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St. Mary's Hospital Medical School.
The SUMMER SESSION begins on May 1st.
Students entering the School for the Summer Session are enabled to devote its Three Months to the uninterrupted Study of Chemistry, Physics, and Biology, and so to present themselves for the Examinations in those subjects at the end of July. If successful therein, they are free to devote the entire Winter Session to the Lectures, practical work, and study required for the more important professional subjects of Anatomy and Physiology.
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THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
CONTENTS.—No. 283.—APRIL 21, 1894.
Notes . . ; ° ° ° 3 . 567 The Budget . , ; ‘ ‘ , » 370 The Roy: al Wedding. ‘ , ‘ » 970 The New Egyptian Ministry ‘ ‘ » 371 Democracy—Real or Sham ? , ‘ » 572 Two Colonial Statesmen , ° ; . 573 The Spring Racing ; ‘ : ‘ . 574 Budge or C onscience ? By Athelstan Riley . 575 The Mistrust of Trusts . ‘ ‘ . 576 The Mania of the Moment in Paris : 577 A Bundle of Letters, II. Miss Mitford (contd.) 578
The Spring Flowers of South Wales. By
M. M. ‘ , ° : ° . . 579 Bypaths in Literature. By Sir Herbert Maxwell . ° ‘ ° - 580
The Refinement of Humanity : ‘ . 581
The Lament of the Fly-Fisher , ; . 582
The Philosopher and the Chorus-girl. By Anthony Hope . ‘ . . ‘
The Faust Revival , " ‘ : . 584 Musical Notes . ; . , : . 585 Correspondence :
Egyptian Politics , ° ° , . 586 Old English Towns , : , , . 586 Versiculi ‘ ‘ ‘ . , ‘ . 587 Oatpa Osacbac a : : ‘ . 588 Fiction . ; ; , . ? , . 589 Hafiz. II. His Own Mysticism. By Sir F.
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Tun Narionat OBSERVER
A Reeord and Review
Vou. XI. (New Series)
APRIL 21, 1894
No. 28 3
NOTES
Great disappointment has been expressed in the musical worl of London at the inability of the Queen to open the new Royal College of Music at South Kensington. The ceremony is now fixed to take place on 2nd May in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Her Majesty will naturally require some rest at Windsor after her return from Coburg, and it is not improbable that the Drawing-Room on 4th May will be held by the Princess of Wales.
Tue Prince of Wales is expected in London on Tuesday next, and he will be joined by the Princess of Wales and the Princesses Victoria and Maud, from Sandringham, at Marlborough House on Saturday the 28th. A Levée will be held on some date between the 4th and 10th of May, but the exact day will not be fixed until the Prince of Wales returns. The Duke of Coburg will be present at this function, which is sure to be popular with the navy on that account.
Tuere is no truth in the rumour that the Queen has intervened in the dispute raised over the allowance of £10,000 a year made by Parliament to the Duke of Coburg. The Duke is retaining that sum for the proper maintenance of Clarence House, where he will take up his residence upon his arrival from Germany on the 28th inst. From the list of entertainments now in preparation, it seems likely that he will spend in this country two or three times the amount of his annuity during his month’s stay.
Tue Queen's determination to disperse the Royal stud at Hampton Court Paddocks has caused the greatest sur- prise, and is the question of the hour among racing men, No adequate reason is as yet forthcoming. The stud has always paid its way, and owing to judicious selection the breed has greatly improved under the management of Sir George Maude. La Fléche and Sainfoin may be men- tioned among the yearlings that have been sold at the Bushey Paddocks. When the stud has been sold off the Paddocks will be let to the first tenant, as was the case in 1837 when a former dispersal took place on the Queen’s accession. The Royal stud was re-established by the Prince Consort in 1850.
Tir event of European importance of recent days has been the presence or absence of the Prince of Bulgaria on the occasion of the Coburg wedding. Thereby hung the issue of his reconciliation with Russia, which the Corres- pondents were so hasty to prognosticate. We were told that Russia was willing and that the Prince was more than willing, but that M. Stambulov disliked the very name of Barkis. It is strange how magnificently ignorant the
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correspondents are of everything but the obvious. When will they realise that M. Stambulov donned long ago the livery of Austria and that his pose of Balkan Bismarck may any day involve its Friedrichsruhe ?
He has his uses, no doubt, or he would not be suffered to remain, but while he is a boor, the Prince is a states- man, and, with little Boris (Infant Honorary Captain of all those Regiments) to back him up, commands the situation. As for the Russian Alliance, it cannot be off-hand but must depend on a variety and intricacy of detail. Though doubtless not easy, it is not impossible and, with Francis Joseph as mediator, there is no reason why it should not be a step towards that golden age which Young Father William vainly seeks to induce the Tsar to inaugurate.
Tue wedding of Don Carlos with the Princess Mary Bertha of Rohan has now been definitely appointed for Saturday next, the 28th instant, when Cardinal Schoenborn, Prince-Archbishop of Prague and Primate of Bohemia, will perform the ceremony at Prague. The bride will be married from the Rohan Palace on the Kleinseite, where breakfast will be served to a large number of guests, in- cluding several Carlist generals and deputations from the north of Spain. On the same evening the Duke and Duchess of Madrid will start for the Palazzo Loredan, which has been for many years the bridegroom’s residence on the Grand Canal at Venice, and where the honeymoon is now to be spent.
Tue stoning of pilgrims in Valencia affords an object- lesson in unofficial Radicalism’s chivalry and tolerance of other views among the masses, as well as in stalled Radicalism’s power and zeal to maintain public order. That the party press should have fomented passion against a law-abiding peasantry, whose only offence was a religious exercise; that women should have been injured and insulted; that religion should have been outraged, and the Church turned into a laughing-stock ; these are no new departures, and might at any time, without stress of inconsistency, find inclusion in a New- castle ‘ program.’
Bur the official attitude, while confirming obvious anticipations, creates a partial precedent. Sefor Aguilera, the Spanish Asquith, cynically neglected preliminary warnings and, when confronted with consequences, kept silence as to violated order, indulging merely in cheap sneers upon the fanaticism of pilgrimage and upon possible abuse of Italian ‘hospitality’ (save the mark!). The incident had evidently pleased, as a graceful sop to Savoyard susceptibilities touching a Pope-King. But the ingrained religiosity of Catholic Spain cannot fail to resent, nor can universal Democracy fail to observe, that Radical intolerance now takes aim at decency and piety, no longer at wealth and breeding merely.
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568 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
Tue French, it appears, are making insidious advances upon neutral territory in Central Africa. For many years they have had the advantage of a consistent colonial policy, which has remained unaffected by constant changes of Government—a state of things which forms a striking contrast to the custom which obtains in this country. With us, a policy of annexation is presently succeeded by the exact reverse, or worse still, by no policy at all. Thus we play into the hands of encroaching rivals.
We have been in the habit of underestimating the importance of French colonial enterprise. At this moment, unless Government decide at once upon definite action, we stand to lose altogether the wide belt of country which stretches across the northern boundary of the Congo Free State from French territory on the west to Italian on the east. Should this happen, it would limit the spread of British influence northward to Latitude 5, and would thus render impracticable any scheme for uniting South Africa with Egypt. Here is a pressing danger: but it is only one among many in this connection to which the vacillation of the Government exposes the country.
Tue tragedy of Carmen Sylva has now entered upon its fifth act and the final stage cannot now, alas, be long delayed. The mental strain of her family differences, the forsaking of those own familiar friends, whom she had pro- tected and advanced, and, most of all, the forcible separa- tion of Vacarescu, the well-beloved, have finally unhinged her brain. If, for State purposes, exile was unavoidable, a gentler regimen would surely have sufficed. It is now many weary months that she has been virtually a prisoner in a gloomy castle by the Rhine with her gloomy mother for gaoler.
Tue meeting of the Grand Habitation of the Primrose League at the Covent Garden Theatre, on Thursday, was an entire success, and next year the assemblage would do well to engage the Albert Hall. Lord Salisbury’s speech was in his best vein, keenly logical, and yet entirely within the limits of sober reasoning. The most significant passage dealt with the grounds upon which the House of Lords will remodel the Registration Bi!l. Lord Salisbury sbjects to the strong danger of persona- tion which the measure creates, and also to the altogether insufficient qualification of residence. On the functions of the Upper House he spoke with obvious propriety, but the subject has become threadbare by now. He restated the undeniable truth, that the Lords cannot pronounce ‘a permanent, definite, irreversible decision’; but they ean bring, through a dissolution, the sense of the country to bear on the question. Also he pressed home the un- answerable contention that an elective element in the Lords must cause that House to assume a position of equality to the other, and so defeat the very ends which Radicalism hopes to achieve.
Or the extra-Parliamentary speeches delivered during the week by Ministerialists, the most important has been that made by Mr. Asquith at Devonport. The Home Secretary declared that the Government would carry Welsh Disestablishment ‘and some other measures’ through the House of Commons. Further, the Bill in question is to be introduced possibly next week, and cer- tainly before the Whitsuntide recess. Yet in the same breath he disclaimed all idea of bringing forward Bills that have no chance of passing. The season of the year considered, as also the fact that a Budget and a Regis- tration Bill, bristling with contentious features, are already before the House, Mr. Asquith may have subse- quent reason to regret his rash pronouncement.
[April 21, 1894
Tur House of Commons amused itself on Wednesday, by carrying the second reading of a Bill for the repeal of the Crimes Act, introduced under the Parnellite auspices. Although accepted by Mr. John Morley on behalf of the Government the measure will scarcely have any practical effect, and the whole business was a mere farce. All the same the Unionists might well have made better figures in the division. Owing to unpaired absentees, Colonel Nolan had his way by a majority of 60, and thus a retro- spective condemnation was passed upon a vital part of Lord Salisbury’s Irish policy.
Tue Government is still plunging desperately into fog which Sir George Trevelyan has discovered. Tues- day’s debate on Mr. Balfour's amendment to the proposal of a Scotch Grand Committee rather confused than cleared the issues. Though the leader of the Opposition was defeated by a majority of 33, the fact remains that every argument employed by Ministerial spokesmen applies equally to English Grand Committees. Indeed, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman actually admitted that the Government was prepared to concede similar institutions to Wales and Ireland, though not to the ‘ predominant partner. However, Sir John Lubbock’s amendment extending the principle to England, will at least force a declaration upon this very material point.
Ir the Conservative Associations have learnt anything from the lesson of the London County Council elections, they will bestir themselves at once. The Radicals are already at work with their organisation to capture seats on the Parish Councils, and will spare no pains to sweep the board. Their latest move is to arrange a Convention in Leicester for the purpose of instructing their agents in the Midland Counties how to work the elections. Where are the Conservative Conventions? and what is the Primrose League doing ?
A comparison between the figures of the Customs and Excise official returns for the fortnight ending on the 14th of this month, and those of the corresponding period of last year is not without interest. Last year’s figures are: Customs, £786,000; Excise, £838,000. This year they have risen to £948,000 and £994,000 respectively. That the official secret of the extra sixpence leaked out seems obvious from these figures. The Chancellor of the Ex- chequer should find out the channel through which it escaped, with so much resulting loss to the revenue of this year.
Tue continued postponement of Lord Coleridge's re- tirement from the Lord Chief Justiceship has apparently impressed Sir Charles Russell with the unwisdom of imitating the sopian dog who sacrificed the substance in pursuit of the shadow. As much may be inferred, at any rate, from the Attorney-General’s acceptance of the succession to the late Lord Bowen in the Court of Appeal. Security of tenure is the last thing of which the Rosebery Government can boast, and the disposal of Lord Coleridge’s office—whenever he may make up his mind to vacate it—may conceivably fall into other hands than theirs. The real goal of Sir Charles Russell’s ambition was, of course, the barred Lord Chancellorship; but he has evidently despaired of the passing of any such Relief Bill as Mr. Gladstone devised in his interest during the last Parliament. His disappearance from the House of Commons will no doubt involve a spirited fight in South Hackney, where, however, he had a majority of four figures at the General Election.
Peckrorton Castie, Cheshire, where Lord and Lady Tollemache entertained a large party last week for the
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April 21, 1894]
Tarporley Hunt Races, is notable as the home of two of the most charming little canvases of Sir Joshua Reynolds ; the Contemplative Youth and Robina. Ten years ago Peckforton could boast of four beautiful full-length Sir Joshuas, one of which was the well-known Thais, but they were sold shortly before the late Lord Tollemache’s death to Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, and are now to be seen at Waddesdon. ‘The pictorial glory of Peckforton is lessened by this loss, but still shines brightly enough in two exceptionally fine landscapes by Richard Wilson, and The Market Cart by George Morland, which is worthy to be placed by the beautiful In a Stable in the National Gallery.
Tue appeal to the Prince of Wales from certain South American Freemasons exposes the great gulf fixed between the modern English view of Freemasonry and its former anathema maranatha on the Continent, where it has become synonymous with Continental Liberalism, once defined by Disraeli as ‘ hostility to kings and gods.’ But the head of the Roman Church viewed not always Freemasonry with the open hostility of the Pontiff. It is even whispered that Pio Nino himself was at one time a Freemason. If so, it was probably during his service under the first Empire as an officer in the Italian army, for Freemasonry was then general among those officers. Certain it is that, when he ascended the Papal throne, the secret societies were full of mysterious hopes, and though these were destined never to be realised, they can scarcely have been self-sown.
Sratistics show that in Australia there are not at present enough women to provide every man with a wife ; in fact, if every woman married once only, one man in seven would have to remain unmarried; while in the United Kingdom, if every man married once only, one woman in seventeen would have to remain unmarried. In the old days, when only the black sheep went out to the Colonies, there was of course little question of the women of their families joining them; but now, when well behaved and cultivated men are becoming colonists, they naturally wish that cultivated women would emigrate too, so that they might have wives and companions who would refine their homes as well as help them in their work. On the other hand, there are many cultivated women in the United Kingdom who quite agree as to the mutual benefit to be gained.
Tue question of Antipodean victuals is reaching an acute A generation has arisen which knows not good Yet a little while and the ordinary man about town will have forfeited his taste in pre salé as hopelessly as he did his taste in port a generation ago. As it is, he oftener than not tolerates the baking of his joints, in which case it matters little if they have indeed been previously frozen A man usually has the meat he
stage. meat and is indifferent how it may be cooked.
or petrified or what not. deserves, as a country its government.
Ir butchers discover that their customers cannot dis- tinguish good, home-grown meat when they get it —why, like Cabinet Ministers, butchers are only human. Dealers in horse-flesh have already given them a lead in establish- ing the caveat emptor principle ; let us be thankful for small mercies if only the lead be not followed after a more literal fashion. . came
Tue possibilities of electric cooking have at length been satisfactorily demonstrated, and the various London electricity supply companies will shortly be in a position to lease the necessary apparatus to their consumers. The cost, it appears, is likely to be about 25 per cent. more than that of gas. Nothing can be more delightful than
fTHE NATIONAL OBSERVER 569
such a system: the heat may be regulated to a nicety: there is no waste, no dirt, and a minimum of labour, We gather that the boiling of water is something of a difficulty at present : but time will doubtless remove this disability, Meanwhile the electrical engineer has made a long stride towards that empire of the future into which we must all desire to see him enter.
Tur Society of Jesus considers that Mr. Rider Haggard has had ample time to prosecute those researches into the conventual discipline of medieval Mexico which the Society believes him to be prosecuting. Father Herbert Thurston, S.J., in a letter to the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazetle, calls upon Mr. Haggard to publish results. Meanwhile, Father Thurston has been credibly informed by Sefor Agreda, librarian of the National Museum at Mexico, that the mummy about whom the discussion arose is that of a woman who ‘was personally known in her lifetime to the cemetery chaplain who gave them information concerning it’ (sic).
Axso her hair was braided, which proves at once, says Father Thurston, that she was not a nun, and therefore could not have been ‘immured :’ ergo, it was never the practice of the Church of Rome to wall up her refractory daughters. That is very satisfactory. But it may be doubted if a newspaper controversy is an entirely success- ful method of advancing the prestige of the Church whereof Father Thurston is so zealous a disciple.
SometTuinG has already come of the enlargement of the Daily News. It has found space to devote to an article— with profuse quotations—on ‘Some Poetry of the Day,’ and in so doing has materially helped to explain how it comes about that the post of Laureate still remains vacant. Lord Rosebery is not by any means likely to rush in where so practised a literary critic as Mr, Gladstone feared to tread. But, remembering the fact that Mr. Lewis Morris was for some time spoken of as the ‘ Radical candidate’ for the crown of bays, it is rather too bad of the Daily News to embellish its article with some feeble doggerel wherein the Welsh bard has treated the execu- tion of the Anarchist Vaillant. It is the special function of a Poet Laureate to turn out verses d’occasion, and if the quotation represents the best that the author of Zhe Epic of Hades can do in this direction, there is a good deal of reason for congratulation that the ‘ Radical candidate’ remains a candidate still.
A votume of collected verse by Mr. Andrew Lang is more than usually welcome in rather a dull week. The lines on ‘The Haunted Homes of England’ should be specially interesting to the disappointed purchaser of Cumnor Place. Mr. Charles Booth will publish shortly, with Messrs. Maemillan, his new book on The Aged Poor in England and Wales, The result of his inquiries has already been communicated in part to the Statistical Society. It is announced that Zhe Newbery House Magazine is to be issued for the future by Messrs. A. D, Innes and Co., though no change will be made for the present in the title of the magazine. Mr, William Graham contributes to the May number of the New Review an article on ‘ Keats and Severn,’ which will contain some fresh facts and reflections. JVilliam Blacklock, Journalist, is a promising title for a novel, when it is known that its author is the editor of the /Veekly Scotsman, The pub lishers will be Messrs. Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier.
