been filled for the past year with serious articles reporting the inroads that have been made on their commercial strongholds, and the British Board of Trade has taken formal action by sending a memorial to its government asking the appointment of a commission to report the best means of counteracting what they call the "commercial crusade of the United States." At the annual meeting of the associated chambers of commerce in Great Britain, held in London on the 7th of March, 1892, the president, Colonel Hill, reported that the exports from Great Britain to the Latin-American countries had decreased $23,750,000 during the last year, and that the examination of the details was very unsatisfactory. He said that there was a decrease in almost every item of merchandise furnished by the United Kingdom to the South American republics and to the colonies, which was due not to any spasmodic or temporary conditions, but to the fact that the merchants in those countries were beginning to go to the United States to buy their goods. This was the result, Colonel Hill asserted, of what was known as "the Pan-American policy" in the United States; and in view of the alarming prospect, it behooved England to look more closely after her commercial relations with the South American republics and with her colonies.

We may as well look the facts in the face. No careful observer will doubt that the balance of power in the coming national election will be held by men who have formerly acted with the Republican party, or, if they have come into political life recently, entertain the opinions which the Republican party entertains on almost all public questions, and opinions which the Republican party has always held. If the men who were on the Union side during the war, who supported the constitutional amendments abolishing slavery and giving equality and citizenship to the colored race, who favored the homestead law, who favored the maintenance of a sound currency and the honest payment of the public debt, who favored the national banking system and the resumption of specie payment, who favored the diplomacy which overthrew the European doctrine of perpetual allegiance and the diplomacy which obtained an apology and reparation from Great Britain, or who are now conscious that they would have favored all of these things if they had been voters when they were accomplished-if these men should vote together this fall, the result would be a clear and overwhelming Republican victory. The success of the Republican party is to be imperilled, if it shall be imperilled at all, by men who separated themselves from it upon a single issue

that of the tariff. Many of these claim to be in favor of protection, and to differ with Republicans only as to a few matters of detail.

May it not be well for such people seriously to consider what it is that they bring into danger in clutching at this one object of their desire? The political power which they aid in giving to the Democracy for one purpose, it will exercise for every purpose which it desires to bring about. If there be an attempt at a radical change in the tariff, the quiet of the country is to be disturbed until the new legislation is perfected. No man can tell, if the Democratic party should be successful in the coming election, what is to be the extent of the changes in the tariff it will attempt to bring to pass, or upon what principle the new legislation of the country upon that subject is to be based. There must be, therefore, a certain disturbance in all business. No manufacturing or commercial industry will be safe. The great industries on which is dependent the prosperity of citizens and of prosperous towns, the employment of vast numbers of workingmen, the return which is to be received on great masses of capital, can rest upon no assured foundation for at least two years after the election of 1892 if Democracy have its way.

But if the tariff reform is worth accomplishing at such a price, the power of legislation upon all other national questions must also be committed to the Democratic party. The country is to be governed by the representatives of the solid South, of the Democracy of New York, whose political methods have been disclosed in the processes which have established it in power in the New York Assembly, joined possibly by two or three Northern States. Every financial question is to be decided by men and by the representatives of communities whose reflections on the subject of finance have led them to the conclusion that fiat money and repudiation and the free coinage of silver are the proper policy for this great, wealthy, and powerful nation, whose principles as to the honesty of elections have borne fruit in processes which have suppressed Republican votes throughout the entire South, and of which Mr. Hill is the most conspicuous and distinguished Northern exponent. The diplomacy of the country is to be managed by persons who like the Fishery treaty of Mr. Bayard and of President Cleveland better than the reciprocity treaties of Mr. Blaine and President Harrison. The authority of the Supreme Court of the United States is to be limited by legislation inspired, perhaps drafted, by the authors of the recent constitution of Mississippi.

What intelligent business man, anxious for the safety of his own

property, anxious for the prosperity of the community with which he is identified, anxious for the glory and prosperity of the country, can consent, because of a difference of opinion with a majority of the people of the North in regard to a single item of a protective tariff, or in regard at most to two or three such items, or can shut his eyes to the danger of the ascendency in this country of the Democracy of the South? Take the Democracy of the South to-day. They are a sectional party, based on sectional opinions, seeking sectional ascendency. They believe that you, and those who think with you, and those who are engaged in like employments with yours, are monopolists and robbers. To them the desire to keep the currency sound and to keep the financial policy of the United States in harmony with the other nations of the civilized world, is but a desire of creditors and oppressors to impose an undue burden upon the necks of their debtors, and to make ill-gotten gains by extortion from the laboring men of the South and West. They desire in every particular to narrow the just authority of the United States, to limit the jurisdiction of its courts, to confine its legislation within narrow bounds, and to reassert and revive the heresy of State rights. The man whom in their hearts they most applaud is the man who can accomplish the overthrow of suffrage in the North as they have accomplished it in the South. The power which they have usurped, though a minority in their own section, they will gladly extend by a like usurpation over the entire country. And to accomplish that end they are prepared to assume any mask or disguise which they think needful to delude the straightforward simplicity of the people of the North.

