beads. And the buntings," mimsy" as was ever any "borogove," chant their lugubrious and monotonous ditties

there.

The telegraph-wires are not the only mysterious works of man which have disturbed and interfered with the feathered life so near to and yet so far apart from his. What a mystery must he be to these fellow-creatures who watch him, with his continual scratching and patching of the breast of kindly Mother Earth! Not wholly does he yield the road to them between sunset and sunrise; but when he goes abroad in the dark it is often in the guise of a rumbling dragon with great eyes of flame. Once, to the writer's knowledge, a gannet swooped down in valiant ignorance on such a horrid creature of the night. He flashed suddenly, white out of the darkness, into the circle of light of a doctor's gig lamps. That bold bird his fellows saw no more, and one may fancy that with his disappearance a new terror was added to the fiery-eyed creatures that roam the roads by night. He died, though not without a fierce fight for his life, and his skin, cunningly filled out with wire and straw, stands under a glass-case in his slayer's home even unto this day.

It is in spring and summer that the road sets forth its choicest lures for its lovers, yet even in "winter and rough weather" it has its beauties for the seeing eye. The puddles and cart-ruts shine like dull silver when the clouds are heavy and gray overhead. When the rain-cloud blows over and the sky clears these same shallow pools and channels gleam with a cold clear blue more exquisite than that of the heavens they reflect, and at night the stars besprinkle them with diamonds. Again:

"Autumnal frosts enchant the pool,

And make the cart-ruts beautiful."

"When daisies go "-and of all roadside blossoms they linger latest and reappear earliest (I have seen them lifting their modest, crimson-tipped heads in December, and opening their vellow eyes before the coltsfoot stars begin to shine)-but even when they are gone the gray stone dikes have still

a glory of green moss, of gray and golden lichens.

When all the land is soaked and sodden with heavy rains, the road, where it climbs that low brown hill, will suddenly shine out across the intervening miles like a sword flung down among the heather.

When the winter rains have given place to the first snowfall of the year, go out early in the morning, before. hoofs and wheels have blotted out the traces of the night, and you shall learn, as nothing else save long and close observation can teach you, how great is the nocturnal traffic of birds and beasts upon the road. Like fine lace-work you shall find their footprints, to and fro, round and across, up the middle and down again. Hares and rabbits, rats and mice, gulls and plovers, thrushes and larks, water-hens and water-rails, these and many more have been busy here while you slept. And even now bright eyes are watching you, themselves unseen-those unsuspected eyes which are ever upon us as we follow the road on our daily round of duty or pleasure. Do they look on us with fear or wonder, with contempt or admiration, or with a mingling of all these feelings? That we can never know while the great barrier of silence stands between us and them. We blunder across their lives, doing them good and evil indiscriminately, but we understand them no more than they can understand us.

Now, in winter, new birds come to our road. Great flocks of snow-buntings, circling and wheeling with marvellous precision, at one moment almost invisible, a dim, brown, moving mist, and the next flashing a thousand points of silver to the level rays of the wintry

Scores of green-finches, which we never see in summer, rise from the road edges to circle a little way and settle again. The "spink spink " of the chaffinch, also unknown to us in summer, may now be heard, fieldfares spring chuckling through the air far overhead, and red-winged thrushes hop among the stubbles. Down this shallow pass between the low hills come in the gloaming the lines of the wild swans, flying

from the upland lochs to the sea. Their trumpet calls ring far through the frosty air, and as we hear them there stir within us vague thoughts and dreams of the white North whence they came. As if answering the thought, the wet road shines through the dusk with a new, faint, unearthly light, as flickering up the northern sky come the pale, shifting streamers of the Aurora. Borealis.

Of the human life that pulses intermittently along our road there is not space here and now to write. Boy and girl, youth and maiden, man and woman, day by day, year in, year out, they follow the winding line, till for each in turn the day comes when it leads them to the kirkyard or to the sea, and the roads of Orcady know them no more.-Longman's Magazine.

LORD KIMBERLEY did not exaggerate the impression produced in the political world by Mr. Chamberlain's speech at Birmingham on the 13th May, when he told the House of Lords that not only did it seem to indicate a "great change" in the foreign policy of this country, but that it appeared to suggest "that Her Majesty's Government have so far advanced in that direction that erelong we may hear of the conclusion of some great alliance." In one respect he confessed to being incredulous. Although the Colonial Secretary had distinctly indicated the United States as the power with whom it was most desirable that a treaty of alliance should be negotiated, he declined to accept that portion of the speech as serious.

I find it difficult to follow Lord Kimberley in his dubiety in face of the terms of Mr. Chamberlain's speech. Three definite and explicit statements were made by the Colonial Secretary. He told his fellow-townsmen that

1. The policy of isolation pursued by Great Britain since the Crimean War is no longer tenable, because we are liable to be confronted at any moment by an overwhelming combination of the Great Powers.

2. The duty which consequently devolves on the Government is, in the first place, "to draw all parts of the Empire closer together," and secondly, "to establish and to maintain bonds of

permanent amity with our kinsmen across the Atlantic."

