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THE PEOPLE'S LIBRARIES OF BERLIN.
THEIR FOUNDER AND FRIEND.

THE Daheim of July 14th contains a brief account of the origin of the People's Libraries of Berlin, by Arend Buchholtz. Berlin, however, would seem to be far behind London in its library movement, as the following notes from the Daheim will show.

When Friedrich von Raumer, the historian of the Hohenstaufen, was travelling in the United States, he happened to fall into conversation with some persons of the lower classes, and was surprised at the accurate knowledge of Plutarch which some of them displayed. Inferring from this that it was the public libraries and scientific lectures which did so much for the people, he made up his mind that he would set about founding sin ilar institutions for the masses of Berlin. So tradition says, at least. On the whole, his idea was well received, but Savigny, the famous jurist, who was the chief opponent of the scheme, declared the whole undertaking, and especially the participation of women in its benefits, to be a degradation to science.

Nothing daunted, Raumer first called into existence a Scientific Union, and organised lectures in the Singing Academy. The result was most gratifying; the most prominent representatives of German science became lecturers, and large audiences filled the Academy. The plan soon found imitators in many other German cities, and thereby an interest was awakened in scientific questions, and much useful knowledge was spread.

Raumer's next move was to establish libraries for the people, it being his idea that knowledge should not be confined to school and university circles. In 1850 four libraries were started, and the next year twenty-three more followed. These libraries, though in close relationship with the public elementary schools, are carried on under the auspices of the Scientific Union. The books are stored in the school-houses, and the libraries are superintended by the school-rector and a representative of the Scientific Union.

Now, very naturally, the interests of the library demand emancipation from the school and the schoolmaster. The work has grown, and "librarians" with more time at their disposal than is possible to the schoolrector, and buildings with more space for the storing of the books than is available in the school-house, are required if further progress is to be made. Moreover, the libraries need to be open all the week round, instead of three days, and reading-rooms are wanted; but there seems little prospect of any extension of the praiseworthy work while the income available amounts to not more than 36,000 Marks (£1,800).

The twenty-seven libraries already in existence contain over a hundred thousand volumes, and after the German classics, Ludwig Anzengruber, Berthold Auerbach, Felix Dahn, Georg Ebers, Theodor Fontane, Gustav Freytag, Paul Heyse, Gottfried Keller, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer, Wilhelm Raabe, Victor von Scheffel, and Friedrich Spielhagen are among the authors most read. Of the readers 70 to 80 per cent. would fall under literature and juvenile works; 10 per cent. read history, biography and travels; 5 per cent. natural science, industrial and technical works.

JUNE 8, 1894, being the hundredth anniversary of the death of Gottfried August Bürger, many articles on the famous poet appear in the current German magazines. Bürger's" Lenore" and "The Wild Huntsman,” as translated or rather imitated by Sir Walter Scott, are almost "household words" with us.

SAINT SIMON, THE PIONEER OF SOCIALISM.
A VICTIM OF THE REVOLUTION.

M. EMILE FAGUET, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, devotes an article to a subject of which comparatively little is known in England: the birth of Socialism in France in the person of the gifted and slightly insane Saint Simon, who gathered about him a band of young meu, some of whom afterwards made their mark under Louis Philippe and the Empire. In his philanthropic ideas he was the precursor of Auguste Comte and Charles Fourier, and like them he leaned to spiritual theories of life, planning not only for the stomachs, but for the immaterial element in man. Henri de Saint Simon was

a man of thirty when the French Revolution broke out; he had been well educated, he had d'Alembert among his tutors, and at eighteen he entered the army and served in the first American war. He was taken by the British and interned in Jamaica; being liberated in 1783, he travelled, and formed commercial schemes, one of which was the connecting of Madrid with the sea. At first ardent for the Revolution, he became its victim, and while imprisoned in the Luxembourg had a vision of "his ancestor Charlemagne," which seems to have been the beginning of many other visions.

