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LORD ROSEBERY AND HIS POLICY.

BY A FRENCHMAN AND A GERMAN.

THE Fortnightly publishes two articles entitled "Foreign Views of Lord Rosebery." The title is rather a misnomer. The most important part of the first article, by the Frenchman, is a discussion of the best method of constituting a Second Chamber; the whole of the second article, by the German, is devoted to a demonstration that democracies cannot fight. Both subjects no doubt are important, but they can hardly be said to be views of Lord Rosebery.

THE FRENCHMAN'S KEY TO THE MYSTERY.

The Frenchman, however, does give us some views of Lord Rosebery. He is M. Augustine Filon. He is puzzled by our Prime Minister, and in order to get some light as to his character he has read up his Pitt, and he thinks he has found in it the key with which to solve the mystery. He says:

The most important sentence in the book, and the one which gives the keynote to the whole, is the sentence in which Lord Rosebery mocks at "the common and erroneous view" that regards "human nature as consistent and coherent. The fact is, that congruity is the exception, and that time and circumstance and opportunity paint with heedless hands and garish colours on the canvas of human life."

WHAT THE FRENCH THINK OF HIM.

M. Filon says that when Lord Rosebery first took office every one in France distrusted him, believing him to be a German. After a time they discovered that he was an Englishman-which he is not, as he is Scotch. They are still ill at ease about him. He says:

As a matter of fact, there is a great deal of admiration and a certain amount of sympathy in our feeling for him, but I am forced to admit that the early mistrust survives. He remains a psychological problem, and every unsolved problem is disquieting.

KIND ADVICE IN THE IMPERATIVE MOOD.

M. Filon then discusses several things, and returns, at the end of his article, to administer to Lord Rosebery some advice as to his conduct and general behaviour if he is to win the approval of Frenchmen in general and M. Filon in particular, which of course is very kind of M. Filon. He says:

Lord Rosebery knows the good-will of the French political world better than I do, and he will take care not to lose it. He has a chance of strengthening his position, of making his mark, and showing his real self after his long course of politic hesitation and diplomacy, of giving proof of his character, now that he has given proof of his wit, of fixing upon a definite Liberal policy both at home and abroad; of holding to it, and, if necessary, of falling with it. He is at the turning-point of his political career, and it is he, not we, who must find the real Rosebery. To that end he must abandon the charming theory of the variable and manifold ego, which is nothing but a series of dissolving views, he must revert to the good old doctrine which regarded a human being as a compact whole, a homogeneous and distinct personality, consistent and coherent," and able to remember to-day both the deeds and the thoughts of yesterday.

666 NOBODY ASKED YOU, SIR,' SHE SAID."

I cannot altogether divest myself of an old prejudice derived from my early education in favour of the "common and erroneous" view. I mean the belief in personal identity, which appears to me the necessary condition of real responsibility. I may admire the man of many parts (l'homme multiple), I may read his books, enjoy his wit, and look with pleasure on his pictures, even when they represent Agincourt or Waterloo; but, if I were a business man, I should not choose him as my partner, and if I were a woman, I should not

accept him as a husband. Moreover, if I were a nation, I should ask something more than words before I linked my fate with his.

THE GERMAN'S OPINION.

The German is Professor Delbrück, of the Preussische Jahrbücher. He begins grimly enough by saying that there is no German view of Lord Rosebery, because in Germany he is unknown. He is a mere party leader, but his policy, so far as it is understood in Germany, is regarded as impossible. That impossible policy is the alliance of Imperialism and Radicalism, which in Germany is universally expected to result in a great catastrophe for England.

NO WAR, NO EMPIRE.

The following passages are interesting as indicating the German view of English parties and English policy :There can be no imperial policy where there is in the last resort no possibility of waging a great war. The very first condition of such a policy is an adequate military equipment. and such an equipment is not yet compatible with Radical principles. The Athens of Pericles proved this in the past; it has been proved anew by the France of to-day. England is not now supposed to be in a condition to meet any serious political crisis like the wars against Louis XIV., the Seven Years' War, or the gigantic struggle with Napoleon. The England of earlier days survived because it was an aristocracy. Public opinion - or the people, if you like — were not altogether powerless in the eighteenth century, but they could not be said to rule. Lord Rosebery, on his first assumption of power, declared, both in theory and in practice, for Imperialism. He made his confession of faith, too, as to the essence of such a policy in the phrase, “the best Foreign Minister is a mute Minister." But in the end his Radical principles will not fail to be the ruin of his Imperialism. At this moment the Radicals are; directing all their energies against the Upper House; and if, by some means or other, they can succeed in destroying it, they will proceed to the breaking up of large estates. When both these pillars are gone Conservatism will have lost its hold in England.

