termed Gladstonianism and tend to strengthen many Unionist principles."

DISAPPEARANCE OF THE LIBERAL PARTY. Blackwood is naturally very jubilant on the subject. Lord Rosebery's retirement has simplified the general political issues.

There is no longer any halting-place between Conservatives and Destructives, and it may be that Lord Rosebery's appreciation of this truth had something to do with his retirement. But, however this may be, the Radicals represent a young, vigorous, and earnest party, monopolising all the vitality and energy which still remains to the Opposition; and they are led by a patrician demagogue of the type of Wilkes, Burdett, and Duncombe, men who regard the interests of their own order, and even their own fortunes, as a feather in the scale when weighed against the immediate calls of personal ambition-political gamblers, in fact, by which name Burke describes them. This is the party of the future, with whom the Conservatives will have to cope.

From the Westminster Budget.]

On the contrary, there was, as indeed there still is, a strong disinclination to take him seriously as a statesman; and it may be that one reason for the respect with which he was known to regard Lord Beaconsfield is to be sought for in his consciousness of a certain resemblance in their histories. . . His rise, in fact, has borne in many respects a curious resemblance to that of the object of his admiration. He had "views" like Disraeli and the Disraelian readiness of satirical speech, and the same controversial "joy of battle." If he had not Disraeli's brilliant literary gift he could wield the pen of the pamphleteer with undeniable vigour and effect. And people believed just as much or as little in the depth of his convictions and the soundness of the views which he undertook to advocate. "Historicus" was recognised as a formidable disputant on points of international law-in a newspaper... The impression prevailed and became ineffaceable that Sir William Harcourt was . . . a lawyer of the "elegant" rather than of the profound order; and much the same suspicion of superficiality attached to his political convictions. . Sir William Harcourt has never shared, as indeed no ambitious politician can afford to share, the perverse attachment of Cato to the losing cause. He has never been ashamed to display that preference for the winning side, in which, according to the Latin poet, he has at least the companionship of the gods to keep him in countenance.

[October 16, 1896.

"The old Liberalism is effete." The new Liberalism is Radicalism and nothing else. And Blackwood fervently desires that "the slippery compromise ycleped Liberalism" will "disappear from our vocabulary." Though the working classes, as a whole, are by no means a Radical preserve, there is "a powerful residuum prepared to support a social and political revolution to the last cartridge." But men are beginning to understand that our party conflicts are only part of the great struggle between the rival principles, on the one hand of "authority, subordination, religion, property, law, order," and on the other of "the negation of all these."

HARCOURT-A LIBERAL DISRAELI.

Mr. H. D. Traill contributes to the Contemporary a rather caustic character-sketch of Sir William Harcourt. "From the first," says the writer, "Sir William has never been credited with any remarkable gifts of statesmanship."

His one unfortunate phrase was about his opponents "stewing in their Parnellite juice." But Mr. Traill allows that Sir William has made himself not only useful, but indispensable to his party. There was no one among his Gladstonian comrades who could for a moment challenge comparison with him as a debater.

He is a parliamentary strategist and tactician of the first force. In a word he has proved by the acknowledgment of both friend and foe, that he is a leader who can really lead, and there is an ever-growing conviction among his party that he is the only one of their leaders who can.

THE CRISIS IN SOUTH AFRICA.
Two VIEWS FROM THE TWO
QUARTERLIES.

THE two old-established quarterlies deliver judgment on the question raised by the Jameson raid.

I. THE CASE OF THE UITLANDERS. The Quarterly Review, in an article on the Boers and the Uitlanders, speaks with no uncertain sound. It says:

Putting aside all national prepossessions and prejudices, there seems to be only one possible solution of the Boer-Uitlander controversy. In the end the race which is strongest in numbers, in wealth, in intelligence, and in energy, must win the day. The ultimate triumph of the Uitlanders is a matter of almost mathematical certainty. There can be no rest in the Transvaal till Uitlanders and Boers are given equal rights; until there is rest in the Transvaal, there can be no peace in South Africa. It is the interest therefore, as well as the duty, of the Imperial Government to make the settlement of the Boer-Uitlander difficulty the dominant principle of our South African policy. Towards this end their efforts should be steadily concentrated, for upon its settlement is staked the question whether the Dutch or British elements are to predominate in South Africa. From this conclusion we can see no escape.

