
its  jurisdiction.  They  receive  no  pay; 
and,  under  close  supervision  from  the 
School  Board,  these  managers  practically 
appoint  and  promote  the  teachers,  and 
are  responsible  for  many  other  details  con- 
nected with  the  organiiation  and  working 
of  the  schools. 

Nor  is  the  four- shilling  grant  all  that  the 
church  schools  gain  financially.  As  the 
law  now  stands,  the  annual  grant  per 
scholar  from  the  Treasury  to  church 
schools  is  regulated  in  amount  by  the 
subscriptions  raised  by  the  school  man- 
agers. This  restriction  has  hampered 
clerical  managers  of  schools  to  which  pri- 
vate subscriptions  were  small,  and,  rather 
than  give  up  the  schools  and  resort  to  a 
school  board,  various  devices  and  tricks 
in  bookkeeping  have  been  invented  to  get 
over  the  restriction.  Every  now  and 
again  some  really  disreputable  dodge  on 
the  part  of  clergymen  has  been  exi>oBed. 
Now,  however,  there  will  be  an  end  to  all 
these  schemes,  as  the  annual  grants  per 
scholar,  apart  from  the  extra  grant  of 
four  shillings  a  year,  will  be  paid  without 
any  inquiries  as  to  the  amount  of  private 
subscriptions  to  the  school.  This  is  a 
great  triumph  for  the  clerical  party,  se- 
cond only  in  importance  to  the  ingenious 
arrangement  under  which,  while  drawing 
nearly  all  their  funds  from  the  Treasury, 
the  clergymen  are  to  give  up  little  or  none 
of  their  control  of  the  schools. 

Another  remarkable  concession  has  also 
been  made  to  the  Church  of  England 
party.  This  time  it  is  in  connection  with 
the  board  schools.  Under  the  act  of  1870, 
no  instruction  can  be  given  in  a  board 
school  which  involves  the  teaching  of  the 
formularies  or  catechisms  of  any  particu- 
lar church  or  denomination.  The  exist- 
ence of  this  provision  has  long  been  a 
source  of  disquiet  with  the  more  aggres- 
sive school  of  English  churchmen.  It 
has  been  assailed  several  times  in  Parlia- 
ment, more  than  once  in  the  House  of 
Lords  at  the  instance  of  the  Bishop  of 
Salisbury,  and  with  the  sympathy  and 


help  of  the  present  Premier.  At  last  the 
churchmen  have  succeeded  in  their  on- 
slaught on  the  unsectarian  character  of 
the  schools  maintained  wholly  out  of  local 
and  imperial  taxes.  If  the  Qorst  bill 
passes,  it  will  be  possible  for  "  a  reason- 
able number  of  the  parents"  of  the 
children  to  go  before  the  managers  of  a 
board  school,  and  to  insist  that  the  chil- 
dren shall  be  taught  in  religion  according 
to  the  creed  or  denomination  of  the  persons 
making  the  claim.  Nominally  it  wUl  be 
possible  for  Roman  Catholic,  Wesleyan,  or 
Unitarian  parents  to  make  these  demands. 
The  Catholics,  however,  will  not  do  so,  for 
the  priests  do  not  allow  their  children 
to  attend  any  but  Catholic  schools,  and 
to  teach  Catholic  children  in  this  way  in 
board  schools  would  involve  additions  to 
the  school  furnishings  which  will  never  be 
allowed  in  English  board  schools.  Non- 
conformists have  never  asked  for  the 
teaching  of  the  tenets  of  their  faith  in  the 
elementary  schools,  and  are  not  likely  to 
avail  themselves  of  the  clause.  It  is 
therefore  solely  in  the  interest  of  the 
sacerdotal  wing  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, and,  if  it  should  become  law  as  it 
now  stands,  clergymen  will  be  able  to  go 
among  their  parishioners,  and,  in  connec- 
tion with  almost  any  board  school,  get 
together  a  sufficiently  large  number  of 
parents  to  demand  Church  of  England 
teaching. 

THE  AMERICAN  ORIENTAL  SOCIETY'S 
MEETING. 

Andovkb  Hill,  April  11, 1806. 

At  the  recent  Congress  of  OrieDtalists  in 

London,    Prof.    Cowell    of    Cambridge,    the 

President  of  the  Aryan  Section,  opened  its 

sessions  with  some  graceful   verses,  first  In 

Sanskrit,  and  then  in  English,  as  follows  : 

*'  Calm  in  c«lm  woods  Uie  ancient  Rlsbto  sate. 

Soothlnc  their  aouls  with   friendihip'a   oonTene 
higli- 
While  we.  my  honoured  friendo,  by  evU  fate. 
Meet  where  the  city's  ceaseless  din  roUs  by.** 

And  he  confoled  ns  with  the  thought  that 
''contrast  brings  new  harmonies  to  light.** 
Well,  here  we  were  as  little  disturbed  by  the 
din  of  the  traffic  that  surges  through  Piccadil- 
ly as  were  the  calm  Hindu  hermits,  and  we 
needed  no  sach  oonsolatioo.  Andover  is  an 
ideal  place  of  meeting  for  a  learned  society, 
and  especially  for  our  Oriental  Society,  whose 
earliest  history  is  closely  associated  with  "The 
Hill."  For  Andover  may  justly  be  called  the 
cradle  of  Oriental  learning  in  America.  The 
names  of  Moses  Stuart  and  Edward  Robinson 
—famous  Andover  names,  famed,  withal,  far 
beyond  Andover— stand  beside  that  of  our 
fouoder,  John  Pickering,  on  the  first  list  of 
our  officers  of  considerably  more  than  half  a 
century  ago.  Indeed,  the  temper  of  cheerful 
reminiscence  was  quite  pervading.  It  was 
to  the  house  of  Moses  Stuart  that  its  present 
occupant,  Prof.  Harris,  welcomed  us  on  Thurs- 
day; and  it  was  the  old  home  of  Austin  Phelps 
in  which  Prof.  Moore  received  us  on  Friday. 
The  charming  inn  in  which — sociable  and  nn* 
scattered— we  lodged,  just  opposite  the  Cam- 
pus, was  once  the  home  of  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe,  and  was  fitted  up  for  her  occupancy 
with  the  first  seven  hundred  dollars  of  the 
proceeds  of  'Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.*  But  Mao 
one  think  from  all  this  that  the     ~ 


April  1 6,  1896] 


Tlie   N'ation. 


303 


cnidle  has  been  condgned  to  the  dtuty  atUc  of 
reminieoenee.  Whoever  examined  Prof.  Moore's 
meeterly  piece  of  work,  his  Commentary  00 
the  Book  of  Judges^  jost  issued,  and  heard  the 
papers  of  his  friend  an^  assistant,  Dr.  Torrey, 
will  doubtless  admit  that  that  piece  of  furni- 
ture is  still  rocking  in  a  very  lively  manner, 
and  that  there  is  no  prsasot  fear  of  the  nur- 
sery's lapsing  into  unwholesome  quiet. 

Preiddent  Oilman,  who  had  given  the  Society 
much  faithful  serrioe'from  the  fifties  to  the 
seventies,  is  now  our  presiding  officer;  and  it  is 
pleasant  to  record  the  faithfulness  with  which 
—in  spite  of  his  duties  on  the  Venesuelan  Com- 
miflrion~he  took  the  long  journey  from  Balti- 
more in  order  to  be  present  Some  societies 
snlTer  under  the  r^me  of  the  merely  '*  orna- 
mental*' or  '* figure-head'*  type  of  president; 
but  we  are  fortunate  in  having  a  man  to  pre- 
side who  can  efficiently  help  us  to  the  smooth 
and  rsady  dispatch  of  the  business  in  hand. 
The  attendance  was  good*  The  members  nnm- 
ber  between  thren  and  four  hundred,  including 
many  residing  in  distant  parts  of  this  country 
and  many  abroad.  About  one-tenth  of  these 
were  present,  besides  many  intelligently  in- 
terested auditors  from  the  Seminary  and  the 
town.  The  Johns  Hopkins  was  represented  by 
its  President  and  by  Haupt;  Columbia  by  Qott- 
heil  and  Jackson ;  Tale  by  Hopkins,  the  sue 
osssor  of  Prof.  Whitney;  Harvard  by  Toy, 
Lyon,  and  Lanroan ;  and  so  on. 

This  was  our  one  hundred  and  seventh  meet- 
ing. The  sevions  began  on  Thursday,  and  con- 
tinued without  drag,  and  yet  without  hurry, 
until  Saturday  nopn.  The  purpose  of  this  ar- 
rangement is  to  give  opportunity  for  two  in. 
formal  evening  sessions.  This  present  arrange- 
ment of  annual  meetings  extending  over  three 
days  is  a  most  palpable  improvement  over  the 
old  plan  of  two  extremely  brief  semi-annual 
meetings,  where  the  need  of  *^  hustling "  and 
'*  catching  trains  "  quite  o'ercrowed  the  scho- 
lar^s  spirit.  President  Oilman  set  the  business 
session  for  Friday  morning.  This  began  with 
the  presentation  of  correspondence  by  the  cor- 
responding secretary,  Prof.  Lanman.  Notable 
among  these  letters  was  one  from  a  distant 
comer  of  Assam  in  India,  from  Sibsagar  on 
the  Brahmaputra.  It  was  written  by  Mr.  Peal 
of  the  Royal  Oeographical  Society,  who  Is  at 
work  on  the  languages  of  that  region,  and  con- 
tained a  request  for  a  certain  publication  of 
the  society  upon  those  tongues  by  one  of  our 
earliest  members,  Rev.  Nathan  Brown,  a  mis- 
sionary of  the  Baptist  Union.  **Ito  [the  book's] 
value  to  us  here,"  says  Mr.  Peal,  "  is  much 
greater  than  you  might  suppose.  Dr.  Brown 
was  a  real  gwniut,^  A  recent  letter,  bearing 
the  signature,  still  clear  and  firm,  of  Otto 
Boehtlingk  of  the  Russian  Imperial  Academy, 
the  Nestor  of  all  Samkritisto  and  the  oldest 
hooorary  member  of  our  society  (be  was  elect- 
ed in  1844),  combines  with  frequent  brochures 
from  his  pen  to  attest  the  unexhausted  vitality 
of  this  dirtinguished  octogenarian.  Prof.  Bueh- 
ler  of  Vienna  sends  a  stately  publication  of  the 
Austrian  Academy  dedicated  to  the  memory 
of  our  Whitney,  and  tells  of  the  progressof  his 
Encyclopedia  of  Indie  Philology,  to  be  issued 
by  Tniebner  of  Straasburg,  the  pubUsfaer  of 
PauTs  Oermanic,  Oroeber's  Romance,  and  Oei- 
ger*s  Iranian  Philology,  and  to  be  executed  on 
the  same  plan  with  those  works.  It  is  of  inte- 
rest to  us  because  two  of  our  members,  Bloom- 
field  and  l<anman,  havea  hand  in  it  Dr.  John- 
ston of  Ballykilbeg,  County  Down,  formerly 
of  the  Bengal  Civil  8ervioe»  makes  the  wel- 
come announcement  that  he  has  translated 
Deussen's  'System  des  Vedanta,'  and  that  it  is 
to  run  through  tba  OaUiuUa  BmsUw  and  then  ' 


appear  in  book  form.  Dr.  Burgess  of  Edin- 
burgh, formerly  Director  Oeneral  of  the  Ar- 
chsological  Survey  of  India,  gives  an  encourag- 
ing account  of  the  progress  of  his  great  work 
(already  noticed  in  these  columns),  soon  to  be 
issued  by  Origgs  of  London.  The  first  portfolio 
of  150  or  more  collotype  plates  of  the  most  im. 
portant  archsBologioal  remains  in  India  may 
soon  be  expected.  They  are  made  from  the 
best  of  some  three  or  four  thousand  negatives 
at  Whitehall  and  the  C^alcutta  Museuoi,  and 
the  negatives  are  selected  by  an  unexcelled  ex- 
pert Of  interest  to  serious  students  of  Buddh- 
ism is  a  letter  from  the  well-known  Subhuti, 
a  Buddhist  high-priest  of  Ceylon,  stating  his 
readiness  to  comply  with  a  request  for  a  tran- 
script of  certain  Pali  texts  of  the  Sacred 
(>uion.  Finally,  Lai  Chandra  Vldya  Bhaskara 
of  Jodhpur,  Rajputana,  sends  us,  in  superb 
calligraphy,  a  most  elaborate  Life  of  Prof. 
Whitney,  done  into  Sanskrit  verses  from  the 
obituary  notice  of  that  scholar  which  appeared 
in  the  NaiUm  of  June  14,  1894. 

The  necrology  of  the  year  included  some 
very  notable  names.  Among  them  is  that  of 
Prof.  Roth  of  Tuebingen,  the  life-long  friend 
and  fellow-laborer  of  Whitney  in  the  field  of 
Vedic  research.  Another  is  Rost,  the  Librarian 
of  the  India  Office  in  London,  whom  scores  of 
grateful  scholars  have  risen  up  to  call  blessed 
for  his  learning  and  for  the  kindness  with 
which  he  put  that  learning  at  their  disposaL 
Of  our  Ulustrious  countryman.  Dr.  Van  Dyck, 
the  great  Arabist»  we  need  not  speak,  unless 
for  the  pride  and  joy  that  we  have  in  calling 
his  noble  life  and  life-work  to  remembrance. 
Two  men  long  distinguished  in  other  walks  of 
life,  the  late  Hon.  Charles  Theodore  Russell  of 
Cambridge  and  the  Rev.  Talbot  W.  Chambers 
of  New  York,  were  for  very  many  yeara  faith- 
ful and  interested  members  of  the  Society. 

The  treasurer,  Mr.  Warren  of  Cambridge, 
showed  a  satisfactory  balance-sheet ;  and  the 
0>mmittee  of  Publication  announced  that  a 
new  half- volume  had  been  issued  a  few  days 
before.  New  blood  was  infused  into  the  soci- 
ety by  the  election  of  a  goodly  number  of  new 
members.  The  old  administrative  officers 
were  reelected,  with  one  exception :  the  sec- 
retary. Prof.  Lanman,  after  nearly  twenty 
years  of  such  labor,  deiired  to  be  reliered, 
and  in  his  stead  was  elected  Prof.  Hopkins. 
On  the  other  band,  the  healthy  growth  of  the 
Society  has  greatly  increased  the  amount  of 
editorial  labor  to  be  done,  and  this  labor 
had  come,  by  prescription,  to  attach  to  the 
post  of  secretary.  To  effect  a  much-needed 
redistribution  of  burdens,  accordingly,  the 
directors  appointed  Professors  Lanman  and 
Moore  to  serve  as  responsible  editors  of  the 
Journal. 

Of  the  miscellaneous  business  only  two 
items  need  be  mentioned.  One  was  an  invita- 
tion from  the  Society  of  Biblical  Literature 
and  Exegesis  to  cooperate  with  them  in  the 
effort  to  establish  a  School  of  Oriental  Study 
and  Research  in  Bible  Lands,  somewhat  after 
the  manner  of  the  American  Schools  at  Athens 
and  Rome.  Prof.  Thayer  of  Harvard  submit- 
ted the  draft  of  a  plan.  The  other  was  a 
scheme  for  promoting  the  Historical  Study  of 
Religions,  and  emanat>ed  from  Prof.  Jastrow 
of  Philadelphia. 

The  papers  presented  were  about  thirty  in 
number.  They  were,  of  course,  largely  tech- 
nical. One  of  the  most  striking  things  about 
them  was  the  largeness  of  the  number  that  at- 
tempted a  rapproeh^meni  of  whoUy  diverse 
phases  of  ancient  ci viiixation.  Thus,  Dr.  Casa- 
nowicx  discussed  the  Alexander  legends  in  Tal- 
mud and  Midraah  with  ref areooe  to  Greek  and 


Assyrian  parallels.  Prof.  Macdonald^s  paper 
on  the  place  of  al-Ohaaali  in  the  theology  of 
Islam  adverted  to  the  infinence  exerted  by 
Buddhism  upon  one  of  the  forms  of  Suflism. 
Prof.  Jackson's  paper  upon  Persian  names  in 
the  Book  of  Esther,  as  well  as  that  of  his  col- 
league, Prof.  (Jottheil,  upon  references  to  Zo- 
roaster in  the  Syriac  literature,  brought  out 
still  other  interlacings  of  Aryan  and  Semitic 
life.  And  again,  Mr.  Edmunds's  essay  on  the 
compilation  of  the  Pali  CTanon  was  the  fruit  of 
studies  which  were  suggested  to  him  by  his 
study  of  the  history  of  the  New  Testament  C^ 
non  under  Prof.  Rendel  Harris.  Dr.  Scott's 
paper  upon  Malayan  words  in  English  was 
a  brief  account  of  a  most  elaborate  inves- 
tigation. In  the  course  of  it  he  used  the  ex- 
pression, **If  there  U  any  longer  any  such 
work  as  an  EogUsh  Dictionary."  If^  indeed  1 
Our  vocabulary  is  already  fairly  fiooded  with 
words  of  the  cosmopolitan  jargon.  His  essay 
showed,  perhaps  more  clearly  than  any  of 
thoae  just  mentioned,  how  infinite  is  the  inter- 
play between  races  and  naticms,  how  impoe> 
Bible  to  study  any  of  them  in  isolation.  And 
yet  how  short  is  the  time  since  scholars  began 
to  realise  that  they  could  not  understand  the 
origin  of  Greek  civilisation  from  the  Grecian 
monumento  of  that  civilization  alone  1 

Apropos  of  a  technical  discussion  of  a  pas- 
sage in  Esra,  Prof.  Haupt  expressed  a  view 
long  held  by  him  that  Assyrian  is  only  an  older 
local  variety  of  Aramaic.  In  his  paper  on 
Genesis  IL  fi,  **  There  went  up  a  mist  (edh)  from 
the  earth,"  etc,  he  assumed  on  the  part  of  the 
Palestinian  narrator  a  misunderstanding  of 
the  old  Babylonian  material  worked  over  by 
him,  in  which  material  the  loan-word  sdA  had 
reference  to  the  system  of  irrigation  practised 
in  Babylonia.  Prof.  Haupt's  pupil.  Dr.  John- 
ston, sent  a  valuable  paper  on  the  epistolary 
literature  of  the  Assyro- Babylonians.  These 
letters  are  original,  contemporaneous,  and 
authentic  documente  for  the  history  of  their 
times.  Noteworthy  among  them  are  the  let- 
ters between  Bel-ibni,  the  general  of  Ashur- 
banipal,  and  his  royal  master.  They  are  per- 
vaded by  cordial  good  feeling  and  soldier-like 
frankness,  and  are  rich  in  historical  allusions 
and  details.  How  wonderful  that  we  should 
now  possess  the  letters— still  clear  in  tone  and 
fresh  in  coloring— to  and  from  a  king  who  only 
a  little  while  ago  was  to  us  the  half- mythical 
Sardanapalus ! 

Prof.  Bloomfield  sent  an  advance  report  of 
the  results  of  his  '  Atharvi^Veda '  studies  now 
publishing  in  Max  MueUer's  '*  Sacred  Books  of 
the  East."  And  a  printed  specimen  of  the  late 
Prof.  Whitney*s  translation  of  the  same  Veda 
was  laid  before  the  Society  by  Prof.  Tianman, 
who  is  now  bringing  out  that  work  in  his 
'*  Harvard  Oriental  Series."  The  Utter's  stu- 
dies of  the  relative  age  of  different  parts  of  the 
*  Rig- Veda '  have  been  continued  by  Prof.  Ar- 
nold of  the  University  CoUege  of  North  Wales, 
Bangor,  who  sent  us  an  elaborate  treatise  on 
that  subject  And  a  critical  investigation  of 
the  eighth  book  of  the  'Rig- Veda,'  conducted 
with  a  similar  purpose,  was  presented  by  Prof. 
Hopkins.  It  is  interesting  to  see  at  such  a 
meeting  as  this  how  like  in  method  is  the  criti- 
cism of  the  Vedas  to  that  of  the  Bible,  differ 
as  they  may  in  details.  For  this  reason,  if  for 
no  other,  it  would  be  a  pity  to  divide  the  So- 
ciety into  two  sections,  a  Semitic  and  an 
Aryan.  The  meeting  was  a  thoroughly  har- 
monious one— no  odium  phiMiogiewn,  It  was 
altogether  happy  and  profitable,  and  fuU  of 
promise  for  the  future  of  the  Society.  The 
next  meeting  is  appointed  to  be  held  at  Balti- 
more, in  Easter  week,  AprU  8»-d4»  IW7. 


S04= 


Tlie    N"atiorL. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1607 


PERSIGirrS  MEMOIRS. 

Paris,  March  20, 1886. 

The  increase  of  interest  which  is  felt  just 
now  in  all  that  relates  to  the  Napoleonic  pe- 
riod does  not  extend  as  yet  to  the  genesis 
and  the  development  of  the  Second  Empire. 
The  events  of  that  period  are  so  near  to  us 
'that  we  seem  to  have  little  to  learn  about  it; 
the  consequences  of  the  Second  Empire  are  still 
too  acutely  felt.  To  be  sure,  the  First  Empire 
ended  at  Waterloo,  as  the  Second  Empire 
ended  at  Sedan,  but  it  is  not  natural  for  the 
present  generation  to  yiew  with  the  same  feel- 
ings two  catastrophes  separated  by  such  a 
long  interval. 

It  was  perhaps  imprudent  to  draw  public  at 
tention  to  one  of  the  men  who  were  the  most 
ardent  supporters  of  Napoleon,  and  who  pow- 
erfully  contributed  to  the  establishment  of  the 
Second  Empire— I  mean  M.  de  Persigny;  but 
all  memoirs  seem  to  be  unwilling  now  to  re- 
main in  the  shade.  There  is  a  gpreat  demand  for 
them,  and  the  economists  are  wont  to  say  that 
where  there  is  a  demand,  there  is  a  supply. 
This  *M^moires  du  Due  de  Persigny'  (Paris: 
Plon;  New  York:  Dyrsen  &  Pfeiffer),  edited 
by  M.  H.  de  Laire,  Comte  d*Espagny,  who  was 
the  private  secretary  of  the  Duke,  are  not 
memoirs  in  the  usual  sense  of  the  word;  they 
are  rather  a  succession  of  political  essays  and 
notes.  The  notes  were  written  at  different 
times.  Persigny  was  afraid  that,  after  his 
death,  the  Oovemment  would  seise  them,  in 
virtue  of  the  law  that  allows  a  search  for  and 
seizure  of  the  papers  of  men  who  have  occu- 
pied high  functions  in  the  state.  He  therefore 
made  three  copies  of  his  Memoirs,  A,  B,  and 
C.  M.  d'Espagny  gives  us  one  of  these.  He 
thinks  himself  entitled  to  do  so  inasmuch  as 
twenty- four  years  have  elapsed  since  the  death 
of  M.  de  Persigny  (January  1S3,  1872),  and  as 
the  persons  mentioned  in  the  memoirs  are  all 
dead,  with  the  exception  of  the  Empress  Eu- 
genie. 

The  name  of  the  Due  de  Persigny  was  Fialin; 
his  family  belonged  to  the  province  of  Forez, 
and  he  always  made  great  efforts  to  prove  that 
it  was  of  noble  origin.  While  he  was  ambas- 
sador in  London  I  know  that  he  induced  his 
colleague,  the  Italian  Minister,  to  have  re- 
searches made  in  the  archives  of  Turin,  as  he 
had  a  notion  that  his  family  had  connections 
with  some  noble  families  of  the  north  of  Italy. 
Nothing  was  ever  discovered  about  the  Fialins 
at  Turin,  but  Persigny  was  always  persuaded 
that  his  family  had  emigrated  from  Dauphind 
to  the  Lyonnais.  Persigny  was  a  small  flef  in 
the  Forez,  which  had  belonged  to  one  of  his 
ancestors.  Fialin  entered  as  a  private  a 
regiment  of  hussars.  Little  is  known  about 
his  life  after  he  left  the  regiment;  he  tried 
without  success  to  enter  the  administration  of 
the  crown  forests;  he  took  some  part  in  the  in- 
trigues of  the  Duchesse  de  Berry  when  she 
prepared  an  expedition  in  Vendue.  We  see 
film,  however,  abandon  the  Legitimist  for  the 
Napoleonic  cause,  in  a  review  which  he  found- 
ed under  the  title  of  Revue  de  V  Occident  Fran- 
cis, The  Duke  of  Reichstadt  was  dead;  Louis 
Napoleon  was  known  only  by  the  part  which 
he  had  taken  in  arising  in  Romagna;  King 
Joseph  was  living  in  quiet  retirement  in  Lon- 
don. Iv  seemed  almost  madness  to  speak  of  a 
restoration  of  the  Napoleons.  In  his  review 
Persigny  makes  a  real  manifesto:  he  prophesies 
a  complete  renovation  of  Europe,  he  announces 
the  arrival  of  a  new  Messiah. 

'*  In  the  imperial  idea  resides  the  true  law 
of  the  modem  world.  .  .  .  The  time  has 
come  for  announcing  in  Europe  the  imperial 


gospel  which  as  yet  has  had  no  apostles.  The 
time  has  come  to  seize  the  old  flag  of  the  Em- 
pei^r — not  only  the  flag  of  Marengo  and  Aus- 
terlitz,  the  flag  also  of  Burgos  and  of  Moscow. 
The  Emperor  I  the  whole  Emperor  I** 

What  Persigny  admires  is  not  only  the  mili- 
tary genius  of  the  Ehnperor,  but  his  political 
genius,  the  ideas  and  institutions  which  paved 
the  way  for  the  new  regime  in  France;  he  finds 
a  Napoleon  better  than  parliamentarism  and 
all  possible  constitutional  formulas^  To  do 
him  justice,  he  always  remained  what  he  was 
in  this  Review,  of  which  only  one  number  was 
issued,  and  which  provoked  no  echo.  Sling 
Joseph,  however,  wished  to  see  the  author, 
and  received  him  at  Denham  Place,  near  Lon- 
don. 

Persigny  entered  into  relations  with  Prince 
Louis  Napoleon,  the  nephew  and  heir  of  Napo- 
leon, and  met  in  him  a  response  to  his  own 
ideas.  With  him  he  arranged  at  Arenenberg 
the  Strasbourg  expedition,  after  having  tra- 
veiled  ifor  several  months  in  the  department  of 
the  East  of  France,  and  chiefly  in  Alsace  and 
Lorraine.  The  expedition  failed  almost  igno- 
miniously.  Napoleon  was  arrested  in  the  bar- 
racks of  a  regiment  of  artillery  ;  Persigny  fled 
to  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Baden,  concealed  him- 
self in  the  Black  Forest,  and  afterwards  went 
to  Arenenberg  and  to  England,  by  way  of 
(j^rmany.  Persigny  was  again  with  the  Prince 
when  he  made  his  second  attempt  at  Boulogne. 
This  time  he  was  arrested  and  tried  before  the 
House  of  Peers.  He  was  condemned  to  twenty 
years*  imprisonment  and  sent  to  the  citadel  of 
DouUens.  After  the  Revolution  of  1848,  Per- 
signy worked  openly  for  Prince  Napoleon.  He 
was  imprisoned  agidn  for  some  time  by  order 
of  the  Provisory  GK>vemment,  and  was  at  the 
Ck>nciergerie  during  the  bloody  insurrection  of 
June.  .The  reaction  which  followed  ended  in 
the  nomination  of  Prince  Louis  Napoleon  as 
President.  Persigny  was  not  among  his  flrst 
Ministers,  who  were  to  be  chosen  from  the 
Chamber,  but  he  was  one  of  his  secret  and  in- 
timate advisers.  In  1849  he  was  elected  a 
Deputy  in  two  departments,  the  Loire  and  the 
Nord ;  from  that  moment  his  public  career  be- 
longs to  history.  He  advised  the  President, 
before  the  2d  of  December,  to  choose  M. 
de  Momy  as  Home  Minister,  and  contented 
himself  with  a  subordinate  task  in  the  execu- 
tion of  the  Ck>up  d'etat ;  but  there  is  no  doubt 
that  he  was  one  of  its  chief  inspirers. 

His  Memoirs  begin  with  two  chapters,  one 
on  the  establishment  of  Louis  Napoleon's  Pre- 
sidency, the  other  on  the  committee  which 
took  its  name  from  the  Rue  de  Poitiers,  where 
it  had  its  meeting,  and  which  was  composed 
of  the  most  important  members  of  Parlia- 
ment, all  more  or  less  hostile  to  Prince  Napo- 
leon, whom  they  justly  suspected  of  medi- 
tating a  coup  d'6tat  and  the  reSstablishment  of 
the  Empire.  The  constituent  work  of  the  Par 
liamentarians  had  come  to  an  end;  they  had 
committed  the  mistake  of  submitting  the  choice 
of  President  to  universal  suffrage.  Universal 
suffrage  fixed  itself  not  on  Gen.  Cavaignac, 
though  he  had  saved  Paris  in  the  June  insur- 
rection, but  on  Prince  Napoleon,  notwith- 
standing his  two  attempts  at  Strasbourg,  and 
Boulogne.  The  name  of  Napoleon  had  still  a 
place  in  the  people's  imagination,  and  nations  as 
well  as  individuals  are  often  led  by  the  forces 
of  imagination.  The  leaders  of  the  Parlia- 
mentarians, Thiers,  Barrot,  M0I6,  etc.,  were 
unpopular;  the  country  attributed  the  Revolu- 
tion  of  1848,  which  had  taken  it  by  surprise,  to 
their  miserable  rivalries.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  country  was  tired  of  the  per- 
manent  agitation   which   had  followed  the 


establishment  of  the  Repablio.  The  coalition 
of  Parliamentarians— the  Duke  de  Broglie. 
Coxmt  Mol^  Thiers,  Berryer,  Montalembert, 
R6musat,  etc— which  met  at  the  Rue  de  Poi- 
tiers, really  desired  the  refistablishment  of  a 
monarchy;  on  the  other  side  was  Prince  Na- 
poleon, silent,  enigmatical,  but  the  nominee  of 
the  people,  who  thought  that  his  mission  was  to 
renew  an  imperialist  era.  Persigny  was  for  a 
time  a  sort  of  deputy  of  the  Prince  in  the  Par- 
liamentary  committee.  '  He  tails  us  how  be 
tried  to  convince  his  oolleaguet  of  the  impossi- 
bility of  establishing  a  monarchy;  he  spoke 
boldly  for  his  own  solution,  the  Empire;  of 
course  he  did  not  convart  anybody.  The  Gor- 
dian  knot  was  to  be  severed  by  the  sword. 

Persigny  was  several  times  minister  and 
ambassador;  he  was  of  an  uneasy  nature^  and 
never  remained  long  in  the  same  place.  In 
1850,  he  knew  Bismarck  at  Berlin;  Bismarck 
was  at  that  time  one  of  the  influential  members 
of  the  feudal  party,  which  hated  the  Empire, 
Napoleon,  and  FrMice.  Among  the  members 
of  this  party,  Bismarck  maintained  an  excep- 
tional attitude  towards  the  members  of  the 
French  Embassy;  he  was  not  afraid  to  com- 
promise himself  by  showing  himself  polite  and 
amiable  to  them,  and  talked  freely  with  them 
on  all  subjects.  Persigny  says  that  Bismarck 
came  one  day  to  see  him,  and,  taking  on  a  seri- 
ous and  almost  solemn  tone,  asked  his  advice 
on  the  affairs  of  Prussia:  the  Liberal  party  was 
entirely  the  master  in  the  lower  chamber;  this 
party  threatened  to  disorganize  everything, 
even  the  army.  Persigny  answered  without 
hesitation. 

**If  you  were  used,  as  they  are  in  Eng- 
land, to  struggles  for  liberty— if  all  classes  in 
Prussia  were  accustomed  to  make  mutual  con- 
cessions to  each  other— I  should  advise  your 
King  to  bow  to  public  opinion  and  to  enter 
without  fear  on  the  path  of  a  constitutional 
regime.  But  in  the  present  state  of  thines  it 
would  be  madness.  ...  If  Louis  Philippe 
had  not  allowed  a  parliamentary  quarrel  to 
explode  in  public,  if  he  had  placed  himself  at 
the  head  of  his  troops  to  keep  order  in  the 
streets,  the  Revolution  of  1848  would  not  have 
taken  place,  and  his  dynasty  would  still  reign. 
It  is  true  that  Charles  X.  undertook  to  redst 
the  Revolution  and  was  beaten;  but  his  exam- 
ple is  also  a  lesson,  for  when  he  signed  his 
Ordinances  he  did  not  foresee  that  they  might 
povoke  an  insurrection,  and  nothing  was  read  v 
to  suppress  it.  The  garrison  of  Paris,  much 
weakened  by  the  departure  of  a  great  part  of 
the  Royal  Guard  for  the  camp  at  Lundville, 
had  no  food,  no  munitions  of  anv  sort,  and,  sur^ 
prised  bv  an  unforeseen  struggle,  it  was  van- 
quished in  a  moment. 

**Well!  apply  the  lessons  of  history  to  the 
circumstances  in  which  you  are  placed.  You 
have  this  piece  of  luck,  that  the  Liberal  party 
invites  a  struggle  on  the  question  off  the 
army,  and  consMiuentiy,  in  defending  the 
army,  you  have  it  with  you.  You  have  also 
this  advantage,  that  the  vote  of  the  budget  is 
not  necessarv  for  carrying  on  the  government, 
as,  in  case  of  a  conflict,  the  budget  of  the  pre- 
ceding year  can  legally  suffice.  .  .  .  Connder 
yourself  in  a  civil  war ;  resist  the  Chamber, 
adjourn  it  once,  twice,  three  times;  but  have 
your  army  always  ready  for  a  conflict." 

A  few  days  afterwards  Bismarck  accepted 
the  presidency  of  the  Council  in  Berlin,  and 
began  the  contest  with  the  Parliament.  Ter* 
signy  never  saw  him  again  till  1867,  when  he 
met  him  at  the  Tuileries  at  a  dinner  which  Na- 
poleon gave  to  the  EZing  of  Prussia  during  the 
Universal  Exposition.  After  dinner  Bismarck 
came  to  him  :  **  *  Well,'  said  he,  *  have  I  not 
well  followed  your  instruction?'  *Yea,'  said 
I,  *  but  I  must  admit  that  the  pupU  has  singu- 
larly surpassed  the  master.' "  Two  days  after- 
wards Bismarck  paid  him  a  visit,  and  they  bad 
a  long  conversation  on  the  subject  of  Loxem- 
burg,  and  the  difficulties  which  arose  from  the 
relations  between  the  Duchy  of  Loxembiirg 


April  16,  1896] 


The   !N"atioii. 


805 


•ad  QtnoBnj.  They  0pok«  alto  of  Sadowa 
and  oi  pcMdble  changM  in  Gemuuiy,  of  the 
Rhine  proTinoet.  Periigny  did  not  think  it 
potiible  that  France  would  long  eetabUih  her 
anthoritj  over  the  Qennan-epealring  provinoee 
of  the  Rhine,  but  he  objected  to  Pmtiia  taking 
tbeee  prorincee  for  henelf ;  he  wished  her  to 
aggrandise  henelf  in  the  north  of  Oermany,  on 
condition  that  the  wonld  indemnify  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Rhine  the  princee  dispoeneted  on 
the  right  bank;  he  wiihed  to  aToid  any  direct 
contact  between  France  and  Pmnia,  and  to 
creata  all  along  the  Rhine  a  inooeeeion  of  neu- 
tralited  buffer  ttatee.  Bismarck  took  great 
interect  in  the  development  of  these  plans;  he 
wonld  have  liked  to  know  what  the  Emperor  Na 
pcdeon  thought  of  them.  Persigny  was  candid 
enough  to  tell  him  that  he  really  did  not  know, 
and  to  add  that  his  personal  influence  in  the 
Council  was  not  Tery  great  in  such  matters. 
We  see  in  the  Memoirs  that  the  influence  which 
was  most  hostile  to  him  was  that  of  the  Em. 
press;  as  for  the  Emperor,  he  always  treated 
Penigny  with  much  kindness,  but  he  had  be- 
come more  and  more  silent,  he  saw  Persigny 
less  and  less,  and  Persigny  does  not  disguise 
the  f^ct  that,  towards  the  end  of  the  Empire, 
his  influence  had  become  very  smalL 

On  the  whole,  these  Memoirs,  though  there 
is  no  thrsad  to  tie  together  their  disconnected 
parts,  though  they  are  very  artless  and  incom- 
plele,  will  afford  a  valuable  document  to  the 
historian  of  the  Second  Empire. 


Correspondence. 


THE  DBBABINO  OF  NORMAL  SCHOOLS. 
To  THS  Editor  of  Thx  Nation: 

8im:  Preddeot  Schurman's  article  on  **  Teach- 
ing—a Trade  or  a  Profession  ?**  in  the  April 
Forum,  contains  in  categorical  form  certain 
statementa  which,  to  say  the  least,  are  plainly 
debatable,  and  therefore  should  not  be  allowed 
to  pass  uncontested. 

Like  other  writers  before  him,  President 
Behurman  holds  that  the  simultaneous  pur- 
suit of  academical  and  professional  instruction 
in  normal  schools  is  **  pernicious,"  on  the 
ground  that  studies  otherwise  yielding  aliK>eral 
education  lose  their  educational  or  culture 
value  when  pursued  with  a  view  to  technical, 
practical  ends.  But  can  it  for  a  moment  be 
maintained  that  the  case  of  a  student  pursuing 
certain  lines  of  study  with  the  ultimate  view 
of  teaching  the  same  is  at  all  parallel  to  that 
of  a  boy  learning  arithmetic,  let  us  say,  for 
osa  in  the  store,  or  of  a  university  student 
working  in  order  to  pass  his  ezaminationf  In 
the  one  case  purely  practical  or  outward  re- 
suite  are  aimed  at ;  the  theoretical,  the  ideal 
side  of  the  work  is  neglected  as  far  as  it  Is  pos- 
sible te  do  sa  In  the  other  case  the  subject  is 
studied  not  merely  with  a  view  to  the  acquisi- 
tion of  facta,  but  also  with  regard  to  ita  adapt- 
abili^  te  psychological  laws  and  with  a  view 
to  ita  moral  and  ethical  aspecta ;  the  earnest 
studsMt  observing  the  attitude  of  his  own  mind 
teward  the  subject  he  is  pursuing  in  order  te 
know  the  better  bow  te  reach  the  avenues  of 
another  mind  in  imparting  knowledge.  The 
latter  ladde  of  learning,  therefore,  Is  exactly 
that  which  may  be  expected  to  yield  the  great- 
est inteUeetnaleoJoymeot  and  benefit ;  for  the 
student's  interest  in  the  subject  is  genuine  and 
mtnnsio— the  very  opposite  of  that  of  a  stu- 
dent working  tor  examination. 

The  plan  of  making  normal  schools  jmrtly 
prof— If  I  pel  has  been  often  urged;  it  hi 


tried  in  a  few  oases  and  soon  abandoned.  The 
plan  is  not  practicable,  and.  If  it  were,  ita  dis- 
advantages would  condemn  it.  It  most  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  discontinuance  for  two  years 
of  all  those  branches  of  study  in  which  the 
students  might  have  become  interested  in  the 
course  of  their  academical  training,  previous 
to  entering  upon  such  a  professional  course, 
would  be  a  lamentable  mistake.  Much  to  my 
regret,  I  cannot  dwell  upon  tUs  point,  as  I 
should  have  to  claim  too  much  of  your  valua- 
ble space. 

President  Schurman  would  limit  the  func- 
tion of  normal  schools  to  the  preparation  of 
elementary  teachers  exclusively.  Of  several 
serious  objections  to  such  a  course,  I  will  men- 
tion but  one.  The  inspiration  and  advantages 
of  culture  which  members  of  the  lower  and 
shorter  courses  in  normal  schools  receive 
through  their  contact  with  more  advanced 
and  ambitious  studento  is  of  inestimable  value 
to  them  and,  indirectly,  to  their  future  pupils. 
It  would  not  be  possible  to  attract  any  con- 
siderable number  of  abU  and  ambitioua  young 
persons  to  a  sdiooi  of  such  limited  range  as  Pre- 
sident Schurman  contemplates;  the  elementary 
schools  would  therefore  suffer  through  the  infe- 
riority of  thoee  willing  to  take  charge  of  them, 
while  now  many  of  the  brightest  and  most  ad- 
vanced  students,  both  graduate  and  undergra- 
duate, going  out  from  nprmal  schools  of  a  high- 
er order,  take  positions  In  the  lower  grades^ 
either  from  preference  or  because  Uiey  fail  to 
secure  positions  in  the  higher  grades.  The 
present  system,  therefore,  leads  to  an  im- 
provement of  the  teaching  force  in  the  lower 
grades  and  to  a  higher  estimation  of  that 
work  in  the  public  mind— a  matter  of  the  ut- 
most importance  since  there  may  ultimately 
result  from  it  a  more  general  recognition  of 
the  meed  of  highly  cultivated  teachers  for 
young  children. 

To  reduce  all  normal  schools— i.  e.,  that 
whole  class  of  institutions  exclusively  devoted 
to  the  training  of  teachers-  to  one  level,  and 
that  a  low  one,  would  hardly  be  oondudve  to 
raising  the  teacher*s  profeeeion.  If  it  were 
possible  in  this  country  to  carry  such  a  plan 
into  eifect— which,  I  firmly  believe,  it  is  not— 
it  would  lead  here  to  a  state  of  things  similar 
to  that  found  in  Oermany.  The  Qerman  semi- 
naries turn  out  teachers  admirably  trained, 
professionally,  for  their  special  work  in  the 
conuDon  schools;  but  they  are,  <u  a  class, 
lacking  in  general  culture.  Why  advocate  a 
policy  which  would  permanently  reduce  the 
vast  majority  of  American  teachers  in  the  fu- 
ture te  the  same  condition  ?      A.  LODKMAV. 

Mkiioas  Btatb  NoaiiAL  BcaooL, 
Tr8a.Asn,  Aprtl  17, 1896^ 


OF  BOOK-WORMS. 
To  THS  Editor  of  Ths  Nation  : 

Sib:  The  account  in  the  New  York  Ettening 
B>9t  of  recent  date  of  the  finding  of  book- 
worms in  the  library  of  Cornell  University  has 
caused  more  or  less  oonmient  which  has  not  al- 
ways been  trustworthy.  For  Uie  purpoee  of 
comcting  the  many  misstatemento  and  record- 
ing the  facto  in  the  case,  I  am  moved  te  make 
the  following  statement: 

On  the  7th  day  of  May,  1808,  while  working 
in  the  catalogue  department  of  the  University 
library,  there  came  to  hand  a  copy  of  Dante's 
*  Divine  Comedy  *  printed  at  Venice  in  the  year 
1538.  It  had  been  received  through  the  mails 
a  short  time  before  direct  from  Italy,  and  bore 
on  the  title-page  a  stamped  device  consist- 
ing of  a  crown  and,  underneath,  the  words 
ARCELLI   M.-OANINO.      The  old  leather 


cover  was  perforated  with  many  boles  about 
the  sise  of  a  pin  head,  wtiich  is  not  an  unoom- 
nM>n  sight  to  thoee  accustomed  to  handle  old 
books.  Many  volumes  come  to  hand  during  a 
year  bearing  such  scars,  but  almost  never  is  the 
insect  found  which  does  the  boring.  Examining 
the  leaves  of  the  volume,  it  was  found  that  the 
worms  had  not  done  much  damage.  The  title- 
page  was  pierced  in  eight  places,  but  the  holes 
extended  through  only  a  few  leaves.  Twenty* 
two  holes  were  found  through  the  back  leaves, 
and  they  went  somewhat  deeper  than  those  in 
the  front  of  the  book.  Close  down  in  the  hinge 
of  the  book  cover  were  found  several  little  fat 
grubs,  resembling  those  sometimes  found  in  a 
hasel  nut  These  were  taken  to  the  entomo- 
logical laboratory,  where  they  were  found  to 
be  alive  and  sufllciently  interesting  to  be  worth 
studying.  From  these  larvsB  were  developed 
small  brown  beetles,  and  further  investigation 
proved  them  to  belong  to  the  genus  known  in 
this  country  as  Sitodrepa  paniceOf  and  in 
Europe  as  Anobium  panioeum.  This  species 
belongs  to  the  family 'Pfinidcs,  or  Death-wateh, 
and  the  order  Coleoptera.  It  was  first  de- 
scribed by  Frisch  in  1721.  There  are  two  other 
species  of  this  genus,  Anobium  pertinax  and 
Anobium  eruditum^  and  in  the  larva  state  all 
three  are  so  much  alike  as  to  be  scarcely  dis- 
tinguishable one  from  another. 

The  often-quoted  account  of  the  finding  by 
IL  Peignot  of  twenty-seven  folios  perforated 
by  one  insect  is  mentioned  by  Blades  as  an  in- 
stance of  the  work  of  this  insect,  but  it  is  not 
quite  clear  whether  Uie  boring  was  done  by 
Anclbium  pertinax  or  Sitodrepa  panicea. 
The  Library  Journal  (vol.  x.,  p.  181)  men- 
tions  the  finding  of  "real  book- worms'*  by 
Richard  Savage,  librarian  of  Stratford-on- 
Avon,  in  April,  1885.  These  were  the  Sitodre- 
pa panieea,  F.  J.  Havergal,  librarian  of 
Hereford  Cathedral,  reported  the  finding  of 
at  least  a  doaen  **  genuine  book-worms  **  dur- 
ing his  eighteen  years'  experience,  from  1853- 
187L.  In  the  year  1858,  William  Blades  found 
in  the  Bodleian  Library  a  book- worm  which 
he  showed  to  the  librarian,  who  at  once 
killed  it  with  his  thumb-nail.  As  none  of  the 
insecto  in  the  above  cases  were  scientifically 
studied,  it  is  impossible  to  say  to  what  species 
they  belonged,  but  from  the  general  deecrip- 
tion  given  they  undoubtedly  belonged  to  the 
genus  Anobium, 

In  this  country  one  or  two  instances  of  the 
finding  of  book. worms  have  been  recorded.  In 
1888  H.  S.  Kephart,  at  that  Ume  cataloguer  in 
the  Yale  University  Library,  found  some 
worms.  After  keeping  them  for  about  six 
months,  he  sent  all  that  were  left  to  Prof. 
Comstock  at  Cornell.  Only  one  was  found  to 
be  alive  when  they  reached  here,  and  so  no- 
thing oould  be  done  towards  determining  to 
what  QMcies  they  belonged.  Recently,  Mr. 
B.  C.  Steiner  reported  the  finding  of  a  book- 
worm about  two  years  ago  in  the  Enoch 
Pratt  Free  Library  of  Baltimore,  but  again 
not  enough  came  to  hand  to  enable  any  one 
to  determine  where  in  the  book-worm  family 
it  belonged. 

Fully  fifteen  different  kinds  of  insecto  which 
infest  books  are  mentioned  by  entomologlsto 
and  other  writers  on  the  subject  The  larger 
part  of  theee,  however,  do  not  eat  the  book* 
Some  eat  the  paste  used  In  binding  the  books; 
oUiers,  like  the  Hypothenemua  erudiCiiSyfasten 
themselves  upon  a  book,  **and,  spinning  a 
robe,  which  it  covers  with  ito  own  excrement, 
do  the  book  little  or  no  harm."  80  far  as  I 
have  been  able  to  learn,  the  insecto  which 
actually  bore  the  books  through,  and  therefore 
do  the  greatest  injury,  belong  to  the  Sitodrepa 


306 


Tlie   ISTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No,  1607 


panicea  or  some  species  of  the  genus  known  in 
Europe  as  Anobiuml         Willabd  Austin. 

COHRKLL  UlOTEBSITT  LiB&iLRT,  April  6,  1890. 


"HIRED   MAN." 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation  : 

Sir  :  Originating  from  the  subetantive  Ayr 
there  is.  in  Anglo-Saxon,  the  verb  hifrian^ 
after  which  came  huren^  a  forerunner  of  our 
hire;  and  the  participle  hired  is  known  to  have 
been  long  current.  But  another  hired  is  the 
Anglo-Saxon  for,  "family,"  "household,"  and 
likewise  for  "  retinue"  and  "  court."  To  mo- 
dernize the  ancient  spellings,  Old  English  had 
hired-swain,  "domestic,"  hired-knave^  "at. 
tendant,"  hired  knight,  "courtier,"  hired- 
play,  "court-play,"  etc.  And  it  bad,  more, 
over,  in  common  use,  hired-man,  "  retainer  N 
— that  is,  to  say,  "man  dependent  on  the 
family,"  with  its  feminine,  hiredtooman.  So 
long,  therefore,  as  these  expressions  continued 
in  vogue,  the  risk  of  ambiguity  stood  in  the 
way  of  the  employment  of  hired  man,  "man 
serving  for  hire,"  and  of  the  allied  hired 
wom^n. 

Among  the  various  kinds  of  fairs  held  in 
England  there  is  one,  now  fast  falling  into 
desuetude,  styled,  as  by  other  names  (for  in 
stance,  statute-fair,  Michaelmas-fair,  sessions, 
and  hiring)  hiring-fair.  To  such  a  fair,  re- 
sort persons  of  both  sexes,  young  and  adult, 
who  wish  to  engage  themselves  as  servants, 
with  others  who  wish  to  engage  servants;  and 
a  bargain  for  service,  usually  for  the  period  of 
a  twelvemonth,  if  concluded,  is  clenched  by 
the  tender  and  acceptance  of  a  shilling,  or  a 
half-crown,  as  earnest.  Servants  secured  un- 
der these  circumstances  were  formerly  spoken 
of,  at  all  events  here  in  Suffolk,  as  hired  men, 
hired  v>omen,  etc. ;  and  the  terms  were  applied 
to  no  others.  With  the  disappearance  of  hir- 
ing-fairs  hereabouts,  some  seventy  years  ago, 
those  terms,  also,  except  historically,  disap. 
peared,  or  nearly  so;  since  they  are  now  heard 
used,  very  singularly,  solely  of  domestics  who 
comport  themselves  with  unbecoming  impor- 
tance. "  She  is  only  a  hired  girl "  expresses 
scornful  censure,  whereas  ^^she  is  only  a  ser- 
vant "  expresses  no  censure  at  all. 

In  a  former  letter  I  have  shown  that  the  ex- 
pression hired  men  was  employed  in  America 
in  1751;  and  I  hardly  doubt  that  your  research- 
ful  correspondent  Mr.  Albert  Matthews  can 
bring  forward  proof  that  hired  women,  hired 
boys,  etc.,  also  were  somewhat  as  rife  in  the 
language  of  our  colonial  forefathers  as  they 
are  in  the  language  of  their  descendants.  How 
such  locutions  found  their  way  into  our  phrase- 
ology is  a  question  which  awaits  solution. 

By  "  servant "  the  authorized  version  of  the 
New  Testament  represents,  for  the  most  part, 
SovAof,  "  slave,"  to  be  taken  literally— as  it  is 
where,  in  Rev  ,  xvilL,  13,  it  Englishes  <rw^a— 
or  else  figuratively.  But  waU,  ^Ukovo^,  oU^ik, 
and  vinip^rr^,  as  well,  are  there  represented  by 
"servant."  In  the  four  places  where  it  is 
qualified  by  "hired,"  a  free  servant,  in  dis- 
crimination from  a  bond,  is  clearly  intended, 
the  originals  being  §iur0tTb%  and  tiiaBiot,  the  for- 
mer of  which  is,  in  two  cases,  translated  by 
"hireling."  Ck)nsulting  brevity,  I  do  not  re- 
fer to  the  Old  Testament. 

Hired  man  I  have  not  traced  beyond  Wy- 
cllf,  who,  in  Jer.,  xlvi,  21,  and  again  in  St. 
Lukp,  XV.,  17,  19,  renders  mercenarH—tor  he 
followed  the  Vulgate~by  "hirid  men,"  "  hy- 
rid  men."  The  same  Latin  word,  in  the  singu- 
lar, he  renders.  In  St.  John,  x.,  12,  13,  by 
•»marchaunt"— glossed   by   "hyred   hyne"— 


strangely  giving  it,  on  etymological  grounds 
readily  conjectured,  a  sense  quite  at  variance 
with  that  of  "  marchantis,"  by  which,  in  Rev., 
xviii.,  3,  etc.,  he  naturally  renders  mercatores 
and  negotiatores.  In  Eling  James's  version  of 
the  Bible,  hired  msn  occurs  in  Jer.,  xlvi.,  21, 
and  nowhere  else.  Wyclif  has  "his  hirid 
place"  in  Acts,  xxviiL,  80. 

On  the  three  occasions  where  Wyclif  quali- 
fies "men"  by  "hirid,"  "hyrid,"  he  would, 
grammatically,  have  put  the  plural  forms, 
hiride,  hyride,  as  every  tiro  in  Old  English  is 
aware.  Can  he,  then,  have  designed,  by  his 
spelling,  a  reminder  of  hired-men,  "retain- 
ers," which,  in  all  probability,  still  had  some 
currency  in  his  time?  That  he  was  capable  of 
eccentricity  is  plain  from  his  perversion  of 
"  marchaunt,"  noted  above.  And  may  not  the 
Wyclif  MSS.  exhibit  hirid  men,  hyrid-menf 

Very  significantly,  unparalleled  as  are,  alike 
for  quantity  and  for  variety,  the  materials 
they  possess  in  illustration  of  our  language, 
both  Dr.  Murray,  editor-in-chief  of  the  Oxford 
English  Dictionary,  and  Professor  Wright, 
editor  of  the  Dialect  Dictionary  now  in  pre- 
paration, are  unable  to  lend  me  any  assistance, 
as  regards  quotations,  in  connexion  with  the 
terms  I  am  considering. 

Was  the  expression  hired  man  brought  over 
from  East  AngUa,  or  elsewhere,  by  English- 
men who  colonized  America  in  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  ?  Whether  it  was,  or 
was  not,  we  who  have  sprung  from  them,  in 
making  it;  uncontrasted  with  slave  or  with 
unpaid  helper,  synonymous,  pleonastically, 
with  servant-man  or  man-servant,  have  dis- 
tinctly defiected  its  sense  from  any  which,  so 
far  as  appears,  has,  in  any  age,  belonged  to  it 
in  the  old  country.  The  fact  is  certainly  note- 
worthy. 

Whether  Dr.  Holmee^s  restriction,  in  Elsie 
Venner,  of  the  term  hired  men  to  servants  of 
American  birth  has  obtained  only  of  late 
years,  or  otherwise  than  locally,  could  be  as- 
certained without  difficulty.  F.  H. 

Marlksford,  EifOULND,  Karch  29.  1896. 


Notes. 


DoDD,  Mead  &  Co.  have  in  press  *  Historical 
Briefs,*  by  James  Schouler,  the  historian  of  the 
United  States.  Polk's  Diary,  of  which  he  has 
already  given  a  foretaste  that  whets  the  appe- 
tite, with  essays  on  Lafayette  in  America,  Our 
Diplomacy  during  the  Rebellion,  and  Historl- 
cal  Industry,  Style,  Grouping,  Researches, 
Testimony,  etc.,  will  figure  in  the  contents. 

D.  Appleton  &  Co.'s  spring  announcements 
include  *  With  the  Fathers,*  studies  in  American 
history  by  Prof.  John  B.  McMaster;  *  Wages 
and  Capital,'  by  Prof.  F.  W.  Taussig;  *  Genius 
and  Degeneration,'  by  Dr.  William  Hirsch; 
^The  Intellectual  and  Moral  Development  of 
the  Child,'  by  Gabriel  Compayr^;  *Our  Juve- 
nile Offenders,'  by  W.  Douglas  Morrison;  'A 
B  C  of  Sense-Perception,'  by  William  J.  Eck- 
off ;  ^  Familiar  Trees,'  by  F.  Schuyler  Biathews; 
*  Ice  Work,  Present  and  Past,'  by  T.  G.  Bon- 
ney;  *  The  Reds  of  the  Midi,'  translated  from 
the  French  of  F^lix  Gras  by  Mrs.  Catharine  A. 
Janvier;  *  The  Seats  of  the  Mighty,'  a  romance 
of  Old  Quebec,  by  Gilbert  Parker  ;  and  *  His 
Honor,  and  a  Lady,'  by  Mrs.  Everard  Cotes. 

A  complete  edition  of  the  works  of  Robert 
Browning,  in  two  volumes,  with  fresh  histori- 
cal and  biographical  notes ;  an  annotated  edi- 
tion, under  Canon  Ainger's  care,  of  Hood's 
Poems ;  a  translation  (in  connection  with  J.  M. 
Dent  &  Co.)  of  the  works  of  Alphonse  Daudet, 


illustrated,  in  monthly  volumes  beginning 
with  *  Tartarin  of  Tarascon ' ;  and  Comenius's 

*  Great  Didactic,'  are  to  be  undertaken  by 
Macmillan  &  Co.  Mr.  John  La  Farge  will  be 
the  subject  of  the  next  Portfolio  monograph, 
from  the  pen  of  Miss  Cecilia  Waem. 

A  Scotch  novel,  *  Robert  Urquhart,'  by  Ga- 
briel Setoun,  will  be  published  directly  by 
Frederick  Wame  &  Co. 

Lee   &   Shepard,    Boston,    will  bring   out 

*  What  They  Say  in  New  England:  A  Book  of 
Signs,  Sayings,  and  Superstitions,'  by  Clifton 
Johnson;  'Studies  in  the  Thought- World  of 
Practical  Mind  Art,'  by  Henry  Wood;  'The 
Mystery  of  Handwriting,'  by  J.  Harrington 
Keene  ("Grapho");  'Patmos,  or  the  UnveU- 
ing,'  by  the  Rev.  Charles  Beecher;  'Public 
Speaking  and  Reading,'  by  E.  N.  Kirby;  'Bos- 
ton Charades,'  by  Herbert  Ingalls;  '  Gymna»- 
tlcs,'by  W.  A.  Stecher;  *  Maria  MiteheU:  Life 
and  Correspondence,'  by  her  sister,  Phoebe 
M.  Kendall;  and  '  The  History  of  the  Hutohin- 
son  Family,'  by  John  Wallace  Hutehinson,  with 
an  Introduction  by  the  late  Frederick  Doug- 
lass. 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.  have  nearly  ready 
'  Tom  Grogan,'  by  F.  Hopkinson  Smith,  with 
illustrations  by  C.  S.  Reinhart. 

D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.  will  soon  issue  'The 
School  Mftfi^iftl  of  Classical  Music,'  compiled 
by  H.  W.  Hart,  with  biographical  sketches. 

Lemcke  &  Buechner  have  in  preparation 
an  exhaustive  Hebrew  and  Chaldee  Concord- 
ance  of  the  Books  of  the  Old  Testament 
('  Veteris  Testamenti  Concordantise  HebraicsB 
atque  Chaldaicsa '),  by  Salomon  Mandel- 
kem;  an  English  edition  of  Hugo  Winck. 
ler's  'tel-Amama  Letters,'  with  a  glos- 
sary;  a  critical  edition  of  the  Septuagint; 
'Der  Babylonische  Talmud,'  complete  text 
with  variant  readings,  translation  and  notes; 
and  (in  connection  with  the  Bibliographisches 
Institut  of  Leipzig)  a  'Geschichto  d^  Eng- 
lischen  Litteratar,'  from  the  earliest  times  to 
the  present  day,  by  Prof.  Dr.  Richard  Wftlker, 
illustrated  with  150  cuts,  25  colored  tables,  11 
facsimile  inserts,  ete.,  to  be  published  in  four- 
teen instalments.  A  welcome  resort  to  wood- 
engraving  is  noticed  in  the  excellent  cuts  of 
the  prospectus  and  of  Part  L 

The  Muses'  Library  (London  :  Lawrence  & 
BuUen;  New  York:  Scribners)  now  includes  a 
complete  two-volume  edition  of  the  poems  of 
Keats,  prepared  by  Mr.  G.  Thorn  Drury.  The 
"feature  "of  the  edition  is  the  "Critical  In- 
troduction" by  Mr.  Robert  Bridges.  This  is 
the  most  original  and  suggestive  essay  on 
Keats  that  has  been  written  for  a  long  time, 
and  will  repay  careful  reading  and  even  some 
study.  It  is  admirably  frank,  not  hesitating 
to  speak  out  in  blame  as  well  as  in  praise,  and 
it  shows  abundant  power  of  discrimination. 
The  sections  on  allegory  are  perhaps  too  fine- 
spun, however,  and  the  discussion  of  Keats's 
philosophy  of  beauty  would  in  all  probability 
astonish  the  poet  himself.  The  style  of  the  es- 
say is  surprisingly  shapeless. 

Mr.  H.  Buxton  Forman's  new  edition  of 
'The  Letters  of  Keats'  (London:  Reeves  & 
Turner ;  New  York  :  Scribners)  is,  on  some 
accounts,  the  best  that  has  yet  appeu^d.  It  is 
absolutely  complete,  so  far  as  materials  are 
known  to  exist,  and  therefore  includes  all  the 
corresi)ondence  that  has  come  to  light  since 
Mr.  Ck>lvin's  edition  was  published  in  1891. 
The  letters  to  Fanny  Brawne  are  not  put  by 
themselves,  but  are  inserted,  so  far  as  poasible^ 
in  their  appropriate  places,  chronologically. 
The  advantages  of  this  arrangement  are  ob. 
vious,  and  not  the  least  of  them  is  that  the 
reader  is  not  forced  to  read  these  letters  (whloh 


April  1 6,  1896] 


THe   N"atioii. 


307 


ought  to  have  been  bnrned)  seriatim.  For 
the  oarefoUiess  of  the  editing,  Mr.  Forman's 
name  is  a  sufficient  warrant.  The  type  is 
notably  dear  and  of  good  size,  and  the  yalne 
and  interest  of  the  volume  are  enhanced  by  a 
portrait  and  by  **  twenty-four  contemporary 
▼lews  of  places  visited  by  Keats.** 

Turgeneff*s  *  Smoke  *  has  been  added  to  the 
series  of  the  Russian  master  translated  by 
Mrs.  Oamett  (Macmillan).  Comparison  with 
the  version  for  some  time  familiar  to  our 
public  with  Holt*s  imprint  shows  no  great 
difference  in  substance ;  in  evenness  and  fine- 
ness of  quality  one  may,  perhaps,  prefer  the 
Utter. 

That  Cuba  has  a  strong  case  against  Spain, 
on  the  charge  of  misgovemment,  cannot  easily 
be  denied,  whatever  one  may  say  of  causes,  re- 
sponsibility, or  remedies.  Much  of  the  evi- 
dence on  which  the  Autonomists  rest  their  case 
may  be  found  in  Raimundo  Cabrera's  *  Cuba 
and  the  Cubans'  (Philadelphia:  LevytypeCo.)t 
albeit  set  forth  with  the  characteristic  vice  of 
Spanish  writing— a  fatal  turn  for  rhetoric; 
lirismo  is  the  Spanish  word  for  it.  This  is  a 
useful  and  timely  book, though  stiffly  translated 
and  carelessly  printed.  A  more  telling  work 
in  the  same  line  is  Rafael  M.  Merchan's  *  Cuba: 
Justiflcaci6n  de  su  Ouerra  de  Independencia' 
(Bogota:  La  Luz),  We  know  no  other  volume 
which  puts  the  matter  so  temperately  and, 
therefore,  so  powerfully. 

The  contents  of  the  third  and  fourth  num- 
bers of  Earl  Strecker's  '  Das  Bismarck-Muse- 
um *  (Berlin  :  Pauli)  do  not  differ  in  kind  from 
those  of  the  preceding  ones.  There  are  nine, 
teen  plates  (Nos.  23-12),  consisting  chiefly  of 
diplomas  of  honorary  citizenship  of  various 
German  towns,  addresses  presented  by  clubs 
and  other  societies,  and  similar  testimonials  of 
esteem.  The  most  original  design  is  perhaps 
the  **humoristic  fan,"  representing  a  "Eu- 
ropean concert"  of  the  great  Powers,  at  which 
Bismarck  directs  the  orchestra  of  statesmen, 
and  wields  the  baton  with  remarkable  verve 
and  vigor  before  an  audience  composed  of  the 
sovereigns  of  Europe.  It  was  the  gift  of  Herr 
Zographo  of  Baden-Baden. 

Andrd  Theuriet^s  *  Annies  de  Printemps' 
forms  the  ninth  volume  of  the  daintily  printed 
"Collection  Ollendorff  illustr^e"  (Paris:  Ol- 
lendorff). It  is  a  partial  biography,  covering 
the  early  years  of  the  poet,  novelist,  and  dra- 
matist—few writers  nowadays  confining  them- 
selves to  one  tnranch  of  literature— and  in  many 
of  its  pages  has  the  captivating  charm  of  Theu- 
riet's  best  work.  But  it  carries  us  on  merely 
to  the  time  when  *■  In  Memoriam '  was  accept- 
ed by  the  Revue  dee  Deux  Ifondes— that  is, 
when  the  author's  literary  career  began. 

'  Contesd'  Hiver,'  by  Alphonse  Daudet,  forms 
one  of  the  numbers  of  the  beautifully  printed 
and  illustrated  "Nouvelle  CoUection  Guil- 
laume"  (Paris  :  Ouillaume). 

^IlDuomo  di  Modena:  Notizie  Storiche  ed 
Artisticbe,'  by  Cav.  Antonio  Dondi  (Modena), 
contains  a  collection  of  documents,  alphabeti- 
caUy  arranged,  which,  though  in  the  first  place 
dealing  with  the  cathedral  of  Modena  (one  of 
the  most  venerable  and  fascinating  in  Italy, 
by  the  way),  will  be  found  invaluable  by  all 
students  of  mediaeval  and  Renaissance  art  in 
ItiUy. 

*  Gli  Affreschi  della  Libreria  del  Duomo  de 
Siena '  (Siena)  is  a  neat  pamphlet  containing  a 
reprint  of  old  descriptions  and  beliotype  re- 
productions of  the  famous  frescoes  by  Pintu- 
ricchio,  wherein  are  recounted  the  deeds  of 
that  oaptiTating  adventurer,  diplomat,  and 
prelate.  Pope  Pius  IL 

Another  pamphlet  deaerving  attention  is  an 


admirable  catalogue  raisonni  of  the  various 
works  by  Ambrogio  Borgognone — after  Fop- 
pa,  the  greatest  and  in  every  way  the  most 
delightful  of  Milanese  painters.  We  owe  this 
compilation  to  Signer  Luca  Beltrami  (Milan  : 
Hoepli),  and  it  is  the  first  of  a  series  that  will 
include  all  the  Lombard  masters. 

The  last  number  for  1896  of  the  Arohivio 
Storico  deWArte  contains  its  usual  quantity  of 
valuable  contributions.  Signer  Frizzoni  writes 
about  the  recently  dispersed  Scarpa  O>llection, 
a  pilgrimage  to  which,  at  the  charming  Vene- 
tian village  of  Motta  on  the  green  Livenza,  used 
to  be  one  of  the  pleasantest  tasks  that  fell  to 
the  students'  lot.  Of  the  two  roost  famous  pic- 
tures of  this  collection,  Mantegna's  "  St.  Sebas- 
tian "  remains,  it  appears,  with  Baron  Fran- 
chetti  in  Venice,  while  the  portrait  of  Raphael 
by  Sebastiano  del  Piombo  has  gone  to  join  the 
many  masterpieces  at  Buda-Pesth.  Signor  An- 
selmi  gives  an  account  of  the  various  glazed 
terracottas  by  the  Delia  Robbiainthe  province 
of  Pesaro-Urbino.  Signor  CJarotti  calls  atten- 
tion to  the  gorgeous  polyptych  which  Cardinal 
della  Revere,  afterwards  Pope  Julius  II.,  or- 
dered  of  the  great  Lombard  painter  Vincenzo 
Foppa,  for  his  own  native  town  of  Savons, 
where,  as  a  child,  he  roamed  the  streets  little 
better  than  a  beggar.  All  these  papers  are 
copiously  illustrated.  Finally,  Signor  Fabri- 
czy  wins  our  gratitude  by  extracting  for  us  the 
few  pearls — and  even  these  are  not  of  great 
price  I— from  the  heap  piled  up  by  German  cri- 
ticism during  1894. 

Pan  goes  a  great  way  to  justify  its  hitherto 
rather  futile  existence  by  an  article  in  its 
March  number  from  the  pen  of  Dr.  Bode,  in 
which  we  are  made  acquainted  for  the  first 
time  with  a  young  decorative  artist  of  the 
highest  genius,  Hermann  Obrist.  Obrist*8 
talent  has  thus  far  most  clearly  revealed  itself 
in  his  embroideries.  Even  the  reproduc- 
tions, excellent  in  their  way,  but  yet  inade- 
quate, surprise  us  with  the  wonderful  possi- 
bilities they  open  out  for  this  exquisite  but 
usually  petty  art.  Dr.  Bode  ends  his  paper 
with  a  eulogy  on  our  own  industrial  art,  and 
on  homes  such  as  Mr.  Tiffany's  and  Mr.  Have- 
meyer^s,  more  than  fiattering  to  our  national 
vanity;  but  in  all  that  differentiates  decora- 
tion  from  furnishing,  a  great  from  a  minor 
art,  we  have  as  yet  produced  little  of  such 
quality  as  is  manifested  in  Hermann  Obrist's 
best  embroideries. 

We  have  received  the  large  and  elaborately 
illustrated  catalogue  of  the  Schoenlank  Col- 
lection,  which  is  to  be  sold  at  Cologne  during 
the  present  month,  and  we  confess  that  it  is 
not  inspiring.  The  bulk  of  the  ooUection  is 
the  work  of  third  and  fifth-rate  Dutch  and 
Flemish  painters,  and  of  the  seventy-odd  il- 
lustrations hardly  half-a-dozen  give  the  idea 
of  an  original  interesting  in  any  other  than  an 
archsBological  way.  Of  most  of  the  pictures 
one  is  tempted  to  say  that  it  is  of  no  im- 
portance whether  they  are  or  are  not  genuine, 
while  of  the  authenticity  of  the  few  that  are 
attritmted  to  really  great  names  one  has  grave 
doubts.  Of  courte  one  cannot  definitely  judge 
them  without  careful  study  of  the  originals, 
but  we  risk  little  in  saying  that  few  of  these 
pictures  would  have  created  a  reputation  for 
the  painters  to  whom  they  are  assigned, 
while  the  so-called  Titian  not  only  is  a  very 
bad  picture,  but  is  bad  in  a  way  and  to  an  ex- 
tent that  render  its  attribution  fantastic. 

Members  of  the  psychological  departments 
in  some  of  our  universities,  and  others,  en- 
gaged upon  the  subject  of  "  child-study,"  will 
find  matter  of  interest  in  an  article  in  the  Pae- 
dagogium  for  January  (Leipzig),  by  Dr.  Al- 


fred Spitzner,  reporting  on  behalf  of  the  exeou- 
tive  committee  of  a  "  congress  for  hygiene  and 
demography."  Under  the  title  **  Geistige  Uber- 
auRtrengung  in  den  Schulec:  Nervosit&t,"  the 
writer  treats  of  mental  and  physical  defects  of 
pupils  in  the  public  schools,  their  relation, 
causes,  etc.  The  question  to  what  extent  the 
school  can  be  held  responsible  for  the  existing 
evil  is  discussed  with  frankness  and  good  judg- 
ment, and  the  hasty  conclusions  and  sweeping 
assertions  concerning  th'is  difficult  problem  on 
the  part  of  many  physicians  meet  with  just 
condemnation.  The  writer  also  discusses  seve- 
ral methods  of  experimental  school  hygiene 
which,  though  perhaps  of  uncertain  value,  de- 
serve the  attention  of  specialists  in  this  impor- 
tant field  who  are  not  already  familiar  with 
them. 

The  distribution  of  the  Armenians  in  Asia 
Minor  and  Transcaucasia  is  the  subject  of  the 
principal  article  in  PetermanfCs  Mitteilungen 
for  January.  The  facts  are  mostly  derived 
from  a  remarkable  work  recently  published  in 
Paris,  *La  Turquie  d'Asie,'  which  gives  a  geo- 
graphical, administrative,  and  statistical  ac- 
count of  each  Asiatic  province  of  the  empire. 
The  author,  Vital  Cuinet,  a  general  secretary 
of  the  Ottoman  Bank,  has  devoted  his  leisure 
and  means  for  the  past  twelve  years  to  the  col- 
lection  of  information  through  correspondents 
in  every  important  place.  The  services  of 
these  persons  he  cordially  recognizee  in  his  pre- 
face, but  adds  that  to  name  them  would  be  a 
poor  return,  as  it  would  inevitably  injure  them 
with  the  Turkish  officials.  In  the  nine  Arme- 
nian provinces,  according  to  the  figures  given 
by  Cuinet,  the  total  population  in  1890  was  al- 
most exactly  6,000.(X)0,  of  whom  4,458,250  were 
Mohammedans,  913,875  Armenians,  and  632,750 
Greeks,  Nestoriaos,  Chaldeans,  Jacobites,  and 
Syrians.  In  the  five  provinces  in  which  the 
Armenians  are  most  numerous,  they  had  only 
34  per  cent.,  while  the  Mohammedans  had  60 
per  cent,  of  the  population.  They  were  in  a 
majority  in  only  nine  kaeae  of  the  two  pro- 
vinces of  Van  and  Bitlis.  In  Transcaucasia 
they  form  a  fifth  part  of  the  total  population, 
numbering  958,371,  or  slightly  more  than  in 
Asia  Minor.  They  live  mostly  in  the  govern- 
ments of  Tiflis,  Erivan,  and  EUsabethpol.  An 
interesting  and  valuable  map,  by  the  editor, 
Dr.  Supan,  accompanies  the  article,  and  shows 
by  shading  and  coloring  not  only  the  distribu- 
tion of  the  Armenians  in  the  region,  but  that 
of  the  other  Christians.  To  this  number,  also, 
Dr.  Franz  Boas  contributes  a  colored  map 
showing  the  distribution  of  the  different  In- 
dian languages  and  dialects  in  British  Co- 
lumbia. 

In  the  February  number  of  the  same  periodi- 
cal Mr.  A.  Lindenkohl  gives  some  of  the  results 
of  observations  of  the  temperature  and  density 
of  the  waters  of  the  Gulf  Stream  and  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico.  There  is  also  a  sketch  of  the  Hinter- 
land  of  the  (German  colony  of  Togo  in  West 
Africa,  with  some  useful  suggestions  as  to  the 
best  method  of  developing  its  great  resources. 
A  detailed  account  of  recent  Russian  explora- 
tions in  northwestern  China  is  interesting 
mainly  as  an  indication  of  the  activity  dis- 
played both  by  the  Government  and  by  scien- 
tific men  and  merchants  in  opening  up  this 
region  to  Russian  influences.  A  table  of  the 
population  of  the  principal  towns  in  the  Oer^ 
man  Empire  on  December  3,  1895,  ezhibitoina 
striking  way  the  popular  movement  towards 
the  cities.  There  are  now  lOa  towns  with  more 
than  30,000  inhabitants,  and  28  with  more  than 
100.000.  Since  1890,  Hamburg  and  Munich 
have  gained  55,000  each  in  round  numbers, 
Berlin  100,000»   and  the  remaining  26  large 


308 


Tlie    N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1607 


citiethave  each  increased  in  similar  propor- 
tions. The  editor,  in  referring  to  the  reported 
arriyal  of  Nansen  in  Eastern  Siberia,  calls  at- 
tention to  the  fact  that  the  first  news  of 
NordenskiOld's  reaching  Bering  Straits  in  1878 
came,  not  from  the  voyager  himself  nor  from 
the  Rossian  officials,  but  from  the  Siberian 
merchant  Sibiriakoif .  In  this  case  the  Vega 
reached  the  straits  and  went  into  winter-quar- 
ters on  September  28,  but  the  news  was  not  re- 
ceiyed  in  Europe  till  May  16,  1879. 

From  April  27  to  May  2  wiU  be  held  the 
spring  session  of  the  Chicago  Commons  School 
of  Social  Economics. 

—Volume  sixteen  of  the  Transactions  of 
the  American  Society  of  Mechanical  Engi- 
neers contains,  in  addition  to  the  usual  papers 
on  engine-testing  and  on  the  strength  of  ma- 
terials, a  description,  by  Mr.  Fred.  W.  Taylor, 
of  his  piece-rate  system  of  paying  wages  which 
has  been  in  satisfactory  operation  for  ten  years 
in  the  works  of  a  Philadelphia  steel  company 
where  a  thousand  men  are  employed.  Mr. 
Taylor  speaks  from  abundant  experience  in  de- 
claring that  the  ordinary  piece-work  system 
of  payment  is  no  improvement  upon  the  de- 
moralizing day-work  plan  of  paying  men  ac- 
cording to  the  positions  they  fill,  and  not  ac- 
cording to  their  individual  efficiencies.  The 
introduction  of  piece-payment  does  at  first 
quicken  the  pace  of  the  better  men,  and  thus 
increases  output  But,  **  after  the  job  has  been 
repeated  a  number  of  times  at  the  more 
rapid  rate,  the  manufacturer  thinks  that  he 
also  should  begin  to  share  in  the  gain,  and 
therefore  reduces  the  price  of  the  job  to  a 
figure  at  which  the  workman,  although  work- 
ing harder,  earns,  perhaps,  but  little  more 
than  he  originally  did  when  on  day  work." 
The  workman  soon  learns  to  foresee  the  cut 
and  to  guard  against  it.  Thus  "the  ordinary 
pieoe-work  system  involves  a  permanent  an- 
tagonism between  employers  and  men,  and  a 
certainty  of  punishment  for  each  workman 
who  reaches  a  high  rate  of  efficiency.  .  .  . 
Even  the  best  workmen  are  forced  continually 
to  act  the  part  of  hyi)ocrites  to  hold  their  own 
in  the  struggle  against  the  encroachments  of 
their  employers.''  This  is  the  testimony  not  of 
a  walking  delegate,  but  of  a  responsible  em- 
ployer. 

—The  remedy  consists  of  two  parts.  First, 
each  job  now  performed  is  analyzed  into  its 
elementary  operations,  and  the  rate  of  pay- 
ment for  the  whole  is  found  by  adding  the 
rates  which  have,  as  a  result  of  experience, 
been  assigned  to  the  constituent  elements.  It 
is  thus  made  possible  at  once  to  fix,  by  similar 
analysis,  a  proportionate  piece-rate  for  any 
novel  job  about  to  be  undertaken.  This  coun- 
teracts the  tendency  of  men  to  **mark  time" 
on  each  new  job  in  hope  of  securing  a  high 
piece-rate  for  it  and  subsequently  nursing  their 
**  soft  snap."  The  second  essential  feature  of 
Mr.  Taylor's  plan  is  a  system  of  "differential 
rates"  of  payment,  designed  to  afford  high 
wages  for  maximum  efficiency,  and  to  reduce 
wages  more  than  proportionately  for  any  fall- 
ing off  from  the  maximum.  For  example,  sup- 
pose a  good  man  can  turn  out  ten  pieces  per 
day,  wages  are  then  fixed  at  thirty-five  cents 
each  for  ten  pieces  and  twenty-five  cents  each 
for  any  less  number.  Under  this  system,  quan- 
tity of  work  has.  been  increased  and  quality 
improved ;  the  men,  conscious  that  they  are 
treated  as  individuals,  have  become  more 
cheerful  and  more  truthful ;  and  although  the 
company  has  never  forbidden  its  men  to  join 
labor  organizations,  its  business  has  not  been 


interrupted  by  any  of  the  strikes  that,  during 
the  past  ten  years,  have  embarrassed  the  steel 
industry  generally.  The  best  men  see  that  the 
success  of  a  labor  organization  must  mean  the 
lowering  of  their  wages  to  the  amount  that  in- 
ferior men  can  earn,  and  they  refuse  to  join. 
Such,  epitomized,  is  Mr.  Taylor's  account  of 
his  **step  toward  partial  solution  of  the  labor 
problem."  It  deserves  to  be  noted  that,  from 
the  establishment  of  the  system  in  1884  to  the 
summer  of  1893,  no  cut  was  ever  made  in 
piece-rates.  The  men  found  that  "it  was  the 
intention  of  the  firm  to  allow  them  to  earn 
permanently  at  the  rate  of  $8.50,"  and  they 
did  it. 

—In  the  latest  number  of  the  Hittorische 
Zeitschrift,  founded  and  formerly  conducted  by 
the  late  Prot  von  Sybel,  the  present  editor, 
Heinrioh  von  Treitschke,  calls  upon  the  Prus- 
sian Gk>vemment  to  publish  the  TBstamenU 
Politiques  of  Frederick  the  Great  of  1752  and 
1768,  which  are  now  preserved  in  the  secret 
cabinet  of  the  state  archives,  and  thus  render 
ed  inaccessible  to  scholars.  After  tile  histo- 
riographer of  the  House  of  Brandenburg,  Prof. 
Preuss,  had  finished  his  'Biography  of  Fred 
erick  the  Great,'  and  other  minor  contributions 
to  the  life  of  this  monarch,  he  was  authorized 
to  prepare,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Berlin 
Academy  of  Sciences,  a  new  and  complete  edi- 
tion of  the  'Oeuvres  de  Fr6d6ric  le  Grand,' 
which  appeared  in  1846-'57  in  thirty  sUtely 
and  sumptuous  volumes.  But,  although  this 
work  was  nominally  complete,  it  was  actually 
far  from  being  so,  since  it  did  not  include  the 
political  correspondence  and  many  official  docu- 
ments, which  it  was  deemed  undesirable  to  pub- 
lish. Among  the  most  important  omissions 
were  the  two  "Political  Testaments"  above 
menUoned.  In  1842  Frederick  William  IV.  re- 
ferred the  question  of  their  publication  to  the 
ministers  Eichhorn,  Savigny,  and  Heinrich 
von  BQlow,  who  decided  unanimously  against 
it.  The  papers  were  also  submitted  to  Alex- 
ander von  Humboldt  and  the  historian  Ranks, 
both  of  whom  feared  lest  they  should  give  of- 
fence, not  so  much  to  France  as  to  Austria, 
and  especially  to  Russia,  and  thus  create  for- 
eign complications.  Ranks  expressed  the  opin- 
ion that  they  should  be  printed  entirely  or  not 
at  all.  More  than  half  a  century  has  elapsed 
since  these  decisions  were  given,  and  it  is  now 
believed  that  the  documents  in  question  ndght 
be  published  without  causing  the  slightest  in- 
ternational irritation.  They  would,  doubtless, 
throw  new  light  upon  the  origin  and  conduct 
of  the  Seven  Tears'  War  and  other  historical 
events,  as  well  as  upon  important  questions  of 
economical,  financial,  and  military  adminis- 
tration and  diplomacy. 

—The  many  expressions  of  disappointment 
at  the  policy  of  the  new  Tsar  that  have  been 
heard  of  late  give  a  peculiar  interest  to  an  ar- 
ticle in  a  recent  number  of  the  Russian  Liberal 
weekly,  Nedyelya,  on  political  and  economic 
life  in  Russia  during  1895.  While  admitting 
that  few  actual  public  reforms  have  been  ac- 
complished, the  writer  stakes  a  very  hopeful 
view  of  the  future.  He  points  to  the  Empe- 
ror's expressed  statements  of  the  necessity  of 
the  development  of  national  enlightenment 
and  to  the  actual  steps  already  taken  in  that 
direction.  Among  these  he  mentions  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  medical  institute  for  women 
and  the  stipendiums  offered  to  authors  and 
scientists  by  the  Academy  of  Science.  Impor- 
tant changes  have  been  made  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice,  leading  to  far  greater  equali- 
ty before  the  law.    The  comparative  lack  of 


advance  in  communal  matters  is  explained  as 
being  due  to  unfortunate  economic  conditions, 
the  consideration  of  which  absorbed  public 
attention.  It  is  natural  that  Uie  writer,  being 
a  Russian,  should  dwell  with  satisfaction  on 
the  triumphs  of  Russia  in  the  diplomatic  field, 
especially  in  the  East.  The  doser  relations 
with  France,  too,  which  he  takes  more  serious- 
ly than  many  outside  of  France  are  inclined  to 
do,  are  regarded  as  promising  much  for  the 
infiuence  of  his  country  in  European  politics. 
After  mentioning  the  firiendly  feelings  of  Rus- 
sia towards  the  United  States,  he  doses  by 
prophesying  that  in  the  not  distant  future 
Russia  will  reach  a  great,  leading  international 
position,  the  main  object  of  which  wOl  be  the 
preservation  of  the  peace  of  the  world. 

—The  Berlingahe  Tidende  of  Copenhagen 
contained  recently  an  interesting  account,  by 
Prof.  Otto  Jespersen,  of  a  visit  to  the  school 
for  deaf-mutes  at  Nyborg,  Ftknen.  This  instil 
tution  occupies  a  peculiar  position  among 
Danish  institutions  of  its  kind,  from  the  fact 
that  it  is  wholly  a  day  school,  its  pupils  being 
surrounded  out  of  class  hours  by  persons  of 
normal  speech,  which,  as  the  author  states,  is 
an  important  condition  in  their  preparation 
for  active  life.  Moreover,  no  children  oon- 
genitally  deaf  are  accepted.  It  indudes  both 
those  who  have  become  totally  deaf  as  a  result 
of  sickness  and  those  who  have  only  partially 
lost  their  hearing.  The  artides,  of  which  there 
are  two,  do  not  attempt  a  detailed  account  of 
the  establishment,  but  confine  themsdves  whol- 
ly to  a  description  of  the  phonetic  side  of  the 
subject,  on  which  no  one  in  Denmark  is  better 
fitted  to  speak  than  the  author.  Prof.  Jesper- 
sen discusses  some  of  the  peculiar  difficulties 
connected  with  the  teaching  of  phonetics  to 
deaf  mutes.  The  most  interesting  of  these  to 
a  foreign  reader  is  that  of  the  so-called  glottal 
catch,  as  this  sound  is  not  found  in  any  other 
language  than  Danish,  where  it  plays  a  wwy 
important  part.  So  dlfllcult  is  the  sound  that 
foreigners  leam  to  produce  it  only  after  long 
practice,  and  frequenUy  not  even  then.  Prof. 
Jespersen  found  the  results  in  this  direction 
truly  remarkable,  the  method,  which  is  not 
described,  being  original  with  the  director, 
Mr.  Forchhanmier.  Another  difficulty  noted, 
which  is  not  peculiar  to  Danish,  is  to  teach  the 
accentuation  of  words.  Formerly  no  attempt 
was  made  in  Denmark  to  distinguish  between 
accented  and  unaccented  syllables  in  teaching 
deaf  mutes,  nor  is  the  new  method  used  in  the 
higher  classes,  as  the  attempt  to  explain  it  to 
those  who  had  already  learned  to  speak  would, 
it  was  feared,  lead  to  confusion.  The  author 
found  that  the  speech  of  the  younger  pupils 
was  very  much  more  intelligible  than  that  of 
the  older  ones,  who  not  only  gave  either  the 
wrong  accent  or  none  at  all,  but  also  frequent- 
ly changed  tiie  sound  altogether.  In  order  to 
teach  tone  and  pitch,  the  absence  of  which  is 
generally  felt  to  be  a  disagreeable  feature  in 
the  speech  of  deaf  mutes,  Ifr.  Forchhanmier  has 
constructed  an  instrument  whidi  he  calls  the 
phonoscope.  It  can  be  used  by  seven  persons 
at  a  time,  who  of  course  do  not  disturb  one  an- 
other, as  they  cannot  hear. 

— M.  Edmond  de  Gonoourt^s  book  on  Ho- 
kusai,  the  great  Japanese  painter,  has  just 
appeared  in  Paris  (Charpentier).  Some  fore- 
tastes of  its  quality  had  already  been  offered, 
in  the  Revue  des  Retmea^  and  were  sufficient 
to  show  that  there  is  no  lack  in  it  of  the  bril^ 
liant  characteristics  of  its  author,  and  of  his 
passionate  love  of  art  and  of  things  Japansss. 
A  curious  story  is  connected  with  the  book. 


April  1 6,  1896] 


Th.e   N"atioii. 


309 


Among  the  ■tode&ts  of  Japaneee  art  no  one, 
porhapt,  has  boon  mora  laborioos,  or  ii  mora 
eompatont  at  a  criUe  and  mora  erudite,  than 
]L8.Biaff.  Although  Hokmai  (or,  ai  M.  Bing 
traaiUtaratet  the  name,  Hok'nl)  died  but  a 
little  more  than  fifty  yeara  ago,  few  traoee  of 
hie  life  remained.  Little  remained  of  him  ex- 
cept his  pictoree.  His  graTe,  even,  was  un- 
known, until  its  disoorery  through  M.  Bing's 
raeearchee.  liany  of  the  artistes  letters  haye 
by  the  same  means  been  brought  to  light.  In 
proeecuting  his  work,  M.  Bing  had  reeoune  to 
the  Bsrrioea  of  a  learned  Japanese  who  under- 
took the  task  of  Terifying  upon  the  qx>t  unoer- 
tain  facts,  and  of  **unraTelling  the  tangled 
skein  of  contradictory  informations.'*  This 
confidential  agent  was  a  certain  **  Jijima  Han- 
Juro,**  a  derer  fellow,  who  conceived  the  idea 
of  adding  to  the  liberal  wagee  Which  he  re- 
ceived from  M«  Bing  the  emoluments  of  an 
author.  As  the  facts  cleared  up,  and  the  re- 
sults of  his  researches  grew  to  the  bulk  of  a 
substantial  collection,  Jijima  published  them 
in  Japan  as  a  *  Life  of  Hok'sal*;  and  while  M. 
Bing  was  busily  occupied  in  codrdinsting  the 
reports  that  were  sent  him,  and  spending  much 
patient  labor  over  Hokusaf  s  life  and  works,  a 
copy  of  this  book  was  sent  across  Uie  ocean  to 
Faris,  where  a  translation  of  it  was  made  for 
the  benefit  of  M.  de  Ooncourt.  This  transla- 
tion Ooncourt  bought,  and  used  quite  inno- 
cently, so  far  as  appears,  since  he  was  ignorant 
of  its  origin.  M.  Bing  has  published  the  pre- 
face of  his  own  forthcoming  Tolume,  *  La  Vie 
et  rOeuvre  de  Hok*saI,'  in  the  Revus  BlanehSy 
together  with  a  note  which  tells  the  story  given 
above.  He  lays  no  blame  on  M.  de  Ooncourt, 
though  he  cannot  refrain  from  saying,  per- 
hape  with  a  little  irony  mingled  with  the  wit: 
•»Je  m*satime  trop  heureux  d'etre  en  posture 
tout  sp6cia1ement  propice  pour  attester  Tori, 
gine  authsntique  de  Fhistoire  relate  dans  le 
volume  Ooncourt,  auquel  je  souhaite  de  plein 
ooBur  la  fortune  6clatante  qui  couronna  lee  plus 
brfllants  ouvrages  du  maitre  ^crivain."  M. 
Bing's  own  bocA  on  Hokusai,  which  may  be 
expected  to  be  much  more  learned  and  more 
thorough  than  that  of  M.  de  Ooncourt,  will 
eooQ  appear. 


THE  BEOniNINOS  OF  THE  UNIVERSI- 
TIES.-!. 

Tk€  Univ^nUUM  of  B^rope  <n  the  MiddU  Ag—. 
By  Hastings  Rashdall,  M.A.,  Fellow  and 
Lecturer  of  Hertford  College,  Oxford.  Ox- 
ford: Clarendon  Press;  New  York:  Blac- 
millan.  1806.  2  vols.,  8vo,  600,  882  pp. 
Ever  since  the  great  expansion  of  activity  at 
0<Htingen  a  century  ind  a  half  ago,  and  more 
particularly  since  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt 
started  the  University  of  Berlin  on  its  remark- 
able career,  the  universities  have  played  an  in. 
creasingly  important  part  In  modem  dvilinr 
tlon.  Both  in  Europe  and  in  America,  as  fac 
tors  in  institutlaoal  life  they  are  constantly  in 
the  public  eye,  and,  wliether  for  weal  or  for 
woe,  they  Influence  powerfully  the  convictions 
and  the  conduct  of  a  large  propc^tion  of  the 
leaden  of  each  generation.  This  condition 
has  come  about  very  gradually— so  gradually, 
indeed,  that  we  have  no  adequate  history  of  i^ 
and  no  widespread  knowledge  of  the  origin 
of  the  institution  iteelf,  the  uni- 


te the  *  EncydopaBdia  Britannica,'  and  by  Perry 
to  the  *  International  BncydopsBdia.'  So  far 
as  the  univenrities  of  Oermany  alone  are  con- 
cerned, we  have  an  ideal  sketch  by  Paulsen; 
but  there  is  no  treatment  equally  good  of  the 
whole  field.  Prof.  Laurie's  'Rise  and  Consti- 
tution of  the  Universities*  is  very  uncritical 
and  inaccurate.  Compayr6*s  *  Abelard  and  the 
Origin  of  the  Universitiee  *  is  much  the  best 
and.  most  authoritative  book  of  its  kind,  but 
its  scope  is  somewhat  restricted.  The  older 
works  of  Meiners,  Ifalden,  and  others  were 
written  before  the  wealth  of  material  now  at 
hand  was  accessible,  and  are  of  antiquarian 
interest  only.  It  is  to  Father  Denifle,  the  first 
volume  of  whoee  *  Die  Entstehung  der  Univer- 
sit&ten  dee  Mittelalters '  appeared  in  1885,  and 
to  Kaufmann,  who  began  the  publication  of 
his  ^Oeschichte  der  deutschen  Univerdt&ten  * 
in  1888,  that  we  must  look  for  scientiflc  weigh- 
ing of  all  the  evidence,  and  careful  presenta- 
tion of  all  the  facts  relating  to  the  origin  and 
early  history  of  the  university  movement.  Un- 
fortunately the  work  of  both  Denlfie  and  Kauf- 
mann  has  been  interrupted,  and  it  is  impossible 
to  predict  when  their  remaining  volumes  will 


The  really  authoritative  literature  on  the 
origin  and  development  of  the  universitiee  is 
Tsry  recent  and  very  incomplete.  Scholarly 
and  accurate  surveys,  though  neceesarily  much 
€<mpreaied,  are  thoee  contributed  by  MulUnger 


The  publication  of  Mr.  Rashdall's  history  has 
been  eagerly  awaited,  especially  since  Mr. 
Oladstooe^s  enthusiastic  reference  to  it  in  his 
Romanes  Lecture  of  1892.  It  has  grown  out  of 
an  Oxford  prize  essay  written  in  1888,  and  is 
entitled  by  its  scope,  its  vast  research,  and  its 
scientific  method  to  take  rank  with  the  works 
of  Denifie  and  Kauf  mann,  to  both  of  whom, 
indeed,  but  particularly  the  former,  Mr.  Rash- 
dall owes  much.  He  has  also  availed  himself 
of  the  immense  mass  of  ofllcial  and  historical 
matter  relating  to  particular  universities  that 
has  seen  the  light  during  the  past  twenty-five 
years.  Indeed,  Bir.  Rashdall's  bibliographical 
notes  alone  are  of  the  greatest  value,  and 
would  amply  justify  publication.  No  impor- 
tant omission  of  any  kind,  save  of  Compayr^'s 
excellent  volume,  mentioned  above,  has  been 
noted  in  them. 

The  educational  beginnings  of  the  universi- 
ties are  readily  traceable  to  the  9choU»  exte- 
riores  of  the  monasteries;  their  institutional 
origin  goes  back  to  the  medisBval  guilds.  Cas- 
sian,  St.  Benedict,  Alcuio,  and  Hrabanus 
bttilded  more  wisely  than  they  knew.  Their 
cloister  schools  were  resorted  to  by  numbers  of 
students  who  had  no  intention  of  becoming 
monks,  and  for  them  a  special  class  or  depart- 
ment, $chola  €xUrior,  was  organised.  These 
schoolB  developed  with  somewhat  more  free- 
dom than  the  Behola  iiUeriores,  which  prepar- 
ed pupils  specifically  for  a  monastic  life.  As  a 
result,  there  began  to  appear  in  the  tenth  and 
eleventh  centuries— first  in  Italy,  then  in 
France  and  England— a  class  of  men,  well 
trained  and  well  educated  according  to  the 
standards  of  the  time,  who  were  not  restricted 
to  the  monasteries,  and  who  were  able  and  not 
unwilling  to  make  teaching  their  life-work. 
These  magittri  or  $chola$Hci  migrated  from 
place  to  place,  giving  lectures  and  presiding  at 
disputations.  As  their  reputations  spread,  and 
groupe  of  scholars  followed  them  about,  these 
masters  and  their  followers  were  invited  hither 
and  yon  by  bishops,  abbots,  and  princee.  Their 
learning  and  infinenoe  became  intemationaL 
The  leading  teachers  of  the  time  gradually 
gravitated  to  certain  centres^  and  in  Uie  course 
of  a  century  or  two  several  of  them,  often 
many,  were  to  be  found  teaching  in  one  town 
or  near  one  nM>nastery.  Bologna,  Paris,  and 
Montpellier  were  such  centres,  and  at  each  one 
of  these  placss  there  appear  to  have  been  a 
number  of  masten  and  scholars  without  any 


relation  to  each  other.  It  is  doubtless  with  this 
development  in  mind  that  Cardinal  Newman 
claimed  for  Charlemagne  the  glory  and  honor 
of  conmiencing  the  university  movement,  and 
wrote  that  "  whether  his  school  at  Paris  be 
called  a  university  or  not,  he  laid  down  princi- 
ples of  which  a  university  is  the  result,  in  that 
he  aimed  at  educating  all  classes  and  undertook 
all  subjects  of  teaching.** 

The  theory  of  Savigny  that  a  university 
came  into  exiBtence  whenever  a  distinguished 
teacher  attracted  to  himself  a  large  number  of 
scholars,  is  suggestive  and  partly  true;  but,  as 
Denifie  has  shown,  it  is  Insufficient  to  account 
for  all  the  facts.  Mr.  Radidall's  treatment 
proceeds  upon  the  same  assumption.  A  method 
of  instruction  different  from  that  practised  in 
the  lower  schools,  and  the  possession  bj  the 
students  and  masters  of  certain  privileges, 
were  the  marks  of  the  developed  university. 
The  method,  so  far  at  least  as  Paris  and  its 
imitators  are  concerned,  is  due  largely  to 
Abelard,  who,  as  Mr.  Rashdall  says,  inaugu- 
rated the  intellectual  movement  out  of  which 
the  universities  eventuaUy  sprang,  although 
even  in  their  most  rudimentary  form  they  did 
not  exist  until  a  generation  after  his  time. 
This  fact  has  been  so  persistently  ignored  by 
popular  writers  on  the  subject,  despite  the  ver* 
diet  of  Cousin,  Newman,  Denifie,  and  Com- 
payr6,  that  it  is  gratifying  to  find  that  Mr. 
RashdalFs  independent  studies  have  led  him 
to  lay  great  emphasis  upon  the  infiuence  of 
Abelard  in  the  university  movement.  We  can 
readily  understand  how  the  elaborate  and 
forceful  argumentations  of  William  of  Cham- 
peaux  and  his  more  famous  pupil,  Abelard, 
encouraged  freedom  of  opinion  and  discussion 
and  attracted  hundreds  of  mature  students  to 
Paris.  Abelard's  **  attempt  to  appeal  from 
recent  tradition  to  the  ancient  Fathers,  and 
from  the  ancient  Fathers  to  Scripture  and  to 
Reason,*'  is  the  medieeval  equivalent  of  what 
the  modem  university  teacher  knows  as  the 
study  of  the  *  *  sources.**  It  would  be  a  mistake 
to  suppose,  however,  that  the  liberal  and  in- 
telligent method  of  Abelard  was  universally 
followed  and  adhered  to  or  that  it  uniformly 
led  to  good  results.  Many  of  the  *|disputi^ 
tions**  based  upon  it  were  unquestionably 
stimulating,  but  too  often  they  degenerated 
into  mere  formal  logic-chop|;^g  and  the  rou- 
tine of  the  **  dicUtion.** 

The  mode  in  which  the  universities  acquired 
special  privileges  and  immunities  is  somewhat 
more  difficult  to  explain.  By  the  beginning  of 
the  thirteenth  century  Studia  Genera/ia  had 
bec<m»e  common.  Three  were  prominent- 
Paris  for  theology  and  arts,  Bologna  for  law, 
and  Salerno  for  medicine.  Apparently  any 
town  that  chose  might,  at  that  time,  claim  to  be 
a  Studium  Otnerale,  and,  as  Mr.  Rashdall  says, 
if  Arezso  or  Vercelli  desired  to  intimate  that  it 
offered  as  good  an  education  as  Paris  or  Bolo- 
gna, it  did  so  by  assuming  the  title  of  Studhim 
OensraU,  It  could  do  this  with  some  grace 
if  it  simply  provided  more  than  one  Magister, 
invited  students  from  all  countries,  and  main- 
tained at  least  one  of  the  so-called  higher  f  acul- 
ties— theology,  law,  or  medicine.  There  was 
no  authority  to  determine  whether  or  not  a 
given  school  was  a  Studium  Oenerale  ;  It  was 
wholly  a  matter  of  hsage.  But  it  is  natural  to 
follow  Mr.  Rashdall  in  supposing  that  a  Ma- 
gister  who  had  taught  at  so  celebrated  a  cen- 
tre as  Paris,  Bologna,  or  Salerno  was  pretty 
sure  to  receive  recognition  elsewhere.  Doubt- 
less the  less  weUkuown  Studia  gladly  wel- 
comed  such  a  man  as  a  teacher,  while  subject- 
ing masters  from  smaller  schools  to  severe  and 
technical  tests.    It  is  Mr.  RashdaU's  inf erenoa 


310 


Tlie    N"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1607 


that  **  to  the  orig^al  conception  of  a  Studium 
Oenerale  there  was  thus  gradually  added  a 
vague  notion  of  a  certain  oecumenical  validity 
for  the  Mastership  which  it  conferred"  (i.,  9). 
This  **OBCumenical  validity"  became  in  time 
the  Jtis  vJbique  docendi. 

The  next  step  is  the  one  by  which  Emperor 
and  Pope  were  brought  to  lend  a  helping  hand 
to  the  now  vigorous  university  movement.  As 
this  is  but  dimly  understood  and  has  been  hot- 
ly debated,  it  will  be  well  to  quote  Mr.  Rash- 
dairs  own  carefully  supported  words: 

"  In  the  latter  half  of  the  thirteenth  century 
this  unrestricted  liberty  of  founding  Sttidia 
Oeneralia  gradually  ceased;  and  the  cessation 
brought  with  it  an  important  change  in  the 
meaning  of  the  term.  It  so  happened  that  at 
about  the  same  time  the  two  great  *  world 
Powers*  of  Europe  [anticipating  the  modem 
American  millionaire]  conceived  the  idea  of 
erecting  a  school  which  was  to  be  placed  by  an 
exercise  of  authority  on  a  level  with  the  great 
European  centres  of  education.  In  1224  the 
Emperor  Frederick  II.  founded  a  Stvdium 
Generate  at  Naples;  in  1229  Gregory  IX.  did 
the  same  at  Toulouse;  while  in  1244  or  1245  In- 
noeer.t  IV.  established  a  Studium  Generate  in 
the  Pontifical  Ck>urt  itself.  These  foundations 
would  appear  to  have  suggested  the  idea  that 
the  erection  of  new  Studta  Generalia  was  one 
of  the  Papal  and  Imperial  prerogatives,  like 
the  power  of  creating  notaries  public.  More- 
over, in  order  to  give  the  graduates  of  Tou- 
louse (in  so  far  as  parchment  and  wax  could 
secure  it)  the  same  prestige  and  recognition 
which  were  enjoyed  by  the  graduates  of  Paris 
and  Bologna,  a  fiuU  was  issued  (in  1283)  which 
declared  that  any  one  admitted  to  the  master- 
ship in  that  University  should  be  freely  allow- 
ed to  teach  in  all  the  Studia  without  any  fur- 
ther examination.  In  the  course  of  the  century 
other  cities  anxious  to  place  their  schools  on  a 
level  with  those  privileged  Universities  applied 
for  and  obtained  from  Pope  or  Emperor  Bulls 
constituting  them  Studia  Generalia.  The  ear- 
lier of  these  Bulls  simply  confer  the  position  of 
Studium  Generate  without  further  definition, 
or  confer  the  privileges  of  some  specified  Uni- 
versity such  as  Paris  or  Bologna. 

**The  most  prominent  practical  purposes  of 
such  Bulls  seems  at  tint  to  have  been  to  give 
beneficed  ecclesiastics  the  right  of  studying  in 
them  while  contriving  to  receive  the  fruits  of 
their  benefices — a  privilege  limited  bv  canoni- 
cal law  or  custom  to  Studia  reputed  *  gene- 
ral.' But  gradually  the  special  privilege  of 
the  Jits  ubique  docendi  came  to  be  regarded 
as  tne  principal  object  of  Papal  or  Imperial 
creation.  It  was  usually,  but  not  quite  inva- 
riably,  conferred  in  express  terms  by  the  ori- 
ginal foundation-bulls ;  and  was  apparently 
understood  to  be  involved  in  the  mere  act  of 
erection  even  in  the  rare  cases  where  it  is  not 
expressly  conceded.  In  1292  even  the  old  arch- 
etypal universities  themselves— Bologna  and 
Paris— were  formally  invested  with  the  same 
privilege  by  Bulls  of  Nicholas  IV.  From  this 
time  the  notion  gradually  gained  ground  that 
the  JUS  ubique  docendi  was  of  the  essence  of  a 
Studium  Generate^  and  that  no  school  which 
did  not  jKMsess  the  privilege  could  obtain  it 
without  a  Bull  from  Emperor  or  Pope  "  (i.,  10- 
12). 

This  passage  is  a  concise  and  doubtless  cor- 
rect suDomary  of  the  facts  concerning  what  has 
seemed  a  very  difficult  matter.  Denifie  and 
Mr.  Rashdall  are  probably  right  in  their  con- 
clusions from  the  admitted  facts,  and  Kauf- 
mann,  despite  his  great  learning  and  acumen, 
is  probably  wrong.  While  the  Emperor  and 
Pope  had  nothing  to  do  with  originating  the 
university  movement,  after  1900  they  became 
a  most  important  factor  in  creating  universi- 
ties, and  Mr.  Rashdall  is  conservative  rather 
than  radical  in  excluding  from  the  category  of 
universitiee,  from  the  beginning  of  the  four- 
teenth century,  all  bodies  that  were  not  found- 
ed by  Pope  or  Emperor.  The  essential  point 
to  bear  in  mind,  however,  is  that  the  earliest 
universities  were  not  founded,  but  grew, 


8CARTAZZINI»S  DANTE  COMMENTARY. 

La  Divina  Commedia  di  Dante  Atighieriy 
riveduta  nel  testo  e  commentata  da  G.  A. 
Scartazzini.  2*  edizione,  riveduta,  corretta, 
e  notevolmente  arrichita,  coll'  aggiunta  del 
Rimario  Perfezionato  del  Dott.  Luigl  Po- 
lacco.  Milan  :  Ulrico  Hoepli. 
That  indefatigable  Dantist,  Dr.  Scartazzini, 
must  have  taken  for  his  motto,  No  year  with- 
out its  book.  Amid  his  almost  kaleidoscopic 
publications  for  the  illustration  of  his  chosen 
poet,  his  readers  bid  fair  to  find  themselves 
before  long  in  some  bewilderment.  We  now 
have  his  Introduction  to  Dante  (to  give  this 
name  to  a  work  with  various  titles)  in  no  less 
than  five  forms,  three  in  Italian  and  two  in 
German.  We  already  had  from  him  two  com- 
mentaries upon  the  *  Divine  Comedy,'  a  larger, 
in  three  volumes,  published  at  Leipzig,  and  a 
.smaller,  in  a  single  volume,  issued  at  Milan ; 
and  now  comes  this  second  edition  of  the  lat- 
ter, so  increased  in  bulk  that  it  must  be  re- 
garded as  a  distinct  work.  His  voluminous 
*  Dante  in  Germania '  surveyed  what  German 
scholars  have  done  for  the  great  Florentine ; 
and  he  announces  as  already  in  the  press  an 
'•  Enciclopedia  Dantesca '  in  two  large  volumes. 
Several  others  of  his  books  there  are,  but  we 
will  not  mention  them  here. 

In  spite  of  this  amazing  rapidity  of  produc- 
tion, the  work  of  Dr.  Scartazzini  is  always 
valuable.  The  larger  edition  of  the  *  Divine 
Comedy '  at  once  established  itself  among  stu- 
dents of  Dante  as  in  important  particulars  the 
most  useful  modem  commentary  on  the  great 
poem.  The  one- volume  edition,  issued  two 
years  since,  had  already  generally  superseded 
for  beginners  and  for  class-room  use  the  edi- 
tions  of  Fraticelli,  Bianchi,  Andreoli,  and 
others  of  less  diffusion ;  and  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  in  its  new  form  this  edition  is 
destined  to  be  for  some  time  to  come  the  most 
useful  and  the  most  generally  adopted  of  all 
the  briefer  commentaries  on  the  poem.  It 
seems,  therefore,  worth  while  to  give  our 
readers  some  notion  of  its  merits  and  demerits. 
The  writing  of  an  adequate  conmientary 
upon  a  poem  like  the  *  Divine  Comedy'  is 
hardly  less  a  work  of  art  than  was  the  produc- 
tion of  the  poem  it^lf .  It  is,  to  be  sure,  art 
of  a  lower,  though  perhaps  not  more  com- 
mon kind;  yet  clearly  showing  itself  art  in 
that  pedestrian-industry,  however  laborious  and 
faithful,  invariably  makes  a  failure  of  it.  Only 
by  the  constant  exercise  of  the  imagination 
can  the  difficult  three-f9ld  task  be  accomplish- 
ed of  comprehending  the  poet,  of  understand- 
ing his  words,  and  of  interpreting  both  ix>et 
and  words  justly  and  surely  to  the  commen- 
tator's own  generation.  For  success  here 
grammar  does  not  suffice,  nor  the  vanity  of 
that  erudition  which  D'Alembert  so  well  de- 
scribed— **qui  croit  voir  tons  les  jours  aug- 
menter  sa  substance  par  les  acquisitions  qu'il 
fait  sans  peine."  The  really  successful  exegete 
must  manage  to  place  before  us  the  poet  him- 
self, as  he  uttered  himself  in  his  poem;  stroke 
upon  stroke  he  must  depict  for  us  that  living 
personality  as  it  drew  from  the  stores  of  nature 
the  materials  for  a  new  and  rare  fabric,  select- 
ing and  shaping  them  to  its  needs.  Mere  ex- 
planation of  verbal  difficulty  or  of  allusion 
is  therefore  but  the  beginning  of  a  commen- 
tator's  duty,  though  naturally,  in  dealing 
with  a  work  like  the  *  Divine  Comedy,'  there 
are  many  and  serious  problems  to  be  faced 
even  here.  The  main  matter  is  to  induct  us, 
more  swiftly  and  truly  than  our  limited  per- 
sonal studies  can  do  it,  into  that  manner  of 
seeing  and  judging  n^en  and  things  which  is 


peculiar  to  the  poet.  What  were  his  imagina- 
tive prepossessions,  and  how  came  he  by  them? 
In  what  shapes  did  truth  and  beauty  present 
themselves  to  his  inward  eye?  From  what 
conjunction  of  personal  experience  and  con- 
temporary convention  did  his  moral  estimates 
proceed?  What  course  of  speculation  did  be 
run?  Who  were  his  intellectual  masters? 
What  did  they  teach  him  ?  And  what  were 
the  determinations  of  his  independent  thoaght? 
These  are  the  essential  questions;  and  the 
really  adequate  commentary,  flowing  beside 
the  poem,  will  answer  them,  not  all  at  once, 
but  little  by  little,  so  that  at  the  end  we  shall 
have  come  not  only  to  understand  and  admire, 
but  also  to  comprehend  and  sympathize.  All 
the  great  poets  of  the  past  need  this  treat- 
ment, but  none  among  them  more  than  Dante. 

There  is  much  in  the  *  Divine  Comedy'  to 
lead  the  commentator  away  from  what  should 
be  his  main  pm*pose.  First  of  all,  the  style 
abounds  in  lexicographical  and  grammatical 
difficulties,  due  in  part  to  the  uncertainties  of 
the  text,  in  part  to  the  accumulated  obscurity 
of  six  hundred  years— difficulties  whose  solu- 
tion may  fairly  tax  the  abilities  and  learning 
of  any  modem  man.  Then,  Dante  has  chosen 
to  give  a  firm  vesture  of  fiesh  and  blood  to  his 
thought  by  constant  allusions  to  contemporary 
men  and  events.  The  elucidation  of  these  has 
already  given  rise  to  a  huge  literature,  the 
production  of  which  shows  no  sign  of  abating. 
In  this  vast  morass  it  is  but  too  easy  to  become 
lost,  and  few  that  enter  it  ever  emerge.  But 
in  our  judgment  the  greatest  danger  of  all  for 
the  commentator  is  a  misconception  of  the 
poem  as  a  whole,  into  which  no  less  a  person 
than  Dante  himself  seems  to  lead  us.  Through- 
out the  Middle  Ages  there  reigned  supreme 
and  undoubted  a  peculiar  theory  as  to  the  pur- 
pose and  function  of  poetry,  namely,  that  in 
so  far  as  it  is  serious  it  is  in  its  innermost  es- 
sence allegory.  This  theory  was  held  without 
reserve  by  Dante.  In  his  *  Con vito '  (Tratt.  II., 
cap.  i.)  he  outlines  it  at  length,  and  assumes 
to  interpret  in  accordance  with  it  the  oanzoni 
used  as  the  texts  of  that  work.  Furthermore, 
in  the  dedicatory  letter  sent  with  the  "  Para- 
diso"  to  Can  Grande  della  Scala  (accepting 
this  as  genuine),  the  poet  reaffirms  the  doctrine 
and  asserts  its  application  to  his  own  poem,  say- 
ing that  the  subject  of  his  work,  taken  literally, 
is  **the  condition  of  souls  after  death,  pure 
and  simple";  whUe,  taken  allegorically,  it  is 
'*man,  in  so  far  as,  having  through  the  free- 
dom of  his  will  merit  or  demerit,  he  receives 
from  Justice  reward  or  punishment." 

Thus  we  have  Dante's  own  assurance  that  the 
*  Divine  Comedy '  contains  at  once  a  literal 
and  an  allegorical  meaning — an  assurance  that 
seems  to  find  confirmation  from  the  very  aspect 
and  first  impression  of  the  poem.  Further- 
more, we  have  his  definition  of  allegory  as 
threefold  in  its  character.  After  this  there 
could  seem  to  be  no  doubt  that  the  first  busi- 
ness of  the  commentator  is  to  disentangle  this 
threefold  mystic  sense,  and  to  show  it  run- 
ning side  by  side  with  the  literal  meaning 
through  the  work.  Such,  indeed,  has  been  the 
conception  of  their  task  that  the  majori^  of 
the  commentators  from  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury down  have  had;  and  in  our  own  time 
many  and  severe  have  been  the  criticisms  upon 
those  who  have  seemed  to  be  indifferent  or 
careless  in  this  matter.  What  was  the  excel- 
lent Giuliani's  tractate,  *  Dante  spiegato  con 
Dante,'  but  an  arraignment  of  such  as  have 
dared  to  neglect  Dante's  own  guidance  in  the 
interpretation  of  his  poem?  And  yet,  we 
venture  to  say,  he  who  completely  and  abeo> 
lutely  acoepti  this  ^dance  wiU  oMtainlj  fail 


April  1 6,  1896] 


Tlie   iN'ation. 


811 


of  fDcce«  in  his  effort*  to  produce  a  satisfac- 
tory exposition  of  the  *  Divine  Comedy.*  For 
the  truth  is,  it  is,  in  the  nature  of  things,  an  im- 
possibility that  there  should  be  four  meanings 
expressed  at  one  and  the  same  time  throughout 
this  or  any  other  work  of  literature.  This  was 
long  ago  recognised  in  dealing  with  the  classic 
poets;  it  is  at  last  almost  uniyerually  accepted 
in  dealing  with  the  Bible.  And  the  time  has 
come  to  admit  that  even  a  man  who  wrote  his 
poem  in  the  firm  conyiction  that  it  ought  to 
contain  these  meanings,  if  it  was  to  be  a  serious 
work,  and  who  at  the  end  flattered  himself  that 
he  had  succeeded  in  making  it  do  so,  though  he 
were  Dante  himself,  could  not  by  any  possi- 
bility so  transcend  all  human  capability  as  to 
accomplish  such  an  undertaking.  Of  symbol- 
ism in  details,  of  allegory  in  dealing  with  par- 
ticular matters,  there  certainly  is  an  abundance 
in  the  *  Divine  Coniedy,*  and  these  the  com- 
mentator must  explain  as  well  as  he  can.  But 
towards  that  vast  and  all-embracing  four-fold 
meaning  supposed  to  run  through  the  whole 
poem,  the  only  safe  plan  is  to  adopt  an  attitude 
of  wise  indifference.  If  any  one  doubts  this,  let 
him  turn  to  Oabrlele  Rossetti's  exposition  of 
the  *  Divine  Comedy  *  and  be  convinced. 

It  is  a  much  more  imporcant  matter  that 
should  engage  the  chief  energies  of  the  mo- 
dem commentator  on  Dante.  It  cannot  be 
too  often  repeated  that  no  man*s  ideas,  not 
even  the  greatest  poet^s,  are  of  his  own  pe- 
culiar coinage  and  issue.  However  rare  and 
personal  they  may  seem  at  first  sight,  they 
will  be  found  upon  examination  to  be  in 
reality  products  of  a  slow  accretion,  in  which 
many  generations  of  minds  have  left  traces 
of  themselves.  And  something  of  this  pro- 
cess we  must  be  shown  if  we  are  to  arrive 
at  any  adequate  understanding  and  appreci- 
ation of  what  the  poet  tells  us.  It  can  hardly 
be  said  that  Dr.  Bcartazzini  has  undertaken 
may  one  of  his  editions  of  the  '  Divine  Comedy ' 
with  this  obligation  clearly  in  mind.  In  all  of 
them  his  effort  seems  chiefly  to  have  been  la- 
boriously to  gather  what  everybody  has  said 
on  each  particular  point,  and  to  select  from 
the  mass  what  appears  to  him  most  reasonable 
and  probable.  In  doing  this  he  has  given 
many  evidences  of  good  sense  and  just  dis- 
crimination in  his  preferences.  He  has  avoid- 
ed, for  example,  an  undue  seal  in  the  pursuit 
of  Dante^s  possible  allegorical  intentions.  He 
has  in  general  refused  to  follow  the  ignea 
feUui  of  incidental  interpretation.  His  judg- 
ment in  questions  of  the  text  is,  in  the  present 
state  of  our  knowledge,  not  often  to  be  quar- 
relied  with,  and  be  is  undoubtedly  superior  in 
this  respect  to  most  of  his  predecessors.  In 
lexicographical  questions  he  is  less  sure,  and, 
indeed,  at  times  displays  a  decided  lack  of  ori- 
(inal  and  first-hand  scholarship.  He  is  too 
apt  to  fall  back  upon  the  interpretations  of 
the  fourteenth-xientury  commentators,  who  are, 
after  all,  as  any  one  who  makes  a  comparative 
•tndy  of  them  must  see.  so  uncritical  in  their 
methods  and  so  divergent  in  their  opinions  as 
to  afford  us  hardly  more  than  valuable  bodies 
of  collateral  linguistic  and  illustrative  mate- 
rial, requiring  in  use  the  same  treatment  as 
the  work  of  Dante  himself.  Still,  the  free 
eTen  though  unscientific  employment  of  this 
material  will  guard  any  judicious  commenta- 
tor from  many  hasty  and  fantastic  randerings. 
And  this  is  the  case  with  Dr.  Scartassini.  We 
must  add,  however,  that  In  the  important  and 
in  many  ways  dilBcult  matter  of  Dante^s  gram- 
mar he  has  done  next  to  nothing  of  value. 

But  the  greatest  weakness  of  this  edition,  as 
w«  have  already  implied,  is  to  be  found  in 
trbal  wt  may  call  its  oomparatire  literary  as. 


pects.  Evidences  abound  in  it  that  Dr.  Bcar- 
tazzini has  a  decidedly  superficial  acquaintance 
with  mediaeval  literature  outside  of  Italy,  and 
indeed  with  the  course  of  ideas  in  the  Middle 
Ages  in  general.  Though  expounding  a  poet 
whose  imaginative  life  began  with  the  almost 
unlimited  acceptance  of  social  and  moral  ideals 
first  formulated  by  the  poets  of  Provence  and 
France,  and  who  to  the  end  retained  his  respect 
and  admiration  for  these  poets.  Dr.  Scartazzi- 
ni  shows  so  little  knowledge  of  them  that  he  is 
able  to  characterize  even  the  most  famous 
among  them,  like  Amaut  Daniel  and  Oiraut  de 
Borneil,  only  at  second  hand  and  most  inade- 
quately. Of  the  real  character  of  their  poetry 
and  of  the  sources  of  its  interest  for  Dante  he 
gives  no  account  at  all.  And  the  same  lack  of 
sure  and  original  knowledge  makes  itself  felt  in 
his  treatment  of  those  intellectual  additions 
which  Dante  in  his  maturer  years  made  to  his 
earlier  imaginative  prepossessions.  The  pas 
sage  from  the  amorous  service  of  Beatrice  Por- 
tinari  to  that  practice  of  love  which  brings  the 
desire  and  the  will  into  harmonious  motion 
with  the  divine  **  love  that  moves  the  sun  and 
the  other  stars,  ^'  is  no  such  easy  and  obvious  pro- 
cess  that  we  may  safely  be  left  to  follow  it  for 
ourselves.  An  adequate  and  final  coomient 
upon  the  *  Divine  Comedy,'  if  we  ever  get  it,  will 
show  us  the  kind  of  help  Dante  derived  from 
all  the  great  spirits  he  enshrines  in  his  poem 
in  attaining  this  ultimate  adjustment  of  his 
thought  to  the  world  and  to  God. 


Robert  Bums  in  Other  Tongvss :  A  Critical 
Review  of  the  Translations  of  the  Songs  and 
Poems  of  Robert  Bums.  By  William  Jacks. 
Glasgow :  BiacLehose;  New  Tork :  MacmlUan. 
This  book,  if  it  serves  no  other  end,  ought  to 
be  a  treasure  to  the  Scotch  perorator.  One  de- 
lights to  imagine  the  fiow  of  eloquence  at 
Bums  anniversaries  and  St.  Andrew's  Day 
dinners  which  will  follow  from  a  judicious  use 
of  its  contents.  The  most  resourceful  speaker 
can  hardly  hope  to  produce  a  more  electric  ef- 
fect than  by  reminding  his  hearers  that  the 
oppressed  Cseech,  in  his  struggle  against  the 
Austrian  tyrant,  nourishes  his  courage  on  the 
martial  pabulum  of  "Scots  wha  hae";  that 
the  Dutch  of  the  Orange  Free  State  have  a 
President  who  can  do  the  *'  Cotter's  Saturday 
Night  *^  into  their  South  African  dialect;  and 
that  the  Swiss  (Germans  confirm  their  demo- 
cratic independence  with  **  A  man's  a  man  for 
a'  that,"  while  the  Germans  of  the  Fatherland 
wallow  knee-deep  in  the  wild-romantic  senti 
ment  of  **  O  my  luve's  like  a  red,  red  rose." 
Some  dexterous  Scot  might  even  get  his  tongue 
around 

**  Feledjak  «  s  rtel  Jdt 
8  ne  «ml«g6Muk  o(»" 

which  is  the  Hungarian  beginning  of  **  Auld 
Lang  Syne."  If  these  sentiments  do  not  bring 
down  the  house,  all  patriotism  must  be  dead  to 
the  north  of  the  Tweed. 

Mr.  Jacks's  collection  of  translations  Is 
brought  together  from  many  quarters,  and  no 
one  who  lacks  Mezzofanti's  attainments  can  be 
trusted  to  pronounce  with  authority  upon  the 
merit  of  the  versions.  Alas  that  it  should  be  a 
case  of  **  No  man  but  Lancelot,  and  he  is  dead." 
In  the  absence  of  Meziof anti,  Mr.  Jscks  has  re- 
sorted to  the  only  possible  expedient.  The 
tongues  represented  are  German,  Swiss  Ger- 
man, Danish,  Norwegian,  Swedish,  Dutch, 
Flemish,  African-Dutch,  Frisian,  Bohemian, 
Hungarian,  Russian,  French,  Italian,  Scottish- 
Gaalic,  Irish-Gaelic,  Welsh,  and— not  to  be  out- 
done by  upstart  tongues— Latin.  Mr.  Jacks 
doM  not  pretend  to  be  a  magtar  of  all  theee, 


yet  to  each  translation  a  critical  comment  is 
prefixed.  The  preface  explains  how  this  is 
managed:  • 

**  It  would  be  hypocritical  pedantry  to  leave 
it  to  be  assumed  that  I  knew  all  the  various 
languages  which  appear  here  sufficiently  well 
to  enable  me  to  criticise  these  translations  as  I 
have  done;  indeed,  some  of  them  I  do  not  know 
at  all.  In  such  cases  I  had  each  retranslated 
literally  into  a  language  which  I  did  under- 
stand, and  the  retranslation  was  sent  to  a  na- 
tive of  the  particular  country  for  confirmation 
and  comment,  and  in  this  way  I  was  able  to 
make  my  remarks." 

Such  a  process  means  no  end  of  pains,  as 
does  the  whole  compilation.  The  volume  is  a 
labor  of  love  and  has  been  done  thoroughly. 
The  claims  which  it  has  to  attention,  apart 
from  excellence  of  printing  and  paper,  its  in- 
cense to  Scotch  pride  in  Bums,  and  the  por- 
traits of  the  translators,  are  more  considerable 
than  one  at  first  thought  might  suppose.  Mr. 
Jacks's  own  observations  are  very  interesting. 
The  Burns  devotee  who  wishes  to  take  up  lan- 
guages will,  from  his  knowledge  of  the  origi. 
nals,  find  the  translations  easy  reading,  and 
new  light  may  be  thrown  on  Bums  in  his  own 
tongue  by  attention  to  Bums  in  French  or  Ger- 
man. Mr.  Jacks  gives  a  decisive  instance  of 
this  last  advantage  anent  the  line  '*  Courts  for 
cowards  are  erected  " : 

**  Four  out  of  every  five  readers  of  Bums  to 
whom  I  put  the  question,  *Doe6  this  mean 
Royal  Courts  or  Courts  of  Law'?  replied 
*  Royal  Courts  of  course.'  An  eminent  Ger- 
man translator  uses  the  word  Gfrericht,  not  Hof . 
This  suggested  the  question  to  me;  and  I  dis- 
covered he  was  right,  as  the  context  shows. 
'  A  fig  for  those  by  Law  protected.  .  .  . 
Courts  for  cowards  were  erected.'  When  I 
pointed  this  out,  my  friends  admitted  that  they 
had  not  thought  of  it  so  closely." 

Mr.  Jacks  has  not  thrown  in  his  translations 
miscellaneously,  but  has  used  method.  As  it  Is, 
the  book  runs  into  550  pages,  and  only  the 
leading  translations  in  each  language  are  print- 
ed. A  selection  is  made  of  certain  pieces,  and 
these,  wherever  possible,  are  followed  through 
the  various  tongues  so  that  the  reader  may 
form  standards  of  comparison.  Out  of  the  47 
songs  and  poems  chosen  for  illustration,  only  9 
are  given  in  but  one  language,  and  the  ma- 
jority of  the  rest  are  given  in  half-a-dozen. 
The  pieces  which  English  critics  have  recog- 
nized to  be  the  best  are  those  which  have  been 
most  diligently  translated.  **  The  Cotter's 
Saturday  Night,"  "Duncan  Gray,"  "Flow 
gently,  sweet  Afton,"  ••  John  Anderson,  ray 
Jo,"  "The  JoUy  Beggars,"  "A  Man's  a  Man 
for  a'  that,"  "  O  wert  thou  in  the  cauld  Blast,' 
"O  My  Luve's  like  a  red,  red  Rose,"  "ScoU 
whahae,"  "Tam  o'  Shanter,"  "To  a  Daisy," 
"To a  Mouse,"  "To  Mary  in  Heaven,"  "Ye 
Banks  and  Braes  o'  bonnie  Doon  "  are  the  fa> 
vorites  of  the  Continent  as  of  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  SUtes. 

In  coming  to  the  translations  themselves,  it 
seems  to  us  that,  as  one  would  suppose  a  priori, 
the  Teutonic  translations  are  better  than  those 
in  the  Romance  languages.  Bums  in  French  or 
Italian  sounds  very  strange,  though  we  must  not 
forget  that  the  most  learned  and  sympathetic 
study  of  Bums  which  has  been  made  by  any 
foreigner  is  to  the  credit  of  a  Frenchman,  M. 
Augusts  Angellier  of  Lille.  Competent  Celtic 
scholars  say  that  the  difficulty  of  translating 
Bums  into  Gaelic  equals  that  of  translating 
him  into  Greek  or  Latin.  "  Bums  in  Gaelic  is 
a  David  in  armor.  His  movements  lack  free- 
dom, grace,  and  vivacity."  But  in  Oermsn, 
especially  in  Swiss-German,  a  good  deal  of  the 
original  affiatus  is  preserved  by  a  skilful  trans- 
lator like  Laun,  Ruete,  or  Corrodi.  We  Insist 
upon  Corrodi's  translation  into  Swlss-OannaQ 


813 


TJfcie   IN^ation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1607 


because  hit  conteDtion  that  no  other  tongue 
■enres  so  well  for  the  reproduction  of  Bums  as 
Uie  Zurich  dialect  is  supported  by  some  excel- 
lent proofs.  Corrodi  has  not  tried  the  poems, 
but  has  translated  thirty-four  of  the  songs.  Ifr. 
Jacks  says  of  his  version  of  **  A  Man*s  a  Man'': 
**  This  translation  is  almost  perfect;  the  first 
Ihie  is  rather  stilted,  and  two  lines  seem  weak. 
.  .  .  These  are  but  two  very  small  defects 
in  what  is  perhaps  the  best  translation  into 
any  language  of  this  magnifioent  ode;  and  it 
is  fair  to  point  out  some  lines  where  the  lan- 
guage seems  even  more  expressive  than  in  the 
original,  which  is  a  bold  thing  to  say  of  any  of 
Bums's  masterpieces.**  The  most  distinguished 
European  who  has  tried  his  hand  at  the  trans- 
lation of  Bums  is  Van  Lennep,  the  Bcott  of 
Holland.  Perfect  command  of  the  English 
tongue  is  an  inheritance  of  the  Van  Lenneps 
of  Haarlem  to  the  present  day.  The  Latin 
translations  are  at  least  amusing,  notably  Mr. 
Leighton's  Into  medieval  Latin  verse.  Mr. 
Whamond  is  less  ridiculous,  but  Burns  and 
Latin  are  oil  and  water. 

We  wish  to  leave  the  impression  that  this 
book  will  be  valuable  to  the  student  of  Bums 
and  to  the  student  of  translations  in  generaL 
Not  least  among  its  strong  points  is  the  moit 
of  Mr.  Jacks's  criticism  of  each  separate  trans- 
lation, and  the  light  incidentally  thrown  upon 
European  inte^vst  in  English  literature. 


A  Manual  of  Oresk  AnHquiHes.  By  Percy 
Gardner  and  Frank  B.  Jevons.  Boribners. 
1806. 
All  introduction,  in  a  single  volume,  to  Greek 
antiquities  in  their  chief  branches— social,  re- 
ligious, and  political— has  long  been  needed, 
and  the  want  is  supplied,  and  well  supplied,  by 
the  pree<nt  work.  The  editors  have  divided 
the  labor  of  composition.  Prof.  Gardner  is 
responsible  for  the  first  five  books,  entitled  re- 
spectively The  Surroundings  of  Greek  Life, 
Religion  and  Mythology,  Cultus,  The  Ckrarse 
of  Life^  and  Commerce;  Dr.  Jevons  has  written 
the  other  four,  on  Ckmstitutional  and  Legal 
Antiquities,  Slavery,  War,  and  The  Theatre. 

Manuals  are  generally  pretty  dry  reading,  but 
this  one  is  a  pleasing  exception  to  the  rule.  It  is 
written  in  an  easy,  almost  conversational  style; 
it  is  no  mere  cataloguing  of  the  facts,  for  in  most 
cases  the  endeavor  is  made  to  trace  the  manners 
and  customs  described  back  to  their  origins, 
and  indeed  the  success  in  this  particular  is  re- 
markable. Take,  for  instance,  the  subject  of 
Sacrifice.  It  was  hardly  to  be  believed  that  in 
a  mere  manual  Prof.  G^ardner  should  have  been 
able  to  go  so  deeply  into  a  topic  Uice  this;  and 
yet  even  the  origins  of  the  sacrifice  meet  with 
satisfactory  discussion.  And  the  subject  of 
religion  in  general  is  treated  by  him  with  a 
fulness  which  is  all  the  more  welcome  because 
Hermann-Strack's  handbook  has  been  long  out 
of  print,  while  the  volume  on  Greek  religion 
in  MiUler's  great  series  is  far  too  bald  an  out- 
line for  general  readers.  A  little  study  of  the 
pages  here  devoted  to  totem  and  fetish,  ances- 
tor worship,  and  orgiastic  cults  will  be  a  genu- 
ine  surprise  to  the  reader  unfamiliar  with  what 
has  been  doing  of  late  years  on  the  lines  of 
comparative  religion.  The  account  of  the 
Eleusinlan  Mysteries  is  interesting  and  yet  so- 
ber—wholly without  that  overstraining  of  the 
imagination  with  which  English  writers  have 
been  too  apt  to  portray  the  surroundings  of  the 
secret  that  was  better  kept  than  any  other  in 
antiquity.  The  contrast  between  the  ritual  of 
ancient  temples  and  that  of  modem  churches 
is  excellently  drawn.  And,  descending  to  par- 
Uoolarsi  we  have  noted  no  important  omission 


in  details  of  religion  save  that  of  the  Athenian 
moBi^tiMrm.  For  all  these  pages  on  religion,  by 
far  the  most  valuable  in  the  book,  we  are  in- 
debted  to  Prof.  Gardner,  and  we  must  thank 
him  too  for  his  clear  account  of  Greek  houses 
and  of  social  life  in  the  open  air. 

To  Dr.  Jevons  we  are  especially  grateful  for 
his  chapters  on  the  laws.  In  fact,  we  know 
of  no  other  English  book  which  gives  so  full 
a  selection  from  the  Attic  Ck)de  in  the  original 
Greek,  accompanied  by  such  a  dear  com- 
mentary. The  code  of  Gortyn  also  finds  a 
place.  His  treatment  of  legal  procedure  be- 
fore the  courts  is  also  excellent,  though  we 
note  here  a  slight  contradiction.  On  page 
583  it  is  stated  that  ''witnesses  themselves 
did  not  appear"  in  court,  whUe  on  page  500 
we  find  the  proper  explanation,  that  they 
appeared,  indeed,  but  merely  to  acknowledge 
their  evid«ioe  as  given  at  ^e  ii^rfxptvif.  On 
the  subject  of  theatrical  antiquities  Dr.  Jevons 
is  not  so  much  at  home.  On  the  still  burning 
question  of  stage  or  no  stage,  while  we  agree 
with  him  that  the  case  of  the  no»stagers  is 
not  yet  fully  proved,  yet  his  attack  upon 
their  position  by  no  means  blunts  all  their 
weapons.  In  fact,  he  seems  not  to  be  aware 
how  many  and  various  shafts  will  soon  be 
directed  at  his  devoted  head.  For  instance, 
the  careful  examinations  made  by  both  Ame- 
ricans and  G^ermans  of  the  internal  evidence 
from  the  plays  themselves,  appear  to  be  all 
but  unknown  to  him.  And,  to  take  up  one 
of  his  own  arguments,  the  passage  in  Plato's 
''Symposium"  on  which  he  lays  much  stress 
is  now  generally  admitted  to  refer  to  the 
proagon  of  Agathon's  play,  and  not  to  the 
performance  itself.  It  took  place,  therefore, 
in  the  odeum,  not  in  the  theatre.  And  no- 
body has  yet  arisen  to  tear  away  the  raised 
stage  from  the  Greek  music-halL 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  plan  of  this  book 
did  not  include  at  least  simple  bibliographies 
of  the  most  important  subjects  treated  in  it. 
The  footnotes  are  few  for  such  a  work  (750 
pages  of  text),  and  they  are  chiefly  references 
to  ancient  authors.  The  book  contains  some 
pictures,  not  very  well  executed;  but,  as  the 
editors  remark  in  their  preface,  English-speak- 
ing students  have  now  at  their  command  a 
fairly  complete  and  well-arranged  series  of  11- 
lustrations  for  all  the  important  branches  of 
Greek  antiquities  in  Anderson's  edition  of 
Schreiber's  *  Atlas,'  which  has  already  been  re- 
viewed in  these  columns.  These  two  books 
ought  to  be  in  the  library  of  every  cJassJcal 
school,  and  they  will  usually  be  sufficient  for 
all  exoept  advanced  students  of  old  Greek  life. 


Ooethi^s  Faust,  By  Kuno  Fischer.   Translated 

and  published  by  Harry  Riggs  Wolcott  Vol. 

I.    Faust  Literature  before  GkMthe.    Man- 

Chester,  Iowa.  1805. 
Pbof.  Fisohxr's  lectures  on  "Faust,"  which 
were  delivered  about  twenty  years  ago  in 
Goethe's  native  city,  were  first  published  in 
1878.  In  1887  they  were  republished  with  ex- 
tensive additions,  and  five  years  later  a  third 
edition  brought  the  work  up  to  date.  The  pre- 
sent translation,  which  is,  we  belie  y^e,  the  first 
into  English,  has  been  made  from  the  text  of 
the  last  edition.  It  comprises  only  the  first  ten 
chapters,  which  deal  with  the  Faust  literature 
prior  to  Gk)ethe;  the  second  and  more  impor- 
tant volume,  on  *  The  Origin,  Idea,  and  Com- 
position  of  GkMthe^s  Faust,'  is  promised  for  the 
end  of  the  year.  To  English  students  it  will  be 
an  invaluable  aid. 

In  the  first  volume  the  Christian  magus  le- 
gends of  the  early  centuries  are  discussed, 


chiefiy  in  the  Interest  of  scholarly  complsto- 
ness,  under  the  representative  names  of  Simon 
the  Sorcerer,  Cyprian  of  Antioch,  and  Theo- 
philus.    The  various  Faust  traditions  of  Ger- 
many are  treated  with  illuminating  fuhmi, 
although,  of  course,  the  discovery  at  Carlsmbe 
of  the  Nuremberg    "Faustgeschichteii"  of 
Roeshirt,  which  antedate  even  the  oldest  Ftani . 
book,  is  too  recent  to  have  received  notice  here. 
A  chapter  is  devoted  to  Marlowe's  "  FaQstaf," 
the  influence  of  which   upon   the   dramatic 
treatment  of  the  legend  in  Germany  wsi  of 
great  poetic  importance;  it  fixed  Uie  diartder 
of  the  opening  scene.    The  volume  closes  with 
a  discussion  of  Lesdng's  famous  LUUratHr- 
hri^t  No.  xvii.,  and  his  fragment  of  "  FAast" 
The  peculiar  aptitude  of  the  (German  mind  for 
this  medisQval  legend  is  everywhere  apparent. 
Those  who  are  impressed  by  numbers  will  be 
interested  to  leam  that  "Faust "  has  been  dra- 
matised 118  times,  and  that  41  of  these  dramas 
preceded  Goethe*s.    It  seems  to  have  been  the 
predestined  form  in  which  the  soul  of  Germany 
was  to  find  its  highest  poetic  expression. 

Sanity  and  moderation  characterise  Prof. 
Fischer's  critical  methods.  He  is  of  that  small 
but  cherished  minority  of  Faust  interpreters 
who  preserve  beneath  the  talar  of  achoUurship 
their  reasonableness  and  humanity.  But  he 
has  been  unable  wholly  to  exclude  controver- 
sial matter.  He  has  given  much  patient  or  im- 
patient study-to  Faust  interpretations,  and  de- 
rives from  them  the  same  kind  of  entertain- 
ment that  Goethe  would  have  found,  had  he 
lived  to  read  all  the  strange  things  which  have 
been  uttered  in  his  name;  but  the  pages  devot^i 
to  an  attack  on  Herman  Grinmi  lead  to  nothing 
and  are  to  be  regretted.  Nor  do  we  thinktbat 
Prof.  Fischer  has  made  out  his  oaae  that  the 
Faust  book  was  in  the  nature  of  a  Lutheran 
tract.  Ridicule  of  the  Pope  was  a  coarse  form 
of  wit,  common  enough  long  befoire  the  Re- 
formation; and  Calderon,  who  cannot  be  ac- 
cused of  anti-clerical  sentiments,  puts  disre- 
spectful words  into  the  mouth  of  one  of  Cypri- 
an's lackeys  in  "  El  M&gico  Prodlgioeo."  Cei^ 
tainly  it  was  not  the  purpose  of  the  chap-bo(A 
to  laud  the  deeds  of  Dr.  Faust  even  at  the  Vati- 
can. 

The  translation  is  worthy  of  all  praise.  It 
is  easy  and  idiomatic,  and  particularly  felici- 
tous in  the  rendering  of  catchwords  and  phrases 
into  which  the  author  has  put  a  special  signifi- 
canoe.  On  page  116^ '*  converted  "is  doubtlsM 
an  intentional  perversion  of  the  playful  impro- 
priety of  the  original.  On  page  120,  Faust  is 
made  to  remove  his  entire  leg,  which  in  the 
chap-book  is  only  a  foot.  The  Hochachule  at 
Erfurt  is  called  a  university,  p.  126.  The 
words  of  the  prince  at  the  Diet  of  Aogsbnrg, 
page  144,  are  not  accurately  rendered.  On 
page  152,  by  a  slip  of  translation,  the  Faust 
fable  is  said  to  be  founded  on  the  pappet  play, 
whereas,  two  pages  below.  Prof.  Fischer's  opi- 
nion is  correctly  stated:  "The  drania  grew 
out  of  the  chap-book."  Finally,  on  page  161, 
the  word  "duel "  unduly  dignifies  tlie  tavern 
brawl  in  which  Marlowe  lost  his  life.  That 
these  should  be  the  only  slips  which  a  oarefol 
reading  has  revealed,  is  a  sufficient  tribute  to 
the  excellence  and  accuracy  of  the  tannslatinn 
The  second  volume  wiU  not  complete  this  ad- 
mirable work  unless  it  is  furnished  with  a  full 
index. 


The  Pianoforte  SoncUa:  Its  Origin  and  De- 
velopment. By  J.  8.  Shedtook.  London: 
Methuen  &  Co. 

Thb  earliest  known  sonata  for  tbetibi^rlir  was 
written  by  the  German  1 


April  1 6,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


818 


At  L^lptig  io  10M.  Tb0  Utatt  known  sonato 
of  lmporUnc«  (**EroicA'')  was  written  by  the 
American  S.  A.  MacDowell  and  pabUebed  in 
tbe  Mme  city  in  1806.  Mr.  Shedlook  does  not 
mention  tbit  last  woHe,  but  be  bad  no  lack  of 
material  In  two  full  centuries  of  sonata- com- 
posing for  writing  a  book  of  d45  pages,  wblcb 
no  student  of  composition  can  afford  to  ignore, 
and  whicb  is  so  admirably  written  tbat  it  will 
appeal  even  to  tbe  general  reader  wbo  knows 
enougb  of  music  to  be  able  to  play  a  sonata. 

Mr.  Sbedlook  devotes  one  of  bis  obapters  to 
**  Tbe  Sonata  in  England.'*  Patriotism  alone 
can  excuse  sucb  a  thing,  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  best  treatises 
on  the  sonata  have  been  written  in  England, 
vis.,  the  present  book  by  Mr.  Bbedlock,  and  Dr. 
Hubert  Parry's  article  in  Orove's  *  Dioti<mary 
of  Music  and  Musicians.'  In  *  The  Art  of  Mu- 
sic,' too.  Dr.  Pan7  has  many  excellent  re- 
marks on  tbe  sonata.  His  thorough  familiari- 
ty with  this  branch  of  music  (he  has  composed 
two  sonatas  himself)  gives  the  more  weight  to 
the  opinion  expressed  in  the  following  sentence: 
**The  aspect  of  pianoforte  music  in  general 
seems  to  indicate  that  composers  are  agreed 
tliat  the  day  for  writing  sonatas  is  past,  and 
that  forms  of  instrumental  music  must  be  more 
closely  identified  with  the  thoughts  which  are 
expressed  in  them." 

Dr.  Parry  was  by  no  mecuis  tbe  first  musician 
who  expreswd  doubts  as  i9  the  vitality  and  fu- 
ture of  the  sonata.  Schumann  wrote,  as  long 
ago  as  1889,  tbst  "  although  from  time  to  time 
fine  tpecimens  of  the  sonata  species  ibade  their 
appearance,  and  probably  would  continue  to 
do  so,  it  seemed  as  if  that  form  of  composition 
had  run  its  appointed  course.**  He  did,  in- 
deed, compose  two  sonatas  himself,  but  his 
heart  was  not  in  this  work  as  completely  as 
when  he  wrote  his  shorter  pieces  in  freer  form, 
and  the  same  may  be  said  of  Weber,  Schubert, 
Chopin,  and  Rubinstein,  as  well  as  of  the  semi- 
classical  Mendelssohn,  whose  four  sonatas  Mr. 
Sbedlock  simply  ignores  (twenty  years  ago 
this  would  have  been  a  capital  crime  in  Eng- 
land), and  even  of  tbe  reactionary  Brahms, 
whose  three  sonatas  are  among  his  earliest 
works  (op.  1,  8,  and  5),  wherefore  it  is  doubt- 
ful, as  Parry  says,  whether  they  represent  his 
maturer  convictions. 

Liisst's  original  and  inspired  sonata  in  B  mi- 
nor stands  by  itself.  Mr.  Sbedlock  thinks  the 
germ  of  it  may  be  found  in  Beethoven*s  sonata 
in  A  flat,  opus  1 10,  and,  after  quoting  Charles 
SouUier's  opinion  that  **  la  sonate  est  morte 
avec  le  dix-buitiime  si^le  qui  en  a  tant  pro- 
duit,**  he  asks,  **  Is  Lisst's  sonato  a  Phosnix  ris- 
ing from  its  ashes  f  Shall  we  be  able  to  say, 
*  La  sonate  est  morte  1  Vive  la  sonate  *  ?  Time 
will  tell.  Hitherto  Liszt's  work  has  not  borne 
fruit."  After  all,  this  sonato  is  so  different 
from  other  works  called  by  the  same  term  that 
the  question  is  less  of  the  survival  of  a  species 
than  of  a  name.  It  differs  from  other  sonatas 
very  much  as  Llsst's  symphonic  poems  in  one 
movement  aod  arbitrarily  varied  tempo  differ 
from  the  symphonies  in  four  movements  of  ar- 
bitrarily prescribed  tempo,  or  as  Wagner's  or^ 
ganically  united  music-dramas  do  from  the 
old-fashioned  mosaic  of  operatic  arias. 

Mr.  Sbedlock^s  attitude  towards  tbe  sonata 
Is  revealed  in  this  sentence  :  **Tbe  history  of 
the  last  seventy  years  almost  leads  one  to  ima- 
gine that  Beethoven  was  the  last  of  the  great 
sonata  writers ; "  and  be  then  proceeds  to 
show,  in  what  Is  by  far  tbe  roost  valuable  and 
interesting  chapter  in  his  book,  bow  Beethoven 
varied  in  his  attitude  towards  the  sonata,  so 
that  he  may  be  regarded  at  once  as  Its  master 
and  its  destroyer.    Under  an  outward  show  of 


preserving  classical  formulsB,  he  was,  In  fact, 
almost  as  great  an  iconoclast  as  Wagner  and 
Lisst  He  did  not  slavishly  copy  tbe  three- 
movement  sonata  of  Haydn  and  Mocart,  but 
wrote  some  of  his  works  In  four,  six  of  them 
in  two  movements.  Of  two  of  these  Mr.  Shed- 
lock  frankly  says:  "The  title  of  'sonata' 
given  by  Beethoven  to  his  op.  90  and  op.  Ill 
does  not  affect  the  music  one  jot ;  under  any 
other  name  It  would  sound  as  well."  Beethoven 
also  abolished  the  repeat,  a  survival  from  the 
old  dance  movement  in  binary  form,  and  in 
the  sequence  of  keys,  freedom  of  modulation, 
moderate  use  of  full  closes,  ete.,  modified  the 
old  sonata  rules ;  and  Mr.  Sbedlock  does  not 
exaggerate  when  he  doees  his  chapter  on  this 
composer  with  the  words :  *'  In  Beethoven, 
so  far  as  sonata  and  sonata  form  are  concerned, 
we  seem,  as  it  were,  to  perceive  the  beginning 
of  a  period  of  decay"  ;  and  a  few  pages  before 
this  :  **  The  process  of  evolution  of  the  sonata 
was  gradual ;  so  also  will  be  that  of  its  disso- 
lution." 

While  Mr.  Sbedlqck  devotes  most  of  his 
space  to  the  architectural  or  structural  side  of 
his  subject,  he  does  not  ignore  the  poetic  or 
emotional  aspect.  A  mnsician  once  asked  Mo- 
sart  regarding  the  andante  of  one  of  his  sona- 
tas, and  the  oompoeer  replied  that  he  **  meant 
to  make  it  exactly  like  Miss  Rose  "—a  pretty 
girl  wbo  had  won  bis  admiration  by  her  grace 
and  amiability.  **  This  was  the  picture  to 
which  he  worked,"  says  Mr.  Sbedlock.  **One 
of  Beethoven's  finest  sonatas,  the  C  sharp  mi- 
nor,  was  inspired  by  a  beautiful  girl:  a  strong 
appeal  to  the  emotions  caUs  forth  a  composer's 
best  powers."  In  another  place  he  remarks: 
"Very  many,  probably  the  greater  number, 
of  Beethoven's  sonatas  rest  upon  some  poetic 
basis."  According  to  Schindler,  the  master  at 
one  time  (181(9  conceived  the  intention  of  indi- 
cating these  poetic  ideas  definitely.  He  cer- 
tainly took  great  pleasure  in  discussing  this 
project,  and  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  he  did 
not  carry  it  out.  Like  the  havoc  he  created 
with  the  rigid  formulsB  of  the  sonata  species  in 
his  later  works,  it  would  have  emphasised  the 
fact  that  he  was  not  so  austerely  **  classical" 
as  some  of  his  admirers  would  niake  him,  but 
that  he  showed  in  many  of  his  works  the 
modem  romantic  spirit  which  Wagner  and 
Liszt  were  the  first  to  point  out  and  insist  upon 
in  their  interpretations  of  them. 


The  HUi-Cav€»  of  Yucatan:  A  Search  for 
Evidence  of  Man*s  Antiquity  in  the  Caverns 
of  Central  America.    By  Henry  C.  Mercer. 
With  seventy.four  illustrations.    Philadel 
phla:  J.  B.  Lippiocott  Co.    1890. 
Tbk  expedition  of  whicb  this  volume  is  the 
outcome  was  made  possible  by  the  generosity 
of  J.  W.  Corwith  of  Chicago,  and  was  carried 
out  under  tbe  auspices  of  the  Department  of 
ArobsBology  of  tbe  University  of  Pennsylvania, 
of  which  institution  Mr.  Mercer  is  an  officer. 
During  tbe  sixty  days  that  these  gentlemen, 
with  their  assistants,  were  at  work  in  the  field, 
they  ]^ited  twenty-nine  caves,  in  ten  of  which 
excavations  were  made.    Of  these  ten,  six  are 
said  to  have  yielded  valuable  and  three  deci- 
sive results. 

Without  going  into  particulars,  it  will  be 
sufficient  to  say  that  these  resulto  are  divisible 
into  two  classes,  one  of  which  is  based  upon 
the  evidence  found  in  the  oaves,  while  the 
other  is  deduced  from  tbe  absence  of  all  proof 
of  a  contradictory  diaracter.  Thus,  for  ex- 
ample, basing  his  conclusion  upon  the  similari- 
ty of  tbe  pottery  and  stone  implemento  found 
in  tbe  oaves  to  specimens  in  oolleetions  from 


the  neighboring  ruins,  our  author  aiacrts  (p. 
170)  that  the  cave  visitors  were  identical  with 
the  Maya  Indians  who  buBt  the  ruined  oltiseof 
Chichenitss,  Labna,  and  Uxmal ;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  abeence  from  the  different  cul- 
ture levels  of  the  oaves  of  all  evidence  of  a 
civilization  lower  than  the  Mayas  are  known 
to  have  reached,  is  believed  to  justify  the  con- 
clusion that  no  earlier  inhabitant  ever  occu- 
pied this  region,  and  that  the  culture  of  these 
cave  people  was  not  developed  in  Yucatan,  but 
was  -tronght  by  Ihem  from  somewhere  else, 
and  in  geologically  recent  times.  To  tbe  first 
of  these  conclusions  there  can  be  no  objections  ; 
and  even  those  of  the  second  class  may  be  tem- 
porarily accepted,  though  in  so  far  as  they  are 
drawn  from  negative  evidence  they  can  hardly 
be  said  to  be  final.  This  fact  our  autlH>r 
clearly  perceives,  for  he  tells  us,  p.  177,  tbat 
"the  discovery  of  an  earlier  culture-layer 
at  a  cave  unvisited  by  us  will  upset  the 
inference." 

Aside  from  these  results,  it  Is  of  interest  to 
note  that,  wh«i  manufacturing  pottery,  the 
Maya  Indians  of  to-day  use  a  rude  wheel  or 
disk,  turning  it  with  both  feet,  instead  of  with 
one,  as  is  the  custom  with  us.  Whether  this 
invention  was  **  indigenous  to  America"  is  un- 
certain. Dr.  Brinton,  for  linguistic  reasons, 
thinks  not;  but  the  Bishop  of  Yucatan  takes 
issue  with  him  on  the  point,  and  Mr.  Mercer 
tells  us  (p.  165)  that  while  it  would  be  difficult 
*'  to  infer  the  ancient  existence  of  such  a  slow- 
moving  wheel  from  the  shape  and  texture  of 
the  potsherds  found  in  the  caves,"  yet  **in 
many  the  fairly  even  thickness,  the  superior 
regularity  of  the  rims,  and  the  parallelism  of 
the  surface  soratehings  suggest  olay-tuming 
upon  the  hand  rather  than  the  hand  turning 
upon  motionless  day."  Archaeologists  will 
await  with  some  interest  the  result  of  further 
investigations  on  this  subject,  as  the  existence 
of  a  potter's  wheel  in  prehistoric  America  has 
hitherto  been  generally  d^Mn^ited. 


7^  Far  Eattem  Qu€*tUm.  By  Valentine 
Chirol.  Macmillan  &  Co.  1890.  Pp.  IM, 
with  two  maps  and  ten  illustrations. 
Thbsx  studies,  by  a  Times  correspondent,  set 
forth  smoothly  and  succinctly,  from  a  British 
standpoint,  the  conditions  and  problems,  inter- 
national and  commercial,  that  present  them- 
selves since  the  convulsion  of  the  Chino- Japa- 
nese war  in  tbe  region  now  known  as  the  Par 
East.  Not  so  comprehensive  as  Mr.  Norman's 
and  Mr.  Curson's  books  (for  Siam,  Annam,  and 
East  Siberia  are  not  treated),  this  volume  sup- 
piemen  to  those  in  giving  special  attention  to 
the  commercial  and  industrial  conditions  and 
possibilities  which  have  to  be  entirely  recon- 
sidered in  view  of  such  recent  evento  as  tbe 
foreigners'  new  privileges  under  the  Treaty  of 
Shimonoeeki,  the  Russian  diplomatic  successes, 
the  industrial  encroachmente  of  Japan,  and 
the  extreme  depreciation  of  silver. 

Tbe  chapters  on  these  subjecto  are  useful  in 
their  summary  of  evento  and  in  their  sugges- 
tions. But  for  information  about  the  political 
and  moral  condition  of  China,  to  which  half 
the  book  is  devoted,  it  is  uselees.  Tbe  whole 
attitude  of  the  writer  is  the  ••reportorial" 
one— tbe  sMumptipn  that  all  one  needs  to  do  to 
know  about  anything  is  to  go  to  the  place  and 
make  some  inquiries.  This  writer,  for  ex- 
ample, vouchsafes  to  pass  judgment  on  Chinese 
morality,  religion,  and  politics,  to  expound  the 
history  and  tralto  of  the  nation,  and  to  pro- 
mulgate with  repeated  and  severest  emphasis 
a  wholesale  condemnation  of  the  manner  of 
life  and  thought  among  an  entire  people;  and 


314 


Tlie   N"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1607 


OD  what  basis?  Co  the  bisis  of  a  tew  months* 
sojonm  in  the  open  ports  and  Peking  -  nearly 
as  satisfactory  a  source  of  information  as  a 
Chinese  newspaper  correspondent  would  find 
for  writing  about  our  people  in  the  C^nese 
quarter  of  San  Francisco.  The  preface  alludes, 
forsooth,  to  the  peculiar  advantage  of  "study- 
ing'' the  questions  "on  the  spot."  This  has 
the  true  ^'reportorial"  ring;  if  yon  can  only 
get  "  on  the  spot»"  you  are  certain  to  secure 
ample  material  for  a  good  **  write-up  **— 
whether  of  a  street-brawl  or  of  a  legal  system, 
of  an  elopement  or  of  the  whole  moral  and 
political  fabric  of  an  empire.  We  have  been 
treated  of  late  to  so  many  of  these  Tolitant 
surface-studies  (of  the  West,  of  the  South,  of 
China,  of  the  Orient— it  matters  not  bow  great 
the  survey,  how  deep  the  problems)  that  our 
senses  are  being  dulled  to  the  risk  of  it,  and 
one  cannot  too  often  record  a  protest  The 
wise  will  understand  that,  for  Chinese  affairs 
at  least,  there  are  on  record  maturer  views 
wiiich  alone  it  wiU  be  safe  to  trust* 


Hwniing  in  Many  Lands:  The  Book  of  the 
Boone  and  Crockett  Club.  Edited  by  Theo- 
dore Roosevelt  and  George  Bird  Orinnell. 
New  York:  FortMt  and  Stream  Publishing 
Co.  1805. 
Thx  second  issue  of  the  Boone  and  Crockett 
Club  is  somewhat  of  a  disappointment.  Hunt- 
ing stories,  unless  well  told,  seldom  have 
much  interest  for  any  but  the  narrator,  or 
for  those  who  have  hunted  the  same  game 
under  similar  circumstances.  A  bald  state- 
ment of  facts,  such  as  the  number  of  Mntm^i« 
killed  in  a  day,  or  a  careful  computation  of 
the  average  number  of  shots  needed  to  kill 
different  kinds  of  game,  makes  very  mo- 
notonous reading.  There  is  so  much  in  big- 
game  hunting  that  appeals  to  every  man, 
whether  sportsman  or  not,  so  much  in  the  si- 
lence of  the  woods  add  plains,  in  the  observa- 
tion and  knowledge  of  game,  in  the  picturesque- 
ness  of  the  companions  of  the  hunt,  and  in  all 
the  small  details  that  constitute  outdoor  life, 
that  it  seems  a  pity  not  to  make  more  of  them 
than  has  been  done  here.  No  doubt  the  task 
is  difQcult,  and  if  overdone  it  were  better  not 
attempted.  This  very  fault  Is  noticeable  in  the 
article  on  '*The  Ascent  of  Chief  Ifountain," 
the  style  of  which,  though  attractive,  is  better 
suited  to  some  poetic  Indian  legend  than  to  a 
nineteenth-century  account  of  rugged  moun- 
tain-climbing. Another  criticism  applies  not 
only  to  this  book,  but^to  nearly  all  of  its 
class.  The  old  style  of  hunting  story  was  ex- 
aggerated, boastful,  ridiculous,  yet  thrilling. 
The  present  style  is  at  the  opposite  extreme. 
Undoubtedly  the  habits  of  dangerous  wild  ani- 
mals  have  changed— the  fear  of  man  has  be- 
come part  of  their  nature ;  but  not  a  Uttle  of 
this  change  is  due  to  the  narrator.  One  no- 
tices an  absence  of  detail,  a  belittling  of  dan- 
ger,  and  seemingly  a  constant  fear  of  telling  a 
good  story  and  being  laughed  at  for  it. 

Still,  notwithstanding  some  dreary  wastes, 
'Hunting  in  Many  Lands'  contains  several 
readable  articles.  Among  these  may  be  men- 
tioned "To  the  Gulf  of  Cortes,"  a  most  inte- 
resting description  of  a  hunting  trip  in  an  ob- 
scure region.  Lower  California;  "A  Canadian 
Moose  Hunt,"  which,  with  its  series  of  mishaps, 
disappointments,  and  unexpected  "red-letter 
days,"  reflects  the  bitter-sweet  experience  of 
many  a  biggame  hunter.  "  Wolf-Hunting  in 
Russia"  reminds  one  in  ports  of  •The  Jungle 
Book,'  but  leaves  behind  it  a  sense  of  disap- 
pointment, as  if  the  tale  might  have  been 
better  told.    The  article  on  **Qame  Laws," 


and  those  concerning  the  protection  of  Yellow- 
stone  Park,  are  excellent  and  instructive,  and 
are  illustrated  by  some  very  attractive  pic- 
tures. They  are  also  important  as  showing 
that  the  Boone  and  Crockett  Club  is  really  ac- 
complishing something  of  value,  not  only  to 
sportsmen,  but  to  the  whole  country— the  pro- 
tection of  game,  and  incidentally  the  protection 
and  preservation  of  its  haunts  and  breeding 
grounds. 


Th€  SenUnoet  of  PublUiug  Syrus.  Edited  by 
R.  A.  H.  BickfordSmith.  Cambridge 
(Bug.):  University  Press;  New  York:  Mac 
millan.  1885.  Pp.  IxU,  61. 
This  new  edition  of  the  *  Sentences'  is,  and 
honestly  professes  to  be,  a  r6tum6  of  the  labors 
of  the  Germans,  W.  Meyer,  Woelfflin,  Fried- 
rich,  etc.,  etc.  The  author,  known  in  our 
younger  days  as  **PubUus,"  not  ''PublUius," 
is  that  mimographer  whom  Julius  Ceesar  pa- 
tronised for  the  sake  of  discrediting  Laberius, 
to' whom  Publilius  was  already  a  dangerous 
rival— only  inferior,  perhaps,  in  not  being  a 
Roman  knight.  It  is  not  possible  to  determine 
which  of  these  sentences  belong  to  Publilius,  as 
only  a  small  fraction  are  proved  to  be  his  by 
having  been  quoted  as  such  In  antiquity. 
Those  given  in  this  edition  are  selected  from 
various  medisBval  collections,  where  they  are 
found  mixed  up  with  wise  saws  in  prose  and 
verse  from  other  authors,  the  whole  being  as 
cribed  to  Seneca ;  and  this  confusion  is  only 
worse  confounded  by  their  partly  alphabetical 
arrangement  under  the  initial  letter  of  the  first 
word  in  each. 

It  is  a  great  pity  that  we  cannot  fully  identi- 
fy what  belongs  to  Publilius,  and  that  we  have 
no  more  of  the  context  with  the  verses  pos- 
sessing a  distinctly  proverbial  character.  We 
should  in  that  case  enjoy  an  opportunity  to 
compare  the  Roman  mime  with  the  relics  of 
the  Greek  mime  which  we  possess  in  the  re- 
mains  of  Herondas,  in  some  idyls  of  Theocritus, 
and  in  other  fragments  of  like  character. 

There  Is  no  easier  road  to  poetic  immortality 
than  to  write  quotable  poetry— that  is,  poetry 
in  which  clear-cut  thoughts  and  tersely  stated 
maxims  shape  themselves  into  one  or  two  com- 
plete verses  easily  memorized  and  long  retain- 
ed. It  is  probably  the  great  success  of  this 
trick  at  the  hands  of  the  mimographers  of  the 
Augustan  age  that  is  chiefly  responsible  for  the 
labored  and  tiresome  pursuit  of  such  **senten. 
tisd"  by  the  poets  and  rhetoricians  of  the  sil- 
ver age.  Nor  did  the  taste  for  them  soon  pass 
away.  In  the  dark  ages,  when  readers  were 
few  and  literary  taste  well-nigh  extinct,  when 
most  of  the  g^eat  classics  were  sleeping  semi- 
millennial  slumbers  in  neglected  corners  of 
conventual  libraries,,  the  most  popular  books 
were  stupid  abridgments  of  ancient  authors 
which  would  now  be  regarded  as  beneath  con- 
tempt Among  these  a  collection  of  quotable 
maxims  and  proverbial  sayings  might  well  pass 
for  the  beet  sort  of  literature.  This  explains 
the  curious  fact  that,  while  some  of  the  g^reat- 
est  works  of  antiquity  have  come  down  to  us 
in  one  or  two  manuscripts  only,  we  have  these 
*  Sentences'  in  no  less  than  forty-four.  Nor 
did  the  popularity  of  these  **  familiar  quota- 
tions "  end  with  the  revival  of  learning.  Since 
the  discovery  of  printing  there  have  been  at 
least  376  separate  editions  of  them,  without 
reckoning  reprints ;  and  the  maxims  have 
been  used  and  appropriated  by  moralists  and 
other  writers  of  all  lands,  by  La  Bruydre,  by 
Calderon,  by  Metastasio,  etc.,  etc. 

The  present  editor,  who  modestly,  if  truly, 
calls  himself  an  amateur,  has  selected  judicious- 


ly from  his  German  authorities.  It  is  not,  we 
presume,  from  that  source  that  proceeds  the 
curious  inaccuracy  on  page  18,  where  the  verae 
**cuivis  potest  accidere  quod  cuiquam  potest" 
is  twice  quoted  with  the  substitution  of  "cui- 
us" for  '^cuivls."  The  English  reader  may  be 
grateful  to  Mr.  Bickford  Smith  for  a  satisfac- 
tory presentation  of  the  *'Sententiae"  and 
their  bibliography,  and  for  an  original  Index 
Verborum  <a  very  necessary  addition  to  such 
a  book)  which  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired, 
unless  it  be  a  dassiflcatory  index  of  the  max- 
ims by  subjects,  which  some  readers  will  miss. 


BOOKS  OF  THE  WEEK. 

▲lUheler,  J.  A.  The  Rainbow  of  Gold.  Home  Book  Go 
Andewon,  Mary.    AFewMemortes.    Hsrpen.    as.soi 
ABdreU.  R«T.  J.  Z.   The  Chrlxtlan  at  Msm.   Bslttaaore^ 
John  Murphy  ft  Go.    $1.  twwmore: 

ADpleton,  Bobert.   And  It  Came  to  Psm.   O.  W.  DIl. 

^V^^JTl.''^,?-  The Detecttre Faculty,  ninstratcdfrom 
Jadl^i»{R«»r(^ and KxpeHence.   Cbidnnatl: Robert 

Bloomer.  D.'c.   Life  and  Writings  of  AmeUa  Bloomer. 

Boston :  Arena  Publishing  CoT  owwner. 

Carleton.  William.     Traits  and  Stories  of  the   Irlah 

PeMintrr.   VoL  IL   London:  Dent:  New  York:  Mm>- 

mlllan.   tl.M. 
Channing.  Prof.  Edward.   The  United  SUtee  of  Ameri- 
ca.   17W-18«6.    MiiAmiii^n,    $1.60.    '"*'""*  ^™«^ 
Cheeter.  Prof.  A.  H.   A  Dictionary  of  the  Names  of 

Minerals.   John  WU«y  ft  Sons.   $s.OO. 
^JL*^-  ^  .?•   '^^  People's  Standard  History  of   the 

United  States,    ^rte  1-4.   Woolfall  Co.   Each  OOcT 
Fisher.  Prof.  O.  P.    History  of   Christian  Doctrine. 

Scrlboers.   98  00. 
Franay.  Gabriel.   Mile,  fluguette.    Paris:  OoUn  ft  Cle. 
Frederic,  Harold.   The  Damnation  of  Theron  Ware. 

Chicago:  Stone  ft  KimbaU.  $1.60. 
Fulton.  John.    Memotrs  of  Frederick  A.  P.  Barnard. 

^^aSle?ft  C?*"**"^*****  ^^^*   Philadelphia: 
GUbert,  Prof.  O.  H.    The  Student's  Life  of  Jesus.     Chi- 

cago:  Chicago  Theological  Seminary. 
Ulnn,  i-dward.    Selecaons  from  Bptotetus.    Boston: 

Glnn  ft  Co.   50c 
Goodwin,  Maud  W.   Dolly  Madison.   Scilbners.   $1.86. 
Green.  J.  L.   Allotments  and  SmaU  Holdings.   London' 

Sonnensoheln;  New  York:  Scribners.   9U 
Greenhlll.  W.  A.   Sir  Thomas  Browne's  Hydrotaphla 

and  the  Garden  of  Cyrus.   MacmlUan.   $1'     ^^"" 
OrenfeU,  B.  P.  Greek  Papyri,  chiefly  Ptolemaic  Oxford* 

Clarendon  Press;  NewYork:  Macmillanr        ""'*~- 
0^e«.H-O-  Creation  Centred  In  Christ.  Armstrong. 

Gummere.  Prof.  F.  B.  Shakspere'k  Merchant  of  Venice. 

Longmans,  Green  ft  Co.   dOc  ^^ 

Gunter.  A.  C.    Her  Senator.  Home  PubUshins  Co.  60g 
Hartmann,  Dr.  J.  God  and  Sin  In  the  AppeUtes.   Truth 

Seeker  Co.   6O0. 
Hlbben,Prof.J.G.  InducUveLoKlc  Scribners.  fl.CO. 
Hobhonse,  L.  J.    The  Theory  (^TKnowledge.    London* 

Methuen  ft  Co.:  New  York!  MacmUlsn!^$4  80 
Hofer.  E.   The  School  of  Politics:  The  American  PH- 

mary  System.   Chicaso:  C.  H.  Kerr  ft  Co.   86c 
Hoffmann.  E.  T.  W.     Weird  Tales.     8  vols,    Scrlbnen. 

HoUand^CUve.   The  Lure  of  Fame.    New  Amsterdam 

Howeils,  W.D.   A  Parting  and  a  Meeting.   Haroe 
Hubbard.  H.  S.  Beyond.  Boston:  Arena  Publish^ 
Hume,  M.  A.  S.   The  Courtships  of  Queen  Ells 
London : Unwln^New York: MaomUlan.    $8.50 
Jewett.  Sophie.    The  Pilgrim,  and  Other  Pouus.     Mao- 
mUlan.  $1.80. 
J6kal.  Maurus.   Pretty  Mlohal.    Rand.  McNallr  ft  Co. 
Kenyon,  F.  G.   The  Brownings  for  the  Young.    Lon- 
don: Smith.  Elder  ft  Co.;  New  York:  Macmlllui.    40c 

^lain '**  F.  T*NSiy.  "^^^  ^^^''  ^  ^^^  °'  **" 

Koralersln;'  ^n ja.  ' Vera  Vorontsoff.  Boston :  Lam- 
son,  Wolff  e  ft  Co.    $1.86.  ^^ 

rjanahftn.  Rer.  John.  The  Era  of  Frauds  in  the  Metho- 
dist Book  Concern.  Baltimore:  Methodist  Book  De- 
pository.  $1. 

Lea  H.  C.  A  History  of  Auricular  Confession  and  In- 
dulgences In  the  Latin  Church.  VoL  II.  Confession 
and  AbsolutloEi.   PhiladelphU:  Lea  Bros,    .g^^^^^ 

Lecky.  W.  E.  H.  Democracy  and  Liberty.  8  vols. 
Longmans.  Green  ft  Co.    $6. 

Le  Chlen  de  Brisquet,  and  Other  Stories.  Edited  for 
School  Use.   American  Book  Co.   85c 

Lewis,  E.  0.  A  History  of , the  American  Tariff.  Chi- 
cago:  C.  H.  Kerr  ft  Co.    85c. 

Locker-Lunpson.  ^ My  Confidences.    Scribners.    $5. 

Lockyer,  J.  N..  and  Rutherford,  W.  The  Rules  oTOolf. 
Macmlllan.    76c 

Morlllot,  P.  Lesage.  [Pages  Cholaies  des  Grands 
EcrlTalns-l   Parts:  Colin  ft  Cle. 

Nletuche,  Friedrlch.  Works.  VoL  XL  The  Case  of 
Wagner.   MaomUlan.   $8.  *-     *««  ^aw  ot 

On  Sermon  FlreparaUon:  RecoUectlons  and  Sugges- 
tions.   MacmlUan.    $1.  -••— - 

Pattee,  Prof.  F.  L.  A  History  of  Amertcan  Uteratur^ 
Silver.  Burdett  ft wCo.   9U60.  i-iwor-wirw. 

Peter,  Dr.  John,  and  Miss  Jehannah.  TransylvanU 
University :  Its  Origin,  Riseu  Decline,  and  FalL  [Filaon 
Club  Pabllcatlon  ]   LoulsWUe :  J.  F.  Morton  ft  iK^ 

Rogers,  HoraUo.  Mary  Dyer  of  Rhode  Island,  the  Qua- 
ker Martyr.    Providence:  Preston  ft  Rounds.   $1. 

RttthOTf  ord,  Mark.   Clara  Hopgood.    Dodd.MeadftCa 

Smith,  Prof.  G.  A.    The  Book  of  the  Twelve  Prophets. 

comrooiUycaUed  Minor.     VoUL    Armstrong.   iL.6o! 
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The  Earl's  Granddaughter.   Boston:  A.  Lmdley  ft  Oo. 
The  Sixteenth  Amendment.    G.  W.  DUlingham.   OOc 
The  Story  of  New   Sweden.   Portland.  Ma. :  Losing. 

Short  ft  Harmon.  ^  «»««». 

Waugli    \frh        John  ton's  Utw  of  the  Poets.  K«w 

ed.        '     '         ribnc^rL    fS.M. 
Wend "   '  i,    Thfl  f>achpK4Er>snra.   Raakall*SBe- 

maU.       XoL^  (ML    Scrlbupr^      Kur    *L 
WlUkf  r,  If  of,   Rio  hard     a*  d«r 

Littemtur  von  aen  %lUii*tcB       :         jg  mr€ 

Heft    1.      LrlniJsr    Oibilcigr»pbl*Jhi*  7 

York:  LeFiick^  «c  BQ«c!ia«r, 


Oo. 


The    Nation. 


NEW  TORE,   THURSDAY,  APRIL    83.   1806. 

The  Week. 

Thx  most  hopeful  development  of  the 
canyaaa  for  the  Republican  Presidential 
nomination  is  the  presentation  of  Speaker 
Reed  by  the  Maine  convention  upon  a 
^d  platform.  That  the  Republicans  of 
New  York  should  declare  clearly  for  sound' 
DQoney  as  they  did  last  month  was  a  fore- 
gone conclusion,  and  consequently  their 
action  did  not  materially  affect  the  deve- 
lopment of  opinion  in  the  party  on  this 
question.  But  the  case  of  Maine  is  alto- 
gether different.  Two  years  ago  the  Re- 
publicans of  that  State  yielded  to  the 
temptation  of  a  shuffling  deliverance  in 
favor  of  **  bimetallism,  '*  the  financial 
plank  in  the  platform  of  1884  declaring 
for  "a  financial  policy  not  in  favor  of 
monometallism,  either  of  gold  or  silver,  as 
the  basis  of  a  financial  system,  but  inter- 
national bimetallism,  to  be  secured  by 
strenuous  efforts  of  the  national  power.'* 
Mr.  Reed  was  already  then  an  aspirant 
for  the  Presidential  nomination  in  1896, 
and  this  platform  of  1894  showed  that  his 
managers  thought  the  road  to  that  nomi- 
nation lay  along  the  path  of  silence  re- 
garding free  coinage,  and  compromise  re- 
garding bimetallism.  It  is  therefbre  an 
immense  gain  to  find  the  party  in  his 
State  this  year  adopting  a  platform 
which,  of  course,  he  framed^  and  which 
declares  that  **  he  is  opposed  to  the  free 
and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver,  except 
by  international  agreement;  and  until 
such  agreement  can  be  obtained,  he  be- 
lieves the  present  gold  standard  should 
be  maintained." 


We  greatly  mistake  the  temper  of  the 
public  mind  if  Mr.  Reed's  declaration 
against  free  coinage  and  in  favor  of  main- 
taining the  gold  standard  does  not  give  a 
great  impetus  to  the  movement  for  his 
nomination.  He  has  labored  thus  far  in 
the  canvass  under  the  misfortune  of  not 
standing  for  anything  in  particular,  while 
Mr.  McKinley  represents  the  principle  of 
protection.  But  the  principle  of  sound 
money,  and  of  the  maintenance  of  the 
gold  standard  as  essential  thereto,  is  vast- 
ly more  important  than  any  question  of 
tariffs.  Moreover,  the  country  is  coming 
to  recognise  this  fact,  and  Republicans 
everywhere  outside  the  silver  States  are 
growing  more  insistent  upon  a  clear  state- 
ment of  the  party's  attitude.  Both  the 
New  Jersey  and  Kentucky  conventions  on 
Thursday  declared  for  the  gold  standard. 
Even  in  North  Dakota  the  silver  erase  has 
subsided,  and  the  Republican  conven- 
tion on  April  15  adopted  a  resolution 
squarely  opposing  free  coinage  '*  until  it 
can  be  arranged  by  international  agree- 
Bt"    Publlo  opinion  asems  now  in  the 


mood  in  which  a  determined  effort  by  the 
business  men  in  the  Republican  party  can 
avert  the  threatened  danger  of  the  nomi- 
nation at  St  Louis  of  a  man  whose  cha- 
racter and  record  on  the  financial  question 
would,  in  case  of  his  election,  throw  doubt 
upon  the  maintenance  of  the  gold  stan- 
dard. 


If  the  country  wants  a  President  who 
doesn't  know  his  own  mind  about  the  cur- 
rency, and  is  only  sure  that,  if  he  were 
given  a  chance  to  carry  out  his  ideas,  he 
shouldn't  know  how  on  earth  to  do  it, 
Morrison  of  Illinois  is  just  the  man.  His 
open  bid  for  the  Democratic  nomination 
is  frankly  made  on  a  platform  of  cheerful 
idiocy.  There  are  a  great  many  puszling 
things  about  this  currency  business,  he 
sagely  remarks.  If  we  go  to  the  silver 
basis,  we  shall  only  have  less  money  of  a 
worse  kind,  but  if  we  stay  by  gold,  we  can 
easily  see  that  "  the  property  of  the  finan- 
cially weak  will  pass  to  the  strong."  For 
his  part,  Morrison  would  like  to  take  a 
middle  path— that  is,  take  to  the  woods ; 
but  "  if  you  are  going  to  ask  me  how  this 
is  to  be  done,  I  say  frankly  I  do  not  see 
the  way." 


The  Democrats  of  Missouri  held  on 
April  15  their  State  convention  for  the 
choice  of  delegates  to  the  national  con- 
vention at  Chicago  next  July.  The  inte- 
rest of  the  gathering  centred  in  its  posi- 
tion regarding  the  silver  issue.  The  re- 
sult was  an  overwhelming  victory  for  the 
advocates  of  free  coinage.  They  not  only 
put  their  plank  in  the  platform,  but  they 
carried,  by  a  vote  of  590  to  5,  a  resolution 
instructing  their  delegates  to  the  national 
convention  to  refuse  to  vote  for  any  per- 
son for  temporary  chairman  of  that  con- 
vention who  is  not  a  pronounced  advocate 
of  the  free  coinage  of  silver  at  16  to  1,  and 
then,  to  cap  the  climax,  by  a  rising  vote 
they  put  in  nomination  as  their  candidate 
for  the  Presidency  at  Chicago  next  July 
••  Silver  Dick  "  Bland.  The  sound-money 
men  in  the  Democratic  party  should  take 
warning  from  this  action  of  the  Missouri 
convention.  It  shows  that  they  must  im- 
mediately organise  their  forces  and  fight 
for  the  control  of  every  State  convention, 
or  they  will  find,  when  they  reach  Chica- 
go next  July,  that  the  majority  of  the 
delegates  have  been  elected  upon  plat- 
forms declaring  for  free  coinage.  Four 
conventions  have  now  been  held,  all  of 
them  in  States  beyond  the  Mississippi. 
The  success  of  the  silverites  in  Oregon, 
Washington,  and  Colorado  was  not  sur- 
prising and  is  not  discouraging.  But 
this  cannot  be  said  of  the  free-coinage 
vote  in  the  Missouri  convention,  and  the 
presentation  of  the  wildest  silver  lunatic 
in  the  Union  as  that  SUto's  ••  favorite 
son."  The  friends  of  sound  mon^  were 
not  prepared  fdr  so  great.ajdefMit 


Secretary  Carlisle's  address  before  the 
Chicago  workingmen  on  April  16  is  a  good 
specimen  of  the  kind  of  argument  that 
should  be  heard  in  every  part  of  the  coun- 
try, if  we  are  ever  to  get  a  sound  currency. 
With  his  customary  clearness  and  pun- 
gency he  illustrated  the  old  truth  that 
the  laborer  b  the  first  man  to  be  hurt  by 
a  depreciated  currency  and  the  last  man 
to  adjust  himself  to  it.  Especially  skilful 
was  his  turning  the  fiank'of  the  latest  sil- 
ver onset — the  Oriental  bogy.  We  cannot 
long  compete  with  China  and  Japan,  say 
the  silverites,  unless  we  go  to  the  silver 
basis.  They  are  underselling  us  now, 
and  will  do  so  more  extensively  every  year 
unless  we  get  off  this  terrible  gold  stan- 
dard. Workingmen  ought  to  understand 
that  they  will  soon  be  out  of  a  job  if  some- 
thing is  not  speedily  done  for  silver.  Mr. 
Carlisle's  answer  is  crushing.  Speaking 
solely  from  the  standpoint  of  the  laboring 
man,  he  affirms  truly  that  this  is  but  a 
thinly  disguised  proposition  to  reduce 
wages  one-half.  In  other  words,  in  order 
to  compete  with  Japan,  the  Philadelphia 
bimetallists  say  we  must  pay  only  Japan- 
ese wages.  Of  course  they  do  not  say  this 
openly;  they  talk  learnedly  of  an  interna- 
tional par  of  exchange  and  a  broader 
standard  of  value;  but  what  their  pro- 
posals really  mean  is  payment  of  wages  in 
currency  depreciated  one-half.  If  it  is 
necessary  to  reduce  wages  one-half,  the 
reduction  might  better  be  endured  on  the 
gold  standard.  Then  a  man  would  at 
least  know  what  he  had  got,  what  his 
wages  would  buy;  but  his  silver  pay  would 
fluctuate  from  day  to  day.  This  argu- 
ment knocks  all  the  remaining  stuffing 
out  of  the  Oriental  bogy. 


Mr.  Edward  H.  Van  Ingen  has  con- 
tinued his  pursuit  of  the  newspapers 
which  published  his  name  in  connection 
with  the  familiar  Cobden  Club  lie  in  the 
campaign  of  1892  until  he  has  brought  all 
the  chief  offenders  to  the  point  of  retrac- 
tion. It  will  be  remembered  that  on  the 
evening  before  and  the  morning  of  the 
last  Presidential  election,  the  Republican 
press  of  this  country  published,  under 
flaring  headlines,  a  statement  that  Mr. 
Van  Ingen,  as  an  American  merchant, 
had  brought  home  a  corruption  fund  of 
half  a  million  dollars  from  the  Cobden 
Club  to  be  used  in  buying  votes  for  Cleve- 
land. Mr.  Van  Ingen  brought  suit  against 
Dalsiel's  news  agency  in  London  for  send- 
ing the  story,  and  it  was  compromised  by 
the  payment  by  Dalsiel  of  900  guineas  and 
costs,  amounting  to  $4,800.  He  also  sued 
the  Mail  and  Express  and  the  Recorder 
of  this  city,  and  obtained  a  verdict  against 
the  former  of  $4,000  and  costs  and  one 
against  the  latter  of  $1,000  and  costs. 
The  Press  also  printed  the  story.  It  now 
publishes  the  confession  of  Dalaiel  that 
««no  such  fund  ever  existed,  and  the  re- 


316 


Tlie    iNTation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1608 


port  was  entirely  unfounded,"  and  adds 
that,  **  as  this  completely  exonerates  Mr. 
Van  Ingen,  it  only  remains  for  us  to  ex- 
press our  regret  at  having  published  such 
false  and  unfounded  charges.*'  The  Press 
further  pays  $3,000  and  costs  rather  than 
have  the  case  go  to  trial.  We  may  now 
reasonably  hope  to  escape  the  Cobden 
Club  lie  in  all  its  forms  this  year. 


The  poor  Hawaiians  must  rub  their  eyes 
as  they  read  one  Republican  platform 
after  another  an(>  find  not  a  word  about 
their  rights,  their  heroism,  their  chastity, 
their  coming  annexation.  In  Massachu- 
setts there  was  a  mild  affirmation  that  we 
should  retain  "our  influence*'  in  Hawaii, 
yet  not  a  whisper  about  annexation.  But 
Maine  is  absolutely  dumb  about  the  glori- 
ous little  republic,  soon  to  be  a  State  in 
the  American  Union.  This  is  a  very 
Brutus-blow,  as  Maine  was  the  most  fer- 
vent and  furious  champion  of  annexation 
only  two  short  years  ago.  If  the  State  of 
Stephens  and  Blaine  and  Hale  and  Bou- 
telle  has  forsaken  the  Hawaiians,  who  will 
take  them  up?  There  is  evidence,  more- 
over, that  the  blow  was  deliberate  and 
long  preparing.  The  Hawaiian  Gazette 
of  March  31  published  an  extract  from  "a 
private  letter  "  from  Senator  Hale,  in  which 
he  told  his  anxious  and  puzzled  corre- 
spondent that  "  annexation  must  wait  for 
a  while."  But  are  not  three  years  **  a 
while  "?  And  if  annexation  is  to  be  left 
out  of  this  year's  State  and  national  plat- 
forms, when  will  it  get  in,  and  where? 
The  Hawaiians  are  slowly  learning  the  sad 
truth  that  the  Republicans  never  really 
cared  a  pin's  worth  for  them.  They  tem- 
porarily were  a  fine  theme  for  patriots  to 
roar  about,  but  have  been  lost  sight  of  al- 
together in  view  of  the  much  bigger  game 
that  has  since  been  started. 


The  Senate  took  happy  advantage  of 
Senator  Morgan's  absence  on  Wednesday 
week  to  ratify  the  treaty  between  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States  providing 
for  a  commission  to  determine  the  dama- 
ges we  must  pay  for  illegal  seizures  in  the 
Bering  Sea.  Morgan  had  intimated  a  de- 
sire to  oppose  or  seriously  amend  the 
treaty,  and  to  submit  a  few  more  remarks 
of  his  cheerful  kind  extending  over  a  week 
or  two.  But  a  not  very  mysterious  dis- 
pensation of  Providence  has  confined  him 
to  his  house  with  illness,  and  the  Senate 
unanimously  jumped  at  the  chance  to 
ratify  the  treaty.  This  will  save  our  repu- 
tation for  fair  dealing  in  the  matter.  As 
a  matter  of  economy,  it  would  doubtless 
have  been  money  in  our  pocket  if  the  last 
Congress  had  voted  the  $425,000  agreed 
upon  by  Secretary  Gresham  and  Sir  Ju- 
lian Pauncefote.  Damages  and  expenses 
under  the  commission  plan  are  likely  to 
amount  to  twice  that  sum;  but  we  have 
had  a  good  deal  of  fun  blustering  and 
making  faces,  wiiich  is  surely  worth  the 
difference. 


Why  does  not  some  one,  at  some  of  the 
colleges,  lecture  and  publish  concerning 
the  disappearance  of  the  old  form  of  po- 
pular government  in  the  State  of  New 
York  ?  We  are  not  indulging  in  the  lan- 
guage of  exaggeration  or  of  political  in- 
vective when  we  say  that  very  little  re- 
mains of  the  old  Constitution  as  redrafted 
in  1846.  and  amended  in  1864, 1869, 1874, 
and  1894.  In  the  first  place,  both  the 
Governor  and  Legislature,  as  provided  for 
by  that  instrument,  have  practically  disap- 
peared as  bodies  responsible  to  the  peo- 
ple. Neither  of  them  pays  undivided  at- 
tention, and  the  Legislature  pays  none 
whatever,  to  public  opinion  as  usuaPy 
expressed  in  civilized  states  through  their 
intelligent  classes.  •  What  they  will  do 
touching  any  measure  is  not  to  be 
ascertained  by  intercourse  with  them, 
and  is  rarely  known  to  themselves  be- 
forehand. The  practice  of  debating,  too, 
for  which  both  houses  are  organized,  and 
which  is  presumed  as  part  of  their  busi- 
ness, has  virtually  ceased,  or  is  reduced 
to  personal  altercation.  The  intention  of 
the  framers  of  the  Constitution,  evidently, 
was  that  the  objection  of  the  mayor  of  a 
city  to  any  legislation  affecting  it  should 
be  weighed  before  its  second  passage,  but 
that  provision  has  been  wholly  disregard- 
ed. The  mayor's  veto  now  simply  means 
a  delay  of  one  fortnight,  and  his  opinions 
on  city  legislation  have  no  sort  of  conse- 
quence. The  Constitution  also  provided 
that  State  offices  should  be  distributed 
through  competitive  examination,  but  it 
had  no  sooner  been  adopted  by  popular 
vote  than  the  leading  State  officers  laid 
their  heads  together  and  devised  a.  plan 
for  filling  the  offices  without  competitive 
examination.  The  Comptroller,  too,  is  a 
State  officer  elected  for  two  years,  whose 
duty  it  is  to  see  that  nobody  receives 
money  from  the  State  who  is  not  legally 
entitled  to  it  The  Legislature,  now  act- 
ing under  instructions,  talks  of  taking 
this  power  from  him  by  enactment,  and 
giving  the  State  money  to  anybody  it 
pleases.  Various  other  changes  have  taken 
place,  the  most  important  of  which  is  the 
lodging  in  the  hands  of  one  man  not  in 
office,  and  therefore  not  responsible  to 
the  people,  the  whole  patronage  of  the 
State,  and  the  control  of  all  State  legisla- 
tion, which  is  in  itself  a  virtual  change  in 
the  nature  of  the  government.  As  far  as 
our  knowledge  goes,  these  changes  are  all 
ignored  in  the  colleges  and  law  schools  of 
the  country,  as  well  as  in  the  text-books. 
The  professors  and  writers  keep  on  talk- 
ing as  if  they  had  not  occurred,  and  as  if 
New  York  were  still  governed  mainly  in 
the  same  manner  as  in  1846. 


The  Greater  New  York  bill  was  **  jam- 
med through  "  the  Senate  on  April  15,  but 
with  a  loss  of  Republican  support,  which 
shows  what  the  measure  is  costing  the 
party.  When  it  first  passed  the  Senate, 
only  four  Republicans  voted  against  it 
Finally,  this  number  was  increased  to 
eleven,  leaving  the  measure  three  votea 


short  of  the  necessary  majority.  It  wai 
saved  from  defeat  by  the  solid  support  of 
the  Tammany  Senators,  who,  under  Can- 
tor's lead,  joined  hands  with  the  Piatt 
machine,  thus  giving  indubitable  evidence 
of  the  Piatt-Tammany  combine  which  ii 
behind  the  bill,  and  which  hopes  to  make 
it  the  first  step  toward  capturing  the  gov- 
ernments of  New  York  and  Brooklyn  for 
an  indefinite  period  by  means  of  bi-parti- 
san Plat^Tammany  commissions.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  eleven  Republican  Se- 
nators should  shrink  from  the  responsi- 
bility of  placing  a  burden  like  this  upon 
their  party.  At  this  writing  it  is  very  un- 
certain what  the  fate  of  the  bill  will  be  in 
the  Assembly.  No  less  than  thirty-six 
Republicans  refused  to  vote  for  it  on  iti 
first  passage,  and  if  the  percentage  of  m- 
crease  be  as  large  in  that  body  as  it  was 
in  the  Senate,  the  bill  will  fail,  even  though 
Tammany  gives  it  solid  support 


We  doubt  if  anything  quite  equal  to  the 
proceedings  at  Tom  Piatt's  rooms  in  the 
Fifth  Avenue  Hotel  on  Sunday  ever  oc- 
curred in  this  country.  The  government 
of  the  State  was  really  in  operation  there. 
**  The  callers,"  says  a  friendly  chronicler, 
**  went  in  pairs  and  in  threes,  and  at  one 
time  nearly  every  leading  member  of  the 
Legislature  was  in  Piatt's  rooms."  The 
purpose  of  the  convocation  was  to  consi- 
der the  Greater  New  York  bill.  The  boss 
had  returned  from  Florida  with  the  de- 
termination of  **  jamming  through"  the 
bill,  which  was  in  danger  of  failing  in  the 
Assembly.  Congressman  Odell,  a  Repub- 
lican candidate  tor  the  governorship,  had 
been  at  Albany  last  week  opposing  the 
bill.  He  called  on  Piatt,  and,  whsn  his 
interview  was  over,  declared  that  his  op- 
position had  been  merely  personal,  that  he 
**  had  always  had  the  highest  regard  for 
Mr.  Piatt,"  and  let  it  be  known  that  he 
should  not  oppose  the  bill  further.  Mr. 
Odell  had  been  through  the  process 
known  as  being  "hauled  off."  He  will 
be  a  docile  Piatt  dummy  now,  and,  if  he 
makes  no  more  "  breaks,"  the  boss  may 
let  him  run  for  the  governorship.  Before 
Mr.  Odell  was  disposed  of,  the  *Meading 
members  "  of  the  Legislature  held  an  ex- 
ecutive session  of  two  hours'  duration 
with  the  boss,  and,  when  that  was  over, 
the  boss  announced:  "  The  Greater  New 
York  bill  will  be  passed  and  Gov.  Morton 
will  sign  it  It  will  be  passed  when  we 
determine  to  pass  it,  this  week  or  next 
week,  but  it  will  be  passed.  Of  that  there 
is  not  the  slightest  doubt"  All  the  de- 
puty bosses  echoed  the  great  man's  words, 
and  went  about  the  corridors  of  the  hotel 
assuring  everybody  that  the  bill  was  ''sure 
to  pass."  Fish  felt  so  sure  of  it  that  he 
said  no  caucus  would  be  held.  In  fact, 
the  caucus  had  been  held,  and  the  legis- 
lating for  the  week  to  come  had  all  been 
done  in  advance. 


Our  Jingoes  must  not  suppose  that  \ 
as  a  national  tonic  can  bo  ] 


April  23,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


317 


aiyely  for  their  own  use.  The  people  they 
want  to  fight  may  insist  upon  sharing  the 
ioapiring  draught.  Here,  for  example,  is 
a  Spanish  writer  hinting  that  all  that 
Spain  needs  to  arouse  her  from  her  pros- 
trate condition,  and  to  give  her  a  place 
again  among  the  great  nations  of  the 
world,  is  a  jolly  good  war  with  the  United 
States.  This  sentiment  is  expressed  in  a 
pamphlet  published  recently  in  Madrid, 
'The  United  States  against  Spain.  By 
an  Optimist.*  The  optimist  is  supposed 
to  be  Valera.  Anyhow,  he  is  some  one 
who  knows  the  United  States.  He  is  per- 
f^tly  aware  that  the  fierce  and  ignorant 
outcries  against  Spain  have  not  come  from 
the  American  people ;  they  are  traceable 
to  reckless  politicians  and  a  still  more 
reckless  press.  Hence,  he  argues,  let  the 
Spanish  people  be  patient,  considering 
the  ignoble  source  of  the  insults,  and  ex- 
pect the  good  sense  and  love  of  justice  of 
the  United  States  to  make  themselves  felt 
in  the  end.  But  if  war  must  come,  he 
concludes,  let  us  think  of  it  as  a  '*  salu- 
tary crisis,"  as  something  that  will  sink 
all  our  differences,  make  our  politics  pure 
and  noble,  and  leave  us  fronting  the 
world,  **all  Spaniards.*'  Valera  has  a  fine 
turn  for  sarcasm,  and  he  seems  here  to  be 
making  excellent  fun  of  our  youthful  re- 
generators by  war. 


The  news  from  Africa  is  disquieting. 
The  continuance  of  the  alarm,  and  the 
dispatch  of  fresh  troops  to  Africa,  show 
that  a  rose-colored  view  of  affairs  therd  is 
not  tenable.  Mr.  Chamberlain  has  given 
notice  to  President  Ertlger  of  the  dispatch 
of  the  troops,  with  an  explanatory  note, 
which  is  evidently  necessary  in  order  to 
avoid  arousing  the  old  man's  suspicions. 
He  does  not  come  to  London,  and  is  sai^l 
to  be  holding  off  in  order  to  secure  even- 
tually the  abrogation  of  that  article  of  the 
convention  which  makes  the  approval  of 
Great  Britain  necessary  to  the  validity  of 
any  treaty  between  the  Transvaal  and  any 
foreign  Power.  The  Boers  are  said  to  be 
very  restless  under  this,  so  satisfied  are 
they  of  their  power  to  face  Qreat  Britain 
single-handed.  The  Transvaal,  it  is  said, 
has  formed  an  alliance  with  the  other 
Dutch  state,  the  Orange  Free  State,  and 
between  the  two  they  profess  to  be  able  to 
put  40,000  men  in  the  field,  which  in  a 
country  like  Africa  is  a  formidable  force, 
and  could  be  subdued  only  after  a  long 
and  bloody  conflict,  which  would,  however 
it  ended,  leave  behind  endless  hates  be- 
tween the  two  races,  and  make  the  work 
of  government  increasingly  difficult.  It  is 
not  believed  that  war  would  elevate  the 
character  of  the  Boers  and  Englishmen. 
It  is  noticeable  that  the  tide  of  Mr.  Cham- 
berlain's popularity  has  begun  to  slacken 
a  little.  The  Jameson  outbreak  was  a 
godsend  to  him,  as  his  skilful  manage- 
ment of  it  postponed  a  little  longer  his 
grand  plan  of  a  Zoljverein  with  the  colo- 
nies. Should  the  African  trouble  be  well 
settled,  he  must  take  up  this  scheme,  of 
wbicb  tlie  EoonomUt  speaks  with  open 


contempt,  for  in  one  breath  he  says  the 
policy  of  free  trade  can  never  be  abandon- 
ed by  England,  and  in  the  next  he  pro- 
poses to  abandon  it  for  the  benefit  of  the 
colonies. 


The  new  land  bill  of  Lord  Salisbury's 
Government,  remitting  half  the  rates  on 
the  land  and  causing  a  deficit  of  $7,500,- 
000  in  the  revenue,  is  likelv  to  excite  a 
storm  of  opposition.  It  is  the  .first  at- 
tempt to  help  the  land  by  legislation 
since  the  repeal  of  the  corn  laws.  It  is 
now  proved  beyond  question  that  the 
farmers  were,  down  to  1846,  completely 
humbugged  on  the  question  of  the  du- 
ties on  corn,  and  that  the  high  price  of 
wheat  in  England  from  the  close  of  the 
war  in  1815  until  the  abolition  of  the  du- 
ties, went  not  into  the  pockets  of  the 
farmers,but  into  the  increase  of  rent,  for 
the  benefit  of  the  landlords.  The  fight 
made  for  protection  by  the  landed  inte- 
rest was,  therefore,  really  a  fight  for 
higher  rents.  The  landlords  were,  how- 
ever, altogether  disappointed  as  to  the 
effect  of  the  repeal  of  the  corn  laws  on 
rent.  Bents  were  never  so  high  as  be- 
tween 1846  and  1876.  The  land  profited 
prodigiously  by  the  great  stimulus  to  in- 
dustry given  by  free  trade,  and  it  may 
be  said  that  down  to  1873  the  lot  of  the 
English  squire  was  one  of  the  happiest 
on  earth.  Luxurious  living  in  this  class 
greatly  increased.  Land  was  a  favorite 
investment,  and  marriage  settlements 
were  made  on  a  very  high  scale.  The 
great  improvements  in  transportation 
made  about  that  time  brought  the  ends 
of  the  earth  into  competition  with  Eng- 
land. A  fall  in  rents  at  once  ensued, 
and  in  twenty  years  had  ruined  a  large 
part  of  the  landlords,  lowered  the  price 
of  land  about  one-half,  and  effected  a 
radical  change  in  English  society.  Things 
have,  during  the  last  five  years,  been 
going  from  bad  to  worse,  and  the  preeent 
bill  may  really  be  called  a  measure  of 
relief.  It  is  likely  to  lead  to  revolt  even 
in  all  the  Tory  boroughs.  A  large  part 
of  the  county  expenses,  which  are  now 
taken  from  the  poor-rates  raised  by  the 
county  authorities,  are  to  be  paid  by  the 
imperial  treasury — that  is,  by  other  inte- 
rests. Sir  William  Harcourt  predicted 
that  the  time  would  come  when  the  whole 
poor-rate  would  be  paid  in  the  same 
fashion  if  the  Tories  had  their  way. 


With  regard  to  the  Irish  land  bill  now 
before  the  House  of  Commons,  it  is  to  be 
observed  that  Irish  land  legislation  be- 
gan with  the  encumbered  -  estates  act 
nearly  fifty  years  ago,  when  the  Irish 
farmers  were  not  represented.  It  was 
then  believed,  as  it  is  still  believed,  that 
English  and  Scotch  members  of  the 
House  knew  better  what  was  good  for 
the  Irish  than  the  Irish  themselves. 
Within  twenty  years  it  was  acknowledge^^ 
that  this  biU  had  not  worked  well,  Itnd 
tbtt  th«  LeyisU^ture  had  committed   a 


radical  mistake^  in  overlooking  the  fact 
that,  as  a  rule,  all  improvements  on  Irish 
farms  were  made  by  the  farmers  them- 
selves, and  that,  therefore,  the  sale  of 
these  improvements  under  the  act  as  the 
property  of  the  landlord  was  a  gross 
wrong  and  injustice.  A  Parliamentary 
title— that  is,  a  title  against  all  the  world 
— was,  however,  given  with  each  sale.  In 
1870  this  title  was  disregarded  and  a  new 
Irish  land  act  was  passed,  in  which  the 
interest  of  the  farmer  in  the  estate  thus 
purchased  under  a  Parliamentary  title 
was  disregarded.  This  is  now  twenty-five 
years  ago,  and  it  is  a  solemn  and  sug- 
gestive truth  that  every  Parliament  since 
then,  both  Whig  and  Tory,  has  been  oc- 
cupied mainly  with  the  Irish  land  ques- 
tion, each  party  in  turn  being  either  pro- 
moters or  opposers  of  legislation  there- 
anent  The  Tories  have  brought  in  bills 
nearly  as  often  as  the  Liberals,  and  the 
former  have  adopted  and  are  acting  on 
doctrines  which  they  have  pronounced 
immoral  and  detestable.  Each  bill,  too, 
has,  as  a  rule,  been  brought  in  by  an 
Eoglishman  who  has  not  been  in  Ireland 
at  all,  or  has  been  there  only  once,  and  he 
denounceaits  opponents  on  each  occasion 
as  public  thieves.  There  is  hardly  a 
doubt  that  no  Irish  Parliament,  however 
composed,  would  in  1850  have  gone  as  far 
as  the  House  of  Commons  will  in  1886,  if 
it  passes  Mr.  Gerald  Balfour's  bill. 


Recent  events  in  Bulgaria  and  in  Tur- 
key have  not,  perhaps,  received,  either  in 
America  or  in  Europe,  the  attention 
which  they  deserve.  Our  ears  have  been 
filled  with  booms  and  the  noise  of  Con- 
gress. In  Europe  the  affairs  of  the 
Transvaal  and  the  English  advance  to- 
ward the  Sudan  have  been  uppermoet  in 
the  newspapers  and  in  the  minds  of  the 
public.  Yet,  during  this  time,  the  dynasty 
of  Ferdinand  of  Bulgaria  seems  to  have 
settled  down,  or  almost  to  have  settled 
down,  upon  a  solid  base.  The  *' conver- 
sion "  of  Prince  Boris — a  religious  inci- 
dent inadequately  described  by  the  word 
6otiJf6— brought  in  its  train,  first,  recog- 
nition of  Ferdinand  by  Russia  and  after- 
ward by  the  Powers,  and  then  his  very 
significant  visit  to  his  suzerain,  the 
Sultan.  The  etiquette  of  this  visit  was 
arranged  beforehand  in  long  negotiations. 
He  was  given  the  rank  of  a  sovereign 
prince.  He  took  precedence  even  of  the 
Grand  Visier.  An  imperial  palace  was 
allotted  to  him,  and  he  received  the  title 
of  Imperial  Highness,  as  if  he  were  a 
prince  of  the  blood.  The  Sultan,  in  fact, 
lavished  on  him  the  most  distinguished 
honors  in  his  gift.  He  was  received  like 
the  Prodigal  Son.  And  all  this^  appa- 
rently, because  Ferdinand  has  made^^hjf^^ 
pefice  with  Russia,  and  because  JtM  one 
man  who  mi^bt  have  made  Bulgaria  a 
nation  has*  been  murdeiW.  What  the 
ultintate  future  of  "Bulgaria  may  be,  no 
mwi  can  now  Hiy*  but  it  is  apparent  that 
o^tt  immediate  future  a  seal  has  beea 
aet  during  these  laot  few  weeka. 


-.^ 


318 


TKe   N"atioii. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1608 


ENGLAND  ON  HER  KNEES. 
Wb  hope  our  more  eminent  bimetal- 
lists,  and  especially  President  Andrews  of 
Brown  Universitj,  will  read  carefully  the 
statement  of  the  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer in  Parliament  on  Thursday  last 
He  will  there  see,  as  we  pointed  out  to 
him  at  the  time,  how  foolish  was  his  talk 
of  ** bringing  England  to  her  knees*' 
through  his  own  little  scheme  over  two 
years  ago.  He  will  see,  too,  how  foolish 
was  the  talk  of  a  good  many  of  his  con- 
geners throughout  the  land  who  main- 
tained that  monometallism  was  bringing 
England  to  her  ruin;  that  if  she  maintain- 
ed her  reliance  on  gold,  collapse  of  her 
financial  system  was  certain.  Happily, 
all  through  this  difficult  period  her  finan- 
ces have  remained  in  the  hands  of  busi- 
ness men  who  understood  currency  and 
exchange.  There  never  has  been  any 
more  chance  of  her  changing  her  stan- 
dard than  of  her  adopting  the  Julian  cal- 
endar. Nothing  in  the  whole  discussion 
has  been  so  droll,  and  yet  so  melancholy 
to  those  who  understood  the  English 
mind  and  polity,  as  the  belief  that  she 
would  change  her  standard  because  Mr. 
Balfour  and  some  of  the  professors  were 
bimetallists,  because  Moreton  Frewen 
said  America  was  unanimous  for  bimetal- 
lism, and  because  Senator  Lodge  thought 
her  unkind  to  silver.  All  these  antics  on 
our  side  of  the  water  have  simply  made 
Englishmen  smile. 

The  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  says 
the  Treasury  was  never  so  full.  Consols 
were  never  higher,  though  the  interest 
has  been  reduced  one-half  within  a  cen- 
tury. The  deposits  in  savings  banks  have 
never  been  so  great ;  the  deposits  in  other 
banks  were  never  so  large.  The  produc- 
tion of  gold  has  never  been  so  great.  The 
bullion  reserve  in  the  Bank  of  England 
was  never  so  large.  The  revenue  receipts 
have  exceeded  the  expenditures.  '*  Every- 
thing has  an  upward  tendency."  The 
exports,  imports,  railway  earnings,  and 
clearing-house  returns  all  show  a  great 
expansion  of  business.  The  revenue  from 
wines,  spirits,  and  tobacco  and  tea  has 
increased.  Every  class  of  the  community 
is  flourishing  except  the  agriculturists, 
who,  there  as  here,  have  now  to  compete 
with  better  soils  and  climates  in  all  parts 
of  the  earth. 

This  ought  to  be  astonishing  reading  for 
an  American.  We  have  nearly  double  the 
population  of  Great  Britain.  We  have  an 
immensely  greater  area  of  soil;  we  have 
far  richer  resources  in  coal  and  iron  and 
other  metals.  We  have  a  government 
which  we  maintain  is  much  better,  or  at 
all  events  dearer  to  the  people  who  live 
under  it,  than  the  government  of  Great 
Britain.  We  have  no  army;  we  have  next 
to  no  navy.  We  have  no  colonies  or  de- 
pendencies. We  have  little  public  debt 
Yet  we  are  not  happy.  Wails  over  the 
badness  of  business  meet  one's  eye  in 
every  newspaper.  We  have  to  borrow 
money  every  quarter  to  keep  our  paper  at 
par.    The  success  of  the  loan  is  received 


with  shouts  of  triumph,  though,  while  it 
is  being  raised,  every  business  man  holds 
his  breath.  At  this  moment  nearly  every 
man  of  instruction  and  ability  in  the 
country  is  working,  with  great  anxiety,  to 
prevent  the  election  of  a  President  and 
Congress  who  shall  declare  fifty  cents  to 
be  worth  a  dollar,  and  abolish  the  gold 
standard.  The  receipts  fall  below  the 
expenditures.  Debts  contracted  in  the 
war,  thirty  years  ago,  remain  unpaid. 
The  prihdpal  commercial  city  in  the 
Union  is  governed  by  a  system  of  black- 
mail, carried  on  by  a  parcel  of  ignorant 
and  penniless  adventurers  from  various 
parts  of  the  Union,  who  do  not  conceal 
their  contempt  for  the  population  which 
submits  to  them. 

Now  what  causes  this  diiferenoe?  No- 
thing material.  Our  population  and  re- 
sources are,  as  we  have  shown,  far  great- 
er than  those  of  England.  Our  govern- 
ment, on  paper,  is  as  good  or  better.  The 
difference  arises  out  of  the  fact  that  com- 
mon  sense  still  presides  over  English 
affairs.  Were  our  Congress  and  legisla- 
tures to  take  charge  of  England  to-mor- 
row, by  the  1st  of  December  the  Treasury 
would  be  empty,  the  Queen  would  have 
taken  refuge  in  Berlin,  India  would  have 
risen  in  revolt,  specie  payments  would 
have  been  suspended,  and  a  bloody  war 
would  have  commenced  with  the  principal 
Powers  of  Europe.  All  this  has  been  pre- 
vented, and  public  affairs  go  as  smoothly 
in  England  as  private  affairs  do  in  this 
country,  simply  by  maintaining  the  supre- 
macy of  common  sense,  which  is  supplied 
in  this  country,  unhappily  in  too  small 
quantities,  only  by  the  Constitution.  They 
are  not  desperately  wrong  who  maintain 
that  we  should  be  better  off  to-day  if 
governed  exclusively  by  constitutional 
conventions,  meeting  only  once  in  ten 
years. 

In  England,  currency  and  finance  are 
left  by  general  consent  to  experts,  to  men 
who  have  given  attention  to  such  subjects, 
or  are  engaged  in  the  management  of  cur- 
rency. A  f^w  metaphysicians,  or  pro- 
fessors, or  cranks  may  proclaim  the  near 
approach  of  ruin  if  some  scheme  of  theirs 
be  not  adopted,  but  few  mind  them.  They 
make  their  little  speeches,  print  their  little 
pamphlets,  but  the  great  world  of  busi- 
ness goes  on  its  way.  There  are  no  **  gold- 
bugs  "  in  England.  The  poorest  man  is 
as  much  interested  as  Lord  Rothschild  in 
having  the  gold  sovereign's  quality  as  a 
measure  of  value  preserved  intact.  The 
idea  of  submitting  currency  to  a  vote  at 
a  general  election  enters  no  one's  head. 
When  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
says  he  will  not  have  a  thing,  that  ends 
the  matter.  The  ablest  men  in  all  branches 
are  still,  as  a  rule,  put  at  the  head  of  af- 
fairs for  the  general  good.  In  London,  in- 
stead of  a  commission  giving  each  other 
the  lie  for  political  reasons,  the  police  is 
governed  in  silence,  order,  and  admirable 
discipline  by  a  one-armed  Indian  officer, 
whom  no  one  ever  dreams  of  interfering 
with.     This  means  simply  the  reign  of 


common  sense.  It  means  the  application 
to  public  affairs  of  the  individual  prudence 
and  foresight  which  make  our  private  af- 
fairs a  succesa.  It  is  as  much  within  our 
reach  as  the  reach  of  Englishmen.  The 
use  of  it  during  the  last  thirty  years  would 
have  given  us  by  this  time  sound  finance, 
light  taxation,  and  a  roaring  trade.  The 
Mikes,  Jakes,  and  Barneys,  instead  of  rul- 
ing us,  would  be  in  the  almshouse  or  the 
jail.  The  American  dollar  would  be  as  fa- 
mous the  world  over  as  the  English  pound. 
The  fun  of  it  is  that  we  can  have  this 
state  of  things  any  day  we  please,  and 
there  is  evidence  on  all  sides  that  the  great 
prosperity  of  England,  as  set  forth  in  the 
Chancellor's  budget  speech,  is  having  a 
profound  effect  on  what  we  may  call  with- 
out disrespect  second-rate  busineae  men 
in  this  country.  First-rate  busineas  men 
have  long  been  aware  of  the  good  trade  in 
England  for  the  last  year ;  but  merchants 
and  bankers  whose  interests  and  whose 
views  are  local  and  narrow,  have  known 
nothing  of  this.  Now  they  have  had  the 
facts  thrust  upon  them  in  this  forcible 
way,  and  are  set  profitably  wondering 
about  the  causes.  England  has  so  long 
been  a  sort  of  hobgoblin  in  this  country, 
an  example  mainly  of  the  things  to  avoid, 
that  it  is  hard  to  confess  that  ahe  is  ahow- 
ing  us  how  to  do  it.  But  if  ahe  is  really 
showing  us,  and  if  the  good  times  which 
she  is  enjoying  do  not,  for  some  reason  or 
other,  take  their  way  to  us  as  they  so 
often  have  done  in  the  past,  the  determi- 
nation to  find  out  what  that  reason  is  and 
remove  it,  cannot  but  strengthen  among 
sensible  men.  Bismarck  said  that  he 
wanted  the  French  republic  to  continue, 
instead  of  a  monarchical  restoration,  inas- 
much as  the  republic  was  a  very  **  salu- 
tary hobgoblin"  for  Germans  to  gaxe 
upon.  The  great  English  surplus  and 
quickened  trade  and  commerce  constitute 
just  now  a  most  salutary  hobgoblin  for 
Americans, 


THE  ROAD  TO   VICTORY, 

Thb  first  essential  to  the  restoration  of 
prosperity  in  the  United  States  is  assur- 
ance of  th§  stability  of  the  currency. 
Such  assurance  has  not  existed  for  years. 
The  lack  of  it  was  the  chief  cause  of  the 
panic  of  1893,  and  continues  the  main 
reason  for  the  prolongation  of  the  busi- 
ness depression.  What  threatens  the  sta- 
bility of  the  currency  is  the  demand  of  a 
large  fraction  of  the  votera  for  the  free 
coinage  of  silver  at  the  ratio  of  16  to  1, 
which  would  involve  the  substituticm  of 
the  silver  standard  for  the  gold  one;  and 
the  readiness  of  prominent  politidana  in 
each  party,  including  the  leading  Bapub- 
lioan  candidate  for  the  Presidency,  to 
compromise  with  this  dishonest  demand 
by  favoring  a  **  bimetallism  "  that  is  ns* 
oessarily  incompatible  with  the  mainta- 
nance  of  the  gold  standard.  The  elaotea 
as  President  of  a  man  whose  rsoord  mahss 
such  a  platform  the  only  one  on  w^Mk  bm 
could  QQjkai$ientij  stand,  would  OMmftMl 


April  23,  1896] 


Th.e    N"atioii. 


319 


yem  of  conatant  apprehension  as  to  the 
■afety  of  our  financial  system. 

The  one  aure  way  of  averting  this  peril 
ifl  the  election  of  a  man  who  can  be  trust- 
ed, upon  a  platform  which  pledges  his 
party  against  free  coinage  and  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  gold  standard.  Such 
a  result  would  establish  the  credit  of  the 
nation  beyond  question,  and  this  would 
of  itself  induce  a  period  of  great  prosperi- 
ty. Secretary  Smith  of  the  Interior  De- 
partment has  expressed  the  opinion  that 
*'  the  nomination  and  election  by  either 
party  of  a  sound-money  man,  on  a  plat- 
form declaring  briefly  and  clearly  that  the 
dollar  of  this  country  should  consist  of 
25.8  grains  of  gold,  and  that  no*  legislation 
should  be  undertaken  to  depreciate  this 
dollar,  would  increase  business  values  in 
the  United  States  25  per  cent,  at  once." 
We  believe  that  this  is  an  underestimate 
of  the  good  that  would  be  accomplished. 

During  the  summer  of  1868,  gold  ranged 
at  a  premium  of  between  40  and  50.  There 
was  an  active  agitation  for  the  payment 
of  Government  bonds  in  the  depreciated 
greenback  currency.  Butler  in  the  Re- 
publican party  and  Pendleton  in  the 
Democratic  advocated  the  adoption  of  the 
policy.  Pendleton  carried  his  party  with 
him,  and  secured  the  adoption  of  a  plat- 
form by  the  Democratic  national  conven- 
tion which  declared  that  '*  where  the  ob- 
ligations of  the  Government  do  not  ex- 
pressly state  upon  their  face,  or  the  law 
under  which  they  were  issued  does  not 
provide,  that  they  shall  be  paid  in  coin, 
they  ought,  in  right  and  in  justice,  to  be 
paid  in  the  lawful  money  of  the  United 
States"— meaning  greenbacks,  instead  of 
gold,  the  only  coin  then  current;  demand- 
ed taxation  of  Government  bonds ;  and 
raised  the  clap- trap  cry  of,  *'  One  currency 
for  the  Government  and  the  people,  the 
laborer  and  the  office-holder,  the  pension- 
er and  the  soldier,  the  producer  and  the 
bondholder." 

The  Republicans  snubbed  Butler,  and 
nominated  Grant  upon  a  platform  which 
contained  this  clear  and  explicit  declara- 
tion in  favor  of  paying  the  bonds  in  gold  : 

'*  We  denotiDoe  all  formft  of  repadiation  as  a 
national  crime;  and  the  natioaal  honor  re- 
qoiref  the  payment  of  the  public  indebtednefls 
in  the  uttermott  good  faith  to  all  creditors  at 
home  and  abroad,  not  only  acoordlng  to  the 
letter,  but  the  spirit,  of  the  laws  under  which 
it  was  contracted.** 

Although  Seymour,  whom  the  Demo- 
crats nominated,  did  not  believe  in  the 
greenback  policy,  he  "stood  upon  the 
platform,"  and  declared,  in  accepting  the 
nomination,  that  *'  the  resolutions  are  in 
accord  with  my  views."  The  ivue  there- 
fore entered  into  the  canvass,  and  resulted 
in  a  strong  movement  by  business  men  to 
defeat  the  Democrats  on  this  ground. 
Only  New  York  and  New  Jersey  of  all  the 
Northern  States  were  returned  for  Sey- 
mour, and  his  majority  in  the  latter  was 
small,  while  the  count  of  New  York  for 
him  has  always  been  considered  fraudu- 
lent by  many. 

The  first  act  passed  by  Congress  a  fort- 


night after  Grant's  inauguration  in  March, 
1869,  was  "An  Act  to  strengthen  the  pub- 
lic credit  of  the  United  States,*'  which 
redeemed  the  pledge  of  the  Republican 
platform  by  declaring  that  "the  faith  of 
the  United  States  is  solemnly  pledged  to 
the  payment  in  coin  or  its  equivalent  of  all 
the  obligations  of  the  United  States  not 
bearing  interest,  known  as  United  States 
notes,  and  of  all  the  interest-bearing  obli- 
gations of  the  United  States,  except  in 
cases  where  the  law  authorizing  the  issue 
of  any  such  obligation  has  expressly  pro- 
vided that  the  same  may  be  paid  in  law- 
ful money  or  other  currency  than  gold 
and  silver  ";  and  that  "  the  United  SUtee 
also  solemnly  pledges  its  faith  to  make 
provision  at  the  earliest  practicable  period 
for  the  redemption  of  the  United  States 
notes  in  coin." 

The  consequences  of  this  victory  for 
sound  money  were  immediate  and  lasting. 
The  premium  on  gold,  which  had  ranged 
between  40  and  50  during  the  summer  be- 
fore the  Presidential  election,  fell  to  an 
average  of  below  35  in  the  month  after 
that  election  occurred,  and  was  down  to 
13  within  a  year  after  Grant's  inaugura- 
tion; while  specie  payments  were  resumed 
only  ten  years  later.  The  Republican 
party  (no  less  than  the  country)  found  that 
honesty  was  the  best  policy  in  a  series  of 
great  victories,  while  the  Democratic  party 
has  not  to  this  day  fully  recovered  from 
the  discredit  brought  upon  it  by  its  ten- 
derness towards  repudiation  not^ly  thirty 
years  ago. 

The  Republicans  can  make  history  re- 
peat itself  this  year.  Bland,  as  a  later 
Pendleton,  will  go  to  the  national  Demo- 
cratic convention  as  the  advocate  of  free 
silver  coinage,  and  will  have  a  large  por- 
tion of  his  party  with  him  in  this  later 
movement  for  repudiation.  The  masses 
of  the  Republican  party  are  sound  on  this 
Issue.  They  are  sick  of  '<  straddles  "  and 
"dodges."  They  are  tired  of  the  decep- 
tive talk  about  "bimetallism."  They  are 
ready  to  welcome  as  clear  and  emphatic  a 
declaration  for  national  honesty  as  was 
adopted  by  iheir  party  in  1868.  Upon 
such  a  declaration,  and  with  a  candidate 
who  can  be  trusted  upon  this  Imuo  as  im- 
plicitly as  Grant  showed  that  he  could  be 
trusted,  the  Republicans  can  sweep  the 
country. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  CIT7. 

Wb  do  not  need  to  wait  for  the  passage 
or  failure  of  the  Consolidation  bill  to 
learn  from  it  the  objects  of  its  promo- 
ters. The  refusal  to  debate  it  on  its 
merits,  the  aid  extended  to  it  by  the 
Tammany  members  of  the  Legislature, 
the  revelations  of  Lauterbach,  and, 
though  last,  not  least,  the  disregard  of 
the  vetoes  of  the  two  Mayors,  all  go  to 
show  that  the  improvement  of  the  city 
government  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
scheme.  Its  originators  do  not,  in  fact, 
deny  that  it  is  a  plan  for  the  creation  of 
a  large  number  of  offices  to  be  divided 


amicably  between  the  two  machines, 
Croker's  and  Piatt's.  Consequently,  the 
observations  of  the  Mayors  and  of  Preei- 
dent  Low  and  others  on  the  advantages 
of  consolidation  in  the  abstract  were 
thrown  away.  Consolidation  as  a  means 
of  improvement  of  anything  whatever  is 
not  in  the  minds  of  the  projectors.  Even 
the  "public  improvements"  which  some 
of  them  talk  of  would  be  simply  contracts 
to  be  divided  between  the  parties,  as  the 
contract  for  the  new  aqueduct  was. 

The  last  two  Legislatures  have  been,  in 
fact,  the  most  barefaced  we  have  ever 
had  —  worse  much  than  Croker's,  for 
Croker's  was  known  to  be  composed  in  the 
main  of  malefactors,  and  we  fiattered  our- 
selves that  a  change  of  parties  would  have 
given  us  relief.  What  has  happened  since 
1884  has  shown  us  that  we  were  mistaken; 
that  in  this  State  at  least,  the  old  idea 
that  the  Republican  party  was  that  of  in- 
telligence and  reform  must  be  given  up, 
and  that  we  are  face  to  face  with  a  crisis 
in  which  neither  of  the  old  parties  can  be 
called  on  for  redress.  Out  experience 
since  1884  shows  us  that  the  old  device 
of  punishing  one  party  by  turning  it  out 
and  putting  the  other  in  power,  is  no 
longer  available.  Should  we  attempt  to 
apply  it  next  fall,  as  many  undoubtedly 
will,  we  shall  probably  find  that  Piatt 
and  his  followers  have  made  such  arrange- 
ments with  Tammany  that  defeat  will 
not  trouble  them  in  the  least, -and,  which- 
ever comes  into  power,  the  Republicans 
will  get  their  share  of  the  spoil.  There  is 
every  sign  now  that  Piatt  is  very  indiffe- 
rent as  to  the  effect  of  his  measures  on 
the  voters,  and  that  his  secret  support 
will  be  given  in  1886,  and  in  1897  too,  to 
the  Tammany  candidate.  The  part  he  is 
making  Mr.  Morton  play  in  this  pro- 
gramme is  its  most  melancholy  feature. 
There  is  not  the  smallest  reason  for  be- 
lieving that  Piatt  cares  in  the  least  who  is 
President  if  the  division  of  offices  in  the 
State  is  satisfactory  to  him. 

These  things  are  all  to  be  considered  by 
those  who  are  in  1897  to  make  one  more 
effort  to  deliver  the  city.  It  is  becoming 
clearer  every  day  that,  if  the  thing  be 
done,  it  must  be  done  by  a  municipal 
ticket,  that  no  help  is  to  be  expected  from 
the  politicians  of  either  party,  and  that  if 
it  fails  badly  it  will  probably  not  be  re- 
peated in  our  time.  The  "Presidential 
year "  is  being  successfully  used  by  Piatt 
to  strengthen  his  own  power,  as  the  fail- 
ure of  the  "  Better  Element "  movement 
shows.  Still,  the  separate  election  in  1897 
will  demonstrate  how  much  there  is  in  the 
city  of  real  patriotism.  But  it  is  not  a 
minute  too  soon  to  begin  to  think  about  it 

No  one  who  thinks  about  it  can  avoid 
the  conclusion  that  the  use  made  by  both 
parties  of  the  cities  of  the  State  for 
their  various  "dickers,"  and  the  suc- 
cessful employment  of  men  of  low  cha- 
racter as  political  leaders,  are  the  re- 
sult of  great  ignorance  of  city  affairs  on 
the  part  of  the  country  constituencies. 
If  one  believed  that  the  majority  of  the 


320 


The    ^N'ation* 


[VoL  62,  No.  1608 


yoten  really  willed  such  asaemblages  as 
the  preeent  Legislature,  and  really  willed 
with  kDowledge  such  meaaures  aa  the 
Conaolidation  bill,  one  would  have  to  give 
up  completely  all  faith  in  democratic  gov- 
ernment. One  would  have  to  admit  that 
the  disappearance,  even  of  its  forms,  was 
merely  a  matter  of  time.  One  goes  on 
writing  and  speaking  in  the  belief  that 
people  desire  good  government  under 
republican  forms,  and  that,  with  more 
reading  and  listening,  they  will  finally 
determine  to  have  it  But  the  misfortune 
of  the  present  situation  is  that  the  city 
makes  no  impression  on  the  country.  As 
a  rule,  either  the  city  press  does  not  dis- 
cuss things  seriously,  or  its  good  faith  is 
suspected.  The  news  and  comments  of 
the  great  picture  papers  simply  amuse 
people,  and  the  real  object  of  some  of  the 
others  does  not  command  respect.  The 
country  papers  are  as  ignorant  about  city 
affairs  as  newspapers  can  well  be,  and 
the  worldly  success  of  the  editors  depends 
wholly  on  their  devotion  to  the  party. 
To  quarrel  with  the  Boss  means  for  a 
country  editor  the  loss  of  circulation,  of 
advertisements,  and  of  the  small  patron- 
age through  which  the  Boss  keeps  the 
country  in  good  humor. 

The  situation  is  not  unlike  that  which 
prevailed  before  the  war  with  regard  to 
the  slavery  question.  That  fight  was 
largely  won  by  the  lecturers,  and  one  of 
the  greatest  misfortunes  of  our  time  is 
their  disappearance  from  the  scene.  We 
have,  it  is  true,  plenty  of  lecturers  still, 
but  they  do  not  touch  on  questions  of  the 
day.  They  amuse  and  they  gratify  curio- 
sity ;  but  they  do  not  attempt  to  infiuence 
opinion.  The  local  paper  has  it  all  its  own 
way.  The  lecturer  in  the  old  days,  on  the 
other  hand,  let  light  from  the  outer 
world  into  a  great  many  places  that  would 
have  remained  dark ;  and  he  commanded 
a  hearing  not  less  by  his  eloquence  as  a 
speaker  and  a  writer  than  by  his  superior 
knowledge.  If  .we  had  people  like  Chapin, 
and  Curtis,  and  Phillips,  and  Emerson, 
and  Beecher  going  through  the  country 
clearing  the  popular  mind  on  the  subject 
of  municipal  government,  international 
law,  and  currency,  we  should  undoubtedly 
escape,  sooner  or  later,  such  extraordinary 
phenomena  as  the  result  of  our  reform 
movement  in  this  city ,  as  the  Jingo  ezcite- 
.  ment  after  Cleveland's  message,  and  as 
the  nomination  of  a  man  like  McKinley 
when  the  country  is  threatened  with  a 
monetary  crisis.  We  mention  these  things 
because  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  show 
that  they  are  the  product  of  pure  igno- 
rance. That  the  Northern  mind  was  not 
easily  aroused  by  slavery  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  for  fifty  years  it  held  its  own  in 
the  Northern  church  and  in  Northern 
opinion,  its  pretensions  increasing  every 
year  in  extravagance,  and  its  contempt  for 
public  opinion  growing  more  conspicuous. 
Men  like  Piatt  were,  in  every  State,  all  dn 
its  side.  They  were  beaten  by  stronger 
forces  than  the  country  paper,  and,  in  our 
opinion,  something  should  be  done  to  re- 


vive the  agencies  which  forty  years  ago 
gave  righteousness  its  victory. 


ACTION   AND    INACTION    IN   EUROPE. 
Pabis,  April  9, 1890. 

I  BSOOLABLT  resd,  alwayg  with  much  inte- 
rest and  pleasore,  often  with  mucb  admiration, 
what  appears  under  the  name  of  Leo  Tolstoi, 
the  famous  aothor  of  *  War  and  Peace'  and 
*  Anna  KarSoina.'  In  the  third  nomber, which 
appeared  in  March,  of  a  new  review,  Cosmopo^ 
2m,  which  calls  itself  intemationa],  as  it  has 
three  parts,  written  one  in  English,  one  in 
French,  and  one  in  German,  there  is  a  curious 
article  by  Tolstoi,  entitled  **  Zola  et  Domes :  le 
Non  sgir/'  It  is  written  in  answer  to  a  speech 
delivered  by  Zola  at  the  banquet  of  the  Gene 
ral  Association  of  Students,  as  well  as  to  a  let- 
ter  written  shortly  before  his  death  by  Dumas 
to  a  French  paper.  Tolstoi  treats  these  two 
documents  as  representative  of  the  two  fnnda- 
mental  forces  which  act  on  humanity— the 
force  of  routine,  which  keeps  it  on  the  road 
that  it  follows;  the  force  of  reason  and  of  love, 
which  incUnes  it  towards  a  higher  ideaL 

It  Is  rather  amusing  to  find  Zola  treated  as 
the  representative  of  routine;  and  why?  Be- 
cause, in  his  speech  to  the  students,  he  recom- 
mended them  to  work,  and  told  them  that 
work  would  make  their  life  happy  and  cheer- 
ful and  deliver  them  from  '*  the  torment  of  the 
inflnite.**  Tolstoi  takes  the  opposite  view;  he 
sees  no  peculiar  virtue  in  work,  and  aims  to 
prove  that  much  of  what  goes  under  the  name 
of  work  is  bad  and  detrimental  to  humanity. 
His  criticism  of  work  is  paradoxical,  but  very 
clever;  to  sum  It  up,  he  considers  work,  in  our 
badly  organised  society,  "  as  a  sort  of  agent  of 
moral  aoffisthesia,  like  tobacco,  wine,  and  all 
our  other  means  of  stultifying  ourselves  so  as 
to  cover  the  disorder  and  emptiness  of  our  ex- 
istence." The  **non-agir  "  which  Tolstoi  places 
In  opposition  to  the  **  agir  "  recommended  by 
Zola  and  generally  by  all  moralists,  econo- 
mists, and  even  by  poets,  as  in  the  beautiful 
line  of  Longfellow, 

"  Act,  set  In  the  llTlng  preteat," 

is  an  approach  to  the  Buddhist  nirvana.  Tol- 
stoi, however,  does  not  go  so  far  as  to  consider 
the  cessation  of  thought  and  of  conscience  as 
the  supreme  object  which  we  ought  to  try  to 
attain;  he  begs  us  to  think,  to  look  round,  and 
to  consider  love  and  charity  as  the  most  im- 
portant affairs  of  our  human  existence.  **  Beek 
ye  first  the  kingdom  of  Ood«  and  his  righteous, 
ness,  and  all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto 
you." 

My  mind  could  not  help,  while  I  was  reading 
this  Tolstoian  theory  of  '*  Work  not,"  eetab. 
lishing  a  relation  between  it  and  the  present 
policy  of  the  Russian  Government,  which 
might  be  summed  up  in  two  words.  **  Act  not." 
Russia's  diplomacy  has  been  left  entirely  of 
late  in  the  hands  of  Prince  Lobanoff,  who 
has  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  all  the 
courts  of  Europe,  as  he  has  been  ambassador 
in  nearly  all  its  capitals;  he  has  become,  if  not 
nominally,  in  reality,  a  chancellor,  a  perma- 
nent  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs.  The  late 
Czar  was  his  own  chancellor,  but  Nicholas  n. 
is  very  young,  and  he  has  shown  no  desire  so 
far  to  assume  all  the  responsibilities  of  diplo- 
macy himself.  The  policy  of  Prince  Lobanoff 
has  been  what  Sir  James  Biacklntosh  called  **a 
masterly  inactivity.''  Nobody  knew  better  how 
little  Russia  had  gained  by  the  policy  of  action 
which  culminated  in  the  Turkish  war  and  end- 
ed in  the  Congress  of  Berlin.    Russia  has  now  ' 


entirely  changed  her  manner.  She  thinks  no 
longer  of  making  war  on  the  "Sick  Man**;  the 
allows  him  time  to  die. 

This  policy  of  inaction  has  its  source  not 
only  in  the  lessons  given  by  the  late  Turldsh 
war,  but  also  in  the  events  which  took  plscs 
after  the  war  in  Bulgaria.  Russia  had  placed 
a  nominee  of  her  own  in  Sophia;  she  had  or- 
ganfsed  and  oiBoered  the  Bulgarian  army,  and 
had  thought  her  infiuence  for  ever  paramoont 
in  the  principality.  But  she  subsequently  lost 
her  influence,  at  least  in  appearance.  After 
the  downfall  of  Prince  Alexander  of  Batten- 
berg,  she  saw  with  much  displeasure  the  Gov- 
ernment of  Bulgaria  fall  into  the  bands  of 
Prince  Ferdinand  of  Coburg  (whom  she  hsd 
every  reason  to  consider  a  favorite  of  Austria) 
and  of  Stambuloff,  who  was  the  boldest  ad- 
versary of  Russian  influence  in  the  principal, 
ity.  She  adopted  towards  Bulgaria  an  at^ 
tudeof  "non.activity";  she  simply  refused  to 
recognise  Prince  Ferdinand,  and  she  thus  hin- 
dered his  recognition  by  all  the  great  Powers. 
For  years,  Prince  Ferdinand  tried  In  vain  to 
conquer  the  sullen  and  silent  resistance  of  the 
late  Tsar;  be  never  succeeded,  and  in  the  aid 
he  had  to  abandon  the  antl- Russian  party, 
and,  after  the  death  of  Stambuloff;  he  called 
to  power  the  men  who  represented  the  mo- 
derate Russian  party.  It  was  not  enough;  we 
have  since  seen  him  making  concession  after 
concession  to  Russia.  Young  Prince  Boris 
was  converted  to  the  orthodox  church,  and  we 
hear  now  that  a  military  convention  has  been 
proposed,  if  it  is  not  already  signed,  between 
Russia  and  Bulgaria.  This  convention  prac- 
tically places  Bulgaria,  In  time  of  war,  in  the 
hands  of  Russia,  as,  by  its  terms,  Russian 
troops  may  land  at  Varna  and  occupy  the 
principality.  In  this  manner,  the  crossing  of 
the  Danube,  always  a  most  difficult  occupa- 
tion In  front  of  an  enemy.  Is  avoided;  what 
becomes,  then,  of  the  defences  prepared  with 
so  much  care  and  at  so  much  expense  by  Ro- 
mania, which  is  a  sort  of  vanguard  of  Austria 
in  the  Eastf  It  Is  plain  that,  by  throwing 
himself  into  the  arms  of  Russia,  Prince  F^xii- 
nand  has  allowed  Russia  to  extend,  without  a 
struggle,  her  sphere  of  infiuence  in  the  direc- 
tion of  Constantinople  and  in  the  Balkan 
peninsula.  Prince  Ferdinand  has  found  it 
easy  to  abandon  the  interests  of  Austria, 
which  has  helped  powerfully  to  maintain  him 
in  Sophia  during  the  last  few  years ;  he  win 
not  find  it  as  easy  to  separate  from  Russia,  it 
he  ever  chooses  to  do  so.  A  natural  attrac- 
tion is  exercised  by  the  Russian  orthodox 
church  on  the  Bolgarian  church ;  and  so 
strong  is  it  that  Prince  Ferdinand  found  hinn 
self  obliged  to  convert  his  young  son  Boris  to 
the  national  church,  feeling  that  otherwise  he 
would  not  obtain  his  own  recognition  by  Rna* 
sia.  Edward  Dicey  has  very  well  described 
the  situation  of  what  he  calls  the  **  peasant 
state,'*  and,  with  his  usual  cleamecs  of  apper- 
ception, he  has  seen  that  the  Prince  could  not 
be  recognized  without  making  great  sacrifices 
to  Russia.  These  sacrifices,  which  Stambuloff 
was  not  willing  to  make,  are  now  tonpleted, 
and  Bulgaria  may  be  considered  as  a  mere 
vassal  state. 

These  results  have  been  obtained  by  Russia's 
waiting  game.  The  same  policy  of  inaction,  of 
inertia,  has  given  her  for  the  present  a  para- 
mount influence  in  Constantinople.  It  is  cer- 
tainly worthy  of  remark  that,  of  all  the  great 
Powers,  Rusda,  which  once  professed  and  whkh 
still  professes  to  be  the  protector  of  the  Cbzia- 
tians  of  the  East,  has  been  the  least  movadlh^fha 
Armenian  massacres.  The  famous ' 
atrocities,"  the  disorders  In  tbml 


April  23,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


831 


oaoMd,  xokdw  Um  SeooDd  Empire,  ad  armed 
ezpeditlon  to  Syria,  were  nothing  compared 
to  the  appalling  horrors  of  which  Aiia  Minor 
has  been  the  scene  daring  the  last  two  years. 
Wholesale  masacrss  of  men,  women,  and 
ohUdren  have  taken  place  under  the  indifferent 
eyes  of  the  cirilised  world ;  and  when  some 
sort  of  intenrention  by  the  great  Powers  was 
meditated,  the  chief  obstacle  came  from  Ras- 
sia.  France,  disarmed  and  neutralised  by  the 
Russian  alliance,  could  not  repeat  what  she 
had  onoe  done  in  Syria  ;  Russians  veto  saved 
the  Turkish  Empire  from  an  interrention 
which  at  one  moment  seemed  imminent.  By 
mere  r<s  ifteHics,  Russia  became  the  dominant 
Fbwer  at  Constantinople ;  h^r  advice  has  be- 
come irresistible ;  her  ambassador  is  omnipo- 


Russia  has  derived  great  benefits  from  her 
alliance  with  France,  or  compact— it  is  difllcult 
to  find  a  suitable  word  for  an  attraction 
which  leemed  instinctive  on  both  sides,  and 
which  has  drawn  towards  each  other  two  na» 
tions  placed  at , two  opposite  ends  of  Europe, 
living  under  different  institutions,  and  having 
absolutely  different  ideals.  A  common  dread, 
not  to  say  hatred,  of  Germany  is  the  tie  which 
has  united  them;  but  this  sentiment  has  not 
been  allowed  by  the  governments  of  the  two 
countries  to  take  an  offensive  form.  The 
alliance  is,  so  to  speak,  purely  defensive,  like 
the  Triple  Alliance  of  Qermany,  Austria,  and 
Italy.  The  vague  but  very  strong  sentiment 
which  is  felt  in  France  for  the  great  Power 
which  first  showed  her  some  sympathy  after 
the  unhappy  war  of  1870,  has  proved  a  greater 
benefit  to  Russia  than  to  France.  It  has  helped 
Russia  to  put  her  finances  in  much  better  order; 
no  less  than  six  or  seven  milliards  of  French 
money  is  said  to  be  invested  in  Russian  funds. 
The  Russian  Treasury,  with  the  help  of  France, 
has  been  allowed  to  borrow  to  an  almost  un- 
limited extent,  and  to  make  convenions  which 
produce  a  great  economy. 

The  alliance,  however,  has  not  yet  been  tried 
on  purely  political  questions — that  is  to  say, 
on  questions  of  great  importance.  It  is  under- 
stood that  on  all  minor  questions,  in  every 
capital,  the  French  and  the  Russian  ministers 
hold  a  similar  attitude.  The  first  question  of 
great  importance  as  to  which  the  interests  of 
France  and  of  Russia  are  perhaps  not  quite 
similar,  has  been  the  recent  question  of  the 
Anglo- Egyptian  expedition  to  the  Upper  Nile. 
This  expedition,  though  it  had  been  preparing 
for  a  long  time,  took  Europe  by  surprise.  In 
Paris  the  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  in  his 
first  excitement,  sent  a  semi-official  note  to 
the  newspapers  which  was  conceived  in  an 
almost  ominous  tone.  The  French  public  is 
really  very  indifferent  to  what  is  going  on  in 
the  valley  of  the  NUe ;  it  is  felt  that  we  have 
no  right  to  speak  loud  at  Cairo  since,  at  the 
time  of  Arabics  revolt,  we  refused  to  join  the 
English  expedition  which  put  an  end  to  that 
rising.  Our  fieet  was  before  Alexandria,  with 
the  English  fleet,  but,  at  the  last  moment, 
much  to  the  surprise  of  our  sailors,  it  was  or- 
dered back  to  Toulon.  We  gave  at  that  mo- 
BMQt  earU  blanche  to  England  ;  but  our  For- 
eign Office  has  kept  on  its  old  way  of  interfer- 
ing in  Eastern  affairr,  and  from  time  to  time 
thinks  it  necessary  to  remind  England  that  its 
occupation  of  Egypt  is  and  must  be  only  tem- 
porary. England  invariably  answers  that  it 
knows  its  obligations,  but  remains  the  Judge 
of  the  time  when  the  evacuation  can  be  made 
without  endangering  the  interesti  and  the 
peace  of  Egypt. 

When  the  expedition  to  Dongola  was  aa- 
iKwnoed,  France  made  objeotiona  to  the  use  of 


the  reeerve  fund,  which  is 'under  the  control  of 
a  European  commission.  Germany,  Italy,  and 
Austria  gave  their  consent ;  Russia  could  not 
well  separate  from  France,  but  it  is  lald  that 
Prince  Lobanoff  made  some  remarks  on  the 
initiative  which  France  had  taken  with  too 
much  haste,  and  without  first  entering  into 
communication  with  Russia.  Russia  does  not 
interfere  in  the  interior  affairs  of  France,  and 
treats  in  the  same  manner  the  administrations 
which  succeed  each  other,  sometimes  with 
great  rapidity;  but  when  it  comes  to  external 
affairs  which  concern  all  the  great  Powers, 
Russia  demands  that  the  action  to  be  taken  by 
her  in  common  with  France  shall  be  the  object 
of  previous  negotiation  and  deliberation.  If 
Russia  had  been  consulted  in  time  in  this  affair 
of  the  Egyptian  funds,  France  would  probably 
have  avoided  the  crisis  in  which  it  is  now  in- 
volved. The  expedition  to  Dongola  has  had 
the  lingular  result  of  intensifying  the  state  of 
complete  hostility  between  our  Senate  and  our 
Chamber  of  Deputies.  This  hostility  may 
have  for  its  consequence  a  ministerial  and, 
perhaps,  what  is  more  serious,  a  Presidential 
crisis. 


THE  NEW  DEGREES  AT  OXFORD. 
OzroRD,  March  80, 1806. 

The  University  of  Oxford  has  seldom  given 
its  assent  to  a  statute  which  promised  to  be  of 
greater  importance  imd  more  far-reaching 
consequence  than  the  one  passed  last  year  and 
just  now  going  into  actual  operation,  by  which 
men,  not  necessarily  holding  an  Oxford  B.A , 
are  admitted  as  candidates  for  the  newly  es- 
tablished degrees  of  bcushelor  of  letters  and 
bcushelor  of  science.  It  is  a  measure,  moreover, 
of  especial  interest  and  importance  to  Ame- 
rican students,  for  whose  benefit  it  was  in 
great  part  intended,  throwing  open  as  it  does 
a  field  of  foreign  graduate  study  which  pre- 
viously  had  been  in  great  measure  closed  to 
them.  For  heretofore  the  only  access  to  an  Ox- 
ford degree  in  course  has  been  through  the  can- 
didate (of  whatever  university  rank  or  stand- 
ing) laying  aside  his  pride  of  previous  degrees, 
taking  the  regular  entrance  examinations  of 
the  university,  entering  as  a  freshman,  and 
wortdng  three  years  as  an  undergraduate.  For 
the  M.A.  he  was  obliged  to  pay  his  fees  and 
keep  his  name  on  the  books  for  the  required 
twenty-seven  terms  from  matriculation— a 
course  which  few  men  of  previous  training 
could  or  would  adopt.  In  many  respects, 
then,  this  new  departure  is  a  revolution  in  the 
Oxford  system,  and  one  hears  even  now  ru- 
mors  to  the  effect  that  it  is  to  be  emulated  by 
the  still  more  conservative  University  of  Paris 
some  time  in  the  near  future.  This  will  no 
doubt  have  a  tendency  to  divert  pert  of  the 
stream  of  Americans  to  Germany  into  other 
channels— a  result  which,  for  some  reasons,  is 
by  no  means  to  be  deplored. 

The  new  degrees  are  established  avowedly  to 
encoursge  research  in  Oxford  by  men  already 
trained  and  even  advanced  in  specialisation. 
They  correspond  closely  to  graduate  degrees 
eUewhere,  and  are  thrown  open  under  condi- 
tions which  not  only  recognise  work  done  out- 
side Oxford,  but  relieve  the  candidates  from 
some  restrictions  of  ordinary  undergraduate 
work,  reddenoei  and  examinations.  Tbecondi. 
tions  under  which  they  are  established  are 
these:  A  candidate  for  either  degree  must  be 
at  least  twenty  one  years  of  age,  and  either  be 
a  B.  A.  of  Oxford  or  give  satisfactory  evidence 
of  a  good  general  ednoation  to  a  oonmiittee  of 
the  Board  of  Faculties.  Having  satisfied  these 
requirements,  he  must  prssenfa  plan  of  study 


or  a  subject  of  research  for  the  approval  of  a 
committee  of  the  Board  of  Faculty  to  which 
his  work  belongs,  and  satisfy  the  conmiittee 
that  (I)  this  work  may  be  profitably  pursued 
in  Oxford,  and  that  03)  he  is  fitted  to  under- 
take the  line  of  research  proposed.  A  mini- 
mum  of  eight  terms*  residence  b  required  for 
the  degree.  The  Oxford  year  of  twenty.fonr 
weeks,  however,  is  divided  for  purposes  of 
residence  into  four  terms,  in  addition  to  which 
in  any  one  year  a  candidate  for  B.L.  or  B.Sc 
is  allowed  to  reckon  forty-two  days'  residence, 
not  necessarily  consecutive,  during  vacation  as 
a  term  counting  toward  the  residence  require- 
ment for  the  degree.  Any  one,  moreover,  who 
has  kept  two  years'  residence  in  the  University 
as  an  undergraduate  is  eligible  for  the  degree, 
so  far  as  residence  is  concerned.  After  the 
candidate  has  proved  his  age  and  his  general 
education,  and  his  subject  and  his  special 
qualifications  for  grappling  with  it  have  been 
passed  upon,  he  is  handed  over  to  a  committee 
of  the  Board  of  Faculty  under  which  his  work 
will  naturally  falL  This,  corresponding  in  all 
essential  respects  to  a  graduate  committee  else* 
where,  supervises  and  directs  his  in  vestigation, 
aids  him  with  advice  and  counsel,  and  finally 
examines  him  on  the  results  of  his  work.  For 
upon  the  completion  of  eight  terms  of  work 
and  residence  the  candidate  must  satisfy  his 
Faculty  Board,  through  its  committee,  of  his 
fitness  to  receive  the  degree,  either  by  such  an 
examination  in  the  subject  of  his  course  of 
special  study  or  research,  or  by  such  a  disserta- 
tion or  report  of  work  done  as  shall  meet  with 
the  approval  of  the  Board.  Any  candidate 
directed  to  submit  a  dissertation  or  report  is 
publicly  examined  on  the  ground  it  covers. 

All  this  is,  in  its  essentials,  scope,  aim,  and 
method,  almost  exactly  equivalent  to  the  pro- 
cess of  obtaining  a  Ph.D.  in  an  American  uni- 
versity. It  may  be  added  here  that  the  de- 
grees in  letters  and  science  do  not  lead  to  the 
degree  of  M.A.,  and  that  Bachelors  of  Letters 
and  Science  rank  immediately  after  Bachelors 
of  Civil  Law  and  Medicine  in  the  university 
polity.  The  titles  of  the  higher  degrees  in 
Letters  and  Science  have  not  as  yet  been  fixed 
upon,  but  it  is  very  possible  that  doctors'  de- 
grees analogous  to  D.C.L.  and  D.D.  will  be 
established. 

The  '*  Faculties"  under  which  theae  degrees 
are  granted  correspond  more  or  less  exactly 
to  the  ** departments"  of  an  American  uni- 
versity. For  the  purpoees  of  this  statute  they 
are  eight  in  number,  Theology,  Law,  Medicine, 
Liter®  Humaniores,  Natural  Science  (including 
Mathematics),  Oriental  Languages,  Modem 
History,  and  English  Language  and  Litera- 
ture. And  in  order  to  give  some  idea  of  the 
ground  covered  and  the  instruction  offered  in 
each,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  enumerate  the 
subdivisions  in  some  detail. 

Theology,  Law,  and  Medicine  are  regarded 
as  ** superior"  faculties,  and  the  two  former 
are  divided  into  (I)  a  specific  superior  course 
leading  to  B  D.  and  D.D.,  and  B.C.L.  and 
D.C.L.,  accessible  only  to  those  already  hold- 
Ing  a  B.  A.,  and  (2)  a  '^school "  in  which  an  un- 
dergraduate reads  for  a  B.A.  as  he  would  in 
any  other  school,  like  modem  history  or  na- 
tural science.  Theology  covers  (a)  the  Holy 
Scriptures,  (6)  Dogmatic  and  Symbolic  The- 
ology, (c)  Ecclesiastical  History,  (d)  Evidences 
of  Religion,  (e)  Liturgies,  (/)  Sacred  Criticism 
and  Archsdology,  {g)  Hebrew.    Law  comprises 

(a)  Jurisprudence,  (6)  Roman  Law,  (c)  English 
Law,  (d)  History  of  Legal  and  PoliUcal  Insti- 
tutions, (s)  International  Law.  Literss  Huma^ 
niorss  includes  (a)  Greek  and  Latin  Languages, 

(b)  Greek  and  Roman  History,  (e)  Logic,  and 


332 


Tlie    N'atioii. 


[VoL  62.  No.  1608 


Moral  and  Political  Philosophy.  Medicine 
covers  Haman  Anatomy,  Physiology,  Medi- 
cine, etc.,  in  addition  to  the  general  subjects 
under  Natural  Science.  Under  Natural  Sci- 
ence are  included  (a)  Mathematics,  (&)  Physics, 

(c)  Chemistry,  (d)  Animal  Physiology,  («)  Ani- 
mal Morphology,  (/)  Botany,  (g)  Geology,  (h) 
Astronomy.  Oriental  Languages  comprise  (a) 
Sanskrit,  Indian  History,  Literature,  Reli- 
gious and  Comparative  I.  E.  Granmiar,  (h) 
Arabic  Language,  Literature,  History,  Epi- 
graphy, and  Theology,  (e)  Hebrew^  Language, 
Literature,  History,  and  Epigraphy,  (d)  Per- 
sian Language,  History,  Pliilology.  Modem 
History  covers  (a)  History  of  England,  Politi- 
cal and  Constitutional,  (6)  a  period  of  general 
European  history— six  in  number,  from  476- 
1S15,  (e)  a  special  subject,  like  Italy  149d-15l8^ 

(d)  Political  Science  and  Political  Economy. 
English  Language  and  Literature  includes  (a) 
portions  of  English  authors  like  Chaucer, 
etc.,  ib)  History  of  the  Language,  including 
Gothic,  Old  and  Middle  English,  (c)  History  of 
English  Literature,  (d)  a  *^ special  subject"  in 
language  or  literature,  chiefly  foreign. 

This  outline  will  convey  an  idea  of  the  gene- 
ral lines  of  instruction  ofTered  here  ;  for  as  the 
whole  system  leads  up  to  the  schools*  exami- 
nations under  their  respective  Boards  of 
Fkcuitiee,  it  follows  that  the  main  strength 
and  body  of  the  instruction  is  directed  to 
preparing  men  for  these.  On  the  other  hand, 
of  course,  the  diversity  of  choice  is  great- 
er  than  appears  at  first  sight.  Modem  his- 
tory, for  instance,  coven  Indian  history, 
geography,  and  palsBOgra|>hy ;  law  includes 
Indian  law ;  Oriental  languages^  some  six  In 
dian  dialects,  besides  Burmese, Turkish,  Chinees, 
and  the  like ;  while  natural  science  takes  both 
agriculture  and  anthropology  under  its  pro- 
jecting wing.  There  is,  it  need  not  be  said,  a 
considerable  body  of  teaching  devoted  to  mo- 
dem languages,  including  Russian,  besides 
Prof.  Rh^*8  admirable  Celtic,  which  has  not 
yet  risen  to  the  dignity  of  a  school.  So,  while 
the  schools  system  defines  arbitrarily  and  not 
always  felicitously  the  provinces  of  hui|Mn 
knowledge,  there  is  still  a  considerable  range 
of  selection  within  these  limits. 

Moreover,  the  candidate  for  the  new  degrees 
is  fortunately  little  hampered  by  this  schools 
system  in  any  direction.  The  list  given  above 
is  rather  indicative  of  what,  in  the  meaning  of 
the  statute,  may  profitably  be  pursued  at  Ox- 
ford—of what,  that  is,  there  are  men  here  to 
advise  him  about  and  direct  him  in  his  work. 
It  is  not  intended  as  a  list  of  courses  of  lec- 
tures to  be  taken  for  a  degree,  for,  under  the 
present  constraction  of  the  statute,  the  candi- 
date  is  not  suppoeed  to  go  into  a  school  on  the 
same  footing  as  a  candidate  for  the  B.  A.  The 
primary  intention  is  that  of  highly  specialised 
work  on  a  subject  or  period  already  teleeUdy 
leading  up  primarily  to  a  dissertation;  and 
though  the  candidate  may  and  doubtless  will 
avail  himself  of  lectures,  his  real  work  will  be 
that  of  his  thesis.  Undergraduate  instruction 
here  is  not,  of  course,  in  the  hands  of  the  Uni- 
versity, but  is  given  by  the  colleges  or  by  the 
delegacy  for  unattached  students,  which  in  its 
practical  working  throws  the  student  into  the 
hands  of  a  tutor  who  directs  all  his  movements. 
The  new  statute,  however,  while  treating  the 
candidate  for  B.L.  or  B.Sc.  as  an  ordinary  un- 
dergraduate in  every  other  respect,  puts  him  in 
the  hands  of  the  University,  answerable  to 
it  and  directed  by  it  through  its  committee. 

A  word  as  to  the  more  practical  details  may 
not  be  out  of  place.  An  intending  candi- 
date should  arm  himself  with  proofs  of  identi- 
ty, age,  and  acquirements  in  the  shape  of  birth 


certificate,  diploma,  and  certificates  of  work 
done,  and  even  personal  letters  from  previous 
instructors.  He  should  by  all  means  have 
some  definite  piece  of  work  selected,  if  possible 
— certainly  some  definite  subject  or  period  to 
offer— and  be  prepared,  if  necessary,  to  pass  a 
general  preliminary  examination  upon  it  if 
required.  It  Is  advisable  in  many  ways  to  join 
a  college,  if  possible,  and  even  to  live  in  col- 
lege, at  least  for  a  time,  for  in  no  other  way 
can  one  come  under  the  peculiar  infiuence  of 
atmosphere  and  association  on  which  so  much 
stress  is  laid  in  the  Oxford  system.  And,  how. 
ever  one  may  sneer  at  restrictions  as  to  the 
meaning  of  cap  and  gown,  being  in  by  10  p.  M. 
under  penal^  of  a  fine,  and  a  doaen  others, 
even  these  seem  to  lend  a  certain  charm  to  the 
life  here,  which  Is  almost  ideal  in  so  many  other 
respects. 

As  to  the  facilities  for  work  outside  the  rou- 
tine  of  lectures,  it  is  impossible  even  to  touch 
upon  most  of  them.  The  first  and  greatest  of 
these,  the  Bodleian  Library  (with  its  annex, 
the  Raddiffe),  as  to  siae,  ease  of  access,  facili- 
ties for  work,  and,  above  all,  the  invariable 
kindness  and  courtesy  of  those  in  charge.  Is 
hardly  to  be  equalled  anywhere.  There  are, 
too,  great  stores  of  books  and  MSS.  in  the  lees 
accessible  college  libraries  and  in  the  museums. 
There  are  the  great  archssologlcal,  antiqua- 
rian, art,  ethnological  and  scientific  oolleo- 
tioDs,  together  with  the  Botanic  Gardens,  the 
various  laboratories  (college  as  well  as  univer- 
sity),  and  institutions  like  the  Indian  Institute 
devoted  to  subjects  connected  with  the  Indian 
Empire,  and  the  Taylorian  to  those  connected 
with  the  study  of  modem  languages.  There  is, 
too,  perhaps  a  greater  number  of  men  engaged 
in  advance  research  in  Oxford  than  almost 
anywhere  else  in  the  world— men  with  or  with- 
out official  connection  with  the  University  or 
with  colleges,  who,  though  they  may  not  lee 
ture,  are  generally  accessible  for  advice  or 
consultation,  and  who,  by  their  very  presence, 
do  much  towards  maintaining  the  atmosphere 
and  tradiUon  of  learning  that  hang  about  the 
place,  and  insensibly  form  sudi  a  great  factor 
in  the  training  of  men  who  come  to  this,  per- 
haps the  most  dignified,  certainly  the  most 
beautiful  seat  of  learning  in  the  world. 

WiLBUB  C.  Abbott. 


\ 


Correspondence, 


THE  RUS8LAN  BRYCE. 
To  THS  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Snt:  Slavioa  non  Uguntur  was  the  catego- 
rical statement  of  a  savant  of  bygone  days. 
Since  then  the  G^erman  countries  have  become 
the  strongholds  of  Slavic  philological  learn- 
ing,  and  France  has  produced  some  good  works 
in  the  Russian  language  that  enjoy  the  respect 
of  Slavic  scholars,  while  the  name  of  good 
translations  from  Russian  into  German  and 
French  is  legion.  America,  with  its  traditional 
friendship  for  Russia,  has  up  to  date  shown  but 
a  spurious  interest  in  the  intellectual  move- 
ment of  its  nearest  trans- oceanic  neighbor,  and 
thus  makes  true  the  statement,  Slavica  non 
leguntur.  With  the  praiseworthy  exception 
of  one  or  two  writers  who  know  Russia  and 
Russian,  the  translations  and  compilations 
made  in  this  country  are  unreliable  and  often 
worthless.    But  of  this  another  time. 

Until  very  lately  Russians  knew  just  as  little 
of  America  and  Americans,  ttieir  acquaintance 
not  rising  above  a  reading  of  the  literary  pro- 
ductions that  have  become  the  poosession  of  the 


whole  English-speaking  world,  and  with  it  of 
the  world  at  large.  Now,  through  the  excellent 
articles  by  A.  P.  Tverskoy  that  have  i^peared 
in  various  leading  Russian  journals  and  week- 
lies, it  is  possible  to  gain  as  clear  an  insight 
into  American  life  as  through  the  psges  in 
Bryce^s  *  American  Commonwealth.'  Thest 
articles  have  been  conveniently  collected  in  a 
well-printed  volume  bearing  the  title,  *  Sketchn 
from  the  United  States  of  North  America '  (St 
Petersburg,  1895),  and  containing  in  ifiO  pages 
the  following  beads:  Ten  Years  In  America— 
The  Presidential  Campaign  of  180d-My  Life 
in  America— Letters— The  World's  Fair. 

In  these  there  Is  unrolled  a  wealth  of  per- 
sonal observations  and  experiences  but  rarely 
found  in  one  man.  It  is  the  his^OTy  of  the  In- 
tellectual transformation  of  a  Russian  emi- 
grant  into  a  stanch  American;  it  is  the  joy- 
ous message  of  free  America  to  the  East  of 
Europe.  The  autobiography  of  the  author 
reads  like  a  fairy-tale.  He  arrived  in  America 
in  1881  with  a  copy  of  Ollendorff  In  his  bands 
and  slender  means.  Of  America  he  knew  no- 
thhdg,  and  he  wanted  to  become  a  farmer, 
though  as  a  nobleman  and  soldier  he  had  never 
put  his  hands  to  a  plough.  He  settled  in  Flo- 
rida, worked  in  a  sawmill,  acquired  a  i»«cti- 
oal  knowledge  of  its  running,  and  entered  into 
partnership  with  two  Americans,  whom  he 
bought  out  In  one  year.  By  diligence  and 
shrewd  investments  he  in  a  few  years  had  laid 
by  enough  money  to  take  the  contract  for  the 
building  of  a  raUroad.  A  few  years  later  he 
became  the  superintendent  of  a  large  railroad 
system.  Within  eight  years  he  was  the  owner 
of  a  large  sawmill,  wood-planing  establish 
ments,  g«ieral  stores,  a  railroad-carriage  fac- 
tory, a  railroad  with  its  branches,  vessels  and 
steamships,  a  million  acres  of  land  granted  by 
State  and  private  Individuals,  several  towns 
along  the  line  of  railroad,  etc,  etc  He  founded 
the  city  of  St.  Petersburg  in  Florida,  became 
mayor  of  a  town,  and  held  several  political 
offices.  He  has  now  retired  from  buslnesa  and 
lives  a  happy  life  on  his  estates  in  Southern 
California. 

In  his  short  but  brilliant  career  Mr.  Tver- 
skoy has  had  ample  opportunity  to  become  ac- 
quainted with  American  life  in  all  its  minu- 
tiee,  and  he  has  acquitted  himself  of  his  diiB- 
cult  task  of  critic  with  remarkable  success. 
It  is  to  be  hoped  that  his  work  may  become 
acceadble  to  an  American  public  In  an  English 
translation,  that  Americans  may  have  again  a 
chance  to  see  themselvee  as  others  see  them. 

Leo  WoEifUL 

CAMBBmoB,  Mass. 


RUFUS  KING'S  CORRESPONDENCE. 

To  THE  EdITOE  of  THB  NATION: 

Sir:  The  portion  of  the  dispatch  from  Rufus 
King  to  the  Secretary  of  State  which  remains 
in  cipher  in  King's  edition  of  Rufus  King's 
Correspondence,  vol.  ill.,  p.  898,  may  be  found 
deciphered  in  Am.  State  Papers,  Foreign  Re* 
lationSfe  voL  ii.,  p.  401,  as  follows: 

"  I  am  assured  that  our  affairs  shall  be  taken 
into  consideration  as  soon  as  the  new  cabinet 
is  settled;  and  I  am  not  without  hopes  that 
they  may  be  satisfactorily  adjusted.  Having 
caused  it  to  be  understood  that  we  should  not 
consent  to  pay  more  than  ten  hundred  thoo- 
sand  pounds  in  lieu  of  what  might  be  awarded 
under  the  sixth  article,  I  shall  await  a  decisloa 
upon  this  offer." 

By  the  convention  of  1802^  negotiated  hif 
King  and  Lord  Hawkesbury,  the  mam  *( 
je600,000  was  designated  as  the  amomiitvil 
paid  by  the  United  States  to  Qnttki 


April  23.  1896] 


Tlie   N'ation. 


328 


dsbto  oootniotod  prior  to  the  tntttj  of  pMoe 
oC  1788.— I  mm,  yery  retpectfolly  your*, 

J.  8.  RsxTsa 
WAmsmnm,  D.  O,  AprU  14, 1806. 


PIDGIN  SPANISH. 

To  THE  BOITOR  OF  TH»  NaTIOW: 

Sir:  Id  coniieotion  with  tba  Intereflting  re- 
marks of  your  correspoDdent  in  the  Nation 
for  January  80,  r«gardiog  '^Pidgin  Englitb,** 
aod  in  view  of  the  ever  increasing  number  of 
Spanish.  American  stories  contained  in  our 
current  literature,  perhaps  you  will  let  me  re- 
mark that  the  average  Spanish  quotation, 
with  its  corresponding  translation,  bears  much 
the  same  relation  to  CaatOian  as  *'  Ralphese*' 
to  «*  Pidgin  English.'*  Thus,  in  the  March 
numt>er  of  Barpef*$  Magazine^  the  writer  of 
the  paper  00  "Arcadian  Bee- Ranching**  re 
fen  to  the  musical  names  of  the  California 
rancheis  and  translates  some  of  them  for  the 
benefit  of  its  readers.  He  writea  **  Las  Poaas  ** 
for  "Los  Poeos**  (meaning  *The  Wells*),  and 
translates  '*Las  Chupa-Rosas **  "Humming- 
Birds*  Neat,**  when  every  one  familiar  with 
Spanish  America  knows  that  "  chupa- roaa** 
(literally,  rose^aucker)  is  the  vulgar  Spanish- 
American  for  humming-bird,  and  in  Castilian 
the  poetic  **  colibri  **  is  the  exact  equivalent. 

In  the  same  magaaJne  are  some  remarks  on 
the  obscurity  of  the  etymology  of  the  word 
"gringo.**  This  word  was  first  applied  to  the 
soldiers  of  the  American  army  invading  Mexi- 
co in  1847,  when  the  then  popular  song  "  Qreen 
grow  the  rushes,  oh  **  was  in  vogue  and  was  sung 
on  the  march.  The  two  first  syllables  plainly 
show  the  origin  of  the  word,  which,  curiously 
enough,  appears  to  have  originated  in  the  same 
manner  along  the  Pacific  Coast  from  the  sing- 
ing of  the  same  popular  air  by  British  sailors. 
I  have  trustworthy  evidence  of  the  word  hav. 
ing  been  adopted  in  Peru  in  reference  to  them 
about  the  same  period.  Nowadays  it  is  applied 
indiscriminately  to  all  English-speaking  people, 
much  in  the  same  manner  as  "gavacho*'  is  to 
the  French  and  "  gachupin  **  to  the  Spanish  by 
the  MeTJoans.— Yours  truly, 

El  Buitbk  Qbtnoo. 
Toru*  DvaAJKK),  Mexico.  April  5. 180C. 

P.  8.~Ton  may  Uke  to  know  that  your 
views  OB  the  Anglo>VeDecuelan  question  are 
▼vry  much  appreciated  by  weU-inf  ormed  Mexi- 
oaaa,  aad  have  caused  a  great  deal  of  favora- 


Notes. 


FuETHEE  aanouDcements  by  Macmillan  &  Co. 
are  'The  Interpretation  of  Literature,*  by 
W.  H.  Crashaw;  *Tbe  Italic  Dialeota,*  by 
Prof.  R.  Seymour  Conway;  aad  *  London 
Burial- Grounds,*  ancient  and  modem. 

Meara.  Scribner  hare  now  become,  by  pur- 
chase and  arrangement,  proprietors  and  Ame- 
rioan  publishers  of  all  the  works  of  Eotwrt 
Louis  Stevenson,  including  the  posthumous. 

The  Star  Publishing  Co.,  Chicago,  wiD 
soon  publish  *  Camp -Fire  Storiea,*  by  CoL 
Edward  Anderson,  profusely  illustrated. 

E.  W.  Moes,  aasistant  Ubrarian  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Amsterdam,  Is  about  to  bring  out 
in  parte,  through  C.  L.  van  Langenhuyaen 
(New  York  :  Lemdu  ft  Bneohner),  a  work  on 
the  local  printers  and  publishers  of  the  16th 
oeatury  (*De  Amsterdamtche  Boekdrukkers 
en  Ultgevers  in  de  seatieiide  eeuw  * ),  a  chapter 
in  the  history  of  early  printing  as  yet  un- 


written. Numerout  facsimiles  of  mark«,  00. 
lophons,  etc.,  will  enhance  the  bibliograph- 
ical and  national  value  of  tbi«  publication. 

The  forty-sixth  volume  of  the  *  Dictionary 
of  NaUonal  Biography*  (MaomiUan)  aU  but 
disposes  of  the  letter  P.  Priestley  and  Pope 
offer  more  of  interest  than  any  other  names  in 
the  section  that  extends  from  Pocock  to  Puck- 
ering.  Quite  exceptionally,  if  we  remember, 
the  Birmingham  philoeopher  is  allotted  to  two 
hands,  his  biography  proper  being  followed 
by  an  estimate  of  him  as  a  scientist.  Leslie 
Stephen  might  have  been  expected  to  be  one  of 
these  colaborers,  but  be  has  reserved  himself 
for  the  poets  Pope  and  Praed.  The  former  he 
biographiies  in  his  best  manner  through  eigh- 
teen page^  with  a  success  for  which  he  him- 
self supplies  the  praise  when  he  says,  "There 
if,  in  fact,  no  more  difficult  subject  for  biogra- 
phy, especially  in  a  compressed  form.**  He 
makes  the  happy  obeervation  that  "  probably 
the  nearest  parallel  to  the  combination  [in 
Pope  of  a  kindly  disposition  with  seeming  ma- 
lignity due  to  unfortunate  conditions  acting 
upon  a  sensitive  nature]  is  to  be  found  in  his 
contemporary,  Voltaire.**  The  notice  of  Praed 
is  much  shorier,  and  reminds  us  that  his  prso- 
nomen  points  to  a  relationship  with  the  New 
England  Winthrops,  and  that  the  first  edition 
of  his  poems  was  published  in  America  by  R. 
W.  Oriswold.  Another  significant  sketch  is 
that  of  the  Greek  scholar  Porson,  which  is 
readable  but  cannot  be  censured  forcomprea- 
sion  in  the  purely  personal  and  anecdotic  part 
of  it. 

The  eight- volume  edition  of  Poe*s  Works, 
bearing  the  English  imprint  of  J.  Shiells  & 
Co.,  and  the  American  of  J.  B.  Lippinoott  Co., 
is. without  note  or  comment  of  any  Idnd,  bio- 
graphical introduotioD,  or  chronological  indica- 
tion, or  Tariant  reading.  It  therefore  does  not 
properly  compete  with  the  Woodberry-Sted- 
man  edition  just  concluded,  nor  is  it  as  beau- 
tifully made.  The  Tolumes  are,  nevertheless, 
both  handy  and  well  printed,  and  are  embel- 
lished with  twenty-four  tasteful  and  effective 
deaigns  (chiefly  by  F.  C.  Tilney)  in  photogra- 
Turoi  including  a  view  of  Poe*s  house  at  Ford- 
ham,  his  portrait,  and  those  of  Henry  Cookton, 
Hawthorne,  and  Mrs.  Browning.  There  may 
yet  be  other  editiona  of  Poe,  but  the  public 
seeme  now  to  be  sufficiently  supplied  for  a  long 
time  to  come. 

The  enduring  popularity  of  SymondsPe  trans* 
lation  of  Benvenuto  Cellini*s  Autobiography 
is  erinoed  by  the  issue  of  a  fourth  edition 
(Charles  Scribner's  Sons).  This  edition,  like 
the  third,  is  in  one  volume,  which,  in  spite  of 
its  more  than  five  hundred  peges,  is  not  very 
cumbrous  to  hold,  while  the  print  is  handsome 
and  legible.  The  only  thing  we  find  to  object 
to  is  the  inadequate  illustration.  The  cuts 
are  small  and  confused,  Cellini*s  elaborate  or- 
nament and  complicated  grouping  of  figures 
kieing  often  nearly  indecipherable,  while  the 
red  bronsing  of  Uie  ink  does  not  add  to  their 
clearness.  Cellioi*s  known  works  are  not  nu- 
merous, and  could  be  completely  illustrated  at 
no  great  oost ;  but  half  the  number  of  draw- 
ings here  given,  if  printed  on  as  large  a  scale 
as  the  page  would  allow,  and  in  black,  would 
be  preferable  to  the  wlu^  number  as  we  have 
them. 

The  Loudon  Virginia  Rangers  were  "  scouts  ** 
during  the  civil  war,  employed  by  the  nation- 
al Government  along  the  Potomac.  They  had 
lively  experiences,  being  often  matched  against 
Mosby*s  Partisans  on  the  Confederate  side. 
The  history  of  the  battalion  is  told  by  Briscoe 
Ooodhart  of  Company  A,  and  published  by 
MoGill  ft  Wallace,   Washington,   D.  C.    Be- 


sides the  personal  interest  it  will  hare  for  the 
members  of  the  companies  and  their  friends, 
it  gives  some  instructive  views  of  the  petty 
warfare  of  raids  and  reconaoissanoee. 

The  "other  side*'  is  preeentad  jn  *Mosby*s 
Rangers,*  by  Jamea  J.  Williamson,  of  the 
Confederate  Company  A,  a  book  of  larger  siae 
and  of  greater  historical  pretensions  (New 
York  :  Ralph  B.  Kenyon).  A  comparison  of 
the  two  volumea  shows  how  natural  it  Is  for 
each  side  to  exaggerate  its  sucoessea  and  slur 
its  defeats.  As  they  often  deecribe  the  same 
skirmishes  from  opposite  standpoints,  the 
amusement  is  heightened  t>y  taking  them  to- 
gether. It  is  a  pity  that  the  author  of 
'  Mosby*s  Rangers  *  had  not  given  at  least  a 
chapter  to  a  frank  history  of  the  law  under 
which  they  were  organiasd,  and  to  their  actual 
practice  of  scattering  after  a  raid  and  pre- 
tending  to  be  peaceful  farmers  tUl  called  to- 
gether again  by  preconcerted  signal.  He  pro- 
tests against  calling  them  guerillas,  but  some- 
thing more  than  a  protest  is  needed  when  the 
law  shows  that  they  were  irregular,  and  prac- 
tically irresponsible,  not  on  the  pay-roll  nor 
acting  under  definite  orders,  authorieed  to 
plunder  and  to  keep  the  profits  of  their  raids. 
What  all  this  leads  to,  the  history  of  war 
plainly  tells.  On  the  representation  of  the 
higher  military  officers  the  Confederate  Gk)v- 
emment,  at  tlM  beginning  of  18fi4,  disbanded 
all  such  organisations  but  Mosby*s,  and  Vir- 
ginia would  doubtless  haye  suffered  leas  if  his 
also  had  been  suppressed. 

Prof.  W.  M.  Flinders  Petrie,  the  Egyptian 
explorer  and  archseologist,  has  recently  again 
put  English  readers  under  a  debt  of  obligation 
by  editing  two  Tolumes  of  translations  of 
*  Egyptian  Tales*  (New  York  :  Frederick  A. 
Stokes  Co.).  They  date  all  the  way  from  the 
fourth  to  the  nineteenth  dynas^,  uid  yet  the 
collection  does  not  by  any  means  exhaust  the 
folklore  of  this  ancient  people.  The  service 
of  Petrie  is,  however,  only  comparative,  since 
all  the  tales  thus  rendered  have  been  in  print 
for  some  years  in  an  excellent  French  transla- 
ti(m,  Maspero*s  *  Contes  Populairea.*  In  read- 
ing the  smooth  version  given  by  Prof.  Petrie, 
the  reader  might  suppose  that  no  iuTolved 
questions  of  granamar  and  vocabulary  are  pre- 
sented by  the  original;  but  such  is  by  no  means 
the  oase,  and  many  of  the  renderings  are  no 
more  than  shrewd  guesses.  The  original  mat- 
ter of  the  present  Tolumea  must  be  sought  in 
the  introduotionB  and  notes,  and  here  the  edit^ 
or  has  rendered  a  more  conspicuous  service 
than  elsewhere.  The  talea  present  material 
valuable  from  the  point  of  view  of  both  litera- 
ture  and  foUclore.  They  throw  light  upon 
many  questions  of  mythology,  every-day  life, 
and  the  current  conceptions  of  the  times,  and 
they  deeerve  also  the  attention  of  students 
of  the  Egyptian  religion.  In  them  a  natural 
progression  is  observable,  from  marvels  and 
talea  of  wonders  and  of  stracge  lands  to  novab 
of  adventure  and  delineatlotts  of  character. 

The  number  of  persons  in  this  country  who 
will  be  interested  in  a  translation,  from  the  Ara- 
bic,  of  an  account  of  *  The  Churches  and  Mon. 
asteries  of  Egypt  and  some  Surrounding  Coun- 
tries*  (Oxford:  Clarendon  Press;  New  York: 
Macmillan),  attributed  to  Abu  SaUb,  the  Ar- 
menian, is  probably  smaU.  The  book  has  re- 
quired the  expenditure  of  much  erudition,  and 
is  a  storehouse  of  quaint  information  for  stu- 
dents of  the  history  of  Christian  Egypt.  The 
translation  and  many  of  the  notes  represent 
the  labor  of  Mr.  Basil  T.  A.  Bvetts  of  Trinity 
(JoUege,  Oxford,  and  formerly  of  the  British 
Museum.  He  has  also  had  the  assistance  of 
other  scholars,  such  as  Alfred  J.  BuUer,  F.a  A., 


324r 


Tlie   Nation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1608 


whoM  work  on  the  *  AndeDt  Coptic  Churches 
of  Egypt'  is  our  latest  and  best  authority. 
The  book  is  an  illustration  of  the  progress  of 
research  and  of  the  increase  of  the  resources 
of  scholarship  for  which  the  present  generation 
is  noted.  The  original  has  been  known  for  a 
long  time,  but  has  only  now  been  put  to  use. 

In  *  A  Dictionary  of  the  Names  of  Minerals, 
including  their  History  and  Etymology,*  by 
Albert  Huntington  Chester,  Professor  of  Min- 
eralogy  in  Rutgers  College  (New  York  :  John 
Wiley  8d  Sons),  we  hare  for  nearly  {>,000  names 
of  minerals  the  original  source  and  name  of 
the  g^ver,  when  possible;  the  etymology  of 
each  name;  and  a  brief  description  of  the  min- 
eral to  which  the  name  applies,  for  help  in 
identification.  In  the  nomenclature  of  mine- 
rals, fancy  has  been  called  into  play  perhaps 
more  than  in  any  other  branch  of  science.  As 
the  author  says :  **  We  sometimes  find  as  the  rea- 
son  for  a  name  the  simple  idea  of  distinguish- 
ing the  thing  itself;  but  this  is  not  the  common 
reason.  Names  have  been  given  to  commemo- 
rate battle-fields,  to  sneer  at  the  work  of  ear- 
lier investigators,  and  as  a  tribute  to  feminine 
loveliness.  In  short,  the  whole  round  of  hu- 
man passions  has  been  gone  over  in  the  manu^ 
f  acture  of  these  words,  which  are  purely  scien- 
tific in  their  uses,  and  for  the  making  of  which 
scientiflq  methods  might  well  have  been  em- 
ployed." In  addition  to  its  general  interest 
from  the  philological  side,  the  book  will  be  of 
great  value  to  mineralogists,  and  save  them 
much  mental  wear  in  struggling  with  half- 
forgotten  roots  and  distorted  or  trivial  mean- 
ings. 

♦  The  Water  Supply  of  the  City  of  New  York, 
1858-1805,'  by  Edward  Wegmann,  C.E.  (John 
Wiley  &  Sons),  contains  somewhat  more  than 
800  quarto  pages  and  about  one  hundred 
and  fifty  plates,  besides  half  that  number  of 
figures  in  the  text.  It  is  one  of  those  valuable 
compilations  which  every  citizen  of  New  York 
who  concerns  himself  with  the  growth  and  de- 
velopment of  his  city,  and  every  engineer  who 
is  interested  in  water  supply,  may  find  of  inte- 
rest and  of  use.  Moreover,  it  combines  the 
historical  and  statistical  information  interest- 
ing to  a  layman  with  detailed  descriptions,  es- 
timates, and  illustrations  which  are  of  real  va- 
lue to  the  engineer.  It  begins  with  an  account 
of  the  various  systems  and  projects  which  pre- 
ceded the  first  construction  of  the  Croton  aque- 
duct; the  most  prominent  system  being  that  of 
the  Manhattan  Company,  and  the  most  amus- 
ing project  being  a  propoeed  adaptation  of  the 
system  used  on  ttie  Schuylkill  at  Philadelphia, 
by  building  a  dam  across  the  Hudson  River 
near  the  foot  of  Christopher  Street,  the  esti- 
mated cost  of  the  dam  being  about  one-sixth 
of  what  has  lately  been  the  estimated  cost  of  a 
bridge  pier  near  the  middle  of  that  river.  Then 
comes  an  account  of  the  construction  of  the  old 
Croton  aqueduct,  and  two  chapters  devoted  to 
the  work  done  after  the  completion  of  the 
aqueduct  proper,  first  by  the  Croton  Aqueduct 
Department  and  then  by  the  Department  of 
Public  Works.  There  follow  an  account  of  the 
new  Croton  aqueduct,  and  a  description  of  the 
Croton  watershed  and  of  the  reservoirs  which 
have  been  or  are  to  be  built  to  provide  ade- 
quate  storage  capacity.  The  book  proceeds 
from  an  exceedingly  competent  hydraulic  en- 
gineer, and  has  evidently  been  carefully  pre- 
pared by  a  master.  The  chief  criticism  that 
one  would  offer  is,  that  the  execution  of  the 
numerous  plates  is  evidenUy  decidedly  infe- 
rior to  the  execution  of  the  drawings  from 
which  they  were  made. 

All  who  have  felt  the  interest  and  charm  of 
the  great  scholar  and  writer  that  was  James 


Darmesteter  will  be  glad  to  know  that  a  new 
volume  of  his  essays  has  been  collected  by  a 
loving  hand,  and  is  just  now  published:  * Nou- 
velles  Etudes  Anglaises.  Avec  avantpropos 
de  Mme.  Mary  James  Darmesteter  '  (Paris: 
Calmami  L6vy).  The  first  of  these  ten  studies 
tells  the  ilory  of  the  different  steps  by  which 
the  reputation  of  Joan  of  Arc  has  risen  in  Eng- 
land from  that  of  an  abandoned  sorceress  to 
that  of  a  virgin  and  martyr.  Other  essays  re- 
gard the  life  and  letters  of  Oeorge  Eliot;  the 
works  of  Wordsworth  and  of  Oliver  ICadox 
Brown;  the  politioal  songs  of  Ireland;  the 
poems  of  Miss  Mary  Robinson  (his  wife);  and 
various  Indian  matters.  These  valuable  stu- 
dies have  been  hitherto  buried  in  old  reviews 
and  magazines,  and  have  been  hard  to  come 
by;  they  are  all  the  more  welcome  now  on  this 
aocount.  The  new  style  of  Mme.  Darmesteter 
may  be  noted;  it  Is  perhaps  a  fresh  tribute  to 
a  deeply  cherished  memory. 

Volume  vi.  of  the  Oeuvrt*  OompUiea  of 
Huygens,  which  was  received  by  subscribers 
in  this  country  early  in  the  present  year,  well 
maintains  the  high  standard  of  the  earlier  vol- 
umes. Two  more  will  be  required  to  complete 
the  correspondence,  which  is  advanced  in  this 
beautiful  quarto  only  from  1666  to  1660,  the 
period  of  the  early  residence  in  Paris.  But  if 
the  movement  is  slow,  it  embraces  the  entire 
thought  of  the  time.  Some  indication  of  all 
the  great  interests,  and  something  from  the 
hand  of  nearly  all  the  great  names,  of  the  mid- 
dle of  the  17th  century  will  be  found  in  these 
volumes.  Bits  of  gossip,  natural  portents,  the 
flight  of  spiders,  the  case  of  the  man  who 
seemed  to  carry  his  X-rays  about  with  him  so 
that  he  could  see  through  people's  clothing, 
find  place  beside  a  discussion  of  the  unity  of 
Gk>d,  of  the  nature  of  truth,  of*  the  doctrine  of 
probabilities,  or  of  a  universal  language.  Huy- 
gens*s  supreme  preoccupations  at  this  time- 
optics,  astronomy,  and  horology — of  course  oc- 
cupy much  space.  The -Scientific  Society  of 
Holland,  which  is  responsible  for  the  editing, 
may  well  be  congratulated  that  it  has  been 
able  to  secure  committees  competent  to  carry 
out  such  a  monumental  undertaking.  The  in- 
dexes are  especially  complete,  occupying  about 
sixty  pages:  a  chronological  index;  an  alpha- 
betical list  both  of  writers  and  of  correspond- 
ents; an  ali^iabetical  list  of  persons  mentioned; 
a  list  of  works  cited;  and,  finally,  an  index  of 
subjects,  prepared  with  evident  care  and  un- 
usually complete. 

Recent  folios  of  the  (Geologic  Atlas  of  the 
United  States  continue  to  furnish  welcome  ad- 
ditions to  the  fund  of  geological,  geographical, 
and  economical  information,  useful  in  so  many 
applications.  Locally  of  great  value  to  the 
people  within  the  limits  of  their  several  areas, 
the  folios  are  of  broader  value  in  teaching,  in- 
asmuch as  they  supply,  in  a  measure  of  detail 
never  before  attempted  generally  for  the  w.hole 
country,  a  body  of  first-hand  facts  upon  which 
a  sound  superstructure  of  generalization  may 
be  reared.  The  several  Tennessee  sheets  por- 
tray the  different  features  of  the  Cumberland 
plateau  and  its  bordering  lower  lands.  The 
sheets  for  the  slope  of  the  Sierra  and  the  plain 
of  middle  (>ilifomia  vie  with  the  transconti- 
nental railroads  in  bringing  the  Pacific  States 
near  to  us  on  this  side  of  the  country.  Addi- 
tional sheets  for  various  parts  of  the  country 
are  in  course  of  publication. 

The  latest  report  of  the  Connecticut  Board 
of  Education  reveals  the  actual  condition  of  a 
number  of  the  public  schools  in  that  State, 
which  is  certainly  such  as  must  make  conscien- 
tious educators  grieve.  Poverty  and  isolation 
appear  in  the  pictures  of  the  little  frame  school- 


houses,  as  well  as  in  the  answers  given  by 
teachers  to  various  elementary  questions  on 
school  methods,  and  in  the  uniformly  high  per- 
centage of  pupils'  failure  to  answer  easy  ques- 
tions correctly.  The  candor  and  sympathetio 
quality  of  the  report  give  assurance  that  re- 
form and  improvement  will  result  from  it. 
One  sentence  of  practical  import  dceervcs  quo- 
tation from  a  chapter  on  women's  voting: 
**  Men  are  elected  to  school  ofiices  for  a  variety 
of  reasons,  but  women  always  because  they 
are  qualified." 

The  current  Proceedings  of  the  American 
Antiquarian  Society  (vol.  x,,  part  2)  are  un- 
usually'rich  in  papers  of  permanent  value. 
Prof.  Egbert  C.  Smyth  returns  to  the  subject 
of  Jonathan  Edwards  and  his  early  writings, 
IM^nting  several  of  the  latter,  with  specimen 
facsimiles  of  the  MS.,  and  establishing  Ed- 
wards's claim  to  a  high  rank  among  the 
world's  precocious  intellects  even  in  a  scien- 
tific direction.  Nathaniel  Paine's  list  of  early 
American  imprints  in  the  Society's  library 
prior  to  1701  is  supplementary  to  Dr:  Green's 
similar  list  for  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society's  library,  to  the  extent  of  non- dupli- 
cates. Volumes  common  to  both  libraries  are 
chronologically  named  without  repeating  Dr. 
Qreen's  bibliographical  descriptions.  Justin 
Winsor  contributes  a  convenient  summary  of 
the  Literature  of  Witchcraft  in  New  England. 
The  battle  of  Bunker  Hill  is  reviewed  from 
a  strategic  standpoint  by  Charles  Francis 
Adams. 

The  solid  foothold  of  the  American  HittoH 
oal  Review  (Macmillan)  is  manifest  in  the  April 
number.  Every  one  of  the  six  leading  pa- 
pers invites  careful  reading.  Most  curious  is 
Wilbur  H.  SiebeH's  '*  Light  on  the  Under- 
ground Railway,"  a  report  of  progrera  in  a 
study  yet  to  be  given  historical  shape  and  com- 
pleteness ;  and  the  map  accompanying  it,  with 
red  route-lines  of  the  fugitives  from  Southern 
bondage,  is  also  provisipnaL  Virginia  is  in- 
volved  in  Justin  Winsor's  *'  Virginia  and  the 
Quebec  Bill,"  in  Prof.  William  P.  Trent's 
"  Case  of  Josiah  Phillips,"  and  James  Ford 
Rhodes's  terse  and  weighty  judgment  on  the 
first  six  weeks  of  McClellan's  Peninsular  cam- 
paign. Charles  Francis  Adams  adds  an  orna- 
ment or  two  to  his  study  of  the  battle  of 
Bunker  Hill  described  above.  Melville  M. 
Bigelow,  the  well-known  legal  writer,  begins 
an  interesting  £ranslation,  with  annotations, 
of  several  Bohuif  wills  and  inventories.  Final- 
ly, Prof.  H.  Morse  Stephens  estimates  some 
recent  memoirs  of  the  French  Directory. 
Quite  the  most  extended  and  important  review 
is  that  of  Senator  Sherman's  Memoirs  by  Ed- 
ward L.  Pierce,  a  capital  performance,  just 
and  moderate,  but  ending  in  a  prophecy,  al- 
ready shaken,  that  this  political  trimmer  would 
(on  his  own  word)  be  found  among  the  oppo- 
nents of  Chiban  annexation.  We  must  notice 
also  a  list  of  New  England  town  records  (of 
Massachusetts  chiefly),  and  an  account  of  the 
Barton  Historical  Collection  in  Detroit,  ac- 
cessible to  students. 

In  the  Oreen  Bag  (Boston)  for  April  the  Hon. 
Walter  Clark  records  two  instances  of  judi- 
cial burnings  alive  in  North  Carolina  of  slaves 
convicted  of  murder  *'  without  the  solemnity 
of  jury,"  as  the  Act  of  1741,  not  repealed  till 
1798,  read.  Burnmg  was  not  prescribed  in  the 
law,  but  the  mode  of  punishment  was  left  to 
the  discretion  of  the  two  or  more  justices  of 
the  peace  and  the  **four  freeholders  {who  ghomld 
alao  be  aumera  of  elave^  "  empowered  to  form 
a  court.  After  1703  a  sUve  oonld  be  tried  t^ 
a  jury  of  freeholder!— whether  1 
not  is  not  stated. 


April  23,  1896] 


The   Nation. 


335 


We  hATe  alTMuiy,  00  ocoadon  of  tbalr  photo- 
grmTure  reproductioQ  of  8taart*i  bead  of  Wash- 
ington, noticed  the  teriea  of  American  celebii- 
tiee  nnderUken  by  A.  W.  Elton  A  Co.,  Boston. 
This  ansplcions  beginning  has  since  been  fol- 
lowed npf  and  two  fresh  remarqne  proofs,  of 
Marshall  and  of  Hamilton,  have  jntt  oome  to 
ns  from  the  aboTeiirm  (New  York:  Knoedler). 
The  Manhail  is  after  a  portrait  from  life  by 
Inman,  painted  in  188t  for  the  PhiUMlelphia 
bar,  and  now  owned  by  the  Law  Anodatioo 
of  that  city.  It  has  become  familiar  through 
eogrsrings,  but  a  better  reproduction  was 
still  possible^  and  we  have  it  here  on  a  plate 
12x15,  bearing  what  relation  to  the  scale  of  the 
original  canvas  we  are  not  informed.  The 
Hamilton  b  a  copy  of  the  original  by  Trumbull, 
now  in  the  Jay  house  at  Eatonah,  N.  Y.,  which 
is  thought  to  have  been  painted  in  1700.  The 
plate  in  thb  instance  is  about  16x20,  and  the 
scale  larger  than  the  MarshalL  Both  these 
prints  are  excellent  specimens  of  the  skill  of 
the  photograTurists  who  offer  them  for  the 
satisfaction  of  amateurs,  and  with  a  laudable 
aim  to  secure  them  a  place  on  the  walls  of 
schools,  through  the  wise  liberality  of  boiuds 
of  education  or  by  private  gift— for  they  pro- 
'  perly  command  a  good  price. 

On  April  24  a  meeting  will  be  held  at  the 
Columbian  University,  Washington,  for  the  sole 
purpose  of  organising  a  Southern  Historical 
Association.  Dr.  J.  L.  M.  Curry  heads  the 
call,  which  is  signed  also  by  Postmaster- Gen- 
eral Wilson,  Oen.  Wade  Hampton,  Gen.  G.  W. 
C.  Lee,  Prof.  Woodrow  Wilson,  G.  Brown 
Goode,  Prof.  J.  Randolph  Tucker,  Prof.  Wm. 
Hand  Browne,  Col.  Richard  M.  Johnston, 
Philip  A.  Bruce,  Walter  H.  Page,  Stephen  B. 
Weeks,  Prof.  W.  Gordon  McCabe,  Prof.  W. 
M.  Baskerville,  and  many  other  well-known 
and  repreeentative  names.  Miss  Louise  Man- 
ly, of  Judson  Female  Institute,  Ala.,  alone 
reprsssnts  her  sex  in  this  list. 

—Mr.  Simon  G.  Croswell  contributes  to  the 
Harvard  Law  Review  for  April  an  extremely 
suggestive  paper  on  the  development  of  the 
law  concerning  the  use  of  electricity  on  high- 
ways. He  confines  himself  mainly  to  an  ex- 
aminatioo  of  the  conflicting  claims  of  telephone 
and  trolley  lines.  Both  these  lines  in  the  first 
place  made  use  of  the  ground  for  the  return 
eurreot,  and  to  a  considerable  extent  still  do 
so.  The  discharge  from  the  trolley  lines,  how- 
ever, is  so  powerful  as  to  be  mischievous.  It 
passes  along  the  gas  and  water-pipes  into 
houses,  reaches  the  telephone-discharging  wires, 
and  passes  into  the  telephones  and  through 
them  to  the  central  exchange.  This  of  course 
produces  all  sorts  of  undesired  sounds  and 
makes  conversation  unintelligible.  There  is 
also  trouble  from  induction  when  the  trolley 
wires  are  near  to  and  parallel  with  those  of 
the  telephone.  The  telephone  companies,  be- 
ing first  in  possession  of  the  highways,  brought 
snit  against  the  trolley  lines,  endeavoring  to 
compel  them  to  discharge  the  electric  current 
in  some  way  which  should  not  interfere  with 
existing  uses,  s.  g.,  by  means  of  metallic  dr. 
cults  for  the  return  current.  The  same  device, 
however,  would  relieve  the  telephones  from 
most  of  their  trouble,  and  in  some  cases  the 
courts  Inclined  to  hold  that  whichever  party 
could  abate  the  nuisance  at  least  expense 
should  be  required  to  do  so. 

—In  other  cases,  however,  the  maxim.  Qui 
prior  est  tempore^  potior  tti  jur*^  was  regarded 
as  controlling.  The  telephone  companies  were 
where  they  were  by  right,  and  it  seemed  rea- 
fonable  that  later  occupants  should  be  made 


to  respect  this  right.  The  other  maxim,  Sie 
%ter€  tuo  ut  alienum  non  Icedos,  was  also  in- 
voked by  the  telephone  companies  against  the 
trolley  lines.  They  said  that  these  lines  could 
exercise  their  franchises  without  damaging 
other  interests  if  they  chose  to  take  the  trouble 
to  do  so,  and  that  it  was  only  equitable  that 
they  should  be  required  to  respect  existing 
rights.  But  all  this  reasoning,  i^usible  as  it 
seemed,  was  suddenly  brushed  aside  by  the 
application  of  another  principle.  The  trolley 
lines  took  the  position  that  the  primary  use  of 
the  highways  is  for  public  travel,  and  that  all 
other  uses  must  be  subordinate  to  this.  The 
teleph<me,  therefore.  Is  only  a  licensed  inter- 
loper, and  the  trolley  as  a  common  carrier 
need  not  regard  such  dubious  rights  as  those  of 
mere  purveyors  of  intelligence.  The  telephone 
and  telegraph  lines  therefore  take  their  fran- 
chises on  highways  subject  to  the  right  of 
travel,  and  so  the  highest  courts  seem  now  to 
hold.  But  this  principle  in  its  turn  may  re- 
quire modification.  The  iron  pipes  used  for 
drains,  for  water,  for  gas,  etc.,  whicL  are  laid 
under  the  highways,  have  no  more  to  do  with 
public  travel  than  the  telephone  wires.  May 
the  trolley  lines  therefore  discbarge  their  elec- 
tric current  into  the  ground  to  the  destruction 
of  these  pipes,  without  being  called  to  account? 
Evidently  the  doctrine  that  the  highway  is 
primarily  for  travel  must  be  modified  so  as  to 
recognise  the  fact  that  what  is  secondary  is  not 
therefore  to  be  ignored.  Qui  po9Urior  0U 
tempore,  potior  cUiquando  jur€  tit 

—An  important  unpublished  document  on 
the  war  of  1870  has  just  appeared  in  Germany, 
and  is  translated  in  the  current  number  of  the 
R€VU4  d€9  Revu0$,  This  document  is  an  ex- 
tract  from  the  journal  of  Count  Frankenberg, 
who,  during  the  time  that  intervened  between 
the  battles  around  Orleans  and  the  capitulation 
of  Paris,  played  an  important  part,  not  only  as 
an  officer  of  rank  In  the  Prussian  service,  but 
also,  and  especially,  as  an  intermediary  be- 
tween Mgr.  Dupanloup  and  Count  Bismarck. 
On  the  14th  of  October,  1870,  he  called  on  the 
Bishop  of  Orleans  to  arrange  with  him  some 
details  of  hospital  service,  when  the  Bishop 
took  occasion  to  say  that  he  did  not  share  the 
extreme  tendencies  or  the  stubborn  animosity 
of  the  Government.  In  the  evening  of  the 
same  day,  he  returned  the'  visit  of  Count 
Frankenberg  and  opened  himself  freely  to  him 
on  the  question  of  peace.  Peace  must  be  made, 
he  said,  without  delay,  or  everything  would 
fall  into  confusion.  He  himself  bad  been  urged 
to  take  the  first  steps,  but  this  he  oould  not  do 
because  Orleans  was  In  (German  hands.  Only 
one  Frenchman  oould  do  it,  and  that  was  bis 
old  friend  Thiers.  The  Bishop  had  read  Bis- 
marck's rlispatch  on  the  interview  with  Jules 
Favre  at  Ferri^res,  and  did  not  think  the  pro- 
positions made  to  France  extravagant  or  out 
of  proportion  to  tbe  situation.  France  must 
redgn  herself  to  a  cession  of  territory,  be  said, 
and,  after  peace  was  made,  she  oould  be  saved 
only  by  the  return  to  power  of  tbe  legitimate 
dynasty.  Prussia  survived  Jena  only  because 
of  the  HohensoUems;  and  Austria  was  not 
broken  up  after  Koeniggraets  solely  because 
she  had  the  Hapsburgs  to  rely  upon.  The  situa- 
tion in  France  was  more  difficult  on  account  of 
the  schism  In  the  legitimate  family,  and  the 
Bishop  urged  the  good  offices  of  King  William 
to  heal  the  breach.  Tbe  Count  de  Cbambord 
ought  to  be  King,  and,  as  be  had  no  child,  to 
adopt  the  Count  de  PmIs  as  his  successor  and 
heir.  **  I  do  not  express  in  this,"^  the  Bishop 
■ald«  "my  own  personal  opinion  only;  the 
whole  French  episcopate  Is  with  ma."    These 


advances  of  Mgr.  Dupanloup  were  at  once  laid 
before  tbe  King  of  Prussia,  tbe  Crown  Prince, 
and  Count  Bismarck.  All  three  expressed 
their  satisfaction  at  the  peaceful  intentions  of 
the  Bishop  of  Orleans,  and  declared  that  they 
in  no  wise  desired  tbe  retetabllsbment  of  the 
Empire,  but  would  be  ready  to  treat  with  the 
one  who  should  offer  them  the  best  terms  and 
tbe  most  satisfactory  warrant  of  peace.  Safe- 
conduct,  they  promised,  should  be  given  to  the 
friend  whom  Mgr.  Dupanloup  desired  to  send 
to  M.  Thiers.  At  this  point  the  extract  from 
the  journal  of  Count  Frankenberg  ends. 

—The  reverse  side  to  the  glorious  pomp  and 
droumstanee  of  war  is  gr^hlcally  shown  In 

*  With  an  Ambulance  during  the  Franco-Ger- 
man War,'  by  Charles  E.  Ryan  (Scribners). 
Tbe  author  was  a  young  medical  student  in 
Dublin  when  tbe  great  war  broke  out  in  1870, 
and  being,  like  most  Irishmen,  an  ardent  ad- 
mirer of  France,  he  volunteered  to  use  such 
medical  and  surgical  knowledge  as  he  had  ao- 
quired  for  the  asiistance  of  the  French  wound- 
ed. After  some  difficulty  he  got  an  appointment 
with  the  Anglo-American  Ambulance  and  pro- 
ceeded with  it  to  Sedan,  where  he  had  his  first 
experience  in  ambulance  work.  Tbe  greater 
number  of  the  doctors  with  whom  he  served  had 
learned  their  business  as  army  surgeons  upon 
the  Confederate  side  during  the  American  civil 
war.  Their  skill,  kindness,  courage,  and  amia- 
bility seem  to  have  made  a  great  impression 
upon  the  young  Irish  medical  student,  who 
never  mentions  the  names  of  his  ooUeagues 
without  words  of  admiration  and  respect  The 
relation  given  of  the  disaster  of  Sedan  fully 
confirms  in  its  piteous  details  the  vivid  narra- 
tive of  ZoU  in  *La  IMbAcle,*  which,  in  his 
preface.  Dr.  Ryan  greatly  lauds,  stating  that 
"thoee  who  were  eye-witnesses  of  Sedan  can 
add  litUe  to  his  deecriptlon."  After  tending 
as  many  as  possible  of  tbe  wounded  of  both 
armies  with  faithful  and  tireless  care  at  Sedan, 
the  Anglo-American  Ambulance  endeavored 
without  success  to  makcTits  way  to  Paris,  and 
thereupon  offered  its  services  to  the  Germans, 
and  was  sent  to  Orleans,  where,  as  at  Sedan, 
it  tended  the  wounded  on  both  sides  during  the 
first  German  occupation,  the  brief  French  oc- 
cupation after  the  battle  of  Coulmiers,  and 
the  second  German  occupation  of  the  city  of 
Jeanne  Dai-c.  In  a  simple  and  natural  style 
Dr.  Ryan  detcribes  the  work  of  the  iotema- 
tional  ambulance  among  the  wounded,  giving 
a  graphic  picture  of  the  terrible  sufferings  in- 
fiicted  on  tbe  unfortunate  victims  of  modem 
military  operations.  Yet  his  vohime  is  no 
mere  gruesome  tale  of  human  suffering. 

