DICKENS'S ORIGINALS.

MYTHICAL AND REAL.

CHARLES DICKENS the younger, in the Pall Mall Magazine for July, gives "Notes on some Dickens Places and People." He pours a steady and good-natured stream of cooling criticism on the " photographic accuracy people," as he calls them, who indulge in over-confident recognition of Dickens scenes and persons. He declares that the Old Curiosity Shop," so-called, in Lincoln's Inn has nothing to do with the story, and that the "Pickwick" house in Dulwich has only mythical connection with the hero of the "Papers." He grants that No. 58, Lincoln's Inn Fields, the residence of John Forster, was undoubtedly Mr. Tulkinghorn's house.. Cooling village and church were, according to the author's own confession, the original of the scenes in "Great Expectations."

BROADSTAIRS TRADITIONS.

The younger Charles then goes on to demolish certain cherished illusions:

I have seen in (American) print a triumphant account of the absolute identification of Miss Betsy Trotwood's house on the cliff at Dover, the principal evidence in the case relating to the green over which Miss Trotwood believed herself to have jurisdiction as regarded the incursions of donkeys; and very much impressed I should have been, no doubt, with the writer's industry and ingenuity, if I had not unfortunately happened to know of my own knowledge that he was altogether wrong. The Trotwood donkey-fights did not take place at Dover at all, but at Broadstairs; where a certain Miss Strong a charming old lady who was always most kind to me as a small boy, and to whose cakes and tea I still look back with fond and unsatisfied regret-lived in a little double. fronted cottage in the middle of Nuckell's Place, on the seafront, firmly convinced of her right to stop the passage of donkeys along the road in front of her door. Never shall I forget being carried by a wilful donkey, who evidently enjoyed the fun, across this sacred ground, and seeing my old friend making vigorously hostile demonstration at me with the hearth-broom. It was a long time before she could be brought to understand that I really had been an unwilling and perfectly innocent trespasser. Broadstairs, by the way, is distinguished by a characteristically baseless, but universally believed, Dickens tradition. It is said indeed, it is hardly safe at Broadstairs to throw any doubt on the story-that a great part of Bleak House" was written in the tall house by the coastguard station above the little pier, which was formerly called Fort House, but is now generally known as Bleak House. As a matter of fact, not a line of "Bleak House" was written there, although a good deal of "Copperfield" was.

We are, however, allowed to read Town Malling for Muggleton, and Norwich for Eatanswill.

FIFTY SAM WELLERS.

Of the characters in Dickens, his son says:

I do not think that, when I was travelling all over the country giving Dickens Readings, and being hospitably entertained at all sorts of houses, and acquiring a remarkable experience of all sorts of hotels, I heard of more than fifty originals of Sam Weller-but I certainly heard of no fewer. As for Mr. Weller Senior, I think I may safely say that I have never been in a town or village which was famous in the old coaching days without hearing of him. . . . Of course many points of many people have been reproduced in Charles Dickens's books, but there are few, very few, cases in which absolute portraits are to be found. Of these, the bullying police magistrate in "Oliver Twist" is one, having been taken bodily from a Mr. Laing, of Hatton Garden Police Court notoriety. Lawrence Boythorn is Walter Savage Landor. The original of Miss Mowcher found the portrait so lifelike that she was moved to bitter remonstrance, with the result

that the little chiropodist's share in the working out of the plot of "David Copperfield" was entirely reconsidered and altered. One Shaw, a Yorkshire schoolmaster, claimed to be the very Squeers himself, because all the neighbours said he was so like him. Leigh Hunt was grievously hurt by Harold Skimpole, and, I think, reasonably.