On the other hand, the Republican party avows and will pursue its well-known purposes until they are accomplished. It will be ready for the new problems and exigencies which the future will bring with it. But it will adhere steadfastly to the principles upon which it has acted in the past. It will not be frightened by the charge of Bourbonism; a Bourbon in the estimation of the self-styled Independent press is a man who does not change his mind from the time he makes his promise until the time has come to perform it. It can pursue and steadfastly maintain great principles and great policies from generation to generation, while its eyes are ever open to the light, and it is ever ready for the new and varying exigencies of the hour.

GEORGE F. HOAR.

A NEW POET.

I ONCE heard a well-known editor, who is also

an able critic, say: "I read all the books of verse which come to us. Some day I shall light on a thin little volume for which in fifty years the book collector of first editions will give a great price." Another friend, who conducts with brilliant success a great magazine, said to me a year ago: "I am in constant fear lest novelty of form or expression may mask for me the value of some original work in prose or verse." The feeling thus expressed is, I am sure, familiar to those for whom verse at its best is a part of the joy or solace of life, and who, from knowledge of the history of popular appreciation, know how difficult it is for a new voice to win attention. Certain sad histories warn us to beware how we dismiss a singer without full hearing. By God's grace an angel in disguise of print may be waiting in a golden hour to charm with the friendliness of a song which shall surely repay our hospitality. It is, perhaps, a somewhat more daring thing to ask others to see with our eyes the angel whom we have divined at the tent door.

Quite lately an accident threw in my way a little book which has given me much happiness,' and I now hasten in the youth of my delight to share my pleasure with others. The time and place of a bit of unalloyed enjoyment have their value in the records of the mind's adventures. I was waiting, in a twilight room, the return of a friend, when, by good luck, I picked up the nearest book, and as I remember, said to myself: "What will it be, verse or prose? Most likely it will be some well-known companion, some old friend." And so reflecting, I opened the little book at a soneti of Shakespearean form apparently upon "Courage." I give it later, and in full, to justify my own courage in asking that these "Day Dreams" be heard.

Since then, I have read the little volume with care, and have also seen a thicker book of verse by Mr. Moore, privately printed in 1883 -"Poems Antique and Modern." This I have read, but not studied. I therefore hesitate as yet to speak of it decisively. Of Mr. Moore's

1 "Day Dreams: A Century of Sonnets. By Charles Leonard Moore. (Privately printed. Philadelphia: 1888.)

other work I know nothing. I turn back now to this rosary of sonnets, for which without the least indecision I claim the serious attention of all who love verse. If there be one thing which in recent poetry most exasperates the student, it is the absence of thought. There is no such lack in this century of sonnets; not only is there here often originality of thought, but there is also the ability to present old and much-used theses with such novelty of phrase and illustration as almost to make one disbelieve in the antiquity of the thought.

But to think for man in verse is valueless unless the verse be a better means of statement than any prose can be. This severe exaction is amply met. The echoes dimly heard in Mr. Moore's early book are no longer apparent. The growth is remarkable. Here is a distinct and individual singer. Felicities of phrase abound, but, especially in the sonnet, nothing is more unfair than to pick these jewels from their setting. Sometimes their relation to the whole poem renders this seeming kindness critically unjust; sometimes the very sobriety of the verbal surroundings are such as to make the beautiful flash of illustrative or illuminative phrase more lovely. I have never read sonnets which it was so difficult to dismember for quotation. Mr. Moore has perfectly understood the use of the last two rhyming lines, and no one has known how to employ them better. Like another young American poet, he has, too, a sense of the value in the sonnet of letting the rhyme fall on words of power, and, like him, he knows exquisitely well the beauty of feminine rhymes in the form of verse he uses. Although my reasonable limits do not forbid quotation, I shall, for reasons above stated, refrain from picking out mere lines or phrases; neither shall I trouble my purpose by pointing out the rare failures or the occasional difficulties of interpretation. There are here and there passages which to me are obscure; there are others which I can understand after more study than I like to discover needful as to poetry. But I willingly leave to others the task of fault-finding. I owe this book too much pleasure to find it agreeable to indulge in hostile criticism.

When one can say of a book of a hundred sonnets that it is interesting, that is rare and dangerous praise, for much noble verse is not throughout or consistently of interest. That it is true of this volume lies more or less in the fact that these sonnets make up a connected whole of related parts. I shall try briefly to analyze the argument with such quotation as my space permits, and as is justified by the fact that, so far as the public is concerned, there has been no