But the Quarterly Reviewer goes further. He defends and apologises for the Uitlanders whose abortive rising

He says they may

had such disastrous consequences. plead two causes in justification :— The first of these causes was to be found in the apprehension on the part of the Uitlanders that grave immediate danger to their vital interests was imminent at the period when the Reform Committee gave the signal for action. The second of these causes was the expectation on their part that this action would meet with such support from without as to render success probable, if not certain. It remains to indicate what was the general character of these apprehensions and these expectations.

It was the well-nigh universal belief in Johannesburg towards the close of last year, that the Government of Pretoria was endeavouring to obtain foreign aid, so as to render impossible any attempt on the part of the Uitlanders to assert their rights by action, and to prevent any possible intervention on the part of their fellow-countrymen in South Africa or of the Mother Country. We may hope, even if we do not expect, that the researches of the impending Commission of Enquiry will throw some light on the truth or falsehood of this belief. But, in order to form a fair opinion as to the action of the Uitlanders, the question to be considered is not so much whether their belief was correct, as whether they had reasonable cause for so believing. We cannot but think that this question must be answered in the affirmative. The Government of Pretoria during the year 1895 had done every thing, short of repudiating the Treaty of Pretoria, to encourage the impression that the Republic was looking to Germany for support against Great Britain. The German, in contradistinction to the British Uitlanders, were treated on the footing of the most favoured nation. Exceptional facilities were given to German manufacturers in preference to British. Coucessions were refused by the State to British speculators and accorded to Germans. Negotiations were reported to be carried on between Pretoria and Berlin by the Secretary of State, Dr. Leyds, the most Anglophobe of Boers; and, according to current report, steps were being taken to organise a foreign legion, commanded by German officers, and composed of German emigrants who had just completed their terms of military service. Plans, too, were said to be ripe for building fortifications, not only at Preto ia but at Johannesburg. Now, as subsequent events demonstrated, the idea which underlay the scheme of an armed demonstration on the part of the Uitlanders was based on the assumption that the volunteer forces which the Reform Committee hoped to raise would be strong enough to hold their own against the Boers, until such time as assistance could be rendered by the British colonists in the Cape and in Natal. Obviously this idea would become impracticable if once the Government of Pretoria had in its service a trained body of European troops. If, therefore, an armed demonstration was to be made at all, no time was to be lost.

The second cause which, in the opinion of the Uitlanders. militated in favour of immediate action, was the expectation that the proposed demonstration would meet with prompt and effective support from without. It is an important fact, bearing on the future development of the Boer-Uitlander controversy, that the belief prevalent throughout the Randt is that if Dr. Jameson had succeeded in effecting his entrance into Johannesburg at the head of his troops, the whole position of affairs would have been changed. We have no means of either disputing or confirming the truth of this impression.

II. THAT GOOD MR. CHAMBERLAIN.

The Edinburgh Review, in an article on the "Ministry and the Country," empties its wash-bowl of adulation over the sacred head of the consistent Mr. Chamberlain :

Mr. Chamberlain has been consistent from first to last. The first thing he had to do was to stop, if possible, the raid, te disavow it, and put the offenders on their trial; and these things he endeavoured to do and did. At the same time he has always declared that the raid, though the most striking incident f the situation, was not the whole nor the principal difficulty he had to deal with; and he has never allowed

himself to be diverted, by a desire to obtain punishment for those who deserved it, from the great end of once more drawing together the feelings of Englishmen and Dutchmen so rudely shaken, not only in the Transvaal, but through the whole of Cape Colony. As regards Mr. Rhodes and the Company, the Secretary of State declared his intention as soon as the suspicious nature of the transactions had come out. Till the raiders were tried he would not authorise an