M. Faguet considers Saint Simon to be a rare example of incoherence in life, character, and detailed ideas, but with a fixed monomania. He always strongly desired one thing-namely, to establish in the world, or at least in Europe, at the very least in France, a new spiritual authority. He cannot get on without one, and does not admit that any thinker can do so. The old authority, that of the Church, he considered to have disappeared, or to be on the point of doing so, or at any rate to be morally condemned, and he searched about for a new one. He held that the Church had created the Monarchy; he did not love the Monarchy, but he had come to feel a much greater horror of the Revolution. And above all he detested lawyers. Of the Church he says that while insensibly moving with each successive age, it pretended to be immobile, and that Luther, in opposing the Church, set up a more immobile authority-that of a Book.

Tracing successive theories which indicated his own mental changes, he first imagined a collective government by savants, artists, and philosophers. Such was the theme of the "Letters to an Inhabitant of Geneva," published in 1803. Fifteen years later he abandoned this theory, and wished to give over all authority to the Captains of Industry. His final and most remarkable work is his "New Christianity," published in 1825. By that time he had built up a system of which the intellectual echo has not yet died away. Augustin Thierry and Auguste Comte were amongst his most helpful disciples. Michel Chevalier, Charton, Felicien David, and the famous Père Enfantin are among those of the Saint Simonians whose names are still familiar to the French and English world. Saint Simon died in May, 1825, but the theories which he created have survived in many new and in some fruitful shapes. M. Faguet ends by characterising him as "a very valiant heart, a very original intelligence, a man of vigorous personality, whose intellectual achievement is destined to a long survival."

THE musical world has scarcely finished commemorating the 300th anniversary of the death of Palestrina when we are reminded that the 14th of June was the 300th anniversary of the death of an equally famous composer of church music, Orlando di Lasso. Many of the German magazines give accounts of the life and work of the Italian musician, whose real name, however, was Roland de Lattre.

WHAT MIGHT BE DONE WITH LONDON PARKS. BY THE EARL OF MEATH.

AN article by the Earl of Meath in the New Review upon "The Possibilities of Metropolitan Parks" may well suggest to Mr. Astor whether, before he becomes quite the most detested person in Great Britain, he might not make a bold stroke for popularity by undertaking to spend say a quarter per cent. of his annual income in making some of the London parks brilliant with electric light every night. Not that Lord Meath mentions Mr. Astor; he only points out what enormous advantages would accrue from such a sensible and necessary step.

LIGHT OPEN SPACES WITH ELECTRICITY.

He notes that the London County Council has decided to light the Victoria Embankment Gardens and the bridges leading to it. He advises them to light and keep open to a late hour all the small gardens in their possession. To encourage them he tells the following anecdote:

As Chairman of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, I once tried the experiment of lighting an East-End square, and of throwing it open of an evening to the public. The place was in consequence so crowded that it was difficult to move on the paths; but although no policeman, and only four caretakers were present, no damage was done, the greatest order was maintained, and the people themselves took care that no one walked upon the grass or flower beds. The British working-man may always be trusted to protect public property if appealed to in the right manner. Unfortunately, the funds of the Association did not permit of the continuance of the experiment.

MAKE PLAYGROUNDS FOR CHILDREN.

But the electric lighting of parks is only one of Lord Meath's many capital suggestions, as may be seen from the following extracts from the rest of his paper:—

Now that the London County Council spends £5,000 a year in providing music in the parks under its control, and has engaged the services of ninety-two bandsmen, four conductors, a librarian, and attendants, under the control of a musical director, a demand will certainly arise on the part of the public for a similar expenditure to be incurred by the Government in the Royal enclosures.

It will be asked why the musical tastes of the people should be gratified in some parks and not in others? In like manner, the London County Council having recently established delightful playgrounds for children in its principal open spaces, the question will arise why the needs of the little ones should be more regarded by the Municipal authorities of London than by the Crown, and Parliament will be required to vote supplies for the erection and maintenance of small, well-sheltered playgrounds, fitted up with gymnastic apparatus, and placed under the supervision of respectable, able-bodied

women.

In many particulars foreign parks surpass ours in the attractions which they offer to the public.

PROVIDE AMUSEMENTS.

