prepared for the purpose only shaped a very vague and moderate scheme of reform, but Disraeli was quite determined to accept any manner of compromises in order to carry some sort of scheme and to keep himself and his party in power. But then arose a new difficulty on which, with all his sagacity, he had not calculated. Lord Cranborne for the first time showed that he was a man of clear and resolute political principle, and that he was not willing to sacrifice any of his conscientious convictions for the sake of maintaining his place in a Government. He was sincerely opposed to every project for making the suffrage popular and for admitting the mass of the workingmen of the country to any share in its government. I need hardly say that I am entirely opposed to Lord Cranborne's political theories, but I am none the less willing to render full justice to the sincerity, not too common among rising public men, which refused to make any compromise on a matter of political principle. Lord Cranborne was then only at the opening of his administrative career, and he must have had personal ambition enough to make him wish for a continuance of office in a powerful administration. But he put all personal considerations resolutely aside, and resigned his place in the Government rather than have anything to do with a project which he believed to be a surrender of constitutional principle to the demands of the growing democracy. Lord Carnarvon and one or two other members of the administration followed his lead and resigned their places in the Government. I need not enter into much detail as to the progress of the Disraeli reform measure. It is enough to say that Disraeli obtained the support of many Radicals by the Liberal amendments which he accepted, and the result was that a Tory Government carried to success a scheme of reform which practically amounted to the introduction of household suffrage. Lord Cranborne and those who acted with him held firmly to their principles, and steadily opposed the measure introduced by those who at the opening of the session were their official leaders and colleagues. I am convinced that even the most advanced reformers were ready to give a due meed of praise to the man who had thus made it evident that he preferred what he believed to be a

political principle, even though he knew it to be the principle of a losing cause, to any consideration of personal advancement.

Some of us felt sure that we had then learned for the first time what manner of man Lord Cranborne really was. We had taken him for a bold and brilliant adventurer, and we found and were ready to acknowledge that he was a man of deep, sincere, and self-sacrificing convictions. I have never from that time changed my opinions with regard to Lord Cranborne's personal character. His career interested me from the first moment that I had an opportunity of observing it, and I may say that from an early period of my manhood I had much opportunity of studying the ways and the figures of Parliamentary life. But until Lord Cranborne had taken this resolute position on the reform question I had never given him credit for any depth of political convictions. The impression I formed of him up to that time was that he was merely a younger son of a great aristocratic family, who had a natural aptitude alike for literature and for politics, and that he was following in Parliament the guidance of his own personal humors and argumentative impulses, and that he was ready to sacrifice in debate not only his friends but his party for the sake of saying a clever thing and startling his audience into reluctant admiration. From those days of 1867 I knew him to be what the world all now knows him to be, a man of deep and sincere convictions, ever following the light of what he believes to be political wisdom and justice. I can say this none the less readily because I suppose it has hardly ever been my fortune to agree with any of Lord Salisbury's utterances on questions of political importance.

In 1868 the career of Lord Cranborne in the House of Commons came to an end by the death of his father. He succeeded to the title of Marquis of Salisbury, and became, as a matter of course, a member of the House of Lords. He was thus withdrawn while still a comparatively young man from that stirring field of splendid debate where his highest qualities as a speaker could alone have found their fitting opportunity. I need not trace out his subsequent public career with any sequence of detail. We all know how from that

time to this he has held high office, has come to hold the highest offices in the State whenever his political party hap pened to be in power. He has been Foreign Secretary; he has been Prime Minister in three Conservative administrations. For a time he actually combined the functions of Prime Minister and those of Foreign Secretary. He was envoy to the great conference at Constantinople in 1876 and 1877, and he took part in the Congress of Berlin, that conference which Lord Beaconsfield declared brought to England peace with honor. Everything that a man could have to gratify his ambition Lord Salisbury has had since the day when he succeeded to his father's title and estates. His own intellectual force and his political capacity must undoubtedly have made a way for him to Parliamentary influence and success even if he had always remained Lord Robert Cecil, and his elder brother had lived to succeed to the title. But from the moment when Lord Robert Cecil became the heir, it was certain that his party could not venture to overlook him. He might have made eccentric speeches, he might have indulged in sarcastic and scornful allusions to his political leaders, he might have allowed obtrusive scruples of conscience to interfere with the interests of his party, but none the less it became absolutely necessary that the Conservative politicians should accept, when opportunity came, the leadership of the Marquis of Salisbury. "Thou hast it all"-the words which Banquo applies to Macbeth -might have been said of Lord Salisbury when he became for the first time Prime Minister.