Take away the great Conservative party from English political life, and discipline amongst the Radicals will inevitably go with it. Probably a Radical England would soon see the rise of a party which would brook no imperial policy at all, and which would ingratiate itself with the masses by promising them the utmost economy in naval and military expenditure. Because a Radical England would not be ready for a great war, Germany holds that Lord Rosebery's programme of "Radicalism with Imperialism" is a practical impossibility.

Woman's Work in the State.

A VERY unadvanced woman, writing in Harper's on the recent development of female activity in the politics of New York State, says that even if the women do not get the vote, they can do a great deal, and ought to be encouraged to do a great deal more in the service of the community. She says:

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Without erasing the word "male from the constitution. -startling phraseology!-the State has ample power to-day to enlarge the scope of their work. In the expenditure of the vast sums of public revenue to which women largely contribute, there are many directions in which the watchfulness of wellchosen competent women would tend to increase economy and honesty. In the management of State hospitals, asylums and prisons, women should be allowed an influential voice. every public school for girls there should be the superintendence, official but voluntary, of properly qualified women. In municipal matters that concern health and cleanliness, the purifying and beautifying of waste places, the enforcement of tenement-house and poor laws, and the reform of the rules that govern the employment of women and children in factories and shops, the woman's hand should be felt and her special knowledge be utilized.

A DEVOUT MESSALINA.

A SKETCH OF QUEEN ISABELLA OF SPAIN.

THE author of "The Secrets of the Court of Spain," which have been appearing for some time past in the New Review, in the December number, brings his narrative down to the Revolution. His summing up of the character of Queen Isabella may be imagined from the scandalous chronicle which he has unfolded, but he has reserved for the last chapter his description of the devotion of this Royal Messalina.

Left to herself-that is to say, to her two ruling ideas, superstition and love-Isabella was bound to fall under the predominating influence, on the one side of the religious personages who surrounded her, on the other of her lovers. Among the former, Sister Patrocinio had undoubtedly the greatest influence on the mind of the Queen. She possessed, it would appear, the gift of miracles, and bore on her flesh the mark of the divine stigmata. She seems to have been at once an illuminée and a deceiver; unconscious, doubtless, even in her most notorious frauds, through that aberration of faith which justifies to the conscience the most shameless deceptions, when they are committed in the interests of the Church. According to numerous Catholic authorities, even Spanish ones, the miracles of Sister Patrocinio were more than dubious. As for her stigmata, a minister, less credulous than the others, forced her to undergo medical treatment. whereupon, at a weck's end, the holy signs had completely disappeared.

Immense sums were handed over to supply the needs of Sister Patrocinio. A superb convent was built for her. Narvaez himself never failed to carry candles in the processions that she set on foot. Among her most curious gifts of miracle figured that of levitation. On certain days she became lighter than air, and would rise in the church like a balloon. The legend ran that the devil had no love for her, and, furious at the important part that she was playing for the benefit of the Church at the Court of Spain, avenged himself on her by tossing her into the air in despite of the law of gravitation.

The Catholicism of Isabella bordered more closely upon idolatry than on actual religion. Never did her principles, however fervent they might be, restrain her on the far from virtuous path where her instincts led her. She was content, if she could, during the day, to count over the complete chaplet of the many pious practices to which she submitted out of fear of the devil, and on whose scrupulous observance she counted for the salvation of her soul.

The two most revered images which Isabella kept in her private chapel were, first, a Virgin, dressed solely by Sister Patrocinio, and, secondly, a Saint Christopher, specially propitious for journeying, and on whom she never failed to cast a long and loving look every time that she went out. She had also a St. Joseph, painted by Murillo, which she piously kissed on the lips every day; at last the poor saint's lips were quite discoloured. The Queen spent several hours every day in praying to all the saints, at least the principal ones, one after the other. She always carried about with her, fastened to her girdle, two bags of medals, one on the left, the other on the right, each weighing a pound and a half.