In Paris and in Berlin an arena has been prepared in which athletic exercises can be practised. In the Bois de Boulogne there is an enclosure overlooked by a covered stand, where spectators can sit and watch the deeds of prowess of athletes on concentric running and jumping grounds. If I remember aright the outside track is for bicyclists, next to that is one of turf for runners, then one inside again for hurdle jumpers, and in the centre are cat-gallows for high and pole jumping. In Berlin permanent obstacles, in the shape of banks and ditches, have been erected, and the military spirit of the nation has

shown itself in the creation of a small fort for the express amusement of successive generations of bands of juvenile defenders and assaulters. In Golden Park, San Francisco, a gigantic covered merry-go-round moved by steam, consisting of two or three rows of horses and carriages. is provided by the Park Commissioners for the use of the public.

CREATE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.

In the same park are large enclosures in which wild buffaloes and deer may be seen grazing; there is also a neatly mown grassy slope on which peacocks sun themselves and display the glories of their plumage, and an immense aviary, in which several acres of woodland, filled with singing and other birds, are covered and enclosed with wire netting, the visitor being able to penetrate through tunnels of wire into the deep recesses of these song-laden glades. In Druid Hill Park, Baltimore, I have seen camels quietly feeding under the charge of their keepers, and in some Continental cities free zoological and botanical gardens are maintained for the instruction and enjoyment of the public at the cost of the municipalities. London possesses no free zoological garden, and only one free botanical garden, which is situated at Kew, a long distance from town. The Parks Committee of the London County Council has established an Animal and Bird-life Sub-Committee, which it is to be hoped, by introducing birds and animals as far as practicable into the London parks, will encourage an intelligent study of natural history amongst classes who have neither the time nor the money to visit the private gardens of our Botanical and Zoological Societies in Regent's Park.

BRAKES, GOAT-CARTS AND LAWN TENNIS.

I cannot see why goat carriages for children should not be found in our London parks as well as in the Champs Elysées, and why well-appointed four-horse brakes should not run in summer from populous centres to distant parks and commons, or through Regent's and Hyde Parks, Constitution Hill, the Mall, the Embankment, and so back to the City. Such vehicles are to be found in some of the American parks, and are well patronised. They are the property of the Parks Commission, and are not run so much for profit as for the enjoyment of the people. There is a portion of Kensington Gardens at present little used, near the Magazine, which might, with slight expense, be made useful to lawn tennis players, and there is also a piece of ground in Hyde Park, not far from the Humane Society's building, which could be turned to a similar use, or made into an admirable playground for children, if it were fitted up with gymnastic apparatus.

There is within the Metropolis a lively demand for cricket and football grounds, which it is at the present impossible to meet. If on some days of the week Hyde Park were added to the list of those open spaces where games are permitted to be played, the dangerous congestion which at present exists would be materially relieved.

UTILISE THE RIVER.

or

If a Continental nation possessed such a splendid road and river-way through the centre of its capital as we do in the Thames and its neighbouring embankments, bright, clean, two or three-decked steamers and little, fast steam launches, like those at Stockholm, would flash over the surface of the waters, bearing of a summer evening passengers from cafes restaurants overhanging the banks to waterside concerts and illuminated gardens. It is all nonsense for people to say that our climate will not admit of evening open-air or semi-openair entertainments of a public nature. The success which attended the summer evening entertainments given in suecessive years at the Horticultural Gardens at South Kensington before the necessities of the builder demanded their destruction, have amply disproved the truth of any such statement. The climate of London and of Paris in summer is after all not as dissimilar as many imagine, and what can be done in the one city can very well be accomplished in the other, especially if a little more protection from weather, by glass, be given in London to spectators and visitors at al fresco theatres, concerts, cafés, and restaurants.

A PROPHECY OF DOOM;

OR, THE VISION OF MR. A. J. WILSON.

In the Investors' Review the editor gives free rein to his vivid and sombre inaagination. In an article dealing with the monstrous discrimination on railway rates practised by the South Western Railway Company between goods from over-sea and goods from Southampton, Mr. Wilson delivers himself as follows:

Looking at these things from afar, merely as one of the people. the spectacle which presents itself to our mind herein is much that of a nest of reptiles engaged in eating each other up. With all our devotion to the "interest of capital," we, as a nation, can look calmly on while the big serpent represented by the capital of the London Docks is being first attenuated by a process of starvation and then gulped down in the alldevouring "swallow" of those still bigger creeping things, the railway corporations. In the past the owners of land were the great devourers of railway capital. They had a right royal time of it when our railways were a-building aud they had land to sell. Millions upon millions of capitalcapital the people found were then pressed into their hands. And how that capital is eating them up also in their tun; it has grown to be a monster which holds them in its grasp, which decrees that their land shall yield no net return except by way of dividends on railway stock. Soon these dividends will also, in their turn, dwindle nd disappear. What will the landlords do then? Not die where they stand, we may be sure. The more the pressure of their relentless foe increases, the more will they cry for yet another creature of evil omen to come to their help; they will summon the dragon of Protectionism to master and devour the railway serpent now supreme ia the pit, filled with ravening and writhing "interests." We rather think, too, that they will succeed. The last demon of all will arrive, and in some respects we should not be sorry if it did. Only through a tremendous social upheaval and revolution, such as a restoration of Protectionism in this country would produce, can we hope to see the present destructive war of self-interests brought to an end-smothered in another and still more all-devouring. But the coming of this dragon would mean good-bye to empire, to foreign trade supremacy, to all that we now swagger and boast about. What matter, so as the "landed interest" were saved! Rents might then for a time compensate it for lost railway dividends, Uganda, India, and one or two other slices of this fair earth.

The only consolation, if it be one, is that other nations are in even a worse state than ourselves. Mr. Wilson devotes the first place in his Review to Carnot's assassination, which, stated briefly, is that, unless France abandons Protection, she must look out for something far more terrible than anything that has yet befallen her:

The lesson of the murder of President Carnot-this, and not international hate, though that, God wot, is bad enough, fed and encouraged as it is by the difficulty of procuring the means of existence, created by bad laws in most countries. M. Carnot was slain by a fanatic whose passionate hate had been generated in the seething masses of discontent which modern nations have created in part through their progress, but most of all by the selfish aspirations which those carried upward by it have studied to gratify. It is for the statesmen of the nations most afflicted to work out a cure. Repression is no cure, vengeance as little. They must abandon the bribery system of Government and endeavour to work for the liberation of all, rich and poor alike, from oppression. cannot do this, then may they hold themselves prepared for outbreaks of the spirit of revolution far more harrowing, infinitely more destructive to established order, than the assassination of the amiable and upright man who a month ago was sacrificed because he was the most conspicuous victim the selected assassin could hope to reach. His real murderer was less the revolting fanatic who struck him than the band of ultra-Protectionists who are fast hurrying France into the whirlwind of a new revolution.

If they

POST OFFICE INSURANCE.

WHY IT HAS FAILED. BY SIR JULIUS VOGEL. IN the Fortnightly Review Sir Julius Vogel contrasts the methods of the Post Office Insurance with those

adopted by the Prudential and other companies. The following is his summing up of the points which he has attempted to prove:

1st. That the failure of the Post Office Insurance system is not caused by the limits within which it is restricted, but that, on the contrary, it might, with the immense advantages it possesses, be made a great success in the hands of an experienced professional life insurance manager.

2nd. That no reflection is designed on the ability of the Post Office Savings Banks officers, but that it is impossible for a Life Insurance Institution to be properly managed unless in the charge of an expert who devotes his whole attention to it.

3rd. That no attempt should be made to increase the permitted limits of insurance, and that it would be desirable to procure legislation

(a) To enable the funds to be invested in securities in which trustees are allowed to invest.

(b) To amend and make effective the provision (Sub. Section 9, Section 5, of the Act of 1882) enabling the profits to be divided amongst insurants. But, even failing this legislation, the institution can be made successful.

4. That payments of premiums more frequently than once a year should be permitted.

5. That persons desiring to insure should be able to obtain information and assistance in filling up their forms.

6. That offices should be open in the evening, where such information could be privately supplied to inquirers, and that small fees should be paid to the officers of the Post Office who rendered assistance, and possibly a consideration allowed to Savings Banks depositors; the object being to make the details of the Government system well understood.

7. That the tables should be reconsidered, revised, and added to from time to time.

8. That fuller information should be afforded and returns be regularly made.

9. That the periodical valuations should be published.

Such Work must not be Crippled.

