Reservist should be amenable to military discipline whenever he is on service is not only natural, but inevitable.

The Reinach case proves, however, that he can be followed into civil life and subjected to the military code should he at any time render himself distasteful to the military authorities. He can be haled before a purely military "Court of Inquiry" for "a gross breach of discipline," and tried in camera. He can be deprived of his

rank, dismissed with dishonor from the service, and held up to public obloquy.

Without serious remonstrance the landmarks of the Republic are being systematically swept away one by one. Is France drifting Is France drifting into a Military Terror? That would, indeed, be a heavy price to pay, in order that a palpably innocent man may perish on the Devil's Island, while the real criminal flaunts it in Paris?-National Review.

IF the end of government is the happiness of the governed, representation is the best instrument yet discovered. The "common-sense of most," when strained through the higher capacity of the few, winnowed, as it were, like corn from chaff, not only "holds a fretful realm in awe"-which an able despotism or a strong oligarchy can also do but it so moulds the laws and the administration to the wants, and even the prejudices, of the people, that they dislike neither, and are, so far as their relation to public affairs is concerned, distinctly happy. No proof of that proposition is required beyond the broad facts admitted by everybody about the countries where the people are recognized as the ultimate and direct source of all authority. In Great Britain a rebellion against the State is almost unthinkable. In America, when the Constitution was threatened by insurgents, the people sacrificed a million lives and six hundred millions of treasure to keep it intact. In France, where everything changes, the fundamental laws and methods of administration are never altered or attacked; and in Switzerland there has not been a rebellion for fifty years-and the last one was religious, and it was suppressed by a rising of the whole remaining population in arms. The peoples in these countries may change their representatives, or, in France, even their method of being represented, but the majority do not hate, and do not willingly alter the system under

which they live. That is for statesmen the sufficient justification of representative government, though statesmen above all others fret most under its occasional aberrations; and historians. may fairly doubt whether, unless the countries in which it prevails are conquered, it will ever be superseded. Nevertheless, there is in that very reservation a point of danger for representative institutions. We cannot deny, though we would willingly deny, that it is in relation to conflicts with the external world that representative institutions are weakest. The straining or sifting process which works so well in internal affairs, appears not to work in external matters, and whenever war is in sight representation becomes a source of danger rather than of security. So far as the Houses, or Chambers, or Bodies will consent to efface themselves, things may go well, but the moment they interfere, the decrease of wisdom becomes manifest to all onlookers not of the same nation. As regards diplomacy, to begin with, the Houses-we use that ancient term as on the whole better than "the Chambers or

"the representative bodies". -are always singularly weak. They never by any chance have a permanent policy. They do not know the diplomatists, and do not allow for the "personal equation," the enormous difference which often exists between one Ambassador and another. The agent of the country is for them the agent of the country, and they accept the as

surances or the views, say, of Mr. Smith as readily as they will accept those of a Talleyrand or a Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. The Foreign Office in any country makes no such blunder, but it has no means, without breaking the hearts of its great service, of bringing its knowledge home to large bodies of imperfectly informed politicians. It could not tell the House that such and such an Ambassador is Inan of fine judgment, but that on such and such a question he is too apt to listen to one particular great lady. The American Houses frequently mistake the character and position of their agents altogether, and if it were not invidious we think we could show that this has happened in England and France also within quite recent times. Ambassadors, who not infrequently are captured by the charm of the life they are accredited to observe, occasionally also contract. the most bitter dislikes, which, if they do not influence their despatches, do influence all their private representations. Then the Houses, though they understand that secrecy is occasionally indispensable, frequently mistake its object, and bring out, or force out, or suggest the precise facts upon which wise managers would remain silent. Again, the Houses often fail in a very wonderful way to understand the respective strengths of their own and foreign nations. We remember long ago a crucial instance of this error, the absolute refusal of the Piedmontese Parliament to make peace with Austria when they had no more power to defeat Austria than a fox-terrier with a wound has to defeat a bloodhound without one. The Piedmontese Parliament was a little one; but our own defied France over "the Colonels"" business when the country was almost unprepared, and even Palmerston shrank back; and the American Houses were very near doing it over Venezuela. The agitation caused by defeat is therefore. sometimes wholly disproportioned to the defeat itself, the Houses never reconciling themselves to a defeated General, and sometimes acting with the unthinking fury which characterized. the action of the French Chambers

when they drove M. Jules Ferry, the strongest man in France, out of public life because some French troops had been surprised by a body of Chinese pirates. There is strong ground for the suspicion, too, that the Spanish Cortes is reflecting unthinking popular passion, and overruling Spanish statesmen who, left to themselves, would rid Spain of a load too heavy to carry, on terms which would not sacrifice her dignity and would make her future easier to bear. Finally, it is nearly certain that representative bodies do not think out what they want from war as clearly as statesmen are compelled to do. It may be doubted if the British House of Commons had any clear policy in its head when it silently forced the Government to risk war with Russia by appropriating Wei-hai-wei; or whether Congress has at all clearly resolved whether it wants Cuba or only the departure of Spain; or whether the Cortes in Madrid has the smallest idea what will happen if it defeats the American Fleet or is defeated by it. Representative bodies are, about war, governed by passion instead of reason, or when passion has not risen to bloodheat they allow themselves to be mastered by aspirations too vague to deserve even the name of statesmanship. There is, in fact, no security against their making blunders which in quite conceivable cases would involve the great reservation made at the beginning of this article-namely, such a defeat as would practically involve, for a time at any rate, the loss of future freedom. France for twenty years after Sedan was only free in her internal action, and not quite free even as to that, for the new plan of fortifying Paris was quietly prohibited.

