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and science, as Freeman and some of our historians dream of doing. the events of history are so simple that the mere words convey them adequately: that is as much as to say there is no human element in them; or, if there be a human element, no resources of art are more than enough, none are enough indeed, to give you the realities of the life of the past. Mere processions of names and events are not realities, else the marriage columns of The Times would be themselves romances. And you must choose which you will deal with. If there is any special good to be got from catalogues of battles, sieges, laws, treaties, these things can be given with only such style as is needed to expound the discoveries of science: they are science, of a sort. But if your object is to convey a poignant, an actual idea of events in which men take a part, do you suppose that it needs style to tell a fictitious story, and no style to tell the verities of human existence? In such a case, then, you must have recourse to all that art can muster; and that speech which makes the thing most real is the best of styles. Such is the style of Carlyle in his French Revolution; and such Michelet's style. They, at all events, give you the actualities of the past as the writers see them. You will say perhaps: "Not as they really were." By that you mean, not as they would have seemed to you. That, of course, is possible. In this case it is as with a painter painting a picture. He may not be conscientious. But the very first condition of his painting any sort of reality is, that he should learn to see with his own eyes. If all the while he is at work he is thinking of your judgment, of what your eyes would see, his pains are lost before he begins.

There is indeed this point of truth in Gautier's doctrine, as we stated it just now, that ideas and the language

which conveys them cannot be treated as things separate, and that style, to be good, must seem inevitable. This would be just the case in an imaginary dialogue between two persons in fiction. If you could suppose Stevenson and Whistler and the other Stevenson (Bob) and Henley (if you like) discoursing on this subject under the sign of the Mermaid in the Zodiac, and the stenograph of the dialogue brought down to us, you would (suppose you knew the interlocutors) know infallibly who had uttered each sentence, though the discourse might have taken a direction you could not foresee. And in that other sort of dialogue whereof I have spoken, the second member in it, who is the reader, should know inevitably that it is you who say such and such things, and not another. That, I imagine, is what Gautier was driving at; and that is what every writer more or less vaguely feels. Only, he often seeks odd ways of bringing the result about; as French art-students try and make themselves conspicuous by wearing strange velveteen garments and fantastically slouched hats. They never reflect nor perceive that, as half their comrades do the same, they are in fact disguised, and not displayed.

This is the very heart of the mys tery of style-the knowing how to be individual and natural at once. Yet I question whether mystery be the right word to use, if it make you think of the "mystery" of wood-carving or the "mystery" of cobbling. These can be acquired by practice; but the essential of that is a gift of Nature. All that a man can achieve is to be natural: all that he can undo is to hide his individuality, if he have one, by affectation. But it cannot be said that every man, however free from affectation, is in literature an individual. He may be so in life. "To be original you have only got to be sincere," Carlyle says. In life perhaps.

But not in literature: that is not enough; though it is the first necessity. There is not one "you" but manythere is with all of us-according to your moods. You are not compelled on every occasion to show your heart of hearts

To preach as never sure to preach again;

And as a dying man to dying men.

Style is, in one sense, an easier matter to a Newman, always intensely in earnest, or to a Carlyle, than to an Elia or a Thackeray, or any one who places continually a point of irony between himself and his audience. But their attitude does not need or presuppose the least of affectation. Always, be your mood what it may, you will seek and hope to find the words which belong to it, which make ambiguity and misunderstanding between you and the reader as unlikely as such can be made. Only, I hope that, instead of being one of your many "yous," you will not fancy yourself Shakespeare, or Milton, or Carlyle, or Mr. Meredith, or Mr. Kipling: for, for anyone out of his childhood in life or letters, on such a road lies lunacy.

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There is an opposite kind of folk who never know if they have individual opinions, tastes, feelings, or have them not; or else are afraid of being detected, which comes to the same thing. So they take refuge behind the hackneyed words and phrases of a language, the commonest commonplaces speech; and they mistake that for simplicity. It is nothing of the sort. An individual view exacts a certain distinctiveness, and that is a certain distinction of language. It must, for instance, be distinguished from journalese, which aims the other way, which tries after the trite phrase and image, because at the first reading these will catch a larger number of suffrages. Not long ago I saw, in one of our