THOMAS HARDY FROM AN ITALIAN STANDPOINT. WE are accustomed to consider our literary position in respect to modern fiction as unrivalled, but foreigners do not always agree with us. Sgr. Carlo Segrè, in the Nuova Antologia (June 16th), as an enthusiastic disciple of Manzoni, falls foul of English contemporary novels in general, and of Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure" in particular. His article is thoughtful and well-informed, and as representative of Italian literary feeling not without interest, for in Italy more attention is paid to English literature than to that of any other country. After giving the outline of the relations between Jude, Sue and Arabella, our Italian critic continues :—

I ask myself whether it is possible to find a more immoral novel than this, from which every consideration of modesty has been banished. And the immodesty of the scenes represented, and of the language used, does not resemble the lack of reticence to be found in Fielding and in Smollett, who are not wanting in dignity and delicacy in spite of their frequent lapses, but it is a low and often repulsive coarseness from which the eye turns away in profound disgust. . . But the most flagrant immorality in the book consists in the general conception on which it is based, and the end towards which it aims. It cannot be called a novel of manners, still less of character; it is essentially a novel with a purpose, and the purpose proclaimed by Mr. Hardy is the most culpable that can be imagined. His object is to show that man is nothing more than the necessary victim of his social surroundings. Where can one find more melancholy types than those of this hero and heroine? Yet Mr. Hardy depicts them as oppressed and innocent beings, and envelops them in his own sympathy... Hardy is a vigorous and capable writer, and it is therefore not strange to find even in his last book pages that fill one with deep admiration. I recall with pleasure the passages analysing the internal struggles and deceptions that Jude passed through in his eager aspirations after culture, and also the whole scene of Commemoration Time at Oxford, at the close of the second volume. But such gems, scattered here and there, are all too few in number, and are overshadowed by the dominant colours of the work, which, judged as a whole, resembles the confused and disjointed nightmare of a fever-patient.

Sarah Grand and Grant Allen fare no better at Sgr. Segrè's hands, and it is on "Esther Waters " alone that he confers a grudging approval in the remark" we might have preferred to see the fancy of the author arrested by objects more worthy both of his and of our attention, but it would be impossible to deny that he has placed in their true light the types, customs, and sentiments that he has sought out and reproduced."

AN appalling picture of the Down Country cotter or Berkshire rustic is given by Mr. G. C. Peachey in the Humanitarian. His home would, it is declared, shock any East-end philanthropist or clergyman working among dockers, colliers or others of the poorer classes. Incest is frequent. Illegitimacy excites scarcely any remark. Dishonesty and deceit are normal. Drunkenness is the besetting sin. Even while applying for outdoor relief, the labourer will procure his nine gallon cask every week from the brewer. The publican gives no credit, for he cannot legally recover. The brewer can recover, and does give credit. Mr. Peachey urges that the brewer should be placed in the same legal disability with the publican.

IS SUICIDE EVER JUSTIFIABLE?

FOUR writers in the Humanitarian for July discuss the question, "Is Suicide Justifiable under any Circumstances?"

NEVER! AND WHY.

The Rev. Stewart D. Headlam holds that "suicide is never justifiable, but the supporters of a theology which denies the real presence of Jesus as the great power in the world, which denies the fact of purgatory, have no right to condemn the suicide." When in a scrape, the true advice is, Brave it out, see it through ::

The belief that this world is intended to become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, or, to translate this classical language, the conviction that it is possible to have a well organised happy human society here, would be fatal to suicide, or at any rate to any reasoned justification of suicide. . . . With a genuine Christian Socialism no one would dream of asking, "Is suicide justifiable?" for none would want to leave this happy earth till their earthly bodies went quietly to sleep. SOMETIMES, AND WHEN.

Miss Helen Mathers declares that "so long as there is one human heart to throb with love at our approach, to ache with sorrow at our going, so long as there is one single soul who looks to us for protection, love or comfort, and from whose lot our extinction would withdraw the sunshine, we have no right to call in our lives." But she finds there are conditions under which suicide becomes necessary and heroic:

A man afflicted with a loathsome, incurable, and lingering disease is morally justified in cutting short the last stages of his malady by a self-inflicted death, and he does finely and well who, taking no last farewell of what he loves, dumbly and courageously applies the remedy he has provided, and, covering his face, passes silently on to everlasting sleep. Not selfishly, not because he will not bear his cross, but because he cannot, and will not, bear to see other lives clouded, and haunted, by an anguish they are powerless to relieve, that some day, perhaps, in the interests of humanity, medicine will be suffered mercifully to end. There are other and more signal occasions when a man's honour, and possibly another person's honour, demand the sacrifice of a man's life, because it is imperative that his lips shall be closed for ever-so he closes them, for there is no alternative. There have been great suicides in history as in everyday life: kingly souls, whose last thought was of themselves, or of flinching from any earthly lot, however difficult, and their motives, however mistaken, being pure, shall plead for them with God and man.

