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FROM LORD RONALD GOWER'S ORIGINAL MODEL FOR THE SHAKESPEARE MONUMENT AT STRATFORD

New York, to visit Germany and there examine this famous relic for himself. After a prolonged scrutiny of the mask, Mr. Page declared his firm belief in its bona fides, and thereupon made from it a very interesting set of models of the features of Shakespeare, which, at the time, attracted great attention.

So far Mr. Cargill. I am, however, able to supplement his paper by later information communicated to me by Lord Ronald Gower. Lord Ronald spent ten years over the Shakespeare memorial which he presented to the town of Stratford-on-Avon, and in the course of those years he naturally devoted much time to the study of all the portraits and busts of Shakespeare that are extant. He told me he had paid careful attention to the Becker mask, and had carefully compared it with the Shakespeare bust. He said that by the Bertillion system of measurement there could be no doubt whatever that the bust was practically modelled from the mask. The only difference is in the length of the nose. The tip of the nose in the bust seems to have been broken off and repaired by shortening it. The measurements were minutely exact, and he had therefore without hesitation selected the bust and the mask for his Shakespeare, which in many respects is the finest which has yet been produced. Lord Ronald Gower told me that he had recently had communications with the owner of the mask in order to see whether he would part with it for a consideration, Lord Ronald's intention being, if possible, to secure it for the museum at Stratford. The owner, however, refused to part with it for a less sum than £10,000. The mask therefore remains in Germany, waiting the appearance of some American millionaire to carry off this famous trophy to the New World.

TEACHING BY TRAVEL.

AN EXAMPLE FOR ENGLISH SCHOOLS.

DR. J. M. RICE in the Forum for September gives a very interesting account of a school excursion carried out at the beginning of this year in the Southern States of America. The paper is very useful, for it calls our attention to an instrument of education which is too much neglected. The school excursion, he says, has grown so much in popularity in Germany that to-day it forms a regular feature of perhaps the majority of the schools of that country. When Dr. Rice was at the University of Jena he was much impressed with a seven days' excursion through the Thuringian Forest, which was undertaken in August by the schools connected with the University.

AN AMERICAN EXPERIMENT.

The account which he gave to the superintendent of the schools in Anderson, Indiana, induced that gentleman to arrange a pioneer trip through Indiana to Virginia. Every one was delighted with it, and many of the parents expressed their willingness to raise funds for the excursion. The party was made up of seventyeight persons, of whom nineteen were grammar-school and thirty-six high-school pupils; the rest were teachers, who travelled with a doctor and stenographer. sexes were about equally represented. Not one of the pupils, and only one or two of the teachers, had ever seen the sea or a mountain, and but few had experienced the sensation of riding in a steamboat, and one of the pupils had never been in a train. The party started at the beginning of June, and travelled one thousand eight hundred miles in seven days. The cost per head, with

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special arrangements, including all fares and all expenses, was only $30, or less than a pound a day.

INSTRUCTION AND SIGHT-SEEING.

The chief point of interest was Richmond, and there every effort was made to combine instruction with sightseeing. For instance, on the day after their arrival in Richmond:-

In the evening a prolonged session was held by the entire party in one of the parlours of the hotel. During this session, which was devoted exclusively to recitations in geography and history, an effort was made to clinch the points thus far acquired by the pupils. The recitation in history assumed the form of a general review of the Civil War, with particular reference to the Shenandoah Valley. During the recitation in geography, the teacher endeavoured to get from the pupils a connected story relating to the districts through which we had thus far travelled.

All seem to have enjoyed themselves thoroughly, and the conductors were convinced that the excursion was perfectly feasible in America. Many people had asserted that American scholars would not prove amenable to discipline, but it was the verdict of every one that there had never been such an orderly excursion carried over the line. The chief weakness of the tour was the unpreparedness of the arrangements before the commencement.

HOW IT IS DONE IN GERMANY.

To obviate this fault, Dr. Rice gives the following account of what was done at Jena:

At Jena we find that each expedition is preceded by a thorough preparation on the part of both teachers and pupils. In regard to the pupil, the preparation takes place by means of a series of special recitations, during which the route is carefully studied, maps are drawn, and the points to be observed are discussed in outline. Thus their minds are placed in an attitude of expectancy, and consequently in the condition most favourable to the acquisition of new ideas.

