AN AMERICAN TRIBUTE TO OUR KING. EDWARD VII. is the subject of a character sketch in the April Century, by Mr. George W. Smalley. The writer declares that "he has far more knowledge and a far higher capacity for rule than is commonly supposed."

HIS LOVE OF NEWS.

He has been of late profoundly interested in matters of public concern. He knew the politics of Europe :

In such matters the Prince took care to keep himself informed. He was extremely well served, and he missed no opportunity of enlarging his means of knowledge. He liked early news. You could not do him a greater pleasure than to tell him or telegraph him of some fact before it became public. I could name men who, being in a position to know and being admitted to his confidence, which he gave discreetly, went almost nightly to

Marlborough House with their budgets of news, domestic and foreign. His household knew what their master expected, and they made it their business to supply him with it. His influence was often invoked from abroad, and often, though in a different way, at home. His intimacies with English statesmen stood him in good stead. Perhaps I may mention two, each very different from the other. I mean Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery, both Prime Ministers, and both, whether in or out of office, deep in the confidence of the Prince.

A STRENUOUS NATURE WITH THE PRIDE OF KING.

Some English readers will perhaps be surprised to read what follows:

I do not believe he will ever care to play the part of King Log. His is a strenuous nature, He has, very fully and strongly, the pride of kings, and what the pride of kings is a Republican who has lived all his life in a republic can but faintly conceive. He has behind him, moreover, the loyalty of

an expectant nation. ... Deep down in the soul of the Englishman lies ingrained this sentiment of loyalty to the kingly house he has appointed to reign over him. The fact that the King holds by a Parliamentary title makes little or no difference. England still expects her King to be a king. Why does she venerate the Queen? Because she has been, before all things, Queen. Within well-defined limits, yet in a perfectly real and true sense, the Queen has not only reigned, but ruled. It is a precedent which the Queen's son, to the full measure of his character and abilities, must follow.

"HE READS NOTHING."

Touching very lightly on his past record, the writer

says:

Underneath the surface, visible to those who knew him best, lying dormant if you will, but always there, was a Prince of Wales quite different from the card-playing, turf-loving, perhaps somewhat reckless, and at times even frivolous young man, whom England in its more austere moods has sometimes thought of imperfect promise for his future kingship, yet never ceased to love.

One training beside those I have already indicated he has always had. He has always been a man of the world-not always, perhaps, of the best world, but, all in all, a man of the world in the sense in which that phrase means most. He knew men. He judged them well. He observed and reflected. To

books he has never devoted himself. I once asked one of the men most about him, "What does the Prince read?" The answer may well startle you. "He reads nothing." "You mean he reads little." "I mean he reads absolutely nothing. We lay before him what we think he ought to see and he reads that, but you will never see a newspaper, and still less a book in his hand." It may have been true at the moment when it was said, though I am bound to add it was denied by other authority equally good.

WORTHY OF HIS PEOPLE'S LOVE.

Mr. Smalley informs his American audience very bluntly:

England is a very democratic country, more democratic in some very important particulars than our own, but there does not exist in England the vestige of a Republican party.

The English have ever shown an affection for the Prince of Wales. Why? asks Mr. Smalley; and answers: "He was worthy of it." One ground of this endearment was the revolution he and the Princess effected in the relations between Court and people :

They mingled with their fellow-subjects, accepted invitations in London and to houses in the country. It had never been done before with anything like the same freedom. Strict etiquette was against it: from the Continent the Court pedants looked on aghast.

A STRONG CHARACTER.

Mr. Smalley remarks on the Kaiser's visit in 1889. When he arrived he merely touched his hat in response to the welcome of the distinguished party who came to meet him. The Prince of Wales shook hands with them cordially. The Kaiser quietly took the hint, and when he bade them good-bye, shook hands. The writer sets down his own impressions of our new monarch :

First of all, the impression of real force of character. Next, that combined shrewdness and good sense which together amount to sagacity. Third, tact... Add to it firmness and courage, and base all of these gifts on immense experience of life by one who has touched it on many sides, and you will have drawn an outline of character which cannot be much altered. Add to it the Prince's constant solicitude about public matters, and his intelligent estimate of forces-which last is the chief business of statesmanship... Add to this, again, the effect upon the hearer of his conversation from a mind full, not indeed of literature, but of life, a conversation of wide range, of acuteness, of clear statement and strong opinion, of infinite good humour.