ALWAYS, AND WITH ENTHUSIASM, IN CERTAIN CLASSES. Paul Sudermann, following Adolf Yost, pleads for the euthanasia of lives that have become worthless. Pessimism and the depression of Europeans are traced to the misery caused by knowledge of the suffering we deliberately refuse to curtail. He recommends with Schopenhauer death by voluntary starvation as the right and wise way of suicide. This is the natural tendency in the case of incurable insanity, but the State and the stomach pump compel the patient to live, while ablebodied men die in the streets for want of food. asks:

He

Can we not imagine as possible a civilisation in which hospitals should be rare and madhouses unheard of, in which no hopeless invalids drag on in useless pain the remainder of their years, no disfigured or monstrous human being shadows by their very existence the happiness of the rest? Might not the criminal class itself be eliminated from society by an enthusiastic preaching of the meritoriousness of voluntary death for the sake of the rest? For in the meanest mortal, as Carlyle has truly written, lies something nobler than the love of gain, and many who are too morally diseased to remain guiltless in life would be fairly strong to face death.

MADNESS EVEN TO ARGUE FOR IT.

Dr. Forbes Winslow reminds us that we live under a Christian dispensation, which puts pagan precedents out of court:-

The whole of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is absolutely opposed to suicide, and not only does it assert that suicide is never justifiable, but that the suicide breaks the laws of God and sends the soul to hell and perdition; and that all hope is inevitably gone for such lost and self-destroyed soul. I am now speaking of those who, of presumably sound mind and understanding, wilfully take that life which is really not theirs to take.

But he regards suicide as generally, if not universally, the act of one mentally deranged. Even to argue that murder and suicide under certain circumstances are just and proper is evidence of insanity, or at least great mental weakness.

Should Widows Re-Marry?

MRS. ANNIE SWAN, for some unheard-of reason, has put this question to herself and to other people whose answers she publishes in the Woman at Home for July. Annie Swan answers her own question as follows :

I cannot see any reason why a widow should not marry again, if she be so minded, and has a suitable offer which embodies pleasant companionship and relief from sordid care. Even if she should have children by a former marriage, it is no guarantee that she may not be left companionless, and in a sense desolate, in her old age.

Mrs. Lynn Linton characteristically tears pass on to tatters at the mere suggestion that any one should so circumscribe the sacred liberty of the widow:

Such a denial of natural rights as is contained in the prohibition of a widow's remarrying is essentially both torture and tyranny, and it behoves all the sane and liberal to make a stand against it.

Mrs. Fenwick Miller is more discursive, but she comes practically to the same conclusion. She says:-

I wish to be allowed to premise that I can make no distinction is my own mind between widows and widowers. The principle must be the same in both cases. There is atrocious injustice in the system pursued in India, of treating widow. hood as essentially different for a min and a woman.

What is sauce for the goose is of course sauce for the gander, and this would probably be the opinion of Her Majesty, who is the only authority quoted as being opposed to second marriage :

Our Queen is well known to disapprove of second marriages; and who cannot but feel that when she shall be laid beside the lover of her youth, the husband whose excellence she has so tenderly commemorated, it will be more dignified in memory, and if indeed they do then consciously meet again a more wondrous and joyful moment, in that he has never been replaced at her side? Truly touching and beautiful was the inscription that the Queen's recently widowed daughter placed on the funeral wreath of her husband: "Till death us do part -till death us do unite again." This must surely be the ideal of a widowed heart, if recognition for eternity be expected.

That, however, as Mrs. Fenwick Miller points out, is a sentiment. But as the widowed state to the male and female is frequently ended by suicide, Mrs. Miller prefers remarriage to death.

A LADY living in the country with one little girl six years old, wishes to meet with another of about the same age to educate with her. Strictest investigation asked for, and the highest references given and required. Address" Alpha," REVIEW OF REVIEWS Office, Mowbray House, W.C.

A PIOUS PICNIC CITY.

