MR. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN. CHARACTER SKETCH BY MR. JUSTIN MCCARTHY. IN the Forum for June Mr. Justin McCarthy writes pleasantly but somewhat bitterly on the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, M.P., who is now Secretary of State for the Colonies in the new administration. Mr. McCarthy

says:

There can hardly be a worse stroke of ill-luck in English political life or I dare say in any other political life-than for an aspiring man to get the repute of being " too clever by half." I think that is just Mr. Chamberlain's condition. He has the repute of being too clever by half. This may, some day, be his political epitaph.

Mr. Chamberlain may or may not be too clever by half, but Mr. McCarthy has no doubt as to his being clever, very clever, especially as a debater.

There are, according to my estimate, five great debaters in The House of Commons. These are Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Asquith, and Mr, Sexton. Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Sexton, and perhaps Mr. Asquith may claim to be orators as well. Mr. Chamberlain is certainly not an orator. There is not a gleam of imagination in him, or of fancy, or pathos, or genuine passion. No heart is ever warmed by his frigid, cutting eloquence. No eyes are ever moistened by any appeal from him. To all the artistic side of life he is colour-blind. He has not in him the capacity for one flash of genuine humour. He can be sarcastic, or perhaps rather spiteful than sarcastic; there is a sort of spinster-like shrillness in him when he gets out of temper and loses the suavity of the ladies' doctor. But he is a keen shrewd debater, and he has a singularly clear intonation. Not a word that he says is lost upon the House. His voice is not musical; it is sibillant and monotonous, but it reaches every ear. He has a quick eye to detect a flaw in the argument of any adversary. He is splendidly self-opinionated, and would not be in the least afraid to measure himself against Demosthenes.

Mr. McCarthy lets us into some secrets of the relations which existed between Mr. Chamberlain and the Irish members when he was President of the Board of Trade in Mr. Gladstone's Administration. He says:

The Irish Nationalist members took him fully into their confidence. We consulted him on all occasions. A vacancy took place in the office of Chief Secretary, consequent upon the sudden resignation of the late Mr. W. E. Forster, and Mr. Chamberlain thought he had every reason to believe that the position would be offered to him He did what I think was a prudent and a straightforward thing, under the conditions. He sent for a number of the most advanced Irish Nationalist members, angl he told us that he desired our advice as to the course he should take in the event, which he then deemed certain, of his being invited to assume the position of Chief Secretarior Ireland. I mention the fact only to show what confiden then had in him, and what confidence he then professed e in us-in us whom since that time he has so unsparingyuced. He knew then as well as we did ourt of him must depend upon his fidelity he and we had together proclaimed tionality and the claim for Home Rule. details of our conversation, but it is not necessary. I know to this day why Mr. Chamberlaid did not receive appointment. He told us it was certain to be offered to him. All my personal and private information had given me the conviction that it would be offered to him. It never was offered to him. The place was given to Lord Frederick Cavendish.

selves that to the princ.

with regard

I could add a

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itous

any serious consideration. Mr. Chamberlain was vexed at the cold reception which the Irish members gave to his proposal of compromise. A certain chilliness began.

This was the little rift within the lute which has widened so rapidly that the quondam Home Ruler and colleague of Home Rulers is now a leading member in Lord Salisbury's Unionist Cabinet.

HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE GOSPELS: "SOUND, POSITIVE RESULTS" FROM GERMANY. THE more explosive "results" of the Higher Criticism as applied to the Old Testament have rather tended to obscure the steady progress which the same order of criticism has been making in the study of the New Testament. A welcome corrective to this tendency is supplied by the eminent Professor H. H. Wendt, of Jena, writing on The Synoptic Problem in Germany " in the New World for June. Those who have been accustomed to think of German Biblical criticism as a hopeless welter of conflicting fancies will be surprised to learn that there is growing agreement among its professors on so intricate yet so vital a matter as the origin of the Gospels. The Gospel of Mark is generally accepted as the oldest of the three, and as a source of Matthew and Luke. The sections common to Matthew and Luke, but not found in Mark, are generally referred to a compilation of the Sayings of Jesus, which is supposed to be the same as the "Logia which, according to the early testimony of Papias, the Apostle Matthew brought together in the Hebrew tongue. The hypothesis that Mark's Gospel and the now lost "Logia" of Matthew form the principal sources of the Synoptic Scriptures "has become dominant with the scientific theologians of Germany," notwithstanding a few notable names to the contrary. Professor Wendt thus concludes his interesting survey :

If we proceed upon the way which the progressive historicalcritical study of the Gospels has shown to be true and sure, we shall attain to sound, positive results; we shall attain to a plain, consistent picture of the historical personality, work and preaching of Jesus Christ-a picture from which there shines upon us in full glory the unique greatness and divine revelation of our Saviour.

