England in 1902

NINETEEN hundred and two has been in England a year of unaccustomed emotion. We have been stirred in turn by the most sincere and sober gratitude, the highest and most jubilant hopes, the most poignant anxiety, and again by an immeasurable relief. The honorable termination of a disastrous and expensive war has been received with heartfelt satisfaction on all hands. This was no matter for noisy or insolent triumph — the issues at stake were too serious, the difficulties of settlement still ahead of us too obviously urgent. But, meanwhile, the news of an actual cessation of hostilities could be received in only one spirit. To a man we were thankful in very grim earnest. We had indeed good cause. But scarcely had we been thus set free, as it were, for the prospect of untrammeled rejoicing in the festival of the coronation, when a cloud of ominous and threatening aspect rose upon the horizon. The uncrowned king was announced to be in danger of his very life. Preparations of every kind were abandoned; visitors from many a distant land lingered a few days to know that the crisis was over and went quietly home; a vast concourse of the military assembled in honor of royalty melted silently away; a crowded and gay metropolis spontaneously hushed the voice of business or pleasure; the trappings of every street were removed by night. The nation thought or spoke of one thing only, — the daily bulletin. Whether our sovereign’s illness were in reality more or less serious than had been officially acknowledged we knew not ; only after a little the strain relaxed, the news became steadily more hopeful and more confident. It was soon evident that science had once more stayed the progress of disease. It was really true, — “the King is out of danger.”

Still he was uncrowned. But no one supposed for a moment that the ceremony would be revived in its original splendor. His Majesty could hardly stand the strain ; his people’s mood had changed. And, in fact, no event could have more thoroughly falsified expectation in every essential of manner and inner significance than the crowning of Edward VII. It became an almost entirely religious ceremony, the solemn expression of a national thanksgiving. We had no desire to forget the days of watching through which we had barely passed, and no attempt to do so was made or thought of. It is probable, meanwhile, that the King’s personal bearing under the crisis and the appreciation he evinced of popular sentiment have secured him a place in the heart of his people he might have otherwise missed.

It remains, however, a fact that the coronation as it might have been had actually occupied men’s minds for the greater part of the year, and had more influence than anything else in the record. This means, if we examine it closely, that, alike in England and among English subjects throughout the world, attention has been almost exclusively concentrated upon an event which, however significant in its imaginative aspect, must be admitted to have itself no influence whatever in affairs. A moment’s reflection will serve to convince any one, possessing the most rudimentary acquaintance with our Constitution, that the actual ceremony of the coronation, however legally essential, can have no direct personal effect on anybody in any way, from King Edward himself to the most enthusiastically loyal of his subjects. Yet the most hard-headed of nations was willing to spend months of busy thought and considerable sums of money on the pageant; the claims of commerce were temporarily put in the background ; the traffic of the metropolis was disorganized ; personal arrangements alike for holiday-making and the development of business were readjusted; society and the masses were united for once in a common enthusiasm.

Nor, of course, was this striking uniformity of thought and action confined to one city or one country. Never before, in all probability, has London entertained at one and the same time so many distinguished representatives of other lands and other nations. Official hospitality was cheerfully strained to the full limits of its capacity, and private visitors, of less obvious — but in some cases no less certain — influence, crowded daily to our shores.

It is not altogether easy, perhaps, to gauge, or at least to define in words, the cause and meaning of so large a movement. The original inspiration lay deeper than any mere spontaneous outburst of personal loyalty or than the natural love of pomps and ceremonies inherent in human nature. Nor could a temperament so essentially phlegmatic as the Anglo-Saxon have been roused so universally and so effectually by anything so abstract as a mere idea, — the spirit of patriotism or the spirit of empire.

To some extent, no doubt, we were influenced by the consideration which always actually determines the everyday decisions of civilized mankind. We knew what was expected of us. We would be resolutely correct. But it is very improbable that such a motive could be in itself really sufficient to account for what took place. The truth is rather that, though we seldom consciously realize it, and still less frequently admit it, we are practically very well aware of the immense importance to humanity of occasionally stating facts in the form of emotion. Loyalty to the sovereign as a personality representing good government — on which we hourly depend — is of the very essence of modern life. The significance of things being done decently and in order is incalculable. It is on the stability of constitutions that the personal happiness of every unit in many millions must ultimately depend.

