Page images
PDF
EPUB

NEXT SESSION.

From Lord George Hamilton's letter it would seem he contemplates the bringing in of another Education Bill next year, but upon that point there appears to be considerable difference of opinion at headquarters. Mr. Balfour's speech in the middle of the month has been accepted in well informed quarters as an intimation that nothing is to be done for Education next year. There is to be no Education Bill, but a measure distributing a dole for the Voluntary schools will be brought in and forced through. It is possible, no doubt, that they may bring in a Bill and lay it on the table, but there is reason to fear that the zeal of the Cabinet on the matter of Education is not great, and that when once they have secured their relief for the subscribers to Voluntary schools by a subsidy from the national exchequer, they will make no further effort to place the education of this country on a satisfactory basis. Mr. Chamberlain seems to have entirely lost all interest in a cause in which he was once one of our foremost champions.

LORD ROSEBERY'S SUGGESTION.

Lord Rosebery, speaking at Epsom on July 24th, made the following reference to the subject of foreign competition:

In the first place, even if we were not exposed to foreign competition, the gradual decay of the apprenticeship system would necessitate in all our smaller towns, and, of course, in all our larger towns, some means whereby a man might be able to become a skilled artisan in his trade, and so obtain that capital which skill represents to the man who possesses it. But our present position is not one of being free from competition. Year after year our Consuls and our various officials of the Board of Trade have called the attention of the community to the fact that we are no longer, as we once were, undisputed mistress of the world of commerce, but that we are threatened by one very formidable rival, at any rate, who, as I dare say Mr. Aston could tell you from his City experience, is encroaching on us as the sea encroaches on the weak parts of the coastI mean Germany. A little book has been lately published called "Made in Germany," to which I think your attention ought to be called; but if that be too long to read, there is an abstract of the arguments of the book in the last number of the REVIEW OF REVIEWS, which I do think is well worth the attention of everybody who is interested in the prosperity of the country of which his prosperity is a part. The figures with regard to Germany are very simple. The heads of the indictment against ourselves are three. First, that the proportion per head of exported British produce is £8 1s. in 1872, whilst it had sunk to £5 11s. 3d. in 1894. Of course, you may say that reduced prices account for some part of that, but I do not think you will find that decreased prices do account for it, when you observe the broad features of the balance of trade, and also of the German increase of trade. Secondly, the imports of German manufactured goods into Great Britain rose from £16,630,000 in 1883 to £21,630,000 in 1893-an increase of thirty per cent. in ten years of manufactured goods into the country which believed it had almost a monopoly of supplying the world with manufactured goods. The total imports into Great Britain declined in value £22,000,000, between 1883 and 1893, in gross, but the imports of manufactured articles increased by over £13,000,000. I think these are grave and striking facts; it is not, perhaps, a time to inquire into the causes as regards Great Britain herself, but as regards Germany the causes are not far to seek. The fact is that for the last sixty, seventy, or eighty years she has fitted herself by the most perfect system of technical education in the world, except, perhaps, the Swiss system, to be a great industrial nation. She has been slow, she has been patient, she has been laborious, sho has sent clerks and agents over here who have taken what secrets we had to afford and have improved on them when they returned to Germany, and the result

is that, though we have not lost our position, she is slowly and not very slowly after all-creeping up to us. In some of our colonies, in India and in Egypt, which is under our tutelage for the present, German trade has gravely menaced British trade. I do not suppose that in Epsom we are prepared to combat singlehanded so grave a condition of affairs, but we can, at any rate, examine the condition as regards the nation at large. We can see what has led to Germany's success, and we may, perhaps, inquire of ourselves whether there have not been internal causes among ourselves— a certain lethargy, a certain indifference, a certain haughty feeling of superiority-which has led to our decline. And, after all, gentlemen, all movements in this country come from the bottom. We have to form an educated public opinion in order to give an impulsion to Governments, and I believe that is more likely to be performed by the study of the facts and the figures with regard to British trade and with regard to German trade, and also by studying in these smaller technical institutes what can be done to remedy it, than by any Parliamentary action that is likely to take place. But, at any rate, we have a right to ask this. There are committees and commissions of inquiry without end. Some are indefinitely postponed, but some are pressing and immediate. Surely an inquiry might well be instituted which might be short, which might be practical, and which might be exhaustive, into the causes of the decline of British trade and the alarming increase of our foreign rivals. We shall, I believe, find this as the summary: -Ever since the conquest by Germany of Austria she has silently and quietly fitted herself for two great wars. them she has accomplished. The war she has accomplished was the great war for the consolidation of Germany. The war which she is accomplishing, and which, in my opinion, is the only meritorious war in which any nation can engage, except under pressure of necessity, is an industrial war. (Cheers.) And in that I think and fear, though with the heartiest wishes for her welfare, that unless we take precautions in time she is not unlikely to succeed also.