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570 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
THE BUDGET
IR W. HARCOURT has profited largely, and we b hasten to add not unfairly, by the visible emotion of agreeable surprise created by his Budget. A certain sense of pleased relief is discoverable in the loud praise of his Radical friends. ‘They had been telling him in their most loud-mouthed style that if his Budget did not come up to expectation the most grievous consequences would follow, from which it may be safely concluded that they had tremours as to what they were to expect. When they learnt that they were to have an instalment of ‘democratisation, they were so pleased that they forgot all about that free breakfast-table which they had been insisting upon as indispensable twenty-four hours earlier, but found themselves quite able to dis- pense with when they knew that they were not to get it. The satisfaction of the rest of the world is most intelligible. The great majority of Englishmen who pay income-tax must have come down to breakfast on Tuesday morning with a gloomy foreboding that their papers would inform them of an extra twopence on the most hateful of all imposts. When it turned out that there was only to be a penny, and sweetened by remis- sions into the bargain, they very naturally fell cheer- fully on the toast and bacon, thinking the while more kindly of Sir W. Harcourt than had been their custom hitherto. Something must be allowed for the un- doubted ability of the speech. But this was not really surprising. ‘lhe cleverness of Sir William ought never to be doubted. When he arrives at stupidity it is by the road of too clever by half.
Examination and reflection may lead to the convic- tion that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has fallen into his old error again. One flagrant piece of legerdemain was detected in his speech at once, and promptly nailed down by Mr. Goschen. We refer, as the reader has already concluded, to the supple trick by which Sir W. Harcourt endeavoured to conceal the fact that he had shuffled out of half his deficit by suspending the payment of old debt, and applying the sinking fund to the payment of the liabilities con- tracted by the Naval Defence Act. It was a good thing to do, for the payment of debt is work for prosperous times, and may be legitimately suspended in bad. Excess of ingenuity was shown by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not in doing the thing, which is simple to the last degree, but in his over profuse professions that he was not doing it, and his torturous efforts to conceal what he was about. There is more than a possibility that he may find he allowed his naturally fine turn for girding to run away with him in those ‘ironical compli- ments and veiled attacks, which were merely noted by Mr. Goschen—noted for reply in future. These, however, are but incidents, and details. Where Sir William may well be proved to have shown his ingenuity to excess is in that very vital part of his Budget which deals with the death dues. ‘To simplify the present complicated system, or rather combination of systems by which the State levies its toll on pro- perty as it passes from generation to generation is good. Nobody objects to the doing of the thing in principle. Nor will there be any violent opposition to the graduation of the tax—in principle we say again. The scale chosen is not evtrageous. ‘The greater
[April 21, 1894.
number will not suffer worse than they do, and the smaller will be very rich men, even when they have paid the highest scale. ‘Those who long for the ‘ democrati- sation’ of the Budget will be pleased to see the work fairly begun. Where the over ingenuity is likely to be found to have intruded is in setting about the task as if it were as easy to do as it is to please those who wish it done by a show of zeal. ‘This simplification of the death duties is no trifling piece of work. We doubt whether Sir William will find that his new dues are bearing him fruit at the early date he has fixed. If they do not, his calculations all break down. The mere fact that he has been forced to give up by far the greater part of the money his extra penny on the income tax could bring in, by the necessity of giving some compensation for the additional burden thrown on land, is a warning. ‘The relief given to small incomes is well thought of. Some Unionists may even reflect with a touch of bitterness that it might have been done by them—but what is given up is gone. Sir William cannot impose it safely again. If, then, the sources from which he expects increase fail him, the outlook is gloomy. ‘The tax will, when the remissions are allowed for, produce very little except an additional burden to be borne by that section of the middle-class which Sir W. Harcourt does not think it worth while to pro- pitiate.
Nor is it yet by any means certain that those sixpences on the barrel of beer and the gallon of whisky will bring Sir William luck. It is easy to say that so small an addition cannot be made sensible to the purchaser of glasses of beer or gills of spirits. ‘The buyer of these refreshments has a rooted conviction, based on no trifling experience, that it will be got out of him somewhere. Sir William, answering Mr. Usborne with more tartness than is commonly bestowed on a maiden speech, indicated his belief that all would be well if brewers and distillers would water their profits rather than their liquor. Here he comes in con- flict with a powerful motive of human conduct which has beaten other Chancellors of the Exchequer, and may beat him. ‘Then there is the discontent of Ireland, already expressed by Mr. Clancy, at the sixpence im- posed at the very time when Government is understood to be considering whether that important Irish product is not taxed too highly already. We doubt whether Sir William mproved his case by tumbling over Mr. Clancy as roughly as he did Mr. Usborne, with a rude reminder that the Englishman’s beer already pays too much in proportion to that liquor which constitutes ‘ the pleasure of Irishmen and Scotchmen.’ If the English- man is to be considered in such a case, the occupation of the Nationalist is gone. Ona the whole, one surveys the proceedings of Monday afternoon and evening in the Commons with a feeling that the Budget is in- genious, unexpectedly moderate, well presented, not ill calculated (though that is less certain) to serve the Ministry with the constituencies, but that it is not passed yet, and that much may happen before it is safely through the third reading.
THE ROYAL WEDDING
HE marriage of the Grand Duke of Hesse and Princess Victoria Melita of Coburg has given descriptive journalism an excellent opportunity. But,
1894.
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April 21, 1894]
apart from the pictutesque aspects of the scene, the event deserves the loyal appreciation of every Briton worthy of the name. As the chief magistrate of Coburg remarked, in courtly phrase, it has formed the occasion of a visit from our Queen to the birthplace of that Prince Consort who won her devoted and lifelong attachment. Moreover, her associations with the smiling German town have been strengthened by the circumstance that she has given it a ruler in the person of her second son. Duke Alfred has placed the British Empire so much in his debt by a brilliant naval career, that, though he has been called to other destinies, he will remain for us essentially an Englishman. And if sundry Radicals have blundered upon the morrow of his daughter’s marriage on which to raise pettifogging objections to his allowance, they may almost be thanked for confirming, by their discomfiture, the impregnable position of the dynasty. Again, the Princess Victoria Melita can claim, no less than her father, an English birth and an English education. She goes to add to the number of our royal ladies who, by finding homes in Germany, have established ties between the two Empires of no mean political significance. Nor can we readily forget that her bridegroom is the child of the lamented Princess Alice, whose assiduous nursing con- tributed to save the life of the Prince of Wales, and whose death was, to quote Lord Beaconsfield, ‘ wonder- fully piteous.’ ‘To the young pair Thursday inevitably proved a day of hopes, but to the public it served to evoke memories, and that is the way of tlie world.
The old line, tu ftliax Austria nube, can be applied with distinct propriety to the Coburg race. By marriage connections, supplemented by diplomatic choice, it has acquired ‘a mediatorial influence in Europe to which that exercised by the Danish family is alone comparable, ‘The Queen of England and a former (aicen of Portugal were united to Coburg husbands. B-lgium and Bulgaria have sought from the Coburg Princes the founders of new dynasties. In every instance the selection was thoroughly justified, and both internal developments and the peace of [Europe were aided thereby. ‘There is history to show that the international authority of the late King of the Belgians far exceeded the proportional number of soldiers that he could put in the field. ‘The Prince Consort moulded the counsels of Kurope to no small ex- tent, and, despite the unworthy detraction to which he was on occasions subjected, with uniform sagacity. The prudent tenacity of the line has latterly found a noticeable example in Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, and in the end he must prevail. Moreover, the alliance of Thursday is regarded by Continental opinion as calculated to give stability to the [uropean equilibrium. It is a commonplace of demagogic oratory that the monarchical principle has become obsolete, and that the marriage of a Royal Princess has no more significance than that of a cook-maid. But plain facts establish the directly opposite con- clusion; and it does matter a good deal whither a Romanoff turns for a bride.
There are, no doubt, certain conflicting interests which cannot be neutralised by any family arrange- ments between reigning Houses. ‘They have not availed to modify the rivalry of England and Russia in Central Asia, and the Neue Freie Presse remarks, acutely enough, that a certain Coburg remained away
VOL, XI,
THE NATIONAL OBSERVER 571
on Thursday, namely Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria. At the same time where the tendency is towards har- mony, these unions do aid in tightening the bonds. It seems improbable that her father’s English origin will cause the new Grand Duchess of Coburg to become a particularly cogent pledge of friendly relations between Great Britain and Germany. In the first place the conditions already established are the most favourable possible ; and, in the second, we are compelled, as an insular Power, to refrain from hard-and-fast alliances with States essentially devoted to other interests than ours. On the other hand her Russian descent on the mother’s side may contribute to render the Czar averse from forcing an issue with Central Europe, more espe- cially should the expected happen, and his son lead to the altar the Princess Alix of Hesse. ‘Thereby would be constituted a combination of domestic influences of no small moment, and it should be remembered besides that he has already a niece in Roumania. No doubt the era of Family Compacts has passed, and a revival of the Holy Alliance, in the shape of an Emperor's League, if achievable at all, would be based on reasons other than those of relationship. At the same time despots are human, and when policy joins with inclina- tion, they are scarce likely to assail wantonly their own kithand kin. Accordingly, without attributing undue importance to the marriage, we may fairly hold that it will hasten that alleviation of international hatreds, foreshadowed both by the declarations of Sovereigns and the necessities of their subjects.
THE NEW EGYPTIAN MINISTRY
Hk young Khedive must have read with huge hilarity, not unmixed with a spice of satisfaction, the chorus of our Press, wherein he has been represented as donning the white sheet of repentance and proclaim- ing his anxiety to play the good boy evermore. It is not the first time that legends about his docility have been promulgated, and some risk must ever attend so impetuous a jubilation. Should it be justified by events, let us then express our satisfaction with the most forward ; but let us meanwhile abstain from leap- ing to conclusions in the dark. What if it be but the old sport: that of reculer pour mieux sauter? Until the next move or two shall have been played, it is equally futile to dub Riaz’s dismissal the Khedive’s ‘tacit apology for his faults in the past’ with the Pall Mall Gazette, and to prate of ‘ another ingenious rebuff to England’ with the Vossische Zeitung.
The likeliest clue to the position lies in analysing the Ministry’s composition. ‘The one circumstance which jumps to the eyes is that it was begotten of compro- mise, and its vitality must in large measure depend upon the question whether Egypt does or does not ‘love coalitions. Ina Cabinet of six, there are three undoubted Khedive’s men: Boutros and Mazloum served under Riaz without sharing his disfavour, and his taste for Fakhri nearly lost Abbas his crown last year. Of Fuad the most that can be said is that he is not openly anti-English, while Nubar himself lost office seven years ago through disagreement with him who is now Lord Cromer. So Mustapha Fehmy alone is Lord Cromer’s man, thick and thin. We and he have not forgotten his dismissal of last year any more than Nubar has probably forgotten his of seven years ago, The
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572 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
Khedive would no doubt have preferred Fakhri, and Lord Cromer’s sympathies were for Mustapha Fehmy, but neither would have been acceptable save at the point of the bayonet. The most obvious compromise was to include them both in the same Ministry under a neutral chief. It is the same kind of compromise as a Cabinet might be which included Mr. Sexton and Colonel Saunderson under the neutral leadership of some unknown quantity—Lord Shand, for example. Nubar is a foreigner and so far an unknown quantity that his vast stores of experience and his long years of leadership concerned quite a different Egypt from to- day’s. His Cabinet councils should be Committee- Rooms XV. of even livelier incident, if indeed he commit the imprudence to hold any. The probable array may be on the one hand, a Khedive’s Cabinet within the Cabinet, and, on the other, Lord Cromer’s representa- tion in the person of Mustapha I'ehmy, with Nubar, ever courteous, ever bland, ever attentive, knowing his own mind and holding the balance remorselessly as pivot of the situation. One thing may be taken for certain, there will be no Cabinet secrets.
On the whole, however, the prospect for Egypt is far from hopeless, and for England far from disconcert- ing. Ifthe important concessions, which the Khedive has secured in the formation of his Ministry, prove anything, they prove that Lord Cromer considers his own position unassailable. If Nubar be not the ‘Englishman, as his antagonists were once wont sneer- ingly to style him, his sympathies are unmistakably not French. And his past career has given evidence of zeal for the material progress of Egypt: extended public works, assured security of life and property, and an improved condition ef the fellaheen, such as are owed to the British occupation. Moreover, the Khedive will find it infinitely harder to create incidents under the suave tutelage of this old diplomat, before whose tact and assurance difficulties melt away. Nubar is a shrewd man of the world, who will countenance no headlong courses. Disraeli pronounced him the greatest Statesman of the East, which is to say of the world, for Statesmanship has ever been of Oriental cradling. And with a firm hand at the helm, what is there to fear ? Abbas has personal charm, youth, generosity, courage, enthusiasm, and even ability on his side, but he is practically friendless. ‘Lhe native party has no initiative and no staying power. In anony- mous newsleaders, it may be and often is truculent, but a call to arms or even a whisper of open conflict would disperse it like a bubble. ‘The days when an Arabi was possible are long past: did there arise such a one out of due season, he would find himself a leader unfollowed. The Sultan has no sympathy for the youth, being a statesman, and therefore no enthusiast. Recent advances were rebutted by the Porte, and, during the Kitchener crisis, the whisper at Constantinople was of deposition, the general feeling one of resentment at a precipitancy so foreign to the Turkish character.
‘Who is this youth? He did not build the Pyramids,’ was the phrase in the air, and it was in vain to urge that the youth had not been afforded time for such a task, And the Sultan is the arbiter in the drama, for Abbas comes of no Divine-right dynasty. His ancestors were mere Turkish Valis, who were liable to recall on any pretext. The
[April 21, 1894
dignity of Khedive was obtained for the family by this very Nubar, to whose judicious intervention its safeguarding may now be due. The best advice for Abbas, if he desire a useful and distinguished career, is to accept the sage monitions of the now old Minister, who has come back to ward off disaster. Should the wilful youth persist in his own wilful gait, he may find his brother playing Jacob to his Esau, and accepting the succession as Vali from the Porte.
DEMOCRACY—REAL OR SHAM ?
§ PERRYMANDERING?’ is the favourite adjective
to apply to the Registration Bill by those who do not like it. Strictly speaking, this term of art is not used quite correctly by the hostile critics of Mr. Morley’s pseudo-Reform Bill. To jerrymander, in the technical language of American politics, is so to redistribute seats and rearrange constituencies as to secure an electioneering advantage for your own party. In that sense the Government Bill does not jerrymander, since it carefully abstains from redistributing seats at all. But it does something analogous, for which we have no precise and convenient phrase in our political terminology. It cuts off votes from those who are thought to be likely to be opposed to its authors, and piles them upon those who are expected to use the privilege of citizenship in their favour. ‘The ‘ plural voter, and the voter who has the occupation franchise by tens of thousands in all great business centres, has a deplorable tendency to disbelieve in Radical virtue and Radical wisdom; therefore he is stripped bare. The lodger, again, is a doubtful ‘ factor ;° the active gentle- men about Mr. Schnadhorst are inclined to believe that, in the towns at least, he shows a disposition to fall away from the faith and worship the Dagon of the Tories. So he, too, is ignored in this Reform. But the person who shirks the painful and burdensome civic obligation of paying his rates is extremely likely to be a remarkably good Radical, and on him, there- fore, is the franchise conferred with effusion, Such is the principle which animates the latest measure of constructive Liberal legislation.
But what strikes one most about the Bill is that it is so glaringly inconsistent. It has been vaunted as the coping-stone on the Democratic edifice, the final triumph of popular rights over privilege and monopoly. The claim is transparently, ridiculously false. ‘The essence of Democratic representation is that the com- position of the elected Assembly corresponds exactly and scientifically to the political character of the elective body. ‘The ‘ Will of the People’ must really be able to express itself effectively and completely, which is certainly not the case if political power is dis- tributed unequally, capriciously, and, as it were, casually. The essence of a Democracy is the equal rights and equal privileges of all its citizens, ‘To allow one man a larger slice of political power because he has a larger rent-roll, a heavier rateable value, or a higher educa- tional qualification, smacks, we are told, fatally of aristocracy. Sono doubt it does; but what are we to say of the system which makes A’s vote weigh in the scale twice or three times, or six times, as much as B’s because A chances to live in one part of the kingdom and B in another? 'The arrangement is so illogical and inequitable that no defence of it is possible. Even
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April 21, 1894]
if we decline to accept Democracy’s fundamental assumption—which is that one man, for political pur- poses, must be regarded as about as good as another— there is no justification to be attempted for the ‘anoma- lies’ of the present distribution. No one has yet been able to explain what an elector of Galway City has done, or what he is, that he deserves to outweigh in the councils of the State rather more than eight free and independent voters of the Wandsworth Division; or what super- Huity of wisdom and virtue there is in Kilkenny that 744 electors of that historic borough should have a member all to themselves while some 15,000 of North Staffordshire have no more. We say this not merely because Ireland, under any fair plan of redistribution, will lose some three and twenty seats, and England will gain them. ‘There are inequalities and ‘anomalies’ outside Ireland, and to correct some of them would tell against Unionism rather than in its favour. Certain of the rural districts and smaller towns in England, Scot- land, and Wales are grossly over-represented, just as many of the great cities in all three countries are robbed of their due proportion of members. Win- chester, Windsor, and Whitehaven, with their three members, cast a smaller total vote than a single divi- sion of Wolverhampton, with its one representative ; and so it goes on throughout the country. On the great lines of Democracy and equality, how can an honest Reform Bill leave all this untouched ¢
For our own part, we are no fanatical opponents of anomaly and anachronism. A thing may be inde- fensible in theory and unjust in principle, and may nevertheless work out very fairly in practice. ‘This is the case with our existing electoral system, with all its caprices and all its exclusions. It does not in the least correspond to the idea on which it is supposed to be based : to wit, that voting power should be pretty equally divided among all adult male persons who occupy a fixed abodeand are responsible membersofsociety. But it works smoothly ; it keeps the legislative and administrative machine going with a fair head of steam, and after all that is the main function of an electorate. ‘There is a great deal—a very great deal—to be said for leaving it alone. ‘It is so easy not to write an epic poem.’ There is nothing easier than to abstain from bringing in a Reform Bill. But if we are to embark on Parlia- mentary Reform again, if the Demorracy is really anxious to be ‘master of its own house, and to pare away the inequalities and illogicalities left standing through all the Iranchise Acts of the century—then we may as well do the thing properly and consistently. Let us not abolish the milder anomaly of the Plural Vote and the Twelve Months’ qualification, while we leave untouched the grosser scandal of the disfranchised lodger, and the under-represented urban elector. Let us have, coupled with the amendment of registration to which no one objects, a real and not a sham Democratic Reform Bill. And the essence of that is a fair redistri- bution of seats and constituencies such as will give to every male adult occupier an equal vote, and to every vote an equal value.
