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argues that one result is that we escape the waste of talent that other nations suffer, because their clever men come into politics late in life and their political careers are liable to interruptions, whereas we have a kind of permanent supply of rich and leisured men able to begin their training in politics in their youth and to devote themselves to public life without the cares and distractions that divide the energies of ordinary men. He argues that another result is the good humor of politics. If a Minister loses office his fate is not very dreadful. He is not exiled to the obscurity and the distresses of a private and laborious career. He is still a member of the governing class, enjoying a good deal of power and a great deal of consideration.

Office was one of the occupations of his comfortable life, and it will one day come his way again. To this Mr. Low attributes that state of things which is often dwelt on with satisfaction as the distinction of our political life, the private friendships that live and flourish amid political hostilities. The prizes of our public life are not forfeited by failure. When failure meant the risk of impeachment politics was a savage game. In America and France failure means for many a politician a relapse from eminence and splendor to the anonymous routine of the life of the crowd. Our statesmen have no such prospective penalties to stimulate or embitter their energies, and they live in consequence a less eager and ferocious life. Nobody, we think, will question the accuracy of Mr. Low's analysis of these consequences, an analysis that is made sine ira aut studio. But it is worth while to continue his analysis a little further. The existence of a class that can be called on from its youth to undertake the work of government, and a class that Englishmen have persisted in summoning to that task, leads at least to two

other consequences besides that recorded by Mr. Low. One is that it excludes other men from their share in government. From one point of view this is an economy, for it means that the country is governed by men who need not do anything else. From another it may mean most extravagant waste, for the men who are excluded or who remain in retirement because there are others who have leisure to govern, may perhaps be far more competent than the men of leisure. The fortunate class on which we come to rely may give us a hundred incapables for one genius; but it is the genius who is apt to be quoted as the illustration of the working of this social law, just as it is men like Pitt and Burke rather than George Selwyn or Duddington whom one often associates with the system of rotten boroughs. Another consequence is that the habit of calling on this class for the work of government has grown into a habit of calling on them for all work of distinction and eminence. The class that gave us our rulers comes to give our railways their directors, our British Associations their presidents, our learned and artistic societies their leaders. Thus this kind of predestined specialism in politics leads to a kind of scattered amateurishness in other things. Because certain men are supposed to inherit particular gifts and opportunities for public work of one kind, they are supposed also to be the right men to put at the head of movements and enterprises that are by their nature related to special arts and aptitudes. All our institutions, whether they are concerned with learning, art, philanthropy, or anything else, come to take their color from this political habit and to consider that for them too their natural leaders are the leaders of politics and society. The Primrose League tends to become their model. The social relationships of politics

are in a sense one aspect of the unreality and irrelevance produced by this state of things. Nobody wants to see politics made into a life-and-death struggle between persons, but there was a certain wholesome instinct Mr. underlying Pickwick's horror when he saw his counsel engaged in amicable conversation with Mrs. Bardell's counsel. Much the same feeling was in the mind of Morris when he made one of his Utopians express contempt for the mutual amenities of politicians who, if they believed what they professed to believe, ought to have treated each other in a very different spirit. In one sense, indeed, high society represents to-day more completely than it did a century ago the social concentration of politics. If England was governed in the eighteenth century by the great houses and the fashionable clubs, they were rival houses and rival clubs. Brooks's and White's waged war on each other, though fortunately it was only rarely a war in the streets. To-day the inner cabinet of fashion knows no distinctions of politics. Leading statesmen of both parties affect the same social group and frequent the same salons. They draw their inspirations from the same source. The modern representatives of Brooks's and White's would be found spending their week-end under one roof and round one bridge table instead of composing Rolliads and AntiJacobins from rival gambling rooms. An amiable spectacle, but its effect on politics goes far. For one thing it is easier for a conspiring influence to penetrate and dominate both parties. For another, this air of unreality means that in public discussion there tends to be a truce on topics that would wound this spirit of comfortable convention. We like to be shocked, but only by paradoxes or things that do not strike us very intimately. Realities are kept The Speaker.

in their place.
In an article in the
Independent Review, adorned with some
more of his living translations of
Euripides, Mr. Gilbert Murray traces
the meaning of the "Troades" and de-
scribes how Athens, fresh from the
sack of Melos, had to gaze on that over-
powering picture of the things women
suffer at the hands of conquerors.
Could modern England, if it were in
such circumstances, endure such a
poignant contact with the real facts?