And this is not all. To secure continuity and cohesiveness in civilization it is necessary that law and order should assert themselves at times before the world, should parade their dignity, and utter through brazen trumpets the majesty of their unrivaled sway. Therefore are crowns and courts. Therefore do crowds gather and gaze. Royalty to-day, of course, means empire. The persons of kings are no longer of the sacred mysteries. It may be noted indeed, in passing, that so far as monarchy can survive the “limitations ” of modern days, the enthusiasms of personal loyalty will only be readily accorded to woman; so that arguments may be advanced in favor of some anti-Salic law under which the throne should be most fitly occupied by a succession of queens. In this respect the coming of Edward VII. marks at least the temporary closing of an era; for unquestionably Queen Victoria was beloved of her people. The remarkable tribute of Lord Salisbury — that by learning her late Majesty’s opinion on any subject he was confident of having thereby discovered the feelings of the great “middle classes ” of the country — will scarcely be repeated of her son. The heart of the people beat with her heart as it beats no longer.

The difference, however, may but serve to accentuate the heritage of position and responsibility of which our present King has so recently taken possession. He stands for a union more embracing and probably more stable than the world has ever seen: a present influence more significant, a past of nobler memories, a future of higher hopes. There is no occasion, and certainly here no intention, to use superlatives in order to claim superiority. The reference is only to the most obvious fact of modern history, — the perpetually growing importance of the so-called Great Powers. Practically speaking, the world is already in the hands of a few governments; and progress must almost certainly emphasize the problems created by present conditions. The dominions of Edward VII. are not exclusively walled by waves.

No most labored device, meanwhile, could have been more effective in bringing home to the public the seriousness of its new duties than the sobering history of recent events in South Africa, however auspicious the signing of peace at the dawn of a new reign. It will be impossible, perhaps for years, to honestly appraise the conduct of this weary war ; still more impossible, assuredly, to prophesy with assurance of England’s ultimate profit and loss thereby. But, whatever our criticisms of yesterday, whatever our confidence in to-morrow, it must be patent to all that our most recent acquisitions of territory are bristling with new problems, new dangers, new opportunities. There are the capitalist ever rampant, the colored peoples ever dissatisfied, the Africander ever active. The solution of all imperialist difficulties lies, no doubt, in Home Rule, — in leaving (as Cecil Rhodes once put it) “ the management of the local pump to the parish beadle; ” but the executive details in any general and permanent system of Home Rule, however imperatively prudent, are apt to become immensely complicated, and the nations of Europe are only feeling their way in this matter. England’s destiny is to make up her mind clearly and once for all.

And in the meantime we can hardly feel confident of any security in coöperation. Present methods of rule are obviously and admittedly of a temporary nature. The Boer generals have not yet exhausted their powers of negotiation and will be slow to announce their conclusions. Mr. Chamberlain’s return visit can bear fruit only at an even later date. The determination of the Colonial Secretary to become, if but for a few weeks, “ the man on the spot ” is very remarkable, very characteristic, and very commendable. The cabinets and the ministries of the future, in charge of imperial manœuvres, will do well to follow his example of studying the outposts. The immediate question, however, remains undetermined, as to how far Mr. Chamberlain and those more permanently representing government in the Colony are approaching a proud and vanquished people in the spirit of genuine good fellowship, and how far the Boers and their leaders are resigned to an honest acceptance of defeat in furtherance of their own immediate prosperity. Lord Kitchener’s terms of closure and his outspoken acknowledgment of help from the generals in submission are hopeful signs. The government is apparently prepared to act in a fairminded, though not in any sense a quixotic, spirit as to relief funds and the other inevitable sequels of war; the Boers seem anxious for a settled life, and their volunteering for Somaliland may do much. There is, indeed, a heavy reckoning behind us, of sufficiently sobering influence.