Lord Salisbury certainly did not achieve his position by any of the arts, even the less culpable arts, which for a time secured to Macbeth the highest reach of his ambition. Lord Salisbury's leadership came to him and was not sought by him. I cannot help thinking, however, that, after he had once attained that supreme position in his party, the remain der of his public career has been something in the nature of an anticlimax. Was it that the chill and deadening influence of the House of Lords proved too depressing for the energetic and vivacious spirit which had won celebrity for Lord Robert Cecil in the House of Commons?

Was it that Lord Salisbury, when he had attained the height of his ambition, became a victim to that mood of reaction which compels such a man to ask himself whether, after all, the work of ascent was not much better than the attained elevation? Lord Salisbury's years of high office coming now thus suddenly to an end give to me at least the melancholy impression of an unfulfilled career. The influence of the Prime Minister, so far as mere outsiders can judge of it, has always been exerted in foreign affairs for the promotion of peace. Even the late war in South Africa is not understood to have been in any sense a war of his seeking. The general belief is that the policy of war was pressed upon him by influences which at the time he was not able to control-influences which would only have become all the stronger if he had refused to accept the responsibility of Prime Minister and had left it to others to carry on the work of government. However this may be, it can hardly be questioned that of late years Lord Salisbury had become that which nobody in former days could ever suppose him likely to become, the mere figurehead of an administration. Lord Salisbury's whole nature appears to have been too sincere, too free from mere theatrical arts, to allow him to play the part of leader where he had no heart in the work of leadership. A statesman like Disraeli might have disapproved of a certain policy and done his best to reason his colleagues out of it, but nevertheless, when he found himself likely to be overborne, would have immersed himself delib erately in all the new-born zeal of the convert and would have behaved thenceforward as if his whole soul were in the work which had been put upon him to do. Lord Salisbury is most assuredly not a man of this order, and he never would or could put on an enthusiasm which he did not feel in his heart. We can all remember how, at the very zenith of British passion against China during the recent political convulsions and the intervention of the foreign allies, Lord Salisbury astonished and depressed some of his warmest admirers by a speech which he made at Exeter Hall, a speech which, metaphorically at least, threw the coldest of cold water on the popular British ardor

for forcing Western civilization on the Chinese people.

Lord Salisbury's frame of mind was one which could never allow him to become even for a moment a thorough jingo, and through all the later years of his power he held the office of Prime Minister at a time when jingoism was the order of the day among the outside supporters of the Conservative Government. He never had a fair chance for the full development of his intellectual faculties while he remained at the head of a Conservative administration. Under happier conditions he might have been a great Prime Minister and a leading force in political movement, but his intellect, his tastes, and his habits of life did not allow him to pay much deference to the prejudices and passions of those on whom he was compelled to rely for support. There was too much in him of the thinker, the scholar, and the recluse to make him a thoroughly effective leader of the party who had to acknowledge his command. He loved reading, he loved literature and art, and he took no delight in the formal social functions which are in our days an important part of successful political administration. He could not be "hail-fellow-well-met" with every pushing follower who made it a pride to be on terms of companionship with the leader of the party. I have often heard that he had a singularly bad memory for faces, and that many a devoted Tory follower found his enthusiasm chilled every now and then by the obvious fact that the Prime Minister did not seem to remember anything about the identity of his obtrusive admirer. Much the same thing has been said over and over again about Mr. Gladstone, but then Gladstone had the inborn genius of leadership, threw his soul into every great political movement, and did not depend in the slightest degree on his faculty for appreciating and conciliating every individual follower. Lord Salisbury's tastes were for the society of his close personal friends, and I believe no man could be a more genial host in the company of those with whom he loved to associate; but he had no interest in the ordinary ways of society and made no effort to conciliate those with whom he found himself in no manner of companionship. He did not even take any strong interest in the study of the