The Cost of Converts.

Our Day for June quotes from the Ram's Horn a curious calculation that a statistical Christian appears to have made in Chicago. This gentleman, one Mr. Chapman, after making the calculation, thus stated the reflections which are suggested:

I found, somewhat to my surprise, that the cost of the conversion of each soul in Chicago in forty leading churches was far greater than it was in foreign fields. I therefore asked the question of myself, "Considered as a business investment simply, is the church paying dividends?"

The following figures embody in tabular form the results of his statistical inquiry:

FORTY CHICAGO CHURCHES-A YEAR'S RECORD.

THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPE.

THE DAY DREAM OF LEO XIII. CAPTAIN. J. W. GAMBIER, R.N., in a paper entitled "The Papacy, its Position and Aims" in the Fortnightly Review, writes very brilliantly concerning the present position and the fixed idea of the Pope. He says:

THE POPE'S POSITION.

Reason as we may, blink facts as much as we like, the Pope, in the silence of his austerely furnished room, with his simple fare of pasta and cold water, is a power in shaping the destinies of the world greater than the Czar, greater than Emperor William, greater than all the Foreign Secretaries who fret and fume on the political stage in the length and breadth of Europe. And why? Because he embodies the idea of a persistent, unwavering policy, with one distinct aim, an aim that will outlive him; that will be followed with the relentlessness of a sleuth-hound by his successors.

IMPROVED BY LOSS OF TEMPORAL POWER.

Captain Gambier looking at the question from an independent point of view, has no hesitation in saying how much the destruction of the temporal power benefited the Roman Church.

To the student of history it seems indisputable that a great boon and blessing has befallen the Church of Rome through the loss of its temporalities.

It is largely owing to the destruction of the temporal power and its consequences that

Round the person of Leo XIII. a strength has accumulated unknown to modern Papacy, whilst, personally, no Pope for centuries has been more implicitly obeyed or more devoutly reverenced. Nevertheless, it is also clearly his own remarkable personality which has greatly contributed to this state of affairs, coupled with the fact that the loss of the temporal power, and, with it, relief from the trumperies which take up the time of ordinary royalties, has left him at leisure to devote his great intellect to what may be properly called the legitimate business of his position.

THE TYRANNY OF A FIXED IDEA.

But although Captain Gambier sees this, the Pope does not, and notwithstanding the enormously improved position which has accrued to him as the result of the formation of the kingdom of Italy, Leo. XIII. never surrenders for one moment his favourite daydream of winning back again the temporal sovereignty of Rome.

The aim of this policy is the Restoration of the Temporal Power. That this is the leading idea of the Vatican, the pivot on which everything turns, can be said without fear of contradiction. The precise form that this restoration will assume may not have taken definite shape even in Leo XIII.'s mind; but, as far as is known to one who stands near His Holiness and knows, or thinks he knows, the views the Pope holds on this subject, there is never a moment's wavering in the belief of the Holy Father that it will come about. It may not be Leo XIII., nor the next, nor the next after him, but it is the immutable intention of God in the government of His Church that His Vicegerent shall be an independent Sovereign. For a Pope without a territory of his own is a theological anomaly, a crime against the majesty of God himself, and thus the present position of the Pope is that of a prisoner—altogether an intolerable position of affairs.

HOW THE POPE HOPES TO REGAIN HIS THRONE.