THE INDIAN MEMORIAL TO QUEEN VICTORIA. LORD CURZON'S SCHEME.

THE Empire Review for April does well to republish Lord Curzon's interesting exposition of the Memorial Hall before the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Nearly £200,000 has already been subscribed in India for the erection of this building.

AN INDIAN VALHALLA.

The Memorial Hall, says Lord Curzon, will be devoted to the commemoration of notable events and remarkable men in the Indian Empire, from the Moguls to the present day :

These records would take the form of paintings, enamels, sculptures, manuscripts, and personal relics and belongings. I should not hesitate for a moment to include those who have fought against the British, provided that their memories are not sullied with dishonour or crime.

I would not admit so much as the fringe of the pagri of a ruffian like the Nana Sahib. But I would gladly include memorials of the brave Rani of Jhansi, and of Hyder Ali and Tippu, Sultan of Mysore. In more modern times, I have already collected, with the aid of those gentlemen who have been good enough to advise me, a list of the names of eminent Indian statesmen, writers, poets, administrators, judges, religious reformers and philanthropists who might be entitled to commemoration in such a Valhalla.

In British Indian history he could collect portraits, busts, or mementoes in original or reproduction of the men who have made the Empire, including governors, viceroys, administrators, great generals, judges, men of letters, missionaries, etc. :—

GALLERIES OF SCULPTURE AND PAINTINGS.

One or more of the galleries of the Victoria Hall will doubtless be devoted to sculpture. Here will be collected the life-size figures or the busts and medallions of great men. A second gallery or galleries will be devoted to paintings, engravings, prints and pictorial representations in general, both of persons and of scenes. Here will be hung original pictures and likenesses, or, where these are not procurable, copies of such. possible, in mezzotints and stipple and line engravings, to recover almost a continuous history of Anglo-Indian worthies, battles, sieges, landscapes, buildings, forts and scenes during the last two hundred years.

It is

While speaking of pictorial representation, it has been suggested to me that around the open corridors of the inner courts and quadrangles of the building might be depicted frescoes of memorable incidents or events. Fresco painting is an art in which the Indian craftsman once excelled.

RELICS OF HEROES.

Of the galleries that are occupied by paintings or in adjoining rooms I suggest that there should be placed stands and cases with glass lids, containing the correspondence and handwriting, the personal relics and trophies and belongings of great men. It ought to be possible to procure autograph letters of all the Governors-General and Viceroys of India, and of the majority of those whose names have already been mentioned. Miniatures, articles of costume, objects that belonged in lifetime to the deceased, and that recall his personality or his career-all of these will fitly appear in such a collection. I should like to exhibit the originals or, where these cannot be procured, copies of Treaties and Sanads and Charters.

From documents or manuscripts it is a natural transition to maps and plans, both native and European. It should not be difficult to collect, either in original or in duplicate, a complete set of all the maps of Calcutta from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the present day.

COINS, MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND PORCELAIN.

Side by side with maps I should be inclined to place newspapers. Coins might also be very properly included. Here we might make an exception and penetrate even further back than

the Mogul days. A microcosm of the history of India through all the ages might be constructed from a classified exhibit of the different coins that have been current in India-Bactrian, IndoBactrian, Hindu, Afghan, Mogul and finally British, including a pecimen of every coin that has been struck in India during the Queen's reign. From the contents of a few cases we might grasp the outlines of history more vividly than from a library of books. Among other objects that have occurred or have been suggested to me I may mention musical instruments and porcelain.

A PRINCE'S COURT.