THE Chill's Guardian, the official organ of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, has a brief review of its present position. The editor says:"The Society was never so busy redressing the wrongs of the young-never had it so large a share of the confidence of the masses-never was it so successful in courts never was it to so large a proportion able to deal with cases satisfactorily without resort to courts-never had it the good opinion of so large a number of Her Majesty's judges-never was it so respected in Parliament, yet never was it so poor, so unable to do justice to the children of the land whose cry comes to its ear as it is to-day. This arises from the disaster of last year. Through the calamity of rainless clouds, long and extensive strikes, and the general depression of trade, there was received from the whole of the area of its operations less than the estimated income to a total of £10,000. By curtailments and checking of operations the Society met this condition of things by £4,000, leaving a deficiency of £6,000 to be met by the extra sympathy and generosity of those who are the friends of the hosts of suffering children whose parents are not their friends. To strike £6,000 off the expenditure of the Society would be to break up much of the machinery which has been constructed with much labour and cost, and this, too, in the poorest parts of the area over which it works."

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MR. HENRY W. WOLFF, who is certainly one of the most indefatigable of men, has a paper on Co-operative Credit in the Economic Review for August. Mr. Wolff has grasped the idea that, in the operation of credit, there lies the most effective lever that society possesses for raising the wage-earner to the level of the co-operative producer. His papers upon People's Banks, and upon the success of co operative undertakings based upon co-operative credit upon the Continent, are full of suggestive help for those who are working in the social field in this country. Mr. Wolff's ideas seem to be those which stand most in need of the helping hand which the proposed National Social Union could give them. They are independent of party, their economic value is indisputable, experience has shown them to be a proved success, and for their application they require the co-operation of a multitude of persons scattered up and down the country. Already, as he says in the Economic Review, his scheme has met with a far readier and more sympathetic reception than there seemed any reason to look for. In Ireland especially he has received cordial support, and the Agricultural Banks' Association, formed for the diffusion of information concerning people's banks, has been overwhelmed with applications for information, both in Ireland and in this country:

INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION.

There is a general disposition to join hands and close ranks, to ally production with supply and both with credit. France has shown us the way in the alliance formally established between its various branches of co-operative organisations, and the work of all-round union promises to be completed by the first International Co-operative Congress which is to meet in London, some weeks hence, to inaugurate an international Co-operative Alliance, designed to insure to co-operators in all countries mutual support and mutual interchange of ideas and information. There has long been a talk of the desirableness of such a union. And the proposition has been so cordially responded to in all quarters, that we may expect a gathering of no little authority and influence, taking important business in hand. The union to be concluded is not to be a mere show union.

CO-OPERATIVE PAINTERS.

Mr. Wolff's suggestion that English co-operators would do well to buy goods direct from foreign co-operators is worth considering. Mr. Wolff remarks that both in co-operative production and credit England is far behind the rest of the Continent:

As

When, a few weeks ago, I attended the Chambre Consultative of these associations, there were a round seventy of them. a specimen of what they do, let me state the case of one of the most prosperous of these bodies, Le Travail, an association of painters twenty-two in number, but often employing additional hands in busy times-who do in the course of a year something like £20,000 or £22,000 worth of work. Thanks to the stimulus imparted to head and hand by the sense of independence and the knowledge that whatever is done will benefit the workers themselves, not only can the association allow its members one franc a day higher wages than nearly all other employers, but it pays besides, at the close of the year, an additional penny per hour out of realised profits (which are shared in the same proportion by the non-members employed); it pays about fifty per cent. annually on the small shares in the concern held by members, and it carries a sufficient contribution every year to the General Pension Fund to secure to every member after twenty-five years' work a substantial pension, benefiting, in case of his death, his widow or his orphans on a somewhat reduced szale. And over and beyond this, the association can allow its members six per cent. interest on all the savings they choose to deposit!

A PLEA FOR MUNICIPAL PAWNSHOPS. ANOTHER Subject to which the National Social Union might profitably turn its attention and that of all its branches is the improvement of the pawnshop. That is one of the institutions in which we are distinctly behind the average level of civilisation. The poor man in almost every European country is better protected, and can raise money at a lower rate of interest than he can in this home of freedom. Mr. Robert Donald, the writer on this subject, in the Contemporary, sets forth this subject in a very striking light. Mr. Donald has for some time been agitating the subject in his excellent journal, London. He has succeeded in inducing Lord Rosebery to issue a Foreign Office inquiry on the subject, and his hand is also visible in the resolution of the London County Council to investigate the question with a view to action. Mr. Donald says:

Few perhaps are aware of the enormous part which the pawnshop plays in the life of the people. In no country in the world is more pawning done. It is estimated that the pledges amount to ten per head of the population a year, which would give 400,000,000 annually. The average value of the pledges is about 4s., which would mean that the loans amount to £20,000,000 a year. In all the poor and industrial quarters of our great cities thousands of people take their Sunday clothing or other articles to the pawnshops every Monday morning, and as regularly take them out every Saturday night.