THE Combination of religion with recreation which is so mirked a feature of our time has developed many strange enterprises on this side of the Atlantic. But to see the thing carried out on a large scale we must look to what is going on in the United States. The camp-meeting is a familiar institution on both sides of the ocean; but it strikes the British mind with surprise to find a camp-meeting blossoming out into a great watering-place without losing its original character. This peculiarly American product is described by H. E. Tidmarsh in the July Quiver. It arose on this wise:

Twenty-seven years ago some godly Methodists finally decided that the usual sea-side resort was not a suitable place in which to spend their vacation with their families. The gaieties and vice, both indoors and out, made it a risky thing to take their young people to such resorts; and to their own ears and eyes the sadness of so much that they saw spoilt the pleasure they might else have got out of the sunshine, and curling wave, and moonlight walk; and, to many of them, the cost was all but prohibitive. Why not find some spot of shore, not too far from our cities, where we could pitch our tents, and bathe, and fish, and play, and pray, away from these soul-pains?" The question was hardly asked before it was answered by a few Methodist preachers who went through the pathless sandhills on the Jersey coast, were bitten by the mosquitoes, bathed in the surf on the firm sand, sunned themselves on the low hills, and at night, amidst almost depressing solitude, slept in their tents.

This life was conducive to the most splendid health, and rapid restoration of the overworked men; and they soon sent for their families and friends, and started with twenty people what has since grown to be the great Ocean Grove Camp-meeting.

The experiment proved a success from the first. Soon an association of twenty-six persons was formed to purchase and administer the land thus in demand. The laws formed for this remarkable colony were very strict. The drink traffic is absolutely prohibited, as also are dancing, card-playing, and the sale of tobacco. Sabbath observance is of the most rigid kind; no milk is sold, no street vehicles run, bathing is stopped; even bicycling is forbidden! For several years the colony dwelt in tents, then more permanent abodes were set up:

-

were

Shops and boarding-houses rapidly increased (there are nearly 1,400 buildings altogether); the sandhills levelled, roads made, a complete system of drainage carried out, gas and electric light introduced, a good supply of excellent water obtained from deep wells, and police, firemen, and all other arrangements which our complex civilisation needs were introduced.

But the tent form of life has not gone out. There are still several hundred tents annually erected by the Association.... The great feature of the settlement is its wonderful religious life, and "the promotion of Christian holiness" has always held the chief place amongst its many objects. For months together, from morning to night, there is an incessant round of meetings and services.

But, naturally enough, a vast number of people go, not for the religious exercises, but for "the bathing and social life which may be enjoyed under safer moral conditions than elsewhere." And a New York storekeeper, finding the place a success, bought and laid out the neighbouring tract of land, where the carnal man can enjoy himself on Sundays and weekdays without restriction, save as to strong drink, which is excluded by the State law. Mr. Tidmarsh concludes with the remark, Why not an Ocean Grove in England?"

WHAT IT COSTS TO RUN A CIRCUS. MR. W. B. ROBERTSON publishes in Cassell's Family Magazine for July an account of Lord George Sanger's Circus. Mr. Robertson qualified for his task by travelling with the circus a week, being made up as a clown every night, but he was mercifully spared any direct share in the performance. He gives some interesting particulars as to the organisation of a great circus. There are two Sanger's Circuses-Lord George's and Lord John's. Lord George is the senior. He has been travelling the country for more than fifty years. Mr. Robertson supplies some figures which give us some idea as to what it costs to run a first-class circus:

In the season it comprises 250 people-40 performers, 50 grooms, 50 tent-men, 24 bandsmen, shoeblacks, harness-makers and harness-cleaners, blacksmiths, carriage-washers, tentmakers, mess-caterers, carpenters, wheelwrights, wardrobekeepers, elephant and camel keepers, menagerie-keepers, and a veterinary surgeon.

The salaries of these different grades range from 22s. 61. to £30 a week. Then there are 200 horses, a varying number of elephants, camels, lions, tigers, and other rare animalsmaintained at an average cost of £26 a day. The daily outlay upon the entire show averages £130 a day. When packed up and on the road, the whole is moved in sixty-two waggons, and is very nearly a mile in length.

