Miss I. A. Taylor discusses how men meet death, and cites as instances the death-scenes among others of Lord. Capell, Bishop Fisher, Sir John Eliot, Lord Collingwood, Mirabeau, Carlyle, Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Samuel Johnson, Keats, Spenser, John of Barneveld, Coleridge, Cromwell, Savonarola, and Pope Sixtus. She concludes that

the fear of death in the abstract is a natural instinct, and being natura', is doubtless a wholesome one. And this being so, a constant realisation of it is scarcely to be desired... Formidable as death appears from a distance, the more one looks into the subject the more certain it becomes that mankind, when brought to a practical acquaintance with it, havə agreed in some blind way to recognise in the enemy whose approaches they have been so unremitting in their efforts to ward off something altogether different from the terrible and hostile force which they have been accustomed to consider it. We fall on guard, and after all it is a friend who comes to meet us."

CENTENARY OF GIBBON'S DEATH.

Mr. Frederic Harrison recalls that Gibbon died in January, 1794, and that the Royal Historical Society are preparing a celebration of the centenary. He hopes that it will be made the occasion of repairing public omission or default, for

Edward

It is a public default that our national collections contain no likeness of the greatest historian of modern times, that our national monuments contain not a tablet to record his name, that his memory is not kept alive by a single object of any kind in any public place or museum, that not a single living scholar has ever had access to the mass of writings he left, which still remain sealed up in a country house. Gibbon has been dead more than a hundred years, leaving a mass of original papers, memoirs, diaries, and essays to his biographer, who has himself been dead seventy-three years. It cannot be supposed that Lord Sheffield's descendants and representatives can have any reluctance to a fresh examination of the Gibbon remains. And there is every reason that the centenary of our great historian's death should be made the occasion of a proper search amongst these precious remnants by authorised and qualified persons.

THE FUTURE OF TROPICAL AUSTRALIA.

Sir Wm. Des Voeux controverts Miss Shaw's roseate forecast of the development of tropical Australia by means of coloured labour under an aristocracy of whites. He gravely deplores the Kanaka traffic as steadily depopulating Polynesia, which cannot be peopled by Europeans. He prefers for Australia an unmixed English race, even if the tropical portion remains uncultivated. Besides these objections, the amount of labour required and the competition of more temperate lands will, he holds, make North Australian progress extremely slow.

OTHER ARTICLES.

Mrs. Sidney Webb derides "the failure of the Labour Commission," and scoffs at its Report as an "omnium gatherum of irresponsible and second-hand opinions" instead of facts. She does, however, rejoice in the "complete collapse" of the Individualist majority. Mr.

A. Silva White, pleading for a firm and consistent African policy, observes that the policy logically involved in our present position south of the Mediterranean is the exclusion of every other European power from Morocco, Tripoli, and the entire Nile Valley; and this, he fears, would require us to join the Triple Alliance, a step which in its turn would end all prospect of Imperial Federation. Mr. J. C. Fitch declares the only certain alternative to the compromise on religious teaching in Board Schools to be a purely secular system. He points out that Anglican schools, where they have had all the children, as in rural districts, have not succeeded in winning them to the Anglican Church. He also insists that the Apostles' Creed is an Anglican formulary. Mr. Selby Bigge, ex- Proctor, writing on college discipline, calmly declares that "In practice, an English university is a plain compromise between a place of learning and a place of amusement, or, in the literal sense of the word, a place of pastime;" and this compromise, which he once thought ignoble, he now frankly supports. Mr. Lewis T. Dibdin assails what he terms" The Proposed Overthrow of the Church in Wales." He claims to be "a diligent student of Nonconformist literature," but declares that he has "never seen even an attempted defence of disendowment as a matter of right and wrong"!

THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

THE current number is somewhat above the average. Mr. Bellot's plea for the nationalisation of railways, and Mr. Macfie's glowing picture of recent economic progress in Mexico, are noticed elsewhere.

GLADSTONE AND CHAMBERLAIN.

