duce Abyssinia into a dependency; but what will be the use of that? An Italian nation can never grow in Abyssinia, and it is an Italian nation beyond seas which, as we conceive, Italy is longing to found. We wish her every success in the enterprise, if she can find a fitting locale; but in this instance we are convinced her energy is misdirected. Her people colonize better than the French-who, however, did not fail in French Canada, and may not fail ultimately in Algeria- but with a hostile and abnormally brave population under foot, with desert tribes all around, with a land needing irrigation before it can be productive, and with a climate just too hot to allow Europeans to retain their energy, no colony can be expected to grow into a nation. With half the expenditure of force, the Italians might in a few years, by strictly legal processes, get the Argentine Republic into their hands, or repopulate Peru, or even acquire a dominant influence within the empire of Brazil. Almost anything can be done when a kingdom pours out industrious children in such numbers; and what does it matter if the new State is called a colony or not? The Italians surely do not dream of imitating the French in Algeria, and acquiring a new dominion with new conditions of life, but to be treated as if it were a part of

with journalists, to give vent to this regret, and to moan, sometimes with a little malice of meaning, over a diverted career; but, except as regards a most minute class, their melancholy has very little motive. Thought is only greater than armies when it is great thought. There have been men, and even men of reflection, to whom the world owed so much for the expression of their ideas that it would be difficult or impossible to think of the form of active life in which they could have effected better things; but they are very few. The conquest of Gaul was a greater feat than writing the "Commentaries." Ceteris paribus, action is greater, or at least far more useful to mankind than thought, as is proved by the fact that we measure thought by its influence on action. He is the great writer who over a wide area has affected either the lives of men, or those thoughts upon which the conduct of life is based. A biographer is rarely, indeed never, greater than the subject of his biog raphy; nor does the sensible historian reckon himself the superior of those who have made history. The orator, indeed, may be, as regards effectiveness, the equal or the superior of the statesman; but then, in those conditions of mankind amid which alone persuasive speech is a great power, oratory is really not so much literature as action, and action often of the most energetic kind. Mr. Gladstone is not a littérateur because when he desires to pass laws or work a revolution he pours out splendid speeches; he is a man of action who uses oratory as the instrument which, in a country governed by a deliberSIR GEORGE TREVELYAN, in the grace-ative assembly, is the readiest to his ful speech at the dinner of the Royal Academy in which he returned thanks for literature, quoted, as the saddest thing he knew, the saying of a Frenchman who was also a statesman, that "literature leads to everything, provided that you quit it." The sentence is a striking one, a bit of that pemmican of thought which Frenchman perhaps, of all men, best prepare for general consumption; but we do not quite know why Sir George applied to it the epithet sad. He meant, no doubt―as, indeed, he said afterwards that literary men who betake themselves to active life never do good literary work again, literature demanding from her votaries too ex-idan, and Canning, and John Morley as clusive a devotion; but then, why is that, taken by itself, so sad? The epithet implies that work done through the expression of thought is higher than work equally well done by taking part in the active business of life; but how often is that true? It is the custom, particularly

the mother land.

From The Spectator.
LITERATURE AND ACTION.

hand. The man who has commanded an army has done more for his country than any writer on strategy or military history; and the statesman who has passed one good law, more than any philosopher not of such rank that good laws have risen out of his philosophy as directly as effect from cause. One or two men, for example, like Adam Smith, may have enriched mankind more than most financiers; but all the host of writers on finance have hardly accomplished so much for England as Sir Robert Peel, or Mr. Gladstone as his successor in the same great work. Sir George Trevelyan quotes Burke, and Sher

his typical illustrations; but Burke and Sheridan, who succeeded in literature, almost failed in action, for their oratory, brilliant as it was, did not carry votes; while nothing Canning ever wrote could compare for a moment in effect with his foreign policy. He might have written