investigation which would bear upon their case. As soon as that was over a searching investigation should be held into the complicity of the Chartered Company and its officials, and accordingly on the day of the conviction of Dr. Jameson Mr. Chamberlain moved for the appointment of a Committee of the House of Commons to make a searching examination into the conduct of the Company. Whether Mr. Rhodes will treat that Committee with more respect than the Committee of the Cape Parliament, and appear before it, remains to be seen. The evidence collected at the Cape tells a very different story of the whole inception and preparation of the raid from that which was for long current in England. It is clear that the conspiracy had been long and deliberately planned by those who held positions of authority and of trust; that fraud had been practised upon the Governor, the representative of the Queen in the Colony; and that every means had been taken by the preparation of false intelligence to deceive public opinion at home. It is charitable to suppose that most of those who still apologise for the raid, and treat the offence of the raiders as a mere technical crime, which as a matter of policy it was necessary to punish, have failed to make themselves acquainted with the true facts of the case. Upon the evidence now made public, the planning of the raid is seen to have been an unscrupulous and fraudulent proceeding. It entailed (as was fully contemplated) the deaths of a number of perfectly innocent persons. It was the direct cause of the miserable native war which is not yet at an end. It brought Great Britain and the German Empire within a measurable distance of war, and has had a most unfortunate effect in straining the relations of the two Powers at a time when it is eminently desirable that hearty cordiality should prevail between them. Those who planned the raid were regardless of the national honour, which was pledged to respect the independence of the Transvaal; and those who carried it out, by the utter feebleness of their performance, brought disgrace upon the British flag.

Our Circulating Library.

DURING the past month there has been a great demand for boxes of books. The new series, comprising more contemporary fiction than the original boxes, has been very successful. Any society or institution which desires to provide its members with a continuously varied selection of books could not do better than subscribe to the series. At the present moment there are boxes scattered throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. We have now a considerable number of second-han i books to dispose of, and will be glad to supply particulars to any club which wishes to forin a permanent library of its own or to add to its present stock of books.

THE Dublin Review for October is an especially good number. Special notice is required for Mrs. Mulhall's statement of the Irish origin of Dante's poem, and the articles dealing with the Reformation and Revolution by Father Kent, Mr. Conder, and Miss Shield Mr. G. T. Mackenzie presses the Indian practice of making grants to denominational schools in behalf of their secular instruction, irrespective of religion taught or not taught, as an example for the Home Government. Miss E. M. Clerke contributes a cheering word on the crisis in Rhodesia, the opening up of which land she pronounces a great success.

MR. DILLON, MR. REDMOND, MR. PARNELL:

DISCLOSURES BY MR. W. O'BRIEN.

“WAS Mr. Parnell badly treated?" is the title of the paper which Mr. W. O'Brien contributes to the Contemporary, and which sheds a strange light upon the present quarrel between Redmondite and Dillonite. The writer begins by declaring that "Mr. Healy's poisoned words " in Committee Room 15, and his subsequent writings, are almost the only grounds for Parnellite resentment and estrangement, and now that Mr. Healy's domination is at an end, one would suppose there might be an end to the The purpose of the schism among the Nationalists.

article is first to make clear, from letters and telegrams in the Boulogne negotiations, that Mr. Parnell was not badly treated, but was treated, and confessed that he was treated, with friendly and respectful consideration. But in doing this, the much more remarkable and practically important fact is that

Mr. John Redmond, who is now the only considerable enemy of reunion, was, while Mr. Parnell was still alive, one of our most earnest auxiliaries in bringing about Mr. Parnell's retirement, and substituting for him the very man who is at this moment chairman of the Irish party, Mr. John Dillon.

As Mr. O'Brien says, "The fact will astonish many people." But he goes on to prove it; and calmly predicts that the moment earnest Parnellites master the facts, Mr. Redmond's power as a mischief-maker will not be worth much further notice."