Mr. Escott draws a series of picturesque contrasts between the Grand Old Man and his quondam lieutenant. He compares the former to Burke and declares that "alike as English Liberal and cosmopolitan friend of liberty, Mr. Gladstone has ever been an idealist first and a practical politician afterwards." Mr. Chamberlain is "the embodiment of the genius of electioneering, above all things the astute and agile party manager." As a House of Commons debater, and as a rhetorical epigrammatist," and not in these points alone, he is scarcely inferior to Disraeli himself. Mr. Escott insists that Mr. Chamberlain owed his rise "solely to his own eminence " as a municipal and Radical statesman, and there can be no question of ingratitude to a chief with whom he was never intimate.

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THE NEW REVIEW. THE three most important articles in this number are by Mr. H. H. Johnston, on "British Central Africa; " by Mr. Fred Dolman, on Municipalities at Work;" and by Mr. Bernard Shaw, on "A Dramatic Realist to His Critics." They have received notice elsewhere. Sir John Lubbock subjects the Budget of 1894 to severe criticism. argues that the graduated death duties embody a principle denounced by economists; they form a tax on capital which eventually falls on the working classes; they at once discourage prudent saving and generous spending by the rich. He concludes with a sigh for the Referendum. Mr. T. H. S. Escott supplies a generous yet discriminating" Appreciation" of the late Edmund Yates, whom he describes as "the chief and most capable creator of a new school of journalism." His lecturing tour in America is said to have laid the foundation-stone of the prosperity which marked the latter half of his life. "The Real Madame Sans-Gêne," according to Mr. A. D. Vandam, was not Madame Lefebvre-who among other unceremonious acts did not hesitate to have stripped before her a negro servant whom she justly suspected of secreting a diamond under his clothes-but a certain Therese Figueur, who served as a dragoon in the French army from 1793 to 1815, and who dared to call Bonaparte to his face a blackamoor. The "Secrets from the Court of Spain" treat of Isabella's marriage to François d'Assise, and how it was brought about. "The Art of the Hoarding" is discussed by three experts. London, prophesies Mr. Aubrey Beardsley, "will soon be resplendent with advertisements, and against a leaden sky skysigns will trace their formal arabesque. Beauty has laid siege to the city, and telegraph wires shall no longer be the sole joy of our æsthetic perceptions." M. Jules Chérêt says he aims at an effective and harmonious combination of brilliant colours; eschewing black and white, he prefers red, yellow, and blue to secondary or composite tints. He likes the largest size of poster best, which enables him to introduce life-size human figures. Mr. Dudley Hardy approves simplicity in outline, and next to red thinks yellow most effective, as it shows by night. The cuts of pictorial advertisements which accompany this symposium make one hope that it will be long before anything in the style of the French specimens is reproduced in this country.

THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW.

THIS month's contents reach a fairly good average. I have noticed elsewhere Mr. Karl Pearson's defence of socialism against the theories of Weismann and Kidd, the glowing plea of "Nauticus" for a united Anglo-Saxon race, Mr. Hancock's description of co-operative workmen's settlements in Mulhouse and Milan, and Dr. Louis Robinson's "Everyday Cruelty."

THE ITALIAN OUTLOOK.

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Rev. H. R. Haweis, who has just been " passing through Italy from north to south and from south to north," gives us his impressions. "The present re-rudescence of Mazzinian Republicanism (without the obleness Mazzini) is the actual and grave danger of the monarchy and of the people." The things indispensable are the monarchy, the army, and-probity. "From top to bottom, every one robs and scrambles and intrigues." The Pope is now immensely popular.

Many think that were Cavour now at the helm, Leo XIII. would come to terms. The old non possumus is felt to be obsolete, and for the first time in nineteen centuries something

like a handsome compromise might at this moment be made. I have this from inner Papal circles, and I have no doubt it will be denied, but it is not altogether untrue.

MR. BALFOUR'S GOOD WORK.

Mr. T. W. Russell gives a glowing account of the work done by the Irish Congested Districts Board with £41,250 at its disposal annually. It makes a goodly tale of industries fostered, taught, or revived. Loans for boats, and gear lent to fishermen, new fishing grounds adopted, curing stations established which have made fishing profitable, the redistribution of holdings, improvement of cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry breeding, instruction in bee-keeping, encouragement of creameries, and the laying out of "example holdings," are among the good things Mr. Balfour's Board has conferred.

OTHER ARTICLES.