LORD SPENCER'S SPEECH.

One of

[blocks in formation]

He regretted exceedingly that that part of the Government Bill was lost which dealt with secondary education. They sometimes heard, even now, the old cry that they used always to be hearing, that in the primary education of this country we were taking too high a position and giving too high-class an education. It must be remembered that primary education might be the only opportunity of continuous education open to many in this country. He considered it perfectly legiti mate to have foreign languages in the curriculum of a primary school, for England in its keen competition with other countries would find immense advantage in numbers of the working classes being able to understand a foreign language. In this England was but following, and following, as he was afraid, a long way behind, other countries. In France, Switzerland, and Germany, foreign languages, English for instance, were taught in the primary schools as well as in their secondary schools and Universities, and this had had a profound effect in improving their manufactures and their industries. He was very much struck with what he saw in this respect in Japan. He visited some of the educational institutions in Japan, where the very best European methods were adopted. At a large school in Tokio, of between eight and nine hundred boys, conducted exactly like the very best school in this country, four hundred were being taught English. Japan had, in fact, adopted in her primary schools that which she knew had been of utility to Western countries such as Germany, Switzerland, France, and even England. In Japan and in Canada, too, he found that both secondary and University education were secured to the people, and he ventured to say that both these countries were in advance of England

in that one matter. In the system of secondary education throughout the country, the fact that England should be behind was rather curious-and he took it that a great deal of it was due to the old grammar schools and the dislike of Parliament -with these schools existing-to create a national system of secondary education in England. The country, he was afraid, had suffered in consequence even of the good deeds of some of their ancestors who were in advance of their time, and established these schools. As civilisation and education had progressed the grammar schools in many instances had fallen behind, partly on account of being badly

located, partly because of their management not coming up to modern ideas, and greatly to their not being sufficient in number. He hoped the country would be able to remedy that before long. In Northamptonshire the County Council, by means partly of Northampton Grammar School, by scholarships, and by lectures, was doing much to improve the secondary education of the district. That more secondary and University education was required was illustrated by the fact that while Germany with a population of 45,000,000, had 24,000 people using her Universities, England, with 30,000,000, had only 5500 at the University.

Mr. Bryce, speaking at Haileybury College, spoke in a similar

[blocks in formation]

statesmen and politicians were now giving this subject earnest consideration. In the present Session, Parliament had made great efforts to pass an important educational measure. It had come to grief chiefly because of its ambitious nature. He held the opinion that our present educational system was one of the most ridiculous that was ever devised. It was cruel that our children could not be educated without being met at every turn by the religious question, and a very strong object-lesson in this had been given recently in Parliament. Foreign countries spared no pains to perfect their educational

[Hill and Saunders, Harrow.

MR. E. E. WILLIAMS, Author of "Made in Germany."

In his opening address he remarked that the institution was unique in our educational system, as being the only college where young men and women were instructed in practical as well as theoretical horticulture. It was instituted in the same year in which he had the pleasure of passing the Technical Instruction Act, and the governing body had laid down their educational lines in a common-sense and practical manner. He held the opinion, generally admitted now, that education was of too bookish a nature. Books might lay a sound foundation for a commercial training, but practice was needed to equip students for the battle of life. Leading

system. The Germans, especially, had long ago foreseen the great struggle there would be. Their technical schools were admirably devised, and the students were taught how to produce an article which would captivate the markets of the world and compete favourably in price and quality with the productions of other countries. The question was seriously engaging the attention of our statesmen, and such institutions as that college would do much to bring about the desired result.

CUT OUT IN OUR OWN COLONIES!