MR. REDMOND AS DILLONITE.

In the course of the negotiations following on the Kilkenny election, Mr. Redmond himself being witness, Mr. Parnell proposed to retire if Mr. O'Brien would accept the chairmanship of the united party. Mr. O'Brien urged that Mr. John Dillon should be the leader; and now, in answer to the charge of "murdering Parnell," Mr. O'Brien offers "proofs of the active exertions of Mr. Redmond and his friends in inducing Mr. Parnell to retire in Mr. Dillon's favour." The documents he cites The "most fatal" are apparently conclusive enough. difficulty was the personal bitterness against Mr. Parnell in "a section of our own camp"-" a small but active and violent minority of our colleagues "-which paralysed the peace negotiations.

66 CECIL RHODES HAS STIFFENED"

PARNELL.

dispute is as to the Land question, I do hope that you will use all your influence to have this difficulty removed, and I say this as one who is quite as anxious for the settlement as you are yourself. . . . Of course I can quite understand a feeling of impatience on the part of G. and his friends, and God knows you have special reason for impatience, but so much is at stake, and we have approached so near an agreement that it would be horrible if a break came now. All the influence that Harrington, Clancy, and I possess is being used in season and out of it in the right direction, and we are all quite impressed with the belief in P.'s bona fides, and that the demand he is making come from his natural desire to use the opportunity to get as good a bargain as possible-but there are other influences amongst his friends besides ours, as you must know, and I most earnestly beg of you to leave no stone unturned to bring about the smail further concession which is alone needful now to put us all in accord. . . . Before the final word is said P. will have a meeting of his supporters. I need,. I think, scarcely tell you that you may count on my continued assistance-whatever it is worth.

On February 9, when the negotiations were practically over, Mr. Redmond wrote to Mr. O'Brien :

I am afraid John's interview with P. at Calais had a very bad effect and accounts for much of recent events. Ever since P. has been saying if you were to be the leader, as he originally strongly urged, the difficulties would be very small. I wish to God this could be so. I well know John (Dillon) would not be the one to object."

MR. PARNELL'S LAST LETTER TO MR. O'BRIEN. Mr. O'Brien publishes with a certain elation, quite explicable under the circumstances, Mr. Parnell's last and confidential note to him:

"House of Commons, London, February 11, 1891. "MY DEAR O'BRIEN,-In addition to the longer letter which I send you for publication I desire to write you a few words expressing how deeply I feel the kindness and gentleness of spirit which you have shown me throughout these negotiations. I have felt all along that I had no right to expect from anybody the constant anxiety to meet my views, the intense desire that all proposals claiming your sanction should be as palatable as possible to me, which have so distinguished your I know you have conduct of the communications between us. forgiven much roughness and asperity upon my part and have made allowances for some unreasonable conduct from me, which, to anybody gifted with less patience and conciliation than yourself, would have been most difficult. I appreciate intensely the difficulties which have surrounded you in these negotiations, the constant and daily anxiety of which would have been overwhelming to anybody of less courage and devotion than yourself, and I fervently hope and believe that the prospects for Ireland are not so dark as you fear, and that after a little time, having pass d through these clouds of darkness, we may once again stand upon our former footing when in happier days we were comrades in arms on behalf of a United Ireland.-My dear O'Brien, Always yours, CHARLES S. PARNELL."

A STUDY IN CYNICAL INCONSISTENCY.

Mr. O'Brien, in his closing words, presses his indictment against Mr. Redmond:

-

To read the declarations of friendliness and confidence showered upon Mr. Dillon and myself in the letters above printed, side by side with the impudent misrepresentations. and abuse he has poured upon our heads ever since the only obstacle to our complete working agreement disappeared, forms the most curious study in cynical inconsistency to be found in the history even of an era which is adorned by Mr. Chamberlain.

These disclosures may make it hard for the Redmondites to answer; they make it perhaps more hard for them to reunite with the party of Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien.