TWO COLONIAL STATESMEN
YENHE complimentary dinner to Sir ‘Thomas MclIlwraith, which was held en Tuesday, must have conveyed to many present a certain feeling of
THE NATIONAL OBSERVER 573
humiliation. He it was that hoisted the British flag over New Guinea, only to be snubbed and disavowed by the Colonial Office; wherefore the Germans annexed the northern portion of the island. The blunder almost ranks with Majuba in its deplorable consequences, though they are, no doubt, being fast rectified by time. And when (Jueensland thought fit to drown mortifica- tion in factious opposition to the mother-country, Sir Thomas set himself to foment rather than abate discon- tent. Did he not repudiate the Naval Defence Bill on the ground that it formed a ‘tribute’ to a distant Power? and is his action on the nomination of Sir Henry Blake to the Governorship capable of extenua- tion? However,a banquet at the Criterion scarcely makes a fitting occasion for mutual contrition, and the speeches, as usual, dealt mainly with compliments of the after-dinner sort. As for the ex-Premier of Queensland, he was profuse in his expressions of loyalty to the Imperial connection, and his words have the ring of truth. We can well believe that he regards separation from the old country as inconceivable; nay, that he is ‘a stronger federalist than Lord Ripon,’ since the Secretary of State holds strongly by nothing. Yet a touch of unreality marks Sir Thomas's treatment of (Jueensland problems, though he may have been seduced into optimism by Sir Robert Herbert's remarks from the chair. Asked if the Colony was in a fair way to recover her financial and commercial position, he replied that the year’s wool-clip was excellent, and that the output of sugar had topped the record. The assurance reads confidently enough, but we should have preferred a promise that the Govern- ment will cease from jobbery, and that the claims of North and Central Queensland for autonomy will receive due consideration. Sir Thomas MclIlwraith disposed of the Separation question as dead; he is likely to modify that opinion on his return.
In many respects, then, we cannot help regarding ‘Tuesday's dinner as a wasted opportunity, so far as our better understanding of the Australasian colonies is concerned. ‘The present juncture demands less general schemes of federation than the setting in order of particular Governments. Have those young Demo- cracies derived any lesson from last year’s experience, or are they still resolved to squander their heritage ? Will they continue to be rough-ridden by Labour, with the result that the State has to contract loans where- with to construct premature Public Works, so that the polity moves in a vicious circle of false prosperity ? Will they alienate land recklessly, and then, by way of cor- rective, concoct inept schemes for restoring the town- loafer ‘to the soil’? Is the cityward tendency to be still further encouraged, on the other hand, by the devotion of public moneys to the populous, and therefore votemongering districts, while the uplands remain un- developed ? ‘These are questions to which the somewhat meagre report of Sir Thomas MclIlwraith’s speech gives no answer, though Queensland has fostered all these abuses, and more particularly the last. Still less do we gather definite information on the Australasian situation from the interview with Sir George Grey which appeared in Monday’s Daily Chronicle. Indeed, from the random reminiscences of that incurable idealist you would conclude that the communities should cast away the few safeguards against unbridled
mob-rule that they still possess. Tne plural vote,
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574 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
and its corollary the intluence of the well-to-do classes, must be abolished, and then Social and Labour questions can be tackled in earnest. ‘The representa- tive of the Daily Chronicle came away with the impression that Sir George resembled Moses surveying the Promised Land. If Biblical imagery is to be adopted, we should prefer to liken him to Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah.
Thrift and the reduction of debts—these are the objects at which Australian statesmanship should aim just now. And their attainment can be achieved only if Ministers with Sir Thomas MclIlwraith’s abilities set themselves to rule, and not to satisfy every working- class craving. Further, until the individual States have succeeded in practising sound economics, no advance can be made towards a United Australasia. We quite agree with Sir George Grey that the Sydney Conference was entirely premature, but not because it could not use sufficiently democratic machinery. On the contrary, ‘entire equality’ forms the most unstable of bases upon which to raise a Constitution. If the Australians are to emerge from their troubles, they must submit to a continuity of policy devised rather against than in accordance with the wishes of the general. Such self- discipline has been exampled, before now, in the history of nations ; and it would be the best possible preparation for a Federated Australasia. We welcome Sir ‘Thomas Mcllwraith’s intimation that the wider and nobler ideal, namely, Imperial I’ederation, has its sympathisers in the colonies. But here again we are dealing with unrealities, since no adequate scheme has been broached, and Sir George Grey’s peripatetic Anglo-Saxon Council, in particular, is absolute foolishness. Besides, internal reorganisations, amounting almost to revolutions, would have to be effected at home, before England could find place in the Confederacy. For the present we must remain content with the ties of common citizenship and kinsmanship, and leave the future to futurity. Sir Thomas MclIlwraith has helped to define the point at which we stand, while Sir George Grey’s speculations fill columns two of the Daily Chronicle.
THE SPRING RACING
O this point the year’s racing has been a matter chiefly of unimportant races run in moderately fine weather and calling for no comment. Three of the handicaps which are with complacency described as first-class, have been run off—the Lincolnshire, the City and Suburban and the Great Metropolitan. The last-named has been in its time the greatest of them all: but now, like so many long distance races, it has fallen upon evil days. Cypria, who divided last year’s Cesarewitch, ran, but proved her inability to win in medium company under a weight that should not have stopped her. The winner is an exemplary hack, able to stay, and fast enough when he feels inclined to beat horses better famed for speed than stamina. But the result of any race over more than two miles makes
melancholy contemplation nowadays.
The other handicaps may be discussed together, because we take them to prove that, as horses go, the generation which is now upon the turf compares more than favourably with its immediate predecessor. The victory of Le Nicham in the Lincolnshire is an abundant proof that Isinglass and Raeburn and consequently Ravensbury, is, each in his degree, of more than common merit, For Le Nicham, who is an own brother to the
[April 21, 1894
disappointing Le Nord, by the famous ‘Tristan, beat a remarkably good and remarkably ready field. It is true that there were two unfortunate accidents at the start, which prevented Macready and Grey Leg from showing their best form: but we do not think that Macready could have got any nearer than he did, since Le Nicham won with several pounds in hand, and the City and Surburban running, in which Le Nicham carrying ten pounds extra gave Grey Leg Qst. 3lb, and ran him within two lengths of victory, shows that he would probably have won in the first race. Grey Leg has established a record, no three-year-old having as yet won this handicap under so heavy a weight as his. He owes his victory to a brilliant piece of riding. Bradford had been far behind at the dis- tance—almost too far behind. But for Chandley’s error of judgment in pulling Nury wide of Le Nicham, he might never have got the chance he took with such daring and determination. Tor a second or two a foul looked possible, but Loates on Le Nicham kept his head as well as Bradford kept his, and the spectators were awarded with one of the most dashing exhibitions of jockeyship the world has lately seen. ‘The race was run at an uncommonly good pace, since Marnovia, who is a magnificent sprinter, had no chance unless she brought her field along at almost a five-furlong rate of speed. ‘This found out the weak spot in Molly Morgan and Callistrate, who were patently unfit. Callistrate, on the strength of his excellent form in the Cambridge- shire and his general three-year-old record, was a very strong favourite. But the money for which he was backed—it was £30,000 a week before the race—did not come from his owner: and at one time it was stated that he would not run. But M. Abeille gave the public a chance, and backed the horse himself.
It is too early to speak of the classic races. Ladas remains a strong favourite for the ‘'wo Thousand and the Derby, partly on account of his owner's popularity. If Lord Rosebery does not complete the triad of his ambitions and win the Derby with him, the blow will be a severe one for Radicalism. If he wins, on the other hand, there are good judges of electioneering who declare that the Radicals will sweep London. ‘The air is full of rumours about the horse: he is in health and feeds well. But the hard ground found out a weakness in his forelegs, and if the season be as dry as it has been it is not certain that he will stand training. He is also riotous and peevish in his box, and requires more than ordinary watching, lest he should do himself some damage. It is also said that his temper is none of the best. Last year, taking the line through Jocasta, the only horse whose form approached Ladas’s was Match- box. Indeed, Matchbox won over a more difficult course, in quite as handsome a fashion. He has never missed a day’s work, and has grown into a splendid animal. So consistent and sound is his private form that he will have little less money behind him in the ‘Two Thousand than Ladas. But the Derby may go to a third horse, who is not in the Two Thousand— Lord Durham’s Son o’ Mine. He, too, has wintered admirably. He met Matchbox in a long race at Kempton last autumn, and after a very bad start ran him to a short head. He was the faster of the pair at the end, and there can be no doubt of his stamina. So it is by no means assured that Ladas will be the year’s champion,
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April 21, 1894]
BUDGE OR CONSCIENCE ? if is the old story, ‘‘ Budge,” says the Fiend ;
‘Budge not,” says Conscience, the only addition being that so many of one’s friends and well-wishers are on the side of the Fiend. ‘Such a reasonable, well- spoken gentleman, they say; ‘listen to him, “he counsels well.”” It is characteristic of the two great parties in the State that Conservatives have good principles, but they always act as if they were not quite sure that they were absolutely true; Radicals, on the other hand, have very bad principles, but they act as if they thoroughly believed in them. ‘Run, my dear sir, said a leading evening Conservative journal to me a few weeks ago, ‘run, for goodness’ sake, your principles are excellent, but there is going to be a row. If one is quite certain of one’s principles no stronger argument could be advanced for standing still. Now if you have any message worth delivering to the Mnglish race never run. Our countrymen are not logical; you may advance the weightiest arguments and they will remain of the same opinion as before. ‘The one thing which appeals irresistibly to the Anglo-Saxon race is pluck. When a man advances certain principles and is soundly beaten, comes up again smiling, advances these principles again, is beaten again, and yet sticks to what he thinks is right, then people will begin to believe in him.
To what is this policy of Budge applied ? To the most serious educational crisis since 1870. It is disheartening to find such a keen appreciation amongst our opponents of the issues of this conflict, and such extraordinary apathy amongst our friends. Yet this is the result of the habitual attitude of the Conservative as contrasted with the Radical press. ‘The Radical or ‘ Progressive’ news- papers follow every action of their representatives. Long reports of the Board meetings, so coloured as to serve the interests of the party, appear week by week, while the Board members are employed to write the articles commenting on their own beneficent policy and the worthless conduct of their opponents. Meanwhile, our side of the press does nothing. A report of a few lines, probably omitting all mention of the most important section of the debate, appears on Friday mornings; no interest in educational questions is engendered in the mind of the ordinary reader, and the man who wants any information as to the action of the people he took the trouble to vote for at the School Board election is driven to search for it in the organs of the Opposition.
Nor is this all. After allowing the Radical press to go on for months rousing the ‘ Progressives * outside the Board and misrepresenting the whole state of affairs to the public at large, the Conservative and Independent journals speak out at last. But they speak as men speak, who, being suddenly roused from sleep, find themselves in the midst of a tumult. Ignorant of the cause or of the subject of the commotion, they hastily avail themselves of the first information which comes to hand; some repeat tke misrepresentations of the enemy ; others, inappreciative of the magnitude of the issue at stake, counsel flight ; and only a few are suffi- ciently wide awake to understand that if their oppo- nents are furious and frantic, the probability is that their representatives on the Board have been doing their duty with more assiduity than usual,
THE NATIONAL OBSERVER 575
Now we do not elect people to serve on School Boards merely for the sake of keeping down the School Rate a penny or so in the pound. Not that I have a word to say against this motive—it is natural that we should try to save our pockets. If we could purge not only the School Board, but the Education Depart- ment as well, of the professional ‘ educationists’ and replace them with men of good honest common sense, we should get far better education at consider- ably less cost. For the present, unfortunately, the people with theories have got a tight hold on our National Elementary Education, and they are now trying to capture Secondary Education as well. [ say we do not elect School Board members merely from motives of economy. We elect them to maintain certain principles of education. What are those prin- ciples? I believe them to be these: firstly, that education should not be divorced from religion; secondly, that the parent, and not the State, should control the education of the child, or, in other words, the maintenance of parental rights against undue inter- ference on the part of the State. These are the principles which we, as citizens of a Christian country, as the inheritors of great and noble traditions, are bound to maintain as we love this England, ‘ this dear, dear land, against the Pagan and Revolutionary prin- ciples which seek to invade us from the other side of the Channel—principles which are not only subversive of religion but inevitably produce turbulence and anarchy in the State.
The limits of this article will not allow me _ to consider the events of 1870, or to point out that the working of the School Board system needs most careful watching ; for the system is not only suspicious in its origin, but suspicious also in the character of its most active supporters. It is sufficient to say that in 1871 a working arrangement was come to between the two parties on the London School Board, by which it was hoped the religious character of the teaching and the rights of parents had been fairly well safeguarded. The present controversy on the Board has resulted from the discovery of a formidable conspiracy to wreck the Christian character of the religious teaching. We cannot be surprised at the very natural bitterness of the party thus suddenly unmasked. The old 1871 rule of the Board required the Bible to be read, and instruction to be given therefrom in ‘ the principles of religion.’ Ninety-nine people out of a hundred have always supposed this religion to be the Christian reli- gion, and the ‘ compromise * under which this instruction was given to be a compromise between Christians. Now we are told that the comparison was between Christian, and non-Christians ;' that ‘the principles of religion’ do not mean Christian doctrines;? that the word ‘religion’ was meant to include all religions ;3 and, though the British public is not yet prepared for secular education,! and the Bible cannot be banished altogether from the schools, yet that volume is not to be treated as a Christian book.’ So much for the attack on religious teaching; the rights of parents
1 The Ion. Lyulph Stanley in a debate at the Board.
2 Daily Chronicle, Sun, Star, ete., a ? nauseam.
’ Echo, January 20, 1894.
4 Daily News, February 2, 1894.
5 The leader cf the Women’s Liberal Federation when it appeared before the Board—a statement which was cheered to the echo by the
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576 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
are being as openly and flagrantly attacked. Those who are connected with Public Elementary Education are aware that a powerful form of ‘l'rades-unionism is springing up amongst the teachers. ‘Teachers’ organisations are getting into the hands of agitators ; many of whom are little better than professivnal political-mongers. ‘The Radical press is in close alliance with the leaders, and even the Conservative press is not untouched by their influence.
It is now suggested by our opponents and endorsed by the teachers’ organisations, that the teachers and not the parents are to be the judges of the kind of religious teaching which should be given to the children. Here I must guard myself against overstating the case. I believe the great majority of our public elementary teachers to be above reproach, but they leave the pro- fessional agitators to commit them as a body to a policy which they would individually repudiate. Dr. Clifford, a prominent member of the new London Progressive Education Council, told us last April that he was pre- pared ‘for the sake of liberty’ to support a policy which would place a Christian child under a Unitarian teacher to receive Unitarian instruction, and this ex- treme doctrine of the liberty of the teacher is, so far as one can see, the authorised doctrine of our opponents. Dr. Martineau and his fellow-memorialists of last year maintained that in the interests of religious liberty the teachers should be ‘left free’ ‘ to interweave’ with the ‘ Scriptural selections’ in the Board’s syllabus ‘any doctrinal additions suggested by their own con- victions. Finally, the London Board School teachers are called upon to ‘come out’ by the ‘ Progressive’ press because the Board has issued a circular which suggests in the mildest language that disbelievers ia Christianity should not give religious instruction to the children of Christian parents, and offers to release them from this false position without in any way prejudicing their position in the service of the Board.
i have said enough, I hope, to show that the time has come for a bold and determined stand on the part of those who would not see the violation of liberty of conscience, and of the rights of parents, and the destruc- tion of those principles upon which the education of the country has been hitherto based. surely opinion is being roused. The School Board itself is now on the alert. We hold the enemy by about five votes. The Church in London is roused: the representatives of the clergy and laity assembled at the Diocesan Conference last week enthusiastically supported the policy of the School Board majority by one hundred and six votes to eleven. I calculate that a third of the electorate of London is certainly with us. The question is, In the short space of time now left to us before the November election, can we meet the misrepresentations of our opponents, powerful as they are in the control of the press, and inform the general public as to the real issue of the battle? If we can, then we may reckon with certainty upon another third of the electorate, and so the election will be won. But, whatever happens, J am not going torun. We will at least show our fellow Englishmen that we are contending for principles which are not only worth fighting for, but capable of being carried through defeat to future victory. ‘Budge not,’ says Conscience. ‘Conscience,’ say I, ‘ you counsel well.’
Aruetsran Riney,
Slowly but
[April 21, 1894
THE MISTRUST OF TRUSTS
HINGS have been very quiet in the City for the last week or so. There has been no fresh sensation for financial journalists, and Sir William Harcourt’s Budget has been received with some little relief. For one thing the Stock Exchange is not to be harassed by any fresh Stamp Duties and for another it had been generally expected that the income tax would be raised to 9d, in the pound, Since only id. has been added and the abatement limit has been extended, City clerks and busi- ness men with moderate incomes are proportionately thankful. The addition of 6d. a barrel in the duty on beer has not had any appreciable effect on the shares of brewing companies. Guinness’s ordinary stock had a slight fall, otherwise there was scarcely any change. Many of our principal breweries being still . private companies though registered under the Limited Liability Laws do not publish reports, and those companies that issue a balance-sheet do not always give the amount of their barrelage ; but it is estimated that the new tax will cost Allsopps about £15,000 a year on an output of 600,000 barrels, while if Bass’s production has not fallen off of late it will have about £25,000 taken off its annual profits, for when the debentures of Bass Ratcliff and Gretton were issued in January 1888 the average amount brewed for the previous five years was certified as 945,005 barrels.