3. "It is one of the most satisfactory results of Lord Salisbury's policy that, at the present time, these two great nations [the United States and Great Britain] understand each other better than they have ever done since more than a century ago."

These statements in the mouth of a Cabinet Minister seem to me to bear no other possible interpretation than that our policy of isolation has been abandoned, and that an understanding, contemplating an alliance in certain contingencies, has been arrived at with. the United States.

The idea that Mr. Chamberlain was indulging himself with irresponsible and academic reflections on the topics of the day, can only be an invention of the enemy. The New Diplomacy may be wanting in a certain lightness of touch, but only the most factious prejudice will accuse it of being deficient in common cuteness. Birmingham herself would blush for her distinguished son could he be guilty of the bucolic simplicity of crying up wares he wishes to purchase. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that the Colonial Secretary was not expounding the views of the Cabinet. Both publicly and privately Lord Salisbury has declined to repudiate his colleague's speech, although its pronouncement in favor of

alliances is opposed to what has hitherto been a fundamental principle of our foreign policy, and Mr. Chamberlain himself has told us that "the Cabinet, as long as it remains a Cabinet, is responsible for the declaration of principles." It is true that the Premier has also evaded every challenge to identify himself with this new departure, but it would not be the first time that a Minister had set up one of his colleagues to promote, or assist in, a movement with which, for the moment, it might be inconvenient for the Foreign Office to be officially associated. Nor would it be unaccountable.

Had Mr. Chamberlain, on any previous occasion, betrayed a doubt as to the sufficiency of the policy of isolation, we might, perhaps, be induced to entertain the "purely personal" hypothesis of his Birmingham utterances. As a matter of fact, the very reverse is the case. In 1896, when the crisis in our foreign relations was such that the mobilization of a flying squadron became necessary, not a Minister hinted at an alliance, and Mr. Chamberlain himself was amply satisfied with "splendid isolation." In a speech delivered at the Hotel Metropole shortly after the Jameson raid, he said:

"Three weeks ago, in the words of Mr. Foster, the leader of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada, "the great mother-empire stood splendidly isolated." And how does she stand to-day? She stands secure in the strength of her own resources, in the firm resolution of her people, without respect to party, and in the abundant loyalty of her children, from one end of the Empire to another."

Not a word here, be it observed, about an alliance. It may be said that this was because none was open to us, inasmuch as, at that moment, we had quarrels on hand with both the United States and Germany, and our relations. with the Dual Alliance were not precisely cordial. However plausible this may seem, it was not the view of the Government, for Mr. Goschen, speaking at Lewes during the same crisis, round

"Foreign and Colonial Speeches." By the Rt. Hon. J. Chamberlain, M.P., pp. 94, 95.

ly asserted the contrary. Mr. Goschen's words are worth recalling at this moment:

"We are said to be isolated, but I say that which I know when I say that we have but to hold out our hands and our isolation will terminate, and we shall receive a welcome into several groups of other Powers.

In the modern system of European politics we could at any moment, I believe, make such alliances as we choose. . . . Our isolation is not an isolation of weakness, or of contempt for ourselves; it is deliberately chosen; the freedom to act as we choose in any circumstances that may arise.” *

This, obviously, is not the expression of a merely personal opinion. If it means anything it means that, in 1896, the Government had declined or, at any rate, discouraged offers of alliance, and, after due consideration, had renewed its faith in Isolation. Seeing that Mr. Chamberlain had, at the same. time, publicly ranged himself on the side of this policy, it is inconceivable that he should now preach of the perils of isolation, and the necessity of alliances, unless the Government had deliberately changed its mind.

It is no part of my present purpose to discuss this change in our Foreign policy, tremendous though it certainly is. My concern is chiefly with the action to which, according to Mr. Chamberlain, it is leading us. If I have endeavored to show that it is a real thing, it is because the demonstration of this fact has an essential bearing on the meaning we are to attach to the inference Mr. Chamberlain has himself drawn from it, and to the statement of the action of the Government he has made in connection with it. Under

ordinary circumstances his picture of what the relations of this country with the United States should be, might pass for one of the pious banalities of the political platform; but this is impossible if it be true that the Government has become convinced of the unwisdom of the policy of Isolation. If an ally is wanted, and the Cabinet has formed the opinion that an understanding with the United States will best respond to its needs, it must be clear, as Mr. As

*Times, February 27th, 1896.

quith said the other day, "that the closer union of Great Britain and America, not only in sympathy and thought, but political co-operation, is no longer the ideal of those who see visions and dream dreams." In this consists the importance of Mr. Chamberlain's speech. It is, to my mind, an official intimation that the ideal of Anglo-Saxon unity is passing from dreamland to the sphere of practical politics.

Now, if this conclusion be correct, there are two important questions which must at once occur to the practical politician. In the first place, is there an actual understanding between the two countries, and in the next place what are its probable conditions?