It is a little difficult to discern the true reason for this particular failure of the representative system. Diplomatists and military men will attribute it to ignorance, and no doubt the bulk of any elected body is usually ignorant of any particular specialty, but there seems no sufficient reason why an elected House should not know that it is ignorant, should not appoint a specially qualified Committee, and

tive Government can lead sometimes as regards a war, but then it only leads at its own discretion because the principle of representative management is temporarily suspended. The Executive has the "confidence" of the representatives on such occasions, not because they agree with it, but because they think it knows and they do not, or because they see that some one must rule other than themselves. M. Thiers made peace in 1871, not the Chambers. We suppose the truth is this: that representative Houses are liable at all times of excitement to an inrush of outside feeling which for the time destroys their winnowing power, and that when the question is of war or peace this inrush usually comes, and is irresistible. We saw the other day a statement, apparently authentic, that the daily average of letters received by each American Senator or Congressman about this Spanish affair exceeded a thousand, the electoral masses dictating in that way to their representatives. The body of the people, in fact, take control into their own hands, and representative government is suspended in favor of

the direct mass vote. The mass is in no country educated enough to manage such transactions wisely, and its Deputies, turned as they are for the occasion into mere funnels, cannot manage them wisely either. Democracy itself, therefore, the new hope of the world, breaks down at a most dangerous point. We quite admit, of course, that it also reveals enormous strength, strength which no other system can by possibility possess, and which sometimes, as in the American Civil War, carries it through difficulties of the most gigantic kind; but still it lacks wisdom, and, therefore, at first breaks down-a fact which those who are enthusiastic for it as the one panacea for all evils should never forget. The remedy, of course, is to trust the Executive, but that requires that the Executive shall be removable, and shall be on the great subject in full accord with the body of the people, two conditions by no means invariably easy to obtain. Without trusted leadership as to war and peace, every representative Government and every free people is in danger in troublous times of going forward half-blindfold, as both the American and the Spanish peoples are doing now. Our sympathies, we need not say, are absolutely with America; but that does not blind us to the fact that her representatives have been this week, and on a question of vital interest, "on the stampede."-Spectator.

Fili mi dilectissime (if, sir, I may borrow the words of the late Lord Derby when, as Chancellor of the University, he conferred the degree of D.C.L. on Lord Stanley, his son)-I fear that I am about to do an unwise thing. When, in an hour of paternal weakness, I accepted your invitation to address the Bodley Society on Style, it escaped me that it was a subject to which I had hardly given a thought, one with which

undergraduates have but small concern. And now I find myself talking on a matter whereof I know nothing, and could do you little good if I did, in presence of an illustrious historian, to say nothing of your own Head, who was an acknowledged master of English, when my own literary style aspired to nothing more elegant than the dry forms of pleadings and deeds. Every one knows how futile for any

President, C. René

actual result are those elaborate disquisitions on Style which some of the most consummate masters have amused themselves in compiling, but which serve at best to show how quite hackneyed truisms can be graced by an almost miraculous neatness of phrase. It is in vain to enjoin on us "propriety," "justness of expression," "suitability of our language to the subject we treat," and all the commonplaces which the schools of Addison and of Johnson in the last century promulgated as canons of good style. "Proper words in proper places," says Swift, "make the true definition of a style." "Each phrase in its right place," says Voltaire. Well! Swift and Voltaire knew how to do this with supreme skill; but it does not help us, if they cannot teach their art. How are we to know what is the proper word? How are we to find the right place? And even a greater than Swift or Voltaire is not much more practical as a teacher. "Suit the action to the word, and the word to the action," says Hamlet. “Be not too tame neither. Let your own discretion be your tutor." Can you trust your own discretion? Have undergraduates this discretion? And how could I, in presence of your College authority, suggest that you should have no tutor but your own discretion?

All this is as if a music-master were to say to a pupil, Sing always in tune and with the right intonation, and whatever you do, produce your voice in the proper way! Or, to make myself more intelligible to you here, it is as if W. G. Grace were to tell you, Play a "yorker" in the right way, and place the ball in the proper spot with reference to the field! We know that neither the art of acting, nor of singing, nor of cricket can be taught by general commonplaces of this sort. And good prose is so far like cricket that the W. G.'s of literature, after ten or twenty centuries," can tell you nothing more than this-to place your words in the right spot, and to choose the proper word, according to the "field" that you have before you.

