Another ingredient in happiness is physical comfort. We are all much better fed than we were sixty years ago— better housed, better clad: all along the line the standard of comfort has been advanced. The huge barracks in which the working-classes of the great cities now live are not pretty, but consider how much more comfortable they are than the old court of tumble-down cottages, with a street about four feet wide. The new barracks are fully provided with water; they are kept in a sanitary condition as good as any palace of prince or peer; they are light and airy: go into any of the old courts in London - there are a few still at Westminster - and see for yourselves the dirty, dilapidated dens in which the people formerly lived. Then, while you think of the advanced standard of comfort, remember the cheap bread, the cheap tea, the cheap meat, the cheap butter, cheese, bacon, eggs, and fruit, which are now offered to the workingman. Not only have his wages gone up, but their purchasing power has advanced as well. If instead of eighteen shillings a week, he now gets thirty; and, if a shilling now could buy twice as much as a shilling did sixty years ago, the standard of comfort for this man and his family has been advanced indeed.

This standard of comfort, this increase in solid happiness, has by long custom and usage become the right of the people. They consider it as much their right as any of the liberties secured by Act of Parliament. This new right constitutes a danger, because a national disaster might run food up to famine prices, and then we should see, what we have not seen for a long time, the tigerish side of the Anglo-Saxon.

We have learned that the old revolutionary cry has quite died away and is almost forgotten. This also is partly the result of the increased comfort. At the same time the advance of democratic ideas has been most marked. Slowly, but surely, the whole power in the country has passed into the hands of the House of Commons. The dominant idea at the present moment of the English people is that the country must be governed for them and by them. This would have seemed a most terrible thing sixty years ago. That we should be governed by workingmen! Incredible! It is, however, the fact; we are governed by the people.

Only, what the prophets did not understand, the governing power is delegated by the people to representatives who are not, as a rule, workingmen; one or two workingmen are in the House and doing well; the people, however, are very chary of electing one of themselves; they prefer to send to the House as their representatives such men as John Morley and James Bryce-scholars and students, responsible persons whom they know and can trust; they will not send demagogues and windbags and political adventurers.

You know how they treat the House of Lords; so long as it gives no trouble it may remain; but only on condition that it is recruited from new families. If it were to obstruct any really popular movement-which the House will not

do- we should see what would happen. Meantime, the people look abroad and judge for themselves; they observe that the great colonies are all republics and are doing well under republican institutions; if we were not doing well under our institutions, it is certain that the revolutionary cry would be heard again.

As regards work and wages, the people are firmly persuaded that they are entitled to be the dictators; they think that they have a right to exact what wages they think are fair and to work for such hours as they think right. There have been desperate struggles, in which the employers have lost huge sums of money, while the men have suffered terrible privations. It is not for me to discuss in this place the right or the wrong of trades unions; it is enough to state that the workingmen hold this belief and are ready, whenever possible, to act on it.

It is sometimes maintained that the British workman is a socialist - well, it is certainly true that socialism exists in his ranks; yet he is not a socialist. Out of the vague socialism which floats about everywhere are springing up ideas; not adopting the theory of universal equality of work and pay, whether to the able man or to the fool; but ideas as to the rights of labor, ideas as to the power and the share which should be allotted to capital. That these questions should be discussed by the working-classes whom they so closely concern appears to me most wholesome for the State. Capital was formerly a despot; capital took what it pleased and tossed the workman what it pleased; capital can do so no longer.

Capital has now to reckon with a rival power far greater than itself in strength as soon as it proves equally great in resolution. I believe so fully in the sense of justice which underlies everything in our workingman's mind that I do not believe that, however strong he will be, he will ignore the rights of capital.

As to the educational and informing influences of recent years in England, they are only beginning to be felt; everywhere is to be seen the working lad studying in the free library, side by side with those who only read for amusement. The young fellow who studies is going to rise in the world; he will become an employer- or he will become a political leader. We may reckon upon seeing the House of Commons, in fifty years, filled with such popular leaders sent up by the constituents. They will not be necessarily demagogues; they will not be necessarily adventurers seeking fortune and place by politics. Fortunately members of the House of Commons are unpaid this discourages the adventurers; they will, however, be leaders of the people, sprung from the people.

Everything points to the advance of democratic ideas in all directions. For instance, most of the Civil Service is now open to competitive examination; the lads of the Polytechnics will get these appointments; there are some branches not yet open; these will also be thrown open. Law and Medicine now require a five years' training, at a cost of over a thousand pounds; these professions will be thrown open to the young men who can pass the examinations. It is now impossible for a poor lad to enter the army or the navy; by changes in the management and daily life of a regiment or a ship poor lads will be enabled to win commissions.