Mr. Williams, author of the book, "Made

in Germany," which I noticed at great length last month, contributes to the New Review an article entitled "Making for Empire." In this article he pleads for the adoption of а policy which would be more or less protective, his belief being that it is necessary to establish differential duties in order to unite the Colonies with the mother country. At present he maintains that the figures show that our trade with the Colonies is not increasing, but is diminishing, while that of Germany and Belgium is advancing by leaps

[graphic]

and bounds. Here are a few of his facts:In '74 the export of our produce to the Possessions (excluding India) was worth £48,000,000; in '84, £50,000,000; in '89, £52,000,000; in '94, £44,000,000. That is to say, in '94 its value was less by four millions than in '74; less by six millions than in '84; less by eight millions than in '89! The common criticism of such a demonstration of failure is that the drop since '89 is accounted for by cheapened prices, and it is as futile a criticism as ever was reared on a basis of unessential fact. Suppose the assertion to be literally true (of course it is an exaggeration) that eight out of fifty-two

millions represents the difference in price between '89 and '94: you have to account for the huge growths in population (Australasia's from 2,742,550 in '81 to 4,149,084 in '94, the Cape's from 720,984 to 1,711,487 in the same years), which should mean a corresponding increase in our export, whereas there is a positive decline. But the fatuousness of the explanation becomes manifest when you turn to foreign records of export to these same Colonies. The critics do not make allowances for diminished prices here. Nor need they. Listen. The German export to Canada was worth £93,706 in '80 and £1,200,317 in '94; the Belgian, £31,059 in '80 and £113,062 in '94; the American, £6,113,947 in '80 and £10,897,418 in '94 (our own increase being from £7,179,421 to £7,955,603). Germany sent goods to the Cape to the value of £38,182 in '80, and goods to the value of £448,412 in '94; Norway and Sweden, goods to the value of £59,791 in '80 and of £216,789 in '94; the United States, goods to the value of £301,426 in '80 and £522,497 in '94 (our increase is about fifty per cent.). The German export to New Zealand rose from £1,434 in '80 to £68,163 in '94; the American from £238,011 to £394,691 (our increase was from £3,479,217 to £3,949,770). To India the German export was worth £68,518 in '81 and £1,716,027 in '94; the Belgian, £950 in '81 and £2,053,278 in '94; the American, £190,848 in '81 and £2,016,815 in '94. Now, what is the meaning of these figures -which by the way are typical? What, I ask, but that the Colonies no longer buy, as matter of course, from the country to which they owe their existence, but that they are steadily transferring their trade elsewhither?

How WE LOSE TRADE IN CHINA.

Mr. Michie, formerly Times Correspondent in China, writing in the Nineteenth Century upon Li Hung Chang's reception in Germany, makes the following observations which bear directly upon the question under discussion:—

The overdone cordiality of Germany and the insular rigidity which is recommended by some of our leading organs are curiously illustrative of the respective national modes of conducting their commercial competition. The stiff and stand-off attitude suggested to the public for the reception of Li Hung Chang represents too accurately the attitude of British manufacturers in their dealings with customers and potential customers. They refuse to budge or bend an inch from their routine in order to promote trade. This is the universal and continuous report of observers of every class and in every corner of the world. The spirit was typified in a London optician's shop the other day, where a lady had brought a prescription for glasses to be made. Calling attention to the fact that her skin was sensitive, she asked that the bridge should be made so as not to hurt the nose. The optical gentleman, in his downright English manner, on which he no doubt prides himself, merely answered, "Oh, we can't make glasses that will not hurt the nose." Possibly not, but he might have attached a customer for life by merely promising to do his best.

Now the Germans, if they have not booked any contracts with Li Hung Chang, as it would have been childish to expect they would-that is not the way things are donehave at least made themselves favourably known to their guest, and thus prepared the way for future business. It is impossible to deny that a powerful stimulus has been given to German commerce in China, that on the one hand the Germans have been roused in a way they have never been before, and, on the other, the Chinese, as represented by their chief contractmonger, have been deeply impressed with the importance of things German. There was never a better advertisement. Many things which Li has seen in Germany he could have seen as well, perhaps better, elsewhere; but the interesting fact remains that it is there that he has seen them, and the memory will abide. He will not want his face again photographed by the Röntgen rays. That remains a German experience.

The Germans have followed him up scientifically. Krupp's agent appears in the photographs taken as if he were part of the show, which in fact he was. The effect of all this is that

when Li returns to China he will always find a German at his elbow ready to enter any service-for a consideration. He will not find an Englishman there. And this trait in the English character, which is losing us our commercial preeminence, is surely the last thing the manufacturing and trading communities need to have urged on them by influential journals.