The Queen seems to have had as many lovers as she had medals, but her misfortune was that she could not keep her lovers as she kept her medals-fastened to her girdle. On the contrary, she was not merely fickle, for when she cast off a lover she would inflict upon him every humiliation which occurred to her vindictive fancy. The result was that the lover of a day almost always became an enemy for life. As there are many days, and she seems to have had almost as many lovers as there are days in the year, her enemies multiplied, and in the end they proved too much for her. Her wretched husband seems to have kept himself very well informed concerning the goings on of his devout but abandoned wife :

Sister Patrocinio and Father Cirilo, Archbishop of Toledo, were, with Father Claret, their Majestics' confessor, the usual

mediators in their domestic quarrels. It required all these three sainted personages to appease the King in his wildest moments of wrath. The King always kept suspended over the head of his wife a terrible sword of Damocles, and he was for ever threatening to break the thread which held it from falling. He had in his possession a collection of letters and documents proving conclusively the various adulteries of the Queen and the real paternity of her children. With this collection was a manifesto in which he protested against the legitimacy of the children born to him in his marriage. Many times, both by surprise and by pressure, the Queen attempted to get from him this bundle of papers, always without success. It was the strongest weapon that the King had succeeded in forging against his wife. When he talked of making it all public, Isabella gave way completely, and consented to anything.

THOSE MAHATMAS-QUERY?

MR. GARRETT has devoted immense pains and patience in the Westminster Gazette, during the last month, to the establishment of the fact that part of the evidence upon which Mrs. Besant relied when she asserted that she had received communications from the Mahatmas, rested upon the extremely dubious authority of Mr. Judge, against whom Mr. Garrett seems to have established a prima facie case of forgery and fraud. Lucifer proclaims regretfully that the evidence was furnished to Mr. Garrett by Mr. W. R. Old. But this is only one-half of the truth, for at least one-half of the statements made by Mr. Garrett rest upon the authority of Colonel Olcott and Mrs. Besant. It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that because the bottom has been knocked out of one of the pieces of evidence, therefore there is no evidence forthcoming as to the existence of Mahatmas. A writer in Lucifer, describing the experiences of a recent pilgrim in Tibet, gives the following account of the Mahatmas, from which it would seem that it is doubtful whether there will ever be any evidence forthcoming concerning these mysterious individuals.

I have often been asked by the many tourists who come to Darjeeling, "Have you seen a Mahatma?" Well, my reply has invariably been that of the lamas themselves. The lamas all believe in such perfected Arhats, who, they say, watch over and protect them. But none but their highest know which of their number has reached such perfection. You may sit side by side with one of the "Great Souls" and yet not know it; for such sages never work directly, but always through a third party; they benefit the order and the people by intermediaries, and their direct agency is as unseen as the track of birds in the air.

"A Student of Occultism" in the Arena, who, however, bears a very suspicious resemblance to Mr. Judge, knows all about these mysterious personages, and has even been able to count them. This writer says:

The fact that there are to-day but thirty-three active living masters of the Inner Temple of the Mystic Brotherhood, that their lives are from necessity very exclusive, that there are so few who could be entrusted with the knowledge they possess, makes access to them most difficult. The Brotherhood of India is a bona fide and definite organisation. It has back of it a long history of concerted effort in behalf of humanity, fraught with both failure and success. It has a most active and intense present existence whose potent influence in behalf of the universal progress of mankind is felt in every quarter of the civilised world. And it has also a definite and orderly plan and purpose for the future, toward the accomplishment of which it is moving with absolute faith, increasing hope and undaunted courage.

If these Indian brothers of ours can be counted to the number of thirty-three, it is a great pity, say, that the thirty-third cannot be spared to furnish us with some indubitable evidence as to the existence of himself and his thirty-two brethren.

THE ORIGIN OF OUR PROTESTANT PATRIOTISM. BY THE LATE MR. FROUDE.

A MELANCHOLY interest attaches to Longman's Magazine, which publishes another of the Oxford lectures by Mr. Froude on the English seamen of the sixteenth century. There is very little in it about seamen, and a great deal about the Pope and his emissaries the Jesuits, who succeeded in making patriotism almost synonymous with Protestantism in the latter end of Elizabeth's reign.

HOW THE REFORMATION BEGAN.