These changes for the lads and workingmen, I foresee very clearly. With regard to the position of women I also foresee important changes. At the present moment there is a wild and insensate game of "grab" going on. Women admit of no restrictions; they claim everything; they are not satisfied with the whole intellectual field; they would overrun the field of physical labor. They take the men's work at half the pay; they drive the men out of the country; they remove from themselves the possibility of marriage; they deny the coun

try that increase of population which the country has a right to expect. This folly will presently cease; calmer and more sensible counsels will prevail. It will be recognized that Nature assigns limitations and prescribes certain kinds of work for men and certain other kinds for women.

Such is the contrast between the English of 1837 and the English of 1897. I am not ignorant that there are still many, and great, improvements to be effected; but I hope that my readers who have followed me will acknowledge that we are not only advanced but that we are advancing in new directions which will lead the country into paths hitherto unsuspected or contemplated with dread. I regard these steps without anxiety— that is to say, I recognize the dangers, if these lines are pushed out too far. In all human efforts there is danger - if we always thought of the danger we should effect nothing; there is weakness, unworthiness, among the best of men; yet, with my countrymen, the prospect which opens out before them is so splendid that it makes one forget the danger.

Finally, I would above all things awaken - or restore-the mind of any American who may read these pages to more kindly thoughts of this English land than he may perhaps have entertained. I would offer these pages as a small tribute towards the reconciliation of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is not only with England that you have to do— not only with what Shakespeare called,

This royal throne of Kings, this sceptred Isle,
This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden

You have to do with other nations soon to become great nations-Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand,- all with the same language, the same laws, the same institutions, the same literature, the same ancestors, and yourselves. I have told you something of what these people - your cousins think and feel at the present day. Ask yourselves a simple question are the differences between you and ourselves great or are they trifling? Are you on account of those differences going to stand aloof forever from the rest of the Anglo-Saxon race? Or will you take the hands that are held out to you and enter once more into friendship with your cousins?

WALTER BESANT.

GREAT FRENCH WRITERS:

RENOWNED French abbé, on being asked by a young girl for the underlying principle, the clue, so to speak, to French history and civilization, replied, "Taine and Renan are the two eyes of France. Honor them!" And truly through Renan's vivid metaphors we see the great dissolvent forces of the civilization of France, while through Taine's clear, unbiased, practical eyes we see the synthetic, or constructive, forces at work, producing a nation constantly beaten about by a wave of great unrest; from royalty to the bourgoisie; from the extreme piety of Ignatius Loyola to the agnosticism of the nineteenth century; from the corrupt, luxurious court of Louis XIV to Rousseau's idea of a "return to nature;" from the carnage of the Bastile to the iron rule of Napoleon;-a nation of fluctuating extremes and unbelievable

contradictions.

Following in the footsteps of the subject of our sketch, and using his own methods of investigation, we find that we cannot expect to understand the life and writings of Taine, or any other writer, viewed separately and apart from their environment, but as a necessary result of his race and hereditary temperament, of the climatic, social and political conditions of his time, and, lastly, as a result of the progress in national growth. And so, taking a brief glance at some of the more important events of French history preceding and following the birth of Taine, we will form, as it were, a frame for this portrait of a great man.

Of the Revolution I need not speak, nor of the momentary exaltation and subsequent degradation of republican principles, under the domination of the French, body, mind, and soul by the remorseless genius of Napoleon; but taking up the thread afterwards we find France hopeful that in the return of the Bourbons she had seen the last of the great Revolution, that a reign of peace had begun. But the years since 1797 had only served to deepen the chasm between the old nobility and the now thoroughly-aroused working people, and

Louis XVIII, who was physically incapable of decision, found himself in a position where decisive adherence to the cause of the nobility or the bourgoisie might have saved him; but, as Talleyrand cynically remarked, "After twentyfive years of exile, the Bourbons have nothing remembered and nothing forgot."