Professor Dowden contributes a very warm and delicate appreciation of Mr. Robert Bridges's poetry. "Notes on England" derive their sole significance from the name of their author-Paul Verlaine. He finds the English Sunday after all not so terrible." Mr. Oscar Wilde furnishes six "poems in prose," short narratives in the style of the Oriental legend, with suggestions ethical and religious, which are more mysterious than significant. Lord Farrer criticises vigorously certain views of Mr. Reed on the Silver Question, and elicits spirited rejoinders from Mr. Moreton Frewen, Professor Nicholson, and Mr. F. J. Faraday.

THE NATIONAL REVIEW.

FROM the Somewhat languorous atmosphere which pervades many of the magazines at this sultry season, the National Review has not altogether escaped. There is plenty of variety, but little that stands out in strong relief. The manifesto of the Imperial Federation (Defence) Committee on the duty of the Colonies to contribute to our navy, and Mr. Mahon's suggestion of a possible alliance between the Labour Party and the Unionists claim notice elsewhere.

WILL FRANCE TURN SOCIALIST?

"H. L." supposes that France is generally regarded as the country in which the system of Socialism will first be practically attempted. But he points out that-

The total number of lots into which the agricultural land is subdivided is stated in the latest returns to be 14,236,000, with an average of 3:50 hectares or 864 acres. . . Three-quarters of the proprietors of the soil of France may be said to own lots under 4 94 acres, and nine-tenths of them an area not exceeding 14-82... It seems hard to imagine that a population which numbers a landowner for every 38 inhabitants, and a Savings Bank depositor for every 62 should, according to human foresight, be prevailed upon to lend a willing ear to the social revolutionist.

66 THE FATHER OF RUSSIAN REALISM." So Mr. Arthur Tilley, varying Turgeniev's phrase, styles Gogol, born in 1809 in the province of Poltava :

Gogol was essentially a humourist; that is to say, he viewed the topsy-turvydom of life rather with sympathetic laughter than with savage indignation or scientific neutrality. But the quality of his humour underwent a considerable change. He began as an observer of the human comedy; he ended as a lasher of national vices. His earliest mood resembles the gentle malice of Jane Austen. his latest has the bitterness, though not the savageness, of Swift.

"A member of the Bechuanaland Police Force," who was one of Captain Forbes's party, recounts his adventures, and allows that "there is a broad substratum of truth" in some of Mr. Labouchere's accusations.

THE FORUM.

THE June number maintains a fairly high level of interest, without, however, any articles of exceptional eminence. There is plenty of variety within a given range, but sociology threatens more manifestly than ever to swallow up literature. Nearly one-half of the contents consists of discussions in economics; and the shadow of social statistics hangs over most of the remainder.

SEX, MARRIAGE, AND DIVORCE.

Mr. C. D. Wright, Superintendent of the Census, contributes a paper simply bursting with facts and figures on the proportions of sex, marriage, and divorce in the population. One table may be cited:

Out of every hundred persons in the United States in 1890 there were fifty-one males and forty-nine females: the total excess of males over females being 1,513,510. The popular fancy that the married are fewer in towns than in the country is contrary to fact. In the divisions

where urban population predominates the single are proportionately fewer, as in populations chiefly rural they are most numerous. The divorced in the United States number only 0:35 per cent. of adults: or one to every 185 married persons. "Divorce was more common among the native whites of native parentage than among the whole population." Among the negro population the divorced were more prevalent than among any other classes."

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"WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM? This is Mr. E. L. Godkin's question. "The peculiarity of the social evolution which the philosophers say is now impending is, that it is to be not a money-making, but a spending evolution. Everybody is to live a great deal better than he has been in the habit of living, and to have far more fun." But where is the money to come from to meet this enormous increase in the living expenses of every civilised population? The total wealth of the United States is some £13,000,000,000. Evenly divided it would give £1,000 to each family of five persons; which invested at six per cent. would yield £60 a year, or 24s. a week. The total wealth of the United Kingdom is £8,500,000,000, or about £1,200 to each family of five; which at four per cent. would yield it £48 a year, or less than a pound a week. Neither sum allows for increase of luxury. In one year in Great Britain

118,830 had incomes over £300 a year, the total being £110,565,955. On the assumption that these people ought to be despoiled and made to share with their less fortunate brethren, let us see what would happen. The population of the kingdom in the year these returns were made was 37,176,464. If the income, then, of people having more than £300 a year were divided among the masses per capita, it would give each individual an income of about £3 annually.