Mr. Froude sets forth once more that Protestantism in its origin was anything but dogmatical. He says:

The Reformation at its origin was no introduction of novel heresies. It was a revolt of the laity of Europe against the profligacy and avarice of the clergy. The Popes and cardinals pretended to be the representatives of Heaven. When called to account for abuse of their powers, they had behaved precisely as mere corrupt human kings and aristocracies behave. They had intrigued; they had excommunicated; they had set nation against nation, sovereigns against their subjects; they had encouraged assassination; they had made themselves infamous by horrid massacres, and had taught one half of foolish Christendom to hate the other. The hearts of the poor English seamen whose comrades had been burnt at Seville to make a Spanish holiday thrilled with a sacred determination to end such scenes. The purpose that was in them broke into a wild war music, as the wind harp swells and screams under the breath of the storm.

RED LETTER SAINTS OR BLACK TRAITORS? The most interesting part of the article, however, is the publication of a document which Mr. Froude has unearthed from the archives of Spain, in which Parsons, the head of the Jesuit mission in England, sets forth in summary the arguments in favour of a prompt invasion of England. It is ridiculous, says Mr. Froude, to regard the severity with which such traitors were treated as an instance of the odium theologicum. He says:

What these seminary priests were, and what their object was, will best appear from an account of the condition of England, drawn up for the use of the Pope and Philip, by Father Parsons, who was himself at the head of the mission. The date of it is 1585, but it is new, and being intended for practical guidance, is complete in its way. It comes from the Spanish archives, and is not, therefore, open to suspicion. 66 PARSON'S BRIEF NOTE."

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Parsons describes his statement as a brief note on the present condition of England," from which may be inferred the ease and opportuneness of the holy enterprise. England," he says, "contains fifty-two counties, of which forty are well inclined to the Catholic. Heretics in these are few, and are hated by all ranks. The remaining twelve are infected more or less, but even in these the Catholics are in the majority. Divide England into three parts; two-thirds at least are Catholic at heart, though many conceal their convictions in fear of the Queen.

"The enemies that we shall have to deal with are the more determined heretics whom we call Puritans, and certain creatures of the Queen, the Earls of Leicester and Huntingdon, and a few others. They will have an advantage in the money in the Treasury, the public arms and stores, and the army and navy, but none of them have ever seen a camp. The leaders have been nuzzled in love-making and Court pleasures, and they will all fly at the first shock of war. They have not a man who can command in the field.

HOW ENGLAND COULD BE CONQUERED.

"In the whole realm there are but two fortresses which could stand a three days' siege. The people are enervated by long peace, and except a few who have served with the heretics in Flanders cannot bear their arms. Of those few some are dead and some have deserted to the Prince of Parma, a clear proof of the real disposition to revolt. There is abundance of food

and cattle in the country, all of which will be at our service and cannot be kept from us. Everywhere there are safe and roomy harbours, almost all undefended. An invading force can be landed with ease, and there will be no lack of local pilots. Fifteen thousand trained soldiers will be sufficient, aided by the Catholic English, though, of course, the larger the force, particularly if it includes cavalry, the quicker the work will be done and the less the expense. Practically there will be nothing to overcome save an unwarlike and undisciplined mob.

"Sixteen times England has been invaded. Twice only the native race have repelled the attacking force. They have been defeated on every other occasion, and with a cause so holy and just as ours we need not fear to fail. The expenses shall be repaid to his Holiness and the Catholic King out of the property of the heretics and the Protestant clergy. There will be ample in these resources to compensate all who give us their hand. But the work must be done promptly."

WERE THE PRIESTS RIGHT?

Mr. Froude points out that the failure of the Armada three years later does not by any means prove that Parsons was wrong in his estimate as to the ease with which England might have been overrun. The circumstances had changed. Mary Queen of Scots was dead, the determined heretics called Puritans and the seamen who had been taught to detest Spain by the Inquisition shattered the Armada before a landing could be effected. Mr. Froude evidently had his suspicions that if the Armada had effected a landing it would have subjected the patriotism of Catholic Englishmen to a test so severe that it probably would not have emerged triumphant. The statement by the priest that England had been invaded sixteen times, and that only twice had the native race succeeded in repelling the invader, is likely to figure conspicuously in future arguments in favour of increasing our navy.