The wonderful history of the native states, the splendour of their courts, the achievements of their great men, can only fitfully be gathered by the visitor to India or even by the resident in the country from visits to their capitals and courts. I should like to constitute a Princes' Court or Gallery in the Victoria Hall, where such memorials should be collected as the princes were willing to contribute or to lend. We might collect pictures of leading princes and chiefs. We might commemorate notable events in their dynasties and lives. They might be willing in some cases to present us from their armouries with duplicates of the large collections that are there contained. Spears and battle-axes and swords, shields and horse-trappings and coats of mail-these are the abundant relics,, in India and elsewhere, of an age of chivalry..

ARMS AND MODELS.

I would propose to devote one gallery to a chronological illustration of the history of British Arms in this country. I would present in cases a complete collection of British uniforms from the days of the earliest Sepoys of the Con pany to modern times. In the same gallery I would place a con plete collection of British medals that have been granted for service in this country and on its borders; and here, too, I should hope will repose the tattered regimental banners that tell the tale of glory won, and pass on an inspiration to successors.

Another very proper adjunct of the Victoria Hall would be a collection of models. There are many oljects of intense historic interest which we either cannot procure because they have vanished, or could not introduce into cur galleries 'because of their size and and unsuitability. These may very fitly be represented by models. For the bulk of our exhibits we must lock to gift or purchase. In this country, in record rooms, in offices, and in kutcherries, will be found a plentiful mine of documentary richness.

I entertain no shadow of a doubt that within ten years of the date upon which the doors of the Victoria Hall are opened there will, unless there be some grave and inexplicable relapse in public interest or incompetent supervision in the interim, be collected therein an exhibition that will be the pride of all India, and that will attract visitors to this place from all parts of the world.

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The Originals of Dogberry and Verges.

REV. P. H. DITCHFIELD writes in Temple Bar on Shakespeare in Buckinghamshire." The statement-by Aubrey, who lived within twenty-six years of Shakespeare's death, is that "the humour of Dogberry, the constable he happened to take at Grendon in Eucks." There is a persistent local tradition to the effect that the poet, in great distress and unable to afford a lodging at the inn, went to sleep in the church porch in Grendon. Two village constables found him there, and charged him with intending to rob the church. After much ado the strolling player convinced the two worthy watchmen that he was no rogue, whereupon they took him to the Ship Inn and regaled him with provisions. These constables were doubtless the originals of Dogberry and Verges." Dogberry's dialect is said by the writer to be pure Buckinghamshire. There is, moreover, a tradition that the "Midsummer Night's Dream" 'was written at Grendon, where there is still pointed cut' the "bank whereon the wild thyme grows."

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VICTORIANA.

IT will be long before the public tires of hearing stories about Queen Victoria. The magazines continue to meet the constant demand.

The Century gives personal reminiscences of Queen Victoria by a member of the suite of an illustrious guest of the Queen at Osborne in 1886. The guests were expected to keep their "cottage" in apple-pie order, as the Queen would immediately after their departure go round on a tour of inspection. The writer reports from the illustrious personage what the Queen said in conversation.

THE CHILD OF POVERTY AND HEIR OF DEBT.

They heard much about the Queen's young days, and of the help which Leopold I. of Belgium, her maternal uncle, had given in those times of poverty, without which her mother could not have afforded to pay for the many professors and masters called in to educate the young Victoria. The writer proceeds :--

Her Majesty's early training made her thrifty for life; but in spite of her saving, she did not accumulate the large fortune which most people attribute to her, as there have always been many private outlets for her wealth. She herself said, in 1886, that every year she had been gradually paying off the enormous debts left by her father, and not until 1880 had finally succeeded.

NOT A TAILOR-MADE QUEEN.

Of her demeanour the writer remarks wonderingly :--It was strange that a woman short of stature, not slender, verging on extreme old age, and unbecomingly dressed, with few physical attractions, should have had such a dignified bearing and have been able to impress every one who came in contact with her by her queenly personality and charm. Her delightfully modulated voice and sweet, genuine smile had, I think, much to do with it; and the strong, sterling qualities of mind and heart made themselves felt in spite of the somewhat plain exterior.

RUNNING HER LADIES OUT OF BREATH.