on liberty forever without securing liberty | he is not doing his best work, that action for millions, as he did when he "called a is more than writing, that if it is in him, new world into existence to redress the he ought to do something, and not simply balance of the old." Mr. Morley, as yet, write. If he can do it, he is shirking the is an unknown quantity in the argument; world's work, and feels that he will be but suppose Home Rule for a moment to more of a man when he is immersed in it, be carried and to succeed. Could all Mr. when he is outside helping the machine Morley ever wrote, or gave promise of along. He ought, he feels, to cure, inthe potentiality of writing, be compared stead of writing about disease. Very often for an instant, in its results for mankind, he mistakes himself, miscalculates his own with a true and a lasting reconciliation be- powers, and in the bitterness of failure, tween Ireland and Great Britain? There aggravated by temperament, curses his is a little literature the importance of folly in giving up his pen; but he acted, which it is impossible to overrate; but nevertheless, from a motive which reveals we habitually overrate the importance of his inner judgment. Take Mr. Morley. literature in the mass, and especially its Mr. Morley has not succeeded yet, and is kindling effect. Action is contagious as weighted by a constitution not perfectly well as thought, and the hero makes suited to our wearying form of political heroes as quickly as any poetry of heroism. battle; but Mr. Morley has already done Tyrtæus was a great poet, but Leonidas more in the forum than he ever did in the made Sparta. No thinker could do more closet, and if he went back to his old labor to raise the standard of duty than General for any other reason than health, would Gordon's example; and it is in the states- be the first to acknowledge that, to his manship of great statesmen, rather than own mind and inner conviction, the retracin their thoughts, that the lesser statesmen ing of his steps signified failure. The seek guidance. Even in theology, where life of action was the larger life, with more thought would seem to be all, it is the in it, more to bring out the whole strength teacher's life that compels conviction, at of its votary, more to be sure of in its least as much as his words - unless, in- ultimate results. This is so true, that we deed, those words are accepted, like Ma- suspect that one reason why so few men hommed's, as directly divine. That the of literature who have become statesmen pleasure of the world is sadly diminished ever write again, is that they feel writing when men of literature take to politics, is to be so useless beside action, that they often true; but the other results of that are hardly attracted to such work. They course may, and frequently do, outweigh have plenty of time, occasionally at least, any benefit to be derived from intellectual under our system; but they have lost the pleasure. The admirers of incisive writ- main impulse, that quantum of belief in ing lost much when Lord Salisbury took the utility of their writing without which to statesmanship; but then, a great party few men, except for money, would ever gained a leader, and England a premier be literary producers. The essay seems whose guidance may far outweigh in value so trivial beside the speech which carried for his people tons of the most acridly or defeated the bill, the book so feeble clever of "contributions." It is, we fear, beside the project of legislation. Virgil when men of literature fail in action, and was greater than Augustus? Perhaps, if then only, that the world has reason to we remember his influence on men in the regret their divergence from their first Renaissance; but was Horace? of all mere littérateurs who ever lived, perhaps the most successful. We should disagree wholly with Sir George Trevelyan's sentence, and rather say that one of the pleasantest features of modern literature is that it opens the door to so many for the higher work of guiding or ruling, and that once opened, they embrace it forever. Whether they are the best of guides or rulers is a different matter, on which we shall not at the fag-end of an article ven ture to enter; but we may just add this sentence. Of the three ruling men of our time who have accomplished most on the Continent, two, Cavour and Bismarck, have been aristocrats trained to diplo

career.

If this is not so, how shall we explain the frequency with which men of literary promise abandon the study and the pen for a career of action? Usually, to such men the quieter career is by far the pleasanter. Is it all vanity, a desire to be more visible, a wish for the higher place in society which society, with an incurable perversity that suggests instinct, persists in assigning to the statesmen above the thinkers? We do not believe it. The literary character is not exempt from vanity, but it is usually simple, and the littérateur who goes out to the battle is mainly influenced by a secret sense that

From The Saturday Review.
CENTRAL-ASIAN ASPARAGUS.

