eralism, and its fall. The sin was shared, as was fitting, by the great man who was otherwise almost sinless in public action. "The flowing tide is with us," said Gladstone, with colossal confidence. And, even as he spoke, the tide turned.

The result of all this is very interesting, though natural enough. When Liberalism met its great débacle, there were, necessarily, two kinds of critics left in the defeated army, with two different plans of campaign, indeed, with two different conceptions of the nature of war. The first formed the coherent and philosophical Liberal Imperialist Party, now consisting entirely of Mr. Saxon Mills; the other formed the Party of which I am a humble member. The first said: "The French Revolution succeeded, because it was progressive, because it was the fresh and forward thing at that moment." The second said: "The French Revolution succeeded because it was religious, because it gave a key or principle which cannot grow old." The first said: "The old Liberals won, because they were men of their time." The second said: "They won because they were men of all time; or rather, because the ideas they dealt with are outside time altogether." The first said: "Old Liberal ideas conquered because they were new: but they are new no longer." The second said: "Not so. Old Liberal ideas conquered because they were true. And they are true still."

The first of these two Liberal doctrines, roughly to be identified with the Liberal Imperialists, is one which easily fortifies itself with arguments drawn, rightly or wrongly, from science. It concerns itself with evolution, with the modifications which fugitive forces make upon a fugitive substance. So far from denying change or denouncing change, it makes it its avowed particular duty to study change. Just as a biologist might re

joice in and relish the strange stages of gradation by which a marmoset might become something like a man, so a politician of this school relishes the subtle shades by which a friend of Cecil Rhodes might become something like a Liberal. And the politicians of this school are perpetually appealing to the example and authority of material science. They are always reckoning up the strength of Empires like the strength of batteries, or prophesying the fall of nations like the fall of leaves. The attitude of the opposite Party is naturally the very reverse. The other kind of Liberalism is in its nature allied, not to science but to art, to literature, and to religion. And it is allied to them for the reason that I have suggested in the opening of this article, that it tends, like literature and like religion, to take some one thing or other out of the stress of time, from under the tyranny of circumstance, and give it that liberty which is only another name for sanctity. For liberty is altogether a mystical thing. All attempts to justify it rationally have al ways failed. Ruskin tried to attack it by pointing out that the stars had it not and the universe had it not. So good a mystic ought to have known that it is just because man has it and the universe has it not, that man is called the Image of God and the universe merely His masterpiece.

The kind of Liberalism which supported the South African War had for its duty the duty of destroying sanetities. The kind of Liberalism which opposed that war had for its duty that of creating sanctities and preserving sanctities. The Imperialist said: "Because it is evident that Time is the enemy of all his children, because it is plain that Saturn is always eating his own, because little lives and little peoples have a slender chance to be themselves for long in the mutability of life, therefore we must not stake too much

on them. We must be on the look-out for their disappearance, we must be ready to rally to new things." The other Liberals, with whom I am in accord, answered: "Because Time is the enemy of all his children, because Saturn eats his own, because little lives and little peoples have a slender chance of survival, therefore we will ring them with a ring of swords, and write for them an inviolable charter; because they are weak we will make them immortal, that they may be themselves, that so they may give the world what nothing else can give it. For, like all other things which are human and therefore divine, they must have the sense of everlasting life in order to live at all."

It must be fairly obvious that all the claims of the democratic philosophy are of this kind-unscientific and (if you like to put it so) unnatural. Science, properly speaking, knows nothing, for instance, of "the Rights of Man" ideal. Pure science does not admit the existence of the Rights of Man. Pure science, indeed, does not admit the existence of Man at all. "Man" is only the gross name we give to a certain patch in the tapestry of evolution, which shades away into other things by nameless gradations. Man is only the ape in the process of becoming the Superman. But democracy has for its whole meaning the flat The Independent Review.

refusal to regard Man from the standpoint of evolution. It takes the thing Man out of the order, and makes it sacred and separate. It says that a man, any man, has rights which no ape can claim, and rights which no Superman can question. It says that a man must not be a despot, however much he may happen to look like the Superman. It says that a man must not be a slave, however much he may happen to look like an ape. That which it claimed for man it claimed also for a nation: it declared that to kill a nation was murder. That which it claimed for man is claimed also for individual men: it declared that every man had round him a transcendental circle of omnipotence, which it called "liberty." That which it claimed for men it claimed even for words: it disliked the notion of a sincere utterance being stopped; it was sorry for the death of an idea. If this Liberalism, in which I believe, succeeds in surviving, it will go onward along a very different course from that marked out for it by sceptics and iconoclasts. It will go on making more and more things sacred, not more and more things desecrate; it will increase in its power of belief, not in its power of query. If it lives, it will increase the religious life of mankind. If it dies, it will be the last of the religions.

G. K. Chesterton.

I.

New Year, be good to England!

This year, a hundred years ago,

Alfred Noyes.

CHAPTER VII.

Master Antonio rode in the cavalcade with a rich jewel round his neck, the gift of my Lady Marlowe. She had gained and bound him to her service with all the arts she knew; and her power was a kind of witchcraft, independent of age and of beauty. The influence was mutual, for with honest and simple natures she could do nothing, except by sheer physical terror. Thus her stepson Harry was absolutely independent of her, not even realizing the carefully hidden evil in her character. Richard was a child, often a rebellious one. Young Edward of March, a Renaissance prince, found nothing strange, but much that was attractive in the glimpses of herself she chose to show him. Very gladly would Isabel Marlowe, though old enough to be his mother, have taken the place afterwards held by Elizabeth Woodville in Edward's life. It would seem that Lancastrian widows and the heir of York had a natural affinity.

It suited my Lady's plans to keep Antonio waiting upon her at Swanlea till the early days of February, sending a man of her own to let Sir William Roden know that she would shortly visit him. It seemed to her, she said, that this complicated affair must be arranged in person. In the meanwhile, she expected every day a messenger from Lord Marlowe, who was supposed to be working his way

south with Queen Margaret's victorious army; but Harry was silent. Then came the news that Edward of York had won a battle at Mortimer's Cross, and that the Queen, in spite of this, was in full march on London. Lady Marlowe delayed no longer. Ruddiford, the key to its own quarter of the Midlands, became a more and more desirable outpost. If she and her party were unlucky enough to meet the Queen's force, or stragglers from it,why, there was Harry, the Queen's man, to vouch for his mother and brother. And he owed them too much explanation, too much atonement, not to acknowledge their claim to the utmost. If, on the other hand, the Yorkist army should cross her path, my Lady Marlowe would feel that the time was come to cast off all disguise. Edward should know that she was on her way, with her son in her train, to capture a strong place for him.

Her Ladyship travelled in her own carriage, a long covered wagon, with panels and wheels curiously painted and gilt, the interior being luxurious with cushions and tapestries. Four strong horses dragged this structure through the miry ways. Though the jolting was frightful, Isabel preferred it to the swinging movement of a horselitter, which followed with her waitingwomen. Master Richard divided his time between lying full length in the carriage, trifling with his little dogs and his lute, and riding, gayly tricked