Yet with all her graciousness she was in some respects resolutely exacting:

The Queen, in many ways so domestic and simple, was always a great stickler for etiquette and precedent, and certain forms of deference were insisted upon in her presence. This must have tried her ladies in more ways than one; for, possessing great physical strength herself, she saw no reason why they should not stand in her presence; and they were expected to take long walks, in all weathers, with their royal mistress. In later years the Queen's outings in her private grounds were taken in a Bath chair drawn briskly by a favourite donkey; and a lady who had walked by her Majesty's side on various occasions, and who was unable to keep up the conversation from lack of breath, told me that the Queen had appeared surprised at the Occurrence. She was evidently unaware of the hardships that these things were to more delicate women, for, when she understood, nobody could have been more considerate, kind, and sympathetic.

A ROYAL WAY INTO AN ORANGE.

Speaking of a foreign visitor, the writer observes :--This same guest showed us how the Queen ate her orange, and advised us to imitate her, which we did ever after, cutting a small hole in the top, removing the central pith with a very sharp knife, and then scooping out the pulp with a spoon, leaving the rind intact.

objections, and finding, shortly afterward, that her wishes had not yet been carried out, she despatched a messenger inquiring the reason. "I suppose Queen Anne had none," she said, "so they did not think it proper for me to have any; but I sent them word promptly that Queen Victoria would have someand she did.'

A CURIOUS DREAD OF HER PRESENCE.

Less intelligible to outsiders was the dread of meeting Her Majesty shown by members of Family and Court :Poor people or perfect strangers the Queen never minded seeing at all. It was only those whom she knew about that she did not care to encounter, as it would put her in the awkward position of being discourteous and passing them by, or else force her to stop and talk with them, when she felt disinclined to do So, Hence, out of deference to the Queen's supposed feelings, arose the etiquette prescribing that one must never be seen on her path. This grew into a stereotyped rule.

A HINT APPARELED AS A DOLL.

Marie A. Belloc recalls in the Windsor Queen Victoria's visits to foreign countries. It is remarked that she rarely went to Germany, never to Berlin, and in spite of pressing invitations never to St. Petersburg. One curious incident, touching the then Princess Royal, is recounted of her stay in Paris in 1855, when French enthusiasm is said to have surpassed that shown in 1896 for the Tsar Nicholas II.!

It was hinted that the lovely Empress of the French was so distressed at the lack of taste shown by those who had the privilege of dressing the youthful Princess, that, by way of remedying this state of things, she presented her young guest with a splendid doll exactly the size of herself, in the hope, which was justified by results, that when the Queen saw the beautiful trousseau which accompanied this marvellous pouple, she would consider the frocks and hats far too fine to be wasted on a doll, and would transfer them to the doll's new owner.

THE MOST EXPERIENCED STATESMAN.

Mrs. Tooley, in the Woman at Home, writes an excellent article on the Queen, in which she fully acknowledges that Victoria not only reigned but ruled. Mrs. Tooley, at least, is under no delusion on this point. She says:

Last autumn, Sir Edward Clarke, on congratulating Lord Salisbury on the result of the elections, said that since the death of Lord Beaconsfield the Prime Minister had, with one exception, been the most experienced statesman in Europe. "That exception was the Queen." Lord Salisbury himself, four times Prime Minister during her reign, gives the remarkable tribute to the Queen's sagacity that her independent judgment had so often proved superior to that of the Government that it had become almost an axiom with ministers that it was dangerous to the best interests of the Empire to pursue a course of which she had doubted the expediency.

She relates an anecdote of how an ancient Baptist deacon

came to Windsor to show the Queen a plough which he had invented. "When I saw the Queen come in, I was right stammered," said he, "for I thought she'd have a gown_a-trailing behind, same as we see in the pictures, and maybe a bit crown on her head. But there she was-a comely, simple woman with a smile on her face. She spoke quiet and friendly like, and said she was glad to see me, and what a long way I had come to show my plough; and she hadn't spoke a dozen words before I felt quite at home, and talked to her as if she worn't no more than nobody. I was no more afraid of her than I am of my neighbours' wives-not half so much as I am of some o' them!"

