and pleads for the poor man, to be allowed to carry him on Sunday afternoon from the crowded city tenement to the fields and parks for fresh air, although the poor man answers that he has not the needful car-tickets and would therefore prefer to walk. Mr. Vanderbilt said a few years ago that his railway was not run in the interest of the 'dear public,' but to earn dividends. This was a perfectly accurate statement, and contains a universal truth as regards the new economic man. He is purely and solely a dividend-earning creature. What ought to be done? The principle of the Sunday law which has stood for ages is cessation of daily toil. Sunday free from toil is the birthright of each citizen. A certain amount of necessary labour is unavoidable. If any modification of this law is to be made it should be made by the community, deliberately and consciously, and only on the initiative of the government of the day; certainly not in the interest, or at the instance, of any corporation. If a certain number of our fellow citizens are to lose their day of rest in the public interest let them be avowedly sacrificed to the public interest by the community. If a man gives up his Sunday for his fellow citizens at the call of duty, he is not morally injured, whereas if he does so for selfish gain it cannot but be otherwise. No corporation or organization of any kind should be allowed to exploit the day at its own will for its own purposes. The conclusion arrived at in this paper is that the Lord's Day is the birth-right of every citizen in the possession of which he has the same claim to protection from society as for any other human right. What has been the character of our legislation affecting morality?—The suppression of gambling, the restriction of the liquor traffic, the prohibition of Sunday work, the suppression of slavery. It does not suggest any attempt to make men moral by Act of Parliament. It does not touch the liberty of the individual apart from his relation to his fellow citizens and the state. It has regard to the promotion of good citizenship. It deals with man in his relation to the state. Even the statute which punishes a man for being innocently drunk does so on national grounds. But all the rest of the legislation may be shown to be by way of removing and restraining evils which are hindrances to the best life of the citizen. One is surprised to find how little legislation there has been upon moral questions, and how moral progress has been allowed to make its way, unguided and untrammelled by the legislature. On the other hand, what is the significance of the legislation that has taken place? What is all legislation? It is the expres sion of the will of the people, often imperfect and often mistaken and short-sighted, but building always better than it knows, for behind is the Divinity that shapes our ends. "Law has always been the expression of social force. Whatever views men may have held as to the origin of those rules of conduct which they have felt themselves bound to follow, the orce which has compelled their obedience has been the approval or disapproval of the community." It has been said that the ordinary mortal is kept moral by the influence of his surroundings, by the standard of conduct in his set, by the fear of the public opinion, by reverence for the traditions of the past, and by the law of the land. In substance this again means the approval or disapproval of the community. It is when that sentiment of the community is sufficiently strong, active, and definite, that it takes shape in a law, and only then should it do so. In a community like ours legislation which precedes, or forces, or anticipates, the governing moral sentiment of the people is a mistake. There must be as Westlake says, "A national persuasion or consciousness that a thing is not only morally right but jurally right and proper to be enforced by a man on his fellows." This distinction is in danger of being overlooked. "Proper to be enforced by a man on his fellows"-Here the lawyer stops and makes way for the philosopher. The philosopher who has spoken last on this subject, (Bosanquet) says, "No general principle will tell us how in particular to solve this subtle question apart from common sense and special experience." G. M. MACDONNELL, MAN A NEW POET AND A NEW PLAY. AN is by instinct a partisan, and usually extreme in his partisanship. Uncompromising judgments are apt to mark his opinions of all who do not agree with him. In literary criticism, as in other things, men take sides, and woe to him whose work bears not the marks of their standards. "This will never do," said Jeffrey of Wordsworth, a hundred years ago, and the critical spirit of the foremost critic of his time has been that of most of his successors. In praise and in blame alike, they are extravagant-hysterical flattery or absolute condemnationfor the most part there has been no middle course. True, Matthew Arnold did sound a protest, and honestly try to judge men and their works by the standard of the best things in literature rather than by any preconceived literary dogmas, but even