Mr. Low is far more concerned to
analyze than to vindicate the modern
conditions of politics. His book, we
hasten to add, travels, of course, over
a great many tracts that we have not
touched on, for it is a singularly com-
plete study of all the main institutions
and methods of government. But the
particular discussion on which we have
dwelt has a special interest, because
Mr. Low evidently thinks this state of
things will not last. The movements
that threaten its life come from vari-
ous quarters. One is an attempt, with
pitfalls and dangers of its own, it is
true, to found a party that will spring
from sources as remote as possible
from these influences. Another is the
automatic pressure of the difficulties
and embarrassments of government, a
pressure that has broken down the
confidence of Mr. Sidney Low, as it did
that of Mr. Bernard Holland, in the
endurance of the existing Unionist cen-
tralization. When this form of govern-
ment ceases we shall lose the advan-
tages that Mr. Low traces to it, but we
shall also be released from disadvan-
tages that we have alluded to. Above
all, we shall gain the power and vigor
and vision of democracy, for the chief
objection to government by a very
limited and comfortable class is not
that it governs for its own interests,
but that it sees the interests of the na-
tion through the medium of its own
habits.

CZAR! LOUIS XVI.! ADSIT OMEN.

Peace on his lying lips, and on his hands
Blood, smiled and cowered the tyrant, seeing afar
His bondslaves perish and acclaim their Czar.
Now, sheltered scarce by Murder's loyal bands,
Clothed on with slaughter, naked else he stands-
He flies and stands not now, the blood-red star
That marks the face of midnight as a scar.
Tyranny trembles on the brow it brands,

And shudders toward the pit where deathless death
Leaves no life more for liars and slayers to live.
Fly, coward, and cower while there is time to fly.
Cherish awhile thy terror-shortened breath.

Not as thy grandsire died, if Justice give Judgment, but slain by judgment thou shalt die. Pall Mall Gazette.

Algernon C. Swinburne.

THE WELSH

The religious awakening, which is now convulsing Wales, has come with all the force of a dramatic surprise. A few months ago not many persons in the Principality, and nobody outside its limits, would have believed that the revival which finds in Mr. Evan Roberts, if not its leader, at least its figurehead, was close at hand. Educated men were of course aware that alike to the Franciscan friar and to the Methodist itinerant, the Welsh people had lent a willing ear. It was, at least in the Principality itself, a matter of common knowledge that between the middle of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century revival after revival had swept over Wales, creating a religious enthusiasm in the mass of the people which the brutality and stupidity of a Whig and latitudinarian episcopate forced almost in spite of itself into the nonconformist chapel. After 1859 however the voice of the revivalist was heard no more on the

REVIVAL.

hillside.

The talk of the old folks, who had in the golden days of Methodism trod many a weary league to hear John Elias preach on the green at Bala, has kept alive in the countryside the tradition of the fathers of Welsh nonconformity. Still, for the last forty years the mind of nonconformist Wales has been turned from the other-worldliness of the revival days to such mundane matters as politics and education, chapel building and sectarian organization. During this period the chapel has been the greatest political power in the Principality, and a system of higher education has been organized on a secular basis. With the political triumph of Welsh dissent however its enthusiasm, if not its spirituality, departed from it. Meanwhile although the Established Church in Wales has made considerable progress in recent years, it has failed to shake off entirely the numbing Erastian tradition of the eighteenth

century. Its higher dignitaries are still rather Establishment than Church defenders. A religious revolution seemed therefore until yesterday impossible in Wales. The most reasonable forecast of its religious future was that the philosophic rationalism of the B.A. preacher of the Welsh University would convert many of the richer Welsh dissenters to theological beliefs closely resembling those which serve in place of a faith to the modern French Protestant, that the large mass of Welsh nonconformists would either sink into religious indifference, or gradually drift back into the Established Church.