—The  third  volume  of  Mr.  J.  H.  Wylie's 

*  History  of  England  under  Henry  the  Fourth ' 
(Longmans)  covers  the  years  from  1407  to  1410. 
It  exhibits  tbe  same  merits  and  defects  as  its 
predecessors.  Evidence  of  untiring  industry 
is  given  upon  every  page;  tbe  referencee  to 
authorities  used  are  so  full  that  often  more 
than  half  tbe  page  is  composed  of  footnotes; 
the  primary  authorities  for  the  period  have 
been  carefully  examined,  and  the  very  adjec- 
tives used  in  the  description  of  an  historical 
character's  personal  appearance  are  vouched 
for  by  quotations  from  contemporary  docu- 
ments; careful  impartiality  is  everywhere  ob- 
served, and  tbe  reader  is  enabled  to  draw  a 
conclusion  differing  from  the  author's  from  the 
materialtheautbor  himself  supplies;  and  there 
is  a  judicious  absence  of  irritating  moral  and 
philosophical  comments.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  defects  that  were  conspicuous  in  Mr.  Wy- 
lie^s  earlier  volumes  are  again  peroeptlhla» 


336 


The    [N'atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1608 


The  old  tendency  to  wander  from  the  subject 
in  hand  is  shown  in  irritating  fashion,  and  the 
book  has  become  not  a  mere  history  of  Eng- 
land during  the  reign  of  Henry  of  Bolingbroke» 
but  a  history  of  the  reig^n  of  that  king  with 
side  glances  at  other  countries  and  at  anything 
else  that  happens  to  occur  to  the  author  at  the 
moment  of  writing.  This  digressive  habit  is 
by  no  means  ofiPensiTe  to  the  reader.  Indeed, 
the  most  interesting  chapters  are  digressions, 
as,  for  instance,  chapter  Izxr.  in  the  present 
Tolume,  dealing  with  Gilds  and  Misteries,  as 
Mr.  Wylie  spells  the  better  known  words  guilds 
and  mysteries,  and  chapter  Ixxxiy.,  on  Oxford. 
It  is  by  means  of  such  digressions  that  his  book 
has  grown  to  its  present  size,  for  neither  the 
accessible  material  nor  the  importance  of  the 
reign  of  Henry  IV.  could  in  any  other  fashion 
have  been  stretched  to  such  an  extent.  It  is 
possible  to  recognize  the  real  learning  of  fifr. 
Wylie,  to  be  grateful  to  him  for  his  industry, 
and  to  enjoy  his  digressions,  while  deprecating 
a  system  of  writing  history  which  produces  an 
omnium-^atherum  of  miscellaneous  informa- 
tion in  the  place  of  a  carefully  constructed  ac- 
count of  the  political,  economic,  and  social 
tendencies  of  a  definite  historical  period. 


NICOLI/S  LITERARY  ANECDOTES. 

Literary  Anecdotes  of  the  Mneteenth  Century: 

Contributions  towards  a  Literary  History 

of  the  Period.    Edited  by  W.  Robertson  Ni- 

coll,  M.A.,  LL.D.,  and  Thomas  J.  Wise. 

London:  Hodder  &  Stoughton;  New  York: 

Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.    1895. 

Thx  first  volume  of  a  series  which  seeks  to  do 

for  the  literary  history  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 

tury.  what  Nichols's  *  Literary  Anecdotes  of 

the  Eighteenth  Century '  has  done  for  its  age, 

deserves    more   than  a  casual  notice.     Dr. 

NicoU  and  Mr.  Wise  have  thus  in  the  preface 

expressed  their  general  aims: 

*' The  editors  hope  to  provide  .  .  .  a  con- 
siderable amount  of  fresh  matter,  illustrating 
the  life  and  work  of  British  authors  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  To  a  large  extent  they 
rely  upon  manuscript  material,  but  use  will  be 
made  of  practicaUy  inaccessible  texts  and  of 
fugitive  writings.  While  leading  authors  will 
receive  due  attention,  much  space  will  be  de- 
voted to  the  less  known  writers  of  the  period. 
It  is  intended  to  supply  biographies,  letters 
hitherto  unpublished,  additions  from  manu- 
script sources  to  published  works,  together 
with  a  series  of  full  bibliographies  of  the  writ- 
ings of  the  greater  authors.  Every  precaution 
has  been  taken  to  avoid  the  infringement  of 
copyright,  and  the  editors  hope  that  they  will 
be  forgiven  any  involuntary  transgression." 

This  is  a  terse  yet  comprehensive  account  of 
the  scheme,  and  the  contents  of  the  first  vol- 
ume fall  readily  under  one  or  other  of  the 
heads  indicated.  To  select  a  single  example 
from  each  class,  we  have  under  **  Manuscript 
Material"  more  letters  from  Shelley  to  Leigh 
Hunt;  under  *' Practically  Inaccessible  Texts'* 
Thomas  Wade's  *  Helena';  under  '<  Fugitive 
Writings,"  Hawthorne's  **  Uttoxeter "  ;  and 
under  **  Bibliographies  of  the  Writings  of  the 
Greater  Authors,"  267  pages  of  ''Materials 
for  a  Bibliography  of  the  Writings  in  Prose 
and  Verse  of  Robert  Browning."  The  promise 
that  '*  much  space  will  be  devoted  to  the  less- 
known  writers  of  the  period"  is  also  amply 
fulfilled.  This  is  keeping  close  to  the  path  of 
Kichols,  for  not  all  Bir.  Bowyer»s  friends,  nor 
even  Mr.  Bowyer  himself,  are  universally  cel^ 
brated.  Thomas  Wade,  Richard  Henry  (Hen- 
gist)  Home,  and  Charles  Wells  are  amoog  the 
obscurer  men  whose  lives  and  writings  are  now 
more  fully  disclosed. 

The  frontispiece  is  an  admirable  portrait  of 


William  Blake,  after  PhiUips's  original  sketch. 
The  plate  used  for  the  reproduction  was  etched 
by  William  Bell  Soott  "This  work  is  one  of 
the  strongest  and  most  characteristic  of  Scott's 
etchings,  which,  for  pnrpoees  such  as  the  pre- 
sent,  possesses  the  unusual  value  of  being  done 
on  steel  with  the  burin  and  not  on  copper  with 
the  point.  Save  through  a  few  proofs  circu- 
lated in  Scotf  s  lifetime,  the  plate  is  totally  un- 
known." Blake  wears  his  most  prophetic  as- 
pect and  looks  every  inch  a  man  of  genius,  with 
a  touch  of  that  madness  to  which  his  great  wits 
were  near  allied.  One  can  almost  bear  him 
say: 

*"  Brine  m^  my  bow  of  bnmliig  goIO, 
Bring  me  my  arrowB  of  desire. 
Bring  me  my  spear:  O  olonda,  unfold. 
Bring  me  my  diariot  of  Are." 

The  ''Anecdotes"  begin  with  a  series  of  un- 
publisbed  documents  which  furnish  fresh  in- 
formation concerning  Blake's  trial  for  treason 
in  1808.  Scofield's  deposition  against  Blake 
comes  first,  then  Blake's  memorandum  in  refu- 
tation, and  thirdly  the  speech  of  Blake's  law- 
yer, Counsellor  Rose.  Blake's  trial  has  a  dis- 
tinct historical  value  apcut  from  being  a  criti- 
cal incident  in  the  life  of  a  most  distinguished 
man.  The  mere  fact  ttiat  a  public  prosecutor 
could  be  found  to  proceed  with  a  grave  charge 
on  the  trumpery  evidence  which  was  adduced, 
shows  that  during  the  period  of  the  Napoleonic 
wars  the  rage  for  suppressing  Majeetdtsbe- 
leidigung  was  even  greater  in  England  than  it 
now  is  in  G^ermany. 

Tennyson  is  not  directly  taken  up  in  this 
volume,  but  two  early  estimates  of  him  are 
given— one  by  Arthur  Hallam,  the  other  by 
Mrs.  Browning.  Hallam's  unfailing  advoca- 
cy of  his  friend  appears  in  two  letters  to  Leigh 
Hunt.  The  first,  written  in  1881,  is  addressed 
to  the  editor  of  the  Tcttler,  The  second  is 
above  a  year  later  in  date  and  more  familiar 
in  style.  Neither  letter  contains  any  views 
that  are  not  elaborately  expressed  in  Hal- 
lam's Essay  on  the  Lyrical  Poems  of  Alfred 
Tennyson  which  Mr.  Le  Oalllenne  has  already 
published.  The  1882  letter,  however,  bears 
clear  testimony  to  the  devotion  of  Hallam's 
set,  the  original  band  of  "  Apostles,"  to  Shel- 
ley.  "While  at  Cambridge  I  partook  largely 
in  the  enthusiasm  which  animated  many  of 
my  contemporaries,  and  indeed  formed  us  into 
a  sort  of  sect  in  behalf  of  his  character  and 
genius."  Elizabeth  Barrett's  "  Opinion,"  pub- 
lished in  1844,  was  doubtless  based  largely  on 
the  1842  volume  of  Tennyson's  poems.  We  do 
not  consider  it  by  any  means  so  piquant  as 
Mrs.  GaskeU's  tribute  In  '  Cranford,'  but  it  de- 
serves to  be  reprinted.  It  originally  appeared 
in  *  A  New  Spirit  of  the  Age,'  two  volumes  of 
critical  essays  in  which  Miss  Barrett  collabo- 
rated with  Home.  The  "  Opinion  "  is  printed 
from  a  manuscript  in  Mr.  Buxton  Gorman's 
collection,  which  shows  just  how  Home  cut  up 
Miss  Barrett's  paper  and  interpolated  "copy  *' 
of  his  own.  The  arrangement  was  fair 
enough,  for  they  were  avowedly  working  to- 
gether and  he  had  authority  to  use  her  contri- 
butions as  he  chose. 

Three  minor  poets  who  receive  generous  re- 
cognition in  this  volume  are  Home,  Wade, 
and  Wells.  A  biographical  account  of  each  is 
furnished  by  Mr.  H.  Buxton  Forman,  upon 
whose  pen  and  library  the  editors  have  drawn 
largely.  His  sketch  of  Home's  life  and  cha- 
racter is  one  of  the  freshest  and  best  things  in 
the  book.  The  curious  know  Home's  farthing 
epic  "Orion,"  but  few,  in  this  country  at 
least,  are  familiar  with  his  exciting  career 
'and  vigorous  personality.  He  is  like  the 
worthies  we  run  across  in  the  publications  of 
the  Hakluyt  Society.    We  do  not  judge  such  a 


man  by  what  he  writes,  but  by  what  he  is. 
Home  was  not  dependent  upon  Europe  for 
amusement  and  enjoyment.  He  would  have 
made  his  cyde  of  Cathay  a  very  lively  term  of 
existence.  From  1888  to  1851  he  was  a  volumi- 
nous writer  on  a  great  variety  of  subjects, 
sometimes  striking  a  style  in  verse  that  called 
forth  praise  from  Roden  Noel  and  even  from 
Browning.  His  ballad  of  "Delora"  is  now 
first  printed  in  its  original  form,  with  margin- 
al notes  in  the  manner  of  the  "Ancient  Mari- 
ner." It  is  somewhat  spasmodic  for  the  taste 
of  the  present  generation,  and  would  not  be 
apt  just  now  to  run  through  many  editions  by 
itself.  However,  if  we  are  to  have  agony  we 
can  stand  it  better  from  a  man  who  could  at 
the  age  of  eighty  swing  dumb-bells  weighing 
fifty  pounds,  than  from  a  poor  ansBmic  creature 
who  never  had  a  passion  in  his  life.  Home 
once  beat  a  shark  in  a  race,  once  helped  the 
captain  and  mates  of  a  timber-ship  put  down 
a  mutiny,  and  once  won  a  prize  claret  bottle 
"  for  grace  and  agility  displayed  in  swimming 
when  thrown  over  the  side  of  a  ship,  bound 
hand  and  foot."  Here  are  some  of  his  experi- 
ences in  America.  He  served  in  the  Mexican 
expedition  of  1826 : 

"  was  at  the  8ieg»  of  Vera  Craz  and  the  tak- 
ing  of  San  Juan  ulloa,  was  taken  prisooer  and 
narrowly  escaped  being  shot  as  such,  gotawa?, 
and,  though  he  knew  iTtUe  of  Spanish  and  less 
of  surgery,  was  employed  in  translating  Span- 
ish dispatches,  etc.,  and  filled  the  post  of  sur- 
geon in  the  cock-pit.  As  boarding  officer  he 
took  several  prizes,  and  finished  with  the  vel- 
low  fever,  his  only  illness  save  his  last.  Quit 
of  the  fever,  and  defrauded  of  his  prize-mo- 
ney, he  left  the  Mexican  service,  cruised  ofiP  the 
Floridas,  landed  at  New  York,  ascended  the 
Erie  Canal,  visited  several  Indian  tribes,  broke 
two  of  his  ribs  at  Niagara  Falls,  lost  all  his 
money  there  at  billlar<»,  and  worked  his  pas- 
sage up  laic]  the  St.  Lawrence." 

Upon  the  discovery  of  gold  in  Australia  he 
left  England  again  and  became  an  extremely 
useful  magistrate  in  the  gold  fields.  Surely 
one  ought  not  to  grudge  Home  his  ciyil-list 
pension  of  £60  nor  his  occasional  rants  in 
"Delonu'* 

A  fresh  opportunity  is  afforded  Wade  and 
Wells  to  win  a  place  for  themselves  in  the 
esteem  of  lovers  of  poetry.  Next  to  creating 
a  new  poet  of  consequence,  nothing  could  please 
lovers  of  poetry  so  well  as  the  discovery  of  a 
true  bard  neglected  by  the  contemporaries  of 
Wordsworth  in  his  age,  and  of  Tennyson  and 
Browning  in  their  youth.  Unfortunately,  the 
chance  of  vindicating  the  claims  of  men  like 
Wade  and  Wells  is  but  indifferent.  The  pre- 
sent century  is  not  open  to  the  reproach  of 
having  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  the  truly  great. 
Its  excess  has  been  on  the  side  of  running  to 
fads.  Wade  and  Wells  undoubtedly  possess 
enough  good  qualities  to  preserve  their  work 
from  being  called  rubbish,  but  they  will  always 
remain  caviare  to  the  generaL  We  cannot  re- 
gret this  particularly,  because  there  is  so  much 
poetry  of  a  high  class  to  be  read  in  the  various 
tongues  of  the  modem  world  that  time  de- 
voted to  the  minor  poets  must  be  stolen  from 
the  time  which  should  be  devoted  to  their  bet- 
ters, fifr.  Forman  complains  that,  "  with  the 
sole  exception  of  Thomas  Lovell  Beddoee,  no 
nineteenth-century  English  poet  whose  merit 
equals  that  of  Thomas  Wade  has  been  so  libe- 
rally neglected,"  and  accuses  fi^r.  Stedman  of 
"missing  a  good  opportunity  of  telling  the 
truth  about  this  nearly  lost  poet."  For  our 
own  pcut  we  cannot  blame  Mr.  Stedman  for 
his  cursory  mention  of  Wade  in  "Victorian 
Poets."  A  writer  so  completely  under  the  in- 
fluence of  Shelley  and  Keats  is  an  awkward 
person  for  erection  into  a  literary  cult    The 


April  23,  1896] 


The   Nation. 


327 


Fiflj  SoniMtt  of  Wade,  many  pabUihed  for 
the  flnt  time,  "The  Contatt  of  Death  and 
LoT«»**  and  '*  Helena,"  both  of  which  have  been 
pabUshed  bat  are  extremely  raiy,  may,  how* 
ever,  tacoeed  in  acoompliihing  thie  wonder. 
At  any  rate  they  are  worth  printing. 

The  *«  Dramatic  Scene'*  of  Charlet  Wells  is 
taken  from  **  Joseph  and  his  Brethren,"  and  is 
rsally  an  interpolation  **  regarding  the  relatiye 
merits  of  Nile-side  polytheism  and  Hebrew 
monotheism."  The  piece  contains  fine  linesi 
bat  is  marred  by  a  rhetoric  which  is  striding 
to  become  poetry,  and  by  a  weakness  for  sen- 
tentioas  utterances  such  as: 

*'  WliU  thoo  hMt  Mid  asslnct  our  deld«t 
I  leare  betwMa  our  datOat  sad  thM: 
Th«lr  proper  lioeour  it  tbelr  proper  esofe,** 

and 

''Tbe  God  of  jntOce  Is  tbo  Ood  ot  1ot«. 
And  chMtlaemeat  It  Ioto  wbare  tin  It  deatti.'' 

The  ten  letters  of  Shelley  to  which  we  now 
come  cover  the  years  1813-1829^  and  are  fall  of 
warm  affection  for  his  correspondent,  Leigh 
Hunt  The  editors  insist  upon  their  valae  for 
the  interpretation  of  Shelley's  character,  by 
their  emphasis  of  the  great  change  which  came 
orer  him  in  1814,  the  year  when  he  threw  in 
with  Hary  Godwin.  The  one  letter  prior  to 
1814  shows  Shelley  in  the  thick  of  his  abstract 
atheistical  specolationB.  The  rest  show  him 
merged  in  the  palpitating  facts  of  life,  awake 
to  the  concerns  of  his  friends  and  instinct 
with  genius.  **  When  once  that  point  in  the 
SheUey  chronology  [1814]  is  reached,  there  is 
no  record  of  retrogression  ;  Tariety— yee,  and 
progress;  bat  never  any  more  letters,  how- 
erer  trifling  or  matter-of-fact  the  subject, 
behind  which  it  is  possibie  not  to  lee  this  par. 
ticolar  personality— intelleot,  emotions,  ima> 
gination,  all  alive,  and  creating  fresh  com- 
binations of  language  and  thought.*'  This 
naturally  raises  the  question  of  8helley*s  let- 
ten  VOTsns  his  poetry— the  question  of  Mat- 
thew Arnold's  paradox  that  Shelley's  prose 
will  outlive  his  verse.  Certainly  there  is  no- 
thing in  the  letters  now  published  to  support 
such  a  view.  They  are  spontaneous,  uni^ect- 
ed,  and  fresh  from  the  heart,  but  their  subjects 
are  not  of  perennial  moment.  A  criticism  of 
Michael  Angelo  might  be  held  to  furnish  an 
exception.  For  the  rest,  the  chronic  money 
difficulties  of  Hunt,  and  Bhelley*s  assistance, 
the  drcumstances  under  which  Uie  **  Hymn  to 
InteUectnal  Beauty**  was  puUished,  the  relsr 
tioos  of  Byron,  Shelley,  and  Hunt  leading  up 
to  the  publication  of  *The  Liberal :  Verse  and 
Proae  from  the  South,*  and  the  appearance  of 
'  Frankenstein,*  are  the  principal  themes.  We 
welcome  the  pubUcatioo  of  new  Shelley  lettsn, 
bat  we  must  confess  that,  in  oar  opinion,  the 
editors  have  somewhat  overestimated  the  value 
ol  their  discovery. 

The  ** Landor  -  Blessington  Papers*'  show 
Landor  in  his  most  amiable  mood.  He  lavish- 
es articles  upon  Lady  Blessington,  redeeming 
her  *Book  of  Beauty*  and  her  'Keepeake' 
from  inanity.  His  modesty  will  sarprise  those 
who  remember  **  I  strove  with  none,  for  none 
was  worth  my  strife."  In  sending  on  a  quarto 
sheet  headed  **Fleasare,  Youth,  and  Age :  An 
Allegory,"  be  says :  **  I  hope  you  wiU  think  it 
worthy  of  a  place,  not  in  the  forthcoming  but 
in  the  following  Book  of  Beauty."  We  quite 
forget  in  the  shower  of  compliments  which  he 
pays  the  fair  editor  that  he  ever  threw  his 
cook  into  a  tulip-bed  at  Piesole,  replying  to 
the  remonstrances  of  his  wife:  **Well,  my 
dear.  I  am  sorry,  if  that  will  do  you  any 
good.  If  I  had  remembered  that  our  best  tnlip> 
bed  was  under  that  window,  Td  have  flung 
the  dog  out  of  t'other."    The  story  may  be 


legendary,  but  no  one  could  invent  such  a 
legend  about  the  Blessington-Landor.  His  in- 
timacy with  the  Ck>untess  extended  from  June 
of  1827  to  the  day  of  her  death  in  1840,  and  he 
could  conclude  a  sketch  of  their  friendship 
with  the  words :  **  Virtuous  ladies,  instead  of 
censuring  her  faults,  attempt  to  imitate  her 
virtues.  Believe  that,  if  any  excess  may  be 
run  into,  the  excess  of  tenderness  is  quite  as 
pardonable  as  that  of  malignity  and  rancour." 
The  letters  now  published  relate  chiefly  to 
Lander's  contributions  to  the  various  annuals 
which  Lady  Blessington  published  in  years 
when  her  income  had  become  small,  and  she 
was  forced  to  depend  on  her  own  energy  for 
the  funds  which  kept  the  salon  at  Gk>re  House, 
Kensington,  in  existence.  They  flll  up  gaps  in 
Madden's  *Life  and  Correspondence  of  the 
Countess  of  Blessington,'  and  are  of  consider- 
able value  to  the  lover  of  literary  gossip.  Be- 
sides letters,  various  minor  papers  and  verses 
of  Landor,  which  accompanied  the  letters,  are 
set  forth.  An  autobiographical  note  which 
Landor  drew  up  for  the  Countess,  and  an  ex- 
tract from  her  diary  concerning  the  first 
weeks  of  their  acquaintance,  are  also  included. 

We  must  not  altogether  pass  over  Haw- 
thorne's paper  on  Uttoxeter,  which  Dr.  NicoU 
and  Mr.  Wise  have  rescued  from  a  file  of  the 
*  Keepsake.'  Hawthorne  himself  introduced 
portions  of  it  into  his  chapter  on  Lichfield  and 
Uttoxeter  in  *Our  Old  Home';  now  we  have 
it  alcme  in  its  first  form.  Hawthorne  never 
wrote  more-delightfully  than  on  the  subject  of 
Johnson's  penance  and  the  market-place  in 
which  it  was  performed.  The  conclusion  is  an 
amusing  little  anti^climax.  By  an  analogy 
drawn  from  his  own  experience,  Hawthorne 
excuses  the  people  of  Uttoxeter  from  their 
failure  to  remember  and  be  impressed  by  the 
one  event  that  redeems  their  town  from  ob- 
scurity. We  do  not  get  much  assistance  from 
thb  essay  about  the  pronunciation  of  the  name. 
Hawthorne  says  it  is  called  Tute-oxeter,  but 
here  he  is  hopelessly  astray  if  the  local  re- 
searches of  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  are  to  be  con. 
sidered  conclusive. 

We  have  left  ourselves  no  space  to  dilate  on 
what  in  some  respects  is  the  most  important 
portion  of  the  yolume,  vis.,  the  Bibliography 
of  Browning's  Writings.  The  following  order 
of  treatment  is  observed:  L  Editiones  Prin- 
dpes;  II.  Contributions  to  Periodical  Litera- 
ture; m.  Published  Letters;  IV.  An  alpha- 
betical list  of  poems  with  reference  to  the 
position  of  each  in  the  yarious  editions;  V. 
CoUected  Editions;  VL  SelecUons;  VII.  Com- 
plete volumes  of  Biography  and  Criticism; 
Vm.  Browningiana.  The  whole  bibliography 
would  refleot  credit  on  the  most  precise  and 
laborious  German,  and  will  be  indispensable 
to  the  systematic  student  of  Browning.  The 
notes  added  to  the  separate  pieces  under  sec- 
tion iv.  are  most  ample,  useful,  and  entertain- 
ing. The  section  Brwoningiana  is  brought 
down  to  February,  1805. 

The  paper,  type,  and  illustrations  of  this 
volume  are  all  very  beautiful,  quite  eclipsing 
old  Nichols;  while  the  numerous  reproductions 
in  facsimile  of  original  holographs  will  give 
the  book  a  special  value  in  the  eyes  of  the  bibli- 
ophile and  the  collector  of  autographs.  It 
would  be  too  much  to  say  that  the  material 
collected  by  the  editors  presents  any  great 
public  character  in  a  new  light,  yet  much  of  it 
is  of  high  interest  and  none  of  it  is  triviaL  If 
the  succeeding  volumes  of  the  series  equal  the 
first  in  merit,  the  *' Literary  Anecdotes  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century  "  will  become  one  of  thoee 
works  **  withoat  which  no  gentleman's  library 
is 


THB  BEGINNINGS  OF  THE  UNIVERSI- 
TIES.— II. 

The  Univertitie^  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Agee, 
By  Hastings  RashdaU,  M.A.,  FeUow  and 
Lecturer  of  Hertford  College,  Oxford.  Ox. 
ford  :  Clarendon  Press ;  New  York :  Mac 
millan.    1896.    2  vols.,  8vo,  560,  882  pp. 

MuoH  of  Mr.  RashdalTs  space  is  very  natu- 
rally devoted  to  the  earliest  typical  universi- 
ties, Salerno,  Bologna,  and  Paris.  Concerning 
the  study  of  medicine  at  Salerno,  the  facts 
regarding  which  are  very  uncertain  and  the 
legends  numerous,  Mr.  Rashdall  is  extremely 
cautious.  He  ascribes  its  origin  jointly  to  the 
survival  of  Grieco-Roman  medicine  in  South- 
em  Italy  and  to  the  fact  that  Salerno  itself 
was  a  health-resort,  sought  because  of  the  mild- 
ness of  the  climate  and  the  neighboring  mine- 
ral springs.  Its  importance  continued  for  only 
two  centuries,  although  its  final  suppreesion 
was  effected  by  Napoleon  as  late  as  1811.  Mr. 
Rashdall  takes  pains  to  emphasise  the  fact  that 
women  were  prominent  as  teachers  and  writ- 
ers at  Salerno  when  that  institution  was  at  the 
height  of  its  prosperity. 

The  story  of  the  universities  at  Bologna  and 
at  Paris  is  intensely  interesting,  for  those  in- 
stitutions not  only  have  maintained  a  con- 
tinuous existence  to  this  day,  but  are  the  veri- 
table parents  of  universities.  The  existence  of 
a  university  at  Bologna  is  explained  primarily 
by  the  uninterrupted  existence  of  the  Roman 
law  and  its  continued  study  and  exposition, 
despite  invasion,  decadence,  and  change,  social 
and  politicaL  The  Seven  Liberal  Arts  includ- 
ed tlM  study  of  law,  which  was  made  a  pcut  of 
rhetoric,  sometimes  of  grammar  as  well.  Mr. 
Rashdall  plays  havoc  with  the  time-honored 
superstition  that  Imerius  was  the  first  teacher 
of  Roman  law  in  medieval  Italy.  He  is  able 
to  prove  not  only  that  Roman  law  was  studied 
at  Pavia  from  at  least  the  beginning  of  the  11th 
century,  but  also  that  the  School  of  Law  at 
Ravenna  had  kept  alive  the  old  traditions  of 
Roman  jurisprudence  from  a  still  earlier  date, 
Imerius,  therefore,  revived  and  forwarded 
legal  studies,  but  did  not  found  them.  He  did 
this  at  Bologna,  whose  earliest  reputation  as  a 
School  of  Arts  is  put  in  the  background  by  its 
later  preeminence  as  a  School  of  Law.  Why 
Bologna  was  the  seat  of  this  revival,  Mr. 
Rashdall  explains  thus: 

"  At  Bologna— the  point  of  junction  between 
the  Exarchate  and  the  Lombard  territory— 
these  traditions  [of  Roman  jorispmdencel 
came  into  contact  with  the  new.bom  poliUoal 
life  of  the  Lombard  cities,  and  with  that  de- 
velopment both  of  professional  and  of  scholas- 
tic law-studies  which  was  one  of  the  outcomes 
of  the  Lombard  political  activity.  To  a  large 
extent  the  revival  of  legal  science  was  common 
to  all  parts  of  Northem  Italy.  But  in  the 
Lombard  cities  the  Roman  law  had  to  contend 
for  supremacy  in  the  schools  as  well  as  in  the 
courts  with  a  rival  Lombard  jurispradence:  it 
was  not  unnatoral  that  the  Roman  law  should 
achieve  its  decisive  victory  in  the  most  Roman 
of  the  Lombard  towns"  (r.,108). 

It  is  not  possible  to  trace  in  detail  Mr. 
EashdaU's  thoroughly  sane  and  well-balanoed 
acoount  of  the  University  of  Paris,  the  alma 
maUr  of  the  universities  of  Germany,  and  per- 
haps the  most  potent  influence  in  building  up  a 
universi^  out  of  the  schools  at  Oxford.  The 
key  to  the  difference  bet  ween  the  universities  at 
Paris  and  at  Bok>gna,and  the  explanation  of  the 
survival  of  the  type  of  the  former,  are  to  be 
found  in  the  power  of  the  Chancellor  and  the 
right  of  the  competent  teacher  to  a  license. 
The  licensed  teachers  became,  guild-fashion, 
the  controlling  power,  and  were  the  fore, 
ronnvs  of   aU   modem  faculties  and  aoa- 


328 


The    N'ation. 


[Vol  62,  Na  1608 


demic  boards.  The  subordinate  facts  connect- 
ed with  these  fundameotal  principles  Mr. 
Bashdall  worlcs  out  in  great  detail,  and  he 
throws  abundant  light  on  many  problems  hi- 
therto dark.  The  famous  Bull  of  Honorius 
III.,  which  in  1219  prohibited  the  study  of 
the  civil  law  at  the  University  of  Paris,  is  ex- 
plained by  Mr.  Rashdall  at  due,  not  to  a  dis- 
like for  legal  studies,  and  a  desire  to  suppress 
or  limit  them,  bnt  to  an  attempt  to  protect 
the  faculty  of  theology,  at  one  centre  at  least, 
from  the  ruinous  competition  of  the  popular 
and  well  rewarded  study  of  the  law. 

The  story  of  the  ** Great  Dispersion"  of 
1228-29  is  capitally  told,  and  is  built  up  in  part 
from  documents  that  have  not  hitherto  been 
used.  It  is  plain  that  the  smaller  uniTersities 
of  France,  especially  those  at  Rheims,  Angers, 
and  Toulouse,  as  well  as  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge, received  a  marked  stimulus  from  the 
advent  of  wandering  masters  and  scholars  who 
left  Paris  at  this  time.  But,  as  Mr.  Rashdall 
says,  the  Unirerslty  of  Paris  lived  upon  its 
misfortunes,  aod  out  of  the  disturbances  cre- 
ated by  the  town^nd-gown  riot  that  led  to  the 
Great  Dispersion  came  positive  proof  that  a 
new  force  had  arisen  in  Europe ;  for  after  two 
years  the  court  and  the  citiseus  were  glad 
enough  to  urge  the  return  of  the  teachers  and 
scholars,  at  any  price,  in  order  to  check  the 
failing  prestige  and  to  restore  the  commercial 
prosperity  of  Paris.  From  that  time  on,  the 
development  of  the  university  was  more  or- 
derly and  less  troubled. 

As  an  Eoglishman,  fifr.  Rashdall  is  justifled 
in  giving  more  attention  to  the  history  of  Ox- 
ford and  Cambridge  than  is  usual  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Continental  historians  of  education. 
To  American  students  also  these  details  are  of 
much  interest.  The  time-honored  legend  that 
Oxford  owes  its  origin  to  Alfred  the  Great 
not  only  is  disoiissed  as  a  myth  (following  Mr. 
James  Parker),  but  Is  asserted  to  be  an  imagi- 
nary creation  that  first  appeared  in  Camden's 
*  Britannia  *  in  1600,  and  was  transferred  from 
this,  three  years  later,  to  Camden's  edition  of 
Asser's  *  Annals.'  The  whole  story  —  begin- 
nings of  which  are  found  in  Higden's  *  Poly- 
cbronicon  '—with  all  its  numerous  and  detailed 
•  appendages,  **may  now  be  abandoned,"  says 
Mr.  Rashdall,  **  to  students  of  comparative 
mythology  and  of  the  pathology  of  the  hu. 
man  mind."  Similarly,  the  ** cobwebs  with 
which  academic  patriotism  has  surrounded  the 
growth  of  the  University  of  Cambridge"  are 
swept  away,  and  the  first  appearance  of  that 
institution  on  the  pages  of  history  is  traced  to 
**  the  dispersion  which  followed  upon  the  Ox- 
ford suspendium  clericorum  of  1209."  But, 
the  true  beginnings  being  established,  the  story 
of  the  subsequent  history  of  the  great  English 
universities  is  admirably  told.  It  includes  not 
only  their  constitutional  development,  but 
their  relation  to  the  church  and  to  the  public, 
their  student  life,  and  their  academic  customs. 
Many  of  these  details,  especially  where  they 
tend  to  explain  existing  survivals  of  older  cus- 
toms, are  intensely  interesting.  For  example, 
it  wiU  surprise  many,  even  well-informed  uni- 
yersity  men,  to  be  told  that  until  1884  Cam- 
bridge University  had  on  its  statute-book  a  jus 
natalium  that  excused  sons  of  noblemen  from 
an  examination  and  a  year's  residence. 

In  reference  to  the  number  of  students  en- 
rolled at  the  medisBval  universltieB  Mr.  Rash- 
dall is  very  conseivative.  He  points  to  the 
fact  that  at  the  larger  universities  of  northern 
Europe  no  oflScial  record  of  students'  names 
was  kept,  that  matriculation  books  are  availa- 
ble only  for  some  of  the  smaller  tmiversitiea 
and  for  tbe  l»t«r  pcut  Qf  the  period  wbl^  la 


under  examination,  and  that  the  estimates  of 
university  attendance  which  we  possess  rest 
exclusively  upon  a  few  obUer  dicta  of  mediae- 
val writers.  Some  of  these  large  estimates  are 
traced  to  the  medissval  habit  of  exaggeration, 
and  some  to  a  dhrect  attempt  to  support  one 
side  of  som^  pending  controversy.  For  exanu 
pie,  the  statement  of  Fits  Ralph,  Bishop  of 
Armagh,  that  there  had  once  been  80,000  stu- 
dents at  Oxford,  is  ascribed  by  Mr.  Rashdall  to 
the  Bishop's  anxiety  to  prove  that  the  uni- 
versity was  being  depopulated  In  consequence 
of  the  kidnappings  of  the  Friars,  which  made 
parents  afraid  to  send  their  sons  to  Oxford. 
By  examining  a  variety  of  evidence,  Mr.  Rash- 
dall reaches  the  conclusion  that  the  student 
population  at  Oxford  could  at  no  time  have 
exceeded  8,000,  and  was  probibly  always  much 
below  that  figure.  For  Paris  the  highest  pos- 
sible attendance  is  put  at  10,000,  and  probably 
no  other  university,  except  perhaps  Bologna 
in  the  course  of  the  thirteenth  century,  ever 
reached  an  attendance  of  5,000. 

It  may  perhaps  be  said,  in  criticism  of  Mr. 
Rashdall's  work,  that  the  reader  would  like  to 
be  given  more  generalizations,  deductions,  and 
applications  of  and  from  the  immense  collec- 
tion of  facts  here  recorded  and  sustained.  The 
chapters  on  "  The  Place  of  the  University  of 
Paris  in  European  History,"  **The  Intellectual 
Revolution,"  "  The  Place  of  Oxford  in  Mediae- 
val  Thought,"  and  «*  Student  Life  in  the  Middle 
Ages  "  are  of  this  character,  and  well  illustrate 
how  interesting  the  whole  subject  may  be  made 
to  the  general  reader.  But  we  should  be  pro- 
foundly thankful  to  have  put  before  us,  in  the 
English  language,  such  a  systematic  presenta- 
tion of  the  history  and  bibliography  of  the 
early  universities  as  Mr.  Rashdall  has  worked 
out.  His  collected  and  annotated  msterial  on 
all  the  universities,  great  and  small,  is  a  per- 
fect mine  of  facts  for  the  student  of  education 
and  of  medisBval  history. 

One  of  the  main  results  of  Mr.  Rashdall's  sur- 
vey is,  as  he  himself  points  out,  to  shatter  a 
good  many  popular  university  traditions. 

**The  University  of  London,  after  being  em- 
powered by  Royal  Charter  to  do  all  things  that 
could  be  done  by  any  university,  was  legally 
advised  that  it  could  not  grant  degrees  to  wo- 
men without  a  fresh  charter,  because  no  uni- 
versity had  ever  granted  such  degrees:  we 
have  seen  that  there  were  women  doctors  at 
Salerno.  We  have  been  told  that  the  Mediae- 
val University  gave  a  religious  education :  we 
have  seen  that  to  the  majority  of  the  students 
it  gave  none.  We  have  been  told  4hat  a  uni- 
versity must  embrace  all  faculties:  we  have 
seen  that  many  very  famous  medisBval  univer- 
sities did  nothing  of  the  kind.  .  .  .  We 
have  been  told  that  the  collegiate  system  is  pe- 
culiar to  England :  we  have  seen  that  colleges 
were  found  in  nearly  all  universities^  and  that 
over  a  great  part  of  Europe  university  teaching 
was  more  or  less  superseded  by  college  teach- 
ing  before  the  close  of  the  mediaeviu  period. 
We  have  been  told  that  the  great  business  of  a 
university  was  considered  to  be  liberal  as  dis- 
tinct from  professional  education:  we  have 
seen  that  many  universities  were  almost  ex 
clusively  occupied  with  professional  educa- 
tion. We  have  been  assured,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  the  course  in  Arts  was  looked  upon 
as  a  mere  preparatory  discipline  for  the  higher 
faculties:  we  have  seen  that  in  the  universities 
of  northern  Europe  a  majority  of  students 
never  entered  a  higher  faculty  at  all "  (li.,  712, 
718). 

Another  result  is  to  make  it  clear  that  all 
these  institutions  were  not  cast  in  a  common 
mould,  but  conformed  to  the  national  and 
social  environments  in  which  they  sprang  up. 
Yet  amid  all  these  difiPerences  the  early  uni- 
versities had  a  common  ideal,  and  that  the 
highest  educational  ideal  of  the  time.  To  de- 
grade the  term  **  university,"  therefore,  as  we 
dQ  in  the  United  Statue  with  o^r  '<  NoroMil 


Universities,"  our  **  Business  Universities," 
and  our  "Universities"  that  are  but  half- 
equipped  secondary  schools,  is,  as  Mr.  Rashdall 
jusUy  says,  to  abuse  the  highest  educational 
ideal  that  we  find  recorded  in  history. 

It  is  impossible,  within  the  limits  of  this  re- 
view,  to  do  more  than  touch  upon  the  chief 
points  of  general  interest  In  Mr.  RashdalTs  re- 
markable book.  To  say  that  it  is  indispensable 
to  students  of  education  and  of  the  Middle 
Ages  and  a  splendid  example  of  scholarship 
and  learning,  is  in  no  sense  an  over-statement 


Ai6/ic  Speaking  and  Debate:  A  Manual  for 

Advocates  and  Agitators.   By  George  Jacob 

Holyoake.  Putnams. 
Many  years  ago  Mr.  Holyoake  wrote  a  prac- 
tical handbook  on  speaking  and  debate  which 
had  the  success  of  being  not  only  reprinted 
but  pirated.  This  volume  he  has  now  rewrit- 
ten, and  in  doing  so  has  produced  a  manual 
which  writers  as  well  as  speakers  will  find  use- 
ful. It  is  not  a  systematic  treatise— indeed,  it 
is  marked  by  a  want  of  system— but  is  full 
of  useful  suggestion,  illustration,  and  advice 
such  as  is  often  not  to  be  met  with  in  syste- 
matic treatises.  No  doubt  the  fundamentsl 
principles  of  the  art  of  persuasion  are  the  same 
to  day  as  In  the  time  of  Quintilian,  but  the  ma- 
terials with  which  the  art  deals  and  the  wea- 
pons in  its  armory  are  by  no  means  precisely 
the  same.  Pulpit  eloquence,  for  instance, 
could  not  be  practised  until  there  were  pulpits 
and  congregations  and  a  Christian  faith. 
Had  MassiUon  preached  in  the  Coliseum  to  the 
Roman  Senate,  he  would  probably  not  have 
moved  his  audience  either  to  repentance  or 
to  tears.  If  Antony  were  to  endeavor  to-day 
to  rouse  his  auditors  to  avenge  the  assassina- 
tion of  CsBsar,  he  would  need  to  remember  that 
they  had  all  read  extras  giving  full  details  of 
the  event.  Public  speakers  go  back  to  Cicero 
and  Demosthenes  for  the  great  fundamental 
principles  of  rhetoric,  as  military  men  go  back 
to  Napoleon  and  Hannibal  for  those  of  strategy, 
not  forgetting  that  neither  Cicero  nor  Demos- 
thenes ever  spoke  in  the  dread  of  the  daily 
press,  nor  that  Hannibal  was  unacquainted 
with  transportation  by  rail,  nor  that  Napoleon 
never  saw  a  Maxim  gun.  For  these  reasons 
formal  and  systematic  works  on  rhetoric  need 
to  be  supplemented  from  time  to  time  by 
manuals  such  as  Mr.  Holyoake's,  designed  to 
bring  forcibly  before  the  mind  the  practical 
questions  which  confront  the  speaker  or  deba- 
ter of  to-day. 

At  the  same  time  a  littie  more  system  would 
have  been  to  the  advantage  even  of  such  a  vol- 
ume. The  reader  is  not  made  clearly  to  un- 
derstand, for  instance,  that  sharp  Uoes  of  divi-* 
sion  separate  the  field;  differentiating  rhetoric 
which  attempts  persuasion  simply  from  rhe- 
toric which  alms  at  victory,  as  in  parliamenta- 
ry debate;  or  from  exhortation,  the  object  of 
which  is  to  arouse  to  action  of  some  kind.  A 
fervent  sermon  to  the  heathen,  preached  with 
genuine  unction,  has  a  different  object  In  view 
from  one  on  the  coast  defences,  or  one  plaolog 
in  nomination  a  Favorite  Son  ;  the  failure  of  a 
speaker  to  notice  such  differences  may  empty 
the  house  for  him. 

Again,  we  miss  a  systematic  analysis  of  the 
modes  and  figures  of  speech.  While  it  is  true 
that  the  rules  of  rhetoric  teach  us,  as  Butler 
says,  only  how  to  name  our  tools,  a  oarsful 
examination  of  the  tools  of  the  trade,  and  of 
the  uses  to  which  they  can  be  put,  will  aiirB^ 
enable  us  to  begin  work  with  less  Hdr  of  ool- 
ting  our  fingers.  Irony  is  nd  by  aqy  aMtH* 
th9  onl7  dan^ous  ixnpleanaBt  (9  tH^ftaPi  fjf 


April  23,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


839 


.flgnret  of  tpeaoh  are  edged  tools,  and  accS- 
danti  will  happen  to  the  beginner  even  if  he 
mtnij  mktakee  an  analogy  for  a  reeemblance, 
at  the  aathor  Meme  to  do  (p.  200).  The  chap- 
ter on  Fignree  of  Speech  is  really  confined  to 
Metaphor  and  Simile,  but,  after  all,  we  for- 
giTe  its  inadeqatcy  in  gratitude  for  having 
recalled  to  us  the  story  of  the  young  preacher 
who,  haying  described  a  man  without  faith  or 
hope  as  *'the  captain  of  a  crewless  yesMl, 
upon  a  shoreless  sea,**  exclaimed,  almost  in- 
evitably, by  way  of  peroration,  *' Happy 
would  such  a  man  be  to  bring  his  men  to 
land.** 

The  value  of  this  book  lies  in  its  practical  ad- 
vice, a  good  deal  of  which  will  not  be  found 
anywhere  else.  **  Writing  for  thePre«"has 
nothing  to  do  directly  with  speaking  or  debate, 
but  every  speaker  or  debater  sooner  or  later 
has  to  make  use  of  the  press  as  a  medium  for 
communication  with  the  public,  and  in  this 
ch^iter  he  will  find  some  golden  rules,  aocom- 
panied  by  perfectly  clear  explanation  of  the 
groonds  on  which  they  rest.  It  is  the  first 
impulse  of  any  one  who  is  misrepresented  to 
resent,  to  deny,  and  to  attack  the  person  mis- 
repreeenting.  The  readiest  means  are  furnish- 
ed by  the  newspapers,  which  are  only  too  glad, 
if  the  persons  concerned  are  at  all  well  known, 
to  print  communications  on  such  subjects.  But 
how  few  persons  remember  that  the  editor  will 
also  print  the  reply,  and  that  he  too  has  the 
final  power  of  deciding  when  the  controversy 
shall  stop^  and  what  view  as  to  its  merits  the 
newspaper  which  has  made  it  public  shall  ex- 
press. 

A  controversy  of  this  kind  has  usually  an 
effect  noi  dreamed  of  by  the  person  who  be- 
gins  it— that  of  hugely  delighting  the  editor 
who  ** opens  his  columns'*  to  it,  the  people  who 
read  it,  and  especially  the  friends  and  ac- 
quaintances of  the  parties.  80  full  of  peril  is 
this  species  of  self- vindication  that  some  emi- 
nent men  think  it  best  never  to  reply  to  any 
attack— but  this  course  is  not  open  to  every 
one.  If  a  public  reply  must  be  made,  the 
golden  rule  for  the  person  who  desires  to  vindi- 
cate himself  is  to  avoid  doing  what  he  is  most 
strongly  tempted  to  do— iippute  an  evil  motive, 
of  some  sort  to  the  person  written  about. 
*'Bven  if  he  thinks  he  has  been  wilfuUy  mis- 
reprsseoted  by  an  adversary,  a  reporter,  or  by 
the  editor,  he  had  better  not  say  so,**  first, 
because  be  can  hardly  ever  be  sure  of  it;  se- 
cond, because  he  can  hardly  ever  prove  it.  The 
capacity  for  honest  misapprehension  and  per- 
version is  so  diffused  among  mankind  that 
there  can  hardly  ever  be  any  certainty  that 
mkvepreeentation  is  wilful,  and  we  may  add 
as  a  final  reason  that  an  antagooiBt  will  have 
■o  diiBonlty  in  making  the  same  charge  in  re- 
ply, whiles  owing  to  a  universal  human  instinct 
unnecessary  to  analyze,  there  is  nothing  in  the 
worid  that  mankind  at  large  enjoys  so  much  as 
hearing  persons  of  note  call  each  other  names 
and  make  mutual  chargee  of  villany. 

In  the  same  way  the  chapter  on  the  "  Theory 
of  Epithets  **  contains  much  valuable  advice, 
and  tarings  out  strongly  the  underljring  princi- 
ple of  modem  parliamentary  debate— the  as- 
sumption that  all  antagonism  springs  from 
honest  difference  of  opinion,  and  therefore  can 
be  removed  by  argument.  This  assumption  is 
not  necsnarily  true.  Interest,  prejudice,  pas- 
sftoo,  hatred,  envy,  and  malice  are  often  at  the 
root  of  differences  even  with  regard  to  points 
of  coQstitntional  law,  and  many  an  opinion  is 
not  founded  on  conviction,  but  is  used  as  a 
mere  weapon  of  attack.  Nevertheless,  it  b  the 
boast  at  once  of  tlie  nuMt  civilised  and  the 
moft  ittOPHifal  forensic  art  Vo  trwt  an  tdyer* 


sary's  opinions  as  error  and  notes  produced  by 
original  stn.  Mr.  flolyoake  points  out  that  the 
best  practical  test  of  what  are  allowable  epi« 
thets  or  imputations  in  debate  is  to  ask.  Should 
we  consider  this  fair  debate  if  applied  to  our- 
selves ^-a  test  which  is  at  once  good  morals 
and  good  sense. 

^  In  conclusion,  it  may  comfort  the  few  read- 
ers who  do  not  feel  themsdves  to  be  already 
accomplished  orators,  to  find  that  Mr.  Holy- 
oake*s  study  of  the  subject  confirms  the  view, 
so  often  repeated  and  so  often  forgotten,  that, 
no  matter  what  the  natural  gifts  of  a  speaker, 
the  greatest  watory  lias  been  always  the  pro- 
duct of  unfiagging  industry  and  lalK>rious  pre- 
paration. 


Feudal  England:    Historical  Studies  of  the 

Xltb  and  Xllth  Centuries.  By  J.  H.  Round. 

London:  Swan  Sonnenschein  &  Co. 
This  book — ^in  part  reprinted  from  the  English 
Historical  Review^  but  in  the  main  new— is  one 
of  the  most  important  contributions  to  the 
knowledge  of  medisBval  English  conditions  that 
have  appeared  of  late  years.  For  a  decade  or 
more  after  the  appearance  of  Professor  (now 
Bishop)  Stubb6*8  first  volume  of  *  Constitution- 
al History,*  the  movement  of  thought  in  that 
field  took  the  direction  chiefiy  of  the  appropri- 
ation and  popularisation  of  his  conclusions: 
but  during  the  last  ten  years  or  so  there  has 
been  a  fresh  impulse  towards  further  investi- 
gation; and  this  further  investigation  has  had 
the  result,  partly  of  securing  greater  preci- 
sion, partly  of  undermining  some  not  unim- 
portant positions  even  of  the  great  Bishop 
himself.  In  this  work  four  scholars  have  pre- 
eminently distinguished  themselves,  and  stand 
head  and  shoulders  above  all  others— Mr.  See- 
bohm.  Prof.  Vinogradoff,  Prof.  Maitland,  and 
Mr.  Round. 

Mr.  Round  remarks,  in  more  than  one  place, 
that  while  the  task  of  the  last  generation  of 
scholars  was  to  interpret  the  **  chroniclers,**  the 
task  of  the  preeent  is  to  supplement  and  cor- 
rect that  evidence  by  recourse  to  the  "re- 
cords**; and  the  remark  is  just.  Not  that  the 
'^records**  were  never  consulted  before:  it  was 
Palgrave  who  did  most  to  make  them  accessi- 
ble ;  and  even  Freeman  made  a  good  deal  of 
use  of  the  Domesday  Book.  But  what  is  new 
is  the  effort,  not  to  pick  out  mere  illustrations 
or  proofs  for  opinions  otherwise  formed,  but 
to  master  the  records  as  wholes,  to  determine 
their  exact  relations  inter  se,  to  analyse  their 
contents,  and  to  let  the  facts  themselves  spon- 
taneously fall  into  significant  order.  And  this 
result  is  what,  in  the  volume  before  us,  fifr. 
Round  has  gone  far  towards  bringing  about 
with  the  record  of  the  great  survey  of  Wil- 
liam the  Conqueror  and  the  documents  that 
duster  around  it. 

Setting  out  from  the  InquisiUo  Oomitatus 
CanUibrigiensiB,  and  comparing  it  on  the  one 
side  with  the  Inquititio  Eliensis  and  on  the 
other  with  the  Domesday  Book  itself,  Mr. 
Round  first  reaches  the  important  discovery 
that  among  the  '* socmen**  there  were  two 
kinds  of  tenure,  "thegnland**  and  **soke- 
land,'*  distinguished  by  important  differences. 
He  then  produces  some  new  and  quite  conclu- 
sive evidence  in  support  of  Mr.  Seebohm*s  con- 
tentions that  the  eatuea  of  Domesday  always 
meant  a  plough  team  of  eight  oxen,  that  the 
hide  contained  four  virgates,  and  that  each 
virgate  contained  thirty  acres  — though  he 
guards  himself  by  inserting  geld  before  each 
of  the  terms  hide^  virgate,  and  €iere.  His 
conclusions,  that  is  to  say,  are  limited  to  the 
aMsssment  of  land  for  the  purpose  of  taxa- 


tion, and  the  relation  of  this  assessment  to 
agricultural  management  is  left  undetermined. 
Next  comes  the  most  exciting  discovery  of  all, 
vis.,  that  in  the  *'hidated**  portions  of  Eng- 
land, the  *'hidation**  was  evidently  srranged 
in  multiples  of  a  five-hide  unit.  In  a  large 
number  of  cases  the  '* Hundred**  itself  was 
reckoned  at  a  hundred  hides— a  fact  that 
clearly  has  a  direct  bearing  on  the  origin  of 
that  territorial  division.  Nor  is  this  all;  there 
is  much  to  make  it  seem  probable  that  **  it  was 
the  Hundred  itself  which  was  assessed  for  geld, 
and  which  was  held  responsible  for  its  pay- 
ment.** Moreover,  it  is  clear  that  "  the  part 
which  is  played  in  the  hidated  district  of  Eng- 
land by  the  five-hide  unit  is  played  in  the 
Danish  districts  by  a  unit  of  six  carucates.** 
In  the  Danish  districts  there  were  probably 
some  other  peculiarities;  chief  of  them  a  small 
**  Hundred,**  usually  composed  of  12  carucates, 
and  forming  a  subdivision  of  the  Wapentake. 
But  the  broad  distinction  between  the  five-hide- 
unit  area  and  the  six-carucate-unit  area  is  be- 
yond doubt,  and  indeed  lies  on  the  surface  of 
the  evidence,  when  once  it  has  been  pointed 
out ;  and  it  will  have  to  be  taken  into  account 
by  all  future  writers. 

The  other  nukin  theme  of  the  book  is  the  ori- 
gin of  knight*8  fees.  Here  Mr.  Round's  view  is 
not  quite  so  novel,  for  he  has  already  presented 
it  in  the  pages  of  the  English  Historical  i?e- 
view.  Taking  for  his  point  of  departure  the 
returns  made  to  the  Exchequer  in  1165,  to 
which  hitherto  but  scant  attention  has  been 
paid,  Mr.  Round  argues  convincingly  that  the 
view  generally  accepted,  on  Dr.  Slubbers  au- 
thority, is  altogether  mistsken;  that  instead 
of  the  Norman  Conquest  making  no  change 
save  in  the  direction  of  greater  definiteness  in 
the  obligations  resting  on  the  landholders,  and 
these  obligations  continuing  to  be  determined 
by  the  hidage  or  value  of  the  holding,  the 
tenants-in-chief  received  their  fiefs  from  the 
Conqueror  to  hold  of  the  Crown  by  a  definite 
quota,  fixed  more  or  less  arbitrarily,  of  mili- 
tary service.  Strictly  speaking,  this  is  but 
"a  theory,**  for  no  contemporary  account  of 
an  enfeoffment  on  such  terms  has  hitherto 
been  found :  but  Mr.  Round's  argument  back- 
ward from  the  known  to  the  unknown  makes 
it  difficult  to  escape  some  such  conclusion. 

To  these  epoch-making  papers  on  Domesday 
and  knight-service,  Mr.  Round  adds  a  number 
of  articles  of  less  moment,  though  those  on 
*'The  Alleged  Debate  on  Danegeld  in  1169/' 
and  ••  The  Oxford  Debate  on  Foreign  Service 
in  1197,**  are  not  to  be  overlooked  in  any  con- 
sideration  of  the  constitutional  position  of  the 
Church.  He  adds,  also,  and  here  we  cannot 
but  think  him  not  altogether  well  advised,  a 
selection  from  his  Quarterly  and  other  papers 
on  Mr.  Freeman*s  account  of  the  battle  of 
Hastings.  The  quantity  of  argumentative 
writing  on  the  two  sides  is  so  great,  Mr. 
Round  and  Mr.  Archer  are  both  such  good  me- 
disDvalisU  and  such  honest  scholars,  the  ques- 
tion as  to  the  **  palisade  **  has  been  so  confused 
by  the  introduction  of  the  side  issue  of  the 
**  shield  wall**  that  a  reviewer  wiU  heniUte 
long  before  he  commits  himself  to  a  positive 
conclusion.  After  all,  there  are  many  other 
points  wherein  Mr.  Freeman's  incomplete  in- 
formation and  over  hasty  judgment  can  be 
shown  with  far  less  question.  Moreover,  the 
current  of  historical  thought  is  rapidly  turn- 
ing away  from  the  sort  of  anticipatory  demo- 
cratic enthusiasm  which  colored  all  Freeman's 
judgment  of  past  institutions.  Very  soon  Free- 
man*s  work  will  come  to  be  estimated  aright, 
both  in  its  strength  and  iU  weakness:  and 
meanwhile  we  grudge  time  and  energy  spent 


380 


Tlie   I^ation. 


[Vol  62,  Na  1608 


on  the  "paUaade,**  which  Mr.  Rounds  we  feel 
sure,  could  turn  to  better  account. 

It  is  cnriooB  to  contrast  Mr.  Round's  out- 
spoken and  not  orer-sympathetic  criticism  of 
Freeman  with  his  carefully  reverential  attitude 
towards  Dr.  Stubbs.  Doubtleas  Freeman  was 
less  adequately  equipped  for  writing  the  histo- 
ry of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries;  doubt- 
lees  his  more  positive  temperament  led  him  to 
more  definite  statements,  while  his  friend 
avoided  committing  himself;  but  we  cannot 
help  asking  ourselves  what  Mr.  Round  would 
have  said  if  Dr.  Stubbs  had  been,  let  us  say, 
a  German  scholar,  and  not  an  English  Conserva- 
tive. For,  in  spite  of  Freeman's  extravagances 
and  Dr.  Btubbs's  moderation,  the  underlying 
conceptions  of  both  were  substantially  the  same 
—just  as  the  Radical  theory  and  the  Whig 
theory  of  government  are  at  bottom  identical. 
Both,  like  Waits,  their  (German  exemplar,  seem 
to  have  carried  back  to  the  past  the  ideas  of 
equality  and  self-government  which  have  cha- 
racterised our  own  age.  The  destructive  pro- 
cess which  Mr.  Round  has  set  going  will  not,  it 
may  be  anticipated,  stop  with  Mr.  Freeman. 

The  time  has  certainly  oome  for  constitu- 
tional history  to  be  written  by  Conservatives. 
And  yet  the  presence  in  this  admirable  volume 
of  a  few  pages  (304-^96),  rather  more  in  place 
in  the  QuarUrly  RwieWy  suggests  the  reflection 
that  if  Liberal  spectacles  are  not  altogether 
satisfactory  for  looking  at  the  past,  Conserva- 
tive spectacles  are  not  to  be  altogether  trusted 
for  a  complete  view  of  the  present. 


Memoirs  of  Frederick  A.  P.  Barnard^  D.D,, 
LL.D.,  L.H.D.,  D.C.  L,,  Tenth  President  of 
Columbia  College  in  the  City  of  New  York. 
By    John    Fulton.    Columbia    University 
Press  (MacmiUanft  Co.).    1896. 
Whosvbb  expects  to  find  in  these  memoirs  a 
complete  disclosure  of  those  qualities  of  Dr. 
Barnard's  personality  which  invested  it  with 
a  certain  halo  in  the  popular  imagination,  will 
be  disappointed.  Something  is  here  to  account 
for  that  halo— Us  enthusiasm,  his  progressive 
spirit,    an   undying   boyishness   in   him,  re- 
sponding to  the  boyishness  of  his  students 
in  one  college  after  another,  and  securing  for 
their   offences  generous  consideration ;    but 
there  are  other  things  set  down  as  frankly 
which  make  the  halo  dimmer  for  our  instructed 
mind  than  it  was  when  we  set  out. 

Bom  in  Sheffield,  Mass.,  in  the  year  of  many 
great  ones,  1809,  at  the  tender  age  of  four  he 
was  being  schooled  by  Orville  Dewey,  the  6iB- 
tinguished  Unitarian  preacher.  But,  though 
his  education  began  so  early,  it  was  through- 
out extremely  imperfect,  and  he  did  not  con- 
sider  that  he  was  ever  really  educated  at  all. 
It  is  an  interesting  circumstance  that,  in  the 
StockbHdge  Academy,  Bfark  Hopkins,  after- 
wards the  President  of  Williams  College,  was 
continually  pitted  against  Barnard  in  all  sorts 
of  generous  intellectual  rivalries.  Barnard's 
admission  to  Yale  and  his  experience  there  re- 
peat in  a  general  way  many  other  accounts 
that  we  have  had  of  the  feebleness  and  slack- 
ness of  the  college  at  and  about  the  time  of 
his  attendance  (1834-28).  Not  having  studied 
arithmetic  at  all  since  his  childhood,  he  de- 
voted a  few  weeks  to  cranuning  it,  and  so  dis- 
covered the  beginning  of  an  aptitude  which 
afterward  grew  steadily  with  his  growth  and 
strengthened  with  his  strength.  Athlsgradu- 
ation  he  was  next  upon  the  honor  list  to  Ho- 
race Blnney,  jr.,  who  excelled  him  in  his 
classics.  Barnard  was  the  youngest  student 
in  his  class. 
His  predilection  was  for  the  law;  but  inher- 


ited, incurable,  and  increasing  deafneos  oom- 
p^ed  a  different  course.  The  chapter  on  his 
life  in  Hartford,  whither  he  went  directly 
from  college,  with  glimpses  of  Catherine  and 
Harriet  Beeoher,  George  D.  Prentice,  Whittier, 
Park  Benjamin,  and  Fanny  Fern,  is  the  most 
entertaining  in  the  book.  He  was  a  man  of 
orations,  and  his  first  one  was  prepared  for  a^ 
Fourth  of  July  celebration  at  Sheffield  in  1829.* 
It  was  a  plea  for  the  Colonisation  Society's 
plan  of  negro  deportation.  But  even  this  was 
too  radical,  the  village  Eiders  thought,  for 
popular  approval,  and  he  substituted  for  it  one 
of  the  regulation  sort.  His  deafness  carried 
him  back  to  Hartford,  after  a  year's  tutorship 
at  Yale,  to  teach  in  Gallaudet's  Deaf  and  Dumb 
Asylum,  from  which  Oallaudet  had  just  re- 
tired. Similar  work  followed  in  New  York, 
whence  in  1888  he  went  to  Alabama  and  re- 
mained there  until  1854,  as  professor  of  mathe- 
matics in  the  infant  State  University,  which 
on  his  arrival  had  just  been  completely  broken 
up  by  the  insubordination  of  the  students  and 
the  resignation  of  the  faculty.  Politics  as 
well  as  education  interested  him,  and  an  ora- 
tion which  he  gave  at  Tuskaloosa,  July  4, 1851, 
is  here  reproduced  entire.  It  did  not  go  very 
near  the  heart  of  the  matter.  The  connection 
of  involuntary  labor  and  respectable  idleness 
as  cause  and  effect  was  the  most  vigorous 
thrust.  With  a  mental  reservation  in  favor 
of  slavery,  he  was  eloquent  for  the  Union  as 
**a  peaceful  asylum  of  the  oppressed  "—"the 
fettered  thoiuands  of  other  lands."  As  time 
went  on.  Dr.  Barnard's  compUoity  with  the  in- 
dustrial system  of  the  South  became  much 
more  pronounced.  Qoing  to  Oxford,  Missis- 
sippi, as  Chancellor  of  the  State  University, 
be  ultimately  became  subdued  to  what  he 
worked  fn  to  a  remarkable  degree  for  a  New 
Bnglander  of  education  and  character.  As 
his  biographer  says: 

"  He  accepted  slavery  as  an  unwelcome  fact; 
he  acquiesced  in  it  as  an  established  fact ;  he 
defended  it  as  a  fact  that  could  not,  in  his  opi- 
nion, be  annulled  or  eliminated  from  the  sodal 
state  of  the  South;  and  finally  he  participated 
in  it  by  becoming,  of  his  own  will,  a  slave- 
holder.''^ 

Subjected  to  suspicion,  he  replied:  *'I  was 
bom  at  the  North;  that  I  cannot  help.  .  .  . 
I  am  a  slaveholder,  and,  if  I  know  myself,  I 
am  *  sound  on  the  slavery  question.' " 

As  the  catastrophe  drew  near,  "he  was 
equally  indignant  at  the  Northern  agitators 
who  were  ready  to  imperil  the  Union  for  the 
sake  of  hastening  emancipation,  and  at  the 
Southern  agitators  whom  he  believed  to  be 
plotting  the  disruption  of  the  Union."  "  There 
is  not,"  sa3rs  his  biographer,  **  the  slightest 
doubt  that  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he  was  a  Union 
man;  but  he  behaved  with  such  consistent  pru- 
dence that  his  sentiments  expoeed  him  to  no 
danger."  Here,  and  in  this  connection,  it  is 
impossible  to  avoid  a  sense  of  something  un- 
sympathetic and  sarcastic  in  the  tone  of  the 
biographer.  Leaving  Mississippi,  Dr.  Bar- 
nard remained  quietly  at  Norfolk  for  some 
time,  and  on  the  fall  of  that  place  in  May,  1862, 
he  passed  within  the  Northern  lines.  His 
doubts  were  now  completely  dissipated,  and 
in  a  little  while  he  was  a  fiaming  Unionist, 
publishing  in  1863  a  "  Letter  to  the  President 
of  the  United  States  by  a  Refugee"  in  which 
slavery  was  denounced  as  something  worse 
than  "the  sum  of  all  dllanies."  His  biogra- 
pher comments  severely  on  this  letter,  going 
so  far  as  to  deny  that  he  was  a  "  refugee  "  in 
any  proper  sense  of  the  word.  There  is  some- 
thing of  the  manner  of  Purcell's  Life  of  Man- 
ning in  the  remark  that,  as  a  codsequenoe  of 


this  letter,  **his  appointment  to  some  perma- 
nent position  of  honor  and  usefulness  at  the 
North  was  assured;  and,  on  the  resignation  of 
President  King,  he  was  elected  as  PresideBt  of 
ColumbU  College." 

The  longest  chapter  in  the  book  gives  a  brief 
history  of  the  College,  and  in  the  four  sao- 
ceeding  chapters  the  salient  points  of  Dr.  Bar- 
nard's administration  are  clearly  brought  cot 
—his  sympathy  with  scientific  studies,  with  an 
elective  course  of  study,  and  with  the  higher 
education  of  women.  It  is  not  without  good 
reason  that  Columbia's  College  tor  Women 
bears  his  name,  although  its  success  maybe 
regarded  as  an  injurious  criticism  on  the  me- 
thod of  coeducation  for  which  Dr.  Barnard 
strove,  but  which  he  was  unable  to  secure. 


Algebra  und  Logik  der  ReUUive,  der  Vorles- 

ungen  fiber  die  Algebra  der  Loglk.    Von  Dr. 

Ernst  Schroeder.    Leipsig:  Teubner.     1896. 

VoL  I.,  Part  L  8vo,  pp.  649. 
SoHRdDKB'B  great  treatise  on  deductive  logic, 
the  most  extensive  that  has  ever  been  written, 
cannot  well  be  neglected  in  Germany;  and  it  is 
hard  to  iooagine  how  any  person  who  has  been 
through  the  work  can  ever  be  again  guilty  of 
such  logical  absurdities  as  have  been  scattered 
hitherto  through  the  very  best  of  Oerman 
text- books.  Everything,  or  almost  everything, 
so  far  written  about  the  logic  of  rtiativee  has 
made  use  of  some  kind  of  technical  algebra. 
The  result  has  been  to  convey  the  idea  that  the 
logic  of  relations  is  an  exceedingly  specialised 
branch  of  logic.  This  is  not  true.  At  least, 
those  who  cultivate  it  maintain  that  it  is  much 
more  general  than  ordinary  logic.  They  hold, 
too,  that  our  ordinary  reasonings,  so  far  as 
they  are  deductive,  are  not|  in  the  main,  such 
syllogisms  as  the  books  have  taught,  but  are 
just  such  inferences  as  are  particularly  dealt 
with  in  this  new  branch  of  logic. 

To  make  this  plain,  they  point  to  the  fact 
that  the  old  syllogistic  inference  can  be  worked 
by  machinery,  but  characteristic  relative  in- 
ferences cannot  be  performed  by  any  mere  me- 
chanical rule  whatever.  Alike  in  the  forms 
of  inference  which  i^^ey  have  added  to  logic, 
and  in  the  old  syllogism,  the  relativists  trace 
the  following  steps:  first,  the  choice  of  pre- 
mises, and  second,  the  bringing  togetbo-,  or 
colligation,  of  the  premises  chosen,  and  tbe 
union  of  them  in  one  conjunctive  propoaitioo. 
They  show  that,  even  in  non-relative  logic, 
there  are  occasional  cases  in  which  there  are 
different  ways  of  connecting  premises:  and,  in 
the  logic  of  relatives,  the  ways  are  simply  in- 
numerable, for  it  makes  a  difference  ^^010  often 
one  and  the  same  proposition  is  taken  as  a 
premise.  This  being  the  case,  it  is  plain  tfaafr 
a  machine  cannot  indicate  the  conclusion  from 
given  premises,  since  the  number  of  such  con- 
clusions is  endless.  The  different  premise 
having  been  united  into  one,  this  one  is  sub- 
jected to  certain  inferential  transformatioBS, 
which  in  the  case  of  ordinary  syllogism  can  be 
analysed  into  two  steps.  Following  upon  tbeee, 
there  is  a  substitution  of  a  *'  term  of  second  in- 
tention," or  logical  conception,  for  an  ordina- 
ry conception  of  experience;  and,  flnallT*  this 
logical  term  is  removed.  At  every  step  of  this 
there  are  different  courses  which  reason  may 
pursue;  so  that  the  conduct  of  the  reaaonittg 
far  transcends  the  powers  of  any  machine 
Nor  can  our  ordinary  procedure  in  thIidoiBg 
possibly  be  mapped  out  in  advance  by  tmteg 
the  crank  of  a  machine. 

We  wiU  not  find  fault  with  Dr.  Sohrtdir  tat 
devoting  his  own  researches  to  the  1 
problems  which  Americaii  tbl|i>Wli  i 


April  23,  1896] 


Tke   !N"ation. 


331 


aside  as  of  inferior  interest,  on  account  of  their 
special  and  technical  character;  for  every  in- 
quirer should  foUoir  his  own  bent.  Besides,  it 
Is  extremely  useful  to  place  within  reach  of 
German  philosophers  a  work  which  may  train 
them  to  a  really  precise  logic  We  repeat  that 
it  would  be  needless  to  fear  that  the  work  will 
be  passed  over  in  neglect  and  silence.  To  af- 
fect to  treat  such  a  treatise  with  contempt 
would,  in  Germany,  expose  any  man  who  might 
attempt  it  to  severe  blame.  It  cannot,  there- 
fore, but  prove  a  useful  book.  Another  **  Ab- 
teOung**  of  it  still  remains  to  appear,  although 
nearly  2,000  large  octavo  pages  are  already  be- 
fore the  public;  and  we  may  hope  that,  in  that 
concluding  part.  Dr.  Bchr6der  may  yet  show 
how  some  of  those  who  have  laid  the  founda- 
tions of  this  method  of  studying  logic,  conceive 
that  it  ought  to  modify  those  general  notions 
about  reatoning  and  other  mental  processes 
which  are  expressed  or  implied  in  the  hurried 
talk  of  the  street,  and  leave  their  traces  upon  all 
our  thought,  and  also  how  it  ought  to  modify 
our  general  philosophical  conceptions— concep- 
tions based  far  more  upon  logical  analysis  than 
upon  anything  else. 

As  this  is  a  branch  of  study  in  which  Ameri- 
can  students  have  done  more  than  their  share 
of  the  work,  our  readers  may  like  a  slight  hint 
of  what  the  nature  of  the  new  light  is  supposed 
to  be.  First,  what  U  the  Logic  of  Relatives  f 
It  is  a  subject  treated  in  all  the  more  complete 
mediaeval  handbooks,  and  hinted  at  by  Arts- 
toUe.  But  it  was  Robert  Leslie  Ellis,  the  editor 
of  Bacon's  philosophical  works,  who  first  got 
some  idea  of  how  it  ought  to  appear  in  a  mo- 
dem shape.  Namely,  instead  of  analysing  a 
proposition  into  subject  and  predicate,  it  ana- 
lyses it  into  subject,  predicate,  and  objects— 
which  last  it  conceives  as  so  many  additional 
subjects.  In  1868  Augustus  De  Morgan  pub- 
Usbed  a  long  memoir  on  the  subject,  in  which, 
besides  establishing  many  important  truths,  he 
clearly  showed  that,  instead  of  being  a  special 
branch  of  logic,  it  is,  in  fact,  a  great  generali- 
sation of  the  old  conceptions.  In  1870  appear, 
ed  the  first  of  a  series  of  contributions  by  an 
American  writer,  Mr.  C.  S.  Pelrce,  one  of 
which  forms  the  acknowledged  basis  of  the 
present  volume  by  Dr.  Schrdder,  who,  how* 
ever,  has  remodelled  the  whole  and  made  ex 
tensive  additions.  Other  Americans  have  ma- 
terially advanced  the  subject,  especially  Prof. 
O.  C.  Mitchell  of  Marietta,  to  whose  work 
both  Dr.  Schroder  and  Mr.  Peiroe  attach  a 
high  value.  Students  all  over  Europe  have 
done  good  work,  most  of  them  following  more 
or  less  closely  the  methods  of  Peirce.  Mr.  A. 
B.  Kempe,  however,  formerly  President  of 
the  London  Mathematical  Socie^,  in  an  im- 
•portant  memoir  in  the  Philosophical  Transac- 
tions, has  struck  out  an  original  path. 

The  first  general  noUon  of  logic  which  be- 
comes profoundly  modified  by  the  study  of 
relatives,  is  that  of  deductive  reasoning  itself, 
which  the  old  logic  represents  to  be  something 
purely  abstract,  intellectual,  and  virtually 
mechanical.  The  new  school  not  only  declare 
that  deduction  is  regulated  by  choice  and  a 
deliberate  plan,  but,  further,  that  it  reaches  Its 
conclusions  by  observation;  in  fact,  they  bold 
that  it  differs  from  inductive  reasoning  main- 
ly in  this,  that  it  observes  objects  of  our  own 
creation— imaginary  or  graphical^instead  of 
objects  over  which  we  have  relatively  little 
control.  This  doctrine  is  not  unlike  Mill's 
analysis  of  the  **  pons  asinorum."  It  is  a  two- 
edged  weapon,  cutting  both  of  the  great  philo- 
sophical doctrines  pretty  seriously. 

Another  common  notion  of  a  logical  kind 
which  is  strangely  transformed  by  the  new 


views  is  that  of  generalization.  The  general!, 
sation  of  the  books  is,  for  the  Relativists, 
merely  the  simplest  and  least  important  va- 
riety of  a  process  which  we  will  refrain  from 
defining,  but  of  which  an  example  is  the  pas- 
sage of  thought  of  the  geometer  by  which  he 
comes  to  conceive  that  a  straight  line  returns 
into  itself. 


Le  Tartuffe  des  C<mUdien9.    Par  P.  R6gnier. 

Paris:  OUendorff.  1896. 
This  is  a  really  fine  and  instructive  piece  of 
work.  M.  Rdgnier*s  intention  had  been  to 
publish  an  edition  of  Mc^dre  from  the  actor's 
point  of  view,  and  probably  no  man  is  better 
qualified  for  the  task ;  but  advancing  years 
have  circumscribed  his  ambition,  and  the  pre- 
sent volume  is  the  only  one  he  expects  to  bring 
out.  This  is  a  disappointment,  for  *'  L'Avare," 
**Les  Femmes  Savantes,*'  "Le  Misanthrope," 
**  Le  Malade  Imaginaire,"  annotated  and  ac- 
companied by  studies  such  as  these  in  **Le 
Tartuffe,"  would  be  of  the  highest  value  to 
students  of  Moll^re  and  of  literature  in  gene- 
ral. The  actor  who  has,  to  use  the  French  ex- 
pression,  to  get  into  the  skin  of  the  character 
he  is  to  play,  must  of  neceesity  study  that  cha- 
racter in  its  every  aspect  and  in  its  relation  to 
every  other  character  in  the  play,  to  the  tone 
and  to  the  purpoee  of  the  play.  That  is,  he 
must  do  precisely  the  sort  of  work  that  any 
genuine  student  of  literature  must  do  in  order 
thoroughly  to  understand  the  author  and  his 
productions.  Every  line,  every  word  then  be- 
comes important ;  nothing  must  be  slighted, 
still  less  overlooked.  .The  analysis  must  be  ex- 
act  and  it  must  be  comprehensive.  Ai)d  these 
words  fitly  characterise  the  studies  and  notes 
of  M.  R^ier.  It  is  quite  safe  to  say  that 
every  lover  of  Moll^re,  every  investigator  of 
the  character  of  Tartuffe^  will  find  in  this 
book  some  new  point  or  some  new  light  upon 
certain  parts  of  the  complex  characters  of 
TartMffB  and  Elmire. 

M.  Rdgnier  discusses  the  question  of  the  real 
character  of  the  impostor  as  a  necessary  pre- 
liminary to  the  indication  of  the  manner  in 
which  it  is  to  be  played,  and  he  comes  to  the 
conclusion  that,  to  make  even  a  partial  buffoon 
of  him,  to  exaggerate  the  possibly  comic  side^ 
is  to  err  gravely.  In  other  words,  without 
naming  Coquelin  the  elder,  he  condemns  the 
travesty  of  Tartuffe  which  that  commercial 
actor  presented  to  American  audiences  after 
having  infiicted  it  on  French  ones.  The  play 
is  a  comedy,  no  doubt,  and  contains  scenes  of 
the  highest  style  of  purely  comic  art,  but  it 
goes  far  beyond  that:  it  is  a  powerful  drama, 
in  which  terror  thrills  the  spectator.  Tartvffe 
is  not  only  a  hypocrite  whose  sanctified  tone 
and  upturned  eyes  disgust,  but  a  formidable 
scoundrel,  utterly  unscrupulous  and  deadly  in 
Ids  vengeance.  These  points  are  admirably 
brought  out  by  M.  lUgnier,  who  has  not  failed 
to  perceive  in  the  depth  and  power  of  Moll^re's 
genius,  as  exhibited  in  his  celebrated  play,  a 
kinship  to  Shakspere's  philosophy  and  pro- 
found insight  into  human  nature.  Moli^re's 
** Tartuffe"  stands  among  the  great  master- 
pieces of  the  French  drama,  alongside  of  Cor- 
neille's  *'Polyeucte"  and  Racine's  **Ph^dre." 

The  modest  manner  in  which  M.  R^gnler 
urges  his  points  and  indicates  interpretations 
is  very  winning,  and  lends  a  singular  charm  to 
the  numerous  notes  and  explanations.  Es- 
pecially worthy  of  close  attention  and  sure  to 
yield  much  food  for  profitable  study  are  his 
comments  on  JSVmire,  on  the  famous  **pauvre 
homme**  scene,  on  the  great  scene  of  the 
unmasking  of  the  hypocrite,  and  on  the  final 


catastrophe.  A  series  of  volumes  of  this  de- 
scription, taking  up  the  masterpieces  of  French 
classical  tragedy  and  comedy,  would  be  of 
incalculable  help  to  teachers  and  students  of 
literature. 


The  Silva  of  North  Amerioa,  By  C.  S.  Sargent, 
Director  of  the  Arnold  Arboretum  of  Har- 
vard University.  Illustrated  with  figures 
and  analyses  drawn  from  nature  by  Charles 
Edward  Faxon.  VoL  IX.  Boston :  Hough- 
ton,  Mifllin  &  Ck>.  1806.  4to,  pp.  190,  plates 
57. 
Thb  ninth  volume  of  Prof.  Sargent's  'Silva 
contains  descriptions  of  the  arborescent  species 
of  Cupuli/erte  which  remain  after  the  oalcs 
are  disposed  of.  The  latter  were  brought  into 
volume  8.  First  come  the  chestnuts  and  their 
nearest  allies;  then  follow  in  succession  the 
birches,  alders,  and  myricas,  and  lastly,  the 
willows  and  poplars.  Illustration  and  treat- 
ment continue  substantially  unchanged.  The 
beautiful  plates  are  full  of  instructive  detail, 
and  exhibit  the  artistic  feeling  which  has  cha- 
racterized all  those  which  Mr.  Faxon  has  given 
us  before.  He  is  particularly  successful  in 
imparting  spirit  to  his  larger  figures,  giving  to 
them  an  air  of  freshness  and  elasticity  which 
is  as  far  removed  as  possible  from  the  conven- 
tional  drawings  of  plants  found  in  many  trea- 
tises. There  is  not,  at  any  point,  the  slightest 
sacrifice  of  accuracy  for  the  sake  of  securing 
this  spirited  effect:  Mr.  Faxon  is  too  profound 
and  true  a  botanist  to  permit  this;  therefore 
his  figures  and  analytical  sketches  possess  the 
highest  degree  of  permanent  value. 

In  the  present  volume  the  chestnuts  are  in- 
troduced by  the  great  golden-leaved  chinqua- 
pin of  the  northwest  coast,  a  tree  sometimes 
reaching  the  height  of  one  hundred  and  fifty 
feet,  with  a  trunk  clear  of  any  branches  for 
more  than  a  third  of  this  distance,  and  ten  feet 
through  at  the  base.  It  is  a  member  of  an  in- 
teresting genus,  CfutanopsiMf  which  may  be 
fairly  recognized  as  a  connecting  link  between 
the  oaks  and  the  true  chestnuts,  and  is  most 
fully  represented  in  southeastern  Asia .  Of  the 
true  chestnuts  we  have  two  within  the  limits 
of  the  area  of  the  *  Silva,'  the  chinquapin, 
CaUanea  pumila^  and  the  large  chestnut  so 
widely  known  to  all  our  readers.  The  latter 
species  masquerades  in  the  present  volume 
under  the  specific  name  dentata^  having  had 
to  resign  the  name  It  was  known  by  in  Prof. 
Sargent's  work  on  the  *  Forest  Trees  of  the 
United  States,'  for  the  tenth  census;  but  it  is 
in  good  company,  since  its  near  relative,  the 
beech,  has  had  to  take  the  BuaaeFague  Ameri- 
cana in  place  of  the  one  used  before  by  Prof. 
Sargent,  ferruginea^  as  weD  as  of  the  one 
which  has  been  adopted  by  a  late  catalogue,  to 
wit,  atropimioea.  These  serious  trifiings  over 
names  are  not  rendering  the  study  of  botany 
very  attractive  nowadays.  Out  of  the  oonfu- 
sion  which  precedes  a  rearrangement  there 
comes  a  good  deal  of  annoying  dust  which  may 
be  even  blinding.  It  seems,  as  we  have  said 
before,  in  noticing  previous  volumes  of  thitf 
work,  a  pity  that  the '  Silva '  should  share  in  the 
confusion  incident  to  the  times.  Many  of  the 
names  adopted  in  the  *  Silva'  cannot  satisfy 
those  who  are  thoroughgoing  in  their  reform; 
for  instance,  they  cannot  be  attached  to  the 
trees  in  the  proposed  New  York  Botanical 
Garden,  and  they  do  not  satisfy  the  conserva- 
tives who  have  asked  that  changes  should  be 
made  only  where  they  are  absolutely  oeoes. 
sary. 

AfUr  this  comment  has  freed  the  mind  of 
the  reviewer  from  aU  sense  of  complicity,  no- 


83Q 


The   K'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1 60S 


thing  but  praise  remains  for  the  text.  Prof. 
Sargent  and  his  associates  have  done  all  of 
their  work  well,  and  have  cast  most  of  it  into 
oonyenient  form.  Six  species  of  birch  are 
treated  of,  fiye  alders,  and  three  mjricas,  one 
of  the  latter  being  the  wax-myrtle,  or  bay- 
berry.  This  last  is  known  on  the  northern 
Atlantic  coast  as  a  pleasant,  sweet-smelling 
stirub,  bnt  along  the  Onlf  it  becomes  a  tree 
forty  feet  in  height^  and  claims  a  place  in  the 
*  SilFa.'  The  willows,  always  a  difficult  group, 
because  they  intergradeso  freely  and  are  sepa- 
rated  from  each  other  only  by  characters 
which  depend  on  flowers,  and  leaves  which 
have  to  be  collected  at  different  timesi  haye 
been  well  elaborated  in  this  work.  There- 
sources  of  the  Arnold  Arboretum  have  plac- 
ed at  the  disposal  of  the  author  and  artist  a 
wealth  of  material  for  description  and  delinea- 
tion which  is  yirtually  without  a  riyaL  The 
fresh  material  could  be  examined  at  the  most 
favorable  times,  and  the  results  are  apparent 
in  the  excellent  discriminations.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  treatment  of  the  poplars, 
with  which  the  volume  ends. 


Th0  Structure  and  Life  of  Birds,  By  F.  W. 
Headley,  M.A.,  F.Z.S.,  etc.  With  78  Illus- 
trations. Macmillan  &  Ck>.  1896.  Svo,  pp. 
XX,  412. 

**  Thx  aim  of  this  book  is  an  ambitious  one.  It 
attempts  to  give  good  evidence  of  the  develop- 
ment of  birds  from  reptilian  ancestors,  to  show 
what  modifications  in  their  anatomy  nave  ac- 
comi)anied  their  advance  to  a  more  vigorous 
life,  and,  after  explaining,  as  far  as  possible, 
their  physiology,  to  make  deu*  the  main  prin- 
ciples of  th^  noble  accomplishment,  flight, 
the  visible  proof  and  expresnon  of  their  high 
vitality.  After  this  it  deals,  principally,  with 
the  subjects  of  color  and  song,  instinct  and 
reason,  migration,  and  the  principles  of  dassi- 
flcation,  and  lastly  gives  some  hints  as  to  the 
best  methods  of  studying  birds." 

Our  author  seems  to  have  lectured  on  orni- 
thology to  his  classes  and  others,  and  very 
probably  his  book  represents  a  syllabus  of  such 
discourses,  li  is  largely  a  treatise  on  anatomy, 
with  special  reference  to  the  evolution  of  the 
flying  organism  and  to  the  physiological  me- 
chanism of  flight.  This  is  his  main  insistence, 
where  he  is  at  his  best;  the  **  after  ^is  '*  of  the 
above  quotation  brings  the  programme  to  its 
conclusion  at  an  accelerated  pace.  The  leading 
facts  of  avian  structure  are  concisely  set  forth 
in  the  simplest  possible  terms;  the  evolutionary 
features  of  the  case,  which  no  one  has  doubted 
since  Huxley  coined  such  words  as  Sauropeida 
and  OmithoBeeHdOf  are  clearly  traced.  At  the 
same  time,  we  fear  that  the  author  brings  the 
pterodactyls  into  too  clear  a  light,  so  to  speak. 
All  he  says  is  true  enough,  properly  interprets 
ed;  but  a  reader  might  easily  get  an  impression, 
not  intended  to  be  conveyed,  of  closer  rela 
tionships  between  pterodactyls  and  birds  than 
actually  exist.  This  old  reptilian  mechanism 
for  flight  was  a  side-issue,  like  the  present  chi- 
ropteran  modification  among  mAinwift^ff  to  the 
same  volant  ends,  and  not  in  the  direct  line  of 
avian  descent  from  dinoeaurian  ancestry.  The 
author  ought  not  to  be  misunderstood  in  this 
matter,  but  be  is  likely  to  be,  on  the  part  of  a 
good  many  readers.  This  portion  of  the  work 
is  the  best  illustrated  of  any,  with  numerous 
clear  cuts  of  the  somewhat  diagrammatic  sort, 
which  are  practically  more  helpful  in  anatomy 
than  a  more  perfect  representation  of  the  ac- 
tual intricacies  would  be.  The  diction  is 
equally  clear;  it  is  crisp,  with  use  of  short 
words  instead  of  long  ones  as  far  as  possible, 
showing  that  the  writer  is  no  novice  in  his 
craft,  though  we  note  a  number  of  misstate- 


ments of  facts  which  he  could  easily  have 
avoided  with  more  care  and  less  haste  in  mak- 
ing printer's  copy. 

'  Whether  all  that  Mr.  Headley  says  of  flight 
wUl  be  found  agreeable  with  the  consensus  of 
expert  opinion  on  that  subject,  can  be  better 
foretold  after  the  event— namely,  when  experts 
shall  have  come  to  any  considerable  agreement 
among  themselves.  The  author  has  evidently 
been  a  cloea  observer  of  the  facts  in  the  case; 
he  handles  them  well  and  comes  to  some  defl- 
nite  conclusions.  He  also  has  due  regard  to 
the  results  of  others,  such  as  Marey,  Allx, 
Gadow,  FCirbringer,  Pettigrew,  Muybridge, 
and  many  more;  he  is  quite  competent  to  dis- 
cuss the  mechanical  principles  involved,  as 
well  as  anatomical  structure  and  physiological 
action;  he  inclines  to  credit  some  of  Oatke*s 
views  regarding  great  heights  and  velocities; 
altogether,  he  is  well  equipped  for  the  aerial 
expedition— even  for  the  soaring  crux  of  the 
problem.  Tet  after  all  comes  this  warning, 
not  to  say  wailing,  note  in  conclusion : 

"  This  ends  my  account  of  flight.  Much,  I 
hope,  has  been  made  dear,  but  much  remains 
that  is  inexplicable.  Matiiema)dcians  will,  no 
doubt,  some  day  arrive  at  a  formula  of  flight 
that  will  claim  to  be  a  complete  solution  of  the 
problem.  Neverthdess,  birds  will  still  exdte 
the  wonder  of  men.  Even  those  who  can  quote 
the  formula  at  a  moment's  notice  will,  when 
they  look  at  a  swift  doing  his  sixty  nules  an 
hour  for  mere  play,  or  if  ttef  happen  to  see  a 
soaring  adjutant,  relapse  for  a  moment  into 
blank  astonishment,  the  mental  state  of  the 
Paciflc  islander  when  a  steamship  flrst  invades 
his  lonely  seas  and  claims  a  place  in  his  philoso- 
phy. It  will  always  be  difficult  to  forget  for 
long  together  tha^  however  much  is  learnt  on 
such  a  subject  as  night,  a  great  deal  more  re- 
mains to  be  learnt." 

(Kltke  might  have  written  that,  and  it  is  al- 
ways the  same  when  an  able,  honest  observer 
lays  down  his  quill,  and  feds  how  blunt  the 
nib  has  worn  after  all  he  has  done.  As  to 
swifts  doing  sixty  miles  an  hour  for  play,  the 
present  reviewer  has  seen  one  of  them,  Airo- 
nautes  melanoleucus  (after  Baird,  or  saxatilis, 
fCfter  Woodhouse),  doing  nearer  260  miles  an 
hour  with  perfect  ease;  and  a  rdative  of  the 
adjutant-bird,  our  wood-ibis,  Tantalus  locu- 
laior,  soaring  on  motionless  pinions  a  mile  or 
more  high,  thermometer  115®  in  the  shade,  air 
dead  calm  (at  least  where  he  stood),  giving  some 
color  to  the  suggestion  that  has  been  made  that 
such  birds  go  aloft  to  enjoy  a  nap  on  the  wing 
in  some  cooler  upper  air. 

The  rest  of  the  book  need  not  detain  us  much 
further  than  to  mildly  criticise  the  chapter  on 
prindples  of  classiflcation,  which  hardly  seems 
up  to  the  mark.  Perhaps,  however,  the  author 
meant  to  be  taken  literally,  and  did  not  medi- 
tate the  desirable  application  of  those  prind- 
ples to  any  extent ;  for  his  prindples  are  sound 
enough.  His  refutation  of  the  supposed  func- 
tion of  chalazsB  in  making  the  yolk  stay  right 
side  up  when  tfae^egg  is  rolled  over,  will  worry 
those  who  have  written  in  the  wake  of  Owen 
on  that  subject.  The  hoatzin  article  is  a  good 
one— f^w  realize  that  all  such  lizard-like  birds 
did  not  leave  the  world's  stage  with  the  archsB- 
opteryx.  The  book  is  indexed,  if  hardly  with 
the  minuteness  which  would  have  been  desir- 
able, and  its  excellence  of  manufacture  is  up  to 
the  standard  which  Messrs.  Macmillan  have 
taught  us  to  expect  in  the  issues  of  their  house. 


Campaigning  in  South  Africa  and  Egypt, 
By  Major.General  W.  C.  F.  Molyneux. 
Macmillan.  1896.  Pp.  viii,  287,  8vo. 
Tbs  larger  part  of  this  volume  is  devoted  to 
an  account,  by  an  English  staff-officer,  of 
the  Kaffir  and  Zulu  wars  of  1878  and  the  fol« 


lowing  year.  To  the  non  professional  reader 
its  chief  interest  lies  in  the  personal  inddentB, 
which  are  well  told,  and  the  pen  portraits  of 
well-known  characters,  as  Sir  Bartle  Frere, 
the  Prince  Imperial,  and  Lord  Wolsdey.  Re- 
garded as  a  history,  (}en.  Molyneux's  narra- 
tive is  somewhat  obscure  and  hard  to  follow, 
even  with  the  aid  of  his  sketch-maps,  and  is 
overloaded  with  technical  details.  Two  facts, 
however,  are  very  dearly  shown :  the  great 
difficulty  of  the  country  for  carrying  on  mili- 
tary operations,  and  the  valor  and  extraordi- 
nary discipline  of  the  Zulus.  From  an  ind- 
dent  in  the  closing  days  of  the  war,  it  is 
evident  that  they  had  also  a  high  sense  of 
honor.  In  this  they  stand  out  in  sharp  con- 
trast to  the  Boers,  judging  from  the  manner 
in  which  these  treated  a  comrade  of  the  au- 
thor's who  was  so  unfortunate  as  to  fall  into 
their  hands  during  the  war  for  the  independ- 
ence of  the  Transvaal.  A  most  graphic  de- 
scription is  given  of  some  of  the  circumstances 
connected  with  the  death  of  the  Prince  Impe- 
riaL  The  anecdotes  related  confirm  the  com- 
mon impression  of  him  as  an  impulsive,  high- 
spirited  youth,  impatient  of  restraint  and 
burning  with  a  desire  to  distinguish  himself. 

There  is  little  that  is  noteworthy  in  the  Gene- 
ral's account  of  the  campaign  against  Arabi 
Pasha  in  1882.  The  prlndpal  point  empha- 
sized is  the  extraordinary  secrecy  which  Sir 
Qamet  Wolseley  kept  in  regard  to  his  plans— 
the  late  Sir  Edward  Hamley,  then  command- 
ing the  second  division,  not  being  informed  of 
them  till  the  army  and  fieet  were  in  motion. 
Gen.  Molyneux,  in  describing  his  life  in  the  da- 
sert  during  the  days  preceding  the  battle  of 
Tel  el-Kebir,  calls  attention  to  a  fact,  which 
we  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  mentioned 
before,  **That  horses  do  not  seem  to  be  de- 
odv ed  by  mirage.  No  matter  how  thirsty  they 
may  be,  they  never  rush  wildly  to  what  you 
imagine  to  be  a  lake;  and  if  you  know  your 
horse  well,  after  a  time  in  the  desert  you  can 
always  tell  by  his  behavior  whether  tiie  four- 
legged  dancing  thing  you  are  approaching  is  a 
horse  or  a  camd." 


•BOOKS  OF  THB  WBKK. 

Alexander,  Mn.    Broken  links.     OmmU  PnWIshing 

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As  Ton  Like  It    Bocton:  Houghton^  Mtfllln  tt  Co,   16c. 
Barnes.  Willis.   Dame  Fortune  Smiled.   BoeUm:  Arma 

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Corelll.  Harie.  Cameos.   Philadelphia:  J.  B.  Upptncott 

Go.    fl. 
De  Medici.  Chas.  The  A  B  G  of  Geometry.  8O0.  OMeet- 

Lessons  in  Geometry.    00c.  Study  of  Geometry.  7So. 

A.  LoveU  A  Go. 
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ker.   00c. 
Gollanoz,  Israel.  Bomeo  and  Juliet.  Titus  Androalcus. 

[The  Temple  Shakspere.]  London:  Dent;  Mew  York: 

Vffmyi^iMi    Each40o. 
Hart,  Dr.  Ernest.   Hypnotism,  Mesmerism,  and  the  New 

Witchcraft.   New  ed..  enlarged.    Appletons.    fL^. 
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Consequences.   George  Boutledge  ft  Sons. 
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Lough.  Thomas.     England's  wealth  Ireland's  Poverty. 

London:  Unwin:  New  York:  Putnams.   $8UM. 
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Moore,  C.L.    Odes.  Philadelphia:  The  Author. 
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The    Nation. 


SEW  rOfiX,   THURSDAY,  APRIL   80,  1806. 

The  Week. 

Thb  plfttform  of  the  Massachusetta  De- 
mocrats is,  as  regards  the  currency,  as 
good  as  any  platform  yet  made.  It  ad- 
heres to  the  gold  standard;  denounces  free 
coinage  of  silver  and  purchases  of  silver; 
demands  the  withdrawal  of  the  green- 
backs; denounces  the  legislation  of  1878  for 
their  reissue;  calls  for  an  elastic  '* bank- 
ing currency,"  and  praises  civil-service  re- 
form. But  the  best  thing  it  does  is  pre- 
senting the  name  of  William  K  Russell 
as  a  candidate  for  the.  Presidency.  No 
candidate  as  yet  spoken  of  has  as  much 
claim  to  fill  Mr.  Cleveland's  place.  Mr. 
Russell  has  already  for  three  terms  filled 
the  governorship  of  a  Republican  State  to 
the  eminent  satisfaction  of  both  parties. 
He  is  still  young  and  vigorous.  He  be- 
longs to  the  new  school  of  politicians  who 
are  to  save  this  country  from  the  old  ones, 
if  saved  it  can  be.  He  is  the  only  candi- 
date yet  spoken  of,  of  whom  no  criticism 
can  be  made  except  that  he  is  too  good 
for  his  party,  and  that  it  is  not  capable  of 
electing  him,  though  it  has  twice  elected 
Mr.  Cleveland.  He  is  one  of  the  few  men 
whom  it  would  honor  itself  by  electing. 
After  what  happened  to  Mr.  Cleveland  in 
1884,  and  above  all  in  1802,  we  shall  not 
say  that  Mr.  Russell  has  no  chance ;  but 
both  his  nomination  and  election  seem  too 
good  to  be  likely.  Of  all  the  men  who  have 
been  yet  spoken  of  for  the  place,  he  is  the 
one  of  whom  it  can  be  said  that,  not  only 
on  the  currency,  but  on  every  matter 
which  concerns  the  national  fame  and 
prosperity,  he  is  himself  a  platform.  We 
should  not  need  to  ask  him  what  he 
thought  about  this  or  that  or  the  other 
thing,  but  simply:  *' Are  you  the  William 
E.  Russell  who  was  Governor  of  Massa- 
chusetts from  1890  to  18837  " 


The  Republican  party  of  Pennsylvania 
touched  the  lowest  level  of  political  de 
gradation  when,  in  convention  assembled, 
on  Thursday,  it  declared  unanimously  in 
favor  of  Matt  Quay  as  its  candidate  f6r 
the  Republican  Presidential  nomination, 
calling  him  **  wise  in  counsel  and  brilliant 
and  able  in  action — at  once  the  type  of 
the  American  dtiaen,  scholar,  soldier,  and 
statesman.*'  Who  would  suppose,  from 
this  description,  that  the  object  of  it  was 
exposed  only  a  few  years  ago  as  a  default- 
er and  embessler  of  public  funds,  placed 
in  his  charge  as  a  State  oflScial,  and  that 
the  full  evidence  of  his  guilt  had  been 
published  in  newspapers  and  pamphlets 
and  circulated  widely  over  the  country? 
Had  not  his  political  friends  made  good 
the  loss  to  save  their  party  from  scandal, 
be  would  have  been  sent  to  the  peniten- 
tiary for  his  orimes.    Yet  sow  the  Repub- 


lican party  in  the  strongest  Republican 
State  in  the  Union  puts  him  forward  as 
the  "  type  of  the  American  citisen,  scholar, 
soldier,  and  statesman,"  and  the  chief 
Republican  organ  of  the  State  has  no- 
thing more  severe  to  say  of  it  than  this: 
**  The  general  feeling  was  in  favor  of  giv- 
ing the  Senator  the  prestige  and  position 
which  come  from  such  an  expression,  and, 
so  far  as  his  own  candidacy  is  concerned, 
he  will  stand  before  the  country  with  the 
State  convention  and  a  large  portion  of 
the  delegation  at  his  back."  Yet  this  is 
the  same  newspaper  which  said  in  1885, 
when  Quay  proposed  to  nominate  him- 
self for  State  Treasurer,  that  his  nomina- 
tion "  would  take  the  lid  from  off  the 
Treasury  and  uncover  secrets  before  which 
Republicans  would  stand  dumb."  No- 
thing seems  to  stand  so  dumb  now  in  the 
Republican  party  of  Pennsylvania  as  its 
moral  sense. 


Qrosvenor  and  Manley  put  out  their 
customary  Monday-morning  claims  for 
McKinley  and  Reed,  respectively,  and  are 
still  able  to  do  it  without  a  smile.  Each 
has  accurate  information,  based  not  on 
press  reports  or  general  rumor,  but  upon 
exact  telegraphic  data  derived  at  first 
hand  from  the  delegates-elect  themselves. 
Qrosvenor's  figures,  on  this  irrefragable 
basis,  are  HA  for  McKinley  up  to  date, 
and  the  rest  really  not  worth  counting. 
Manley,  on  the  same  basis  and  with  an 
equally  earnest  air  of  being  careful  to 
keep  well  within  the  truth,  reckons  Mc- 
Kinley 250,  Reed  161,  all  others  217,  and 
83  doubtful  or  contested.  The  discrepancy 
argues  many  more  '*  doubtful "  delegates 
than  Manley  gives;  many  delegates  must 
have  telegraphed  both  managers  that  they 
were  his,  heart  and  soul.  Mysterious 
^'changes"  are  reported  in  the  Oklahoma 
delegation:  all  six  of  them  were  at  first 
conceded  to  Reed  by  the  McKinley  arith- 
meticians; now  they  claim  four,  on  what 
grounds  does  not  appear — perhaps  Reed's 
belated  gold-bug  views  have  given  the 
McKinley  bankers  a  chance  to  effect  a 
sound  conversion.  Manley  throws  out  one 
hint,  however,  which  is  enough  to  chill 
the  most  Napoleonic.  He  intimates  that 
he  and  his  allies  control  the  national  com- 
mittee, and  so  the  temporary  roll  of  the 
convention;  that  they  will  also  control  the 
committee  on  credentials,  with  all  that  the 
name  implies.  This  suggests,  no  doubt, 
the  true  anti-McKinley  strategy.  Quay 
long  ago  gave  it  to  be  understood  that 
something  like  one  hundred  so-called  Mc- 
Kinley delegates  would  be  <*  fired  through 
the  roof  of  the  wigwam"  when  the  con- 
vention got  down  to  business. 


This  is  a  great  year  for  veteran  politi- 
cians in  the  Presidential  race.  Senator 
Allison,  the  Favorite  Son  of  the  Iowa 


Republicans,  will  be  sixty-eight  years  old 
when  the  next  President  is  inaugurated ; 
and  ex*  Gov.  Boies  of  the  same  State, 
whom  many  Democrats  want  to  enter  in 
the  contest,  is  some  months  older.  Sena- 
tor Cullom  of  Illinois  is  less  than  a  year 
the  junior  of  Allison.  Mr.  Morrison  of 
Illinois  is  already  well  along  in  his  seven- 
ty-first year,  and  Gov.  Morton  of  New 
York  is  sixteen  months  older.  Here  are 
five  men  who  either  are  septuagenarians 
already  or  will  become  such  during  the 
term  of  the  next  Presidency,  and  yet  not 
one  of  them  sees  any  ground  of  objection 
to  his  candidacy  on  this  account.  How- 
ever, we  have  one  youngster  in  the  race, 
ex-Gov.  Russell  of  Massachusetts  being 
yet  more  than  a  year  short  of  forty. 


Speaker  Reed  has,  barring  his  surrender 
to  the  Jingo  crazes,  kept  the  House  firmly 
under  bit  and  bridle.  For  speed  and  for 
reasonable  economy  in  appropriating  pub- 
lic money,  the  session  has  no  doubt  made 
an  admirable  record.  But  as  adjourn- 
ment draws  in  sight  the  wild  horses  be- 
gin to  plunge  and  snort,  and  the  Speaker 
apparently  begins  to  cave  in.  The  fact 
that  his  do-nothing  policy  has  not  seemed 
to  mean  delegates  in  his  pocket  may  have 
something  to  do  with  it.  The  other  fact, 
that  his  chosen  lieutenants  in  the  House, 
men  like  Cannon  and  Hitt,  have  made 
so  spiritless  a  fight  in  their  own  districts 
against  the  McKinley  boomers,  may  also 
have  something  to  do  with  it.  At  any 
rate,  he  has  felt  compelled  to  do  some- 
thing, or  pretend  to  do  something,  for  the 
''  old-soldier  vote,"  and  hence  the  general 
pension  bill  which  the  naughty  Repub- 
lican House  is  at  last  allowed  to  vote 
upon.  When  the  pension  bill  itself  was 
up  earlier  in  the  session,  Mr.  Reed  saw 
to  it  tliat  all  the  vicious  amendments 
intended  to  let  the  Boys  right  into  the 
Treasury  were  ruled  out  on  points  of 
order,  despite  the  wrath  of  the  true  lovers 
of  the  veterans.  But  now  he  has  given 
his  consent  to  a  general  bill,  weakening 
the  defences  of  the  Treasury  here  and 
there  againsl  the  pension  raiders,  and 
doing  as  much  mischief  as  can  be  done 
short  of  going  the  whole  figure  of  a 
service  pension.  A  wicked  Democrat 
offered  on  Monday  a  substitute  provid- 
ing for  a  service  pension,  but  this  was 
indignantly  denounced  as  an  "attempt 
to  put  the  Republicans  in  a  hole."  They 
insist  upon  doing  all  the  putting  in  a 
hole  themselves,  the  President's  veto 
being  what  they  aim  at  and  hope  for. 


The  success  of  the  International  Arbi- 
tration Congress,  at  Washington,  which 
adjourned  on  Thursday  evening,  was  as- 
sured in  advance,  and  the  distinguished 
jurists,  educators,  and  clergy,  both  Catho- 
lic and  Ihrotestant»  who  attended,  lent  the 


334r 


•Plie    USTation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1609 


weight  of  high  character  and  great  influ- 
ence, as  well  as  of  sound  reason,  to  the. 
resolutions  adopted.  These  recite  the  un- 
certain and  oppressiye  nature  of  war  as  a 
means  of  settling  international  disputes, 
to  say  nothing  of  its  immense  eyils,  and 
affirm  the  superiority  of  arbitration,  as 
well  on  grounds  of  material  interests  and 
permanency  as  because  of  the  demands  of 
religion,  humanity,  and  justice.  A  settled 
^stem  of  arbitration  established  by  treaty 
is  urged  as  an  immediate  duty  on  the 
governments  of  the  United  States  and 
Oreat  Britain,  and  the  extension  of  arbi- 
tration to  all  civilized  nations  at  the  earli- 
est possible  day  demanded.  Thus  this 
congress  has  proved  a  fitting  climax  to  the 
series  of  local  congresses  with  the  same 
object,  and  has  given  expression  to  the 
deliberate  and  intelligent  opposition  of 
the  men  of  light  and  leading  in  this  coun- 
try to  the  whole  Jingo  madness  that  has 
been  raging  in  press  and  Congress  for  four 
months  past.  A  noticeable  thing  about 
the  Washington  gathering  was  the  absence 
of  Gongressmen,  even  as  spectators.  They 
could  not  allow  it  to  be  supposed  for  a  mo- 
ment that  they  had  aught  in  common  with 
the  most  learned,  intelligent,  and  philan- 
thropic citizens  of  this  country.  As  if 
sharply  to  emphasize  their  dissent  from 
the  congress,  two  of  them  chose  the  occa- 
sion for  passing  the  lie  in  the  capitol,  and 
for  throwing  inkstands  and  everything 
movable  at  each  other,  while  reaching  for 
their  knives.  A  Senator-elect  covered  with 
blood  by  the  ferocious  assault  of  a  fellow- 
Bepresentative  is  the  appropriate  answer 
of  a  Jingo  Congress  to  an  Arbitration 
Congress. 


Louisiana's  quadrennial  election  last 
week  resulted  in  the  defeat  of  a  constitu- 
tional amendment  by  which  it  was  pro- 
posed virtually  to  eliminate  the  negro  vote, 
as  was  done  dx  years  ago  in  the  neigh- 
boring State  of  Mississippi.  This  amend- 
ment proposed  to  require  citizenship,  in- 
volving a  five  years*  residence,  of  the 
foreigner  before  he  could  vote,  instead  of 
giving  him  the  suffrage  upon  his  an- 
nouncing an  intention  to  become  natu- 
ralized; and  to  require  that  a  man,  whe- 
ther of  native  or  of  foreign  birth,  "  shall 
be  able  to  read  the  Constitution  of  the 
State  in  his  mother  tongue,  or  shall  be  a 
bona-fide  owner  of  property,  real  or  per- 
sonal, located  in  the  State  and  assessed  to 
him  at  a  cash  valuation  of  not  less  than 
laOO."  This  was  framed  with  the  inten- 
tion of  being  so  interpreted  and  applied 
aa  to  keep  out  nearly  all  the  negroes  and 
let  in  about  all  the  whites.  In  order  to 
provide  for  such  whites  as  could  meet 
neither  the  educational  nor  the  property 
qualification,  the  amendment  further  pro- 
posed that  the  next  Legislature  should 
have  power,  by  a  vote  of  two-thirds  of  all 
the  members  elected  to  each  house,  and 
with  the  approval  of  the.Gh>vernor,  to  mo- 
dify, change,  or  amend  this  article  of  the 
Constitution,  and  that  such  modifications, 
pb«ngefy  qf  mn^ndmeota,  ^l^ei^  iq  adopted 


and  approved,  should  become  a  part  of 
the  Constitution  without  submission  to 
the  popular  vote.  This  was  the  most  ex- 
traordinary way  of  changing  a  constitu- 
tion ever  proposed,  and  it  seemed  bo  dan- 
gerous a  method  to  many  of  the  whites 
that  they  helped  the  negroes  to  defsat 
the  whole  amendment. 


The  Massachusetts  Supreme  Court  has 
finally  got  at  the  latest  attempt  to  '*  beat " 
the  civil-service  laws  in  that  State,  and 
has  made  as  thorough  work  of  it  as  our 
own  Court  of  Appeals  did  of  similar 
trickery.  It  decided  on  Saturday  that 
the  veterans*-preference  law  of  1895, 
which  the  late  Gov.  Greenhalge  bravely 
vetoed,  but  which  was  noisily  passed  over 
bis  veto  by  the  Republican  Legislature,  is 
unconstitutional.  **  Public  offices,'*  de- 
clares the  full  bench  of  the  court,  are  not 
created  for  •'  the  profit,  honor,  or  private 
interest  of  any  one  man,  family,  or  class 
of  men,*'  and  *'it  is  inconsistent  with  the 
nature  of  our  government  that  the  ap- 
pointing power  should  be  compelled  by 
legislation  to  appoint  to  certain  public 
offices  persons  of  a  certain  class  in  prefe- 
rence to  all  others."  Pensions  may  be 
voted  to  veteran  soldiers  and  sailors,  on 
the  ground  of  services  to  the  common- 
wealth, but  it  is  not  within  the  constitu- 
tional power  of  the  Legislature  to  "  give 
to  veterans  particular  and  exclusive  privi- 
leges distinct  from  those  of  the  commu- 
nity in  obtaining  public  office."  The 
mandamus  prayed  for  is  therefore  issued 
to  the  Civil-Service  Commissioners,  the 
result  of  which  will  be  to  make  all  exami- 
nations hereafter  truly  competitive,  and 
to  compel  those  already  appointed  to  of- 
fice, under  the  law  now  pronounced  null 
and  void,  to  undergo  an  examination  in  or- 
der to  retain  their  places.  The  decision 
comes  as  one  more  tribute  to  the  courts 
and  constitutions  as  our  chief  remaining 
bulwark  against  the  spoilsmen.  It  will 
also  serve  to  heighten  the  reputation  of 
Gov.  Greenhalge  for  sagacity  as  well  as 
courage  in  withstanding  the  raging  of  the 
partisan  mob. 


Mr.  Aldridge,  the  Piatt  Commissioner 
of  Public  Works,  has  been  compelled  to 
yield  to  the  civil-service  law,  after  a  year 
of  struggle  against  it,  and  has  asked  the 
Civil-Service  Commission  to  hold  compe- 
titive examinations  for  clerks  in  the  ca- 
nal department.  Last  year  he  defied  the 
commission  and  the  law,  and  appointed 
his  own  clerks,  appealing  to  the  courts  to 
sustain  him.  The  recent  decision  of  the 
Court  of  Appeals  has  convinced  him  that 
the  law  is  a  real  one,  and  is  so  strong  that 
even  the  Piatt  machine  cannot  break  it 
without  suffering  the  consequences.  He 
finds  that  if  he  appoints  his  subordinates 
in  defiance  of  the  law,  he  must  pay  their 
salaries  himself,  and  this  part  of  the  busi- 
ness he  does  not  enjoy.  He  will  obey  the 
law  henceforth,  expressing  freely  his  con- 
temptuous opinion  of  civil-seryice  hum- 


bug and  of  the  Comptroller  of  the  State 
in  the  meantime,  by  way  of  solace.  The 
Comptroller  is  the  chief  object  of  his 
wrath,  for  if  he  had  consented  to  violate 
his  oath  of  office  and  pay  the  salaries  of 
Aldridge*s  illegal  employees,  there  would 
have  been  no  trouble.  We  commend  Al- 
dridge's  fate  to  Commissioner  Lyman  of . 
the  Excise  Department,  for  sooner  or  later 
he  will  find  that  he  must  surrender  to  the 
law  in  regard  to  his  employees. 


The  Evening  Post  publishes  some  ex- 
tremely interesting  information  about  the 
special  "  confidential "  agents  whom  Com- 
missioner Lyman  has  selected  to  execute 
the  Raines  liquor-tax  law  in  this  city  and 
in  Brooklyn.  Great  difficulty  was  ex- 
perienced in  collecting  this  information 
because  of  the  obscure  life  which  many  of 
the  seventeen  special  agents  for  this  city 
lead.  Their  names  are  not  to  be  found  in 
the  directory,  and  their  addresses  were 
not  given  at  the  time  of  their  appoint- 
ment, for  reasons  best  known  to  their 
backers.  Three  days*  search  by  the  re- 
porters failed  in  some  instances  to  find 
any  one  who  had  ever  heard  of  the  ap- 
pointee. The  reason  why  such  secrecy  is 
desirable  about  careers  of  this  kind  is  re- 
vealed in  the  brief  sketches  published. 
Only  a  very  small  proportion  of  the  seven- 
teen men  selected  for  this  city  have  ever 
followed  any  reputable  business.  Their 
records  read  like  those  of  Tammany  men 
which  the  Evening  Post  has  published 
so  frequently.  Nearly  all  of  them  belong 
to  the  Boy  class  in  politics,  having  spent 
their  lives  in  "dealing**  and  dickering  with 
Tammany,  holding  now  and  then  some 
small  political  office,  and  spending  most  of 
their  time  in  and  around  the  saloon.  In 
Brooklyn  a  respectable  Special  Deputy 
Commissioner,  Col.  Michell,  was  appoint- 
ed for  Kings  County.  He  concluded  that 
he  would  be  allowed  to  select  his  special 
agents,  who  were  to  act  under  him,  and 
he  did  select  them.  They  were,  as  a  rule, 
very  good  men,  and  went,  accordingly,  as 
a  mere  matter  of  form,  for  approval  to  the 
head  office,  where  they  were  all  dismissed 
and  a  set  of  Mr.  Lyman's  own,  selected  by 
Jake  Worth,  the  Brooklyn  Boss,  appoint- 
ed in  their  place.  They  are  on  the  whole 
a  better  lot  than  the  New  York  ones,  the 
Republican  party  being  in  Brooklyn  rather 
more  respectable  than  in  New  York,  but 
they  belong  to  the  office-seeking  class,and 
it  is  fair  to  presume  would  eschew  oompe-' 
titive  examinations,  and  are  distinctly 
worse  than  Mr.  Michell*s  appointees.  Mr. 
Lyman's  object  in  refusing  to  make  his  ap- 
pointments through  competitive  examina- 
tions, and  his  pretence  that  the  positions 
are  in  any  sense  confidential,  and  that  it 
was  want  of  time  which  prevented  his 
obeying  the  Constitution,  are  thus  shown 
to  be  on  their  face  dishonest. 


The  Mayor's  approval  of  the  bill  forbid- 
ding the  erection  of  advertising  fences  and 
bonrde  within  360  feet  of  park  entri^nosf, 


April  30,  1896] 


Tlie    N'ation. 


335 


and  along  the  sides  of  the  parks,  makes 
that  most  timely  and  desirable  measure  a 
law,  probably,  for  there  is  no  reason  to 
doubt  the  Governor's  approval.  •  Under 
the  law,  the  Park  CommissioDers  will  have 
power  to  order  the  removal  of  all  present 
eyesores  of  this  most  offensive  variety,  in- 
cluding the  monstrosity  which  has  been 
erected  at  the  head  of  the  Riverside  Drive 
during  the  past  few  weeks.  Unless  a  law 
of  this  nature  had  been  passed,  we  should 
very  soon  have  been  forced  to  ride,  along 
many  of  our  park  approaches,  through  a 
double  wall  of  garish  bill-boards,  decorated 
with  all  the  horror  of  a  sign-pain ter*8 
skill.  The  Riverside  Drive,  with  its  many 
vacant  adjoining  lots,  furnishes  an  excep- 
tional field  for  this  new  system  of  torture, 
and  it  was  being  improved  with  an  appall- 
ing' recklessness  and  rapidity.  The  dese- 
cration will  have  to  stop  now,  and  all 
traces  of  it  will  be  abolished  without  de- 
lay, for  we  cannot  conceive  of  the  Park 
Commissioners  hesitating  for  a  moment, 
after  the  law  is  signed,  in  the  execution 
of  what  must  be  to  them  a  pleasurable 
duty. 


We  do  not  see  how  the  London  Tirnea 
can  allow  even  its  **own  correspondent" 
in  New  York  to  go  on  insisting  upon  hav- 
ing a  war  over  the  Venezuela  squabble, 
after  Mr.  Balfour's  statements  in  the 
House  of  Commons  on  Monday.  In  fact, 
the  news  from  both  Washington  and  Lon- 
don gives  the  lie  flatly  to  the  Times  de- 
spatches of  last  week.  The  Veoezuela 
Commission  give  it  out  that  a  decision  is 
not  to  be  looked  for  from  them  for  a  long 
time  to  come.  They  also  intimate,  most 
unpleasantly,  that  they  are  far,  as  yet, 
from  having  any  ''unimpeachable  evi- 
dence "  that  Venezuela  ever  owned  a  foot 
of  land  east  of  the  Orinoco.  This  is 
strange.  The  Venezuelan  case,  we  under- 
stood, was  simply  overwhelming.  As  for 
the  British  case,  we  saw  that  thoroughly 
"riddled"  as  lately  as  Monday  in  the 
Tribune.  These  Commissioners  are  evi- 
dently inflated  by  their  own  importance, 
and  are  ridiculously  demanding  proof  bet- 
ter than  that  which  satisfled  the  whole  of 
Congress,  the  Secretary  of  State,  and 
every  well  -  equipped  journalist  in  the 
country.  No  wonder  Comptroller  Bowler 
refuses  to  pay  their  rent. 


If  Mr.  Chamberlain  could  have  ridden 
through  London  in  an  open  barouche 
with  Oom  Paul  by  his  side  as  the  captive 
of  his  diplomacy,  it  would  have  been  a 
great  triumph  for  him.  But  Paul  is  too 
sharp  for  him.  He  will  not  come  to 
London.  He  will  settle  in  South  Africa 
British  interference  with  the  internal 
affairs  of  the  Transvaal,  and  there  is  ugly 
talk  of  a  racial  war,  and  much  fear  that 
the  present  compliance,  in  spite  of  Krd- 
ger's  prudence,  may  end  in  increased  ha- 
tred and  possible  hostilities  between  the 
English  and  the  Dutch  in  Africa,  which 
WQuld  throw  the  country  back  fifty  years 


or  more.  Mr.  Chamberlain's  tone  has  been 
prematurely  topping,  and  his  advice  to 
the  Transvaal  too  patronizing.  There  is 
some  reason  to  fear  that  things  can  go  no 
further  for  the  present  in  Africa,  and  that 
Mr.  Chamberlain  may  have  to  carry  out 
his  scheme  of  a  zollverein  between  Eng- 
land and  the  colonies.  The  day  he  is 
compelled  to  bring  that  about  will  be  one 
of  the  saddest  days  in  his  history. 


The  French  Senate  had  peculiar  provo- 
cation, aside  from  its  constitutional  con- 
flict with  the  cabinet,  to  make  a  stand 
for  its  rights  on  the  vote  for  the  expenses 
r^t  the  occupation  of  Madagascar.  It  was 
only  on  March  30  that  the  Gk>vernment 
asked  money  on  this  account,  it  having 
been  decided  that  the  existing  appropri- 
ation would  expire  on  April  30.  The 
Chamber  hastened  to  vote  the  credit 
asked,  and  then  adjourned  till  May  19. 
This  made  it  necessary  for  the  Senate  to 
accept  the  bill  precisely  as  it  came  from 
the  Chamber,  without  the  alteration  of 
an  item  or  a  word,  or  else  cause  the  whole 
to  fail.  The  danger  of  thus  limiting  the 
Senate's  right  to  amend  money  bills  was 
pointed  out  in  the  Chamber,  and  that 
body  was  asked  to  adjourn  only  to  a  date 
when  the  Senate's  amendments  might 
still  be  considered  before  April  30.  But 
this  suggestion  was  promptly  voted  down 
(it  is  said,  under  direct  prompting  from 
M.  Bourgeois),  and  so  the  Senate  was  put 
in  the  contemptible  position  of  being 
dictated  to  by  the  Prime  Minister.  Its 
response  was  a  flat  refusal  to  vote  the 
money  at  all  until  the  ministry  should 
recognize  its  constitutional  responsibility 
to  both  houses  of  the  National  Legisla- 
ture. On  April  2  M.  Bourgeois  told  the 
Senate  that  it  might  vote  no  confidence 
as  often  as  it  pleased,  but  that  he  would 
not  resign.  If,  however,  it  dared  to  op- 
pose him  on  a  question  of  foreign  policy, 
he  would  withdraw.  He  thought  he 
could  safely  fall  back  on  French  Jingo- 
ism, but  the  Senate  squarely  met  him, 
and  resign  he  did,  albeit  with  much  back- 
biting and  grumbling.  The  passive  atti- 
tude of  the  President  in  all  these  cabinet 
squabbles  is  exciting  more  and  more  im- 
patience among  men  anxious  to  see  every 
reserve  power  of  the  Constitution  put  in 
play  against  headlong  democracy  and 
anarchy. 


The  outcries  in  France  against  the  Se- 
nate are  made  suspicious  by  their  origin. 
They  speak  mainly  for  the  ardent  wish 
of  the  Socialists  and  more  reckless  Radi- 
cals to  get  rid  of  about  the  last  conserva- 
tive barrier  that  stands  between  them 
and  supreme  control  over  legislation  and 
government.  It  is  not  merely  a  nice 
question  of  constitutional  interpretation 
or  even  of  constitutional  revision.  A 
radical  and  socialistic  democracy  is  fight- 
ing for  a  free  hand.  The  Chamber's 
vote,  by  a  large  majority,  that  it  must  be 
preponderant  in  all  conflicts  over  questions 


of  right,  because  it  represents  the  princi- 
ple of  universal  suffrage,  shows  the  drift. 
So  does  the  frenzy  of  the  Socialists  against 
the  Senate.  This  existed  and  was  ex- 
pressed long  before  the  present  crisis. 
On  April  12  the  famous  Bourse  du  Tra- 
vail was  thrown  open  again  to  the  labor 
organizations.  This  public  home  of  **  la- 
bor," it  will  be  remembered,  had  to  be 
closed  in  1893  by  the  Qovemment,  on  ac- 
count of  the  political  agitation  of  which  it 
had  become  a  centre.  M.  Bourgeois,  in 
keeping  with  his  general  radical  policy, 
decided  to  open  it  again,  stipulating  that 
it  should  be  used  purely  in  the  interests 
of  "labor,"  not  of  politics.  What  the 
unions  thought  of  the  stipulation  may  be 
inferred  from  the  opening  ceremonies. 
Their  spokesman  declared  that  they  had 
come  back  to  their  own,  and  would  make 
the  Bourse,  as  before,  the  home  of  a  revo- 
lutionary propaganda.  Cries  of  "Down 
with  the  Senate! "  were  heard  on  all  sides, 
the  band  played  "La  Carmagnole,"  and 
a  red  scarf  was  thrown  over  the  statue  of 
the  republic.  All  this  was  ominous,  ss 
were  also  the  shouting  mobs  that  have 
gathered  to  hear   the  Socialist  orators. 


For  some  months  a  violent  agitation 
has  been  kept  up  by  the  medical  students 
in  Paris  end  Montpellier  against  the  prac- 
tice of  admitting  foreigners  to  the  medi- 
cal courses  of  the  universities.  They 
maintain  that  the  influx  of  foreign  stu- 
dents is  reaching  "disquieting  propor- 
tions." In  1884  the  number  entered  at 
Paris  was  127  ;  in  1894  it  had  risen  to  169. 
This  does  not  seem  so  disquieting  a  propor- 
tion in  the  total  of  6,000.  In  the  German 
medical  schools  there  were,  in  1892,  no 
less  than  4,077  foreign  students  out  of  a 
total  of  some  8,000.  But,  say  the  ardent 
medical  protectionists  in  France,  Germany 
does  not  allow  one  of  these  foreign  stu- 
dents to  practise  medicine  in  the  empire. 
We,  on  the  contrary,  are  seeing  our  great 
winter  resorts  in  the  south  of  France  gra- 
dually fllling  up  with  a  motley  array  of 
German,  Swiss,  Russian,  English,  and 
even  American  doctors.  This  should  be 
stopped.  With  the  number  of  good  na- 
tive physicians  increasing  every  year  in 
disquieting  proportions,  how  is  the  strug- 
gle for  existence  to  be  supported  if  the 
best  part  of  the  practice  is  turned  over  to 
interloping  foreigners?  But  the  hotel 
proprietors  in  the  south  of  France  reply 
that  the  prejudices  of  their  foreign  patrons 
must  be  consulted.  The  English,  in  par- 
ticular, simply  insist  upon  being  drugged, 
embalmed,  and  buried  by  the  loving  hands 
of  fellow-countrymen.  Some  unpatriotic 
physicians  have  also  mildly  objected  that 
it  is  a  good  thing  to  encourage  foreign 
medical  students  to  come  to  France ;  that 
it  spreads  abroad  the  fame  of  French 
medicine ;  that  it  has  actually  increased 
the  prestige  and  the  fees  of  the  leaders  of 
the  profession.  The  logic  of  protection  is 
fairly  lodged  in  the  student  mind,  and  we 
all  know  what  terrible  fellows  the  French 
are  in  proceeding  to  logical  results. 


336 


The   Nation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1609 


GOVERNOR  MORTONS  POSITION, 
Thb  bill  known  as  the  Consolidation  bill 
for  the  creation  of  ''Greater  New  York  " 
has  passed  both  houses  of  the  State  Le- 
gislature oyer  the  veto  of  the  Mayors  of 
New  York  and  Brooklyn,  and  now  awaits 
the  signature  of  the  Governor.  We  have 
commented  already  on  the  methods  used 
in  its  passage,  on  the  contempt  displayed 
by  its  promoters  for  local  opinion,  on  the 
reliance,  in  the  last  resort,  on  Tammany 
for  the  necessary  majority,  as  well  as  on 
the  extreme  smallness  of  that  majority. 
Should  Gov.  Morton  now  sign  it,  he  will, 
in  the  eyes  of  the  great  body  even  of  his 
admirers  and  supporters,  have  completed 
the  proof  that  he  is  in  close  alliance  with 
Piatt  The  first  instalment  was  his  ap- 
pointment of  Aldridge  last  year;  the 
second  was  his  appointment  of  Lord  on 
the  Civil-Service  Commission,  and  his  re- 
moval of  McKinstry  without  reason  as- 
signed; the  third  was  his  appointment  of 
Lyman,  and  his  uniting  with  him  in  an 
attempt  to  nullify  the  State  Constitution 
in  the  matter  of  competitive  examinations; 
the  fourth  will  be  his  approval  of  the  Con- 
solidation bill. 

These  things  suggest  several  observa- 
tions, which  we  make  with  entire  respect 
for  Gov.  Morton,  but  with  little  hope  that 
they  will  produce  any  impression  on  him. 
There  is  no  case  on  record  of  the  nomina- 
tion for  President  of  a  man  suspected  of 
being  in  league  with  a  boss  of  Piatt's  de- 
scription, or  who  had  approved  of  a  boss's 
methods  in  his  own  State.  Two  men,  and 
two  only,  in  the  history  of  the  United 
States,  Blaine  and  Hill,  have  sought  a 
nomination  largely  on  the  strength  of 
their  possession  of  the  kind  of  skill  in 
"getting  delegates"  which  Piatt  dis- 
plays. They  both  failed  miserably. 
Blaine  got  a  nomination,  but  it  did  him  no 
good,  for  reasons  a  large  portion  of  which 
will  apply  to  Gov.  Morton's  case.  In  both 
instances,  the  voters  dreaded  to  see  trans- 
ferred to  Washington  the  arts  and  in- 
fluences which  had  been  successful  in  the 
locality  from  which  the  candidate  came, 
or  for  which  he  was  distinguished.  More- 
over, whatever  the  local  boss  may  do, 
conventions  nominate  with  a  view  to  elec- 
tion. They  nominate  only  men  whom 
there  is  a  fair  chance  of  electing,  and  such 
chance  it  is  not  in  Piatt's  power  to  give. 
He  is  a  great  man  in  Albany,  but,  in  so 
far  as  his  fame  has  spread  beyond  the 
borders  of  the  State,  it  is  malodorous. 
Outside  the  State,  even  among  Republi- 
cans, he  is  an  odious  man.  Any  one  who 
comes  into  the  convention  leaning  on  his 
arm  will  come  heavily  weighted.  The 
convention  will  not  be  affected  by  the 
unanimity  of  the  New  York  delegation, 
because  they  will  not  believe  in  its  sin- 
cerity. Of  all  this,  and  a  great  deal  more 
like  it,  Mr.  Cleveland  is  a  striking  illus- 
tration. Iq  1892  he  had  to  all  outward 
appearance  got  no  delegates,  and  was 
more  hated  by  men  of  the  Piatt  type  in 
his  awn  State  than  any  one  in  the  party. 
He  had,  in  their  estimation,  no  chance 


whatever  of  either  nomination  or  election. 
He  was  both  nominated  and  elected,  and 
carried  his  own  State,  with  every  jobber 
in  his  party  hostile  to  him,  by  a  plurality 
of  45,000.  If  Mr.  Morton's  reliance  on 
Piatt  be  justifiable.  Hill  ought  to  have 
been  nominated  and  elected,  and  Croker 
ought  to  be  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  or 
Secretary  of  State. 

This  State  is  carried  at  every  election 
if  not  by  the  Independents,  at  least  by 
persons  of  an  independent  way  of  think- 
ing. We  do  not  need  to  argue  this  point. 
We  need  obly  point  to  the  election  re- 
turns showing  the  way  in  which  the  ma- 
jority shifts  from  side  to  side.  It  is  this 
class,  therefore,  which  any  man  who 
thinks  he  has  a  political  future  needs  to 
cultivate.  It  is  in  this  class  that  the 
bulk  of  Gov.  Morton's  friends  are  to  be 
found.  The  only  sincere  rejoicing  over 
his  election  in  1894  came  from  this  class. 
It  contains  a  large  part  of  the  intelligent, 
industrious,  and  thinking  population  of 
the  State.  It  desires  good  government 
under  the  laws.  It  is  hostile  to  bossism, 
to  corruption,  and  to  Ceesarism  in  every 
form.  For  it,  the  Constitution  of  the 
State  of  New  York  and  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  are  good  enough. 
It  desires  to  stand  on  the  ancient  ways, 
and  earn  its  bread  in  thankfulness  and 
honesty.  It  has  iseen  with  sorrow  and 
apprehension  the  growth,  in  this  State,  of 
a  system  w^i<m  leaves  in  neither  State 
nor  city  a  ^race  of  American  polity,  and 
substitutes  therefor  the  barbarous,  secret, 
and  venal  ways  of  Oriental  despots.  It 
was  glad  of  Gk>vernor  Morton's  election 
because  he  had  filled  several  other  places 
with  honor  and  efficiency ;  because  he  was 
a  gentleman,  a  man  of  means  and  integ- 
rity, who,  it  was  believed,  would  neither 
countenance  nor  participate  in  "  ways 
that  were  dark  or  tricks  that  were  vain." 
That  election  was  considered  a  protest 
not  only  against  the  financial  heresies 
that  were  threatening  the  public  credit 
in  the  nation  at  large,  but  against  the 
process  which  was,  in  this  State,  gradual- 
ly effacing  party  lines,  and  making  the 
Republican  leader  not  only  an  autocrat 
like  the  Democratic  boss,  but  also  a  part- 
ner in  Democratic  villanies,  and  setting  up 
a  new  sort  of  government,  which  com- 
pletely deprived  the  people  of  their  an- 
cient remedy — the.  substitution  of  one 
party  for  another  in  the  administration  of 
affairs. 

The  qualities  which,  as  has  been  shown 
in  the  past,  conventions  are  most  apt  to 
honor,  are  courage  and  purity  of  charac- 
ter. For  whatever  purpose  conventions 
may  assemble,  this  is  apt  to  be  the  out- 
come of  them.  It  is  not  at  all  likely  that 
Gov.  Morton  will  receive  the  nomination 
in  return  for  supporting  Piatt's  schemes. 
Whatever  this  may  do  for  him  with  the 
New  York  delegation,  the  supposition  that 
he  has  hand,  act,  or  part  in  Piatt's  form  of 
government  is  likely  to  be  fatal  to  his 
Presidential  aspirations.  Much  as  peo-  I 
pie  have  gone  through,  they  are  not  yet  ' 


prepared  to  make  the  White  House  a  Piatt 
headquarters.  If  Gov.  Morton  wishes  to 
succeed,  he  must  keep  clear  of  imputa- 
tions of  this  sort,  and,  above  all  things* 
he  must  look  after  the  reputation  he  will 
leave  behind,  whether  he  gets  the  nomi- 
nation or  not.  This  for  him,  at  his  time 
of  lif6,  is  the  main  thing.  The  wretched 
creature  who  is  trying  to  '*  run  "  and  de- 
grade him  for  his  own  purposes  will  soon 
pass  into  the  same  tomb  as  Tweed  and 
Croker  and  Kelly,  and,  like  them,  be  for- 
gotten and  despised.  Gov.  Morton  expects 
better  things  of  posterity.  He  wishes  to  live  * 
in  men's  memories  as  a  gentleman  at  least, 
'*  whose  armor  was  his  honest  thought, 
and  simple  truth  his  utmost  skill." 


ASSURANCE  OF  THE  GOLD  STANDARD. 

Thb  tide  now  sets  strongly,  in  the  Repub- 
lican party,  toward  the  adoption  in  the 
national  convention  at  St.  Louis  next 
June  of  a  platform  which  will  drop  the 
nonsense  about  * 'bimetallism"  and  a  ''dou- 
ble standard,"  and  declare  as  clearly  and 
boldly  against  the  silver  heresy  and  for 
the  gold  standard  as  the  plank  adopted  by 
the  Connecticut  Republicans  last  week, 
which  reads  as  follows : 

"  We  are  unalterably  opposed  to  tbe  iaiTie  of 
unsecured  paper  currency,  either  by  tbe  Gov- 
ernment or  the  banks,  or  the  free  coinage  of 
silver,  at  any  ratio,  and  favor  a  single  stan- 
dard of  value,  and  that  standard  gold.** 

The  only  thing  needed  to  convert  hesi- 
tating politicians  to  this  policy  is  a  de- 
monstration that  the  adoption  of  such 
a  platform  would  insure  victory  in  the 
election.  Happily  such  a  demonstration 
can  easily  be  made. 

The  admission  of  Utah  to  the  Union 
swells  the  number  of  votes  in  the  Elec- 
toral College  to  447,  and  makes  224  neces- 
sary to  a  majority.  Utah's  admission, 
although  the  new  State  has  but  three 
electoral  votes,  emphasizes  the  changes 
in  the  distribution  of  political  power  pro- 
duced during  the  last  few  years  by  the 
incoming  of  six  other  Territories  and 
the  new  apportionment  of  Representatives. 
Cleveland's  overwhelming  majority  Im  1892 
blinded  politicians  to  the  difference  be- 
tween the  conditions  in  case  of  a  dose 
contest  now  and  such  elections  as  those 
of  1876  and  1888.  From  the  reaMmission 
of  the  Southern  States  to  the  Union  after 
the  civil  war  down  to  the  election  of  1802, 
the  "  solid  South  "—meaning  thereby  the 
sixteen  States  in  which  slavery  had  exist- 
ed—needed to  be  reinforced  only  by  the 
small  group  of  New  York,  Co  mecticut, 
and  New  Jersey  in  the  North  to  constitute 
a  majority  of  the  Electoral  College.  In 
1876,  if  South  Carolina,  Florida,  and 
Louisiana  had  been  counted  for  Tilden, 
he  would  have  had  203  electoral  votes  out 
of  369,  and  might  have  spared  Indiana's 
fifteen  and  still  have  had  three  more  than 
a  majority.  In  1884,  Cleveland  had  Indi- 
ana, New  York,  and  her  two  neighbors, 
making  with  the  South  219  out  of  401 
votes,  but  he  could  have  surrendered  In- 
diana to  Harrison  in  1888  and  still  h%i9 


April  30,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"ation. 


337 


bad  20i,  or  three  more  than  a  majority,  if 
New  York  had  kept  compaDj  with  Con- 
necticut and  New  Jersey. 

But  the  aizteen  ex-alave  States  hare 
now  only  159  yotea  out  of  447,  instead  of 
138  out  of  969  under  the  apportionment 
based  on  the  census  of  1870,  and  153  out 
of  401  under  the  1880  apportionment— but 
little  more  than  35  per  cent,  now,  against 
about  38  per  cent,  in  both  of  the  previous 
decades.  The  addition  of  New  York, 
New  Jersey,  and  Connecticut  makes  only 
211  out  of  447,  or  thirteen  short  of  a  ma- 
jority. With  Indiana  also  the  Democratic 
candidate  under  the  old  combination  of 
1884  would  hare  but  two  more  than  a  ma- 
jority,  instead  of  eighteen  more. 

The  silverites  in  the  South  who  talk  so 
glibly  about  **  sweeping  the  country  on  a 
free-coinage  platform  "  evidently  know 
no  more  about  the  existing  conditions  in 
the  Electoral  College  than  they  do  about 
the  monetary  standards  of  the  world, 
"  What  do  we  care  if  we  lose  New  York," 
some  of  them  say,  *'  or  Connecticut  and 
New  Jersey,  besides?  We  c|in  make  it 
up  in  the  rest  of  the  country.*'  They  do 
not  realize  that,  even  if  they  could  keep 
the  South  solid  for  a  free-coinage  plat- 
form, they  would  still  need  sixty-five  elec- 
toral votes  in  the  North,  not  one  of  which 
would  come  from  any  State  in  the  East. 
Where  would  they  look  for  them  in  the 
West?  Leaving  out  of  account  the  excep- 
tional conditions  in  1892,  when  Illinois, 
Wisconsin,  and  California  were  carried 
for  Cleveland,  there  is  only  one  State 
west  of  the  Alleghanies  which  the  party 
has  carried  since  1856— Indiana ;  and  no 
intelligent  observer  believes  that  Indiana 
could  be  carried  for  free  coinage  this  year. 

But  the  mining  States?  They  cut  a 
great  figure  in  the  Senate,  where  the  nine 
States  among  the  Rockies  and  west  of  that 
range  have  one-fifth  of  the  members,  but 
they  cast  lees  than  one- twelfth  of  the  elec- 
toral votes.  If  the  whole  nine  went  for  a 
free-coinage  Democrat,  he  would  have  but 
thirty-six  votes  from  that  immense  section 
of  the  country,  and  would  still  be  twenty- 
nine  short  of  a  majority;  and  nobody  can 
study  the  political  record  of  those  States 
without  seeing  the  absurdity  of  supposing 
that  they  would  go  solidly  for  the  De- 
mocracy on  any  platform. 

The  truth  is,  that  the  right  sort  of  a 
Republican  candidate,  standing  on  a  gold 
platform,  would  be  sure  to  carry  the  coun- 
try over  any  Democrat  standing  on  a  free- 
coinage  platform.  Indeed,  one  can  count 
up  almost  votes  enough  to  elect  him  be* 
tween  the  Atlantic  and  the  Mississippi, 
north  of  the  old  Mason  and  Dixon's  line, 
as  will  be  seen  by  this  summary: 

Number  of  Electoral  ▼oCet 447 

Majority 884 

nilDoU 84 

Mloblfui 14 

Wlfcooalo 19 

MlDiiMota. 9 


New  BnglAiid., 

New  York 

New  Jersey..., 
PeanaylTAiile. . 
Ohio 


ToUl. 


It  will  be  seen  that  only  10  more  votes 
are  needed,  and  Iowa,  which  is  as  surely 
Republican  as  Illinois  or  Michigan,  would 


furnish  these,  and  three  to  spare.  Kan- 
sas with  10,  Nebraska  with  8,  and  the 
two  Dakotas  with  7  between  them,  can- 
not possibly  be  carried  by  the  Democracy 
this  year.  There  remain  excellent  chances 
for  more  than  one  State  further  West, 
while  in  the  South,  Delaware  and  Mary- 
land will  repudiate  free  coinage,  and 
West  Virginia  and  Missouri  could  be 
hopefully  contested  by  the  Republicans. 
There  is  no  possible  way  for  the  most 
ingenious  Democratic  arithmetician  to 
figure  out  a  majority  for  his  party  next 
fall  if  it  shall  stand  for  free  coinage.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  Republicans  can  in- 
sure victory  in  November  by  adopting  a 
gold- standard  platform  in  June. 


NEW    MEXICO    TWENTY-TWO     YEARS 
AOO, 

Thb  proposition  to  admit  into  the  Union 
as  States  New  Mexico,  Arizona,  and  Okla- 
homa renders  timely  a  revival  of  the  now 
generally  forgotten  fact  that  a  bill  for  the 
admission  of  the  first  of  these  Territories 
was  passed  by  the  lower  branch  of  Con- 
gress twenty-two  years  ago,  and  that  only 
a  happy  chance  saved  the  nation  from 
having  had  another  unfit  State  during  the 
long  period  since  1874.  On  the  9th  of 
March  in  that  year  a  bill  was  introduced 
in  the  House  **  to  enable  the  people  of 
New  Mexico  to  form  a  constitution  and 
State  government,  and  for  the  admission 
of  said  State  into  the  Union."  The  bill 
was  referred  to  the  committee  on  Terri- 
tories, which  in  a  few  weeks  reported  it 
back  favorably,  and  on  the  21st  of  May  it 
was  passed  by  the  overwhelming  vote  of 
160  yeas  to  54  nays. 

Then,  as  now,  the  House  was  Republi- 
can by  more  than  a  two- thirds  vote. 
Stephen  B.  Elkins,  who  had  gone  West 
to  '*  grow  up  with  the  country,"  had  re- 
turned as  a  Delegate  in  the  lower  branch 
of  Congress  from  New  Mexico,  and  as- 
pired to  be  one  of  the  first  Senators  from 
the  new  State— failing  in  which  ambition 
at  the  West,  he  later  sought  a  residence 
in  a  community  nearer  the  Atlantic,  and 
ie  now  Senator  from*  West  Virginia.  Mr. 
Elkins  urged  the  admission  of  the  Terri- 
tory twenty- two  years  ago,  on  the  ground 
that  its  population  then  was  large  enough 
to  justify  such  action,  his  estimate  being 
135,000  souls,  and  that  the  lines  of  rail- 
way then  under  construction  or  projected 
through  that  region  would  cause  a  rapid 
and  great  growth  in  the  early  future.  He 
concluded  with  this  tremendous  tribute 
to  King  Coal,  whose  dominion  covered 
the  territory  from  which  he  hoped  soon  to 
become  a  Senator : 

'*By  AD  nnnataral  UBurpation  Cotton  was 
oDce  called  and  twUeved  by  some  to  be  king  ; 
but  time  and  the  natural  laws  of  comaierce 
have  served  to  dispel  this  delusion,  and  CoaL 
with  his  ebon  brow,  has  come  to  the  front,  and 
by  ananlmouft  consent  has  been  crowned  king 
for  ever,  and  from  his  dark  throne,  with  his 
brother  Iron,  wields  the  sceptre  of  empire  over 
all  human  industries,  his  realms  beinz  mea- 
sured only  by  man*s  ingenuity.  In  the  United 
Rtates,  the  home  and  tnroDe  of  this  king  is  in 
the  Rocky  Mountains;  his  children  live  and 


rule  in  the  AUeghanies  and  the  Missisrippi 
Viilley.  The  Rocky  Mountains  will  play  no 
ordinary  or  secondary  part  in  the  future  of 
this  country.  80  long  unknown,  light  is  be- 
ginning to  dawn ;  we  are  but  catching  glimpses 
of  the  future  grandeur  and  elory  of  this  great 
empire.  In  New  Mexico  the  time  Is  not  far 
distant  when  a  thousand  furnacee  for  the  re- 
duction of  ores  will  light  up  the  sides  of  her 
vast  mountains,  and  this  ore,  drawn  by  a  thou- 
sand engines  busy  by  day  and  by  night,  will 
be  poured  into  the  lap  of  the  Mississippi  Val- 
ley, and  millions  of  sheep,  cattle,  and  horses 
will  feed  on  her  boundless  plateaus." 

• 

Another  argument  which  Mr.  Elkins  did 
not  mention  was  even  more  potent  with 
most  of  the  Representatives  whom  he  ad- 
dressed—the belief  that  New  Mexico 
would  strengthen  the  Republican  side  of 
the  Senate  by  two  votes,  and  furnish  three 
Republican  votes  in  the  Electoral  Col- 
lege. Nevertheless,  there  were  Republi- 
cans, especially  from  New  England,  who 
were  not  prepared  to  throw  away  all  the 
principles  which  they  had  always  pro- 
fessed regarding  the  danger  to  the  nation 
of  illiterate  States.  Mr.  George  F.  Hoar, 
then  a  Representative  from  Massachu- 
setts, made  some  remarks  which  were  ex- 
ceedingly creditable  to  the  first  State  that 
ever  imposed  an  educational  qualification 
for  the  suffrage.  He  pointed  out  that, 
not  many  years  before,  the  people  of  New 
Mexico  had  rejected  by  a  large  majority  a 
proposition  to  establish  a  public-school 
system;  that  no  such  system  had  been  es- 
tablished until  1871;  that  by  the  census 
of  1870  no  fewer  than  52,220  of  the  66,464 
persons  over  ten  years  of  age,  or  about 
five-sixths,  could  not  read  or  write ;  and 
that  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  people 
could  not  speak  the  English  language. 
He  said  further: 

**Now,  while  it  is  true  that  no  man  should 
be  debarred  from  the  privileges  of  dtitenship 
because  he  speaks  Spanish  only,  or  because 
he  cannot  read  or  write  (and  to  the  nnmb«r 
thns  returned  in  that  Territory  we  may  safely 
add  a  large  percentage,  because  people  fre- 
quently say  they  can  write  when  they  can  only 
write  a  word  or  two,  their  own  names  per- 
haps), yet  it  seems  to  me  that  when  Congrev 
is  oonslderinff  the  question  whether  the  peo- 
ple of  a  Territory  shall  be  formed  into  a  State 
of  the  Union,  the  fact  that  they  cannot  per- 
form the  duties  of  American  citisenshlp  by 
voting  intelligently  on  public  questions,  the 
fact  that  the  great  body  of  them  cannot  under- 
stand the  laws  of  the  country,  cannot  read  the 
discussion  of  political  qnestions,  cannot  ob- 
tain information  about  their  interrits  from 
newspapers  or  magazines,  constitutes  a  strong 
reason  why  we  should  require  such  a  commu- 
nity to  wait  for  admission  until  they  are  l>eiter 
prepared.'* 

Clarkson  N.  Potter  was  then  a  Demo- 
cratic Representative  from  this  city,  and 
he  made  an  able  argument  against  the 
scheme.  He  rose  immediately  after  Mr. 
Ellkins  had  paid  his  glowing  tribute  to 
King  Coal,  and  remarked  that  it  was  *'  a 
thankless  task  to  resist  such  an  earnest 
and  eloquent  appeal  to  the  House  as  the 
one  just  now  addressed  to  it,*'  and  that 
gentlemen  of  his  temperament  "  would 
find  legislation  much  more  agreeable  if 
they  could  carry  it  on  upon  the  princi- 
ple recommended  by  Mr.  Tittlebat  Tit- 
mouse, who  proposed  a  general  bill  for 
giving  everybody  everything.**  This  be- 
ing impracticable,  measures  must  be  treat- 
ed with  reference  to  those  general  public 


338 


Tlie   ^N^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1609 


considerations  which  ought  alone  to  gov- 
ern Ckmgressmen,  and  Mr.  Potter  pro- 
ceeded to  take  up  various  such  considera- 
tions. One,  upon  which  he  laid  much 
stress,  was  the  influence  which  the  ad- 
mission of  unfit  States  would  have  in  dis- 
turbing the  proper  relations  between  the 
commonwealths  in  the  Senate.  Some  of 
his  utterances  on  this  point  have  proved 
prophetic. 

Mr.  Potter  pointed  out  that,  even 
twenty- two  years  ago,  sixteen  Senators 
from  eight  States  having  a  contiguous 
territory  (Massachusetts,  New  York,  Penn- 
^Ivania,  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Missouri, 
and  Kentucky)  represented  a  majority  of 
the  people  of  the  CJnion.  **  It  is  the  most 
absurd  thing  possible,*'  he  said,  *'  to  call 
such  a  government  a  popular  govern- 
ment" On  the  contrary,  it  was  in  this 
respect  one  of  the  most  absurd  govern- 
ments on  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  yet  it 
was  proposed  to  make  it  more  absurd  by 
introducing  Territories  with  a  mere  hand- 
ful of  people,  and  giving  them  the  right 
to  send  two  representatives  each  into  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States.  Mr.  Potter 
continued: 

'*I  miderstand  that,  with  the  great  physical 
prosperity  of  the  coontry,  such  gradual  chang- 
es are  not  obeerved.  The  attention  of  men  in 
these  hurried  days  is  but  too  rarely  given  to 
the  fundamental  principles  of  government. 
Bat  the  time  will  come  when  this  thing  will 
not  be  longer  tolerated.  Every  new  State 
forced  into  the  Union  with  its  two  members  in 
the  Senate  of  the  United  States  will  be  a  rea- 
son for  coercingattention  to  this  matter  bv  the 
great  States.  What  is  the  inevitable  result  of 
the  further  introduction  of  small  States  but  to 
unduly  reduce  the  influence  of  the  older  and 
larger  States  ?  Besides  this,  do  not  gentlemen 
know  that  the  inevitable  result  of  giving  to 
the  people  in  those  small  Territories— I  mean 
Territoriee..with  but  a  small  population — rep- 
resentation in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States 
must  be  that  they  will  be  controlled  by  ioflu. 
enoes  exercised  by  men  of  wealth  ?  I  heaid  it 
stated  not  long  ago  that  one  of  the  Senators  of 
a  certain  State  had  not  been  in  the  State  in 
two  years  before  be  was  elected.  Who  are  the 
men  elected  to  the  Senate  from  these  small 
Western  States  ?  Are  they  men  who  control 
the  railways  and  mines  and  wealth  of  the 
States  or  not  f  Do  we  desire  to  repeat  the  ex. 
periment  of  Nevada,  when,  after  all  the  years 
that  have  followed  her  admission,  there  is  still 
a  population  not  half  so  great  as  in  some  agri 
cultural  counties  in  my  State  f " 

Happily  for  the  country,  the  slow- going 
Senate  did  not  act  upon  this  matter  until 
near  the  end  of  the  next  short  session, 
when  it  made  some  amendments  in  the 
bill  which  the  House  did  not  have  time  to 
consider,  and  the  measure  failed.  What 
we  escaped  by  this  lucky  chance  can  be 
appreciated  only  when  we  reflect  that  the 
population  of  the  Territory  was  but  about 
18,000  larger  by  the  last  census  than  Mr. 
Elkins  claimed  in  1874,  and  that  the  per- 
centage of  illiteracy  is  still  almost  45  per 
cent.,  and  when  we  recall  our  bitter  ex- 
perience since  Mr.  Potter's  day  with  Mon- 
tana, Idaho,  and  other  Territories  equally 
unfit  for  statehood. 


ENOLANEtS  REVENUE  AND  AMERICAN 
TRADE, 

EvBB  since  the  remarkable  statement  of 
the  British  Exchequer  for  the  fiscal  year 


ending  March  31  was  published  a  fort- 
night ago,  the  enemies  of  free  trade  and 
sound  currency  have  kept  the  silence  of 
dismay.  When  complaint  of  dull  trade 
and  paralyzed  industry  was  loud  on  every 
side  in  our  own  country,  here  came  the 
statement  of  a  nation,  living  under  un- 
restricted trade  and  a  gold  currency  stan- 
dard, showing  an  increase,  over  the  pre- 
ceding fiscal  year,  of  £7,290,000  in  Gov- 
ernment revenue,  leaving  an  almost  un- 
precedented annual  surplus  of  £4,208,000, 
or  121,040,000.  This  increase  was  all  the 
more  striking  and  significant  in  that  tax 
levies,  under  the  British  budget-estimate 
for  an  approaching  fiscal  year,  are  com- 
monly based  on  the  expectation  that  reve- 
nue will  hardly  exceed  expenditures.  The 
extraordinary  gain  of  the  past  year,  there- 
fore, simply  means  that  the  trade  from 
which  the  revenue  is  derived  has  ex- 
panded far  more  rapidly  than  the  esti- 
mates had  anticipated.  Nor  is  it  least 
significant  that  all  this  happened  with 
our  own  national  revenue  still  falling 
short,  by  millions,  of  official  expectations. 

It  was  not  in  reason,  however,  to  sup- 
pose that  friends  of  fettered  trade  and  de- 
based currency  would  rest  idle  under  so 
startling  an  object-lesson.  We  understand 
that  the  critics  of  that  school,  having  now 
recovered  from  their  first  shock  of  aston- 
ishment and  dismay,  are  about  to  enter  on 
their  own  explanations  of  the  phenomenon. 
It  is  maintained  already,  by  some  of  these 
oracles,  that  the  expansion  in  Great  Bri- 
tain's revenue  is  distinctly  a  result  of  its 
heavier  exports  to  the  United  States  under 
the  Wilson  tariff.  Prior  to  August,  1894, 
it  seems,  the  profits  of  British  industry 
were  curtailed  by  the  exclusion  of  their 
merchandise  from  our  markets.  Now, with 
the  bars  let  down,  they  are  ''flooding" 
our  entire  market,  and  heaping  up  such 
profits  that  Great  Britain's  tax  receipts 
have  bounded  up  along  with  them.  The 
bearing  of  this  argument,  as  an  authority 
of  similar  acumen  once  observed,  lies  in 
the  application  thereof. 

But  we  greatly  fear  that  the  argument 
of  a  lower  American  tariff  as  the  chief 
factor  in  British  tra(Je  and  revenue  ex- 
pansion will  find  some  trouble  with  the 
figures.  During  the  fiscal  yesr  ending 
June  30,  1895,  the  United  States  imported 
merchandise  from  Great  Britain  valued  at 
$159,083,243.  This  feas  a  large  and  natural 
increase  over  the  year  of  panic  and  trade 
stagnation  which  preceded  it.  But  the 
fiscal  year  1894  was  not  the  ''banner 
year"  of  the  McKinley  tariff.  It  is  •the 
year  beginning  July  1,  1892,  and  ending 
June  30,  1893,  in  which,  as  protectionists 
are  wont  to  boast,  the  McKinley  act  had 
its  full  infiuence  on  trade.  In  those  twelve 
months  the  United  States  imported  from 
Great  Britain  merchandise  valued  at 
$182,859,769.  That  is  to  say,  if  the  Wilson 
act  has  been  the  only  factor  in  the  inter- 
national trade  movement,  it  has  cut  down 
our  British  imports  15  per  cent  since  the 
days  of  the  McKinley  law. 

We  do  not  suppose  that  serious  and  in- 


telligent economists  will  found  on  such 
comparison  of  the  figures  any  final  con- 
clusions regarding  the  operation  of  the 
tariff.  The  prostration  of  American  in- 
dustries, through  the  currency  experi- 
ments of  1890,  has  had  vastly  more  to  do 
with  the  decline  of  our  foreign  trade  since 
1892  than  did  any  change  in  the  customs 
legislation.  The  figures  do,  however, 
amply  demonstrate  that  the  lower  duties 
under  the  Wilson  act  have  had  little  or 
nothing  to  do  with  the  expanding  British 
trade.  A  very  noteworthy  revival  in  for- 
eign commerce  has  been  going  on  in  parts 
of  the  world  quite  unconnected  with  Ame- 
rican fioanciering.  While  annual  exports 
from  England  to  the  United  States,  since 
the  fiscal  year  1892-3,  have  decreased  $23,- 
770,000,  Great  Britain's  total  exports  to 
all  foreign  countries  have  increased  $45,- 
000,000. 

The  London  Economist^  in  its  com- 
ment on  the  latest  trade  statement  for  the 
United  Kingdom,  has  analyzed  this  re- 
markable export  movement,  which  has  ex- 
tended further  in  the  current  quarter. 
The  increase,  it  appears,  was  largest  in 
the  case  of  textile  and  metal  goods.  Of 
the  textile  fabrics,  China,  India,  Japan, 
and  Germany  contributed  virtually  all  the 
iDcrease  over  the  preceding  year.  Worsted 
goods,  however,  one  of  the  largest  textile 
commodities  of  export,  "  exhibit  a  falling 
off  in  consequence  of  a  check  in  the  trade 
with  the  United  States."  In  the  metal 
exports,  during  the  month  of  March  alone, 
"  India  took  quite  nine  times  the  weight 
of  railroad  material  that  was  shipped  in 
March  last  year,"  while  in  other  metals 
"  South  Africa,  India,  and  Australasia  are 
largely  increasing  their  demand."  But  in 
shipments  to  America  "  there  is  again  a 
serious  falling  off."  These  citations, 
taken  quite  at  random,  are  amply  corrobo- 
rated by  the  figures  and  illustrate  the 
general  tendency.  They  simply  signify 
that  while  our  nation's  enterprise  and  in- 
dustry have  been  lying  prostrate  under 
chronic  assaults  on  the  standard  of  the 
currency  and  chronic  tinkering  with  the 
import  duties.  Great  Britain,  with  its  laws 
fixed  for  all  time  in  both  particulars,  has 
been  reach iog  out  after  the  expanding 
foreign  trade  of  other  nations.  While  the 
United  States  has  been  wondering  vaguely 
whether  it  could  or  could  not  suppress 
its  trade  with  Europe,  England  has  been 
absorbing  the  new  and  growing  markets 
of  Africa,  Australasia,  and  Japan.  It  is 
hardly  a  matter  for  surprise  that,  with 
this  rapid  extension  of  Great  Britain's 
foreign  trade,  the  annual  revenue  should 
rise  to  the  index-mark  of  real  prosperity. 

This  is  the  truth,  looked  upon  from  a 
commercial  point  of  view.  There  re- 
mains, of  course,  the  vantage-ground  of 
Jingo  criticism.  We  do  not  doubt  that 
when  these  indisputable  commercial  facts 
have  penetrated  the  thick  skulls  of  our 
protectionists  and  infiationists,  we  ahall 
hear  denunciations  of  England's  gt^acty 
snatching  at  the  foreign  trade  of  aatkHMh 
Lodge   would    punish   tha  graMMKft  W 


April  30,  1896] 


The   N'ation. 


339 


immgine,  bjr  adoptiog  an  unsound  cur- 
rency in  the  United  States.  McKinley 
would  get  his  rerenge  by  putting  up  abso- 
lutely prohibitory  bare  against  our  own 
foreign  trade.  As  for  American  indus- 
triee,  they  have  grown  used  to  the  Lodges 
and  McKinleys  since  the  triumphs  of  1890, 
and  might  be  expected  to  take  their  dose 
in  silence. 


THE  NEW  NATIONAL  PORTRAIT   GAL- 
LERY. 

London,  April  1, 1896. 

M.  Alfbxo  Btevxns  it  not  the  only  artift 
who  bat  said  boldly  that,  in  painUog,  subjects 
may  be  dispensed  with  (en  peinture  on  pent  ss 
poMBer  d€  9%ij€i).  Bat  this  is  not  qaite  true 
when  it  is  a  portrait  that  is  to  be  painted. 
The  great  artist  may,  or  indeed  will,  make  a 
sitter  merely  the  motive  for  a  beautiful  ar- 
rangement of  color  or  of  lines;  for  that  reason, 
however,  he  does  not  disdain  the  lesser  task  of 
producing  a  likeness.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
are  portraits,  quite  feeble  and  incompetent  as 
paintings,  that  have  enormous  valae  histori- 
cally.  Certainly,  a  national  portrait  gallery 
may  depend  for  its  interest  more  upon  its  sub- 
ieots  than  upon  the  artistic  merit  of  its  pio- 
turss,  as  a  visit  to  the  new  building  in  St. 
Martin's  Place  will  prove. 

For  at  last  the  English  collection  of  histori- 
cal portraits  is  hung  in  a  manner  befitting  its 
importance.  The  National  Portrait  Gallery 
was  founded  as  far  back  as  IS.'ifi,  when,  it  is 
worth  noting,  the  stately  portrait  of  Sir  Wal. 
ter  Raleigli,  by  Zaccaro,  was  the  first  purchase 
of  the  Trustees,  the  famous  Chandos  8hak> 
spere,  presented  by  the  Earl  of  EUesmere,  the 
first  donation  they  received.  But  for  many 
years  the  pictures  were  hustled  about  unoere. 
monioosly,  finding  temporary  refuge  now  in 
VTestminster,  now  in  South  Kensington,  where 
a  shabby  shed  gave  them  shelter,  and  again  in 
the  Bethnal  Green  Museum,  for  all  practical 
purposes  as  remote  from  the  centre  of  London 
as  the  Louvre  or  the  Prado.  At  the  beet  their 
hanging  in  these  places  was  a  makeshift.  Sir 
George  Scharf,  the  late  Director,  might  do  all 
that  was  possible  to  increase  the  educational 
usefulness  of  the  collection,  but  it  is  doubtful 
if  any  one  Journeyed  to  see  it  except  the  con- 
sdeotious  tourist  and  the  student  of  more  than 
average  enthusiasm.  At  Bethnal  Green,  how- 
ever, as  likely  as  not,  the  portraits  would  have 
remained  indefinitely  had  it  not  been  for  the 
generosity  of  Mr.  Alexander,  who  provided  for 
them  the  permanent  home  which  the  richest 
country  in  the  world  was  still  too  poor  to  fur- 
nish at  the  public  expense.  The  new  building 
adjoins  the  National  Gallery,  though  altogether 
separate  from  it,  so  that  for  position  no  better 
site  could  have  been  found  in  London.  Archi- 
tecturally, the  gallery  is  not  all  that  could  be 
desired—the  rooms  are  over-small,  and  in  many 
the  light  is  not  so  good  as  it  might  be.  But  on 
the  whole  it  is  satisfactory  enough,  and  of 
course  the  greatest  improvement  upon  the  tem- 
porary asylums  that  preceded  it.  Besides,  Mr. 
Lionel  Gust,  the  new  Director,  has  hung  the 
pictures  to  such  advantage,  with  so  genuine  a 
respect  for  chronological  continuity,  so  right  a 
feeling  for  decorative  effect,  that  the  defects 
of  the  building  are  the  more  easily  overlooked 
and  forgotten. 

As  for  the  collection  itself,  now  that  it  is 
displayed  as  it  deserves  (the  pictures  cleaned 
and  put  in  good  order),  no  one  can  exaggerate 
its  interest.  Those  who  agree  with  Carlyle 
that,  in  historical  inves^ations,  one  of  the 


most  primary  wants  is  to  procure  a  bodily 
likeness  of  the  personage  inquired  after,  will 
here  be  enabled  to  study  and  master  the  his- 
tory of  England  as  they  never  could  in  books 
alone.  From  Edward  IIL  even  to  Queen 
Victoria,  the  country's  sovereigns  can  be 
passed  in  review:  Plantagenets,  Tudors, 
Stuarts,  Hanoverians— in  all  their  might  or 
weakness,  beauty  or  coarseness;  attended  by 
the  long  train  of  courtiers,  warriors,  and 
statesmen,  poets,  artists,  and  scientists,  frail 
ladies  and  gay  gallants,  who  have  made  or 
marred  the  strength,  the  greatness,  the  ro- 
mance of  England.  Whatever  else  these  por- 
traits may  leave  in  doubt,  one  truth  is  estab- 
lished beyond  dispute  :  not  until  recent  gene- 
rations has  royalty  thought  so  ill  of  itself  as 
to  commission  the  least  accomplished  artists 
to  paint  the  royal  portraits.  From  Holbein 
and  Zuccaro  to  Winterhalter  and  Angeli  is  a 
far  cry;  and  late  Hanoverian  rooms  must  in. 
evitably  dwindle  into  dulnera  and  insignifi- 
cance after  the  splendor  of  the  early  Tudor 
and  Stuart  series.  Once,  in  England,  it  was 
the  pride  of  kings  to  play  the  patron  of  art 
with  some  discretion  and  to  their  own  gpreater 
glory.  They  may  have  appreciated  the  quali- 
ty of  the  work  as  little  as  their  degenerate 
successors,  but,  in  Justice  to  themselves,  they 
sought  their  portrait'paiuters  always  among 
the  most  distinguished  artists  of  the  day;  and 
their  court,  dutifully,  as  a  court  should,  fol- 
lowed suit. 

This  is  the  reason  why,  from  the  aesthetic 
standpoint,  the  earlier  rooms  in  the  Portrait 
Gallery  are  the  most  delightfuL  Trustees 
and  directors,  of  course,  have  not  enjoyed 
unlimited  freedom  in  their  selection;  often 
enough,  being  obliged  to  take  what  they 
could  get— at  times,  the  copy  instead  of  the 
original,  at  others  relying  upon  the  follower 
if  the  master  was  beyond  reach.  But  when  all 
artists  of  a  school  accepted  the  fine  convention 
of  its  leaders,  even  lesser  achievements,  even 
copies,  were  not  without  style  and  distinction. 
There  are  finer  Holbeins  in  the  National  Gal- 
lery;-the  one  beautiful  Antonio  More  (a  Sir 
Thomas  Gresham,  simple,  severe,  stately),  and 
the  two  or  three  Zuccaros  (Elisabeth,  queenly 
and  imperious,  berufSed  and  bejewelled; 
Raleigh,  with  pearls  in  his  ears),  are  outnum- 
bered by  the  works  of  unknown  artists.  But, 
for  all  that,  the  room  in  which  the  Tudor  por- 
traits hang  has  a  splendor  of  decoration  not  to 
be  surpassed  in  any  other  section  of  the  Gal- 
lery. The  traditions  of  these  men  were  not 
dishonored  by  Geeraerts— it  was  he  who 
painted  Mary  Sidney,  Countess  of  Pembroke, 
**  subject  of  all  verse  *' ;  by  Mlerevelt— and  the 
rich  harmonious  Sir  Horace  Vere,  a  landscape 
in  the  Low  Countries,  then  a  battleground  for 
English  soldiers,  painted  beneath,  may  be 
counted  his  masterpieces ;  by  Van  Dyck— not 
BO  well  represented,  however,  save  in  his  dig- 
nified portrait  of  Sir  Kenelm  Digby;  the 
plain,,  homely  features  of  that  **  prodigy  of 
learning,  credulity,  valour,  and  romance,*' 
made  familiar  to  the  fortunate  possessors  of 
his  *  Receipts  in  Chirurgery  and  Cookery,*  by 
the  engraving  therein  published  as  frontis. 
piece. 

A  special  interest  is  given  to  this  period  by 
the  appearance  on  the  walls  of  the  first  two 
English  painters  of  note,  William  Dobson  and 
Robert  Walker,  neither  as  famous  to-day  as 
he  should  be.  Dobson  was  called  by  Charles 
I.  **  The  English  Tintoret,**  and,  now  and  then, 
in  the  winter  shows  of  Old  Masters  at  the 
Royal  Academy,  there  is  to  be  seen  a  canvas  by 
him  which  proves  that  King  Charles  was  not 
far  wrong  as  a  critic    But  here,  though  his 


several  paintings  give  some  idea  of  the  breadth 
and  elegance  of  his  style,  none  is  so  wor- 
thy of  him  as  his  own  portrait,  an  arrange- 
ment in  brown,  with  not  a  little  of  the  swag- 
ger with  which  Velasquez  loved  to  paint  him- 
self.  Walker  threw  in  his  fortunes  with  the 
Parliament  rather  than  with  the  Conrt»  and 
Cromwell  sat  to  him  more  than  once.  His 
**  Cromwell,**  included  in  the  national  ooUeo- 
tion,  is  less  plain  of  feature,  less  stem  of  as- 
pect, than  some  other  of  the  Protector's  por- 
traits, and  an  unexpected  touch  of  janntyism 
— **  dandiacal,**  it  should  have  seemed  surely  to 
Tenfelsdrdckh— is  lent  to  it  by  the  obsequious 
attentions  of  a  youth  in  red  who  ties  a  scarf 
upon  his  hip  over  his  armor. 

With  the  second  Charles  we  oome  to  a  lavlah 
array  of  Lelys  and  Knellers— a  series  of  por- 
traits as  gay  and  extravagant,  as  sumptuous 
and  amusing,  as  the  court  life  of  the  timsa. 
To  look  at  all  their  splendid  courtiers,  in  flow- 
ing curls  and  dainty  velvets  and  silks,  at  all 
their  lovely  women  arrayed  like  oonrtesaaa 
and  posing  as  shepherdesses,  is  to  read  with 
new  understanding  the  plays  of  Congreve,  the 
memoir^  of  Gramont  The  Gallery  is  very 
rich  in  examples  of  these  two  men:  almost  all, 
portraits  to  be  remembered  with  pleasure  for 
their  beauty  no  less  than  their  associations;  a 
few,  perhaps,  leaving  a  stronger  imprssslon 
than  the  others— the  Sir  William  Temple,  by 
Lely,  for  instance,  because  of  the  charm  of  his 
face,  that  one  likes  to  fancy  with  the  gardens 
and  groves  of  Moor  Park  for  its  background; 
the  Buckingham,  by  the  same  painter,  because 
of  the  cynical  wickedness  stamped  upon  every 
feature;  the  Congreve,  by  Kneller,  resplendeiil 
as  the  mere  **  gentleman**  whom  Voltaire 
would  never  have  travelled  to  see.  Standing 
out  with  distinction,  holding  their  own  in  the 
midst  of  the  gorgeous  flamboyaacy  of  Lely 
and  Kneller,  are  three  small  portraits  by  Ho- 
garth: one  of  himself,  a  grotesque  little  flgurs 
at  his  easel  in  a  room  wonderfully  full  of  at- 
mosphere and  light;  another  of  Lord  Loval, 
awkward  and  big,  and  somehow  suggesting  the 
lumbering  form  of  Dr.  Jolmson. 

The  generation  of  painters  that  could  boast 
the  names  of  Reynolds  and  Gainsborough  and 
Romney  follows  next  in  order,  but  hitherto 
their  masterpieces  have  not  come  in  the  way 
of  Trustees  and  Directors.  The  National  Gal- 
lery can  make  a  more  brilliant  showing;  the 
Winter  Academy  serves  as  reminder  of  the 
treasures  which  could  so  appropriately  find  a 
place  on  national  walls.  Good  portraits  by 
them  there  are  of  course:  Reynolds*e  well- 
known  Goldsmith,  with  the  humorous,  ugly, 
attractive  face;  Romney*s  masterly  sketch 
of  himself;  Gainsborough's  General  Lawrence 
in  scarlet  coat— to  mention  but  three.  Still, 
in  this  period  there  are  great  gaps  which,  it  is 
hoped,  will  gradually  be  filled;  for,  assuredly, 
now  that  Englishmen  have  learned  the  value 
and  importance  of  their  national  portraita, 
they  will  be  eager  to  make  the  collection  as 
perfect  as  possible.  Opie,  Hoppaer,  Lawrence» 
Raebum,  Beechey,  do  their  utmost  to  main- 
tain the  beauty  and  stateliness  of  the  walls, 
until  these  are  given  over  to  the  commonplace 
of  the  quite  modem  pictures.  Not  even  Mr. 
Watttf's  generous  gifts  of  portrait  of  faosous 
men,  painted  by  himself,  can  relieve  the  dull 
Victorian  dreariness,  to  which  Whitsrhalter'e 
**Prince  Consort  **  and  the  copy  of  Von  Ange- 
li's  "  Queen  Victoria**  seem  to  set  the  standard. 
As  far  as  the  artist  is  concerned,  the  latsst 
rooms  of  all  might  as  well  have  remained 
closed  for  ever.  But,  in  a  portrait  gallery,  as 
I  have  said,  there  are  other  interssts  to  be  con- 
sidered. 


840 


Tlie    [N^ation* 


[Vol  62,  No.  1609 


It  IB  when  one  studiet  the  collection  for  itg  as- 
sociations, personal  or  romantic,  that  it  is  found 
most  inexhaustible.  Not  more  than  the  slight- 
est hint  of  Its  wealth,  in  this  respect,  is  possi- 
ble in  the  space  at  my  disposal.  If  it  is  the 
history  of  literature  that  appeals  to  you  most 
kemly,  you  may  here  come  face  to  face  with 
almost  all  your  literary  heroes,  beginning  with 
the  inimitiTe  Chaucer—the  Chandos  Shak- 
ipere,  rings  twinkling  in  his  ears;  a  Ben  Jon- 
son,  red  and  coarse,  the'bricklayer  rather  than 
the  poet's  rare  Ben;  a  Drayton  all  too  self- 
conscious  in  his  latfrel  wreath,  down  to  the 
sketch  of  BteTenson  by  Mr.  Richmond,  the 
portraits  of  Browning  and  Tennyion  and  Roe- 
setti  by  Mr.  Watti,  added  but  yesterday.  And, 
as  a  rule,  they  are  grouped  on  the  walls  as  they 
were  in  life :  there  is  a  Queen  Anne  room  full 
of  poets  and  essayists,  in  turbans— Pope,  unex- 
pectedly discoyered  with  a  blue  eye  in  one 
portrait,  with  a  brown  in  a  second,  hanging  by 
its  side.  And  again  you  meet  in  company 
Byron  (in  an  Albanian  costume),  and  Keats 
and  Leigh  Hunt,  Ck>leridge  and  Southey  and 
Lamb— Lamb  attired  by  Hazlitt  in  a  Velas- 
quez  dresi  for  the  occasion,  looking  very  old- 
ma»terish  and  impressive.  And  there  is  a  lit- 
tle comer  where  Mrs.  Browning  in  ringlets, 
and  Gteorge  Eliot  with  hair  drawn  primly  down 
over  her  ears,  and  Christina  Rooetti  as  her 
brother  drew  her,  and  Miss  Strickland  in  vel- 
yet  and  pearlB,  as  were  proper  for  a  **  high- 
priestess,*'  as  Mrs.  Carlyle  called  her,  and  a 
round,  cheery  little  Miss  Mitford,  and  a  ma- 
tronly Hannah  More  hang  in  company— with 
the  women  writers;  sex  rather  than  time  being 
the  bond  of  relation. 

The  history  of  artists  is  as  amply  illustrated ; 
many  following  the  example  of  Dobson  and 
Walker  and  Hogarth,  and  painting  their  own 
portraits.  Among  them  you  may  see  Rey- 
nolds, an  ugly  youth,  shading  his  eyes  with 
his  hand ;  and  Benjamin  West,  as  handsome 
as  Gilbert  Stuart  could  make  him ;  and 
Barry,  inspired  by  his  own  face  as  he  never 
was  by  his  allegorical  and  symbolical  flights  ; 
and  Blake,  his  simplicity  of  character  appa- 
rently incomprehensible  to  Phillips,  the  Aca^ 
demician ;  and  Bonington,  in  high  stock,  the 
typical  youth  of  1880,  as  Delacroix  must  have 
known  him  in  the  days  when  they  shared  their 
studio.  But  how  go  through  the  list?  Or 
how,  without  making  a  new  catalogue,  record 
the  namee  of  all  the  actors  and  actresses 
whose  familiar  faces  look  down  from  these 
enchanted  walls?  How  record  the  endless 
succession  of  soldiers  and  sailors  and  states- 
men who  have  been  the  very  backbone  of 
England's  power  and  might?  They  are  al- 
most all  here— only  a  very  few  missing.  And 
there  is  not  a  portrait  that  is  not  labelled, 
names  and  dates  carefully  given  ;  sometimes, 
as  well,  a  quotation,  or  a  line,  of  one  kind  or 
another,  to  jog  the  sluggish  memory.  "It 
has  always  struck  me  that  historical  portrait 
galleries  far  transcend  in  worth  all  other 
kinds  of  national  collections  of  pictures  what- 
ever," Carlyle  told  Earl  Stanhope  in  the  first 
embryonic  days  of  the  Grallery.  Could  he  see 
it  now,  he  would  be  but  strengthened  in  his 
opinion.  London  possesses  no  more  interest- 
ing national  institution  than  the  Portrait 
Oallery  which  has  just  been  opened.      N.  N. 


THE   COMPLETE    "FAUST"    ON   THE 
GERMAN   STAGE. 

Wkimab,  AprU  7,  1896. 

**  Oft  wean  ea  ant  <Iareh  Jabre  darctagedranffea. 
Snohelnt  es  In  ▼oUendeter  Qestalu'' 

SLOWL.T  but  surely  the  great  dramatic  poem 


in  #hich  the  genius  of  Goethe  found  its  fullest 
expression  is  emerging  into  view  for  the  Ger- 
mans  in  its  "  finished  form " ;  and  this  pro- 
gress is  due  not  so  much  to  scholars  and  teach- 
ers, though  these  have  their  modest  share  in 
the  work,  as  to  the  theatres,  which  are  always 
the  most  potent  agency  for  the  popularization 
of  the  classics.  It  would  be  too  much  to  say, 
no  doubt,  that  the  Second  Part  of  **  Faust "  is 
likely  to  become  truly  popular  even  with  the 
help  of  the  stage,  but  people  are  at  any  rate 
becoming  accustomed  to  it.  Some  of  the  best 
theatres,  notably  that  of  Leipzig,  have  drop- 
ped on  principle  the  practice  of  giving  the 
First  Part  alone.  The  rendition  of  the  com- 
plete <*  Faust "  at  Weimar  has  become  a  regu- 
lar annual  festival.  The  Vienna  performances 
have  long  been  famous,  and  now,  since  last 
year,  Munich  has  a  new  adaptation  of  its  own. 
In  short,  the  work  has  been  played  so  often, 
in  so  many  places,  and  with  such  success,  that 
its  dramatic  availability,  within  the  limits  im- 
posed by  time  and  space  and  human  powers  of 
endurance  (behind  the  curtain  and  in  front  of 
it),  must  now  count  as  an  established  fact.  The 
interesting  question  is  no  longer,  Wlietber? 
but.  How? 

In  thus  doing  its  part  to  make  the  real 
"  Faust "  known  the  stage  is  atoning  for  its  own 
sins  and  for  sins  not  its  own.  For  many  years 
after  the  death  of  Goethe  the  Second  Part  was 
pretty  generally  held  to  be  poetically  worth- 
less. The  idea  prevailed  that  the  poet  had 
written  in  his  prime  a  sufficiently  complete 
tragedy,  of  wonderful  depth  and  power,  ending 
with  the  death  of  Orttohen;  and  that  then,  in 
bis  old  age,  when  his  poetic  powers  had  failed, 
he  had  unlucxily  tacked  on  the  Second  Part  as 
an  after-thought,  making  of  it  a  repository  of 
allegories,  crotchets,  and  mysticism  such  as 
could  only  torment  the  real  lover  of  poetry. 
It  was  not  very  surprising,  therefore,  that  the 
First  Part,  which  had  not  only  become  a  lite- 
rary classic,  but  had  begun  to  be  played  with 
success  before  the  completion  of  the  entire 
work,  should  go  on  its  course  as  a  successful 
stage- play  in  serene  disregard  of  its  late-bom 
complement.  To  play  it  alone  seemed  nofonly 
permissible,  but  actually  like  coming  to  the 
rescue  of  the  real  Goethe,  the  great  Goethe, 
against  his  own  senile  aberrations.  And  then 
the  composers  came  in  with  their  work.  Ber> 
lioz  did  not  scruple  to  appropriate  Gk>ethe's 
lines  for  a  radical  perversion  of  Goethe's  pur- 
pose—an artistic  Use-majeaU  which  musicians 
sometimes  still  try  to  condone.  Gounod  wrote 
his  famous  opera,  which  has  familiarized  my- 
riads in  all  parts  of  the  world  with  a  portion 
of  Gk>ethe's  plot,  but  is  nevertheless  a  mere 
travesty  of  Goethe,  though  matters  are  mend- 
ed somewhat  if  it  is  given,  as  it  mally  ought 
to  be,  under  the  name  of  "  Marguerite."  Thus 
the  whole  infiuence  of  the  stage  made  for  the 
dissemination  not  only  of  imperfect  but  of 
wrong  impressions  concerning  Goethe's  mas- 
terpiece. 

For  the  inevitable  e£Pect  of  giving  the  First 
Part  alone,  whether  as  play  or  opera,  is  to 
focus  attention  upon  the  love-story.  Oretchen 
becomes  the  real  centre  of  interest ;  and  as  for 
Faust^  one  hardly  knows  what  to  make  of  him. 
EUs  character  appears  detestable  in  spite  of 
the  Devil,  and  the  naive  mind  has  no  further 
use  for  him.  Perdition  seems  the  right  fate 
for  him  if  for  anybody.  One  is  driven  to  sur- 
mise that  the  poet  must  really  have  intended  a 
tragedy  of  sin  and  damnation  on  the  lines  of 
the  old  legend.  And  when  reminded  that  the 
Prologue  cannot  possibly  be  read  on  any  such 
supposition,  one  is  tempted  to  take  refuge  in 
the  theory  of  a  change  of  plan ;  the  theory 


that  the  poet  actually  started  his  hero  for  bell, 
and  then,  midway  in  his  course,  decided  (so  to 
speak)  to  reverse  engines  and  make  for  Para- 
dise under  the  flag  of  Pelagian  universalism. 
But  this  theory,  though  it  still  finds  occasional 
defenders,  is  to  my  mind  untenable  in  the 
light  of  present  knowledge.  No  one  can  teU 
definitely  snd  p6eitively  just  how  the  young 
Goethe  conceived  the  moral  of  the  tragedy 
which  be  was  destined  to  finish  after  a  lapse  of 
sixty  years;  but  it  is  very  certain  that  there 
was  no  damnation  in  bis  programme.  Perhaps 
there  was  no  salvation  either ;  for  be  liad  in- 
vented a  mythology  of  his  own  which  took  no 
account  of  the  traditionary  heaven  and  helL 
Fauat  was  thought  of  as  a  soaring  idealist 
driven  to  desperation  by  much  brooding  over 
human  limitations  and  the  general  badness  of 
life.  The  Devil  was  to  be  a  tormentor  who 
should  recommend  the  pleasures  of  time  and 
sense  as  an  antidote  for  intellectual  tronUes, 
knowing  full  well,  however,  that  bis  victfan 
would  never  be  satisfied.  Very  likely  theie 
was  no  question  of  a  mortgaged  soul ;  the  Devil 
was  to  get  his  reward  as  he  went  along. 
Fauatt  tragedy,  possibly,  was  to  be  the  uni- 
versal tragedy  of  death,  following  upon  a  par- 
ticularly energetic  quest  for  the  greatest  pos- 
sible fulness  of  life.  He  was  to  go  down  be- 
fore a  stronger  power— the  Power  that  bad 
decreed  man's  finitenees  and  mortality.  But 
that  he  was  to  go  down  morally,  turn  traitor 
to  his  better  nature,  and  fall  at  last  into  the 
clutches  of  the  mediseval  Devil— of  such  a  pur- 
pose there  is  no  clear  indication  from  first  to 
last. 

In  the  middle  portion  of  his  life,  without 
needing  to  modify  his  youthful  plan  radically, 
Gothe  determined  to  convert  the  old  theologi- 
cal  legend  of  sin  and  damnation  into  a  drama 
of  mental  dearing-up,  of  reconciliation  to  life 
through. life,  and  to  '*save"  his  hero  in  the 
ta*aditional  sense.  The  Faust  of  the  First  Bart 
was  now  conceived  as  a  wanderer  in  the  dark 
who  was  to  be  led  out  into  tiie  light.  This 
meant  a  Second  Part,  an  ascent  following  tiie 
descent.  We  know  now,  too,  that  the  idea  of 
this  Second  Part,  and  to  a  great  extent  also 
its  details  of  plot,  were  distinctly  present  to 
Goethe's  mind  during  the  years  in  which  the 
First  Part  was  receiving  the  form  in  which 
the  world  knows  it.  This  being  so,  one  sees  at 
once  that  any  representation  of  the  story 
which  ends  with  the  death  of  Oretehsn  is  not 
really  Gk>ethe's  *  *  Faust."  It  leaves  a  false  im- 
prestion,  except,  indeed,  as  the  spectator  men- 
tally corrects  what  he  sees  from  what  he  knows. 

But  this  consideration  would  have  to  count 
for  little  if  the  Second  Part  were  higlOy  ab- 
struse or  dramatically  weak.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  it  is  neither.  One  can  easily  find  fault 
with  its  occasional  long-windednesa,  its  man- 
nerisms  of  style,  its  now  and  then  tantalis- 
ing symbolism.  Still,  the  great  fact  remains 
that,  speaking  broadly,  the  matter  of  the  poem 
was  seen  with  wonderful  vividness  and  describ- 
ed with  superb  art.  Signs  of  decadent  poww 
are  obvious  only  in  a  portion  of  the  f  oorth  act, 
which  was  the  very  last  to  be  complied; 
elsewhere  there  is  not  a  weak  line  to  be  found, 
though  there  ts  some  curious  diction.  As  for 
the  abstruseness,  that  has  for  the  most  part 
been  read  into  it.  And  it  is  all  dramatic,  toa 
The  feasibiUtyof  playing  the  *•  Helwia"  was 
discussed  by  Goethe  in  1827  with  Eckermasa, 
who  had  remarked  that  the  piece  made  severs 
demands  upon  the  reader.  "  But  it  Is  all  sen- 
suous," (Joethe  answered,  "and  if  jonL^binkal 
it  as  acted  it  will  strike  Uie  eye  tefOttllf . 
More  I  have  not  intended.  Bnooghlfltepw^ 
ral  mass  of  spectators  flind  ] 


April  30,  1896] 


Tlie    !N"atioii. 


341 


Umj  tee;  the  bigher Import  wUl  not  eecftpe  the 
initiated."  What  Goethe  here  tayt  It  yaatlj 
Important  and  appliet  equally  to  the  other 
portiona.  It  is  all  tentuout,  meant  to  be  teen 
and  heard;  and  the  reader  who  bat  no  chance 
to  tee  and  bear  mott  rltoaliie  as  beet  he  can. 
The  tymbolitm  wUl  take  care  of  Itself  accord- 
ing to  the  degree  of  his  general  culture.  Thus 
the  stage  it  the  bctt  corrective  (next  to  com- 
mon sense)  for  those  vagaries  of  allegorical  and 
metaphysical  Interpretation  which  gave  the 
poem  in  an  early  day  |uoh  a  dubious  repute. 

It  was  perhaps  a  consequence  of  the  words 
just  quoted  that  Eckcrmaon,  shortly  after 
Goethe*s  death,  undertook  to  prepare  a  stage- 
adapUtion  of  the  Second  Part  alone.  Wish- 
fng  to  save  the  entire  seventy- five  hundred 
lines,  he  decided,  with  more  piety  than  practi- 
cal judgment,  to  distribute  them  over  three 
evenings.  In  due  time  he  sent  his  first  **  eve- 
ning," with  music  by  Eberwein,  to  several  pro- 
minent theatres,  all  of  which  declined  it.  It 
was  finally  played  at  Weimar  in  1850,  but  once 
was  enough.  Previous  to  this,  however,  name- 
ly in  18^  a  portion  of  the  Second  Part  was 
produced  suooeasfully  at  Dresden  under  the 
name  of  **The  Rape  of  Helena."  The  piece 
was  the  work  of  Karl  Outskow,  who  put  to- 
gether parts  of  the  first,  second,  and  third  acts 
and  made  up  a  kind  of  semi-independent  **phan 
tasmagory,**  such  at  Goethe  himself  had  at  one 
time  thought  of.  This  was  not  '*  Faust,"  but 
it  was  a  beginning  which  showed  that  Goethe 
had  tMen  quite  right  in  supposing  that  his  work 
would  **  please  the  eye."  About  the  middle  of 
the  fiftiee,  accordingly,  the  Second  Part  was 
laid  hold  of  by  a  Hamburg  man,  WoUheim  da 
Fooaeca,  with  a  view  to  exploiting  it  for  stage- 
effects.  He  not  only  cut  the  text  unmercifully, 
which  is  allowable  and  even  necessary,  but  he 
added  much  matter  of  his  own,  amalgamated 
the  characten  of  Homtmoulua  and  Euphorionj 
made  Helma  the  ghost  of  Qrttehmi^  et  cetera. 
In  shOTt,  like  the  reoent  London  ballet  of 
**  Faust,"  this  adaptation  made  no  pretence  of 
fidelity  to  Gk>etbe;  but  it  was  given  with  sue- 
osas  at  Hamburg,  independently  of  the  First 
Flart,  and  was  afterwards  repeated  in  several 
other  places. 

Tbe  first  attampt  to  play  the  whole  **  Faust" 
in  a  spirit  of  decent  loyalty  to  Goethe's  plan 
was  made  at  Weimar  in  1875  by  the  late  Otto 
Devrlent,  who  arranged  the  poem  as  a  medie- 
val **  mystery  in  two  days'  works."  The  first 
performanoe  was  a  great  success,  and  Dev- 
rieof  s  adaptation  has  since  been  given  in  many 
places.  It  is  still  regularly  used  at  Leipsig 
and  Weimar,  though  with  many  deviations 
from  the  printed  book.  The  three-storied  mys- 
tery-stage never  really  existed,  but  was  invent- 
ed by  the  elder  Devrlent  to  obviate  the  evil  of 
frequent  and  tediona  changes  of  scene  behind 
tbe  curtain.  In  the  odddle  of  the  stage  and 
soflMwIiatback,  one  sees  a  raised  arch  with  a 
hole  underneath.  This  hole  Is  **  hell,"  Its  cha- 
racter  being  suggested  by  a  series  of  black  dra- 
gons and  chimeras  drawn  against  a  fiery  back- 
gronnd  and  revolving  for  a  while  In  an  endless 
chain.  On  either  side  is  a  low  fiight  of  steps 
leading  to  a  second  story,  which  is  **  earth," 
while  a  third  story  farther  back  represents 
"heaven."  In  the  Prologue,  Jfsf>Aif(opAe{ss 
emerges  from  the  hole  and  lounges  on  the  steps 
while  talking  in  preeenoe  of  the  angels  with 
the  Lord  in  **  heaven."  In  the  performancee 
I  have  seen,  the  Lord  was  invisible  behind 
**olouds,"  but  on  tbe  mystery-stage,  at  any 
rate,  he  should  appear  to  the  eye  In  the  guise 
of  an  old  man— the  Ancient  of  Days.  Bo,  too, 
tbe  archangels'  parts  were  sung  by  women, 
bat  they  ought  to  be  spoken  by  men.    In  the 


further  course  of  tbe  action,  where  no  heaven 
or  hell,  but  very  much  earth,  is  required,  Dev- 
rient^s  three  stories  are  utilised  In  various 
ways— conveniently  for  tbe  stage-director,  but 
In  a  manner  destructive  of  all  illusion.  In  view 
of  recent  progress  in  the  art  of  "open  trans- 
formation," as  the  Germans  call  it,  the  mys 
tery-stage  seems  hardly  worth  keeping.  It 
costs  more  than  It  comes  to,  and  Goethe,  at 
any  rate,  had  nothing  of  the  kind  in  view. 

Devrient's  Tersiou  gives  the  First  Part  very 
completely,  cutting  judiciously  here  and  there, 
but  omitting  nothing  except  the  irrelevant 
Intermesso.  This  makes  a  performance  more 
than  five  hours'  long,  which  is  rather  too  much 
of  a  good  thing.  At  Leipzig  this  time  was 
shortened  a  little  by  omitting  tbe  Walpurgis- 
Nlght,  but  it  would  be  much  better  to  sacri- 
flee  the  Prelude,  which  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  play  and  sounds  like  a  school  exercise  in 
declamation.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Second 
Part  is  reduced  by  free  cutting  to  about  four 
hours  and  a  half.  The  superb  opening  scene- 
sunrise  in  the  Alps— produces  a  fine  effect  on 
the  stage,  though  not  so  fine  as  one  might  be 
led  to  expect  from  its  matchless  literary 
charm.  The  fairy-choruses  become,  of  course, 
a  ballet.  The  Urxa  rima  does  not  declaim 
easily,  and  the  deep  pregnancy  of  the  lines  is 
easily  marred  by  an  inadequate  Faust,  Tbe 
first  scene  at  the  Bmperor*s  court  takes  but 
moderately  weU.  The  masquerade  becomes  a 
short,  bisarre  spectacle,  with  much  panto- 
mime, leading  up  quickly  to  the  Emperor's 
signature  of  the  wonder-working  greenback. 
The  paper-money  scene,  to  the  reader  a  price- 
lees  bit  of  satire,  Is  distinctly  weak  on  the 
stage,  but  Faust's  deeeent  to  the  realm  of  the 
Mothers  and  the  subsequent  evocation  of  Paris 
and  Helena  call  out  strong  applause.  The 
Baccalaureus  scene  Is  a  little  leas  effective  than 
its  pendant  in  the  First  Part,  but  the  scene  in 
Wagfier's  laboratory  quickly  restores  interest 
Homunoulus  comes  into  being,  under  Mephis- 
t&s  passes,  as  a  tiny  human  figure  in  a  large 
glass  jar  which  is  carried  about  the  stage  by 
the  Devil.  The  figure  is  made  luminous  by  a 
fine  electric  wire,  and  its  voice  proceeds  from 
an  invisible  Fr&uleln.  The  motley  army  of 
daasical  spooks  which  Goethe  conjures  up  for 
the  Walpurgis-Nlght  is  reduced  to  a  matter 
of  Sphinxes,  GrifiOns,  Sirens,  and  Phorkyads ; 
theae  last  being  conveniently  housed  in  '*  hell." 
The  festival  in  the  Aegean  Sea  la  omitted. 
Faust  gett  quickly  to  the  temple  of  Manto 
without  the  aid  of  a  visible  Centaur,  Mephis- 
tcpheles  borrowt  the  guise  of  a  Phorkyad, 
.and  a  sudden  open  transformation  brings  on 
Helena  and  her  Trojan  maidens.  The  classl- 
oal  portion  of  the  third  act  is  greatly  con- 
densed,  but,  after  the  magic  shifting  of  the 
scene  to  FausVs  casUe,  the  text  is  given  much 
more  fully.  The  love- idyl  in  Arcadia  is  pic- 
turesque rather  than  dramatic,  but  the  Eu- 
phofHon  scene  is  both  In  a  high  degree,  and, 
when  well  given,  takes  the  house  by  storm.  In 
the  fourth  act  we  are  brought  very  soon  to 
Fdusl^s  grand  scheme  of  dyke-building.  The 
battle  Is  quickly  disposed  of,  and  we  see  the 
formal  bestowal  upon  Faust  of  his  swampy 
fief  by  the  sea.  The  fifth  act  easily  surpasses 
all  that  precedes  in  dramatic  interest  Tbe 
warder's  song  from  his  tower,  the  burning  cot- 
tage, FausVs  defiance  of  Dame  Care,  his  final 
burst  of  energy,  his  death,  the  digging  of  his 
grave  by  the  Lemurs,  the  battle  of  tbe  devils 
and  the  angels  for  the  possession  of  Us  soul— all 
these  form  a  series  of  pictures  which  any  lover 
of  the  poem  may  well  wish  to  see  with  the 
bodily  eye.  Once  seen  they  are  not  soon  for- 
gotten.   On  the  other  hand,  the  final  apotheo- 


sis presents  a  problem  which  tbe  sttge  can 
solve  at  best  but  very  im perfectly.  The  sacred 
mount  and  the  holy  anchorites  are  omitted, 
and  we  are  brought  directly  to  ** heaven,"  with 
the  ICater  Glorioea  on  the  throne.  But  the 
play  ends  weakly  in  comparison  with  the 
book.  The  modem  adult  finds  it  hard  to  take 
a  stage  heaven  naively. 

The  success  of  the  first  Weimar  performances 
was  such  that  the  staging  of  the  complete 
"Faust"  at  once  became  a  practical  problem 
for  the  managers.  Some  of  them,  averse  to 
the  mystery. stage,  went  back  for  the  Second 
Part  to  the  Hamburg  adaptation  of  Fonseca. 
This  was  revived  in  various  cities,  notably  in 
Dresden,  where,  in  a  greatly  improved  form, 
it  is  still  made  use  of  at  the  Court  Theatre.  In 
other  places  experiments  were  made  on  the 
line  of  maximum  fidelity  to  Goethe's  text  This 
principle  was  carried  farthest  at  Hanover, 
where  the  play  was  spread  over  four  evenings; 
and  at  Mannheim,  where  the  performance 
lasted  until  two  o'clock  in  tbe  morning.  These 
experiments  proved  ephemeral.  Quite  different 
was  the  case,  however,  with  the  new  adapta- 
tion brought  out  by  Adolf  Wilbrandt  in  1883 
at  the  Burgtheater  in  Vienna.  This  achieved 
a  memorable  success,  maintained  itself  in  popu- 
lar favor,  and  has  lately  appeared  in  book  form 
with  an  excellent  preface  by  the  **  author," 
himself  a  well-known  dramatic  poet  Aside 
from  his  discarding  of  the  mystery-stage,  Wil- 
brandt differs  most  radically  from  Devrlent  in 
that  he  takes  three  evenings  for  tbe  play.  The 
first  ends  with  the  rejuvenation  of  Faust,  the 
second  comprises  the  love  tragedy,  and  tbe 
third  is  devoted  to  the  Second  Part.  In  this 
arrangement  the  First  Part  is  given  very  fully, 
even  the  lyrical  dedication  being  included;  but 
the  Second  Part  is  reduced  very  much  as  by 
Devrlent,  though  with  manifold  differences  in 
scenic  details.  But,  in  spite  of  Wilbrandt's 
undeniable  success,  there  are  serious  objections 
to  tbe  bisection  of  the  First  Part.  **  Faust "  is 
not  a  trilogy,  and  ought  to  be  played  in  two 
evenings.  Experience  has  shown,  moreover, 
that  it  ean  be  played  in  two  evenings  of  tolera- 
ble length  without  sacrificing  anything  really 
essential  to  Ck>ethe's  plot.  It  is  not  a  case  for 
worship  of  the  letter.  This  view,  which  seems 
to  be  taken  by  most  of  the  German  critics,  has 
lately  been  carried  into  effect  at  Munich  in  a 
new  adaptation  by  Possart  This  was  produced 
about  a  year  ago  and  received  with  prodigious 
enthusiasm.  It  has  since  been  repeated,  and 
bids  fair  to  become  a  permanent  attraction  of 
the  Munich  Court  Theatre. 

This  review  will  suffice,  though  I  might  offer 
more  evidence  of  a  similar  character,  to  justify 
the  statement  with  which  I  set  out.  There 
are  no  longer  people  who  think  that  the  com- 
plete ** Faust"  cannot  be  played,  though  there 
are  thoee  who  think  It  ought  not  to  be  played. 
These  delight  in  raising  the  cynical  query  how 
far,  after  all,  that  "higher  Import"  of  which 
Goethe  speaks  really  oomes  home  to  an  average 
audience  in  the  theatre.  All  one  can  say  on 
this  subject  is  that  everything  depends  on  the 
preparation  the  spectator  brings  with  him. 
No  doubt  many  of  Goethe's  lines  are  too  subtle^ 
too  deeply  charged  with  experienoe,  with  his- 
tory, with  criticism  of  life,  to  be  instantly 
grasped  by  the  casual  playgoer.  The  Ideas, 
and  the  connection  of  ideas,  will  often  be 
Greek  to  him  because  they  correspond  to  no- 
thing within  his  range  of  experience.  But 
then  that  is  true  of  all  great  plays.  The  thea- 
tre does  enough,  and  does  much,  if  it  provides 
foi' people  of  some  refinement  a  steady  and  ele- 
vating enjoyment  of  what  they  see  and  hear. 
And  this  is  possible  if  the  general  drift  of  the 


34^ 


Tlie   [tTation* 


[Vol  62,  No.  1609 


play  is  clear  as  it  proceeds.  He  who  would 
understand  tbe  great  poets  thoroughly  must 
e*en  study  and  grow  older. 

Calvin  Thomas. 


Correspondence. 


"NAKED  BED." 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation  : 

Sir:  This  expression,  which  was  common, 
for  centuries,  in  seemingly  hypallatic  construc- 
tions, which  occurs  in  Shakespeare,  and  which 
is  abundantly  illustrated  by  gloesarists,  I  ad- 
verted to,  incidentally,  in  your  1,508th  number. 
From  my  store  of  quotations  for  it  I  select,  as 
follows,  a  few  that  are,  comparatively,  of  late 
date: 

**  My  love  .  .  .  suddenly  leapt  out  of  his 
naked  6ed."  Anon.,  Gloria  ana  Narcissus 
(1653),  Vol.  I.,  p.  174. 

"In  the  Interim  he  was  forced  to  support  his 
Weak  Body  with  a  Stick;  Or  else  he  would  sit 
in  a  Chair,  but  very  rarely  come  into  his  ^aked 
Bed :  Only  be  kept  himself  in  his  Cloths,  with 
his  Head  upright."  Sir  Roger  L'Estrange, 
Twenty  Select  Colloquies  of  Erasmus  (1680),  p. 
178. 

**Tet  she  never  scrupled  to  oblige  him  so 
far  as  to  undress  and  go  even  into  tne  naked 
Bed  with  him  once  every  week."  Anon.,  The 
Adventures  of  Rivella  (1714).  p.  49. 

"This  young  lady  went  into  naked  bed  in 
her  cabbin."  **  She  protested  she  would  never 
go  into  naked  bed,  on  board  ship,  again.'* 
Thomas  Araory,  Life  of  John  Buncle  (17&--66), 
Vol.  I.,  pp.  94,  95  (ed.  1770). 

To  come  into  naked  6ed,  for  instance,  de 
notes,  as  all  students  of  English  should  be 
aware,  ''to  come  naked  into  bed" ;  it  having 
formerly  been  long  the  custom,  more  or  less, 
to  sleep  without  a  night-dress.  And  even  now 
this  way  of  speaking  survives  in  Scotland,  if 
not  likewise  in  Yorkshire.  Aged  people  about 
me,  here  in  Suffolk,  all  remember  it  as  having 
been  current  in  their  younger  days. 

One  cannot  but  suppose  that  in  naked  bed 
must  have  been  understood,  at  any  time  in  a 
good  number  of  bygone  generations,  in  a  sense 
different  from  that  which  it  bore  when  first 
introduced.  Unquestionably  it  was  owiog  to 
mere  thoughtless  parrotry  that  it  was  retain- 
ed, after  the  fashion  of  sleeping  nude  was  giv- 
en  up,  to  mean,  with  reference  to  the  wearer 
of  a  night  dress,  simply  "  in  bed."  Such  being 
the  case,  it  furnishes  an  example,  in  linguis- 
tics, of  a  tradition  whose  origin  and  import 
have  been  forgotten.  Its  use  on  Cape  Cod, 
mentioned  by  your  correspondent  "  P.,"  in  re- 
stricted  connection  with  a  person  confined  to 
his  bed  by  illness,  as  in  **he  is  sick  in  bis 
naked  bed,^*  is  a  noteworthy  and  interesting 
local  Americanism. 

*•  His  coward  lips  did  from  their  colour  fiy." 
Here  Shakespeare  hypaliagizes.  Only  when 
inspected  superficially,  however,  is  there  hy- 
pallage  in  the  phrases  spoken  of  above. 
Naked  bed  is  there  really  a  compound,  and  of 
the  same  class  as  sick-bed^  sick^roomy  blind 
asylum,  mad-doctor,  poor-house.  In  technical 
language,  it  is  a  combination  expressing  at- 
tributive relation,  and  should,  for  distinction, 
be  changed  to  naked-bed. 

Tempest,  which,  also,  according  to  **  P.,"  is 
synonymous,  on  Cape  Cod,  with  "  thunder- 
storm,"  has  the  same  signification  throughout 
East  Anglia.  p^  q^ 

M A«LKSFou>.  EMoraRD.  April  16. 189e. 


Notes. 


The  following  are  among  the  most  recent  an- 


nouncements  of  Macmillan  &  Co.:  *  Women 
in  English  Life,  from  MedisBval  to  Modem 
Times,'  by  Georgiana  Hill;  *The  Education  of 
Children  at  Rome,'  by  George  Clarke,  Ph.D.; 
and  *  Outlines  of  Economic  Theory,'  by  Her- 
bert  J.  Davenport. 

An  active  lieutenant  of  O'Connell's  is  com- 
memorated in  a  work  which  T.  Fisher  Unwin, 
London,  has  in  press:  *A  Life  Spent  for  Ire- 
land :  Leaves  from  the  Diary  of  W.  J.  O'Neill 
Daunt,'  edited  by  his  daughter,  with  a  preface 
by  Mr.  Lecky.  Mr.  Unwin  will  further  bring 
out  'Bohemia,'  by  C.  E.  Maurice,  in  the 
** Story  of  the  Nations"  seHes ;  *The  Afri- 
cander,' by  E.  Clairmonte ;  and  Qaston  Bois- 
sier's  'The  Country  of  Horace  and  Virgil,' 
translated  by  D.  Havelock  Fisher. 

A  fresh  batch  of  reprints  may  fitly  lead  off 
with  the  Murray-Putnam  edition  of  G^rge 
Sorrow's  *  Bible  in  Spain,'  in  two  volumes  of 
liberal  typography,  which  follow  close  in  time 
upon  Macmillan's  reissue  of  *  Lavengro.'  The 
title  fairly  masks  a  stirring  tale  of  travel  and 
adventure  which  must  ever  interest  the  read- 
ing public  in  the  eccentric  author.  A  late  his- 
torian of  Spain,  Ulick  Ralph  Burke,  supplied 
for  this  edition  what  he  did  not  live  to  see  in 
type,  viz.,  a  very  useful  sketch  of  the  political 
evolution  of  Spain  after  the  Napoleonic  wars 
and  down  to  the  time  of  Borrow's  first  visit 
in  1835,  together  with  abundant  notes,  his- 
torical, geographical,  and  illustrative— the  last 
much  needed  for  an  allusive  writer.  An  itine- 
rary, maps,  and  several  photogravures  and 
etchings  of  landscape  and  architecture  com- 
plete the  thoroughly  good  workmanship  of  this 
edition. 

More  showy  than  the  foregoing  are  volumes 
iii.  and  iv.  of  the  translation  of  Barras's  '  Me- 
moirs'  (Harpers),  of  which  we  need  say  no- 
thing except  that  they  contain  an  index  to  the 
entire  work.  After  making  acquaintance  with 
this  writer  in  the  first  two  volumes,  one  has 
little  disposition  either  to  trust  or  to  read  him 
further.  The  translator  cannot  be  accused  of 
making  him  attractive  by  a  readable,  idiomatic 
version.  He  slavishly  follows  the  French  even 
to  the  habit  of  the  tenses,  and  Is  quite  de- 
void of  ease  or  skill.  But  whoever  owns  the 
first  half  of  this  work  will  want  the  conclu- 
sion. 

The  translation  of  the  correspondence  be- 
tween Renan  and  his  sister  Henriette,  of  which 
our  readers  have  already  had  an  account,  has 
fallen  to  Lady  Mary  Loyd  (*  Brother  and  Sis- 
ter,'  Macmillan).  It  may  be  read  with  plea- 
sure. The  print  is  excellent,  and  there  are  por- 
traits of  the  author  and  of  the  subject  of  tbe 
Memoir  which  precedes  the  letters. 

From  the  same  house  we  have  the  third 
volume  of  Bj5rnson*s  novels,  *  A  Happy  Boy,' 
and  a  charming  little  volume  composed  of 
*  Sir  Thomas  Browne's  Hydriotaphia  and  the 
G^den  of  Cyprus.'  The  editor  in  this  case 
is  the  late  W.  A.  Greenhill,  M.D.,  whose  con- 
scientious labor  on  behalf  of  a  brother  physi- 
cian has  established  an  improved  text,  while 
supplying  notes,  indexes,  glossary,  and  biblio- 
graphy.  A  plate  of  burial  urns  and  two  title- 
page  facsimiles  are  among  the  ornaments  of 
this  classical  pocket  companion. 

The  widow  of  Prof.  Tyndall  has  very  advis- 
edly consented  to  a  reissue  of  '  The  Glaciers  of 
the  Alps,'  which  is  still  in  request  after  thirty- 
six  years,  though  long  out  of  print.  It  is 
handsomely  {M^esented  by  the  Longmans. 

A  fresh  lease  has  just  been  given  to  Prof. 
Barrett  Wendell's  novels  *  The  Duchees  Emilia' 
and  *Rankell's  Remains,'  by  Charles  Scrib- 
ner's  Sons,  who  have  succeeded  to  the  Boston 
publishers  of  a  decade  ago. 


There  is  some  invention  in  Albert  Lee's 
'Tommy  Toddles'  (Harpers),  in  the  vein  of 
'Alice  in  Wonderland,'  but  the  punning  is 
flat  and  meant  for  the  gallery  of  elders,  tbe 
verse  intolerable;  and  the  misuse  of  shdll  and 
vfiU  alone  should  rule  the  book  out  for  chil- 
dren. So  we  have  praise  only  for  Mr.  Peter 
Newell's  illustrations,  at  once  original  and 
humorous,  with  here  and  there  a  decorative 
stroke  of  no  mean  quality.  Collectors  have 
long  since  marked  this  artist's  productions  for 
preservation. 

Brief  genealogies  of  three  related  families  of 
Hassam,  Hilton,  and  Cheever  have  been  bound 
together  for  private  distribution  by  the  author, 
Mr.  John  T.  Hassam  of  Boston.  In  an  earlier 
monograph  on  *Ezekiel  Cheever  and  Borne  of 
his  Descendants,'  Mr.  Hassam  had  proved  that 
this  famous  old  nuuiter  of  the  Boston  Latin 
School  was  not  the  author  of  portions,  at  least, 
of  a  MS.  book  of  Latin  and  Greek  verse  depo- 
sited as  his  composition,  by  one  of  his  uncriti. 
oal  descendants,  in  the  Boston  AthensBum.  He 
now  revolts  to  the  subject  in  the  present  vol- 
ume, reprinting  the  MS.,  and  adducing  other 
sources  from  which  the  collection  was  derived. 
Moreover,  the  handwriting  is  not  Cheever's. 
Probably  no  item  of  the  contents  proceeded 
from  his  muse. 

Burdett's  « Official  IntelUgenoe'  for  18Q6 
(London:  Spottiswoode  ^  Co.),  a  stout  volume 
of  2,180  pages,  contains  a  mass  of  thoroughly 
compiled  and  arranged  information  on  all  se- 
curities dealt  in  upon  the  London  Stock  Ex- 
change, including  Government  stocks,  home, 
colonial,  European  and  American  enterprises 
of  all  kinds,  and  notably  mining,  prospecting, 
industrial,  and  general  promoting  companies. 
Its  notices  comprise  the  history,  capitalliation, 
revenue  statements,  and  lists  of  directors  of 
the  several  concerns.  The  whole  is  arranged 
in  proper  alphabetical  order.  As  usual,  Mr. 
Henry  C.  Burdett,  Secretary  to  the  share 
and  loan  committee  of  the  London  Stock  Ex- 
change, has  had  the  oversight  of  this  laborious 
publication,  which  is  issued  under  the  official 
sanction  of  the  Stock  Exchange  committee. 
We  can  but  announce  its  appearance:  the  fact 
that  it  is  now  in  its  fourteenth  year  shows  the 
estimation  in  which  it  is  held  in  all  financial 
circles. 

Velhagen  ^  Klassig  (Leipzig),  whose  excel- 
lent popular  yet  scholarly  books  have  done  so 
much  tovFards  making  the  German  people  ac- 
quainted with  what  Is  best  in  literatui^  his- 
tory, and  art,  have  now  begun  a  general  his- 
tory of  art.  It  is  to  be  published  under  tbe 
direction  of  Dr.  H.  Knaokfuss,  author  of  th^ 
widely  circulated  '  Deutsche  Kunstgeschichte,' 
and  editor  of  their  series  of  "  Kiinstlermono- 
graphien."  The  first  volume,  however,  has 
been  prepared  by  Prof.  Max  Georg  Zimmer- 
mann,  and  is  devoted  to  the  art  of  antiquity 
and  of  the  middle  ages.  After  some  introduc- 
tory chapters  on  art  in  the  Eastern  countries 
and  on  the  beginnings  in  Southern  Europe, 
there  is  presented  a  brief  and  clear  history  of 
Greek  and  Roman  art  in  all  departments.  In 
describing  the  art  of  the  middle  ages,  the  dis- 
cussion is  confined  to  the  architecture,  sculp- 
ture, and  painting  of  the  countries  of  Western 
Europe.  The  second  volume  will  be  devoted 
to  Gothic  and  Renaissance  art^  and  the  third 
to  the  late  Renaissance,  Rococo,  and  Modem 
art.  The  numerous  illustrations  of  the  parts 
already  published  (in  IMfwwng  fashion)  are 
for  the  most  part  half-tone  cuts  from  photo- 
graphs of  originals,  and  are  in  every  way  as 
nearly  perfect  as  it  is  possible  to  make  thaoL 
In  the  complete  w<vk  there  will  be  aboat  000 
illustrations.    The  iMrice»  twenty-four  1 


April  30,  1896] 


The   N"ation. 


348 


will  doubtlaM  allow  the  book  to  find  its  waj 
into  large  numbert  of  oultored  homes. 

Kt&rschQer*s  ^DeatMsherLitteratur-Ealender* 
for  1806  is  some  four  weeks  later  than  ustial. 
It  still  oontiiiaes  to  grow,  this  Tolume  contain- 
ing  100  more  pages  than  the  one  for  1894.  Two 
good  portraits  serve  as  frontispieces :  Ger- 
hard Hanptmann,  whose  production  of  1805, 
**  Florian  Oejer/*  met  with  something  of  a 
fiasco  when  first  presented  in  Berlin,  but  after 
reTision  and  copious  cutting  down,  has  since 
won  success;  and  Frau  Sophie  Junghans,  whose 
oontribution  to  the  literature  of  1895  is  the  no- 
Tel  *  Qeschieden.*  The  first  section,  describing 
new  laws,  or  changes  in  laws,  relating  to  lite- 
rary productions  in  Germany,  Austria,  and 
Switserland,  is  very  short  and  shows  that  few 
changes  bsTs  been  made.  Section  iy.  gives  a 
deecription  of  the  Schiller,  Grillparser,  and 
Bern  prizes,  and  the  conditions  under  which 
the  prises  are  awarded.  After  the  alphabeti- 
cal list  of  contemporary  German  writers  come, 
as  if  appendices,  a  list  of  German  publish- 
ers, with  the  kinds  of  work  each  one  is  best  pre- 
pared for ;  a  list  of  periodicals,  with  a  descrip- 
tion of  each  and  the  principal  names  on  the 
editorial  staff  of  each;  a  list  of  theatres,  with 
the  names  and  generally  the  addresses  of  the 
skanagers;  a  list  of  some  of  the  leading  firms 
engaged  In  the  technical  work  of  bookmak- 
ing,  engraving,  etc.,  etc 

A  somewhat  similar  undertaking  of  Dr. 
KilrsohDer's,  one  upon  which  he  has  been  work- 
ing tince  1888,  and  the  first  volume  of  which 
is  now  announced  for  the  present  year,  is  his 
'Handbuch  der  Deutschen  Presse.'  His  pur- 
pose  is  to  make  a  reliable  encydopsedia  of 
German  periodical  literature,  containing  in- 
formation  about  erery  German  paper  in  the 
world 'and  its  personnel.  The  book  is  being 
prepared  under  five  general  divisions. 

The  sad  and  erentf  nl  career  of  a  German  pa- 
triot and  poet  of  the  eighteenth  century  has 
been  recalled  by  the  recent  unveiling  at  Teplitz 
of  a  monument  to  Johann  Gk>ttfried  Seume. 
The  oration  which  was  delivered  on  that  occa- 
sion by  Prof.  Sauer  of  Prague,  the  editor  of 
Eupharian,  has  Just  reached  this  country.  A 
passionate  lover  of  freedom,  Seume  was  yet 
obliged  to  fight  for  two  ye^rs  in  a  Hessian  regi- 
ment under  English  command  against  the  ar- 
mies of  American  independence;  subsequently, 
in  the  Rusrian  military  service,  he  was  preeent 
at  the  massacre  in  Warsaw  in  1794;  and  finally 
be  witnesMd  the  complete  degradation  of  his 
own  native  land.  He  died  in  1810  before  the 
beginning  of  the  wars  for  freedom.  In  8enme*s 
rugged  character  were  combined  ardent  pa- 
triotism, religious  atheism,  ascetic  morality, 
and  healthy  humor  with  the  temperamental 
melancholy  of  Toung  and  Gray,  which,  as 
Prof.  Sauer  points  out,  was  rery  different  from 
the  blas^  WBUMchmert  of  a  later  time.  Depre- 
cating the  ** century  of  paper,*'  he  nevertheless 
flQed  several  volumes  with  his  own  writings. 
His  graphic  account  of  a  nine  months'  tramp 
to  Syracuse  survives,  and  two  lines  from  his 
poem,  **  Die  Gesaenge,"  are  familiar  to  thou- 
sands who  never  heard  his  name: 

**  Wo  men  stncvt,  Um  dich  rnblg  Bloder. 
BiJfewlohter  bsbeo  kelB*  Ueder.** 


The  Quarterly  Statement  of  the  Palestine 
Exploration  Fund  for  April,  in  addition  to  the 
regular  reports  of  the  excavations  at  Jerusa 
tain,  has  an  account  of  an  interesting  Latin 
Inscription  recently  found  in  that  city.  As 
dacipbered  by  Canon  Dalton,  it  appears  to  be 
a  votive  Inscription,  set  up  about  the  year  117 
▲.  D.,  by  a  vexiUariuM^  or  standard-bearer, 
of  the  8d  legion  to  Jupiter  Serapis  for  the 
baalth  or  victory  of  the  Emperor  Trajan  and 


the  Roman  people.  There  is  also  a  short  de- 
scription of  some  Bible  coins  found  in  Pales- 
tine, and  a  plea  for  the  exploration  of  the 
plateau  of  Et-Tih,  to  the  north  of  the  Sinaitic 
peninsula,  with  a  view  to  establishing  the 
route  of  the  Exodus  and  the  mountain  from 
which  the  law  was  given.  This,  the  writer 
suggests,  was  not  the  traditional  Sinai,  but 
may  have  been  Jebel  Meleg,  a  mountain  of 
most  impressive  dimensions,  lying  half-way 
between  Ismailia  and  Kadesh. 

The  opening  article  in  the  Oeographical 
Journal  for  April  is  a  plea,  by  Dr.  R.  H.  Mill, 
for  the  preparation  of  a  geographical  descrip- 
tion of  the  Britiih  Islands  based  on  the  Ord- 
nance Survey.  This  is  followed  by  a  sober 
but  encouraging  account  of  the  resources  of 
British  Central  Africa,  by  Alfred  Sharpe.  He 
is  eepecially  hopeful  in  regard  to  the  future  of 
the  negro.  As  the  sale  of  **gin,  guns,  and 
gunpowder  ^  is  prohibited  in  the  greater  part 
of  the  territory,  the  negro  has  not  deteriorated 
through  his  contact  with  the  white  man,  and 
his  condition  has  distinctly  improved.  The 
unskilled  laborer  in  the  coffee  plantation  soon 
learns  skilled  work,  **such  as  carpentry,  ttna- 
ber-sawing,  brick- burning  and  moulding, 
bricklaying,  overseeing,  bullock  driving,  etc." 
An  African  had  the  sole  charge  of  the  tele- 
graph ofSce  at  Blantyre,  while  others  at  this 
station  owned  land,  paid  their  taxes  in  cash, 
and  had  bank  accounts.  Col.  Holdich  contri- 
butes  some  notes  on  the  ancient  and  mediaeval 
history  and  geography  of  ICakran,  the  most 
southern  district  of  southwestern  Baluchistan, 
and  Mr.  J.  Ainsworth  describes  a  journey  in 
British  East  Africa.  Both  these  articles  are 
accompanied  by  maps. 

The  industrial  and  commercial  development 
of  Japan  is  the  subject  of  an  interesting  paper 
in  the  ScottUh  Oeographical  Magazine  for 
April,  by  Mr.  J.  Troup,  British  consul  at  Yo- 
kohama. Notwithstanding  the  extraordinary 
growth  of  her  foreign  commerce  and  of  every 
kind  of  industry,  shown  by  a  mass  of  figures 
and  facts,  he  does  not  fear  Japan's  competi- 
tion with  the  Weet,  as  some  writers  have  done. 
The  great  discrepancy  between  the  rate  of 
wages  is  already  diminishing  with  the  increased 
price  of  food,  and  the  dearth  of  labor  occa- 
sioned by  the  war  is  apparently  '*  becoming 
accentuated  by  emigration  to  Formosa."  The 
other  articles  are  upon  Venesuela  and  the 
''shotta"  of  northern  Africa. 

The  disastrous  ice-fall  that  occurred  on  the 
slopes  of  the  Gemmi  pass  in  Switserland  last 
September  has  lately  been  reported  on  in  con- 
siderable detail  by  Heim  of  Zurich,  who  has 
made  a  special  study  of  avalanches,  land, 
slides,  and  other  catastrophes  to  which  vigor- 
ous young  mountain  ranges  are  subject.  In 
this  instance,  a  great  sheet  of  ice,  detached 
from  the  lower  end  of  an  elevated  glacier  of 
the  second  order,  rushed  down  the  mountain- 
side, sped  across  the  valley  at  its  foot,  and  in 
part  swiftly  fiowcd  up  the  opposite  slope,  then 
falling  back  like  a  wave  from  a  steep  shore. 
A  destructive  blast  of  wind  was  produced  b^ 
the  air  outrushing  from  beneath  the  falling 
mass ;  thus  a  considerable  space  was  laid  waste 
on  all  sides,  and  even  large  forest  trees  were 
overtnmed.  The  report  is  published  as  a  New 
Tear's  issue  by  the  Naturforschende  Gesell- 
schaft  of  Zurich,  and  is  well  illustrated. 

No  controversy  in  the  history  of  art  has 
recently  been  more  bitter  than  that  concern- 
ing Raphael's  artistic  origin.  Those  who  up 
held  his  derivation  from  Perugino  have  based 
themselves  largely  on  the  belief,  hitherto  un- 
assailed,  that  Raphael's  **  Sposalixio,"  now  in 
the  Brara,  was  a  doee  copy  of  a  famous  altar- 


piece  once  in  the  Cathedral  of  Perugia,  but 
for  the  last  eighty  years  the  chief  pride  of 
Caen  in  Normandy  —  a  work  hitherto  con- 
sidered an  undoubted  Perugino,  and,  as  such, 
held  to  be  one  of  the  important  national  pos- 
sessions of  France.  In  the  April  number  of 
the  Oazette  dea  Beauao-ArtB,  Mr.  Bemhard 
Berenson  maintains  that  the  Caen  **  Sposa- 
lixio"  was  not  painted  by  Raphael  at  all,  but 
that  its  real  author  was  his  second-rate  fellow- 
pupH,  Giovanni  Lo  Spagna,  and  that  the  Caen 
altar-piece,  far  from  having  served  as  a  model 
for  the  gifted  young  Sanzio's  masterpiece,  is  a 
mere  imitation  of  that  work. 

The  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  originated  at 
William  and  Mary  CoUege,  Va.,  in  1776. 
Much  the  larger  part  of  the  April  number  of 
the  CoUege  Quarterly  is  given  up  to  a  reprint 
of  the  records  from  the  Society's  foundation  to 
1781  (when  the  advent  of  the  British  inter- 
rupted both  meetings  and  records),  and  to  illus- 
trative biographical  and  other  matter  supplied 
by  President  Lyon  G.  Tyler.  Here  will  be 
found  the  original  charter  granted  to  Harvard 
chapter.  The  editor  also  does  something  to. 
elucidate  the  pedigree  of  President  Monroe,  in 
which  a  single  link  lacks  positive  evidence. 
The  Monroes,  while  entirely  respectable, 
**  never  held  the  same  state  in  society  as  the 
Lees,  Washingtons,  AUertons,  Ashtons,  and  a 
few  other  great  families  of  Westmoreland  and 
King  George  Counties,"  with  which  there  were 
no  intermarriages. 

-=The  eighteenth  century  seems  to  be  coming 
to  its  own  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth;  and  in 
the  fiood  of  reprints  none  should  be  more  wel- 
come than  a  new  edition  of  Johnson's  best  lite- 
rary legacy,  his  *Livee  of  the  Poets.'  Such 
an  undertaking,  in  six  volumes  (the  original 
edition  was  in  four),  under  the  editorial  care  of 
Mr.  Arthur  Waugh,  is  to  be  carried  through— 
in  this  country — by  the  Scribners,  who  send  us 
the  first  volume.  The  new  *  Lives,'  in  handy 
and  attractive  form,  is  to  be  an  exact  reprint 
of  the  edition  of  1783,  in  phrasing,  punctua- 
tion, and  spelling;  and  the  editor  has  limited 
his  functions  to  bibliographical  and  biographi- 
cal notes.  Johnson  is  a  fit  subject  for  such 
emendations,  as  even  his  enormous  memory 
had  its  lapses,  and  he  trusted  to  it  too  confi- 
fidently  or  too  indolently.  He  handed  over 
the  MS.  of  hiB  Life  of  Rowe,  with  its  many 
r6sum6s,  complacently  remarking  that  the 
thing  was  pretty  well  done  considering  that 
he  had  not  read  one  of  Rowe's  plays  for  thir- 
ty years.  His  reproach  of  Savage  for  hav- 
ing  '*  a  superstitious  regard  to  the  correction 
of  his  sheets,"  and  his  open  scorn  for  An- 
drew Reid,  who  professed  himself  a  **  master 
of  the  secret  of  punctuation,"  have  their  im- 
plications concerning  his  own  practice.  More 
than  once  he  openly  repudiates  painstaking,  as 
when,  referring  to  the  praise  bestowed  on  Con- 
greve's  **  Incognita,"  he  says,  "*  I  would  rather 
praise  it  than  read  it";  or,  impatiently  turn- 
ing  away  from  Akenside*s  Odes,  he  observes: 
**  To  examine  such  compositions  singly  cannot 
be  required;  when  they  are  once  found  to  be 
generally  dull,  all  further  labor  may  be  spared ; 
fbr  to  what  use  can  the  work  be  criticised 
that  will  not  be  read  f 

—Cowley,  Denham,  Milton,  Butler,  Roch- 
ester, and  Roscommon  are  dispatched  In  this 
first  volume,  and  portraiu  of  the  greater 
four  adorn  the  page.  Mr.  Waugh*s  notes  are 
based,  as  he  tells  us,  upon  the  monographs  on 
eighteenth -century  writers  by  Leslie  Ste- 
phen, Mr.  Craik,  Austin  Dobson,  and  others, 
and  espeoiaUy  upon  the  *  Dictionary  of  Na^ 


34=4= 


The    [N^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1609 


tional  Biography.'  One  is  surpriied  to  find 
no  allufioD  to  Birkbeck  HUPs  Bo8w«n,  and 
to  diBCoyer  that  Mr.  Wangh  prefers,  appa- 
rently, another  edition.  A  reisroe  of  John- 
son with  no  aid  from  the  first  of  Johnsonians 
would  be  a  cnriodtj— excusable^  perhaps,  on 
the  ground  that  Mr.  Wangh  so  rigidly  con- 
fioes  himself  to  a  sort  of  sublimated  proof- 
reading, and  waives  all  attempts  at  criticism, 
or  at  letting  Johnson  expound  Johnson.  The 
*  Lives '  surely  have  a  flavor  of  their  own  which 
many  readers  would,  no  doubt,  be  thankful  to 
be  left  to  themselves  to  enjoy ;  but  it  would 
seem  as  if  the  temptation  would  have  been 
irresistible  to  illustrate  the  more  formal  John- 
son of  the  *  Lives*  by  the  undress  Johnson  of 
the  Literary  Club.  Doubtless  the  criticism 
in  both  characters  is  at  bottom  one  and  the 
same ;  and  even  in  the  printed  page  we  find 
much  of  the  pungency,  the  vigor,  the  ele- 
phantine gambolling  of  the  autocrat  of  the 
club.  As  to  his  critical  standards  they  were, 
of  course,  those  of  his  age.  Milton  and  Shak- 
spere  were  well  enough  for  a  barbarous  period, 
but  Dry  den  and  Pope  had  made  **  English 
numbers"  truly  harmonious  and  perfect. 
Judged  by  Tennyson's  saying,  recorded  by 
Fits  Gerald,  that  ''Lycidas''  is  an  infaUible 
touchstone  of  poetical  taste,  Johnson  had  no 
tsste  at  all.  But  a  critic  can,  no  more  than 
a  poet,  be  torn  from  the  soil  in  which  he 
grew ;  and  in  the  formal  landscape  of  the 
eighteenth  century  Johnson  yields  an  impres- 
sion of  agreeable  variety.  In  his  *  Lives '  we 
ara  but  following  Leslie  Stephen  when  we 
stfy  that  he  is  seen  at  his  best. 

—Mr.  Henry  Bradley  takes  the*  floor  in  the 
current  issue  of  the  Oxford  Dictionary— Field- 
Fish  (MacmiUan).  His  catholic  vocabulary 
embraces  the  adjectival  >lii-(f«-«{^c(0,  *"  pertain- 
ing to,  or  characteristic  of,  the  end  of  the 
(1 9th)  century;  characteristically  *  advanced' 
or  modem,*'  with  a  flrst  quotation  from  the 
London  Daily  News  of  December,  1890.  We 
remark  also  the  vocables  fine  artt  fine  genile- 
tnan,  fine  lady,  without  the  hyphen.  Ortho- 
graphically,  perhaps  nothing  is  more  curious 
than  filigranef  whose  present  spelling  is  flrst 
recorded  in  1794,  for  the  substantive;  and  only 
in  1847  for  the  adjective,  at  the  end  of  eleven 
quotations  of  which  no  two  are  spelt  alike. 
The  decline  of  thefi^j  (including  raisin)  in  spe- 
cial estimation  is  interestingly  shown  by  a  gpreat 
number  of  obsolete  forms,  meanings,  and  ex- 
pressions derived  from  that  fruit.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  miss  the  fin  and  fin-keel  associated 
with  the  latest  development  of  racing  yachts 
and  war-ships.  Too  recent,  again,  are  quotar 
tions  only  of  1891  for  **  fifth  wheel  of  a  coach," 
and  of  1883  for  **  figure-head "  C'said  depre- 
catingly  of  one  who  holds  the  position  of  head 
of  a  body  of  persons,  a  community,  a  society, 
etc.,  but  possesses  neither  authority  nor  in- 
fluence ") .  The  transitive  verb  finance  is  shown 
to  have  been  a  neologism  in  186d,  but  our 
**  somewhat  coUoquial "  substantiveyind  ("that 
which  is  found ")  goes  back  to  1847  as  a  dic- 
tionary word,  and  to  1858  in  literary  use,  in 
connection  with  gold.  We  hear  much  just  now 
of  **fllled  cheese,"  and  this  article  has  been 
known  since  1890  at  least,  while  the  sense 
'  adulterated '  applied  to  cottons  is  three  years 
older.  "First  come,  flrst  served"  is  met  with 
in  1545.  The  topical  fintly  was  unknown  to 
Johnson,  but  was  recognized  by  Bmart  in  1846; 
Mr.  Bradley  says  that  "many  writers  prefer 
firsts  even  though  closely  followed  by  secondly^ 
thirdly,  etc."  That  finality  with  which  we 
were  repeatedly  familiar  in  the  days  of  pro- 
slavery  compromise  turns  up  in  1883  in  con- 


nection with  the  Reform  Bill.  Mme.  D'Arblay 
stands  sponsor  in  1778  for  fight  ahy  (with).  It 
is  common  to  speak  of  colors  which  "  kill "  each 
other  by  juxtaposition ;  Miss  Tonge*s  reference 
to  "tinto  that  *flght'  with  the  fewest  colors" 
harks  back  to  Bhakspere's  "note  the  flghting 
conflict  of  her  hue,  how  white  and  red 
each  other  did  destroy."  Among  the  indeter- 
minate etymologies  is  that  of  fileh,  which, 
"like  many  other  slang  w(»^  [is]  flrst  re- 
corded in  the  10th  century."  The  substantive 
firm  "  flrst  occurs  in  translations  from  Spanish 
writers,"  but,  in  the  sense  of  'style,'  "was 
probably  taken,  like  other  oommeroial  words, 
from  Italian." 

—Readers  of  Sir  William  Fraser's  former 
books  on  Wellington  and  Disraeli  know  just 
what  to  expect  in  his  'Napoleon  III.'  (Lon- 
don:  Sampson  Low,  Marston  Sd  Co.;  New 
York:  Scribners).  The  volume  is  a  farrago  of 
anecdotes  good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  jumbled 
together  without  any  attempt  at  order  or  pro- 
portion. Sir  William  Fraser  begins  by  stating 
that  he  had  the  honor  of  knowing  two  ladies 
to  both  of  whom  the  Emperor  Napoleon  III., 
when  an  exile  In  London,  proposed  marrlagei 
and  on  the  strength  of  this  acquaintanceship 
he  seems  to  have  been  interested  In  the  career 
of  the  imperial  despot  who  ruined  France  by 
his  corrupt  government  in  time  of  peace  as 
much  as  by  his  fatuous  foreign  policy.  Per- 
haps the  most  intaresting  of  Sir  William  Fra- 
ser's stories  concerns  a  supposed  project  of  the 
exile  of  Chiselhurst  to regidn  his  throne.  "Not 
only  was  his  return  to  Paris  Intended,  but 
every  detail  had  been  arranged.  A  private 
yacht  was  to  be  used  to  land  the  Emperor  at 
some  port  undetermined  in  the  northern  corner 
of  France,  or  possibly  in  Belgium.  I  had  this 
from  the  proprietor  of  the  yacht,  the  late 
James  Ashbury;  he  had  more  than  once  men- 
tioned the  circumstance  to  me,  and  he  repeated 
it  the  evening  before  his  death.  Tending  se- 
cretly, the  arrangement  was  that  the  Emperor 
should  proceed  at  dnce  to  the  camp  at  ChAlons, 
where  forty  or  fifty  thousand  men  were  sssem- 
bled  for  the  purpose  of  manoeuvre;  declaring 
himself,  he  was  to  head  this  army  and  march 
at  once  upon  Paris  "  (p.  244) .  An  entertaining 
piece  of  information  for  most  Americans  about 
the  personal  appearance  of  the  "father  of  his 
country  "  is  contained  in  the  following  compa- 
rison: "Speaking  with  an  American  of  some 
eminence,  I  described  Napoleon  III.,  with  hesi- 
tation, as  having  the  eyes  of  that  most  intelli- 
gent of  animals,  the  pig.  Oen.  R.  observed, 
'That  was  the  term  applied  to  Washington, 
"the  pig- eyed  Washington."'  After  hearing 
this  I  do  not  hesitate  to  put  it  down"  (p.  19S), 
These  are  typical  passages  from  the  volume  of 
the  garrulous  old  dandy,  whose  birth  and  ca- 
reer in  the  Guards  and  in  Parliament  enabled 
him  to  see  much  not  permitted  to  the  vulgar 
g^aze,  but  who  seems  to  be  chiefly  proud  of 
the  smallness  of  his  feet,  to  which  delightful 
fact  he  more  than  once  pointedly  refers. 

.  —Already  plans  for  the  total  eclipse  of  the 
sun  at  about  midnight.  Eastern  standard  time, 
August  8-9,  are  fully  matured.  The  flrst  ob- 
servers who  may  have  an  opportunity  to  catch 
the  total  eclipse  will  be  several  parties  of  Eng- 
lish amateurs  on  the  west  coast  of  Norway 
near  Bodd,  where  the  sun  will  only  just  have 
risen.  Farther  to  the  northeast.  In  Finland, 
near  the  Varanger  Fiord,  at  Vard5  and  Vad- 
sd,  the  scientific  astronomers  wiU  be  out  in 
full  force,  among  them  Mr.  E.  W.  Maunder  of 
the  Royal  Observatory,  Mr.  Albert  Taylor  of 
South  Kensington,  Sir  Robert  Ball  of  Cam- 


bridge, M.  Deelandres  of  Paris,  M.  Taccbini  of 
Rome,  Mr.  A.  Lawrence  Rotoh  of  Boston,  Mr. 
Taylor  Reed  of  Princeton,  and  Prof.  S.  Glase- 
napp  of  the  University  of  St.  Peterdrarg,  so. 
oompanied  by  Mr.  Vntchikbovsky,  together 
with  some  flfty  amateur  observers,  chiefly 
English,  for  whose  accommodation  three  tour- 
ist steamers  will  ba  run  to  the  belt  of  the  total 
eclipse.  Going  still  further  north.  Into  lati- 
tude north  72",  the  track  of  the  shadow-path 
crosses  Goose  Land  near  MOller  Bay,  on  the 
west  coast  of  the  southern  Island  of  Nova  Zem- 
bla.  Here  will  be  stationed  the  representa- 
tives of  the  Imperial  Academy  of  Sciences  st 
St.  Petersburg  and  of  the  Kasao  Society  of 
Naturalists.  At  this  point  the  eclipM-path  be- 
gins to  curve  southeasterly,  crossing  the  Lena 
near  Olekminsk,  whither  the  Imperial  Geogra- 
phical  Society  will  send  Mr.  Voxneeensky,  Di- 
rector of  the  Meteorological  Obeervmtory  at 
Irkutsk.  Five  years  ago  was  founded  a  Rus- 
sian Astronomical  Sodety  which  will  ambi- 
Uously  place  In  the  field  three  psurties  on 
Russian  soil,  their  chief  station  being  on  the 
Lena  and  the  otWs  00  the  Ob,  and  in  the 
eastern  parts  of  the  Uleaborg  province,  to  the 
north  of  Enontekis.  At  all  these  stations  the 
corona  wHl  be  the  chief  object  of  study  by 
means  of  ordinary  methods  of  photography. 
Still  further  to  the  southeast,  on  the  lower 
Amur,  will  be  an  important  expedition  io 
charge  of  Mr.  Wittram,  sent  out  by  the  Im- 
perial Russian  Obeervatory  at  Pulkova. 

—From  there  the  moon's  shadow  ^^versss 
the  earth  still  in  a  southeasterly  directaoo, 
crossing  the  great  northern  island  of  the  Japan- 
ese Empire  known  as  Yeso,  or  the  Hokkaido, 
from  Soya,  Its  most  northern  point,  to  AkeshL 
On  this  island  will  be  established  not  lesp  than 
seven  stations,  three  of  them  occupied  by  the 
Amherst  eclipse  expedition,  headed  by^  Prof. 
Todd  of  that  institution,  and  equin>ed  by  the 
liberaUty  of  Mr.  D.  WiUls  James  and  his  son 
Mr.  Arthur  Curtiss  James,  in  whoae  private 
yacht,  the  Coronet^  the  Amherst  expedition 
sailed  from  San  Francisco  last  week,  via  Hono- 
lulu. Th^  main  station  will  be  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  AkeshI  Bay,  on  the  southeast  cosst 
of  Yeso.  A  few  miles  southwest^  at  Knshiro, 
the  Astronomer  Royld  of  England,  Mr.  Chris- 
tie, will  establish  himself,  accompanied  by 
Prof.  Turner  of  Oxford,  and  Oapt.  HUls,  R.E. 
Likewise  on  the  island  of  Yeao  will  be  two 
Japanese  parties,  sent  out  from  the  Govern- 
ment observatories  of  Tokyo;  also  the  lick 
Observatory  expedition,  led  by  Prof.  Scbse- 
berle,  assisted,  by  Mr.  Buckbalter  of  the  Chahol 
Observatory  at  Oakland,  California.  Not  since 
the  great  eclipse  of  1878  In  our  western  coun- 
try have  so  many  eclipse  obeervers  been  in  the 
field,  and  clear  skies  will  insure  a  rich  harvest 
of  results. 


MARY  ANDERSON'S  MEMOIRa 

A  Few  Memories,    By  Mary  Anderson  (Mms. 

de  Navarro).  Harper  &  Brothers.  1890. 
In  her  modest  little  preface  to  these  "Fisw 
Memories,"  Mme.  Navarro  declares  that  she 
wrote  them  chiefiy  for  young  girls,  "  to  show 
them  that  the  glitter  of  the  stage  Is  not  all 
gold,  and  thus  to  do  a  little  towards  makiag 
them  realize  how  serious  an  undertaking  It  U 
to  adopt  a  life  so  full  of  hardships,  humilia- 
tions, and  even  dangers."  It  Is  doubtful  whe- 
ther her  experience,  as  she  relates  tt^  wHl  hs 
regarded  as  a  very  terrible  warning  by  SMk 
ambitious  novices  as  may  ha|»p«i  to  tnem  Iw  Jl 
for  instruction.    Most  of  thaiA  { 


April  30,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


346 


MMCoiiie  nc9)  will  find  much  more  in  it  to  en- 
oounif*  Uum  to  dl^iiit  them.  At  a  matter  of 
teoV  ooinlderlns  ber  opportonltiet  and  the 
limited  amount  of  her  artiitio  capital,  liiat 
Andereon's  stage  career  was  extraordinarily 
■mooth  and  proeperoue,  running  a  coone  of 
eoiitlnaooB  and  inoreaeing  popularity,  and  end- 
ing in  f ortone  and  preeent,  if  not  permanent, 
renown,  while  the  was  ftill  in  the  fall  bloom 
of  yonth.  Of  coone  she  enooontered  ooca- 
■krnal  ehecki,  the  ordinary  and  ineyitable  diffl- 
onltiee  canted  by  peooniary  ttraite,  the  Hckle* 
nem  of  pablic  taste  and  profettional  jealouties 
^•trialt  which  the  endnred  with  paUence  and 
good  temper  and  overcame  by  determination ; 
hot,  on  the  whole,  the  protpered  beyond  all 
reatonable  ezpeotatioo,  and  reaped,  almost  in 
the  dayt  of  her  raw  noritiate,  the  rewardt 
which  most  actort,  eyen  when  far  more  richly 
equipped,  dream  of  enjoying  only  after  many 
long  yean  of  arduout  labor. 

No  one  familiar  with  her  ttageaohieTementt 
and  ber  imperfect  training  would  expect  to 
find  in  Mme.  NaTarro*t  book  any  new  or  Taloa- 
ble  refleetiona  on  the  art  of  acting  or  ttage  pro- 
duction, any  subtle  or  illuminative  analy tit  of 
playt  or  charaotert,  any  ttriking  or  original 
Tiewt  on  the  responsibilitiee  or  priyilegee  of 
management,  or  anything  like  an  intelligent 
comparatiTe  study  of  the  methods  of  famous 
actors.  It  it  only  fair  to  add  that  the  exprett- 
ly  and  rery  properly  ditclatmt  all  pretensiont 
to  literary  or  critical  ability.  At  a  contribu- 
Uoo  to  theatrical  literature  her  volume  it  of 
very  tmall  importance,  but  at  a  bit  of  autobio- 
graphy it  it  exceedingly  interesting  on  account 
of  itt  unoontdout  revelation,  in  a  thoutand  un- 
pmneditated  timpUoitiet,  of  the  pertonality 
of  the  writer,  which  belongt  to  a  very  high 
type  of  womanhood,  high-ti^ted,  frank,  joy- 
out,  tender,  enthusiattic,  innocent,  religiout 
without  a  taint  of  cant,  and  telf-reliant  with- 
out a  trace  of  envy.  Only  a  strong  and  health- 
ful natnn  copld  breathe  to  loog  the  infected 
aUnosphen  of  the  footlights  without  contami- 
nation. From  first  to  last  in  her  book  there  it 
not  one  note  of  affectation  or  intincerity.  In 
the  beginning  tlie  writet  like  a  bright  tchool- 
girl,  with  very  little  tente  of  cohetion  or  pro- 
portion. She  chatten  of  dollt  and  other  nurt»- 
ry  matters,  and  of  tom-boy  freakt  which  an 
not  uncommon  or  worthy  of  record  except  at 
indications  of  character. 

The  RiehslUu  of  Edwin  Booth,  the  tayt,  flrtt 
intplred  lier  with  a  patsion  for  the  ttage,  and  the 
fact  it  onriout,  for  it  teemt  to  indicate  an  appre- 
ciation of  the  effect  of  that  elaboration  of  detail 
to  which  the  never  paid  much  attention*  Thit 
performance  tet  her  to  praotiting  on  lier  own 
aoooont,  and,  in  the  tecrecy  of  a  gamt,  the 
began  to  rehearte  not  only  RieMisu,  but  Rich- 
ord  and  iiam(eC  At  thit  time  the  wat  a  great, 
gawky  girl  of  rixteen,  and  the  abturdity  of 
her  choice,  apparently,  never  occurred  to  her. 
Postibly  theee  early  experimentt  may  have 
helped  to  devalop  that  wonderful  voice  which 
contributed  to  greatly  to  her  later  tucceet.  At 
all  events,  it  wat  in  theee  characten  that  the 
first  acted  in  a  private  nhearsal  before  Char- 
lode  Cushman,  who  promptly  recognised  her 
natural  advantages,  and  sent  her  to  George 
Vandenhoff  for* 'trimming  and  dipping.**  This 
correct  and  intelligent  but  formal  and  unim- 
aginative actor  doubtless  rsgulatod  many  of 
her  rough  edges  and  gave  her  valuable  hints, 
but  it  may  be  doubted  wtiether  the  ten  half- 
houn  which  she  spent  in  his  company  were  of 
much  material  benefit  to  her.  She  probably 
profited  mon  from  the  friendly  aid  of  John 
MoCullough,  who  esteemed  her  abilities  very 
highly,  and  devoted  many  of  his  lelsun  houn 


to  rehearsing  with  her  in  sceaee  from  various 
ttandard  playt.  It  wat  to  him  that  the  owed 
the  opportunity  of  making  her  first  public  ap- 
pearance as  $hmet^  and  she  gives  a  naive  ac- 
count of  that,  to  her,  memorable  performance. 
A  little  later  on  she  secured  a  week*s  engage- 
ment, during  which  the  played  Bianco^  Julia, 
JToadne,  and  Paulins,  at  well  at  Julitt  Her 
firtt  real  popular  tuccess  was  won  in  New  Or- 
leans at  Meg  Merrilise^  and  the  innocently 
dwellt  upon  the  effect  which  the  created  by  her 
timulation  of  bent  decrepitude,  unconsciout  of 
the  fact  that  Scott  detcHbet  the  old  woman  at 
being  at  tall  and  ttraight  at  a  grenadier,  and 
that  the  wat  abuting  groetly  the  tpecial  quali- 
ficationt  with  which  beneficent  natun  had  en- 
dowed her.  To  the  end  of  her  career  the  per- 
dtted  in  thit  mitnpretentatioa,  which  it 
worthy  of  remark  because  it  erophatizee  the 
lack  of  true  dramatic  indgbt  and  adaptability 
mon  or  less  conspicuous  in  all  her  cbaracteri- 
sations.  A  striking  instance  of  this  it  afforded 
in  her  own  oonfestion  that  the  wat  quite  un- 
able to  adapt  hertelf  to  W.  8.  Gilbert*!  concep- 
tion of  OKikUea,  Rightly  or  wrongly,  he  wished 
ber  to  exhibit  a  little  mon  contdoutnett  of 
the  comic  or  tatiric  value  of  tome  of  her 
tpeeches,  but  she  could  not  subdue  her  own 
personality  to  the  suggested  conditions,  and 
in  the  end  he  was  obliged  to  allow  her  to 
follow  her  own  line.  Possibly  her  way  was 
the  better,  but  that  is  not  the  question. 

It  was  in  Chicago  that  she  met  with  her  iirtt 
serious*professional  reverBe.  In  that  dty  the 
critics  attacked  her  savagdy  and  her  engage- 
ment wat  a  faUure.  She  faced  the  tituation 
with  courage  and  admirable  temper,  and  it  it 
much  to  her  credit  that  she  plainly  wat  mon 
concerned  at  the  pecuniary  lost  tuttained  by' 
her  ttanch  friend  John  McCuUoagb  than  at 
the  temporary  extinction  of  her  own  hopes. 
These  wen  soon  nvived  by  successful  engage- 
ments elsewhere,  and  wen  never  dashed  again. 
Her  youth  and  beauty,  the  air  of  freshness 
and  purity  which  she  carried  about  with  her, 
her  nationality,  and  her  fine  fiashes  of  de- 
clamatory power,  made  her  a  popular  pet, 
and  she  had  many  powerful  friends.  One  of 
them  was  Gen.  Sherman,  the  most  lenient  of 
theatrical  critics.  It  was  at  his  suggettion 
that  the  played  OalcUea  and  Lady  Macbeth, 
and  he  wat  courageout  enough  to  declan  that 
he  preferred  her  in  the  latter  character.  But  it 
it  unnecessary  to  dwell  upon  Miss  Anderson*s 
stage  career  in  detaiL  Everybody  knows  that 
it  wat  prosperous,  both  hen  and  in  England,  in 
an  extraordinary  degree,  but  her  triumphs 
wen  pertonal  rather  than  artittic,  and  the 
created  no  ttandard  of  excellence  except  pos- 
tibly in  OalaUa,  tor  which  her  dattio  face 
and  figun  preeminently  fitted  her,  and  in  Per- 
dUa^  which  the  played  with  an  exquitlte 
buoyancy,  timplidty,  and  grace  not  easily  to 
be  forgotten. 

The  nal  interest  and  charm  of  her  book  lie 
in  the  story  of  ber  life  outside  the  theatn, 
and  especially  that  part  of  it  which  was  passed 
in  England,  when  her  theatrical  nputation 
and  the  kindly  offices  of  infiuential  friends 
secured  her  not  merely  the  acquaintance  but 
the  friendship  of  many  of  the  most  distin- 
guished men  and  women  of  the  day ;  and  she 
tent  of  theee  amicable  relatione  with  a  delight- 
ful unoonadonsnete,  which  provet  that  her  na- 
tun wat  entirely  unspoiled  by  the  fiattering 
attentiont  bestowed  upon  her.  She  nlates  a 
most  characteristic  anecdote  of  James  Rutsell 
Lowell.  She  had  asked  him  whether  he  had 
teen  Bernhardt  in  **  La  Toeca,**  and  be  nplied 
tharply  in  the  negative,  adding,  by  way  of 
explanation,    '*!  refute  to  have   my 


dragged  in  the  gutter  '* — a  pungent  tentence, 
which  expresses  in  a  breath  the  whole  abom- 
inable tendency  of  the  later  Sardou  drama, 
the  delibente  prostitution  of  genius  for  the 
sake  of  gain.  Lowell,  of  course,  was  a  friend 
of  the  higher  theatn,  but  Cardinal  Manning 
regarded  the  stage  as  an  unmitigated  eviL 
He  told  Mme.  Navarro  that  he  had  prayed 
for  her  ntirement  from  the  footlights.  His 
main  objection  to  the  actor's  life  is  worth 
quoting: 

**From  our  cradles,**  he  said,  **weall  have 
a  tendencv  to  set.  Small  boys  pntend  to  be 
men,  soldiers,  anything  but  what  they  an. 
Tiny  girls  play  at  being  mothera,  cradling 
their  dolls.  The  so-called  art  of  acting:  increas- 
es this  tendency  in  those  who  witness  it  idmost 
as  much  as  in  those  who  practise  it.  I  cannot 
conceive  how  the  latter  can  escape  heintt  led  in 
time  to  an  unconsdous  development  or  artifi- 
ciality or  exaggeration  in  their  thoughts,  and, 
as  a  natural  result,  in  their  speech  and  man- 
ner." 

The  fallacy  of  all  this  in  general  application 
is  too  obvious  to  need  nfutation,  but  the  argu- 
ment  is  curious  as  an  illustration  of  the  danger 
of  studying  a  question  from  one  point  of  view 
only. 

With  Tennyson  Miss  Anderson  enjoyed  un- 
common intimacy,  and  she  furnishes  a  fasd- 
nating  glimpse  of  the  poet  in  his  inner  home 
life,  ravelling  in  oomic  stories,  of  which  he  had 
a  vast  collection,  contributed  by  Lowell  and 
other  friends,  or  plunging  through  rain  and 
mire,  In  his  great  doak  and  heavy  boots, 
stopping  at  frequent  intervals  to  deecant  upon 
the  subUer  beauties  of  natun  or  to  point  out 
some  precious  woodland  shrub  or  fiower.  At 
other  times  she  sat  at  his  knee  while  he  redted 
long  passages  from  his  own  works  in  the  deep 
rhythmical  chant  which  was  to  strangdy  im- 
pressive. She  was  breakfasting  with  Mr. 
Gladstone  in  Downing  Street  when  the  party 
was  startled  by*the  crash  of  the  dynamite  ex- 
plosion at  the  British  Admiralty  dose  by.  The 
great  statesman  was  chatting  learnedly,  do- 
qaenUy,  and  gayly  about  dd  and  modem  toys, 
when  the  startling  interruption  came,  and  was 
the  only  one  of  the  company  who  showed  no 
sign  of  fear.  He  proceeded  instantiy  to  the 
scene  of  the  outrage,  and  upon  his  ntum 
spoke  briefly  of  the  cowardice  of  the  deed.  A 
minute  later  he  had  dismissed  the  subject,  and 
was  joking  about  the  intricacies  of  female 
cloaks  and  other  ifkrments. 

Wilkie  Collins,  one  of  her  warmest  friends 
and  admirers,  confided  to  her  the  story  of  his 
torments  from  gout  in  the  eyes,  which  wrung 
from  him  such  cries  of  agony  that  he  could 
scarcely  find  an  amanuensis  who  could  endun 
to  listen  to  his  dictation.  As  all  the  world 
knows,  he  sought  nlief  in  heroic  doees  of 
opium,  and  he  declared  to  her  that  he  dictated 
the  finale  of  *  The  Moonstone'  while  under  the 
infiuenoe  of  the  drug,  and,  afterwards,  did  not 
recognise  it  as  his  own  composition.  He  told 
her  how  Charles  Reade,  at  the  funeral  of 
Charles  Dickens,  leaned  upon  his  shoulder  and 
wept.  She  has  fresh  stories,  too,  of  George  F. 
Watts,  who  painted  her  portrait,  of  Browning, 
Newman,  Longfellow,  Lord  Houghton,  Hden 
Faudt,  Alma-Tadema,  Max  MOller,  Rutkin, 
and  others,  but  space  will  not  permit  their  ra> 
production.  In  Paris  she  was  introduced  to 
Hugo,  and  noted  that  in  kissing  a  lady's  hand 
he  never  bent  his  own  head,  but  raised  the 
hand  to  his  lips,  which  is  a  happy  bit  of  obser- 
vation. She  tells,  with  her  wonted  ingenuoue- 
ne ss,  an  anecdote  of  Bernhardt,  who  imposed 
upon  her  credulity  in  characteristically  thear 
trioal  fashion.  ''I  will  act  specially  for  you 
to-night,"  quoth  that  guileleas  Frenchwoman, 


346 


Tlie    IN"atioii, 


[VoL  62,  No,  1609 


**but  it  wiU  be  bad  for  me.**  And  lo»  at  the 
end  of  the  performance,  Sarah  laj  prostrate 
on  the  stage,  pressing  to  her  lips  a  handker- 
chief on  which,  as  she  showed  after  her  revi- 
val with  champagne,  there  was  an  ominous 
spot  of  blood.  This  stroke  of  acting  impressed 
Mme.  Navarro  greatly,  and  it  most  be  ad- 
mitted  that  Sarah  kept  her  promise. 

The  latter  half  of  the  book,  relating  her 
professional  and  holiday  experiences  in  Eng- 
land and  Ireland,  and  her  American  farewell, 
is  much  better  than  the  first,  and  is  written  in 
an  agreeable,  vivacious,  simple  style.  The 
matter  of  it  is  not  often  of  much  importance 
either  as  information  or  instruction,  but  it  is 
entertaining,  and  the  manner  is  so  simple  and 
honest,  so  free  from  boaatfulness  or  petty  jea- 
lousy or  pretension  of  any  sort,  that  the  sym. 
pathy  of  the  reader  is  enlisted  from  beginning 
to  end.  If  Cardinal  Manning  had  lived  to 
read  it,  he  would  have  been  forced  to  acknow. 
ledge  that  there  is  nothing  inconceivable  in 
the  proposition  that  a  pure  and  strong  nature 
may  enact  a  sham  without  becoming  one. 


BRITISH  FOREIGN  POLICY. 

The  Orowth  of  Britiih  Pblicy:  An  Histori- 
cal Efsay.    By  Sir  J.  R.  Seeley,  Litt.D., 
K.C.M.G.,    formerly   Regius    Professor  of 
Modem  History  in  the  University  of  Cam- 
bridge. Cambridge  (Eng.):  University  Press; 
New  York:  Macmillan.     1895.    2  vols.,  pp. 
xxiv,  486,  408. 
Th9  History  of  the  Foreign  Policy  of  Oreat 
Britain.     By  Montagu  Burrows,  Cbichele 
Professor  of  Modem  History  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Oxford.    London:  W.  Blackwood  & 
Sons;    New   York:    G.  P.  Putnam's   Sons. 
1896.    Pp.  xiv,  372. 
Thbsc  two  books  are  alike  in  their  treatment 
as  well  as  in  their  subject.    Neither  of  them 
is,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  a  history; 
the  authors  do  not  profess  to  have  made  any 
elaborate  study  of  sources;  references,  even  to 
secondary  authorities,  are  in  both  books  few 
and  far  between;  and  the  object  aimed  at  is 
rather  to  stimulate  interest  in  the  long  story 
of  British  foreign  policy  than  to  narrate  its 
detailed   history.    Sir  John   Seeley,    indeed, 
frankly  terms  his  work  an  historical  essay,  by 
which  he  denotes  its  nature  rather  than  its 
length,  for  it  fills  two  closely  printed  volumes, 
while  Prof.  Burrows's  book  is  in  every  way 
even  more  of  an  essay  than  Sir  John  Seeley*s. 
The  prevailing  intention  in  both  works  is  the 
same,  namely,  to  outline  the  story  of  the  way 
in  which  the  insular  state  of  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland  has  been  drawn  in  self-defence  at 
times  into  Continental  politics,  and  to  exhibit 
the  reasons  for  which,  at  other  times,  it  has 
withdrawn  from  its  position,  and  has  either 
deliberately  avoided  foreign  complications  or 
looked  indifferently  upon  the  events  in  the  his- 
tory of  other  European  nations. 

Sir  John  Seeley's  *  Growth  of  British  Policy' 
has  a  sympathetic  interest  in  that  it  is  the  last 
work  from  the  pen  of  a  busy  writer  and  sti- 
mulating thinker,  which  occupied  him  during 
the  closing  years  of  his  useful  life.  The  essay 
is  appropriately  preceded  by  a  brief  biography 
of  Seeley  by  his  friend  Prof.  Prothero  of 
Edinburgh  University,  who  was  acknowledged, 
for  many  years  before  his  promotion  to  the 
chair  of  history  at  Edinburgh;  to  be  the  leading 
spirit  among  historical  workers  at  Cambridge. 
Prof.  Prothero's  work  has  been  done  with 
graceful  skill.  The  life  of  Sir  John  Seeley, 
as  he  portrays  it,  was  not  eventful,  and  its 
epochs  are  cpark^d  b^  the  puUicat|pa  9^  |^ 


different  works.  The  son  of  a  Fleet  Street 
publisher,  John  Richard  Seeley  spent  his  youth 
and  early  days  among  books,  and  gave  early 
evidence  of  litersry  capacity.  He  was  bom 
in  London  in  1884,  educated  at  the  City  of 
London  School,  went  up  to  Cambridge  with 
a  scholarship  at  Christ's  College  in  1852,  was 
bracked  Senior  Classic  with  two  others  in 
1857,  and  afterwards  obtained  a  fellowship  at 
his  college.  In  1868  he  succeeded  F.  W.  New. 
man  as  Professor  of  Latin  at  University  Col- 
lege, London,  and  in  1809  he  succeeded  Charles 
Elingsley  as  Regius  Professor  of  Modem  His- 
tory at  Cambridge,  a  post  which  he  held  until 
his  death  in  January,  1895.  Such  an  appoint- 
ment as  that  of  Seeley  to  the  Cambridge 
chair  would  not  be  tolerated  at  the  present 
time,  for  Seeley  made  no  pretensions  at  that 
time  to  rank  among  English  historical  soho- 
lars.  He  had  attained  reputation  rather  as  a 
religious  thinker  than  as  an  historian,  by  the 
publication  of  his  well-known  book,  *Ecce 
Homo,'  in  1865,  in  which  he  had  laid  weight 
on  the  human  side  of  the  life  of  Christ  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  divine  attributes,  in  a  way 
that  aroused  the  wrath  of  all  the  Christian 
churches  in  England.  But  Seeley's  appoint- 
ment by  Mr.  Gladstone  was  at  least  no  worse 
than  Lord  Palmerston's  appointment  of  Charles 
Kingsley  to  the  same  chair  of  history  at  Cam- 
bridge a  few  years  previously,  for  Kingsley's 
only  equipment  for  the  teaching  of  history 
was  the  fact  of  his  having  written  some  his- 
torical novels. 

After  settling  at  Cambridge,  Seeley  devoted 
himself  with  enthusiasm  to  the  work  of  instruc- 
tion, and  he  became  also  a  voluminous  writer 
on  historical  subjects.  He  belonged,  indeed, 
.as  an  historian  to  the  bygone  school  which 
looked  upon  the  study  of  bdstory  merely  as  a 
useful  guide  and  corrective  in  estimating  cur- 
rent political  forces,  and  he  considered  the 
work  of  the  historian  to  be  the  inculcation  of 
political  lessons,  and  not  simply  the  ascertain- 
ment of  the  truth  with  regard  to  the  events  of 
the  past.  Seeley,  in  short,  was  more  of  a  poli- 
tician than  an  historian.  He  had  no  inclination 
for  the  laborious  work  of  research.  He  pre- 
ferred to  look  upon  history  in  the  large  rather 
than  in  detail.  His  imagination  was  stirred 
by  great  events  and  far-reaching  issues,  and  his 
patriotism  was  ever  aroused  by  the  contempla- 
tion of  the  growth  of  the  power  of  the  British 
Empire.  But  these  characteristics  of  his  mind, 
joined  to  the  possession  of  a  singularly  luminous 
and  effective  literary  style,  made  him  more  of 
a  power  in  his  native  land  than  a  trained  his- 
torian could  possibly  have  been.  A  special 
merit  of  Seeley's  books  is  their  readableness. 
His  '  Life  of  Stein,'  for  insUnoe,  is  litUe  better 
than  a  compilation  from  the  great  work  of 
Pertz,  but  it  is  infinitely  more  readable  than 
the  work  of  the  German  biographer,  and  his 
*  Short  History  of  Napoleon  I.,'  though  a  poor 
piece  of  work  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
historical  student,  has  approved  itself  to  the 
general  reader  more  than  many  better  books. 

Seeley's  last  years  were  occupied  in  studying 
the  earlier  stages  of  the  growth  of  England 
into  an  imperial  Power,  and  the  work  we  are 
considering  may  be  regarded  as  an  introduc- 
tion to  his  <  Expansion  of  England.'  But '  The 
Expansion  of  England,'  though  abounding  in 
stimulating  ideas,  is,  after  all,  only  a  brilliant 
essay.  An  indispensable  preliminary  to  a  more 
elaborate  treatment  of  the  growth  of  the  em- 
pire was  an  introductory  study  of  the  devel- 
opment of  the  British  policy  which  made  the 
British  Empire  possible.  This  introductory 
study  we  have  in  the  two  volumes  before  us.  I 
Sad  S^ele7  lived,  the^  would  bftye  been  fo)- ' 


lowed,  doubtless,  by  the  more  extended  exami- 
nation of  the  growth  of  the  empire  in  the 
eighteenth  century  which  he  had  in  mind. 
The  period  covered  is  from  the  reign  of  Eliza- 
beth to  the  reign  of  William  UL,  and  a 
leading  contention  of  our  author  is  that 
for  this  period  the  English  foreign  policy 
is  dominated  by  the  fact  that  there  is  as  yet 
no  Great  Britain,  and  that  Ireland  is  neither 
a  helpless  dependency  of  the  British  crown 
nor  an  independent  nation.  As  long  as  Eng- 
land and  Scotland  remained  separate  kingdoms, 
and  Ireland  was  practically  a  half-settled,  half- 
conquered  alien  country,  it  was  impossible  for 
a  British  policy  to  exist,  with  an  empire  of  the 
seas  and  colonies  and  trading  dependencies  in 
distant  continents  in  prospect.  The  keynote 
of  English  history  up  to  the  time  of  William 
III.  is  the  relation  between  the  different  parts 
of  what  is  now  the  United  EZingdom;  and  ths 
foreign  policy  of  Elizabeth,  of  the  Stuarts,  of 
Cromwell,  and  of  William  m.  is  subordinated 
to  or  affected  by  the  important  question  of 
building  up  an  insular  state  which  shall,  when 
united,  build  up  the  British  Empire.  Seeley 
points  out  that  what  characterizes  the  Eliza- 
bethan age  is  not  the  period  of  the  great 
war  with  Spain  which  is  naturally  associated 
with  it,  but  the  long  period  of  peace  which 
preceded  the  open  outbreak  of  war,  during 
which  England,  in  happy  contrast  to  the  na- 
tions  of  the  Continent,  remained  undisturbed 
by  religious  war  at  home,  forgot  the  fires  of 
Smithfield  and  the  Marian  persecutioo,  and 
prepared  for  an  era  of  navid  adventure  and 
commercial  extension  in  Asia  and  America. 
The  suocessful  struggle  with  Spain  in  the 
later  years  of  the  Queen's  reign  was  ths 
revelation  to  the  world  of  a  new  phase  of  ex- 
istence. But  the  struggle  with  Spain  oould 
not  be  triumphantly  waged  by  an  isolated 
England,  and  therein  lies  the  importance  of 
the  right  understanding  of  Elizabeth's  policy 
towards  other  anti- Spanish  parties  like  the 
Dutch  and  the  French  Huguenots  on  the  one 
hand,  and  towards  Scotland  and  Ireland  on 
the  other. 

After  the  long  period  of  the  Civil  War,  of 
which  a  side  not  less  important  than  the  con- 
stitutional struggle  between  King  and  P^lia- 
ment— namely,  the  independent  action  of  Eng- 
land, Scotland,  and  Ireland— is  skilfully  indi- 
cated by  Sir  John  Seeley,  came  tiie  brief 
period  of  Cromwell's  ascendancy,  when  the  in- 
sular state  arrived  at  a  brief  and  premature 
unity,  and  the  imperial  policy  of  future  times 
was  foreshadowed  by  the  conquest  of  Jamaica 
and  the  triumphant  intervention  of  the  Lord 
Protector  in  the  contest  between  Spain  and 
France.  The  reigns  of  the  last  two  Stuarts, 
like  those  of  ^e  first  two,  are  signalized  by  a 
period  of  reaction.  The  constituent  parts  of 
the  United  Kingdom  again  separate,  and  for- 
eign policy  is  guided,  not  by  imperial  conside- 
rations, but  by  the  French  tendencies  of  the 
Stuart  kings  and  their  voluntary,  though  some- 
times interrupted,  adherence  to  the  schemes  of 
their  cousin,  Louis  XIV.  The  Revolution  of 
1688,  which  had  its  origin  as  much  in  the  na- 
tional feeling  of  repulsion  towards  the  dis- 
graceful foreign  policy  of  the  later  Stuarts  ia 
subordinating  English  to  French  interests  as  in 
the  desire  to  overthrow  an  nnoonstitutiocial 
monarch,  bent  on  restoring  the  Catholic  reli- 
gion in  both  England  and  ScoUand,  brought 
about  a  revival  of  the  imperial  policy  of  C^xm- 
well  in  insular,  conunercial,  oceanic,  and  Coo- 
tinental  policy.  It  was  William  UL  wha» 
more  successful  than  Cromwell  in  tiiat  IM 
power  rested  on  a  bloodless  rerohrtleo  iHtal 
of  on  mUitfuy  force,  wm  h»M|4  «»  |4W 


April  30,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


347 


oat  to  the  people  of  the  United  Kingdom 
the  line  of  their  destiny.  In  insular  policy, 
indeed,  it  was  reeerred  for  the  statesmen 
of  Queen  Anne  to  bring  about  the  union 
bet#een  England  and  Sootiand  which  put 
an  end  to  the  postibilitj  of  a  separation  be- 
tween the  two  once  hostile  portions  of  the 
island  of  Oreat  Britain,  but  it  was  William 
TIL  who  made  that  union  poMible,  and,  with 
regard  to  Ireland,  the  fastening  of  the  Pro- 
testant domination  upon  the  necks  of  the  Irish 
people,  which  rendered  Ireland  a  helpless  de- 
pendency of  Great  Britain,  was  deemcKl  neces- 
sary, owing  to  the  resistance  the  Catholic  Irish 
had  offered  to  the  Revolution  of  1688  and  their 
adhesion  to  the  Stuarts  and  to  France.  It  was 
in  the  reign  of  William  III.,  too,  that  England 
took  up  her  position  as  a  preeminently  com- 
mercial state,  at  peace  with  her  former  com- 
mercial rivals,  the  Dutch,  and  ready  to  share 
her  trade  (since  in  no  other  way  oould  political 
union  be  attained)  with  her  old  antagonists, 
the  Scots,  and  established  herself  firmly  on 
the  road  to  commercial  greatness  which  had 
been  pointed  out  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  and 
partly  attained  during  the  government  of 
Cromwell. 

But  British  commercial  greatness  oould  not 
be  firmly  founded  unless  supported  by  a  strong 
oceanic  power  and  such  a  Continental  policy 
as  should  prevent  the  interference  of  European 
Powers  to  its  detriment.  It  was  during  the 
reign  of  William  m.  that  Britain  learned  her 
rAle  upon  the  seas ;  and  the  series  of  naval  vic- 
tories which  had  commenced  with  the  defeat 
of  the  Spanish  Armada  in  1588,  which  had 
been  illustrated  in  the  days  of  Cromwell  by 
the  exploits  of  Blake,  but  which  had  recently 
been  intermitted,  began  again  with  the  victory 
of  La  Hogue  in  1002.  British  commercial 
greatness,  however,  depended  upon  something 
more  than  naval  power,  and  was  based  no  less 
upon  the  maintenance  and  growth  of  her  colo- 
nies across  the  Atlantic,  and  of  her  trading 
factories  in  India  and  the  East,  for  the  peace- 
ful development  of  which  Britain  had  not  only 
to  he  supreme  upon  the  seas,  but  to  prevent 
the  growth  of  any  rival  in  Europe.  The  Con- 
tinental polioy  of  William  IIL  is  important 
both  from  an  international  point  of  view,  in 
that  he  headed  the  league  of  Europe  against 
Louis  XIV.,  and  commenced  the  work  of  re- 
straining French  ambition  and  aggression, 
which  Marlborough  carried  to  triumphant 
success,  and  also  in  its  infiuence  on  British 
polioy,  which  at  the  Treaty  of  Utrecht  showed 
its  commercial  and  colonial  tendencies  in  the 
acquisition  for  the  British  crown  of  Gibraltar 
and  Minorca  and  Nova  Scotia  and  in  the  Asi- 
ento  clause. 

Although  it  suffers  from  publication  at  the 
same  time  with  Sir  John  Seeley^s  masterpiece, 
*  The  History  of  the  Foreign  Polioy  of  Great 
Britain '  by  Prof.  Montagu  Burrows  of  Oxford 
has  some  merits  of  its  own  which  should  not  be 
overlooked.  His  volume  deals  mainly  with  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  therefore  from  one 
point  of  view  rivals  Seeley^s  *  Expansion  of 
England,*  and  from  another  follows  out  in 
miniature  the  sequel  of  the  story  contained 
in  8eeley*s  last  book.  Prof.  Burrows  has  as 
clear  a  grasp  of  principles  as  Seeley,  but  he 
works  upon  a  slighter  scale,  and  does  not  at- 
tempt the  examination  of  so  many  national 
and  international  forces  as  his  Cambridge  col- 
league. By  far  the  most  important  part  of  his 
essay  deals  with  the  causes  of  the  outbreak  of 
war  with  Spain  in  1780.  It  has  been  constant- 
ly  the  habit  to  regard  the  opposition  to  Sir 
Robert  Walpole  which  led  to  this  war  as  pure- 
ly UptiQ9»f  wd  Prof.  PuiTOWf  |hii  Ogoe  pgd 


service  in  pointing  out  the  reality  of  the 
grievances  under  which  English  commerce  suf- 
fered from  the  Spanish  maritime  policy,  which, 
when  exemplified  in  the  story  of  Jenkios^s  ear, 
caused  the  explosion  of  national  wrath  that 
overthrew  Walpole  and  opened  a  long  era 
of  naval  and  colonial  war.  Prof.  Burrows, 
further,  never  forgets  that  he  was  once  a  cap- 
tain in  the  royal  navy,  and,  throughout  his 
book,  lays  weight  on  the  naval  importance  of 
the  British  wars  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
He  refers  most  appreciatively  to  Capt.  Mahan's 
famous  work,  but,  long  before  Mahan  bad  been 
heard  of.  Prof.  Burrows  had  shown  bis  sense 
of  the  importance  of  British  naval  history  in 
his  *  Life  of  Lord  Hawke,'  of  which  he  an- 
nounces a  new  and  improved  edition.  In  his 
later  chapters,  when  dealing  with  the  wars 
waged  by  Britsin  with  the  French  Revolution 
and  Napoleon,  Prof.  Burrows  hardly  handles 
his  subject  with  equal  felicity.  He  is  blinded 
by  his  admiration  for  the  younger  Pitt  and  for 
Canning.  He  actually  attributes  to  Canning 
the  chief  merit  for  the  successful  resistance  to 
Napoleon,  and  barely  mentions  the  name  of 
Lord  Castiereagh,  the  great  statesman  who 
guided  the  formation  of  the  last  European  coa- 
lition, who  directed  the  policy  of  Britain  in  the 
final  struggle,  and  who  shares  with  the  Czar 
Alexander  I.  the  glory  of  overthrowing  the 
Corsican  adventurer. 


BOUGAINVILLE. 

La  JeunBue  ds  BcugainvilU  et  la  Ouerre  de 
Sept  Ant,  [Les  Fran^ais  au  Canada.]  Paris: 
Daupeley.Gonvemeur.  1806.  Pp.  100. 
This  monograph  is,  in  size,  rather  more  than 
a  brochure  and  rather  less  than  a  book.  Its 
author,  M.  Rend  de  Kerallain,  seeks  to  present 
a  picture  of  the  leading  incidents  of  the  Seven 
Years'  War  in  Canada,  as  seen  through  the 
eyee  of  a  gallant,  active,  and  intelligent  young 
Frenchman  who  was  in  the  thick  of  the  fray 
from  the  capture  of  Oswego  to  the  fall  of 
Quebec.  Louis  Antoine  de  Bougainville  has 
other  tities  to  fame  than  his  career  as  first 
aide-de-camp  to  Montcalm  from  1750  till  1750. 
He  was  the  first  French  circumnavigator,  he 
bore  an  honorable  part  in  the  batUe  between 
Rodney  and  De  Grasse,  he  was  chosen  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Institute  at  its  formation,  and,  un- 
der the  Napoleonic  regime,  he  became  Senator, 
Count  of  the  Empire,  and  member  of  the  Le- 
gion of  Honor.  He  was  also,  through  his 
work  on  Integral  Calculus^  a  fellow  of  the 
Itoyal  Society.  When  we  add  that  he  had  his 
full  share  of  pleasure— pleasure  according  to 
French  and  eighteenth-century  definition— it 
will  be  seen  that  he  was  a  many-sided  man. 
But  Bougainville  has  found  a  detractor  in  the 
Abbd  Casgrain,  professor  of  history  at  Laval 
University,  and  one  of  the  most  spirited 
national  writers  who  have  dealt  with  the  wan 
of  French  Canada.  The  Abbd  Casgrain  is  per- 
haps best  known  through  his  *  PMerinage  au 
Pays  d'£?ang61ine,*  in  which  he  exposed  the 
garbled  character  of  **  Selections  from  the 
Public  Documents  of  the  Province  of  Nova 
Scotia,**  Parkman's  chief  source  for  the  fourth 
and  eighth  chapters  of  *  Montcalm  and  Wolfe.* 
Above  all  things  he  is  Jealous  for  the  reputa 
tion  of  his  compatriots,  the  French  Canadians, 
and  is  anxious  to  rehabilitate  the  habitant 
of  the  eighteenth  century  whenever  hostile 
testimony  is  brought  to  light.  Bougainville, 
in  his  Journal  and  in  his  letters,  admits  that 
th»  Canadian  is  a  good  woodsman,  but  in 
other  respects  sets  him  down  a  poor  creature. 
09  tuep  him  with  cruelty,  chicanery,  and 


with  the  whole  host  of  undesirable  traits  which  * 
a  half  civilized  existence  begets.  The  Abb^ 
Casgrain  is  not  the  man  to  allow  such  a  de- 
scripUon  to  go  unchallenged.  In  *  Montcalm 
et  I^vis*  he  assails  the  quality  of  Bougain- 
ville's  evidence  by  impeaching  Bougainville 
himself.  The  essay  under  review  is  the  re- 
Joinder  of  one  of  Bougainville*8  descendants, 
an  historical  writer  who  is  quite  competent  to 
meet  the  Abb^  Casgrain  on  his  own  ground. 

We  have  already  called  attention,  in  our  re- 
view of  *  Un  PMerinageauPays  d'^vang^Hne,* 
to  the  Abb4  Ca8grain*s  comfortable  eclecti- 
cism. M.  de  Kerallsin  takes  up  the  charge, 
reiterates,  and  goes  beyond  it.  Whereas  we 
referred  to  nothing  more  than  a  convenient 
gift  of  shotting  the  eyes,  this  new  critic  ranges 
first  among  the  counts  of  his  indictment  wilful 
auppreuio  veri  :  *' Assure  men t,  Tauteurcana- 
dien  dont  FouTrage  nous  a  forc^  de  prendre  la 
plume,  ne  m^ritait  gudre  Tattention  que  nous 
avons  dfi  Ini  prater.  II  ne  lit  point  les  textes 
quMl  a  sous  les  yeux;  qnand  il  les  lit,  il  ne  les 
comprend  point;  quand  n  les  comprend,  il  les 
fausse  aussitdt  qu*il  y  voit  la  moindre  utility.** 
This  is  strong  language.  It  is  not  diluted  when 
M.  de  Kerallain  explains  that,  in  his  contempt, 
be  would  have  waited  for  the  public  to  find 
out  how  it  had  been  deceived,  if  the  papers  of 
Bougainville  were  accessible  in  their  entirety 

''Si,  pourtant,  les  textes  dont  il  se  sert 
avaient  tons  4t^  mis  par  Timpression  k  la  por- 
t^e  du  public  nous  aurions  laiss^  probablement 
k  la  sagacity  dee  historiens  futurs  le  soin  de 
faire  Justice  de  sa  mauvaise  foi.  Mais  le 
silence  n*^tait  point  posrible.  Montcalm  et 
Bougainville  avaient  protests  d*avance  centre 
les  interpretations  perfides  dont  lis  sentaient 

^ue  leur  m^moire,  avec  la  fausset^  de  certains 
'anadiens,  finirait  par  Atre  Tobjet.  '  N*en  cro- 
jez  pas  lee  Canadiens,*  ^crivait  Bougainville  & 
son  ir^re  comme  s*il  pr67oyait  son  contradic- 
teur;  *croyez  touiours  de  preference  noe  Jour- 
naux.  Les  Canadiens  se  vantent  et  mentent. 
Nous  autres  ne  savons  dire  que  la  verite.*  ** 

Various  points  in  Canadian  history  have  fur- 
nished matter  for  spirited  discussion,  but  one 
does  not  often,  nowadays,  lay  hands  on  a  work 
which  is  so  uncompromisingly  polemical  in 
tone.  Last  year  tha  erection  of  a  monument 
at  Chateauguay  gave  rise  to  a  controversy 
concerning  the  part  of  De  Salaberry  in  that 
encounter,  but  personal  bitterness  was  avoided. 
Bf.  de  Kerallain,  on  the  contrary,  does  not  will- 
ingly leave  the  Abb^  Casgrain  a  single  shred 
of  reputation.  He  accuses  him  of  pilfering 
from  Parkman  even  when  speaking  words  of 
disparagement,  and  he  certainly  produces  some 
amusing  cases  of  parallelism.  The  Abbe  Cas- 
grain is  an  editor  as  well  as  an  historiao.  M.de 
Kerallain  gives  him  no  peace  even  here.  His 
text  is  inaccurate,  his  arrangement  bad,  his 
notes  either  insignificant  or  incorrect.  The 
Frenchman  delivers  his  attack  upon  the  Cana- 
dian all  along  the  line.  Montcalm  and  Vau- 
dreuil  could  notPbavK  regarded  each  other  with 
lees  cordiality  of  feeling. 

For  ourselves  we  aooept  as  truthful  the  tea- 
timony  of  Bougainville  to  the  maladminia- 
tration  of  the  colony  and  to  the  weaknesses 
of  the  French  Canadians,  so  long  as  we  are 
permitted  to  make  one  reservation.  Bougain- 
ville did  not  think  the  game  worth  the  candle, 
and,  while  ready  to  do  his  soldier*s  duty,  was 
never  in  a  mood  to  regard  the  colonists  with 
sympathy.  He  appears  to  us  in  the  light  of 
a  frank,  honorable  man.  His  family  letters 
are  models  of  affectionate  solicitude.  He  has 
neither  the  arts  nor  the  spirit  of  a  vUifler. 
He  strives  to  be  scrupulously  precise  in  bts 
statement  of  facts.  But  a  man  so  completely 
out  of  touch  with  colonial  aspirations  could 
pot  faU  to  lee  char«<oter,  If  not  fact*,  through 


348 


Tlie    Nation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1609 


a  distorting  medium.  To  take  a  single  in- 
stance. At  Carillon  what  he  saw  was  the 
cantine  of  the  engineer,  De  Lotbinidre.  **D 
est  de  Pint^rdt  de  oe  Vaaban  qne  les  oavrages 
trainent  en  longneor.  H  f ant  bien  que  la  can- 
tine  ait  du  d^bit.  Le  Tin  7  est  &  six  litres  le 
pot.  Je  marque  ces  variations  de  priz.  Cest 
le  thermom^tre  des  concussions  de  oe  pays.** 
He  saw,  also,  at  the  time  of  the  massacre,  what 
he  considered  to  be  connivance  between  the 
interpreters  and  the  savages,  but  he  did  not 
see  the  gallant  conduct  of  the  Canadians, 
which  has  been  signalized  in  Mr.  William 
McLennan^s  stirring  ballad.  At  the  end  of 
the  campaign  he  summed  up  his  impressions 
of  war,  people,  and  country  in  the  following 
words :  **Tout  ce  que  je  puis  vous  dire,  c'est 
qu'en  quittant  ce  pays  nous  ohanterons  de  bon 
coeur  VIn  Exitu  IgraiV^ 

Agaiiist  M.*  de  Kerallain,  then,  we  contend 
that  Bougainville,  with  all  his  honesty,  was 
prevented  by  general  prepossession  from  giv- 
ing an  adequate  account  of  the  events  which 
he  witnessed.  Against  the  Abb6  Casgrain  we 
contend  that  Bougainville  was  truthful  and 
desired  to  send  home  minutely  exact  reports. 
He  conducted  himself  with  distinction  through- 
out,  and,  if  we  make  a  single  exception,  did 
whatever  could  have  been  reasonably  expected 
of  an  officer  in  his  position.  The  one  exception 
was  his  failure  to  watch  Holmes^s  vessels  with 
unremitting  care  on  the  evening  of  September 
18,  1759.  Says  Parkman:  *«When  Bougain- 
ville saw  Holmes's  vessels  drift  down  the 
stream,  he  did  not  tax  his  weary  troops  to  fol- 
low them,  thinking  that  they  would  return  as 
usual  with  the  flood  tide.**  This  was  the  off 
chance  against  which  Bougainville  failed  to 
guard,  and  Wolfe  gained  the  heights.  M.  de 
^  Kerallain  objects  to  Kingsford's  phrase,  **  Bou- 
gainville  was  simply  autgeneraUed^**  and  sug- 
gests the  substitution  of  humbugged.  At  the 
worst,  Bougainville's  lack  of  vigilance  on  this 
occasion  was  not  the  Nemesis  of  an  habitual 
slackness.  It  was  the  '*one  dark  hour  which 
brings  remorse, **  rather  than  **the  sin  that 
practice  bums  into  the  blood."  On  the  whole, 
Bougainville  was  an  excellent  staff  officer,  and 
Montcalm's  warm  friendship  through  years  of 
closest  familiarity  vouches  for  the  honor  of  his 
character. 

Two  questions,  however,  which  this  essay  of 
vindication  involves  are  of  an  interest  quite 
equal  to  that  of  the  vindication.  The  first  of 
these  is  the  comparison  inevitably  suggested 
between  the  venality  of  French  Canadians  in 
the  eighteenth  century  and  the  venality  of 
French  Canadians  to-day;  between  the  ve 
nality  of  those  who  formed  the  entourage  of 
Vaudreuil  and  Bigots  and  the  venality  of  their 
descendants  as  one  sees  it  revealed  in  the  late 
Merder  administration  and  in  the  city  govern- 
ment of  MontreaL  The  secoq^  is  purely  per- 
sonal, and  relates  to  the  credibility  of  the 
Abb6  Casgrain.  We  cannot  but  believe  that 
the  perusal  of  M.  de  Elerallain-s  critidsms  will 
give  him  more  than  one  bad  quarter  of  an 
hour. 

A  portion  of  this  essay  has  been  sent  to  the 
Bevue  Historique,  In  its  complete  form  it  is 
a  bibliographical  rarity.  Only  150  copies  were 
printed,  and  these  are  for  private  disMbution. 
M.  de  Kerallain  writes  with  much  wit,  force, 
and  erudition.  A  few  books  like  his  own  would 
go  far  to  remove  the  indifference  of  French 
readers  to  the  subject  of  the  Canadian  wars-an 
indifference  which  he  expressly  deplores.  The 
French  as  a  naUon  sUU  appreciate  liveliness, 
though  they  do  date  their  viUl  historical  in- 
terests from  1789.  We  will  close  with  an  ex- 
ample of  M.  de  Kerallain's  liveliness,  his  own 


parting  quip:  "Toutefols  .  .  .  nonsdirons 
que  la  legon  doit  nous  servir  k  tons,  et  que, 
tons,  4tudiants  ou  6crivains,  nous  ne  saurions 
trop  appliquer  le  conseil  ot  r6sumait  son  ex- 
perience un  vieux  thdologien,  aprte  une  vie 
quasi  centenaire  d'^rudition  pol6mique  :  *  V^- 
riflez  ton  jours  vos  citations.' " 


The  CUi$9  and  Biehopriea  of  Phrygia  :  Being 
an  Essay  of  the  Local  History  of  Phrygia 
from  the  Earliest  Times  to  the  Turkish  Con- 
quest. By  W.  M.  Ramsay,  D.C.L.,  LL.D., 
etc.,  etc.  Macmillan.  1806. 
SoMX  years  ago,  in  his  historical  *  (Geography 
of  Asia  Minor,'  Mr.  Ramsay  announced  his 
ambition  to  write  a  local  history  of  the  several 
countries  of  Asia  Minor.  That  ambition  pro- 
mises now  to  be  realized,  for  the  volume  before 
us  is  but  the  first  of  a  series  that  is  intended  to 
collect  all  the  information  that  can  be  gleaned 
from  the  authors,  from  inscriptions  and  monu- 
ments, from  the  survival  of  names  and  reli 
gious  facts  in  modem  times,  and  from  other 
such  scanty  sources,  and  to  interpret  these  in  the 
light  of  the  geographical  and  national  condi- 
tions. No  man  is  better  qualified  to  undertake 
this  task  than  Mr.  Ramsay,  who  for  the  past 
sixteen  years  has  busied  himself  by  day  and  by 
night  in  investigating  and  pondering  the  prob- 
lems connected  with  the  history  of  Asia  Mi- 
nor. He  firsc  visited  that  country  in  1880,  in 
company  with  Sir  Charles  WUsoo,  one  of  Dis- 
raeli's travelling  consuls  who  were  spying  out 
the  land  preparatory  to  its  annexation  to  the 
British  Empire.  For  the  following  eleven  years 
the  half  of  each  year  was  spent  in  travel  in 
Asia  Minor,  collecting  inscriptions,  mapping  the 
country,  locating  the  sites  of  ancient  cities  and 
towns,  and  studying  the  still  existing  monu- 
ments. He  has  thus  come  into  possession  of  a 
mass  of  knowledge  concerning  Asia  Minor  such 
as  no  other  man  of  this  day  and  genwation  can 
pretend  to.  Indeed,  there  are  only  three  or 
four  men  living  who  are  in  a  position  to  check 
off  Mr.  Ramsay's  statements,  and  no  man  may 
lightly  dispute  him.  Whatever  else  may  be 
said  or  thought  of  his  work,  it  cannot  be  de- 
nied that  he  is  a  persistent  searcher  /or  truth. 
In  fact,  much  of  the  time  spent  on  his  earlier 
journeys  was  wasted,  and  repres^ited  misdi- 
rected effort,  owing  in  gpreat  measure  to  the 
necessity  he  was  under  of  feeling  his  way  dark- 
ly, for  want  of  an  instructor  in  the  ways  and 
means  of  archaeological  travel—for  Sir  Charles 
Wilson  may  not  be  reckoned  as  such.  Accord 
ingly,  no  small  portion  of  the  second,  third, 
fourth,  and  fifth  journeys  was  occupied  in  cor- 
recting the  mistakes  and  blunders  made  on 
previous  journeys.  Nevertheless,  the  spirit  of 
the  man  must  be  noted  and  praised. 

Mr.  Ramsay  has  written  much.  Before  ever 
he  essayed  a  book,  his  articlee  on  the  topo- 
graphy and  arcbsaology  of  Asia  Minor  were 
scattered  in  innumerable  periodicals  up  and 
down  the  world.  They  were  of  value,  though 
written  in  a  style  that  sometimes  baffled  in- 
terpretation, and  students  along  this  line  of 
antiquarian  research  longed  to  have  Mr. 
Ramsay  collect  his  results  in  the  form  of  a 
book.  But  when,  in  deference  to  this  demand, 
he  produced  his  *  Historical  (Geography  of 
Asia  Minor,'  his  readers  were  greatiy  disap- 
pointed, for  probably  no  worse  made  book 
exists.  It  was  literally  thrown  together,  and 
hurried  off  to  the  printer  a  year  or  so  before  it 
was  ready  for  the  press.  The  only  redeeming 
feature  was  its  soundness  in  matters  of  fact. 
It  also  gave  offence  for  other  reasons  which 
need  not  be  mentioned  now.  In  his  later  books, 
which  have  followed  in  quick  succession,  Mr* 


Ramsay  has  steadily  improved  as  abookmsker, 
and  has  avoided  the  error  of  going  to  prm 
before  he  was  ready.  This  last  but  one  sod 
most  ambitious  of  his  books  is  the  bert  msde 
of  the  series. 

What  he  now  has  in  hand  is  the  local  history 
of  Phrygia,  the  first  volume  treating  of  the 
cities  of  the  Lycos  and  adjoining  valleys.   It 
is  ambitious,  too,  for  the  titie-page  informs  w 
that  it  is  to  deal  with  Phrygia's  history  *'from 
the  earliest  times  to  the  Turkish  oonqueBt" 
The  knowledge  and  ability  to  cover  so  vsit  a 
field  ex  cathedra  is  g^ven  to  but  few  men,  but 
it  must  be  confessed  that  Mr.  lUunsay  has  ac- 
quitted himself  most  creditably,  and  the  teo- 
tions   which   deal   with   Byzantine  or  even 
Turkish  matters  will  be  most  helpful  to  futore 
travellers.    The  value  of  the  book  as  a  whole 
is  extraordinary;  it  is  a  veritable  mine  of  in- 
formation in  regard  to  Phrygia  at  all  periods 
of  its  history.    Not  only  does  it  throw  impor- 
tant light  upon  profane  history,  but  the  student 
of  tiie  early  history  of  the  Christian  Church 
will  find  it  a  valuable  aid.    The  Lycos  valley 
is  precisely  tiie  part  of  Phrygia  which  possooBco 
the  deepest  interest  for  the  theologian,  as  being 
the  scene  of  some  of  the  labors  of  St  Paul, 
who  left  there  the  impress  of  his  enthusiasm 
and  his  genius  in  the  churches  of  Laodicee, 
Hierapolis,  and  Colossae.   Now  that  the  railway 
can  bring  travellers  to  the  very  gates  of  these 
old  cities,  the  book  ought  to  be  exceedin^y 
useful  to  more  thoughtful  travellers. 

The  present  volume  is  divided  into  nine 
chapters,  of  which  the  first  describes  the  gen- 
eral features  of  the  Lycos  Valley ;  the  second, 
Laodicea ;  the  third,  Hierapolis ;  the  fourth, 
the  Middle  Masander  Valley ;  the  fifth,  the 
Lower  Msoander  Valley ;  the  sixth,  Colosne; 
the  seventh,  Lounda,  PeltsB,  etc.;  the  ei^th, 
the  Valley  of  the  Kasanes  and  Indos;  the 
ninth,  the  Phrygian  cities  of  the  Pisidian 
frontier.  Mr.  Ramsay's  treatment  may  best 
be  understood  by  a  synopsis  of,  say,  chapter 
iii.,  on  Hierapolis :  The  Holy  aty  ;  its  Sitaa- 
tion  and  Origin ;  its  ReUgious  Character ; 
Mother  Leto ;  Leto  and  Kora ;  the  God ;  tiie 
Matriarchal  System ;  the  Brotiierhood ;  the 
Religion  of  Burial;  the  God  as  Ruler  and 
Healer;  the  Trade-Guilds;  its  History;  its 
Magistrates  and  Municipal  Institutions ;  the 
Gerousia.  Under  each  of  these  heads  the 
reader  will  find  matter  that  is  new,  instructive, 
and  suggestive.  We  cannot  go  into  details  in 
this  notice,  but  in  illustration  we  may  men- 
tion the  discussion  of  the  matriarchal  system, 
which  throws  an  interesting  light  upon  the 
many  inscriptions,  found  throughout  Asia 
Mmor,  in  which  descent  is  reckoned  ^>pa- 
rentiy  from  the  mother.  It  seems  that  chil- 
dren were  bom  while  the  unwedded  motiier 
was  living  as  a  courtesan  before  the  goddess, 
in  accordance  with  a  custom  that  bad  pre- 
vailed in  the  worship  of  the  Great  Mother 
Goddess  of  Asia  from  time  immemoriaL  It 
was  a  religious  rite,  involving  no  infamy,  but 
quite  the  reverse,  and  might  even  be  recorded 
on  the  tombstone  of  the  Parthenos  (here,  sim- 
ply unmarried  u>oman)  as  an  especial  claim 
upon  the  respect  and  revenmoe  of  her  family 
and  townsmen.  It  is  a  remnant  of  the  pre- 
Greek  social  system  that  was  never  really 
abolished,  but  decayed  slowly  before  the  ad- 
vance of  the  Graeco-Roman  civilixation.  It 
was  the  memory  of  this  antiquated  social 
system  that  led  to  the  troubles  of  St.  TImUs, 
about  50  ▲.  D. 

Each  chapter  is  followed  by  an  apptttdiz,  in 
which  the  author  cites  the  inscriptloi  of 
which  be  has  made  use  in  supporting  tlM  viavs 
set  forth  in  the  text;  or  pertiapilti 


April  30,  1896] 


Tlie   iJTatioii. 


849 


more  exact  to  say  that  these  inscriptioiis  have 
created  the  aothor't  views.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  reader's  task  is  made  difficult  by  disjoint- 
edoees,  as,  for  example,  Mr.  Ramsay's  last 
word  on  the  matriarchal  system  cannot  be 
found  in  the  chapter  on  Hierapolis,  to  which 
we  have  referred  above,  but  must  be  sought 
here  and  there  throughout  the  book.  We  ad- 
mit that  this  cannot  wholly  be  avoided  in  a 
work  like  the  present,  but  it  makes  us  wish 
that  Mr.  Ramsay  would  treat  of  Asian  man- 
ners and  customs  in  a  separate  volume. 


Venestcela ;  A  Land  where  it's  always  Sum- 
mer. By  William  Eleroy  Curtis.  With  a 
map.  Harper  &  Bros.  1896. 
Mb.  Cubti^s  account  of  Veneroela  contains  a 
good  deal  of  useful  information,  put  together 
in  a  second-rate  way;  it  is  marred  by  the  fact 
that  the  author  is  not  well  equipped  as  an  ob- 
server and  is  slovenly  as  a  writer.  He  is  not 
aoeorate,  he  is  flippant,  and  he  is  not  a  man  of 
the  world.  This  last,  we  are  aware,  is  a  terri- 
ble accusation  to  bring  against  a  gentleman 
who  has  been  the  director  of  the  Bureau  of 
American  Republics,  but  it  is  nevertheless 
Ime.  Mr.  Curtis  knows  the  United  States, 
and  be  has  seen  a  good  deal  of  South  America; 
but  ^>parently  the  only  standard  he  has  to 
apply  to  South  America  is  that  furnished  by 
the  United  States.  Now  this  is  aU  very  weU 
as  far  as  it  goes,  but  to  understand  any  Spanish 
American  state  it  is  necessary  to  keep  before 
the  mind  not  the  United  States,  but  Europe. 
Veoemela  is  eaMntially  European.  The  Andes 
are  American;  the  Orinoco  is  American;  so 
are  the  Uanos;  the  race  is  mixed;  but  Vene 
xuelan  life,  society,  civilization,  institutions, 
habits,  and  even  government  (they  have  tried 
to  import  the  constitutional  system  of  the 
United  States,  but  have  totally  failed)  are  as 
European  as  those  of  the  Venice  after  which 
the- country  was  named.  Leaving  the  peons 
and  wandering  Indians  out  of  view,  there  is 
not  an  idea, in  a  Venezuelan's  bead,  nor  a  hope 
or  fear  in  his  heart,  which  does  not  derive  its 
color  and  substance  from  Europe.  His  litera- 
ture, his  speech,  his  press,  his  religion,  the 
house  he  lives  in,  the  railway  carriage  he 
travels  in,  his  cooking,  the  signs  on  his  shops, 
his  theatre,  his  ceremonial  observances,  the 
rocking-chair  he  takes  his  nesta  in— every- 
thing in  his  existence  is  European.  Venesuela 
belongs  to  the  European  world,  and  not  to  the 
Europe  of  great  capitals  either,  but  to  a  pro- 
vincial Europe  still  more  foreign  and  strange 
to  us.  For  an  American  to  attempt  to  describe 
the  peculiarities  of  Venezuela  by  comparison 
with  life  as  it  is  known  in  Maine  or  Illinois,  is 
as  if  an  Englishman  should  attempt  to  describe 
Algiers  by  comparing  it  with  Yorkshire. 

The  result  is  inevitably  to  give  an  air  of 
grotesqueness  to  description  some  of  which  is 
otherwise  defective  through  its  inaccuracy. 
One  or  two  examples  will  show  what  we  mean. 
In  chapter  xv.  the  author  gives  an  account  of 
Venezuelan  fruita— the  country  produces  every 
known  tropical  species— and  sums  up  the  sub- 
ject by  saybig  that  *f  or  every-day  diet"  there  is 
nothing  in  the  tropics  **  that  will  compare  with 
the  Concord  grape  or  the  russet  apple."  For 
every-day  diet  there  is  nothing  in  the  tropics 
that  will  compare  with  a  prime  porter-house 
steak;  but,  after  all,  what  of  it  ?  In  the  next 
chapter  religion  is  discussed;  Mr.  Curtis  de- 
scribee the  country  as  **  a  most  invitlDg  field  " 
for  Protestant  missionary  effort,  and  declares 
that  **a  dozen  churches  might  be  organized  in 
Venezuela  at  once,  and  within  a  few  years 
every  one  of  them  would  be  self-supporting." 


In  another  chapter,  in  the  course  of  a  very 
light-hearted  description  of  the  oemeteriee,  he 
warns  tbe  traveller  not  to  imagine  that  **  Ella 
Duerme  "  on  a  tomb  is  **  the  name  of  a  girl." 
A  Venezuelan  conrtship  he  declares  to  have  be- 
come so  informal  that  *'a  yonng  man  takes 
matters  into  his  own  hands  nowadays,  and 
*sitB  up'  with  his  sweetheart,  just  as  they  do 
in  Biassaohnsetts  or  Illinois."  It  is  only  Hir 
to  say  that  it  is  by  no  means  for  clergymen 
alone  that  Mr.  Curtis  sees  a  great  opening.  At 
Macuto,  a  little  seaside  place  near  La  Ouayra, 
he  would  have  some  one  build  a  modem  hotel 
of  a  hundred  or  a  hundred  and  fifty  rooms. 
It  is  true  there  are  some  difficulties  about  it» 
for  not  only  the  material  and  furniture,  "  but 
the  builders  and  servants,  must  be  imposted"; 
but,  once  built,  and  oondncted  on  the  Ameri- 
can plan,  it  **  would  be  full  of  gnests  the  whole 
year  round"  (p  80).  Another  hotel  Is  much 
needed  at  Caracas  (p.  4^.  Why  Is  It,  one  won- 
ders, that  capital  and  labor  do  not  flow  into 
Veneanela,  as  they  have  done  into  the  northern 
half  of  the  contbient  f 

A  tendency  at  every  turn  to  looseness  of  state- 
ment is  a  marked  feature  of  the  book,  and  no- 
where is  this  more  dangerous  for  an  observer 
than  in  the  treses.  The  atmosphere  is  one  of 
fancy  rather  than  fact^  and  it  is  unsafe  to  take 
anything  for  granted  or  by  common  report.  In 
Venezuela  there  Is  a  mental  haze  (not  unlike 
that  which  hovers  over  the  coast  of  tbe  tierra 
oali^tUe)  which  envelops  all  matters  of  dis- 
tance^ measure,  weight,  and  number,  and  ob- 
scnrea  the  harsh  outlines  of  fact;  this  base  It 
is,  in  part,  which  makes  any  agreement  upon 
the  Ouiana  boundary  line  so  difficult.  Mr. 
Curtis  does  Utile  to  disdpate  it.  He  gives  the 
area  of  Venezuela  at  607,960  square  mUes 
(p.  7),  without,  however,  mentioning  the  im- 
portant fact  that  an  enormous  part  of  this  is 
not  actually  administered  by  Venezuela  at  all; 
he  declares  the  States  to  be  ''independent  in 
the  management  of  their  local  affairs"  (p.  10), 
which  is  true  only  on  paper;  at  p.  48  the 
population  of  Caracas  Is  given  at  70,000,  yet 
at  p.  188  the  number  of  foreigners  is  said  to  be 
7,000,  and  this  Issaid  tobe  16  per  cent,  of  the 
population.  The  altitude  of  Caracas  (a  very 
important  point  in  South  America)  is  given  at 
8^000  feet  (pp.  86, 48),  though  all  the  ^^clopedias 
make  it  about  1,000  feet  less;  the  number  of 
English  books  about  Venezuela  Is  said  (p.  52) 
to  be  three;  the  expenses  of  housekeeping  are 
"about  the  same  as  in  the  United  States" 
(p.  60),  though  the  author  himself  points  out 
that  rent  and  service  are  much  lower.  Ca- 
racas he  calls  a  "  sort  of  one-story  Paris  "  (p. 
158),  and  declares  social  life  there  to  be  very 
much  like  what  it  is  in  '*  the  Continental  dties 
of  Europe"  (p.  168)~asort  of  one-story  Cos- 
mopolis,  perhaps.  But  the  danger  which  lurks 
in  generalizations  has  no  terrors  for  this  au- 
thor. One  singular  remark  about  the  habits 
of  the  Venezuelans  is  that  there  is  little  drunken- 
ness among  them,  because  they  drink  "light 
native  liquors  made  of  fruits  and  the  juioe  of 
the  sugar-cane,"  which  "intoxicate  easily,"  but 
**  when  the  fumes  of  the  alcohol  have  left  the 
brain,  there  is  no  serious  effect  like  that 
which  follows  brandies  and  other  strong 
drinks."  The  native  liquor  of  Venezuela  is 
new  rum,  the  properties  of  which  every  good 
New  Englander  knows.  It  does  intoxicate 
easily,  but  the  after- effects  in  Ciudad  Bolivar 
or  Maracaibo  are  substantially  the  same  as  in 
Chelsea  or  Salem. 

