MR. JOHN MORLEY, in replying to some of Mr. Lecky's charges against the liberal movement of the last fifty years in England, expresses his regret that in his recent book, Democracy and Liberty, Mr. Lecky has not devoted himself to a discussion of democracy in all its aspects; its effect not only on government, but on social relations of every description, on science, on art, on literature,

on the whole of life, in short, as we see it in the western world to-day. He says: "We can hardly imagine a finer or more engaging, inspiring, and elevating subject for inquiry than this wonderful outcome of that extraordinary industrial, intellectual, and moral development which has awakened in the masses of modern society the consciousness of their own strength, and the resolution, still dim and torpid, but certain to expand and to intensify, to use that strength for purposes of their own. We may rejoice in democracy or we may dread it. Whether we like it or detest it, and whether a writer chooses to look at it as a whole or to investigate some particular aspect of it, the examination ought to take us into the highest region of political thought, and it undoubtedly calls for the best qualities of philosophic statesmanship and vision."

The task suggested is not easy, and Mr. Lecky, perhaps wisely, has not attempted it. He devotes himself mainly, in the first volume, at least, to describing the objectionable tendencies of democracy, more particularly as illustrated by

the history of the last half century in England and America. The second volume may be called a series of essays on the topics now most frequently discussed in democratic countries; Mr. Lecky gives the pros and cons of each without committing himself to very positive opinions on any of them. All authors who touch at all on democracy in our day recognize in it a new and potent force, destined before long to effect very serious changes in the social structure, and to alter in many important respects the way in which men have looked at human society since the foundation of Christianity. But they handle it very much as we handle electricity; that is to say, tentatively. They admit they are dealing with a very mysterious power, of which they know as yet but little, and on the future manifestations of which they cannot pronounce with any confidence. The great difficulty in the way of discussing it philosophically or scientifically is the one which doubtless Mr. Lecky himself has experienced, that thus far all investigators have been themselves part of the thing to be investigated. Every man, or nearly every man, who takes up a pen to examine the questions what democracy is, and what effect it is likely to have on the race, is himself either an earnest advocate or an earnest opponent of it. He sees in it either the regeneration of mankind or the ruin of our civilization. This is true of nearly every writer of eminence who has touched on it since the French Revolution. The