Among the surprises, of joy or suffering, that have varied the monotony of the ever lengthening campaign, no other perhaps can equal, in interest and significance, the death of Cecil Rhodes, empire-maker. In some ways the most remarkable man of our generation, preeminent in just those qualities to which it would seem the Future will lend her key, there is yet much that remains mysterious and inconsistent about his vigorous personality. Hard - headed, ambitious, unscrupulous in the means to his end, working entirely by materialistic influences to materialistic ideals, Rhodes was yet a dreamer who kept his own counsel. Without accepting Mr. Stead’s fantastic “Gospel according to St. Cecil, ” it is impossible to deny him a touch of the seer and the prophet. His strength and power were derived chiefly from the characteristics, rare enough to-day, of absolutely believing in something, confidently working for something, and remaining careless the while of passing events and personal considerations. Rhodes could always wait because he never doubted the future. One recalls his deliberate abandoning of a position at the Cape to which ordinary prudence would claim devotion, for the sake of completing his terms at Oxford. How few of the men with whom he has associated, or of those who hail him master, would have recognized the value in life of a university career, or would have had the patience to return to it, once their feet were set on the ladder of commercial enterprise! Such a man never practically accepted the possibility of death. There lay his weakness and by that he fell. Something of the man’s true greatness breathes through his will, of consequences far-reaching and penetrating. The rest we shall never know. Who shall say whether the problems of South Africa are increased or diminished by his withdrawal ? There is, unquestionably, one less force to reckon with.

The pressing demand of imperialism, of which the coronation witnessed the resources as the war has emphasized the perils, is forcing our attention upon two questions, the decision of which may be destined to bring about more far-reaching changes in our civic and commercial life than the inventions or the reforms of a century. The Englishman, you should note, is always unwilling to face new ideas: foreseeing nothing, he yet maintains his individuality through new conditions; his development lies over a series of tremendous crises of which the deepest shadows remained to the last unsuspected. It would be interesting to discover, on the eve of the next general election, what proportion of our voters will have given a moment’s serious reflection to the vital problems of protection and conscription, now rapidly stealing upon us to the exclusion of all others.

It is obvious on the face of it that both movements are in direct opposition to the genius of the English race. They involve the denial and the yielding up of much for which our fathers struggled long and manfully. The principles on which they depend are apparently retrograde and contrary to the most vigorous liberalism. Finally, their acceptance would remove two most prominent occasions of boasting over that in which it is our dearest delight to declare ourselves unlike our neighbors.

Protection, probably, is viewed with less excitable alarm for the two very obvious reasons that it has no direct concern with personal liberty, and that it may be introduced gradually, under various guises, without being ever formally admitted to a place on a party programme. We are not even now, absolutely and without reserve, free-traders; we may become a good deal less so without being quite aware of it. The question, however, remains, for those most resolutely opposed to the creation of tariffs, whether it were not better to force the hands of the Protectionists by fighting out every encroachment, the most insignificant, on general principles, and so bringing the whole matter persistently forward to be settled on a firm basis for a reasonably lengthy period. The need of revision in our former decision for free trade, the mere questioning of which a few years ago would have excited universal indignation, has arisen from the enormous development of commercial enterprise, from the close rivalry of foreign nations which we can no longer afford to neglect, and — in particular — from the special claims of our Colonies, where the doctrine of free trade has never been exactly popular. It is an error to suppose that they are either unanimous or unqualified in desiring from us a direct reversal of policy ; but they certainly present a majority in favor of some such changes, and from the fullest consideration of their real interests can we alone derive stability and honor in the future. It is essentially an age of commerce, and those most anxious for the moral wellbeing of nations will effect nothing without a frank acknowledgment of present conditions. Those on whom the very existence of our markets now depends are apparently inclined to the opinion that some measure of protection is necessary to our prosperity. Let them openly declare their conclusions and the considerations on which they are based. Thus shall the honest Liberal know if they may be accounted friends or foes; so shall he determine with what enthusiasm he may support or with what resolution he may oppose. Commercialism demands attention. The only possibility of limiting its encroachments will be to recognize, and in some sort administer to its permanent interests.