As to the teachers, the work of the journey is usually so divided that those who take an active part shall teach only during a single day. On that day, however, the one who teaches takes complete charge of all the proceedings. At a special teachers' meeting, held several weeks in advance, the particular days are selected by mutual agreement. The work of preparation on the part of the teacher now begins, and it consists in studying from maps, railway guides, books of travel, and so on, the details concerning the points of interest -historical, industrial, geographical, geological, botanicallying within the district assigned to him. In arranging the programme for the day on which he has charge, he accounts for every hour. The programme, once made, is carried out to the letter. The sight-seeing is invariably undertaken in the form of a recitation. Lessons given on the road are particularly valuable, because they have been thoroughly prepared in advance.

PRÁCTICAL SUGGESTIONS.

He makes some suggestions for the organisation of excursions in the future:

First, I should recommend that the classes be divided inte sections, and that each section be placed in charge of a teacher taking an active part in the work. Indeed, the teacher in charge should at all times have an eye on his pupils.

Second, I would suggest that, on a journey a week in duration, some of the time be devoted to rusticating. A day or two spent in the woods, travelling on foot or in wagons to selected points of interest, would not only add to the enjoyment of the tour, but .give an opportunity for nature studies. By this means, also, the fatigue of a continued series of extended railway journeys would be avoided.

I cordially invite any of my readers who are engaged in teaching to communicate with me if they think that there is a possibility of naturalising this excellent institution in this country.

MY ADVICE TO THE LABOUR PARTY.

BY SIR JOHN GORST.

SIR JOHN GORST contributes to the North American Review for August an article entitled "English Workmen and their Political Friends," in the course of which he offers to the workmen of England advice as to how they should comport themselves in politics. He says nothing is more remarkable than the contrast between the professions of devotion to the interests of labour which both parties indulge in at election time, and the impotence which characterises the Labour party in the House of Commons. He says:

The reason why the class so powerful at the polls is so impotent in the House of Commons is not far to seek. It is because it has no policy in which the workers generally are agreed, and no leaders whom the workers generally trust.

WHAT THE ENGLISH WORKMAN SHOULD NOT DO.

In the opinion of Sir John Gorst, they should not support the Radicals, who, he says, have no policy except the extension of the franchise, and the multiplication of elections. They would do better to support the Conservatives; for they have one great advantage in relation to Labour questions-they are not pledged to organic change, and they have therefore in office more leisure for social legislation. He would incline to recommend them to adopt the policy of forming an independent Labour party, and for this two conditions are essential: First, a leader whom the members of the party will follow; secondly, a policy or a principle to which the party is able and willing to sacrifice without regrets the interests of both Conservatives and Radicals. Sir John Gorst does not say in so many terms that he is ready to fill the post of leader to such a party, but we are left to hope that such may be the case.

A SUGGESTED PROGRAMME.

He has less scruple about suggesting a policy as a basis on which English working men might take their stand.

Though there is comparatively little that changes in the law can do to improve the condition of the workers, yet there are certain measures which have a tendency in this direction and which could be carried without shaking the foundations of society, without altering the laws of property, and without letting in violent or revolutionary change. But in reference to these, no political leader has any definite plan to recommend, and at present there is no prospect of anything practical being done.

ARBITRATION.

The first plank in this programme is Industrial Arbitration:

First of all, there is the question, which a Royal Commission has been considering for three years, how to settle trade disputes between employer and employed without a labour war. Every one admits that it is desirable to have some method more rational and less costly than a strike or a lockout. Where is a political force to be found that will compel the Government and Legislature to take this matter in hand, and think out a scheme for the rational settlement of trade disputes? The five-sixths of the workers, who, being defenceless in a trade dispute, would gain by the establishment of any power to stand between them and an unreasonable employer, are dumb, ignorant, and unrepresented in the House of Commons. There is no force at present to overcome the inertia of Government and Parliament, and the establishment of tribunals of conciliation and arbitration is not yet within the sphere of practical politics.