most remarkable figures in the political world around him, if he did not feel drawn into sympathy with their ways and their opinions. On one occasion, when a report had got about in the newspapers that Lord Salisbury was often seen in friendly companionship with the late Mr. Parnell in the smoking-room of the House of Commons, Lord Salisbury publicly stated that he had never, to his knowledge, seen Parnell, and had never been once in the House of Commons smoking-room.

No man has been better known, so far as personal appearance was concerned, to the general English public than Lord Salisbury. He has been as well known as Mr. Gladstone himself, and one cannot say more than that. He was a frequent walker in St. James's Park and other places of common resort in the neighborhood of the House of Parliament. Every one knew the tall, broad, stooping figure with the thick head of hair, the bent prows, and the careless, shabby costume. No statesman of his time was more indifferent than Lord Salisbury to the dictates of fashion as regarded dress and deportment. He was undoubtedly one of the worst-dressed men of his order in London. In this peculiarity he formed a remarkable contrast to Lord Beaconsfield, who down to the very end of his life took care to be always dressed according to the most recent dictates of fashion. All this was strictly in keeping with Lord Salisbury's character and temperament. The world had to take him as he was-he could never bring himself to act any part for the sake of its effect upon the public. My own impression is that when he was removed by the decree of fate into the House of Lords and taken away from the active, thrilling life of the House of Commons, he felt himself excluded from his congenial field of political action and had but little interest in the game of politics any more. He does not seem destined to a place in the foremost rank of English Prime Ministers, even of English Conservative Prime Ministers. But his is beyond all question a picturesque, a deeply interesting, and even a commanding figure in English political history, and the world will have reason to regret if his voluntary retirement from the position of Prime Minister should mean also his retirement from the field of political life.

T

HE attitude of Mayor Low, of New York City, in calling upon his Board of Education to throw open the public-school buildings to wide use by the people at large, is a measure of municipal economy. The Mayor has hit upon one of the tremendous and overlooked municipal extravagances, and he has discovered, in a measure, methods of correcting this waste. Actual squandering or theft of public moneys is quickly detected and sternly resented. Another form of civic prodigality, however, commonly passes for good husbandry of resources. This is the shameful waste of the municipal plant. In the business world such conditions as are the rule in cities could not prevail. The manufacturer who erected a large and expensive factory, and then, in the face of tremendous demand for his products at a profitable price, allowed his mill to be operated on oneeighth time, would be considered a fool. When a municipality, however, allows millions of dollars' worth of public buildings to be used only a few hours a few days each year, no one inveighs against the practice as criminal waste, and, until Mayor Low spoke out, no one called the city a fool. Nevertheless, this public practice is but a different statement of the unbusinesslike behavior of the individual producer.

Instances of such waste of public plant are numerous, but the most shameful example is furnished by the school-houses or educational plant, costing vast bond issues and interest charges, and yet useful for the greater part of the time to no one except the janitor. In New York City the value of the school plant, as fixed in City Superintendent Maxwell's last annual report, was $56,164,184. This is a vast amount of property, and yet, up to a few years ago, it was in use only six hours per day 180 days in the year, or a total of 1,080 hours. During the remaining 7,680 hours the buildings were closed like factories on strike or enterprises shut up by the sheriff-paying no rent, yielding no return, absolutely useless except for the fact that the school steps were really valuable as children's play-houses. In other words, save in providing instruction for an average of 400,000 children for six hours per day for less than one-half the year, the buildings, for all the good they did, were like public paupers-a charge on the city for maintenance.

This state of affairs is true, not only of New York City, but all too generally throughout the world. Mayor Low's policy for New York, therefore, will be found upon investigation to be as applicable to any other city as to the five boroughs around New York Bay. The way