"O cæcas hominum mentes!" To-day Wales is once more in the throes of a religious convulsion. Again mysterious visions are seen, again mysterious lights brood over the homes of believers, or the chapels where the fire of the awakening is blazing: again the grand hymns of the old revival days are sung by enthusiastic congregations; again simple and uneducated men and women are awakening the land to the old evangelical faith. Night after night the whole population of many a village crowds into one of its little chapels to sing and to pray (so they would put it) as the Holy Spirit may lead them. The movement is strongest in South Wales and has produced in Mr. Evan Roberts a remarkable personality; but in the wilds of Merioneth and Carnarvonshire the same force is at work, though the English press has not yet heard the names of its seers and teachers. Meanwhile political turmoil is dead. No one-a few wirepullers excepted-mentions Mr. LloydGeorge's agitation against the Education Act, except perhaps to regret it. Sectarian proselytism is at an end. The prayer of the revivalist is not that persons shall become Methodists or Baptists or Independents, but that the "churches free and established alike"

shall awaken from their frozen apathy. and teach again the fundamental principles of Christianity. Some features of a more doubtful nature are accompanying the upheaval. It is not quite pleasant to read that Eisteddfods and literary meetings are falling flat; and it is even more regrettable to hear that many of the converted in South Wales are ceasing to play football. It is deplorable that the reason of certain weak-minded persons should be deranged by the excitement necessarily attendant on these revivalist gatherings. In the main, however, the testimony, even of the callous London journalist, goes to show that the movement may claim already to have effected a great, if only a temporary, reformation in the morality of large districts.

To speculate as to the causes of the marvellous outburst would at the present time be dangerous. Perhaps popular disappointment at the results of fifty years of political agitation may have turned the minds of many Welshmen to spiritual hopes and fears. Possibly the country folks have wearied of the bitter feuds of rival denominations, and of the vaporings of the young preacher from the University College who has been striving to Hegelianize Calvinistic Methodism. It will be however more profitable to compare the present awakening with the great upheavals of the olden days. In some ways this revival presents the old familiar features. There is the old orthodoxy, the old fervor and something also, alas, of the old narrow and Puritan conception of the religious life. On the other hand certain superficial differences present themselves, due mainly to the spirit of the age. There is comparatively little said of eternal wrath; there are few of those uncouth manifestations of popular excitement, which unquestionably prejudiced educated opinion against the older Method

ism; there is less powerful preaching, and more lay initiation. Over and above all this, however, it is clear that a religious conception directs the present movement to which the men of the earlier revivals were strangers. Their minds were fixed on the idea of individual conversion. They rushed to the chapels and field-preaching to hang on the lips of a great orator, who proclaimed salvation. In the movement of to-day the underlying ideas seem to be the public confession of sin, and the salvation not so much of the individual as of the community. In a word this remarkable revival is a protest against an individualistic and sectarian conception of religion, and a struggle to return to a corporate and positive Christianity. For this reason Churchmen may view the Welsh movement with satisfaction. There is nothing essentially Protestant in the idea of revivalism. Coldness and decorum in religion savor in truth of Erastian Protestantism; the greatest revivalist of whom Church history tells was that most purely medieval of religious characters, S. Francis of Assisi. Το prophesy the future effects of this Welsh revival would be as idle as to speculate upon the causes that have called it forth. One thing however seems certain. Welsh religion can never again become as individualistic or sectarian as it has been in the past; and the Catholic conception of Christianity which the revival has reintroduced into Wales may in time have The Saturday Review.

ecclesiastical and politic consequences of lasting importance.

Meanwhile it is satisfactory to note that Welsh Churchmen have to some extent learned the lesson of the eighteenth century. Two Welsh Bishops have pronounced on the work of the revivalists a qualified benediction. There is not the slightest fear to-day that a curate who says a kindly word of these enthusiasts will have his license quashed, far less are we likely to see (as in the olden time) a diocesan chancellor, or high ecclesiastical dignitary supplying liquor to a mob engaged in stoning Mr. Evan Roberts. Were it not for the Acts of Uniformity, it would be quite possible for the Church to take a prominent part in guiding and modifying in a wise direction this remarkable manifestation. So far, however, as lies in their power, the majority of Welsh Churchmen are sympathetic, and this sympathy will not be lost on a religious and emotional people and will do more than a thousand Church defence meetings to shake the unreasoning prejudice, which up to the present time has made the average Welsh dissenter regard the Church as an Erastian and worldly institution.

To conclude, though a few materialists, a solitary English Radical, and the baser sort of journalist may jeer, a new chapter seems to have been opened in Welsh history which, ere it is ended, may record events of deep religious interest to other lands besides Wales.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Andred D. White's "reminiscences" which have been printed in The Century Magazine are to be published in book form next month by The Century Company. A new volume by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell,-a story of expe

riences of Northerners in the South during the reconstruction period, is to appear at the same time.

The announcement that some Indian ladies have started a ladies' monthly

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