The cardinal fact to be borne in mind in this inquiry is that the question, especially so far as it relates to the immediate perils of British isolation, is a question of practical politics only. A practical need cannot be solved by reliance on the ideal fitness of things. The popular idea that an Anglo-American alliance may be based on affinities of race or identity of language, and cemented by common sympathy for Cuban freedom, is a delusion. Prince Bismarck, whose life-work has been the political reunion of the Germanic races, declared it the other day to be "nonsense.' Science affords no support to such a theory, and political experience is strongly against it. This question, which the man in the street talks of so glibly, belongs, in reality, to the obscurest problems of anthropology. It is, no doubt, true that a common racial origin and a common language afford precious materials for political ties; but even when you add a common territory, a common history, and a common religion, they do not always constitute cohesive elements in a political sense. The Tartars and Turks have a common origin; Russians and Poles are both Slavs; France and Italy are Latin nations, and vet, in their couples, they hate each other cordially. When the affinities of race between England and

* "Interview with Prince Bismarck," Daily Graphic, May 20th, 1898.

France were strongest, wars between them were most frequent. A common language has not placed the union of Great Britain and Ireland out of danger, nor has it made the Germans and Slavs in Austria one people.

The true test of racial affinity is when, as M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire has pointed out, besides a common origin, there is constancy of character.* Is there such affinity between the English of this Empire and the Americans of the United States? It is difficult to answer so complex a question with any certainty, but the primâ-facie evidence seems to point in a negative direction.

The ethnical careers of the two nations have been widely different. It is true that both are mixed races, and that both have been submitted to the influence of continuous immigrations; but the mixing processes have not been the same. In England the alien elements, struggling with a nation of formed. character and assured prepotency, have been absorbed without sensibly modifying the essential qualities of the race. In America there has been no such process. The nation has been formed, not by the eclectic absorption of elements most congenial to the British nucleus, but by a process of unresisted and indiscriminate alien augmentation. When we add to this the modifying influences of a separate national history and of peculiar political institutions, the bias of which is distinctly anti-British, it is permissible to doubt whether the racial affinities of the two nations have been strong enough to maintain a substantial identity of character.

But even if their national characters closely approximated, this would not of itself, or in combination with other racial affinities, afford an element of political cohesion. All our historical experience shows that something more is required. There must be a subjective principle actively making for union, a sense of common interests, something like the coscienza della nazionalita of Mancini, a unifying force which vivifies and organizes the inert racial affinities in resistance to alien pressure.

Hitherto the political history of the United States has not indicated the existence of such an element in the national consciousness. On the contrary, the whole tendency of the people has been in the opposite direction. This is sufficiently illustrated by an observation of General James H. Wilson, in a recent article on "America's Interests in China." "It is not to be denied," he says, with naïve surprise, "that our interests are with our ancient antagonist, England, and for the first time against those of our ancient allies, France and Russia." * Could we have a better demonstration of the futility of the sentimental theory of an AngloAmerican alliance?

The argument from common sympathies on the Cuban Question is not less open to objection. Such sympathies possibly indicate an affinity of character, but of themselves they no more make for political alliance than identity of language. Like us, the Americans sympathized with the cause of Hungarian independence, and with the persecuted Armenians, but this did not turn them from their traditional friendship for Russia, and induce them to cultivate closer relations with this country, although in the one case Russia crushed the Maygars while we exerted ourselves for the safety of Kossuth, and in the other Russia stood in the way of our proposed punishment of the Sultan. Moreover, it is very doubtful whether the sympathies of the two nations are of precisely the same quality. In this country nothing has been heard of British interests in Cuba, although, as I shall presently show, they are very considerable. Our sympathy, so far as the public and the newspapers are concerned, is exclusively a moral sentiment, the result of disapproval of Spanish methods of colonial government, and of sincere reprobation of Spanish cruelty. The Americans, on the other hand, have been moved to action partly because their commercial and political interest have been imperilled by the chaotic situation in Cuba, and partly because of their be

* North American Review, February, 1898, p. 138.

lief that the explosion of the Maine was contrived by the Spanish Government.

It follows, then, that a political understanding with the United States must take the same course as similar arrangements between other nations. However much it may be strengthened afterward by an awakened sense of racial affinity, and of common political ideals, its basis must be a community of material interests, and those interests must be ascertained and agreed upon in the usual way.

I come back to the question, Is there such an understanding?

It seems to me that so sensible a man as Mr. Chamberlain would scarcely have spoken of our relations with the United States, in the terms and context he employed at Birmingham, had a political understanding been still only in the ideal stage. On this negative argument, however, I need not insist. A far more impressive piece of evidence is afforded by the fact that our present attitude on the Cuban Question constitutes a complete reversal of the policy pursued by this country for over seventy years. Why has this change been made? It involves a valuable concession to the United States, for which no adequate compensation is visible. If, however, it is part of a general revision of the relations of the two countries, and one which forbids the continuance of the jealousies and suspicions bv which our former policy was actuated, it is at once explained.

The Cuban question, it is well to remember, is not, and never has been, a purely American or even HispanoAmerican question. For the better part of a century, if not longer, it has been an international question, in which four Powers-Spain, the United States, Great Britain, and France-have claimed a more or less equal interest. The popular impression that our attitude toward it is governed by the policy pursued by Mr. Canning in regard to the revolted Spanish-American colonies is altogether a mistake. However much Mr. Canning may have sympathized with the cause of South American freedom, he had far too keen a sense of British interests to dream of