The  author  seems  to  have  taken  up  the 
study  of  Spanish,  bat  he  cannot  be  said  to 
have  attained  a  mastery  of  it  At  page  ISl, 
he  speaks  of  "pronundamentos"  (sic)  as  the 


Spanish  word  for  "a  revolutionary  party." 
The  word  for  melon  he  pronounces  "  malony," 
and,  that  there  may  be  no  mistake  about  it, 
declares  tiiat  it  recalls  the  name  of  a  **  nume- 
rous and  highly  respected  Irish  family" ;  a 
woman's  bonnet,  he  says,  is  called  a  "  begor- 
ra"  (p.  187).  The  Spanish  for  "there  is  none" 
he  converts  into  tbe  two  English  words  "  no 
hay,"  over  which  he  makes  very  merry.  He 
gives  (p.  181)  what  he  calls  a  "unique"  death 
notice,  but  the  term  is  much  more  applicable 
to  his  translation  of  it,  beginning,  "  Day  be- 
fore yesterday  went  down  to  the  sepulchre 
the  honest  and  laborious  Mr.  Paul  Emilio 
Gomez."  lAmonadB  he  pronounces  "Lee- 
monoddie."  A  town  in  Ck>lombia  he  declares 
to  be  "  famous  only  for  its  name."  The  name 
is  St.  Thomas;  to  distinguish  it  from  another 
St.  Thomas  which  threw  off  the  Spanish  yoke, 
it  was  caUed  by  the  Spaniards,  with  "indig- 
nant irony,"  "Santa  Tomci»  ds  la  Ca6eUeros." 
Such  a  name,  If  it  can  be  imagined  in  exist- 
ence, would  certainly  make  a  town  well  known 
in  tbe  Spanish-spei^dng  world,  and  so  would 
Mr.  Curtis's  strange  equivalent  of  "St.  Tho- 
mas the  Qentieman." 

The  best  thing  in  the  book  is  the  account  of 
the  rise,  rule,  and  downfall— if  it  can  be  called 
downfall  to  be  living  in  Paris  in  luxury  on  the 
fortune  which  he  wrung  out  of  his  impove- 
rished country — of  Guzman  Blanco.  Tyrant 
for  tyrant,  bis  figure  is  as  picturesque  as  any 
that  South  America  has  produced,  and  that  is 
saying  a  good  deal.  Mr.  Curtis  givee  one  or 
two  stories  of  him  which  illustrate  hit  charac- 
ter very  well,  and  are  new  to  us.  The  best  are 
the  stories  of  the  scientific  anniversary  at 
which  Guzman,  in  reply  to  an  invitation  to 
preside,  said  he  would  do  so  if  all  the  papers 
were  submitted  to  him  for  revision  (p.  tOl);  of 
his  proclamation  of  the  independence  of  the 
Venezuelan  church  of  "tbe  Roman  Episco- 
pate," and  of  his  decision  to  return  to  "the 
uses  of  the  primitive  church  founded  by  Jesus 
Christ  and  his  aposties,"  including  the  election 
of  the  Archbishops  "by  Congrees"  (p.  906), 
and  of  his  securing  a  proper  reception  for  the 
officers  and  sailors  of  our  fieet  by  means  of  a 
decree  forbidding  any  citizen  to  charge  them 
anything  for  supplies  of  any  kind  while  on 
shore  (p.  175). 


TheFea^U  of  Autolycu$.  By  Elizabeth  Ro- 
bins Pennell.  London:  John  Lane;  New 
York:  The  Merriam  0>.  1898. 
Mbs.  Pxr  nkll  in  the  preface  to  her  book  would 
make  herself  out  a  "  greedy  woman,"  and  in 
the  chapter  on  the  Virtue  of  Gluttony  she 
encouragee  the  cultivation  of  that  quality  in 
her  sex.  This  is  only  a  /ofon  de  parUr,  for 
Mrs.  Pennell,  when  she  has  occasion  to  mention 
special  dishes,  selects  with  refined,  delicate, 
and  diicriminating  taste,  and  essentially  those 
which  are  wasted  in  the  gratification  of  mere 
gluttony.  She  was  evidentiy  "chaffing"  her 
English  audience  (for  the  various  papers  of 
which  her  volume  is  composed  appeared  origi- 
naUy  as  separate  articles  in  the  PaU  Mall  Oa. 
zeeee).  Mrs.  PenneU  discourses  pleasantiy  of 
breakfasts,  dinners,  and  suppers;  she  enlo- 
giaes  "  the  subtle  sandwich,"  *'  the  incompara- 
ble onion,"  "the  most  excellent  oyster,"  "the 
magnificent  mushroom,"  and  "  the  triumphant 
tomato."  Of  them  she  tells  us  nothing  new, 
although  she  proclaims  that  "there  Is  no 
knowledge  nobler  than  that  of  the  'gullet 
science,' "  and,  in  quotation  of  another  writer, 
that  "  the  disoorery  of  a  new  dish  does  more 
for  the  happiness  of  the  human  race  thao  tbe 
discovery  of  a  planet"     The  first  of  thene 


350 


Tlie    N'atlon. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1609 


aphorisms  may  arouse  the  languid  interest  of 
the  epicure;  but  the  second  will  not  discourage 
the  astronomer  in  his  search  of  the  bearens. 

All  that  Mrs.  Pennell  has  to  say  may  be  con- 
densed within  very  restricted  limits;  but  she 
has  elaborated  her  subject  with  such  facile 
grace  that,  in  those  who  are  able  to  envelop 
eating  with  a  poetic  halo,  her  loye  of  that  func 
tion,  whether  real  or  simulated,  will  inspire 
appreciatiye  recognition.  To  tourists  from 
remote  portions  of  the  United  States  and  the 
Dominion  of  Canada,  equipped  with  well- 
lined  wallets  and  unjaded  palates,  who  are 
about  to  go  abroad  for  the  first  time,  Mrs. 
Pennell^s  book,  in  its  accurate  knowledge,  ac- 
quired  through  experience,  of  special  local 
dishes  and  of  the  places  where  they  may  be 
procured  in  the  various  towns  of  Europe,  will 
prove  of  value.  To  the  gourmand,  however, 
it  oflFers  nothing  in  the  way  of  culinary  pre. 
parations  with  which  he  is  not  entirely  fami- 
liar,  and  of  which  be  is  not  perhaps  long  since 
weary.  As  a  pessimistic  Chicago  poet  says  in 
an  Ode  to  Spring  : 

'*  Same  old  vloletB,  Bame  old  blue ; 
Same  old  gnuw-plot,  same  old  haa ; 
Same  old  look  In  ererythliig; 
flame  old  season ;  same  old  spring." 

So  may  it  be  said  of  cookery  at  the  close  of  the 
nineteenth  century:  Same  old  soup,  same  old 
fish,  same  old  sauce,  with  the  same  old  dish. 


CrimincU  Sociology,     By  Enrico  Ferri.     D. 

Appleton&Co.  1896. 
Thb  very  competent  editor  of  the  **  Crimino- 
logy Series,"  in  which  this  volume  appears, 
Mr*  W.  Douglas  Morrison,  remarks  that  the 
public  is  in  danger  of  being  deluded  by  mis. 
leading  statistics  concerning  the  diminution  of 
crime.  He  is  evidently  inclined  to  the  opinion 
that  crime  is  either  increasing  or  at  least  keep, 
ing  pace  with  the  increase  of  population.  At 
the  same  time  he  thinks,  as  most  do  who  inves- 


tigate the  subject,  that  no  good  results  are  to 
be  expected  from  resorting  to  punishments  of 
greater  rigor  and  severity.  It  is  generally  ad- 
mitted that  our  system  of  penal  servitude  not 
only  fails  to  reform  offenders,  but,  in  the  case 
of  the  less  hardened  criminals,  and  especially 
first  oflFenders,  produces  a  deteriorating  effect. 
Evidently,  under  these  circumstances,  we  need 
to  inquire  into  the  causes  that  produce  crimi- 
nals. Prof.  Ferri's  work  is  an  essay  in  this  di- 
rection, and  perhaps  the  beet  of  those  which 
we  have  lately  had  from  Italian  investigatorB. 
Under  the  head  of  Criminal  Anthropology  he 
takes  up  the  individual  conditions  which  tend 
to  produce  criminal  habits  of  mind  and  action. 
He  then  examines  the  adverse  social  conditions 
that  tend  to  lead  certain  sections  of  the  popu- 
lation into  crime.  While  maintaining  that  the 
only  way  to  diminish  crime  is  to  ameliorate 
these  conditions,  he  admits  that  criminal  codes 
are  nevertheless  necessary  for  the  protection  of 
society,  and  concludes  by  pointing  out  the  im. 
portance  of  some  practical  reforms  in  criminal 
law  and  prison  administration. 

While  Prof.  Ferries  methods  appear  to  us  to 
be  considerably  in  advance  of  those  of  Lom- 
broso,  we  can  hardly  regard  them  as  strictly 
scientific  in  character.  He  is  too  ready  to  ac- 
cept statistical  returns  as  evidence,  without 
the  laborious  verification  which  almost  all 
statistics  require,  and  his  reasoning  is  fre- 
quently confused  and  wandering.  Many  of 
his  conclusions  are  of  such  extreme  general- 
ity as  to  be  of  little  practical  value.  We  know 
that  drunkenness  find  crimes  of  violence  are 
connected,  and  that  poverty  is  related  to 
crimes  against  property.  No  doubt,  if  we  can 
put  a  stop  to  drunkenness  and  eliminate 
poverty,  we  shall  have  done  much  to  suppress 
crime ;  but  there  is  nothing  new  in  this.  StiU, 
it  is  well  to  look  at  the  subject  from  various 
points  of  view,  and  many  of  Prof.  Ferries 
suggestions   deserve   attention.     The  Anglo- 


Saxon  race,  however,  will  hardly  consider  the 
proposition  that  the  jury  should  be  dispensed 
with  in  the  trial  of  ordinary  offenders,  how- 
ever it  may  commend  itself  to  the  theorists  of 
Continental  Europe. 

BOOKS  OF  THB  WEEK. 

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OONOLUSION  OF  THB  ELEVENTH  VOLUME^ 

MAY 

EDUCATIONAL 
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Papen  Prepared  lor  the  Harvwd  Teachera'  As- 
jodatloo : 

1.  Wider  range  of  electlves  in  college  admission  re- 


1.  Wider  range  of  electlves  in  college  admission  re- 
ouirementa,  by  Charles  W.  Eliot  and  John  etlow;  2. 
Modern  languages  as  an  alternative  in  college  admis- 
sion requirements,  by  C.  H.  Orandgent,  Morris  H. 


tlve  in  college  admission  requirements,  by  J.  T.  Ber- 
gen, jr.,  and  C.  B.  Davenport;  4.  Ck>llMe  admission 
requirementa.  by  A.  Lawrence  Lowell  and  N.  S.  Shaler. 

The  University  of  Michigan,  IL  by  B.  A.  Hinsdale;  Pro- 
fessor Dewey  on  interest  and  the  will,  by  WliUam  T. 
Harris. 

D18CU8810M.— Recommendations  as  to  uniform  college 
entrance  requirements  made  by  theOonferences  held 
at  Columbia  University,  February,  1805. 

Bsvixwa.  Editobialb. 

•8  a  v^ar  (sionlMy,  exoepting  Juiv  otnd  Auffuei); 
85o.  a  number. 

HENRY  HOLT  &  CO., 

29  WEST  23D  STREET,  NEW  YORK. 

T  ^tt-^rc  We  buy  and  sell  bills  of  exchan^on 

j-#c  ttci  a  nn^  mike  Cable  Transfers  of  monegr  to 

of  Europe.  Australia,  and  the  West  Indies; 

^*  also  msike  collections  and  Issue  Commer- 

Credlt  cial  and  rravellers' Credits,  available  in 

v^rcui t.  ^^  pj^^  ^  ^^  world. 

Brown    Brothers    &    Co.,    Bankers, 

NO.  59  WALL  STREET,  NEW  YORK. 

THE  SCHOOL  POETRY  BOOK. 

Compiled  by  Jaiom  H.  Psmximaw,  Delanoey  School, 
Philadelphia.  Gives  seventy-three  of  the  best  short 
poems  off  the  English  language  for  memorlxlng  and 
reading.  189  pages.  40  cents.  D.  O.  HEATH  ft  CO., 
Publishers,  Boston*  New  Tork,  Chicago. 


/(/ST  PUBLISHED. 

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By  Anoelo  Mosso.  Translated  from  the  Ita- 
lian by  E.  LouoH  and  F.  Kixsow.  Crown 
8vo,  $1.76. 

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by  the  title.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  series  of  essays  on  the  ex- 
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ed in  a  measure  sclentiflcally,  i.  e..  physiologioally.  the 
book  Is  not  lotended  solely  for  the  sdentlllo  public 


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The    Nation. 


NEW  YORK,   TBUR8DAT,  MAY  1,   1806. 

The  Week. 

Thb  walls  of  the  aDti-McKinley  Jericho 
hare  baeD  knocked  too  flat  by  the  blast  of 
the  Ulinoia  trumpet  to  be  rebuilt.  Quay 
and  Piatt  and  Manley  make  a  dismal  pre- 
tence at  continued  cheerfulness,  but  they 
see  the  fatal  drift  away  from  them,  and 
know  it  cannot  be  checked.  With  the 
ablest,  most  prudent  and  far-sighted  Re- 
publican leaders  against  him,  or  at  least 
gravely  doubtful  of  the  wisdom  of  his 
nomination,  with  the  most  conservative 
elements  of  his  party  East  and  West  de- 
siring another  type  of  man,  McKinley  is 
nioving  on  triumphantly  to  an  almost 
certain  victory  at  St  Louis.  What  does 
it  mean  T  It  means  the  triumph  of  igno- 
rant, one-idea  extremists.  It  means  that 
the  currency  may  go  hang,  provided  only 
we  may  have  another  high-tariff  debauch. 
It  means,  moreover,  a  distinct  threat  that 
we  shall  get  another  high  tariff,  as  we 
got  the  last  one,  only  by  a  corrupt  bar- 
gain, involving  the  debasement  of  the 
currency.  Senator  Teller  was  most  ex- 
plicit on  this  point,  in  his  r61e  of  Repub- 
lican enfant  terrible  the  other  day.  He 
taunted  the  Republican  tariff  extremists 
with  their  inability  to  reenact  the  Mc- 
Kinley bill  in  the  next  Senate.  It  can- 
not be  done  without  placating  the  eight 
or  ten  Republican  silver  Senators  who 
will  hold  the  balance  of  power.  But  will 
McKinley  or  his  kind  in  the  Senate  hesi- 
tate to  give  them  their  pound  of  flesh  in 
the  shape  of  shattered  national  flnances  T 
Not  for  an  instant.  Congressman  Draper 
of  Massachusetts  is  already  out  for  a  cur- 
rency of  lead,  or  anything  whatever,  if 
necessary  to  get  high  duties  again.  This 
is  the  threat  to  business  and  finance  in- 
volved in  the  McKinley  boom.  This  will 
be  the  meaning  of  his  success  at  St  Louis 
and  at  the  polls,  as  interpreted  by  his  own 
friends. 


Senator-elect  Foraker  hastens  to  notify 
the  Eastern  Republicans  that  they  will  get 
neither  candidate  nor  platform  at  St.Louis. 
In  the  name  of  McKinley  himself,  he  as- 
serts that  the  Republican  national  conven- 
tion will  declare  not  for  the  gold  standard, 
but  for  bimetallism,  and  against  free  coin- 
age of  sUver  only  temporarily  and  con- 
ditionally. This  would  fittingly  make  no- 
minee and  principles  alike  two-faced,  and 
complete  the  serious  threat  to  stability  of 
business  and  finance  involved  in  the  Mc- 
Kinley candidacy.  Foraker,  of  course,  is 
bound  to  exalt  the  Ohio  currency  plank 
as  the  sum  of  financial  wisdom,  and  ex- 
pects the  advocacy  of  bimetallism  to  carry 
anotlier  Ohio  man,  whom  modesty  does 
not  forbid  him  to  mention,  into  the  White 
House  in  1900.    But  there  is  every  reason 


to  believe  that  a  determined  effort  to  place 
the  party  squarely  on  the  gold  standard 
would  be  successful.  Sentiment  has 
changed  greatly  since  the  Ohio  shuffle 
was  adopted.  A  declaration  for  the  gold 
standard  is  really  about  all  that  Eastern 
Republicans  have  left  to  fight  for,  and 
they  may  as  well  concentrate  their  ener- 
gies on  this  important  point  The  plat- 
form has  to  be  adopted  before  the  candi- 
date is  nominated.  No  one  doubts  that 
McKinley  would  stand  on  any  kind  of  a 
platform  offered  him.  The  despondent 
anti-McKinley  leaders  cannot  do  better 
than  struggle  to  put  him  on  a  gold  plank. 
He  would  look  just  as  picturesque  and  be 
a  good  deal  safer. 


Vermont's  unexpected  declaration  for 
McKinley  is  the  severest  blow  Speaker 
Reed*s  candidacy  has  yet  received.  It  is 
not  simply  a  question  of  the  delegates  in- 
volved (they  number  only  eight).  Mr. 
Reed  has  all  along  confidently  counted 
upon  a  solid  New  England  vote  behind 
him,  but  now  the  McKinley  poachers  have 
filled  their  bag  from  his  own  preserves. 
He  is  thus  unable  to  pose  any  longer  as 
even  a  sectional  candidate.  To  be  that  is 
not  of  itself  a  great  distinction  or  advan- 
tage in  a  canvass  for  the  Presidential  no- 
mination, but  it  was  the  strongest  rdle 
left  the  Speaker,  and  now  that  has  been 
made  impossible  for  him.  His  candidacy 
has  never  had  a  national  character — some 
of  his  New  England  support  has  before 
looked  dubious;  and  now  one  State  has 
openly  left  him.  It  was  a  great  stroke  on 
the  part  of  the  McKinley  managers,  and 
it  is  not  a  little  significant  that  their  first 
undoubted  success  in  breaking  into  New 
England  should  have  been  won  in  the 
most  purely  agricultural  State.  It  is  an 
indisputable,  though  very  curious,  fact, 
that  the  most  genuine  and  unbought  en- 
thusiasm for  McKinley  is  to  be  found 
among  farmers — not,  as  one  would  have 
expected,  among  artisans  and  manufac- 
turers. The  only  explanation  is  that  the 
farming  mind  is  peculiarly  susceptible  to 
the  McKinley  logic.  We  had  good  crops 
when  we  had  a  high  tariff,  and  how  are 
you  going  to  get  away  from  that?  The 
bucolic  mind  in  England  during  the  Na- 
poleonic wars  was  just  as  firmly  convinced 
that  there  would  never  be  another  good 
harvest  if  peace  were  made.  George  Etiot*s 
novels,  with  the  insight  they  give  into  the 
mysterious  operations  of  the  agricultural 
intellect,  are  the  political  manual  to  which 
we  should  send  any  one  asking  for  the 
reasons  of  McKinley*s  great  popularity 
among  American  farmers.  The  proved 
venality  of  our  "yeoman"  voters  should 
also  be  taken  into  account 


How  shall  we  explain  the  enthusiasm  for 
one  who  is  neither  a  military  liero,   a 


leader  in  civil  life,  nor  a  ** magnetic*' 
man?  It  is  the  fact,  which  was  itself  a 
mere  chance,  that  McKinley's  name  came 
to  be  associated  with  a  tariff  act,  the 
passage  of  which  was  coincident  with  a 
period  of  prosperity,  and  the  repassage  of 
which  is  believed  by  the  masses  to  be  ca- 
pable of  immediately  restoring  that  pros- 
perity. A  mere  chance,  we  say.  In  the 
Republican  caucus  which  nominated  Reed 
for  Speaker  in  1889,  McKinley  stood  se- 
cond with  38  votes,  and  Cannon  of  Illinois 
third  with  22.  Custom  virtually  decrees 
the  naming,  by  the  successful  candidate, 
of  his  chief  rival  as  chairman  of  the  ways 
and  means  committee,  and  so  '*  leader  of 
the  House."  If  Cannon  had  received  the 
38  votes  and  McKinley  the  22,  it  would 
have  been  the  Cannon  tariff  act,  and  we 
should  have  had  to-day,  with  precisely  as 
much  reason,  unbounded  enthusiasm  for 
Cannon— a  man,  by  the  way,  with  quite 
as  much  claim  to  the  Presidency,  in  point 
of  ability,  as  McKinley— and  Cannon's 
claim  would  seem  too  ridiculous  for  con- 
sideration. In  other  words,  the  enthu- 
siasm for  McKinley  is  a  matter  of  neither 
brains  nor  heart.  It  is  not  based  upon 
admiration  of  the  man's  ability  or  upon 
affection  for  one  who  makes  tens  of  thou- 
sands regard  him  as  a  personal  friend.  It 
is  purely  a  matter  of  the  pockcet  It  is 
based  upon  the  belief  among  the  masses 
that  McKinley's  election  in  1896— or,  for 
that  matter,  Cannon's,  if  Cannon  had 
been  appointed  chairman  of  the  ways  and 
means  committee  in  1889— will  give  them 
constant  work  with  easy  hours  at  lugh 
wages.  In  short,  it  rests  upon  the  theory 
that  the  tariff  is  the  most  important  thing 
in  the  country,  and  that  the  Qovemment 
can  mark  wages  up  or  down.  It  is  due  to 
the  spreading  among  the  ignorant  of  the 
idea  that  prosperity  is  to  be  determined 
by  votes. 


McKinley's  defenders  have  **  pointed 
with  pride  "  to  a  stump  speech  in  August, 
1891,  in  which  he  condemned  free  coinage. 
One  trouble  about  this  speech  is  that, 
even  though  McKinley  may  have  been 
right  on  the  silver  question  in  August, 
1891,  he  did  not  stay  so  long.  Only  two 
years  later,  in  September,  1883,  the  Ohio 
financier  was  making  speeches  on  the 
same  question  again,  and  this  was  the 
way  he  talked: 

"  The  silTtr  product  of  the  country,  one  of 
the  most  important  we  have,  should  not  be 
discriminated  against^  but  some  plan  should 
be  devised  for  its  utilization  as  a  money  which 
will  insure,  not  the  displacement  of  gold,  but 
the  safe  and  full  use  of  both,  as  eTohangea 
among  the  people." 

This  speech  was  delivered  at  a  most  criti- 
cal time.  President  Cleveland  had  called 
an  extra  session  of  Congress  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  repealing  the  silver-pur- 
chase act,  and  the  House  had  promptly 
responded  to  his  appeaL    But  the  Senate 


362 


Tlie    Nation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1 6 10 


halted  and  hesitated  for  weeks,  until  the 
sound-money  men  of  the  oountiy  wwe 
almost  in  despair.  It  was  in  this  gloomy 
period  that  McKinley  raised  his  Tolce,  not 
to  help  the  men  of  both  parties  who  were 
fighting  for  sound  money  against  heavy 
odds,  but  to  help  the  oUier  side  by  pro- 
testing against  any  discrimination  to  the 
prejudice  of  sIlTer,  and  demanding  the  use 
of  dlyer  as  fully  as  of  gold. 


It  is  encouraging  to  find  that  Repub- 
lican politicians  and  newspapers  repn- 
senting  the  business  interests  of  the 
country  are  expressing  the  apprehension 
which  prsTails  over  the  prospect  of  Mc- 
Kinley's  nomination  on  a  "straddling" 
platform.  Mr.  Depew  says  that  the 
country  has  suffered  for  years  because  of 
the  doubt  about  our  currency,  that  this 
has  been  one  of  the  causes  of  the  finan- 
cial and  industrial  depression  from  which 
we  are  still  suffering,  and  Uiat  "the 
'hold-up'  in  the  Senate,  by  the  sUver 
Senators,  of  all  measures  for  the  relief  of 
the  Treasury,  for  the  increase  of  its  re* 
▼eniie,  for  the  national  defence,  for  the 
protection  of  American  industries,  unless 
coupled  with  the  f^ee  coinage  of  silver 
upon  an  arbitrary  ratio,  has  made  the 
money  question  the  leading  and  most  im- 
portant issue  to  be  decided  in  this  cam- 
paign." He  adds  that  no  party  which 
fkils  emphatically  to  take  the  ground  that 
the  United  States  must  be  put  perma- 
nently upon  a  gold  basis  "can  carry  New 
York,  New  Jersey,  Connecticut,  or  Mas- 
sachusetts. Upon  any  oUier  basis  Penn- 
sylvania will  be  doubtful,  as  will  also  be 
Michigan,  Minnesota,  and  Illinois.  The 
question  now  can  neither  be  sidetracked 
nor  eliminated  nor  suppressed."  The 
unanimity  for  protection,  he  declares, 
places  that  principle  out  of  danger. 
Even  more  significant  and  encouraging 
is  the  similar  attitude  of  the  Philadel- 
phia Ledger^  published  in  the  very 
stronghold  of  protection.  The  Ledger 
asserts  that  "  the  real  issue  of  the  cam- 
paign is  the  currency  " ;  that  "the  tariff 
is  an  issue  which  need  not  be  considered 
by  either  candidates,  leaders,  or  organs  "  ; 
Uiat  "the  country  could  better  do  with- 
out any  tariff  than  suffer  the  lowering 
of  the  currency  to  a  silver  basis" ;  and 
that  "  the  Republican  convention  should 
nominate  no  man,  the  country  vote  for  no 
man,  who  is  not  an  open,  manly,  pro- 
nounced supporter  of  the  gold  standard 
of  monetary  value." 


Senator  Teller's  blurting  out  of  the 
truth  on  Wednesday  week  about  the  cor- 
rupt bargain  by  which  the  McKinley  act 
was  got  in  exchange  for  the  silver-purchase 
act  was  a  complete  exposure,  and  stripped 
away  the  last  rag  with  which  Senator 
Sherman  has  attempted  to  cover  his  own 
shameful  part  in  the  transaction.  He  has 
asserted  more  than  once,  and  specifically 
his  recent  'Recollections,'  that  Harri- 
a  woold  not  have  vetoed  •  freo-Cf4iMVO 


bin,  and  that  the  purchase  act  was  devis- 
ed as  a  means  of  heading  off  free  coinage. 
Not  at  all,  affirmed  Teller,  while  not  a  Se- 
nator dared  contradict  liim.  Harrison 
would  have  vetoed  a  free-coinage  bill.  If 
we  had,  as  we  threatened,  put  a  free-coin- 
age rider  on  the  McKinley  bill,  he  would 
have  vetoed  both  tariff  and  coinage.  This 
was  perfectly  well  known  to  Sherman  and 
the  other  Republicans,  and  to  save  their 
tariff  they  bribed  the  silver  Senators  with 
the  purchase  act.  This  is  the  undoubted 
truth.  Senator  Teller  relieves  Mr.  Harri- 
son from  Sherman's  charge  that  he  was 
friendly  to  free  coinage,  but  does  not  re- 
lieve him  from  the  odium  of  playing  the 
part  assigned  him  in  the  corrupt  bargain. 


The  early  Democratic  convention  in 
Missouri,  with  its  silver-mad  resolutions, 
appears  to  have  roused  sound- money 
Democrats  to  the  need  of  making  a  fight 
They  have  buckled  on  their  armor,  and 
have  already  won  a  great  victory  in  Michi- 
gan, where  they  last  week  unhorsed  the 
boasting  silver-men,  and  elected  the  dele- 
gates-at-large  to  Chicago,  with  a  majority 
of  the  district  delegates,  on  a  gold  plat- 
form. The  silverites  went  down  shriek- 
ing, "We  are  beaten  because  we  have 
been  bought  up  I "  But  this  cry  is  not 
a  good  one  to  base  a  contesting  delegation 
upon.  Nor  has  it  a  proud,  defiant  ring 
about  it,  calculated  to  strengthen  the 
nerves  of  silver  delegates  in  other  State 
conventions.  A  suspicion  that  buying-up 
may  be  done  is  a  deadly  one  to  implant  in 
a  diver  breast,  and  the  main  result  will 
be,  we  fbar,  to  send  hundreds  of  silver 
champions  to  conventions  anxiously  in- 
quiring when  the  process  is  to  begin,  and 
where  the  paymaster  is  to  be  found.  The 
Michigan  victory,  with  the  strong  and 
uncompromising  plank  adopted  by  the 
Penn^lvania  Democrats,  is  of  excellent 
omen. 


The  Senate  on  Friday  varied  the  ex- 
change of  billingsgate  between  New  York 
and  South  Carolina  by  striking  out  two  of 
the  four  battle-ships  provided  for  in  the 
naval  bill.  This  action  was  taken  on  the 
ground  of  economy,  but  the  point  made 
against  it  by  Congressman  Boutelle  is  per- 
fectly fair.  He  justly  says  that  the  Se- 
nate has  been  the  inflammatory,  bullying 
body  in  this  Congress.  It  has  done  its 
best  to  plunge  the  country  into  two  for- 
eign wars.  Senator  Sherman,  as  chair- 
man of  the  committee  on  foreign  relations, 
has  been  chief  incendiary.  Yet  now,  when 
it  is  a  question  of  getting  ready  to  make 
his  brave  words  good,  of  preparing  to  fight 
with  ships  instead  of  resolutions,  he  is 
found  voting  against  the  ships.  This  new 
inconsistency  will  not  trouble  a  veteran  in 
inconsistency  like  Mr.  Sherman,  but  it  is 
highly  significant  of  the  headless  course 
of  the  Senate  all  thb  session.  It  has  ad- 
vocated a  domineering,  aggressive  policy 
towards  other  nations,  which,  if  it  was 
ierioual;r  intended,    would    require    the 


buiidittg  of  a  first-class  navy  at  the  earH- 
est  posslUe  moment.  It  has  derided  the 
business  aspect  of  a  foreign  war,  delight- 
ing to  call  those  who  urged  it  cravens  and 
traitors.  Yet  it  weakly  withdraws  from 
even  a  moderate  preparation  for  war,  on 
the  plea  that  there  is  no  money  available. 
It  thus  frankly  confesses  that  its  mouUi- 
ing  of  last  December  and  February  was 
mere  imbecile  bluster. 


The  Piatt-Tammany  liquor  combine, 
which  has  been  suspected  of  bein^  be- 
hind the  Raines  tax  law^  is  very  plainly 
revealed  in  the  remarkable  information 
published  by  the  Evening  Post  concern- 
ing the  surety  company  of  which  one  of 
Piatt's  sons  is  the  manager.  There  is  no 
doubt  about  the  accuracy  of  this  infor- 
mation. It  shows  with  startling  plain- 
ness that  Piatt's  son's  company  is  openly 
giving  bonds  to  liquor-dealers  without 
requiring  the  usual  oath  or  affidavit  as 
to  the  truth  of  their  statements,  and  is 
saying  to  them  that  this  relieves  them  of 
all  liability  which  might  be  incurred  in 
case  the  statements  which  had  been 
sworn  to  turned  out  to  be  folse.  In  ad- 
dition to  this,  th^  intimation  is  conveyed 
to  all  applicants  that  if  they  get  their 
bonds  from  the  Piatt  company  they  will 
be  protected  by  the  PlaU  "  pull "  with 
the  confidential  agents,  and  will  not  be 
disturbed  if  they  violate  Uie  law.  The 
consequence  is  that  the  Piatt  company, 
although  its  rates  are  higher  and  its 
financial  standing  is  inferior  to  that  of 
its  rivals,  is  doing  a  roaring  business, 
the  great  majority  of  liquor-dealers  be- 
lieving that  the  name  of  Piatt  is  worth 
more  than  all  other  considerations  com- 
bined. 


The  formal  dedication  on  Saturday  of 
the  new  site  for  Columbia  College  marked 
what  is  certain  to  be  the  beginning  of  a 
new  era  for  this  city.  It  is  the  first  step 
towards  the  establishment  in  the  heart 
of  the  city  of  a  really  good  university,  fully 
equipped  with  all  the  attributes  and  faci- 
lities of  a  modern  institution  of  learning 
of  the  first  rank.  When  the  new  build- 
ings whose  cornerstones  were  laid  on  Sa- 
turday shall  have  been  completed,  and 
the  beautiful  site  upon  which  they  are  to 
stand  shall  have  received  its  full  allotment 
of  structures,  the  old  college  will  enter 
upon  a  new  and  larger  life  which  cannot 
fail  to  exert  an  elevating  and  beneficent 
influence  upon  the  city*  It  will  become 
more  than  ever  before  Uie  centre  of  the 
city's  intellectual  life,  and  will  aid  poww- 
fully  in  the  development  of  our  greatest 
municipal  need,  a  sensitive  and  active 
civic  pride. 


The  Transvaal  Calvinists  are  evidently 
as  great  sticklers  for  the  doctrine  of  their 
own,  as  for  that  of  divine,  sovereignty. 
They  want  all  sizfners  and  fllibusters  to 
understand  that  it  is  a  dangerous  ttiing 
to  tri^e  with  either,    (t  bM  \!W^  9»^  ^ 


May  7,  1896] 


Tlie    IN'ation. 


353 


Jonathan  Edwards  that  he  would  con- 
demn uncounted  millions  to  hell  without 
the  flicker  of  an  eyelash,  though  personally 
he  would  not  harm  a  fly;  the  Boers,  how- 
e?w,  belisTe  in  punishment  in  both 
worlds.  Yet  no  one  supposed  that  their 
sentence  of  death  on  the  Johannesburg 
rsTolutionists  was  anything  more  than  a 
matter  of  form,  to  be  hereafter  graciously 
remitted  or  commuted  by  President  Kr&- 
ger.  In  fact,  it  is  inconceivable  that  the 
accused  persons  should  have  pleaded 
guilty  unless  assured  in  advance  of  get- 
ting off  on  tolerable  terms.  But,  though 
thus  purely  pro  forma,  their  sentence 
will  do  a  world  o.f  good  to  hotheads  and 
adventurers  in  South  Africa  and  else- 
where. The  sovereignty  of  a  weak  power 
has  come  to  mean,  to  far  too  many,  a 
thing  to  sport  with  at  will.  Only  one  or 
two  of  the  revolutionary  missionaries* 
sons  in  Hawaii,  for  example,  seemed  to 
have  the  slightest  idea  that  they  were 
riddng  their  necks.  And  the  jaunty  way 
in  which  Jameson  and  his  gentleman  raid- 
ers set  out  to  overthrow  the  government 
of  a  friendly  power,  shows  how  vague 
were  their  ideas  of  law  and  international 
obligation.  President  KrOger  has  done 
well  to  magnify  the  terrors  of  outraged 
sovereignty,  human  as  well  as  divine.  He 
has  also  given  Chamberlain  a  terrible  les- 
son in  diplomacy. 


lot  more  of  mighty  interesting  telegrams 
up  his  sleeve. 


It  begins  to  look  as  if  Chamberlain's 
real  reason  for  so  anxiously  desiring  Presi- 
dent Krtiger  to  come  to  London  was  a  hope 
that  the  simple-minded  old  Boer  would 
bring  the  incriminating  telegrams  along 
with  him  in  his  grip-sack,  d  la  Mulligan, 
and  that  they  might  be  wormed  out  of 
him  and  suppressed.  The  Colonial  Secre- 
tary must  have  learned  of  their  existence 
from  Jameson  himself,  or  from  Cecil 
Rhodes;  and  bis  feeliDgs,  with  the  cer- 
tainty that  they  were  hanging  over  his 
head  all  the  while,  we  leave  to  those  fa- 
miliar with  the  villains  on  the  Bowery 
stage  to  imagine.  What  was  morally  der- 
tain  from  the  flrst  is  now  put  beyond  seri- 
ous question — namely,  that  Jameson  was 
acting  throughout  with  the  cognizance,  if 
not  under  the  direct  orders,  of  Cecil 
Rhodes,  and  that  the  whole  raid,  so  be- 
praised  in  London  music-halls  and  by  the 
Poet  Laureate,  was  simply  a  piratical  expe- 
dition carefully  planned  by  the  leading 
officials  of  the  Chartered  Company.  Presi- 
dent KrQger  has  published  the  telegrams 
captured  with  Jameson  at  just  the  right 
dramatic  moment,  and  we  shall  hear  less 
about  Boer  blood  thirst  iness  and  more 
about  Boer  astuteness.  That  there  was 
treason  at  Johannesburg,  and  an  attack 
on  a  friendly  country  plotted  at  Cape 
Town,  is  now  clear ;  and  the  treason  and 
the  plot  have  not  even  the  immoral  justi- 
fication of  having  been  successful.  Swift 
and  complete  disavowal  by  England,  and 
stem  measures  with  the  implicated 
officials,  are  imperatively  demanded. 
Chamberlain  cannot  be  sure,  either,  that 
t)^  insofeot  old  Putch  farmer  haa  nof  » 


Mr.  Chamberlain,  besides  suffering  from 
the  recalcitrancy  and  shrewdness  of  the 
venerable  Com  Paul,  is  k>eginning  to  suf- 
fer from  the  proposed  remission  of  taxes 
on  land.  The  deadly  parallel  has  opened 
on  him,  and  will  probably  play  on  him 
now  steadily  for  weeks.  The  London 
Daily  News  has  two  terrible  extracts 
from  speeches  made  in  1885,  when  Mr. 
Chamberlain  was  a  furious  Radical,  and 
compared  Ireland  to  Poland.  In  one  he 
warns  the  farmers,  in  almost  savage  terms, 
that  no  relief  of  local  taxation  will  do 
much  for  them.  '*  But,"  says  the  great 
man,  "even  if  the  farmer  could  get  all  he 
desired  in  those  two  respects  [protection 
and  reduction  of  local  taxation],  that 
•would  not  benefit  htm  one  iota,  though  it 
might  enable  his  landlord  to  extract  a 
higher  rent.'*  The  other,  from  a  speech 
made  in  1883,  is  still  more  dreadful,  and 
deserves  full  quotation : 

"  Lord  Salisburv  coolly  proposeB  to  band  ft 
over  indirectly,  if  not  directly,  to  the  land- 
lords of  the  country  in  the  tbape  of  a  contri- 
bution in  aid  of  local  taxes.  I  mutt  say  that 
I  never  recollect  any  public  man  propose  in  a 
franker— I  might  even  say  in  a  more  auda- 
cious—maoner  to  rob  Peter  in  order  to  pay 
PaoL  And  what  makes  It  worse  is,  that  in  this 
case  Peter  Is  represented  by  the  landless  mil- 
lions who  have  no  other  wealth  than  their 
labor  and  their  toil,  while  Paul  is  the  great 
landlord,  with  20,000  acres,  who  is  seeking  to 
relieve  himself  of  his  share  of  taxation  by 
shiftinff  it  on  to  the  shoulders  of  his  less  fortu- 
nate fellow-conntrymen.** 

Mr.  Chamberlain  will  probably  say  that 
a  man  has  a  right  to  change  his  mind  in 
thirteen  years,  and  so  he  has;  but  as 
)oog  as  the  moral  government  of  the 
world  lasts,  Providence  will  keep  an  eye 
on  politicians  of  Mr.  Chamberlain's  stamp, 
through  all  their  mutations.  Mr.  Cham- 
berlain probably  little  thought,  in  the 
midst  of  the  recent  burst  of  popularity, 
that  Com  Paul  was  getting  ready  the 
humble  instrument  of  his  humiliation. 


The  dissension  in  France  between  the 
Chamber  and  the  Senate  over  the  income- 
tax  causes  the  London  Daily  News  to  re- 
mark: 

**  Whether  such  a  convenient  and  elBcacioDs 
mode  of  raising  revenue  be  desirable  in  Prance 
at  the  present  moment  is  a  poiat  for  French- 
men, and  not  for  foreigners,  to  decide.  Bat  to 
denounce  it  as  robbery,  or,  except  in  the  strict- 
ly technical  seose  of  tne  term,  confiscation,  is 
ridicnlons.'*  ^ 

In  a  certain  sense  this  is  true,  but  French- 
men who  consider  an  income-tax  **  rob- 
bery*' or  **  confiscation  "  are  not  wholly 
to  blame,  and  are  really  no  more  ridicu- 
lous than  the  people  who  talk  abqut  it  as 
*  *  scientific. "  An  income-tax  would  be  the 
best  of  all  taxes  if  it  were  levied  off  people 
who  liked  it  and  told  the  truth  about  their 
incomes.  In  England  and  Qermany  it 
does  reasonably  well  because  there  it  is 
simply  a  tax,  and  ia  not  thought  of  as 
anything  else.  In  this  country  or  France 
it  would  not  be  a  tax.  It  would  be  a 
mp9^  on  the  part  of  the  poor  or  morf 


numerous  for  punishing  the  rich  or  the 
minority  for  being  well  off.  So  that  whe- 
ther it  is  a  tax  or  not  a  tax  depends  on  the 
people  who  pay  it.  Considering  the  state 
of  relations  between  the  classes  in  France, 
it  is  not  surprising  that  the  class  which 
has  an  income  opposes,  tooth  and  nail, 
the  desire  of  the  class  which  has  none  to 
make  it  pay  the  expenses  of  the  Govern- 
ment, for  to  that  it  would  come.  The  in- 
come-tax in  such  countries  is  the  weapon 
through  which  the  unsuccessful  hope  to 
make  the  successful  smart.  In  this  coun- 
try the  income-tax  would  have  been,  if 
leviable,  a  means  by  which  the  poor  agri- 
cultural and  silver  States  would  make  the 
rich  or  business  States  contribute  most  of 
the  revenue,  and  the  rate  would  have  been 
increased  in  every  Congress,  and  likewise 
the  number  of  people  who  collect  it  Sal- 
vation from  it  is  one  of  the  best  pieces  of 
work  the  Supreme  Court  ever  did  for  us. 
For  half  a  century  in  France  the  Socialists 
have  been  looking  for  it  as  a  mode  not  of 
raising  money  for  the  Oovernment  so  much 
as  of  carryiog  out  their  own  views  of  state 
policy.  The  taxes  of  every  country  should 
be  framed  with  reference  to  its  social  and 
political  conditions.  There  is  no  more  a 
science  of  taxation  than  a  science  of  medi- 
cine. There  is  an  art  of  taxation,  which 
is  an  extremely  interesting  art,  and  con- 
sists mainly  in  finding  out  what  kind  of 
person  the  taxpayer  is,  and  how  he  lives. 


To  people  who  ask  what  is  the  matter 
with  Spain,  why  she  fell  from  the  pri- 
macy of  Europe,  why  her  government  ia 
BO  inefficient,  and  all  that,  a  very  good  an- 
swer is  furnished  by  the  spectacle  wit- 
nessed in  Madrid  on  Monday.  The  bones 
of  a  thirteenth-century  saint  were  carried 
through  the  streets  in  solemn  procession 
by  800  priests,  and  nine-day  services  are 
now  being  held  in  the  cathedral,  with 
Queen  and  Ministry  present,  as  a  means 
of  bringing  to  an  end  the  prevailing 
drought  and  triumphantly  concluding  the 
Cuban  war.  Of  the  religious  significance 
of  all  this  we  say  nothing,  but  as  a  chunk 
of  pure  medifisvalism  it  has  the  highest 
political  significance.  It  shows  how  poor 
is  the  pretence  that  Spain  is  really  a  part 
of  the  modem  world.  Much  as  she  has 
undeniably  advanced  since  the  revolution 
of  1868,  many  as  are  her  partial  adjust- 
ments to  present-day  conditions,  it  ia  evi- 
dent that  the  political  ideas  of  the  great 
majority  of  her  people  remain  those  of  the 
time  of  the  Armada.  Philip  really  relied 
upon  San  Lorenso  more  than  upon  his 
ships,  and  Madrid  clearly  thinks  better  of 
the  fighting  qualities  of  San  Isidro  than 
of  Qen.  Weyler.  What  can  the  most  en- 
lightened Ministers  do  when  they  have  to 
get  on,  under  universal  suffrage,  with  a 
people  who  put  their  political  trust  in  a 
saint's  relics?  It  seems  idle  to  ask  when 
Spain  is  going  to  reform  and  modernise 
her  government  of  Cuba;  she  has  first  to 
accomplish  the  harder  task  of  reforming 
and  modernising  the  Spaniah  mind, 


854: 


Tlie   !N"atioiL. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1610 


THE  DIVIDED  8ILVERITE8, 

Thb  letter  which  Senator  Wolcott  of  Co- 
lorado wrote  last  week  to  the  chairman  of 
the  Republican  central  committee  for  his 
State  is  a  sign  of  the  times.  It  is  nothing 
less  than  an  offer  to  surrender  from  the 
heart  of  the  silver  camp.  Senator  Wolcott 
says  that  the  Colorado  Republican  State 
conyention,  which  is  to  meet  next  week, 
may  decline  to  be  represented  at  the  na- 
tional convention  of  the  party  at  St.  Louis, 
or  it  may  select  delegates.  If  the  latter 
course  shall  be  adopted,  as  he  impliedly 
advises,  he  holds  that  **  the  duty  of  the 
delegation  will  be  to  attend  the  convention, 
make  the  l>est  fight  possible  for  bimetal- 
lism in  the  committee  on  resolutions  and 
on  the  floor  of  the  convention  if  there 
shall  be  opportunity  for  discussion  before 
the  whole  convention,  and,  after  having 
insisted  by  every  proper  method  upon  the 
duty  of  the  convention  to  declare  in  favor 
of  the  restoration  of  silver  as  a  measure 
of  value  equally  with  gold,  to  accept  the 
will  of  the  majority  of  the  convention,  and 
endeavor  to  secure  the  nomination  of  the 
candidate  most  friendly  to  Western  inte- 
rests.'* While  declaring  himself  ready  to 
make  any  sacrifice  to  secure  the  remone- 
tization  of  silver  (in  the  interest  of  national 
prosperity),  and  counting  party  ties  as 
nothing  in  comparison  with  that  end,  he 
sees  that  '*  both  of  the  two  great  parties 
are  apparently  opposed  to  free  coinage  by 
the  United  States,*'  while  the  Populist 
party  advocates  the  policy  only  as  a  step- 
ping-stone to  other  measures  '*  which 
would  be,  if  adopted,  destructive  of  free 
institutions,"  and  he  knows  of  **  no  fourth 
party  as  yet  entitled  to  our  confidence  and 
support"    He  proceeds : 

**  Under  these  circumstances  and  conditions, 
therefore,  I  desire  to  be  counted  as  a  Republi- 
can, proud  of  the  traditions  of  my  party, 
glorying  fu  its  achievements,  and  still  hopeful 
that  the  great  party  which  has  heretofore  stood 
for  the  masses  against  the  classes,  msy  on  this 
great  economic  queation  yet  range  itself  on  the 
side  of  humanity  and  of  civilization.'* 

Mr.  Wolcott  is  the  ablest  among  the 
younger  members  of  the  Senate,  and  the 
most  independent,  as  was  illustrated  a 
few  weeks  ago  by  his  leading  the  opposi- 
tion in  the  upper  branch  to  the  Jingo 
craze  that  followed  the  President's  Vene- 
zuelan message.  He  has  great  infiuence 
with  his  party  in  his  State,  having  secured 
a  reelection  without  difficulty  at  the  end 
of  his  first  term  last  year.  He  is  the 
strongest  man  among  the  Senators  from 
the  silver  States.  The  sole  hope  of  success 
for  those  States  in  making  an  impression 
upon  the  St.  Louis  convention  was  a 
"  united  front "  among  their  Republicans. 
They  must  stand  together  in  the  policy  of 
menacing  the  advocates  of  the  gold  stan- 
dard with  a  bolt  from  that  convention  and 
a  consequent  loss  of  their  States  to  the 
Republican  ticket  in  November.  Such  a 
stand  would  arrest  the  attention  of  the 
whole  country,  and  might  frighten  weak- 
kneed  Republican  politicians.  Senator 
Wolcott's  letter  has  rendered  the  adoption 
of  this  policy  impossible.    It  furnishes  a 


rallying-point  for  those  partisans  (and  they 
are  always  a  large  element  in  every  poli- 
tical organization)  who  have  always  voted 
the  straight  ticket  for  President,  however 
much  it  went  against  the  grain,  and  who 
are  now  ready  to  welcome  a  good  argu- 
ment for  doing  the  same  thing  next  fall. 

The  publication  of  it  was  followed  by  a 
speech  from  Mr.  Wolcott's  Colorado  col- 
league, in  which  Mr.  Teller  announced 
that  he  would  do  his  best  to  secure  a  de- 
claration for  free  coinage  at  St.  Louis, 
and  would  bolt  the  party  if  he  should  not 
succeed. 

*'  I  am  frequently  asked,*'  he  said,  **  what  I 
will  do  if  the  political  party  with  which  I  am 
connected,  and  whose  record  I  am  proud  of, 
adopts  the  gold  standard  and  puts  itself  in  line 
with  those  who  are  demanding  that  gold,  and 
gold  alone,  shall  measure  the  values  of  the 
world.  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  here,  as 
I  have  said  before  and  shall  say  again,  that, 
whenever  the  political  party  to  which  I  belong 
ceases  to  represent  my  sentiments  and  my. 
judgment,  I  will  cease  to  act  with  it.  When 
the  Democratic  party,  in  which  I  was  brought 
up  and  educated,  became  the  party  of  oppres- 
sion and  wickedness.  I  got  out  of  it.  I  should 
despise  myself  if  I  should  lift  my  hand  to  put 
in  power  any  one  who,  in  the  executive  chair, 
would  use  the  slightest  influence  to  maintain 
the  present  system  of  flnaoce.  I  should  de- 
spise  myself,  as  you  ought  to  despise  me,  if  I 
did  not  lift  my  voice  against  it  on  every  occa- 
sion;  and  if  I  lift  my  voice  one  way  and  vote 
another  way,  you  would  have  a  right  to  accuse 
me  of  hypocrisy.  Mr.  President,  as  I  speak, 
so  I  will  vote,'  in  the  interest^  as  I  twlieve,  of 
the  great  masses  of  men  in  this  country,  in  the 
interest  of  the  great  masses  of  men  throughout 
Christendom." 

This  declaration  is  to  be  welcomed  by 
all  people  who  hate  compromise  and  wo^ld 
have  no  more  shuffling  on  the  issue  of  the 
day.  Mr.  Teller  was  a  member  of  the 
committee  on  resolutions  at  the  Republi- 
can national  convention  of  1892,  which 
reported  that  extraordinary  plank  affirm- 
ing that  "  the  American  people,  from  tra- 
dition and  interest,  favor  bimetallism," 
and  that  '*  the  Republican  party  demands 
the  use  of  both  gold  and  silver  as  stan- 
dard money,"  etc.  Four  years  ago  the 
Colorado  Senator  was  ready  to  accept  a 
declaration  facing  both  ways,  and  to  go 
home  and  tell  his  constituents  that  it 
meant  free  coinage,  while  New  Englanders 
interpreted  it  the  other  way.  This  year 
he  Insists  upon  a  plank  which  will  mean 
the  same  thing  in  Massachusetts  as  in 
Colorado,  and  he  will  leave  the  party  un- 
less he  can  get  such  a  plank. 

The  two  utterances  of  the  Colorado 
Senators  ought  to  settle  the  question  of 
free  coinage  at  St  Louis.  Mr.  Teller 
shows  that  there  are  silver-men  in  the 
Republican  party  who  put  silver  above 
party  fealty.  Mr.  Wolcott  shows  that 
there  are  Republicans  among  the  silver- 
ites  who  care  more  for  the  party  than  for 
the  metal.  Mr.  Teller's  attitude  proves 
that  his  wing  of  Republicans  cannot  be 
held  in  the  organization  without  a  free- 
coinage  plank ;  Mr.  Wolcott*s  that  the 
Republicans  whom  he  represents  will  not 
bolt  if  the  platform  shall  declare  expli- 
citly against  16  to  1  The  real  danger  of 
the  situation,  however,  is  from  the  Wol- 
cott wing  of  silver-State  Republicans 
rather  than  the  Teller  wing.    Everybody 


will  see  that  the  party  cannot  satisfy  the 
latter  element.  The  risk  will  lie  in  the 
attempt  to  placate  the  men  lor  whom 
Mr.  Wolcott  stands,  and  to  *Met  them 
down  easy.*'  There  is  still  another  dan- 
ger, and  an  even  more  serious  one.  A 
strong  candidate  can  be  trusted  on  a 
weak  platform,  but  a  weak  candidate 
is  to  k>e  dreaded  on  the  strongest  plat- 
form. There  is  a  clause  in  Mr.  Wol- 
cott's letter  which  has  a  direct  bearing 
upon  this  point,  and  which  should  be 
carefully  considered  by  sound-money 
men.  We  refer  to  his  making  it  the  duty 
of  the  overruled  Colorado  delegation  to 
'*  endeavor  to  secure  the  nomination  of 
the  candidate  most  friendly  to  Western 
interests."  This  can  have  but  one  mean- 
ing. Such  a  candidate  would  be  one 
who  was  anxious  to  **do  something  for 
silver,"  and  who  would  strain  a  point 
for  that  purpose.  There  is  a  timely 
warning  in  Mr.  Teller's  revelation  that 
Mr.  Harrison  consented  to  the  silver- 
purchase  act  of  1890  because  silver  Repub- 
lican Senators  threatened  to  place  a  free- 
coinage  rider  on  the  McKinley  )act  unless 
the  President  and  the  sound-money  men 
in  Congress  would  agree  to  **do  some- 
thing for  silver." 


00 V.  MORTON  AND  THE  PLATFORM. 

Qov.  MoBTON  was  elected,  in  1894,  on  a 
platform  which  said,  among  other  things: 

'*We  arraign  the  administration  of  Gk>v. 
Flower  for  its  glaring  sins  of  omission  and 
commission.  The  executive  of  this  State  was 
the  accomplice  of  the  odious  Democratic  ma- 
chine which  stole  the  Legislature.  ...  He 
put  the  canals  in  the  hs^ds  of  party  workers, 
and  made  a  highway  of  politics  of  a  highway 
of  commerce;  he  blockeo  the  path  of  k>allot 
reform  and  of  home  rule  in  violation  of  his 
solemn  pledge;  he  made  a  mockery  of  civil- 
service  reform,  and  in  everv  emergency  was 
the  ready  tool  of  machine  bosses  instead  of  be- 
ing the  Qovemor  of  the  State.  .  .  .  We 
pledge  to  the  people  an  improved  civil  service, 
municipal  home  rule,  an  acceptable  excise 
law,  etc.,  and  free  and  fair  primaries,  as  fully 
protected  by  law  as  general  elections." 

The  amended  Constitution  wlis  submit- 
ted to  the  people  at  the  election  at  which 
Grov.  Morton  was  chosen.  The  platform 
said  of  this  amended  Constitution: 

**  We  recognize  the  wisdom  of  the  Constitu- 
tional Convention  in  dealing  in  important  and 
needed  revision  and  amendment  of  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  State,  and  commend  the  action 
thus  far  taken  by  that  convention  to  the 
favorable  consideration  of  the  people." 

Gk>v.  Morton  ran  on  this  platform,  and 
on  it  received  the  hearty  support  of  the 
honest  and  conservative  people  of  the 
State.  His  majority  was  156,000,  the  lar- 
gest ever  received  by  any  candidate  in  this 
State,  except  one.  The  amended  Consti- 
tution, thus  approved  by  the  convention, 
with  which  he  must  have  been  perfectiy 
familiar,  was  submitted  to  the  people  at 
the  same  election,  and  received  a  majority 
of  over  83,000.  One  of  the  most  important 
amendments  provided  that  all  the  appoint- 
ive offices  of  the  State  should  be  filled  by 
competitive  examination ''so  far  as  prac- 
ticable." Another  provided  that  every 
act  affecting  a  city  should  be  submitted 


May  7,  1896] 


The    N"atioii. 


355 


to  the  Major  thereof  for  hii  approral. 
That  this  latter  wae  not  meant  to  be  a 
mere  form  was  ahown  by  the  fact  that  the 
provision  was  also  made  that,  if  the  Mayor 
BO  vetoed  it,  it  would  have  to  be  passed  by 
the  Legislature  a  second  time.  This  evi- 
dently meant  that  the  reasons  for  overrul- 
ing the  veto  should  be  weighty,  and  lucid, 
and  capable  of  clear  expression  on  paper. 
The  amendment  was  meant  to  put  a  stop 
to  the  practice,  in  both  parties,  of  forcing 
bills  affecting  cities  hastily  through  the 
Legislature  against  the  will  and  often 
without  the  knowledge  of  the  constituted 
municipal  authorities. 

Now,  suppose  Qov.  Morton  had  written 
a  letter  of  acceptance  containing,  among 
others,  the  following  passages : 

**  I  note  what  you  say  with  regard  to  my 
predecessor's  administration  of  the  canals 
— that  *  he  put  them  In  the  hands  of  party 
workers,  and  made  a  highway  of  politics 
of  a  highway  of  commerce.*  I  shall  do, 
as  nearly  as  may  be,  the  same  thing.  As 
soon  as  inaugurated  I  shall  put  the  canals 
into  the  hands  of  one  of  the  most  noto- 
rious and  unscrupulous  workers  of  the 
Republican  party.  I  shall  not  consider 
bis  antecedents  as  regards  the  State  ser- 
vice, nor  shall  I  ask  him  what  his  views 
and  intentions  are  touching  the  civil-ser- 
vice amendment  of  the  Constitution.  I 
shall  simply  tell  him  to  go  ahead  and  do 
what  he  did  before.  When  I  find  him  to- 
tally disregarding  the  law  and  setting  the 
^  Civil-Service  Commission  at  defiance,  I 
shall  neither  remove  nor  rebuke  him.  I 
shall  allow  him  to  go  on  in  his  own  way 
and  fight  the  competitive  system  in  the 
courts,  and  get  all  he  can  out  of  the  canals 
as  a  highway  of  politics. 

*'  As  regards  the  Civil-Service  Commis- 
sion, I  shall  promptly  reorganize  it,  and, 
without  giving  any  reason  to  the  public, 
shall  remove  one  of  its  members,  who  is 
known  to  be  faithful  to  his  duties,  and 
put  in  his  place  one  of  its  bitterest  and 
best-known  epemies,  and  I  shall  do  this 
not  on  my  own  judgment  either,  but  under 
the  advice  and  pressure  of  a  characterless 
New  York  expressman,  who  desires  that 
the  majority  of  such  commission  shall  be 
hostile  to  the  new  system  of  appointment 
as  intended  by  the  Constitution.  As  soon 
as  I  have  arranged  this,  I  shall  sign  a  bill 
provkiing  for  a  very  large  number  of  em- 
ployees, with  high  salaries,  and  I  shall 
allow  these  to  be  selected  by  the  express- 
man above  mentioned,  and  used  for  his 
own  purposes.  Sixty  of  these,  one  for 
each  county,  are  to  be,  he  sayr,  *  special 
agents,'  and  I  see  that  he  has  provided 
that  they  shall  be  *  confidential*  persons 
io  order  to  withdraw  them  from  the  ex- 
aminations provided  by  the  new  Constitu- 
tion. I  am  rather  sorry  he  has  done  this, 
but  he  must  have  his  way.  I  shall  im- 
pose no  restrictions  on  him  as  to  their 
character  and  antecedents,  but  let  him 
select  them  as  he  pleases,  and  think  it  not 
unlikely  that  he  will  select,  for  the  most 
part,  bummers  without  standing  or  occu- 
pation.   At  the  head  of  this  organisation 


he  is  to  put  a  creature  of  his  own,  who 
tells  me  that  he  cannot  have  his  appointees 
examined  competitively,  because  '  there  is 
not  time.' 

<•  I  am  much  interested  in  the  changes 
made  by  the  amended  Constitution  in  the 
matter  of  city  government.  The  people 
evidently  intend  that  the  old  system  of 
legislative  tinkering  with  city  charters 
shall  cease,  and  that,  unless  under  very 
extraordinary  circumstances,  such  as  the 
complete  domination  of  a  city  by  a  corrupt 
boss  like  Tweed,  all  proposed  changes  in 
municipal  government  shall  emanate  from 
the  people  of  the  place  and  from  their  duly 
elected  authorities.  In  order  to  check 
departures  from  this  sound  and  whole- 
some rule,  I  see  the  mayors  have  been 
given  a  veto  power.  But  it  will  not  be 
convenient  this  year  to  pay  much  atten- 
tion to  this  amendment.  I  shall  allow 
the  expressman  above  mentioned  to  draft 
the  largest  scheme  of  city  government 
ever  set  on  foot,  not  excepting  the  reorga- 
nization of  London,  with  the  assistance  of 
a  young  lawyer  living  in  the  country.  I 
am  aware  that  the  expressman  is  a  very 
ignorant,  illiterate  person,  who  has  had 
no  experience  in  real  statecraft,  and,  as 
far  as  I  can  learn,  the  young  lawyer  is 
still  worse.  But  they  are  both  very 
anxious  to  try  their  hands  at  charter- 
making.  I  wish  they  would  not,  but  I  do 
not  see  my  way  to  preventing  them.  I 
should  like  very  much,  too,  to  have  the 
approval  of  the  mayors  of  the  two  cities  of 
New  York  and  Brooklyn  for  their  work, 
and  should  like  to  have  it  submitted,  ac- 
cording to  the  American  practice,  to  the 
people.  But  both  the  expressman  and  the 
lawyer  say  they  care  nothing  about  the  ap- 
proval of  the  mayors,  and  are  unwilling  to 
submit  it  to  the  people.  In  fact,  both 
mayors  and  people  have  disapproved  of  it. 
This  is  a  very  unfortunate  thing  to  occur 
in  a  Presidential  year,  but  what  can  I  do? 
Both  the  expressman  and  the  lawyer  are 
very  obstinate  persons.  The  expressman, 
it  is  true,  holds  no  public  office,  but  I  am, 
after  all,  only  a  Governor  of  the  State  of 
New  York,  and  he  will  control  ever  so 
many  votes  at  St.  Louis.  The  situation  is 
a  very  disagreeable  one  all  round.  I  wish 
from  my  heart  Aldridge,  and  Lord,  and 
Piatt,  and  Lexow,  and  Lyman  were  a  dif- 
ferent kind  of  people,  but  they  are  what 
they  are." 

Now,  the  foregoing  is  an  exact  descrip- 
tion of  what  has  happened  since  Qov. 
Morton  was  elected,  except  what  relates 
to  his  approval  of  the  Ghreater  New  York 
bill.  We  ask,  in  all  fairness,  whether  he 
could  possibly  have  received  the  majority 
he  did  receive,  had  this  public  the  remo- 
test idea  that  things  would  run  as  they 
have  run.  We  commend  it  to  his  careful 
consideration  as  a  man  of  honor.  Tens  of 
thousands  of  voters  feel  that  they  have 
thus  far  made  a  great  mistake  with  regard 
to  his  independence,  both  political  and 
personal.  It  is  for  him  to  set  himself 
right  with  the  people  who  have  trusted 
and  exalted  him. 


THE  UNFORTUNATE  PRESS, 
Thb  fate  which  has  overtaken  the  New 
York  Times  will  cause  genuine  regret 
among  those  who  know  anything  of  Its 
history.  It  has  played  a  very  prominent 
and  creditable  part  in  both  the  politics 
and  the  journalism  of  New  York.  It  made 
its  way  into  profit  and  distinction  over 
forty  years  ago,  through  the  talent  and  in- 
dustry of  its  founder,  Henry  J.  Raymond, 
although  its  rival,  the  Tribune,  not  only 
was  animated  by  Hoi  ace  Greeley's  pas- 
sionate earnestness,  but  had  a  staff  made 
up  of  such  men  as  George  William  Cur- 
tis, Bayard  Taylor,  William  H.  Fry,  and 
George  Ripley.  Until  the  war,  and,  in- 
deed, one  may  say,  until  Ravmond's  deaUi 
in  1869,  it  was  a  sober,  dignified  news- 
paper, that  supplied  conservative  Repub- 
licans with  the  calm  and  moderation  which 
the  fiercer  convictions  of  the  Tribune  made 
impossible.  That  such  a  journal  was  de- 
sired and,  in  proper  hands,  was  profitable, 
was  shown  by  the  great  success  of  the  en- 
terprise. Two  fortunes,  indeed  three, were 
made  out  of  it.  Raymond  made  one,  George 
Jones,  the  late  publisher,  made  another, 
and,  we  believe,  Mr.  Gilbert  Jones,  his  son, 
made  another  by  his  final  sale  of  it  for  a 
large  sum — a  transaction  which  has  raised 
him  to  a  very  high  degree  of  financial  fame 
and  eminence. 

Its  want  of  later  success,  which  we 
hope  is  only  temporary,  is  another  illus- 
tration of  the  mbfortune,  from  the  moral 
point  of  view,  which  seems  to  wait  on 
New  York  journalism.  The  foundation 
of  such  papers  as  the  Herald^  Tribune, 
and  Times  by  the  labor  and  ability  of  one 
man  is  no  longer  possible.  Each  of  these 
papers  had  its  origin  in  little  else  than  an 
energetic  editor  behind  a  small  printing- 
press,  and  worked  its  way  into  success  and 
influence  by  slow  degrees.  To-day  the 
competition  is  so  keen  and  the  expenses 
of  a  newspaper  so  great  that  it  has  to  be 
begun,  as  a  factory  or  railroad  is  begun, 
by  an  investment  of  a  million  or  two,  be- 
sides having  the  right  kind  of  editor  and 
publisher.  After  all,  of  the  two  kinds  of 
success  a  newspaper  may  achieve— the 
financial  and  the  moral — one  only  4s,  as  a 
rule,  possible.  It  may  fill  the  pockets  of 
the  proprietors  and  yet  be  a  curse  to  their 
generation,  or  it  may  be  full  of  the  beat 
sentiments  and  too  dull  to  make  any 
money.  There  is  no  property  in  the  world 
harder  to  manage,  and  yet  it  has  great 
fascination  for  many  rich  men,  who  loae 
in  it  with  remarkable  fortitude.  To  own 
even  a  foiling  paper  is  to  some  a  perpetual 
joy. 

It  is  this  difficulty  of  management  which 
probably  accounts  for  the  fact  that  while, 
during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  we 
presume  we  may  say  millions  have  been 
flung  into  the  maelstrom  of  New  York 
journalism,  hardly  any  attempt  has  been 
made  to  improve  its  quality  as  a  whole. 
The  American  press  continues  to  be  the 
most  famous  in  the  world  for  its  badness 
in  all  points  but  the  gathering  of  newa,  in 
which  it  is  preeminent.    But  when  it  is 


356 


Tlie   l^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1610 


considered  as  the  chief  literature  of  a 
great  people,  and  the  chief  moulder  of 
opinion,  and  the  chief  d  iff  user  of  intelli- 
gence, it  is  the  most  extraordinary  pheno- 
menon of  the  modem  world.  Nothing,  or 
next  to  notliing,  is  done  to  mend  it.  Each 
new  Tenture'ia  on  the  same  lines  as  the 
last,  or  is  generally  a  little  worse.  Many 
millions  are  given  every  year  to  colleges 
and  schools  by  patriotic  and  philanthropic 
men,  but  no  attempt  is  made  by  this 
class  to  improve  the  press,  which  has  a 
hundred  times  as  much  influence  on  the 
character  and  mind  of  the  people  as  all 
the  colleges  and  schools  put  together. 
They  have  for  it  an  unconcealed  contempt. 
They  know  it  is  vulgarizing  and  debauch- 
ing their  children,  and  they  are  ready  to 
invest  in  it  for  pecuniary  profit  on  the  old 
plan,  but  they  are  not  willing  to  make  it 
better.  There  b  no  doubt  that  the  French 
press  is  more  venal,  but  it  is  written  with 
far  more  education,  in  better  style,  with 
more  knowledge  of  the  world.  Most  of 
our  journals  seem  to  be  composed  for  the 
class  of  slender  instruction  and  childish 
minds  known  as  domestic  servants,  and  in 
any  other  civilized  country  would  probably 
never  get  above  the  basement  story.  But 
many  of  our  educated  men  even  enjoy  and 
admire  the  most  scurrilous  and  menda- 
cious of  them  all. 

The  note  of  the  press  to-day  which  most 
needs  changing  is  childishness.  Even  if 
the  papers  are  clean  and  decent,  they  are 
fit  only  for  the  nursery.  The  pictures  are 
childish;  the  intelligence  is  mainly  for 
boys  and  girls.  The  **good  stories'*  are 
trivial,  and  are  intended  chiefly  for  junior 
clerks  and  laborers.  The  observations  on 
public  as  distinguished  from  purely  party 
affairs,  are  quite  juvenile.  The  abuse  is 
mostly  boyish  or  street  abuse,  with  neither 
rhyme  nor  reason  in  it.  What  is  wanted 
in  the  way  of  reform  is  mainly  maturity, 
the  preparation  of  the  paper  for  grown 
people  engaged  in  serious  occupations. 
Gravity  either  in  discussing  or  in  manag- 
ing our  affairs  is  fast  vanishing  under  the 
journalistic  influence.  We  jaugh  over 
everything,  make  fun  of  everybody,  and 
think  it  will  **  all  come  out  right  in  the 
end,"  just  like  ill-bred  children  who  hate 
to  have  their  games  interrupted.  It  seems 
as  if  something  might  be  done  by  Ameri- 
can capitalbts  to  elevate  the  most  potent 
means  of  cultivation  we  have,  which  is 
to-day  exerting  most  influence  on  the  na- 
tional mind  and  character.  We  believe 
we  have  yet  to  see,  though  we  are  very 
near  seeing,  the  full  effect  on  the  coming 
generation  of  the  present  cheap  newspa- 
per press. 

An  illustration  of  what  we  have  called 
the  misfortune  which  waits  on  the  New 
York  press,  has  just  been  furnished  by 
the  Journal.  After  leading  for  yeara  a 
disreputable  and  mischievous  existence, 
this  paper  was  recently  bought  by  a 
California  millionaire,  who  has  proceeded 
to  spend  money  on  it  lavishly.  We  were 
in  hopes  that  his  millions  would  go  to 
laise  its  quality  and  make  it  a  rational 


and  hopeful  addition  to  the  New  York 
newspapers.  Apparently  notliing  was 
further  from  his  thoughts.  He  went  to 
work  at  once  to  make  a  newspaper  of  the 
old  bad  stamp,  and  to  rival  the  worst  of 
the  others  in  their  worst  tricks — wilder 
sensations,  sillier  inventions,  more  "  good 
stories,"  more  dreadful  "  reportorial  hu- 
mor," more  space  for  scandals,  divorces, 
invasions  of  private  life,  more  childish 
pictures,  still  stupider  remarks  on  public 
affairs,  than  any  of  its  contemporaries. 
In  publishing  a  long  report  of  a  not  re- 
markable divorce  case,  for  instance,  it  did 
nothing  that  its  contemporaries  do  not  do; 
but  in  printing  a  large  cartoon  of  a  duel 
which  it  was  thought  would  precede  the 
divorce  case,  but  wliich  never  came  off, 
it  outdid  them  all.  Not  only  does  it  flood 
the  streets  with  this  wretched  mess,  but 
it  actually  succeeds  in  getting  commenda- 
tion for  it  from  the  best  quarters.  That 
it  should  get  a  rousing  testimonial  from 
Tom  Piatt  for  publication  in  Uie  railway 
stations  is  nothing  wonderful,  but  that  it 
gets  just  as  rousing  ones  from  men  like 
Dr.  Parkhurst,  as  it  has  done,  is  ex- 
traordinary. That  a  man  of  his  standing 
should  help  in  emptying  buckets  of  im- 
becility and  mendadty  on  the  heads  of 
his  fellow-citisens  for  another  man's  pro- 
fit is  something  really  odd,  to  say  the 
least. 

It  is,  however,  part  and  parcel  of  that 
absence  of  any  sense  of  responsibility  for 
the  press  of  the  country  which  is  one  of 
its  curses.  If  any  man  chooses  to  print 
a  blackguard  newspaper  and  does  not  ac- 
tually recommend  theft  or  fornication  in 
the  editorial  columns,  it  is  supposed  to  be 
his  affair  exclusively,  and  but  few  of  us 
refuse  to  buy  the  paper  so  as  to  help  his 
venture.  That  readers  are  in  any  sense 
participes  criminis  seems  to  enter  no 
one's  head.  This  immense  source  of  popu- 
lar instruction  is  left,  without  a  thought 
by  preachers  and  philanthropists  and  pa- 
triots, to  a  swarm  of  young  men,  most  of 
whom  have  failed  in  life,  who  make  'Hsopy" 
simply  as  a  means  of  livelihood,  and  who 
must  themselves  be  occasionally  astound- 
ed by  the  sort  of  things  they  are  paid  for. 
There  are  already  some  signs  of  the  growth 
of  a  moral  sense  on  this  subject.  In  parts 
of  the  West,  leagues  or  clubs  are  said  to 
have  been  formed  to  eschew  the  reading 
of  newspapers — that  is,  to  prevent  greedy 
speculators  from  making  private  houses 
the  receptacles  each  morning  of  their  filth 
and  imbecility  ;  but  any  progress  in  that 
direction  is  necessarily  slow.  What  is 
needed  is  a  disposition  on  the  part  of  rich 
men  to  lavish  their  wealth,  without  hope 
of  return,  on  the  leading  instrument  of 
popular  education.  It  would  be,  in  a  far 
higher  sense  than  the  old  Roman's,  "sow- 
ing for  the  immortal  gods." 


C08MIAN  HYMNS, 

EvEBTBODT  remembers  Dr.  Holmes's  *K)de 
for  a  Social  Meeting,  with  Slight  Altera- 
tions by  a  Teetotaler."    Having  mistaken 


the  nature  of  the  occasion,  his  ode  had  to 
have  its  Bacchanalian  and  festive  bunts 
given  a  severe  turn — his  "  nectar  "  being 
made  to  read  *Mogwood,"  'Rubies"  ap- 
pearing as  **  dye-stuff,"  *'  the  breath  of 
the  fragrance  they  shed  "  figuring  as  '*  the 
taste  of  the  sugar  of  lead,"  and  his  final 
lilt  of  song,  '*Long  live  Uie  gay  servant 
that  laughs  for  us  all ! "  being  transmo- 
grified into,  "  Down,  down  with  the  tyrant 
Uiat  masters  us  all ! "  In  like  manner  it 
might  be  said  of  a  volume  of  hymns 
recently  published,  that  it  is  a  book  of 
*  Hymns  of  Divine  Praise,  with  Slight 
Alterations  by  Atheists,  Agnostics,  and 
Materialists.' 

The  work  in  question  is  the  '  Cosmian 
Hymn-Book,'  lately  issued  by  the  Truth 
Seeker  Co.  In  the  very  title  is  a  hint 
that  this  is  no  chaotic  or  even  microoos- 
mic  affair.  Let  others  sing  of  earth,  or 
heaven,  or  hell,  or  even  the  solar  universe; 
no  such  limitations  shall  fetter  the  Cos- 
mian hymnist  His  hymn-book,  he  an- 
nounces, has  "  been  prepared  to  meet  a 
public  want."  This  we  could  have  be- 
lieved; most  books  are,  or  think  they  are, 
so  prepared.  But  he  adds,  with  more  ori- 
ginality, that  **it  is  perfectly  free  from 
all  sectarianism."  This  boast  an  exami- 
nation of  the  book  will  show  to  be  fully 
justified*  It  is  free  not  only  from  sec- 
tarianism, but  from  every  tiling  that  could 
possibly  offend  the  most  conscientiously 
irreligious. 

Wherever  the  word  Gk)d  occurs,  in  any 
of  the  familiar  hymns  made  over  for  this* 
volume,  some  turn  or  substitute  is  deli- 
cately chosen  so  as  not  to  grate  in  the  old 
way  upon  a  sensitive  Cosmian  ear.  Thus 
those  who  were  taught  to  sing  (and  per- 
haps refused  to  sing  longer  because  so 
crudely  taught),  **Gk)d  is  with  all  who 
serve  the  right,"  may  here  find  with  jpy 
that  *' Peace  is  with  all  who  serve  the 
right."  Similarly,  the  outgrown  old 
hymn,  **  Praise  to  Thee,  Thou  great  Crea- 
tor," becomes,  when  submitted  to  Prof. 
Huxley's  cosmic  process,  "  Praise  to  thee, 
all  bounteous  Nature."  This  is  a  very 
skilful  way  of  avoiding  offence  to  tender- 
ly nurtured  Cosmians,  and  is  quite  su- 
perior, in  our  judgment,  to  the  device  once 
favored  by  John  Morley  of  spelling  Qod 
with  a  small  **  g."  But  the  careful  edit- 
ing of  this  hymn-book  extends,  we  are 
glad  to  say,to  the  smallest  details.  '*  Sin  " 
is,  of  course,  excluded  utterly;  in  place  of 
that  obsolete  word  we  have  **  ill."  Equal- 
ly, of  course,  there  is  no  recognition  of 
the  *'soul " — an  unpleasant  word,  sugges- 
tive of  the  possibility  of  being  '*  lost,"  or 
even  (what  would  be  still  more  dreadful 
from  a  Cosmian  point  of  view)  '*  saved." 
Accordingly,  instead  of  singing  "  Awake, 
my  soul !"  we  are  hereafter  to  call  upon 
the  "  mind  "  or  "  heart "  to  awake.  Simi- 
larly, "  holy  "  becomes  *•  noble  " — though 
why  the  editor  left  "  unholy  "  in  the  same 
hymn  we  cannot  say.  But  it  is  his  own 
lyric  advice  to  **  Gather  your  roses  while 
you  may,"  and  we  hasten  on. 

We  can  note,  however,  but  a  few  ol  Xtm 


May  7,  1896] 


Tlie   N"ation. 


357 


many  plemsing  detail*.  All  local  indica- 
tiona,  euch  as  "below,"  '* above,"  are 
properly  remoyed  from  the  indiscreet 
hymns  which  by  such  expressions  fostered 
a  superstitious  and  non-cosmic  notion 
about  a  possible  hesTen  and  a  too  proba- 
ble hell.  The  **  hops  of  future  joy  "  has 
a  suspicious  theological  squint,  and  be- 
comes *'  hope  of  future  days,"  in  which 
the  most  carefully  brought-up  Oosmian 
may  venture  to  indulge.  But  it  is  in  the 
new  objects  of  ecstatic  devotion,  the  new 
sanctities  which  the  Cosmian  darkens 
with  his  song,  that  the  peculiar  eminence 
of  the  *  Ckwmian  Hymn-Book '  most  clearly 
appears.  We  know  the  ideas,  the  long- 
ings, the  hopes  and  fears,  the  religious 
conceptions  which  have  moved  Christian 
hymnologv  to  its  grandest  outbursts ;  but 
the  Cosmian  strikes  out  an  entirely  new 
flight,  quiring. to  the  young-eyed  cheru- 
bins  after  this  fashion : 

**St«nialin«ttarI  QqanohleM  force  1 
No  hand  can  ttajr  thy  olroaltf  •  oonne, 
But  deep  In  the  atajM  of  tpaoe 
The  fTttemenm  their  deettned  raee.* 

Or  take  this  song  of  comfort  for  the 
afflicted: 

**  AU-«I1  reeolt  from  Matiire*t  lawg, 
Unohaaglns  all  are  la  their  ooane ; 
And  maa,  and  all  thlase,  mnet  enhinlt 
To  Nature^  far  raperlor  foroe.'* 

These  sentiments  may  be  entirely  true. 
They  have  been  held,  in  one  shape  or  an- 
other, ever  since  human  thought  was  first 
recorded,  but  there  is  no  record,  we  be- 
lieve, of  their  ever  having  before  moved 
men  to  bursts  of  glad  song,  except  in  bur- 
lesque. There  was  an  extravaganza  put 
afloat  some  years  ago  which  was  supposed 
to  give  poetic  and  devotional  expression 
to  the  materialistic  creed.  It  was  flrst 
used,  we  believe,  apropos  of  Buckle,  and 
the  first  lines  ran  as  follows: 

**  I  believe  In  eteain  and  rlee, 
Not  In  Tlrtne  or  In  rice: 
I  bellere  la  all  the  saeet 
Am  the  power  to  ralee  the  maiMs." 

The  Cosmian  hymn -writer  appears  to 
have  taken  this  caricature  as  a  serious 
model.  About  his  own  seriousness  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  One  of  his  hymns,  it 
Is  true,  has  a  word  of  condemnation  for 
"cold  breeding"  that  "affects  to  be 
quite  at  its  ease,"  but  he  is  always  col- 
lected and  altogether  at  his  ease  in  the 
presence  of  eternal  matter,  quenchless 
force,  and  the  laws  of  nature.  He  is,  in 
fact,  a  powerful,  if  unconscious,  witness 
to  the  indestructible  nature  of  the  reli- 
gious instincts.  If  a  blank  creed  like  his 
must  have  its  worship,  its  grotetque  imi- 
tations of  Christian  forms,  the  world 
Is  evidently  far  from  having  entirely 
got  through  with  religion.  Even  the 
revolutionary  anarchists  have  a  form  of 
worship,  consisting,  as  one  of  them  testi- 
fied before  a  London  magistrate,  in  going 
out  into  the  country  on  Sunday,  sitting 
under  a  tree,  and  saying  fervently, "  Hang 
the  priests!"  The  Cosmian  hymn-book 
would  fit  well  into  that  service.  . 


CIVIL.8ERVICE    PRIKCIPLB8    IN    THE 
DEPARTJliENT   OF  STATE. 

Washinoton,  D.  C,  May  1, 1890. 

It  has  been  well  known  for  many  yean  that 
politioal  inflnenoe  has  been  of  litUe  or  no  avail 
in  obtaining  positions  in  the  Department  of 
State  at  Washington,  whatevermay  be  said  of 
the  means  whereby  offloee  mndUr  that  depart- 
ment have  been  seonred.  It  has  been  the  de- 
partment*8  cnstom,  for  more  than  twenty 
years,  to  note  in  its  Registers  the  public  ser- 
vice of  its  oflloers  and  employees.  These  reve- 
lations, when  earefnUy  examined,  are  most 
gratifying  to  those  who  believe  in  the  seleotion 
of  capable  men  to  fill  exscatlve  offices,  and 
their  retention  notwithstanding  changes  ol 
administration. 

The  more  important  officers  of  the  depart- 
ment, sobordinate  to  the  Oecrstary,  are  the 
Assistant  Secretaries  (of  whom  there  are  now 
three),  a  Chief  Clerk,  and  six  Bnrsan  Chlefa 
Many  of  these  have  been  ssleeted  In  the  past 
because  of  their  special  trainings  and  have 
held  their  offices  for  a  long  period.  The  offioe 
of  Asristant  Secretary  was  created  in  1868. 
Mr.  Frederick  W.  Seward,  son  of  Secretary 
Seward,  held  it  from  1881  to  1880,  and  from 
March,  1877,  to  October,  1879.  He  was  sa<v 
oeededinisao  by  Mr.  J.  C.  Baaeroft  Davis,  at 
present  and  for  a  number  of  yean  past  the 
reporter  of  the  Supreme  Coort  of  the  United 
States.  Mr.  Davis  had  been  Secretary  of  the 
United  States  Legation  at  London  from  June 
7, 1840,  to  November  80, 1868,  aad  he  was  three 
times  Assistant  Secretary  of  State— from 
March,  1800,  to  November,  1871 ;  from  Janu- 
ary, 1878,  to  June,  1874 ;  and  from  December, 
1881,  to  July,  1882. 

Another  occupant  of  this  post,  after  having 
acqaired  diplomatio  ezperieooe,  was  Mr.  John 
Hay,  the  author.  He  was  our  Oecrstary  of 
Legation  at  Paris  from  March,  1806,  to  1807, 
when  he  was  transferred  to  a  similar  post  at  Vi- 
enna, which  he  held  until  September  80, 1808. 
Besides  this  service  be  had  experience  as  our 
Secretary  at  Legation  at  Madrid  from  June  18, 
1860,  to  October  1, 1870,  before  be  was  appoint, 
ed  Asristant  Secretary  of  State  November  1, 
1870.  He  held  the  Ust-mentlooed  oflkse  until 
May,  1881. 

The  present  chairman  of  the  Committee  on 
Foreign  Affairs  of  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives, Mr.  Robert  R.  Hitt  of  Illinois,  was  Mr. 
Hay's  succeesor.  He  also  had  had  a  spedal 
training  for  the  poet,  having  served  as  our 
Secretary  of  Legation  at  Paris  for  six  yean 
ccmtinuously  prior  to  his  entrance  upon  duty 
at  the  Department  of  State.  He  was  Assist^ 
ant  Secretary  for  less  than  a  year. 

Mr.  John  Davis,  now  one  of  the  Judices  of 
tbeUnlted  States  Court  of  Claims,  wasparticn- 
larly  well  qaaUfled  to  discharge  the  duties  of 
Asristant  Secretary  when  be  received  his  ap- 
pointment in  July,  1882.  He  had  been  a  clerk 
in  the  Departmeot  of  State  from  September, 
1870,  to  October,  1872;  secretary  to  the  agent 
of  this  Government  before  the  Geneva  Tttbu- 
nal  which  decided  our  claims  against  Great 
Britain  growing  out  of  the  dvU  war,  and  in 
1874  was  appointed  clerk  of  the  Court  of  Com- 
missioners of  Alabama  Claims  which  sat  at 
Weshington  and  awarded  the  fifteen  and  a 
half  mlUlon  dollars  paid  by  Great  Britain.  In 
1881  he  was  assistant  counsel  representing  our 
Government  before  the  French  and  American 
Claims  Commlsrion.  He  eontlnned  Asristant 
Secretary  of  State  nntU  his  elevation  to  the 
ben<^  in  February,  1886. 

The  preeent  oocupant  of  the  plaoe^  Mr.  W. 
W.  RockhUl,  has  ssrved  not  only  as  CbieC 


Clerk  and  as  Third  Assistant  Secretary  during 
the  whole  of  this  Administration,  but  from 
April,  1884,  to  July,  1888,  he  was  our  Secre- 
tary of  Legation  at  Pekhig  and  our  Charge 
d* Affaires  ad  inUrim  at  Seoul 

The  post  of  Second  Assistant  Secretary  was 
not  established  untU  1800— thhrty  yean  ago; 
and  in  all  that  time  it  has  had  but  two  occu- 
panta.  The  first— WHliam  Hunter  of  Rhode 
Idand— entered  the  department  as  a  dark  in 
1880,  roee  to  be  Chief  Clerk  in  1862,  and  con- 
tinued in  that  podtlon  until  be  was  appointed 
Second  Assistant  in  1800.  While  Chief  Clerk 
he  acted  on  one  occarion,  from  May  to  Octo- 
ber, as  Assistant  Secretary.  Mr.  Hunter  died 
in  office^  full  of  yean  and  of  honors,  and  was 
succeeded  in  1880  by  Mr.  A.  A.  Ade^  the  pre- 
sent  incumbent,  who  has  himself  been  in 
the  service  of  the  department  for  twenty- 
siz  years.  He  was  our  Secretary  of  Lega- 
tion at  Madrid  from  1870  to  1877,  when  he 
was  transferred  to  the  department.  Here  he 
was,  for  a  year,  dark  of  Class  One,  then 
Chief  of  the  DipUnnatlo  Bureau  untU  1888, 
when  he  was  appointed  Third  Assistant  Secre- 
tary, whi<^  place  he  held  until  promoted  to 
that  made  vacant  by  Mr.  Hunter's  death. 

In  1878  Congress  provided  for  another  As- 
sistant Secretary  in  the  Department  of  Stat^ 
which  has  since  had  nine  incumbents.  Of 
these,  in  addition  to  Mr.  Adee  and  Mr.  Rock- 
hUl,  three  had  previous  training  In  the  d^Murt- 
ment  or  in  the  diplomatic  service.  Mr.  Charles 
Payson  of  Massachusetts,  who  held  the  pori- 
tlon  from  June,  1878,  to  June,  1881,  entered  the 
department  as  a  dark  In  ISTO,  and  roee  to  be 
Chief  of  the  Diplomatic  Bureau  In  1878.  From 
July,  1874,  to  April,  1870,  he  was  Chief  of  the 
Bureau  of  Statistics,  and  again  Chief  of  the 
Diplomatic  Bureau  until  June,  1878.  Mr.  John 
B.  Moore  of  Delaware,  who  filled  this  porition 
from  August,  1880,  until  September,  1801,  when 
he  became  Professor  of  International  Law  in 
Cdnmbia  Cdlege,  had  earned  a  clerkship  in 
the  department  by  means  of  a  competitive  ex- 
amination under  the  civil-service  act  on  July 
1, 1886,  and  held  it  until  his  promotion.  Mr. 
Edward  H.  Strobel,who  was  for  one  year,  dur- 
Ing  the  present  Administration,  Third  Assist- 
ant  Secretary  of  State,  and  who  has,  since  April, 
180i,  represented  this  Government  as  Minister, 
first  to  Bcuador  and  afterwards  to  Chile  (where 
he  now  is),  had  been  our  Secretary  of  Lega- 
tion at  Madrid  from  June,  1886,  to  June,  1880. 
The  office  of  Chief  ClerJK  of  the  Department 
of  State  is  one  of  considerable  antiquity.  It 
was  created  by  the  act  of  1780,  which  estab- 
lished the  Department  iteelf.  Notafewofthe 
Chief  Clerks  have  been  promoted  from  clerk- 
ships of  a  lower  grade.  Mr.  Dayton  had  been 
a  clerk  in  the  department  tar  four  yean 
prior  to  his  appointment  as  Chief  Clerk.  Mr. 
Vail  had  served  In  the  same  way  eleven  years. 
Mr.  Derrick  had  had  sixteen  yeanP  experience, 
and,  when  superseded  by  Mr.  CraU^  he  was 
given  a  sixteeo-hundnd-doUar  clerkship, which 
he  held  until  again  elevated  to  his  former  po- 
ritioninl848.  Mr.  Trist  was  Consul  at  Havana 
from  1888  to  1888,  then  a  clerk  in  the  Depart- 
ment of  State  (or  mon  than  five  years,  and 
again  Consul  at  Havana  for  eleven  vean  be- 
fore he  was  appointed  Chief  Clerk.  Mr.  Chew 
served  the  State  Department  as  a  clerk  In  eadi 
grade  from  1884  to  1866,  whan  be  was  tem- 
porarily Chief  Clerk,  and  again  as  a  clerk  of 
the  highest  grade  for  eleven  years,  whan  he 
was  asked  to  become  the  sucosssor  of  Mr.  Hun- 
tsr,  for  whom  a  higher  position  had  been  pro- 
vided. His  sucosssor,  Mr.  Sevellon  A.  Brown, 
had  stttsted  the  department  as  a  derk  in  1800 
and  bad  gone  from  grade  to  grade.    Mr.  Ohfl- 


358 


Tlie    IN^atlon. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1 6 10 


toD,  now  Chief  of  the  ConBular  Bareau,  who, 
during  Mr.  John  W.  Foster's  brief  adminbtra- 
tion,  was  Chief  Clerk,  had  bad  tweWe  years' 
experience  as  a  clerk  in  the  Department 

Of  the  twenty-two  persons  who  haye  held 
this  place,  two  have  died  in  ofBce,  one  has  re. 
signed  to  aocept  a  position  oatside  of  the  Got- 
emment  service,  and  thirteen  have  been  ap- 
pointed to  other  Federal  offices.  John  Graham 
of  Virginia,  Chief  Clerk  from  1807  to  1817,  was 
appointed  in  the  latter  year  one  of  onr  Com- 
missioners to  Buenos  Ayres.  Daniel  Brent  of 
Virginia,  his  successor,  continued  to  act  as 
Chief  Clerk  until  his  appointment  as  Consul 
at  Paris  in  1888.  Asbury  Dickins  of  North 
Carolina,  who  came  after  Brent,  resigned  the 
chief  clerkship  in  1836  to  become  Secretary  of 
the  United  States  Senate.  Aaron  Ogden  Day- 
ton of  New  Jersey  then  held  the  place  for  one 
year,  when  he  was  appointed  Fourth  Auditor 
of  the  Treasury.  Aaron  Vail  of  New  York, 
his  successor,  also  remained  but  a  year,  when  he 
was  appointed  our  Charge  d*A£Faires  to  Spain. 
Daniel  Fletcher  Webster  of  Massachusetts  was 
Chief  Clerk  from  March,  1841,  to  April,  1848, 
when  he  was  sent  on  a  special  commission  to 
China,  where  he  serred  until  the  latter  part  of 
1844.  Nicholas  P.  Trist  of  Virginia,  who  was 
Chief  Clerk  from  August,  1845,  to  April,  184f, 
was  appointed  Commissioner  to  Mexico,  and 
his  successor,  John  Appleton  of  Maine,  was, 
after  a  few  months,  made  Charge  d' Affaires  to 
BoUvia. 

The  bureau  officers  have  seldom  or  never 
been  changed  for  political  reasons.  Whenever 
a  vacancy  has  occurred,  it  has  been  filled  either 
by  the  promotion  of  a  clerk  from  the  same  or 
some  other  department,  or  in  a  few  instances 
by  the  selection  of  a  man  of  ascertained  fitness 
whose  occupation  had  specially  qualified  him 
to  discharge  the  duties  of  the  office.  Exclusive 
of  the  Secretary,  there  are  borne  on  the  Regis 
ter  of  the  Department  of  State  seventy-eight 
officers,  clerks,  and  employees.  Of  these,  fifty 
(or  64  per  cent,  of  the  whole  number)  have 
served  the  Government  more  than  ten  years. 
To  be  exact,  one  has  served  more  than  fifty 
yecurs,  another  more  than  forty,  and  still  an- 
other more  than  thirty.  Seven  have  been  in 
the  service  more  than  twenty-five  years,  ten 
more  than  twenty  years,  sixteen  more  than 
fifteen  years,  and  fourteen  more  than  ten 
years. 


SOCIAL  REGENERATION  IN  ITALY. 
Italy,  April  6, 1806. 

The  King  has  just  signed  the  decree,  coun- 
tersigned by  the  Ministers  of  the  Interior,  of 
Finance,  of  Public  Works,  of  Public  Instruc- 
tion,  and  of  Agriculture,  Industry,  and  Com- 
merce, nominating  for  the  period  of  one  year 
a  civil  commissary  to  exercise  political  and 
administrative  functions  in  all  the  provinces 
of  Sicily,  subject  to  the  Minister  of  the  Inte- 
rior. The  commissary  is  invested  with  all  the 
authority  of  the  ministers  enumerated  above; 
be  is  responsible  for  public  security,  for  the 
provincial  and  communal  administration,  aud 
for  the  public  works;  is  to  readjust  local  taxa- 
tion and  primary  instruction,  to  survey  mines 
and  forests — and  this  without  interfering  with 
the  state  budget.  He  may  suspend  functiona- 
ries dependent  on  the  various  ministries,  giving 
eight  days'  notice  to  the  respective  ministers. 
The  prefects  of  the  seven  provinces,  though 
they  cannot  be  suspended  or  dismissed,  are  to 
correspond  with  the  royal  commissary  instead 
of  with  the  Minister  of  the  Interior.  He  can 
order  inspections  of  all  administrative  and  po. 
litical  offices;  revision  of  all  the  provincial  and 


communal  budgets,  so  as  to  proportion  their 
expenses  to  the  contributive  force  of  each. 
Among  the  many  provisions  there  is  one  spe- 
cially just :  No  beasts  of  burden  (meaning 
mules  and  donkeys)  can  be  taxed  in  a  commune 
where  cattle  are  untaxed,  and  the  one  animal 
of  the  poorest  is  in  any  case  to  be  spared*  The 
budgets  of  charitable  institutions  and  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  are  to  be  revised, 
and  a  project  for  the  unification  of  the  com- 
munal and  provincial  debts  to  be  prepared 
within  six  months  with  a  view  to  prolonging 
the  term  for  repayment,  and  so  lessening  the 
amount  of  interest,  with  a  reduction  of  the 
local  taxes. 

This  decree,  together  with  bills  for  the  aboli. 
tion  of  the  tax  on  the  exportation  of  sulphur, 
for  bonded  warehouses,  etc.,  will  be  presented 
to  Parliament  for  the  special  benefit  of  miners, 
so  let  us  hope  that  there  will  be  a  bill  for  the 
abolition  of  the  infamous  truck  system.  .In 
their  report  to  the  King,  the  ministers  enume- 
rate the  reasons  that  render  such  steps  neces- 
sary :  because  the  act  of  amnesty  would  be  null 
and  void  without  remedial  measures;  beciuse 
a  delegation  of  the  powers  of  the  several  minis- 
ters to  one  representative  will  facilitate  the 
passage  of  the  measures  tending  to  bring  the 
administrators  into  contact  with  the  popula- 
tions, render  ponible  the  maintenance  of  pub 
lie  security,  moderate  the  expenses  of  the  pro- 
vinces and  the  communes,  and  lesMU  the  bur- 
dens of  the  contributors.  Other  provisions  re- 
gard the  railroads  in  Sicily  and  the  ferry-boats 
which  are  to  unite  the  island  with  the  conti- 
nent. The  proposal  is  feasible  as  far  as  it  goes. 
The  abolition  of  the  tax  on  the  exportation  of 
sulphur  is  an  act  of  justice,  as  the  export  tax 
on  silk  in  Lombardy  was  abolished  two  years 
since;  but  greatcare  will  be  needed  to  insure 
the  benefit  to  the  actual  miners— the  excavat> 
ors  and  the  transporters  of  the  ore  to  the  snr- 
face— and  not  to  the  owners  and  farmers  of  the 
mines.  Should  the  royal  commissary  be  able 
to  reconstruct  the  municipal  and  provincial 
budgets  and  adjust  the  incidence  of  taxation 
equitably,  the  experiment  will  have  been  worth 
making. 

There  is,  however,  one  great  omission  which 
will  assuredly  deprive  the  royal  commissary 
of  the  support  of  the  Socialists  who  are  suffi- 
ciently reasonable  to  accept  half  a  loaf  when 
a  whole  one  is  not  forthcoming.  There  is  no 
allusion  to  a  reform  of  the  land  laws,  and 
without  such  a  reform  no  real  pacification  of 
Si^ly  can  be  expected.  An  absolute  necessity 
is  the  reform  of  all  contracts  between  the  own- 
ers and  tillers  of  the  soil ;  the  abolition,  if  not 
of  the  latifondi,  at  least  of  the  gabtllotH  (the 
middlemen),  who,  after  paying  an  enormous 
rent  to  the  absentee  landlord,  underlet  the  es- 
tate in  large  or  small  farms,  which  are  again 
subdivided  by  the  tenants— once,  twice,  and 
thrice— so  that  the  real  tillers  of  the  soil  are 
reduced  to  work  all  the  workable  days  of  the 
year,  and  then  to  find,  when  the  crops  are 
gathered  in,  that  their  portion  is  absorbed  by 
debt,  usury,  and  the  hundred  and  one  pretexts, 
priest-paying,  guardian- feeding,  etc.,  etc., 
which  the  various  tenants  have  invented  for 
their  destruction.  In  a  letter  to  the  Nation 
last  year  I  gave  a  r^sum^  of  the  bill  presented 
to  the  House  by  Signer  Crispi  for  the  amelio- 
ration of  the  latifondi.  Some  of  its  provi- 
sions were  excellent,  but  the  opposition  offered 
was  so  universal  that  it  was  at  once  withdrawn, 
with  a  pledge  that  it  should  be  presented  anew 
with  modifications  and  ameliorations.  Since 
then  nothing  more  has  been  heard  of  it,  and 
the  Marquis  di  Rudini,  who  is  one  of  the  great 
landed  proprietors  of  Sicily,  in  an  exhaustive 


article  in  the  OiomaU  degli  Eeonomitti  for 
February,  180S,  demonstonted,  to  the  satisfac- 
tion at  least  of  landlords,  that  the  uncultivated 
lands  of  Sicily  are  incapable  of  culture,  and 
that  those  vast  expanses  devoted  to  wheat  are 
unsusceptible  of  producing  other  crops.  What 
attracted  the  champions  of  the  tillers  of  the 
soil  in  the  bill  referred  to,  was  the  proposal  to 
divide  all  estates  of  more  than  100  hectares,  to 
let  the  portions  at  fixed  rents,  or  on  the  sys- 
tem of  emphyteuHa  of  the  Roman  law,  whils 
a  special  and  heavy  tax  was  to  be  levied  on 
all  uncultivated  lands  to  constrain  the  own- 
ers to  cultivate  them,  or  to  let  them  on 
such  terms  as  would  induce  peasants  to  till 
them.  Rudini  affirms  that  every  effort  has 
been  made,  by  owners  or  middlemen,  to  bring 
waste  lands  under  cultivation;  that  he  himself 
has  converted  unhealthy  marshes  Into  vine- 
yards, olive  and  almond  plantations;  hat 
broken  up  latifondi  and  let  portions  out  on 
long  leases.  All  went  well  till  the  phylloxera 
destroyed  the  vineyards;  then  the  tenants  tlrew 
up  their  leases,  and  the  proprietors  had  to  re- 
plant American  vines  and  sustain  the  loss  of 
rent  and  crops.  What,  he  asks,  could  com- 
pulsory legislation  do  in  this  case  f 

The  great  impulse  given  to  Sicilian  culture 
was  the  extraordinary  demand  for  the  hardly 
fermented  juice  of  the  grape  (must)  vrhen  the 
phylloxera  had  devastated  the  French  vine- 
yards, along  with  the  large  exportation  to  the 
United  States  of  oranges,  lemons,  and  limei 
before  California  and  other  States  had  brought 
their  vast  plantations  to  their  present  point 
Sicily  really  lost  a  capital  trade  with  England 
for  wines  and  fruits  by  the  carelessness  of  her 
manufacture,  and,  in  the  case  of  fresh  fmitk 
by  her  fecklessness  in  selecting  and  pack- 
ing it.  Great  Britain  now  receives  such  vast 
supplies  from  the  Channel  Islands  and  from 
Australia  of  fresh  fruits  and  early  vegetables 
that  it  will  be  difficult  for  Sicily  to  recapture 
the  market  which  might  have  been  her  own. 
Grain  and  wine  have  fallen  50  per  csent.  in 
value  during  the  past  few  years,  and  last  year 
oranges,  lemons,  and  limes  were  left  hanging 
on  the  trees  for  want  of  purchasers.  All  these 
things  have  to  be  taken  into  account  by  the 
legislators  and  champions  of  the  peasant  daas, 
for,  even  were  the  lands  of  the  state  and  what 
remains  of  the  ecclesiastical  property  to  be 
distributed  gratis  among  the  peasants,  beyond 
the  produce  necessary  for  home  consumption 
without  markets  the  surplus  would  be  produced 
at  a  loss.  The  peasant  cuts  short  all  such  rea- 
soning by  saying:  "Give  me  enough  land  to 
till  for  the  use  of  my  family,  enough  to  pro- 
duce all  the  com,  broad  beans,  and  vegetables 
which  we  must  consume  or  starve,  and  we  will 
be  thankful  and  contented,  and  take  any  extra 
work  that  may  fall  in  our  way  at  such  stipend 
as  may  be  doled  out  to  us.  What  we  complain 
of  is  that  we  work  in  season  and  out  of  season 
only  to  see  our  mule  or  donkey  sequestered,  and 
be  turned  out  of  our  huts  as  the  winter  season 
comes  on.  If  we  have  a  bit  of  land,  we  can*t 
pay  the  land  tax,  and  the  fisco  takes  the  land 
from  us,  compelling  us  to  join  the  army  of  day 
laborers;  and,  what  with  compulsory  festas 
besides  Sundays  and  bad  weather,  we  rarely  if 
ever  work  more  than  900  days  In  the  year, 
whereas  we  need  to  eat  865  days.^ 

The  Socialists  in  1888  confined  their  practiosl 
attempts  to  getting  better  contracts  for  the  so- 
called  mHayerd  and  day  laborers;  tiiese  were 
abolished  as  soon  as  the  leaders  were  sent  to 
d urance  vile.  Now  the  agitation  reoommenoei^ 
as  also  the  demand  for  theexpropriatfattof  the 
latifondi  for  '*  public  uUli^.''  But  wta««* 
the  funds  to  oome  from?    The  stats  I 


May  7,  1896] 


The   Nation. 


359 


•mptj;  the  140mUUoDS  for  Africa,  if  adyanced 
by  the  National  Bank,  most  be  repaid  and 
with  interest;  there  does  not  remain  a  single 
ayailable  article  capable  of  taxation,  nor  can 
existing  taxee  on  a  broad  basis  be  augmented. 
A  progresHive  Income  tax,  a  progressiye  land 
tax  (the  small  incomes  and  small  farms  ex- 
cepted), woold  be  a  remedj,  but  where  is  the 
House  of  Deputies  that  would  yote  such  reyo> 
lutionary  measures?  Still,  were  eyen  existing 
laws  properly  applied,  some  help  would  be 
forthcoming.  We  have  proved  over  and  over 
again  that  the  charitable  institutions,  proper 
ly  administered,  would  suffice  to  house,  feed, 
and  maintain  all  the  old  people  who  cannot 
work,  and  all  the  young  children  and  orphans 
for  whom  no  one  is  now  responsible  and  who 
must  steal  or  starve.  There  are  sufficient  in- 
stitutions for  educating  them  to  honest  trades 
and  for  putting  them  out  in  life,  but  one  half 
of  the  funds  go  in  administration  when  they 
are  not  spent  for  electioneering  purposes,  as 
was  a  large  portion  of  the  sums  subscribed  for 
the  victims  of  the  earthquakes  in  Calabria. 
Should  the  royal  commissioner  succeed  in  re- 
storing order  and  honesty  in  the  administra- 
tion of  the  charitable  institutions  of  Sicily,  he 
will  haye  provided  a  fund  for  the  assistance  of 
the  populations  willing  to  work  and  unable  to 
find  employers  and  employment;  but  we  fear 
that  the  organized  resistance  of  associated  in. 
terests  will  prove  too  powerful  in  the  future  as 
in  the  past;  and  in  the  event  of  fresh  delusions, 
the  starving  populations  will  assuredly  have 
recourse  to  fresh  reyolutions. 

If  I  deyote  more  attention  to  Sicily  than  to 
other  parts  of  Italy,  it  is  not  because  the  largest 
island  of  the  Mediterranean  has  the  monopoly 
of  misery,  but  because  those  islanders  do  not 
choose  to  suffer  in  silence,  and  therefore  force 
their  grieyancee  and  their  demands  for  re- 
dress  on  the  public.  The  island  of  Sardinia 
is,  if  possible,  in  a  worse  plight  than  Sicily ; 
and,  without  waiting  for  the  results  of  the 
late  inquiry,  we  haye  a  whole  library  of  Sar- 
dinian literature  to  proye  the  wasteful,  sense- 
less administration  of  past  and  present  times. 
Brigandage,  homicide,  vendettas,  are  the  order 
of  the  day.  In  Sardinia  there  haye  been  no 
general  or  organised  revolutions ;  the  Social- 
ists there  haye  not  found  fertile  ground  for 
sowing  their  doctrines.  The  Sardinians  offer- 
ed an  asylum  to  the  house  of  Sayoy  when  the 
first  Napoleon  annexed  all  their  other  pro- 
yinces,  even  as  did  Sicily  to  the  Bourbons. 
Tet  for  that  fertile,  loyal  island  nothing  has 
been  done.  I  visited  it  and  spent  a  month 
there  with  Gkuribaldi  in  1856,  and  was  aston- 
ished to  see  the  wild  wastes  of  uncultivated 
yet  so  fertile  soil,  the  gigantic  orange  groyes 
and  oliye  forests,  the  groves  of  pepper  trees— 
'*ogni  ben  di  Dio,''  as  the  inhabitants  used  to 
say.  **This  will  be  a  garden  when  Italy  is 
united,  free  and  one,**  Qaribaldi  said;  and 
when  he  bought  his  barren  rock  at  Caprera, 
he  made  frequent  excursions  to  the  larger 
island,  always  hoping  against  hope  that  **  some-  * 
thing  would  be  done  for  it**  Alas  I  Sicily, 
with  a  surface  of  29,441  square  kilometres,  has 
a  population  of  2,700,000  souls.  Sardinia,  with 
a  surface  of  24,842  kilometres,  has  but  680,000 
inhabitants.  It  is  a  desert.  There  are  rail- 
roads ;  but)  said  a  traveller  Just  returned,  you 
travel  through  waate  lands— no  houses,  trees, 
or  inhabitants.  Malaria  prevails.  The  deni 
sens  know  only  the  tax-gatherer  and  the  mili- 
tary officer  who  summons  the  conscripts  to 
the  annual  levy.  There,  as  in  Sicily,  the  latU 
fondi  preyail ;  small  proprietors  have  disap- 
peared ;  the  lands  let  for  pasturage  or  for  the 
cultivation  of  wheat  do  not  yield  a  bare  sus- 


tenance to  the  peasants.  Tourists  exclaim  : 
*'  Why,  not  even  round  London  and  Paris  and 
Naples  have  we  seen  such  splendid  fruit  or- 
chards and  vegetable  gardens,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  oliye,  lemon,  and  orange  groyes  T*  This 
is  true  for  the  three  cities ;  but  a  few  miles 
from  these  you  find  nothing  but  thistles,  as- 
phodel, and  lentils— the  white,  sad  dstus  the 
only  flowering  bush.  The  land  is  fertile,  the 
hands  are  sufficient,  for  the  Sardinians  do  not 
emigrate  unless  forced  to  do  so,  but  capital  is 
wanting.  Priyate  individuals  or  industrial 
companies  do  not  care  to  invest  in  an  island 
where  the  fiseo  takes  not  the  first-fruits  but 
the  seed  and  fiower  which  might  produce 
them.  Maggese  (the  leaving  the  land  to  re- 
pose one  year  in  two  or  three,  as  a  substitution 
for  manure)  prevails  in  Sardinia,  as  in  Sicily. 
The  Sardinians,  fatalists  by  nature,  are  now 
so  by  experience.  **  Nothing  is  done,  therefore 
nothing  can  be  done.**  As  for  public  security, 
the  brigands  secure  themselves.  Rarely,  if 
ever,  is  a  crime  informed  against.  Do  they 
nut  pay  taxes  to  the  Oovemment  tp  govern 
the  island  f  Why  should  the  inhabitanto  ex- 
pose themselves  to  the  rerenge  of  the  power- 
ful? The  Sardinians  are  more  **  resigned" 
than  the  Sicilians ;  but  there  is  an  end  even  to 
resignation,  and  it  may  be  that  the  end  is  near 
at  hand. 

As  I  end  this  doleful  letter  comes  the  an. 
nouncement  that  Senator  Codronohi  is  nomi- 
nated by  royal  decree  the  new  royal  commis- 
sary  for  SicUy,  and  also  Secretary  of'  State 
without  portfolio.  Ck>dronchi  is  a  moderate  of 
pure  water;  has  been  Prefect  of  Milan,  of  Na- 
pies,  and  of  other  proyinoes.  As  Secretary  of 
State,  he  will  be  able  to  expound  his  theories 
and  Justify  his  actions  in  the  council  of  minis- 
ters; as  Senator  he  can  answer  questions  among 
his  peers.  If  our  hopes  and  beliefs  were  equal 
to  our  ardent  desires  for  his  success,  we  might 
end  our  letter  with  a  brighter  close;  but  we 
are  not  oonyinoed,  as  we  were  almost  a  fort- 
night since,  that  the  darkest  hour  which  pre- 
cedes  the  dawn  is  yet  at  hand.  Africa  looms 
yet  too  darkly  on  the  horiion.         J.  W.  M. 

Correspondence. 

NAKED   BED   ONCB  MORS. 
To  THX  Editor  of  Thx  Nation  : 

Sib:  Illustrations  of  this  phraae  may  be  seen 
in  that  rare  and  yaluable  book,  Wright*s  *  His- 
tory of  Domestic  Manners  and  Sentiments  in 
England  during  the  Middle  Ages.*  At  p.  257, 
in  speaking  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries,  he  says,  **  One  custom  continued  to 
prevail  during  the  whole  of  this  period— that 
of  sleeping  in  bed  entirely  naked.**  In  the  fif- 
teenth century  it  **  continued  in  all  classes  and 
ranks  of  society**  (t6.,  411).  At  p.  477  one  of 
the  cuts  indicates  the  same  practice  in  the  pe- 
riod following  the  Reformation. 

In  the  Countess  of  Easex^s  case  (2  How.  St. 
Trials  785),  in  1618,  one  may  see  the  phrase 
**  naked  bed,*'  and  specific  illustrations  of  what 
it  meant.  T. 

Gamsbidob,  Msj  B,  1606. 

To  thx  Editor  or  Ths  Natioit. 

Sib:  In  further  allusion  to  the  phrase 
«•  naked  bed,**  which  was  agalb  touched  upon 
in  the  last  issue  of  the  Nation^  it  may  be  of  in- 
terest to  note  that  Mr.  Pepys,  under  date  of 
May  21,  1660,  says,  **  so  to  my  naked  bed.*" 
The  editor,  Mr.  Wheatley,  in  a  note,  refers  to 
the  custom  of  our  English  aneestors  sleeping 


without  clothes,  and  quotes  from  ''  Venus  and 
Adonis'*: 

**  Who  MM  hta  true  lore  In  her  naked  bed. 
Teaching  the  eheeta  a  whiter  hue  than  white.** 

Mr.  Richard  Grant  White,  in  a  note  to  the 
line  in  Macbeth  (Act  II.,  Sc.  1),  **  Get  on  your 
night-gown,**  also  refers  to  the  ancient  custom, 
but  adds  that  Shakspere  knew  nothing  of  this, 
and  that  by  all  such  allusions  in  his  plays 
('*  JuUus  Cesar,**  Act  II.,  Sc.  2;  the  old  *'Ham. 
let,**  Act  III.,  Sc.  4,  ** enter  Ghost  in  his  night- 
gown**) a  bed- room  drees  (ro6e  de  ehambre)^ 
and  not  a  night-dress,  is  intended.  Mr.  White 
seems  to  be  mistaken  in  the  assumption  that 
Shakspere  knew  nothing  of  the  custom,  since, 
even  if  Mr.  Pep3rs*s  remark  is  a  mere  surviyal 
of  expression,  the  quotation  noted  above,  .and 
the  later  incident  given  by  your  correspondent 
last  week,  would  show  that  the  custom  ob- 
tained in  Shakspere*s  day.  It  would  be  inte- 
resting to  know  when  tbe  custom  in  this  respect 
changed  and  under  what  influences. 

Yours,  HsifBT  LmFTMAinf. 


Notes. 


Matrabd,  Mxbrill  &  Co.  haye  in  press  for 
immediate  publication  a  'History  of  the 
Army  of  the  United  SUtes,*  edited  for  the 
Military  Service  Institution  by  Gen.  Theodore 
F.  Rodenbough  and  Major  William  L.  Haakin, 
U.  S.  A.,  with  portraits  of  all  the  generala-in- 
chief  of  the  army  from  1789  to  1805. 

MacmiUan  &  Co.  have  undertaken  to  issue  a 
*  Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology,* 
under  the  editorial  supervision  of  Prof.  J. 
Mark  Baldwin  of  Princeton  University.  Defl- 
nitions  will  be  combined  with  justificatory 
historical  matter  and  with  very  full  bibliogra- 
phies.  The  contents  wiU  be  wholly  original 
and  individually  signed.  The  staff  of  the  Dio- 
tionary  embraces  Profs.  Andrew  Seth,  John 
Dewey,  Josiah  Royce,  R.  Adamson,  W.  R. 
Sorley,  J.  McK.  Cattell,  E.  B.  Tltchener,  Jo- 
seph Jastrow,  and  Lloyd  Morgan,  Dr.  Benja- 
min  Rand,^  and  others. 

Henry  Holt  &  Co.  will  shortiy  publish  a 
translation  of  *  La  Musique  et  les  Musiciens,' 
by  Albert  Lavlgnac,  and  W.  Praser  Rae*s 
biography  of  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan. 

Lemperly,  HiUiard  &  Hopkins  haye  just 
ready  'Little  Rhjmes  for  UUle  People,*  by 
Anna  M.  Pratt  of  Cleveland— a  limited  edi- 
tion;  and '  Linooln  and  his  Cabinet,*  by  Charles 
A.  Dana. 

The  Transatlantic  Publishing  Company  will 
soon  issue  *  A  Society  Woman  on  Two  Conti* 
nents,*  by  Mrs.  James  Maokin  ;  *  Memoirs  of  a 
Little  Girl,*  by  Winifred  Johnes ;  and  *Lo- 
To-Kah,  the  Ute,*  by  Vemer  Z.  Reed. 

*  The  Story  of  Cuba,*  by  Murat  Halstead,  is 
to  be  brought  out  by  the  Werner  Co.,  Chicago. 

Tbe  Chicago  firm  of  Stone  &  Kimball,  now 
become  H.  S.  Stone  &  Co.,  promises  a  second 
series  of  *Prose  Fancies,*  by  Richard  Le  Gal- 


Copeland  &  Day,  Boston,  haye  in  hand  a 
new  translation,  by  M.  S.  Henry,  of  *  Auoas> 
sinetNioolette*;  the  passages  in  verse  being 
turned  into  English  rhyme  by  E.  W.  Thomp- 
son. The  form  is  freakishly  small  for  so  large 
type  as  that  of  the  prospectus. 

*  Number  and  iu  Algebra,*  by  Arthur  Lefe- 
yre  of  the  University  of  Teza%  is  announced 
by  D.  C.  Heath  A  Co. 

Mr.  S.  M.  Hamilton  has  chosen  a  timely  sub- 
ject, "The  Monroe  Doctrine:  Its  Origin  and 
Intent,**  for  his  Part  I.  of  •  The  Hamilton  Fao. 
similes  of   Manuscripts  in  the  National  Ar» 


360 


Ttie   l^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No,  1 6 10 


chives  relating  to  America'  {Public  Opinion 
Co.).  Here  we  have,  admirably  reproduced  bj 
photographic  processes,  six  letters  of  Mooroe, 
Jefferson,  Madison,  and  Rush,  together  with 
excerpts  from  Monroe's  message  embodying 
the  so-called  '*  doctrine."  If,  is  glancing  over 
the  handsomely  printed  quarto,  the  reader  re- 
calls the  definition  to  the  effect  that  **  a  popular 
song  is  one  that  everybody  has  become  tired 
of,**  neither  editor  nor  publisher  is  to  blame, 
as  each  has  done  his  share  in  a  distinctly 
praiseworthy  manner.  And  if  the  less  hack- 
neyed material  promised  in  succeeding  parts 
but  equal  this  first  in  execution,  a  series  of 
real  value  to  the  student  wHl  have  been  well 
begun. 

Something  like  the  service  which  Dumont 
rendered  to  Bentham  was  that  which  Harriet 
Martineau  performed  for  Comte  when  she 
translated  freely,  and  condensed  to  one- fourth, 
his  *  Positive  Philosophy.'  After  nearly  fifty 
years,  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  is  sponsor  for  a 
new  edition,  in  three  neat  volumes  ot  Bohni 
Philosophical  Library,  of  Miss  Martineau's 
tour  deforce  (London:  G^rge  Bell  &  Sons; 
New  York:  Macmillan).  He  prefixes  a  brief 
notice  of  Comte,  but,  for  the  rest,  leaves  the 
text  unannotated,  not  caring  to  point  out  its 
relatively  insignificant  shortcomings.  He 
does,  however,  add  five  pages  of  concluding 
considerations,  embracing  Comte's  programme 
of  future  philosophical  labors  ultimately 
carried  out,  which  his  translator  omitted  as 
not  being  strictly  a  part  of  the  work  in  hand. 
It  is  well  to  remembw  that  this  abridgment 
not  only  had  the  hearty  approval  of  Comte, 
but  wes  honored  with  a  translation  back  into 
the  French— or  the  beginning  of  one. 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons  have  begun  a  taking 
litUe  series  of  **  Stories  by  English  Authors," 
parallel  to  that  by  American  authors  also 
bearing  their  imprint.  One  of  the  two  initial 
volumes  before  us  has  England  for  the  scene  of 
the  short  tales;  the  other,  Ireland.  Reade, 
Hardy,  Collins,  Lover,  Carleton,  and  Barlow 
are  some  of  the  contributory  writers.  The 
frontispieces  are  portraits  of  Samuel  Lover 
and  Anthony  Hope. 

We  can  appropriately  record  here  the  ap. 
pearance  of  the  second  volume  of  the  hand, 
some  Dent- Macmillan  edition  of  William  Carit- 
ton's  *  Traits  and  Stories  of  the  Irish  Peasant, 
ry,'  edited  by  D.  J.  O'Donoghue.  Here  we  have 
Carleton's  house  in  Dublin  for  a  frontispiece, 
besides  illustrative  etchings. 

The  late  Qeorge  Augustus  Sala  is  to  be  re- 
membered by  his  culinary  as  well  as  by  his 
literary  writings,  and  hence  a  reivue  of  his 
'Thorough  Good  Cook,'  with  its  preliminary 
*'  chats  "  (Brentano's).  It  is  a  phimp  square 
volume  of  nearly  500  pages. 

An  awkward  shape  has  been  given  to  '  My 
Mascot:  A  Collection  of  Valuable  Receipts' 
(Boston:  Sabra  Publishing  Co.).  The  scheme 
is  to  introduce  each  section  with  a  printed  re. 
ceipt,  and  leave  the  housewife  to  fill  up  the 
blank  leaves  with  approved  receipts,  written 
in  her  own  hand.  A  harmless  **  sentiment " 
heads  each  folio. 

In  1870  the  Legislature  of  Maine  authorised 
W.  W.  Thomas,  jr.,  one  of  its  commissioners 
on  the  settlement  of  the  public  lands,  previ- 
ously United  States  Consul  in  Sweden,  to 
plant  in  the  northern  part  of  the  State  a  oolo- 
ny  of  young  Swedish  farmers,  with  their  fami- 
lies and  their  pastor.  The  fifty^ne  persons 
who  formed  the  first  company  were  chosen 
with  great  care,  only  those  being  taken  who 
were  able,  among  other  things,  to  pay  their 
passage  to  America;  but  providon  was  made 
by  the  State  for  aiding  the  colony  in  various 


ways  until  it  should  become  firmly  established. 
The  history  of  the  enterprise  is  told  with  par- 
donable pride  in  *  The  Story  ot  New  Sweden ' 
(Portland:  Loring,  Short  Sc  Harmon),  a  report 
of  the  exercises  at  the  quarter-centennial  oele- 
bration  in  Jtme,  1806.  From  the  first  the  colo- 
ny was  remarkably  successful,  and  the  town 
of  New  Sweden  is  now  the  centre  of  a  Swedish 
population  of  nearly  flfteoi  hundred,  with  pro- 
perty of  an  estimated  value  of  more  than  half 
a  million  dollars.  The  undertaking  has  a  spe- 
cial interest  as  an  example  of  successful  colo- 
nisation under  State  auspices. 

*  Father  Archangel  of  Scotland,  and  Other 
Essays,'  by  O.  and  R.  B.  Cunninghame  Qra- 
ham  (London  t  Adam  &  Charles  Black ;  New 
York :  MacmiUan),  is  unhappily  named,  giv- 
ing no  hint  of  the  fresh  free  air  of  the  Argen- 
tine pampas  which  blows  through  almost 
every  page  from  title  to  finis.  Even  when  the 
scene  shifts  to  Spain  or  Morocco,  the  pampa, 
the  wild  horse,  the  untrammelled  Oauoho,  is 
not  forgotten.  In  Corufia,  by  a  grave  sur^ 
rounded  by  exotic  plumes,  the  lover  of  the  free 
life  of  the  southern  plains  feels  *'  that  pampas 
grass  looks  sad  In  Europe,  and  hangs  its  head 
as  if  it  missed  wild  horses  bounding  over  it, 
and  sickened  for  the  calling  of  the  Terutero." 
This  strong,  almost  fraternal  sympathy  with 
the  rude  race  which  so  long,  held  sway  over  the 
La  Plata  fdains,  a  race  now  passing  rapidly 
away,  constitutes  the  chief  charm  of  the  book. 
We  see  the  Gauoho  as  in  real  life,  swaggering 
and  fighting  at  his  pulqueria^  swinging  at  a 
bound  into  the  saddle  and  galloping  off,  like  a 
bird  taking  wing,  magnifying  achievements  of 
horsemanship  by  the  oamp*fire  while  the  smell 
of  smoke  and  leather  rises  in  our  nostrils  ;  we 
can  feel  the  excitement  of  the  ostrich  hunt, 
and  discern  the  fklnt  but  fatal  tracks  by 
which  the  raetreador  leads  across  leagues  of 
pampa  to  the  rendetvous  of  the  horse-thief. 
This  is  something  more  than  depicting  a  strange 
life — ^it  is  making  it  real ;  and  we  can  in  conse- 
quence  forgive  many  shps  In  the  use  of  good 
English,  and  a  host  of  trivialities  and  foolish 
sarcasms  in  the  tales  of  **  Father  Archangel " 
and  *'In  the  Tarumensian  Woods.**  These 
mar  the  book ;  but  the  lover  of  horses  and 
horsemen  and  of  the  unrestraint  of  wild  life 
will  find  in  it  many  morsels  of  rare  flavor. 

From  the  Hudson  Importing  Co.,  No.  10  East 
Fourteenth  Street,  we  have  received  three  vol- 
umes entitled  'English  Minstrelsie:  A  National 
Monument  of  English  Song,'  which  will  make 
a  strong  appeal  to  all  who  are  interested  in 
British  folk-music.  It  is  edited  by  the  Rev.  S. 
Baring-Gk>uld,  who  spent  ten  years  in  collect- 
ing new  material  for  it,  his  intention  being 
that  it  **  should  not  confine  itself  to  such  songs 
as  have  been  written  for  the  harplschord  and 
the  piano,  by  skilled  musicians,  but  should  in. 
elude  also  the  lark  and  thrush  and  blackbird 
song  of  the  ploughman,  the  thrasher,  and  the 
milkmaid."  The  result  is  a  collection  of  about 
300  songs  uodquaUed  in  scope,  variety,  and  in- 
terest in  its  own  field.  The  volumes  are  pre- 
faced by  historical  sketches  of  English  national 
song  and  of  English  opera,  and  the  editor  has 
added  notes  to  many  of  the  songs,  in  the  belief 
that  a  knowledge  of  the  circumstances  under 
which  they  were  written  will  add  to  their  into- 
rest.  There  are  a  number  of  quaint  old  pictures, 
besides  excellent  etchings  of  Sims  Reeves,  Ed- 
ward Lloyd,  Charles  Bantley,  Mary  Davies, 
Signer  Foil,  Antoinette  Sterling,  and  others. 
The  type  is  clear  and  large,  and  the  text  care- 
fully edited,  it  **  being  unhappily  true  that 
some  of  the  finest  old  English  airs  are  found 
associated  with  undesirable  words." 

Dr.  Th.  Baker  has  compiled  a  very  conve- 


nient *  Dictionary  of  Musical  Terms '  (G.  Sohir- 
mer).  It  comprehends  within  2930  pages  hriet 
definitions  of  upward  of  0,000  English,  French, 
German,  Italian,  and  other  words  and  phrases 
used  in  the  art  and  science  of  music  It  does 
not  purport  to  be  an  original  work,  but  a  com- 
pilation  from  the  standard  works  of  Orove^ 
Riemann,  and  many  others,  general  and  spe- 
oiaL  Some  of  the  articles,  like  Trill,  are  fully 
illustrated  with  musical  examples,  and  the  de- 
finitions, so  far  as  we  have  examined  them,  are 
concise  and  accurate.  Of  omissions  we  have 
noted  only  decreeoendo.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  Japanese  ''Koto"  introduces  an  element 
usually  ignored  in  such  works.  Of  recent  mu- 
sical inventions  the  Autoharp  is  mentioned; 
but  why  is  the  MoUmn  ignored— an  instrument 
which  brings  orchestral  music,  performed  with 
expression,  into  every  home,  and  is  destined 
to  play  a  great  rdle  in  spreading  atastefor  the 
best  music  f 

As  the  great  English  Dialect  Dictionary  be- 
gins to  go  to  press,  the  English  Dialect  Society 
puts  forth  three  more  glossaries,  Nos.  74,  75^ 
76,  in  token  ot  the  vigor  of  the  parent  enter- 
prise. Mr.  Skeat  edits  nine  specimens  of  dia- 
lects from  various  sources,  expressly  for  the 
use  of  PK>f .  Wright,  the  Editor  of  the  Diction- 
ary, and  has  taken  upon  himself  the  labor  of 
as  many  indexes.  The  ninth  selection,  a  York- 
shire  dialogue,  he  pronounces  "  the  oldest  good 
specimen  of  a  modem  English  dialect  that  has 
come  down  to  us."  Incidentally  he  testifies  to 
a  change  in  Essex  pronunciation  in  half  a  cen- 
tury, when  the  a  in  skate  has  acquired  the 
sound  of  <  in  kite.  On  the  other  hand,  a  ser- 
vant at  the  door  receiving  his  name  as  Skeat, 
rhyming  with  beet,  would  always  pityingly 
announce  '*Mr.  Skate,"  rhyming  with  great 
The  Rev.  F.  M.  T.  Pftlgrave  contributes  a  list 
of  words  and  phrases  in  every- day  use  in  Het- 
ton-le-Hole,  Durham,  with  the  prefatory  mat- 
ter characteristic  of  this  series,  which  ought 
somehow  to  be  digested  for  a  chapter  of  the 
Dictionary.  In  this  village  he  notes  that  At- 
kinson  is  pronounced  Atchison;  and  Tumbnll, 
TrunmieL  '*Halleluias"  is  the  usual  term  for 
Salvation  Army  folk.  From  the  mining  conn- 
try  of  Bewick  we  pass  to  Edward  Fits  Gerald's 
East  Anglia  in  Walter  Rye's  careful  reSditing 
of  Forby.  In  this  volume  a  New  Englander 
will  feel  much  at  home,  but  there  is  a  deal  of 
hasardous  etymologizing  by  sundry  amatenn. 

For  fifteen  ^ears  and  more  there  have  appear- 
ed in  DIUuetration  numbers  of  peiis^  signed 
G.-M.  Valtour,  which  were  read  with  interest 
because  they  united,  with  a  form  at  once 
strong  and  concise,  real  thought  and  the  fruits 
of  observation.  These  have  now  been  put  to- 
gether in  book  form  by  their  author,  Gnstave 
Vapereau,  under  the  title  *L'Homme  et  la  Vie: 
Notes  et  Impressions'  (Paris:  Hachette).  They 
are  classified  under  five  headings,  and  a  plea- 
sant and  instructive  occupation  it  is  to  dip  into 
them,  fiavored  as  they  are  by  real  wit»  by 
sound  satire  and  sounder  judgment.  One  or 
two  samples,  by  way  of  proof :  "  We  rule  our 
life  by  maxims  we  should  not  like  engraved  00 
our  tombstone."  **  One  may  judge  of  a  man't 
character  by  his  opinion  of  women."  **Ths 
increasing  taste  for  illustrated  works  marks 
the  growth  of  indolence  of  mind:  we  are  spared 
the  trouble  of  reading."  **For  many  men 
politics  are  a  means  of  getting  an  income  with- 
out putting  in  any  capital,  and  of  having  a 
profession  without  serving  an  apprenticeship 
to  it." 

*Le  Mdcanisme  de  la  Vie  Modeme, '  by  the 
Vioomte  G.  d'Avenel  (Paris:  Colin  ft  Cia.),  ii  a 
study  of  industrial  and  commercial  progiw  ti 
France  which  is  as  fascinating  asagoo^drii^ 


May  7,  1896] 


The   Nation, 


361 


IntcrMttng  norei,  and,  withal,  full  of  nraoh  in- 
formatloo  obteliMd  st  flni  hand  by  the  author. 
Tha  ■objects  trtatod  are  the  great  dry  goods 
houses,  notably  the  Boa  Maroh^  and  the 
LoQTre;  the  iron  indnstry,  espedaUy  as  seen 
al  the  great  Creasot  works;  the  food  inpply, 
which  is  ilhistrated  by  a  deeoription  of  the 
Potin  stores  and  factories;  the  banking  estab- 
Ushments,  and  the  wine  business.  Each  stndy 
brktles  with  stotistics,  but  M.  d'Arenel  is  a 
writer  who  understands  the  art  of  being  dear, 
and  eTsn  the  layman  can  follow  intelligently 
the  details  so  abundantly  giren. 

*Les  Chemins  de  fer  aux  Atats-Unis,*  by 
Louis  Pnul  Dubois  (Fisris:  CoUn  &  Cie.),  is  a 
stody  of  the  jaOway  systems  in  this  country 
which  couT^ys  in  a  compact  form  much  in- 
formation concerning  the  great  lines,  their 
workings,  financing,  and  traffic  It  is  not  a 
mere  place  of  writing  around  the  subject,  but 
m  serious  attempt  to  present  to  Frenchmen  a 
▼iew  of  a  system  of  railroading  differing  in 
nearty  every  respect  from  the  European  sys- 


The  deeeription  of  a  journey  from  Damascus 
to  Bagdad,  in  PeUrmann^9  MiUeilw^gen  for 
March,  is  intsresting  mainly  from  the  eridence 
which  it  gives  of  the  energetic  and  partially 
successful  attempts  of  the  Turkish  Gk>yem. 
ment  to  control  the  wild  Beduin  tribes  whose 
constant  raids  preTent  the  derelopment  of  the 
region  lying  between  the  Mediterranean  and 
Mesopotamia.  Not  only  are  the  caravan  routes 
being  protected  by  garrisoned  posts  and  flying 
columns  of  mounted  infantry,  but  the  natlres 
are  being  induced  to  give  up  their  nomadic 
life  and  to  become  cultivators  of  the  ground. 
In  this  the  sons  of  influential  sheikhs,  who 
have  been  educated  In  the  Gk>vemment  school 
(**asohirst  mektebi**)  at  Constantinople,  have 
giveii  efficient  aid.  Dr.  Baumann*s  acoountof 
the  extensive  Arab  sugar  plantations  on  the 
Pagan!  River  in  Ocrman  Bast  Africa  is  en- 
eouraging  for  the  future  of  this  colony.  Ac- 
cording to  the  census  taken  on  Decembw  2, 
1800,  the  poimlation  of  the  German  Empire  is 
0,944,606,  an  increase  of  5.7  per  cent,  since 
1800.  The  growth  was  largest  in  Branden- 
burg and  Wertphalia,  where  it  was  11  per  cent. 
Taking  Piassis  as  a  whole,  the  Increaee  was 
fliS  psr  csnt.;  for  Alsace-Lorraine  it  was  8.8 
per  csnt.  There  has  been  a  gain  in  every 
part  of  the  empire  ezorpting  the  little  pro- 
vince of  HohsnsoDem,  which  has  lost  1.5  per 
cent. 

Prof.  Flinders  Petrie,  in  an  account  of  the 
last  ssason*S  excavations  at  Thebes,  given  in 
London  on  April  8,  says  that  among  the  ob- 
jects discovered  was  a  large  inscribed  tablet 
of  black  syenite.  It  record*  the  deliverance 
of  Egypt  from  the  Libyans  during  the  reign 
of  Merenptah,  about  1900  b.  c,  and  then  re. 
dtes  the  various  places  taken  in  this  monarch's 
Syrian  war;  and  among  these  (in  Northern  Pal- 
esUnsv  apparently)  he  spoiled  **the  people  of 
IsraeL"  If  tide  rsndering  of  the  name  Is  oor- 
reot  (and  it  is  aocepfed  by  Prof.  Maspcro  and 
Dr.  NaviUe),  then  tiie  long-desired  connection 
between  Egypt  and  Israel  through  the  monu- 
ments has  been  established.  What  light  this 
discovery  throws  upon  the  time  of  the  Exodus, 
held  by  some  authorities  to  have  taken  place 
In  this  rslgn,  remains  to  be  seen. 

The  Southern  History  Association  was  orga- 
nlasd  at  Washington  on  April  24  by  the  elec 
Uon  of  Poetmaster^General  Wilson  as  presi- 
dent; of  Dr.  J.  L.  M.  Curry.  Oen.  M.  C.  Butler, 
0eo.  M«  J.  Wright,  John  R.  Proctor,  Thomas 
K.  Page,  andProf.  Woodrow  Wilson,  as  Vice. 
Presidents;  of  Dr.  C.  Meriwether  as  Secretary; 
mad  of  Thorns  M.  Owen  as  Trsasorer,  bssidesa 


large  and  highly  representative  administrative 
council. 

—A  magaxine  does  not  often  bring  out  an 
article  more  eeriously  to  be  recommended  to  the 
general  reader  than  Benjamin  H.  Rldgely*t 
*«  Oxnedles  of  a  Consulate**  in  the  Bfay  num- 
ber of  Seribnef^B,  As  the  typical  American 
tourist  is  sure  to  **  take  in  **  Geneva,  there  is  no 
place  that  could  have  offered  better  opportuni- 
ties for  photographic  shots  at  bis  Ideas  of  what 
a  consul  is  there  to  do  for  him.  The  essential 
comedy  of  the  consulate  begins,  of  course,  in 
Washington,  in  the  ousting  of  one  man  to  make 
way  for  another  no  better,  if  as  good ;  and  Mr. 
Ridgely  is  as  quick  to  see  this  and  as  frank  in 
admitting  it  as  could  be  wished.  It  would  be  a 
gratiflcation  to  believe  that  his  article  will  be 
as  faithfully  thumbed  as  Baedeker  on  every 
ship  that  leaves  our  docks  this  season.  There 
ii  a  sting  of  mortification  in  the  documentary 
evidence  he  supplies  of  the  behavior  and  the 
Inane  demands  of  compatriots  who  fiock  to  his 
office  or  pelt  him  with  letters;  but  the  writer 
who  can  shame  us  into  seeing  ourselves  as 
others  see  us  abroad  will  do  his  country  a 
handsome  serrice.  Another  article  which,  if 
It  is  not  literature,  is  at  least  journalism  of  a 
desirable  sort,  ii  Isobel  Strong's  **Vaillma 
Table-Tklk,**  to  be  concluded  in  June.  It  may 
be  a  trifle  disapi>ointing  to  find  that  actual  un- 
dress utterances  of  Stevenson's  are  somewhat 
thinly  strewn  through  a  text  descriptive  of  his 
domestic  life,  yet  there  are  several  sayings 
with  an  aphoristic  ring  that  are  among  the 
things  of  his  one  would  not  willingly  miss.  An 
account  of  Women's  (Hubs  in  London,  some 
very  fair  short  stories,  together  with  the  first 
paper  on  the  **  Evolution  of  the  Trotting 
Horse"  and  the  ineritable  verse,  make  up  the 
rest  of  the  contents  of  this  magaslne. 

— ninstratlon  and  text  from  separate  hands 
seldom  hang  together  so  well  as  do  those  of  Du 
Maurier  and  Felix  Moecheles  in  the  latter's 
article,  **  In  Bohemia  with  Du  Maurier,"  in  the 
(Mntury,  The  common  quality  which  fuses 
the  two  into  one  is  the  unaffected  pleasure 
that  has  evidently  gone  to  the  making  of 
each,  although  Du  Maurier's  pen* and- ink 
sketches  were  done  in  the  fifties,  and  Moselle- 
lee's  reminiscences  were  written  at  a  date  that 
gives  them  a  long  perspective  of  time.  Where 
Du  Maurier  gathered  a  great  deal  of  the  ma- 
terial for  his  later  fiction,  and  how  he  first 
began  to  discover  his  diversified  talents,  are 
the  chief  dlsdosuree  of  interest  in  the  recoUeo- 
tions.  Their  charm  consists  in  the  picture 
they  give  of  the  young  art-studenf  s  unoon- 
scions  revelling  in  his  own  devemees,  and  his 
overfiowing  delight  in  production,  of  which 
verse,  sketch,  and  letters  preeerved  here  are 
the  outcome.  The  beginning  of  Mr.  Bryce's 
**  Impressions  of  South  Africa"  is  full  of  pre- 
sent and  the  {nxxnlse  of  future  interest,  as  he 
has  applied  to  the  country  now  looming  Into 
prominence  the  same  powers  of  personal  ob- 
servation which  made  his  visit  here  so  fnut- 
fuL  In  tlds  first  paper  the  economic  and  po- 
litical problems  of  South  Africa  are  ap- 
proached through  a  deeeription  of  its  physical 
features,  in  which  a  place  is  given  to  the 
picturesque  qualities  of  the  landscape,  depend- 
ing on  **a  warmth  and  richness  of  tone  which 
fills  and  dslights  the  eye,"  and  on  the  charm 
of  primeval  solitude,  silenoe,  and  dreary 
solemnity.  It  is  encouraging  to  obeerve  not 
only  that  Dr.  Philip  Omnbe  Knapp  finds  a 
negative  answer  to  the  general  question,  **  Are 
Nervous  Diseases  Inorsaalng  f "  but  also  that, 
contrary  to  popular  assertion,  he  comee  to  the 
wp9dfie  oonclnslon  that^  *'  witboot  mors  evi- 


dence in  its  favor,  we  must  regard  the  belief 
in  the  greater  nervousnesi  of  Americans  as  an 
error." 

—Dr.  Birkbeck  HiU  has  not  lacked  explioit- 
ness  in  stating,  in  the  opening  sentences  of  the 
current  number  of  the  AUantie^  that  he  is 
editing  his  group  of  Letters  of  D.  G.  Roswttl 
*'for  readers  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantla" 
All  that  can  be  done.  In  the  way  of  elucidat- 
ing and  supplementing,  by  two  penons  pos- 
sessed of  interesting  information  about  other 
interesting  people,  both  the  editor  himself  and 
the  poet's  brother,  W.  M.  Roseetti,  have  not 
failed  to  do  for  these  letters,  which  were  all 
written  to  another  poet^  William  AlUngham. 
But  the  charm  which  it  might  have  been  hoped 
would  make  Ronettl's  prose  independent  of 
editorial  attractions  is,  so  far,  not  to  be  found, 
though  it  may  still  be  discovered  in  instal- 
ments of  the  letters  yet  to  come.  In  his  plea- 
santly written  **Trip  to  Kyoto,"  Lafcadio 
Heam  writes  down  himself  and  his  much- 
loved  Japaneee  as  indisputably  among  the 
Wordsworthians.  Betweoi  his  praise  of  the 
universal  cheapness  of  pleasure  in  Japan, 
where  "the  delight  of  the  eyes  is  for  every- 
body," and  the  spirit  of  '*8tray  Pleasures  "  or 
**  To  the  Daiiy,"  the  difference  is  not  more  than 
skin  deep.  Any  one  to  whom  the  tone  of  this 
article,  or  thatof  Olive  Thome  Miller's  ''Whim- 
sical Ways  in  Bird  Land,"  is  sympathetic,  must 
also  be  in  sympathy  with  the  article  on  "  The 
Preservation  of  Our  Oame  and  Fish,"  by  Gkw- 
ton  Fay.  The  tragedy  of  our  wildfowl  is  an 
old  story,  but  always  a  moving  one,  and  this 
is  an  effort  worthy  of  all  succees  to  rally  their 
friends,  first  among  whom  should  be  the  true 
sportsman,  to  their  reecue.  Among  their  ene- 
mies, secret  and  open,  are  the  politician,  the 
game  warden,  the  dealer,  the  breech-loading 
and  magazine  shot-gun,  and  now  the  cold- 
storage  system.  It  is  shameful  to  have  to  add 
to  this  list  women,  who  are  reeponsible  for 
orders  like  a  recent  one  from  an  BngUsh  firm 
for  the  skins  of  600,000  ox-eye  snipe,  the  small- 
est of  their  species. 

—A  point  of  interest  In  Harper'9  Magatine 
will  be  found  in  the  article  containing  a  small 
budget  of  letters  grouped  under  the  head 
*' England  and  America  in  1868."  These  letters 
are  addressed  to  Cyrus  W.  Field,  whose  two 
most  conspicuous  correspondents  are  Messrs. 
Bright  and  Gladstone.  Fortunately  there  is 
nothing  in  the  tone  of  either  (each  expreesing 
deepest  consideration  for  American  interests) 
calculated  to  stir  animosity  in  the  most  belli- 
cose mind«  unices,  Indeed,  it  can  be  imputed 
as  a  common  crime  to  two  eminent  English 
statesmen,  otherwise  so  dissimilar,  that  they 
had  no  prophetic  vision  of  the  results  of 
our  great  crisis—time  having,  in  fact,  fiatly 
ccmtradict^  Mr.  Gladstone.  Mr.  Field's  re- 
lation to  the  negotiations  for  the  Atlantic 
cable  receives  brief  coounent  from  the  anony- 
mous editor  of  this  correspondence.  Another 
of  Professor  Woodrow  Wilson's  historical 
papers,  **  At  Home  in  Virginia,"  though  going 
over  the  oft-trod  ground  of  the  gathering  of 
the  Revolution,  has  the  individuality  and 
viridness  of  trsatment  which  produce  a  fresh 
picture  before  the  mind  of  the  reader.  Prof. 
Brander  Matthews  has  not  profited  by  the 
^T>mpU  of  the  Louvre  and  other  national 
galleries  which  give  the  freedom  of  their 
walls  to  the  works  of  no  living  artist  Hii 
essay  on  **The  Penalty  of  Humor"  opens  so 
promisingly  that  one  hopes  to  find  in  it  a  con- 
tribution to  all  one's  future  thought  on  the 
subject.  But  the  winding  up,  where  one  looks 
confidently  for  the  eaH^yisfs  deft  appUoatftoos 


362 


Tlie    N'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No,  1610 


ftod  final  hitting  the  nail  on  the  head,  consists 
of  an  expression  of  ardent  admiration  for  the 
works  of  Mark  Twain.  Ck>inoidentall7,  a  por- 
trait of  Mr.  Clemens  and  an  article  **Mark 
Twain,"  by  Joseph  H.  Twichell,  lead  off  this 
number  of  the  magazine. 

—The  article  *' Light  on  the  Underground 
Railroad/'  in  the  April  American  Historical 
Review^  has  moved  a  Western  correspondent 
to  send  us  a  leaf  of  his  own  experience.  He 
says: 

''  In  the  winter  of  1860-61,  I  was  obliged  to  go 
from  Chicago  to  Des  Moines,  in  the  heart  of 
Iowa.  Marengo  was  then  the  most  western  point 
I  could  reach  by  rail.  The  stage  on  which  I 
there  took  passage  at  nightfall  soon  lost  the 
track  in  the  houseless,  fenceless,  and  treeless 

grairie.  TVe  wandered  till  the  horses  were  ex- 
austed,  and  should  have  frozen  had  not  the 
bark  of  a  dog  brought  us  at  last  to  a  hut.  The 
next  day  we  could  get  no  farther  than  a  farm- 
bouse,  *out  of  sight  of  land,'  midway  between 
Brooklyn  and  Qrinnell.  Sheltered  here  and 
promised  a  lodging  on  the  floor  of  the  loft,  we 
spent  the  evening  in  the  conmion  room  of 
farmer  Bates.  There  a  gun,  hanging  high  in 
old  New  England  fashion  on  two  wooden 
brackets,  led  me  to  speak  of  it.  *That  gun,' 
said  Bates,  *is  John  Brown's  gun ;  he  passed 
this  way  more  than  once,  piloting  negroes 
North— at  one  time  about  thirty — and  on  his 
last  visit  left  the  gun  here.'  Then,  taking  the 
gun  down,  he  showed  me  how  Brown  had 
mended  the  stock  and  a  piece  of  the  lock 
which  had  been  broken.  The  first  remark  of 
one  of  the  stalwart  boys  was,  'That  gun  is 
going  South  next  summer.'  No  doubt  it,  or 
at  least  the  boy,  did  go,  for  the  firing  on 
Sumter  followed  within  three  months.  The 
object-lesson  afforded  by  fugitives  with  Brown 
as  a  guiding  angel  would  not  let  the  youth 
stay  at  home." 

—A  puzzle  once  solved  loses  all  interest ;  but 
an  enigma  which  may  be  plausibly  explained 
in  several  ways,  but  demonstrably  solved  in 
none,  has  a  perennial  fascination.  Who  was 
the  lian  in  the  Iron  Mask  ?  Who  was  Kaspar 
Hauserf  Was  Louis  XIV.  really  married  to 
Mme.  de  Maintenon,  after  all?  Was  Swift 
married  to  Stella  ?  Not  that  it  matters  great- 
ly, in  either  case ;  but  it  would  be  a  comfort 
could  we  substitute  proofs  for  internal  convic- 
tions,  and  so  have  them,  once  for  all,  settled 
and  done  with.  With  regard  to  Swift's  case, 
the  present  annotator  has  long  been  oonvinced 
that  there  was  no  marriage.  He  has  arrived 
at  that  conviction,  not  by  a  minute  sifting  and 
testing  of  each  particle  of  so-called  evidence, 
but  by  taking  the  sum  of  what  was  offered  on 
one  side,  and  contrasting  it  with  all  that  tend- 
ed to  prove  the  contrary;  the  negative  evidence 
seeming,  to  his  mind,  overwhelmingly  prepon- 
derating. But,  in  the  brochure  (a  reprint  from 
the  September  Anglia)  before  us,  entitled 
•Was  Swift  Married  to  Stellar  Prof.  A.  von 
W.  Leslie  has  carefully  gone  over  the  ground, 
and  shown  bow  weak  the  evidence  is.  State- 
ments dubious  at  first,  and  banded  down 
through  a  succession  of  transmitters,  taking  a 
twist  from  each  ;  remarks  dropped  casually  in 
conversation  and  brought  forward  seventy  or 
ninety  years  afterwards— in  fact,  much  of  this 
evidence  is  little  better  than  Lord  Peter's  proof 
of  the  nuncupatory  will,  who  remembered  that 
be  "had  heard  a  fellow  say,  when  we  were 
boys,  that  he  had  heard  my  father's  man  say," 
that  the  father  had  expressed  himself  favora- 
bly in  the  matter  of  gold  lace.  Whether  this 
view  of  the  case  places  Swift*s  character,  as 
Prof.  LesUe  thinks  it  does,  in  a  less  lurid  light, 
need  not  be  discussed  here.  But  we  must 
strongly  protest  against  the  way  he  speaks  of 
the  innocent,  trusting,  and  hapless  Vanessa, 
whose  cruel  fate  has  left  a  stain  on  Swift's 
memory  which  all  the  oceans  cannot  wash 
away. 


—It  will  be  remembered  that  M  Ren^  Dou. 
mio,  in  his  discourse  at  Angers  on  the  present 
literary  crisis,  gave  utterance  to  a  somewhat 
hard  prophetic  saying,  to  the  effect  that  France 
was  likely  soon  to  consist  of  "a  handful  of 
mandarins  in  the  midst  of  an  unlettered  peo- 
ple." M.  Doumic  has  since,  in  an  article  in  the 
D4hat$f  thrown  a  little  light  upon  what  he 
means  when  he  talks  of  *Hhe  lettered"  and 
'*  the  barbarians."  The  distinction  which  he 
makes  between  the  two  seems  to  be  very  nearly 
that  which  Matthew  Arnold  made  between 
the  Remnant  and  the  rest  of  mankind.  M. 
Doumic  notes  the  extreme  satisfaction  which 
the  Socialists  take  in  the  classical  and  lettered 
oratory  of  M.  Jaur^.  They  seem  to  delight 
in  that  which  it  is  their  real  mission  to  destroy. 
That  M.  Jaur^  himself  is  one  of  the  lettered 
there  Is  no  doubt.  He  is  one  of  the  most  com- 
plete products  of  bourgeois  education.  A 
clever  pupil,  laureate  of  the  Concours  de  la  Sor- 
bonne,  section  chief  at  the  Normal  School,  he 
uses  against  his  old  teachers  the  arms  which 
they  have  furnished  him.  He  cites  Homer 
and  is  full  of  Cicero,  and  his  followers  applaud 
his  erudition  instead  of  distrusting  him  on  ac- 
count of  it.  In  this,  to  be  sure,  one  only  finds 
repeated  a  characteristic  phenomenon  of  the 
first  Revolution.  Eloquence  then  was  strongly 
tinged  with  classical  remembrances,  and  much 
of  it  was  drawn  directly  from  Livy  and  from 
the  Roman  orators.  The  people  applauded  all 
this  literature,  and  yet  were  none  the  less 
"barbares."  Perhaps  the  truth  is  that  they 
were  moved  by  the  rhetoric  of  their  political 
leaders.  But  it  is  precisely  the  unlettered  man 
who  is  moved  by  rhetoric,  and  it  the  slave 
of  the  phrase ;  for  phrases  leave  incredulous 
those  who  know  what  the  phrase  is.  It  is 
only  because  of  their  ignorance  that  men  are 
the  dupes  of  words.  The  last  word  of  rhetoric 
is  to  inspire  a  horror  of  rhetoric.  M.  Ren6 
Doumic  seems  to  have  in  his  mind,  when  he 
talks  about  mandarins,  not  a  new  class  to  be 
hereafter  developed,  but  the  old  class  of  the 
truly  wise  and  cultivated  who,  in  every  age, 
have  been  the  salt  which  has  kept  the  earth 
sweet,  while  his  barbarians  include  that  half- 
educated  class  which  is  often  farther  removed 
from  the  light  of  civilization  than  the  wholly 
iUiterate. 


MARCOU'S  AGASSIZ. 

Lt/f,  Letters^  and  Works  of  Louis  Agassiz, 
By  Jules  Marcou.  With  illustrations.  Mao- 
millan  &  Co.  1896.  2  vols.,  crown  8vo.  L, 
pp.  xii,  802,  pU.  a ;  II.,  pp.  X,  818,  pU.  4. 
About  twenty  formal  biographies  of  Agastiz 
appeared  from  1845  to  1893,  with  some  thirty 
lesser  notices  of  his  life  and  works  during  the 
same  period,  besides  uncounted  articles  com- 
piled for  cydopeedias  or  for  newspapers.  We 
have  also  many  portraits,  painted,  engraved, 
or  photographed,  with  busts,  medals,  and  tab- 
lets. A  list  of  Agassiz's  own  principal  writings, 
or  *' works,"  1828-78,  is  418.  or  425  with  others 
published  posthumously,  1874-80 ;  and  this  is 
exclusive  of  countless  fugitive  pieces,  printed 
correspondence,  museum  officialities,  reported 
lectures,  and  the  like,  which  we  suppose  would 
take  a  complete  Agassiz  bibliography  beyond 
1,000  entries.  Here  is  certainly  an  embai^ 
rassing  richness  of  material  for  any  biogra- 
pher, but  it  has  been  already  so  well  worked 
up  that  a  new  Life  of  Agassiz  must  show  its 
reason  for  being,  and  especially  for  offering  to 
supplant  Mrs.  E.  C.  Agassiz^s  *  Life  and  Corre- 
spondence,' which  has  been  very  generally 
considered  final  since  its  appearance  in  1885. 


Accordingly,  Prof.  Marcou's  compliments  to 
Mrs.  Agassiz  are  necessarily  apologetic  in 
form  and  in  fact  explanatory,  his  persuasion 
having  been  that  **tbe  true  history  of  Agassis 
has  not  yet  been  written." 

The  veteran  geologist  is  the  sole  sorvivor  of 
the  small  band  of  Buropecm  naturalistB  who 
came  to  America  with  Agassiz  in  1846,  tiie  only 
one  now  living  who  enjoyed  Agaasi^s  friend- 
ship for  nearly  thirty  years,  and  one  of  the  few 
men  to  whom  Agassiz  ever  even  half-imboeocD- 
ed  himself.  He  is  distinctively  one  of  the  school 
of  scientists  to  which  Agassiz  belonged,  now 
generally  considered  old-fashioned,  out  of  date, 
and  hopelessly  heretical  in  the  dogma  and  ritual 
of  present-day  evolutionary  science.  Prof. 
Marcou  has  been  many  years  in  gathering  if 
not  also  in  shaping  his  materials,  with  the 

**  design  of  presenting  to  the  public  the  man 
himself;  his  origin,  his  character,  his  public 
life,  his  private  life,  his  passions,  his  weak- 
nesses, his  faults,  bis  errors,  his  g««iius;  what 
he  did  and  what  he  left  undone;  above  all,  to 
put  him  in  his  place,  in  a  true  light,  in  correct 
perspective,  with  its  lights  and  shadows,  in 
the  field  of  nlstory  of  natural  science.  I  have 
tried  to  speak  of  nim  uninfiuenoed  by  the  dis- 
cordant voices  which  have  celebrated  his  me- 
rits without  discretion,  or  demolished  his  re- 
putation without  measure." 

His  subject  Is  a  man  of  enormooa  achieve, 
ment,  of  world-wide  fame,  and  of  unquestiona- 
ble genius,  whom,  nevertheless,  many  persons 
honestly  believe  to  have  been  *WastIy  over- 
rated," and  whom  some  discerning  ones  have 
considered  inferior  to  Jeffries  Wyman  as  a 
biologist,  though  the  latter's  name  ia  scarcely 
known  beyond  scientifio  circles.  A  renowned 
and  erudite  student  of  nature,  his  most  signifi- 
cant and  far-seeing  generalization — ^namely, 
that  ontogeny  of  the  individual  epitomizes 
phylogeny  of  the  race— has  had  little  to  do  with 
his  renown  and  been  little  considered  in  esti- 
mating his  erudition.  A  professional  ichtbyolO' 
gist,  of  vast  acquirements  in  his  specialty,  hit 
maturest  generalizations  regarding  cydoid, 
ctenoid,  ganoid,  and  placoid  scales  have  come 
to  be  considered  not  less  unsound  and  fanciful 
than  Cuvier's  notion  of  four  types  of  all  ani- 
mals, or  than  Owen's  archetype  itself.  A 
popular  and  sympathetio  personality  which 
won  all  hearts,  his  biographer  represents  him 
as  uneasy  in  the  presence  of  his  peers,  brooking 
no  rival,  and  received  in  Paris  and  London 
with  all  the  more  cordiality  because  it  was 
known  tiiat^  his  stay  would  be  short.  The  gift 
ed  teacher  of  a  generation  of  men  and  women 
whom  to  know  personally  waa  an  education 
in  itaelf,  his  students  ran  the  whole  gamut 'he- 
tween  reverence  and  mutiny.  A  lavishly 
generous  man,  to  whom  business  m^hods  were 
unknown,  who  never  counted  the  cost^  he  was 
often  pinched  for  private  means,  yet  bad  the 
address  to  secure  vast  sums  of  public  money 
for  scientific  ends. 

We  sometimes  hear  of  men  who  are  said  to 
be  greater  than  their  works.  If  there  really 
be  any  such  persons,  Agassiz  is  among  the 
number.  His  positive  contributions  to  sdeacs 
extend  o?er  half  a  century— from  the  descrip- 
tion of  a  new  monkey  in  1828,  to  a  posthumous 
work  on  corals  in  1880 ;  they  range  througli 
all  branches  of  the  biological  sciences,  and  ex- 
tend far  into  the  department  of  physics,  espe- 
cially in  the  ice-age  problems  of  geology.  In 
so  far  as  he  had  a  zoological  spedatty,  it  was 
ichthyology,  and  in  thia  his  reaearohea  were 
extenaively  paleeontologioal.  The  study  of 
echinoderms,  so  successfully  prosecuted  by  hie 
distinguished  son  Alexander,  long  ooei^»M 
him.  He  is  also  prominently  identlfled  vtti 
embryological  research.     His  emdltioB  wm 


May  7,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


363 


Tatt  and  rariad;  a  tanacioiia  memory  kept 
moelof  It  arailable  at  a  moment*t  ootloe;  a 
WBll-ordered  mind  enabled  him  to  atilize  most 
of  It  on  any  occasion;  a  stabbom  ingistence 
iipoi|  fact  kept  him  from  dreaming  much,  and 
his  imagination  teems  to  have  been  seldom  if 
ever  overwrought.  The  result  of  his  life- 
work,  Boch  as  it  is,  has  passed  into  history; 
and  what  has  been  foond  to  fit  the  progress  of 
sdenoe  has  become  ingrained  in  our  common 
stock  of  permanent  knowledge.  Agassis,  in 
short,  is  ^'classic**  in  natoral  history.  Tet 
we  doabt  if  the  net  result  of  his  published 
work  approaches  the  measure  of  importance 
and  usefulness  of  his  personal  example,  or  has 
anything  like  the  influence  he  exerted  while 
living— and  still  exerts,  though  dead.  This  is 
what  we  mean  by  saying  he  was  greater  than 
his  works.  In  his  career  as  a  teacher  and 
populariser  of  science  is  to  be  read  his  truest 
title  to  fame.  We  recall  no  other  name,  ex- 
cepting that  of  Huxley,  which  has  become  so 
nearly  synonymous  with  **  science,**  or,  at  any 
rate,  with  the  idea  which  tiiat  word  conveys 
to  most  persons.  As,  by  a  late  witty  saying, 
^^for  the  English  public,  *  science'  means  an 
artide  by  Professor  Huxley  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century,^  so  meant  a  lecture  by  Agassis  for 
many  years  to  the  average  American.  Agassis 
did  more  than  make  science  respectable;  he 
made  it  fashionable—socially  fashionable.  No 
man  could  be  devised  or  imagined  better  at 
this  business,  in  this  country  at^least.  Art 
conspired  with  nature  to  fit  him  for  it ;  his 
personal  appearance,  his  manner,  his  delivery, 
even  his  slight  foreign  accent,  told  with  im- 
mense effect,  and  gave  him  an  irresistible 
bold  upon  his  hearers.  He  was  fully  con- 
scious of  this  power,  loved  the  footlights  as 
dearly  as  any  actor,  and  made  the  platform  a 
stage  for  dramatic  situations.  We  may  never 
Bpe  his  like  again  in  this  respect,  but  the  re- 
sults remain  visible  and  palpable.  Thousands 
have  applauded  Agassiz's  public  pronounce- 
ments, for  one  person  who  ever  read  his  books 
to  any  considerable  extent;  hundreds  have 
been  kindled  to  enthusiasm  for  the  pleasant 
paths  of  knowledge  by  the  contagion  of  his 
personal  example,  for  one  whose  knowledge 
has  been  increased  by  his  publications;  and 
scores  of  students  who  have  become  prominent 
in  science  in  indirect  consequence  of  his  teach- 
ings, turn  to  his  writings  chiefly  to  criticise  or 
refute  them. 

The  public  really  knows  very  little  of  Agas* 
sis's  technical  work— or  anybody's  else,  for 
that  matter.  How  many  of  his  admirers  have 
any  but  the  vaguest  ideas  of  bis  theories  or 
observations  on  glaciation  ?  How  many  could 
assign  the  respective  parts  taken  by  Agassis 
and  Edward  Deeor  in  the  history  of  echino- 
derms  ?  How  many  could  quote  a  single  fish's 
name  from  the  *  Poissons  Fossiles  'f  If  we  turn 
to  one  of  his  greatest  and  one  of  his  very  few 
oommercially  successful  works,  one  also  of  spe- 
cial interest  to  Americans,  who  so  love  and 
honor  Agassiz's  name,  the  result  is  still  the 
same.  This  is  no  other  than  the.celebrated 
*  Contributions  to  the  Natural  History  of  the 
United  States,'  which  started  magnificently  in 
Aprfl,  1866,  but  broke  down  after  four  volumes 
had  appeared,  tatSlfZ^Bnd  was  never  resumed, 
though  ten  volumes  had  been  planned.  Agassis 
was  then  at  the  senith  of  his  popularity;  he 
had  just  passed  his  fiftieth  birthday,  Hay  37, 
1857,  to  which  Longfellow  dedicated  the  poem 
which  is  far  better  known  than  Agassiz's  own 
great  work.  Prof.  Maroou  states  that,  with 
the  exception  of  the  preliminary  Essay  on  Clss. 
sifloation,  which  achieved  some  popularity  and 
had  dedded  inflnenoe,  on  its  separate  repnbli* 


cation  in  modifled  form,  the  number  of  persons 
who  ever  read  the  *Ckmtributions'  may  be 
*^ less  than  one  hundred"  in  America  and  **only 
a  few  dozens  "  in  Europe.  Similarly,  Part  XL 
of  the  *  Principles  of  Zodlogy'  was  never  pub- 
lished,  and  various  other  projected  works, 
which  appeared  in  part,  were  never  pushed  to 
completion.  Almost  the  only  popular  and 
practically  successful  book  Agassis  ever  wrote 
was  his  *  Methods  of  Study  in  Natural  History,' 
which  appeared  in  1868  after  running  for  two 
years  in  the  AUantie  Monthly^  went  through 
about  twenty  editions,  and  had  enormous  edu- 
cational influence.  This  is  probably  the  one 
work  in  which  Agassis  the  writer  and  Agassis 
the  speaker  came  in  closest  touch;  and  hence 
its  effectiveness.  The  greatest  practical  boon 
Agassis  ever  conferred  upon  working  natural- 
ists was  his  '  Nomenclator  Zodlogicus,'  with 
the  accompanying  Index— the  veriest  drudgery 
imaginable  for  an  author,  yet  drudgery  of  a 
kind  that  no  hack  or  mere  compiler  could  have 
performed;  and  only  those  who  have  to  keep  it 
at  their  elbows  can  be  sufficiently  grateful  for 
this  instrument. 

The  work  before  us  is  decidedly  the  most 
comprehensive,  most  incisive,  most  original, 
and  altogether  ungracious  contribution  to  our 
knowledge  of  Agassis  that  has  ever  aj^ared. 
We  question  its  entire  wisdom  and  we  suspect 
its  disinterestedness.  While  it  will  delight 
some,  it  will  pain  others,  and  cause  to  grieve 
not  a  few  of  the  judicious.  It  is  particularly 
remarkable  for  raking  up  old  personalities  and 
forgotten  sdentiflo  quarrels  Who  remembers 
anything  about  Agassis*s  affair  with  James  D. 
Forbes  until  he  is  here  reminded  of  it  ?  And 
who  cares  now  whether  or  not  the  breach  was 
ever  healed  between  the  vivacious  Franco. 
Swiss  king  of  the  Ice-age  and  the  obnoxious 
British  Islander— '*  tall,  thin,  dry,  haughty, 
and  extremely  egotistical"— concerning  whom 
Marcou  quotes  with  gusto  from  TOpffer :  **  Je 
d^fendd  vos  de  paaler  4  moa,  quand  je  dis6 
rien  k  vos  P  Who  was  Karl  Schimper,  that 
we  should  care  whether  or  not  *'  il  n'a  manqu^ 
&  Schimper  que  d'dtre  sobre,"  or  now  wish  to 
peruse  Agassiz's  'Erwiederung  auf  Dr.  £arl 
Schimper's  Angriffe'  f  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Desor  matter  was  more  serious,  and,  much  as 
Marcou  says  about  it  tiiat  we  wish  to  know, 
he  leaves  us  in  the  lurch  as  to  the  real  secret  of 
the  extraordinary  relations  between  Agassis 
and  his  long-time  secretary.  The  first  volume, 
dealing  with  Agassiz's  early  life  in  Europ^  is 
remote  enough  from  present  interests,  in  both 
time  and  scene,  to  give  us  much  accurate  and 
original  information  not  to  be  found  elsewhere, 
and  otherwise  to  pass  unchallenged  as  the  al- 
ways delightful  and  seldom  dangerous  gossip 
of  the  great.  The  second  volume,  however, 
treating  of  the  times  when  Agassis  was  in  the 
midst  of  us,  is  simply  a  heap  of  combustibles, 
which  only  require  ventilation  enough  to  flare 
up.  Chapter  xvlii.,  for  example,  1858-64,  fans 
the  embers  of  all  the  burning  questions  of 
thirty  years  ago,  till  we  feel  the  beat  and  see 
them  glow  again.  In  recalling  the  odium 
$cienti/icum  to  which  the  dissensions  over 
Darwinism  gave  rise,  our  author  is  either 
mistaken  or  unjust.  In  Dr.  Gray's  case,  which 
must  be  so  familiar  to  most  of  our  readers  that 
we  need^not  elaborate  it,  the  note  on  p.  110  is 
probably  erroneous  in  fact,  and  we  do  not 
think  it  quite  right  to  say  of  Agassiz  and  Gray 
that  **  their  friendship  grew  rapidly  until  com- 
pletely  checked  by  the  publication  of  Darwin's 
*  Origin  of  Species,'  in  1860"  (i.,  p.  284).  Cer- 
tainly there  was  a  coolness  for  a  time  while 
the  great  sodlogist  and  the  great  botanist 
were  each  endeavoring  to  readjust  their  pre- 


conceptions to  the  new  order  of  things;  but  It 
was  happily  removed  before  long,  and  the  two 
met  cordially,  if  infrequently,  as  long  as  Agas- 
sis lived.  This  is  not  the  only  case  where  we 
suspect  there  Is  a  little  private  axe  hidden  in 
the  large  and  shapely  bundle  of  faggots  of  fact 
which  Professor  Marcou  offers.  Sometimes  be 
seems  to  be  settling  old  scores  of  his  own,  with 
Agassis  for  a  stalking  horse.  Thus,  for  a  piece 
of  present-day  practical  politics,  or  eminently 
practicable  polemics,  commend  us  to  what  he 
sajs  of  the  origin,  progress,  and  present  status 
of  the  National  Academy  of  Sciences.  We  cite 
volume  ii.,  pp.  157,  158: 

"In  March,  1868,  during  a  session  of  the 
Board  of  Regents  of  the  Smithsonian  Institu- 
tion, be  joined  Prof.  Bache  in  his  scheme 
for  the  foundation  of  a  National  Academy  of 
Science.  Bache  was  a  rather  ambitious  man, 
full  of  academic  distinctions,  and  a  lover  of 
power.  In  1860  Agassis  had  him  elected  a  cor- 
responding member  of  the  Academy  of  Science 
of  the  Institute  of  France,  and  from  that  mo- 
ment fische  worked  at  cbe  creation  of  a  Na- 
tional Academy,  to  bear  some  analogy  to  the 
French  one.  Under  the  pretext  that  the  (Gov- 
ernment at  Washington  might  be  in  want  of 
advice,  directions,  and  reports  on  scientific 
subject^^  Bache,  supported  by  Agassiz  and 
Joseph  Henry,  obtained,  through  Henry  Wil. 
son,  then  Vice- President  of  the  United  States, 
an  act  by  the  Thirty*  seventh  Congress  *to  in- 
corporate the  National  Academy  of  Science.' 

''  Agassis,  who  knew  the  defects  of  close  cor- 
porations with  Government  privileges,  like 
the  Institute  of  France,  hesitated  in  following 
Bache,  as  did  Joseph  Henry.  But  both  had 
been  in  such  intimate  relationship  with  Bache, 
and  the  American  Association  for  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Science,  founded  in  1848,  had 
given  such  scanty  results,  notwithstanding  the 
influence  exerted  on  the  committee  by  Prof. 
Bache  and  his  friends,  that  they  thought  a 
trial  might  be  made.  Agassiz  may  be  called 
one  of  the  founders,  but  not  the  *  prime 
mover.'  Returning  from  Washington,  after 
the  act  was  passed  by  Congress,  Agassiz  was 
certainly  not  an  enthusiast  on  the  subject,  and 
even  showed  a  dislike  to  talk  about  it,  simply 
saying  that  *  the  National  Academy  was  main- 
ly to  satin  fy  Bache's  ambition  for  control.'  A 
friend  told  him  that  it  would  soon  fall  into  the 
hands  of  pdiUco-savants,  which  he  admitted 
might  be  true;  and,  in  fact,  a  few  years  after 
the  death  of  Bache,  Agassiz,  and  Henry,  the 
National  Academy  became,  as  predicted,  a 
tool  in  the  hands  of  ambitious  Government 
employees  at  Washington." 

Whether  or  not  one  should  here  read  betweoi 
the  lines  '*  pas  mdme  acaddmiden,"  we  are 
not  disposed  to  inquire,  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  dissensions  among  the  ninety-odd  Ame- 
rican iomiortals  have  often  been  expressed  in 
identical  terms  within  the  verge  of  the  Aca- 
demy's chaste  enceinte. 

Our  notice  would  be  incomplete  without 
some  reference  to  Agassiz's  religious  opinions, 
as  reflected  by  his  biographer.  His  scientific 
conceptions  seem  to  present-day  scientists  radi- 
cally wrong;  how,  then,  about  that  measure  of 
ignorance  which  he,  like  most  intellectual  men, 
bundle  up  in  what  may  be  called  a  creed  or 
confession  of  faith  f  Very  likely  Agassis,  like 
Faraday,  Gray,  and  many  other  great  sden- 
tista,  knew  the  difference  between  what  he 
knew  and  what  he  did  not  know,  and  was  thus 
able  to  keep  his  science  and  his  religion  in 
separata  watertight  and  fireproof  compart- 
ments. Very  likely,  also,  be  could  feel  to  the 
depths  of  his  spiritual  nature  the  difference 
between  living  religion  and  dead  ecclesiastt- 
dsm.  Marcou  cites  on  this  score  a  letter  wri^ 
ten  by  Agassis  to  the  rector  of  Neuch&tal, 
December  14,  1841,  during  the  tempest  in  a 
teapot  which  arose  over  some  of  Agissis's 
san«-/cKX>n  dealings  with  dogma: 

*'Heureusement  que  les  temps  de  Galilde  n'ex- 
istent  plus;  mais  aussi  y  a-t-il  bien  moins  de 
m^rite  qu'alors  4  ne  pas  composer  avec  les 


364 


Tlie    [NTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1610 


pretensions  des  Mtnittrta  de  Polite,  et  ce 
n^att  oertes  pas  una  conronne  de  martyre  que 
f  esp^re  oonqn^rir.  Je  dis  *de  T^liJie,'  et  pal* 
}k  fentends  lee  ministree  de  taua  les  caltes, 
qu'Us  soient  proteetants,  cathoUqoes,  jaifSi 
ou  mahom^tans,  qui  n€  veuisnt  /aire  de 
progr^B  en  risn.  Ivotez  bien  que  je  ne  dis  pis 
*de  la  Beliffion.*  ITonbliez  pas  qne  mes  doc- 
trines ne  peuvent  p<»ter  d'atteinte  qn^k  Yen- 
seUcnement  dee  doctenrs  de  T^glise,  et  nulle- 
ment  aax  wfyrii/6B  de  la  lUUgion."    (L,  p.  103 ) 

Agassiz's  religions  ideas  or  ideals  seem  to 
hare  developed  along  tfae  lines  thus  indicated, 
and  his  matarest  yiews  were  probably  not 
markedly  different  In  spirit.  We  most  make 
room  for  one  more  extract,  of  not  mach  later 
date  than  the  above,  it  is  true,  bot  no  donbt 
reflecting  what  became  an  habitual  frame  of 
mind.  Marcou  Is  speaking  (L,  p.  281),  but  what 
he  cites  from  a  letter  of  Agassis  to  Adam 
Sedgwick,  June,  1845,  is  nothing  different  from 
what  most  acientists  would  say  or  have  said : 

"Agassis,  after  his  student  life,  was  not  a 
materialist,  but  a  spiritualist,  in  natural  his- 
tory, an  adversary  both  of  agnosticism  and  of 
pietism  ;  for  he  i-ays  :  *  I  dread  quite  as  much 
the  eza^eration  of  religious  fanaticism,  bor- 
rowing nttgments  from  science,  imperfectly, 
or  not  ail,  understood,  andthen  making  use  of 
them  to  prescribe  to  scientific  men  what  Uiey 
are  aDowed  to  see  or  to  And  in  nature.'  *' 

Altogether  we  shall  be  surprised  if  this  work 
does  not  make  a  sensation  which  will  be  felt 
far  beyond  sdentiflo  circles.  Some  of  Agas- 
six's  old  pupils,  now  numbered  in  the  hierarchy, 
are  not  likely  to  let  it  pass  without  rising  to 
remark  upon  various  points.  As  a  piece  of 
literary  handicraft,  it  is  altogether  admirable. 
As  a  biography,  it  is  a  model  of  much  that 
ought  to  be  in  every  biography  and  of  some 
things  to  be  sedulously  shunned.  The  book  is 
beautifully  printed,  the  type  is  clear,  the  vol- 
umes are  of  handy  siae,  and  all  the  niceties  of 
composition  are  observed.  The  illustrations 
are  few,  but  of  particular  interest.  The  au- 
thor's coDunand  of  another  than  his>  mother 
tongue  is  perfect)  and  he  need  not  have  apo- 
logized for  introducing  so  many  pages  of 
French  text ;  most  readers  will  be  glad  he  did 
so.  If  there  be  a  fault  of  the  anther's  English 
style,  it  is  too  close  pointing— construction  of 
clauses  too  peppery  with  commas.  The  French 
text  is  all  but  faultless,  as  we  should  expect 
it  to  be  under  the  circumstances ;  but  Latin 
names  have  not  always  fared  so  well  at  the 
printer's  hands,  as  witness  ''Cknregonus"  and 
•'Jaucus." 


WOBLAITS  ENTRANCE  INTO  MEDICINB. 

Pioneer  Work  in  Opening  the  Medical  Profee^ 
aion  to  Women :  Autobiographical  Sketches 
by  Dr.  Elizabeth  Blackwell,  author  of  *The 
Moral  Education  of  the  Toung,'  etc.    Long- 
mans, Oreen  &  Co.    1895.    Pp.  266. 
Thx  story  of  the  woman  who  took  the  first 
medical  degree  in  America,  and  who  was  also 
first  admitted  to  the  practice  of  medicine  in 
England,  is  a  story  of  very  great  interest;  it  is 
told  in  this  book  in  a  very  effective  manner, 
and  with  perfect  modesty  and  simplicity. 

Elizabeth  Blackwell  was  bom  in  England, 
the  third  of  a  family  of  nine  chfldren,  more 
than  one  of  whom  turned  out  to  be  unusually 
gifted.  She  dwells  upon  the  advantage  of  grow- 
ing  up  in  the  midst  of  alarge  group  of  brothers 
and  sisters.  The  natural  and  healthy  discipline 
which  children  exercise  upon  one  another,  the 
variety  of  tastes  and  talents,  the  cheerful  com- 
panionship, even  the  rivalries,  misunderstand- 
ings, and  reconcilistions,  where  free  play  is 
given  to  natural  disposition  under  wise  but 
|K)t  too  ri^  pT^rsight,  f on»  an  fy^^ept  dis- 


cipline, she  beUeves,  for  after-life.  Whan  she 
was  eleven  years  old,  the  family  moved  to  New 
York,  and  soma  years  later  to  CincinnatL  She 
was  seventeen  when  her  father  died,  leaving 
the  family  unprovided  for.  She  and  her  two 
older  sisters  opened  a  school,  which  they  oar- 
ried  on  succesifully;  and  acquaintance  with 
the  very  intelligent  circle  of  New  England  so- 
ciety settled  in  Cincinnati,  of  which  the  Rev. 
W.  H.  Channing,  nephew  of  EUery  Channing, 
was  the  inspiring  centre,  furnished  a  congenial 
atmosphere  for  their  years  of  young  woman- 
hood. After  the  school  was  given  up,  Elisa- 
beth taught  In  a  small  town  In  Kentucky, 
where  she  gained  her  first  practical  experience 
of  negro  slavery;  her  letters  give  a  graphic 
description  of  the  crude  dviUsatloD  of  a  West- 
em  slave  State  at  that  period.  During  soaoe 
further  teaching  in  other  Southern  States,  the 
Idea  of  studying  medicine  had  finally  taken 
shape  with  her,  and  than  began  tte  nearly 
hopeless  effort  to  find  a  medical  school  which 
would  admit  a  woman.  Some  glimmering  of 
comfort  she  may  have  got  from  the  indecision, 
at  least,  of  one  Philadelphia  physician,  who 
said  to  her,  **You  have  awakened  trains  of 
thought  upon  which  my  mind  Is  taking  action, 
but  I  cannot  express  an  opinion  to  you";  and 
upon  being  further  urged,  **I  beg  leave  to 
state  clearly  that  the  opwation  of  my  mind 
upon  this  matter  I  do  not  feel  at  liberty  to  un- 
fold." But  usually  the  response  was  very 
prompt. 

The  story  of  the  accident  by  which  it  hap- 
pened that  the  Medical  College  of  Geneva, 
N.  Y.,  finally  opened  its  doors  to  Bfiss  Black- 
well  is  of  critlosl  moment  in  the  history  of 
the  progress  which  women  have  made  in  these 
eventful  fifty  years.  We  condense  it  from  a 
latter  which  was  publishad  in  1892  by  a  waU- 
known  physician  of  New  York  who  had  htem 
one  of  her  fellow-students,  and  which  is  given 
in  the  appendix  to  this  book  : 

**Tha  daas,  numbering  about  150  students, 
was  composed  largely  of  Toung  man  from  the 
neighboring  towns.  They  were  rude,  kxklste- 
rous,  and  riotous  beyond  comparison.  During 
lectures  it  was  often  impossible  to  hear  the 
professors,  owing  to  tte  confnsloiL  Scmie 
weeks  after  the  course  began,  the  dean  ap- 
peered  before  the  class  with  a  letter  In  his 
hand  which,  he  said,  contained  the*  most  ex. 
traordinary  request  that  had  ever  htem  made 
to  the  faculty.  The  letter  was  written  by  a 
physician  of  Philadelphia,  who  requested  the 
faculty  to  admit  as  a  student  a  ladywho  was 
studying  medicine  in  his  office.  They  had 
decided,  he  said,  to  leave  the  matter  in  the 
hands  of  the  class,  with  this  understanding, 
that  if  any  single  student  objected  to  her  ad- 
mission, a  negative  reply  would  be  returned. 
It  subeequentiy  appeared  that  the  faculty  did 
not  intend  to  admit  her,  but  took  this  plan, 
which  they  thought  would  be  a  jperf ectly  safe 
one,  of  avoiding  the  responsibility  of  a  re- 
fusaL 

**  But  the  affair  assumed  a  ludicrous  aspect 
to  the  class,  and  the  announcement  was  re- 
ceived with  uproarious  demonstrations  of  fa- 
vor. At  a  meeting  which  was  held  in  the  eve- 
ning, the  most  extravagant  speeches  were 
made  in  favor  of  admitting  the  lady,  and  were 
enthusiasticaUy  cheered.  The  vote  was  finally 
taken,  with  what  seemed  to  be  one  unanimous 
yell,  *YeaI'  When  the  negative  vote  was 
called,  a  single  voice  was  heard  uttering  a  tlftiid 
*  No.'  The  scene  that  followed  passes  descrip- 
tion. A  general  rush  was  made  for  the  comer 
of  the  room  which  emitted  the  voice,  and  the 
recalcitrant  member  was  only  too  g^ad  to  ac- 
knowledge his  error,  and  to  record  his  vote  in 
the  affirmative.    .    .    . 

**Two  weeks  or  more  elapsed,  and  as  the 
lady  student  did  not  appear,  the  incident  of 
her  application  was  quite  forgotten,  and  the 
class  continued  in  its  riotous  career.  One 
morning,  all  unexpectedly,  a  lady  entered  the 
lecture-room  with  the  professor;  she  was  quite 
small  of  stature,  plainly  dressed,  appeared  dif* 
fideot  and  ret|rin|^,  but  ba4  a  Qra  and  datef^ 


rained  axpression  of  face.  Her  entrance  into 
that  bedlam  of  confusion  acted  like  magic 
upon  every  student.  Each  hurriedly  soagfat 
his  seat,  ud  the  most  absolute  silence  pre- 
vailed. For  the  first  time  a  lecture  was  giveo 
without  the  slightest  interruption,  and  every 
word  could  be  heard  as  distinctly  as  if  there 
had  been  but  a  single  parson  In  the  room.  Tbe 
sudden  transformation  of  this  class  from  a 
band  of  lawless  desperadoes  to  geotleoMB,  by 
the  mare  presence  of  a  lady,  proved  to  be  pn-- 
manent  In  its  affects.  A  more  orderly  class  of 
medical  students  was  never  seen  than  this, 
and  it  continued  to  be  so  to  the  end  of  the 
term.  ...  In  the  honor  list  of  the  roU  of 
graduates  for  that  year  appears  the  name  of 
Dr.  Elizabeth  BlackweU." 

We  have  no  space  to  describe  tbe  untiring 
effort  which  had  stai  to  be  made  bef (»e  Dr. 
Blackwell  had  added  to  her  course  of  study  tiie 
experience  in  the  London  and  Paris  hoepiish 
which  she,  being  In  advance  of  tiie  medical 
students  of  her  time,  deemed  easantlal  to  bsr 
preparation.  But  we  must  make  room  for  tbe 
charming  deecription  of  the  teaching  of  one  of 
the  heads  of  the  Paris  Maternity,  where,  fai 
spite  of  sufferings  from  bad  air  and  bad  food, 
she  spent  some  months ;  It  shows  what  teacb- 
Ing  maana  in  the  hands  of  one  who  Is  bom 
with  the  vocation  for  it: 

**If  the  pupils  answer  promptly  and  well, 
her  satisfaction  Is  extreme,  her  face  growi 
beautiful,  and  her  *  Bien,  trte  bleo  !'  does  one 
good.  It  Is  so  hearty ;  bot  if  an  unlucky  popil 
heaitata,  if  she  speak  too  low,  if  intelUgenoeor 
attention  b«  wanting,  there  lu-eaks  forth  tbe 
most  admirable  scolding  I  ever  listened  ta 
Alternately  satirical  and  furious,  ahe  becomei 
perfectly  on  fire,  looks  up  to  heaven,  dssps 
her  hands,  rises  upon  her  chair :  the  next  mo- 
ment, If  a  goad  answer  has  redeemed  the  fanlt, 
all  Is  f orgottmi,  her  satisfaction  is  as  great  ss 
haranger.  Atfirst,Iwasalitaeshockedattbii 
stormy  instruction,  but  It  produces  wonderfol 
results.  If  the  girls  keep  their  temper  under  it 
and  do  not  cry,  it  comes  right  at  last ;  bats 
tear  is  an  unpardonable  offence,  and  consider- 
ed an  insult  and  a  misunderstanding.  Madame 
Charriar  is  a  woman  of  great  experianca  and 
always  speaks  to  the  point,  and  her  lessons  sre 
very  usef  uL" 

It  was  during  her  stay  at  the  Uatemit^  thst 
Dr.  Bladnreli  became  subject  to  an  attack  of 
purulent  i^hthalmia,  which,  in  spite  o/L  tbe 
most  devoted  care  on  the  part  of  phystdsos 
and  fellow-nurses,  resulted  in  the  loss  of  one 
eye,  and  prevented  her  from  beoomisg  tbe 
great  surgeon  which  she  had  hoped  to  be.  Tbe 
further  study  and  travel  in  England,  tbe  re- 
turn to  New  York  to  practise,  the  opening  of 
a  hospital  in  18{nr,  after  she  had  been  joined 
by  bar  sister,  Dr.  Emily  Blackwell,  and  Dr. 
Zachraawska,  and  the  final  decision  to  oontiniis 
her  work  In  England— these  and  other  inte- 
resting matters  must  be  sought  In  the  book 
itaalf. 

Fanny  Kemble,who  often  rendered  generow 
help  to  benevokmt  institutions  by  the  use  of 
her  great  talent,  was  appealed  to  on  behalf  of 
this  struggling  infirmary.  **  iSb»  reoetired  ns 
courteously  and  listened  to  us  with  kindnes; 
but  when  she  heard  that  the  physiciaBs  of  the 
institution  were  women,  she  sprang  up  to  her 
full  height,  turned  her  Hashing  eyes  upon  as, 
and,  with  the  deepest  tragic  tones  of  her  mag- 
nificent voice,  exclaimed,  *  Trust  a  womam!- 
asaDOCTOBl— NEVER!'"  Even  this  does  aot 
seem  so  remote  from  the  present  time  as  tbe 
fact  that  the  Springfield  RepmbUean  thougbt 
it  worth  while  to  reproduce  the  remark  of  tbe 
'*  sprightly  Baltimore  Am"  to  the  affect  that 
the  first  woman  medical  stndmti  if  adadttod 
to  the  profession,  ought  to  confine  bar  pradios 
to  diseases  of  tlie  heart. 

One  of  the  vacations  in  her  madioal^ 
was  spent  by  Dr.  Blackwell  in  the 
department  of   M^  ^fMfkf  9lmiitm$^  % 


May  7,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


866 


PhikuUlphia ;  her  ejM  w«re  th«re  opened  to 
the  eTil  that  ia  in  the  world,  and  the  f ounda- 
tloB  WM  laid  for  that  strong  feeling  of  oUiga. 
tloB  which  has  led  to  an  important  part  of  the 
aotirity  of  her  later  years.  Her  little  book  on 
the  *  Moral  Education  of  the  Toong'  was  re. 
fused  bj  twelve  London  publishers,  and  she 
was  flnaUy  obliged  to  print  it  at  her  own  ex- 
psoes^  but  its  plain-speaking  seems  very  inno- 
cent now.  She  believes  that  it  has  been  well 
worth  the  efforts  of  a  lifetime  to  have  at- 
tained knowledge  which  justifies  an  attack  on 
the  root  of  all  evil^vlx.,  the  pessimism  which 
ssesrts  that  because  forms  of  social  evil  have 
always  existed  in  society,  therefore  they  must 
continue  to  exist  for  ever. 


An  ArHtt  in  (As  Himalaytu,  By  A.  D.  Mo- 
Cormidc  Illustrated  by  over  100  original 
sketches  made  on  the  journey.  Macmillan 
A  Co.  1896. 
Mb.  MoCk>RiacK,  the  artist  who  went  to  the 
Earakorams  with  Sir  W.  M.  Conway,  contri- 
bates  in  this  volume  an  account  of  the  pictur- 
eeque  aspects  of  the  expedition.  He  does  not 
attempt  to  add  anything  to  the  geographical 
informatioa  which  has  bemi  given  to  the  world 
by  his  leader.  He  is  confessedly  not  a  geogra- 
pher, nor  even  a  trained  traveller.  Previous 
to  this  Himalayan  trip,  his  knowledge  of  the 
world  was  bounded  on  the  east  by  London  and 
oo  the  west  by  Belfast.  He  had  a  studio  in 
Chelsea,  but  orders  came  slowly,  and  he  had 
brought  himself  to  look  the  odds  of  farming  or 
cattle  herding  in  the  face  when  an  opportunity 
to  go  out  with  Conway  was  put  in  his  path  by 
an  otter  «9o,  Jack  Roudebush.  The  frontispiece 
shows  Mr.  MoCormick  to  be  a  man  of  splendid 
strength,  and  he  hailed  vith  enthusiasm  a 
chance  to  use  his  musdes,  draw  new  subjects, 
and  see  the  world.  Jack  Roudebush  was  able 
to  go,  too,  so  his  happiness  must  have  been 

The  serious  work  of  the  Conway  expedition 
was  the  exploration  of  the  Baltoro  Qlader  and 
the  high  mountain  region  in  the  neighborhood 
of  the  Golden  Throne.  Mr.  McCcmnick  adds 
sone  interesting  details  to  what  we  already 
know  about  the  ascent  from  Askole  to  Pioneer 
Fsak,  and  the  return  journey  through  the 
ssnacs  and  over  the  endless  moraine.  On  the 
day  of  the  great  and  final  climb  he  was  knock- 
ed  up,  and  with  heroic  self-effacement  remain- 
ed in  camp  rather  than  interfere  with  the 
rhanoss  of  the  others.  The  wonder  is  not  that 
he  was  ID  at  such  an  altitude,  but  that  he  did 
sowaD.  What  would  De  Saussure  have  said 
to  a  man  who  could  cUmb  t»,000  feet  within 
five  months  from  the  time  he  flrstsaw  a  moun- 
tain? The  kindness  with  which  Mr.  McCor- 
mick  took  to  eUmbing  finds  a  parallel  in  the 
facility  with  which  his  peooU  lent  itself  to  the 
rsprodoction  of  mountain  scenes.  His  sketches 
bear  no  traces  of  the  *prentice  hand.  One  can- 
not axpeet  in  black  and  white  the  mountain  ef- 
fects whksh  M.  Lopp^  has  caught,  but  Mr. 
MoCormiek^s  drawings  bear  out  what  is  said 
o(  them  in  the  preface  to  ^Climbing  in  the 
Himalayas*:  *' No  traveller  was  ever  aocom- 
paaiad  by  a  better  artist  than  Mr.  McCormick, 
whose  illnstrations  adorn  this  volume,  and 
wboee  watsr-ook>r  sketchee,  some  of  which 
ware  recently  exhibited,  have  received  on  all 
hands  praise  both  high  and  weUmerited.** 

We  oaanot  pretend  that  Mr.  McCormick*s 
litsrary  accomplishments  are  on  the  same  plane 
with  tboee  wUiBh  he  poesessee  in  the  character 
of  artist.  He  enjoyed  what  he  saw  and  is  en- 
srgetk)  in  description,  but  he  is  not  always 
ikflltal.  A  o«naia  rsOmidMic/  pf  ^  idits 


expressed  by  **  dreaming,**  **  color,**  **strange- 
nees,**  is  to  be  expected,  but  one  would  prefer 
to  have  them  occasionally  in  the  form  of  enir^f 
rather  than  always  in  the  solid  form  of  joints. 
The  style  is  not  too  stilted  to  exclude  a  passage 
Uke  the  first  of  the  following  extracts,  nor  too 
compact  to  exclude  the  second:  **The  row 
the  Indian  '  shandrydan  *  made  was  not  enough 
for  the  Kashmiri,  but  he  must  let  in  six  sets  of 
cymbals  round  his  coster*  barrel  arrangement, 
and  the  noise  was  infernal.**  "Early  in  the 
morning  we  sent  off  the  tents  and  baggage, 
except  the  ColoneFs,  with  whom  I  stayed  till 
lunch,  when  it  began  to  blown  perfect  storm.** 
On  page  109,  in  the  character  sketch  of  Dr. 
Robertson,  **not  often**  should  be  **not  sel- 
dom,** unless  the  rest  of  the  context  is  strange- 
ly out  of  keeping.  The  passage  at  present  runs : 
**Now  he  is  known  to  every  one  in  England, 
as  he  was  then  known  to  every  one  on  India's 
northern  frontier,  as  a  man  of  rare  courage, 
ooolnees,  and  determination,  not  often  com- 
bined with  political  judgment.**  As  we  are 
told  immedUtely  after  that  **he  either  does 
the  abeolutely  right  thing,  or,  at  any  rate,  se. 
lects  the  best  in  circumstances  when  all  seem 
equally  bad,**  it  is  to  be  presumed  that  Mr. 
McCormick  does  not  mean  to  deny  Dr.  Ro- 
bertson's political  judgment. 

None  of  Mr.  McCormick's  adventures  was 
particularly  remarkable,  and,  owing  to  the 
narrow  limits  of  his  travelling  prior  to  1802i 
he  has  no  such  standards  of  comparison  as  Sir 
W.  M.  Conway  is  constantly  making  use  of .  De- 
scriptions of  €kka  rides  are  always  good,  but  a 
professional  humorist  would  probably  make 
more  out  of  the  subject  than  Mr.  McCormick 
has  done.  His  comments  on  the  Ourkhas  em- 
phasise their  cheerfulness,  strength,  and  con- 
rage,  but  sometimes  refiect  upon  their  loose 
morality.  At  the  preeent  moment  their  as- 
sistance is  indispensable  to  success  in  any  Hi- 
malayan expedition.  A  good  many  of  the 
Fifth  Ourkhas  are  receiving  a  sound  train- 
ing at  the  hands  of  Alpine  experts,  and,  with 
the  advantage  of  trained  guides  on  the  spot, 
some  follower  of  the  late  Mr.  Mummery  may 
well  hope  to  vanquish  a  bettor  mountain  than 
Pioneer  Peak. 

Among  other  matters  of  interest  in  Mr.  Mc- 
Cormick*s  book  we  may  single  out  the  three 
following  for  special  mention :  First,  he  found 
that,  in  order  to  reproduce  Eastern  subjects, 
speed  of  execution  was  necessary.  '*  Rapid 
sketching  was  the  only  way  to  catch  hold  of 
the  effects,  and  I  made  a  careful  study  of  the 
details  of  the  scene  to  add  to  it  if  required; 
but  in  all  cases  I  tried  to  get  effect  and  draw- 
Ing  down  at  once,  as  that  was  the  only  way  to 
retain  any  of  the  spirit  and  go  of  the  scene.*' 
The  illustrations  in  this  volume  seem  to  be 
taken  without  modification  from  Mr.  McCor- 
mick's  sketch'books.  They  are  less  highly  fin- 
ished than  the  illustrations  which  he  furnished 
to  *  Climbing  in  the  Himalayas,*  but  they  are 
even  more  animated.  We  have  praised  Mr. 
McCormick*s  mountain  drawings.  It  will,  then, 
be  considered  no  disparagenkent  to  say  that  we 
prefer  his  drawings  of  the  native  figure  and 
costume.  When  people  are  the  subjects,  pho- 
tographs are  not  to  be  compared  with  good 
drawings,  but  with  mountains  the  case  is  dif- 
ferent. Only  an  extraordinarily  fine  sketch 
can  compare  for  excellence  of  representation 
with  Signer  Stfla*s  photographs.  Not  one  of.  . 
Mr.  MoCormick*s  mountain  pieoee  seems  to  us 
so  satisfactory  as  the  photogravure  of  Dych 
Tan  in  Munmiery*s  'Alps  and  Caucasus.*  Sa- 
condly,  Mr.  McCormick,  like  all  generous  men 
who  go  to  India,  was  fired  by  the  spectacle  of 
the  hard,  opeoH^rworh  which  SogUsb  oflloers 


do  during  a  considerable  part  of  every  year. 
He  does  not  inflict  upon  his  reader  platitodee 
about  the  civilizing  influence  of  Great  Britain 
In  that  empire.  He  simply  says  he  should  like 
to  take  a  hand  himself.  '*  Every  evening  in 
camp  [at  Srinagar],  when  the  gray  soft  base 
over  the  Bagh  wes  lit  up  with  the  golden  glory 
of  the  setting  sun,  we  sat  down  with  our  com- 
panions, some  of  whom  were  officers  come  down 
from  Oilgit,  and  smoked  and  talked  of  what 
each  had  seen  and  done,  of  war  and  adventure, 
and  of  living  a  life  that  made  use  feel  it  was 
the  life  a  man  should  live.  As  I  thought  of 
the  dreary  days  in  the  busy  bustle  of  Lon- 
don and  contrasted  them  with  the  glorious 
open  life  around,  I  felt  that  here  was  my  abid- 
ing-place.** Finally,  the  Conway  expedition 
proceeded  from  beginning  to  end  without  hitcb, 
accident,  or  unpleasantness.  If  men  are  of 
the  right  sort,  nothing  brings  them  together  so 
close  as  experiences  of  adventure  and  danger. 
Anyhow,  it  is  pleasant  to  read  of  an  important 
exploration  party  which  has  no  "  Rear-guard  ^ 
skeletons  in  its  closet. 


A  Handbook  of  Oretk  Seulphtre,    By  Ernest 

Arthur  Oardner,  M.A.    Part  L    Macmillan 

A  Co.  1806.  8vo,  pp.  208. 
This  is  the  flrst  volume  of  a  projected  series 
of  Handbooks  of  Archieology  and  Antiquities. 
It  deals  with  the  history  of  Greek  sculpture 
down  to  Phidias  inclusive,  breaking  off  just 
before  the  discussion  of  the  Parthenon  mar- 
bles. There  ere  flfty-flve  well-executed  half- 
tone illustrations.  The  second  and  concluding 
part  of  the  work  is  expected  to  sppear  in  the 
course  of  the  preeent  year. 

For  all  its  brevity,  this  handbook  must  take 
rank  at  once  as  the  best  account  of  Greek 
sculpture  existing  in  English.  Mrs.  Mitchell*s 
*  History  of  Ancient  Sculpture,*  published  in 
1888,  is  praiseworthy  and  useful,  but  (so  rapid- 
ly does  new  material  accumulate)  it  is  already 
antiquated  in  parts,  especially  in  regard  to 
early  Attic  sculpture.  Moreover,  it  is  dis- 
flgured  by  many  shockingly  bad  illustrations. 
And,  flnsdly,  its  text  is  rather  that  of  a  pains- 
taking  and  judicious  compiler  than  that  of  an 
Independent  master  of  the  subject  Mr.  A.  S. 
Murray *s  *  History  of  Greek  Sculpture  *  has  the 
advantage  of  being  the  work  of  a  trained  and 
distinguished  archaeologist  Originally  pub- 
lished in  1880-*88,  it  was  reissued  in  a  leoond 
edition  in  1800,  but  only  the  flrst  volume  was 
revised,  and  that  very  inadequately.  It  is, 
moreover,  costly,  and,  while  excellent  in  parts, 
is  of  very  uneven  merit  The  small  *  Manual 
of  Ancient  Sculpture,*  by  M.  Paris,  '*  edited 
and  augmented**  by  Miss  Jane  E.  Harrison, 
though  it  has  received  no  little  praise,  swarms 
with  blunders  and  absurdities,  the  responsi- 
bility for  which,  it  is  only  fair  to  say,  resU 
chiefly  with  the  English  editor.  There  are  no 
other  books  in  English  which  come  into  con- 
sideration. There  was  thus  real  need  for  a 
work  which  should  trace  the  history  of  Greek 
sculpture  with  a  master*s  haid,  and  with  due 
regard  to  the  whole  available  mass  of  material. 
That  need  Mr.  Gardner  has  admirably  sup. 
plied. 

In  his  Introduction  he  discusses  (a)  the 
sources  of  our  knowledge  of  the  lubjeot,  (6) 
the  materials  and  proossses  of  Greek  sculpture, 
ie)  the  use  of  sculpture  for  architectural  deco- 
ration, and  <d)  the  chronological  arrangement 
to  be  obeerved  in  the  sequeL.  The  second  sec 
tion,  on  a  subject  to  which  Mr.  Gardner  has 
made  important  contributions,  especially  in  a 
paper  pubUshed  in  the  Journal  of  HMtnie 
^mltM  t^  V&^  wlU  be  of  eifecW  value  to 


366 


Tlie   ISTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1 6 ID 


the  student.  The  history  proper,  so  far  as 
completed,  falls  into  three  chapters.  Chap. 
L  deals  with  '  Early  Influences,'  chap,  it  with 
*  The  Rise  of  Greek  Sculpture  (6(XM80  B.  c.),' 
chap.  lii.  (Incomplete)  with  *  The  Fifth  Cen- 
tury  (48(M0O  B.  c.).*  Ezhaustiveness  of  treat- 
ment is  of  course  not  aimed  at,  but  the  outlines 
of  the  subject  are  clearly  and  firmly  drawn. 
The  limitations  of  space  and  perhaps  the  tem- 
per ot  the  author  have  reduced  sesthetic  criti- 
cism to  a  minimum.  The  term  "history*'  is 
interpreted  strictly,  and  the  author  seems  half 
to  apologize  (p.  200)  for  introducing  a  cursory 
description  of  two  or  three  works  whose  exact 
period  and  school  cannot  be  definitely  as- 
signed. In  short,  the  book  is  scientific  in 
spirit.  It  aims  at  understanding,  leaving  en- 
joyment to  take  care  of  itself.  Its  most  dis- 
tinguishing characteristic  is  a  rigorous  exclu- 
sion of  conjecture,  however  dazzliog.  But,  for 
all  its  severity,  it  is  thoroughly  readable,  and 
even  fascinating. 

While,  of  course,  some  of  lir.  Gardner's 
views  %re  open  to  discussion,  we  have  noted 
almost  no  statements  that  could  positively  be 
pronounced  incorrect.  The  head  upon  the  sta- 
tue of  Aristogiton  in  Naples  is  said,  on  page 
188,  to  be  Lysippean  in  character.  This  head 
was  enumerated  by  Graef  among  the  copies  of 
the  Meleager,  which,  according  to  our  present 
lights,  is  attributable  to  Scopas,  or  an  inune- 
diate  pupil  of  Scopas.  The  evidence  on  which 
Prof.  Furtw&ngler  bases  his  identification  of 
the  Athena  Lemnia  of  Phidias  is  not  quite 
correctly  stated  on  page  266.  There  are  two 
copies  (not  one)  in  Dresden  of  the  statue  in 
question;  and  it  is  not  true  that  **the  head  of 
the  Dresden  statue  is  made  in  a  separate  piece." 
In  the  one  statue  the  head,  still  partially  pre- 
served, was  of  one  piece  with  Uie  body;  in  the 
other  the  head  was  indeed  separate,  but  it  is 
now  missing  altogether.  These  trifiing  slips, 
however,  do  not  affect  Mr.  Gardner^s  main 
contention,  viz.,  that  Prof.  Furtw&ugler's 
brilliant  identification,  which  seems  to  have 
been  generally  accepted  in  Germany,  is  with- 
out adequate  evidence.  For  our  own  part,  we 
are  inclined  to  rate  more  higlily  than  Mr. 
Gardner  does  the  strength  of  the  proof  ad- 
vanced; but  the  general  attitude  of  mind 
which  he  displays  in  this,  as  in  other  matters, 
cannot  be  too  warmly  commended. 


Statistics    and    Sociology,     By    Richmond 

Mayo-Smith.  Macmillan  &  Co.  1895. 
This  volume  is  offered  as  the  first  part  of  a 
** systematic  Science  of  Statistics";  but  the 
claim  appears  to  t>e  somewhat  too  broad. 
In  fact,  it  is  only  by  a  stretch  of  language 
that  it  can  be  described  as  a  scientific  treatise 
at  all.  The  author  seems  to  make  no  clear 
distinction  between  statistics  in  general  and 
the  statistics  of  human  society  in  particular, 
nor  does  he  appear  to  have  considered  the  me- 
thod necessarily  employed  in  the  study  of 
human  society,  whether  by  means  of  statistics 
or  otherwise.  The  definition  of  statistics  as 
consisting  **  in  the  observation  of  phenomena 
which  can  be  counted  or  expressed  in  figures  " 
is  altogether  inadequate.  Every  other  human 
being,  as  well  as  the  census  taker,  according  to 
this  definition,  is  a 'statistician.  Lord  Dvn- 
dreary  was  a  statistician  when  he  observed 
that  his  toes  were  equal  in  number  to  his 
fingers,  and  the  child  beginning  to  count  is  en- 
gaging  in  statistical  investigation.  Number  is 
the  widest  of  aU  the  categories,  and  it  cannot 
be  admitted  that  statistics  is  nothing  but 
arithmetic.  It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  unless 
phenomena  can  be  enumerated  they  are  not 


ayailable  for  the  use  of  the  statistician  ;  but  aa 
practically  all  phenomena  can  be  counted, 
this  limitation  is  vain.  It  is  the  classification 
of  phenomena  that  makes  Uiem  available  for 
scientific  purposes ;  and  without  a  clear  com- 
prehension of  the  principles  and  methods  of 
scientific  classification,  the  accumulation  and 
analysis  of  figures  profit  nothing. 

We  are  told,  it  is  true,  that  the  method  of 
statistical  observation  is  not  of  universal  ap- 
plication, but  we  are  not  told  when  it  is  appli- 
cable,  or  how  it  is  to  be  applied.  We  are  ad- 
vised that  **fittingness  and  suggestiveness  are 
more  important"  than  mere  accumulation  of 
facte— a  principle  which  is  undoubtedly  true, 
but  lacks  scientific  precision.  So  of  the  state- 
ment that  **  always  and  eyery where  with  sta- 
tistical analysis  comes  the  question  whether 
our  classification  is  legitimate  and  scientific." 
Many  such  questions  are  suggested  by  our 
author,  but  he  contents  himself  with  asking 
the  questions  and  not  answering  them.  He 
observes  that  as  population  fluctuates  it  is  ne- 
cessary, in  considering  births,  deaths,  mar- 
riages, etc.,  **  to  adopt  some  sort  of  rate."  But 
concerning  the  standard  to  be  adopted  we  are 
left  in  the  dark.  **  The  most  simple  is  that  of 
the  whole  population."  It  has  certain  advan- 
tages, certain  disadvantages;  but  whether  the 
advantages  outweigh  the  disadvantages  or  not 
we  are  not  told,  nor  are  we  informed  of  the 
principles  upon  which  such  problems  are  de- 
termined. In  comparing  phenomena  we  are 
warned  to  take  care  that  the  comparison  is  a 
fair  one,  and  advised  to  select  typical  statis- 
tics **  which  will  prove  the  point  in  band,"  suf- 
flcient  in  number  **to  show  that  the  mle  is 
general  and  not  exceptional."  Such  counsels 
as  these  merely  suggest  the  difficulties  of  scien- 
tific investigation.  They  show  how  fallacious 
are  the  inf Minces  that  may  be  derived  from 
collections  of  figures,  but  they  do  not  show 
how  these  fallacies  may  t>e  avoided. 

On  the  whole,  while  we  concur  in  the  opinion 
that  "  if  we  are  not  to  be  entirely  confused 
and  overwhelmed  by  the  mere  mass  of  data 
and  by  the  confiicting  conclusions  to  which 
they  seem  to  lend  support,  it  is  necessary  that 
we  strive  for  and  attain  mbsolute  clearness  in 
respect  to  the  ends  to  be  sought  and  the  methods 
of  seeking  them,"  we  do  not  think  this  absolute 
cleamees  has  been  obtained  in  the  present  work. 
Indeed,  we  incline  to  the  view  that  this  treatise 
is  not  concerned  directly  with  the  science  of 
statistics.  It  is  essentially  a  collection  of  in- 
ferences from  census  reports  and  other  collec- 
tions of  figures,  many  of  which  are  no  doubt 
valid,  many  also  suggestive  and  interesting, 
but  all,  so  far  as  we  have  observed,  insufficient- 
ly verified.  The  United  States  census  of  1890 
was  in  several  respects  improperly  taken,  and 
some  of  its  defects  have  been  so  thoroughly  ex- 
posed as  to  be  notorious.  But  In  these  pages 
we  have  failed  to  find  any  regard  paid  to  its 
untrustworthy  character,  and  inferences  de. 
rived  from  its  tables  are  offered  without  proper 
warning.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that 
if  there  is  to  be  any  statistical  science,  it  can 
be  developed  only  from  premises  which  have 
been  themselves  established  in  accordance  with 
the  canons  of  inductive  logic.  Ck>nclusions  de- 
rived from  unverified  observations  belong  not 
to  the  realm  of  science,  but  to  that  of  specula- 
tion. 

Although  we  cannot  regard  this  work  as 
sufficiently  critical  to  possess  much  scientific 
value,  it  would  be  unjust  to  ignore  its  merits. 
It  is  full  of  observations  which  prove  the 
author  to  be  well  aware  of  the  worthlessness 
of  much  which  passes  for  statistics,  and  to  be 
familiar  vrith  the  conditions  upon  which  cor- 


rect inductions  are  to  be  obtained .  As  a  prac- 
tical treatise  it  abounds  in  information  which, 
while  not  meeting  the  strict  requirements  of 
scientific  tests,  is  yet  sufficiently  accurate  for 
ordinary  purposes.  Evidence  may  be  in  many 
respects  imperfect  and  untrustworthy,  and  yet 
be  admissible  as  revealing  the  existence  of  ten- 
dencies. It  is  in  the  discovery  and  isolation  of 
such  tendencies  that  the  author  does  his  best 
work,  and  achieves  results  of  positive  value. 
The  principal  rubrics  comprehend  the  most  im- 
portant conditions  of  man  as  a  social  being — 
birth,  death,  marriftge,  sex,  age,  and  crime. 
There  are  chapters  also  on  the  infirm  and  depen. 
dent,  ot\  race,  and  on  migration.  These  chapters 
are  full  of  interesting  matter,  presented  in  an 
attractive  and  readable  way.  There  is  very 
little  positive  and  dogmatic  statement,  and  if 
the  author's  conclusions  are  accepted  subject  to 
the  cautions  and  reservations  with  which  he 
offers  them,  the  book  will  be  found  to  be  of 
service  by  the  legislator  as  well  as  by  the  stu- 
dent of  human  society.  And  this,  when  we 
consider  the  manner  in  which  statistics  are 
generally  collected,  is  more  than  can  be  said  of 
most  works  of  this  kind. 


The  Development  of  ParHament  during  the 
Nineteenth  Century.  By  G.  Lowee-Dlckin- 
son,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  King's  College,  Cam- 
bridge. Longmans,  Green  &  Co.  1896.  Pp. 
vi,  188. 

**  Ths  object  of  the  following  pages  is  twofold: 
first,  to  recount,  as  briefiy  and  clearly  as  may 
l>e,  the  process  of  the  *  democratication'  of  Par- 
liament: secondly,  to  put  what  appears  to  me 
one  of  tne  most  important  questions  to  which 
that  process  has  given  rise— the  question  of  the 
competence  of  a  democratic  House  of  Com- 
mons to  direct  to  a  satisfactory  issue  the  social- 
istic tendencies  of  the  future." 

In  this  opening  paragraph  of  the  preface  is 
clearly  stated  the  plan  of  a  very  instructive 
and  suggestive  book,  a  book  which,  in  less 
than  two  hundred  pages  of  large  print,  brings 
England  and  the  world  face  to  face  with  a 
most  remarkable  transformation,  not  in  the 
least  understood  by  its  authors  and  scarcely 
by  its  subjects.  To  analyze  it  adequately,  to 
give  even  a  correct  idea  of  this  work,  by  the 
minimiim  of  quotation  from  its  startling  and 
illuminating  epigrams,  would  be  beyond  the 
space  at  our  command.  A  short  summary 
must  suffice,  in  the  hope  of  sending  readers  to 
a  book  sadly  needed  in  the  day  when  Ameri- 
cans are  talking  about  the  danger  from  the 
spread  of  English  monarchical  institutions. 

The  authors  and  the  opponents  of  Parlia- 
mentary reform  in  1882  never  contemplated  a 
democratic  remodelling  of  the  ancient  constita- 
tion  of  King,  Lords,  and  Commons;  they  believ- 
ed Parliament  was,  and  ought  to  be,  the  means 
whereby  varied  elements  and  varied  Interests^ 
weighed  and  not  counted,  should  combine  to 
preserve  an  ancient  and  complex  system.  The 
Tories  maintained  that  this  was  pwf ectly  done 
by  the  existing  arrangement ;  the  Whigs  held 
that,  by  one  act  of  vigorous  readjustment^  it 
might  be  done  very  much  better;  and  the 
mass  of  the  burgher  class,  who  were  the  chief 
agents  In  forcing  Lord  Grey's  Govemmefit  to 
carry  **the  bill,  the  whole  bill,  and  nothing  bat 
the  bill,"  woidd  have  utterly  scomad  Samuel 
Warren's  sarcastic  title,  **A  bUl  for  giving 
everybody  everything."  But  the  precedent 
had  been  set  for  changing  the  prescriptive 
system ;  and  henceforth  no  change,  however 
radical,  was  impossible.  Yet  no  change  was 
attempted  for  t?renty  years"-and  from  1862  to 
1867  each  new  reform  t>lll  was  taken  up^  as  w« 
should  81^,  **to  make  political  capital,"  and 


May  7,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


367 


not  from  adj  stroDg  pretnire  from  any  cUmi. 
Both  of  the  great  parties  had  onlted  in  oppoe- 
Ing  the  sweeping  ooostitotional  changes  advo- 
oated  by  the  physicalforoe  Chartisti in  1840  ; 
end  when  theee  rose  against  a  Whig  Qoyem- 
mentt  their  counsel  were  Tory  lawyers,  whose 
politics  were  as  unsympathetic  as  poerible. 

Brery  Reform  BiU  up  to  1807  contemplated 
some  new  delicate  adjustment  of  interests,  not 
with  a  Tiew  to  increasing  the  electorate,  but  to 
dereloping  a  greater  Tsriety  of  respectable 
constituencies;  but  none  of  thes%  cunning  de- 
yioes  met  with  any  response  till  Disraeli's  art- 
ful  plan,  transformed  by  the  shock  of  clashing 
intrigues  into  a  measure  so  democratic  that  it 
startled  the  very  Radicals,  added  a  vast  body 
of  urban  constituents,  because  numerical  in- 
crease was  the  only  change  that  could  be  un- 
derstood. Yet  even  then,  Mr.  Lowe,  who  had 
had  in  Australia  an  experience  in  which  very 
few  of  his  colleagues  shared,  was  the  only 
statesman  of  any  party  who  understood  and 
explained  what  had  come  about  Another  half 
generation  completed  the  work,  democratised 
the  county  constitueodeB  as  well  as  the  dty, 
swept  away,  in  only  ilfty  years  from  the  days 
of  the  first  Reform  Bill,  the  balanced  and  va- 
ried Parliament  with  which  centuries  had  been 
familiar,  and  created  a  numerical  electorate  of 
millions,  the  representatiyes  having  practi- 
cally changed  their  character  to  delegates. 

Meanwhile  the  democracy— that  is,  the  wak- 
ing classes,  into  whose  hands  the  author  well 
says  the  upper  and  middle  classes  have  been 
forcing  the  political  power— have,  by  a  series 
of  strange  steps  (chartism  and  trades- unionism 
among  them),  arrived  at  a  position  of  a  very 
socialistic  character,  in  which  the  almost  un- 
checked authority  of  a  workingman's  House 
of  Commons  stands  an  excellent  chance  of 
being  used  for  a  still  further  extension  of 
suffrage,  to  include  all  adults— not  merely 
women,  but  paupers— and  for  a  redistribution 
of  property  in  the  very  spirit  of  Karl  Marx. 
Such  an  entire  overthrow  of  English  traditions 
never  was  in  the  mind  of  those  who  ptssed  the 
Reform  Acts  of  1882, 1867,  and  1884.  But  it  is 
entirely  on  the  cards  if  all  the  legislative 
power  is  in  the  hands  of  a  single  unchecked 
body— a  national  convention  which,  however 
loudly  it  might  claim  to  represent  the  people, 
would  really  leave  very  much  of  what  makes 
and  always  has  made  England,  unrepresented. 
The  only  hope  for  law  and  property  is  in  a 
second  chamber.  The  author  oonsiders  the 
House  of  Lords  in  its  history  and  its  capabili- 
ties. He  contends  that  the  charge,  constantly 
levelled  against  it,  of  having  obstructed  and 
defeated  the  popular  will  is  untrue;  that,  how- 
ever obeolete  the  hereditary  principle  may  be, 
and  in  need  of  substitution,  it  would  be  far 
more  easy  to  make  such  substitution  and  re- 
form the  upper  house  than  to  save  England 
from  anarchy  if  it  were  abolished. 

As  was  said  above,  this  is  a  bare  and  very 
imperfect  summary  of  the  argument,  omit- 
ting the  terse  and  pointed  language,  the  keen 
illustrative  power,  the  grave  yet  hopeful  tone 
of  the  book.  It  is,  in  all  respecti,  the  work  of 
an  historian,  a  scholar,  a  patriot,  and  a  phflo- 
sopber,  and  deserves  to  be  widely  read  and 
deeply  studied. 


M<uUr9  of  Italian  Mtuie,    By  R.  A.  Streat- 

feild.  Bcribners.  Pp.270. 
IH  our  comments  on  the  *  Masters  of  Qerman 
Music,'  in  the  series  entitled  **  Masters  of  Ckm- 
temporary  Music, '^  the  fact  was  noted  that 
Mr.  MaiUand  did  not  have  a  very  imposing 
list  of  masters  to  deal  with.    Tet  ttiat  German 


list,  which  included  Brahms,  Max  Bruch,  Qold- 
mark,  Rhelnberger,  Kircbner,  Reinecke,  Bar- 
giel,  Hofmann,  Bruckner,  Nlkod^  Richard 
Strauss,  and  six  others,  is  infinitely  more  im- 
posing  than  the  meagre  array  of  Italian  names 
at  the  service  of  Mr.  Streatfeild— Verdi,  Bolto, 
Mascagnl,  Puccini,  Leoncavallo,  Sgambati, 
Bazxini,  and  Mancinellf.  Were  it  not  for  the 
veteran  Verdi,  now  in  his  eighty-third  year, 
this  list  of  '*  masters"  would  seem  almost 
comic,  and  it  certainly  reveals  in  a  most  pain- 
ful way  the  decadence  of  musical  Italy.  Our 
author  seems  to  realize  the  situation.  He 
clings  to  Verdi  with  the  despair  of  a  man  who 
sees  a  desert  before  bim,  and  not  till  he  has 
given  him  more  than  half  the  pages  in  his  book 
does  he  proceed  to  the  others.  He  knows  that 
"at  the  present  time,  and  indeed  for  many 
years  past,  music  in  Italy  has  meant  opera, 
and  opera  alone."  Tet  lately  the  tendency  of 
this  opera  has  been  '^towards  melodrama  of 
an  unusually  sordid  and  objectionable  type." 
And  what  makes  matters  worse,  this  tendency 
is  already  overcome,  so  that  the  author,  while 
ostensibly  treating  of  contemporary  **  mas- 
ters," is  really  writing  the  history  of  an  ephe- 
meral fad.  The  account  he  gives  (174)  of  the 
honors  pidd  to  Mascagni  on  account  of  his 
fifth-rate,  vulgar  **  C^avalleria  Rusticana" 
makes  very  amusing  reading  even  to-day,  and 
the  Joke  will  grow  richer  with  keeping. 

Tet,  with  the  exception  of  Verdi  and  of 
Bolto  (a  man  of  one  opera,  now  in  his  fifty- 
fourth  year),  Mascagni  is  the  most  talented  of 
contemporary  Italian  composers.  Leoncavallo 
is  less  vulgar,  but  also  less  spontaneous  and  to 
call  either  of  these  or  any  of  the  others  of  the 
young  men  *' masters"  is  a  serious  misuse  of 
terms.  They  do  notdeserve  to  be  incorporated 
in  a  musical  history  any  more  than  the  erotic 
ephemeral  novelists  of  our  time  deserve,  or 
will  secure,  a  place  in  literary  history.  At  the 
same  time  oneoan  understand  Mr.  Streatfeild's 
perplexity.  He  was  called  upon  to  write  about 
the  famous  Italian  composers  of  the  day ;  and  as 
he  could  find  only  two  who  came  under  that 
head,  he  had  to  make  notoriety  take  the  place 
of  fame  in  the  other  cases.  As  it  is,  the  value 
of  his  book  lies  partly  in  the  demonstration  it 
gives  of  Italy's  present  musical  poverty,  and 
partly  in  the  chapters  on  Verdi  and  Bolto, 
which  are  well  written  and  interesting.  If  the 
book  were  called  *  Verdi  and  Others,'  its  scope 
and  value  would  be  more  obvious. 


From  Far  Formoia,    By  Q.  L.  Mackay,  D.D. 

Fleming  H.  Revell  C^o.  1895. 
Thosc  writing  to  Tamsui  or  Taiwan  must  now 
address  their  letters  "  Japimese  Empire."  As 
valuable  as  timely  is  this  richly  freighted  voU 
ume  treating  of  the  country  and  people  that 
may  be  said  to  be  restored,  rather  than  a  ward- 
ed as  the  spoils  of  war,  to  Japan.  Formosa 
has  an  area  of  15,000  square  miles  and  a  popu- 
lation  of  nearly  4,000,000.  The  cUmate  is  ex- 
cessively  trying  to  foreigners,  for  the  island 
lies  betwixt  the  monsoons  and  theKuro  Shi  wo, 
or  Black  Current  of  the  Pacific,  and  between 
the  twentieth  and  twenty- fifth  degrees  north 
latitude.  It  is  a  land  of  trofrfcal  heat,  of 
constant  and  excessive  moisture,  of  intense 
energy  in  vegetable  life,  with  quick  growth 
and  rapid  decay,  and  of  chronic  malaria  in 
the  lowlands.  The  eastern  part  of  the  Island 
is  a  great  mountain  mass,  having  a  rocky  sea- 
face,  for  the  most  part  without  hartMirs,  while 
the  western  portion  contains  i^teaus,  plains, 
and  soil  of  amazingly  fertile  character. 

This  well- written,  well- arranged,  and  well- 
indexed  volume  is  probably  the  first  general 


work  descriptive  of  the  country  and  people. 
It  presents  facts  collected  and  classified  by 
one  who  has  spent  twenty-three  years  on  the 
island  among  all  varieties  of  people,  native 
and  foreign.  The  author.  Dr.  Mackay,  was 
sent  out  by  the  Canadian  Presbyterian  Church. 
Admirably  equipped  for  bis  work  by  nature 
and  otherwise,  he  belongs  to  that  too  rare 
type  of  missionaries  who  work  for  the  bodies  as 
well  as  the  souls  of  men.  Dr.  Mackay's  idea, 
from  the  first,  hss  been  to  raise  up  a  native 
ministry,  to  find  common  ground  of  both  faith 
and  works,  and  to  fit  men  to  be  preachers  and 
livers  of  the  Qospel  in  Formosa  especially. 
Where  he  found  no  seed  planted,  there  are 
now  ^izty  churches,  over  a  thousand  communi- 
cant members,  and  thousands  of  Christian  ad- 
herents. He  has  done  what  some  missionaries 
fail  utterly  in  doing— disarmed  the  prejudices 
of  the  white  merchant,  traveller,  and  tourist, 
and  made  the  foreign  residents  his  helpers  and 
sympathizers.  He  has  visited  the  wild  savages 
in  their  mountain  fastnesses,  and  has  never 
quailed  before  howling  mobs  or  men  with  mur- 
derous intent.  Formosa  is  the  land  of  tooth- 
ache and  malaria.  When  Dr.  Mackay  could 
not  preach  the  Gkispel,  he  extracted  teeth  and 
dispensed  medicine.  He  has  drawn  out  of  their 
sockets  no  fewer  than  twenty  one  thousand  de- 
cayed teeth.  He  has  studied  the  fiora,  fauns, 
minerals,  and  resources  of  Formosa.  Hence, 
his  pag^  have  unique  value  to  the  man  of  sci- 
ence. At  Tamsui,  his  headquarters,  he  has 
colleges  for  men  and  women,  and  museums  for 
the  study  of  the  ethnology,  religious  and  natu- 
ral features  and  products  of  Formosa,  and  he 
gives  his  young  preachers,  as  far  as  possible,  a 
very  practical  and  many-sided  education.  His 
story,  modestly  told,  possesses  thrilling  inte- 
rest, and  is  much  assisted  by  mi^  and  illustra- 
tions. 

Dr.  Mackay  married  a  native  Formosan 
lady,  and  the  frontispiece  portrays  himself 
and  family.  For  the  book  in  its  preeent  form 
the  Rev.  J.  A.  Macdonald  is  responsible.  Dr. 
Mackay  having  sailed  away  for  Formosa  in 
October,  fully  believing  that  the  Japanese  oc- 
cupation will  greatly  improve  the  general 
situation,  and  confident  that  his  plans  are 
fiexible  enough  to  meet  the  new  problems. 

There  is  an  aboriginal  population  of  For- 
moss,  dwelling  in  the  mountains  and  Jungles, 
whose  ruling  passion  is  head-hunting.  These 
swoop  from  their  mountain  lairs  upon  the 
Chinese  engaged  in  camphor*  wood  cutting, 
rioe-farming,  or  rattan  pulling.  The  houses  of 
the  chiefs  and  warriors  are  decorated  with  the 
spoils  of  many  years,  and  Chineee  brain-sauce 
is  a  favorite  tit-bit  at  a  feast.  These  mountain 
savsges  also  look  upon  the  C^iinese  with  supreme 
contempt,  and  direct  their  hatred  also  against 
those  aborigines  who  have  bemi  conquered  by 
the  Chinese  and  have  adopted  the  dress,  cue, 
and  religion  of  their  conquerors.  These  subject 
people  are  called  Pepo-boans,  and  occupy,  in 
the  main,  the  plateaus  between  the  littoral 
and  the  mountains.  The  mountain  savages 
look  upon  all  men  who  do  not  wear  the  cue  as 
their  kinsmen,  and  this  augurs  well  for  the 
Japanese  attempt  to  win  them  over  to  loyalty 
and  ol)edlenoe.  The  story  of  the  French  bom- 
bardment and  invasion  is  told  with  wonderful 
fairness,  and  a  chapter  describing  the  work  of 
the  English  Presbyterians  in  Southern  For- 
mosa (the  Canadian  Mission  having  the  north- 
em  part  for  their  field)  concludes  this  extreme* 
ly  valuable  work. 

BOOKS  OP  THK  WBBK. 

▲rcjrll.  tb«  Duke  of.   The  PblIoM>ph7  of  nellrf:  Qr» 
Law  IB  ChrtoUan  Tbeolosy.    Scrlboert.    95. 


368 


Tlie    N^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1610 


At  WiaTlPsltiyj  l^fiflDdii  for  ISiMi.  PublUbcd  for  the 
Baolor  OiAAA.    Fiitiiam».   •!►  ^ 

BAdlidUt  Annn  B.  View*  on  Africa,  I'lirt*  One  and 
TWO.   [Tbo  W^jfld  and  li«  PeopU?]    F^llvef.  Burdett  A 

BDker,  M.  N.    ScweruB''  and  St^wa^t*  V*urlHcatlon.    D. 

Van  Nrietfwitl  Co,    aOt.  ,  „  ^ 

CjinDRn,  E^lwlQ,    The  Bl»torj  of  ilip  Lnx^al  Rates  In 

Enalnud.    LfJOjRmani,  <»i%rn  S:  Co,    75c. 
PaiiOeE,    Alph'inaie.     Tfti'tarln  at  T^TM-vtm. 

lX>tii:  Ntnv  Yiffk;  MBeaiUlftti.    §1.  ^     „ 

Idc  tiPT.  W.  IT.    Tbe  AllltU'lf  ^^t  the  1  hiin'h  to  Some 

of  the  SoeUl  l^fubU/wis  of  Thwei  LK^     <  arabrldge: 

UnlvrntUj  Pi-e*^;  Nt*w  York:  Mm/mUbiM     TOc 
FUaKerald,  Pppi- V.  Ttif  Lift- rif  lJu^l■uc^:■^r■'rlle.  »  vow. 

London:  Uowriev  &  C0.1  Mew  York;  ^erit'TW-rs.    18. 
Bnle  W.  H     Handl^xik  m\  ttiv  ljiw  of  EtHtJmentfl  and 


London: 


James.  Prof.  William.  Is  Life  Worth  Living?  Phila- 
delphia: S.  B.  Weston.    &0c.  ^ 

Kimball.  Hannah  P.  Soul  and  Sense.  Boeton:  Cope- 
land  A  Day.    75c.  _  ^ ' 

Lampman.  Archibald.   Lyrics  of  Earth.    Boston:  Cope- 

Maltland.  ^  w.  Select  Passages  from  the  Worki  of 
Bracton  and  Azo.   London:  Bernard  Quarltch. 

Nauromte.  Jacques.  A  travers  la  Tourmente.  Paris: 
Ctolln  ft  Cle. 

Out  of  Town.    Harpers.    $1.25.      .     ^     ,,  _ 

Pemberton.  Haz.   A   Gentleman's   Gentleman.   Har- 

QuUler-Coiioh'.  A.  T.    Adventures  In  Criticism.    Scrib 

Rhymes  of 'ironquUl.  6th  ed.  ToDeka.  Ks.:  Crane  &  Co. 
Rhys-Davids.  Prof.  T.  W.   Buddhlsoi.  Us  History  and 
Uterature.   Putnams.    fLSO. 


SpraKue,  Prof .  H.  B.     AsTouUkelt.    Silver,  Burdett 

Stev^Bon,  R.  L.   Edinburgh;  Picturesque  Notes.   JUo- 

SUmson,'  F.  J.    Handbook  to  the  Labor  Law  of  the 

United  States.   Serlbners.   tl.BO.  w.-m« 

Stlmson.  F.  J.   Pirate  Gold.    Boston:  Houghton,  Mlflttn 

Torrey*.  Bradford.  Spring  Notes  from  Tennessee.  Bos- 
ton: Houghton,  Mifflin  A  Co.   (LSS.  ^      ,^  . 

Train,  Elizabeth  P.  The  Autobiography  of  a  Prof es- 
slonal  Beauty.  Philadelphia:  J.  B.  L^^oooCt  Co.  7flc 

Trnmble.  Alfred.  In  Jail  with  Charles  Dickens.  New 
York:  F.  P.  Harper. 

Watson,  Rev.  John.  The  Mind  of  the  Master.  Dodd, 
Mead  &  Co.    $1.60.        ^     ^      ^.  ^      „        -     v^^ 

What  One  Can  Do  with  a  Chaflng-Dlsh.  Newed.  New 
York:  John  Ireland. 


HENRY  HOLT  &  CO.,  N.  Y. 

HAVE  JV8T  PUBLISHED : 

IN  THE  VALLEY  OF  TOPHET. 

By  H.  W.  Nevinsom.  Author  of  Slum  Stories  In  Lon- 
don.  lOmo.  cloth.  91.00. 

IN  INDIA. 

By  AMDKfe  Cbevrillon.    lamo.  gilt  top.  with  fron- 
tispieces   91.00. 
Translated  by  William  March  ant.   A  highly  vivid  and 
poetical  description  of  Hindu  India  (not  Ber  Majesty's 
uidla).    Luminous  with  the  atmosphere,  spiritual  as 
well  as  physical,  of  that  supersensitive  clime. 

RUSSIAN  POLITICS. 

By  Hkbbsbt  M.  Thompson.    Large  ISmo.   99. 
A  clear  and  readable  account  of  the  bearing  of  Rus- 
sian geography  and  history  on  the  present  conoltlon  of 
Russian  pontics,  and  of  the  bearings  of  tbe  latter  on 
questions  of  world-wide  interest. 

ON  PARODY. 

By  ASTHUB  Shadwkll  Mabtin.    12mo,  91.25. 
An  essay  on  the  art,  and  humorous  selections. 

The  Outlook:  "A  volume  of  Infinite  delight  and  re- 
source to  lovers  of  English  verse.  The  book  Is  an  laddl- 
tlon  not  onlv  to  the  Uterature  of  literary  study,  but 
also  to  the  literature  of  pleasure." 

EMMA  LOU:  HER  BOOK. 

By  Mary  M.  Meabs.    12mo,  91* 
New  Tork  lYmes  .*  "  The  neatest,  closest,  and  most  ac- 
curate description  of  village  life  In  exactly  the  way  an 
uncommonly  bright  girl  would  see  it." 

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NOW  FEADY. 

HISTORY 
OF  ARCHITECTURE. 

By  A.  D.  F.  Hamlin,  A.M.,  Adjunct  Professor 
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The    Nation. 


NEW   YORK.    THURSDAY.  MAY  14.   180«. 

The  Week. 

Nothing  more  amusing  has  been  seen 
for  a  long  time  than  the  squirming  of  the 
spoilsmen  in  Congress  over  Mr.  Cleve- 
land's order  bringing  30,000  more  offices 
under  the  protection  of  the  civil-service 
law,  and  leaving  only  a  few  hundred 
places,  below  those  filled  by  Presidential 
appointment  and  Senatorial  confirmation 
and  above  the  grade  of  laborers  and  scul- 
lions, for  the  politicians  to  quarrel  over. 
Although  the  immediate  effect  of  the  or- 
der is  to  make  many  thousands  of  efficient 
Democratic  office-holders  sure  of  retaining 
their  places  if  a  Republican  President 
comes  in  next  year.  Democratic  Congress- 
men who  hate  *' snivel-service  reform" 
abuse  Mr.  Cleveland  for  his  action.  Rep- 
resentative Berry  of  Kentucky  says  that 
•<each  Administration  should  be  looked 
after  by  its  friends,"  while  Representative 
Bailey,  a  free-coinage  lunatic  from  Texas, 
says  that  he  has  grown  tired  of  criticising 
the  President  for  his  many  un-Democratic 
acts,  and  contents  himself  with  styling 
the  latest  performance  "  indecent." 


devised  to  overcome  the  sweeping  order 
of  the  President." 


Naturally,  however,  the  greatest  in- 
dignation is  manifested  by  the  Republi- 
can spoilsmen.  Representative  Payne  of 
New  York  says  that  he  was  elected  to 
Congress  on  a  civil-service  platform,  and 
he  *' believes  in  a  practical  civil-service 
law,"  but  that  the  President's  order  is  is- 
sued 80  late  in  his  Administration  that  '*  it 
looks  as  though  he  wha  endeavoring  to 
take  an  Undue  advantage  of  his  probable 
successor."  Representative  Odell  of  this 
State,  who  hopes  that  Piatt  will  nominate 
him  for  Covemor  next  fall,  goes  a  step 
further.  He  declares  that  he  is  a  believer 
in  the  theory  that  '*to  the  victors  belong 
the  spoils,"  and,  although  he  does  not  ex- 
pect to  have  a  great  deal  of  infiuence  with 
the  next  Administration  if  it  shall  be  pre- 
sided over  by  Mr.  McKinley,  yet,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  "Republican  boys"  who 
do  the  hard  work  for  the  party,  he  "  hopes 
that  the  law  may  be  changed  or  the 
classifications  modified  by  executive  or- 
der, so  that  they  may  be  taken  care  of." 
Representative  Evans  of  Kentucky  says 
that  he  '*  believes  in  practical  and  fair 
enforcement"  of  a  '*good  civil-service 
law,"  but  that  it  is  "  a  mean  political  ad- 
vantage "  for  the  Plresident  to  take  of  his 
prospective  successor,  to  wait  until  all  the 
offices  are  filled  with  friends  of  the  pre- 
sent Administration,  and  then  attempt  to 
close  the  door  to  that  they  cannot  be  re- 
moved or  changed.  Senator  Thurston  of 
Nebraska  says  he  is  not  familiar  with  the 
ezistiog  law,  but  he  believes  that,  if  a 
Republican  Administration  is  inaugurat- 
ed next  March,  **  ways  and  means  will  be 


Most  delightful  of  all  is  the  attempt  of 
Henry  Cabot  Lodge  to  reconcile  his  prac- 
tice as  a  demagogue  with  his  professions 
as  a  would-be  statesman.  In  the  latter 
capacity  he  attended  the  Massachusetts 
Republican  State  convention  only  seven 
weeks  ago,  and  helped  to  secure  the  pas- 
sage of  this  resolution : 

**  The  civil-service  laws,  which  remove  the 
public  service  from  the  control  of  favoritism, 
patronage,  and  polities,  should  be  honestly 
and  thoroaghly  enforced,  and  the  cla^sifiea 
service  extended  wherever  it  is  possible." 

President  Cleveland's  order  comes  almost 
like  a  response  to  this  demand ;  it  extends 
the  classified  service  *'  wherever  it  is  possi- 
ble," for  hardly  a  place  is  now  left  outside 
of  i^.  Lodge  the  would-be  statesman  feels 
constrained  to  say  that  he  is  **  a  believer 
in  the  policy  of  civil-service  reform  on 
general  principles,"  and  considers  the  ac- 
tion of  the  President  beneficial  to  the  ser- 
vice, since  all  previous  extensions  of  the 
civil-service  law  have  eventually  helped 
to  improve  the  public  service,  and  the  re- 
cent order  may  be  expected  to  have  a 
similar  effect  But  Lodge  the  demagogue 
points  out  that  "  there  are  many  per^ns 
who  will  claim  that  the  President  has 
been  too  sweeping  in  his  latest  extension 
of  the  classified  service  " — in  other  words, 
in  extending  it  wherever  possible ;  and  he 
contends  that,  if  the  next  President  wishes 
to  reclassify  some  of  the  employees  who 
are  now  protected  by  the  latest  order,  he 
will  have  the  power  under  the  present  law 
to  do  so,  since  the  law  that  permits  a 
President  to  extend  the  classified  service 
also  permits  another  President  to  curtail 
or  limit  the  classifications.  No  reformer, 
however,  need  fear  that  the  Lodges,  and 
Evanses,  and  Odells,  and  Thurstons  will 
have  their  way  in  this  matter. 


The  McKinley  boomers  show  visible 
signs  of  uneasiness  over  the  assaults  which 
are  being  made  upon  his  financial  record. 
Several  of  them  have  arrived  in  town  si- 
multaneously, and  their  explanations  of 
the  reasons  why  he  is  not  able  to  say  ex- 
actly where  he  stands  at  present  fill  many 
columns  of  the  newspapers.  They  are  all 
able  to  say  that  they  have  no  doubt  what- 
ever of  his  soundness  on  the  money  ques- 
tion, and  that  he  is  '*sure  to  be  nomi- 
nated," but  they  are  all  convinced  that  it 
would  be  folly  for  him  to  speak  for  himself 
now.  Why?  Oen.  Alger  explains  that 
point  most  clearly  by  saying  that  the 
Major  '*  greatly  deplores  the  opposition 
of  the  Eastern  Republicans,  and  ia  fully 
aware  that  this  opposition  springs  from 
a  demand  that  he  should  come  out 
and  signify  himself  to  be  a  sound- 
money  man.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  though, 
the  silver-men  are  making  the  same 
demands   on  him    to  come  out  and  de- 


clare himself  for  them.  He  must  re- 
main silent  until  the  platform  is  adopted 
at  St.  Louis."  That  is  a  sufficiently  plain 
explanation.  If  the  Major  were  to  speak 
now,  he  would  lose  the  support  of  either 
the  Eastern  delegates  or  the  silver  dele- 
gates; by  keeping  still,  he  hopes  to  get 
both,  and,  after  thus  securing  the  nomi- 
nation, he  will  let  it  be  known  which  set  of 
them  he  has  deceived.  As  Speaker  Reed 
expresses  it:  **  McKinley  does  not  want  to 
be  called  a  gold-bug  or  a  silver-bug,  so 
he  has  compromised  on  a  straddle-bug." 
Qen.  Alger's  explanation  is  undoubtedly 
authentic,  for  not  only  has  he  coroe  to  us 
direct  from  McKinley,  but  others  of  the 
McKinley  boomers,  who  also  come  to  us 
direct  from  him,  give  the  same  one. 


Despite  the  blare  of  the  McKinleyites 
that  the  only  issue  is  sky-high  protection, 
it  is  the  currency  plank  which  continues 
to  cause  the  hottest  fighting  in  State  con- 
ventions, and  it  is  the  currency  plank 
which  anxious  business  men  first  turn  to 
as  the  great  sign  of  the  times  for  them. 
The  Michigan  Republicans  voted  down 
the  mild  gold  plank  offered  by  their  com- 
mittee on  resolutions*  and  rushed  madly 
off  for  a  kind  of  weather-vane  bimetallism. 
They  did  this  in  the  face  f^i  Mr.  Depew's 
plain  warning  that  they  could  not  carry 
New  York,  New  Jersey,  Connecticut,  or 
even  Maseachusetts  on  such  a  platform. 
"Shall  we  bow  to  threats  like  that?'* 
cried  the  McKinley-mad,  silver- mad  Re- 
publicans, and  of  course  no  man  was  cra- 
ven enough  to  confess  that  he  would. 
The  surprising  result  was  to  leave  the 
Michigan  Republicans,  supposed  to  be 
sound,  on  a  silver  platform,  though  the 
Michigan  Democrats,  thought  to  be  hope- 
lessly gone  with  the  silver  disease,  had 
made  a  death-bed  repentance  of  it  and  got  | 
upon  a  gold  platform.  In  Indiana,  things 
went  better,  and  the  emphatic  declaration 
of  the  Republican  convention  against  free 
coinage  and  for  gold  will  be  a  decided 
help  in  the  fight  that  undoubtedly  needs 
to  be  made,  and  to  be  made  earnestly,  for 
a  similar  deliverance  at  St.  Louis.  The 
New  Jersey  Democratic  currency  plank  is 
the  strongest  one  yet  written.  It  is  not 
only  as  uncompromising  as  the  Connecti- 
cut Republican  platform  in  declaring 
against  coinage  of  silver  "at  aiy  ratio," 
and  as  resolute  and  outspoken  for  the  gold 
standard,  but  goes  further  than  any  Re- 
publican platform  in  demanding  also  the 
entire  divorce  of  the  Government  from  the 
banking  businese,  and  the  retirement  of  all 
legal-tender  Treasury  notes.  Thus,  speak- 
ing broadly,  the  silver  cause  is  going  down 
in  both  parties,  though  the  sound- money 
men  in  neither  can  afford  for  a  moment  to 
relax  their  vigilance  or  determination. 


One  of  McKinley*s  managers  was  asked 
the  other  day  why  the  Ohio  candidate  for 


370 


Tlio   !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 1 


the  nomination  at  St.  Louia  does  not  aay 
whether  or  not  he  opposes  the  free  coinage 
of  ailver  and  favors  the  maintenance  of 
the  gold  standard.  He  replied  with  per- 
fect frankness  that  McKinlej  would  be  a 
fool  to  tell  how  he  stood  on  the  financial 
issue  while  a  lot  of  delegates  were  still  to 
be  ehoeetj  10  eilver  States.  The  conren- 
tioD  ia  one  of  theso  States  was  held  oq 
Wednewiay  of  last  week,  aod  the  Califor- 
nia BepvkbHcana  showed  their  iot^rpreta- 
tion  of  McKiD ley's  silence  by  adopting 
witbaiit  any  oppoBitioD  a  froe-eoinage 
platform,  and  instructicg  their  ddegates 
to  support  the  Ohio  candidate  as  the  best 
man  to  stand  upon  such  a  platform*  The 
SB  mo  interpretation  of  McKinley^s  atti* 
tude  is  made  by  free- coin  age  Republicana 
in  other  Westerti  State*,  Silver  Republic 
can  newspapers  reprint  MoKin ley's  finan- 
cial record,  and  •*  fjoint  with  pride"  to  it 
as  proof  that  he  is  against  the  gold  stan- 
dard and  will  ^^  do  something  for  ailver  *' 
if  he  shall  be  made  President, 


The  Montana  Republicans  in  their  State 
convention  on  Monday  adopted  resolutions 
unqualifiedly  commending  the  action  of 
Carter  and  Mantle  of  their  Btate,  Teller 
of  Colorado,  Dubois  of  IdahOpSnd  Cannon 
of  Utah  in  putting  free  coinage  before  the 
tariff  and  everything  else  laat  winter;  but 
an  effort  to  instruct  the  delegates  to  walk 
out  of  the  St.  Louis  convention  in  case 
silver  should  not  be  recognized,  failed.  It 
is  thus  shown  in  Montana,  as  Senator  Wol* 
cott's  attitude  showed  in  Colorado,  that 
an  element  of  the  Republican  party  will 
support  the  ticket,  no  matter  what  the 
platform  may  aay.  Teller  and  Dubois 
have  gone  too  far  to  retreat,  both  of  them 
being  coDirnitted  to  a  bolt  if  they  cannot 
dictate  the  platform;  but  it  remains  to  be 
seen  how  large  a  proportion  of  the  party 
in  the  ailver  States  they  can  carry  with 
them. 


The  Gk>vernor'B  "  memorandum  *'  about 
the  con  tot  id  at  ion  bill  contains  mainly  rea- 
sons why  he  should  not  sign  it.  In  shnrt, 
he  shows  conclusively  that  consolidation, 
as  proposed,  cannot  supply  the  things 
which  consolidation  calls  for.  He  admits, 
also,  not  only  that  no  commission  to  be 
appointed  under  the  bill  can  supply  what 
consolidation  calls  for,  but  that  even  if 
the  thing  were  posaibJOt  there  would  not 
be  time  to  do  it.  That  is,  there  ia  not 
even  time  for  the  commiesion  to  attempt 
the  impoeaible.  Then  he  adds  that  **  this 
possibility  is  not  a  euf^cient  objection  to 
warrant  hie  disapproval  of  the  bitl^' 
Perhaps  not  his  disapproval  as  Governor, 
but  it  would  warrant  his  disapproval  as  a 
reasoning  man.  We  are  not  much  con* 
cerned  about  the  future  of  the  measure  ; 
but  we  acknowledge  a  feeling  of  general 
regret  that  the  Governor  should  leave  the 
chair  under  the  suspicion  that  he  has  not 
acted  out  of  his  own  head  about  the  chief 
public  measures  which  have  come  before 
him — that  Piatt  has  been  able  to  use  him 


for  his  own  schemes  of  selfishness  and 
folly. 


The  quiet  establishment  of  a  branch 
Tammany  in  Brooklyn  is  the  first  sign 
that  the  Wigwam  is  getting  ready  to  rule 
Qreater  New  York  when   the  new  city 

shall  have  been  created.  There  baa  been 
a  good  deal  of  childish  talk  about  Tam- 
many opposition  to  oonaalidation,  but  it 
has  t>een  noticeable  that  whenever  votes 
were  necessary  in  the  Legislature  to  pass 
consolidation  legislation,  a  sufHeient  num- 
ber was  always  forthcoming  from  Tarn* 
many  members.  Nobody  knows  better 
than  these  shrewd  political  operators  that 
a  large  city  will  be  more  certain  game  for 
them  than  a  smaller  one.  6/  having  a 
joint  bosS'Ship — ^ono  boss  for  Brooklyn 
and  one  for  New  York,  animated  by  a 
common  purpose,  to  plunder  the  people— 
the  greater  Tammany  would  be  far  more 
powerful  than  the  smaller  one  has  been* 
The  decent  people  of  the  larger  city^^dia- 
con  raged  by  the  magnitude  of  the  city 
and  their  own  unorganized  condition, 
would  be  more  helpless  than  ever,  and 
would  be  even  more  inclined  than  ever  to 
say,  **Ob,  well,  what  is  the  use  ?  We  are 
sure  to  be  outnumbered  any  way,  and  if 
we  try  to  f^ot  a  respectable  government, 
we  shall  succeed  only  in  showing  our 
weakness/'  Then,  too,  by  doubling  the 
opffortunitiea  of  public  plunder,  the  aeal 
of  all  the  plunderers  is  doubled  also,  and 
their  courage  and  determination  to  rule 
will  be  stimulated  by  the  very  conditions 
which  are  BO  likely  to  discourage  their  re* 
spectable  opponents.  There  will  be  a 
great  assembling  of  all  the  shady  political 
characters  of  the  State,  and  even  of  the 
country  at  large,  in  the  greater  city,  for 
nothing  like  ita  possibilities  in  the  way  of 
plunder  has  yet  been  seen  In  this  count]?. 


Trustworthy  reports  from  various  parte 
of  the   State   agree  in  saying  that    the 

Raines  liquor-tax  law  Is  working  dtsas^ 
trously  for  the  Republican  party.  Sena- 
tor CoggeehaU  of  Ulica  aays  its  effect  is  so 
bad  that  it  will  cause  the  Republicans  to 
lose  the  State  this  fall,  and  many  other 
observers  who  are  aa  practical  politician  a 
aa  he  ie  agree  with  him.  The  law  would 
have  been  a  great  political  burden  for  the 
Republicans  to  carry  if  it  had  been  put  in 
force  merely  as  a  restrictive  measure;  but 
when,  in  addition  to  this^  it  is  put  in 
force  primarily  as  a  political  scheme  to 
give  the  Hepublican  machine  patronage, 
its  effects  cannot  fail  to  be  harmful.  The 
whole  State  has  been  advised,  by  the  way 
in  which  Mr*  Lyman  was  permitted  by 
the  Governor  to  appoint  hla  subordinates, 
that  the  law  Is  to  be  "  worked  Tor  all  It  is 
worth  ''  for  Piatt  polilica.  It  Is  impoBsl- 
ble,  after  this  showing,  to  defend  It  as  a 
piece  of  temperance  legislation*  It  will 
drive  from  the  Republican  party  thousands 
of  foreign- born  voters  in  all  the  cities  of 
the  State,  and  thousands  of  other  voters 
of  independent  tendencies  all  over    the 


State,  including  many  temperance  advo- 
cates. 


The  recent  State  election  in  Louisiana, 
like  the  last  two  elections  in  Alabama, 
showed  that  the  Democratic  party  can 
no  longer  command  the  substantially 
unanimous  support  of  the  white  peopU  of 
the  Gulf  States.  The  heavy  Democratic 
majorities  came  almost  eirclusively  from 
the  parishes  in  which  the  negroes  const! - 
tute^  two-thirds  or  more  of  the  entire  po- 
pulation* There  are  thirteen  parishes  in 
the  State  in  which,  by  the  census  of  ISDO, 
there  were  more  than  two  adult  male  ne* 
groes  to  every  white  mate  over  twenty-one 
years  old*  Every  one  of  these  parishes  at 
the  recent  election  gave  Gov.  Foster,  the 
Democratic  candidate,  a  majority.  In 
several  of  them,  as  BoBsler,  C<»ncordia, 
and  East  Carroll,  the  vote  as  returned  not 
only  was  large,  but  was  practicalZy  unani* 
mous.  In  the  whole  thirteen  there  were 
11,415  white  males  over  the  age  of  twenty* 
one, and  37,789  negro  males  of  the  same  age* 
In  these  parishes  Gov.  Foster's  majority 
was  2^300.  There  are  nineteen  other  pa- 
rishes in  which  the  number  of  negro  voters 
eiceeds  tlie  number  of  white,  but  in  no 
one  of  which  are  the  negroes  more  than 
twice  as  ^numerous  as  the  whites.  Of 
these  parishes,  twelve  gave  Demoeratic 
majorities  amounting  to  some  12^000,  and 
seven  gave  opposition  majorities  aggre- 
gating 0,600.  The  net  Democratic  majo> 
rity,  thereforot  in  these  parishes  is  Ot-lOO* 
There  are  twenty-seven  parishes  in  which 
there  are  more  white  than  negro  voters* 
Of  the  Be,  nine  gave  Democratic  msjorl- 
ties  and  eighteen  opposition  majoritiee. 
The  conditions  in  liouisiana  are  like 
those  which  have  existed  in  Alabama  for 
the  laat  four  years.  Kolb,  the  Fusioa 
candidate,  both  tu  1892  and  ld9i«  carried 
the  white  portions  of  the  latter  State,  but 
was  beaten  by  the  enormous  majortties 
cost  or  returned  against  him  from  the 
black- be  It  counties* 


The  regions  In  which  the  Democracy  ii 
now  weakest  are  precisely  the  regions 
which,  during  re  const  ruction  days,  were 
moat  nearly  unanimous  in  their  adherence 
to  it*  The  speed  with  which  this  Inde- 
pendence of  voting  among  the  white  peo- 
ple of  the  South  has  followed  the  repeal 
of  the  federal  election  laws  and  the  aban- 
donment by  the  Republican  party  of  any 
demand  for  their  rei>nactment,  is  surpris- 
ing. That  such  a  development  would* 
sooner  or  later,  take  place  when  external 
preesure  was  withdrawn,  was  of  course 
natural.  It  was  not  to  bo  ejfpected,  how- 
ever, that  it  would  come  about  aa  speed- 
ily aa  it  has  done.  Already  both  parties 
among  the  white  men  are  bidding  for  the 
negro  vote.  The  neceeftitj  of  securing 
the  support  of  the  negroes  led  many  Lou- 
181  an  a  Democratic  politicians  to  declare 
againat  the  constitutional  amendment  by 
which  the  negroea  would  have  b^sn  ds* 
prived  of  the  suffrage.     As  a  result,  tb* 


May  14,  1896] 


Tke   N"atioii. 


371 


amendment  was  overwhelmingly  beaten 
at  the  polls.  Some  of  the  Louisiana  pa- 
pers are  bitterly  deploring  the  fact  that 
white  men,  and  Democratic  white  men  at 
that,  did  bid  for  negro  Totes ;  but  the  bid 
was  made,  and  will  unquestionably  be  re- 
peated hereafter.  The  white  men  who 
hare  supported  the  Populist  and  Republi- 
can parties  will,  sooner  or  later,  find  a 
way  to  put  a  stop  to  the  frauds  by  which 
they  are  cheated  in  the  black  belts.  The 
negroes,  when  the  whites  are  divided,  will 
just  as  certainly  be  in  a  position  to  secure 
fairer  and  more  generous  treatment  than 
they  have  received  in  the  past. 


Henry  M.  Stanley  puts  his  finger  on 
one  great  obstacle  to  the  establishment 
of  a  system  of  arbitration  between  the 
United  States  and  other  nations  when  he 
says  in  the  Independent  that  our  sen- 
sational press  is  demoralizing  the  public 
mind.  The  morbid  appetite  that  has 
been  fed  upon  murders  of  individuals, 
naturally  and  inevitably  grows  to  desire 
the  murder  of  thousands  in  battle,  with 
all  the  other  concomitants  of  war.  Our 
press  is  thus  cultivating  a  taste  for  war 
among  our  people,  and  in  the  same  mea- 
sure making  peaceful  arbitration  seem 
too  prosaic  for  acceptance.  This  alarm- 
ing tendency  can  be  seen  most  clearly  by 
an  observer  like  Mr.  Stanley,  who  is 
familiar  with  the  United  States,  and  who 
watches  developments  in  this  nation  from 
another  country;  but  it  is  visible  to 
every  thoughtful  and  candid  man  here 
who  studies  the  signs  of  the  times. 


Lord  Rosebery's  talent  for  clever  nag- 
ging never  had  a  fairer  subject  than  Mr. 
Chamberlain's  late  exploits  in  diplomacy! 
and  in  bis  speech  at  Rochdale  on  April  28 
he  did  them  full  justice.  Chamberlain's 
was  **the  new  diplomacy,"  the  country 
had  been  given  to  understand,  but,  new  or 
old.  Lord  Rosebery  maintained,  it  had 
been  an  unparalleled  comedy  of  errors. 
Frankness  and  taking  the  country  and  the 
newspapers  into  your  confidence  was  an 
excellent  thing,  but  it  had  its  awkward 
side.  The  Colonial  Secretary  invited  Pte- 
sident  KrQger  to  come  to  England  to  dis- 
cuss the  policy  England  would  recom- 
mend, and  policy  and  invitation  were 
both  given  to  the  public.  The  result  was 
that  the  Transvaal  instantly  repudiated 
the  policy,  and  said  it  would  answer  the 
invitation  when  it  got  ready.  The  new 
dipk>mat  was  asked  in  the  Commons  how 
he  liked  this,  and  cheerfully  replied  that 
it  was  of  no  consequence  whatever.  Then 
what  followed  T 

"  Our  Ck>loQia]  Secretary,  in  a  vigorous  prac- 
tice of  the  neir  diplomacy,  went  to  a  public 
dinner,  and  said  that  the  administration  of 
President  Kriiger,  the  gentleman  whom  he 
had  invited  to  England,  and  whom  be  was 
anxious  to  conciliate,  was  eminently  oormpt. 
Well,  if  that  is  tbe  method  by  which  the  new 
diplomacy  ooDciliates  tbe  person  with  whom 
it  is  negotiating  it  is  a  very  new  diplomacy 
'-^—^     [Umghter.]   Then  eame  tbe  refusal 


of  President  EIrQger  to  accept  tbe  invit%tioD, 
and  now  we  are  told,  as  tbe  last  act  in  this 
melodrama,  that  her  Majesty's  Qovernment 
have  withdrawn  the  invitation  to  President 
Kriieer.  [Laughter.]  It  is,  I  think,  an  un. 
usuiu  proceeding  with  regard  to  invitations, 
bat  it  b  evidently  a  part  of  tbe  new  diplomacy 
that  has  withdrawn  tbe  invitation  to  President 
KrQger  and  sent  it  to  Sir  Hercules  Robinson 
instead.    [Laughter.}" 

All  this,  be  it  remembered,  was  before 
those  fatal  telegrams  were  published  by 
the  wicked  KrOger.  With  these  transfix- 
ing the  bosom  of  the  new  diplomacy.  Lord 
Rosebery  could  have  made  a  still  sorrier 
picture  of  it. 


The  South  African  trouble  has  at  last 
been  brought  before  the  House  of  Com- 
mons by  Sir  William  Haroourt,  who  said 
the  whole  story  of  the  invasion  of  the 
Transvaal  was  an  **  inexpressibly  revolt- 
ing, sordid,  squalid  picture  of  stock-job- 
bing imperialism,"  and  he  might  have 
put  it  stronger.  Henry  Labouchere  did 
put  it  stronger,  for  he  called  the  directors 
of  the  South  African  Company  "  a  gang 
of  shady  financiers."  Li  view  of  the  tele- 
grams discovered  in  Jameson's  bag,  no 
doubt  remains  that  the  raid  was  organised 
and  paid  for  by  the  company,  and  that 
they  expected  to  establish  a  republic  of 
their  own  on  the  ruins  of  the  Transvaal. 
We  observe  that  Sir  William  Harcourt 
takes  an  entirely  different  view  of  Mr. 
Chamberlain's  part  in  the  matter  from 
that  of  Lord  Rosebery.  He  says  Mr. 
Chamberlain  was  *' surrounded  by  diffi- 
culties, and  had  shown  1^  courage  and  de- 
cision worthy  of  his  position."  Wherein 
this  courage  and  decision  consist,  and 
what  made  him  so  popular  for  some 
weeks  after  the  outbreak,  does  not  clearly 
appear.  All  he  did  was  to  disclaim  all 
connection  with  the  raid,  and  bring  Jame- 
son home  for  a  feeble  and  limping  trial. 
He  has  not  done  a  single  thing  or  said  a 
single  word  to  bring  the  authors  of  the 
crime  to  justice.  All  the  evidence  which 
has  been  supplied  concemhig  the  real 
nature  of  the  transaction  has  come  from 
Paul  Krfiger.  Mr.  Chamberlain  fbels  the 
force  of  the  telegrams,  but  falls  back  on 
the  plea,  with  which  our  own  sharpers 
have  made  us  so  familiar,  that  they  are 
not  '*  legal  evidence."  The  truth  appears 
to  be  that  not  only  did  the  dhrectors  or- 
ganise the  raid,  but  they  fully  expected 
the  result  to  be  adopted  or  condoned  by 
the  imperial  government.  They  expect* 
ed,  like  the  Sons  of  the  Missionaries  at 
Hawaii,  to  have  simply  to  send  an  emis- 
sary to  London  to  tell  the  Government 
about  the  new  republic  and  about  the  in- 
competency and  corruption  of  the  Dutch- 
men. No  one  can  read  the  liistory  of  the 
company  without  feelhig  that  the  precau- 
tions taken  by  the  Boers  to  prevent  their 
own  government,  for  which  they  had 
suffered  so  much,  from  behig  at  once 
taken  out  of  their  hands  by  the  swarm  of 
adventurers  who  were  in  possession  of  the 
mines,  were  reasonable  and  just,  and  that 
any  wrongs  which  arose  under  them  were 


sure  to  be  remedied  after  a  while.  Tbe 
miners  had  only  to  wait  and  argue. 
What  made  Mr.  Rhodes  and  the  company 
so  hasty  was  their  feeling  so  rich.  Every- 
thing seems  possible  and  right  to  a  sud- 
denly enriched  man.  Then,  the  South 
African  venture  was,  for  England,  a  pecu- 
liarly aristocratic  one.  *'  Society  "  was  in 
it  to  an  extraordinary  degree,  and  it  was 
talked  up  in  all  the  London  drawing- 
rooms. 


There  is  no  reason  to  tliink  that  our 
latest  *'war"  alarm  will  prove  any  more 
serious  than  those  that  have  gone  before 
it.  Five  men,  captured  upon  a  filibuster- 
ing American  schooner,  have  been  sen- 
tenced to  death  by  a  court-martial  at 
Havana.  One  of  them  is  said  to  be  an 
American  citixen  and  two  others  claim 
to  be  such.  The  sentences  are  to  be  re- 
vised by  the  Spanish  Cabinet,  and  there 
are  indications  that  they  will  be  modified. 
In  the  meantime,  the  journalistic  war- 
riors are  "  churning  up"  the  incident  in 
the  usual  way,  by  sending  out  all  kinds 
of  bogua  news  about  it.  Qen.  Weyler  is 
pictured  as  furious  with  anger  at  the  at- 
titude of  the  United  SUtes  towards  Cuba, 
and  as  threatening  to  resign  if  the  sen- 
tences are  not  carried  out  One  report 
says  he  has  sent  word  to  Secretary  Olney 
that  the  prisoners  would  be  executed  in 
spite  of  the  latter's  protect;  but  when  the 
**story"  got  back  to  Havana  from  the 
United  States,  it  was  said  that  nobody 
there  had  heard  of  its  details  before.  Tet 
it  is  upon  this,  more  than  anything  else, 
that  **war  with  Spain"  is  now  in  progress 
in  the  press  and  in  the  minds  of  some  of 
our  most  thoughtful  statesmen  and  ob- 
servers. We  think  it  entirely  safe  to  say 
that  hostilities  will  not  begin  before  the 
end  of  the  present  week,  and  that  wheth- 
er there  be  war  or  not,  the  Cleveland 
Administration  wUl  see  to  it  that  the 
rights  of  American  citisens  are  fully  pro- 
tected. 


Despite  the  show  of  brave  words  in 
the  speech  of  the  Queen  Regent  to  the 
Cortes,  her  references  to  the  Cuban 
struggle  are  dispiriting.  Misgovemment 
of  the  island  is  tacitly  admitted,  and  the 
need  of  sweeping  administrative  reforms 
conceded.  Yet  those  reforms  cannot  even 
be  formulated,  much  less  applied,  until 
the  rebellion  ia  suppressed,  and  that  it 
will  be  suppressed  quickly  no  hope  is 
held  out  It  is  the  fatal  drift  of  things 
towards  complete  helplessness,  both  in 
Spain  and  in  Cuba,  with  the  ruin  of  the 
latter  becoming  more  complete  every 
day,  the  Spaniah  debt  mounting,  claims 
for  loss  of  property  owned  by  foreigners 
piling  up,  that  makes  the  Cuban  question 
so  grave.  The  Queen  makes  rather  nerv- 
ous allusion  to  the  sympathy  and  aid 
accorded  the  revolutionists  by  citisens  of 
the  United  States,  yet  is  able  to  speak 
warmly  of  the  **  correct  and  friendly  con- 
duct** of  our  government. 


373 


Ttie    [N'atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 1 


THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  WORK, 
It  is  almoet  thirty  years  since  a  small 
party,  mostly  civil-service  reformers,  sat 
down  to  breakfast  in  Washington,  with 
the  view  of  introducing  their  subject  to 
the  notice  of  a  few  men  in  public  life,  one 
of  whom  was  a  United  States  Senator. 
The  talk  of  the  reformers  was  rather 
amusing  than  otherwise  to  the  public 
men.  The  Senator,  a  very  intelligent  per- 
son, confessed  that  he  looked  on  it  as  a 
Plrussian  whimsy  of  some  kind,  and  had 
to  have  civil-service  reform  explained  to 
him.  All  agreed  that  the  introduction  of 
^ything  like  the  competitive  system  into 
the  United  States  was  a  dream  which 
might  some  day  be  realized,  but  not  in 
the  lifetime  of  anybody  present.  It  was 
.  the  millennium,  and  the  millennium  was 
a  thing  not  to  be  hastened  or  too  eagerly 
longed  for.  No  one  there  really  expected 
to  see  the  reform  accomplished.  If  it 
ever  was  accomplished,  it  was  to  be  the 
result  of  an  agitation  lasting  more  than 
one  generation,  like  the  anti-slavery  agi- 
tation. 

There  is  one  recipe  for  the  dissipation 
of  the  gloom  about  public  affairs  which  is 
just  now  filling  the  public  mind,  especially 
since  ** Prosperity's  Advance  Agent" 
made  his  appearance  on  the  scene,  and 
that  is,  looking  back.  It  will  be  conside- 
rably strengthened  by  observing  that 
to-day  this  apparently  impossible  or  ex- 
tremely remote  reform  is  an  accomplished 
fact,  within  the  lifetime  of  the  generation 
which  saw  the  agitation  for  it  begin.  The 
President's  last  orders  place  the  whole 
civil  service  under  the  rules,  except  oflSces 
which  require  confirmation  by  the  Senate. 
Under  Arthur  there  were  15,773  classified 
places;  under  Cleveland  in  the  first  term 
there  were  11,757  added  to  these;  under 
Harrison  there  were  15,698  added,  making 
a  grand  total  of  43,128  up  to  the  4th  of 
March,  1883.  Since  then  the  additions 
have  gone  on  gradually  increasing,  until 
now  there  are  85,200  places  under  the 
rules,  or  substantially,  as  we  have  said, 
the  whole  civil  service  of  the  United 
States,  within  thirty  years  from  the  be- 
ginning of  the  movement. 

That  the  change  has  been  powerfully 
aided  by  the  example  of  other  countries, 
especially  England,  and  by  its  thorough- 
ly democratic  character,  we  do  not 
deny,  but  the  main  stimulus  to  its  growth 
has  undoubtedly  come  from  the  observa- 
tion of  the  working  of  the  new  system  in 
all  the  departments  in  which  it  has  been 
tried.  It  exemplifies,  above  all  things,  the 
truth  of  the  French  proverb  that  **  no- 
thing succeeds  like  success."  The  sys- 
tem has  been  extended,  in  the  main,  be- 
cause its  usefulness  became  more  and 
more  manifest.  Its  inclusion  of  the  whole 
service  is  one  of  the  best  things  we  owe 
to  Mr.  Cleveland,  whose  retirement  from 
office,  to  make  room  for  Prosperity's  Ad- 
vance Agent,  would  be,  at  this  time,  no- 
thing short  of  a  national  misfortune. 

The  fact  is  that  the  agitation  on  this 
subject,  as  regards  the  national  service, 


ceased  years  ago.  It  may  be  said  to  have 
died  out  at  Mr.  Cleveland's  election  in 
1884.  Since  then  the  spoils  system  has 
had  no  open  defender.  Here  and  there 
an  orator  has  raised  his  voice  for  it,  but 
his  words  have  been  received  as  jests. 
Of  late  years  the  agitation  has  confined 
itself  mainly  to  an  attempt  to  get  the  re- 
form introduced  into  the  State  or  munici- 
pal services.  Progress  in  this  field  has 
been  hindered  by  the  fact  that,  as  a  gene- 
ral rule,  State  and  municipal  officers  are 
hostile  to  it.  With  some  exceptions  the 
places  in  the  State  and  municipal  service 
are  filled  by  men  who  are  interested  in 
*'  beating  the  law" — that  is,  in  preventing 
its  execution  by  some  device  or  other. 
The  only  conspicuous  friends  it  has  in 
public  life  in  this  State  to-day  are  the 
Comptroller,  Mr.  Roberts,  Col.  Burt  of 
the  Civil- Service  Commission,  and  Mr. 
Roosevelt  of  the  Police — not  counting,  of 
course,  the  unpaid  commission  which  has 
charge  of  the  municipal  service.  None  of 
the  others,  from  the  Boss  down,  venture 
to  denounce  it  openly,  but  they  curse  it 
privately  and  treat  it  scornfully  in  the  Le- 
gislature. In  all  probability  it  would  hard- 
ly have  found  its  way  into  the  amended 
Constitution  if  the  Boss  had  thought  it 
would  pass.  He  doubtless  expected  it  to 
be  defeated,  and  the  civil- service  clause 
of  the  instrument  is  now  causing  him  and 
his  followers  great  annoyance,  and  they  are 
fighting  against  it  by  every  means  in 
their  power.  But  the  issue  can  hardly 
be  doubtful  after  what  has  happened  in 
the  federal  civil  service.  It  is  now  the 
American  system.  Their  little  systems 
have  their  day,  but  the  system  under 
which  this  nation  is  to  march  to  its  des- 
tiny, whatever  that  may  be,  is  undoubt- 
edly the  competitive  system. 

The  Massachusetts  Supreme  Court,  in 
declaring  unconstitutional,  the  other  day, 
the  law  giving  a  preference  to  veterans  in 
appointments  to  State  offices,  passed  by 
the  politicians  over  Gov.  Greenhalge's 
veto,  laid  down  the  rule  which  we  confi- 
dently expect  yet  to  see  adopted  and  acted 
on  in  every  branch  of  the  American  ser- 
vice, both  federal.  State,  and  municipal. 
Said  the  court : 

**  Public  offlcee  are  created  for  the  purpose  of 
effecting  the  ends  for  which  government  has 
been  instituted,  which  are  the  common  good« 
and  not  the  profit,  honor,  or  private  interest  of 
any  one  man,  family,  or  class  of  men. 

"  In  our  form  of  government  it  is  fundamen- 
tal that  public  offices  are  a  public  trust,  and 
that  the  persons  to  be  appointed  should  be  se- 
lected solely  with  a  view  to  the  public  wel- 
fare." 

This  is  the  true  and  only  American 
rule.  The  use  of  offices  for  the  reward  of 
services,  whether  they  be  military  or  civil, 
whether  service  to  the  country  or  service 
to  a  party,  is  forbidden  by  American  po- 
lity. We  may  give  a  man  a  money  pen- 
sion, or  a  suit  of  clothes,  or  a  mule,  or  a 
farm,  for  having  been  valiant  or  patriotic, 
but  we  cannot  give  him  an  office — for  an 
office  is  service,  and  the  due  service  the 
appointee  cannot  render  unless  he  is  the 
fittest  man. 


A  WORD  TO  BUSINESS  MEN. 

An    article  in  the   Tribune  of  Monday 
morning  opens  in  this  way : 

**  It  would  be  a  Rreat  thing  for  some  people 
and  for  the  country  if  they  could  only  get  hold 
of  the  truth  that  their  worry  about  the  money 
question  is  unfounded  and  wasteful.  They  are 
gratuitously  spoiling  business  for  themaelves; 
and  for  others  as  far  as  they  can,  by  lying 
awake  nights  for  fear  some  Khost  may  carry 
them  off.  Are  they  not  able  to  see,  what 
many  millions  of  *  the  plain  people '  have  seen 
all  the  time,  that  the  money  question  is  ren- 
dered harmless  and  empty  by  making  the  tariff 
the  controlling  issue  V 

It  is  evident  from  these  astounding  ob- 
servations that  the  supporters  of  McKin- 
ley,  finding  that  the  weakness  of  their 
candidate  on  the  currency  question  is  be- 
ginning to  be  better  and  better  under- 
stood, have  determined  now  to  turn  pub- 
lic attention  away  from  it,  as  far  as  possi- 
ble, and  concentrate  it  on  the  tariff,  the 
restoration  of  which  they  say  would  of  it- 
self, without  regard  to  the  currency,  in- 
itiate a  period  of  great  prosperity.  We 
have  over  and  over  shown  in  these  col- 
umns by  facts,  figures,  and  dates,  that 
this  currency  trouble  began  while  the 
McElinley  tariff  was  still  in  operation, 
and  that  the  condition  of  the  Treasury 
was  extremely  bad  and  getting  worse  be- 
fore the  defeat  of  the  Republicans  in  1892. 
We  have  also  shown,  as  well  as  any  tiling 
can  be  shown  from  human  experience, 
that  this  is  a  necessary  result,  nearly  as 
certain  as  the  tides,  of  two  things :  one  is 
Government  banking  with  a  fixed  volume 
of  paper;  the  other  is  the  operation  of 
Gresham's  law  on  our  stock  of  gold.  The 
notion  that  these  two  things  can  be  cured 
by  a  high  tariff  reminds  one  of  the  belief 
of  people  in  desperate  straits  that  some- 
'thing  will  *'  turn  up  "  to  avert  a  certain 
fate  —  a  belief  which  is  hardly  ever 
wanting.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find 
among  the  most  ignorant  of  European 
peasantry  an  idea  more  fantastic  and  ab- 
surd than  the  idea  that  there  can  be  a 
great  deal  of  national  prosperity,  no  mat- 
ter what  the  currency  may  be,  through 
putting  high  duties  on  foreign  imports. 

Our  own  belief  is  that  the  nomination 
of  McKinley  at  St  Louis  will  be  followed 
by  a  period  of  very  great  depression,  and 
that  his  election  will  cause  one  of  the 
greatest  panics  in  modem  history.  There 
are  several  reasons  for  this  belief.  One  is 
McEinley's  own  character.  The  weakness 
of  this  is  notorious.  His  closest  friends 
acknowledge  that  he  is  singularly  un- 
fitted, through  personal  good  nature  and 
kindliness,  for  a  great  office  like  the  Presi- 
dency of  the  United  States,  requiring  so 
much  determination  and  self-confidence. 
Not  only  is  his  character  weak,  however, 
but  the  record  shows  that  during  the  last 
twenty  years  of  discussion  on  the  impor- 
tant questions  of  currency  and  national 
credit,he  has  stood  on  both  sides  of  them. 
He  supported  and  opposed  free  silver 
coinage.  He  advocated  the  silver-pur- 
chase act,  and  gave  no  support  to  its  re- 
peal. He  has  declared  himself  a  bimetal- 
list  of  the  incomprehensible  variety,  and 


May  14,  1896] 


The    N'ation. 


373 


he  is  at  this  moment  backed  up  both  hy 
the  E^aatern  sound-money  men  and  by  the 
Western  silTer-men,  showing  that  neither 
know  exactly  what  his  position  is.  From 
such  a  man  in  private  life,  no  sensible 
merchant  would  take  any  advice.  He 
wouk]  listen  to  him  about  currency  as  a 
matter  of  politeness,  but  he  would  not 
think  for  a  moment  of  shaping  his  busi- 
ness ventures  by  anything  he  said  on  the 
subject,  and  we  should  not  be  at  all  sur- 
prised if  McKinley's  currency  opinions 
were  at  this  moment  a  joke  in  the  busi- 
ness circles  of  Cincinnati.  And  yet  mer- 
chants are  asked  to  give  money  and  votes 
to  make  this  man  President  of  the  United 
States,  an  office  which  during  the  next 
four  years  will  require  two  things  above 
all — one  is,  absolutely  distinct  and  edu- 
cated views  on  the  laws  of  exchange,  and 
the  other  is  great  force  of  character. 

Another  reason  is  the  nature  of  the  cri- 
sis. We  must  beg  business  men  to  re- 
member that  it  does  not  depend  on  them 
which  question,  the  currency  or  the  tariff, 
shall  make  itself  paramount  at  the  coming 
election.  In  all  business,  as  one  may  say 
in  all  civilization,  the  currency  is  the  main 
question.  You  can  carry  on  business  for 
ages  without  a  tariff.  You  cannot  carry 
it  on  in  a  great  state  for  one  month  with- 
out a  currency  which  commands  public 
faith.  The  Tribune^ 8  request,  therefore, 
that  business  men  will  dismiss  the  cur- 
rency from  their  minds,  and  think  only  of 
the  tariff,  like  so  many  of  our  journalistic 
utterances,  savors  rather  of  the  nursery 
than  of  the  market.  It  is,  under  these 
circumstances,  a  child's  prayer.  You  must 
think  of  the  currency  before  anything  in 
the  world,  or  go  out  of  business.  You 
must  remember,  too,  that  the  currency 
question  you  are  treating  is  not  so  much 
whether  you  will  use  silver  or  gold.  It  is 
not  a  *' battle  of  the  standards'*  simply. 
You  are  now,  by  incredible  exertions  and 
quarterly  loans,  maintaining  a  gold  stan- 
dard. A  large  party  in  this  country 
want  a  silver  standard,  and  they  do  not 
want  a  silver  standard  at  par — that  is,  a 
silver  standard  as  good  as  gold,  and  in- 
volving no  difference  in  value,  only  differ- 
ence in  weight  of  the  metal.  They  want 
a  silver  standard  worth  only  half  the  gold 
standard,  and  threatening  all  wages,  all 
debts,  all  deposits  in  trust  companies  and 
''bavingB  banks,  all  rents,  all  annuities, 
with  50  per  cent,  reduction.  The  adop- 
tion of  such  a  standard  would,  therefore, 
cause  such  a  panic  as  has  not  been  seen 
in  modem  commercial  history  except  in 
time  of  war  after  an  overwhelming  inva- 
sion, and  we  believe  it  would  be  the  easiest 
thing  in  the  world  to  persuade  McKinley 
to  agree  to  it,  mainly  for  want  of  know- 
ledge.   He  would  know  no  better. 

We  must  finally  ask  business  men  to 
remember  that  the  convention  which  is 
to  nominate  McKinley  is  not  composed  of 
financiers  or  experts  in  exchange  or  cur- 
rency, and  its  nomination  will  be  simply 
advice  to  voters,  and  nothing  more. 
When    they   nominate    McKinley,    they 


simply  advise  you  to  vote  for  him.  Now, 
who  are  the  delegates  ?  They  are  gene- 
rally shiftless  men  or  professional  politi- 
ticians.  The  vast  majority  of  them  find 
it  hard  work  to  make  a  living.  A  large 
number  expect  or  expected  some  small 
office  from  McKinley.  A  swarm  of  them 
are  ignorant  negroes  from  the  South.  A 
very  large  number  are  simple-minded 
farmers.  Very  few  if  any  have  any 
knowledge  whatever  about  business  or 
currency.  Probably  not  more  than  a 
dozen  or  two  could  get  a  $500  note  dis- 
counted at  a  bank.  Such  as  they  are, 
they  are  largely  influenced  by  the  howls 
and  applause  of  a  large  audience,  more 
ignorant  or  less  known  than  themselves, 
in  the  galleries,  who  have  no  responsibil- 
ity whatever.  What  business  man  is 
there  who  would  take  the  advice  of  such 
a  body  on  any  point  affecting  his  private 
affairs— how  he  should  manage  them,  or 
what  he  ought  to  do  ?  And  yet  the  next 
Presidential  election  will,  owing  to  the 
nature  of  the  issues,  be  a  great  business 
operation.  Usually,  electing  a  President 
is  preferring  one  good  man  to  another, 
because  he  is  more  **  magnetic,"  or  was  a 
good  soldier,  or  t)elieves  in  50  per  cent,  on 
woollens  or  furs.  The  next  election,  on 
the  contrary,  will  decide  what  the  stand- 
ing of  the  United  States,  and  of  every 
man  in  it,  will  be  in  the  commercial  world 
for  fifty  years  to  come. 

Finally,  the  effect  on  foreign  nations  of 
McKinley's  nomination  and  election  will 
be  great.  We  need  not  point  out  to 
business  men  the  importance  of  this.  To 
the  Dervishes  who  believe  that  foreigners 
sell  securities  cheap  in  order  to  annoy  us, 
we  have  nothing  to  say.  But  large  num- 
bers of  foreign  investors  have  been  wait* 
ing  to  see  what  we  should  do  about  the 
currency  before  either  selling  out  or  going 
in.  The  nomination  and  election  of  Mc- 
Kinley will  be  to  them  proof  positive  that 
we  mean  to  go  down  into  the  pit,  and 
reach  rationality  and  sound  finance 
through  a  panic.  Moreover,  it  is  difficult 
to  estimate  the  blow  which  his  nomina- 
tion will  give  the  general  faith  in  popular 
government.  Few  of  those  who  are  **hol- 
lering"  for  McKinley  know  anything 
whatever  about  his  connection  with  the 
tariff — know  whether  he  drew  it,  or  even 
understood  it — or  could  tell  in  what  man- 
ner he  is  "  Prosperity's  Advance  Agent," 
any  more  than  if  they  were  bom  in  Cala- 
bria. They  are  bringing  no  more  intelli- 
gence to  the  work  of  government  than 
Russians  or  Moroccans.  Think  of  the 
effect  of  this  on  owners  of  gold,  on  pru- 
dent fathers,  guardians,  and  trustees. 


WHAT  THEY  DO  AT  ALBANY. 

Thx  Legislature  at  Albany  usually  sits 
about  four  months,  but  the  time  occu- 
pied by  the  session  bears  comparatively 
little  relation  to  the  bulk  of  legislation 
turned  out.  As  little  or  no  time  is  now 
occupied  in  debate,  and  measures  are 
generally  prepared  not  in  it,  but  for  it — 


in  New  York  or  elsewhere— by  those  who 
desire  legislation,  more  measures  can 
now  be  got  through  the  legislative  mill 
than  formerly  in  the  same  time.  In 
three  or  four  months  the  Legislature 
formerly  turned  out  a  single  volume  of 
laws;  last  year  it  turned  out  three. 
There  is  a  significant  parallelism  (which 
unquestionably  is  a  matter  of  cause  and 
effect)  between  the  periodp  of  swollen 
legislation  at  Albany  and  those  of  domi- 
nant corruption  and  Boss  government 
A  mere  glance  at  the  volumes  as  they 
stand  in  order  on  the  shelves  of  any  law 
library  will  serve  to  show  this.  Until 
1866,  we  find  the  session  laws  almost  in- 
variably comprised  in  a  single  volume. 
As  the  Tweed  Ring  rises  to  the  height  of 
its  power  the  tide  of  legislation  begins  to 
rise  with  it.  From  1866  to  1872  it  re- 
quires two  volumes  a  year  to  contain  the 
laws  passed  at  Albany;  after  1872  the 
effect  of  the  reform  movement  against  the 
ring  begins  to  be  felt,  and  after  1874  that 
of  the  new  constitutional  restrictions 
upon  the  power  of  the  Legislature  adopted 
in  that  year,  stopping  special  legislation 
of  certain  kinds,  and  giving  the  Governor 
power  to  veto  separate  items  in  appropri- 
ation bills,  an^  the  session  laws  present 
for  several  years  a  very  shrunken  appear- 
ance. In  1878,  although  the  Legislature 
sat  until  May  15,  only  418  laws  were 
passed,  comprised  in  a  volume  of  610 
pages. 

Quite  as  apparent  as  the  relation  be- 
tween the  bulk  of  legislation  and  boss 
government  is  that  between  its  bulk  and 
the  exercise  of  the  veto  power  at  Albany. 
In  1874  a  constitutional  amendment  was 
adopted  providing  that  no  bill  should  be- 
come a  law  after  the  Legislature  had  ad- 
journed unless  approved  by  the  Qover- 
nor  within  thirty  days,  and  giving  power 
to  veto  separate  items  appropriating  mo- 
ney, while  approving  other  portions  of  the 
same  bill.  The  years  from  1874  until  1876, 
when  Tilden  was  (Governor,  and  from  1876 
to  1879,  when  Lucius  Robinson  was  (gov- 
ernor, were  all  one-volume  years.  They 
were  followed  by  A.  B.  Cornell,  and  the 
legislation  of  the  next  three  years  is  com- 
prised in  two  volumes  for  each  year. 
Cleveland  followed,  and  legislation  again 
shrank  to  one  volume,  and  so  remained 
even  under  Hill,  the  legislation  during 
his  term  of  office  having  been  mainly 
Republican  and  opposed  to  Tammany  le- 
gislators sent  up  trom  New  York.  The 
veto,  too,  was  still  feared  under  Hill.  It 
was  in  1881  that  R.  P.  Flower  appeared 
on  the  scene  as  an  agent  of  the  new  Tam- 
many. In  1892,  1893,  and  1894  we  go 
back  to  two  volumes  ;  in  1894  Piatt  comes 
into  power,  and  in  1895,  for  the  first  time 
in  the  history  of  the  SUte,  the  legislation 
of  the  State  appears  in  three  large  vol- 
umes of  over  1,000  pages  each.  The  laws 
passed  this  year  have  not  yet  been  print- 
ed ;  it  ought  to  be  a  three-volume  year. 

Few  people  will  be  ready  to  believe  that 
the  public  business  of  the  State  has  in- 
creased so  much  in  the  last  ten  years  that 


374= 


Tlie    Nation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  161 1 


we  itand  in  need  of  three  or  four  times  as 
much  legislation  now  as  then,  especially 
as  there  are  some  twenty  or  thirty  perma- 
nent boards  or  heads  of  departments,  such 
as  the  Board  of  Health,  the  Superintend- 
ent of  Public  Works,  and  the  Railroad 
Commissioners,  which  transact  public 
business  ipso  facto  removed  from  the 
control  of  the  Legislature,  and  when,  too, 
the  Constitution  has  considerably  re- 
stricted the  power  to  enact  special  legisla- 
tion. What  is  it,  then,  with  which  the 
Legislature  occupies  itself  every  year 
for  three  or  four  months,  and  which,  un- 
checked, produces  such  an  enormous  and 
increasing  body  of  legislation?  We  ought 
to  find  out  if  we  can,  for  any  such  annual 
dose  means  increased  expense  and  unne- 
cessary and  annoying  interference  with 
every  one's  life,  liberty,  property,  and 
happiness  by  a  body  which  every  one 
dreads. 

To  answer  this  question  we  have  taken 
a  year  when  legislation  was  at  its  mini- 
mum, and  examined  the  result  to  see,  so 
far  as  possible,  what  it  was  that  occupied 
the  time  and  attention  of  the  Legislature. 
The  year  1878  is  a  good  year  for  the  pur- 
pose. The  Governor  exercised  the  veto 
power  with  proper  strictness ;  the  Legis- 
lature was  a  better  body,  too,  than  it  is 
now — the  wave  of  reform  which  had 
swept  the  Tweed  Ring  out  of  existence 
having  had  an  effect  even  upon  the  mem- 
bers at  Albany. 

The  analysis  shows  that  the  main  work 
of  the  Legislature  at  its  best  still  consists, 
notwithstanding  the  constitutional  re- 
strictions of  1874,  of  special  acts  arrang- 
ing, managing,  and  interfering  with  the 
affairs  of  persons,  corporations,  cities, 
towns,  villages,  and  counties,  all  over  the 
State,  not  on  any  general  plan  of  legisla- 
tion at  all,  but  without  any  plan  what- 
ever, and  unquestionably  in  the  main  in 
response  to  the  private  solicitation  of  poli- 
ticians, lobby  bts,  and  others  applying  for 
legislation  as  a  matter  of  favor.  These 
acts  go  by  the  name  of  legislation,  but 
they  are  not  in  reality  legislative.  They 
establish  no  rule  of  action  governing  the 
relations  of  persons  to  one  another,  in  re- 
spect to  the  State,  or  to  property,  con- 
tract, life,  liberty,  or  family,  and  in  fact 
no  general  rules  of  any  kind.  They  give 
money  to  A,  grant  to  B  the  right  to  estab- 
lish a  ferry,  relieve  C  from  the  operation 
of  a  law,  authorize  the  city  of  New  York 
to  establish  a  park,  determine  how  the 
city  of  Brooklyn  shall  pay  for  the  repave- 
ment  of  an  avenue,  authorize  its  Common 
Council  to  &x  the  proper  cost  of  a  sewer 
and  pay  John  McCloskey  for  it,  give  the 
village  of  Athens  the  right  to  leaee  its 
ferry  property,  etc.  Three- quarters  of  the 
work  of  the  year  consists  of  acts  of  this 
sort,  and  one-hal/ot  it  relates  to  cities, 
towns,  villages,  counties,  and  corpora- 
tions.  All  these  acts  are  oulmde  the 
limits  of  activity  drawn  by  the  constitu- 
tional restrictioDe  of  1874.  Special  legisla- 
tion within  this  field  has  ceased.  Outside 
of  it,  it  TUDS  greater  riot  than  ever. 


We  have  not  thought  it  worth  while  to 
analyze  the  laws  of  1896,  because  the  out- 
side of  the  volumes  and  the  index  are 
enough,  without  any  analysis.  *'  Other 
than  general  laws"  is  the  euphemistic 
description  officially  given  to  the  whole  of 
volumes  ii.  and  iii.  Some  150  of  them  re- 
late to  this  city,  more  than  a  page  of 
titles  in  the  index  to  Brooklyn,  125  chap- 
ters or  so  to  cities  other  than  New  York 
or  Brooklyn ;  nearly  two  pages  of  titles  to 
corporations,  a  page  to  towns,  another  to 
villages. 

There  is  only  one  way  to  remedy  these 
evils,  and  the  diagnosis  of  the  disease 
shows  what  it  is.  Special  legislation  must 
be  still  further  restricted,  and  especially 
the  power  of  the  Legislature  to  manage 
the  affairs  of  every  city,  county,  town, 
village,  and  business  corporation  must  be 
taken  away  by  the  Constitution  itself. 
That  the  Legislature  will  ever  cut  down 
its  own  powers  is  a  mere  dream.  The  mo- 
ment this  is  done  the  volume  of  legisla- 
tion will  shrink  again,  and  it  will  be  found 
that  the  needed  work  of  the  Legislature 
can  be  got  through  by  a  session  once 
every  two  years  at  the  utmost  Mean- 
while it  is  absolutely  necessary  that  a 
Qovernor  be  elected  who  will  use  the  veto 
power. 

Illinois  resembles  New  Tork  in  having  a 
great  commercial  and  manufacturing 
capital,  while  the  government  is  carried 
on  at  a  political  capital  in  another  part  of 
the  State.  It  is,  like  New  York,  a  popu- 
lous State,  and  is  filled  with  a  great  va- 
riety of  industries  of  all  kinds,  carried  on 
by  corporations.  It  is  also  full  of  politics 
and  corruption,  and  contains  what  is  com- 
monly known  as  the  great  wicked  city  of 
Chicago.  In  1869  its  annual  product  of 
laws  was  printed  in  four  volumes,  of 
which  three  were  made  up  of  private 
acts.  In  1870  the  Constitution  was 
amended  by  restricting  the  power  of  the 
Legislature  to  pass  private  laws,  in  every 
possible  way.  Among  the  provisions  were 
clauses  prohibiting  special  acts  *' regulat- 
ing county  and  township  affairs,  incorpo- 
rating cities,  towns,  or  villages,"  or 
amending  their  charters,  forbidding  the 
creation  of  business  corporations  or  any 
alteration  of  their  charters,  except  by  ge- 
neral laws,  aod  finally  forbidding  the 
paeeage  of  apy  special  act  in  any  case  in 
which  a  general  law  could  be  made  appli- 
cable. We  have  aclanee  in  our  Gonatitu- 
tion  adopted  for  the  same  purpose,  but  it 
ia  nufratory,  because  it  leaves  the  whole 
q  neat  ion  whether  a  general  act  is  appli- 
cable, not  to  the  courts,  but  to  the  Legis- 
lature itaelf,  to  determine.  Such  a  pro- 
viflioD  IB  of  no  value. 

The  conrta  it  is  which,  applying  these 
provisions,  can  cure  the  complaint,  be- 
cause proviaiona  of  this  sort,  adopted  in 
Illinois,  moat  thoroughly  put  the  whole 
matter  in  tbe  handd  of  the  judges.  Laws 
such  aa  are  prohibited  may  be  passed,  but 
the  courts  treat  them  aa  null,  and  no  one 
has  an  interest  to  procure  teglalation 
which  has  no  effect*     And  now  mark  the 


result  The  laws  of  Illinois  at  the  next 
session  after  the  adoption  of  the  Constitu- 
tion of  1870  shrank  to  one  volume;  from 
that  time  to  this  they  have  remained  in 
one  volume  of  the  size  of  an  ordioary 
pamphlet.  The  whole  legislation  of  Illi- 
nois for  twenty  years  is  no  greater  in  bulk 
than  the  legislation  of  New  York  woold 
be  in  three  such  years  as  18d5.  We  haTe 
liefore  us  the  volume  for  1895.  It  con- 
tains 350  pages,  almost  all  of  generallegis- 
lation.  Under  the  head  of  cities,  towns, 
and  villages  there  are  sixteen  referenoM 
in  the  index;  under  counties,  two;  under 
corporations,  five;  under  the  head  of  Chi- 
cago not  one,  and  yet  the  Legislatnn 
meeta  only  once  in  two  years. 


LITERARY  PROPERTY  ONCE  MORE, 

Ths  question  of  international  copyright 
has  come  up  again  of  late  in  several  wayi. 
Action  was  for  a  time  threatened  in  Con- 
gress, retracing  the  few  and  faltering 
steps  we  took  in  1891  towards  recognition 
of  the  rights  of  foreign  authors ;  but  the 
mischief  is  averted,  for  the  present  session 
at  least.  Triumphant  McKinley ism  would 
doubtless  mean  a  frank  and  brutal  return 
to  the  old  piratical  methods  ;  the  foreign 
artist,  writer,engraver,  musician  becoming 
again  as  truly  our  natural  enemies  and  law- 
ful prey  as  the  foreign  manufacturer.  Then 
there  is  the  threat  of  the  new  Canadian 
copyright  law,  to  which  imperial  asseot 
has  not  as  yet  been  given.  This  law  is  mo- 
delled rather  loosely  upon  our  own — in  some 
respects  it  is  more  generous  to  the  foreign 
author;  but  its  aim  ia  substantially  the 
same,  viz.,  to  compel  the  publication  in 
Canada  of  new  books  sold  in  Canada,  no 
matter  where  they  are  written.  It  is  the 
manufacture  of  books  that  the  Canadian 
printers  are  bent  upon  securing  as  a  mo- 
nopoly, just  as  it  was  the  manufacture  of 
books  that  our  copyright  reformers  had  to 
concede  to  Aiflerican  publishers  in  order 
to  get  any  bill  at  all  in  189L 

Mr.  Henry  C.  Lea  declares,  in  a  letter 
to  Gk>ldwin  Smith  (which  the  latter  for- 
warded to  the  London  Times)^  that  this 
proposed  Canadian  law  is  one  '*of  false 
pretences."  This  does  not  refer  to  the 
convenient  assumption  made  by  the  Cana- 
dian publishera  that  they  have  only  tl^a 
good  of  Canadian  "  labor  **  at  heart*  Out 
publishers,  Mr,  Lea'e  firm  among  them, 
made  the  aame  aaaumption,  with  at  lea^t 
equal  sincerity.  The  thing  really  aimed 
at,  affirms  Mr*  Lea,  is  the  building  up  of 
an  immense  contrabanr]  trade  over  the 
Canadian  border.  The  book- trade  id  Ci- 
oada  is  too  small  an  affair  to  be  struggled 
for  with  this  Bospicious  oagerness;  *^  it  is 
the  market  of  the  United  States  that  ii 
really  kept  in  view/*  This  it  is  which 
makes  the  Canadian  bill  so  aerbus  a 
"  threat "  to  EngUah  interests.  Why  90^ 
Why  J  American  "  labor/' asserts  Mr.  Le*, 
will  at  once  rise  up  and  sweep  away  our 
own  law  of  1891»  In  other  worJe.  the 
eight  of  Bueceasful  piracy  and  smu^li&f 
will  be  tQO  much  for  us,  and  we  shall  m- 


May  14,  1896] 


The    !N"atioiLc 


875 


•iat  00  haying  a  ihare  of  them  ounelTes. 
Or,  to  put  the  matter  in  another  way,  we 
thought  we  had  cleTerly  got  a  monopoly 
of  **  English  intereate "  in  the  pub- 
liahing  way»  but,  if  the  greedy  Cana- 
diana  are  going  to  stick  their  fingers  in 
the  pie,  we  shall  give  up  our  slight  pre- 
tence of  decency,  in  the  law  of  1891,  and 
openly  hoist  the  black  flag  again. 

What  the  rest  of  the  civilised  world 
thinks  of  our  boasted  international  copy- 
right law  of  1891  may  be  seen  by  the  al- 
lusions to  it  at  the  International  Literary 
Conference  lately  convened  at  Paris.  The 
United  States  is  still  classed  with  Russia 
as  the  two  great  countries  which  are  bar- 
barian in  the  matter  of  refusing  adequate 
international  copyright.  This  is  because 
neither  country  will  unreservedly  accept 
the  Berne  conveotion,  thus  placing  lite- 
rary property  on  the  same  basis  as  other 
property  in  private  international  law,  and 
making  the  rights  and  protection  of 
authors  entirely  reciprocal,  among  the 
agreeing  nations.  Our  law  of  1891  is  thus 
described  by  Zola,  who,  if  any  writer  in  a 
fbreign  language,  should  be  in  a  position 
to  profit  by  it:  "In  the  United  SUtes 
there  is,  it  is  true,  a  kind  of  convention 
which  gives  protection  to  the  works  of 
foreigners,  but  under  such  complicated 
conditions,  and  through  the  observance 
of  such  vexatious  formalities,  that  it  is 
practically  inoperative.*'  If  we  really 
want  to  range  ourselves  alongside  the  edu- 
cated world  in  the  proper  recognition  of 
literary  property,  the  thing  for  us  to  do  is 
to  give  in  our  adherence  to  the  Berne  con- 
vention. That  is  what  the  delegates  to 
the  Paris  Conference  say.  That  is  what 
we  think  our  own  cop3rright  reformers 
will  have  to  come  to.  Certainly  our  pres- 
ent position  isoneof  unstable  equilibrium. 
The  Treloar  bill  and  Mr.  Lea's  warning  in 
the  name  of  the  labor  organizations  show 
OS  that  the  barbarians  will  not  let  us 
keep  in  peace  the  little  we  have  won.  If 
we  have  to  make  the  fight  over  again,  as 
we  almost  surely  shall,  we  may  as  well 
fight  to  secure  a  full  suit  of  civilized 
clothes,  instead  of  putting  up  with  a  silk 
hat  and  caoe,  to  go  with  our  blanket  and 
moccasins. 

Zola  maintains,  with  justice,  that  the 
root  of  the  trouble  is  really  a  failure  to 
believe  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
literary  property  at  all.  He  says  he  has 
talked  with  educated  Russians  who  seem 
high-minded  and  clear-sighted  on  every 
subject  except  this ;  but  the  moment  you 
begin  to  argue  with  them  that  a  foreigner 
is  just  as  much  entitled  to  protection  from 
the  laws  for  his  book  or  play  as  he  is  for 
his  wine  or  silk,  they  shy  off  and  smile  at 
yon  curiously:  this  is  really  going  too  far. 
Ton  seem  to  them  an  amiable  but  unintel- 
ligible enthusiast  They  have  no  concep- 
tion of  literary  property  as  a  legal  thing, 
an  entity,  an  affair  to  make  statutes  and 
treaties  about.  It  is  ooly  a  kind  of  make- 
believe  property.  This  amused  and  con- 
-  descending  air,  on  the  part  of  legislators, 
in  dealing  with  authora  and  artists,  this 


entire  failure  to  grasp  the  idea  of  a  lite- 
rary or  artistic  product  as  property,  we 
see  of  course  to  be  the  true  explanation 
of  all  such  compromising  shifts  as  our 
copyright  law  of  189L 

It  is  tiresome  work  going  over  the  tedi- 
ous old  fallacies  on  this  subject.  But 
there  is  one  of  them,  connected  with  the 
eye  single  to  the  manufacture,  as  distinct 
from  the  writing,  of  books,  that  is  set  in 
stronger  light  with  the  passing  of  every 
year.  This  is  the  fancy  that  authors  and 
artists  differ  from  all  other  producers  in 
being  loftily  unselfish,  in  not  requiring 
the  ordinary  motives  of  gain  to  induce 
them  to  labor.  That  is  to  say,  they  are 
supposed  to  be  bursting  with  great 
thoughts  and  fine  ideals  which  they  must 
give  to  the  world,  whether  the  world  gives 
them  hard  cash  in  return  or  not.  This 
conception  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  the 
<*  manufacture-clauses."  Authors  are 
bound  to  write  anyhow;  so  let  us  make 
them  get  their  printing  done  on  our  own 
terms.  But  the  class  that  lives  by  author- 
ship, pure  and  simple,  is  amazingly  small 
in  every  country.  The  vast  majority  of 
literary  producers  earn  their  daily  bread 
by  producing  something  else.  If  you  cut 
down  their  profits  by  literature,  yon  are 
not  going  to  compel  them  to  produce  more 
literature  to  make  up,  but  more  of  the 
something  else.  **  Why  are  yon  so  silent?" 
asked  Catherine  II.  of  Russia,  addressing 
the  taciturn  Spanish  Ambassador.  '*  Ma- 
dame," was  his  reply,  **  in  my  country  men 
who  speak  are  burnt"  Something  like 
that  will  be  the  answer  of  authors  to  the 
manufacture-clause  logic.  In  the  long 
run,  writers  who  are  pirated  or  mulcted 
for  writing,  will  not  write. 