MEN WHOM BOSTON DELIGHTS TO HONOUR. THERE is an interesting article in the New England Magazine for November upon "The Monuments and Statues of Boston." The writer says:

Of the thirty odd existing public outdoor statues, monuments, memorials and graven images of one sort and another, within the corporate limits of the city of Boston, nearly twothirds are portrait statues; one is a famous monument reared to commemorate a bloody defeat and a moral victory; another perpetuates the memory of a massacre; three bring to mind important discoveries; still another symbolises the emancipation of the slaves; and no less than six are raised in honour of the dead soldiers and sailors of the war of the Rebellion. Wê have, besides these memorials of historical events, three of which occurred in the city itself, the effigies of about a score of great American statesmen, soldiers, orators, reformers, philosophers, sailors, philanthropists and patriots; but we still look in vain for the statues of our poets and painters. Glover and Cass were worthy soldiers; but that they should have monuments in Boston, while Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson and Whittier, Copley, Stuart and Allston are without this form of recognition in this centre of literature and art, is a strange indication of the haphazard way in which the community undertakes to express its sense of the eternal fitness of things.

Illustrations are given of many of these statues. Among the persons selected for this kind of honour are the following: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, William Lloyd Garrison, Admiral Farragut, Colonel W. Prescott, Edward Everett, Josiah Quincy, Charles Sumner, Daniel Webster, Horace Mann, Alexander Hamilton, Governor Winthrop, and Theodore Parker. Beethoven, Columbus, and Lief Ericson are also honoured with statues. Irishmen will be interested in learning that a monument to John Boyle O'Reilly is about to be erected..

REMINISCENCES OF MR. FROUDE.

BY MR. JOHN SKELTON.

THERE is an interesting paper in Blackwood's Magazine by Mr. Skelton, who describes with the enthusiasm of a friend and a disciple, his late master the historian. Mr. Skelton says of Mr. Froude:

HOW MR. FROUDE LOOKED.

He was a singularly bright and vivacious companion; his smile was winning as a woman's; possibly he did not always unbend, but when he unbent he unbent wholly. In congenial society he was ready to discourse on every topic in the heaven above or on the earth beneath; and when at his best he was not only a brilliant and picturesque but a really suggestive talker. But while he had a passionate scorn of meanness and truckling, he had an equally passionate reverence for truth, as he understood it, whatever guise it assumed. The mask might be sometimes as impassive as Disraeli's; but behind it was an almost tremulous sensitiveness-a tenderness easily wounded. His presence was striking and impressive-coalblack eyes, wonderfully lustrous and luminous ("eyes full of genius-the glow from within"-as Dr. John Brown said); coal-black hair, only latterly streaked with grey; massive features strongly lined-massive yet mobile, and capable of the subtlest play of expression. For myself I can say without any reserve that he was, upon the whole, the most interesting man I have ever known. To me, moreover, not only the most interesting, but the most steadfastly friendly.

MR. FROUDE ON THE CALVINISM OF TO-DAY.

Mr. Skelton then quotes extensively from a series of letters stretching over the last thirty years of Mr. Froude's life, from what I extract some of the more characteristic passages. Speaking of some of the more debased or degraded developments of Scotch Calvinism, Mr. Froude asserts:

Alas! that Knox's Kirk should have sunk down into the thing which is represented in those verses. . . . The horrible creed is not new. Thomas Aquinas says much the same. And after all, if it is once allowed that God Almighty will torture poor devils for ever and ever for making mistakes on the nature of the Trinity, I don't see why any quantity of capricious horrors may not be equally true. Given the truth of what all English orthodox parsons profess to believe, and Hephzibah Jones may believe as much more in the same line as he pleases. Only I think our opinion ought to Lave been asked as to whether we would accept existence on such terms before we were sent into the world.

AND OF THAT OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Of Calvinism itself Mr. Froude was a great admirer, although it was the Calvinism of the sixteenth century rather than that of the nineteenth that commanded his devotion. On this point he says:

It is a paradox to say that old Calvinism was not doctrinal in the face of the Institutes; but it is astonishing to find how little in ordinary life they talked or wrote about doctrine. The doctrine was never more than the dress. The living creature was wholly moral and political, -so at least I think myself.

Speaking of his lecture on Calvinism on another occasion, he wrote:

I don't mean to meddle with the metaphysical puzzle, but to insist on the fact historically that this particular idea has several times appeared in the world under different forms, and always with the most powerful moral effect. The last reappearance of it in Spinoza, and virtually in Goethe, is the most singular of all. They have believed in Election, Predestination, and, generally, the absolute arbitrary sovereignty of God; and these, and not the moderate Liberals

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Another curious expression of his religious belief comes out in a letter in which he expressed his sympathy with Swinburne:-

The Saturday Review temperament is ten thousand thousand times more damnable than the worst of Swinburne's skits. Modern respectability is so utterly without God, faith, heart; it shows so singular ingenuity in assailing and injuring everything that is noble and good, and so systematic a preference for what is mean and paltry, that I am not surprised at a young fellow dashing his heels into the face of it.