The dangers of conscription, fairly faced, are far more obvious. There cannot possibly be two opinions on the matter. It may be a stern necessity; it must be a grave evil. Recent events have most reasonably shaken our complacency in England’s military resources and in her efficiency. They should also have no less effectually awakened our conscience to the unspeakable horrors of war and the countless occasions for distrust of the conditions imposed by military life. It is, of course, an open question how far such evils might be either increased or diminished by any system of conscription, conditional or absolute; and they cannot be allowed to obscure the imperative urgency of reform. On the other hand it would be even more disastrous if, in a zealous crusade against inefficiency, we should overlook the incalculable value of voluntary service, wherein lies the very essence of our best traditions, the proudest moments of our history. The spirit of militarism rampant is probably the most dangerous force of modern times. Let us beware at all costs of admitting its influence. Here again it is of the first importance that the possibility should be faced. It will be a long time, one may safely predict, before any party, the most desperate, would openly adopt conscription into its programme; but the principle, however skillfully disguised, has already become the subject of an active propaganda, and is apparently in high favor among those directly responsible for military affairs. It would be a serious matter thus to strike at the very roots of individual liberty ; to create in our midst a new caste, which by the example of other countries has shown itself capable of becoming more autocratic and more retrograde than even the aristocracies of yesterday or the plutocracies of to-day.

Another lesson, perhaps, may be read from the calamities of recent years; a different solution may be offered for difficulties no longer to be denied. It is worthy at least of consideration whether we may not secure the ends desired rather by diminishing than by increasing the numerical strength of our forces: whether the profession of arms cannot be raised by demanding higher excellence and offering more substantial rewards. Were the volunteer movement at the same time encouraged and recognized in a really generous and serious spirit, were the Militia Act judiciously extended, we could secure “such a force as the Empire never yet had at its command.” We may reckon finally on coöperation of conspicuous gallantry from every one of our growing colonies, and it seems that an answer may yet be found to the most persuasive upholder of conscription.

The political executive, meanwhile, in addition to South African problems, has been concerned with the scarcely less important subject of national education. While this important institution, on the one hand, has not proved itself quite so unmixed a blessing as was once anticipated, in the enthusiasm of its original promoters it has become, on the other, almost unrivaled as a field of operation for the bickering of sects and the confusion of party politics. Conditions have now arisen, foreseen many years ago by a few clear-sighted Liberals, which are daily increasing the influence of ecclesiastics, encouraging denominational schools, and hampering at every turn the freedom of honest non-conformity. Once more the government, professing to recognize and encourage the principle that education provided from the public purse must be secular, are doing their best to contravene it by the careful provision of loopholes through which the clergy have never been at a loss to insert their dogmatic influence. Without yielding for a moment to personal animus — always most difficult to avoid in argument — one is honestly driven by a sense of fairness to the use of such harsh phraseology; for our state church has never been content to teach religion or stimulate morality without insisting on her own doxologies. No one, of course, has any intention of shutting out the children from religious instruction. The ground of complaint is simply that state education is now compulsory, which faith can never be; and that it is largely paid for by persons who are not churchmen, among whom the most sincerely pious find many of her doctrines positively distasteful. It cannot be denied that clergymen will seldom, if ever, be found, who would hesitate in the endeavor to enlist for their own communion the children of parents belonging to other denominations.