THE HOURS OF LABOUR.

The second question is that of the hours of labour:Of all labour questions there is none upon which the workers are more nearly of one mind than the movement for shortening the hours of labour. The desire for more leisure is honour

able to the workers. It is begotten, not of idleness, but of an aspiration after higher things. They wish for opportunities of better culture, nobler family life, and occupations fitting them for the position of citizens. In a very large number of industries the shortening of hours would result, as experience has shown, in greater efficiency of labour, increased output, and better workmanship.

But although this is so, nothing has been done for the general body of workers in the shape of statutory limitations of excessive labour. The universal Eight Hours Bill is impracticable, and the Eight Hours for Miners Bill makes but slight progress:

If there is to be any authority to which workers generally can appeal for the curtailment of hours of labour, it must be a local authority, which will have to decide the question with regard to local circumstances. No party in the state has yet committed itself to any scheme for the creation of such an authority, and there' is no strong public opinion to support it if it did.

THE UNEMPLOYED.

This question, he says, is the most urgent and difficult political problem of the day ::

It seems a universal disease of the modern city. If there is no imminent danger of revolution, it is because the famishing unemployed are too apathetic, and in many cases too sensible, to give ear to Anarchists and disturbers of public order. In the case of London there is this further curious phenomenon, that while there are in the town hundreds of thousands of men clamouring for work and starving for want of it, there are in the country within thirty miles of town thousands of acres of land lying derelict, and bringing forth thorns and thistles instead of food. The leading statesmen of all political parties can contribute nothing more helpful than to throw cold water upon every scheme of remedy that is proposed.

One practical suggestion has been made, which would not cure the evil, but which would mitigate its intensity, and afford some measure of its extent-the establishment of labour registries throughout the United Kingdom This central

clearing-house can only be effectively supplied by the central Government; but the central Government will not stir, and there is every prospect of the local movement dying out for lack of this piece of requisite machinery.

EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY.

The fourth question is that of Employers' Liability. On this, every one knows Sir John Gorst's views. He would compel the employer to compensate the worker for all accidents which befall him in the ordinary course of his business. From this obligation he would allow no contracting out, nor would he limit the right to compensation to cases where there had been negligence on the part of the employer.

CHILD LABOUR.

The fifth point is that of raising the age of the employment of children from eleven to twelve.

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Sir John Gorst closes his article as follows:Happily philanthropy has not yet been monopolised by any political party in the state, and such matters as education in all its branches, a more rational system of dealing with children who commit offences against the law, the prohibition of the letting of dwellings unfit for human habitation, the building of better homes for the people in town and country, better provision for destitute children and for those who by blindness, deformity, or other affliction are incapable of earning their own living, and pensions for the deserving aged, are still discussed without party animosity. Discussion will result in practical reform when the people whose interests are most affected have power to compel the Government to take the matter in hand, and when a more enlightened public opinion forbids the miseries of the young, the aged, and the afflicted being used by society as a convenient object-lesson for teaching thrift to the able-bodied.

SCIENTIFIC RELIGION AND ITS BASIS. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF TELEPATHY. BY MR. MYERS. I WISH that those of my friends who lament over what they regard as my deplorable devotion to the study of spooks would read Mr. Fred. W. H. Myers's article on Psychical Research" in the National Review. No matter how prejudiced any one might be, he could not fail to understand, from that brilliant and masterly presentation of the case for the study of psychical phenomena, why despite all entreaties, denunciation and ridicule I must persist in prosecuting my experimental investigation in the obscure but transcendently important region. As Mr. Myers puts it, in telepathy we have the first indication of a stable standpoint from which Natural Religion may move the world, from which a scientific religion may be developed which will offer a satisfying answer, not only to the external and practical but also to the profound and inward desires and questionings of man. If this be so, how dare those, who at the present moment have facilities afforded for telepathic experiment, refuse to allow this rare and almost unique gift to remain unused?

THE REDISCOVERY OF THE SOUL.