THE Monde Moderne for March contains two very interesting articles-" Strasburg," by C. Nerlinger; and "The Ivories in the Cluny Museum," by Edouard Garnier.

IRELAND, ENGLAND, AND IMPERIALISM.

BY MR. T. M. HEALY.

MR. HEALY'S name is too seldom seen in the English reviews, and it is a great pity, for, terrible as is Mr. Healy's tongue, it is nothing as compared with his pen. In the New Liberal Review he has an article entitled "The Unimperial Race," in which he sums up our relations to Ireland in eight pages of slashing invective. It is an excellent piece of writing, such as we seldom see in the rather dreary pages of our reviews.

THE ENGLISH GARRISON AND IRISH INTERESTS.

Mr. Healy's first complaint is, that while England taxes Ireland, even the English administration is clothed, armed and fed for the benefit of English manufacturers :

The ships, the guns, the munitions of war, the uniforms, the stores, are all bought in Britain. If special volunteers are needed for the African War they are raised abroad at five shillings a day (the native tariff being one shilling), and the only thing which Ireland can with certainty discern as her portion of the spoils will be an increase of paupers in her workhouses. Not even the clothing, the batons, or the handcuffs of the Irish police will the Government buy in Ireland, although both War Office and Admiralty try to help far-away India by prescribing that her obsolete indigo dyes must be used in "service fabrics. Despite the provisions of the Treaty of Union, Irishmen are saddled with every British impost, and these are contrived solely to suit the necessities of the larger island.

Ireland, he says, without getting anything in return, except some famines, has paid England about £400,000,000 in taxes since the Union, not to mention the larger sums taken in the shape of absentee rents. In dealing with this money Ireland has in practice no vote :

In the second Chamber 100 Irish are admitted to be outvoted by 570 British, and it is so bedevilled with "rules" that no Irishman, practically, can overcome its procedure so as to carry a Bill. Thus Irish legislation proceeds only from Government. This Government is so taken up with British affairs and foreign or Colonial concerns, that the gentlemen in the Ministry "responsible' for Ireland can only get a word in edgeways, after a certain percentage of unusual crimes have been recorded to enable him to persuade his colleagues that the Irish are serious. Under this system no Irish Bill can get any time allotted to it unless it smacks of the heroic. Humdrum parish measures get not a moment's toleration Minor reforms, moreover, would have to be suggested by the residents in the country, and the only persons to bring these under notice would be the permanent officials, but the last thing they think of is something which would not benefit themselves.

When the Crown comes to deal with serious crime, no Catholic is allowed to serve on a jury, if State interests (i.e., landlords') are concerned. Barring political and agrarian o fences, the criminal law is generally humanely administered. A Protestant criminal may be more tenderly handled, or can more easily arrange to get off altogether, but in the case of "non-political" offences, the accused Catholic gets a fair trial and a just sentence. Indeed, the severity of the agrarian and political warfare tends to undue lenity towards ordinary crimes. Until recently anyone could murder his wife or poison his child and be sure of a reprieve, but Viceroy Cadogan has begun to let the law take its course of salutary strangulation for murders committed on poor people who were not bailiffs or land agents. Outside large cities, the heads of the police take little interest in hunting down criminals who merely offend against common

humanity. "Stripes" or promotion can be won in the R.I. Constabulary only by zeal on behalf of landlordism. In the Dublin Metropolitan Police, however, there is much honest thief-catching.

THE LAND ACTS.

They do not, however, catch the administrators of the Land Acts, which have been perverted into uselessness. As to the administration of the ordinary law, Mr. Healy says:

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Once outside the ambit of Hooliganism, your British administrator fancies himself" as a law-giver only a trifle below Moses. Any Army officer broken in India, Egypt, or Birmingham, and created what is called a Resident Magistrate, will rate the inheritors of the Brehon Code about "Law and Order," as if Clapham were near Mount Sinai. He represents 'the common law" for the multitude, and the chief result of his operations last century may be stated to be the studding of Ireland with licensed houses in order to increase the drink revenue for the Exchequer. This is now no longer a settled policy with the Castle or the Excise, as there is hardly room for any more, and the rulers who officially strewed public-houses by the thousand over the land now dub their subjects "drunkards" on occasion.