Mr. Froude's political opinions found free expression in these letters. Of politicians he had the lowest opinion. Of Lord Palmerston he wrote in 1865:

Pam. cares for nothing but popularity; he will do what the people most interested wish; and he would appoint the Devil over the head of Gabriel if he could gain a vote by it.

His distrust of Gladstone made him look kindly even on Lord Beaconsfield. He wrote:

I see plainly that G is driving the ship into the breakers.... I mentioned at a party of M.P.'s the other night that throughout human history the great orators had been invariably proved wrong. There were shrieks of indignation; but at last it was allowed that facts looked as if it were true. Will you write on Dizzy now?

RUSSIAN AND TURK.

Mr. Froude was very hearty anti-Turk, his sentiments on that subject bringing him for once into line with Mr. Freeman and Mr. Gladstone. Writing in September, 1877, after the first reverses before Plevna, he said:

This Eastern business is very frightful, and will bring an ugly train of mischiefs behind it, worse than any which were anticipated. No European Government can allow Moslem fanaticism to come off completely victorious. The Turk, I fear, is like the bull in a Spanish circus. However splendidly he fights, and however many men and horses he kills, he is none the less finished off in the end by somebody. Providence, that "loves to disappoint the devil," will probably bring one good out of it all-a reform of the Russian administration. That democracies should promote the wrong man to high place is natural enough, but there is no excuse for an autocrat. Of men of letters Mr. Froude had but small opinion. He said on one occasion :

The ablest men in the country at this time, I believe, are lawyers, engineers, men of science, doctors, statesmen, anything but authors. If we have only four supreme men at present alive among us, and if Browning and Ruskin are two of those, the sooner you and I emigrate the better.

The whole of the article is full of interesting passages. of which these are but samples.

SIR JOHN DAVIDSON, formerly of Edinburgh, now of Frederickton University, gives an interesting account of the Educational Congress in 1894 in the Educational Review for November.

AN article in Cornhill Magazine on King's Palaces is devoted to a description of the salmon, who, we are told, has two palaces. The sea is his larder and the river his nursery. He was once a trout, but is now a salmon. A brief article on "Palm Oil at the Porte" is written by a man who spent £25,000 in twelve months at Constantinople in cbtaining the Sultan's fiat to the project of some speculators.

THE SPREAD AND CURE OF DIPHTHERIA.
THE STORY OF ANTITOXIN.

DR. ROBSON ROOSE writes on "The Spread of Diphtheria" in the Fortnightly Review. From his paper it would seem that diphtheria increases steadily side by side with the improvements in sanitary administration. Dr. Roose says:—

THE INCREASE OF DIPHTHERIA.

The average mortality varies in different epidemics; it generally ranges between 25 and 40 per cent. During the last few years the number of fatal cases has been steadily increasing in London, though the proportion of deaths to attacks has considerably diminished. In the metropolitan area in 1889, the deaths from diphtheria numbered 1,617; in 1892, they were 1,969; while in 1893, they reached a total of 3,265. During the second quarter of the current year, 644 deaths were registered from diphtheria, and 1,826 from the same cause in England and Wales. Recent observations, extending over eight years, in Prussia, show a yearly average mortality of more than 40,000 children from diphtheria, the number of deaths almost equalling the fatality from scarlet fever, measles, and whooping-cougli combined. The fact that the mortality from diphtheria has more than doubled in Lordon during the twenty years terminated by 1890, and has, moreover, increased to a less extent throughout England and Wales, and especially in many cities and towns, cannot fail to excite alarm, not unmixed with surprise. During this period, many sanitary laws have been passed, and their provisions have been vigorously carried out by a numerous staff of well trained and competent officers.

THE CAUSES OF ITS INCREASE.

Dr. Roose discusses the causes of this strange and menacing increase. He says:

It is highly probable that the spread of diphtheria is promoted in a very special manner by the massing together of large numbers of children, as occurs at the present day in many of our elementary schools. This view has been forcibly advocated by Dr. Thorne, who has paid great attention to the subject.