he was too prone to include under the scornful name of Philisfines all who saw not eye to eye with him. And So sure is the critic of the soundness of his judgment that he often gets into a trick of omniscience, and not content with assigning an author his place in his own age, is pleased to settle it for eternity. But omniscience in mortals is a doubtful quality, and time often leaves the critic sadly in the lurch. Who now reads Martin Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy"? yet, some thirty years ago, this work went into its fiftieth edi tion, and a leading critic said, "it will live as long as the English language;" while the Spectator assured its readers that "he has won for himself the vacant throne waiting for him among the immortals, and has been adopted into the same rank with Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning." * * * * * I hope a similar fate does not await England's latest literary lion, Stephen Phillips, but certainly the reviewers seem to have combined to praise him almost as Tupper was praised. Of his "Paolo and Francesca," the Saturday Review says, "It unquestionably places Mr. Phillips in the front rank of modern dramatists and of modern poets. It does more, it proclaims his kinship with the aristocrats of his art, with Sophocles and Dante. He has given us a masterpiece of dramatic art, which has at once, the severe restraint of Sophoclean tragedy, * * *** the plasticity, passion, and colour of our own romantic tragedy, a noble poem to brood over in the study, a dramatic spectacle which cannot fail to enthral a popular audience and which would in mere stage effect, have done credit to the deftest of modern play-wrights. He has produced a work for which I have little doubt Mr. Alexander will have cause to thank him, and a work which would, I have as little doubt, have found favour with the judges who crowned the 'Antigone' and the Philoctetes.' Such extravagant flattery, is surely the result of an emotional spasm which has momentarily paralysed the critic's sense of proportion. Before considering the play however, let us glance at some of poet's earlier work. His chief interest is humanity, and certainly his work gives evidence that he has a natural gift for discerning the subtleties of character and reading the secrets of the soul. He loves, for instance, to pick out a face from the crowd on the streets of London and reveal the thoughts and emotions it but half conceals. Some of his efforts show the prentice hand, and while striking are not poetic, but his later work proves this to be merely the fault of youth. Indeed, the steady advance in the power and poetic quality of his work is its most promising characteristic. The tragedy of human life, and the faith which overcomes it, especially appeal to him and find expression in several poems, of which, perhaps, the finest is "The Wife," a gruesome but powerful tale. His two most ambitious efforts previous to "Paolo and Francesca," were "Christ in Hades" and "Marpessa." The former elaborates a striking conception of Christ's relation to man and the sorrow it involves for Him. There are several fine passages, notably that in which Prometheus foretells the sorrows of Christ. But the blank verse moves a bit stiffly as yet, and there is a certain lack of felicity in the working out of the idea. "Marpessa" is a Greek Idyll, based on Marpessa's choice of a lover. Apollo and Idas are rivals for her hand, and she chooses the mortal. The form of the poem is evidently suggested by the famous passage in Tennyson's "Enone," describing the award of the apple of discord. The sentiments expressed, particularly Marpessa's reasons for her choice, are modern rather than Greek, but perhaps not more so than Athene's speech in Tennyson. The imagery and setting are Greek, while the execution is always delicate, and often exquisite. The verse is flexible and musical, yet dignified-hardly the verse yet of Paolo and Francesca,'-but an immense advance on the earlier fragments. There is a fine magic of style in Apollo's speech, which stirs the fancy; look for instance at the free mastery of rhythm in the following lines, and the large phrase, warm, ethereally imaginative like that of Keats : "We two in heaven dancing,-Babylon Shall flash and murmur, and cry from under us, Be hurled with her inhabitants, and all And rapidly laugh till all this world is warm." Idas' avowal of love is one of the finest passages in the book, -a few lines will serve to indicate the subtle suggestion and delicate phrasing which picture so finely to the imagination, the intangible charm of Marpessa. "Not for this only do I love thee, but Because Infinity upon thee broods; And thou art full of whispers and of shadows. more quotation to It is a love lyric, Before passing to the tragedy, just one illustrate another side of Mr. Phillips' talent. but in form it is the old lyric of the ciseleur school of France, the lyric of Blaudelaire, somewhat modified and perhaps enriched by the sentiment of the aesthetic school; it is deftly wrought though perhaps too dependent on that trick of iteration. There |