tency than his earlier writings had led the world to suppose. Failures in consistency and logic were easily to be found by his critics in the writings of Ruskin, but it is not in virtue of any such slight advantages in logical cohesion that Carlyle can outlive a writer who in beauty and pleasantness was so greatly his superior.

When we say that the fame and influence of Ruskin's writing may be established and forwarded by the fact that they had a good man's personality behind them, we say what to some will be a mere truism, but will seem to many to come into fatal collision with the doctrine of Art for Art's sake. The beauty of prose, we shall be told, as the beauty of landscape, has nothing to do with the beauty of holiness. As regards past ages this position is not stubbornly defended, for no one is much concerned to deny that men The Saturday Review.

may somehow have built their fanes more beautifully because they did not believe prayer to be fruitless, and even to-day a falling off in capacity to enter into feelings which have swayed humanity so much and so long may, conceivably, imply a "correlation of atrophy" somewhere else in the artistic organism. The artistic impartiality which acclaims lean Aquinas and Queen Venus in the same breath and with the same heartiness does not seem to be establishing itself except in the aversion of the world. If, to put it at its lowest, it is really "better to be good than bad"-if some kind of truth or warrant really did underlie the death-bed utterance of Scott-then it is not inconceivable that the works of Ruskin may be unconsciously indebted for their immortality, not, perhaps, to what he believed, but to the spirit in which he believed it.

At first he had stood inactive, sick with pity and impotence; but at the first sign of living humanity in the dark cottages, Gaspar made up his mind what to do. The largest of the houses was just before him. Springing through the open door, he stumbled over two prone and writhing figures in the passage. The glare from the stacks showed him a painted Micmac and a white man in his shirt, locked in a death grip. This was no affair of his. He slipped past, darted up a narrow stairway, and found himself before two doors-one open and one shut. To the shut one he turned with a flash of thought that here, perhaps, he might be in time.

The door was bolted, but snapped open as his shoulder surged against it; and he paused upon the threshold.

The little room was brilliantly alight from a blaze of hay just before the window. Against one wall was a low bed. He had a vision of a young girl starting up from the pillow, her great eyes wild with fear, her face whitely gleaming with a wild glory of red-gold hair. A cry froze on her lips, and she clutched at the blankets as if to try to hide some small form that lay between her and the wall.

At this moment, another door, opposite to Gaspar, burst open, and a savage darted in. His fierce black

eyes fell on the bed, and, with a whoop, he pounced forward, scalpingknife in hand. The girl cowered, shuddering, and hid her face.

But Gaspar was there as soon as the savage. With his left hand he caught the uplifted wrist, and the stroke never fell. Under the raised arm his long knife shot home to the hilt, driven hotly. The redskin dropped with a deep, gasping grunt.

Gaspar rolled the limp body under the bed. The girl, who had looked up in time to see the end of the swift encounter, was gazing at him in bewil derment.

"Quick, mademoiselle! Get up! Come! There'll be others here on thé instant!"

He ordered sharply, thrusting into her hands a heavy, woollen skirt which lay on a chair near by.

She had her wits about her in á moment.

"No," she answered. "Save him if you can!" and, pulling aside the covering, she showed him a rosy child asleep beside her.

Gaspar's jaw set like iron.

"Jesu-Marie!" he vowed between his teeth, "I will save you both. But it will be hard! Come! Come!"

And hastily rolling the little one in the blanket, he snatched him up and turned to the door by which he had entered. The girl, meanwhile, had slipped small, white feet into the shoes which lay by the bed, thrown on the

In judging the Transvaal-not merely from the German outlook-the points of view are determinative, the ethical and the political one; in the confusion and mingling of the two lies the foundation of much obscurity and perplexity. The Boers, by their own sweat and blood, in severe conflict with the wilderness and its inhabitants, have won a home, and it is a matter of course that the sympathies of the whole civilized world should be with them in their defence of it against English greed. The probably undeniable fact of a government which greatly needs betterment, can in no wise prevent this.

Since the first annexation of the Transvaal by England in the year 1877, there have been constant attempts by the English to rule the country in one way or another, and we are probably not wrong in recognizing among the motives of these efforts, besides the imperialistic tendencies of the British statesmen and cabinet, that is, the idea of the establishment of a confederation of states in South Africa under English supremacy, the more or less hidden desires of English capitalists, mine owners, and adventurers, to use for Mr. Cecil Rhodes and his comrades the same appellation which was formerly officially bestowed upon the founders of the English Empire in the East Indies.

Jameson's raid into the Transvaal, the almost total escape from punishment of the English officers who took part in it and the farce played before and by the parliamentary commission of investigation, aroused by no means unjustifiable excitement and indig

Translated for The Eclectic Magazine by Mary J. Safford.

nation throughout Continental circles, which, within the last few months, received fresh food from the attitude of the English government and press in the negotiations with the Transvaal before the outbreak of hostilities.

If Talleyrand's definition of diplomacy as the application of sound common sense to public affairs is just, it can only be said that, in the negotiations with the Transvaal, diplomacy has played a thoroughly subordinate part; while, on the contrary, Mr. Chamberlain's energy, by which he succeeded in imposing his own will upon his less positive and reluctant colleagues has been the determining element. The support of a large portion of the English press, especially the Times, which, during the Jameson raid, played an absolutely irritating part, aided the efforts to divert English public opinion from the actual conditions, and fix it upon the point at which the desires of the imperialist party culminate, that is, the destruction of the Dutch republics as independent states.