And the evil does not end here. A state church is so inevitably in a position to exert pressure on governments, its officers are so naturally predominant in local councils, that it has actually been able, in pursuance of its own fancied interests, to cripple at every point the efficiency of that secular education, so essential to the future of the country, which it is the proper function of state schools to provide. The comparative indifference of church nominees to their profession has been testified again and again; the inferiority of so-called voluntary schools is equally well established; and it is a curious instance of the blindness attendant upon controversies that no one pauses to reflect on the obvious consequences of such a policy to the church herself. She is gathering to her fold all those who are most inadequately equipped for the battle of life; she is making sure that her own sons and daughters shall be handicapped at every turn. She is so eager to retain the power of interference with other men’s business as to forget her own. Surely good citizens will make the best churchmen, and it is — in the main — by a sound secular education that good citizens are produced. We are not concerned here with the particular devices by which complacent Toryism is just now seeking to bolster up an old abuse; and we are convinced that revisions of codes the most elaborate and developments of machinery the most extensive can make little headway against so penetrating and so subtle a retrograde influence.

The religious, or more exactly the church, question must be permanently settled. It lurks behind every so-called reform, it poisons every election, it hinders daily work. Yet no real difficulty stands in the way of its settlement. A solution, already frequently brought forward, could be introduced without adding one item of responsibility to those now accepted by legislators or teachers, without demanding another farthing from the pockets of an overburdened taxpayer. The church could lose absolutely nothing by its adoption. The one and only end to be achieved is the setting free of the state paid teacher from all responsibility for religious instruction. Government may then provide a time and place for such classes, which should be held in regular school hours, but excluded from the regular school curriculum. They should be given to church children by the clergyman himself or his direct representative, who must have no other connection with the school; while for the children of dissenters their own bodies should send the minister or other representative, to whom the same restrictions would of course apply. Conduct in these classes and marks obtained therein should in no way influence the children’s school career ; they should be rigidly excluded from any report on which government grants depend, and should not be subject to the incursions of any government inspector. It is transparently obvious that the change would benefit religious, as much as secular instruction. Nothing less final or drastic would offer any check to the present confusion, or put an end to the discreditable wranglings among the preachers of peace. The different religious bodies would then gain adherents among the children, as now among adults, by their own energy ; and every success would be an honest and notable achievement.

No feeling but that of relief can be experienced in turning from the contemplation of a somewhat unseemly episode in church history to the study of an important work recently issued by a prominent “man of God ” on the Philosophy of the Christian Religion. By so naming his remarkably thoughtful and illuminating dissertation, Principal Fairbairn (of Mansfield College, Oxford) steps at once into the arena of modern polemics, with the resolute determination of maintaining that the faith we most of us still profess has no occasion to turn its face from the most searching investigation of the learned or from the most complicated requirements of civilized life to-day. He is concerned to “discuss the question as to the person of Christ, what He was, and how He ought to be conceived, not simply as a chapter in Biblical or in systematic theology, but as a problem directly raised by the place He holds and the functions He has fulfilled, in the life of man, collective and individual.” He sets out to prove that “the conception of Christ stands related to history as the idea of God stands related to nature, that is, each in its own sphere the factor of order and the constitutive condition of a rational system.”

Dr. Fairbairn divides his argument into two main portions; considering first the sphere and material in which Christ had to work, and secondly the personality by which he was enabled to achieve. It is established as a preliminary that the supernatural is not antagonistic, but rather essential, to the natural; and the position is supplemented by an inquiry into the problem of evil and a summary of man’s inner history. The ground cleared by so lucid an exposition of environment, our latest apologist proceeds naturally to a reverent study of the Person, inspired by the unhesitating conclusion that “the teaching of Jesus can never by itself explain the power of Christ, the reign, the diffusion, the continuance, and the achievements of the Christian religion.”

No one can afford to overlook so thoughtful a plea; no one can miss its “sweet reasonableness.”

Philosophy, of any ultimate significance, is based on history; and in this connection we may note the issue of several important historical works too weighty for detailed appraisement in a few paragraphs. The vast scheme of the Cambridge Histories, courageously planned by the late Lord Acton, is progressing with a regularity and thoroughness from which one may hopefully augur that it will not fall far short of its magnificent inception. From Oxford, meantime, we have Mr. Armstrong’s comprehensive and discriminating The Emperor Charles V., originally intended for the series of Foreign Statesmen, but found too bulky for the purpose. As the author most justly remarks, if Charles “had been a greater man, it would have been easier to write a smaller book,” while, on the other hand, the gigantic issues “it was his recognized duty not to evade but to control ” imperatively demand discussions in detail. “The real interest of his life,” in fact, “consists in a peculiar combination of character and circumstances,” and, in view of her early preeminence as a colonial power, the history of Spain must always appeal to English readers.