Not only does the Pope sigh for the restoration of his temporal power but he believes the attainment of this ideal is not very far out of his reach. The following is a fairly accurate statement of the conclusions which find favour at the Vatican:

The Church believes that all the poorer and most of the middle and respectable classes sigh for the good old days-all save the political adventurer and the money-lender. The Church, therefore, bides its time until the bubble bursts;

probably after the great war so long foretold, when Europe will resolve into its natural elements; when Italy, leaning on that fatal reed England, will have ceased to be anything but a geographical expression, with France extended all along the maritime Alps to Genoa, Venice once more Austrian, with Lombardy thrown in to "compensate" her for the loss of Herzegovina and Bosnia, formed into a new state with Hungary and Servia, whilst Umberto will be handed back politely to reign in Turin-if he has recognised on which side his bread is buttered, a faculty which has always hitherto distinguished the House of Savoy. The rest of Italy may have formed some kind of Republic, its capital Florence, leaving Rome, and a possible twenty or thirty miles' radius of the Campagna, for the Pope. Here the Head of the Church will reign as an independent sovereign over a neutral state, will levy his own taxes (which would be a species of municipal rate), and will once more strike his own effigy on coins which the experience of Pio Nono's attempt will keep up to the proper standard. This small spot on earth, dedicated to the service of God, will be under the guarantee of all the Powers, will require no lines of circumvallation, no soldiers, and no ships, and Rome will once more become what it had been for nearly seventeen hundred years (with a brief interval), the home of the Head of the only True Church. And the Vatican need not trouble itself much to bring about this state of affairs. By abstention on the part of the faithful in Italy from all political matters, power is gradually slipping into the hands which must ruin the country. With authority set at nought and bankruptev at her doors, resources sucked dry, credit blasted, with the Triple Alliance fading away (her only support), bullied by France, deserted by England, Italy, the Italy of Umberto, Crispi, Rudini, and Co., is tottering to destruction. And this must render the restoration of the temporal power a European necessity, for the simple reason that, failing an Italian king, no other person except the Pope would be allowed by the other Powers to scat himself there.

CROMWELL AND HIS STATUE.

THE Free Review writes sensibly on the proposed statue to Cromwell. It says:

A thoughtful politician will look at the past of his country all round, and he may as well muse over Strafford as over Simon de Montfort, as well over Bolingbroke as over Peel. Above all, if he is to commemorate kings as kings, he may fitly commemorate statesmen as statesmen. Now, of all the men whose names bulk large in our political history there is simply none so important, so outstanding, so memorable, as Cromwell. That we should have statues in London to the two Charlescs and the four Georges, and none to Oliver, testifies merely to average meanness of spirit, not at all to principled criticism of Oliver's tyranny. If we leave him statueless as a tyrant, we should leave the Charleses and the Georges statueless for no less valid reasons. The men who bestatued these cannot have done so on worthy grounds of constitutional principle. And as no Liberal can now be supposed to admire George the Third as a politician, no Liberal could reasonably be challenged for proposing a good statue to Cromwell while bad statues to bad kings remain standing in the name of public opinion.

London is infamous among capitals for the quality and the quiddity of its statues; Shakspere is made trivial by incompetent statuary; Cobden is made insignificant by selection of site; Keats, London-born, is represented by an American bust, stuck in a church, where it had no business to be; Milton, the greatest of English artists in verse, is but feebly grouped wit1 Chaucer, another great Londoner-born, and with Shaks on the fountain in Park Lane; but George the Thid, Charles the First and Anne, though with no bett best have some of the best available sites... Then ne grotesque chaos of Westminster Abbey, with fe, reproduces

of rank and office sprawling in groups o
while great writers and artists get inch,
that can be said for the statue syst
the confusion and irrationality of li

SIR EDWARD HAMLEY AT TEL-EL-KEBIR.

AN EXPOSURE BY COLONEL MAURICE. IT is difficult to imagine a more crushing exposure than that to which Sir Edward Hamley is subjected in the current number of the United Service Magazine. Mr. Shand, who wrote Sir Edward Hamley's biography, which has been recently published, made a series of grave charges against Lord Wolseley, implying that the Commander-in-Chief, in the Egyptian Campaign, had wilfully and unjustly refused to recognise the share taken by Sir Edward Hamley in winning that battle, and suggesting generally that the official history had been cooked in order to give all the credit to those to whom it did not belong. Colonel Maurice, as the compiler of that official history, simply demolishes General Hamley and his partisans. He tells the story of how the official history was written, and shows that every page of it was submitted to Sir Edward Hamley for revision and correction before it was published, and that he adopted almost all Sir Edward's suggestions, merely stating in footnotes when the statement communicated by Sir Edward Hamley rested solely upon that officer's own testimony. In his work as official historian, Colonel Maurice says he had no trouble whatever with any officer engaged in the expedition excepting only from Sir Edward Hamley, and he found it was impossible to satisfy him unless he did injustice to others. Colonel Maurice says:--