To have perceived this plainly as the final goal of British policy, and prepared for the decisive conflict which for decades has been recognized as inevitable, is clearly a merit of the government of the two Boer republics. Therefore, it is pure hypocrisy for the English to regard and declare the Transvaal ultimatum the cause of the outbreak of the war; the war had already become inevitable, and it would have been unpardonable folly on the part of the Boers to wait, before arming, until the English had completed their preparations and then made their demands.

But the incidents in South Africa again strikingly confirm the accuracy

of Prince Bismarck's statement that political and military movements must go hand in hand, to avoid disappointments and defeats. As in the year 1866, Austrian diplomacy had reached war, while military preparations were still far behind, the same spectacle is now repeated in England, where diplomacy caused a breach, while in regard to military matters everything was yet to be accomplished. Thus, it became possible for the Boers to overrun large tracts of British territory, and, even though their success against the British troops already in the field should be only partial, they can materially impede and delay the advance of English re-inforcements by destroying their railroads and bridges.

If the sympathy of wide circles for the little band of Boers who did not shrink from entering into battle with imperial England is thoroughly natural and intelligible, the political situation, in spite of all the outcry of small German and agrarian parties, must be considered exclusively from the practical standpoint. Sentiment alone forms no policy, at least no good one, but-unless we desire to expose ourselves to severe disappointments and defeats -we must duly weigh all the chances which may follow the transition from diplomatic to military action, that is, must draw up a profit and loss account, and, after mature consideration, reach farther decisions. If the gentlemen who offer resolutions and have them adopted in public assemblies would first take the trouble to understand the consequences which must follow the practical execution of their wishes, they would spare themselves and others a great deal of very unnecessary labor. In the present state of affairs, Germany can only stand in the position of a neutral toward the conflict in South Africa; what tasks may arise for her in the

future, from the conditions there, cannot be foreseen.

Numerically considered, there can scarcely be a doubt of the ultimate success of England, though probably at the cost of needlessly heavy sacrifices of men and money, yet there are possibilities which might change the situation in favor of the Boers. Among these might be the chance of the outbreak of the plague in the British army, a chance which has placed other armies we need only remember the Russo-Turkish campaign of 1828-29-in the worst possible situation against far weaker adversaries.

But even a complete military success of the British troops, unless it led to a reconciliation between the contending nationalities and systems, would impose upon England tasks which she would scarcely be able to perform continuously.

A permanent garrison of 40-50,000 men in South Africa would require so large a portion of the English army that very soon a comprehensive change of the British military system would be needed. Then the time will come when the nation will have to answer the question whether the solution of the South African difficulty by the fusion of the various elements existing there might not have been accomplished in a cheaper and more bloodless way. The conviction forces itself upon the unprejudiced observer that the more rapid increase in the number of foreigners, and the intermarriages between the members of the various nationalities would, in the course of a few years or decades, naturally and inevitably produce a preponderance of the English element, and that it would have been better to seek an understanding upon the basis of concessions made by the Boers, rather than upon military successes.

The dream of a military promenade to Pretoria vanished long ago, the ex

ultation over the nominal victories at Glencoe and Elandslaagte has died away, and the consciousness that, even in the most favorable case, still greater sacrifices will become necessary, is beginning to cast its shadow over England. But the most significant fact of all is probably the feeling in Continental circles, that too speedy and easy a victory for England would be more inimical to universal peace than a prolongation of the struggle. It is not envy and jealousy, especially in

Deutsche Revue.

Germany, which evoke this feeling,the victors in three wars, and the successful competitors in commerce and manufactures, can witness any good fortune of other nations without jealousy, but the conviction that laurels too easily won would prevent English imperialists from appreciating actual circumstances, and might, therefore, cause farther conflicts which Germany would be unable to witness as quietly as the battles in South Africa. M. von Brandt.

It has come to be more and more acknowledged that the great writer who is just dead will depend for his fame with posterity mainly upon the literary quality of his prose; and opinion seems, for a good many years, to have trended towards the view that, as a master of prose eloquence, he will be among the immortals. That his position in this respect is not even more unreservedly allowed, is due partly to the fitful and sidelong way in which, with a fine disdain of publishers and bookbuyers alike, he projected his works upon the world, and partly upon the body of doctrine which they were designed to enforce. For doctrine it always was: sometimes seeming to be that of an inspired apostle and sometimes of a crazy doctrinaire, but never delivered otherwise than didactically and de haut en bas. Matthew Arnold, long ago, noted how different were his powers when he was expounding Alpine snows and Swiss gentians and when he was trying to force upon a reluctant audience such propositions as that "Hamlet is, no doubt, connected in some way with 'homely', the entire

event of the tragedy turning on betrayal of home duty". But for literary immortality, the disputability of a writer's doctrines seems to be of very little moment. It does, on the other hand, appear to be of very real import that somehow there should be apprehended to exist at the back of his work a human personality, and that a good ore. Mere mental acumen, such as that of De Quincey, even when accompanied with great exquisiteness of phrase, does not seem to lead posterity captive in the fullest sense. When we reflect, on the other hand, on the great hold upon the world which has been given to Plato by the sort of holiness that is felt to underlie his writing-or when, to take a later and lesser example, we are confronted in Stevenson's Letters with a character of extraordinary nobility, we take away with us the conviction that here is a man who was greater than we knew, and that the "distant people whom we call posterity" will, by their own odd, rule-of-thumb, mental processes, come to realize the man in the rest of his work, and, having realized, will read