PARTY  POLITICS  IN  JAPAN. 

Tokyo,  April  16, 1806. 

Ths  definite  alliance  between  the  Govern- 
ment and  the  Jiyoto  has  done  more  for  the 
■olidiflcation  of  political  parties  in  Japan  than 
any  other  event  since  the  adoption  of  the  Con- 
•titution.  It  has  been  a  long  and  aocertain 
work  to  pat  order  into  the  chaos,  bat  at  last 
there  are  signs  that  the  aimless  straggle  of  the 
past  few  years  is  ended,  and  that  parties  will 
now  move  forward  with  definite  porposee. 
The  more  liberal  ministers  of  state  clearly  re- 
cognise the  new  political  conditions  under 
which  the  Government  is  placed;  and  even  the 
conservative  ministers,  by  th^  opposition, 
show  how  much  they  fear  that  the  old  ideal  of 
an  iodependeot  Cabinet  is  doomed. 

Early  in  January  the  members  of  the  Par- 
liamentary Opposition  (there  was  then  no  Op 
position  partj)  introduced  an  address  to  the 
throne  making  the  present  ministers  respon- 
sible for  the  retrocession  of  the  Liaotang  Penin- 
sula and  the  failure  of  Japim's  Corean  policy. 
It  was  pretty  clearly  seen  that  this  measure 
woald  not  pass,  inasmuch  as  the  National 
UDionists— a  feeble  body,  yet  holding  the  ba- 
lance of  power— had  determined  to  unite  with 
the  Jiyato  on  this  occasion  in  support  of  the 
Government  The  address  was  defeated  by  a 
heavy  majority  <170  to  103),  but  the  Opposition 
members  were  not  disheartened  by  their  failure, 
as  they  clearly  saw  that  many  of  those  who 
voted  with  the  Government  were  in  reality  as 


bitter  opponents  of  the  Governments  policy 
as  they  themselves,  and,  but  for  pressure  from 
certain  leaders,  would  have  gladly  Joined  the 
Opposition. 

The  defeat  of  the  address  added  stimulos  to 
the  revival  of  the  long*  discussed  question  of 
establishing  a  united  Opposition  party.  Two 
difficulties  have  stood  in  the  way  of  this  union : 
the  first,  the  selection  of  a  new  name  for  the 
party;  and  the  second,  the  question  of  leader- 
ship. The  Kaishinto— the  oldest,  most  power- 
ful, and  intelligent  of  the  Opposition  psjrties— 
wished  to  sacrifice  neither  its  name  nor  its 
preeminence.  Except  for  the  most  pressing 
necessity,  this  organisation  would  have  pre- 
ferred its  old  rdle  of  being  a  wrecker  of  parlia- 
ments to  losiog  its  title  and  importance.  Even 
the  successful  move  of  the  Jiyuto  in  Joining 
forces  with  the  Government,  though  it  an- 
doabtedly  caused  a  renewal  of  the  cry  for  the 
union  of  the  Opposition  parties,  did  not  at 
onoe  overcome  the  prejudices  of  the  Kaishlnto 
leaders.  A  new  event,  however,  added  seal  to 
the  partisans  of  such  a  union.  On  the  llth  of 
February  occurred  the  Corean  coup  dPitat,  re- 
sulting in  the  overthrow  of  the  former  pro- 
Japanese  Cabinet.  The  murder  of  two  of  the 
old  ministers  by  the  new  Corean  (Government, 
the  attacks  in  varioos  parts  of  Corea  upon 
Japanese  soldiers  and  residents,  and  the  entire 
suppression  for  a  time  of  the  pro-Japiuiese 
party,  caused  a  deep  feeling  of  resentment 
in  Japan.  It  was  generally  felt  that  Marquis 
Ito  was  tamely  submitting  to  insult  in  his  en- 
deavor merely  to  keep  the  peace  with  foreign 
Powers.  In  Parliament  several  members  of 
the  Opposition  arraigned  the  Government  as 
utterly  weak,  blundering,  and  faithless.  Fi- 
nally a  leading  member  of  the  National  Union- 
ists (Mr.  Sassa)  introduced  a  resolution  declar- 
ing that  the  Government  did  not  deserve  the 
confidence  of  the  nation.  In  this  resolution  all 
the  mistakes  of  the  Government  daring  the 
past  nine  months  were  detailed,  and  special 
stress  was  laid  upon  the  failore  of  Japan's 
policy  in  Corea. 

The  Opposition  parties  were  delighted  at  this 
turn  of  aJQTairs.  At  last  they  were  to  secure 
the  adhesion  of  the  National  Unionists,  without 
whose  aid  all  possitde  assaults  on  the  Govern- 
ment must  fafi.  The  no-confldence  resolution 
was  not  even  urg^  by  the  anti- Government 
members;  it  was  the  voluntary  contribution 
of  a  party  whose  declared  position  was  that, 
though  not  wholly  in  agreement  with  the 
Government,  they  would  sustain  it  in  all  im- 
portant financial  measures.  Their  feelings 
were  now  so  strong  as  to  break  through  every 
boundary  of  prudence  or  silence.  The  resolu- 
tion woiJd  certainly  have  passed  the  House  if 
it  had  oome  to  a  vote  on  the  day  it  was  intro- 
daced;  but  Just  before  the  vote  was  taken,  in 
fact  while  a  member  was  on  the  rostrum  en- 
gaged in  showing  up  the  mistakes  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, an  imperial  rescript  arrived  ordering 
a  suspension  of  Parliament  for  ten  days.  And 
now  ensued  one  of  those  changes  so  character- 
istic of  Japanese  politics.  The  Cabinet  used 
the  ten  days*  interviU  in  palling  the  wires  so 
deftly  that,  at  the  end  of  that  time,  the 
National  Unionists  sgreed  to  withdraw  their 
reeolutkm.  How  this  was  accomplished  is 
not  oertainly  known,  but  it  is  probable  that 
certain  ministers  of  the  present  Cabinet,  who 
have  been  ideotifled  with  the  National  Union- 
ists, were  requested  to  use  all  their  efforts  to 
stop  the  anti- Government  demonstration  of 
that  party.  At  any  rate,  at  a  meeting  of  the* 
parliamentary  members  of  the  party  held  sooo 
after  the  issue  of  the  rescript,  ViMX>ant  Bhins- 
gaws,  their  leader,  stated  that  political  con- 


376 


Tlie    N^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 1 


ditioDB  in  the  East  were  too  delicate  and  com- 
plicated to  permit  his  giring  his  aoent  to  the 
passing  of  the  resolution,  and  he  requested 
the  members  to  withdraw  it  as  soon  as  Parlia- 
ment resumed  its  sitting.  This  was  a  bitter 
dose  to  a  party  which  boasted  that  it  was  the 
most  consistent  of  all  political  organisations 
in  the  country,  and  it  is  said  that  some  of  the 
members  of  tbb  National  Unionists  felt  so 
humiliated  that  they  withdrew  from  the 
party. 

However,  on  the  26th,  when  Parliament  re- 
assembled, notice  was  given  by  Mr.  Sassa  that 
he  wished  to  withdraw  the  resolution  he  had 
introduced.     The  Jiyuto  members  now  had 
their  opportunity.    They  saw  that  if  they  op- 
posed the  withdrawal,  they  would  have  the 
support  of  the  Opposition  parties,  and,  when 
the  resolution  came  to  a  vote,  they  could  count 
on  the  support  of  the  very  members  who  had 
first  moved  it;  they  carried  out  this  manoeuvre 
with  complete  success,  and  the  National  Union- 
ists, who  had  enthusiastically  brought  forward 
the  resolution,  were  now  forced  to  eat  their 
own  words  by  voting  against  it.     Their  hu- 
miliation  was  thus  complete.    Not  even  the 
organs  of  the  Qovermnent  or  of  their  own 
party  spared  their  ridicule.    On  the  other  hand, 
the  defeat  of  their  resolution  removed  the  last 
obstacle  in  the  way  of  an  amalgamation  of  the 
Opposition  parties.    They  had  been  gradually 
learning  the  lesson  that  they  could  not  hope  to 
coDomand  a  strong  following  In  the  country  so 
long  as  each  party  retained  its  independent 
organization.    Their  second  defeat  in  this  par- 
liamentary session  only  emphasised  their  weak- 
ness.   All  the  Opposition  parties  agreed  to  dis- 
solve  their  respective  organisations  and  to  es- 
tablish  a  new  party  with  a  new  name,    Tbi» 
was  called   the   Shimpoto,  or  ProgreasLoaiBt 
party;  and  the  Kaishinto,  while  sac ri Doing  « 
title  under  which  it  has  fought  many  battte$s 
kept  as  much  of  its  prestige  as  possible  by  adopU 
ing  a  new  name  in  substance  similar  to  the  for- 
mer one.    On  the  Ist  of  March  a  celebratioD 
was  held  in  honor  of  the  consununatlon  of  thb 
political  event.    The  new  party  dai  ms  at  le««t 
103  members  of  Parliament— 51  of  the  former 
Kaishinto,  38  Ck)nstitutional  Reformers,  6  Ot^ 
Club,  6  Chugoku  Progressionists,  8  Financial 
Reformers,  and  5  Independents.    The  3  h  Im  pot>o 
ia  therefore  but  little  weaker  than  tbti  Jijuto. 
In  the  manifesto  issued  soon  after  i^  organixa* 
tion  the  new  party  holds  to  the  foUo^ring  pro- 
gramme: 

**Our  party  intends  to  introduce  the  system 
of  responsible  cabinets  by  the  steady  pursuit 
of  progressive  priociples ;  to  assert  the  nation- 
al rights  bv  remodelling  the  Empire  s  foreign 
policy ;  and  to  manage  the  national  finances 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  encourage  tbe  dereloi^ 
ment  of  industry  and  commerce— in  short,  U> 
attain  the  realitv  of  constitutional  gov^ern- 
ment,  thus  completing  the  grand  work  of  tbe 
Restoration,  enhancing  the  dignity  of  tbe  Im- 
perial Court,  and  promoting  the  rights  and 
welfare  of  the  people.*' 

In  regard  to  the  leadership  of  the  new  party, 
much  interest  has  been  expressed,  but  notblng 
thus  far  has  been  made  known  to  the  public. 
It  is  more  than  likely,  however,  that  Count 
Okuma  will  retain  his  position  as  chief  ad  vip- 
er and  director  of  the  new  party,  as  he  was  of 
the  Kaishinto.  His  experience  and  ability  are 
universally  acknowledged.  He  has  twi(?©  been 
a  cabinet  minister,  and  is  thoroughly  familiar 
with  the  details  of  practical  govern  men  t^^n 
advantage  shared  by  none  of  the  other  teftders 
of  the  party.  He  has  a  capacity  for  p^rty 
management  (a  doubtful  virtue,  perhaps)  iu 
many  ways  superior  to  that  of  any  one  In  the 
group  of  statesmen  who  have  been  prominent 


in  the  Meyi  era.  Moreover,  he  has  a  certain 
popularity  even  outside  of  the  limits  of  his  old 
party,  especially  with  independent  voters  who 
cannot  identify  themselves  with  his  party,  yet 
would  like  to  see  him  restored  to  power. 

The  whole  political  situation  at  present  in 
Japan  is  distinctly  better  than  has  yet  existed. 
Two  powerful  parties  dispute  the  field,  while 
the  small  remaining  third  party,  though  now 
holding  the  balance  of  power,  cannot  hope  to 
do  so  much  longer.  The  Government  is  ad- 
mittedly depending  on  the  support  of  one  of 
these  parties.  It  can  scarcely  hope  to  remain 
in  power  when  that  support  is  withdrawn.  It 
has  been  said  that  the  question  of  appointing 
ministers  of  state  was  purposely  left  vague  in 
the  Constitution  in  order  that  it  might  be  set- 
tled by  the  conflict  of  political  opinion.  It  was 
held  that  political  parties  must  assert  and 
educate  themselves  so  as  to  establish  their 
claim  to  recognition  by  the  Government.  Only 
in  this  way  could  they  acquire  the  requisite 
capacity  for  conducting  government  by  party. 
If  the  founders  of  the  Constitution,  of  whom 
Marquis  Ito  was  chief,  looked  so  far  into  the 
future  as  this  view  would  indicate,  they  mutt 
acknowledge  that  the  period  of  preparation  is 
now  coming  to  an  end.  They  must  see  that  the 
days  of  the  Satcho  cabinets  are  nearly  ended, 
and  the  day  of  party  cabinets  approaching. 
Even  the  most  recent  results  of  the  alliance  be- 
tween the  Government  and  Jiyuto  proTe  that 
this  change  is  expected.  As  a  reward  for  the 
serrices  of  the  Jiyuto  during  the  present  ses- 
sion. Count  Itagaki  has  just  been  admitted  to 
the  Cabinet  as  Minister  of  Home  Affairs. 
That  such  a  distinction  should  now  fall  to  a 
Radical,  and  a  leader  of  the  Jiyuto  who  has 
criticised  the  present sy^itena  of  government  in 
Japan  for  over  twenty  yearst,  would  be  an  ah 
surdity  if  tbe  m  in  Liters  of  the  Crovrn  were  nofe 
ready  to  contmagi  tbat  tbe  old  system  was  inde- 
fensible. And  Count  Itagaki,  honored  and 
even  loved  as  be  is  In  Japans  would  forfeit  all 
the  respect  be  has  gained  if  he  could  not  show 
that  bis  position  wa«  eesenliatly  diiferent  from 
what  it  would  have  been  bod  he  accepted  office 
ten  year*  ago*  Q,  D, 


BARRAS'S  MEMOIRS.-V. 

Fabis.  April  m,  im\. 

Two  new  volumes  of  the  Memoirn  of  Barras 
have  appeared/  the  two  last,  and  complete  what 
is  to  be  remembered  of  tbe  political  career  of 
tbe  Terrorifit  Viscount  de  Barras,  who  left  tbe 
political  stage  when  he  was  stiil  young  and  in 
full  possession  of  all  hiii  faculties.  He  disap- 
peared in  tbe  movement;  which  he  had  himself 
prepared^  before  Bonaparte,  whom  he  always 
considered  bis  own  creation. 

The  third  voiurae  extends  from  the  coup 
d'Mat  of  tbe  18th  Fmctidorj  year  v.  (Septem- 
ber 4,  17^7),  to  that  of  the  IStb  Brumaire,  year 
viii.  (November  9,  1799).  The  ttrst  coup  d^dlat 
may  be  said  to  have  been  father  to  the  second : 
abyssus  abyMUm  tocat.  It  was  essentially  the 
work  of  Barras.  Oen.  Bonaparte  htjlped  it  only 
at  a  distance;  he  was  then  in  Italy,  and  he  was 
caulioua  euough  to  do  bo  more  than  send  to 
the  Directory,  which  was  in  need  of  support 
Qgainsti  tbe  rising  reaction,  one  of  bis  lleut^- 
nante,  AugereaUj  a  coarae  and  brutal  soldier, 
who  hardly  understood  the  questions  at  issue 
between  the  two  fractions  of  the  Directory, 
and  between  tht*  Directory  nnl  the  Councils  of 
the  Ancients  and  of  the  Five  Hundred.  The 
history  of  the  co«p  dVftaJ!  of  Fructidor  has 


_  *  *  Memoln  df  Bsrriu,  MemtMir  of  Uiq  Dlrectenl^' 


often  been  told.  Three  of  the  Directors,  Bs^ 
ras,  Rewbell,  and  La  Revelli&re,  prepared  it 
wlUi  Augereau. 

"Midnight  strikes,"  says  Barras;  ^'Aoge. 
reau's  columns  are  put  in  motion.  It  is  ordered 
that  Camot  and  Barth^lemy  be  kept  imder 
guard  in  their  apartments.  Camot  had  tl- 
readv  fled  from  the  Luxembourg.  Atdayhgfat 
I  order  alarm  guns  to  be  fired;  the  greoadten 
of  the  Legislative  Body  embrace  the  troops  of 
the  line  and  fraternize  with  them.  Aoseresn 
had  drunk  a  little  champagne  to  brace  bimaelf, 
as  if  going  into  battle.  .  .  .  His  operatioDs 
frighten  the  conspirators;  the  Tuileriee  and  the 
halls  of  Assembly  of  the  Legislative  Body  sre 
closed:  guards  forbid  entrance  to  theai.  Th« 
Council  of  tbe  Five  Hundred  assembles  st  tbe 
Od6on  and  tbe  Ancients  at  the  Medical  School; 
they  declare  that  the  troops  and  tbe  Republi- 
cans have  deserved  well  of  the  country;  lawt 
popular  and  appropriate  to  the  situation  sre 
voted;  the  Deputies  who  had  conspired,  with 
Pichegru.  their  chief,  are  arrested.  ...  Not 
a  drop  of  blood  was  shed  on  this  memorable 
day,  which  saved  the  country." 

Camot  and  Bartb^lemy,  who  were  condemn- 
ed to  deportation,  were  replaced  iomiediately 
by  Merlin  and  Fran9ois  de  KeufchAtsau,  two 
of  the  ministers.  What  Barras  doss  not 
tell  us  is,  that  thirty-three  members  of  tbe 
councils  were  condemned  to  exile;  that  the 
laws  against  the  6migr^  were  again  put  hi 
force;  that  the  Directory  dishonored  its  victory 
by  many  acts  of  priTate  vengeance.  The  IStii 
Fructidor  was,  in  fact,  the  reSstablishment  of 
the  Reign  of  Terror,  only  in  a  milder  form; 
the  victims  were  not  taken  to  the  guillotixie, 
but  pent  to  Cayenne  or  to  Oleron. 

Talleyrand  was  one  of  the  most  ardent  rap- 
porters  of  the  coup  (T^tat  Bonaparte  wrote 
to  Augereau  September  28, 1797:  **The  whole 
army  has  applauded  the  wisdom  and  ener^ 
you  showed  on  tbi»  essentia)  occasion:  i^  hu 
taken  its  |>art  in  tbe  success  of  the  country 
with  characteristic  enthusiasm  and  eoerg;.^ 
Augereau  had  boped  that  the  coupd^i^toi  wouM 
be  the  end  of  tbe  Directory.  **  Have  we  faid* 
the  1 8th  Fructidor  for  nothing  ?^^  said  he  to 
everybody,  ^*  What  does  Barr&a  mean  ?  Doei 
he  think  that  he  must  keep  bis  four  colleagues? 
Let  blfu  remain  alone  and  live  alone  in  tbe 
Ltijcembonrg.^^  Barrns^  who  was  aometinu^ 
ceiled  ironicall3*  KiDg  Barrat^,  tells  us  moc^estlj 
^*  that  he  was  frankly  RepubUean  and  had  not 
ceased  to  be  so.^^  He  thanked  Augereau  and 
R^al,  who  also  urged  him  to  take  the  whote 
power  iu  his  own  hands  ;  he  would  eveo  have 
\iB  believe  that  it  was  with  sentiments  ot  tbe 
greatest  regret  that  he  had  to  separate  himsftli 
from  Camot* 

Lafayette  bad  been  kept  in  the  prisons  of 
Auiitria  moce  IT92.  Mme.  de  Bta^l  cams  to  see 
Barras  after  Fructidor,  and^  as  some  negotrs- 
tlons  were  being  carried  on  at  the  timte  b^ 
tween  France  and  An&tria,  she  asked  him  to 
make  the  liberation  of  Lafayette  one  of  the  ar- 
ticles of  the  arrangement  which  was  in  pf^ 
paration,  *^You,  dear  Barras,  who  are  Dot 
made  of  ice,  who  have  a  soul  of  Provence^  sufh 
as  I  like,  I  address  myself  to  you.  *  .  .  Tmi 
must  restore  Lafayette  to  FYance,  to  the  Re- 
public.'^  The  question  was  discosaed  in  the 
Directory,  and  it  wa^  agreed  that  Bonaparte^ 
who  was  negotiating  in  Italy  with  AustTis, 
should  demand  the  liberation  of  Lafsy«tt?. 
**Bonapart&,"  say&  Barras^  "accepted  with 
much  satisfaction  the  mif^ion  which  we  gs^ 
him."  He  found  some  difficulty  in  the  vi^  »• 
9rlicB  which  is  the  onlinary  method  of  fki 
Austrian  policy,  but,  **  finally ,  Tarar*  Achnm 
gave  up  its  prey.** 

Napt^k^n  was  sent  by  the  Dtfoetorr  *»  ^ 
Ccmg^ress  of  Rastadt^  after  the  peai^  of  Canfp" 
Formio.     He   made    a    triumphal    pnofrav 


May  14,  1896] 


Tlie   ISTatlon, 


877 


throngh  SwitMriMid.  At  BAle  the  command- 
ant  of  Honlngue  made  him  a  tpeecb.  This 
Omieral  Duf  our,  who  had  hitherto  bean  knowo 
as  a  flaroe  RapubHoan,  said  to  Boiia|>arte:  **  I 
do  not  know  the  forms  of  oratory.  I  will  not 
compare  70a  to  Turenoe  or  to  Montecaccoli;  I 
will  merely  say,  Bonaparte  is  the  greatest 
mas  in  the  nniTerse.**  Bonaparte  was  aocom* 
panied  on  this  Journey  by  his  wife,  who  was 
eTerywhere  treated  as  a  queen. 

The  members  of  the  Directory  had  received 
the  papers  of  the  Count  d'Antraigues,  seised 
at  Venice  by  Bonaparte.  D'Antraiguee  (whose 
Life  has  recently  been  published)  was  at  the 
same  moment  agent  of  the  Emperor  of  Russia 
and  of  the  French  Princes.  In  the  letters 
sent  by  Bonaparte,  Pichegru  was  compro- 
mised ;  he  appeared  like  a  secret  agent  of  the 
Prince  de  Condd.  The  Directors  did  not 
know  exactly  what  to  think  of  these  papers. 
They  had  become  jealous  of  Bonaparte  and 
suspected  his  motives.  When  he  came  to 
Paris,  **all  parties  were  expecting  him,  and 
expected  something  of  him.'*  A  great  cere- 
mony took  place  to  celebrate  the  peace; 
the  Directors  charged  Talleyrand  to  present 
Bonaparte  to  themselves,  as  negotiator  of  the 
peace.  Talleyrand  praised  the  young  general, 
not  only  as  a  conqueror,  but  as  a  servant  of 
the  Revolution ;  he  praised  also  **  his  love  of 
antique  simplicity,  his  devotion  to  abstract 
science ;  he  spoke  of  his  favorite  reading,  of 
the  sublime  Ossian  with  whom  he  learned  to 
detach  himself  from  the  earth.  Talleyrand 
said,  with  his  grave,  serious,  and  solemn  air, 
what  many  of  the  spectators  could  not  hear  so 
seriously,  that  it  would  perhaps  be  necessary 
some  day  by  solicitation  to  tear  Bonaparte 
away  from  his  studious  retreat.^ 

Bonaparte  replied  in  an  entirely  different 
vein;  he  said  only  a  few  words,  and  ended  thus: 
'*  When  the  happiness  of  the  French  people  is 
founded  on  the  best  organic  laws,  Europe  will 
become  free."  What  were  those  best  organic 
laws  to  be  f  Bonaparte  did  not  say ;  the  Di- 
rectors and  the  spectators,  and  all  Frenchmen 
who  read  the  words  of  Bonaparte,  were  free 
to  maka  their  own  reflections  on  the  subject. 
In  that  *' retreat"  of  which  Talleyrand  spoke, 
Bonaparte  became  the  centre  of  innumerable 
intrigues.  He  was  too  active  to  remain  quite 
indifferent  to  them.  He  had  hoped  after  Fruo> 
tidor  to  be  made  himself  a  Director,  but  he  was 
too  young  for  the  post.  He  soon  felt  that  he 
had  better  leave  Paris,  which  was  a  hotbed  of 
intrigues,  and  asked  to  be  sent  to  Egypt. 

After  Fructidor,  Madame  de  Sta^L,  who  had 
obtained  the  erasure  of  her  father,  M.  Necker, 
from  the  list  of  the  ^oiigr^  claimed,  in  his 
name,  two  millions  which  Necker  had  lent  to 
the  King  in  1789,  but  which  he  had  really  lent 
to  the  nation.  These  two  millions  were  not 
paid  by  the  Directory,  and  the  majority  of  the 
Directors,  imagining  that  Madame  de  StsAl 
was  always  mixed  up  with  some  intrigues,  or. 
dared  her  to  leave  France,  as  they  had  a  right 
to  do,  since  she  was  a  foreigner.  Madame  de 
8taM  went  at  once  to  Barras,  and  he  gives  us 
the  details  of  this  interview  with  his  usual 
cynicism.  She  came  first  alone,  and  returned 
a  second  time  with  Benjamin  Constant,  **who 
was  still  sincerely  attached  to  a  woman  whoee 
celebrity  had  preceded  the  celebrity  which  he 
desired  for  himself.**  Ben jamin  Constant  wrote 
a  defence  of  Madame  de  StaAl  for  the  Directors 
(the  text  of  it  is  found  In  the  Memoirs),  and 
Madame  de  8ta«l  remained  in  Paris. 

On  the  anniversary  of  the  execution  of  Louis 
XVL  (January  21)  there  used  to  be  a  national 
festival.  The  first  had  taken  place  in  the  year 
Iv.,  just  before  the  dafwrtore  of  Boni^Muta  for 


Italy.  In  the  year  vt  be  found  himself  in 
Paris,  after  his  great  victories,  but  without  a 
political  or  military  post.  He  was  invited, 
however,  to  assist  in  the  ceremony.  Talley- 
rand transmitted  to  him  the  invitation: 

**  With  a  verv  cold  and  srave  air,  he  an- 
swered that  he  had  no  public  functions,  that 
he  had  personaUy  nothing  to  do  with  this  festi- 
val; tbat,  without  pretending  to  discuss 
whether  the  condemnation  of  Louis  XVI.  had 
been  useful  or  detrimental,  he  thought  it  an 
unfortunate  incident:  that  national  festivals 
were  celebrated  for  victories,  not  for  the  vic- 
tims left  on  the  l>attle-field.  Talleyrand  an- 
swered that  the  anniversary  festival  of  Janua- 
ry 21  was  just,  since  it  was  political;  that  it 
was  political,  since  all  countries  and  all  repub- 
lics had  celebrated  as  a  triumph  the  fail  of  ab- 
solute power  and  the  putting  to  death  of  ty- 
rants." 

A)Fter  some  discussion  it  was  resolved  that, 
as  the  Institute  was  going  to  this  festival, 
Bonaparte  should  go  as  a  member  of  that 
body.  Bonaparte  was  very  anxious  to  leave 
Paris;  he  constantly  spoke  to  the  Directors 
about  Egypt,  and  finally  obtained  permission 
to  form  an  army  in  Toulon,  and  a  fleet  was 
placed  at  his  disposal.  The  Directors  learned 
in  rapid  succession  the  news  of  the  seizure  of 
Malta,  of  Bonaparte's  victory  in  Egypt,  and 
of  the  defeat  of  the  French  fleet  at  Abukir. 

In  the  absence  of  Bonaparte,  it  seems  as  if 
Barras's  Journal  (for  his  memoirs  have  almost 
the  form  of  a  journal)  becomes  a  mere  account 
of  intrigues.  Fouch6  makea  his  appearance, 
and  his  influence  begins  to  be  felt.  After  the 
13th  Vend^miaire  Barras  had  given  Fouch6 
a  temporary  mission  in  the  departments  of  the 
Routh;  since  that  time,  Fouchd  had  bten  living 
almost  in  poverty  with  a  nun  whom  he  had 
married  (he  bad  himself  been  a  monk).  The 
Directors  helped  him  from  time  to  time  with 
a  little  money.  Barras  employed  him  as  a 
spy,  in  his  private  police,  and  Fouchd  soon 
became  important  to  him.  He  sent  him  to 
Italy,  with  the  title  of  chief  agent  of  the 
Directory.  Foucb6  began  his  fortune  there. 
He  entered  into  close  relations  with  Joubert, 
and  concealed  his  own  immorality  under  the 
high  reputation  of  that  generaL 

News  of  Bonapcute^s  death  in  an  insurrec 
tion  in  Egypt  arrived  one  day  at  Paris  by  way 
of  Geneva.  Mme.  Bonaparte  came  at  ooce  to 
the  Luxembourg,  and  asked  Barras  if  the  news 
was  ofScial.  It  was  not,  and  Barras  reassured 
his  friend  Mme.  Bonaparte,  who  had  found 
him  surrounded  with  many  people.  She  wish- 
ed to  speak  to  him  alone,  and  feigned  to  be  ill. 

**I  dismissed,'*  says  Barras,  **the  persons 
who  were  in  my  drawing-room,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  my  doctor,  Dufour.  He  entered 
with  me  an  adjacent  room,  where  Mme.  Bo- 
naparte had  retired.  We  found  her  more  calm, 
almost  smiling;  she  bad  with  my  doctor  the 
same  confidence  and  frankness  as  with  myself. 
Are  all  your  people  gone?    Are  you  free?* 


She  looked  round  in* an  uneasy  way. 

Bonaparte  has 
been  assassinated?'   '  I  believe  it«*  said  I.    'Ah  I 


'  Well,  Barras,  is  it  true  that  Bonap 


ah  I'  said  the,  *I  breathe.  Ah!  my  friend,  if 
it  is  so,  I  shall  not  be  so  unhappy  with  the  con- 
tinuation of  your  friendship.  People  have  t>e. 
liev^d  that  Bonaparte  was  in  love  with  me, 
that  he  married  me  for  this  reason;  he  is  a 
man  who  never  loved  any  one  but  himself, 
himself  alone;  he  is  the  hardest,  the  mokt  fe- 
rocious egotist  tbat  ever  appeared  on  earth. 
He  has  never  known  anvthing  but  his  own  in- 
terest, his  ambition.  Tou  have  no  idea  how 
he  atiandoned  me.  Would  you  believe  it  f  I 
hardly  have  100,000  francs  a  vear— of  allow- 
ance, I  mean,  for  Joseph  baa  all  the  capital  in 
hand,  and  he  pays  me  my  allowance  monthly.* " 

And  so  she  goes  on.  If  we  may  believe  Bar- 
ras, speaking  of  her  desire  to  buy  Malmaison, 
of  her  debts,  of  the  money  she  needs,  of  her 
diamonds,  of  which  she  has,  she  says,  not  more 


than  three  millions*  worth,  but  which  the  bro- 
thers of  Bonaparte  would  dispute  with  her  if 
he  was  dead.  She  asks  him  to  receive  her  dia- 
monds on  deposit.  Barras  wisely  refused,  and 
advised  her  to  place  her  diamonds  in  the  hands 
of  her  notary—advioe  which  she  immediately 
followed. 


Correspondence. 


COLUMBLA   COLLEGE   IN   1770. 
To  THE  Editob  of  Thx  Nation: 

Sm  :  In  connection  with  the  recent  laying  of 
the  cornerstone  of  Columbia  College,  the  fol- 
lowing letter  of  the  president  of  King's  Col- 
lege, in  1770,  deecriptive  of  that  institution,  is 
of  interest.  It  was  written  to  Jonathan  Bou- 
cher, who  for  some  time  had  been  tutor  of 
John  Parke  Custis  (the  stepeon  of  George 
Washington),  and  was  occasioned  by  inquiries 
of  Washington  as  to  the  best  college  in  this 
country  to  which  to  send  Custis.  As  a  result, 
apparently,  of  this  correspondence,  Washing- 
ton brought  the  lad  to  New  York  in  May,  1773, 
and  entered  him  at  the  college  under  tiia  par- 
ticular charge  of  Dr.  Cooper,  Unfortunately, 
Custis  had  already  engaged  himself  to  Nelly 
Calvert,  had  therefore  no  inclination  to  study, 
and,  after  only  six  months  of  study,  he  re- 
turned South  and  promptly  married.  In  his 
disappointment  Washington  wrote  (December 
15, 1773),  as  follows  to  President  Ck>oper: 

**The  favorable  account,  which  you  were 

S leased  to  transmit  to  me,  of  Mr.  Custis*s  con- 
uct  at  college,  gave  me  very  great  satisfac- 
tion. I  hoped  to  nave  felt  an  increase  of  it  by 
his  continuance  at  that  place,  under  a  gentle- 
man so  capable  of  instructink  him  in  everr 
branch  of  useful  knowledge.  But  this  hope  \m 
at  an  end ;  and  it  has  been  against  my  wishes, 
that  he  should  quit  college,  in  order  that  he 
may  enter  soon  into  a  new  scene  of  life,  which 
I  think  he  would  be  much  fitter  for  some  years 
hence,  than  now.  But  having  his  own  inclina- 
tion, the  desires  of  his  mother,  and  the  acqui- 
escence of  almost  all  his  relatives  to  encounter, 
I  did  not  care,  as  he  is  the  last  of  the  family,  to 
push  my  opposition  too  far,  and  I  have  there- 
fore submitted  to  a  kind  of  necessity. 

**  Not  knowing  how  his  expenses  at  college 
may  stand,  I  shall  be  much  obliged  to  you  if 
you  will  render  me  an  account  of  them.  You 
will  please  to  charge  liberally  for  your  own 
particular  attention  to  Mr.  Custis,  and  suffl- 
ciently  reward  the  other  gentlemen,  who  were 
engaged  in  the  same  good  offices.  If  the  money 
I  left  with  you  is  insufficient  to  answer  these 
purposes,  please  to  advise  me  thereof,  and  I 
will  remit  the  deficiency. 

"  I  am  very  sorry  it  was  not  in  my  power  to 
see  you  whilst  io  these  parts.  I  thank  vou 
very  sincerely.  Sir,  for  your  polite  regard  to 
Mr.  Custis  during  his  abode  at  college,  and 
through  you  beg  leave  to  offer  my  acknow- 
ledgments in  like  manner  to  the  professors.** 

Paul  Lkicxstkr  Ford. 


Ktko's  Collsob,  New  York,  tt  Mar.  1770. 
Mt  DKia  Sim : 

I  bold  myself  much  obliged  to  you  for  good  Will, 
as  well  as  good  ofllces,  towards  this  College,  as  in- 
■t&nced  in  your  Conduct  respecting  Mr.  Custis  and 
I  am  under  still  welghUer  obligations,  when  I  con. 
Elder  your  very  friendly  Suspension  of  Belief,  with 
Regard  to  some  Reports,  which,  you  tell  me,  have 
been  circulated  in  your  paru  to  our  prejudice.  I 
am  conscious  that  we  have  Enemies  In  abundance-^ 
that  every  Dissenter  of  high  principles,  upon  the 
Continent,  is  our  Enemy— that  many  of  their  Mis- 
sionaries, from  the  Northern  Into  the  Southern  pro- 
vinces, make  it  their  BusinesB,  nay,  have  it  in 
charge  from  their  masters,  to  decry  this  Institution 
by  all  po9$ible  means'^  because  they  are  convinced, 
from  its  very  Construction  (being  In  the  Hands  only 
of  Churchmen— which  Is  very  far  Indeed  from  being 
the  Case  of  any  other  College  to  ye  northward  of 
Virginia,— and  I  know  of  none  to  the  southward  of 


378 


Tlie   N"atioii. 


[VoL  62,  No,  1611 


it^they  are  convinced;  that  ft  must  eventiudly 
prove  one  of  the  flrmeet  Sopports  to  ye  Cbnrch  of 
England  in  America. 

Hence  there  arose  an  opposition  coeval  with  ye 
College  Itaelf,— or,  rather,  with  the  very  flrrt  men- 
tion of  an  InstitotSon  so  circumstanoed  which  hath 
heen  continued,  without  Interruption,  to  this  very 
day,  with  much  Resentment,  Inveteracy,  and  Ma- 
lice. The  College  of  New  Jersey— and  those  of 
New  England— were  already  on  their  own  lole  di- 
rection, and  yet  they  could  not  be  satisfied  that  ye 
poor  Church  should  have  any  Influence  in  one: 
not  that  Dissenters  of  any  Denomination  are  ex- 
cluded from  either  Learning  or  Teaching ;  nay.  we 
have  educated  many  and  have  several  at  this  very 
Time,  who  do  Honor  both  to  us  and  themselves. 

However,  oweing  either  to  the  very  Opposition,  or 
to  our  own  Care  &  Circumspection,— which  may, 
perhaps,  have  arisen  from  the  former— our  num- 
bers yearly  encrease,  and  our  present  Apartments 
overflow.  It  would  ill  become  any  one,  to  boast  of 
the  Advantages  enjoyed  by  a  Semlxuuy  over  which 
he  hhnself  presides:  but  I  will  venture  to  afllrm, 
that,  with  Respect  to  DUcipiine  (which.  It  seems, 
is  one  heavy  Accusation  exhibited  against  us,)  we 
are  far  from  being  outdone  by  any  College  on  the 
American  Continent:  and  I  know  of  none  in  Eu- 
rope, to  which,  in  this  Article,  we  are  really  in- 
ferior. Add  to  this,  that  the  Expence  however 
such  Things  may  be  magnified  by  our  Adversaries, 
is  not  half  so  much  as  at  any  of  the  latter;  and,  I 
believe  very  little,  If  at  all,  more,  than  at  moai  of 
the /ormer.  Our  Tuition  is  only  five  pounds— one 
Dolr  passing  for  8  shillings  New  York  Currency; 
Room-rent  four;  and  Board,  including  Breakfast, 
Dinner  and  Supper,  at  ye  Rate  of  eleven  ShUlings  a 
week,  for  ye  Time  each  Student  is  actually  hi  Col 
lege.  These,  (saving  Fire-wood,  Candles,  &  waah- 
ing,  which  must  be  had  every  where)  are  the  princi- 
pal Expencea.  indeed  almost  the  only  ones,  of  the 
truly  Collegiate  kind:  othen,  hideed  may  run 
higher— as  hi  Dress,  and  mnnetimf  in  Company, 
than  they  do  at  Colleges  In  the  Ctountry;  tho'  even 
These  will  not  be  materially  different  to  a  Student 
of  rttU  gentility :  For  such  an  one  will  chuse  to 
appear  handsomely— habitual  hi  all  situations;  and 
when  he  does  go  hito  Ctompany,  he  will  chuse  the 
best  for  his  Associates. 

With  regard  to  our  plan  of  Education,  It  is  copied. 
In  the  most  material  parts,  from  Queen's  College, 
hi  Oxford  ;  with  the  wh  [ole  (?)  torn]  System  of 
which,  (having  been  for  many  Tears,  both  Learner 
[torn]  In  that  Seminary,  with  the  Character  of  which 
you  are  by  no  means  unacquataited,)  I  looked  upon 
myself  as  perfectly  familiar. 

The  young  Qencleman's  Ouardian  may  rely  on 
every  Thing  in  my  power  for  his  Ward*8  Emolument ; 
but  as  my  turning  private  Tutor  as  it  wer»-lt  seems 
to  me  so  Inconsistent  with  my  office  (whatever 
others  In  my  Situation  may  think  of  it)  that  I  must 
beg  to  be  excused.  But  I  repeat^That  I  will  shew 
Mr.  Custls  eyeij  mark  of  Care  &  Attention,  and  see 
that  his  other  Teachers  shall  do  the  same. 

I  have  only  to  add,  that  I  with  he  may  be  here  hi 
June,— as  we  do  not  admit  pupils  when  absent— that 
I  beg  my  beet  Respects  to  (^11.  Washhigton,  whom 
I  shall  be  exceedingly  happy  to  wait  upon  hi  New 
York  (your  self ,  I  hope,  in  Company)— and  that  I 
am.  Dr  8r  yr  affn  Friend 

and  very  obedt  Servant  ftc. 

M.  COOPKR. 

I  hope  you  wiU  have  patience  with  me--at  pre- 
sent I  suffer  much  by  a  severe  Fit  of  the  QraveL 


Notes. 


Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Ck>.  have  arranged  for 
the  American  publication  of  the  unpublished 
Letters  of  Victor  Hugo,  in  two  volumes.  They 
are  addressed  to  his  father,  his  wife,  his  dangh. 
ter,  to  Lamennals  and  Sainte-Benye;  and,  In 
exUe,  to  LedmRolUn,  Lamartlne,  MazzlnL 
and  Oaribaldt 

Prof.  McMaster's  'With  the  Fathers'  and 
Prof.  F.  W.  Taussig's  •  Wages  and  Capital' 
are  on  the  point  of  being  Issued  by  D.  Apple- 
ton  &  Co. 


'  The  Tale  of  Balen,'  a  new  and  long  po&m  by 
Algernon  Charles  Swinburne,  Is  la  the  prea&  of 
Charles  Bcribner's  Sons. 

Henry  Holt  &  Co.  announce  *Tbe  Qulc-Jc- 
sands  of  Pactolus,'  a  story  of  San  Francisco, 
by  Horace  Annesley  Vacbell,  and  '  In  the  Val- 
ley of  Topbet,'  by  Henry  W.  Nevin^Q. 

In  book  form,  Mr.  Jamet  Lane  Allen's  €09- 
mopolUan  serial,  *  Butterflies:  A  Tale  of  Ka^ 
ture,'  will  bear  the  Imprint  of  MaGmillan* 

Brentano's  will  publish  directly  '  Bicycling 
for  Ladies,'  by  Maria  B.  Ward,  fuUy  illustrat- 
ed. 

The  Bowen-Merrill  Co.,  Indianapolis  bare 
just  ready  *The  Trent  Affair:  A  Review  of 
the  English  and  American  Relationii  at  the  Be^ 
ginning  of  the  Civil  War,'  by  Thomas  L. 
Harris,  A.  M. 

A  new  book  of  verse, '  Songaof  the  Soul/  by 
Joaquin  Miller;  *  The  Padflc  History  Btorira,' 
retold  by  Harr  Wagner;  and  *  Care  and  Culture 
of  Men,'  by  David  Starr  Jordan,  President  of 
Leland  Stanford,  Jr.,  University,  are  about  to 
be  issued  by  the  Whitaker  &  Ray  Co.,  S&n 
Frandaco. 

An  English  version  of  the  late  James  Dar- 
mesteter's  *Nouvellee£tudetAnglaises,^  editeii 
by  his  wife  as  we  remarked  the  other  ilaj^  b 
to  be  brought  out  in  London  by  T.  Fisher 
Unwin. 

We  have  already  noticed  the  translation,  is- 
sued in  England,  of  Sonla  KovalevtUsy's  novel, 
•  Vera  Vorontsoff;'  or  '  Vera  Barautaova.'  It 
has  now  appeared  in  this  country  to  a  new 
translation  by  Anna  von  Rydingsrard  (Baro- 
ness von  ProBchwitc),  under  the  imprint  of 
Lamson,  Wolffe  &  Co.  The  American  edition 
is  a  very  pretty  piece  of  book-making. 

*  The  Mathematical  Papers  Read  at  the  la- 
temational  Mathematical  Congrera'  (b^ld  in 
connection  with  the  Chicago  BxposltfoD)  has 
appeared  as  voL  L  of  the  PublicationB  of  the 
American  Mathematical  Society  (Mactnillan) ; 
a  guarantee  fund  for  the  cost  of  publicatioti 
having  been  contributed  by  that  society  and 
some  other  mathematicians.  The  volume  ba« 
the  usual  handsome  appearance  of  MactnlllAn'a 
books.  Among  the  contributors  of  papers  are 
Klein,  Weber,  MlAkowskl,  HUbert,  Hurwitx, 
Study,  and  others,  besides  the  Amerleaiis 
The  brief  account  by  Klein  of  the  present  di- 
rection  of  mathematical  investigation  will  be 
found  to  be  of  Interest  to  those  (professors  of 
mathematics  even)  to  whom  most  of  the  vol- 
ume is  a  sealed  book. 

Dr.  Levi  Seeley  has  brought  together  a 
great  many  Interesting  and  instructive  facts 
in  his  *  Common-School  System  of  Germany ' 
(New  York:  £.  L.  Kellogg  &  Co.),  but  his  at- 
tempts to  apply  German  methods  in  detail  to 
the  solution  of  American  problems  are  not  so 
happy.  The  system  of  school  organization  by 
"districts,"  in  rural  oommunitieB,  iind  by 
**  wards,"  or  single  scheols,  in  cities,  is  un&ti^ 
mously  condemned  by  our  best  authorities. 
Everywhere  the  tendency  among  progre^ive 
communities  is  to  make  the  towushipi,  the 
county,  and  the  municipality  the  units  for 
educational  organifation  and  control.  Ger- 
many can  learn  from  us  in  this  respect,  rather 
than  we  from  her.  Nor  Is  It  correct  to  imply 
(p.  192)  that  in  American  cities  there  la,  as  a 
rule,  any  uncertainty  as  to  the  teaeher'a 
tenure.  In  the  cities  that  Dr.  Seeley  cttee  as 
examples  It  Is  far  too  difficult  to  get  rid  of  bad 
and  Inefficient  teachers;  their  tenure  Is  too 
secure.  The  chief  lessons  that  we  may  learn 
from  Germany  are  (I)  the  necessity  for  a  high 
professional  standard  in  the  training  of  teach- 
ers, (3)  the  value  of  close  and  constant  e:£pert 
supervision,  and  (8)  the  substitutiot]  of  teach - 


Ingt  or  inctruction,  for  **  bearing  lesstuif "  In 
the  Hass  room.  In  mo^t  other  mftttenk  fiota- 
bly  as  regardB  the  Kindergarten  (pp.  225- .^ I}, 
otir  beiit  eJementary  ftehooli  are  far  in  adfsoos 
of  the  average  of  those  found  in  Genuanj. 

The  .itr iking  articles  on  Viveai  Aik^haoit  Utd* 
caster,  Milton^  Locke,  and  other  English  writ- 
ers OD  education,  contributed  to  the  Retut  In- 
t^matimiale  de  C Enseignement  by  M,  Jat^aes 
Parineniler  of  PoJtlerB,  have  been  broogbltCk 
getber  in  a  volume  entitled  ^  HifitoiredeV&la 
caljon  en  Angl&terre'  (Paris:  PerriD).  Mofi 
of  these  men  were  sages  rather  than  educator^ 
aod  their  reflections  on  education  are  marked 
rather  by  praoiical  wLsdom  than  by  sctentiSe 
insight.  Yet  a  debt  of  gratitude  Is  due  tb«in 
for  holding  up  a  clear  educational  Ideal  in  the 
sixteen th  and  seveoteentb  centuries,  &&d  m 
preparing  the  way  for  the  moro  tecbi]ic&]  and 
detailed  discofi^ions  that  have  sprung  up  finoii 
The  clofi^iiig  chapter  of  M.  Parm'^n  tierce  book  li 
a  tribute  to  the  character  and  f!i?rvicef  of  tht 
lale  R.  H.  Quick,  etlitor  of  Mulcaster  and 
author  of  *  Educational  Eeformers.* 

Dr,  O.  Laurent  of  BruMiiiels,  a  YoluEuiacmB 
writer  on  medical  and  e^lucational  Hobjecti^ 
has  compressed  Into  some  250  psge^  a  mlficei- 
laneous  afisartment  of  information  with  the 
title  *  Le»  Univerait^s  des  DeuE  MondeV  {Fa' 
rU:  Alcan).  The  illustrations  are  interesting, 
but  the  book  itself  is  more  like  a  catalogios 
than  a  contribution  to  literature. 

One  can  but  praise  the  idea  of  Dr.  Oeauos 
Kiopper'fl  '  Real  Lejt ikon  der  EnelisciiBa 
Bpracbe,^  of  which  the  first  matalment  it  li^fbrv 
us  (Leiptigt  Gebhardt  &  WiJiscb;  New  York: 
l/emcke  &  BuecbnerJ.  This  work  aims,  aboTi 
all,  to  meet  the  need  of  a  better  know^ledg^  of 
Euglaud  add  Englishmen  arising  from  jn> 
creased  contact  by  reaaon  of  tJ^rKUMjy'a  <?olo- 
nial  expanaloUf  but  also  it  is  to  assist  in  coi^ 
Fectinff  miBconoeptioDB  and  supplanting  dowii> 
right  ignorance  eiren  among  the  lettered  cUa; 
Hence^  brides  being  a  legal,  cominerciAl,  po- 
litical and  institutional  encyclopedia,  and  a 
select  gasetteeri  It  la  a  reader's  handbook.  W« 
End  not  only  Abernethy  BiscuJt,  Abongiiu!^ 
Pr^itection  8<x'iety,  Adrian's  Wall,  Adulls^ 
mites,  African  Lake  Co.,  Agitation  (O'Coo- 
nell)^  Acadtmy,  AdTertiiements  {with  sample 
fomis  of  birth,  marriage  and  death  notic«i), 
Agony  Column  {with  choice  instances),  but 
also  Abel  Sbufflebottom  (Sonthey^s  pseudoDjm 
when  publi*blog  bis  *  AniAtory  Poem^  1,  Ad- 
mirable Doctor  (Roger  Bacon's  title),  Adriel  (in 
Dryden*ft  *  Abealom  and  Aohitophel,*  identified 
with  John  Sheffield),  St.  Agnes  E?e  (but  with 
no  mention  of  Keats),  etc,  with  a  hint  of  a 
queatfonsble  literary  perspective  on  the  pari 
of  the  edltora.  America  is  expressly  excludtd 
from  oonsideration  in  this  work,  yet  the  only 
Abolitionists  defined  are  the  younger  genersr 
ration,  on  this  side  of  the  water;  the  pr^ent 
Lieftrung  ends  with  Alabama  Ciaim»i  and 
Mr.  Jobn  Fiske  is  enumerated  iu  the  past  tense 
with  Spencer  and  Huxley  as  Agoostio^  of 
which  the  definition  is  singularly  beside  Uit 
mark.  The  English  is  in  general  very  corrtct- 
ly  printed,  but  Aggression  is  out  of  plaw  by 
being  spelt  with  one  g.  A  similar  leiieon  for 
France  is  announced  for  simoltaneocs  i«oe 
by  the  same  firm. 

Soon  after  the  promnlgation  of  the  tTolei 
Ferry  educational  laws  of  l*iSl,  there  iprang 
up  in  France  a  not  inconsiderable  literatura 
emanating  from  tbe  ji^n  pf  such  writers  «i 
Paul  Bert,  Ch.  Bigot,  J.  Simou,  Liaiid,  Hj- 
rion,  Compayrfi,  and  others  of  similar  pitnxii- 
nenc^f  wbi?$f  aim  was  to  meet  the  neoeawiy  ^ 
some  sort  ol  moral  inslructloii  i^  th^  l*J 
schoiilja.    Quite  reeent^  the  siyne  want,  »tili 


May  14,  1896] 


mmtisfled,  hat  giren  rite  to  a  new  grovrth  of 
publications,  differing  from  the  earlier  ones  of 
a  doiea  years  ago  bj  tbeir  more  immediate 
adaptation  to  the  needs  of  teachers  and  popils. 
A  score  of  such  **liyrets  de  morale  **  are  no- 
ticed in  the  April  iisue  of  the  Revue  PMago- 
Ifique.  The  idea  of  inculcating  moral  notions 
bf  means  of  special  devices  is  sometimes  soout> 
ed,  but  the  problem  which  the  French  school- 
men  are  Just  now  making  such  earnest  and  in- 
telligent efforts  to  soWe  is  a  terlous  one  and 
confronts  modem  society  everywhere.  This 
new  class  of  educational  Uterature  deserves, 
therefore,  to  be  noted  as  both  meritorious  and 
auspicious. 

In  the  ^mertoaa  Anthropologiat  for  May, 
Mr.  J.  Walter  Fewkee  has  an  interesting  arti- 
cle upon  the  **  Prehistoric  Culture  of  Tnsayan." 
It  is  based  upon  an  exploration  of  the  ruined 
Moki  village  of  Sikyatki;  and  so  far  as  the 
pottery  Is  concerned,  his  conclusions  are,  to  a 
certain  extent,  in  line  with  what  H.  C.  Mercer 
(*  HiU  Caves  of  YucaUn,'  p.  105)  tells  us  of  the 
probable  use  of  the  wheel  by  the  prehistoric 
potters  of  Yucatan.  Speaking  of  the  superi. 
ority  of  this  ancient  ware  over  modem  Pueblo 
work,  Mr.  Fewkes  says:  ** While  there  is  no 
evidence  of  the  use  of  the  potter's  wheel  in  an- 
clent  Tusayan,  I  believe  that  the  symmetry  of 
old  food  bowls  was  brought  about  by  revolv. 
ing  the  unfinished  object  around  the  hand,  and 
that  the  principle  of  the  potter's  wheel  was 
recognised  and  made  use  of  in  ancient  as  in 
modem  fashioning  of  ceramic  ware." 

Mr.  Edward  W.  James  of  Richmond  oon- 
tinuee,  in  the  third  number  of  his  Loioer  Nor* 
folk  Co ,  Virginia^  Antiquary^  his  pursuit  of 
historic  truth  in  a  spirit  which  we  look  to  see 
emulated  by  the  new  Southern  History  Asso- 
ciation. He  reprints  from  the  WiUiam  and 
Mary  College  Quarterly  his  census  of  slave 
owners  in  Princess  Anne  County  in  1810,  show, 
ing  8.996  slaves  owned  by  646  heads  of  fami- 
lies (against  421  noo-slaveholdinghead^.  What 
is  curious  is,  that  nine  slave-owners  on  the  list 
were  free  negroes,  with  a  total  holding  of  four- 
teen. From  a  document  of  May  1, 1728,  it  ap- 
pears that  a  negro  nine  years  old  was  declared 
**a  tythable.**  Two  documents  relating  to 
public  schools  (in  1728  and  1786),  and  an  ac- 
count of  the  ecomtric  Qen.  Charles  Lee,  will 
attract  attention.  The  Antiquary  may  be  bad 
of  J.  W.  Randolph  &  Co.,  Richmond. 

The  Tour  du  Monde  has  begun  the  publica- 
tion of  a  complete  list  of  important  exploring 
expeditions  and  Journeys  by  distinguished  tra- 
vellers, which  (a)  were  completed  In  1805,  (6) 
are  now  In  progress,  and  (0)  will  start  in  1806. 
Out  of  more  than  one  hundred  entries  In  which 
the  objects  of  each  expedition,  its  personnel, 
dates  of  depcurture  or  arrival,  or  the  latest 
news  is  given,  twenty- nine  were  of  Journeys 
in  Africa,  chiefiy  In  the  Congo  Basin,  twenty- 
Iwo  In  Asia,  mostly  In  central  Thibet  and  the 
region  of  the  headwaters  of  the  Irrawaddy, 
the  Yangtse  and  Mekong  rivers,  nineteen  In 
America,  ten  In  the  polar  regions,  and  seven  In 
Ooeanlca.  France  and  Germany  are  most 
largely  represented  In  the  list,  there  being 
only  ten  American  and  five  English  expedl- 
tlons  chronicled.  Among  these  are  the  Jour- 
neys of  Mrs.  Beaumont  In  Alaska  and  Miss 
Kingiley  in  West  Africa,  who  are,  apparently, 
the  only  ladles  that  have  travelled  alone.  An 
interesting  and  growing  feature  of  the  explo- 
rations of  the  present  time  Is  the  commercial 
expedition  sent  out  for  the  purpose  of  investi- 
gating the  trade  resources  of  balf-civillsed 
countries.  In  China  there  have  been  several 
missions  of  this  character,  French,  German, 
and  Russian,  and  in  the  Transvaal  a  French 


The   N'ation. 


one.  The  list  also  contains  short  notices  of  re- 
cently  deceased  travellers. 

The  Magyars  on  the  eve  of  their  millennium 
form  the  subject  of  a  suggestive  article  in  the 
Annales  de  Q4ographie  tor  April,  by  M.  &1. 
Sayous.  He  draws  attention  to  the  fact  that 
It  is  not  the  Hungarian  people  as  a  whole  who 
begin  this  month  to  celebrate  this  unique  an- 
niversary, but  only  the  dominant  half  of  a 
population  of  some  fifteen  millions.  They  are 
dominant,  not  through  wealth,  station,  privi- 
leges, or  even  numbers,  but  through  their  lan- 
guage. For  their  extraordinary  increase,  from 
two  millions  in  the  time  of  Maria  Theresa,  and 
four  mlUions  fifty  years  ago,  to  nearly  eight 
millions  now.  Is  due  not  to  the  natural  laws  of 
increase,  but  to  their  absorption  of  other  races 
—Germans,  Slavs,  and  Rumanians.  The  de- 
finition of  a  Magyar,  then,  is  **a  man  of  any 
race  to  whom  the  Hungarian  language  has  be- 
come  the  mother-tongue,  and  who  makes  of 
that  language  the  banner  of  his  patriotism.'* 
Naturally  the  language  Itself  shows  the  infiu- 
ence  of  this  absorption  In  the  vast  number  of 
German,  neo-Latin,  and  Slav  words  which  It 
contains,  these  last  being  used  to  express  reli- 
gious ideas.  Referring  to  the  part  which  the 
Hungarian  played  In  stemming  the  Ottoman 
invasion,  the  author  believes  that  his  future 
may  be  not  less  useful  mainly  because  he  op- 
poses the  conception  of  a  nation  to  that  of  a 
race  which  so  largely  rules  in  Eastern  Europe. 
Among  the  marks  of  material  and  Intellectual 
progress  are  the  multiplication  and  improve- 
ment of  the  means  of  communication,  both 
railways  and  highroads,  the  growth  of  all 
kinds  of  industries,  and  the  increasing  inte- 
rest of  the  people  in  education  and  literature. 
There  are  now  in  Hungary  8  universities,  18 
academies,  150  gymnasia,  and  70  normal  schools 
for  the  instmction  of  teachers;  676  periodicals 
In  the  Magyar  lang^uage  are  issued  in  addition 
.to  187  In  other  tongues,  and  the  annual  pro- 
duct of  the  Magyar  press  Is  1,500  volumes. 
Among  other  article  In  the  AnncUee  Is  one  on 
the  economic  situation  of  Cuba.  A  hypsome- 
trie  map,  from  Russian  sources,  of  the  region 
about  tJbe  Carpathians  Is  an  unusually  beau- 
tiful piece  of  workmanship. 

Recent  topographical  sheets,  prepared  by 
the  U.  B.  Geological  Survey  for  various  parts 
of  the  country,  oontinoe  to  increase  the  great 
store  of  information  accumulated  In  our 
national  map.  Almost  any  sheet  taken  up  at 
random  excites  an  Interested  comment  on  the 
physlographical  features  that  It  represents. 
The  Orlskany  (N.  Y.)  sheet  includes  a  large 
part  of  the  **long  level'*  in  the  fioor  of  the 
Mohawk  valley,  welcome  long  ago  during  the 
construction  of  the  Erie  Canal,  and  explained 
in  recent  years  by  Gilbert  as  the  path  of  the 
ancient  overflow  of  the  expanded  Lake  Onta- 
rio. A  little  to  the  south  rises  the  strong 
escarpment  of  the  Allegheny  plateau,  a  thou- 
sand feet  above  the  valley  floor.  The  wHd, 
uncivilised  country  along  the  boundary  of 
Virginia  and  West  Virginia  is  exhibited  in 
the  Tasewell  sheet,  a  confusion  of  digitate 
hlU-spurs,  between  branching  and  sub-branch- 
ing valleys.  Several  sheets  for  Florida  illus- 
trate the  ** sink- hole**  style  of  drainage  preva- 
lent In  the  low-lying,  calcareous  region  of  that 
State.  The  wonderful  dissection  of  the  Absa- 
roka  range  by  deep  valleys  Is  shown  on  the 
Isbawooa  (Wyoming)  sheet.  The  extraor- 
dinary flatness  of  the  prairie  In  South  Dakota 
appears  on  the  Aberdeen  sheet,  where  the 
surface  lies  at  1,800  feet  for  many  miles  to- 
gather,  interrupted  only  by  occasional  narrow 
and  shallow  valleys.  The  bold  ascent  from 
Lake  Superior  to  a  swampy  plateau,  800  feet 


879 


above  the  lake,  is  well  brought  out  on  the 
Duluth  sheet 

The  departments  of  geology  In  our  colleges 
will  welcome  the  announcement  that  a  new 
general  geological  map  of  England  and  Wales, 
prepared  by  the  Geological  Survey  of  the 
United  Kingdom,  is  nearing  completion.  It  Is 
In  thirteen  sheets,  on  a  scale  of  four  miles  to 
an  Inch.  Seven  of  the  sheets  have  now  been 
issued,  five  are  In  the  engraver's  hands,  and 
the  one  remaining  will  soon  be  prepared.  The 
sheets  have  heretofore  been  colored  by  hand 
and  sold  at  10s.  6d.  apiece;  but  one  sheet  has 
now  been  produced  by  color-printing,  and  sold 
at  28.  6d.,  and  the  sale  of  this  sheet  Justifies  the 
expectation  that  this  new  system  of  publica- 
tion may  be  continued  and  extended.  As  this 
woold  mean  a  reduction  In  the  price  of  the 
whole  map  from  about  $85  to  18,  It  may  be 
safely  said  that  it  will  cause  a  ten- fold  increase 
in  its  sale  In  this  country.  If  that  Is  of  any 
consequence. 

At  the  International  Women*s  Ckmgress 
which  will  meet  at  Berlin  during  the  fourth 
week  In  September,  every  imaginable  Interest 
of  the  woman  movement  will  be  duly  repre- 
sented. The  programme  arranged  for  the 
seven  days*  session  comprises  addresses,  re- 
ports, and  discussions  covering  more  than 
thirty  different  topics  connected  with  woman's 
work  and  endeavors.  An  Inspection  of  the 
exhibit  of  charities  at  the  Industrial  Expo- 
sition, which  will  then  be  open.  Is  also 
planned. 

—General  du  Barail,  who  has  been  publish- 
ing a  brilliant  and  interesting  series  of  **  Sou- 
venirs** in  ih^  Revue  Hebdofnadairty  reaches 
in  the  current  number  the  epoch  when  the 
royalists  were  busy  in  their  preparations  for 
the  return  of  the  Comte  de  Chambord  and  the 
restoration  of  the  monarchy.  At  that  time 
General  du  Barail  was  Minister  of  War  In  the 
BrogUe  Cabinet,  and,  although  he  paid  much 
more  attention  to  the  army  than  he  did  to  po- 
litics, he  had  a  general  knowledge  of  what  was 
going  on,  gathered  from  his  dally  talks  with 
Marshal  MacMahon.  Not  a  word  as  to  the 
royalist  plans  was  spoken  In  the  Cabinet,  until 
one  day.  Just  after  the  return  of  M.  Chesnelong 
from  Salxburg,  M.  Emoul  asked  Barail  point- 
blank  how  the  army  would  behave  In  face  of  a 
restoration  of  the  monarchy  with  the  Comte 
de  C^hambord.  Barail  answered  at  once  that 
the  army  would  obey,  without  reserve  and 
without  hesitation,  the  orders  of  the  Marshal- 
President.  '«And  .  .  .  the  white  fiagf* 
**  Oh,  mon  Dieu  I  1  have  such  confidence  In  the 
discipline  of  the  army  as  to  believe  that  it  wiU 
stand  even  the  white  fiag  If  It  be  imposed  upon 
It."  At  these  words  an  Icy  silence  set  in,  which 
was  broken  at  last  by  the  Due  de  Brogue's  say- 
ing :  **  Subir  Is  drapeau  blame  t  What  do  you 
mean  by  those  words,  General  P  Barail 
answered  that  it  seemed  to  him  that  his  words 
explained  themselves,  and  asked  in  turn  whe- 
ther any  one  Imagined,  perchance,  that  the 
army  would  receive  the  white  flag  with  shouts 
of  Joy.  The  army,  he  said,  holds  to  the  na- 
tional oolors ;  and  it  holds  to  them  all  the  mora 
strongly  because  at  the  pressnt  moment  they 
are  stained  by  defeat.  Then,  addressing  the 
Marshal,  he  recaUed  to  him  how,  in  1880,  the 
sight  of  the  tricolor  bad  the  Immediate  ef- 
fect of  deciding  the  troops  to  make  common 
cause  with  the  insurgents.  The  Due  de  BrogUe^ 
who  agreed  with  General  du  Barail,  made  no 
answer,  but  M.  Braoul  replied,  saying  that 
Barail  misunderstood  the  feelings  of  the  masMS. 
After  the  sitting,  Barail  was  suounooed  to  the 
President,  who  began  to  talk  with  him  about 


380 


Tlie    Nation. 


[VoL  62,  No.  161 1 


matters  in  general;  bat  Barail  came  to  the 
point  at  once  by  saying  that- he  imagined  that 
the  Marshal  might  wish  for  his  resignation. 
**No,"  MacMahon  answered,  **they  asked  for 
it  and  wanted  Dncrot  put  in  your  place,  bat  I 
told  them  that  I  wonld  answer  for  yon  as  for 
myself.  Mais,  sapritti  I  voua  n^Stet  pas  avo- 
cat,  vous!^^ 

— ^  Histoire  de  la  Langue  et  de  la  Litt^rature 
franpaise,  des  Originee  &  1900*  (Paris:  Ar. 
mand  Ck>lin  et  Cie.)  is  the  title  of  a  new  and 
▼ery  important  work,  the  first  two  parts  of 
which,  an  instalment  of  two  hundred  pages, 
have  jost  appeared,  under  the  direction  of  L. 
Petit  de  Julleville.  It  is  the  work  of  a  group  of 
scholars,  specialists  in  certain  lines  of  literature 
and  language,  and,  as  these  last  words  indi 
cate,  the  close  union  between  the  language  and 
the  literature  is  significantly  marked.  A  third 
feature  commendf  It  farther  :  the  due  recogni- 
tion of  medisyal  literature,  which  receives  a 
fall  share  of  attention.  These  three  points  are 
the  fruit  of  the  changes  in  views  and  methods 
which  have  been  steadily  becoming  more  and 
more  prominent  for  years  past,  and  one  cannot 
but  feel  profoundly  grateful  to  find  them  all 
combined  in  one  work  which,  when  completed, 
promises  to  be  the  fullest  and  most  serviceable 
history  of  French  literature  yet  produced. 
The  names  of  the  collaborators  are  a  sufScient 
guarantee  that  the  spirit  in  which  the  work  has 
been  planned  and  in  which  it  will  be  carried 
out  is  the  spirit  of  the  most  scientific  modem 
school.  Every  one  of  the  writers  has  made 
his  mark  ;  and  vrhile  it  is  impossible,  as  well  as 
needless,  to  mention  all,  a  glance  at  the  table  of 
contents  of  the  first  two  volumes,  which  cover 
the  period  of  the  Biiddle  Ages,  shows  how  in- 
telligently the  work  has  been  distributed.  The 
history  of  the  language  falls  to  Ferdinand 
Brunot ;  Petit  de  Julleville  takes  the  narrative 
religious  poetry,  the  later  poets  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  the  drama ;  L6on  Gautier,  the  Chan- 
sons de  Geste  ;  C14dat,  the  Arthurian  romances 
and  the  poems  of  Marie  de  France  ;  Sudre,  the 
Fables  and  Roman  du  Renard,  and  B^dier,  the 
Fabliaux;  while  Gaston  Paris  has  written  a 
preface  to  these  two  volumes  which  is  one  of 
the  most  Instructive  and  thoughtful  works 
that  have  come  from  his  pen. 

—Again,  it  is  quite  evident  from  the  peru- 
sal of  the  first  part— even  did  the  prospectus 
not  state  the  fact  explicitly— that  the  aim  of 
the  writers  is  not  to  give  the  public  the  im. 
pression  the  works  have  made  upon  them  in- 
dividually, but  a  clear  understanding  of  these 
works  and  an  accurate  knowledge  of  exact 
facts  concerning  them.  This  is  unquestionably 
a  great  step  in  advance  in  a  general  history. 
This  one  will  furnish  ideas  and  documents  and 
not  merely  opinions  and  impressions.  The  ad- 
dition of  a  bibliography  is  a  tine  qua  ncn,  at 
the  present  day,  and.  the  new  work  has  this 
necessary  portion  well  attended  to  in  a  select 
bibliography,  while  the  iUustrations  are  not 
fanciful  but  exact  transcripts  of  contemporary 
documents.  It  is  interesting,  but  regrettable, 
to  note  that  the  division  of  literature  into  chro- 
nological epochs  is  maintained ;  the  old  classi- 
fication into  Biiddle  Ages,  sixteenth,  seven- 
teenth, eighteenth,  and  nineteenth  centuries 
figuring  here  as  in  Nisard,  Albert,  Faguet, 
or  stale  Demogeot.  As  the  progress  made  in 
the  scientific  study  of  literature  is  recognized 
in  the  allocation  of  special  subjects  to  special 
authors,  it  is  a  pity  that  the  arbitrary  divi- 
sion founded  on  broad  chronology  has  not  been 
abandoned  in  favor  of  one  based  on  the  periods 
covered  by  the  great  literary  schools.  In 
amount  the  Biiddle  Ages  get  a  tnlr  uhftre — two 


volumes;  the  same  being  given  to  the  seven- 
teenth and  nineteenth  centuries,  while  the 
sixteenth  and  eighteenth  are  to  have  one  vol- 
ume apiece.  The  first  parts,  which  have  come 
to  hand,  contain  the  preface,  and  the  first 
two  chapters,  **PoMe  narrative  religieose'' 
and  **  L*^pop6e  nationale.**  The  introduction, 
**  Origines  de  la  langue  fran^aise,*'  is  to  com- 
prise eighty-two  pages,  and  will  appear  when 
the  first  volume  is  finished. 

—Lovers  of  Wordsworth  and  his  family  win 
welcome  the  new  edition  ot  Dora  Wordsworth^s 
*  Journal  of  a  Few  Months*  Residence  in  Por- 
tugal and  Glimpses  of  the  South  of  Spain* 
(Longmans).  Apart  from  the  interest  attach- 
ing to  Birs.  Quillinan*s  book  as  the  only  publi- 
cation of  the  poet*s  daughter,  its  pages  have  a 
more  definite  value.  The  last  half -century  has 
altered  conditions  of  life  in  Portugal  as  every- 
where else,  and  this  simple  narrative  vividly 
depicts  a  bygone  order  of  things.  The  greater 
part  of  the  invalid*s  stay  in  Portugal  was  spent 
in  Oporto,  where  she  saw  something  of  the  na- 
tives, but  more  of  the  society  of  the  English 
colony  of  wine-exporters,  to  which  her  hus- 
band by  birth  belonged.  She  describes  at 
length  a  tour  made  from  Oporto  among  the 
old  cities  in  northern  Beira  (the  cradle  of  the 
Portuguese  national  monarchy)  like  Braga  and 
Guimarftee,  during  which  she  had  a  better  op- 
portunity to  study  Portuguese  life  and  to  ob- 
serve the  characteristics  of  Portuguese  scene- 
ry. From  Oporto,  when  the  winter  was  over, 
she  went  by  sea  to  Lisbon,  where  she  visited 
all  the  sights  of  the  Portuguese  capital,  and 
from  which  she  made  the  usual  excursion  to 
the  beautiful  dty  of  Cintra.  From  Lisbon  she 
travelled  with  her  husband  and  stepdaughter 
through  the  south  of  Spain,  visiting  Cadis  and 
Gibraltar,  Seville  and  Granada.  She  was  by 
her  long  friendship  with  Southey  sufficiently 
versed  in  Portuguese  history  and  literature  to 
appreciate  intelligently  what  she  saw  about 
her,  and  this  differentiates  her  book  from  the 
jottings  of  ordinary  tourists.  Ck)nsidering  the 
greatness  of  Herculano,  the  one  famous  scien- 
tific historian  whom  modem  Portugal  has  pro- 
duced, and  the  father  of  the  Portuguese  his- 
torical school,  it  is  curious  to  read  the  follow- 
ing passage  written  about  him  in  1846,  when 
he  was  still  known  only  as  a  poet  and  journal- 
ist. **The  history  of  Portugal,**  says  Mrs. 
Quillinan,  **the  most  romantic  of  histories,  is 
stQl  unwritten;  so  we  must  console  ourselves 
with  such  a  one  as  we  may  get  from  Senhor 
Herculano,  librarian  to  the  king-consort.  He 
is  a  hater  of  the  English,  because  the  bur- 
gesses of  Plymouth  did  not  discover  that  a 
man  of  mark  had  come  among  them  when  be 
did  them  the  honor  to  make  their  town  bis 
place  of  exile  for  a  few  months  or  weeks,  I  for- 
get which,  when  Don  Biiguel  was  King  absolute, 
many  years  ago.  He  has  never  forgotten  tb^ 
neglect,  but  has  made  for  himself  opportuni- 
ties of  abusing  us,  through  the  periodical  prea^ 
of  Lisbon,  in  articles  magnanimously  signe^l 
with  his  own  name.  We  will  forgive  him  all  that 
nonsense  if  he  will  truly  and  honestly  digest 
the  materials  open  to  him,  and  give  us  an  or^ 
derly  and  dispassionate  compilation  of  facts  ^' 
(p.  186).  d^rtainly  Herculano  more  than  justi- 
fied Mrs.  Quillinan*s  hopes  in  his  admirable 
history  of  medisBval  Portugal. 

—The  history  of  the  Ptolemies  in  Egypt  is 
gradually  assuming  body  and  precision  in 
many  details  by  the  aid  of  recent  discoveries 
of  papyri.  The  latest  publication  of  these  in 
England  is  Mr.  B.  P.  Grenf ell*s  collection,  en- 
titled *  Greek  Papyri,  Cbiefly  Ptolemaic  *  (Ox- 
ford:  CJarendoo  Press ;  Kew  Tork:  Biacmillan). 


This  little  volume  is  a  sequel  to  the  editor's 
*  Revenue  Laws  of  Ptolemy  Philadelphus,*  with 
their  supplements,  and  contains  chiefiy  theedi- 
tor*s  discoveries  for  the  winters  of  1898  and 
189i.  The  fragments  are  mostly  rteords  of 
wills,  loans,  and  other  business  transactions 
belonging  to  the  first  and  second  oentnrics 
B.  c,  and  containing  in  their  dry  detail  mocb 
that  illustrates  the  business,  the  civic  and  do- 
mestic life  of  the  Egyptian  people.  A  good 
instance  of  this  is  seen  in  the  will  of  Dryton 
(126  B.  o ),  which  distributes  his  property  be- 
tween his  son,  his  second  wife  and  her  five 
daughters  according  to  minute  and  reasonable 
provisions,  and  with  an  api>arent  freedom  and 
security  which  are  highly  creditable  to  the 
civil  administration  of  the  period.  The  list  of 
artidee  bequeathed  to  the  women  is  curious, 
viz.,  two  female  slaves,  a  vineyard  with  walls 
of  burnt  brick,  two  dove-cotes,  one  of  them 
unfinished,  a  wagon  and  ox,  together  with 
other  more  valuable  real  and  persooal  proper- 
ty. The  concluding  sentence  is  highly  inte- 
resting, and  guarantees  to  Apollonia,  the  testa- 
tor's second  wife,  all  sums  earned  by  her  dur- 
ing his  lifetime.  That  Apollonia  was  a  clever 
business  woman  is  attested  by  three  other 
documents,  which  record  loans  by  her  of 
wheat,  or  money,  the  latter  at  the  rate  of  60 
per  cent,  for  one  year,  double  the  prevailing 
rate  of  the  period.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that, 
in  the  face  of  so  many  chances,  several  docu- 
ments relating  to  this  family  should  have  sur- 
vived, as  well  as  the  second  and  the  third  will 
of  Dryton.  To  these  domestic  details  we  may 
add  an  extraordinary  piece  of  gossip  from  the 
Byzantine  period  (fourth  century  a.  d.),  a  let- 
ter from  Artemis  to  her  husband,  Theodorus, 
a  soldier.  She  prays  that  he  may  come  back 
to  her  safe  and  sound,  and  encloses  to  him  a 
letter  which  she  had  addressed  to  a  certain 
Sarapion.  In  this  last— the  Greek  of  which  is 
as  rude  as  the  manner—she  gives  Sarapion  a 
"piece  of  her  mind,**  and  informs  him  that  his 
daughters  are  no  better  than  they  should  be. 

— The  most  important  documents  from  an 
historical  point  of  view  are  the  record  of  a  sale 
of  land  by  a  certain  priestess  to  her  husband 
(114  B.  o  ),  and  of  a  transfer  of  land  by  Sebtitis  to 
her  daughter  (109  b.  c).  Each  of  these  fixes  the 
date  of  the  transaction  by  a  preliminary  list  of 
the  first  ten  Ptolemies,  including,  as  VI.,  Eupa- 
tor  and  as  VIII.  Philopator  Neos,  whose  reigns 
have  been  disputed  by  M.  Revillout  and  others. 
As  long  ago  as  1852,  Lepsius  had  arrived  at  the 
truth,  basing  his  conclusions  on  the  evidence 
of  hieroglyphic  ioscriptions  and  demotic  teits, 
thlA  evidence  is  now  for  the  flriit  time  conJina- 
imI  from  purely  Greek  f^urc^^.  Finally^  we  may 
mention  an  interestiug  literary  disoovery,  * 
fragment  of  au  ALex&Ddriiin  nov^l  trHtten 
iomewhat  later  than  1T4  B.  c.^  in  whleh  some 
love-lorn  damsel  laments  the  de^^rtion  of  lier 
lover,  with  a  genume  toucb  of  pttssiou  anil 
pathos.  Tbe  style  is  poetic  and  rhetoHc&I,  cod- 
BigtiDg  of  rapid  E^taccato  sentences.  Tbe  lan- 
guage and  the  situation  remind  one  of  Sinio?- 
tba  in  tbe  incantation  sf>ene  of  the  sei^ond 
idyl  of  TheocritUfi.  This  dlthjrambic  frag* 
ment,  of  little  more  than  twenty- five  linea,  is 
written  on  the  tn^rm  of  a  papyrus  which  pro- 
saicaUy  records  the  loan  of  100  artabs  d 
wheat  tn4  S.  C). 


LECKT^B   DEMOCRACY  AI?D  LIBEHTf . 

D«mo<7rac|/  and  Idberfjf.  Bj  Wfaiam  El- 
ward  Hartpole  Leek;.  2  vols.  LsmffxiMm 
Green  &  Co.    mm. 

Tbm  title  selected  for  this  book  ikm  m%  flvi 


May  14,  1896] 


Th.e   iTation. 


381 


A  Twry  cUtmr  iiitl*nAtioii  of  its  conteDti,  which 
ambrao»  m  diacunioD  of  the  effect  of  oniTersal 
■offrage  on  repreeeotative  Institutioos  and  oq 
liberty;  the  limits  of  State  interferenoe;  So- 
dalism  and  Socialist  political  economy;  Church 
and  State;  popular  education;  woman  suffrage; 
the  eight- hour  moTement;  divorce;  RousMau^s 
theories;  the  Australian  ballot;  the  referen- 
dum, and  a  host  of  other  questions  about  which 
pubUc  interest  is  aroused  in  different  parts  of 
the  world,  and  which  together  may  be  regard- 
ed as  forming  the  network  of  problems  affect- 
ing Liberty  woven  by  the  tireless  loom  of  De- 
mocracy. On  nothing  which  the  author  dis- 
cusses does  he  fail  to  throw  some  light,  often 
▼ery  brilliant.  His  clear  and  interesting  style 
gives  attraction  to  the  driest  topics,  and  his 
impartiality  of  manner  disposes  you  to  accept 
his  yerdict,  even  when  it  is  directly  opposed  to 
all  your  preconceptions  and  prejudices.  In  a 
review  it  is  impossible  to  touch  upon  more 
than  one  or  two  points. 

To  our  mind,  Mr.  Lecky^s  most  important 
and  novel  present  contribution  to  political 
philosophy  Is  the  array  of  fact  and  argument 
hj  which  ha  shows  that  universal  suffrage  (at 
any  rate  in  communities  such  as  those  we  live 
in),  is  a  deadly  enemy  to  representative  or  par- 
liamentary institutions,  through  its  effect  in 
steadily  lowering  the  character  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  representative  body;  this,  under  its 
influence,  tending  more  and  more  to  represent 
only  the  widespread  longing  of  the  ignorant 
and  Improvident  to  rob  the  thrifty,  to  under- 
mine the  security  of  contract  and  property, 
and,  wherever  law  or  liberty  stands  In  their 
way,  to  blot  them  out.  The  case  against  univer- 
sal suffrage  rests  mainly  on  observation  of  the 
unquestionable  facts,  first,  that  while  we  have 
numerous  instances  of  legislatures  of  the  first' 
rank  produced  by  a  restricted  suffrage,  we 
have  none  whatever  of  any  such  body  pro- 
duced by  universal  suffrage;  second,  that,  In 
several  cases,  parliamentary  bodies  of  the  first 
rank  have  run  down  pari  passu  with  the  ex-'^ 
tension  of  the  suffrage.  We  may  leave  out  the 
British  Parliament,  bf  cause  the  suffrage  Is  not 
yet  there  entirely  divorced  from  property,  and 
many  of  the  most  prominent  men  in  English 
politics  obtained  their  entrance  into  public  life 
while  the  sufErage  was  stUl  narrow.  Mr.Lecky 
is  of  opinion  that  deterioration  in  the  House 
of  Commons  has  set  in,  but  there  are  plenty 
of  other  clearer  instances.  Italisn,  Austrian, 
Belgian,  and  Dutch  Parliamenti,  elected  by  a 
high  sufl^ge,  have  produced  creditable  legis- 
latlon;  In  all  these  countries,  since  the  basis  of 
the  suffrage  has  been  greatly  extended,  there 
Is  a  marked  deterioration  in  public  life.  In 
France  It  is  notorious  that  the  character  of 
the  representative  body  has  steadily  declined 
until  even  the  cabinets  which  It  produces  are 
cabinets  of  nobodies.  It  is  in  the  United  Stotes, 
however,  that  the  evil  effects  of  universal 
suffrage  00  legislation  are  most  clear;  and  Mr. 
Lscky*s  case  is  here  even  more  telling  than  he 
knows  It  to  be.  The  Senate,  which,  so  long  as 
it  remained  composed  of  men  whose  opening  to 
public  life  had  been  furnished  by  a  property 
suffrage,  was  a  body  remarkable  all  ower  the 
world  for  the  ability  and  character  of  its  mem- 
bers, has,  since  the  full  effects  of  universal 
suffrage  have  come  into  play,  grown  to  be  an 
impotent  and  ignorant  body,  which  can  no 
longer  be  relied  upon  either  to  originate  good 
proposals  of  its  own,  or  to  impede  vicious  le- 
gislatloo  let  on  foot  in  the  House  of  Re|M*esen. 
tatlves.  If  It  Is  said  in  reply  to  this  that  the 
Senate  Is  not  elected  by  universal  suffragei  but 
by  the  States,  the  answer  cannot  be  allowed  to 
have  miieh  weig ht|  because  the  bodies  which 


niwh  wi 


select  Senators  In  the  various  States  are  them- 
selves the  product  of  universal  suffrage.  The 
character  of  the  State  Legislatures  Is  too  no- 
torious  to  permit  dispute.  In  this  State,  with 
its  six  millions  of  Inhabitants*  containing  the 
chief  city  and  commercial  capital  of  the  coun- 
try, the  men  who  make  up  the  Legislature  are 
obecure  local  politicians,  most  of  whom  no  one 
would  employ  in  private  business  of  any  kind. 
They  debate  nothing,  but  i>ass  bills  under  the 
orders  of  a  dealer  in  votes,  who  sells  legislation 
like  any  South  American  dictator,  and  in  many 
cases  passes  bills  by  the  aid  of  members  of  the 
party  nominally  oppoeed  to  him  in  return  for 
promises  of  place.  The  system  In  New  York 
Is,  however,  only  a  g^tesque  exaggeration  of 
evils  which  every  State  capital  illustrates.  So 
far  from  the  public  having  any  confidence  in 
a  legislature,  every  recent  constitution  is  full 
of  provisions,  dictated  by  the  most  profound 
distrust,  restricting  its  powers  In  every  direc- 
tion. 

On  these  facts,  the  case  against  universal 
suCErage,  so  far  as  It  affects  representative  in- 
stitutions, is  a  strong  one;  it  is,  we  may  add, 
reinforced  If  a  different  method  is  employed, 
and  we  inquire  into  the  ultimate  causes  of  the 
process  we  see  going  on  about  us.  Why  and 
how  does  universal  suffrage  produce  Its  effects? 
The  answer  Is,  we  believe,  very  simple.  A 
popular  vote  is  of  two  sorts :  it  decides  a  ques. 
tion,  or  it  elects  a  person  to  office.  The  refer- 
endum, and  our  frequent  votes  on  constitu- 
tional questioos,  are  illustrations  of  the  for- 
mer, and  the  answer  of  universal  suffrage  to 
the  questions  propounded  is,  according  to  our 
experience,  not  generally  unwise.  When  it 
comes,  however,  to  electing  to  office,  universal 
suffrage  can  do  nothing  more  than  decide  be- 
tween two  candidates  put  up  by  a  small  num- 
ber of  managers.  The  theory  of  popular  Insti- 
tutions is  that  candidates  are  brought  fwward 
by  a  sort  of  automatic  natural  selection  of  the 
fittest.  A  is  observed  by  his  neighbors  to  be  a 
wise,  prudent  man,  who  talks  and  argues  well, 
and  manages  affairs  intrusted  to  him  skilfully ; 
his  neighbors,  knowing  that  a  new  legislature 
Is  shortly  to  be  elected,  discuss  the  advisabili^ 
of  sending  A  to  it,  and  In  this  way  A  becomes 
a  candidate.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  except  in 
extreme  cases,  the  deliberation  of  the  voter  is 
confined  to  the  question  whether  he  shall  vote 
for  one  of  two  parties ;  and  what  a  popular 
election  decides  is  which  of  two  parties  shall 
carry  on  the  government.  The  selection  of  the 
candidate  is  left  to  a  small  body  of  managers, 
who  will  generally  put  up  as  candidates  men 
no  better  than  themselves.  So  long  as  the 
suffrage  is  based  on  property,  the  managers  of 
the  machine  will  come  from  the  propertied 
classes,  and  will  select  men  who  are  fairly  rep- 
resentative of  those  classee;  as  soon  as  suffrage 
is  based  on  mere  numbers,  the  machinery  of 
politics  falls  Into  the  hands  of  a  much  lower 
class,  and  necessarily  the  level  of  candidates 
falls  too.  Ignorance,  so  far  as  it  is  vested  with 
power,  tends  to  drive  out  Intelligence,  Just  as  a 
debased  currency  tends  to  drive  out  gold. 

But  this  tendency  is  greatly  aggravated 
among  us  by  our  practice  of  making  all  offloee 
elective  for  short  terms.  Constant  elections 
have  the  effect  of  increasing  the  importance 
of  those  who  manage  the  machinery,  especially 
in  cities,  where  it  soon  gets  to  be  out  of  the 
question  for  a  voter  to  have  much  voice  In  the 
selection  of  candidates  without  abandoning  all 
other  business  and  taking  to  politics  as  a  call, 
ing.  This,  of  course,  In  such  a  condition  of 
government,  involves  consequences  from  which 
the  better  class  of  voters  shrink.  In  the  end 
we  have  the  machine  as  we  know  it.  with  a 


boss  at  Its  head,  which  virtually  carries  on  the 
government;  the  representative  system  has 
shrunk  to  a  form,  and  the  members  of  the  Le- 
gislature, though  elected  by  the  people,  are 
really  the  boss's  hired  men.  What  would  come 
next  we  can  only  guess;  but  we  know  that  the 
aim  of  the  more  intelligent  bosses  has  ahrmys 
been  to  transfer  the  system  to  Washington, 
where  it  would  logically  end  In  a  machine  dic- 
tatorship, controlling  a  Presidential  puppet 
Just  as  Governors  are  now  sometimes  con- 
trolled, tempered  by  occasional  revolts  and  re- 
form movements.  The  forms  of  popular  rep- 
resentative government  would  be  kept  up,  but 
for  the  benefit  of  one  man  or  a  small  group  of 
men. 

Such  is  the  case  against  universal  suffrage— 
perhaps  we  might  say  <since  the  democratic 
principle,  once  introduced,  seems  always  to 
lead  to  universal  suffrage),  the  case  against 
democracy— stated  as  strongly  as  we  can  put 
it.  No  American  of  mature  years  can  read 
Mr.  Lecky's  book  without  feeling  that  the  ex- 
perience of  his  own  country  furnishes  a  great 
deal  of  the  strongest  proof  in  It.  But  It  must 
not  be  supposed  from  this  that  Mr.  Lecky*s 
volumes  are  intended  primarily  as  a  warning 
to  us.  On  the  contrary,  Us  thesis  is  that  the 
country  in  which  the  effects  of  the  Introduc- 
tion of  pure  democracy  will  be  most  felt  is  his 
own.  In  the  United  States,  as  he  points  out, 
following  Sir  Henry  Maine  and  most  modem 
writers  on  the  subject,  the  Constitution  Im- 
poses checks  upon  the  Legislature  of  which  the 
most  important  are  the  veto  and  other  powers 
of  the  Bxecutive  and  the  high  authority  vested 
in  the  judiciary,  which  for  ever  prevents  the 
legislative  bodies  produced  by  universal  suf- 
frage from  Interfering  (as  their  nature  would 
lead  them  to  do)  with  the  foundations  on  which 
society  rests— i.  e.,  property,  contract,  and  lib- 
erty. In  England  no  such  checks  exist.  Par- 
liament is  supreme,  and  there  Is  nothing  to 
prevent  universal  suffrage  from  sending  to 
Westminster  a  House  of  Commons  which  will 
pass  any  measures— no  matter  how  subversive 
of  the  elementary  principles  of  justice  and 
civilization— demanded  by  a  temporary  majo- 
rity. Nay,  according  to  Mr.  Lecky,  this  has 
already  been  done,  the  whole  series  of  mea- 
sures regulating  rent  and  the  relation  of  land- 
lord and  tenant  in  Ireland  being  in  the  nature 
of  confiscation.  This  part  of  the  book,  while 
no  doubt  very  effective  as  a  Conservative  ar- 
gument in  England,  deals  with  a  case  the  ex- 
ceptional character  of  which  prevents  its  being 
so  weighty  as  the  author  would  have  us  be- 
lieve. Most  English  Liberals  would  refuse  to 
admit  that  the  principles  of  recent  Irish  land 
legislation  were  applicable  to  England,  Scot- 
land, and  Wales.  What  Mr.  Lecky  calls 
confiscation  they  call  justice;  party  feeling 
still  colors  every  one's  judgment  about  the 
matter.  No  English  Liberal  can  deny,  bow- 
ever,  the  force  of  the  abstract  reasoning.  An 
omnipotent  Parliament  elected  by  universal 
suffrage  must  pass  whatever  measures  a  majo- 
rity  demands.  There  is  no  written  constitu- 
tion under  which  the  courts  can  declare  laws 
invalid  because  they  violate  the  obligation  of 
contracts  or  make  life,  liberty,  or  property  In- 
secure ;  consequently,  were  this  tendency  un- 
checked, there  would  be  no  oountry  In  the 
world  where  the  future  of  liberty  and  free  In- 
stitutions of  law  and  government  would  be  as 
dark  as  In  England. 

The  sum  and  substance  of  this  part  of  the 
book,  then,  Is  that  the  condition  of  free  insti- 
tutions in  the  United  SUtes  is  an  awful  warn- 
ing to  England  of  her  fate  If  she  becomes 
entirely  demooratio.    In  such  a  case  her  Par- 


382 


Tlie    Nation. 


[VoL  6:2,  No,  i6il 


Uament  will  famish  a  maohine  to  promote 
the  ends  of  demagogues,  sodalistB,  agrarians, 
and  oommonists,  the  like  of  whioh  the  world 
has  never  seen.  The  conclusion  is  one  which 
we  cannot  on  oar  side  any  longer  maintain  to 
be  wholly  unreasonable.  We  can  no  longer 
say,  Ck)me  to  the  United  States  and  we  will 
show  you  a  pare  democracy,  where  the  ofBces 
are  filled  by  the  most  capable  men;  where  the 
taxation  is  the  lightest  in  the  world;  where 
there  are  no  schemes  of  spoliation  in  the  air; 
where  there  are  no  great  inequalities  of  for- 
tune, no  talk  of  foreign  war,  and  where  the 
dreams  of  the  martyrs  of  liberty  through  the 
ages  of  oppression,  cruelty,  and  superstition 
haye  at  length  be«i  made  true  in  the  life  of 
a  free  and  happy  people.  On  the  contrary, 
we  are  confronted  by  problems  very  like  those 
which,  according  to  Mr.  Lecky,  confront 
England. 

The  question  is,  what  is  to  be  done ;  and,  cu- 
riously enough,  the  remedies  which  the  friends 
of  liberty  and  good  goyemmeot  recommend 
to  check  the  ravages  of  the  disease  are  funda- 
mentaUy  not  unlike  in  the  two  countries.  In 
both,  what  is  dreaded  is  the  behavior  of  popu- 
lar legislatiye  bodies.  No  one  in  England  now 
fears  the  Crown  or  the  courts;  no  one  in  this 
country  fears  the  EzecutiTe,  while  the  courts 
are  our  main  reliance  against  legislation.  In 
both  countries  tendencies  are  at  work  which, 
unchecked,  must  sap  the  life-blood  of  free  in- 
stitutions. In  both  countries  conserratiTes  in- 
stinctively  turn  for  relief  to  those  parts  of  the 
Constitution  whidi  reinforce  permanence  in 
institutions.  One  of  the  things  threatened  is 
property;  therefore,  by  all  means,  they  say, 
stick  to  property  suffrage  where  it  still  exists, 
and  strengthen  and  improve  in  every  way  the 
House  of  Lords,  which  represents  property 
most  dis^ctly.  In  thii  country,  having  the 
courts  to  help  us,  what  we  do  is  to  restrict  the 
power  of  the  Legislature  in  every  possible  way 
—by  limiting  more  and  more  the  number  of 
subjects  over  which  it  has  jurisdiction,  by  cui^ 
tailing  as  far  as  possible  its  powers  of  taxation, 
and  by  reducing  the  frequency  of  its  sessions; 
so,  we  lengthen  the  terms  of  governors,  may- 
ors, and  judges,  and,  wherever  the  judiciary 
is  non-elective,  keep  it  so.  We  can  hardly  ad- 
mit it  to  be  **  the  theory  of  American  states- 
men,** as  Mr.  Lecky  sardonically  observes, 
"that  the  persons  elected  on  a  democratic  sys- 
tem are  always  likely  to  prove  dishonest,  but 
that  it  is  possible  by  constitutional  laws  to  re- 
strict their  dishonesty  to  safe  limits'*  (vol. 
i.,  p.  108.)  We  simply  do  what  we  believe  our 
race  has  invariably  done,  when  power  has 
been  insufferably  abused  by  one  branch  of  the 
Government;  we  restrict  it,  take  it  away  alto- 
gether, or  lodge  it  elsewhere.  This  is  exactly 
what  Mr.  Lecky  would  do  in  England.  It  is 
all  that  any  one  can  do,  for  the  step  backwards 
from  democracy  to  privilege  will  not  be  taken 
through  a  democratic  suffrage.  Finally,  it 
must  not  be  overlooked  that,  in  this  country, 
we  correct  the  evils  produced  by  universal 
suffrage  in  one  direction  by  the  very  same 
agency  operating  in  another.  All  our  modem 
constitutional  changes  are  the  products  of  uni- 
versal suffrage. 

So  far  as  Mr.  Lecky*s  book  deals  with  the  ten- 
dency of  universal  suffrage  to  ruin  representa- 
tive bodies  and  through  them  to  produce  other 
evils,  his  position  seems  to  us  impregnable. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  politics  is  not  a 
science  of  demonstration .  We  may  point  out  a 
tendency,  but  there  are  always  so  many  forces 
at  work  that  we  cannot  be  sure  how  far  the 
tendency  will  produce  its  extreme  logical  effect. 
Nothing  is  so  certain  as  that  an  elective  judi- 


ciary in  a  city  like  New  Tork  tends  to  produce 
corruption  on  the  bench;  yet  nothing  is  more 
oertain,  either,  than  that  the  judiciary  here  is 
to-day,  after  two  generations  of  elective  judges, 
better  than  it  was  twenty-five  years  ago.  Nor 
can  it  be  assumed  that  because  democracy  is 
introduced  in  a  country,  and  a  generation  or 
two  later  we  find  a  great  many  tendencies  at 
work  which  all  seem  to  point  to  the  disruption 
of  the  ties  of  family,  to  the  undermining  of 
the  foundations  of  property  and  contract,  and 
to  rendering  life  and  liberty  insecure,  and  cor- 
rupting the  administration  of  justice,  all  these 
consequences  are  the  results  of  democracy  cmly . 
Divorce  is  rife  among  the  well-to-do  nlesif  in 
this  country,  but  it  has  not  been  forced  upon 
them  by  universal  suffrage. 

Mr.  Lecky  draws  a  picture  of  the  state  of  so- 
ciety in  this  country  which  is  far  from  flattei^ 
ing,  though  it  does  not  differ  from  that  whidi 
is  reflected  in  the  press  every  day,  and  leaves 
it  to  be  inferred  that  it  is  more  or  less  a  conse- 
quence of  universal  suffrage.  We  should  be 
inclined  to  say  that  it  was  the  consequence  of 
a  great  variety  of  causes,  and  that  of  the 
amount  of  weight  to  be  given  to  universal  suf- 
frage in  producing  the  result  no  man  can 
judge.  Besides  this,  the  argument  from  con- 
sequences is  a  weapon  which  the  believer  in 
democracy  can  also  use.  If  it  is  to  be  assumed 
that  the  present  condition  of  the  most  advanc- 
ed societies  of  the  world  is  to  be  attributed,  as 
a  whole,  to  the  spread  of  democratic  ideas,  we 
must,  to  judge  fairly  of  the  effect,  go  back  at 
least  to  the  condition  in  which  the  world  was 
while  privilege  still  ruled  it.  We  have  also 
an  example  of  that  world  still  left,  existing  on 
an  enormous  scale,  in  the  Russian  Empire.  If 
we  go  back  a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  it  exist- 
ed all  over  the  world.  The  old  world  was  not 
governed  democratically,  but  by  tl>e  very 
classes  which  in  theory  i^ould  always  produce 
fitness,  ability,  and  seal  in  government— the 
educated,  the  holders  of  property,  long-estab- 
lished  families.  These  classee  had  the  power, 
and,  what  is  more,  had  enjoyed  it  for  ages, 
and  were  supported  in  its  enjoyment  by  church, 
es  which  had  a  hold  upon  conduct  such  as  no 
religious  bodies  now  have.  Had  they  pro- 
vided even  decent  government  for  mankind, 
democracy  might  never  have  estabUshed  its 
claim  to  a  hearing.  As  it  was,  they  produced 
for  justice  widespread  tyranny  and  corrup- 
tion, for  peace  constant  war,  for  liberty  and 
happiness  endless  misery  among  large  classes 
of  those  dependent  on  them.  The  equality  of 
man  was  no  doubt  a  dream,  but  it  awakened 
the  world,  and,  bringing  democracy  with  it, 
set  on  foot  those  stupendous  changes  which 
have  made  the  world  of  to-day,  if  not  a  para- 
dise, at  least  a  place  where  we  are  free  to 
make  of  our  lives  what  our  faculties  permit. 

We  have  not  a  word  to  say  against  the  truth 
of  the  picture  of  the  evils  of  the  state  of  society 
in  which  we  live,  but  inasmuch  as  the  old  sys- 
tem produced  a  condition  of  tilings  to  relieve 
the  world  from  which  democracy  had  to  be 
invoked,  and  inasmuch  as  democracy  appears 
to  be  established  as  firmly  on  its  throne  as  au- 
tocracy or  the  privilege  of  the  educated  mino- 
rity ever  was,  we  are  thankful  to  believe  that 
even  the  baleful  and  poisonous  influence  of 
ignorant  and  irresponsible  suffrage  is  counter- 
acted by  other  forces  powerful  enough  to 
triumph  in  the  end,  and  to  justify  those  who 
still  refuse  to  believe  that  man*s  inevitable 
alternative  is  either  anarchy  or  privilege  rest- 
ing on  force.  If  universal  suffrage  were  po- 
tent enough  to  blot  out  again  the  freedom  and 
justice  and  equal  rights  to  attain  which  whole 
generations  have  laid  down  their  lives,  then 


would  our  last  state  be  indeed  worse  than  the 
first ;  for  even  hope  would  be  gone. 


LAST  POEMS  OF  MARGARET  OF  NA- 
VARRE. 

LeM  Demi^rw*  FckMes  de  Marguerite  de  No- 
varrty  publie^  pour  la  premiere  fois,  avee 
une  introduction  et  des  notes,  par  Abel  Le- 
franc,  secretaire  du  Concede  France.  [Pub- 
lication de  la  Society  d'Histoire  Litt^rairs 
de  France.]  Paris:  Armand  Colin  ft  Cie. 
8vo,  pp.  Ixxvii,  461. 

Ih  1547  there  was  published  a  collection  of  com- 
positions in  verse— they  scarcely  deserve  to  be 
called  po«n»— entitled  *  Les  Marguerites  de  la 
Marguerite  des  princesses.*  This  Margaret, 
*'  the  pearl  of  princesses,**  was  that  Queen  of 
Navarre,  sister  of  Francis  I.,  whose  name  in 
literature  is  distinguished  chiefly  as  the  au- 
thor of  the  *  Heptameron.*  Any  one  who  has 
read  aright  this  last-mentioned  work,  and  has 
judged  it  intelligently,  feels  little  surprise  in 
flnding  that  **  les  marguerites**  of  the  Queen  are 
chiefly  expressions  in  various  forms  and  at 
considtfable  length  of  the  sinoereet  religious 
emotion.  Mingled  with  poems  of  this  cha- 
racter are  others  of  a  less  serious  cast,  but  all 
have  such  fervor  and  such  tenderness  that  they 
reflect  as  in  a  mirror  the  sweet  and  noble 
mind  of  their  writer. 

The  ** Marguerites**  were  reprinted  twenty 
years  ago  under  the  editorship  of  M.  Fttlx 
Frank,  and  met  with  warm  appreciatioa  among 
their  modem  readers.  That  the  four  beautiful 
little  volumes  contained  all  Margaret's  impor- 
tant poems  was  not  questioned.  It  was  known 
that  some  minor  ones  still  remained  among  tlie 
manuscripts  of  the  Arsenal  and  of  the  Biblio. 
th^ue  Nationale,  and  extracts  from  them  had 
been  given  by  one  and  another  student  of  the 
Queen*s  works;  but  no  one  suspected  that  a 
consideralde  part,  and  not  the  least  interesting, 
of  her  poetical  writings  was  still  unknown. 
The  discoveries  that  are  made  in  the  great 
libraries  of  to-day  by  literary  explorers  have 
a  blending  of  chance  and  research  that  is  the 
perfection  of  good  fortune,  and  he  would  be  a 
dullard  who  did  not  sympathise  with  the  emo- 
tion M.  Lef ranc  confesses  he  felt  when,  work- 
ing five  years  ago  at  the  Biblioth^ue  Nationals^ 
he  found  in  his  liands  a  manuscript  which  no 
man  had  read,  it  would  seem,  since,  three  cen- 
turies and  a  half  ago  Jeanne  d'Albret  laid  its 
leaves  in  an  iron  box  with  solid  fastenings. 

They  were  her  mother*s  last  writings ;  most 
of  them  probably  compoeed  in  the  less  than  three 
years  that  elapsed  between  the  death  of  King 
Francis— the  blow  which  killed  Margaret— 
and  her  own  death  in  1549,  at  the  not  old  age 
of  fifty-seven  years.  And  it  is  not  strange 
that  as  Margaret,  during  this  very  period, 
had  made  a  selection  of  her  poems  and  given 
it  to  the  world,  her  daughter  should  have  felt 
that  these  were  not  then  to  be  published,  and, 
putting  them  away,  put  than  out  of  her 
thoughts.  One  can  easily  believe  that  the  ex- 
pressions of  her  mother's  eager,  open,  tender, 
feminine  intelligence  did  not  I4ipeal  to  the 
rigidities  and  severities  of  Jeanne*s  masculine 
nature ;  and  whether  Margaret  was  or  was  not 
a  Roman  Catholic  in  her  belief,  she  was  a  true 
Catholic  in  the  larger  sense,  while  Jeanne  wss 
a  true  Protestant,  to  whom  Biargarel^  im- 
mense and  persistent  liberality  most  have 
l>een  entirely  unwelcome.  Nowhera  doea  Mar- 
garet*s  generosity  of  inteUectual  ^ppmnlsHw 
find  fuller  and  finer  exprewlon  Umm  hkHnm 
Last  Poems.  So  her  daughter  toeteilfeMmf  | 
and  now  they  are  unlocked.  ~  ~ 


May  14,  1896] 


Tlie   2Sration. 


383 


DOW,  tt  most  be  with  shmme  that  the  heights 
from  which  Margaret  ipeaks  are  etill  so  far 
aboTe  the  oonunon  paths  of  the  world ;  kmt 
this  sweet»  dear  Toioe  that  sings  this  perpetual 
song  of  Loire,  LoTe,  Loto,  will,  it  oannot  be 
doobted,  find  respondye  hearts. 

Margaret's  iteration  and  reiteration  of  the 
need  of  Lore,  the  joy  of  Love,  shapes  itself 
into  a  **  comedy  **  contained  in  this  Tolome 
with  a  graoefolness  and  fineness  onnsoal  for 
her.  For  it  must  be  said  that  her  Terse  for  the 
most  part  is  very  inartistic :  weak  in  form 
and  sadly  wordy.  Every  word  is  gracloos, 
bot  there  are  so  many  of  them  I  A  great 
deal  of  her  verse  is  only  serious  doggerel, 
and  has  no  poetic  qoality.  She  evidently 
wrote  it  as  easily  and  as  carelessly  as  one 
talks;  it  is,  in  truth,  simply  rapid  talking 
to  herself,  and,  just  because  it  is  so,  it  is  a 
singularly  interesting  reflection  of  her  mind. 
Bot  this  UtUe  "  comedy  **—«*  une  Ck)m6die 
jou^  au  Mont  de  Marsan,  le  jour  de  caresme 
preoant  mil  cinq  cens  quarante  sept,  a  quatre 
personnages,  e'est  assavoir  la  Mondainne,  la 
Buperstitleuse,  la  Sage  et  la  Raine  de  Tamour 
de  Dieu,  bergdre  "—this  liUle  *'  morality  *'  has 
great  charm.  The  four  lovely  women  who 
circle  about  one  another,  with  mutually  clasp- 
ing and  unclasping  hands— La  Mondainne,  who 
loves  her  body,  and  asks  to  be  asked  why,  and 
says  why  in  the  sweetest  manner;  La  Bupersti- 
tleuse, who  is  going  on  a  holy  pilgrimage;  La 
ktege,  who  knows  that  man  is  both  body  and 
soul;  and  La  RUne  de  Dieu,  a  shepherdess  who 
feels 

'*Qal  Ttt  d*amoar  a  blen  le  enmu  jolealz" 

— thsse  fair  figures,  and  their  courtrous  and 
pretty  and  wise  and  high  sayings,  take  the 
heart  captive.  M.  Lefranc  has  noted  that 
Margaret  Inclined  to  make  use  of  the  form  of 
dialogue,  and  remarks  with  discernment  that 
this  form  was  better  fitted  than  any  other  to 
shon  forth  all  the  ** nuances'^  of  her  thought 
(and,  it  may  be  added,  the  many  sides  of  her 
thought),  and,  also,  to  save  any  necessity  of 
formulating  explicit  personal  conclusions 
regarding  the  subjects  of  universal  interest  she 
treats.  This  may  be  observed  in  the  <  Hepta- 
meron,*  where  the  conversations  are  far  more 
Interesting  and  important  than  the  stories  to 
which  they  serve  as  prologues  and  epilogues. 

But  the  longest  and  most  important  poem  in 
this  volume— 175  pages  long— is  a  narrative  en- 
UUed  «*  Les  Prisons  de  la  Reine  de  Navarre," 
i  n  which  phrase  the  *  *  de  ^  may  be  taken  to  mean 
not  "the  work  of,"  but  strictly  "of,"  the  pri- 
sons  in  which  had  been  imprisoned  the  Queen 
of  Navarre— "My  Prisons,"  bm  she  herself 
thought  of  them.  It  is  not  material  prisons  of 
which  she  writes— she  was  never  literally  a  pris- 
oner; but,  perhaps  t>ecause  the  imprisonments 
of  others  had  throughout  her  life  been  a  cause 
of  anguish  to  her,  she  is  apt  to  use  the  figure 
of  spiritual  prisons.  For  example,  in  a  letter 
to  her  nephew  Henri  II.,  written  just  after  the 
death  of  the  King,  her  brother,  she  speaics  of 
her  many  sufferings : 


compter  malsrtJe  et  ennuju 

liM  Joan  maavale  ei  1m  farcheoMt  aalota 
D*  mofp  dM  mleas  voUic**  efe  prIWMu, 
PertM.  refrecta.  cralnotet  et  iralilMms.'* 

In  more  than  one  passage  of  the  poem  now 
q>oken  of  is  the  sentiment  eipressed  with 
ardw,  "  Ubi  spiritus,  ibi  libertaa,"  and  It  may 
be  mentioned,  in  passing,  as  an  interesting 
little  fact»  that  this  motto  is  worked  on  several 
pieces  of  tapestry  executed  by  Margaret  her- 
self  (who  had  pleasure  always  in  this  sort  of 
work,  and  did  much  of  it),  and  is  especially  to 
be  remarked  6n  a  dais  of  black  velvet  and 
crimsoo  satin  which  belonged  to  her,  and  was 


very  probably  made  by  her  own  hands.  This 
piece  of  work  is  called  in  several  Idth-century 
inventories  of  the  ChAteau  de  Pau  (where  ap. 
parenUy  it  is  still  in  existence)  the  "  Dais  des 
Prisons  rompus,"  which  gives  it  a  close  con- 
nection with  this  poem,  and  is  a  confirmation 
of  the  poem*8  authenticity  which  It  is  surpris- 
ing that  M.  Lefranc  does  not  point  out. 

The  story  she  tells  here  is  of  three  prisons 
successively  dwelt  in  by  her— three  delightful 
prisons,  in  each  of  which  she  was  perfectly 
happy— the  prison  of  Earthly  Love ;  that  of 
Ambition,  Riches,  and  Pleasure,  or,  in  general 
terms,  of  Woridllness ;  and  the  prison  of  Sci- 
ence—that is,  of  Earthly  Knowledge.  From 
each  of  these  prisons  in  turn  she  is  delivered 
by  the  Grace  of  Ood,  and  each  of  them  in  turn 
becomes  not  hateful  to  her— never  that— but 
something  inferior  to  the  liberty,  the  perfect 
liberty,  she  at  last  attains  in  the  Love  of  GhxL 
The  details,  too  numerous  to  be  here  entered 
upon,  are  often  of  great  interest,  especially  in 
the  portion  deecribing  her  rapturous  enjoyment 
of  Learning,  which  Ib  all  fragrant  with  the 
fresh  breeses  of  the  Renaissance.  The  whole 
poem  is  a  Renaissance  rendering— the  Renais- 
sance checkered  with  the  Reformation— of  the 
subject-matter  of  Tennyson*s  "  Palace  of  Art," 
and  in  conception  it  is  more  subtle,  more  pro- 
found, and  far  more  sincere  than  the  modem 
poet*8  picturing  of  the  dealings  of  the  Divine 
Spirit  with  the  Human  Soul.  Not  musical  in 
sound,  it  is  singularly  musical  in  thought— 
that  if,  its  "motives"  are  muslo-Iike  in  their 
vague  yet  piercing  suggeetiveness. 

It  is  addreased,  almost  unquestionably,  to  her 
second  husband,  Henri  d'Albret,  though  under 
the  disguise  of  a  man  addressing  a  woman.  This 
disguise  Margaret  often  adopted,  and  it  was 
more  permissible  in  her  day  than  in  ours,  when 
a  width  of  intellectual  scope  is  granted  to  wo- 
men such  as  Margaret  could  not  claim  with- 
out apparent  presumpdon.  Another  reason, 
also,  probably  infiuen<  ed  her  in  this  instance. 
Her  first  prison  of  Eanhly  Love  she  describes 
as  of  her  own  creation,  she  walls  made  impass- 
able and  the  bolts  and  bars  riveted  for  his 
sake  whom  trustworthy  eyewitnesses  of  her 
life  fay  she  loved  at  first  with  tender  passion, 
as  was  her  nature,  and  treated  to  the  last  with 
admirable  respect,  through  all  the  sad  twenty 
years  of  their  union,  though  he  (eleven  years, 
alas  I  her  junior)  showed  her  constant  disre- 
gard and  unkindness.  From  the  beginning, 
probably,  the  one  who  was  loved  was  the  man, 
the  one  who  loved  was  the  woman,  and  till  the 
world  recogniass  that  this  is  great  Nature's 
will,  there  must  be  something  of  mortification 
for  the  woman  in  this  relation,  and  Margaret's 
assumption  here  of  a  man's  dress  is  easily  ex- 
plicable. 

In  the  doeest  possible  spiritual  connection 
with  this  first  "prison"  is  another  poem  of 
twenty-one  "dixains,'*  "Les  Adieux";  her 
adieus  to  all  the  dear  delightfulnesses  of  her 
love.  She  speaks  now  in  her  own  person, 
uttering  such  poignant  grief  with  such  mag- 
nanimous sweetness  and  noble  tenderness  that 
these  pages  are  certainly  among  the  most 
touching  ever  written  by  a  woman.  Among 
the  other  "poesies"  of  this  volume  is  a  kmg 
dialogue  between  the  Queen  and  her  dead 
brother,  and  a  "comedy"  on  his  death,  "sur 
le  treqias  du  Roy."  The  last  words  of  the 
"comedy,"  sung  by  all  the  personages,  "Si 
bona  snscepimus  de  manu  Domini,  mala  autem 
quare  non  sustineamus,  sicut  Domino  placuit  f 
Ita  factum  est.  Sit  nomen  Dei  benedictum  "— 
theee  words  are  echoed  from  every  page  of  the 
Queen's  writings.  And,  such  being  the  case, 
the  mysticim,  the  obacority  in  which  she 


often  veils  her  lofty  aspirations,  is  of  tn^i? 
consequence  to  those  who  care  for  her  chiefly 
as  a  peculiarly  womanly  woman.  Those  who 
care  for  her  as  a  thinktr  (M.  Lefranc,  for 
example)  must  needs  pull  the  cloth  hard— so 
hard  that  it  almost  or  quite  cracks.  To  speak 
of  "the  splendor  of  her  intellect,"  as  some  of 
her  editors  are  pleased  to  do,  is  as  unfltting  as 
to  talk  of  "  the  splendor  of  her  beauty,"  as 
they  also  do.  Her  plain  face,  where  the  vigor 
of  the  great  Valois  nose  was  blended,  in  her 
youth,  with  the  timidity  of  her  small  eyes, 
and,  in  her  age,  with  the  kindliness  of  her 
mobile  mouth,  charmed  by  its  expreaslvenesB, 
and  was  in  harmony  with  the  Beamais  coe- 
tume,  almost  the  dress  of  a  widow,  which  she 
always  wore,  even  at  Court,  after  the  death 
of  her  only  son.  In  like  manner,  the  charm 
of  her  verses,  robed  in  their  quaint  phraseo- 
logy, is  largely  a  matter  of  sentiment ;  their 
vflJue  is  dependent  on  the  reader.  A  some- 
what intimate  knowledge  of  her  life  is  needed 
to  place  one  in  sympathetic  relation  with  them. 
There  are  scarcely  a  dosen  pages  which,  from 
their  own  merits,  reward  attention  and  de> 
serve  permanence.  Her  verses  are  as  mortal 
as  herself,  for  they  are  herself.  In  comparing 
her  effusions  with  those  of  George  Herbert, 
with  whom  she  had  much  in  common,  one 
recognises  what  "the  Elisabethan  age"  did 
for  its  min(»r  poets.  Margaret  was  trained 
in  the  school  of  Marot.  Traces  of  her  reading 
appear  in  this  volume,  as  in  her  other  works, 
especially  of  her  studies  of  Plato  and  Dante. 
She  refers  by  name  to  Dante,  and  a  fine  passage 
of  the  "  Prisons,"  the  meeting  of  the  traveller 
among  supernal  things  with  "un  vieillart"  is 
a  (perhaps  unconscious)  copy  of  the  "veglio 
solo  "  of  the  first  canto  of  the  "  Purgatorio." 

One  becomes  almost  as  prolix  as  herself  in 
writing  of  her;  it  is  because,  as  M.  F61ix 
Prank  has  well  said,  "she  was  one  of  those 
rare  beings  who  are  loved  in  death  through 
the  mists  of  ages." 


My  Ck>nfideneea :  An  Autobiographical  Sketch 
Addressed  to  My  Descendants.  By  Frederick 
Locker-Lampson.  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 
1896. 
To  a  certain  extent  this  book  disarms  criticism. 
It  is  not,  we  are  told,  intended  as  a  contribu- 
tion to  literature,  but  simply  to  preserve  for 
the  writer's  own  descendants  such  little  notices 
and  anecdotes  of  two  or  three  of  their  progeni- 
tors as  will  probably  be  interesting  to  them,  if 
not  to  the  public ;  and  if  they  are  printed  in  a 
volume,  instead  of  being  left  in  manuscript.  It 
is  because  this  is  the  only  way  to  assure  their 
preeervation.  He  even  doubts  whether  the 
present  inheritors  of  the  name  will  care  much 
about  them,  but  projects  his  vision  into  a 
dim  future  when,  to  some  remote  deecendant 
of  an  antiquarian  turn,  they  may  be  precious 
fragments  of  salvage.  This  is  a  quite  intelligi- 
ble feeling.  If  the  preeent  writer  possessed  an 
authentic  record  to  the  effect  that  an  ancestor 
of  his  own  once  saw  Ben  Jonwn  at  the  Mer- 
maid, and  heard  him  say,  in  his  big  voice, 
"  Drawer,  more  sack,"  be  would  be  immensely 
proud  of  the  fact,  and  would  be  pained  to  think 
that  it  oould  ever  be  totally  forgotten. 

Mr.  Locker  came  of  a  family  respectable 
rather  than  distinguished— London  men  of 
business,  with  some  literary  tastes.  His  grand- 
father entered  the  navy,  roee  in  the  service,  at 
one  time  had  both  Nelson  and  Colliogwood  un- 
der his  command,  and  seems  to  have  been  one 
of  the  beet  specimens  of  that  lost  type,  the  old 
sea-capUin.  Mr.  Locker*s  father  was  atUched 
to  the  navy  in  a  dvn  oapad^,  andan  iaterea^ 


384: 


Tlie   N^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 1 


log  letter  from  him  is  heregiren,  describlDg  ftn 
interview  with  Napoleon  at  Elba.  His  wife 
was  a  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Jonathan  Boucher, 
a  distinguished  divine,  and  a  rather  conspicu- 
ous figure  in  Maryland  colonial  history.  Mr. 
Boucher  was  eminent  not  only  for  piety,  learn- 
ing, and  eloquence,  but  for  his  undaunted  and 
uncompromising  loyalism.  His  last  sermon 
was  preached  at  Annapolis,  when  Revolutiona- 
ry  passion  was  wildest,  and  with  a  pair  of  pis- 
tols lying  on  the  desk,  and  concluded  with  a 
defiant  '*  Ood  save  the  King  I " 

Mr.  Locker  himself  was  bom  at  Greenwich 
Hospital,  of  which  his  father  was  a  resident 
commissioner,  in  1821.  His  parents  intended 
him  for  a  professional  career,  but  the  boy, 
though  a  good  cricketer,  and  with  rather  a 
knack  of  turning  off  English  verses,  could 
never  take  kindly  to  Latin ;  so  that  scheme 
had  to  be  given  up,  and  a  clerkship  was  ob- 
tained for  him  in  the  Admiralty.  Here  it  was 
that  he  made  his  first  public  venture  in  poetry 
with  *  London  Lyrics,*  light,  easy,  and  g^race- 
ful  pieces,  which  are  still  pleasantly  remem- 
bered, and  deserve  to  be.  These  brought  him 
to  the  notice  of  Thackeray,  who  asked  him 
to  write  for  the  ComhUL  His  marriage,  in 
1850,  to  Lady  Charlotte  Bruce^  a  great  favorite 
at  court,  introduced  him  to  very  distinguished 
people  indeed,  and  seems  to  have  wrought  an 
improvement  in  his  fortunes,  as  the  Admiralty 
drops  out  of  sight,  and  we  find  him  travelling 
like  a  man  of  leisure,  wintering  in  Italy,  and 
collecting  rare  majolica  and  editiones  princi- 
pes^  to  say  nothing  of  paying  £100  for  a  miss- 
ing leaf  of  the  First  Folio.  Even  early  in  the 
sixties  this  sort  of  thing  took  a  long  purse. 

After  the  death  of  his  wife,  in  1866,  foUowed 
by  the  mention  of  his  remarriage  (to  Miss 
liampson)  in  1874,  the  book  loses  much  of  its 
autobiographical  character,  and  is  made  up 
of  little  disconnected  Bketches  of  persons  and 
occurrences,  apparently  written  for  separate 
publication  at  various  times.  The  last  chap- 
ter, in  which  he  describes  himself  in  a  pleasant 
country  home,  cheerfully  awaiting  the  end,  is 
at  once  pleasing  and  touching ;  and  the  whole 
book,  if  a  little  disappointing,  leaves  one  with 
a  distinct  image  of  a  bright,  cheery,  and 
amiable  personality. 


The  Story  of  the  Indian.  By  George  Bird 
Grinnell.  Illustrated.  D.  Appleton  &  Ck>. 
1806.  870,  pp.  370. 
In  this  volume  Mr.  Grinnell  has  brought  to- 
gether his  recollections  of  the  manners  and 
customs,  religion,  etc.,  of  certain  tribes  with 
which  he  seems  to  have  lived.  His  object,  so 
we  are  told,  was  "to  give  only  a  general  view 
of  Indian  life  "  ;  and  if,  in  carrying  out  this 
plan,  he  has  found  it  necessary  to  descend  into 
particulars  (as,  e.  g.,  when  describing  scenes 
he  has  witnessed  and  repeating  stories  he  has 
heard),  it  Is  because  "the  concrete  example 
conveys  a  clearer  idea  of  an  event  than  an  ab- 
stract statement,  and  because  the  story  of  the 
Indian  should  not  be  told  wholly  from  the 
point  of  view  of  a  race  alien  in  thought,  feel- 
ing, and  culture.**  To  this  explanation  of  his 
purpose  and  of  his  proposed  manner  of  work 
there  can  be  no  objection.  In  fact,  the  know- 
ledge which  long  association  with  the  Indians 
has  given  him  of  their  character,  has  enabled 
him  to  prepare  an  account  which  differs,  in 
certain  respects,  from  the  usually  received 
ideas,  but  which  may,  perhaps  for  this  very 
reason,  help  us  to  understand  the  methods  of 
thought  and  lines  of  conduct  that  characterize 
our  red  neighbors. 
Take,  for  instanoe,  what  is  said  of  their  ideas 


of  marriage  and  about  the  position  of  woman 
among  them.  Instead  of  being  the  drudge 
and  slave  she  is  sometimes  painted,  we  find 
that  bhe  occupied  a  well-defined  and  "re^iect- 
able  "  position,  and  that  not  only  was  she  con- 
sulted upon  household  and  family  matters, 
but  that  (p.  107),  upon  occasion,  she  was  called 
into  the  tribal  council  and  her  opinions  asked. 
Unquestionably,  her  life  was  hard  and  full  of 
toil^  and  so,  for  that  matter,  in  early  times, 
was  the  life  on  the  frontier  of  her  white  sister; 
but,  in  spite  of  certain  drawbacks,  she  seems 
to  have  found  time  (pp.  26,  46,  etc.)  to  gossip, 
dance,  and  gamble,  and,  on  the  whole,  she 
managed  (p.  47)  to  get  a  good  deal  of  pleasure 
in  life.  Even  in  her  marriage,  the  presents 
(p.  40)  which  passed  between  the  parents  of 
the  contracting  parties,  and  which  are  usually 
spoken  of  as  the  price  paid  for  the  wo- 
man, sometimes  found  their  way  back  to  the 
newly  wedded  pair.  Evidently,  in  a  case  of 
this  kind,  there  was  no  question  of  bargain  and 
sale.  It  was  simply  another,  and,  so  far  as 
etiquette  required  the  presents  to  be  of  equal 
value,  an  ingenious,  way  of  increasing  the 
dowry  with  which  the  young  people  began 
housekeeping.  But  even  if  this  were  not  so 
and  the  marriage  was  a  virtual  sale  on  the 
part  of  the  woman's  father,  as  it  sometimes 
was,  there  was  a  foundation  of  common  sense 
in  the  Indian's  view  of  the  matter.  "  Marry  a 
man  who  is  willing  to  give  something  for  you,** 
said  an  Omaha  mother  to  her  daughter ;  and 
whether  we  regard  this  gift  as  a  measure  of 
the  woman*s  value  or  of  the  man*8  love,  it  is, 
perhaps,  as  satisfactory  a  test  as  are  the  pro- 
testations that  often,  under  similar  circum- 
stances, pass  current  with  us. 

In  the  matter  of  religion  the  account  is  not 
so  clear.  As  well  as  we  can  gather  from  our 
author's  somewhat  incongruous  statements, 
the  Indian's  pantheon  was  inhabited  by  an  in- 
definite number  of  gods,  or  rather  supernatu- 
ral agencies,  of  different  degrees  of  power. 
They  were  neither  uniformly  good  nor  bad, 
but  sometimes  one  and  sometimes  the  other; 
and  they  could  be  placated  by  prayers  and 
sacrifices.  All  nature  was  alive  with  them; 
and  every  Indian  had  some  such  power—medi- 
cine, it  is  generally  called— to  watch  over  and 
protect  him.  Thus  far  all  is  plain  sailing,  and, 
as  it  agrees  with  what  we  know  of  Indian 
ideas,  we  accept  it.  But  when  we  are  told  (p. 
203)  that  before  the  Pawnees  had  been  greatly 
changed  by  contact  with  civilization,  they  re- 
garded  Atiue  TVratro— the  head  of  their  su- 
pernatural hierarchy—"  as  an  intangible  spi- 
rit, onmipotent  and  beneficent,*'  we  respect- 
fully call  a  halt,  for  the  reason  that  ideas  like 
these  belong  to  a  phase  of  development  in  ad- 
vance of  that  which  the  Indian  had  reached. 
With  all  due  respect,  we  prefer,  on  this  point, 
to  follow  Dunbar,  who  tells  us  (in  his  sketch 
of  the  Pawnees),  that  "  it  was  very  doubtful 
whether  their  conception  of  Ti-ra-wa  could  be 
rightfully  called  a  conception  of  a  spiritual 
being  at  all.  It  was  rather  an  indistinct  being 
with  certain  human  attributes  indefinitely 
magnified.**  "All  success,  **  we  are  furthermore 
told,  "  was  regarded  as  an  expression  of  his 
favor,  and  all  disappointment  or  failure  as  a 
betokening  of  his  disapprobation.  He  was 
changeable  like  themselves**;  and  although 
"  stoutly  affirming  that  they  loved  him  a  great 
deal,  yet  they  evidently  feared  him,"  which 
they  would  hardly  have  done  if  he  had  been 
looked  upon  as  a  purely  beneficent  being. 

Naturally  enough,  in  a  volume  consisting  in 
part,  as  this  does,  of  "many  memories"  of  dlf- 
ferent  tribes,  slips  and  incongruitiee  are  almost 
inevitable.    Accordingly,  we  are  not  surprised 


to  find  not  only  that  there  is  an  occasional 
clash  between  certain  "general  views,"  but 
that  there  is  also,  at  times,  a  fiat  contradictioa 
between  some  particular  general  view  and  its 
oooGrete  example.  Take,  for  instance,  the 
statement  (p.  54)  that  the  buffalo  must  have 
been  well-nigh  invulnerable  to  the  stone-headed 
arrow,  and  it  cannot  be  reconciled  with  what 
we  are  told  (p.  152)  of  the  power  of  the  bow  in 
old  times.  Moreover,  it  does  not  agree  with 
what  Cabeza  de  Vaca  and  others  tell  us  d  the 
trade  in  buffalo  robes,  which,  in  early  times, 
the  Indians  of  the  plains  carried  on  with  their 
neighbors.  So,  too,  the  struggle  for  existence, 
severe  as  it  may  have  been  in  certain  quarters 
(pp.  58,  56),  can  hardly  have  been  general  if  the 
Southeastern  tribes  (p.  248)  "found  little  or  no 
difficulty  in  supporting  life.**  Of  the  same  cha- 
racter and  even  more  objectionable  is  the  as- 
sertion (p.  125)  that,  within  the  historic  epoch, 
the  Indians,  in  war,  killed  "women  and  chil- 
dren as  gladly  as  men,"  etc.  The  statement  is 
general,  and  yet  not  only  is  it  not  true  of  cer- 
tain tribes  east  of  the  Mississippi,  but  on  p.  139 
we  are  told  that  the  Plegans,  in  a  skirmish  with 
the  Crows  and  Gros  Ventres,  in  wiiich  they 
were  victorious,  killed  the  men  but  took  the 
women  and  boys  prisoners,  and,  we  may  add, 
adopted  them. 

These  instances  (and  there  are  others  of  the 
same  sort)  indicate  the  character  of  the  con- 
clusions to  which  we  object;  and  our  purpose 
in  calling  attention  to  them  is  not  so  much  to 
criticise  this  particular  volume  as  it  is  to  sound 
a  note  of  warning  against  the  danger  of  in- 
dulging in  generalities.  Like  ourselves,  the 
Indians,  considered  either  as  individuals  or  in 
their  tribal  capacities,  differed  in  many  re- 
spects; and  while  these  differences  were  of  de- 
gree rather  than  kind,  yet  it  would  be  difficult 
to  give  expression,  save  in  the  broadest  possi- 
ble terms,  to  a  formula  that  would  include  all 
of  them.  Thus,  while  it  is  probably  safe  to 
say  that  there  was  but  one  phase  of  civilization 
from  the  St.  Lawrence  to  Panama,  yet  if  called 
upon  to  depict  the  constituent  elements  of 
this  civilization  in  phraseology  that  would 
apply  to  tribes  differing  as  widely  as  did  the 
Iroquois  and  the  Aztecs,  we  should  find  it  as 
impossible  as  it  would  be  to  represent  home 
life  in  Fifth  Avenue  and  at  the  Five  Points  on 
one  and  the  same  canvas. 


The  History  of  the  Austrakuian  Colonise, 
By  Edward  Jenks.  [Cambridge  Historical 
Series]  MacmiUan.  1895. 
As  Prof.  Jenks  remarks  in  the  opening  sentence 
of  his  preface,  "No  sane  person  would  attempt 
to  write  a  complete  history  of  Australasia  in 
800  pages."  Within  the  limito  that  be  has  as- 
signed himself  his  own  work  is  admirable.  It 
is  clear,  condensed  to  a  necessary  if  almost 
fatiguing  extent,  thoughtful,  unprejudiced, 
and  characterized  by  a  refreshing  absence  of 
rhetoric.  We  have  set  before  us  in  a  brief 
form  the  circumstances  of  the  foundation  of 
each  of  the  Australasian  colonies,  with  the 
difficulties  it  had  to  contend  against,  and  the 
story  of  how  they  were  successfully  overcome 
till  present  prosperity  was  reached.  If  we  find 
it  hard  to  remember  distinctly  all  that  wa 
read,  the  f  auH  lies  not  so  much  with  the  author 
as  with  the  necessity  he  was  under  of  telling 
many  things  in  a  small  space,  and  also  with  a 
certain  sameness  in  several  of  the  facts  that  he 
relates.  Ck>ncise  as  he  is,  his  last  chapter,  that 
on  "  Present  Day  <;^estions,"  is  the  only  one 
that  strikes  us  as  inadequate,  and  here  he  has 
obviously  retrenched,  owing  to  "limits  of 
space,  already  somewhat  exceeded." 


Ma^  14,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation, 


386 


The  histories  of  the  different  Australasiaii 
colonies  have  been  in  the  main  similar  and  not 
startlingly  eyentfuL  The  first  stage  was  usu- 
ally military  rule,  penal  settlements,  and  a 
small  free  population  which  for  a  time  did  not 
raise  its  own  means  of  subsistence.  Boon  the 
number  of  immigrants  increased,  as  they  be- 
came self-supporting,  then  prosperous ;  while 
some  governors  greatly  helped,  others  rather 
retarded  progress.  After  a  time,  colonists 
were  appointed  to  the  Legislative  Councils, 
which  were  given  a  certain  authori^  ;  later, 
they  were  elected  to  these  councils,  and  finally 
granted  their  present  nearly  complete  self- 
government.  Among  the  most  important 
dates  of  this  development  are  1788,  when  the 
colony  of  New  South  Wales  was  founded;  1805, 
the  year  in  which  the  wool-growing  industry 
began ;  1851,  when  gold  was  discovered.  In 
1823  we  find  the  first  Australasian  constitution, 
in  1842  the  first  represenUUve  one.  In  1855-56 
responsible  government  was  introduced  into 
all  the  colonies  except  West  Australia,  which 
did  not  get  it  until  1890,  being  also  the  last  to 
be  abandoned  as  a  penal  settlement  (1865),  and 
even  then  not  by  its  own  desire  but  in  defer- 
ence to  the  clamor  of  its  neighbors.  The  next 
great  step  will  be  some  sort  of  a  federation. 

In  a  century  the  progress  of  Australia  has 
been  most  remarkable.  Mr.  Jenks  thus  com- 
ments on  it  and  its  results: 

**  In  this  colonization  there  has  been  scarcely 
one  of  the  difficulties  which  have  threatened 
other  attempts.  The  colonists  have  (with  tri- 
fiinz  exceptions)  been  all  of  one  nation.  Save 
in  New  Zealand,  there  has  been  no  serious  na- 
tive opposition  to  face.  The  mother  country 
has  poured  out  her  treasure  and  her  brains 
for  tne  service  of  her  favorite  children.  No  tax 
has  been  laid  upon  Australian  industry  for  the 
benefit  of  £ngli8h  merchants.  The  outfiowings 
of  a  populous  and  a  free  country  have  provid- 
ed a  generous  stream  of  vigorous  immigrants. 
A  genial  climate  and  a  fruitful  soil  have  re- 
warded honest  effort  with  a  liberality  which 
is  the  best  incentive  to  further  effort.  .  .  . 
Therefore  the  immediate  prosperity  has  been 
great.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  the  pros- 
perity has  been  without  its  dangers.  The  suc- 
cess of  Australian  endeavors  hitherto  has  pro- 
duced a  buoyancy  which  too  often  degenerates 
into  recklessness,  a  generosity  which  is  some- 
times perilously  alun  to  extravagance.  The 
good  results  which,  in  really  sterling  charac- 
ters, follow  upon  a  period  of  struggle  and  ad- 
versity, have  not  had  an  opportunity  of  mani-^ 
festing  themselves  in  Australia.  The  visitor 
is  struck  with  the  absence  of  originality  in  the 
life.  It  is  almost  a  reproduction  of  English 
life  a  few  years  before.  Instead  of  stepping 
forward  ten  years,  as  he  expects,  when  he 
lands  on  the  shores  of  Australia,  he  seems  to 
have  slipped  ten  years  back.  The  so-called 
originality  of  Australian  politics  amounts 
principally  to  this,  that  the  reform  party  in 
Australia  has  succeeded  in  doing  what  the  re- 
form party  in  England  has  on^  tried  to  do. 
There  are  few  new  ideas;  the  colonists  have 
brought  a  fairly  complete  stock  of  ideas  with 
them,  and  th^  have  seen  no  reason  to  change 
them." 

One  point  that  we  must  be  careful  not  to  for- 
get is  the  difference  between  New  Zealand  and 
her  sisters;  a  difference  in  climate  and  in  natu- 
ral features,  as  well  as  in  the  character  and 
number  of  the  natives  with  whom  the  settlers 
have  had  to  deal;  therefore  '*  the  development 
of  New  Zealand  has  been  at  a  slower  rate  than 
that  of  Australia,  though  on  much  the  same 
lines.  But  even  this  difference  is  a  factor  of 
vast  importance,  for  a  different  rate  of  deve- 
lopment produces  a  different  character  of  de- 
velopment." 

Another  fact  is  especially  deserving  of  at- 
tention :  British  colonies,  in  distinction  from 
those  of  other  countries,  are  popularly  sup- 
posed to  be  due  almost  entirely  to  unre- 
stricted private  enterprise.    The  history  of 


Australia  does  not  help  to  confirm  this  view. 
"New  South  Wales,  with  the  costs  of  trans- 
port,  assistance  to  free  emigrants,  provi- 
sion against  famine,  salaries  of  civil  and  mili- 
tary officials,  expense  of  public  works,  and 
other  items,  is  reputed  to  have  cost  the  mother 
country,  in  the  first  thirty- four  years  of  its  ex- 
istence, no  less  than  ten  millions  sterling  "  In 
return,  the  squatter  was  not  allowed  to  appro- 
priate the  spot  on  which  he  settled.  **The 
Crown  quietly  assumed  the  ownership  of  Aus- 
tralian land  ;  and  the  assumption  stood  the 
strain,  not  merely  of  the  rush  for  sheep  pas- 
tures, but,  which  is  far  more  wonderful,  of  the 
rush  for  gold.  The  advanced  guard  of  the  ex- 
ploring colonists  might  burst  into  country 
never  trodden  by  the  foot  of  white  man  ;  but 
they  could  claim  no  acre  of  it  except  through 
the  grant  of  the  Crown.'*  As  for  paternal 
care  and  legislation, 

**at  first  the  whole  community  liVed  upon 
Government  rations.  The  Government  sup- 
plied seeds  and  tools  for  the  farm,  and  took 
all  the  settlers'  produce  at  a  fixed  price.  Oft- 
en it  engaged  in  farming  operations  on  its 
own  account.  Medicine  and  clothing  were  dis- 
pensed from  the  Government  offices.  All  the 
public  works  were  undertaken  on  the  initia- 
tive and  carried  out  under  the  supervision  of 
the  Government.  This  state  of  things  lasted 
at  least  until  Macarthur  showed  what  could 
be  done  by  individual  enterprise ;  and  there 
is  little  doubt  that  it  has  given  a  jpowerful 
impulse  to  what  is  now  called  the  State  So- 
cialism of  the  colonies.  When  the  colonists 
took  the  administration  into  their  own  hands, 
they  found  a  Gk)vemment  machinery  capsble 
of  being  used  for  all  kinds  of  economic  pur- 
poses, and  a  community  long  accustomed  to 
look  to  (Government  for  help  and  direction  in 
economic  enterprise.'* 


A  Handbook  of  British  Lepidoptera.  By  Ed- 
ward Meyrick,  B.A.,  F.L.8.,  F.E.S.,  Assist- 
ant Master  at  Marlborough  College.  Mao- 
millan  &  Co.  1895.  Svo,  pp.  844,  numerous 
figures. 
This  volume  will  be  a  surprise  to  the  many  in 
this  country  who  have  known  of  the  author 
only  as  an  earnest  and  successful  worker  in  the 
lower  families  of  the  Lepidoptera.  It  is  by  far 
the  best  work  of  the  kind,  in  its  comprehen- 
siveness  and  completeness,  that  has  been  given 
to  the  public.  Stainton's  *  Manual  of  the 
British  Butterfiies  and  Moths,'  which  has  been 
a  standard  for  nearly  forty  years,  will  be,  to  a 
great  extent,  superseded  by  it.  The  amount  of 
information  that  has  been  condensed  into  this 
handbook  (it  can  be  held  in  the  hand  without 
the  slightest  fatigue)  is  marvellous.  By  its  aid, 
any  student  of  British  Lepidoptera  will  be  able 
to  name  his  specimens  with  accuracy,  to  learn 
of  their  structure  and  be  directed  in  their 
classification.  The  descriptive  text  of  each  one 
of  the  two  thousand  and  sixty-one  species, 
through  a  rigid  system  of  abbreviation,  has 
been  limited  to  an  average  of  a  half-dosen 
lines,  followed  in  most  instances  by  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  larvfB  in  three  or  four  lines,  the 
time  of  their  appearance,  and  the  habitat,  in 
all  cases  indicating  such  as  occur  in  North 
America.  Analytical  keys  lead  readily  to  the 
larger  groups,  to  families,  to  genera,  and  to 
species.  Keys  so  complete  have  rarely,  if  ever, 
been  given.  The  illustrations  of  venation  and 
otl^r  structural  characters  of  many  of  the 
genera  have  been  drawn  from  the  author's  per- 
sonal observations.  An  introductory  chapter, 
treating  of  structure,  classification,  etc.,  is  es- 
pecially  satisfactory. 

A  marked  feature  of  this  volume  is  the  new 
classification,  now  for  the  first  time  published 
in  its  entirety,  based  on  the  author's  study  for 
years  of  the  Lepidoptera  of  the  world.    To 


those  of  us  who  have  not,  during  the  last  few 
years,  been  watching  closely  the  forces  at 
work  in  systematic  entomology,  particularly 
among  the  Lepidoptera,  in  their  upheavals, 
disintegration,  and  reconstruction,  it  is  rather 
startling  to  be  asked  to  ignore  the  long  fa- 
miliar  division  of  the  Lepidoptera  into  *-  But- 
terflies "  and  '' Moths";  to  find  the  butterfiies, 
as  **  Papilionidse."  fianked  on  each  side  in  the 
middle  of  a  volume,  by  moths,  and  next  to  the 
Pyralids— the  Geometridsa,  Sphingids,  Satur- 
niadsB,  and  the  Notodontidso,  with  others, 
grouped  into  a  subfamily  of  **  Notodontina" 
—the  .^geridsB  among  the  **Tineiua"— the 
stout-bodied  Cossus  of  nearly  three  inches  ex- 
panse of  wings  among  the  diminutive  **Tor* 
tricina";  and,  finally,  to  learn  that  the  Lepi- 
doptera, in  all  their  beauty,  variety,  and 
seeming  high  Tank,  have  their  origin  in  the 
low,  degraded,  case-inhabiting  aquatic  larva 
of  a  caddis-fiy.  But  all  these  incongruities 
and  surprises  must  be  accepted  if  it  be  admit- 
ted that  a  natural  classification  is  preferable 
to  an  artificial  one.  A  system  would  l>e  na- 
tural if  based  on  resembUmcee  of  allied  genera 
and  species  resulting  from  community  of  de- 
scent, leading  upward  from  the  oldest  to  the 
latest  developed.  Mr.  Meyrick  holds  that, 
beyond  any  doubt,  the  peculiar  venation  and 
other  structural  features  of  the  wings  of  the 
MicropterygidsB—a  small  family  of  minute 
moths^-show  them  to  be  the  ancestral  group 
of  the  Lepidoptera.  According  to  three  laws 
of  control  in  the  development  of  new  organs 
or  their  subsequent  loss,  lines  of  descent  have 
been  worked  out  and  indicated  in  diagrams 
showing  the  phylogeny  of  nine  superfamilies 
(terminating  in  ina)  in  which  the  order  of 
Lepidoptera  is  divided  in  this  volume.  In 
each  of  these,  the  phylogeny  of  the  several 
families  (ending  in  idee)  is  similarly  given.  In 
tabulating  the  genera,  their  ordinal  arrange- 
ment indicates  the  lines  of  descent,  number 
one  being  the  latest  developed. 

It  will  be  seen  from  the  above  that  the  clas- 
sification adopted  is  in  accordance  with  the 
views  advanced  in  Darwin's  *  Origin  of  Species.' 
It  has  evidently  been  carefully  elaborated  by 
the  author,  beyond  that  presented  by  any 
other  writer,  and,  unless  it  shall  be  shown 
faulty  in  any  particulars,  it  will  in  all  proba- 
bility be  generaUy  accepted  by  American  sys- 
tematists.  From  the  intimate  relationship  of 
the  Lepidoptera  of  the  United  States  to  those 
of  Great  Britain— a  number  of  species  being 
common  to  the  two  countries  and  many  others 
differing  only  by  minute  characters— this  vol- 
ume will  be  almost  indispensable  to  American 
students  of  lepidopterology. 


The  Coming  Individualitm,  By  A.  Egmont 
Hake  and  O.  E.  Wesslau.  Macmillan  &  Co. 
1895. 
What  the  coming  individualism  may  be  is  not 
easy  to  detemUne  from  a  perusal  of  this  book  ; 
but  the  indications  are  that  it  must  be  some- 
thing disagreeable.  Such  a  farrago  of  queru- 
lous protests,  of  indiscriminate  censure,  and  of 
unsupported  assertions  as  we  have  here  is  not 
often  encountered,  and  any  reforms  that  are 
calculated  to  confer  upon  these  joint  authors 
greater  liberty  than  they  now  enjoy  should  be 
accepted  with  a  good  deal  of  hesitation.  The 
reader  is  moved  by  the  same  sort  of  exaspera- 
tion that  is  felt  at  the  misbehavior  of  a  spoiled 
child,  and  becomes  strong  in  his  belief  in  the 
saving  efficacy  of  corporal  punishment  and  per- 
sonal restraint.  Mora's  the  pity,  for  protesU 
against  **colleotivism"  are  badly  needed  in 
England,  and  it  would  be  a  matter  of  no  great 


386 


Tlie   Nation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 1 


diffloolty  to  make  them  effective ;  but  so  long 
a«  reformers  persist  in  making  reform  odious 
by  means  of  intemperate  language  and  ill.con- 
sidered  assertions,  so  long  will  thej  fail  to  add 
to  their  numbers. 

Yet  whoever  has  patience  with  the  manner- 
isms, or  ill.mannerisms,  of  this  composite  au- 
thorship  will  find  that  it  has  reason  on  its  side. 
The  **  Factory  ^cts^  of  ESngland  are  the  ob- 
jects of  a  socialistic  faith  that  amounts  to 
fanaticism,  and  are  constantly  appealed  to  as 
demonstrating  the  necessity  of  restraining  in- 
dividual liberty  by  the  state.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  prosperity  of  the  working  classes  of 
England  was  caused  by  free  trade  and  not  by 
restriction,  and  improved  conditions  of  labor 
would  inevitably  have  come  if  there  had  been 
no  factory  acts.  80  far  as  these  acts  were  un- 
questionably beneficial,  they  did  not  restrain 
liberty,  but  overthrew  a  monstrous  form  of 
slavery— the  apprenticing  of  pauper  orphans  to 
mill-owners.  80  far  as  they  interfered  with 
liberty,  they  were  sturdily  opposed  by  John 
Bright,  and,  until  his  character  can  be  de- 
stroyed, the  iiolicy  of  the  factory  acts  will  re- 
quire argument  as  well  as  dogmatic  assertion 
to  establish  its  wisdom. 

One  of  the  most  amusing  instances  of  the 
working  of  the  protective  measures  which  are 
creeping  into  English  policy  under  the  influ- 
ence of  the  socialistic  craze  is  afforded  by  the 
Merchandise  Marks  Act.  The  theory  of  this 
act  was  that  the  English  would  buy  more 
English  goods  and  less  of  foreign  manufacture 
if  they  knew  their  origin,  and  hence  it  was 
prescribed  that  all  foreign  goods  dealt  in  by 
English  traders  should  be  branded  with  the 
name  of  the  cotmtry  where  they  were  made. 
The  result  was  that  the  foreign  customers  of 
English  merchants  had  their  attention  called 
to  the  fact  that  many  of  the  goods  which  they 
bought  were  made  in  Qermany  and  other 
countries,  and  it  naturally  occurred  to  them 
to  dispense  with  the  English  middleman  and 
to  order  directly  from  the  foreign  manufac- 
tiirer,  with,  whose  existence  the  English  Par- 
liament bad  been  at  pains  to  acquaint  them. 
At  present  the  German  manufacturers  not 
only  are  securing  this  trade,  but  are  actually 
ordering  goods  from  English  makers  upon  the 
superior  qualities  of  which  they  have  German 
names  and  addresses  marked,  while  the  poorer 
stuff  is  sent  under  the  English  brand.  Such, 
at  least,  is  the  statement  put  forth  in  thik 
book ;  but  there  are  more  sides  than  one  to 
such  a  question. 

Nothing  seems  more  unlikely  than  that  the 
English  should  change  either  their  system  of 
dealing  with  the  traffic  in  strong  drink  or  their 
banking  laws,  but  these  writers  are  not  daunted 
by  such  considerations;  nor  is  it  wholly  vain 
to  protest  against  the  most  inveterate  abuses, 
for  only  in  this  way  can  they  be  prevented  from 
increasing.  While  we  may  not  be  convinced 
that  the  abolition  of  the  monopoly  of  the  Bank 
of  England  is  desirable,  it  is  well  to  be  remind- 
ed of  the  objections  that  may  be  fairly  raised 
against  it,  and  in  this  country  we  evidently 
need  to  consider  the  subject  from  every  point 
of  view.  We  might  say  the  same  of  the  drink 
traffic,  but  it  must  be  confessed  that  the  wis- 
dom of  the  policy  of  loading  this  business  with 
all  manner  of  burdens  is  firmly  established  in 
the  minds  of  most  people. 

Altogether,  this  book  will  probably  impress 
the  reader  with  the  idea  that  its  authors  are 
hopelessly  wrong-headed;  but,  for  all  that,  it 
may  not  be  wholly  unprofitable  reading. 


BOOKS  OF  THE  WEEK. 

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tutlon     Fart  IL    The  Crown.    Oxford:  Clarendon 

Frees:  New  York:  XacmUlan. 
Ayree,  Alfred.    The  Verbalist.   New  and  revised  ed. 

A|»pletons. 
Balxac,  H.  de.   The  Unknown  Masterpiece,  and  Other 

Stories.   London:  Dent;  New  York:  MacmUlan.  91.50. 
Barnes,  James.    For  Klngor  Country:  A  Story  of  the 

American  BeTOlutlon.   uarpera.   91.50. 
Bartlett,  Rev.  B.  T.   The  English  Bible  in  American 

Eloquence.   Philadelphia:  American  Baptist  Publica- 
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Baitlan,  A.   Die  DenkschiSpfnng  umgebender  Welt  aus 

kosmogonlBchen  Vorsteuung  In  CulturundUticnltur. 

Berlin:  F.  Dttmmler. 
Beecher,  Rey.  Charles.     Fatmos:  or,  The  UnTelUng. 

Boston:  Lee  ft  Sbepard.   91.60. 
Blrkmlre,  W.  H.   The  Planning  and  Construction  of 

American  Theatres.    London:  Chapman  ft  Hall;  New 

York:  John  Wiley  ft  Sons. 
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OinnftCo.   60c 

W.  R.    Quaint  Nantucket.    Boston:  Houghton, 

in  ft  Co.    91.60. 

Boudlnot.  J.  J.   The  Life,  Public  Senrlces,  Addressee, 

and  Letters  of  Ellas  Boudlnot,  President  of  the  Conti- 
nental Congress.    8  vols.    Boston:  Houghton,  Mifflin 

ft  Co.   95. 
Braohet,  Auguste.   A  Historical  Grammar  of  the  French 

Language.     Oxford:   Clarendon  Press;  New  York: 

Macmlllan.   9S. 
Bright,  Prof.  William.   The  Boman  See  In  the  Early 

Church,  and  Other  Studies  in  Church  History.   Long 

mans,  Oreen  ft  Co.   9S. 
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Brown  ft  Co. 
Brodbeck.  Adolph.    The  Ideal  of  Unlversitiea.    New 

York:  Metaphysical  Publishing  Co.   91.60. 
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Days.   Boston:  Houghton.  Mifflin  ft  Co.    91.95.  ^^ 
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MacmUlan.   96. 
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Peasantry.      Second    Series.     London:   Dent;    New 

York:  Macmlllan.    91.60. 
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Johnson,  Clifton.  What  They  Say  In  New  England:  A 
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The    Nation. 


NKW  YOBK,   THURSDAY,  MAT  %l,  1806.    ' 

The  Week. 

McKiKLET  baa  not  yet  epoken,  and  it  is 
the  opinion  of  all  his  managers  that  he 
need  not  speak.  One  of  them,  Mr.  Kohl- 
saat  of  Chicago,  says:  "Why  should  he 
speak  T  fie  has  600  delegates,  and  will  be 
nominatdd  before  the  end  of  the  first  bal- 
lot." What  more  do  you  want  than  that? 
When  you  ask  if  he  is  a  silyer-man  or  a 
gold-man,  and  are  told  that  he  is  "  sure 
to  be  nominated,"  is  not  that  sufficient  ? 
The  Tribune  says  the  efforts  to  make  him 
speak  are  "  calumnies,**  that's  what  they 
are.  When  you  quote  a  man's  record  to 
•how  that  he  has  voted  for  free  silver 
coinage,  that  he  not  only  has  allied  Jiim- 
self  regularly  for  years  with  the  silver- 
men,  but  has  stood  on  the  floor  of  the 
House  and  denounced  President  Cleve- 
land for  using  the  whole  power  of  his  of- 
fice to  maintain  the  credit  of  the  Govern- 
ment, and  you  use  these  quotations  as 
evidence  that  such  a  man  cannot  safely 
be  elected  President  unless  he  shall  first 
say  squarely  whether  he  is  for  the  gold 
standard  or  not,  you  are  dealing  in  "ca- 
lumnies." Why  should  he  speak?  says 
Kohlsaat,  and  all  the  McKinley  organs 
echo  that  question,  but  not  one  of  them 
ventures  to  answer  another  and  far  more 
pertinent  question,  Why  should  he  not 
•peak? 


The  answer  to  this  is  furnished  in  some 
information  which  the  World  has  collect- 
ed from  the  silver  section.  McKinley's 
chief  supporter  in  Nevada,  when  asked  to 
say  if  the  delegates  from  that  State  are 
supporting  McKinley  because  they  consi- 
der him  a  "  friend  of  silver,*'  replies  that 
the  delegates  "  are  earnest  advocates  of 
McKinley  unless  some  more  pronounced 
friend  of  silver  can  be  nominated,"  and 
says  their  partiality  for  McKinley  "is 
wholly  based  on  his  record  in  Congress 
on  the  financial  question  ;  though  not  so 
pronounced  a  friend  of  silver  as  is  desira- 
ble, he  is  held  to  be  acceptable  as  a  com- 
promise ;  it  is  not  generally  believed  that 
he  would  veto  any  silver  bill."  In  Idaho, 
support  of  him  is  based  on  the  belief  that 
"  if  nominated  and  elected  he  would  do 
the  cause  of  silver  less  harm  than  any 
other  candidate."  Mr.  Myron  A.  McCord, 
who  is  leading  the  McKinley  forces  in 
Arizona,  says :  "  I  regard  McKinley  as 
the  man  most  favorable  to  silver  of  all  the 
candidates  thus  far  named.  His  record 
shows  it"  The  editor  of  the  McKhiley 
organ  in  Ariiona  says:  "McKhiley  I 
believe  to  be  the  most  favorably  disposed 
towards  free  silver  and  Western  sentiment 
of  all  the  candidates."  These  answers  are 
far  more  to  the  point  than  Mr.  Kohlsaat's 
question,  "  Why  should  he  speak  ?  "  for  ' 


they  answer  the  other  question,  Why 
should  he  not  speak?  He  would  lose 
some  of  those  600  delegates  if  he  were  to 
declare  that  he  is  the  friend  of  gold 
rather  than  of  silver.  That  is  why  it  is 
"  calumny  "  to  ask  him  to  speak  now. 


As  Speaker  Reed's  prospects  for  the 
Presidency  grow  dim  his  wit  grows  bright. 
"  Advance  Agent  of  Prosperity !  "  he  said 
to  a  newspaper  man  the  other  day. 
"  When  I  was  a  boy,  the  advance  agent  of 
the  circus  would  go  through  the  country 
and  cover  the  sides  of  the  barns  and  the 
fences  with  the  most  gorgeous  posters  of 
what  the  circus  would  be."  Then  he  pic- 
tured the  procession  of  knights  in  armor 
and  ladies  in  silk  attire,  mounted  on  Ara- 
bian steeds,  and  followed  by  elephants, 
lions,  tigers,  and  other  wild  beasts  in  a 
high  state  of  natural  fury.  When  the  cir- 
cus actually  came,  it  usually  consisted  of 
a  few  persons  riding  horseback  in  the 
usual  country  style,  one  drowsy  elephant, 
and  a  few  weather-stained  boxes  mounted 
on  wheels  and  supposed  to  contain  wild 
animala  "  It  never  came  up  to  the  show- 
bills," he  added,  "  but  there  was  always 
at  least  one  first-class  acrobat  who  could 
ride  two  horses  at  once."  If  Mr.  Reed 
did  not  say  this,  it  was  nevertheless  what 
he  was  justified  in  saying.  The  McKin- 
ley canvass  has  been  a  country-circus  ad- 
vertising dodge  from  the  start.  It  has 
drawn  the  wondering  admiration  of  all 
the  undersized  intellects  in  the  country, 
and  has  been  discussed  by  them  in  a  prac- 
tical way  by  the  turning  of  handsprings 
and  the  riding  of  horses  in  all  attitudes 
except  the  right  one;  and  the  movement  is 
still  going  on.  The  "first-class  acrobat 
riding  two  horses  at  once  "  has  been  the 
principal  figure  on  the  posters  all  the 
time.  What  a  pity  that  Speaker  Reed 
himself  invested  this  acrobat  with  the 
tinsel  that  now  makes  him  such  a  glitter- 
ing attraction  to  all  the  small  boys  of  the 
countryside. 


Senator  Teller's  victory  in  Colorado  is 
as  sweeping  as  it  is  unique.  He  secured 
not  only  a  tremendous  endorsement  in  the 
platform  for  himself  and  his  ideas,  but  a 
delegation,  handed  over  to  him  ostenta- 
tiously as  his  personal  property.  The 
others  are  instructed  to  "  act  in  harmony 
with  the  views  of  the  Hon.  Henry  M. 
Teller.**  Why  men  instead  of  dummies 
should  have  been  chosen  for  this  purpose, 
it  is  hard  to  see.  Even  the  "compli- 
ment** of  an  election  as  delegate  must 
seem  more  than  usually  dubious  under 
such  circumstances.  Such  open  action 
by  a  State  convention  is  unparalleled. 
So  also  is  the  attitude  in  which  Senator 
Teller  will  enter  the  convention.  He  is 
solemnly  bound  to  refuse  to  abide  by  its 
decisions  unless  it  decides  in  a  way  which 


he  and  everybody  knows  in  advance  to  be 
impossible.  That  is  to  say,  he  will  go  to 
St.  Louis  as  an  announced  bolter,  and  yet 
demand  a  share  in  the  deliberations  of  the 
convention.  This  will  present  a  puzzling 
question  to  the  convention  casuists.  There 
are  some  delegates  whose  "regulsrity" 
cannot  be  disputed.  Yet  they  are  regu- 
larly elected  for  the  express  purpose  of 
thwarting  and  defying  the  convention 
and  bolting  it.  This  difficulty  goes  far 
deeper  than  a  mere  question  of  candi- 
dates— far  deeper  than  the  controversy 
which  Conkling  precipitated  and  which 
he  and  Garfield  fought  out  in  the  conven- 
tion of  1880. 


A  dealer  in  railroad  bonds  sends  us  the 
following  extract  from  a  letter  written  by 
his  London  correspondent: 

"When  the  Veneniela  dispute  Ik  settled,  and 
gold-standard  candidates  of  both  your  great 
parties  are  Dominated,  there  will  be  unpre- 
oedented  sales  of  American  securities  in  the 
autama;  history  has  no  record  of  such  a  ple- 
thora of  money  as  in  this  city  at  present  wait- 
ing for  investments^ 

Probably  every  man  who  has  business 
correspondence  with  London  or  with  any 
part  of  Europe  has  received  similar  let- 
ters. Indeed,  the  writer  of  the  foregoing 
extract  has  merely  stated  as  a  fact,  with- 
out assigning  reasons,  what  M.  Leroy 
Beaulieu  said  at  greater  length  in  the 
Forum  magazine  not  long  since— that  the 
Old  World  is  gorged  with  capital  seekhig 
investment,  and  would  gladly  send  it  to 
the  United  Stotes  if  assured  that  the  gold 
standard  would  be  maintained  and  that 
the  Government  would  retire  from  the 
banking  business.  Some  people  think 
that  we  do  not  need  foreign  capital.  Ot)iers 
say  that  if  we  had  free  coinage  of  silver, 
we  should  have  enough  money  of  our 
own,  as  though  silver  bullion  grew  on 
trees  and  it  was  only  necessary  to  pluck  it 
off  and  make  it  legal  tender,  in  order  to 
make  everybody  rich.  This  is  one  of  the 
most  widespread  fallacies  of  the  day.  It 
keeps  company  with  the  notion  that  silver 
is  deprived  of  an  inalienable  right  when  it 
is  denied  admission  to  the  mint,  and  that 
the  admission  of  gold  to  the  mint  while 
silver  is  excluded,  is  an  act  of  partiality 
and  favoritism  contrary  to  the  principles 
of  free  government  and  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  SUtes. 


It  will  probably  be  a  long  time  before 
these  misconceptions  are  wholly  uprooted, 
but  it  ought  not  to  require  much  time  or 
effort  to  convince  people  that  an  inflax  of 
foreign  capital  would  be  f6r  the  benefit 
of  everybody,  and  eapeoiaUy  for  that  of 
the  borrowing  claM  and  the  wage-work- 
ers. Borrowers  are  interested  in  getting 
money  at  the  lowest  rates,  and  these  are 
to  be  obtained  by  the  abundance  of  capi- 
tal in  the  loan  market    To  wage-workers 


388 


Tlie    IN^ation. 


[Vol,  62,  No.  1612 


an  abundance  of  capital  means  plentiful 
employment.  That  **  Industry  is  limited 
by  capital "  is  one  of  the  maxims  of  po- 
litical economy.  It  means  that  industry 
cannot  exceed  the  limits  fixed  by  the 
food,  clothing,  implements,  and  materials 
existing  at  any  time  for  the  support  of 
labor  during  the  period  of  production. 
If  anybody  thinks  that  industry  can  go 
beyond  this  limit,  let  him  try  and  see  how 
long  he  can  work  without  eating  and  how 
much  he  can  produce  without  other  tools 
than  his  own  hands.  A  fortiori,  the 
more  food,  tools,  and  materials  we  have, 
up  to  the  point  of  absolute  saturation, 
the  more  employment  there  will  be  for 
labor.  Consequently,  anything  which  re- 
moves a  barrier  to  the  introduction  of 
foreign  capital  is  a  boon  to  the  working 
class  and  to  the  borrowing  classes.  One 
such  barrier,  and  the  principal  one,  is  the 
doubt  still  surrounding  the  silver  ques- 
tion. 

A  movement  has  been  started  by  a 
number  of  shipbuilders  on  the  Atlantic 
Coast  to  get  the  two  leading  parties  to 
favor  the  policy  of  "discriminating  du- 
ties." These  people  are  not  satisfied 
with  the  absolute  prohibition  of  foreign- 
built  ships  from  American  ownership, 
but  they  want  a  higher  rate  of  duty 
placed  on  goods  imported  in  American 
ships  than  in  foreign  ones.  Since  suc- 
cessful shipping  requires  cargoes  both 
ways— exports  as  well  as  imports— it  fol- 
lows that  if  foreign  countries  should 
adopt  the  discriminating  policy,  the  Ame- 
rican ships  would  make  their  outward 
voyages  in  ballast.  As  this  would  be  the 
condition  of  the  foreigners  in  respect  of 
the  inward  voyages,  there  would  be  no 
gain,  on  the  whole,  to  the  American  ship- 
owner, but  a  loss  to  both  consumers  and 
producers.  The  petitioning  shipbuilders 
say  that  all  that  they  want  is  just  enough 
discrimination  "to  create  a  pre/ere  nee.  for 
American  ships,  in  order  to  give  them  the 
carriage  of  American  commerce."  What  is 
American  commerce?  It  is  the  sum  total  of 
our  imports  and  exports.  Of  course,  we 
can  give  bounties  from  the  public  trea- 
sury to  the  carriers  of  the  outward-bound 
cargoes,  but  we  cannot  give  any  prefer- 
ence as  to  such  cargoes  by  discriminat- 
ing duties.  Only  the  foreign  govern- 
ments can  do  that,  and  they  would  be 
very  likely  to  retaliate.  In  any  view  of  the 
case,  discriminating  duties  are  a  fraud  on 
the  public,  and  they  ought  not  to  be  tole- 
rated or  even  considered  by  the  national 
Democratic  convention,  which  the  ship- 
builders are  principally  trying  to  influ- 
ence, any  more  than  a  new  tariff  on  wool. 


The  Bar  Association  of  the  State  of 
Michigan  adopted  reBolutiona  the  other 
day  in  favor  ol  a  permaneDt  court  of  ar- 
bitration for  the  BfittlemeQt  of  disputes 
between  nations  of  the  Englmh-ipeaking 
race,  and  decided  also  to  organize  a  pro- 
pagsnda  to  push  the  movement  until  it 


should  be  carried  into  effect.  A  commit- 
tee was  appointed  by  the  arbitration  con- 
ference at  Washington  to  continue  the 
work,  and  this  committee,we  understand, 
is  now  actively  engaged  in  the  duties 
assigned  to  it.  Hardly  anybody  can  be 
found  who  is  opposed  to  the  project; 
even  those  who  think  that  it  is  imprac- 
ticable say  that  they  would  favor  it  if  a 
safe  and  sure  way  could  be  found  to  carry 
it  into  effect.  The  most  gratifying  re- 
sponse was  given  by  President  Cleveland 
to  the  committee  which  presented  to  him 
the  action  of  the  Washington  conference. 
Everything  seems  so  favorable  to  the 
movement  that  nothing  can  prevent  its 
success  except  mere  inertia  and  the  com- 
mon belief  that  it  will  now  go  of  itself. 
Unfortunately,  no  good  cause  ever  goes 
without  pushing.  The  action  of  the  Bar 
Association  at  Grand  Rapids  should  be 
imitated  in  every  State  in  the  Union. 


Congressman  Fowler  of  New  Jersey 
made  a  very  pointed  address  the  other 
day  to  the  committee  on  banking  and  cur- 
rency, of  which  he  is  a  member.  This 
committee  consists  of  fifteen  of  the  ablest 
men  in  the  House,  yet  they  cannot  agree 
about  any  thorough-going  measure  of  cur- 
rency reform,  although  they  have  report- 
ed some  small  amendments  of  the  nation- 
al banking  act.  The  reason  why  they 
are  <«all  at  sea"  is  that  the  country  itself 
is  in  the  same  predicament  Mr.  Fowler 
is  a  believer  in  what  is  called  a  credit  cur- 
rency as  distinguished  from  a  secured 
currency.  Yet  he  hits  the  nail  on  the 
head  when  he  says:  '*To  suppose  that  the 
people  of  the  United  States  will  give  up  a 
secured  currency  in  a  day,  a  week,  a 
year,  or  a  decade  e?en,  for  a  credit  cur* 
roncy  \a  a  rooet  violent  pr8suinpti'?nf  even 
if  such  a  thini!'  were  eound  in  principle/' 
With  this  conservatism  is  mingled  a  great 
deal  of  ignorance,  for  In  no  country,  past 
or  presentf  have  the  maseea  of  the  people 
ever  been  able  to  grasp  the  principles  of 
finance  or  form  any  sound  opinione  there- 
on. Mr.  Fowler  proceeded  to  diBcusa  the 
old  Suffolk  Hank  eystem  of  New  England 
and  the  present  Byetema  of  Canada,  Scot- 
landf  France,  and  other  countriee  where  an 
elastic  credit  currency  prevails.  Tbe  aaual 
answer  to  arguments  baaed  upon  the  ex* 
perience  of  other  countriea  la  that  a  credit 
currency  may  work  Well  in  other  parta  of 
the  world,  but  would  not  do  for  ua.  This 
Mr.  Fowler  rightly  considers  an  impeach- 
ment  of  our  civUi3£ation  and  a  decJaration 
that  we  are  unfit  for  eelf  government  and 
eelf-control,  '*  Would  any  man  aerioualy 
contend/*  be  asks, ''that  the  preatdent, 
cashier,  or  board  of  directors  of  a  bank 
would  be  more  foolish  in  loaning  the  notes 
of  a  bank  than  it»  depoeite,  when  ctrcum- 
stances  will  bring  them  to  ita  counter  for 
redemption  tvith  the  certainty  and  prompt* 
neasof  the  checks  drawn  againat  depoaita?** 
Mr.  Fowler'fl  whole  argument  betraya  a 
mind  welt  grounded  in  the  principlea  of 
money  and  banking  and  fully  competent 
to  give  them  expresaion. 


Gov.  Morton  has  not  yet  signed  the 
bills  which  the  Legislature  passed  pro> 
viding  for  the  payment  of  the  fifty-one 
men  whom  Superintendent  Aldridge  ap- 
pointed in  the  Public  Works  Department 
in  defiance  of  law,  and  he  may  well  hesi- 
tate about  giving  them  his  approval.  The 
amount  of  money  involved  is  about  $30,- 
000,  and  there  is  a  practical  certainty 
that  in  the  end  Aldridge  will  have  to 
pay  this  out  of  his  own  pocket.  He  has 
no  legal  claim  against  the  State,  and 
there  is  no  chance  that  the  courts  will 
hold  that  he  has.  He  knew  perfectly 
well  what  he  was  doing  when  he  appoint- 
ed these  men.  The  new  Constitution 
went  into  force  on  January  1,  1896,  and 
on  April  15  of  that  year  the  Gover- 
nor and  the  Civil-Service  Commission 
decided  that,  under  its  provisions,  the 
employees  in  Aldridge's  department 
must  come  within  the  civil-service  regu- 
lations and  be  subjected,  before  ap- 
pointment, to  competitive  examination. 
Aldridge  refused  to  take  this  view, 
though  advised  by  legal  authority  to  do 
so,  and  appointed  his  fifty-one  subordi- 
nates without  examination  and  in  defi- 
ance of  the  law.  The  Comptroller  re- 
fused to  pay  these  men,  and  Aldridge 
carried  the  matter  into  the  courts.  The 
Court  of  Appeals  decided  against  him  in 
its  now  famous  opinion,  in  which  it  took 
the  ground  that  the  '  civil-servioe  laws 
were  so  strongly  intrenched  in  the  Con- 
stitution that  the  Legislature  coold  not 
reach  them.  Aldridge  then  had  the 
Legislature  pass  a  bill  referring  the  ques- 
tion of  payment  to  the  Board  of  Claims. 
The  Governor  signed  this,  but  it  was  dis- 
covered to  be  useleas  because  contrary  to 
the  ConstituttoD,  Then  Aldridge  had 
flfty^one  bills  passed,  providing  for  the 
payment  of  each  employee  eeparately,  and 
theae  are  now  before  the  Govern  or*  If  he 
signs  thetn,  they  wUi  undoubtedly  prove 
to  be  futile,  for  the  Q^mptroller  wiU  re- 
fuse payment  again,  and  the  courts  must 
sustain  their  former  ruling. 


The  tributes  paid  by  various  city  ofB.- 

ciala  and  the  press  to  the  late  Deputy- 
Comptroller  Storrs  are  no  doubt  just  and 
deserved.  He  appears  to  have  been  1 
moat  valuable  public  Bervant^  asaiduoua, 
trusty,  and  a  complete  master  of  all  tbe 
matters  falling  within  his  province,  and 
of  many  lying  outeide  it  So  indiapenfa- 
ble  had  be  made  htmaelf  by  hia  knowledge 
that  hia  tenure  of  office  was  made  secure 
by  the  sheer  dread ,  on  the  part  of  hie  su* 
perior  officers,  of  what  might  happen  to 
the  city'a  buaineaa  without  him.  But  «e 
think  that  Comptroller  Fitch  and  other 
zealous  guard iane  of  the  American^  as 
distinguished  from  the  Chinese,  ayatem 
of  appointment  to  office  should  doI  ha^t 
failed  to  point  to  Mr.  Storra  aa  a  warniDg 
example  of  that  terror  of  alt  true  patriatt 
--an  **  aristocracj  of  office-holders***  A 
man  steadily  in  office  for  forty  y^ars  most 
surely  have  become  arrogant,  l&zy,  Iguo^ 


May  21,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


389 


rant,  and  careless.  We  say  he  must  have  be- 
come so,  because  we  all  know  that  perma- 
nency of  tenure  inevitably  results  in  those 
evils,  and  we  are  really  incredulous  to  hear 
Mr.  Fitch  testifying  that  the  late  Mr. 
Storrs  was  extraordinarily  industrious, 
and  courteous  and  painstaking  to  a  de- 
gree. This  seems  to  us  a  dangerous  ad- 
mission. Simple-minded  people  will  be 
led  to  ask  why  it  would  not  be  a  good 
thing  for  all  public  officers  to  be  kept 
in  their  positions,  instead  of  being  turned 
out  just  as  they  begin  to  understand  their 
duties.  We  cannot  too  carefully  guard 
against  such  insidious  undermining  of  our 
institutions. 


The  governmental  difficulties  into  which 
the  Cuban  war  is  plunging  Spain  are  im- 
perfectly appreciated  in  this  country.  In 
Prime  Minister  C4novas's  cushion  the 
financial  thorn  is  undoubtedly  the  sharp- 
est. The  war  is  costing  $6,000,000  a  month; 
upwards  of  180,000,000  will  have  been 
spent  by  August.  Gdu.  Weyler  holds  out 
no  hope  of  subduing  the  rebellion  short  of 
two  years'  time.  Where  is  the  money  to 
be  found?  With  Cuba  all  the  whUe 
steadily  approaching  ruin,  Spain's  securi- 
ty for  borrowing  is  impaired.  So  is  her 
commerce  with  the  island,  the  prosperity 
of  her  merchants  and  artisans  depending 
upon  it,  and  therefore  their  ability  to  bear 
increased  taxation.  Spain  has  confessed 
bankruptcy  once  within  the  past  genera- 
tion, and  the  Cuban  war,  if  much  pro- 
longed, seems  bound  to  drive  her  again  to 
similar  straits.  Why,  then,  does  not  the 
Grovemment  grant  Cuba  home  rule,  or  go 
back  to  the  policy  of  Prim  and  renounce 
the  island  outright  as  a  possession  which, 
Spaniards  privately  admit,  is  now  little 
but  a  source  of  trouble  and  loss  to  them  f 
We  suppose  no  party  or  form  of  govern- 
ment in  Spain  could  do  that  and  live. 
The  sentiment  of  national  dignity  and 
honor  seems  now  to  attach  itself  chiefly 
to  the  retention  of  Cuba.  Spain  may  be 
impoverished,  but  she  will  maintain  her 
lofty  tone  to  the  end,  like  the  decayed 
nobleman  in  Vald6s*s  novel,  who  had  but 
one  shirt  to  his  back,  but  who  did  not  for 
that  cease  to  bear  himself  with  fierce 
pride.  Spain,  in  fact,  appears  to  be  able 
neither  to  subdue  Cuba  nor  to  govern  it; 
neither  to  keep  the  island  nor  to  let  it  go. 


Sir  William  Harcourt's  attack  on  Cecil 
Rhodes  in  the  House  of  Commons,  fol- 
lowed up  later  in  an  address  to  his  con- 
stituents, serves  to  show  the  division  of 
sentiment  in  England  over  the  complicity 
of  the  Chartered  Company  in  the  Trans- 
vaal conspiracy.  On  the  one  hand  there 
is  a  widespread  and  keen  sense  of  humili- 
ation that  the  country  should  have  been 
compromised,  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  by 
officials  who  acted  like  sordid  stock-Jot>- 
bers,  and  whose  plots  came  so  conspicu- 
ously to  grief.  But,  on  the  other,  there  is 
»l»rm  at  tbe  yast  property  and  political 


interests  involved  in  any  action  that 
might  be  taken  to  punish  Rhodes  and 
cripple  the  company.  It  is  the  latter  feel- 
ing which  ties  Chamberlain's  hands,  and 
apparently  commits  the  Government  to  a 
waiting  policy.  *' Something  must  be 
done,"  cry  Harcourt  and  Labouchere,  but 
that  only  means,  say  the  other  side,  that, 
as  Lord  Pal  mere  ton  said  was  always  the 
case  when  that  cry  is  raised,  you  want  us 
to  do  something  foolish.  Cecil  Rhodes  is 
unquestionably  the  ablest  Englishman  in 
South  Africa.  The  development  and  con- 
solidation of  English  rule  in  that  region, 
and  the  building  up  of  the  great  property 
of  the  Chartered  Company,  are  due  more 
to  him  than  to  any  one  else.  What  about 
the  interests  of  the  more  than  14,000 
shareholders  in  the  company — more  than 
4,000  of  them  being  foreigners?  Have 
they  not  a  right  to  be  consulted  before 
any  action  is  determined  upon  which 
may  ruin  them?  That  is  what  is  said, 
and  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there  is 
force  in  it.  But  the  indecision  of  the 
Government  which  way  to  turn  is  un- 
doubtedly making  political  capital  for  the 
Liberals. 


The  Tory  Parliamentary  programme,  as 
outlined  by  Mr.  Balfour  in  the  Commons, 
is  shrewdly  conceived.  First  the  educa- 
tion bill  is  to  be  passed,  and,  as  all  the 
Irish  members  favor  it,  a  smashing  ma- 
jority is  expected.  Then  the  agricultural- 
rating  bill  is  to  be  taken  up — a  choice  bit 
of  confiscatory  legislation,  as  Chamber- 
lain described  it  thirteen  years  ago  and  as 
the  Economist  terms  it  now.  The  Libe- 
rals and  the  Irish  will  fight  this  bill  tooth 
and  nail,  but  just  behind  it  will  lie  the 
Irish  land  bill,  which,  with  some  trifiing 
amendments,  all  parties  approve.  But 
they  cannot  have  it,  Mr.  Balfour  will  keep 
telling  them,  unless  they  stop  opposing 
and  debating  the  agricultural  bill.  Let 
that  slip  through  and  there  will  be  a  good 
chance  for  relieving  Irish  tenants ;  other- 
wise, no  one  knows  when  anything  can  be 
done  for  them.  These  are  clever,  tactics, 
but  the  main  confidence  of  the  Tories, 
after  all,  is  their  great  Parliamentary  ma- 
jority. They  are  as  majority-mad  as  our 
own  Republicans.  They  think  they  can 
do  anything  they  please.  After  all  the 
damaging  criticisms  that  may  be  made 
upon  their  measures,  they  have  160  ma- 
jority, and  what  are  the  Liberals  going  to 
do  about  it  ?  But  veteran  politicians  are 
not  disturbed  by  this  sort  of  talk.  Sir 
William  Harcourt  told  the  National  Libe- 
ral Club  the  other  evening  that  he  had 
seen  too  many  majorities  of  his  own  dis- 
appear, and  too  many  majorities  of  his 
opponents  melt  away,  to  be  either  very 
much  elated  by  being  in  the  majority  or 
depressed  by  finding  himself  in  the  mi- 
nority. A  majority,  he  said,  was  very 
much  like  a  fall  of  snow,  which  might 
possibly  come,  but  mna  absolutely  certain 
to  go.  So  he  warned  the  complacent 
Tories  not  to  put  their  trust  in  a  majority 


which,  like  so  many  others,  was  bound 
soon  to  '*  join  the  majority." 


The  rumor  from  London,  fortified  by 
the  language  of  the  Liberal  organs,  that 
the  party  is  going  formally  to  abandon 
Irish  home  rule  because  of  the  support 
given  by  the  Irish  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons to  the  education  bill  of  the  Conser- 
vatives, has  had  a  good  deal  more  im- 
portance ascribed  to  it  than  it  deserves. 
Since  Mr.  Gladstone's  retirement  and  the 
defeat  of  his  bill,  home  rule  has  been  no- 
thing but  a  pale  ghost.  The  dissensions 
among  the  Irish  would  have  finished  it, 
even  if  Liberal  interest  in  it  had  not  been 
almost  completely  destroyed  by  the  large 
majority  received  by  the  Tories  after  the 
Lords  had  thrown  it  out.  A  measure  that 
is  certain  not  to  be  passed  in  the  lifetime 
of  anybody  now  in  politics,  is  not  likely 
to  remain  long  in  sight  even  in  a  party 
programme.  No  matter  what  anybody 
says,  everybody  knows  that  home  rule  is 
dead.  It  needed  both  Gladstone  and  Par- 
nell,  a  united  Irish  party,  and  a  fiercely 
discontented  population  in  Ireland,  to  give 
it  any  vitality.  Gladstone  and  Parnell  are 
l>oth  gone.  In  the  absence  of  any  stimu- 
lation from  above,  the  popular  demand  for 
home  rule  has  for  the  moment  been  ap- 
peased by  the  successful  working  of  the 
new  land  laws.  But  its  greatest  enemy 
has  been  the  divisions  of  the  Irish  repre- 
sentatives, who  have  been  fighting  like 
cats  and  dogs  for  two  years,  and  giving  as 
deplorable  accounts  of  each  other  as  two 
hostile  Southern  editors.  This  has  al- 
ready greatly  disgusted  the  English  pub- 
lic, and  would  have  turned  away  the  at- 
tention of  all  active  Liberals  from  home 
rule,  even  if  there  were  the  remotest 
chance  of  passing  such  a  measure  within 
the  next  quarter  of  a  century. 


The  retention  of  home  rule  on  the  Libe- 
ral programme  has  been  for  some  time 
only  nominal.  It  is  there  because  it  has 
been  there,  and  for  little  other  reason.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  there  is  more  real  sympa- 
thy between  the  Tories  and  the  Irish  than 
between  the  Irish  and  the  Nonconformists. 
The  principle  of  authority,  or  leadership 
by  somebody,  finds  much  more  favor  both 
with  the  Irish  and  Tories  than  with  the 
Liberals.  Then,  the  Irish  have  never 
hesitated  to  make  terms  with  the  Conser- 
vatives when  they  could  get  anything  out 
of  them.  The  educational  system  pro- 
vided by  the  new  bill  is  far  more  impor- 
tant to  the  Irish  Catholic  clergy  than  any- 
thing, short  of  home  rule,  the  Liberals 
are  ever  likely  to  offer.  When  one  consi- 
ders that  the  Tories  are  in  power  till  1902 
for  certain,  and  possibly  as  long  again, 
and  that  they  are  completely  independent 
of  the  Irish  for  their  majority,  the  wonder 
is  the  Irish  have  not  been  even  more  eager 
than  they  have  been  to  bargain  with  them, 
on  the  old  plan  of  getting  all  they  can  out 
of  the  English,  no  matter  of  which  party. 


390 


Tlie   [NTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  161 2 


McKlNLETS  SILENCE. 

The  question  what  currency  the  nation 
shall  use  hereafter  is  the  most  important 
question  which  has  come  before  the  Ameri- 
can people  since  the  war.  It  has  only  a 
business  aspect.  You  may  love  and  honor 
siWer  or  gold  as  much  as  you  please, 
you  may  weep  in  silence  over  *'  the  dollar 
of  the  fathers,"  but  when  you  leave  your 
chamber  and  go  out  into  the  cold  world 
with  your  dollar,  you  find  that  no  one 
cares  a  cent  about  your  feelings.  All  to 
whom  you  offer  it  ask  you  brutally,  What 
is  it  worth  in  gold  7  And  when  you 
speak  of  gold,  some  cynical  wretch  is  sure 
to  say,  What  is  exchange  to-day?  To 
venture  in  business,  to  start  a  house,  to 
enter  into  a  partnership  or  enter  into 
any  operation  requiring  time,  it  is  es- 
sential you  should  know  what  the  cur- 
rency of  your  country  is  to  be  for  at 
least  five  years  to  come.  Next  to  this 
oomes  the  question,  What  will  Congress 
do  about  the  currency  as  it  exists  to-day  ? 
If  you  cannot  get  an  answer  to  this,  the 
next  in  importance  is,  What  will  the  next 
President  do  with  regard  to  any  legisla- 
tion Congress  may  pass  with  a  view  to 
deteriorating  the  currency  ?  If  this  next 
President  should  be  McKinley,  you  have 
the  answer  to  this  one  question  already, 
so  long  as  he  does  not  change  his  mood. 
In  1890  he  said,  in  substance,  in  debate, 
that  he  would  not  prevent  Congress  from 
deteriorating  the  currency  if  it  chose,  and 
he  abused  Cleveland  for  interposing  his 
veto  between  such  legislation  and  the 
country.    Said  this  great  man  in  debate  : 

*'  A  single  voice,  a  single  man,  elected  to  exe- 
cute the  laws,  not  to  mi^e  tbem,  commanded 
the  majority  on  that  side  of  the  House  to  be 
silent,  and  they  were  silent.  [Applause  and 
laughter  on  the  Republican  side.] 

**  As  I  said  a  moment  ago,  we  are  after  prac- 
tical results.  [Derisive  laughter  on  the  Demo- 
cratic side  of  the  House.]  We  propose  to  give 
to  this  country  what  gentlemen  upon  the  other 
side  of  the  House  could  not  do:  what  you  did 
not  dare  do  for  four  years.  We  propose  to 
give  to  the  country  a  silver  bill  that  will  take 
all  the  silver,  practically,  of  the  United  States 
and  make  it  available  for  the  uses  of  the  peo- 
ple." 

So  we  know  what  he  would  do  on  one 
question — if  he  does  not  change  his  mind; 
but  whether  he  will  change  his  mind  no- 
body as  yet  knows,  and  he  will  not  speak 
because  if  he  did  so  he  would  offend  so 
many  people. 

We  learn  from  the  Tribune  that  *'  the 
reticence  of  self-respect"  is  the  proper 
and  polite  name  for  Idajor  McKinley*s  re- 
fusal to  answer  any  question  touching  his 
position  on  the  money  question.  It  is  the 
more  important  to  have  a  good  name  for 
this  thing  because  of  **  the -impression, 
now  grown  into  a  conviction,"  that  ]tfc- 
Kinley  **will  be  the  Republican  candi- 
date "  for  the  Presidency.  What  to  call 
the  refusal  of  such  a  person  to  state  his 
opinions  on  the  leading  question  of  the 
day  ve  never  knew  until  now.  It  is  to  be 
called  "reticence  of  self-respect."  We 
thought  that  this  was  the  name  for  the 
refusal  of  a  private  man  to  state  his  opi- 
nions.    If  we  went  into  such  a  man's 


ofllce  and  asked  him  what  he  thought  on 
the  currency  question,  we  have  always 
supposed  that  he  would  be  justified  not 
only  in  refusing  to  answer  us,  but  in  ex- 
pelling us  from  his  premises,  using  no 
more  force  than  was  necessary  for  the 
purpose ;  and  that,  when  putting  us  out, 
he  might  observe  that  self-respect  made 
his  reticence  necessary.  But  it  now  ap- 
pears that  the  term  is  also  available  for 
the  use  of  candidates  for  high  ofllce,  who 
do  not  wish  to  let  people  know  what  they 
think  until  they  are  nominated,  while  it 
is  still  not  available  for  small  private 
places.  If,  for  instance,  a  clerk  applied 
for  a  place,  and  pleaded  **  reticence  of 
self-respect "  in  support  of  refusal  to  tell 
who  was  his  last  employer,  and  what  he 
thought  about  theft  and  forgery,  he  would 
still  be  dismissed  as  a  crank;  but  when  a 
man  asks  to  be  made  President  of  the  Unit- 
ed States,  he  may  still  say  that  his  dignity 
will  not  allow  him  to  mention  his  views 
about  the  matter  which  most  nearly  con- 
cerns the  people  of  all  classes  and  condi- 
tions, and  will  be  in  a  sense  his  special 
care  in  case  he  should  be  elected. 

But,  alas  !  this  plea  is  not  open  to  Major 
McKinley  of  Ohio.  The  trouble  with  him 
is  that  he  has  not  been  "reticent"  He 
is  "  short "  of  self-respect,  as  they  say  in 
the  Stock  Exchange.  He  has  spoken,  and 
spoken  profusely,  on  this  very  matter  on 
which  the  people  now  wish  to  hear  him. 
He  has  already  declared  hiniself  what  is 
called  *'  a  silver- man  "  by  every  means 
within  his  reach.  If  he  now  keeps  silent, 
it  is  with  the  view  of  making  believe,  by 
a  species  of  fraud,  that  he  is  not  a  silver- 
man.  He  wants  every  silver-man  in  the 
country  to  suppose  he  is  a  silver-man,  and 
every  gold-man  to  suppose  he  is  a  gold- 
man.  We  know  that  he  wishes  us  to  sup- 
pose that  he  is  a  silver-man  because  he 
has  spoken  freely  on  that  subject ;  and  we 
know  he  wishes  us  to  believe  him  a  gold- 
man  because  he  would  otherwise  produce 
once  more  his  silver  reflections.  Conse- 
quently his  reticence  comes  too  late. 

In  1890  he  called  on  the  House  in  strenu- 
ous terms  to  pass  the  silver-purchase  act 
of  that  year.  He  wanted  to  purchase 
$4,500,000  monthly  to  encourage  sliver. 
He  condoled  with  Bland,  '*a  free-silver 
man  as  we  know  him  to  be,"  yet  power- 
less to  pass  a  free-coinage  bill,  and  com- 
pelled by  the  dictation  of  the  President 
to  sit  silent.  In  1891,  in  a  speech  at  To- 
ledo, O.,  February  12,  he  declared : 

'*  During  all  of  his  [Cleveland's]  years  at  the 
head  of  the  Gk>vemment  he  was  dishonoring 
one  of  our  precious  metals,  one  of  our  own 
great  products,  discrediting  silver  and  en- 
hancing the  price  of  gold.  He  endeavored 
even  before  his  inauguration  to  office  to  stop 
the  coinage  of  silver  dollars,  and  afterwards, 
and  to  the  end  of  his  Administration,  persist- 
ently used  his  power  to  that  end.  He  was  de- 
termined to  contract  the  circulating  medium 
and  demonetize  one  of  the  coins  of  commerce, 
limit  the  volume  of  money  among  the  people, 
make  money  scarce,  and  therefore  dear.  He 
would  have  mcreased  the  value  of  money  and 
diminished  the  value  of  everything  else- 
money  the  master,  everything  else  the  ser- 
vant.^' 

Or  take  this  extract  from  a  speech  of 


his  made  at  Findlay,  0.,  September  27, 
1894: 

**  The  Democratic  party  has  been  in  control 
of  every  branch  of  the  Ghovemment  since  the 
4th  day  of  March,  1898.  Its  legislative  branch 
has  been  in  session  for  more  than  twelve 
months,  yet  it  has  g^ven  us  no  silver  legisla- 
tion whatever,  except  to  strike  down  the  Bber- 
man  law  at  its  special  session  called  for  that 
purpose,  and  In  response  to  the  argent  recom- 
mendation of  a  Democratic  President.  The 
party  that  struck  silver  down,  and  gave  it  the 
severest  blow  it  ever  had,  cannot  be  relied  up- 
on to  give  that  metal  honorable  treatment.*' 

In  fact,  he  began  to  work  and  vote  for 
silver  as  far  back  as  1877.  He  has  been 
doing  it  steadily  down  to  this  year. 
There  is  no  more  confirmed  and  steady 
silver- man  in  the  country.  We  do  not 
say  that  he  was  a  silver-man  through 
fraud  or  selfishness.  He  was  probably 
a  silver  -  man  through  sheer  stupidity 
and  ignorance.  He  has  no  more  idea  of 
the  laws  of  currency  than  one  of  his  negro 
delegates  at  St.  Louis  will  have  of  the 
higher  mathematics.  We  are  far  from 
railing  at  him  for  this.  It  is  not  every 
man  who  understands  currency,  and  the 
quality  of  a  man's  brain  is  fixed  by  the 
Creator.  But  the  attempt  to  give  the 
country  to  understand  at  this  date  that 
he  is  really  not  a  silver  but  a  gold-man,  or 
a  heavenly-money  man,  and  that  he  is 
keeping  silent  now  through  dignity,  and 
not  through  fear  of  being  found  out,  is 
shocking.  It  is  revolting.  Every  man  in 
the  community  who  has  children  to  bring 
up  and  a  moral  sense  of  his  own,  ought  to 
rise  against  it  and  bring  to  naught  this 
attempt  at  imposture. 

He  ought  to  rise  against  it  for  two  rea- 
sons. One  is,  that  to  give  the  sanction  of 
the  popular  vote  to  such  an  attempt  to 
allow  candidates  for  the  great  place  which 
McKinley  seeks,  to  "  lie  low,"  no  matter 
what  their  antecedents  may  have  been, 
until  they  found  out  how  the  convention 
was  going,  would  really  be  putting  the 
Presidency  up  at  auction  to  be  bidden  for 
by  the  leading  knaves  of  the  community 
every  four  years.  The  other  is,  that  the 
particular  question  in  the  arena  to-day  is 
far  too  important  to  allow  of  any  delay  or 
subterfuge  about  it.  The  convention  will 
not  meet  till  next  month ;  the  election 
will  not  be  held  till  November.  The  poli- 
ticians have  at  last  got  hold  of  the  cur- 
rency of  the  country,  and  are  using  it  as  a 
stake  in  their  miserable  game,  and  mean 
to  do  so  for  six  months,  and  cover  the 
whole  land  with  fraud  and  humbug.  Will 
the  business  men  permit  this  ?  Are  they 
to  be  satisfied  with  the  assurances  of 
Chris  Magee  and  Gen.  Alger,  when  the 
candidate  himself,  the  only  man  who 
knows,  dares  not  tell  his  countrymen 
what  he  thinks  on  the  most  momentous 
question  which,  except  the  war,  has  been 
submitted  to  the  American  people  since 
the  Revolution  ?  Will  they  not  speak  out 
at  tbis  crisis  for  frankness,  for  loyalty,  for 
truth,  and  for  honesty,  as  well  as  for  the 
gold  standard — the  honest  measure  f 


May  21,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


891 


PROSPECTS  OF  A  BOLT. 
Ths  news  from  Ohio  and  Illinois  touching 
the  course  of  Democratic  politics  does  not 
improve  the  prospect  of  a  sound-money 
platform  at  Chicago.  In  Illinois  the  or- 
ganisation of  the  party  was  taken  awmy 
from  Senator  Palmer  and  his  friends  by 
the  "  snap  convention  "  of  last  year.  That 
was  an  unfair  and  irregular  proceeding, 
but  it  served  the  purpose  of  its  promot- 
ers. It  put  the  Democratic  party  of  the 
State  into  the  hands  of  Gov.  Altgeld,who 
has  attached  his  fortunes  to  the  silver 
wing  of  the  party  without  any  apparent 
reason  except  that  he  can  annoy  President 
Cleveland  m<nre  in  that  way  than  in  any 
other.  As  for  Ohio,  the  Democracy  of 
that  State  has  been  on  the  wrong  side  of 
every  money  question  that  has  come  up 
since  the  war.  Last  year  Senator  Brice 
kept  it  straight  by  a  supreme  effort,  but 
the  money  question  was  not  then  of  para- 
mount importance  as  it  is  now.  It  is 
much  to  be  feared  that  the  party  will  now 
go  as  it  went  in  the  days  of  old  Bill  Allen 
—that  is,  for  the  poorest  kind  of  money 
there  is  any  chance  of  getting. 

It  behooves  the  gold-standard  Demo- 
crats in  all  parts  of  the  country  to  con- 
template their  position  in  case  the  party 
at  Chicago  votes  for  free  coinage,  by  the 
United  States  alone,  at  the  ratio  of  16  to 
1.  That,  as  everybody  knows,  means  the 
single  silver  standard.  The  pretence  that 
it  means  bimetallism  is  not  maintained  by 
any  honest  person.  Whether  bimetallism 
could  be  maintained  by  an  international 
agreement  is  a  matter  of  dispute.  Very 
few  persons  think  that  it  could  be  pre- 
served at  the  legal  ratio  of  16  when  the 
market  ratio  is  30;  but,  however  that  may 
be,  there  is  no  prospect  of  an  intemationai 
agreement.  Both  the  gold-standard  peo- 
ple and  the  silver-standard  people  are  tired 
of  talking  about  international  agreements, 
and,  even  if  that  were  a  hopeful  solution 
of  the  difficulty,  it  could  not  be  reached 
in  time  for  this  year's  campaign.  The 
day  of  straddles  is  past,  lliere  is  no- 
thing to  do  but  to  vote  for  one  standard 
or  the  other.  For  office-seekers  this  is  a 
dreadful  predicament,  but  for  business 
men  and  for  the  public  in  general  nothing 
could  be  better  than  to  have  this  question 
put  before  the  country  so  that  it  shall  be 
voted  on  fairly  and  squarely. 

The  silver  standard  will  never  be  adopt- 
ed by  this  country.  No  party  can  hold 
itself  together  which  sets  out  to  produce 
that  result*  No  party  which  aims  to  re- 
duce the  dollar  to  fifty  cents  can  avoid  a 
prodigious  bolt*  There  may  be  a  bolt  in 
any  case,  and  bolting  may  extend  to  both 
parties,  but  it  is  certain  that  if  either  of 
them  declares  fat  free  coinage  at  16  to  1, 
there  will  be  a  dismemberment  of  the  or- 
ganisation of  that  party,  with  the  pros- 
pect that  the  fragments  will  never  come 
together  again.  Moreover,  the  division 
will  not  be  a  sectional  one.  It  will  run 
through  all  the  States  east  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  certainly,  and  through  those 
of  the  Plusiflo  Coast  probably.    There  is 


no  chance  of  the  Republican  party  making 
a  declaration  of  that  kind.  There  is 
every  probability  that  it  will  pronounce 
for  the  gold  standard  outright  in  order  to 
offset  the  bad  impression  made  by  McKin- 
ley's  straddling.  Any  bolt  which  may 
follow  at  St.  Louis  can  be  easily  reckoned 
with.  It  will  be  of  small  dimensions,  of  a 
purely  sectional  type,  and  will  not  put  the 
party  in  real  Jeopardy  as  a  bolt  of  the 
other  kind  would  put  the  Democracy. 

We  should  not  apprehend  any  harm  to 
the  republic  from  a  bolt  in  the  Democratic 
party,  not  even  if  it  were  a  thunderbolt. 
Both  the  old  parties  long  since  outlived 
the  objects  that  called  them  into  being. 
Whether  they  are  longer  useful  for  any 
purpose  may  well  be  doubted.  If  this 
question  could  have  been  submitted  to  a 
popular  vote  at  any  time  the  past  winter, 
while  business  men  opened  their  news- 
papers each  day  with  fear  and  trembling 
lest  they  should  find  the  country  involved 
in  some  war  without  a  cause,  the  verdict 
would  have  been  overwhelming  that  both 
parties  deserved  perdition,  and  that  any- 
thing which  should  dissolve  and  disperse 
them  would  be  heaven's  blessing  to  us  all. 
For  this  reason  we  have  not  looked  with 
alarm  upon  the  formation  and  growth  of 
the  Populist  party.  By  bringing  the  seeds 
of  disintegration  into  the  other  parties  it 
has  promised  to  clear  the  ground  for  new 
political  divisions  based  upon  living  issues, 
to  disestablish  the  old  machines,  and  to 
awaken  the  dormant  patriotism  and  un- 
used talent  that  find  no  place  to  work  for 
the  country  under  the  tyrannical  and  cor- 
rupting boss  system.  The  Populists  have 
pretty  well  sapped  the  Democratic  party 
in  the  South,  and  that  is  the  reason  why 
it  is  now  going  for  silver  and  fifty-cent 
dollars.  Why  should  not  all  the  believers 
in  that  doctrine  range  themselves  under 
one  banner,  and  vote  for  one  candidate? 
Then  all  who  are  opposed  to  them  will 
range  themselves  on  the  other  side.  The 
advantage  of  such  an  alignment  is  that 
each  man  will  then  know  what  he  is  fight- 
ing for,  and  can  work  with  some  assur- 
ance that  the  blows  he  strikes  will  tend  to 
produce  the  result  he  aims  at. 

It  may  be  said  that  if  a  Democratic 
bolt  takes  place  without  any  Republican 
bolt  of  corresponding  size,  the  bolters  will 
contribute  to  the  election  of  McKinley 
and  the  enactment  of  a  new  McKinley 
tariff.  The  answer  is  that  it  will  not  be 
the  bolt,  but  the  bad  Democratic  plat- 
form, that  will  do  the  mischief.  The  elec- 
tion of  the  Republican  nominee  will  be 
assured,  and  the  only  question  for  Demo- 
crats to  decide  will  be  whether  this  result 
shall  be  accompanied  by  an  open  revolt, 
or  by  abstention  from  the  polls,  or  by 
quietly  voting  the  Republican  ticket.  It 
would  be  much  the  better  policy  for  the 
sound- money  Democrats  to  walk  out  of 
the  convention  and  make  a  public  decla- 
ration of  their  reasons  for  doing  so.  One 
reason  for  taking  this  course  is  that  the 
disintegration  of  the  Democratic  party 
will.pcoBote  the  breaking  up  of  the  Re- 


publican party  also.  There  are  plenty  of 
differences  among  Republicans  as  to  sil- 
ver, greenbacks,  and  the  tariff,  which  will 
find  room  for  expression  whenever  the 
Democratic  pressure  is  withdrawn.  The 
two  parties  have  braced  each  other  up  for 
many  years.  When  one  of  them  actually 
falls,  the  other  cannot  remain  standing 
very  long.  Moreover,  Republican  success 
at  the  polls  does  not  necessarily  mean  an- 
other McKinley  tariff.  There  are  obsta- 
cles still  in  the  way  of  such  an  enactment, 
especially  a  shortage  of  votes  in  the  Se- 
nate. In  any  case  a  McKinley  tariff  is  a 
curable  evil,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
while  a  fifty-cent  dollar  is  not. 


ONE  ISSUE  DISPOSED  OF, 

CoNysifnoNS  for  the  choice  of  delegates 
to  the  Republican  national  convention 
have  now  been  held  in  all  the  forty-five 
States  of  the  Union.  The  platforms 
adopted  in  these  conventions,  particularly 
those  held  in  the  important  States  of  the 
North,  have  been  examined  with  interest 
for  the  light  that  they  might  cast  upon  the 
drift  of  party  sentiment  regarding  the  live 
questions  in  our  politics,  and  particularly 
the  currency  issue.  One  feature,  how- 
ever, common  to  them  all,  has  escaped  no- 
tice, although  it  is  really  most  significant 
We  refer  to  the  entire  absence  of  any  al- 
lusion to  the  issue  which,  in  one  phase  or 
another,  has  been  visible  and  prominent 
in  Republican  platforms  in  every  Presi- 
dential year  since  the  party  appeared  on 
the  national  stage.  The  sectional  ques- 
tion, growing  out  of  slavery,  is  not  so  much 
as  mentioned  anywhere. 

The  first  Republican  national  conven- 
tion, in  1866,  assembled  in  response  to  "a 
call  addressed  to  the  people  of  the  United 
States,  without  regard  to  past  political 
differences  or  divisions,  who  are  opposed 
to  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  compromise, 
to  the  policy  of  the  present  [Democratic] 
Administration,  to  the  extension  of  sla- 
very into  free  territory."  In  every  Presi- 
dential campaign  during  the  forty  years 
from  that  time  to  this,  either  slavery  or 
questions  growing  out  of  slavery — as,  the 
reconstruction  of  the  Union,  the  conferring 
of  suffrage  upon  the  former  slaves,  and 
the  attempts  to  protect  them  in  the  exer- 
cise of  that  right— have  occupied  a  front 
place  in  Republican  platforms.  The  con- 
trast between  four  years  ago  and  the  pre- 
sent year  is  most  striking  in  this  respect. 
In  1892  Benjamin  Harrison  was  President, 
and  aspired  to  a  reflection.  The  Repub- 
lican convention  in  his  own  State  of  In- 
diana was  therefore  naturally  held  early, 
meeting  at  Indianapolis  on  the  10th  of 
Biaroh.  During  his  administration  a  des- 
perate attempt  had  been  made  to  strength- 
en the  existing  federal  election  laws  by 
the  passage  of  what  came  to  be  known 
as  the  Force  bill.  This  issue  was  put 
first  in  the  platform  adopted  at  Indiana- 
polis, which  l>egan  as  follows: 

"The  RepnblioaDS  of  Indiana,  in  HUte  coo- 
ventl(Ni  asMmbled,  believing  that  a  ooatinoa- 


393 


Tlie    N'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 2 


tion  of  the  Republican  party  in  power  is  eawn- 
tia)  to  good  ffovemment  and  the  development 
of  the  materia]  resources  of  the  coantry,  hereby 
reaffirm  our  devotion  to  the  principles  of  the 
party  as  set  forth  in  the  platform  adopted  at 
the  national  convention  in  1888«  and  we  de- 
clare: That  a  pure  ballot  and  a  fair  count  are 
necessary  to  the  maintenance  of  our  republi- 
can institutions  and  the  liberties  of  our  peo- 
ple, »*  etc. 

Throughout  the  North,  Republican 
conventions  imitated  the  example  thus 
set  by  their  Indiana  brethren  in  pushing 
the  sectional  issue  to  a  front  place.  Penn- 
sylvania and  Ohio  adopted  the  same 
plank  on  the  subject,  avowing  "belief 
in  a  free  ballot  and  a  fair  count,"  and 
affirming  that,  "unless  intelligent  and 
patriotic  sentiment  accord  these  rights 
to  the  humblest  citizen  in  every  section 
of  the  country,  it  becomes  the  duty  of 
the  federal  Qovernment  to  secure  them 
by  Congressional  enactment,  under  the 
authority  conferred  by  the  CoDstitution." 
The  Republicans  of  New  York  "de- 
nounced the  treatment  of  the  colored 
people  in  the  South  as  barbarous,  and 
continued  (in  defiance  of  the  laws  and  the 
federal  Constitution)  for  the  sole  purpose 
of  perpetuating  Democratic  control  of 
that  section";  and  they  proceeded  to 
**  tender  to  the  people  thus  oppressed  our 
cordial  sympathy  and  our  earnest  efforts 
for  the  amelioration  of  their  condition." 
Every  State  platform  framed  in  the  North 
had  a  plank  on  this  question,  and  when 
the  delegates  chosen  by  such  conventions 
assembled  at  Minneapolis,  they  adopted 
a  platform  containing  this  general  party 
deliveraDce  i 

^^  We  demand  that  every  eitlKen  of  the  Unit^ 
ed  Btates  shalt  be  allowed  to  im»t  one  free  and 

unre»tric^ted  bAllot  in  all  public  elections,  and 
that  sut-b  bAllot  nhall  be  ct)iitil4Hl  atid  returoed 
a8  CAat:  that  suf h  laws  iball  b^  etiaetod  and 
enforced  as  wlli  ietnire  to  eTery  citizen,  be  he 
rich  or  poor»  native  or  foreign- oorn,  white  or 
black,  bia  aoTer^li^  rigbti«  guaranteed  by  the 
Canstitut^OD,  Tlit*  free  and  faoneat  popular 
ballot,  the  just  aod  equal  representation  of  aU 
the  peop]«f  ms  well  oh  their  jui»t  and  ec|ual  pro- 
te^^tioii,  uDder  the  lawB«  are  the  foundation 
of  our  rflpublicau  institutions  1  and  the  party 
will  nerer  relax  Ita  elforta  uDiU  the  int'ei^rilr 
of  the  ballot  and  the  puiity  of  eleetiont^  ahall 
be  fully  guaranteed  and  protected  in  every 
Btate." 

A  Democratic  Administration  has  been 
in  power  for  four  yoara,  supported  during 

the  first  two  jeare  by  a  Democratic  CoD- 
grefis.  That  CoDgresB  repealed  the  fade- 
rsJ  election  lawB,  aod  thus  put  North  and 
South,  white  and  blacky  ox- master  and 
ei-8lBve|Onanequality,  Thees  perim  en  t 
baa  been  tried  long  enough  fairly  to  test 
its  workJnga.  The  result  is  that,  begin- 
ning with  the  platform  adopted  in  Ohio, 
the  Btate  which  expects  to  furnish  the 
candidate  this  year,  every  Republican 
State  convention  has  omitted  all  reference 
to  **a  pure  ballot  and  a  fair  count/*  the 
**  oppressed  colored  people  in  the  South," 
and  the  necesaity  of  legislation  to  secure 
every  citizen  **  his  sovereign  rights*"  In- 
deed, the  one  reference  to  the  subject  found 
anywhere  In  the  country  was  the  protest 
against  a^y  attempt  to  reopen  the  ques- 
tion made  by  the  Eepufohcan  State  con- 
?antioo    iu   Teiaa,    comp<i!S*^d     largely   ol 


colored   delegatee,    which    adopted    this 
pointed  resolution : 

*'We  view  with  ntisf action  and  pride  the 
rapid  growth  of  Republican  sentiment  in  the 
South,  and,  reiving  on  tbe  force  of  a  healthy 
public  opinion  demanding  fair  and  honest  elec- 
tions, believe  that  further  legislation  on  this 
subject  by  Congress  is  undesirable  and  unne- 
cessary.'' 

The  return  of  the  Democracy  to  com- 
plete control  of  the  Government  in  1893 
has  not  brought  all  the  benefits  that  were 
reasonably  to  have  been  expected.  But 
the  Cleveland  Administration  has  render- 
ed the  nation  one  immense  and  enduring 
service  by  for  ever  eliminating  the  section- 
al issue  from  our  politics. 


THE  NEW  GALLERY. 

Loudon,  April,  1896. 

Thx  day  has  gone  by  when  tbe  Orosvenor 
Gfldlery,  or  tbe  New,  which  came  to  take  its 
place,  was  the  beadquarten  of  any  one  special 
group  of  artists.  Indeed,  if  a  gallery  were  set 
aside  for  the  purpose,  the  Independents,  or  Se- 
cessionists, to  fill  it  with  their  work  would  be 
bard  to  find.  The  Pre-Raphaelite  following 
has  dwindled  into  insigniflcance.  The  Glas 
gow  men  are  quite  willing  to  scatter  their 
forces,  each  sending  his  pictures  to  the  exhibi- 
tion most  likely  to  accept  them.  Even  tbe 
members  of  tbe  New  English  Art  Club  have 
ceased  to  flaunt  their  rebellion  in  the  face  of 
the  public,  settling  down  to  sober  accomplish- 
ment. Tbe  result  is,  on  tbe  one  hand,  a  fresh 
access  of  dulness  in  tbe  never  very  gay  Lon- 
don  shows;  on  the  other,  a  better  chance  that 
honestly  good  work  will  not  be  overshadowed 
by  the  eccentric,  whether  in  subject  or  treat- 
ment. 

Tbiii  year"*!:  New  Gallery,  which  has  |u&t 
opened  lU  door^,  is  really  bat  lltUe  more  than 
au  ov(?rflow  from  the  Royal  Academy.  But 
there  Is  one  great  dlfTerenc^:  tbe  b^t  places 
on  tbe  line  are  not  reserved,  aa  at  BurUngt'^t] 
Honae,  for  the  productions,  however  incompe- 
tent, of  c^ertatn  privileged  men.  Beside^i  the 
rooms  are  t^malk^r  and  \&m  <^ro^ded  by  a  hete- 
rogeneous array  of  conflicting  colors  and  de 
signs.  Much  of  tbe  work  that  is  mo«t  charm- 
ing, and  maj£es  the  charm  moat  ke«<nly  fett, 
would  simply  not  be  seen  at  the  Acaiiemy, 
where  reflnement  of  method  eounte  for  little. 
The  work  to  which  I  refer  more  parti  en  larly 
U  to  be  foimd  among  the  landscapes.  It  is  a 
curious  thing  that  tbe  inflnenca  of  Constable? 
and  Bonington  seems  at  Iai4  to  be  reaching 
England  by  the  very  roundabout  way  of  France. 
The  impreB^ton  that  Constable,  slighted  at 
home^  made  upon  the  Frenchmen  of  bla  tlm^, 
has  been  pointed  out  again  and  again.  He 
bad  Biibetituted  nature  for  the  old  classical 
con ven tion,  and,  across  tbe  Channel,  there 
were  men  but  too  ready  to  follow  wfaere  be 
bad  led.  Bonington  waa  still  more  of  a  power. 
Delacroix  paid  ^ger  tribute  to  his  genius, 
which  was  as  frankl?  acknowledged  by  others 
to  wboQ]  bis  name  was  unknown.  Qigom  tells 
bow  Gro«,  all  unconsciously,  called  him  '  ^  mas^ 
ter"  to  his  very  face  while  Bonington  was 
still  a  student  in  the  great  Frenchman's  stu- 
dio.  But  in  England  bis  work  and  Constable's 
made  no  such  stir ;  for  their  own  countrymen 
tbeywereneverm  aatenj.  They  a  nd  th  ©  Norwich 
School  were  promptly  forgotten;  and  if  Turn- 
er,  thank B  to  Ruskln,  was  remembered,  it  was 
as  a  name,  not  an  Infiuence,  Now  and  then 
artisU  like  Mason  and  Fred.  Walker,  or  North 
or  Cecl]  Law^oQ,  seemed  to  be  endea^'oring  to 


rescue  landscape  painting  from  the  depths  of 
ineptitude  into  which  it  was  fast  sinking,  bat 
in  vain.  And  the  worst  of  it  was  that  the 
more  inept  the  landscape,  the  more  strennoos- 
ly  its  painter  insisted  upon  his  adherence  to 
the  traditions  of  what  he  was  pleased  to  csll 
the  English  tradition.  But  many  of  tbe  young- 
er men  have  studied  in  Paris.  In  England  tbe 
work  of  tbe  Romanticists,  who  were  the  legiti- 
mate successors  of  Constable  and  Bonington, 
is  becoming  more  familiarly  known,  and  there 
is  no  question  that,  within  the  last  few  years, 
there  is  a  marked  change  for  the  better,  hi- 
deed,  I  think  the  excellenqg  of  tbe  landscapes 
tbe  one  noteworthy  feature  of  the  present  col- 
lection at  the  New  Gallery. 

It  is  not  so  much  that  individual  pictures  are 
good,  though  several  of  them  are,  as  that  tbe 
general  standard  has  been  raised,  that  atten- 
tion has  been  turned  to  more  legitimate  artis- 
tic problems.  Where  the  object  was  once  to 
crowd  a  canvas  with  as  much  detail  as  itcoald 
hold,  or  perhaps  more,  now  there  are  a  few 
English  artists  who  concern  themselves  with 
the  aspect  of  the  scene  they  paint,  with  har^ 
mony  of  color,  with  rightness  of  values.  They 
have  learned  to  prize  simplicity  and  breadth 
and  freedom  of  handling  above  niggling  and 
Ill-considered  smudging.  They  seek  to  com- 
poee  a  picture  rather  than  to  make  a  painted 
photograph,  a  literal  transcript  of  nature. 

It  would  be  useless  here  to  write  out  a  list 
of  names  in  order  to  establish  the  truth  of  my 
assertion.  One  will  serve  as  weU,  and,  after 
all,  no  exhibitor  answers  my  purpoee  more 
forcibly  than  Mr.  Edward  Stott,  a  young  man 
whose  reputation  has  hardly  yet  spread  from 
bis  fellow-artists  to  the  general  public.  He 
has  taken  a  simple  domestic  svibject,  quite  -in 
sympathy  with  English  popular  traditions. 
**The  Old  Gate.''  he  calls  it,  and  he  shows 
three  tired  horses  coming  home  after  tbe  da;^'* 
work,  a  boy  inonnted  upon  the  flrsl>  while,  <m 
the  open  gate,  a  Bniall  girl  is  perched,  and  an- 
other stands  at  its  ^ide.  Beyond  is  tbe  long, 
low,  re«l' roofed  bam.  fowls  gathering  nuder 
tbe  shadow  of  its  waU.  (n  tbe  deecrlption  it 
sounds  a£  though  tbiv  picture  might  be  one  of 
the  charaot^ristic  water -colors  of  WlUiam 
Hunt.  But  Mr.  Stott  has  not  troubled  to  teB 
a  silly  story  or  to  didcover  liham  sentinient,  as 
Hunt  would  have  done.  To  him  the  subject 
has  been  nothing  but  an  excuse  to  record  a 
lovely  effect  of  light.  The  low  rays  of  the  set- 
ting sun  fall,  with  transflguring  glory,  upon 
the  face  and  jacket  of  the  girl  who  standi  and. 
here  and  there,  on  the  horse  and  the  boy  on  its 
back:  far  away,  to  the  left  of  the  barn,  itretdu 
es  a  tender,  lu  dp  i  nous  f ky .  Figures  and  detail* 
are  all  enveloped  in  the  magical  atruosphere  ol 
tbe  hour,  and  the  artiiit  has  known  bow  to  con- 
centrate attention  upon  this  effecti  and  how 
to  give  to  hiB  impression  tbe  serenity,  the  feel- 
ing  of  completene^  which  is  no\er  aji»ing 
from  the  true  work  of  art.  One  will  wak^h 
Mr.  Stott'fl  future  career  with  intereet.  I  wi*b 
there  wore  space  to  speak  at  length  of  Mr,  hAj> 
tbur  Lemon's  "  Campagna  Romana,"  with  the 
vast  desolate  plain  &barply  defined  in  tbe  clear 
Italian  atmosphere,  and  yet  tbe  idea  of  almcst 
illimitable  distance  so  well  eiprtcsed;  of  Hr. 
Pepper TOm*6  soft,  silvery  gray  imprearoon*  of 
eveming;  of  ^me  hairdu^en  other  landiM^p* 
which  give  genuine  diitdncHon  t<i  a  not  very 
notable  show. 

But  the  good  work  is  not  entirely  conflned  to 
the  land^rapf^.  Thera  y  a  Sue  portrall  ttf 
Counteea  Clary  Aldringen  by  Mr.  SarfieOL  II 
It  is  not  one  of  hi*  pk^iaanteiU  the  fault  4si*a- 
bly  was  Mb  aitler*^  not  hit.  It  b  a  f laiOMgtii. 
and  the  tall,  sllghti  Belf-conadoua  llgui*  10 


May  21,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


393 


white  eTening  gown  has  juat  riseo  from  the 
■ofa  as  if  to  giire  greeitng  to  an  arriving  gueit. 
The  month  it  partly  open  in  a  set,  acid  society 
tmHe,  the  right  arm  Is  ready  to  be  extended; 
the  pose  and  expression  are  wonderfully  na- 
tural and,  one  feels  instinctiyely,  characteris- 
tic. The  white  of  the  gown,  painted  with  im- 
mense vigor  and  yivacity,  tells  delicion^ly 
against  the  pale  roee  of  the  sofa,  behind  which 
hangings  fall  in  heavy  folds.  And  the  woman 
herself  stands  so  well  within  the  room,  which  is 
so  unmistakably  filled  with  real  air,  that  most 
of  the  other  portraits  in  the  gallery  seem  no  bet. 
ter  than  lay  figures  painted  in  the  flat  It  has 
not  the  beauty  of  Mr.  Sargent^s  lovely  '*  Lady 
Agnew,**  nor  the  dignity  of  his  '*  Hiss  Rehan,** 
nor,  again,  the  spirit  and  go  of  his  "  Carmen- 
clta**;  but  it  is  a  very  distinguished  perform- 
ance, immeasurably  more  accomplished  than 
the  work  that  surrounds  it. 

It  is  a  strange  contrast  to  turn  from  Mr. 
Sargent  to  Sir  Edward  Bume  Jones,  whose 
canvases  show  but  too  plainly  the  infinite  la- 
bor which  they  have  cost  him.  To  tell  the 
truth,  he  Is  not  at  his  best  this  year.  In  both 
his  pictures  he  has  been  at  much  trouble  to 
carry  out  an  unpleasant  color  scheme,  which 
does  not  help  to  reconcile  one  to  the  reappear- 
ance of  the  wan,  mystic  figures  one  knows  but 
too  welt    In  the  first, '*  Aurora,'' 

"  Day's  harbinger 
Oomea  dandng  trom  the  Eaat." 

She  is  merely  his  Psyche,  his  Venus,  his  Virgin 
under  another  name.  She  wears  rose-gray 
draperies,  hard  and  cold  as  the  gray  walls  be- 
tween which  she  winds  her  way;  and  she 
dances  to  so  sad  a  measure,  she  clashes  her 
cymbals  with  such  wistful  weariness,  that  one 
might  well  dread  the  coming  of  the  day  thus 
heralded.  Never  was  there  a  more  despairing 
Dawn,  nor  one  less  beautifuL  **  The  Dream  of 
Lsuncelot  at  the  Chapel  of  the  San  Grael  ^  also 
is  without  the  loveliness  of  decorative  design 
that  might  compensate  for  lack  of  harmony  in 
the  color. 

Mr.  Watts,  who  is  always  prominent  at  the 
New  Gallery,  has  scarcely  been  more  success- 
fnl.  His  work,  like  Sir  Edward  Bume^  Jones's, 
always  commands  respect  even  when  it  bor- 
ders  upon  failure.  But  allegory  must  some- 
times prove  a  snare  for  the  painter,  and  his 
figure  of  **  Earth  "  is  so  coarse  in  form  (which 
was  no  doubt  intentional),  the  fruit  and  flow, 
ers  she  holds  in  her  arms  present  so  muddy  an 
arrangement  of  reds  and  browns,  that  one 
cannot  but  wish  he  had  thought  less  of  his  al- 
legory, more  of  his  picture.  He  has,  besides, 
a  *'  Time,  Death,  and  Judgment,"  statuesque 
in  its  composition,  but  otherwise  disappoint* 
ing;  and  two  little  pictures  of  Adam  and  Eve, 
before  and  after  the  fall—a  subject  so  hack- 
neyed in  art  that  a  much  more  original  con- 
oeption  and  treatment  than  his  would  be 
needed  to  give  it  interest.  For  the  rest,  there 
is  nothing  to  note,  unless  it  be  the  fact  that  to 
M.  Femand  Khnopflf,  as  to  Mr.  Watts,  mysti. 
dsm  or  symbolism  has  proved  a  pitfalL  His 
one  picture,  **  Des  Caresses,*'  which  represents 
a  leopard-like  sphinx  and  her  lover,  he  has 
filled  so  chock-full  of  esoteric  meaning  that  he 
has  forgotten  to  find  expretsion  for  it  in  the 
striking  decorative  arrangement  which  he  once 
accustomed  us  to  expect  from  him.  Few  are 
the  artists  strong  enough  to  indulge  in  ideas. 

N.  N. 


BARRAS'S   MEMOIRS.-VI. 

PAKI8,  May  7, 1896. 
Ojtu  of  the  men  who  owed  their  importance 


to  Barras  was  R6al,  who  played  such  an  im- 
portant part  in  the  Empire.  He  was  a  lawyer, 
and  did  not  miss  one  of  Barras's  soirdes  at  the 
Luxembourg.  He  had  made  himself  notorious 
in  the  case  of  Babenf,  the  Socialist  leader  of 
the  time.  It  is  curious  to  notice  the  part  which 
is  always  left  to  women  in  the  Memoirs  of  Bar- 
ras. **  One  day,"  he  says,  **  I  received  a  visit 
from  a  friend  of  mine  who  was  also  a  friend 
of  Real's,  Mademoiselle  or  Madame  de  ChAte- 
nay,  for  her  quality  of  canoness  gave  her  the 
right  to  be  called  Madame  [the  Memoirs  of 
Madame  de  Ch&tenay  have  been  recently  pub- 
lished, and  I  shall  soon  have  to  give  an  account 
of  them,  as  they  possess 'real  interest].  She 
was  a  person  of  much  etprit^  and  even  more 
erudition;  a  true  Benedictine."  She  came  to 
speak  in  favor  of  E6a],  and  recommended  him 
for  the  office  of  Commissioner  of  the  Directory 
in  the  Department  of  the  Seine.  **  You,  Bar- 
ras, to  whom  France  owes  the  finest  things  in 
the  Revolution,  who  are  the  father  of  the  most 
distinguished  citizens  and  soldiers  that  honor 
our  country— for  did  you  not  make  Bonaparte, 
Hoche,  Talleyrand,  Foucbd,  etc  ?— I  do  not 
answer  for  those  whom  I  don't  know  parti, 
cularly,  but  I  do  answer  for  Rdal."  There 
were  good  reasons  why  our  canoness  took  so 
much  interest  in  R6al,  as  her  Memoirs  will 
show.  Barras  was  moved  by  Madame  de  Chi- 
tenay,  and  it  must  be  remarked  that  he  does 
not  suggest  that  she  employed  with  him  the 
means  which  were  employed.by  others,  and  on 
which  he  dwells  with  so  much  complacency 
and  cynicism  in  his  Memoirs.  lUal  was  ap- 
pointed, and  ^*  there  you  have  one  more  actor," 
says  Buras,  **whom  I  introduced  on  the  scene." 
Barras  observes,  on  this  occasion,  that  the 
personages  cited  above  '*all  put  themselves 
forward  by  means  of  women's  infiuenoe."  Bo- 
naparte was  the  first: 

*^  We  have  seen  his  manoeuvres  with  Jose- 
phine and  his  marriage  in  order  to  have  com- 
mand of  the  army  of  Italy.  Then  Talleyrand ; 
we  have  seen  how  he  was  helped  and  kept  up 
by  Madame  de  StaSl.  We  now  see  R6al,  in  a 
secondary  sphere,  using  the  same  means.  .  .  . 
I  will  make  here  a  sad  refiection  on  their 
conduct.  After  having  used  women  in  the  in- 
terest of  their  ambition,  they  were  all  ungrate- 
ful; they  squeesed  the  lemon  and  threw  away 
the  peeL" 

Talleyrand  was,  says  Barras,  more  than  un- 
grateful, he  became  hostile: 

**  Judged  by  what  she  [Mme.  de  Stafil]  told 
me  when  I  saw  her  asain  in  1814,  she  did  not 
doubt  that  Talleyrana  was  the  prime  mover  in 
the  persecution  she  had  to  suffer.  *  I  had  be- 
come insupportable  to  him,'  said  she  laughing, 
ly,  *  as  Agrippina  was  to  Nero.  ...  I  bad 
^ven  him  bread  literally,  my  dear  Barras,  be- 
Fore  you  made  him  minister  on  my  recommen- 
dation; what  bad  I  not  done  for  him  ?  Re- 
member my  importunities.  Well,  if  he  could 
have  treated  me  as  Nero  did  Ag^ppina,  he 
would  have  done  so;  he  would  do  It  still,  and 
why?  Because  I  gave  him  bread  and  made 
him  minister.'* 

One  of  the  agenU  of  Louis  XVIII.,  of  the 
Prince  de  Cond6,  of  the  EInglish  Government 
(this  class  of  secret  agents  is  not  content  with 
doing  its  work  for  a  single  person  or  party), 
was  a  man  called  Fauche-Borel,  a  bankrupt 
bookseUer.  He  had  received  large  sums  for 
communicating  directly  or  indirectly  with  the 
most  important  public  men  and  bribing  them 
in  order  to  bring  them  over  to  the  royalist 
cause.  Fauche-Borel  bad  persuaded  the  Pre- 
tender and  the  foreign  cabinets  that  Barras, 
the  General  of  the  9th  Tbennldor,  of  the  18th 
Vend^miaire,  of  the  18th  Fructidor,  was  the 
most  vulnerable.  He  wrote  to  him  from  Wesel, 
under  the  name  of  FrMMo  Borelly,  saying 
**  that  be  had  important  revelationi  to  maketo 


him  which  interested  France  and  the  Dlreo- 
tory."  He  wished  to  have  passports  for  Paris 
or  to  have  sent  to  him,  on  the  part  of  Barras, 
an  agent  who  possessed  his  entire  confidence. 
Barras  showed  this  letter  to  the  Directory  the 
day  he  received  it.  The  Directory  Judged 
**  that  it  was  important  not  to  neglect  this  pro- 
position, and  to  send  an  agent.'*  Talleyrand, 
then  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  was  consult- 
ed; he  chose  for  agent  of  the  Directory  a  per- 
son who  saw  Fauche^orel  at  Weeel,  but  ob- 
tained no  communication  of  any  importance. 
The  Directory  decided  that  another  should  be 
sent  with  a  letter  from  him.  Barras  sent  a  M. 
Gudrin  with  the  letter  desired  by  Fauche-Borel. 
He  said  in  this  letter:  '*Tou  can  safely  give 
the  bearer  all  the  information  and  all  the  docu- 
ments which  you  announce  to  be  of  great  inte- 
rest for  the  Republic,  the  Government,  and  for 
myself  in  particular." 

We  find  in  the  Memoirs  a  letter  which  Bo- 
relly  wrote  to  Barras  on  the  17th  Vend^miaire, 
year  viiL,  with  "  letters-patent  from  the  King 
appointing  a  commissioner  for  the  proclama- 
tion of  the  monarchy."  The  Viscount  de  Bar- 
ras was  named  High  Commissioner;  a  month 
after  Louis  XVIU.  should  have  taken  the 
reins  of  government  Barras  was  to  receive 
as  an  indemnity  **  the  sum  of  twelve  millions 
of  livres  toumois— ten  millions  for  himself  and 
two  millions  which  were  to  be  divided  by  him 
between  his  coadjutors  in  the  work  of  the  resto- 
ration." Barras  says  that  the  correspondence 
and  the  letters-patent  were  conmiunicated  to 
the  Directory.  Fouchd  arrested  a  certain 
Monnier,  whom  Barras  characterises  as  the 
correspondent  of  WeseL  Barras's  secretary 
Botot  appeared  before  the  Directory,  his  name 
having  been  used  at  Wesel;  the  secretary  **  dis- 
avowed everything."  The  secret  register  of 
the  Directory  would  perhaps  dispel  the  mys- 
tery of  these  negotiations.  What  seems  clear, 
notwithstanding  the  protestations  of  the  Me- 
moirs, is,  that  Barras  was  open  to  an  offer, 
and  that  he  was  thought  to  be  so  by  his  col- 
leagues of  the  Directory.  In  his  memoirs  Go- 
hier,  one  of  the  Directors,  does  not  express  any 
doubts  on  the  subject.  He  says  that  there 
were  in  the  Directory  two  traitors;  that  while 
Siej^  was  working  for  a  dictatorship— the 
dictatorship  of  Bonaparte  and  himself— Barras 
was  conspiring  for  the  monarchy.  **  The  mo- 
ment when  this  Director  was  to  unfurl  the 
royal  standard  was  fixed,  the  day  on  which 
this  conspiracy  was  to  break  out  was  marked; 
and  if  the  movement  failed,  it  was  because 
Siey^s  movement  prevented  it."  The  allusion 
is  to  the  famous  18th  Brumaire,  the  day  which 
witnessed  the  foundation  of  Bonaparte^s  power. 

In  volume  iv.  of  Barras's  Memoirs  there  are 
many  interesting  details  concerning  what  may 
be  called  the  preliminaries  of  the  18th  Bru- 
maire. Barras's  ambiguous  conduct  during 
this  period  may  be  explained  by  the  fact  that 
he  was  carrying  on  a  sort  of  double  policy  ;  he 
certainly  knew  the  projects  of  Hiey6«  and 
Bonaparte,  but  he  was  conspiring  probably  also 
on  his  account.  He  was  somewhat  deceived 
on  the  subject  of  Bonaparte's  prestige,  and  he 
seems  to  have  been  surprised  when  he  found, 
after  Bonaparte's  return  from  Egypt,  that, 
to  use  his  own  very  energetic  expressions, 
'Ma  France  se  pr^ipitalt  vers  une  existence 
nouvelle."  The  prestige  of  the  **tehapp6 
d'^gypte"  was  growing  every  day,  and  Barras 
himself  had  become  more  and  more  unpopular 
and  disregarded.  When  oonvinced  that  Bona- 
parte  was  the  man  of  the  day,  he  abandoned  his 
own  projects  and  cut  the  threads  which  he  had 
thrown  across  the  frontier  in  the  direction  of 
the  Pretender.   It  was  too  late— Bonaparte  had 


394= 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1 61 2 


seen  through  him;  he  did  not  like  Bamw  any 
more  than  Barras  liked  him,  and  the  reasons 
for  this  mutual  dislike  are  obvious.  Josephine 
was  a  sort  of  living  reproach  which  stood  be- 
tween them. 

On  the  8th  Brumaire,  ten  days  before  the 
coup  dTHat,  Barras  had  at  his  table  Moreau 
and  Bonaparte ;  the  conversation  turned  on  the 
political  situation.  Barras  recognised  the  ne- 
cessity of  a  dictatorship  ;  he  confessed  that  he 
was  himself  **usd  pour  la  ciroonstance,''  and 
pronounced  the  name  of  a  general,  Hddouville, 
by  way  of  sounding  Bona;>arte.  The  effect  was 
terrible.  Bonaparte  fixed  an  angry  look  on 
Barras  and  soon  went  away,  determined  to 
work  with  Sieyds  only.  He  felt,  however, 
some  hesitation ;  he  knew  that  Barras  had 
much  decision  and  courage,  having  seen  him 
at  Toulon  on  the  18th  Vend^miaire.  They  saw 
each  other  any  times.  Talleyrand  and  R6al 
tried  to  induoe  greater  harmony  between 
them.  In  Barras's  opinion  the  return  of  Bona- 
parte furnished  the  means  of  procuring  an 
amelioration  of  the  constitutional  system  ;  in 
stead  of  a  Directory  of  five  members,  it  was 
necessary  to  have  a  single  President  who 
should  have  the  power  of  dissolving  the  legis- 
lative chambers.  Napoleon  said  to  Barrat, 
**  It  is  either  you  or  Sieyds,**  and  seemed  at 
times  to  leave  him  the  choice.  Barras  did  not 
choose;  he  invented  difflcuUies,  and  flnaUy  it 
was  agreed  among  Bonaparte's  supporters  that 
they  would  say  to  Barras*s  supporters,  "He  is 
with  us,  but  wishes  to  show  hiinself  only  after 
the  business  is  done.'*  It  was  also  agreed  that 
Sieyte  should  be  amused  and  flattered  to  the 
end,  and  that  Bonaparte  should  be  made  First 
Consul,  with  the  addition  of  two  other  Consuls 
who  would  be  merely  his  lieutenants. 

On  the  16th  Brumaire  the  friends  of  Bona 
parte  met  at  the  house  of  the  President  of  the 
Ancients.  It  was  agreed  that  the  tifo  Coun- 
cils and  the  Directory  should  be  transferred  to 
Saint-Cloud,  and  that  the  proposition  should 
be  made  by  a  committee  of  the  Ancients.  The 
details  of  the  coup  d'Hat  are  well  known. 
The  removal  to  Saint-Cloud  was  voted  in  the 
early  morning,  and  Oeneral  Bonaparte  was 
charged  with  the  necessary  measures  for  the 
protection  of  the  national  representation.  All 
the  troops  in  Paris  were  placed  for  that  object 
under  his  command.  The  decree  of  removal  of 
the  legislative  chambers  to  Saint-Cloud  was 
sent  ofiScially  to  Barras.  Two  of  the  Directors, 
Gohier  and  Moulins,  went  to  the  Lb^cembourg 
to  join  him;  they  were  already  abandoned, 
even  by  the  troops  which  usually  guarded  the 
Luxembourg.  Talleyrand  arrived,  after  the 
departure  of  Gk>hier  and  Moulins;  he  acted  the 
part  of  the  Tempter:  the  republic  was  in  dan- 
ger,  Bonaparte  had  no  other  thought  but  to 
save  it.  Siey^  the  two  Directors  who  had 
just  left  Barras,  understood  matters;  they  had 
resigned  and  were  going  to  join  the  Ancients 
at  Saint-Cloud.  **I  open  my  window,"  says 
Barras;  **  I  give  a  look  on  the  Rue  de  Tour- 
non  and  vicinity.  I  see  soldiers  going  to 
the  Tuileries,  the  people  accompanying  them 
with  shrieks  of  support  and  encouragement.  I 
can  no  longer  conceal  the  truth  from  myself. 
I  determine  my  course  with  the  resolution 
I  have  often  shown  in  difScult  times."  He 
writes  and  sends  in  his  resignation  as  Director. 
And  so  the  curtain  falls  upon  him.  He  proba- 
bly did  not  think  that  it  would  fall  for  ever, 
and  that  his  political  career  had  come  to  an  end. 

Barras,  after  having  given  in  his  resigna- 
tion, left  immediately  for  his  country-house 
at  Groeboifl.  It  wm  there  that  he  heard  the 
detaili  of  the  a/wp  dCUut  of  Brumaire^  wbicli 
gave  to  fiooKparte  a  real  dictatorship.     ^^  The 


conspirators  of  the  two  councils  divided  among 
themselves  the  power  and  the  fortune  of 
France  under  various  names  more  or  less  se- 
rious; some  called  themselves  senators,  some 
others  tribunes,  or  even  legislators.  It  was 
their  way  of  making  people  believe  that  there 
still  remained  a  national  representation  in 
France."  Two  days  after  the  coup  (f^toC, 
Bonaparte  sent  Fouch6  to  Orosbois  to  ask 
Barras  what  place  he  would  like  to  have  in 
the  Gk>vemment.  Barras  took  him  over  his 
garden  and  said  to  him:  *'This  is  the  only 
place  I  now  wish  to  occupy."  He  wrote  to 
Bonaparte  a  letter  in  which  he  said  that  his 
determination  to  leaVe  public  life  was  irrevo- 
cable. Had  there  been  a  secret  compact  be- 
tween Napoleon  and  Barras  f  Did  Barras,  as 
his  contemporaries  'believed,  receive  three 
millions  as  the  price  of  his  resignation  as 
Director?  Why  did  Barras  accept  no  post, 
diplomatic  or  military }  Did  be  simply  re- 
ceive money?  Did  the  price  of  his  resigna- 
tion remain  in  the  hands  of  Talleyrand,  as 
Barras  intimates  i  n  a  note  f  *  ^  My  resignation, 
of  which  I  have  told  the  story  without  any 
reservation,  involved  no  money  offer.  ..  .  . 
I  declare  that  if  any  sum  was  paid  by  Bona- 
parte for  this  object,  it  remained  wholly  in 
the  possession  of  Talleyrand."  There  remains 
a  mystery  hanging  over  all  these  points ;  what 
is  certain  is,  that  Barras  disappears  as  a  politi 
cal  actor  on  the  18th  Brumaire;  exit  Bairas. 

We  see  him  after  this  date  going  from  place 
to  place,  from  Orosbois  to  Brussels,  from 
Brussels  to  Provence,  from  there  to  Rome, 
always  under  the  eye  of  Fouch6's  polioe,  filled 
with  a  bitter  hatred  of  Napoleon.  The  close 
of  volume  iv.  is  a  prolonged  satire  on  the 
Emperor.  Barras  uses  his  remaining  strength 
in  obscure  intrigues  and  conspiracies ;  he  ap 
plauds  the  treason  of  Bemadotte,  of  Moreau  ; 
he  triumphs  with  the  Russians  and  the  Allies 
during  the  campaign  in  Russia  and  in  the  m- 
vasion  of  France.  He  ended  his  life  durtog 
the  RestCMtition  in  1837,  ignored^  forgotten,  Iti 
great  affluence,  protected  by  vhe  GK>verDm6Dt 
of  the  Bourbons,  who  never  forgot  that,  be- 
fore the  18th  Brumaire,  Barras  had  been  ready 
to  prepare  their  return  to  France. 


Correspondence. 

CHRISTINA  ROSSETTPS  MEMORIAL, 
To  THs  Editor  of  Ths  Nation  : 

Sir:  A  memorial  to  the  late  Christina  Eoe^ 
setti,  the  gifted  poetess  whose  fame  is  world- 
wide, will  be  placed  in  Christ  Church,  Wobtu-D 
Square,  which  she  attended  for  nearly  twenty 
years. 

Sir  Edward  Bume- Jones,  who  was  a  life-long 
friend,  has  consented  to  prepare  the  designs  tor 
a  series  of  paintings  in  the  reredoa,  and  to 
superintend  the  work  in  its  progress,  if  a  sum 
sufficient  be  raised. 

A  first  list  of  subscribers  has  been  priotod 
which  contains  the  names  of  W.  M.  Ros^ttf, 
Mackenzie  Bell,  Sir  William  Jenner,  the  Bishop 
of  Durham,  Ada  Swanwick,  and  othera. 

It  is  believed  that  there  are  many  in  America 
who  will  with  pleasure  contribute  to  the  niemo- 
rial,  and  I  beg  to  add  that  donations  may  be 
sent  to  the  Christina  Rossetti  Memorial  Ac- 
count in  the  Bank  of  England,  Threadneedle 
Street,  London,  or  to    Tours  truly, 

J.  J.  GuiNBnffNiNa  Naes, 
Vicar  of  Christ  Church,  Wobum  Squ^e^  and 

Chaplain  to  the  Mart|ues!i  of  Londonderry, 

fta  To^TEB  STBXKT^  LOWDC^It,  Itftjr  4,  1606. 


Notes. 


Zola's  *  Home'  is  on  the  eve  of  being  brought 
out  in  English  by  Macmillan  8l  Co.,  who  an- 
nounoe  also  *A  Collection  of  Problems  and 
Examples  in  Physics,'  by  C.  P.  Matthews  and 
J.  8.  Shearer  of  ComelL 

The  New  Amsterdam  Book  Co.,  IM  Fifth 
Avenue,  have  in  press  *  Political  Parties  in 
the  United  States,  their  History  and  Influ- 
ence,* by  J.  Harris  Pfttton,  M.A. 

G.  P.  Putnam^s  Sons  will  unite  in  one  vol- 
ume Mr.  David  A.  Wells's  North  ^meHcaa 
Revieu)  article  on  "  The  Relations  Between  ths 
United  States  and  Great  Britain,"  ex-Minister 
Phelps's  Brooklyn  address  on  "The  True 
Monroe  Doctrine,"  and  Mr,  Carl  Schurz'i 
Washington  address  on  ''Arbitration,"  under 
the  general  title,  'The  United  States  and 
Great  Britain.'  The  same  firm  have  nearly 
ready  '  Abraham  Lincoln,'  the  HeraleTM  thou- 
sand-dollar prise  poem  by  the  Rev.  Lyman 
Whitney  Allen;  *  A  Venetian  June,'  by  Anna 
FuUer;  and  'Will  o'  the  Wasp;  A  Sea-Tarn  of 
the  War  of  1812,'  by  Robert  Cameron  Rogers. 

•  Ice  Work,  Present  and  Past,'  by  Prof.  T.  O. 
Bonney,  and  '  Green  Gates,'  a  New  York  novel, 
by  Mrs.  K.  M.  C.  Meredith,  are  annoanoed  by 
the  Appletons. 

George  Bell  &  Sons,  liOndon  (New  York: 
Macmillan),  have  issued,  in  the  Bohn  Library 
series,  a  cheaper  edition  of  T.  Keane's  transla- 
tion from  the  Russian  of  Alexander  Pushkin's 
'  Prose  Tales,'  noticed  in  these  columns  a  coo- 
pie  of  years  ago. 

The  translation  into  English  from  Anatole 
Leroy-Beaulieu*s  third  and  last  volume  of  *  The 
Empire  of  the  Tsars  and  the  Russians '  has  ap- 
peared from  the  press  of  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons. 
This  volume  is  devoted  to  the  religion  of  Rus- 
sia. It  ii  Itupoedble  to  speak  with  too  high 
praise  of  the  manner  in  which  the  aathor  haa 
treated  this  oiott  delicate  and  diiBc^lt  topic. 
A  lorelgDert  a  member  oC  the  KiiBsiAit 
Churcb'fl  ^eat  rivals  be  might  easUj  hare 
oTorfitepped  the  limits  of  truth,  delicacy, 
and  good  feeling.  But,  with  a  few  trifling 
exceptions  which  might  be  taken  by  a  per- 
son occupying  another  point  of  view,  hi* 
statements  may  be  accepted  as  fair  &nd  ear- 
rect  within  mortal  boundB  of  error.  Thii 
volume  should  do  much  to  remove  divers  deep- 
seated  errors  and  widely  spread  eonvlctionft  ai 
to  the  Russian  Church  and  the  QoYernmenf » 
attitude  towards  it  and  towards  the  di«idetit 
geote  whicli  have  long  existed,  or  are  cocsUmt- 
ly  spriDgfug  up  like  the  mushrootn,  fkddi^b 
sects  of  our  Western  world.  We  should  like 
to  mention^  in  porticulsr,  as  examples  of  the 
atitbor^s  sympathetic  comprebension  and  joi^ 
tice,  bts  characterization,  on  p.  BU,  of  the  pea^ 
eaut  and  Cbrifltianity;  on  p.  106,  of  the  Rui- 
slfto  images;  and  on  pp.  9il,  109-110,  of  the 
Church  music.  The  tranilalar^s  r^maj-tably 
fluent  English  Is  marred  by  the  defects  whith 
we  analyzed  at  length  fo  our  review  of  iba 
first  volume  in  the  series,  and  which  of  tej3  ren- 
der the  chronology  or  seoae  chaotic 

Before  the  death  of  Frof.  Herbert  Titttle  of 
Cornell  University,  in  the  summer  of  l^H  ^* 
was  known  that  prolonged  ill-heattb  bad  ita- 
peded  the  completion  of  his  *  History  of  Prui- 
sia' ;  and  the  inforoiatioD  that  only  a  putrtioii 
of  the  fourth  volume  had  been  written  w a*  re- 
ceived with  sincere  reg^^-^t,  but  without  tur* 
prise.  This  portion,  however,  amtiuttljed  la  • 
half  of  the  projected  volnme  ;  it  wait  ready  tot 
the  priDt^r,  and  Mrs,  Tattle  ha^  ddiM  wtasly  tfi 
giving  it  to  tbe  puUIic  (Houcbtoo,  MUflla  A 


May  21,  1896] 


The   Nation. 


395 


Co.).  The  p«riod  ooyered—the  opening  earn- 
paigni  of  the  Seven  Tears*  War,  from  the 
■eliore  of  Saxony  to  the  Tictoriee  of  Ronbach 
and  Leothen— is  of  exceptional  interett ;  and, 
in  spite  of  the  author's  repngnanoe  to  any  show 
of  entbnsiasm  and  his  dread  of  anything  ap> 
proaching  **  Bne  writing,"  the  story  holds  the 
reader.  The  volnme  is  fully  ap  to  the  level  of 
its  predecessors :  it  exhibits  the  historian's 
characteristic  merits -care  in  attesting  the 
facts,  clearness  of  presentation,  sanity  of  jndg. 
ment,  and  sobriety  of  expression.  Like  the 
previous  volameit,  it  is  minutely  indexed. 
Prof.  Herberc  B.  Adams  of  Johns  Hopkins 
University  contributes,  by  way  of  preface,  a 
sympathetic  sketch  of  Prof.  Tuttle^s  life  and 
labors. 

Mr.  Percy  Fitzgerald  has  been  revising  his 
*Life  of  Sterne,'  which  is  now  published  in 
two  neat  volumes  by  Downey  &  Ck>.  (New 
York:  Charles  Scriboer's  Sons).  The  changes 
and  additions  are  so  great  as  to  make  the  pre- 
sent edition  a  new  book.  Many  documents  re- 
lating to  Sterne  have  come  to  light  during  the 
last  twenty  years,  and  with  no  advantage  to 
his  character.  Indeed,  the  most  important 
thing  about  this  edition  is  the  biographer's 
change  of  attitude  towards  his  subject.  The 
fresh  letters  and  a  careful  study  of  Torick*s 
Journal  (soon  to  be  published)  have  brought 
Mr.  Fitsgerald  almost  to  Thackeray's  estimate 
of  Sterne.  "Yorick's  Journal  ...  is  fa- 
tally damaging;  exhibiting  a  repulsive  combl- 
nation  of  Pharisaical  utterances  and  lax  prin- 
ciple. This  would  seem  to  show  that  Mr. 
Sterne  was  something  more  than  the  mere 
*phflanderer*  he  described  himself  to  be. 
.  .  .  It  may  be  always  fairly  presumed  that 
licentious  writing  is  almost  certain  to  be  fol- 
lowed by  life  and  practice  as  licentious."  Mr. 
Fitsgerald  is  very  well  up  in  Sterne's  love 
affairs,  and  does  not  consider  that  Qui  ne 
ehangera  ptu  ga'en  mourant^  at  the  end  of 
a  fond  letter,  means  much.  The  people  of 
York,  who  were  scandalized  at  *  Tristram 
Shandy,'  would  have  collapsed  on  reading  the 
correspondence  of  their  clergyman.  Exter- 
nally,  the  most  interesting  portions  of  Steme*s 
life  were  his  visits  to  London  and  Paris.  Mr. 
Fitzgerald's  chapters  on  these  episodes  are  ad- 
mirable. Paris  was  decidedly  more  congenial 
to  Sterne  than  Sutton.  **  Among  the  French 
in  Paris  he  gave  full  reins  to  his  natural  spirits; 
and  to  them  his  peculiar  temper  seems  to  have 
been  very  acceptable.  ...  *  I  laugh  till  I 
also  cry,'  he  wrote,  *  and  in  the  same  tender 
moments  cry  till  I  laugh ;  I  Shandy  It  more  than 
ever.' "  It  must  have  been  worth  while  to  see 
Sterne  in  the  full  tide  of  hilarity.  He  is  f ortu 
nate  in  finding  a  biographer  who  does  him 
justice  without  wronging  the  public  by  a 
paradoxical  defence  of  his  behavior.  Mr.  Fitz 
gerald's  book,  in  its  supplemented  and  recon- 
sidered form,  will  doubtless  remain  the  stan- 
dard life  of  witty  and  volatile  Shandy. 

The  Chicago  University  unites  with  the 
Early  English  Text  Society  in  publishing  a 
new  MS.  of  Lydgate's  *  The  Assembly  of  Qods.' 
The  issue  constitutes  the  first  monograph  in  a 
series  of  English  Studies  to  be  published  by 
the  University,  and  is  at  the  same  time  to  be  a 
regular  issue  of  the  English  Society.  The 
editor  is  Dr.  O.  L.  Triggs,  whose  doctoral 
thesis  the  critical  part  of  the  work  constitutes. 
Dr.  Triggs's  book  on  Browning  and  Whitman, 
a  study  in  Democracy,  was  noticed  in  these 
columns  three  years  ago.  It  is  a  far  cry  from 
Whitman  to  Lydgate,  but  we  dare  say  an 
exhilarating  one.  At  all  events,  while  Dr. 
Triggs's  earlier  book,  though  often  original, 
was  marred  by  mistiness  and  noosequaciona- 


ness,  the  author  now  employs  a  much  severer 
method.  The  poem  itself,  which  the  editor 
assigns  {eontra  Dr.  Schick  of  Heidelberg)  to 
Lydgate's  second  period,  it  a  typical  mediaeval 
allegory  of  2,000  lines,  and  in  theology,  myth- 
ology, and  construction  is  neither  more  nor 
less  conventional  than  most.  The  avowed  aim 
of  the  poem,  to  find  a  common  ground  of  ao- 
cord  between  reason  and  sensuality,  is  realized  : 
*'in  the  fear  of  death  all  accord — Lydgate, 
Reason,  and  Sensuality."  The  editor  adds  six 
chapters  of  critical  apparatus,  throwing  em- 
phasis on  the  last  chapter,  which  discusses 
allegory  as  a  literary  {^  re.  Somewhat  mis 
cellaneous  here  is  the  collection  of  materials, 
but  these  are  informed  by  a  fine  feeling  on  the 
editor's  part  for  the  vital  bond  between  litera- 
ture and  life. 

Dr.  Bloomer's  *  Life  and  Writings  of  Amelia 
Bloomer'  (Boston:  ^retia  Publishlog  Co.)  is 
a  husband's  unaffected  memorial  tribute  to  his 
wife  that  must  command  respect.  Mrs.  Bloom, 
er's  life  was  almost  uneventful.  She  was  per- 
haps  the  second  woman  in  this  country— Mrs. 
Swisshelm  antedates  her  by  one  year— to 
found  and  conduct  a  paper  of  her  own  (the 
Lily)y  and  she  fought  out  in  her  husband's 
printing-office  the  principle  of  woman's  right 
to  set  type.  The  promotion  of  temperance  was 
her  chief  aim  in  life,  and  she  was  also  fairly 
prominent  among  the  woman- suffrage  writers 
and  speakers;  but  she  will  be  remembered  by 
the  word  she  unwittingly  added  to  the  English 
vocabulary,  though  she  did  not  invent  the 
**  Bloomer"  costume^  was  not  the  first  to  wear 
it,  and  abandoned  it  with  the  same  indepen- 
dence  with  which  she  adopted  It  She  cele 
brated  her  golden- wedding  anniversary  In  **  a 
black  satin  costume  en  train,  with  gray  da- 
mascene front,  crdpe  lace  in  the  neck,  dia- 
mond ornaments."  The  **  costume,"  while  she 
wore  it,  brought  upon  her  no  personal  odium 
or  annoyance,  and  she  lived  to  see  a  race  of 
women  bicyclers  far  outstripping,  in  their 
approach  to  the  male  costume,  her  modest 
innovation.  Her  activity  on  behalf  of  the  sol- 
diers in  the  war  was  like  that  in  the  other 
causes  (including  the  church)  which  interested 
her.  Mrs.  Bloomer  came  of  Rhode  Island 
stock,  was  bom  in  central  New  York  in  1818, 
and  died  In  Iowa,  her  final  home.  In  1894.  Her 
life  is  typical  of  the  New  England  spirit,  in  ito 
permanent  and  its  migratory  anpect,  and  her 
labors  belong  to  a  class,not  specially  interesting 
in  themselves,  which  are  all  the  time  honey- 
combing old  prejudices  and  abuses,  and  pre- 
paring the  way  for  great  statutory,  institu- 
tional, and  social  reforms. 

In  turning  the  search-light  of  modem  sci- 
ence upon  the  problem  of  woman's  mental  ca- 
pacity, as  compared  with  that  of  man,  M. 
Jacques  Lourbet,  in  his  *  La  Femme  devant  la 
Science  Contemporaine'  (Paris :  Alcan),  has 
not  disposed  of  the  question  for  all  time  to 
come,  but  he  has  given  a  clear  account  of  its 
present  status.  The  proof  that  the  dogma  of 
woman's  irremediable  intellectual  inferiority 
receives  no  support  from  recent  biological  and 
psycbc^physiological  discoveries  was  worth  es- 
tablishing. The  subject  has  been  touched  upon 
by  nearly  every  writer  on  the  woman  ques 
tionf  historically  it  has  been  very  fully  treated 
by  Mis.  Eliza  Burt  Gamble,  in  *The  Evolution 
of  Woman ';  but  M.  Lourbet's  treatise  belongs 
rather  with  Havelock  Ellis's  'Man  and  Wo- 
man,' as  the  most  comprehensive  from  the 
purely  scientific  point  of  view. 

Joseph  Turquan*«  *  Les  Soeurs  de  Napoleon  * 
(Paris:  Librairie  Illustr^;  New  York:  Lemcke 
&  Buechner)  is  an  attempt  to  define  the  infiu 
ence  which  the  three  princesses,  Eliza,  Pauliae, 


and  CJaroUne,  had  on  the  fate  of  the  Napoleon- 
ic  dynasty.  That  infiuence  was,  according  to 
M.  Turquan,  evil  and  destructive,  and  he  as- 
cribes this  effect  to  the  immoral  lives  of  the 
trio.  Indeed,  the  story  smacks  strongly  of  the 
chronique  goandaleuae,  though  the  author 
takes  pains  to  assure  us  that  this  is  not  his 
fault,  but  the  inevitable  consequence  of  his 
effort  to  paint  true  portraits  of  the  Emperor's 
sisters. 

The  third  and  fourth  volumes  of  'Discours 
et  Opinions  de  Jules  Ferry '  (Paris :  Colin  A 
Cie.),  edited  and  annotated  by  Paul  Roblquet, 
are  devoted  to  the  speeches  made  by  Ferry  on 
educational  questions.  On  these  he  could  claim 
to  speak  with  authority,  having  thrice  held 
the  position  of  Minister  of  Public  Instruction, 
and  having  striven  steadily  to  place  education 
within  the  reach  of  every  French  citizen.  The 
fourth  volume  contains,  in  addition,  two  speech- 
es on  foreign  affairs,  but  the  real  interest  of 
the  volumes  lies  In  the  educational  debates,  es- 
pecially those  on  the  education  of  girls,  and  on 
compulsory  lay  teaching  in  primary  schools. 

The  Belgian  writer,  Ferdinand  Loise,  gives 
us,  in  his  *  Histoire  de  la  Po^siemise  en  rapport 
avec  la  civilisation  en  Italic'  (Paris :  Tborin 
&  Fils)  the  third  volume  of  his  complete  work 
on  the  history  of  poetry.  This  work  Is  praoti- 
cal  y  new,  having  been  extensively  rewritten 
and  considerably  enlarged.  Among  the  addi- 
tions are  the  introductory  part,  analytical 
summaries  of  the  great  Italian  epics,  and  a 
review  of  nineteenth-century  literature.  The 
passages  quoted  are  followed  by  translatibns 
usually  very  dose  to  the  spirit  of  the  original. 

Prince  Alexandre  Bibesco^s  *  La  Question  du 
Vers  fran^ais  et  la  Tentative  des  Pontes  deca- 
dents' reappears  in  superb  dress  (Paris  :  Fisch- 
bacher).  It  is  interesting  to  reread  this  plea 
in  favor  of  French  verse  as  used  by  all  the 
great  poets  of  France,  albeit  the  attempt  of 
the  Decadent  poets  has  ceased  to  attract  much 
attention,  if  any.  By  far  the  larger  part  of 
the  arguments  put  forward  by  Blbesco  on  the 
one  hand,  and  by  Psichari  and  Anatole  France 
on  the  other,  turn  oo  the  question  of  the  so- 
called  mute  e,  which  is  very  far  from  mute  In 
verse  and  often  emphatic  in  song. 

F^lix  H6mon,  whose  edition  of  Coraeille  is 
deservedly  well  thought  of,  has  collected,  in 
*  Etudes  Litt6raires  et  Morales,'  first  series 
(Paris:  Delagrave),  a  number  of  articles  which 
have  already  appeared  in  reviews,  and  his 
study  of  the  terly  comedies  of  Comellle  whion 
is  prefixed  to  the  edition  above  referred  to. 
The  closing  article,  on  Braneti^re  and  Bossuet, 
possosiBS  much  interest.  ^ 

M.  Munier-Jolain,  who  delivered  an  excel- 
lent course  at  the  Sorbonne  on  eloquence  at 
the  French  bar,  has  published  his  lectures  in 
book  form  under  the  titie  '  La  Plaidolrie  dans 
la  Langue  fran^aise'  (Paris:  Chevalier- Ma- 
reecq  &  Cie.).  It  is  a  distinctiy  valuable  addl. 
tlon  to  the  knowledge  of  this  form  of  elo. 
quence.  The  period  covered  is  from  1400  to 
1700,  and  the  evolution  of  eloquence  at  the 
bar— its  merits  and  its  defects— is  fully  ex- 
amined and  clearly  stated. 

The  exact  history  of  the  word  **  soclallsme  " 
has  not  been  very  well  known,  and  much  time 
has  been  spent  In  the  search  for  Its  first  ap- 
pearance in  the  French  language.  In  a  re- 
cent study  on  *  L'^cole  Saint-Slmonlenne '  M. 
Georges  Weill  points  out  what  he  thinks  may 
be  its  origin.  The  Olobe,  an  early  organ  of 
St.  Simonism,  makes  use  constontiy,  he  says, 
of  the  word  "social";  but  the  term^'social- 
isme"  is  found  in  it  only  once,  namely,  in  an 
article  In  the  Issue  of  Febraary  18,  1883.  The 
editor,  M.  Jonci^res,  declares  that  the  poetry 


^96 


*l?JhLe    Nation* 


[VoL  62,   Ko;  1612 


of  Victor  Hugo  merits  admiratioii  in  spite  of 
its  purely  personal  character,  aod  then  adds: 
**  Nous  ne  voolons  pas  sacrifier  ]b  personnalit^ 
ao  BocialUme^  pas  plos  que  ce  dernier  k  la  per- 
sonnalitd."  The  respectiye  words  are  in  italics 
in  the  text,  which  indicates,  as  M.  Weill 
thinks,  that  they  are  unusual.  It  will  be  ob- 
served that  the  sense  of  the  word  *'  socialisme,** 
in  the  passage  quoted,  differs  somewhat  from 
that  in  which  it  is  now  employed. 

The  sixteenth  volume  of  the  admirable  series 
of  Jndici  e  Cataloghi,  issued  by  the  Italian 
Ministry  of  Public  Instruction,  is  a  Ghalilean 
Bibliography  embracing  2,108  works  of  the 
philosopher  or  pertaining  to  him.  It  precedes 
a  speedily  forthcoming  analytic  index  to  the 
entire  collection  of  Galilean  M88.  possessed  by 
the  Central  National  Library. 

A  quarterly  periodical,  JEb?.Li6rts,  is  projected 
for  July  by  the  Washington  Ex-Libris  Society. 
The  magazine  will,  of  course,  be  illustrated. 
The  edition  will  not  exceed  SCO  copies.  Sub- 
scriptions at  11.50  (for  this  country,  11.75 
abroad)  may  be  sent  to  the  society's  treasurer, 
Mr.  W.  H.  Shir.Cliff. 

American  tourists  familiar  with  our  Summer 
Schools  may  be  tempted,  by  the  announcement 
of  the  eighth  Summer  Assembly  of  the  Nation- 
al Home- Reading  Union  at  Chester,  England, 
from  June  27  to  July  0,  to  combine  sight-seeing 
with  a  comparative  study  of  institutions.  As 
in  this  country,  various  lectures  (one  on 
''  Samuel  Pepys  and  his  Music,''  by  the  organ- 
ist of  Chester  Cathedral,  others  on  the  geology 
and  botany  of  the  district,  on  Mediaeval  Mo- 
nastic Arrangements  and  on  Gk>thic  Archi- 
tecture, with  a  local  squint)  are  attended  with 
neighborhood  excursions,  to  Hawarden  Castle, 
Llangollen,  etc.  The  Duke  of  Westminster  will 
preside. 

The  first  woman  who  has  received  the  per- 
mission  of  the  Minister  of  Public  Instruction 
to  attend  lectures  in  the  University  of  Munich, 
Bavaria,  is  Miss  Ethel  Gertrude  Skeat,  daugh. 
ter  of  the  well-known  editor  of  Chaucer's 
works.  After  pursuing  a  four  years*  course  of 
study  at  Cambridge,  Miss  Skeat  passed  her  ex- 
amination in  natural  science  with  distinction, 
and  obtained  a  prize  in  the  form  of  a  travel- 
ling stipend;  during  the  past  nine  months  she 
has  been  engaged  in  geological  and  palseonto- 
logical  researches  under  the  direction  of  Prof. 
Zlttel  in  the  Munich,  paleeontological  collec- 
tions, which  are  especially  rich  in  rare  fossils. 
Probably  no  objection  will  be  made  to  her  can- 
didacy for  an  academical  degree. 

— One  of  thg  most  curious  among  the  many 
quaint  and  out-of-the  way  volumes  included 
in  the  ''Galatea  Collection"  of  books  about 
Woman,  now  being  catalogued  at  the  Boston 
Public  Library,  is  a  work  consisting  of  two 
thick  volumes,  bound  in  vellum,  devoted  to 
the  saintly  women  of  the  early  Christian 
Ages  who  lived  in  solitude  among  woods  and 
mountains.  The  title  is  '  Le  Eroine  della  Soli- 
tudine  Sacra,  overo  Vite  d'alcune  delle  pid 
illustri  Romite  Sacre,  del  P.  Maestro  Gir61amo 
Ercolani.'  It  was  printed  in  1654  at  Bologna, 
with  four  dilTerent  commendations  of  approv- 
al, in  Latin  or  Italian,  on  the  part  of  the  priest- 
hood, as  migbt  well  be  the  case,  seeing  that  the 
author  was  prior  of  the  convent  of  S.  Agos- 
tino  at  Bologna.  The  thirty  saints  whose  lives 
are  recorded  range  in  the  date  of  their  deaths 
from  about  the  year  8,  when  the  first,  name- 
ly, Elizabeth,  mother  of  John  the  Baptist, 
is  reported  as  having  died— although  the 
worthy  prior  decline  s  to  name  the  exact  day 
of  her  demise,  but  says  that  the  Mariirologio 
Romano  places  it  on  the  5th  of  November—to 


the  latest,  **  Geneviefa  Palatlna,"  princess  of 
Brabanza,  who  died  April  2,  a.d.  750.  The  bi- 
ographies are  in  Italian,  with  many  marginal 
comments  in  Latin  and  citations  from  the 
fathers;  but  the  most  curious  characteristic  is 
afforded  by  the  pictures.  Each  of  the  thirty 
heroines  of  solitude  is  portrayed  in  her  favorite 
retreat— either  hut,  tent,  tree,  or  rock,  accord- 
ing to  the  preference  of  each;  some  text  from 
the  Vulgate  being  usually  inscribed.  In  some 
cases  there  are  in  the  background  bouses  or 
churches  of  the  quaint  Albert  Dfirer  style  of 
architecture,  indicating  that  the  sacred  soli- 
tary, like  Thoreau,  stayed  tolerably  near  home; 
but  most  of  the  scenes  are  laid  In  woods  or  de- 
serts, and  the  heroines  are  often  accompanied 
by  angels  and  sometimes  by  saints. 

— In  the  case  of  the  mother  of  John  the  Bap- 
tist, she  is  sheltered  beneath  a  rock,  with  her 
plump  naked  child  beside  her,  while  two 
winged  and  well-clad  angels  are  present  also, 
one  of  whom  is  feeding  the  cheery  little  boy 
out  of  a  saucer  with  a  large  flat  spoon.  Mary 
Magdalen,  with  the  usual  voluptuous  look  and 
abundant  tresses,  kneels  beneath  a  little  shelter 
tent,  the  sheltering  tree  being  inscribed  with 
the  rather  doubtful  motto  ScUU  nunqwim 
amanti.  '*AtanasiaAntiochena''haaasimilar 
tent,  with  the  more  unequivocal  device,  Ckuta 
pUieent  auperi^,  and  two  angels  tending  her. 
A  neat  little  hut  shelters  Thais  of  Alexandria, 
and  a  man  of  saintly  aspect  opens  the  door, 
greeting  her  with  an  air  of  surprise  Maria, 
the  niece  of  the  hermit  Abraham,  has  a  simi- 
lar tent,  near  her  aged  uncle's;  and  while  he 
prays,  she  is  apparently  reading  from  the 
Bible  to  a  robust  sinner  of  jovial  look  who 
leans  against  her  door.  Here  the  appropriate 
motto  is  Qui  stat  vid&at  ns  eadeat.  The 
erring  Maria  of  Egypt  kneels  before  an  aged 
hermit,  in  the  forest.  The  virgin  Ermelinda 
kneels  alone  in  a  comfortable  little  shanty,  with 
door  and  window,  like  those  our  soldiers  used 
to  build  for  themselves  during  the  dvil  war. 
Saint  Genoveva  appears  with  her  deer.  A 
rather  apocryphal  personage  named  Dimpna, 
daughter  of  the  King  of  Ireland,  in  a  thatched 
hut  of  unusual  pattern,  is  being  defended  from 
an  approach  of  soldiers  by  an  apparent  angel, 
the  motto  on  her  hut  being  Fotius  mari  quam 
fofdari,  "Giacchelina  Romana"  has  a  little 
roof  half-way  up  a  tree,  just  large  enough  to 
shelter  her  and  her  crucifix;  there  are  steps 
leading  to  it,  as  with  the  little  playhouses 
made  for  children  in  trees;  close  by,  there  is  a 
river  with  vessels.  Rose  of  Viterbo,  a  Fran- 
ciscan, is  preaching  from  a  rock  in  the  city 
square  to  a  crowd  of  admiring  men  and  wo- 
men, with  a  zeal  that  Mrs.  Howe  might  ad- 
mire, and  the  motto  says  that  she  ''speaks 
roses,"  Vere  rostu  loquitur.  The  Dominican 
Sibyl  is  praying  at  the  door  of  her  hut,  while 
the  Deity  is  looking  down  from  a  cloud.  Lucia 
da  Narni,  a  Dominican,  appears  disguised  in 
boy's  dress,  but  with  loclcs  of  hair  falling  over 
her  shoulders,  with  haloed  saints  around  her, 
and  the  somewhat  alarming  motto:  Ex  fami- 
na  vir,  nee  virtamen,  necfamina^  sed  virago. 
Most  remarkable  of  all,  perhaps,  is  Christina 
the  Admirable,  who  sits  poised  on  the  top  of  a 
palm-tree  resembling  a  giant  cactus,  whence 
she  waves  her  hand  to  shepherds  g^ng  from 
below;  or  perhaps  Melania,  a  Roman  lady, 
who  has  somehow  procured  for  herself  a  little 
box  like  those  which  old-fashioned  city  watch- 
men had  sixty  years  ago.  It  is  just  big  enough 
for  her  to  stand  upright  in,  and  her  smiling 
face  looks  out  from  a  peep-hole  at  the  topt 
while  admiring  winged  angels  stand  on  each 
side  of  the  box,  and  three  little  cherub  heads, 


winged  tint  bodiless^  fioat  in  the  air  above,  A 
ftirollw  hot  bai  not,  alM,  given  ttifBcLeni 
protection  to  ^'  Wibor&da  t#de»c;&."  a  GeroiLa 
laiati  who  la  ft«en  assaultetri  b^  four  Hnnganaii 
fioldiera,  backing  at  her  bead  with  large  ktilT«i, 
having  torn  off  the  root  of  her  shelter.  Bht 
appears  resigned.  It  U  due  to  most  of  tib«ci 
solitaries  to  say  that  they  are  Dsuallj  in  g^Md 
physical  condition,  and  are  apt  to  look  as  de- 
fiantly and  irresistibly  cbeerful  ^mH  th^y  w«re 
^ '  Sal  vail  on  la  ssias. " 

^All  students  of  Petrarch  owe  a  debt  ai 
profound  gratitude  to  Prof,  Giovanni  Maitic^ 
for  the  embodiment  of  bis  twenty  year*'  labor 
on  the  text  of  the  Rime  in  the  hanr]jsoQ:ik6|  jei 
modest  and  IneipeDsi^^^  ^^edidone  criiica" 
just  published  in  Florence  by  Barb^ri.  Thi« 
Bcholariy  achievement  iuvlte^l  an  eitpositiua 
too  full  for  tbe  present  work  and  which  is  to 
appear  hereafter;  but  the  preliminary  obier- 
vatiotts  are  ample  for  an  undi^r^tandiog  of  tfas 
method  employed  and  drudgery  titiderigoiie. 
The  arrangement  of  the  V^moniere  goes  back 
to  tbe  earlier  and  gole  autbotitlc,  in  which  tbe 
^*  sonetti  e  canzoni  sopra  vari  argoaienti "  an 
iatermi ogled  wttfa  tbe  love  Bonnets.  The  din- 
ijon  into  iwo  parts  is  determined  hj  the  year 
of  tbe  poet's  conversion  il3^i  aud  the  compel 
sition  of  the  cAUzone  ''  F  vo  penaando.^  Be^ 
ginning,  however,  with  tbe  sonnet  '*Toniimi 
a  mente/'  tbe  concluding  tbirty^one  piecei 
of  tbe  Canzoniert  ore  ordered  for  the  irtt 
time  in  accordance  with  plain  figures  fcinod  io 
themargiuof  ih&  original  Codice  Vaticano  la- 
tino, No.  '6\^^  indicating  tbe  poet^s  latest  pr^ 
ference  for  this  aeries.  To  be  discru^rsed  ber*^ 
after  are  the  reasoni  for  ibese  changes  in  Om 
distribution  in  the  light  of  cbroiiologj  mad 
a>ithetic  considerations.  The  eodex  just  men* 
tioned  is  partly  in  Petrarch's  handwriting,  but 
he  monif^tly  revised  and  corrected  tbe  copy- 
fet^s  part,  and  exbibits  a  pretty  consisteDt  or> 
thograpby,  which  has  determined  Mesttcs'i 
general  observanworrBaaoned  eclecticism;  bat 
in  bis  footnotes  he  restorea  tbe  form  hi^  "fArim 
from,  so  that  tbe  text  of  tbls  codex  is  repro- 
duced in  its  entirety.  He  is  also  to  be  tbanked 
for  tbe  pains  he  baa  bestowed  with  a  free  band 
on  tbe  punctuation.  This,  a^  may  be  imagined, 
ja  often  equivalent  to  a  com  men  tar  j  ;  witntai 
the  QOte  on  page  29Q  justifying  the  par«t}tlM> 
ses— '*  {oh,  che  spero  y}  ^^—in  line  eleven  of  tbe 
sonnet  **  Eapido  tiume*'' 

--The  next  precious  docoment  to  be  ezxamined 
and  used  in  connection  with  the  foregoing  ii 
tbe  Co  J  ice  Vaticano  Latino,  No.  139H,  contaui- 
ing  the  Trionji  in  addition  to  the  Canxoni^rtt 
and  consisting  of  eigbteen  sheets,  autograptdc 
rough  drafts.  This  bss  alrt«dy  b^en  r*pn> 
duced  in  print  and  in  facsimiie,  but  has  beea 
gleaned  anew  by  Mestica,  and  the  vanonl 
readings  are  duly  incorporated  in  Xh^  fo^ 
notes— an  enormous  boon  to  iboa©  who  would 
verify  the  editor's  statement  that  with  P^ 
trarch  tbe  art  of  writing  was  tbe  art  of  after- 
thought  {arte  dei  ptntiin^ntiu  Mortsover,  he 
baa  gathered  in  au  appendix  the  poems  not  io- 
cluded  in  tbe  Rime^  with  some  not  Fetrarch'i 
but  addressed  to  him,  copied  in  his  own  hscd. 
But  we  have  no  apat.^  to  iudicate  the  micuti- 
neas  with  which  tbia  codex  bas  been  made  ooio- 
pletejy  available,  nor  in  like  manner  wfven 
otber  codices,  which,  with  sundry  printed  ed> 
tions  from  1501  to  I'lWl*,  ha^e  l:w*n  t^oj  e^ned  for 
tbe  notes.  Mestica  c^ls  Maraaud  »  Rim*  at 
lfelW-20  Ibe  modem  Vulgate,  aud  bas 
it  into  the  t^mparisou  as  an  aid  to  thorn  1 
possess  or  havc^  access  to  this  wlitely  1 
edition.     Ho  has  borrowed,  witli  dr  wfttoil 


May  21,  1896] 


Th.e   !N"atioii. 


397 


modiacationi,  lome  of  Manand^i  "argumenti'' 
preflxed  to  the  pieces  of  the  Oanzaniere,  bat 
hM  compoeed  some  for  himself,  and  the  whole 
of  those  for  the  Trionfi,  Well  may  he  exclaim 
at  the  end,  *'  Ecoo  U  vero  Petraroat  *"  and  adopt 
Petrarch*s  ''  Hoc  placet "  affixed  to  one  of  the 
Tery  latest  of  his  revlaions.  This  admirable 
volume  is  illustrated  with  a  frontispiece  por- 
trait of  Petrarch  from  the  oodex  in  the  Paris 
National  Library. 


TIPPANVS    PROTESTANT    EPISCOPAL 
CHURCH. 

A  History  of  the  Protestant  EpxsoopoX  Church 
in  the  United  Statee  of  America.  By 
Charles  C.  Tiffany,  D.D.,  Archdeacon  of  New 
York.  New  York :  The  Christian  Litera- 
ture Company.    1895. 

Dr.  TiFFAirr*8  volume  takes  a  high  rank  in 
the  series  of  '*  American  Church  Histories,'' 
of  which  it  is  the  last  instalment  up  to  date. 
It  suffers  most  in  comparison  with  Prof. 
Walker's  Congregatdonalist  volume,  because 
there  we  have  a  development  of  thought, 
while  here  the  considerations  are  almost  ex- 
clusively those  of  ecclesiastical  organization 
and  development.  It  also  provokes  compari- 
son with  other  recent  histories  of  the  Episco- 
pal Church.  It  deprives  Dr.  Coleman's  *The 
Church  in  America '  entirely  of  its  reason  for 
existence.  It  has  no  such  relation  to  Dr.  Mo- 
Coonell's  *  History  of  the  American  Episcopal 
Church,'  which,  though  much  less  careful  and 
elaborate,  has  an  individuality  which  will  in- 
definitely prolong  its  life,  and  is,  as  Dr.  Tiffany 
says  in  his  preface,  **as  full  of  wisdom  as  of 
wit."  Dr.  Tiffany's  has  perhaps  even  more  of 
wisdom,  but  it  certainly  has  less  of  wit,  either 
because  he  has  less  by  nature,  or  because,  more 
careful  than  Dr.  McConnell  of  the  dignities  of 
churchmanship  and  of  the  sensibilities  of 
churchmen,  he  has  refrained  from  the  publica- 
,  tion  of  many  things  which  put  the  church, 
from  time  to  time,  in  an  amusing  or  ridiculous 
light.  At  the  same  time,  he  has  presented  as 
fairly  and  frankly  as  Dr.  McConnell  those  as- 
pects of  the  church  in  the  colonial  period  which 
were  shameful  in  the  extreme.  Indeed,  it  may 
be  questioned  whether  his  more  serious  presen- 
tation of  those  aspects  does  not  make  a  more 
painful  impression  than  his  predecsssors' 
lighter  vein,  delighting  more  in  their  absurd- 
ity than  grieving  that  such  things  could  be. 

No  one  can  identify  himself  with  a  great  in- 
stitution  without  being  sensitive  to  its  tradi- 
tions, and  hence  Dr.  Tiffany^s  opening  chap- 
ters on  Virginia  and  Maryland  are  such  that 
every  loyal  Episcopalian  must  read  them  with 
a  heavy  heart.  **  These  colonies,"  he  writes, 
**  became  a  refuge  and  resort  for  the  thriftless 
and  profligate  clergy  of  England,  who  were 
glad  to  escape  from  their  debts  and  difllcultiee 
at  home,  and  whose  friends  were  so  happy  to 
get  rid  of  them  that  they  aided  in  securing  for 
them  assured  positions  and  salaries  on  the  dis- 
tant continent."  Many  details  are  given  in 
illustration  of  this  damning  generalization. 
Writing  of  the  clergy  in  1791,  Gov.  Berkeley 
says:  ^'But  of  all  other  conunodities,  so  of 
this,  the  worst  are  sent  us."  They  were  time- 
serving  and  indifferent;  earnest  and  impas- 
sioned only  in  their  seal  for  their  full  tithes  of 
tobacco.  In  Virginia  the  punishment  of  ec 
desiastical  offences  by  civil  penalties  was  a 
source  of  much  trouble  and  weakness.  '*  The 
principle  of  religious  toleration  was  wholly 
akisent."  Upon  the  threshold  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary troubles  Patrick  Henry  appeared  be- 
fore a  l^gai  tribunal  on  behalf  of  the  Testries 


and  the  people  against  the  exactions  of  the 
dergy,  and  his  eloquence,  already  brilliant, 
practically  won  his  cause:  the  clergy  got  one 
penny  damages.  It  so  happened,  therefore, 
that  they  entered  on  the  Revolutionary  period 
miserably  handicapped,  and  we  read  without 
astonishment  that  of  ninety-one  clergymen 
only  fifteen  continued  at  their  posts. 

The  early  course  of  things  in  Maryland  was 
even  more  unfortunate  and  scandalous  than  in 
Virginia,  but  it  was  relieved  by  the  example 
of  the  commissary.  Dr.  Bray,  **a  man  of  noble 
and  devoted  character,  who  was  drawn  to  the 
work  by  the  denials  and  sacrifices  which  it  in- 
volved." But  even  his  heroic  efforts  could  do 
little  with  such  rotten  or  intractable  material 
as  he  had  at  hand.  It  was  a  queer  kind  of  qua- 
rantine when  the  question  was  not  of  cholera 
or  of  yellow  fever,  but  "  whether  there  was 
any  minister  on  board,  and  if  so  what  his  de- 
meanor had  been  upon  the  voyage."  **No 
wonder,"  writes  Dr.  Hawks,  a  trusted  historian 
of  the  church,  **  that  such  a  bastard  establish- 
ment as  that  of  Maryland  was  odious  to  so 
many  of  the  people;  we  think  their  dislike  is 
evidence  of  their  virtue";  and,  but  for  the  in- 
tervention of  the  Revolution,  he  contends  that 
**the  singular  spectacle  would  have  been  pre- 
sented  of  the  extinction  of  a  church  establish- 
ed  by  law"  without  *' a  statute  expreisly  de- 
priving it  of  its  character  as  an  establishment" 
— this  because  of  indirect  legislation  counter- 
acting the  greed  of  the  clergy.  The  Episcopa- 
lian intolerance  of  Roman  Catholics  does  not 
appecu'  in  any  brighter  colors  than  in  Prof. 
CGorman's  Roman  Catholic  history  in  this 
ecclesiastical  series.  '^Biaryland"  (it  is  again 
Dr.  Hawks  who  is  quoted)  '*  presented  the  pic- 
ture of  a  province  founded  for  the  sake  of 
freedom  of  religious  opinion  by  the  toil  and 
treasure  of  Roman  Catholics,  in  which,  of  all 
who  called  themselves  Christians,  none  save 
Roman  Catholics  were  denied  toleration." 
Meantime,  *'  Tlie  Roman  Catholics  and  dissent- 
ers looked  with  contempt  on  an  establishment 
so  profiigate  in  some  of  its  members  that  even 
the  laity  sought  to  purify  it,  and  jet  so  weak 
in  its  discipline  that  neither  clergy  nor  laity 
could  purge  it  of  offenders." 

From  Maryland  the  narrative  passes  to  New 
England.  The  situation  there  is  given  admira- 
bly in  the  words  of  Gardiner,  the  English  his- 
torian :  **  The  problem,  as  it  presented  itself 
to  men  of  that  generation,  was  not  whether 
they  were  to  tolerate  others,  but  whether  they 
were  to  give  others  an  opportunity  to  be  into- 
lerant to  themselves."  In  colonies  actuated 
by  this  principle  the  Episcopalians  stood  little 
chance  of  life  and  growth.  The  sea  change 
which  the  Puritan  temper  suffered  in  crossing 
the  Atlantic  as  affecting  **  our  dear  mother, 
the  Church  of  England,"  is  left  quite  as  inex- 
plicable as  it  has  always  been.  Apart  from 
the  smaller  numbers,  the  scandals  of  the  clergy 
were  much  less  numerous  than  in  the  South. 
Dr.  Tiffany  does  not,  with  Dr.  McConnell,  cre- 
dit the  difference  to  the  example  of  the  Puri- 
tan clergy,  but  that  example  probably  had 
much  to  do  with  it.  At  their  best,  however, 
the  Episcopalian  conies  were  a  feeble  folk  ;  at 
the  dose  of  the  Revolution  there  were  but 
four  Episcopal  ministers  in  Massachusetts,  and 
only  six  in  all  New  England. 

The  Rhode  Island  section  is  one  of  the  most 
interesting  in  the  book,  made  so  by  the  Bishop 
Berkeley  episode  and  by  the  semi-civilisation 
of  Narragansett  County,  which  had  all  the 
brilliant  and  superficial  aspects  of  a  Southern 
community— its  slaves,  its  lavish  hospitality, 
its  festive  cheer.  At  Providence^  one  of  the 
baser  sort  came  in,  but  he  was  **foroed  out  of 


the  church  in  time  of  service  by  an  extraordi- 
nary gust  of  wind,"  and  afterward  **haU*  out 
of  the  pulpit"  by  his  people  for  breakinic  open 
the  church  door,  and  other  irregularities.  In 
New  Hampshire  and  Maine  the  beginnings  were 
extremely  weak  and  slow.  In  Connecticut  the 
dramatic  incident  was  the  simultaneous  seces- 
sion  of  the  entire  faculty  of  Yale  College  and 
one  other  Congregational  ist  minister  from  the 
Congregational  to  the  Episcopal  Church.  It  is 
true  the  faculty  consisted  in  1?32  of  the  Presi- 
dent and  one  tutor,  but  we  have  the  authority 
of  President  Woolsey  for  believing  that  '^great- 
er alarm  would  scarcely  be  awakened  now  if 
the  theological  faculty  of  the  college  were  to 
declare  for  the  Church  of  Rome,  avow  their 
belief  in  transubstantiation,  and  pray  to  the 
Virgin  Mary." 

In  the  New  York  chapter  (where  the  name 
of  Jacob  Leisler,  the  anti- Jacobin  Revolution- 
ist, is  spelled  *'  Leslie  "  every  time),  there  are 
interesting  details  concerning  the  building  of 
the  first  Trinity  Church.  Six  pounds  towards 
the  steeple  was  contributed  by  Jews.  Three 
hundred  pounds  which  had  been  raised  for  the 
redemption  of  slaves  in  Algeria,  and  had  not 
been  spent  because  the  slaves  had  escaped  or 
died,  was  obtained  from  the  town  authorities, 
and  the  wardens  were  granted  a  commission 
for  aU  '*  Weifts,  Wrecks,  and  Drift- Whales." 
In  New  York  the  general  conditions  were 
much  more  favorable  to  the  Episcopalians 
than  in  New  England,  and  they  succeeded  be- 
fore long  in  laying  deep  the  foundations  of 
that  supreuuusy  in  the  city  which  they  still  en- 
joy,  thanks  in  good  part  to  the  enormous  ap- 
preciation of  lands  given  to  Trinity  Church  in 
1705—**  the  Queen's  farm,  a  tract  of  land  ex- 
tending all  along  the  river  from  the  present 
site  of  St.  Paul's  Chapel  to  Christopher  Street." 
The  interest  of  the  New  Jersey  origins  centres 
in  the  personality  of  Thomas  Talbot,  a  sealous 
missionary  whose  labors  were  as  unselfish  as 
they  were  incessant.  He  was  an  ardent  advo- 
cate of  American  local  bishoprics,  and  there  is 
a  rumor  that  he  procured  consecration  for 
himself  as  Bishop  of  New  Jersey.  Dr.  Tiffany 
agrees  with  the  best  authorities  in  discrediting 
this  rumor,  which  is  engraved  upon  Talbot's 
mural  monument  in  St.  Mary's  Church  in 
Burlington.  But  it  is  impossible  to  follow  the 
course  of  Dr.  Tiffany's  narrative  through  all 
the  colonies.  In  C^eorgia  we  encounter  John 
Wesley  at  a  time  when  he  was  a  High  Church- 
man of  the  extremest  altitude  and  endowed 
with  a  plentiful  lack  of  common  sense.  Dr. 
Tiffany  is  very  kind  to  his  melancholy  failure, 
and  not  a  little  blind  to  Whitefield's  horrible 
complicity  in  thd  introduction  of  slavery  into 
the  oolooy  and  in  the  partial  support  by  slave- 
labor  of  the  Orphanage  whose  founding  was,  we 
are  told,  *'by  far  the  most  interesting  and 
valuable  act  of  Whitefield  in  Georgia." 

Having  concluded  his  survey  o(  the  colonial 
period,  Dr.  Tiffany  sums  up  the  history  and  its 
lessons  in  an  effective  manner.  The  disabili« 
ties  were  immense:  thriftless  or  too  thrifty  and 
profiigate  clergymen,  the  lack  of  native  minis- 
ters made  compulsory  by  the  necessity  of  their 
going  to  England  for  ordination,  the  lack  of 
episcopal  oversight  and  discipline.  The  at- 
tempts to  procure  bishops  are  reciud,  and  the 
reasons  operative  against  them  are  stated  fair- 
ly;  nowhere  more  so  than  in  the  words  of  the 
original  Adams:  **  There  is  no  power  less  than 
Parliament  which  can  ereate  bishops  in  Ame- 
rica. But  if  Parliament  can  erect  dioceses 
and  appoint  bishops,  they  may  introduce  the 
whole  hierarchy,  establish  Uthes,  eoUblifth  re- 
ligion, forbid  dissenters,  make  schism  heresy, 
impoee  imnalt*^  extending  to  life  and  limb  as 


398 


Tlie    N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1612 


well  M  to  liberty  and  property."  It  was  the 
alJianoe  of  Church  and  State  that  handicapped 
the  colonial  Church  in  this  particular,  and  in- 
deed at  almost  every  point.  Entirely  free 
from  State  control,  it  would  have  had  a  much 
more  honorable  career,  a  much  more  conspicu- 
ous success. 

Dr.  Tiffany's  book  is  divided  into  two  nearly 
equal  parts:  the  colonial  part  extends  to  p. 
289,  and  the  part  covering  the  period  1785-1895 
to  p.  560.  In  the  second  part  we  have  first  an 
elaborate  study  of  the  endeavors  to  organise 
the  church  simultaneously  with  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  national  (Government.  In  these 
endeavors  Dr.  White  of  Philadelphia  was  the 
most  active  and  controlling  spirit,  and  yet  the 
final  outcome  was  not  a  little  different  from 
his  original  anticipations.  Evidently  the 
church  was  much  lees  sensitive  to  traditional 
authority  then  than  it  is  now,  so  radical  the 
changes  that  were  suggested  in  the  prayer- 
book  and  in  the  government  of  the  church, 
some  of  which,  and  not  the  least  important, 
were  finally  adopted.  The  story  of  the  struggle 
for  episcopal  consecration  is  retold  through 
all  the  weary  length  of  its  amusing,  strange, 
and  sometimes  sordid  complications.  It  was 
certainly  a  queer  performance  for  Seabury,  an 
ardent  loyalist,  on  British  half-pay  till  his 
death  in  1790,  to  obtain  consecration  from  the 
Scotch  non-juring  bishops  when  the  English 
bishops  would  not  accommodate  him.  Evi 
dently  this  action  of  the  non- jurors  forced  the 
hand  of  the  Anglicans,  and  it  is  interesting  to 
note  how  narrowly  the  American  sect  escaped 
the  loss  of  any  foreign  consecration  whatso- 
ever. The  party  was  considerable  who  thought 
it  could  be  dispensed  with  altogether,  and,  if  it 
had  been  from  necessity,  the  damage  would 
perhaps  have  been  repaired  without  much 
difficulty.  But  oh  the  difference  to  those 
whose  hearts  are  stayed  on  the  unbroken  line 
of  apostolical  succession  I 

The  organization  of  the  church  was  not  the 
signal  for  any  sudden  access  of  prosperity. 
The  period  from  1789  to  1811  is  set  down  as  "  A 
Period  of  Suspended  Animation.**  But  the 
next  twenty  years  were  *'  A  Period  of  Aroused 
Self.Consciousness  and  Aggression.**  Next 
came  ^'  A  Period  of  Internal  Conflict,**  the  con- 
flict incidental  to  the  differences  of  High 
Church  and  Low  and  to  the  ■* Memorial'*  of 
Dr.  Muhlenberg,  looking  to  an  extension  of 
episcopal  functions  and  a  more  elastic  use  of 
the  church  service.  As  between  High  Church 
and  Low,  Dr.  Tiffany  sails  with  an  even  keel. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  say  to  which  he  mor? 
inclines.  A  more  generous  appreciation  coubl 
not  be  had  of  either  party  from  the  most  eager 
partisan.  Bat  when  in  the  concluding  part, 
1865-1895,  ♦•A  Period  of  Positive  Advance," 
the  Broad  Church  is  described,  the  apprecia- 
tion has  a  warmth  of  feeling  which  we  cannot 
err  in  taking  as  an  indication  of  the  writer^s 
individual  position.  The  impression  made  by 
this  description  is  confirmed  by  the  beautiful 
and  effective  characterizations  of  Dr.  Wash- 
bum  and  Phillips  Brooks.  These  characteriEa- 
tions  are  two  of  many  in  the  book  that  are  ex. 
tremely  well  conceived.  Dr.  Muhlenberg'a 
*'  Memorial  Movement**  is  called  '*  a  movement 
more  significant  than  any  other  which  has  ap- 
peared  in  the  Church's  history,**  and  the  slow 
but  sure  appropriation  by  the  church  of  the 
memorial  ideas  is  heartily  applauded. 

In  the  treatment  of  the  relations  of  the 
church  to  the  nation  during  the  war.  Dr.  Tlf  ^ 
faaj  is  more  the  ©cclesiafitical  politician  than 
he  ia  any  where  ebe.  **Tbo  Episcopal  Church 
as  an  or^aQizatioii  bad  from  the  be^Qaing  de- 
t<? nil i lied  to  keep  aloof  from   party  poliUca," 


But  the  slavery  question  was  not  a  question  of 
party  politics.  It  was  a  great  moral  question 
divisive  of  the  political  parties.  As  much 
as  possible  is  made  of  the  apologetic  re- 
solution passed  by  the  (General  Convention  of 
1803,  promising  the  prayers  of  the  church  to 
the  Government  in  its  deadly  periL  Concern- 
ing slavery  the  church  as  such  was  always 
silent,  while  individual  clergymen  were  not 
wanting  in  downright  opposition.  A  pathctio 
circumstance  was  the  calling  of  the  roll  of  all 
the  bishops  in  the  general  conventions  during 
the  war,  none  answering  from  the  South. 

In  the  later  history  there  are  many  interest- 
ing details  on  which  we  cannot  toudi.  What 
we  miss  is  any  indication  of  influence  upon  the 
church,  for  good  or  ill,  of  the  wonderful  ex- 
pansion of  natural  and  critical  science  which 
has  synchronised  with  the  expansion  of  the 
church  since  1866.  Dr.  Tiffany  reserves  for 
his  climax  a  hopeful  prophecy  of  the  good 
times  coming  under  the  aegis  of  the  **  Quadri- 
lateral **  of  the  Lambeth  conference.  Judging 
from  the  action  of  the  last  Oeoeral  Convention, 
it  would  appear  that  the  disposition  of  the 
Episcopalians  to  give  up  something  of  doctrine 
and  observance,  in  order  to  gather  the  other 
sheep  into  their  own  fold,  abates  as  time  goes  on. 


RECENT  FICTION. 

A  Lady  of  Quality.  By  Frances  Hodgson 
Burnett.    Charles  Bcribner*s  Sons. 

Strangera  cU  Liaoonntl,  By  Jane  Bartow. 
Dodd,  Mead  &  Co. 

Earth'M  Enigmas,  By  C.  G.  D.  Roberts.  Lam- 
son,  Wolffe  Sl  Co. 

The  Gold  Fith  of  Oran  ChimH,  By  Charles 
F.  Lunmiis.    Lamson,  Wolffe  &  Co. 

Mrs.  Burnbtt  shows  bold  confidence  in  a 

widespread  iguoraQc>e  of  Queen  Anne  litera- 
ture by  announcing  that  her  *  Lady  of  Quality  * 
Is  ^^a  most  curioufl  history^  as  related  by  Mr. 
Isaac  Bickeratafff  but  not  presented  to  the 
World  of  Faiblon  through  the  pages  of  the 
Tatier.^^  The  history  is  most  carious,  and 
there  1^  no  denying  that  several  of  its  Incldente 
may  have  come  within  Dick  Bieele*B  experi- 
enee.  Mi^.  Burnett^s  aMuranee  of  her  public's 
insenslbiJity  to  literary  motive,  manner,  and 
style  liefi  in  the  word  a«.  If  Mr.  Bickerstaff 
ever  related  ibis  history »  he  showed  commend- 
able discretion  in  withholding  it  from  a  paper 
the  general  purpose  of  which  wa^  ^*  to  recom. 
mend  truths  fncoceDce,  honor^  and  virtue  aa 
the  chief  ornaments  of  life."  If  ho  ever  re- 
lated it  a  a  Mrs,  Burnett  has  written  it  down, 
It  must  have  been  on  a  njght  when,  foreseeing 
that  he  should  not  go  home  at  all,  he  sent  word 
apologetically  early  in  the  eTeuing^  winding 

"I  am,  dear  Prue,  a  little  in  drink,  but  at 
all  times    Y'  Falthfuil  Husband, 

Rich*  SxintB." 

The  evidence  Against  the  Bickeretaff  myth  Is 
strong,  and  one  may  fairly  assnme  that  'The 
Lady  of  Quality '  is  a  contemporary  creation 
by  a  novelist  not  finical  about  matter  fit  for 
publication,  scomfnl  of  the  probabilities  of 
character  and  logic  of  events,  and  vainly 
imagining  that  the  eighteenth' century  cachet 
ia  given  by  calling  women  '^ sluts"  and 
"wenches,"  men  ^*rakee"  and  '^  wild  dogs," 
and  by  peppering  the  pages  with  '"odaook^" 
**foraootLj"  and  somewhat  archaic  adjectives 
such  as  ^^beauteoits"  and  **  royslering/^ 

The  I^ady  Clorlnda  Wfldairs  is  introduced  at 
birth,  h&wlJDg  at  her  dead  mother,  8be  is  the 
ninth  unwelcome  daughter  of  a  terrible  Sir 


Qeoffry  and  his  inconveniently  prolific  wife. 
Why  ninth  it  is  impossible  to  guess,  since  the 
number  is  not  proverbially  fateful,  and  Binoe 
six  of  the  sisters  already  in  the  churchyard  lie, 
having  therefore  nothing  to  do  with  the  tale. 
For  six  years   Clorinda  lived   between  the 
kitchen  and  stable,  daring  which  time  she 
learned  to  ride,  to  kick,  and  to  curse  with 
great  volubility  and  precision.    She  made  her 
first  meeting  with  her  father  memorable  by 
falling  on  him  with  a  hunting-crop  and  "hm. 
guage  which  would  have  done  credit  to  Doll 
Lightf oot  herself.*'    Charmed  by  her  spirit  and 
phrase^,  Sir  Geoffry  took  her  education  under 
his  personal  supervision,  with  the  result  that 
at  fifteen  modesty  was  unknown  to  her  and 
decency  a  word  without  meaning.    Mrs.  Bur- 
nett says  that  at  this  age  she  "was  as  worldly 
and  familiar  with  the  devices  of  intrigue  at 
she  would  be  at  forty,"  and,  farther,  that  she 
was  **no  more  Ignorant  than  if  she  had  been  in 
with  some  gay  young  springald  of  a  lad." 
Eiighteenth-oentary  springalds  must  have  been 
very  knowing  boys  if  to  measure  them  by  Clo- 
rinda is  no  slander.    These  points  being  borne 
in  mind,  we  see  no  reason  why  Clorinda,  being 
unchaste,  should  not,  to  suit  her  interests,  as* 
sume  the  loftiest  virtue,  and,  much  assisted  in 
the  enterprise  by  the  beauty  to  the  mere  indi- 
cation of  which  pages  of  superlatives  are  de- 
voted, should  not  marry  in  succession  a  per- 
fectly noble  and  virtuous  earl  and  an  unspeak- 
ably magnificent  duke.    It  would  be  just  like 
her,  too,  and  like  nobody  else,  to  murder  an  in- 
convenient lover  with  her  favorite  implement 
of  battle,  a  hunting-crop,  to  tuck  him  tidily 
under  a  sofa,  and,  in  a  splendor  of  jewels  and 
brocade,  to  alt  on  him,  so  to  speak,  while,  with 
inimitable  self-possession,   she    received   the 
whole  world  of  fashion,  including  that  benevo- 
lent censor,  Mr.  Addison. 

In  all  this  there  is  no  inconsistency,  and, 
though  it  Is  a  pity,  it  might  be  tme.  Bat 
what  Is  not  true,  what  Is  grossly  false  to  fact 
and,  as  fiction,  weak,  f^utimental,  and  rldico- 
ious,  is  the  subsequent  development  of  CloHu- 
da.  This  development  I3  supposed  to  justify 
Ihe  preceding  narration  and  to  point  the  mcv 
ral.  Such  use  of  a  scandalous  tale  marks,  even 
more  significantly  than  do  the  artificial  tquj- 
net  and  extravagant  style,  the  wide,  wide  dif- 
ference between  Mr^  Bicketi^t^ff  mxd  Mrs. 
Burnett ;  it  points  to  the  amazing  conclusioa 
that  Mm,  Burnett  i4  not  conscious  of  having 
exposed  vice,  but  believes  tbat,  from  the  be» 
ginning,  sbe  is  seriously  occupied  in  delineat- 
ing the  progress  of  a  possibly  faulty  mortal 
towards  the  glory  of  a  full  blown  angel.  8udi 
moral  obliquity  is  too  sad  a  subject  to  dwell 
upon,  and  the  only  relief  Is  in  the  thought 
that  even  the  feeblest  minded  reader  may  be 
saved  from  infection  by  the  buman  instinct  to 
reject  a  miracle  to  which  the  narrator  haf 
failed  to  give  an  air  of  veracity  or  even  plau- 
sibility. The  most  serious  result  of  the  publi- 
cation of  *  A  Lady  of  Quality '  that  need  be 
anticipated  is  a  deluge  of  publications  from 
lady  novelists  alt  solemnly  declaring  that  in 
order  to  live  long  and  happily  and  to  achieve 
an  epitaph  recording  superlative  nobility  aad 
purity,  it  is  quite  Imperative  for  a  woman  to 
oomjnit  every  siiQ  mentioned  in  the  decalo^iiSv 

Hunger  is  doubtless  painful  to  Ryans^  Fiae- 
gnns^  and  Raffertys  wh(>  (*iiTou«e  on  aspooiiful 
of  tea  and  exchange  j  ok  en  over  the  last  potato, 
but  it  doesnH  appear  j^o,  and  that  Is  one  of  lb* 
reasons  why  people  may  read  ^Stniogvr^ai 
Lific^innel '  at  night  and  face  destiny  with  «KQt 
degree  of  checrfulnese  next  morning,  AB 
writers  of  Irish  fiction  emphasise  th«  ohecrfKll* 
nees  and  vtit  of  the  peasantry^  but  Jaat  B&f' 


May  21,  1896] 


The   N'ation. 


399 


low  has  *  preeminent  talent  for  showing  these 
qualities  as  Gkxl-given  compensatioDs  for  cen- 
turies of  struggle  with  dire  povertj.  It  would 
almost  seem  that  it  is  more  by  their  uncon- 
sciously heroic  philosophy  than  by  their  irre- 
pressible combatiTeness  that  Irish  peasants 
hare  been  saved  from  perishing  of  despair. 
Miss  Barlow*s  work  is  as  natural  and  free 
from  effort  for  literary  effect  as  Action  can  be 
without  faUlng  flat  and  dull.  The  incidents 
that  enliven  the  changeless  routine  of  life  at 
Usconnel  are  the  passing  by  or  temporary  so- 
journ of  a  thieving  tinker,  a  visionary  scholar, 
a  soldier,  an  idiot  or  **quare  one.*'  These  in- 
cidents  are  less  valuable  for  themselves  than 
as  a  means  of  bringing  out  character  and  en- 
couraging conversation  in  Lisoonnel.  The 
most  noticeable  points  of  character  are  kind- 
ness, family  affection,  and  loyalty,  and  an  in- 
extinguishable interest  in  the  neighbors,  while 
the  conversation  is  full  of  wit  and  plentifuDy 
seasoned  with  wisdom.  The  Irish  have  always 
been  fortunate  in  writers  of  song  and  story 
capable  of  expressing  the  heart  of  the  people, 
and  never  more  so  than  in  the  case  of  Jane 
Barlow,  whose  work  is  both  a  profound  and 
sympathetic  study  of  Irish  humtn  nature  and 
a  notable  contribution  to  fiction  in  the  Eng- 
lish language. 