I think on the whole it would not be an exaggeration to say that such a social evolution as the ethical economists have

planned could not be accomplished, even for a single year, without doubling the wealth of every country which tried it, while making no increase in the population.

HOW BALTIMORE GOT RID OF TRAMPS.

Mr. E. R. L. Gould tells how Baltimore last winter dealt with the unemployed. The people receiving lodging in Baltimore police stations as tramps numbered in 1892, 25,132; in 1893, 39,976. A central relief committee, formed from charitable and business associations, opened two shelters for non-residents, where the labourtest-of splitting so much wood--was rigorously applied, and opened stoneyards for the resident unemployed. The police sent on applicants to the shelters, and only when they were filled allowed the police station to be occupied. The nightly number of tramps dropped from 334 in the first fortnight of January to 233 in the next four weeks, and in the following six weeks to 171. The police stations were finally closed to tramps on February 3rd. The stoneyards were closed on April 5th.

THE POOR V. THE HEATHEN.

The success of Christian missions in India is maintained against the recent aspersions of Mr. Gandhi, by Mr. F. P. Powers. He begins with the striking remark that "as the contributions for the support of Protestant missions all over the world did not in 1892 quite equal the sum estimated to have been spent on the poor of the one city of New York in the season of 1893-4, it will hardly be claimed that the poor are neglected on account of missions." "Protestant Christianity is growing in India as fast as it is in the United States. To the suggestion that a vegetarian diet would make the missionary more acceptable to the Hindu, Mr. Powers retorts, "If abstaining from meat fosters the belief that there is a god under a cow-hide, it is the duty of missionaries to eat meat three times a day if thereby they may help to convince the dupes of Brahman superstition that beef is diet and not deity."

PROJECTED SOUTH POLAR EXPEDITION.

Dr. F. A. Cook, who is fitting out an expedition to winter within the Antarctic, thus describes his plan of action:

Securing a stout steam whaler of some 300 tons burden, I shall set sail from New York about October 1st, 1895, and proceed directly to a South American port, where a supply of beef and tallow will be procured, to be manufactured into pemmican. The ship will be provisioned for three years. Our course will be laid for the Falkland Islands, where the coal-bunkers will be re-filled. From the Falklands we will steam down to... Louis Philippe, which is an eastern division of Graham Land. On an island of this coast a lifeboat will be placed, in order to furnish an avenue of retreat in case of disaster. At the farthest attainable point to the south where there is land and a safe anchorage, headquarters will be established ashore. A structure capable of enduring the strongest gales, and so built as to afford an adequate protection from the cold, will be erected.

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After the long Polar night has passed, a select party will set off south, and the writer sees "no reason why a well-equipped sledging party should not be able to reach the geographical pole, starting from the eightieth paral lel." The entire expedition will not number more than fifteen, five being the scientific staff.

OXFORD THE IDEAL OF LEISURE AND CULTURE.

President G. S. Hall pleads for fellowships that shall provide leisure and guidance for post-graduate study, with a view to the training of professors. He looks with admiring envy to this country:

All the Oxford colleges now have fellowships, 367 in all, ranging in number from Wadham, with S, to All Souls, with 50, and with an upper and lower limit fixed for each Fellow. Probably nowhere in the world can be found groups of more scholarly or delightful young men than these coteries of the best youth in England, for which the whole educational system has been sifted, and who are to be future leaders. Their scholarly activity and productivity is now increasing, and these 21 little groups are academic ideals of leisure and culture nowhere paralleled. Nearly the same may be said of the 17 colleges of Cambridge, England, with their 334 fellowships. Besides these, Oxford has 480 scholarships and about 126 exhibitions, and Cambridge 518 scholarships. More recently the universities have begun to rival the colleges. Cambridge has 48 and Oxford 41 fellowships and scholarships.

The Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. J. S. Morton, prophesies of hope to the American farmer. The outcry about mortgages has been too loud. "Census returns show that about seventy per cent. of all the farms in the United States are unencumbered." With the increase of population land and food must rise in value. Only let them abjure Protection.

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

THE North American Review for June devotes much of its space to a discussion of Coxeyism, publishing no fewer than four articles upon the subject. These are noticed elsewhere, as also are the articles on "Woman Suffrage in Practice."

THE MODERN GIRL.