THE PRESS AND THE PUBLIC.

There are signs that the press is beginning somewhat slowly to wake up to the importance of this question. The Speaker, for instance, says that it is high time the attention of politicians was directed to the facts set forth in Mr. Williams' book. Mr. Williams' theories are not all convincing, and some of his statements are capable of explanation and of reply; but the main facts which he laments constitute so remarkable an indictment as to deserve all the publicity that they can secure. We cannot study these statistics, adds the Speaker, without a genuine feeling of alarm :

The Germans do not sleep upon their reputation and haughtily decline to do business in any fashion but their own. But they set themselves to understand and to master all the conditions of success, and to profit keenly by the lethargy or shortcomings into which our complacent security may run. To meet them we must modernise our methods, educate our children, and devote ourselves to science, to study, and to work. It is not yet too late for us to hold our own. But every day makes it clearer that a far greater effort in our education and our industry is needed if we are to keep the first place in the commerce of the world.

recess

WANTED AN AUTUMN CAMPAIGN.

If anything is to be done, there must be during this a rousing campaign in favour of education. It is in the common school that the victories of the future must be won. There is, indeed, ample material for use in such a campaign. The evidence which I have used for the last month as to the progress of German industrial competition is after all a foreshadowing of things to come rather than a statement of what has actually happened, but in our rural districts we are face to face with a disaster that has already overwhelmed us. The ruin of English rural industry is a matter that stares us in the face at every turn. Our poor peasants find themselves hopelessly beaten by the foreign competitor, not merely in those great staples such as wheat, but in the smaller and valuable secondary products of the farm. How closely this is connected with the lack of good sound education, and also of intellect applied scientifically to the solving of an economic problem, the example of the Danish market is an illustration in point. The condition of English education in rural districts is a disgrace to the nation. The children cease to go to school between ten and eleven. The schools themselves, especially the rural board schools, are often disgracefully inefficient, and the children after leaving the schools hardly ever open a book. Hence, when they arrive at manhood and womanhood they can hardly read or write. What is wanted, therefore, is an agitation in the recess directed definitely towards the aim of raising the age of attendance, and of improving instead of impairing the efficiency of our elementary schools, so as to afford a basis upon which to superimpose the technical schools which are so urgently needed.

THE Quiver is chiefly noticeable for Hector Maclean's sketch of the human Öddments and Wastrels of London, and the commencement of a new serial story by Helen Boulnois, "Jervis Carew's Ward,"

EN ROUTE: A FIN-DE-SIÈCLE "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS."*

INTRODUCTORY: OF WAYS OF SALVATION.

book reminds

paintings of M. Jean Beraud, the eccentric French artist, who in recent years has created a certain sensational success by painting the scenes of the Gospel amid modern surroundings. His first, which perhaps was the most famous, represents Christ at the house of Simon the leper, when Mary Magdalene anointed His feet with ointment and wiped them with the hair of her head. Round the central figure of the story were grouped men and women dressed in the latest Parisian fashions, and wearing, some of them, unmistakable likenesses to certain eminent financiers and demimondaines of the day. Another picture in the same style represents Christ bearing the cross. The pallid, haggard, blood-stained figure staggered onward beneath the cross too heavy to be borne, pursued as he went by the ribald crowd of exquisites, dandies in full dress with their profligate companions hanging on to their arms, while all sorts and conditions of men and women of the present age, modern to their finger-tips, pursued the Saviour with their execrations and derisions.

M. HUYSMANS' PILGRIM.

Huysmans' book is a "Pilgrim's Progress" done in the style of this artist, for it represents the flight of the convicted sinner from the City of Destruction to Mount Zion, in the very latest dialect of modernity. Durtal, M. Huysmans' pilgrim, starts from Paris in the last half of the last decade of the nineteenth century. He is up to date, a decadent of the decadents, a man exhausted with every debauchery, familiar even with the most fantastic forms of vice and blasphemy, who, at the age of forty, finds himself constrained to flee from the wrath to come. He pursues his flight in such characteristic fashion, that even in the midst of his spiritual agonies, in which his soul, wandering in the wilderness, cries aloud for the living God, or shudders in horror at its attempt to escape from the grasp of the Evil One, his body craves for the indispensable cigarette, and the struggling convert is graciously permitted to perfume with tobacco the privacies of woods which surround a Trappist monastery!

THE VALUE OF THE STORY.