It is a hard life, but Mr. Sanger's experience seems to confirm Mr. Robertson's theory that there is nothing like a constant change of air for keeping people in good health. In his circus, Mr. Sanger finds both health, wealth and happiness:-

Yet no bribe will induce Mr. Sanger to retire. "No, sir," he has told me; "I like it, and we all like it. I can't sit down in a house for half an hour; and I am never so well in winter quarters as when travelling. As you know, we travel from February to November, often in mud, and snow, and bitter winds; yet not one of us will have so much as a cough. The moment we go into winter quarters, however, then we begin. First this one has a cold; then that one has pain somewhere; and so on it goes, right round the lot of us until we get started again."

That Mr. Sanger's remarks are confirmed by truth was exemplified a year or two ago when a City syndicate offered him £150.000 for his circus. He accepted the offer, stipulating that £50,000 should be paid down on a certain date. Then he became a miserable man, and had to take to his bed ill. Here was the work of his lifetime passing into other hands. “I declare to you, sir," and I fancy I have detected a tear in Mr. Sanger's eye when telling this story, "I almost wished to die rather than see that show that I have travelled scores of times all over these islands with, and over the greater part of the Continent, go off without me. The thought made me fairly desperate; so I wrote to my solicitors, Messrs. Lewis and Lewis, of Ely Place, to get me out of the engagement

This they were able to do honourably enough. The £50,000 that was to be paid down on a fixed date, was not so paid until a few days later, and when it arrived it was returned, the contract being cancelled on the plea that the money had not been paid down at the stipulated time."

Mr. Robertson does not explain why Mr. Sanger takes to himself the title of "Lord," but whether he has a right to it or not, he has secured for his lordship a wider popular recognition than that of the many members of the Second Chamber.

In the year when Sir David Evans was Lord Mayor of London, a schoolboy, on being asked what a peer was, answered

"A lord, sir."

Name one or two."

"Lord George Sanger and the Lord Mayor of London!"

An electric shock of indignation ran through all Afrikanders from the Limpopo to the Cape. All differences between the Cape Colony and the Republic about tariffs, and the like, were forgotten, and it is now quite clear that if ever England wanted to revenge Majuba, there would be an end of her paramount power, although for the moment her arms might conquer. The paramount power cannot live by physical force alone, but by upholding right and justice. It has already received a rude shock. There was at first a strong suspicion that the British Government countenanced the revolution, and it is even now difficult to persuade Afrikanders of the contrary. "Are you now convinced" (writes a distinguished Cape Afrikander) "of the utter falsehood and cowardice of those who tried to coin out of minor grievances a revolution so as to take the Transvaal from its rightful owners. . . . If all the men and all the money England possesses were given at the present moment, it would not bring back the respect she has lost nor the love of just people here, and if ever England is to be looked upon as great here it will be only after she has had the moral courage to clear herself from complicity and disavow this scandalous proceeding." Dutch Afrikanders are too desperately in earnest to be satisfied with what appeared to them half-hearted disavowals, if not of the crime, at least of the criminals. There are no more loyal subjects of the Queen than the Dutch Afrikanders, but "blood is thicker than water," and as long as there is persistent misrepresentation, as long as there are people who try to foment dissension between the two races in order to gain so-called Imperialistic objects, there never will be peace in South Africa.

A COMMERCIAL UNION WITHIN THE EMPIRE.

Sir Frederick Young, Vice-President of the Royal Colonial Institute, writing on this subject, puts forward a scheme of his own, the essence of which is that all goods coming into the Empire from foreign ports should pay a special navy tax or police toll of 2 per cent. He cumbers up his scheme by proposing to establish a Fiscal Parliament; but that is unnecessary. All that is practical in his proposal is contained in the following paragraph:

That a special duty of 23 per cent. be imposed upon foreign produce imported into the whole Empire. It is estimated that this would amount to nearly £9,000,000, which would constitute a common fund which would be appropriated by the Fiscal Parliament as a contribution to the central Government, which at present bears almost the entire cost, for the naval defence of the Empire. This would relieve the Colonies from the payment of subsidies, and would be supplied jointly by the Colonies and Great Britain. Besides being relieved from the payment of subsidies the Colonies would enjoy preferential treatment in the markets of the United Kingdom.

REFORMATION AND REUNION.