At last we seem to be getting to the end of the Trust Company troubles. The Trustees, Executors, and Secu- rities Insurance Corporation has been reorganised, with Mr. Alexander Young for chairman ; the petitions to wind it up have been dismissed, and with careful management and a shade of luck as regards its chief asset (the Mexican Southern Railway), the shares should recover at least a portion of their former value. At present they are still quoted at rather less than nothing—that is to say, a seller has to offer a small cash inducement to a purchaser to take them off his hands, but the discount is £1ashare less than a few weeks ago, The remaining directors of the Industrial and General Trust having, in the most unaccountable way, persisted in clinging to office, contrary to the wish of the great majority of the shareholders, are to be solemnly turned out, at a specially convened meeting next week. It would be a salutary warning to others if, by laying bare the inner history of the small ring of men who really pulled the strings of the Trustees’ group of Companies, those men could be made legally responsible for their actions. But we doubt its possibility. This group of miscalled trusts, with its affiliated companies and promotions— Otis Steel, American breweries, Kansas City, Wyandotte bonds, ete.—has cost the public at a low estimate over ten millions of money, But the articles of association were so drafted that the directors were able to do almost anything without render- ing themselves liable to legal consequences, while at the same time the shareholders were kept completely in the dark on the fatuous plea that it would be injurious to the Company if its investments and transactions were dis- closed. Unless, however, there is a chance of obtaining restitution we do not see what good will be done by raking up the past. Any public company where secrecy is insisted upon should be scrupulously avoided, and it has gradually dawned upon the directors of, Trusts that if they desire to preserve any shreds of reputation they must publish their lists of securities.
There is still one group, however, of which the parent, the Debenture Corporation, has so far success- fully weathered the storm, and which still keeps up the policy of secrecy. What is the result? The Preference Securities Trust is being liquidated, the Anglo-
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April 21, 1894]
American Debenture Corporation is writing off one-third
of its paid-up capital and the Foreign and Colonial Debenture Corporation has been absorbed by the parent at a considerable loss to the shareholders, Remains the Debenture Corporation itself, of whose real position none but the managing directors can speak with any certainty. This is the institution which demanded and obtained a fee of 5000 guineas to examine into the position of the Hansard Union before deciding to lend it any money. How well its investigations were conducted appears from the fact that the Corporation, after selling up the Hansard Union and _ having its own receiver and liquidator, eventually lost some £14,000 over its loan, while, as is now ancient history, the share- holders in the Hansard Union never saw a penny back, At present the Debenture Corporation has its hands full with the Liberator companies, and it has agreed to lend over £900,000 to the Official Receiver in order to assist the liquidation, What the end will be no one can tell ; but if people like to buy shares with a heavy liability in a concern of this kind, where the character of the business transacted only leaks out by accident, they should not ery vut if one day they discover that things are not quite what they seemed. If there is any lesson to be learnt from the chapter of Trust accidents, it is that important City names are unfortunately no longer a guarantee of old-fashioned honour and integrity. Investors must bear this in mind and use their critical faculties without being blinded by eminent names on a prospectus. If they do this, they will be able to find not a few desirable investments even among the shares of Trust Companies,
THE MANIA OF THE MOMENT IN PARIS
ECIDEDLY curious at present is the trend of opinion
in intellectual Paris. For the nonce the leaders of French thought, the pioneers of French artistic and literary activity, together with the crowd of quidnunes who only await a sign to follow in their wake, would appear to be in search of the stuff whereof to fashion a creed. After abjuring belief in most things, Parisians would seem to have come to the pass of earnestly desiring to bring them- selves to Selieve in anything, At least, it is a fact that they are somewhat seriously coquetting with a faith, for the incongruous ingredients of which they have gone impartially to the founders of religious systems from Buddha to Swedenborg, and to the ‘illuminated’ of all ages from Nostradamus to Madame Blavatsky. It will be seen that the occultism in vogue on the Boulevards is eminently eclectic. sufficiently incomprehensible, more especially if it be at the same time picturesque. Whatever savours of the mysterious or the uncanny, from black magic to the
It seorns no doctrine which is
hypnotic experiments of Charcot, is its joy. It admits an acquaintance with the Cabala, has intuitions of an undis- covered sense, and owns to an inkling of much that is generically described as Satanic. It professes a subtle apprehension of the cloudier tenets of Freemasonry. The unknowable is its peculiar concern, the ‘ beyond’, /’v-7e/4, its sphere of predilection. But an exhaustive catalogue of the articles of this esoterie confession need not be attempted. From the nature of things, an exact profes- sion of faith must not be expected from an occultist least of all from an occultist dowblé Jun Purisien. Enough has been said to show that this creed in swaddling clothes -a profusion of them—is a miscellany of mysticism, elaborated for the bewilderment of the vulgar by a select cvterie of initiates. What it all means may never be
circumstantially revealed. That. however, is a_ trifle.
THE NATIONAL OBSERVER BY
Occultism, as understood by its Parisian professors, has the saving merit of being not uninteresting. The message may be obscure, but so long as it pleases some of the deftest pens and cunningest pencils in France to convey it, it will be sure of the attention of the curious,
It must not be supposed that the movement is confined to the apostles of any and every eccentric gospel that abound in the high places of Montmartre, to the writers in the minor reviews, to /es petites chapelles in short. Its manifestations are to be met with in other and more influential quarters; it has won recognition where the ephemeral as a rule is scouted and tabooed. A romance— Le Masque, by Gilbert Thierry the son of the historian— of which occultism was the /e/t-motiv was running recently in the Revue des Deux Mondes. The Figaro, in its literary supplement, is publishing a series of articles by Jules Bois on the minor religions of Paris, the subject-matter being the tenets of such esoteric sects as the Essenes and the Satanists. A novel, L’Vternelle Poupée, by the same author, who is one of the high priests of the new supersti- tion, appearing at present in the (i/ Lilas, is deeply tinged with the peculiar theories of its writer. It may be added that Lourdes, the new novel by Zola, which is to follow DP Eternelle Powpée in the same paper, is concerned with the miraculous, and turns upon the wonders that may be wrought by faith. This capitulation of ‘the master’ is specially significant, as the new movement is in its essence a reaction against his earlier manner. One of the cleverest of Zola’s former companions in arms, a contributor to the Soireés de Médan, Huysmans, has become an ardent dis- His last book, Ja-)as, created an immense sensation and his forthcoming work, of which we are able to say the title will be Ln Route, will deal primarily with mystical problems.
ciple of occultism.
Jules Bois again is about to issue a volume on Satanism and Black Magic. Even the theatre has not escaped the contagion. Izael at the Renaissance had much to say about Buddhism, and the sole rwison 7’étre of Hauptmann’s play //annele, pro- duced recently at the Théitre Libre, was its mysticism, The very scientists are yielding. The keenest interest has been excited by the very strictly conducted experiments of Colone!] Rochas, one of the directors of the Heole Poly- technique, in which he stored up the sensibility of a ‘subject’ in a wax figure, a performance strangely sug- cestive of the practices attributed to the witches of olden time. Equally remarkable results have been obtained by Luys, on whom Charcot’s mantle has fallen, Indeed, it is not too much to say, that the question of whether it is possible by sheer will-power to influence your fellow creatures at a distance for good or evil, the moot point in other words of the efficacy of spells, is a burning topic in Paris to-day.
It will occur to some to ask whether the occultists are to be taken seriously? Perhaps the wisest answer is that their sincerity is in any case of no moment, except may be to the adept. For the merely curious their chief attraction will always lie in their skill in raising stimulating side issues, in their continual tilting at all conventional bug- bears. They are rarely guilty of the capital crime of being commonplace. Besides, in this matter-of-fact age it is delightful to fall upon a manner of men who are uncom. promisingly at loggerheads with common sense. an allusion must be made to their worship of the ‘ eternal feminine.’ They are writing what Yellow Asterism would fain write. Although Zola has seen the error of his ways, the day is yet distant when the French novel will be safe
Finally,
pabulum for school-girls. Nana naked and unashamed has been dethroned, but there reigns in her stead another Nana, the more dangerous for her dexterously designed
drapery.
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578 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
| All rights reserved |
A BUNDLE OF LETTERS Il. MARY RUSSELL MITFORD—conlinued
N our issue of to-day we come to the conclusion of the selections from the unpubiished letters of Mary Russell Mitford which it is our privilege and pleasure to The story of her earlier letters The correspondence enabled the
present to our readers, was simple enough.
reader to outline in his mind a number of scenes in real life. In scene the first a lady of accomplished art, in a remote parsonage among the Welsh hills, sat musing over a poem of Miss Mitford’s until the music of the words permeated her very being. She let her fingers wander over harp, piano or spinet, until the music began to grow definite and articulate: and then, having succeeded some years before in securing a welcome from Sir Walter Scott when she had set his words to music, she determined to write to Miss Mitford at Three Mile Cross and, having written, waited until she could secure the co-operation of her friend the ‘ travelling M.P.’. We reflect, at once, that members of the Houses of Parliament had their uses in those days. How long the missive took to reach ‘Three Mile Cross’ history does not record ; most likely the time was about equal to that which would be required now for a letter to reach an esteemed contributor of ours in Samoa by ordinary course of post. But, after many days, the despatch reached Miss Mitford, and found that cheery lady of letters confined to her bed in all the prosaic horrors of biliousness. The offer to add musie to musical words was accepted on the instant and acted upon. the difficulty of the nameless lady who claimed exclusive
Then came
rights in a song which she had not written because she had set it to music which the world had forgotten, and threats of the law against the quiet lady in Wales. Those threats, of course, could never have come to anything. The most pettifogging attorney of his day would have been compelled to inform the lady of ‘sad-litigious- plaguey-ways’ that she had no cause of action. But Miss Mitford was righteously indignant and we confess that we should take some mischievous pleasure from the perusal, if it were possible, of the letter which she wrote to the offender. But, since that is not possible, we are obliged to be contented with a very characteristic letter in which Miss Mitford gave an account of her proceedings. This letter had a postscript covering every available part of the enclosing sheet ; and that enclosing sheet was addressed and posted on September 7, or more than a fortnight after it was written, by C, F. Palmer. fragrance of the old world about these very dates in an
Surely there is a
age of multitudinous posts and endless telegrams; but human nature was much the same thing then as it is now, and Miss Mitford’s letter is exquisitely human, Here it is.
My pear Mrs. ,—Just one line to thank you sin- cerely and earnestly for your great kindness and to tell you that I have myself written to Miss ——- on the subject of the song, not only explaining the affair, but also warning her against giving so unfavourable, and I trust unconscious, an opinion of her own temper and disposition as she would do by continuing to oppose, fruitless as her opposition must be, the publication of your musick. She has not had the good sense or the good taste to reply to my letter, but as I told her that I considered her conduct wholly unjustifiable in any point of view and wholly ground- less as a legal proposition (for anybody to whom I have given verses for a scrapbook might make the same claim), I take entirely for granted that she will abandon her opposition. At all events, if she should he silly enough to
[April 21, 1894
bring the case forward, I shall appear on your side, as I told her I should. But I firmly believe that we shall hear no more of the matter. Your tour in this fine weather must be delightful. I trust that the sisterly meeting with which it will close, will prove most gratifying to each. I shall send this to await you at your house, and, as you say, I can hardly regret even the wrong which has tended to make us better acquainted. And now, God bless you, my dear Mrs. ———, say to Mrs. -—— for me all that is true and kind, and believe ine ever, with all good wishes to both, Most faithfully yours, M. R. Mrirrorp,
Three Mile Cross, August 22, 1833,
| Postscript on outer sheet. |
My pear Mrs, ,—Since writing the enclosed I have received from Miss —-——- a letter which I also enclose. I cannot agree with her that she has made any sacrifice, but I rejoice most heartily that an affair so worrying has at
last terminated so amicably. I have heard yowr song ex- quisitely sung lately by a lady who is just exactly the person whom you would like to sing your music. _ It is very strange how rarely one hears really good English ballad singing which I suppose, so simple as it seems, is in the very sweet and pure and youthful voice which it demands, the perfect articulation, the feeling and the taste, just exactly the most difficult thing in the world.
larewell.
Once again,
The next letter, franked by John Walter the Second, the son and successor of the founder of The Times news- The surrender of the litigious lady does not seem to have been quite complete, and we gather that she must have expressed her feelings towards
paper, is really delightful.
her rival in musical composition with some acerbity. But the charm of this last letter lies in the scene we can picture of the Mitford household. We can all but see Dr. Mitford fuming round the phaeton which is to take him to his ‘gander party’; we can all but hear Miss Mitford’s pen scratching the paper—and withal the phrases are as elegant, and the letter appears to be as deliberate as if Miss Mitford had hours at her disposal. Clearly the habit of serious letter-writing was one which could not be shaken of in a moment.
Three Mile Cross, October 18th.
My pear Mrs, ——-,—My father having just given me notice that he shall meet three or four M.Ps. at dinner to-day (a ‘ gander party’ in Reading—to quote from Miss Edgeworth what she quoted from Garrick), I sit down, although the phaeton is already at the door, to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your sweet and charming letter. Miss —— is a pugnacious lady, but I owe her no small thanks for having made me better acquainted with you than could well have happened at the sad distance between us without her interference ; so if she have, as her friend here says she has, a constant desire to give pleasure to everybody, her end has been in this affair completely, and I should suppose unexpectedly, accomplished. ‘Some- Let me talk of a far better subject, the dear, the admired, the venerated Mrs. -
I was indeed delighted to find that a mention which had no recommendation but the perfect truth of the feeling with which it was written, had had the power to cheer and please one whom I look up to more than I can easily
thing too much of this.’
describe as the ornament of her age and sex. Your
account of your meeting touched me exceedingly. I trust
that when you next see her you will find her health and spirits completely restored, and that she will be well enough to carry my idea and that of Sir Walter Scott (what an honour it is to resemble even in a trifling fancy
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April 21, 1894]
that greatest of writers!) into execution. Mine is perhaps the more practicable, though his is imaginative and grace- ful, and with her poetry and giving trees that are emblems, such as the bay, the myrtle, etc. (by the way, two of the first plants of either to be found in England, especially the bay, are in my little garden), it might be made exceed- ingly elegant and variable. But if once you heard the bee-bird you would say that the whirr of his wings was real music. Adieu, my dear Mrs, ——; say everything for me to the equally dear Mrs. ——, and believe me, with every good wish, most faithfully and affectionately yours, M. R. Mirrorn.
Your tour really ought to be published. Did no one ever tell you how singularly charming and spirited your
prose style was? It is perfect.
The last letter is undated. It relates to the biography of a pure woman who was a woman of genius.
My pear Mrs. ——,—Your nephew a son who
seems worthy of his mother—and what a world of praise does that imply !—has sent me your charming volume—a noble memoir worthy of its noble subject !—and both the book and the letter which accompanied it touched and gratified both myself and my father to a degree that you would hardly conceive possible. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the chastened pleasure which your kindness has given to both, especially to my beloved father, who has by God’s mercy been restored to me this spring after a most dangerous illness, and who sends his thanks and blessings to the friend whose kind mention (far too praiseful, except inasmuch as the truth in which I loved and honoured and looked up to your admirable sister) may in some way warrant the placing my poor name in the same page with hers,
And now, not without sadness, we leave Miss Mitford, being undecided for the moment whether, next week, we shall dive into the correspondence of Sir Walter, of Wordsworth, of Madame Ranke, or of the Landgravine of Hesse,
THE SPRING FLOWERS OF SOUTH WALES
(<)' all seasons, to me the spring is most attractive ; chiefly because hope lies before. I do not under- stand the preference of some persons for autumn tints over those of spring flowers. The colours of autumn leaves are those of decay and approaching death. They remind us of the cold winter and short days so soon to follow, in which it is hard to believe that warmth, light- ness, and outdoor life can ever return; but spring flowers are almost the greatest delight of men, and of all parts of this country South Wales is the richest in the wild flowers of spring. ‘The Devonshire lanes are spoken of as if they were the ideal: and truly lovely they are. But their fame is the result of their being better known than those of South Wales.
deep as those of Devonshire, and as full of primroses.
Here there are lanes as narrow and
The Welsh primroses are not only as large and as luxuriant as those of Devonshire, but in many places
they are of all colours, I have seen coloured primroses
in abundance ina few places in Cornwall, but none in’
Devonshire ; nor are the colours of the Cornish primroses to be compared to those of South Wales, Speaking of many years ago, it used to be the greatest delight to gather them in the many places where they grew. I remember, as a child, bank upon bank covered with them, not only the more or less dull red which are
found in Cornwali, but deep, true red, bright mauve lilac,
THE NATIONAL OBSERVER 579
deep yellow and pure white. No garden could show a more brilliant or varied collection.
The cowslips were as beautiful and abundant as the primroses. The rich pastures—on strong clay land—were yellow with them, the yellow being dotted here and there with red; and sometimes there were polyanthuses. These I have never found wild elsewhere—though I have found cowslips, more or less coloured, in Ireland. In one place, purple crocuses grew wild in a grass field. The single daffodil, the common ‘Lent lily,’ was not so common as the large double daffodils. These double daffodils in some places filled a whole grass field, growing in huge clumps and close together. In those days flowers were not so much sought after as now; there were no tourists to grub them up; and though children would gather handfuls of them, there were plenty for all, and even at the end of the season the fields were still filled with them. The ‘Tenby daffodil’ (obval/aris) grew in a field about a mile from Tenby (and also, I believe, in other places near), where we used to gather it by basketfuls. Perhaps the most wonderful flower-field was one full of the large double sweet-scented ‘ Gardenia’ Narcissus. The grass was literally covered with it, growing in huge clumps. It grew in one place besides, but not so abundantly, and I have found it wild nowhere else. Snow- drops, too, grew wild in some places, generally on the high cliff, and under hedges which were white with them. It would have been impossible to gather them all. On the way to the narcissus field was a wide hill-side, en- tirely covered with columbines. The blue columbine is common enough wild in England, but here in Wales, it was of all colours besides: red, pink, white and purple, double as well as single, and not of the usual straggling growth, but small, compact, and full of bloom.