Divine

As a consequence of this vacillating policy of Louis XVIII his reign was full of unrest, revolts, and conspiracies. At his death, in 1824, he was succeeded by his brother Charles X, who was like Louis in being distracted between two policies and opinions, for he was a bitter Royalist and believed that to the victor belongs the spoils; constitutionalism was to him the most hateful of words-he scorned the restricted policy of the sovereigns of England, and once remarked: "I would rather earn my bread than be king of England." He carried absolutism to such extremes that in 1830, after a reign of six years, he was deposed, and Louis Philippe was crowned, not because of the Rights of Kings," nor heredity; but because he was the choice of the people, "The King of the Bourgoisie" the nobles sneeringly called him. He dared not make his policy a strong one, for he feared the Chamber of Deputies. His reign of eighteen years was one long series of disastrous events, from the foreign wars, the Spanish marriages, the death of the Dauphin, the uprisings of the Orleanists, to the triumphal return of the great Napoleon's body from St. Helena, -until on the eve of his being deposed by the Revolution of 1848 Louis Philippe said, "All is possible to France, an empire or a republic, a Bourbon or an Orleanist, or a president-but one thing is impossible, that any of these should last."

Soon after this, Louis Napoleon, who had been posing as a republican, was chosen president by a majority of 4,000,ooo votes, but the magic of his uncle's career had affected him from his boyhood, and he, too, soon began to dream of being emperor. Outwardly a leader of the people, he resolutely set to work to undermine the governing power of the

Chamber of Deputies, until in 1851 that wonderful piece of political mechanism was set in motion, and in one night Louis Napoleon became Napoleon III. So well was this coup d'état planned, that no unusual occurrences took place. Napoleon was stupendously blind to all opinions but his own, and, as he lacked the clear insight of his great uncle, he succeeded in embroiling himself and France in home and foreign policies that were suicidal to any good or permanent government.

During these years of political discord we find liberal ideas beginning to dominate French art and literature. In the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau, and later in those of Thiers, Victor Hugo, Guizot, Dumas, Zola, and Lamartine; in the speeches of Louis Blanc and Gambetti, we find the most revolutionary sentiments set forth. The art galleries of the Louvre and the Tuileries became the receptacles of much of the most famous art of the world. In this period of rebirth, in the breaking away from the chains of classicism in art and literature, in the midst of revolutionary ideas, Hippolyte Adolphe Taine was born, April, 1828, at Vouziers, a small town on the Seine, near the Ardennes Mountains. His family was among the intellectual aristocracy of France; all were well educated and fairly prosperous, if not exactly rich; some being members of the Chamber of Deputies. From his infancy he was imbued with the doctrine of the rights of man.

His father was a very learned man and taught Taine Latin, Greek and mathematics, while an uncle who had resided a long time in America and England, made the youth familiar with the English language. All that was English fascinated him from an early period. Even as a boy he found great delight in reading books in the language of Shakespeare. While French novels were forbidden him, foreign literature was thrown open to him without restriction. Indeed his father was so pleased with this linguistic disposition of his son, that the greatest freedom was allowed him in his reading. Being cut off from the imaginative works in his own language, Taine early devoted himself to a study of English classics, and probably no English boy of fourteen knew his Shakespeare, his Spenser, and his Milton, as Taine knew them at that

age. The foundation was thus laid for an accurate and extensive study of English literature, to which he afterwards owed a large portion of his celebrity.

When he was thirteen, his father died, and his mother brought him to Paris where she at first placed him as a boarder in a private school; but soon after he entered a preparatory college where he distinguished himself by his intelligence and industry. During all these years he was the object of tender care and unremitting watchfulness on the part of his mother, a woman of warm affections and rare intuition, who, by her sympathy, did much for her talented son.

Before he was twenty he had received three prizes for treatises. These achievements threw open to him the doors of the so-called Normal School, a kind of seminary in which the pupils were trained for professional chairs in the universities. This higher course of study was, however, often used as a stepping stone to a literary career. Edmond About, Prévost-Paradol, Sarcey, were colleagues of Taine, who afterwards became famous. Taine remained at this school for three years, during which time the soundness of his judgment was universally recognized. His fellow students had great respect for him, never venturing to address him otherwise than as M. Taine. He had the power of concentration to such an extent, that it was said he could learn more in one week than most pupils could in a month. This gave him a great deal of leisure which he devoted to the study of philosophy, theology and the Fathers.

Day by

This method of instruction was admirably calculated to stimulate the intellectual activities of students. Ample mental nourishment was provided them, the debates were carried on with the greatest freedom, every question being submitted to the touchstone of reason. day the most varied opinions, political, æsthetic, philosophical, and religious, come into collision in these youthful circles, without any restriction from their liberal professors. On the contrary, they encouraged the utmost freedom in the expression of individual views. The instruction was given in the form of debates in which the evidence was summed up by the professor. Two of Taine's subjects were the mysticism of SainteBeuve, and the philosophy of Hegel.