Mrs. Sarah Grand continues her series of papers upon "The Men and Women of To-Day," this time discussing the Modern Girl. It is neither so insolent nor so piquant as her previous dissertation upon the Modern Man. As might be expected, Mrs. Grand thinks much more of the modern girl than she does of the modern girl's brother, the Man of the Moment:

In the first reaction from the old state of things the chattelgirl is apt to rebel against necessary as well as unnecessary restraint, and the consequence is anything but edifying; but at the same time there are girls growing up among us in all classes who promise to be among the finest specimens of their sex the world has ever seen in any numbers. Now and then individuals of the kind have appeared to show what women might be, but it is only in our day that the type has blossomed out into many representatives. These girls are the product of the higher education which is truly both higher and an education; and happy is the man who secures one of them for a wife.

WHOM SHOULD WE ASK TO DINNER?

In a paper entitled "Fashion and Intellect," Mr. W. H. Mallock discourses upon the subject, whom should we invite to dinner if we wish to have a pleasant dinnerparty? The success of a dinner, he says, depends primarily upon the following condition :

That the guests should be persons, not necessarily well acquainted with each other, but at all events occupying positions which are, roughly speaking, similar-accustomed to the same manners, judging people's breeding and appearance by the same unformulated standards, instinctively looking at life from the same or from neighbouring standpoints, and thus seeing it in practically the same perspective.

Men of great intellect are not necessarily good diners out. Social intercourse in its most finished and most brilliant form is only possible in a class which is, in some sense, an aristocracy, and has an hereditary nucleus. The best English society is an aristocracy still. In the whole of England, he says, there are not more than 250 men with more than £50,000 a year, and between 70 and 80 of them are old-established landed magnates.

Brilliant society, in short, is like a game of skill, or a concert, in which the best results are produced only by specially gifted persons, and must not be confounded with that other social intercourse founded on close relationship, or early association, or a desire to discuss any given serious subject.

HOW SHOULD DOCTORS BE PAID?

Dr. William A. Hammond, in an article entitled “What Should a Doctor be Paid?" says that not ten physicians out of every hundred receive as much compensation as the Corporation attorneys and other lawyers employed by the city of New York. Dr. Hammond thinks that the American millionaires are very mean to their doctors, and never think of paying them in accordance with the services which they render. This is all the worse

because:

No class of men do so much in the way of charity as those who practise medicine. It is time that superior skill in them and wealth in their patients should count for more than has hitherto been the case, and their fees should be promptly paid.

DEFAULTING AMERICAN STATES.

In an article entitled "Our Family Skeleton," John F. Hume describes the various repudiated or neglected debts of many of the Southern states. Arkansas has bonds out for eight or nine million dollars which can be bought at ten to fifteen cents on the dollar. North Carolina has twelve millions out which can be bought at five to eight cents on the dollar. South Carolina has six millions at two to five cents on the dollar. West Virginia has fifteen millions at six to seven cents on the dollar. Among the other defaulting states are Georgia with five millions, Louisiana with twenty, and Mississippi with seven million dollars. None of these bonds are worth even a cent in the dollar. Texas is also in the black list. It is curious that in all these states which have repudiated or neglected bonds the state treasuries have lost millions of dollars by treasury defalcations, for as the state steals from its creditors so do the officials steal from the state.

OTHER ARTICLES.

The Bishop of Albany has an article on New York State University; and Sir Ashmead Bartlett, of all people in the world, has been chosen to write on the "Political Outlook in England." More space this month is given to notes and comments, and the number closes with an index to the 158th volume.

Longman's Magazine devotes considerable space to two hunting papers-one an account of how Nansen, the Arctic explorer, shot bears in Greenland; another describing chamois hunting above the snow-line.

Chums, Cassell's magazine for boys, offers a bicycle for the subscriber who will send in a postcard with the cleverest answer to "Why I should have the_Bicycle," and secondly, "What will I do for Chums if I win it." The magazine maintains its high character for the quantity and quality of its letterpress and illustrations. THE excellent paper on Gatherings" in Cassell's Family Magazine contains much the most popular account of scientific novelties which is to be found in the periodicals. Among other things there is this month an account given of a new wind motor, by which a windmill twenty feet in diameter is fixed to a dynamo below. With the wind going sixteen miles an hour the motor develops four horse-power. There is also an excellent article on Firemen in the series on "People who Face Death."