The wild ‘Scotch’ roses which grow on the Tenby Sandhills, blossoming early in June, together with blue sea squills and purple orchids, are by no means com- mon in their colour. In general they are white: here they are of all shades, from white to deep red ; that is to say, when they first come out and are in their full beauty—a mass of colour. Later in the year, when there are blossoms only here and there, they grow pale and are nearly always white as elsewhere. In the summer, some of the sandhills by the sea are full of the lovely large pink convolvulus, which grows in pure sand in the burning sun, so that it is wonderful where it can find either its nourishment or its moisture. Its roots are, however, so long that they start from a depth to which no amount of sun can penetrate. I have often tried to dig it up; but in vain. I never The diticulty ot digging to such depths was increased by the looseness
could reach a root with the smallest fibre.
of the sand, which fell in as fast as one cleared it out, Some of the sandhills too are covered with pansies—most of them pure bright yellow, but here and there, of as bright a blue—sweet thyme, and the brilliant viper’s bugloss. The cliffs of the South Welsh Coast are, as elsewhere, covered with pink and white thrift, sea Javender, and bottle campion, yellow ‘bird's claw’, ‘ ladies’ fingers,’ and with worts, besides sea squills. Nor are the moors any- where brighter with sweet yellow gorse and _ purple heather: while the bogs are full of bog asphodel, the delicate pink bog pimpernel, and pink pedicularis. The pink everlasting pea used to grow under the ciiffs of a tidal river.
In one or two points it must be confessed that South Wales is somewhat lacking. Like Devonshire, it possesses sweet white violets: but they are not as common as in England, and there are scarcely any blue. And although there are blue-bells (wild hyacinths) yet they are not
to be compared, either in size or quantity, with those
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of many English districts: chiefly because there are no such woods as in many parts of England. For bluebells, I know no such country as Notts, where the woods of Sherwood Forest are absolute sheets of blue when they are in blossom. The strong soil and mild climate of South Wales have no doubt much to do with the variety of its flowers. It is very likely that many of them have run wild frpm deserted cottage gardens ; but if this is so, they are now, at any rate to all intents and purposes, completely native and wild—and most of them have the advantage of inhabiting a part of the country unknown, and likely to remain unknown to tourists. Let us hope that the devastators who have destroyed so much of the parsley fern in the Lake district; who have completely eradi- cated the Killarney fern and scarcely left a primrose within walking distance of Torquay, will not find out the double narcissus and coloured primroses of South Wales. Since Tenby has become a fashionable watering- place the osmunda regalis which used to grow magnifi- cently in its marshes has shared the fate of the Tenby daffodil. But the other flowers I have mentioned which are specialities of South Wales, lie off the beaten track, in remote places, and, being a faithful member of the Selborne Society, | do not mean to say where those
places are. M. M
BYPATHS IN LITERATURE
igereniertiige that it is profitable to see ourselves with the eyes of others, diversion may sometimes be had from minute descriptions of our forefathers, as they appeared to strangers, and North Britons of to-day may do worse than skim through a volume of Leélers from Fdinburgh ; Written in the Years 1774 and 1775 (Edin. burgh. 1776). The author was one Captain Topham, an English Guardsman, who spent six months in the Scottish capital, shortly after Dr. Johnson and his henchman, Boswell], had been perambulating the Land o’ Cakes, and at the very season when the publication of their tour had set Edinburgh society buzzing like a nest of angry wasps. The tenour of Captain Topham’s observations will be found so much more agreeable to the national sensi- bilities than those of the great bookman, that one is disposed at first to suspect him of having been entrusted with a brief for his hosts, until it is remembered that these letters were addressed to private friends, and that many of them had been written and despatched before the appearance of Johnson’s volume. When it did appear, Topham was indignant at what he reckoned to be its injustice; and the excuses made by the man of the world for the narrow views of the man of the inkhorn form not the least diverting passages in his correspondence.
‘ Poor Johnson, who, probably, had never travelled more than a few miles from London . , . must naturally be astonished at everything he saw, and would dwell upon every common occurrence as a wonder... . He found himself in a new world: his sensations were those of a child just brought forth into daylight ; whose organs are confused with the numerous objects that surround him, and who discovers his surprise at everything he sees. Men of the world would not have descended to such remarks.’ Topham brings graver charges than this against the philosopher, and, not hesitating to impugn his veracity, seems to have been at some pains to ascertain the truth as misrepresented by Johnson.
It was atime of great social vitality in Scotland. The legislative union with England had been in force for two generations; the poorer country was just beginning to throw off the habits ef penury contracted during the centuries of hard fighting and heavy taxation following
580 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
[April 21, 1894
upon the wars of independence, but had not yet lost either its native peculiarities or the impress of prolonged political intimacy with France. The difference between social customs at that time in London and Edinburgh was far greater than it is at the present day between those of London and New York. Practically, Scotland was still a foreign country to the Englishman; the Guardsman had not only a keen eye, but a pretty gift of expression whereby to communicate the result of his observation, Perhaps the most surprising parts of his letters are those which draw a contrast between the manners and bearing of well-to-do people in the two countries. ‘A man who visits this country after having been in France will find in a thousand instances the resemblance there is betwixt these two nations. That air of mirth and vivacity, that quick and penetrating look, that spirit of gaiety which distinguishes the French, is equally visible in the Scotch.’ It is hardly possible to imagine any remark less likely to suggest itself to one who should now visit Scotland for the first time. Yet our author gives so many details of social pecu- liarities that it is impossible to suspect him of unkind irony, ‘Whenever the Scotch of both sexes meet they do not appear as if they had never seen each other before, or wished never to see each other again ; they do not sit in sullen silence, looking on the ground, biting their nails, and ata loss what to do with themselves; and, if some one should be ready enough to break silence, start as if they were shot through the ear with a pistol; but they address each other at first sight, and with an vnapressement (sic) that is highly pleasing.’
The bearing of good society in the two countries being now practically undistinguishable from each other, it must be left matter of speculation whether Scottish levity has leavened the English, or English gravity reduced the Scots to their present somewhat sombre mode of address. Casting about for some reason to account for the debonair demeanour of the North Briton, Captain Topham propounds a curious psychological theory. He declares the French are gay because, being Catholics, they enjoy the ‘blessed invention’ of absolution, which ‘renders the spirits free and unclouded by placing all the burden of our sins upon another man’s back ;’ whereas the Scots, although as Presbyterians they have no absolution, yet ‘have something very like it—a superstitious reliance on the eflicacy of going constantly to church,’ where, he admits, they look so solemn that one might think they were not only going to bury their sins but themselves.
But if he shows a generous appreciation of the sociable qualities of the Scots, our author devoutly prays to be delivered from all share in their sports. He _ betrays invincible ignorance of the august mysteries of golf, and profanely describes it in a paragraph wherein allusion is also made to ‘ the insignificant pastimes of marbles, tops, ete.’ Golf an insignificant pastime! Phoebus! what a phrase ! We would have Captain Topham to know—but let that pass. He has just enough discretion to admit that ‘some skill and nicety are necessary to strike the ball to the proposed distance and no further, and that in this there is a considerable difference in players. Heigho! there be some of us for whom the path through life were less thorny if this were the whole matter. After all, there is some- thing in Captain Topham’s failure to appreciate the nobility of golf which may temper the acerbity of his criticism when he says that though Scottish gentlemen ‘love shooting, hunting, and the pleasures of the field, they are proficients in none of them.’
The hazard table was in universal vogue, but owing to the scarcity of cash among fashionable folk, the incon- venient habit prevailed of keeping books, and the gallant Captain’s delicacy was sorely wounded by being referred
1894
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April 21, 1894]
to twenty different people before he could receive his winnings. He protests, also, with all his might against the practice of kissing ladies (in public, bien enlendu), and fortifies his objection by many quotations from the classics, ‘When I see a beautiful girl of sixteen approaching to be saluted by a row of strangers, it always gives me an idea of tasting before you bid: and removes from my imagination that semi-reducla appearance, which Ovid mentions as so pleasing in the figure of Venus.’
On graver matters Captain Topham has plenty of praise to bestow. He mentions with enthusiasm the greater lenity of the Scottish, as compared with the English criminal code. No man could be capitally con- demned for the theft, unless he were proved a thief by habit and repute ; executions, therefore, were very un- common, and, when they did take place, were conducted with more solemnity than in other countries. Topham was an eye-witness to a hanging in the Grassmarket, and he draws a favourable contrast between the behaviour of the Scottish crowd and that of the people whom he had seen collected in Paris to view a poor wretch broken on the wheel. The French crowd applauded the dexterity of monsieur le bourreau ; whereas in Edinburgh, so great was the abhorrence of the office of executioner, that the hangman had to be kept three or four days in prison till the popular excitement had subsided. In the matter of funerals, Scottish customs seem to have invaded England since Captain Topham’s day, for he observes that, whereas in the south no distress was ever seen, and the only attendants at the grave were hired mourners, in Scotland the relatives and friends accompanied the body to its resting-place with great solemnity. Moreover, the procession was always on foot, whereas, says the Captain, ‘you frequently meet an Englishman’s hearse at full gallop, as if, after having been in an hurry all his lifetime, it was decreed he should find no rest even in death.’
Captain Topham, as a cultivated man, takes pleasure in the literary flavour already diffused through Edinburgh society. Writing forty years before the appearance of Waverley, he was able to declare that ‘there never was an instance of a man acquiring a fortune by the sale of his writings,’ a state of matters for which he blames the law of copyright as it then stood between England and Scot- land. He paid a visit to the printing-otlice of Foulis of Glasgow, the Aldine of the north, and describes how the head of that firm lost his pre-eminence in the trade by reason of his too exclusive devotion to collecting pictures ; whereupon the publishing and printing business migrated to Edinburgh, where it was destined to enjoy a dis- tinction which has not yet wholly passed away. Cap- tain Topham’s friends enjoyed an enviable privilege in the receipt of these lively and well-expressed letters, from which there must have been expunged, previously to publication, many personal details and pungent anecdotes. It would not be easy for a writer in the last decade of this century to impart so much local colour to his pages, for the bane of uniformity has gone too far towards engulfing these islands in their length and breadth.
Herserr Maxwe ,
THE REFINEMENT OF HUMANITY ADE 12.205
MYNHIS man, who said he had travelled through time,
refrained, after our first scepticism, from any further speech of his experiences, and in some subtle way his silence, with perhaps a certain change we detected in his manner and in his expressed opinion of existing things,
THE NATIONAL OBSERVER 581
won us at last to a doubt of our own certain incredulity. Besides, even if he had not done as he said, even if he had not, by some juggling along the fourth dimension, glimpsed the world ten thousand years ahead, yet there might still be a sufficiently worthy lie wasting in his brain. So that some conversational inducements began to be thrown towards him, and at last he partially forgave us and produced some few further fragments of his travel story.
‘Of the fragile beauty of these people of the distant future,’ said he, ‘I bear eye-witness, but how that beauty came to be, I can only speculate. You must not ask me for reasons.’
‘But did they not explain things to you?’ asked the red-haired man.
‘Odd as it my seem, I had no cicerone. In all the narratives of people visiting the future that I have read, some obliging scandal-monger appears at an early stage, and begins to lecture on constitutional history and social economy, and to point out the celebrities. Indeed so little had I thought of the absurdity of this that I had actually anticipated something of the kind would occur in reality. In my day-dreams, while 1 was making the machine, I had figured myself lecturing and being lectured to about the progress of humanity, about the relations of the sexes, and about capital and labour, like a dismal Demological Congress. But they didn’t explain anything. They couldn't. They were the most illiterate people I ever met,
‘Yes, I was disappointed. On the other hand there were compensations. I had been afraid I might have to explain the principles of the Time Machine, and send a perfected humanity on experimental rides, with some chance of having my apparatus stolen or lost centuries away from me. But these people took it for granted I was heaven-descended, a meteoric man, coming as I did in a thunder-storm, and so soon as they saw me appear ran violently towards me, and some prostrated themselves and some knelt at my feet. ‘‘Come,” said I, as I saw perhaps fifty of these dainty people engaged in this pleasing occupation ; “ this at least is some compensation for con- temporary neglect.” A feeling of fatherly exaltation replaced the diffidence of my first appearance. I made signs to them that they should rise from the damp turf, and therewith they stood smiling very fearlessly and pleasantly at me. The height of them was about four feet, none came much higher than my chest, and I noticed at once how exquisitely fine was the texture of their light garments, and how satin smooth their skins. Their faces —I must repeat—were distinctly of the fair consumptive type, with flushed cheeks, and without a trace of fulness. The hair was curled.’
The medical man fidgeted in his chair. He began in a tone of protest : ‘ But @ priori——'
The Philosophical Investigator anticipated his words, ‘You would object that this is against the drift of sani- tary science.
You believe the average height, average weight, average longevity will all be increased, that in the future humanity will breed and sanitate itself into human Megatheria. I thought the same until this trip of mine. But, come to think, what I saw is just what one might have expected. Man, like other animals, has been moulded, and will be, by the necessities of his environ- ment. What keeps men so large and strong as they are? The fact tuat if any drop below a certain level of power and capacity for competition, they die. Remove dangers, render physical exertion no longer a necessity but an excrescence upon life, abolish competition by limiting population : in the long run——’
‘ But,’ said the medical man, ‘ even if man in the future
no longer need strength to fight against other men or
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582 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
beasts, he will still need a sufficient physique to resist disease.’
‘That is the queer thing,’ said the Time Traveller ; ‘there was no disease. Somewhen between now and then your sanitary science must have won the battle it is beginning now. Bacteria, or at least all disease causing bacteria, must have been exterminated. I can explain it in no other way.
‘Certainly there had been a period of systematic scientific earth culture between now and then. Gnats, flies, and midges were gone, all troublesome animals, and thistles and thorns, The fruits of this age had no seeds, and the roses no prickles. Their butterflies were brilliant and abundant, and their dragonflies flying gems. It must have been done by selective breeding. But these deli- cious people had kept no books and knew no history. The world, I could speedily see, was perfectly organised — finished. It was still working as a perfect machine, had been so working for ages, but its very perfection had abolished the need of intelligence. What work was needed was done out of sight, and modesty, delicacy, had spread to all the necessary apparatus of life. The inquiries about their political economy I subsequently tried to make by signs, and by so much of their language as I learnt, were not understood or were gently parried. I saw no one eating. Indeed for some time I was in the way of starvation till I found a furtive but very pleasant and welcome meal of nuts and apples provided me in an elegant recess. They were entirely frugivorous, | found— like the Lemuride, There was no great physical differ- ence in the sexes, and they dressed exactly alike.’
The medical man would have demurred again.
‘ You are so unscientific,’ said the Philosophical Inven- tor. ‘The violent strength of a man, the distinctive charm and relative weakness of a woman, are the outcome cf a period when the species survived by force and was ever in the face of danger. Marriage and the family were militant necessities before the world was conquered. But humanity has passed the zenith of its fierceness, and with an intelli- gent and triumphant democracy, willing to take over the care of offspring and only anxious to save itself from suffo- cation by its own increase, the division of a community into so many keenly competitive households elbowing one another for living room must sooner or later cease. And even now there is a steady tendency to assimilate the pursuits of the sexes. A very little refinement in our thinking, and even we should see that distinctive costume is an indelicate advertisement of facts it is the aim of all polite people to ignore.
‘The average duration of life was about nineteen or twenty years. Well—what need of longer? People live nowadays to threescore and ten because of their excessive vitality, and because of the need there has been of guarding, rearing, and advising a numerous family. But a well-organised civilisation will change all that. At any rate, explain it as you will, these people about the age of nineteen or twenty, after a period of affectionate inter- course, fe]] into an elegant and painless decline, experienced a natural Euthanasia, and were dropped into certain perennially burning furnaces wherein dead leaves, broken twigs, fruit peel, and other refuse were also consumed.
‘ Their voices, I noticed, even at the outset, were par ticularly soft and their inflections of the tongue subtle. I did a little towards learning their language.’ He made some peculiar soft cooing sounds. ‘The vobcabulary is not very extensive.’
The red-haired man laughed and patted his shoulder.
‘But I am anticipating. To return to the Time Machine. 1 felt singularly reassured by the aspect of these people, and by their gentle manner. Many of them
[April 21, 1894
were children, and these seemed to me to take a keener interest in me than the fully grown ones. Presently one of these touched me, at first rather timidly, and then with more confidence. Others followed his or her example. They were vastly amused at the coarseness of my skin and at the hair upon the back of my hands, particularly the little ones. As I stood in the midst of a small crowd of them, one came laughing towards me, carrying a chain of some beautiful flowers altogther new to me, and put it about my neck. The idea was received with melodious applause; and presently they were running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I was almost smothered with blossom. You, who have never seen the like, can scarcely imagine what delicate and wonderful flowers ten thousand years of culture had created. A flying machine, with gaily painted wings, came swooping down, scattering the crowd right and left, and its occupant joined the throng about me. Then some one suggested, it would seem, that their new plaything should be exhibited in the nearest building ; and so I was beckoned and led and urged, past the Sphinx of white marble, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone. As I went with them, the memory of my confident anticipations of a profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible merriment, to my mind.’
THE LAMENT OF THE FLY-FISHER
MYNXHE current number of The Fortnightly contains an interesting article on fly-fishing. Its writer, Mr. Basil Field, albeit aware that anglers ‘ differ like doctors and wrangle like divines, nevertheless believes that they are agreed on the following propositions. These are respectively, that— (1) Fly-fishers have vastly increased in number ; (2) Streams and rivers fit for them have decreased in
number ; but
(3) Have increased in rental value ;
(4+) Trout have become more scarce ;
(5) Are smaller in size ;
(6) Do not rise to the fly as freely as they did.