To “the almost superhuman wickedness ” of John Lackland, Miss Kate Norgate has devoted one closely written volume, in which an adventurous record is narrated with a satisfying and wellmerited amplification. John lived in a day when kings made history and made it picturesquely. However little heroic, their stories are always therefore absorbing and instructive.

In both the cases aforementioned history has been fitly written as biography ; and there are numerous instances where biography no less undeniably becomes history. Such assuredly may be claimed for Mr. John Morley’s memorable series the English Men of Letters, and, in particular, for the striking group of volumes now before us. Carlyle having been already included, how few influences in thought and action, characteristic of the century from which we have just emerged (surnamed the “Victorian era ”), can remain unrecorded in the pages of John Ruskin by Frederic Harrison, Matthew Arnold by Herbert Paul, George Eliot by Leslie Stephen, Alfred Tennyson by Sir Alfred Lyall, and Robert Browning by G. K. Chesterton. Did not our fathers learn from Ruskin to see, from Arnold to think, from George Eliot to feel? Have not Tennyson and Browning uttered their visions, their deductions, and their emotions in imperishable verse ? Add only Herbert Spencer, and the message of a generation is writ clear. It is a message to which we may not wisely turn a deaf ear. Verily there were giants in those days, and we are giants’ children. We have entered upon an heritage of strenuous, clean thought, boundless ideals, and iron resolution. The men of yesterday were as fearless as ever we can be in asking questions ; and it seems to me they were more passionately zealous to obtain an answer, better fighters in the service of truth. Because they opened the door, we must not lose the way.

Of absolute creations immediately contemporaneous there is meantime but little to note. The year has borne no new poet, playwright, or novelist, and those already illustrious have been for the most part unproductive; though Mr. George Meredith has broken a long silence in a few pages of brilliant character analysis for a new edition I have issued myself of Lady Duff Gordon’s Letters from Egypt. We have had, as usual, a new novel from Mr. Henry James, Mr. Anthony Hope, Mr. Robert Hichens, Mr. Merriman, Mr. Stanley Weyman, and John Oliver Hobbes. Mr. Henry Harland’s My Lady Paramount is not unworthy of The Cardinal’s Snuff Box, and Mr. C. F. Keary, in his High Policy, has once more proved himself a workman of most remarkable and interesting efficiency.

To the same author belongs the distinction of having published an almost solitary contribution to serious poetry. His elusively fascinating The Brothers, A Masque, can only be coupled with the sombre and dignified The Princess of Hanover, also in dramatic form, by Mrs. Margaret L. Woods. Mr. Keary and Mrs. Woods are neither of them “professionally ” writers of verse; but they are nobly akin, as serious students of that high art and practiced adepts in its mysteries.

There is, finally, a common and otherwise unique interest attaching to three recent publications of widely differing scope and intention. In The Little White Bird, Mr. J. M. Barrie appears to have set himself, quite unconsciously one would suppose, to give us an historico-geography lesson on the Elfland to which most of his fancy’s children in reality belong. There is not, I think, another writer of to-day who understands so well the first imperative demand which our little ones will make upon those who would “tell me a story, ” — that he should be literal, copious, and quite credible in every detail. The true child is never impatient and always serious. He cares scarcely at all about where he is going but infinitely much about what he is passing. And you will never please him unless you are thoroughly and unaffectedly happy about your task, unless you can utterly banish every consideration of the consequences. Mr. Barrie possesses the secret; it has made him at once a stumbling-block to the critical and an unfailing delight “to the general. ” His latest story contains an analysis of elf-nature which veils and betrays the self-apologist: “One of the great differences between the fairies and us is that they never do anything useful. They looked tremendously busy, you know, as if they had not a moment to spare, but if you were to ask them what they were doing they could not tell you in the least.” Watch the fairies closely and you may one day understand Mr. Barrie.