weeklies, a plea for the writing of a kind of poetry which should come nearer the facts of life and not appeal so much to the imagination! What did the writer mean by the "facts of life"? The scientific facts? Poetry has nothing to do with such. It has to do with nought at all that is not touched with imagination. Nor has style in prose. So long as you are recording facts in a scientific way you have no need of style, as has been already said: and to dress these up in any form of language but the most familiar would be an insincerity. Style begins when the art of writing begins; and that is just when you present something human, some character and some emotion (the first implies the second), the character and emotion of an imaginary being, or your own character and emotion, face to face with the reader, the delight or humor or admiration or wonder you find in that thing of the external world or that thought of the metaphysical world. But all words, by the frequency of their use, lose something of their virility; and if you never stepped outside the range of your journal or your everyday conversation, you could never express an idea or a feeling which was essentially yours.

The two extremes meet here in being alike disguises-those who, when speaking of familiar things in commonplace conditions, seen under no stress of feeling, clothe their thoughts in a language culled out of dictionaries, and those who fancy they can, at no time, in no circumstances, use words which are not in the currency of every day. The first, like our art-students in their velveteens, if they attract attention to their garb withdraw it from their faces; and the second hide their faces altogether.

This is as much as need be said here of style, while leaving out of account the element of intonation; for that will best be explained if at a later time I

write of poetry. This is indeed a necessary part of all good prose—the mere cadence of sound. But the part which it plays in prose is less than, and yet parallel to, its function in verse. One of the conditions of all poetry-and likewise of all good style in prose—is that the writer's mind should be crowded with ideas, that he should have much more to say than he can possibly find space to say. Why in such circumstances he must call in the aid of intonation, and the cadences of words, that is to show hereafter. Let it be enough to notice in this place, that this particular part of style-the intonation, the tonality, if you like that word the best-is in prose used most often for expressing the personality of the writer: the rise and fall of sentences, the use of long words or short words, the mere alternation of vowel-sounds: these things belong more or less to each writer who has a style of his own -to Macaulay one sort, to Johnson one sort, to Hooker one sort, to Thackeray one sort of cadence or tonality in their prose, taken as a whole. It is this part of style, more than any other, which is "of the man himself."

The task then before our critic who aspires to be a critic of style is no easy labor. And one cannot lay down for him golden rules. But I am sure the first and best one is, that he should get rid of the idea that style is a kind of polish, or an external ornament added to the essential of writing. The second danger (but that is like unto the first) is, that he should think he must be on the watch to detect and The Independent Review.

make known the beauties of an author's style. Horace stands straight in his path with the maxim touching the summa ars. That style alone is of the best which is in the first place unobtrusive, in the second which does in the long run convey an impression of individuality, in the third place of an individuality high above the commonplace. Macaulay never achieved this third stage. But our modern "stylist" aims at this alone, neglecting the first two conditions, nay, spurning them as hindrances to his art.

I will not end without glancing at a third conception of style that notion of Flaubert's that language comes as it were a gift from the outward object or influence which is the subject of the writing, or the cause of it. Flaubert's theory was (we know) that there was one right way of describing any subject for description-say a Norman farm like that where Madame Bovary was born and bred-one right way and no other. And I cannot see but that this amounts to a theory that the style must come from without, not from within. I bring this doctrine upon the tapis, but I do not mean to discuss it. At a first glance, it seems to have no meaning; at a second to be at any rate in direct contradiction, not only to all that has been said in this article, but to all known theories of style. Notwithstanding, it is a doctrine to which I, for one, not a little ineline. If I were to give my reasons of agreement, they would seem almost mystic. And so I rather refrain.

C. F. Keary.

We are nowadays constantly within hearing of elections and electioneering; and side by side with the clamor of this machinery complaints are as constantly heard of the unsatisfactory character of the results accomplished. Parliamentary institutions may be said to be past being on their trial. The newer age condemns them. If these complaints had been confined to the experience of Parliament in some European countries, we might be content with the old explanation that the mischances arose from a foolish attempt to apply the principles of Parliamentary government to races and communities not prepared for their reception. Why complain if a Slav Sobranje breaks down, or even if an Austrian Reichsrath proves unworkable? Unfortunately, the complaints are perhaps more frequently heard from Anglo-Saxon communities, where the genius of the people has been supposed pre-eminently fitted for the successful management of Parliaments, and where long-standing use has made the forms and methods of Parliamentary procedure familiar to every citizen. Mr. Bryce has told us of the curious length to which popular feeling in respect of their Legislatures has run in some of the Western States. They are debarred from meeting more than a strictly limited number of days in the year, or perhaps from meeting oftener than every other year. A more recent form of restraint, which has, I be lieve, become established in one or two instances, would require that no Act of the Legislature should have the force of law until it has been submitted to and approved by a popular vote. The principle of a Referendum, familiar enough in Swiss politics, has not yet been seriously discussed among