BEACONSFIELD BEATIFIED:

BY MR. FREDERICK GREENWOOD.

THERE is a flavour of saucy paradox in Mr. Greenwood's selecting the very height of the Armenian agitation as the moment for publishing in Cornhill a panegyric upon Lord Beaconsfield. It is positively refreshing in these days-when " peace with honour" has passed into a bitter byword, and Christendom from California to Armenia writhes under the damnosa hæreditas of Lord Beaconsfield's policy-to find а man prepared to canonise him as a true prophet. He begins by declaring "he had no narrow views," and by granting that nothing concerned him more than his own place in the world." He loved applause, but liked better to be selfsatisfied. And he was genuinely proud of his Oriental ancestry.

DISRAELI'S PLAN.

Of his alleged plan of conduct, said to be drawn up in early life, Mr. Greenwood says it was perception and persistence rather than planning:

Though carried out with an infinity of particulars, Disraeli's supposed plan began and ended with the shrouding of his mind and character in mystery: but a mystery that constantly piqued observation, constantly provoked curiosity and as often baffled it. In this way he fastened a peculiarity of attention upon himself at twenty-two that lasted all his life. It was never exhausted, nor is it exhausted yet. Hardly less is his memory preserved by speculation on a strange character and a strange career, than by a constant development of events that make him wonderful. For this becomes plain: speeches that were received as far-fetched fancies, only meant to flash and startle, were prophecies soberly uttered where they were not understood.

HIS SELF-CONTROL AND SELF-REPRESSION. "The fundamentals of Mr. Disraeli's character were simple." He knew his mind and could control it:

By these gifts, which make saints of the religious and organise victory for ambition, Disraeli was able to suppress instincts and to subordinate qualities which were least serviceable to him, thereby strengthening by further simplifying the machine. It is natural to think ill of this process when it is employed not for saintliness but for ambition. . . . With high views of a great career, studious conformity to them demanded the suppression of ignoble indulgences. He suppressed them. To speak of one by way of example, he could hate deeply and nct nobly. Vindictiveness lived in him-subdued. forgiveness, made a rule of life, became at least as much a habit as a rule; and one well-observed prohibition in his scheme of conduct was never to strike at a little man.

66 AFFECTIONS DEEP AND TENDER."

But

Some have supposed that in this way he suppressed whatever affections he may have possessed. Mr. Greenwood grants that the range of his affections was limited, but "within their narrow bound his affections were deep and tender "; and his few friendships were most warm and most affectionate." This would come out in a proper biography, but a complete portrait will never be given to the world. The man most competent for the task gave it up in despair: the mass of Beaconsfield papers being so enormous and in such a "finished state of confusion as to confirm this decision.

THE SPHINX IN TEARS.

In proof of Disraeli's genuine sensibility Mr. Greenwood tells a story concerning Colonel Home, whom Disraeli consulted privately during the Russo-Turkish war as to possible military moves by England. On the day after

Home's death Mr. Greenwood saw Disraeli at Downing
Street:-

On admission to him (it was a very early morning call) I found him bending over the Times, which was spread upon the table where he stood, and I think had that moment been opened. Without looking up his first word was, “You have seen the bad news?" The voice was so agitated-his, Mr. Disraeli's-that I wondered for an instant what national calamity I had overlooked and was now to hear of. "You know that Home is gone?" he added, and then in the same unexpected voice broke into many expressions of affectionate admiration. The word that struck me most was, "I destined him to great command!" So speaking, he sat down by the fireside as if quite overcome. There he was silent, and the silence was such that for a time I did not like to look in his direction. When I did so, I saw that the hands extended on his knees were flapping up and down from the wrist in a wellknown movement of distress, and that tears were rolling down the awful ruin which even in those days his face had become. Yet it was an absolutely impassive face at that moment still. His tears were the only signs of emotion on it: rain upon the grey defaced features of the Sphinx.

Mr. Greenwood cannot conceive that this distress was put on for the purpose of imposing on a single observer and one "so inconsiderable." He infers that "it was the absence of affection that was affected."