Mr. Myers, in concluding his article, compares himself to the dog baying at the moon :—

To him it seems that in all this planet's history there has been no more marvellous, more inspiring hour. But the dog's part is but to bark and to awaken; to rouse and summon the soon-dawning century to another Copernican displacement of the centrality of earth;-a Copernican expansion, not of the macrocosm without us, but of the profounder microcosm within.

It is the rediscovery of the soul of man, with all its divine potentialities that telepathy suggests, and it is worth while risking the whole world for the chance.

66 SCIENCE FALSELY SO-CALLED."

Mr. Myers deals sympathetically with the objections of his scientific friends to the only possible methods by which psychical research can at present be prosecuted :

It is the natural dislike of a railway-guard to turn backwoodsman. To understand it, one need only think of the difference between the popular conception of a man of science in the old days and now. The old idea of a man of science was of a man who groped into Nature. The new idea is of a man who may be trusted never to make mistakes. But men who insist on electric lamps along their road will never reach the centre of Africa.

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It has, I trust, finally established what may be called the preliminary statistical fact that a casual connection of some kind must exist between the death at a distance and the

apparition of the dying man. Most fair-minded persons, I think, who study the Report of Professor Sidgwick's Committee (as well as all the former evidence to the same effect), will be convinced that there are true apparitions of dying men. And few persons who hold this belief, and who also study the collections of apparitions of so-called dead men which have appeared in our "Proceedings" (as well as in the Report of the census itself), will long refuse to believe that the living impulse which projects these phantoms can and does operate unenfeebled after the shock of death.

IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH?

Then is there life after death? Does the personality perish? Mr. Myers has no hesitation as to the answer:

Beyond us still is mystery; but it is mystery lit and mellowed with an infinite hope. We ride in darkness at the haven's mouth; but sometimes through rifted clouds we see

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the desires and creeds of many generations floating and melting upwards into a distant glow; "up through the light of the sea by the moon's long-silvering ray." To these precursory glimpses I must devote the space which remains to me; to the flashes of distant illumination which those messages from the unknown may shed through mist and blackness upon the life of men.

THE ANSWER OF TELEPATHY.

What light, then, does telepathy throw on the great problems of human life? Let Mr. Myers reply:

We have already adequate evidence that telepathy does not operate between living or embodied minds alone, but operates also between the so-called dead and the living, between discarnate and incarnate souls. This means that in some form or other our lives and memories survive the tomb.

NEW LIGHT ON DUTY.

What is its bearing upon the ideal and sanction of Duty? The answer is not less reassuring:

Its general influence on the ideal of duty is obvious at a glance. It will be in the direction which moral reforms must always take; the insistence on inwardness and reality, as opposed to that mere accomplishment of external functions which is all that Law and Society are able to exact. The mere knowledge that mind is ever thus speaking to mind must needs be a perpetual summons to a willing transparency and an intimate truth of soul.

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

Nay, more, telepathy suggests the possibility of demonstrating the reality of future retribution, and holds out the hope of a scientific conception of the Day of Last Assize:

Once grant telepathy, however-once admit the principle of Like to like, and all is known,-and there is no need of further machinery to secure either punishment or beatification. The To be adjustment is inevitable, the sanction is automatic. transparent to all-to be linked and bound to other souls in the precise degree which affinity justifies-who cannot imagine the deserved delight of such reward, or oftener, perhaps, the terror of such retribution?

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Telepathy also enables us to understand something of the real meaning of the doctrine of the communion of saints:

We may remember that telepathy, even as we know it here, is not a mere enforced entrance into another's privacy, nor even a mere shorthand transference of unfettered thought. Rather it is in its essentials a communicatio idiomatum-a mingling of spirits often too intimate to express itself through any or through all of the narrow senses of the flesh. The communion of saints will be the very substance of the life everlasting. THE SUPREME PROBLEM.

But what has telepathy to say of, God:-

To the solution of such a problem we men can offer only a first and rudest approximation. We can do no more than generalise still further the highest law which we have thus far divined. Thus far, as the spirit has risen higher, its modes of knowledge have seemed open-backward, forward, inward, around; its bond and conjunction with other spirits has seemed more far-reaching at once and more pervasive. In

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