ourselves, but it was acted upon in Australia, where the Constitution of the Commonwealth was submitted to popular votes after having been approved by the Legislatures of the constituent States. Opinions will doubtless differ as to what would have been the result had some recent Acts of Parliament-for example, the Licensing Act or the Education Act-been submitted to a plébiscite of the nation, as a condition precedent of their becoming law; but the suggestion of such a procedure may not be unprofitable to consider, and the fact that it can be made illustrates an abiding uncertainty as to whether Parliament can always be trusted as an expression of the national will.

We must approach the subject in a different manner if we would form a correct estimate of the decline of Parliamentary authority among ourselves, It would be well in the first place to recall how that authority stood in its highest manifestation, say during the fifty years which followed 1832. What were the distinguishing characteristics of Parliamentary action during that half-century? As Mr. Bagehot pointed out, Parliament evolved a Committee called the Cabinet, to which was entrusted the administration of the several political departments and the preparation of the principal new projects of law. The expression of the will of the majority of the Legislature, and presumptively of the nation, was thus secured, but the service of Parliament went much beyond this. Within its Sessions the conduct of the Administration was continuously criticised, and the House of Commons justified its claim to be the Grand Inquest of the nation by the discussion of the grievances of all classes of the people.

The majority ruled through the Ministry. Minorities were heard with growing success through the representatives of discontented sections and the advocates of progressive change. One set of men pressed for economy of expenditure, and materially helped to secure it. Another set exposed the wants and the sufferings of the day-laborers, whether in the field, mine or factory, or on shipboard. Another set directed attention to the criminal law and its punishments, especially that of transportation, and, in connection with this last, our colonial relations necessarily came under review. Irish representatives could not fail to press upon their fellow-members the grievances only too plentifully supplied through the bad laws and bad administration of the sister island. Yet another illustration, which the reader may have earlier expected, is found in the battle against the evil legislation which throttled industry and commerce, and imposed unjust taxes on the food of the poorest of the people. Such activities were the glory of Parliamentary history, and whilst they severally ended in success, more or less complete when the majority and the Ministers representing the majority found themselves carrying through the measures of reform so long agitated, it must ever be remembered that it was through minorities, and private members representing minorities, that the work of conversion was begun and conducted up to the last stage of victory. There was work outside as well as within Parliament. The platform and the Press aided in the labor. But the highest education which animated the platform and instructed the Press was achieved in Parliament, where advocacy and criticism met, and the inertia of Conservative opinion was overcome by the energy of reason.

It would be a pitiful contrast to go step by step through a comparison of the Parliament of the mid-nineteenth

century and Parliament as it appears at the opening of the twentieth century. We cannot get rid of Ireland, and as long as money is voted for the service of Irish departments the defects of Irish government will continue to be brought under review. But apart from this, how complete is the change! The old combination of the energy of private members and the activity of Ministers has disappeared. The time allotted to the former has been curtailed, and new obstacles have arisen to prevent them from effectively using the hours still left at their command. Forms of procedure have been developed or abused, so as to takeaway in the House of Commons the power of bringing under discussion subjects which most urgently require it. The transformation is admitted, and is not unfrequently justified. It is claimed that the work of Parliament is. to pass laws, and laws can be passed only when introduced by a Government commanding the confidence of the Legislature. Private members are reduced to impotence, but they deserve. no better fate. They accomplish at best an idle intrusion into the arena and a waste of time that could be usefully employed. If the records of the last century are appealed to, the answer is that all the great work then required to be done has been done, and there is nothing left now to parallel the exigencies of the past. This line is taken by those who voice the majority which desires no change. I have no doubt a similar opinion was cherished, if not expressed, by faithful supporters of Ministers fifty years ago. It betrays a singular lack of imagination, not to say a dull unintelligence, as to the capabilities of the future. The politician must be strangely constituted who thinks that our land laws are beyond the discussion of change, and that no Parliamentary time could be well spent in canvassing proposals for