Season and climate exert but little influence on the development and spread of diphtheria, but the disease is more common in temperate and cold climates than in the tropics.

HOW TO REMEDY IT.

The following are Dr. Roose's suggestions as to the best means by which the malady could be kept in check::

The notification and isolation of cases ought, of course, to be sedulously carried out; but there are several difficulties in the way. Sore throat is a very common complaint; it is, indeed, one of the symptoms of an ordinary cold, and a condition which may pass into diphtheria may exist for many hours without exciting the least suspicion. When cases of diphtheria occur in any locality, all forms of throat disease ought to be carefully investigated and examined by a medical practitioner. The efficient ventilation of schools would do much to check the spread of all infective diseases. If natural ventilation could not be achieved, artificial means of supplying fresh air ought to be adopted, notwithstanding the expense of any such method. When a case of undoubted diphtheria has occurred among children attending a school, the buildings should be forthwith closed and thoroughly disinfected. As a matter of course, the sufferers should be isolated, and visits from other children should be strictly forbidden. The milk supply will require special attention, and all insanitary conditions should be reinedied as far as possible.

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having been removed by filtration from the vaccinating liquid. and the morbid properties of the poison itself having been reduced by the addition of certain chemicals. This attenuated poison was injected into a quite sound sheep (or horse) in such limited quantities as to obtain but a very feeble reaction of fever; and the injections were repeated until the animal was accustomed, so to say, to the poison, and no more fever was provoked by subsequent injections. Then stronger doses, up to three and six cubic inches of the attenuated poison, were resorted to; and when they also had no marked effect, an injection of the most virulent diphtheria poison, such as would kill outright an untrained sheep, was attempted. If it did not provoke diphtheria, the sheep or horse was considered immune, and the serum of its blood could be used to cure diphtheria in other animals. This method was gradually perfected, and it was discovered by Roux that the serum need not be drawD cach time afresh. It may be desiccated, and kept for a long time in such state without losing its properties. The curative effects of such serum are really wonderful.

ITS ALLEGED CURES.

How remarkable these results are may be gathered fron the following case, with which Dr. Roose concludes his article:

In the Paris Children's Hospital, previous to the serum treatment, the mortality had scarcely ever been below 50 per cent. From February 1st to July 24th, 1894, the rate of mortality was less than 24 per cent. among 448 children treated with antitoxin. During the same time, at the Trousseau Hospital, where the serum treatment was not used, the morSimilar tality amongst 520 cases was equal to 60 per cent. and even more striking experiences have been reported from Germany and Austria. In our own country, owing to the difficulty in obtaining antitoxin, the treatment has been adopted in a comparatively small number of cases. The results have been extremely satisfactory, and leave no room for doubt as to the potency of the remedy. Up to November 10th, Sir J. Lister's appeal had produced about £500, one-quarter of the sum required to enable the Association to prepare the serum on an adequate scale. The necessity is urgent, and it is to be hoped that the remaining £1,500 will be promptly supplied.

A WORD OF CAUTION.

It is well to know, however, that the merits of antitoxin are gravely questioned by the German experts:—

The views of Berlin medical circles appear to be very divided on the subject of the new cure for diphtheria. At a numerously-attended meeting of the Medical Association, held some days ago in the capital, Dr. Hansemann, the assistant of Professor Virchow, read a paper in which he stated that after a careful investigation of the question, he had come to the following conclusions: (1) The Löffler bacillus cannot be indisputably recognised as the cause of diphtheria, as it occurs. in many other diseases; (2) the prophylactic character of the serum has not been proved: (3) it is not a specific remedy, as certain cures have not been demonstrated; and (4) the serum is by no means uninjurious to the human body. Dr. Hansemann's criticisms were heartily applauded.

THE Newbery House Magazine will be withdrawn after this month; and Messrs. A. D. Innes and Co. announce a new Church magazine, well illustrated and of a popular character, to begin with the new year. It is to be called the Minster.

THE Magazine of Art was enlarged in November and otherwise improved. Both the November and December numbers contain interesting articles, and Mr. Spielmann, in the current number, writes in praise of Munich as aul art centre.

WITH the December part the Art Journal closes its volume. It is a very good number. We have a description of the new British Art Gallery, which is progressing rapidly, and the concluding article on the Tate Collection for which the gallery is being built.

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