Mr. George W. E. Russell, replying to Mr. Birrell's paper on the English Reformation, maintains that the Reformation had little or nothing to do with the mass. The vital point of the Reformation was the repudiation

of the Pope's authority; hence he regards Lord Halifax's attempt to re-establish the unity of Christendom by the recognition of the headship of the Pope as open to the following objections:—

First, we should have to admit that the Pope is infallible in matters of faith and morals; and I, for one, no more believe it than I believe that the earth is square. We must abandon our secure foothold on the creeds and the Bible for the varying and perhaps inconsistent decisions of successive Popes. We must exchange the characteristic virtues of the Church of England-an open Bible, a vernacular liturgy, Communion in both kinds, freedom of marriage for the clergy, freedom of Communion for the laity-for the opposite evils of the Roman system. And, in the region of practical effort, we should renounce our passport to the sympathies of the great AngloSaxon race, which has, to all appearance, broken finally with Rome and all that savours of her. We come then to this. The headship of the Pope is unsupported by Scripture or History, is vehemently repudiated by a great part of modern Christendom, and could not be accepted by us without grievous loss to our spiritual privileges and opportunities.

The utmost that Mr. Russell hopes for in the way of reunion would be an increase of Christian charity between Christian communions, so that without surrendering their distinctive views of truth, they could co-operate for common ends. Mr. Russell's concluding remarks as to the true way of dealing with Nonconformist Christians will be read with interest by those gentlemen. Note, however, that even this liberal-minded churchman rules the Unitarian absolutely out of the Christian pale.

THE ORIGINAL NOTE ON CHINESE DIPLOMACY.

Mr. E. H. Parker translates several official documents from the Court records of the Manchu Dynasty. The documents consist of the Imperial orders issued by the Emperor of China to the King of England after the reception of Lord Macartney. The order begins as follows:-" So then, thou King, far away over many oceans, thou hast inclined thine heart towards civilisation, and has made a point of despatching envoys to respectfully bear a submissive address." "That address," the Imperial order went on to say, "bears witness, O King, to the genuineness of thy respectful submission." The order went on to reject nearly all the proposals made by Lord Macartney. England is treated as a tributary kingdom turning with honest heart towards civilisation, but the suggestions that the missionaries should be allowed to enter the country and merchants trade therein, is rejected with indignation as wanton suggestions for which "it would not be just to hold thee, King, personally responsible." The distinction between Chinese and barbarians he was told is strictly maintained. The desire which thy envoys now express is that barbarous men may be allowed to approach here as they list, which is even more impossible to grant than anything else." The order concludes, "Say not thou wast not warned! Tremble and obey, without negligence, this further command." Things have changed somewhat since then, but in their heart of hearts it is probable that Li Hung Chung holds much the same opinion as the Emperor who dictated this order in 1793.

THE BAB AND BABISM,

Mr. Rees gives an account of the rise of Babism in Persia. It began in 1845 with the preaching of a hand

some young man who called himself the "Gate of Heaven," which, being translated, is " Bab" in Persian. He gathered to himself eighteen apostles and made a convert of many, including among others a beautiful, eloquent and earnest young woman, whose name was Zareen Taj, or the Golden Crown. The Bab followers speedily took up arms against the Shah and were promptly suppressed. The Bab was killed and his corpse cast to the dogs at the age of twenty-seven, while the beautiful Zareen Taj was strangled and burnt in the citadel and her ashes scattered to the winds. The unfortunate Babees were hunted down and exterminated with every conceivable variety of torture, some were crucified, others were built up and left to starve, some were shod like horses, others again were cut to pieces with knives and whips, but not all the resources of the savage torturers could induce them to forswear their faith. No one knows at present how many there are in Persia: it is not considered either safe or polite to refer to them in any way, but there is little doubt that the faith is cherished by many. The Bab's chief achieveIment was the abolition of the veil and his reduction of the number of wives allotted to the true believer from four to two.

In another respect also Bab improved greatly upon Mussulman law in regard to women. Besides the abolition of the veil already spoken of, he abolished the existing law of divorce. For their weakness, Bab prescribed for women short and easy prayers, and he discouraged pilgrimages, saying that wives and mothers were better at home. Other innovations, which, so far as my inquiries went, are at all times honoured in the breach, were his decrees that beards should be shaven, circumcision abandoned, and pipes put out. He was no timeserver, and attacked some of the most cherished institutions of the country, amongst which I would certainly include pipes, beards, and circumcision.