In  the  silent  Canadian  forests  and  sea-born 
Tantramar  marshes  one  might  hope,  if  any- 
where, to  be  rid  of  '  Earth's  Enigmas,'  but  it 
is  just  in  these  lonely,  lovely  places  that  lir. 
Roberts  has  found  riddles  plentiful  and  pro- 
found: why  unconsidered  trifles  are  inile 
stones  of  destiny;  why  gratifled  ambition 
turns  out  Dead  Sea  fruit;  why  the  happiness 
of  young  love  is  smitten  in  an  instant  by  tra- 
gedy: why  superstitions  are  often  justified  by 
facts,  and  why  no  man  can  always  believe  his 
own  eyes  or  any  evidence  of  his  senses.  For- 
tunately Mr.  Roberts  has  not  attempted  to 
analyse  the  inscrutable  or  to  explain  the  inex- 
plicable. His  tales  are  objective,  tales  of 
moral  and  physical  courage,  of  accident  from 
floods  and  high  tides,  of  fights  for  life  with 
wild  beasts,  and  of  terror,  of  supernatural 
omens  and  portents.  His  questions  are  mat- 
ters of  inference,  and  it  is  possible  to  read  the 
tales  without  suspecting  any  far-reaching  spe- 
culation. The  incidents  and  scenes  fit  each 
other  admirably,  and  the  characterization  is 
strong,  dear,  and  interesting.  Sometimes  the 
beauties  and  wonders  of  nature  are  over- 
wrought, but  the  defect  is  excused  when  we 
remember  that  a  poet  of  nature  is  struggling 
with  the  limitations  of  a  plain  int)ee  tale. 
Much  more  surprising  than  decorative  excur- 
sions are  the  vivid  presentation  of  rough  and 
primitive  people,  and  a  vigorous  directness  at 
critical  moments  which  we  are  accustomed  to 
find  only  in  very  accomplished  writers  of  prose 
fiction. 

The  incidents  narrated  in  *The  Gold  Fish 
of  Gran  Chim6 '  occupy  a  vmt  short  space  of 
time,  and  are  novel  and  touching.  The  mo- 
ment chosen  is  that  when  independent  seekers 
for  buried  treasure  in  the  dust  and  mould  of 
Chim6  are  expecting  an  order  to  desist,  or  else 
to  go  on  at  a  price  which  shall  benefit  only 
the  Peruvian  Ckmgress.  **Ifs  a  fool's  law,  a 
thiefs  law— but  if  they  pass  it  there  it  is. 
When  I'm  in  a  country  I  obey  its  laws,  crasy 
though  they  be."  80  spoke  the  scientific 
American  mummy-miner,  and  ordered  his 
slaves  to  dig  for  all  they  were  worth  until 
it  was  known  for  certain  that  the  obnoxious 
law  had  passed.  **This  law  is  meant  to  rob 
our  few  scholars  of  their  collections ;  if  one 
were  to  And  even  the  Pis  Chrand€t  it  would 
rob  him  even  of  that.    There  is  no  remedy ; 


either  to  flod  it  k>efore  the  law  shall  pass  or 
not  at  all."  Sor  sighed  Don  Beltran,  the  only 
gentleman  of  Peru  who  deigned  to  work,  and 
himself  descended  into  the  pit  in  pursuit  of 
the  fabulous  treasure  which  would  redeem 
his  fallen  fortunes  and  scatter  his  enemies. 
Such  Integrity  deserves  reward  and  gets  it, 
but  not  until  the  law-respecting  scientist  has 
shown  his  skill  in  the  manly  art  of  self- 
defence,  and  Don  Beltran  sounded  the  depths 
of  despair.  An  entertaining  sequence  of  inci- 
dents is  as  much  as  should  be  expected  in  a 
tale  of  strange  adventure ;  here  we  have  that, 
and,  besides,  the  unexpected— the  display  of 
a  great  many  emotions  and  passions  and  intel- 
lectual qualities.  The  spirit  throughout  is 
alert  and  gay,  and  the  sympathy  with  deli- 
cately itrung  natures  charming;  even  the 
literal  translation  of  a  foreign  idiom  (a  very 
dangerous  experiment)  adds  to  the  grace  and 
naturalness  of  Mr.  Lunmiis's  tale. 


BRUCB'S  ECONOMIC  HISTORY  OF  VIR 
QINIA.— I. 

Economic  History  0/  Virginia  in  the  Seven- 
teenth Century :  An  Inquiry  into  the  Mate- 
rial Condition  of  the  People,  based  upon 
Original  and  Contemporaneous  Records.  By 
Philip  Alexander  Bruce.  MacmiUan  &  Co. 
1896.    Map.    8vo,  pp.  xix,  634,  647. 

Virginia  has  not  been  fortunate  in  her  histo- 
rians. Among  the  earlier  writers,  SUth  and 
Girardin  possess  merit,  and  the  latter  enjoyed 
the  assistance  of  Jefferson.  Among  the  later, 
Brown's  'Genesis  of  the  United  States'  takes 
a  high  rank  because  of  its  original  documents. 
Apart  from  these  examples,  the  faults  of  su- 
perficial investigation,  partially  concealed  by 
rhetoric  or  rhapsody,  have  marked  the  so- 
called  histories,  making  a  dreary  and  un 
profitable  field  for  the  student  unable  to  re- 
vert to  the  original  records.  It  was  in  a  ques- 
tioning mood  that  we  took  up  the  volumes  of 
Mr.  Bruce,  for  they  deid  with  tkie  earliest  pe- 
riods of  Virginia  history— the  first  settlements 
and  ninety  years  subsequent;  periods  which 
have  been  rendered  hasy  by  tradition  and  sur- 
rounded  by  a  halo  of  romance.  As  we  read  on, 
itsoon  became  evident  that  the  writer  possessed 
and  had  applied  unusual  capabilities  for  per- 
forming his  task.  He  is  a  Virginian,  of  keen  ob- 
servation, and  not  terrified  by  the  drudgery  of 
original  investigation.  Manuscript  as  wdl  as 
printed  authorities  have  been  carefully  studied, 
and  this  labor  has  resulted  in  what  must  be 
regarded  as  the  best  record  of  the  early  eco- 
nomic development  of  a  colony,  the  best  histo- 
ry of  the  early  agricultural  growth  of  any 
State  in  the  Union.  As  a  mere  history  it  would 
stand  high;  ss  a  description  of  the  economic 
system  of  Virginia  it  possesses  even  greater 
merits,  explaining,  as  it  does,  by  this  method 
Virginia's  peculiar  place  in  the  colonial  system 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  Even  more  truly 
is  it  an  essential  contribution  to  our  national 
history ;  for  in  early  Virginia,  devoted  to  the 
culture  of  a  single  commercial  crop,  and  drift- 
ing into  the  employment  of  slave  labor  only, 
are  to  be  found  the  germs  of  that  institution 
which  determined  the  political  and  oommerda] 
position  of  the  South  in  the  Union  until  ov«r. 
thrown  by  the  civil  war. 

Lest  this  judgment  be  considered  too  high, 
it  may  be  well  to  point  out  a  few  instances 
where  the  author's  enthusiasm  for  his  sub- 
ject has  carried  him  into  excess  ei  state- 
ment. The  question  of  the  trustworthiness 
of  Captain  John  Smith  may  be  regarded  as 
an  open  one.     He  is  one  of  the  flrsti  and, 


indeed,  most  interesting  writers  on  the  con- 
dition of  the  early  settlement ;  but  it  seems  to 
us  that  Mr.  Bruce  accepts  too  implicitly  the 
early  chroniclers.  Virginia,  as  described  by 
them,  is  a  very  garden  spot,  with  bound- 
less agricultural  possibilities.  But  these  men 
were  sent  out  by  a  company  which  was 
formed  for  profit,  and  it  was  their  interest 
to  paint  as  pleasing  a  picture  as  they  knew 
how.  Their  ietters  and  pamphlets  are  to  be 
taken  with  allowance,  and  rather  as  **  circu- 
lars of  information  for  Intending  emigrants" 
than  as  scientific  records  of  actual  conditions. 
It  is  not  till  they  mistake  the  caterpillar  for 
the  silkworm  (i.,  868)  that  Mr.  Bruce  offers  a 
warning  against  the  exaggeration  of  the  early 
notions.  Even  after  eighty  years  of  planting, 
the  settled  parts  of  the  colony  **bore  the 
aspect  of  a  wilderness." 

Another  excess  of  Mr.  Bruce  is  in  the  multi- 
tude of  detail  with  which  he  surrounds  each 
division  of  his  subject.  This  is  an  amiable'ex- 
cees,  and  it  may  truly  be  said  that  the  author 
is  never  overwhelmed  by  his  facts  to  the  ob- 
scuring of  his  narrative.  The  wide  research 
and  admirable  combination  of  material  prove 
what  he  can  do;  but  the  reader  is  at  times  re- 
pelled by  a  too  minute  regard  for  what  Is  inci- 
dental to  the  subject  This  has  involved  a 
danger  Of  losing  Uie  sense  of  relative  impor- 
tance of  matter.  Individual  instances  are 
heaped  up  in  the  case  of  secondary  as  well 
as  of  primary  topics.  In  this  direction  Mr. 
Brace's  labors  have  been  so  exhaustive  as  to 
leave  little  for  those  who  may  work  over  the 
same  territory. 

In  the  large  number  of  topics  covered  by 
Mr.  Bruce,  two  easily  lead  in  interest,  the  cul- 
ture  of  tobacco  and  the  system  of  labor.  Had 
the  soil  of  Virginia,  easily  obtained  by  barter 
or  force  from  the  Indians,  been  as  generally 
fertile  as  the  early  settlers  repreeented  it,  and 
had  the  planters  enjoyed  favorable  markets, 
we  might  have  looked  for  a  varied  agriculture. 
Having  satisfied  their  own  immediate  needs 
for  food,  they  had  few  markets  for  grain, 
while  it  was  soon  found  that  in  tobacco  they 
had  a  staple  export  at  once  i»t>fitable  and 
easily  marketed.  The  Indian  had  cultivated 
the  plant  with  success,  and  John  Rolfe,  who 
married  Pocahontas,  was  the  first  colonist  to 
attempt  its  growth.  Within  four  years  the 
plant  had  become  one  of  the  great  crops  of 
the  colony,  and  in  1617  was  cultivated  even  in 
the  streets  and  market-place  of  Jamestown. 
It  was  soon  the  only  crop,  the  measure  of 
value  and  medium  of  exchange,  an  object  of 
legislative  solicitude,  and  a  monopoliaer  of 
colonial  effort.  The  "right"  of  planting  was 
discussed.  The  number  of  stalks  to  the  family, 
the  distance  between  stalks  and  number  of 
leaves  to  the  stalk,  the  sise  of  hogsheads,  and 
the  mode  of  inspecting  the  dried  leaves,  were 
some  of  the  details  regulated  by  law  in  an  at- 
tempt to  restrict  the  product  and  improve  its 
quality.  The  culture  iufluenced  the  taking  up 
of  the  land  whose  fertility  it  exhausted,  and 
sustained  the  entire  social  system  of  the  settle- 
ments, together  with  their  external  relations. 

Tills  concentration  of  effort  upon  a  single 
commodity  led  to  important  results.  The 
planter,  seeking  his  own  gain,  increased  his 
production  to  such  an  extent  that  the  mar* 
ketable  crop  was  generally  in  excess  of  what 
English  consumption  required,  and  he  was 
obliged  to  look  elsewhere  for  a  sale  of  the  ex- 
cess. On  the  other  hand,  no  effort  of  King 
or  Parliament  to  create  a  market  could  keep 
pioe  with  the  increasing  production.  The  im- 
porUtion  into  England  of  Spanish  leaf,  a  better 
article  than  the  Virginian,  was  restricted  or  pro- 


400 


Tlie    N'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1612 


hibited ;  the  plantinfc  of  tobacco  in  England  was 
rigorooalj  forbidden.  Two  policies,  however, 
prevented  an  equilibrium  in  this  trade.  The 
King  must  have  his  customs,  and  to  secure 
that  the  planter  was  enjoined  from  dis- 
posing of  his  tobacco  in  any  market  other 
than  the  English.  The  merchant  marine 
must  be  encouraged,  and  for  that  the  planter 
must  ship  in  English  vessels.  It  was,  then, 
not  to  a  free  market  that  the  Virginian 
brought  his  goods;  he  was  not  free  to  choose 
his  market  or  his  carrier,  or  to  flx  his  price. 
That  was  all  done  for  him  by  law  and  by  cus- 
tom, by  taritr  regulations,  and  by  agents  or 
factors  acting  at  a  distance  and  too  irrespon- 
sible to  feel  the  full  sense  of  duty  to  their 
clients.  Lastly,  with  his  production  regulated 
by  colonial  laws,  his  sales  hampered  by  Eng- 
lish policy,  the  planter  could  be  made  to  suffer 
for  his  loyalty,  as  when  he  proclaimed  the  son 
of  the  beheaded  Charles,  and  could  be  made  to 
pay  for  the  extravagances  of  the  King  or  his 
representative  in  the  colony,  or  for  the  profit 
of  the  merchant  who  held  a  lien  on  his  future 
crops.  All  competition  except  among  the 
planters  themselves  was  destroyed. 

Such  a  system  was  too  oppreoive,  and  led 
to  evasion  and  smuggling,  the  natural  protests 
against  arbitrary  laws  so  contrary  to  real  in- 
terest.  In  1663  the  loss  to  the  English  customs 
on  tobacco  shipped  to  Holland  was  estimated 
to  be  ten  thousand  pounds  sterling  a  year,  and 
every  enforcement  of  the  customs  and  naviga- 
tion laws  brought  a  threat  of  ruin  to  the  plant- 
er. The  price  of  his  product  sank  to  less  than 
a  penny  a  pound,  and  Biaryland  competed  on 
such  terms  as  to  place  him  at  a  disadvantage, 
rendering  nugatory  all  efforts  to  restrict  pro- 
duction. The  prices  fluctuated  widely  from 
year  to  year,  and  no  forecast  of  market  could 
be  made.  Beginning  with  1680  a  crisis  was 
reached,  and,  in  the  general  desperation,  riots 
were  fostered,  resulting  in  the  destruction  of 
plants  in  the  vain  hope  of  affecting  prices. 
Later  the  value  of  tobacco  did  increase,  and 
the  planter  secured  some  advantage.  Tear 
after  year  passed  with  nothing  to  depend  upon 
save  this  lottery  of  tobacco-culture.  Through- 
out the  century  the  authorities  sought  by  re- 
wards and  threats  to  induce  some  diversity  of 
crops,  such  as  hemp,  flax,  the  vine,  or  silk.  Li. 
beral  bounties  were  offered  and  skilled  work- 
ers specially  imported  to  serve  as  pioneers  and 
teachers.  All  was  in  vain.  The  planter  pre- 
ferred to  live  miserably  by  tobacco  rather  than 
in  comfort  by  any  other  means,  and  was  rich  or 
poor  according  to  the  price  of  this  staple.  In 
its  consequences  there  could  be  no  better 
illustration  of  the  evils  of  state  interference 
with  economic  law  than  the  attitude  of  Par- 
liament, merchant,  and  planter  towards  the 
tobacco  plant. 


German  Songs  of  To-day,    Edited,  with  an 
introduction  and  literary  notes,  by  Alexan- 
der Tille,  Lecturer  on  the  German  Language 
and  Literature  in  the  University  of  Glas- 
gow.   Macmillan  &  Co.    1896. 
It  is  the  purpose  of  this  volume,  as  stated  in 
the  preface,  *•  to  provide  American  students  of 
Germsn  literature  with  a  representative  se- 
lection from  the  lyrics  of  the  New  Empire." 
In  the  rapid  evolution  of  natural  science  and 
the  interest  in  social  problems,  the  editor  re- 
cognizes the  two  mental  factors  which  deter- 
mine the  character  of  modem  German  lyrics 
and  distinguish  them  from  the  romantic  poetry 
prior    to    1870.     It    i»,    of    coliih^:,    nbsurtl    to 
maintain  that  any  segment  of  the  circle  of 
human    interests   Is   insusceptible   of    po&tic 


treatment,  for  this  proposition,  as  Pater  has 
said,  is  **  always  liable  to  be  discredited  by 
the  facts  of  artistic  production."  This  Tolume, 
however,  contains  no  ** facts''  tending  to  din- 
credit  such  a  proposition  with  regard  to  sci- 
ence and  sociology.  Indeed,  it  would  seem 
that  our  so-called  modem  tendouHes  have 
been  peculiarly  unfortunate  in  the  quality  of 
their  exponents,  and  it  is  the  ungraoious  duty 
of  responsible  criticism  to  condeuiu  tbt^  pre^nt 
collection  of  songs  as  depressing  and  uu whole- 
some,  in  no  true  sense  repre^entattve,  and 
altogether  repugnant  to  lovers  of  the  high- 
minded  muse  whose  function  heretofore  has 
been  to  elevate,  to  purify,  and  to  delight. 

Probably  no  collection  of  poems  was  ev«r 
brought  together  which  did  not,  both  tiy  ^in^i 
of  omission  and  of  commission,  offend  I  hose 
most  familiar  with  the  fleld  cov&red.  Thi^ 
book  will  not  prove  an  exception.  Maoy  a  lyric 
gem  and  many  an  honored  name  will  be  misled. 
None  of  the  poems  is  to  be  found  b«re  wbicb 
have  endeared  the  fine-grained  and  entirely 
modern  poet  Ferdinand  von  Saar  to  the  hearts 
of  his  countrymen,  nor  is  there  auy  example  of 
the  strong  and  simple  verse  of  Johanna'  Am- 
broeius,  a  modern  among  modernK,  whose  nam b 
is  now  known  in  every  G^man  home.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  are  poems  here  whieb,  for 
various  reasons,  we  think  ought  not  to  have 
been  included.  There  are  some  strong  po^ms^ 
but  they  are  painful;  clever  ones  which  are 
cold ;  pretty  ones  but  feeble ;  and  otherm,  al> 
though  of  excellent  workmanship,  aretno&t  un- 
pleasantly  flavored.  Some  are  not  poemjt  at 
all,  but  merely  versified  documentf;.  What 
place,  for  instance,  in  a  book  of  sougii  have  the 
rhymed  aphorisms  of  Nietzsche  and  his  Ger- 
man editor,  Fritz  Koegel?  Their  pre^nco  ii 
explained,  but  not  excused,  by  the  fat  t  that 
Mr.  Tille  has  charge  of  the  Englifth  edition  of 
Nietzsche's  works. 

In  this  circumstance  we  have  the  explana^ 
tion,  also,  of  the  unrefreshing  atmosphere 
which  pervades  most  of  the  book.  Under  the 
pretentious  heading  "Modern  Life,'*  our  at- 
tention  is  directed  to  drunkei:ne»8,  diseofie,  and 
death.  The  voice  of  the  **  under- paid  and 
over-worked ''  is  heard  again,  shriller  and  l^is 
touching,  more  sociological  and  lem  poetic, 
but  as  dreary  and  hopeless  as  when  it  t^ng  the 
"Song  of  the  Shirt."  **  Modem  Love'*  ie  pre- 
sented to  us  largely  as  an  affair  of  the  Eenees, 
and  some  even  of  the  more  delicate  love  Ijrica 
seem  to  be  accompanied  by  a  signiUcaut  wink. 
Otto  Hartleben  displays  a  marked  dii^tuste  for 
men  who  never  got  drunk  at  luidnigbt  uor 
yielded  to  the  solicitations  of  dark  eyes.  But 
we  look  in  vain  for  some  dim  refieetton  of  the 
playful  grace  of  Goethe's  "Morgenklagen"  or 
Philine's  song,  which  alone  can  rescue  the 
frankly  erotic  lyric  from  repulsive  mediocrity. 
The  third  rubric  is  "Modern  Thought." 
Modem  thought  seems  to  consist  for  the  most 
part  of  pessimistic  sentiments  of  a  strongly 
anti- Christian  tendency.  Indeed,  the  hatred 
which  some  of  these  young  poets  man  if  ^t  tx^ 
wards  God  and  the  institutions  founded  in  bin 
name  is  extreme.  Here,  too,  we  miss  the  sav. 
ing  charm:  there  is  none  of  that  fierce  mdiguu- 
tion  at  God's  injustice  which  lends  to  the  de- 
fiant outbursts  of  Omar  Khayydm  their  Pro- 
methean dignity.  These  are  rather  the  utter- 
ances of  young  and  unformed  minds,  boasting 
of  their  intellectual  strength. 

That  this  collection  does  reprei^nt  certain 
phases  of  Germ&n  life  and  thought  during  the 
last  twenty- five  years  cannot  be  denied.  These 
teotlenci^,  however,  do  not  characterize  the 
period.  The  J  are  aberrations,  ending  some- 
time in  iEnbecility,  of  which  in  our  own  day 


exafTiplee  are  not  lacking,  or  (correcting  Ifaem* 
selves  in  the  aobeHng  process  of  the  jean.  To 
^Ject)  the  poems  of  hot- headed  youtb^i  and 
middle-aged  gentlemen  with  diseased  wits  u 
representative,  is  to  wrong  literature  mnch  ai 
some  of  our  American  cities  wrong  muaidpal 
govern nient  by  electing  Incompetent  and  Bemi* 
cnminal  men  to  represent  the  body  of  Jost 
eitisens.  It  is  encouraging  to  hear  from  many 
landir  the  protest  against  an  opinion  which,  br 
reason  of  insistent  Iteration,  has  been  gajnio^ 
jsn'ound^  that  our  end  of  the  century  hi  distiii. 
guisberl  from  other  times  by  its  mat^riaiiEUi, 
pessimiam^  and  hot  clamoring  for  **  &.  freer  Ufa 
of  love.*^  Tbeae  things  are  neither  new  dot 
Epecifically  representative;  degeneration  is  not 
pndemic^  and  Germany  still  has  poet»  who  can 
giTe  utterance  to  her  nobler  and  truer  a»pira* 
tions. 

Mr.  Tillers  introduction  is  In  gen  Ions  and 
thoughtful,  and  be  has  made  an  honest  effort 
to  render  Justice  to  the  uplifting  tendenciea  \a 
German  thought,  Aceordlngly  the  book  con- 
tains «ome  genuine  poetry,  but  most  of  it  wu 
written  by  men  of  the  last  generation.  Fon* 
tane^i  "Die  BrQck^ am  Tay  '^  is  a  spirited po^m 
wh[ch  thrills  with  the  terror  of  that  great 
disaster,  and  haunts  the  imagination  with  its 
weird  ru^b.,  Two  or  three  pretty  love  lyrioi 
reveal  the  grace  of  a  day  %vbich  is  not  yet 
dead,  and  now  and  then  is  beard  an  eam«^ 
voico  which  epeaks  for  decency  and  duty. 
But  the  ead  feature  of  the  volume  is  that  iU 
compiler  seems  to  feel  no  Tepiigtianc«  for  the 
age  of  which  be  presents  a  lyric  portrait  so 
unlovely,  nor  does  he  seem  to  be  couMdous 
that  the  life  of  the  new  Empire  could  havs 
had  any  better  eitponentfl.  One  would  think 
that  a  (Scholar  who  considers  Amo  HoU  tbi 
greatest  l^rrica^l  genius  the  Empire  has  jet 
prodnced,  would  have  preferred  to  edit  tha 
poems  of  another  time  or  people*  Goethe, 
who  judged  his  oountrymen  with  K»ber  objeo^ 
tivity,  advised  : 

'*  FretiDil4.%  trelbet  fiur  lilleti  mtt  Ertut  ima  Ll^W:  fUP 

helden 
Stehcni  de^m  Deatcchea  to  tefaua,  dcji,  acb  :     90  vteKi 

entst^nt." 

It  is    the    German    In    bis  disflgurament  to 

whom  Mr.  TIlJe  has  introduced  Us. 


LectureM  on  the  Coun^l  of  Tr^ntt  delivered  at 

Oxford,  18»3  TKS,  by  James  Anthony  Frouda. 
Char  les  Scri  bner's  Sons.     1 896. 

TlTE  fro  its  of  Mr.  FroudeS  O^tford  professor- 
ship are  now  being  given  to  the  public.  Tbs 
pr^isent  lectures,  although  the  earliest  of  th« 
three  rouraes  which  he  was  allowed  to  com- 
plete^ are  the  last  to  see  the  light.  Tbel^  are 
thirtet^n  of  them,  twelve  intended  for  the  usnat 
academic  audience  and  the  last  for  the  gena^ 
ral  lecture^ hearing  public.  In  fact,  this  di^ 
tinction  might  aa  well  have  paaaed  without 
mention,  for  Mr.  Froude's  manner  ii  never 
academic.  Even  more  than  in  the  tmae  of  the 
lectures  on  Erasmtia^  one  Ls  led  to  wonder 
just  what  serious  students  could  do  with 
these.  Beven  of  the  twelve  lecture*  do  not 
touch  the  Oouucil  at  all,  but  are  a  review  of 
the  general  conditions  of  Europe  and  of  the 
course  of  ©vents  leading  up  to  th«  eventual 
proclamation  of  the  CounciL  It  i*ji  in  gi*n^ 
ral  reviews  of  this  sort  that  Mr.  FVoude  i* 
alwajis  at  bii;  best.  His  strength  is  uot  tn  the 
c&refut  weighing  of  historicm]  evId^iioQ,  ww 
In  the  detail  of  a  continuous  narralav%  Iml  rat 
tber  tn  the  skill  with  which  he  prtMOla  ova 
side  of  a  great  question,  and  gmupi  in  llii 
presentation  all  the  aspeota  of  a  ^^wa  tiat 
which  favor  his  view.    Any  tme  famHlaf  litill 


May  21,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


401 


his  method  might  almost  have  predicted  jost 
what  he  would  nj  here.  It  is  the  well-koown 
touch-and-go  process,  without  reference  to 
authority,  without  pretence  of  non-partisan- 
ship, but,  after  all,  with  great  steadiness  in 
the  underlying  purpose. 

On  the  whole,  one  must  admit  that  the 
point  of  view  is  in  the  main  sound  and  clear. 
The  estimate  of  the  dangers  to  Europe  from 
the  overgrown  Catholic  system  is  at  all  events 
supported  by  so  vast  an  array  of  facts  that  it 
no  longer  needs  apology.  One-sided  this  pre. 
sentation  doubtless  is,  but  it  is  a  side  that  has 
at  least  a  right  to  be  boldly  and  strongly 
stated.  If  there  be  something  grotesque  in  the 
idea  of  Mr.  Froude  as  a  teacher  of  youth  in 
historical  method,  it  ought  to  be  remembered 
that  his  academic  honors  were  a  matter  of 
very  late  adoption,  and  that  the  standards  of 
academic  appointment'(at  the  English  univer- 
sities) in  the  field  of  history  have  seldom  been 
very  exacting. 

The  most  vivid  impression  one  gets  from 
those  lectures  which  treat  of  the  Council  itself 
is  that  of  the  deep-seated  opposition  between 
the  strict  curial  party  and  the  numerous  inte- 
rests of  the  Church  as  represented  elsewhere. 
For  instance,  the  ancient  antagonism  between 
the  Curia  and  the  episcopate— an  opposition 
never  to  be  overcome  and  never  even  dogmati- 
cally disposed  of  until  the  Vatican  Council— is 
emphasized  here  at  every  point.  Further,  the 
national  interest,  especially  as  represented  by 
Charles  V.,  is  given  credit  for  all  it  deserves 
in  its  efforts,  ineffectual  though  they  were,  to 
keep  the  curial  party  from  its  greatest  extrava- 
gances. Charles  is  plainly  the  author's  hero, 
and  this  not  merely  for  the  sake  of  the  causes 
he  is  promoting,  but  for  the  qualities  of  the 
man  himself.  He  is  the  one  person  in  the  great 
drama  of  the  Council  who  seems  to  estimate 
justly  the  multitudinous  forces  of  European 
politics  and  feeling.  He,  above  all  others,  de- 
mands the  Council,  and  he  keeps  his  hand  upon 
it,  through  his  representatives,  both  at  the 
Council  itself  and  at  the  Curia.  His  failure  to 
influence  it  was,  perhaps,  as  much  as  anything 
else  the  cause  of  that  break-down  in  his  work- 
ing powers  which  drove  him  from  the  stage 
just  when  a  strong  hand  seemed  most  sorely 
needed. 

The  volume  on  the  Council  can  hardly  attain 
the  popularity  of  that  on  Erasmus,  since  it 
lacks  the  element  of  unity,  and  does  not  make 
op  for  it  by  any  amplitude  of  detail  which 
might  commend  it  to  the  student  seeking  in- 
formation as  to  the  tangled  diplomacy  of  the 
late  Reformation  period. 


MUitary  Letters  and  Essays,    By  Capt.  F.  N. 
Maude,  R.  E.— Cavalry  StitdUs  from  Two 
Oreat  Wars,   [International  Military  Series. 
Edited  by  Capt.  A.  L.  Wagner,  U.  8.  A.] 
Kansas  City:  Hudson- Kimberly  Co.  8vo,  pp. 
808,267. 
Capt.  Waonbb  is  doihg  a  service  to  military 
students  in  making  use  of  his  opportunities  as 
instructor  at  the  Leavenworth  Infantry  and 
Cavalry  School  of  the  Army  to  edit  and  re- 
publish papers  on  the  art  of  war  which  have 
attracted  serious  attention  in  Europe  and  in 
this  country.     Of   the  two  volumes   named 
above,  the  first  is  a  series  of  papers  written  by 
Capt.  Maude,  late  of  the  Royal  Engineers,  for 
the   benefit  of   officers   of   the    Bengal   ser- 
vice when  he  was  on  duty  in  India.     As  a 
whole,  his  papers  were  intended  to  be   cri- 
tiques upon  the  actual  condition  of  the  art  of 
war  in  tactics  and  in  weapons,  with  special  in- 
quiries wbather  the  assumed  lewon^  of  the 


Franco-German  war  are  those  which  it  in  fact 
should  teach,  and  whether  the  General  Staff 
of  Germany  agree  with  the  English  authorities 
in  respect  to  such  teaching. 

Captain  Maude  knows  his  own  mind,  and  his 
handling  of  his  topics  is  that  of  a  man  with 
strong  mental  grasp  of  his  subject  who  has 
Inched  clear  ideas  about  it,  and  is  dead  in 
earnest  in  warning  his  countrymen  that  they 
are  running  after  theories  which  the  best  mili> 
tary  brains  of  the  Continent  have  repudiated. 
This  is  especially  his  contention  as  to  the  cur- 
rent notion  in  English  military  circles  that  the 
war  of  1870  established  the  superior  value  of 
extended-order  fighting  (practically  skirmish- 
ing) over  that  of  the  line  in  two  ranks  in  which 
the  line  officers  can  retain  personal  control  of 
movements  by  that  direct  command  and  disci- 
pline which  is  lost  when  the  soldier  is  released 
from  the  duty  of  keeping  his  place  and  his 
gait.  Our  own  civil  war  had  shown  the  disad- 
vantages of  attack  in  deep  and  narrow  colunms, 
and  the  absolute  necessity  of  a  more  extended 
formation  ;  but  it  was  a  common  criticism 
among  our  officers  who  saw  the  fighting  in  the 
Franco  German  war  that,  in  many  instances, 
the  advancing  lines  became  practically  dis- 
organized and  more  nearly  a  mob  than  a  mili- 
tary unit.  They  lost  the  mobility  of  a  body 
by  seeking  too  much  the  mobility  of  the  indi- 
vidual. In  short,  they  had  carried  our  ex- 
tended order  to  an  absurd  and  self -destructive 
extreme.  In  the  desire  to  avoid  the  heavy 
losses  of  a  too  compact  formation  under  fire, 
they  had  sacrificed  the  ability  to  handle  troops 
with  that  imity  of  will  and  of  action  which  is 
the  soul  of  military  power. 

Captain  Maude  shows  by  his  own  examina^ 
tion  of  the  French  and  German  manoeuvres, 
especially  the  latter,  that  the  German  staff  bad 
recognized  the  error,  and  is  using  a  modified 
system  of  field  tactics  which  keeps  the  ad- 
vancing line  much  better  in  hand,  and  puts  it 
nearly  upon  the  system  which  our  most  intelli- 
gent officers  had  developed  in  1864-5.  He  has 
illustrated  his  argument  by  widely  varied  stu- 
dies, both  of  examples  in  the  battles  of  1870 
and  of  recent  field  manoeuvres  on  a  large 
scale.  He  gives  most  interesting  notes,  also, 
of  his  observation  at  these  manoeuvres  of  the 
actual  changes  brought  about  by  the  use  of 
smokeless  powder.  He  finds  that  it  does  not, 
as  was  anticipated,  conceal  the  combatants' 
positions,  for  the  vivid  fiash  of  the  artillery 
and  of  the  musketry  punctuates  the  setting  of 
the  lines  more  exactly,  for  an  alert  observer, 
than  any  smoke  puff  could  do.  No  one  pre- 
tending to  keep  abreast  of  progress  in  military 
studies  can  afford  to  neglect  these  essays. 
They  are  both  able  and  bright,  always  pat 
upon  the  true  point  of  discussion,  and  as  stimu- 
lating when  one  differs  from  the  author  as 
when  one  agrees  with  him. 

The  second  volume,  the  Cavalry  Studies,  is 
made  up  of  three  elaborate  papers:  The  French 
Cavalry  in  1870,  by  Lieutenant-Colonel  (now 
General)  Bonie  of  the  French  Dragoons,  trans- 
lated by  Lieutenant  C.  F.  Thompson  of  the 
Seventh  Hussars ;  The  German  Cavalry  at 
Vionville  and' Mars- la-Tour,  by  Major  Kaehler 
of  the  German  General  Staff,  translated  by 
Lieutenant  Reich mann  of  the  Ninth  Infantry, 
U.  S.  A.;  and  The  Operations  of  the  Cavalry 
in  the  Gettysburg  Campaign,  by  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  George  B.  Davis,  U .  S.  A .  The  French 
and  German  papers  are  peculiarly  valuable 
because  they  deal  with  the  same  war  and  with 
the  same  engagements,  so  as  to  give  vivid  pic- 
tures from  the  opposed  points  of  view,  but 
with,  in  the  main,  concurring  criticism  upon 
the  nnreadinesf  and  the  antiquated  methods  of 


the  Second  Empire.  Colonel  Davis's  paper  is 
a  republication  of  his  excellent  essay  to  show, 
in  connection  with  the  others,  how  far  our  own 
cavalry  had  learned  from  experience,  by  1863, 
the  lessons  the  French  studied  bitterly  seven 
years  afterward. 

We  wish  that  Capt.  Wagner  had  had  enough 
faith  in  the  success  which  his  enterprise  richly 
deserves  to  give  the  volumes  more  complete 
and  attractive  form  from  the  standpoint 
of  book- making.  To  issue  such  books  without 
an  index  is  a  sin  against  the  class  of  readers 
who  will  gain  most  profit  from  them,  and  who 
will  long  for  an  easy  mode  of  reference  to  each 
criticism  and  to  each  fact,  each  incident  of  each 
field,  and  each  organization  and  officer  whose 
movements  and  whose  conduct  point  the  argu- 
ment. Then  some  maps  for  the  first  volume 
are  a  necessity.  The  four  in  the  second  are  ad- 
mirable, and  if  a  similar  number  of  good  ones 
had  been  inserted  in  the  first,  its  value  would 
have  been  multiplied.  If  only  a  single  good 
topographical  map  of  the  vicinity  of  Aldershot 
had  been  given  to  illustrate  Capt.  Maude^s  ex. 
cellent  description  of  the  sham  battle  of  the 
English  troops  there,  it  would  have  been  a 
boon  to  the  reader  and  made  the  reading  much 
more  profitable.  We  would  fain  believe  it 
would  have  mad^  the  publication  more  pro- 
fitable also. 


Russian  Politics,    By  Herbert  M.  Thompson, 

M.'A.  Henry  Holt  &  Co. 
Mr.  Thompson  is  a  member  of  the  English 
Society  of  Friends  of  Russian  Freedom,  of 
which  there  is  a  branch  in  this  country,  and  of 
which  he  furnishes  the  circular  and  an  appeal 
in  an  appendix.  To  those  who  are  acquainted 
with  the  views,  objects,  and  methods  of  this 
society,  this  suggestion  sufficiently  indicates 
the  tone  of  the  book—in  a  measure.  We  say 
'Mn  a  measure,^  because,  on  the  whole,  the 
author  is  inclined  to  stop  short  of  offensively 
partisan  denunciations.  Nevertheless,  had  he 
exercised  a  little  more  reserve  in  that  parti- 
cular, had  he  not  seized  upon  opportunities  for 
strong  expression  on  matters  where  much  more 
information  is  needed  than  is  at  the  command 
of  a  foreigner  who  has  neither  visited  nor 
studied  Russia,  his  book  would  have  been  much 
stronger  and  more  valuable.  We  assume,  from 
the  internal  evidence,  that  he  has  not  been  in 
Russia,  and  that  his  information  has  been  ob- 
tained  exclusively  from  the  books  which  he 
quotes  and  from  one  of  the  Rusitian  exiles  now 
established  in  England.  It  would  have  been 
more  fair  to  give  the  other  side  a  hearing  in 
court  before  passing  a  final,  condemnatory 
verdict,  or  to  have  refrained  from  comment 
altogether,  and  rested  the  case  on  the  evidence 
quoted.  One  point  must  be  mentioned,  to  the 
author's  honor  :  he  gives  the  source  of  his  in- 
formation in  every  case,  and  the  hints  thus 
afforded  to  the  reader  who  desires  to  study 
any  special  phase  of  the  question  in  greater 
detail  are  very  useful.  The  volume  is,  in  fact, 
a  compilation,  and  one  of  the  best  compilations 
which  we  have  seen  for  a  long  time.  There  is 
nothing  abrupt  or  scrappy  about  it.  Its  five 
maps,  which  show  the  ethnographical  distribu- 
tion of  the  population,  the  natural  agricultural 
zones,  the  Jewish  pale  of  settlement,  the  gene- 
alogy  of  the  imperial  family,  Russia  before  the 
time  of  Peter  the  Great,  and  the  final  partition 
of  Poland,  are  of  great  value  and  interest  to 
any  one  who  studies  Russian  topics. 

Bpt  Mr.  Thompson  makes  mtbtakes  which 
are  incompatible  with  a  profound  knowledge 
of  Russian  history  and  with  personal  know- 
ledge of  the  country.    On  p.  t»,  for  exaiDpl«» 


403 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


[VoL  62,  Na  1612 


he  tays :  '  *  The  middle  of  the  thirteenth  cen  turj 
taw  their  [the  Tatar]  invading  hoete  deraatating 
with  fire  and  sword  as  far  north  as  NoTgorod.*^ 
The  Tatars  never  got  to  **IiOrd  Novgorod  the 
Great,"  and  that  haughty  republic  remained 
unconqnered  until  the  time  of  Ivan  the  Terri- 
ble, when  that  Tsar  humiliated  it,  three  centu- 
ries after  the  date  here  mentioned.  On  p.  88 
we  read:  ''The  building  of  the  Kremlin  at 
Moscow  was  begun  under  Ivan  III.  The  Krem- 
lin takes  the  place,  in  the  chief  Russian  cities, 
that  the  Acropolis  did  in  those  of  ancient 
Greece;  but  as  Russia  is  a  flat  land,  the  Krem- 
lln  could  not  be  stationed,  as  the  Acropolis  used 
to  be,  crowning  a  hill  and  overlooking  the 
city.**  Russia  is,  on  the  whole,  a  flat  country ; 
but  Moscow  is  built  on  a  series  of  undulating 
hills,  of  which  the  one  crowned  by  the  EZrem- 
lin,  as  it  overlooks  the  city,  is  the  highest. 
The  Kremlin  of  Nishni- Novgorod,  also,  is  on  a 
hill.  It  would  be  well,  in  a  second  edition,  to 
correct  such  errors  as  Stephen  ^avorski,  for 
Tavorski;  General  Orenteln,  for  Drenteln ; 
Biren  and  the  Duke  of  Courland,  for  Biren, 
Duke  of  Ck>urland ;  Schlusseburg,  for  Scblus- 
selburg— errors  which  have,  probably,  their 
origin  in  the  American  version,  as  well  as  The 
Chriete,  for  the  ChriaVe.  The  description  of 
the  Russian  church  as  *'  that  woodenly  formal 
pietism,'^  and  so  forth,  is  neither  true  nor 
kind  ;  and  the  reader*s  mind  involuntarily  re- 
verts to  the  law  which  prevents  the  accession 
to  the  throne  of  England  of  a  Roman  Catholic 
when  he  meets  this  sentence  :  **  According  to 
a  barbarous  custom  which  still  obtains,  a 
princess  marrying  the  heir  to  the  Russian 
throne  undergoes  '  conversion '  to  the  Greek 
communion,  and  is  very  often  rechristened  by 
another  name.**  Such  a  remark,  on  the  part 
of  an  Englishman,  Is  decidedly  indiscreet— it 
lays  him  open  to  retort,  and  it  contains  an  un- 
truth: no  one  who  belongs  to  a  Christian 
church  and  has  received  baptism  therein  is 
ever  "re- christened**  on  entering  the  Russian 
Church,  though  the  future  Empresses  do  re- 
ceive names  which  their  subjects  can  master, 
after  saints  whose  festivals  can  be  celebrated, 
for  the  enjoyment  and  repose  of  the  people. 
The  author  makes  one  good  point,  in  his  dis- 
cussion of  the  peasant.  He  says :  **  The  ave- 
rage consumption  of  alcohol  in  Russia  is  less 
per  head  than  in  western  European  countries, 
which  seems  to  dispose  of  the  idea  that  the 
Russian  peasant  spends  his  substance  in  riotous 
living,  and  ruins  himself  by  excessive  drink- 
ing.'' 

The  authorities  which  our  author  quotes  are 
of  very  varied  quality,  and  from  each  he 
draws  what  he  requires  to  enforce  his  argu- 
ment—and, generally,  only  that.  Such  a  book 
must,  of  necessity,  present  a  one-sided  view  of 
matters ;  but  its  interest  is  undeniable.  One 
wonders  whether  an  Englishman  or  an  Ameri- 
can  would  relish  or  respect  a  book  on  his  own 
country  made  up  on  the  same  principle,  and 
whether  the  printing  and  reading  world 
would  not  breathe  a  sigh  of  relief  if  only  those 
people  who  really  know  Russia  were  permit- 
ted to  write  and  dogmatize  about  it,  or  com- 
pile tomes  from  other  tomes  about  it  I 


Southern  Quakere  and  Slavery  :  A  Study  in 
InsUtutional  History.  By  Stephen  B.  Weeks, 
Ph.D.  [Johns  Hopkins  University  Studies 
in  Historical  and  Political  Science.]  Balti- 
more.   1896. 

The  title  of  Dr.  Weeks's  book  has  the  merit  of 
undemtAtement.  He  ba»  really  prepared,  with 
great  indlaatryj  a  siiuimary  accouot  of  Quaker 
•ottlemantA  at  the  South,  their  rise  and  de- 


cline, in  connection  with  thehr  relations  to 
slavery  and  a  consequent  migration  to  the 
Northwest.  It  is  only  on  p.  196  that  the  title 
recurs,  as  the  heading  of  the  ninth  chapter. 
The  proverbial  dryness  of  Quaker  annals  has 
been  felt  and  expressed  by  this  investigator, 
but  he  has  contrived  to  make  his  narrative 
anything  but  dull,  and  the  work  as  a  whole, 
with  its  map,  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  our 
religious  and  political  history.  That  the  South- 
em  Quakers,  as  soon  as  they  had  completely 
divorced  themselves  from  slaveholding  (which 
was  not  till  after  the  Revolution),  were  in  a 
delicate  position  may  be  inferred.  They  threw 
their  weight  in  favor  of  modifying  the  statutes 
directed  against  emancipation,  and  evaded 
them  in  a  manner  by  assigning  their  own  f reed- 
men  to  a  committee  which  held  them  till  it 
could  transport  them  to  the  North.  In  a  so- 
ciety,  however,  whose  normal  condition  was 
one  of  war  between  the  dominant  and  the  sub- 
ject race,  the  Quakers,  as  men  of  peace,  had  no 
proper  place.  If  they  remained,  they  had  to 
contrive  a  modue  vivendi  with  the  institution 
which  they  detested  (pp.  242,  297),  and  whose 
growing  power,  both  State  and  national, 
forbade  them  to  expect  any  enlargement  of 
their  own  denomination  by  accessions  from  the 
North.  *'  There  was  found  to  be  but  one  ef- 
fective protest  against  the  system— migration." 
Their  material  inducement  to  remain  after  the 
country  north  of  the  Ohio  was  fairly  thrown 
open  to  settlement  was  much  diminished,  and 
in  the  and  a  great  movement  from  the  seaboard 
to  that  fertile  region  took  place  in  the  wake  of 
the  freedmen  already  dispatched  thither.  Dr. 
Weeks  traces  these  shiftings  with  certainty  and 
particularity.  What  follows  belongp  to  the 
history  of  the  **  Underground  Railway,**  for  in 
Indiana  and  Ohio  the  newcomers  were  at  liber, 
ty  to  speed  the  fugitive  on  his  way  to  Canada, 
and  this  liberty  they  uasd  while  braving  the 
terrors  of  the  constitutional  power  which  was 
on  the  side  of  the  oppressor.  In  Georgia  and 
South  Carolina  the  Quaker  societies  have  quite 
gone  out  of  sight;  in  Virginia  they  reckon  but 
a  few  hundreds;  in  North  Carolina  they  still 
count  for  something,  though  this  State  was 
foremost  in  the  migration. 

'*  The  largest  and  most  progressive  meetings 
found  in  North  Carolina  to-day  are  not  among 
the  representatives  of  the  native  stock,  but 
among  those  who  came  in  from  the  North  dui^ 
ing  the  eighteenth  century.  .  .  .  Most  of  these 
new  setUers  were  from  Pennsylvania,  but  some 
had  delayed  a  few  years  in  Maryland;  some 
were  from  New  Jersey,  and  some  from  Nan- 
tucket. .  .  .  [Their]  motive  was  distinctiy 
economic.  Their  movement  is  parallel  to  that 
of  the  Scotch- Irish  "  (pp.  95,  96). 

Among  these,  from  Pennsylvania,  was  the 
family  from  which  sprang  Samuel  M.  Janney, 
the  historian,  most  proliflc  of  Southern  (Quaker 
writers;  from  Nantucket,  the  stock  of  Levi  Col- 
fln,  whose  active  aid  to  fugitives  after  he  re^ 
moved  to  Cincinnati  is  related  in  his  Reminis- 
cences ;  from  New  Jersey,  the  kinsmen  of  Ben- 
jamin Lundy.  The  manumission  societies  form- 
ed in  North  C^olina  from  1816  to  1885  were 
supported  though  not  controlled  by  Quakers, 
Some  of  those  in  North  Carolina  were  orga* 
nized  by  Charles  Osbom,  others  (as  also  in  Vir- 
ginia) by  Lundy.  Osbom  was  a  native  of 
North  Carolina,  who  removed  near  the  end  of 
the  last  century  to  Tennessee,  where  he  began 
his  anti -slavery  labors.  These,  though  not  to 
be  despised,  do  not  entitie  him  to  Dr.  Weeks'^ 
excessive  praise  as  "  one  of  the  greatest  of  the 
anti-slavery  agitators."  His  main  service  was 
in  paving  the  way,  by  his  Philanthropist,  for 
Lundy,  upon  whose  appearance  Osbom  fades 
into  the  background.   Nor  was  the  latter  **  the 


first  man  in  America  to  proclaim  the  doctriiM 
of  Immediate  and  unconditional  emsadpa- 
tion.**  That  high  honor  belongs  to  the  Bsv. 
George  Bourne,  and  he  an  Englishman. 

Dr.  Weeks  would  probably  have  dwelt  mon 
upon  Lundy's  labors  had  our  Jerseyman  been 
a  Southern  Quaker.  It  would  have  been  inte. 
resting  to  note,  in  connection  with  the  certifi- 
cates (In  1802)  from  South  River«Va.,  to  *'Cob. 
cord  Monthly  Meeting,  Northwest  Territory 
[Ohiol**  that  it  was  precisely  to  this  mesting 
that  Benjamin  Lundy  was  dismissed  in  1809 
from  Hardwick  and  Mendham  Meeting,  N.  J., 
instead  of  to  Westland,  Pennsylvania,  ai  flnt 
contemplated ;  Westland  being  a  stopping-place 
for  the  Ohio  migration.  Dr.  Weeks  enaMei  os 
to  perceive  that  Lundy's  new  associations  were 
with  Friends  fresh  from  the  pit  of  slavery, 
and  hence  calculated  to  arouse  his  interest  in 
the  subject  and  to  ground  him  in  his  abhorreiice 
of  the  system.  We  may  also  remark  that  Tho- 
mas Lundy  removed  in  1706  from  Ringwood 
Monthly  Meeting,  N.  J.,  to  Westfleld,  N.  C. 
Dr.  Weeks  records  mig^tionsfrom  thismooth- 
ly  meeting  to  Ohio,  though  no  Lundy  is  among 
them;  but  the  name  occurs  on  the  list  from 
Mount  Pleasant. 


Theoretical  Chemistry,  Bj  Walter  Nenitt 
Ph.D.  Translated  by  Charles  SkeelePfelmer, 
Ph.D.  Macmillan.  Pp.  xxvi-^e07. 
Knowlxdgk  of  the  general  laws  and  coodi- 
tions  of  chemical  chuige  has  made  eoormoof 
advances,  the  last  few  years,  through  the  sj%- 
tematic  study  of  the  interrelation  of  physical 
and  chemical  phenomena;  and  Physical  Che- 
mistry, practioslly  a  new  branch  of  science,  if 
the  result.  Hence  the  **  Theoretical  Chemis- 
try **  of  to-day  is  a  very  different  thing  from 
that  of  only  ten  years  ago.  Not  only  are  iti 
bounds  much  extended,  but  the  point  of  view 
is  largely  new,  and  one  from  which  a  more 
comprehensive  survey  and  wider  generalia- 
tions  are  possible. 

Dr.  Nemst*s  work,  in  the  original,  met  with 
a  most  hearty  reception  in  Germany  end 
among  those  who  keep  in  touch  with  German 
science,  to  whom  the  author's  reputation  ai  a 
brilliant  worker  in  his  chosen  field  was  well 
known.  It  gives  a  clear  and  critical  acoooot 
of  the  achievements  and  principles  of  phyiiosl 
chemistry.  Without  aiming  at  such  a  com- 
plete record  of  data  as  is  given  in  OstwsJd*i 
'  Lehrbuch,'  Dr.  Nemst  has  endearored  to  pre- 
sent a  thorough  description  of  those  resnlti 
which  possess  the  most  general  significance  or 
give  promise  of  attain  ing  it,  and  of  tb<>9e  b  jp<^ 
theees  wbiob  have  thus  far  proved  of  rali^. 
Eeaee  a  great  msss  of  material  wbicb  now  hn& 
tmlj  historicai  interest  U  omitted.  The  Etil« 
of  Avogadro,  *'whieti  fi^ems  to  be  an  almoft 
iaexbaiistible  'horn of  plenty  ^  for  tb€  moleciT* 
lar  theory,'*  and  the  Doctrine  of  Energy,  «r« 
flttingly  empbftftized  as  tbe  most  ImportMt 
fouadattona  in  the  tbeQretit?al  discusiiiaQ  of 
chemical  phenomena. 

The  subject  is  divided  Into  four  **booki,* 
wboae  titles  will  indicate  In  a  rough  waj  the 
AQQpa  ot  tbi?orelic8ki  chemistry  at  the  pTBiwst 
day.  Book  Lis  on  '*  The  Universal  Prtperd* 
of  Matter,"  and  has  chapters  oti  the  ga»eoiii, 
the  Uquidt  the  solid  states  of  aggregation,  tb^ 
pbjsif-al  tniitore^  and  rtilate  Bolntione ;  Boot 
IL,  on  ''Atom  and  Molecule,''  AbaU  with  the 
theories  of  atomic  and  moleetilar  cioiis^tetkn 
of  matter,  the  deter miaatioQ  of  mol«ralir 
weights,  the  c^nfrtltutioo  and  strucinrv  of  th* 
molecule,  ffl^^s^insHation  of  gaaeSi  iilei*trt>ljFU»' 41^ 
socifttion,  '^v.\ ;  Book  Itt^on  ^'TheTras^tfe*' 
tion  of  Matter,"  InclMee  ch^nlsal  ftatlei  tfd 


May  21,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


403 


kioeticB ;  and  Book  IV.,  on  **TIm  TnuMfonii»> 
Uonsof  Bncrgj/'  dlsouMM  th«niio->  electro-, 
and  pfaoto-cbemietry.  Tbe  work  b  an  exceed- 
ingly sQooeeiful  preeentetion  of  a  dlfflonlt  tul^ 
Jeci,  end  is  cbaracteriaed  by  thoroogb  maatery 
and  marked  independence  of  treatooent.  It  is 
fnll  of  ingKestiveoeie  and  ftimuloB  to  the  stn- 
dent  of  chemistry. 

On  accoont  of  its  sterling  value  we  were  pre- 
pared to  welcome  a  translation  which  should 
render  it  acoessible  to  English-epealdng  che- 
mists  whose  German  is  weak  or  wanting;  hut  we 
most  confess  to  a  feeling  of  great  disappoint* 
ment  when  we  opened  the  Tolume  before  us. 
It  is  a  pity  that  the  translation  should  not 
have  fallen  to  a  more  competent  hand.  The 
translator's  knowledge  of  the  two  languages 
involTcd  in  the  transaction  unfortunately  ap. 
pears  hardly  adequate  to  the  task  he  set  him- 
sell  In  a  treatiie  dealing  with  such  abstruse 
subjects,  and  one  not  merely  to  be  read  but 
studied,  clearness  and  accuracy  of  statement 
are  of  the  flnt  importance.  WbOe  the  Oe» 
man  of  Dr.  Nemst  offen  little  ground  for  cri- 
ticism in  these  respects,  Dr.  Palmer's  transla- 
tion is  faulty  to  a  degree  which  makes  the 
book  hard  reading  and  tries  the  patience  of 
the  student  to  the  limit  In  his  preface  the 
tramlator  says:  **  Regarding  the  translation,  I 
have  been  guided  solely  by  the  aim  to  combine 
fidelity  to  the  original  with  deamess  in  good 
EnglUh."  *'  Fidelity  to  the  original,"  accord- 
ing to  Dr.  Palmer's  method,  consists  in  pains- 
taking, literal  rendering  of  the  German,  sen- 
tence by  sentence,  phrase  by  phrase;  a  method 
which,  as  every  student  of  German  knows,  can- 
not result  in  '^good"  and  idiomatic  English. 
We  note  also  that  he  intimates  some  uncer- 
tainty of  his  qualifications  as  a  translator  in 
adding:  **I  am  very  largely  indebted  to  the 
assistance  of  ...  in  the  attempt  to  make 
the  sound  German  speak  good  English.  The 
translation  is  submitted  to  the  [hoffentlieh^ 
kindly  criticism  of  both  colleagues  and  stu- 
dents." 

No  criticism  is  really  kindly  which  falls  to 
point  out  defects.  And  it  is  in  no  unkindly 
spirit  that  we  call  attention  to  the  shortcom- 
ings of  this  translation,  but  in  the  discharge  of 
the  simple  duty  which  the  reviewer  owes  to 
the  public.  The  melancholy  truth  of  the  stric- 
tures which  have  been  made  on  this  transla-< 
tion  is  abundantly  demonstrated  by  the  follow- 
ing examples: 

"  If  one  can  diminish  at  pleasure  the  adapta- 
ble volume  of  a  definite  amount  of  a  simple 
gas,  by  increasing  the  external  pressure,  the 
presrare,  exerted  oy  the  gas  on  the  surround- 
ing  walls,  grows  continually  with  the  diminu- 
tion of  volume:  if  one  works  at  a  temperature 
sufllciently  reduced,  there  suddenly  comes  a 
point  at  which,  by  diminishing  the  volume,  the 
pressure  experiences  no  increase,  but  remains 
constant."    (Page  47.) 

**  The  question  whether  a  well-defined  chem- 
ical substance  represents  an  element  or  a  com. 
Cmnd  of  several  different  elements,  and  in  the 
tter  case  to  what  extent  each  element  is  con- 
tained in  unit  weight  of  the  substance,  this  is 
a  problem  of  a  purely  experimental  nature," 
etc.    (Page  151.) 

**The  fact  that  the  molecule  consists  of  one 
atom,  in  tbe  case  of  onl v  a  few  elements,  where 
the  atomic  and  molecular  weights  are  identical 
with  each  other,  such  not  being  the  case  for 
all  the  elements,  this  occasions  only  passing 
doubts,"  etc.  *  (Page  IfiS ) 

'*  Suppose  that  we  believe,  not  only  as  has 
been  emphasixed  in  accordance  with  experience 
thus  far,  that  the  mutual  saturation  capacity 
is  almost  unlimited;  but  also,  inasmuch  as  aU 
ponderable  matter  attracta  other  matter  mu^ 
tually.  without  regard  to  its  properties,  so  let 
us  regard  every  two  lines  of  force,  called  va- 


lences (from  different  atoms),  under  suitable 
drcumstanote.  as  showing  only  mutual  action, 
irrespective  of  whichever  atoms  they  radiate 


from;  then  It  is  very  probable  that  the  intensi- 
ty of  this  action  from  its  natorei,"  etc.  (Page 
241.) 

These  specimens,  taken  almost  at  random, 
show  in  what  measure  Dr.  Palmer  has  suc- 
ceeded in  his  attempt  '*to  make  the  sound 
German  speak  good  EngUsh."  They  are  al- 
most worthy  of  a  place  beside  the  illustrations 
of  **  School  BngUsh  "  which  have  recently  been 
offered  to  the  readers  of  the  N<iHon, 

Dr.  Nemst^s  meaning  can  undoubtedly  be  ex- 
tracted from  such  passages  as  the  above  by  a 
devoted  student;  in  other  instances,  however, 
the  reader  is  misled  by  greater  and  more  sub- 
tile obscurity,  or  actual  mistranslation.  For 
example:  **For  supposing  that  .  .  .  some 
genius  had  gained  an  insight  into  the  kinetic 
gas  theory,  a  little  before  the  gas  laws  them- 
selves were  discovered  (vor  ihrer  EhUdeekitng 
wtnigtUfiiM  Msum  Theil  vcrauagesehen  hdtU); 
even  then,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  way  .  .  . 
had  to  be  levelled  down  by  much  painstaking 
endeavor  {in  Wirkliehheit  aber  habma  viele 
mikhevoUe  Fortehuiigmi  den  Weg  ehnen  mfU- 
sen)."  (Page8fi6)  "  This  ratio  of  tbe  relative 
quantities  wi^  remain  constant,  even  if  one 
should  wait  seventeen  (I)  years  {dieses  Mengen- 
verhdllniss  hlieb  oanstant^  atieh  als  man  Tf 
Jahrewartete),"  (Page 876.)  Tbe  translator't 
exclamation-point  is  pertinent. 

We  add  a  few  further  illustrations  of  the  in- 
felicitous expressions  and  renderings  with 
which  the  book  abounds.  On  page  288  we  are 
told,  in  regard  to  certain  changes  of  affinity, 
that  **  we  usually  are  entirely  ignorant  as  to 
tbe  whereabouts  of  the  cause."  On  page  267, 
*'  This  [support]  sits  on  a  heavy  tripod  base." 
On  page  467  is  *'  a  pendulum  which  is  well 
muffled."  On  page  287  '*  we  go  into  a  region 
.  .  .  which  can  only  be  reached  by  a  leap 
of  a  bold  phantaay."  BeliMg  la  sometimes 
** casual,"  sometimee  ^'arbitrary,"  and  again 
^'aeleoted."  AuftrUh  becomea  **reaiatance"; 
pofs^ren  (traverse)  is  **pas8  by*';  maitge 
schliffen  la  *' smoothly  ground";  zu  Stande 
kommen^  "come  to  a  pause";  Sperrfliissig- 
keit,  "packing liquid";  wird  aberwohl  ntr- 
gends  Uichter  gemaeht,  "can  be  easily  made 
now  or  never."  We  find  also,  "  nature  laws," 
"knifepointfuls,"  "mass-points,"  "play  space'i 
(of  the  molecules),  and  "  heat-toning  "  ( Wdrme- 
tdnung)  for  thermal  valt\e. 

With  the  publisher  rests  the  real  responsi- 
bility  for  the  appearance  c^  so  unsatisfactory 
a  translation.  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated 
that,  for  the  sake  of  his  reputation,  and  for  the 
protection  of  the  public  on  whom  that  reputa- 
tion depends,  a  publisher  should  exercise  at 
least  as  much  caution  in  the  acceptance  of  a 
translation  as  of  an  original  work.  Tbe  trans- 
lation of  such  a  treatise  as  this  of  Nemst's  must 
of  coune  be  the  work  of  one  who  possesMa  a 
thorough  maatery  of  tkie  aubject;  but  the  ex- 
pert should  also  be  known  to  have  the  ability 
to  reproduce  tbe  matter  of  the  original  in  clear 
and  idiomatic  Engliah.  Thiaiaobvioua  enough, 
but  in  the  preaent  inatance  it  baa  been  atrange- 
ly  neglected. 


7^  Journal  of  Captain  William  FoU^  Jr,^ 
during  his  Captivity  in  the  French  and  In- 
dian War,  from  May,  1746,  to  August,  1747. 
Dodd,  Mead  &  Co,    1886.    8vo,  pp.  xxxvii, 
228.    Portraits  and  maps. 
A  coHTmnunoN  of  some  importance  has  been 
made  to  the  original  sources  of  our  colonial 
history  through  tbe  publication  of  this  journal, 
found  in  manuscript  by  Mr.  J.  F.  Hurst  in  a 
book  store  in  Geneva,  Switserland.    The  au- 
thor, Capt.  Wm.Pole,  Jr.,  of  Falmouth,  Maine, 


was  taken  priaoner  near  Annapolla  Royal  in 
Nova  Scotia,  which  waa  then  beleaguered  by  a 
large  force  of  French  and  Indians,  and  was 
carried  to  Quebec,  where  he  remained  for  two 
years  in  dote  confinement.  Considering  the 
circumstances  under  which  the  first  and  most 
interesting  half—giving  a  description  of  the 
incidents  of  the  march  through  the  Maine  wU- 
demeta— was  written,  it  is  a  remarkable  pro- 
duction, showing  considerable  literary  power 
as  well  as  quaint  humor.  The  moat  important 
paasage  for  historical  purposes  is  the  detailed 
account  of  the  fight  in  Tatmagouche  Bay,  by 
which  Capt.  David  Donahew  turned  back  a 
force  of  several  hundred  French  and  Indians 
who  were  on  their  way  to  relieve  Louisburg. 
This  exploit,  of  which  little  notice  has  been 
taken  by  the  historians,  certainly  haatened  the 
fall  of  Uiat  place,  if  it  was  not  the  occasion  of 
it.  Mr.  Parkman  refers  to  the  dismay  of  the 
governor  and  garrison  at  the  non  arrival  of 
M.  Marin's  troops,  but  does  not  mention  the 
cause  of  his  failure.  An  account  of  the  fight, 
however,  is  given  in  the  official  report  of  the 
governor,  printed  in  the  appendix  to  'A  Half- 
Century  of  Cunfiict.' 

The  latter  half  of  the  journal,  narrating  the 
incidents  of  the  writer's  prison  life,  is  largely 
taken  up  with  the  names  of  the  new  prisoners 
brought  in  and  of  those  who  died.  The  largest 
number  confined  at  one  time  was  296,  and  the 
deaths  were  77.  There  were  also  marriages 
and  births  among  the  captives,  and  occasion- 
ally the  monotony  of  their  prison-life  was 
broken  by  some  notable  incident,  as  the  fol- 
lowing entry  shows: 

"12^  this  Day  as  we  was  at  dinner  Came 
Into  our  Room  J*<>  Simeon  a  man  y'  have  been 
In  this  place  about  2  Tears  and  one  Susanah 
Boillison  y*  was  taken  with  Cap*  Salter,  these 
2  have  desiered  m'  Norton  to  marrey  them 
Severel  times,  But  having  no  permlasion  from 
y*  General,  he  always  Refused  y*  therefore 
they  came  and  Stood  in  y*  middle  of  y*  Room 
hand  in  hand  before  y*  minister  as  he  Sat  at 
dinner  and  Declar"  they  took  Each  other  as 
man  and  wife  In  y*  Preeence  of  God  and  us 
witneses  after  which  they  had  a  Certificate 
drawn  and  we  all  Sign*  it  Viz  12  y«  minister 
on  y*  top  and  all  y*  R«st  of  us  under  him,  this 
was  y*  first  time  I  Ever  Saw  y*  like  Encou- 
ragement and  permission  Given,  for  whore- 
ing." 

There  are  numerous  notes,  explanatory  of 
names  of  persons  and  places,  as  well  as  an  his- 
torical introduction  by  Mr.  V.  H.  Paltsits. 
We  have  detected  a  slight  error  in  his  account 
of  Gov.  Mascarene.  The  commander  of  his 
regiment,  raised  not "  for  service  in  the  West 
Indies,"  but  for  the  expedition  against  Port 
Royal,  was  not  0>1.  Wanton,  but  CoL  Sha- 
drach  Walton  of  New  Hampshire.  Acc<nnpa- 
nying  the  volume  is  an  admirable  reproduction 
of  the  manuscript  map  in  the  Lenox  Library, 
made  in  1749  at  Gov.  Shirley's  request,  by  the 
surveyor  Charles  Morris,  "of  the  northern 
English  Colonies,  together  with  the  French 
neighboring  Settlements."  There  are  also  a 
route-map,  plans,  facsimiles  and  portraits,  and 
an  excellent  index.  Of  the  beauty  of  the  mo- 
chanical  execution  of  this  product  of  the  De 
Vinne  Press  it  is  hard  to  speak  in  too  high 
praiae. 

Pierres  Gravies  dee  Collectiona  Marlborough 

et  d'Orl^ans,  etc ,  r^uniee  et  r^Mit^es  avec 

un  texte  nouveau  par  Salomon   Reinach. 

Paris:  Firmin-Didot  et  Cie.  1896. 

This  is  the  fourth  volume  of  the  now  famous 

"  Biblioth6que  des  Monuments  Figurds  Greos 

et   Remains."     The  archaeological   world   is 

deeply  indebted  to  M.  Reinach  for  his  careful 

repnbUcation  and  re6diting  of  aU  the  volumes 


404= 


Tlie    IN'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 2 


in  this  series,  and  the  latest  especially  will  be 
a  boon  to  a  rapidly  increasing  audience.  It 
surprises  us  to  find  that  M.  Reinach  has  been 
able  to  cram  so  much  into  so  small  a  space,  and 
to  fix  a  price  that  puts  the  volume  within  the 
reach  of  most  students  who  are  mterested  in 
the  subjcict.  The  old  folio  volumes  were  out 
of  print,  and  were  for  the  most  part^inaccessi- 
ble  to  students  in  America.  Besides  bhst,  the 
accompanying  texts  were  mostly  unscientific 
and  antiquated,  and  could  be  used  with  safety 
only  by  those  who  knew  well  the  ground  they 
were  treading.  All  this  has  been  materially 
changed,  thanks  to  the  tireless  work  of  M. 
Reinach,  who  has  compressed  the  thirteen  vol- 
umes (mostly  folio)  into  the  compass  of  one 
large  octavo  volume  consisting  of  xv  and  195 
pages  and  137  plates,  while  the  cost  is  only 
thirty  francs. 

The  reduction  in  the  size  of  the  old  plates 
has  not  impaired  the  value  of  the  original  en- 
gravings for  purposes  of  study  and  comparison. 
M .  Reinach  has  really  written  a  new  text  to 
these  old  plates;  he  has  eliminated  the  stuff 
and  padding  (or,  in  other  words,  the  greater 
part)  of  the  original  texts,  and  has  cited  the 
literature  relating  to  individual  gems.  In- 
deed, the  ld5  pages  of  this  volume  are  of  far 
more  value  than  the  entire  texts  of  the  origi- 
nal thirteen  volumes.  We  can  ^o  even  far- 
ther and  assert  that  the  original  volumes  are 
now  relegated  to  oblivion,  because  completely 
superseded  by  this  modest  publication. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  that  can  be  said,  we 
must  warn  the  student  that  it  is  not  safe  to 
make  unquestioning  use  of  these  plates,  in  which 
a  strong  element  of  caricature,  untrustworthi- 
ness,  and  misrepresentation  is  always  present. 
Methods  of  study  and  teaching  have  changed 
since  the  olden  days  of  unquestioning  faith 
when  these  plates  were  regarded  as  real  boons. 
Nowadays  true  archeeological  research  must 
needs  be  done  in  the  presence  of  the  originals 
or  of  casts  from  the  originals ;  lacking  which, 
photographs  from  the  casts  of  gems  give  us 
the  only  other  safe  means  of  studying  art.  All 
engravings  and  mere  outlines  involve  error  and 
misrepresentation,  involve  a  loss  of  details,  of 
tyx>e,  and  an  obscuring  of  the  motive  subject. 

The  plates  of  this  volume  need  further  sift- 
ing and  elimination,  and,  in  spite  of  the  debt 
we  owe  to  M.  Reinach,  we  see  clearly  that  the 
definitive  publication  of  antique  gems  has  not 
yet  been  made.  It  is  a  fascinating  subject 
that  calls  aloud  for  a  devoted  worker. 


The  Number  Concept ;  Its  Origin  and  Develop- 
ment. By  Levi  Leonard  Conant.  Macmil- 
lan.  1896. 
This  volume  is  made  up  of  tables  of  the  nume- 
rals of  a  great  many  (perhaps  5(X))  different 
languages,  with  a  slight  connective  commen- 
tary, drawing  attention  to  the  signification  and 
composition  of  the  words.  The  shortcomings 
of  the  work  are  numerous  and  regrettable, 
though  by  no  means  fatal;  its  merits  are  few 
and  simple,  but  considerable. 

The  title  is  a  misnomer,  and  the  author  shows 
that  his  own  number- concept  is  in  a  low  stage 
of  development.  Numerals  are  not  themselves 
concepts  at  all,  nor  do  they  signify  concepts. 
They  are  simply  a  scale  of  vocables,  which  we 
use  very  much  as  we  use  a  foot  rule.  We  ap- 
ply them  to  a  multitude,  and  mark  how  far  on 
the  scale  that  multitude  will  go.  In  explaining 
this,  we  explain  what  the  number. concept  real- 
ly Is:  it  is  the  iutdllgent  txineeptioti  of  the  pur- 
pose and  methofl  of  the  ftystem  of  numerals. 
It  is  entirely  utmeoesaary  th^t  thia  should,  in 
tbe  form  qI  a  oopce|J(t^  or  luteUwtual  product, 


be  in  the  minds  of  those  who  use  numerals.  It 
is  sufficient  that  they  should  know  by  experi- 
ence  that  counting  is  somehow  useful,  that  it 
aids  bargaining,  etc.,  and  that  they  should  be 
habituated  to  the  use  of  a  series  of  words  in 
counting..  The  continual  use  of  the  word 
"  concept,''  instead  of  speaking  of  "  words  "  or 
**  terms"  and  their  ** significations,*"  is  a  Ger^ 
man  way  of  speaking,  very  inferior,  both  in 
logical  accuracy  and  in  perspicuity,  to  our 
English  idiom.  At  any  rate,  the  real  subject 
of  this  book  is  numerals  and  their  modes  of 
formation. 

Very  little  is  said  of  the  number- concept 
(which  is  really  of  very  late  development),  nor 
of  the  idea  which  the  tribes  mentioned  may 
entertain  in  regard  to  number  in  general;  and 
what  little  is  said  is  not  worthy  of  criticism. 
Not  only  does  the  author  fail  to  discriminate 
the  number-concept  from  the  use  of  numerals, 
but  he  also  falls  into  a  confusion  of  thought 
which  must  greatly  embarrass  his  mathematical 
pedagogy,  namely,  a  confusion  between  num- 
ber, in  the  sense  of  the  result  of  counting,  and 
multitude.  He  tells  us  that  all  tribes  **show 
some  familiarity  with  the  number-concept.'" 
Tet  he  mentions  Bolivian  tribes  which  are  said 
to  have  no  numerals  whatever.  Still,  he  says 
they  show  **  a  conception  "*  of  the  difference  be- 
tween one  and  many.  In  another  place,  he 
says  that  the  **  number  concept"  of  ordinary 
people  is  imperfect,  in  that  they  have  little 
sense  of  the  different  degrees  of  multitudinous- 
ness  of  high  numbers.  On  the  contrary,  this 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  accuracy  of  their 
*•  number  concept,"  or  of  their  power  of  apply- 
ing numerals  to  the  purpose  for  which  they 
were  invented.  It  is  true  that  to  the  mind 
trained  in  certain  branches  of  applied  mathe- 
matics the  word  *  trillion  "  carries  associations 
of  rigid  statistical  uniformity  which  the  word 
*'  miUion  "  lacks.  Such  a  mind  may  be  said 
to  attach  different  conceptions  to  the  two 
words;  and  the  distinction  is  useful  to  such  a 
mind.  But  this  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  use 
of  numbers  as  numbers.  The  person  consid- 
ered will  put  all  that  out  of  his  mind  when  he 
has  any  definite  numbers  to  deal  with,  and  will 
perform  his  arithmetical  calculations  jn«t  like 
anybody  else.  A  system  of  numerals  is  an  ap- 
paratus for  counting.  Those  numerous  tribes 
which  have  names  only  for  one^  tv>o^  and  three^ 
which  express  four  by  two  tvoo^  five  by  tvoo 
and  three^  etc.,  evidently  did  not  count  at  the 
time  their  language  was  formed,  and  probably 
do  not  count  now.  They,  like  all  men,  recog- 
nize pairs  and  triplets  by  their  configurations, 
fours  ae  pa1r»  of  pairF,  etc.  The  so-called  nu- 
merals of  Bucb  tribes  artf,  pro|>ertj  speakings 
not  numeraJjs  at  aLL  When  a  tribe  baa  a  au- 
meral  Hystem  ha»ed  upon  yjti«i  len,  or  twenty^ 
the  evidence  is  that  they  possess  tb&  art  of 
counting.  Tbej  are  quite  prepared  to  count 
indefinitely  as  soon  aa  they  can  count  at  all, 
provided  tbay  have  the  pow&r^  poaj»«s«ed  by 
most  sBVBgesj  of  un<:ox]&oioii&]j  coining  a  name 
as  EEoon  B£  they  need  it.  The  limits  of  tbeir 
numeral  words  mark  the  limits  of  their  need 
of  iueb  ward^,. 

From  a  philologioal  poikt  of  view^  the  exe- 
cution of  tbe  book  \&  ilovenly.  The  author 
copies  the  various  transcriptions  of  the  writ- 
ing!! from  which  he  has  compiled  the  lifitSr 
without  explauatioo,  and  omitting  all  dia- 
critical marks.  We  do  not  know  whether  c 
is  to  be  pronounced  k  or  a  A  or  tsh  or  th  or  dh, 
whether  ^  represents  the  Qerman  guttural  cJ% 
or  the  velar  k^  whether  x  stands  for  k»^  for 
fc,  or  for  the  Arabic  ghain^  whether  j  has  the 
English,  French^  German  or  SpanlBh  sound, 
etc.  When  we  remember  that  the  English  word 


/oos,  pronounced  by  a  Cherokee,  and  trans- 
literated according  to  a  recognized  system, 
but  with  the  diacritical  marks  removed,  ap- 
pears as  kwagxti^  we  see  that,  for  the  purposes 
of  comparison  of  languages,  this  book  pre. 
sents  nothing  but  an  imperfect  list  of  refer- 
ences. There  is  little  notice  of  Semitic  nume- 
rals, none  of  the  Egyptian,  and  scarcely  any 
of  the  Babylonian.  There  is  no  mention  of 
the  so-called  Chaldean  names  for  the  Arabic 
figures  found  in  Latin  twelfth* century  works. 
There  is  no  classification  by  races ;  but  North 
American  and  African  languages,  the  furthest 
remote  from  one  another  in  their  spirit  of 
any  of  the  tongues  of  men,  are  shovelled  in 
together.  Of  many  minor  faults  we  take  no 
notice. 

The  merits  of  the  work  are  that  it  exhibits 
all  the  modes  of  formation  of  numerals,  that 
it  shows  the  universality  of  the  bases  5, 10,  20, 
and  the  non-existence  of  any  true  binary 
scale  or  any  use  of  6  or  11  as  a  base,  that  it 
affords  evidence  that  many  tribes  do  not 
count,  and  consequently  have  no  proper  nume- 
rical system,  and  that  there  are  the  greatest 
differences  in  tbe  arithmetical  capacity  of 
races  equally  barbarous. 


Hunting  and  Fishing  in  Florida^  including  a 

Key  to  the  Water  Birds,  etc.    By  Charles  B. 

Cory.    Boston:    Published  by  the   Author. 

1896.  8m.  4to,  pp.  802. 
Flobida  is  so  peculiar  in  its  geographical  po- 
sition and  climatio  conditions  that  it  may  be 
said  to  have  a  fauna  and  flora  of  its  own. 
Naturalists  have  only  gradually  waked  up  to 
this  fact,  with  the  result  that  during  the  past 
twenty-five  years  almost  every  writer  of  any 
scientific  pretensions  who  has  studied  the  sub- 
ject  has  had  to  describe  some  new  gpecies  or 
subspecies.  A  formal  systematic  treatise  on 
the  land  vertebrates,  for  example,  would  re- 
fiect  an  extraordinary  assemblage  of  nearctic 
and  neotropical  characteristicti,  with  a  fades 
on  the  whole  different  from  either.  Florida, 
in  fine,  is  almost  as  much  Antillean  as  Nortii 
American.  Mr.  Cory  in  this  work  first  for- 
mally distinguishes  the  peninsular  cougar,  re- 
habilitates Rafinesque's  wildcat,  and  adopts 
the  particular  subspecies  of  various  recent 
specialists  among  the  rodents  and  Insectivores. 
The  general  trend  of  variation  among  both 
birds  and  mammals  is  toward  darker  colora- 
tion and  smaller  size,  though  in  the  latter  re- 
spect peripheral  parts,  such  as  the  beaks  and 
feet  of  birds,  may  not  be  proportionately  re- 
duced, but  rather  the  reverse.  The  Florida 
rf d  bat,  for  example^  may  be  distinguished  u 
^-1  talaphu  borealig  peninvulari^  and  we  doubt 
not  that  tbe  small  deer  of  the  peniufQla  it 
equally  entitled  to  recognition  as  Cariaeu^  {cv 
Datnelaphu*]  fratercutvjf. 

Tbe  birds  ha  to  been  subjected  to  such  seardi- 
log  scrutiny  of  late  ye^rs  that  perhaps  no  oe» 
forme  remain  to  be  discovered,  excepting 
eiftrajs  froin  the  insular  offing.  The  latter 
half  of  tbe  present  work  is  devoted  to  a  *yi- 
tematic  treatise  upon  the  waders  and  swim^ 
mers.  Mr.  Cory  is  nothing  if  not  orthodox  la 
nomeuclature;  he  lays  Hrm  hold  of  tbe  horns 
of  tbe  A,  0.  U,  altar,  observes  the  code  pune- 
tiliouslj,  and  would  as  soon  be  01ft  of  the  waiU 
as  out  of  the  fashion  of  a  "  Key  *'  to  the  sp?t^w« 
he  describes.  The  bird&  are  also  vejry  fullj 
i litis tratt^d  by  means  of  pr^xe^^  plates,  Tbew 
portraitfl  are  as  a  nije  elegant  and  effeetlTe; 
but  they  vary  in  th^e  r^pecta  aeoordlng  i& 
the  better  or  worue  t&xidarm j  of  the  partic^ikr 
specimens  which  were  shot  wfth  ih«»  i«UHi& 
The  t«xt  in  each  oa«e  Is  «  t^rm^  diAfaa4i^ 


May  21,  1896] 


Tlie    Nation. 


405 


which  emphasizes  differential  characters  in 
thick  type,  with  brief  notes  on  habitats,  habits, 
and  the  like. 

Aside  from  this,  and  /rom  the  mammalian 
chapter,  as  well  as  from  a  similar  one  on  the 
snakes  of  Florida,  the  other  half  of  the  book 
is  of  the  oating  class,  in  the  nature  of  personal 
narrative  of  hnntinn:  and  fishing ;  but  it  also, 
includes  a  considerable  account  of  the  Semi, 
nole  Indians.  The  author  is  a  keen  sportsman 
as  well  as  a  good  naturalist,  and  some  of  these 
sketches,  such  as  that  on  tarpon- fishing,  make 
▼ery  attractive  reading.  One  good  point  is 
scored  fan  discriminating  clearly  between  the 
crocodile  and  alligator ;  and  in  this  respect  we 
may  recall  the  fact  that  it  is  not  many  years 
since  it  was  declared  that  there  were  no  croco- 
diles in  Florida,  because  there  could  not  be 
any— the  AlligatoridcB  being  an  American, 
and  the  Croeodilida  an  old-world,  type  of 
emydosaurians.  This  part  of  the  work  is  as 
fuUy  illustrated  as  the  ornithological  portion, 
chiefly  with  hunting  scenes,  pictures  of  large 
game  killed,  and  portraits  of  Indians.    The 


book  is  a  handsome  one  in  all  its  appoint- 
ments, and  will  fully  sustain  the  author's  re- 
putation for  readability,  reliability,  and  good 
sense.  At  least  one  of  his  previous  works  is 
not  less  magnificent  than  the  great  Audubon 
folios  themselves;  and  Mr.  Cory  is  one  of 
the  singularly  fortunate  naturalists  whose  pri. 
vate  means  are  adequate  to  any  desired  grati- 
fication of  luxurious  tastes. 

BOOKS  OF  THE  WEEK. 

▲meriean  Oratioiu:  Stodlet  la  American  Political  Hla- 
tonr.   Patnams.    tl.SS. 

Arnold,  Matthew.  Eeeayi  In  Crltldam.  Boston:  AUyn 
ft  Bacon.   8O0. 

AavaMln  and  Nloolette.  Boston :  Copeland  ft  Day.  70c. 

Bailey.  Alice  W.   Mark  Heff ran.    Harpera.    91. 99. 

BarrAre,  Albert.  A  Dictionary  of  French  and  EngKih 
Military  Terms.  Second  Part.  French- English.  Lon- 
don: Bachette;  Boston:  T.  H.  Castor  ft  Co. 

Blodgett,  Mrs.  Mabel  F.  Fairy  Tales.  Boston:  Lamson, 
Wolffe  ft  Co. 

Book  Sales  of  1805.   London:  P.  Cockram. 

Brewster.  W.  T.  Studies  In  Struotore  and  Style.  Mac 
mlUan.   91. 10. 

Byars,  W.  V.  The  Olory  of  the  Oardeo,  and  Other 
Odes,  Bonnets,  and  Ballads.  Second  Series.  The  Au- 
thor. 

Clinton.  H.L.    Extraordinary  Cases.    Harpers.   92.00.' 

Cody,  Sherwln.  In  the  Heart  of  the  Hlus.  London: 
Dent;  New  York:  MacmUlan.    91.90. 

Conant,C.  A.  A  History  of  Modem  Banks  of  Issue. 
Patnams.   98. 


AUr|^l«^ 


CxtfK.  Mrit  ETeraftl.     BlJ   |i"r''r    .[f\-;  .<.  ] 

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EMiit,  a«Drff«,    i^iL&A  Msrner.    MAypurd,  Morrill  A  i'ci. 

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Ti  ti  I A :  J .  b .  ti  p  1  >r  u  kH  Ki  I  Vq^    93. 
Irving.  W.    T*l4»  ot  n  TmrvLler.     Maroard,  HcrrJU  A 

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,t  Wimnrnt,.    91, 1*5. 
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E<  isiii'rr,  Pr^Tf    Ih  A     Hmn^b«'«V  1^  Uln  Kkirbar«  sd*! 

I  i4i  i  •  LL&  riJ  a  CI  LJ  il  a  A  i  ■«  b .     ticnn  frm :  IH  Q  Q  4t  d*.    fB, 
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8  "iKwlL-k,  Jsm>  M,    HouKv  from  tin-  fJn^ult.    Q.  H.  Rk'h- 

8  <'U'tj  of  MuTflowpr  PMio<»nd*nUi.     First  V«*sr£look. 

Srw  York.  J.  B.  ^itt^ku^ 
SuiiUr  Lrti»tt,  I'rtif .  K.  C.  de.   Cupp^tf '■  Le.  Pster.  IkHtoii; 

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T...i«'  r.  W.  W.     Cwkf^iuie  Jfi  Jjiiij^  Iilnnil!  Jobsi  Bllnt's 

I  tr-s  i  rulhin  truerpreter.    Fr«iii  (n  P,  Itsr^r.    |2. 
Wtiih  hvrikclii,  .1    T.    A   tiaii   Ir'enay.    Boston :   Lajiiitrjii, 


HENRY  HOLT  4  CO..  N.  Y.. 

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The    Nation. 


NEW  YORK,   THURSDAY,  MAY  i8,   180«. 

The  Week. 

The  reaulta  of  the  Democratic  State 
coDYentioDs  held  on  Wedneeday  of  last 
week  were  rather  queer.  The  Iowa  De- 
mocrats went  for  the  free  coinage  of  direr 
hj  about  two  to  one.  Those  of  South  Da- 
kota, an  adjoining  ^State,  went  against  it 
hj  about  the  same  majority.  On  the  At- 
lantic seaboard  two  conventions  were  held. 
That  of  South  Carolina  went  for  free 
coinage  and  that  of  New  Hampshire 
against  it.  The  battle  in  all  four  States 
was  on  this  question  exclusively.  En- 
dorsement of  the  Cleveland  Administra- 
tion or  condemnation  of  it  turned  on  the 
silver  question.  Seventeen  States  have 
now  held  conventions  and  have  elected 
338  delegates,  of  whom  172  are  either  in- 
structed or  are  known  to  be  in  favor  of 
free  coinage,  and  166  against  it.  This 
majority  of  six  for  free  coinage  is  likely 
to  be  increased  and  to  become  decisive, 
*  unless  their  opponents  show  plainly  that 
they  do  not  intend  to  be  bound  by  such  a 
decision.  If  they  make  it  clearly  under- 
stood that  they  cannot  be  drawn  or  driven 
into  the  policy  of  repudiation,  and  that 
the  money  needed  for  legitimate  campaign 
expenses  cannot  be  obtained,  they  may  be 
able  to  prevent  the  adoption  of  such  a 
policy;  but  without  some  determined  ac- 
tion of  this  kind  the  Chicago  convention 
will  run  upon  a  fatal  rock.  The  party  is 
worm-eaten  by  Populism.  Tillman,  Alt- 
geld,  Boies,  Morgan,  Harris,  and  Bryan  are 
Populists,  with  hardly  any  disguise.  If 
they  control  the  convention,  the  party 
may  as  well  haul  down  its  own  flag  and 
hoist  that  of  Weaver  and  Peffer  in  its 
place. 


The  organ  of  the  Manufacturers'  Club 
of  Philadelphia  says  that  a  convention  will 
meet  at  Detroit  this  week  whose  object 
will  be  to  *'  take  the  tariff  question  out  of 
poliUcs,"  and  that  it  will  be  asked  to  adopt 
as  a  leading  principle  that  *'  the  tariff  levied 
on  all  goods  from  any  foreign  country  into 
the  United  States  shall  in  all  cases  be  an 
amount  fully  equal  to  the  difference  in  the 
cost  of  producing  said  goods  in  any  foreign 
country  and  the  cost  of  producing  such 
goods  in  the  United  States."  The  Manu- 
facturer finds  several  objections  to  this 
plan,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  it  is  in 
accord  with  the  last  national  Republican 
platform,  which  says  that  '*on  all  imports 
coming  into  competition  with  the  products 
of  American  labor  there  should  be  levied 
duties  equal  to  the  difference  between 
wages  abroad  and  at  home."  The  only 
difference  between  the  platform  and  the 
Detroit  proposal  is  in  the  use  of  the  words 
*' cost  of  producing"  instead  of  *' wages." 
The  Mant^faeturer  points  out  the  fact,  of* 


ten  referred  to  by  the  wicked  free-traders, 
that  the  cost  of  producing  particular  goods 
varies  in  different  places  in  this  country, 
and  wants  to  know  whether  the  highest 
cost  shall  be  taken  as  the  basis  of  the  ta- 
riff, and,  if  so,  how  the  tariff-makers  are  to 
ascertain  which  manufacturer's  costs  are 
the  highest.  We  would  venture  to  add 
that  it  is  very  easy  for  a  manufacturer  to 
add  to  his  cost  of  production,  and  that  any 
one  dissatisfied  with  the  tariff  could  raise 
his  expenses  to  any  desired  figure.  Again, 
the  Manufacturer  wants  to  know  how  we 
could  learn  what  the  foreigner's  cost  of 
production  is.  *'  What  if  he  should  make 
a  false  report  ?  "  it  asks.  Of  course  our 
people  would  never  make  false  reports  on 
such  a  question,  not  even  our  suffering 
sugar-refiners.  How  would  you  prevent 
undervaluation  ?  it  asks.  Indeed,  the  ob- 
jections to  this  plan  are  too  numerous  to 
mention,  the  most  formidable  of  all  being 
the  fact  that  one  Congress  cannot  bind 
future  ones  to  let  the  tariff  question  alone. 
In  other  words,  the  freedom  of  the  people 
to  deal  with  this  question  from  time  to 
time  cannot  be  impaired.  We  have  had 
attempts  before  this  time  to  commit  Con- 
gress to  a  particular  tariff  policy,  and  their 
complete  failure,  as,  for  example,  in  1883, 
when  Congress  appointed  a  commission, 
composed  of  the  most  noted  protection- 
ists in  the  land,  to  frame  a  tariff,  and 
then  rejected  their  bill  before  It  was  three 
months  old. 


The  imbecility  of  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States  as  now  constituted  was 
shown  up  to  some  purpose  by  Senator 
Sherman  in  debate  last  week.  Mr.  Sher- 
man has  been  himself  s  glaring  illustra- 
tion of  this  during  a  large  part  of  the 
present  session,  but  that  fact  detracts  no- 
thing from  his  picture  of  the  general  situa- 
tion. The  subject  under  discussion  was 
an  amendment  to  the  fortification  bill 
offered  by  Senator  GK>rman,  providing  for 
the  issue  of  certificates  of  indebtedness  to 
run  three  years  and  drawing  3  per  cent, 
interest,  to  meet  the  deficiencies  of  reve- 
nue caused  by  this  and  other  appropria- 
tions of  the  present  Congress.  Mr.  Sher- 
man objected  to  an  increase  of  the  public 
debt  in  time  of  peace,  and  insisted  that  it 
was  the  duty  of  Congress  to  vote  addi- 
tional taxes  to  meet  the  additional  expen- 
ditures. He  referred  to  the  Dingley  bill 
that  had  passed  the  House  and  had  been 
killed  in  the  Senate  by  the  substitution  of 
a  free-silver  amendment  The  Dingley 
bill,  he  said,  did  not  meet  his  entire  ap- 
proval. It  did  not  go  far  enough.  If  it 
had  passed,  there  would  probably  still  be  a 
deficiency.  He  would  vote  for  a  tax  on 
tea  or  on  coffee  or  on  anything  to  get  the 
Government  out  of  the  mire  in  which  it 
was  embedded.  He  would  **  take  the  last 
shirt  off  the  backs  of  the  people  of  the 
United    Stotes  rather  than    violate  the 


public  faith  of  the  (Government.'*  He  in- 
sisted that  the  Senate  should  not  increase 
appropriations  without  providing  the  mo- 
ney to  meet  them,  and  he  added  : 

**  When  appropriation  bills  come  to  us  from 
the  House  of  Representatives^  they  are  uni- 
formly increased  here,  and  large  additions  are 
made  to  them  in  many  details.  We  have  no 
rifrht  to  do  this.  We  have  no  ri^ht  to  impose 
obligations  on  the  people  of  the  United  States 
unless  we  also  impose  upon  them  the  burden 
of  taxation  so  as  to  meet  those  obligations.'* 

He  hoped  that  the  President  would  refuse 
to  spend  a  dollar  beyond  the  current  re- 
ceipts of  the  (Government.  If  he  were 
himself  President,  he  would  disregard  all 
appropriations  of  Congress  that  were  in 
excess  of  the  regular  income. 


There  is  a  difficulty  in  the  way  of  ap- 
plying this  remedy.  It  would  be  easy  for 
a  President  to  say :  "  I  have  no  money  to 
meet  this  appropriation.  The  Tressury  is 
empty ;  fill  it  and  I  will  pay  your  bills." 
But  such  is  not  the  case.  By  reason  of 
a  law  passed  while  Mr.  Sherman  was 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  and  at  his  in- 
stance, the  greenbacks  which  have  been 
redeemed  are  considered,  not  as  notes 
paid  and  fundi  officio^  but  as  (Govern- 
ment assets,  and  the  law  expressly  re- 
quires that  they  be  paid  out  again.  It 
does  not  prescribe  any  limit  of  time  with- 
in which  they  must  be  paid,  but  it  means 
obviously  that  they  cannot  be  hoarded 
and  kept  back  when  there  are  lawful  ap- 
propriations of  Congress  awaiting  pay- 
ment. There  is  now  more  than  $100,000,- 
000  of  greenbacks  in  the  Treasury  which 
have  been  redeemed  and  which  the  law 
says  shall  be  paid  out  again.  Mr.  Sher- 
man ought  to  have  gone  one  step  farther 
and  offered  a  bill  to  retire  and  cancel 
these  redeemed  notes  and  all  others  re- 
ceived in  the  Treasury  by  the  same  pro- 
cess. Such  a  measure  would  be  helpful 
in  many  ways.  Such  a  measure  would 
not  only  prevent  Congress  from  spending 
more  money  than  it  provides  taxes  for, 
but  it  would  uplift  public  and  private 
credit  by  giving  assurance  that  a  false 
system  of  finance  had  been  definitively 
abandoned. 


Editorially  the  Tribune  continues  to  be 
in  a  state  of  great  hilarity  over  the  anxie- 
ty of  business  men  to  know  what  kind  of 
a  President  the  Republicans  are  going  to 
elect.  The  joke  is  really  too  killing.  You 
dear  distressed  bankers  and  merchants 
and  investors,  it  expostulates  with  shak- 
ing sides,  don't  you  see  how  mirth-pro- 
voking you  are  T  But  its  news  columns 
sponge  out  every  word  of  its  editorial  page. 
It  has  to  report  '*crsxy  Populist  finance  " 
as  •*  likely  to  pass  in  the  Senate,"  has  to 
record  the  votes  of  twelve  Republican  Se- 
nators in  favor  of  a  bill  to  break  down  the 
only  law  which  now  stands  between  us  and 
a  50-oent  dollar,  and  to  print  the  passion- 


408 


Tlie    IN'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No,  1613 


ate  cry  of  Senator  Sherman,  thanking  Gkxl 
that  the  President  of  the  United  States, 
no  matter  what  Senate  or  House  might 
do,  would  veto  any  such  legislation.  How 
truly  diverting  it  is,  under  these  circum- 
stances, with  the  threats  of  such  repudi- 
ating measures  hanging  over  the  country, 
with  the  certainty  that  there  will  be  an 
enormous  crop  of  them  in  the  next  Con- 
gress— what  a  capital  joke  it  is  that  men 
should  want  some  assurance  that  the  next 
President  will  stand  as  firmly  against  the 
lunatics  as  the  present  one  does  !  Every 
day,  in  fact,  makes  it  more  and  more  ne- 
cessary that  the  next  President  should  be 
known  of  all  men  to  be  of  strong  convic- 
tions and  unflinching  courage  on  every 
financial  question ;  yet  every  day  makes 
it  more  and  more  certain  that  the  man 
whom  the  Republicans  are  **  sure  to  elect " 
has  neither  convictions  nor  courage. 
•*  Orszy  Populist  Finance  '* — but  no  word 
from  McKinley.  Repudiation  and  panic 
predicted  even  by  Lodge — but  McKinley 
nobly  dumb.  That  is  the  situation  which 
gives  such  exquisite  point  to  the  Tri- 
bune^e  quips. 


Some  people  are  wondering  at  the 
strange  fiagging  of  interest  in  Cuba  on 
the  part  of  Congress,  and  are  attributing 
it  to  unworthy  motives.  They  say  the 
whole  excitement  of  two  months  ago  was 
artificial  and  insincere,  a  mere  bit  of 
spread-eagleism,  and  ask,  if  Congressmen 
were  so  dead  in  earnest,  why  they  have 
not  kept  the  welkin  a-ringing.  But  the 
real  reason  for  the  sudden  chilling  of  en- 
thusiasm has  been  strangely  overlooked. 
The  Cuban  patriots  have  issued  bonds, 
have  asked  the  American  people  to  sub- 
scribe to  them  as  "  a  practical  manifesta- 
tion of  sympathy,"  but  have  committed 
the  enormous,  the  incredible  blunder  of 
making  these  bonds  payable  in  gold. 
This  shows  an  incomprehensible  blind- 
ness to  American  sensitiveness.  The 
American  people  is  furiously  determined 
to  have  the  best  money  in  the  world, 
glorious  as  the  fiag,  untarnished  as  the 
national  honor,  sacred,  miraculous,  para- 
disiacal money — ^but  it  is  not  gold.  We 
know  what  to  think  of  any  man  or  nation 
that  says  gold.  No  friend  of  the  people  or 
of  liberty  will  ever  utter  that  word.  The 
Cubans  should  have  made  their  bonds 
payable  in  the  mystic,  wonderful  McKin- 
ley money.  Their  choice  of  gold  bonds 
makes  all  honest  Americans  and  a  silver 
Congress  doubt  if  they  are  really  patriots 
at  all. 

The  Soraa  filibustering  case  was  de- 
cided at -Washington  on  Monday,  and  the 
decision  is  not  primarily  against  the  Cu- 
bans nor  in  favor  of  Spain.  It  is  simply 
an  interpretation  and  application  of  muni- 
cipal law—known  as  the  neutrality  laws. 
Those  laws  are  meant  for  the  protection 
of  our  own  government  and  people.  They 
do  not  relate,  by  direct  intent,  to  our  duty 
under  international  law,  but  are  meant  to 
prevent  PU^  citisetie,  or  aliens  uuder  our 


jurisdiction,  from  involving  us  in  war  with 
other  countries.  Such  acts  as  those  of 
which  the  captain  of  the  Horsa  was  con- 
fessedly  guilty  tend  inevitably  to  embroil 
us  in  war  if  we  permit  them,  and  it  is 
therefore  of  great  importance  that  our 
highest  court  has  declared  them  \\\pgB} 
and  punishable.  Otherwise,  the  p<^wer 
of  declaring  war  would  be  lodged,  not  in 
the  hands  of  President  and  Congress,  but 
in  those  of  filibusters.  The  principal  puiat 
of  the  decision  is  the  clear  definitioQ  of 
what  is  meant,  in  the  neutrality  lawEi,  by 
**a  military  expedition."  The  lower  courts 
have  held  confiicting  opinions,  but  now, 
of  course,  will  be  bound  by  the  definition 
of  the  Supreme  Court,  which  undoubted- 
ly would  cover  the  case  of  the  men  recent- 
ly tried  before  Judge  Brown  in  this  city 
and  acquitted. 


The  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  in 
the  sugar-bounty  cases,  while  it  doeB  not 
touch  the  question  of  the  constitution- 
ality of  bounties,  reverses  the  decii?ioD 
of  Mr.  Bowler,  the  Comptroller  of  the 
Treasury,  and  requires  the  payment  of  the 
money  appropriated  by  Congress.  The 
court  holds  that  if  Congress  has  made 
promises  and  induced  people  to  iticur 
expense  which  they  would  not  other- 
wise have  incurred,  and  has  then  ae~ 
tually  appropriated  the  money  to  m- 
demnify  the  parties,  the  payment  c&d^ 
not  be  stopped  by  an  administrative 
officer  on  the  ground  of  unconstitution- 
ality. The  Government  has  a  right  to 
make  good  a  loss  which  private  parties 
have  incurred  in  good  faith,  relying  on 
its  promises;  and  this  independently  of 
the  constitutionality  of  bounties.  This 
was  the  governing  consideration  of  the 
Congress  that  made  the  appropriation  in 
question — the  same  Congress  that  pasied 
the  Wilson  bill.  The  Government  often 
makes  appropriations  to  indemnify  indi- 
viduals who  have  done  or  suffered  acts 
in  reliance  on  its  good  faith,  although 
in  a  legal  point  of  view  the  payment  is 
equivalent  to  a  gratuity.  In  other  words, 
the  practice  of  equity  is  not  denied  to 
the  Government  by  the  Constitution* 
It  would  be  a  very  queer  sort  of  gov- 
ernment if  the  case  were  otherwise.  It 
would  be  a  very  odd  state  of  thinj^a  if 
an  inferior  officer  of  the  Treasury  could 
set  up  his  opinions  and  rulings  against 
the  deliberate  acts  of  Congress  and  the 
President.  Although  the  question  of  the 
constitutionality  of  bounties  per  Be  was 
not  decided,  the  drift  of  the  decision  is 
toward  the  affirmance  of  it — that  is,  to- 
ward affirming  the  power  of  Congress  to 
do  what  it  pleases  with  the  public  money. 
Apparently  the  remedy  for  profiigate^  or 
mistaken,  or  dishonest  appropriations  is 
not  in  the  courts,  but  in  the  people.  This 
view  is  not  in  conflict  with  other  decisions 
of  the  court  in  cases  where  State  legiH Ma- 
tures are  restrained  from  voting  bounties 
to  private  individuals  by  provisions  in  the 
State  constitutions. 


The  Supreme  Court  at  Washington  ren- 
dered a  decision  of  much  importaace  od 
May  19,  in  the  case  of  the  lUinois  Central 
RaiJroad,  Plaintiff  in  Error,  vs*  the  Stile 
of  IIHnois.  The  decisir>n  is  one  relating  to 
interstate  commt^rce,  and  it  denies  the 
right  of  a  State  to  detain  unneceasarilf, 
or  turn  out  of  it  course,  a  train  of  chib 
destined  to  another  State  as  part  of  a 
through  line.  Tho  bridge  of  the  tllinoit 
Central  across  the  Ohio  River  is  three  and 
a  half  mifes  north  and  east  of  the  CaLro 
station.  It  was  built  at  that  place  maDy 
years  ago,  the  nature  of  the  ground  desig- 
nating It  as  the  most  advantageous  for  the 
purpose.  The  through  trains  frooi  Chi- 
cago to  New  Orleans  stop  at  the  junction 
three  and  a  half  miles  from  Cairo,  andrus 
a  special  car  and  locomotive  to  that  city  for 
the  conveyance  of  passengers  and  bag^ 
gage.  The  city  sought  to  compel  the 
company  to  run  the  through  trains  to  the 
Cairo  s  tat  ion ,  which  would  require  an  un- 
necessary Jourctey  of  seven  miles,  and  the 
State  Supreme  Court  sustained  this  con- 
tention, under  a  taw  of  Illinois  which  says 
that  *^all  regular  passenger  trains  shall 
stop  a  sufficient  length  of  time  at  the  rait- 
road  stations  of  county  seats  to  r€fceive  and 
let  off  passengers  with  safety  *';  Cairo  being 
a  county  seat.  The  oounsel  for  the  coni- 
pany,  Judge  Ft^ntreaii,  submitted  a  very 
remarkable  brief  of  ninety *six  pages,  in 
which  the  whole  question  of  the  constitu- 
tional control  by  Congreis  of  commeroe 
'*  among  the  several  States  "was  argued, 
ile  maintained  that  this  power  was  neces- 
Bsrity  Bxclusive,  that  such  commerce  was 
indivisible,  that  the  railroad  in  question 
had  authority  from  Congress  and  the 
State  of  Illinois  to  form  a  continuous  tine 
of  communication  with  other  States,  and 
that  it  could  not  be  compelled,  under 
the  police  power  of  the  State,  to  turn 
aside  from  its  established  through  line  to 
run  to  a  county  seat  for  which  it  provided 
adequate  means  of  transportation  for  pas- 
sengers and  baggage.  All  these  con  ten* 
tions  were  sustained  by  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  in  an  opinion 
delivered  by  Justice  Gray.  The  full  opi- 
nion has  not  been  published.  There  was 
no  dissenting  opinion. 


Mr,  Lyman,  doubtlesii  at  Platt^s  instt- 
gation,  deceived  Gov.  Morton  into  believ- 
ing that  there  was  not  time  to  examine 
the  liquor  agents  competitively,  under  the 
Raines  bill,  and  that,  if  examined  at  alL| 
they  must  be  examined  simply  non-com- 
petitivety,  and  he  appointed  for  this  pur- 
pose,  out  of  his  own  head,  a  heterogeneous 
crowd  of  politicians — of  course,  like  all 
this  class,  moatly  ignorant  and  shiftless, 
and  often  diseolute.  This  was  done  in 
spite  of  the  constitutional  provision  that 
the  examinations  must  be  competitive, 
**  in  so  far  as  practicable.**  There  was  no 
reason  in  the  world  for  thinking  that  the 
examination  of  these  people  was  net  prac^ 
ticable,  The  non-competitive  ezamjn&tion 
was  simply  an  evasion  of  the  fujidaisttntaJ 
law,  at  which  Gov^  Morton  ought  ool  to 


May  28,  1896] 


Th.e   !N"atioii. 


409 


bsTe  connived.  But  the  Lyman  appoint- 
ees cannot  pass  even  the  non-competitive 
pass  examination.  Fourteen  out  of  the 
twenty-seven  were  rejected  on  Friday  at 
Albany,  for  simple  ignorance.  One  of 
them  was  a  brother  of  **Jake*'  Worth, 
the  Brooklyn  Boss,  and  one  was  E.  S. 
Mellen,  the  Brooklyn  auditor.  There  is 
an  auditor  for  you!  We  wonder  what  such 
a  man  was  to  audit.  None  of  these  re- 
jected fellows  can  present  themselves 
again  for  a  year.  So  no  time  at  all  has 
been  saved;  the  Governor,  Lyman,  and 
Piatt  have  brought  discredit  on  them- 
selves, and  the  true  character  of  the 
creatures  whom  they  were  trying  to  quar- 
ter on  the  public  treasury  has  been  re- 
vealed. 


The  main  value  of  such  occurrences 
lies,  after  all,  in  the  fact  that  they  slowly 
diffuse  through  the  barrooms,  gambling- 
houses,  and  other  haunts  of  vice  the  no- 
vel idea  that  public  offices  are  established 
for  the  benefit  of  the  people,  and  are  not, 
in  the  eye  of  the  law,  rewards  or  "  plums  ** 
for  working  **  Boys/*  or  for  ne*er-do-weels 
or  drunken  fellows  or  defaulters.  This 
idea  makes  slow  progress,  but  every  such 
examination  as  has  taken  place  at  Albany 
helps  to  spread  it.  The  Boys  curse  and 
fume,  and  want  to  be  ** patriotic"  and  go 
to  war  with  somebody,  but  they  will  gra- 
dually cease  to  look  on  the  public  service 
as  a  refuge  or  almshouse.  Some  time  ago 
a  superintendent  of  the  mint  in  San 
Francisco,  La  Grange  by  name,  proved 
so  inefficient  as  to  let  his  chief  subordi- 
nate pick  and  steal  without  dbcovery, 
and  had  himself  to  resign  in  consequence. 
Instead  of  turning  his  attention  to  some 
honest  business,  with  which  he  was  fa- 
miliar, on  the  Pacific  Coast,  he  started 
for  New  York,  and  on  his  arrival  here 
had  no  difficulty  in  getting  an  eminent 
mint  man,  Mr.  Leech,  to  recommend  him 
to  the  Mayor  as  a  Fire  Ck>mmi8sioner. 
For  what  ?  Because  he  was  familiar  with 
the  business  of  extinguishing  fires  7  Be- 
cause he  enjoyed  the  confidence  of  the 
fire-insurance  companies  ?  Because  he 
was  an  old  resident  of  the  city  and  fa- 
miliar with  its  wants?  Not  a  bit  of  it 
Simply  because  he  **  was  a  brave  soldier 
with  a  splendid  record. " 


Ecclesiastical  politics  has  had  little 
chance  to  catch  the  eye  of  the  public, 
fully  intent  as  that  eye  is  upon  the  world- 
ly article,  yet  the  various  church  conven- 
tions recently  in  session  have,  as  usual, 
shown  more  than  once  that  they  could 
teach  the  politicians  not  a  few  tricks  of 
their  own  trade.  The  Presbyterians  elect- 
ed their  Moderator  at  Saratoga  on  Thurs- 
day by  as  pretty  a  mixing  of  oil  and  water 
as  is  often  seen  in  gatherings  of  the  un- 
godly—«"  combine '•  of  the  sound  and 
the  unsound  in  the  faith  cutting  out  the 
prize  from  under  the  very  guns  of  the 
conservatives.  The  latter  are  dolorously 
predicting  a  reopening  of  the  Briggs  con- 
kPTwa^r   with  1^11  th9  renewal  of  grief 


which  that  implies ;  but  a  weary  public 
will  hope  for  better  things.  Out  in 
Cleveland  the  Methodist  balloting  for 
bishops  had  many  of  the  characteristics 
of  profane  nominating  conventions.  There 
were  dark  horses,  ** throwing"  of  votes, 
tantalizing  running  up  of  one  candidate 
within  sight  of  the  promised  land,  only  to 
drop  him  hard  on  the  next  ballot,  and  so 
forth.  The  action  of  this  Methodist  Con- 
ference on  the  subject  of  forbidden  amuse- 
ments was  instructive.  At  present  the 
discipline  forbids  card-playing,  dancing, 
theatre  going,  and  other  sins  of  the  kind. 
Several  city  ministers  admitted  that  these 
prohibitions  were  a  dead  letter,  and  tend- 
ed, so  far  as  they  were  known,  to  alienate 
young  people  from  the  church.  But  still, 
it  was  powerfully  argued,  we  cannot  af- 
ford to  let  down  our  standards,  or  to  ap- 
pear to;  and  even  if  we  cannot  enforce  the 
dbcipline,  do  not  let  us,  in  the  name  of 
consistency,  alter  it  an  iota.  This  view 
carried  the  day  by  a  large  majority,  and 
the  dead-letter  laws  remain  dead  but  in- 
violate. 


The  customary  return,  under  the  cor- 
rupt-practices act,  has  been  published  in 
Great  Britain,  showing  all  expenses  which 
were  incurred  in  the  Parliamentary  elec- 
tion of  1895,  and  the  exhibit  furnishes 
many  interesting  facts  for  American  con- 
sideration. In  the  first  place,  it  is  to  be 
noted  that  the  total  expenditure  falls 
more  than  a  third  short  of  the  maximum 
total  allowed  by  the  law.  There  were 
1,181  candidates,  and  the  law  permitted 
them  to  spend  £1,025,207.  They  actually 
spent  only  £617,996,  or  but  a  little  more 
than  three-fifths.  This  has  been  the  case 
in  nearly  or  quite  every  election  which  has 
been  held  during  the  twenty- four  years 
since  the  law  was  enacted,  though  pre- 
vious to  its  enactment  it  was  quite  gene- 
rally thought  that  the  maximum  had  been 
made  too  low.  The  average  expenditure 
was  about  £546  for  each  candidate,  or 
less  than  $2,700,  and  about  three  shillings 
and  eigl^t  pence,  or  66  cents,  for  each  vote 
polled.  Of  course,  the  total  of  expendi- 
tures for  individual  candidates  varies  ac- 
cording to  the  size  of  the  constituency. 
The  largest  amount  permitted  in  any  dis- 
trict does  not  exceed  16,000,  which  is  a 
mere  trifle  compared  with  what  is  spent  in 
many  American  districts.  Mr.  Lodge 
made  a  return  in  Massachusetts  after  the 
election  in  1892  in  which  he  admitted  an 
expenditure  of  $12,000.  In  only  four  of 
the  ten  American  laws  are  limits  placed  to 
expenditures — those  of  California,  Mis- 
souri, Minnesota,  and  Ohio—and  in  none 
of  these  States  is  the  law  enforced  with 
the  rigor  characteristic  of  Great  Britain. 


The  chief  item  of  expenditure  in  the 
British  returns  is  invariably  that  for  the 
printing  of  campaign  literature,  and  it  is 
an  interesting  fact  that,  with  few  excep- 
tions, the  candidate  spending  most  for  this 
purpose  succeeded  in  the  election.  The 
nmowt»  spent  ranged  from  $W  to  orer 


$2,500,  and  in  all  cases  were  returned  by 
items  under  the  requirements  of  the  law, 
the  expenditures  being  entirely  legitimate. 
The  British  voter  is  thus  subjected  to  a 
tremendous  '*  campaign  of  education,*' 
fully  equal  if  not  superior  to  that  of  our 
most  exciting  Presidential  elections.  Our 
principal  items  of  expenditure,  in  those 
States  in  which  returns  are  required,  are 
for  "flags,"  "banners,"  "torches," 
"  uniforms,"  "  bands,"  and  "  transparen- 
cies." All  these  uses  of  money  are  for- 
bidden under  the  British  act,  and  if  a 
candidate  were  to  return  $2,000  as  ex- 
pended for  "flags,"  as  a  Massachusetts 
candidate  did,  he  would  lose  his  seat. 
They  were  forbidden  in  England  because 
bribery  of  voters  was  disguised  beneath 
them,  and  there  is  little  doubt  that  they 
are  made  to  serve  a  like  purpose  here,  for 
the  $2,000  item  in  the  Massachusetts  re- 
turn was  part  of  a  total  expenditure  of 
$11,000  in  a  single  congressional  district. 
Moreover  they  are  not  in  the  least  "edu- 
cational." When  a  man  spends  more  to 
gain  a  seat  in  Congress  than  the  entire 
salary  of  the  office  for  its  term,  it  is  not 
unreasonable  to  suspect  that  he  concealed 
under  his  flag  item  some  expenditures 
which  he  would  not  care  to  make  public. 
Some  of  our  laws  are  nearly  as  strict  in 
their  other  requirements  as  the  British 
act,  but  none  of  them  is  enforced  to  the 
letter  as  that  act  is,  for  want  of  a  vigilant 
and  determined  public  sentiment  behind 
the  law. 


The  furious  obstruction  offered  by  the 
Irish  in  the  Commons  on  Thursday  night, 
when  the  agricultural-rating  bill  was  in 
committee,  may  have  been  due  to  a  desire 
to  placate  the  Liberals,  or  may  mean  no- 
thing more  than  the  force  of  old  habit  It 
is  to  be  noted,  however,  as  the  Irish  then 
found  out,  that  the  new  rules  of  the  House 
make  the  old  kind  of  open  instruction  in- 
creasingly difficult  if  not  impossible.  The 
thing  has  now  to  be  done  with  finer  art. 
One  must  have  the  resources  and  appear- 
ance of  burly  honesty  of  Sir  William  Har- 
court  to  be  successful  in  debating  and 
amending  a  measure  out  of  time,  in  a  way 
not  to  be  called  down  by  the  Speaker.  Mr. 
Lowther  himself,  now  Tory  Chairman  of 
Committee,  who  brought  the  rebellious 
Irishmen  to  book  on  Thursday,  is  an  adept 
in  the  art  of  ol>struction  within  the  rules, 
and  gave  some  fine  displays  of  it  in  the 
last  Parliament  when  the  home-rule  bill 
was  pending.  Mr.  Balfour,  however,  will 
be  able  to  invoke  closure  more  successful- 
ly than  Mr.  Gladstone  was — at  least  if 
Speaker  PeePs  ruling  is  adopted  by  Speak- 
er Gully.  The  former  held  that  closure 
could  but  rarely  and  dubiously  be  applied 
by  a  ministry  with  a  majority  of  only  40 
behind  it;  a  majority  of  150  is  entitled  to 
a  swifter  putting  of  the  main  question. 
Still,  even  a  majority  of  that  size  cannot 
"jam  "things  through  in  the  Commons, 
and  the  agricultural  bill  will  no  doubt  be 
a  much  longer  time  in  passing  than  the 
OoTeniment  aotidptto, 


4rlO 


Tlie    [N^atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1613 


PLATFORMS, 
Thebb  is  a  dispoeition  among  some  peo- 
ple to  minimize  the  importance  of  Mc- 
K]nley*8  silver  record,  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  the  platform  on  which  he  will  stand 
will  be  made  by  others.  He  seeks  to  con- 
firm this  impression  himself  by  declaring 
that  the  reason  he  does  not  speak  about 
the  currency  is  that  he  does  not  wish  to 
forestall  the  platform,  and  his  friends  give 
us  to  understand  he  will  be  bound  by  the 
platform.  We  dislike  to  dispel  pleasant 
illusions,  but  business  men  ought  to  un- 
derstand that  this  reliance  on  the  plat- 
form as  a  substitute  for  the  man,  or  as  a 
supplement  to  the  man,  has  no  founda- 
tion in  the  history  of  the  instrument 
which  passes  under  that  name.  The 
platform,  in  fact,  has  shared  the  fate  of 
the  whole  nominating  system.  It  has  be- 
come an  instrumentality  for  getting  votes, 
with  little  or  no  reference  to  the  real  af- 
fairs of  the  country.  It  does  not  any 
longer  foreshadow,  in  the  least,  the  fu- 
ture policy  of  the  party  adopting  it.  It 
has  sunk  into  the  rank  of  pure,  undiluted 
humbug.  Let  us  give  some  illustrations 
of  our  meaning. 

In  1872,  the  Republican  platform  de- 
nounced "repudiation  of  the  public  debt 
in  any  form  or  disguise  as  a  national 
crime.'*  When  Congress  met  (it  had  a 
large  Republican  majority  in  1874),  it 
passed  an  inflation  bill  indefinitely  post- 
poning a  return  to  specie  payments.  Pre- 
sident Grant  vetoed  it. 

In  1876,  the  Republican  platform  **  so- 
lemnly pledged  its  faith  to  make  provi- 
sion, at  the  earliest  practicable  period, 
for  the  redemption  of  the  United  States 
notes  in  coin,"  and  said  that  **  commer- 
cial prosperity,  public  morals,  and  na- 
tional credit*'  demanded  *'a  continuous 
and  steady  progress  to  specie  payments.** 

In  1878-79,  a  bill  to  repeal  the  resump- 
tion act  would  have  passed  both  houses 
of  Congress  if  President  Hayes  had  not 
made  known  that  he  would  veto  it. 

In  1888,  the  Republican  platform  **  fa- 
vored the  use  of  both  gold  and  silver  as 
money,*'  and  denounced  silver  demoneti- 
zation, but  nothing  more.  In  1890,  with- 
out the  least  warning,  the  Sherman  act, 
providing  for  the  purchase  of  $54,000,000 
worth  of  silver  bullion  a  year,  was  passed 
by  both  houses,  and  President  Harrison 
signed  it. 

In  the  same  year  the  Republicans  gave 
through  their  platform  **  uncompromis- 
ing** adherence  to  the  policy  of  protec- 
tion, and  said  it  must  be  maintained. 
But  they  proposed  to  reduce  the  revenue 
by  the  abolition  of  the  tobacco  tax,  the 
tax  on  spirits  used  in  the  arts,  and  import 
duties  on  articles  which  could  not  be  pro- 
duced at  home.  If  further  reduction  were 
neceesary,  they  suggested  the  abolition 
also  of  the  whole  internal  revenue.  In 
1890,  Congress  passed  the  McKinley  bill, 
without  any  notice,  the  provisions  of 
which  were  so  monstrous  that  in  1892  the 
whole  country  rose  agaioat  it  a^d  inflicted 
on  its  BUthcrs  a  cruihtng  defeat. 


In  1892,  the  Democratic  convention  de- 
nounced the  McKinley  bill  and  the  Sher- 
man silver  act,  and  adopted  a  '* straddle*' 
plank  regarding  gold  and  silver.  As  soon 
as  Congress  met,  it  went  to  work  to  pass  a 
seigniorage  bill,  which  President  Cleve- 
land vetoed,  and  to  prepare  a  free  coinage 
bill,  which  did  not  pass  because  it  was 
known  he  would  veto  it;  and  without  the 
smallest  notice  passed  a  rigid  income'tax 
bill,  aimed  at  people  earning  over  $4,000 
a  year.  All  remonstrances  were  treated 
with  contempt,  or  answered  with  the  sim- 
ple assertion  that  *'it  was  sure  to  pass.'* 
The  history  of  the  efforts  of  the  President 
to  get  the  Sherman  act  repealed,  the  panic, 
and  the  scorn  of  Congress  for  Wall  Street, 
in  which  the  members  were  freely  operat- 
ing, and  the  judgment  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  are  still  fresh  in  the  public  memory. 

It  will  be  seen  from  all  this  that  the 
platform  is  no  longer  a  political  pro- 
gramme which  either  party  intends  to 
follow.  It  is  a  manifesto  issued  for  the 
purpose  of  getting  votes  at  the  election, 
and,  after  the  election,  does  not  receive 
the  smallest  attention.  Another  illustra- 
tion of  the  uselessness  of  paying  any  at- 
tention to  it  was  furnished  by  the  Repub- 
lican party  in  this  State  last  year.  Its 
platform  might  have  been  drawn  by 
Mugwumps,  for  it  promised  nearly  every- 
thing they  demand,  but  the  policy  pur- 
sued by  the  Republican  Legislature  was 
almost  an  exact  copy  of  that  pursued  by 
the  Democratic  Legislature  under  Croker, 
of  which  this  very  platform  complained, 
more  particularly  in  the  matter  of  indif- 
ference to  intelligent  public  opinion. 

The  platform  on  which  McKinley  will 
be  nominated  will  probably  be  an  inge- 
nious attempt  to  deceive  both  the  friends 
of  gold  and  the  friends  nf  silver  as  to  the 
policy  to  be  pursued  by  the  coming  Ad- 
ministration. But  even  if  it  comes  out  in 
an  apparently  satisfactory  manner  for  the 
gold  standard,  we  warn  the  friends  of 
sound  money  against  supposing  that  it 
will  afford  any  guarantee  as  to  the  legisla- 
tion of  Congress.  It  will  not  receive  any 
notice  whatever  after  election.  It  will  be 
used  to  influence  votes  at  the  election,  and 
there  will  be  the  end  of  it.  If  we  had 
trusted  to  platforms  since  1870,  this  coun- 
try would  now  be  a  financial  chaos.  We 
have  been  saved  by  a  succession  of  Presi- 
dents of  strong  character  and  measurable 
financial  knowledge.  The  only  exception 
was  President  Harrison,  who  was  as  weak 
as  Sherman,  and,  like  him,  sought  salva- 
tion for  the  country  in  dodges. 

All  the  tendencies  of  American  politics 
eince  the  war  show  that  our  reliance  in 
future  must  be  substantially  the  same. 
Congress  and  the  Legislatures  are  going 
rapidly  down  hill,  and  are  likely  to  be 
worse  before  they  are  better.  They  are 
clearly  incompetent  to  govern  a  great 
commercial  country,  and  we  must  rely, 
until  some  change  occurs,  on  putting  vig- 
orous men  of  known  character  and  opi- 
nio as  tntbe  Freaideniial  chair,  not  to  le- 
gie  ate,  but  to  prevent  misohief.    A  move- 


ment has  been  made  to  do  away  with  the 
President  as  a  source  of  help,  and  it  is 
said  McKinley  is  in  it  himself,  by  insist- 
ing that  Congress  must  be  allowed  to  set- 
tle the  financial  question  itself,  and  that 
the  Presidential  veto  must  not  be  allowed 
to  prevent  the  success  of  its  schemes. 
Every  one  knows  what  this  means.  For 
such  a  programme  a  person  of  McKinley*f 
character  and  instruction  is  just  the  man, 
and  we  warn  business  men  to  look  out  for 
it  In  matters  of  finance,  until  the  silver 
and  paper  crazes  subside  and  national 
sanity  is  completely  restored,  the  Presi- 
dent must  be  our  main  reliance,  but  it 
must  be  a  President  whose  opinions  have 
always  been  on  the  side  of  rationality,  and 
with  whose  firmness  we  and  the  whole 
world  are  familiar.  Nothing  in  the  pre- 
sent canvass  is  more  ridiculous  than  the 
proposal  that  the  business  world  should 
accept,  in  lieu  of  the  candidate's  own  re- 
cord, *<  certificates "  of  soundness  from 
chance  politicians  and  **  bankers "  of 
whom  we  never  heard  before.  One  would 
suppose  the  Presidential  chair  was  a  but- 
ler's place,  and  that  anybody  would  do  for 
it  whom  Smith,  the  leather  man,  or  Jones, 
the  exchange  dealer,  said  was  a  good  man. 
To  be  President  of  the  United  States  a 
man  ought  to  be  as  well  known  as  Glad- 
stone, or  Bismarck,  or  Lincoln,  or  Seward. 
If  any  obscure  body  will  do,  why  do  not 
the  managers  advertise  and  sell  the  place 
to  the  person  who  promises  most,  as  the 
Pretorian  Guard  used  to  sell  the  imperial 
purple? 


TWO   HAILROAD    CASES. 

Tim  Supreme  Court  at  Washington  re- 
cently disposed  of  two  railroad  cases  ot 
great  importance,  tbe  first  involving  a  no- 
vel attempt  to  make  us©  of  the  powers  of 
tbe  Interstate  Commerce  Oommieelon  to 
balp  on  protection  ;  tbe  other  involving 
the  powers  of  the  CommjBsion  generally. 
In  1889  the  Interstate  Commerce  Com- 
mlsaioDi  of  its  own  motion  and  without 
any  heartDgf  made  an  order  providing, 
among  other  things,  that  all  imports 
shipped  from  abroad  to  any  point  in  tbe 
United  States  should  be  taken  '*on  the 
Id  land  tariff,**  Subeequently  the  Now 
York  Board  of  Trade  and  Traneportation 
complained  that  certain  railroad  com- 
panies were  violating  thie  order  in  the 
fact  that,  whereas  they  charged  the  reg^* 
lar  rates  on  property  delivered  to  them  at 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  other  ports 
for  transportation  to  Chicago  and  other 
inland  pointed  they  charged  much  lower 
ratee  if  fllmilar  property  came  to  them 
from  Europe  on  through  bilia  of  ladingt 
to  be  canied  first  by  steamships  and  then 
by  rail  Aa  a  matter  of  fact,  and  as  ap- 
pears from  tbe  opinions  of  the  judges, 
this  is  the  universal  custom  with  all  the 
great  railroads  in  the  country  ;  th«<  ooeaa 
rates  from  Liverpool  and  other  European 
porlsp  which  are  fixed  entirely  by  conipe- 
titioD,  govern  the  whole  queetkinr  »od 
every  American  railroad  taking  su^  Im- 


May  28,  1896] 


Th.e    N'atioii. 


411 


ports  has  to  traoBport  them  at  a  much 
lower  rate  acroee  this  continent  than  it 
needs  to  do  in  the  case  of  articles  of  do- 
mestic production.  The  railroad  that  does 
not  do  this  loses  the  business. 

The  order  consequently  began  to  have 
very  serious  results.  In  the  case  of  the 
Illinois  Central  it  deprived  that  company 
(the  Supreme  Court  says)  **  of  a  valuable 
part  of  its  traffic  (to  say  nothing  of  its  ne- 
cessary effect  in  increasing  the  charges  to 
be  finally  paid  by  the  consumers) ";  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  was  in  no  better 
plight,  while  it  appears  that  competent 
evidence  had  been  adduced  that,  if  the 
order  were  to  be  generally  enforced,  **  the 
result  would  be  that  it  would  effectually 
close  every  steamship  line  sailing  to  and 
from  Baltimore  and  Philadelphia."  The 
Texas  and  Pacific  Railway,  which  forwards 
imports  to  San  Francisco  via  New  Orleans, 
determined  to  contest  the  matter,  and,  af- 
ter a  long  fight,  it  has  won  a  complete 
victory.  The  case  is  reported  in  volume 
16  of  the  Supreme  Court  Reporter  No.  22 
(Texas  and  P.  Ry.  Co.  vs.  Interstate  Com- 
merce Commission). 

The  only  clauses  in  the  interstate-com- 
merce act  which  could  possibly  justify 
such  an  interference  with  the  business  of 
the  railroads  are  those  which  provide  that 
all  charges  must  be  '^reasonable  and  just'*; 
that  there  must  be  no  unjust  discrimina- 
tion in  the  case  of  similar  services  **  under 
substantially  similar  circumstances  and 
conditions  *' ;  that  there  shall  not  be  any 
'*  undue  or  unreasonable  preference  or  ad- 
vantage *'  in  any  case;  and  that  no  more 
shall  be  charged  **  under  substantially 
similar  circumstances  and  coiiditions*' 
for  a  shorter  than  for  a  longer  haul  over 
the  same  line  in  the  same  direction,  '*  the 
shorter  being  within  the  longer  distance." 
The  case  is  so  clear  that,  notwithstanding 
the  dissent  of  Judges  Harlan  and  Brown 
and  Chief- Justice  Fuller,  we  may  proba- 
bly consider  the  question  settled  for  ever; 
the  most  remarkable  thing  about  it  is  the 
way  that  the  tariff  was  dragged  into  it. 
In  fact,  it  looks  very  much  as  if  the  order 
had  been  promulgated  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  making  a  test  case  to  get  a  decision 
that  the  interstate-commerce  act  was  de 
signed  to  reinforce  the  tariff  and  help 
keep  out  foreign  manufactures. 

If  a  railroad  must  charge  the  same  on  an 
article  (imported  to  Chicago  from  Ger- 
many) between  New  York  and  Chicago  as 
it  does  on  every  article  of  domestic  manu- 
facture sent  from  New  York  to  Chiqago, 
the  cost  of  importation  being  by  so  much 
increased,  in  many  cases,  as  already  stated, 
the  result  would  be  a  virtual  prohibition 
of  the  import  This  was  the  object  of 
the  Commission.  If  it  costs  a  dollar  a 
yard  to  deliver  an  article  made  in  Germany 
to  the  purchaser  in  Chicago,  while  the 
same  article  costs  a  dollar  and  five  cents 
manufactured  in  New  York  or  in  Phila- 
delphia, it  is  clear  that  the  article  will  be 
imported  by  the  Chicago  consumer  from 
abroad ;  if  the  railroad  rate  on  the  im- 
ported article  can  be  made  prohibitive. 


then  Chicago  consumers  will  have  to  buy 
the  domestic  article.  This,  says  the  Com- 
mission, is  protection  reinforced  by  the 
interstate-commerce  act.  So  it  is,  with  a 
vengeance.  But  it  is  also  the  grossest 
discrimination  against  railroads  and  con- 
sumers, and  thus,  says  the  Supreme  Court, 
the  Commission  **  seems  to  create  the  very 
mischief  which  it  was  one  of  the  objects 
of  the  act  to  remedy."  Reinforcing  pro- 
tection it  declares  not  to  have  been  the 
object  of  the  act. 

The  other  case  (Cincinnati,  N.  O.  and 
T.  P.  Ry.  vs.  Interstate  Commerce  Com., 
22  Sup.  Ct  Reporter  No.  700)  is  chiefly 
important  because  it  lays  down  for  the 
first  time  the  principles  as  to  railroad 
rates  in  general  which  the  Supreme  C!k>urt 
holds  univertolly  applicable.  The  case 
was  one  of  unjust  discrimination.  It  ap- 
peared that  the  railroad  charged  more  for 
a  shorter  than  a  longer  haul  under  similar 
circumstances  and  conditions.  The  Su- 
preme Court,  in  upholding  the  decision 
of  the  Commission  that  this  was  improper, 
declared  that,  subject  to  the  restrictions 
in  the  act,  common  carriers  are  free,  as 
they  always  have  been,  *'  to  make  special 
contracts  looking  to  the  increase  of  their 
business,  to  classify  their  traffic,  to  adjust 
and  apportion  their  rates  so  as  to  meet 
the  necessities  of  commerce,  and  generally 
to  manage  their  important  interests  upon 
the  same  principles  which  are  regarded 
as  sound  and  adopted  in  other  trades  and 
pursuits." 

Taking  these  in  connection  with  the 
other  transportation  cases  which  have 
come  before  the  court  in  the  last  twenty 
years,  it  is  evident  that  we  have  in  the 
Commerce  Commission  a  body  clothed 
with  no  power  to  fix  rates  at  discretion, 
but  merely  a  semi-judicial  board  armed 
with  special  powers  to  prevent  injustice 
where  a  plain  case  is  made  out  by  the 
facts  proved.  Its  grotesque  attempt  to 
prohibit  foreign  commerce  for  the  sake 
of  protection,  under  the  guise  of  an  order 
prohibiting  discrimination,  has  come  to 
nothing,  just  as  all  previous  attempts  of 
every  State  commission  to  **run"  th» 
railroads  have  come  to  nothing.  This 
case  is  also  a  curious  illustration  of  the 
way  in  which,  through  the  action  of  the 
courts,  the  very  laws  framed  to  curtail 
liberty  often  prove  in  the  end  a  means  of 
strengthening  it.  The  interstate  -  com- 
merce act,  designed  by  many  if  not  most 
of  its  framers  to  stop  the  railroads  from 
managing  their  business  in  their  own  way, 
turns  out,  as  it  is  explained  by  the  oourts, 
to  be  a  weapon  which  the  railroads  can 
themselves  use  to  prevent  oppression  of 
the  whole  community  by  the  Commission. 


THE  INSPECTRIX, 

Of  the  whole  number  of  the  inspectors  of 
the  publip  schools  appointed  by  the  Mayor 
of  New  York,  under  the  new  law,  about  a 
fifth  are  women,  most  of  them  being  reap- 
pointments. Many  of  them  are  ladies 
well  known  in  public  charitable  and  phi- 


lanthropic work,  of  different  sorts.  They 
serve  without  pay,  hold  office  for  five 
years,  and  their  duties  are  to  examine 
every  school  at  least  once  a  quarter,  with 
regard  to  attendance,  teaching,  discipline, 
and  also  **  cleanliness,  safety,  warming, 
ventilation,  and  comfort,"  and  to  report 
to  the  Board  of  Education  any  matter  re- 
quiring attention. 

This  employment  of  ladies  in  the  schools 
(and  by  ladies  we  mean  not  women  con- 
spicuous in  fashionable  life,  but  women 
who  have  been  brought  up  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  intelligence  and  good  breeding, 
who  live  in  houses  marked  by  cleanliness, 
order,  and  taste,  whose  associations  are 
with  people  of  the  same  sort,  who  show 
in  the  small  field  of  their  own  households 
the  capacity  for  good  management  of  per- 
sons and  property  which  is  the  key  to  all 
successful  government),  is  of  very  recent 
growth,  but  we  believe  it  has  been,  so  far 
as  tried,  eminently  successful.  The  form- 
er trustees  did  not  like  it  for  two  reasons: 
first,  because  no  man  likes  to  have  work 
committed  to  his  care  and  discretion  su- 
pervised by  some  one  else,  especially  by  a 
woman;  and,  second,  because  they  know 
very  well  that  the  inspectrix  was  appoint- 
ed because  they  themselves  did  the  work 
badly.  But  the  system  of  trustees  who 
do  not  perform  their  trust,  supervised  by 
inspectors  who  have  no  control  of  them, 
has  been  swept  away;  the  inspectors'  du- 
ties are  now  very  like  those  of  the  board 
of  visitors  which  every  well  managed  col- 
lege has,  but  the  details  covered  are  vast- 
ly more  numerous. 

In  schools  there  are  peculiar  reasons 
why  a  woman  is  likely  to  do  some  of  this 
work  better  than  men,  and  why  men 
really  need  their  aid.  Many  of  these 
will  occur  to  any  one  who  enters  a  public 
school  even  for  the  first  time ;  half  the 
children  are  girls,  most  of  the  teachers 
are  themselves  women,  and  these  facts 
lead  every  day  to  questions  on  which  a 
man  has  little  or  no  knowledge,  and  as  to 
which,  in  his  own  household,  he  is  only 
too  thankful  to  have  the  benefit  of  a 
woman's  judgment.  In  fact,  the  most 
painful  and  distressing  situation  in  do- 
mestic life  in  which  a  man  can  be  placed 
is  notoriously  that  of  having  suddenly 
thrust  upon  him,  by  the  death  or  deser- 
tion of  his  wife,  the  sole  management 
and  education  of  a  number  of  small  chil- 
dren of  both  sexes.  A  public-school  sys- 
tem with  only  men  in  charge  would  pro- 
duce much  the  same  kind  of  difficulty, 
but  on  a  vast  scale.  The  women  teachers 
do  not  answer  the  purpose  of  inspectors, 
for  they  are  part  of  the  system  to  be  in- 
spected* 

There  is,  moreover,  one  department  of 
school  administration  which  is  peculiarly 
adapted  for  women's  care,  because  it 
corresponds  closely  to  what  comes  under 
their  jurisdiction  in  their  own  house- 
holds, and  that  is  what  may  be  called  the 
housekeeping  of  the  schools  -the  super- 
vision of  their  comfort,  cleanliness,  and 
decency.    No  one  who  has  not  actually 


412 


^Plie    iNTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1 61 3 


gone  over  a  school  in  the  poorer  parts  of 
the  city  has  anj  idea  of  the  depths  of 
sloTODliness  to  which  this  housekeeping 
has  descended.  Ring  the  bell,  and  a 
dirty  janitor  emerges  in  his  shirt  sleeves 
from  his  subterranean  lair,  squirting  to- 
bacco juice  as  he  comes.  He  is  evidently  a 
shiftless  hanger-on  of  some  ward  politi- 
cian, who  has  found  a  quiet  place  for  him 
here  at  the  public  crib.  Examine  the 
rooms,  and  you  will  find  some  so  dark  as 
to  suggest  inevitable  injury  to  the  chil- 
dren's eyes;  look  at  the  chairs,  and  you 
may  find  some  of  the  wrong  size  for  the 
desks,  so  that  the  children  are  forced  to 
sit  on  them  in  great  bodily  discomfort; 
ask  the  explanation  of  a  pool  of  water 
standing  in  the  yard,  you  will  be  told  that 
there  has  been  a  leak  in  the  water-pipe 
for  several  months;  look  into  the  sanitary 
arrangements,  and  they  will  be  found  not 
sanitary.  Everywhere  there  is  that  pecu- 
liar sort  of  untidiness,  and  mustiness,  and 
slouch  which  is  anathema  to  every  good 
woman.  The  condition  of  these  poorer 
school-houses  before  the  coming  of  the  in- 
spectrix  was  a  training  in  slovenliness  and 
disorder  for  every  unfortunate  generation 
of  scholars  that  went  through  them.  Her 
work  thus  far  has  mainly  been  to  look  out 
for  matters  of  this  kind.  There  will  never 
be  a  time  when  they  will  not  need  looking 
after,  and  they  are  quite  as  important  as 
teaching. 

For  ourselves  we  could  wish  that  the 
inspectrix  might  invade  other  spheres  of 
activity  hitherto  exclusively  reserved  to 
man.  There  is  not  a  public  building  in 
the  city  which  would  not  be  the  better 
for  a  report  from  her.  Every  one  knows 
what  women  have  done  for  the  interior 
conditions  of  the  prisons  and  hospitals; 
every  one  knows  that  it  was  in  great 
part  through  women's  taking  the  matter 
up  that  an  interest  was  aroused  in  clean 
streets,  of  which  we  are  now  reaping  the 
benefit  in  Col.  Waring's  administration. 
Oh  that  there  could  be  an  inspectrix  for 
the  Tombs,  and  for  the  court-house,  and 
for  the  city  hall,  and  the  registry  of  deeds, 
and  the  police  courts.  Of  what  use  have 
the  presentments  of  male  grand  juries 
proved  7  There  is  not  a  heeler  employed 
in  them  but  would  be  frightened  if  he 
knew  his  building  was  to  be  inspected  by 
some  of  the  ladies  appointed  on  Wednes- 
day week. 

The  shocking  condition  of  our  munici- 
pal housekeeping  is  partly  owing  to  Tam- 
many, but  partly  also  to  the  fact  that 
man,  left  to  himself,  is  not  an  over-clean 
or  orderly  animal,  or  one  that  is  fond  of 
giving  much  attention  to  the  details  of 
comfort  and  cleanliness.  He  does  not 
perceive  the  fact  in  his  domestic  life, 
because  he  has  a  domestic  inspectrix  who 
spends  a  large  part  of  the  day  in  looking 
after  his  house.  In  the  management  of 
public  institutions  he  flatters  himself  he 
can  get  on  without  her.  But  it  is  a  mis* 
take. 

It  really  looks  as  if  in  some  fields  the 
lady  inspector  might  accomplieh  some  of 


the  work  which  we  once  fondly  hoped  the 
**  gentleman  "  and  **  scholar  "  in  politics 
would  do.  She  has  one  great  advantage 
over  him,  that  she  does  not  take  up  the 
work  for  a  living,  but  because  she  has  an 
interest  in  it  for  its  own  sake,  and  leisure 
to  attend  to  it.  Her  function  is  merely  to 
see  and  report  and  actually  shame  men 
into  correcting  abuses.  She  cannot  be 
reduced  to  silence  by  taking  away  her 
salary,  for  she  has  none;  she  cannot  be 
**read  out  of  the  party,"  because  she  does 
not  belong  to  any.  Her  warnings  must  be 
listened  to  here  as  elsewhere. 


**THE    YELLOW   TERROR:' 

This  is  the  name  given  by  a  French  eco- 
nomist, not  to  the  fever  or  the  literature 
of  the  color  mentioned,  but  to  the  spectre 
of  Japanese  commercial  competition.  It 
is  a  bogy  which  has  for  some  time  been 
looming  large  before  the  timid  eyes  of  bi- 
metallists  and  protectionists.  Their  doc- 
trines are  for  the  most  part  supported  by 
arguments  in  terrorem^  and  it  is  natural, 
therefore,  that,  finding  the  horrors  of  a 
scarcity  of  money  failing  them,  and  the 
awfulness  of  foreign  goods  given  away 
losing  its  power  over  the  imagination,  they 
should  cast  about  for  a  new  raw-head-and- 
bloody- bones  to  frighten  people  with. 
They  think  they  have  found  it  in  the 
growth  of  Japanese  industry.  In  Parlia- 
ment and  Reichstag  alike,  in  Congress 
and  in  party  convention,  bimetallists 
driven  into  a  corner  and  protectionists 
put  to  their  trumps  always  fall  back  on 
the  Yellow  Terror.  The  historic  question, 
conclusive  against  the  anti-slavery  agita- 
tion, '*Do  you  want  your  daughter  to 
marry  a  nigger?*'  has  now  to  give  way  to 
the  equally  pertinent  and  unanswerable 
inquiry,  **  Do  you  want  your  daughter  to 
play  on  a  Japanese  piano?" 

The  Colorado  Republicans,  for  example, 
came  out  strong  on  Oriental  competition. 
Free  trade  was  ruining  us,  the  gold  stan- 
dard was  cutting  all  values  in  two,  and  if 
you  didn't  believe  either  assertion  to  be 
true,  how  were  you  going  to  get  away 
from  the  deadly  competition  of  **  the  Far 
East"?  By  jumbling  three  discordant 
propositions  in  one  plank  every  doubter 
must  be  convinced.  .  But  facts  are  the 
most  convincing  things  after  all,  and  a 
long  report  by  the  British  Vice- Consul  at 
Tokio,  Mr.  Longford,  which  has  just  been 
published  by  the  Foreign  Office,  and 
which  sets  forth  at  length  the  facts  about 
Japanese  industry  and  foreign  commerce, 
is  better  worth  studying  than  all  the  bi- 
metallic orations  and  resolutions  on  the 
subject  that  were  ever  printed. 

That  Japan  has  greatly  expanded  her 
manufacturing  and  her  export  trade  since 
1872  is  beyond  question.  The  principal  in- 
dustry to  exhibit  a  marked  advance  is  the 
cotton  manufacture.  In  1888,  Japan  had 
24  cotton  factories  with  114,000  spindles ; 
last  year  she  reckoned  58  factories  and 
8S3,000  Bpindlee.  On  the  cheaper  grades 
of  goods  Japaaeae  manufacturers  are  abie 


to  compete  closely  with  British  and  Ame- 
rican exporters  in  the  Chinese  and  Indian 
markets.  But  even  the  miraculous  Ja- 
panese have  not  yet  learned  of  McKinley 
how  to  sell  without  buying.  Their  in- 
creased cotton-goods  productions  and  ex- 
ports have  led  directly  to  largely  increas- 
ed imports  on  that  very  account.  The 
machinery  to  manufacture  the  goods  and 
the  ships  to  market  them  have  been 
bought  abroad.  Moreover,  the  imports 
of  raw  cotton  have  risen  enormously; 
from  India  alone  Japan  took  72,000,000 
pounds  of  cotton  in  1895.  This,  by  the 
way,  is  of  itself  a  hard  nut  for  the  bime- 
tallists to  crack.  Indian  cotton,  they 
have  told  us,  raised  on  a  bimetallic  stan- 
dard, can  be  sold  in  gold-standard  couo- 
tries  for  twice  its  price,  and  no  wonder  the 
poor  American  cotton-grower  is  ruined. 
But  why  on  earth  is  the  Indian  cotton- 
grower  selling  72,000,000  pounds  of  cotton 
in  bimetallic  Japan  for  half  the  sum  he 
could  get  in  Liverpool  ?  We  fear  a  fal- 
lacy is  lurking  somewhere,  and  not  very 
mysteriously  lurking  either,  in  this  bime- 
tallic argument. 

Another  bimetallic  assertion  fares  hard 
at  the  hands  of  Consul  Longford's  facts. 
This  is  that  gold  countries  cannot  trade 
successfully  with  silver  countries.  You 
see,  as  President  Walker  has  carefully  ex- 
plained, there  is  no  fixed  **par  of  ex- 
change" in  such  cases,  and  how  under 
heaven  are  you  going  to  buy  or  sell  goods 
without  a  par  of  exchange  ?  One  side  or 
the  other  is  sure  to  find  itself  gettinf? 
cheated,  and  the  trade  will  stop,  of  course, 
right  there.  But  somehow"  gold-standard 
English  and  German  and  American  manu- 
facturers go  right  on  selling  to  Japan  and 
taking  her  produce  in  exchange,  pitiably 
ignorant  that  the  want  of  a  par  of  exchange 
inevitably  prevents  any  such  operation.  Of 
the  whole  foreign  trade  of  Japan  in  1896 
—$140, 000, 000" Great  Britain's  abare  was 
$53,000,000,  the  United  States  had  m.- 
000,000,  Germany  §8,000,000.  The  indi- 
vidual merchanta  eogaged  id  the  buaiBass 
are,  of  course,  loeiQg  moaey,  but  as  ibe; 
are  not  aware  of  it,  the  fatal  nature  of  the 
lack  of  a  par  of  exchange  i«  as  yet  cod- 
ceaLed  from  them«  The  foolish  fellovri 
actually  think  they  have  a  par  of  ex- 
change in  the  gold  in  which  all  their  bUls 
are  payable. 

The  actual  competition  of  Japan  In  the 
great  lines  of  manufacture  is  not  at  sU 
formidable  up  to  the  preieut,  Mr.  Long- 
ford coDcludee.  In  but  few  branches  can 
the  Japanese  undefsell  the  foreign  pro- 
duct, quality  for  quality,  and  even  tb« 
JapaDeae  consutner  prefers,  as  a  general 
things  the  imported  to  the  domestic  arti- 
cle. But  how  abcmt  the  future  ?  Arw 
not  Japaneee  cheap  coal  and  cheap  laboTi 
combined  with  Japanese  invent iventss,  to 
prove  a  real  Yellow  Terror  to  industrtal 
Europe  and  America  ?  Mr,  Longlotd 
does  not  appear  to  be  frightened.  He 
points  out  Bome  of  the  changes  alrstllf 
observable  which  are  sure  toeqcimlliii  ei^ 
ditions.    ''  Wagee  In  ftU  clasflKa  of  U3Uf 


May  28,  1896] 


Tlie    N"atioii. 


413 


hare  riMn,  and,  while  the  capitalists  are 
putting  money  into  industries  which  pro- 
mote a  demand  from  Europe  for  manufac- 
tures, the  lower  classes  have  a  higher 
standard  of  liring  than  they  ever  had  be- 
fore." The  simple  truth  is  that  unstable 
equilibrium  in  international  trade  rela- 
tions cannot  long  endure.  Differences  in- 
fallibly adjust  themselves.  Inventions 
cannot  be  monopolised,  or  a  low  cost  of 
production  kept  the  exclusive  property  of 
one  nation  dealing  with  others.  The  prin- 
ciple that  tends  to  equalize  various  trades 
and  professions  and  industries,  in  respect 
of  their  rewards,  works  among  competing 
nations.  Most  absurd  of  all  is  it  to  sup- 
pose that  the  alert  Japanese  are  going  to 
put  up  with  less  wages  or  a  lower  stan- 
dard of  living  than  they  need  to,  with 
their  natural  earning  power  shown  to 
them  to  be  what  it  is.  The  Irish  home- 
rule  question  **  in  a  nutshell "  has  been 
defined  to  be  **  a  quick-witted  nation  gov- 
erned by  a  stupid  people."  In  like  man- 
ner we  may  say  that  there  is  and  will  be 
no  Yellow  Terror  unless  the  quick-witted 
Japanese  become  as  stupid  as  the  bime- 
tallists  who  talk  about  them. 


HOW    ITALY   IS   GOVERNED. 

ROMK,  May  10,  1896. 
Ir  it  were  povible  to  ttate  in  a  word  the  e»- 
Motial  element  of  govemment  in  Italy— that 
which  is  really  ith  secret  spring  of  official  ac- 
tion from  the  highest  to  the  lowest  functions 
of  government— that  word  would  be  **Ca- 
morra.''  We  take  it  for  granted  that  lUly  is 
governed  constitutionally  because  it  has  popu- 
lar representation  and  a  Parliament,  but  in 
point  of  fact  there  is  not  a  stage  of  govern 
ment  in  which  the  decisive  agency  in  the  con 
duct  of  affairs  is  not  the  power  of  the  '*  Ca- 
morra,^  or  what  corresponds  (as  nearly  as  the 
Italian  nature  permits)  to  oar  **Ring."  Be- 
ginning with  the  communa)  councils,  in  which 
the  most  minute  affairs  of  the  population  are 
decided,  there  it  scarcely  a  measure  passed  in 
which  the  main  motive  of  decision  is  not  the 
personal  and  pecuniary  interests  of  the  coun. 
cillors.  A  relative  who  has  been  for  many 
years  in  the  provincial  and  communal  councils 
in  central  Italy  in  which  he  held  a  large  amount 
of  real  estate,  assured  me  that  it  was  the  con. 
stent  practice  of  the  councillors  to  pass  mea- 
sares  for  the  improvement  of  their  personal 
property  as  measures  of  public  utility— roads 
to  open  their  estates  as  roads  of  public  ne- 
cessity, etc ,  etc. ;  and  of  course  it  is  under- 
stood that  the  privilege  is  always  in  favor  of 
the  richer  and  to  the  loss  of  .the  poorer  of  the 
population.  Put  in  terms  of  strict  logic  and 
honesty,  It  means  that  government,  so  far  as 
tascation  and  financial  expedients  go,  Is  a  limit, 
ed  system  of  robbery.  An  intelligent  and  in- 
dependent Italian  once  said  to  me,  **  Every 
Italian  has  in  his  constitution  something  of  the 
Camorrist";  and  he  was  from  Piedmont, 
where  the  evil  Is  at  iU  minimum.  In  the  little 
book  by  Prof.  Villari,  'La  Bicllia  e  U  SociaU- 
smo,'  recently  published,  I  lee  the  following 
singular  declaration,  and  who  knows  Villari 
knows  that  he  always  speaks  the  strict  verity  : 

**  A  Hicilian,  who  is  alM>  a  competent  teacher, 
said  to  me  one  day:  » In  the  little  commune 
where  I  was  bom,  the  party  in  power  does  not 
pay  the  dorio  eomsumo  [the  tax  on  all  food  that 
oomes  into  the  town  or  Tillagej.  Some  days  ago 


a  certain  man  refused  at  the  gates  to  pay,  be- 
cause he  was  a  friend  of  theawassnrof  finance. 
Not  being  known  to  the  customs  officer,  he  was 
accompanied  to  the  communal  palace,  where 
he  was  recognised  and  did  not  pay.  The  Op- 
position does  not  protest,  because,  when  it  is  in 
power,  it  does  the  same.  And  the  poor,  unfor- 
tunately,  always  pay.  My  family  is  not  parti, 
san,  does  not  aspire  to  power,  is  loved  by  all, 
and  so  never  pays.  But  what  shall  I  do  when, 
arriving  at  toe  gates,  they  say  to  me,  **  Pass, 
y  ou  are  known*^  must  I  pay  perforce?*  Officers 
of  the  army,  to  whom  I  told  the  fact  at  table, 
said  to  me  that  often,  and  not  alone  in  Sicily, 
they  had  repeatedly  been  obliged  to  insist  on 
paying:  *  You  are  a  major  and  have  the  right 
not  to  pay.'  *  You  are  commander  and  ought 
not  to  pay.'  It  is  an  ancient  custom,  and  the 
tax-gatherer  thinks  it  must  continue.  The  gen- 
tleman who  comes  from  his  farm  and  brings  a 
hare  or  a  turkey  in  bis  carriage,  does  not  pay 
—that  is  understood;  the  poor  peasant  pays 
for  his  bread." 

In  the  provincial  councils  the  construction  of 
roads,  when  not  made  simply  for  the  benefit  of 
a  great  proprietor,  becomes  the  subject  of 
bribery,  just  as  much  as  if  it  were  in  New 
York  city,  the  contract  being  given  nominally 
to  the  lowest  bidder,  but  only  nominally.  In 
the  great  cities  the  collusion  is  worse.  When 
the  city  of  Rome  proposed  to  construct  the 
great  embankments  on  both  banks  of  the  Tiber 
for  the  restraining  of  the  floods,  a  building 
company  offered  to  take  the  contract  for  sixty 
millions  of  francs,  and  the  city  refused,  pre- 
tending to  make  economies  by  giving  it  out  in 
lots;  and  when  it  had  spent  more  than  one 
hundred  millions  and  had  become  bankrupt, 
the  royal  Government  had  to  finish  the  work. 
In  Milan,  Turin,  and  some  other  cities  of  the 
north  these  things  are  measurably  avoided,  so 
the  system  is  not  always  in  fault;  but  the  fur- 
ther  south  you  go,  the  stronger  the  Camorra. 
In  Naples  no  measure  is  passed  without  paying 
its  contribution  to  the  corruption  fund. 

In  Parliament  it  takes  another  form.  It  is 
impossible  to  organize  political  parties  in  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies  because  there  is  always  a 
very  large  proportion  of  the  Deputies  who  will 
vote  according  to  the  appropriations  made  by 
the  Ministry  for  expenditure  in  their  electoral 
colleges,  on  highroads,  railroads,  endowment 
of  local  universities,  ports  even  where  no  ship- 
ping exists,  and  so  through  all  the  demands  of 
a  population  accustomed  to  be  provided  for  at 
the  public  expense ;  which,  after  all,  comes  to 
paying  all  round,  only  much  more  for  the 
waste  and  the  Camorra.  A  gentleman  of  my 
acquaintance  who  owned  a  large  estate  in  the 
district  of  which  Acquapendente  is  the  chief 
town,  and  who  had  constructed  an  admirable 
road  through  it,  covering  half  the  distance  be- 
tween the  town  and  the  nearest  railway  sta- 
tion, offered  the  municipality  the  use  of  bis 
road  If  it  would  construct  one  to  connect  with 
it,  in  default  of  which,  cooununication  was 
carried  on  by  circuitous  and  very  much  longer 
roads.  The  municipality  refused  the  offer, 
saying  that  they  would  make  the  Government 
build  a  railroad,  and  they  would  spend  no- 
thing  for  a  carriage  road.  But  for  the  financial 
disaster  which  stopped  all  the  new  railways,  it 
is  probable  that  the  Acquapendente  road  would 
have  been  built  ere  this,  though  for  the  exclu- 
sive use  of  a  small  town  without  commerce  or 
industry,  and  which,  like  so  many  other  Italian 
railways,  would  never  pay  the  working  ex- 
penses. 

The  organisation  of  political  parties,  even 
on  the  most  elementary  principles  of  political 
economy,  is  therefore  impossible,  for  there  is 
always  a  body  of  Deputies,  numbering  proba- 
bly from  100  to  150,  who  will  vote  for  any 
ministry  that  promises  local  expenditure.  The 
railway  ring  alone  devours  the  public  reve- 


nue to  the  amount  of  many  millions  (before 
the  crisis  and  practical  bankruptcy  it  was 
200  millions  annually,  excess  of  expenditure 
above  the  receipts);  and  local  expendltui^ 
apart  from  that  controlled  by  Parliament 
adds  much  to  this,  from  other  works.  Milan, 
again,  i9  greatly  interested  in  manufactures, 
and  a  partial  system  of  high  protection  is  es- 
tablished for  the  benefit  of  Milan,  though  the 
country  at  large  is  strongly  interested  in  free 
trade. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  the  Camorra  must* 
finish  at  the  elective  body  of  the  Parliament, 
but  in  fact  the  throne  is  surrounded  by  a  ring 
which  no  interest  of  the  country,  however 
sacred,  has  ever  succeeded  in  breaking.  This, 
which  is  known  as  the  **  palace  Camorra,** 
occupies  itself  with  the  composition  of  the 
Ministry  and  the  secret  direction  of  foreign 
affairs.  It  is  composed  of  court  favorites  of 
both  sexes,  superior  officers  of  the  army  pos- 
sessing the  personal  confidence  of  the  King, 
members  of  the  diplomatic  body.  Senators, 
etc.,  and  its  action  is  immediately  upon  the 
sovereign,  owing  to  which  ministerial  crises 
are  directed,  and  appointment  of  the  higher 
functionaries,  especially  in  the  army,  is  con- 
trolled. This  ring  is  thoroughly  French  in  its 
political  sympathies,  and  has  always  been  hos- 
tile to  the  Triple  Alliance  and  to  Crispt 
From  its  pressure  on  the  sovereign  no  minis- 
try has  ever  been  able  to  escape,  and  the  latest 
instance  of  its  overruling  the  constitutional 
powers  was  the  refusal  to  permit  the  late  Min- 
istry to  recall  Baratieri  from  Africa  when  it 
was  so  clearly  seen  that  he  was  losing  all 
power  of  direction  of  the  campaign- 

Baratieri  belonged  to  a  group  of  political 
personages.  Deputies  and  others,  himself  being 
a  Deputy,  and  the  ring  at  the  palace  had  need 
of  his  infiuence  in  certain  contingencies,  so  that 
what  glory  and  consequent  influence  were  to 
be  got  out  of  the  war  were  to  be  gained  by 
him  as  one  of  its  number.  He  belonged  to  the 
Zanardelli  group,  and,  when  that  chief  at> 
tempted  to  form  a  ministry,  had  been  the  can-' 
didate  for  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs.  The 
Oazzetta  del  PopolOt  the  leading  journal  of 
Piedmont,  and  the  most  Independent  and  honest 
journal  in  Italy,  said  in  its  leading  article  on 
the  African  question :  **  It  is  said,  and  with  too 
much  justice,  that  the  Abyssinian  campaign 
has  been  carried  on  more  with  a  view  to  Par- 
liamentary and  journalistic  results  than  from 
true  military  motives.  Most  sacred  truth  t  If 
Baratieri  had  not  been  a  Deputy  and  of  the 
group  of  Zanardelli,  even  designated  as  the 
Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  he  would  have 
been  recalled  long  ago,  and  Italy  would  not 
now  be  mourning  Amba  Alagi  and  Abba  Ca- 
rima  [as  the  batUe  of  Adua  is  now  called].** 
But  if,  being  Deputy,  he  had  not  been  one  of 
the  ring  which  serves  the  purposes  of  secret  po- 
litical combinations  (one  of  the  most  important 
of  these  being  to  combat  and  paralyse  the  ope- 
rations  of  the  party  which  regards  the  Triple 
Alliance  and  the  agreement  with  England  as 
the  vital  interesU  of  the  country,  and  which 
has  lately  been  led  by  Crispl),  he  would  have 
found  no  support  against  the  demand  of  the 
Ministry  for  his  recaU.  As  It  was,  it  was 
simply  the  pressure  of  the  **  palace  Camorra  " 
which  induced  the  King  to  refuse  to  allow  him 
to  be  recalled. 

All  these  things  are  now  matters  of  general 
public  knowledge,  and  the  effect  on  the  popu- 
larity of  the  King  can  easily  be  imagined.  He 
is  digging  the  grave  of  the  monarchy  more  ef- 
fectually than  all  the  republicans  in  the  king- 
dom. The  professed  republicans  who  have 
sttooeedsd  to  Majodni,  Bertani,  Alberto  Mario, 


414: 


Th.e    iNTatioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 J 


and  their  cod  temporaries  and  f^saociates  are, 
with  two  or  three  exceptions,  the  blindest  in- 
^tmments  in  the  hands  of  French  intriguers, 
and  France  has  very  few  friends  in  Italy  be- 
sides them  and  the  "palace  Camorra*'  (with 
which  they  are  also  leagued  by  a  common  ani- 
mosity to  Crispi) ;  so  that,  by  a  strange  com- 
bination, the  republicanism  of  France  is  the 
worst  damper  on  that  of  Italy,  and  the  moment- 
ary safeguard  of  the  throne.  80  thoroughly  is 
this  condition  of  things  known  in  the  country 
that  I  have  heard  it  openly  said  by  old  publi- 
cists of  Tarious  political  connections,  that  it  is 
only  the  abdication  of  the  King  that  can  save 
the  throne.  The  country  begins,  in  view  of 
the  disasters  of  Abyssinia,  to  revolt  at  being 
governed  by  irresponsible  and  irrecognizable 
intriguers  composing  the  "  palace  Camorra.^ 

X. 


REVENUE  MEASURES  IN  JAPAN. 
Tokyo,  April  25,  1896. 

RsHARKABLX  as  has  been  the  political 
movement  in  Japan  during  the  last  session  of 
Parliament,  the  actual  legislative  work  of  the 
session  has  been  more  remarkable  still.  At 
no  time  during  the  past  six  years  have  mea- 
sures affecting  particularly  the  flnanoee  of  the 
country  been  proposed  or  passed  that  could 
compare  either  in  interest  or  in  influence  with 
those  of  the  session  which  has  just  closed.  Had 
financial  bills  of  similar  importance  been  un- 
der consideration  in  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States,  the  whole  country  would  have  been  in 
a  state  of  excitement;  the  newspapers  would 
have  vied  with  each  other  in  giving  details  con- 
cerning the  progress  and  probabilities  of  the 
measures,  and  the  whole  machinery  of  businesM 
would  have  been  disturbed.  Here  in  Japan,  on 
the  contrary,  the  public  excitement  and  dis- 
turbance  to  business  may  be  said  to  have  been 
nil.  One  or  two  taxation  measures  were,  in 
deed,  upon  consideration,  opposed  by  certain 
semi- public  bodies,  as  for  instance  the  Tokyo 
Chamber  of  Commerce;  but  the  opposition  was 
half-hearted  and  the  objections  offered  of  an 
indifferent  character. 

This  quiet  acceptance  by  the  public  of  mea- 
sures so  important  cannot  be  ascribed  particu- 
larly to  any  habit  of  submission  or  any  other 
race  characteristic  of  the  Japanese  people.  It 
was  seen  from  the  opening  of  the  session  that 
something  had  to  be  done  to  devise  means  for 
permanently  increasing  the  revenue  of  the 
Government.  In  the  opinion  of  the  executive, 
as  well  as  of  all  the  political  parties,  the  ex- 
penses of  the  war  were  not  to  be  met,  except  in- 
cidentally, out  of  the  indemnity.  The  interest 
on  the  public  debt  that  had  augmented  so  rap- 
idly during  and  immediately  after  the  war 
had  to  be  provided  for.  It  was  also  a  matter 
of  general  agreement  that  the  army  and  navy 
were  to  be  strengthened,  and  provision  for  this 
purpose  had  to  be  made  at  once.  Lastly,  the 
conquest  of  Formosa  proved  far  more  btirden- 
some  than  was  anticipated;  and,  furthermore, 
it  was  seen  that  the  organization  of  the  Gov- 
ernment of  the  island  would  for  some  years  be 
a  drain  upon  the  treasury  rather  than  a  re- 
source to  it.  These  items  of  increased  expendi- 
ture were  all  inevitable  features  of  the  budgets 
of  the  coming  years,  and  no  difference  of  opi- 
nion existed  that  taxes  must  be  devised  to  pro- 
duce a  larger  revenue.  If  it  be  remembered 
that  in  Japan  finimcial  mea^suresof  Importflnce 
to  the  natioo  generally  origiaato  with  the  C4ov- 
€  Foment^  the  HouBe&  for  tbu  moht  |iart  con- 
ceming  th*^iji5iu!vt*&  merely  i*ilb  critlcUiog  or 
moiiktjUig  the  bilk  as  iutrodaced^  wo  havti  an 


explanuUon  of  the  small  excitement  mani- 
fested. It  was  a  general  sentiment  that  the 
measures  proposed  by  the  Government  were 
designed  to  secure  as  large  a  revenue  as  possi- 
ble with  as  little  friction  as  was  compatible 
with  existing  circumstances. 

The  total  annual  revenue  of  the  Japanese 
Government  may  be  roughly  put  at  97,000,000 
yen.  The  expenditure  during  the  past  few 
years  has  been  less  than  this,  at  least  by  6  or  7 
million  yen,  a  sum  which  has  been  employed 
for  the  most  part  in  redeeming  outstanding 
public  obligations.  The  expenditure  for  the 
coming  fiscal  year  is  estimated  at  152,000,000 
yen,  or  in  round  numbers  62,000,000  yen  above 
the  ordinary  expenditure  of  past  years.  About 
40,000,000  yen  of  this  increase,  however,  will 
be  paid  out  of  the  indemnity,  leaving  an  excess 
of  about  14  or  15  million  yen  to  be  met  by  in- 
creased taxation  or  by  the  issue  of  bonds. 
The  actual  normal  expenditure  after  the  next 
fiscal  year  will,  it  is  estimated,  reach  a  figure 
between  120  and  IdO  million  yen,  and  therefore 
the  financial  question  before  the  last  Parlia- 
ment was  how  to  devise  by  methods  of  taxation 
an  annual  increase  of  revenue  over  and  above 
the  present  figure,  amounting  to  something 
over  25,000,000  yen.  It  was  impossible  to  aug- 
ment the  land-tax,  as  that  was  felt  to  be  high 
enough,  and  any  attempt  in  that  direction 
would  have  met  with  the  direct  opposition  of 
Parliament.  What  was  proposed  by  the  Gov- 
ernment and  accepted  by  both  houses  was 
practically  the  establishment  of  two  new  taxes 
and  the  increase  of  two  old  ones.  The  new 
ones  are  the  registration  and  trade  taxes,  the 
others  are  the  taxes  on  sak6  and  tobacco. 

To  explain  these  four  taxes  properly  in  all 
their  bearings  would  require  a  volume,  as  they 
have  to  do  with  conditions  of  production  and 
trade  that  are  to  some  extent  peculiar  to 
Japan.  It  is  to  be  noted,  too,  that  an  adequate 
translation  of  the  acts  has  not  yet  appeared, 
and  until  this  is  done  various  minor  points  con- 
cerning them  must  remain  obscure  to  foreign- 
ers. At  this  stage,  therefore,  a  simple  outline 
must  suffice. 

The  registration  tax  is  to  be  levied  on  the 
registration  of  all  lands,  buildings,  professions 
of  nearly  every  description,  companies,  mines, 
successions,  public  bonds,  marriages,  divorces, 
and  other  leg^l  functions  specified  in  the  act. 
The  rate  is  in  every  <  ase  stated  in  the  act.  On 
buildings  and  lands  it  varies  between  2 10  per 
cent,  to  8-10  per  cent,  of  the  market  value, 
on  cooapanies  from  'i-W)  percent,  to  BIO  per 
ccEjt^  of  the  capital.  In  the  gsj^  of  profe^iLonSf 
the  tax  takoM  the  form  of  a  license  fee,  amouDt- 
ing,  for  instancy  In  the  cofie  of  lawyer^  to  ^) 
yen  for  the  Qri»t  rt^istratioii  and  lU  jreii  for  ra^ 
nenraSs,  Tbi?  tax  Is  heaviest  on  mines.  For 
trial  operations  th«  tax  is  50  jen^  for  active 
working  lOl)  yen,  and  for  the  sale  or  purchase 
of  miniDg  right's  ^  yen.  As  certain  registry 
taxcis  have  been  id  ^xisteiice  in  Japan  for 
many  years,  the  old  ones  are  in  every  ca^e 
superseded  by  the  new  law.  There  is  also  a 
list  of  exemptloQA,  comprising  especially  those 
who  work  for  daily  wages,  servants,  etc.  The 
law  goes  into  OEieriition  from  the  Ut  of  April 
of  the  present  year.  The  tfbtitiiated  proceeds 
of  tills  tax  are  ^1^8(10. 000  yen. 

The  trade  tax  is  evea  more  complicated  than 
the  preceding.  It  U  assei^ed  on  every  kind  of 
trade,  manufacture^  wholesale  or  retail  bud- 
nes^y  and  includes,  besides,  banking  opera tiouB^ 
insurance  eompauie^  money-lending,  traujiixir- 
tatioti,  printiDgj  pboiograpby,  hoteK  restau* 
rants,  tiro  leer  age,  warehousing,  and  other  forms 
of  itiEjiifttrial  enterprise.  The  syetem  of  as- 
seeing  the  tax  is  necessarily  niiniite  and  intri- 


cate, but  whether  It  will  prove  simpler  in  pfio- 
tioe  than  it  now  seems,  remains  to  be  Been. 
The  tax  is  generally  proportioned  to  the  amoimt 
of  business  done.  In  the  case  of  merchsBts 
the  rate  is  5.100  per  cent,  on  the  proceeds  of 
sales  for  wholesale  transactions,  and  15^100  per 
cent,  for  retail  transactions,  together  with  4 
per  cent,  of  the  rent  of  the  premises,  and  1  yen 
per  employee.  In  the  case  of  banking,  hi- 
surance,  money-lending,  warehousing,  etc,  the 
rate  is  2  10  per  cent,  of  the  capital  plus  4  per 
cent,  of  the  rent  of  the  premises  and  1  yen  per 
employee.  In  the  case  of  manufactures  sad 
photography  the  tax  is  assessed  at  the  rate  of 
15-100  per  cent,  of  the  capital,  plus  4  per  cent 
of  the  rent  of  the  premises,  1  yen  per  busineas 
employee,  and  80  sen  per  hand.  There  is  s 
small  list  of  exemptions,  comprising  (1)  those 
engaged  in  certain  Government  businesses,  (2) 
those  engaged  in  wholesale  and  rettil  bosinesB 
during  the  first  year  of  their  enterprise,  and 
(S)  those  engaged  in  banking,  insurance,  nuuia- 
facturee,  etc.,  during  the  first  three  yean  of 
their  enterprise.  There  are*minute  provisioos 
for  appraising  the  rent  of  xnremises  and  for 
computing  the  proceeds  of  sales.  The  law  goes 
into  effect  on  the  1st  of  January,  1897.  The 
estimated  yield  of  the  tax  is  7,550,000  yen. 

The  two  remaining  taxes  are  not  new  taxes, 
and  were  intended  to  be  merely  augmentatioss 
of  existing  ones,  yet  both  are  so  reorganised 
under  the  new  law  that  they  can  scarcely  be 
recognised  as  old  friends  in  their  new  garb. 
The  sak6  tax  bill  is  long  and  complicated, 
partly  because  there  are  so  many  varieties 
of  this  article  made,  and  partly  because  the 
conditions  under  which  it  is  produced  are  so 
peculiar.  The  capital  point  of  the  new  system 
is  that  ordinary  sak^ — the  kind  consumed  by 
the  great  mass  of  people— is  to  be  taxed  at 
the  rate  of  seven  yen  per  koku,  instead  of  four 
yen  per  koku,  as  heretofore  (the  koku  is  eqosl 
to  nearly  forty  gallons).  The  tax  on  other 
kinds  of  sak6  is  raised  in  about  the  same  pro- 
portion. The  estimated  yield  according  to  the 
new  rate  is  9,200,000  yen  in  round  numbers,  an 
increase  of  nearly  double  the  old  yield.  The 
new  system  goes  into  operation  on  the  1st  of 
October  next. 

The  new  law  regarding  tobacco  is  an  inno- 
vation in  Japan,  and  introduces  something 
like  a  revolution  in  her  system  of  raidng 
revenue.  Until  now  the  tobacco  tax  has  been 
in  the  main  a  copy  of  the  American  system. 
The  tax  has  been  assessed  in  the  form  of  s 
ijtarnp  tax,  wHh  the  stamp  affixed  to  the  pact- 
age  for  sale.  The  only  difference  between  tb^ 
two  systems  has  been  that  in  Japan  the  vaJofl 
of  the  stamp  has  varied  with  the  price  of  ttie 
article,  whereati  in  the  United  Btates  the  tax 
ia  a  fixed  amount  per  pound  iodep«ndent  icil 
the  price.  This  ay w tern  has  been  very  Sftc- 
ce»sful  in  America,  but  iu  Japan  there  was 
this  difiiculty,  that  a  very  large  amount  ll 
believe  fully  oiie  halfl  of  the  tobaceo  never 
came  into  the  bands  of  the  manufacturer^  l»it 
was  used  by  the  agritrultural  classes  for  home 
coostimption  without  paying  any  tax.  For 
this  reason  the  revenue  from  tobacco  b*§ 
fallen  far  short  of  what  it  would  b«  in  Am^ 
rica,  where  the  enltivaUon  of  tobacco  is  locsl- 
Ized  and  the  great  ma^  of  farmers  buy  their 
tobacco  from  the  "store."  The  prohleni  of 
the  Japaueee  Government  was  to  makf  all 
consumers  of  tobacct*  ptkj  tlje  tax,  and  at  tli« 
same  time  not  to  cause  too  much  tnterfe^aee 
with  the  iuduiitry. 

For  this  purpose  the  Qoveminent  prtip«H^ 
to  make  Ibe  bui^iae&s  of  buylllf  aod  nelllag  tht 
le.*if  t'i>bat:co  a  GoTertuiieut  mtMnopulf.  lo 
cording  to  the  Dew  law,  all  growars  ot  nthM^ 


May  28,  1896] 


The   Nation, 


415 


MV  lo  MDd  in  DoUoe  to  the  proper  olllcialt,  by 
the  end  of  April,  of  the  arcA  devoted  to  the 
cttlUyation  of  the  leaf.  The  Goyemment  re- 
•mrrm  the  right  of  UmUiog  this  area  if  neoee- 
mrj.  The  grower  ii  not  to  keep  back  aoy  of 
this  amount  for  hie  own  nee  or  for  nle,  uoleis 
be  Intends  it  for  exportation,  in  which  latter 
rase  he  has  fnll  libert j  to  tell  it  to  others  nn- 
der  proper  safeguards.  Bj  this  means  the 
Ooremment  hopes  to  get  possession  of  all  the 
tobscco  raised  for  consumption  in  the  country. 
The  commodity  is  to  be  stored  in  Goyemment 
warehonses  and  sold  to  manufacturers  at  fixed 
prices,  the  difference  between  the  purchase 
and  selling  price  representing  the  profits  of  the 
monopoly  to  the  State.  At  already  explained, 
it  is  not  so  much  intended  that  the  price  paid 
the  farmer  or  demanded  from  the  manufac- 
turer shall  be  yery  different  from  the  present 
range  of  price%  as  that  the  Goyemment  shall 
collect  the  tax  from  M  consumers  and  ind- 
dentally  absorb  the  profits  of  the  middleman. 
The  new  system  will  not  come  into  force  until 
the  1st  of  January,  189S--a  date  not  too  re- 
mote, as  the  Goyemment  will  find  it  necestary 
to  establish  a  large  amount  of  machinery,  es- 
pecially warehouses,  to  effect  the  monopoly. 
The  estimated  yield  of  the  new  system  is  oyer 
10^000^000  yen,  or  more  than  twice  the  pro- 
ceeds of  the  present  tax. 

These  are  the  four  measures  that  the  Goy- 
emment has  rssorted  to  for  increasing  the 
reyenne.  The  total  receipts  from  these  four 
taxes  are  estimated  at  more  than  88,000,000 
yen,  but  as  the  taxes  to  be  repealed  as  soon  as 
the  new  measures  come  into  force  amount  to 
about  7,000,000  yen,  the  net  increase  is  esti- 
mated  at  2Q»000,000 yen.  Thisestimate  is  not 
excessiye.  It  is  probable  that  as  soon  as  the 
new  system  is  in  working  <M*der  the  proceeds 
will  be  somewhat  more  than  this,  and,  with 
the  growth  of  Japan,  industrially  and  com- 
mercially, the  amount  will  be  considerably 
larger.  For  the  next  two  years,  howeyer,  the 
benefit  to  the  Treasury  will  be  smaU,  partly 
becanse  all  the  new  taxes  do  not  go  Inune- 
diately  into  force,  partly  because  the  new 
system,  especially  the  tobacco  monopoly,  will 
require  in  the  first  instance  a  certain  outlay 
from  the  Treasury,  and  partly  because  any 
new  tax  system  requires  time  to  be  organised 
efllcientiy. 

It  would  not  be  difficult  to  offer  criticisms  on 
the  kind  of  taxes  selected  by  the  Goyemment 
for  the  sake  of  incrsasing  the  reyenue.  No- 
thing  is  so  tempting  as  to  carp  at  the  weak 
points  of  any  tax  or  system  of  taxes,  and  no- 
thing Is  so  chimerical  as  to  attempt  to  satisfy 
all  rlssses  in  a  community.  One  or  two  points 
may,  howeyer,  be  noted.  In  the  first  plaos,  it 
is  doubtful  whether  more  time  could  not  haye 
been  spent  profitably  in  the  diwnisdon  of  four 
such  ifflport#Bt  measures,  or  at  least  whether 
two  of  the  measures  could  not  haye  been  post- 
poned for  consideration  to  the  next  session  of 
Parliament.  In  the  second  place,  it  is  question- 
able  whether  difficulties  will  not  result  from 
the  peculiar  method  of  imposing  the  trade  tax. 
A  similar  tax  is  imposed  in  other  countries, 
notably  France,  without  recourse  to  the  ne. 
cessity  of  Inspecting  the  books  and  accounts  of 
any  business  firm  or  company.  A  system  of 
assessment  that  turns  wholly  upon  certain  ob- 
yious  outward  characteristics  (though  the 
Japaneee  trade  tax  contains  in  part  such  fea- 
tures)  is  preferable,  if  it  can  in  fairness  be  car- 
ried out.  Lastly,  It  Is  a  matter  of  doubt 
whether  the  tobac6o  monopoly  wasa  neoearity. 
It  is  likely  that  the  Goyemment  knew  what  it 
was  about  when  It  Instituted  a  monopoly  ;  yet 
It  seems  reasonable  to  suppose  that  a  moderate 


increase  in  the  rate  of  the  tobacco  tax  might 
have  proved,  within  a  few  million  yen,  as  pro- 
ductiye  of  revenue  without  subjecting  the  to- 
bacoo  industry  to  the  great  amount  of  official 
supervision  which  the  new  system  demands. 
Bnt  these  are  rather  incidental  criticisms  than 
yital  objections.  If  the  Government  shows  a 
disposition  to  administer  the  new  system  of 
taxes  with  as  much  impartiality  and  as  little 
needless  interierence  as  possible,  it  will  no 
doubt  achieve  as  much  success  as  any  govern- 
ment does  at  present  in  a  matter  so  unpopular, 
yet  so  indispensable  to  the  nation's  welfare. 

G.  D. 


Correspondence. 


JOHN  COLTER. 
To  TH«  Edftor  of  Thi  Nation: 

Bnt:  The  interest  which  always  attaches  to 
the  personal  history  of  the  pioneers  in  Ameri- 
can exploration  is  my  spology  for  presenting 
the  f ollowiog  facts  concerning  one  of  the  most 
noted  of  those  early  characters.  In  a  recent 
work*  I  gave  a  summary  of  what  was  then 
known  coDoeraing  the  adventures  of  John  Col- 
ter, the  discoverer  of  the  Yellowstone  Won- 
derland, and  endeavored  to  unravel  the  myste- 
ry in  which  was  buried  too  deeply  the  history 
of  a  very  notable  performance.  Since  the 
publication  of  this  work  I  have  come  across 
two  new  references  to  Colter,  both  prior  to  the 
year  1820,  one  in  an  obscure  chapter  of  an  old 
work  on  Louisiana,  and  the  other  in  a  letter 
from  Thomas  Biddle  to  Gen.  Atkinson,  treating 
of  the  Indian  trade.  While  this  new  informa- 
tion happily  confirms  the  theory  already  work- 
ed out  as  to  the  scope  and  purpose  of  Colter's 
wanderings,  it  goes  far  towards  filling  the 
blanks  in  the  existing  record,  and  in  one  re- 
spect adds  an  original  leaf  to  the  laurel  of 
Colter's  fame. 

As  hitherto  understood,  the  biography  of 
John  Colter  may  be  very  briefly  stated.  He 
was  a  private  In  the  expedition  of  Lewis  and 
Clark.  On  the  return  of  the  expedition  from 
the  Padflo,  Colter  secured  his  discharge  at  the 
site  of  the  Mandan  yillages,  and  went  back  up 
the  river  with  two  companions  to  hunt  and 
trap.  In  1807  he  made  a  long  journey  through 
what  is  now  Northwestern  Wyoniing,  and 
while  on  this  journey  discovered  the  peculiar 
volcanic  country  which  exists  near  the  head- 
waters of  the  Yellowstone.  In  the  following 
summer  he  commenced  trmpjping,  with  a  com- 
panion named  Potts,  on  the  headwaters  of  the 
Missouri.  Here  they  were  attacked  by  the 
Blackfeet,  Potts  was  slain,  and  Colter,  by  run- 
ning the  gauntlet,  escaped,  though  by  the 
narrowest  nuu^gin  and  with  incredible  suffer- 
ing and  exertion.  In  1810  he  returned  to  St. 
Louis.  He  saw  much  of  Clark,  Brackenridge, 
Bradbury,  and  others,  told  of  his  adventures, 
was  evi<tonUy  believed  by  the  more  discerning^ 
but  was  ridiculed  by  the  great  man  of  his  lis 
teners,  who  derisively  christened  the  scene  of 
hU  exploiU  **  Colter's  HelL''  In  1811  Colter 
moved  some  distance  up  the  Missouri,  married, 
and  made  his  exit  from  history. 

It  now  appsars  that  Colter  did  not  reoMdn 
continuously  in  the  upper  country  from  1806 
to  1810.  In  the  spring  of  1807  he  set  out  for 
St.  Louis  and  descended  the  Missouri  as  far  as 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Platte.  Here  he  was  met 
by  a  party  under  Manuel  Lisa,  the  celebrated 
trader,  who  induced  him  to  return  to  the  upper 
rivers.    When  the  expedition  arrived  In  the 

••Th«TtllowMoo9Natloa*lPsrk.*    ISM. 


Yellowstone  country,  the  Blackfeet  Indisns 
were  encountered.  Lisa  was  agreeably  disap- 
pointed to  find  them  not  hostile,  as  he  feared 
they  might  be  on  account  of  their  experience 
with  Capt.  Lewis  the  previous  year.  But  It 
seems  that  they  were  so  sensible  of  the  provo- 
cation under  which  Capt  Lewis  had  acted 
that  they  had  not  cherished  the  loss  of  their 
two  brethren  at  his  hands  as  a  cause  for  re- 
venge, and  were  ready  for  friendly  Inter- 
course with  the  whites. 

When  Lisa  reached  the  mouth  of  the  Big- 
horn, he  set  up  a  trading  post  and  di^MUched 
Colter  to  visit  the  neighboring  tribes  and 
bring  them  in  to  trade.  Colter  set  out  with  a 
**  thirty.pound  pack,''  and  travelled  several 
hundred  miles,  part  of  the  time  alone,  and 
part  of  the  time  with  Indians.  While  in  com- 
pany with  a  party  of  Crows,  they  were  at- 
tacked by  the  Blackfeet  Colter,  in  self-de- 
fence,  fought  with  the  Crows,  <n«tfngnifhing 
himself  greatly.  The  Blackfeet  were  defeated 
with  loss,  but  not  until  they  had  seen  a  white 
man  fighting  on  the  side  of  their  hereditary 
foes. 

Next  year  Colter  and  Potts,  while  trapping 
on  the  Upper  Missouri,  were  surprised  by  a 
party  of  Blackfeet  who  still  seemed  not  dis- 
posed to  hostility.  But  difficulty  soon  arose,  a 
fight  ensued,  Potts  and  two  Indians  were 
killed,  and  Colter  made  his  escape. 

These  two  encounters  in  which  the  Blackfeet 
suffered  so  signally,  and,  more  particularly, 
the  unfortunate  appearance  of  especial  friend- 
ship on  the  part  of  the  whites  for  the  Crow 
nation,  as  evidenced  by  the  location  of  a  trad- 
ing-post In  the  country  of  that  tribe,  and  by 
the  presence  of  one  of  their  number  in  the 
fighting  ranks  of  the  Crows,  determined  irre. 
vocably  the  future  attitude  of  the  Blackfeet 
toward  the  whites.  Whenever  thereafter  they 
met,  it  was  always  on  terms  of  instant  and 
deadly  hoetillty. 

It  thus  appears  that  the  adventures  of  John 
Colter,  which  have  hitherto  seemed  decidedly 
of  the  romantic  and  fictitious  order,  were  the 
result  of  a  definite  purpoee  of  trade  with  the 
Indians.  His  **route  in  1807"  was  a  simple 
business  enterprise.  His  terrible  experience 
with  the  Blackfeet  was  no  fiction.  His  fame 
as  discoverer  of  the  Yellowstone  Wonderland 
rests  on  a  secure  basis.  But,  with  these  claims 
to  the  remembrance  of  posterity,  he  must 
henceforth  share  the  burden,  so  long  home  by 
the  great  explorer  Capt  Meriwether  Lewis,  of 
having  been  In  part  the  cause  of  that  malig- 
nant and  lasting  enmity  of  the  Blackfeet  to- 
wards the  whites  which,  for  upwards  of  three- 
score years,  played  so  important  a  part  in  the 
hiitory  of  the  far  West 

HnuLM  M.  CHimiiDBH.  • 


m  MEMORY  OF  GEORGE  STEPHENS. 

To  THS  Editor  or  Th>  Natioic  : 

Sir:  a  committee  has  been  formed,  with 
Sir  Edmund  Mooson,  British  AmbsMador  to 
Austria,  as  chairman,  and  the  Rev.  C.  A. 
Mo<^e,  late  Chaplain  of  H.B.M.'s  Legation  in 
Denmark,  as  sscretary,  to  establish  a  memo- 
rial to  Prof.  George  Stephens,  for  many  years 
in  charge  of  the  Departoient  of  English  at  the 
University  of  Copenhagen,  but  better  known 
through  his  writings  on  ranology.  The  memo- 
rial is  to  take  the  appropriata  form  of  **a 
small  Endowment  Fund  bearing  his  name,  for 
the  benefit  of  St  Alban's  Church,  Copenhagen, 
towards  the  founding  and  malntsnanoe  of 
which  Prof.  Stephens  laborsd  long  and  seal- 
ously." 


416 


Tlie   IN^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  [613 


Prof.  Stephens  had  not  a  few  friends  in  this 
ooontry  who  have  enjoyed  his  hospitality  at 
the  villa  on  Bianco  Lnnos  All^e,  and  they  will 
undoubtedly  be  glad  to  learn  of  this  oppor- 
tunity to  express  their  regard.  Subscriptions 
may  be  sent  to  the  Rev.  C.  A.  Moore,  Gustav 
Adolf  Strasse  6,  Dresden,  Saxony.— Yours  re- 
spectfully, Daniel  Kilham  Dodob. 

CHAMTAioir.  III..  May  23. 1 800. 


Notes. 


Stone  &  Kimball  have  transferred  their  en- 
tire business  from  Chicago  to  No.  139  Fifth 
Avenue,  New  York;  the  Chap-book  alone  hav. 
lug  been  left  behind  as  the  property  of  Bir.  H. 
S.  Stone,  formerly  a  member  of  the  above  cor- 
poration. They  have  nearly  ready  '  The  Pur- 
ple East,^  poems  principally  about  Armenia, 
by  William  Watson;  *The  Yankees  of  the 
East,^  a  book  of  letters  on  Japan,  by  William 
E.  Curtis,  in  two  volumes  with  illustrations ; 
'  The  Thlinkets  of  Northern  Alaska/  by  Fran- 
cis Knapp  and  Rheta  Louise  Childe,  illuttrated; 

*  Six  Conversations  and  Some  Correspondence,' 
by  Clyde  Fitch;  *Wive^  in  Exile,*  a  society 
novel  by  William  Sharp ;  '  In  a  Dike  Shanty,' 
by  Maria  Louise  Pool ;  *  An  Adventurer  of  the 
North,'  by  GUbert  Parker  ;  *  The  Island  of  Dr. 
Moreau,'  by  H.  G.  Wells;  and  *Miss  Arm- 
strong's  and  Other  Circumstances,'  short  sto- 
ries by  John  Davidson. 

Edward  Arnold  announces  for   June  first 

*  George's  Mother,'  a  novel  by  Stephen  Crane. 

A  popular  Life  of  Edison,  by  E.  C.  Kenyon, 
is  promised  by  Thomas  Whittaker. 

Macmillan's  latest  announcements  are  *A 
History  of  Elementary  Mathematics,'  by  Dr. 
Florian  Cajori  of  Colorado  College;  a  text- 
book of  selections  from  Chaucer  by  Prof.  Hi- 
ram Corson  of  Cornell ;  Leibnitz's  *  Critique  of 
Locke,'  translated  by  Alfred  G.  Langley ;  an 

*  Introduction  to  Public  Finance,'  by  Prof. 
Carl  C.  Plehn  of  the  University  of  California ; 
and  'Embarrassments,'  short  stories  by  Henry 
James. 

*■  The  Continent  of  America :  Its  Discovery 
and  Baptism,'  including  an  attempt  to  estab- 
lish the  landfall  of  Columbus  on  Watling's 
Island,  by  John  Boyd  Thacher,  is  an  expen- 
sive work  about  to  be  issued  in  a  limited  edi- 
tion by  Wm.  Evarts  Benjamin,  10  West  22d 
St.,  N.  Y. 

T.  Y.  Crowell  &  Co.  will  soon  issue  'CamU- 
la,'  a  novel  of  society  life  in  Stockholm,  from 
the  Swedish  of  Richert  von  Koch;  *  The  Vic- 
tory  of  Ezry  Gardner,'  a  Nantucket  idyl  by 
^iss  Imogen  Clark;  and  *The  Social  Meaning 
of  Religious  Experiences,'  by  Dr.  Herron. 

From  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.  we  are  to  have 

*  The  Problem  of  Elementary  Composition,'  by 
Elizabeth  H.  Spalding,  and  *  Select  Poems  of 
Robert  Bums,'  edited  by  Andrew  J.  George. 

Houghton,  Mifliin  &  Co.  propose  a  Riverside 
School  Library  embracing  a  series  of  fifty 
books  pertinent  to  the  name  of  the  series. 
Franklin's  Autobiography,  Andersen's  Tales, 
the  » Vicar  of  WakejBeld,'  and  *  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,'  among  others,  will  enter  into  this  col- 
lection. 

The  first  complete  illustrated  edition  of  Mar- 
ryat's  works  in  Danish  is  about  to  be  published 
at  Copenhagen.  The  transUtor  is  P.  Jern- 
dorffJessen,  and  the  translation  will  be  re- 
vised, to  avoid  possible  technical  mistakeii,  by 

cautiou  would  be  an  admirable  one  lu  the  caiie 
af  many  orlgiua.]  works  treatlEig  gf  ^^  ^^_ 


whose  authors  have  less  practical  experience 
than  the  author  of  *  Peter  Simple.' 

What  Mr.  David  Hannay  has  given  us  in 
his  'Don  Emilio  Castelar'  (F.  Wame  &  Co.)  is 
a  vivacious  and  cynical  sketch  of  Spanish  poli- 
tics since  the  revolution  of  1868,  with  Castelar 
only  occasionally  appearing  as  the  (feus  tx  mo- 
chindn,  or,  more  frequently,  the  god  run  over 
and  crushed  flat  by  the  machine.  Of  Castelar 
on  his  oratorical  or  his  literary  side,  little  or 
nothing  is  said;  his  personality  is  left  almost 
wholly  in  the  shadow.  Of  his  political  theories 
and  political  career,  even,  no  formal  account 
or  summation  is  given.  His  name,  in  short, 
has  simply  furnished  Mr.  Hannay  a  peg  upon 
which  to  hang  his  lively  description  of  Spanish 
political  methods  and  changes.  This  seems 
a  little  misleading,  in  a  series  si>ecifically  de- 
voted to  ''  Public  Men  of  To-day";  but,  after 
all,  we  think  the  author  has  chosen  wisely. 
His  long  residence  in  Spain,  and  intimate  ac- 
quaintance with  the  Spanish  political  charac 
ter  from  the  inside,  make  what  he  writes  here 
of  much  more  value  than  a  perfunctory  but 
more  personal  account  of  Castelar  could  possi- 
bly  have  been.  For  the  light  his  incisive  com- 
ments throw  upon  the  present  situation  of 
Spain,  his  book  makes  an  especial  appeal  to 
present-day  readers. 

'  Studies  in  Plant  Form,  with  some  sugges- 
tions  for  their  Application  in  Design,'  by  A. 
E.  V.  LiUey  and  W.  Midgley  (Scribners),  is 
likely  to  prove  a  useful  volume  to  many  inte- 
rested in  ornamental  designing.  Not  that  the 
book  itself  is  particularly  good  or  the  **  sug- 
gestions" particularly  valuable.  The  general 
remarks  on  the  "principles  of  design"  are 
slight,  and  the  *'  concise  accounts  of  the  tech- 
nical requirements  of  the  different  processes  " 
are,  though  sensible,  altogether  too  concise; 
but,  as  the  authors  remark  in  the  preface,  "  it 
is  seldom  that  the  plant  most  suitable  for  a 
particular  design  is  in  season  when  it  is  wanted, 
and  it  is  often  .  .  .  difficult  (sometimes  im- 
possible) to  find  a  drawing  of  the  ornamental 
sides  of  many  plants."  They  therefore  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  giving  a  series  of  somewhat 
simplified  and  decorative  drawings  of  plant 
forms,  supplemented  by  some  very  good  and 
clear  photographs  from  nature.  The  designs 
which  the  authors  have  formed  from  this  ma- 
terial are  not  always  extremely  successful,  but 
the  material  itself  is  most  valuable. 

Curtis  &  Co.  of  Boston,  publishers  of  the 
**  Copley  Prints,"  recently  noticed  by  us,  send 
us  a  well  printed  little  pamphlet  by  Ernest 
FenoUosa  on  the  *  Mural  Paintings  in  the 
Boston  Public  Library.'  We  -heartily  agree 
with  Mr.  Fenollosa's  estimate  of  the  impor- 
tance, in  forming  a  national  school  of  art,  of 
this  effort  towards  monumental  painting,  and 
he  says  so  much  that  we  believe  to  be  true, 
and  80  much  more  that  we  should  like  to 
believe  to  be  true,  that  it  seems  ungracious  to 
quarrel  with  his  enthusiasm;  but  we  cannot 
help  the  feeling  that  a  greater  reticence  of 
language  would  have  carried  greater  convic- 
tion. The  implied  comparison  of  Mr.  Sargent 
to  Michelangelo  would  assuredly  strike  that 
admirable  modem  painter  himself  as  exces- 
sive, and  a  certain  tropical  luxuriance  of 
phrase  disguises  the  soundness  of  much  of  the 
criticism.  Still,  the  criticism  is  sound  and 
suggestive,  and  we  recommend  a  reading  of 
the  pamphlet  to  any  one  who  may  have  been 
tempted  to  think  of  '*  mere  decoration"  as  of 
an  inferior  kind  of  art 

Th4»  PorffnHo  for  AprU  (»£acmillan)  is  a 
rarity  m  that  it»  mterest  is  not  only  contem- 
poraneous bill  American.  We  do  not  remem- 
ber an  Instance,  hitretofore,  of  an  American 


artist,  reatdent  Jn  A  men  fa,  who  has  rweiTetJ 
the  houorn  of  an  elaborate  monograph  in  in 
irnportsui  foreign  publication.  Certaiol;  do 
A  men  can  artist  deserves  such  homage  morv 
than  Mr.  John  Lafarge,  who  has  now  r«cdv«d 
it.  The  text,  by  Cecilia  Waern,  is  weU  writ- 
ten,  atid  sj  illutoinat^  by  a  liberal  quantity  ef 
Mr.  Lafarge' »  own  cbanniiig  prose.  It  inak«i 
no  attempt  - '  to  assign  him  a  set  rank" — it  wiU 
b©  many  jemm  before  i  bat  can  be  dotne—  but  is 
wisely  confined  to  an  account  of  his  **  develop- 
ment, ^dealis  and  aioiK,  together  with  a  few 
hints  ms  to  temperament  and  g^ts  that  codeU^ 
tute  his  artbitie  personalitj/^  By  a  sizigul&r 
oventlght  the  dale  of  bis  birth  (1S35)  has  been 
entirely  omitted.  The  illu&tratiDns  are  nniDi^ 
roufl  ntxd  well  executed,  and  giro  an  adequate 
idea  of  the  range  of  Mr.  Lafarge's  prodoeUon, 
if  not  of  it»  quality.  Wht^tber  in  paint  or  in 
glasit>  color  is  »ucb  an  essential  element  of  bii 
art  that  be  suS'ers  more  than  most  pain  tan 
from  tuny  form  of  reproduction.  We  ref^rst 
that  liomethiiig  more  was  not  given  us  in  i11u»^ 
t ration  of  his  admirable  landscape  paintlog, 
^me  of  which  will^  we  think,  fioaUy  bold  the 
highest  rank  in  his  compleled  work, 

H.  Aiigoste  Brachet'fl  '  Hi»tortc&l  Grammar 
of  the  French  Lan^age'  (Oxford:  Clarendoo 
PrefrH;  New  York;  Macmillan)  is  practicaUj  & 
new  work^  not  only  as  enlarged^  hot  as  having 
been  rewritten  in  great  part  by  Mr.  Paget 
Toy u bee,  whose  competence  is  well  known  to 
i«rbolar«.  The  book,  in  fact,  has  been  brongfat 
up  to  date,  and  the  results  of  the  most  recent 
researches  embodied  in  it.  The  whole  of  Book 
J.,  which  treats  of  Fbonetics,  and  forms  mora 
than  half  of  the  volume,  is  entirely  origiiiat 
BookM  IL  and  11 L  have  also  been  so  largely 
rewritten  that  Brachet^s  own  share  is  greatlj 
diminished,  and  bih  Introdaction  alone  it  re- 
tai  ned  nearly  in  f  ul  L.  Di  vision  Into  pars  graphs 
and  the  addition  of  two  very  full  indicee,  oue  of 
subjects  smd  one  of  words,  facilitate  the  ose  of 
the  book  for  reference  purpoties. 

**  Davant  le  Siftcle*'  tP*ris:  Colin  &  Citi  m 
the  last  reeneil  of  articles  by  the  Vicomte  de 
V'ogfl#^  and  contains  some  noteworthy  pasea 
The  itndy  of  Beted  ia^s  ^^Trophi*ess^^  that  00 
Tatoe^  and  that  on  Mont^gtit  have  distinct 
value.  The  article  on  Canrobert  Is  touching 
as  well,  **  Premier  Septembre"  is  a  realistic 
account  of  so  much  of  the  war  as  the  writer 
saw,  Interspersed  with  sound  adTlcti  to  his 
compatriotH, 

M.  George  L,  Fonsegrive  studies  conlempo^ 
rary  literature  from  the  Christian  standpoint, 
and  is  not  aihamed  to  say  so.  Another  recom- 
uiendatLon  is  that  he  speaks  intelligently  on 
the  subjects  he  treatis  and  his  articlea,  origi- 
nally pub!  i«bed  in  Im  Quinzaint  and  now  is- 
sued collectively  under  the  title  '  Les  Litres  et 
\^  Id^ea— l8Afc-fi5  ^  (Paris:  Lecoffre),  are  worth 
reading;.  It  is  really  ideaa  more  than  the  hook% 
t  bemsel  Tee  which  he  discuisses.  The  folio  wing 
may  h^  noticed  more  parti  en  tarly :  **  Le  Bilan 
de  ia  Bcience,^^  **  Le  Sentiment  religieox  ilaits 
le  Roman/*  and  "  L^ Education  morale.'' 

The  fourth  and  concluding  volume  of  Am(y 
d^  Roux'ii  history  of  Italian  literature  ho*  just 
appeared  {Paris;  Plon  &  Cle.K  U  covert  the 
period  from  1883  to  1896.  The  lack  of  an  index^ 
so  very  common  a  defect  in  French  book&,  di- 
miuLshes  the  practical  value  of  this  work. 

On  May  14,  1790,  Dr.  Edward  Jeooer  ftTt 
performed  the  operation  ol  vaccination*  and 
in  celebration  of  the  <  t>fit«nnlal  aiiniT<»r{<ary  of 
this  benelicent  discovery  the  Imperial  Board 
of  Health  in  Berlio  baa  issued  a  mumorla]  an- 
titlfkd  *  SmaJlrioi  and  Preventive  Vei<<cttkaCkiQ^ 
( '  B latte m  nnd  Scbutz|>ockenlmpf  nn^ ' } .  V§t<^ 
ctnation  wab  made  cotopolADfj  In  Havmria  m 


May  28,  1896] 


Th.e   ITation. 


417 


early  as  Auguat  26, 1807,  but  did  not  become 
generally  obligatory  in  Germany  before  the 
enactment  of  the  "Reicbs-Impfgetetz"  of 
April  8,  1874,  the  necessity  of  which  was 
proved  by  the  epidemic  of  smallpox  that  had 
raged  a  short  time  before  in  all  the  principal 
German  cities  except  Munich,  whose  inhabi- 
tants remained  comparatively  free  from  the 
scourge.  In  1805  the  mortality  from  smallpox 
in  Bayaria  amounted  to  the  fraction  0.017  of 
every  100,000  inhabitants ;  in  other  words, 
there  were  only  seven  cases  and  a  single  death. 
It  is  also  shown  that,  with  proper  precautions 
as  regards  the  purity  of  the  vaccine  matter, 
there  is  not  the  slightest  danger  of  infection  or 
of  any  injury  whatever  to  the  patient.  Thei^ub- 
lication  of  these  statistics  is  the  answer  of  the 
Board  of  Health  to  the  recent  attempts  in  the 
Imperial  Diet  to  abolish  the  law  making  vac- 
cination and  revaccination  obligatory. 

Members  of  the  Faculty  of  the  University  of 
G6ttingen  have,  in  more  than  one  way,  in  re- 
cent years  shown  their  active  interest  in  the 
advancement  of  woman.  The  articles  on  **Die 
Deutsche  Frauenbewegupg "  by  Prof.  Gustav 
Cohn  of  the  department  of  political  science 
{Rund9cfMUy  March-May)  furnish  new  evidence 
that  the  spirit  of  progress  has  found  an  abode 
in  that  famous  seat  of  learning.  The  histori- 
cal portions  of  Prof.  Cohn's  treatise  are,  on  the 
whole,  critical  and  philosophical  rather  than 
statistical  (full  statistics  on  the  subject  may  be 
found  in  the  work  of  Frau  Lina  Morgenstem, 
Berlin,  1805,  and  elsewhere),  but  he  gives  in 
broad  outlines  an  interesting  account  of  the 
movement  during  the  last  thirty  years  from 
the  standpoint  of  a  conservative  and  hopeful 
sympathizer. 

The  Scottish  Oeographical  Mctgaaine  for 
May  contains  a  timely  article,  by  Capt  Maun- 
•ell,  on  Turkish  Armenia  and  Kurdistan. 
Though  mainly  topographical,  it  gives  inte- 
resting descriptions  of  scenery  and  of  the  peo- 
pie  and  their  homes— for  example,  of  an  Ar- 
menian mountain-village  which  is  occupied 
through  the  winter  (many  are  deserted  for  the 
plains  at  this  season),  and  whose  street  is  cov- 
ered  so  that  the  village  has  one  common  roof. 
**  The  interior  is  like  a  rabbit  warren,  and  it  is 
difficult  for  the  uninitiated  to  grope  about  and 
escape  being  knocked  down  in  the  semi- dark- 
ness by  cattle  being  driven  in  and  out"  Each 
house  contains,  in  addition  to  the  oven,  a  great 
vat  for  storing  water  in  winter 'to  prevent 
its  being  frozen.  The  author  emphasises  the 
importance,  geographical  and  strategical,  of 
the  Armenian  plateau  with  relation  to  the 
great  lines  of  communication  between  Europe 
and  Asia.  There  is  also  an  interesting  account 
of  the  Falkland  Islands,  the  people,  and  their 
great  industry,  sheep-raising.  In  a  population 
of  1,900  there  is  not  one  who  is  receiving  aid 
from  the  poor*fund,  and  the  average  amount 
to  the  credit  of  the  250  depositors  in  the 
savings  bank  U  $850. 

A  most  adventurous  journey  is  described  in 
the  Otographioal  Journal  for  May.  Mr.  8t. 
George  Littledale,  accompanied  by  his  wife 
and  nephew,  starting  from  Tarkand  early  in 
January,  1805,  crossed  Thibet  from  north  to 
sooth,  coming  within  forty-eight  miles  of 
Lhasa.  Here  he  was  compelled  to  turn  west- 
ward, and  entered  India  through  Kashmir. 
Some  idea  of  the  nature  of  the  country  tra- 
versed is  given  by  the  fact  that  from  April  26 
to  October  16  they  never  descended  lower  than 
15,000  feet,  and  for  four  weeks  of  that  time 
had  camped  over  17,000  feet.  At  times  the 
thermometer  was  ten  degrees  below  zero  in  the 
tent,  and  the  hair  was  frosen  to  the  pillow. 
For  seven^.five  days  they  did  not  see  a  man. 


Considering  the  inaccessibility  of  Lhasa  to  Eu- 
ropeans—nothing would  induce  the  L%ma  Gov- 
ernment to  admit  Mr.  Littledale  and  his  party 
~it  is  strange  to  read  of  the  supplies  which 
they  received  from  this  place,  viz.,  scented 
soap,  WUls's  Bristol  bird^s-eye  tobacco,  and 
groceries  wrapped  in  a  queer  old  print  of  a 
London  church.  This  may  be  a  relic  of  the 
visit  of  Manning,  the  correspondent  of  Charles 
Lamb,  the  only  Englishman  who  has  succeeded 
in  reaching  Lhasa.  The  Journal,  it  may  be 
added,  incorrectly  ascribes  this  exploit  to 
George  Bogle.  Mr.  Littledale  made  a  rough, 
but  remarkably  accurate,  route  survey  of  1,700 
miles,  much  of  it  through  absolutely  unex- 
plored country,  discovering  among  other 
things  a  mountain  chain  with  peaks  20,000  feet 
high.  He  brought  back  between  sixty  and 
seventy  plants,  found  at  a  height  of  about 
16,000  feet;  and  ten,  including  a  **strlldng 
grass'*  and  a  fungus,  are  probably  new  to 
science. 

The  fourteenth  annual  report  of  the  Dante 
Society  of  Cambridge,  Mass.,  has  for  its  chief 
accompanying  paper  some  illustrations  of  the 
*  Divine  Comedy,'  extracted  by  Prof.  Norton 
from  the  Chronicle  of  Fra  Salimbene  (composed 
1283.'87),  in  the  original  Latin.  These  are 
largely  concerned  with  liistorical  personages, 
but  also  with  incidents  like  the  earthquake  al- 
luded to  in  Inf.  xxiii.,  8742,  in  the  fright 
caused  by  which  Sslimbene's  mother  left  him 
in  his  cradle  and  hurried  off  with  his  two  sis- 
ters.  Resenting  this  in  after  years  as  a  slight 
on  his  sex  ('*  because  she  ought  to  have  had  a 
greater  concern  for  me,  a  man-child,  than  for 
the  girls  **),  he  was  assured  that  she  picked  them 
up  as  being  larger  and  more  portable. 

The  Woman's  Education  Association  of  Bos- 
ton has  established  for  the  current  year  seve- 
ral scholarships  for  work  in  the  summer 
schools,  to  be  chiefly  offered  for  the  course  in 
Physical  Geography  given  by  Prof.  W.  M. 
Davis  of  Harvard  University.  The  sum  at 
disposal  is  not  large,  and  contributions  are  de- 
sired. They  may  be  sent  to  Mrs.  R.  H.  Rich- 
ards, Institute  of  Technology,  Boston,  Mass. 
A  circular  issued  by  the  Association  enu- 
merates summer  courses  for  1806  in  eight  col- 
leges and  universities,  all  at  the  East,  save  one 
(Chicago). 

—Prof.  Edward  Channing  of  Harvard  Uni- 
versity has  written  for  the  Cambridge  Histo- 
rical Series  the  volume  on  *  The  United  States 
of  America,  1765-1865'  (Maomillan).  In  spite 
of  a  pervading  impression  of  slightness,  the 
book  is  one  which  may  be  read  with  some  in- 
terest and  considerable  profit,  although  any 
attempt  to  give,  within  the  narrow  limits  of 
three  hundred  pages,  a  clear  and  well-propor- 
tioned  account  of  the  history  of  the  United 
States  for  a  hundred  years  can  never  be  quite 
successful  unless  accompanied  by  g^reat  skill 
in  condensation  and  an  unusually  interesting 
style.  Unlike  most  writers  of  similar  manuals. 
Prof.  Channing  has  apparently  chosen  to  re- 
strict himielf  to  a  presentation  and  discussion  of 
leading  events  and  important  situations  only, 
rather  than  to  crowd  his  pages  with  facts; 
but  while  his  selection  shows,  in  general,  a  sure 
sense  of  the  relative  importance  of  things,  he 
does  not  indicate  many  new  points  of  view, 
nor  are  his  comments  very  profound.  As  a 
history  the  book  is  of  somewhat  unequal  merit. 
Much  the  best  portion  is  that  covering  the  pe- 
riod from  1765  to  the  beginning  of  Jefferson's 
first  administration  in  1801,  which  is  '*  based 
on  the  author's  own  reading  of  the  original 
sources";  the  treatment  is  technical,  however, 
rathar  than  broad,  and  the  discusion  of  the 


relations  between  the  colonies  and  the  mother 
country  lays  at  least  due  emphasis  upon  the 
merely  legal  aspects  of  the  points  at  issue. 
Forthepcoiod  subsequent  to  1801  the  author 
freely  acknowledges  special  indebtedness  to 
other  writers;  this  part  of  the  work,  therefore, 
presents  few  points  calling  for  comment,  be- 
yond noting  that  the  theory  of  nullification  is 
summarily  dismissed  as  '*  ridiculous,"  and  that 
Prof.  Channing  has  written  a  very  readable 
account  of  the  slavery  controversy  vrithout 
leaving  the  impression  that  he  regards  the 
struggle  as  one  of  very  profound  significance. 
We  have  noted  but  few  errata^  and  none  of 
them  serious.  Georgia  ceded  its  Western  lands 
in  1809,  not  in  1801  (p.  111).  The  Ordinance  of 
1787  provided  for  the  eventual  formation  of 
five,  not  six  (p.  114)  States  out  of  the  territory 
northwest  of  the  Ohio  River.  Washington's 
proclamation  of  neutrality  was  ifsued  in  1703, 
not  in  1704  (p.  148) ;  and  Foot's  resolution  in  re- 
gard to  the  public  lands  was  introduced  in  De- 
cember, 1820,  not  *'in  1830"  (p.  215).  The 
statement  (p.  125)  that  the  eleventh  amend- 
ment  to  the  Constitution  **  limited  the  power  of 
the  Supreme  Court,"  is  hardly  adequate.  The 
volume  is  equipped  with  maps  and  a  good  in- 
dex, and  there  is  a  useful  select  bibliography. 

—At  the  **  World's  Congress  of  Librarians," 
held  during  the  World^s  Fair  at  Chicago,  in 
1803,  it  was  proposed  to  form  a  union  of  the 
principal  libraries  of  Europe  and  America  for 
the  purpose  of  publishing  facsimiles  of  the 
rarest  and  most  valuable  manuscripts.  The 
cost  of  reproduction  was  to  be  borne  by  the 
associated  libraries,  and  the  facsimiles  were  to 
be  distributed  among  them.  It  was  further- 
more agreed  that  the  enterprise  should  be  under 
the  direction  of  W.  N.  Du  Rieu,  the  librarian 
of  the  University  of  Ley  den  in  Holland,  and 
that  the  publisher  should  be  A.  W.  Sijthoff  of 
the  same  city.  Owing  to  financial  difficulties, 
this  plan  was  not  carried  into  effect,  |md  the 
enterprising  Leyden  publisher  has  now  under- 
taken to  reproduce  these  facsimiles  at  his  own 
expense  under  the  editorial  superintendence  of 
Du  Rieu.  The  first  series  will  consist  of  six 
Greek  and  six  Latin  manuscripts,  among  which 
may  be  mentioned  the  ^schylus  of  the  Lau- 
rentian  Library  of  Florence,  the  Diosoorides  of 
Vienna,  the  Plato  of  Oxford,  the  Lucretius  of 
Leyden,  and  lK>th  the  Florentine  manuscripts 
of  Tacitus.  The  first  volume  issued  will  be  the 
manuscript  of  the  first  eight  books  of  the  Sep- 
tuagint,  written  in  the  fifth  century,  and  for- 
merly the  property  of  the  French  councillor 
Claude  Sarrau  (deceased  in  1651),  and  there- 
fore  known  as  the  Codex  Sarravianus.  It  con- 
sists of  158  leaves,  of  which  ISO  are  in  Leyden, 
22  in  Paris,  and  1  in  St.  Petersburg.  A  sue 
cessful  reproduction  of  these  widely  scattered 
fragments  will  bring  them  together  in  a  single 
volume,  and  thus  render  the  whole  codex  again 
available  by  scholars.  The  directors  of  Euro- 
pean  libraries  are,  as  a  rule,  exceedingly  libe- 
ral in  placing  their  manuscripts  at  the  disposal 
of  the  libraries  of  other  countries  fur  the  pro- 
motion of  special  researches.  The  State  Li- 
brary of  Munich  has  even  permitted  unique 
manusoripto  to  be  sent  to  the  United  States 
for  this  purpose.  But  such  a  stretch  of  gene- 
rosity is  attended  with  great  risks  and  might 
result  in  irreparable  loss.  Nearly  every  large 
library  has  among  iu  manuscript  treasures  a 
limited  nnmber  of  so  called  kimelia  (jewels), 
which  are  never  lent,  but  belong  to  the  cate- 
gory known  in  France  as  **manuscrits  non- 
touristes."  As  the  Leyden  publisher  announces, 
it  is  to  the  '*  reproduction  des  manuscrits  grecs 
et  latins  Dontouristea"  that  particular atteo- 


418 


Tlie    !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1613 


tion  will  be  given.  Excellent  facsimilet  of 
several  kimelia,  rach  as  the  DemostheneB  in 
Palis,  the  Xfibelungen  in  Munich,  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  manuscript  in  Vercelll,  the  Psalter  in 
Utrecht,  and  the  *  Imitatio  Christ! '  in  Brussels, 
already  exist  and  have  met  with  unqualified 
praise.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  new  enterprise 
will  be  fully  appreciated  by  scholars  and  re- 
ceive the  support  of  libraries  and  universitiee 
in  this  country.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  in- 
sist  upon  the  value  of  these  facsimiles  not  only 
for  the  purposes  of  collation  in  editing  texts, 
but  also  for  imparting  class-room  instruction 
in  palsography. 

'Herr  Wilhelm  Bode,  the  well-known  con- 
servator of  the  Museum  of  Berlin,  tells  in  Pan 
the  story  of  how  he  formed  the  collection  of 
Italian  bronses  which  is  one  of  the  glories  of 
that  gallery.  With  great  modesty  he  attri- 
butes most  of  his  trouvailleM  to  chance  and  to 
good  luck,  but  it  is  easy  to  see  that  his  own 
unwearied  activity,  and  his  sureness  of  taste 
and  keenness  of  scent  as  a  connoisseur,  have 
been  more  valuable  to  him  than  any  luck. 
His  first  purchases  date  from  a  journey  which 
he  made  into  Italy  at  a  time  when  he  was  only 
an  attach^  of  the  Museum.  He  had  been  com- 
missioned  to  bring  back  some  casts,  but  he  con- 
vinced himself  very  soon  that,  with  a  little 
perseverance  and  good  fortune,  he  could  at 
almost  the  same  cost  obtain  originals.  It  was 
thus  that  he  bought  the  famous  busts  of  the 
Palaszo  StroEzi,  Michelangelo's  '*St.  John,"" 
a  ** Cavalier*'  of  Riccio^s,  which  he  found  at 
Venice,  a  *'St.  John  '*  of  Donatello's,  and  other 
most  valuable  works.  Herr  Bode  tells  his  tale 
not  without  humor,  and  some  of  the  stories  of 
his  I  usee  and  tricks  as  a  collector  are  most 
amusing.  He  was  once  paying  a  visit  to  Frede- 
ric Spitaser,  who  lived  then  in  narrow  lodgings 
in  the  Rue  deRivoli,  when  the  Baron  Adolpbe 
de  Rothschild  was  announced.  Bode  took  re- 
fuge in  a  sort  of  lumber-room,  and  found  there 
on  the  floor  a  great  study  of  a  head  for  a  statue 
of  Ludovico  di  Oonsaga,  which  he  studied  at 
his  leisure.  "  When  Spltzer  came  back,  *'  Bode 
sajs,  **he  told  me  with  asoiile  that  connois- 
seurs themselves  had  their  moments  of  error, 
and  that  he  had  let  himself  be  taken  in  when 
he  bought  that  study.  I  concealed  my  sur- 
prise, and  some  weeks  after  I  profited  by  his 
avowal  and  bought  the  sculpture  very  cheap 
through  an  agent.**  The  famous  Spanish  sta- 
tue, the  **  Madonna  in  Tears,**  which  is  one 
of  the  finest  pieces  in  the  Berlin  Museum, 
was  acquired  by  methods  even  less  direct  and 
frank. 

—The  Impresdonists  hold  the  Luxembourg 
in  force,  awaiting  there  the  time  of  their  tri- 
umphal march  to  the  Louvre.  The  Caillebotte 
collection  has  just  been  accepted  by  the  Con- 
seU  d*£tot.  M.  Gustave  CaiUebotte  was  him- 
self an  Impressionist  painter,  and  in  the  course 
of  the  last  thirty  years  had  gathered  together 
sixty-six  canvases,  works  of  his  school,  and  at 
his  death  bequeathed  them  to  the  nation.  At 
first  there  were  some  difllculties  raised  as  to 
the  legacy.  M.  Caillebotte  had  prescribed  that 
his  entire  collection  should  go  into  the  Museum; 
the  directors  of  the  Beaux- Arts,  however,  wish- 
ed that  certain  pictures  of  minor  value  should 
be  removed  from  it.  A  newspaper  discussion 
arose  upon  this  point,  together  with  false  ru- 
mora  that  the  gift  would  be  declined.  In  recdity 
there  was  only  a  misunderstanding,  and  a  very 
slight  one  at  that,  and  the  authorities  of  the 
Museum  and  the  Caillebotte  hein  are  now  en- 
tirely  agreecJ .  Forty  pictuj-ea,  in  stead  of  sixty- 
six,  E"  to  the  Luxembourg.     Tbe«j  cwnvascs 


have  been  chosen  by  the  Conservator  of  the 
Museum  and  by  the  artists  interested.  Of 
Manetk  there  are  two  pictures;  of  IMgas,  seven 
pastels;  of  Cteinne,  one  painting;  of  Claude 
Monet,  eight;  of.Renoir,  six;  of  Sisley,  six;  of 
Pissarro,  eight ;  there  are  also  two  of  Millet*s 
drawings.  When  one  remembers  the  twenty 
years  of  insult  and  of  obloquy  through  which 
the  Impressionist  school  has  struggled  to  its 
present  position,  and  when  one  remembers  also 
how  recent  is  the  time  when  Claude  Monet  had 
to  fight  almost  desperately  to  win  a  place  at 
the  Luxembourg  for  &iouard  Manet*s  **01ym- 
pia,**  one  can  see  bow  substantial  the  present 
triumph  is.  The  Caillebotte  collection  will  be 
hung  in  a  new  gallery  which  is  to  be  built  upon 
the  garden  terrace,  and  which  will  open  from 
the  vestibule  of  sculpture. 

—From  1871  to  1877  the  late  Viscount  de 
Qontaut-Biron  represented  the  French  repnb 
lie  at  Berlin;  and,  under  the  catching  title 
*  An  Ambassador  of  the  Vanquished,*  his  friend 
and  sometime  chief,  the  Duke  de  Broglie,  has 
described  De  Gtontaufs  experiences  and  the  re 
lations  between  France  and  Germany  during 
the  six  years  that  followed  the  peace  of  Frank 
fort  The  book  is  based,  as  the  title-page  de. 
Clares,  upon  the  Ambassador*s  diaries  and 
memoranda ;  but  this  material  is  obTiously  sup- 
plemented by  De  Broglie^s  personal  knowledge 
of  the  events  narrated.  De  Broglie  was  the 
leader  of  the  French  royalUrtw;  from  May,  1878, 
to  May,  1874,  he  was  at  the  head  of  President 
MacMahon*s  cabinet,  and,  during  the  greater 
part  of  the  year,  he  held  the  portfolio  of 
Foreign.  Affairs.  Incidentally  his  narrative 
throws  light  on  the  attempted  restoration  of 
the  Bourbons  in  the  person  of  **  Henry  V.*' 
The  most  interesting  chapter,  however,  is 
that  devoted  to  the  •*  crisis  of  1875,'*  when 
it  was  feared  that  Germany  intended  to 
provoke  a  fresh  war  and  crush  France  be* 
fore  her  military  power  was  restored.  It 
seems  plear  that  Moltke  and  the  military 
party  in  Prussia  favored  this  course.  It  ia 
admitted,  even  by  De  Broglie,  that  King 
William  was  opposed  to  it.  What  is  disput- 
ed is  the  attitude  of  Bismarck.  He  has  al 
ways  maintained  that  he  had  no  idea  of 
provoking  a  war.  De  Qontaut,  however,  dis- 
trusted him,  and  initiated,  as  De  Broglie  tells 
us,  the  measures  which  secured  the  interven 
tion  of  the  Russian  diplomacy.  According  to 
De  Broglie,  the  peril  was  a  real  one,  and  the 
Ambassador *s  prompt  and  shrewd  action  saved 
his  country.  The  animosity  which  Bismarck 
henceforth  displayed  against  De  Gontaut  is 
depicted  as  the  natural  resentment  of  a  vio- 
lent man  against  the  antagonist  who  has  foiled 
him.  The  German  side  of  the  story  is  that 
Bismarck,  deeply  resenting  the  unnecessary 
interference  of  Russia,  resented  also  the  French 
suspicion  wliicb  had  invoked  the  interference; 
and  if  he  held  De  Gontaut  chiefiy  responsible, 
it  appears  from  De  Broglie^s  testimony  that  he 
was  not  in  error.  The  volume  is  translated 
and  annotated  by  Albert  D.  Vandam,  and 
published  by  Macmillan.  The  character  of 
the  translation  may  be  illustrated  by  a  few 
random  excerpts.  We  read  of  De  Gontaut's 
"  rapid  advance  into  a  midst  which,  Unt  iUeff 
so  mils  to  iV  (p.  24);  of  **  scruples  which  pre- 
vented part  of  the  Royalists  to  adhere  **  to  a 
project  (p.  72):  of  ^* dissentiments^^  between 
Bismarck  and  Von  Arnim  (p.  75);  and  of  **<A« 
ssvsrt  appreeiations  enumercUed  in  the  course 
of  the  Bazaine  trial  with  regard  to  the  conduct 
of  the  Pmseian  generals  during  the  war**  (p. 
14d).  For  the  not«s  whiuh  Mr.  Vandam  ha« 
inserted  no  cause  appears  except  that,   like 


MereutiOf  but  with  less  reason,  he  *' loves  to 
hear  himself  talk.** 


THE   COURTSHIPS    OF   QUEEN   ELIZA- 
BETH. 

The  Cowtshipa  of  Queen  Elizabeth:  A  Histo- 
ry of  the  Various  Negotiatioos  for  her  Msr- 
riage.  By  Martin  A.  a  Hume,  F.R.  Hist 
S.,  Editor  of  the  Calendar  of  Spanish  Bfesto 
Papers  of  Elisabeth  (Public  Record  Ofilce). 
London:  Unwin;  New  York:  MacmiDsn. 
1896.  Illustrated.  Pp.  vi,  348. 
The  history  of  royal  loves  and  marriages  is  not 
angelic  or  august.  True  love  has  seldom  nm 
in  the  course  marked  out  for  it  by  statwnss- 
ship  or  diplomacy,  and  scandals  have  been  the 
natural  result.  Royalty  has  a  claim  on  our 
pity  and  our  charitable  aUowanoe^  since  it  is 
generally  deprived  of  conjugal  affection,  which 
to  the  rest  of  us  is  the  nurse  of  virtue.  ETen 
George  IV.,  had  the  law  allowed  him  to  msrry 
Mrs.  Fitsherbert,  who  seems  to  have  been  is 
every  way  worthy  oC  love,  might  have  besn 
made  a  better  man.  State  policy  compelled 
him,  in  her  stead,  to  take  a  bride  the  first 
sight  of  whom  made  him  call  for  brandy.  In 
England  every  proposal  of  a  dotation  for  one 
of  the  royal  family  calls  forth  angry  proteits 
from  the  democracy;  a  vote  for  one  would  al- 
most cost  a  Radical  member  of  ParliamcDi  hu 
political  life.  Tet  so  long  as  the  Royal  Mar- 
riage Act  prevents  the  members  of  the  rojal 
family  from  marrying  whom  they  plesie, 
equity  will  surely  entitle  them  to  dotstioa 
Why  do  not  the  Radicals  move  to  repeal  the 
Royal  Marriage  Act,  and  restore  to  the  mem- 
bers of  the  royal  family  their  natural  libertj 
of  choice  f  Princes  and  princesses  would  then 
have  no  need  vt  luarnagi?  portions  ffOLu  tbe 
public.  They  might  take  their  choice  smmg 
the  RQthB<7hildf,  Hiracbea^  VanderbUt^  afid 
Jay  GoiildH. 

In  making  a  special  study  of  the  c<>i]rti»hipi 
of  Elizabeth,  Mr.  Martin  A.  8.  Hume  has  hid 
the  aid  of  the  tipanifib  state  papers  of  tba 
reign  at  the  Record  Office,  ot  the  calendar  of 
which  be  is  the  aditor,  and  which  could  not  fdl 
to  throir  new  light  upon  the  subject.  Tb«lii«- 
tory  wbich  he  lays  before  us  is  a  singular  mix- 
ture of  the  action  of  coquetJ-y  with  that  of  d^ 
plomacy.  We  are  Inclined  tu  think  tbst  th^r* 
was  Id  it  rather  more  of  coquetry  and  \e^  of 
diplomacy  than  Mr.  Hume  supposes,  Wboii 
EUmbeth  tries  to  draw  PhiJip  IL  into  a  poii- 
tlve  offer  for  her  baud^  In  order,  as  Mr.  Htitue 
Bs^s,  that  she  may  ha^e  the  sati^sctioB  of 
Baying  that  ibe  refused  bim,  eoqueU'y  iordj 
predominates  over  policy*  Mr.  Hume  trulT 
depicts  Elizabeth's  vanity  as  perfecUj  uxsmti*- 
ble,  BO  that  only  those  who  would  cota&aX  ta 
pander  to  it  could  hope  for  a  coutijiuanc*  ^1 
her  favor,  and  such  a  foibl*  wo^  not  likelj  tp 
obeervti  diplomatic  limits.  It  is  pretty  evi- 
dent, also,  tbat  sex  was  strong  to  ber,  sad  tbst 
Bhakspere^a  lines  describing  her  ba  pa^^^icg  «i 
**  in  maiden  meditation,  fancy-free,"  which  Mr. 
Hume  tabes  for  hi»  motto,  are  more  beautifol 
than  tme.  BtiU,  the  diplomatic  BlgniecsMv 
of  the  biddingB  and  chmfTerings  for  her  hm^ 
was  unquestionably  great.  They  helped  hw 
council  to  maintain  the  balance  betwwi 
France  and  Spain,  whose  conJoDction  m^U 
have  been  fatal  to  the  Protestant  reaUa.  T^ 
credit  them,  m  Mr.  Htune  doiai,  with  "tbp 
mnkin£  of  modem  EuglaQd,'*  m^ma  tu  ns^  w 
confeas,  going  U^i  far ;  but  they  iaidfiwibt*dl» 
did  much  to  ward  off  danger.  Wm&msol  Mp 
thinking,  however^  that  the  Eugtasd  9i  ^^ 
stjighain,  liraJie^  and  Sydney  would,  wtth^ 


May  28,  1896] 


Th.e   Nation. 


419 


M17  rojal  ooortehiptihaTe  maiMgad  toiiMhow 

to  MT*  ifeMlf. 

One  dark  episode,  at  all  evente,  in  the  hi»- 
(cry  there  is  which  had  in  it  nothing  dipk>- 
matle.  Most  readers  will  learn  from  this  tre*. 
tise  for  the  first  time  that  the  modesty  of 
EUmbeth  reoelyed  a  shock  in  her  early  yonth 
from  scandalous  treatment  undergone  at  the 
hands  of  Lord  Seymour,  to  whose  care  and 
that  of  his  wife,  Catherine  IVurr,  ths  Queen 
Dowager,  she  was  for  a  time  consigntd.  This 
in  some  measure  prepares  us  for  her  extremely 
immodest  flirtation  with  the  handsome  and 
Qoprindpled  Leicester.  That  the  flirtation 
went  beyond  extreme  immodesty  Elisabeth, 
when  she  supposed  herself  to  be  dying,  posi- 
tiTvly  denied,  and  her  denial  may  be  belieyed. 
Bot  it  is  certain  that  she  openly  received  Lei- 
osster'a  addresses,  knowing  that  he  was  already 
married  to  Amy  Robsart.  Here  we  will  let 
Mr.  Hume  speak: 

**  Shortly  afterwards,  in  September.  1560, 
Cecil  took  the  Bishop  [Quadra]  aside  ana  com- 
plained bitterly  of  Dudley,  who,  he  said,  was 
tnriog  to  turn  him  out  of  his  place;  and  then, 
after  exacting  many  pledges  of  secrecy,  said 
that  the  Queen  was  conducting  herself  in  such 
a  way  that  he  (CecO)  thought  of  retiring,  as  he 
clearly  foresaw  the  ruin  of  the  realm  through 
the  Qneen*s  intimacy  with  Dudlej.  whom  she 
meant  to  marry.  He  begged  the  Bishop  to  re- 
monitrate  with  the  Qoeen.  and  ended  by  say- 
ing that  Dudley  was  thinking  of  kiUing  his 
wire,  *  who  was  said  to  be  ill,  although  she 
was  quite  welL'  *The  next  day,'  writes  the 
Bishop,  *  as  she  was  returning  from  huntlDs, 
the  Queen  told  me  that  Robert's  wife  was  dead, 
or  nearly  so,  and  a^ked  me  not  to  say  anything 
about  it.  Certainly  this  businets  is  most 
shameful  and  scandalous:  and,  withal,  I  am 
not  sure  whether  she  will  marry  the  man  at 
once  or  eren  at  all,  as  I  do  not  think  she  has 
her  mind  sulBciently  fixed.  Cecil  says  she 
wishes  to  do  as  her  father  did.'  In  a  post- 
script of  the  same  letter  the  writer  gives  the 
news  of  poor  Amy  Robsart's  death.  *  She  broke 
her  neck—she  must  have  fallen  down  a  stair- 
case,'said  the  Queen.  Henceforward  Dudley 
was  free,  and  the  marriage  negotiations  bad 
another  factor  to  be  taken  into  account." 

Before  this  the  Bishop  had  learned,  from  a 
quarter  deemed  by  him  trustworthy,  that 
Leicester  meant  to  pdsoo  his  wife.  He  after- 
wards adhered  to  the  opinion  that  she  had 
been  murdered:  so,  pretty  evidently,  did  Bur- 
leigh; and  the  belief  was  so  rife  that  preachers 
in  the  pulpit  Impugned  the  honor  of  the  Queen. 
Elizabeth  might  hare  been  made  to  believe  that 
Leicester's  wife  was  dying,  though  she  ought 
to  have  repelled  with  disgust  addresses  made 
to  her  by  tlie  husband  of  a  dying  wife.  But 
when  the  dark  prediction  was  fulfilled  by 
Amy's  sudden  and  violent  death,  it  seems  im- 
possible that  she  should  not  have  divined  the 
truth.  Yet  she  continued  her  fiirtation  with 
Leicester,  and,  had  he  been  of  princely  rank, 
would  evidently  have  made  him  her  husband. 

That  Leicester's  wife  was  murdered  it  Is 
hardly  possible  to  doubt.  An  aoddental  death 
could  not  have  been  predicted.  The  hypothe- 
sis of  suicide  has  not  a  shadow  either  of  evi- 
dence or  of  probability  in  its  favor,  whUe  it  is 
directly  contradicted  by  the  verdict  of  "mis- 
cbannce."  There  was,  of  course,  a  studious 
show  of  fair  inquiry;  but  we  know  what  Lei- 
oeeter*s  influence  was  and  what  Juries  were  In 
thoee  days.  Why  did  not  Leicester  himself  go 
to  the  spot  and  institute  the  investigation  in 
personf  Why,  but  because  the  villain  dared  not 
look  on  the  face  of  his  murdered  wifef  That 
b«  was  a  villain  all  the  world  believed.  He  had 
Ml  Italian  **  physician  "  at  his  ride.  Bis  second 
wlfA  accused  him  of  practising  on  her  life. 
Twice  Mr.  Hume  implicates  him  in  an  smssri 
nation  plot.  He  was  ready  to  sell  his  oountry 
•ad  its  rsUgiott  to  Spain  for  Spanish  support 


in  his  matrimonial  scheme  of  ambition,  though 
he  afterwards  affected  to  be  the  patron  of  the 
Protestant  party.  The  Catholic  morality  was 
dead.  The  new  Protestant  morality,  though 
it  was  gaining  ground  among  the  people,  had 
not  yet  extended  itself  to  the  courts,  even  to 
those  which  had  broken  with  the  Papacy. 
Elisabeth  had  no  scruple  in  instigating  Sir 
Amyas  Paulet  to  make  away  with  Mary  Queen 
of  Scots.  Nor  had  she  or  her  councillors  any 
scruple  in  renewing  their  connection  with 
Catherine  de  M6dicis,  and  negotiating  with  her 
for  a  marriage  with  one  of  her  sons,  after  the 
massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew. 

Philip  II.,  his  son  Don  Carlos,  the  Austrian 
Archduke  Ferdinand,  the  Scotch  Earl  of  Ar- 
ran,  Eric  King  of  Sweden,  Charles  IX.  of 
France,  the  French  Princes  Anjou  and  Alen- 
Qon— the  diplomatic  flirtations  or  semi-filrta- 
tions  with  all  theee  (the  amour  with  Leicester 
still  going  on  and  helping  to  defeat  the  other 
plans),  form  about  as  tangled  a  skein  as  it  was 
ever  the  lot  of  a  historian  to  unwind.  For  the 
accomplishment  we  must  refer  to  Mr.  Hume's 
pages.  A  spider's  web  would  be  as  easy  to 
analyse.  The  most  amusing  of  the  courtships, 
as  well  as  that  which  came  nearest  to  bearing 
fruit,  was  the  courtship  of  the  Due  d'Alen^on. 
The  Queen's  age  was  double  that  of  her  suitor, 
but  he  affected  to  be  dying  with  love  of 
her,  so  that  courtiers  said  he  would  have  a 
good  voyage  across  the  Channel  if  he  did  not 
swell  the  waves  with  his  tears.  He  was  deeply 
pitted  with  smallpox,  and  his  figure  was  far 
from  imposing,  yet  the  Queen  seems  almost  to 
have  had  serious  thoughts  of  him.  She  gave 
bim  the  pet  name  of  her  **frog";  she  re- 
sponded to  his  burning  love-letters,  and  bade 
him  address  her  as  his  wife.  She  fiattered  his 
hopes  with  **  nouvelles  demonstrations,  accom- 
pagndes  de  baisers,  privaut^  caresses,  et 
mignardises  ordinaires  aux  amants."  At  bis 
death  she  wrote  to  his  excellent  mother  that 
if  a  picture  of  her  heart  could  be  seen,  there 
would  be  seen  a  body  without  a  soul.  This 
ended  the  series  of  courtihips,  as  well  it  might, 
the  Queen  being  now  fifty,  though  her  vanity 
exacted  from  her  oourliers  the  language  of 
love  as  the  condition  of  her  favor  to  the  end. 

It  was  fortunate  for  England  that  of  the 
negotiations  for  a  Spanish,  an  Austrisn,  and  a 
French  marriage,  none  took  effect.  Any  one 
of  thoee  connections  would  have  thrown  a 
heavy  weight  into  the  scale  of  Catholicism 
and  reaction.  The  best  policy,  if  there  was  to 
be  marriage,  was  probably  that  indicated  by 
the  nomination  of  the  Scotch  Earl  of  Arran. 
Had  there  been  a  Scotch  Protestant  up  to  the 
mark— which  the  Earl  by  no  means  was— the 
marriage  would  have  united  the  two  king- 
doms, and  the  island  realm  might  then  have 
bid  defiance  to  its  foes.  But  the  only  Scotch- 
man who  was  personally  a  fit  mate  for  the 
Queen  of  England  would  have  been  excluded, 
even  when  he  was  unmarried,  by  the  bar  sinis- 
ter on  his  birth. 

The  nation  earnestly  desired  that  the  Queen 
should  marry,  both  to  put  a  stop  to  scandals 
and  to  secure  the  succession.  Parliament  gave 
expression  to  the  wish.  Elisabeth's  refusal  to 
marry,  if  the  beet  husband  offered  her  was 
Alen^on,  we  can  well  understand.  Her  stead- 
fast refusal  to  name  a  successor  it  is  not  so 
easy  to  explain.  She  left  the  country  to  the 
chances  of  a  disputed  snooeetion  and  a  civU 
war.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  any  motive 
other  than  unwillingness  to  part  with  power. 
Pity,  at  aU  events,  Elisabeth  deserves,  as  a 
woman  undoubtedly  of  warm  temperament 
and  strongly  inclined  to  marriage,  yet  debar- 
red from  it  by  her  position.    There  is  no  diffi- 


culty in  understanding  the  melancholy  which 
clouded  her  last  days.  We  need  not  resort  to 
the  pathetic  fable  about  Eswx  and  the  ring,  or 
to  the  more  refined  hypothesis  thtt  she  was 
saddened  by  the  departure  of  her  era— a  notion 
belonging  rather  to  modem  philoeophy  than 
to  Tudor  times,  to  which  fin^de-tUele  fancies 
were  unknown.  Elisabeth  was  a  woman  ;  she 
had  dallied  with  love  all  her  days;  and  now 
the  end  had  come  and  she  had  missed  her  hap- 
piness. 


BRUCE'S  ECONOMIC  HISTORY  OF  VIR- 
GINLA,— U. 

Economic  Hiatory  of  Virginia  in  the  Seven-' 
teenth  Century  :  An  Inquiry  into  the  Mate- 
rial Condition  of  the  People,  based  upon 
Original  and  Contemporaneous  Records.  By 
Philip  Alexander  Bruce.  MacmiUan  A  Co. 
1896.    Map.    8V0,  pp.  xix,  684.  647. 

In  an  agricultural  colony  poor  in  capital 
and  growing  but  a  single  commercial  crop, 
and  one  thought  to  require  extensive  cultiva- 
tion, the  question  of  the  source  of  an  adequate 
supply  of  labor  was  of  great  importance. 
Land  was  practically  unlimited  in  quantity, 
but  even  the  land  must  be  cleared  of  the  for 
est— an  arduous  task— before  the  first  plant 
could  be  laid  down.  A  few  years  under  to- 
bacco exhausted  the  natural  fertility  of  the 
soil ;  fertilisers  were  too  difficult  to  obtain, 
and,  even  when  had,  proved  noxious  to  the 
flavor  of  the  tobacco.  It  was  cheaper  to  move 
on  to  a  fresh  piece  of  land  and  begin  anew  the 
culture.  From  the  origin  of  the  settlement 
labor  was  in  demand  to  clear  the  foresti,  and 
all  through  the  century  the  labor  question  was 
prominently  before  the  planter. 

This  question  was  solved,  as  far  as  was 
possible,  in  two  ways:  by  the  employment 
of  lervants  and  the  purchase  of  slaves.  The 
one  led  easily  to  the  other,  and  the  introduc- 
tion and  general  use  of  negro  slaves  were  fol- 
lowed by  consequences  which  have  colored  the 
entire  current  of  our  national  history.  The 
account  of  the  ** servants"  given  by  Mr. 
Bruce  is  adequate,  very  satisfactory,  and  in 
many  points  novel.  It  is,  further,  especially 
notable  as  an  instance  of  his  well-balanced  and 
fearless  treatment  of  a  controverted  topic. 
More  than  thirty  yearsago  the  Virginia  **  cava- 
liers" were  written  of  in  terms  of  derision,  and 
it  was  charged  that  the  very  scum  of  England 
was,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  dumped  per- 
force into  the  colony.  The  poor,  the  incapable, 
and  the  felon  were  alike  regarded  as  fair  **co. 
lonial  goods,"  and  were  shipped  as  merchandise 
to  be  told  to  the  highest  bidder  in  America  for 
a  term  of  years.  Such  a  conception  of  the 
early  colonising  methods  was  an  exaggeration 
upon  its  face,  but  it  was  seriously  accepted  as 
historically  true,  and  the  display  of  authori- 
ties  in  its  support  seemed  to  be  conclusive. 
That  felons  were  sometimes  transported  to  the 
colonies  is  true.  Nor  is  it  strange,  when  it  is 
remembered  that  the  law  of  the  day  punished 
about  three  hundred  crimes  with  death.  One 
who  was  condemned  to  suffer  the  extreme 
penalty  was  a  felon;  but  he  might  have  sinned 
under  mitigating  circumstances,  and,  by  a 
Judge  inclined  to  mercy,  exile  to  Virginia  was 
offered  in  lieu  of  the  gallows.  But  the  policy 
of  the  Virginia  Company  was  always  against 
receiving  criminals,  and,  after  its  dissolution, 
it  was  by  the  act  of  individual  merchants,  and 
not  as  a  settled  policy  of  state,  that  convicts 
were  introduced.  The  result  was  a  mere 
sprinkUng  of  this  undesirable  class.  By  far  the 
larger  part  of  the  inmiigration  consisted  of 


4r20 


The    !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161^ 


thcwe  who  had  left  England  because  of  extreme 
poTerty,  or  by  reason  of  political  distarbances 
and  rebellion  in  Ireland  and  Scotland,  or  those 
who  voluntarily  indentured  themselves  to  se- 
cure transportation.  Still  another  source  of 
emigrants  from  England,  admirably  described 
by  Mr.  Bruce,  was  abduction.  In  1680  it  was 
estimated  that  upwards  of  ten  thousand  per- 
sons were  annually  "spirited  away'*  and  sent 
out  of  England,  leaving  no  trace.  As  this 
horrid  business  involved  the  kidnapping  of  a 
large  number  of  mere  children,  the  press  gang 
becomes  respectable  beside  it. 

Once  in  the  colony,  the  servant  was  bound 
to  his  master  for  the  term  of  his  articles.  As 
the  majority  of  them  were  still  young,  a  ser- 
vice of  from  three  to  seven  years  would  'cover 
the  cost  of  transportation.  Their  treatment 
was  good,  tbeir  food  better  than  that  given  to 
laborers  in  England,  and  they  enjoyed  tbe  dis. 
tmction  of  being  esteemed  tbe  very  best  of  im- 
ported merchandise;  a  constant  demand  for 
servants  maintaining  the  market.  After  tbe 
expiration  of  service  they  became  members  of 
tbe  community,  and  their  descendants  were  tbe 
equals  of  those  of  a  full  citizen  of  the  colony. 
That  this  system  was  a  makeshift,  and  attended 
with  evils  difficult  to  counteract,  the  extensive 
legislation  on  servants  proves.  Runaways  were 
common,  and  the  neighboring  wilderness  made 
them  easy.  To  maintain  the  ascendancy  of  the 
master,  cruelty  was  authorised,  such  as  brand- 
ing ;  but  it  does  not  appear  that  this  was  often 
applied  or  ever  carried  to  excess.  It  was  natu- 
ral that  some  friction  between  master  and  ser- 
vant should  exist  in  a  system  of  partial  slavery; 
but  this  stage  was  gradually  displaced  by  one  of 
full  slavery,  where  the  control  of  tbe  master  was 
absolute  during  the  life  of  the  slave,  and  not 
for  a  few  years  only.  In  the  first  half  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  servants  greatly  outnum- 
bered the  slaves ;  but  the  latter  increased  more 
rapidly  in  proportion,  and  at  the  beginning 
of  the  eighteenth  century  the  number  of 
slaves  was  nearly  as  large  es  that  of  ser- 
vants.  Tbe  improved  economic  condition  of 
England  must  account  for  the  smaller  move- 
ment of  servants. 

A  Dutch  vessel  in  4619  brought  the  first 
negroes  to  Virginia,  but  for  seventy  years  tbe 
means  of  obtaining  Africans  were  limited. 
As  a  slave  was  a  laborer  for  life,  and  by 
breeding  could  supply  his  successors,  he  was 
regarded  as  a  cheaper  workman  than  the 
white  servant,  who  could  be  held  for  a  few 
years,  and  at  the  expiration  of  his  term  was 
reasonably  certain  to  leave.  The  importation 
of  this  human  merchandise  ro^e  gradually 
from  very  small  numbers  to  about  five  hun- 
dred a  year,  when  the  ability  of  tbe  planters 
to  purchase  was  crippled  by  the  troubles  of 
Bai^OD^^  rebellion,  tu  tbe  Isst  decade  of  the 
century  the  Eojal  A/rican  Com  pan  y  was  the 
agency  of  supply;  and  U  is  not  a  little  signifi- 
oant  that,  in  the  last  ten  years  of  the  century, 
the  Afrfcau  hud  almost  entirely  supplatited 
the  white  servant  03  tbe  bajijs  of  headrrigbt^ 
to  land.  At  the  iiame  time  tbe  Virgluian- 
bom  blare  bad  become  ao  miiob  tbe  more  de- 
sirable as  to  command  a  better  price  tbao  tbe 
newly  imported  negro.  The  slaire,  or  *^  ser- 
vant'- as  he  was  called,  was  classed  as  per- 
Bonal  property  until  tbe  end  of  the  century, 
when  he  be«^me  by  law  real  estate,  except 
when  m  the  han^ls  of  a  merchant.  But  the 
introdiiction  of  tbe  negro  amounted  to  a  rev- 
olutioo,  for  he  could  not  amalgamate  with 
the  whites,  and,  even  if  freed,  retained  his 
peculiar  place  in  the  social  system,  though 
admitted  to  certain  political  privileges  if  he 
OTftned  lan4.    In  food,  nlothing,  iiij4  ipe^lg^l 


attendance,  tbe  slave  was  believed  to  be  less 
costly  than  the  white. 

On  this  point  we  find  a  serious  difficulty  in 
accepting  Mr.  Bruce^s  conclusions.  He  ques- 
tions the  wastefulness  of  slave  labor,  *'  not  only 
in  the  colonial  period,  but  in  the  period  be- 
tween the  Revolution  and  the  war  between  the 
States**;  and  attributes  this  waste  to  the  sta- 
ple grown,  tobacco.  Large  farms  and  fresh 
fields  were  demanded  for  the  successful  growth 
of  the  plant.    He  says : 

'*If  the  culture  of  tobacco  were  very  profit- 
able, the  tendency  to  enlarge  each  estate  would 
be  just  as  strong  to-day  in  Virginia,  with  labor 
emancipated,  as  it  was  during  the  existence  of 
slavery.  That  institution  only  promoted  the 
extension  of  the  plantation  by  cheapening  la- 
bor to  the  lowest  point,  which  to  that  degree 
increased  the  owner*s  returns  from  his  crops, 
enabling  him  to  invest  a  greater  sum  each 
year  in  land.  ...  If  for  everv  servant 
brought  into  the  Colony  between  1675  and  1700 
a  negro  had  been  substituted,  the  accumula- 
tion of  wealth  by  the  planters  would,  during 
this  period,  have  been  more  rapid  than  it  was, 
not  on  account  of  their  ability  to  raise  a  larger 
quantity  of  tobacco  for  sale,  which  would  have 
been  undesirable,  as  the  snnply  thmughout  the 
century  was  even  larger  than  the  demand,  but 
on  account  of  that  curtailment  in  the  cost  of 
production  which  would  have  followed  from 
the  employment  of  laborers  bound  for  life  and 
not  for  a  term  of  years." 

This  is  hardly  a  correct  application  of  an 
economic  principle.  The  same  conditions  ap- 
plied to  cotton  and  to  rice  as  to  tobacco;  yet 
the  returns  are  greater,  and  the  actual  cost  of 
culture  less,  under  free  labor  and  with  small 
farms  than  in  the  palmiest  days  of  slavery.  It 
is  a  pity  that  Mr.  Bruce  could  not  have  proved 
his  point  by  comparing  the  yield  of  tobacco  on 
two  farms,  the  one  employing  servants  and 
the  second  slaves,  other  conditions  being  nearly 
equal.  The  intelligence  of  the  servant  must 
have  been  to  his  advantage;  and  a  century 
later  the  farmers  of  Virginia,  using  slaves, 
could  not  produce  the  cereal  crops  in  competi- 
tion with  Pennsylvania,  using  free  or  articled 
labor.  The  slave  has  proved  to  be  the  costliest  of 
labor.  He  works  under  compulsion,  and  there- 
fore works  ill;  he  enjoys  none  of  the  fruits  of 
his  labor,  and  therefore  has  no  inducement  to 
work  well;  he  shares  in  none  of  the  better- 
ments of  a  saving  of  labor,  and  therefore  he 
has  no  call  to  improve.  Paint  the  plantation 
system  in  as  rosy  colors  as  you  please,  there  is 
ever  the  shiftless,  wasteful,  and  improvident 
economic  background.  That  slave  labor  in 
early  Virginia  was  a  step,  perhaps  a  necessary 
step,  in  the  development  of  tobacco-culture, 
need  not  be  questioned.  It  was  as  necessary  as 
the  white  or  indentured  servant,  and,  had  it 
been  a  temporary  expedient,  the  injury  to  so- 
ciety  and  agriculture  would  have  been  easily 
overcome  on  its  disappearance.  But  it  be- 
came not  merely  a  permanent  feature,  but  the 
sole  form  ot  labor;  and  that,  in  the  long  rim, 
meant  ruin  to  tbe  planter  and  the  reduction  of 
the  land  to  infertility.  The  economic  blunder 
of  slavery  w&s  nearly  as  great,  and  quito  &s 
lasting,  a»  tbe  social  blunder.  Adam  Smith 
vindicated  the  virtues  of  free  labor  as  against 
slave  labor  with  aa  much  force  as  he  vindi- 
cated free  commerce  against  the  mercantile 
a  J  stem. 

So  much  has  been  said  of  staple  and  slave 
ai  to  forbid  any  lingering  on  other  subjects 
treated  bj  Mr.  Brute.  The  money  system  of 
the  colony,  the  manufactures  of  the  planta. 
t^on,  tbe  rudiments  of  commerce,  tlie  relative 
value  of  the  e&tatea  and  the  town  life,  are  a 
few  of  the  general  topics  of  his  chapters  :  and 
on  every  point  he  is  full,  accurate^  and  free 
tfQm  tiias^    IM»  ft  pleasure  to  meet  with  so 


satisfying  a  work,  whether  regarded  as  a  his- 
tory or  as  an  exemplification  of  political 
economy,  and  it  is  destined  to  rank  high  u 
a  product  of  careful  and  untiring  inveitiga- 
tion,  of  enthusiasm  tempered  by  discretion  sod 
scholarship.  A  very  full  index  increasei  tbe 
usefulness  of  the  work. 


The  Diary  of  a  Japanese  Convert,    By  Esiiz5 

Uchimura.    Fleming  H.  Revell  Co.    1895. 
The  relations  of  Christendom  and  beatheodom 
have  not  produced  another  book,  from  the 
heathen  side,  so  interesting  and  valuable  as 
this,  which  we  can  now  recalL    After  some  in- 
troductory matter,  we  have  a  journal  cofer- 
ing  a  period  extending  from  1877  to  1888,  and, 
what  is  of  much  greater  interest  and  impor- 
tance, tbe  deliberate  conunent  on  this  journal 
of  the  mature  man.    The  preliminary  accoant 
of  the  author's  parentage  and  early  traming 
is  instructive  and  also  entertaining,  because  it 
is  enlivened  by  those  budiorous  touches  which 
give  the  book  throughout  much  of  its  fascina- 
tion.   "  Amidst  solemn  instructions  **  of  bis  fa- 
ther **  about  duty  and  high  ambition,**  be  *'  dis- 
cerned words  of  emulation  for  atndy  and  in- 
dustry with  an  opulent  harem  in  view.**   His 
superstitious  relations  to  the  various  gods  were 
serious  enough  in  their  day,  whatever  occasion 
they  furnish  him  for  present  laughter.  Enter- 
ing a  new  Government  college«  be  was  forcsd 
against  his  will  and  conscience  by  tbe  senior 
class  to  make  tbe  Christian  confession,   fint 
the  proof  of  the  pudding  in  the  eating  wsa  ex- 
tremely satisfactory.  '*  One  Gkxl  and  not  many 
was  indeed  a  glad  tiding  to  my  littie  sooL 
.    ,    .    Monotheism  made  me  a  new  num.  I 
resumed  my  beans  and  eggs.  **    Straightway  all 
his  superstitious  fears  vanished  into  thin  air. 
The  enforced  adhesion  to  Christianity  was  fol- 
lowed in  a  few  months  by  an  emotional  coo- 
version  and  admission  to  the  Methodist  Cburdt 
A  little  company  of  students  formed  a  church 
organization  and  cultivated  their  piety  with 
mutual  emulation.    But,  remaining  00  tbeir 
knees  for  an  hour,  they  found  "  synovitis*'  en- 
suing, and  **the  general  cry  was  for  short 
prayers,'*  especially  as  their  leader  went  to 
sleep  in  his  devotions,  with  his  head  bowed  on 
the  flour- barrel  that  answered  for  a  pulpit,  and 
was  awakened  with  difficulty.    Another  expe- 
riment was  tried— giving  up  the  meetings  to 
debate,  80  that  they  might  shekrpen  their  wea- 
pons against  sceptical  attacks  on  Christianity. 
The  first  meeting  ended  in  something  very  like 
a  row,  and  the  former  methods  were  resumwL 
Sometimes  there  were  insinuations  in  the  pray- 
ers, **not  to  be  heard,  of  course,  by  our  Fa- 
ther in  Heaven,**  but  only  by  the  other  dsTo- 
tees.    In  the  whole  business  there  wag  mneh 
jmmaturity  and  foolishness  ;  also  luuch  juDkiet' 
iDg  and  jollity*    At  the  closo  of  the  yolkf* 
t^ourse  virtue  had  its  reward,    the  Chrktiais 
making  all  ih&  class  speeches  and  gettiQ^  all 
tbe  prJKee  but  one. 

Resolved  to  **  disperse  the  h^&tben  as  we  do 
street-dogB^"  with  much  friction  and  mtsnndef- 
standing  an  independent  native  chiircfa  v^ 
fonnded  by  tbe  young  graduates.  The  MHhr>- 
dtsts  wanted  back  the  money  tbey  had  gi^^n, 
and  it  wag  paid.  The  depleted  trea^ry  ^*^ 
tilled  up  by  tbe  heroic  sacridcets  of  the  jvn^f. 
coQverta,  and  the  finished  chmrcb  was  soon  otI 
of  debt.  A  great  gat  boring  of  Chrilllaiw  ^ 
1883  suggests  a  chapter  on  Sentimental  Chr^ 
tiantty.  It  was,  i^aid  to  be  a  Pi:iit«0(?stal  tiatf, 
but  young  Ucbimura  could  not  obtais  cb 
^Vgiftft  of  the  spirit,"  however  be  m%hi  b*^ 
hie  breast  apd  focn&  his  mental  vlafon  oB  ^ 
deceitful  heart,  as  he  had  be«9|  p^4  p^  pQH  d^ 


May  28,  1896] 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


431 


b7  a  fiery  Methodist  exhorter.  NevertheleM, 
his  feet  slid  in  doe  time. 

**With  the  daily  and  weekly  increase  of 
friends  and  acqnalntaDces  among  the  believ- 
ers, my  religion  was  fast  inclining  toward*  sen- 
timentalism.  .  .  .  Fresh  from  my  country 
church,  with  childish  innocence  and  credulity 
I  plunged  into  the  Turkish- bath  society  of 
metropolitan  Christianity,  to  be  lulled  and 
shampooned  by  hymns  sung  by  maidens,  and 
sermons  that  offended  nobody.*' 

More  or  less  laxity  among  the  converts,  es- 
pecially in  their  sexual  relations,  was  the  in- 
evitable result  of  the  demand  for  a  numerical 
increase  of  converts  and  of  the  emotional  ex- 
citements resorted  to  in  order  to  draw  them  in 
and  keep  up  their  nervous  tension.  A  Life  of 
John  Howard,  and  Charles  Loring  Brace*s 
*  Oesta  Christi,'  gave  Uchimura  a  timely  check 
upon  his  downward  course,  and,  hoping  to  find 
in  Christian  civilisation  the  practical  realisa- 
tion of  his  new  and  loftier  ideals,  he  crossed 
the  Pacific  Ocean  and  landed  in  California. 

From  this  point  onward  Mr.  Uchimura*s 
book  has  a  peculiar  value,  far  in  excels  of  that 
of  the  preceding  matter.  To  that  useful  gift 
which  enables  us  to  see  ourselves  as  others  see 
na,  few  of  our  foreign  visitors  have  contribut- 
ed so  much.  He  was  very  much  astonished  at 
the  familiar  every* day  use  of  Scriptural  and 
religious  language  by  Americans.  When  a 
railroad  car  stopped  with  a  jerk,  there  was  an 
outburst  of  such  language,  and  on  every  simi- 
lar occasion.  A  misfortune  befell  one  of  his' 
friends:  **  He  was  pxek-poekUed  of  a  purse  that 
contained  a  five-dollar  gold  piece.*'  Later  he 
lost  his  new  silk  umbrella  on  a  Fall  River 
steamer.  **  I  felt  the  misfortune  so  keenly  that 
only  once  in  my  life  I  prayed  for  the  damna- 
tion of  that  execrable  devil  who  oonld  steal  a 
shelter  from  a  homeless  stranger  at  the  time  of 
his  dire  necessities."  The  use  of  keys  and  other 
devices  in  America  to  prevent  robbery  was  in 
strange  contrast  with  the  simple  confidence 
of  his  Japanese  experiepce.  In  no  respect  did 
Christendom  seem  to  him  so  much  like  hea- 
thendom as  in  its  intense  race  prejudices,  and 
especially  towards  those  whom  the  people  of 
the  Iforth  '*  had  bought  with  their  own  blood." 
A  still  greater  anomaly  was  the  an ti- Chinese 
sentiment.  This  point  is  elaborated  with  much 
force  and  eloquence.  Pugilism,  lotteries,  in- 
temperance, lynching,  political  corruption, 
and  religious  jealousies— all  these  confounded 
Uchimura,  and  determined  him  never  to  defend 
Christianity  again  by  holding  up  the  morality 
of  Europe  and  America. 

In  Pennsylvania  he  entered  an  asylum  for 
idiots  as  an  attendant.  The  Superintendent, 
whose  favorite  hymn  was  Dr,  Furness*s 

"Blowly  bj  God's  band  onfurled.** 

pronounced  the  Unitarians  "the  narrowest 
and  driest  of  sects."  Nevertheless,  his  wife 
was  one  of  them,  and  Mr.  Uchimura  could  not 
resist  the  beauty  of  her  life.  Henceforth  his 
religious  sympathies  must  include  such  as  she. 
**  I  believe,"  he  says,  **  an  orthodoxy  that  can- 
not be  reconciled  with  such  a  Unitarianism  as 
hers  is  not  worthy  to  be  called  orthodox  or 
straight* doctrined.  The  true  liberality,  as  I 
take  it,  is  allowance  and  forbe^umnce  of  all 
honest  beliefs  with  an  unflinching  conviction 
in  one*s  own  faith." 

The  next  step  was  to  a  New  England  college. 
A  great  missionary  meeting  stirs  Uchimura  to 
some  caustic  observations:  **The  show  is 
worth  seeing  in  all  respects."  **  Converted 
heathen  are  made  good  use  of  as  circus  men 
make  use  of  tamed  rhinoceroses."  But  he  ad- 
vises **  the  circus  men  to  be  more  considerate  in 
thif  matter.    On  the  one  hand^  tbe^  ppoU  tbf 


tamed  rhinoceroses,  and  also  induce  the  un- 
tamed ones  to  simulate  the  tamed,  for  that 
they  find  the  easiest  way  of  getting  things  g^ood 
for  their  rhinoceros  flesh."  He  does  not  be- 
lieve in  **  pity  "  as  a  missionary  motive,  but 
holds  that  the  effort  based  on  it  '*  might  be 
withdrawn  without  much  detriment  to  the 
sender  or  the  sent."  While  at  the  college  he 
embraced  the  orthodox  scheme  of  redemption 
as  he  had  never  done  before.  Apparently,  the 
influence  of  the  good  president  had  much  to  do 
with  this,  for,  going  to  a  theological  seminary, 
he  found  theology  **,the  driest  and  most  worth- 
less of  all  studies,"  while  the  laughing  and 
jesting  of  the  students  over  the  most  serious 
problems  was  to  him  simply  shocking.  He 
resolved  that  such  a  course  could  fit  neither  a 
Christian  nor  a  heathen  to  be  a  good  mission- 
ary, and  he  went  back  to  Japan. 

In  conclusion,  he  expresses  his  faith  in  mis- 
sionary enterprise  while  laying  his  finger  here 
and  there  on  many  a  festering  sore  :  *'  Though 
we  despise  godless  science,  yet  fcienceless 
evangelization  we  do  not  put  much  value  upon. 
I  believe  faith  is  wholly  compatible  with  com- 
mon sense,  and  all  zealous  and  successful  mis- 
sionaries have  had  this  sense  in  abundance." 
This  is  one  of  many  pungent  sayings  that  our 
missionaries  should  con  and  inwardly  digest. 


England's  Wealth  Ireland's  Poverty.  By 
Thomas  Lough,  M.P.  London:  T.  Fisher 
Unwin;  New  York:  Putnams.  189fi. 
This  book  treats  of  the  financial  relations  be- 
tween England  and  Ireland,  a  matter  which 
for  the  last  two  years  has  been  under  investi- 
gation by  a  Royal  Commission,  though  no  re- 
port has  yet  been  made.  Mr.  Lough  has  ex- 
ceptional qualifications  for  dealing  impartially 
and  freshly  with  a  matter  hitherto  usually 
left  to  officials  and  professional  statisticians. 
He  is  Irish-bom,  but  not  a  Catholic,  a  whole- 
sale merchant  in  London,  Member  of  Parlia- 
ment for  an  English  constituency,  and  actively 
engaged  in  London  municipal  affairs.  His 
personal  acquaintance  with  Ireland,  where  he 
has  a  summer  residence,  has  enabled  him  to 
expose  and  correct  many  current  official  falla- 
cies and  misrepresentations. 

Mr.  Lough  has  made  a  dry  and  technical 
subject  pleasant  reading  and  easy  of  compre- 
hension. Admirable  diagrams,  in  addition  to 
unavoidable  tables  of  figures,  give  graphic 
representation 8  of  the  relative  changes  in  popu- 
lation,  taxation,  pauperism,  trade,  etc.,  in  each 
decade  of  the  century.  We  are  shown  the  ful- 
filment of  Qrattan's  words:  *' Rely  on  it  that 
Ireland,  like  every  enslaved  country,  will  ulti- 
mately be  compelled  to  pay  for  her  own  subju- 
gation. Robbery  and  taxes  ever  follow  con- 
quest; the  nation  that  loses  her  liberty  loses  her 
revenues."  The  revenue  from  Ireland  paid 
into  the  imperial  exchequer  is  from  eight  to 
nine  million  pounds  yearly,  and  the  British 
Treasury  maintains  that  this  is  spent  for  the 
benefit  of  Ireland.  But  all  expenditure  occurs 
at  the  pleasure  of  the  British  majority;  Irish 
members  are  in  a  minority,  and  cannot  control 
it.  Ireland's  revenue  is  largely  spent  for  Bri- 
tish  purposes,  or  is  wastefully  spent  in  Ireland 
according  to  ignorant  British  notions  of  what 
Ireland  ought  to  want.  Since  the  Union,  the 
unbroken  course  in  fiscal  matters  has  been  an 
increase  per  head  of  Irish  taxation  and  a  de- 
crease of  British. 

As  an  example  of  how  the  Irish  taxes  are 
spent,  we  find  that  the  military  and  police  to- 
gether amount  to  one  armed  man  for  every 
twenty  peasants.  The  police  force  under  Bri- 
tt^h  management  has  increased  continaously 


in  numbers  and  in  cost,  while  population  and 
crime  have  diminished;  the  cost  of  this  **  secon- 
dary army  "  is  as  much  as  the  whole  taxation  of 
the  country  was  ninety  years  ago.  The  total 
cost  of  the  police  force  in  Scotland  (under  local 
management)  is  only  as  much  os  that  of  the 
police  pensioners  in  Ireland.  Here  is  Mr. 
Lough*s  picture  of  the  police  arrangements  in 
the  village  of  Killeshandrs,  a  village  of  600  in- 
habitants,  once  prosperous,  now  decayed,  and 
**  about  as  neglected  a  place  as  you  could  find 
in  a  civilized  country  " : 

**  In  this  village  is  a  barrack  containing  ten 
men.  This  costs  £1,000  a  year;  in  Great  Britain 
one  policeman  would  be  safflcient  for  two  such 
villages.  But  it  will  t>e  said  there  is  more 
crime  in  Ireland.  This,  however,  is  a  Question 
of  fact,  and  statistics  show  that,  out  of  every 
100.000  people,  there  are  59.7  in  prison  in  Eng- 
land, 69.6  in  Scotland,  and  only  58  4  in  Ireland. 
In  the  neighborhood  of  this  village  there  has 
been  no  serious  crime  for  the  last  half  century, 
and  during  that  time  the  population  of  the 
district  has  fallen  to  half,  out  the  number  of 
the  police  steadily  increases.  The  members  of 
the  force  are  the  onl v  prosperous  people  in  the  • 
place.  Tbey  are  well  fed  and  clothed  and  their 
dudes  are  exceedingly  light.  Tbey  collect  agri- 
cultural statistics;  prepare  small  cases  for  the 
petty  sessions.  Two  await  the  arrival  of  every 
train,  and  two  others  watch  with  interest  its 
departure.  They  have  bicycles,  dogs,  and  a 
boat  for  fishing." 

This  extravagant  and  unnecessary  expendi- 
ture extends  into  every  branch  of  government. 
The  Lord  Lieutenant  and  his  household  cost 
about  £40,000  a  year.  The  smallest  details  of 
local  government  are  controlled  by  the  Impe- 
rial Parliament;  even  the  county  road  autho- 
rities are.  practically  appointed  by  the  British 
Government,  not  by  the  ratepayers  whose 
money  they  spend.  The  assessment  for  rates 
is  made  by  an  imperial  instead  of  a  local  au- 
thority,  as  in  the  rest  of  the  United  Elingdom. 
The  sama  extravagance  appears  in  the  civil 
establishments.  There  are  ''  boards"  for  every 
conceivable  purpose,  with  from  three  to  five 
highly  paid  Commissioners  at  their  head.  In 
England  one  chief  suffices,  and  he  is  responsi- 
ble to  Parliament,  and  can  explain  or  defend 
his  action  there,  while  Irish  Conmiissioners 
are  in  most  cases  under  the  Treasury,  and  un- 
amenable to  public  opinion.  With  all  this 
waste  of  the  revenue  it  is  difficult  to  get  money 
for  such  objects  as  education  and  the  develop- 
ment of  the  resources  of  the  country.  The 
simple  conclusion,  Mr.  Lough  points  out,  is 
that  **  Ireland  is  a  nation  starved  in  the  midst 
of  plenty."  We  strongly  recommend  any  one 
interested  in  the  Irish  question  to  read  this  in- 
teresting book. 


A  History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with 
Theology  in  Christendom,  By  Andrew 
Dickson  White.  2  vols.  D.  Appleton  &  Co. 
1898. 
Mr.  White's  book,  a  development  of  his  ^  War- 
fare of  Science,*  is  a  conscientious  summary  of 
the  body  of  learning  to  which  it  relates,  ac- 
cumulated during  long  years  of  research.  He 
puts  the  whole  in  a  narrative  form  by  taking 
a  number  of  the  chief  departments  of  science, 
natural  history,  chemistry,  agtronomy,  geo- 
graphy, geology,  therapeutics,  hygiene,  and 
philology,  and  telling  the  story  which  shows 
how  each  one  had  to  be  freed,  by  the  patient 
toil  and  sacrifices  of  generations  of  studenta 
and  martyrs,  from  the  shackles  of  theologic 
and  theocratic  error;  how  the  constant  strug- 
gle of  the  Christian  Church  through  centuries 
was  to  stifle  knowledge,  and  how  only  within 
the  lifetime  of  those  now  living  has  it  at  length 
yielded  tb#  fi«W,    Th#  book  is  produced  M  a 


4r2Q 


sort  of  Fett9ehriftf  or  tribute  to  Ck>ni6ll  Uni- 
▼enity,  one  of  the  flnt  inititutiont  in  the 
world  dedicated  primarilj  to  pare  loienoe— a 
foundation  which  at  once  proved  the  means  of 
fanning  into  a  cheerful  but  harmless  glow,  for 
the  benefit  of  a  few  local  and  belated  friends  of 
bigotry,  the  dying  flames  of  theologio  hate. 

Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  chapter  in  the 
book  is  the  firsts  in  which  Mr.  White  gives  an 
account  of  the  substitution  for  the  original 
theologic  view  of  the  uniyerse,  as  created  by 
acts  such  as  might  be  attributed  to  a  human 
being  endowed  with  superhuman  power,  of 
the  theory  of  evolution,  ending  with  natural 
selection,  and  the  triumph  of  the  Darwinian 
explanation  of  the  origin  of  species.  The  ac- 
count is  not  only  instructiye,  but  in  part  enter- 
taining.  Darwin^s  'Origin  of  Species*  was 
published  in  1850,  and  was  received  by  the 
religious  world  with  a  chorus  of  disapproval 
at  onoe  fierce  and  grotesque.  The  doctrine, 
they  said,  of  evolution  of  the  higher  from 
the  lower  type  was  untrue,  contrary  to  reli- 
^on,  and  absurd  on  its  face.  The  Bishop 
of  Oxford  declared  that  Darwin  had  tried 
to  **  limit  Gh)d*s  glory  in  creation,'*  and  that 
natural  selection  was  *'  absolutely  incompati- 
ble with  the  Word  of  GKmL*'  A  clerical  re- 
viewer  suggested  that  it  would  have  been  more 
modest  in  Darwin  *^  had  he  given  some  slight 
reason  for  dissenting  from  the  views  gene- 
rally entertained.**  A  distinguished  clergy, 
man,  vice-president  of  an  institution  founded 
for  the  pious  purpose  of  combating  **  danger- 
ous **  science,  declared  Darwinism  **an  attempt 
to  dethrone  Gk)d.**  Hgr.  S^gur  declared  of  his 
teachings  that  **they  come  from  hell,**  and  the 
Pope  said  that  they  were  opposed  **even  to 
Reason  herself.**  At  Cambridge,  Whewell, 
himself  a  scientific  man,  refused  to  allow  a 
copy  of  the  book  to  be  placed  in  the  library; 
at  the  American  college  at  Beirut  **  nearly  all 
the  younger  professors  were  dismissed  for  ad- 
hering to  Darwin*s  views  **;  Dr.  Woodrow,  for 
professing  belief  in  them,  was  turned  out  of  the 
Presbyterian  seminary  at  Columbia,  and  Dr. 
Winchell  had  to  leave  Vanderbilt  University. 
And  all  this  took  place  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

Considerable  additions  would  be  needed  to 
make  Mr.  White's  narrative  complete.  The 
whole  subject  of  government,  for  instance, 
as  a  branch  of  study,  has  been  emanci- 
pated  from  theological  conceptions  within 
very  recent  times.  The  book  is  mainly  con- 
fined to  natural  science;  but  the  subject  of 
interest  and  usury  is  gone  into,  which  is  not  a 
question  of  natural  science  at  all.  On  the 
whole,  these  volumes  must  be  consulted  chiefiy 
for  facts,  not  exposition.  No  attempt  is  made 
to  explain  the  process  by  which  modem  con 
ceptions  of  science  and  modem  methods  of 
investigation  have  driven  theology  off.  Among 
the  facts  collected,  Mr.  White  does  not  fail  to 
notice  the  curious  evidence  tending  to  show 
that  many  of  the  great  modem  discoveries  of 
science  seem  to  have  suggested  themselves  to 
the  Greeks,  and  then  to  have  lain  dormant  for 
centuries,  to  be  brought  to  notice  again  only 
after  Greek,  Roman,  and  mediaeval  civiliza- 
tion had  in  turn  been  swept  away.  Curiously 
enough,  the  same  thmg  is  true  of  political 
science.  Aristotle  is  its  father,  but,  after  he 
had  classified  governments  under  the  three 
heads  which  still  roughly  answer  our  pur- 
pose, substantially  nothing  was  done  until  the 
seventeenth  century. 

The  only  criticism  which  we  shall  venture  to 
offer  of  a  work  which  is  a  moqument  of  in- 
dustry, is  that  Mr.  While  iseems  to  us  to  make 
a  mistake  Jn  thinking  that  he  in  called  upon  to 


TJtie    [N^ation. 

offer  any  suggestions  as  to  the  reconciliation 
to  be  effected  now  between  science  and  reli- 
gion. That  is  the  task  which  the  persecuted 
followers  of  truth  were  compelled  to  undertake 
for  many  centuries  at  the  peril  of  their  lives. 
Galileo  was  called  upon  to  justify  science;  Gro- 
tius  was  called  upon  to  defend  toleration  of 
the  pursuit  of  knowledge.  But  that  day  has 
gone  by.  It  is  science  which  is  established 
now,  and,  if  there  is  to  be  a  reconciliation,  it  is 
religious  truth  which  must  justify  itself.  Sci- 
ence proves,  Mr.  White  tells  us,  the  ascent  of 
man,  not  his  faU.  To  say  that  the  Bible  is  a 
**  revelation  *'  of  the  ascent  of  man,  as  he  also 
does,  is  to  indulge  in  a  metaphor  which,  in  his 
mouth,  tends  to  confuse  rather  than  enlighten. 


[VoL  62,  No.  1613 


Books  and  their  Makers  during  the  Middle 
Agee:  A  Study  of  the  Conditions  of  the 
Production  and  Distribution  of  Literature 
from  the  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  to  the 
Close  of  the  Seventeenth  Century.  By 
George  Haven  Putnam,  A.M.  G.  P.  Put- 
nam*s  Sons.  1896.  VoL  I.,  ▲.  d.  470.1600. 
8vo,  pp.  xxvii,  460. 
This  continuation  of  Mr.  Putnam's  book  on 
*  Authors  and  their  Public  in  Ancient  Times ' 
begins  with  a  description  of  the  production  of 
books  after  the  downfall  of  the  Western  Em- 
pire. It  is  full  of  curious  information  con- 
cerning book  making  arts  in  monasteries, 
which  were  first  made  a  clerical  duty  in  Italy 
by  Cassiodorus  and  S.  Benedict,  during  the 
sixth  century.  The  rule  of  S.  Ferreol,  written 
about  this  time,  says,  **He  who  does  not  turn 
up  the  earth  with  the  plough,  ought  to  write 
parchment  with  the  fingers.**  Nuns  were  also 
required  to  copy,  and  some  were  in  distinction 
as  illuminators.  ** Scriptoria**  were  soon  es- 
tablished in  Germany,  France,  HoUand,  and 
Ireland.  England  seems  to  have  been  slow  to 
practise  book-making  arts,  for  it  was  at  the 
dose  of  the  seventh  century  before  the  monas- 
teries at  Wearmouth  and  Yarrow  became 
centres  of  a  transient  literary  activity.  Then 
followed  the  establishment  of  libraries  outside 
of  monasteries,  the  education  of  copyists  who 
were  not  ecclesiastics,  and  the  distinct  busi- 
ness of  selling  manuscript  books  When  the 
early  Italian  universities  drew  many  pupils  to 
them,  dealers  in  books,  stationarii  and  libro' 
Hi,  fiocked  around  their  courts.  In  the  thir- 
teenth century  there  were  enough  of  them  in 
some  of  the  larger  cities  to  give  names  to  the 
districts  in  which  they  made  their  sales.  Ave 
Maria  Lane,  Pater  Noster  Row,  Amen  Comer, 
in  London,  indicate  that  these  early  booksellers 
made  petty  book  sales  as  well  as  big  ones,  and 
that  they  had  dealings  with  common  people  as 
often  as  with  scholars.  In  the  Latin  Quarter 
of  Paris  as  well  as  in  the  vicinity  of  Italian 
universities,  the  booksellers  were  kept  under 
restraint,  which  compelled  some  of  the  num* 
ber  to  seek  for  buyers  in  places  where  trade 
was  more  free. 

Just  before  the  invention  of  typography,  the 
copyists  of  Bruges,  Ghent,  and  Antwerp,  aided 
by  illuminators  and  decorative  book-priutei^ 
had  organized  corporations  for  the  better  prac- 
tice of  their  trades.  Book-making  in  it-;  high- 
est achievements  was  deservedly  rated  &»  one 
of  the  fine  arts,  for  it  had  enlisted  the  services 
of  famous  painters.  The  desire  for  a  fine  book 
like  the  <*Grlmani**  breviary  or  the  "Here- 
ford Ifissal  **  was  as  conunon  among  men  of 
wealth  and  taste  as  the  desire  for  fine  pictures 
Bat  books  like  these,  usually  made  to  order  for 
princes  and  nobles,  could  not  be  considered 
subjects  of  trade.  A  trade  in  cheap  book.4  was 
maintained,  not  only  in  the  small  shops  of 


cities,  but  at  markets  and  annual  fain.  Be- 
ginning with  the  sale  of  devotional  pictain 
and  little  books  of  colored  pictures,  some  with 
and  some  without  explanatory  text,  soon  to  be 
engraved  on  wood  and  printed  from  the  blocb, 
a  way  was  being  paved  for  the  invention  of 
printing  from  types.  To  these  humble  (ore- 
runners  of  the  type-printed  book  our  suthor 
gives  too  little  consideration. 

His  notice  of  the  invention  of  typography  it 
obviously  intended  to  be  complete  and  impsr- 
tiaL  He  follows  Humphreys  in  the  belief  that 
Kostar  was  the  printer  of  the  first  book  edition 
of  the  *  Biblia  Pauperum,*  and  edso  the  printer 
of  the  'Speculum  Humanss  Salvationis.'  No 
diligent  student  of  the  invention  of  typography 
can  accept  Humphreys  as  an  authority.  He 
was  a  xealous  compiler  and  a  praJseworthy 
maker  of  fine  books  of  facsimUes,  but  not  an 
original  investigator  or  exact  thinker,  oarelea 
in  the  sifting  of  evidence  and  inexact  at  to 
dates  and  facts.  It  is  a  surprise,  too,  to  note 
in  Mr.  Pntnam*s  book  the  omiasion  of  the 
names  and  works  of  recent  authors  who  hsTe 
been  diligent  investigators  of  this  subjeet. 
Nearly  three  hundred  books  are  specified  ss 
the  mines  from  which  he  derives  informatioB, 
but  one  does  not  see  in  this  long  list  the  nanm 
of  Hdtrop  or  Hessels,  Weigel,  Zestermaon,  or 
Van  der  Linde.  The  information  famished  by 
these  authors  is  of  importance,  and  shoold 
have  been  utilised. 

The  first  printers  were  not  schoUrs,  nor  even 
the  professional  book-makers  attached  to  the 
universities.     They  seem  to  have  been  me- 
chanics and  traders  who  took  up  the  new  srt 
as  a  more  expeditions  and  profitable  method  of 
book-making.  They  imitated  as  closely  as  they 
could  the  style  or  form  of  letters  most  used  by 
scribes,  and  followed  their  kadership  in  isra 
ing  the  books  that  promised  to  be  most  sala- 
ble.   These  books,  classical  or  theological,  and 
in  the  Latin  language,  soon  overstocked  the 
market,  and  the  prices  of  printed  books  fell 
rapidly.    There  was  some  opposition  to  print- 
ing by  the  copyists  and  engravers,  but  only 
from  those  of  the  lower  dass.     Scribes,  and 
the  collectors  of  fine  manuscript  books  during 
the  last  half  of  the  fifteenth  century,  how- 
ever,  had  great  contempt  for  all  f<aiBS  of 
printed  books.    Many  librarians  boasted  that 
they  did  not  have  one  on  their  shelvaa.    Thii 
dislike  was  most  general  in  Italy.    At  flrvt  the 
clergy  looked  with  tolerance  or  indifference  on 
the  spread  of  printing.    When  printers  f oond 
that  the  market  for  the  classics  and  dogmatic 
theology  was  being  overstocked,  they  began 
to  print  books  in  the  vernacular  that  were  m1- 
able  to  common  people.    This  provoked  the 
censure  and  restraint  of  the  Church.     There 
was  also  no  small  complaint  on  the  part  of 
printers  against  each  other,  caused  by  the  pira- 
tical reprinting  of  books.    The  interference  of 
the  law  was  frequently  solicited.     In  thii  re- 
straint our  author  traces  the  orig^  of  copy- 
right law,  a  subject  in  which  he  is  at  home. 

The  «ervt<:!«s  rendered  to  the  wofld  by  ptin- 
t^-publlRb^rs  like  AMub^  the  ^tiennes^  Frobeti, 
and  othen^  ar6  described  by  Mr.  Futmam  wiU 
elearneRB  and  foree*  Yet  they  were  except  ioos. 
Muc^b  bad  printing  wah  done  at  the  beg^muioe 
of  tbe  sixteenth  century.  In  the  introdnrticfi 
to  bis  *  Adsgia '  Erasmus  writ^  &a  follows  i 

'^  Formerly  there  was  devoted  to  the  c>arrert' 
nets  of  a  lii>erary  maD^i^i^ript  as  much  cmrs  ^nij 
attention  as  to  the  writioi;  of  A  aot&riAi  ipstni- 
meoi.  Such  care  and  precki  on  waa  hold  to  be 
a  sacred  duty,  Later,  the  copying  c?f  mxa^ 
seripts  was  «i]itru&itMl  to  innioraQt  i^oiakj,  dod 
even  U>  wtiroen.  But  haw  mnt±  m.«r«  iirri  fr 
is  the  evit  that  can  b«  bmiighl  about  bv  a^*l^ 
]£m  printer^  and  jet  to  this  ma£t«r  'tlua  Um 


May  28,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


4:Q8 


givM  no  heed.  A  dealer  who  sells  Bofflish 
ttuffi  under  the  gnine  of  Venetian  is  pnnlwed, 
but  the  printer  who,  in  place  of  correct  texts, 
misleads  and  abuses  the  reader  with  pages  the 
contents  of  which  are  an  actual  trial  and  tor. 
ment,  escapes  unharmed.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  Germany  is  plagued  with  so  many  books 
that  are  deformed  [t.  «.,  untrustworthy].  The 
authorities  will  superyise,  with  arbitrary  regu- 
lations, the  proper  methods  for  the  banng  of 
bread,  but  concern  themseWes  not  at  all  as  to 
the  correctness  of  the  work  of  the  printers, 
although  the  influence  of  bad  typography  is 
far  more  injurious  than  that  of  bad  bread.*^ 


Evolution  and  Man^s  Place  in  Nature,  By 
Henry  C.  Calderwood.  Macmillan.  18d5. 
8vo,  pp.  849. 
Ws  have  here  a  discussion  and  summary  of 
the  biological  additions  to  our  knowledge  of 
man,  together  with  a  revirion,  in  the  light  of 
modem  evolution,  of  man  as  recognized  by  me- 
taphysicians and  theologians.  Prof.  Calder- 
wood's  writings  are  always  interesting  and 
thought-inspiring,  even  if  not  at  all  times  con- 
Tlncing.  His  present  subject  enlists  his  great- 
est earnestness  and  vigor.  The  book  will  be 
less  favorably  regarded  by  scienttsts  than  by 
those  interested  in  harmonizing  evolution,  in 
its  recent  developments,  with  theology  or 
philosophy.  The  review  of  the  development 
and  status  qf  the  physical  man  is  fair,  though 
marked  by  occasional  Indeflniteness  or  indi- 


rectness, due  in  part,  at  least,  to  Mr.  Calder. 
wood's  lack  of  familiarity  with  the  facts  on 
which  the  reasoning  is  based.  In  dealing  with 
his  own  observations  this  might  not  have  been 
the  case;  but  when  stating  that  Darwin  or 
another  has  said  this  or  that,  he  raises  a  ques- 
tion whether  he  fully  understood  his  authority 
—whether  the  latter  interpreted  the  facts 
rightly,  or  may  not  have  had  incorrect  ideas 
of  discoveries  by  another  who  in  turn  might 
have  mistaken.  Our  author  is  skilful,  but  his 
references  in  support  of  bis  position  have  not 
the  foroe  of  personal  observation,  and  they  at 
times  weaken  the  argument  so  that  when  im- 
possibility  of  determination  is  announced  to  be 
a  consequent,  the  impression  given  is  more  of 
a  dearth  of  information  than  of  insurmounta- 
bility to  science. 

In  the  metaphysical  portions  the  work  is 
more  satisfactory.  The  position  of  the  author, 
and  in  some  degree  the  lines  of  discussion,  may 
be  suggested  by  stating  his  belief  that  animal 
intelligence  is  not  rational,  that  instinct  is  a 
matter  of  structure  and  belongs  to  sensory 
apparatus,  and  that  he  recognizes  a  power,  be- 
yond  scientific  observation,  which  is  ever  in 
operation  and  which  has  manifested  itself  at 
the  most  impressive  periods  of  the  world's 
history— first  at  the  appearance  of  organic 
life,  again  on  the  appearance  of  mind,  and 
again  on  the  advent  of  rational  life;  a  first 


cause ;  an  eternal  personality,  related  to  the 
spiritual  life  of  rational  souls  as  to  no  other 
known  type  of  existence.  This  raises  the  ques- 
tion whether  the  origin  of  our  world  was  one 
of  the  lees  impressive  periods,  or  a  manifesta- 
tion  of  a  different  power. 


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TRUSTEES. 
W.  H.  U.  Moore,  Geot]^  BlU^  Aiuon  W.  Hard* 

A.  A.  Raren,         John  L.  Biker,  la«ac  B«I1, 

Joe.  H.  Chapman.  C.  A.  Hand,  Joseph  Affostml, 

Jam4»  Low,  John  D.  Hewlett,       Yernon  H.  Brown^ 

Jaa.  G.  DeForeflt,  Guatav  Amilnck.^      Leandei-  N.Lorell. 
WlUlAm  De^rout,  N.  Lentou  J^mlth,      Everett  Frapar, 
^V^n  I  am  H.  Webb,  Cba«.  H .  Manh  al  I,    W  m.  B.  Baul  ton, 
Horace  Gray,        Chaa  D.  Leverleb,    Geo.  W.  Qulstard, 
O.  dfi  Tbom#en.     Kd  w'd  Ployd-Jonee,  Paul  L.  Theb*ii4 
Cbaa  F.  Burdett, Georse H, Maey,       JnoB. Woodward, 
Henry  S.Qnwley*  Lawrence  Tumure,  Qeorse  CoppetJ. 
VVm,  B.  Dodie^      Waldron  P.  Brown. 

W.  H.  H.  MOORE,  Pt«aldent. 

A.  A.  RAVEN.  Yloe-PnaldeDt. 

F.  A.  PARSONS,  Sd  Ylce-PrHldent, 


FRENCH  BOOKS' 


at  Wn.  R.  JENJC1NS-, 

PnhUsher. 
^1  Buts  ATETta, 
NEW  YORK, 
C^!implete  Cataln^ue  on  application. 

UACK  NUMBERS.  VOLS.,  AND  SETS 

LJ  of  tliB  .Va/<oa.  a«  aljo  of  odl  perlodk^f.  bought, 
»oM,  SlXhI  exchanged  by  A.  S.  Cl^uCh  171  Fultos  Stnet. 
weet  of  Broad  war,  ^ew  York. 

r^  *  n        w       SnbftcrlptloEiii  to  ForelxQ  Fw- 

rOT€tPli  tSOOkS^  rtodlcalB.  Tauchnlti  Britlib 
o  antbora,    Cntalofues  oa  19 

plication.    Oi^L  ScHOJCnnor,  £3  School  BL,  Boeton. 


n  Apt/'  numtTf-rs  and  acta  of  all  maici^iMrieR.  Iw 
D/\Lh^  price  i^iviw  waskts  to  Aiieai4:!a!«  K^fiAflfi 
KxcHAJfoa.  De  BeiHl  thilltllnir,  9t*  Louki,  Mo. 

TT     WILLIAMS,  .jj  EAST  loTff  ST., 

ll  .  N.  Y.,  dealer  In  Maira»1n«fl  aiad  otk«r  F«rtoaietla 
gieta*  Toiumai^  or  iln^le  nmubera. 

f^mptiti  Index  to  LiUtH's  Living  A g£,  H  iJk 
L.    «tid of  Idyd.  E. Both,  u^ FIbiSI, r  ■' 


The    Nation. 


mw   YORK,   THURSDAT,  JUNE  4,   1896. 

The  Week. 

WiTHiif  one  month  of  the  close  of  the 
fiscal  year,  the  Treasury  shows  a  deficit 
of  $27,000,000.  The  receipts  are  greater 
by  $14,000,000  than  in  the  corresponding 
months  of  1891-5,  and  the  expenditures 
$7,000,000  less;  but  the  deficit  has  been 
creeping  up  month  by  month,  and  it  will 
doubtless  amount  to  $30,000,000  by  June 
90.  Meanwhile  the  gold  holdings  are 
subject  to  drain  agsin,  no  less  than  $17,- 
000,000  gold  having  been  drawn  out  in 
the  month  of  May  alone.  But  do  these 
figures  have  any  sobering  effect  on  Con- 
gress? Only  to  drive  it  into  more  reck- 
less waste  of  the  public  money  on  ships 
and  fortifications  and  a  swollen  river-and- 
harbor  bill.  The  latter  is  being  passed 
over  the  President's  veto  with  a  shout 
What  has  he  got  to  do  with  spending  the 
people's  money?  That  is  the  perquisite 
of  Congress,  he  will  find  out.  If  he  has 
to  issue  bonds  to  psy  the  (Government's 
debts  and  to  preserve  the  gold  standard, 
why,  let  him.  That's  his  affair.  We'll 
curse  him  roundly  for  doing  it,  but  as 
for  economy  and  moderation  in  appro- 
priations, why,  what  on  earth  are  we  here 
for? 


The  river  -  and  -  hsrbor  bill  which  the 
President  has  vetoed  is  the  most  shame- 
less debauch  with  public  money  that  we 
can  recall,  and  it  comes  at  a  time  when 
the  Treasury  is  subsisting  on  borrowed 
money.  No  words  can  be  too  severe  to 
characterize  such  profiigacy.  One  of  the 
inevitable  effects  must  be  to  impair  confi- 
dence in  our  credit  abroad,  already  weak- 
ened to  a  disastrous  extent  by  the  silver 
craze.  It  is  perfectly  plain  that  the 
money  to  meet  this  extravagant  appro- 
priation must  be  taken  from  the  pro- 
ceeds of  the  last  bond  sale,  and  hence 
that  another  one  will  be  necessary.  Se- 
nator Sherman  justified  the  veto  in  ad- 
vance when  he  said  that  Congress  was 
piling  up  expenditures  without  revenue, 
and  that  the  President  ought  to  refuse  to 
pay  out  more  money  than  the  Treasury's 
current  iocome.  If  Congress  passes  the 
bill  over  the  veto,  Mr.  Cleveland  may 
follow  Mr.  Sherman's  advice  in  this  par- 
ticular. He  would  certainly  be  sustained 
by  public  opinion,  regardless  of  party  di- 
visions, if  he  should  do  so.  One  para- 
graph in  the  veto  message  contains  a 
general  truth  little  calculated  to  propitiate 
members  of  Congress  who  voted  for  the 
bill,  viz.: 

**  I  believe  no  greater  danger  confi^nts  ui,  ai 
a  nation,  than  toe  unhappy  decadence  among 
oar  people  of  genuine  and  trostworthy  love 
and  affection  for  oar  government  as  the  em- 
bodiment of  the  highest  and  best  aspirations 
of  bamaoity.  and  not  as  the  giver  of  gifts,  and 
because  ita  mi«ion  is  tbe  enforoemenfe  of  exact 


jastlce  and  eqaality,  and  not  the  allowance  of 
unfair  favoritism." 

The  passage  of  the  bill  over  the  veto  has 
been  consummated  in  the  House.  It  is  to 
be  hoped  that  the  people  will  keep  a  list 
of  the  yeas  and  nays,  and  severely  remem- 
ber the  men  who  have  recorded  themselves 
in  the  affirmative. 


In  view  of  all  the  other  extravagances 
of  the  present  Congress,  those  actually  ac- 
complished and  those  contemplated,  the 
report  of  the  committee  on  the  Nicarsgua 
Canal  ought  not  to  occasion  surprise. 
They  recommend  the  project,  of  course. 
It  is  true  that  a  committee  of  Govern- 
ment engineers,  after  a  personal  examina- 
tion of  the  route  and  the  country  and 
the  work  already  done,  reported  against 
going  on  with  the  canal  at  present,  say- 
ing that  the  data  were  insufficient,  that 
the  canal  company's  figures  were  erro- 
neous, if  not  intentionally  false,  and  that 
it  was  not  yet  proved  that  the  canal  was 
practicable  from  the  engineering  stand- 
point The  House  committee,  without 
any  later  information  and  without  per- 
sonal examination  of  anything  except 
the  company's  light  literature,  decides 
that  the  canal  is  practicable  on  the 
present  plan,  that  it  can  be  built  for 
$82,000,000  (making  allowance  for  $100,- 
000,000  as  an  outside  figure),  and  that  it 
is  wise  for  the  (Government  to  guarantee 
the  company's  securities  to  the  latter 
amount,  or  even  $150,000,000  if  necessary. 
This  is  a  sum  three  times  as  large  as  the 
Government  guaranteed  for  all  the  Pacific 
railroads  taken  together.  It  is  to  be  spent 
in  making  a  canal  subject  to  a  foreign 
jurisdiction,  and  exposed,  in  case  of  war, 
to  seizure  by  any  naval  power  that  can 
first  reach  it  and  is  strong  enough  to  hold 
it  or  destroy  it.  If  such  a  scheme  can 
pass  Congress,  what  may  we  not  expect? 
The  present  river and-harbor  bill  is  a 
trifle  in  comparison  with  it.  The  latter 
has  at  least  the  advantage  that  the  money 
will  be  spent  in  our  own  country. 


A  measure  has  just  passed  the  Unit- 
ed States  Senate  which  takes  away  from 
the  Administration  its  power,  under  the 
resumption  law  of  1875,  to  issue  bonds 
for  the  protection  of  the  Treasury  reserve. 
The  bond-issue  power  was  indeed  an  es- 
sential and  indispensable  part  of  that  le- 
gislation. The  Congress  of  1875  fully  ap- 
preciated that  the  maintenance  of  resump- 
tion and  the  future  protection  of  the 
national  credit  might,  in  an  easily 
imagined  exigency,  depend  entirely  on  this 
bond-issue  power  unquestionably  possess- 
ed and  unhesitatingly  used  by  the  execu- 
tive. This  is  why  Senator  Sherman  and 
Senator  Qray,  Republican  and  Democrat, 
united  the  other  day  in  declaring  to  the 
Senate  that  its  action  on  the  Butler  bill 
*<  marks  a  crisis  in  the  history  of  the 


country  and  in  the  history  of  the  Senate." 
Both  understood,  as  all  other  intelligent 
citizens  do,  that  this  bond-issue  power, 
bravely  and  promptly  exercised  by  Mr. 
Cleveland  on  four  critical  occasioos,  is  all 
that  has  stood  since  1893  between  the 
United  States  Tressury  and  repudiation. 
With  Congress  in  such  a  mood— for  the 
passage  of  this  bill  in  the  Senate  has  all 
along  been  assumed  as  probable— and 
with  a  recollection  of  the  catastrophe  four 
times  so  narrowly  averted,  every  business 
man  and  every  citizen  has  a  ri^ht  to  ask, 
with  fear  and  trembling,  what  attitude 
the  next  Administration  can  be  depended 
on  to  take  in  such  another  criais. 


Senator  Sherman  has  again  exposed  his 
insincerity  on  the  question  of  raisiog  reve- 
nue. While  the  "  filled-cheese  bill "  was 
before  the  Senate,  Mr.  Dubois  offered  an 
amendment  providing  for  an  additional 
tax  of  75  cents  a  barrel  on  beer.  He  point- 
ed out  the  well-known  fact  that  such  a 
tax  would  bring  in  $25,000,000  a  year— al- 
most enough  to  meet  the  deficiency  in  the 
revenue — and  would  not  affect  anyt>ody 
except  those  ''gentlemen  who  have  accu- 
mulated large  fortunes  in  the  maoufacture 
of  beer,"  as  the  price  of  a  glass  of  beer 
would  not  be  increased.  Mr.  Sherman  not 
only  opposed  the  amendment,  but  he  de- 
precated the  idea  of  any  further  impost  on 
beer,  on  the  ground  that  it  already  "  has 
a  pretty  heavy  tax  on  it  for  an  article 
which  is  very  useful  and  comfortable," 
and  he  said  that  he  did  not  know  whether 
he  would  vote  tor  a  larger  tax  under  Say 
circumstances,  "because  I  thiok  that  ths 
consumers  of  beer  already  pay  a  very  large 
sum."  This  is  the  ridiculous  end  of  the 
Ohio  Senator's  professed  anxiety  of  a  few 
months  ago  to  vote  for  a  tax  on  tea,  coffee, 
or  anything  else  io  order  to  raise  more 
revenue. 


Nothing  could  show  more  conclusively 
the  universal  appreciation  that  the  finan- 
cial question  is  the  most  important  one 
now  before  the  people  than  the  split  of 
the  Prohibition  party  on  this  issue.  Here 
is  an  organization  which  was  formed  for 
the  sole  purpose  of  puttiog  an  end  to  the 
traffic  in  intoxicating  liquors;  yet  when 
it  holds  its  national  convention,  the  one 
thing  which  interests  the  delegates  is 
whether  the  party  shall  favor  or  oppoee 
the  free  coinage  of  silver.  A  long  con- 
troversy shows  that  a  small  majority  are 
against  the  16to-l  doctrine,  and  then  the 
minority  bolt  and  start  a  new  organisa- 
tion for  the  promotion  of  an  object  which 
is  dearer  to  them  than  any  consideration 
affecting  the  liquor  traffic.  Prohibition- 
ists have  been  called  men  of  one  idea,  who 
could  think  of  nothing  but  their  hobby. 
The  fact  that  Prohibitionists  now  put  the 
currency  above  everything  else  shows  how 
absurd  it  is  to  suppose  that  the  approach- 


426 

ing  campaign  can  be  fought  on  any  other 
iflflue. 

The  nearer  we  get  to  the  St.  Louis  con- 
yen  tion,  the  more  pronounced  becomes 
the  support  of  McKinley  by  the  silver 
Republicans  of  the  West,  on  the  ground 
that  his  record  and  his  character  show 
that  he  is  not  and  will  not  be  a  gold- 
standard  man.  The  Dry  Ooods  Econo- 
mist of  this  city  recently  sent  a  circular 
to  representatives  of  the  trade  through- 
out the  country,  pointing  out  that  the 
financial  issue  is  the  most  important  one, 
that  '*  McEinley's  record  is  that  of  a  per- 
sistent imnderer  to  the  unsettlement  of 
our  financial  system,"  that  all  merchants 
who  favor  the  maintenance  of  the  gold 
standard  should  place  themselves  on  re- 
cord, and  asking  dry-goods  men  to  let  it 
know  whether  they  favor  such  mainte- 
nance. The  head  of  a  dry-goods  company 
in  Topeka,  Kan.,  has  furnished  to  the 
Journal  of  that  city,  an  earnest  free- 
coinage  and  McKinley  newspaper,  a  copy 
of  his  reply  to  this  circular.  He  writes 
that  the  officers  of  his  corporation  are  for 
McKinley,  **  first,  last,  and  all  the  time,*' 
for  the  reason,  among  others,  that  '*  he  is 
not  an  extremist  on  the  money  question,'* 
and  that  *'we  especially  admire  in  Mr. 
McKinley  that  quality  which  enables  him, 
notwithstanding  the  pressure  of  his  ene- 
mies, to  keep  his  views  on  silver  coinage 
to  himself  until  such  time  as  he  thinks 
it  wise  to  express  them."  The  President 
of  the  company  says  that  it  has  twelve 
employees,  eight  of  whom  are  Republi- 
cans, two  Democrats,  and  two  Populists. 
Seven  of  the  Republicans  are  warmly  in 
favor  of  McKinley,  and  one  of  the  Demo- 
crats expects  to  vote  for  him,  while  the 
Populists  *'hope  for  a  chance  to. vote 
for  an  out-an-out  free-silver  man.'*  The 
letter  concludes :  **  But  one  of  the  entire 
twelve  approves  of  the  gold  standard, 
nor  do  we."  Evidently  somebody  is  going 
to  be  terribly  cheated  in  this  business. 
Who  is  it  going  to  be— the  Eastern  sound- 
money  men,  who  claim  that  McKinley  ia 
for  the  gold  standard;  or  the  WeBtern 
siJyentoB^  who  BUpport  bioa  enthusiasts 
cftlly  beeauaa  they  believe  that  he  ih  not  ? 


The    IN'atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1614 


The  Tribune  com  plains  with  great  jua- 
tice  of  people  who  "have  bombarded  Mr, 
McKinley  witEi  queatioDi  which  they  know, 
and  be  knows,  and  they  know  that  he 
Imowe,  have  no  other  earthly  purpose  than 
to  entrap  and  mierepreaent  him/'  And  it 
intimates  that  these  questiona  relate  to 
**  all  subjecte  under  diacuesion  in  Ihe  civil- 
ised world,  beginning  with  tbe  Mosaic 
coamogony  aud  coming  down  to  coinage.'* 
But  it  IB  absurd  to  suggest  eTen  that  the 
Major  cannot  protect  himaeif  againet  such 
people*  He  can  easily  cut  off  a  man  who 
begins  by  asking  him  about  the  Mosaic 
cosmogony,  and  the  nebular  hypotheBis, 
etc.,  by  flimply  aayipg  that  such  tbinga 
have  no  relatioa  to  tbe  election,  and  that 
ho  has  not  made  up  his  mind  about  them. 
He  can,  in  fact,  eafely  treat  such  quea- 


tioners  as  impostors,  just  as  much  as  if  he 
were  not  a  candidate.  The  only  genuine 
persons  who  go  to  him  ars  the  gold-stan- 
dard men.  Surely,  he  must  have  been^ 
▼isited  by  some,  who  simply  said,  waiving 
the  Mosaic-cosmogony  matter,  that  all 
they  wished  to  know  was  which  standard 
he  favored — gold  or  silyer.  Is  it  conceiv- 
able that  he  was  not  visited  by  some  such 
inquirers?  Now  what  did  he  say  to  them? 
This  is  all  we  want  to  know.  What  he 
thinks  about  all  other  subjects  of  human 
interest  is  a  matter  of  comparative  indiffe- 
rence to  us.  Of  course  we  should  like  to 
know  how  such  a  mind  as  Major  McKin- 
ley's  works  on  any  subject,  as  we  should 
like  to  know  how  Gladstone's,  or  Bis- 
marck's, or  Darwin's,  or  Goethe's  work- 
ed ;  but  we  acknowledge  that  this  is  not 
the  time  to  discover  how  it  works  on  sub- 
jects in  general.  We  only  ask  how  it 
works  on  one.  Is  this  unreasonable?  Is 
it  impertinent?  Are  we  to  die  in  igno- 
rance? How  a  man  of  ordinary  sensibility 
can  see  millions  surging  round  his  window 
in  search  of  information  on  one  subject 
only,  and  yet  deny  it,  passes  our  compre- 
hension. 