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The most famous essay on Style, I suppose, is that by one of the greatest

wizards who ever used language-I mean the Ars Poetica of Horace, almost every line of which has become a household word in the educated world. But what avail his inimitable epigrams in practice? Who is helped by being told not to draw a man's head on a horse's neck, or a beautiful woman with the tail end of a fish? "Do not let brevity become obscurity; do not let your mountain in labor bring forth a mouse; turn over your Greek models night and day; your compositions must be not only correct, but must give "delight, touch the heart," and so forth. and so forth. All these imperishable maxims-as clean cut as a sardonyx gem-these "chestnuts," as you call them, in the slang of the day-serve as hard nuts for a translator to crack, and as handy mottoes at the head of an essay; but they are barren of any solid food as the shell of a cocoanut.

Then Voltaire, perhaps the greatest master of prose in any modern language, wrote an essay on Style, in the same vein of epigrammatic platitude. No declamation, says he, in a work on physics. No jesting in a treatise on mathematics. Well! but did Douglas Jerrold himself ever try to compose a Comic Trigonometry; and could another Charles Lamb find any fun in Spencer's First Principles? A fine style, says Voltaire, makes anything delightful; but it is exceedingly difficult to acquire, and very rarely found. And all he has to say is, "Avoid grandiloquence, confusion, vulgarity, cheap wit, and colloquial slang in tragedy." He might as well say, Take care to be as strong as Sandow, and as active as Prince Ranjitsinhji, and whatever you do, take care not to grow a nose like Cyrano de Bergerac in the new play!

An ingenious professor of literature has lately ventured to commit himself to an entire treatise on Style, wherein he has propounded everything that can usefully be said about this art, in a style which illustrates everything that

you should avoid. At the end of his book he declares that style cannot be taught. This is true enough: but if this had been the first, instead of the last, sentence of his piece, the book

would not have been written at all. I remember that, when I stood for the Hertford Scholarship, we had to write a Latin epigram on the thesis:

Omnia liberius nullo poscente

-fatemur, (I replied―) Carmina cur poscas, carmine si sit opus?

no

And so I say now. Style cannot be taught. And this perhaps puts out of court the Professor's essay, and doubt my own also. Nothing practical can be said about Style. And no good can come to a young student by being anxious about Style. None of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature-no! nor one gem to his English prose, unless nature has endowed him with that rare gift-a subtle ear for the melody of words, a fastidious instinct for the connotations of a phrase.

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You will, of course, understand that I am speaking of Style in that higher sense as it was used by Horace, Swift, Voltaire, and great writers, that is, Style as an element of permanent literature. It is no doubt very easy by practice and good advice to gain a moderate facility in writing current language, and even to get the trick of turning out lively articles and smart reviews. 'Tis as easy as lying; govern these ventages with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music "-quite up to the pitch of the journals and the magazines of our day, of which we are all proud. But this is a poor trade and it would be a pity to waste your precious years of young study by learning to play on the literary "recorders." You may be taught to fret them. You will not learn to make them speak!

There are a few negative precepts, quite familiar common form, easy to remember, and not difficult to observe. These are all that any manual can lay down. The trouble comes in when we seek to apply them. What is it that is artificial, incongruous, obscure? How are we to be simple? Whence comes the music of language? What is the magic that can charm into life the apt and inevitable word that lies

hidden somewhere at hand-so near and yet so far-so willing and yet so coy-did we only know the talisman which can awaken it? This is what no teaching can give us-what skilful tuition and assiduous practice can but improve in part-and even that only for the chosen few.

About Style, in the higher sense of the term, I think the young student should trouble himself as little as possible. When he does, it too often becomes the art of clothing thin ideas in well-made garments. well-made garments. To gain skill in expression before he has got thoughts or knowledge to express, is somewhat premature: and to waste in the study of form those irrevocable years which should be absorbed in the study of things, is mere decadence and fraud. The young student-ex hypothesi-has to learn, not to teach. His duty is to digest knowledge, not to popularize it. and carry it abroad. It is a grave mental defect to parade an external polish far more mature than the essential matter within. Where the learner is called on to express his thoughts in formal compositions-and the less he does this the better-it is enough that he put his ideas or his knowledge (if he has any) in clear and natural terms. But the less he labors the flow of his periods the more truly is he the honest learner, the less is his risk of being the smug purveyor of the crudities with which he has been crammed, the farther is he from becoming one of those voluble charlatans whom the idle study of language so often breeds.

I look with sorrow on the habit which has grown up in the University since my day (in the far-off fifties) — the habit of making a considerable part of the education of the place to turn on the art of serving up gobbets of prepared information in essays more or less smooth and correct-more or less successful imitations of the viands that are cooked for us daily in the press. I have heard that a student has been known to write as many as seven essays in a week, a task which would exhaust the fertility of a Swift. The bare art of writing readable paragraphs in passable English is easy enough to master;