It is not surprising that the attention should have been turned to such a very widespread need in early times. Mr. Donald says:

A Bishop of London did start a pawnshop on charitable principles, in connection with St. Paul's, in the reign of Edward III, and granted loans without interest, but his example was not followed.

From the church the business fell into the hands of the Jews or Lombards, and with them it has remained ever since. The result is that the poor man has to pay ten, sometimes twenty, times as much interest upon his small loans as his neighbour in France or Italy. The trade is regulated by an Act passed in 1872, which was framed exclusively in the interests of the pawnbroker. Speaking of this Mr. Donald says:

The Pawnbrokers' Act runs counter to the whole tendency of recent legislation. It protects the strong against the weak. It is class legislation of the worst kind-ingeniously contrived to press most severely upon those who most need the advances which the pawnshop gives, and who are least able to bear the burden which it inflicts. It amounts to the nationalisation of usury, and is a blot on the Parliament which passed it, and should not be allowed longer to disgrace the Statute Book.

Mr. Donald describes briefly the salient features of the various continental pawnshops, and proves conclusively that something must be done if England is not to fall under the reproach of lagging far behind the rest of her neighbours.

Continental pawnshops, unlike ours, are all organised in the interest of the borrowers and the community, and adapt themselves to the needs of the people, while ours harmonise better with the interests of the pawnbrokers. I think I have established a strong case for municipal action, and have shown that the control of pawnshops in the interest of the community would be a legitimate, sound, safe, and profitable extension of collectivism.

Not impossible, certainly, but attainable at present only very slowly and only here and there where the local conditions are exceptionally favourable. If we are to see it generally adopted, we must do something in the direction indicated in the preceding article.

RELIGION AND HUMAN EVOLUTION.

BY FRANCIS GALTON.

IN the National Review Mr. Francis Galton has a brief paper upon Mr. Benjamin Kidd's book. He says:-

Mr. Kidd has the distinction of having compelled many readers to give serious consideration to his arguments by submitting them with a remarkable earnestness, wealth of apposite phrases, and happy turns of expression. Let the ultimate verdict be what it may on the net value of his conclusious, his readers will have had the feeling, which is rare to most of us, of being forced to travel for awhile out of their habitual lines of thought.

This is no ordinary achievement, and deserves to be praised encouragingly. Mr. Galton is not prepared to accept Mr. Kidd's views as to the need for the interposition of altruistic sentiments depending upon religion. But what is religion? says Mr. Galton. Mr. Kidd says that it is a form of belief providing an ultra-rational sanction for conduct by which the interests of the individual are subordinated to those of the evolution of his

race.

But there are other definitions of religion:According to my own views of the main question, any guiding idea that takes passionate possession of the mind of a person or of a people, is an adequate adversary to purely selfish considerations, without being a "religion" in some generally accepted senses at all. Many of the ordinary emotions which influence conduct admit of being excited to so high a pitch that the merely self-regarding feelings do not attempt to withstand them, but yield themselves unresistingly to be sacrificed to the furtherance of a cause.

Mr. Galton, placing himself in the position of an agnostic, proceeds to suggest what would be peculiarly profitable and proper for man to attempt :

One of the most prominent conditions to which life has been hitherto subject, is the newly discovered law of the survival of the fittest, whose blind action results in the progressive production of more and more vigorous animals. Any action that causes the breed or nature of man to become more vigorous than it was in former generations is therefore accordant with the process of the cosmos, or, if we cling to teleological ideas, we should say with its purpos.