The  (Georgia  Bankers'  Association  held 
their  annual  meeting  at  Augusta  a  few 
days  since,  and,  after  finishing  the  busi- 
ness that  brought  them  together,  were 
entertained  at  a  banquet  Ex-Senator 
Walsh,  who  is  the  editor  of  the  Augusta 
Chronicle^  and  a  silver-man,  was  present 
and  was  called  on  for  a  speech.  Mr.  Walsh 
made  a  brief  response,  in  which  he  said 
that  he  would  become  an  advocate  of  the 
gold  standard  in  case  anybody  could  de- 
monstrate two  propositions  to  him:  first, 
"that  the  volume  of  primary  money  does 
not  control,  in  a  great  measure,  the  com- 
modities that  seek  to  be  exchanged  for 
it";  second,  "that  the  universal  law  of 
supply  and  demand,  which  governs  the 
price  of  all  articles  that  enter  into  com- 
merce, does  not  govern  the  price  of 
money."  If  both  these  propositions  were 
conceded  to  be  trut^i  there  would  sUll  be 
something  more  needed  to  make  a  logical 
coo  c  I  us  ion.  The  first  and  fundamental 
contention  of  the  '*gold-buga  "  is  that  tbe 
free  coinage  of  silver  would  not  add  any- 
thing to  the  volume  of  money,  but  merely 
Bubstitule  silver  for  gold.  They  say  that 
all  history  proves  this,  and  that  even  if 
an  increased  volume  of  money  ware  de- 
sirable, it  would  not  be  brought  about  by 
such  a  substitution.  They  deny,  also,  that 
a  ri^  of  general  prices  would  be  for  the 
advantage  of  the  great  mass*  of  mankind. 
They  point  to  the  fact  that*  although 
prices  of  most  tbinga  have  fallen  since 
1873,  wagea  have  risen,  and  that  conae- 
quenlly  the  working  clasaea  are  better  oflfj 
since  they  receive  more  dollars  and  can 
buy  more  goods  with  each  dollar.  For 
these  reasons,  no  logical  end  or  argumen- 
tative purpose  is  reached,  even  if  one  con- 
cedea  Mr.  Walsh's  contention.  He  wishea 
us  to  take  three  things  for  granted »  al- 
though not  even  mentioned  by  him,  viz.; 


that  the  free  coinage  of  silver  wilt  give  lu 
a  larger  quantity  of  money  than  we  now 
have,  that  a  larger  quantity  is  desirable, 
and  that  a  general  rise  of  prices  would  be 
advantageous  to  mankind.  Those  are  the 
things  which  Mr.  Walsh  should  have  de- 
monstrated before  he  put  his  proposition 
to  the  (Georgia  bankers. 


Had  the  Republican  convention  build- 
ing in  St  Louis  been  too  badly  damaged 
by  the  late  tornado  to  be  made  ready  by 
June  16,  the  national  committee  would, 
have  had  an  opportunity  to  do  a  sensible 
thing.  It  was  not  at  all  necessary  that 
the  convention  should  be  put  off  simply 
because  there  was  not  another  building  in 
the  city  capable  of  seating  6,000  to  8,000 
people.  All  that  was  and  ia  needed  is 
seating  capacity  for  the  1,000  delegates. 
There  must  be  many  halls  in  St  Louis 
large  enough  to  accommodate  the  conven- 
tion proper  with  ease.  The  chance  to  get 
rid  BO  easily  of  the  thousands  of  interlop- 
ers that  hinder  and  attempt  to  direct  the 
work  of  national  conventions,  ought  to 
have  been  accepted  with  joy.  They  are  a 
more  intolerable  nuisance  with  every  year, 
and  make  the  appearance  even  of  delibe- 
ration and  debate  more  and  more  farcical. 
The  committee  should  have  been  thank- 
ful to  seize  the  occasion  to  shut  out  the 
mob,  and  hold  the  convention  according 
to  programme  and  under  infinitely  better 
conditions  than  can  possibly  be  enjoyed  in 
the  great  auditorium. 


A  thousand  and  one  candidates  for  the 
Vice-Presidency  are  reported  as  being 
under  grave  consideration  by  the  McKin- 
leyites,  but  the  man  they  would  undoubt- 
edly prefer  is  Speaker  Beed.  The  bait 
they  are  dangling  before  him  ia  that  he 
would  be  just  thtf  kind  of  czar  needed  to 
regenerate  the  Senate.  With  him  in  the 
chair,  it  is  said,  the  dreary  twaddle  of  the 
Stewarts  and  Morgans  and  Peffera  would 
be  brought  abruptly  to  an  end,  the  Senate's 
buBiness  would  march  like  maglCf  and  an 
applauding  country  would  iJse  up  to  blera 
the  bold  Beed.  But  no  man  is  less  likely 
to  be  deceived  by  this  fancy  picture  than 
the  Speaker  himself*  He  knows  that  the 
most  czar-like  preaiding  officer,  backed  hj 
no  matter  how  frantic  popular  cheers, 
could  do  nothing  to  make  the  Senate  a 
body  for  the  dia patch  oF  public  business 
unleaa  a  majority  of  the  members  were 
willing'  to  stand  by  him.  But  whenever  a 
majority  are  ready  to  change  the  rules  and 
act  like  rational  human  beings  bent  oti 
something  besides  floods  of  talk,  the  prt- 
siding  officer  becomes  of  litUe  moment. 
It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  Senate 
will  ever  be  regenerated  by  the  Vic©  Pr^i- 
dent;  its  help  cometh  not  from  the  Cbair, 
The  Cbair  has  no  power  in  the  Senate. 
When  a  few  more  of  tbe  old  fallows  die  or 
are  displaced,  when  a  Uw  more  younger 
men,  impatient  and  in&nitely  weary  <rf 
the  eham  tradition  of  aenatorta!  courte^, 
take  their   places,   we    may   hope    for  a 


June  4,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


427 


change.  There  are  some  grateful  Bignaof 
Buch  a  coming  change;  but  it  must  be 
wrought  by  the  Senate  itself,  not  by  its 
chairman. 


The  World  publishes  a  number  of  tele- 
grams from  members  of  the  Democratic 
national  committee  in  response  to  an 
inquiry  whether  they  are  in  favor  of  ab- 
rogating the  two-thirds  rule  at  the  Chica- 
go convention.  The  point  of  the  inquiry 
lies  in  the  fact  that  any  number  of  dele- 
gates more  than  one- third  can  prevent 
any  nomination  if  they  are  dissatisfied 
with  the  platform.  Chairman  Harrity 
says: 

**  la  my  Judgment  temporary  conditions  will 
not  justify  the  abrogation  of  any  well-estab 
lished  rule  that  has  been  found  to  work  satis- 
factorily in  the  past.  The  two  thirds  rule  as 
applied  to  candidates  ought,  in  my  opinion,  to 
be  continued.  It  has  usually  been  the  case 
that  candidates  who  obtained  the  support  of 
the  majority  of  the  deleKates  to  the  Democratic 
national  convention  were  able  to  command  the 
other  votes  necessary  to  give  them  the  re- 
quired number  under  the  two>  thirds  rule.** 

The  word  *'  usually  "  is  well  chosen.  It 
has  usually  been  the  esse,  but  not  al- 
ways. A  conspicuous  exception  is  found 
in  the  Charleston  convention  of  1860, 
when  Senator  Douglas  had  a  majority  of 
the  votes,  but  never  could  get  two-thirds. 
The  difficulty  here  was  over  the  platform, 
which  endorsed  the  doctrine  of  **  squatter 
sovereignty,"  or  the  right  of  the  first  set- 
tlers of  a  Territory  to  have  slavery  or  to  re- 
ject it — the  Southerners  contending  that 
no  power  could  prevent  them  from  csrry- 
ing  slaves  thither  and  holding  them  as 
long  as  the  Territorial  governments  con- 
tinued. Upon  this  question  the  conven- 
tion finally  split,  one  faction  adjourning 
to  Baltimore,  where  Douglas  was  finally 
nominated,  and  the  other  to  Richmond, 
where  John  C.  Breclcinridge  was  nomi- 
nated. If  the  difficulty  at  Charleston  had 
been  merely  a  personal  one,  means  would 
have  been  found  to  overcome  it.  What 
made  it  insurmountable  was  the  impossi- 
bility of  agreeing  upon  a  platform.  This 
is  exactly  the  difficulty  looming  up  at 
Chicago.  Chairman  Harrity  was  wise  as 
a  serpent  when  he  said  **  usually."  Of 
fifteen  answers  received  to  the  World*8 
interrogatory  three  are  in  favor  of  abro- 
gating the  two-thirds  rule,  eight  are 
against  it,  and  four  are  non-committal. 


The  gold-standard  Democrats  of  Chi- 
cago hoisted  their  flag  on  Thursday  last  to 
some  purpose.  About  500  of  them,  all 
representative  men,  including  Franklin 
MacVeagh,  ex-Mayors  Cregier  and  Hop- 
kins, and  Judge  Moran,  met  at  the  Palm- 
er House,  elected  a  county  central  com- 
mittee, and  took  steps  to  send  a  contest- 
ing delegation  to  the  national  convention. 
What  was  more  to  the  purpose,  the  speak- 
ers at  the  meeting  declared  that  they 
would  not  support  any  candidate  for  the 
Presidency  who  was  in  favor  of  the  unre- 
•tricted  coinage  of  silver,  and  that  they 
wouk)  Tota  for  a  B«pubUoan  in  prafarenoa 


if  he  were  nominated  on  a  sound-money 
platform.  These  declarations  were  re- 
ceived with  loud  cheers,  and  the  resolu- 
tion to  form  an  organization  independent 
of  the  Altgeld-Populiat  concern  was  adopt- 
ed by  unanimous  vote.  This  movement 
in  Illinois  will  have  a  powerful  effect  in 
the  surrounding  States,  where  the  influ- 
ence of  Chicsgo  is  at  all  times  very  great. 
It  will  stiffen  the  backs  of  the  sound- 
money  Democrats  of  Indiana,  Iowa,  and 
Nebraska  especially— those  of  Wisconsin 
need  no  stiffening — and  will  not  be  with- 
out its  influence  in  the  East  and  South. 


Oregon  has,  during  the  past  ten  years, 
gone  for  the  Republicans  in  every  Presi- 
dential year,  but  elected  that  Democratic- 
Populist  politician,  Pennoyer,  Governor 
twice  in  intermediate  years — in  1886  and 
1890.  In  1894  the  Republicans  chose  the 
(Governor  for  the  first  time  since  1882,  and 
no  doubt  has  been  felt  this  year  that  they 
would  carry  through  their  candidate  for 
Supreme  Court  Judge  and  get  a  good 
majority  of  the  Legislature  which  will 
choose  a  United  States  Senator  to  succeed 
Mr.  Mitchell.  The  interest  of  the  contest 
centred  about  the  silver  question.  The 
sound-money  men  were  beaten  in  the  Re- 
publican State  convention,  which  rejected 
their  proposed  plank  and  substituted  the 
** straddle"  of  the  national  platform  in 
1892,  and  the  silverites,  in  one  of  the  two 
congressional  districts,  nominated  a  free- 
coinage  Republican,  who  appears  to  have 
been  successful,  while  the  Republican  ma- 
jority in  the  Legislature  is  expected  to  re- 
elect Mr.  Mitchell  on  his  free-coinage  re- 
cord. The  influence  of  this  election  can 
hardly  fail  to  be  unfavorable  to  the  cause 
of  sound  money  in  each  of  the  great  par- 
ties. 


Commissioner  Lyman  of  the  Excise 
Department  has  bowed  to  the  inevitable, 
and  has  requested  the  State  Civil-Service 
Commission  to  place  his  *' special  oonfl- 
dential  agents"  on  the  list  of  competi- 
tive places.  The  position  of  Comptroller 
Roberts,  sustained  by  the  opinion  of  ex- 
Judge  Danforth  and  others,  that  if  the 
agents  were  appointed  in  any  other  way 
they  could  never  hope  to  be  paid  by  the 
State,  was  the  cause  of  this  surrender. 
It  is  flnal,  and,  taken  in  connection  with  a 
similar  surrender  by  Mr.  Aldridge,  should 
convince  the  Piatt  machine  that  the  Con- 
stitution is  too  strong  for  them,  and  that 
they  cannot  get  possession  of  the  public 
service  of  the  State  in  deflance  of  its  pro- 
visions. We  should  have  been  glad  to 
have  Mr.  Lyman  carry  the  matter  into  the 
courts  in  order  to  get  a  ruling  on  the 
meaning  of  the  word  '*  practicable "  in 
the  Constitution,  for  it  was  upon  that 
that  Mr.  Lyman  based  his  hope. 


Church  finances,  not  flne  points  of  doc- 
trine, conatitutad  the  burning  question 
this  year  before  the  Presbyterians  in  As- 
sembly at  Saratoga.    The  new  tl«760»000 


Presbyterian  house  in  Fifth  Avenue  has 
mightily  stirred  up  the  plain  Presbyte- 
riana  of  the  West,  especially  in  view  of 
heavy  mission  debts  reported,  and  it  look- 
ed at  one  time  as  if  the  sale  of  the  build- 
ing would  be  ordered  and  a  return  made 
to  humbler  quarters.  ^  But  flnally  the 
whole  matter  was  referred  to  a  committee 
of  business  men,  who  are  to  report 
next  year.  Two  Assemblies  have  already 
endorsed  the  new  Presbyterian  building 
as  a  wise  business  investment,  but  the  re- 
turns have  not  come  up  to  expectations, 
and  the  Western  jealousy  of  Eastern  lux- 
ury, which  is  as  observable  in  religious  as 
in  secular  politics,  may  yet  lead  to  an 
abandonment  of  the  whole  ambitious  pro- 
ject The  committee  on  church  unity, 
appointed  some  years  ago  to  negotiate 
terms  of  union  with  the  Episcopal  Church, 
made  a  flnal  and  rather  melancholy  re- 
port, and  begged  to  be  discharged  from 
further  hopeless  labors.  *'With  all  her 
conscious  weaknesses  and  imperfections," 
says  the  report,  **the  Presbyterian  Church 
must  insist  "—well,  that  it  is  as  good  as 
the  Episcopal,  any  day.  This  recalls  the 
address  to  the  Queen  which  the  judges 
drew  up  at  the  opening  of  the  new  Law 
Courts.  *'  Conscious  as  we  are  of  our  own 
inflrmitiea,"  the  flrst  draft  of  it  began. 
Objection  was  made  to  this  as  a  little  too 
abject,  when  Lord  Bo  wen  suggested  that 
it  should  read,  **  Conscious  as  we  are  of 
each  other's  inflrmities."  That  is  the 
kind  of  consciousness  the  Presbyterians 
really  have — an  acute  consciousness  of  the 
weaknesses  and  imperfections  of  the  Epis- 
copalians. 


The  use  to  which  the  Tories  propose  to 
put  their  big  inherited  surplus  shows  a 
strict  intention  to  make  their  charity  be- 
gin at  home.  The  landlords  are  to  get  a 
good  slice  of  it,  through  the  new  agricul- 
tural rating  bill,  and  the  church  schools 
their  share  by  means  of  the  education 
bill.  Meanwhile  foreign  glory  is  to  be 
got  dirt  cheap,  the  British  taxpayer  hav- 
ing nothing  (as  yet)  to  pay  on  that  score. 
The  Egyptians  are  to  pay  for  being 
protected  on  the  Sudan  frontier,  though 
they  did  not  dream  they  were  in  dan- 
ger nor  ask  to  be  protected.  It  is 
now  known  that  the  orders  to  ad- 
vance toward  Dongola  came  straight  from 
Rome,  Cairo  being  left  wholly  in  igno- 
ranee  till  the  last  moment.  Some  Indian 
troops  have  since  been  sent  to  Suakim, 
as  it  is  thought  they  can  endure  the  cli- 
mate better  than  the  English.  Some  one 
asked  ioT  the  Commons  who  was  going  to 
foot  the  bill  for  this  transfer  of  soldiers. 
He  learned  that  it  was  customary  to 
charge  such  items  up  to  the  Indian  bud- 
get, and  the  Government  proposed  to  do 
so  now.  The  Egyptian  fellaheen  and  the 
Indian  ryots  will  never  know  why  their 
taxes  are  heavier  this  year,  and  we  fear 
that  even  Secretary  Curaon  would  be  un- 
able to  make  it  clear  to  them  bow  they 
happily  illuatrata  the  beauties  of  imperial 
Iklaratkm. 


438 


Tlie    ]N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1614 


THE  PROSPECT  AT  CHICAOO. 
BsNATOB  Bbicb  IB  qooted  as  predictiog  a 
majority  of  100  for  the  free  ooinafre  of  sil- 
▼er  at  the  Chicago  conTeiitioD.  He  thinks 
that  the  Republicans  at  St.  Louis  will 
adopt  a  gold  platform,  that  McKinleywill 
endorse  it,  that  there  will  then  be  a  bolt, 
but  not  a  serious  one,  of  delegates  under 
the  lead  of  Teller.  He  thinks  that  there 
will  be  no  bolt  at  Chicago,  but  such  an 
abstention  of  Democratic  voters  in  the 
coming  election  that  the  party  will  be 
crushed.  He  has  no  doubt  that  the  Re- 
publicans, in  that  event,  will  carry  all  the 
Western  States  from  Ohio  to  the  Dakotas 
inclusive.  These  views  are  attributed  to 
Mr.  Brice  by  a  morning  newspaper. 
Whether  he  is  correctly  reported  or  not, 
these  opinions  are  held  privately  by  so 
large  a  number  of  influential  Democrats 
that  they  may  be  considered  common 
property.  Another  opinion,  a  sort  of 
corollary  of  the  preceding  ones,  is  that  the 
silver  question  will  overtop  everything 
else  in  the  campaign,  no  matter  how 
strenuously  the  Republicans  may  seek  to 
push  the  tariff  to  the  front.  McKinleyism, 
as  that  phrase  is  commonly  understood, 
will  be  swallowed  up,  even  though  Mc 
Kinley  be  the  Republican  candidate.  It 
will  be  submerged  by  the  money  question. 

The  result  of  the  Democratic  primaries 
in  Kentucky  can  hardly  be  taken  other- 
wise thsn  as  the  defeat  of  the  sound-money 
men  at  Chicago.  Last  year  they  carried 
the  State,  uncer  the  lead  of  Secretary 
Carlisle,  by  a  sufficient,  but  not  large  ma- 
jority. Now  the  silverites  have  recovered 
their  lost  ground,  and  the  gold-standard 
men,  by  losing  that  State,  have  probably 
lost  the  national  convention  also.  The 
only  question  is  whether  the  sil? erites  will 
have  a  two- thirds  majority  at  Chicago  or 
not.  This  is  not  very  important  now,  since 
the  split  in  the  party  will  be  too  wide  and 
deep  to  be  healed  this  year,  if  ever.  The 
Louisville  Courier- Journal^  commenting 
on  the  action  of  its  party  friends,  says 
that  **  they  have  spit  upon  the  fathers  of 
the  party  whoee  name  and  organization 
they  claim,  have  proclaimed  Jefferson  an 
ignoramus,  Jackson  a  conspirator,  Benton 
a  knave,  and  Cleveland  a  traitor.  For 
the  faith  handed  down  through  a  hundred 
years  of  glorious  party  history,  they  have 
substituted  a  fad  rejected  by  every  in- 
telligent civilization  on  the  globe,  and  for 
the  exponents  of  that  faith  they  have  sub- 
stituted such  apostles  of  Populism  as 
Stewart,  such  ezhorters  of  socialism  as 
Tillman,  such  evangels  of  anarchism  ss 
Altgeld.*'  It  adds  that  Saturday's  work 
makes  Kentucky  a  Rf  publican  State  for 
years  to  come ;  that  although  Bradley 
had  lost  the  popularity  which  gave  him 
the  office  of  Governor  last  year,  any  Re- 
publican can  now  carry  the  State  '*  over 
a  party  which  binds  itself  to  the  corpse  of 
free-silveriam.'* 

The  events  of  the  Democratic  campaign 
make  it  clear  that  although  the  party  re- 
pealed the  Sherman  act  in  1893,  its  heart 
was  Dot  io  that  fight,  It  was  *•  brought  up 


to  the  bull-ring'*  by  main  strength.    It 
required  all  the  force  that  Mr.  Cleveland 
could    use,   aided    by    Carlisle,   Wilson, 
Gorman,  Hill,  Voorhees,  Mills,  and  other 
leaders  of  varying  views  and  tendencies  as 
to  other  matters,  and  goaded  by  a  finan- 
cial panic  of  the  first  magnitude,  to  accom- 
plish the  result    It  was  a  great  victory  for 
the  country,  but  it  was  achieved  over  the 
heads  and  against  the  feelings  of  the  De- 
mocrats of  the  West  and  South.    A  majo- 
rity of  them  were   for  cheap  and  nasty 
money  all  the  time.    They  are  now  under 
no  duress  or  restraint    Mr.  Cleveland  no 
longer  holds  them  by  the  back  of  the  neck. 
They  feel  free  to  go  their  own  way — that  i% 
to  the  bad— and  they  are  going  thither  with 
ail  possible  speed.   They  will  not  only  lose 
the  Presidency,  but  a  lot  of  Southern  States 
which  they  have  hitherto  counted  upon  as 
surely  Democratic— Delaware,  Maryland, 
and  Kentucky  certainly ;  West  Virginia, 
Tennessee,  and  Missouri  probably — while 
their  only  possible  gains  to  offset  these 
losses  will  be  the  small  Rocky  Mountain 
States,  and  these  are  by  no  means  certain. 
The  Republican  voter  who  is  going  to 
leave  his  party  on  account  of  free  silver, 
ezcept  in  the  silver-producing  region,  has 
not  yet  been  heard  from.    On  the  other 
band,  the  Democrats  of  education,  sub- 
stance, and  training  all  over  the  country 
—in  South  Carolina  and  Texas  as  well  as 
m  New  York  and  Illinois— who  will  never 
vote  to  debase  the  standard  of  value,  are 
legion.    One  man  of  this  type  is  Mr.  W. 
W.  Baldwin  of   Burlington,  Iowa,   who 
writes  to  the  Des  Moines  Leader  in  reply 
to  Gov.  Boies's  contention  that  free  sil- 
ver would  give  us  the  Mexican  standard 
and  bring  us  Mexican  prices  within  thirty 
days.    **No  civilized  nation,"  s«ys  Mr. 
Baldwin,    **has  ever  yet  taken  such   a 
plunge  as  is  here  proposed,  namely,  to  re- 
duce the  value  of  its  currency  one-half 
at  a  single  stroke,  but  I  agree  that  it 
would  be  felt  inside  of  thirty  days. "    Then 
he  pictures  the  consequences : 

**  We  bad  a  tooch  of  the  feeling  in  liay, 
1888,  from  the  mere  suspicion  ttiat  the  Trea 
Burj  Department  might  break  down  in  its 
effort  to  prevent  this  fall  to  the  silver  or 
Mexican  basis,  whicb  GN>v.  Boies  desires  to 
see  accomplished.  Tbirty  days  were  not  re 
quired  to  spread  the  feeling.  It  closed  banks 
and  business  hoaxes  and  factories;  it  ruioed 
the  prosperous  and  industrious  by  thousands; 
it  sent  out  into  the  streets  and  upon  the  mad* 
other  thousands  to  beg  or  starve  because  there 
was  no  work.  It  was  the  panic.  Its  influence 
did  not  cea^e  in  thirty  days  It  is  yet  with  us 
It  is  a  factor  in  the  50  cent  wheat  and  the  17 
cent  corn.  The  immediate  panic  is  over,  but 
the  panic  prices  linger.  What  strange  seoti 
ment  is  this,  that  leads  ns  to  invite  a  repetition 
of  that  silver  panic  f  What  an  baliucination 
to  imaKine  that  revival  of  tbe  threat  to  reduce 
our  monev  to  the  silver  basis,  with  its  menace 
to  all  values  aod  to  all  business,  will  lead  to  an 
improvement  m  the  prices  of  farm  products ! 
Gov.  Boi*s  is  many  years  my  senior  in  years; 
bat  I  am  many  years  his  senior  as  a  member 
of  the  Democratic  party  and  in  devotion  to  its 
principles.  I  claim,  therefore,  the  right,  as  a 
Democrat,  to  protest  againnt  this  strange  doc- 
trine of  destruction  and  degradation." 

The  men  of  Mr.  Baldwin's  type  abound 
in  all  the  Northern  States.  They  give 
to  the  Democratic  party  all  the  character 
that  it  possesses.    They  contribute  ideas 


to  the  party  councils  and  money  to  its 
campaigns  without  the  hope  or  desire  of 
personal  reward.  Cut  them  off,  and  the 
party  becomes  a  derelict,  like  a  ship  with- 
out captain,  crew,  rudder,  or  sails.  This 
seems  to  be  the  destiny  of  the  party 
which  claims  descent  from  Jackson,  Ben- 
ton, and  the  other  **go'd-bugs  "  and  anti- 
paper-money  men  of  the  thirties  and  for- 
ties, when,  in  fact,  the  party  took  its  riae. 
While  we  had  hoped  for  something  bet- 
ter as  the  result  of  the  labors,  the  exam- 
ple, and  the  influence  of  the  present  Ad- 
ministration .upon  the  party  which  elect- 
ed it,  and  from  the  feeling  of  pride  which 
is  due  to  good  work  unselfishly  performed, 
we  can  still  fiod  satisfaction  in  the  proa- 
pect  that  all  the  cheap-money  men,  repo- 
diators.  Populists,  anarchists,  and  Coxay- 
ites  are  ranging  themselves  under  one 
banner  where  they  can  all  be  raked  by  one 
fire. 

EX-SENATOR    HENDERSON  ON 
McKINLET. 

One  of  the  ablest  and  moet  respected  Re- 
publicans of  the  day,  ez-Senator  Hen- 
derson of  Missouri,  in  a  long  interview  ex- 
hibiting sound  notions  about  the  curren<7, 
protests  that  he  does  not  see  why  Mr. 
McKinley  should  be  held  responsible  for 
**  views  expressed  by  him  on  questions  of 
currency  and  coinage  between  1873  and 
1884."  The  answer  is  that  Mr.  McKin- 
ley's  views  on  currency  and  ooinage  ex- 
pressed between  1873  and  1884  have  been 
fully  confirmed  by  him,  as  late  as  Sep- 
tember, 1894,  and  he  refuses  to  say  whe- 
ther he  holds  them  still  or  not.  80  that, 
by  an  inference  baaed  on  all  human  expe> 
rience,  we  are  commenting  on  the  views 
on  these  subjects  which  he  holds  at  this 
hour.  What  a  man  said  two  years  age 
and  refuses  to  withdraw  now,  he  would, 
according  to  all  rules  of  svidenoe,  if  he 
spoke,  still  say. 

Mr.  Henderson  deplores  Mr.  McKinley'a 
talk  about  silver  between  1873  and  Iffii, 
but  says  Mr.  Carlisle  and  Mr.  Blaine  and 
others  prominent  in  public  life  talked 
the  same  way.  But  they  talked  wrong. 
Mr.  CaVlisle  is  not  a  candidate  for  the 
Presidency,  nor  is  any  of  the  olbers.  W» 
opposed  Mti  Blaine  for  this  reason,  «moa| 
others.  It  is  no  con  eolation  to  the  oatMii 
to  learo  that  the  mao  whom  it  is  about  Co 
put  in  its  chief  office  bad  parlDere  in  th 
errors  durmg  ten  years  of  hie  blundering 
and  perversity.  We  do  not  blame  Mr. 
McKinley  for  talking  as  wildly  about  cur- 
rency as  many  other  men  did  at  the  time. 
We  simply  eay  that  It  is  dangerous  to  make 
him  President.  If  he  were  not  a  candi- 
date for  tbe  Presidency,  all  discuieloci  ol 
his  finsDciaf  views  would  be  idle* 

Mr.  Henderson  then  proceeds  to  give  m 
explanation  of  Mr.  McKinley^s  aberrationa 
It  appears,  according  to  htm,  thai  all  the 
foolieh  things  McKinley  said  about  iilvif 
were  not  said  for  silver,  but  for  the  tsriff* 
At  any  ratei  says  be: 

'^  Ko  d<>clurKtfi7n  of  b1^  at  thk  Iat«r  p«ioi 
hm  been  found  that  is  not  now  vu^OiifpU&iik 


June  4,  1896] 


Th.e   N'ation.. 


429 


wbeo  critically  ex«mioed,  of  constraction  fa> 
Torable  to  the  sioKle  gold  standard  and  ab«o 
IttteJy  aeaiott  fr^  coinage.  All  tbe  quoted 
dedarataona,  to  the  effect  that  he  *  favored  sll- 
Ter  to  the  extent  that  it  could  be  maintained 
OQ  a  parity  with  gold,'  mean  nothing,  in  the 
light  of  fubeequent  history.** 

Kow  what  is  thii  extract  from  a  speech 
of  his  deliTered  at  Findlay,  0.«  September 
S7, 1804? 

'*The  Democratic  party  has  been  in  control 
of  eyery  branch  of  the  govemmeat  since  the 
4th  day  of  March,  1808.  Ita  legislatiTe  branch 
has  been  in  session  for  more  than'  twelve 
months,  yet  it  has  given  us  no  silver  iegisla- 
tion  whatever,  except  to  strike  d  )wn  the  Sher- 
man law  at  its  ftpecial  session  called  for  that 
purpoee,  and  in  response  to  th<«  urgent  recom 
meadation  of  a  Democratic  PreMident.  The 
party  that  struck  silver  down,  and  gave  it  the 
severest  blow  it  ever  had,  cannot  be  relied 
upon  to    give  that  metal  honorable  treat- 

Thlfl  is  his  deliberate  view  expressed 
one  year  after  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman 
act,  which  had  delivered  the  country  from 
a  terrible  panic,  caused  by  the  firm  be- 
lief of  ail  classes  and  conditions  that  a 
oontinuaDce  of  the  purchases  of  silver 
under  the  act  would  end  in  placing  us 
within  a  few  weeks  on  a  silver  basis. 
Either  he  shared  this  belief  or  he  did  not. 
If  he  did  not,  he  is  clearly  unfit  to  be 
President  lor  want  of  intelligence.  If  he 
did,  ha  is  unfit  to  be  President  on  account 
of  his  hypocriqr  in  1804.  It  is  to  be  re- 
membered that  while  the  country  was 
waiting  in  great  anxiety  for  the  repeal, 
McKinley  never  said  a  word  in  its  favor. 
His  only  utterance  on  that  momentous 
occasion  was  a  declaration  that 

''The  silver  product  of  the  country,  one  of 
the  most  important  we  have*  should  not  be 
discriminated  against,  hut  some  plan  should 
be  deviled  for  its  utilizatioo  as  a  money  which 
will  insure,  not  the  displacement  of  gold,  but 
the  safe  and  full  use  of  both,  as  exchanges 
^  the  people.** 


He  knew  very  well,  or  did  not  know, 
that,  as  we  stood,  the  maintenance  of  all- 
▼er  at  a  par  with  gold  depended  on  the 
ability  of  the  Qovernment  to  pay  gold 
lor  all  presented  silver,  and  he  knew,  or 
did  not  know,  that  persistent  purchases 
of  silver  would  bring  about  the  silver 
standard  quite  as  effectively  as  free  coin- 
age. 80  that  saying  he  was  opposed  to 
free  coinage  but  in  favor  of  continued 
purchases  of  silver,  is  like  saying  that  he 
was  in  favor  of  tweedledum,  but  had  set 
his  face  like  fiint  against  tweediedee. 
We  must  In  charity  suppose  that  when 
he  talked  about  '*  not  discriminating 
against  the  silver  product  <5f  the  coun- 
try," he  had  not  the  least  idea  what 
he  meant,  but  knew  that  it  would  be 
taken  by  the  silver- men  to  mean  some- 
thing plessant. 

Mr.  Henderson's  explanation,  as  we  have 
said,  of  McKinley's  aberrations  about  sil- 
ver. Is  that  they  were  due  to  a  combina- 
tion with  the  silver- men  to  enable  him  to 
get  his  tariff  bill  through  both  houses, 
and  did  not  express  his  real  sentiments 
about  the  metal;  that  '*  he  said  no  more 
in  favor  of  silver  than  was  necessary  to 
eoable  him  to  hold  the  combination  "  to- 
gether.   This  is  sabstantiall/  a  oonfesaion 


that  McKloIey,  while  a  member  of  Con- 
gress, was  willing  to  assist  In  debasing  the 
currency.  If  not  In  bringing  on  national 
bankruptcy,  by  agreement  with  the  silver- 
ites,  in  order  to  procure  the  passage  of  a 
very  high  tariff.  This  sounds  like  a  plea 
for  pardon  or  indulgence  for  McKinley  as 
a  deluded  but  innocent  member  of  the 
House;  but,  odd  as  It  may  seem,  Mr. 
Henderson  produces  It  as  a  reason  why 
we  should  make  him  President  of  the 
United  States.  Any  such  combination 
was  utterly  disreputable.  In  the  case  of 
a  man  who  had  a  clearer  understanding  of 
what  he  was  doing,  we  should  call  It  trea- 
son. It  was  the  basest  act  a  man  could 
commit  against  the  Government,  short  of 
levying  war  against  It.  But  we  have  no 
proof  whatever  that  he  repents  or  even 
regrets  it  We  have  many  reasons  for 
believing  not  only  that  he  would  do  it 
again  if  he  had  a  chance,  but  that  he 
means  to  do  it  again  the  first  chance  he 
gets.  Everything  that  has  appeared  in 
the  McKinley  newspapers  and  interviews 
goes  to  show  their  desire  to  treat  the  cur- 
rency as  subordinate  to  the  tariff.  Many 
articles  to  this  effect  have  appeared  In 
the.  New  York  Tribune.  We  may  there- 
fore fairly  expect  that  one  of  theflLrst  acts 
of  the  next  Congress  will  be  to  pass  a  high 
tariff  bill  by  any  means  in  Its  power,  with 
McKinley*s  hearty  approval.  One  of  these 
means,  and  the  only  absolutely  necessary 
one,  will  be  another  combination  with  the 
sliverites.  Without  such  a  combination, 
such  a  bill  cannot  get  through  the  Senate. 
The  sliverites  know  4hii  and  McKinley 
knows  it,  so  that  the  situation  next  year 
will  be  exactly  the  same  as  in  1800,  except 
that  the  coinage  question  will  be  much 
more  dangerous  and  alarming.  A  high- 
tariff  bill  will  get  a  majority  on  condition 
that  the  Bepublicans  will  **do  something 
for  silver.**  Quotations  from  the  St  Louis 
platform  at  this  juncture  about  **  sound 
money  '*  will  have  no  more  effect  than  the 
evening  breese.  The  agreement,  what- 
ever It  Is,  will  be  carried  out  They  will 
**  do  something  for  silver.*' 

Why  do  we  think  so  f  We  think  so  be- 
cause all  the  evidence  within  our  reach 
shows  that  there  are  few  or  no  real  gold- 
men  In  the  West  The  best  Republican 
organs  in  that  region,  such  as  the  Detroit 
Tribune^  ahow  that  the  public  mind 
there  Is  not  made  up  about  the  currency 
question.  The  Western  men  are  still 
enamoured  of  the  Idea  of  keeping  gold 
and  silver  on  an  equality.  All  that  they 
have  given  up  Is  the  expectation  that 
the  famous  ** international  agreement" 
will  be  reached.  They  still  believe  that, 
somehow  or  other,  this  keeping  of  gold 
and  silver  on  an  equality,  this  keeping  of 
gold  from  leaving  the  country,  can  be  ao- 
complishsd  by  some  legislation  of  our  own; 
and  such  legislation  will  be  tried,  and  they 
will  have  in  McKinley  a  President  who  will 
favor  the  idea.  Another  reason  for  think- 
ing so  is  that  exertions  are  evidently  being 
made  already  to  procure  the  adoption  of 
a  **  sound-money  *'  platform  almply  at  St 


Louis,  in  the  hope  that  some,  like  Mr.  Hen- 
derson, will  interpret  **  sound  money  *'  as 
meaning  gold;  others  as  meaning  silver 
and  gold  in  equal  proportions;  others  as 
silver  in  some  shape  or  other.  In  the  use 
of  such  ambiguous  phrases  McKinley  him- 
self is  past  master,  and  the  platform  Is  al- 
ready being  manufactured.  It  is  all  but 
certain  that  the  platform  will  contain  eome 
such  '*  straddle,'*  because  there  Is  an  ap- 
par«>nt  determination  not  to  speak  of  the 
'*gold  standard  '*  at  all,  for  fear  of  off-'ud- 
ing  the  West.  There  will  be  no  gold-stan- 
dard .plank  If  the  silver-men  can  h4*lp  It, 
and  they  rely  on  bringing  the  poor  gold- 
standard  men  into  line  by  showing  them 
the  Democratic  party,  East  and  West,  go- 
ing **  hell  bent  **  for  silver,  leaving  the  Re- 
publican ranks  the  only  place  for  a  man  to 
stand  in  with  a  ray  of  hope. 

The  probabilities  are  that  the  gold- 
men  will  be  much  affected  by  thia  rea- 
soning. They  will  not  insbt  on  the  men- 
tion of  the  gold  standard,  "Ipsissimis 
verbis.**  They  will  be  content  with  the 
phrase  •**  sound  money,*'  and  trust  In 
Providence.  The  situation  of  business 
men  at  the  Eaat  Is  already  pretty  despe- 
rate. Their  business  and  credit  are  going 
to  ruin  before  their  eyes,  and  they  will 
take  a  tariff  and  McKinley  sooner  than 
nothing.  Things  cannot  be  worse  with 
them,  and  they  may  be  better.  For  thirty 
years  the  Republican  party,  when  bent  on 
financial  folly,  has  been  stopped  in  its 
mad  career  by  a  firm,  resolute,  and 
well-informed  Preaident.  One  only  has 
*'  wobbled,*'  and  that  was  Oen.  Harrison. 
They  are  now,  apparently,  about  to  have 
one  of  the  greatest  wobblers  In  the 
country  just  where  they  want  him.  No 
more  vetoes,  Congress  omnipotent,  and 
a  *'  combination "  the  order  of  the  day. 
The  prospect  Is  glorious,  but  the  end 
is  certain. 


A  BISHOP  AMONG  THE  PROPHETS. 

PBoyBSSOB  HnxLBT*8  death  extinguished 
a  vast  amount  of  clerical  envy,  of  which 
he,  living,  had  been  the  object,  and  the 
hearty  tributes  paid  his  memory  in  many 
a  pulpit  and  religious  paper  last  July 
showed  what  a  diatanoe  had  been  travelled 
since  his  famoua  set-to  with  Bishop  Wil- 
berforce.  But  another  Bishop  spoke  at 
Leeds  the  oth^r  day  In  favor  of  the  Hux- 
ley Memorial  Fund,  and  his  words  are 
almost  of  themselves  a  memorial  to  Hux- 
ley. It  was  Dr.  Boyd  Carpenter,  Bishop 
of  Ripon.  and  his  address  before  the  Leeds 
meeting  betrayed  the  frankest  acceptance 
of  the  spirit  in  which  Huxley  labored  and 
the  ends  for  which  be  strove.  Dr.  Car- 
penter did  not  content  himself  with  praia- 
Ing  Huxley's  energy,  his  unflagging  appli- 
cation, his  powers  of  lucid  exposition,  and 
all  that,  but  went  to  the  core  of  the  ma^ 
ter  in  saying,  '*  I  am  here  as  a  friend  of 
knowledge,  to  do  honor  to  one  who  en- 
larged Its  borders.**  To  have  done  thia 
was,  in  the  Bliihop's  opinion,  to  have 
**  added  to  the  comforts,  the  joys,  and  the 


430 


Tlie    iN^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1614 


aflsurances  of  life.'*  Nor  did  he  leave 
room  for  the  auspicion  of  the  usual  mental 
reaervations.  It  was  an  essential  part  of 
manhood  '*to  follow  truth  wherever  it 
leads  us.  Religious  truth,  in  one  sense, 
must  always  wait  on  scientific  truth,  and 
religious  truth  must  often  change  its  form 
at  the  bidding  and  on  the  information  of 
scientific  truth." 

How  simple  on  those  terms  the  **  recon- 
ciliation of  science  and  religion,*'  at 
which  so  many  have  toiled  painfully  and 
in  vain,  appears !  All  you  have  to  do  is 
to  treat  adjacent  and  mutually  influenc- 
ing truths  in  those  provinces  just  as  you 
would  in  any  other — that  is  to  say,  give 
full  credit  to  each  so  far  as  the  evidence 
for  each  warrants,  and  then  adjust  or 
harmonize  the  two,  or  make  one  give  way 
before  the  other,  as  the  laws  of  thought 
compel  you.  If  we  could  believe  that 
Bishop  Carpenter  in  praising  Huxley 
spoke  for  Christendom,  or  even  for  the 
Church  of  England,  as  authoritatively  as 
Bishop  Wilberforce  did  in  baiting  him,  we 
should  think  that  a  great  many  chairs 
and  lectureships  in  theological  seminaries 
"  on  the  relations  of  religion  and  science  " 
would  at  once  appear  even  more  useless 
than  they  now  do.  At  any  rate,  the 
Bishop  of  Bipon's  position  is  the  only  one 
that  can  be  successfully  maintained  ;  it  is 
the  only  one  fkt>m  which  the  reconcilers 
have  not  already  been  driven. 

We  all  know  the  successive  stages 
through  which  the  controversy  has  gone. 
The  first  one  was  marked  by  an  air  of  con- 
fident superiority  on  the  part  of  theology 
towards  rising  science.  This  superiority 
was  first  amused,  then  indignant,  then  se- 
verely anathematizing.  Dr.  Holmes,  in 
his  Life  of  Emerson,  describes  the  conser- 
vative theologians  of  the  day  as  standing 
about  the  young  lecturer,  like  so  many 
puzzled  pointer  dogs,  uncertain  what  the 
strange  game  might  be  they  had  fiushed. 
Something  like  that  was  the  ecclesiastical 
attitude  forty  years  ago  towards  evolution. 
Nothing  quite  so  absurd  had  ever  been 
heard  of.  Darwin  was  a  rare  jester. 
What,  he  was  in  earnest — had  worked  se- 
venteen years  before  writing  a  line  T  WelJ, 
well,  it  was  time  the  Church  spoke  out 
about  this  science  falsely  so  called.  What- 
ever vain  imaginings  these  innovators 
might  bring  forth,  theology  had  a  more 
sure  word  of  prophecy.  .If  science  was 
dangerous  and  wicked  instead  of  being,  as 
we  supposed,  merely  laughable,  it  was 
time  to  warn  our  students  against  it. 

But  this  stage  could  not  and  did  not 
last  very  long.  Theological  students  had 
a  way  then,  as  they  have  now,  of  perverse- 
ly reading  the  very  books  their  professors 
put  in  the  Index  for  them.  So  there  soon 
came  in  a  new  fashion — one  which  must 
still  be  called  the  reigning  fashion.  It  is 
to  be  generously  tolerant  of  science,  but 
to  insist  that  it  keep  to  its  own  sphere. 
Science  was  all  very  well  in  its  place,  but, 
like  Mr.  Brooke  and  his  pamphlets  in 
*Middlemarch,'  it  would  never  do  to  go 
too  far  in  that  aort  of  thing;  you  must  see 


your  danger  in  time  and  *'  pull  up.'*  Here 
came  in  the  famous  illustration  which  still 
lives  to  comfort  many  troubled  hearts — 
the  illustration  of  the  **  parallel  tracks." 
There  was  the  scientific  train  coming  on 
under  full  steam,  apparently  boupd  to  col- 
lide with  the  religious  train  going  the  other 
way,  but  lo!  just  as  the  crash  was  immi- 
nent you  found  they  were  on  parallel  tracks 
and  could  not  touch  each  other.  Voild 
tout! 

This  parallel- track  theory  of  religion 
and  \  science  has  flourished  long,  but  a 
great  deal  has  had  to  be  spent  on  it 
for  repairs.  Somehow  a  large  number  of 
switches  have  been  surreptitiously  built 
between  the  two  tracks,  and  collisions 
have  occurred  in  spite  of  the  utmost  care. 
Car-loads  of  Assyrian  cylinders  and 
^Syptian  inscriptions  have  gone  smashing 
into  the  Plenary  Inspiration  caboose;  geo- 
logical excursion-trains  have  recklessly 
jumped  their  own  rails  and  telescoped 
the  Mosaic-cosmogony  special  passing  on 
the  other  track;  the  higher  critics  have 
unexpectedly  thrown  a  switch,  and  at  the 
same  time  thrown  a  train- load  of  dignified 
theologians  into  a  miscellaneous  and 
struggling  heap  of  historians,  philologists, 
and  antiquarians.  The  parallel  ttacks 
have  come  to  be,  in  fact,  strewn  with  so 
many  wrecks,  and  the  expense  and  diflS- 
culty  of  keeping  them  in  operation  are 
growing  yearly  so  great,  that  even  some 
theologians  are  now  thinking  that  a  single 
track  would  have  its  advantages.  The 
Bishop  of  Ripon,  as  we  have  seen,  boldly 
declares  for  the  single  track. 

Figures  and  levity  aside.  Dr.  Carpen- 
ter's honest  admission  that  much  reli- 
gious truth  is  only  approximate  and  ten- 
tfitive  in  form,  and  that  it  must  suffer 
change  from  age  to  age  as  new  light 
comes,  is  one  of  great  significance.  It 
does  not  mean  that  science  is  to  have 
everything  its  own  way.  Scientists  have 
their  own  crude  and  passing  theories 
which  have  to  be  abandoned.  No  one 
will  be  more  ready  than  they  to  conceive 
of  truth  as  a  whole  which  grows  slowly 
and  by  sloughing  off  many  temporary  ac- 
cretbns,  only  they  insist  upon  coDaider- 
ing  it  as  a  whole.  They  recognize  no 
piffeoD- holes  in  the  mind  for  nicely  aa- 
sorted  truths.  Truth  is  one  as  reasoning 
IB  OBP,  If  theologianfi  will  only  follow 
Biabop  Carpenter's  lead  in  going  over  to 
that  poaition,  it  will  prove  a  bappy  meet- 
ing-ground of  science  and  religion. 


TEE    PROTEST     OF    THE     MODNTAm^ 

LOVEIL 

WOODBTOOK,  N.  H.,  April  25,  lW9e. 
To  the  American  dweller  in  cities  n  summer 
vacation  ban  come  to  be  aa  oeeessary  as  black 
coffee  after  dinner;  and  New  England  bus  spe- 
ciftj  Inducements  which  tend  to  t^nfirm  the 
babit.  \Va&  it  not  a  B  oston  law  j  er  w  ho  *  ^could 
<Jo  a  year's  work  In  ten  tiirvntbis  but  not  in 
twelve'f  Ib  not  New  England  tlanked  by  twoat. 
trncUonB  which  do  not  come  qlqa©  together  any- 
where «lfle  lu  the  country,  east  of  Caiiforala— 
bold  6/mixmMt  and  picturesque  mountains?  Now 


that  the  **  cottager  ^*  has  quietly  appropriated 
almost  every  quarter-mile  of  headland  from 
Castine  to  Plymouth,  and  is  seizlDg  the  beet  of 
the  beacbee,  the  excluded  New  Eoglander  miy 
turn  backward  to  a  region  where  no  board 
fence  can  shut  out  his  view  ;  in  the  mountaing 
nature  has  provided  humanity  with  an  exhaust- 
less  store  of  summer  delights.  Of  the  maoy 
advantages  of  the  Berkshires  and  the  Green 
and  White  Mountains,  one  is  their  accessibility. 
To  Stockbridge  or  Bread  Loaf  or  Franconia  is 
but  a  seven  or  eight  bours^  journey  fmm  Bos- 
ton, or  a  night^s  ride  from  New  York;  the  rail- 
roads now  push  far  up  into  the  valleys,  and 
from  the  station  one  steps  into  the  wilderaeis. 
The  camper  still  finds  boughs,  the  hunter  may 
expect  game,  and  the  fisherman  may  bag  the 
little  models  of  trout  so  scorned  by  the  old  in- 
habitant. 

As  for  beauty  of  scenery,  that  philoaopber 
of  pessimism  who  avers  that  the  outlines  of 
American  mountains  are  commonplace  hsg 
never  known  Monadnock,  or  Ossipee,  or  Maoi> 
field,  or  Lafayette.  The  sweep  of  the  momu 
tains  is  clad  in  forest.  The  streams  recall  the 
query  of  the  Brookline  child  :  **  Papa,  how  can 
these  White  Mountain  farmers  afford  to  have 
such  beautiful  brooks  for  their  little  bojs?^' 
As  for  roads,  where  is  there  anything  more 
delightful  than  the  long,  lazy,  winding,  shaded 
highways,  smooth  of  surface^  diversified  by 
*Hhank-you-marm«s*'  and  revealing  fresh  views 
every  half-mile  ?  Nor  is  this  paradise  a  back, 
woods.  Throughout  the  mountains  are  long- 
established  hotels ;  less  pretentious  boarding- 
houses  abound  ;  and  the  knowing  still  visit  and 
keep  to  themselves  some  of  the  real  old-fash- 
ioned farmhouses,  with  hollyhocks  in  the  front 
yard,  greeh  peas  in  the  garden,  and  a  brook 
into  which  one  freely  may  tumble  unawares. 

To  review  some  of  the  impressions  gained 
from  earlier  visits,  I  am  making  this  outr<d 
season  trip  to  one  of  the  many  New  England 
mountain  regions.  The  Pemigewasset  valley 
is  attractive  at  all  seasons,  even  when  the 
sno  w  bangs  on  the  upper  mountain  slopes.  The 
Franconia  range  is  beautiful  in  form,  adorned 
with  forests,  abundant  in  water  cooraes.  The 
whole  region  has  for  many  years  been  growing 
in  favor  as  a  place  of  suouuer  sojourn.  Al- 
ready  fond  of  it,  and  predisposed  to  find  it  im- 
proved, I  must  own  to  a  great  disappointment 
The  glory  of  the  mountains  is  departing,  and 
the  mountain-lover  mourns. 

The  accommodations  for  visitors  change  lit- 
tle. To  enter  into  the  question  of  summer  hotels 
might  lead  to  a  general  survey  of  AmeriL^aa 
civilji^tion  i  our  question  is,  liroply  t  b(*w  fsr 
do  the  hotels  provide  for  the  re«sotiab1e  desdrei 
of  one  who  lovifs  mountaitis  F  Their  &itef  &ft 
iiifsuallj  well  chosen,  un  George  Washington':^  in- 
genuous  pr  mc  iple '.  ^  *  1 1  can  not  be  supposed  thAt 
those  who  were  first  on  the  ground  failed  to 
secure  the  most  eligible  locations.'*  Crawford^ 
J&ffer&ou  Bighlandg,  Jackson,  Sugar  Bill^  ted 
notably  the  Profile  Hotja*^  have  the  best  yatir 
tions  in  the  mountains.  But  why  plant  a  Inpi- 
ber-jfird  In  front  of  the  Deer  Park  HoteJ  in 
North  Woodstock,  a  luundry  opposite  th«  Fro- 
file  House,  and  a  stnbte  vis  h-vh  to  the  Flmnt 
Hou^e?  Whj,  in  all  the  mountAiiij^  i&  it&t 
no  welUmade,  dry,  easy  fooipatb  more  ttia 
half  a  mile  long  to  take  advantage  of  tfa^^^ 
superb  outlooks  ? 

Take  the  Mount  Lafayette  r£ttig«  asanftxaEO* 
pie,  I  have  be^u  trying  to  carry  out  a  loa^' 
delayed  purpo$ie  to  climb  it.  Here  is  a  beaati- 
ful  mountain,  Alpine  in  its  upper  re4M^h«*h oal| 
3,300  feet  higher  than  the  Fraacomfl  Nfltel, 
Hundreds  of  p«K:»ple  go  up  H^SOQ  f6«£  from  &r 
matl  to  the  Bchwar»ee;  how  ttwjr  «ltBlbUp 


June  4,  1896] 


The   iTation. 


431 


fayette  f  Of  course  the  hotels  are  not  respon- 
sible for  the  snow  which  yesterday  made  the 
path  a  fiety^,  and  thus  held  the  ad v^enturer  back ; 
bot  at  least  the  snow  filled  up  the  track  which 
Baedeker  courteously  calls  **a  steep  bridle- 
path.** No  beast  that  was  ever  bridled  could 
make  his  way  up  that  steep,  stony,  rough 
watercourse,  choked  with  fallen  treee.  An 
engineer's  location,  a  little  expenditure,  a  few 
benches,  care  to  put  all  in  order  every  year,  a 
rest-house  at  the  summit,  would  bring  visitors 
to  Franconia  Notch.  The  principle  of  White 
Mountain  hotel  management  was  unconsciously 
furnished  by  the  care-taker  at  the  Flume 
House.  He  had  no  beverages,  he  said,  except 
champagne  and  claret.  The  champagne  and 
claret  people  climb  no  mountains;  but  why  is 
there  no  consideration  for  the  people  (fifty 
times  as  numerous)  who  want  their  mountains 
unmixed  with  expensive  civilization,  and  will 
pay  their  way  modeetly  f 

Several  delightful  drives  had  left  in  my 
mind  the  conviction  that  one  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful of  all  mountain  roads  was  that  from  the 
Profile  House  to  North  Woodstock.  To  be  sure, 
like  all  the  White  Mountain  roads,  it  does  not 
take  advantage  of  its  scenic  opportunities; 
here  are  none  of  the  rock  galleries  and  flying- 
bridgee  which  bring  travellers  leagues  out  of 
their  way  to  see  the  Via  Mala;  and,  consider- 
ing the  profit  made  by  the  hotels  out  of  coach- 
ing, the  roads  about  North  Woodstock  are 
very  few;  one  goes  north,  two  go  south,  none 
to  the  east,  and  a  ridiculously  steep  and  im- 
practicable road  to  the  west.  One  is  struck  by 
the  long  stretches  of  impenetrable  forest  in 
the  White  Mountains,  and  wishes  for  the 
powers  of  a  Dictator  of  New  Hampshire,  to  lay 
out  a  Cornice  Road  sweeping  at  the  same  level 
in  and  out  of  the  recesses  of  the  mountains, 
all  around  Lafayette,  and  so  to  Crawford^s, 
and  then  a  loop  around  the  shoulders  of  the 
Presidential  Range.  One  sees  the  high  cottage 
sites,  the  waterfalls,  the  tunnels,  the  over- 
hanging clifff ,  the  coaches  spinning  past. 

From  this  vision  the  mountain  lover  awakes 
to  find  that  if  Franconia  Notch  is  a  fair  sam 
pie,  the  few  existing  roads  are  likely  to  be 
ruined.  Who  does  not  remember  the  sylvan 
drive  from  the  Profile  down  to  the  Flume  ? 
The  first  stretch  of  four  miles  is  still  as  wild  and 
beautiful  as  ever.  Then,  all  at  once,  we  plunge 
into  Whitehouse's  hideous  saw- mill  town, 
planted  athwart  the  limpid  Pemigewasset,  the 
houses  dropped  down  in  blocks  like  a  child^s 
toy  village — but  most  unclean.  From  the  big 
mill  comes  the  shriek  of  the  saws;  and  a  slow- 
moving  endless  chain  carries  edgings  and 
debris,  to  cast  them  into  the  stream.  A  con- 
tinuous  fire  eats  into  the  heap  as  it  is  made, 
and  raises  vain  hopes  that  it  may  some  time 
bum  the  mill.  Below  the  village  the  buggy 
plunges  into  an  infamous  stretch  of  road. 

'  "If  yoQ'd  fe^n  tb<>#e  roads 
Before  tbey  were  made, 
Too  wotUd  bold  op  your  banda 
And  bieM  General  Wade.** 

murmurs  my  companion.  The  highway  of 
pleasant  memories  is  cut  down  to  the  underly- 
ing boulders,  broadened  into  quagmires,  deep- 
ened into  two  feet  of  greasy  mud,  where  six. 
horse  teams  struggle  and  fiounder  ;  then  comes 
a  dry  half  mile;  then  more  ^^bolge^**  into 
which  one  longs  to  plunge  the  authors  of  this 
profanation.  The  road  is  to  be  ** put  in  order" 
in  May,  but  it  never  can  be  restored  to  its 
beauty,  and  every  rain  will  make  it  a  bog  again. 
For  the  present  the  gangs  of  the  conspirators 
against  the  welfare  of  their  State  have  not  de- 
8t]^>yed  the  views;  Whitehouse  is  said  to  have 
twenty  years'  work  before  him.     Tou  may 


still  sit  on  your  piazsa  and'  possess  the  moun- 
tains. But  as  the  slopes  are  stripped  of  all  the 
large  trees,  the  dead  and  gnarled  trunks  will 
stand  out,  a  jagged  horror;  and  the  sawdust  so 
liberally  distributed  in  the  streams  is  good 
neither  for  trout  nor  for  the  temper. 

Yet  **  people  must  live,**  and  no  one  grudges 
a  starving  land-owner's  cutting  a  tree  to  buy 
bread.  We  are  accustomed  also  to  see  our 
cities  made  ugly,  that  there  may  be  work  for 
the  willing.  The  pity  of  this  process  of  **  ugli- 
fication  **  is  that  it  threatens  eventually  to  im- 
poverish the  countryside.  No  one  supposes 
that  the  profits  on  the  heavy  investments  in 
the  upper  Pemigewasset  are  more  than  $100,000 
a  year;  and  when  the  forests  are  stripped  there 
will  be  no  more  work;  the  mill  villages  will  go 
to  ruin,  and  the  summer  visitor  will  fiee.  If 
the  same  capital  were  invested  in  making  the 
country  attractive  to  people  of  moderate 
means,  in  building  roads,  paths,  outlooks,  and 
inns,  8,000  additional  visitors  might  be  drawn, 
who  would  leave  with  somebody  a  profit  of 
thirty  dollars  each,  and  the  profit  would  in- 
crease from  year  to  year.  Self-interest  is  not 
an  effective  motive  in  the  White  Mountains. 

Here  at  Woodstock  our  roads  are  safe  and 
the  countryside  unspoiled.  Four  miles  north 
is  the  village  of  North  Woodstock,  intended  by 
nature  to  be  the  centre  of  a  summer  commu* 
nity.  The  village  is  not  made  attractive;  no 
good  paths  or  drives  lead  to  the  neighboring 
mountains  and  waterfalls;  the  best  road  for 
driving  is  ruined.  The  town  is  so  helpless  that 
it  lets  the  lumbermen  destroy  its  most  valuable 
asset— the  road  to  the  Profile  House— without 
even  a  hearty  grumble.  If  the  people  had  a 
coal  seam,  nobody  could  prevent  their  working 
it;  as  it  is  only  a  beautiful  combination  of 
mountain,  valley,  hill,  and  plain,  they  let  their 
heritage  slip  away. 

Albert  BxmHinELL  Hart. 


AN    IMPENITENT    REPUBUCAN. 

Italy,  May  16, 1896. 

Anothsr  of  Italy's  grand  old  heroes  has 
passed  away  at  Mentone.  A  Milanese,  like 
Carlo  Cattaneo  and  Oipseppe  Ferrari,  Enrico 
Cemuschi  was  the  arm.  as  Cattaneo  was  the 
bead,  of  that  first  great  uprising  of  March,  1848, 
which  shook  the  Austrian  dominion  to  its  foun- 
dations and  would  have  succeeded  in  expelling 
the  foreigners  from  Italian  soil  but  for  the  ti- 
midity of  the  moderate  faction,  the  letting  **  I 
dare  not**  wait  upon  *'  I  would**  policy  of  Carlo 
Alberto  and  his  counsellors.  Before  even  Cat- 
taneo could  bring  himself  to  decide  on  calling 
the  unarmed  populace  to  attack  the  16,000 
Aastrlans  armed  to  the  teeth  within  the  city, 
Cernuschi  unsheathed  his  sword  in  Broletto, 
shouting,  *'War!  war!**  He  dictated  three 
decrees  to  the  Governor,  0*Donnell,  and  stood 
over  him  till  be  signed  them;  transported  the 
city  government  from  unsafe  to  safe  quarters, 
improvised  barricades  in  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye,  became  the  idol  of  the  people  and  the 
nightmare  of  the  aristocracy.  Appointed  mem- 
ber of  the  council  of  war,  he  insisted  on  open- 
ing  the  dispatches  which  friends  of  the  enemy 
tried  to  smuggle  through  as  private  messages, 
refused  all  offers  of  armistice,  and  fought  till 
the  end  of  the  third  day,  when  the  last  Aus- 
trian  quitted  Milan. 

One  of  Cemufchi's  expedients  during  the 
Milanese  revolution  will  always  be  remem- 
bered in  his  native  city.  The  insurgents  were 
in  possession  of  the  suburbs  and  followed  up 
the  foe,  harassing  them  in  their  fiight.  In  or- 
der  to  keep  up  oommunicatiuni  with  the  inte- 


rior, Cemuschi  organized  the  MarUniU^  the 
orphan  children  dressed  in  the  garb  of  their 
asylum,  and  hence  easily  recognised  and  al- 
lowed to  cross  the  barricades  and  pass  the 
gates,  which  they  did  with  such  dexterity  and 
courage  that  he  always  remembered  them, 
last  year  sent  them  120,000,  and  has  left  them 
other  $10,000  in  his  will.  As  be  vehemently 
opposed  the  humble  dedication  of  the  city  to 
Charles  Albert,  and  refused  to  call  on  the  peo- 
ple to  desist  from  the  pursuit  of  the  foe,  the 
members  of  the  provisional  government  first 
calumniated,  then  arrested  him  for  pretended 
participation  in  a  demonstration,  and  in  a 
public  proclamation  **  trusted  that  the  trials 
initiated  would  reveal  who  among  the  rioters 
were  merely  misled  by  others  who  had  been 
bribed  with  Austrian  gold.  After  four  days 
of  detention  in  one  of  the  bolzas,  the  criminal 
tribunal  found  that  **  he  had  fallen  under  sus- 
picion, owing  to  an  unfortunate  combination  of 
circumstances,**  and  he  was  released  clear  of 
all  charge.  One  of  the  many  proclamations 
that  be  issued  and  signed  shows  the  moral 
tone  of  the  lion-hearted  youth.  The  people 
were  bot  upon  spies  and  the  wretched  police 
agents  who  had  sent  so  many  patriots  to  the 
Spielberg. 

**NoI  fellow-citizens,**  he  wrote,  "let  our 
victory  be  stainless.  Let  us  not  demean  our- 
selves by  taking  vengeance  on  the  sateUites 
whom  their  fugitive  masters  have  abandoned 
in  our  hands.  It  is  true  that  for  thirty  jetjn 
they  have  been  the  scourge  of  our  fainilies. 
But  be  you  generous  as  you  have  been  valor- 
ous.'* 

Save  in  fair  fight  not  a  drop  of  blood  was  shed. 

Cemuschi  opposed  the  fiuion  as  inoppor- 
tune, calculated  to  give  the  Pope  and  the  King 
of  Naples  and  Duke  of  Tuscany  the  excuse  they 
wanted  for  withdrawing  their  troops  from  the 
**  Holy  War,**  now  transformed  to  a  stmggle 
for  the  annexation  of  a  province.  When  even 
hope  was  lost,  he  still  fought  on  vigorously  to 
the  very  last,  sped  to  Swltserland  to  secure  a 
quantity  of  muskets,  then,  refusing  to  recog- 
nise the  capitulation,  did  his  best  to  persuade 
Grifflni  to  hold  the  line  of  the  Adda,  and  was 
with  Garibaldi  fighting  against  desperate  odds 
until  he  also  was  compelled  to  quit  Italian  soil. 
He  then  went  to  Tuscany  and  thence  to  Rome, 
where  again  he  taught  liie  defenders  the  "  art 
of  barricades.**  He  had  been  one  of  the  oppo- 
nents of  the  watchword  V Italia  ford  da  se, 
and  would  have  bad  Italy  accept  the  assistance 
of  republican  France  against  the  Austrians  in 
Lombardy  ;  hence,  the  conduct  of  the  French 
Assembly  in  supporting  the  fugitive  Pope  and 
assailing  Rome  came  upon  him  as  a  bitter  dis- 
illusion which  augmented  his  determination  to 
resist  invasion  to  the  uttermost.  But  when  all 
chance  of  saving  Rome  was  over,  to  prevent 
useless  bloodshed,  instead  of  accepting  either 
of  Mauini*s  proposals  to  the  Assembly  to  re- 
sist to  the  uttermost,  or  to  carry  the  war  into 
the  provinces,  he  put  the  following  motion: 
**Ttae  Assembly  desists  from  a  defence  that  has 
t>ecome  impo«ible  and  remains  at  its  post.*' 
After  summoning  GhuikMkldi  and  the  other 
military  chiefs,  who  all  confirmed  the  **  impos- 
sibility'* of  further  resistance,  as  the  French 
were  in  possession  of  the  city,  the  Assembly 
decreed  the  cessation  of  hostilities— unani- 
mously but  for  one  vote,  Masai ni*s,  who  bit- 
terly reproached  Cemuschi. 

Cemuschi  remained  when  most  of  the  other 
leaders  had  quitted  Rome.  The  French  com- 
manders, attributing  the  soomfully  hostile  at- 
titude of  the  entire  Roman  population  towards 
themselves  to  his  influence,  arrested  him  on 
the  charge  of  exdtlng  the  Romans  against  the 


433 


The    !N"atioii. 


[VoL  62,  Na  1614 


Frtncbf  of  leading  them  to  rack  and  destroy 
the  VilU  Medici,  the  Faniese  Palace,  etc  ,  and 
shot  him  ap  in  the  Castle  of  St.  Anfrelo,  and, 
after  six  months*  detention,  sammoned  bim 
before  a  council  of  war.  Refusing  counsel,  he 
made  a  magoiflcent  defence,  or,  rather,  a  de- 
fence of  Italy  and  of  Italians,  who  **  had  defend 
ed,  and  would  ever  defend,  native  soil  against 
all  foreign  inyaders.  Ton  call  me,  you  call 
them  anarchists— the  word  is  in  vogue  Just 
now;  but  you  simply  do  not  know  us.  For 
myself,  I  am  a  man  of  order,  a  practical  man, 
as  the  Bnglifiih  say  ;  un  homme  s^rieiue,  as  the 
French  have  it.**  The  verdict  of  the  military 
jadges  absolved  him  from  all  charges,  but,  the 
public  prosecutor  appealing,  he  was  detained 
another  six  months  in  prison,  again  tried, 
found  innocent,  and  tent  in  a  French  man  of- 
war  to  Toulon.  His  letters  during  and  after 
his  imprisonment  to  Cattaneo  and  to  B*rtani 
are  some  of  the  moat  original  and  amusing 
that  I  have  ever  read. 

Head  of  a  large  family  of  orphan  brothers 
aod  sisters,  as  their  fortune  had  been  di 
minished  during  the  revolution,  and  Henry*!^ 
portion  sequ<»strated  by  the  Au^trians,  he  set 
to  work  as  an  engineer;  later  he  entered  the 
Cr^dfr.Foncier,  apeociating  with  the  anti  im. 
perial  republican  Parisians.  From  the  first 
he  m%rked  his  antipathy  to  communists  and 
socialists,  but  took  vast  interest  in  the  social 
progress  of  the  working-cUsses,  and  founded  a 
corporative  society  for  the  sale  of  meat.  A 
Milanese  exHe  put  $^.000  into  the  concern, 
which  failed  entirely,  as  most  cooperative 
slaughter  houses  and  butchers*  stores  have 
failed,  even  in  England.  The  very  first  mo- 
ment he  became  possessed  of  nuch  a  sum  he  in 
•isted  on  refunding  the  $30,000  to  his  friend 
Marquis  Arconati. 

When  in  1860  the  Franco  Sardinian  war 
against  Au«trU  was  proclaimed,  he  denounced 
it  as  immoral  and  fatal  to  Ital?*s  future  Ca 
vour.  who  had  a  special  hatred  of  all  Lombard 
repuhlicaup,  especially  federalints,  denounced 
him  in  Parliament,  and  in  bis  memorable  reply 
C«»rnui>chi  gave  htm  a  Roland  for  his  Oliver 
He  took  no  part  in  the  war  of  1866,  and  affirm- 
ed in  1867  that  he  would  never  assise  monarchy 
to  take  possession  of  Elome  When  in  1870  the 
appeal  to  universal  suffrsgA  was  made  in 
France,  be  gave  the  republicans  $30  000  for 
their  propaganda,  and  for  this  was  eipelled 
from  France  by  the  Emperor.  After  the  fall 
of  the  Empire  he  returned  to  Paris,  and.  as  a 
protest  against  the  proclamation  of  **  Ooe  Italy, 
with  Rome  for  ito  capital  under  Victor  Ema* 
nuel  and  bifi  succej^sors,**  he  renounced  bis  Ita- 
liao  citizenship  and  was  naturalized  a  subject 
of  the  French  R-public.  Bertani  reproached 
him  bitterly,  but  kept  bis  affection  and  est<>em 
for  bim  to  the  last.  During  the  Oerman  siege, 
he  was  the  providence  of  the  Parihians,  spent 
freely  of  his  wealth  (large  even  then),  and, 
when  the  Communists  got  the  upper  hand, 
remained  there,  doing  his  utmost  to  save  the 
hostages  and  restrain  violence,  and  came  near 
losing  his  life  for  his  attempt  to  save  Deputy 
Cbaudet. 

For  some  years  he  travelled  in  China,  Japan, 
and  Egypt,  bringing  home  vast  treasures  of 
antiquity  His  magoiflcent  villa  in  Avenue 
Velabquez,  Pare  Monceau,  was  open  to  all  bis 
countrymen,  moderates  or  liberals.  The  Am- 
bassador Reasmann  was  a  frequent  guest,  but 
Cernuschi  never  set  foot  In  the  official  resi-s 
denoeof  the  Italian  King's  ambassador.  Re- 
garded as  one  of  the  greatest  fiainciers  and 
eci^DomUts  of  the  day,  he  was  intruKt«d  with 
y&rioua  gtmnrtal  operations  and  made  an  im- 
menae  fortune,  but  never  was  a  single  accusa. 


tiou  of  indelicacy,  i^till  less  of  dishonest  specu 
lation,  brought  against  him.  As  an  economist, 
his  campaign  in  favor  of  bimetallism  will  long 
be  reiLembered  in  England  and  the  United 
Ktates.  In  1884  he  visited  Italy,  avoiding 
Milan  and  Rome,  **  preferring  to  retain  the 
memory  of  the  scenee  of  his  youthful  exploits 
and  vanished  hopes  intact.**  At  Mantua  he 
was  welcomed  by  Achilla  Saochi,  Garibaldi** 
^-flchting  doctor,**  visited  Or8ini*s  prison  and 
rhe  art  treasures  contained  in  the  city.  At 
Bologna,  Qioao%  Carducci,  and  Frati,  the  head 
librarian,  were  his  ciceroni,  and  to  the  mu 
iteums  and  libraries  of  the  city  he  was  munifl 
cent.  Just  after  his  return  to  Paris  the  Italian 
press  attacked  him  violently  on  monetary, 
economical,  and  political  queetiona,  and  one 
noted  moderate  paper  called  him  **an  out  and- 
out  bad  Italian,**  which  led  to  the  publication 
of  a  generous  vindicatory  letter  signed  by 
Carducci,  Frati,  Giovanni  Castellan!,  the  cele- 
brated patriot  and  .antiquarian,  and  Prof 
TuUio  Martello.  When,  in  1890  during  Crispi*s 
first  ministry,  the  general  elections  took  place, 
he  sent  100.000  lire  to  the  republican  asaodar 
tion  for  propaganda  and  for  the  expenses  of 
republican  candidates,  and  never  in  this  claitsic 
land  of  calumny  and  vituperation  were  attacks 
as  virulent  or  as  unjust  made.  The  Govern 
ment  might  spend  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
puolic  money,  use  threats,  promises,  bestow 
rank  and  office  to  insure  the  success  of  its 
candidates,  but  a  republican  must  not  give 
money  of  his  own  for  the  spread  of  a  principle 
which  was  dearer  than' his  life. 

It  was  in  the  spring  of  the  following  year 
that  I  went  to  Paris  by  appointment  to  visit 
Cernuschi  in  his  beautiful  Italian  villa,  with 
the  medallions  of  Aristotle  and  Leonardo  da 
Vinci  over  the  entrance.  With  visions  of  the 
youthful  hero  in  memory,  I  was  hardly  pre 
pared  for  the  au<tere,  venerable  aspect  of  the 
grand  old  man,  with  his  long,  thick,  silver 
hair;  but  tHe  bright  liqiid  eyes,  the  peculiar 
sweetness  of  the  full  p«rted  lips,  were  there  as 
in  his  youth.  •*  Welcume  to  the  widow  of  the 
staunch  federal  republican  whose  dauntless 
courage,  blameleas  life,  and  stem  adhesion  to 
bis  principles  to  the  end  make  him  an  example 
to  hid  oottntrym«»n,'*  Ife  said.  The  object  of 
my  visit  was  to  lay  before  him  the  sorrowful 
fact  that  neither  Bertani,  Mario,  nor  myself 
bad  been  able  to  find  an  editor  or  a  band  of  the 
*'master*s**  pupils  to  publish  Cattaneo*s  letters 
and  political  writings  which  three  successive 
deaths  had  left  oj  my  helpless  hands.  He 
offered  at  once  to  pay  an  editor,  on  condition 
that  during  his  lifetime  I  should  keep  his  name 
a  secret,  which  (with  the  exception  of  three 
friends  named)  L  agreed  to  do.  Two  volumes 
have  appeared  and  pleased  **the  vanished 
eje.'*  The  third  and  last  is  in  course  of  prepa- 
ration. The  details  of  that  interview  are  too 
fresh  in  memory  to  be  narrated  to  day,  when 
his  remains  are  journeying  from  Mentone,  not 
Co  Milan,  but  to  Paris,  there  to  be  cremated 
and  to  remain,  how  long,  O  Italy,  how  long  f 

J.  W.  M. 


THE  ROYAL  ACADEMY. 

LoNix)N,  May  6, 1896. 
If  fidelity  to  tradition  were  always  a  virtue, 
the  Royal  Academy  would  be  beyond  re- 
proach. Year  after  year,  it  peraeverea  in 
maintaining  its  reputation  for  mediocrity ; 
year  after  year  it  covers  its  walls  with  the 
regulation  number  of  inept  or  incompetent 
canvases,  relieved  here  and  there  by  the  genu- 
ine work  of  an  artbt,  which  seems  the  more 


marvellous  or  charming  because  of  the  roa. 
trast.  Change  is  the  last  thing  expected  of  so 
conservative  a  body.  Indeed,  so  little  is  the 
slightest  variation  looked  for,  in  either  the 
Academy *8  policy  or  the  quality  of  its  exhibi- 
tion, that  this  spring  almoet  a  sensation  has 
been  created  by  the  action  of  the  hanging 
committee  in  rejecting  two  men  who,  for  some 
time  past,  have  been  the  moat  honored  of  oot* 
side  exhibitors.  But  two  years  since,  Mr. 
Tuke*B  was  the  principal  picture  bought  for 
the  Chantrey  collection ;  a  oonspicuons  place 
on  the  line,  hitherto,  has  always  bean  foond 
for  Mr.  Furse's  portraits.  And  now,  both 
Mr.  Furse  and  Mr.  Tuke  are  among  the  re- 
jected, and  the  reported  reason  is  tbe  faihire 
of  each,  in  the  eyes  of  the  committee,  to  ooma 
up  to  his  own  standard  of  merit--the  Academy 
suddenly  showing  a  misjudged  patamal  con- 
cern for  the  progress  of  individuAl  contri- 
butors.   • 

This,  and  other  vagaries  of  the  hanging  com- 
mittee, whose  one  endeavor,  evidently,  has 
been  to  produce  as  many  discords  as  poaalhleia 
the  given  space,  have  made  moat  talk  among 
artista  and  art  critics.  And  really,  it  is  wdl 
that  there  should  be  something  to  tsdk  aboQt, 
for  the  pictures  themsehyes  are  no  great  stimu- 
lus to  entbusiasm  or  discussion.  It  may  be 
that  the  Academy  wears  a  gayer  aspect  than 
usual.  Here  and  there  is  a  faint  reflection  of  the 
light  that  shines  from  the  walls  of  the  Champ. 
d^-Mara  Salon:  two,  at  least,  of  the  young- 
er associates,  Mr.  Solomon  and  Mr.  Hacker, 
do  their  best  to  out-dazsle  eyery thing  in  their 
vicinity— the  one,  with  an  iridescent  Venns, 
the  other  with  a  theatrical  nun  choosing  be- 
tween the  clotater  and  the  world,  while.  apfMh 
rently,  the  lime- light  is  well  turned  on  from 
the  wings.  Here  and  there,  too,  are  rigns  of  a 
bewildered  realization  that  sham  symbolism  or 
mysticism  is  just  now  in  fashion,  and  very 
amazing  and  disastrous  are  the  reaulte.  Bnt 
technical  fireworks  and  Bcrupuloos  adherence 
to  fashion  are  not  guarantees  of  good  work, 
and  the  pictures  of  distinction  are,  as  they 
ever  must  be,  those  which  bid  least  clamoroos- 
ly  for  a  day*s  notoriety. 

A  special  and  largely  sentimental  interest  is 
atuched  to  tbe  **Clytie**  of  Sir  Frederick 
Leigbton.  Be  was  working  upon  it  immedi- 
ately before  his  death,  and  it  is  a  pleasure  to 
find  that  his  last  canvas  is  one  of  the  best  he 
has  shown  for  many  years.  The  goddeas,  her 
gulden  gr«en  drapprj  faJLiag  abaat  ber^  her 
&r am  out  stretched  in  prayer,  ia  ktieelitig  hji 
«tnall  a/tar,  In  tbeatrobg  glow  of  tbe  B»tttQf 
sun;  for  background  there  is  a  vague  brown 
bflldde  aud  a  tremeDdaus  overbangmg  cmnopf 
of  golden  cloud:  and  perhaps  becaiiset  aooord- 
{og  to  Blr  Fredet-irk  Leightou's  method,  tb« 
painting  is  fititi  uofiukbeMj,  it  has  more  of  %hs 
breadth  and  fr^ahtteHS  and  vigor  of  bi»  skeK-h^ 
es,  Im^  of  the  waxint^tki  and  cbaract^tlesi 
SfDootfaueEs  atid  pnliBh  of  bl»  pirtur^^.  Wtth 
aometbiug  of  tbe  name  B«ntiiiietital  interest 
one  turtis  ec  the  work  of  tha  new  Pre^d^^nt. 
Hit  John  £,  Mi  Hals,  whom  one  always  remeis^ 
bera  as  the  great  m&bter  h*»  once  wna.  Ha  hai 
two  or  three  porirait*  which  can  t>e  paaaad  in 
Bilence,  and  a  picture  called  *♦  A  Foremnfler,' 
presumably  John  the  Baptist,  which  Ib  rapei' 
lent  in  its  muddy  coV  r,  prosaic  it>  its  ttea^ 
tnent-  but,  at  leait,  the  ^lim  brown  figure,  wiih 
tbe  leopard  skinaroaod  his  loins,  mmtt^  anrf- 
f  ec-ti  ve  bi  Ihooette  agaiutt  ttie  s^bado  wb  of  a  Utili 
wood,  and  i^  so  well  placed  in  tbt^  campodxkm 
that  it  recaLls  some  of  the  artM'a  aarber  ini 
not)ler  performajicea» 

However^  it  b  ninre  ^ncooragitig  to  i 
the  work  of  the  joimgfer  miea— w«rk  1 


June  4,  1896] 


The   iN'ation. 


433 


pends  Qpon  no  leDtimeDtiil  issue  for  its  impor- 
tenoe.  The  reoent  elections  baTe  made  so  great 
a  difference  that  now,  curiously  enough,  most 
of  the  notable  contributions  come  actual  ly  from 
irithin  the  academic  ranks.  If  I  except  two 
Tery  lovely  studies  of  sea  and  sand— ezqui^te 
color  fantafies— by  Mr.  William  Stott,  the 
most  striking  pictures  are  by  Academicians  or 
Assodatea.  You  have  but  to  look  to  the  por 
traits  to  find  Mr.  Sargent  supreme,  though 
Mr.  Sargent,  it  must  be  admitted,  is  far  from 
being  at  his  best  His  **  Mr.  Chamberlain  *'  is, 
no  doubt,  the  clou — to  borrow  the  French 
word  -of  the  Academy.  But  this  is  due  rather 
to  South  Africa  t  *an  to  the  painter.  The  pose 
is  oommonplaoe,  even  photographic.  The  Ck>- 
lonial  Minister  stands  by  his  desk;  his  left 
hand,  which  grasps  a  bundle  of  papers,  resting 
upon  it  The  long  expanse  of  immaculate 
frock  coat,  the  orchid  in  the  buttonhole,  the 
high  light  on  the  trousers  knee,  all  divide  at- 
tention with  the  head,  which,  one  cannot  but 
think,  failed  to  appeal  to  Mr.  Sargent,  so  per- 
functory is  his  rendering  of  It  On  the  other 
hand,  in  the  **  Portrait  of  a  Lady,*'  be  shows 
one  of  the  really  beautiful  women  be  seems,  as 
a  rule,  so  reluctant  to  paint  It  is  a  full  length, 
and  the  figure,  in  white  evening  gown  and  a 
cape  of  yivid  cherry  failing  from  the  shouldeni, 
stands  In  front  of  a  dark,  deep  toned  Japan- 
ese, screen.  The  arrangement  is  very  simple, 
recalling  the  **  Counters  Clary  Aldringen  ^  in 
the  New  Gallery;  but  the  face  has  charm  and 
elegance,  the  pose  distinction,  and  the  whole 
figure  is  brushed  in  with  spirit  and  the  gayety 
of  the  painter  sure  of  his  effect  There  is 
nothing  to  compare  to  this  among  the  portraits, 
which,  I  should  add,  are  of  more  than  usual 
Insignificance.  There  are  two  or  three  excep- 
tions—fnr  one,  Mr.  Orchardson*s  large  '*  Pro- 
vost of  Glasgow,**  a  masterpiece  in  the  refined 
rendering  of  accessories,  of  an  embroidered 
tablecloth,  an  EAStem  carpet^  but  with  a 
white  head  that  detaches  itself  and  fairly  leaps 
at  you  from  the  subdued  background ;  possibly 
In  the  pUce  which  the  picture  is  designed  to 
fill  the  light  may  remedy  the  fault  which  now 
seems  so  glaring.  M.  Benjamin  Constant  is 
represented,  but  he  brings  with  him  only  the 
more  accomplished  commonplace  of  the  Champa 
l^ys(64.  There  is  a  strange  pale,  brown  por- 
trait of  Mr.  Alfred  Gilbert,  the  sculptor,  by 
Mr.  Watts.  Mr.  Lavery,  Mr.  Greiffenhagen 
Mr.  Loadan  contribute,  hut  they  make,  for 
them,  an  indifferent  showing — the  result  partly 
of  the  bad  hanging. 

When  it  come«  to  the  subject  pictures,  honors 
lie  with  Mr.  Abbe?,  who  unquestionably  has 
achieved  a  well- deserved  success  with  his 
**  Richard  Duke  of  Gloucester  and  the  L%dT 
Anne,**  a  marked  advance  upon  any  and  all  of 
the  paintings  he  has  as  jet  exhibited.  The 
scene  chosen  Is  the  second  in  the  first  act  of 
•«  Richard  IIL,'*  and,  as  reminder,  the  quota- 

tlOD, 

**  Waa  BTet  womAa  In  tbts  hnmoiir  woo^d. 
Wm  ever  woouui  In  this  toamuur  wont** 

Is  printed  in  the  catalogue.  Across  the  back- 
ground the  ftmeral  procession  stretches— at  one 
end  the  catafalque  rich  In  heraldic  ornament, 
at  the  other  a  sea  of  faces  as  far  as  eye  can 
reach.  The  black  cloaks  of  the  figures,  broken 
by  the  narrow  strip  of  red  lining  in  their  hoods 
and  the  red  staves  of  their  inverted  halberds, 
present  a  strong,  stirring  arrangement  of 
oolor,  repeated  in  the  long  black  train  of  the 
Lady  Anne  and  the  red  robes  of  Gloucester, 
whm  the?  stand  in  front  of  the  procession. 
It  Is  evident  that  Mr.  Abbey  has  learned  much 
wfaOa  at  work  on  the  Galahad  series,  for  he 
•sems,  In  the  composition  and  grouping,  to 


understand  decorative  limitations  and  require- 
ments more  fully  than  ever  before.  That  he 
meant  to  treat  the  scene  decoratively  Is  clear, 
since  he  has  made  no  attempt  to  introduc*" 
light  or  atmosphere,  but  has  carried  it  out 
with  a  certain  flatness  appropriate  to  mural 
decoration.  It  therefore  seems  to  me  a  mis 
take  to  have  treated  the  two  principal  figures 
realistically  and  dramatically.  Their  realism 
is  Inconsistent  with  the  general  scheme ;  they 
break  the  harmony  of  the  design.  Bat,  de- 
spite this  defect,  the  picture  will  make  one  look 
forward  more  keenly  to  the  second  portion  of 
the  Galahad  series. 

If  there  were  space,  I  should  like  to  speak  in 
detail  also  of  the  '^Pandora,**  by  Mr.  Water- 
house;  a  charming  little  **  Sirens,''  byvMr 
Swan;  an  old-masterish  arrangement  of  the 
nude  by  Mr.  Watts,  the  ''Infancy  of  Jupiter": 
Mr.  Grelffenhagen's  '*  Judgment  of  Paris." 
These  all  have  merit,  and  are  a  welcome  relief 
from  the  conscientious  naturalism  of  men  like 
Mr.  Stanhope  Forbes  and  Mr.  Frank  Bramley, 
who  waste  their  knowledge  in  accurate  records 
of  farm-yard  incidents,  not  beautiful  In  them 
selves,  though  the  artist  who  aimed  at  being 
something  more  than  a  human  camera  could 
give  them  beauty. 

It  is  Mr.  Clausen,  another  of  the  newer  As- 
sociates, who  excels  In  landscape.  I«  stead  of 
the  midsummer  brilliancy  which  has  so  often 
m^pired  him,  this  year  he  has  found  a  motive 
In  the  gray  melancholy  of  early  dawn,  **  Bird- 
Scaring,  March.'*  It  is  a  diflicult  effect  to 
render,  for  sad  and  cold  as  Is  the  gray  light 
it  c«n  be  tender  and  soft  as  well.  Mr.  Clausen 
has  managed  to  suggest  both  the  coldness  and 
the  tenderness;  pale  mi»ts  lie  lightly  on  his 
chilled  fields  and  distant  bills,  and  envelop,  an 
with  phantom  foliage,  the  lonely  trees  that 
ribo.  In  ghostly  shadows,  from  the  grayness. 
One  pale  rift  of  yellow  light  shows  In  the  east 
In  the  foreground  stands  the  little  human 
scarecrow,  cold  and  sad  as  the  hour,  but  with 
^mething  of  tragedy  In  his  Millet  like  pose 
that  redeems  his  ragged  ugliness  and  brings 
bim  into  sympathy  with  the  scene.  There  is 
00  other  landscape  quite  so  eubtle  and  digni- 
fied as  this  But  Mr.  Arthur  Lemon  here,  as 
•it  the  New  Gallery,  has  delightful  and  quite 
individual  impressions  of  Italian  landscape. 
There  is  a  very  sutely  '•Pastoral"  by  Mr. 
Alfred  Bast  who,  in  it  strives  less  obviously 
4ud  more  suocessfully  to  be  poetic  than  Is  his 
wont  Mr  Alfred  Parsons,  Mr.  David  Mur- 
ray, Mr.  North,  the  contemporary  of  Fred*. 
Walker  and  Pmwell,  and  Mr.  La  Thauffue,  all 
cootribate  intelligent  and  legitimately  im- 
preeslve  work.  Among  the  marines,  Mr 
Alexander  Harrison's  *' Great  Mirror"  would 
probably  be  conspicuous,  had  not  an  Irre- 
sponsible  hanging  committee  seen  fit  to  sky  It. 
Mr.  Bridgman's  *'Pharaoh*s  Captives"  has 
not  been  much  mere  fairly  treated.  It  is  easy 
to  understand  why  distinguished  foreigners 
so  seldom  seek  to  exhibit  at  Burlington  House. 

I  have  not  left  myself  space  to  say  bow  good 
the  sculpture  Is.  Mr.  Alfred  Gilbert  again 
proves  himself  the  master  in  a  jewel  like 
sUtuette  of  *'St  George,"  in  aluminium, 
toothed  with  gold  and  ivory.  It  Is  a  perftct 
little  piece  of  modelling;  the  metal  being  used 
for  the  armor,  the  Ivory  for  faoe  and  hands,  to 
produce  an  admirable  effect  of  oolor.  Mr. 
Harry  Bates,  an  Associate,  has  his  equestrian 
statue  of  Lord  Roberta,  a  commission  for 
Calcutta.  It  Is  so  large  that  It  was  found  na- 
ces»ary  to  erect  It  in  the  court-yard,  much  to 
Its  advantage.  The  figure  sits  well  up-m  the 
horse  and  is  full  of  dignity,  while  the  pedes- 
tal Is  decorated  with  a  very  sptrlted  baa^raUaf; 


representing  artillery  and  cavalry  in  action. 
One  regrets  that  the  monument  must  go  from 
London,  a  city  so  unfortunate,  always,  in  the 
statues  set  up  in  its  streets  and  parks.  A  series 
of  little  colored  bas-reliefs  by  Mr.  George 
Frampton,  and  a  casket  In  silver  and  enamel 
by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Dawson,  are  treated  with 
that  fine  feeling  for  decorative  beauty  that 
distinguishes  the  work  of  many  of  the  younger 
sculptors. 

Water  colors  and  black-and-white  receive 
the  scant  courtesy  which  is  their  accustomed 
portion.  Mr.  E.  A.  Walton,  one  of  the  Glai^ 
gow  men,  introduces  an  unexpected  romantic 
note  In  the  water  color  room,  with  a  oonple 
of  fantastic  studies  of  heads,  one  of  which  he 
frankly  calls  **  Romance."  And  in  the  black- 
and  white  room  Mr.  Abbey  makes  an  appear- 
ance—the first  step.  It  is  to  be  hoped,  toward 
his  championship  of  the  Illustrator's  art  in 
the  Academy,  which  has  so  persistently  dis- 
dained it  N.  N. 


Correspondence. 


THE  SUGAR  BOUNTY  AND  THE  COMP- 
TROLLER. 

To  THB  Editob  Of  The  Nation: 

Sib:  A  paragraph  in  your  last  Issue  about 
the  bounty  decision  convevs  an  erroneotu  Im- 
pression as  to  the  position  of  the  Comptroller 
with  regard  to  It  The  Comptroller  Is  not  In 
any  sense,  an  inferior  ofllcer,  but  has  been,  since 
Hamilton's  time  In  practice  and  since  1868  by 
exprees  statute,  the  superior  of  the  Secretary 
and  of  all  the  Cabinet  officers  In  rulings  on 
claims  and  matters  of  aecnunt  Moreover,  he 
never  rejected  the  claim,  but  referred  It  to  the 
Court  of  Claims  to  advise  him  as  to  Its  oonttl- 
tutlonality,  also  under  a  statute  of  1868.  He  ex- 
pressed his  own  opinion  on  the  matter  merely 
as  explanation  of  delaying  the  claim  in  this 
way,  but  carefullv  avoided  deciding  It 

The  trouble  about  tbe  current  newspaper 
view  of  the  case  is  its  tendency  to  scare  Comp- 
trollers In  future  out  of  exercising  their  sta- 
tutory power  to  refer  doubtful  constitution- 
al questions  to  the  court— a  thing  constantly 
done  by  the  Comptrollers  of  the  Sute  and  dty 
of  New  York.  It  is  idle  to  Ulk  about  the  oon- 
stitutiooal  decisions  of  the  President  In  sign- 
ing appropriation  bills.  He  cannot  examine 
the  ooDstitutlooallty  of  a  hundredth  part  of 
the  stuff  that  is  dumped  on  him  at  the  dote  ot 
a  session.  The  Comptroller  Is  the  man  pro- 
vided by  Congress  to  decide  whether  claims 
shall  be  paid  without  litigation  or  referred  to 
tbe  courts.  JusnoK. 

WAsamoTos.  D.  a.  May  99. 189«. 


SOUTHERN  PAUPERS  AND  RACES. 
To  TBK  Editob  of  Thx  NAnoK : 

Sib-  In  this  county  of  Decatur,  Georgla,with 
a  populaUon  of  nearly  80,000  (the  blacks  and 
whites  being  about  equal),  th«>re  are  at  present 
in  the  one  poor  house  of  the  county  but  five 
inmates—one  man  and  four  women— all  white. 
Besides  this,  about  twenty-seven  people,  most- 
ly white,  receive  out-of-door  relief.  During 
the  past  three  years  eight  has  been  the  largttt 
number  of  Inmates  at  one  time,  of  whom  two 
were  black.  In  ten  half  years*  realdenoe  here 
I  have  seen  but  one  tramp  and  no  white  beg>- 
gar;  nor  black,  for  that  matter,  unless  one 
counts  the  wilbngness  of  nearly  the  whole  race 
to  Aooept  gifts,  and  to  expect  them  for  slight 


434= 


Tlie    N'ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1614 


service,,  or  none,  as  allied  to  begging.  It  is, 
however,  essentially  different,  for  the  asking  is 
always  from  some  colored  person  one  knowp, 
and  some  service  in  return  is  usually  implied, 
and,  indeed,  often  generally  rendered.  The 
number  of  foreigners  in  the  whole  population 
is  not  much  greater  than  the  number  of  pau- 
pers, and  they  are  mostly  Jews. 

The  white  people  in  this  county  are  quite 
poor  compared  with  the  North  or  West,  and 
the  blacks  are  ten  times  poorer  than  the  whites. 
Nearly  all  are  engaged  in  agriculture.  Here 
is  an  opportunity  for  sociological  study  pre- 
sented nowhere  else  in  the  world.  The  semi- 
tropical  climate  and  the  presence  of  the  blacks, 
lately  slaves,  have  made  our  South  in  many 
ways  more  different  from  the  North  than  Eng- 
land is.  The  cost  of  living  here  is,  I  iMlieve, 
less  than  in  any  other  highly  civilised  country. 
T.  B.  Brooks. 

BAJOnmsDOT,  Oa.,  May  8S,  1896. 


A  LESSENING  OP  DIFFICULTIES. 
To  THE  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sir:  There  has  recently  come  to  my  notice 
an  instance  of  plagiarism  which  has  not  been 
exposed,  so  far  as  I  know,  or  received  the  cen- 
sure that  it  deserves  because  of  its  boldness 
and  msgnitude,  as  well  as  because  of  the  cir. 
cumstances  under  which  it  occurred.  The 
theft  to  which  I  wish  to  call  public  attention 
through  the  columns  of  the  Nation  is  to  be 
found  in  a  monograph  entitled  '  Public  Lands 
and  Agrarian  Laws  of  the  Ronuin  Republic,* 
by  Andrew  Stephenson,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of 
History  in  Wesleyan  University.  This  mono- 
graph is  one  of  the  series  of  Johns  Hopkins 
Studies  in  Historical  and  Political  Science,  and 
it  was  published  in  Baltimore  in  1891. 

According  to  the  author^s  own  statement,  he 
has  **  earnestly  endeavored  to  lessen  the  diffl- 
culties'*  which  surround  Roman  agrarian 
legislation,  and  his  reason  for  writing  the 
work  **is  found  in  the  fact  that  agrarian 
movements  have  borne  more  or  lees  upon 
every  point  in  Roman  constitutional  history, 
and  a  proper  knowledge  of  the  former  is  neces- 
sary to  a  just  interpretation  of  the  latter.^  A 
book  which  appears  under  such  auspices  and 
with  Such  a  purpose  should  have  particular 
value.  It  should  contribute  to  our  informa- 
tion upon  the  subject:  failing  this,  it  should  at 
least  be  original  in  treatment  and  accurate  in 
statement.  Consequently,  one  is  surprised  to 
find  that  a  third  of  the  book  is  merely  a  trans- 
lation, almost  verbatim,  from  a  treatise  on  the 
same  subject  published  in  Paris  in  1846,  and 
entitled  **Des  lois  agraires  chpzles  remains," 
by  M.  A.-P.-L.  Mac^—of  whom,  it  should  be 
said,  not  the  slightest  mention  is  made  any- 
where  in  the  course  of  the  work. 

The  indebtedness  of  Prof.  Stephenson  begins 
in  his  preface,  and  it  extends  through  an  ag- 
gregate of  thirty  pages,  found  in  various  sec- 
tions of  the  book.  The  closeness  with  which 
he  follows  M.  Mac^  may  be  seen  from  the  fol- 
lowing  passages : 

'*Tbe  other  peoples,  admitted  merely  to  the  Jus 
Italicum,  did  not  enjoy  the  civil  or  political  rights 
of  Roman  citizens,  nor  any  of  the  privileges  of 
Latin  allies:  at  best  they  kept  some  souvenirs  of 
their  departed  independence  in  their  interior  ad- 
ministration, but  otherwise  were  considered  as  sub- 
jects of  Rome."    (Stephenson,  p.  68.) 

"  Mais  les  autres  peuples,  soumls  seulement  au  Jus 
Italicum,  n'avaient  aucnn  des  droits  clvils  ou  poli- 
tJqi]ie«de»cKoyf»n«roTna<n?.  aiacun^l^.a  i.iKilT*ji-ttH  Je« 
ftliifis  lAtloa;  tout  an  pluH,  leur  avftlt^on  Mmft 
qui^1qu?ti  souvenirs  d**  leiir  aadeaae  ind^pendfux.'fl 
ilAjiii  i^ftiJiii3<niBtrat:[on  int€rl@ure.   Pom-  tout  1e  resle, 


lis  6taient  consid6r6s  oomme  les  sujets  de  Rome/' 
(Mac6,  p.  268.) 

Furth<)r,  an  interesting  comparison  may  be 
made  between  an  expression  of  M.  Mac6  (p.  270), 
*'le  7  des  calendes  de  juiUet,""  and  Prof.  Ste- 
phenson's translation  of  the  same  (p. 68),  "the 
7th  of  the  calends  of  July.*'  This  seems  to 
be  a  rather  unusual  rendering  of  the  Latin 
*<vn  calendas  sextiles,"  which  is  cited  in  a 
foot  note  to  substantiate  his  statement.  It  af- 
fords an  excellent  illustration  of  Prof.  Ste- 
phenson's methods.  Apparently  his  researches 
did  not  extend  much  beyond  M.  Mack's  book 
so  long  as  that  was  available ;  in  his  blind  fol- 
lowing of  M.  Mac6  be  out-Livys  one  of  Lily's 
worst  faults. 

Witji  such  passages  in  mind,  the  earnestness 
of  Prof.  Stephenson's  attempt  to  *'  lessen  the 
difficulties  "  of  his  subject,  and  also  his  abUity 
to  accomplish  this  task,  may  reasonably  be 
questioned.  His  monograph,  as  it  stands,  is 
little  more  than  juvenile  in  character.  Plagia- 
rism is  but  one  of  its  faults— the  most  repre- 
hensible fault.  As  a  compilation,  it  does  not 
have  the  merit  of  being  smoothly  and  skilfully 
made.  The  book  might  have  been  valuable 
and  useful,  but  the  result  of  Prof.  Stephenson's 
work  is  quite  otherwise. 

Tborivton  Jenkins. 

CAMBBmoB.  MiM.,  Maj  89. 1806. 


A  HARD  CASE. 
To  the  Editor  of  The  Nation: 

Sib:  Last  June  I  read  in  your  columns  an 
advertisement  from  Brown  University,  which 
announced  that  a  price  of  1300  would  be  given 
for  the  best  essay  written  upon  one  of  several 
stated  subjects.  It  was  further  stated  that  the 
competing  theses  must  be  **  placed  in  the 
hands  of  the  President  of  Brown  University  on 
or  before  May  1st,  1896." 

I  have  accordingly  been  investigating  one  of 
the  given  subjects  during  the  past  winter. 
The  thesis  which  I  wrote  upon  it  I  sent  by  ex- 
press to  Providence  on  the  morning  of  Friday, 
May  1,  and  was  assured  that  it  would  be  de- 
livered there  on  the  same  day. 

On  Monday,  May  4,  the  thesis  was  returned 
to  me  with  a  note  from  President  Andrews 
saying,  **Your  manuscript  arrived  only  tbi^ 
morning,  too  late  to  be  available  in  the  com- 
petition, according  to  our  advertisement."  In- 
qniry  at  the  express  office  showed  that  the 
package  reached  Providence  at  3:50  P.  M.  on 
Friday,  and  was  taken  to  the  college  that  after^ 
noon,  but  was  not  then  delivered  because  the 
college  office  was  closed.  It  was,  however, 
delivered  on  the  morning  of  Saturday,  May  2, 
and  a  receipt  obtained  for  it. 

I  sent  this  statement  to  President  Andre  vvs. 
He  made  no  offer  to  accept  the  thesis,  but 
sent  me  the  following  answer  :  *'Upon  inquiry 
I  find  that  the  expressman  brought  your  manu- 
script to  my  college  office  between  6  and  7 
P.  M.  on  May  1st.  Our  business  office  hours 
close  at  6.^'  A.  L.  Cbockeb. 

Cambbidoe,  Xaj  30, 1896. 


Notes. 


BuBROws  Brothers  Co.,  Cleveland,  name 
August  for  the  date  of  issue  of  the  first  volume 
of  their  proposed  republication  of  the  Jesuit 
Relations,  as  already  announced  by  us.  There 
win  be  but  750  s^U  printed,  direct  from  thta 
type,  and  subscript  I  ous  must  include  the  entire 
Tbe  rate  of  publication  will  be  one 


volume  monthly.  The  Relations  will  be  set 
partly  from  careful  transcripts  and  partly 
from  originals,  and  the  original  pagination, 
though  not  observed,  will  be  noted  tbronghoat. 
French  compositors  will  be  employed  upon  the 
French  text,  and  special  punches  have  been 
cut  for  some  peculiar  phooetic  type  of  the  ori- 
ginal. The  translation  will  be  as  literal  ai 
possible,  and  will  be  the  work  of  John  Cotler 
Covert,  assisted  by  Mary  Sifton  Pepper  and 
others.  Mr.  Reuben  Gold  Thwaites.  Secretary 
of  the  State  Historical  Society  of  Wisconsin, 
will  have  editorial  direction.  The  voYomei 
will  number  some  sixty,  at  $3.50  each. 

*  Child  Observaiions,*  made  on  a  very  large 
Boale  by  the  students  of  the  State  Normal 
School  at  Worcester,  Mass.,  and  edited  by  EI. 
len  M.  Haskell,  is  announced  by  D.  C.  Heath 
&Co. 

D  Appleton  &  Co.  will  publish  immediately 

*  Maggie,'  by  Stephen  Crane,  and  in  the  aa- 
tumn  his  *  Little  Regiment.' 

*  The  Way  They  Loved  at  Grimpat:  Village 
Idyls,'  by  £.  Rentoul  Esler,  is  in  the  press  of 
Henry  Holt  &  Co. 

A    translation    of    Gabriele   D'Axmnnzio's 

*  Episoopo  and  Company,',  by  Myrta  Leonora 
Jones,  will  be  published  by  Herbert  S.  Stone 
&  Co.,  Chicago. 

John  Murphy  &  Co.,  Baltimore,  have  in 
preparation  for  the  fall  '  The  Ambassador  of 
Christ'  by  Cardinal  Gibbons. 

The  Boston  Museum  of  Fine  Arts  is  about  to 
issue  a  new  edition  of  Mr.  Robinaon's  *  Cata- 
logue of  Casts  from  Greek  and  Roman  Scnlp^ 
ture,'  thoroughly  revised  by  the  author.  Many 
of  the  descriptions  have  been  entirely  rewrit- 
ten, to  embody  the  results  of  recent  investiga- 
tions, and  thirty-six  new  numbers  are  included, 
as  well  as  a  second  index,  arranged  according 
to  the  places  in  which  the  originals  of  the  casts 
are  at  present  exhibited.  The  book  will  be 
published  by  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 

A  new  Danish  translation  of  the  'Heims- 
kringla '  is  announced.  The  translator  is  Dr. 
Winkel  Horn,  who  is  at  present  engaged  on  a 
translation  of  Saxo,  and  who  is  known  to  Eng- 
lish readers  through  his  History  of  Scandina- 
vian Literature.  The  work  will  be  accom- 
panied by  a  number  of  illustrations  by  the 
Norwegian  artist,  Louis  Moe. 

Mr.  H.  W.  Lntrr's  "diaries"  ofParliameol 
are  duw  ei tended  hy  his  ^  Diary  of  the  Homi 
Rule  ParliaiDent,  ieP24m*5'  tCwsellj.  We  find 
h^re  the  same  burnor,  g'tataf ul  coDdeDsatioo, 
cotnprcBsed  iuformation,  with  swift  limntDg 
of  dramatic  seepes  and  hiJ^torie  moment  thai 
renfier^d  fanjuus  the  voluniefl  which  preceded 
this  oue.  F'or  ItA  iticid<>tital  records  of  biUi 
and  rotes  and  gittings^  the  book  is  handy  for 
reference,  Mr.  Lucj'g  personal  affection  for 
Lord  Randolph  ChurehtH  jDcUoes  him  to  mtke 
that  fallen  meteor  the  hero  of  the  volume-^ 
though  be  waB  mrjfit  decidedly  a  Batnftt  left 
out  of  the  play  in  the  Parliaraeut  covered* 

In  both  the  plan  and  the  execution  of  Mf. 
W.  T.  BreWBt-er'a  *  Studies  in  Btrticture  mA 
Style  ^  (MacmUlan)  we  find  much  to  prai«e  and 
nothing  of  any  account  to  blame.  The  volume 
is  intended  to  furnish  supplementary  work  to 
the  English  studies  of  the  freshm&i]  year- 
work  in  the  ana  lysis  of  Kuglish  prose.  Froiide, 
SteTcnsoD,  John  Morley,  Arnold*  Eryce,  Bus- 
kiUf  and  Newman  are  the  author?  studied  ia 
ex  true  ts;  and  for  the  most  part  thej  ar«  j 
sen  tad  in  their  perspicacious  rather  than  1 
brilliant  moods,  Mr,  Bn^w^ter's  stiidles  a« 
practical,  J^nd  tiLlapt«(i  to  the  tieeds  of  his  aO" 
dJence.  Logical  structure  a  freshman  can  ht 
brought  to  {nualyze^  and  with  eodtoM  good  1^ 
hinijelf.     Of  style  the  mers  ^ibfimm  wmk 


June  4,  1896] 


The   ISTation. 


485 


lenoet,  those  particolarly  of  fresh  and  definite 
diction,  he  can  be  Jed  to  see;  but  Mr.  Brewster 
eTidently  knows  the  nature  of  the  freshman, 
and  refrains  from  trying  to  persuade  him  of 
refinements.  Not  the  least  merit  of  the  book 
if  the  absence  from  the  text  of  a  swarm  of  re- 
ferenoe-fiicures,  those  goats  of  the  student  soul. 
But  even  this  kind  of  book  ought  to  be  iiidexed. 

For  students  there  is  much  important  matter 
in  the  *  Biological  Lectures  Delivered  at  the 
Marine  Biological  Laboratory  of  Wood^s  Holl 
in  the  Summer  Session  of  189S'  (Boston:  Oinn 
&  Ck>.).  It  treats,  in  lines  more  or  less  special, 
but  in  some  degree  comparative,  of  evolution, 
influence  of  surroundings,  fertilization  of  the 
ovum,  the  cell,  development,  morphology,  and 
kindred  subjects.  The  different  authors  of  the 
various  chapters,  ten  in  all,  rank  high  as  au- 
thorities in  their  particular  departnients,  and 
these  writings  fix  the  present  status  of  science 
in  regard  to  their  specialties,  thus  furnishing 
points  of  departure  for  the  determination  of 
advances  and  rates  of  progress.  The  essays 
are  monographical,  and  consequently  are  of  es- 
pecial importance  to  those  studying  the  same 
or  related  subjects,  while  to  biologists  in  gene- 
ral they  are  welcome  as  works  of  reference. 
Aside  from  their  direct  stimulus  to  thought, 
they  indirectly  incite  to  research  through  an 
evident  lack  of  agreement  in  the  conclusions 
accepted.  A  reader,  after  perusal,  is  likely  to 
decide  from  this  that  there  is  something  unset- 
tled in  the  fbundations  of  our  scientific  beliefs. 

The  *'  Biological  Lectures  and  Addresses '  de- 
livered  by  the  late  Arthur  Milnes  Marshall, 
M.A.,  M.D.,  and  edited  by  C.  F.  Marshall, 
M.D.  (London:  David  Nutt;  New  York:  Mao- 
millan),  are  mainly  summaries  from  various 
special  researches  arranged'  for  popular  leo- 
tures.  Each  of  the  thirteen  is  complete  in  it- 
self. All  of  them  relate  to  biology;  yet 
through  such  topics  as  the  modem  study  of  zo- 
ology,  animal  pedigrees,  the  celt  theory,  death, 
embryology  as  an  aid  to  anatomy,  the  reca. 
pitulation  theory,  and  the  like,  they  include  a 
considerable  amount  of  variety.  The  author 
was  an  investigator,  and,  in  preparing  his  ma- 
terial, has  evidently  made  studies  of  his  sub- 
jects, canvassing  the  fields  thoroughly  and 
verifying  whenever  necessary  to  a  pr6per  un- 
derstanding. His  essays,  consequently,  have 
the  vitality  and  enthusiasm  of  records  of 
original  work,  though  they  are  comparatively 
free  from  the  technicalities  or  the  confusion 
of  detail.  Their  subjects  being  those  claiming 
most  attention  at  the  present,  they  form  at- 
tractive reviews,  and  at  the  same  time  are 
well  adapted  for  entertaining  those  who  have 
given  little  thought  to  such  things.  Outlines 
of  theories,  methods,  accomplishments,  pur- 
poses, and  needs  in  science  fill  the  book  with 
attractive  reading-matter. 

*MUe.  Huguette'  (Paris:  Colin  &  Cie.)  is 
one  of  those  books  written  especially  for  young 
girls,  and  blanc  enough  to  satisfy  the  longing 
of  Sarcey's  soul — a  perfectly  justifiable  long- 
ing, by  the  way.  It  has  also  the  advantage  of 
having  been  written  by  Qabriel  Franay,  whose 
*  Mon  Chevalier '  was  crowned  by  the  French 
Academy.  There,  however,  the  advantages 
stop,  for  the  book  is  somewhat  too  sentiment- 
al, somewhat  too  blanc  and  too  young  girlish. 
The  heroine  is  a  very  self-conscious  young 
person  who  would  fain  be  considered  artless, 
guileless,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  but  who  is  very 
fuU  of  her  importance,  her  looks  and  a  sham 
belief  (which  she  does  not  really  entertain  for 
a  moment)  that  she  is  old  and  doomed  to  be 
an  old  maid. 

In  'Une  Cour  et  nn  Aventurier  an  18e 
fitele  :  le  baron  de  Ripperda '  (Paris :  Leroux), 


M.  Gabriel  Syveton  has  given  the  fruit  of 
much  research  and  reading  concerning  this 
minister  of  Philip  V.  of  Spain,  who  negotiated 
the  double  marriage  of  the  Infanta  of  Spain 
and  the  Archduchess  of  Austria.  Ripperda  is 
proved  to  have  been  an  active  agent  rather 
than  a  great  patriot.  The  whole  question, 
however,  has  always  been  beset  with  obscurity 
and  difficulties,  most  of  which  have  been  clear- 
ed away  by  M.  Syveton,  who  has  ransacked 
archives  and  official  files  with  such  success  as 
to  unearth  the  **  very  secret  **  treaty  negotiat- 
ed by  Ripperda. 

M.  Rend  Doumic,  who  is  steadily  gaining 
ground  as  a  critic,  has  brought  out  his  sixth 
volume  in  this  line  of  work.  It  is  called 
*  Etudes  sur  la  litt6rature  fran^aise'  (Paris: 
Perrin  &  Cie.),  is  announced  as  the  first  of  a 
series,  and  is  composed  of  articles  contributed 
to  the  Revue  dee  Deux  Mondee.  These  articles 
are  reviews  of  books  serving  as  a  theme  for  the 
development  of  M.  Doumic's  ideas.  The  more 
noteworthy  papers  are  those  on  **  L'0p6ra  et  la , 
Tragddie,"  in  which  another  cause  of  the  deca- 
dence of  the  latter  form  Is  stated  and  discussed, 
and  "Diderot,^  an  author  whose  claims  to 
fame  and  influence  are  heavily  discounted  by 
the  critic. 

It  may  be  worth  while,  although  a  little  late, 
to  mention  that  a  very  interesting  correspon- 
dence between  Aug^te  Comte  and  Gnstave 
d'Eichthal,  carried  on  during  a  long  visit 
which  the  latter  made  to  Germany  in  the  years 
1824-1825,  has  been  printed  in  the  Revus  Occi- 
dentale.  These  letters  between  the  great  Posi- 
tivist  teacher  and  a  young  disciple  only 
twenty  years  of  age,  and  full  of  an  ardent 
enthusiasm  (which  rises  even  to  the  point  of 
passion)  for  Comte*s  general  ideas  and  for  so* 
ciology,  form  a  valuable  contribution  to  the 
biography  of  Auguste  Comte  and  to  the  history 
of  Positivism.  The  date  of  the  number  of  the 
review— the  conventional  date — is  March  1  of 
the  present  year.  Perhaps  it  will  not  seem  so 
very  long  ago  if  the  real  date  is  given,  which 
is  5.  Arietote,  108. 

In  the  just  issued  report  of  the  State  Geolo- 
gist for  New  Jersey  for  1895,  popular  interest 
pertains  to  the  sections  on  the  development  of 
artesian  wells  in  the  southern  part  of  the  State, 
and  on  forest  areas  and  forest  flres.  Mr.  C.  C. 
Vermeule's  report  of  progress  on  forestry  in 
northern  New  Jersey  confirms  the  well  estab- 
lished fact  of  an  equilibrium  between  cutting 
and  repair  in  that  section,  and  uses  this  fact 
(observable  for  a  long  period)  to  impugn  the 
common  belief  that  deforesting  has  caused  the 
drying-up  of  once  navigable,  or  more  naviga 
ble,  streams.  Mr.  Vermeule  shows  that  tem- 
perature (through  its  effect  on  evaporation)  is 
a  much  more  important  factor,  and  that  since 
1870  we  have  been  in  a  generally  droughty  pe- 
riod. Even  the  great  floods  of  recent  years 
have  had  their  match  at  earlier  periods.  All 
we  can  say  is,  that  *^  heavier- forested  catch- 
ments furnish  a  steadier  flow,  better  sustained 
during  dry  periods,**  and  suffer  rather  less  from 
severe  floods.  Mr.  VeroMule*s  studies  have 
shown  him  that  there  is  leas  disposition  to  de- 
stroy and  waste  the  forests  on  the  part  of  our 
native  rural  population  than  of  *'the  immi- 
grant population  from  countries  where  the 
control  and  management  of  forests  is,  on  the 
whole,  far  superior  to  our  own  methods.**  This 
was  naturally  to  be  expected  in  the  removal 
from  such  control  to  perfect  license. 

An  encouraging  account  of  the  growth  of 
the  Providence  Public  Library,  in  both  size 
and  usefulness,  is  given  in  the  annual  report 
for  1895,  the  eighteenth,  of  the  eflkient  librar 
rian,  Mr.  W.  S.  Foster.    In  an  appendix  is  an 


interesting  table  showing  the  use  of  fiction  in 
thirty-nine  libraries,  from  which  it  appears 
that  in  eleven  the  percentage  is  over  80  per 
cent.,  in  seventeen  it  is  over  70  per  cent.,  in 
eight  over  00  per  cent.,  and  in  three  it  is  over 
50  per  cent.  Several  large  libraries,  including 
Boston  and  Worcester,  do  not  give  the  amount 
of  fiction  r^ad.  The  highest  percentage  is 
89.42,  the  lowest  50.5,  which  is  reported  by  the 
library  of  Los  Angeles,  with  a  circulation  of 
829,405  volumes.  Next  in  rank  are  Qulncy  and 
Newton,  Mass.,  then  follow  Providence,  with  63 
per  cent.,  and  Chicago,  which,  with  a  circula- 
tion of  more  than  a  million  volumes,  reports  a 
fiction  percentage  of  only  02.51  per  cent.  The 
library  is  about  to  be  adequately  housed  in  a 
new  building,  which  will  cost,  when  completed* 
IdOO.OOO. 

We  have  received  the  first  number,  for  May, 
of  a  new  monthly  called  Publie  Librarieaj  is- 
sued by  the  Library  Bureau  at  Chicago.  It 
has  been  projected  in  the  interest  of  the  small- 
er libraries,  with  a  view  to  meeting  their  need 
for  detailed  information  as  to  practical  work- 
ing. A  first  section  of  the  tentative  A.  L.  A. 
Library  Primer,  compiled  by  J.  C.  Dana,  is 
the  main  feature  of  this  number.  News  of  li- 
braries, librarians,  and  associations  is  also 
mi|ch  in  evidence.  There  is  a  column  of  que- 
ries and  answers. 

Among  the  various  measures  for  increasing 
the  number  of  independent  occupations  for 
women,  the  opening  of  horticultural  schools 
for  girls  is  obviously  one  of  the  most  sensible 
and  promising.  Many  of  our  agricultural  col- 
leges admit  girls  to  their  classes,  but  without 
very  seriously  attempting  to  turn  out  theoreti- 
cally  and  practically  trained  gardeners.  In 
Germany  the  first  Gartenbauschule  f  fir  Frauen 
was  opened  by  Frftulein  Dr.  Castner  at  Friede- 
nan,  near  Berlin,  on  October  1,  1894.  The  first 
class  of  seven  members  will  be  graduated  from 
that  institution  next  fall,  when  one  of  the  gra- 
duates will  enter  as  teacher  a  similar  school  re- 
cently established  at  Riga,  in  Livonia.  On  the 
1st  of  October  next  the  second  institution  of 
the  kind  in  Germany  will  be  opened  on  the 
estate  of  the  Baroness  von  Barth-Harmating 
near  Plauen,  in  Saxony.  The  courses  of  study, 
extending  over  two  or  three  yean,  include  not 
only  the  most  varied  branches  of  gardening 
and  horticulture,  but  also  such  scientific  and 
commercial  instruction  as  is  needed  for  the 
successful  pursuit  of  the  business.  Two  stu- 
dents of  the  first  mentioned  school  have  already 
established  themselves  on  rented  land  and  prov- 
ed the  profitableness  of  the  occupation.  It  is 
also  said  that  there  is  a  demand  for  thoroughly 
trained  female  horticulturists  as  superinten- 
dents of  the  gardens  on  large  esUtes.  The  fact 
that  these  new  institutions  are  intended  for 
"gebildete  Frauen  und  M&dchen**  is  emphasiz- 
ed. In  January  last  a  society  for  the  promo- 
tion of  the  support  of  women  by  means  of 
fruit-culture  and  gardening  was  formed,  of 
which  FrI.  Anna  Blum  of  Spandau  is  secretary. 

The  Vacation  School  of  Modem  French 
founded  at  Geneva  in  1892  has  just  published 
its  programme  for  the  present  season.  It  is 
in  two  courses,  from  July  15  to  August  80,  and 
from  October  1  to  21.  Every  Saturday  there 
will  be  excursions  to  the  environs,  or  visits  in 
groups  to  the  National  Swiss  Exposition  now 
open,  closing  October  15.  The  official  bureau 
of  information  of  the  Caurs  de  Viteancei  is  at 
5  Quai  du  Mont- Blanc. 

It  has  been  finally  decided  that  English  shall 
be  included  among  the  official  languages  at  the 
international  medical  congress  to  be  held  at 
Moscow  next  year.  At  first  the  choice  waa 
Umit«i  to  French,  Garmao,  Aid  Ruariaa. 


436 


Tlie   N"atioii, 


[Vol  62,  No.  1614 


In  oonnection  with  the  semi-ceotennial  oele- 
bratioD  of  Cambridge,  Mass.,  it  is  proposed  to 
purchase  a  portion  of  Elm  wood,  the  birth- 
place and  lifelong  home  of  James  Rnssell 
Lowell,  and  make  of  it  a  Lowell  Memorial 
Park.  The  tract  inTolved  has  been  secured 
till  July  1  at  a  price  of  IS5.000,  and  a  commit- 
tee headed  by  Mrs  Louis  Agassiz,  and  includ- 
ing Miss  Alice  Longfellow,  is  soliciting  sub 
scriptions  in  sums  large  and  smalL  These  may 
be  sent  to  the  Treasurer,  Mr.  William  A.  Bnl- 
lard.  First  National  Bank,  Cambridge. 

—Mr.  Albert  Shaw's  study  of  the  city  gov- 
ernment of  St.  Louis  is  especially  opportune 
in  the  June  Century,  He  had  already  shown 
in  his  two  Tolumes  how  far  British  and  Conti 
nental  cities  have  advanced  beyond  uj  in  the 
solution  of  the  problem  how  to  make  life  in  a 
city  decent  and  attractive.  He  now  shows  how 
far  St.  Louis  has  gone  ahead  of  other  Ameri- 
can cities  in  the  achievement  of  home  rule,  in 
the  emoloTment  of  experts  in  certain  city  of- 
fices, and  in  a  phenomenal  freedom  from  charges 
of  official  corruption.  Particularlj  in  St.  Louis 
to  be  congratulated  on  having,  partially  at 
least,  thrown  off  the  shackles  of  ward  repr^ 
sentatioo.  While  the  twenty  eight  delegatf  s 
to  the  lower  branch  of  the  Municipal  Assam 
bly  are  still  elected  from  wards,  the  thirteeen 
members  of  the  upper  branch,  or  Council,  are 
elected  from  the  city  at  large.  Nothing  in  Mr. 
Shaw's  article  is  more  striking  than  his  com 
ment  on  the  personal  difference  between  the 
members  of  these  two  branches.  Delegates 
elected  from  wards  exhibit  in  general  the  fa- 
miliar characteristics  of  their  class,  but  gentle- 
men of  repute  and  character  serve  in  the 
branch  elected  at  large,  which  has  contained, 
under  the  present  charter,  **  groups  of  men 
who  would  have  done  credit  to  any  legislative 
body  in  the  land."  St.  I^ais  has  lately  become 
an  example  to  other  cities  in  its  system  of  gar- 
bage treatment,  and  avoids  at  the  same  time 
any  offensive  claim  to  moral  superiority  on 
this  score  by  usmg  a  simple  invention  which 
**has  now  made  possible,  on  purely  commer- 
cial grounds,  an  advanced  step  in  American 
municipal  housekeeping  that  neither  public 
spirit,  the  sanitary  motive,  nor  yet  the  de 
mands  of  a  fastidious  civilization,  had  sufficed 
to  effect "  There  are,  however,  some  features 
of  the  corporate  life  of  St.  Loais  which  prove 
that  its  citizens  have  not  yet  altogether 
emerged  from  the  national  stupidity  and  su- 
plnene<«  in  the  treatment  of  civic  affairs. 
They  still,  for  instance,  accept  a  clean  sweep 
in  offices  with  each  change  of  administration 
as  part  of  the  providential  order  of  human  af- 
fairs, and  they  will  make  to  strangers  this 
summer  such  an  exhibition  of  poles  and  over- 
head wires  in  their  streets  as  no  other  great 
dty  in  the  world  can  show.  For  the  rest  of 
this  number  of  the  Century,  we  shall  content 
ourselves  ^ith  remarking  the  continuation  of 
Mr.  Bryce's  **  Impreeeions  of  South  Africa." 

—Readers  of  Barper^a  will  find  that  the  artist 
whom  Dr.  Charles  Wald<itein  designates  as 
'*  The  Greatest  Painter  of  Modern  Germany  " 
is  Adolf  Friedrich  Menzel.  Dr.  Waldstein's 
distinction  in  classical  fields  creates  a  predis- 
position in  favor  of  his  paper,  which  neverthe- 
less makes  an  impression  of  inadequacy  in  this 
modem  branch  of  criticism.  In  **  A  Visit  to 
Athens"  Bishop  Doane  lends  to  a  very  trite 
composition  the  weight  of  a  widely  known 
name.  The  most  successful  literary  effort  in 
the  number  is  called  out  by  the  venerable  pas- 
time of  fishing.  '*  The  Ouananiche  and  its  Car 
nadian  Environment,"  by  E.  T.  D.  Chambera, 


is  a  capital  paper  in  its  line,  combining  wttb  a 
sportsman's  knowledge  a  skill  in  expresiion 
which  is  worthy  of  classical  tradition.  Tbe 
illustrations  to  this  article  are  oorresponditiglj 
attractive.  In  Scriimer'a  the  redeeming  fea- 
ture is  Henry  Norman's  *'In  the  Balkans." 
The  fascination  of  the  Balkan  Peninsula,  not 
the  ''Titanic  tangle"  of  its  politios  is  Mr 
Norman's  theme.  He  therefore  touches  ligb  t1  j 
on  the  Eastern  Question  as  such,  stopping 
merely  to  give  an  outline  of  the  diplomatic 
problems  which  are  *'the  nightmare  of  empe 
rors  and  the  despair  of  statesmen."  The  read 
er,  nevertheless,  after  following  him  from 
Sofia  to  Belgrad  and  from  Bosnia  to  Rumao  ia^ 
will  be  likely  to  find  that  the  numerous  nic«« 
and  states  which  are  crowded  into  the  ''cfaesa 
board  of  Europe  "  present  a  much  less  confuted 
aspect  to  the  mind,  and  that  a  more  vivtd  im^ 
pression  of  foreign  parts  is  seldom  received 
from  an  article.  The  Bay  of  Cattaro,  Cetttnjf*, 
and  Prince  Nicolas  are  subjects  which  natu 
Tally  animate  the  pen.  Some  verses  of  St<^v«n 
son's  are  included  in  Isabel  Strong's  oonclu&i  on 
to  '' Vailima  Table-Talk,"  but  there  is  a  falttoR 
off  in  quality  between  this  and  the  first  part. 
In  the  Atlantic,  Oen.  Francis  A.  Walker's  plea 
for  the  ''Restriction  of  Inunigration"  may  be 
singled  out  as  most  likely  to  provoke  thoujebt 
and  C'-tmment;  but  Dr  George  Blrkbeck  Hill 
continues  to  edit  the  letters  of  Dante  Gabriel 
Kossetri,  and  Lord  Howe*s  commission  to  pa 
cify  the  Colonies  has  fresh  documentary  light 
thrown  on  it  by  Paul  Leicester  Ford. 

— The  forty-fourth  annual  report  of  the  Bm- 
ton  Public  Library  records  the  opening  of  tht^ 
new  building  during  the  past  year,  the  de- 
velopment  of  the  plans  and  policy  of  the  new 
librarian,  Mr.  Herbert  Putnam,  andarevolu 
tion  in  the  personnel  and  evidently  in  the  idean 
of  the  board  of  trustees.  Steps  are  being 
faken  to  make  the  work  of  the  nine  branc^h^Ei 
and  thirteen  delivery  stations  more  effec-tiire. 
The  latter  are  now  given  something  of  tbe 
character  of  branches  by  having  on  deposit  in 
each  a  small  supply  of  books,  frequently 
changed,  from  which  applicants  may  select 
something  if  their  call-slipe  sent  to  the  librar? 
rail  to  secure  what  they  want :  by  telephonic 
communication  with  the  main  librarj  it  U 
propos«^d  still  further  to  increase  their  efHt-len* 
cy.  The  West  End  branch  has  lately  taken 
possession  of  its  new  home,  the  old  W^ht 
Chorch,  which  has  been  remodelled  sufflcientl  j 
for  the  purpose  while  retaining  most  of  ii»  id 
tereeting  features.  This  is  the  church  in  wh icb 
James  Runsell  Lowell,  as  a  boy,  listened  to  the 
excellent  sermons  of  his  father.  Rev.  CbarltE 
Lowell,  and  which  was  later  perhaps  equnlly 
famous  as  Dr.  Bartol's  church.  What  oioie 
fitting  use  for  "abandoned"  churches  tbati 
this  ?  It  was  to  the  founders  and  supp  >rter« 
of  a  free  library  that  Lowell  himself  applied 
the  Scripture,  The  teachers  shall  shine  afl  the 
firmament,  and  they  that  turn  many  to  right- 
eousness as  the  stars  forever  and  ever.  Tbe 
main  building,  while  it  provides  seats  for 
nearly  four  times  as  many  readers  as  the  old 
building,  and  seven  times  the  fioor-spaoe  in 
public  rooms,  has  already  been  quite  fullj  oc- 
cupied by  the  public.  Contrary  to  the  expecta- 
tions of  the  trustees,  the  remoteness  of  CopLej 
Square  from  "down  town"  seems  to  nifik« 
no  difference  to  the  frequenters  of  the  librar^r, 
while  the  greatly  increased  facilities  attrset 
multitudes  who  shunned  the  crowd  apd  the 
discomforts  of  the  old  building.  The  mo^t 
significant  improvement  in  the  present,  ar 
rangement  is  the  placing  on  practically  open 
shelves  nearly  200^000  volumes,  which  may  be 


consulted  with  almost  no  formalities  acd 
wbiebf  w«  remark  in  passtngf  are  paJrilcuUrl; 
Mmgbt  after  for  genealogical  research.  It  b 
Id  this  direction  that  the  beat  "  library  t^U 
ence"  is  tending.  It  is  no  tzutter  for  surpHse 
that  the  annual  expeo&es  of  tbe  library  are  m* 
crea9<>d  to  the  extent  of  130  OQO  by  the  new 
hullding.  10  that  Bocoe  t225.0aO  must  now  be 
approprfaled  yearly  by  tbe  city.  This  sqoi, 
eapitslizfi^  ml  four  per  ceot »  represeDta  an  in- 
ve«tm^nt  of  five  and  a  half  millions,  which 
muat  be  added  to  tbe  &\i.  millloos  which  tbe 
present  plant  is  said  to  be  wortbt  to  show  bow 
rfiitincUj  Boston  is  still  in  tbe  lead  as  to  iti 
provbion  for  its  froe  library. 

—The  second  edition  of  Mr.  George  Haven 
Putnam's  *Tbe  QuestlQu  of  Copyright*  (G.  P- 
Putnam's  Sons)  bnoga  tbifl  comptlaifon  up  to 
d  ate.  1 1  com  pH§e8  tbe  tei 1 0  f  ou  r  CO  p jrigh t  aet^ 
a  summary  of  the  copyright  lawi  at  preeeot  in 
force  in  tbe  chief  countriBS  of  the  worlds  to- 
getber  with  a  report  of  tbe  legislation  now 
pendJEig  Ib  Great  Britain,  a  sketch  of  the  cob' 
t^t  in  the  U cited  SUt^e  C1B3T  iH],  and  papi>n 
on  tbe  development  of  the  conception  of  lite- 
far  y  property,  and  on  the  results  of  tbe  Aroe- 
ri can  act  of  1  BO  1 .  H r.  Putnam  (who  advocated 
tbe  act  of  1B9U  though  himself  In  favor  of  the 
most  liberal  system  of  copyrlghti  thinks  the 
M tat  ate  has  worked  better,  on  the  whole,  than 
there  was  reason  to  ajiticipate  ;  that  the  most 
fterlous  and  legitimate  crltlcisois  of  the  L«w 
have  come  from  tbe  authors  of  France,  Ger- 
ms ny^.  and  Italy,  who  cannot  secure  AmeriMB 
copyright  for  books  requiring  translation  ;  Mlt 
that  theee  mieht  be  met  by  an  amendment  re- 
quiring registration  in  regular  oour&e,  while 
Dermltting  publication  of  an  EDgtisb  veriicio 
later.  Uolees  aomethiog  of  this  sort  is  done^ 
he  fesr^  the  ahrogatioa  by  on©  or  roofe  of  these 
countries  of  tbe  existing  couTeatlona  wiUi  us. 
He  favors  the  extension  of  tbe  term  of  c^py. 
right,  and  hop^  that  in  timft  the  mannfacmr* 
ing  clauee  may  be  done  aw&j  with  8t>  will 
most  of  his  readers.  The  present  eop^  right 
law  fixes  a  period  far  loo  short  to  secure  Ute- 
rary  property  as  other  property  U  Becurcd— 
tbe  extreme  term  is  forty  two  years— and  m«t 
c^^pyriftbta  expire  at  the  very  time  that  tbe 
author  would  naturally  desire  to  make  them 
mmt  safe,  is,,  when  hi*  children  begin  to  reap 
tb*  harvest  from  the  seed  which  he  has  sown. 
As  to  the  manufacturiog  clau*e,  it  represents 
simply  tbe  triumph  of  brute  protectlou  over 
thft  principles  reeoKoized  throughout  the  civl- 
tised  world  In  deallog  with  all  questions  of 
property.  Wherever  property  la  reccigui»pd  by 
municipal  law»  tbe  right  to  transport  it  from 
country  to  country  and  enjjy  its  fruitR  is  also 
recognised.  Our  law  is  one  of  the  first  in  the 
history  of  tbe  i^orld  to  make  the  enjoy  meat  of 
property  dependent  upon  tbe  place  of  roinu- 
facture.  It  i*  a  novel  application  of  tbe  prin- 
ciple of  protection,  and  there  is  no  reason  why, 
if  there  were  anything  io  it,  ll  should  not  be 
applied  to  all  property  ;  would  it  not  greatly 
stimulate  American  manufacttirea  if  every 
coat,  bat,  cloak,  cooking  utensil,  and  steel  rail 
In  thecotiuLiy  made  of  imported  material  could 
be  ovnied  only  on  proof  that  it  bad  been  tnsde 
in  the  country  T  The  authors  took  this  tnon- 
i^trouB  provision  on  the  principle  that  half  a 
loaf  b  better  than  no  breads  but  th«  fact  re- 
mains thai  our  country,  after  having  been  for 
a  century  tbe  great  exponent  of  FHracy,  hss 
substituted  for  piracy  a  copyright  system  itiU 
so  barbarous  that  the  promoters  of  the  law 
which  introduceii  it,  are  mainly  occupied  with 
measures  to  palliate  Ibe  evi3  eOTectK  of  the 
condition*  thrust  down  their  throata  hf  the 


June  4,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


437 


labor  unions  and  otbera,  who  were  the  real 
fatliert  of  the  manufacturing  clause. 

— ^e  are  reminded  of  the  Bogllsh  tourists 
in  Boeton  and  its  historic  vicinity,  who  said 
thej  nerer  should  forgive  themselves  for  not 
having  visited  America  before  all  the  interest- 
ing people  had  died,  by  the  latest  *  Journal  *  of 
M.  Edmond  de  Ooncourt.  Nearly  all  the  great 
names  which  illustrated  the  pages  of  theesrlier 
volumes  have  disappeared.  Alphonse  Daudet 
seems  to  be  almost  the  only  one  who  is  left 
The  journalist  himself,  if  not  exactly  on  evil 
days  fallen,  has  at  least  fallen  on  less  interest- 
ing  days  than  were  his  former  ones,  and  him- 
self  begins  to  feel  that  the  afternoon  of  life  is 
somewhat  wearisome.  He  records  scandals  of 
much  the  same  sort  as  before,  but  lesser  ones  ; 
he  has  reflections  such  as  he  has  given  us  be- 
fore, and  gossips  only  less  entertainingly  than 
be  did.  But  the  gossip  is  rather  the  worse  for 
being  so  fresh.  It  is  like  bearing  the  next 
momiog's  talk  after  a  ball.  One  touch  of 
characteristic  ingenuousness  may  be  quoted. 
Under  the  date  of  September  4,  1803,  M.  de 
Gkmcourt  writes :  *'  Lorrain  vient  dejeuner  ce 
matin  k  la  maison,  et,  eonfiant  en  moi,  il  se 
r^pand  sur  sa  jeunesse.**  Then,  with  a  most 
complete  unconsciousness  of  committing  any 
impropriety,  he  himself  confides  the  whole 
story  of  M.  Lorrain*s  youth  to  the  gentle  read- 
er. M.  Lorrain's  adventures  were  nothing 
very  extraordinary,  yet  still  it  may  be  doubt 
ed  whether  be  has  been  exactly  pleased  at  see- 
ing tbem  in  print.  The  *  Journal '  is  appearing 
as  a  feutUeton  in  the  icho  de  A^is,  where 
its  publication  began  in  April. 

—The  Association  Fran^aise  pour  TAvanoe- 
ment  des  Sciences  went  out  of  its  way  a  little 
this  year  to  hold  its  annual  meeting  at  Tunis, 
and  this  fact  had  some  influence  upon  the  cha- 
racter of  the  papers  read.  M.  Marcel  Dubois, 
Professor  of  Colonial  Oeogrspby  at  the  Sor 
bonne,  delivered  a  mo«t  interesting  discourse, 
comparing  the  different  systems  of  oolonisa 
tion,  ancient  and  modem.  He  oomplained  of 
the  injustice  which  often  results  from  such 
comparisons,  in  exalting  the  merits  of  the 
andents,  insisting  strongly  on  the  advantage 
which  the  Romans  had  in  being  able  to  send 
out  to  Africa  colonists  who  were  already  al- 
most as  good  as  acclimated.  The  Roman  colo- 
nists, too.  were  accustomed  to  the  practice  of 
irrigation  of  the  soil,  and  to  the  sort  of  agri- 
culture which  is  most  profitable  in  Africa.  He 
maintained  that,  on  the  whole.  Prance  had 
quite  afl  great  an  interest  in  North  Africa  as 
Rome  bad,  and  that,  just  deductions  being 
made,  France  had  been  no  less  successful  in 
her  work  there.  Commandant  Reblllet  then 
gave  some  interesting  details  on  the  desert 
tribes,  and  on  the  first  results  of  the  exten- 
don  of  trade  towards  the  south,  incidentally 
conveying  much  new  information  about  the 
Sahara.  M.  de  Coudray  La  Blanoh^re  siioke 
of  the  rural  settlements  of  the  Romans  in  North 
Africa.  Of  more  general  interest,  perhaps, 
was  a  communication  of  Prof.  Montellus  of 
Stockholm  on  the  distribution  of  dolmens. 
This  type  Qf  tomb,  he  said,  is  of  Oriental  ori 
gin,  but  it  has  been  transplanted  even  so  far 
as  to  Scandinavia.  The  Scandinavian  dolmens 
date  from  an  epoch  much  earlier  than  the 
twentieth  century  B.  c,  and  we  have  in  these 
monuments  indications  of  an  influence  which 
the  Bast  exercised  upon  Europe  at  a  very  early 
date.  If  the  Scandinavian  dolmf-ns  were  so 
early,  the  Oriental  dolmens  mu»t  be  at  least 
one  or  two  thousand  years  earlier  still.  This 
is  oooflrmed  by  the  fact  that  the  chambers  in 


the  Egyptian  pyramids  are  constructed  exactly 
like  dolmens,  with  the  single  difference  that 
the  stones  of  which  they  are  built  are  cut  and 
polished.  It  is  not  to  one  people  alone  that 
dolmens  belong.  An  Aryan  people  was  living 
in  Soandioavia,  while  the  dolmens  of  Syria 
could  not  have  been  built  by  Aryans.  It  was, 
then,  a  question  of  influence  rather  than  of 
migration.  Prof.  Montelius  spoke  also  of  other 
traces  of  Oriental  influence  on  the  north  of 
Europe  in  the  times  which  immediately  suc^ 
ceeded  the  dolmen  epoch.  ThrouRhout  this 
period,  communications  between  the  east  and 
the  north  of  Europe  followed  along  the  coast 
of  Africa  to  the  Spanish  peninsula.  It  was 
evidently  easier  to  go  along  the  coast  than  to 
cross  the  sea.  Only  at  a  much  more  recent 
time  did  the  influence  of  eastern  civilization 
take  another  route,  traversing  flrst  the  Medi- 
terranean and  then  the  European  continent. 


RECENT  POETRY. 

It  is  only  fair  to  say  of  the  much- derided  Poet 
Laureate  of  England  that  there  is,  in  the  pre- 
face to  bis  new  historical  drama,  *  England's 
Darling'  (Macmillan),  a  tone  of  humility  which 
certainly  was  not  visible  when  be  began  his 
special  duties  by  furnishing  the  music  balls 
with  a  song  of  triumph  about  the  marauder 
Jameson.  He  says  frankly  of  his  new  work, 
^' Would  it  were  worthier T  and  goes  on  to 
quote  manfully  from  King  Alfred's  own  (re- 
ported) words,  **Do  not  blame  me;  for  every 
man  must  say  what  he  says,  and  do  what  he 
does,  according  to  bis  ability.''  Indeed,  the 
whole  preface  conflrms  the  suggestion  which 
we  made  on  tbe  appearance  of  his  charmiog 
book,  *  A  Poet's  Garden,'  to  the  effect  that  the 
new  laureate  had  best  write  his  poetry  in 
proee.  We  are  compelled  to  see  the  merely 
oflicial  quality  appearing,  however,  in  his  bold 
remark  (p.  xii) :  '*  Englishmen  have  never  con- 
ceded unqualified  admiration  save  tp  those 
who  combined  with  intellectual  distinction  the 
crowning  grace  of  moral  worth,"  and  express- 
ed opinion  that  the  national  sentiment  would 
never  have  sustained  a  Henri  Quatre  or  Louis 
Quatorae.  It  is  bard  to  see  how  such  an  as- 
sertion could  be  made  by  any  one  who  had 
perused  Thackeray's  *  Four  George*,'  for  in- 
stance; nor  would  it  be  hard  to  gather  some 
later  iUustrstions  from  Punch.  But  some 
licence  must  be  allowed  toa  laureate-^lse  wby 
do  laureates  exist?— and  his  drsma  has  at  least 
a  good  subject,  and  m%y  be  praised  on  the  basis 
recognised  by  that  good  woman  who  admired 
her  pastor  because  he  bad  such  beautiful  texu. 
The  play  is,  indeed,  best  compared  with  others 
whose  scene  is  Isld  at  a  period  somewhat  siml 
lar— as,  for  instance,  with  Sir  Henry  Taylor's 
**  Edwin  the  Fair,"  to  which  it  is  certainly  far 
Inferior  In  interest  or  action,  and  strikingly  so 
in  the  beauty  and  effectivenees  of  its  lyric  paa- 
sagew.  The  tribute  to  Lord  Tennyson  which 
follows,  under  the  name  **  Tbe  Parsing  of  Mer- 
lin," would  doubtlsM  t)e  regarded  as  simple 
and  pleasiuK,  were  there  not  a  general  disposi- 
tion to  make  light  of  whatever  this  new  f  unc 
tionary  does. 

The  volume  of  *New  Poems,'  by  Christina 
G.  Rossetti  (Macmillan),  will  at  first  suggest 
the  dissppointment  almost  always  inspired  by 
posthumous  poetry.  As  a  rule,  the  poet  is  not 
seen  at  bis  best  in  what  be  has  kept  in  reeerve; 
the  very  fact  that  it  was  not  brought  forwsrd 
often  shows  that  it  did  not  satisfy  its  author. 
But  in  this  case  any  want  of  poetic  satisfaction 
Is  more  than  balanced  by  the  biographic  inte- 
rest; and  in  the  notes,  especially,  we  see  re> 


vealed  the  home-life  of  a  highly  gifted  family, 
whose  mixed  nationality  makee  their  intellec 
tual  work  more  interesting,  while  their  wide 
divergence  in  thoucbt  makes  their  frank  mu- 
tual criticism  delightful.  They  do  not  hesi- 
tate in  the  least  to  blame  or  praise  each  other's 
work,  and  to  quote  tbe  mutual  compliments  or 
condemnations ;  and  this  relation  is  peculiarly 
noble  and  sweet  between  the  shy,  devout,  nun- 
like sister— for  tbe  other  sister,  Maria,  is  met 
but  little— and  the  ardent  and  free-thinking 
brothers.  Christliia  and  her  mother  were  like 
lovers,  and  interchanged  valentines;  her  child- 
hood was  cradled  in  poetry,  and  this  voluma 
contains  some  seventy  pagee  of  her  verse  writ- 
ten before  the  age  of  seventeen.  Her  Italian 
poems,  which  appear  here  for  the  flrst  time, 
are  more  graceful  and  lyrical  than  any  of 
those  in  English,  and  there  are,  among  tbe 
many  houU-rimie  sonnets  —  those,  namely, 
of  which  the  rhymes  are  given  and  the  text 
afterwards  ,fllled  in— three  sonnets  with  the 
self-same  rhymes,  showing  how  deftly  she 
could  give  that  number  of  varying  solutions 
of  a  single  problem  (pp.  20,  21,  28).  One  of 
the  Italian  poems  is  a  curiously  felicitous  ren- 
dering into  that  language  of  the  oft  quoted 
Latin  poem  of  tbe  Emperor  Hadrian,  **Animii- 
la  vagula  blandula  "  (p.  288) : 

ADBIANO. 

InlmiioclA.  Ts«sonicola.  morMdoeola, 

OMte  d«4  con  o  e  ••norm, 

OTf>  or  f  avml  o  Imora  T 
Palltdiiocls.  imoldlis.  ■▼Mtitoocla, 

Non  pitt  wbttSMite  or  ora. 

She  also  wrote  an  English  version  of  this, 
both  these  t>eing  intended  for  a  privately 
printed  volume  of  these  translations  edited  by 
Bir.  David  Johnston  of  Bath— to  which  compi- 
lation her  brothers  also  contributed.  Her 
English  translation  is  the  following  (p.  171) : 

Bool  nidd'rlew,  nnbreced, 
Tbe  body's  rrtond      -  - 


Wbltber  sws>  unlay  7 
Uocappl*^.  p«l«  discaaed. 
Dumb  to  ttiy  mouxmd  JeiU 

The  curious  incapacity  of  the  brother  to 
adapt  himself  to  the  highly  wrought  religious 
mood  of  the  sister  is  seen  in  his  comment  on 
her  versee  called  *'  Tbe  End  of  the  Pirst  Part*' 
(p  86),  where  he  thinks  it  neceesary  to  explain 
the  line 

'*  Most  ohaDge  my  lAQcfater  to  ssd  teen  of  foUV 

byaxplaining  that  **th1s  would  be,  for  Chris- 
tina, a  very  exaggerated  phrase,**  and  that  it 
may  possibly  refer  only  to  original  sin.  He 
apparently  has  never  learned  by  experience 
that  it  is  usually  the  most  stainless  souls  which 
scourge  thcmsel  vee  most  bitterly  with  remorse. 
One  of  the  shorter  English  poems  has  a  cu- 
rious flavor  of  that  other  recluse  woman  of 
genius,  Emily  Dickinson  (p.  198^ : 

THS  WAY  OP  THC  WORLD. 

A  boat  tbat  sans  upon  tbe  sm. 

RbUi  far  and  far  and  far  away : 
Wbo  saU  la  b#r  klog  sonfft  of  ^e# 

Or  watoa  and  praj. 

A  boat  tbat  drifii  upon  tbe  sea. 

BUrat  afd  to  d  tu  ana  and  air  t 
Wbo  aailfd  In  her  ba*e  anded  glea 

And  watoa  and  prayer. 

Mr.  M.  M.  Cawein*s  *  Undertones*  (Copeland 
ft  Day)  continue  to  show  that  improvement 
which  has  been  seen  in  his  later  (and  too  numa- 
rous)  volumes.  He  has  mainly  shed  the  ex- 
treme imtutiveneesof  which  we  have  formerly 
oomplained,  and  has  also  repressed  much  of 
bU  tnrgidness;  although  there  is  still  some  of 
this  to  be  got  rid  of.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
is  a  growing  tone  of  cynicism  and  of  that  bale* 
ful  tendency  in  which  his  friend  Mr.  Howells 
has  preceded  him,  to  regard  human  love  aa 
good  for  early  youth  only.     He  evidenay 


4S8 


1?lie    i^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1614 


thinks  of  it  only  as  Miss  Berry*s  Frenchman 
thought  of  a  beauty  past  her  prime,  **Elle  n*a 
qu'un  quart  d*heure  pour  Tdtre."  Neither  his 
technique  nor  his  taste  is  quite  to  be  trusted  ; 
thus,  he  rhymes  storm  with  harm,  and— which 
is  strange  for  a  Soutbemer-^moon  with  tune 
(p.  10) ;  and  to  describe  the  sunlight  as  **  loaf- 
ing*' (p.  1)  is  certainly  not  to  be  commended. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  has  readiness  and  afflu- 
ence of  imagination,  and  his  love  of  local  color- 
ing is  staunch  and  American,  so  that  such  a 
poem  as  this  shows  him  at  his  beet  (p.  4) : 

THE  WOOD. 

witch-hazel,  dogwood,  and  the  maple  here; 

And  there  the  oak  and  hickory; 
Linn,  poplar,  and  the  l>eech-tree.  far  and  near 

As  the  eased  eye  can  see. 

WUd  ginger ;  wahoo.  with  Its  wan  balloons ; 

And  brake*  of  brlen  of  a  twilight  green; 
And  fox-grapes  plumed  with  «uq  mer;  and  strong  moons 

Of  mandrake  flowers  between. 

D^ep  gold-green  ferns,  and  moises  red  and  gray- 
Mats  for  what  naked  myth's  white  feet  7— 

And,  cool  and  calm,  a  cascade  far  away 
With  even-falling  beat. 

Old  logs,  made  sweet  irlth  death:  rovgh  bits  of  bark; 

And  tangled  twig  and  knotted  root; 
Ajid  sansmne  splashes  and  great  pools  of  dark; 

And  many  a  wild-bird's  Ante. 

Here  let  me  sit  antti  the  Indian.  Dusk, 

With  copper-colored  feet,  comes  down; 
Sowing  the  wlldwood  with  starflre  and  musk. 

And  shadows  blue  and  brown. 

Mr.  Smyth,  in  his  recent  Life  of  Bayard 
Taylor,  concedes  that  his  yerse,  except  per- 
haps in  the  **  Bedouin  Song*'  and  the  *'Song 
of  the  Camp."  had  no  spontaneity,  but  was  all 
**  carefully  built  up  by  the  inteUect,"  but  telU 
us  OD  the  opposite  page — what  we  had  not  pre- 
viously known— that  there  is  still  a  Taylor 
cult,  at  least  in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania, 
and  names  as  its  chief  representative  Ifr.  Clin- 
ton ScoUard.  Now  for  the  first  time  we  recog. 
nize  the  key  to  Mr.  Scollard's  limitations,  that 
he  has  assiduously  set  before  himself  an  inade- 
quate model.  With  assiduous  effort  and  the 
careful  collection  of  materials,  he  still  remains 
ordinarily,  as  did  Taylor,  within  the  zone  of 
mediocrity,  and  this  applies  even  to  his  *  Hills 
of  Song^  (Copeland  &  Day).  Few  of  our 
younger  poets  write  with  so  much  readiness 
and  fertility  as  Mr.  ScoUard;  he  is  cultivated, 
observant,  conscientious,  and  always  keeps  to 
a  certain  desirable  standard  of  good  taste;  he 
has  also  a  wide  range  of  material;  and  yet  he 
never  quite  stirs  the  blood  or  makes  himself 
essential.  What  we  mean  may  be  best  seen 
by  a  little  comparison.  There  is  no  better  test 
of  a  poet  than  the  way  he  deals  with  the  ocean, 
the  one  thing  unchanged  and  untamable,  still 
as  ever  elusive,  exhaustless,  irresistible.  This 
is  Mr.  Scollard^s  way  of  approaching  it  (p.  21) : 

THE  MARINER'S  GRAVE. 

Beneath  the  grim  old  beacon  tower 
_  They  made  his  Ust  straight  bed. 
The  gray  and  grluled  slope  below. 
And  ocean  wide  outspread . 

There  might  he  see  the  ships  slip  In 

And  out  across  the  bar. 
▲nd  down  the  night  the  warning  light 

Fling  Its  recurrent  star. 

There  might  he  hear  the  harplnic  wind 

Retnne Its  ancient  strain. 
And  that  sublime  musician,  sea. 

Intone  its  Joy  and  pain. 

There  might  his  sleep  be  long  and  deep. 

From  time  and  tide  withdrawn ; 
Above,  the  sea  gull's  silvery  wing 

UnUl  the  last  red  dawn.  * 

Now,  we  will  not  be  so  severe  as  to  propose  a 
comparison  with  a  wild  Berserker  chant  like 
Kipling's  »»The  Dipsy  Chanty,"  but  there  are 
two  brief  poems,  briefer  than  Mr.  Scollard's, 
and  both  meditative  like  his,  each  of  which  has 
in  it  a  touch  of  thoroughly  imaginative  grasp 
as  real  as  the  sea  itself.  Having  quoted  them 
in  pr^'vfrjus  notices,  we  will  not  give  tbem 
again  :  they  are  Prof.  Roberts* »  *■*  On  a  sailor 


buried  ashore**  and  Mr.  Carman*s  ** Child 
Marjorie.**  There  would  be  no  better  way  of 
illustrating  Mr.  Scollard*s  limitations  than  to 
print  either  of  these  short  studies  side  by  side 
with  his.  In  saying  this,  we  would  again  bear 
witness  to  his  uniformly  high  workmanship  as 
respects  literary  execution. 

Mr.  James  B.  Kenyon  is  another  of  the  poets 
who  are  cultivated  and  pleasing,  although  but 
mildly  inspired.  The  name  of  his  new  vol- 
ume, *An  Oaten  Pipe*  (Tait),  is  rather  far- 
fetched, nor  is  the  selection  of  contents  so  ex. 
clusively  pastoral  as  to  make  the  title  convinc- 
ingly appropriate.  Perhaps  the  strongest  of 
the  poems  is  this  sonnet  on  Sappho,  who  left 
fewer  verses  and  suggested  more,  it  would 
seem,  than  any  recorded  poet  (p.  119) : 

SAPPHO. 

Where  Is  that  bay-crowned  head  supreme  In  song  ? 

The  tides  that  darkle  round  the  Leucadlan  steep 

Lap  her  forever  Into  deeper  sleep; 
About  her  heart  of  fire  the  cool  waves  long 
Like  cerements  have  been  wound,  and  voices  strong 

Of  winds  and  waters  o'er  her  pillow  keep 

Their  boisterous  lullaby.   That  f rensled  leap 
From  the  hoar  height,  when  sense  of  sharpest  wrong 
Ran  in  her  blood  liae  flame— the  fears  that  strove 

Within  her  stormy  soul— the  lyric  tongue 
Whose  last  high  music  ran  through  realms  of  love. 

Till  hushed  by  that  sea-wind  which  o'er  her  flung 
Its  sudden  doom— ah,  all  the  dole  thereof 

No  equal  tears  have  wept,  no  lips  have  song. 

We  are  also  led  to  Sappho  in  *  Songs  from 
the  Greek,*  translated  by  Jane  Sedgwick  Mi- 
not  (New  York  :  Richmond),  a  delightful  vol- 
ume, taking  rank  with  Mrs.  Perry*s  similar 
book  noticed  some  time  since  by  as,  and  mak- 
ing with  it  two  most  acceptable  contributions 
by  American  women  to  the  rendering  of  minor 
Oreek  poetry.  This  volume  includes  some 
choruses  from  the  dramatisto  and  an  idyl  of 
Theocritus,  but  it  is  taken  mostly  from  Sappho 
and  the  Anthology.  The  author  shows  care, 
at  least  in  the  selection  of  authorities,  as,  for 
instance,  in  the  following  (p.  42) : 

TWO  FRAQMENTS  BY  SAPPHO. 

The  stars  that  stand  about  the  moon 
Their  shlninir  faces  veil  as  soon 
As  at  her  full.  In  splendor  bright. 
She  floods  the  earth  with  silver  light. 

And  through  green  boughs  of  apple-trees 
Cool  comes  the  rustling  of  the  breexe, 
While  from  the  quivering  leaves  down  flows 
A  stream  of  sleep  and  soft  repose. 

The  Greek  word  corresponding  to  "  breeze  ** 
is  wanting  in  the  original  text,  which  is  imper- 
fect. It  appears  from  Wharton*8  variorum 
edition  that  previous  translators,  as  Merivale, 
Symonds,  and  Palgrave,  have  used  the  words 
"water**  or  **  stream,**  whereas  Miss  Minot, 
following  Wharton,  substitutes  "breeze,**  which 
certainly  seems  more  appropriate,  although 
we  know  from  Theocritus  that  the  combination 
of  orchards  and  streams  was  not  uncommoo. 
We  cannot,  however,  commend  the  present 
translator  for  inserting  "green**  to  charac- 
terize the  boughs,  for  it  is  an  addition  of  her 
own,  although  Frederick  Tennyson  takes  the 
same  liberty.  In  the  other  pretty  fragments 
(p.  48)  about  the  apple  and  the  hyacinth,  Mi^ 
Minot  calls  the  apple  on  the  bough  "  redden- 
ing,*' whereas  Sappho  only  calls  it  »*  sweet  *^ 
(yAvKt^MoAoy),  and  In  the  other  half  of  the  frag- 
ment she  simply  describes  the  fallen  hyacinth 
as  purple,  whereas  the  original  word  {iwinop4fvpwi} 
rather  describes  it  as  growing  more  purple  or 
"  impurpling  **  on  the  ground  as  it  dies.  Hera 
again  she  has  Rossetti  and  Sir  Edwin  Arnold 
with  her,  but  Wharton  against  her.  All  this 
is  holding  her  to  that  standard  of  strict  lite- 
ralness  which  has  been  demanded  (since  Long- 
fellow*s  example)  of  a  translator,  and  to  which 
few  of  her  predecessors  have  been  confined  ; 
aDd  we  renow  our  tribute  to  the  excellent 
quslltj  of  her  work. 

■The  Pilgrim^  and  Other  Poems*  (Macmil- 


Ian),  by  "Sophie  Jewett**  (Ellen  Burroughs), 
takes  its  name  from  the  title- poem,  but  it 
might  also  have  taken  it  from  the  fact  that 
the  best  verses  in  the  book  have  European 
themes.  The  most  striking;  is  this,  on  a  subject 
which  has  doubtless  suggested  thoughts  akin 
to  poetry  in  many  minds— the  weird  figures  in 
stone  which  overlook  the  stir  and  tumult  of 
Paris  from  their  cathedral  heights  (p.  6i) : 

A  SaOLINQ  DEHON  OP  NOTRB  DAME. 

guiet  as  are  the  quiet  skies, 
e  watches  where  the  city  lies 
Floating  in  vision  clear  or  dim 
Through  sun  or  nUn  beneath  his  eyes; 
Her  songs,  her  lau|diter.  and  her  cries 
Hour  after  hour  drift  up  to  him. 

Her  days  of  glory  or  disgraoe 

He  watches  with  unchanging  face; 

He  knows  what  midnight  crimes  are  done. 

What  horrors  under  summer  sun; 

And  souls  that  pass  in  holy  death 

Sweep  by  him  on  the  morning's  breath. 

Alike  to  holiness  and  sin 

He  feels  nor  alien  nor  aSln ; 

Five  hundred  creeping  mortal  years 

He  smiles  on  human  joy  and  tears. 

Man  made,  immortal,  scorning  man; 

Serene,  grotesque.  Olympian. 

Mr.  Charles  Leonard  Moore,  in  his  ^Odes* 
(Holt),  exhibits  his  wonted  thoughtfulnees  and 
grasp,  but  the  very  title  of  his  volume  shows 
that  he  risks  himself  too  much  upon  amhi. 
tious  themes  and  treatment.  Even  Lowell,  in 
attempting  the  ode,  had  but  one  great  and 
triumphant  success;  and  the  irregular  and 
dithyrambic  strain  has  really  a  more  fatal 
facility  than  the  ballad  measure,  and  admits  of 
as  hopeless  commonplace.  Mr.  Moore's  best  suc- 
cess is  in  his  "  Elegy  **  on  Poe,  which  has  reaUy 
more  of  fine  discrimination  than  any  other  of 
the  numerous  poetic  tributes  to  that  author,  so 
far  as  we  can  recall  them.  This,  for  instance, 
comes  after  a  delineation  of  "  the  tragic  singer 
of  the  Shades,**  and  touches  with  firm  hand 
the  key  to  his  forlorn  fate  (p.  40) : 

•'  viewless  he  went  amid  life's  garish  Ills; 
He  could  not  wait  ttU  twlUjriit  owned  his  race. 

Dusk,  his  new  dynasties; 
Wan.  vacant  presence  and  neglected  guest. 
Earth  placed  no  Uirone  for  him  whereon  to  rest. 
Poppy,  therefore,  and  every  poisonous  growth 
To9k  ne.  that  could  transport  his  soul  away 
From  his  wide  prison— for  his  eyes  were  loth 

And  weary  of  the  day. 
And  every  steed  he  chartered,  that  did  go 
A  little  on  the  journey  from  tJie  earth. 
And  joined  each  distance-seeking  cara>an : 
Where'er  the  waves  did  roU.  or  the  winds  blow 
O'er  this  world's  abrupt  and  i>reclpltous  girth. 

Swiftly  his  spirit  ran. 
Drunk  with  imaginations,  drunk  with  wine. 
Drowsy  with  dreams  or  waking  with  desires. 
He  sat  at  Pleasure's  feet  and  would  not  rise. 
Enamored  of  oblivion  In  vain- 
Pleasure,  no  more  smooth-lipped,  no  more  divine. 
But  burning  with  unfathomable  fires, 
With  melancholy  In  her  mighty  eyes. 

VVUh  j>roua  llpn  (rarb)nts  pain. 
L<iDf(  fben-  be  isat.,  ^'hllt>  In  a  eup  she  gave 
It  Oil  bitter  driuk  for  tblr^^  and  tii<?  salt  vravo.^' 

For  some  rea^on^  hitherto  unexplained,  Tri- 
nity College  haii  been  more  Eucc^safut  than 
other  American  institutions  in  producing  good 
college  poetry  L  and  while  none  of  it  takes  us 
quite  back  to  the  cla^ie  period  of  Praed  and 
the  '^Etoniao,*'  yet  the  new  volamo  of  ^Trini- 
iy  Veree^^  edited  by  De  Forest  Hicks  and  Hen- 
ry Rutgers  Rem  sen  tHartford,  Conn.),  aifordt 
sotiie  excellent  fooliug  atid  some  very  g^racefal 
rerse.  Under  tbe  former  head  may  b^  classed 
**  The  Qr^co-Trojao  Qame^'  of  football^  in  Ho- 
meric werse,  by  C.  F.  Jobii»oi]f  laxd  a  parody 
of  Rudyarti  Kipling,  "The  Marry  in'  of  Dannj 
E^eever.^'  Thiti  last  is  meritoriouAi  as  is  thU 
"L'Eoyoy": 

Where  tlie  cUtta  at  Brittaoj 

Stieat  WBfeh  ihe  etmudlng  deep, 

sunk  Hi  an  enehaDi«>d  «J.c«p, 
Lies  a  cltj  *Death  tb«  sea. 

Thence,  I  have  heard  pessants  leULnn;, 

When  the  nifwnli  bnogiisg  lenw. 
And  thv  o<-va.ii  j^eu^e  ensmii  sw^llBA 

1 D  1 1 6  3;i  k'  u  t  e  r  I  tj  Htld  flo  w  _ 

^>r  1 1  j\  *!i(  I IV  coiDO*  a  nfeailos  ^— 

ijvvT  sill  UM'  ctmntrj  «ide. 
Soqnd:  of  ralrj  bells  ArpflaJua 

In  ihc  noinrc'd  v^^en  tide, 
AUM  tiiP  (HJiii  wklch  I ^ 

Uvrt  foreTer  1 


June  4,  1896] 


The    !N"atioii. 


439 


80  from  life*!  natroubled  ocean. 

In  our  golden  even-time. 
We  shallhear  with glmd emotion 

Bcboee  ringing— chime  on  chime : 
And  oar  hearts,  thoee  sunken  cities. 

Stored  with  thoaghts  of  former  days. 
Soft  shall  sing  us  olden  ditties 

Of  oar  college  life  and  ways ; 
And  the  soul  which  learns  that  music 

Kever  longs  for  newer  lays. 

In  the  little  yolume  of  thirty  pages  called 
limply  'Verses,'  by  May  Wright  Plummer 
(Cleveland,  O.:  Lemperly),  there  is  more  of 
the  poetry  of  earnest  thought  than  in  many 
larger  books.  The  following  bit  of  blank  verse 
— Cicero*s  supposed  soliloquy  on  the  death  of 
CfBsar— is  perhaps  the  strongest,  and  has  in- 
deed some  lines  of  remarkable  strength  (p.  81) : 

At.  look,  and  look  again,  at  him  who  bore 

Th»  world  and  flinched  not.  but  an  hour  ago. 

In  bis  colossal  shadow  touts  was  lost: 

"  Down  with  him.  down,  tha'  we  may  see  onrselres  I" 

He  lies  there;  are  ye  greater  than  before  ? 

Beyond  the  door  the  world  he  carrted  waits 

To  fall  upon  your  staggering  feebleness 


1  Into  chaos  once  again. 

Flee  ye.  Indeed !  From  that  stIU  figure  prone 
Stretches  a  shadow  that  may  welfaflray. 
LlTlng.  it  alternated  with  the  sun; 
Dead,  It  creeps  onward,  licking  up  the  light. 
80  hare  ye  chilled  the  pulses  of  the  world 
Into  stagnation.   Flee,  and  be  content ! 

We  have  before  now  called  attention  to  the 
remarkable  vigor  and  freshness  with  which 
the  younger  Canadian  poets  write  of  nature, 
and  the  manner  in  which  they  show  also  a  feel- 
ing for  the  human  side;  their  landscape  almost 
always  skilfully  including  something  of  that 
kindlier  tie.  Perhaps  this  is  a  more  instinctive 
tendency  in  a  colder  clime,  where  the  indoor 
aspect  of  things  can  never  be  long  ignored,  as 
compared  with  the  larger  share  of  dreamy  out- 
door indolence  practicable,  for  instance,  to 
Lanier.  At  any  rate,  the  fact  is  there.  Note 
how  quickly  it  makes  itself  felt  in  the  close  of 
these  charming  verses  of  the  spring-time,  from 
Archibald  Lampman's  '  Lyrics  of  Earth '  (Bos- 
ton :  Copeland  &  Day) : 

JtTNE. 

Long,  lona  ago.  It  seems,  this  summer  mom 
That  pale-browed  April  passed  with  pensive  tread 
Through  the  frore  woods,  and  from  its  frost4>ound  bed 

Woke  the  arbutus  with  her  sUver  horn; 
And  now  May,  too,  is  fled. 

The  flower-crowned  month,  the  merry  laughing  May. 
With  rosy  feet  and  fingers  dewy  wet. 

Leaving  the  woods  and  all  cool  gardens  gay 
With  tulips  and  the  scented  violet. 

Gone  are  the  wind-flower  and  the  adder-tongue 
And  the  sad  drooping  bell  wort,  and  no  more 
The  snowy  trilliums  crowd  the  forest's  floor: 

The  purpUng  grassy  are  no  longer  young. 
And  summer's  wide-set  door 

Cer  the  thronged  hills  and  the  broad  panting  earth 
Lets  in  the  torrent  of  the  later  bloom. 

Haytlme.  and  harvest,  and  the  after  mirth. 
The  slow,  soft  rain,  the  rushing  thunder-plume. 

Note  how  noiselessly  the  human  sspeots 
**  hay- time  and  harvest "  steal  in  at  the  end  to 
take  us  from  the  realm  of  wild  nature  into  that 
half.tamed  world  which  Thoreau,  in  spite  of 
all  misrepresentations  of  him,  maintained  to 
be  the  best  theme  for  literature.  In  this  case 
the  quiet  phrase  serves  the  same  purpose  as 
when  Sir  Philip  Sidney  flings  out  the  glowing 
description  of  his  Arcadia,  and  puts  into  it,  as 
the  centre  of  the  whole  display  of  delight, 
**  there  a  shepherd- boy  piping,  as  though  he 
should  never  be  old.'' 

*Uttle  Rhymes  for  LitUe  People,'  by  Anna 
M.  Pratt  (Cleveland  :  Lemperly),  is  more  suc- 
cessful than  books  of  deliberate  nonsense  and 
child-talk  are  wont  to  be,  and  one  of  the  poems 
is  so  odd  and  unexpected  in  its  outcome  as 
to  have  already  won  a  great  newspaper  and 
school  success,  thus  (p.  81) : 

A  MOBTUmfO  MISTAKE. 

I  studied  my  tables  over  and  over,  and  backward  and 

forward  too; 
But  I  couldn't  remember  six  times  nine,  and  I  dldnt 

know  what  to  do, 
TIO  sister  told  me  to  play  with  my  doll  and  not  to 

bother  my  head. 
"  If  you  call  her  •  Fifty  four '  for  a  whUe,  you-U  learn  It 

by  heart,*'  she  said. 

80  X  took  my  t%rorlU,  Mary  Ann  (thoogb  I  thought 
*twas  a  dMadfol  shame 


To  give  such  a  perfectly  lovely  child  such  a  perfectly 
horrid  name), 

And  I  called  her  my  dear  little  "Fifty-four"  a  hun- 
dred times. tlUI  knew 

The  answer  of  six  times  nine  as  well  as  the  answer 
of  two  times  two. 

Next  day  Elisabeth  Wlgglesworth.  who  always  acts  so 

Said  ^8Ix  dmes  nine  Is  fifty- two,"  and  I  nearly  laughed 
aloud! 

But  I  wished  I  hadn't  when  teacher  said,  **  Now,  Doro- 
thy, tell,  if  you  can." 

For  I  thought  of  my  doll,  and— sakes  alive!— I  answered, 
—"Mary  Ann!" 

There  is  a  tradition  that  Dr.  S.  Weir  Hit 
chell  earned  in  his  youth  a  book  of  MS. 
poems  to  be  inspected  by  the  late  Dr.  O.  W. 
Holmes,  and  was  advised  by  that  gentleman— 
speaking  from  his  own  experience — to  acquire 
his  medical  reputation  first  and  then  print 
what  he  wished.  He  has  certainly  fulfilled 
both  precepts,  as  his  *  Collected  Poems '  (Cen- 
tury Co.)  includes  the  substance  of  no  less  than 
seven  volumes  in  verse,  besides  a  preliminary 
advertisement  of  six  novels  and  two  books  of 
essays.  So  vast  a  range  of  activity,  for  one 
still  otherwise  engaged  in  an  absorbing  pro. 
fession,  might  awaken  suspicion  of  slovenly 
nork,  and  yet  the  dramatic  studies  of  Dr. 
Mitchell  are  never  slovenly— we  cannot  say 
quite  as  much  for  some  of  his  shorter  pieces— 
and  we  have  before  now,  in  noticing  the  sepa- 
rate volumes,  conceded  to  him  a  distinct, 
though  not  absolutely  controlling  and  domi- 
nating, power  as  a  dramatist. 

'Nymphs,  Nixies,  and  Naiads:  Legends  of 
the  Rhine,'  by  M.  A.  B.  Evans,  with  illustra- 
tions by  Wm.  A.  McCullough  (Putnamt),  is  a 
little  book  on  the  plan  of  those  Rheinsfigen 
which  are  sold  along  the  famous  river,  with 
versified  legends  from  the  different  localities— 
the  traditions  of  the  Lorelei,  Bishop  Hatto,  and 
the  rest.  It  is  pleasantly  done,  but  not  bril- 
liantly,  and  good  translations  of  the  German 
ballads  would  on  the  whole  be  better.  *  Ame- 
rica Liberata,'  by  Robert  H.  Vickers  (Chicago: 
Kerr),  is  a  little  book  without  much  interest  as 
poetry,  but  possessing  a  good  deal  as  an  epic 
describing  the  South  American  revolutions,  of 
which  events  we  need  to  refresh  our  knowledge, 
especially  when  so  much  attention  is  now  at- 
tracted to  the  affairs  of  our  Southern  neigh- 
bors. *  The  River  Bend,  and  Other  Poems,'  by 
Tacitus  Hussey  (Des  Moines,  Iowa:  Carter  & 
Hussey),  is  a  sort  of  home  product  with  home- 
made illustrations.  The  book  has,  without 
signal  merit,  a  genuine  quality  which  is  not 
unattractive,  except  that  the  shadow  of  Riley 
hangs  over  it,  as  over  so  much  Western  Ameri- 
can poetry,  and  makes  it  seem  imitative  and 
even  a  little  second-hand.  There  is  at  the  end 
of  the  book  a  prose  sketch  called  '*A  River 
Idyl"  which  strikes  us  as  being  more  simple 
and  enjoyable,  on  the  whole,  than  any  of  the 
verses. 

*  Armenian  Poems  Rendered  into  English 
Verse,*  by  AUce  Stone  Black  well  (Boston: 
Roberts),  is  an  ingenious  transfusion,  through 
two  hands,  of  the  original  poetry,  which  is 
translated  into  prose  by  one  person  and  mould- 
ed into  verse  by  another.  The  poems  survive 
this  double  process  as  well  as  might  be  expect- 
ed—that is  to  say,  not  very  well;  but  there  is 
much  of  the  essence  of  vigorous  national  poetry 
in  them,  even  at  the  end,  and  the  book  will 
serve  to  renew  the  general  sympathy  with  that 
wronged  race— a  sympathy  which  shows  as  yet 
no  signs  of  waning.  But  as  compared  with  the 
Rumanian  ballads  published  in  *  The  Bard  of 
the  Dembovitsa,*  for  instance,  they  seem 
neither  powerful  nor  picturesque.  The  best 
aspect  of  *  Sunshine  and  Shadow,*  by  Caroline 
Edwards  Prentiss  (Putnams),  is  in  iu  choice  of 
subjects.  These  are  full  of  local  coloring. 
''  Summsr's  Calendar,**  for  instane^  comprises 


poems  on  the  ox-eyed  daisy,  the  pond-lily,  and 
the  golden-rod;  and  elsewhere  there  are  verses 
on  violet,  anemone,  bluet  (or  Houstonia),  but- 
tercup, morning  glory,  arbutus,  wild-rose,  In- 
dian pipe  (or  ghost-flower),  and  even  poison- 
ivy,  which  last,  we  believe,  even  Emily  Dick- 
inson has  not  included  in  her  weird  gallery. 
This  alone  would  give  to  the  present  volume  a 
sense  of  elevation  above  mediocrity,  though 
the  handling  of  these  simple  themes  is  not  al- 
ways as  successful  as  their  selection.  The 
novel  binding  of  the  book,  a  sort  of  leather  or 
leatherette,  we  cannot  quite  commend. 

A  charming  little  edition  of  the  pretty,  old 
French  tale,  *  Aucassin  and  Nicolette *  (Boston : 
Ck>peland  &  Day),  has  the  prose  as  translated 
bjM.  S.  Henry  and  the  verse  by  E.  W.  Thom- 
son, and  is,  as  always,  something  unique  in 
literature.  The  same  very  enterprising  firm 
have  issued,  as  another  volume  of  their  delicate 
''Oaten  Stop'*  series,  'Soul  and  Sense,*  by 
Hannah  Parker  Kimball,  a  collection  of  short 
meditative  poems,  carefully  finished  and  al- 
ways with  a  certain  amount  of  thought  and 
power,  but  pervadingly  sad.  Mr.  William 
Vincent  Byers  is  his  own  publisher  of  'The 
Glory  of  the  Oods,  and  Other  Odes ;  Sonnets 
and  Ballads  in  Sequence ;  with  a  note  on 
the  relations  of  the  Horatian  Ode  to  the 
Tuscan  Sonnet.*  Whatever  genesis  he  may 
find  for  the  sonnet  measure,  he  certain- 
1y  tests  it  too  severely  when  he  offers  us  a 
yolume  of  166  poems  in  that  measure;  it  is 
something  which  even  Rossetti  would  not  dare 
offer  to  his  most  enamoured  readers.  It  does 
not  help  the  matter  that  he  tortures  some  of 
them  into  a  lilting  measure  and  calls  them 
ballads. 

The  poems  of  Caroline  and  Alice  Duer  (New 
York  :  Richmond)  are  somewhat  unequal,  but 
deserve  to  be  praised  for  this  vigorous  ballad, 
with  which  they  open,  and  which  is,  just  now. 
what  the  daily  newspapers  call  "timely  **: 

AN  INTERNATIONAL  EPISODE. 
CMaroh  19,  1880.) 

We  were  ordered  to  Samoa  from  the  coast  of  Panama, 

And  for  two  long  months  we  sailed  the  unequal  sea, 

TIU  we  made  the  horseshoe  harbor  with  Ita  curving 

Smelt  the  good  green  smeU  of  grass  and  shrub  and 
tre<j. 
We  had  barely  room  for  swinging  with  the  Ude- 

Tbere  were  many  of  us  crowded  4n  the  bay : 
Three  Germans,  and  the  EngUvh  ship,  beside 

Our  three- and  from  the  Trenton^  where  she  lay. 
Through  the  sunset  calms  and  after. 
We  could  hear  the  shrUl  sweet  laughter 

Of  the  children's  voices  on  the  shore  at  play. 

We  all  knew  s  storm  was  coming,  but,  dear  God !  no 
man  could  dream  ^  ^   ^  ^ 

Of  the  furious  heU-horrors  of  that  day : 
Through  the  roar  of  winds  and  waters  we  could  hear 
wild  voices  scream—  ,  ^  .  .  ^-     .^^. 

See  the  rocking  masU  reel  by  us  through  the  spray. 
In  the  gale  we  drove  and  drifted  helplessly. 

With  our  rudder  gone,  our  engine  fires  drowned, 
and  none  might  hope  another  hour  to  see ; 

For  all  the  air  was  desperate  with  the  sound 
Of  the  brave  ships  rent  asunder- 
Of  the  »brleklng  souls  sucked  under, 

'Noath  the  waves,  where  many  a  good  man  s  grave 
was  found. 

About  noon,  upon  our  quarter,  from  the  deeper  gloom 

*'caroe  the  EngUsh  num^f-war  CaUiope :         .^^„  . 
••We  have  lost  our  anchors,  comrades,  and  though 
smell  the  chances  are. 
We  mu»t  steer  for  safety  and  the  open  sea. 
Then  we  climbed  aloft  to  cheer  her  as  she  pa*»»a  .  ^. 
Through  the  tempert  and  the  blackness  and  the 

••  Now?Ood  speed  you.  though  the  shout  should  be  our 

Through  the  channel  where  the  maddened  breakers 

Through  the  wUd  sea*s  bill  and  hollow 
On  the  path  we  cannot  follow.  %_^^^  •• 

To  your  women  and  your  children  and  your  bo«ne.'» 

Oh !  remember  lU  good  brothers.   We  two  people  speak 

^^A'n^ycS? native  land  was  mother  to  our  land : 
But  the  Bead,  perhaps,  U  hasty  when  the  naUon'slieari 

**ind  we  prate  of  things  we  do  not  understand. 
But  the  day  when  we  stood  face  to  face  with  death. 

(I  pon  whose  face  few  men  may  look  and  teU). 
4s  long  as  you  could  bear,  or  we  bad  breath. 

Four  hTOrt  red  voices  cheered  you  out  of  heU. 
9y  the  will  of  that  «tem  chorus. 
Ry  the  motherland  which  bore  us, 

Jodga  If  we  do  not  love  each  other  weU. 


4r40 


'l^lie    !N^atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  16 14 


RECENT   LAW   BOOEB. 

Thx  tint  edition  of  Mr.  William  Edirard  Hairs 
*  Treatise  on  International  Law '  appeared  in 
1880;  at  the  time  of  his  death  in  Norember, 
1894.  the  fourth  edition  was  in  press,  and  part 
of  it  bad  been  finally  revised  by  the  author. 
As  now  published  by  Macmillan  it  contains  a 
oonsiderable  amount  of  new  matter  not  found 
in  any  of  the  previous  editions,  relating  to 
protectorates  and  spheres  of  influence,  territo- 
rial waters.  Jurisdiction  over  foreism  ships, 
nationality^  the  Bering  Sea  controversy,  and 
the  principles  of  law  applicable  to  the  subjects 
of  a  neutral  nation  who  may,  before  the  out- 
break of  war,  be  in  the  service  of  one  of  the 
beUigerents,  and  who  nuty  be  made  the  object 
of  the  flrst  hostilities,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Kouj  $hing.  These  and  other  additions  enhance 
the  value  of  a  work  which  proceeds  from  a 
publicist  who  has  been  described  by  an  emi- 
nent contemporary,  also  a  personal  friend,  as 
**one  of  the  most  accomplished  men  of  his 
generation."  The  son  of  a  physician  who  was 
attached  to  the  court  of  Hanover  and  then  to 
the  British  legation  at  Naples,  he  early  acquir- 
ed a  knowledge  of  modem  languages  and  a 
taste  for  art,  both  of  which  he  subsequently 
cultivated.  He  studied  law  and  was  called  to 
the  bar;  but  he  diversified  his  pursuit  of  his 
profession,  which  perhaps  was  never  very  assi- 
duouii,  by  various  studies  and  extensive  travel. 
He  had  collected  materials  for  a  history  of 
civilisation  and  a  history  of  the  British  colo- 
nies, when  be  was  led  to  concentrate  his  atten- 
tion on  international  law,  in  which  he  soon  be- 
came an  acknowledged  authority. 

His  *  Treatise  on  International  Law,'  which 
was  preceded  in  1874  by  a  small  volume  on  the 
'  Rights  and  Duties  of  Neutrals,'  achieved  im- 
mediate success.  It  is  characteristic  of  the 
man.  Without  attempting  the  cumulative  and 
somewhat  ostentatious  show  of  learning  of 
Philllmore,  it  combines  the  results  of  deep  re- 
search, discriminating  thought,  and  clear  com- 
mon sense,  and  approaches  nearer  to  the  stan 
dard  of  Wheaton's  '  Elements '  than  any  other 
English  treatise  on  the  same  subject,  though  it 
lacks  the  calm  philosophical  spirit,  the  judicial 
tone,  and  sometimes  the  absolute  accuracy  of 
that  great  masterpiece.  In  its  discussion  of 
the  laws  and  usages  of  war,  and  of  the  various 
questions  arising  out  of  the  existence  of  a  state 
of  war,  it  is  especially  comprehensive  and 
thorough;  and  in  this  category  we  desire  par- 
ticularly to  mention  its  treatment  of  the  sub^ 
ject  of  neutrality ~a  subject  which  has,  in  the 
course  of  the  last  hundred  years,  acquired  a 
definite  form  and  attained  an  immense  impor- 


Dr.  T.  J.  Lawrence's  *  Principles  of  Interna- 
tional Law'  (Boston:  D.  C.  Heath  ft  Co.)  ap 
parently  comprises  the  elaborated  text  of  leo 
tures  of  which  the  syllabus  was  published  in 
1886,  under  the  title  of  *  A  Handbook  of  PubUc 
International  Law,'  a  manual  the  excellence  of 
which  was  attested  by  its  adoption  by  the  Bri- 
tisb  Admiralty  for  the  use  of  officers  of  the 
royal  navy.  The  '  Principles,'  like  the  *  Hand- 
book,'  is  divided  into  four  parts,  but  it  contains 
four  more  chapters  than  the  latter,  partly  rep- 
resenting  the  subdivision  of  snbjecto.  Some 
of  tbe  definitions  of  the  *  Handbook '  have  been 
slightly  condensed,  and  some  have  been  ampli- 
fied, but  not  always  to  advantage.  For  ex- 
ample, the  *  Handbook'  defines  independence 
as  the  *>  right  of  a  state  to  manage  all  ito  af- 
fairs, whether  external  or  internal,  without 
interference  from  other  states";  the  'Princi- 
ples' adds,  "as  long  as  it  reispects  tbe  corre^ 
spondlng  right  poftaei^ed  by  each  fuUy  sove- 


reign member  of  the  family  of  natioos."  This 
qualification  seems  to  have  been  so  expressed 
as  to  exclude  the  idea  that  a  suzerain  may  lose 
its  right  of  independence  by  ceasing  to  respect 
tbe  rights  of  a  subject  state,  possessed  of  some 
of  the  attributes  of  sovereignty.  But,  assuming 
this  to  be  so,  let  us  suppose  that  the  aggressor 
is  a  sovereign  state  other  than  the  suzorain. 
Is  not  the  legal  consequence  of  its  action  the 
same  as  if  tbe  state  whose  rights  it  had  failed 
to  rMpect  were  fully  sovereign  f 

While  we  are  of  c^oion  that  this  work  is  a 
useful  elementary  manual,  we  have  observed 
in  it  several  apparently  inadvertent  state- 
ments, to  two  of  which  we  will  refer.  In 
section  IIS  it  is  said  that  the  United  Stotes 
"  decline  to  recognise  that  any  change  of  alle- 
giance has  taken  place  when  an  American 
woman  marries  a  foreigner,  though  they  re- 
gard a  foreign  woman  married  to  an  Ameri- 
can as  an  American  subject."  The  authority 
cited  for  this  statement  is  Wharton*s  'Inter- 
national Law  Digest,*  section  186.  But  an  ex- 
amination of  the  whole  section  will  show  that 
while  it  has  not  been  held  that  the  marriage  of 
an  American  woman  to  an  alien  subjects  her 
to  all  the  disabilities  of  alienage,  such  as  ina- 
bility to  inherit  real  property,  it  is  tbe  preva- 
lent view  that  her  political  status  follows  that 
of  her  husband  at  least  during  coverture: and  it 
is  hardly  to  be  supposed  that  the  United 
States  would  claim  a  right  to  intervene,  in 
behalf  of  the  American  wife  of  a  foreigner, 
against  the  action  of  her  husband's  govern- 
ment. Again,  in  section  166,  on  the  effect  of 
war  00  treaties  to  which  the  belligerents  are 
partiea,  there  is  a  disgram  in  which  it  is  said, 
as  to  treaties  for  regulating  ordinary  social 
and  commercial  intercourse:  "Effect  doubt- 
f  uL  Generally  the  treaty  of  peace  deals  with 
such  matters;  if  not,  it  is  best  to  take  the 
stipulations  as  merely  suspended  during  war." 
For  this  statement  the  text  affords  no  actual 
authority.  Two  judicial  decisions  are  cited, 
but  they  relate  to  rights  in  real  property,  and 
refer  to  the  peculiar  conditions  resulting  from 
the  division  of  the  British  Empire  at  the  close 
of  tbe  American  Revolution.  The  author  ob- 
eervsa,  it  is  true,  that,  while  "  some  treaties 
of  peace  expressly  stipulate  for  tbe  revival  of 
postal  and  commercial  agreements  subsisting 
before  tbe  war,"  in  other  cases,  where  the 
treaties  of  peace  contained  no  such  stipula- 
tion,  agreements  of  the  kind  in  question  ''have 
been  acted  upon  after  the  peace  on  the  under- 
standing that  they  were  restored  to  efficiency 
by  it";  but  of  such  tsacit  revival  he  gives  no 
example.  Hall  says  that,  in  respect  of  such 
treaties,  the  simplest  course  is  "  to  take  them 
to  be  all  annulled."  This  view  has  been  so  pre- 
valent among  publicists,  has  been  so  frequent 
ly  recognized  by  governments,  and  has  so 
much  of  the  force  of  reason  to  support  it,  that 
the  opposite  view  would  seem  to  require  sub- 
stantial proof  of  its  validity,  though  it  may 
find  sanction  in  loose  expressions  of  some 
writers.  The  work  contains  an  excellent 
statement  of  the  distinct  subjects  of  neutrality 
and  neutralization;  and  it  properly  discusses 
certain  recent  aspects  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
as  involving  the  assertion  of  the  primacy  of 
the  United  States  in  America. 

The  latest  addition  to  the  Hornbook  series 
is  a  volume  on  the  *  Interpretation  and  Con- 
struction of  the  Laws,'  by  H  C.  BUck  (St. 
Paul:  West  Publishing  Co.).  It  is  designed  to 
elucidate  tbe  cardinal  modem  rule  that  a 
court's  chief  duty  is  to  seek  out  and  enforce 
the  actual  meaning  and  will  of  the  lawmaking 
power.  The  law  is  stated  in  the  form  of  rules,  of 
which  th^re  are  a  hundred  and  sLxtiy-one^  and 


th^re  Is  a  final  cbapt^r  on  the  tuterpretaticai 
of  judlcliil  df'dslotis  and  Ifae  d^trifie  of  pt^ 
c«uleDts«,  whieb  will  be  found  of  value.  Bcquq 
t w  en  ty-foMT  bun  d  red  caeee  are  citfd»  and  among 
tbem  we  are  somewhat  surprtoed  Tkf>%  to  Qod 
G^lpcke  tn.  Dabciqiip^  decided  by  the  Buprrme 
Court  of  tbe  United  bUtet  tn  iSeS,  a  very  tAvd- 
iEig  autfaorit;  00  tbe  subject  of  xtart  drei*u. 
U  is  mucb  lafer  and  far  le«a  difficult  to  write 
about  decisions  than  it  is  tr^  attempt  toembodj 
in  acctjrmte  and  terse  LaT^gtiage  tbe  piiDCicilei 
of  Iaw  which  tfaey  embody.  Mr.  BlAc>k's  llttte 
code  of  inter  pre  (at  Ion  i&  on  th«>  whole  w«U  eo&. 
•trueted;  here  and  there  ft  lacks  precfsjon  sfid 
accuracy  of  statemeut.  Rule  140,  fortostanoe, 
Is  as  foUow«:  *'Id  law  a  pret^ent  11  an  ad* 
judged  CA«e  or  decUloo  of  a  court  of  justloa 
considered  as  furni§bitig  a  rule  of  sntborltj 
for  the  determination  of  an  Identical  orslmtlar 
CHse  afterwards  aritiitig  or  a  similar  quMtion 
of  law."  The  Erst  half  of  this  le  perfectly  cor* 
rect^  A  precedeo  t  1b  a!  ways  a  eas*.  and  al  wmyi 
SQ  adjudged  csHe;  and  when  fiucb  a  caee  is  ei- 
amined  as  a  precedent.  It  Is  always  for  the  pur^ 
poHe  of  exrractlDg  from  ft  a  rule  or  authorllj 
far  the  determf nation  Of  another  case.  But 
the  rest  of  the  rule  is  confuAin^,  It  appean 
that  a  precedent  wUl  furnish  a  rtile  in  aa 
'MdeoUca]  ^^  or  *' similar^'  cam^  ot  for  a  ^'sIaiI^ 
lar  '  question  of  law.  The  lofereDce  seems  ir- 
r^btlble  that  it  will  not  dispoee  of  the  trffrntv 
cat  qyestiou  of  law  if  jt  arises  agmlsi.  Tbfs  ii 
of  course  abctird.  and  not  wbat  Mr  Black  tfi. 
tended.  Rule  148  contains  a  d«>fiaitlon  of  a 
(ficfum;  aewen  Hoes  of  It  are  wboll  j  suptrHa- 
ous.  No.  149  is  balf  rule  and  half  cots  merit 
Nos.  150  and  151  correctly  stete  the  rule  of 
ft  are  dtcuis^  but  conclude  with  tbe  statement 
tfaat  il  does  not  apply  in  **  exceptjon&l  cases  ^ 
if  there  are  "  urgent  reasons."  This  is  a  favor- 
ite  but  v^rf  bad  way  of  saying  Ibat  tbere  are 
cases  in  whicb  a  rule  of  dt'cisloti  is  not  foil  owed; 
but  tbere  is  hardly  any  rule  in  tbe  world  goT- 
emipg  bumao  conduct  to  which  there  are  not 
erceptioiii^  aod  it  is  far  better  oot  to  use  a  tvi^ 
mula  to  cbaraoterixn  m.  particular  rule  which  is 
uniformly  true  of  nearly  every  rule.  The  ei- 
ceptiona  to  tbe  rule  and  tbe  urgency  of  the  rea- 
sopB  for  them  must  in  tbe  end  be  stated  and  ex- 
plained separately.  On  the  other  haod»  Rale 
153  contains  a  rery  good  enumeration  of  tbe 
coniai derations  which  bear  upon  the  force  and 
effect  to  be  giFtu  to  precedent!.  At  p  40A  the 
fundamental  di Terences  between  the  principle 
of  res  adjudicate  and  *tare.  dedsU  are  pointed 
out  with  great  cltameBS. 

Tbe  subject  of  iulerpretatlou  and  con«trui> 
tiou  will  always  be  a  fascinating  one  to  mindl 
of  a  logical  and  pbilosophlcal  ca^t.  On  look- 
ing oyer  a  book  such  as  Mr«  Black 'a,  one  it 
i^ truck  with  tbe  multitude  of  problems  still 
open  to  discussion,  wbile  (owing  to  the  fact 
that  our  coDstitution^  embody  the  primary 
principles  of  common  rigbt  aod  civil  lit^erty  In 
the  form  of  a  written  charter)  in  no  country 
are  tbe  materials  for  a  sound  soltttioa  of  sncb 
questions  so  abundant  as  with  na.  All  our 
great  constitutional  cou&ictB  for  the  hundred 
years  of  our  existence  as  a  nation  have  turned 
upou  the  meauJog  which  the  law  should  de- 
clare to  be  the  true  construction  of  a  few  print* 
ed  words.  As  has  often  been  said-  in  tbe  legal 
forutUf  words  are  things:  and  wherever  writt« 
Ci^Dittitutions  as  well  as  the  rule  of  precedent 
are  tbe  Kupreiue  Iaw^  tbe  big  beet  qut^tftions  of 
all,  tbe  questions  on  which  the  hyeb,  liberty, 
and  property  of  milliotia  depend,  hitxgv  upon 
the  meaning  of  wortifl.  Were  it  not  for  Iht 
enligbt^ned  manner  in  which  courts  have  ap> 
plied  tbe  principilee  of  luterpretation  and  e^m- 
struction  to  questions  ol  pnblie  a&d  prifasa 


is 


June  4,  1896] 


Tlie   IN"atioii. 


4:41 


light  OB  tbey  hmw  aiiteD,  the  Unloo  itMlf 
mighli  before  now,  baTe  oome  to  a  yfolent 
end. 

The  fourth  editioo  of  Mr.  Jemce  W.  Gererd*8 
well  known  treetiae  on  *Titlee  to  Reel  Eetete 
in  the  8Ute  of  New  York*  (Baker,  Voorbie 
&  Co.)  giree  aU  the  code  and  statute  cbangee. 
with  notes  of  decMons,  since  the  last  edi- 
tion. The  editor,  Mr.  Edgar  Logan,  who  was 
one  of  the  editors  of  the  third  edition,  states 
in  a  preface  that  he  has  bad  great  assist- 
ance from  the  author.  Between  the  two 
editi'^ns  there  is  an  apparent  difference  of 
only  twentr-two  pi(ges,  but  this  is  owing  to 
a  change  of  type,  which  masks  Tery  large  and 
important  additions.  There  is,  we  suppose,  no 
n«e  in  protesting  against  the  absence  of  a 
Table  of  Casee,  the  success  of  a  standard  book 
without  one  haTing,  no  doubts  convinced  the 
author  that  such  tables  are  superfluous ;  we 
always  find,  neTertbekss,  that  in  actually 
tracing  a  doctrine  or  proposition  through  the 
courts  the  name  of  a  case  is  quite  as  important 
a  clue  as  an  index  title.  How  many  thousand 
eases  are  cited,  we  haTe  no  accurate  means  of 
Judging.  We  should  not  be  surprised  at  being 
told  that  there  are  OTer  15.000.  At  any  rate, 
the  learning  packed  into  this  volume  is  pro 
digious  in  amount,  and  makes  one  shudler  to 
think  wbat  it  must  swell  to  in  another  fifty 
years.  This,  it  must  be  remembered,  is  a  real 
property  lawyer's  voile  meeum  for  a  single 
State.  No  one  can  follow  its  rules  blindly  in 
another  Jurisdiction,  not  because  the  prtoci* 
pies  of  land  law  are  not  the  same  throughout 
the  United  States,  but  because  of  the  perpetual 
changes  in  legislation. 

Mr.  Gerard's  book  is  made  up  in  large  part 
of  statutes  many  of  which  have  introduced 
innovations  peculiar  to  New  York.  Ever  since 
the  tioie  of  Lord  Coke,  for  instance,  it  had  been 
the  rule  that  if  land  were  devised  or  granted 
to  A  for  hfe,  and  after  liis  decease  to  his  heirs 
and  assigns  for  ever,  A  took  the  whole  estate 
in  fee.  The  rule  was  connected  with  feudal 
military  tenuree,  and,  once  explained,  a  child 
in  law  could  never  forget  it.  A  fee  must  not 
be  in  abeyanc^^  because,  if  it  were,  there  would 
be  no  one  who  could  discharge  the  service* 
incident  to  it  and  due  to  the  lord;  but  since, 
as  long  as  A  is  alive,  no  one  can  tell  who 
his  heirs  may  be,  it  was  impossible  for  such  a 
grant  or  devise  to  vest  a  remainder  in  them; 
ergOt  the  whole  fee  must  vest  in  A.  This  U 
what  must  have  t>een  inUmUd,  This  rule  was 
long  the  law  in  this  State;  but  the  revisers  of 
1880,  who  seem  to  have  been  infected  with  the 
delusion  that  the  way  to  make  law  clear  and 
comprehensible  was  to  sweep  away  all  rulek 
the  original  reasons  for  which  had  ceased  to 
exist,  abolished  it  on  the  ground  that  the  feu- 
del  system  had  oome  to  an  end.  •  The  oonse 
quence  was  not|  as  they  hoped,  a  simplifying 
of  the  drawing  of  wiUs,  but  a  new  batch  of  de- 
cisions determining  the  effects  and  limits  of 
the  change.  In  other  Statee  the  old  role  pre- 
vails, so  that  the  decisions  here  since  IttSO  are 
in  Massachusetts,  for  example,  of  no  authori- 
ty. The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  the  rule 
against  perpetultiee,  which  makes  it  impossi 
ble  to  tie  up  proper^  for  more  ttian  a  certain 
period.  The  common-  law  rule  on  the  subject 
made  the  period  a  life  or  li?ee  in  being,  and 
twenty* one  years  afterwards.  This  rule  was 
English  in  origin,  but  was  adopted  generally 
in  this  country,  and  in  Uiose  States  where  it 
still  exists  It  is  not  found  to  produce  any  evil 
results.  But  it  was  not  good  enough  for  tlie 
revisers  of  1880,  who  changed  it  to  two  Uvea, 
with  the  result  that  for  any  one  in  this  State  I 
who  wishes  to  provide  for  grandchildren,  no 


lawyer  can  safely  draw  a  will  without  a  care- 
ful study  of  the  very  peculiar  local  rules  of 
construction  which  have  been  laid  down  since 
that  time. 

These  are  two  notorious  instances  of  the 
confusion  which  oomes  from  even  well>meant 
and  intelligent  interference  by  the  legislaturee 
with  settled  oommon-law  rules  of  property. 
What  such  legislatures  as  we  have  now  would 
do  if  they  allowed  themselves  full  swing  in 
tbeee  matters,  one  can  only  guess.  Fortunate- 
ly, they  are  conscious  of  their  own  ignorance 
and  incompetence  to  deal  with  them,  and  usu- 
ally there  are  no  powerful  Interests  struggling 
at  Albany  for  the  enactment  of  new  rules 
changing  the  law  of  property.  Notwithstand- 
ing tbis,  balf  the  volume  of  Judicial  decisions 
which  goes  to  make  up  the  substance  of  such  a 
book  as  Mr.  Oerard*s  is  due  to  mistaken  and 
unneceesary  legis1ation>-and  to  nothing  else. 
So  long  as  we  have  legislaturee  of  the  present 
Aort,  it  is  absurd  to  groan  over  the  perpetually 
increasing  volume  of  decision  and  annotation. 
For  tbe  practising  lawyer  the  field  of  inquiry 
covers  all  the  casee^not  such  only  as  may  be 
valuable  as  illustrating  principles. 

The  third  edition  of  Blr.  D.  8.  Remsen*s  '  Ma- 
nual of  Intestate  Soccesrion  in  New  York* 
(Bftker,  Voorbis  &  Co ),  forms  a  convenient 
little  book  of  reference  of  some  hundred  and 
fifty  pages.  The  law  of  inheriranoe  and  dis- 
tribution is.  fortunately,  rarely  meddled  with 
by  the  Legislature.  Ltst  year  an  attempt  was 
made  to  alter  it  by  making  a  man's  widow  one 
of  his  direct  heirs,  and  a  law  was  passed  for 
this  purpose  in  March.  It  aroused  such  an 
amount  of  indignation  on  the  part  of  thoee 
who  knew  what  confusion  the  change  would 
cause,  that  in  June  the  act  was  repealed;  it 
was,  however,  in  force  for  nearly  three 
months,  and  may  have  given  rise  to  questions 
of  property  yet  to  be  disposed  of  by  the  courts. 
It  doee  not  seem  to  be  noticed  by  Mr.  Remsen. 

In  tbe  second  edition  of  his  '  Law  of  Collate- 
ral and  Direct  Inheritance.  Legacy,  and  Soo- 
cessioo  Taxes'  (West  Publishing  Company), 
Mr.  B.  F.  Doe  Passes  states  that  since  1890  this 
system  of  taxation  has  been  introduced  into 
Maine,  Massachusetts,  Ohio,  Dllnois,  Califor- 
oia,  Connecticut,  and  New  Jersey,  to  say 
nothing  of  Canada  and  Australia.  It  is  evi- 
dently  in  a  fair  way  to  become  universal.  In 
New  York,  lineal  heirs  pay  1  per  cent,  and 
coUaterals  ft,  and  from  1885  to  18M  the  SUte 
has  collected  by  meant  of  this  tax  eome  $1 1,- 
OOaOOO.  In  England  the  revenue  from  ''  deatb 
duties"  of  one  kind  and  another  is  said  to 
amount  now  to  more  than  i£ll,000.000  annual- 
ly. Mr.  Doe  Passoe  suggests  that  in  New 
York  a  very  small  increase  in  the  inheritance- 
tax-rate  would  enable  us  to  dispense  with  the 
personal- property  tax  altogether.  The  great 
recommendation  of  the  tax  is  that  it  is  easily 
collectible,  and  that  the  cost  of  collection  is 
«malL  In  England  a  new  inheritance  tax  (im- 
poeed  in  1894)  of  1  per  oent.  on  all  real  and 
personal  property  was  strenuously  opposed  as 
increasing  tlie  heavy  burdens  already  weigh- 
ing upon  land.  In  this  country  the  succession 
tax  is  mainly  a  personal  tax,  and  has  been 
attacked  as  unconstitutionaL  The  courts,  how- 
ever, have  generally  upheld  it  as  being  a  tax 
on  the  privilege  of  succeeding  to  property.  It 
has  led  to  many  curiosities  of  oonstruotion. 
In  Massachusetts  the  privilege  has  been  held 
to  be  a  *' commodity,"  while  elsewhere  the 
attempt  to  secure  a  ruling  that  property  in* 
veeted  in  Government  bonds  is  exempt  frcHU  it 
has  failed ;  tbe  courts  holding  that  the  person 
piling  the  tax  doee  not  pay  it  on  tbe  bonds, 
but  to  secure  the  privilege  of  succeeding  to 


them.  The  tax  has  enabled  one  court  to  da> 
dde  upon  tbe  exact  nature  of  money  awarded 
for  French  spoliation  claims  ;  the  ruling  being 
that  the  money  is  a  mere  gratuity  from  Con- 
gress to  the  heirs,  and  not  inherited  from  any- 
body whatever.  The  preeent  edition  seems 
very  full  and  useful. 

A  new  edition  of  Edmond  Kelly's  *  French 
Law  of  Marriage  and  Divorce,'  by  Oliver  B. 
Bodington  (Baker,  Voorhis  ft  Co.),  is  marked 
by  an  increase  in  bulk,  though  the  number  of 
cases  cited  is  only  forty-five;  it  is  ten  years 
since  the  first  edition  appeared.  The  subject 
is  to  us  one  of  very  considerable  and  growing 
importance,  not  merely  because  many  Ameri- 
cans live  in  Paris,  but  because  international 
marriages  become  more  and  more  common 
every  year,  while  the  law  governing  tbe  con- 
tract of  msrrisge  and  the  relation  of  husband 
and  wife  is  wholly  different  in  tbe  two  coun- 
tries. American  parents  whose  daughter  mar^ 
riee  an  Englishman  have  a  general  notion  of 
what  will  be  their  daughter's  position  as  re- 
gards iH^perty,  social  and  household  hfa.  etc. 
If  their  daughter  becomes  engaged  to  a  French- 
man, they  know  little  or  nothing  about  the 
world  into  which  she  is  going.  NevertheleeB 
tbey  have  it  in  tbeir  power  to  know  in  advance 
much  more  about  tbe  effects  of  a  French  than 
of  an  English  marriage.  The  whole  French 
law  of  tbe  domestic  relations  a  compromise 
between  legal  arrangemente  handed  down  from 
the  days  of  Justinian  and  innovations  intro- 
duced in  the  intereet  of  modem  individualism 
and  liberty  of  contract—is  at  odds  with  our 
system.  To  begin  with,  one  condition  of  valid 
marriage  in  France  is  tbe  consent  of  parents  or 
other  anceetors  in  tbe  ascendant  line;  and  since 
tbeee  may  be  of  different  sex  and  stand  in  an 
unequal  degree  of  consanguinity  to  the  person 
who  desires  tbeir  consent,  elaborate  rules  have 
been  formulated  in  order  that  some  decision 
may  be  reached.  Thus,  if  there  are  no  parents, 
but  a  grandmother  and  a  great-grandfather 
survive,  nearness  of  degree  prevails  over  con- 
siderations of  sex,  and  the  grandmother  has 
the  last  word;  but,  if  the  degreee  are  equal, 
the  grandfather  carries  tbe  day.  Fortunately 
for  tbe  peace  of  families,  the  number  of  persone 
of  marriageable  age  who  have  great-grandpa- 
rents living  and  capable  of  taking  an  active 
and  intelligent  interest  in  the  matrimonial  da- 
signs  of  their  great-grandchildren  is  not  great. 
Supposing  the  coneent  obtained,  tbe  whole 
French  law  affecting  property  rights  under 
the  marriage  is  utterly  different  from  ours. 
An  Anglo-Saxon  marriage  settlement  deals,  as 
Mr.  Kelly  clearly  explains,  with  specifically 
deeignated  property,  while  a  French  eonircU 
de  mariag^  esUblishee  a  system  of  law  /br  Ue 
partU$,  governing  not  merely  the  determinate 
property  which  may  be  deecribed  in  it,  but 
various  classes  of  property  not  specifically  da- 
•igoated,  either  posseessd  at  the  time  of  the 
marriage  or  afterwards  acquired. 

We  have  nothing  in  our  law  or  marriage- 
customs  oorreaponding  to  the  various  r^ines 
of  the  French  code.  Indeed,  leaving  out  of 
view  marriage  settlemenu  (which  are  un- 
known except  among  the  well-to-do),  the  ea- 
sential  difference  between  the  property  rela- 
tions of  a  husband  and  wife  in  France  and 
America  is  that  in  one  country  the  whole  ma^ 
ter  is  regulated,  so  far  as  possible,  hn  advance 
(e.  g  ,  household  expenses  and  expansee  of  ediip 
cation  of  children),  while,  with  us,  it  is  all  left 
to  chance.  Marriage  is  proverbially  a  lottery; 
the  French  endeavor  to  eliminate  chance  as 
much  as  possible  from  the  result,  while  we 
practically  act  upon  the  principle  that  pro- 
vision U  impossibie,  and  each  household 


4t4rQ 


The    IN^ation* 


[VoL  62,  No.  16 1 4 


fight  it  out  for  iteelf.  Which  is  right?  We 
do  DOt  koow,  though  we  have  a  stroDg  sos- 
picioD  that  neither  system  could  be  well  trans- 
planted from  the  soil  of  which  it  is  a  growth. 
Mr.  Kelly  seems  to  think  that  the  French  rule 
of  the  legitimization  of  children  by  marriage 
after  their  birth  is  an  essential  feature  of  their 
system,  but  does  not  clearly  explain  his  reason 
for  thinking  so.  To  our  minds  it  is  simply  an 
enlightened  and  humane  rule,  which  should  be 
introduced  everywhere,  and  is  just  as  likely  to 
produce  good  retiults  in  New  York  (it  is  now 
the  law  of  this  State  by  L.  1805,  c.  531)  as  in 
France.  With  regard  to  breach  of  promise,  by 
the  way,  Mr.  Kelly  removes  a  common  mis- 
conception—that no  such  thing  is  known  in 
France.  It  is  true  that  a  lady  cannot  get 
thumping  damages  for  injury  to  her  feelings, 
but  a  contract  is  a  contract,  all  the  world 
over,  and  if  the  wronged  party  has  suflTered 
any  material  damage,  recoyery  may  be  had. 
In  a  recent  case  the  would  be  husband  recover- 
ed for  money  wasted  on  jewelry,  a  wedding 
ring,  and  presents  of  flowers  and  candy.  The 
English  judges  who  tried  within  a  year  or  two 
to  persuade  themselves  that  breach  of  promise 
of  marriage  was  a  tort^  had,  no  doubt,  not 
heard  of  this  judgment. 

Mr.  Arthur  O.  Sedgwick*s  *  Elements  of  Da. 
mages'  (Boston:  Little,  Brown  &  Ck>.)  is  not 
an  abridgment  of  tbe  well-known  text-book 
of  similar  title,  but  a  reSxammation  of 
the  subject,  having  different  form,  scope, 
and  purpose.  As  tbe  book  appears  in  the 
**  Student's  Series,'*  it  is  presumptively  intend- 
ed rather  for  study  than  for  reference;  but  it 
will  be  found  by  no  means  useless  by  practition- 
ers. The  method  adopted  is  to  state  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  law  of  damages  (so  far  as  possi- 
ble) as  rules  or  principles  of  law,  such  as  a 
court  might  lay  down  to  a  jury,  and  to  follow 
these  statements  with  the  cases  that  illustrate 
them.  The  plan  is  very  well  carried  out,  and 
students  will  And  the  subject  brought  within 
their  reach  in  a  systematic  and  comprehensive 
exposition.  The  most  interesting  part  of  the 
book,  from  a  scientific  point  of  view,  is  that 
showing  the  relation  of  the  modem  functions 
of  the  jury  to  the  development  of  the  law  of 
damages.  Nothing  can  be  more  instructive 
than  the  system  of  concurrent  jurisdiction 
now  exercised  by  the  court  and  jury,  and  its 
explanation  is  very  succinctly  given  by  Mr. 
Sedgwick. 
The  chief  interest  in  Mr.  Henry  L.  Clinton's 
Extraordinary  Cases'  (Harpers)  is  that  it  car. 
ries  us  back  to  a  period  in  the  administration 
of  criminal  justice  in  New  York  which  already 
seems  remote.  The  earlier  cases  in  it,  such  as 
those  of  Polly  Bodine  and  Henri  Carnal,  be- 
long to  a  time  when  it  was  still  common  for  the 
leaders  of  the  bar  to  be  retained  in  criminal 
cases,  when  judges  took  fees,  when  aldermen 
sat  as  side  judges,  when  judges  engaged  in 
newspaper  controversy  over  cases  pending  in 
their  courts,  and  when  reprieves  by  the  Gover- 
nor seem  to  have  been  as  common  as  stays  of 
proceedings  by  judges  became  later— indeed, 
when  it  was  still  to  be  decided  whether  a  judge 
bad  power  to  grant  a  stay  in  a  capital  case. 
We  have  found  the  case  of  Henri  Carnal  the 
most  interesting  in  the  boolc,  but  to  understand 
it  thoroughly  the  reader  must  consult  also  the 
decisions  in  the  rei>orts  to  which  Mr.  Clinton 
refers.  It  lasted  several  years,  and  ended  in  a 
substantial  triumph  for  the  defence.  The  ac 
cuhcd  was  tried  and  found  guilty  of  what 
seems  to  have  been  a  pUin  case  of  murder. 
Nevertheless,  Mr.  Clinton,  who  was  assigned  to 
defend  him,  succeeded  within  ten  minutes  in 
* '  planting  an  exception  "  in  the  case  which  took 


root  and  throve,  so  that  in  the  end  it  **  vitiated 
and  rendered  null  and  void  all  subsequent  pro- 
ceedings"; through  it  a  new  trial  became  neces 
sary,  and  on  this  (the  former  witnesses  having 
meantime  disappeared)  the  accused  pleaded 
guilty  to  a  low  degree  of  manslaughter,  was 
sentenced  to  a  short  term  of  imprisonment,  at 
the  expiration  of  which  he  married,  purchased 
a  farm  in  the  West,  settled  there,  and,  when  last 
heard  of,  was  **  doing  well."  The  laity,  who  can- 
not appreciate  legal  points,  will  not  enjoy  the 
story  as  much  as  Mr.  Clinton's  professional 
brethren.  The  merits,  for  obvious  reasons,  are 
not  gone  into;  the  case,  as  we  read  it,  is  an  excitp 
ing  game  between  the  district  attorney  and  the 
counsel  for  the  defence,  in  which  the  stakes  are 
the  life  of  the  defendant;  the  district  attorney 
tries  to  hang,  the  counsel  for  defence  to  pre- 
vent him;  the  judges  see  that  the  rules  of  the 
game  are  observed,  and  the  question  of  guilt 
or  innocence  is  wholly  immaterial,  excipt  so 
far  as  adverse  evidence  encountered  in  the  pro- 
gress of  the  game  may  handicap  one  side  or 
the  other. 


De  Quincey  and  hia  Friends,  By  James 
Hogg.  London:  Sampson  Low;  New  York: 
Scribners. 
Mr.  Jaxes  Hooo,  son  of  a  more  famous  pub- 
lisher, has  here  collected  a  mass  of  "personal 
recollections,  souvenirs,  and  anecdotes  "  of  De 
Quincey.  It  was  a  good  thing  to  do,  for  al- 
though much  of  the  volume  has  been  printed 
before,  the  articles,  which  contain  matter  of 
value  to  the  De  Quincey  student,  have  mostly 
escaped  such  biographers  as  Dr.  Japp.  Dr. 
Japp  himself  contributes  an  outline  life,  with 
emphasis  on  De  Quincey 's  associates;  for  few 
men  of  his  time  were  more  sought  after  by  dis- 
tinguiihed  pilgrims,  and  few  were  so  charming 
to  so  many  kinds  of  people.  Other  friends,  Mr. 
Colin  Rae- Brown,  and  Mr.  Hogg  himself,  con- 
tribute recollections,  tbe  latter  telling,  among 
other  things,  how,  but  for  his  own  youthful 
sanguine  efforts,  we  should  probably  never 
have  had  an  edition  of  De  Quincey  collected 
by  tbe  author.  There  are  reprinted  memories 
by  Richard  Woodhouse,  Mr.  John  Ritchie 
Findlay  of  the  Scotsman^  the  late  John  Hill 
Burton,  the  Rev.  Francis  Jacox,  Mr.  James 
Payn,  the  late  James  G.  Bertram  of  Tait^ 
Hood,  Carlyle,  and  others.  Dr.  Shad  worth 
Hodgson's  essay  on  De  Quincey  is  appended. 
There  is  a  long  poem  by  Dr.  Moir,  which  has 
an  antiquarian  interest  touching  the  name  De 
Quincey.  Finally,  there  is  an  eesay  *'On  the 
Supposed  Scriptural  Expression  for  Eternity," 
dating  back  to  1852  or  1853;  this  essay  is  in- 
eluded  in  the  American  edition,  but  in  no  Eng. 
liah  edition  of  "Collected  Works";  Mr.  Hogg 
has  reprinted  it  once  before  in  a  volume  on 
*  The  Larger  Hope.'  We  should  further  note 
that  there  are  a  few  unpublished  letters ;  also, 
a  Latin  theme  written  by  De  Quincey  for  one 
of  his  examiners  at  Worcester  College. 

All  the  contributors  to  the  volume  dwell  on 
two  things:  the  extreme  sweetness  and  cour. 
tesy  of  De  Quincey's  manner,  and  his  fragile, 
intellectual  personal  appearance.  In  person 
he  reminds  Mr.  Rae- Brown  of  Cardinal  Man- 
ning—the slightest  of  bodies  serving  as  a  stem 
to  a  gloriously  intellectual  head.  All  the 
writers  speak  of  the  refined  face  and  the 
changing  eyes,  dull,  filmy,  almost  dead  in  one 
moment,  glowing  and  full  of  depths  in  the 
next.  That  the  sweet  low  voice  and  antique 
courtesy  could  mask  an  urbane  causticity  is 
clear  from  various  calm  remarks  of  De  Quin- 
cey here  recorded.  He  speaks  of  Words, 
worth's    '*  usual    haughty  and  discourteous 


manners,"  and  of  his  "sidling"  walk  (p.  07). 
He  cannot  admit  that  Bums  is  a  great  poet 
(p  97).  He  refuses  to  dine  with  Thackeray  be- 
cause he  is  not,  like  Dickens,  beniffnant  (p. 
194).  It  is  Interesting  to  know  that  he  did  not 
at  first  join  with  the  more  earnest  admirers  of 
Hawthorne  and  Emerson,  but  that  he  after- 
wards recognized  the  genius  of  tbe  'Scarlet 
Letter '  (p.  234).  Of  his  many  eccentric  little 
dicta  none  is  more  striking  than  the  remark 
that  *'  walking— a  long  walk— gives  extraor- 
dinary depth  and  expression  to  ladies'  eyes" 
(P-»). 

The  volume  is  light  in  weight  and  beauti- 
fully made,  but  there  are  slips  in  printing,  e.  g., 
p.  ^  line  9;  p.  115,  line  17;  p.  228,  line  18. 


Social  Rights  and  Duties  :  Addresses  to  Ethi- 
cal  Societies.  By  Leslie  Stephen.  [The 
Ethical  Library.]  London  :  Sonnenschein ; 
New  York :  Macmillan.  2  vols. 
"  Rbal.lt  delightful  reading,"  wrote  Edward 
Fitz  Gerald  of  an  earlier  volume  of  Mr.  Ste- 
phen's, "and,  I  think,  really  settling  some 
Questions  of  Criticism,  as  one  wants  to  be  done 
in  all  Cases,  so  as  to  have  no  more  about  and 
about  it."  But  those  were  questions  of  litera. 
ry  criticism,  where  finality  may  make  a  more 
plausible  show  of  being  attained  than  in  tbe 
wider  and  more  complex  themes  treated  in 
these  volumes.  Yet  they  are  'none  the  less 
really  delightful  reading,  a  good  part  of  their 
charm  consisting  in  the  writer's  frank  dis- 
avowal  of  finality.  A  full  and  flexible  and  bo- 
nest  mind  going  "about  and  about "  such  sub- 
jects as  Science  and  Politics,  the  Morality  of 
Competition,  Ethics  and  the  Struggle  for  Ex- 
istence, Punishment,  Luxury,  tbe  Duties  of 
Authors,  the  Vanity  of  Phlloaophising,  and 
the  half  dozen  other  titles  of  these  addreaBos, 
is  doubtless  giving  the  very  best  that  can  be 
given  in  this  line,  whether  to  eth'ical  socie- 
ties or  the  general  public.  Those  who  know 
what  the  free  play  of  Leslie  Stephen's  mind 
means,  will  ask  no  better  treat  than  to  see 
it  applied  to  such  congenial  diacussiona.  Eu 
acuteness,  his  fatal  eye  for  the  heart  of  a  ques- 
tion, and  the  swift  thrust  of  his  pen  right  at  it, 
his  quiet  humor,  his  tolerance,  his  modesty, 
his  inveterate  habit  of  boldly  flinging  into 
words  tbe  thing  he  thinks— all  these  are 
present  throughout,  and,  in  the  eyes  of  every- 
body but  the  Scotchman  who  wanted  to  know 
what  "Paradise  Lost"  "proved,"  more  than 
make  up  for  the  absence  of  dogmatic  posi- 
tiveness. 

Tlietie  ftddreseee  ere  a  sort  of  lay  ^rmon,  soad. 
show  bow  tbid  inb^rited  bfimUetic  imgUnct  of 
the  StepheD  ffLmHy  survive  the  narrow  evan- 
gelicalism which  gave  it  birth  and  on  whicb 
it  once  feil.  Like  a  true  preacher,  Mr,  Stephec 
is  CDnfcious  of  present  cjuaetioaiiigs  mud  pr^^nl 
Deeds,  uDd  Hpeaks  to  tbeoi  directly.  Most  of 
tbe  pri>b1emg  that  have  oCFered  themselves 
with  tbe  greatest  itiaifsteBf^  to  thinking  men 
iu  the  paBt  twenty  years  flgur<^  in  thess  f>ages^ 
if  few  thoroughgoing  solutions  ar«  offered^ 
Hence  tbe  frequent  reference  to  csootempciraiy 
theories  and  writers.  Even  the  latt^  Mr,  Kidd,  at 
be  may  now  safely  be  called,  comes  in  for  some 
of  Mr.  bt^pUeo's  moat  deft  awordsajanshipi,  ths 
result  beJag  to  cut  off  tbe  bead  of  this  tecoiid- 
baud  philosopb^^r  so  neatly  that  he  himself 
can  st'aroely  be  aware  of  his  lo«s,  Huxlej"^ 
famous  liouiaueB  lei^ture  «uggesta  such  re- 
marks and  qimll 6 cations  of  a  rather  haitv 
statement  as  HuKley  bimself  fell  botind  lo 
make,  on  reflection,  Mr.  BaJfour  b^  of  cmirw, 
the  man  who  philo^,>pbu^a  to  pr^v&  Una  v^BitT 
of  all  philosophizing,  aud  dettroyi  th«  f  Qnnda^ 


June  4,  1896] 


Tlie   !N*atioii. 


443 


tkmB  of  soientifio  belief  in  order  to  maintain 
that  theology  it  as  firmly  based. 

Mr.  Stephen's  organon  of  knowledge,  so  far 
as  he  professes  to  employ  any,  may  be  said  to 
be  the  method  of  careful  statement  This  is 
alirays  half  the  battle  with  him.  Nor  is  it  the 
derioe  of  a  log^c-ohopper  choosing  bis  own 
premises.  He  has  the  air  of  a  man  anxious 
simply  to  get  at  the  core  of  a  question,  and 
brushing  aside  all  that  is  merely  incidental  or 
adTentitious  in  order  to  see  what  the  real  diffl. 
onlty  is.  Perhaps  the  best  of  all  the  addresses 
here  printed,  for  the  illustration  of  this  way 
of  winding  himself  like  a  serpent  into  his  sub« 
Jeot  (as  it  was  said  of  Burke),  is  the  one  on 
Ethics  and  the  Struggle  for  Existence.  Most 
admirable  and  convincing  is  his  grasp  upon  the 
timth  that  no  theory  of  the  facts  of  life,  of  eril 
and  suffering,  can  at  all  alter  those  facts.  One 
theory  explains  some  of  them,  another  some 
more;  one  theory  has  the  advantage  over  an- 
other in  point  of  completeness  and  likelihood; 
but  under  all  theories  the  facts  remain  the 
same,  and  have  their  ugly  implications  under 
aU. 

■*Does  the  theory  of  the  *  struggle  for  exist- 
ence' throw  any  new  light  upon  the  general 
problem?  I  am  quite  unable  to  see.  for  my  own 
part,  that  It  really  makes  any  difference:  evil 
exists;  and  the  ouestion  whether  evil  predo- 
mlnates  over  gooa  can  only,  I  should  say,  be  de- 
cided by  an  appeal  to  experience.  One  source 
of  evil  ii  the  conflict  of  interests.  Every 
beast  preys  upon  others;  and  man,  according 
to  the  old  saying,  is  a  wolf  to  man.  All  that 
the  Darwinian  or  any  other  theory  can  do  is, 
to  enable  us  to  trace  the  consequences  of  this 
fact  in  certain  directions;  but  it  neither  creates 
the  fact  nor  makes  it  more  or  less  an  essential 
part  of  the  process.  It  *  explains '  certain  phe- 
nomena, in  the  sense  of  showing  their  connec- 
tion with  previous  pbenomens,  but  does  not 
show  why  the  phenomena  should  present  them- 
selves at  all.** 

We  should  be  glad,  If  space  admitted,  to 
quote  other  passages  from  these  notable  ad- 
dresses. Some  of  them  have  previously  seen 
the  light  in  magazines,  but  the  old  ones  are 
worth  rereading,  and  the  new  ones  have  soUder 
charma  than  those  of  novelty. 


Fiahegy  Living  and  Fossil :  An  Outline  of  their 
Forms  and  Probable  Relationships.  By  Bash- 
ford  Dean,  Ph.D.  [Columbia  University 
Biological  Series,  III.]  Macmillan  Sc  Ck). 
1895. 
Thx  fishes  as  they  now  are,  and  as  they  have 
been  in  the  course  by  which  they  have  reached 
their  present  condition,  are  fairly  well  set 
forth  In  this  attempt  at  a  concise  general,  and 
to  some  extent  popular,  presentment.  The 
work  is  comparative  and  very  comprehensive. 
Perhaps  it  might  have  been  improved  by  a 
greater  amount  of  text,  yet  an  abundance  of 
drawings  obviates  much  explanation.  It  deals 
with  forms,  habits,  structure,  functions,  em- 
bryology,  affinities,  genealogy,  distribution, 
etc.,  and  has  classified  lists  of  publications  re- 
lating to  its  various  divisions.  As  a  whole  it 
is  to  be  commended,  numerous  particulars 
rendering  it  liable  to  criticism  notwithstand- 
ing. The  exceptions,  and  the  remedies  to  be 
applied  in  a  future  edition,  will  be  sufficiently 
evident  in  a  few  examples  from  the  more  no- 
ticeable. 

Classification,  being  so  much  a  matter  of 
personal  opinion,  for  present  convenience,  and 
liable  to  changes  as  investigation  proceeds, 
should  have  less  weight  than  some  other  fea- 
tures. We  should  prefer  the  fishes  divided 
into  four  primary  groups  rather  than  two. 
The  lampreys  would  stand  for  one;  the  others 
would  be  sharks  and  skates,  chinueras,  and 


lung  fishes  and  bony  fishes.  Mainly  the  de- 
scent  of  the  fishes  ia  traced  by  means  of  forms 
containing  a  great  deal  of  solid  matter  in  der- 
mal armature  or  in  skeleton;  these  forms  were 
the  most  specialized,  and,  consequently,  whUe 
best  adapted  for  preservation  as  fossils,  were 
most  affected  by  causes  which  tended  to  the 
extinction  of  their  species.  More  plastic  forms, 
with  less  of  the  hard  matter,  did  not  petrify 
so  readily,  but  were  better  prepared  for  adap- 
tation such  as  would  prevent  extinction.  These 
last  retained  more  of  the  structure  common  to 
the  earlier  types— that  is,  they  were  less  spe- 
cialized. Our  author  treats  such  species  or 
genera  as  **  the  most  generalized  forms,"  though 
he  nowhere  establishes  the  existence  of  a  gene- 
ralizing process.  In  truth,  when  he  says  more 
generalized  he  means  less  specialized;  but  the 
expressions  are  not  synonymous.  The  Clado- 
dont  (Cladoselache  of  Dean),  a  highly  special- 
ized type,  is  a  good  instance.  This  is  said  to 
be  one  of  the  most  generalized  of  known  sharks, 
the  possible  ancestor  of  Acanthodes,  Pleura- 
canthus,  Heterodontus,  and  modem  sharks,  of 
great  degrees  of  specialization,  also,  in  very 
different  directions.  The  contention  that  the 
Cladodont  changed,  in  its  progeny,  in  form, 
armature,  dentition,  etc.,  lost  a  dorsU  fin  while 
acquiring  an  anal  and  fin  spines,  and  became 
Acanthodes,  should  be  supported  by  some  kind 
of  proof;  the  theory  of  a  common  ancestor  is 
too  available  to  be  put  aside  for  a  mere  sug- 
gestion of  possibilities. 

Regarding  loss  of  fins,  we  are  Informed  that, 
*<  should  life  habits  require  undulatory  mo- 
tion, paired  fins  must  inevitably  tend  to  dis- 
appear." The  fishes  cited  in  support  of  this 
are  some  that  rest  on  the  i>ottom,  where 
paired  fins  are  not  needed  as  balancers;  but  in 
these  cases  it  is  disuse,  not  undulatory  motion 
in  swimming,  that  caused  the  paired  fins  (as 
also  in  many  cases  the  vertical  fins)  to  dlsap- 
pear.  In  similar  manner  disuse  has  carried 
away  the  limbs  of  certain  lizards  and  of  snakes. 
**It  may  now  aid  the  mouth  in  admitting 
water  to  the  gills  "  is  said  of  the  spiracle ;  but 
in  certain  rays  that  rest  and  feed  on  the  bot- 
toms this  organ  Is  greatly  developed ;  they  de- 
pend on  it  in  breathing,  not  on  the  mouth. 

"Partially  true,"  is  all  that  can  be  said  of 
the  statement  that  the  majority  of  the  sharks 
are  vivipcurous  and  have  a  placental  attach- 
ment ;  in  a  considerable  number  of  viviparous 
sharks  there  is  no  such  attachment.  Dean 
says  the  egg  of  the  Greenland  shark  is  said  to 
be  spherical  and  relatively  small  and  to  be  de- 
posited unprotected  by  capsule ;  G&nther  says 
of  the  same  shark  that  it  is  stated  to  be  vivi- 
parous and  to  produce  about  four  young  at  a 
birth.  Pristis  and  Pristiophoms  should  change 
places  In  the  arrangement ;  the  former  is  the 
ray,  the  latter  the  shark. 

Some  of  the  figures  are  not  jup  to  the  stan- 
dard. Figure  29,  named  Trygon  with  a  ques- 
tion, is  Adtobatis  of  MQller  and  Henle.  It  and 
figure  30  are  Incorrect  in  showing  the  front 
teeth  wider  than  the  hind  ones;  the  latter  are 
of  most  recent  growth,  and  should  be  the 
wider.  Figure  173,  Ba  thy  onus,  is  entirely  out 
of  proportion;  and  figure  184,  said  to  be  the 
porcupine  fish  with  needle-like  scales,  Is  really 
the  swell  fish  with  compressed,  blade-like  rigid 
,  spines.  It  should  have  been  said  that  the 
needle-like  spines  of  the  porcupine  fish  are 
erectile,  which  increases  the  resemblance  to 
the  mammal. 

Need  of  revision  is  apparent  m  the  nomen- 
clature; for  instance,  Butrlnus  stands  for  Bu- 
tyrinus,  Christiceps  for  Cristioeps,  and  Lae- 
margus  for  tho  prior  name,  Bomniosus.  Hepta- 
branchlas,  Notidanus,  and  Heptanchus,  names 


for  a  single  genus,  are  used  in  a  way  to  con- 
fuse the  student.  In  the  derivation  of  the  last 
of  these  the  author  finds  <yx«,  Lat.  ango^  to 
press  tight,  to  throttle.  A  better  rendering  b 
that  of  Agassiz,  from  ^ycof ,  sinus,  a  notch,  re- 
ferring to  the  gill  openings;  this  would  give  e 
instead  of  ch  in  Heptancus  and  Hexancus. 
Heptranchias,  the  earliest  name,  however,  is 
most  likely  a  Rafinesqulan  distortion  of  iwri. 
and  0p^yxuu  Commonly,  generic  names  are 
formed  in  the  singular.  Thus,  Chlamydoee- 
lachus  was  originally  derived  from  x^^vc, 
and  viXaxat ;  Dr.  Dean  changes  it  to  Chlamy- 
doselache,  deriving  from  v*kix*i'  which  he  de- 
fines shark  instead  of  sharks.  Why  the  plural 
name  of  cartilaginous  fishes  in  general,  always 
so  used  by  Aristotle,  should  be  taken  in  Ueu  of 
the  singular,  applicable  to  a  single  shark,  is 
not  demonstrated.  Gfinther,  who  previously 
made  the  mistake,  may  have  been  followed,  or 
both  authors  may  have  been  led  astray  by  Cu- 
vler,  who  similarly  fixed  the  name  Selache  on 
a  shark  now  known  by  the  prior  name  Ceto- 
rhinus.  Corrected,  Dean's  Cladoselache  in- 
comes Cladoselachus;  whether  it  is  a  synonym 
for  Cladodus,  he  has  not  yet  fully  decided. 

In  conclusion,  it  should  be  said  that  this 
volume  has  many  excellent  features,  and  will 
do  a  g^eat  deal  of  good. 


In  India,    Translated  from  the  French  of  An- 

dr6  ChevrlUon  by  William  Marchant.  Henry 

Holt  &  Co.  1896. 
The  Kutab  Mlnar  is  a  fitting  frontispiece  to  a 
book  on  India.  Kutab  commemorates  the 
Moslem  conqueror  who  reared  it  in  1198 ;  Mi- 
nar  (the  minaret)  is  the  distinctive  badge  of 
the  most  energetic  race  among  Indian  popula- 
tions. Confessedly  the  grandest  work  In  the 
world  of  its  class,  it  seemed  to  the  present 
writer,  as  he  climbed  it  after  circling  the 
globe,  the  most  impressive  pillar  of  any  class. 

M.  Chevrillon,  bound  in  buckram,  brings  to 
mind  Falstaff^s  rogues  who  were  so  habited. 
He  fiits  along  as  evanescent  as  those  minions 
of  the  moon.  His  whole  pilgrimage  from 
Kandy  to  Kinchinjanga,  as  well  as  through  the 
Mogul  cities  and  many  others,  was  compressed 
into  less  than  fifty  days.  Nor  did  he  dare  ko 
alone,  but  was  personally  conducted  by  what 
he  calls  a  **  boy,"  more  commonly  styled  a 
**  bearer  "  by  Anglo-Indians.  From  the  stsrt 
he  was  imposed  upon  by  this  functionary,  who 
shrewdly  bargained  that,  on  the  score  of  con- 
scientious scruples,  be  should  never  wait  on  his 
master  at  table  nor  carry  a  satchel  for  him. 
Such  was  the  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend 
who  kept  him  in  leading-strings,  once  well- 
nigh  deUverlog  him  up  to  Nautch  DelUahs. 
His  book,  however,  has  a  charm.  It  is  never 
dull,  and  It  shows  India  from  a  French  point 
of  view.  Tet  but  few  of  his  nation  have  such 
a  savor  of  Anglomania.  Landing  at  Pondi. 
cherry,  the  last  vestige  of  French  domination, 
he  sheds  no  tears  over  the  French  downfall, 
feeling  that  the  English  have  done  a  better 
service.  Thanks  to  the  good  ends  gained,  be 
justifies  the  evil  means,  as  some  do  African 
slavery,  viewing  It  as  a  whip  in  the  hand  of 
the  Almighty  for  scourging  Africans  into 
civilization.  Thus  the  apple  of  Paris  has  gone 
to  the  worthiest.    Datur  digniori, 

M.  ChevrUlon's  first  chapter  betrays  a  travel- 
ler embarked  on  his  first  voysge.  Everything 
on  the  steamer  and  the  sea  fills  him  with  amaze- 
ment. His  emotions  burst  out  in  such  hyper- 
boles that  readers  laugh  at  him  as  very  green 
and  equally  sentimental.  His  gushing  pages 
on  Red  Sea  heat  are  pointless  compared  with 
five  words  of  the  captain  of  whom  the  reviewer 


4:4:4: 


Tlie    IN"atioii. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1614 


bad  asked  why  tbat  sea  was  Dsmed  Red. 
His  answer  was  because  it  is  red  hot,  Hslf-a- 
dozen  cities  often  taken  in  bj  Cook's  tourists 
were  beyond  the  range  of  M.  Cbevrillon.  His 
sole  excursion  outside  the  beaten  path  of  those 
personally  conducted  adventurers  was  to  Bllora. 
Regarding  the  cayes  there  we  have  a  chapter. 
In  this  there  is  little  description  of  what  the 
stranger  s&w,  but  much  reading  of  bis  own  no- 
tions into  Hindu  carvings.  A  large  section  of 
the  book  is  of  a  similar  make-up,  either  from 
need  of  padding  or  from  the  writer's  subjective 
ca6t  of  mind — bis  nature,  like  the  dyer's  hand, 
subdued  to  the  Oriental  element  it  worked  in. 
At  Benares,  for  example,  five  pages  suffice  for 
setting  forth  the  bathing  during  a  morning  on 
the  Ganges— a  »cene  wbich,  but  for  associar 
tions,  stone  stairs,  and  the  lack  of  bath-hou«e6, 
would  strongly  remind  one  of  New  Jersey 
beaches.  But  this  brief  relation  is  text  for  a 
sermon  more  than  ten  times  as  long  of  theo- 
sopbical  mysticism.  The  stjle  is  lively  and 
fresh,  but  unless  reaiers  believe  the  specula- 
tor inspired,  they  must  at  length  »kip  or  fall 
asleep.  M.  Cbevrillon  often  makes  us  doubt 
whether  his  own  speculations  are  in  dead 
earnebt  or  are  ironical  jokes.  What  he  digni- 
fies as  heavenly  meditation  we  call  earthly 
laziness  raised  to  its  highest  power.  How  much 
is  man  above  the  jelly- fish  when  bis  prajers 
are  made  by  machinery,  or  consist  in  vain 
repetitions  of  the  monosyllable  OM— one  hun- 
dred and  eight  times  at  a  beat? 

Our  author's  Hindu  ideals  are  vague— gela- 
tinous, so  to  speak— deficient  in  dates  and  facta. 
He  has  caught  the  contagion,  and  is  himself 
negligent  of  accuracy.    At  the  gate  of  the  Taj 


TVo  ATetr  NttveU  in 

THE  PROTEAN  SERIES. 

lemo.  eacb  $1.00. 

The  Quicksands  of  Pactolus 

▲  novel  by  Horacs  Akhislbt  Vachkll. 
As  th«  title  Indicates,  the  )x>ok  tUustrates  the  dangem 
from  sudden  wealth. 

A  REMARKABLE  WORK  OF  FICTION. 

The    Way  They  Loved   at 
Grim  pat. 

Village  Idylls.   By  E.  RsirrouL  Eblkk. 

"  A  book  this  to  read.  *o  reread— to  lay  aalde  for  six 
months  In  a  drawer,  and  then  upon  redlsoovery.  to  wel- 
come with  Joy  and  tit  down  to  read  all  over  again."— 
Mr  8.  R.  Crockett  In  the  Chrt»tian  Leader. 

'*  OnA  r.f  th|i  b«at  cnmpltmpnta  wa  caa  pay  tbU  bonk 
1»  111  €' iiiff'p'K  That,  »j(i-i)iht  sricf^r,  r^^tiH*',  nnfl  h**iirlj' 
rpcMPHMpfirlntlou  In  rf^Aii.  wfi  I'ftu  fiav  very  llifl?'  ol^uut 
it.  [[  ban  tiartUy  Bsy  fnLilti—'W'lLiEf'b  14  rfioi)iitriji|(il>  llil- 
falf   to   thi^  cTltlcr.    -  Mr.   t^eorse   EalniBtriirj   la   %h& 

'*  Anoni^  the  ^ery  h^it  upeelmenBCif  dur  mod pth Abort- 
itory  llttTAtureJ'— Mr.  Jamsi  Fayn  In  (he  Ittutttattd 
London  >>(/». 

■■  Unpretaotlgutly  giwd/'— furl  Matt  QareH*. 

HENRY  HOLT  &  CO.,  N.  Y. 


JUNE 

EDUCATIONAL 
REVIEW. 


Ttifl  Work  Of  (be  Londuq  Hcbool  Board,  T»  J.  KannK 
mara;  Collpjr«Or«anlEat|ofl  g^od  OoTerDment.Charlea 
F.  TbwLnE;  Fmltfle  Itninrovenjient  of  Burjil  EchcKSls. 
James  H.  Blod««tt:  Evolatlctnftry  Pijcliology  and 
E<litrat|oii.  Hiram  M.  SUnJt'y;  College'  Entrance  Re- 
riiilr^TOeata  In  H<^lencp,  R»j ph  S.  Tarr:  Horice  ManD, 
FrMicli  W,  Parker. 


S3*<^o  a  year;  35  „nt»  m  fiuiii1>er. 

HENRY  HOLT  &  CO..  N.  Y. 


Mahal  garden,  he  layr,  **we  pass  under  the 
arch,  and  the  Taj  appears  in  sight  half  a  mile 
distant ''  (p.  109).  It  is  no  more  than  one- third 
so  far.  Half  a  mile  is  2,640  feet,  wbOe  the  ac- 
tual length  of  the  avenue  from  the  garden- gate 
to  the  opposite  portal  of  the  Taj,  according  to 
English  engineers,  it  880  feet.  Again,  the  great 
wonder  at  Ellora  he  describes  as  **  a  temple  cut 
in  an  isolated  rocky  mass  which  is  ittelf  160 
feet  long,  100  broad,"  etc.  (p.  228).  In  this  mass 
there  la  no  room  for  tbe  real  temple,  which,  as 
we  read  in  Fergusson,  tbe  supreme  authority, 
meafiures  247  feet  by  150.  *'  Tbe  isolated  mass*' 
is  Isaiah^s  bed,  too  short  for  a  man  to  stretch 
bioofelf  on  it,  and  tbe  covering  too  narrow  for 
him  to  wrap  himself  in  it. 

I^otwithbtanding  shortcomings — sometimes 
by  reason  of  them— we  lay  down  M.  Chevril- 
lon*s  rbapsody  more  reluctantly  than  many  a 
better  boolc. 


BOOKS  OF  THE  WEEK. 

Allen.  J.  L.    Summer  In  Arcady:   A  Tale  of  Nature. 

Macmlllan.    (1  85 
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bol»,  H.  du.    The  tta^netlc  Circuit  in  Theory  and  Prac- 
tice.   Lonirroens,  Ur^n  &  Co     (4. 
Cold  Dithe«  for  Hoc  Weather.    Rarpt>r«     (1. 
Collins.  Mabel.     A  Debt  of  Honor.    American  Publlih- 

era  Corporation.    fiOc. 
Dalblar,  Lieut.- Jol.  P.  H      Dlctlonarr  rf  Qnotatlong 

(En»llsh)     London:  Bon nensehein;  New  York:   Mao 

mlllan.    92. 
Esier,  E.  R    The  Way  they  Loved  at  Grimpat:  Village 

IdTiir    Henry  Bolt  ft   Co    91. 
Farjeon.  B  L.    A  Fair  Jewess,    casftell     &0c 
Garry.  A.    Out  of  Bout  de.    Henry  Holt  ft  Co.    75c. 
Gee.  Henry,  end  Hardy.  W.  J.    Documents  IHustratlTe 

of  Ennluh  Church  History.    Macmlllan.    18  dO 
Hamilton,  M.  Across  an  Ulst«  r  Dog.  Edward  Arnold.  (1. 
Harding.  J.  W.    An  Art  Failure.    F.  T.  Neely. 
Harvard  Studies  in  Classical  Philology.     Vol.  VL     Boa^ 

ton:OinnftCo.    91.50. 
Judvon,  Mrs.  Isabella  F.    Cyrua  W.  Field,  bis  Life  and 

Work.    Harpers.    §8. 
Kfiigbt.  William.     The  PoeUcal  Works  of  William 

Wordsworth.     Vols.  I.-IIL     Macmlllan.    Esch  91.50. 


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McLenaan.  J.  F.     Stndles  In  Ancient  Hlstonr:  An  In- 
quiry Into  the  Origin  of  Exogamy.    Macmlllan.  10. 
McMaster.  Prof.  J.  B      With  the  Fathers:  S«ndSes  ti 

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MelrlUe.  Herman.   Typee.   American  PubHsbeti  Cor- 
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Merrlman  H.  S.    Flotsam:  The  Study  of  Life.  Loog- 

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Nesblt.  Bdltb      In  Homespun.     London:  John  Laae; 

Brston:  Roberts  Bros.    tl. 
Orchard,  Dr.  T.  N.   1  he  Astronomy  of  Milton's  Psradlse 

Lost.    Longmans.  Gre«'n  ft  Co    95. 
Pontopptdan,  Bemik.    Emanuel:  or.  Children  of  th« 

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Pratt.  Cornelia  A.    Tne  Daughter  of  a  Stoic     Msonll- 

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Stevenson,  R.  L.   Weir  of  Hermlsion.  8cnbi&«*r<.  It  JSO. 
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The    Nation. 


HEW  YORK,   TEURSDAT,  JUNE  11,   1800. 


The  Week. 


Thb  menace  of  last  week's  vote  on  the 
Butler  bond  bill  is  the  cloud  which  it 
throws  over  the  financial  policy  of  the 
Gk>vernment  during  the  next  Administra- 
tion. There  was  a  majority  of  seven  in 
the  Senate  for  repudiation,  and  previous 
votes  have  shown  about  the  same  strength 
for  any  proposition  which  the  silverites 
favor.  The  alarming  feature  of  the  sena- 
torial outlook  is  the  certainty  that  there 
will  be  a  msjority  for  equally  wild  mea- 
sures in  that  body  during  the  next  Ck)n- 
gress.  The  sound- money  men  will  gain 
several  seats,  but  the  admission  of  Arizo- 
na, New  Mexico,  and  Oklahoma  as  States 
will  reinforce  the  soft-money  side  by  six 
votes,  leaving  things  as  they  now  are— 
and  nobody  can  doubt  that  the  scheme 
for  bringing  in  these  three  Territories  will 
be  carried  through  next  winter.  The 
country,  therefore,  must  face  the  certain- 
ty that  the  upper  branch  of  Congress  will 
be  on  the  wrong  side  of  every  financial 
question  which  may  arise  under  the  next 
President.  How  the  lower  branch  will 
stand,  nobody  can  tell.  The  House  of 
Bepresentatives  elected  next  fall  may  be 
all  right,  while  its  successor,  to  be  chosen 
in  1896,  may  be  all  wrong.  The  necessity, 
therefore,  for  the  most  robust  indepen- 
dence in  the  executive  will  be  even  great- 
er during  the  next  Presidential  term  than 
during  the  present.  He  will  confront  a 
Senate  with  a  majority  of  members  so  ig- 
norant, reckless,  or  crazy  that  they  will 
be  capable  of  anything.  If  the  Republi- 
cans carry  the  election  next  fall,  their 
President  will  come  in  committed  to  the 
early  enactment  of  a  tariff  bill  which  will 
restore  prosperity.  A  Republican  House 
will  pass  a  McKinley  bill  fast  enough, 
but  it  wUl  be  "held  up"  in  the  Senate 
by  the  Republican  silverites,  who  will  de- 
mand heavy  ransom  in  the  shape  of  legis- 
lation for  their  metal.  We  shall  have 
1890  over  again,  only  worse,  if  we  have  a 
President  who  will  make  concessions  to 
the  repudiationists,  as  Harrison  did  six 
years  ago. 


Many  Republican  newspapers  in  the 
East  are  shamefully  deceiving  their  read- 
ers as  to  the  significance  of  the  Oregon 
election.  They  say  that  the  Republicans 
carried  the  Legislature  and  one  of  the 
congressional  districts,  that  the  party 
stood  for  sound  money,  and  that  the  re- 
sult is  therefore  a  defeat  of  the  silverites. 
The  truth  is  that  the  Republican  State 
convention  voted  down  a  resolution  against 
free  coinage,  and  adopted  jl  **  straddle  " 
in  its  stead;  that  the  Republican  candi- 
date for  Congress  who  was  successful  is 
a  16-to-l  man;  that  the  BepybHoan  cao^ 


didate  in  the  other  district,  who  was 
beaten  by  a  Populist,  was  a  "  straddler,** 
who  refused  to  oppose  free  coinage;  and 
that  the  Legislature  is  overwhelmingly 
for  free  coinage,  the  only  question  being 
whether  it  will  send  to  the  Senate  some 
other  financial  lunatic  or  reelect  Mr. 
Mitchell,  who  not  only  supports  free 
coinage,  but  voted  the  other  day  for  the 
anti-bond  resolution.  For  a  Republican 
organ  to  call  such  results  as  these  a*  tri- 
umph for  sound  money,  because  Mitchell 
and  the  Republican  free-coinage  candi- 
dates in  the  two  congressional  districts 
call  themselves  by  the  name  of  that  party, 
is  a  shameful  attempt  at  deception. 


The  Oregon  election  seems  to  have  un- 
nerved the  McKinley  men  completely. 
Not  only  has  the  Populist-Democratic 
combine  upset  the  usual  Republican  ma- 
jority there,  but  the  Republican  party  in 
that  State  split  on  the  silver  question,  and 
the  gold-standard  faction  was  the  small- 
est of  all  that  took  part  in  the  contest. 
Another  fact,  most  surprising  to  the  Mc- 
Kinleyites,  is  that  the  tariff  question  was 
not  heard  of  in  the  campaign.  Although 
Oregon  is  one  of  the  largest  sheep-breed- 
ing States  in  the  Union  and  ought  to  be 
pining  for  a  duty  on  wool,  that  subject 
was  not  mentioned.  The  silver  delusion 
had  smothered  the  tariff  delusion  com- 
pletely. The  news  from  Oregon  has  sent 
all  the  weak-kneed  brethren  running  for 
cover.  Senator  Aldrich  says  now  that  it 
will  be  sufficient  if  the  St.  Louis  platform 
pronounces  against  free  coinage  at  16  to  1, 
leaving  the  ground  open  for  free  coinage 
at  17  to  1,  or  at  some  other  ratio,  or  for  a 
reenactment  of  the  Sherman  law.  A  lot 
of  nerveless  Republicans  on  the  ways  and 
means  committee  oppose  the  taking  of 
any  vote  on  the  bond-repudiation  bill 
which  has  Just  come  from  the  Senate. 
The  whole  McKinley  programme  depends 
upon  making  the  tariff  the  issue  and 
adopting  a  straddle  at  St.  Louis  on  the 
silver  question.  If  this  cannot  be  done, 
McKinley  is  as  illogical  a  candidate  as  a 
Methodist  preacher  would  be  in  an  elec- 
tion for  Pope  of  Rome.  If  the  real  issue 
— the  issue  which  dominates  men's  minds 
and  controls  their  feelings— is  the  ques- 
tion. What  shall  be  the  standard  of  value? 
then  the  McKinley  edifice,  which  looks  so 
imposing  now,  is  a  house  of  cards  which 
is  liable  to  fall  either  before  or  after  the 
St  Louis  convention  meets. 


Suppose  that  a  *'  straddle  '^  is  adopted 
at  St.  Louis.  Where  are  any  votes  to  be 
gained  by  that  T  The  16-to-l  men  are  not 
going  to  be  satisfied  with  it.  Senators 
Dubois  and  Teller  smile  when  that  kind 
of  platform  is  mentioned.  They  say  that 
the  silver-men  have  been  fooled  too  many 
times  in  that  way.    Th^  are  going  to 


St.  Louis  with  an  unequivocal  free-coin- 
age platform.  If  they  do  not  get  it  adopt- 
ed there,  they  are  going  to  Chicago  to  ask 
the  Democrats  to  adopt  it.  If  they  fail  in 
that  quarter,  they  intend  to  hold  a  con- 
vention of  their  own  on  the  22d  of  July 
and  adopt  a  platform  and  nominate  can- 
dates  of  their  own.  This  was  the  position 
taken  by  them  months  ago.  They  are 
now  more  than  confirmed  in  it  by  the  re- 
sult of  the  election  in  Oregon.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  supporters  of  the  gold 
standard  are  equally  in  earnest.  The  proof 
of  this  is  found  in  the  declarations,  heard 
on  every  hand  from  life-long  Democrats, 
that  they  will  vote  the  Republican  ticket 
if  the  St.  Louis  platform  is  sound  and  the 
Chicago  platform  unsound  on  the  money 
question.  These  are  men  who  do  not 
change  theur  party  ties  lightly.  It  must 
be  some  consideration  of  overwhelming 
import  that  moves  them  to  so  strange  a 
step.  Is  it  supposable  that  this  feeling  is 
less  dominant,  less  intense,  in  Republican 
circles? 


Whatever  political  divisions  there  may 
be  among  the  American  people,  they  have 
but  a  single  thought  on  the  money  ques- 
tion. To  a  man  they  are  for  **  honest  '* 
money,  the  *' soundest*'  currency  known 
to  men  or  angels.  This  is  the  great  com- 
fort which  optimistic  patriots  may  extract 
out  of  Thursday's  Democratic  platforms 
in  Kentucky  and  Virginia.  The.  Ken- 
tucky platform  is  simply  ferocious  in  its 
determination  to  have  nothing  but  an 
honest  dollar.  Anybody  who  doubts  that 
the  fifty-cent  dollar  which  the  resolutions 
proceed  to  call  for  is  '*  honest,"  had  bet- 
ter be  prepared  to  meet  a  Kentucky  gen- 
tleman in  a  rage.  As  for  Virginia,  the 
kind  of  money  the  silverites  want  there  is 
so  wonderful,  so  heavenly,  that  the  mere 
thought  of  it  sends  them  into  raptures 
and  rhapsodies.  It  is  "sound  money,  the 
soundest  the  world  has  ever  had  or  can 
have,  the  money  of  our  Constitution,  the 
money  of  the  people,  the  money  of  civili- 
zation through  the  ages  past  and  destined 
to  be  such  for  ages  to  come."  It  is  a  pity 
that  this  miraculous  money  has  to  be  ex- 
plained, farther  on,  as  fiat  rags  and  half- 
weight  coin — but  it  is  honest  just  the 
same,  sound,  unsullied,  glorious.  As  to 
the  honesty,  however,  there  will  be  a 
chance  for  two  inflections,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  unpractised  lago,  in  whose  mouth 
the  words  "  Honest,  my  lord  T"  became, 
"  Honest  1  My  Lord  1" 


The  Maine  Republicans  nobly  renewed 
last  week,  in  State  convention,  thei^  *'  un- 
swerving loyalty  to  that  great  champion 
of  protection  and  sound  money,  Thomas 
B.  Reed,"  and  hoped  that  the  national 
convention  would  heed  the  demand  of 
"the  business  faiterestsof  the  country" 


4:4.3 


Tlie   ISTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1 61 5 


for  his  DominatioD.  Aoother  slant  at 
McKioley  was  Tisible  in  the  chairman's 
speech,  when  he  spoke  of  Reed  as  a  man 
whose  "lips  are  not  sealed  in  silence 
when  silence  is  dishonor,  nor  opened  to 
words  that  are  meant  to  have  no  mean- 
ing.*' ft  mast  be  said,  however,  that 
this  description  of  the  Speaker  is  true,  if 
at  all,  only  since  the  nomination  has  been 
lost  to  him.  As  long  as  he  saw,  or  thought 
he  saw,  that  his  best  chance  of  getting  it 
lay  in  silence,  McKinley  himself  was  not 
more  voiceless.  And  did  ever  the  Ohio 
coiner  of  winged  words  beat  Reed's  fatu- 
ous message  to  the  Home  Market  Club 
about  the  dawn  soon  coming  ?  It  is  of 
the  essence  of  brains  and  courage  that 
they  show  themselves  as  such  stall  times; 
and  the  **  brainy,  masterful  Reed  "  was 
so  long  content  to  play  the  part  of  a  nerve- 
less trimmer  that  it  is  no  wonder  the  party 
forgot  what  manner  of  man  he  was. 


We  are  indebted  to  the  Buffalo  Courier 
for  a  supplement  to  McKinley's  record  on 
the  silver  question  in  the  shape  of  an  im- 
portant and  significant  vote  which  we 
had  overlooked.  On  the  16th  of  Jan- 
uary, 1878,  Stanley  Matthews  carried 
through  the  Senate  a  concurrent  resolu- 
tion which,  after  quoting  various  laws  re- 
lating to  the  public  debt,  including  the 
act  of  1870  for  the  refunding  of  the  na- 
tional debt,  and  the  resumption  act  of 
1875  authorizing  the  issue  of  bonds  for 
the  maintenance  of  specie  payments,  de- 
clared that  all  the  bonds  of  the  United 
States  issued  under  these  acts  *'  are  pay- 
able, principal  and  interest,  at  the  option 
of  the  (Government  of  the  United  States, 
in  silver  dollars  of  the  coinage  of  the 
United  States  containing  412  1-2  grains 
each  of  standard  silver  "  ;  and  that  such 
payment  would  '*not  be  in  violation  of 
the  public  faith  nor  in  derogation  of  the 
rights  of  the  public  creditor."  On  the 
29th  of  the  month  the  resolution  came 
before  the  House,  and  was  carried  by  a 
vote  of  189  to  79,  McKinley  being  record- 
ed in  the  affirmative,  while  on  the  other 
skle  were  Garfield  of  Ohio.  Reed,  Frye, 
and  Hale  of  Maine,  Robinson  of  Massa- 
chusetts, Hewitt  of  New  York,  and  many 
other  prominent  sound-money  men  of  both 
parties.  This  was,  of  course,  a  repudia- 
tion of  the  gold  standard,  and  was  so 
understood  by  both  the  advocates  and  the 
opponents  of  the  resolution. 


The  latest  contribution  to  McKinley's 
record  is  the  publication  of  a  letter  writ 
ten  by  him  on  the  27th  of  October,  1890, 
just  before  the  congressional  election  that 
ended  his  career  in  the  House,  in  which 
he  answered  inquiries  about  his  position 
on  various  public  questions  put  to  him  by 
the  Secretary  of  the  Stark  County  (O.) 
Farmers'  Alliance.  He  declared  himself 
opposed  to  all  Trusts  and  combinations  in 
the  restraint  of  trade,  favorable  to  regu- 
lation of .  railroad  rates,  opposed  to  the 
bolding  of  lands  by  aliens,  and  a  supporter 


of  a  lard  bill  in  which  farmers  were  inte- 
rested; while  as  to  the  financial  question — 

'*  I  am  in  favor  of  the  use  of  all  the  silver 
product  of  the  United  States  for  money  as 
circolatiDfr  medium.  I  would  have  »ilver  and 
gold  alike." 

This  letter  was  published  by  the  World 
on  Thursday  morning.  Its  authenticity 
is  not  questioned.  Indeed,  it  is  taken 
from  the  files  of  the  local  newspaper  in 
Canton,  which  printed  it  in  the  issue  of 
October  30,  1890.  McKinley  himself,  ac- 
cording to  his  usual  habit,  refuses  to  say 
anything  for  publication  on  the  subject, 
although  he  is  reported  as  having  ex- 
plained to  personal  friends  that  **  the  let- 
ter was  written  at  a  time  of  great  excite- 
ment, when  be  was  making  from  six  to  ten 
speeches  a  day,"  and,  furthermore,  that 
'*his  argument  in  favor  of  silver  wss  at 
that  time  in  harmony  with  his  party." 


In  the  debate  on  the  President's  veto  of 
the  river  and  harbor  bill.  Senator  Sherman 
again  took  the  novel  view  that  the  Presi- 
dent ought  not  to  veto  an  appropriation 
bill,  because  it  is  always  within  his  dis- 
cretion to  pay  the  money  or  not  to  pay  it. 
If  there  is  no  money  in  the  Treasury  to 
pay  it,  or  if  for  any  reason  his  judgment 
is  against  paying  it,  then  he  ought  not  to 
pay  it.  Acts  making  appropriations  are 
merely  permissive,  and  for  that  reason 
ought  never  to  be  vetoed.  This  is  an  as- 
tounding doctrine,  or  would  be  so  if  any 
utterances  of  Mr.  Sherman  could  astound 
us.  His  argument  (on  page  6603  of  the 
Congressional  Eecord)  begins  by  quot- 
ing the  first  paragraph  of  the  bill,  viz.: 

*'That  the  following  sums  of  money  be,  and 
are  hereby,  appropriated,  to  be  paid  out  of 
any  mooey  in  the  Treasury  not  otherwise  ap- 
propriated, to  be  immediately  available  and  to 
be  expended  under  the  direction  of  the  Secre- 
tary of  War  and  the  supervision  of  the  Chief 
of  Eog^eers,  for  the  construction,  completion, 
repair,  and  preservation  of  the  public  works 
hereinafter  named.*' 

This,  says  Mr.  Sherman,  **  is  merely  per- 
missive; and,  in  the  case  of  every  one  of 
these  appropriations,  if  the  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury  should  say  that  he  has  no 
money  for  this  purpose  that  is  not  other- 
wise appropriated,  as  a  matter  of  course 
he  is  not  bound  to  expend  it,  .  .  .  or 
if  the  President  of  the  United  States 
should  see  proper  to  say  that '  the  object 
of  the  appropriation  is  not  a  wise  one;  I 
do  not  concur  that  the  money  ought  to  be 
expended,'  that  is  the  end  of  it."  If  the 
appropriation  is  merely  permissive,  the 
words  '*to  be  immediately  available" 
have  no  meaning.  If  the  first  section  is 
to  be  construed  as  Mr.  Sherman  thinks 
it  should  be,  it  ought  to  contain  the 
words,  '*  provided  the  President  of  the 
United  States  considers  such  appropria- 
tions, or  any  of  them,  wise."  The  Sher- 
man construction,  if  correct  in  law,  would 
reach  by  a  short  cut  the  constitutional 
amendment  which  many  people  favor,  en- 
abling the  President  to  veto  particular 
items  in  an  appropriation  bill,  as  the 
Governor  of  New  York  can  do. 


Another  part  of  Mr.  Sherman's  conten- 
tion deserves  notice,  and  that  is  his  in- 
sinuation that  there  is  no  money  in  the 
Treasury  to  meet  this  appropriation.  Un- 
fortunately, and  in  consequence  of  a  law 
which  Mr.  Sherman  was  instrumental  in 
enacting  in  1878,  the  greenbacks  which 
have  been  redeemed  in  gold  must  l>e  ** re- 
issued and  paid  out  again  and  kept  in 
circulation."  About  $115,000,000  by  legal- 
tender  notes  has  been  accumulated  in 
this  way.  It  is  very  easy  for  Mr.  Sherman 
in  the  Senate  and  Mr.  Dingley  in  the 
House  to  say  that  greenbacks  so  received 
ought  not  to  be  used  for  paying  the  cur- 
rent expenses  of  the  Government  Why, 
then,  do  you  not  repeal  the  law  of  1878, 
or  at  least  bring  in  a  bill  for  that  purpose 
and  take  a  vote  on  it  ?  Do  you  fancy  that 
people  can  be  hoodwinked  with  the  notion 
that  the  President  is  violating  law  or 
morals  by  paying  out  money  which  an  ex- 
isting statute  says  he  shall  pay  out  ?  If 
the  committee  of  ways  and  means,  in  its 
report  adverse  to  the  Butler  repudiation 
bill,  criticises  the  Secretary  of  the  Trea- 
sury for  using  the  proceeds  of  bond  sales 
for  current  expenses  of  the  Grovernment, 
then  the  committee  must  be  in  favor  of 
letting  the  Government  stop  for  want  of 
means  to  go  on  with.  Perhaps  Mr.  Ding- 
ley  would  say  that  if  his  bill  were  passed, 
there  would  be  means  to  go  on  with. 
Other  people  might  differ  from  him  in 
opinion  as  to  this,  but  it  is  a  sufficient 
answer  to  say  that  his  bill  has  not  passed, 
and  that  the  Secretary  has  to  deal  with 
existing  facts,  and  not  with  Mr.  Dingley's 
conjectures  of  what  would  happen  if  some- 
thing else  happened. 


Senator  Morgan's  attempt  to  lash  a 
dying  Ck)ngress  into  fresh  fury  about  Cuba 
will  probably  fall.  The  whole  thing  is  in 
the  hands  of  the  President — properly  so— 
and  there  it  will  remain.  As  to  the  par- 
ticular case  of  the  American  citizens  in 
jail  in  Cuba  for  being  caught  red-handed 
in  filibustering,  no  one  has  a  scintilla  of 
evidence  that  the  President  has  not  acted 
in  their  behalf  with  prompt  energy.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  known  that  his  firm 
protest  has  already  secured  a  suspension 
and  review  of  their  first  hasty  and  du- 
biously legal  sentence,  and  that  every- 
thing possible  has  been  done  to  secure 
them  a  fair  and  speedy  civil  trial,  which 
is  the  extent  of  their  rights.  Morgan  was 
vastly  indignant  that  the  court  proceed- 
ings had  been  conducted  in  Spanish.  Of 
course,  the  Spanish  officers  diould  have 
used  English  or  Alabamese.  Anyhow,  a 
war-ship  should  be  sent  at  once  to  Cuba 
to  take  those  Americans  straight  out  of 
their  dungeon.  No  American  who  has 
violated  the  laws  of  his  own  country  and 
has  been  captured  with  an  armed  force 
attacking  a  friendly  foreign  power  would 
be  left  one  day  in  jail,  or  even  under  bail, 
if  Morgan  had  his  way.  Meanwhile,  the 
scheme  to  compel  Mr.  Cleveland  to  sliow 
his  hand  in  the  Cuban  business  is  a  hlgli^ 
ly  dangerous  ooe,    tie  ma^  ftliBOft  Wf 


June  II,  1896] 


Th.e   iN'ation. 


447 


day  show  so  many  trump  cards  that  hia 
furibund  enemies  will  wish  they  hadn't 
done  it 


The  decision  of  the  Appellate  Division 
of  the  Supreme  Court  at  Albany  on  the 
Albany  police  bill  is  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance. Should  it  be  confirmed  by  the 
Court  of  Appeals,  to  which  it  is  ffoing,  its 
significance  for  this  city  cannot  be  over- 
rated. It  not  only  declares  the  Albany 
police  bill  unconstitutional — that  is  a  com- 
paratively small  matter — but  the  grounds 
of  the  decision  are  very  far-reaching.  It 
decides,  in  the  first  place,  that  an  act 
which  seeks  to  divide  the  Police  Commis- 
sion equally  between  the  two  leading  po- 
litical parties,  is  an  attempt  to  place  the 
minority  on  an  equality  with  the  majority, 
and  give  the  majority  no  more  power  than 
the  minority.  This  the  judgment  declares 
to  be  *Mn  violation  of  the  fundamental 
laws  of  a  republican  government "; 

**The  principle  that  the  majority  shall  gov- 
ern lies  at  the  very  basis  of  our  government. 
Among  the  rights  of  the  majority,  as  a  part 
of  its  soverf  IgD  power,  is  the  right  to  select 
officers,  either  directly  ny  election,  or  indirect- 
ly  by  aathoritiee  or  officers  whom  thev  have 
choeen  by  election.  This  power  of  the  maiori- 
ty  to  govern,  the  Legislature  cannot  take  from 
them.  The  Legislature  exercises  the  legisla 
tive  power  of  the  people,  it  is  their  agent  for 
that  purpose,  but  it  cannot  limit  or  surrender 
anv  of  the  power  or  authority  of  its  princi. 

This  is  a  tremendous,  let  us  hope  a  fatal, 
blow  to  the  **  bi-partisan  "  foolery.  You 
may  give  a  minority  representation;  you 
cannot  give  it  equal  power. 


The  act  next  violates  the  principle  of 
local  self-government: 

*"  But  it  may  be  said  that  the  Legislature  is 
composed  of  the  representatives  of  the  people, 
and  that,  therefore,  their  acts  are  presumed  to 
be  the  acts  of  a  majority  of  the  people,  and 
that  while  this  act  deprives  the  majority  of  the 
people  in  one  locality  of  their  power,  »till  it  is 
m  accordance  with  the  will  of  the  majority  of 
the  people  of  the  whole  State,  and  that  thereby 
the  principle  of  majority  government  is  recog- 
nized. There  would  be  force  in  that  sugges 
tion  if  it  was  not  for  another  principle  of  our 
government,  recognized  by  our  Constitution, 
and  if  the  people  had  not  by  the  Constitution 
limited  their  power  to  override  the  will  of  a- 
majority  in  any  locality.  The  principle  I  re- 
fer to  is  the  principle  of  local  self-government. 
The  principle  of  local  self- government  is  re- 
garded as  fundamental  in  American  political 
institutions.  It  means  that  local  affairs  shall 
be  decided  upon  and  regulated  by  local  au- 
thorities, and  that  the  citizens  of  the  different 
political  divisions  of  the  State  have  the  right  to 
determine  upon  their  own  public  concerns  and 
select  their  own  local  officials  without  being 
controlled  by  the  general  public  or  the  State 
at  large.  For  this  purpose  municipal  corpora- 
tions are  established  and  are  invested  with 
rights  and  powers  of  government  subordinate 
to  the  general  authority  of  the  State,  but  ex- 
clusive within  their  sphere.  The  principle  is 
one  that  runs  through  our  entire  system  of 
government,  from  the  road  and  school  district 
up  to  the  federal  Government.  The  ngbt  of 
cities  to  govern  themselves  has  been  the  sub- 
ject  of  attack  by  arbitrary  power  from  a  very 
early  period.  In  our  own  State,  it  seems  to 
me,  the  subject  has  been  placed  bevond  ques- 
tion. All  through  our  State  Constitution  this 
principle  of-  local  self-government  is  recog- 

Should  this  principle  receive  the  highest 
judicial  aanction,  it  will  stop  for  ever  the 


incessant  and  nefarious  legislation  for  this 
city  at  Albany  regarding  its  most  vital 
local  concerns  which  goes  on  every  winter 
at  the  instigation  of  the  local  Democratic 
or  Republican  boss.  It  would  infuse  new 
life,  new  activity,  and  a  new  spirit  into 
our  municipality.  It  will  be  seen  that 
the  decision  bears  fiat*footed  on  our  po- 
lice here.  Until  it  is  reversed,  our  Police 
Board  is  unconstitutional,  and  we  trust 
that  immediate  steps  will  be  taken  to  ap- 
ply the  law. 


Mayor  Strong's  action  in  extending  the 
civil-service  rules  to  cover  about  all  the 
desirable  places  that  are  left  in  the  muni- 
cipal service  will  be  a  truly  terrible  blow 
to  all  Boys,  in  Tammany  and  elsewhere. 
There  is  really  little  left  in  the  way  of  of- 
fices for  them  to  fight  for  at  the  polls.  If 
Abe  Gruber  is  right  about  it,  they  are  ail 
likely  to  cease  to  manifest  any  interest  in 
politics,  and  to  leave  our  elections  to  take 
care  of  themselves.  This  last  extension 
takes  away  all  the  biggest  *' plums*'  as 
the  preceding  ones  took  away  the  great 
mass  of  little  *' plums."  Of  course  the 
heads  of  departments  remain,  and  a  new 
Mayor  can  always  remove  them  all  and 
put  his  own  men  in  their  places ;  but  these 
cannot  change  the  subordinates  in  the  de- 
partments, for  they  are  now  all  within  the 
rules  and  cannot  be  removed  except  for 
cause.  All  vacancies,  however  created, 
must  be  filled  through  competitive  exami- 
nations. The  Boys  will  surely  think  that 
the  republic  is  tottering  to  its  ruin.  The 
mere  perusal  of  the  list  of  nearly  seventy 
places,  with  salaries  ranging  from  $900  to 
15,000  each,  and  a  grand  total  of  $318,- 
000,  is  enough  to  strike  a  Boy  dead  on 
sight.  Think  of  all  that  l>eing  put  out  of 
the  reach  of  the  Boys  for  all  time  2 


The  dissolution  of  the  union  between  the 
Irish  and  the  English  Nonconformists, 
which  has  been  formally  announced  by 
the  organ  of  the  English  Methodists,  on 
account  of  the  action  of  the  Irish  mem- 
l>ers  in  supporting  the  education  bill,  and 
over  which  there  is  much  jubilation 
among  the  Conservatives,  shows  clearly, 
what  was  always  suspected,  that  this 
union,while  it  lasted,  really  rested  on  Glad- 
stone's prestige.  The  home-rule  doctrine 
was  never  held  with  any  real  heartiness  by 
the  leading  English  Liberals,  say  Lord 
Rosebery  and  Sir  William  Harcourt. 
They  held  it  because  Gladstone  had  got  it 
incorporated  into  the  Liberal  creed,  but 
it  was  always  to  them  something  like  the 
Athanasian  Greed  to  good  churchmen. 
The  mass  of  the  English  Dissenters, 
as  we  now  see,  clung  to  it  because  eighty- 
six  Irish  votes  were  a  powerful  aasistance 
in  getting  other  things  they  wanted  and 
cared  for  more  than  home  rule.  The  split 
can  do  no  great  harm  to  the  home- rule 
cause  at  present,  for  it  was  already  as 
dead  as  Julius  Ctesar,  owing  to  the  large- 
ness of  the  Conservative  majority  and  the 
dieappearaoce  from  the  political  ecene  of 


the  one  able  Englishman  who  ever  gave 
it  any  vitality.  But  it  renders  any  reun- 
ion of  the  Irish  with  the  Liberals  indefi- 
nitely remote,  and  makes  it  more  probable 
than  ever  that  some  little  measure  of 
home  rule,  something  in  the  County 
Council  line,  will  yet  come  from  the  Tories 
themselves,  who,  in  fact,  are  much  more 
like  the  Irish  than  the  Liberal  Dissenters, 
and  come  nearer  to  them  on  several  points. 


The  arguments  with  which  the  Dissent- 
ers justify  their  separation  from  the  Irish 
would  make  ludicrous  reading  if  placed 
side  by  side  with  those  by  which  home 
rule  used  to  be  advocated  in  the  same 
quarter.  The  anti-home-rulers  opposed 
home  rule  on  the  ground,  among  others, 
that  it  would  not  do  to  give  home  rule  to 
such  bad  men  as  the  Irish;  but  the  home- 
rulers  said  that  it  was  to .  be  given  as  a 
wise  political  measure,  and  not  as  a  re- 
ward for  good  behavior,  and  that,  no  mat- 
ter how  they  behaved,  unless  Lil>eral  doc- 
trines were  all  wrong,  it  was  better  for 
both  Ireland  and  England  that  the  Irish 
should  manage  their  own  affairs.  It  ap- 
pears now,  however,  that  the  Irish  ought 
not  to  have  home  rule  unless  they  agree 
with  the  English  about  the  management 
of  common  schools.  This  inconsistency 
is  perceived  by  some  Liberal  leaders 
like  Sir  Frank  Lockwood  and  Mr.  As- 
quith,  and  they  laugh  quietly  over  it, 
but  there  it  is.  The  affair  really  fur- 
nishes one  more  argument  for  home  rule 
to  the  Irish  arsenal,  for  it  shows  once 
more  how  inevitably  all  parties  in  Eng- 
land, Whig  and  Tory,  pass  on  Irish  ques- 
tions on  English  grounds.  Nearly  every- 
thing the  Irish  have  ever  asked  for  in  a 
hundred  years  has  been  refused,  at  first 
at  least,  for  an  English  reason.  Of  course 
there  are  many  causes  for  the  present  ob- 
literation of  home  rule — Parnell's  death, 
Gladstone's  retirement,  and  the  Irish  dis- 
sensions— but  we  have  no  doubt  the  one 
which  acts  most  powerfully  on  the  Eng- 
lish mind,  perhaps  unconsciously,  is  Irish 
tranquillity.  Public  attention  in  England 
has  never  been  seriously  given  to  Irish 
questions  except  in  periods  of  disturbance^ 
and  even  then  it  is  only  very  recently  that 
healing  measures  have  been  substituted 
for  coercive  measures. 


The  deaths  of  Jules  Simon  and  L^on 
Say,  following  each  other  so  closely,  will 
not  lessen  the  anxiety  of  Frenchmen  over 
the  signs  of  decay  in  their  public  life. 
This  is  a  phenomenon  which  is  giving 
trouble  in  every  democracy.  In  France, 
as  in  this  country,  the  abler  and  better 
men  have  so  long  abstained  from  an  active 
political  life  that  they  now  find  their  pub- 
lic iofiuence  reduced  almost  to  a  nullity, 
and  discover  that  they  cannot  exert  effect- 
ive political  power  even  when  they  try  to. 
This  ought  not  really  to  surprise  them,  for 
nothing  will  more  quickly  forget  and  ignore 
you  than  politics  when  you  consent  for  any 
long  time  to  for^t  and  ignore  t^ 


448 


Tlie    iN^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1 61 5 


A  LESSON  IN  FINANCE, 
Thebb  is  io  progrress  at  the  present  mo- 
ment an  object-lesson  in  the  value  of  an 
elastic  currency  so  remarkable  that  it  de- 
serves especial  mention.  For  several 
months  past,  the  Russian  Gk)vernment  has 
been  pursuing  what  is  evidently  a  con- 
certed plan  to  reform  its  coinage.  With 
this  in  view,  gold  has  been  drawn  from 
all  countries  on  which  Russian  exchange 
was  favorable,  and  the  specie  has  been 
flowing  steadily  into  the  St.  Petersburg 
reserves.  Since  January  1,  according  to 
its  latest  published  statement,  the  Impe- 
rial Bank  of  Russia  has  increased  its  stock 
of  gold  $39,000,000.  This  increase  of  the 
national  gold  reserve  has  been  carried  out, 
according  to  economic  rule  as  practised  in 
every  civilized  modern  state  except  our 
own,  through  reduction  of  the  paper  cur- 
rency. Even  the  circulation  of  the  Bank 
of  Russia  has  been  reduced  within  the 
same  period  $25,550,000. 

It  happened  in  this  Russian  operation, 
as  it  did  in  the  similar  Austrian  episode 
a  few  years  ago,  that  Germany  was  at  first 
the  easiest  gold  market  on  which  to  draw. 
While  the  Bank  of  Russia's  gold  reserve 
was  thus  increasing  rapidly,  the  gold  sup- 
ply of  the  Imperial  Bank  of  Germany,  be- 
tween February  22  and  April  7,  decreased 
$23,500,000.  At  this  time,  it  will  be  re- 
membered, the  United  States  was  nego- 
tiating its  $100,000,000  loan,  our  money 
markets  were  contracted,  and  gold  ship- 
ments from  New  York  had  ceased.  The 
Bank  of  Germany,  like  other  national 
banks  of  European  states,  supplies  the 
needed  currency  by  its  own  note  issues. 
When  the  outward  gold  movement  had 
begun  seriously  to  deplete  the  Bank's  spe 
cie  reserves,  a  very  perceptible  movement 
to  contract  this  note  circulation  was 
adopted.  From  April  7  to  May  26,  the 
notes  of  the  German  Bank  in  outside  cir- 
culation were  reduced  $40,000,000.  The 
result  was  at  once  apparent  in  the  money 
market.  The  Berlin  open-market  interest 
rate  advanced  from  2^  per  cent,  at  April's 
opening  to  3  per  cent,  at  the  close  of  May. 
Immediately  the  gold  depletion  ceased. 
The  German  Bank's  reserves  began  to 
rise  again.  Week  before  last  they  had 
increased  $13,750,000  from  their  recent 
minimum.  This  restoration  of  the  gold 
supply  having  brought  the  Bank's  reserve 
once  more  to  a  safe  percentage  of  note  lia- 
bilities, the  Bank's  report  for  the  next 
week  showed  once  more  a  moderate  ex- 
pansion of  circulation,  with  an  accompa- 
nying decline  in  money  rates.  In  other 
words,  a  simple  and  scientific  process,  ap- 
plied when  the  circulating  medium  was 
relatively  in  excess,  and  when  the  percent- 
age of  reserve  was  running  down  too  ra- 
pidly, has  served  the  double  purpose  of 
restoring  the  currency  to  equilibrium  and 
wholly  preventing  any  doubts  as  to  its  se- 
curity. 

Ever  since  1890,  the  currency  infiation 
under  the  Sherman  silver-purchase  act 
had  forced  the  foreign-exchange  rates  of 
the  United  States  to  so  high  a  level  that 


this  country  was  habitually  looked  to  as 
the  cheapest  gold  market  in  the  world. 
Our  own  insane  currency  legislation  drove 
out  our  gold  to  Europe,  and  it  was  merely 
a  question  which  nation  should  receive 
the  precious  metal.  The  process  of  buy- 
ing gold  to  keep  our  Treasury  reserve  in- 
tact resulted  in  a  further  heavy  redemp- 
tion of  legal  tenders,  and,  by  this  tempo- 
rary retirement,  an  awkward  sort  of  cur- 
rency contraction  was  in  progress  which 
failed  invariably  of  its  object.  If  the  cur- 
rency of  this  nation,  like  that  of  every 
other  great  financial  state,  were  subject 
to  automatic  contraction  or  expansion  ac- 
cording to  the  money  market's  true  re- 
quirements, we  should  long  ago  have 
checked  the  embarrassing  gold-export 
movement,  as  surely  as  this  season's  Ger- 
man export  was  arrested.  If  we  did  not 
instantly  check  the  specie  export,  we 
should  at  all  events,  on  such  occasions, 
have  sustained  a  safe  percentage  of  re- 
serve to  liabilities,  instead  of  witnessing  a 
decline  in  this  reserve  percentage,  as  our 
Treasury  did  in  1894,  to  barely  14  per 
cent.  For  a  time,  this  year,  as  we  have 
said  already,  the  "tying  up"  of  money 
incidental  to  the  February  loan  served  all 
this  purpose.  But  meantime  confidence 
and  trade  activity  had  fiagged,  first  as  a 
result  of  the  repeated  Jingo  menaces  at 
Washington,  then  because  of  doubt  and 
suspicion  respecting  the  leading  candidate 
for  the  Presidential  nomination.  As  the 
needs  of  trade  contracted,  the  money  rate 
declined,  and  idle  paper  currency  again 
piled  up  in  the  city  depositories. 

Finally,  exports  of  gold  began  again, 
and  the  Treasury  reserve  is  now  running 
once  more  rapidly  down  the  scale.  If  we 
were  doing  business  in  this  country  on  a 
properly  elastic  currency,  the  recourse 
would  be  as  obvious  as  it  has  been  in  Ger- 
many. Ck)n traction  of  the  .  circulating 
medium  would  probably  indeed  be  auto- 
matic. Bank  currency  would  presumably 
be  called  in  simply  because  bank  loans, 
needed  no  longer  in  a  sluggish  trade,  were 
paid  off  by  the  borrowers.  Having  no  pre- 
tence of  any  such  device  of  modern  scien- 
tific financiering,  our  paper  currency,  once 
more  far  in  excess  of  business  needs,  is 
piling  up  again  in  institution  vaults,  and 
more  than  $22,000,000  gold  has  gone  abroad 
since  April  4.  The  United  States,  in  fact, 
a  seemingly  willing  victim,  is  providing 
all  the  gold  asked  by  the  Russian  Trea- 
sury. It  is  hard  to  say  whether  regret  at 
the  event,  or  contempt  for  the  stupid  poli- 
cy which  makes  it  possible,  ought  in  such 
an  episode  to  be  an  intelligent  American's 
chief  sentiment 


THE    PENSIONER  AND    HIS  DOLLAR, 

The  German-American  Grold -Man -on- a- 
Grold-Platform  League  is  doing  good  work 
in  distributing  le^ets,  showing  in  what 
classes  of  the  community  the  silver  swin- 
dle is  likely  to  work  most  damage.  For 
instance,  all  persons  living  on  wages  and 
salaries,  and   all  depositors  in   savings- 


banks,  will  suffer  at  once  by  the  intro- 
duction of  a  fifty-cent  dollar.  No  matter 
what  glorious  future  they  may  promise 
themselves  through  a  rise  in  wages  and 
salaries,  and  consequent  surplus  for  '*the 
bank,"  what  stares  them  in  the  face  is 
poverty  the  moment  the  money  they  are 
paid  in  becomes  payable  in  silver  instead 
of  gold.  Not  only  so,  but  their  poverty  will 
last  a  long  time,  for  neither  a  high  tariff 
nor  a  silver  currency  will  bring  a  single 
wage-earner  a  day's  work  more  than  he 
has  now.  As  to  this  the  inflationists  are 
deluded  by  the  recollection  of  the  good 
times  which  accompanied  the  inflated  war 
currency.  The  war  not  only  steadily 
lessened  the  supply  of  Ibbor,  through  the 
withdrawal  of  the  whole  body  of  soldiers 
from  industry,  but  created  an  artificial 
market  in  which  all  products  as  fast  as 
they  were  produced  and  purchased  were 
consumed  and  destroyed,  and  which  there- 
fore could  never  be  glutted.  All  this  is  so 
plain  that  if  the  wage-earner  could  be  in- 
duced to  look  the  matter  in  the  faoe,  he 
would  be  no  more  deluded  by  the  promise 
of  prosperity  made  by  the  silverites  than 
the  manual  laborer  could  be  to-day  by 
arguments — once  so  efficacious — that  ma- 
chinery would  prove  his  ruin. 

There  is  one  class  addressed  by  the 
League  which  will,  however,  be  even 
more  plainly  and  shockingly  swindled  by 
the  silver  dollar  than  the  wage-earners— 
and  that  is  the  whole  body  of  men, 
women,  and  children  on  the  pension  list. 
The  swindle  is  more  plain  in  this  instance 
than  in  any  other,  because  a  pensioner  is 
in  most  cases  in  a  position  in  which  he 
can  be  but  little  benefited*  by  any  exer- 
tions of  his  own.  The  $1^,000,000  di- 
vided annually  among  the  970,000  pen- 
sioners on  the  rolls  will  never  be  affected 
by  a  tariff  nor  by  any  rise  io  wages.  The 
moment  the  silver  basis  comes,  the  970,- 
000  pensioners  will  have,  not  $140,000,000, 
but  $70,000,000.  The  swindle  is  peculiar- 
ly shocking  because  it  falls  upon  a  depen- 
dent class  which  is  supposed  to  have 
particularly  meritorious  claims  upon  the 
public. 

No  doubt  in  the  South  a  great  many 
silverites  chuckle  over  the  idea  of  swin- 
dling the  pensioners,  imagining  that  ths 
whole  body  of  them  are  in  the  North  and 
Northwest,  and  that  for  the  South  to  help 
on  the  good  work  of  cheating  them  would 
be  nothing  but  tit  for  tat,  the  South  hav- 
ing been  unduly  taxed  for  their  benefit 
But  this  is  a  total  mistake.  Owing  to 
immigration  into  the  South  from  the 
North,  and  other  causes,  the  Southern 
pension  list  is  very  large.  There  are  13,- 
557  Federal  pensioners  in  West  Virginia, 
8,043  in  Virginia,  7,902  in  Texas,  16,017  in 
Tennessee,  53,959  in  Missouri,  3,715  in 
Mississippi,  12,979  in  Maryland,  4^453  in 
Louisiana,  28,905  in  Kentucky,  3,706  in 
Georgia,  3,217  in  Florida,  8,354  in  the 
District  of  Columbia,  2,730  in  Delaware. 
10,364  in  Arkansas;  and  even  ia  Sooth 
Carolina  there  are  1,717.  Hov 
votes  this  list  represent!  it  wovM  lit  i 


June  II,  1896] 


The    IN*atiorL. 


449 


poMlbla  to  say ;  many  of  them  are  women 
and  children  ;  others  may  be  colored  sol- 
diers or  their  families ;  but  it  must  repre- 
sent a  good  many  Totes ;  perhaps  votes 
enough  in  one  or  two  States  to  turn  a 
close  election. 

In  the  Northern  States,  of  course,  the 
case  is  much  plainer.  The  present  pen- 
sion law  was  passed  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  getting  votes.  The  effect  of  sil- 
ver inflation  will  be  to  cheat  every  pen- 
sioner out  of  half  the  income  which  was 
to  be  a  claim  upon  his  gratitude.  In 
Illinois  68.678  of  them  will  be  cheated  out 
t>f  $4,963,823,  in  Indiana  69,850  of  them 
will  be  cheated  out  of  a  little  larger  sum 
—$10,000,000  in  round  numbers  in  the  two 
SUtes.  In  Ohio  there  wUl  be  106,160  vic- 
tims, and  they  will  be  **done"  out  of 
$7,779,283.  These  three  States  might 
alone  determine  the  election.  Altogether 
in  the  Northern,  Northwestern,  and  East- 
em  States  there  are  nearly  800,000  victims 
who  will  be  cheated  out  of  more  than  $60,- 
000,000  a  year  by  the  silver  swindle. 

A  campaign  among  these  victims  would 
be  a  campaign  of  education,  no  doubt,  as 
we  have  said,  and  fortunately  the  Govern- 
ment has  a  list  of  them.  There  are  many 
of  them  who  are  women  and  children,  and 
many  of  them  are  negroes  who  live  in 
States  where  their  votes  are  of  small  con- 
sequence. But  there  are  many  thousands 
of  white  voters  among  them,  and  the 
figures  given  show  that  it  is  probable 
that  in  several  States  the  pensioner  may 
influence  the  result  conclusively.  Even 
where  he  has  some  other  means  of  live- 
lihood he  is  almost  always  a  person 
whose  pension  is  a  considerable  part  of 
his  whole  income.  He  is  open  to  argu- 
ment, and  what  the  Qerman-American 
League  want  to  do,  as  we  understand 
their  purpose,  is  to  make  the  silver  swindle 
so  plain  in  its  effects  upon  individuals 
that  the  operation  shall  of  itself  create  a 
gold  party  once  and  for  all.  The  way  to 
do  it  is  to  bring  it  home,  not  merely  to 
classes  in  the  mass,  but  the  individual  in 
the  class;  to  show  the  pensioner,  the  sav- 
ings-bank depositor,  the  mill-hand,  that 
his  dollar  under  the  new  regime  will  be 
flfty  cents;  that  his  pension  will  be  half 
what  it  now  is;  that  his  children  will  get 
fewer  shoes  for  it,  his  wife  and  he  less 
meat;  that  his  rent  will  be  higher,  his 
coal  bill  larger,  and  that  at  the  end  of 
every  year  he  will  be  poorer  than  he  was 
at  the  beginning.  These  are  the  true  pic- 
toras  of  what  the  political  Hungry  Joes 
have  in  store  for  him. 


THE  FRENCH  CLAIMS    VETO. 

Thb  President's  veto  of  the  general  defl- 
dency  bill  is  mainly  based  on  the  item  for 
the  French  spoliation  claims,  amounting 
to  $1,027,314.09.  He  very  justly  says  that 
these  claims  have  no  proper  place  in  a  de- 
fldency  bill.  But  the  grounds  of  the  veto 
are  such  that  he  would  be  required  to 
withhold  his  approval  from  any  bill  which 
oootained  them. 


The  claims  arise  out  of  depredations 
upon  American  vessels  by  French  priva- 
teers between  1791  and  1800,  in  the  course 
of  the  Franco-English  war,  in  which  we 
were  neutral.  These  claims  were  flled  at 
Washington  by  those  injured,  and  pre- 
sented by  our  Government  to  France,  and 
thus  became  the  subject  of  negotiation 
between  the  two  countries.  Other  mat- 
ters were  pending  between  them,  how- 
ever, at  the  same  time,  and,  in  the  flnal 
settlement  made,  the  United  States  aban- 
doned those  private  claims,  adjusting  its 
own  difficulties  with  France  partly  through 
this  abandonment.  The  claimants  have 
ever  since  contended  that  this  was  unjust 
and  gave  them  an  equitable  claim  on  their 
Government  for  reimbursement. 

The  President's  reply  to  this  is,  flrst, 
that  the  claims  are  not  legal  claims; 
second,  that,  being  founded  on  our  neutral 
status,  they  would  have  no  standing  if 
the  fact  was  that  this  country  was  not  a 
neutral,  but  at  war  with  France— there 
being  of  course  no  redress  for  one  bellige- 
rent as  against  another  for  depredations 
committed  in  the  course  of  war — and  that, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  better  opinion  is 
that  we  were  then  at  war  with  France; 
third,  that  it  is  *•  confidently  slleged" 
that  these  claims  were  really  abandoned 
because  they  were  good  for  nothing,  and 
that  if  they  were  used  in  obtaining  our 
national  settlement  with  France,  this  re- 
sult did  not  make  them  good  against  the 
United  States;  fourth,  that  in  the  first 
quarter  of  the  century,  while  they  were 
still  fresh— at  a  time  near  the  period  of 
the  depredations — there  was  adverse  ac- 
tion in  the  Senate  and  House,  which  cre- 
ates a  presumption  against  them;  fifth, 
that  bills  for  the  relief  of  the  claimants 
have  been  twice  vetoed;  sixth,  that  it  is 
*'  now  estimated  "  that  the  claims  **may 
amount"  to  $26,000,000;  seventh,  that 
none  of  these  claims  have  been  psid  except 
$1,300,000,  put  into  the  general  deficiency 
bill  in  the  last  hours  of  the  session  of  Con- 
gress, March  3,  1891;  eighth,  that  many 
of  the  claims  are  those  of  insurers,  who 
ought  not  to  be  paid  under  any  circum- 
stances. 

We  have  endeavored  to  state  the  Presi- 
dent's objections  fairly,  but  must  point 
out  that  he  has  wholly  omitted  to  refer, 
except  in  the  most  indirect  way,  to  the 
most  important  recent  facts  in  the  history 
of  the  claims.  Many  people  in  reading 
his  messsge  must  wonder  what  his  refe- 
rence to  cases  *'  pending  for  examination 
in  the  Court  of  Claims"  means ;  and  how 
it  was  that  $1,300,000  came  to  be  paid  at 
all.  The  fact  is,  that  after  these  claims 
had  been  before  Congress  for  three- quar- 
ters of  a  century,  and  after  the  historical 
objections  urged  by  the  President  had 
been  brought  up  over  and  over  again,  and 
when,  in  addition  to  the  unfavorable  re- 
ports and  vetoes  referred  to  by  him,  forty- 
five  reports  in  Congress  had  been  made  in 
favor  of  the  claims,  and  after  Marshall, 
Madison,  Pickering,  Clay,  Clinton,  Ed- 
ward Livingston,  Everett,  Webster,  Cush- 


ing,  Choate,  and  Sumner  had  recognised 
the  claims  as  valid,  the  whole  matter  waa 
finally  referred  to  the  Court  of  Claima  for 
a  Judicial  opinion  as  to  their  merits,  by 
an  act  of  Congress  passed  January  20, 
1886.  This  act  said  nothing  about  gratu- 
ities or  largess,  but  gave  permission  to 
such  persons,  or  their  representatives  (the 
original  claimants  being  all  long  since 
dead),  as  had  "  valid  claims  to  indemnity 
upon  the  French  Grovernment  arising  out 
of  illegal  captures,"  etc.,  to  apply  to  the 
court  by  petition  within  two  years ;  di- 
rected the  court  to  ascertain  and  deter- 
mine the  *'  validity  and  amount  '*  of  the 
claims ;  directed  the  Secretary  of  State  to 
procure  all  accessible  foreign  evidence  and 
documents ;  and  directed  the  court  to 
make  reports  of  its  findings  every  year — 
such  reports,  however,  not  to  be  conclu- 
sive. Under  this  act,  the  claimants  pre- 
sented their  evidence  and  made  their  ar- 
guments, and  the  United  States  did  the 
same  on  its  side,  and  the  court  on  May  17, 
1886,  in  the  case  of  Gray  vs.  the  United 
States,  decided  the  claims  in  general  to 
be  valid,  using  the  following  language : 

**  The  result  wbich  we  have  reached  is  sup- 
ported by  rf^B^lutions  passed  in  each  of  the 
thirteen  original  States,  by  tweoty-foor  re- 
ports made  to  tbe  Senate  by  its  committees,  by 
over  twenty  similar  reports  made  to  tbe  Hoase 
of  Representativefi,  by  tbe  fact  that,  while 
three  adverse  reports  have  been  made,  one  to 
tbe  Senate  aod  two  to  tbe  Hoose,  no  adverse 
report  has  been  made  in  either  body  since  the 

SubliCAtion  of  the  corref^pondence  in  1826,  and 
y  the  farther  facts  that  the  Senate  has  parsed 
eight  bills  in  favor  of  tbese  claimants,  and  tbe 
House  has  passed  three  of  these,  of  which  one 
is  tbe  present  law— the  other  two  having  b^n 
vetoed,  one  by  President  Polk,  substantially 
upon  grounds  not  at  this  time  important,  the 
other  by  President  Pierce  for  reasons  which 
we  have  considered  very  fully  in  this  opinion, 
and  with  which,  after  the  most  careful  ana 
painstaking  consideration,  we  cannot  agree.*' 

It  was  now  supposed  by  most  persons 
that  the  matter  was  settled,  but  tbe  un- 
fortunate reservation  of  the  right  of  Ck)n- 
gross  to  disregard  the  finding  of  the  court 
remained.  The  claimants  went  on  and 
proved  their  claims,  but  until  1891  Con- 
gress refused  to  appropriate  money  to  pay 
them.  In  that  year  $1,300,000  of  the 
claims  was  passed  by  Congress,  and  sub- 
sequently paid.  Here  the  matter  stands. 
The  validity  of  the  plaintiffs*  claims  as  a 
whole  has  been  decided  in  favor  of  the 
claimants  by  the  tribunal  to  which  the 
defendant  referred  them,  and  one  batch 
of  judgments  has  been  paid  by  it.  It  now 
refuses  to  pay  the  rest,on  the  ground  that 
the  plaintiffs  have  no  case. 

The  President  has  no  doubt  killed  the 
claims  for  the  present,  but  that  tbe  claim- 
ants will  accept  his  decision  as  a  finality 
is  not  to  be  expected,  as  there  is  not  a  sin- 
gle argument  in  it  that  has  not  been  al- 
ready considered  by  the  Court  of  Claims 
and  disposed  of  in  their  favor.  While  th^ 
result,  in  sending  off  the  first  claimants 
with  their  money  paid,  and  denying  all 
redress  to  the  others  who  stand  in  exactly 
the  same  position,  may  be  the  part  of 
financial  wisdom  at  the  present  time,  it  is 
certainly  not  justice.  Those  who  are  fa- 
mUiar  with  the  history  of  the  controversy 


-450 


Tlie    [N^atiorL. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1615 


will  remain  conyinced  that  the  French- 
claims  controversy  will  never  be  settled 
until  the  Government  is  willing,  not  only 
to  send  the  matter  to  a  court,  but  to  abide 
by  its  finding. 


THE  RULE  OF   THUMB, 

The  Society  of  the  Army  of  the  Tennessee 
determined  last  year  to  erect  an  equestrian 
monument  to  Gen.  Sherman,  and  a  com- 
mittee was  appointed  for  the  purpose  of 
which  Gren.  G.  M.  Dodge  was  chairman. 
Ck)nscious,  apparently,  of  their  own  want 
of  skill  and  experience  in  the  matter  of 
judging  sculpture,  they  very  properly 
asked  four  leading  American  sculptors — 
J.  Q.  A.  Ward,  Augustus  St.  Gaudens, 
Olin  L,  Warner,  D.  C.  French,  and  a 
prominent  architect,  Bruce  Price— to  aid 
them  in  making  a  selection  among  the 
designs  for  which  they  had  advertised. 
In  this  they  followed  the  admirable  exam- 
ple of  Mr.  Burnham  at  Chicago.  He  sum- 
moned the  leading  American  artists,  and 
asked  them  to  make  designs  of  exhibition 
buildings  and  divide  the  work  among 
themselves.  The  world  knows  the  result. 
In  other  words,  he  acknowledged  that  the 
men  who  give  attention  to  a  thing,  and 
win  fame  in  doing  it,  especially  in  matters 
of  taste,  are  most  likely  to  be  right  in 
their  judgment  about  it. 

We  have  said  in  **  matters  of  taste,'* 
but  this  is  really  true  in  all  matters. 
Civilization  is  built  on,  and  progresses  on, 
the  idea  that  the  men  who  occupy  them- 
selves with  any  pursuit  are  likely  to  know 
more  about  it  than  those  who  do  not,  and 
that  their  advice  touching  that  pursuit  is 
good  to  take.  This  is  true  of  war,  of  lite- 
rature, of  science,  and  of  art  in  all  its 
branches,  of  small  things  as  well  as  great, 
from  arranging  a  dinner- table  to  fighting 
a  battle.  A  man  who  arranges  a  dinner- 
table  may  be  an  ass  in  most  things,  but  if 
he  has  long  given  his  attention  to  this 
matter  of  arranging  dinner- tables,  he  is  a 
master  in  that  field,  and  his  word  should 
be  listened  to.  If  everybody  in  the  world 
thought  he  knew  as  much  about  every- 
thing as  everybody  else,  social  chaos  would 
ensue,  and  we  should  end,  in  a  few  gene- 
rations, in  the  woods,  clothed  in  skins  of 
beasts  like  our  ancestors. 

The  five  artists  thus  selected  prompt- 
ly complied  with  the  request  of  the  com- 
mittee, and  went  to  Washington,  where 
they  passed  judgment  on  the  designs 
there  collected,  selected  two  as  of  more 
merit  than  the  others,  and  recommended 
that  further  competition  between  the 
authors  of  these  two  should  be  ordered. 
They  acted  without  compensation,  for  the 
honor  of  Gen.  Sherman  and  the  credit  of 
American  sculpture.  This  advice  was 
given,  they  say,  "in  the  clearest  way,  and 
with  every  precaution  to  guard  against 
misunderstanding.'*  Far  from  taking  it, 
the  committee  promptly  proceeded  to  call 
for  further  competition  between,  it  is 
true,  the  two  recommended  by  the  judges, 
but    also   between    two   others,    one   of 


whom  had  been  already  specially  disap- 
proved, or  not  at  all  approved,  by  the 
judges.  Worse  than  all,  when  the  award 
was  finally  made,  it  was  made,  with- 
out communication  with  the  judges,  to 
that  one  of  the  two  supplementary  com- 
petitors **  whose  model  in  the  first  com- 
petition was  not  considered  by  the  com- 
mittee of  experts  as  worthy  of  considera- 
tion." 

The  want  of  courtesy  to  the  artists 
called  on  to  advise  would  be  very  shock- 
ing if  we  were  not  used  to  it  in  our  official 
life,  where  old  and  valuable  public  ser- 
vants are  often  turned  out  of  office  with- 
out other  notice  than  the  appearance  of 
their  successors  to  take  their  places.  But 
this  can  readily  be  overlooked,  in  view  of 
much  more  serious  considerations.  The 
snub  to  the  judges,  coupled  with  the 
award,  contains  the  assertion  that  the 
committee  of  the  Army  of  the  Tennessee 
know  more  about  sculpture  and  are  better 
judges  of  it  than  anybody  in  Europe  or 
America ;  for  this  is  what  I  say  if  I  ob- 
serve that  I  do  not  mind  what  Messrs. 
Ward,  St  Gaudens,  Warner,  French,  and 
Price  say.  I  put  myself  on  a  level  with 
Phidias  and  other  great  sculptors  of 
antiquity  whose  superiority  all  moderns 
acknowledge.  In  the  very  droll  letter 
from  Mr.  J.  R.  Dunlap,  editor  of  the 
Engineering  Journal^  in  defence  of  the 
committee*s  action,  which  was  published 
in  the  Evening  Post  on  Wednesday  week, 
he  not  only  put  the  committee  before  the 
sculptors,  but  put  Secretary  Lamont,  Gen. 
Miles,  Gen.  Sherman's  family,  and  him- 
self before  them.  JBe  gave  information 
about  the  conditions  of  a  good  Sherman 
statue,  and  about  sculptor  Rohl-Smith, 
which  would  have  put  Leasing  to  the 
blush,  and  caused  the  closing  of  the 
Beaux- Arts  as  a  useless  institution. 