macy; but the third, Thiers, who really ing being peculiarly grateful to the inexsaved France in 1870 from the Commune, pert equestrian, who scarcely feels the as well as from the Germans, was essen- usual results of hard trotting) or for transtially a littérateur who accepted the port service. The hares are still taller, French statesman's advice, and" quitted hardier, and more speedy, while their huge, it." His career is scarcely a proof that it erect ears afford excellent cover to the is a sad step to take. How much book rider. So far some little difficulty has would have compensated France for his been felt in breaking these hares in for decision that 66 the republic divides us military purposes. They are also disleast," that is, for gaining seventeen tinctly "gun-shy," and a charge of harery years of opportunity to regain her strength? (if "camelry," why not "harery "?) need not appal even the British soldier, with his tin bayonet and nursery pea-rifle. As the frogs of Akhal Tekiz are a good deal bigger than ordinary crocodiles, there is some idea of mustering a frog force for river service. The bees also rival the celebrated "best bee" of Slavonic fable. Everything, indeed, in Akhal Tekiz is in the same heroic proportion, and the Zoological Gardens of St. Petersburg are going to be at once enlarged by several hundreds of versts for the convenience of including specimens. The usefulness of these central Asian fauna for the transport of the celebrated naphtha and petroleum of the steppes is also incalculable. With all these advantages, it seems a curious fact in human nature that Russia does not feel at all inclined to stop in her eastern and southern progress. Asparagus such as Alexander never knew already overshadows her markets, and makes her independent of the corn of Odessa and the staple tallow candle of popular delusion. But ambition, as George Osborne remarks in the surviving chapter of his "Ethics," is selfish and insatiable. Russia, not content with asparagus beyond the dreams of Covent Garden, and with beans probably equal to that of the celebrated Jack, has her eye on the pagoda-tree, and is intriguing with Mr. Patrick Casey. Fortunately the pagoda-tree has been pretty exhaustively shaken by this time, and may produce less than the inheritors of unparal leled asparagus expect. Better it were to examine, with scientific minuteness, the interesting problem, Who were the mysterious race that cultivated the Akhal Tekiz asparagus to its present gigantic proportions? Science maintains that wild asparagus is weedy and slender. Only under cultivation does it grow about as thick as the human thumb. Who, then, cultivated it till it became as thick as the human arm? Or might it not be still more scientific to ask who floated, in a season not more silly than all recent seasons, this portentous substitute for the enormous gooseberry?

CENTRAL Asia is the land of romance and fable. Here are lamas, ants as large as foxes, according to Herodotus, and forests of asparagus, useful as cover, and invaluable as food to the armies of Russia. In the steppes of Akhal Tekiz the grass grows as tall as a tall man, and as thick as the arm of the late Mr. Jackson, Lord Byron's tutor. Enormous flocks of canards have their habitation in the thickets of asparagus, and are exported for European consumption. One single tree of asparagus will feed ten Russian soldiers, and we only hope that the entire Russian military force may be maintained for years on this agreeable fruit of the earth, with or without melted butter, according to taste. By the way, India is the land of melted butter (the natives call it ghee), and it would not surprise us to find Mme. de Novikoff arguing that India is therefore naturally part and parcel of the czar's dominions. He who owns the grass has a natural, indefeasible claim to the ghee. The sweet reasonableness of this must have already occurred to Mr. Gladstone, who has been flirting with the vegetarian vote.

While the Standard devotes a leading article to the central-Asian asparagus, other marvels of the latest steppes the czar has taken appear to have escaped the notice of the newspapers. The "shoots of the asparagus have a range of fifteen thousand yards, with a low trajectory and an explosive power which is to melinite as melinite is to gunpowder. The difficulty of transport is at once overcome by the size, docility, and swiftness of the rabbits and hares which, ignorant of Sir William Harcourt's bill, grow to magnificent proportions. The common rabbit of Akhal Tekiz reaches the mean height of fifteen hands, and its speed is in proportion. These animals are invaluable, either for mounted infantry (their downy cover

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