It these statements are even approximately accurate,
their import is too grave to be disregarded by the fly- fisher who desires a continuation of his sport. The first three propositions call for little notice. They are too self-evident to be disputed. If the first be true, and it is attested on all hands, we must accept the increased rentals as the working out of an elementary law from which there is no escape. That streams and rivers fit for the fly-fisher have decreased in number is unhappily correct. The main reason for this is to be found ‘n one word—‘ pollution,’ Parliament has already given attention to this matter and some good may result from restrictive legislation, When, moreover, a certain standard of purity is maintained, angling societies have recognised the advantages of re- stocking, and in this way much good has been achieved, Mr. Field’s three last Jaments, however, go to the very root of the gentle art. Trout, he says, have become scarcer and smaller than they were, and do not rise to the fly as freely as of yore. To this we do not altogether assent, Ifa seeming Hibernianism may be permitted we would say that trout have grown larger and smaller. The intermediate size—the good average fish seems to have fallen off. This is by no means less disastrous to the water. The really big fish have practically ceased from rising and have taken to raiding shoals of minnows and young trout with cannibal impartiality. Such monsters grace neither the river nor the table. Yet the regulations in force on dry-fly streams protect them admirably. At times the mayfly or sedge may stir them from a peaceful
, 1894
ceener one of 1 more They ind at y the wd of ain of put it \dious id fro intil I have licate e had came nd its e one hould coned able, went sof a with
irate, 2 fly- first » too it is ntals here isher main ‘ion,’ and hen, ined, f re- ved, very come e to ‘ther 1 we The have the from and sters tions
At ceful
April 21, 1894]
contemplation of the bottom, but such times are rare indeed, and then only does the fly-fisher come to even terms with them. In many streams too the fry that escape these patriarchs fall victims later on to pike. The keepers no doubt do their best, but the fact remains that the ‘wary luce’ is all too familiar in even the most classic rivers. To take a typical instance. There is at the present minute a stretch of the silver Itchen of about a mile in length which, ten years ago, had no commercial value. Now its yearly rental is £50. In the good old times two or three brace of fish represented a fair day’s work. Since then the trout have evermore become scarcer and more coy, and three brace in a week is no bad performance. In 1891 they reached the lowest depth. There were some very large fish and many very small ones, but tidy trout of one to two pounds had almost entirely disappeared. Could the keeper account for it? No. The sport was net so good as it had been. He did not think there were any pike to speak of—perhaps a few small ones.
This explanation did not entirely satisfy the present writer who paid a second visit to the stream, this time with a jack rod, The second throw resulted in the capture of a pike weighing fifteen pounds. The proprietor was astonished and hurt. Galvanised, for the time being, into something like activity the keepers organised acrusade. Another fish of fifteen pounds was soon afterwards killed, a similar one leapt the net and throughout the winter many smaller ones were taken. If this occurs in streams like the Itchen and Test the plaint of the fly-fisher is well-fourded. The mischief too does not end with the mere destruction of the trout. The presence of pike renders sa/mo/ario so nervous that the slightest disturbance in his vicinity at once puts him down. The numbers of these depredators would however soon touch their irreducible minimum if the joint proprietors by taking regular and concerted action estab- lished something like a system amongst themselves. At this time of the year it is pleasant enough to walk along the ‘drawns’ and side streams with spear or wire on the look-out for gravid pike. That satisfies the sporting in- stinct. Not so delightful is it to drag the river on a winter's day with the clearing and cleaning of the ice-cold net which such a process implies. It is, however, a responsibility of first importance and one that should be most readily incurred. For the rest there is room for doubt whether the trout is beginning to Jearn the nature of the artificial fly or whether the true cause of sluggish- ness in biting is not to be found in a scareity of the natural fly which has been noticeable of late years.
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE CHORUS-GIRL A DIALOGUF
STPVHERE is less between us than might be supposed,’ observed the Philosopher.
‘There is nothing at all between us,’ protested the Chorus-girl indignantly.
‘I beg pardon. You do not, [ think, understand my meaning.
‘No, I don't, said the Chorus-girl, tapping her brown boot with her parasol.
‘T desired to say that there was less difference between us than might be supposed. Our paths in life, at the first blush——'
‘Oh, are you going right back to ‘hal?’ asked the Chorus-girl wearily.
“At first sight, I should say,’ amended the Philosopher patiently—‘ so entirely dissimilar, yet offer many points of comparison,’
THE NATIONAL OBSERVER 5383
‘1 don’t know what they pay you ——’ began the Chorus- girl.
‘I’m content if I don’t work at a loss,’ said he.
‘Well, go ou. What else are they like in?’ she asked, with her first sign of interest.
‘The object of your profession is to amuse mankind, Of mine, it is the result.’ And the Philosopher sighed.
‘I should hardly have thought it,’ remarked the Chorus- girl.
‘And, although I work with my head, and you with your——’
‘ Legs,’ said the Chorus-girl.
‘I was about to say voice, protested the Philosopher.
‘Then you know nothing about it,’ said the Chorus- girl. '
There was a pause: then the Philosopher, staring vacantly across the hotel-hall, went on :
‘I have but a small part in the piece
‘It can’t be smaller than mine.’
‘I have but to look on at the actors —~
‘It’s not particular fun, is it ?’
)
’
‘ And wonder how they do it
‘It’s easy enough.’
‘And why they trouble to do it
‘Well, I know that.’
‘And why they gain applause by it-—’
‘Yes; that’s queer if you like.’
‘And what will be judgment of the Great Critic
‘ They square ‘em, every one.’
‘It’s not possible,’ declared the Philosopher.
‘It’s done every day, affirmed the Chorus-girl.
While he grew dreamier she had become animated. She turned round and looked at the Philosopher.
‘I'd no idea it was like that,’ she said.
‘What was like what ?’ he murmured, rubbing his fore- head.
?
‘Why, what you do—your business.’
‘ Philosophy ?’
‘Yes. I say, do you get tired of it?’
‘Yes. But I could not give it up.’
‘That's me all over,’ said the Chorus-girl, with an em- phatie nod.
‘I had,’ said the Philosopher, ‘many openings in life. I commanded good interest. I could have got work at the Bar.’
‘So could I, said the Chorus-girl, in emulous eager- ness.
‘Bat I hated the life.’
‘It’s not fit for a Christian,’ she agreed.
‘The sight of the great stage fascinated me.’
‘I was crazy for it from a child,’ she cried.
‘I determined to penetrate behind the curtain.’
‘Yes, yes; so did I.’
‘And at all costs to learn something of what lay behind,’
‘Fancy you feeling that!’ exclaimed the Chorus-girl, much puzzled.
‘Day and night I studied.’
‘You've just got to,’ she nodded.
‘No problem should be too hard for me-~—no step too difficult,’
‘Oh, but some of them are teasers!’ said the Chorus- girl,
‘I would succeed. J would mount, and mount
‘Yes, yes.
‘Till I stood on a pinnacle and saw———
‘Your photograph in every window !’
The Philosopher gave a little start. Then he smiled and said sorrowfully : ‘Who knows? Perhaps it was that in part: but 1 thought it was love of the thing.’
’
Bye Fe
ae
584 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
‘So it is—a good deal,’ said the Chorus-girl sympatheti- eally.
‘You think so?’ he asked quite eagerly.
‘You bet it is!’ said she. ‘Why, when you've done the thing well, you let ’em say what they like.’
‘Yet, if they would understand a little ——
‘Oh, they’re a pack of fools!’ said the Chorus-girl with an indulgent smile.
A silence followed. At last the Philosopher, whose brow had been knit with deep thought, observed : ‘ Well, I haven't got far in my grand attempt.’
‘Slow work, isn’t it ?’ said the Chorus-girl.
‘It’s fifteen years since I began.’
The Chorus-girl said nothing, but she frowned a little.
‘And I have learnt but few of the secrets-———
‘Oh, I wouldn't say that of myself.’
‘And those I could not teach to others.’
‘I wouldn't if I could,’ said the Chorus-girl.
‘ And the time is so short for it.’
‘Yes, they won't look at you after began the Chorus-girl, but she left the sentence unfinished ; yet in a moment she went on, in a confidential tone: ‘It'll be pretty bad when one’s quite passée, won't it?’
‘ Passée?’ echoed the Philosopher. Then he smiled, saying, ‘I don’t know what it will be when one is passée. That’s one of the things I’m always trying to find out.’
‘IT shouldn't be in a hurry,’ said the Chorus-girl with an uneasy little laugh. ‘ It’ll come soon enough anyhow ; and it won’t be quicker or slower for your thinking of it.’
‘I can’t help thinking of it,’ said he.
‘Well then, no mere can I—but you needn't talk about it,’ she said sharply.
‘When the curtain falls on the play ——’
‘For the last time? Just fancy it !’
‘And one gets back to reality—will it be strange, | wonder ?’
The Chorus-girl declined to pursue the topic. She contented herself with remarking that she was not fifty yet, anyhow.
‘I had not supposed that you were,’ said the Philo- sopher hastily. He was a polite man. ‘Indeed, I should imagine you to be much less. Your complexion, if I may mention it, looks too fresh
‘Put on those glasses of yours, said the Chorus-girl with a cynical smile.
He did as he was told, and looked at her for a moment.
‘ Ah, well,’ said he, ‘ which of us does not do the like, before we face the world ?’
‘You don’t look as if you did,’ she cried.
‘You haven’t the proper sort of spectacles, said he, ‘or you would see it deep on me.’
She gave a little laugh.
‘You’ve got a queer way of talking,’ she said, crossing one knee over the other. ‘I haven't met many men like you, you know.’
‘You have also been a pleasant novelty for me,’ he admitted, pulling his beard.
‘Yet we've got on very well,’ she remarked. ‘I haven’t understood half you’ve been saying, though.’
‘I believe you have understood the whole of it,’ said the Philosopher with obvious conviction. Then he turned to her in some apparent embarrassment. ‘I do not know,’ said he, ‘whether you ever——’ A motion of his hand ended the sentence.
‘You're very kind,’ said the Chorus-girl.
The Philosopher crossed the hall and rang the bell.
The waiter came and he gave an order, When the
[April 21, 1894
Philosopher returned and sat down again by the Chorus- girl, she remarked—
‘Seemed amused, didn’t he ?’
‘To whom do you refer?’ asked the Philosopher.
‘Why, that waiter.’
‘Why should he be amused ?’ said the Philosopher in utter and innocent surprise.
‘I don’t know, I’m sure, said the Chorus-girl ; and, under that protection which the Philosopher excused, she coloured a little. But the Philosopher was not looking at her.
Silently they sipped the wine : and when it was finished and paid for the Philosopher rose. Holding his hat in his hand, he bowed to the Chorus-girl and said, ‘ I have to thank you, madam, for much kindness. I have seldom had any conversation which I shall remember with more pleasure or, I hope, to greater profit.’
The Chorus-girl made him noanswer. She looked down at her feet.
‘I thank you, madam,’ he repeated. ‘And | have the honour to wish you good afternoon.’ With which he bowed again, turned away and, putting on his hat, left the hotel. And as he went, he said, ‘She interested me very much. I enjoyed the conversation.’
And she sat on for a while : till, lifting her eyes, she found a young man standing opposite her. He pointed to the glasses which still stood on the table and winked, half in question, half in understanding.
‘I’ve been having a bit of a change,’ said the Chorus- girl in icy tones.
‘A change, eh?’ said the young man.
‘Yes, I’ve been talking to a gentleman,’ said she, and
rose and left him where he stood. Anruony Hope.
THE FAUST REVIVAL
if hardly needed the explanatory note at the back of
the Lyceum programme to remind us once more of the impossibility of embodying in an acting drama the ‘complete philosophy’ of Goethe’s master-work, No one has ever complained that the late W. G. Wills failed to appreciate this rather obvious condition in preparing his stage version of the first part of the colossal poem. So far from attempting to compass the impossible, Mr. Wills was quite content to let the philosophy of Faust take care of itself, and to set about his work in the practical and unambitious spirit of the opera librettist. The result may not have roused the students and lovers of Goethe to enthusiasm ; but it was eminently satisfactory to Lyceum audiences, who, by popular acclamation, have long since placed it in the first rani of Mr. Irving’s managerial successes. With all its philosophical elements obscured or even obliterated, the Faust legend must always retain however handled, the materials of an intensely moving, because intensely human, life-drama, You might degrade Mephistopheles to the level of the mechanical villain and his victims to that of the commonplace hero and heroine of Adelphi melodrama, and still the overmastering humanity of this story of love and temptation and frailty would triumphantly assert itself. Mr. Wills, who was at least a writer of refinement and a minor poet of some capacity, put the legend, of course, to a far less severe test. His gift of smooth and _ occasionally vigorous blank verse, and his association with the greatest of stage-managers, enabled him so to treat the superficial aspects of the tragedy as to provide the Lyceum with a Faust capable, at any rate, of holding its own against the ‘book’ associated with the che/-d’wuvre of Gounod, More than this he was probably not required to do; the rest was a mere question of that artistically perfect setting which
asco RBM AAT T GF NO
1894
orus-
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ished hat in ve to Idom more
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orus-
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April 21, 1894]
is an inalienable tradition of this theatre, and of the popularity of the destined Margaret and Mephistopheles. Supplied with these conditions, the Lyceum Faust was welcomed by the Lyceum dévols with open arms, prolonged its career for over a twelvemonth, and after a long interval has now been restored to its place amid every demonstra- tion of popular delight. Why should Mr, Irving’s audiences trouble themselves about Goethe and his philosophy, when they can revel in the electric glories of that marvellous picture-pandemonium on the summit of the Brocken, and acclaim one of the greatest achievements of a great actor ?
Like his Lows XJ. and his Beckei—and unlike most of his other creations —Mr. Irving’s Mephistopheles is a perform- ance that compels absolute unanimity of praise. It is a character whose every attribute lies within his means. In physique, in facial expression, in the command of grim, sardonic humour, above all in that unique weirdness and imaginative power that enable him at will to cast a spell of lurid mystery over the scene, the actor is the ideal, nay, the only possible representative of the ‘ Spirit that denies.’ No mere malevolent, restless Flibbertigibbet is this all- dominating Fiend ; no need of tinselled eyelids to impress the beholder with his supernatural character and power. Fine as the embodiment was at first, it is infinitely finer now, for the actor has brought home with him from his wanderings in the New World an added repose, an access of restrained force, and a surprising clearness of articulation that conspire to remove all the old obstacles to the appre- ciation of his genius. There is a deeper note in the mock- ing malignity of the Tempter, an added impressiveness in his moments of devilish exaltation, that give a new value to an always masterly creation. If it is denied to Miss Terry to realise in perpetuity the ideal Margaret of the legend, it matters little so long as she still brings to the character her invaluable gifts of tender pathos, picturesque charm, and poetic grace. But Mr. Terriss’s Faust is an artistic mistake, and the romance suffers severely when this gentle Margaret is matched with a lover as ‘ robustious ’ as the Second and as bluff as the Eighth Henry, as those Royal roysterers lived and moved awhile since on the Lyceum stage. Jent new Martha in Miss M. A. Victor, and has even succeeded in adding to the spectacular effect of that
Mr. Irving has found, however, an excel-
astonishing Satanic pantomime on the Brocken. When the echoes of his thunderous weleome home have died away, he might do worse than consider the advisability of dispensing with the scene of the Witches’ Kitchen, inter- polated since the first production of the play. Apart from the fact that it is a bad imitation of what is well done in Macbeth, it is intrinsically feeble and wholly unnecessary. With it should go the Christmas-card visions that appear to Faust on the verge of his rejuvenescence, They are unworthy of the theatre’s scenic reputation.
MUSICAL NOTES
FPX\HE craze for Wagner shows no sigus of abating.
In a single week three concerts have been organised, with programmes consisting entirely of ex- amples, and almost identical examples, of the master and crowds have thronged to them as they would in no other country in Europe. It may be questioned whether this crazy admiration, which makes organisers of concerts understand that Wagner spells financial success, is alto- gether sincere, Certainly it is one-sided and inadequate, and so far may be considered undurable. True appreciation of Wagner’s genius in England on a firm and indestructible basis will be signalised by the production of his great
THE NATIONAL OBSERVER 585
music-dramas in their entirety as a matter of course every year,
Those who had heard Herr Mottl conduct at Bayreuth and Carlsruhe went to the Queen’s Hall last Tuesday prepared to hear the most poetic and beautiful readings that can be given of Wagner’s music, and were not dis- appointed. Those who had not heard him, but were attracted there by the name and fame of one of the first conductors of our generation, may have been a little chilled by the absence of the hot and fiery effect of sharp contrasts and quick changes which they have learnt to expect in interpretation by more ordinary leaders. The wealth of exquisite gradations, which Herr Mottl forces on his orchestra in crescendo and diminuendo alike, is a welcome change from the cheap theatrical transitions which are so often indulged in, For instance, Herr Mott! discarded the conventional rendering of the second part of the Yann- hiuser overture, did not rush at it with scrambling im- petuosity, but took it with an almost dreamy deliberation. The Parsijal prelude was taken, too, at the slow pace at which we are accustomed to hear it played at Bayreuth.
The orchestra, numbering 102 players, played magni- ficently, and considering Herr Mottl’s short acquaintance with English artists, it is marvellous how he seemed to understand and to dominate them, Mr. Andrew Black sang admirably in the final scene of Die Walkiire. His success was certainly influenced by the dignified restraint of the orchestra during his solo, In the Yrauermarsch from Gotlerddimmerung, new instruments, specially con- structed for the occasion, were used, the bass trumpet and the bass and tenor tubas, which would have contributed more to the instrumental colouring if they had been absolutely in tune. Herr Mottl will give another concert on May 22nd, when besides selections from Wagner, Berlioz’s works will be represented in the programme. This is as it should be, for Herr Mottl’s name is in- separably connected with the efforts he has made to produce and get a hearing for the neglected operas of the eccentric French composer, efforts which were crowned with success in the Berlioz Cycle at Carlsruhe last year.
Mr. Frederick Dawson, who gave a recital at St, James's Hall on the 17th, is a pianist of great power and facility of execution. Manual difficulties seem child’s play to his wonderfully trained fingers. But he is too exuberantly vigorous, and there is a lack of variety about his interpretations. The programme was unduly long, consisting of two Beethoven sonatas, the ‘ Waldstein’ and the E flat, besides long selections from Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, and Rubinstein, Mr. Dawson was most successful in the Mendelssohn variations, and in Rubinstein’s difficult Staccato study in C, If there were a little more broad artistic inspiration in Mr. Dawson's playing, his extraordinary mastery of technical detail would secure him a place as one of the first pianists of the present day.