Nothing  much  more  extraordinary  or 
dis(x>uraging  has  happened  since  the  days 
of  Vinnie  Ream.  Our  older  readers  may 
remember  that  advocacy  of  this  lady's 
work  developed  the  fact  that  both  houses 
of  Congress  swarmed  with  some  of  the  best 
judges  of  painting  and  sculpture  in  the 
world,  and  that  one  man  was  exactly  as 
good  a  judge  of  a  picture  as  another— a 
fact  which  can  be  readily  ascertained  by 
frequenting  any  picture  -  gallery  in  the 
world,  on  a  free  day.  Application  was 
made  here  in  New  York  some  time  ago  to 
the  Board  of  Aldermen  for  permission  to 
copy  one  of  the  portraits  in  the  City  Hall 
— a  Stuart,  we  believe — and  the  objection 
was  made  by  an  aldermanic  connoisseur 
that  the  copy  might  turn  out  t>etter  than 
the  original,  be  sold  for  more,  and  thus 
lower  its  value.  This  shows  that  there  is 
really  no  kind  of  knowledge  more  widely 
diffused  than  art  knowledge.  Consider- 
ing this,  the  enormous  sums  spent  all 
over  the  world  on  art  schools  and  schools 
of  design  have  always  puzzled  us.  Their 
promoters  say  it  is  to  promote  art  educa- 
tion and  art  culture  among  the  people. 
Bless  your  souls,  they  do  not  need  it 
They  have  got  it.    There  are  Mr.  Dun- 


lap,  for  instance,  and  Secretary  Lamont 
We  warrant  neither  has  frequented  any 
of  your  art  galleries,  and  yet  they  can  both 
give  points  to  Mr.  St.  Gaudens. 

The  matter  has  more  than  an  art  bear- 
ing; it  is  symptomatic  of  many  other  things. 
It  is  another  indication  of  the  struggle 
we  have  in  America  to  assert  the  claims  of 
knowledge  about  everything  which  does 
not  yield  an  immediate  pecuniary  return. 
The  currency  question  is  one  of  them. 
The  real  masters  of  this  question,  the  men 
who  know,  are  the  men  who  are  daily  en- 
gaged in  the  work  of  exchange.  It  is  they 
who  can  tell  what  is  the  best  measure  of 
value,  the  best  money  for  civilized  men. 
Yet  they  are  rarely  heard  from  or  listened 
to  on  this  subject  A  few  years  ago  the 
late  Mr.  Blaine  was  telling  an  ignorant 
audience  on  the  stump  that  we  lost  |60,- 
000,000  a  year  in  our  trade  with  Cuba. 
When  you  went  down  to  Front  Street,  and 
saw  the  men  who  carried  on  the  trade 
with  Cuba,  you  found  they  were  all  mak- 
ing money,  and  when  you  showed  them 
Blaine's  statement,  they  smiled  broadly. 
At  this  moment  the  Western  world  is 
filled  with  the  babble  of  people  who  do 
not  exchange  at  all,  but  insist,  with  furi- 
ous gestures,  that  the  exchange  dealers 
and  merchants  are  ignorant  fools  and  base 
**  gold  bug&"  Every  farmer  in  the  South 
and  West,  though  he  has  never  handled 
more  than  $100  in  his  life,  is  sure  that  all 
the  financiers  of  Europe  and  the  Eastern 
States  are  wrong  in  this  matter,  and  that 
he  knows  better  than  they  how  to  provide 
*'  the  soundest  money  the  world  has  had, 
or  can  have — the  money  of  the  people, 
the  money  of  civilization  through  the 
ages  past,  and  destined  to  be  such  for 
ages  to  come."  We  thus  see  how  much 
time  is  wasted  by  the  human  race  on  in- 
struction, in  study,  and  in  practice. 


POLITICAL    GENTLEMEN, 

Mr.  Lbcky,  in  his  book  on  Democracy, 
argues  that  gentlemen,  as  a  class,  are 
likely  to  govern  other  people  better  than 
such  as  are  not  gentlemen;  the  reason 
he  g^ves  being  that,  owing  to  their  posi- 
tion, associations,  training,  and  ambi- 
tions, they  are  more  likely  to  discharge 
political  duties  with  faithfulness,  and  to 
be  intelligent,  just,  and  honorable.  The 
suggestion  greatly  irritates  Mr.  John 
Morley,  who,  in  his  scathing  review  of 
the  book,  asks,  in  substance,  why  gen- 
tlemen who  idly  abuse  the  bad  times 
over  their  whiskey  and  soda  in  the  club 
smoking-room,  should  be  supposed  to  be 
an  exceptionally  good  governing  class. 
Talleyrand  said:  **What  is  democracy 
but  an  aristocracy  of  blackguards?"  and 
Mr.  Morley  evidently  at  bottom  thinks 
that  Mr.  Lecky  is  of  Talleyrand's  opinion. 
Perhaps  he  is  not  far  out  of  the  way  in 
this  suspicion. 

For  us  the  matter  has  a  somewhat  dif> 
ferent  interest  from  that  which  it  has  for 
Englishmen,  because  we  hAve  new  llnd 
in  an  atmosphere  in  which  i 


June  II,  1896] 


Tlie   IN'ation. 


451 


such,  have  been  deemed  a  class  special- 
ly endowed  with  political  virtue,  and 
the  idea,  held  by  so  many  people  only  a 
few  years  ago,  that  the  degradation  of  our 
politics  would  be  ameliorated  by  introduc- 
ing gentlemen  into  them,  has  not  been 
confirmed  by  experience.  As  a  rule,  in- 
stead of  politics  having  been  elevated  by 
them,  they  have  been  degraded  by  politics. 
Some  of  them  have  no  sooner  seen  office 
dangling  before  their  eyes  than  they  have 
forsworn  their  whole  early  training,  thrown 
aside  independence  and  principle,  become 
blind  partisans,  and  made  ferocious  war 
upon  the  causes  they  had  been  brought 
up  to  fight  for.  Others  have,  as  in  this 
city,  thrown  overboard  all  pretence  of  de- 
cencyt  made  common  cause  with  thieves 
and  blackmailers,  and  assured  their  amazed 
friends  that  this  was  what  '* politics*' 
really  meant,  and  the  only  way  in  which 
government  could  be  carried  on.  A  very 
few  have  been  driven  out  of  politics  be- 
cause they  were  too  good  for  it.  The 
greater  number  have  brought  a  good  deal 
of  discredit  upon  the  class  from  which 
they  came,  and  the  republic  would  have 
taken  no  harm  had  their  places  been  filled 
from  any  other. 

Our  experiment  cannot  be  cited  to  show 
that  there  is  any  magical  effect  produced 
by  making  use  of  gentlemen  to  elevate 
politics  or  keep  them  pure.  Are  there 
any  facts  which  point  to  a  different  con- 
clusion f 

To  answer  this  or  any  other  question 
about  gentlemen  is  not  easy,  because  the 
word  gentleman  is  used  in  two  senses  very 
wide  apart.  Mr.  Morley's  criticism  of 
Mr.  Lecky  illustrates  this.  When  Mr. 
Lecky  speaks  of  the  advantages  to  be  de- 
rived from  gentlemen  taking  part  in  gov- 
ernment, what  he  has  in  mind  is  either 
himself  and  his  friends  and  acquaintances, 
or  else  an  ideal  gentleman,  who  has  all 
the  best  qualities  of  the  class  and  none  of 
its  defects.  When,  on  the  other  hand, 
Mr.  Morley  ridicules  the  idea  of  gentle- 
men's being  of  much  use  in  politics,  he 
has  in  mind  bigoted  Tory  squires,  bad 
Irish  landlords,  and  young  clubmen  who 
curse  the  followers  of  '*01addy,"  and 
wonder  how  they  are  going  to  put  their 
tailor  off  a  few  months  longer. 

Now,  everybody  has  a  great  respect  for 
gentlemen  of  the  first  sort,  and  no  respect 
at  all  for  gentlemen  of  the  second.  To 
say  with  emphasis  that  a  man  is  a  gentle- 
man, in  our  language  is  proverbially,  so 
far  as  this  world  goes,  the  highest  enco- 
mium that  he  can  receive.  No  epithet 
adds  anything  to  it;  on  the  contrary,  it  is 
reduced  by  epithets,  because  it  implies  in 
our  usage  all  the  highest  qualities  that  a 
man  can  have  among  men.  A  truthful 
gentleman,  a  brave  gentleman,  a  reliable 
gentleman,  are  pleonastic  and  even  vulgar 
expressions—pleonastic  because  the  word 
gentleman  implies  all  these  other  qualities; 
vulgar  because  no  one  who  is  a  gentleman 
would  be  capable  of  failing  to  recognize 
this  fact.  As  the  Roman  vir  had  by  the 
term  itself  the  qualities  which  viriu8  im- 


plied, so  our  gentleman  has  all  the  quali- 
ties which  in  mediseval  theory  or  fancy 
went  with  **  gentle  "  blood.  This  can  be 
seen  by  the  qualities  left  out  as  well  as 
by  those  included.  Virtues  peculiar  to 
women  are  not  '*  connoted  ";  it  has  been 
very  justly  said  that  a  woman  cannot  by 
any  possibility  have  the  feelings  of  a  gen- 
tleman. It  is  a  man's  ideal,  and  it  is  not 
altogether  an  ideal  of  moral  perfection  by 
ainy  means. 

If  there  were  in  any  country  any  nume- 
rous body  of  men  of  this  sort  in  control  of 
the  government,  the  question  could  hardly 
arise  whether  they  had  qualities  adapted 
to  make  their  services  in  politics  valuable. 
Inasmuch  as  they  represent  the  ideal  of  a 
race,  held  up  to  be  admired  for  generations 
by  its  bards,  philosophers,  romancers,  and 
historians,  there  can  hardly  be  too  many  of 
them  in  any  government.  A  celebrated 
lord  chancellor,  asked  by  some  one  what 
principle  he  adopted  in  selecting  judges 
for  nomination,  said,  '*  I  always  pick  out  a 
gentleman;  and  if  he  knows  a  little  law,  so 
much  the  better."  What  he  meant  was 
that  learning  could  be  acquired,  but  the 
qualities  of  character  which  constitute 
our  ideal  must  be  there  already.  Unfor- 
tunately, however,  the  gentleman  of  actual 
social  existence  means  something  very  dif- 
ferent from  this.  It  is  impossible  to  define 
the  word  exactly,  but  for  practical  pur- 
poses it  means  any  man  who  either  shares 
in  or  is  recognized  as  fitted  to  share  in  the 
society  which  is  generally  regarded  in  any 
community  as  the  best.  The  qualifications 
for  admission  are  so  different  at  different 
times  and  in  different  places  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  enumerate  them.  In  one  place 
family  alone  wUl  answer ;  in  another  mere 
wealth,  accompanied  by  a  very  slight  mo- 
dicum of  manners,  will  be  enough ;  in  all, 
occupation  counts,  but  very  differently 
in  different  countries.  We  rarely  meet 
apothecaries  or  dentists  in  society.  In 
Austria,  however,  a  country  governed  in 
great  measure  by  an  aristocracy,  we  have 
known  an  apothecary  at  the  head  of  a  Spa 
administration,  and  an  officer  compelled  to 
fight  a  duel  with  another  apothecary  — 
gentlemen  all.  In  many  places  in  Eng- 
land the  local  school-teacher  is  not  a  gen- 
tleman. 

Used  in  this  sense,  the  word  means  no- 
thing but  a  certain  social  distinction, 
which  is  far  removed  from  indicating 
with  any  certainty  the  possession  of  quali- 
ties specially  adapted  for  the  discharge  of 
political  trusts.  On  the  contrary,  it  indi- 
cates almost  nothing  with  regard  to  cha- 
racter. In  the  course  of  a  year  every  one 
meets  dozens  of  gentlemen  who  have 
hardly  a  moral  quality  or  peculiarity  in 
common.  They  may  be  brave  or  coward- 
ly, truth-tellers  or  liars,  faithful  or  un- 
faithful. A  man  may  be  a  ruffian  among 
his  wife  and  daughters,  treacherous,  a 
miser,  corrupt,  and  still  pass  in  society 
for  a  gentleman,  if  he  has  never  done 
anything  for  which  this  society  itself 
looks  askance  at  him.  In  fact,  a  gentle- 
man   remains   a   gentleman,   no   matter 


what  he  does,  until  something  or  other 
happens  which  makes  It  necessary  for 
society,  as  a  matter  of  self-preservation, 
to  eject  him.  Formerly,  no  doubt,  birth 
was  essential;  but,  even  in  those  remote 
days,  a  gentleman  by  birth  was  not  ip%o 
facto  a  Colonel  Newcome  in  character. 
George  IV.,  Sheridan,  Byron,  and  Talley- 
rand himself  were  all  gentlemen.  The 
mad  King  of  Bavaria  who  bankrupted  his 
kingdom  for  the  sake  of  art,  was  a  gentle- 
man, though  very  fond  of  the  society  of 
those  who  were  not.  In  New  York,  con- 
viction of  crime  will  rule  a  man  out  in 
most  cases. 

If  what  we  have  said  is  true,  there  can 
hardly  be  a  presumption  that  a  man  re- 
cognized among  his  fellows  as  a  gentleman 
for  social  purposes  will  therefore  probably 
make  a  good  legislator,  cabinet  minbter, 
governor.  So  far  as  he  has  the  qualities 
with  which  we  endow  our  manly  ideal  in 
song  and  story,  he  is  indubitably  qualified. 
As  a  test  of  fitness,  the  fact  that  a  man 
is  a  gentleman  will  not  do,  in  politics,  any 
more  than  it  will  in  railroads,  engineer- 
ing, surgery,  law,  architecture,  or  art.  The 
standard  has  the  defect  of  having  little  or 
no  intrinsic  value,  except  for  the  purpose 
for  which  it  is  used— which  is  purely  so- 
cial. 


TWO  NEW  GERMAN  TRAGEDIES. 
Cambridge,  May  25, 1896. 

Ernst  von  Wildckbruch  and  Gerhart 
Hauptmann  are,  in  a  way,  representatives  of 
two  extremes  in  contemporary  Gterman  lite- 
rature :  Wildenbmch  fiery,  passionate,  rheto- 
rical. Hauptmann  dreamy,  brooding,  vision- 
ary; Wildenbrueh,  an  ardent  monarchist,  a 
zealous  supporter  of  the  present  regime,  seeing 
the  salvation  of  Germany  in  a  continued  su- 
premacy of  Bismarckian  principles;  Haupt- 
mann, a  Democrat  if  not  a  Socialist,  in  deepest 
sympathy  with  the  sufferings  of  the  **disinhe> 
rited,'*  hoping  for  the  millennium  of  universal 
brotherhood.  Wildenbrueh,  an  idealist  of  the 
straightforward,  unreflective  type,  sunny,  se- 
rene, somewhat  inclined  toward  melodramatic 
effects ;  Hauptmann,  a  strange  mixture  of  a 
pessimistic  realism  and  of  a  mystic  faith  in 
the  glory  of  the  unseen,  disdaining  all  that  is 
not  absolutely  genuine  and  true.  Wildenbrueh 
the  greater  playwright;  Hauptmann  the  great- 
er poet.  This  contrast  of  artistic  temper,  while 
it  marks  the  whole  literary  career  of  the  two 
men,  has  never  been  brought  out  more  con- 
spicuously than  in  the  two  great  historical 
dramas  which  have  been  the  event  of  the 
year  on  the  Berlin  stage :  Hauptmann*s  **  Pie- 
rian Geyer"  and  Wildenbruch's  *'Heinrich 
und  Heinricbs  Geschlecht.** 

That  Wildenbruch's  ** Heinrich  **should have 
easily  carried  off  the  crown  of  popular  sucoesi, 
is  not  surprising.  Asa  stage  show  it  is  simply 
overwhelming.  Here  we  have  all  the  brilliancy 
of  diction,  the  intensity  of  action,  the  irre- 
sistible surging  up  to  a  grand  climax  which 
give  eternal  youth  to  Schiller^s  dramas;  and, 
added  thereto,  we  have  the  lifelikeness,  the  pal- 
pability, the  breadth  of  detail,  in  which  mo- 
dem realism  revels.  Here  we  see,  indeed,  the 
gigantic  Bgurs  of  History  herself  striding  over 
the  stage,  but  we  also  see  our  own  feelings, 
longings,  and  aspirations  embodied  in  human 
forms,  and  recognize  them  as  the  real  movers 


4t53 


The   !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1615 


and  makers  of  national  destinieB.  The  subject 
of  the  drama  is  a  struggle  which,  as  Bismarck 
has  said,  dates  back  to  the  days  when  Aga- 
mmnnon  quarrelled  with  Calchas,  the  struggle 
between  king  and  priest.  The  principal  com- 
batants in  this  struggle  are  Henry  IV.  and 
Gregory  VII. ;  the  prize  for  which  it  is  fought 
out  is  Germany.  With  true  dramatic  instinct 
Wildeobmch  tbrongbont  the  play— which  is 
intended  for  two  successive  eTenings— main- 
tains himself  on  the  yery  height  of  his  subject: 
he  leaps,  as  it  were,  from  catastrophe  to  catas- 
trophe, leaving  it  to  the  imagination  of  his 
hearers  to  make  its  way  after  him  through  the 
dark  glens  and  ravines  that  lead  up  to  these 
shining  mountain  peaks. 

In  the  beginning  we  see  Henry  as  a  boy,  an 
impetuous,  imperious  youth,  smarting  under 
the  discipline  of  a  fanatically  religious  mother, 
burning  with  the  desire  to  equal  the  fame  of 
his  heroic  father,  at  last  thrust  into  the  prison 
walls  of  monastic  asceticism  under  the  tutor 
ship  of  Anno,  Archbishop  of  Ck)log^e.  Next 
be  appears  as  King,  in  the  acme  of  his  power. 
He  has  subduKi  the  rebellious  Saxons;  he  enters 
triumphantly  his  faithful  Worms;  he  is  re- 
ceived by  the  citiaens  as  the  protector  of  civil 
freedom  against  princely  tyranny  and  clerical 
arrogance;  all  German v  seems  to  rise  in  a  grand 
ovation  to  her  beloved  leader.  Intoxicated  by 
his  success,  he  resents  all  the  more  deeply  the 
paternal  admonitions  of  Pope  Gregory  about 
the  looseness  of  bis  private  life  which  are  just 
then  conveyed  to  him;  be  insists  on  being 
crowned  Emperor  at  once;  and,  when  this  re- 
quest is  not  complied  with,  he  allows  himself 
to  be  carried  away  by  his  indomitable  wrath, 
he  forces  bis  bishops  into  that  insulting  letter 
by  which  Gregory  is  declared  a  usurper,  a 
felon,  a  blasphemer,  to  be  driven  out  from  the 
sanctuary  of  the  Church  which  he  pollutes 
by  his  presenee. 

And  now  we  are  introduced  to  the  other 
great  character  of  the  drama,  to  the  opposite 
of  this  fiery,  unmanageable  young  ruler,  to 
Gregory,  the  self  possf'ssed  and  self  abasing 
priest,  the  man  in  whose  soul  there  seems  to  be 
no  room  for  any  passion  except  the  passion  for 
the  cause  of  the  Church,  for  the  triumph  of  the 
spirit  over  the  fiesb,  and  who  nevertheless  har- 
bors in  bis  breast,  unknown  to  himself,  the 
most  consuming  ambition  and  the  most  colos- 
sal egotism.  We  see  him  silting  in  cathedra 
in  the  basilica  of  Santa  Maria  Maggiore.  Sup^ 
pliants  and  crimioaU  are  brought  before  him. 
A  Flemish  count,  who  has  committed  murder, 
and  who  has  in  vain  fled  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  Europe  in  quest  of  delivery 
from  the  anguish  of  bis  tormented  conscience, 
beseeches  the  Fope  to  put  an  end  to  his  wretch, 
ed  life;  Gregory,  instead,  holds  out  to  him  the 
hope  of  salvation  through  joining  a  crusade. 
A  Roman  noble,  who  in  robber  knight  fashion 
has  made  an  assault  upon  the  Pope,  and  who 
by  the  clergy  and  the  people  has  been  con- 
demned to  death  for  this  crime,  is  pardoned  by 
Gregory—"  for  he  has  sinned,  not  against  the 
Church,  the  holy  one,  but  against  Gregory,  a 
poor,  feeble  mortal.*'  A  lay  brother  of  St. 
Peter's,  who,  disguised  as  priest,  has  taken 
money  from  foreign  pilgrims  for  reading  mass 
to  them,  and  who  by  the  clergy  and  the  people 
has  been  sentenced  to  a  fine  and  exile,  is  order- 
ed by  Gregory  to  be  thrown  into  the  Tiber— 
•*for  he  has  sinned  against  the  Church,  he  has 
cheated  human  souls  of  their  salvation." 

These  scenes  have  just  parsed  before  our 
eyes  when  the  messengers  of  King  Henry, 
bearing  the  letter  of  libel  and  vilification,  are 
admitted.  Gregory  is  the  only  one  who  in  the 
tumxUt  that  follows  its  reading  remains  abso- 


lutely  calm;  he  protects  the  messenger  him- 
self  against  the  rage  of  the  Romans;  he  for- 
gives  Henry,  the  man,  for  what  he  has  said 
against  Gregory,  the  man. 

'*  For  what  he  has  said  against  the  head  of 
the  Holv  Church,  for  that  let  Henry  be  cursed ! 
I  forbid  all  Christians  to  serve  thee  as  a  King, 
I  release  them  from  the  oath  that  they  have 
sworn  thee.  Thou,  darkness  revolting  against 
light,  return  to  chaos  !  Thou,  wave  revolting 
against  the  ocean,  return  to  naught  I  No  bell 
shall  be  sounded  in  the  city  where  Henry 
dwells,  no  church  be  opened,  no  sacrament  be 
administered.  Where  Henry  dwells,  death 
shall  dwell !  Let  my  legates  go  forth  and  an- 
nounce  my  measage  to  the  world  !" 

The  climax  of  the  whole  drama  is,  as  it 
should  be,  the  Canossa  catastrophe.  It  is  here 
that  Gregory,  the  victor  in  the  political  game, 
succumbs  morally;  that  Henry,  the  vanquished, 
rises  in  his  native  greatness.  It  is  here  that 
Gregory,  with  all  his  soaring  idealism,  reveals 
himself  as  an  inhuman  monster;  that  Henry, 
with  all  his  faults  and  frailties,  arouses  to  the 
full  the  sympathy  which  we  cannot  help  feel- 
iog  for  a  bravely  struggling  man. 

The  excommunication  of  Henry  has  plunged 
Germany  into  civil  war.  A  rival  king,  Ru- 
dolf  of  Swabia,  has  been  proclaimed.  He  and 
the  chiefs  of  his  party  have  come  to  Canossa 
to  obtain  the  papal  sanction  for  their  revolt. 
Gregory  clesrly  sees  that  Rudolf  is  nothing 
but  a  figure-head,  a  mere  tool  in  the  hands  of 
fanatic  conspirators,  totally  unfit  to  rule  an 
empire.  He  clearly  feels  it  his  duty  to  dis- 
countenance this  revolt,  to  restore  peace  to 
Germany  by  nmking  bis  peace  with  Henry. 
But  the  demon  of  ambition  lurking  in  his 
breast  beguiles  him  with  a  vision  of  world  do- 
minion :  he,  the  servant  of  the  servants  of  God, 
shall  be  the  arbiter  of  Europe;  he,  the  ple- 
beian, shall  see  the  crowns  of  kings  roll  before 
him  in  the  dust.  He  does  not  discountenance 
Rudolf  and  his  set;  and  when  Henry  appears 
before  the  castle,  broken  and  humiliated,  ask- 
ing for  absolution  from  the  ban,  Gregory  re- 
mains unmoved.  For  three  days  and  nighu 
the  King  stands  before  the  gate  in  ice  and 
«now;  for  three  days  and  nights  the  Pope  sits 
in  his  chair,  speechless,  sleeplet>s,  refusing  to 
eat  or  drink.  At  last,  the  intercession  of  Hen- 
ry's mother,  who,  herself  in  the  shadow  of 
death,  has  come  to  pray  for  her  son's  salva- 
tion, softens  Gregory's  heart:  he  admits  Henry 
to  his  presence.  Henry  appears,  a  king  even 
in  his  misery.  He  bends  his  knee  before  the 
Pope,  he  confesses  his  guilt,  he  acknowledges 
the  justice  of  his  punishment.  The  reconcilia- 
tion is  brought  about.  Just  then  Henry's 
glance  falls  upon  Rudolf  and  his  followers 
standing  in  the  background.  He  greets  them 
as  friends,  thinking  that  they  have  come  to  re- 
new their  allegiance  to  him.  But  they  rudely  re- 
pulse  him,  and  boast  of  the  Pope's  intention  to 
acknowledge  Rudolf  as  King.  And  Gregory 
does  not  contradict  them.  With  fearful  sud- 
denness Henry  sees  what  a  shameful  game  has 
been  played  with  him;  and  yet  he  masters 
himself,  he  makes  one  last  appeal  to  whatever 
there  is  of  true  feeling  in  his  opponent: 

**  Gk)d,  help  me  against  myself  I  Christ, 
Saviour,  who  wast  th>self  a  king  among  the 
heavenly  host  and  didst  bow  thy  neck  under 
the  scourge,  help  me  against  myself  I  {He 
tum$  abruptly  toward  Oregory.)  Once  before 
I  knelt  before  thee— I  did  it  for  myself.  (He 
falls  down  on  his  knees,)  Here,  a  second 
time,  I  lie  before  thee,  for  Germany  lie  I  here! 
Break  thy  silence  I  Tbv  silence  is  the  coffin  in 
which  the  happiness  of  Germany  is  entombed  ! 
If  thou  didst  know  how  unhappy  this  Ger- 
many is  thou  wouldst  speak — speak  I  Thou, 
ordained  by  God  to  bring  peace  to  the  world, 
let  me  take  peace  with  me  on  my  way  to  Ger- 
many,  not  war,  not  howling  civil  war  f 


And  Gregory  remains  silent  1  From  here  on 
to  the  end  of  the  drama  there  is  nothing  but 
revenge,  and  revenge  on  revenge.  And  this 
work  of  destruction  does  not  stop  until  both 
Gregory  and  Henry  have  breathed  their  last 
Both  men  die  in  defeat  and  desolation;  both 
die  inwardly  unbroken— Gregory  trusting  in> 
the  future  triumph  of  the  Church,  Henry 
trusting  in  the  indeetructible  vitality  of  the 
German  people. 

A  few  words  may  be  added  about  Hanpt- 
mann's  "  Florian  Geyer,"  although  it  is  impos- 
sible  to  do  justice  to  this  work  except  by  read- 
ing and  anidysing  it  scene  by  scene.  The  defects 
of  Hauptmann^s  dramatic  style  are  here,  per- 
haps, more  clearly  visible  than  in  any  previous 
production  of  his.  The  lack  of  unity,  the  ah- 
senoe  of  a  true  hero,  which  were  seen  in  "  Die 
Weber,"  characterise  this  drama  also.  And, 
in  addition  to  this,  there  is  a  slowneas  and  dif. 
fuseness  of  movement  which  must  be  fatal  to 
its  effect  as  a  theatrical  piece.  And  yet  it  is 
impossible  to  resist  the  impression  that  here  we 
are  face  to  face  with  the  creation  of  a  great 
artist.  Hauptmann  sees  things  not  as  they  ap- 
pear on  the  stage,  but  as  they  are  in  life.  He 
seems  to  have  no  thought  of  how  his  figures 
may  affect  his  hearers.  He  simply  tells  what 
he  sees,  and  he  tells  it  with  that  wonderful 
directneas  which  is  the  privilege  of  diildran 
and  poets.  Not  a  phrase  which  could'not  thus 
have  been  spoken;  not  an  event  which  could 
not  thus  have  taken  place;  not  a  character 
which  would  not  probably  have  taken  just  this 
turn;  and,  beneath  all  this  realism,  that 
strange  belief  in  a  hidden  life  which  makes  us 
feel  that  all  these  outward  happenings  are  only 
feeble  manifestations  of  some  grand  mysterious 
central  force  working  under  their  surfaosw 
This  is  the  manner  in  which  Hauptmann  in  this 
drama  makes  us  live  through  the  great  German 
peasant  revolt  of  the  sixteenth  century,  its  glo- 
rious beginning  and  its  miserable  end;  its  hopes, 
triumphs,  excesses,  msssacrea,  failures;  its  no- 
ble enthusiasm,  its  dark  fanaticism,  its  aavage- 
ness  and  greed,  its  egotism  and  pettiness.  And 
it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  in  order  to  un- 
derstand what  is  implied  by  the  word  *' Revo- 
lution," one  could  do  no  better  than  to  study 
the  details  of  this  strangely  monotonous  and 
strangely  fascinating  picture  of  popular  wrath 
and  popular  delusion. 

That  German  literature  during  the  last  de- 
cade has  entered  upon  a  new  era  of  genuine 
productivity  must  have  been  clear  for  some 
time  past  to  every  iiiteilfgent  observct.  That 
this  new  fnavement  should  have  acquired  suffi- 
cient str(<t}gth  to  produce^  oolv  a  year  or  two 
after  the  triumphs  achieved  by  ^*  Belmat"  and 
**  Die  Weber/'  two  dramaa  of  such  heroic  di- 
mensions and  Btieh  extraordinary  pow«r  •§ 
Hauptmann* a  '^Florian  Gejer^'  aod  Wilden- 
bruch'e  ^^  fieinneb*''  is  nevertbeletss  a  iur prise, 
and  seems  to  justify  the  ho|jes  of  tboee  who  see 
in  the  present  revolt  against  couvenCions  the 
dawn  of  another  epoch  of  clasaic  perfection  of 
form.  Eu!fO  Fraxcxx. 


MADAME  DE  CHA8TENAY, 

PAms,  May  21,  18«. 
The  period  of  transition  between  the  Tenta- 
and  tbe  eitablifhrneot  of  the  Empire  wiU  al- 
ways possess  the  greatest  interest;  we  find  tn  ft 
the  remaiiiing  represtotativts  of  the  old  r4» 
gime  mIxiDg  with  the  lepreti-enljitivii's  of  aA 
entirely  new  social  order.  The  ^mlgr^s  are  re- 
turning ope  by  one  from  their  exUe;  th^  mw 
anxious  to  have  their  names  struck  off  tiism 
the  liatfi  which  marked  their  pertions  for  tha 


June  II,  1896] 


Th.e   iN'ation. 


453 


foillolfiM  and  tbair  wUtat  for  ooDfltcmtloiL 
Thtj  art  do  loogcr  tn  fear  of  tha  guillotiiief 
tmt  ibey  ara  still  under  tbe  eye  of  tbe  police; 
tbey  hare  found  a  patt  of  their  estates  sold  as 
national  estates,  oftentimes  to  their  ancient 
dependants;  they  try  to  save  what  still  remains 
unsold.  They  are  obliged  to  solicit  the  help  of 
the  men  in  power ;  they  are  seen  in  the  ante- 
rooms of  the  Terrorists  who  made  the  ninth 
Thermidor ;  they  preeent  petitions  to  the  Direo- 
ton;  they  see  a  new  Paris,  new  fortanes,  new 
dresses,  new  mannert— a  new  France.  This 
contrast  has  seldom  been  shown  in  a  better 
light  than  in  the  memoirs,  recently  published, 
of  Madame  de  Chastenay,  who  belonged  to  a 
distiuguiihed  family  of  Burgundy.  Bom  in 
Paris  in  ITH,  she  died  at  ChAtiUon-sur-Seine 
only  00  May  0, 1855  I  hare  known  a  few  per- 
sons who  saw  her  in  her  old  age,  and  who  were 
habitn^  of  her  sUon.  She  was  always  called 
Madame  de  Chastenay  (though  she  had  never 
been  married),  by  Tirtue  by  her  title  of  Canon- 
CM,  given  to  her  when  she  was  only  fourteen. 
This  title  was  conferred  only  on  ladies  who 
ooold  proTe  the  nobility  of  their  paternal  and 
maternal  families  for  a  number  of  generations 
by  written  documents.  It  was  in  itself  a  mark 
of  the  highest  gentility.  Some  of  the  abbeys 
which  conferred  the  rank  of  Canoness  were  so 
strict  (for  instance,  the  Abbey  of  Remiremont 
in  Lorraine)  that  it  would  haye  been  impoesible 
for  tbe  ladies  of  the  highest  rank,  even  for  the 
Princess  of  Bourbon,  to  become  oanonesses  in 
tham  on  account  of  some  misalliance  or  of 
some  morganatio  union. 

We  can  therefore  take  it  for  granted,  without 
losing  ourselves  in  genealogies  without  interest, 
thai  Mile,  de  Chastenay  was  of  tbe  purest  aris- 
tocratic class  or  set.  Her  father  was  an  officer 
of  dragoons.  At  the  sge  of  fourteen  she  was 
named  Canoness  of  spinal  (her  aunt  was  Ab- 
bess of  ipinal).  The  proofs  had  been  made 
according  to  rule,  a  paternal  filiation  of  eight 
nobles  <f  4>^  and  the  sanoe  number  on  the  ma- 
ternal side: 

**  I  remember  that  at  vespers  the  whole  chap- 
ter (there  were  twenty  ladies  in  all]  came  to 
taka  me  from  mv  aunt*s  house.  I  had  a  black 
gown.  One  of  the  knights  of  the  chapter  gave 
me  bis  hand ;  the  garrison  band  preceded  oa 
When  we  arrived  in  the  choir  of  the  church, 
I  kneeled;  the  abbess  said  to  me,  *  What  do  you 
ask,  my  daughter  V  Answer:  *  The  bread  and 
the  wine  of  Saint  OoCry  [the  patron  of  the 
chapter],  to  serve  Ood  and  the  holy  Virgin.*  I 
had  to  eat  tome  biscuit,  to  wet  my  lips  in  a 
cup ;  they  put  on  me  a  great  blue  cordon,  with 
a  hanging  croes,  a  long  mantle  fringed  with 
ermine,  a  black  veil.  A  Te-Deum  was  sung, 
the  prooe^ision  returned  in  the  same  order,  and 
a  ball  began  at  my  aunt*a  I  amused  myself 
much  at  this  ball,  as  well  as  at  those  which  soo- 
ceeded  during  the  five  days  of  my  stay  at  Epi- 
naL  1  had  wept  during  the  ceremony,  but  tne 
dance  consoled  me  very  rapidly." 

MUe.  de  Chastenay  was  eighteen  years  old  in 
1789;  she  was  very  intelligent  and  quite  capa- 
ble of  understanding  all  the  questions  which 
agitated  the  country  before  the  Revolution. 
She  was  reading  Montesquieu,  Locke,  Mably, 
and  a  thousand  political  productions  of  the 
time.  **  I  loved  liberty,**  she  says  with  a  rare 
candor.  **I  was,  In  the  fullest  sense  of  the 
term,  a  very 'exalted*  person.**  When  the  elec- 
tion to  the  Statea-Oeneral  took  place,  her  father 
was  elected  by  the  nobility  of  the  baiUwick  of 
ChitHkm  in  Burgundy.  Mile,  de  Chastenay 
analyses  very  well  the  sentimente  which  ani- 
mated the  order  of  the  nobility  at  tbe  States- 
General.  In  the  elections,  the  question  at  issue 
between  the  candidates  was  tbe  vote  per  caput 
or  the  vote  by  order.  The  vote  per  caput  im- 
plied the  principle  of  popular  representation. 
In  which  the  three  orders  were  to  be  merged; 


the  vote  by  order  implied  the  poUtioal  distinc- 
tion of  tbe  ancient  orders  of  the  nobility,  the 
clergy,  and  the  Tiers-^tat.  At  Versailles  the 
order  of  the  nobility  divided  promptly.  The 
majority  was  formed  of  the  nobles  who  from 
this  moment  were  called  aristocrats— chiefly 
provincial  nobles,  who  had  not  lived  at  court, 
and  who  lived  on  their  estates.  The  minority 
was  liberal;  It  conlprlsed  the  most  brilliant 
young  men,  whoee  families  were  accustomed 
to  live  at  court,  tbe  leaders  of  fashion,  the 
young  officers  who  bad  fought  in  the  American 
war.  The  Duke  of  Orleans,  a  prince  of  tbe 
blood,  belonged  to  this  minority.  The  mem- 
bers of  tbe  majority  meant  to  maintain  the 
privileges  of  their  order,  with  tbe  exception  of 
tbe  pecuniary  privileges,  which  they  were 
willing  to  sai  rifioe,  and  to  preserve  tbe  prero- 
gative of  tbe  Oown.  The  minority  was  pre- 
pared to  make  all  needful  sacrifices  to  work  in 
harmony  with  tbe  Tiers- ]6tat. 

Mile,  de  Chastenay  was,  like  her  father,  an 
ardent  admirer  of  tbe  reformers.  *'  I  was,** 
she  says,  **  dan$  U  dMire."*  She  tells  us  tbe 
story  of  tbe  first  events  of  tbe  Revolution  in  a 
graphic  manner.  Her  cf^lire  received  great 
shocks  when  she  saw  an  "  odious  multitude  ** 
take  Louis  XVI.  back  from  Versailles  to  Paris. 
**  Some  men  had  loaves  of  bread  on  their  pikes 
or  their  bayonets;  but,  what  people  will  find 
difficult  of  belief,  the  heads  of  the  murdered 
Guards  preceded,  borne  in  triumph,  and,  by  a 
horrible  refinement,  they  had  their  bloody  hair 
frUi  at  Sevres.  The  National  Guard  marched 
behind  theee  horrible  banners.**  MUe.  de  Chas- 
tenay remained  In  Burgundy  during  the  win- 
ter of  1789-1790;  she  returned  to  Paris  In  the 
spring,  and  found  tbe  tide  of  emigration  in 
full  force,  and  society  having  for  its  mot  d^or* 
dre,  **  Tbe  King  is  captive  and  all  bis  acts  are 
forced.**  She  spent  the  worst  timee  of  the 
Terror  In  Rouen,  and  nothing  can  be  more  in- 
teresting than  her  narrative  of  tbe  life  which 
she  led  In  the  capital  of  Normandy  during 
this  terrible  period.  There  Is  a  realism  in  her 
account  which  transcends  In  its  eloquence  the 
declamation  of  many  writers: 

**Tbe  life  which  we  led  was  of  great  sim- 
plicitv  and  of  profound  obscurity.  The  art  of 
tbe  tune  was  to  isolate  one*s  self.  .  .  .  We 
had  no  illusions;  we  said  to  each  other,  my 
brother  and  myself,  whan  walking  in  the  eve. 
niog  in  the  delicious  /ales  round  Rouen,  that 
witbin  six  months  we  should  all  fall  under 
tbe  axe  of  the  Revolution.  Still,  the  fiowers 
charmed  us,  we  made  drawings,  we  indulged 
in  music,  we  read  novels,  we  had  our  moments 
of  pleasure;  and  after  our  violent  and  sudden 
emotions  we  experienced  every  day  thoee  move- 
ments of  joy  which  resemble  hope.  Tbe  days 
succeeded  each  other.  Mamma  bad  heroic 
courage:  and  we  had  been  forbidden  to  hear 
the  homble  reading  of  papers.  ...  A  com- 
plete famine,  an  absolute  poverty,  added  to 
the  misery  of  the  times ;  the  maximum  made 
It  complete.  A  deputy  named  Siblot  appeared 
in  Rouen,  and,  as  meat  was  becoming  scarce, 
he  save  orders  that  not  a  pound  of  it  soould  be 
solo.  .  .  .  People  had  to  form  in  queH€  at 
the  baker*s;  a  few  pounds  of  rice  would  have 
been  called  a  monopoly.  ...  A  ring  at 
the  door-bell  caused  us  horrible  pains  and  a 
oold  sweat '* 

A  member  of  the  Convention  named  Alquier 
was  sent  to  Rouen  on  a  mission.  He  knew  the 
father  of  MUe.  de  Chastenay,  and  was  able  to 
protect  him. 

'*  Regicide  through  fear,  he  yet  voted  for  the 
appeal  to  the  people,  and  hoped  thus  to  save 
his  own  Ufe  and  not  to  commit  a  crime.  I 
know  how  this  mixture  of  acta  and  sentiments 
wiU  seem  odious  to  persons  fortunate  enough 
never  to  have  sinned,  perhaps  because  they 
never  had  occasion  to  do  so.  We  were  undo* 
the  greatest  obligations  to  M.  Alquier.  .  .  . 
We  had  also  in  the  committee  a  very  obliging 
protector,  M.  Godebin,  a  dyer,  who  was  not  a 


bad  man,  but  whose  manners  and  tone,  with- 
out being  inspired  bv  tbe  great  wrath  of  the 
/¥re  DucAesne.  were  far  from  mild.  My  father, 
towards  five  o*clock  in  the  morning,  paid  him 
short  visits,  and  received  from  him  rules  of 
conduct ;  in  no  way  to  attract  attention  was 
tbe  primary  lesson.  My  father  ordered,  by  bis 
advice,  a  coat  styled  earmagnoU^  so  as  to  ap- 
pear on  the  street  dressed  like  everybody  else.** 

A  law  of  April  Id,  1794,  directed  against  sua- 
pected  persons  and  tbe  nobles,  forbade  the  lat. 
ter  to  remain  in  Paris  or  in  the  maritime 
dtles.  MUe.  de  Chastenay  had  to  return  with 
her  father  and  mother  to  ChAUUon.  They  had 
to  pass  round  Paris  by  Saint  Denis  and  Cha- 
renton;  It  was  on  the  day  when  Mme.  Eliza^ 
betb  ascended  tbe  gulUotine.  Tbe  poor  travel- 
lers met  with  constant  and  touching  pity 
among  tbe  people  in  their  difficult  journey. 
**My  brother  having  left  the  carriage  whUe 
the  postilUon  was  mending  something,  tbey 
remained  for  a  few  minutes  together,  sad  and 
silent ;  *  So  you  are  a  nobleman,*  at  last  said 
tbe  postiUion.  *Yes,*  answered  my  brother. 
*0b,  God  I*  said  the  postiUion  with  a  great 
sigh,  and  remounted  his  horse.**  It  was  so 
everywhere  along  the  road ;  at  Ch4tiUon  they 
found  tbe  Terror  in  fuU  force.  By  an  unfor- 
tunate mistake,  the  name  of  M.  de  Chastenay 
had  been  placed,  in  bis  absence,  on  the  list  of 
the  6migr^  and  he  had  to  hide  himself. 
MUe.  de  Chastenay  was  imprisoned.  We  leam 
from  her  what  a  provincial  prison  was  in 
1794.  She  had  to  Uve  in  tbe  same  room  as  tbe 
concierge,  bis  wife,  several  chUdren  and  seve- 
ral prisoners.  Her  father  was  arrested,  taken 
to  Dijon,  and  from  Dijon  to  Paris.  Tbe  9th 
Thermidor  saved  him ;  be  had  had  the  good 
fortune  to  be  defended  before  the  tribunal  by 
R6al,  who  was  to  play  an  important  part  in 
MUe.  de  Cha8tenay*s  life.  BMl  was  a  lawyer 
and  gave  himself  up  to  the  defence  of  tbe  ac- 
cused. "  Witty,  animated,  with  a  shining  talent; 
good,  natural,  fuU  of  senslbiUty,  he  espoused 
my  father's  cause  with  enthusiasm.**  The  ad- 
miration thus  expressed  for  tbe  man  who 
saved  her  father's  Ufe  was  the  beginning  of  a 
liaimm  which  lasted  nearly  aU  her  life. 

Mile,  de  Chastenay  behaved  very  courageous- 
ly  before  tbe  munlcipaUty  of  ChAtiUon;  she  was 
set  free,  but  the  times  were  stiU  very  troubled. 
The  9th  Thermidor  had  not  put  an  immediate 
end  to  the  Terror.  **  Tbe  day  which  foUowed 
the  acquittal  of  my  father  was,'*  she  sayv, 
**  marked  in  Paris  by  tbe  apotheosis  of  Marat 
—that  Is  to  say,  by  the  transfer  of  his  remains 
to  the  Pantheon.**  MUe.  de  Chastenay  spent 
the  autumn  of  1794  in  Dijon;  she  was  at  CbA- 
tiUon  in  1795,  and  had  occasion  to  see  there  an 
officer  of  artillery,  Msrmont  (who  became 
Marshal  Marmont).  "The  young  officer  had 
just  coma  from  tbe  army  of  Provence,  then 
caUed  the  army  of  Italy;  he  was  accompanied 
by  General  Bonaparte,  a  general  of  artUlery, 
who  was  on  his  way  to  Nantes,  where  he  was 
to  take  command  of  the  army  of  tbe  West. 
M.  de  Marmont  was  his  friend,  but  not  bis 
aide  da-camp.  The  (General,  who  was  then 
twenty-six  years  old,  had  been  educated  at  the 
MUitary  School  with  a  cousin  of  M.  de  Mar- 
mont** General  Bonaparte  was  accompanied 
by  his  brother  Louis,  who  was  then  sixteen 
years  old,  and  was  himself  getting  his  educa- 
tion.  MUe.  de  Chastenay  made  tbe  acquaints 
anoe  of  Bonaparte;  her  face  had  struck  him. 
She  had  with  him  a  conversation  which  lasted 
four  hours  after  dinner  (people  dined  then  at 
two  o'clock). 

**I  am  sorry  not  to  have  written  down  our 
conversation;  there  are  only  fragmenU  of  it 
in  my  mind.  ...  I  soon  discovered  that  the 
(General  had  no  republican  faith  or  maxims. 
I  was  surprised,  but  he  was  absolutely  frank 


454 


The   Nation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1615 


on  the  subject.  He  spoke  of  the  resistAfice 
which  the  KeTolntion  had  met;  the  resist 
ance  was  not  over,  and  success  was  impos- 
sible. .  .  .  The  General  told  me,  what  was 
true,  that  the  mass  of  the  army  was  wholly 
alien  to  the  bloody  events  of  which  France  had 
been  the  theatre ;  it  ignored  them  completely, 
and  he  seemed  to  believe  that  the  army,  al. 
ways  in  tbe  hands  of  the  d«  /octo  authority, 
would  not  interfere  with  parties,  and  would 
take  on  no  special  color.  Bonaparte  spoke 
of  the  poems  of  Ossian,  whom  he  admired,  of 
*Paul  and  Virginia  \  he  spoke  of  happiness. 
He  said  that  for  a  man  it  ought  to  conidst  in 
the  highest  development  of  his  faculties. 

**  At  the  time  when  this  conversation,  me- 
morable for  mp,  took  place,  1  had  the  intimate 
conviction  that  whoever  should  offer  a  centre 
to  opinion  would  seise  the  helm  which  was  in 
nobody*s  hand,  would  dare  to  call  himself,  and 
would  in  effect  become,  chief  and  king,  and 
would  find  no  obstacle,  because  nothing  was 
established,  and  no  man  fixed  the  confidence 
or  even  the  attention  of  all.  I  think  that  I  said 
so,  and  it  would  be  singular  that  I  should  tbu« 
have  been  his  prophetess.  I  know  positively 
that,  preoccupied  with  this  idea,  I  spoke  of  it 
to  everybody.  .  .  .  My  memory  does  not 
give  me  any  as»urance  of  having  laid  this  idea 
before  Bonaparte.  However,  he  always  remera 
bered  our  conversation,  and  I  do  not  think 
that  it  was  becaute  I  spoke  to  him  of  Virginia 
and  of  Oasian.'' 


Correspondence. 


WASHINGTON'S  LIBRARY. 
To  THs  BAiTOR  or  Thx  Nation: 

Sir:  In  Ford's  *  Washington,*  vol.  xiv.,  p.  280, 
there  is  some  account  of  the  Bishop  Wilson 
Bible  which  Washington  gave  in  his  will  to 
Bryan,  Lord  Fairfax,  with  a  few  remarks 
about  the  circumstances  of  its  acquisition  by 
Washington.  In  a  search  among  the  Wash- 
ington papers  in  the  State  Department  for  in. 
formation  about  the  gathering  of  Washing- 
ton*s  library,  I  found  a  letter  from  Clement 
Cmttwell,  which  explains  how  Washington 
came  by  the  Wilson  Bible,  and  a  copy  of  which 
I  enclose.  The  Concordance  mentioned  in  tbe 
letter  is  now  in  the  Washington  collection  in 
the  Boston  AthensBum,  a  catalogue  of  which  is 
now  in  the  press.  According  to  Mr.  Ford,  tbe 
Bible  is  now  in  the  Library  of  Congress. 

Very  truly  yours, 

Applston  p.  C.  Griffin. 

Boston  Aranjauv,  Jane  8,  I8O0. 

Wokingham  Bxrkshirx  May  1st  1704 
Sir.— By  the  WUl  of  the  late  D'  Wilson  Pre- 
bendary of  Westminster  &  Rector  of  S.  Ste. 
phens  Walbrook  in  London  I  was  directed  to 
transmit  to  your  Bxcellency  a  Copy  of  his  Fa- 
thers Works,  the  Venerable  Bishop  of  Sodor  & 
Man;  and  the  English  Bible  in  which  are  con- 
tained the  Notes  of  the  good  Bishop.— I  have 
yet  delaved  to  fulfill  the  desire  of  my  friend 
that  I  might  at  tbe  same  time  have  the  honour 
of  requesting  a  place  in  your  Library  for  a 
work  of  my  own  A  Concordance,  by  me  in- 
tended as  a  Companion  to  tbe  Bible.  That  you 
may  long  enjoy  the  Honours  you  have  so  well 
deserved  in  a  country  of  peace  &  prosperity  is 
the  fervent  wish  and  prayer  of  Your  Excellen- 
cy's 

most  obedient  Servant  and  admirer 

Clkmcnt  Cruttwrll. 


AN  OBJECT-LESSON. 
To  THE  Editor  of  Thr  Nation: 

Sir:  Recently  I  had  occasion  to  make  a  re- 
mittance to  a  correspondent  in  the  city  of  Gua- 
temala, Central  America.  I  sent  a  bank  draft 
for  $25,  drawn  by  a  Chicago  bank  on  a  New 
York  bank.  Under  date  of  May  16  I  am  ad. 
vised  by  my  correspondent  in  Guatemala, 
'*  Your  check  of  $25  realised  in  this  money  $53, 
which  amount  is  placed  to  your  credit.^ 


Just  at  this  time  a  plain  statement  of*  facts 
such  as  the  above  may  help  some  of  those  who 
are  in  the  air  theorizing  to  get  back  to  terra 
firma  and  common  sense.  What  honest  man 
of  ordinary  intelligence  can  face  the  inropo- 
sition 

$25  00  =r  $53.00 

and  not  realise  that  those  who  are  clamoring 

for  16  to-1  silver  are  more  dangerous  to  our 

country  than  if  they  were  engaged  in  an  open 

insurrection  ?    A  nation  can  stand  wounds  and 

hard  raps  and  deprivations  and  come  out  all 

right,  but  it  can*t  stand  an  unlimited  amount 

of  mind-poisoniog.— Very  respectfully, 

A.  T.  H.  Browrr. 
Cbicaoo.  June  4, 1809. 


Notes. 


Charles  Sorirnkr's  Sons  will  publish  *  Sport 
in  the  Alps,'  by  W.  A.  Baillie-Grohman,  with 
numerous  illustrations  from  instantaneous  pho- 
tographs. 

G.  P.  Putnam^s  Sons  issue  immediately 
*  Camping  in  the  Canadian  Rockies,*  by  Wal- 
ter D.  Wilcox,  with  many  plate  and  text  illua- 
trations. 

•A  Cycle  of  Cathay,»  by  Dr.  W.  A.  P. 
Martin;  a  Life  of  Robert  Whitaker  McAU, 
founder  of  the  mission  which  bears  his  name; 
and  a  Life  of  Dr.  A.  J.  Gordon,  are  in  the 
press  of  Fleming  H.  Revell  Co. 

The  Macmillan  Co.,  as  we  must  now  denomi. 
nate  the  newly  incorporated  6rm,  have  in  pre- 
paration a  'Kipling  Birthday  Book,'  with 
decorative  illustrations  from  the  deft  hand  of 
the  elder  Kipling;  and  *  Humphry  Davy,  Poet 
and  Philosopher,*  in  the  **  Century  Science 
Series.** 

Henry  Holt  &  Co.  will  make  a  book  of 
Horace  Annesley  Vachell*s  serial  story,  *  The 
Quicksands  of  Pactolus,*  lately  running  in  the 
Overland  Monthly, 

Lamson,  Wolife  &  Co.,  Boston,  will  bring 
out  the  lectures  recently  delivered  in  this  city 
and  elsewhere  by  Prince  Volkonsky,  under  the 
title,  *  Pictures  of  Russian  History  and  Litera- 
ture,* with  an  introduction  by  Prof,  C.  B.  Nor- 
ton. 

*  The  Graduate  Courses*  for  1806- *97,  of- 
fered by  twenty-three  of  our  leading  colleges 
and  universities,  Is  just  ready.  Leach,  Shewell 
&  Sanborn  are  the  publishers. 

A  cooperative  volume,  *  The  Cambridge  of 
Eighteen  Hundred  and  Ninety-Six,*  with  the 
imprint  of  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  will  be 
a  permanent  outcome  of  the  current  celebra- 
tion of  that  Massachusetts  city*s  fiftieth  annl- 
versary  of  corporate  existence. 

The  Peter  Paul  Book  Co.,  Buffalo,  have 
nearly  ready  a  *  Dictionary  of  Buffalo,  Niagara 
Falls,  Tonawanda,  and  Vicinity,'  with  maps 
and  illustrations. 

Way  &  Williams,  Chicago,  announce  *  The 
Sonnet  in  England,  and  Other  Essays,*  by  the 
late  James  Asbcroft  Noble;  a  volume  of  essays 
by  Mrs.  Meynell,  *The  Color  of  Life*;  and 
'  From  Cairo  to  the  Sudan  Frontier,*  by  H.  D. 
TraiU. 

'In  tbe  Kingdom  of  the  Shah,*  by  E.  Treach- 
er Collins,  is  a  timely  publication  to  be  ex 
pected  from  T.  Fisher  Unwin. 

Mr.  T.  Hamilton  Crawford*s  illustrations  in 
line  and  wash  were  not  unworthy  to  be  made 
tbe  occasion  of  a  fresh  edition  of  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson*s  **  picturesque  notes**  of  his  *  Edin- 
burgh *  (Macmillan),  a  work  having,  in  addition 
to  the  author's  wonted  charm  of  style,  an  his- 
torical value.    Perhaps  Nbe  style  will  not  bear 


comparison  with  George  Borrow*s  in  the  itir* 
ring  Edinburgh  chapter  of  *  Lavengro,*  where 
one  may  read  of  mob  warfare  between  Old 
Town  and  New,  of  which  even  the  memory 
has  disappeared  from  Stevenson's  annals.  Tbe 
volume  is  beautifully  made.  The  same  firm 
sends  us  two  more  volumes  of  its  Dickens 
reprint,  edited  by  the  younger  Dickens,  con- 
taining (I)  'The  Uncommercial  Traveller*  sad 
*A  Child's  History  of  England,*  and  (2)  s 
number  of  pieces  from  Household  Wordt 
and  AU  the  Year  Rounds  chronologically  sr- 
ranged,  excepting  **  The  Lazy  Tour  of  Two 
Idle  Apprentices,**  written  in  collaboratian 
with  Wilkie  Collins,  which  is  reserved  for  the 
end,  and  furnishes  nearly  a  fourth  of  the 
volume.  Finally,  we  report  further  progres 
in  Mr.  Gollancs*s  dainty  edition  of  Shakipere 
(Dent-Macmillan),  by  the  appearance  of  "  Jo- 
llus  Caeear,**  "Romeo and  Juliet,**  "Timonof 
Athens,**  and  "Titus  Andronicus." 

The  Harpers  have  given  a  handsome  new 
dress  to  Mark  Twain's  anti-slavery  tract,  *Tbe 
Adventures  of  Huckleberry  Finn,'  prori<fiBs 
it  with  a  frontispiece  portrait  of  the  author 
and  with  some  rather  slight  illustratioos  by 
E.  W.  Kemble.  Its  power  to  interest  and 
amuse  has  suffered  nothing  in  the  down  yesn 
since  it  first  saw  the  light. 

Messrs.  Putnam  have  published  apart  from 
Mr.  M.  D.  Conway's  edition  of  Thomas  Psine's 
Writings  the  *  Age  of  Reason  *  in  a  thin  volome 
uniform  with  *  Tbe  Rights  of  Man.'  An  intro- 
duction by  Mr.  Conway  has  mu(^  curiooi  in- 
formation to  impart  about  tbe  fortunes  of  the 
work  at  tbe  hands  of  editors,  printers,  and 
translators. 

A  little  volume  styled  <McK{nley*s  Vsster- 
pieces*  has  been  put  together  by  R.  L.  Paget 
and  published,  with  a  portrait,  by  tbe  Joseph 
Knigbt  Co.  of  Boston.  The  editor  assures  ns 
that  "No  American  of  this  age  can  afford  not 
to  read  McKinley*s  speeches.**  There  is  a  lenee 
in  which  this  may,  unhappily,  become  a  truth ; 
but  in  tbe  evil  day  of  his  candidacy  it  wiD  be 
needful  to  go  to  the  larger  collection  made  bj 
the  aspirant  himself  with  a  view  to  the  im- 
pending contingency,  for  a  just  appreciatioQ 
of  the  dull,  commonplace,  untrained,  incohe- 
rent mind  of  the  rigger  of  the  St.  Louis  con- 
vention. Still,  let  us  quote  this  **ma8terij'* 
definition  of  the  "good  dollars"  the  now  a- 
lent  Ohioan  wanted  in  1800  (June  2^,  speak- 
ing in  bis  place  in  the  House:  **  As  good  ia 
the  hands  of  the  poor  as  the  rich  ;  equal  dol- 
lars, equal  in  inherent  merit,  equal  in  par- 
chasing  power,  whether  they  be  papn*  dollans 
or  gold  dollars,  or  silver  dollars,  or  Treeforr 
-notes— each  convertible  into  the  other  and 
each  exchangeable  for  the  other,  because  esdi 
is  based  upon  equal  value  and  baa  behind  it 
equal  security;  good,  not  by  flat  of  law  alone, 
but  good  because  tbe  whole  commercial  world 
recognises  its  inherent  and  inextinguishable 
value." 

Mr.  Temple  Scott's  *  Book  Sales  of  1895*  (Lon- 
don: Henry  Stevens'  Son  &  Stiles)  challenges 
comparison  with  Elliot  Stock's  'Book-Pricei 
Current '  for  the  same  year.  The  new-cocaer 
is  more  elegant,  but  not,  we  think,  more  exact 
in  its  typography,  is  not  alphabetically  ar 
ranged  under  each  sale  as  in  tbe  rival  oompOs- 
tion,  and  only  rarely  names  the  purchaser.  Its 
index  has  a  certain  superior  convenience  is 
that  it  often  repeats  the  dates  of  the  worb 
catalogued.  Finally,  the  volaofte,  though 
standing  as  high  on  the  shelf,  la  aoowwhat 
thicker  and  broader  than  'BookJPrioea  G«* 
rent'  Tbe  latter  seems  tha 
but  we  have  made  no  tearohl 
and  are,  for  our  own  p«i%  |0M  \ 


June  II,  1896] 


The    ItTation. 


455 


▼olumes  at  hand,  while  not  persuaded  that  the 
book-buying  public  needs  the  double  service. 

If  one  were  to  judge  merely  from  the  nume- 
rous attempt!  and  repeated  failures,  the  task 
of  writing  an  account  of  the  government  of 
the  United  States  for  the  use  of  schools  would 
have  to  be  set  down  as  one  of  extraordinary 
difficulty.  We  had  supposed  that  the  old 
method  of  commenting  upon  the  clauses  and 
phrases  of  the  Constitution  seriatim  had  been 
long  since  abandoned;  but  Prof.  Allen  E. 
Rogers  returns  to  it  in  <  Our  System  of  Govern- 
ment' (Orono,  He.:  The  Author),  and  with 
rather  unsatisfactory  results.  The  book  is 
reaUy  an  elementary  text- book  of  **  civil  gov- 
ernment/' with  frequent  excursions  into  con- 
stitutional law;  but,  while  there  is  too  little 
law  for  the  lawyers,  we  fear  there  is  a  great 
deal  too  much  for  the  schools,  at  the  same  time 
that  the  detailed  information  regarding  the 
practical  workings  of  government  in  the  Unit 
ed  States  is  comparatively  slight.  There  is  a 
chapter  on  the  Constitution  and  administrative 
organization  of  Maine  which  will  have  some 
local  interest  and  importance. 

Another  volume  in  Methuen  &  Co.*s  series  of 
classical  translations  has  reached  us,  Cicero*s 
*De  Natura  Deorum.'  The  translator,  Mr. 
Francis  Brooks  of  University  College,  Bristol, 
is  not  without  skill  in  the  art.  His  version  is 
dose,  yet  idiomatic;  readable,  without  being 
disfigured  by  the  modern  colloquialisms  with 
which  many  recent  translators,  while  seek- 
ing after  liveliness,  sncoeed  only  in  bring- 
ing the  classics  down  to  their  own  level 
of  mediocrity.  We  should  have  welcomed 
fuller  notes  than  those  which  Mr.  Brooks  has 
given  us,  and  we  may  repeat  that  a  transla- 
tion, to  be  really  useful,  should  have,  at  the 
top  of  every  page,  references  to  the  book  and 
section  of  the  originaL 

M.  Deloche,  in  his  *Le  Port  des  Anneaux 
dans  I'antiquit^  romaine  et  dans  les  premidres 
■j^es  du  moyen  Age,*  by  no  means  exhausts 
a  subject  which  in  those  periods  was  concerned 
with  public  and  official  as  well  as  with  private 
life.  It  is,  in  fact,  much  t09  extensive  for 
treatment,  like  his,  in  the  "  M^moires  de  1'  Aca- 
d^mie,"  and  it  deserves  a  large  volume  to  it- 
self. His  brochure,  however,  may  serve  to 
map  out  the  ground  and  to  show  the  divisions 
into  which  a  fuller  investigation  may  conve- 
niently fall,  for  he  has  a  good  conception  of 
its  broader  outlines  and  is  capable  of  taking 
wide  views  of  the  field.  It  is  in  details  that  he 
breaks  down,  and  indeed  he  seems  better  ac- 
quainted with  the  medisBval  than  with  the 
classical  part  of  his  subject.  It  is  suspicious 
when  a  writer  refers  to  Plantus  (Af.  O.  05),  as 
evidence  that  rings  were  used  in  betrothals  so 
early  as  the  seoond  century  b.  c,  when  in  fact 
the  ring  there  in  question  is  supposed  to  be  sent 
as  a  love- token  by  a  married  woman  to  her 
lover  I  It  looks  almost  worse  to  find  Terence 
cited  as  authority  for  Roman  life  without  a 
hint  of  his  Oreek  originals.  And  M.  Deloche 
does  not  seem  to  understand  the  principle  on 
which  the  ring  was  given  in  betrothals^-as  a 
symbol  of  arrhoy  earnest  money  to  bind  a 
bargain.  For,  to  the  old  Roman,  marriage 
was  nothing  if  not  a  business  contract.  On 
the  whole,  we  cannot  recommend  M.  Deloche 
to  any  but  collectors  of  material. 

The  fourth  volume  of  Copp^e*s  *  Mon  Frano- 
parler'  (Paris:  Lemerre)  contains  many  pages 
of  excellent  reading,  notably  those  on  Bour- 
get,  Les  Pamassiens,  and  Alexandre  Dumas. 

Dr.  Henri  Lion's  thesis  for  the  doctorate 
forms  a  solid  volume  on  a  solid  subject,  *  Les 
TragMies  et  les  theories  dramatiques  de  Vol- 
taire'  (Paris:  Haohette).    Naturally  enough, 


having  read  and  reread  the  tragedies,  having 
studied  the  correspondence  and  the  criticisms, 
friendly  or  hostile,  Dr.  Lion  ends  by  having  a 
pretty  high  opinion  of  Voltaire  as  a  dramatist, 
and  a  still  higher  one  of  him  as  a  Force,  with 
a  capital.  It  is  not  possible  to  agree  fully 
with  this  writer,  but  one  is  grateful  to  him  for 
the  conscientious  piece  of  work  be  has  pro- 
duced, and  which  becomes  at  once  indispensa- 
ble to  students  of  the  drama  or  of  Voltaire. 
The  book  is  full  of  valuable  information. 

Boussod,  Valadon  &  Co.,  808  Fifth  Avenue, 
send  us  the  first  parts  of  the  annual  **  Figaro 
Salon,"  each  of  which  is  accompanied  ^y  a 
color  print  of  double  size.  M.  Philippe  GiUe 
supplies  the  discourse  for  the  iUustrations; 
his  task  has  not  been  easy  this  year. 

The  Atlas  of  the  Pacific  Ocean  lately  issued 
by  the  Deutsche  Seewarte  at  Hamburg  fol- 
lows similar  works  for  the  Atlantic  and  Indian 
Oceans,  and  will  soon  be  supplemented  by  a 
sailing  handbook  of  thorough  German  quality 
—a  quality  commonly  regarded  as  too  high  for 
our  run  of  seamen,  but  greatly  appreciated  by 
those  of  more  scientific  training.  The  charts 
of  the  winds  for  the  opposite  seasons  are  per- 
haps of  the  most  general  interest.  Here  we 
see  the  southeast  trades  persistent  in  the  east- 
em  south  torrid  ocean,  but  gradually  curving 
to  join  the  Australian  northwest  monsoon  of 
the  southern  summer,  or  extending  far  beyond 
the  equator  as  the  southeast  monsoon  of  Asia, 
even  as  far  north  as  the  Sea  of  Okhotsk  in  the 
northern  summer.  The  prevailing  westerly 
winds  of  far  southern  latitudes  maintain  their 
considerable  strength  with  small  change  the 
year  round,  but  those  of  the  high  northern 
latitudes  vary  from  gales  in  winter  to  mode- 
rate winds  in  summer.  The  charts  of  ocean 
currents  are  also  prepared  for  the  opposite 
seasons;  theie  exhibit  with  great  clearness  the 
variation  of  the  counter  current  that  fiows 
eastward  north  of  the  equator,  broad  and  f  uUy 
developed  in  our  summer,  narrow  and  weak  in 
our  winter.  Agreeably  to  the  theory  that  as- 
cribes the  equatorial  counter  currents  ta  the 
monsoon-like  deflection  of  the  trades  as  they 
cross  the  equator  into  the  summer  hemisphere, 
a  counter  current  appears  trending  along  the 
Solomon  Islands,  east  of  New  Guinea,  dur- 
ing the  summer.  In  this  same  region,  the  Pa- 
ciflc  has  tropical  cyclones  in  January  and  Feb- 
ruary; thus  repeating  in  both  these  features 
the  habit  of  the  Indian  rather  than  of  the  At- 
lantic Ocean. 

The  liberalizing  spirit  of  to-d  ly  asserts  itself 
in  the  latest  recommendation  of  the  0>uncil 
of  the  Senate  of  Cambridge  University  in  fa- 
vor of  the  affiliation  of  St.  Edmund's  Col- 
lege, Old  Hall,  Ware.  This  Roman  Catholic 
College  claims  to  be  the  oldest  seat  of  higher 
education  in  England  belonging  to  the  Romish 
Church,  having  in  1793  become  the  recognized 
successor  to  the  original  college  of  Doaai, 
France,  established  in  the  sixteenth  century 
for  the  education  of  EUiglish  priests.  The  cur- 
riculum of  St.  Edmund*B  College,  hitherto 
based  on  the  requirements  for  the  Arts  de- 
grees at  London  University,  will  in  the  future 
be  arranged  so  aa  to  harmonize  with  the 
courses  at  the  University  of  Cambridge. 

Certain  reactionary  influences  of  college  life 
in  a  university  town  are  no  lees  strikingly 
shown  by  the  results  of  a  recent  plebiscite  tak 
en  by  the  Cambridge  Review^  to  test  the  feeling 
among  resident  members  of  this  same  English 
university,  below  the  degree  of  M.A.,  in  re- 
gard to  the  admission  of  women  to  Cambridge 
degrees.  Out  of  2,880  post-cards  dUtributed 
for  voting  purposes,  2,188  were  promptly  re- 
turned,  filled  out ;  of  this  number  1,602,  or 


nearly  80  per  cent.,  were  against  the  granting 
of  degrees  to  women,  and  only  437,  or  less  than 
21  per  cent.,  in  favor  of  it ;  four  cautious  spi- 
rits reported  themselves  as  neutral  on  the  sub- 
ject. 

The  new  Southern  History  Association  will 
hold  its  first  annual  meeting  at  Columbian 
University,  Washington,  on  June  12,  at  eight 
p.  M.  The  programme  includes  an  inaugural 
address  by  the  President,  Postmaster  General 
Wilson,  and  seven  papers,  limited  to  twenty 
minutes  in  length,  with  five  minutes  for  com- 
ment. Headquarters  will  be  at  the  Bbbitt 
House. 

A  confusion  favored  by  family  affiliations 
occurred  in  our  notice  last  week  of  Recent 
Poetry,  when  we  attributed  (p.  488,  middle 
column)  *  Songs  from  the  Greek'  to  Jane 
Sedgwick  Minot  in  place  of  Jane  Minot  Sedg- 
wick, to  whom  we  tender  an  apology. 

—Some  years  ago  Prof.  Alois  Brandl  (then 
of  GOttingen,  now  of  Berlin)  startled  Chaucer- 
ians  by  a  new  thesis  concerning  **  The  Squire's 
Tale."  He  maintained  that  this  poem,  hitherto 
regarded  as  one  of  the  most  spontaneous  and 
spirited  of  Chaucer's  works,  was  nothing  but 
an  allegorical  account  of  the  matrimonial  infe- 
licities of  John  of  Gaunt's  daughter  Elizabeth. 
Though  supported  with  much  acuteneas  and 
some  learning,  this  hypothesis  was  palpably 
untenable,  and  it  was  accordingly  withdrawn 
by  its  author  after  it  had  **  walked  the  town 
awhile."  Since  then  little  has  been  done  for 
**The  Squire's  Tale,"  and  discussion  of  its 
sources  has  pretty  well  ceased.  The  latest  num- 
ber of  the  '^Publications'*  of  the  American 
Modem  Language  Association,  however,  con- 
tains an  article  which  is  likely  to  cause  some 
throwing  about  of  brains.  We  refer  to  Prof. 
Manly 's  essay  on  **  Marco  Polo  and  the  Squire*s 
Tale.*"  As  our  readers  are  aware,  Prof.  Skeat, 
about  twenty  years  ago,  maintained,  in  his 
school  edition  of  *'The  Squire*s  Tale,"  that 
Chaucer  was  indebted  to  Marco  Polo's  *  Tra- 
vels '  for  his  description  of  the  Tartar  court, 
and  this  contention  has  met  with  general  ac- 
quiescence, though  here  and  there  a  scholar 
has  expressed  himself  with  reserve  on  the  sub- 
ject.  In  his  Oxford  edition  of  Chaucer,  re- 
viewed in  these  columns  last  year^  Prof.  Skeat 
contented  himself  with  reprinting  the  substance 
of  his  previous  investigation.  Dissatisfied  with 
the  grounds  of  Prof.  Skeat's  opinions,  Prof. 
Manly  has  examined  the  question  afresh,  and 
his  results  differ  widely  from  those  of  his  pre- 
decessors. If  Marco  Polo,  he  argues,  was 
Chaucer*s  authority  for  Tartar  manners  and 
politics,  the  English  poet  has  treated  his  voucher 
in  an  extraordinary  fashion,  omitting  or  alter- 
ing all  that  is  characteristic  or  peculiar,  and 
retaining  only  those  commonplaces  which  be 
could  have  found  as  well  in  a  dozen  other  ac- 
cessible sources.  Prof.  Manly's  destructive  cri- 
ticism seems  to  usaltogether convincing;  unless 
unexpected  evidence  is  forthcoming,  Marco 
Polo  is  "  out  of  the  itory  "  henceforth.  Con- 
struction  Prof.  Manly  does  not  attempt.  He 
contents  himself  with  remarking,  at  the  end 
of  his  excellent  paper,  that,  in  his  opinion, 
Chaucer  found  the  names  of  his  characters  and 
his  mUe  en  Mchte^  as  well  aa  the  outline  of  his 
plot,  in  the  as  yet  undiscovered  source  of  the 
tale.  With  this  conclusion  we  are  inclined  to 
agree,  and  we  await  with  lively  interest  Prof. 
Manlj's  promised  article  on  Chaucer's  **  rela- 
tions  to  certain  men  who  had  travelled  wide- 
ly." Unless  some  reoord-searcher  makes  an 
uncommonly  lucky  discovery,  we  seem  to  be 
at  the  end  of  our  immediate  information  about 
Chaucer :  all  the  more  reason  why  aoholart 


456 


The    [NTation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1615 


should  look  sharply  after  those  of  his  oontem- 
poraries  with  whom  he  may  have  oome  in  oon- 
tact 

— lir.  George  Neilson  has  added  to  his  in- 
structive and  entertaining  essays  on  mediaeval 
subjects  an  investigation  into  the  source  and 
extent  of  the  widely  current  belief  that  Eng- 
lishmen had  tails.  It  appears  in  a  reprint 
from  the  Proceedings  of  the  Glasgow  ArchsBO- 
logical  Society,  and  seemingly  exhausts  the 
history  of  the  Caudatu*  AnglieuM^ibt  re- 
proach which  for  centuries  was  cast  upon  na- 
tives of  Britain  by  their  enemies  and  rivals  in 
Scotland  and  on  the  Continent.  Even  towards 
the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century,  William 
Lambarde,  in  his  Perambulation  of  Kent,  is 
moved  to  indignation  at  the  slander  **  so  that 
the  whole  English  nation  is  in  foreine  coun- 
tries abroad  earnestly  flowted  with  this  dis- 
honourable note  in  so  much  that  many  believe 
as  verity  that  we  be  monsters  &  have  tailes  by 
nature,  as  other  men  have  their  due  partes 
ft  members  in  usuall  manner.**  The  belief 
seems  to  have  originated  in  the  later  twelfth 
century  as  a  legend  that  when  St  Augustin  of 
Canterbury  was  preaching  to  the  pagan  Sax- 
ons of  Dorsetshire,  th^  not  only  refused  to  be 
converted,  but  in  derision  pinned  fish-tails  to 
his  garments,  whereupon  the  angry  saint 
prayed  that  their  children  might  be  bom  with 
tails,  and  Gkxl  granted  the  prayer.  A  later 
variant  ascribes  it  to  another  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  Thomas  Becket,  the  tail  of  whose 
sumpter-horse  was  docked  to  despite  him.  The 
growth  and  extension  of  the  belief  are  followed 
by  Mr.  Neilson  through  the  centuries  with  his 
customary  research  and  vigor  of  exposition 
down  to  the  time  of  Andrew  Marvell,  who 
illustrates  the  danger  of  episcopal  indigna- 
tion: 

**  Nerer  tliAll  CalTin  pardoned  be  for  BsIm  ;  « 

Merer,  for  Barnet'i  Mke,  the  Lauderdalei : 
For  Becket'i  take  Kent  alwmju  thtM  bare  tails.** 

—Recently  published  educational  statistics 
of  Germany  present  some  points  of  interest  as 
regards  the  relative  attendance  of  members  of 
the  principal  religious  bodies  at  the  higher  in- 
stitutions of  learning,  namely,  the  scientific 
and  classical  gynmasia,  in  which  courses  of 
study  are  pursued  preparatory  to  the  poly- 
technic school  and  the  university.  On  a  basis 
of  10,000,  the  proportion  of  pupils  attending 
these  institutions  is  in  Prussia  27  Catholics  to 
50  Protestants  and  888  Jews;  in  Saxony  22 
Catholics  to  40  Protestants  and  857  Jews;  in 
Bavaria  42  Catholics  to  67  Protestants  and  870 
Jews;  in  WQrtemberg  53  Catholics  to  93  Pro- 
tesUnts  and  500  Jews;  in  Baden  41  Catholics 
to  86  Protestants  and  417  Jews;  in  Hesse  50 
Catholics  to  67  Protestants  and  883  Jews.  Thus 
it  will  be  seen  that,  in  the  six  largest  German 
states,  containing  87  per  cent  of  the  entire 
population  of  the  Empire,  the  Catholics  are 
far  behind  the  Protestants  in  their  desire  for 
higher  education,  and  the  Jews  vastly  superior 
in  this  respect  to  both  the  Christian  organiza- 
tions together.  It  would,  therefore,  be  per- 
fectly  natural  and  just,  other  things  being 
equal,  that,  in  proportion  to  their  numbers, 
Protestants  should  hold  more  positions  of 
honor,  trust,  emolument,  and  influence  in  the 
state  than  Catholics,  and  Jews  more  than  Fro- 
tettanU  and  Catholics  combined.  Indeed, 
this  is  generally  true  in  respect  to  Protestants, 
but  not  in  respect  to  Jews,  who,  owing  to  anti- 
Semitic  prejudice,  faU  to  receive  the  recogni- 
tion in  the  civil  and  military  service  to  which 
their  culture  and  capacity  would  entitle  them. 
Wot  long  since  an  anti-Semitic  orator  in  Ber- 
lin made  it  a  reproach  to  the  Jew  that  he 


is  eager  to  give  his  children  every  possible 
educational  advantage  and  thus  render  it  more 
difficult  for  Christians  to  compete  with  them. 
'^Therefore  down  with  the  Jew P*  was  his  con- 
clusion. 

—The  undeniable  fact  that  Catholics  furnish 
proportionately  fewer  aspirants  after  higher 
education  than  Protestants  is  due  to  a  variety 
of  causes,  two  of  which  may  be  mentioned  as 
perhaps  the  most  important.  The  first  of  these 
is  sacerdotal  celibacy.  The  Protestant  clergy- 
man conscientiously  fulfils  the  Scriptural  in- 
junction to  **be  fruitful  and  multiply,"  and  is 
usually  blessed  with  a  numerous  offspring.  He 
belongs,  also,  to  what  has  been  called  *'the 
Academic  Races,**  and  his  sons  are  expected 
to  study,  if  not  theology,  at  least  one  of  the 
learned  professions.  Thus  the  Protestant  par- 
sons of  Germany  furnish  quite  a  large  quota 
of  its  academical  citisens,  and  their  descend- 
ants,  whether  clergy  or  laity,  inherit  a  taste 
for  learning,  and,  in  most  cases,  pursue  some 
course  of  study  at  the  university.  On  the  oth- 
er hand,  whatever  may  be  the  aptitudes  and 
attainments  of  the  Catholic  priest  in  scholar- 
ship, these  traits  remain  purely  individual  and 
are  not  transmitted  to  posterity.  The  second 
cause  is  the  persistently  hostile  attitude  of  the 
ecclesiastical  and  political  leaders  of  the  Catho- 
lic party  to  the  superior  grades  of  secular  edu- 
cation. In  conventions  of  the  Church  as  well 
as  in  public  assemblies  and  in  Parliament  they 
are  oonstantiy  denouncing  scientific  schools 
and  universities  as  hotbeds  of  irreligion,  and 
thus  deter  many  sincere  Catholics  from  pa- 
tronizing such  godless  insdtutions.  But  who 
ever  heard  a  Jewish  rabbi  or  the  elders  of 
the  synagogue  indulge  in  vituperation  of  this 
sort? 

— Raoul  Ro8i6re*s  *  Recherohes  sur  la  Po^ie 
Contemporaine*  (Paris :  A.  Laisney)  is  a  valu- 
able contribution  to  critical  literature,  and 
must  find  a  place  on  the  shelves  of  every  stu- 
dent of  French  literature.  It  is  composed,  as  is 
usually  the  case  at  the  present  day,  mostiy  of 
articles  which  have  appeared  in  reviews  and 
magazines,  but  unlike  many  such  articles,  these 
are  well  worth  collecting  and  preserving  in 
book  form.  The  two  chapters  on  English  and 
German  infiuence  on  France  in  the  eighteenth 
and  nineteenth  centuries  would  alone  give 
value  to  the  work.  They  form  part  of  a  very 
sound  criticism  of  Bruneti&re's  *  Evolution  de 
la  Po^sie  lyrique  en  France  an  19e  sitele,*  and 
are  full  of  information.  The  "  Gen^se  d*Her- 
nan],**  which  appeared  in  the  number  of  the 
i^eime  B/«iie  for  April  25,  and  in  which  the 
sources  of  that  famous  play  are  investi- 
gated, excites  the  desire  that  M.  Rosl^re 
would  publish  an  edition  of  that  play  with  a 
commentary  embodying  the  result  of  his  in- 
vestigations. He  indicates  **Ajny  Robsart** 
as  the  source  of  the  first  act.  This  drama, 
founded  on  Sir  Walter  Scott's  *  Kenilworth,* 
was  produced  at  the  Od6on  in  1828,  and  was  a 
flat  failure.  At  the  time,  the  play  was  signed 
by  Paul  Foucher,  Hugo^s  brother-in-law,  but 
Foucher  bad  nothing  to  do  with  it  The  second 
act  is  inspired  by  AJarc6n*s  **Tejddor  de  Sego- 
via,** the  plot  of  which  gave  Hugo  the  main 
lines  of  '*  Hemani.**  The  principal  incident  of 
the  third  act  is  drawn  from  another  of  Alar- 
c6n*s  plays,  "  Oanar  Amigos.**  The  fourth  act 
is  a  reproduction  of  a  portion  of  '*  Cromwell,** 
famous  for  its  preface.  The  fifth  act  is  partiy 
inspired  by  SbakBpere*s  **  Romeo  and  Juliet** 
and  partly  drawn  from  "Amy  Robsart.** 
Two  other  chapters  are  also  especially  worthy 
of  attention,  that  on  "Shakespeare  sur  nos 
ThdAlres,"  and  that  on  Jean-Marie  Heredia. 


HORSE*S   HOLlfES. 

Life  and  Letters  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holwui, 
By  John  T.  Morse,  jr.  2  vols.  Boston: 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.    1886. 

OUK  expectation  of  what  a  writer  win  do  ii 
shaped,  perhaps  unduly,  by  the  best  that  he  hss 
done.  Certainly  when  we  beard  that  Mr. 
Morse  would  write  the  Life  of  Dr.  Holmes,  we 
recalled  his  Life  of  Lincoln,  and  congratolsted 
ourselves  upon  another  biography  from  the 
same  skilful  hand.  In  the  'Lincoln,*  boir- 
ever,  there  was  a  necessity  for  compreMdon 
everywhere.  In  the  '  Holmes*  a  necesiity  for 
expansion  seems  to  have  posseaeed  the  biogra- 
pher, and  we  have  two  volumes  where  all  might 
have  been  said,  and  better  said,  in  one.  In 
the  larger  work  Bir,  Morse  moved  easily  sod 
as  one  at  home;  here  fretfully,  like  a  hone  in 
an  uncomfortable  harness.  Not  only  in  hii 
general  manner  is  he  somewhat  deprecstory 
and  apologetic,  but  of  particular  apologlfs 
there  are  not  a  few— some  of  them  for  the 
biographer's  performance,  and  some  for  Dr. 
Holmes.  One  thing  is  sure—that  no  one  will 
accuse  Mr.  Morse  of  having  unduly  msgDified 
his  subject  If  Dr.  Holmes  thought  mare 
highly  of  himself  than  he  ought  to  think,  11 
has  been  sometinoes  charged  and  freqoently 
surmised,  Mr.  Morse  has  made  large  atoee- 
ment  for  his  fault,  for  he  has  written  of  him 
as  if  beset  by  fears  of  claiming  for  him  any- 
thing that  the  most  grudging  critic  would 
not  cheerfully  allow. 

In  one  respect  the  reader  may  jusUy  com- 
plain that  the  promise  of  the  Lincoln  book  ii 
broken  in  the  Holmes.  There  was  no  good 
reason  why  this  should  not  have  been  made  u 
coherent  and  symmetrical  as  that.  In  fact,  it 
is  more  a  series  of  separate  essays  than  a  con- 
tinuous biography.  Many  things  are  antid. 
pated  that  would  better  have  waited  for  their 
appropriate  time.  The  least  excusable  wsite 
is  that  of  Samuel  May*s  pathetic  letter  describ- 
ing the  last  meetings  of  the  class  of  *20,  which 
appears  in  vol.  i.,  p.  78,  when  it  should  here 
been  reserved  for  the  concluding  pages.  The 
book  lacks  order  and  it  especially  lacks  chro- 
nology, proper  to  which  we  have  a  notable  in- 
stance in  the  case  of  "The  Last  Leaf.**  This 
poem  is  several  times  referred  to,  but  its  date, 
even  proximately,  is  not  given,  and  tiie  poetry 
of  the  period  is  spoken  of  disparagingly,  with- 
out an  exception  in  favor  of  the  poem  which 
Mr.  Morse  himself  sets  in  a  higher  niche  d 
fame  than  "The  Chambered  Nautilus,**  tbongfa 
this  was  for  Dr.  Holmes  his  "one  entire  end 
perfect  chrysolite.** 

Mr.  Morsels  arrangement  of  his  matter  Is 
defective  in  one  gross  particular  as  well  se  in 
minor  instances.  In  vol.  iL,  beginning  with 
p.  107,  we  have  several  groups  of  letters— to 
Lowell,  Motley,  and  others— which,  intovpen- 
ed  with  the  narrative  and  critical  portiou  of 
the  book,  would  have  given  to  those  portions 
a  much  more  important  and  attractive  cfaarsc- 
ter  than  they  now  possess.  For  Mr.  Mcne 
does  not  conceal  from  us  the  fact  that  he  has 
kept  his  best  wine  to  the  last,  and  served  the 
poorer  kinds  along  the  earlier  courses  of  the 
feast :  "  Nothing  has  been  omitted  which,  by 
any  liberality  of  judgment,  could  be  supposed 
to  have  any  interest ;  on  the  contrary,  notei 
and  letters  are  printed  which  woold  hardly 
have  been  selected  if  there  had  been  an  fs*- 
barras  de  richeesee.^  This  is  certainly  aolsB- 
oouraging  for  a  beginning.  It  Is  uuiiflMiily 
discouraging.  Even  the  letters  la  tba  bod^  of 
the  book  are  better  than  this  wam^  ktMm 
to  expect.  Neither  these  nor  tfe*  1 
the  charm  of  Lowell's  Imblili^^ 


June  II,  1896] 


Tlie   N^ation. 


457 


and  •zptodve  spooteoMty.  Tbey  were,  for 
the  moefc  pert,  written  es  carefully  aa  Emer- 
son*! to  Carljle,  and  as  if  with  a  view  to 
poethnmone  publication.  But  they  are  good 
lettera  neyertheleM.  The  trouble  it,  thej  are 
related  to  Hohnee's  proee  publicationi  ae  **  the 
Mune  continued,**  But  when  Mr.  Morse  laye, 
in  hie  second  paragr^>h,  **  In  point  of  fact,  Dr. 
Hohnei  had  not  only  put  the  best,  but  abso- 
lutely oK,  into  the  volumes  with  which  he  had 
amused  and  instructed  the  English- reading 
worid,**  he  is  again  needlessly  discouraging, 
and  exceedingly  unjust  both  to  Dr.  Holmes 
and  to  his  own  wOTk.  There  is  a  great  deal  in 
these  volumes  that  we  did  not  have  before,  and 
much  of  it  has  a  personal  accent  which  more 
than  confirms  the  {feasant  impression  made 
by  the  author  aa  such ;  it  demands  for  Dr. 
Holmes  an  esteem  and  affection  which  outrun 
all  bounds  rsacbed  by  the  public  heretofore. 

Dr.  Holmes*s  interest  in  problems  of  heredity 
did  not  lead  him  to  study  carefully  his  own 
pedigree,  but  Mr.  Morse  has  given  us  enough 
to  show  that  his  blood  had  several  admirable 
strains  allying  him  with  people  of  historical 
and  local  reputation.  His  theological  heresy 
was  germinal  in  his  great-grandmother,  Mrs. 
Temperance  Holmes,  whoee  minister  preached 
such  strange  and  incredible  things  that  she 
**  refused  to  write  after  him  ^^i,  «.,  to  make 
sbort-hand  notes  of  his  sermons.  He  inherited 
the  features  of  his  mother*s  mind  and  disposi- 
tion; it  is  a  pity  that  he  did  not  inherit  those 
of  his  father's  face,  the  beauty  of  which,  as 
here  reproduced,  is  so  remarkable  that  the 
page  which  it  adorns  is  the  most  attractive 
in  the  book  and  that  to  which  the  reader 
of tenest  returns.  The  father  wasted  no  ink  in 
recording  his  son^s  airivaL  The  entry  in  his 
almanac  is,  **20,  son  b." 

"It  Msmsd  to  mssa  to  little;  OMent  to  muoh." 

There  are  some  interesting  fragments  of  an 
autobiography  which  Dr.  Holmes  never  car- 
ried very  far.  They  do  much  to  justify  Mn 
Morse's  opinion  that  he  was  more  interested  in 
theology  than  in  anything  else.  His  revolt 
from  Calvinism  began  early  and  ended  only 
with  his  death.  He  had  *'  a  kind  of  Indian  sa- 
gacity in  the  discovery  of  contraband  read- 
ing.'' He  ''always  read  in  books  rather  than 
through  them,  and  always  with  more  profit 
from  the  books  read  in  than  from  the  books 
read  through,^  For  'The  Pilgrim's  Progress' 
he  has  no  conventional  praise:  **  It  represents 
the  universe  as  a  trap  which  catches  most  of 
the  human  vermin  that  have  its  bait  dangled 
before  them."  In  poetry  his  favorite  reading 
in  his  youth  was  Pope's  Homer,  and  be  never 
repented  of  his  admiration.  Accounting  for 
his  poetic  temper,  he  puts  for  Wordsworth*s 
''heaven"  the  earth  which  lay  about  him  in 
his  infancy,  the  scenery  of  his  childish  years. 
In  ooUege  tiie  home  splints  were  off,  and  he  en- 
joyed his  freedom.  He  recalls  that  once  for 
several  days  his  room  was  the  seat  of  continu- 
ous revelry.  But  when  his  father  went  to  col- 
lege "  his  mother  equipped  him  with  a  Dutch 
liquor  case  containing  six  large  bottles  filled 
with  the  various  kinds  of  strong  waters,"  from 
which  it  would  appear  that  the  former  times 
were  not  in  all  respects  better  than  theee. 

In  1888,  Holmes  came  to  New  York,  "seeing 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life  a  real  city,"  and 
look  ship  for  Europe.  Pursuing  his  medical 
studies  in  Paris,  he  soon  became  deeply  en- 
grossed in  them,  but  with  a  margin  for  some 
gayety.  The  descriptions  of  his  teachen  are 
taken  from  his  '  Hundred  Days  in  Europe,*  and 
they  are  felicitous,  that  of  Louis  enthusiastic 
in  its  praise.    Another  was  '*  a  great  drawer  of 


blood  and  hewer  of  members.*'  The  young 
student  took  himself  very  seriously,  and  did 
his  best  to  enlighten  his  parents  as  to  the  civi- 
lising infiuence  of  the  theatre  and  so  on,  add- 
ing, not  very  prettily,  "You  must  excuse  these 
llttie  remarks,  and  not  waste  your  next  letter 
in  refuting  them."  There  is  a  good  deal  of 
forcible  characterisation  in  these  early  letters 
and  some  anticipations  of  the  coming  humorist. 
Edward  Irving,  of  Carlylean  immortality  and 
the  "  gift  of  tongues,"  is  described  as  "  a  black, 
savage,  saturnine,  long-haired  Scotchman, with 
a  most  Tyburn-looking  squint  to  him";  the 
King  (WUliam  IV.)  '*  looks  like  a  retired 
butcher,"  and  his  face  is  "  probably  the  largest 
undviliaed  spot  in  England."  In  general, "  the 
crudities  and  yeast  of  youth  "  are  more  amus- 
ing than  the  deliberate  fun. 

He  returns  to  America  full  of  enthusiasm 
for  the  practice  of  his  profession.  "  Literary 
parturition"  taxes  him  too  severely  to  be 
united  with  medicine,  as  if  it  were  the  common 
sort ;  so  '*not  another  hair  from  the  locks  of 
Poesy."  But  he  did  not  find  the  practice  of 
medicine  what  he  had  anticipated.  The  best 
thing  about  it  was  that  he  had  to  keep  a  horse 
and  chaise— his  joy,  the  terror  of  his  friends. 
His  exuberant  jollity  stood  in  the  way  of  his 
success,  and,  more  seriously,  the  muses  whom 
he  had  forsworn.  The  story  of  his  inability  to 
divide  his  practice  because  he  had  but  one  pa- 
tient is  not  told,  and  is  probably  mythical,  nor 
are  we  informed  if  he  ever  practised  after  his 
return  to  Boston  irom  Dartmouth,  where  he 
taught  anatomy  in  1889-40.  There  is  much 
emphasis  on  his  volume, '  Medical  Essays.'  The 
date  of  the  volume  is  withheld,  but  the  most 
important esMiy,  "Contagiousness of  Puerperal 
Fever,"  appeared  in  1848.  He  was  not  quite 
sure  whether  he  took  more  satisfaction  in  this 
essay  or  in  "The  Chambered  Nautilus."  He 
said: 

"  I  think  oftenest  of  '  The  Chambered  Nauti- 
lus,' which  is  a  favorite  poem  of  mine,  though 
I  wrote  it  myself.  The  essay  only  comes  up 
at  long  intervals. . . .  But  in  writing  the  poem 
I  was  filled  with  a  better  feeUng— the  highest 
state  of  mental  exaltation  and  the  most  crys- 
talline clairvoyance,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  that 
had  ever  been  granted  to  me  ;  I  mean  that  lu- 
cid vision  of  one's  thought,  and  of  all  forms  of 
expression  which  will  be  at  once  pecise  and 
musical,  which  is  the  poet's  special  gift,  how- 
ever lai^e  or  small  in  amount  or  value.  There 
is  more  selfish  pleasure  to  be  had  out  of  the 
poem— perhaps  a  nobler  satisfaction  from  the 
tife'Saving  labor." 

Dr.  Holmee  wrote  to  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell  that 
the  wood  of  which  academic  chairs  are  made 
has  a  narcotic  quality  which  occasionally  ren- 
ders the  occupants  somnolenti  lethargic,  and 
even  comatose.  His  own  case  was  an  ex- 
ception to  the  rule.  Bir.  Morse  avails  himself 
of  a  very  pictureeque  bit  of  writing  about  Dr. 
Holmes's  medical  professorship  by  Dr.  Cheever, 
and  a  careful  estimate  by  his  successor,  Dr. 
Dwight.  He  liked  to  lecture  on  the  "dry 
bones"  better  than  on  dissections,  because 
they  teere  dry  and  clean.  Vivisection  he  ac- 
cepted aa  a  justifiable  method  of  investigation, 
"odious  beyond  measure  in  its  abuse,"  while 
in  his  heart  he  hated  it  and  would  run  out  of 
the  room  when  a  rabbit  had  to  be  sacrificed 
upon  the  ahar  of  science.  Perhaps  the  hardest 
thing  he  had  to  do  was  to  withhold  the  best 
that  he  could  give  in  order  that  the  duller 
boys  might  get  their  share  of  help. 

When  the  AOantio  was  started  in  1857,  Mr. 
Morse  tells  us  that  Holmes's  name  "had  scarce- 
ly been  heard  outside  the  small  town  of  Boa- 
ton."  But  he  ha^then  been  a  lyceum  lecturer 
for  many  years  and  had  had  no  lack  of  en- 
gagements.   Thegeneral  lack  of  dates  is  abso> 


lute  in  this  particular,  nor  are  any  of  his 
subjects  indicated  except  a  course  before  the 
Lowell  Institute  on  the  English  poets.  It 
would  be  good  to  know  how  much  his  lectures 
helped  his  literary  work  when  the  establish, 
ment  of  the  Atlantic  gave  him  bis  great  op- 
portunity. His  contributions  to  the  AtlanOe 
are  not  estimated  too  highly,  but  with  a  re* 
freshing  difference  from  the  treatment  of  his 
poetry  and  letters.  Albeit  "the  critic  is  only 
the  mosquito  of  the  literary  world,"  and 
though  "it  is  not  worth  while  to  discourse 
in  hia  veia"  (we  italicise  the  unconscious  pun), 
Bfr.  Morse  proceeds  to  criticise  the  Autocrat, 
Prof  eesor,  and  Poet  with  considerable  elabora- 
tion; and  the  criticism,  approving  Holmee's 
New  England  limitation,  is  much  wiser  than 
Mr.  Henry  Jamee's  regret  of  Hawtbome^s 
"  narrow  plot  of  ground,"  though  he  grew  on 
it  such  specimens  as  the  'Scarlet  Letter'  and 
'  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables.'  No  attempt 
is  made  to  reverse  the  general  impression  that 
the  "  Breakfast  Table  "  series  was  a  descending 
one.  As  for  Holmes's  three  novels,  '  The 
Guardian  Angel'  is  held  to  be  a  great  im- 
provement  on  '  Elsie  Venner,'  but  '  A  Mortal 
Antipathy '  far  below  it,  and  a  sign  of  failing 
power.  The  snake  story  interested  him  great- 
ly in  rattiesnakes  not  only  while  he  was  writ- 
ing it,  but  for  years  after.  At  one  time  he 
kept  one  for  observation  and  experiment  un- 
til a  rat  was  given  him  to  kill,  with  unexpect- 
ed results:  the  snake  it  was  that  died. 

The  treatment  of  the  Doctor's  poetry  is  very 
brief,  and  of  all  the  poems  he  wrote  hardly  a 
dosen  are  mentioned  for  reproof  or  praise. 
But  "Dr. ^Holmes  was  more  anxious  to  be 
thought  a  poet  than  anything  else,"  and  BCr. 
Morse  would  have  done  well  to  avail  himself 
of  outside  help  at  this  point  as  in  the  matter  of 
his  professorship.  What  he  claims  for  him  is 
that  he  was  "a  charming  singer,"  and  his  ex- 
pansion of  this  claim,  though  brief,  is  excel- 
lent. To  his  occasional  vene  we  have  a  single 
paragraph  allotted,  a  short  one  at  that.  Dr. 
Holmes's  interest  in  the  Saturday  Club  was  one 
of  his  most  vivid  personal  traits.  It  was  the 
burden  of  his  letters  to  Lowell,  and  of  those  to 
Motley  in  a  less  degree.  These  letters  are  his 
best.  Those  to  Lowell  are  under  some  con- 
straint to  make  them  worthy  of  his  critical  ad- 
miration; those  to  Motley  are  written  with  a 
freer  hand.  An  early  one  to  Lowell  criticises 
'  Sir  Launfal '  with  much  frankness;  and  such 
a  fire,  kept  up,  would  have  obliged  Lowell  to 
deploy  his  forces  in  a  more  careful  manner. 
There  are  nice  appreciations  of  his  literary 
companions,  like  this  one  of  Emerson:  "If 
you  have  seen  a  cat  picking  her  footsteps  in 
wet  weather,  you  have  seen  Emerson's  ex- 
quisite intelligence  feeling  for  its  phrase  or 
epithet."  Alcott,  with  even  greater  felicity, 
represented  him  as  sorting  the  keys  of  his  cabi- 
nets. In  two  groups  of  the  letters— those  to  an 
unidentified  Jamee  William  Kimball  and  Birs. 
Stowe— he  is  almost  entirely  theologicaL  Mr. 
Morse  thinks  the  battie  he  was  fighting  is  now 
so  completely  won  that  the  report  of  it  will  ex- 
cite littie  interest,  but  we  are  not  so  sure  of 
tUs.  It  would  appear  from  theee  pages  that  Dr. 
Holmes's  hatred  of  the  penology  of  Calvinism 
was  as  intense  as  Theodore  Parker's;  and  to 
the  remarkable  adumbration  of  it  which  has 
taken  place,  the  exhalations  of  his  wit  and 
humor,  as  well  as  bis  more  serious  dealing  with 
it,  must  have  contributed  a  great  deal.  His 
pious  emotions  and  his  Unitarian  affections  ran 
parallel  with  much  tender  doubt  and  serious 
questioning.  Suffering  was  to  him  a  greater 
mystery  than  sin,  and  the  sin  he  found  himself 
blaming  Ism  and  Isss  and  pitying  more  and 


458 


Tlie   Nation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1615 


more,  to  conditioned  is  the  will  by  organiza- 
tion and  environment.  He  delighted  in  the 
evidencet  of  good  ethics  and  religion  outside 
the  Christian  bounds.  The  Chicago  Congress 
of  Religions  he  hailed  **as  the  longest  stride 
towards  the  Blillenninm  ^  that  he  had  seen. 

There  is  a  good  chapter  on  his  occupations 
and  methods  of  worlc,  a  trivial  one  on  the  bur- 
dens of  his  correspondence,  and  a  very  im- 
portant one  on  his  distaste  for  public  affairs  as 
evinced  by  his  freedom  from  all  complicity 
with  the  anti-slavery  spirit  into  which  all  bis 
great  literary  companions  were  caught  up. 
The  longest  letter  in  the  book  is  a  painful  jus- 
tiBcation  of  his  course  in  reply  to  certain 
criticisms  from  Lowell.  During  the  war  his 
engagement  in  public  matters  was  all  that 
could  be  asked,  and  he  was  never  again  so  in- 
different as  he  had  been  before.  That  he  had 
a  son  in  the  army  brought  the  great  struggle 
home  to  him  sharply,  and  he  contributed  to  it 
a  few  Tyrtsean  odes  and  a  strong  Fourth  of 
July  oration.  But  if  his  hearty  malediction 
upon  John  Quincy  Adams  aud  bis  metrical  de- 
fence of  Webster  ever  caused  him  a  regret,  uo 
sign  of  it  is  here. 


MORE  PICnON. 

Dr.  Oray^s  Quest.    By  Francis  H.  Underwood. 

Boston:  Lee  &  Shepard. 
My  Lady  Nobody.     By  Maarten  Maartens. 

Harper  &  Brothers. 

Dolly  Dillenbeek.    By  James  L.  Ford.    George 

H.  Richmond  &  Co. 
Boss.    By  Odette  Tyler.     The  Transatlantic 

Publishing  Company. 

The  One  Who  Looked  On.  By  F.  F.  Montresor. 

D.  Appleton  &  Co. 
Paul  and  Virginia  of  a  Northern  Zone,  From 

the  Danish  of  Holger  Drachmann.    Chicago : 

Way  &  Williams. 
Pinks  cmdCherriee.   ByC.  M.Ross.   Glssgow: 

James  MacLehose  &  Sons;  New  York:  Mac- 

millan. 

The  Sister  0/ a  Saint,  and  Other  Stories.    By 

Grace  Ellery  Channing.    Chicago  and  New 

York:  Stone  &  RimbaU. 
Christian  and  Leah,  and  Other  Ghetto  Stories. 

By  Leopold  Kompert.    Translated  by  Alfred 

a  Arnold.    MacmiUan. 

Jrralie's  Bushranger,  By  E.  W.  Homung. 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 

Dr.  Warrick^s  Daughters.  By  Rebecca  Hard- 
ing Davis.    Harper  &  Brothers. 

Comedies  of  Courtship.  By  Anthony  Hope. 
Charles  Scribner^s  Sons. 

The  Chronicles  of  Count  A  ntonio.  By  Antho- 
ny  Hope.    D.  Appleton  &  Co. 

In  the  last  novel  of  the  late  Francis  Under- 
wood, his  wide  reading,  extensive  knowledge 
of  literature,  law,  and  medicine,  and  a  fa- 
miliarity with  the  custoons  of  fifty  years  ago, 
enabled  him  to  give  an  elaborate  frame  to  his 
story,  and  to  show  What  the  traveller  of  that  pe- 
riod found  io  Boston,  in  rural  New  England,  in 
Chester,  London.  Paris.  The  description  of  the 
dress  of  an  East  India  merchant  in  Boston,  from 
purplisb.blue  coat,  canary  colored  waistcoat, 
striped  seersucker  trousers,  to  the  blue  clay, 
napless  hat,  perhaps  does  as  much  to  carry  the 
reader  into  the  past  as  the  familiar  and  con 
temporaneous  mention  of  Chateaubriand  and 
Lamartine.  Assuredly  the  invasion  of  Daniel 
Webster's  law  office  by  the  pretty  girl  client  is 
realistic  if  not  real,  and  the  grateful  kiss  she 
imprints  upon  bis  cheek  at  parting  takes  ita 


place  beside  that  other  bais§r  dUbre  that  was 
bestowed  upon  the  young  Liszt  by  Beethoven. 

Novel  readers  will  be  pleased  to  find  that 
Mr.  Maartens  has  relaxed  his  clenched  fists, 
drawn  together  his  wide-stretched  eyelids, 
and  smoothed  his  porcupine  locks;  has  aban- 
doned hysterics  and  returned  to  bis  first  man- 
ner. We  find  in  *My  Lady  Nobody '  the  fea- 
tures which  gave  his  early  stories  their  reputa- 
tion. In  minute  and  deep-piercing  observa- 
tion of  manneis,  customs,  characteristics,  and 
motives,  this  book,  like  those,  stamps  him  a 
rare  forager  for  material,  providing,  too,  a 
rare  garnish  of  wit  worthy  the  banquet.  When 
he  mounted  the  socialistic  platform  in  certain 
of  his  novels,  he  grew  tiresome  and  incoherent; 
bii  preaching  here  is  more  forcible  for  not  b^ 
ing  in  lermons,  and  of  the  400  pages  of  *  My 
Lady  Nobody'  there  is  not  one  that  is  dull. 
It  cannot  be  said  that  the  story  marches  ra 
pidly.  Its  attraction  lies  less  in  the  develop- 
ment of  a  plot  (though  there  is  one,  hing- 
ing on  the  laws  of  inheritance)  than  in  the 
pictures  of  Dutch  society  and  universal  huma- 
nity. With  a  book  that  yields  such  a  plentiful 
harvest  of  both  feeling  and  satire  we  feel  no 
disposition  to  quarrel  on  trifling  grounds. 
Therefore,  it  is  undlsturbing  to  reflect  that  a 
woman  so  severely  conscientious  as  the  hero- 
ine would  scarcely  have  lent  herself  to  a  fraud, 
however  pious;  that  a  sewing-girl,  offered 
marriage  by  the  officer  who  had  betrayed  her, 
would  hardly  have  refused  it.  These  and  si- 
milar inconsistencies,  after'  all,  are  not  the 
bool^  nor  Is  it  on  trial  for  absolute  probabi- 
lity. If  one  is  little  disquieted  by  the  improba- 
bilities, one  is  perhaps  most  of  all  attracted  by 
the  irrelevancies— by  the  characters  and  scenes 
which  do  not  propel  the  story,  by  the  little 
world  of  beings  made  up  of  interwoven  frail- 
ties and  virtues;  not  by  the  laws  of  Dutch 
inheritance,  but  by  the  touches  of  nature 
shown  in  the  soldier-pcu'son  ;  the  land-poor  ba- 
ron, *  denying  himself  a  Corot"  and  counting 
it  to  himself  for  economy ;  the  bemffled  ba- 
roness, coddling  a  lap-dog  and  facing  a  mob; 
the  yellow-cheeked,  oily  hypocrite;  the  inva- 
lid, msking  Scriptural  designs  in  worsted  work 
and  debating  what  might  have  been  the  color 
of  Leah's  "tender  eye?,"  and  whether  she 
shpuld  embroider  L  on  Laban's  table-cloth. 
Epigram,  of  course,  since  Maartens  writes,  is 
pricked  into  all  the  pages,  and  throughout 
runs  a  Urge  brained  apprehension  of  mortal 
affairs. 

On  page  363  of '  Dolly  Dillenbeek '  stands  the 
remark  that  the  French  salon  is  an  institution 
which  would  thrive  in  our  artistic  climate 
about  as  well  as  a  pineapple  would  in  Tompkins 
Square.  In  this  observation  is  reached  the 
high- water  mark  of  the  wit  and  wisdom  of  the 
book.  It  is  a  history  of  the  rise  and  downfall 
of  a  very  rich  young  man  who  squandered  his 
money  in  caf^sand  gambling -parlors,  furnished 
limitless  champagne  to  unlimited  numbers  of 
loafers  and  sponges,  backed  theatrical  mana- 
gers, brought  out  and  subsequently  married  a 
successful  actress,  and  came  at  last  to  pecu- 
niary and  cerebral  grief,  the  former  because 
be  had  not  read  his  mother's  will;  the  latter 
because  be  d''ank  too  much.  The  progress  of 
the  actress  from  country  girlhood  to  metropo- 
litan fame  is  the  subject  of  the  pendant  por- 
trait;  another,  almost  as  conspicuous,  being 
that  of  the  all  shrewd  manager.  The  box-office 
bide  of  the  drama  and  the  interior  view  of 
the  caf6  are  violently  insisted  upon  ;  the  land- 
scape Lt  that  blooming  on  Broadway  between 
Twenty- third  and  Forty-second  Streets.  The 
accessory  figures  are  thd  loafers  and  sponges. 
**  A  portrayal  of  certain  phases  qt  metropoUtaa 


life  and  character,"  Mr.  Ford  calls  it,  and  quits 
ponibly  it  is ;  but  its  relation  toliteraturs  is 
that  of  a  cake-walk  to  the  Shaksperian  drama. 

Miss  Tyler's  book  also  belongs  to  the  crude 
period  of  fiction  as  to  style.  '  *  The  Boss  stared 
dully  at  him,  her  bizarre  mind  growing  lumi- 
nous with  admiration,''  is  a  specimen  from  its 
rich  flora.  The  subject,  however,  is  a  good 
one,  with  a  strongly  dramatic  trend,  and,  un- 
der all  the  absurdities,  falsities,  and  ignorances, 
rims  a  vein  of  genuineness  in  the  portrayal  of 
the  Virginia- plantation  idea  in  both  white  and 
black  aspect.  If  two  recording  angels  sit  over 
the  shoulder,  to  note,  the  one,  if  the  task  be 
well  done,  the  other,  if  it  be  worth  doing,  we 
can  imagine  the  former  dropping  a  salt  tear 
over  Miss  Tyler's  book ;  the  latter,  over  Mr. 
Ford's,  a  tear  both  salt  and  bitter. 

No  greater  artistic  contrast  with  their  work 
could  be  found  than  that  in  the  story  entitled 

*  The  One  Who  Looked  On,'  where  the  thing 
told,  though  slight,  is  worth  while,  and  where 
the  telling  is  trained,  yet  simple  and  sincere. 
There  is  a  glimpse  of  an  Irish  home  that  is  ex- 
cellently done,  and  a  delightfully  warm  Irish 
heart  beats  in  the  heroine's  breast.  It  is  a 
plaintive  little  tale,  sad  but  sane  reading,  with 
the  same  insight  into  the  human  machine  that 
was  shown  in  a  former  work  of  this  writer, 

*  Into  the  Highways  and  Hedges,*  but  under 
conditions  less  tragic  and  formidable. 

The  litUe  Danish  idyl  which  Mr.  FrancU 
Browne  introduces  to  the  English-reading  pub- 
lic would  have  smelled  as  sweet  by  some  other 
than  its  present  clumsy  name.  It  is  a  pretty 
story  of  the  Danish  shore,  of  sand-dunes, 
coast-forests,  sea  faring  folk,  and  a  boy-and- 
girl  pair  of  lovers.  To  read  it  is  to  feel  salt 
spray  in  the  face  and  to  breathe  the  fragrance 
of  birch  trees;  to  follow  the  sea  in  bitter  earnest 
and  to  play  with  beetles  in  the  woods;  to  make 
friends  with  rough,  moody,  kindly  villagen, 
human  and  canine,  and  to  watch  the  love  of 
the  blacksmith's  bashful  son  and  the  Captain's 
teasing  daughter  through  lyric  childhood  to 
dramatic  culmination. 

The  pinks  and  cherries  of  Rome  in  June  set 
a  certain  Norwegian  Fred  to  thinking  of  his 
old  home,  and  a  very  charming  little  book  of 
reminiscence  be  makes.  No  idyl  this,  but  a 
boy's  recollections  of  his  childhood  in  a  little 
gossiping  Norwegian  town :  his  mother's  house- 
keeping, his  brother's  kindly  tyranny,  his  own 
schoolboy  games  and  fights,  and  tbe  child's  re- 
membrance of  the  grown-up  games  of  life  that 
went  on  around  him.  The  local  color  of  the 
town  is  admirably  used;  humor  is  refreshingly 
present;  and  that  we  may  not  forget  it  is  Nor- 
way, a  note  of  the  sea  sounds  through  the 
boy's  memories.  From  cover  to  cover  this  is  a 
particularly  taking  little  volume. 

Miss  Channing's  stories  are  for  the  most  part 
of  Italy,  and  show  a  nice  appreciation  of  both 
the  pathetic  and  the  happy-go-lucky  phases  of 
life  among  the  Italian  peasantry.  There  are  a 
tear  and  a  smile  in  each  story,  and  the  execu- 
tion is  delicate  and  thoughtfuL  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  Califomian  sketch,  while 
that  belonging  to  the  colonial  period  in  Massa- 
chusetts is  something  less  spontaneous  than 
the  rest,  perhaps  because  it  touches  on  neither 
pathos  nor  fun. 

With  a  deal  of  German  clumsiness  which 
the  translator  has  not  transformed,  Komperfs 
Ghetto  stories  have  a  merit  and  interest  quite 
unusual.  They  are  not  only  of  the  Ghetto,  bat 
from  within— a  point  of  view  not  often  taken 
in  current  fiction.  They  direct  attentton,  at 
once  sympathetically  and  candidly,  U>  tmr^ 
day  life  in  the  Jewish  quarter  at  an  aU  Bnhs^ 
mian  town.    As  must  happen  vlwii  |9  trMri^ 


June  II,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


4:59 


the  subject  yields  a  return  of  profound  signifl- 
canoe.  Although  the  stories  are  lightly  con- 
structed, they  are  filled  with  Hebrew  poetry 
and  Hebrew  piety  which  an  honest  portrayal 
of  Hebrew  foibles  avails  not  to  eclipse. 

A  capital  little  story  of  Australian  love  and 
adventure  is  *  Irralie*s  Bushranger.'  The  inci- 
dents, just  improbable  enough  to  be  real,  are 
original  and  cleverly  combined,  and  there  is 
no  flagging  in  the  press  and  stir  of  the  story. 
There  is  enough  and  not  too  much  Australian 
landscape,  and  some  extremely  able  personal 
sketches.  It  must  be  set  down  as  one  of  the 
beet  small  books  of  adventure  of  the  year. 

*  Dr.  Warrick's  Daughters  *  is  good  reading, 
for  its  excellent  workmanship  were  there  no 
other  reason.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  miss  the  cru- 
dities of  the  average  novel,  with  its  labored 
efforts  to  startle  and  its  heedlessness  of  form. 
The  author  says  of  her  heroine,  **  If  she  had 
lived  now,  she  would  probably  have  had  the 
prevalent  desire  for  notoriety,  and  mistaken 
it  for  an  inspiration,  and  have  written  an  in- 
decent novel  to  set  forth  a  great  truth,  or 
rushed  before  the  public  to  show  how  feebly 
she  could  kick  against  Christianity,  or  mar- 
riage, or  the  Tyrant  Man."  This  is  preemi- 
nently what  Mrs.  Davis  has  not  done;  nor  is 
there  anything  she  could  have  taken  from  us 
that  we  would  have  parted  more  gladly  withaL 
Her  story  besides,  on  the  positive  side,  is  full 
of  interest,  depicting  with  practised  touch  life 
in  an  old  Pennsylvania  town,  and  showing,  as 
foil,  the  sleepy  enchantment  of  a  Louisiana 
plantation.  The  Gray  and  the  Blue,  differen- 
tiated with  the  skill  of  a  minute  observer, 
shimmer  through  the  fabric  of  her  story,  and 
even  so  blend,  light  and  dark,  the  weaknesses 
and  virtues  of  her  many  characters.  The  ser- 
mon of  the  book,  breathed  not  preached,  is 
against  the  great  god  Mammon,  who  is  made 
very  repulsive,  while  yet  his  worshippers  are 
seen  to  be  sometimes  men  of  .like  passions  with 
ourselves. 

Mr.  Anthony  Hope*8  novels  may  be  roughly 
classified  aa  of  the  Zenda  and  the  non  Zenda. 
We  have  either  romance,  guast- history,  or 
drawing-room  problems  worked  out  by  spark- 
ling talk.  *  Comedies  of  Courtship '  naturally 
belongs  to  the  latter  category,  and  abounds  in 
the  comicalities  of  errant  affections.  A  few  of 
the  stories,  indeed,  strike  a  fuller  note  than 
that  of  comedy,  and  one  or  two  stage  them 
selves  into  farce  so  readily  as  to  be,,  like  all  nn- 
staged  farce,  rather  solemn  reading. 

'  The  Chronicles  of  Count  Antonio,'  by  its 
very  name,  steps  into  the  class  Zenda.  It  is 
the  history  of  the  adventures  of  a  noble  out- 
law and  his  band,  related  by  Ambrose  the 
Franciscan  aa  he  learned  them  from  other 
monks  and  from  tradition.  Chivalry,  love, 
and  gore  are  the  chief  of  our  diet,  and  are 
made  to  sound  doubly  chivalrous,  loving,  and 
gory  by  the  employment  of  a  semi-Scriptural 
manner  of  speech.  There  may  be  those  who 
will  find  this  archaic  rampagiousness  a  trifle 
fatiguing;  there  are  undoubtedly  others  who 
will  delight  in  the  wars,  stratagems,  spoils, 
and  linal  triumph  of  the  constant  Antonio. 
Tour  Zenda  knight  is  strictly  monogamous ; 
your  un-Zsnda  knight  never  experiences  a 
'*  tinge  of  that  silent  pain "  which  the  poet 
says  belong  to  those  **  who  have  longed  deeply 
oooe."  The  one  flghts  and  woos,  the  other  flirts 
and  runs  away;  the  one  wins  by  strategy  or 
dies  a  bachelor;  the  other  makes  epigrams,  and 
she  would  be  distinguished  whom  he  had  never 
loved.  Over  realm  of  poesy  or  carpet  they 
ride,  their  mounts  the  differing  quills  of  Bir. 
Hop^s  fancy,  and  both  at  their  beet  are  raie 
good  fallows. 


A   PHILOSOPHIC    "MR.    HYDE." 

TheCais  of  Wagner:  The  Twilight  of* the 
Idols;  Nietzsche  contra  Wagner.  Edited  by 
Alexander  Tllle.  Translated  by  Thomas  Com- 
mon. [The  Works  of  Frledrlch  Nietzsche. 
Vol.  XI.]  Macmillan.  1896. 
Amid  the  motley  throng  of  false  prophets 
who  are  clamoring  for  the  ear  of  the  culti- 
vated public  of  the  day,  it  would  hardly 
be  possible  to  flod  a  more  picturesquely  eccen- 
tric flgure  than  that  of  Frledrlch  Nietzsche, 
whose  works  the  enterprise  of  Messrs.  Macmil- 
lan is  for  the  flrst  time  rendering  accessible  to 
English  readers.  That  a  German  professor 
should  aspire  to  a  place  In  International  litera- 
ture Is  sufficiently  surprising ;  that  he  should  do 
so  on  the  strength  of  productions  like  Niet  zsche's 
Is  more  paradoxical  than  anything  Nietzsche 
ever  wrote.  In  fact,  a  Jekyll  and  Hyde  theory 
alone  seems  to  give  a  clue  to  the  phenomenon. 
In  this  case  Dr.  Jekyll,  i.  e.,  Nietzsche  the  pro- 
fessor, was  a  gentle  and  gentlemanly  savant 
whose  precocious  acquirements  procured  him 
a  full  professorship  of  Greek  In  the  Uni- 
versity of  BAle  before  he  had  taken  his  de- 
gree at  Leipzig,  in  whom  overwork,  and,  poe- 
tilbly,  the  reaction  of  a  sensitive  temperament 
against  the  pedantry  and  Philistinism  of  his 
life,  had  produced  a  nervous  breakdown  which 
compelled  him  to  resign  his  chair  after  a  dozen 
years  of  successful  teaching,  and  who  had 
since  led  the  usual  life  of  an  Invalid  in  all  the 
health  resorts  of  Europe.  Very  different  is 
the  flgure  of  Nietzsche  the  writer,  running 
amuck  among  the  Ideals  of  civilization,  a  veri- 
table Mr.  Hjde,  ruthlessly  trampling  under 
foot  the  received  standards  of  morality  and 
religion,  an  Iconoclast  who  shatters  the  estab- 
llshed  structures  of  science  and  learning,  and 
poses  as  the  prophet  of  the  Aryan  race,  as  the 
new  *' Zarathustra,"  who  boasts  that  he  has 
given  mankind  the  deepest  book  which  it  poe- 
seeses,  and  whose  excesses  of  revolutionary 
thought  grow  more  and  more  frantic  until  the 
poor  Dr.  Jekyll  finally  disappears  into  the 
**  hopeless"  ward  of  a  funatic  asylum.  Of  course 
all  this  havoc  of  Mr.  Hyde's  was  wrought 
on  paper;  he  never  attempted  to  carry  out  his 
Ideas  In  practice,  and  so  he  escaped  the  judicial 
restraint  which  an  ungrateful  society  has  so 
often  put  on  other  **immoralists"  with  simi- 
lar views;  and  hence,  possibly,  morality  and 
religion  do  not  feel  a  penny  the  worse,  and  sur- 
vlve  in  blissful  ignorance  of  their  virtual  an- 
nihilation by  Nietzsche- Hyde.  But  there  are 
nowadays  so  many  ** suggestible"  persons  who 
can  be  hypnotized  Into  accepting  as  true  what- 
ever creed  Is  presented  to  them  with  sufficient 
Insistence  and  reiteration  of  asseveration,  that 
it  Is  perhaps  prudent  to  scrutinize  the  creden- 
tials of  this  new  ^^Dionyslac"  (and  paranoiac) 
wisdom. 

The  proper  preparation  for  the  reader  of 
Nietzsche  Is  Nordau.  It  Is  not  merely  that 
the  latter  has  recognized  Nietzsche  as  a  mo- 
dem tendency  and  devoted  a  long  and  abusive 
chapter  to  him  in  his  book  on  '"Degenera- 
tion," but  that  those  who  have  acquired  the 
taste  for  Nordau  will  find  the  same  qualities 
In  Nietzsche  In  an  exaggerated  and  even  more 
piquant  form.  If  they  can  Imagine  Nordau 
suddenly  gifted  with  an  accession  of  literary 
power  and  InvecUve,  acquiring  real  and  wide 
culture,  scholarship,  and  taste  (even  though 
of  a  perverse  kind) ;  If  they  can  Imagine  him 
scintillating  with  epigrams  and  aphorisms, 
and  refraining  from  quoting  Lombroso  and 
Krafft-Eblng,  they  may  accept  Nietzsche's 
books  as  the  logical  continuation  of  Nordau, 
iMid  Nietzsche's  Ut«  m  the  appropriate  abd 


inevitable  end  of  such  insane  preachers  of 
sanity.  If  they  cannot  do  this,  they  will  at 
least  be  forced  to  recognise  that  in  Nietisohe 
there  has  come  a  greater,  though  wilder, 
prophet,  for  whom  Nordau  has  prepared  the 
way. 

Certainly  the  resemblance  between  them  is 
deep  and  far-reaching.  Both  are  possessed  by 
the  idea  of  degeneration  and  decadence,  and 
declaim  unceasingly  about  the  necenlty  of 
health;  both,  moreover,  are  equally  vague 
about  the  diagnosis  of  the  disease  from  which 
they  see  everybody  suffering,  and  equally  re- 
luctant to  fix  more  precisely  the  date  when 
the  process  of  degeneration  maj  be  supposed 
to  have  set  in.  On  this  point,  indeed,  Nietzsche 
supplies  a  valuable  commentary  and  reduetio 
ad  atfsurdMm  of  Nordau;  for  whereas  the  lat* 
ter  speaks  only  of  the  present,  the  former's  re> 
marks  embrace  the  whole  of  history,  and  dis- 
cover almost  universal  degeneracy  from  the 
very  first.  Hence  the  inference  obviously  is 
that  the  type  from  which  we  have  **  degene- 
rated" was  that  of  the  savage  or  of  the  ape. 
Again,  both  Nietzsche  and  Nordau  pride  them- 
selves on  being  physiological  and  psychological, 
although  their  ** science*'  is  clearly  only  sec- 
ond-hand, not  to  say  pseudo-scientific.  Both 
excel  In  vituperation  and  constantly  substitute 
abuse  for  argument;  in  this  respect,  however, 
Nietzsche  i»  facile  pHaeepe— chiefiy  on  account 
of  his  greater  range.  Both  are  anti-rellglouF, 
because  they  have  no  appreciation  of  the  spi- 
ritual side  of  man,  and  so  cannot  understand 
that  in  the  descendant*  of  brutes  a  certain  re- 
pression of  anlmallty  Is  essential  for  full  sanity 
of  soul.  Both  are  deficient  in  humor  and  gro- 
tesquely ignorant  of  the  real  condition  of  the 
English- speaking  world,  although  their  criti- 
cisms of  Germany  seem  often  to  strike  home. 
Lastly,  to  mention  a  point  suggested  by  the 
title  of  the  present  volume,  both  have  won. 
notoriety  by  attacks  upon  the  music  of  Wag- 
ner, which  they  unite  in  regarding  as  the  in^ 
carnation  of  the  morbid  tendencies  of  the  age. 
In  fact,  Nordau's  quarrel  with  Nietzsche  is 
essentially  based  on  the  fact  that  two  of  a 
trade  do  not  agree,  and  that  the  latter  is  the 
better  craftsman  of  the  two.  And  the  great 
difference  between  them  is  that  whereas  Nor- 
dau is  only  a  journalist  in  pursuit  of  a  seuMb- 
tlon,  Nietzsche  was  sincere.  If  not  sane,  in  the 
advocacy  of  his  views. 

Of  these  views  the  present  volume  gives  a 
fair  selection.  For  even  though  it  does  not 
contain  his  most  characteristic  and  suggestive 
works,  it  manages  to  give  the  reader  a  tasta 
of  most  of  the  quaint  fancies  that  pass  for  the 
'*  philosophy"  of  Frledrlch  Nietzsche.  In  ad- 
dition to  the  amusing  and  frequently  acute  on- 
slaught on  Wagner  already  alluded  to,  we  get 
his  quasi  meUphysioal  '*  Will  to  Power,"  the 
queer  cross  between  a  misunderstood  Darwin- 
iKm  and  an  Inverted  Schopenhauerism  which 
is  supposed  to  be  the  basis  of  Nietzsche's 
thought.  We  get, further,  in  the  '* Anti- 
christ," his  theory  of  the  conflict  between  the 
ethics  of  the  strong  and  noble  few  and  of  the 
weak  and  base  many,  of  the  deplorable  tri- 
omph  of  the  latter  In  Judabm,  Christianity, 
and  Buddhism,  and  of  the  necessity  of  revers- 
ing this  crime  against  life  by  a  thoroughgoing 
**  revaluing  "  of  all  values.  We  are  tickled  by 
his  admiration  for  the  healthy,  strong,  and 
masterful,  which,  after  writing  down  Plato, 
Socrates,  and  Christ  as  *' degenerates,"  is  ready 
to  accept  aa  historical  reallxations  of  hit  ideal 
the  characters  of  Caesar  Borgia  and  Napoleon, 
although  perhaps  nothing  short  of  Bluebeard 
could  fully  satisfy  IL  On  the  other  hand,  we 
are  hardly  iotroduoed  M  yet  U)  the  **  bloi^d* 


460 


Tlie   IN'atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1615 


roTisg  beAst  of  prey"  to  whose  conqoest  and 
mthleM  oppression  of  rabject-rAcee  Nietacbe 
(with  a  characteristic  disregard  of  the  obvious 
fact  that  no  oonqoeets  are  possible  without 
discipline  and  self-sobordination)  refers  the 
origin  of  civilization,  nor  to  the  still  more 
mjsterioos  conception  of  the  "  overman " 
whom  he  proposes  to  breed  from  the  elect  of 
the  human  raoe--apparentl7  bj  the  highlj 
scientific  method  of  encouraging  unlimited 
self-indulgence. 

The  ** Twilight  of  the  Idols*'  wiU  be  found 
full  of  brilliant  epigrams  and  Uterarj  critl- 
oisms  (0.  or.,  the  delicious  allusion  to  Seneca's 
Spanish  descent  in  calling  him  the  **  toreador 
of  Virtue,"  and  the  description  of  Rousseau  as 
the  **  return  to  Nature  in  impurU  naturali' 
bus*'),  and  also  of  such  philosophy  m  majbe 
compressed  into  aphorisms.  These  aphorisms 
have  been  received  with  immense  applause  in 
Qermany.  Nietasohe  never  wearies  his  readers 
by  following  the  same  train  of  thought  for 
more  than  a  page  at  a  time,  though  it  must  be 
admitted  that  the  same  idea  crops  up  in  a 
fragmentary  form  over  and  over  again.  But 
even  so  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  apho- 
rism is  not  still  too  lengthy  and  coherent  a 
vehicle  for  the  taste  of  a  newspaper-reading 
public,  and  the  next  original  German  *^  phi- 
losopher*' will  doubtless  outbid  Nietoche  by 
expressing  himself  in  headlines. 

Altogether  it  would  be  surprising  if  NietE- 
schiau  doctrines  flourished  in  American  soil: 
they  point  to  the  East  rather  than  to  the 
West  They  are  Slav  rather  than  German, 
and  redolent  of  the  lAberum  Veto  of  the  Polish 
nobles,  from  whom  Nietnche  claimed  descent. 
It  is  significant  that  he  regards  Russia  as  the 
state  of  the  future  (p.  201),  the  very  state 
which  crushed  out  the  aristocratic  anarchy  of 
Poland.  But  the  Anglo-Saxon  peoples  have 
long  learnt  to  reconcile  liberty  with  order, 
and  though  Nletssche  may  strike  a  responsive 
chord  in  the  hearts  of  a  certain  type  of  Prus- 
sian officers,  when  they  dream  of  shaking  off 
the  restraints  of  an  iron  discipline  and  of  loot- 
ing the  industrial  dssses  they  despise  so  heart* 
ily,  we  cannot  believe  that  Nietoche  will  prove 
to  be  more  than  a  passing  erase  even  of  the 
Teutonic  mind. 

It  remains  to  speak  of  the  contributions  of 
others  than  Nietssche  to  the  preeent  volume. 
Mr.  Tille's  preface  labors  to  ||raft  Nietssche's 
views  on  the  Darwinian  conception  of  the 
survival  of  the  fit  (as  if  Darwin  would  have 
ignored  d  la  Nietzsche  the  moral,  intellectual, 
and  social  qualities  in  the  make-up  of  fitness  I), 
and  indulges  in  some  absurdly  pretentious 
criticisms  of  thinkers  like  Spencer,  Huxley, 
and  Arthur  Balfour.  There  is  no  index,  and 
for  the  translation  not  much  can  be  said ;  it 
generally  fails  to  reach  a  fluent  and  idiomatic 
English  rendering,  it  not  infrequently  be- 
comes unintelligible,  and  sometimes  blunders. 
StiU,  it  is  not  so  bad  as  to  destroy  the  enjoy- 
ment of  those  who  know  how  to  relish  Nietz- 
sche the  writer  without  admitting  the  plenary 
inspiration  of  Nietzsche  the  prophet. 


With  the  Fathers:  Studies  in  the  History  of 
the  United  States.  By  John  Bach  HcMas- 
ter.  D.  Appleton  &  0>.  1896. 
Thx  essays  collected  in  this  volume  have  all 
appeared  in  various  periodicals,  and  may  be  pre- 
sumed, for  the  moet  part,  to  have  thus  received 
such  attention  fro*  ^the  public  as  they  have  de- 
served. Two  of  tifiem,  however,  as  they  relate 
to  matters  of  present  interest,  may  not  im- 
properly be  m«.de  the  subject  of  criticism— one, 
enUUed  "A  Century's  Struggle  for  Silver"; 


the  other,  *'  The  Monroe  Doctrine."  As  to  the 
former,  the  title  is  altogether  misleading. 
Professor  McMaster  himself  declares  that  it 
was  not  until  1878  that  our  **saver  era" 
b^gan  and  that  the  first  serious  struggle  for 
bimetallism  took  place.  Evidently,  therefore, 
we  had  been  engaged  in  some  other  struggle 
for  silver  during  the  earlier  three-quarters  of 
the  century.  What  was  the  nature  of  this 
struggle  f  We  read  that  a  hundred  years  ago 
the  currency  of  the  country  was  quite  hetero- 
geneous; that  a  mint  was  established  for  the 
coinage  of  the  precious  metals  into  money  of 
the  United  States  for  the  purpose  of  displacing 
foreign  coins ;  that  a  United  States  Bank  and 
many  State  institutions  were  chartered,  and 
furnished  notes  that  were  very  generally  dis- 
honored, but  that  expelled  specie  from  Hrcula- 
tion;  that  silver  was  overrated  as  compared 
with  gold  and  was  exported;  that  in  order  to 
maintain  a  supply  of  small  change  the  weight 
of  fractional  coins  was  decreased;  and  tliat  the 
coinage  was  regulated  in  1878,  1878,  and  1890. 
It  looks  very  much  as  if  Prof.  McMaster  had 
been  unable  to  resist  the  temptation  of  making 
use  of  a  taking  title  without  regard  to  its  pro- 
priety, and  we  8  re  reminded  of  a  story  of  Lord 
Gastlereagh,  who,  after  speaking  for  half  an 
hour  without  any  of  his  hearers  having  any  idea 
of  his  subject,  suddenly  stopped  and  exclaimed : 
'*So  much,  then,  for  the  Law  of  Nations." 

This  story  might  perhaps  be  thought  appli- 
cable to  the  other  essay  which  we  selected  for 
comment,  *'The  Monroe  Doctrine."  After 
narrating  the  history  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  the 
revolutions  in  Spain  and  Naples,  the  policy  of 
Great  Britain  under  Canning,  etc..  Prof.  Mo- 
Master  admits  that  the  Doctrine  has  no  place 
in  the  law  of  nations.  **  It  does  not  need  to  be 
there.  It  belongs  to  a  class  of  facts  whose  ex- 
istence does  not  and  must  not  depend  on  the 
consent  of  nations."  It  is  not  a  doctrine  that 
a  weak  power  can  proclaim.  It  would  have 
been  foolish  for  the  South  American  govern- 
ments to  have  announced  it  when  threatened 
by  the  Holy  Alliance,  **  because  they  could 
not  have  made  it  good.  We  alone  could  de- 
clare it  because  we  alone  were  strong  enough 
to  support  it."  **  Either  we  determine  the 
status  of  Republican  government  and  Repub- 
lican institutions  in  the  two  Americas,  or  the 
nations  of  the  Old  World  will  do  it  for  us." 
The  nations  of  the  Old  World,  by  Jingo,  shall 
not  do  it  for  us  ;  and  this,  according  to  Prof. 
McMaster,  is  the  Monroe  Doctrine. 

As  he  expounds  it,  it  might  as  well  be  called 
the  **Dog.inthe-Manger  Doctrine."  It  makes 
no  difference  whether  what  is  called  arepub- 
lie  in  South  America  is  a  republic  or  a  ty- 
ranny ;  whether  the  government  of  England  is 
really  republican  rather  than  monarchical; 
whether  or  no  civilization  would  be  advanced 
and  human  welfare  increased  by  the  extension 
of  English  influence;  whether  the  peace  and 
safety  of  the  people  of  the  United  States  would 
or  would  not  be  affected  by  such  extension  in 
South  America.  Such  considerations  are  im- 
material and  irrelevant.  No  European  power, 
according  to  Prof.  McMaster,  shall  increase  its 
power  or  infiuence  on  this  continent,  or  over- 
throw any  existing  govemmenti  or  establish 
any  direct  control  over  its  policy.  8io  voto, 
sie  jubeo.  If  reasons  are  asked  for,  it  is 
enough  to  say  that  might  makes  right.  The 
American  people  does  not  choose  to  permit 
any  European  power  to  extend  its  influence  on 
the  American  continenti  and  the  American 
people  is  strong  enough  to  have  its  own  way. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  would  be  a 
waste  of  time  to  inquire  whether  the  condi- 
tion of  afl^tirs  when  the  absolute  governments 


of  Europe  were  refistahlishing  overthrown  des- 
potisms in  the  early  part  of  this  century  bean 
any  analogy  to  the  controversy  between  Great 
Britain  and  Venezuela.  It  is  idle  to  investi- 
gate the  merits  of  this  controversy.  If  Great 
Britain  should  make  a  clear  title  to  the  lands 
claimed  by  Venezuela,  it  would  beyond  ques- 
tion increase  her  influence  in  those  regions 
and  tend  to  **  control  the  destiny"  of  the 
Venezuelans.  It  is  ridiculous  to  talk  about 
arbitration,  because  justice  and  expediency 
and  right  uid  law  and  prescription  have  to  be 
considered  by  arbitrators,  and  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  has  nothing  to  do  with  these  concep- 
tions. Supposing  the  arbitrators  found  against 
Venezuela,  and  Venezuela  refused  to  submit 
to  the  award.  The  Doctrine  would  farMd 
Great  Britain  to  execute  the  judgment,  for  die 
could  not  do  so  without  increasing  bar  infiu- 
ence and  power  at  the  expense  of  Veoesuela. 
It  is  vain  to  ask  if  such  a  doctrine  as  this  is 
not  immoral,  for  it  is  not  so  much  a  doctrine 
as  a  dogma,  a  settled  principle  whidi  admits 
of  no  question. 

Doubtless  Prof.  McMaster  would  admit  that 
if  some  South  American  state  grew  more  pow- 
erful than  we  are,  it  might  interfere  in  our 
foreign  relations  as  we  interfere  with  its  affaixi 
now.  And  he  would  have  to  admit  that  the 
policy  of  Russia  in  subjugat£ing  Poland  and  in 
expelling  the  Jews  from  her  limits  is  exactly 
as  defensible  as  the  Monroe  Doctrine  as  he  ex- 
pounds it.  Russia  is  powerful  enough  to  do 
these  things,  she  does  them  in  the  name  of  her 
own  peace  and  safety,  and  that  is  the  end  of 
it.  Such  a  doctrine,  Prof.  McMaster  weD  say^ 
has  nothing  to  do  with  international  law;  and 
he  might  have  a4ded,  it  has  no  more  to  do  with 
international  morality. 


Eaoeureiane  in  Libraria  :  Being  Retrospective 
Reviews  and  Biographical  Notes.  By  G.  H. 
PoweU.  Soribners.  1896. 
Mr.  Powxll'8  excursions  rather  impress  the 
reader  as  the  work  of  a  reformed  bibliomaniac; 
a  person  who,  having  for  years  gratified  the 
lust  of  the  eyes  after  editions  asms  rurss, 
rouses  himself  to  read  his  treasures  and  ex- 
tract their  human  interest.  That  his  own  col- 
lection furnishes  the  material  for  the  Tolume 
constitutes  a  tremendous  glorification  of  Mr. 
Powell's  library.  Crammed  with  curious 
facts  as  the  book  is,  we  are  happy  to  take  the 
author  at  his  foreword,  and  read  him  for  more 
liberal  purpoees  than  that  of  verifying  refer, 
ences  to  vellum  opuscule. 

In  an  opening  chapter  on  the  phfloeophy  of 
rarity,  Mr.  Powell  reveals  a  few  of  the  snares 
that  beset  the  raw  buyer,  and  th«i  dwells  on 
the  value,  **  to  a  chastened  intellectual  sense," 
of  editions,  especially  prinetpes.  A  book  may 
be  rare  for  other  reasons  than  diiBculty  of  ac- 
quisition. First  editions  are  often  precions  as 
indicating  the  accession  of  new  ideas  to  Hm 
world.  Every  advance  or  change  in  Imman 
history  leaves  its  mark  in  the  reoords  of  faOitt. 
ography.  A  second  chapter  and  a  third  are 
mediseval  studies.  The  second,  refaeaxzing 
firom  Proissart  the  GkMcon  tragedy  of  young 
Gaston  de  Foix  and  his  devilish  parent,  exhi- 
bits mediflBvalism  in  **the  fierce  chiarosonro 
of  blood-stained  splendor"  whidi  lingered  into 
the  fourteenth  century  and  later.  The  third 
chapter  ransacks  a  shelf  of  old  stofy-books. 
Here  a  vagrant  essay  mi  '*The  Hunting  of  the 
Myth,"  being  responsible  to  no  sdentiflo  epirit 
of  myth-resolution,  wanders  from  ApoikMJwus 
of  Athens,  with  his  great  ssoood-ostttnrT  JMK- 
oteca  of  wonders,  to  the  Uiffl^wpa  ot  XfmM 
Eemus.    Better  fiui«  ev«^  tea  Hrii  M  tt* 


June  11,  1896] 


Tlie   IN"atioii. 


-461 


expotiUon  of  the  famous  anread  'DiscipHna 
Clericalis '  of  Petnit  Alfonsus.  **  An  Improv- 
ing Work,**  the  showman  calla  it;  bnt  it  it  wa- 
•tmed  with  a  perfect  salt-mine  of  anecdotes 
far  from  clerkly  in  doctrine.  Just  here  we 
are  moved  to  the  impious  suggestion,  that 
an  the  world,  except  Mr.  Powell  and  a 
few  other  children  of  the  light,  needs  a  new 
edition  of  Alfonsus,  that  long  promised  by 
Nyrop  of  Copenhagen  not  being  f orthcom- 
ing. 

'*  The  Pirate's  Paradise,**  which  is  chronicled 
in  the  fourth  chapter  from  the  point  of  view 
of  1740  A.D.,  when  Charles  Leslie's  *  New  and 
Bxaot  Account  of  Jamaica*  had  reached  a 
third  edition  in  Bdinburgh,  means  the  island 
of  Jamaica.  With  harassing  detail  we  learn 
how  that  spot,  peopled  so  strangely  with  per- 
sons of  desperate  character,  came  to  be  the 
stronghold  of  a  Morgan  and  a  Teach.  The 
three  remaining  chapters  deal  with  various 
matters  of  historical  goesip.  **A  Medley  of 
Memoirs  **  suggests  the  extraordinary  variety 
in  autobiographical  records,  which  are  alike 
only  in  being  actuated  by  the  passionate  desire 
of  not  being  forgotten;  a  desire  equally  intense 
in  the  strong  Caesar  and  the  weak  Cicero,  in  the 
mysterious  Sully  and  the  frank  Agrippa  d*Au- 
bign6.  Collected,  the  host  of  memoir-writers 
furnish  a  back-view  of  history  both  curious 
and  important.  The  chapter  on  "  Rabelais  at 
Home  **  reviews  the  1710  edition  of  *  Lettres  de 
Francois  Rabelais  dcrites  pendant  son  voyage 
en  Italic*— another  back  view  of  history;  the 
wrong  side  of  the  dark  tapestry  that  was  being 
woven  in  1696,  and  thereabouts,  in  Rome.  In 
his  concluding  chapter,  on  the  *'  Wit  of  His- 
tory,*' Bir.  Powell  writes  racily  of  the  count- 
less dramatic  utterances  that  have  come  off  in 
the  crises  of  history,  or,  more  exactly,  have 
usually  failed  to  come  off.  He  knows  the  whole 
list  of  ^  Up-GKiarda-and-at-them  1**  apothegms 
that  turn  out  to  have  been  merely,  **Now, 
gentlemen,  if  you  please.**  Apropos  of  one  of 
Bir.  Weyman*8  pretty  titles,  he  adds  another  to 
the  familiar  things  that  Riehelieu  on  critical 
occasions  abstained  from  saying:  "It  would  be 
a  pedantic  reflection  on  the  title  of  a  popular 
novel  of  the  day  to  repeat  that  there  is  no  au- 
thority for  *  Je  oouvrs  tout  de  ma  robe  rougeJ' 
Yet  the  original  remark  appears  to  have  been, 
<  Je  renvtrm  tout  avec  ma  soutane  rouge*— a 
difrerentidea**(p.di6). 

Mr.  Powell  is  distinctly  well-informed,  and 
leaves  one  the  pleasant  impression  that  he 
knows  even  more  than  he  tells.  That  he  ne- 
glects to  mention  many  modem  works  which 
discuss  sdentiflcally  the  matters  treated  by  his 
<Ad  books,  is  a  fault  inevitable  to  his  plan.  Now 
and  then,  however,  he  essays  to  give  modem 
references,  and  here  he  leaves  much  to  be  de- 
sired. For  instance,  when  Dunlop's  *  History 
of  Fiction*  is  singled  out  (p.  90)  as  a  standard 
reference  work  for  the  study  of  mediaeval  sto- 
ries, it  is  strange  that  there  should  be  no  men- 
tion of  really  recent  and  authoritative  studies 
like  those  of  Reinhold  KAhler.  A  foot-note 
(p.  86)  refers  to  two  modem  writers  on  the 
legend  of  the  Seven  Wise  Men,  but  there  is  no 
mention  of  such  investigators  as  Comparettl 
and  D'Ancona.  It  is  a  little  strange  that  in  a 
list  of  old  Italian  mythologians  (p.  82)  neither 
Giraldi  nor  Masuccio  appeari.  In  a  moment  of 
relapse  to  his  bibliomania  Mr.  Powell  thinks  it 
sacrilegious  to  hunt  the  myth  in  modem  edi- 
tions of  old  authors.  Acoordingly,  he  says 
that  such  study  must  begin  with  the  *  Golden 
Legend,*  whereas,  to  be  serious,  it  must  begin 
with  the  much  earlier  works  of  Jacques  de 
Vicry,  edited  only  yesterday  by  Prof.  Crane 
of  Cornell.    In  this  connection,  too»  we  miss 


the  names  of  the  *  Vitae  Patrum*  and  of  ^tienoe 
de  Bourbon. 

As  for  style,  Mr.  Powell's  pages  so  corascate 
with  sparks  of  digression  that  his  natural 
fluency  and  good  wit  enjoy  less  than  their  fair 
chance  of  exhibition.  To  enliven  a  treatment 
unavoidably  dull  at  places,  he  appeals  to  con- 
temporary interests.  As  a  translation  of  the 
quod  tuput  audiena  acquievit  of  Petrus  Al- 
fonsus we  have  "Brer  Wolf  lay  low**;  and 
Lewis  Carroll,  Ibsen,  Matthew  Arnold,  Ste- 
venson, Shelley,  G^rge  Borrow,  Kipling,  and 
Bret  Harte  drop  in  at  points  where  one  could 
hardly  expect  a  modero  to  be  squeesed  in  edge- 
wise. It  is  all  very  good,  however,  and  some- 
times to  the  point.  In  closing,  we  note  that 
the  author  thinks  "  Ex  Librist  **  a  term  too  bad 
to  apply  "even  to  a  political  opponent**;  also, 
that  books  "should  always  have  their  top 
edges  cut  and  gilt  and  their  sides  shaved 
smooth** — a  dictum  which  must  have  passed 
securely  over  the  heads  of  Mr.  Powell's  pub- 
lishers. 


CanyofiB  of  the  Colorado.  By  J.  W.  Powell, 
Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  formerly  Director  of  the 
United  States  Geological  Survey.  With 
many  illustrations.  Meadville,  Pa. :  Flood 
ft  Vincent.    1896. 

To  do  full  justice  to  this  volume  it  should  be 
considered  from  different  points  of  view,  for 
such  is  the  character  of  its  contents  that  they 
may,  without  injury,  be  divided  into  three 
parts,  each  of  which  appeals  to  a  particular 
set  of  readers.  In  one,  for  example  (and  to 
this  the  lovers  of  adventure  will  naturally 
turn),  we  have  an  account  of  the  descent  of 
the  river  and  a  description  of  the  accidents  by 
flood  and  field  that  befell  Major  Powell  and  his 
companions  in  the  course  of  their  hasardous 
undertaking.  In  another,  the  geology  of  the 
vast  extent  of  country  drained  by  the  Colora- 
do, with  its  marvellous  formations  and  gor. 
geous  coloring,  is  painted  in  graphic  language; 
while  the  third  is  made  up  of  short  sketches  of 
the  arts,  industries,  manners  and  customs  of 
the  differeut  tribes  of  Indians  that  were  en- 
countered duriug  successive  expeditions  to 
this  region.  With  much  of  what  is  here 
brought  together  we  are  already  familiar, 
though  nowhere  has  it  been  given  in  the  com- 
pact, readable  shape  in  which  it  now  appears* 
Beginning  with  the  geology  of  this  district* 
we  are  told  that  from  the  level  of  the  sandy 
plain  through  which,  after  passing  through 
the  cafions,  the  river  fiows,  the  country  rises 
by  a  series  of  gigantic  steps  or  plateaus— hun- 
dreds and  even  thousands  of  feet  in  height— 
until  the  summit  is  reached  amid  the  snow  and 
ice  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Through  these 
plateaus  the  river  has  cut  its  way;  and  some 
idea  of  the  amount  of  erosion  that  has  taken 
place  may  be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  the 
Grand  Cafion  is  only  one  of  the  numerous 
gorges  by  which  this  region  is  dissected;  that 
it  is  217  miles  long,  and  that  for  much  of  this 
distance  there  is  a  vertical  wall  of  rock,  6,000 
feet  high,  between  the  bed  of  the  stream  and 
the  level  of  the  plateau  above.  In  other  words, 
the  Colorado,  in  this  part  of  its  course,  has  ex- 
cavated a  gorge  which  the  Blue  Ridge  (p.  890), 
if  plucked  up  and  thrown  in,  would  not  fill, 
and  Into  which  Mt.  Washington  might  be  top- 
pled head  first,  and  the  dam  would  not  force 
the  water  over  its  walls.  Vast  as  is  the  work 
of  erosion  represented  in  this  and  other  cafions, 
it  is  bat  a  small  part  of  that  which  has  taken 
place  over  the  entire  district.  To  appreciate 
this  it  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  that  over 
the  whole  of  the  200,000  square  miles  of  terri- 


tory drained  by  this  stream  and  its  tributaries, 
an  average  of  6,000  feet  of  rock  has  been  wash- 
ed  away.  Or,  better  still,  imagine  (p.  893)  "  a 
rock  of  this  sise  and  a  mile  in  thickness  against 
which  the  clouds  have  hurled  their  storms  and 
beat  it  into  sands,  and  the  rills  have  carried 
the  sands  iuto  the  creeks,  and  the  creeks  have 
carried  them  into  the  rivers,  and  the  Colorado 
has  carried  them  into  the  sea,**  and  you  wOl 
have  an  idea  of  the  forces  that  have  been  at 
work  over  this  whole  area  and  of  the  immense 
results  they  have  accomplished. 

As  a  good  part  of  this  region  is  an  arid  waste, 
but  little  better  than  a  desert,  the  population 
was  necessarily  small  and  was  confined  to  the 
narrow  river  valleys  and  to  the  neighborhood 
of  an  occasional  spring.  Such  as  it  was,  how- 
ever, it  is  of  interest  to  the  ethnologist  for  the 
reason  that  it  was  made  up  of  tribes  that  be- 
longed to  different  linguistic  families,  and 
because  among  these  tribes  were  to  be 
found  representatives  of  the  two  extremes 
of  Indian  civilization.  Thus,  for  example, 
north  of  the  river,  scattered  about  here  and 
therein  small  bands,  were  the  Utee— a  Sho- 
shonee  tribe— who  were  among  the  lowest  in 
point  of  progress  of  any  of  our  American  In- 
dians; while  south  of  the  stream  dwelt  other 
Shosbonee  tribes  (as,  e.  g.^  the  Moqui  and  the 
Navajo),  whose  position  in  the  scale  of  develop- 
ment was  higher,  though  they,  perhaps,  fell 
short  in  some  particulars  of  their  Pueblo 
neighbors.  To  note  the  characteristics  of 
these  several  phases  of  civilisation  would  carry 
us  further  than  we  care  to  go,  and  we  content 
ourselves  with  saying  that  the  differences  be- 
tween them  may  be  gauged  by  the  fact  that 
while  the  Pueblos  (pp.  24,  111,  etc.)  as  early  as 
the  time  of  Coronado,  in  ▲.  D.  1540,  raised  com, 
beans,  and  squashes,  and  "  had  almost  accom- 
plished the  ascent  from  savagery  to  barba- 
rism,** the  Utes  (pp.  62, 106, 818,  etc.,  etc.),  some 
three  centuries  later,  still  used  stone  arrow- 
heads, knives,  and  hammers,  and  were  so  far 
from  cultivating  the  soil  that  they  may,  in  a 
general  way,  be  said  to  have  depended  for  a 
good  part  of  their  food  upon  the  seeds,  roots, 
and  fruits  that  were  natural  to  the  region. 

In  view  of  such  differences,  any  attempt 
at  generalization,  except  upon  the  broadest 
possible  lines,  must  result  In  failure,  and  it 
was  probably  for  this  reason  that  our  author, 
instead  of  vainly  trying  to  formulate  modes  of 
expression  broad  enough  to  include  arts  and 
methods  that  are  intrinsically  different,  wisely 
confined  himself  to  short  and  distinctive 
sketches  of  the  condition  of  the  tribes  with 
which  he  came  in  contact.  Of  course,  this 
plan  necessitated  a  certain  amount  of  repeti« 
tion ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  fixed  the 
limits  within  which  the  several  descriptions 
held  good,  and  to  this  extent  it  eliminates  a 
source  of  error  and  furnishes  us  with  a  model 
for  future  work  in  this  direction.  Of  these 
sketches  those  of  the  Moqui  (p.  825)  and  of  the 
Zuni  (p.  868)  are  perhaps  the  most  satisfactory 
as  they  are  certainly  the  most  elaborate ;  and 
our  object  in  singling  them  out  is  not  so  much 
to  emphasijEe  this  fact  as  it  is  to  call  attention 
to  the  prominent  part  which  the  camera  and 
the  pencil  can  be  made  to  play  in  depicting 
the  usages  of  a  savage  people.  For  reasons 
that  will  readily  suggest  themselves,  it  is  often 
difficult  to  convey,  in  words  alone,  an  ade- 
quate idea  of  the  customs  and  industries  inci- 
dent to  a  low  civilization  or  to  one  with  which 
we  have  but  little  1;  common*  This  fact 
Major  Powell  clearly  apprehended,  and  ao- 
cordingly,  by  way  of  safeguard,  he  has  enrich- 
ed his  pages  with  a  quauUty  of  illuttration 
that  leaves  UtUe  to  be  dedred.    Not  only  are 


46Q 


Tlie    Nation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 5 


the  finished  products  of  the  Indian's  arts  and 
industries  dnlj  represented,  but  we  are  per- 
mitted  to  see  him  at  some  of  bis  daily  avoca- 
tions, and  when  engaged  in  the  rites  and  cere- 
monies by  which  he  hoped  to  bring  good  or 
avert  evil.  Useful  as  this  means  of  communi- 
cation  has  been  found  to  be  when  applied  to 
human  agencies,  it  is  equally  serviceable  when 
used  to  depict  natural  scenery.  Indeed,  but 
for  the  liberal  use  which  our  author  makes  of 
the  engraver's  art,  we  should  find  it  difficult 
to  enter  into  the  feelings  of  enthusiasm  with 
which  he  gazes  upon  scenes  some  of  which 
(p.  881)  are  **  too  vast,  too  complex,  too  grand 
for  verbal  description.'* 


Lueius  Q.  C  Lamar:  His  Life,  Times,  and 

Speeches.     182&-18dS.     By  Edward  Mayes. 

Nashville,     Tenn.:      Methodist     Episcopal 

Church  South.  1896. 
In  this  enormous  volume  of  over  eight  hundred 
pages  of  unusual  dimensions  there  are  mate- 
rials for  a  good  life ;  they  are,  however,  swal- 
lowed up  in  a  mass  of  speeches,  letters,  and  re- 
ports, all  of  which  are  printed  in  full;  the  re- 
sult is  that  the  book  cannot  be  read  except  as 
a  labor  of  love.  This  is  a  pity,  for  Lamar^s 
career  brought  him  into  a  good  many  different 
high  positions  in  public  life.  He  knew  and  was 
thrown  into  contact  with  all  the  chief  politi- 
cians of  his  time.  He  began  life  as  an  ardent 
Southerner,  while  at  his  death  his  name  was  a 
sort  of  symbol  of  reunion;  his  independence  of 
character  was  so  marked  that  he  did  what 
hardly  a  public  man  of  his  day  ever  dared  to 
do— refused  to  obey  explicit  instructions  from 
his  State  directing  him  how  to  vote ;  and  he 
was  not  wanting  in  humor,  humanity,  sympa- 
thy—all the  qualities  which  lend  a  charm  to 
character. 

His  oratory,  which  was  the  key  to  success, 
seems  to  have  been  a  genuine  gift,  though  it 
hardly  reached  a  level  likely  to  render  it  per- 
manently impressive;  but  it  was  the  naif  sin- 
cerity of  his  character  which  endeared  him  to 
all  his  contemporaries.  He  did  not  belong  to 
the  modem  world  of  cities,  but  to  the  rural 
community  which  he  so  long  represented.  His 
poetical  temperament  enabled  him  to  see   in 


Mississippi  and  the  South  everything  tliat  was 
noble  and  elevating,  to  imagine  Washington  as 
it  existed  before  the  war  a  **moet  beautiful 
place"  (p.  76),  and  to  believe,  long  after  the 
war  had  destroyed  the  old  South,  that  it  had 
been  the  care,  patience,  providence,  industry, 
forbearance,  and  firmness  of  the  Southern 
planter  in  tiis  treatment  of  his  slaves  that  had 
made  the  negroes  ^*  the  finest  body  of  agricul- 
tural  and  domestic  laborers  that  the  world  has 
ever  seen,"  and  had  enabled  him  to  elevate 
them  to  such  a  height  as  to  cause  them  to  be 
deemed  fit  for  admission  **  into  the  charmed 
circle  of  American  freedom"  (p.  60).  Such  a 
feat  would  certainly  have  made  the  Southern 
planter  famous  throughout  the  world;  most  re- 
markable of  all,  Lamar  really  believed  in  this 
wonderful  reminiscence.  Mississippi  ought  to 
be  grateful  to  him.  It  will  be  a  long  time  be- 
fore  the  New  South  will  produce  any  one  ca- 
pable of  seeing  in  it  what  he  found  there. 


Porphyry  the  Philosopher  to  his  Wife  Marcel- 
la,  Translated,  with  introduction,  by  Alice 
Zimmern,  Girton  College,  Cambridge.  Pre- 
face by  Richard  Gamett,  C.B.,  LL.D.  Lon- 
don :  George  Redway.  1896. 
A  FRSSH  example  of  the  late  Greek  attitude 
towards  spiritual  thmgs  is  given  to  English 
readers  in  Miss  Zimmem's  pretty  little  book, 
and  the  translator's  name  guarantees  the  ex- 
cellence of  the  version.  Dr.  Garnett's  preface 
is  vivacious,  Miss  Zimmem's  introduction  is 
comprehensive  and  painstaking ;  between  them 
they  contrive  to  put  the  reader  in  a  frame  of 
mind  for  inevitable  disappointment,  for,  of 
the  three  authdrs  represented  in  the  book. 
Porphyry  is  easily  the  least  interesting.  The 
public  which  has  formed  its  idea  of  Greek 
books  of  devotion  on  those  of  Epictetusand 
Marcus  Aurelius,  will  find  here  a  heavier 
touch,  a  greater  proportion  of  commonplace, 
a  more  sentimental  tone.  These  are  all  marks 
of  literary  degeneration,  and  it  would  have 
been  instructive  to  English  readers  if  the 
translator  had  included  in  her  introduction  a 
study  of  Porphyry's  style,  with  an  account  of 
the  fate  that  had  befallen  Greek  prose  in  the 
third  century.     But  the  beauty  of  the  Pla- 


tonic ethics  cannot  be  hid,  and  the  sweet  aus- 
terity of  neo-Platonism  is  full  of  attractive- 
ness. The  quaint  motif  of  Porphyry's  letter 
to  his  wife  is  an  attempt,  in  the  spirit  of  Pro-, 
tesilaus,  to  induce  her  to  substitute  a  philo- 
sophical for  a  passionate  love,  and 

"  Learn,  by  mortal  jeanUng,  to  Moend." 

A  good  deal  of  sociological  interest  attaches 
to  the  letter  from  the  fact  that  it  was  written 
to  a  woman,  and  the  following  sentiment 
should  win  much  applause  from  a  finrde'^iiele 
audience:  "Neither  trouble  thyself  much 
whether  thou  be  male  or  female  in  body,  nor 
look  on  thyself  as  a  woman,  for  I  did  not  ap- 
proach thee  as  such.  Flee  all  that  is  woman- 
ish in  the  soul,  as  though  thou  hadst  a  man's 
body  about  thee." 

BOOKS  OF  THE  WEEK. 

Ki  tir  PubUftblnff  €0,    2^, 

THun  New  tarki  MaciulUaH.    f  l.&O. 
Coo^tr.    J.    F,     Tho    htk&i  of   th^   Mohlcuia.    Bost^D: 

nDUshtijii,  MimiB  &  Co.    (Ukr. 
Daudet^  Alphoiaiu:>.    ivingv  tn    EfUe.     LoDdosT  I>«aC; 

Efiiir-rt,  rtut*  J.  C.    InLTCKjuFrtloti  to  tlae  Stud^  of  Latlu 

]  f  ►  fn "  ri  pi  Ion  fl .    A  me  rf  L*aii  Book  Co. 
PU   .-   in-v  i.i  H-    Armfnlaa^oil  ber  F«<rj;»]e«    BArttard.' 

J'  '-:    I'llfiDiiljlDg  (>>. 

t      ,■ 
Hiii'fi  4jJl,  MurftL    Tbe  Slviry  oc  Cab*.     Cklx?e«o;  W«f - 

ner  L'o. 
Hlll.Gt^-orglaniL    W.jinei]  In  EiLgUth  Ufe.    2  voIj.    haa- 

Uoii:  n^iritlpf';  New  York:  MufmlUl^p, 
Kenuuni,  II.  U.    thv  VeU  Uttttl:  A  New  LJaht  on  t|M 

Wnrlcl'H  Hlstor^r.    Ivotnldn:  Chapmhti  «   Hiiil,  Ftitlft^ 

dolphia:  J.  B.  Ut)ptnc<itt  Co,    92, 
LaDKtcitt,  Ch,  V.    MaiLDi>l  de  BlblioRTftpble  Itl«tortqa«k 

I.  tiiitrumeiit#  BJbUoKrjipliiquea*    Furtis  HsctieiMr. 
LULaint  J.  r.  B.    FcikerBturlei.    P,  P.  HwDer.    lU 
Miu'  i:ul)jjcb,  Himtf^r.    Etobert  Bunu:  A  Ceatenuu?  QMxt. 

Pl»(<'i>ri,  AiuC^df^ti^     Cd  Ami  du  P<;uple^    {La  BrvUia#  >rii 

1^1,-,.     I'nrts:  Colin  &  Clo. 
Pc  •  Maria  L.    In  A  Dike  SbJinty.    CUc4fiQt  fltOQe 

i         .J I.  fiae, 

1  1  Frpiif^h  HlHtnrjr.    M&emfUoJk.    flLtS, 

Roavre.  Cb.  de.   k  Deux.   Paria:  A.  Colin  ft  Ole. 
Sanborn.  Kate.   My  Literary  Zoo.   Appletons.    70e. 
Saanden,    ManhaU.     Beaatlfol    Joe.    FSladi 


Charles  H.  Banes.    26o 
Schftfer,  Prof.  E.  ▲.,  and  Thans,  Prof.  Q,  D.   Qnatnli 

Elements  of  Anatonur.    10th  ed.    Appsodiz.   LoaC' 

mans,  Green  ft  Co.   i8. 
Schopenhauer,  Arthur.   The  Art  of  ControTeny.  and 

Other  Posthumous  Papers.   London;  Bonneasonein; 

New  York:  MacmUlan.   90c. 
Southworth,  Mrs.   Victor's  Triumph.   M .  J.  Irers  ft  Oo. 

83c 
Tompkins,  Elisabeth  K.  The  Broken  Ring.  Pntnams.  91. 
VachelL  H.  A.    Hie  Qnlcksaadt  of  Psctolus.   Heary 

Holt  ft  Co.   $1. 


Ohicaso:  Way 


Ward,  Maria  E.  Bicycling  for  Ladles.  Brentaaos.  91.60. 
Waterloo,  Stanley.    An  Odd  Sltoadon.    ~* '  ~ 

ftWUllams.    •IJW. 
Watson.  William.    The  Purple  East.    London:  John 

Lane;  Chicago:  Stone  ft  Klniball.   76c. 


Messrs.  Henry  Holt  6^  Co.  invite  the 
attention  of  discriminating  readers  of 
light  literature  to  the  books  they  are  pub- 
lishing  under  the  general  title  of 

••  THE  PROTEAN  SERIES/' 

The  numbers  so  far  ready  are: 

WISDOM'S  FOLLT.    A  study  In  Feminine  Derelop- 

ment.   By  A.  V.  Outton. 
THE    QUICKSANDS   OF  PACTOLUS.    A  Novel  of 

Calif omia  Life.    By  H.  A.  Vachkll. 
THE  WAY  THEY  LOVED  AT  ORIMPAT.    Village 

Idyls.   By  E.  Rbittoui.  EsLBB. 
IN  THE  VALLEY  OF  TOPHET.  Powerful  oonnec^ 

ed  stories  of  English  mlnlog  regions.    By  H.  W. 

Nkvison.  author  of  "  Slum  Stories  of  London." 

Forthcoming  Numbers  are  : 

A  STUMBLER  IN  WIDE  SHOES.  Scenes  In  Am- 
sterdam and  Rural  England.  The  hero  Is  an  artist. 

THE  TOUCH  OF  SORROW.  A  story  of  English 
society  by  one  who  plainly  knows  it,  with  good 
character  drawing,  and  a  moral. 

THE  BOOK  OF  THE  PLAY.  A  Story  of  a  gossipy 
New  England  town.     By  Elisabeth  Lyman  Cabot. 

A  DIPLOMAT  IN  LONDON.  From  the  French  of 
Charles  Oavard.  Orapblc  accounts  of  diplomatlo 
experience  under  tbe  Commune,  and  also  of  the 
social  experience  natural  to  a  French  diplomat  In 
London. 

l6nio.    Cloth.    Price  $1.00  per  yoloma. 

ESTABUSHSD  1780. 

WALTER  BAKER  &  CO.,  IJmited, 

DORCHESTER.  MASS. 
Breakfast  Cocoa,  absolutely  pure.  deUolous,  nutritious. 


Yale 
Mixture. 

A  QENTLEMAN'S  SMOKE. 

You  won't  know  the  luxury  of 
Pipe-Smoking  until  you  use  Yale 
Mixture. 

A  two  oz.  trial  package,  postpaid,  for  26  eta. 

MARBURQ  BROS., 

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Baltlmorv.  Md. 

STOWE,  VT. 

Summit  off   Sunset  Hill,  ffkdng  Mt. 
Mansfield. 

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POUR  YEARS  OP 

NOVEL  READING. 

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The  Paget  Papers. 

DIPLOMATIC  AND  OTHER  CX>RRESPONDKNCB 
OF 

TheRt.  Hon.  Sir  Arthur  Paget,  G.C.B. 

iyg4'i8oj.     With  two  Appendices^  t8o8 
and  i82i'i82g. 

Arranged  and  edited  by  his  son,  the  Rt  Hon.  Sir  AU- 
OUBTU8  PAGET,  O.C.B.,  Late  H.  a  M.  Ambas- 
sador at  Vienna, 
With  Notes  by  Mrs.  J.  R.  OaxEir. 

In  Two  Volumas,  large  demy  8yo.  pp.  800.  with 
nomeroas  Portralta.    $10.00  act. 

New  Novel  by  Mr.  Merrimao. 

FLOTSAM. 

THE    STITDY   OF   A    LIFE. 

By    HENRY   5BT0N    MBRRIMAN, 

Author  of  "With  Edged  Tools,"  "The  Sowen,"  ete. 

With  Frontispiece  and  Ylgnette  by  H.  O.  MAassr. 

lamo,  Cloth*  Ornamental,  Si.as* 


LONGMANS,    GREEN.  &   CO. 

gi  and  gj  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 


The    Nation. 


jvanr  tork,  TSuaaDAT,  jusk  is,  i8M. 

The  Week. 

SiHCS  the  Federal  QoTernment  wm  res- 
cued from  the  ehamefal  ■ubserTiency  to 
■IftTery  which  characteriied  it  before  the 
ciTil  war,  there  has  beeo  no  session  of 
Ckxigress  so  disheartening  to  a  patriot  as 
that  wliich  ended  on  Thursdaj.  At  no 
date  within  the  lifetime  of  the  present 
generation  has  the  public  opinion  of  the 
national  Legislature  been  so  contemptu- 
ous, and  so  deservedly  contemptuous. 
Never  since  1860  have  the  tendencies  in 
Congress  been  so  unhealthy  and  even 
alarming.  The  Senate  has  reached  its 
lowest  ebb.  The  House,  if  not  so  bad  as 
the  Senate,  emulated  that  body's  folly  in 
Jingoism  and  in  recklessness  of  appropria- 
tion. It  shelved  free  coinage,  indeed,  and 
it  refused  to  endorse  repudiation,  although 
the  leaders  of  the  Republican  majority 
lacked  the  courage  to  stamp  it  out  by  a 
direct  •  vote.  Complaining  that  Demo- 
cratic legislation  had  caused  a  deficit,  the 
same  managers  refused  to  adopt  the  sim- 
ple and  practicable  method  of  raising  the 
•25,000,000  or  t30,000,000  a  year  needed  by 
doubling  the  tax  on  beer,  but,  instead, 
pushed  through  a  buncombe  tariff  bill, 
which  they  knew  could  never  pass  the 
Senate  or  secure  the  President's  signa- 
ture. After  this  assurance  that  the  defi- 
cit must  continue,  they  proceeded  to  in- 
crease it  by  passing,  under  a  suspension 
of  the  rules  and  without  a  chance  for  de- 
bate, the  largest  river-and-harbor  bill  ever 
framed,  and  repassing  it  over  the  deserved 
veto  of  the  President.  Republicans,  Demo- 
crats, and  Populists  have  all  had  a  share 
in  this  most  discreditable  performance. 


Our  happy>go-lucky  system  of  national 
finance  is  usually  put  on  exhibition  at  the 
close  of  a  session  of  Congress.  The  chair- 
man of  the  committee  on  appropriations 
makes  a  speech  congratulating  the  House 
on  its  fhigality  and  careful  use  of  the  peo- 
ple's money,  while,  of  course,  not  refusing 
any  appropriation  manifestly  for  the  pub- 
lic good,  and  then  prints  a  table  showing 
how,  if  you  leave  out  this,  that,  and  the 
other  bill,  the  total  is  much  less  than  the 
extravagant  Congress  controlled  by  the 
other  party  had  voted.  Then  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  minority  on  the  same  com- 
mittee follows,  proving  by  hU  table  that 
there  never  had  been  such  a  reckless  and 
spendthrift  Congress,  and  announcing, 
without  a  flicker  of  the  eyelid,  that  an 
outraged  people  wiil  hold  the  majority  to 
a  strict  account  This  year  the  show  was 
more  than  usually  diverting  k>ecauteour 
finances  are  more  than  usually  chaotic. 
Deficit  heaped  on  deficit,  the  majority  of 
the  House  strenuously  insisting  tliat  the 
Qovsrament  has  not  tevenue  enough,  tho 


Speaker  opening  the  seasion  with  the 
cry  of  economy,  and  the  chairman  of  the 
committee  on  appropriations  echoing  it, 
one  must  confess  to  some  surprise  at  find- 
ing the  appropriations  larger  than  in  any 
one  fiscal  year  since  the  last  years  of  the 
civil  war.  The  total  for  the  seasion  is 
t515,75e,820-an  increase  of  $18,751,000 
over  the  appropriations  of  the  last  preced- 
ing session.  In  addition  should  fairly  be 
reckoned  in  contracts  authorised  for  $78,- 
241,000  more,  for  which  coming  Con- 
gresses will  have  to  find  the  money. 


The  way  Chairman  Cannon  meets  this 
situation  is  by  calling  the  appropriations 
*'  wise  and  economical,  not  scant  and  in- 
sufficient," and  by  saying  that  if  you  leave 
out  the  river-and-barbor  bill  and  the  per- 
manent annual  appropriations,  the  record 
is  not  so  black  as  it  might  appear.  Messrs. 
Sayers  and  Dockery,  for  the  minorityt 
affirm  that  "this  Congress  is  the  most 
recldessly  improvident  and  riotously  ex- 
travagant Congress  since  the  establish- 
ment of  the  government."  If  these  as- 
sertions and  denials  had  not  been  made  so 
regularly,  the  country  would  pay  more  at- 
tention to  them.  What  really  gives  them 
special  point  this  year  is  the  critical  situ- 
ation of  the  Treasury,  and  the  fact  that 
this  was  laid  clearly  before  Congress  by 
Secsetary  Carlisle.  For  the  fiscal  year 
just  ended  he  estimated  a  deficit  of  $17,- 
000,000,  which,  in  effect,  turned  out  to  be 
$27,000,000.  For  1896-97  he  figured  a  sur- 
plus of  $6,900,000,  but  on  what  basis?  On 
the  basis  of  total  appropriations  of  $457,- 
000,000,  In  the  face  of  this.  Congress  has 
voted  $516,000,000— or,  in  other  words,  has 
deliberately  voted  a  deficit  of  $52,000,000. 
A  Congress  that  does  this  writes  itself 
imbecile  in  finance. 


President  Cleveland's  apparent  loss  of 
infiuence  with  his  party  is  the  theme  of 
many  philosophic  comments  by  Republi- 
cans. Never  was  the  fall  of  a  party  idol 
and  dictator  so  complete.  Yes,  but  poor 
Mr.  Cleveland  may  comfort  himself  by 
refiecting  that  if  he  has  not  got  on  very 
well  with  Democrats,  he  has  converted 
Republicans  with  astonishing  rapidity 
and  success.  The  latter  are  now  follow- 
ing his  lead  with  beautiful  docility. 
Eight  years  ago  they  denounced  him  for 
having  "  dishonored "  silver;  three  years 
ago  they  allowed  themselves  to  be 
dragged  by  him  by  the  scruff  of  the  neck 
into  completing  the  dishonor  of  silver 
through  the  repeal  of  the  silver-purchase 
law;  two  years  ago  he  began  boldly  to 
advocate  the  gold  standard,  eo  nomine^ 
amid  vast  Republican  carping,  and  now 
the  party  at  St  Louis  is  enthusiastically 
getting  on  his  platform.  Such  success  of 
an  apostle  turning  to  the  Gentiles  is  truly 
UBiMoedentsd  in  the  annals  of  poiiticai 


evangelisation.  And  the  conversion  Is 
likely  to  extend  also  to  the  issuing  of 
bonds  for  gold.  If  Republican  Congress- 
es go  on  voting  appropriations  $60,000,000 
a  year  more  than  the  revenue,  more  iMmds 
will  have  to  come.  One  of  the  first  acts 
of  the  supernatural  McKinley  may  have 
to  be  a  call  for  bids  on  Government  bonds. 
It  certainly  will  be  if  Mr.  Cleveland  fol- 
lows the  after- us- the-deluge  methods  of 
President  Harrison. 


One  of  the  strildng  utterances  coming 
from  the  Babel  of  tongues  at  St  Louis  Is 
the  following  from  Congressman  Grosve- 
nor,  McKinley's  second  in  command,  to 
the  editor  of  the  New  York  Herald: 

**  Just  M  soon  M  this  insanity  blows  over,  the 
tariff  will  beoome  the  leadiog  issue.  When 
this  oonvention  and  the  Demooratio  oonvention 
have  adjoomed,  the  tariff  will  oome  to  the 
front" 

The  "  insanity  "  here  referred  to  Is  the 
demand  that  the  words  **  gold  standard  " 
shall  be  inserted  in  the  Republican  plat- 
form. This  is  so  far  the  leading  issue  at 
present  that  nothing  else  is  talked  of  or 
thought  of ;  but,  when  it  *'  blows  over," 
the  tariff  will  take  its  natural  place  at 
the  front,  says  Grosvenor.  That  de- 
pends, for  as  it  takes  at  least  two  persons 
to  make  a  bargain,  it  takes  at  ieast  two 
parties  to  make  a  political  issue.  If  the 
Democrats  put  the  free  coinage  of  silver 
in  their  platform,  the  tariff  will  not  come 
to  the  front  this  year,  and  probably  not 
next  year  nor  the  year  after.  The  fight 
that  the  McKinley  men  are  making  at  St. 
Louis  is  not  so  much  against  the  gold 
standard  as  it  is  against  giving  precedence 
to  the  gold  standard  as  an  iasue.  It  is 
precisely  because  they  know  that  the 
money  question  is  the  dominant  one,  and 
that  McKinley  on  a  gold  platform  is  an 
illogical  candidate,  that  they  are  so  stout- 
ly resisting  the  use  of  the  word  gold. 


With  McKinley's  nomination  for  the 
Presidency  assured,  and  his  election  prob- 
able, the  thing  for  sound-money  men, 
without  distinction  of  party,  to  do  at  once 
is  to  organise  a  campaign  for  the  election 
of  a  House  of  Representatives  which  will 
be  sound  on  the  financial  issue.  McKin- 
ley's election  would  give  the  country,  for 
the  first  time  since  the  soft-money  sgita- 
tion  began  after  the  war,  an  executive 
who  could  not  be  expected  to  veto  any  act 
which  Congress  might  send  him.  A  Re- 
publican Congress  might  pass  |in  inflation 
bill  under  Grant,  and  the  nation  could 
hope  to  escape  through  his  refusal  to  ap- 
prove it  A  Democratic  Congress  might 
pass  a  bill  to  coin  the  seigniorage  under 
Cleveland,  and  the  country  knew  that  it 
could  never  become  a  law.  But  whatever 
the  representatives  of  the  people  in  the 
Senate  and  House  migr  sgree  to  in  ths 


464 


Tlie   Nation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1616 


way  of  financial  legislation  from  1897  to 
1901  will  be  sore  to  pass  the  White  House 
with  McKinley  as  its  occupant.  As  for 
the  executive's  exercising  any  restraint 
upon  Congress,  as  Hayes  did  when  he 
thwarted  the  movement  for  the  repeal  of 
the  resumption  act,  or  Cleveland  when  he 
kept  a  Congress  that  wanted  to  pass  a 
free-coinage  bill  from  really  doing  it,  Mc- 
Kinley would  never  think  of  attempting 
such  a  thing. 


Still  another  vote  of  McKinley's  needs 
to  be  cited  to  complete  his  record  in  Con- 
gress on  the  currency  question.  On  the 
29th  of  April,  1878,  the  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives was  called  upon  to  decide 
whether  it  would  pass  a  bill  making  it 
unlawful  for  the  Treasury  thereafter  to 
cancel  or  retire  any  more  legal-tender 
notes,  and  providing  that  when  any  such 
notes  should  be  redeemed  or  received  into 
the  Treasury  under  any  law  from  any 
source,  they  should  not  be  retired,  can- 
celled, or  destroyed,  but  should  be  reis- 
sued and  paid  out  again  and  kept  in  cir- 
culation. The  proposition  was  opposed 
by  the  sound-money  men  on  both  sides  of 
the  chamber,  including  Garfield  of  Ohio, 
Hewitt,  Hiscock,  and  Potter  of  New  York, 
Claflin,  Crapo,  and  Robinson  of  Massachu- 
setts, Frye  of  Maine,  and  Gibson  of  Loui- 
siana. But  the  same  crowd  which  a  few 
months  before  had  voted  for  free  coinage 
supported  this  measure  also,  and  McKin- 
ley was  again  found  among  them.  The 
man  who  expects  to  be  the  next  President 
is  thus  among  those  who  are  responsible 
for  the  continuance  of  the  policy  by  which 
the  Government  must  keep  on  indefinitely 
paying  out  the  same  greenback  and  re- 
deeming it  in  gold,  instead  of  getting  rid 
of  the  promise  to  pay  once  for  all. 


Gk)v.  Morton  is  entitled  to  much  credit 
for  the  straightforward  manner  in  which 
he  has  held  himself  as  a  candidate  before 
the  St.  Louis  convention.  He  is  the  one 
candidate  who  has  had  the  courage  to  de- 
fine his  views  on  the  A.  P.  A.  question, 
saying  quite  simply  that  if  he  were  charg- 
ed with  the  duty  of  administering  the 
office  of  President,  he  should  "endeavor 
to  treat  all  classes  without  discrimination 
as  to  their  religious  belief.'*  That  is  not 
a  very  difficult  thing  to  say,  and  when  it 
is  said  there  is  really  nothing  to  add  to 
it,  and  no  rational  mind  can  see  any  criti- 
cism to  pass  upon  it;  yet  what  a  curious 
light  it  throws  upon  the  McKinley ized 
political  situation  that  no  other  candidate 
finds  himself  able  to  say  it,  lest  by  doing 
so  he  might  lose  a  few  votes.  The  Gover- 
nor's course  in  regard  to  a  vice-presiden- 
tial nomination  was  equally  dignified  and 
discreet.  He  was  placed  in  a  position  of 
being  »♦  played  "  by  Piatt  for  first  place  if 
he  could  get  it,  and,  failing  that,  as  a  will- 
ing candidate  for  second  place.  He  upset 
that  scheme  by  sending  a  telegram  to  Mr. 
I>epew  refusing  to  have  his  D»me  us^  for 
B^coQd  plac^ 


The  forthcoming  number  of  the  Forum 
magazine  will  contain  an  article  by  M. 
Leroy-Beaulieu,  the  distinguished  French 
publicist,  on  McKinleyism  as  it  looks  to 
an  intelligent  foreigner  who  has  no  per- 
sonal interest  in  our  politics.  In  the  first 
place,  he  tells  us  that  the  name  of  Mc- 
Kinley stands  in  Europe  for  something 
more  than  a  protective  tariff — an  exagge- 
rated form  of  protection  intended  serious- 
ly to  restrict  trade.  The  election  of  such 
a  man,  he  says,  would  give  a  new  and 
powerful  impetus  to  protectionism  in  Eu- 
rope. European  protectionists,  who  sre 
mainly  landowners,  want  higher  duties 
on  agricultural  products.  In  France  they 
are  now  clamoring  for  an  increase  of  30  or 
40  per  cent,  on  wheat.  In  Germany  they 
are  equally  fierce,  and  in  England  they 
are  beginning  to  make  some  headway, 
putting  forward  the  idea  of  a  great  Bri- 
tish Zollverein,  which  is  protection  under 
the  guise  of  a  closer  political  union  with 
the  colonies.  Any  new  outburst  of  pro- 
tectionism in  Europe  would  be  a  back- 
ward step  in  civilization,  and  would  be 
especially  injurious  to  the  United  States 
as  an  exporter  of  agricultural  products. 
One  thought  might  be  added  to  Leroy- 
Beaulieu 's  lucid  reasoning.  If  the  new 
outburst  of  protectionism  in  Europa  really 
takes  place  and  throws  back  our  fifty- 
cent  wheat  on  the  hands  of  American 
farmers,  they  may  get  their  eyes  open  a 
little  sooner  to  the  fact  that  protection  is 
a  downright  swindle  to  them.  Husiicua 
expectatf  said  the  Latin  poet.  The  farm- 
er has  been  waiting  in  this  country  more 
than  a  hundred  years  for  the  tariff  to 
begin  to  benefit  him,  and  he  is  still  wait- 
ing. Perhaps  if  he  finds  that  other  na- 
tions can  play  tariff  also,  he  may  change 
his  notions. 


The  chief  part  of  Leroy-Beaulieu's  arti- 
cle, however,  relates  to  McKinleyism  and 
the  silver  question.  McKinley  is  under- 
stood in  Europe  to  be  a  silver  man  or  a 
silverish  man.  There  is  a  difference  be- 
tween the  two.  A  silver  man  is  one  who 
is  in  favor  of  free  coinage  at  some  ratio, 
preferably  the  ratio  of  16  to  1.  A  silver- 
ish man  is  one  who  has  no  particular 
views,  but  who  wishes  to  be  considered 
••  friendly  to  silver  " — just  friendly  enough 
to  get  the  votes  of  the  silver  men,  but  not 
friendly  enough  to  lose  those  of  the  gold 
men.  Leroy-Beaulieu  takes  this  occasion 
to  tell  us  what  is  the  status  of  interna- 
tional bimetallism  at  the  present  time. 
Although  a  small  clique  of  agitators  con- 
tinue to  make  themselves  heard  (they  had 
a  small  private  conference  at  Brussels  the 
other  day),  the  movement  is  as  dead  as 
possible.  As  to  free  coinage  of  silver  at 
the  ratio  of  16  to  1,  that  is  simply  incon- 
ceivable. So  far  are  the  nations  of  Eu- 
rope from  moving  in  the  direction  of  bi- 
metallism, the  only  one  that  has  not  the 
single  gold  standard  now  is  striving  ea- 
gerly to  reach  it,  and  will  soon  accom- 
plish that  eQd,    Russin  has  been  accumu* 


lating  gold  for  this  purpose  steadily  for 
a  series  of  years,  and  drawing  her  sup- 
plies chiefiy  from  the  United  States.  She 
now  has  the  largest  quantity  on  hand 
that  can  be  found  in  any  one  place,  viz., 
$420,000,000.  This  is  considerably  larger 
than  the  gold  reserve  of  the  Bank  of 
France.  Does  anybody  suppose  that  Rus- 
sia, at  the  end  of  her  long,  persistent 
effort  to  resume  specie  payments  on  the 
gold  basis,  is  going  to  give  any  counte- 
nance to  bimetallism,  national  or  inter- 
national T  No  more  is  Austria-Hungary 
likely  to  do  sa  As  for  France,  with 
which  Leroy-Beaulieu  is  more  intimately 
concerned,  he  tells  us  that  the  French 
bimetallists  themselves  say  that  they  can 
do  nothing  without  the  co5peration  of 
England,  and  that  nobody  expects  Eng- 
land to  change  her  standard.  In  short, 
while  the  United  States  might  give  a  new 
life  and  impetus  to  protectionism  in  Eu- 
rope, it  cannot  galvanize  the  corpse  of 
bimetallism. 


The  Democratic  convention  in  Minne- 
sota last  week,  with  its  unqualified  de- 
claration for  the  maintenance  of  the  pre- 
sent gold  standard,  is  a  fresh  illustration 
of  the  fact,  to  which  we  have  repeatedly 
called  attention,  that  the  States  with  the 
largest  proportion  of  foreigners  are  doing 
much  more  to  sustain  the  financial  sta- 
bilitj  of  the  nation  than  those  which  are 
peopled  almost  entirely  by  the  native- 
born.  In  Virginia  less  than  3  per  cent  of 
the  population  are  of  foreign  parentage ; 
in  Minnesota  the  proportion  exceeds  75 
per  cent  Yet  the  Democrats  of  Virginia 
went  for  free  coinage  at  the  ratio  of  16  to 
1  by  a  vote  of  four  to  one,  while  those  of 
Minnesota  sustained  the  most  uncompro- 
mising sort  of  gold  platform  by  a  large 
majority.  The  leading  Democratic  jour- 
nal of  the  Northwestern  State,  the  St 
Paul  Olobe^  is  entitled  to  honorable 
mention  for  its  persistent  and  effective 
work  on  the  right  side  in  that  party ;  aa 
is  the  Pioneer  Pre^s  of  the  same  city  for 
the  @ame  sort  of  iDBtructioQ  to  itapybli* 
caBfl  during  the  long  agttstioQ  foe  soft 
money  id  one  ahape  or  another. 


The  Senate  took  a  turn  at  art  [aat  week, 
and  left  the  experts  locking  aa  silly  as  so 
m^iny  defeated  gold-bugs.  The  idea  of  & 
committee  of  aculptors  undertaking  to 
teach  battle- scarred  generals  any  thing 
about  artiBtic  merit  !  Ae  Senator  Millfl 
said,  a  body  of  man  who  **  arrogate  to 
themBelvea  an  exclusive  knowledge  ol 
art  '*  were  the  f&et  persona  on  earth  to 
whom  an  untamed  Teiao  would  refers 
question  about  the  Sbermai^  monument 
The  ConBecticut  idea  of  art  was  lumi- 
nously set  forth  by  Senator  HawJey^  who 
asserted  that  what  was  wanted  was  aet 
^'  a  mere  work  of  art,"  but  go  teething 
that  the  old  soldiers  would  recognize  **  a 
mile  off  "  aa  the  real  Old  Tecumeoh*  It 
only  remained  to  add,  as  Senator  Alliaon 
did,  that  the  whole  thing  grev  out  of  per 


June  18,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


465 


•ooal  eDinitj  agmintt  the  BUoceMful  artist, 
and  that  the  deciffion  and  protest  of  the 
oommittee  were  baaed  on  spite  and  envy, 
not  on  esthetic  principles.  On  the  whole, 
it  was  a  bad  day  for  presumptuous  ezpertSt 
who  were  taught  the  needed  lesson  that 
Art  may  err,  but  Nature  (in  the  shape  of 
a  Senate  giring  its  mind  to  monuments) 
cannot  miss. 


It  is  to  be  said  of  the  Greater  New 
York  Commission  that  it  is  probably  the 
best  which  the  Gk>Temor  was  able  to  form, 
and  that  it  will  accomplish  as  much  as 
any  Commission  could  under  the  condi- 
tions in  which  it  will  have  to  do  its  work. 
Several  members  of  it  are  admirably  well 
qualified  for  the  task  before  them,  and,  if 
Uie  prospects  for  performing  useful  and 
lasting  public  service  had  been  better,  we 
have  no  doubt  that  others  equally  well 
qualified  could  have  been  induced  to  ac- 
cept podtions  with  them.  As  it  stands,  it 
is  much  more  of  a  Brooklyn  than  a  New 
York  Commission,  and,  however  great  the 
abilities  of  some  of  its  individual  mem- 
bers may  be,  as  a  whole  it  is  not  a  body 
which  gives  promise  of  performing  suc- 
cessfully the  practically  impossible  task 
set  for  it,  which  is  the  evolving  of  a  charter 
for  one  of  the  greatest  cities  in  the  world 
within  about  eight  months.  E?en  if  it 
were  to  prove  equal  to  this  tremendous 
task,  it  must  proceed  about  it  with  the 
possibility,  in  the  end,  of  having  its  work 
rejected  by  the  next  Legislature.  The 
Commission  must,  in  fact,  carry  forward 
its  task  under  conditions  prepared  by  Piatt 
and  Lezow,  who  in  arranging  them  had 
no  interest  whatever  in  the  formulating 
of  a  scheme  of  municipal  government,  but 
were  looking  only  for  the  creation  of  such 
a  situation  as  would  enable  them  to  cap- 
ture, in  the  interest  of  spoils  politics,  the 
governments  of  the  two  great  cities  af- 
fected. 


The  English  education  bill  is  exciting 
fierce  opposition  from  the  Liberal  party, 
especially  from  the  Dissenters.  The 
Liberal  party  is  opposed  to  it  because  it 
breaks  up  the  arrangement  made  by 
them  twenty-six  years  ago  through  the 
late  Mr.  Forster,  which  was  the  first  se- 
rious attempt  not  only  to  establish  popu- 
lar education  in  England,  but  to  make 
popular  education  undenomlnationaL  As 
a  general  rule,  such  popular  schools  as 
had  existed  in  England  before  that  time 
were  adjuncts  of  the  parish  church,  and 
were  completely  controlled  by  the  Angli- 
can minister,  to  the  great  disadvantage 
or  at  least  discontent  of  the  Dissenters. 
Mr.  Forster*s  bill  established  popular 
schools  ruled  by  elected  school  boards, 
but  it  compromised  by  giving  Govern- 
ment assistance,  at  a  stated  proportion 
to  voluntary  subscriptions,  to  denomina- 
tional schools.  As  the  years  have  rolled 
by,  the  school  boards  have  gained  on  the 
clergy  9  the  voluntary  subscriptions  to 
denominational  schools,  and  consequently 
the  QoveromeDt  nid,  haye  f^Uenoff,  until, 


to  use  their  own  language,  "  the  strain  [on 
them]  has  become  intolerable.**  It  is  now 
prop<ised  to  abolish  the  school  boards,  to 
remit  the  management  of  the  schools  to 
the  county  councils,  to  increase  the  as- 
sistance to  the  denominational  schools, 
and  to  hand  religious  instruction  in 
the  schools  over  to  the  clergy  of  different 
denominations.  In  order  to  secure  some 
such  legislation,  the  Anglican  clergy  are 
accused  of  working  with  great  vigor  at 
the  last  election  to  get  Tory  majorities. 
Worse  than  all,  since  the  election.  Lord 
Salisbury  has  openly  made  common  cause 
with  them  by  treating  the  church  as  **we'* 
and  the  Dissenters  as  **you,**  in  conver- 
sations with  the  Dissenting  delegations 
who  came  to  remonstrate  with  him  about 
the  bill.  Principal  Fairbairn,  the  most 
scholarly  Nonconformist,  the  head  of  the 
Dissenting  college  at  Oxford,  has  just  con- 
tributed a  bitter  article  on  the  subject  to 
the  Contemporary  Review^  in  which, 
passing  over  machinery  and  details,  he 
denounces  the  policy  of  the  bill  as  a  dis- 
tinct return  to  mediaeval  clerical  methods 
in  popular  education,  and  as  due  in  the 
main  to  the  efforts  of  the  Anglican  clergy, 
who  are  not,  he  says,  what  they  used  to 
be.  They  used  to  be  part  and  parcel  of 
the  gentry,  younger  sons  or  brothers,  men 
of  family.  They  are  now,  he  alleges, 
more  sacerdotal,  more  purely  professional, 
more  separated  from  the  community  at 
large,  and  more  imbued  with  a  sense  of 
"  apostolic  succession."  To  this  change 
in  the  character  of  the  body  he  ascribes 
the  new  attempt  to  regain  control  of  the 
schools  and  root  out  purely  secular  edu- 
cation among  the  people. 


.  The  full  text  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  letter 
to  Cardinal  Rampolla  on  Anglican  orders 
does  not  make  it  clear  why  the  Noncon- 
formists should  have  been  so  cut  to  the 
heart  by  it  as  the  cable  reported  that  they 
were.  It  contains  no  view  which  Mr. 
Gladstone  has  not  been  long  known  to  en- 
tertain. He  is  a  high-churchman,  and  as 
such  is  bound  to  welcome  the  inquiry 
which  the  Pope  has  set  on  foot  in  Rome 
respecting  the  validity  of  Anglican  orders. 
That  *'  any  immediate,  practical,  and  ex- 
ternal consequences  **  would  follow  a  fa- 
vorable decision,  he  does  not  imagine,  but 
simply  hails  the  proposed  investigation  as 
an  act  of  wisdom  and  charity  on  the  part 
of  the  Pope,  in  whom  it  argues  great 
courage  and  **  an  elevation  above  all  the 
levels  of  stormy  partisanship,'*  and  as  a 
step  towards  the  only  form  of  church  uni- 
ty now  possible — a  united  and  tolerant 
bearing  of  witness  to  the  essentials  of  the 
Christian  faith.  Why  the  expression  of 
such  opinions  should  be  fiercely  denounced 
by  Nonconformist  ministers  as  '*  a  betrayal 
of  the  liberty  of  the  country**  and  **a 
miserable  trifling  with  Rome,'*  does  not 
appear  to  a  mind  untrained  in  the  niceties 
of  theological  logic.  In  the  course  of  this 
very  letter  Mr.  Gladstone  paid  a  handsome 
tribute  to  "those  independent  reli^ou^ 


communities**  with  which  his  political 
life  had  brought  him  much  in  contact; 
but  this  contact  has  taught  him  little  if  it 
has  not  made  him  aware  of  their  extreme 
sensitiveness  and  hysterical  fervor  on  all 
subjects  relating  to  the  Scarlet  Woman. 
What  Walter  Bagehot  wrote  of  the  Eng- 
lish feeling  about  Rome  is  still  very  much 
in  point  Referring  to  the  Oxford  move- 
ment, he  said  that  it  had  vexed  the  Eng- 
lish people  by  crossing  **  their  one  specu- 
lative Affection,  by  encountering  their 
one  speculative  Hatred."  Of  a  Tracta- 
rian  clergyman  the  instinctive  English 
judgment  was,  "  the  system  which  trained 
him  must  be  bad.*' 

**8ach  is  oar  axiom.  TeD  an  Englishman 
that  a  building  [at  Oxford]  is  without  ose,  and 
he  will  stare;  that  it  is  iUiberal,  and  be  wMi 
survey  it;  that  it  teaches  Aristotle,  and  he  will 
seem  perplexed;  that  it  doo*t  teach  science, 
and  be  won't  mind;  but  only  bint  that  it  is  the 
Pope,  and  he  will  arise  and  bum  it  to  the 
ground." 


Mr.  G.  S.  Fort,  who  writes  in  the  last 
Nineteenth  Century  on  "  The  True  Mo- 
tive and  Reason  of  Dr.  Jameson's  Raid,** 
was  private  secretary  to  Sir  Henry  Loch 
while  the  latter  was  Governor  at  the 
Cape,  and  is  on  the  most  Intimats  terms 
with  both  Rhodes  and  Jameson.  He 
states  **  positively  "  that  the  chief  object 
of  Jameson's  rush  was,  not  to  overthrow 
the  Dutch  Government,  not  to  redress  the 
grievances  of  the  Outlanders,  but  to  *'  se- 
cure documentary  evidence  *'  of  the  secret 
alliance  between  the  Transvaal  and  Ger- 
many, which  evidence  "was  believed,  on 
reliable  authority,  to  be  in  possession  of 
President  KrQger  in  Pretoria.'*  Accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Fort,  the  intrigues  of  the  Ger- 
mans in  the  Transvaal  had  been  divined 
by  Cecil  Rhodes,  who  saw  in  their  success 
the  ** death-blow  to  his  lifelong  work," 
and  determined  to  thwart  them  by  get- 
ting hold  of  the  secret  treaties  and  hold- 
ing theni  up  to  the  scorn  of  the  world. 
If  Mr.  Chamberlain  had  allowed  him,  he 
would  have,  when  in  England,  '*  gone 
down  to  Trafalgar  Square"  and  pro- 
claimed this  as  the  true  motive  of  the 
raid.  This  is  more  curious  than  convinc- 
ing, and  even  the  solemn  Mr.  Fort  has  to 
admit  that  this  theory  *'  is  necessarily  to 
a  certain  extent  hypothetical.**  One  thing 
not  hypothetical  is  that  Rhodes  said  that 
which  was  not  when  he  avowed  to  Cham* 
berlain  that  he  was  entirely  ignorant  of 
the  raid.  And  the  idea  of  sending  800 
troopers  to  steal  some  documents !  One 
skilled  burglar  would  have  been  much 
better.  It  would  have  been  just  like  the 
wicked  Krdger  to  burn  every  last  secret 
treaty  the  moment  he  heard  the  English 
raiders  were  coming.  The  guilty  old  man 
would  know  what  they  were  after.  There 
is  also  a  certain  humor,  of  which  Mr. 
Fort  seems  wholly  unaware,  in  sending  a 
man  after  incriminating  documents  who 
himself  was  loaded  down  with  incrimi- 
nating documents.  Dr.  Jameson  ought 
at  least  to  have  swallowed  the  key  to  the 
cipher  telegranu  captured  with  him. 


4:63 


Tlie    ISTation. 


[Vol.  62,  No.  1616 


PROSPERITTS  ADVANCE  ORATOR. 
In  a  little  volume  of  'McKinley's  Master- 
pieces,' lately  published,  the  ^ood  news  is 
revealed  that  **  William  McKinley  stands 
high  among  America's  greatest  orators." 
Everybody  would  have  believed  this  if 
McKinley  had  never  delivered  or  printed 
any  orations.  As  it  is,  the  assertion  may 
be  tested  by  the  fact.  The  small  book  of 
condensed  McKinley  oratory  is  put  forth 
to  "  meet  the  needs  of  the  busy  man." 
But  we  prefer  the  large  and  complete  edi- 
tion of  McKinley's  speeches,  on  the 
ground  that  a  little  dulness  is  a  dangerous 
thing,  and  that  one  should  drink  deep  of 
the  Major's  oratorical  flow  before  report- 
ing on  ita  quality.  Even  so,  there  are 
perils  in  writing  of  an  orator  who  belongs 
to  Dr.  Johnson's  category  of  men  who  not 
only  are  dull,  but  provoke  dulness  in 
others.  However,  in  the  cause  of  discover- 
ing one  of  America's  greatest  orators,  we 
are  ready  to  run  all  risks. 

Lord  Rosebery's  oratory  has  been  de- 
fined as  English  in  substance,  but  with  a 
surface  addition  of  French  polish.  No 
such  discrimination  can  be  made  in  Mc- 
Kinley's case.  Substance  and  surface  are 
all  of  a  piece  in  his  oratory;  and  whether 
you  plunge  into  it,  or  skim  over  it,  the 
sense  of  touching  something  wooden  is 
unmistakable.  There  is  scarcely  a  gleam 
in  the  whole  654  deadly  pages — not  a 
phrase  or  thought  to  serve  as  a  watch- 
word of  party  or  epigram  of  debate;  not  one 
flash  of  happy  characterization;  not  one 
generous  burst  of  unpremeditated  enthusi- 
asm; hardly  an  apt  passage  cited  from  poet, 
orator,  or  statesman.  Nothing  can  recon- 
cile one  to  this  dead  level  of  monotony  ex- 
cept McKinley's  occasional  efforts  to  rise 
above  it.  The  luckless  reader  of  his  ad- 
dress to  the  Mahoning  Valley  Pioneers, 
with  its  beautiful  quotation  from  **  a 
gifted  songstress  of  this  valley,"  or  of  his 
discourse  to  the  Ohio  State  Grange,  with 
his  easy  flinging  about  of  all  that  **  Cato, 
the  eloquent  orator  and  great  general," 
"old  Virgil,"  ••  the  historians  of  China," 
and  a  long  line  of  ex-Presidents  had  said 
about  farming  (all  obviously  drawn  fresh 
from  some  book  of  elegant  extracts) — one 
condemned  to  witness  the  dray  horse  thus 
frisking  about  will  cry  out,  we  say,  for  a 
return  to  the  old  shambling  trot.  The  ap- 
petite developed  by  a  slight  experience  of 
McKinley  flowers  of  fancy  for  a  column  of 
McKinley  flgures  and  extracts  from  the 
Iron  Age  is  simply  amazing  to  one  who 
has  not  tried  it. 

These  may  seem  slight  tests  of  oratory, 
but  they  are  really  among  the  most 
searching.  The  oratorical  temperament 
is  in  nothing  more  truly  revealed  than  in 
its  incidental,  its  extemporized  graces 
and  felicities.  Their  absence,  or  misera- 
ble failure  in  laboriously  attempting  them, 
is  a  surface  indication,  to  be  sure,  but  an 
indication  just  as  faUl  as  bad  spelling  or 
bad  grammar  would  be  in  one  setting  up 
for  an  educated  man.  (There  is,  by  the 
way,  a  deal  of  bad  grammar  In  this  Mc- 
Kinley tome,  despite  its  revbion  by  Mr. 


McKinley  himself,  assisted  by  the  Ohio 
State  Librarian.)  Consider,  too,  the  mat- 
ter of  insight  into  character,  judgment  of 
a  man,  a  movement,  or  an  institution. 
The  really  great  orators  throw  these 
things  off  in  a  fine  glow — as.  Burke  threw 
off  his  tribute  to  Charles  Townshend— 
and  in  nothing  is  the  exaltation  of  the 
oratorical  nature,  with  its  swift  intuition 
and  vitally  metaphorical  language,  more 
clearly  displayed.  Remember  this,  and 
then  listen  to  McKinley  declaring  (to  take 
only  a  few  examples)  Oberlin  '*  unrivalled 
in  university  annals,"  and  **  scarcely  se- 
cond to  the  best  institutions  of  the 
world "  (p.  571) ;  affirming  that  Logan 
(**  Black  Jack  ")  had  achieved  **  a  success 
in  both  careers  [military  and  civil]  almost 
unrivalled  in  the  history  of  men"  (p. 
275-6);  asserting  that  WilUam  D.  Kelley 
('•Pig- Iron  Kelley"),  as  '*  a  student  and 
master  of  political  economy,  was  probably 
without  a  superior  in  the  present  genera- 
tion "  (p.  448).  Of  a  man  capable  of  such 
things  we  can  only  say,  as  Disraeli  once 
said  cynically  of  himself,  '*  Circumstances 
have  forced  me  to  do  a  good  deal  of  talk- 
ing, but  nature  meant  me  to  be  a  silent 
man." 

But  logic,  force,  impact  of  relentless 
argument  are,  after  all,  the  weightier 
matters  of  political  oratory,  and  it  may 
be  said  that  herein  lies  McKinley's  title 
to  rank  with  Webster.  As  to  logic,  he  is 
evidently  of  De  Quincey's  opinion,  that 
any  fool  can  reason  correctly  from  given 
premises,  but  that  the  true  logician  is 
known  by  the  choice  of  the  premises  from 
which  to  reason.  Hence  comes  his  pe- 
culiar greatness  in  varying  his  premises 
to  suit  the  conclusion  he  wishes  to  draw. 
Take  his  one  fundamental  doctrine,  of 
which  he  is  a  master  if  he  is  of  anything 
— the  doctrine  that  the  foreigner  pays  the 
tax.  This  is  an  absolute  and  unqualified 
truth  in  Virginia  (p.  185)  and  Ohio  (p.  372); 
but  in  Georgia  (p.  342)  it  becomes  the  as- 
sertion that  "  the  duty  is  rarely  paid  by 
the  consumer,"  and  in  Washington  (p. 
411)  the  admission  that ''  it  [the  tariff  tax] 
may  add  a  little  temporarily  to  the  cost  to 
the  consumer."  On  the  main  question 
we  say  nothing,  and  refrain  from  pitting 
Hamilton  against  McKinley ;  but  as  a 
specimen  of  deft  changing  hands  and 
ability  to  dispute  on  either  side,  we  sub- 
mit that  it  shows  McKinley  to  have  a 
logical  faculty  beyond  anything  that  Web- 
ster ever  dreamed  of. 

In  one  respect,  we  admit,  McKinley's 
oratory  is  overwhelming  and  irresistible. 
No  man  ever  lived  who  was  his  equal  in 
demonstrating  what  nobody  questions,  or 
in  cramming  down  the  throats  of  his  ad- 
versaries the  propositions  with  which  they 
themselves  start.  His  unique  impressive- 
ness  is  best  seen  when  he  is  arguing  some 
such  thesis  as  that  a  government  must 
have  a  revenue.  The  Union  League  Com- 
mittee on  Political  Reform  have  come 
dangerously  near  him  on  this  subject; 
but,  on  the  whole,  not  even  those  fierce 
slajfers  of  the  slain  can  rival  McKinley  in 


this  chosen  field.  He  rides  down  all  o^y- 
ponents  like  a  whirlwind.  Ill  betide  the 
man  who  should  dare  to  maintain,  in  the 
face  of  his  noble  wrath,  that  a  govern- 
ment can  pay  its  bills  without  money, 
that  revenue  may  rain  into  the  Treasury 
from  the  clouds,  that  neither  internal  nor 
external  taxes  are  necessary.  All  such 
suggestions  McKinley  dashes  aside  im- 
petuously and  with  lofty  scorn.  He  pur- 
sues the  wretched  sophists  who  SflBert 
that  a  government  needs  no  revenue,  into 
every  hole  and  corner  where  they  seek  a 
refuge  from  his  lightnings,  and  drags 
them  out  trembling  and  begging  (or 
mercy.  America  never  before  had  an  ora- 
tor capable  of  such  feats.  And  few  can 
she  have  had  able  to  invite  comparison 
with  McKinley  on  such  a  theme  as  **The 
American  Home."  His  panegyric  on  that 
institution,  his  stern  and  unyielding  op- 
position to  everything  that  threatens  it, 
his  defiance,  in  his  own  single  person,  of 
all  its  enemies,  his  bold  assertion  that 
"  the  good  home  makes  the  good  citizen, 
and  the  good  citizen  makes  wholesome 
public  sentiment " — who,  we  ask,  can  read 
or  hear  all  this  without  paying  tde  orator 
the  tribute  of  a  tear,  or  mayhap  a  groan  f 
We  should  be  glad  to  think  more  highly 
of  the  intellect,  as  of  the  convictions  and 
courage,  of  the  man  whom,  as  Col.  John 
Hay  informs  the  London  TimeSf  '*a  singu- 
larly spontaneous  movement  of  the  voters" 
has  already  chosen  President  of  the  United 
States.  If  we  had  that  form  of  gratitude 
to  McKinley  which  consists  of  a  lively 
sense  of  favors  to  come,  we  might  be  able 
to  see  in  him,  as  Col.  Hay  does,  **un usual 
qualities,  extraordinary  ability  and  force 
of  character."  But  having  no  other  means 
of  judging  mind  than  by  the  products  of 
mind,  we  see  no  reason  for  calling  upon 
any  of  America's  greatest  orators  to  take 
a  lower  seat  and  give  place  to  one  worthier; 
and  if  any  one,  after  surviving  654  pages 
of  McKinley,  thinks  differently,  we  should 
be  as  anxious  as  Charles  Lamb  to  be 
allowed  to  examine  that  man's  phrenolo- 
gical development. 


THE  ALBANY  POLICE  JUDGMENT. 

The  Albatiy  Law  Journal  justly  ineiela 
on  the  great  gravity  of  the  doctrinefl  laid 
down  by  Judge  Herrick  in  delivering  the 
opinion  of  the  AppeiZate  Division  of  the 
Third  Department  in  the  Albany  police 
case.  It  IB  true  that  the  opinion  has  not 
yet  been  a^rmed  by  the  Court  of  Appeal^ 
but  the  fact  that  it  came  from  a  majority 
of  four  out  of  five  membere  of  the  Appel* 
late  Division  raiB^s  a  probability  that  it 
will  receive  the  sanction  of  the  Court  of 
AppealB  also.  Should  it  do  so,  its  impor- 
tance for  all  municipal  reform  era  m  thli 
State,  for  all  civii-eervlce  aod  munidpaJ 
reform  aesociatiODi,  and  all  persona  labor ^ 
ing  to  form  '*  a  municipal  party  "  her©  or 
elsewhere,  caonot  be  ovi;rrat«d,  and  9e 
call  to  it  the  earnest  attention  of  all  tucb 
persons. 
Most  of  our  readers  will  remembeir  that 


June  1 8,  1896] 


The   N"ation. 


467 


during  all  the  recent  agitation  for  the 
divorce  of  municipal  adminietration  from 
party  politics,  we  were  met,  by  both  ene- 
mies and  many  well-intentioned  friends, 
with  the  argument  that  thii  was  impossible 
as  long  as  the  power  of  the  Legislature 
oyer  the  city  was  exercised  as  at  present, 
and  that  even  if  we  were  only  municipal 
men  during  city  elections,  we  should  have 
to  be  party  men  when  we  came  to  elect 
members  of  the  Senate  and  Assembly. 
It  was  difficult  or  impossible  to  reply  to 
this  argument.  The  candidates  for  the 
Legislature  were  sure  to  be  either  Repub- 
licans or  Democrats,  and  the  Legislature 
itself  was  sure  to  exercise  constant  con- 
trol over  city  affairs.  This  control  not 
only  exists,  but  has  been  growing  for 
thirty  years.  The  cities  of  the  State 
have  each  a  charter  or  organic  law,  but 
this  law  is  liable  to,  and  undergoes,  inces- 
sant modification  at  the  hands  of  the 
Legislature,  generally  against  the  will  of 
the  city.  During  all  this  period,  not  one 
city  of  the  State  has  enjoyed  what  is  call- 
ed local  self-government  or  "  home  rule  " 
in  any  sense  in  which  the  term  is  ordina- 
rily used.  The  police,  the  lighting,  the 
education,  the  petty  justice,  the  street- 
cleaning,  the  taxation  of  every  city  in  the 
State  are  controlled  by  the  Legislature. 
That  is,  its  local  affairs  are  all  in  the 
hands  of  men  who  do  not  live  in  it,  who 
have  no  knowledge  of  it,  and  caonot  have, 
humanly  speakiDg,  much  concern  about 
it  We  cannot  in  New  York  pave  a  street, 
open  a  public  school,  employ  or  promote 
a  policeman,  fix  our  rate  of  taxation,  light 
or  clean  our  streets,  without  legislative 
sanction  and  regulation.  The  same  is  true 
of  every  other  city. 

Originally— that  is,  forty  or  fifty  years 
ago,  when  the  effect  of  railroads  on  the 
growth  of  cities  first  began  to  be  felt— 
the  motives  for  this  interference  may  have 
been  good.  People  were  called  on  to  deal 
rather  suddenly  with  a  new  problem » and 
tMlf-govemment  in  large  communities  like 
this  seemed  to  be  breaking  dowo,  and 
State  interference,  in  the  first  moments  of 
surprise  and  alarm,  seemed  called  for. 
But  very  early,  as  early  as  1870,  it  was 
found  that  the  matter  had  another  and 
very  serious  side,  that  cities  had  grown 
too  large  to  be  successfully  managed  in 
this  way;  and,  soon  after  the  Tweed  scan- 
dal, both  parties  began  to  inscribe  *'  home 
rule*'  on  their  flags  in  obedience  to  a 
growing  sentiment,  but  without  the  least 
intention  of  carrying  it  into  practice.  In 
the  meantime  60  per  cent,  of  the  popula- 
tion of  the  State  has  come  to  live  in  the 
cities,  and  their  united  annual  revenues, 
if  we  may  judge  from  New  York,  amount 
to  about  t75,000,000,  and  the  practice  of 
interference  with  them  from  the  outside— 
that  is,  of  regulating  their  government 
and  their  taxation,  and  of  filling  their 
offices  in  the  interest  of  people  who  may 
not  and  generally  do  not  live  in  them— 
has  become  a  regular  business  by  which 
a  small  army  of  men  make  their  liveli- 
hood either  as  legislators,  ** owners"  of 


legislators,  bosses,  lol^byists,  or  politi- 
cians. 

This  class  is  now  very  large  and  increas- 
ing, and  generally  makes  enough  in  the 
winter  by  minatory  or  corrupt  legislation 
directed  against  cities,  or  corporations 
having  their  seats  in  cities,  to  live  with 
comfort  during  the  remainder  of  the  year. 
Many  profess  to  be  lawyers;  others  ard 
supposed  to  be  in  **  real  estate,"  but  the 
bulk  of  them  do  not  take  the  trouble  to 
assume  any  occupation  at  all.  They  are 
Toms,  Dicks,  Charleys,  Mikes,  Abes, 
Jakes,  Barneys,  often  not  only  without 
any  recognixed  calling,  but  with  too  little 
character  to  get  places  with  any  private 
employer.  They  are  nominally  in  the  ser- 
vice of  one  party  or  the  other,  but  their 
business  is  to  threaten,  defeat,  or  delay 
legislation  about  cities  at  Albany.  This, 
too,  is  done  in  the  most  arbitraiy  way, 
and  without  assigning  any  reason.  City 
offices  are  often,  as  in  the  case  of  Buffa- 
lo, Albany,  and  this  city,  filled  without 
notice  by  the  boss  in  control  of  the  ma- 
jority, so  that  a  class  of  adventurers, 
like  the  two  Sheehans,  has  grown  up,  who 
are  moved  about  from  city  to  city  to  fill 
its  leading  places  as  the  boss  or  they  them- 
selves may  think  best.  Against  such  pro- 
ceedings the  protests  of  the  city  itself  or 
its  officials  are  useless.  The  late  amend- 
ments to  the  Constitution  gave  the  mayors 
a  consultative  voice  in  local  legislation, 
thinking  it  would  check  these  practices, 
but,  as  we  see  in  the  Greater  New  York 
case,  it  has  not  had  the  slightest  effect. 
The  opposition  of  the  two  mayors  has  had 
no  effect,  although  the  legislation  ema- 
nated from  a  small  village  on  the  Hudson 
and  from  a  distant  county. 

We  might  fill  columns  with  illustrations 
of  this  system.  The  general  result  is  that, 
as  is  shown  in  the  Albany  police  case,  local 
self-government,  as  it  has  always  existed 
and  been  insisted  on  by  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race,  preceding  all  written  constitutions, 
has  practically  disappeared  in  this  State. 
There  is  less  of  it  than  in  any  European 
country.  Charters  are  granted  here,  but 
they  are  altered  annually  by  persons  not 
residing  in  the  locality,  and  in  defiance  of 
the  inhabitants,  which  is  centralization  in 
a  form  hardly  seen  since  Louis  XIV.  The 
recent  decision  in  the  Albany  case  charac- 
terises this  sort  of  thing  fitly,  and  abso- 
lutely denies  the  right  of  Legislatures  to 
interfere  in  local  concerns,  as  long  as  they 
are  conducted  constitutionally.  They  have 
no  right  to  alter  the  constitution  of  police 
boards,  or  say  how  they  shall  be  filled;  to 
say  whether  a  street  needs  paving  or  how 
it  shall  be  paved;  to  say  whether  the  city 
shall  be  united  to  some  other  city,  or  how 
its  schools  shall  be  conducted.  AH  this  is 
local  matter  for  local  decision. 

Should  the  decision  of  the  Appellate 
Division  be  sustained,  it  will  almost  work 
a  revolution  in  this  ^tate.  It  will  make 
the  establishment  of  real  municipal  gov- 
ernment easy  all  over  the  State.  It  will 
kill  all  the  organizations,  from  Tammany 
down,  which  live  by  controlling  and  af-  ' 


fee  ting  legislation.  It  will  deliver  cor- 
porations from  the  blackmail  of  the  bossesi 
and  it  will  bring  the  reason  and  good  sense 
of  the  inhabitants  to  bear  on  municipal 
concerns.  It  will  put  a  stop  to  those  an- 
nual sorrowful  expeditions  of  good  citi- 
zens to  Albany  to  resist  rascality,  by  argu- 
ments addressed  to  a  lot  of  venal  Boysi 
whose  only  answer  is  that  "  it  is  sure  to 
pass."  Should  the  Court  of  Appeals  con* 
firm  the  judgment,  all  reform  organlsa*. 
tions  will  have  a  new  weapon  to  work 
with,  before  which  everything  must  go 
down.  The  Boys  are  already  sorrowful 
over  the  competitive  examinations.  Take 
away  from  them  the  legislative  business, 
and  want,  crime,  or  honest  industry  would 
stare  them  in  the  face. 


FREE  TRADE  IN  ENGLAND, 

The  rubbish  which  some  of  our  papers 
allow  their  London  correspondents  to  pre- 
pare for  the  American  market  is  receiving 
another  striking  exemplification  in  the 
pretence  that  free  trade  in  England  is  in 
some  danger.  We  are  fresh  from  some- 
thing of  the  same  kind  in  the  case  of  bi- 
metallism. For  years  it  was  impossible  to 
persuade  American  bimetallists  that  their 
cause  was  not  making  rapid  progress  in 
England ;  and  when  Mr.  Balfour  came  out 
strongly  on  their  side,  we  were  told  that 
his  advent  to  power  would  be  the  signal 
for  the  pound  sterling  to  share  its  honors 
with  silver  at  some  ratio  or  other.  Well, 
he  has  got  into  power,  and  the  new  minis- 
try has  no  more  thought  of  meddling  with 
the  currency  than  the  old  one.  The  pre- 
sent Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  makes 
nearly  as  merry  over  the  bimetallists  as 
Sir  William  Harcourt  did.  In  other  words, 
the  nation  pays  even  less  attention  to  lir. 
Balfour's  views  on  the  currency  than  it 
pays  to  his  views  on  the  Unknowable. 

We  are  just  witnessing  a  similar  phe- 
nomenon in  the  case  of  lir.  Chamber- 
lain. This  gentleman  has  got  into  a 
Conssrvative  Ministry  without  having  a 
single  rag  left  of  the  causes  and  beliefs  to 
which  he  devoted  his  earlier  life.  The 
Tory  Ministry  is  using  its'  enormous  ma- 
jority to  attack  or  damage  the  causes  for 
which  he  once  stood,  and  is  taking  no 
notice  of  the  beautiful  promises  he  has 
recently  made  to  the  poor  and  the  aged 
and  forlorn.  Consequently,  it  has  con- 
siderately given  him  a  place  in  which  hit 
former  record  cannot  well  be  used  for  his 
detriment.  Hitherto  he  has  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  cok)nies,  good,  bad,  or  in- 
different. For  him  they  are  virgin  soil. 
Accordingly  he  is  Colonial  Secretary,  and 
his  first  act  w^  to  promise  that  some- 
thing should  be  done  for  the  colonies, 
and  that  this  would  probably  take  the 
form  of  a  sort  of  imperial  federation, 
based  on  a  customs  union.  The  colonies 
nearly  all,  if  not  all,  raise  their  revenues, 
as  they  now  have  a  right  to  do,  by  cus- 
toms duties.  These  duties  are  mainly 
levied  on  English  goods.  Their  own  pro- 
ducts are  admitted  duty  free  into  Eng- 


468 


Tlie   I^ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1616 


land.  It  was  propoeed,  therefore,  that 
they  should  remit  or  greatly  reduce  these 
duties  in  consideratioo  of  being  members 
of  an  imperial  confederation,  being  pro- 
tected in  time  of  war,  etc  The  colonies 
promptly  refused.  They  needed  the  money 
badly,  and  were  ready  to  take  the  risks 
of  war.  This,  combined  with  distance, 
diversity  of  interests,  difference  in  form 
of  government,  etc,  seemed  to  dispose  of 
.the  imperial- federation  idea.  A  federa- 
tion one  leading  member  of  which  was  in 
America,  one  in  the  South  Pacific,  and 
one  in  England,  seemed  little  more  than 
a  beautiful  dream. 

This  was  bad  for  Mr.  Chamberlain. 
How  was  his  something  for  the  colonies 
to  be  doneT  He  had,  when  the  chambers 
of  commerce  came  together,  after  his  un- 
successful attempt  on  old  KrQger,  to  say 
something.  So  he  intimated  gently,  tenta- 
tively, that  if  the  colonies  would  propose 
that  Great  Britain  should  put  a  tax  on 
everything  she  receives  from  other  parts  of 
the  world,  except  the  colonies,  they  would 
not  meet  with  an  immediate  refusal. 
This  is  probably  true,  but  the  reason  why 
they  would  not  meet  with  an  immediate 
refusal  is  that  probably  no  notice,  beyond 
a  mention  in  Parliament,  would  be  taken 
of  the  proposal.  It  would  be  received, 
like  the  bimetallic  idea,  as  an  absurdity. 
No  ministry  would  venture  to  show  it  any 
favor.  It  would  be  far  more  than  a  re- 
duction of  duties  on  colonial  products,  for 
colonial  products  oome  in  duty  free.  It 
would  be  a  proposition  to  clap  a  duty  on 
French,  German,  Russian,  Italian  pro 
ducts,  on  nearly  every  article  of  comfo<' 
and  neoessify  from  all  parts  of  the  world 
which  an  Eoglishman  now  uses,  and  which 
he  now  receives  dufy  free.  He  would  be 
asked  to  do  this,  too,  not  because  the  Eng- 
lish people  are  dissatisfied  with  free  trade, 
for  the  country,  as  the  late  statement  of 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  shows, 
was  never  so  prosperous  as  under  free 
trade,  but  to  oblige  Mr.  Chamberlain, 
Lord  Salisbury,  and  the  colonists. 

Here  again  there  is  a  striking  resem- 
blance to  bimetallism.  During  the  whole 
bimetallic  agitation  there  was  not  a  pre- 
tence that  the  English  people,  or  its  great 
merchants  or  traders  or  exchange  dealers, 
were  dissatisfied  with  the  gold  standard. 
What  was  said  was  that  Senator  Morgan, 
and  Senator  Lodge,  and  President  An- 
drews, and  Mr.  Bland  were  dissatisfied, 
and  that  if  Eogland  did  not  abandon  the 
gold  standard,  there  would  be  trouble. 
Senator  Lodge  propoeed  to  discriminate 
against  her  goods  on  account  of  it,  and 
ascribed  American  hatred  of  England  to 
that  cause,  solely  or  mainly.  But  the 
English  people  paid  no  attention  to  these 
objectors.  It  was  ready  to  confer  with 
them  as  much  as  they  pleased,  but  it  had 
no  more  idea  of  touching  the  pound  ster- 
ling than  of  dethroning  the  Queen.  This 
simple,  plain,  conspicuous  truth  has  need- 
ed twenty  years  in  order  to  dawn  on  our 
silver  and  bimetallic  fanatics.  It  would 
have  taken  longer,  but  for  the  advent  of 


the  Salisbury  Ministry,  which,  curiously 
enough,  was  a  striking  product  of  English 
conservatism,  and  yet  was  expected  to  be- 
gin its  reign  by  a  tremendous  change  in 
the  mechanism  of  English  business. 

A  recent  striking  article  in  the  London 
Economist  on  this  subject  treats  the  pro- 
tectionist apostles  with  the  contempt  they 
deserve.  But,  in  commenting  on  the  fail- 
ure of  Cobden*s  prophecies  about  the  adop- 
tion of  free  trade  elsewhere,  it  fails  to  no- 
tice the  fact  that,  since  Cobden*s  day,  the 
government  of  all  the  leading  countries  in 
Europe  has  passed  into  the  hands  of  a  dif- 
ferent class.  That  is,  they  have  all  become 
democratic  He  could  not  now  make  his 
French  treaty  with  France  or  any  other 
of  them.  Nor,  probably,  could  Sir  Robert 
Peel  adopt  free  trade.  Trade  and  currency 
have  been  taken  hold  of  by  the  masses,  and 
they  are  learning  their  lessons  about  them. 
Protection  is  the  natural  resort  of  the  igno- 
rant or  inexperienced  man.  To  keep  the 
market  to  himself  is  the  one  expedient  of 
the  thoughtless  or  uninstructed.  The  gres  t 
conditions  of  commerce  and  exchange 
are  hard  to  understand.  **  Protection  and 
cheap  money*'  will  therefore  be  the  cry 
of  the  uninstructed  whenever  they  have 
possession  of  a  government  until  they  learn 
better.  The  failure  of  '*  Cobdenism '*  to 
spread  is  really  not  nearly  so  wonderful  or 
so  unexpected  as  the  control,  thirty  years 
after  his  death,  of  the  currency  of  a  com- 
mer-^ial  nation  of  70,000,000  by  a  popular 
an  embly  partly  composed  of  ignorant  and 
/enal  negroes,  whom  the  two  adverse  in- 
terests accuse  each  other  of  purchasing 
for  cash.  Cobden  did  not  foresee  this,  and 
would  not  have  believed  it;  why  should 
her 


THE  AMHERST   ECLIPSE  EXPEDITION 
TO  JAPAN. 

Honolulu,  May  94, 1890. 
ArncB  fifteen  days  of  voyaging  over  the  lone- 
ly  Pacific  Ocean,  the  nigged  cliffs  and  peaks  of 
the  Hawaiian  Islands  broke  the  ocean  horison 
with  a  serrated  welcome.  The  Coronet  came 
to  her  anchorage  In  lovely  Hooolula  harbor 
late  in  the  evening  of  May  10,  and  the  next 
momiDg  showed  calm  water  ali  about,  many 
vessels  at  anchor  (our  nearest  neighbor  being 
the  United  States  steamship  Adamtl)^  raoges 
of  precipitoos  mountains,  and  the  city  lying  at 
their  feet,  while  sunshine  almost  tropical  in 
its  warmth  reminded  us  of  our  latitude,  as  the 
Southern  Cross  had  done  the  night  before. 
While  the  scientific  gentlemen  became  imme- 
diately absorbed  in  details  of  work,  others  of 
the  company  were  more  interested  in  the  im- 
mense eruption  of  Mauna  Loa,  which  had  been 
in  progress  for  more  than  two  weeks  on  the 
island  of  Hawaii  ;  and  during  the  CoroneVa 
stay  at  Honolulu,  a  secondary  trip  was  planned 
to  the  volcano.  The  weekly  steamer  sailed  the 
next  day  for  the  voyage  of  270  miles,  and, 
quite  as  if  they  had  not  just  come  from  more 
than  2,000  miles  of  ocean  travelling,  the  6*oro- 
n€€M  party  gayly  embarked  on  the  steamer 
Hall  for  Hawaii.  The  forward  deck  of  the 
HaU  contained  a  motley  but  most  interesting 
crowd  of  passengers.  Chinese,  Japanese,  na- 
tive islanders,  Portuguese,  and  every  conceiva- 
ble half-breed  combination  were  lying  about 


in  picturesque  confusion.  Small  Japsiiese 
babies  with  their  shaved  beads  and  hair 
fringes,  Chinese  infants  with  their  qaeues,  di- 
versified the  scene  where  the  deck  wss  so 
thickly  covered  with  the  various  reposing  na- 
tionalities, all  in  thehr  native  attitudes,  thst 
stepping-room  was  out  of  the  question. 

No  one  who  has  not  visited  the  islands  can  pro- 
perly appreciate  their  remoteness  from  one  an- 
other. The  map  appears  to  indicate  the  litUe 
group  as  lying  dose  together,  perhaps  an  hour 
or  two^s  sail  apart.  But  the  steamer  takes  two 
days  and  a  night  to  go  from  Oahu,  on  whicfa 
Honolulu  is  situated,  to  Hawaii,  where  are  Maa* 
naLoaandlCaunaKeaandKilauea.  Thsiceo- 
ery  of  the  different  islands  passed  was  unnsnal 
and  impresdTe— Molokai  and  Lanai,  with  their 
cliffs  and  ravines,  and  ICani,  with  a  wonderful 
sunset  light  on  its  red-lava  mountain  ilopss 
and  bright  green  sugar-cane  fields.  By  the 
courtesy  of  the  purser  we  landed  on  Mani  st 
the  little  town  of  Tiahaina,  for  an  hour  or  two 
— a  purely  native  town,  full  of  coooanut  palms 
and  strange  vegetation,  a  fine  beach,  and  ca- 
rious houses.  But  the  first  interesting  stop  on 
Hawaii  itself  was  the  next  day,  at  Kealakea- 
kua  Bay,  where  Captain  Cook  is  buriedand  a 
monument  stands  on  guard  in  his  honor,  tha- 
dowed  by  an  enormous  cliff  over  400  feet  high, 
and  fronting  a  bay  where  the  water  is  as  desr 
and  green  as  an  emerald.  It  seemed  odd  to  be 
able  to  telephone  from  any  of  theee  little  na- 
tive towns  to  all  other  places  on  the  island, 
but  a  perfect  telephone  system  is  one  of  the 
blessings  of  this  fair  republic.  The  news 
about  Mauna  Loa  was,  however,  discoorsg- 
ing.  Every  fresh  reply  over  the  wires  wss  to 
the  effect  that  Its  eruption  was  nnmistakablj 
over— no  fire  could  be  seen.  Bat  hope  still 
lived  that  something  might  yet  remain  when 
we  reached  our  port^  at  the  foot  of  that  great 
mountain,  18,700  feet  high,  whose  base  is  so 
enormous  and  the  slope  so  gradoal  that  iti 
true  proportions  are  quite  disguised.  All  daj 
the  rugged  shores  of  Hawaii  were  skirted,  ths 
top  of  the  superb  mountain  lightly  veiled  hi 
mist,  the  coast  a  series  of  lava  cliffs  in  whidi 
are  caves  where  often  native  dead  are  buried, 
and  where  the  surf  breaks  in  tremendous  waUi 
of  white,  with  spray  fiying  high,  and  all  the 
air  filled  with  its  resounding  boom. 

The  landing  was  made  at  Punalun  in  small 
boats  through  the  surf— a  very  exciting  trip, 
as  the  great  breakers  chased  us  from  behind, 
raised  us  in  a  wild  rush  forward  for  a  moment, 
broke  themselves  on  the  lava  reefs  on  both 
sides,  and  still  the  natives  kept  calmly  on, 
guiding  the  boat  through  the  dangerous  pas- 
sages, taking  each  wave  just  right  until  we 
were  safely  brought  up  beside  the  little  wharf, 
filled  with  a  crowd  of  natives  and  Chinese, 
and  one  more  jump  brought  us.  among  theoL 
It  was  here  that  the  famous  mud  flood  of  1868 
swept  down  so  rapidly  that  many  inhabitants 
were  killed,  and  miles  of  valuable  land  made 
useless.  Farther  up  the  coast  we  had  passed 
the  great  lava  flow  of  that  year,  when  convul- 
sions of  all  sorts  stirred  the  island  to  its  foun- 
dations. A  tidal  wave  buried  the  Punalaa 
road  deep  in  permanent  breakers,  and  earth- 
quakes moved  houses  quite  off  their  founds- 
tions,  and  broke  vases  and  china  indiscrimi* 
nately,  so  that  now  dining-room  closets  are 
fitted  up  like  a  ship*8  galley,  with  guards  in 
front  of  every  shelf.  Fortunately,  the  lava 
fiows  very  slowly—but  a  few  inches  a  day— 
and  there  is  plenty  of  time  to  remove  goods 
and  prevent  any  fatalities.  The  flow  of  1881 
went  toward  the  town  of  Hik\  and,  kss|iiag 
steadily  on  its  way,  caused  great  depreariott  Sa 
the  minds  of  the  inhafaitanta  and  1 


June  1 8,  1896] 


Tlie  N"atlon. 


469 


real  wUte.  Land*  of  aooeftnU  iiMinory  were 
•old  for  a  mmg.  Bat  wb«o  withio  three-qaar- 
ttn  of  a  mile  of  the  town,  tho  PrioceM  Ruth, 
a  member  of  the  old  royal  Kam«liameba  Hmi- 
Iji  weot  oot  with  a  oompatty  of  friends  to  ap- 
peeee  if  poarible  the  wrath  of  Ptf e,  goddeai  of 
fire.  Bottlee  of  brandy  and  gin,  pige,  chick. 
•OS,  illk  handkerchief^  and  looks  of  hair  were 
thrown  into  the  ihiggish  stream  with  appro- 
priate oeremoniee,  and  the  flow  stopped  the 
next  day,  diTiding  iteelf  and  dying  out  harm- 
leasly.  Bot  the  real  estate  could  not  be  bought 
back  by  its  former  owners.  Neither  terror  of 
Fele  nor  gratitude  was  suflldent  for  that. 

At  Punalun,  society  seems  to  be  in  a  state  of 
prlmitiTe  simplicity.  After  walking  up  to  the 
UtUe  hotel  through  a  path  between  lily-poods 
bordered  by  rushes,  no  proprietor  was  appa. 
reot.  ETerythittg  was  open,  all  on  one  floor, 
doors  and  windows  hospitably  wide,  beds  care- 
fully made,  and  not  a  soul  in  sight.  80  we  took 
possessioa  and  slept  calmly,  a  Chinaman  pre- 
paring a  delicious  breakfast  next  morning.  A 
short  ride  on  the  funniest  little  rusty  toy  railway 
imaginable,  through  a  desolate  lava  country 
where  white  poppies  bloomed  larishlyf  took  us 
to  Pahala  plantation,  where  tons  of  fine  sugar 
are  made  annually.  The  methods  and  ma- 
chinery were  of  great  interest,  but  horses  were 
waiting,  and  an  ancient  stage  took  iu  burden, 
while  the  others  rode  the  rough  but  capable 
horses  of  the  region— the  ladies  riding  man- 
fashion,  in  the  style  of  which  Kate  Field  ap- 
proved when  not  carried  to  excess,  and  which 
is  uniyersal  here.  After  the  charmingly  hos- 
pitable manner  of  the  islanders,  we  were  en- 
tertained at  luncheon  at  the  Kapapala  Ranch, 
a  garden  of  beauty  in  the  midst  of  great  bar- 
renness;  and  here  a  ririd  account  of  the  great 
emptloo  was  giyen— the  suomiit  crater  (Mo- 
kuaweoweo),  a  lake  of  liquid  fire,  while  two 
great  fiery  fountains  played  upwards  from  iU 
midst  more  than  800  feet.  Prom  the  depths  of 
a  heavy  Bnow.storm  the  benumbed  and  half- 
fainting  company  watched  through  the  night 
this  gigantic  qwctade  and  listened  to  the  never- 
ceasing  soar  of  the  flames  and  the  internal 
seething  of  this  indescribable  cauldron.  And 
that  was  but  a  few  days  before,  when  ships  at 
sea  could  view  the  pillar  of  fire  on  Mauna  Loa^s 
orsst  for  150  miles,  and  now  it  was  all  out  and 
gone;  not  a  brsath  more  of  this  terrific  energy, 
and  only  a  calm  suounit  reposing  peacefully 
above,  innocently  laying  its  huge  crest  against 
the  sky  like  any  New  England  hill.  But  Ki- 
lauea  remained,  only  about  one-third  the  height 
of  Mauna  Loa,  to  be  sure,  yet  always  interest- 
ing and  evidently  preparing  for  an  eruption  of 
its  own. 

With  much  reluotanoe  the  plan  of  climbing 
nearly  14,000  feet  into  the  air  was  abandoned, 
since  the  great  sight  had  seethed  iteelf  into 
rest,  and  the  Volcano  House  at  Kilauea  was 
made  the  objective  point.  The  ride  ovor  lava, 
■tUTeoed  as  it  fiowed  into  weird  shapes  and 
crawling  circles,  occasionally  heaped  into  wild 
msMis.  but  always  smooth  and  rounded—the 
pahoehoe  of  the  islander— was  one  to  be  long 
remembered.  Brilliant  yellow  and  scarlet  milk- 
weed blossomed  lavishly  all  along  the  way, 
standing  deooratively  against  black  lava  back- 
grounds,  while  armies  of  brown  buttsrfiies 
looked  as  if  they  had  escaped  from  tome  New 
England  meadow  to  this  strange  and  foreign 
scene  on  the  uplands  of  Hawaii.  The  goddess 
Fele  seema  very  food  of  red,  as  naturally  sha 
might,  since  red  flowers,  red  leaves,  red  berriea, 
and  red  birds  abound  00  the  sk>pes  towards  her 
oitadeL  But  she  is  a  very  jealous  lady,  and 
no  flower  or  berry  mnst  be  picked  oo  the  way 
op  to  Baiaoea,  for  that  would  imply  that  one 


admired  tbem^and  homage  must  be  paid  her 
flirst;  otherwise  she  will  seod  rain  or  other 
damper  to  the  satisfaetion  of  the  traveller. 
No  native  would  think  of  plucking  anything 
on  the  way  to  the  crater.  Fsle^s  particular 
flower,  the  ohia,  grows  on  large  trees,  a  mag- 
nificent fringe  of  scarlet,  very  tempting  to  the 
visitor.  Towards  evening  a  cloud  of  white 
steam  indicated  the  nearness  of  KHauea,  and 
steam  bursting  out  of  holes  and  cracks  in  the 
ground  all  about,  very  hot  and  fringed  with 
exquisite  sulphur  crystals,  formed  the  sugges- 
tive approach  to  the  Volcano  House.  Perched 
high  on  one  wall  of  the  enormous  crater,  the 
hotel  commands  the  entire  scene  of  desolate 
grandeur.  A  lake  of  black  lava,  8>^  mUes  in 
one  direction  by  1>^  in  the  other,  is  surrounded 
by  nearly  perpendicular  walls  varying  from 
750  to  900  feet  high,  at  one  end  of  which  a  se- 
condary crater  sends  out  volumes  of  sulphur 
steam.  Mauna  Loa  rises  grandly  towards  the 
west,  and,  in  the  north,  Mauna  Kea  raises  its 
more  rugged  peak  yet  higher. 

The  descent  into  the  crater,  on  the  sure- 
footed horses,  is  a  memorable  experience. 
Back  and  forth  the  narrow  path  winds,  down 
the  wall,  through  masses  of  ferns  and  foliage, 
ufitil  the  great  difit  behind  shuts  out  half  the 
sky,  and  high  up  from  its  thick  verdure  a 
single  bird- song  came  out  airily  into  the  dewy 
morning.  But  the  lake  was  unspeakable  deso- 
lation, with  its  black  lava  in  writhing,  curl- 
ing, creeping  masses  as  far  as  the  eye  could 
reach,  growing  hotter  to  the  feet  as  the  steam- 
ing crater  was  approached,  until  a  stick  thrust 
slightly  into  a  crack  came  out  in  flames. 
Strange  contradiction  of  this  fast-dying  nine- 
teenth century,  a  telephone  wire  orosses  this 
Hades  of  desolation,  and,  though  useless  now, 
onoe  served  to  connect  the  Volcano  House 
with  a  little  house  dose  to  the  active  crater. 
But,  in  the  picturesque  language  of  the  na- 
tives, **it  was  eaten  up  by  theflrs^;  that  is,  the 
hot  lava  walls  caved  and  the  UtUe  house  fell 
in  one  day.  The  lake  is  full  of  "blow.holes" 
in  this  region,  too  frightfully  hot  to  stand 
near,  and  every  tiniest  crack  sends  out  heat 
like  a  register  in  winter  when  the  furnace 
below  is  red  hot— only  in  Kilauea  one  may 
not  send  down  impatiently  to  know  why  the 
furnace  drafts  have  been  forgotten.  The  cra- 
ter is  a  bewildering  mass  of  tumbled  lava,  hiss- 
ing sulphur  steam  and  unbearable  heat.  An- 
other great  eruption  like  that  of  last  January 
is  daily  expected,  but  did  not  break  out  bef <Nne 
we  left.  The  dreary  grimness  of  a  slumbering 
but  restless  volcano  is  beyond  any  words  to 
exprees.  One  morning  the  whole  crater,  lake 
and  all,  was  flUed  with  mist  and  showers, 
while  the  early  sun  shooe  brilliantly  else- 
where, and  a  superb  rainbow  arohed  the  great 
black  pit  with  heavenly  radiance. 

Rilaueaiki,  near  by,  is  well  worth  the  walk 
through  ferny  uplands.  Another  lake  of  dead 
lava  sunk  more  than  seveo  hundred  feet 
into  the  woods,  and  about  a  mile  acrosa,  the 
great  bowl  has  nearly  perpendicular  sides, 
beavHy  wooded,  at  the  bottom  of  which  wild 
goats  browse.  This  crater  has  never  been 
active  in  historic  times.  If  spaoe  permitted, 
much  might  be  said  of  the  beautiful  and  tropi- 
cal road  to  Hilo,  on  the  other  side  of  the  island 
from  Pahala,  where  rains  are  almost  constant, 
where  coffee  is  being  extensively  raised  as  a 
probably  very  sucosasful  experimeot,  and 
where  many  curious  sights  and  people  may  be 
seen,  and  of  the  royal  native  luncfaeoo  made 
for  us  on  our  return  by  the  hospitable  friends 
at  Kapapala  Ranch,  where  young  pig  and 
chicken  wrapped  in  leaves  and  roasted  nnder 
ground,  with  poi  in  varioos  form%  wars  the 


chief  articles  00  the  table.  Out  again  from 
the  jet-black  lava  sand  beach,  where  pure 
white  surf  breaks  through  the  tumbling  wavea 
to  the  steamer  anchored  beyond,  and  the  re- 
turn journey  was  begun.  At  Kealakeakua 
Bay,  Miss  Kate  Field  came  on  the  steamer, 
looking  very  ill,  and,  as  she  said,  quite  worn 
out  with  interminable  riding  over  lava  beds, 
and  visits  at  native  houses,  searching  for  ma- 
terial  in  her  exhaustive  study  into  the  oondi- 
tion  of  the  islands.  She  wanted  me  to  sit  by 
her  for  awhile  in  her  state-room,  which  I  did, 
and  had  a  very  lively  conversation  with  the 
brilliant  but  evidently  very  ill  writer.  A 
friend  accompanied  her  as  far  as  the  nextstop- 
ping-place,  but  otherwise  she  was  qnite  alone, 
and  the  physician  of  our  expedition  found  her 
well  along  in  an  attack  of  pneumonia,  which 
must  have  begun  several  days  before.  He 
worked  over  her  for  some  time,  and  was  with 
her  all  night,  but  told  us  in  the  morning  that 
she  would  probably  not  live  twenty-four  hours. 
She  herself  had  no  idea  of  her  condition,  and 
it  devolved  upon  me  to  tell  her,  and  to  take 
her  last  messages  and  the  addroases  of  friends. 
By  constant  stimulants  she  was  kept  alive 
through  the  day  and  until  we  reached  Hono- 
lulu, but  she  died  within  an  hour  after  land- 
ing. She  had  made  many  friends  in  Honolulu, 
who  filled  the  church  for  her  funeral  and 
beaiM  the  luxuriant  island  flowers  about  her 
as  she  slept.  Much  of  her  latest  material  was 
left  in  such  form  that  it  cannot  be  used.  She 
tried  to  dictate  somewhat  to  me  at  the  last,  but 
her  mind  continually  wandered,  and  **  it  will 
need  a  lot  of  editing**  seemed  to  be  the  burden 
of  her  thought. 

Honolulu  has  been  more  than  hospitable  to 
the  Expedition,  and  it  is  with  general  regret 
that  the  Coronet  sails  off  to-morrow  toward 
Japan,  even  though  it  is  another  sunny  land, 
full  of  friendliness  and  flowers. 

Mabsl  Looms  Todd. 


THE  PARIS  SALONa 

Pabu,  May,  1800. 

At  this  season  I  am  ready  to  agree  with 
Chassagnol,  in  the  Ooncourts*  *Manette  Salo- 
mon,' that  it  would  be  well  to  discourage  some 
few  thousand  painters  a  year.  The  impression 
made  by  the  galleries  in  London  is  only  oon- 
flrmed  by  the  salons  in  Paris.  Far  too  many 
men  nowadays  play  at  being  artists,  or,  what 
is  worse,  try  to  wrest  an  income  from  art. 
The  exhibition  is  at  the  root  of  the  evil ;  and 
the  evil  has  grown  to  such  proportions  that  it 
threatens  to  kill  the  exhibition.  Already  the 
French  critic  is  asking.  Will  there  be  any  more 
big  picture  shows  in  the  twentieth  oeotury  f 
The  need  to  produce  a  novelty,  startling  if  poe- 
dble,  as  regularly  as  the  horse-chestnuts  bloa- 
som  in  the  Champe-ilTsise  and  aloog  the  Bou- 
levards, has  all  but  exhausted  the  reeouroes  of 
talent.  Genius,  fortunately,  has  seldom  stooped 
to  the  annual  straggle  for  the  rMawis  of  a  day. 

In  the  old  Sak>n  the  ''intsrval  of  fatigue,** 
as  I  have  heard  it  called,  has  led  to  so  inevi- 
table a  monotony— each  new  show  being  but  a 
repetition  of  the  last— that  I  think  I  oould 
have  described  this  year's  pictures  before  ever 
I  had  looked  at  them.  I  could  have  answered 
for  the  supremacy  of  M.  Rochegrosse  among 
the  manufacturers  of  the  huge  mocfciiM,  even 
without  seeing  his  *  Angoisse  Humalne,'  with 
its  fbtnoQS,  if  well  drawn,  pyramid  of  men 
and  wooMO  in  modem  dress,  striving,  their 
arms  uplifted,  to  reaoh  an  irideeoent  figure 
floating  in  the  sky  above,  and  symbolising— 
who  oarsa  what  r   I  could  have  known  that  M. 


4:70 


Tlie   IN'ation. 


[Vol  '62,  Na  1616 


Qerrais's  subject  would  be  an  excuse  for  a 
study  of  the  nude  In  biiUiant  light,  though  I 
doubt  if  I  should  have  foreseen  that  the  paint- 
er  of  the  **  Three  Maries  "  of  a  few  years  since 
would  condescend  to  anything  so  vulgar  as  the 
ceiling  whose  ultimate  destination  the  Cata- 
logue does  not  disclose.  I  could  hare  called 
attention  to  the  expected  horrors  and  blood- 
shed. I  could  bare  pointed  out  the  correct 
commonplace  in  the  portraits  of  M.  Bonnat 
and  M.  Benjamin  Ck)nBtant,  the  vapid  classi- 
cism of  M  Bouguereau,  the  wasted  seriousness 
of  M.  J.  P.  Laurens  and  M.  0^r6me,  the  ivory 
flesh  and  vague  shadows  of  M.  Henner.  For 
are  not  these  things  as  inevitable  in  the 
Champs-^lys^es  as  splendor  and  color  in  the 
Louvre  f  Indeed,  I  could  have  declared  with 
certainty  that  the  exceptions  in  the  vast  array 
of  misdirected  industry  were  M.  Poitelin's  po- 
etic sketches  of  barren  heath  and  moorland; 
the  romantic  landscapes  of  M.  Frangais  and 
M.  Harpignies,  still  true  to  the  traditions  of 
1880;  the  woodland  idyls  of  M.  Fantin-Latour; 
the  pamtings  of  foreigners,  more  especially  of 
Americans  and  Bnglishoien.  It  is  not  surpris- 
ing that,  in  Puis,  voices  are  heard  lamenting 
the  disappearance  of  French  art  in  the  cosmo- 
politan invasion  1  The  pictures  to  catch  my 
eye  were  Mr.  Bisbing's  landscape  with  cattle, 
Mr.  Loeb^s  portraits,  Mr.  Pierce's  shepherdess, 
Mr.  Pieknell*s  long  straight  road  through  open 
country,  Mr.  Inness's  old  garden,  Mr.  Dodge's 
ceiling  for  the  Washington  library,  which,  if 
not  very  original,  is  at  least  a  model  of  re- 
straint compared  to  M.  Oerfais's  light  and 
nakedness  run  mad;  while  I  regretted  not  find- 
ing Mr.  MacE^wen  in  his  accustomed  place. 
Or  else  it  was  Mr.  Orchardson's  "Toung 
Duke"  that  arrested  me,  or  Mr.  Lorimer's 
**Mariage  de  Convenance,*'  a  work  I  have 
already  described  when  it  was  shown  in  Lon- 
don. 

80,  also,  with  the  sculpture.  M.  Frdmiet's 
"St  Michel*'  has  something  of  the  elegance, 
something  of  the  dainty  swagger,  of  his 
Joan  of  Arc  in  the  Place  dee  Pyramides.  M. 
Falguifere  has  set  all  Paris  to  talking  by  his 
**  Danseuse  "  (an  entirely  nude  and  very  modem 
figure),  not  because  of  its  merit,  but  because, 
as  a  portrait  of  a  popular  balletdancer,  it  has 
given  every  one,  from  the  wit  of  the  JoumcU 
to  the  poet  of  the  Courrier  Fran^ia^  a  chance 
to  exercise  his  ingenuity  in  gossip  or  in  verse. 
But  there  is  nothing  that  comes  more  legiti- 
mately by  success  than  Mr.  MacMonniee's  two 
contributions:  the  fine,  dignified  Shakspere 
after  the  Droeebout  portrait  already  seen  in 
the  statuette  of  last  year,  and  the  '*  Venus  and 
Adonis,"  which  I  wish  be  had  caUed  by  an- 
other  name.  For,  if  It  is  very  charming  as  a 
groupi  very  refined  and  masterly  in  the  model- 
ling, the  woman  who  stands  with  so  much  co- 
quetry, so  much  jauntiness,  by  the  side  of  the 
beautiful  youth  is  not  Venus,  but  a  coootte, 
a  model  of  the  qtuirtier.  However,  a  name 
that  offends  merely  one's  associations  matters 
less  when  the  work  has  unquestioned  charm 
and  distinction. 

At  the  Champ-de-Mars  I  find  the  general 
fatigue,  Uie  general  exhaustion,  still  more  mark- 
ed, for  the  simple  reason  that  it  is  but  a  very 
few  years  since  the  new  Salons  made  so  pro- 
mising and  brilliant  a  beginning.  But  the  ar- 
tist is  not  an  automaton  warranted  to  grind 
out  a  masterpiece  with  unfailing  punctuality. 
Mr.  Whistler  does  not  exhibit,  though  never 
was  his  infiuence  more  strongly  felt;  neither 
does  M.  Alfred  Stevens,  nor  M.  Carri^re,  too 
busy  probably  with  his  own  show  in  the  Salon 
de  I'Art  Nouveau,  nor  M.  Lhermitte.  Again, 
a  fashionable  fad,  dependent  for  success  ufwn 


its  freshness,  cannot  outlive  more  than  a  cou- 
ple of  seasons.  There  is  no  new  sensation,  and 
mysticism  has  degenerated  into  absolute  child- 
ishness with  M.  Lfon,  into  a  poor  copy  of  Bot- 
ticelli with  M.  Point;  the  religious  excitement 
is  so  wholly  spent  that  M.  Binet  is  reduced  to 
the  expedient— blasphemous  surely  to  the  de- 
vout—of representing  Mary  Magdalen  quite 
naked  as  she  weeps  over  the  dead  Christ,  and 
M.  Jean  B^raud  gives  up  the  Scriptures  alto- 
gether to  preach,  presumably,  a  social  sermon. 
But  though  '*  La  Pouss^  "  draws  the  crowd  as 
he  meant  it  should,  I  doubt  if  any  one,  if  he 
himself,  could  explain  just  what  is  intended 
by  the  sudden  raid  of  the  rabble  upon  an  ele- 
gant dinner  party  painted  with  a  tedious  elabo- 
ration  and  a  tightness  enchanting  to  the  multi- 
tude, disheartening  to  the  artist  I  M.  Dagnan- 
Bouveret,  it  is  true»  has  chosen  a  religious 
subject,  and  with  very  conspicuous  results,  for 
his  Last  Supper  is  one  of  the  largest  canvases 
in  the  exhibition.  But  he  has  not  relied  upon 
eccentricity  of  treatment  for  his  effect— con- 
tent rather  to  be  scrupulously  conventional  in 
arrangement  and  costume.  The  color  is  un- 
pleasant, and  the  concentration  of  glaring  yel. 
low  light  upon  the  central  figure  theatrical; 
the  Christ  seems  far  too  effeminate,  the  poee  of 
theApoetles  far  too  self  conscious  and  photo- 
graphic But,  at  least,  it  is  a  sober,  dignified 
piece  of  work  that  com&ands  respect  to-day 
even  if  it  be  forgotten  to-morrow. 

Portraits,  usually,  are  painted  to  fulfil  a 
definite  oonunisaion  rather  than  to  snatch  a 
chance  notoriety,  and  their  greater  excellence 
is  therefore  easily  accounted  for.  It  Is  among 
the  portraits,  however,  that  Englishmen  and 
Americans  are  here  preeminent.  Of  course, 
many  of  the  French  ot  Continental  painters 
whose  portraits  one  always  seeks  are  not  ab- 
sent: M.  Besnard,  with  the  half  length  of  a 
lady  in  yellow  seen  in  brilliant  light;  M.  Aman- 
Jean,  to  whom  once  more  each  sitter  has 
proved  the  motive  for  a  lovely  harmony  of 
color;  M.  Boldini,  as  always  undeniably  clever, 
but  yielding  to  his  mannerisms,  until  now  his 
Princesses  and  Countesses  wear  gowns  slipping 
so  swiftly  from  their  shoulders  and  drawn  so 
tightly  about  their  legs  that  one  can  but  look 
with  apprehension;  M.  Blanche,  with  a  large, 
vigorous  presentment  of  M.  Thaulow,  the 
Norwegian  artist,  and  his  family  ;  M.  Zom,  so 
uncompromisingly  realistic  that  he  does  not 
hesitate  to  show  himself  on  canvas  as  big  and 
burly  as  the  typical  butcher;  M.  Gkmdara,  who, 
for  sake  of  variety,  has  turned  his  tremendous 
dexterity  to  the  painting  of  a  pink  satin  gown 
instead  of  the  l<mg  familiar  white.  And  there 
is  one  lesser  known  man,  M.  Simon,  who,  of  a 
portrait  group,  has  made  a  decorative  panel 
(his  name  for  it)  which,  could  he  have  lent  it 
the  charm  of  color,  would  be  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  pictures  in  the  show.  But  quite 
as  striking  as  these  canvases,  perhaps  more  so, 
is  the  work  that  comes  from  Glasgow:  por 
traito  by  Mr.  Guthrie,  Mr.  Lavery,  Mr.  Wal- 
ton,  Mr.  Cameron,  of  which  I  need  say  no 
more,  since  I  did  them  full  justice  when  they 
were  exhibited  in  one  or  another  of  the  Ixmdon 
galleries.  Miss  Cecilia  Beauz's  delightful  ar- 
rangements in  white  are  counted  among  the 
year's  triumphs,  even  by  the  French  critic 
who  resents  the  foreign  encroachment.  No 
one  has  made  a  more  distinct  advance  than 
Mr.  Humphreys-Johnston  with  his  portrait  of 
his  mother.  It  may  be  that  the  stately  white- 
haired  lady  in  black,  seated  gracefully  on  a 
green  couch,  might  never  have  been  painted 
just  as  she  is  had  there  been  no  Whistler.  But 
Mr.  Johnston  has  had,  first  of  all,  the  intelli^ 
gence  to  accept  a  good  master,  and  next  the  ' 


artistic  sense  to  adapt  and  not  copy  too  dsr- 
ishly  that  master's  methods.  The  picture  hsi 
a  dignity  i^d  repose  conspicuous  where  rest- 
lessness and  eccentricity  are  jvevailing  fea. 
tures.  Again,  you  recognise  the  Whistlerisa 
infiuence  in  Mr.  Alexander's  lady  in  rose  and 
black,  his  one  contribution  this  year,  in  Itr. 
Herter's  Japanese  fantasies,  even  in  Mr.  Sar- 
gent's **  Graham  Robertson,  Esq.,"  from  lait 
spring's  Academy.  But  Mr.  Sargent,  in  hit 
turn,  has  been  the  inspiration  of  Bir.  Dannsf  0 
*' Otero,"  the  Spanish  dancer,  who,  though 
arrayed  in  vivid  green,  is  reminiscent,  to  her 
own  loss,  of  the  golden  *'  Carmencita''  of  the 
Luxembourg.  Were  there  space  I  ihonld 
speak  also  of  Mr.  Melchers  and  of  two  yoonger 
men,  Mr.  Cushing  and  Mr.  Hopkinson,  wboee 
portraits  are  still  immature,  but  give  hope  for 
the  future. 

The  landscapes  are  not  wonderf uL  M.  Ca- 
lin,  M.  BUlotte,  M.  Grivean  are  intertsting^ 
but — ^I  say  it  with  hesitation^monotonoos.  M. 
Besnard,  M.  Sisley,  M.  Eliot  are  brilliant,  hot 
with  a  brilliancy  that  has  grown  too  familisr 
for  further  criticism.  Thwe  are  amusiiig  im- 
pressions  of  Paris  streets,  rendered  as  none 
but  M.  Raifa^lli  can  render  them;  marines  by 
Mr.  Harriscm,  skilful,  but  their  variety  in  dan- 
ger of  being  staled  by  custom;  and  the  Nonre> 
gian  streams  and  snows  that  Mr.  Thankm 
paints  with  more  truth  than  poetiy.  The  fsot 
is  that,  in  outdoor  work,  there  is  nothing  very 
remarkable  unless  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannsi^ 
ideal  and  decorative  landscapes  can  be  so  cks- 
sified.  These  are  the  five  large  panels  for  the 
Boston  Library— Virgil,  Homer,  .^schylin, 
History,  and  Astronomy.  It  cannot  be  re- 
peated too  often  that  one  never  knows  what  Is 
in  M.  de  Chavannes's  work  until  it  is  seen  in  the 
place  for  which  it  is  designed.  I  shall  restrict 
myself,  then,  to  the  statement  that  the  decora- 
tions, where  they  now  hang,  strike  me  as  more 
rhythmical  in  line,  more  tender  and  yet  splen- 
did in  color,  than  last  year's  paneL  I  seem  to 
recognise  many  of  the  figures,  much  as  one  re- 
cognizes again  and  again  the  angals  of  Perugiso 
or  BotticellTs  maidens,  who,  no  doubt,  were 
too  lovely  to  be  confined  to  a  single  wall  or  de- 
coration. But  I  can  remember  nothing  else  by 
the  same  artist  as  rich  and  glowing  as  the  Mt- 
chylus,  with  its  deep  blue  sea  that  surronndi 
the  lonely  rock  where  Prometheus  hangs ;  the 
tragedy  not  grim  but  made  beautiful  by  the 
elassic  serenity  of  the  scene. 

Besides  showing  these  designs,  M.  Puvis  de 
Chavannes  has  filled  a  large  room  with  his 
sketches  and  drawings— an  important  ooDee- 
tion,  explaining,  as  it  does,  the  painter^i  me- 
thods of  study  and  work.  But  it  deserves  not 
merely  a  gallery,  but  an  article  to  itself.  And 
this  brings  one  face  to  face  with  what  is  at 
once  the  great  attraction  and  the  great  draw, 
back  to  the  Champ-de-Mars  Salon.  Tear  by 
year  it  is  becondng  less  an  exhibition  than  a 
collection  of  exhibitions.  M.  de  Chavanues  Is 
not  alone  in  holding  a  special  show  of  his  own. 
Another  room  is  reserved  f<M-  Mr.  Abbey's 
Shakspere  drawings.  Those  who  have  seen 
only  the  illustrations  as  they  appeared  in 
Harper's  can  have  no  idea  of  the  delicacy  and 
strength  of  the  originals.  The  knowledge  they 
reveal  is  amazing;  architecture  and  landaoape 
are  as  carefully  studied  as  figurea  andcostome, 
while  the  composition  is  far  more  decorative 
than  the  stilted  primitiveness  so  aasldnoasly 
cultivated  under  that  name  in  Birminghsat 
Mr.  Abbey,  in  Paris  as  in  London,  haa  soored 
an  enormous  success.  M.  Paul  BcDOuard,  m 
illustrator  as  clever  in  his  partioiilgr  M4f 
has  a  third  room ;  M.  Desboi^  ihm  i 
a  fourth ;  M.  Dubufe  a  flft^   1*1 


June  1 8,  1896] 


The   iTation. 


471 


powibia  to  d«ToU  to  meh  the  notlM  he  d»> 


WcraitiiotforM.  DMboliandforM.  Rodin, 
who  Mods  MTiTttl  mATTelluitt  imprenioiit  in 
marbki  the  leatpture  wonld  be  Mdly  insigniA- 
OAst.  BlAck-Mid-whtU  hM  loet  not  a  little  of 
the  Tttelitj  which  for  the  Intt  few  jeers  he* 
medeitioimportentesectlonof  thisSelon.  M. 
LepAre^  however,  cooTlnote  one  of  the  scope  of 
his  powers  by  showing  his  wood  engravings  and 
woodcnts  side  by  side.  There  ere  dry-points  by 
M.  HeUen«  etchings  by  M.  Blanche,  lithographs 
by  M.  Lanois,  lithographs  printed  in  color  by 
M.  Rlri^re,  M.  Charpentier,  and  M.  Roche; 
thsee  last  two  using  a  new  proosss  of  stamping 
for  which  they  have  fonnd  the  name  Litkogra- 
pkU  ga^f^rM,  Mr.  McCarter's  drawings  for 
the  Orssa  Tree  Library  edition  of  Verlaine 
ara  here,  and  also  his  Beater  designs  published 
in  Seribner^M,  And  of  the  master  whom  he  has 
ftwUed  with  eo  much  sympathy,  M.  Carlos 
Bchwabe,  thera  ara  two  ezamplse,  less  satis- 
factory in  some  ways  than  others  exhibited  in 
the  past  M.  VaUoton,  quite  unaccountably, 
is  among  the  rajected.  Pastels  and  water- 
colon  ara  not  rery  notable,  though  in  th^  one 
medium  '^Oyp**  has  an  amusing  portrait,  as 
full  of  character  as  it  is  indifTsrently  drawn 
and  modelled ;  and  in  the  other  Mr.  Albert  K 
Stamer  has  some  good  sketchee.  Two  other 
American  painten  who  give  lu-omiee  are  Mr. 
Kendall,  with  a  large  study  of  the  nude^  and 
Mr.  Lambsrt  with  several  landscapes.    N.  N. 


UNPUBLISHED   LBTTBR8   OF  TH0MA8 
PAJNK 

LovDOir,  May  18, 1896. 
The  following  letter  (the  original  of  which 
has  Jost  come  into  my  possession)  is  of  both 
personal  and  historical  interest  It  was  ad- 
dressed to  "Thomas  Walker,  Esq*r,  Rothor- 
ham,  Yorfcshira.**  In  the  comer,  beneath  the 
address,  he  wrote,  "Single  SheH**  at  is  on 
large  foolscap),  and  on  the  raverse  is  the  en- 
dorsement, "T.  Paine,  Esq*r,  Mch.  IS,  1789,*' 
this  being  probably  by  Walker,  and  showing 
the  date  of  his  raply.  Half  of  a  large  seal 
remains  which  leaves  (apparently)  part  of  a  P, 
and  thera  is  a  post-ofllce  mark.  Mr.  Foljambe, 
whose  letter  is  quoted,  wes  a  nephew  of  Sir 
George  Savillek  and  lived  three  miles  from 
Messrs.  Walker's  iron  works,  where  the  large 
arch  of  Paine's  iron  bridge  (110  feet)  was  con- 
structed for  exhibition  at  Paddington  Green, 
London. 

The  politioal  part  of  the  letter  refattesi  as 
will  be  seen,  to  the  exciting  constitutional 
question  which  aross  in  the  autunm  of  17&8, 
as  to  the  condition  of  the  three  estates  of  the 
rsatan  under  the  incompetency  of  George  IIL, 
who  had  become  ineane.  Pitt  maintained  that 
the  King's  authority  had  not  lapsed,  but  that 
the  two  Houses  had  a  right  to  devise  means 
for  the  representation  of  that  power  by  a 
Commissioner.  The  Whigs  maintained  that 
the  royal  authority  passed  to  the  Prince  of 
Wales  by  hersditanr  right,  and  that  the  two 
Houses  had  no  right  to  legislate  at  all  without 
the  King,  whoee  seal  would  be  "forged"  if 
attached  to  any  act  by  any  non-royal  hand. 
Pttt  carried  his  point,  but  it  was  a  rwduoiio 
ad  abturdum  to  select  the  Prince  (the  man 
most  odious  to  the  people)  to  be  the  "  Commis- 
sioner,'* with  restricted  powers,  if,  as  the 
Tories  contended,  he  had  no  mora  claim  to  be 
Regent  than  any  private  individual.  It  is 
sufBcientJy  curious  to  And  Paine  arguing  the 
superior  right  of  the  Prince^  but  it  will  be 
sesn  that  his  oonetitutiopal  position  was  con- 


sistent: the  two  Houses,  unable  to  act  without 
the  throne,  could  deal  with  the  matter  (as  in 
10aS)  only  as  the  nation  itself  in  action.  But 
the  nation  had  not  elected  either  House,  and 
they  were,  Paine  thought,  usurping  an  au- 
thority belonging  only  to  a  national  conven- 
tion. 

LoMDOV,  Fehrnary  96, 1780. 
Dear  81a. 

Tour  favour  of  the  88d  is  Just  come  to  hand,  for 
which  I  tbsnk  you.  I  wrote  to  the  President  of  the 
Board  of  Works  last  Monday,  wishing  him  to  begin 
making  preparations  for  erecting  the  arch.  I  am  so 
conildMit  of  his  Judgment  that  I  can  lafely  rely  on 
his  going  on  as  far  as  [he]  pleases  without  me,  and 
at  any  rate  I  shall  not  be  kmg  before  I  revisit  Both- 
erham. 

I  had  a  letter  yesterday  from  Mr.  Foljambe,  apo- 
logising for  his  being  obliged  unexpectedly  to  leave 
town  without  calling  on  roe,  but  that  he  should  be 
in  London  again  in  a  few  daya  He  concludes  his 
letter  by  saying—''  I  saw  the  Rib  of  your  Bridge. 
In  point  of  deganoe  and  beauty  it  far  exceeds  my 
ffixpectatlons,  and  Is  certainly  beyond  anything  I 
ever  saw.**  Tou  will  pleaee  to  inform  the  Presldrat 
what  Mr.  Foljambe  says,  as  I  think  him  entitled  to 
participate  in  the  applause.  Mr.  Fox  of  Derby  call- 
ed again  on  me  last  evening  respecting  the  Bridge, 
but  1  was  not  at  home.  There  Is  a  project  of  erect- 
ing a  Bridge  at  Dublin,  which  will  be  a  large  under- 
taking, and  as  the  Duke  of  Leinster  and  the  other 
Deputies  from  Irdand  are  arrived,  I  intend  making 
an  opportunity  of  speaking  to  them  on  that  busi 
sees. 

With  reepeot  to  News  and  PoliUos,  the  Kfaig  is 
certainly  greatly  amended,  but  what  Is  to  follow 
from  it  is  a  matter  of  much  unoertaintv.  How  far 
the  nation  maj  be  safe  with  a  man  of  a  deranged 
mind  at  the  head  of  it,  and  who,  ever  since  he  took 
up  the  notion  of  quitting  England  and  going  to  live 
in  Hanover,  has  been  continually  planning  to  en- 
tangle England  with  (German  connections,  which,  if 
followed,  must  end  in  war,  is  a  matter  that  will  oc- 
casion various  opinlona  However  unfortunate  it 
may  have  been  for  the  sufferer,  the  King's  malady 
has  been  no  disservice  to  the  nation:  he  was  burning 
his  lingers  very  fast  in  the  (Serman  war,  and  whe- 
ther he  is  enough  in  his  senses  to  keep  out  of  the 
Hre  is  a  matter  of  doubt 

Tou  mention  the  Rotherham  Addrees  as  compli- 
menting Mr.  Pitt  on  the  sneoeei  of  his  administra- 
tion, and  fdr  outrHmg  and  wupporiing  th4  RigMa 
afth^FwpU, 

I  differ  exceedingly  from  you  hi  this  opinion,  and 
Ithink  the  conduct  of  the  Opposition  much  nearer 
the  prindplee  of  the  constitution  than  what  the  con- 
duct of  the  Mhilstry  waa  80  far  from  Mr.  Pitt  as 
serting  and  supporting  the  Rights  of  the  people,  it 
appears  to  me  taking  them  away.  But  as  a  man 
ought  not  to  make  an  assertion  without  giving  his 
reason!.  1  will  give  jou  mine. 

The  English  nation  Is  composed  of  two  orden  of 
men.  Peers  and  Omunoners—by  Oonunoners  is 
properly  meant  every  nuui  In  the  nation  not  having 
the  title  of  Peer-end  it  Is  the  ezistenoe  of  those 
two  orders,  setting  up  distinct  and  opposite  Claims, 
the  one  hereditary  and  the  other  elective,  that 
makes  it  neceeesry  to  estaMlsh  a  third  order,  or 
that  known  by  the  name  of  the  Regal  Power,  or  the 
Power  of  the  Crown. 

the  Regal  Power  is  the  Majesty  of  the  Kattoa 
eoUeeted  to  a  center,  and  residing  in  the  PerMn  ex- 
ercising the  Regal  Power.  The  Right,  therefore,  of 
the  Prince  Is  a  Right  standing  00  the  Bight  of  the 
whole  Nation.  But  Mr.  Ptu  says  It  stands  on  the 
Right  of  Parliament  Is  not  Parliament  composed 
of  two  bouses,  one  of  which  Is  Itself  hereditary,  and 
over  which  the  people  have  no  controul,  and  hi  the 
sstahUshment  of  which  they  have  no  election,  and 
the  other  bouee,  the  rspteesntatlves  of  only  a  SBsall 
part  of  the  Nation  f  How  then  can  the  Rights  of 
the  People  be  swertsd  and  supported  by  absorbing 
them  Into  an  heredltery  house  of  Peers  T  Is  not  one 
heredltuy  power  or  Right  at  dangerous  as  the 
other?  And  yet  the  Addreseers  have  all  gone  on  the 
Error  of  eetabltshiag  Power  In  the  bouse  of  Peers,- 
over  whom,  as  I  have  abeady  said,  they  have  no 
oontronl,— for  the  toeonsletent  purpoee  of  oppoeing 
It  la  the  prfteee,  over  whom  they  have  some  oca- 


It  was  one  of  those  caeee  bi  which  there  ought  to 
have  been  a  National  Convention  elected  for  the  es- 
prees  purpose  ;  for  If  government  be  permitted  to 
alter  itself,  or  any  of  its  parts  be  permitted  to  alter 
the  other,  there  Is  no  fixed  constitution  In  tlM  coun- 
try. And  If  the  Regal  Power,  or  the  person  exer- 
cising the  Regal  Power,  either  as  King  or  regent, 
instead  of  standtaig  "on  the  univereal  ground  of  the 
Nation,  be  made  the  meer  [tic]  creature  of  Parlia- 
ment it  is.  In  my  humble  opinion,  equally  as  Incon- 
sistent and  unconstitutional  as  if  Parliament  was  the 
meer  creature  of  the  Orown. 

It  Is  a  common  Idea  In  all  countrlea  that  to  take 
power  from  the  Prince  Is  to  give  liberty  to  the  peo- 
ple, but  Mr.  Pltt*s  conduct  Is  almost  the  reverm  of 
this— his  is  to  take  power  from  one  part  of  the  gov- 
ernment to  add  it  to  another,  for  he  has  encreesed 
the  power  of  the  Peera  not  the  Righte  of  the  Peo- 
ple.—I  moit  give  him  credit  for  his  Ingenuity,  If  I 
do  not  for  his  prindplee;  and  the  lees  so  because  the 
object  of  his  conduct  is  now  visible,  which  was  to 
[keep]  themselves  In  pay  after  they  should  be  out 
of  [favor]  by  retaining,  thro*  an  Act  of  Parliament 
of  their  own  making,  between  four  and  five  hundred 
thoueand  poundsof  theClvil  list  In  their  own  handa 
This  is  the  key  of  the  whole  business,  and  It  was  for 
this,  and  not  for  the  Rights  of  the  People,  that  he 
set  up  the  Right  of  Parliament;  because  It  wss  only 
by  that  means  that  the  spoil  could  be  divided.  If 
the  restriction  [on  the  Prince  Regent]  had  been  that 
he  should  not  declare  war,  or  enter  Into  foreign  al- 
liances without  the  consent  of  Parliament,  the  ob- 
Jecte  would  have  been  National,  and  have  had  some 
senee  hi  them,  but  It  Is  that  he  shoukl  not  have  all 

th€  money.— If  Swift  was  alive  he  would  say,  **8 

on  such  Patriotism.^' 

How  they  will  manage  with  Ireland  1  have  had 
no  opportunity  of  learning,  as  1  have  not  been  at 
the  other  end  of  town  since  the  Commisslooers 
arrived.  Ireland  will  certainly  Judge  for  Itself,  and 
not  peroilt  the  English  Parliament  or  Doctors  to 
Judge  for  her.— Thus  much  for  PoUtica 

I  veiy  sincerely  congratulate  you  and  the  fSml- 
liee  on  the  probable  reoovery  of  Mra  Jon*.  Walker, 
and  hope  eoon  to  have  the  pleesnre  of  seeing  you 
all  hearty,  happy,  and  well  I  write  bj  the  return 
of  the  Post  that  it  may  come  to  hand  before  you 
receive  the  final  orders  of  your  Commanding  Ottcer ; 
and  as  I  have  written  It  all  off  ata  dash,  and  have  to 
go  out  to  dinner  at  the  other  end  of  the  town,  I  do 
not  hold  myself  reeponsible  for  Errora 

With  dncere  respect  to  all  the  famillee,  and  in 
hopes  of  seeing  you  In  London  before  I  set  off  for 
Rotherham,  I  am,  D*  Sir,  your  sincere  friend  and 
humble  servant  Tnoius  PAXva 

Mr.Whiteeide's  Oompt*. 

Paine's  office  in  London  was  In  No.  18  Broad 
Street  BuUdings  (City),  the  establishment  of 
Peier  Whitsslde  (of  Philadelphia),  OMrchanti 
whose  failure  fell  so  heavily  upon  the  author 
and  his  bridge  enterprise. 

Paine's  reference  to  Ireland  will  be  re> 
marked.  He  afterwards  visited  that  island, 
and  I  have  a  draft,  in  his  writing,  of  thebegin^ 
nine  of  a  note  (178al|  as  follows:  **I  have  the 
honour  of  prseeoting  to  the  gentlemen  prseeot 
a  letter  I  have  received  from  the  United  Irish- 
men of  Dublin  informing  me  of  my  having 
been  elected  an  honorary  member  of  their  So- 
ciety. By  this  adoption  of  me  at  one  of  their 
body  I  have  the  pleasore  of  considering  my. 
self  on  their  "  (the  reet  is  wanting). 

One  mors  letter  I  will  add,  as  it  has  never 
appeared  except  in  Lanthenas*s  translation  of 
Paine>s  'Decline  and  Fall  of  the  BngUsh  Sye- 
tem  of  Finance.*  I  recenUy  found  in  the  Na- 
tional Archives  at  Paris  a  copy  of  it  in  French 
printed  by  order  of  the  Council  of  AnoienlSi 
April  87.  17W : 

Cmssn :  I  present  you  with  a  «nall  work  en- 
titled Th4  DecUne  and  DiH  c/ tk€  Wnglitk  Sifttwrn^f 
Flnanet,  In  which  I  have  ezplahied  aadezpoeedthe 
finances  of  your  principal  enemy,  the  government 
of  England.  If  I  have  eny  capacity  in  Judging  of 
drcumstancos,  and  from  thence  of  probable  events, 
the  taU  of  that  government  Is  very  nearly  at  hand. 

the  coadMon  In  which  that  govsmment  finds  It- 


4.7Q 


Th.e   K"atioti. 


[Vol  6i,  No.  1616 


self  at  tbiRtnoment  is  curioos  and  critical,  and  dif- 
ferent to  anything  it  erer  experienced  before.  It  is 
now  pressed  by  two  internal  and  formidable  oppo- 
nents that  never  appeared  during  any  former  war. 
The  one  is,  the  great  and  progressiTe  change  of  opi- 
nion that  is  spreading  itself  throughout  England 
with  respect  to  the  hereditary  system  of  govern- 
ment. That  system  has  fallen  1nore  in  the  opinion 
of  the  people  of  that  country  within  the  last  four 
years  than  it  fell  in  France  during  the  last  four 
years  jireceding  the  French  revolution.  The  other 
is,  that  the  funding  system  of  finance,  on  which  the 
government  of  England  depends  for  pecuniary  aid, 
is  now  explaining  itself  to  be  no  other  than  a  gov- 
ernmental fraud. 

In  former  ward  the  government  of  Eng^d  were 
supported  by  the  superstition  of  the  country  with 
respect  to  s;  nominal  non-existing  thing  which  is 
called  a  constUution ;  and  by  the  credulity  of  the 
country  as  to  the  funding  system  of  flnanca  It  was 
from  these  two  popular  delusions  that  the  govern- 
ment of  England  derived  all  its  strength,  and  they 
are  now  deserting  her  standard.  When  this  monster 
of  national  fraud  and  maritime  oppression,  the  gov- 
ernment of  England,  shall  be  overthrown,  the  world 
will  be  freed  from  a  common  enemy,  and  the  two 
nations  may  count  upon  fraternity  and  a  lasting 
peace.  Thomas  Paikb. 

It  was  the  opinion  of  William  Ck>bbett  that 
official  maltreatment  of  an  hamble  exciseman, 
Thomas  Faine,  cost  England  her  American 
colonies,  However  extravagant  that  may  seem, 
there  is  little  doubt  that  the  outlawry  of  the 
author  of  the  *  Rights  of  Man/  in  1792,  not 
only  broke  the  Bank  of  .England  in  1797,  but 
founded  that  traditional  hatred  of  French  pro- 
gressives for  England  which,  as  radicalism  ac- 
quires  power  in  France,  amounts  almost  to  a 
one-sided  vendetta,  Tet  were  Paine  alive  to- 
day, the  general  constitution  of  his  native  ooun- 
try  would  probably  come  nearest  his  ideas  of 
republican  government. 

MONCURE  D.  CJONWAT. 


Correspondence. 


A  CORRECTION. 

To  THE  EdITOB  of  THE  NATION: 

Sm:  The  following  words  appear  in  the  Nu' 
tion  of  March  26,  reviewing  the  Transactions  of 
the  Asiatic  Society  of  Japan:  **But  his  [Clay 
MacCauley^s]  discourse  on  'Silver  In  Japan'  is 
not  considered  orthodox  enough  to  go  in  as  a 
body  article,  and  hence  is  printed  in  small  type 
in  the  appendix." 

The  reviewer  must  have  been  more  than  usu. 
ally  careless  in  glancing  through  the  **  Trans- 
actions **  even  for  the  purpose  of  review.  The 
author  of  the  discourse  on  '*  Silver  in  Japan '^ 
is  not  Clay  MacCauley,  and  it  was  not  printed 
in  the  appendix  because  it  lacked  orthodoxy^ 
but  because  it  was 'only  an  address  or  lecture, 
and  not  a  regularly  prepared  paper  submitted 
before  reading  to  the  council.  A  lecture  or 
address  is  always  supposed  to  be  printed  in  the 
appendix.  The  same  number  of  the  **  Transac- 
tions" contains  a  lecture  (also  in  small  type) 
in  the  appendix  by  Prof.  Chamberlain,  whose 
orthodoxy  on  the  subject  of  the  Japanese  lan- 
guage has  not,  I  believe,  been  questioned. 
Gabbbtt  Dboppebs, 
Corr.  Sec'y  of  Asiatic  Soc.  of  Japan. 

Torro,  Maj  11, 18«6. 


[We  cannot  explain  away  our  inadvert- 
ence.—Ed.  Nation.] 


Notes. 


T.  FisHXB  UNwnr,  London,  annonnoes  a  work 


on  *The  London  Burial  -  Orounds,'  by  Mrs. 
Basil  Holmes,  **  written  in  a  chatty  style.*' 

Flood  So  Vincent,  MeadviUe,  Pa.,  are  about 
to  bring  out  a  new  edition  of  Mr.  W.  C.  Brow- 
nell's  'French  Traits*;  'The  Growth  of  the 
French  Nation,*  by  Prof.  George  B.  Adams  of 
Tale;  'A  Survey  of  Greek  CivOization,*  by 
Prof.  Mahaffy ;  *  A  History  of  Greek  Art,*  by 
Prof.  Frank  B.  Tarbell  of  the  University  of 
Chicago,  and  'A  Study  of  the  Sky,*  by  H.  A. 
Howe  of  the  University  of  Denver. 

The  Peter  Paul  Book  Co.,  Buffalo,  will  soon 
publish  'The  Diary  of  a  Peculiar  Girl,*  by 
George  Austin  Woodward. 

From  the  Bollettino  (May  15)  of  the  National 
Central  Library  in  Florence,  it  appears  that 
the  Du  Rieu-Sijthoff  project  of  reproducing 
MSS.  cannot  be  carried  out  as  respects  the 
.Sschylus,  Virgil,  and  two  Tacitus  MSS.  in  the 
Laurentian  Library  at  Florence.  The  £schy- 
lus,  indeed,  has  already  been  published  by 
this  library,  and  the  rest  it  will  now  take  in 
hand,  preferring  not  to  concede  the  privilege 
to  others.  The  same  number  of  the  Bollettino 
registers  the  gift  to  the  National  Central  Li- 
brary of  a  great  collection  of  more  than  20,000 
engraved  portraits  gathered  by  Prof.  Antonio 
Buonamici  of  Pistoia.  They  are  arranged 
partly  by  nationalities,  partly  by  categories. 

In  the  revival  of  present-century  classics,  a 
reprint  of  Carleton*s  '  Traits  and  Stories  o(  the 
Irish  Peasantry'  was  deservedly  undertaken 
and  has  been  carried  out  with  the  taste  and 
^mple  elegance  common  to  the  publications  of 
J.  M.  Dent  &  Co.  (New  York:  Macmillan).  The 
fourth  volume,  just  issued,  crowns  the  series, 
and  one  may  now  enjoy  at  his  leisure  '*  Phelim 
OToole*8  Courtship,**  '*  Shane  Ftulh*s  Wed- 
ding,*' "Larry  McFarland's  Wake,**  "The 
Party  Fight  and  Funeral,**  and  all  the  other 
inimitably  humorous  and  historically  truthful 
pictures  of  Irish  peasant  life  and  character. 
From  the  same  source  we  have  two  more 
volumes  of  the  Balzac  translations,  'The  Un- 
known Masterpiece,  and  Other  Stories,*  and  'A 
Bachelor's  Establishment,*  each  with  an  intro- 
duction by  Prof.  Saintsbury ;  and  three  volumes 
of  a  translation  of  Daudet's  works,  his  '  Elings 
in  Exile,'  'Tartarinof  Tara8con,*and  'Tarta- 
rin  on  the  Alps  *— charming  volumes  in  gray 
linen  with  a  pale- blue  flowered  stamp,  the 
illustrations  not  quite  up  to  the  rendering  of 
the  orig^inals,  the  versions  by  different  hands, 
and  none  masterly. 

Macmillan  Ck>.  publish  for  the  American 
Economic  Association  a  valuable  reprint  of 
the  letters  of  Ricardo  to  J.  R.  McCulloch  from 
1816  to  1828,  edited  with  excellent  notes  by 
Dr.  J.  H.  Hollander  of  Johns  Hopkins  Uni. 
versity.  It  is  interesting  to  remark  that  Mo- 
Culloch  was  affected  by  the  idea,  now  preva- 
lent in  some  parte  of  our  country,  that  na- 
tional debts  ought  to  be  scaled  down  when  the 
price  of  grain  falls.  The  discussions  are  ab- 
struse, but  by  no  means  without  present  ap- 
plication. 

A  valuable  contribution  to  the  history  of 
taxation  is  made  by  Mr.  Edwin  Cannan  in  his 
'  History  of  Local  Rates  in  England  *  (Long- 
mans). The  matter  is,  of  course,  excessively 
technical,  and  possesses  principally  antiquarian 
interest,  but  Mr.  Cannan  endeavors  to  connect 
it  with  modem  conditions  by  confining  his  ex- 
position to  such  facts  as  throw  light  upon  the 
two  great  characteristics  of  the  English  rating 
system  which  give  rise  to  most  complaint. 
These  are  the  facts  that  rates  are  paid  only  in 
respect  of  certain  kinds  of  property,  and  are 
levied  from  the  occupiers  and  not  the  owners 
of  that  property.  The  explanation  is  to  be 
found  in  the  drcnmstanoe  that  the  levying  of 


rates  was  not  originated  by  any  central  au- 
thority,  but  was  the  outgrowth  of  innumera- 
ble load  customs,  which  were  based  on  no  uni- 
form theory— hardly  on  any  theory.  Statu- 
tory enactments  have,  of  course,  much  oom- 
pUoated  the  matter,  which  is  in  so  chaotic  a 
state  as  greatly  to  tempt  the  zeal  of  reform- 
ers. 

In  the  same  direction  is  Mr.  Frederic  C. 
Howe*s  'Taxation  and  Taxes  in  the  United 
States  under  the  Internal  Revenue  System, 
1791-1895*  (New  York:  Thomas  T.  CroweU  & 
Co.).  Mr.  Howe  very  properly  acknowledges 
his  own  debt,  and  that  of  every  laborer  in  this 
field,  to  Mr.  David  A.  Wells,  •'  whose  cartful 
and  scholarly  investigations  of  almost  every 
phase  of  the  revenue  experiences  of  the  time, 
as  well  as  the  industrial  aspects  and  influmoes 
of  the  same,  are  an  inexhaustible  fund  from 
which  to  draw,  and  greatly  alleviate  the  labors 
of  those  who  may  follow  after  him  in  a  field 
which  he  haa  made  completdy  his  own.**  It  is 
convenient  to  have  the  history  of  our  internal- 
revenue  system  summarized,  and  Mr.  Howe 
has  done  the  work  with  evident  care;  but 
many  of  bis  inferences  are  of  doubtful  validity, 
and  some  of  his  theories  are  more  than  doubt- 
ful. His  lamentations  over  the  decision  of  the 
Supreme  Court  against  the  income-tax  do  not 
excite  our  sympathy.  The  idea  that  we  may 
be  hampered  in  some  future  emergency  be- 
cause we  cannot  tax  incomes  is  preposterous. 
Provided  the  country  has  the  necessary  wealth, 
the  Government  will  secure  the  necessary  reve- 
nue if  the  people  support  it,  without  recourse 
to  a  tax  on  incomes. 

The  literature,  if  such  it  may  be  called,  of 
the  "Labor  Problem**  in  Great  Britain  is  as- 
suming vast  proportions.  The  recent  report 
of  the  Royal  Commission  was  as  long  as  the 
moral  law,  and  might  well  have  sufficed  for  a 
generation.  M.  Paul  de  Rousiers,  however,  has 
thought  it  worth  while  to  furnish  his  impres- 
sions on  the  subject  to  his  countrymen,  and 
Mrs.  F.  L.  D.  Herbertson  has  thought  it  worth 
while  to  translate  tiiem  for  the  benefit  of  Eng- 
lishmen, under  the  title  '  The  Labor  Question 
in  Britain  *  (Macmillan).  It  must  be  admitted 
that  M.  de  Rousiers  has  produced  a  very  read- 
able volume,  filled  with  entertaining  incidents, 
and  giving  a  comprehensive  view  of  English  In- 
dustry. We  may  safely  follow  him  in  the  con- 
clusions that  English  workmen  are  better  off 
than  French,  and  that  the  general  elevation  of 
laborers  constitutes  the  only  true  solution  of 
the  labor  question.  Socialistic  measures,  in 
the  autb(»'*s  opinion,  are  not  adapted  to  bring 
about  this  elevation,  which  has  been  proceed- 
ing rapidly  in  England  under  the  influences  of 
freedom. 

A  remarkable  consolidation  of  our  know- 
ledge of  magnetism  has  taken  place  during  the 
past  ten  years.  This  has  been  due  to  a  realiz- 
ing sense  of  the  value  of  Faraday*s  conception 
of  lines  of  magnetic  force,  and  to  the  applica- 
tion of  quantitative  meastu-ements  to  them. 
When  the  trolley  car  was  flrst  used,  it  was 
feared  that  the  watches  of  the  passengers 
would  be  magnetized  by  the  motors  of  the  car. 
If  this  had  happened,  the  electric  raHroads 
would  speedily  have  become  bankrupt,  for  the 
stray  lines  of  magnetic  force  which  could  mag- 
netize the  passengers'  watohea  would  indicate 
a  very  uneconomical  design  of  electric  motor. 
Their  magnetic  circuits  would  have  had  a 
great  air  resistanoe,  and  the  magnetic  flekl 
which  must  be  generated  in  order  to  propel 
the  car  would  have  been  proportionately 
weak.  We  have  come  to  speak  of  the  maf* 
netic  circuit  just  as  we  had  hitherto  spolMB  of 
the  electric dronit.  The  resistanoe  of  triMilB  a 


June  1 8,  1896] 


Tlie  N"ation. 


4^3 


nuignetic  circuit  is  twj  wmaXi  becaute  a  large 
Dumber  of  lines  of  force  can  be  urged  through 
it.  The  resistance  of  air,  however,  is  large.  In 
designing  dynamos  and  electric  motors^  care 
is  taken  to  have  a  magnetic  circuit  of  small 
resistance,  in  order  to  avoid  the  straying  of 
lines  of  magnetic  foroe  out  of  the  field  where 
they  are  needed  to  effect  the  proper  transfor- 
mation of  energy.  Dr.  H.  Du  Bois*s  treatise, 
*The  Magnetic  Circuit  in  Theory  and  in  Prao- 
tioe,*  translated  by  Dr.  Atchison  (Longmans), 
is  a  Ittdd  account  of  the  growth  of  our  syste- 
matic knowledge  of  the  magnetic  field;  and  it 
may  be  called  at  present  the  danic  on  this 
important  subject. 

Prof.  Francis  B.  Crocker,  author  of  '  Elec- 
tric Lighting*  (D.  Van  Nostrand  Co.),  beUevee 
that  this  mode  of  lighting  has  now  reached  a 
sufiDcient  degree  of  perfection  to  warrant  the 
preparation  of  a  treatise  which  will  not  be  out 
of  date  even  before  it  is  published.  The  dyna^ 
mo  admits  of  very  little  further  improvement, 
and  is  now  one  of  the  most  efficient  of  modem 
machines.  Then,  too,  the  present  systems  of 
distribution  of  lights,  the  methods  of  wiring, 
and  the  safeguards  will  probably  remain  un- 
changed in  their  main  characteristics.  Prof. 
Crocker,  indeed,  calls  attention  to  the  striking 
fact  that,  among  all  the  important  features  of 
an  electric-lighting  system,  the  steam  engine  is 
the  one  which  is  being  modified  the  most.  He 
discusses  the  various  souroes  of  electricity, 
and  shows  that  steam  is  still  the  chief.  He  has 
little  faith  In  recent  endeavors  to  obtain  elec- 
tricity directly  from  coal,  and  in  this  connec- 
tion he  touches  upon  the  use  of  carbon  in  a 
fused  alkali— a  process  which  is  now  attracting 
attention  in  certain  quarter*.  He  describes  only 
those  machines  which  experience  has  proved  to 
be  useful,  and  his  suggeetions  and  oritioisms 
possess  a  peculiar  value,  for  he  not  only  has 
taught  the  theory  of  the  dynamo,  but  has  also, 
in  collaboration  with  Mr.  Wheeler,  produced 
one  of  the  most  efficient  dynamos  now  used  in 
the  arts.  The  present  volume  is  principally 
devoted  to  the  generating  plant,  and  will  prob- 
ably be  followed  by  another  on  the  vsjrious 
systems  of  electric  lighting. 

Why  was  Paderewski  able  to  earn  |SM7,000 
in  five  months  while  most  other  pianists  bare- 
ly make  enough  to  pay  expenses?  His  tech- 
nique is  no  better  than  that  of  several  other 
pianists  now  in  the  field;  his  superiority  lies 
entirely  in  the  fact  that  he  plays  with  expres- 
sion, and  therefore  touches  hearts  which  others 
leave  cold.  The  same  lesson  was  taught  by 
Lisstand  Rubinstein;  yet  music- teachers  con- 
tinue to  devote  99  per  cent,  of  their  pupils  time 
to  mere  technical  exercises  which  are  as  insuf  - 
flcient  to  make  a  real  pianist  as  mere  erudition 
is  to  make  an  author.  Whoever  shall  write  a 
perfect  treatise  on  the  art  of  musical  expres- 
sion will  erect  for  himself  a  lasting  monument. 
Pending  the  appearance  of  such  a  book,  stu- 
dents may  derive  considerable  advantage  from 
C.  A.  Ehrenf  eoter*s  *  Delivery  in  the  Art  of 
Pianoforte  Playing'  (Scribners).  It  treats  lu- 
cidly, in  sixty  pages,  of  the  questions  of  ac- 
centuation, phrasing,  and  tempo.  While  fault 
may  be  found  with  the  fact  that  all  the  exam- 
pies  are  taken  from  Beethoven's  sonatas  Cln 
which  there  is  less  opportunity  for  expression 
than  in  the  works  of  Chopin  and  Schumann), 
the  writer's  remarks  are  usually  sound,  and 
will  be  useful  to  all  who  are  not  bom  musi- 
dans.  The  following  will  serve  as  au  exam- 
ple: **The  most  common  fault  with  regard  to 
tempo  is  to  play  slow  movements  not  slow 
enough  and  quick  movements  not  quick  enough. 
The  first  is  mostly  due  to  a  want  of  power  of 
oorrect  perception  and  true  musical  feeling. 


The  second  most  generally  is  due  to  insufficient 
technical  qualification."  The  author's  substitu- 
tion  of  **non-legato"  for  ** semi-staccato"  (p. 
44)  is  a  palpable  absurdity. 

Prof.  Albert  Barr^re's  *  Dictionary  of  French 
and  English  Military  Terms,'  Part  U.,  French- 
English  (London:  Hachette;  Boston:  T.  H.  Cas- 
tor Sc  Co.)  is  a  thin  little  volume  of  which  the 
execution  merits  much  praise.  It  is,  over  and 
above  the  definitions,  a  mine  of  practical  in- 
formation respecting  the  French  military  ser. 
vice.  Under  ieole  we  meet  with  an  enumera- 
tion of  the  several  institutions  scattered  over 
France,  with  their  special  training;  under 
mar^ehal  is  given  the  legal  limit  on  the 
number  of  marshals ;  under  mariage  (of  offi- 
cers) the  consent  of  the  secretary  of  war  and  a 
marriage  portion  are  reported  necessary,  etc. 
The  appendix  supplies  much  statirtioal  matter 
respecting  the  headquarters  of  army  corps, 
ordnance,  smaU  arms,  pay,  pensions,  court- 
martials,  etc. 

Those  who  wish  to  comprehend  the  political 
situation  in  France  will  derive  assistance  from 
a  little  book  by  M.  L6on  de  Seilbac  enUtled 
*Le  Monde  SociaUste;  Oroupes  et  Pro- 
grammes '  (Paris  :  Armand  Colin  et  Cie.).  Be- 
sides some  minor  factions  the  Revolutionary 
Socialists  are  divided  into  three  sections— the 
Allemanists,  the  Broussists,  and  the  Gueedists. 
There  are  other  Socialistic  parties  or  groups, 
concerning  all  which  and  their  plans  M.  de 
Seilhac  gives  a  disorimioating  account. 

A  monthly  journal.  What  to  Eat,  will  be 
started  in  July  by  Pierce  &  Pierce  at  Minne- 
apolis  (New  York:  Tribune  Building).  A  no- 
vdty  will  be  the  restriction  of  advertising  to 
what  pertains  to  **food,  drink,  table  furnish- 
ings, or  table  decorations." 

The  fore-matter  of  the  Harvard  Oraduaie^ 
Magatiiu  for  June  possesses  an  unusual  degree 
as  well  as  evenness  of  interest.  Mr.  Robert  S. 
Peabody  discusses  the  univerdty  grounds  and 
buildings  with  reference  to  their  haphazard 
dispodtion,  in  the  absence  of  any  controlling 
scheme  of  landscape  gardening  and  architec- 
ture. He  lays  a  proper  stress  on  the  one  great 
opportunity  yet  left  in  this  direction  by  con- 
necting the  college  territory  immediately  with 
the  Charles  River,  towards  which  the  gift  of 
Soldiers'  Field  is  more  and  more  forcing  the 
pent-up  athletes.  Historically  he  might  have 
added  that  this  proposition  is  nearly  ten  years 
old,  but  still  awaits  the  **some  benefactor"  in« 
voked  by  Mr.  Peabody.  Mr.  Edwin  H.  Abbot's 
sketch  of  the  late  (>en.  Francis  C.  Barlow,  re- 
inforced by  Qen.  MUes's  oomiSetent  testimony, 
will  do  much  to  prolong  the  memory  of  that 
remarkable  soldier,  whose  incredibly  boyish 
face  is  pictured  with  the  artide.  A  fine  por- 
trait of  the  late  Dr.  Fumest,  by  Gutekunst, 
accompanies  a  brief  notice  by  the  Rev.  Charles 
G.  Ames.  Mr.  Arthur  Gilman  shows  what  a 
wealth  of  historic  association  clusters  about 
Fay  House,  the  seat  of  Radcliffe  College ;  and 
the  Rev.E.  E.  Hale  discourses  pleasantly  on  the 
Well-known  portrait  group  of  five  living  pred- 
dents  and  ex-preddents  of  Harvard,  from  Jo- 
siah  Qttincy  to  Dr.  Felton.  The  anonymous 
writer  of  the  observations  **From  a  Gradu- 
ate's Window  "  makes  a  proper  critidsm  of  the 
sad  festival  known  as  the  Commencement  Din- 
ner; but  it  would  be  a  pity  to  change  the  scene 
of  it  from  Memorial  HalL  The  remedy  is  to 
reduce  the  attendance. 

Prof.  Skeat,  in  the  Academy  for  May  ao,  at- 
tacks the  current  etymologies  of  the  word  loop, 
and  leans  to  a  Norse  origin.  He  thinks  **  loop- 
hole **  may  be  found  to  refer  **  to  the  course  of 
Ught,  as  being  a  place  where  the  light  may 
leapin."    **  The  sense  of  noose  in  a  string  is 


later;  it  easily  follows  from  that  of  a  bore  or 
hole  in  a  waU.  But  there  is  a  posability  that 
it  meant  *  running-knot.' "  He  might  well 
have  been  reminded  of  a  combination  of  these 
dgnifications  in  Fits  Gerald's  version  of  Omar : 

**  4nd  Lol  the  Hunter  of  tba  East  hw  caoctit 
The  Snltanl  Tomt  In  a  Nooee  of  Llgbt.'* 

While  the  perennial  interest  in  the  history 
of  the  ill-fated  daughter  of  Maria  Theresa  cen- 
tres naturally  in  her  tragic  end,  every  new  de- 
tail of  her  earlier  life  at  the  French  court  that 
comes  to  light  reveals  more  fully  the  pathos  of 
that  period  as  well.  M.  Pierre  de  Nolhac's  ac- 
count of  it,  in  the  Revue  dee  Deux  Mondee  for 
May  15,  is  in  part  derived  from  unpublished 
sources,  and  shows  the  fifteen-year-old  Dan- 
phine  in  a  charming  light.  The  idea  that  there 
should  be  any  relation  between  the  conduct  of 
this  child  toward  Mme.  du  Barry  and  Louis 
XV.'s  attitude  on  the  Polish  question  might 
have  been  a  fruitful  one  for  Scribe.  Mme.  de 
(tampan,  in  her  Memoirs  (vol.  i.,  chap,  iii.), 
mentions  among  the  ladies  who  met  Marie  An- 
toinette at  Kehl,  on  the  frontier,  the  Duchess 
de  Cou^  **  sa  dame  d'atours."  This  is  evident- 
ly an  error,  since  M.  de  Nolhao  relates  the  cir^ 
cumstances  under  which  Mme.  de  Cosa6's  ap- 
pointment took  place  nearly  a  year  after  the 
arrival  of  the  young  Archduchess  in  France. 
**Papa,"  she  said  to  the  King,  '*  j'esp^re  que 
vous  me  donnerez  une  de  mee  dames."  **  Non, 
stirement,"  replied  Louis,  "et  je  compte  que 
vous  reoe vres  mon  choix  a vec  respect. "  It  was 
after  this  conversation  that  Mme.  de  Coss^  was 
appointed. 

Petermann^s  Mitteilungen  for  April  contains 
the  conclusion  of  Baron  von  Oppenbelm's  ac- 
count of  his  journey  from  Damascus  to  Bag- 
dad. A  description  of  the  political  dividons 
of  South  Africa  is  accompanied  by  a  large 
map,  in  which  we  notice  with  some  surprise 
the  omisdon  of  Beira,  the  terminus  of  the  Ma- 
shonaland  Railway.  Five  years  ago  an  un- 
known sand^t,  it  is  now  a  thriving  port  with 
large  business  houses  and  a  weekly  European 
mail,  and  is  a  place  of  call  for  hidf-a-dozen 
steamship  lines.  There  is  also  a  curious  map 
so  ruled  as  to  show  the  time  of  the  latest  rising 
and  earliest  setting  of  the  winter  sun  in  nearly 
every  part  of  Germany. 