MATRIARCHS.

Everybody knows about patriarchs, bu matriarchs are known only to students, hence it is with considerable interest the reader will turn to Mr. Edward B. Tylor's paper on "The Matriarchal Family System." It seems there are about sixty different peoples in which the matriarchate more or less prevails. In these regions the husband leaves his family and goes to live with his wife. The ladies propose, and the descent passes in the female line. In some cases the bridegroom among the Zunis has to sew clothes and mocassins for his bride, and combs her hair on the terrace in the sun." The woman controls the situation: to her belong all the children, and descent, including inheritance, is on her side. Mr. Tylor points out various social reasons which may lead to matriarchal rather than patriarchal family life. He gives many reasons for thinking that the two great regulations of early civilisation, matriarchy and exogamy, have nothing about them fantastic, outrageous, absurd, but are the practical outcome of the practical purposes of people like-minded with ourselves.

THE WOMAN MOVEMENT IN GERMANY.

The Hon. Mrs. Bertrand Russell writes a well-informed article concerning the present position of the woman movement in Germany. The legal status of woman in the Fatherland from a political point of view is very bad:

Associations founded for political objects may not have women, scholars, or apprentices as members, nor may women, scholars, or apprentices be present at any meetings of such associations." So runs the Prussian Coalition Law, and the laws of Bavaria, Brunswick, and some of the smaller States

impose the same limitations on women; while in Saxony, where the laws allow women to be present at political meetings, they may not be members of political associations. These laws explain in a large measure why there is not in Germany, as in England and America, any strong and wellorganised woman movement.

Mrs. Russell thinks that the only hope for women lies with the Social Democrats. She says:

But the future of the woman movement in Germany undoubtedly lies with the Social Democratic party, the only strong political party in the world that demands the full equality of the sexes. When the middle-class women make demands, they have no political party to represent them; when the working women wish to agitate for anything, they have forty-seven members of the Reichstag to push their claims.

Mrs. Russell may be right, but if so, it only shows the extremely parlous condition of the woman movement in Germany, where public opinion has only now begun to believe that it is possible for a woman to take an interest in social and political questions, and yet still remain a Christian.

A CATHOLIC ON THE MANITOBA SCHOOL QUESTION. Mr. T. C. Down tells the story of the Manitoba school question from the point of view of thoroughgoing advocates of the Remedial Bill. How things are going may be imagined from the following sentence with which he opens his essay :

The history of the past six years of Protestant domination in Manitoba affords such a display of tyranny and oppression as would seem at the present time to be incredible. The treatment of the Roman Catholics, by which they are wholly deprived of the enjoyment of the rights in the education of their children secured to them by the constitution, comes as near to persecution as can well be conceived in these days of boasted toleration and enlightenment.

LONDON MUSIC HALLS.

Mr. Frederick Wedmore reports the result of a little study which he made of the music halls. Mr. Wedmore defends the tableaux vivants, praises the organised dances, but deplores the songs sung by some women, which he confesses are not the songs which he would take any woman of gentle or good mind to listen to. Mr. Albert Chevalier, he says, is incomparably the most reticent and finished artist of the men of the music halls. £400 per week was paid to Yvette Guilbert at the Empire, and Chevalier refused an engagement which would have brought him in £8,000 a year. On the whole he does not think the music hall entertainment can claim to be either elevating or refined. In the popularisation of new discoveries he sees a new vista which may possibly bring a better class of people to the music halls.

MANNERS IN GREAT BRITAIN.

Lord Meath asks whether manners are disappearing from Great Britain. He thinks that a great part of the unpopularity of England is due not to politics or to jealousy, but is the result of personal experience of the rude and overbearing manner of individual Englishmen. Englishmen wear hats in foreign hotels where every foreigner is bareheaded; they will go out to dinner in shooting coats, and walk about the streets of large towns in knickerbockers or mountaineering attire, with an utter disregard to the etiquette of the place where they are. Lord Meath therefore exhorts British men and women to consider whether politeness is not worth preserving, even from an Imperial point of view. There is a good deal in what he says, but on the other hand it is very difficult for Englishmen travelling abroad to pick up without being taught all the delicate