It has now become a serious necessity to better the breed of the human race. The average citizen is too base for the every day work of modern civilisation. Civilised man has become possessed of vaster powers than in old times for good or ill, but has made no corresponding advance in wits and goodness to enable him to direct his conduct rightly. It would not require much to raise the natural qualities of the nation high enough to render some few Utopian schemes feasible that are necessary failures now.

Our agnostic preacher might go on to say that this terrible question of over-population and of the birth of children who will necessarily (in a statistical sense) grow into feeble and worse than useless citizens must be summarily stopped, cost what it may. The nation is starved and crowded out of the conditions needed for healthy life by the pressure of a huge contingent of born weaklings and criminals. We of the living generation are disp nsers of the natural gifts of our successors, and we should rise to the level of our high opportunities.

That is to say, the nation might devote its best energies to the self-imposed duty of carrying out, in its manifold details, the following general programme: (1) Of steadily raising the natural level of successive generations, morally, physically, and intellectually, by every reasonable means that could be suggested; (2) of keeping its numbers within appropriate limits; (3) of developing the health and vigour of the people. In short, to make every individual efficient, both through nature and by nurture.

A passionate aspiration to improve the heritable powers of man to their utmost, seams to have all the requirements needed for the furtherance of human evolution, and to suffice as the

basis of a national religion, in the sense of that word as defined by J. S. Mill, for, though it be without any ultra-rational sanction, it would serve to "direct the emotions and desires of a nation towards an ideal object, recognised as richly paramount over all selfish objects of desire."

To this Mr. Kidd appends a postscript in which he says that his argument must be taken as a whole, and that it would not be wise for him to state it over again. He says that he thinks the new religion proposed by Mr. Galton is a scientific impossibility. He is glad to think that Mr. Galton has been able to go so far with him as he has done.

A CHURCHMAN'S VIEW OF MR. KIDD'S Book. The Church Quarterly Review is delighted with Mr. Kidd's book. It says:

We offer a most thankful welcome to the work of Mr. Kidd, who gives us reasons of hope; and these founded on no emotional rhapsodies, but upon sound scientific argument. If he thinks better of our social future than other writers of the time, it is because he takes account of past facts which have obtained from evolutionists far slighter recognition than their importance deserves.

Discussing Mr. Kidd's assertion that Altruism must have ultra-rational sanction, the reviewer says:-

We hold that there is a rational sanction, but it takes account of the whole man, soul as well as body, conscience as well as desire, and seeks the satisfaction of the religious faculty as well as of the hunger for meat that perisheth. Mr. Kidd chooses to call these spiritual desires and powers "ultrarational" (evidently meaning what would ordinarily be called beyond reason). We prefer to call them rational in the highest sense of the word. But, at all events, we shall agree that they deal with the supernatural, and require a supernatural faith for their exercise.

The review concludes by commending Mr. Kidd's admirable volume to the readers, assuring them that it will well reward their study.

The Little Sisters of the Poor.

IN a brief notice of Mrs. Abel's book on the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Dublin Review thus summarises one of the most remarkable of religious and philanthropic movements of modern times. The Little Sisters of the Poor is an institution which

founded less than fifty years ago by a young village curate with no resources save his stipend of £16 a year, assisted by two poor seamstresses and a peasant woman, has covered the whole earth with its branches, and taken its place among the most beneficent creations of Catholic faith. It has now 250 houses, of which twenty-nine are in the United Kingdom, and gives food and shelter to over 33,000 of the aged and indigent poor of both sexes. The name of the humble servant woman who was its first alms-gatherer is so closely interwoven with its early history that its sisters throughout Brittany are still known as "Jeanne Jugans," and a Street in St. Servan is called after this lowliest of its inhabitants. Here in a wretched attic the Abbé Le Pailleur placed his two young novices with Jeanne as their matron, and hither, in October 1840, they brought the two old women who were the first pensioners of the Little Sisters of the Poor. During this time the two girls still pursued their calling as seamstresses, while Jeanne, by various forms of service, earned wages which also went into the common fund. With every extension of the undertaking fresh help was forthcoming for it, and thus it progressed from a garret to a basement, and then to a house built for it by the charity of the public. Now the Little Sister, with her basket or her cart, is a familiar figure in every large city, and the Abbé Le Pailleur has lived to see the great idea with which heaven inspired him realised to an extent that prophetic vision alone could have forescen.

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