Mr. Kipling’s Just So Stories again were conceived in Wonderland, the Wonderland of the world’s youth. But as Mr. G. K. Chesterton has acutely remarked: “They are not fairy tales: they are legends. A fairy tale is a tale told in a morbid age to the only remaining sane person, a child. A legend is a fairy tale told to men when men were sane.” It is written on their very title-page, that these stories are “for little children, ” but they are crowded with strange words and images only calculated to perplex the child. The fact does not, of course, diminish by one jot or tittle the magnitude of the author’s achievement. He has written new fables. Here, even more convincingly than in the immortal Jungle Books, he has proved to an unbelieving generation that it is still possible to “see animals as primeval men saw them, not as types and numbers in an elaborate biological scheme of knowledge, but as walking portents, things marked by extravagant and peculiar features. An elephant is a monstrosity with his tail between his eyes ; a rhinoceros is a monstrosity with his horn balanced on his nose ; a camel, a zebra, a tortoise are fragments of a fantastic dream, to see which is not seeing a scientific species, but like seeing a man with three legs, or a bird with three wings, or men as trees walking. ” Mr. Kipling again is very fortunate in being his own artist. The numerous illustrations to his fascinating tales were surely first scratched on mighty stones in a vast desert. Here even the most modern of blinding spectacles may see “how the whale got his throat, ” “the camel his hump, ” and the “leopard his spots.” Even the most tiresomely pedantic of microscopes cannot overlook “the crab that played with the sea,” or “the butterfly that stamped.”

Though assuredly the making of new legends evinces a finer spirit of worship than the revival of old, the mead of hearty welcome may not be rightly withheld from those engaged upon the latter quest. Lady Gregory, indeed, has merited the undying gratitude of her countrymen and charmed the world by having once for all “arranged and put into English the story of the men of the Red Branch of Ulster,” entitled Cuchulain of Muirthemne. William Morris, as Mr. W. B. Yeats here tells us in an appreciative preface, once remarked that “the Norseman had the dramatic temper and the Irishman had the lyrical. The Norseman was interested in the way things are done, but the Irishman turned aside, evidently well pleased to be out of so dull a business, to describe beautiful supernatural events.” There can be no question, indeed, that the Irish bards in telling a story were an unconscionable time about it. That is why we love them so well. “One knows one will be long forgetting Cuchulain, whose life is vehement and full of pleasure, as though he always remembered that it was to be soon over; or the dreamy Fergus, who betrays the sons of Usnach for a feast without ceasing to be noble ; or Conall, who is fierce and friendly and trustworthy. ” Let us sing with them forever of “angry, amorous Malve, with her long, pale face; of Findabar her daughter, who dies of shame and pity ; of Deirdre, who might be some mild modern housewife but for her power of prophetic vision ; ” and of proud Emer, wife to Cuchulain, “ the woman whom sorrow has set with Helen and Iseult and Brunhilda, to share their immortality in the rosary of the poets. ”

In presenting this great cycle of bygone days to her own generation Lady Gregory has worked on a method at once the most reverent and the most judicious, the most faithful and the most courageous. On the one hand she has never hesitated to select, to omit, and to arrange; while on the other, she has always resisted the temptation of plucking away details or smoothing out characteristics to become modernly readable. She would recall for us the “time when people were in love with a story, and gave themselves up to imagination as if to a lover, ” and, of course, she is right. To this end, finally, she has discovered a beautiful and living speech, which, with the warrant of a fine old age echoing the lilt of ancient music, is yet a true English dialect entirely free from discordant archaisms. Her words are of to-day only, but so cunningly arrayed in well-ordered sentences that we seem listening to the very voice of Nature hymning Humanity:—

“ If we of Ireland will but tell these stories to our children, the land will begin again to be a Holy Land, as it was before men gave their hearts to Greece, and Rome, and Judæa.”

R. Brimley Johnson.