HOME RULE BY LANDLORDS.

Mr. Healy does not believe in any amelioration scheme which emanates from the Imperial Parliament. He would prefer an honest despotism, and thinks even direct rule by the landlords preferable to that of the British Parliament :

To escape from the shackles of the Legislative system in which Ireland is immeshed, the Irish Members would be justified, if they cannot get Home Rule, in forcing on the disfranchisement of the Island. Even a plan vesting despotic power solely in the Orange Lodges (if it included fiscal control) would be preferable to the woeful parody on representative institutions now afflicting Ireland. The landlord's rallying ground in Dublin is the Kildare Street Club, and its Smoke Room Committee, after a year's training, would manage the country more tolerably than the Imperial Parliament.

The Irish, in short, do not possess Imperial souls. "The only sound which ever carried from Dublin to London came from the mouth of a blunderbuss."

Intellectual Friendship.

NOTHING is more conducive to the advancement and progress of the human race than friendship and comradeship between men and women. There are thousands of students, of men and women engaged in various pursuits, who come to Great Britain, and, for want of a connecting link, fail to benefit by means of social and intellectual intercourse with the English people. Such visitors come and go without coming into actual living contact with all classes of the English race. The Correspondence Club has been founded to bring men and women of all nations, of all sorts and conditions, and of all shades of opinion and belief, into touch with each other by means of what may be termed "Letter Friendships." Should such correspondence be uninteresting, being anonymous, it can easily be ciosed; or, on the other hand, should it prove so interesting that the parties concerned desire a personal acquaintance, introductions can be arranged and names and addresses exchanged. English-speaking peoples abound everywhere, and it is to the interest and advancement of the human race that they should be brought into correspondence touch with their various individuals and sections. All particulars will be sent by the Conductor on receipt of a stamped, addressed foolscap envelope, at Mowbray House, Norfolk Street, W.C.

BUSINESS-LIKE IMPERIALISM.

BY MR. J. ALFRED SPENDER.

THE Editor of the Westminster Gazette contributes to the New Liberal Review a characteristically rare and judicial article under the above heading. I agree with most of it, but I must make one exception.

AN UNDESERVED TRIBUTE.

Mr. Spender, speaking of the Fashoda incident, says— "It is only fair to say, when one is criticising the Government, that throughout their Egyptian operations they showed foresight, decision, and a thoroughly business-like spirit. It is the one completely satisfactory piece of Imperial work that we have witnessed in recent times."

Considering that the French only wanted to get out quietly from the impasse into which Marchand had blundered belatedly, this is a hard saying. The menacing and blustering method adopted on this side of the Channel all but rendered the evacuation impossible. A quiet, firm, business-like intimation that Marchand was a tourist whose comfort would be looked after by the AngloEgyptian Government, and who would as soon as possible be passed on to his destination, was all that was wanted in order to have closed the incident. Instead of that, our Minister insisted upon kicking France downstairs to the music of a brass band and with all the neighbours looking on, with the result that if it had not been for Russia, war might have been inevitable.

JOHN BULL AS HE IS AND AS HE THINKS HE IS. With that exception, I have nothing but praise for the article. Very good, indeed, is the contrast which he draws between John Bull as he fancies himself to be, and the real John Bull as his neighbours see him :

That personage, as he conceives himself, is the embodiment of the sober virtues-staid, prudent, cautious, constant, domestic, and peace-loving. According to the new version, he was an incalculable, excitable, ambitious being, who kept his quieter neighbours in perpetual apprehension as to where he would break out next. While he thanked heaven daily that he was not as others--the slave of a crushing militarism--they observed that he was perpetually at war, and that he claimed to be master of the sea in a sense that none of them were masters of the land. To himself he appeared an evangelist, whose freetrading principles and enlightened ideas of government put his neighbours under an obligation at each stage of his expansion ; to them a being of insatiable ambition, with a remarkable talent for acquiring the best bits.

