What noble house is there, however illustrious may be the record of its achievements through the ages, which could strike the balance and say that it did not remain immeasurably in its country's debt? We have endeavoured to indicate some of the ways in which a portion of that debt may be discharged by the present aristocracy of England, and especially by its younger members. We have done this without adverting to the difficult question of a reform in the constitution of the House of Lords. We believe that such a reform ought not to be much longer delayed, and that, if wisely conceived, it would strengthen and not weaken the genuinely conservative forces of our polity. But such reforms as we should wish to see in the House of Lords would leave it still a strong embodiment of the hereditary principle. We have, therefore, assumed that in some form or other the great trust of legislation remains hereditary in the aristocracy. We have assumed that those of them on whom that trust devolves will take a genuine and continuous interest in its discharge. This last assumption, it must be admitted, is far from being borne out by recent facts, but it is essential to any rational support of the hereditary principle. Attendance in the Upper Chamber whenever there is public business of importance under consideration must sooner or later come to be a condition, whether imposed by parliamentary rule or by the conscience of the individual legislator, of continued membership of that body. The vital matter is that the aristocracy should prove themselves generally worthy of the great responsibilities attaching to a class which being supported by law in the possession of resources placing its members far beyond the need of work for daily bread, and in constant touch with means of culture, is bound to render public service in the spheres of legislation, of administration, and of social leadership.

That the nation at large desires to see such service rendered by the aristocracy is demonstrated by its readiness to give the members of that class full opportunities of displaying and of developing their fitness for rendering it. The need for such public service as a leisured and cultivated class can best render, if its members are willing to take the trouble, is greater now in England than at any former period. The machinery of local government in the counties has been developed in every direction, and is sure to receive important further developments, and there is no part of the machine in the working of which valuable aid may not be rendered by the hereditary owners of the soil. The need for infusing higher ideals into the government of the great industrial and commercial centres

of

of population is recognised by their inhabitants, and the neighbouring aristocracy are able to give very important assistance towards the spread and the realization of those ideals. The social separation of town and country is a source of needless weakness and limitation of outlook to both, and it is unquestionably in the power of the aristocracy to put an end to that separation. Problems of immense magnitude and distracting complexity weigh upon the public mind in regard to the relations between Capital and Labour, and the conditions of life among the poor; and there are many members of the aristocracy who, by throwing themselves into the work of the University and public school Settlements, may both minister directly to the sweetening and elevation of the social atmosphere of the poorest quarters of our great cities, and acquire knowledge and influence by which they will be enabled to affect beneficially the action of legislators on the one hand and labour leaders on the other. In all the spheres of action to which we have referred there is abundant evidence that the acceptance of their responsibilities by the members of the aristocracy will be welcomed by the people at large, if only they will take the trouble necessary to qualify themselves for the worthy discharge of their high trust, and apply themselves as seriously to the duties involved in it as they do to the fulfilment of functions of Imperial responsibility—or to the pursuit of the field sports in which they are so admirably proficient. For our part, we will not believe that the conditions thus laid down will be deemed too severe by the inheritors of the most splendid opportunities and the most inspiring traditions which ever descended to any class in any nation in the world's history.

Vol. 184.-No. 367.

X

ART.

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.—1. Das Leben F. Nietzsche's. Von seiner Schwester. Leipzig, 1895.

2. Die Werke F. Nietzsche's. Eight Vols. Leipzig, 1896. 3. Thus Spake Zarathustra.

1896.

4. The Case of Wagner, &c. London, 1896.

Translated by Dr. Tille. London,

Translated by Thos. Common.

5. Der Einzige und sein' Eigenthum. Von Max Stirner. Zweite Auflage. Leipzig, 1882.

And many other Works.

SOME

NOMEWHERE about the year 1716, so runs the story, a Polish gentleman belonging to the noble house of Nietzsky was condemned to death for having conspired as a Protestant, with other Protestants, against the Republic. He made his escape, with wife and child, into German territory. Of him nothing more is known; and even these details may be little else than a legend. But Friedrich Nietzsche, whose life and opinions we are proposing to narrate, was proud of his Polish origin; nor did his restless, brilliant, self-centred, and unmanageable character, which at last broke down into madness, belie the affinities whereby we are led to think, if not, as he would persuade us, of Copernicus, yet certainly of Chopin. He is the latest, and by no means the least significant, of those spirits that, like the too often quoted Mephistopheles, 'say No' to an entire civilization. His one veto, his Nie pozwalam, or 'I decline to agree,' uttered with explosive rhetoric, and flowing out into ten thousand aphorisms, has made him the hero as well as the prophet of free-thinkers. To him the Church seems an effete superstition, the State mere tyranny, metaphysics the ghost of religion sitting upon its grave, morality a bugbear, Vol. 184.-No. 368.

Y

law

law the enemy of life, and everything permissible so long as men please themselves.

This Great Charter, drawn in outline more than half a century ago by Max Stirner,-whom Dr. Nordau brushes aside as a crazy Hegelian,'-finds in Nietzsche such a wealth of light and colour-it is proclaimed with so sweeping an eloquence, and, we must add, with such damnable iteration'that none can marvel if the anarchists of all nations flock to his standard. What, in comparison with his laughing, singing, and dancing strophes are the pale arguments of a Max Stirner, the rants and furies of Bakunin, the geographical lectures and moral-revolutionary pleadings of Prince Kropotkin, or the halting deductions of Mr. Herbert Spencer? And in the deep gloom which hangs over Nietzsche, in his wanderings of the mind and the feet through so many high and wild landscapes, in the pathos of contrast suggested by his early and his latter years, in his present condition of insanity without hope, while his books are sumptuously edited, carefully translated, and studied from New York to St. Petersburg, all the elements of tragedy are mingled.

Those who suffer persecution for a creed will naturally be drawn to preach it; and the family of the Polish fugitive, once established on a peaceful soil, dedicated themselves to the service of the Lutheran Church. Friedrich, the grandfather of our anarchist, born at Bibra in 1756, was Pastor of Wollmirstadt in Thuringia, Doctor of Divinity, and Superintendent at Eilenburg. He published Sermons, vindicated the Second Epistle of Peter against Grotius, offered a Rational View of Religion, Education, Loyalty, and Benevolence' to those whom the present excitement in the world of theology' seemed likely to trouble; and, dying at the age of seventy, left behind him the reputation of a worthy and learned parson. He was twice married, and had ten children. His second wife, sister of Dr. Krause and widow of Superintendent Krüger, exercised no small influence over the household in which young Friedrich grew up at Naumburg on the Saale. Like all his kinsfolk, she was sincerely religious, but in the somewhat light-tempered fashion which dwelt more upon making the world happy than upon her neighbours' sinfulness. Two of her sons became clergymen, and Karl Ludwig, the father of that boy who was to bring his Lutheran ancestors so much fame and shame, not only distinguished himself in his University course at Halle, but while quite a young man was appointed as tutor of the Princesses of Sachsen-Altenburg, one of whom afterwards became Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, and a second Grand

Duchess