Dr. Mackenzie’s new work, Bethichem ; A Mystery, was produced by the Royal Choral Society at the Albert Hall on the 12th. The title is a little irritating, as there is nothing in the composition which suggests or recalls any features of the old English mystery plays. It is, in fact, an oratorio of the ordinary type, provided with extraordi- narily bad words by Mr. Joseph Bennett. The literary merit of the series of pompous lyrics which constitute Mr. Bennett’s share in Bethlehem is hard to discover, but perhaps no one would think it worth the search if he were engrossed by Dr. Mackenzie’s musical treatment of them. And it is impossible to be engrossed by the tedious music of Bethlehem. From first to last, with the exception of the melodious little Cradle Song, it is dull and heavy. The composer has brought a vast amount of industry, of
586 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
academic musical learning to bear upon a thin and meaningless inspiration. There is plenty of orchestral effect, but it speaks too plainly of an infinite capacity for taking elaborate pains: it does not hide or redeem the weakness of the work as a whole.
eed
CORRESPONDENCE
EGYPTIAN POLITICS
[To the Editor of Zhe National Observer] London, 18th April, 1894.
Sir,—There is no reason why I should defend the Pa// Mal Gazette nor the Pa// Mall’s Egyptian correspondent from the bitter and not quite intelligible attack of your correspondent ‘Pyramid. The Pad/ Mall can take care of itself. But it is a pity that an apparently estimable gentleman should take a column of your valuable space to show how little he knows of Egyptian politics. ‘Pyramid’ knows and sees about as much of modern intrigues as all the other pyramids.
Last Saturday must have been a proud day for him. At breakfast time the world read his inspired prophecy that Nubar Pasha would never return to office, so broken in health and spirits was he. Before the world lunched it learned from the Pall Mall and other papers that Nubar had returned to office. At breakfast time the world hung on ‘ Pyramid’s’ lips while he discoursed about the ‘apparent discord’ between Riaz and the Khedive, which was described as ‘part of the game.’ Well, others besides ‘Pyramid’ know something of Riaz, and they know that the be-all and end-all of his life is to hold on to the dignity and emolument of office. Was it ‘ part of the game’ that he should abandon that by which and in which he lives? ‘Pyramid’ says that Abbas and his late Minister were ‘ actuated by one and the same motor, that is, an overweening desire to get rid of the English out of Egypt.’ Abbas may have been till lately, but he is an intelligent youth and quick tolearn. He learned a good deal at Constantinople, and he no longer affects to despise Lord Cromer’s authority. I believe that the presence of Mustapha Fehmy and Fakhni, of Fuad and Boutros in the same Cabinet under Nubar, as the result of negotiations in which Lord Cromer must have taken part, is a sign that for the present he means to work harmoniously with us, however much he may cling in secret to his ‘ motor’ and his ‘ overweening desire.’ As for Riaz, I have good reason to know that he desires to see the English retain their hold on Egypt, so long as he may by any chance retain his hold upon ihe reins of power. Riaz is a fanatic to the marrow, but he js at the same time a remarkably astute fanatic: and his support of the Khedive’s policy was ‘motored’ by an ‘overweening desire,’ not to get the English out of the country, but to be the Khedive’s Prime Minister: and it did not matter who was Khedive so long as Riaz was at his right hand, as Abbas dis- covered when he found himself deserted by his Cabinet at the time of the late ‘incident.’ That was an affront which Abbas could not be expected to forgive. Moreover, the Pa// Mall was right in saying that Abbas has never really favoured Riaz, whose habit of getting his own way whenever he can is not pleasant to a youth of so despotic a temper. He thought he had scored when Mustapha Fehmy was not forced back upon him: but he preferred Fakhri all the time.
The Pail Mall was right in commenting upon Riaz’s ‘apparent inability to take a bold and strong line’ during the late crisis, When the history of his dismissal comes to be written it will be found that he acted like a man beggared of resources, His attempt to force the Khedive’s hand by a premature resignation proves as much. I am not sure that we have done well to let him go. He hates us, but at the same time he had the sense to recognise our power. Nubar has a lack of independence, and a part of his Cabinet—Fakhri, Boutros and Mazloum—used to be counted among our enemies. The situation requires caution rather than confidence. Privately, I should like to know what Tigrane Pasha, Nubar’s son-in-law, is about.—I am, etc.,
SPHINX,
[April 21, 1894
REVIEWS OLD ENGLISH TOWNS
Town Life of the Fifteenth Century. By Mrs. J. R. GREEN, London: Macmillan.
The mere male creature may be excused for a parting s‘gh as he sees the supremacy of his sex threatened, or indeed annihilated, in yet another quarter. From light literature he is now habituated to see himself driven by the other sex, not masquerading as George Eliot or George Sand, or John Oliver Hobbes, or George Egerton ; but boldly in her own person as Mrs. Humphry Ward or Olive Schreiner. Heretofore, woman has said, while taking the things that are ‘pretty, odd and new. All ugly, old, odd things I leave to you.’ So man has been allowed to disport himself at ease in the field of history and dryasdust. But now Mrs. J. R. Green has shown that there is no subject, however seeming-dull, that she will not touch. Happily in touching she adorns. In good sooth from the point of view of mere humanity we cannot but welcome Mrs. Green’s advent to the ranks of historical writers. Under the heavy hands of bishops and professors Clio has been dull com- pany lately. In Mrs. Green’s company she renews her youth and becomes fit fellow for Euterpe. Let it not be thought however that her book is of that order of town-history, which consists in saying ‘If these grey old walls could talk, what stories might they not tell, or ‘ We see again the lonely but ill- fated queen riding through the town in the mi Ist of a brilliant throng of mailed knights, and all the other stale old gush by means of which want of knowledge and poverty of imagination strive to conceal themselves. It is a book of exact knowledge, careful inference and logical discussion, as well as graph‘c statement and brilliant summary. In fact, it is history written as it ought to be written, a branch at once of science and of literature.
The salient points which Mrs. Green brings outin regard to the state of the towns in the fifteenth century are the autonomy enjoyed by each, the immense variety of constitutional deve- lopment and experiment in them, the incessant change and struggle that was going on, the extraordinary complexity and overlapping of institutions in the sam2 narrow boundary, chiefly exemplified in the interaction and interchange of powers and persons between the trades and the municipal bodies. It is strange to think that of this old-world life scarcely a trace survives. The odd muddle which exists in London between th2 Livery Companies and the Corporation, both menaced; some relics in York of the Merchants’ Company; in Chester the continuance of some Trade Companies or Craft-guilds for the sake of sharing in some charities; and a few similar waifs and strays in other ancient places are the only existing institutions which recall the rich and varied flora of the medieval forest of towns. Ina passage of considerable power Mrs. Green points out how modern municipalities are the mere deputies of the central government, which itself through its own officials does most of the work of the medieval munici- pality :
‘To a burgher of the Middle Ages the care and protection of the State were dim and shadowy compared with the duties and responsibilities thrown on the townspeople themselves. For in the beginning of municipal life affairs of the borough, great and small, its prosperity, its safety, its freedom from crime, the gaiety and variety of its life, the regulation of its trade, were the business of the citizens alone.’
A striking picture is given of the multifarious duties of what in the fifteenth century began to be called the Common Council.
‘From the affairs of a pig-market and the letting of butchers’ stalls, they were required to pass to business of the most com- plicated kind—to constitute a Board of Trade concerned with inland and foreign commerce; a Foreign Office constantly busied with the external relations of the town, whether to over- lord, or king or rival boroughs ; a legal committee responsible for all the complicated law business that might arise out of any of these relations, or out of the defence of the chartered privi- leges of the borough; a Treasury Board, whose incomings were drawn in infinitesimal proportions from the most varied and precarious sources, and whose outgoings included every possible payment with which any public body has had to deal,’
eS ny “pa
April 2
In the and indt brilliant perhaps bonds of bour bar commun one. In are put t party, br brotherh before tl not form fifteenth you find vailing | the oligz like the to show of the fe gression well bro scale as social in book on merchan occupiec cathedrz north th no pries Mass, af child do the cha contrary
A proj strange the Abb a gramn the prie: the ‘al; ‘alphabe that the mean th ‘ papa, fF graces | ages anc Lord’s | read. element: school.
In a with suc many m least thr kept the people c man to meanwh that th in anotl point o Parliam merchar like Jace Poles fr as grea seal was sale ‘to were ne whose st great Cl of simp! formula minghar appears houselin ‘licence to hold |
IR etter ar meme
April 21, 1894]
In the fifteenth century, owing to the enormous commercial and industrial development of England, of which a rapid and brilliant sketch, full of lively detail, is given, the towns attained perhaps their zenith as corporate entities. They had burst the bonds of feudal tutelage and the petty boundaries of mere neigh- bour barter, but had not yet become too large for each to be one community, or too specialised in industry to be a self-sufficing one. In regard to constitution, some fine German romances are put to flight. The good old times, ‘when none were for a party, but all were for the State,’ and the grand old Teutonic brotherhood of equal freemen shrink into a very mythical past before the light of the facts collected. Mrs. Green wisely does not formulate any all-embracing counter theory. But in the fifteenth century, and however much further back you may go, you find still the same radical and ineradicable differences pre- vailing between the rich and the poor, the few and the many, the oligarchy and the democracy. The evidence of town life, like the evidence of manor life, when carefully examined, goes to show progress from servitude to freedom, from the power of the few towards the interests of the many; and not retro- gression from a paradisaical state of equality. Mrs. Green has well brought out the uprising of the townsman in the social scale as against the gentleman and the clergyman, not only in social importance but in manners and in learning. ‘The first book on Etiquette in English appeared in 1430. The successful merchant stepped into the place as patron of learning formerly occupied by the successful churchman, and Town Guilds rivalled cathedral bodies as keepers of grammar schools. At Bridg- north they even went so far as to order, in 1503 : ‘ There shall no priest keep no school, save only one child to help him to say Mass, after that a schoolmaster cometh to town ; but that every child do resort to the common school, in pain of forfeiting to the chamber of the town 203. of every priest that doeth the contrary.’
Apropos of schools, by the way, Mrs. Green falls into a strange blunder. She quotes a case at Walden in Essex, where the Abbot asserted, apparently as lord, the monopoly in teaching a grammar school of the master appointed by him, but allowed the priests in the town church to teach ‘very little’ children the ‘alphabete and graciis.’ In a note this is translated ‘alphabet and humanities, with along (and wrong) explanation that they did not mean Latin but logic. But ‘graciis’ does not mean the Three Graces, or even deportment as practised in ‘papa, p2tatoes, poultry, prunes, and prisms.’ It is simply the graces before and after meat, which, throughout the middle ages and for long afterwards, appeared with the ABC and the Lord’s Prayer in the Primer, out of which children learnt to read. The Abbot allowed the parish clergy to conduct an elementary school for children, but not to keep a Grammar school.
In a book which covers such an extent of ground and deals with such varied facts it is not surprising that there are a good many mistakes, and more repetitions. ‘Thus, we are told in at least three distinct places that the Trinity Guild at Coventry kept the grammar school there; twice at least that when the people of Rye went to look at a play they first planted a watch- man to see that their streets were not burnt by the enemy meanwhile. We are given to understand in one place that the first paving Acts for towns were about 1450; in another place one of 1329 is referred to; while in point of fact they are found from almost the very first Parliament rolls, viz, in 1301. We are told that no English merchants ever rivalled the rise and greatness of merchants like Jacques Coeur in France: but the sudden rise of the De la Poles from Hull merchants to the Dukedom of Suffolk is surely as great as that of any foreigner of them all. The Mayor's seal was not added to the seals of new comers on their deeds of sale ‘to overcome hesitation and distrust’ of them because they were new comers, but was added to the seal of any citizen whose seal was not well known, just as archdeacons and other great Church corporations frequently added their seals to those of simple canons or priests, purely for the reason stated in the formula used : ‘because my seal is unknown to many.’ Bir- mingham is not credited with ‘2000 houslings,’ which Mrs. Green appears to understand to mean ‘householders,’ but with 2000 houseling people—z.e., communicants. Why does she talk of a ‘licence to mortmain?’ The phrase is ‘a licence in mortmain’ to hold lands in mortmain. The plays or pageants performed
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by the various guilds were not separate plays, but only separate scenes or parts of the one Corpus Christi play, which, together with the Corpus Christi Guilds, Mrs. Green seems imperfectly to understand. Lastly, as a sin of omission, while so much is repeated several times over, we may notice that there is no attempt to explain the purport of the great return of Guilds demanded by the Crown in Richard II.’s reign, though a satis- factory explanation would probably go far to explain the mysteries surrounding the relations between municipalities and guilds. These, however, are minor blots. They detract little from the value of the great gift that Mrs. Green has bestowed on the student of English history.
VERSICULI Desert London: and other Fanctes. London: Milton Smith. The Persian Vizier: and other Poems. CLIFFE. London: Remington, Poems. By LEWIS BROCKMAN. London: Cox. The Reconciliation. By GASCOIGNE MACKIE. Simpkin. The Wanderer in the Land of Cybi: and other Poems. By CLIFFORD BROOKS. London: Cox.
By JAMES BURNLEY
By FRANCIS HENRY
London :
Songs of the Cascades (Part I.). By ERL VIKING. London: Cox. Sonnets: and other Verses. By WILLIAM Gay. Melbourne:
Petherick. Poems, Sonnets, Songs, and Verses. By the Author of The Professor : and other Poems. WLondon: Bell.
Mr. Burnley set himself too difficult a task when he attempted to give a concrete form to that complex entity we call ‘ London.’ His ambitious effort occupies eight ‘ Parts,’ with a‘ Proem’ and an ‘Epilogue’; and after the manner of Zhe Princess (longo tamen intervallo) it is punctuated by lyrics. The opening of the political section of this queer farrago may be commended to the notice of Sir William Harcourt when next he has occasion to make use of his only metaphor :
lhe Ship of State—poor battered hulk !—puts forth Once more upon the sea of politics,
Her tattered flag blown helpless in the breeze,
Her sails (the dower of Freedom) all besmirched And torn by party-taints and strife; and when
rhe helmsman mounts his post, and would direct, She answers not unto his stern mmand.
A little of this kind of thing goes a long way, and we much prefer Mr. Burnley when he discourses to us—a poetical Private Learoyd—in the dialect of his native Yorkshire. He will pro- bably be distressed when we inform him that ‘Jim’s Letter’ and ‘Ruffinheead’ and ‘ Nivver no more’ are worth all the clumsy blank-verse banalities of ‘ Desert London’ put together : but it is none the less an indisputable fact.
In his renderings of Leopardi, Mr. Cliffe showed himseli a faithful and appreciative translator, but he has scarcely sufficient originality to justify an independent appearance. His verses on the death of the Duke of Clarence are turgid and ineffective, and quite out of keeping with the simplicity of the dead Prince’s character. An ode ‘To the Creator’ is equally grandiloquent, and not a whit more successful, reminding the judicious reader of the liberties taken with the Deity (and the English language) by Mr. Robert Montgomery. Mr. Cliffe’s attempts at sapphics and alcaics are also, we fear, wholly lacking in the curiosa
felicitas that those difficult metres demand.
Mr. Brockman is somewhat more fortunate in his poetic equipment. His sonnets are not without grace of expression, his ballads have now and then the true archaic note, and many of his ‘other verses’ are melodious enough. We could have wished, however, that he had resisted the temptation to re- publish sundry ‘topical’ effusions, which, to speak frankly, are sadly poor stuff—thin, tawdry, and vulgar—and especially the rhymed heroics which he has the unparalleled effrontery to associate with the name of Alexander Pope.
In Zhe Reconciliation: a Romance of Fairyland, Mr. Gascoigne Mackie reveals a certain undisciplined vigour, which may some day (if he is a very young man) stand him in better stead. At present he is terribly effervescent, with a cloying, creamy sweetness, suggestive of sparkling Burgundy. He
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has read his Keats to some purpose, as witness the following
lines :
Next came fantastic spirits of the deep, With tangled locks, wild-eyed, and ill at ease, Spectral as wraiths that fledge the flats of sleep, Or vanishing dreams that visit but to tease A sick man’s brain, with troubled memories Of flashing headlands ring’d with billowy foam
Where lovely sirens sit and sing the mariter home.
‘The Tarras,’ on the other hand, is full of reminiscences of Tennyson’s ‘ Brook’ :
Where gusts of sudden wind displace The weaving gnats and midges, The wrinkle roughens o’er my face And ripples into ridges, O’er many a shelf of slate and shale I purl, where shoals of minnow Sparkling like grains of sunny hail My whirling shallows winnow.
Mr. Mackie, in short, as the foregoing extracts prove, is still in the imitative stage. But he is on the right road ; he has a real feeling for nature; and we wish him a kindly God- speed.
The Wanderer in the Land of Cybi is the title waich Mr. Clifford Brooks gives to a rather absurd little volume. It opens with a series of ‘Sun Worshippings, that is to say, verses in praise of some half a score of damsels, elaborated with what we take to be Celtic imagery. As thus:
A little boat, thy mouth sleeps on the sea Of thy uncoloured face ;
or, again, with a nice derangement of epitaphs—
But as a far-off hill, blue hazéd, lonely, Away from throngs, is exiled sole and only, So art thou passionless and cold and thronely.
All things considered, we advise Mr. Brooks to leave our awkward English tongue alone for a time, and write his next book in Welsh. His trifling irregularities will thus be less noticeable.
‘Erl Viking’ hails from British Columbia, and is a dashing bard, who doubtless has a great vogue in the literary circles of Vancouver. We admire his politics (which are violently anti- Gladstonian) a good deal more than his poetry.
In his ‘prefatory note ’ to Sonnets and other Verses, Mr. Wil- liam Gay modestly says :‘ These verses are merely the occasional essays of one whose chief interest lies another way... . They will almost certainly have no successors from this pen; and whatever fate may be assigned them, they will accept.’ It is not easy to see how they could do otherwise : but we do not think Mr. Gay need despair. His verses are by no means so bad as many which are more confidently announced; and we shall always be ready to give hima friendly hearing. He really should not, however, rhyme ‘ dawn’ with ‘ gone.’