From  an  addrees  reoentiy  delivered  at  Havre 
by  M.  Jules  Gantier,  representing  the  Minister 
of  Public  Instraction,  it  appears  that  a  genu- 
ine revival  has  of  late  been  witnessed  all  over 
France  in  the  establishment  and  support  of 
courses  of  instruction  for  adults  and  children 
above  school  age.  Thousands  of  these  courses 
are  conducted  in  city  and  country  districts, 
mainly  by  private  initiative,  encouraged  and 
aided  by  the  Government.  Mors  than  this,  the 
circumstances  attending  the  movement  in  its 
present  form  (its  beginnings  date  back  more 
than  thirty  years,  to  the  Ministry  of  Victor 
Duray)  seem  to  warrant  the  bdief  in  its  per- 
manence ^d  further  growth.  The  speaker 
referred  to  the  earlier  history  of  similar  enter- 
prises in  order  to  point  out  the  injurious  influ- 
ence of  Governmental  interference  with  af- 
fairs in  which  liberty  of  action  and  unhindered 
adaptation  to  local  wants  are  essentiaL 

The  Amherst  Edipse  Expedition  to  Japan, 
under  the  direction  of  Prof.  Todd,  which  left 
New  York  April  6,  arrived  at  San  Fran- 
dsoo  ten  days  later,  and  sailed  for  Honolulu 
on  April  2ft,  in  Mr.  Arthur  Curtiss  James's 
yacht  Ckmmet,  reaching  that  port  on  May  10. 
The  time  at  sea  was  utilised  by  different  mem- 
bers of  the  expedition  in  adjusting  and  testing 
the  operation  of  many  of  the  newer  instru- 
ments devised  espedaUy  for  the  coming  ecUpee, 
which  this  expeditioik  will  observe  on  August 


4=74= 


The   N'ation* 


[Vol  62,  Na  1616 


9  in  the  Hokkaido,  or  northern  Japan.  The 
Bzpeditlon  tailed  on  May  25  for  Yokohama, 
expecting  to  reach  that  port  about  June  20. 
Eight  yean  ago  the  Coronst  made  the  fame 
trip  in  twenty-two  daji. 

The  excavationi  at  Corinth  of  the  American 
School  of  Clawical  Stodies  at  Athene  have 
been  attended  with  as  marked  niooe«  as  could 
be  expected  for  the  first  year's  campaign.  The 
theatre  has  been  discovered,  lying  ten  or  fif- 
teen  feet  beneath  the  surface  of  the  ground. 
Near  the  upper  part  of  the  oavea  many  archaic 
terracotta  figurines  have  been  found,  indicat- 
ing the  neighborhood  of  a  temple,  probably 
of  Aphrodite.  A  magnificent  Greek  stoa  or 
passageway,  east  of  the  temple,  is  important 
in  itself,  and  is  another  indication  of  the  near- 
ness of  the  agora.  Since  the  discoTeries  af- 
ford the  first  fixed  point  for  the  study  of  Co- 
rintbian  topography,  they  are  manifestly  of 
the  greatest  importance. 

—The  Century  Co.  have  put  forth  a  new  edi- 
tion of  their  magnwn  opus  under  the  title  of 
*  The  Century  Dictionary  and  Cyclopedia.*  It 
is  in  ten  consecutively  numbered  volumes,  of 
which  the  last  two  comprise  the  former  single- 
volume  *  Cydopeedia  of  Names,*  and  are  dis- 
tinguished by  the  sub-tiUe  ''Names**  stamped 
on  the  back.  Heeding  a  suggestion  made  by 
others,  perhaps,  as  well  as  by  ourselves,  the 
publishers  have  filled  out  the  half  of  voL  x. 
with  a  full  array  of  maps,  but  have  not,  in 
these,  sought  after  novelty  or  high  exoeUesoe 
of  execution.  The  several  States  of  the  Union 
are  shown  in  detail,  and  will  serve  ordinary 
purposes  of  consultation  while  there  is  as  yet  a 
great  deficiency  in  our  atlases  of  the  United 
States.  But  the  maps  have  no  index  of  names, 
and  are  themselves  not  numbered,  dependence 
being  placed  on  their  alphak>etical  arrange- 
ment. The  new  volumee  stand  about  one  inch 
lower  than  the  sumptuous  original  issue,  and 
are  as  much  less  wide.  They  have,  consequent- 
ly,  parted  with  some  of  their  generous  mar- 
gins, and  in  quality  of  paper  as  in  binding 
(which  is  very  tasteful  and  serviceable)  corre- 
spond to  the  endeavor  to  reduce  the  price  of 
the  work  while  sacrificing  none  of  the  essen- 
tials. Intrinsioally,  the  Dictionary  is  more  ac- 
curate, and  hence  more  valuable,  than  when 
first  publiehed.  The  corrections  are  too  nu- 
merous  and  minute  to  trace  without  enormous 
labor.  They  and  a  few  insertions  in  the  vo- 
cabulary have  obviously  been  made  without 
renewing  the  plates.  The  Names  section  in 
particular  has  been  very  extensively  ovei^ 
hauled  on  the  same  condition.  To  sum  up,  for 
less  money  the  public  can  now  procure  the 
Dictionary  at  its  best,  and  that  beet  is,  among 
all  completed  dictionaries  of  the  languege, 
easily  at  the  front.  It  does  not  supplant  all  the 
rest,  but  in  daily  practice  we  turn  to  it  first 
and  seldom  without  satisfaction.  Until  the 
completion  of  the  Oxford  and  the  Djalect  Dic- 
tionaries, it  is  Uttie  likely  that  any  rival  wiU 
appear.  For  that  reason,  we  hope  that  revi- 
sion will  still  be  the  order  of  the  day,  and  that 
another  five  years  may  witness  afreeh  edition, 
perhaps  even  cheaper  than  the  present. 

—In  'Money  and  its  Relations  to  Prices,' 
(Scribners),  Mr.  L.  L.  Price  undertakes  an  in- 
quiry, by  scientific  methods,  which  the  Ame- 
rican people  are  obliged  to  answer  by  the 
method  of  universal  suffrage.  The  book  con- 
sists of  lectures  delivered  by  the  author  at 
University  College,  London,  and  bears  the 
mark  of  careful  preparation.  After  a  review 
of  the  various  "  index  numbers,*'  and  methods 
observed  in  preparing  them,  Mr.  Price  con- 


eludes  that,  "  within  its  limits,  the  index  num- 
ber, as  generally  constructed,  is  a  useful,  if 
not  indispensable,  instrument  of  economic  and 
sUtistical  inquiry,  and  that,  within  its  limits 
also,  it  is  an  instrument  sulBdant  for  its  pur* 
pose.**  He  appears  to  favor  the  idea  that 
rising  prices  "  kindle  the  imagination  and  en- 
courage enterprise,"  and  that  this  tendency  is 
greatly  increased  and  intsosifled  where  the 
credit  system  prevails.  From  this  he  reasons 
that  as  employers  are  of  the  "debtor  dass,** 
which  represents  the  active,  enterprising  peo- 
ple "engaged  in  the  production  of  fresh 
wealth,**  whUe  the  creditor  class  consists  of 
the  inactive  and  unindustrious  who  live  on  the 
wealth  created  in  the  past,  it  is  beneficial  to 
the  community  to  have  a  rise  of  prices.  The 
reasoning,  of  <x>urse,  proves  that  prices  must 
always  be  kept  moving  upward  in  order  to 
maintain  the  benefit.  Bo  convinced  is  Mr. 
Price  of  the  advantages  oif  inflation  that  he 
maintains  that  it  is  on  the  whole  for  the  inte- 
rest of  laborers  th4t  fHlces  should  rise.  He  is 
quite  ready  to  adopt  the  view  of  Jevons— by 
whom  he  has  been  greatly  infiuenced— that 
rising  prices  have  the  effect  of  "a  discharge 
from  his  debts  to  the  bankrupt  long  struggling 
against  his  burdens. "  This  sentiment  will  be 
kmdly  applauded  by  many  people  in  some 
parts  of  our  country,  and  by  some  people  in 
every  part;  but  thoughtful  people  will  Insist 
on  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  method  by 
which  prices  are  to  be  kept  always  rising. 
They  think  not  only  of  the  prosperity,  or  fan- 
cied prosperity,  accompanying  a  rise  in  prices, 
but  also  of  the  disaster  and  ruin,  not  fknded 
but  real,  that  must  inevitably  succeed.  Mr, 
Price's  eesay  is  very  ingenious,  but  he  does 
not  condder  this  difficulty;  and,  so  far  as  we 
have  obeerved,  he  ignores  the  fall  in  the  rate 
of  interest— a  fact  of  which  the  creditor  dass 
is  painfully  aware.  It  will  be  easy  to  contro- 
vert many  of  his  statements;  but  his  book  is, 
with  all  its  fallades,  worthy  of  examinati<m. 

—Mr.  F.  W.  Bu»en*s  'The  School  of  Plato* 
(London:  Methuen  &  Co.;  New  York:  Mac- 
millan)  is  an  extremdy  abstract  survey  of  the 
course  of  Oreek  speculation  from  Thales  to 
Plotinns,  accompanied  by  copious  refiections 
on  the  necesdty  that  an  acceptable  i^iiloeophy 
should  meefthe  yearnings  of  the  individual 
soul  for  happiness  or  peace,  and  on  the  failure 
of  many  ambitious  modern  systems  in  this  re- 
gard. The  writer  has  evidently  studied  his 
Pater,  his  Burnet^  and  his  Zeller,  and  is  not 
unacquainted  With  the  souroee.  His  refiec- 
tions on  the  systems  that  glimmer  by  us  in 
ghostly  outlines  on  his  pages  are  frequently 
Just  and  occadonally  acute.  But  he  has  re- 
served aU  footnotes,  exact  refermicse  and  il- 
lustrations for  a  later  volume,  and  the  conse- 
quent vagueness  and  apparently  capridous 
unevenness  of  his  treatment  throw  an  air  of 
unreality  over  the  entire  work  and  make  it 
very  hard  reading.  His  main  theses  seem 
to  be  (1)  that  philosophy  is,  in  its  inception, 
the  revolt  of  the  individual  against  the  shack- 
les imposed  and  the  sacrifices  demanded  by 
abeorption  in  the  communal  life  of  the  primi- 
tive dty  state,  and  is  pursued  as  a  selfish 
quest  for  some  principle  of  reconciliation  be- 
tween the  finite  soul  and  the  infinite  power 
or  powers  that  hem  her  in ;  (2)  that  the  spirit- 
ual life  of  the  Roman  empire  is  of  q>ecial  dg- 
niflcance  for  us,  because,  owing  to  the  assump- 
tion of  all  dvic  responsibilities  by  the  state, 
the  spirit  of  individualism,  by  which,  after 
the  disdpation  of  illusions,  our  own  religious 
and  philosophical  systems  must  in  the  end  be 
tested,  had  free  scope  to  develop  itself ;  (8)  the 


dominating  influence  throughout  this  derslop. 
ment  was  Platonism  on  its  mystic  ornUgiovs 
dde.  Platonism  first  transformed  sad  thn 
broke  up  the  chief  philosophic  religion  of  the 
Empire,  Stoidsm,  and  then  endeavored  nUtj 
in  tiie  neo-Platonic  doctrines  of  emsnstioD  and 
negative  thedogy  to  meet  those  neediof  the 
individual  soul  which  only  the  Christian  n- 
ligion  could  satisfy. 

— M.  Aulard,  whose  knowledge  of  tiiehiftory 
of  the  French  Revdution  may  be  called  ex- 
haustive, and  who  has  already  destroyed  mon 
than  one  legend  of  that  epoch,  hts,  in  a  re- 
cent number  of  the  Btvue  ds  Batriiy  nm  hii 
pen  through  anottier  popular  belief  dear  to 
the  makers  of  historical  handbooks.  "ItbM 
been  generally  bdieved,**  he  says,  "that  the 
eaup  iTHat  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteentii 
Brumaire  in  l^e  year  VIIL  brought  bnuqiiely 
to  an  end  all  free  manifestation  of  pubtte 
opinion  in  our  country,  and  that  on  the  twenti- 
eth Brumaire  France  awoke  to  find  itself  en- 
daved  and  gagged.**  But  that  was  not  tbe 
real  course  of  events.  Things  never  h^ypenlo 
any  such  symmetrical  and  rounded  fsahioa. 
In  reality,  on  the  morrow  of  the  eigfateentb 
Brumaire,  Bonaparte  was  very  far  frooB  beisf 
willing  that  the  consequences  of  the  coup 
dPHai  should  be  seen.  Everything  was  made 
to  run  as  amoothly  as  posdble.  The  plot  itadf 
was  bien  maehini;  there  was  a  midmaffl  oC 
violence.  The  stroke  of  genias  in  the  tiriog 
was  the  spreading  of  the  report  of  a  pretended 
conspiracy  of  the  Jacobins  against  the  two 
consuls.  To  this  was  added  the  devcr  fable  of 
the  daggera,  with  which  it  was  said  that  the 
Five  Hundred  had  attempted  to  strike  at 
Bonaparte  on  the  nineteenth  Brumaire.  TUi 
aMured  the  intervention  of  the  troops.  Tbenoe- 
forward  aU  went  smoothly.  A  part  of  the 
Andents  and  of  the  Five  Hundred  came  to- 
gether again  to  name  the  three  consols.  A 
list  of  proscribed  persons  was  also  drawn  up 
by  them,  but  this  was  merdy  a  matter  of 
form,  not  meant  to  be  serious,  and  was  revoked 
a  fortnight  later.  The  language  of  the  nev 
saviours  of  society  was  most  modest,  especuDy 
if  it  be  compared  with  the  language  of  the 
conquerors  of  the  Slst  of  May,  of  the  dsth 
Thermidor  and  of  the  eighteenth  Fnictidor. 
"  No  one  spoke  of  military  dictatordilp ;  Bona- 
parte exchanged  his  general*s  uniform  for 
dvil  dress  (the  newspapers  announced  it),  and 
it  was  a  dvil  government  which  was  to  be«- 
tablished.  There  were  no  boasts  of  ddog  any- 
thing  great  or  anything  new,  but  only  pro- 
f  eedons  of  a  desire  to  do  what  was  bert  witboot 
disturbing  people  more  than  was  neceissry." 
Puis  remained  perfectly  quiet,  although  the 
nineteenth  and  twentieth  Brumaire  were  dajs 
propitious  for  a  "descent  into  the  street.'' 
The  nineteenth  was  a  Sunday,  and  the  twen- 
tieth a  d^cadiy  and  the  weather  was  fine;  bnt 
no  one  budged.  Foudi6  spread  his  fabetaoodi 
abroad  through  the  caf6s  and  theatres,  aid 
stirred  up  a  good  deal  of  indignation  at  the 
attempt  to  poniard  the  hero  of  Egypt  Bori- 
ness  men  looked  with  favor  upon  the  new 
government.  The  Bourse  roee,  GoveniiBflBt 
stocks  almost  doubling  their  value  within  a 
week;  which  gave  Talleyrand,  at  a  Inter 
period,  ground  for  his  wdl-known  answer  si 
to  the  sources  of  his  fortune. 

—At  Paris,  after  ^nmiairei  the  fioyaUrti 
were  in  exultation.  They  juaaipad  at  oaoe  to 
the  condudon  that  Bonaparte  woold  ad  «  e 
aecond  Monk,  and  restore  the  muMtfth^  li* 
propodtiona  to  this  and  wmm  aMid»4»'ftiW 
Republicans,  and  4 


June  1 8,  1896] 


Tlie   Nation. 


475 


w«rt  loriMd  into  rkUcoto  on  the  tlng^  Bot 
tbt  propodtkMM  wm  dooUntd  and  the  thtnir* 
wnrMdf  and  Bonnpnrto  wt  himtelf  to  raMmrt 
Um  BapotUcnnt.  Than  the  oUrfcj  iprand  a 
rapart  thai  tba  Rapablloan  calandar  waa  about 
to  ba  sQppTMMd  and  the  CathoUo  raUgkn  ra* 
atorad.  A  biahopi  Royar,  preacbad  a  tarmon 
at  Notra  Dama  In  honor  of  tha  ooitp  d'HtiL  Ha 
was  promptly  iflanoad.  BotUHP^rta  himialf 
wrota  with  his  own  hand  anawara  to  tha  few 
proteata  which  ha  reoaiTad  from  formar  aaM>> 
eiataa  and  othan.  Ha  made  to  all  tha  aama 
protartationa,  that  ha  had  antarad  upon  *'tha 
way  which  laada  to  organisation,  to  tma  libar- 
^1  and  to  bappfnaaa."  Ona  by  ona  hia  oppo- 
nanta  cama  in,  Bartea  natoraDy  among  tha 
llrat.  In  briaf,  the  goremmaot  of  Bonaparte^ 
dnrlng  tha  proriaory  conaalata»  waa  aa  far  as 
poaaibia  ramorad  from  deapoUam.  According 
to  M.  Aolard,  tha  policy  of  that  time  waa 
"praaqne  anaai  Umporiaatrice  qua  calla  de 
Barfma»  maia  phia  doaoai  phia  cwdiala  et  phia 
fnuHjaiaa.** 


EGYPTIAN  ARABIC. 

An  Arabio-EngliMh  Vocabulary  of  tho  CfoUo- 
qmUU  Arabic  of  Egypt,  Compiled  by  8. 
Spiro  of  tha  Miniatry  of  Finance.  Pp.  zii, 
Ml.  Cairo:  Al-Mokattam  Printing  Office; 
London:  Bernard  Quaritch.  1896. 
OuB  Arabic  lexioona  are  remarkable  for  being 
Tolominooa  and  incomplete;  indeed,  it  would 
almoat  aeem  aa  though  their  incompleteneaa 
ware  in  direct  ratio  to  the  aiae  and  nombar 
of  tha  Tolumea.  Witneta  the  cydopean  labora 
otJL  W.  Lane,  whoae  death  prevented  the  fln- 
iahing  of  hia  great  lexicon  (whereby  the  latter 
part  haa  had  to  ba  pobUahed  almoat  in  akeleton) 
—tha  work,  howerer,  atill  covering  over  three 
tbooaand  triple-colnnmed  quarto  pagea.  Tat 
Lane  limited  himaelf  to  purely  claaaical  Arabic, 
and  tha  aigniflcationa  to  ba  found  in  hia  work 
are  auch  aa  were  in  uae  only  during  the  firat 
two  oaotariea  after  tba  Prophet*a  death.  In 
other  worda,  madiasval  Arabic— all  the  great 
hiatorioal,  geographical,  philoaopbioal,  and 
other  Htaratnra  aubaequent  to  the  eighth  oao- 
tory  ▲.  D.— la  left  entirely  unnoticed.  Now  it 
will  easily  be  understood  that  tha  original  lan- 
guage of  tha  Deaert,  however  rich,  had  to  be 
considerably  modified  and  extended  to  suit  the 
use  of  those  who  governed  the  various  lands 
stretching  from  Spain  to  the  Wall  of  China, 
who  had  evolved  a  theology  more  intricate 
than  that  of  tha  Schoolmen,  and  whoae  phlloso. 
phers  were  credited  with  a  thorough  know- 
ledgaof  Aristotle.  Hence  it  foUows  that  though 
Lane  to  indiqmisabla  to  the  scholar,  his  great 
qnartoa  will  not  suffice  the  learner  who  wishes 
to  undsrstand,  say,  tha  Chronicle  of  Tabari,  or 
even  to  read  ten  successive  pages  of  the  *  Anu 
bian  Nights,*  Furtharmora,  Lane,  like  all  pre- 
vious lezioographers,  has  for  the  most  part 
marsly  translated  into  his  work  the  informa- 
tion supplied  by  the  native  Arabic  dioUonariea. 
These  latter,  of  course,  are  Uttla  mors  than 
lists  of  synonyms;  for  an  Arabic  dictionary,  in 
Arabic,  must»  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  explain 
what  a  thing  Is  by  saying  that  it  is  something 
else. 

The  Dutch  scholar  Dosy  sought  to  supply 
tha  lack  in  Lane  and  others  by  his  two  great 
quarto -volumea  of  'Supplement  aux  Dlctlon- 
nalres  Arabes.*  This  was  a  stride  in  the  right 
direction;  all  tha  meanings  there  registered 
wars  from  dtad  passages,  and  the  work  was 
the  fruit  of  extensive  reading,  not  merely  tha 
rsanlt  of  compilation  made  from  tha  explana- 
tions given  by  the  native  autboritlea.  But 
even  with  all  that  has  bean  aooomplishad  (pmd. 


nssdissa  to  say,  others  have  followed  in  the 
linea  traced  out  by  Lane  and  Dosy),  how  in- 
complete  our  Arabic  lexicons  still  are  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  never  does  a  properly 
edited  text  appear— even  of  the  simplest— 
without  a  shorter  or  a  longer  glossary  of 
words  with  meanings  not  to  be  found  in  either 
the  8,000  quarto  pages  of  Lane  or  the  1,700  of 
Dosy.  The  tmct  of  the  matter  is  that  this  rich 
literature,  covering  In  unbroken  line  more  than 
a  thousand  years,  and  produced  in  countriee 
situated  as  far  apart  as  Morocco  and  Meeopc 
tamia,  can  with  difficulty  be  squeesed  between 
the  covers  of  a  single  set  of  volumes.  It  is  as 
though  one  should  try  to  gather  Into  one  list 
all  the  words  used  in  classical  and  medisDval 
Latin,  together  with  thoee  common  to  all  the 
modem  Romance  languages. 

At  the  preeent  day  the  focus  of  any  literary 
activity  that  yet  remains  to  the  Arablo-speak- 
ing  people  is  undoubtedly  in  Egypt.  The  dia- 
lect there  may  not  be  classical,  but  it  Is  co- 
pious. Furthermore,  it  shows  an  ad^tability 
to  modern  ideas  and  usage  which  stamps  it  as 
one  of  the  conquering  languages  of  tbe  world 
—at  any  rate  for  Africa.  Mr.  Spiro  is  happily 
endowed  for  the  work  that  he  has  undertaken; 
Arabic  Is  his  native  language,  but  his  educa- 
tion has  been  English.  He  has  produced  in  a 
convenient  form  a  vocabulary  which  may 
JusUy  claim  to  **repreeent  almost  all  that  a 
foreigner  would  meet  with  in  conversation 
with  the  natives  of  Egypt.'*  The  immense 
value  of  the  present  compilation  liee  in  tbe 
fact  that  it  registers  the  colloquial  words,  now 
adopted  into  official  and  administrative  use, 
which,  though  not  to  be  found  in  Arabic  dic- 
tionaries, have  yet  become  part  of  the  written 
language  of  modem  Egypt.  Mr.  Spiro  is  well 
aware  that  **  no  single  compiler  can  hope  to 
make  an  exhaustive  collection,"  but  we  trust 
that  his  deeerved  tfuooess  in  thia  instance  will 
induce  him  to  extend  his  labors,  and  in  due  time 
bring  out  a  second  and  improved  edition  of 
hia  book;  in  view  d  which  eventuality  we 
shall  make  some  few  criticisms  on  points 
worthy  of  his  attention,  and  indicate  what 
might  possibly  be  changed  to  advantage  In  a 
future  issue. 

To  transliterate  Arabic  perfectly  into  Latin 
characters  is  an  almost  insoluble  problem, 
and,  as  Mr.  Spiro  remarks,  **the  adoption  of 
a  system  is  a  matter  of  taste.**  The  system 
here  adopted  is  that  of  the  late  Spitto  Bey, 
which,  from  a  philological  point  of  view,  has 
many  advantages.  It  must,  however,  be  cara> 
fully  studied,  and  Mr.  Spiro  would  have  done 
well  to  i»1nt  an  explanatory  note  indicating 
especially  that  in  his  transliteration  the  Eng- 
lish 9h  sound  is  raprssented  by  the  $  dotted 
above,  and  that  his  i  is  to  be  pronounced,  as 
with  the  Italians  and  Germans,  like  the  Eng^ 
lish  y  (this  last  letter  is  used  to  repreeent  the 
long  I  or  ••  sound).  Mr.  Spiro  prefaces  his 
work  with  some  useful  lists  of  common  words, 
the  Numbers,  the  Namea  of  tha  Months, 
Weights  and  Measuraa^  the  Adminiatrative 
Divisions  of  Egypt,  and  other  like  matters. 
The  Ust  of  numerals  prompts  the  remark  that 
the  due  uss  of  the  hyphen  In  transliteration 
would  vastly  aid  the  learner  In  keeping  the 
syllables  properly  distinguished.  It  is  curi- 
ous,  in  pasaing,  to  notice  how  the  claaaical 
oaaa  ending  of  the  noua  la  atill  at  timea  pra- 
aerved  in  the  modem  dialect ;  thna,  the  Ara- 
bio  for  '*  three  hundred  **  la  pronounced  t%Utu- 
my^  (for  the  daaalo  thalathu  myfaU  but  Mr. 
Spiro  transliterates  this  (likewise  the  succeed. 
Ing  hundreds)  in  one  word  tuUumyjii^  which  Is, 
we  hold,  a  mistake,  for  the  foreigner  will  Infal- 
Ubly  take  the  first  twosyllablss  to  be  tmUtm, 


and  then,  adding  yfa  (or  ssya),  win  be  perfect- 
ly unoomprehended  of  the  people.  All  these 
and  like  words  should  be  carefully  separated 
by  the  hyphen,  s.  g.,  iuUti-myja^  urbu'^myfa^ 
etc. ;  for  In  Arabic  especially  the  difference  Is 
to  be  strongly  marked  between  (we  may  give 
an  example  in  English)  cm  ice  haum  and  a  nice 
houtc^  and  running  words  together  """ifliw 
this  distinction. 

Coming  to  the  vocabulary,  it  will  be  noticed 
that  derived  words  are  given  partly  under  the 
root  form  (as  is  the  rule  in  dictionaries  of  the 
classical  language),  partly  In  alphabetical 
order.  Mr.  Spiro  on  this  subject  aptly  re- 
marks :  "  Those  experienced  in  teaching  Arabic 
to  foreigners  in  Egypt  know  that  only  a  small 
percentage  of  these  study  the  syntax  and  the 
grammar,  and  that  tha  Egyptians  themselves 
are  often  at  a  loss  to  find  a  word  In  a  pursly 
Arabic  lexicon  where  the  derivatives  are  given 
only  under  the  root- verb.**  So  f ar  ao  good, 
but  what  is  astonishing  to  any  one  who  has 
made  the  classical  Arabic  his  study  is  to  find 
that  Mr.  Spiro,  abandoning  orthography, 
spells  many  of  his  words  phonetically— and 
says  nothing  about  it.  The  following  examples 
will  show  how  far  the  modem  Egyptians  have 
progressed  on  this  convenient  but  downward 
path.  Certain  people,  as  all  know,  having  a 
constitutional  inability  to  pronounce  the  sound 
of  th  and  the  kindred  dh  (which  in  English  is 
likewise  written  th)^  put  an  a  for  the  former 
and  a  s  for  the  latter.  Most  Frenchmen,  for 
instance,  pronounce  "this  thing*'  as  ** sis 
siiHir,**  and  in  like  manner  both  Persians  and 
Turks,  after  borrowing  half  their  dictionary 
from  the  Arabic,  consistently  confound  the 
Arabic  s  and  ik^  pronouncing  both  as  a,  while 
the  four  Arabic  letters  «,  dhy  d,  and  th  are  In- 
differently uttered  as  s.  For  it  should  be  re- 
marked that  the  dialect  of  the  Deeert  is  very 
rich  in  these  dental  and  palatal  sounds.  We 
have  both  (and  th,  d  and  dh,  then  (dotted  or 
palatal)  ( and  Its  oorreqxmding  th,  aleo  a  dot- 
ted sibilant  s  and  its  corresponding  aspirated 
d.  The  Persians  and  Turks,  however,  stick  to 
orthography,  and  pronounce  consistently  s  and 
M  according  as  the  unpronounceable  letter  has 
the  (A  sound  or  the  dA.  The  modem  Egyptian, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  remarkable  for  being  in- 
consistent In  pronunciation,  and,  if  Mr.  Spiro 
is  to  be  taken  as  our  guide,  often,  as  already 
noticed,  throws  orthography  to  the  dogs.  For 
sometimes  th  Is  pronounced  as  (,  sometimes  as 
a.  Thus  the  classical  thaUUha, '  three,'  becomes 
plain  iaUUa,  but  under  the  Initial  (A  In  tha 
vocabulary  Mr.  Spiro  writes  **see  4**  and  (Ad- 
60,  'firm,*  is  given  as  sdMf,  while  mathai,  'a 
proverb,*  becomes  ma$al ;  and  many  other  ax^ 
amples  follow. 

It  Is,  however,  among  the  letters  d  and  s 
that  the  most  remarkable  confusion  occurs. 
In  classical  Arabic,  dim'  means  'a  cuirasa,' 
while  dAird*  (which  a  Persian  or  Turk  pro- 
nounces s<rd*),  is  *  the  ell  or  cubit';  now  both 
these  words  Mr.  Spiro  writes  Indifferently 
with  the  plain  Inltla]  d,  thus  confusing  two 
diffsrent  roots  and  signiflcatlons.  Again,  un- 
der the  letter  a  of  ttUs  vocabulary  there  are 
sooM  wonderful  words.  It  will  be  suffldsBl 
to  point  to  the  common  and  vary  classical  root 
daroio,  which  is  used  in  the  vulgar  dialect  in 
such  an  expression  as  Darfa/IA,  explained  by 
Mr.  Spiro  to  signify,  '*I  laugh  at  you.  Yon 
are  beneath  my  aottca.**  But  this  Is  here 
given  under  tbe  letter  s  (and  spelt  with  the 
Arabic  sd),  thus  confounding  it  with  the  root 
aaraia,  •*  to  swallow  a  mouthful,*'  and  entire- 
ly upae<ting  Jnat  notions  of  propriety. 

It  Is  for  the  astonishing  number  of  new  worda 
and  seooodary  meanings  that  tba  present  Yo- 


476 


Tlie   IN*atiorL. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1616 


cabulary  is  remarkable.  The  compiler  has 
supplied  many  naetvl  examples  of  idiomatic 
usage,  as  in  the  column  of  racy  vernacular 
given  under  the  heading  rigl,  '  foot.'  Foreign 
words  have  rightly  been  marked  with  an  as- 
terisk, but  it  is  none  the  less  a  shock  to  find 
such  a  classical  and  orthodox  word  as  »cUA$na^ 

*  safety/  registered  with  the  signification  of 

*  sausage*  (to  wit,  the  Italian  ialame,  now 
doubtless  imported  into  Egypt).  Common 
words  have  also  a  surprising  way  of  lengthen- 
ing their  vowels  in  the  modem  dialect;  for  in- 
stance, the  classical  ragul^  *a  man,'  becomes 
rdgily  with  a  long  alif  that  would  entirely  al- 
ter the  meaning  of  the  word  in  the  classical 
speech.  On  the  other  hand,  a  good  old  loan- 
word like  dUldb  (which  the  Arabs  borron  ed 
from  Persia  when  the  first  Moslems  conquered 
the  Sassanian  Empire)  still  keeps  Its  original 
meaning  of  *  water-wheel,'  but  adds  thereto 
the  secondary  signification  of  a  *  cupboard,* 
or  *  wardrobe.'  Further,  and  doubtless  be- 
cause from  the  signification  of  *watei^wheel' 
dmdb  came  to  signify  *  wheel '  in  general,  and 
then  any  clever  *wheeled>machine,'  an  addi- 
tional meaning  has  grown  up  in  its  now  com- 
mon  use  to  denote  'a  ruse  or  trick':  and  a 
'  business  man '  in  modem  Cairo  Is  now  under- 
stood under  the  phrase  rdgil  diUdb^  literally, 
*a  man  of  ruse,'  for  which  terms  the  classical 
dictionary  offers  no  interpretation.  In  many 
instances  Mr.  Spiro  would  certainly  confer  a 
benefit  were  he  to  add  further  explanation  of 
the  strange  meanings  which  have  come  to  be 
attached  to  words. 

Mr.  Spiro  has  done  very  much  to  facilitate 
the  labors  of  such  as  desire  to  get  a  practi- 
cal knowledge  of  Arabic.  To  readers  of  the 
'Thousand  and  Ooe  Nights'  this  vocabulary 
will  be  an  Indispensable  adjunct^  while  the 
English  official  in  Egypt,  who  has  to  wade 
through  the  pages  of  dispatches  and  adminis- 
trative reports,  will  find  here  **  financial,  engi- 
neering, mechanical,  and  military  words"  ex- 
plained which  he  will  seek  for  in  vain  in  the 
pages  of  either  Lane  or  Dosy. 


JAPAN   AND   CHINA   AT   WAR. 

The  Chines  Japan  War,   By  Vladimir.  Charles 

Scribner's  Sons.    1896. 
The  Japan-China  War.    By  JuUchi  Inouye. 

With   photo- engraved   plates    by    Ogawa. 

Yokohama:   Kelly    &  Walsh;    New  York: 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 
Both  of  these  works  are  largely  compilations, 
and  both  are  drawn  mainly  from  Japanese 
sources.  The  first,  whose  author  adopts  the 
pseudonym  of  Vladimir,  is  of  the  greater  per- 
manent value,  giving  a  clear  and  consecutive 
narrative  of  the  war,  as  well  as  of  the  circum- 
stances leading  up  to  it  and  of  the  various  ne- 
gotiations that  led  to  its  close  and  the  estab- 
lishment of  peace.  The  illustrations  are  very 
poor,  and  in  this  respect  the  second  work  is 
much  the  superior— its  illustrations,  by  Ogawa, 
being  mainly  from  photographs,  well  defined 
and  of  considerable  size.  To  some  extent,  and 
in  this  respect,  one  work  supplements  the  other. 
Inouye's  work,  however,  confines  itself  to  the 
three  principal  events  of  the  war— the  battle 
of  the  Yalu,  or  Haiyang  Island,  the  campaign 
on  the  Regent's  Sword,  resulting  in  the  fall  of 
Port  Arthur,  and  the  military  and  naval  ope- 
rations in  and  about  Weibai-wei  Bay. 

It  is  difficult  not  to  agree  with  Vladimir  in 
bis  introductory  pages  as  to  the  characteristics 
of  the  three  peoples  concerned  in  the  China- 
Japan  war.  Much  as  they  have  in  common  of 
reUgioD  »od  learpip^,  aud  alike  a*  they  m^  l^ 


origin  and  mode  of  thought,  tliey  nevertheless 
differ  radically  in  most  physical  and  intellectu- 
al traits.  The  Japanese,  to  begin  with,  form  a 
curious  compound.  Warlike  by  nature  and 
tradition,  they  are  at  the  same  time  amiable 
and  artistic;  qui<dc  and  vivacious,  they  posooM 
insatiable  curiosity,  and  a  desire  to  leoim  not 
always  accompanied  by  thoroughness  of  diges- 
tion and  assimilation.  The  Chinese,  on  the 
other  hand,  though  quiet,  laborious,  and  con- 
servative, and  naturally  padflc,  can  with 
proper  treatment  and  training  make  excellent 
seamen  and  soldiers.  They  are,  we  believe, 
naturally  better  seamen  than  the  Japanese, 
and,  under  the  American  flag  and  in  arctic 
expeditions,  have  shown  as  much  courage  and 
endurance  as  their  neighbors  the  Japanese,  or 
their  shipmates  and  companions  of  European 
and  American  origin.  Certainly,  as  seamen 
on  mercantile  vessels  they  are  preferred  by 
European  commanders  to  Japanese,  in  Eastern 
waters.  With  China*s  lack  of  Internal  com- 
munication and  want  of  homogeneity  of  dia- 
lect, is  to  be  considered  the  prevalent  general 
indifference,  if  not  hostility,  to  the  ruling 
classes.  As  a  result,  it  is  not  a  matter  of  won- 
der  that  the  Chinese  are  so  wanting  in  that 
patriotism  which  the  Japanese  possess  almost 
to  fanaticism.  As  to  the  Koreans,  they  differ 
from  both  the  Japanese  and  the  Chinese.  They 
seem  to  lack  the  virtues  of  both.  For  cento- 
ries  subjects  of  a  tributary  kingdom,  and  vic- 
tims of  constant  maladministration,  they  have, 
as  Vladimir  truly  states,  become  slothful  and 
indifferent  to  a  degree  which  would  be  beyond 
belief  to  thoM  who  do  not  know  them.  In 
physical  appearance  they  are  perhaps  the  finest 
of  the  three  nationalitiee,  but  they  lack  sadly 
the  industry  and  stability  of  the  Chinese,  as 
well  as  the  courage,  enterprise,  and  patriotism 
of  their  insular  neighbors  of  Japan. 

The  relative  value  of  the  war  forces  of  China 
and  Japan  seems  to  have  been  singularly  mis- 
understood, not  only  by  the  civHiced  world  at 
large,  but  more  particularly  by  most  Euro- 
peans and  Americans  residing  In  the  extreme 
Orient.  The  general  tendency  was  to  compare 
populations  and  geographical  extent  rather 
than  war-like  spirit  and  military  and  naval 
efficiency— a  mistake  not  uncommon  with  our 
own  legislators  when  comparing  the  standing 
of  the  United  States  with  that  of  other  naval 
and  military  Powers.  Although  the  numeri- 
cal force  of  the  Chinese  army  in  its  four  classes 
was  nominally  much  superior  to  that  of  the 
Japcmese,  it  was  not  really  so,  and  it  was  bad- 
ly officered  and  disciplined,  and  inefficient,  as 
a  rule,  in  its  organisation  and  armament.  The 
fourth  class  of  the  Chinese  troops,  known  as 
the  drilled  or  trained  army,  was  alone  worthy 
of  the  name.  It  was  composed  of  men  who  had 
been  drilled  in  the  European  manner,  and  in 
numbers  was  estimated  by  different  authorities 
to  consist  of  from  50,000  to  100,000  men.  The 
numbers  of  the  other  classes  were  even  more 
uncertain;  their  training  was  n^lected,  and 
they  were  armed  with  weapons  of  all  sorts,  in- 
cluding spears  as  well  as  bows  and  arrows. 
The  Japanese  army,  on  the  contrary,  was  a 
model  of  its  kind.  It  has  been  deservedly 
praised  for  the  perfection  of  its  organization, 
the  celerity  of  its  mobilization,  and  the  preci- 
sion of  its  movements.  Formed  upon  the  best 
European  model,  the  standing  army  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  was  but  little  short  of  70,- 
000  men,  capable  of  expansion  by  the  addition 
of  the  reserve  and  territorial  army  to  at  least 
twice  this  size.  The  infantry  and  cavalry 
were  armed  with  the  Murata  rifie,  a  breach- 
loader  invented  by  a  Japcmese  officer  of  that 
name,  whil^  the  light  artUlery  copsisted  of 


of  compreflsed  bronze  made  upon  tbe 
system  of  an  Austrian  at  Osaka.  Tbe  power 
of  rapidly  concentrating  and  transporting 
troops  was  possiUe  to  China  only  by  means 
of  the  sea  and  by  chartered  transports; 
this  means  out  off,  there  remained  but  tbe 
badly  kept  canals  and  worse  roads.  The  Ja- 
panese in  their  own  country  had  the  advantage 
of  the  railway  system,  and  for  tranqwrts  they 
drew  largely  upon  the  many  steamers  of  their 
own  great  company— the  Nippon  Ynsen  Kai- 
sha.  The  insular  conditions  of  Japan  are  such 
that  transports  can  effectually  aid  and  supple- 
ment the  concentration  of  troops  by  ralL  The 
transportation  of  material  was  effectively  done 
by  the  Japanese,  the  organisation  being  very 
thorough;  coolies  took  the  place  of  the  wagons 
and  beasts  of  burden  of  western  countries. 

As  to  the  Chinese  naval  force  engaged  during 
the  war,  it  may  be  said  to  have  consisted  al- 
most entirely  of  the  Pei-Yang  or  northerD 
squadron;  the  vessels  of  the  southern  squadron 
and  flotillas  remaining  in  their  respective  loca- 
lities. The  Chinese  navy  was  superior  in  per- 
sonnel in  every  reepeot  to  that  of  the  army, 
and,  furthermore,  in  its  equipment,  was  supe- 
rior to  the  navy  of  Japcm,  but  in  its  ships 
alone;  for,  notwithstanding  the  bitter  criticism 
and  neglect  of  their  navy  by  the  Japanese,  its 
personnel  was  excellent  in  morale  and  died- 
pline^  and  never  lacking  in  dash  and  bravery. 
Inouye,  in  his  preface,  tells  under  what  disad- 
vantages the  navy  had  been  placed  of  late 
years.  He  adds  that  **the  Japanese  have 
never  been  great  sailors,  the  laws  of  tbe  Toko- 
gawa  Government  having  probibited  the  con- 
straction  of  large  ships.  It  was  possible,  then, 
that  the  Japanese  officers  might,  by  their  de- 
fective navigation  and  unskilful  maoQenvres, 
run  their  war-ships  into  danger."  Theee  fears 
ware  soon  dispelled  by  the  battle  of  the  Yalu; 
and  the  Japanese,  with  inferior  ships,  aooom- 
plished  what  the  Chinese,  with  upon  the  whole 
a  superior  naval  force,  fUQed  to  do.  Had  the 
vessels  asked  for  by  Vioe-Admiral  Kabayama 
in  1890  been  given  by  the  Japanese  Parliament 
and  the  battle>ships  now  building  been  at  the 
command  of  Admiral  Ito,  the  cooomand  of  the 
sea  would  have  been  secured  at  the  beginning 
of  the  war,  and  the  beginning  of  the  winter 
would  have  found  the  Japanese  army  before  or 
in  Peking  instead  of  in  ManUdiuria.  Japan 
possessed  during  the  war  no  battle  ships  and 
no  armored  vessels  fit  to  cope  with  the  Ting 
Tuen^  or  its  sister  ship,  the  Chen  Yuen, 

By  the  middle  of  July,  1894,  the  Korean 
question  had  become  so  involved  that  war 
with  China  and  Korea  seemed  to  present  the 
only  solution  to  the  Ji^Mkneee.  Popular  feeling 
ran  high,  and  the  whole  nation  was  resolved 
not  to  suffer  more  humiliation  in  Korea.  China 
was  considered  the  instigator  of  all  that  had 
happened  in  the  peninsula,  both  as  to  insults 
offered  and  lives  lost,  and  the  hand  of  tiie 
Government  would  have  been  forced  even  if  it 
had  been  unwilling.  But  it  was  not  unwilling. 
The  march  of  events  was  rapid.  On  the  18th 
of  July  the  Korean  Govemmoit  requested  the 
withdrawal  of  the  Japaneee  troops;  on  tbe 
19th  the  Chinese  Minister  left  Korea  and  re- 
turned to  China;  on  the  20th  the  Japanese 
Ifinister  in  Korea  sent  an  ultimatum  to  the 
Korean  Government,  to  which,  on  the  2dd,  the 
Korean  Gk>vemment  responded  onsatisfaoCori^ 
ly,  and  as  a  result,  on  the  dSd,  the  Japaneae 
troops  attacked  the  King's  palace  and  >MMMfc"— 
masters  of  that  labyrinUi  uid  cmnaegncntly  oC 
the  Govemment.  Since  that  1 
late  flight  of  the  King  to  the  1 
Korea  has  been  praotkallgr 
COOtTQ}*    With  th9  ( 


June  1 8,  1896] 


Tlie    IN*atioii. 


4:77 


Uoe  at  Seoul  on  the  28d  of  July,  the  reffolar 
hostilities  between  Japan  and  Korea  began 
and  ended. 

The  war  between  Japan  and  China  also  be- 
gan, as  most  wars  of  modem  times  begin,  with 
the  actoal  hostilities  preceding  the  formal  de- 
claration. History  has  established  this  as  the 
mle,  the  reverse  as  the  exception.  The  hurry- 
ing of  the  forces  from  China  and  Japan  to 
Korea  made  the  collision  ineTitable,  and  its 
approach  known  to  all  well-informed  persons  in 
China  and  Japan.  On  the  21st  of  July  and 
upon  the  days  inmiediately  succeeding,  eleven 
steamers,  carrying  more  than  8,000  men,  were 
sent  from  Tientsin,  the  port  of  Peking,  to 
Korea.^  Some  were  sent  to  the  Talu  River, 
and  others  direct  to  Asan,  near  Chemulpo,  the 
port  of  the  capital  of  Korea.  The  former 
were  assembled  to  bar  the  approach  to  China 
from  Korea,  the  latter  to  reinforce  the  Chi- 
nese troops  already  in  Korea  and  near  the 
capitaL  To  secure  and  preserve  the  advantages 
of  the  position  in  Korea  held  by  the  Japanese, 
quick  action  was  necessary ;  and  as  soon  as  it 
became  known  that  the  transports  had  left 
Tientsin,  three  of  the  fastest  cruisers  of  the 
Japanese  navy  left  Sasebo,  the  naval  station 
in  southern  Japan,  on  the  28d  of  July,  reaching 
the  vicinity  of  Asan  on  the  morning  of  the 
25th,  falling  in  at  the  same  time  with  two 
small  Chinese  men-of-war  coming  from  Asan, 
at  which  place  the  attack  upon  the  palace  of 
the  23d  Inst,  was  known.  Which  side  opened 
fire  is  in  dispute,  but  it  mattered  not:  the  train 
had  been  laid,  and  the  application  of  the  torch 
was  inevitable.  Japan  by  this  time  meant 
war.  The  engagement  resulted  in  the  defeat 
of  the  Chinese  vessels— the  loss  of  one  and  the 
flight  of  the  other.  Before  the  pursuit  of  the 
Chinese  vesseli  was  over,  the  British  steanoer 
Kow-Bhing^  chartered  and  acting  as  a  Chinese 
transport,  was  sighted  in  company  with  a 
snudl  Chinese  dispatch  vessel,  which  was  at 
once  captured.  The  Kow^hing  was  found  to 
have  1,200  Chinese  troops  on  board,  fully 
armed,  besides  twelve  field  guns,  ammunition, 
etc.  The  Japanese  cruiser  Naniwa  boarded 
the  KotD-ahing,  and  her  captain,  an  English- 
man, was  directed  to  bring  her  to  anchor, 
which  he  did  under  protest ;  but  the  Chinese 
troops  with  their  leaders  refused  to  surrender 
to  the  Japanese  or  allow  the  Europeans  in  the 
ship  (among  whom  was  Von  Hanneken)  to 
do  so. 

The  destruction  of  the  ship  followed,  and 
was  Justified  by  international  law,  but  the  loss 
of  the  1,000  persons  on  the  KouhMhing  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  necessary  or  unavoidable. 
Engaged  as  she  was  upon  unneutral  service, 
her  position  was  not  unlike  a  foreigner  enlist- 
ed in  an  army  which  becomes  by  the  outbreak 
of  hostilities  belligerent.  His  engagement  in 
a  military  service  without  regard  to  war  in- 
volves the  possibility  of  taking  part  in  war 
and  warlike  operations,  with  all  its  risks  and 
penalties.  But  the  Kouyshing  matter  was  bad- 
ly managed.  Granting  that  the  ship  itself 
could  not  be  taken  possession  of  from  the  nu- 
merical force  of  the  Chinese  on  bofuxl,  it  could 
nevertheless  have  been  disabled,  and  its  imme- 
diate destruction  was  not  necessary,  as  the 
ship  was  at  anchor  and  under  the  guns  of  the 
Naniioa,  It  does  not  seem  to  have  been  es- 
tablished that  the  Japanese  fired  upon  the  Chi- 
nese in  the  water,  but  there  seems  to  be  also  no 
evidence  or  claim  that  they  made  any  attempt 
to  save  those  who  were  in  the  water  with  their 
boats.  It  is  stated  that  the  agents  of  the 
Kou>-$hing  had  inserted  a  proviso  securing  in- 
demnification in  case  the  vessel  solfered  any 
CMOAlt/  from  the  incideiiti  q|  wftr,  w\Mk 


showed  an  ezpeotanoy  and  assumption  of  risk 
that  weakens  the  claim  of  innocenoe  in  trans- 
porting troops  to  what  was  generally  known 
as  a  most  probable  theatre  of  war.  So  far  as 
can  be  ascertained,  the  British  Government 
has  not  taken  advantage  of  the  offer  of  repara- 
tion made  by  the  Japanese  Government  if  the 
act  should  be  proved  to  be  a  breach  of  inter- 
national law. 

No  more  troops  were  attempted  to  be  landed 
in  the  vicinity  of  Chemulpo,  and  the  campaign 
of  the  Japanese  against  the  Chinese  in  Korea 
was  soon  under  way,  the  Japanese  forces  being 
rapidly  and  largely  reinforced  without  any 
interference  with  their  disembarkation  on  the 
part  of  the  Pei-Tang  squadron.  A  fine  oppor- 
tunity for  an  active  and  aggressive  enemy  was 
here  lost.  The  feebly  opposed  operations  of 
the  Japanese  through  Korea  caused  great  loss 
of  prestige  to  the  Chinese,  besides  rendering 
complete  the  subjugation  of  Korea  and  the 
Koreans;  but  this  campaign,  with  the  opera- 
tions that  followed  in  Mantchuria,  had  no  de- 
cisive effect  upon  the  war.  Even  if  the  war 
had  been  prolonged,  the  positions  held  at  the 
last  in  Mantchuria  would  have  been  easily  ob- 
tained from  the  Kinohow  peninsula  after  the 
fight  of  the  Tain  and  the  consequent  command 
of  the  sea  Uiere  obtained. 

The  three  great  events  of  the  war  are  rightly 
given  by  Inouye — the  battle  of  the  Talu  (or, 
more  correctly,  of  Haiyang  Island),  the  cap- 
ture of  Port  Arthur,  and  the  naval  and  mili- 
tary operations  at  Wei-hai-wei,  resulting  in  its 
capture  and  that  of  the  Pei-Tang  squadron. 
First  in  importance  and  in  time  came  the  great 
naval  battle  off  the  Talu.  The  meeting  of  the 
two  fieets  is  now  known  to  have  been  a  matter 
of  accident;  neither  was  in  full  force  when  the 
smoke  from  each  fieet  revealed  its  presence  to 
its  antagonist.  Little  time  was  given  for  the 
formation  of  tactical  plans,  but  some  general 
plan  of  operations  had  been  formulated  on 
both  sides  in  case  of  meeting  with  the  enemy. 
The  approach  was  not  rapid  for  modem  fieets; 
the  miUn  body  of  the  Chinene  had  but  a  speed 
of  six  knots,  while  the  principal  squadron  of 
the  Japanese  moved  at  the  rate  of  ten  knots. 
The  Chinese  line  of  battle  was  intended  to  be 
that  of  the  indented  line,  but  it  became,  by 
force  of  circumstances,  an  obtuse  double  eche- 
Ion;  both  of  these  formations  are  not  favored 
by  the  best  tacticians  of  the  day,  and  certainly 
they  received  no  additional  prestige  from  the 
results  off  Haiyang  Island.  The  Japanese  fleet 
had  not  been  without  preparation  in  fleet  tac- 
tics, for  Admiral  Ito,  months  before,  had 
drilled  his  commanders  in  tactical  movements 
by  means  of  steam  launches.  He  made  his  ap> 
proach  with  system  and  coherence,  and  al- 
though signals  were  misunderstood  and  move- 
ments miscarried  at  times,  and  at  others  were 
hampered  by  weak  and  slow  vessels,  his  plans 
were  in  the  main  carried  out  and  in  the  main 
were  successful.  At  no  time  did  the  two 
squadrons  of  the  Japanese  lose  their  organisa- 
tion or  unity,  or  resign  themselves  to  the  in- 
dividual duel  and  mdI6e.  By  a  concentration 
of  attack  upon  the  flanks  of  the  Chinese  fleet, 
and  by  the  movements  to  protect  the  weaker 
and  slower  vessels,  the  Japanese  commander- 
in-chief  destroyed  the  flanking  vessels  of  the 
enemy  without  losing  a  single  one  of  his  own, 
notwithstanding  his  own  inferiority  of  force 
and  the  superiority  of  the  two  Chinese  battle- 
ships. These  vessels,  however,  saved  the  rest 
of  the  Chinese  fleet. 

Fortunately  for  the  Japanese,  it  was  not 
neoeasary  to  come  to  olose  range  to  secure  ef- 
fectiveness of  flre  on  their  part ;  the  Chinese 
Tessels  destroyed  were  at  a  range  of  8,000 


metres,  and  the  superiority  of  speed  gave  the 
Japanese  a  choice  of  positions  for  concentra- 
tion of  flre,  which  the  lack  of  initiative  on  the 
part  of  the  enemy  further  resigned  to  them. 
The  Chinese,  thus  encircled  and  henmied  in, 
not  only  received  the  full  effect  of  this  concen- 
tration  of  flre,  but  were  at  the  further  disad- 
vantage of  being  compelled  to  repair  damages 
and  put  out  the  accidental  fires  constantly  oc- 
curring on  their  vessels  under  this  severe  and 
continuous  hammering.  The  Japanese,  on  the 
contrary,  could  haul  out  of  action,  repair 
damages,  and  resume  fighting,  or  seek  safety 
with  impunity.  The  advice  and  instructions 
of  Von  Hanneken,  formerly  of  the  German 
Army,  encouraged  the  lack  of  initiative  al- 
ready existing  on  the  part  of  the  Chinese  and 
their  leader.  Admiral  Ting.  While  the  subor^ 
dinate  officers  and  men  of  the  Chinese  fleet 
doubtless  stiU  felt  the  effecto  of  the  discipline 
and  administration  of  Lang,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  the  superior  officers  ever  mastered 
the  manoBuvres  and  evolutions  practised  under 
him.  Admiral  Ting,  distinctively  a  military 
officer,  a  Chinese  military  officer  at  that,  knew 
nothing  of  ships  until  he  was  about  forty  years 
of  age,  and,  though  intelligent  and  of  un- 
doubted bravery,  he  was  in  no  sense  a  naval 
leader  or  tactician.  Personally  honest,  he 
stands  out  in  unselflsh  devotion  to  his  cause  as 
the  best  character  we  know  on  the  Chinese 
side  during  the  war,  and  the  tribute  to  him  by 
the  Japanese  after  his  death  was  no  less  cre- 
ditable to  them  than  to  him.  But,  when  all  is 
said,  he  still  remained  as  infericn*  to  Admiral 
Ito  as  Ito  was  inferior  to  a  Farragut  or 
Nelson. 

The  victory  of  the  Talu  not  only  disabled 
for  the  time  and  partially  destroyed  the  Pei- 
Tang  squadron — ^the  only  active  naval  force  of 
the  Chinese— but  so  disheartened  and  demoral- 
ized its  personnel  that  it  never  again  took  the 
open  sea  except  to  escape  from  Port  Arthur  to 
Wei-hai-wei,  and  the  command  of  the  sea, with 
all  that  this  implied,  came  entirely  into  the 
hands  of  the  Japanese.  There  were  two  acts 
left  to  be  played  in  the  drama  of  the  war,  both 
following  and  possible  through  this  command 
of  the  sea.  The  operations  against  Port  Ar- 
thur, and  the  campaign  preceding  it  on  the 
peninsula  of  the  Regent's  Sword,  came  flrst. 
In  this  short  campaign  the  work  was  done  al- 
most exclusively  by  the  army,  and  it  was  well 
done,  and,  where  necessary,  bravely  done. 
The  landing  was  unopposed,  and  the  forts  as  a 
rule  unworthily  defended.  The  Chinese  naval 
force  at  anchor  at  Wei-hai-wei  did  not  leave 
their  port  of  refuge,  and  neither  disturbed  the 
landing  of  the  Japanese,  nor  flred  a  shot  in  de- 
fence of  the  port  and  fortress  created  for  their 
safety  and  welfare  1 

Winter  soon  came  on,  and  it  is  both  severe 
and  stormy  in  the  Tellow  Sea  and  Gulf  of 
PeohllL  The  courage  of  the  Japanese  fully 
equalled  their  powers  of  endurance,  and  a  win- 
ter campaign  against  Wei-hai-wei  was  deter- 
mined upon.  On  the  10th  of  January,  1895, 
over  flfty  transports  left  UJlna,  in  the  inland 
sea  of  Japan,  for  Talienwan  Bay  near  Port 
Arthur,  under  command  of  Marshal  Count 
Oyama,  who  had  organised  the  attack  upon 
Port  Arthur.  Arriving  at  Talienwan  on  the 
14th  of  January,  the  final  preparations  were 
made,  and  on  the  19th  and  succeeding  days  of 
the  same  month  the  expediti<m  left  in  three 
divisions  for  Tungching  Bay  on  the  Shantung 
Peninsula,  thirty- seven  miles  distant  by  land 
from  Wei-hai  wei.  The  disembarkation  com- 
menced on  the  20th  of  January  upon  the  arrival 
of  the  first  division  in  the  midst  of  a  snow-  stomu 
The  landing,  diwJQvw^  by  the  Chineee,  was 


4=73 


'Pile   N'ation. 


[Vol  62,  Na  1616 


but  tlighUy  opposed,  the  disembAiiuitioii  being 
80  rapidly  effected  that  on  the  90th  of  the  lame 
month  the  forward  moTement  began,  and  wai 
■o  far  advanced  that  the  attack  upon  the  forte 
of  Pohchihyaieu,  on  the  loath  shore  of  the  bay, 
wae  raooeief  ally  made  on  the  80th  of  January, 
and  the  Chineee  Qeet  wae  compelled  to  take  np 
a  position  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  bay,  which 
nins  in  a  northeasterly  and  soothwestsrly  di- 
rection. A  heary  gale  coming  np  caused  a  delay 
in  the  naval  and  military  operations,  and  gave 
Admiral  Ting  an  opportonity  to  destroy  the 
guns  in  the  ports  commanding  the  anchorage  of 
the  Chinese  fleet,  and  thus  render  his  position 
under  liukung  Island  tenable  so  long  as  the  isl- 
and itself  was  in  the  possession  of  the  Chinese. 
This  prolonged  the  resistance  after  the  ci^tture 
of  the  town  of  Weihai-wei  and  the  other  ports 
on  the  mainland,  which  was  effected  by  the  af- 
ternoon of  the  2d  of  February.  In  addition  to 
the  protection  of  the  ports  on  the  two  islands 
in  the  harbor,  that  of  Lih  Island  being  sciU  in- 
tacti  tlieentrances  to  the  bay  were  protected  by 
formidable  booms.  In  the  defence  made  l^ 
the  Pei-Tang  squadron,  which  consisted  of 
twenty- flre  vessels  of  all  kinds  and  sisss,  from 
torpedo  boats  up  to  battle-ships^  Admiral  Ting 
and  bis  command  did  their  beet  work,  while 
the  Japanese  proved  themselves  on  their  side 
to  be  especially  well  fltted  by  national  charac- 
teristics for  daring  torpedo-boat  work.  On  the 
18th  of  February,  189fi,  Admiral  Tingssnt  his 
letter  of  surrender  to  the  Japanese  ooaunand- 
er-in-chief,  and  the  drama  of  the  war  came  to 
a  dose  with  the  tragic  death  of  the  unfortu- 
nate  admiral  by  his  own  act. 


Alpine  NaU§  and  the  CUmbing  Foot.  By 
George  Wherry.  Cambridge,  Eng.:  ICacy 
mUlan  Sc  Bowes ;  New  York :  MaomiUan. 
1806. 
Tbb  Alpine  literature  of  1800  opens  up  with  a 
review  of  mountaineering  in  the  years  1801-06. 
Mr.  YHierry,  when  returning  from  Switser^ 
land,  jots  down  in  the  train  a  record  of  the 
season's  adventures,  and  publishes  it  in  the 
Cambridge  Chronicle.  Five  annual  letters 
have  thus  appeared,  and  he  reprints  them  with 
the  addition  of  two  new  papers,  "On  the 
Climbing  Foot*'  and  **On  Accidents.**  To- 
gether, they  make  a  very  neat  and  a  very 
readable  little  book. 

The  increasing  audacity  of  Alpine  climbers 
is  brought  home  to  one  with  every  fresh  herald- 
ing of  their  deeds.  Mr.  Wherry's  exploits  fnr^ 
nish  a  new  illustration  of  this  threadbare 
theme.  The  Mei  je  is  still  a  dangerous  moun- 
tain, a  mountain  to  be  respected  even  under 
the  most  favorable  conditions.  To  climb  it  with 
a  broken  rib  is  a  feat  of  personal  pluck  worth 
mentioning,  however  pernicious  the  example. 
**  I  gained  the  summit  at  nine  o'clock,  but,  just 
at  the  final  struggle,  where  it  is  necessary  to 
straddle  on  a  sharp,  red-rock  ridge,  called  the 
ehwal  rouge,  with  fine  precipices  below,  my 
rib  gave  way,  and  went  completely  broken 
through.  .  .  .  I  could  feel  and  even  hear  the 
ends  of  the  broken  rib  grating  together;  but  I 
kept  at  it,  going  down  steadily  and  slowly  with 
groans  and  grunts."  Mr.  Wherry's  climbing 
has  really  been  of  ttie  first  order,  and  the  com- 
plete absence  of  vainglory  in  his  narrative 
adds  much  to  ito  value  with  those  who  know 
how  easy  it  is  to  make  a  desperate  adventure 
—on  paper— out  of  a  small  peak. 

Mr.  Wherry  is  university  lecturer  in  surgery 
at  Cambridge,  and  men  of  his  profession  are 
always  observant.  Mr.  Dent  is  another  ex- 
ample. A  cardinal  merit  of  his  classic,  *  Moun- 
taineering,' in  the  Badminton  Library,  is  dia- 


quisition  on  the  work  of  the  body  in  active 
esaroise.  Mr.  Wherry  is  much  lese  comprehen- 
sive than  Mr.  Dent,  dealing  with  one  anatomi- 
cal feature  of  dimbing,  and  not  with  its  broad 
physiological  aspects.  His  essay  on  the  dimb< 
ing  foot  is  the  true  raimmd'Hre  of  the  present 
book  and  an  interesting  study  in  adaptation. 
LssUe  Stephen  once  obeerved  that  the  beet 
amateur  dionld  feel  modest  when  he  reflects 
on  his  inferiority  to  a  ssoood-dass  guide.  Of 
course  an  extra-good  man,  such  as  Stephen 
himself  in  his  climbing  days,  or  the  Rev. 
Charles  Hudson,  who  was  killed  in  the  flrst 
ascsot  of  the  Matterhom,  is  far  better  than 
the  average  Chamonix  hirding.  Tet  no  ama- 
teur ever  equalled  Melohior  Anderegg  or 
Christian  Aimer.  Fraotioe  tells.  The  dimb- 
ing foot  is  not  the  gift  of  Qod,  nor  does  it  come 
by  nature.  It  is  a  physical  adiqitatlon  due  to 
perpetually  walking  up  hiU. 

Mr.  Wherry  states  this  physical  difference 
between  guides  and  amateors  as  follows:  **  It 
has  oftsn  been  noticed  in  mountaineering  that 
a  guide  can  go  face  fwward  and  whole-footed 
up  a  slope,  while  the  amateur  following,  and 
coming  to  a  steep  part,  cannot  plant  his  whole 
foot  upon  the  slope,  but  has  to  go  on  his  toes  or 
else  turn  sideways."  To  explain  the  cause  of 
the  difference,  Mr.  Wherry  begins  with  photo- 
graphs of  an  infant  flve  wedcs  old.  At  this 
tender  age  the  Instep  can  be  made  to  touch  the 
shin  by  slight  pressure  of  the  flnger.  Ghra- 
dually  freedom  of  movement  is  lost  in  gaining 
strength.  With  the  guides  the  Instep  becomes 
modified  eo  that,  without  pressure,  the  foot  is 
bent  upward  beyond  the  limit  whidi  can  be 
reached  by  an  amateur  with  pressure.  Cap- 
tain Abney  has  taken  careful  photographs  of 
the  feet  of  Alois  Kalbermatten  and  Peter  Per- 
ren  for  contrast  with  the  feet  of  good  ama- 
teurs. The  most  casual  glance  at  them  shows 
why  it  is  that  amateurs  go  on  their  toes  while 
the  guides  walk  flat-footed.  There  is  a  climbing 
foot  as  distinctly  as  there  is  a  baseball  hand. 

Mr.  Wherry's  interest  in  the  guides  is  not 
confined  to  their  feet.  Unlike  a  good  many 
recent  Alpine  writers,  he  has  warm,  even  en- 
thusiastic, words  fw  their  moral  qualities.  One 
laments  to  hear  of  any  decadence  when  he  re- 
members the  traditions  of  the  early  school,  and 
of  late  it  has  been  the  habit  to  notice  the  ac- 
tivity of  the  mountaineers  in  the  race  for  mo- 
ney. Two  pawsges  in  different  parts  of  this 
book  may  be  placed  side  by  side  to  show  that, 
after  all,  the  feeling  of  old  and  new-«;hooI 
climbers  for  their  guides  is  the  same  when  the 
guides  are  themsdves  worthy.  *' Wandering 
into  Couttet's  Hotel  at  Chamounlx  quite  with- 
out intention,  I  witnessed  a  touching  farewell 
betwen  Mr.  M — >-  [presumably  Mr.  C.  E.  Ma- 
thews] and  Mdchior  [Anderegg].  To  see  an 
undemonstrative  Englishman  kiss  his  gray, 
bearded  old  guide  on  both  cheeks,  when  these 
two  have  climbed  together  for  forty  years, 
gives  one  suddenly  a  glimpse  of  the  pathoe 
of  life  impossible  to  recall  without  emotion." 
And  then,  concerning  his  own  guides:  "How 
do  theee  men,  Xaver  Imseng  and  Alois  Kalber- 
matten, win  my  regard  f  Xaver  has  an  angd 
face  and  Alois  a  form  like  Hercules.  It  is  not 
only  their  courage,  skUl,  and  devotion  to  duty, 
but  their  sympathy  with  my  delights  or  dlffl- 
cultiee— this  is  the  great  charm." 

Mr.  Wherry  says  of  his  own  *'  poor  tracts" 
in  the  preface:  "Only  of  this  I  fed  assured, 
that  similar  notes,  put  into  my  hands  when  I 
began  climbing,  would  have  been  read  by  me 
with  avidity."  We  can  say  for  our  own  part 
that  we  have  read  his  *  Alpine  Notes'  if  not 
with  avidity,  at  least  with  very  considerate 
pleasure. 


Current  BupertUUone:  CoUsoted  from  ths 
Oral  Tradition  of  English  Spesking  Folk. 
Edited  by  Fanny  D.  Bergen.  With  Notes  tnd 
an  Introduction  by  William  Wells  NewelL 
Boston:  Houghton,  Mifflin  ft  Co.   1886. 

What  They  Say  in  New  England:  A  Book 
of  Signs,  Sayings,  and  Superstitioiii.  Col- 
lected by  Clifton  Johnson.  Boston:  Lss  & 
Shepard.    1800. 

Mbs.  Bkbokh's  work  to  published  ss  the  fourth 
volume  of  the  Memoirs  of  the  American  Folk- 
LoreSodety,  and  is  limited  to  450  copiflB.  Ai 
stoted  in  Mn  KeweU's  introduction,  it  li  ths 
flrst  oondderaUe  printed  collection  msde  is 
America  of  snperstitiotts  belonging  to  (ngUtb- 
speaking  folk.  Mrs.  Bergen  has  also  ooUacted 
the  superstitions  connected  with  animsl  sod 
plant  lore,  iriiich  will  make  a  volume  of  equil 
siae  with  the  present  one.  There  is  noprstsBoe 
that  completeness  has  been  attained;  bat  of 
course  the  number  of  variants  of  ths  sams  be- 
lief is  inflnite,  and  the  main  requiremeat  is  a 
judidovs  dassiflcation.  Mrs.  Bergen's  princi- 
pal rubrics  are  Babyhood,  Childhood,  Lofe 
and  Marriage,  Death  Omens,  Mortuary  Cm- 
toms,  Dreams,  Luck,  Projects,  Phyricsl  Cbs- 
racteristics,  Widiss,  Feetivals,  Westher,  etc 
She  has  fomid  the  possesdon  of  a  pet  sopenfti- 
tion  or  two  an  open  sesame  to  many  bsUeCiof 
this  sort  held  by  servants  and  other  plain  peo- 
ple; but  much  information  has  been  derired 
from  cultivated  persons  who  have  heea  ob- 
servant in  this  direction. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  most  beUrti 
of  this  character  have  their  roots  in  older  landi 
than  ours,  and  Mrs.  Berg6n  has  limited  her  Hit 
to  items  taken  down  from  the  narratioD  of  pe^ 
sons  bom  in  America.  This  limit  is  somewfait 
arbitrary,  since  what  such  persons  narrate  may 
have  been  of  direct  and  even  recent  imports- 
tion.  But  unless  a  comparative  folk-lore  ware 
attempted,  perhaps  no  better  limit  could  baT« 
been  ckoeen.  To  a  certain  extent  the  loosltty 
of  superstitions  is  signiflcanti  and  Mrs  Beqies 
has  made  it  a  rule  to  state  the  piece  when 
each  belief  prevails.  But  all  that  can  beaaM 
on  this  subject  is  that  in  the  regions  of  back- 
ward dvilisation  superstition  is  more  wctin 
and  more  primitive  in  form.  A  supentitioB, 
according  to  Mr.  Newdl,  is  properly  defined  ai 
a  belief  respecting  causal  sequence,  dependlDf 
on  reasoning  proper  to  an  outgrown  coltors. 
We  should  be  inclined  to  add  that  the  reseoo- 
ing  must  be  of  a  falladous  character,  for  aoond 
reasoning  is  not  a  matter  of  epochs.  Moet  d 
the  reasoning  of  common  people  is  in?alid; 
but  as  the  invalidity  of  an  inference  beoooM 
apparent  with  the  increase  of  kno^riedge,  tbe 
inference  becomes  dlsmdited  and  fsDa  into 
the  category  of  superstitions.  However  thii 
may  be,  Mrs.  Bergen  has  made  a  fssdnating 
collection  of  obeolescent  but  still  vigoroos  tra- 
ditions, and  her  labors  will  undoubtedly  be 
productive  of  large  results.  Every  one  will 
flnd  familiar  beliefs  and  sayings  in  her  lift; 
and  nearly  every  one^  probably,  will  be  shh 
to  add  to  it. 

Mr.  Johnson's  little  book  is  very  similsr  both 
in  origin  and  in  spirit  to  Mrs.  Bergent,  bst  tt 
is  less  systematio,  and  the  materid  hss  be« 
gathered  from  a  restricted  fldd,  prindpsUjlB 
western  Massachusetts.  He  does  not  limit 
himself  to  superstitions,  but  indudes  prorsrH 
rhymes,  tricks  and  catches,  songs,  stoM  ^^ 
sery  tales,  etc  Many  of  our  chfldboodt  Modi 
will  be  recognised  here,  and  some  mw  ac- 
quaintances made.  The  book  is  aMvsettvsii 
appearance,  and  has  some  ^fNpMi  U  aol 
very  interesting  Ulustrattaii  tM  teCiH* 
is  rather  aoanty,  and  mail  ft^  M 


June  i8,  1896] 


Tlie   N'atioii. 


479 


tribaUoQ  to  oar  eDtertainmtQtrAlhar  Uumi  our 
knowledgik 


ItUroduel4amioP9lUical8ei€nc9:   TwoSeriM 

of  L^ctOTM.    By  Sir  J.  R.  Seeley.    Maoinil* 

Ian  &  Co.  1800. 
Tbx  •ditor  of  this  toIium,  Prof.  H.  Sidgwlck, 
oommaodi  it  to  Um  pablie  as  mainlj  Talnable, 
not  for  th«  purpose  of  imparting  a  oompleta 
■yttem,  but  of  commuiileatiiig  a  method  of 
■tad J.  For  thif  porpoee  it  ii,  to  oar  mind,  at 
once  interesting  and  disappointing.  The  leo- 
torer,  late  professor  of  modem  history  at  Cam- 
bridge, had  a  mind  of  great  acateness  and  re- 
markable skill,  both  in  the  nss  of  langaage 
and  in  the  analysis  of  terms.  Tliis  skill,  in- 
deed, seems  to  |»x>dooe  a  defect:  it  leads  him 
into  the  common  pitfall  of  subtle  thinking— 
reasoning  founded  on  signifloattoos  dsTised  by 
the  thinker  himself .  Misled  by  his  facility,  we 
often  find  oorselTes  ready  to  yield  to  some 
conchision  which,  on  reflection,  does  not  ap. 
pear  to  be  rationally  connected  with  the  pre. 
misss  laid  down  as  supporting  it.  When,  in 
the  end,  the  method  has  been  conununicated, 
and  with  the  aid  of  it  we  have  the  scheme  of 
the  entire  history  of  the  world  flashed  on  the 
lecturer's  screen,  we  cannot  help  asking  our- 
selyes blankly,  *'Is  that aUf  If  the  rationale 
of  political  science  is  so  simple,  why  has  the 
world  persisted  in  missing  it  during  all  these 
oenturiesr 

The  lecturer  announces  at  the  outwt  that  he 
hopes  to  be  able  to  dkentangle  a  true  science 
of  politics  from  the  mass  of  narratiTe  which 
we  call  History,  and  that  the  sdenoe  is  to  be 
inductive.  What  it  is  to  teach  us  is  the  nature, 
aim,  and  purpose  of  the  State— not  what  ought 
to  be  its  aim  and  purpose.  He  then  proceeds 
with  an  analysis  oi  a  number  of  the  terms 
oommonly  used  in  political  discussion,  and 
makes  in  the  course  of  this  analysis  many  in- 
teresting and  acute  obeenrations.  As  he  un- 
folds his  method,  he  applies  it  to  history,  past 
and  contemporary;  notwithstanding  which  the 
method  still  remains  obscure,  partly  for  the 
reason  already  suggested,  that  the  terms  in 
common  uss  describing  the  conceptions  ana- 
lysed are  used  by  him  in  novel  and  uncommon 
ssoses.  8UUs^  for  instance,  he  seems  to  extend 
so  as  to  cover  Tribe  (pp.  80,  6^.  Now,  a  State 
may  undoubtedly  be  conceived  without  a  defi- 
nite territory,  continuously  possessed,  and  a 
Tribe  may  be  conceived  as  having  a  settled  ter- 
ritory; but  the  word  State  universally  imports 
definite  territory,  the  word  Tribe  an  organisa- 
tion based  on  kinship.  If  we  Ulk  about  a  tribe 
as  a  sort  of  states  we  might  as  well  bring  the 
primitive  family  under  the  same  head,  and  it 
is  not  at  all  clear  that  the  student  would  not 
be  Justified  in  inferring  such  to  be  the  lecturer's 
intention.  But  surely  for  purp3ses  of  analysis 
and  olassiflcation  the  differsncss  between  the 
State  and  the  Family  are  <iuite  as  important 
as  the  fact  that  one  has  been  historically  deve* 
loped  out  of  the  other. 

Another  peculiarity  connected  with  this  is 
what  we  can  describe  only  as  an  attempt  to 
dispenss  with  all  recognised  legal  oonoeptions. 
It  is  very  much  as  if  the  desire  of  the  lecturer 
had  been  to  frame  a  theory  of  government 
without  taking  any  notice  of  Law.  Conse- 
quenUy,  we  have  no  discussion  of  such  sub- 
jects as  Sovereignty,  nor  of  the  separation  of 
the  three  departments  of  government,  which, 
be  time  of  Montesquieu,  has  been  at 
B  important  as  the  old  Aristotelian 
classifloation  of  Aristocracy,  Monarchy,  and 
Democracy.  Now  undonbtedly  part  of  the 
history  of  the  world  oaa  be  dlsoosssd  without 


taking  Law  into  account.  But,  in  modem 
times  and  in  dviliaed  states,  government  and 
law  go  hand  in  hand,  and  to  attempt  a  theory 
of  politics  without  paying  any  attention  to 
Law  must  lead  to  very  peculiar  results.  Ex- 
amplee  are  not  difficult  to  find.  When  it  is 
said  that  the  law-making  body  in  England 
**dUH$  not  govern^  but  makes,  supports,  and 
destroys  the  government,*'  this  not  only  lodges 
the  government  in  one  body  and  the  sovereign- 
ty  in  another,  but  eliminates  altogether  from 
the  problem  the  fact  that  what  the  author  calls 
the  government-making  organ — Parliament- 
is  itself  the  agent  of  the  whole  body  of  electors. 
We  are  not  surprised  after  this  to  find  Louis 
XIV.  made  to  govern  by  consent,  because 
France  had  physical  resources  enough  to  have 
overturned  his  government,  and  James  IL 
demonstrated  to  have  been  a  responsible  King. 
In  fact,  we  are  not  surprised  at  anything  in 
the  way  of  demonstration,  for  the  method  of 
the  lecturer— not  that  which  is  communicated, 
but  that  which  is  actually  employed— would 
enable  him  to  maintain  anything. 

On  the  other  hand,  no  one  can  possibly  read 
the  book,  still  less  study  it,  without  learning 
something.  The  analysis  of  the  term  Liberty, 
for  instance,  as  having  no  eeoteric  value,  but 
meaning  nothing  more  nor  less  than  freedom 
from  restraint  or  interference,  leaves  nothing 
to  be  desired.  It  is  the  sphere  of  uncontrolled 
action  in  any  state,  and  it  has  no  necessary 
connection  with  parliamentary  government. 
There  was  probably  much  more  liberty  in 
some  directions  among  the  Saxons  in  England 
than  thA-e  is  in  Massachusetts  to-day.  It  is 
Just  here,  however,  that  germs  of  a  theory  of 
political  sdenoe  seem  to  show  themselves 
founded  on  prindples  which  we  believe  to  be 
esssntisHy  wrong.  Buckle  thought  he  could 
deduce  history  from  the  physical  droumstances 
of  a  race;  Sir  John  Seeley  seems  to  have  sus- 
pected that  history  might  be  traced  to  the  re- 
lation between  the  geographical  features  of  a 
country  and  the  objects  of  its  government. 
His  syllogism  would  be:  Nations  with  exposed 
frontiers,  and  hence  military,  produce  govern- 
ments severely  limiting  liberty.  A  is  a  coun- 
try with  an  exposed  frontier;  hence  A  will  pro- 
duce such  a  government.  The  major  premise 
is  obviously  faulty,  because  a  country  with  an 
exposed  frontier  may  be  overrun  and  subju- 
gated. The  argument  correctly  stated  would, 
we  beUeve,  be  as  follows:  A  state  fighting  for 
its  existence  cannot  be  carried  on  without  a 
strong  government,  encroaching  more  and 
moro  on  Liber^.  A  is  such  a  state.  A's  gov- 
ernment will  be  marked  mors  and  more  by  en- 
croachments on  Liberty— examples:  France, 
under  Napoleon,  England  under  Pitt,  the  Unit- 
ed States  during  the  war  of  the  rebellion,  Prus- 
sia under  Frederick  the  Oreat.  We  are  firm 
believers  in  political  sdenoe,  but  it  is  not  a 
science  by  which  we  can  predict  history. 


DU  Erianger  BurmhmiBehaft  1«16.188S*  Bin 
Bdtrag  snr  innera  Oeechiohte  der  Rsstaura- 
tionsseit.  Von  Frtedrich  Renter.  Erlan- 
gen.    1800.    8vo,  pp.  416. 

No  period  of  German  history  presents  a  more 
striking  pioturo  of  the  appalling  obstacles 
against  which  modem  constitutional  life  has 
fought  its  way  than  the  period  of  reaction 
which  set  in  after  the  downfall  of  Napoleon, 
and  which  made  it  possible  for  such  narrow- 
minded  autoomts  as  Nicholas  I.  of  Russia  and 
Prince  Mettsmich  to  maintain  themselves  for 
mors  tlian  thirty  years  as  the  arbiters  of  En- 
rope.  Public  opinion,  which,  in  the  daTs  of 
Stsin  and  Flchte,  had  at  last  become  a  power 


in  national  life,  was  again  reduced  to  naught. 
For  although,  in  the  constitutional  monarchies 
of  South  Qermany  at  least,  there  was  enjoyed 
a  certain  degree  of  parliamentary  freedom, 
the  political  strength  ropreeented  by  these 
miniature  states  was  so  small  that  the  debates 
of  their  legislaturss  had  seldom  more  than  aca- 
demic value  and  hardly  ever  stirred  the  nation 
as  a  whole.  While  Austria  and  Prussia,  too, 
were  foremost  in  pursuing  a  policy  of  per- 
sistent and  relentless  coercion,  the  educated 
public  of  Vienna  and  Berlin  was  engrossed  in 
.discussing  the  latest  literary  scandal  or  the  ad- 
vent of  a  new  ballet-dancer  on  the  operetio 
stage.  No  wonder  that  this  should  have  been 
the  time  in  which  renegades  to  freedom  like 
Friedrich  von  Genta  and  K,  L.  von  Haller  were 
praised  as  great  political  philoeophers;  in 
which  the  •*  Fate  Tragedy,**  with  its  paUid 
faces  and  meaningless  horrors,  with  its  hope- 
less gospel  of  submission  to  a  blind  chance, 
achieved  its  greatest  theatrical  triumphs;  in 
which  the  hollow  phantasms  of  a  spiritualistic 
Juggler  like  Amadous  Hoffmann  were  admired 
as  marvels  of  poetic  fiction.  No  wonder  that 
such  a  hopeless  pedant  as  Raupach  should  have 
been  exalted  by  this  age  as  a  master  of  the  his- 
torical drama;  that  the  lyric  dilettantism  of 
the  period  should  have  found  an  organ  in  those 
numberless  poetic  almanacs  and  keepsakes  em- 
bellished with  inane  steel  engravings,  the 
thought  of  which  forced  upon  the  lips  of  the 
manly  Gervinus  the  words  of  HoUpur: 

**  I  had  rather  be  s  kttUB  sad  ctr  omw. 
Than  oaa  of  tlicsa  mdm  metre  ballad-oionfert.** 

No  wonder  that  even  the  best  minds  of  the  na- 
tion—a GriUparcer,  a  Rfickert,  a  Lenau,  a 
Heine,  a  Platen,  a  Schopenhauer— should  have 
been  affected  by  this  universal  repression  of 
public  activity;  that  they  too  should  have  been 
crippled  in  their  natural  development,  alienat- 
ed from  their  own  day  and  their  own  country, 
led  astray  in  their  tastes  and  propensities,  dis- 
couraged in  thdr  views  of  Uf^  debarred  from 
truly  constructive  achievements. 

The  author  of  the  book  before  us,  favorably 
known  through  his  contributions  to  the  biogra- 
phy of  RQckert^  has  attempted  to  give  tis  an 
inside  view  of  this  sad  epoch  by  depicting  its 
effects  upon  German  student  life  in  general, 
and  upon  the  various  **  Btirschensebaf ten  **  of 
the  University  of  Erlangen  in  particular.  He 
brings  before  tis  in  characteristic  types  the 
spirit  of  joyous  liberalism  which  animated 
the  generation  of  students  who  had  taken  part 
in  the  wan  against  Napdeon.  He  introduces 
us  to  the  Wartburg  festival  and  other  scensa 
of  Juvenile  frolic,  in  which  this  spirit  found  a 
harmlesiy  if  boisterous,  expression.  He  gives 
a  detailed  account  of  the  epidemic  of  persecu- 
tion which  followed  the  assassination  of  Kotse- 
bue,  the  deed  of  an  irresponsible  fanatic:  how 
hundreds  of  sttidents  were  expelled  from  the 
imiversities  and  put  into  prison  for  the  hei- 
nous crime  of  having  worn  the  German  colors 
in  their  buttoikholes;  how  professora  were  sus- 
pended and  put  under  police  surveiUanoe  for 
having  spoken  of  national  dntiss  and  national 
aims.  And  although  the  author  does  not  tiring 
his  narrative  down  to  the  Revohition  of  1848, 
he  leU  us  witnsss,  partly  at  least  through  the 
eyes  of  actual  parUdpants,  those  occasional 
sporadic  risings  and  outbursts  of  popular  feel- 
ing, like  the  Hambacher  Fast  and  the  Frankfur- 
ter Attentat,  which  finally  culminated  m  the 
March  Revolution.  Throughout  the  book  the 
author  Appears  as  one  of  thoee  chivalrous 
Gernum  ideaUsts  whoes  type  has  been  made 
familiar  to  Americans  through  men  like 
FoUsn,  Ueber,  or  Sohurs.  His  attitude  of 
mind  could  not  be  better  expressed  than  by 


480 


Ttie   !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1616 


the  words  in  which  he  himseir,  in  the  preface, 
characterizes  his  intellectual  afflliatioui : 

•*  Die  mOMen  Feinde  vein,  die  die  Knechteobaf  t  woilen. 
Die  mtt«en  Frlnde  seln.  die  die  Wahrbelt  farchten. 
Die  mflwen  Feinde  seln.  die  das  Recht  verdrelien. 
Die  mQMen  Feinde  seln,  die  ron  der  Ehn  welotaen." 


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Political  Wrltlnn.  f704-l774.  PhOadalphla:  His- 
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Frederic,  Harold.  Mrs.  Albert  (imndy.  Merrlam  Co. 
tl86. 

ones,  F.  S.    The  Industrial  Army.    Baker  ft  Taylor  Co. 

GlIuVa^Df.  B.  L\  lu  1.'  -  mements  of  Gaelic  Gram- 
mar^   LnoilOD:  Pa  via  iiiulL 

Hunt,  Prof-  T.  w.  Ain^tiPHU  Medltetlve  Lyrics.  E.  B. 
Treac.    il. 

Kcwtiufre,  tf.  w.  T1i«  «3r««ii  Dldaetlo  of  John  Amos 
eonifniui,  UymiQU.  A.  h  a  Black;  New  York:  Mao- 
mlMan.   tt- 

KlPK,  captv  CbarK^.    flunwcit  Pass.    American  Publish- 

Kitm,  Pauttiiv.    AUda  miir~  O.  H.  Bldunond  ft  Co. 

htmK  w.   K.    ftuKb   HUirr.  fFamous  SooCs  Seriea.] 

Lci'^4M,  n,  B.     ^ke^arijs:  The  War  of  the  nitbusters. 

>iL,>,,,  ..„ii  v».   n.  p  Johrj*ion  Publishing Ca    $1.60. 

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I^ti(l«^tD ;  Methueo  ft  Co  1  M^  w  York:  MaemUlaa.  f8.&0. 


Payne,  Will.   Jerry  the  Dreamer.   Harpers.  11^5. 
Pettingin  ft  Co 's  Newspaper  Directory.  I8M.  Koitoii: 

Pettfr  gill  ft  Co. 
Held.  Rer.  H.  M.  B.   Lost  Habits  of  the  Bellgioos  Life. 

Edinburgh:  J.  Gardner  Hltt. 
Birers.  Qeorfte  R.  R,   The  Governor's  Garden.  Boston: 

Joseph  Knlgbt  Co.   tl.60. 
Boblnson,  C.  P.    American  Democracy.    Plttsborgli: 

W.  T.  Nicholson. 
Rodieblare,  &    Pases  Cholsles  des  Grands  ]ftnlTaim. 

Chateaubriand.   Paris:  CoUn  ft  Cle. 
Sloane.  Prof.  W.  M.   The  Life  of  James  McCosh.  Serlb- 
ners. 
Sprat t.   I^aDldaii..     Nature  of  an   Cnlvurte  ot  Ufn. 

.ftti  ktiairiile^  Pla.-  Vmae*  FrluUQeD^. 
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The  Week. 

It  is  well  known,  and  is  highly  charac- 
teristic, that  the  choice  of  the  Jewish 
Rabbi  to  deliver  the  opening  prayer  at  the 
St.  Louis  convention,  was  due  to  a  wish 
not  to  offend  the  A.  P.  A.  by  employing  a 
Catholic,  nor  the  Catholics  by  employing 
a  Protestant  In  fact^  the  prayer  was 
to  be  part  of  the  general  humbug  for' 
which  the  convention  has  been  held. 
We  doubt  if  any  similar  body  has  met  in 
the  United  States  with  less  sincerity. 
McKinley  is  probably  the  first  candidate 
for  the  Presidency  whose  friends  before  the 
convention  have  had  to  confine  themselves 
to  apologies,  whom  hardly  any  one  dared 
to  praise,  and  whose  own  language  showed 
his  unfitness  for  the  place;  who  refused 
to  speak  out,  lest  he  should  anticipate  the 
platform,  yet  secretly  fought  hard  to  draw 
the  platform  to  suit  himself;  who  is  sur- 
rounded by  a  mass  of  gold  men  who  were 
silver  men  a  fortnight  ago,  and  stands  on 
resolutions  which  the  drafter  and  he  have 
been  fighting  for  some  years.  Lodge  and 
McKinley  as  gold'  men  are  a  sight  most 
offensive  to  honest  men.  What,  then, 
must  the  whole  spectacle,  including  the 
Rabbi's  prayer,  be  to  the  Almighty,  whom 
it  is  evidently  intended  to  hoodwink  along 
with  everybody  else?  .  When  one  considers 
what  prayer  professes  to  be,  and  to  whom 
it  is  addressed,  the  use  now  made  of  it  in 
Congress  and  in  these  political  assembla- 
ges is  fully  as  shocking  as  free  coinage  of 
silver  at  16  to  1.  What  must  the  *<  nig- 
gers" who  were ** stolen"  from  Hanna  by 
the  gold  men,  who  *'  treated  them  well," 
have  thought  of  the  Rabbi's  invocation 
that  they  might  be  filled  with  **a  deep 
and  abiding  sense  of  the  transcendent 
dignity  and  nobility  of  American  citizen- 
ship and  the  sacred  obligations  which 
should  attend  it"? 


Picking  one's  way  here  and  there 
among  the  miscellaneous  gems  of  the 
platform,  things  rich  and  rare  appear  on 
every  hand.  Four  years  ago  the  platform 
shed  bitter  tears  over  the  sufferings  of  the 
Jews  in  Russia.  This  year  it  holds  up  to 
scorn  those  '*  alien  syndicates  "  (meaning 
Jewish  syndicates)  which  have  the  credit 
of  our  government  in  pawn.  This  is  pret- 
ty hard  on  the  Rabbi  chaplain.  It  is  also 
pretty  hard  on  John  Sherman,  who  pawn- 
ed the  credit  of  the  Qovemment,  on  still 
harder  terms,  to  the  same  alien  syndi- 
cates. And  what  has  become  of  home 
rule  in  Ireland,  with  which,  four  years 
ago,  the  Republicans  so  deeply  sympa- 
thized ?  It  seems  to  need  sympathy  now 
more  than  ever;  yet  the  platform  has  not 
a  throb  of  sympathy  except  for  **  wise  " 
tomperanoa  and  the  struggling  Cubans* 


We  note  with  pleasure  the  ringing  de- 
mand that  women  be  admitted  *'  to  wider 
spheres  of  usefulness,"  though  we  are 
pained  to  find  no  more  "  reaffirming  "  of 
the  one-cent  postage  plank  or  the  Force- 
bill  plank.  Sill,  we  are  to  build  and  own 
the  Nicaraguan  Canal,  buy  **  the  Danish 
Islands,"  have  a  big  navy  and  unlimited 
coast  defences,  and  be  ready  for  half-a- 
dosen  fbreign  wars;  all  which  gives  some 
idea  of  the  kind  of  taxation  that  is  going 
to  be  imposed  in  order  to  meet  **  the  ne- 
cessary expenses  of  the  (Government." 


Civil-service  reform  cuts  only  a  small 
figure  in  the  Republican  platform,  and 
was  not  mentioned  in  the  discussion  of  is- 
sues among  the  delegates.  However,  the 
resolution  in  which  the  party  "  renew  our 
repeated  declarations  that  the  civil-ser- 
vice law  shall  be  thoroughly  and  honestly 
enforced,  and  extended  wherever  practi- 
cable," is  all  that  could  be  asked.  The 
important  thing  is  whether  the  candidate 
who  will  stand  on  the  St.  Luuis  platform 
is  a  man  who  can  be  trusted  to  live  up  to 
this  plank  in  case  of  his  election.  We 
are  glad  to  say  that  McKinley*s  record  on 
this  question  in  Congress  is  a  good  one. 
He  has  never  had  much  to  say  on  the 
subject,  but  what  he  did  say  was  excel- 
lent, and  his  votes  were  on  the  right  side. 
His  name  is  recorded  among  the  yeas  on 
the  passage  of  the  original  Civil-Service 
act  under  Arthur's  Administration,  and 
he  has  always  favored  sustaining  the 
commission  in  its  work.  On  one  notable 
occasion  he  declared  himself  a  firm  be- 
liever in  the  reform,  and  earnestly  oppos- 
ed a  proposition  favored  by  not  a  few  of 
his  own  party  to  strike  it  down. 


On  the  24th  of  April,  1890,  the  execu- 
tive, legislative,  and  judicial  appropriation 
bill  being  before  the  House,  Mr.  Houk  of 
Tennessee,  one  of  the  few  Southern  Re- 
publicans in  Congress,  moved  to  strike  out 
the  entire  appropriation  for  the  Civil-Ser- 
vice Commission,  on  the  familiar  ground 
that  it  was  **  an  impracticable  machine," 
and  that  the  system  was  **  inconsistent 
with  the  genius  and  spirit  of  our  institu- 
tions." Bir.  Cheadle,  an  Indiana  Repub- 
lican, followed  in  a  similar  strain,  de- 
nouncing the  whole  theory  of  the  civil- 
servioe  law  as  "un-American  in  all  its  pro- 
visions," as  *' class  legislation,"  and  as 
finding  its  **  great  motive  power  in  the 
educational  institutions  of  this  country, 
which  want  to  find  permanent  place  for 
their  graduates,"  McKinley,  who  was 
the  chairman  of  the  ways  and  means 
committee,  and  so  "  leader  of  the  House," 
closed  the  debate  in  a  brief  but  excellent 
speech,  which  was  followed  by  the  rejec- 
tion of  Mr.  Houk's  motion,  128  to  61. 
"My  only  regret,"  began  Bir.  McKinley, 
"  is  that  the  oommittee  on  appropriations 


did  not  give  to  the  Commission  all  the  ap- 
propriation that  was  asked  for,  for  the  im- 
provement and  extension  of  the  system." 
He  proceeded  to  declare  that,  '4f  the  Re- 
publican party  of  this  country  is  pledged 
to  any  one  thing  more  than  another,  it  is 
to  the  maintenance  of  the  civil -service 
law  and  its  efficient  execution ;  not  only 
that,  but  to  its  enlargement  and  its  fur- 
ther application  to  the  public  service." 
He  pointed  out  that  the  law  was  put  upon 
the  statute-book  by  Republican  votes,  and 
that  every  national  platform  of  the  party 
since  its  enactment  had  declared  not  only 
in  favor  of  its  continuance  in  full  vigVr, 
but  in  favor  of  its  enlargement  so  as  to 
apply  more  generally  to  the  public  service. 
He  maintained  that "  this  is  not  alone  the 
declaration  and  purpose  of  the  Republi- 
can party,  but  it  is  in  accordance  with  its 
highest  and  best  sentiment — aye,  more,  it 
is  sustained  by  the  best  sentiment  of  the 
whole  country.  Republican  and  Demo- 
cratic alike."  He  concluded  with  these 
remarks,  which  he  might  well  repeat  as 
part  of  his  letter  of  acceptance : 

**  Mr.  Chairman,  the  Repablic«n  party  most 
take  no  backward  step.  The  merit  8>8tem  is 
bere,  and  it  it  here  to  stay ;  and  we  may  Just 
as  well  understand  aod  accept  it  now,  and 
give  oar  attention  to  correcting  the  abuses, 
If  any  eiist,  and  improTiD^  the  law  wherever 
it  can  be  done  to  the  advantage  of  the  public 
service." 


The  most  prominent  feature  of  the  no- 
mination of  Mr.  Garret  A.  Hobart  for 
Vice-President  at  St.  Louis  is  its  proof  of 
the  command  which  the  McKinley  dele- 
gates had  over  the  convention  in  every  re- 
spect except  the  precise  wording  of  the 
financial  plank  of  the  platform.  It  was 
not  disguised  from  the  time  the  delegates 
began  to  assemble  that  Mr.  Hobart  was 
Mr.  Henna's  choice  for  the  place.  Had 
he  not  been  supported  in  this  way,  his  am- 
bition would  never  have  been  satisfied.  It 
is  not  the  habit  of  national  conventions  to 
go  for  Vice- Presidential  timber  to  small 
States  whose  electoral  vote  has  been  habi- 
tually cast  for  the  opposite  party.  Mr. 
Hobart  is  a  man  of  entire  respectability 
and  a  good  business  man,  yet  there  were 
probably  not  a  dozen  men  in  the  conven- 
tion, outside  of  the  New  Jersey  delegation, 
who  knew  anything  about  his  public  or 
business  career.  In  his  own  State,  the 
most  that  can  be  said  for  him  is  that  as  a 
lawyer  he  has  managed  skilfully  the  af- 
fairs of  some  embarrassed  corporations 
committed  to  his  charge,  and  has  made  a 
fortune  for  himself  by  his  practice ;  that 
he  has  impressed  his  party  associates  in 
the  State  with  his  ability  as  a  campaign 
manager,  although  under  his  direction 
Republican  candidates  for  Governor  have 
steadily  been  beaten  until  the  peculiar 
situation  of  affairs  last  year  carried  Bir* 
Griggs  into  the  Governor's  chair.  When 
Bir.  Hobart,  as  a  member  of  the  national 
Republican    committee,   arrived   in  St 


482 


Tlie   N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  Na  161 7 


Louis  last  week,  he  Joined  hie  fortuneB  At 
once  with  thcee  of  Mr.  McKinlej,  going 
eyen  to  far  as  to  vote  in  that  committee 
to  seat  some  of  the  anti-Platt  delegates 
from  this  city.  If  the  Piatt  men  could 
hare  defeated  him  with  one  of  their  own 
New  Torkers,  thej  would  have  done  so, 
but  they  were  prevented  from  carrying 
out  their  plan  in  this  regard  by  the  posi- 
tion taken  by  Oot.  Morton  as  to  the  se- 
cond place  on  the  ticket,  and  by  the  gene- 
ral disinclination  of  the  delegates  to  take 
any  man  from  a  State  like  New  York, 
where  the  cliques  in  the  party  were  so 
bitter  towards  one  another.  The  New  Jer- 
sey platform  spoke  out  squarely  for  gold, 
and  Mr.  Hobart  has  not  attempted  to 
dodge  that  issue.  In  that  light,  there- 
fore, he  may  be  considered  as  leayen  to 
the  ticket. 


Mr.  Hobart's  speech,  at  the  meeting  in 
his  honor  at  Paterson  on  Monday  evening, 
gave  the  country  its  first  sample  of  the 
intellectual  quality  of  the  Republican 
candidate  for  the  Vice-Presidency,  and  a 
disheartening  sample  it  is.  No  candidate 
is  compelled  to  be  an  orator,  but  he  is  or 
should  be  compelled  to  know  when  he  is 
not.  Mr.  Hobart  might  surely  have  bow* 
ed  his  thanks  to  his  friends  and  neighbors, 
and  there  made  an  end  ;  but  to  hare  ram- 
bled on  with  such  ineptness  and  gro- 
tesqueness  as  he  did  for  ten  minutes  was 
to  deprive  himself  at  a  stroke  of  that  title 
to  be  considered  a  great  man  which  has 
been  said  to  consist  in  a  strong  conviction 
that  one  is  not  a  great  man.  Intellectual- 
ly, the  candidates  appear  to  be  true  yoke- 
fellows, though,  mediocrity  for  mediocrity, 
one  may  think  McKinley  entitled  to  the 
first  place  he  holds,  and  may  hope  Bir. 
Hobart's  functions  will,  providentially, 
never  go  beyond  presiding  over  the  Senate, 
for  which  he  is  qualified  by  experience. 


The  first  speeches  which  Major  McKin- 
ley has  made  as  a  candidate  all  indicate  a 
disposition  on  his  part  to  make  the  tariff 
the  chief  if  not  the  only  issue  of  the  cam- 
paign. He  has  made  half-a-dosen  speeches, 
and  in  but  one  of  these  has  he  even  squint- 
ea  at  the  currency  issue,  while  in  several 
of  them  he  has  laid  stress  upon  the  tariff 
as  the  remedy  for  all  our  financial  ills. 
He  assured  the  MilhoUand  McKinley 
Leaguers  of  New  York,  when  they  called 
upon  him  on  Friday: 

''AH  we  have  to  do  this  year  is  to  keep  clow 
to  the  people,  hearkea  to  the  yoioe  of  the  peo- 
ple, have  faith  in  the  people,  and,  if  we  do 
that,  the  people  will  win  for  ns  a  triamph  for 
that  great  masterful  principle  which,  in  all  the 
years  of  the  past,  has  given  us  plenty  and  pros- 
perity.*' 

On  Saturday  he  said  to  a  delegation  which 
called  upon  him  with  banners  made  of 
"sheets  of  home-made  tin": 

"  What  we  want  In  this  country  is  a  policy 
that  will  give  to  every  American  workingman 
American  wages:  a  policy  that  will  pntenoogh 
money  into  the  Treasory  of  tiie  United  States 
to  run  the  Gk>venun«nt;  a  policy  that  will 
bring  bei^  to  OS  that  period  or  prosperity  and 


of  plenty  that  we  enjoyed  for  more  than  thir- 
ty years." 

Later,  on  Saturday,  he  said  to  a  delega- 
tion of  workingraen: 

**  I  cannot  misunderstand— nobodv  can  mis- 
understand-—the  meaning  of  these  demonstra. 
tions  on  the  part  of  the  workingmen.  They 
mean  Inst  one  thing,  and  that  thing  is,  that  in 
the  mind  of  every  American  workingman  is 
the  thought  that  this  great  American  doctrine 
of  protection  is  associated  with  wages  and 
work,  and  linked  with  home,  with  family,  with 
country,  and  with  general  prosperity.  That, 
fellow-^tizens,  is  what  all  these  demonstra^ 
tions  signify.  They  mean  that  the  people  of 
this  country  want  an  industrial  policy  tnat  is 
for  America  and  for  Americans.  They  mean 
they  intend  to  return  to  that  ooUcy  which  lies 


at  the  foundation  of  our  national  prosperity, 
prop  to  the  National  Trea- 
sury, and  which  is  the  bulwark  of  our  indns- 


which  is  the  safest  prop  to  the  ] 


trial  independence  and  flnancial  boncM*." 

Nobody  would  infer  from  these  utterances 
that  the  great  iaue  which  overshadowed 
all  others  in  the  St  Louis  convention  was 
that  of  the  currency,  or  the  gold  standard. 


Major  McKinley  made  another  speech 
on  Monday,  which  is  notable  as  contain- 
ing his  first  allusion,  since  his  nomina- 
tion, to  the  currency  iaue  of  the  cam- 
paign. After  his  usual  remarks  about 
the  boundless  prosperity  which  a  high 
tariff  always  brings,  he  said:  **And,  my 
countrymen,  there  is  another  thing  the 
people  are  determined  upon,  and  that  is 
that  a  full  day's  work  must  be  paid  in 
a  full  dol  ar.'*  What  is  a  «<  full  dollar  "  ? 
The  silver  men  say  a  sixteen-to-one  sil- 
ver dollar  is  *•  fuU,'*  and  that  a  gold  dol- 
lar is  more  than  full.  The  Gk'eenbackers 
always  claimed  that  a  greenback  was  a 
<*full  dollar."  Suppose  the  St.  Louis 
platform,  instead  of  mentioning  the  gold 
standard,  had  compromised  on  the  de- 
claration: '*  Resolved,  That  we  are  in  fa- 
vor of  a  full  dollar  for  a  full  day's  work," 
what  would  have  been  the  effect  upon 
the  coiintry?  Would  the  business  inte- 
rests have  aocepted  that  as  a  satisfactory 
assurance  that,  with  McKinley  as  Preei- 
dent,  there  would  be  no  danger  of  the 
country's  passing  to  the  silver  standard? 
There  are  intimations  that  Hanna  has  de- 
cided to  have  Major  McKinley  make  no 
more  speeches  at  present,  and  this  is  a 
wise  precaution,  for  if  the  strongest  sound- 
money  utterance  that  he  can  make  after 
nearly  a  week  of  cogitation  is  that  he  is 
in  favor  of  a  **  full  dollar,"  the  sooner  he 
stops  talking,  the  better* 


President  Cleveland's  deliverance  against 
the  free-coinage  madness  on  Wednesday 
week  seems  to  have  been  what  the  sound- 
money  men  in  the  Democratic  party  were 
waiting  for,  though  they  should  not  have 
needed  to  be  thus  taken  by  the  ear,  as  it 
were,  in  order  to  make  them  do  their 
duty.  The  most  shameful  feature  of  the 
canvass  for  the  Ohicago  convention  has 
been  the  cowardice  and  inactivity  of  the 
element  in  the  party  which  believes  in  the 
gold  standard,  and  which  knows  how  dis- 
astrous the  silver  policy  would  prove,  not 
only  to  the  nation  if  it  couki  be  enacted 


into  law,  but  to  the  Democratic  organba- 
tion  if  it  should  be  made  Uie  platform 
next  month.  While  the  free-coinage  men 
have  everywhere  been  earnest  and  seakms, 
the  sound-money  men  have  done  practi- 
cally nothing  to  stem  the  tide.  It  is  the 
simple  truth  to  say  that  more  work  has 
been  done  by  Democratic  public  men  mod 
journals  for  the  right  side  in  the  South, 
where  it  required  great  courage  to  oppose 
the  overwhelming  sentiment,  than  in  the 
North,  where  the  men  who  advoeate  the 
gold  standard  have  the  people  with  them. 
Here,  for  example,  is  the  great  Stata  of 
New  York — which  should  have  led  c^  in 
the  demand  for  a  sound-currenpy  plank  at 
Chicago  weeks  ago— waiting  until  a  few 
days  befbre  the  national  convention  to  de- 
fine its  position,  and  thus  throwing  away 
all  the  infiuence  that  it  should  havs  ex- 
erted before  the  delegates  meet  on  the  7th 
of  July. 


The  favor  lent  the  free-coinage  idea  by 
the  Democrats  of  Maine  will  surprise  00^ 
those  who  are  not  familiar  with  the  poli- 
tical history  of  that  Stote.  It  is  the  one 
comer  of  the  East  where,  during  the  last 
twenty  years,  the  soft-money  fallacy  has 
secured  a  foothold.  In  1878  the  Green- 
backers,  or  Nationals,  carried  one  of  the 
five  congressional  districts  outright,  and 
another  with  the  help  of  the  Democratie 
voters,  while  in  each  of  the  other  ttiree 
the  Republican  candidates  received  fewer 
votes  than  were  divided  between  the 
Democrats  and  Nationals.  In  the  Sep- 
tember election  of  1880  a  fusion  of  the 
Opposition  defeated  the  Republicans  oa 
the  governorship  and  in  two  congressional 
districts,  while  Reed  was  saved  by  only 
117  majority  and  one  of  his  colleagues  by 
but  467.  Many  people  jumped  to  the  ooo- 
clusion  that  Ghirfieldwas  going  to  lose  the 
country  two  months  later,  but  before  No- 
vember the  Republicans  of  Maine  had  re- 
covered their  hold  of  that  State,  while 
Qreenbackism  elsewhere  in  the  country 
cut  but  a  small  figure.  The  poison  of 
cheap  money,  however,  has  never  been 
entirely  eliminated  from  the  Maine  bj9- 
tem,  and  such  a  recurrence  of  the  attack 
as  is  now  seen  must  be  regarded  aa  liable 
to  happen  at  any  time. 


The  Democratic  State  conventicm  in 
Florida  illustrates  the  possibilities  whidi 
were  open  if  the  sound-money  members 
of  the  party  throughout  the  country  had 
made  the  fight  they  ought.  Thk  com- 
monwealth is  bordered  by  States  that 
have  been  carried  by  the  silverites,  and 
Senator  Call  has  always  been  a  blatant 
advocate  of  free  coinage.  But  the  friends 
of  sound  money,  under  the  leadership  of 
the  Jacksonville  Citizen^  insisted  upon 
making  a  fight,  and  in  last  week's  can- 
vention  they  defeated  the  free-ooinsge 
men  on  a  square  test,  and  rejected  Gall  as 
a  delegate  to  Chicago,  a  maSorlly  of  Iks 
delegation  chosen  being  lor  tha  Milali- 
nance  of  the.  gold  ataodaril   SUi  il^ 


June  25,  1896] 


Tlie    !N"atioii. 


483 


Beot  in  the  Sooth  has  been  greatly  ham- 
pered bj  the  inaction  of  thoee  Northern 
Dcmoerata  who  believe  in  the  gold  etan* 
dard,  and  their  apparent  reedineae  to  let 
the  ailveritea  have  their  waj  at  Chicago 
without  a  protest.  If  the  Democrats  of 
New  York  had  served  notice  upon  the 
country  last  March  that  free  coinage  was 
not  to  be  thdught  of,  and  that  a  silver 
platform  would  destroy  all  chance «  of 
party  success  next  fall,  other  Southern 
SUtes  than  Florida  would  have  **  turned 
down  *'  their  Calls,  and  sent  sound-money 
men  to  Chicago.  The  salvation  of  the 
party  is  not  impossible  even  now,  but  it 
is  infinitely  harder  than  it   need   have 


The  death  of  Oen.  Bristow  deprives  the 
country  of  a  man  of  great  intellectual 
f6roe,  who  was  also  a  moral  hero.  Most 
people  have  forgotten  that  he  was  the  can- 
didate of  the  l>etter  element  of  the  Repub- 
lican party  for  the  Presidential  nomina- 
tion in  1876— the  year  when  Hayes  was 
nominated — aud  that  he  received  113  votes 
in  the  convention,  the  other  leading  can- 
didates being  Blaine,  Conkling,  and  O.  P. 
Morton.  Most  people  have  forgotten  the 
circumstances  that  caused  him  to  be  cho- 
sen by  the  better  element  as  their  candi- 
date. Oen.  Bristow  was  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  under  President  Grant.  The 
whiskey  frauds,  implicating  some  of  the 
President's  most  intimate  frieuds,  includ- 
ing his  private  secretary,  Qeo.  Babcock, 
were  unearthed  at  this  time,  either  at  the 
instance  of  the  Secretary  or  with  his  ac- 
tive co5peration.  Oen.  Grant's  mental  con- 
stitution was  such  that  any  attack  upon 
his  immediate  friends  became  an  attack 
upon  himself,  and  Gren.  Bristow  was  some- 
what later  forced  to  resign.  The  fact  that 
he  would  not  bend  a  hair's  breadth  in  the 
prosecution  of  the  Wftiiskey  Ring  to  ac- 
commodate the  interests  of  the  private 
secretary  or  the  prejudices  of  his  chief, 
gave  him  a  powerful  hold  on  the  con- 
sciences of  hiB  countrymen.  Of  course  it 
was  charged  that  he  was  doing  it  all  for 
political  effect,  whereas  it  was  with  the 
greatest  reluctance  that  he  allowed  his 
name  to  be  used  at  Cincinnati,  and  with 
the  conviction  that  he  could  not  be  nomi- 
nated. He  simply  yielded  to  the  necessity 
that  there  should  be  some  rallying-point 
for  the  members  of  the  party  who  could 
not  follow  Blaine,  Conkling,  or  Morton. 


There  was  an  element  of  humor  in  the 
situation  evolved  last  week  by  the  Senate 
bond-issue  investigating  committee,  which 
partly  offsets  the  sense  of  humiliation  felt 
by  ail  readers  of  the  proceedings.  The 
committee,  or  at  all  events  its  free  coin- 
age majority,  came 'to  New  York  deter- 
mined to  prove  that  the  contract  of  1806 
was  a  dishonest  and  infamous  collusion, 
and  they  apparently  had  little  doubt  of 
their  ability  to  do  so.  Before  the  exami- 
nation of  witnesMS  had  lasted  two  days 
the  eiiver  committeemen  were  in  a  sort  of 
paale,  sad  were  refufllng  to  ask  any  far- 


ther questions  of  the  witnesses,  simply  be- 
cause the  answers  already  made  had  up- 
set so  completely  the  committee's  theory. 
What  their  now  adjourned  investigation 
has  disclosed  is  exactly  what  all  news- 
paper readers  were  perfectly  aware  of  a 
year  ago,  that  banking  experts  went  to 
Washington  in  January,  1805,  to  warn 
the  (Government  that  a  financial  crisis 
was  impending;  that  the  crisis  was  near 
at  hand  by  the  close  of  January;  that  the 
Secretary  of  .the  Treasury  sounded  several 
New  York  bankers  on  the  chances  of  a 
foreign  bond  issue,  and ^  received  unfavor- 
able answers;  that  eventually,  when  ac- 
tion could  no  longer  be  deferred,  the  lead- 
ing international  houses  of  New  York 
were  applied  to  for  the  purchaee  of  gold, 
and  that  terms  were  at  last  agreed  upon. 
Most  of  last  week's  extraordinary  cross- 
examination  of  the  witnesses  seemed  to 
be  conducted  on  the  theory  that  Mr.  Bel- 
mont went  to  Washington  in  January  to 
propose  the  purchase,  by  his  foreign  cor- 
respondents, of  a  new  Government  bond 
issue.  Any  answer  remotely  suggesting 
such  a  purpose  was  hailed  with  glee  by 
the  committee,  and  the  keenness  of  their 
disappointment  when  they  failed  to  prove 
the  fact  was  evident, 


Strange  as  it  may  seem,  the  inquiries 
of  the  committee  virtually  stopped  with 
this.  There  were  other  lines  of  inquiry 
not  only  open  to  the  committee,  but  pro- 
perly involved  in  their  inveetigation.  Any 
one  would  suppose,  for  instance,  that  the 
following  questions  would  necessarily  have 
suggested  themselves :  Why  did  the  syndi- 
cate of  1895  make  so  wide  a  difference  in 
their  bid  for  an  ordinary  bond  and  for  a 
gold  bond  ?  What  was  involved  in  the 
syndicate's  contract  pledge  to  protect  the 
Treasury?  Why  were  the  large  European 
bankers  reluctant  to  buy  our  bonds?  Not 
one  of  these  questions  was  put  by  the 
learned  Senators,  and  when  Mr.  Morgan, 
at  the  close  of  a  purposeless  cross-ques- 
tioning, asked  permission  to  go  into  some 
of  theee  further  phases  of  the  matter,  be 
was  shut  off  with  a  promptness  which 
left  no  doubt  as  to  what  part  of  the  truth 
the  inquisitors  preferred  not  to  have  on 
record.  Over  the  remarkable  suggestions 
and  queries  of  the  committee  on  points  of 
foreign  exchange  and  banking,  we  are 
glad  to  draw  a  veil  of  charity.  It  ia  pos- 
sible that  Senator  Vest,  Senator  Jones, 
and  Senator  Walthall  have  obtained,  dur- 
ing their  ofllcial  visit  to  New  York,  some 
much-needed  information  on  these  busi- 
ness questions.  We  wish  we  could  hope 
that  they  would  use  it. 


Those  nails  which  Bfr.  Chamberlain  was 
driving  into  the  coffin  of  Cobdenism  do 
not  seem  to  have  met  the  Scriptural  re- 
quirement of  being  fastened  in  a  sore 
place  by  a  master  of  assemblies.  In  fact, 
nail  driving  Is  notoriously  an  extra-hasard- 
ous  occupation,  and  bruised  thuml>s  and 
l>ad  language  are  a  frequent  product.  Mr. 


Chamberlain  is  an  expert  at  concealing 
his  own  discomfiture,  but  even  he  cannot 
cover  up  the  general  condemnation  in 
England  of  his  '*  happy-thought "  scheme 
for  an  Imperial  Customs  Union.  The 
Congress  of  Chaml>ers  of  Commerce,  be- 
fore which  he  first  broached  it,  gave  it  the 
go-by  almoet  contemptuously,  and  re- 
sponsible statesmen  in  various  colonies  at 
once  declared  it  wholly  chimerical.  The 
Economist  makes  a  ghastly  show  of  the 
w^ole  thing,  as  it  has  before  had  occasion 
*to  do  with  some  of  Mr.  Chamberlain's  co- 
lonial grandiloquence.  It  points  out,  in 
the  first  place,  the  extraordinary  al>surd- 
ity  of  supposing  that  the  way  to  reconcile 
two  opposing  views  is  to  offer  a  third  to 
which  each  of  them  is  equally  opposed. 
The  protectionist  colonies  will  never  give 
in  to  free-trade  England,  or  vice  versa. 
Very  welf,  says  Chamberlain,  let  each 
abandon  its  principles  and  practice  under 
the  name  of  **  a  third  course."  This,  says 
the  Econotnisit  with  cruel  disregard  of  a 
lucid  intellect,  is  sheer  and  unintelligible 
stupidity.  It  then  shows  that  Mr.  Cham- 
berlain, as  usual,  had  gayly  made  his  pro- 
posals without  any  idea  of  what  the  actual 
itkCiB  were,  and  produces  the  figures  of 
cdiopial  trade  to  prove  that  his  scheme 
woul^  be  entirely  unworkable  even  if  it 
were  conceivable  that  it  might  be  adopted. 


The  literary  as  well  as  the  political 
duello  continues  to  fiourish  in  France,  if 
we  may  judge  by  the  exchange  of  shots 
now  in  progress  between  Zola  and  Gaston 
Deschamps.  The  latter,  in  a  review  of 
'  Rome '  in  the  Temps,  gave  some  exam- 
ples of  the  way  in  which  the  novelist  had 
•^documented"  himself  for  his  work.  The 
documenting,  in  fact,  had  in  some  cases 
gone  perilously  near  to  slavish  and  literal 
copying  of  authorities,  of  which  Des- 
champs furnished  several  delicious  exam- 
ples. Zola  made  a  furious  return-fire  in 
Figaro^  disdaining  to  mention  his  adver- 
sary by  name,  but  calling  him  an  **  assas- 
sin," a  "  scratcher  of  paper,"  a  "  library 
rat,"  and  other  sweetly  reasonable  things. 
It  is  rather  amualng  to  find  him  admit- 
ting, or,  rather,  boasting,  after  ail  this 
fanfaronade,  that  Deechampe  was  quite 
right  in  accusing  him  of  plsgiarism.  Tbere 
was  much  more  of  it  in  'Rome  '  than  had 
been  charged.  Of  course  he  had  read 
books  about  Rome,  and  of  course  he  bad 
been  at  no  particular  paina  to  see  that 
phrases,  passsges,  or  perhaps  whole  p^ges 
were  not  traneferred  bodily  to  his  novel. 
That  was  "the  right  of  a  novelist"  As 
for  those  vermin  of  critics,  when  they  hsd 
done  the  work  and  won  the  fame  that  he 
had,  it  would  be  time  for  them  to  open 
their  heads.  Deschamps,  in  his  turn,  ar- 
gues that  there  are  rights  of  critics  as 
well  as  authors,  quotes  from  a  private  let- 
ter of  Zola's,  on  another  occasion,  ful- 
somely  praising  the  critic  whom  he  now 
reviles,  and  serves  notice  that  the  great 
man  will  hear  from  him  further  in  this 
matter. 


484= 


Tlie   !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 7 


THE  REPUBLICAN  NOMINEE, 
McKinley'b  nomination  has  been  for 
Bome  months  a  foregone  conclusion,  and 
he  is,  in  our  opinion,  the  proper  nominee 
for  a  party  in  the  condition  of  the  Repub- 
lican party — bereft  of  true  leaders,  with- 
out any  cause  or  idea  in  its  keeping,  and 
without  settled  views  on  finance.  He  is 
exactly  fitted  for  the  place  he  has  got 
The  party  has  been  searching  for  him  ever 
since  Blaine's  death.  There  has  not  been 
a  time  since  1861  when  the  country  so 
much  needed  a  man  of  strong  character 
and  clear  views  as  this  year.  In  1860  it 
got  a  man  of  clear  views,  because  its  own 
views  were  clear.  Lincoln  led  to  victory 
a  party  which,  as  Cromwell  said  of  his 
russet-coated  captains,  *'knew  what  it 
wanted,  and  loved  what  it  knew."  Mc- 
Kinley  is  going  to  lead  a  party  which  does 
not  know  what  it  wants,  except  money, 
and  holds  no  clear  views  on  anything, 
human  or  divine.  McKinley's  absence  of 
settled  convictions  about  leading  ques- 
tions of  the  day,  and  his  want  of  clear 
knowledge  of  any  subject,  make  him  em- 
phatically the  round  man  in  the  round 
hole.  If  the  party  had  nominated  any- 
body else,  it  would  have  made  a  great 
blunder.  Even  Reed  would  have  been  a 
mistake,  for,  if  a  trimmer,  he  is  not  mud- 
dle-headed. 

The  alarm  of  the  country  over  the  vir- 
tual nomination  of  McKinley  in  advance 
of  the  convention  has  forced  a  large  num- 
ber of  silver  men  to  turn  gold  men  and  put 
a  gold  plank  in  the  platform.  So  far  so 
good.  It  saves  us,  for  the  present  at  least, 
from  the  execution  of  McKinley's  plan 
of  turning  all  the  silver  products  of  the 
country  into  coin  and  making  them  legal 
tender.  But  that  is  about  all  it  does.  It 
makes  it  pretty  certain  that  we  shall  not 
deliberately  get  down  on  the  silver  basis. 
If  we  ever  reach  that,  it  will  be  by  acci- 
dent and  by  some  especial  display  of  weak- 
ness on  McKin ley's  part.  But  should  he 
be  elected,  as  he  probably  will  be  (for  the 
Democrats  are  making  an  awful  show  of 
themselves),  there  are  certain  dangers  and 
risks  to  be  guarded  against  and  looked 
out  for,  which  we  beg  to  submit  in  their 
order. 

What  will  be  done  about  the  currency 
will  depend  on  the  Congress  to  be  elected 
next  November,  about  the  probable  com- 
position of  which  no  one  knows  anything. 
There  will  be  no  restraint  on  it  except  the 
platform  adopted  last  week,  and  what 
this  will  amount  to  no  one  can  tell.  Mc- 
Kinley will  be  no  restraint,  because  he  is 
virtually  pledged  to  sign  anything  that 
Congress  sends  him.  Avowing,  as  he 
does,  that  the  opinions  of  the  party  on  all 
subjects  are  virtually  his,  there  is  no  rea- 
son why  he  should  not  keep  this  pledge. 
Secondly,  he  will  have  been  elected,  among 
other  things,  or  rather  before  all  things, 
as  the  champion  of  the  tariff,  or  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  protected  interests,  and 
to  deliver  the  country  from  the  horrors  of 
the  Wilson  tariff.  To  get  a  new  tariff 
passed,  therefore,  either  in  March  or  in 


December, will  be  his  first  duty.  How  will 
he  do  it?  The  Senate  is  filled  to  a  majority 
with  enraged  silver  men,  who  feel  that  he 
and  the  party  have  cheated  them,  and  that 
silver  is  as  much  entitled  to  protection  as 
wool  or  iron.  In  what  way  can  they  be  in- 
duced to  pass  a  tariff  ?  In  one  way  only 
— by  ''doing  something  for  silver."  There 
are  various  things  one  can  **  do  "  for  sil- 
ver without  openly  violating  the  platform. 
One  is  buying  it,  which  McKinley  has 
steadily  advocated.  We  do  not  think  this 
way  will  be  adopted.  But  in  order  to 
pass  a  tariff,  some  way  will  have  to  be 
found.  A  large  body  of  the  public  want 
silver,  and  almost  worship  it.  Mr.  Tel- 
ler's shedding  tears  over  it  in  the  conven- 
tion shows  what  a  place  the  metal  has 
found  in  the  hearts  of  the  people.  Silver 
is,  we  think,  the  first  raw  metal  that  has 
ever  been  wept  over.  Iron  is  twice  as  pa- 
triotic and  has  done  five  hundred  times  as 
much  for  civilization,  but  it  has  never 
drawn  tears,  in  the  pig  state.  It  ha^^'  to 
be  turned  into  a  weapon,  like  a  sword  or 
halbert,  in  order  to  move  strong  men. 

McKinley's  character  is  so  vague,  and 
so  little  forecast  of  what  he  is  likely  to  do 
can  be  got  either  from  his  career  or  from 
his  language,  that  a  good  deal  of  uncer- 
tainty must  mark  the  first  year  or  two  of 
his  administration,  at  a  period  when  cer- 
tainty is  of  priceless  value.  We  must  not 
overlook  the  fact — the  experience  of  the 
human  race  forbids  us — that  he  has  a  cer- 
tain number  of  unpaid  creditors — not  legal 
creditors,  it  is  true,  but  still  creditors  whose 
claims  on  him  it  is  difficult  for  any  ordi- 
nary man  to  resist  who  has  many  favors 
to  bestow.  Our  sole  guarantee  that  they 
will  not  be  improperly  rewarded  lies  in 
McKinley's  private  character,  which  is, 
we  believe,  very  good;  but  we  must  re- 
member that,  in  dealing  with  them,  one 
virtue  will  have  to  contend  with  another 
—gratitude  with  the  sense  of  public  duty. 
The  experiment  of  putting  an  insolvent 
man  at  the  head  of  the  government  is  one 
never  before,  we  believe,  tried  in  a  consti- 
tutional state,  and  it  will  be  watched  with 
interest. 

Nothing  marks  more  clearly  than  Mc- 
Kinley's nomination  the  mistake  of  turn- 
ing nominating  conventions  into  vast  ex- 
cited crowds,  doing  their  work  under  the 
eyes  of  a  larger  crowd,  more  excited  still. 
There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  gold  in 
the  platform  was  forced  on  the  convention 
by  the  business  men,  and  that,  had  the 
convention  been  a  deliberative  body,  Mc- 
Kinley's unfitness  to  stand  on  any  such 
platform  would  have  been  recognized. 
But  the  pledges  given  by  the  delegates 
before  they  ever  met  or  compared  notes, 
made  it  impossible  to  choose  any  other. 
About  the  platform  they  were  free,  but 
about  the  candidate  they  were  tied  up,  so 
that  they  were  compelled  to  put  him 
astride  a  body  of  doctrine  with  which  he 
has  never  been  in  thorough  sympathy. 
But  the  formal  recognition  of  the  doc- 
trine by  the  party  at  least  insures  discus- 
sion, and  encourages  us  to  hope  that  there 


will  be  no  more  difficulty  in  killing  the  sil- 
ver heresy  through  the  country  by  free  de- 
bate than  there  has  been  in  getting  such 
a  collection  of  politicians  as  met  at  St. 
Louis  to  declare  for  the  gold  stand ar'l. 
What  is  debauching  and  will  continue  to 
debauch  the  people  is  the  legislation  to 
enable  individuals  to  make  money,  which 
goes  by  the  name  of  "  protection  to  native 
industry."  Every  man  who  sees  this 
wants  his  share. 


THE  ST.  LOUIS  PLATFORM. 

Approval  of  the  gold  •  standard  plank 
adopted  by  the  Republican  natibnal  con- 
vention must  not  be  taken  as  approval  of 
the  remainder  of  the  platform,  or  as  con- 
donation of  it.  We  are  aware  that  plat- 
form deliverances  on  subjects  not  of  vital 
interest  are  considered  by  the  public  very 
much  as  stage-thunder,  intended  to  carry 
on  the  movement  of  the  play,  and  there- 
fore not  worthy  of  much  attention  even  if 
it  is  bad  per  se.  The  tribe  who  make 
their  living  out  of  politics  take  advantage 
of  this  indifference  to  side  issues,  to 
weave  into  the  platform  all  sorts  of  fraud- 
ulent schemes,  so  that  they  can  go  before 
Congress  at  a  future  time  and  make 
claims  upon  the  public  confidence  on  the 
ground  that  they  have  the  authority  of 
the  national  platform,  the  broadest  man- 
date of  the  party,  for  doing  so.  Thus 
platforms  are  constructed  in  log-rolling 
fashion  like  river  -  and  -  harbor  bills,  so 
that,  apart  from  the  chief  and  vital  issue 
or  issues,  there  may  be  a  collection  of  the 
rottenest  material  that  the  country  af- 
fords. We  think  that  the  St.  Louis  plat- 
form, aside  from  the  gold-standard  plank, 
answers  this  description. 

The ''arraignment"  paragraph  is  usu- 
ally placed  at  the  beginning,  and  is  made 
very  hot  for  the  opposing  party.  As  a 
general  thing  the  opposing  party  deserves 
some  buffeting.  The  Democratic  party 
deserves  a  good  deal,  but  mostly  of  a 
different  kind  from  what  it  receives  in  the 
bill  of  particulars.  Among  other  accu- 
sations laid  at  its  door  is  this: 

**  In  administrative  management  it  has  mtb- 
lessly  sacrificed  IndispeDsable  revenu^  en- 
tailed an  unceasing  deficit,  eked  out  ordinary 
current  expenses  with  borrowed  money,  piled 
np  the  public  debt  by  $262,000,000  in  time  of 
peace,  forced  an  adverse  t>alance  of  trade, 
kept  a  perpetual  menace  hanging  over  the  re- 
demption fund,  pawned  Ameriean  credit  to 
alien  syndicates^  and  reversed  all  the  measures 
and  results  of  successful  Republican  rule." 

We  shall  not  go  back  to  the  causes  of  the 
'*  unceasing  deficit "  of  revenue,  although 
it  would  be  easy  to  find  them  in  the  un- 
impeachable testimony  Of  Charles  Foster, 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  under  President 
Harrison.  Let  that  pass  in  order  to  reach 
the  **  pawning  of  American  credit  to  alien 
syndicates."  What  is  meant  by  that  ?  It 
means  that  the  Administration  now  in 
power  is  blamable  for  selling  bonds  to 
maintain  the  public  credit  It  admits  of 
no  other  construction.  Is  any  particular 
stress  laid  on  the  word  '^  alien"  f  If  bonds 
are  to  be  sold  at  all,  they  are  to  be  aold  at 


June  25,  1896] 


Th.e   N"ation. 


485 


the  best  price  offered.  The  beet  price  can 
be  obtained  only  in  the  widest  market 
Shut  out  the  foreign  bids  and  you  make  a 
home  monopoly — the  very  charge  that  pro- 
duces the  greatest  outcry  even  when  the 
charge  is  false.  Any  Secretary  of  the  Trea- 
sury who  should  limit  bids  to  American 
buyers — any  one  who  should  advertise  "no 
foreigners  need  apply** — would  be  im- 
peached by  Congress  and  universally  exe- 
crated. Therefore  the  gravamen  of  the 
arraignment  is  that  the  present  Adminis- 
tration is  censurable  for  selling  bonds  to 
maintain  the  gold  standard. 

No  matter  how  the  deficit  came  about, 
this  is  the  real  crime.  How  does  this 
sound,  how  does  this  look,  beside  a  plank 
affirming  that  the  existing  gold  standard 
must  be  maintained  f  It  looks  as  though 
the  arraignment  plank  and  the  gold-stan- 
dard plank  had  been  drafted  by  two  dif- 
ferent sets  of  hands,  or  sub-committees, 
and  slapped  together  without  any  compa- 
rison of  views  either  before  or  after  the 
drafting,  and  that  the  arraignment  set 
did  not  know  what  they  were  talking 
about  For,  as  surely  as  the  sun  rises, 
the  McKinley  Administration  will  have  to 
sell  bonds  to  redeem  the  promises  of  its 
own  platform  if  it  is  confronted  by  the 
same  conditions  as  those  which  have  four 
times  confronted  the  Cleveland  Adminis- 
tratk>n.  We  think  that  it  will  be  con- 
fronted by  such  conditions,  and  that  the 
result  will  be  due  to  the  extravagant  and 
reckless  appropriations  made  by  the  terri- 
ble Congress  that  has  just  adjourned. 

There  is  so  much  else  that  is  bad  in  this 
platform  that  we  hardly  know  where  to 
put  our  finger  first.  Foreign  policy  occu- 
pied a  large  share  of  the  committee's  at- 
tention, and  while  this  part  of  it  is  not  so 
bad  as  might  have  been  expected,  con- 
sidering the  stampede  which  Mr.  Cleve- 
land produced  among  Republican  Con- 
gressmen by  his  Venezuelan  message,  it 
is  essentially  a  Jingo  production,  offensive 
and  undignified  in*  tone,  betraying  the 
half-grown,  loud-talking,  self-asserting 
frame  of  mind,  far  removed  from  gentle- 
manly and  civilised  deportment  and  from 
the  reserve  which  accompanies  genuine 
courage  and  real  strength.  The  slime  of 
Henry  Cabot  Lodge  is  ^er  it  all.  Our 
foreign  policy,  it  says^^bijld  be  firm, 
vigorous,  and  dignified,  and  for  this  reason 
we  ought  to  have  a  great  many  expensive 
things,  such  ss  a  Nicaragua  Capal,  a  large 
navy,  the  Danish  Islands,  to  b^  acquired 
by  purchase,  and  *'  a  much-needed  navai 
station  in  the  West  Indies.*'  Ail  of  these 
things,  or  any  of  them,  will  hasten  the 
time  when  McKinley,  if  elected,  will  have 
to  sell  bonds  to  meet  current  expenses 
and  maintain  the  gold  standard.  All  or 
any  of  them  will  help  to  get  us  into  foreign 
trouble  which  the  whole  American  people, 
except  a  few  speculators  and  contractors, 
are  most  deeply  interested  in  avoiding. 
The  Danish  Islands  are  a  misfortune  to 
any  country  that  possesses  them.  They 
were  rejected  by  us  after  investigstion 
whan  Mr.  Seward  was  Secretary  of  State.  1 


**  Much-needed  naval  station  in  the  West 
Indies.*'  That  also  was  rejected  by  us 
after  investigation  when  Gen.  Grant  was 
President  It  now  reappears  in  the  St. 
Louis  platform,  for  no  better  purpose  than 
to  let  Mr.  Lodge  out  of  the  bad  scrape  he 
fell  into  when  he  tried  to  out- Jingo  Presi- 
dent Cleveland  and  <*got  left." 

As  for  the  protective  plank,  it  leaves 
McKinley  looking  almost  as  much  of  a 
misfit  candidate  as  does  the  currency 
plank.  **  We  are  not  pledged  to  any  par- 
ticular schedules.*'  That  is  to  say,  do 
not  fear,  good  people,  that  we  shall  break 
our  leg  a  second  time  on  the  McKinley 
tariff.  The  platform  is  for  a  "  reasonable 
application  "  of  the  protective  principle ; 
the  awful  inference  lies  on  the  surface 
that  there  have  been  unreasonable  appli- 
cations of  it  **  The  country  demands  a 
right  settlement,  and  then  it  wants  rest" 
Business  men  say  they  want  rest  immedi- 
ately, and  dread  nothing  more  than  to  be 
harried  another  four  years  by  tariff  agita- 
tion. Finally,  the  platform  explicitly 
throws  over  the  sugar  bounty,  which  was 
a  great  and  essential  feature  of  the  Mc- 
Kinley tariff.  In  other  words,  it  is  for 
McKinley,  but  not  for  McKinley  ism. 


THE  SILVERITE  SECESSION, 

Senator  Tsllsb  announced  to  the  com- 
mittee on  resolutions  at  St.  Louis,  when 
his  free-coinage  plank  was  rejected,  that 
he  could  not  support  a  candidate  standing 
on  a  gold  platform.  He  is  quoted  as  say- 
ing that  the  Republican  party  had  become 
*'the  slave  of  Wall  Street  and  Lombard 
Street,**  and  that  it  was  a  matter  of  con- 
science with  him  to  abandon  it  This  kind 
of  talk  seems  to  have  been  taken  in  good 
part  by  Senator  Lodge,  although  nothing 
nouHI  have  been  more  insulting  except  a 
charge  that  the  majority  of  the  committee 
and  of  the  delegates  had  been  bought  with 
money.  Lodge  is  reported  to  have  replied, 
in  a  feeling  manner,  that  he  had  the  ut- 
most respect  for  Teller,  who  had  just  de- 
scribed him  and  his  associates  on  the  com- 
mittee as  slaves  of  English  bankers.  Then 
the  representatives  of  Utah,  Idaho,  Mon- 
tana, and  Nevada  endorsed  and  repeated 
what  Teller  had  said— in  other  words,  took 
themselves  out  of  the  party.  The  Call- 
fomian  on  the  committee  did  not  go  so 
far.  He  contented  himself  with  saying 
that  his  State  would  be  lost  to  the  Repub- 
licans by  40,000  msjority,  which  is  proba- 
bly a  gross  exaggerstion. 

Next  to  the  adoption  of  the  gold-stan- 
dard platform,  the  secession  of  the  silver- 
ites  is  the  best  thing  that  has  happened 
since  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  act  in 
1803.  It  is  beneficial  in  a  number  of  ways. 
It  accentuates  the  fight  on  the  money 
q.U0stion,  m^kes  the  division  of  public 
sentiment  deeper,  prevents  future  strad- 
dling, and,  last  but  not  least,  it  probably 
hokis  the  Senste  against  the  McKinley 
tariff  fanatics.  At  all  events,  it  relegates 
the  tariff  to  the  second  place  in  the  cam- 
paign, and  furnishes  opportunity  for  a 


almilar  division  and  secession  at  Chicago 
in  case  a  free-coinage  platform  ia  adopted 
there.  With  a  free-coinage  platform  it 
W(  uld  hardly  be  worth  while  for  the  De- 
mocrats in  the  East  to  nominate  electoral 
tickets.  They  might  better  follow  the 
example  of  Teller,  Dubois,  and  Cannon, 
and  abstain  from  further  proceedings 
in  the  convention  after  the  platform  is 
adopted. 

All  signs  point  to  the  sharpest  possi- 
ble division  on  the  silver  issue — so  sharp 
that  the  personality  of  McBUnley  will  be 
mainly  lost  sight  of.  This  will  be  a  de- 
sirable feature  of  the  campaign,  in  the 
East  at  all  events,  since  his  name  inspires 
no  enthusiasm  here,  even  among  Republi- 
cans. Anything  which  serves  to  put  him  in 
the  background  will  be  an  advantage  to  the 
ticket,  which  will  depend  for  success  upon 
votes  that  would  never  be  given  to  him 
except  as  an  alternative  to  the  silver  stan- 
dard and  business  chaos  resulting  there- 
ffrom.  What  the  future  may  bring  us 
tariff-wise  cannot  now  be  predicted,  but 
the  immediate  danger  is  a  financial  crisis 
of  the  first  magnitude  growing  out  of  a 
change  in  the  standard  of  value.  In  com- 
parison with  this  the  tariff  question,  al- 
though unsettled,  is  relatively  small.  No- 
body is  going  to  change  his  opinions  on 
this  subject  merely  because  circumstsnces 
have  compelled  him  to  subordinate  this 
issue  to  another  one  for  the  present.  Nor 
will  the  fight  be  given  up  for  that  rea- 
son. 

How  much  the  secession  of  Toller  and 
his  faction  will  amount  to  in  electoral 
votes  cannot  be  known  until  after  the  two 
platforms  and  the  two  tickets  are  an- 
nounced. It  is  our  belief  that  no  North- 
ern State  east  of  the  Mississippi  River 
will  be  found  in  the  free-coinage  column 
in  November,  and  that  of  the  States  west 
of  that  boundary  the  party  favoring  the 
gold  standard  has  the  best  prospects  in 
Kansas,  Nebraska,  the  two  Dakotas,  and 
Wyoming.  Some  doubts  have  been  ex- 
pressed as  to  Iowa,  but  the  doubters  have 
not  made  account  of  the  sound- money 
Democrats  of  that  State,  who  constituted 
more  than  one-third  of  the  recent  State 
convention.  These  men  have  already  be- 
gun to  organise  against  free  silver,  like 
their  friends  in  Chicago,  and  they  may 
be  depended  on  to  fight  There  will  be  no 
whipping-in  after  the  convention,  because 
the  business  interests  of  these  men  are  at 
stake.  They  have  no  option,  because  they 
are  fighting  for  their  bread  and  butter. 

In  Indiana  the  contest  will  k>e  sharp, 
but  we  have  every  confidence  that  the 
gold  standard  will  win.  The  same  result 
will  follow  in  Michigan,  although  the  Re- 
publicans there  have  k>een  under  bad  lead- 
ership. In  that  State  the  line  of  division 
runs  as  sharply  through  the  Democratic 
as  through  the  Republican  ranks.  In  the 
South  we  find  many  encouraging  signs. 
Maryland,  Delaware,  Kentucky,  and  West 
Virginia  are  almost  certain  to  be  ranged 
against  free  coinsge,  while  the  chancee  of 
defeating  Bland  in  Missouri  and  Harris 


4:86 


Tlie   ISTation^ 


[Vol  62,  No.  1617 


in  TeoDMsee  are  fairly  good.  It  may  turn 
out  that  the  Republican  majority  in  the 
next  Oongrese  will  not  be  aa  large  aa  it  is 
in  the  present  one,  but  that  will  be  no 
misfortune  to  the  party.  The  shocking 
blunders  in  the  present  Congress  were 
due  mainly  to  the  unwieldy  strength  of 
the  party.  If  they  bad  had  only  twenty 
or  thirty  majority,  Speaker  Reed  would 
not  hare  lost  control  of  them.  He  wot.ld 
have  been  able,  in  all  probability,  to  keep 
them  from  passing  the  extra vigant  appro- 
priation bills  which  constitute  the  present 
menace  to  the  Treasury  reserre.  Hence 
the  Republicans  can  lose  some  of  their 
top-heaviness  in  Congress  with  adrantage 
to  themselves. 

Whether  the  Teller  secessionists  go  to 
the  Democrata  or  to  the  Populists,  or^set 
up  a  party  of  their  own,  makes  little  dif- 
ference in  the  long  run,  though  the  proba- 
bility is  that  all  the  silverite  factions  will 
oome  together  eventually.  Meanwhile 
they  have  nominated  Teller  for  President, 
and  have  put  forth  an  insidious  and  de- 
ceptive address  to  the  people  which  it  will 
probably  be  necessary  to  answer  a  good 
many  times  before  the  end  of  the  cam- 
paign. Almost  every  line  of  it  is  either 
an  unsupported  assertion  or  a  manifest 
falsehood.    Take  this  one  as  a  sample: 

"  The  country  cannot  much  longer  exist  free 
and  independent  againit  all  the  rest  of  the 
world,  nor  can  its  people  be  free  in  the  noblest 
■ems  of  the  term,  if  the  United  Statee,  a  debt- 
or nation,  shall  follow  a  policy  dictated  by 
creditor  nattons.** 

What  is  meant  by  existing  free  and  inde- 
pendent against  all  the  rest  of  the  world? 
The  phrase  has  a  quasi-belligerent  ring. 
Ever  since  the  close  of  the  Revolutionary 
war  we  have  existed  free  from  and  inde- 
pendent o{  other  nations,  and  we  have 
been  free  and  independent  again$t  them 
whenever  we  haye  been  at  war  with  them, 
which  has  been  only  five  years  out  of  one 
hundred  and  six.  These  facts  show  that 
we  can  Ise  free  and  independent  of  them 
or  against  them  as  the  case  may  be,  aK 
though  we  have  been  a  debtor  nation  all 
the  time  and  have  found  it  profitable  to 
ourselves  to  be  so.  There  is  no  external 
force  compelling  us  to  be  a  debtor  nation. 
Debt  is  incurred  by  borrowing  money,  and 
there  is  no  law  compelling  men  to  borrow. 
They  borrow  when  they  find  it  advan- 
tageous to  do  so  if  they  can  find  lenders. 
The  most  unfortunate  borrowers  are  those 
who  cannot  find  lenders,  and  the  most  un- 
fortunate lenders  are  those  whose  borrow- 
ers cannot  pay.  Ability  to  pay  means 
generally  that  the  borrower  has  made  a 
profit,  or  at  all  eventa  that  he  has  not 
made  a  loss.  In  the  jargon  of  the  Popu- 
list camp,  it  is  always  the  borrower  who 
is  suffering  because  he  cannot  pay.  He 
is  the  object  of  commiseration,  whereaa 
the  one  to  be  really  pitied  is  the  lender. 
It  is  his  money  that  has  **gone  up  the 
spout."  The  borrower  haa  had  the  use 
of  it.  He  may  have  consumed  it  or  lost  it 
in  bad  speculations,  but  evidently  the 
lender  is  the  real  sufferer  if  the  borrower 


cannot  pay.  If  he  can  pay,  however,  that 
fact  ahows  that  the  loan  has  been  a  mu- 
tual advantage,  which  is  a  gain  to  the 
world. 

But  the  boltera  tell  us  that  the  people 
«•  cannot  be  free  in  the  noblest  sense  of 
the  term  if  the  United  SUtes,  a  debtor 
nation,  shall  follow  a  policy  dictated  by 
creditor  nations."  Do  they  mean  that 
foreigners  are  dictating  our  policy  without 
our  knowing  it  ?  If  so,  the  wrong  term 
has  been  used,  because  dictation  implies 
knowledge  on  the  part  of  dictator  and 
dictatee.  If  our  policy  is  framed  for  us 
abroad  without  our  knowledge,  then  the 
word  deception  should  be  used  in  place  of 
dictation.  No  evidence  is  offered  to  show 
that  foreigners  are  using  either  deception 
or  dictation  as  to  our  currency  qrstem. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  they  are  concern- 
ed only  with  their  own.  We  have  tried 
three  times  to  get  them  to  change  their 
qrstem.  They  have  never  tried  once  to 
induce  us  to  change  ours.  It  is  evident 
that  in  the  single  sentence  quoted  from 
the  bolters*  address  there  are  four  or  five 
falsehoods  or  suggestions  of  falsehoods — 
about  one  to  each  line.  We  judge  from  a 
cursory  examination  that  the  proportion 
of  lies  to  truth  in  the  whole  address  is  not 
less  than  16  to  L 


TBAT**INTERNATIONAL  AOREEMENT,'^ 

III  this  country  nothing  In  politics  comes 
suddenly.  Almost  all  waves  of  popular 
feeling  are  prepared  or  stimulated  by  per- 
sons who  are  more  knowing  than  the 
masses.  This  was  distinctly  true  of  the 
Jingo  movement,  for  instance.  For  two 
years  a  band  of  politicians  kept  the  air 
full  of  threatenings  against  England,  and 
abuse  of  Cleveland,  in  the  interest  of 
what  was  called  a  "more  vigorous  foreign 
policy."  As  time  rolled  on,  the  talk  grew 
fiercer.  The  flag  was  hoisted  on  all  the 
schoolhouses  as  a  measure  of  defiance. 
The  children  were  drilled,  and  there  final- 
ly arose  a  call  for  war,  not  with  England, 
but  with  anybody,  as  a  means  of  moral 
discipline.  If  we  did  not  go  to  war  with 
somebody,  the  Jingoes  said,  there  was  no 
knowing  what  would  become  of  our  cha- 
racter. '*  Patriotism"  ceased  to  have  any 
civic  meaning,  to  connote  love  of  law,  or 
order,  or  integrity*  or  good  government. 
It  meant  simply  for  awhile  a  desire  to 
fight  somebody,  or  admiration  for  people 
who  were  going  to  fight.  With  the  Vene- 
suela  outburst,  Jingoism  totally  collapsed. 
After  •* standing  behind  Cleveland"  a 
few  minutes,  the  Jingoes  all  dispersed  to 
their  homes,  and  became  utterly  peace- 
able, showing  that  if  agitators  only  kept 
quiet,  the  people  had  no  thought  of  fight- 
ing anybody. 

Very  much  the  same  thing  has  hap- 
pened with  regard  to  the  silyer  agitation, 
except  that  it  has  had  a  little  more  as- 
sistance from  events.  The  panic  of  1873 
combined  with  the  fall  of  silyer  to  start  it, 
but  its  absurdities,  in  our  belief,  would 
have  kiUed  it  long  ago  had  it  not  been 


nouri^ed  by  the  body  of  much  more  in- 
structed men  known  as  "  bimetallisti." 
The  ignorant  masses  have  constantly 
heard  from  these  people,  during  the  Itit 
twenty  years,  that  although  the  extreme 
view  of  the  silverites  was  idle,  there  wu 
something  behind  it;  that  the  scardtj  of 
gold  had  lowered  prices;  that  a  double 
standard  composed  of  both  silver  tnd 
gold  was  possible,  through  intematioDtl 
agreement;  that  the  hated  England  wm 
the  main  obstacle  to  this  agreement,  and 
that  our  business  was  to  force  her  into  it 
This  talk  of  professors  and  "philoso- 
phers "  has  kept  this  pest  of  the  modem 
world  alive  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  tod 
has  caused  the  holding  of  three  absurd 
conferences,  in  which  we  were  almost  the 
only  members  who  really  desired  success 
The  others  attended  and  delated  to  hu- 
mor us.  In  not  one  of  them  did  there 
appear  to  be  the  smallest  hope  that  olti* 
mate  agreement  could  be  reached,  bat  the 
preaching  at  home  continued.  The  hope 
was  constantly  held  out,  and  is  held  oat 
to-day,  that  another  conference  will  be 
held,  when  we  shall  get  what  we  wint 
This  passion  for,  and  promise  of,  a  ood* 
ference  keeps  the  ignorant  masses  of  the 
South  and  West  in  constant  expectation 
and  constant  irritation.  What  they  ire 
waiting  for  is  not  a  conference  to  ne 
whether  a  double  standard  would  be  • 
good  thing,  but  a  conference  that  will  tod 
in  bringing  it  about  They  think  Eofl^ 
land  is  the  main  obstacle  and  they  want 
to  fight  her.  This  was  actually  the  ex- 
planation Lodge  gave,  a  few  months  igo, 
in  a  letter  to  a  friend  in  England,  of  the 
excitement  over  Venesuela. 

The  latest  contributor  to  this  litsratoie 
of  mischief  is  Mr.  W.  C.  Whitney.  He 
printed  a  letter  in  Monday's  press  foil 
of  wise  reasoning  as  to  the  danger  and 
folly  of  free  coinage  just  now.  Bat,  •• 
usual,  he  assured  the  silverites  thst  thsir 
cause  was  good  and  its  triumi^  wu 
coming: 

**Tbere  has  never  been  a  time  when  tte 
prospects  of  international  sfstion  favonUeto 
the  joint  standard  were  at  all  as  promii^  •• 
at  the  present  moment.  Bat  an  iO-adrued, 
onsnceessful  attempt  here  woold  discredit  the 
cause  the  world  over.  What  is  the  sitnatiaD 
as  regards  this  ?  From  the  discusdon  of  tte 
last  twenty  yearn,  it  has  come  to  pstt  thst 
among  the  persons  In  Europe  who  ars  traisad, 
recognised  scientists  upon  monetary  and  eoo- 
nomlc  questions,  scarcely  one  is  not  at  the  pr^ 
sent  moment  advocating  the  desirability  01  the 
joint  standard  as  the  real  solution  oTths  mass- 
tary  difficulrlas  of  the  world.  This  indndci 
every  professor  engaged  in  teaching  or  \»- 
turing  on  these  subjectt  in  the  unlvenitiei  of 
Great  Britain.  Tbey  are  agreed  anon  tbs 
desirabiUty  of  It,  and  that  it  is  entirely  Fri^ 
tioable  if  established  and  noaintained  by  sgres- 
ment  of  the  principal  commercial  nafctons?* 

This  is  the  kind  of  talk  which,  oommg 
from  such  quarters,  keeps  the  silver  move- 
ment alive  in  this  ooontry,  and  kespi^ « 
will  keep  us  for  some  time  to  oods  ta 
constant  danger  of  its  snccesi.  We  dM^ 
totally  the  assertion  that  inSocopsavoiC 
**  trained,  reco^niied  stisuU^  ^|Hia^ 
notary  and  economic  flMiiSM  ttM^ 
scarcely  one  who  to  Ml  ^ 
advocating  thee 


June  25,  1896] 


Tlie  nSTation. 


487 


dard  fts  the  real  eolution  of  the  monetarj 
difBoulties  of  the  world."  The  direct  con- 
trary of  this  ia  nearer  the  truth.  If  Mr. 
Whitnej  does  not  wish  to  be  accused  of 
decelTing  his  countrymen,  he  will  give 
them  the  names  of  these  persons  and  sam- 
ples of  what  they  say.  He  is  simply  re- 
peating here  an  absurd  statement  of  Mr. 
Balfour's,  who  is  a  fair  specimen  himself 
of  the  '*  philosophers  "  who  want  a  double 
standard.  There  is  hardly  one  recognized 
authority  in  England  on  financial  ques- 
tions who  desires  or  belieTes  in  the  possi- 
bility of  a  double  standard,  or  would  thhik 
for  one  moment  of  doing  business  in  it  if 
it  were  established.  There  are  professors 
who  preach  it,  but,  like  our  "  ethical "  pro^ 
feasors  here,  few  of  those  who  have  the 
English  pound  sterling  in  their  keeping 
pay  any  attention  to  them.  But  give  us 
their  names,  Mr.  Whitney,  and  the  names 
of  their  universities.  Nothing  does  more 
to  bring  about  this  immense  silver  delu- 
sion, with  its  disastrous  consequences,  and 
to  make  men  like  McKinley  the  leaders  of 
the  American  people,  than  this  sort  of  talk.^ 
As  long  as  the  famous  <*  international 
agreement,"  with  the  foreign  ** scientists" 
behind  it,  is  kept  hanging  before  the  eyes 
of  the  public  as  a  strong  probability,  we 
shall  never  have  business  peace  or  sta- 
bUity. 

One  by  one  the  arguments  of  the  bi- 
metallists  have  deserted  them.  The  ear- 
liest one,  that  the  scarcity  of  gold  had 
lowered  prices,  has  gone,  partly  because 
so  many  causes  are  at  work  to  cheapen 
modem  commodities  that  It  is  impossible 
to  connect  it  by  proof  with  any  one; 
partly  because  the  supply  of  gold  has 
within  a  few  years  increased  enormously 
and  is  still  hicreasing.  The  second  one, 
that  the  gold  standard  was  in  any  coun- 
try causing  scarcity  of  money  to  people 
who  had  collateral  or  credit  to  borrow 
on,  has  perished  under  the  smiles  of  real 
busineas  men.  The  third  one,  that,  ab- 
surd or  not,  the  nations  are  going  to  agree 
to  give  silver  or  any  other  commodity  an 
arbitrary  price  in  a  conference  which 
England  is  to  attend  "  on  her  knees,"  is 
kept  afloat  in  default  of  anything  better. 
It  is  the  sole  support  to-day  of  the  silver 
movement.  It  is  the  expectation  or  hope 
of  this  which  keeps  the  agitation  alive 
among  the  masses,  as  well  as  among  ra- 
tional bimetallists.  Concerning  fanatics 
of  the  Teller  type,  or  ignorant  men  of 
the  "  Ckdn  "  school,  we  have  nothing  to 
Bi^.  **  Non  ragioniam  di  lor,  ma  guarda  e 
passa."  We  appeal  to  sensible  and  pa- 
triotic bimetallists  of  the  community  to 
try  silence  fdr  a  few  years.  Their  cause 
is  a  loat  cause,  like  that  of  the  Stuarts  or 
of  the  Confederacy.  It  may  be  well  to 
have  fought  in  it,  but  it  is  better  now  to 
forget  it.  The  remembrance  does  no- 
thing but  turn  away  the  minds  of  their 
ooontrymen  from  frugality  and  industry, 
as  the  true  sources  of  wealth,  and  fill 
their  hearts  with  bitterness  against  the 
great  managers  of  money  at  home  and 
Abroad,  to    whom   oivilisatioii  in  every 


country  is  so  much  indebted,  and  to 
whom,  whatever  their  faults  may  be,  it  is 
of  even  more  Importanoe^than  to  any  one 
else  that  the  standard  of  value  should  be 
kept  as  far  as  possible  steady,  that  credit 
should  be  kept  intact,  and  that  all  work- 
ers of  every  nation  should,  about  money 
as  about  other  things,  be  clothed  and  in 
their  right  mind. 


THE   TORT  COLLAPSE. 

Thb  breakdown  of  the  English  Ministry 
on  the  Education  bill,  in  spite  of  the 
largeness  of  their  majority,  is  doubtless 
due  in  part  to  the  public  disappointment. 
Although  their  majority  in  the  House, 
owing  to  small  majorities  in  various  coun- 
ties and  boroughs,  was  in  the  beginning 
150  (now  146),  it  was  in  reaUty,  if  the 
House  fully  represented  the  voting  popu- 
lation, only  14.  The  knowledge  that  it 
has  nearly  half  the  public  behind  it  has, 
therefore,  made  the  Liberal  Opposition 
much  fiercer  and  more  truculent  than  its 
strength  in  Parliament  appeared  to  war- 
rant. It  has  been  so  strenuous  on  the 
Education  bill  that  the  (Government  has 
abandoned  it  with  a  somewhat  ludicrous 
promise  that  it  will  go  to  work  at  it  again 
next  year. 

But  the  trouble  goes  further  back  than 
the  Education  bill.  The  Ministry  came 
in  with  a  great  fiourish  of  trumpets,  espe- 
cially about  foreign  affairs.  Almost  im- 
mediately after  it  took  office  occurred  the 
Armenian  fiasco.  Nothing  has  occurred 
in  English  history  more  humiliating  or 
more  shocking  to  the  moral  and  religious 
public,  especially  to  the  Nonconformists, 
than  Lord  Salisbury's  standing  by  idly 
and  allowing  the  massacres  to  go  on  in 
Armenia,  and  then  pretending  that  he  had 
not  provided  for  this  contingency  in  mak- 
ing the  Berlin  treaty,  and  that  the  cession 
of  Cyprus  was  not  meant  as  a  pledge  that 
this  sort  of  thing  should  not  happen 
again.  He  was  easily  convicted  of  evadon 
out  of  the  speeches  he  made  when  he 
came  back  with  Disraeli,  as  well  as  out  of 
the  treaty  itself.  He  has  cut  an  equally 
lamentable  figure  in  the  Egyptian  mat- 
ter. After  efforts  to  conceal  from  the 
House  of  Commons  what  the  advance  in 
the  Sudan  was  for,  it  has  crept  out, 
through  the  Italian  Green  Book,  that  it 
was  intended  in  its  inception  to  help  the 
Italians  in  Abyssinia,  that  Salisbury's  dis- 
patches were  almost  dictated  at  Borne, 
and  that  the  story  of  Dervish  restlessness 
was  a  pure  invention. 

So  much  as  regards  foreign  policy.  At 
home  the  Ministry  were  to  avoid  the 
Liberal  folly  in  attempting  great  constitu- 
tional changes,  such  as  home  rule  for  Ire- 
land and  the  reform  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  and  confine  themselves  to  domestic 
reform  in  the  interests  of  the  poor  and  the 
old.  There  Is  no  sign  of  any  measure  of 
this  kind.  BCr.  Chamberlain,  who  was 
the  leading  apostle  of  this  sort  of  thing, 
seems  to  have  withdrawn  his  attention 
from  it  wholly,  and  is  occupying  himself 


In  building  up  an  Imperial  Zollverein, 
amid  the  jeers  and  laughter  of  his  old  aa- 
sociates.  Only  two  capital  bits  of  legisla- 
tion have  been  produced  after  a  whole 
autumn  and  winter  of  refiection  and  pre- 
paration. Both  are  what  is  called  class 
legislation.  One  is  for  the  benefit  of  the 
impoverished  landholders,  the  other  for 
the  benefit  of  the  Anglican  clergy.  The 
first  relieves  the  land  from  $7,500,000  of 
taxes  by  which  landlords,  not  farmers, 
would  profit.  The  other  not  only  saves 
the  church  schools  from  extinction,  but 
alters  the  whole  school  system  as  settled, 
after  forty  ;ears  of  agitation,  by  Mr.  W. 
E.  Forster  in  1870.  It  abolishes  the  elect- 
ed school  boards,  and  gives  the  govern- 
ment of  the  schools  to  the  county  coun- 
cils. It  removes  the  limit  of  four  dollars 
and  a  half  a  child,  given  as  aid  by  the 
Government  to  every  denominational 
school,  and,  worse  than  all,  rein  trod  ucea 
religious  instruction  into  the  schools  on 
the  demand  of  the  parents,  and  allows  it 
to  be  given  by  the  clergyman  of  their 
choice. 

The  importance  of  this  is  that  Dissent- 
ers are  satisfied  with  the  public  schools. 
Among  them  denominational  schools  can 
hardly  be  said  to  exist.  Denominational 
schools  are,  as  a  rule.  Church  or  Roman 
Catholic  schools.  It  is  these  which  have 
mainly  profited  by  the  Government  money. 
But  as  time  has  gone  on,  and  as  their  sup- 
porters have  become  impoverished,  the 
subscriptions  to  them  have  diminished, 
and  the  ability  to  profit  by  the  Govern- 
ment aid  by  producing  pupils,  has  dimin- 
ished with  it  They  were  more  and  more 
threatened  with  extinction  when  the  Con- 
servatives returned,  to  power.  The  first 
act  of  the  new  Ministry,  as  we  see,  was  not 
to  improve  the  public  schools,  but  to  raise 
the  importance  of  the  denominational 
schools  and  diacredit  all  others.  This  is 
the  measure  which  the  Liberals  in  Parlia- 
ment have  been  opposing  tooth  and  naiL 
Now  that  Irish  home  rule  is  out  of  the 
way,  there  can  hardly  be  a  doubt  that 
the  great  body  of  the  Liberal  party  in  the 
countiy  ia  again  behind  them.  It  is  most 
likely  that  the  Land  bUl  wUl  share  the 
fate  of  the  Education  biU. 

But  there  is  more  still.  It  is  now  ac- 
knowledged, or  at  least  not  denied,  that 
Mr.  Balfour's  leadership  of  the  House 
has  been  extremely  bad.  In  fact,  we  can 
recall  no  instance  when  any  one  in  such 
a  position,  with  a  majority  of  160  behind 
him,  has  been  compelled  to  abandon  im- 
portant legialation  in  his  first  session. 
This  alone  would  be  a  confession  of 
failure.  But  it  has  been  long  foreseen. 
Bftr.  Balfour's  rise  into  the  front  rank 
during  the  Irish  crisis  was  one  of  the 
strange  episodes  of  that  remarkable  pe- 
riod. He  was  one  of  the  four  young  men 
of  fortune  and  fashion  who,  in  earlier 
daya,  used  to  go  down  to  the  House  main- 
ly to  *'guy"  Gladstone.  He  was  not  much 
known  otherwise.  His  aasumption  of  the 
Irish  Secretaryship  excited  general  sur- 
prise.   But  he  filled  it  In  a  way  thai  was 


488 


The   ]N"ation. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1617 


at  that  time  immensely  ^ratifjing  to 
London  ■ociety.  His  immediate  resort  to 
coercion  delighted  the  clubs.  His  indif- 
ference to  the  Tulgar  Irish  abuse  delighted 
the  drawing-rooms.  He  became  a  hero  in 
society,  as  '*  the  brave  Mr.  Balfour.*'  His 
oratory,  halting  at  first,  improved  greatly, 
and  he  locked  the  Irish  up,  like  a  colonel 
administering  martial  law,  so  resolutely 
that  he  came  out  of  the  home-rule  fight 
with  all  the  honors  there  were  for  a  Cen- 
ser/stive.  After  Gladstone's  victory  in 
1892,  he  was  in  opposition,  resting,  so 
to  speak,  on  his  laurels.  But  his  cha- 
racter as  well  as  capacity  seems  to  have 
been  strangely  misconceived.  He  is  really 
a  charming  metaphysical  philosopher,  and 
his  conversion  into  an  administrator  o* 
perturbed  provinces,  a  political  economist, 
and  the  leader  of  a  stormy  assembly  at  a 
great  crisis  in  the  world's  affairs,  has  prob- 
ably astonished  him  as  much  as  anybody. 
Both  he  and  Mr.  Chamberlain  are  finding 
out  that  to  be  a  statesman  something  more 
is  necessary  than  to  be  a  Liberal  Unionist. 


WHY   ITALY   18   NOT   RICH. 

RoxB,  June  10.  1896. 

It  is  a  carious  fact  that  while,  In  modern 
times,  Italy  bss  become  to  a  certain  extent 
synonymous  with  poverty,  it  was  in  ancient 
timet  regarded,  as  ir.  is  in  fact,  potentially  the 
richest  country  in  Europe.  No  other  part  of 
Europe  presents  such  varied  and  abuodaot  re 
sources  for  development,  and  no  other  makes 
such  slight  demands  on  the  Individual  for  ex- 
istence. Why,  under  such  circa mutanoee,  the 
people  and  the  Oovemmeot  alike  should  be  at 
the  foot  of  the  list  of  nations  eojoy  ing  the  pri 
vilege  of  controlUog  their  own  fortunes,  must 
seem  to  the  oataider  a  problem  of  diiBcult 
solution.  I  will  try,  in  a  superficial  way,  to 
show  why  this  is  so. 

FirstJy,  the  Oovemmeat  Is  poor  because  it 
is  prodigal  and  dishonest,  not  Jn  its  relations 
with  iu  creditors,  hnt  in  those  »ith  its  factors. 
In  gathering  its  income,  the  dishonei^ty  of  Itn 
functionaries  is  the  cause  of  the  taxation  fall 
ing  oppressively  on  the  clauses  which  a  wibe 
statesmanship  would  protect  and  make  more 
prosperous,  leaving  the  minimum  of  burthen 
on  those  who  are  canable  of  bearing  the  maxi. 
mum.  Italy  is  governed  in  the  interest  of  the 
wealthy  classes  a  fact  which  has  the  result, 
on  one  side,  of  diminisbiog  responsibility  and 
enterprise  in  those  who  ought  to  lead  in  the 
latter  and  feel  the  fullest  weight  of  the  for- 
mer,  and  on  the  other  of  discouraging  thrift  in 
those  who  ought  to  t>e  encouraged  in  economy 
The  collection  of  taxes  in  the  more  abundant 
springs  is  directed  by  favoritism,  by  official 
prescription,  and  bv  brit>ery.  An  acquaintance 
who  has  large  iutere^ts  io  Tuicaoy,  in  mioes 
and  real  estate,  said  to  me  that  he  paid  only 
the  quarter  of  the  tax  which  the  law  required, 
but  added  that  he  would  wiliiogly  pay  the 
whole  if  the  law  would  allow  him  to  import 
the  artificial  fertilizers  free  of  duty.  Another 
bought  a  bou^e  and  farm,  including  the  furni- 
ture of  the  former,  and,  as  the  impost  on  house 
and  land  transfer  is  heavy,  and  that  on  furni- 
ture  is  light,  the  price  of  the  house  and  farm 
was  put  at  a  fraction  of  the  value,  and  that  of 
the  furniture  swelled  to  flU  the  total  to  the 
amount  actually  paid.  There  U  no  income  tax 
in  the  sense  in  which  that  term  is  used  io  Eng- 


laod  and  the  United  States,  but  a  so-called 
professional  income  tax,  which  was,  by  the  old 
law,  fixed  at  seventeen  per  cent,  on  half  the 
estimated  income,  and  which  is  somewhat  in- 
creased by  the  new  law  of  Sonnino,  in  which 
there  are  variations  according  to  the  sources 
of  the  income.  But  in  the  cumMament  of  the 
income,  political  and  politico-personal  influence 
passes  for  so  mnch  that,  to  use  the  words  of  a 
functionary  to  myself,  if  one  has  influence  in 
the  Government  it  is  possible  to  have  the  as- 
sessment made  at  a  small  fraction  of  the  real 
income.  Now  as  the  small  incomes  are  not 
easy  to  disguise,  and  their  possessors  have  no 
influence  in  official  regions,  it  follows  that  the 
owners  of  them  cannot  escape  their  taxea,  but 
the  larger  incomes  are  so  easily  disguised  that 
they  pay  only  on  a  fraction.  Thus,  one  of  the 
most  prominent  physicians  of  Ro  e^  whose  in- 
come ii  estimated  at  fromtme  hundred  to  one 
bundred  and  fifty  thousand  francs,  is  known 
to  pay  on  one  of  7.000,  and  I  am  told  of  a 
Deputy  whose  Income  is  certainly  100,000  a 
rear,  but  who  pays  on  900  a  month.  Wher- 
ever  concealment  is  possible  this  is  the  case, 
more  or  less,  and,  the  income  of  the  state  be- 
ing of  necessity  fixed,  it  follows  that  the  poorer 
citixens  pay  the  heaviest  taxes  in  proportion. 
The  secondary  consequence  is  the  general  con- 
tempt of  the  law,  and  the  universal  evasion  of 
it  when  possible. 

The  Oovsmmsnt  is  again  impoverished  in 
the  expenditure,  and  especially  in  that  on  pub- 
lic works.  It  is  enough  to  see  how  the  rail- 
ways are  built  to  form  an  idea  of  the  openings 
for  rascality  and  fraud.  They  are  not  built  by 
contract,  but  on  estimate.  A  bmlding  com- 
pany estimates  that  a  certain  line  will  cost  a 
certain  sum,  and  receives  the  job,  which  is  al- 
ways indeed  a  **  job."  The  Government  guar 
rantees  a  certain  income  per  kilometre,  and  the 
<*onstruotor  makes  the  road  as  long  as  possible: 
but  when  the  grant  (which  is  made  in  bonds  of 
the  state)  for  the  amount  authorued  is  ex- 
hausted, the  constructor  coolly  tells  the  Minis- 
try that  the  road  must  stop  there  unless  the 
af  in  it* try  makes  another  grant,  which  is  of 
course  done,  and  the  invariable  result  is  that 
the  original  estimate  is  nearly,  or  quite,  or 
even  more  than,  doubled,  with  the  consequence 
that  none  of  the  roads,  as  they  are  made,  ever 
pay  their  expenses  and  interest  on  their  cost  of 
construction.  More  than  that,  they  are  so 
nurdened  with  deadheads  that  it  is  estimated 
that  only  40  per  cent,  of  the  pcusengers  they 
carry  pay  full  fare,  the  remaining  <M)  per  cent, 
uaymg  from  nothing  up  to  75  per  cent,  of  the 
fare.  Deputies  and  (Senators  travel  free  every- 
where in  the  kingdom,  but.  as  the  state  pays  a 
block  sum  for  their  privilege,  it  is  not  a  dead 
loss,  though  as  every  Deputy  who  travels  in- 
sists  on  having  a  whole  compartment  for  him- 
self, the  road  becomes  anything  but  a  profita- 
ble one.  Worse  than  this  :  while  writing  this 
letter  I  note,  in  the  proceedings  of  the  Cham- 
ber of  Deputies,  the  following  statement  made 
by  a  reforming  Deputy  : 

'*I  remember  to  have  seen  in  an  express 
train  a  child  of  eight  jears,  son  of  a  high  em- 
ployee, travel  alone  in  a  compartment  of 
eigbt  places.  Another  case  :  these  gentlemen, 
the  employees,  are  not  content  with  filling  the 
carriages  of  the  Italian  Society,  but  fill  even 
those  that  come  from  abroad  for  the  use  of 
iutemational  travellers.  The  other  day  a 
gentleman  who  wanted  to  go  from  Rome  to 
Vienna  could  not  take  a  seat  in  the  c%r  re- 
served for  the  international  service  to  which 
he  had  a  right,  because,  in  a  compartment  of 
eiicbt  places,  a  high  railway  emolojee  had  in- 
stil l^d  himself  comfortably.  It  was  u&ele«8  to 
appeal  to  the  courtesy  of  the  ht^tion  master 
at  Rome  ;  it  seems  that  he  was  helpless  asainst 
his  superior.*' 


Every  employee  of  both  the  great  syitsmi 
of  raflway  has  the  right  to  make  three  joir- 
nevs  a  year  on  each  one,  where  he  Ukes,  sad 
with  his  family,  and  the  conseq^ience  it  thst 
some  of  them  ruin  themselves  taking  long 
railway  journeys  for  which  they  have  not  the 
money  to  pay  the  expenses.  And  they  are 
00,000.  with  as  manv  more  pensioned  off  who 
have  the  same  privilege  ;  and,  as  all  travellen 
know,  the  railway  fare  is  the  smallest  part  of 
the  expense  of  a  journey. 

Another  disastrous  interference  with  the 
riches  of  the  state  is  the  system  of  taxing  sU 
business  enterprises,  after  they  have  b^eo  es* 
tablished  three  years,  at  rates  which  in  some 
cases  swamp  the  profits,  while  idle  capital, 
simply  paying  interest  escspes.  A  general  in- 
come tax,  equalising  all  these  interests  in  the 
focidence,  would  prevent  all  this  Injnstice,  bat 
the  infiuenre  of  the  personages  who  profit  bj 
the  present  system  prevails  to  hinder  it  Add 
to  all  these  causes  for  the  deficiency  of  income 
and  excess  of  outgo  the  continual  and  all  per- 
vading evasion  of  all  forms  of  impost  end  the 
very  general  feeling  that  it  is  a  laudable  thing 
to  cheat  the  (Government  or  to  rob  it  and  it  it 
clear  that  the  state  has  a  hard  time  of  it  to  at 
tain  a  balance  of  the  budget'and  of  course  the 
state  is  poor. 

The  population  cannot  be  said  to  be  poor, 
and  on  this  subject  there  are  great  delnsioni 
abroad  ;  but  It  is  not  as  rich  ss  it  might  tM. 
and,  in  fact  io  comparison  with  France  sod 
England,  it  may  be  said  to  be  poor.  But  Lorn- 
hardy.  Piedmont  and  parts  of  Tuscany  com- 
pare well  with  other  parts  of  Europe  even 
with  France,  with  whioh  the  comparison  wonki 
be  most  just  As  a  whole,  Italy  is  getting  rich 
even  faster  in  proportion  to  the  already  soqni^ 
ed  wealth  than  is  France,  the  annual  increan 
of  total  national  wealth  being  estimated  at  a 
milliard  of  francs  a  year,  or  2  per  cent  of  the 
totaL  But  it  is  impossible  not  to  admit  that 
Italy  is  not  profiting  by  her  natural  facilities 
for  enriching  herself,  except  in  parts  of  the 
extrenoe  north,  and  the  reason  is  simple— the 
people  have  not  u  a  rule,  the  ambition' of 
getting  rich.  The  Italian  has  the  reputation  of 
being  lasy,  and  all  who  know  the  people  know 
that  it  is  quite  the  contrary.  They  are  *' indo- 
lent **  which  is  another  thing.  The  word  ii 
Italian,  and  has  a  correct  Italian  meaning, 
which  is  that  one  follows  his  ^*indoU^^  or  natn- 
ral  bent  Everybody  who  has  had  to  deal 
with  Italian  laborers  knows  that  thej  are 
among  the  best  to  be  found,  and,  wh<»n  they 
please  to  work,  they  require  less  saperri- 
sion  than  mo9t  others.  But  let  a  holiday 
come,  a  great  festa  of  the  people  or  the  Church, 
and  you  could  no  more  get  them  to  lose  the 
enjoyment  of  it  for  wages  than  you  could  get 
them  to  do  a  thing  they  had  never  been  train- 
ed to.  As  a  rule,  the  Italian,  even  of  the  lower 
classes,  does  not  aspire  to  accumulate  means; 
if  he  does,  it  is  limited  to  the  acquisition  of  a 
cabin  and  a  piece  of  ground  for  a  garden.  The 
ambition  to  become  rich  and  to  accumulate 
for  the  sake  of  accumulation,  which  is  the 
spring  of  what  is  called  national  prosperity,  is 
wanting.  There  is  a  degree  of  contentment 
and  banhomiey  under  a  condition  approaching 
privation,  which  is  remarkable,  and  the  evi^ 
dent  happiness  of  the  lowest  stratum  of  ■O' 
ciety,  especially  in  the  southern  part  of  the 
peninsula,  might  well  be  envied  by  the  peofib 
of  more  prc^perous  countries.  I7o  doubt  thil 
has  a  very  important  bearing  on  tlie  qoeitioSi 
Why  is  the  Italian  poorPand,  in  this  diredla^ 
answers  it  satisfactorily,  and  expiates  a^^ii 
nation,  as  a  whole,  is  less  ; 
rially  than,  for  instanos^  ] 


June  25,  1896] 


The   N'ation. 


489 


low«r  rliiwi  ars  affected  by  the  teodaDcy 
to  aocomQlata.  TbU  ondtUon,  it,  howeT«r, 
yielding  to  the  general  humao  tendencj,  and 
the  indication  that  the  habit  of  laving  is  grow- 
ing it  in  tha  fact  that  the  acoomalation  of  the 
rams  in  the  postal  tavinga  banks  has  reached 
the  am'^nnt  of  flfteen  honored  millions  of  lire 
(1800.000.000). 

But  there  the  clanes  join  on  a  dead  leTel  of 
apathy.  Bej ond  the  most  elementary  accumn- 
laUoD  the  enterprise  of  the  nation  does  not 
aspire.  Except  in  the  north,  and  especially 
aboat  Milan,  there  is  almost  no  disposition  to 
•mbark  in  undertakings  of  a  specuUtiTe  na- 
ture, and  this  is  a  general  reason  why  Italy 
lags  behind  the  other  European  nations  in  the 
increase  of  prosperity.  Whatever  the  cause  of 
this  aversion  to  inreeting  money  in  new  opera- 
tions—whether apathy,  indifference  to  in- 
crease of  fortune  or  distrust  of  the  result— the 
fact  is  that  the  reluctance  to  eo^bark  in  com- 
mercial or  industrial  aflTairs  is  phenomenal,  and 
most  of  the  serious  undertakings  in  the  country 
are  carried  on  with  foreign  capital,  though  the 
accumulation  in  Italy  is  suiBolent  for  all  that 
needs  ta  be  done.  This  appears,  in  looking  at 
it  from  the  outside  and  without  the  study  of 
occult  motives,  like  an  ezoewive  timidity  in 
business  affairs,  but  it  is  most  likely  simple 
apathy.  Thus  we  may  see  that  in  the  produc- 
tion of  wine,  which  ought  to  be  the  specialty 
of  Italy— climate,  soil,  and  general  condition 
offering  the  peninsula  a  supremacy  in  it,  both 
as  to  the  variety  and  the  treatment  of  the 
winee— in  general  there  is  a  complete  indiffer- 
ence as  to  quality  or  kind,  and  for  many  years 
the  wine-growers  were  satisfied  to  p<x>duoe  the 
orudeat  material  for  treatment  in  France  and 
Qermany,  while  they  could  produce  at  home 
•rvy  variety  of  wine,  from  the  lightest  pro- 
duct of  the  high  mountain  region  to  the  strong- 
est wines  known,  in  Sicily.  It  is  true  that,  here 
and  there,  individuals  are  awaking  to  the  ad 
vantages  of  home  ripsoing  of  wines,  but  the 
greater  part  by  far  of  the  exportation  is  still 
due  to  the  wine-makers  of  other  countries, 
who  ask  for  what  may  be  considered  as  the 
raw  material  of  the  trade. 

The  fruit  market  is  in  the  same  condition. 
The  climate  and  soil  of  the  peninsula  would, 
among  all  European  countries,  enable  it  to 
produce  the  greatest  variety  of  fruits,  both  as 
to  species  and  quality,  and  in  a  few  cases,  as  if 
nature  had  tried  to  show  the  people  the  way, 
the  fruits  are  of  the  finest  quality.  The  peach, 
under  cultivation,  is  equal  to  the  best,  but  to 
find  a  choice  variety,  carefully  and  intelligent- 
ly selected  as  in  France  or  America,  and  put 
on  the  market  with  common  attention  to  oon> 
dition,  is  almost  unknown.  If  one  suggests  to 
an  Italian  any  such  source  of  emolument,  the 
general  reply  Is,  **  Very  good,  but  get  us  Eng- 
lish capital  and  we  will  see."  The  same  thing 
appears  in  the  oommooest  kinds  of  business. 
It  is  not  unknown  to  shoppers  in  Rome  that  a 
shopman  will  tell  his  customer  that  he  has  not 
an  article,  to  avoid  the  trouble  of  hunting  it 
out  in  his  stock.  The  Qermans  and  the  Jews 
are  coming  largely  into  trade  in  Italy,  and 
their  ways  are  driving  the  old  fashioned  Ita- 
lians into  deaperatk>n,  and  leaving  them  in 
many  oasM  out  of  competition. 

Af  Car  all,  though  to  the  foreigner  who  comes 
Into  Italy  for  the  first  timr  It  seems  aa  If  pro- 
gress had  stopped,  and  the  country  was  con 
tent  to  be  poor,  one  who  has  been  here  for 
thirty  years  can  see  thst  there  is  Ufa,  and,  like 
Galileo,  can  s^,  «*  Eppur  si  muove."         X. 


MADAME   DE   CHASTEN  AT.— II. 
Paris,  June  6, 1806. 

We  left  Mile.  deChastenay  conversing  freely 
with  Qen.  Bonaparte  at  Cb&tillon,  and  receiv- 
ing the  confidences  of  the  man  who  was  soon 
to  be  the  master  of  the  world,  playing  with 
him  at  what  is  called  in  France  the  **  petite 
jeux"  (forfeits),  and,  in  consequence  of  a  g<ig€ 
touchy  seeing  a  moment  at  her  feet  the  man 
who  afterwards  saw  Europe  at  his  feet.  Bona- 
parte left  with  Marmont;  he  did  not  go  to  Brit- 
tany. Mile,  de  Chastenay  learned  that  he  had 
returned  to  Paris.  **  I  don't  pretend,**  she  says, 
* '  to  write  history.  I  only  know  that  there  was 
in  Paris  a  commotion;  that  Gen.  Bonaparte, 
who  was  enrolled  on  the  side  of  the  Conv^ition, 
or  of  its  msjority,  and  of  the  Directory  which 
was  soon  to  be  created,  defended  the  Tuileriee 
and  used  his  artillery,  and  that  a  decided  vic- 
tory consolidated  a  power  which  the  nature  of 
things  then  imposed.**  The  allusion  is  to  the 
thirteenth  Vend6miaire,  the  day  of  the  defeat 
of  the  royalist  sections  by  the  troops  of  the 
Convention  commanded  by  Bonaparte. 

Times  had  become  hard,  and  the  Chattenays 
were  almost  In  want.  The  assignata,  the  paper 
money  of  the  day,  had  lost  all  their  value. 
**  Their  nominal  value  was  such  that  if  you 
wanted  four  gold  louis,  you  would  have  to  give 
twenty-five  thousand  francs  in  assignats.*' 
The  Chastenays  had  to  go  almost  without 
bread,  and  had  to  sell  from  time  to  time  a 
watch  or  a  jewel  to  get  a  little  fiour,  which 
they  baked  themselves.  MUe.  de  Chastenay 
was  sometimes  in  Burgundy  with  her  father 
and  sometimes  in  Paris.  She  has  curious  notes 
on  life  in  Paris  at  that  period  : 

**  People  lived  much  concentrated  in  quar- 
ters, for  want  of  carriages.  It  was  perhape  this 
cause  which  constituted  the  Faubours  St -Ger- 
main one  of  the  reprssentatives  of  Uie  old  re- 
gime. The  Faubourg  k}aint-Hoiior6  remained 
more  sociable,  and  ended  by  becoming,  in  some 
respects,  a  set ;  and  the  Cbauside  d*Antin  be- 
came peopled  with  the  new  rich.  It  was  there 
that  were  invented  the  Greek  costumes  and 
the  antique  furmture;  and  this  innovation, 
shorn  of  some  grotesque  exaggerations,  re- 
newed the  taste  and  gave  a  new  impulse  to 
art.  .  .  .  The  style  of  Uviog  of  our  old  ac- 
quaintances was  of  great  simplicity.  Each 
one  carried  a  bit  of  candle  to  mount  the  stair- 
case of  a  friend ;  toilets,  receptions,  lodgings— 
everything  was  simple ;  people  made  a  point 
of  being  simple  and  economical  in  everything; 
they  only  wished  not  to  be  wanting  in  ele- 
gance. The  time  thus  spent  was  generally 
found  sweet  by  those  who  enjoyed  it.** 

Mile,  de  Chastenay,  who  was  very  culti- 
vated, began  to  make  for  herself  a  name  in 
what  was  called  the  republic  of  letters.  She 
became  notorious  by  a  translation  of  Anne 
Raddiffe's  'Mysteries  of  Udolpho  *  The  mar- 
riage of  her  brother,  Henri  de  Chastenay,  to 
MUe.  de  Lagulche  was  a  great  event.  The  La- 
gulches  were  great  landowners  in  Burgundy. 
The  times  grew  lees  hard;  the  revolutionary 
r^me  was  losing  lU  worst  features ;  there  was 
a  sort  of  renewal  of  life  In  society. 

**  Paris  offered  then  a  singular  spectacle.  It 
was  the  time  of  the  triumph  of  the  Cbauss^e 
d'Antin,  the  time  when  Madame  R^camier, 
handsome  as  the  day,  affected  to  appear  every- 
where with  a  simple  fichu  of  Uoen  on  ber  head, 
always  di«posed  in  the  same  manner.  The 
young  ladies  wbo  by  birth  belonged  to  the  old 
regime  followed  the  new  style  of  elegance  and 
luxury,  all  the  more  because  it  harmonised 
with  a  small  outlay.  The  young  men  had  their 
haircut  d  la  Titus;  the  young  women  had  It 
arranged  after  the  busts  of  antiquity.  A  slight 
mo»lln  with  a  knot  of  ribbon  composed  an  ex- 
quisite porurs,  and  onlv  very  cross  old  ladiaa 
regretted  powder  and  high-heeled  shoes.  I  do 
not  consider  these  details  superflnotis.** 

The  Amigr^s  were  oomiiig  back  ooe  by  one, 


sometimes  with  false  passports,  sometimes  af  - 
ter  having  succeeded  in  getting  their  namea 
ersaed  from  the  lists  made  during  the  Terror. 
They  appeared  like  strangers,  and  were  **  do- 
ing** Paris— a  Paris  which  they  had  never 
known.  Of  all  the  friendships  which  Mile,  de 
Chastenay  made  at  that  time,  the  most  impor- 
tant to  her  was  that  of  R^al.  He  had  saved 
the  life  of  her  father.  He  was,  she  says,  full  of 
HP^^  of  vivadtyt  of  kindness. 

**His  independent  opinions,  when  merely 
shown  in  conversation,  gave  it  a  mov<nnent,  a 
lightness,  and,  at  the  same  time,  an  elevation 
which  had  for  me  the  (rreatest  possible  charm. 
I  went  to  see  Mme.  lUal  and  her  familv,  in 
the  midst  of  which  she  led  a  simple  and  quiet 
life.  1  had  some  conversations  with  M.  tt^al. 
His  opioions  were  not  ail  mine,  but  ideas 
inarched  so  fast  with  a  miod  like  his  that  It 
was  not  worth  while  to  dispute  over  a  few  of 
them ;  we  left  them  aside,  and  it  was  only  after 
the  too  famous  event  of  the  18th  Fructidor 
that  our  relations  became  as  intimate  as  in- 
dispensable.** 

A  catastrophe  was  preparing;  the  royalist 
party  was  reviving  and  the  Directory  became 
alarmed: 

**  The  press  was  absolutely  free;  the  papers 
which  were  opposed  to  the  Revolution,  espe- 
cially to  the  revolutionists  and  to  the  Direct- 
ors  even  more  than  to  the  Directorial  Govern- 
ment, were  numberless.  .  .  .  This  false 
compass  deceived  the  ^migrds,  and  they  be- 
came, by  fashion,  even  more  ardent  than  thev 
really  were;  it  deceived  the  opinion  which  I 
will  call  national,  and  which  wished  only  for 
quiet  and  for  the  return  of  the  absent,  but 
which  feared  a  sort  of  reaction.** 

Two  of  the  Directors,  Caroot  and  Barth^le- 
my,  were  favorable  to  the  reaction.  **  Nobody 
at  the  time  of  the  Restoration,**  says  Mile,  de 
Chastenay,  '*  remembered  or  wished  to  remem- 
ber the  proecription  of  Camot  after  the  18th 
Fructidor.  Still,  there  was,  at  that  moment, 
a  return  towards  royalty  which  was  the  secret 
thought  of  the  unseen  leaders.**  As  for  Bar- 
tbdlemy,  he  had  been  a  clerk  in  the  Foreign 
Office  whom  circumstances  brought  to  the 
front  He  signed  the  treaties  of  B4le  with 
Prutsia,  with  Spain.  The  Swiss  had  erected 
triumphal  arches  on  his  paseage;  on  his  return 
through  France  he  received  the  most  fiattering 
homage.  In  Paris  and  in  the  Directory,  this 
preetlge  soon  disappeared  and  was  replaced  by 
injusUoe.  *'P^e,  tall,  without  dignity,  little 
aooustomed  to  speak  and  to  give  out  his  ideai^ 
.  .  .  the  poor  Barth61eroy  was  quite  stupe- 
fied by  the  hopes  and  the  hatreds  which  his 
Presidency  of  the  Directory  seemed  to  excite. 
...  He  did  not  know  a  single  person.  I 
have  never  seen  an j body  so  null.**  On  the  I7th 
Fructidor,  MUe.  de  Chastenay  went  to  a  soir^ 
with  her  mother  and  sister ;  she  went  home  at 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  having  noticed  no- 
thing in  the  streets. 

*' At  the  dawn  of  day  the  streets  were  fuU  of 
soldiers  and  bayonets;  at  nine  o'clock  In  the 
morning  Camot  had  fled,  Barth^iecny  was  a 
prisoner,  an  immense  number  of  Deputise,  of 
journalists,  and  other  people  wars  in  priaon. 
.  .  .  The  day  of  the  18 ih  Frucudor  was  die- 
astrous;  It  destroyed  all  the  preatige  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  year  ill.  It  sbowed  that 
the  laws  were  no  protertioo,  constitutions  no 
safeguard.  Journal ista,  DepuUee,  Directors, 
even,  were  transported  loHionaman[in  French 
GulanaJ.  .  .  .  It  traversed  aU  the  straicht 
lines  of  opinion.  The  Republic,  on  Its  trial, 
was  nothing  but  the  victory  of  a  party.  Two 
new  Director!  were  appointed.  Everjrthlog  aa. 
sumed  a  character  of  violence  and  of  conquest. 
The  Treasury  failed— that  is  to  say,  two- thirds 
of  the  public  debt  was  repaid  in  paper  money. 
This  measure  c^ist  us  13.000  livres  of  rsvsotie, 
by  a  stroke  of  the  pan ;  oar  forruoe,  after 
the  ruin  of  the  aetlgnats,  never  recovered  fron 
this  terrible  shock.'* 

The  laws  against  the  taiigrte  were  again  put 


490 


Tlie   I^ation- 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 7 


In  force  with  renewed  Beveritj.    Mile,   de     goto  and  boots.     He  had  taken  the  flneat 

apartment  in  the  Lozembonrg ;  a  fine  gaileiT 
snoceeded  the  drawing-room.  I  have  teen  it 
•ometimee  almost  full  of  more  or  leM  remarka- 
ble men.    He  passed  from  groap  to  group.** 


Chastonay  had  to  take  great  pains  in  order  to 
obtain  the  deflnitlTe  erasure  of  the  father  of 
her  sister-in-law,  M.  de  Laguicbe,  who  was  er- 
roneously on  the  dreaded  list  of  the  6migr^ 
R4al  senred  her  again  on  this  occasion.  He 
had  rooms  at  the  Police  Bureau,  as  he  had 
been  charged  by  the  OoTemment  with  the  ex- 
amination of  the  papers  which  prored  the  re- 
lations of  Oen.  Pichegru  with  the  English 
Goyemment  and  with  the  Prince  of  Cond6. 
Real  was  still  at  the  bar,  but  he  spent  seTeral 
hours  CTery  day  at  the  Police  Bureau,  where 
Mile,  de  Chastenay  went  to  see  him,  took  his 
instructions,  and  consulted  him  on  her  family 
affairs.  Mile,  de  Chastonay  was  ti?^enty-six 
years  old,  R6al  forty. 

**  We  boch  had  youth;  I  had  real  youth,  he 
was  young  in  character,  though  his  hair  was 
already  almost  w  hi  to.  His  attachment  for  me 
increased  every  day;  my  gratitude,  my  confi- 
dence In  him,  became  every  da/  more  impe- 
rious duties,  and  duties  which  I  found  it  easier 
to  fulfil  I  expected  eTerythmg  of  him,  and, 
in  order  to  imagine  what  1  felt,  you  must  un- 
derstand our  situation.  It  was  a  question  of 
thetrAo/s  of  the  fortune  of  my  sister- in  law; 
if  the  name  of  M.  de  Laffuiche  was  not  struck 
off,  it  was  total  ruin  for  him  and  for  his 
brother." 

When  Bonaparto  came  back  from  Italy, 
Mile,  de  Chastenay  hoped  to  find  in  him  an 
aUy.  V 

"The  conqueror  of  Italy  was  not  of  the 
common  run  of  generals.  Notwithstanding 
his  addresses  on  the  18th  Fmctidor,  aU  the 
malcontents  placed  their  hope  in  him.  He  was 
coming  back  to  make  a  co«b  (f  ^Cot— such  was 
the  general  opinion.  The  Directory  received 
Bonaparto  wita  misgiyings :  Btmaparto  treated 
the  Directory  with  an  affectation  of  levity 
and  contempt.  He  shut  himself  up,  and,  to 
gain  time  and  to  multiply  his  chaness,  he  pre- 
pared the  expedition  to  Egypt.  I  remember 
that  he  said  to  Rtel :  *  Theee  people  don*t 
know  how  to  goTem  ;  but  the  Oovemment 
still  goes  on,  and  I  doQ*t  want  to  be  a  rebel  P** 

R^al  finished  his  work  at  the  Police  Bureau; 
he  entered  Into  a  company  of  army  contract- 
ors, and  MDe.  de  Cha^enay  saw  many  of  his 
partners,  amohg  whom  was  Fouch6.  "My 
first  impression  of  him  was  perhaps  painful," 
she  says,  but  it  did  not  hinder  her  from  ofton 
seeing  Fouch^  "who  gare  me  judicious  ad- 
vice about  men  and  things.  He  manifested 
towards  me  the  most  obliging  interest,  and 
begged  me  to  consider  him  in  future  as  a  coun- 
sellor whose  experience  might  not  be  without 
use  to  me.  I  used  this  advantage,  and  had 
several  times  oooasion  to  applaud  myself  for  so 
doing." 

MUe.  de  Chastenay  saw,  it  is  clear,  a  very 
mixed  company.  The  canoness  was  thrown 
among  men  who  had  been  Terrorlsto ;  she  fre- 
quented much  the  litorary  men  of  the  time,  and 
seems  to  have  been  altogether  very  sociable.  "I 
went  everywhere,"  she  says  very  frankly.  She 
became  acquainted  with  Barras,  with  Lare- 
vellidre.  The  first  visits  to  the  Terrorlsto  were 
made  in  the  interest  of  the  Lagulche  family. 
"  It  will  never  be  known  how  much  courage 
they  required.  I  don*t  speak  of  the  obliga- 
tion always  to  make  my  visita  on  foot,  of  the 
simplicity  of  my  dress,  but  of  the  profound 
Iwlation  in  which  I  was  in  this  society,  and 
which  was  very  terrible  at  first  to  me.*»  By 
degrees  the  ice  was  broken.  This  is  her  por- 
trait of  Barras: 

"A  noble,  and  at  heart  very  glad  to  be  one, 
he  preserved  in  his  manner  the  dignity,  the 
politeness  which  prejudice  attributes  to  us  and 
imposes  on  us.  .  .  .  H«  was  tell,  brown  ; 
his  countenance  was  haughty,  his  eye  bright ' 
his  person  wm  thoroughly  dlsUngulsbed  ana 
really  imposing.    He  wore  a  long  blue  redin- 


Mlle.  de  Chaatenay  describes  the  salon  of 
Barras,  and  cites  the  men  and  women  who 
were  the  chief  guesto  of  the  Director,  among 
others  Madame  Bonaparte,  Madame  TalUeo, 
the  greatest  beau^  of  the  time,  Madame  de 
Stall,  Benjamin  Constant,  Talleyrand.  "I 
was  to  Talleyrand,"  she  says,  "an  object  of 
surprise,  and  I  don't  think  be  ever  quito  un- 
derstood me.  I  have  never  been  at  ease  with 
men  of  his  stamp,  who  employ  any  instmmen- 
tality,  and  who  play  at  profomd&wr,  ...  1 
don*t  know  how  this  poUtidan  one  day  came 
to  reveal  to  me  the  secret  of  his  life :  *  Yon 
must  always,*  said  he,  *put  yoorself  in  a  situa- 
tion where  you  can  choose  between  two  reso- 
lutions.*" By  her  espHe  Mile,  de  Chastonay 
made  herself  rapidly  important  in  the  govern- 
mental sphere  of  the  Directory ;  many  people 
now  began  to  ask  for  her  aid,  and  she  became 
a  sort  of  connecting  link  between  the  remains 
of  the  old  regime  and  the  powers  of  the  day. 
Her  protection  was  understood  to  be  the  pro- 
tection of  R6al,  who  had  made  himself  more 
and  more  InfinentiaL 

But  we  must  take  leave  of  MUe.  de  Chaste- 
nay, and  wait  patiently  for  the  publication  of 
the  second  volume  of  her  Memoirs.  We  wHl, 
however,  improve  the  oooasion  to  complain  of 
this  new  habit  of  publishing  volumes  of  im- 
portant memoirs  separately  and  sometimes  at 
long  intervals. 


Correspondence. 


DENTISTS  IN  SOCIETY. 
To  THX  EnrroB  of  Tn  NATioir : 

Sir:  In  an  editorial  in  a  recent  number  of 
the  Nation,  entitled  "PoUtical  Gentlemen," 
these  words  appear:  "  We  rarely  meet  .  .  . 
dentista  in  society.'*  From  this  one  is  to  sup- 
pose that  there  is  something  in  dentistry  which 
is  antagonistio  to  refinement,  education,  and 
other  things  which  go  to  make  a  gentleman.  Is 
this  true?  As  well  say  one  rarely  meeto  an  ocu- 
list in  society,  or  one  rarely  meeto  a  rhinolo- 
gist  in  society.  Dentistry  is  nothing  if  not  a 
part  of  the  great  medical  profession,  and  is  so 
acknowledged  by  the  American  Medical  Soci- 
ety, as  one  section  in  that  association  is  wholly 
devoted  to  dentistry.  The  term  of  pupilage  of 
the  dental  school  is  the  same  as  that  in  most  of 
the  medical  schools.  The  fundamentals,  via., 
anatomy,  chemistry,  physiology,  materia  medi- 
ca,  are  the  same.  The  requiremento  for  en- 
trance to  the  schools  are  tlie  same.  A  good, 
ly  number  of  those  now  entoring  the  dental 
schools  have  degrees  from  the  best  scientific 
and  literary  colleges  in  the  country.  Many 
dentista  are  men  of  good  breeding,  have  good 
manners,  and  have  refined  and  educated  tastes. 
There  are  about  seven  physicians  to  one  den- 
tist, and  the  proportion  is  even  greater  between 
the  lawyer  and  the  dentist,  so  it  will  be  seen 
that  one  would  naturally  meet  fewer  dentista 
in  society  than  either  physicians  or  lawyers; 
besides,  one  may  often  meet  a  dentist  in  society 
and  not  be  aware  that  he  is  a  specialist,  as  the 
title  Doctor  is  not  discriminating. 

There  was  a  time  when  dentistry  was  on  a 
low  plane;  so  was  surgery  when  practised  only 
by  barbers.— Yours  truly, 

Thomas  L.  Oiucxr. 

OaioAao,  JniM  le.  liea. 


"AS  YOU  LIKE  IT"  AT  SBfTTH  COLLEGE. 
To  TBB  Editob  of  Tbx  Naroh: 

Sir:  Three  performances  of  Shakspsr«^i**Ai 
You  like  It"  have  been  given  by  the  ohui  of 
18P6  aa  part  of  their  graduation  exeroisss.  Tlis 
first,  a  dress  rehearsal,  was  necessarily  some* 
whatcruda;  the  third,  on  Saturday  eveohi& 
June  18,  was  the  most  finished  piece  of  drs. 
matic  study,  the  Greek  play  "  Electra**  ezospt- 
ed,  yet  undertaken  by  the  students  of  Smith 
College.  The  task  would  perhaps  not  hsTt 
been  entered  upon— it  would  certainly  hsTt 
been  lesa  confidently  carried  out— without  tbs 
example  of  last  year's  dass  in  "  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream."  AU  the  motives  inflnsndng 
the  Senion  of  li05  to  undertake  a  play  of 
Shakspere  were  felt  with  equal  force  by  the 
present  Seniors.  They,  too,  deairsd  to  entw- 
tain  their  guesto  and  to  get  the  inteOectnslsDd 
Bsthetic  discipline  afforded  by  training  for  nieh 
a  representotion.  To  the  former  careful  shidy 
of  the  text  was  added  this  year  great  attontioQ 
to  the  stage  business.  Mr.  Alfred  Young,  tto 
trainer,  made  a  careful  study  of  all  tbs  pre- 
sentations of  the  play,  and  collated  the  *'  bad- 
ness "  of  eadi  part  for  the  benefit  of  the  re- 
spective performers.  The  result  wss  highly 
interesting. 

The  play  was  cut  to  remove  all  pansgsemi- 
suitoble  for  modem  presentation  and  to  redooe 
ito  length.  Very  long  speeches  were  avoided 
whenever  practicable.  Sir  Olivmr  MarUoBt  snd 
D§nnU  were  entirely  omitted,  and  also  Rota- 
lincTs  epUogoe.  The  order  of  sosnes  wae 
changed,  in  conformity  with  costomary  stige 
usage,  to  make  the  action  more  cohsrsntssd 
intelligible.  Theee  changes  render  the  scttsf 
play  markedly  different  from  the  play  as  resd. 
The  characters  appear  in  different  ligfati,  sad 
certain  traito  in  changed  i»x>portion.  Bom- 
Und,  tor  instance,  becomes  gentler  and  on  the 
whole  more  romantia  The  eliaractsr  of  Ctiia 
grows  in  interest  and  attains  moresigiiiiicsDCs. 
On  the  other  hand,  certain  passagss  fai  the 
play  usually  cut  were  left  in,  with  the  g«Bs> 
ral  effect  of  bringing  out  the  serious  and  ro- 
mantic side  of  the  stOTy  and  charaetsrs.  The 
minor  parte  received  careful  attention  throng 
out,  the  mobs,  crowds,  and  attendante  tetsf 
made  distinctly  parte  of  the  action  aswiUai 
of  the  spectacle.  Such  changeeaa  ensued  fron 
the  drcnmstanoes  under  which  the  play  wti 
given,  or  from  the  cutting,  maj  be  considered 
inoidentaL  One  change  was  deliberately  msde^ 
that  of  interpreting  Jaqusa  as  the  bitter  cynk 
and  libertine  instead  of  the  romantic  phikefr* 
pher. 

Mr.  Abbey's  Shaksperian  fflustratkme  were 
used  as  guides  in  costuming.  Oreat  iogenoi^ 
was  shown  in  adapting  the  pictures  tostege 
effect,  particularly  as  most  of  the  costenee 
ware  made  by  a  committee  of  the  dase.  The 
scenery  was  arranged  to  make  the  woodi-lffe 
as  prominent  as  possible,  and  four  diirenat 
scenes  gave  glimpses  of  the  Ardan  forest  The 
grouping  of  the  exiled  f ollowars  of  the  bsaiih' 
ed  Duk^t  his  earnest  and  dignified  view  of  Uf^ 
the  oocupations  and  recreations  of  tbs  littie 
community,  ware  all  very  delicately  and  eog- 
gestively  conveyed.  The  songs  were  given  sfMr 
old  versions  by  Dr.  Ame,  Bishop,  and  Morliif, 
transposed  and  arranged  for  four  parted  Be> 
frains  from  these  songs  ^>peared  mm  dramstfe 
tnoiifM  in  the  introduction  of  Fh<»b§  sad  50- 
Vina,  of  Orlando  and  Adam,  in  the  exit  of 
BomUimd  and  Oriando  in  Ack  HL,  aadtelte 
dance  with  which  the  plaj  was  asdwi 

Of  the  acting,  it  must  be  said  Itefe  ilfttHt; 
ceeded  the  expeototioDa  oC  1 
watched  the  progrssa  ol  Itel 


June  25,  1896] 


Th.e   IN'ation. 


491 


TIm  fdoM  of  the  girl*  w«r»  mnoh  inort  ade- 
qiuU«  to  tb«  demaDd  than  wmt  to  li«Te  been 
expected,  end  the  rendering  of  eome  of  the 
moet  dUBmli  perU  wmt  meet  euooewful.  The 
pert  of  TVm«4j(o9ie  wee  extrmordinerUy  well 
giTen  bj  Miee  Dnetin.  A  tinge  of  melencholj 
mede  the  finel  tnggeetlon  In  the  perMMietlon  of 
one  of  Shekepere'e  tjpicel  foole.  The  Unee 
were  nowhere  better  dellTered  then  by  Mies 
Hell  In  the  cherecter  of  Adam.  The  lending 
perU  were  eo  well  taken  that  nobody  mieeed 
the  iignlfloance  of  OfltaU  Intelligently  tne- 
talned  character,  f oond  the  dfigniee  of  Rom- 
limd  abeord,  or  the  tndden  conTertlon  of  Oliv€r 
Ineredible.  Perhape  the  eerereet  teet  endured 
by  the  acting  wee  that  of  the  lore  ecenee, 
which  were  uniformly  intereeting  and  in  eeve- 
ral  plaoee  really  charming. 

It  ehould  be  eaid  that  no  Englleh  play  haa 
erer  been  giren  by  itudentB  of  Smith  College 
in  which  all  the  work  wee  to  .directly  the  out- 
come of  epedel  etndyand  preperation  in  the 
Depertment  of  Elocution.  Mi«  Peck,  the  head 
of  this  department,  f eela  that  this  performance 
doee  much  to  put  such  work  in  Iti  proper  rela- 
tion  to  dramatic  and  literary  etudy,  both  ineide 
and  outride  the  college.  R.  D. 

VoenuMfToir.  Mam.,  Jane  10, 1896. 


Notes. 


A.  P.  Ttxb8K0T*8  *  Sketchee  from  the  United 
Statea  of  North  America,*  already  heralded  in 
these  oolnmns  by  a  correspondent,  Dr.  Leo 
Wiener,  Is  a  translation  announced  by  Mao- 
mUlan-Co. 

The  Robert  Clarke  Co..  Cincinnati,  wiU  pub- 
llsh  next  month  'Nathaniel  Hassle,  a  Pioneer 
of  Ohio,*  by  DaTld  Meade  Massie,  with  por- 
trait  and  mep.  The  work  will  haTO  a  place 
beeide  the  St.  Clair  Papers. 

A  chart,  ihowing  the  **  Deeoent  of  England's 
Sorereigns,**  that  may  be  folded  in  any  histo- 
rical work,  is  to  be  published  at  once  by  D.  C. 
Heath  A;  Co. 

In  the  current  Prooeedings  of  the  State  His- 
torical Society  of  Wisconsin  we  read  that  the 
long-expected  catalogue  of  its  bound  newspa- 
per tUee  is  stiU  deUyed  by  the  difflcultles  inci- 
dent to  eo  novel  and  Important  an  enterprise. 
It  will  be  arranged  geographically  and  chrono- 
logically  by  decadee,  will  classify  by  special 
featnrea,  and  wUl  be  enriched  with  historical 
notee.  An  alphabetical  Index  to  editors  and 
publishers  will  conclude  this  moet  useful  labor. 

Harper  ^  Bros,  follow  up  Mark  Twain*s 
•Hnckleberry  Finn*  with  *A  Connecticut 
Yankee  In  King  Arthur's  Court,'  uniform  In 
style  and  aleo  illuetrated.  The  serlee  is  pret- 
tily bound,  and  will  find  a  welcome. 

The  Meesn.  Putnam's  **  Mohawk  Edition  ** 
of  Cooper's  works  proceeds  with  *The  Sea 
lione,  or  the  Lost  Sealers,'  which  oompletee 
the  seoood  seetioa  of  six  Tolumee.  We  have 
only  to  renew  our  praise  of  the  opennees  of  the 
typography  and  the  general  oomellneee  of 
thto  Issue. 

Another  handful  of  Tolumes  In  the  little 
wtoe-colored  serlee  of  ••Stories  by  English  Au- 
thors" comes  from  Charlee  Scribner's  Sons. 
The  talee  relate  reqMotlTely  to  London,  France, 
Italy,  and  Africa  an  itinerary  quite  oonform* 
able  to  that  of  preaent-day  tourists.  Good 
portraltsof  Barrie,  Weyman,Payn,and  Doyle 
f nmleh  frontieplecse  to  the  two  hundred  pagee 
of  brief  Action  by  twentytwo  writers  In  aU. 

The  Mttister  of  Bduoetion  for  the  Prorince 
of  Ontario^  Mr.  Oeorge  W.  Ross,  hae  oontrl- 
hnled  to  the  Intnatlasal  Bdocayon  Ssrleeaa 


extremely  ludd  and  satisfactory  account  of 
the  school  system  oTer  which  he  preeidee  (D. 
Appleton  &  Co.).  Dr.  Harris,  in  his  editorial 
preface,  truly  remarks  that  <*  it  may  be  doubt- 
ed whether  there  is  another  instance  in  Ame- 
rica of  so  wise  a  uee  of  money  and  supenrlsing 
power  as  Is  shown  in  this  Province  of  Ontario, 
excepting  the  administration  of  the  Peabody 
and  Slater  funds  for  the  stimulation  and  nur- 
tnre  of  ednoation  In  our  Southern  Statee." 
The  striking  featuree  of  the  Ontario  echool 
system  are  the  oloee  organisation  and  correla- 
tion of  its  several  parte,  higher  and  lower;  the 
insistence  upon  the  employment  of  trained 
teechersonly;  and  the  provision  for  denomi- 
national schools,  subject  to  the  same  standards 
of  efficiency  as  the  public  schools.  Centralised 
supervision  and  apportionment  of  school 
moneys  assure  the  maintenance  of  the  legal- 
ly preecribed  standards  in  all  these  respecte. 
Many  of  the  strongeet  points  of  the  Ontario 
system  are  being  oonsoloosly  or  unconsciously 
Imitated  in  several  of  the  more  progreesive 
States,  notably  in  New  York  and  New  Jersey. 
Prof.  Hinsdale  of  the  University  of  Michigan 
is  a  cautious  and  painstaking  student  of  edu- 
cation, and  theee  qualities  are  reflected  in  his 
two  latest  books.  The  one,  *  Studiee  in  Edu- 
cation' (Chicago:  Werner  School  Book  Com- 
pany), is  largely  made  up  of  the  author's 
recent  contributions  to  the  Educational  lU- 
view,  the  Forum,  and  other  periodicals.  Of 
these  papers  two  are  specially  noteworthy. 
They  deal  respectively  with  the  Dogma  of 
Formal  Discipline  and  the  American  School 
Superintendent  His  other  work,  'Teaching 
the  Language- Arts'  (D.  Appleton  &  Co.),  is 
more  ambitious,  and  attempts  to  oonstruct  a 
consistent  theory  of  grammatical,  linguistic, 
and  literary  training. 

*  Education,'  by  H.  Herman,  M.A.  (Dodd, 
Mead  A  Co.),  is  largely  devoted  to  peyohology, 
and  is  written  In  apparent  ignorance  of  the 
current  literature  of  education  in  Germany, 
France,  Italy,  and  the  United  Statee.  The 
author  is  grievously  mistaken  in  his  suppoel. 
tion  that  the  conception  of  the  book  is  *'  en- 
tirely original.**  Theconoeptionnotonlyisnot 
original,  but  is  commonplace  and  imperfect. 

The  considerable  interest  in  the  Moravian 
reformer,  Comenius,  that  was  aroused  by  the 
celebration,  in  1893,  of  the  three-hundredth 
anniversary  of  his  birth,  and  the  Intrinsic 
merit  of  the  book  itseU.  justify  the  pubUoation 
of  an  English  version  of  his  *  Didactica  Magna ' 
(MaomOlan  Co.).  The  editor,  Mr.  M.  W. 
Keatinge,  has  supplied  a  useful  and  vdumi- 
noue  introduction.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the 
book  is  not  **  translated,**  as  is  usual,  but 
*>  Englished." 

•Sketches  of  English  Glee  Compoeera,'  by 
David  Baptie  (Scribners),  is  a  little  volume  of 
288  pagee  which  will  doubtless  be  wermly 
welcomed  by  the  numerous  glee  dube  In  our 
colleges  and  elsewhere.  Brief  sketches  are 
given  of  the  llvee  of  about  two  hundred  oom- 
poeers  of  gleee  between  the  years  1785  and 
1868,  with  lists  of  their  beet  pieces,  and  indi- 
cations of  the  voioee  for  which  each  piece  is 
written,  to  enable  caterers  for  glee  dube  or 
choral  sodetiee  to  chooee  what  they  desire. 
The  author,  being  an  Englishman,  is  patrloti- 
oally  proud  of  the  glee,  which  is  bgland*s 
prindpal  contribution  to  the  world's  treasures 
of  music  He  jwtly  holds  that.  In  this  Held, 
England  is  unrivalled.  Gounod,  Ambroise 
Thomas,  Abt,  COoken,  Kreutaer,  Mendelssohn, 
and  others  have  written  beautlfnl  part  aon^i, 
but  "it  is  In  a  differsot  style  from  the  Englleh 
glee,  and  Oof  is  stiU  the  hast."  Onthesecood 
pafe  the  author  gives  hie  reaaooa  for  this 


statement,  which  are  intereeting  if  not  con- 
vincing. 

A  professional  reviewer  is  apt  to  shudder 
when  a  '*new  metliod**  of  singing  Is  placed  on 
his  desk.  It  is  therefore  a  pleasure  to  meet 
with  a  book  like  *  Voloe-Bulkiing  and  Tone- 
Pladng,'  by  Dr.  H.  Hdbrook  Curtis  (Apple- 
tons).  This  treatise  is  Intended  to  be  of  use  to 
physicians  as  well  ee  to  students  of  the  voice; 
it  expoeee  fallacious  theories  regarding  the  eo- 
called  registers,  and  Indudee  exercises  for  the 
rsstoratlon  of  cords  injured  by  improper  vocal 
methods  so  much  in  vogue.  The  author,  be- 
rides  being  familiar  with  the  latest  work  of 
sdentiflc  specialists,  has  had  much  practical 
experience  with  eminent  singers,  the  results  of 
which  are  incorporated  In  the  text,  and  there 
are  valuable  suggestions  regarding  breathing, 
hygiene,  tone-placing,  voice-building,  etc.,  with 
abundant  illustrations.  Even  the  general 
reader  will  find  something  to  entertain  blm  in 
the  last  chapter,  which  has  a  number  of  pio- 
tures  showing  the  lovely  figures  of  seaweed, 
flowers,  ferns,  and  shells  that  can  be  produced 
by  tone  vibratione  after  the  method  of  Mrs. 
Watts-Hughes,  as  first  deecribed  in  the  Oe»- 
tury  MagaHns  for  May,  1801.  Altogether, 
this  is  an  exceptionally  valuable  book  of  Its 
kind,  though  the  introductory  sketch  of  the 
«* Origin  of  Music"  might  well  have  been 
omitted.  The  volume  is  dedicated  to  Jean  de 
Ressk«. 

The  first  volume  of  the  **  Library  of  Early 
English  Writers'*  begins  with  Yorkshire  writ- 
ers,  singling  out  **  Richard  RoUe  of  Hampole, 
an  English  Father  of  the  Church,  and  his  Fol- 
lowers*' (London:  Swan  Sonneneohein  ft  Co.; 
New  York :  Macmlllan).  It  is  edited  by  Prof. 
C.  Horstmann,  well  known  from  his  editions 
of  *Altenglisohe  Legenden'  and  other  works. 
Our  acquaintance  with  Hampole  has  been 
hitherto  through  his  *  Prick  of  Conscience,* 
but  now  we  have  for  the  first  time  an  edi- 
tion of  his  various  minor  trsaUses.  The 
"Introduction**  discusses  scholastidsm  and 
mysticism,  and  is  Incomplete,  preparing  the 
way  for  a  ooosidermtion  of  Hampole  him- 
self, who  is  regarded  ae  the  typical  English 
mystic.  He  entered  upon  the  hermit  life  in 
his  nineteenth  year,  and  forms  a  direct  con- 
trast to  Duns  Scotus,  the  oppoeition  of  feeling 
totaitelleot.  While  writing  much  In  Latin,  "he 
waa  the  first  who  to  any  great  extent  employed 
his  mother-tongue."  Many  short  treatlsss  in 
both  prose  and  poetry  are  Included  in  this 
vohime,  among  the  latter  being  the  poem  be- 
ginning— 

-Wb«  A<Um  d^end  gT»,ipMi.  sptr.  If  tkoe  wfl  gpede. 
—      i  was  then  ibe  prtd«  d  man,  t— * 


It  is  hoped  that  the  next  voluoM  will  be  pro- 
vided with  an  index,  or  with  a  table  of  oon- 
tente  at  least,  and  wiU  tell  us  something  mors 
about  Hampole  himself. 

It  was  a  happy  thought  that  led  Mrs.  Mar- 
tha Footo  Crowe  to  edit  the  later  *Eliaa. 
bethan  Soonet-Cydee,'  which  have  hitherto 
been  inacosaslble  to  the  geoeraL  There  is  a 
natuiml  unity  running  through  thsee  eequencee 
of  poema  which  makse  it  highly  desirabto  to 
have  them  together  at  hand  for  comparison. 
The  attractive  Utile  volume  before  us  pro- 
miMs  a  series  which  will  make  thie  possible. 
In  her  first  volume  Mrs.  Crowe  givee  the  full 
text,  spelling  modemiasd,  of  Lodge's  "  Phillis^ 
and  Giles  Fletcher's  "  Llda."  Her  several  in- 
trodnctioDs  offer  ssisntisl  biographical  ftteu 
and  some  popular  criticism,  hut  make  no  pre- 
tenoe  of  original  reeeeroh.  The  publiehers  are 
Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  Trfihoer  ft  Co. 

tt  would  haitUy  be  expected  that  the  Hie- 


493 


Tlie    I^ation. 


[Vol.  62,  No,  1617 


tory  of  the  Twentj-ieoond  Regiment  of  the 
New  York  NatloDal  Ouard  woold  make  ao  in- 
tereeting  chapter  in  onr  war  historj,  yet  sooh 
ia  the  fact.  It  wae  organised  early  in  1861, 
from  basioese  men,  to  supply  a  local  protec- 
tion in  New  York  city  which  was  felt  to  be  in- 
dispensable when  the  older  militia  regiments 
had  mostly  gone  to  the  fleld.  Althoogh  its 
members  were  men  whom  strong  duty  requir- 
ed to  be  at  home,  the  regiment  yolunteered 
for  brief  fleld-serdoe  at  Harper's  Ferry  in 
1809,  and  again  in  the  Gettysburg  campaign  of 
186S,  and,  though  it  saw  no  severe  fighting, 
its  story  is  among  the  most  interesting  as  to 
marching,  biTouac,  and  rough  oamp-Ufe.  It 
did  good  serriee,  also,  in  the  draft  riots  and 
in  other  local  disturbances.  Its  history  is 
among  the  best  illustrations  of  the  close  rela- 
tions of  State  troops  to  the  national  army. 
Gen.  George  W.  Wingate  has  made  a  sumptu- 
ous Tolume'of  the  regimental  annals,  and  E. 
W.  Dayton  lias  published  it  in  excellent  form 
with  maps  and  photographic  illustrations. 

'  The  Ckmfederate  Soldier  in  the  Civil  War,* 
edited  by  Ben  LaBree  (printed  by  the  Courier- 
Jaunuil  Ck).,  Louisville  is  a  ponderous  folio, 
compiled  from  various  sources,  profusely  illus- 
trated  with  process  reproductions  of  portraits, 
maps,  and  scenes.  It  cannot  claim  to  be 
a  history,  but  is  one  of  those  encydopssdic 
collecti(nis  of  documents,  narratives,  battle- 
reports,  biographies,  and  anecdotes  which 
contain  much  of  the  crude  material  of  history, 
and  make  amusing  reading  for  such  as  love  to 
pick  and  choose  among  a  diversified  mass  of 
material  more  or  less  authentic.  Its  collection 
of  portraits  is  very  large,  and,  as  photography 
has  been  mostly  relied  upon,  the  gallery  of 
soldiers  and  statesmen  is  well  worthy  of  study 
for  the  types  of  character  to  be  seen  in  the 
noteworthy  group  of  men  who  planned  seces- 
sion and  led  its  soldiers  in  the  field. 

Every  student,  on  taking  up  a  new  subject 
of  investigation,  has  found  his  greatest  diffi- 
culty lie  in  the  effort  to  acquire  a  knowledge 
of  its  bibliography;  and  even  in  the  conduct 
of  old  studies  it  is  not  emsj  to  keep  abreast 
with  the  constantly  multiplying  mass  of  pub- 
lications in  books  and  periodicals.  With  the 
view  of  lightening  this  labor  for  historians, 
M.  Ch.-V.  Langlois  has  undertaken  a  *  Manuel 
deBibliograpbieHistorique'  (Paris:  Hachette 
&  Cie.),  of  which  the  first  part  has  Just  ap- 
peared,  comprising  a  condensed  critical  review 
of  the  innumerable  bibliographies  devoted  to 
history  and  its  Hiklf»wiaMnschaflen,  To  work- 
ers in  hirtory  it  wUl  prove  a  handy  and  efficient 
guide  in  showing  them  what  has  been  done  and 
is  now  doing  towards  furnishing  them  with 
the  aids  necessary  to  the  prosecution  of  their 
labors.  The  wide  and  exact  erudition  of  M. 
Langlois  is  well  known,  and  he  is,  further- 
more, fitted  for  his  present  task  by  the  fact 
that,  unlike  most  French  scholars,  his  horison 
is  not  limited  by  national  boundaries.  What 
has  been  accomplished  in  this  country  in  the 
matter  of  bibliography  receives  ample  atten 
tion  at  his  hands,  but  perhaps  the  most  strik- 
ing feature  of  his  little  volume  is  the  enormous 
preponderance  which  has  been  secured  by  Ger- 
man laborers  in  this  field.  The  second  part  of 
the  book  promisee  to  contain  an  account  of  the 
original  sources  of  history,  and,  if  executed 
with  thoroughness,  will  prove  of  even  greater 
utility  than  the  present  one. 

Tourists  in  France,  whether  afoot  or  on  the 
wheel,  should  equip  themselves  with  J.  Ber- 
tot's  *  Guides  du  Cycliste  en  France'  (Paris:  G. 
Boudet)«  embracing  nine  12mo  volumes.  All 
the  routes  radiate  from  Paris,  with  runs  to 
Geneva,  MarseilleB,  Bordeaux,  Brest,  Havre, 


etc.  Colored  route-maps  and  plans  of  cities 
are  abundantly  supplied,  with  other  needful 
information.  The  editor  is  a  devotee  of  Alpine 
climbing  as  well  as  of  the  bicycle.  The  phrase 
**chemins  non  v^lo^ablee'*  introduces  us  to  a 
neologism  which  one  will  seek  in  vain  in  Lit- 
tr6. 

The  Rev.  C.  C.  Carpenter,  Secretary  of  the 
Alumni  Association  of  Andover  Theological 
Seminary,  continues  the  necrology  of  the  in- 
stitution in  his  usual  admirable  manner.  Al- 
though the  number  deceased  in  1896-6  largely 
exceeds  that  of  previous  years,  reaching  66, 
it  need  not  be  supposed  that  this  indicates  a 
decline  in  the  longevity  of  Andover  graduates. 
The  average  age  of  the  66  decedents  was  74 
years  and  four  days.  Three  of  the  number 
were  over  00,  twenty  were  between  80  and  90, 
fourteen  between  70  and  80,  twelve  between  60 
and  '70,  and  only  two  below  50,  one  of  whom 
was  nearly  49.  All  were  college  graduates, 
and  four  had  been  college  praddents.  Among 
the  notable  names  are  those  of  Edward  Beecher, 
Harvey  D.  Kitchel,  Prof.  Daniel  S.  Talcott  of 
Bangor,  Dr.  Samuel  F.  Smith,  and  Drs.  Clark 
and  Alden  of  the  American  Board.  Prof. 
Park,  at  the  age  of  87,  now  heads  the  roll  of 
living  alumni. 

Mr.  F.  Qutekunst,  Philadelphia,  has  sur- 
passed his  ** imperial  panel"  photograph  of 
th>  late  Dr.  W.  H.  Fumess  in  a  photogravure 
from  the  same  negative,  we  believe.  This  per 
manent  print  preserves  to  a  remarkable  degree 
the  delicate  detail  of  a  face  '*each  several 
point**  of  whose  benevolent  expression  was 
*"nrfinbUosl7  brlcht  with  Um  tnwsnl  grsoe,** 

as  Lowell  said  of  Mrs.  Follen's  countenance. 
Dr.  Fumess*s  autograph  in  facsimile  is  affixed 
to  the  plate. 

The  Sierra  Club  has  Just  issued  a  new  edition 
of  iU  *'  Map  of  the  Central  Portion  of  the 
Sierra  Nevada,**  first  issued  in  1888,  and  now 
extensively  revised  in  accordance  with  the 
latest  authorities  and  explorations.  The  map 
is  on  a  scale  of  four  miles  to  the  inch,  and  has 
side  maps  on  a  larger  scale  of  the  Toeemite 
Valley  and  the  Hetch-Hetchy.  Valley.  It  is 
conveniently  folded  for  the  pocket  in  covers 
or  dissected  and  mounted  on  doth  (San  Fran- 
cisco: T.  S.  Solomons,  606  Calif omia  Street, 
E.12). 

^Btbliographiea  (London  :  Kegan  Paul ; 
New  York :  Scribners)  is  notably  successful  in 
maintaining  the  interest  and  value  of  its 
papers.  Part  ix.  opens  with  a  survey  of  Japa- 
nese illustrated  books,  by  Robert  K.  Douglas, 
whose  concern  is  purely  historical,  and  who  has 
no  technical  information  to  impart.  The 
sample  illustrations,  of  which  several  are  color- 
ed, are  numerous  and  striking.  Mr.  Douglas 
misses  the  direction  of  the  flight  of  wild 
duck  in  describing  Plate  ii.;  they  are  depart- 
ing, not  approaching  the  musician.  Natalie 
Rondot  writes  in  French  on  wood-engraving  at 
Lyons  in  the  fifteenth  century,  and,  amid  much 
crude  work,  exhibits  specimens  of  a  high  de 
gree  of  attainment.  A  kindred  theme  enUsts 
Mr.  Alfred  W.  Pollard  in  •*  The  Woodcut  De- 
signs for  Ulumination  in  Venetian  Books, 
l469-*78.'*  Mr.  Pollard  has  made  the  not  insig- 
nificant discovery  that  borders  were  stamped 
on  pages  as  a  guide  to  the  illuminator — the 
same  work  being  found  with  and  without  such 
impressions.  He  infers  that  this  was  done 
outside  of  the  printing  office.  **  It  is  possible 
that  each  printer  had  business  relations  with  a 
distinct  firm  of  illuminators,  to  whom  he  sent 
a  few  copies  of  his  books  for  decoration,**  and 
that  the  private  buyer  resorted,  on  his  part,  to 
one  or  another  such  firm  as  suited  his  taste^  as 


**  where  we  find  a  Jenson  book  with  a  Vinde- 
linns  border,  or  vice  versa  **— i  e.,  where  the 
printer's  taste  and  customary  dealing  havs 
been  ignored.  Still  more  important  is  Dr. 
(}amett*s  essay  towards  mapping  the  inteUec 
tual  currents  of  the  fifteenth  century  as  mani. 
fested  in  the  incunabula^  in  the  case  of  ths 
Italian  book  trade.  The  peculiar  diaraoteris- 
tics  of  the  publications  of  Rome,  Veoioe, 
Bologna,  Ferrara,  Florence,  Biilan,  and  Na- 
ples from  1467  to  1600  are  set  forth  in  more  or 
leas  detail,  with  the  conclusion  that  Italisn 
Renaissance  literature  was  "far  more  utilita- 
rian than  that  of  ages  often  stigmatized  as 
matter-of-fact  and  prosaic.**  Classical  aQthors 
were  reproduced  ^'either  for  the  infonnation 
they  contained,  or  aa  books  for  school  or  eel- 
lege.**  Outside  of  these,  beyond  impressiouof 
Dante,  Petrarch,  and  Boccaccio,  **  very  little  of 
a  fanciful  or  imaginative  character  appear- 
ed.** It  waa  in  Venice  that  the  public  proved  a 
better  patron  than  thoae  in  authority,  thongli 
**  Florence  understood  the  duty  of  encoursgiof 
contemporary  talent  better  than  any  other 
city.**  We  have  room  only  to  mention  Mr.  W. 
Barclay  Squire's  **  Notes  on  Early  MQli^ 
Printing,'*  Mr.  H.  B.  WheaUey's  "The  Straw- 
berry-HiU  Press,**  and  Mr.  Joseph  FieDiieiri 
laudatory  account  of  Once  a  Week  as  **a  great 
art  magazine.**  Like  the  foregoing,  these  ar. 
tides  are  amply  illustrated. 

— The  third  volume  of  **  Harvard  Studies 
and  Notes  in  Philology  and  Literature**  (Boa- 
ton:  Ginn  &  Co.)  contains  Prof.  Kittredge^i 
*  Observations  on  the  Language  of  (Thauoer^ 
Troflus,*  issued  in  1894  aa  one  of  the  publications 
of  the  Chaucer  Society  for  1891,  and  republish- 
ed in  this  volume.  It  is  a  thorough  and  search- 
ing grammatical  and  metrical  InvestigatioD  of 
Chaucer's  **Troilu8,**  which  extended  orer 
many  years,  and  is  **  intended  to  furnish  some 
materiflds  for  the  large  induction  necessary  to 
reaaonable  certainty  in  the  matter  of  Chanoer'i 
language,  particularly  his  use  of  final  a."  The 
study  is  based  on  the  MS8.  as  edited  by  Dr. 
Furnivall  for  the  Chaucer  Society,  and  is  a^ 
ranged  by  parte  of  speech,  all  forma  being 
noted  that  are  necessary  for  a  complete  gram- 
matical view  of  the  language.  The  nnmberiof 
of  the  linea  ia  continuous,  and  a  oomparatiTe 
table  prefixed  gives  the  correspoodeDoes  in 
Furnivall  and  Morris.  Prof.  Skeat*s  editioo 
did  not  appear  until  the  table  had  been  sent  to 
the  printers,  but  the  statement  is  made  that 
his  numbering  corresponds  with  Dr.  Monis^ 
for  Book  I.,  and  with  Dr.  FumivaU*8  f or  the 
other  books.  Skeat's  edition,  however,  con- 
tains 8,299  lines,  not  8«2S2,  as  in  Prof.  Kit- 
tredge*s  MS.  A,  on  which  the  study  is  chiefly 
based;  hence  one  stansa,  inserted  as  in  Morris 
after  st.  127,  must  be  added.  A  compsrisoo 
for  the  unusual  form  am  in  Chaucer  shows  that 
the  three  cases  occurring  in  '*  Troilus**  are  all 
recorded.  The  form  beth^  third  person  phiral, 
cannot  be  found  in  Skeat  at  tlie  reference 
given  (6020).  Interjectiona  are  omitted  in 
Prof.  Kittredge*s  chapter  on  •*  Adverbs  and 
Other  Particlea.**  A  search  for  the  rare  odim 
failed  to  find  it;  there  is  but  one  instance  in 
*'  TroUus**  (i,  1041).  This,  perhape  the  eariiesi 
instance  on  record  of  the  use  of  the  intarjeo- 
tion,  is  not  given  in  the  Oxford  English  Dic- 
tionary, although  another  is  there  recorded  si 
a  noun,  **  and  his  adew  made**  (U^  lOB^  hot 
this  is  an  incorrect  reading,  doubUssi  tnm 
the  text  of  Bell,  who  gives  it.  Prof.  BkMfeM 
here  *'And  radde  it  over,**  wtthMft^ 
Pref .  Manly  has  made  a  similtf'  I 
Prof.  Kittredge,  of  **TbaI 
men,**  in  *'  Harvard  Stodki^'" 


June  25,  1896] 


olb«r  pooM  of  Chaaoar  an  now  midMr  hkrm- 
tifAtloo  lo  tb*  Mme  way.  Prof.  Kittradge't 
work  haa  alraady  prodaoed  good  fmit. 

—At  tha  Ma/  maatiiig  of  the  BngUsh  Ooatba 
Soctoty,  Prof.  Dowdan  deliTarad  the  Preddwi- 
tial  addmi.  He  aMomed  the  r61e  of  the  De- 
TiFt  AdTOoata  witha  thorooghneai  thatoanaed 
a  ftir  in  the  court  of  darotees.  flit  addreM 
has  now  appeared  in  the  June  nmnber  of 
OoemopoMt.  Tha  chief  dafecti  in  Ooethe't 
character  and  works  are  therein  set  forth  with 
brerity  and  deamsss  and  without  modifying 
phrases.  Tha  paper  will  be  read  with  interest 
by  the  admirers  of  Goethe  as  an  example  of 
the  ease  with  which  a  trained  scholar  may 
spedoQsly  wrest  his  facts  to  false  oondnsions. 
The  lata  Prof.  Carriere  of  Munich  once  pub- 
lished an  essay  in  which,  by  the  use  of  the 
**  philological  method,**  he  proved  that  Lessing 
wrote  Goethe's  "  Faust**  The  work  was  skil- 
fully eiecuted,  and  some  dull  men  imagined 
that  a  ** Baconian**  theory  had  actually  in- 
Taded  the  field  of  Goethe  literature.  Prof. 
Dowden  lias  acoomplishad  a  similar  tour  de 
fortty  but  has  missed  the  tine  strain  of  irony. 
Any  reader  familiar  with  Goethe's  life  and 
works  can  frame  his  own  reply  as  he  reads. 
Indeed,  in  the  replies  which  it  elicito  will  be 
found  tha  only  real  value  of  this  article. 
A  statement  so  frankly  one-sided  can  exert 
scarcely  more  influence  in  England  tiian  was 
produced  in  Germany  by  Grabbers  ill-natured 
arraignment  of  Bhakspere.  It  is,  however,  a 
pity  that  the  seal  of  the  Advocatus  Diaboli 
should  have  led  him  into  misstatements,  as, 
for  instance,  when  he  says  that  in  the  treat- 
ment of  '*  Faust**  **the  results  of  a  century's 
criticism  tend  more  and  more  towards  disinte- 
gration.**  But,  after  all,  the  chief  harm  which 
this  kind  of  inttllectual  athletics  can  do  is  to 
supply  with  plausible  catchwords  the  vocabu 
lary  of  thoee  who,  in  their  insular  ignorance, 
are  fond  of  depreciating  the  German  poet ;  and 
this  class  of  persons  will  be  very  ready  to 
doubt  the  sincerity  of  Prof.  Dowden*8  ioten- 
tioQs  aa  a  friend  of  Goethe  in  disguise.  This 
**Case  against  Goethe,**  however,  is,  as  Ed- 
mood  Sch^rer  said  of  **  Hermann  uod  Doro- 
thea,** "a  factitions  work." 

—Mr.  W.  A.  Shaw,  whose  *  History  of  Cur- 
rency *  at  once  made  him  an  authority  on  mone- 
tary sdeoce,  has  collected  a  number  of  papers 
bearing  on  the  subjecti  which  are  published  un- 
der the  title  *8elect  Tracts  and  DocumenU  Il- 
lustrative of  English  Monetary  History,  1630- 
1780*  (London  :  Clement  Wilson).  The  authors 
from  whose  writings  the  collection  is  made 
are  Sir  Bobert  Cotton,  Henry  Robinson,  Sir 
Richard  Ttaiple,  **J.  S,"  Sir  Isaac  New. 
ton,  John  Conduitt;  and  extracts  are  added 
from  the  Domestic  SUte  Papers  at  the  Record 
Oflloew  The  compilation,  Mr.  Shaw  tells  us,  is 
meant  aa  an  object-Wsion  in  currency  history, 
and  is  intentionally  restricted  to  a  century 
which  cannot  be  called  controversiaL  It  il- 
lustrates, at  five  dllTerent  periods,  **  the  one 
main  difficulty  which  the  monetary  systems  of 
every  state  of  Europe  experienced,  as  the  re> 
suit  of  a  mechanism  inberitsd  from  the  Mid. 
die  Agea,  and  which  they  continued  to  expe- 
rience until  the  reforms  of  quite  modem 
times.**  This  difllculty  was  substantially  that 
rsoogniaed  and  stated  by  Sir  Thomas  Gresh* 
am,  or,  aa  Mr.  Shaw  expresses  it,  the  buying 
up  of  better  money  by  means  of  inferior 
kinds.  It  is  not  truei  he  says,  that  bad  money 
drives  out  good ;  but,  under  favorable  condl* 
tloaa,  the  merchant  exchanger  can  buy  up  the 
good  money  by  means  of  the  bad,  the  unworn 


Tlie   iN'ation* 


by  meana  of  tha  worn,  tha  more  valuable  by 
means  of  the  less  valuable.  In  such  operations 
the  provisions  for  free  coinage,  as  the  mints 
of  no  two  countries  put  the  same  values  on 
the  metals,  were  of  great  assistance ;  and 
the  great  reform  of  this  century  has  con- 
sisted in  the  abolition  of  this  privilege.  Mr. 
Shaw*s  selections  graphically  illustrate  the  in- 
cessant perplexities  and  dangers  encountered 
by  the  mint  directors  of  the  period,  and  are 
extremely  interesting  as  showing  the  practical 
working  of  bimetallism  with  free  coinage. 

—Senator  Lulgi  Chiala  has  done  more  than 
any  other  living  Italian  to  collect  and  preserve 
the  most  valuable  private  documents  of  the 
men  who  made  Italy  a  generation  ago.  His 
edition  of  Cavour*B  letters,  enriched  by  ample 
notes,  must  always  remain  an  original  source 
for  every  student  of  European  history  between 
1847  and  1861.  Senator  Chiala  has  now  edited 
the  papers  of  Glacomo  Dina  (Turin:  Roux, 
Frassati  &  Co.),  a  man  interesting  for  his  own 
character  and  attainments,  and  important  as 
being  the  chief  journalistic  supporter  of  (fa- 
vour's nine  years'  miaiitry.  Dina  was  a  Jew, 
bom  at  a  time  when  his  rac^  had  neither  civil, 
political,  nor  social  rights  in  Piedmont  Be- 
fore he  was  twenty  he  had  acquired  an  extra- 
ordinary amount  of  learning,  for  which  he  had 
no  outlet,  the  only  employment  open  to  him 
being  that  of  primary-school  teacher  at  sixty 
dollars  a  year.  The  reforms  of  1847,  however, 
allowed  the  establishment  of  newspapers,  and 
to  one  of  these,  the  OpinUm^  of  Turin,  Dina 
was  called  as  an  assistant.  Subsequently  he 
roee  to  be  the  managing  editor,  in  the  days 
when  that  paper  was  the  recognized  mouth- 
piece of  the  Cavourian  party.  Senator  Chiala 
reprints  many  of  Dina*s  leaders  on  important 
events— the  expedition  to  the  Oimea,  the  con- 
ference at  Plombi^res,  the  war  of  1850,  Gari- 
baldi*8  Sicilian  expedition,  etc.— together  with 
private  letters  to  and  from  Dina,  and  an  un- 
failing stream  of  explanation.  Dina*s  articles 
have  for  the  historian  the  added  value  of  rep- 
resenting the  point  of  view  which  (favour 
wished  the  public  to  take;  but  they  also  de> 
•erve  attention  on  Dina's  own  account  He 
was  a  man  who  held  the  highest  ideal  of  a 
joumali8t*s  mission — a  man,  therefore,  who  be- 
longs to  a  type  which  seems  to-day,  except  for 
a  few  rare  exceptions,  aa  obeolete  as  is  that  of 
paladin  or  knight  errant  Dina  believed  that 
the  journalist  should  educate,  should  form  and 
lead  public  opinion,  should  speak  the  truth, 
and  trust  without  doubt  or  wavering  to  the 
final  verdict  of  reason. 


4=98 


JAMES   WILSON. 

Th»  WoTk%  of  Jams*  WiUon,  Associate  Jus- 
tice of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  and  Professor  of  Law  in  the  Ollege 
of  Philadelphia ;  being  hU  Public  Discourses 
upon  Jurispmdence  and  the  Political  Science, 
including  Lectures  as  Profesior  of  Law, 
1700  VI.  Edited  by  James  de  Witt  Andrews, 
a  vols.   Chicago :  CJallaghan  &  C^.    1806. 

NoTwirBSTAifDiKO  the  important  part  played 
and  the  high  position  held  by  him  in  puUic 
affairs,  the  name  of  Wilson  has  almost  lapsed 
into  oblivion.  His  prsssnt  editor  feels  it  na. 
oeesary  to  insist  with  emphasis  upon  his  un- 
doubted claims  to  ren»eml>rance.  Ifot  only 
was  he  a  member  of  the  convention  which 
framed  the  Ck>nstitution,  but  it  was  hi  a  great 
measure  due  to  his  eloquent  good  ssose  that 
the  ratifloatioo  of  it  by  Pennsylvania  was 
secured.    Ha  was  one  of  the  first  judges  of 


the  Supreme  Court,  appointed  by  Washing* 
ton,  and  nuy  be  said  to  share  with  Marshall 
and  Jay  the  honor  of  having  formulated  and 
made  effective  some  of  the  cardinal  legal 
principlee  of  our  government  His  remains 
make  it  seem  very  probable  that,  bad  he  lived 
(he  died  in  1706  at  the  age  of  fiftysis).  he 
would  have  been  known  aa  a  great  federalist 
judge ;  aa  it  was,  he  had  an  opportunity,  in  the 
case  of  Chisholm  vs.  the  State  of  Georgia,  to 
render  a  judgment  which  made  it  for  the  first 
time  plain  that  the  Constitution  had  called 
into  existence  a  new  sovereign  state. 

This  case,  reported  in  the  second  volume  of 
Dallas's  Reports,  came  before  the  Supreme 
Court  in  17S0,  four  yean  after  the  new  govern- 
ment had  gone  into  operation.  It  came  up  in 
a  matter-of-fact  way,  upon  a  motion  by  Mr. 
Randolph,  Attorney-General,  that  unless  the 
State  of  (Georgia  should  enter  an  appearance 
in  defence  of  the  action,  judgment  should  be 
entered  against  the  State  by  default;  never- 
theleis,  it  was  what  would  now  be  called  a  very 
sensational  suit  It  involved  a  question  so  Im- 
portant  that  the  decision  in  it  resultsd  in  one 
of  the  few  amendments  of  the  Constitution 
adopted  between  1787  and  our  own  time.  The 
question  was  whether  i^tata  could  be  sued  in 
the  federal  courts  on  a  money  demand  by  the 
citisen  of  another  State.  The  Chief  Justice 
was  Jay ;  his  associates  were  Iredell,  an  excel- 
lent  lawyer,  Blair,  Wilson,  and  Cushing.  All 
delivered  opinions  seHoMm,  and  all  felt  that 
in  a  measure  the  future  complexion  and  even 
fate  of  the  new  govemment  hinged  Upon  their 
decision.  The  <>mstitution  provided  that  the 
judicial  power  should  extend  to  controversiee 
between  a  State  and  a  citisen  ;  did  this  mean 
that  any  one  to  whom  a  State  owed  money 
could  obtain  federal  process  to  compel  pay- 
ment by  the  State  t  Four  yean  before,  such 
a  suit  would  have  been  inconceivable.  That  a 
sovereign  was  exempt  from  suit  was  a  legal 
commonplace  familiar  to  every  student  of 
filackstone  and  Coke.  If  Georgia,  a  sovereign 
State  in  1780,  was  now  subject  to  an  action  of 
(U9ump$it  at  the  suit  of  any  one  to  whom  she 
owed  money,  it  could  only  be  because  her  sov. 
ereignty  pro  tanto  waa  gone.  This  was  the 
fundamental  question  which  the  judges  were 
to  decide. 

Their  opinions  were  characteristic  of  the  men 
who  delivered  them.  IredelTs  was  that  of  a 
lawyer  and  strict  constructionist,  Jay's  that  of 
a  lawyer  who  was  also  a  statesman,  determin- 
ed to  give  the  most  liberal  construction  to  the 
charter  he  was  called  upon  to  interpret  but 
determined  at  the  same  time  to  put  his  jodg* 
meat  upon  grounds  impregnable  to  attack; 
Wi1son*s  that  of  an  orator,  a  publicist  a  scho- 
lar, and  a  metaphysician,  dinatisfled  with  him- 
self unless  he  could  show  that  the  decision  he 
bad  reached  was  called  for,  not  merely  by  the 
Constitution,  but  by  all  history,  all  law,  and 
finally  by  all  philosophy.  Irsdell*s  argument 
was  in  substance  that  aveo  if  a  State  could 
be  sued  under  the  new  Omstitutlon,  still  the 
power  to  entertain  such  a  suit  had  not  been 
conferred  on  Ibe  courts  by  0>ngress,  and  a 
new  statute  was  neotesary  for  the  purpose. 
He  strongly  intimated  the  opinion,  however, 
that  no  such  power  existed.  The  meaning  of 
the  clause  in  the  Constitution  was  merely  that 
the  oourts  were  to  take  cognisance  of  such  coo- 
troveniee  between  a  State  an<V  a  citisen  aa 
bad  been  cognisable  before  the  adoption  of  the 
Constitution— i.  «.,  suiu  In  which  the  State 
was  plaintiff,  or  in  which  It  consented  to  be 
sued.  The  Chief  JustlceNi  opinion  was  purely 
practical.  He  did  not  cite  a  single  can,  but 
relied  first  upon  the  fact  that  Georgia  was  not 


4=94: 


Tiie   !N"atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  161 7 


sovereign  In  th«  setiM  or  to  the  extent  in  which 
the  King  of  Bnglftnd  was  sovereign;  that  her 
Umtited  tovereignty  was  oompatible  with  sua- 
bility, and  that,  finally,  the  Constitotion  (to 
which  Georgia  was  a  consenting  party)  ex- 
pressly anthoriaed  such  a  suit. 

Wilson's  opinion,  on  the  other  hand,  while 
quite  as  logical  as  Jay's,  is  an  ornate  rheto- 
rical essay.  Not  satisfied  with  what  he  justly 
calls  the  ** uncommon  magnitude'*  of  the  ques- 
tion involved,  he  magnifies  it  still  further  at 
the  outset  by  declaring  it  to  involve  one  more 
important  stiil— **  Do  the  people  of  the  United 
States  form  a  nation  f  Having  determined 
that  this  is  the  question  before  him,  he  opens 
the  discussion  with  a  quotation  from  Reid,  ex- 
plains that  he  intends  to  use  the  words  state 
and  sovereign  in  new  senses;  that  the  state  Is 
merely  a  useful  and  valuable  contrivance 
brought  into  existence  by  the  real  sovereign, 
the  people;  that  consequently  the  State  of 
Georgia  is  not,  as  to  the  purposes  of  the  Union, 
a  sovereign  at  all;  that  Uie  notion  of  sovereign- 
ty on  which  the  State  had  relied  for  exemption 
was  purely  feudal  in  origin,  the  sovereign 
being  a  king— we  have  no  feudal  system  and 
no  king  here— while,  on  principles  of  general 
jorisprudenee,  laws  are  founded  noton  the  com- 
mand of  a  superior,  but  on  the  oonMtU  of  those 
who  obey  them.  There  is  in  these  principles 
nothing  to  exempt  the  State  of  G^eorgia  from 
suit.  In  the  second  place,  many  preoedents 
warrant  such  a  suit.  The  oases  cited  are  from 
Isocrates,  the  history  of  Spain,  Sparta,  France, 
and  tbe  Saxons.  In  the  third'  place,  the  exemp- 
tion of  a  state  from  suit  being  thus  shown  to 
be  unwarranted  by  history  and  general  juris- 
prudence, the  only  remaining  questions  are: 
Could  the  Ckmstitution  vest  a  jurisdiction  over 
the  State  of  G^rgia  ?  Has  it  done  so  ?  Both 
of  which  are  answered  in  the  afl^mative,  and 
the  conclusion  reached  that  judgment  must  be 
rendered  for  the  plaintiff,  by  default. 

Bat  execution  never  issued.  So  astonished 
was  the  public  at  the  novelty  of  the  idea  that 
States  were  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
federal  courts,  that  an  amendment  to  the  Con- 
stitution exempting  them  from  it  was  shortly 
afterwards  proposed  and  adopted,  and,  in  1796, 
all  suits  of  the  kind  were  swept  from  the  re- 
cords of  the  court.  Curiously  enough,  and  as 
if  to  wipe  out  any  vestige  of  the  decision, 
the  successors  of  Jay  and  Wilson  have  in  our 
day  gone  out  of  their  way  to  declare  that  the 
decision  of  the  court  in  Cbisholm  vs.  Georgia 
was  wrong.  In  1889,  in  the  case  of  Hans  vs. 
Louisiana,  we  find  a  new  attempt  made  to 
sue  a  State,  under  another  clause  of  the  Con- 
stitution. The  court,  after  an  interval  of  a 
hundred  years,' reexamines  the  subject,  and 
announces  that  it  was  Iredell,  and  not  Wilson 
and  Jay,  who  was  right,  chiefiy  on  the  ground 
that  the  interpretation  of  the  Constitution  an- 
tecedent to  its  adoption,  by  Hamilton  in  the 
Federalist,  and  by  Madison  and  Marshall  in 
the  Virginia  convention,  had  established  that 
States  were  not  suable.  This  criticism  of  the 
earlier  decision  is  entirely  extra-judicial,  for 
it  was  not  at  all  necessary  to  the  decision  of 
the  Louisiana  case,  and  we  shall  therefore 
take  the  liberty  of  expressing  the  opinion  that, 
were  the  main  question  still  open  to  argument, 
tbe  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  itself,  ren- 
dered after  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution, 
by  Wilson,  .(ay,  and  their  associates,  ought  to 
be  more  weighty  than  eoe  parte  arguments  of 
advocates  of  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution 
whose  main  object  was  to  minimise  whatever 
objections  were  urged  against  it. 

But  whatever  view  may  be  taken  of  the 
technical  correotneis  oC  the  decision,  who  can 


but  deplore  the  results  of  the  failure  of  these 
judges  in  their  bold  attempt  to  settle  for  ever 
the  supremacy  of  the  new  Government?  What 
has  exemption  from  suit  brought  in  its  train 
but  millions  of  debt  repudiated  and  thousands 
of  innocent  people  plundered  f  How  much 
better  would  it  be  if  the  tribunal  which  has 
always  enjoyed  unquestioned  obedience  where 
two  States  are  parties,  or  where  the  most  pow- 
erful corporation  or  the  most  populous  city 
or  subdivision  of  a  State  is  concerned,  had  not 
been  shorn  of  the  power  to  enforce  justice 
between  a  State  and  a  citizen !  Indeed,  when 
one  reads  these  early  opinions  and  refiects  on 
the  subsequent  history  of  the  country,  one  is 
tempted  to  go  much  further,  and  to  echo  the 
wish  expressed  by  Jay,  that  "the  state  of  so- 
ciety were  so  far  improved,  and  the  science  of 
Gk)7emment  advanced  to  such  a  degree  of  per- 
fection, as  that  the  whole  nation  could  in  the 
peaceable  course  of  law  be  compelled  to  do 
justice."  Repudiated  by  the  States  and  swept 
from  the  records  of  the  court  the  decision  might 
be,  but  the  principles  underlying  such  judicial 
opinions  could  no  more  be  effaced  than  the 
Constitution  itself.  The  sovereignty  of  the 
Union  had  been  recognized,  the  idea  of  the 
State  as  a  subordinated  political  agency  had 
been  formulated— views  to  be  wholly  lost 
sight  of,  and  to  be  vindicated  two  generations 
later  by  force  of  arms  in  a  conflict  which  ended 
in  their  complete  triumph.  One  of  the  earliest 
heralds  of  the  true  constitutional  meaning  and 
scope  of  that  great  conflict  seems  to  have  been 
Wilson.  The  opinion  in  Chisholm  vs.  the 
State  of  G^rgia  is  really  his  best  monument. 
An  edition  of  his  works,  published  under  the 
direction  of  Bird  Wilson,  in  three  volumes, 
appeared  in  1804.  The  greater  part  of  the  con- 
tents of  both  the  earlier  and  later  edition  con- 
sist of  the  lectures  on  Law  delivered  in  the 
College  of  Philadelphia  in  1790-'91.  The  pre- 
sent editor  has  added  a  good  mauy  notes  of  his 
owD,  which  are  mainly  valuable  in  so  far  as 
they  refer  the  reader  to  cases  and  other  writ- 
ers. The  speculative  opinions  advanced  in 
them  do  not  seem  to  add  anything  to  the  text, 
and  are  calculated  to  produce  the  erroneous 
impression  that  Wilson's  views  of  jurispru- 
dence  are  those  of  modem  scholars.  How  the 
editor  has  succeeded  in  persuading  himself  of 
this  we  do  not  know.  Wilson  was  essentially  a 
man  of  his  time,  though  in  advance  of  ic  also. 
Bom  and  educated  in  Scotland,  and  coming 
here  while  still  very  young,  he  had  a  greater 
knowledge  of  the  principles  of  the  Roman  law 
than  most  of  his  English  or  American  contem- 
poraries. His  reading  was  wide,  and  he  enter- 
tained on  all  public  subjects  advanced  and  hu- 
mane views.  Like  the  authors  of  the  Federal' 
iff,  his  reasoning  as  to  human  institutions  is 
always  founded  upon  a  perception  of  the  great 
truth  that  they  are  carried  on  by  men  acting 
from  observed  tendencies  and  impulses,  and 
that  the  flrst  question  is  whether,  with  human 
nature  as  it  is,  a  projected  institution  will  or 
will  not  accomplish  a  given  result.  Thus,  he 
clearly  foresees  (vol.  1.,  p.  859)  exactly  how  divi- 
sion of  responsibility  as  to  appointments  must 
produce  bad  appointments.  It  could  not  be 
made  clearer,  even  by  a  study  of  bi-partisan 
commissions  in  New  York.  His  whole  chapter 
on  government  is  a  most  enlightened  essay. 
In  his  eleventh  chapter  he  points  out  that, 
under  our  system,  an  unconstitutional  law 
cannot  but  be  held  void  by  the  courts— in  this 
anticipating  and  explaining  what  was  to  be 
the  course  of  decision.  In  his  remarks  on  the 
philosophy  of  evidence  he  points  out,  far  in 
advance  of  his  time,  that  a  competition  be- 
tween opposite  analogies  is  the  principle  into 


which  legal  controversies  may  often  be  re- 
solved. In  his  "  Considerations  on  the  power 
to  incorporate  the  Bank  of  North  America,'' 
the  principle  of  the  decision  In  th&  Dartmouth 
College  case  is  anticipated  in  a  very  remarka- 
ble way  (vol.  i,  p.  566).  He  favored  the  fusion 
of  Law  and  Equity  (vol.  IL,  p.  180),  and  pro- 
tested against  the  failure  of  the  common  law 
to  provide  compensation  for  the  deatii  of  a 
human  being  (p.  860).  On  the  other  hand,  he 
knew  no  more  than  his  contemporaries  of  tbe 
historical  method  of  studying  law— although 
his  Inquiry  into  the  probable  derivation  of  the 
word /stony  shows  a  philological  sense  which 
would  have  greatiy  helped  to  equip  him  for  It 
—and  the  basis  of  his  philosophy  of  jurispm- 
dence  was  metaphysical  and  theologicaL  Con- 
sequentiy,  the  greater  part  of  his  specnlative 
writing,  while  deserving  of  preservation  owing 
to  the  light  which  it  throws  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  law,  is  no  longer  of  any  other  value. 
The  reason  why  Mr.  Andrews  does  not  perceive 
this  is  that  he  himself,  as  his  note  on  **  Who 
are  the  Peoplef  shows,  is  ametaphysleiantoo, 
while  his  evident  leaning  toward  soolalism 
does  not  help  to  render  his  metaphysics  any 
clearer. 

It  cannot  be  honestiy  said  that  Wilson's  ab- 
stract speculations  about  law  are  of  much  more 
value  than  thoee  of  Puffendorf,  though  they 
are  one  degree  more  modem.  He  traces  law 
and  custom  to  consent.  It  has  been  proved 
over  and  over  again  since  his  time  that  this  Is 
a  mere  assumption,  and  opposed  to  the  facts  of 
history.  Law  had  its  origin  partly  in  brute 
force,  parUy  in  custom,  and  partiy  in  regula- 
tions enforced  by  a  sovereign.  As  to  the  lat- 
ter, no  consent  was  asked,  and  as  to  custom 
it  is  impossible,  with  regard  to  many  primitive 
social  rulesj  that  there  can  have  been  any  an- 
tecedent consent.  To  say  nothing  of  such  cus- 
toms as  suttee,  circumcision,  human  sacrifices, 
cannibalism,  or  marriage  accomplished  by  vio- 
lence, we  have  no  proof  that  a  rule  of  proper- 
ty such  as  primogeniture  or  dower  was  in- 
troduced by  any  such  means.  The  argument 
as  to  consent  is,  first,  that  law  cannot  be  Im- 
posed by  superior  right,  for  one  human  being 
has  by  nature  no  superior  right  over  any  other. 
I  have  no  more  right  to  make  rules  for  you^ 
than  you  for  me.  But  since  law  rightfully  ex- 
ists, and  we  are  under  a  necessity  to  assign 
some  origin  to  It,  there  Is  none  discoverable 
but  an  act  of  consent  on  the  part  of  the  gov- 
erned that  he  shall  be  subject  to  certain  rules. 
The  vice  of  the  argument  is  that  it  confounds 
the  right  to  govern  with  the  fact  of  govern- 
ment. We  know  nothing  about  the  right  to 
govern  unless,  ascending  from  the  plane  of 
metaphysics  to  that  of  theology,  we  assume  (as 
almost  every  one  did  down  to  the  present  oen- 
tury)  that  the  right  is  derived  from  God.  If 
we  say  that  the  right  to  govern  ought  to  be 
derived  from  the  people,  that  Is  the  expression 
of  an  opinion  that  a  government  so  derived 
better  answers  the  ends  of  government.  No 
existing  government  is  based  on  the  consent  of 
the  whole  people:  women,  children,  and  gene- 
rally large  numbers  of  adult  males  have  no 
voice  In  it. 

Of  the  man  Wilson  llttie  has  come  down  to 
us.  Yet,  with  the  aid  of  the  old-fashk>ned 
portrait  prefixed  to  the  earlier  edition  of  his 
works,  we  cannot  be  far  out  of  the  way  In 
ascribing  to  his  character  qualities  corrsspond- 
Ing  to  thoee  of  hii  mind.  A  kindly  and  hu- 
mane wisdom  marks  every  Une  tiiat  he  wrote, 
and  looks  out  at  us  through  his  spectacles. 
His  face  alone  explains  why  Washington 
should  have  preferred  him  to  the  distlnguisbed 
lawyers  of  his  o^wn  State  m  wa 


June  25,  1896] 


The   Nation. 


4:95 


for  his  B«plMw.  He  waiaii  AooompU^Md  imb> 
UcktaadtkUful  d^b^Ur,  with  a  Sootoh  pw- 
aiftoocy  whl^  toanMnm  mains  us  iidII*, 
thoacliratbtririUithaaatliim.  Who  but  the 
laan  hlmMlf  would  arcr  hare  thought  it  worth 
whik  to  ■ogfiMti  in  tha  ooona  of  a  judicial 
opinkm  00  jtifiadlotioii,  that  oooftitatlooal  ac- 
ooraoy  ii  Incombant  npoD  ns,  not  onlj  in  oar 
oommoB  hut  **aT«n  in  our  conviyial  lan- 
fvao'*? 

**Uatoastatlradr  •  Tba  United  StatM '  in- 
ftaad  of  the  *  PMple  of  the  United  States'  ie 
thetoast^veo.  This  it  not  poUUoally  oorraot. 
The  toait !•  meant  to  preeent  to  Tiew  the  flnt 
great  object  in  the  Union;  it  preMnti  only  the 
•eoond.  It  preeeotB  only  the  artificial  penon 
inetieed  of  the  aatoral  perwat  who  epoke  it  in- 
to exiitence.  A  Btate,  I  cheerfully  admit,  it 
the  nobleet  work  of  Man,  but  Man  himtelf. 
free  and  honeet,  it  (I  raeak  at  to  thit  world) 
the  nobltet  work  of  GodC** 


TURKS  AND   MONGOLB. 

IhirodMeiiom  d  VHUioirt  ds  VAtU:  Tuitat  et 
Mongolt  dee  Origlnet 41406.  ParLtenCa- 
hun.  Parit:  Colin  ft  Cia. 
With  a  part  of  thit  work  ttndentt  are  already 
ftuniliar  in  the  chaptert  which  M.  Cahua  hie 
lately  oontributed  to  the  general  work  of  La- 
Titte  and  Ramhaud;  but  to  much  it  there  con- 
deneed  into  to  little  tpaoe  that  an  amplification 
it  Tery  welcome.  Well  at  he  writet,  with  all 
the  eate  and  mattery  of  a  good  French  ttyle, 
hit  bo(A  can  ncTer  be  popular,  for  the  maM  of 
Battem  naaet  it  alone  enough  to  frighten 
away  many  readert.  Although  be  utet  a  meet 
▼aried  tet  of  authoritiet,  from  Chineee  ohroni. 
dee  to  the  latett  European  traTellen  in  Cen. 
tral  Atia,  he  teemt  to  rely  chiefly  on  Turkith 
touroet,  writing  from  an  Eattem  point  of 
▼iew,  interetted  in  and  admiring  hit  charao- 
ten,  and  not  mainly  concerned  with  any  poe- 
tihle  relatione  between  their  actiont  and  the 
dettiniet  of  wettem  Europe.  The  deameet 
and  decitioo  of  hit  opiniont,  if  dittinctly  im- 
prwJre  at  being  bated  on  much  leamlog, 
in  the  end  proroke  criUdtm.  M.  Cabun 
knowt  too  exactly  the  motivet  of  everybody. 
We  Tery  much  doubt  whether  hit  natire  au* 
thoritiet  are  tuflldenUy  explicit  or  trutt- 
worthy  to  be  a  ture  foundation  for  many  of 
hit  theories,  which  only  too  often  appear  to 
be  the  result  of  mere  a-priori  reasoning,  ex* 
pratttd  St  if  there  could  be  no  question  at  to 
ttt  accuracy. 

"The  Tnrkt  and  the  Moogolt  were  the  in- 
termediaries between  the  dTilisation  of  the 
Chinsss  and  that  of  the  Ferdans.**  We  find 
them  first  undsr  the  name  of  Hiung-Nu,  a 
general  tenn  applied  to  the  barbarian  tribce 
agaiiMt  whom  the  Oriat  Wall  was  built,  and 
who,  as  mercenaries  and  invaders,  played  much 
the  same  r61e  in  Chinsss  history  as  the  Ger> 
mans  at  onetime  In  that  of  the  RooMm  Empire. 
Gradually  they  were  pushed  back  until,  in  the 
bsginning  of  the  Christian  era,  they  were  sepa- 
rated into  two  parti,  some  driven  northwaids, 
while  great  wsstss  wsrs  forced  to  the  west  by 
ths  Chinsss  general  Panchao,  who  even  reached 
the  Caspian,  and  was  prsparing  to  attack  the 
Pnnhiaas  when  recalled  1^  hk  Emperor.  Un- 
of  Huns,  the  mere  vanguard  of 
of  wandering  Mongolians  nearly 
estsrn  Christendom.  In  009  the 
Btral  As^Uc  King  of  the  Tn-kiu, 
as  the  Chinese  called  them,  or  the  TW^cm,  ac- 
cording to  the  Greeks,  Mnt  ambastadon  to 
Justin  n.  and  to  the  "  Son  of  Heaven  "*  in  ordsr 
"^to  form  an  alUaaoe  between  the  two  great 
dvfUgsd  StaiSB,  between  China  of  the  Bast 
gad  ths  Ta-Tdn,  the  grtat  China  of  tha  Wssti 


the  Roman  Empire;  he  and  his  Tnrkt  tsrving 
as  the  intennediary,  the  man  atarms  in  the  pay 
of  the  allies.**  Nothing  came  of  this  alliance. 
For  centuries  the  Sassanid  sovereigns  of  Persia 
kept  back  the  Turanians  to  the  north  of  them 
until  they  themsdves  were  crushed  by  the 
Arab  invasion  of  the  followers  of  the  Prophet 
Thit  wat  the  chance  of  the  Turkt;  in  large 
bandt  or  tmall,  as  enemies,  or  more  often  as 
mercenaries,  they  flowed  touthward ;  they 
adopted  Mohammedanism;  they  were  the  best 
warriors  of  the  Caliphs,  who  became  puppets 
in  their  hands,  and  finally  they  founded  mighty 
empires  of  their  own,  such  at  that  of  Ghuzna, 
which  conquered  much  of  northern  India,  that 
of  the  Seljukt,  who  overran  Ada  Minor  and 
Palettine  and  brought  on  the  crutadet. 

Meanwhile  their  dittant  kin,  north  of  the 
Great  Wall,  remained  as  before,  preying  on 
China  when  the  wat  weak,  her  vasials  when 
she  wat  ttrong,  until  their  tcattered  bandt  were 
united  by  Genghit  Elhan.  Thit  extraordinary 
man,  who  wst  bom  in  1182,  wst  gifted  with 
a  dear  oold  mind ;  hit  ambition  wat  bound- 
Itst,  but  he  wat  moderate  and  cautiout  in 
action,  while  never  varying  from  hit  purpoeet, 
a  stattsman  and  an  organiser,  the  first  slave  to 
the  Tatsak  or  Rule  he  had  created,  and  which 
embodied  the  punctilious  bureaucratic  spirit 
that  the  Mongolsprobably  caught  from  the  Chi- 
nese,  and  that  wat  to  unbearable  to  tubject 
people.  Though  one  of  the  greateet  conquer- 
ort  the  world  hat  ever  teen,  he  made  no  pre- 
tence of  bdag  a  military  geniut,  but  picked 
out  hit  generab  with  wonderful  ditcemment. 
The  early  career  of  the  future  Emperor  wst  ar^ 
duous  enough,  for,  having  lost  his  father  while 
still  a  youth,  he  and  his  mother  had  great  diffi- 
culty  in  keeping  together  the  warriors  attach- 
ed to  the  family.  Gradually,  however,  tribe 
after  tribe  was  overcome  by  a  mixture  of  force 
and  diplomacy.  The  Christian  Sultan  of  the 
Kerait  Turks,  the  Prester  John  of  European 
legend,  wst  defeated  and  killed,  and  in  1200 
Genghis  Khan,  fixing  his  capital  at  Karakorum 
in  Mongdia,  south  of  Lake  Baikal,  proclaimed 
himself  the  ■*  Infiexible  Emperor.  **  China 
was  at  that  time  divided  Into  two  empires, 
Mantchu  in  the  north,  and  a  purdy  native  in 
the  south.  The  northern  state  wst  attacked  in 
1210,  but  did  not  finally  succumb  until  after  a 
struggle  of  twenty-four  years,  at  the  coet  of 
torrents  of  bloodshed.  While  this  war  wst 
still  going  on,  in  1219,  the  Mongols  assailed,  not 
without  provocation,  the  Turkith  empire  of 
Kharetm  in  Central  Ada,  and  did  not  rest 
unto  they  had  subdued  it  In  spite  of  difficul- 
ties and  rivalries  at  to  the  suocssdon,  the  death 
of  Ghengis,  in  1227,  ssemed  only  to  increase  the 
momentum  of  his  followers,  whcee  ranks  were 
now  swelled  by  great  numbers  of  their  con- 
quered Un.  Batu,  one  grandson  of  the  Index- 
ible, subjugated  Russia  and  laid  waste  lands 
in  Central  Europe.  Knblai,  another,  as  the 
Great  Khan,  subdued  southern  China,  while 
his  younger  brother,  Hulagu,  overthrew  tbe 
Persiansand  prssied  on  almost  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean, till  his  progress  was  checked  by  the 
Msmehikes 

In  an  thsss  conquests  M.  Cahun  insists 
again  and  again  that  the  sucoe«  of  the  Mon- 
gols was  owing  to  their  superior  generalship 
and  organisation,  not  to  the  tmmenee  numbers 
credited  to  them  by  the  frightened  chroniclers 
of  the  tame  and  accepted  even  to-day  by  many 
historians.  *'  In  the  thirteenth  century  in  mi 
Utary  art  it  was  the  Mongols  who  were  dvilis- 
ed,  while  tha  barbarians  wsre  the  people  whom 
they  defeated  in  all  due  form,  thanks  to  the 
fwius  of  thdr  genersls,  the  experlsooe  of  their 
oaptains,  the  dJsdpHna  of  thdr  troops,  and 


not  at  all  to  thdr  numbers,  ndr  campaign 
of  1214  (against  Kharesm)  was  as  regular  and 
as  wdl  ordered  as  our  classic  one  of  1605.** 
Certainly  tbe  two  yeari^  raid  of  Jebe  and 
Snbutai,  a  generation  later,  wes  marvdious 
snoogh.  Starting  with  20.000  cavalry  from 
Samarkand,  they  tracked  the  Sultan  of  Kha- 
resm  to  his  death,  passed  along  eouth  of 
the  Caspian,  overthrowing  Turks,  Persians, 
Georgians,  all  who  oppossd  them,  crosssd  the 
impenetrate  Caucasus,  crushed  or  swept  be- 
fore them  the  nations  of  the  steppe,  defeated 
at  the  River  Kalka  a  Russian  army,  whoss 
numbers  are  given  by  Karamdn  ss  82,000 
men,  pushed  on  to  the  Dnieper,  then  returned 
tranquilly  to  the  heart  of  Asia.  In  the  great 
invadon  of  Russia  nominally  commanded  by 
Batu— an  easy-going  prince  very  difTerent  from 
what  the  terrified  imagination  of  the  West 
painted  him— but  really  led  by  Snbutai,  ac- 
cording to  trustworthy  Turkish  and  Chinsss 
accounts,  the  Mongols  mustered  some  150.000 
men,  most  of  whom  had  come  from  immense 
distances,  and  when,  later,  they  divided,  they 
can  have  had  in  Poland  but  about  40,000 ;  in 
Hungary  60,000  to  80,000  troops.  With  this 
by  no  means  overwhelming  force,  they  over- 
ran nearly  the  whde  of  Rusda,  which  they 
hdd  in  subjection  for  centuries,  and  they  de- 
stroyed **  in  six  weeks  all  the  military  strength 
of  Poland,  Hungary,  and  Eastern  Germany.** 
The  dividon  that  swept  through  Poland,  car- 
rying all  before  them  in  less  than  thirty  days, 
defeated  a  combined  army  of  Slavs  and  Ger- 
mans  at  Liegnits,  then  plundered  Lu«tia,  Mo- 
ravia, and  Silesia,  scornfully  heedless  of  ths 
army  which  King  Wensd  of  Bohemia  kept 
safdy  in  the  mountains.  The  main  body  in 
Hungary,  after  a  first  success,  oovered  200 
kilometree  in  less  than  the  three  following 
days— a  feat  perhape  without  parallel  in  mili- 
tary annals— won  a  victory  on  the  morrow, 
driving  the  enemy  Into  marshee  from  which 
but  four  escaped  ;  and  finally,  a  month  later, 
by  splendid  manoeuvring,  defeated  a  superior 
army  of  Hungarians,  Germans,  Croats, 'and 
Western  volunteen  at  Miskolcs,  with  a  loss  of 
thirty  to  forty  thousand  men.  Mora  extraor- 
dinary still,  if  anything,  is  the  fact  that  this 
invading  swarm  of  cavalry,  with  perhape  a 
few  Chineee  engineers  and  light  battering- 
machines,  should  havs  captured  evM7  town  it 
eerioudy  bedeged  from  Kiev  to  tbe  impregna- 
ble Gran  on  the  Austrian  frontier.  The  death 
of  Ogdai,  the  Great  Khan,  caused  Batu  to  re- 
trace his  steps  eastward,  while  Snbutai  return- 
ed to  tbe  wars  in  China,  but  soon  withdraw  to 
die  peaceably.  *'  From  Corea  to  FriuU,  be  had 
conquered  thirty-two  nations  and  won  sixty- 
five  pitched  battlee.** 

The  decline  of  the  Mongol  empira  wss  rapid. 
Under  Kublal  the  capital  was  removed  to 
Pekin,  whera  the  Great  Khans  and  their  foU 
k>wera  had  become  fiuddhlsu  and  Chineee  in 
character;  yet  within  a  Uttie  over  a  century 
they  wera  overthrown  by  the  national  move- 
ment which  brought  about  the  Ming  dynasty. 
The  great  dependendse  to  the  east  wera  from 
the  first  pracUcally  independent.  They  soon 
adopted  Mohammedanism,  and  the  ChristiaBs, 
ones  so  numerous  among  this  most  tolerant  of 
races,  entiraly  disappeared.  Tbe  kingdoms 
broke  up,  yet  one  of  them  had  one  mora  ukk 
ment  of  grtat  glory  and  empira  under  the  fa- 
mous Timur,  with  whose  raign  M.  Oabun  dosee 
his  book.  His  conclusion,  in  taking  leave  of 
the  people  for  whom  he  has  evidently  so  much 
sympathy,  is  noteworthy.  He  ascribes  their 
dsdine  to  thdr  belief : 

"I  have  pointed  out  how  refractory  the 
TurUih  oatura  ft  to  oontroveray  and  theology, 


496 


Tlie   IN'atioii. 


[Vol  62,  No.  1617 


how  naturally  prone  to  discipline.  In  accepting 
Islam  as  a  state  religion,  the  Turks  of  Turkes- 
tan, of  Trans  ozania,  of  Kbaresm,  adopted  it 
as  a  whole  without  discussion,  in  a  military 
manner,  like  a  password.  During  a  hundred 
years  the  monks  and  theologians  of  Bokhara 
were  able  to  mould  their  brains  at  will  with- 
out being  embarrassed  by  a  contradiction,  a 
subtlety,  or  a  simple  commentary.  Thus  the 
Renaissance  in  Central  Asia  was  nothing  bat  a 
renewal  of  the  Middle  Ageii.  While  the  Euro- 
peans, under  the  spur  or  Hellenism*  and  daz- 
zled by  the  rediscovery  of  antiquity,  were 
launching  boldly  out  towards  the  unknown, 
towards  free  research,  towards  revolt,  the  Asi- 
atics, their  equals  till  the  fifteenth  century, 
let  themselves  docilely  be  brought  back  to  the 
School  as  conceived  by  the  sages  of  the  ortho- 
dox Khalif.  Tbey  discovert  as  a  novelty 
Aristotle  (as  deformed  by  the  Arabs),  they 
returned  to  the  '  Amalgest,'  they  plunged  into 
Avieenna,  their  compatriot,  they  began  again 
in  Turkish  the  epoch  of  the  BassanidsB;  they 
'  marked  time,'  but  pever  advanced  (its  pUti- 
nirent  8ur  place).  All  their  inteUectual  acti- 
vity, and  they  had  as  much  as  others,  spent 
itself  in  scholasticism,  in  jurisprudence,  in  rhe- 
toric; with  great  efforts  they  reconstituted  Eu- 
clid, Ptolemy.  Gktlen,  Hippocrates — they  hardly 
dared  touch  Plato ;  to  go  further  would  have 
been  to  lose  themselves.  Little  by  little,  with 
the  help  of  the  monks,  they  came  to  think 
only  of  their  salvation  and  to  be  content  with 
the  Koran.'' 


On  Parody,    By  A.  S.  Martin.    Henry  Holt 

&Ck).  1886. 
Dr.  Johnson  had  a  very  low  opinion  of  parody, 
and  so,  no  doubt,  had  Wordsworth ;  the  for- 
mer considered  it  too  easy.  Bat  then,  nobody 
ever  contended  for  anything  more  than  that 
it  was  an  effective  and  very  amusing  form  of 
satire.  The  very  greatest  writers  of  aU  ages 
have  made  use  of  it,  and,  so  long  as  man  re- 
tains the  capacity  of  being  amused  l>y  con- 
trasts, so  long  he  will  continue  to  enjoy  parody. 
Mr.  Martin's  book  consists  of  an  essay  on 
parody,  with  numerous  examples,  many  of 
which  are  good.  Gk>lng  back  to  the  Greeks, 
and  tracing  parody  down  through  the  Roman 
and  medisB^al  period  to  our  own  time,  we  find 
the  Greeks  and  our  own  race  to  have  been  its 
masters.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  mediaeval 
parody  that  must  have  made  the  monks,  friars, 
and  priests  laugh,  but  we  have  to  mount  to 
Aristophanes  before  we  find  the  same  kind  of 
travesty  that  we  enjoy  so  much  nowadays.  In 
English  literature  parody  has  been  the  test  of 
fame ;  with  the  exception  of  Bhakspere,  every 
serious  writer,  and  especially  every  serious 
poet,  has  had  his  parodist,  often  himself  a 
great  writer.  Throughout  English  literature, 
parody  is  the  laugh  mg  echo  of  all  serious 
verse,  and  in  our  own  time  it  has  become  a 
regular  branch  of  literary  business,  each  new 
writer  possessed  of  a  distinct  style  being  wel- 
comed by  a  chorus  of  travesty.  This  has  been 
for  years  a  specialty  of  Ptinc^.  It  is  surprising 
how  much  this  book  owes  to  verse  contributed 
to  that  journal  by  unknown  writers. 

Mr.  Martin's  survey  is  not  by  any  means  com- 
plete. He  does  not  seem  to  know  of  Sir  F. 
Pollock's  extraordinarily  clever  verse,  which 
certainly  deserved  mention ;  we  miss  also 

"  Not  s  son  had  he  got,  nor  s  pehny  <»  note." 

Maginn  is  cited  only  for 

"  Mj  heart  leaiM  up  when  I  behold 
A  bailiff  In  the  street.*' 

Canning's  **  Needy  Knife-grinder  "  would  have 
been  far  better  than  *' Despairing  beside  a 
dear  stream."  But  the  book  is  full  of  good 
examples.  We  are  glad  to  see  some  mention 
made  of  Mr.  James  Davis,  a  writer  for  the 
press  whose  name  is  far  less  known  than  it  de- 
serves  to  be.  His  parodies  were  deToted--at 
least  such  of  them  as  we  remember— to  satire 


of  the  attempt  to  found  a  cult  or  religion  upon 
agnosticism.  His  creed,  concluding  with  an 
avowal  of  belief  in  '*  the  disunion  of  the  saints, 
the  survival  of  the  fittest,  the  persistence  of 
force,  the  dispersion  of  the  body,  and  in  death 
everlasting,**  is  the  only  thing  g^ven  in  full 
(p.  23).  His  lines  in  imitation  of  Addison's 
should  be,  if  we  remember  right : 

**  Yon  orb  which  shines  to  light  the  Day 
One  hundred  million  miles  away, 

BrolTed  from  nebnlona  orpatlon 
By  foroet  and  thetr  correlation. 

Bhall  keep  na  whlrUng  In  Its  orbit 
TIU  force  and  motion  reabsorb  It." 

A  verse  is  missing  from  the  hymn  in  praise 
of  the  spectroscope:  and  if  his  book  reaches 
another  edition,  we  hope  Mr.  Martin  will  look 
up  the  tract  about  the  good  little  Positivist 
boy  brought  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  pure  ag- 
nosticism (being  allowed  only  to  read  such 
literature  as  the  above,  and  to  pthy  only  with 
philosophical  toys),  whom  a  little  Christian 
boy  misled  for  a  time  with  his  wicked  Chris- 
tian books  and  toys,  until  in  the  end  the  little 
agnostic  caught  cold  and  lay  on  his  death-bed, 
when,  fortunately,  his  parents  were  able  to 
rescue  him  from  the  depraved  infiuences  to 
which  he  had  sunk  a  victim,  so  that  the  little 
fellow  died  with  a  happy  smile  on  his  face  mur- 
muring, **Home— home— homeogeneous  Evolu- 
tion," 


AnimcU  Symbolism  in  Eocleaicistieal  Archi. 
lecture.  By  E.  P.  Evans.  With  a  bibli- 
ography and  78  illustrations.  Henry  Holt 
&  Co.  1896.  Pp.  xii,  875. 
This  is  a  book  of  a  class  once  more  common 
than  it  is  now,  for  it  is  rare  in  these  times  to 
see,  at  least  in  English,  great  masses  of  strange 
information  put  together  without  definite  and 
declared  purpose.  This  is  not  a  history  of 
animal  or  other  symbolism  in  architecture, 
ecclesiastical  or  other,  or  in  mediseval  art  taken 
together.  There  is  in  it  a  most  entertaining 
account  of  the  pagan  statues,  bas-reliefs,  and 
gems  which  have  been  taken  over  into  ecclesi- 
astical service  by  attributing  to  John  the  Bap 
tist  what  originally  belonged  to  Mars,  and  to 
the  Virgin  what  had  been  dedicated  to  Venus 
(pp.  806  to  815).  The  well-known  seated  sta- 
tues in  the  Vatican  of  the  Greek  comic  poets, 
Poseidippos  and  Menandros,  were,  we  are  told, 
adored  as  saints  after  their  discovery  in  Rome 
in  the  sixteenth  century.  This  is  rather  a  late 
instance,  but  such  ascriptions  were  common 
enough  in  earlier  years.  The  peacock  and  the 
eagle,  as  the  attributes  of  Juno  and  Jupiter, 
are  common  on  the  sarcophagi  of  Emperors 
and  Empresses;  hence  they  were  used  for 
Christian  tombs;  from  these  they  invaded 
other  Christian  decoration.  Being  received  as 
common  emblems  in  Christian  art,  their  pres- 
ence had  to  be  accounted  for,  and  strange 
legends  are  accepted  as  sufficient  explanation. 
Thus,  the  peacock's  fiesh  not  being  subject  to 
decay,  it  is  emblematic  of  the  incorruptible 
spiritual  body.  Bt.  Augustine  was  desirous  of 
ascertaining  whether  the  fiesh  of  the  bird  had 
really  this  unusual  property,  showing  in  this  a 
sdentiflc  spirit  worthy  of  so  great  a  thinker; 
and,  the  legend  relates,  he  found  that  it  was 
strictly  true. 

In  another  part  of  the  book  we  hear  of  the 
wonderful  marine  bishop  who  was  oaoght  as 
any  mere  merman  might  have  been  caught  in 
the  fifteenth  century  and  in  the  Northern  seas. 
The  ecclesiastical  dignitary  refused  or  was  una- 
ble to  speak,  but  gave  its  episcopai  blessing  to 
its  captors  when  they  released  it,  by  the  well 
known  gesture  (made,  it  appears,  '*  with  iu 
fin  ").    The  unioom,  with  all  its  strange  asso- 


ciations with  maidens,  by  whom  alone  it  can 
be  caught,  is  of  course  a  favorite  attribute  oi 
the  Virgin,  and  the  picture  common  in  the  lat- 
er middle  ages  of  a  unicorn  hunted  and  fiying 
to  a  maiden  as  if  for  shelter  is  capable  of  be- 
ing  explained  in  many  different  ways.  Pearls 
are  drops  of  dew,  which  a  certain  sea^creature, 
coming  to  the  surface,  receives  direct  from 
the  sky.  This  legend  has  also  several  explana- 
tions. 

Stories  like  these,  selected  from  many  an. 
cient  authorities,  or  traced  in  the  carvings 
of  the  earlier  middle  ages  and  in  prints  of  a 
later  time,  fill  this  book  from  cover  to  cover. 
A  very  full  index  serves  to  unlock  all  its  mys- 
teries in  their  turn.  It  is  as  well  read  by  the 
use  of  the  index  as  in  any  other  way.  For 
example,  we  found  our  curiosity  greatly  ex- 
cited by  the  entry,  **  Luther,  Martin,  on  the 
aqueous  origin  of  swallows,"  and  on  turning 
to  page  149  read  how  Luther,  in  his  com- 
mentary on  Genesis,  confirms  the  text  about 
the  waters  bringing  forth  living  creatures  by 
pointing  out  that,  even  in  his  time,  the  swal- 
lows lay  dormant  under  water  all  winter 
long  and  emerged  every  spring,  even  as  they 
emerged  on  the  fifth  day  of  creation.  To  any 
one  who  desires  a  large  amonnt  of  this  sort  of 
information,  not  very  successfully  organized, 
this  book  may  be  recommended. 


The  Story  of  Cuba :  Her  Struggles  for  Liber- 
ty, the  Cause,  Crisis,  and  Destiny  of  the 
Pearl  of  the  Antilles.  By  Murat  Halstead. 
Illustrated.  Chicago:  The  Werner  Com- 
pany. 1896. 
M&.  Hal8TEAD*8  volume,  apart  from  the  his- 
torical portions,  has  a  certain  value  as  the 
report  of  a  newspaper  correspondent  who  has 
recently  visited  Cuba,  though  the  evidence  it 
contains  is  mainly  what  lawyers  call  '*cumu. 
lative."  The  author  does  not  seem  to  have 
seen  anything  of  the  island  outside  of  Havana, 
nor  to  have  ever  been  behind  the  scenes  either 
of  the  Spanish  or  the  insurrectionary  side.  We 
hear,  as  usual,  a  great  deal  about  the  wrongs 
and  oppressions  of  the  Spaniards,  but,  owing, 
no  doubt,  in  great  measure  to  the  fact  that  the 
rising  is  not  in  the  bands  of  political  men,  no 
definite  explanation  is  given  of  what  sort  of 
redress  is  contemplated,  beyond  emancipation 
from  the  Spanish  yoke.  To  all  inquiries 
**  Cuba  libra  !"  is  the  invariable  reply.  Just  as 
it  might  have  been  in  the  time  of  Bolivar.  But 
the  world,  having  grown  older  and  wiser  than 
it  was  in  Bolivar's  time,  wants  to  know  now 
not  merely  that  some  one  is  struggling  to  be 
free,  but  what  use  he  is  likely  to  make  of  his 
freedom  after  he  has  attained  it.  On  this  point 
the  Cubans  are  absolutely  silent,  and  their  pre- 
sent lack  of  anything  like  an  organized  civil 
government  makes  it  extremely  difficult  to  say 
even  whether  tbey  have  any  political  plan. 
Our  politicians,  therefore,  very  kindly  answer 
the  question  for  them  by  saying  that  of  course 
Cuba  will  become  part  of  the  United  States. 

No  doubt  this  would  in  the  end  redeem  the 
island,  but  it  would  be  a  frightful  piece  of 
work  for  us.  Not  only  should  we  have  to  set 
tie  with  Spain,  for  a  debt  of  millions  has  been 
heaped  up  on  account  of  Cuba  for  which  Spain 
is  responsible,  but  we  should  add  to  our  domain 
the  country  which  Mr.  Halstead  describee— an 
island  nearly  the  size  of  England,  inhabited  by  a 
couple  of  mUlions,  or  less,  of  blacks  and  whites, 
the  former  only  recently  freed,  and  neither  race 
having  shown  any  political  qualides,  while 
both  are  fond  of  fighting  and  lawlessness.  Out- 
side the  cities  (Gallenga,  in  his  prophetio 
'  Pearl  of  the  AntUles,'  describes  the  begiiiiiiiig 


June  25,  1896] 


Xhe    Nation. 


497 


of  the  prooMil  tba  caltirated  territory  It  re- 
tepdng  into  waste»  and,  as  the  preaent  war  it  a 
maraodinf  and  predatory  war,  the  entire 
tngar  and  tobaooo  **  plant,**  ootaide  the  placet 
goarded  by  troopa,  it  being  dettrojred.  But  if 
we  are  to  ooodder  onnelvea  at  heirt  of  the 
prc^MTty,  thit  fact  it  not  of  to  much  im- 
portance at  that  the  place  of  everything  de- 
ttroyed  it  being  taken  by  debt,  and  that  the 
population  it  oompoaed  of  Tery  poor  materialt 
for  telf-gOTemmeot.  The  island  it  naturally 
to  rich  that  a  few  yean  would  repair  the 
watte,  but  what  Senatort  it  would  tend  to 
Wathington,  what  delegatet  and  altematee  to 
national  oonTentiont!  Our  Southern  tlave- 
holdert*  longing  for  Cuba  wat  the  natural 
diteated  craying  for  a  ttimulant  adapted  to  re- 
iuTigorate  an  exhautted  todal  organitm;  the 
Southern  demagoguet^pretent  pattion  teemt  to 
apring  from  cautet  quite  at  unhealthy. 

To  our  mind,  Mr.  Halttead*t  facts  deetroy 
the  argumantt  tuggetted  by  politioal  fancy. 
The  argument  from  **dettiny,**  however,  it 
unanswerable,  and  always  hat  been  to  thote 
who  beUeve  in  it.  Cuba  belongt  by  destiny  to 
the  United  Statet.  jutt  at  Canada  and  Mexico 
do,  to  tay  nothing  of  South  America ;  it  it  alto 
part  of  dettiny  that  the  pretent  owners  of  these 
countries  should  vigorously  redst  parting  with 
them*  to  that  it  will  probably  be  centuries  be- 
ore  destiny  it  aocompUthed  satisfactorily  to 
all  parties.  Newspaper  correspondents,  how> 
ever,  occupy  themselves  much  with  ttie  future, 
and  we  are  glad  to  know  from  Mr.  Halttead 
that  it  will  all  turn  out  right  in  the  end. 


fTomen  in  EnglUh  hift^  from  Medissval  to 
Modem  Timet.  By  Qeorgiana  Hill,  author 
of  *  A  History  of  English  Drees.*  2  volt., 
8vo,  pp.  xz,  SSO-deSS.  London:  Richard 
Benttey  ft  Son;  New  York:  Macmillan. 

**TmE  sixteenth  century  wat  Bngland*t  great 
literary  renaiwance.  Freeh  ttreamt  of  mtel- 
lectual  life  were  poured  into  the  nation. 
There  wat  aetirity  in  all  departments  of 
thought.  The  study  of  poetry,  of  theolof^,  of 
the  olaasict  went  on  apace.  The  printing- 
prett  wat  letting  looee  floodt  of  knowledge. 
The  tide  twept  the  women  of  the  nobiuty 
along  in  itt  course.** 

Seven  hundred  paget  of  ttale  "  tiatementt  ** 
of  thit  kind  do  not  make  a  book  to  be  warmly 
welcomed;  and  the  many  chapters,  and.  the 
eountleas  paragraphs  of  sentences  eight,  ten, 
twelve  wo«\ls  long,  chopped  off  with  an  ab- 
rupt fun  stop,  are  not  easy  reading.  The 
truth  it,  there  it  no  pulte  of  ritaUty  in  theee 
volumet:  thedeadneat  of  mechanical  produc 
tlon  pervades  them.  They  contain  a  matt  of 
information— many  mttsss,  rather— but  for  the 
most  part  of  a  somewhat  trivial  quality,  and 
which  few  peraons  could  profitably  select  from 
and  oook  the  facte  for  themselves,  while,  in  its 
present  condition,  no  literary  stomach  could 
digest  It.  The  reader  can  only  regret  that  so 
much  ability  for  painstaking  has  been  to  mit- 
appUed,  and  that  such  attractive  looking  vol- 
umes should  contain  so  little  for  either  an  idle 
or  a  studious  hour.  A  heap,  however  large,  of 
uneorted  pebbles,  even  though  they  may  have 
been  brought  from  a  distance,  creates  only  a 
cairn  that  does  not  long  detain  the  steps  of  the 
traveller. 

The  work  treato  of  five  •'periods.**  Period 
L,  '•  Women  in  the  Days  of  Peudaliam,**  it  dis 
miseed  in  a  hundred  pages.  Period  IL,  **  Eng- 
land after  the  Renaianmoe,**  occupies  two  bun* 
dred;  Period  ni.,  "Ufe  In  the  Last  Century,'* 
one  hundred  and  thirty;  and  Period  IV'.,**  Wo- 
men in  the  Victorian  Era,**  just  twice  as  many. 
The  longest  **periods,**  the  nineteenth  century 


and  the  seventeenth,  are  the  most  readable. 
The  glimpses  of  the  great  ladies  and  city  dames 
of  the  Stuart  ages  in  their  domestic  life  and  in 
their  petitions  to  Parliament  afford  some  en- 
tertainment; but  here  especially  is  needed 
careful  information  regarding  the  difference 
in  the  value  of  money  then  and  now,  to 
which  the  authoress  only  casually  refers^  and 
which  constantly  bears  an  important  relation 
to  the  matters  touched  upon.  The  sketches  of 
her  contemporaries  given  by  Miss  Hill  present 
with  praiseworthy  impartiality  a  view  of  the 
philanthropic,  the  professional,  the  political 
woman  we  all  know — the  pykhlic  woman,  the 
**  modem  woman.**  The  account  of  the  Prim- 
roee  League  and  the  Women's  Liberal  Federa- 
tion is  too  short  to  do  more  than  excite  curi- 
osity at  to  the  methods  of  these  organ izations; 
but  it  succeeds  in  doing  that.  Everywhere 
there  is  a  deplorable  lack  of  accurate  refe- 
rences to  the  ** authorities**  of  the  compiler,  to 
her  touroet  of  infof  mation,  which  makes  it  en- 
tirely  impossible  to  study  ** after'*  her,  to 
**look  up*' any  point  of  interest  in  her  com- 
panionship. There  are  few  glaring  mistakes. 
One  occurs  in  vol.  ii.,  p.  17,  where  Horace 
Walpole  is  spoken  of  as  the  brother  (not  the 
son)  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole. 


Strik€8  and  Social  Problems.    By  J.  Shield 

Nicholson.  Macmillan  &  Co.  1896. 
Thx  title  of  this  book  is  not  very  well  chosen. 
It  suggests  that  we  are  to  consider  the  relation 
of  strikes  to  other  phenomena  in  the  industrial 
world;  but  this  is  only  partly  true.  What  we 
have  here  is  really  a  collection  of  essays  on  a 
number  of  interesting  subjects— essays  which 
have  little  more  unity  than  what  comes  from 
being  bound  within  the  same  covers.  Never- 
thelett,  they  are  to  meritorious  as  to  be  worth 
reading  by  eoonomittt,  and  to  deeerve  the  care- 
ful attention  of  thinking  people  in  general. 
Their  dittinguishing  mark  is  common  sense- 
not  the  distinguishing  mark  of  a  good  deal  of 
the  recent  writing  on  economic  subjects— and 
they  are  extremely  clear  and  simple  in  state- 
ment. Their  significance  from  the  economic 
point  of  view  is  their  decorous  but  unmistaka- 
ble repudiation  of  the  socialistic  tendencies 
that  have  largely  prevailed  in  England  since 
Mill  and  Caimes  passed  away.  It  is  high  time 
for  protest  of  this  kind,  and  Prof.  Nicholson 
will  find  plenty  of  people  ready  to  be  con- 
verted. 

We  can  mention  but  a  few  of  the  fallacies 
which  have  had  much  popularity  with  this 
generation,  and  which  Prof.  Nicholson  punc 
turet.  It  has  been  to  vehemently  ass^^rted  as 
to  be  commonly  believed  that  the  rise  of  wages 
during  the  last  fifty  years  has  been  due  to  the 
trade  unions.  Trade  unions  have  insisted  that 
wages  should  be  raised,  and  wages  have  rben; 
that  has  established  the  relation  of  cauHe  and 
effect  for  many  people  in  England,  ju«t  as  the* 
tariff  is  held  to  be  the  efficient  forc«  in  thin 
country.  Prof.  Nicholson  points  out  that 
these  unions  have  not  invented  maohim*,  or 
opened  markets,  or  extended  credit.  They 
have  probably,  on  the  whole,  diailciiibed  pro- 
duction and  discouraged  enterprise;  and  if 
they  follow  the  leaden  that  are  now  mo»t 
prominent,  they  will  seriously  interfere  with 
commercial  prospexity.  Ho  of  the  'MlTing- 
wage"  theory.  Prof.  Nichol«on  says  flatly 
that  to  suppoee  that  any  class  of  Imborprs  can 
obtain  higher  wages  by  refusing  to  work  for 
lower  wages  is  a  grott  and  mischievous  fallacy, 
and  he  tupporta  his  assertion  by  sufficient 
proofs.  Combination  Is  futile  to  effect  it  ex- 
cept when  competition  would  effect  it    And, 


after  all  the  abuse  that  has  been  heaped  upon 
competition,  it  is  the  great  preeerve^  of  free- 
dom and  promoter  of  equality. 

We  cannot  follow  the  arguments  with  which 
Prof.  Nicholson  disposes  of  the  philoeophers  of 
the  Fabian  school,  or  exposes  the  shallow  cri- 
tics  of  the  great  economists  of  former  days. 
We  must  content  ourselves  with  general  praise 
of  bi^  methods  and  specific  commendation  of 
the  essay  on  the  *' Reality  of  Induttria)  Pro- 
gress," that  on  the  *'  Classical  Political  Econo- 
my," and  the  "  Plea  for  Industrial  Liberty." 
Altogether,  the  book  is  wholesome  and  ttimu. 
latiog  in  a  high  degree,  and  time  spent  in 
reading  it  is  time  well  spent. 


The  Sun.    By  C.    A.    Toung,   Ph.D.,   LL.D. 

New  and  revised  edition.  Appletoos. 
This  popular  work,  originally  published  fifteen 
years  ago,  has  already  passed  through  four  or 
five  editions,  in  which  It  has  been  kept  mea- 
surably up  to  date  by  the  expedient  of  notes 
and  appendices.  But  during  thit  fertile  period 
the  advances  in  our  knowledge  have  been  so 
great  as  to  necessitate  a  thorough  rewriting. 
Past  investigations  upon  the  sun*s  distance  have 
been  so  corrected  that  one  can  now  rely  upon 
the  round  value  93,000,000  miles,  and  a  corre- 
sponding parallax  a  trifie  lees  than  8'.8,  with 
practical  certainty  that  no  subsequent  reeearch 
within  the  next  quarter  century  can  displace 
it.  Dr.  Oill  of  Cape  Town  and  Prof.  New- 
comb  of  Washington  have  mainly  contributed 
to  this  result  Prof.  Toung  makes,  however, 
a  very  proper  reservation  at  to  the  •mbarrast- 
ment  of  the  aberration  method  due  to  the 
newly  found  fiuctuation  of  terrestrial  latitudes; 
and  it  is  altogether  probable  that  our  next 
note «ror thy  improvement  in  the  sun*s  distance 
will  come  from  a  research  taking  full  acoount 
of  this  perplexing  variation.  So  thoroughly 
at  home  is  Prof.  Young  in  all  the  varied  llnea 
of  solar  work  that  one  need  fear  no  inaccuracy 
in  his  account  of  the  labors  of  others.  Hit 
presentation  of  recent  advanoet  in  photogra- 
graphy  of  the  solar  spectrum  embraoee  a  new 
and  interesting  plate  of  the  great  Princeton 
spectroscope;  and  proper  r^ard  Is  paid  to 
Prof.  Rowland's  epoch-making  work  at  the 
Johns  Hopkins  University  (dating  from  about 
18)M),  and  now  everywhere  acc^ted  as  the 
standard),  to  the  extraordinary  cleamees  and 
beauty  of  execution  which  characterise  the  de- 
tailefl  photographic  maps  of  Mr.  Hlggs  of 
LivertxK)],  and  to  the  excellent  m^ps  of  the  late 
M.  Tbollon  of  Nice,  showing  the  ^larying  ap- 
l>earance  of  the  spectrum  oorretpondlng  to 
different  altitudes  of  the  sun.  The  preeence  of 
known  terrestrial  elements  In  the  sun  has  been 
very  fully  Investigated  by  Prof.  Rowland  in 
the  last  few  years,  and  he  can  thus  far  reckon 
with  certainty  about  forty  elementt.  Indium, 
platinum,  tungsten,  uranium,  and  a  few  others 
are  doubtful ;  chlorine,  fiuorine,  iodine,  and 
bromine  are  among  those  not  yet  tried  by  Prof. 
Rowland;  while  antimony,  gold,  phosphomt, 
mercury,  iralphur,  and  about  ten  othen  leet 
pn>miueot  are  not  yet  found  in  the  sun.  But 
as  Prof.  Rowland  has  himself  remarked,  his 
failure  to  find  them  is  very  flttle  evidence  of 
their  abMnce  from  the  sun  itself.  Two  other 
el^nienu  retiulre  especial  ootloe  from  their 
mauife«tation  of  bright  Itnga— coronlum,  not 
yet  trai^d  to  earth;  and  halttun«  finally  identi- 
fled  by  Ramsay  last  year,  in  connection  with 
bis  researches  upon  argon,  discovered  by  Lord 
Raylelgh  and  himself  as  a  hitherto  unrecog* 
biz«d  constituent  of  our  atmosphere.  Helium, 
It  has  been  found,  can  be  obtained  from  nearly 
all  the  uranium  minerals,  in  tome  instanoea 


498 


Tlie    !N"atioii. 


[VoL  62,  No.  161 7 


commiii|led  with  argon  and  in  others  nearly 
pure,  lleteoric  iron  contains  it,  also  the 
waters  A  certain  mineral  springs  in  the  Pyre- 
nees and  the  Black  Forest;  indeed,  as  F^of. 
Tounk  sajs,  it  turns  out  to  be  very  widely  die- 
tribuMd,  although  only  in  very  small  quantl- 
tities,  imd  probably  never  free.  But  whether 
the  new  element  is  really  elementary  or  a 
double  compound  is  not  yet  known,  and  this 
quesMon  is  still  under  investigation  by  Runge 
of  Berlin  and  other  leading  spectroscopists, 
who  'hiive  found  that  the  lines  of  its  spectrum 
divide^to  two  sets  mathematically  independ- 
ent of  ei|ch  other. 

Perhaps  the  most  rent^«..able  recent  ad- 
vances  id'  methods  of  k.  research  are  due 
to  Prof.  Hale  of  the  University  of  Chica .  ■», 
whose  ingenious  spectro-heliograph  reo  tb 
full  elucidation  at  the  hands  of  Prof.  Toung. 
Nor  are  the  pictorial  results  obtained  with  it 
neglected,  whether  they  be  f aculaa,  which  Prof. 
Hale  was  the  fltst  to  photograph  in  belts  acron 
the  8un*s  disk,  feimilar  to  those  in  which  the  or- 
dinary dark  fpots  occur,  or  the  protuberance 
which  he  (followed  by  Deslandree  of  Paris)  now 
photographs  at  any  time  by  monochromatic 
light,  at  any  or  all  parts  of  the  sun^s  limb  where 
they  may  show  themselves. 

We  can  hardly  afford  space  for  even  mention 
of  all  the  modem  researches  sufficiently  treat- 
ed by  Prof.  Young;  but  we  have  detected  no 
omission  on  his  part.  Not  only  are  all  obser- 
vational results  dealt  with,  like  Howlett't 
faithful  thirty-flve-year  spot  series  recently 
completei^  but  the  speculative  theories  of 
Brester  aod  Schmidt  receive  that  fair  and 
careful  treatment  which  their  authors  deserve, 
although  naither  of  these  theories  can  be  said 
to  commend  itsMX  in  aU  particulars  to  practi- 
cal students  of  8<^ar  physics.  Also,  we  must 
pass  by  the  late  doterminations  of  the  effective 
temperature  of  th^  sun^s  surface,  equal  to 
about  14,000  degree»  Fahrenheit,  by  Le  Chate- 


lier  and  Wilson  independently,  and  Hale*s  re- 
peated but  unsuccessful  attempts  to  photo- 
graph the  sun's  corona  without  an  eclipse.  But 
no  modem  solar  research  has  aroused  intenser 
interest  than  Prof.  Langley's  investigations  of 
the  infra-red  portion  of  the  solar  spectrum 
through  a  highly  sensitive  heat-measurer  of 
his  own  invention.  His  most  recent  achieve- 
ment with  this  instrument  is  an  ingenious  me- 
thod, accessory  to  it,  by  which  all  the  rapid 
fluctuations  of  the  tract  in  question  are  auto- 
matically photographed  in  a  form  precisely 
comparable  with  the  upper  portions  of  the 
spectram  as  ordinarily  recorded.  We  have 
now,  indeed,  a  complete  chart  of  this  invisible 
heat  spectrum  ten  times  as  long  as  the  sun*s  en- 
tire  luminous  spectrum,  and  there  are  indica- 
tions of  heat  even  farther  below  the  red.  So 
sensitive  is  this  delicate  instrament  that  a 
change  of  temperature  no  g^reater  than  the 
millionth  pai;t  of  a  degree  centigrade  is  detect- 
ible.  But  the  explanation  of  the  geometrical 
arrangement  of  the  lines  in  this  invisible  spec- 
trum is  a  work  hardly  yet  begun. 

A  typographic  inaccuracy  here  and  there, 
as  Burckhardt  for  Burckhalter  (p.  258) ;  and  a 
slip  as  to  the  residence  of  Bigelow  of  the  Signal 
S«*vice,  Washington,  needs  correction  in  a  sub- 
sequent  issue,  which  the  great  importance  of 
the  subject  and  the  rapid  growth  of  solar  in- 
vestigation will  early  render  necessary. 


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