Absolutely throughout all my relations with all officers concerned, he was the only man whose efforts were directed to get his own claims recognised. That I consulted him, at all events freely in regard to every point on which he could speak with authority, and accepted his statements with perhaps even too great freedom, is now sufficiently clear. I only asked Lord Wolseley one question about any point connected with the campaign, and as I obtained in regard to that point decisive evidence which showed that he was mistaken, I wrote the story as to that matter in direct contradiction of what Lord Wolseley had told me. Everything that I wrote concerning Lord Wolseley's action was either based on documentary evidence such as in any court of justice would have been decisive, or on the unanswerable evidence of others. Not by one jot or tittle was the evidence coloured in his favour.

Colonel Maurice, in reply to the unworthy sneers directed against Lord Wolseley, tells an incident which has hitherto escaped public notice:

No army ever ran a nearer chance of losing its Commanderin-Chief at the very beginning of the action. Lord Wolseley and his brother, now Sir George Wolseley, had ridden far ahead of the staff, after he had given the order for our halting. He had given his horse to his brother to hold; wishing to try with his glass to peer into the darkness to see whether the flashes of the firing in front would guide him as to the course of the action, for all the emergencies of which it was so necessary for him to make provision, yet which it was so difficult to guide or aid in any way after it had once begun. The first shell which was thrown from the advanced work, fired no doubt pretty much at a venture, fell between Lord Wolseley and his horse. Fortunately the shell buried itself in the sand and did not explode. Otherwise one of the earliest incidents of Tel-elKebir would have been the blowing to pieces of the Commander-in-Chief, his horse, and his brother. As it was, the horse was so frightened that it broke away from Sir George and was with some difficulty caught.

So far from General Hamley having been a hero of Colonel Maurice says:

Tel-e

Kebir

le evidence from all sources disproves absolutely statement which virtually makes the part which Sir E. Hanley layed, the one which decided the fate of the battle. I believe that I can show conclusively that throughout the campaign S E. Hamley was simply the fifth

wheel in the coach, the one man whose death at any moment would have made no difference whatever to the success of the expedition, and that nothing but incrdinate vanity could have concealed this fact even from himself.

The decisive victory which crushed Arabi, so far from being due to General Hamley, was altogether the work of Lord Wolseley. Colonel Maurice says:

Knowing pretty well the story of most of the great battles of the past, I know of only one of which it can be said that the entire course of the battle was so completely worked out and foreseen by the general in command, as was the case at Tel-el-Kebir.

There is to be another article, in which Colonel Maurice will further expose this extraordinary tissue of misrepresentation woven by the vanity of General Hamley, in order to conceal the truth from the eyes of the public. It is a thousand pities for General Hamley's reputation that his friends should have forced this exposure uroi Colonel Maurice, but as it had to be done, there can be no doubt as to the thoroughness with which the task has been performed.

HOW CHARLES DICKENS KILLED HIMSELF.

CHARLES DICKENS, junior, in the North American Review for June, writes a very sad paper about his father, which brings out very clearly how recklessly the great novelist killed himself by giving public readings. He says:

There was something of almost wilful exaggeration, of a defiance of any possible over-fatiguc, either of mind or body, in the feverish sort of energy with which these readings were entered upon and carried out.

It would almost seem that he might have been living and writing novels to this day if he had not persisted, in defiance of all warnings, in giving public readings which exhausted his strength and ultimately killed him. He had plenty of symptoms of his approaching collapse:

Among other serious symptoms he noticed that he could only read the halves of the letters over the shopdoors on his right. The old elasticity was impaired, the old unflagging vigour often faltered. One night at the St. James's Hall, I remember, he found it impossible to say Pickwick, and called him Pickswick, and Picnic, and Peckwicks, and all sorts of names except the right, with a comical glance of surprise at the occupants of the front seats, which were always reserved for his family and friends. In fact when my father described himself, in a letter written to Mr. Dolby on the very eve of the breakdown, as being "a little out of sorts," he was, in fact, on the brink of an attack of paralysis of the left side, and probably of apoplexy.

What finished him was a farewell series of twelve readings at St. James's Hall. The state in which he was can be imagined from the instructions given to young Dickens by his father's medical attendant::

"I have had some steps put up against the side of the platform, Charley," said Mr. Beard, who was constantly in attendance. "You must be there every night, and if you see your father falter in the least, you must run up and catch him and bring him off with me, or, by Heaven, he'll die before them all."