Poems, Sonnets, Songs and Verses is what the author of 7he Professor oddly styles his prettily-printed collection of metrical bric-a-brac. His muse is of the most engagingly discursive kind : now she perpendeth of statesmen, and anon doth prattle of spiders; on one page her theme is partridge-shooting, on another the massacre of Peterloo. Even Juvenal, with his guidguid agunt homines, is thrown completely into the shade in point of versatility. The reader of the volume experiences a mild surprise, as of one who turns a kaleidoscope, not knowing what new arrangement of coloured scraps may next present itself. The following stanza by the writer might, indeed, be most fitly applied to his own performances :
He was afraid his nimble pen Would drain his head quite dry, But as the thoughts oozed through the quill,
Bi
New thoughts ran in incessantly,
OAYMA OEAXOAI
The Yellow Book; An Illustrated Quarterly. Vol. I. London : Mathews.
On Monday the great world did Messrs. Mathews and Lane, publishers, the honour to creak on its hinges: for it had been foretold that on that day a new planet—a star of modernity, a yellow asteroid, in fact—should swim into the ken of the nation
[April 21, 1894
which hitherto had sat in a most lamentable darkness. Never was the way of a magazine made so plain before it as The Yellow Book's : judicious advertisements planted and injudicious interviews watered. The new periodical was to be ‘ beautiful asa piece of bookmaking, modern and distinguished in its letterpress and its pictures, and popular in the best sense of the word.’ We should like to know, by the way, what the pro- moters take to be the best sense of the word ‘ popular,’ and how they imagine that anything concerned with art or letters can be at once popular (in the ordinary sense of the word) and dis- tinguished. But the world took the cue submissively, and awaited the advent of Zhe Ve//ow Book in an attitude of reverent expectation. Now we have it: you can see men going home from their labour in the city, bearing the work deferentially under their arms: it flames from the forehead of many an ‘occasional table’ in Brixton and Bayswater. For the great world likes to be told what it must admire, especially when it is told to admire something new. It stands to reason that a quarterly, which boasted its intention of throwing aside the ‘traditions of periodical literature’ as ‘old’ and ‘bad’, was assured of a welcome from the obedient suburban populace, which since it cannot be the apostle of The Newness is content to be its acolyte. ‘We needs must love the highest when we see it:’ but Brixton and Bayswater never see anything. Only they admire, and sometimes buy the highest—or the latest— when they are told to do so.
And now 7he lelow Book shines—we beg its pardon, glares —in every self-respecting and ‘cultured’ household. In audacity of tone, its cover is the highest thing we have ever seen. ut how does the publisher's preliminary boast accord with his finalaccomplishment? ‘The thing was to be ‘ beautiful as a piece of bookmaking, modern and distinguished in its letter- press, and its pictures, and popular in the best sense of the word.’ Our duty is to submit that The Yellow Book is not beautiful as a piece of bookmaking. It is bizarre, eccentric, uncomfort- ably heavy to the hand—it weighs half as much again as a book of its size should weigh—and is no more than clearly, usefully printed. The paper is smooth with a smoothness whose surface is broken by every touch of the finger : glazed to a polish that almost distresses the eye. The type strikes us as too small for the size of the page ; the leading and spacing give an erratic, scattered, unsatisfactory appearance where we expect solidity and completeness. The dropped words at the foot of each column of type,and the advertisements of the reproducing agents who have processed the pictures irritate the eye exceedingly. The title-page which comes after the contents lists consists of a thin, unimpressive rivulet of print, beside a study of a young lady playing a piano in the middle of a wind-blown field: a young lady whose hair and gown seem to be of the same material as the instrument. We can only express our humble uninstructed amazement at the audacious vulgarity and the laborious inelegance of the cover, leaving the reader to judge whether this be a beautiful piece of bookmaking or not. It may be ‘ popular in the best sense of the word,’ of course.
rhe pictures, too, were to be modern and distinguished. All pictures which have been lately executed are modern ; indeed, they could not be otherwise. And we have no wish to suggest that several of the sketches and studies to be found here are not distinguished intheir humble way. Sir Frederic Leighton’s, for instance, are drawn in his usual formal, academic, and frigid style. But Mr. Joseph Pennell’s Le Puy en Velay is admirable in tone and line; admirable in the effect of dignity which the artist has attained at the slenderest expense of his resources. We are greatly taken by the Portrait of a Lady by Mr. Charles W. Furze. Mr. Sickert and Mr. Rothenstein show, as they have so often shown before, that they are clever always and scarcely care to be more than clever. But what shall be said of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley, who contributes four sketches, besides’ the title-page and the design for the cover? His women—he mostly draws women—are ofa surprising angularity, a surprising height, and surprisingly bedraped. They resemble nothing on the earth, nor in the firmament that is above the earth, nor in the waters under the earth; with their lips of a more than Hottentot thickness, their bodies of a lath-like flat- ness, their impossibly pointed toes and fingers, and their eyes which have the form and comeliness of an unshelled snail. Mr. Beardsley does appreciate the grace of a long fluent line, and can inglicate the sweeps and folds of his drapery in such a
April ¢
manner less tha smudgir of propt utterly. suppose The | drawing the wor traditior will not here mi the edit by the ‘ cal mat by the‘ —and it fantasia airier, f been ch has the some s society. courage busines style or judgme Waugh prove t we hav artificia Hobbes one ‘no stories, d’Arcy, and ne the cau: It is nic an ange bad old angels parent] perforn of the» Gosse, Poet’ ; can wri cellany of Cosn amusin; orpimet wise, ta when h ticular of his | that he ‘ rippin; the coc leave h tinguisl js also : ‘It’s he an unin be met will be admirec has alr have. the thi Newne
Wec Zangwi of Schn
April 21, 1894]
manner that the unreality of his work sometimes strikes one less than the occasional accident of its grace. But his smudginess ! the clamant hideousness of histones! The sense of proportion and harmony seems to have departed from him utterly. Yet he, too, is modern and distinguished and, we suppose, ‘ popular in the best sense of the word.’
The letterpress of Zhe Yellow Book is quite as modern as the drawings, rather more distinguished and not in any sense of the word so popular. But we do not see where the ‘old bad traditions of periodical literature’ have been cast aside. We will not say that any one of the stories and essays that we find here might have appeared in an ordinary magazine, because the editors of the better magazines would probably have held by the ‘ old bad tradition’ of rejecting nonsensical and hysteri- cal matter. But on the other hand they would also have held by the ‘old bad tradition’ of accepting Mr. Henry James's story —and it is a story for once—or Mr. George Saintsbury’s clever fantasia on wine and women, which might have been of an airier, friskier diction to its own advantage. Mr. James has been charged with having fallen into a Dodotage, but his satire has the sting of a commendable bitterness, it is in fact a whole- some stinging criticism on the pseudo-literates of modern society. Mr. Garnett’s essay is on the love-story of a curious courageous mercenary who was a sonneteer in the intervals of business : and nothing could be lighter and more reticent in Style or more judicious in sentiment. But reticence and good judgment are neither old nor bad: although Mr. Arthur Waugh travails through some twenty pages, attempting to prove that reticence is but the tune of the passing time and that we have none of it. ‘ The Fool’s Hour’ is the first act of an artificial comedy by Mr. George Moore and ‘John Oliver Hobbes.’ The dialogue is vastly amusing at points, but it leads one ‘no forrader’ towards the core of the drama. There are other stories, but we can only praise ‘ lrremediable, by Miss Ella d’Arcy, which is clever and well written, in spite of an occasional and needless brutality of phrase—interjected, we imagine, in the cause of The Newness. The verse is not at all distinguished. It is nice to be able to assume that Mr. Richard Le Gallienne is an angel : the opening of ‘ Free-worship’ irresistibly recalls the bad old scholastic problem about angels and needle-points. But angels are not necessarily poets, although they may and ap- parently do compare a tree to‘a sponge of living light’ and perform other modern, distinguished and, in the best sense of the word, popular freaks with the English language. Mr. Gosse, too, is always frequent and free with his views on ‘The Poet’ and his habits: but that does not prove that Mr. Gosse can write poetry any more than his contributions to this mis- cellany prove it. We have left Mr. Max Beerbohm’s ‘ Defence of Cosmetics’ to the last because it is the most astonishing and amusing of all the contributions to this misarrangement in orpiment. When any one, modern and distinguished or other- wise, talks about the ‘tangled accrescency of man’s emotions,’ when he describes woman as the ‘ resupinate sex’ and a par- ticular lady as ‘fair but infelix,’ when one finds that the centre of his argument is the ‘secernment of soul and surface,’ and that he mingles with his most precious phrases such words as ‘ripping,’ ‘ spiflicate,’ ‘ensorcel ’—in the sense of enchant—‘ trip the cock-a-whoop,’ and ‘damned flutterpate, it is kindest to leave him alone. This sort of thing may be modern and dis- tinguished and ‘ popular in the best sense of the word.’ But it js also silly.
‘It’s not the hen that cackles the most that lays the largest egg. Zhe Yellow Book has been boomed into notoriety and an unintelligent circulation. But the best of its contents might be met in any of the old, bad magazines. The worst of them will be taken as something rich and strange, something to be admired by reason of their frenzied eccentricity. The publisher has already viven the keynote of the criticisms he would like to have. Honesty compels us to strike a discordant strain, But the thing will probably be accepted as the Evangel of The Newness. O ye unwise among the people...
FICTION We cannot pretend to have been so much amused by Mr.
Zangwill’s new volume of stories, and especially by 7he King of Schnorrers (London: Heinemann), which gives its title to
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the collection, as the more favoured reviewers seem to have found themselves. Like the same author’s other works, these pieces reveal both power and imagination, but we find his majesty the ‘Schnorrer’ (or Jewish beggar of a century ago) rather a dull dog, in spite of his undeniable impudence and extravagant dignity. He is cunningly contrived and well worked out, but he does not entertain us; neither he, nor his swagger, nor his impunity, nor his victims, nor his son-in-law —who to some extent turns the tables upon him—nor anything that is his. The comparatively fugitive pieces which make up the volume are of the nature of magazine articles, some better and some worse, but all up to a fair standard of merit. In ‘The Memory Clearing-House,’ Mr. Zangwill has played—almost trifled—with an idea which is rather suggestive of a comparatively old-world story of Mr. Besant’s (and Mr. Rice ?), which sticks in the memory. Whether its title was or was not Zhe Strange Love of Mr. Lucraft, something of the kind it certainly was. Itisa good idea, and we cannot but regret that Mr. Zangwill did not work out his rather hasty sketch into something more elaborate and of more durable interest. ‘ Cheating the Gallows’ is a not very skilful essay in the Box-Cox-Jekyll-and-Hyde style, and ‘Flutterduck’ seems to us more sordid than pathetic. However, there are probably a good many people whose good fortune it is to be more interested by Mr. Zangwill than we are, and to them we may hope that these stories will prove sufficiently attractive.
In Katherine Lauderdale (London: Macmillan) Mr. Marion Crawford gives us another study of New York Society. That it is clever is a matter of course, that it is long-winded is, alas! only too true. If you resign yourself to the fact that the three volumes ought to have been one, and if you forget that Mr. Crawford could then have made it a masterpiece like his Cigarette Makers Romance, you will enjoy the book. It is pleasant reading—more, it is frequently entirely entertaining. The theme is none of the pleasantest, but it is handled with so light a touch that the hero’s hereditary affection for diverse and strange liquids is never offensive. Jack Ralston is the only son of a United States Admiral, who in his day could carry more liquor like a gentleman than any other man in the navy of the Republic. Jack is a good fellow, but he inherited his father’s strong head as well as the paternal thirst. He was naturally proud of his exceptional achievements in seeing other men go under the table, and gave frequent exhibitions of his powers. Early in life he acquired a reputation as a drinker—a reputation that is, when the story opens, on the point of developing into that of a drunkard. He is in love with his cousin, Katherine Lauderdale. They are engaged, but Jack has no occupation: his widowed mother is not rich, and Katherine’s father opposes the match. How they get privately married, how Jack previously tonfesses his besetting sin t Katherine, how on his wedding-day he is believed by his wife, his mother, his best friend, and all his familiars, to have beea brutally and boisterously drunk, and how a doctor out of a machine puts everything right by saying that he has tasted nothing stronger than water for days—all this is what Mr. Crawford tells in three volumes. The wonder is how he manages to take so long to do it, and it says much for his wit that you are not bored long before the end of the third volume. Much of Mr. Crawford’s time, however, is taken up with an account of the house of Lauderdale—a Casa Saracinesca trans- lated to New York.
From Mr. Crawford’s comedy of errors to the startling tragedy of Miss May Crommelin’s Dust before the Wind (London : Bliss) isa long step. The books have nothing in common; Miss Crommelin’s is vastly the more dramatic theme, Mr. Crawford’s has the advantage in a better pre- sentment. Here any comparison must end. Dust defore the Wind is a tale of women—the men are lay figures, supers, things with labels. The women, however, are all well done. The mother is an excellent study and the daughters are quite as charming as any one could wish—the younger, the heroine of the tale, is romantic and beautiful, somewhat of an Undine till the Fairy Prince (who alas, is a married man) comes. There- after follows the obvious tragedy, but it is originally treated and concluded by dramatic intenseness. Exuberance of style, vary- ing occasionally on the hysterical, spoils the literary quality of the tale, but on the whole it is quite above the average novel.
The man who has no music in his soul need not attempt to
590 THE NATIONAL OBSERVER
read A Daughter of Music, by G. Colmore (London: Heine- mann). The rest of us, however, will find it an interesting and intelligent tale, full of strange pathos and developing a plot which even in these days is original. The blot on the bookisa stage miser, a simple and inharmonious importation from the melodrama of the Adelphi. The heroine, and indeed, most of the other characters, are creatures of another and more artistic conception, and the benefit of contrast might have been {more naturally achieved. With ail its good points, however, 4 Daughter of Music is unconvincing. The ring of truth to life and human nature is wanting from time to time. It is poetic, fantastic, an you will, but it has failed and its failure is rather a failure of temperament than of method.
The latest ‘Pseudonym, Zhe Hon. Stanbury (London: Unwin), is worthy of praise. It is realistic in the best sense, and portrays character in a wholesome, true, and at times tender fashion, and with a style free from either the affectations of precision or brutality. Were the author a woman the work might be described as gentlewomanly, or were he a man the epithet might be retained without disparagement. "Twas a stroke of genius that made the ill-assorted marriage of the Hon. Stanbury with the sick Jassée danseuse turn out happily for both, and terminate only by her death. In the interests of Mrs. Grundy the woman ought to have tired of the man, or he to have grown neglectful, and yet this ending seems the true one. ‘Poor Miss Skeet’ is still more delicately touched, and one is forced to feel that the lonely old maid’s appreciatio of passion and beauty might not be ridiculous as the clergyman’s wife thought, nor dreadful as a censorious world would imply, One point that may be cavilled at is the persistent chord of sadness in the book ; though it is neither a hopeless nor a cynical sadness. The constant recurrence of the minor tone strongly recalls Miss Wilkins. Three short stories comprise the volume : the first leaves the hero with a dead wife and an impending funeral, the second opens with these words, ‘If you really want to know how we came to buy that plot of land in the Protestant cemetery at Rome ’—while the third treats of an indigent gentlewoman whose employment had been the adorning of graves, and whose sole recreation when paralysed was an occasional trip to a burial-ground. Indeed, the third sketch— though not devoid of merit—had been better omitted, the first two being so good that a third on the same lines, and not up to the standard, forms an anti-climax.
HAFIZ Il. HIS OWN MYSTICISM
Colonel Wilberforce Clarke’s translation of Hatiz is from Major Jarrett’s Calcutta edition of the Persian text published in 1881, under the auspices of the Government of India. Certain Indian azar texts with commentaries have, however, been made available for collation; and many authorities have been consulted for purposes of annotation. In his preface, Colonel Clarke gives his reasons for preferring prose to poetry, and expresses the opinion that this mode of treatment, where we have ‘every word weighed, every thought truly expressed and the spirit as well as the meaning preserved, is likely to do more for the diffusion of Oriental learning than a thousand essays.’ At the same time, he considers that, owing to sundry special hindrance;, ‘a literal, or perfect, translation of Hdfiz in metre or in prose, is an impossible achievement. The reader is, moreover, told that ‘in the note on Siifi-ism, in inter- polations in the text, and in footnotes, much Sifi-istic informa- tion is given’: but as no note is forthcoming, we must seek for our key in the remaining data. An instructive life of the poet succeeds the preface: then follow the odes, fragments, tetrastics, masnavis, elegies, and other forms of Persian versification designated ‘Saki-nama,’ ‘Mughanni Nama,’ ‘Bino, and ‘Penta’ rhyme, in all 5,706 couplets and thirteen strophes.
The first of the Odes should serve better, in analysis, to illustrate the translator’s view of the poet’s mysticism than any other separate piece in the collections, inasmuch as the annota- tions to that Ode are so especially full and suggestive. How to put it before the English reader, in the truest possible like- ness to the original is no easy matter, because the main
[April 21, 1894
characteristic of that original is the music of its language and of itsrhyme. It goes without saying that we may not reproduce the one; nor can we do the other fitly, unless by closing each rhyming line with ‘A4é’—a task which could only be accom- plished in England by the introduction of foreign words : for there are eight lines which rhyme together, the first two, the fourth, sixth, and each alternate line to the fourteenth and last. Clarke, it has been shown, objects to versifying at all, so we cannot use his version for a starting-point : moreover, we shall have quite enough to say about it and him by-and-by. Bicknell begins with a good measure and rhyme, but takes a new rhyme for his second couplet, and continues his course to completion after the same independent fashion, regardless of his model. We are, therefore, driven to prepare a version for ourselves, professing no virtue but that of outward resemblance, in con- struction to the eye, as in sound to the ear; and seeking to retain the measure of the original Persian and follow its method, so far as to supply seven rhymes to the closing word of the first line without perversion or modification of meaning. It will be observed that the third, fifth, and each alternative line to the thirteenth, has no rhyming connection with any other, but simply retains the common metre.
1. What ho, the S#4/ thou that art, offer the bowl and pass it round : Easy was Love, at first; but now, its hard perplexities
abound. Il.
By perfume of the musk-pod, Zephyr-borne, at eve, from off thy locks, By gloss of that sweet-scented curl, how many hearts in
blood are drown’d! Ill. Colour