Nevertheless, although there is much in the book which may seem fantastic-and there is undoubtedly a great deal which is effective to the last degree-" En Route" is a notable volume which may be specially commended to the perusal of those persons to whom it will be most antipathetic, viz., the hard-headed, more or less materialistic, commonsense, matter-of-fact, rationalised Protestant of our day and generation. Specially may it be commended to those good souls to whom the Roman Catholic Church is an abomination, who regard Rome as the mystical Babylon, and who confound her ceremonies, her ritual, and her practices under a wholesale indiscriminate anathema. The perusal of the book may indeed be commended to such as a violent but healthy irritant. It will perhaps make them blaspheme in every chapter, but at the same time that it

"En Route," by J. K. Huysmans. Translated from the French, with a Prefatory Note by C. Kegan Paul. (Kegan Paul). Pp. 313. s.

may confirm them in their reasoned objections to the Roman creed, it will probably in many cases for the first time enable them to understand somewhat of the attraction of the doctrines and practices against which they so strongly protest. The Orangeman who reads this may damn the Pope at the end as vigorously as before, but if he does he will at least be able to understand that he is condemning something which is no longer an emanation of the pure cussedness of human nature, but which does on many sides appeal powerfully and directly to the deepest needs of the human heart.

THE KEY OF SYMPATHY.

To the majority of men and women who are not violent anti-Papists, but to whom the raison d'être of many things in the Catholic Church is shrouded in the densest mystery, this book will be very welcome, for it explains things which to many of us have been inexplicable, and renders thinkable ways of life which are utterly incomprehensible. It is no mean service to be rendered to any one by an author, to lend us for a time the key of sympathy whereby we can open the locked door of the understanding, so that we can enter in and realise what our brother or sister has found to be good, nay, indispensable for the soul's welfare. It is a service, the rendering of which atones for many sins. This M. Huysmans undoubtedly has accomplished, better perhaps in this particular sphere than almost any other modern writer who can be named.

THE THREE CHRISTIAN BROTHERS.

It is a trite saying that one-half of the world does not know how the other half lives, but how little trouble we take to understand what it is that constitutes the very breath of life to millions of our fellow-creatures! Christendom may be said to be broadly divided into three parts-Roman, Greek, and Protestant. That is to say, the Christian family consists of three brothers, each one of whom is so much impressed with the differences dividing him from his brothers, that he forgets that they are all children of one father, and are all in direct filial relations with the author of their being. No doubt our Greek and Roman brethren are very perverse and horribly mistaken, and it is much to be desired that they would abandon their corruptions and heresies, and become even altogether such a one as their Protestant brother.

WHAT MAKES THEM TO LIVE?

But seeing that we have sworn at them to that effect for three hundred years without producing any appreciable result upon their lives, it is surely high time that we should endeavour to appreciate that which makes them to live, to understand what it is that keeps the lamp of faith burning in their hearts, and which, all imperfections notwithstanding, nevertheless does help millions of men and women to lead somewhat of a Christian life, to bear the misfortunes of life with patience, and to confront the sad certitude of death with resignation and hope. Nor need we at this period shrink from studying with sympathetic eye the working of the Divine Spirit in our brother's soul. Too often men have shrunk from admitting the operations of divine grace outside their own Church, fearing lest such an admission might lead to

[ocr errors]

an exodus much to be deplored from their own fold. But of that there need be at present but little anxiety. The old adage "One man's meat is another man's poison' holds good in religion as in other things, and it does not in the least follow because one way of salvation may be found to offer the way of least resistance to our friend and brother, that therefore it must be that which our feet should traverse.

"
HOW TO TEST WAYS OF SALVATION."

Ways of salvation of all kinds are indeed by no means so easy that we should be above taking a hint from those who have made a pilgrimage along other lines than those with which we are familiar. Of all such ways there is only one test. That is not the voice of the Church or the authority of Scripture, it is the one of simple common sense. "This is the way of salvation," do you say? Then does it save? If it does, then Church or Scripture must be brought into harmony with it, for the fact of salvation is the supreme thing.

WHAT IS SALVATION?