IN the German reviews there are two character sketches of Mr. Gladstone, tardy articles that appeared before the change in political affairs towards the end of June. The article in the Deutsche Revue (June) is unsigned, but the tone of it may be gathered from the concluding sentence: "When Mr. Gladstone was obliged to retire, he left English politics in the worst confusion for his colleagues." In Heft 21 of Ton Fels zum Meer, Mr. C. Frank Dewey gives us an amiable picture of Mr. Gladstone at home.

IF I WERE POSTMASTER-GENERAL: SECOND TRY. BY MR. HENNIKER HEATON, M.P. MR. HENNIKER HEATON is not going to be PostmasterGeneral, worse luck! but we can rely upon him to be a thorn in the side and a goad to the back of Mr. Arnold Morley's successor. By way of giving the new PostmasterGeneral a taste of his quality, Mr. Henniker Heaton contributed to the Contemporary Review one of those programmes of his which are so curiously compounded of minute detail and the slap-dash of a theatrical scene painter. His programme is magnificent, even if it is not business, and there is probably more business in it than the Post Office officials will be ready to admit.

IMPERIAL PENNY POSTAGE.

Let us, then, abolish postal frontiers within the Queen's dominions, as we have abolished Customs frontiers. Let the Postmaster-General be empowered to declare the British Empire henceforth a single postal district, with a uniform penny postal rate for letters (as there is already a uniform halfpenny rate for printed matter), whether transmitted one mile, ten miles, or ten thousand. And then let him celebrate the opening of the new building by solemnly promulgating a long list of those reforms on which the public has set its heart, and abolishing a still longer list of grievances, which the public will no longer tolerate. Several great Colonies, including Canada, New Zealand, and Victoria, will consent to imperial penny postage to-morrow, on a sign from the British Postmaster-General. The House of Commons, the Ministry, the Press, and public opinion favour the reform; but our Post Office looks to the Colonies to take the initiative.

AN IMPERIAL BRITISH STAMP.

Not only should we thus encourage correspondence between all parts of the Empire, but we should facilitate the transmission of small sums of money. An imperial British stamp, available throughout the Queen's dominions, should be provided; money orders, on the mandat-carte system, should be issued at every British post-office; and telegraphic money orders between all great centres of population, from Edinburgh to Sydney, from Ottawa to Hongkong. And, with every mandat-carte or telegraphic money order, the amount named in it should be 'duly delivered at the payee's door. An incalculable stimulus would thus be administered to British trade, and, what is more, to British patriotic feeling and to racial sympathy.

In addition to this he would establish parcel post between the United States and Great Britain, a convenience to civilisation which, incredible though it appears, has not yet been established.

QUICKER DELIVERY.

Mr. Henniker Heaton does not confine his attention to our relations with our kin beyond the sea, he is anxious to improve our home delivery, and for this purpose he makes the following suggestion :—

If the post-office would attach a letter-box to every important train, tram and omnibus, and provide a sorter, with a staff of letter-carriers, at the terminus, hours might be saved. And why is there not a division of mail-matter into three classes at St. Martin's-le-Grand, as in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere? Letters should form the first class, newspapers and book-post the second, and parcels the third; and a special staff should be employed to deal with each.

The express

service should be simplified and extended, and the charge should be reduced to 2d. for the first mile. How long are we to wait for the crimson "Express" stamp, as used abroad? And why cannot we have the carte-télégramme system in London and other large cities? In Paris or Berlin a postcard (costing 3d.) is driven through a pneumatic tube from one part of the city to another with the speed of thought.

AN AGRICULTURAL PENNY PARCEL POST.

In the country districts more frequent collections and deliveries are required. There are too many post offices in

the towns, while there are not half enough in the country. Public opinion demands the immediate abolition of " guarantees" and "porterage," as odious exactions worthy only of the Middle Ages, the laying of a network of telegraph or telephone wires throughout the rural districts, and the institution of regular and frequent postal collections and deliveries, and the "Agricultural Parcel Post," at specially low rates, for flowers, fruit, choice vegetables, and dairy produce, which are now imported from France, Belgium, Holland and Denmark to the amount of £15,000,000 a year. The late Mr. Raikes warmly approved of this suggestion. The "Cash on Delivery' system should be given a fair trial. It has been uniformly successful in other countries, and in a rich, busy, and denselypopulated country like this it would be invaluable. By this system the Post Office not only carries a tradesman's parcel, but receives the price of it on delivery, and accounts for the price to the sender.