THE VIEW OF A FOREIGN DIPLOMATIST.

Mr. Spender says:—

I remember, when the Boer War was only a few weeks old, talking with an able and experienced foreign diplomatist about the prospects of European intervention. He scouted the idea, firstly for the cynical reason that no rival of Great Britain could wish anything better than to see her involved in a South African struggle, and secondly, on the ground that the settled policy of Europe was against interference with other people's quarrels. "You English," he said, "will never understand us; you persist in believing that we are pining to fight with each other, and pining to fight with you. I tell you most of us know, as you don't know, what war is like in our own countries, and we are determined that it shall never happen again in our time. You have no policy about anything, we have a policy about everything, and having a policy prevents quarrels. You are afraid that we are going to pick a quarrel with you about the Boers. Why should we? They are far off, and you command Besides, if one starts complications, one never knows where they will stop. Some of us are glad that you have at last something to occupy you which will prevent you from causing

the sea.

crises and enable you to forget the affaire Dreyfus. But if there must be a quarrel, we are very glad that it should be in Africa." UNBUSINESSLIKE IMPERIALISM.

Mr. Spender passes in scathing review the features of Unionist Imperialism. He says :

These Conservative and Unionist statesmen-intellectual men professing the most fastidious principles - have exploited the weaknesses of democracy beyond the dreams of any earlier demagogues. An incurable belief in strong language, a passion for publicity, an immovable conviction that the business of war is the same thing as the business of electioneering-extending even to the belief that the Boers might be vicariously defeated at a General Election-together with a constant disinclination to realise the facts and tell the public the truth, have been the most prominent features of Government in England during recent years. The Jameson Raid, the four crises, and the South African War, are the fruits of the period; the last not an isolated incident, but the climax and final summary of all the levities, and miscalculations, and incoherences of the preceding years.

A BUSINESS-LIKE LETTER.

Business-like Imperialism consists, then, on the side of policy in reversing all this--in mending the manners of our public men, if Mr. Chamberlain will forgive the expression, and in getting clear ideas about our policy and our interests. We must either adjust ourselves to the conditions, eschew panic, establish our policy on a settled basis, and put away from us the thought of great conspiracies and inevitable wars, or we shall have neither peace nor peace of mind, nor be able to support the intolerable burden which will otherwise be cast upon us. Baron Stoffel's words: The struggle of carelessness, of ignorance, and of incapacity, with all the opposite qualities, foresight, education, and intelligence," have an ominous ring.

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QUEEN ALEXANDRA AT HER SON'S DEATHBED. IN the ornate April number of the Sunday at Home, Canon Fleming makes public, he says for the first time, a story of Her Majesty Queen Alexandra at the deathbed of the Duke of Clarence, which he prefaces with another already published. We cite both together as they are given. In 1892 the Prince and Princess sent for the Canon, and she told him the story which she then permitted him to print. She said :

"In 1888 all my five children received the Holy Communion with me, and I gave Eddy a little book, and wrote in it—

"Nothing in My Hand I Bring,
Simply to Thy Cross I Cling;'
and also,

'Just as I Am, Without One Plea,
But That Thy Blood was Shed for Me,

O Lamb of God, I Come.'"

"When he was gone, and lay like one sleeping, we laid a Cross of flowers on his breast, and after we had done so, I turned to the table at his bedside and saw the little book in which were written these words; and I could not help feeling that he did cling to the Cross, and that it had all come true."

The Canon goes on :

It was then also she told me a story, so touching, so sacred, that she has, till now, kept it locked in the casket of her heart; but she has now granted me her gracious permission to give it for the first time to the public. She said to me on that Sunday afternoon :

"Shortly before Eddy's death, he was lying, as if in a sleep. Suddenly he raised himself up from his pillow, and looking round the room, said twice, 'Who's that calling me--who's that calling me?' I gently said: 'It's Jesus calling you': and I hope he heard me.'