But what is salvation? Salvation is a term that may be used of course as relating solely to the destiny of the soul when it is freed from the temporary envelope of the physical body. And this is, of course, of transcendent importance. But it is one which cannot from its nature be subjected to mundane tests. In its practical, work-aday meaning it has to do not so much with the next life, but with that which we are living from day to day. The test, therefore, of a way of salvation is to ask whether by following it a man is saved from those sins, weaknesses, and miseries which, so far as they go, involve the loss of the true life. We constantly meet every day lost souls. They may "go to Heaven when they die," as the hymn says, but in this life they have lost all that makes life worth living. They have neither charity for their fellow-creatures, patience for bearing their own burdens, or joy for ministering to the lives of those in the midst of whom they pass their existence. They are men who are fretful, bitter, selfish, and unhappy. For those persons it is evident the way of salvation is still to be sought.

WHO ARE THE SAVED?

There are others with whom we are all familiar, who, whether by the operation of a certain divine grace which comes from nature or heredity, or through the more orthodox channel of creed or ritual, or by some philosophy of their own, may be regarded as distinctly saved souls. They are saved from the world, the flesh, and the devil, that infernal Trinity from which we are delivered when we are saved in the first place from ourselves. They manifest the fruits of the Spirit even although they may not so much as know that there is any Spirit; they are full of the joy of peace and of helpful service to their fellow-men. They may be poor in this world's goods, they may be sick and suffering in other ways; but they are delivered from that supreme curse of a self-centred existence, in which the gratification, the amusement, the service of self become the sole law of our being. In other words, they have found salvation.

As for the fate of these lost souls and saved souls in the next world, we can only argue from analogy or debate with the aid of the message of Revelation. But with these disputations we need not trouble ourselves so much; for us it is enough to know whether our brother's way of salvation has saved him from being a nuisance to himself and his neighbours, and made him a source of help and health and happiness to those in the midst of whom he dwells.

IF ROMAN CATHOLICS ARE SAVED

But taking this, which may be described as an ultrarationalist conception of salvation, there is no doubt that these fruits of the Spirit or this deliverance from the evil that is in the world, and especially in our own hearts, has been attained through many centuries by many of the greatest and holiest of our race, through agencies which that good man, Dr. Barnardo, for instance, would regard as almost purely diabolical. From the point of view of common sense, to say nothing of Christian charity and the humility which is born of a painful consciousness of our own shortcomings, it is surely well to inquire a little into the true inwardness of the modus operandi by which these good people within other communions than our own have found peace and joy in believing. All Churches are more or less inanufacturers of saved souls-factories of holy lives, the output of which is good works. Not even the greatest bigot can deny that in all ages, even in those of the greatest corruption, stainless Christian lives have been lived in every land by faithful souls who knew no more of Christ and His heaven than they learnt through the teaching of the Church of Rome. There are, indeed, few who are familiar with the wide range of the literature of religious experience, who would not go much further and say that the Roman Catholic Church has in all times produced saints whose lives, judged by any test of human excellence, will compare favourably with those which can be shown in any other religion.

HOW IS THE SALVATION EFFECTED?

It is a homely saying that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the test of any religion is the people whom it produces. Good trees do not produce evil fruit, neither do bad trees bring forth good fruit, and if we could imagine that some supreme rationalist, holding no form of creed, but contemplating all, were to muster before him all the children of men in order that he might draw up a roll of those elect souls of the human race who have displayed the greatest virtue, manifested the most marvellous love, and have attained most nearly to the highest ideal of human perfection, there would undoubtedly be in that noble galaxy of the herosaints of the world no small contingent from those who hold the Roman faith. That even an Orangeman, excepting on the 12th of July, would be willing to admit; but for the most part the process by which this result was obtained is hidden from Protestant eyes by the very natural prejudice born of the intense reaction which took place three centuries ago against the corruptions of Rome, and a not less healthy repugnance to recognise as true pontifical pretensions which appear to reason manifestly false.

THE ANSWER OF EN ROUTE."

In "En Route " we have an attempt made, with what success our reader will judge for himself, to portray the way by which the Roman Catholic Church saves the souls of those who are committed to its care. Durtal, Huysmans' pilgrim, cannot be regarded as an average penitent, but the problem which is discussed in the pages of "En Route" is all the more sharply defined on that account. Durtal is a decadent of the end of the nineteenth century, who, having wallowed in the lowest depths, is brought into the way of salvation by the Roman Catholic Church. It is a veritable Pilgrim's Progress that we have here described, not by the Bedford tinker, whose artless story has been the staff and the stay of millions of humble souls for the last two

[ocr errors]

66

« PreviousContinue »