CHEAP POSTAGE FOR MAGAZINES.

Mr. Heaton pleads for the admission of magazines to the privileges of the cheap postage accorded to newspapers. He says:

The present rule is that any "registered newspaper" can be conveyed by post for a half-penny. To be registered, however, it must (1) be published at intervals not exceeding seven days, and (2) consist mainly of "news, or articles relating thereto." So that the whole of our monthly reviews, magazines, and religious and scientific periodicals are excluded, and subjected to heavy postal taxation; while the registered newspapers themselves must only contain a certain proportion of advertisements. These two rules are obviously opposed to public policy. For in the first place, the deliberate utterances of picked thinkers, divines, philosophers, and medical, military and naval authorities, and, in fact, specialists of all kinds in the monthly periodicals, must be more valuable, and therefore more worthy of favour, than the police and sporting news, the Court and Society gossip, even the political speeches and the glib leading articles, which make up a daily newspaper. Secondly, it is suicidal for the Post Office to repress advertising, since it is well known that the department derives an enormous revenue from the replies to advertisements, the resulting postal orders and parcels, and the registration of them. I have therefore introduced a Bill abolishing the two rules referred to.

OTHER REFORMS.

Here is a tolerably big programme and one which will not be carried out in its entirety this century:

66

Postcards and stamped envelopes should be sold, as in other countries, at their face or stamp value. At present a purchaser has to pay d. for a halfpenny" postcard, and the poor are thus severely fleeced. Our postcard, at present the smallest and meanest in Europe, should be made at least as large as the international postcard of the Postal Union. The mandat-carte system should be introduced, and the postal order done away with. In Germany, Switzerland, and elscwhere the remitter of money pays in the amount at a postoffice, and receives a mandat-carte, upon which he writes the payee's address, and adds a short message. The letter-carrier takes the money, with the mandat-carte, to the payee's door. Thus speed and safety of transmission, and payment to the right person, are ensured. So successful has this system proved, that the French Government has just adopted it.

THE REV. T. C. Collings has an excellent article in the Leisure Hour entitled "The Settlements of London: Where they are and What they are Doing." He thus summarises the settlements already existing:

Oxford House would be described as a High Church institution, Toynbee Hall as a Broad Church settlement, Mansfield House is supported by the Congregationalists, Bermondsey by the Wesleyans, Newman House represents the Roman Catholics, while University Hall is the outcome of Mrs. Humphry Ward's well-known volume, “Robert Elsmere," and Browning Hall, the youngest, makes a new appeal to the well-to-do to return and live among the poor.

A PENNY-A-WORD CABLEGRAMS TO AMERICA. MR. HENNIKER HEATON, not content with this programme, launches another idea in the North American Review for June. The Atlantic, he insists, ought to be made to cease to exist, and this can be done by utilising the existing cables which united Europe to America, but which are rendered comparatively useless by the monopoly which controls them. He makes the startling statement that

It would be perfectly feasible to telegraph the whole of the letters now exchanged between the two countries for the sum which is now paid to the mail-steamship companies. Meanwhile, I may invite the Anglo-American Company to make a grand experiment. It should institute a Sunday or nightly service at a penny per word for purely social messages, the use of codes being strictly forbidden. I have little doubt that a profit of £50,000 a year would at once be realised. This is no scientific problem or financial adventure. The wires exist, the staff is in perfect training; and at a week's notice the people of the United Kingdom and the United States may be in constant electrical communication on questions of business or on private affairs; the letter post being reserved for the transmission of formal documents. And this wonderful transformation would be effected with a positive saving to the taxpayers.

The number of words sent over the cables between America

and England last year was 23,000,000. Of these twenty million were business messages at one shilling per word, and the balance, three millions, were messages at fivepence per word. Deducting some small charges, the total income from Anglo-American cables may be put down at £1,000,000, or five million dollars.

Now, by means of the recent improvements, forty-five words per minute can be sent over one wire, so that the twelve cables might be employed to send in one year no less than 283,824,000 words! It must be remembered, however, that only two of the twelve cables are extensively employed. Indeed, a cable expert of high authority is of opinion that the new cable of the Anglo-American Company, having a weight of 400 pounds of copper to the mile, is of sufficient capacity to carry all the existing traffic.