WHOSE WAS THAT VOICE?-SALISBURY'S ?

He suggests that Home's death recalled one of Disraeli's great vexations-the refusal of his colleagues to consent to a campaign in Asia Minor which Home had planned and for which Cyprus was acquired. Disraeli always deplored his defeat:-

Just as he maintained, at the time and after, that there would have been no Crimean war had not the English Government convinced the Tsar that it was in the hands of the peace party, so now he believed that a bold policy would prevent or limit the conflict, and remove consequences the full development of which we are witnessing to-day. He foresaw these consequences then. They were and are the justification of his policy. But of course he would have been laughed at from one end of the kingdom to the other had he given publie utterance to his anticipations. At the time of which I write his griefs on this head were still green, and, for once at any rate, he made no concealment of them. When he had done speaking of Home and his work in Asia, he said, "But then "-flinging out his hands-" you know what happened. My colleagues would not have it. What you don't know is that at last I was so much alone that I had but one voice with me in the Cabinet." Yes, like various other persons I did know something of what went on in that unhappy Government; but-one voice alone! Much I wished to ask whose voice that was, though of course the question was impossible.

Speaking of Disraeli's fantastic modes of attiring himself, Mr. Greenwood agrees with Froude that "his dress was purposed affectation." His foppery was "more than half assumed." It won him attention which his intrinsic ability turned from mockery to admiration. Herein appeared the fact that though a patriotic servant of England "he was un-English quite. Bred in England, where all his associations were, he was in mind and intellect completely alien: and therefore his calculated surprises overshot the mark in a way and to a degree that he was insensible of."

"I CALL THAT HELLISH!"

Mystification, and not by any means to his own glory, is the object which Mr. Greenwood assigns to the "bewildering contradictions" which "he sometimes launched with an evident intention of having them talked about." "Bewildering contradictions" are known

in homely English under a single and a briefer name. Mr. Greenwood tells of

two emphatic and diametrically opposite judgments on English art-the one publicly delivered at a Royal Academy dinner, the other addressed fifteen minutes afterwards to Mr. Browning, with the first speech still in his ears. In that speech, what struck Mr. Disraeli most when he looked upon those walls was the abounding invention, the exuberance of fancy, displayed in the works which adorned them. In the other, what struck Mr. Disraeli most when he looked upon those walls was the paucity of invention, the barrenness of fancy, which--&c. When the poet told this tale to Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Gladstone said with manifest conviction, "Mr. Browning, I call that hellish!" What I myself like less is the last piece of affectation that Disraeli practised in the House of Commons. For it was his last night in that House; and Sir William Fraser tells us that on this evening he was believed to be really asleep in his place. Not he.

MY DIZZY IN HIS BATH!"

Mr. Greenwood recalls some amusing incidents of Lady Beaconsfield's enthusiastic admiration of her husband. Here is one:

She was one evening in the company of some ladies when the conversation wandered into a talk of fine figures: Mr. A.'s, Mr. B's, Captain C.'s. The old lady let them run on, and then said pityingly, “Ah! You should see my Dizzy in his bath!"

Yet within all manner of "fantastic maskings and disguisings a strong, sober will, a mind thoroughly masculine, was carrying him steadily along the path marked out by his ambition from the age of eighteen. Marked out in detail, we might almost say."

THE VEILED PROPHET VINDICATED BY EVENTS! Mr. Greenwood ventures on a delightfully audacious formula concerning his hero: "The whole tenor of affairs, both at home and abroad, proclaims more loudly every day his foresight and sagacity"! The reputation of "adventurer, charlatan, mountebank," was due to his "theatricalism;" but "the theatricalism never touched the wisdom." It is not so much that we open our eyes to Disraeli's superior wisdom as that the manifestation of his wisdom by events opens our eyes to it. The prophet is vindicated by the progress of events:

Time and trial continue to show that what were called Dizzy's "pretentious absurdities, his antiquated romancings, his fantastic anticipations, were in fact sound reasoning and precise forecast. These later years are crowded with proof that he was most right when the dominant opinion of his day decided that he was most wrong. Take these various illustrations: the foreseen decay of what, for the best of reasons (those that go deepest), he believed to be England's most solid, wholesome, and necessary industry; his rejection of the political economy of his time (now given up by the economists themselves), his discernment of the fatal absence from it of the human element,' and his refusal to accept the economists' dictum without reference to political considerations. Again, the prescience which understandingly foresaw the corruption and decay of our party system-than which nothing seemed a more ridiculous subject of apprehension then, while nothing seems to-day less ludicrous. And, not to sink to matters of great but yet inferior importance, let us mark his perception of the imminent danger of a Russian ascendency which would put Eugland into the second place, with the natural consequences of that mighty change. These are matters of fundamental significance, as we all perceive amidst the surprise of actual and perhaps irretrievable experience; and to know Disraeli's history is to learn that he earned a reputation for absurdity by foreseeing what these things would come to if left to the wisdom that scorned him. They were so left, and at this moment all the greater troubles of England are Disraelian fulfilled prophecies.

THE PROPHET'S ONE MISTAKE.

Yet even the sun has spots: "the prophets always speak by broken lights," and Mr. Greenwood's idol was not "invariably faithful to his beliefs. There was the signal infidelity of the 'dishing' Reform Bill of 1867." The excuses made for him could not have imposed on his judgment or conscience. Of this strange combination of prophet and fop "all the explanation we can get lies in Abraham's bosom." Mr. Greenwood comes to the common conclusion, " Dizzy was what he was, because hewas a Jew." "The singular conditions of detachment in which his Jewish nature placed Disraeli afford the best explanation of the mystery man' in politics as well as the 'mountebank' in society."

Jose-Maria de Heredia.

NUMBER 5 of Nordisk Tidskrift contains several good articles. The one most likely to interest the general reader is E. Löseth's pleasantly-written critique on JoséMaria de Heredia, the French-Spanish poet, who was last year elected to the French Academy. Only the initiated were aware that he was the century's first sonnetist, nor does he yet figure in general conversation or biographical dictionaries even in France. It was only in 1893, says Herr Löseth, that he attracted the notice of the big public by the publication in book form of various poems previously scattered about in periodicals and now strung together under the title "Les Trophées." Before the year was out, the thirteenth edition was published, and the honour done him by the Academy created neither surprise nor remark. JoséMaria de Heredia was born in 1842. An aristocrat he was by birth. He was born in Cuba and is of Spanish extraction. His ancestry may be traced back to the time of the conquest of the New World. He is a direct descendant of one of the followers of Cortez. On the maternal side, however, he is of French extraction. He has lived the greater part of his life in France. He came to that country first as a child of eight, and was schooled there until his seventeenth year, when he went to Havanna for a year's study at the university. He then returned to France and settled down in Paris. Though not rich, since his family had lost their large property, he yet had enough to be comparatively independent. It was in his twentieth year that he made his début as an author in the Revue de Paris. He contributed, indeed, chiefly to the reviews, such as the Revue des Deux Mondes and to the periodicals which became the organs of the Parnassian school. Heredia began as the pupil of Leconte de Lisle; he resembles him directly, but is working himself forward by degrees to independence; he has developed something of his master's style and has reached in his own field a perfection equal to that of his teacher. The radiant light flashing through his poetry, with its triumphant rhythm of delight in the outer beauties of life and the world, its freedom from hypochondriacal, pessimistical thoughts, though here and there a faint, and fascinating melancholy asserts itself-these, says Herr Löseth, are features peculiar to Heredia.

Prizes.

I HAVE been compelled to hold over the adjudication of the Essays sent in describing How I Learnt to Like Reading. There are over one hundred essays to read, and some of them are very good; but I have decided to leave over the adjudication until next month, when the other essays will be in, and all the prizes will be allotted together.