The cost of laying a trans-Atlantic cable is said to be about £500,000. If so, the total cost for the twelve working cables, and three which have been abandoned, is about £7,500,000. Yet the capital of a single company is £7,000,000, while for £1,000,000 we might at once lay two cables capable of doing all the work. The interest on £1,000,000 could not exceed £50,000, and the working expenses would be about £80,000; total, £130,000. For which annual expenditure the public might have a service just as good as the present one, for which it pays the companies £1,000,000.

I say it is high time to change all this: to recognise that since the first cable was laid the Atlantic no longer exists. What I propose is that the British and American Governments should jointly acquire the property and rights of the existing cable companies, at a fair valuation, and establish a common state monopoly in cable communication. They should then establish a tariff of one penny per word; and the result would be a prodigious development of trade, and an immense increase in the happiness of the masses.

Finally, I turn to the one man who has it in his power to advance this scheme more than all other public men put together I mean Sir John Pender. Sir John is the brain of cabling enterprise, not only in the Atlantic, but all over the world. When his one rival, the Commercial Cable Company, was formed, the rates went down from one shilling and eightpence to sixpence, and the traffic increased 727 per cent. But Sir John has worked the charge up again to a minimum of one shilling per word, and there he would fain maintain it. But he must be aware that this scandal of idle wires and prohibitive charges cannot last for ever.

Sir John Pender then must think over the error of his ways and reform, for although Mr. Henniker Heaton is

not Postmaster-General he may go further and fare worse. Honestly speaking there are few persons who can look at the present monopoly of the cable service, with its results in high prices and little business, without seeing in it an object lesson which England and America would do well to take to heart.

HOW PARIS IS FED.

IN the fifth of a series of articles appearing in the Revue des Deux Mondes on "The Mechanism of Modern Life" by Vicom'e d'Avenel last month, the writer describes how Paris is fed through the great shops and stores devoted to alimentation. The French nation are now noted for their delicate cooking, but in the Middle Ages they seem to have been very poorly fed. Hippocras, a sort of hot punch, was in Rabelais' time the luxury of the rich, and in the age of the poet Villon figs and dates were only eaten by epicures, and oranges were much dearer than are now bananas. In the reign of Francis I., the Duchess of Vendome sent a present of melons and artichokes to the Queen of Spain, then in Flanders, and under Louis XIV. Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter that "chocolate will set you up in health, but how are you to make it if you do not possess a proper pot?" Nearly all the fish consumed by the common people was either dried or salted, and by no means cheap. Meat cost less than it does now, but was not good.

There are curious records of the adulteration of food in the Middle Ages: the milk was watered, spices and jams were mixed with cheaper materials, and drugs, especially quinine, suffered in the same way. Even now quantities of olive oil and brandy, which are almost wholly innocent of the fruit of the olive or the juice of the grape, are sold to the population of Paris; but it is only fair to add that these spurious goods are in no wise prepared from unwholesome materials.

Of the great Paris grocery establishments, that going by the name of Felix Potin is the chief. The founder's father, who cultivated his own land at Arpajon (Seine-etOise), desired to make a lawyer of his son, and Felix was put into an office at the age of sixteen; but the lad had an irresistible desire to become a grocer, and before he was twenty-four years old he had started in business. He became in time perhaps the biggest grocer in the world. Felix Potin acted splendidly during the siege of Paris. He refused to allow his stock of eatables-which had by that time become immense— to be bought up by speculators, and he rationed carefully his supplies of food, which he doled out to the public at the same prices as before. He thus sold £80,000 worth of food, for which he might easily have obtained a quarter of a million of English money. It is sad to think that this large-hearted man died in the year following the war at the early age of fifty-one.

Neither butchers' meat nor bread has yet been subject to the methods of accumulation and distribution pursued in the grocery trade; but an immense establishment has been started in Paris by a M. Cléret for the making of sausages and black pudding, the price having been sensibly lowered by the concentration of manufacture. But these remarks only apply to pork. Reckoning that there are a thousand co-operative food supplies in France, four hundred are bakeries, and nineteen deal exclusively with the fresh meat trade. The famous Maison Duval possesses not only its restaurants of world-wide fame, but three large butcher's shops, distributing meat each year up to a value of a million of francs-in English money, £40,000.