the burden grows heavier: last year 223 boroughs or parishes had to pay a school rate of 1s. in the pound or more, and 330 others 9d. in the pound, or something more than that, but less than 1s. In the interests of liberty of conscience, and of the right to control the funds they supply, the ratepayers ought to have the same power of dealing with their schools that the managers of and subscribers to voluntary schools have with theirs. If the ratepayers were allowed to find part, or even the whole of the money required, for building new schools, and then to place their management in the hands of committees willing to undertake the task, and to furnish the larger part or the whole of the sums required for their maintenance, it would greatly lighten the burden of the rates, and we believe would be gladly welcomed in many parishes that now groan under the heavy local rates with which they are burdened. As the consent of two-thirds of the managers and subscribers to voluntary schools is needed before a school can be transferred to a board, so the consent of two-thirds of the ratepayers might be required before a school could be transferred from a board to local managers. The We cannot close this article without expressing our surprise at the manner in which English people sometimes adopt plans that have been tried by other nations, at the very time that the more thoughtful part of those nations seem inclined to look upon their past practice as less successful than they had previously regarded it. In the United States the system of free schools has been in full operation from the foundation of the States: but now it is being abandoned to a large and rapidly increasing extent, partly on educational, and partly on religious grounds. In the case of individuals, the number of those who are willing to profit by other people's experience is comparatively small, and the same rule seems to apply to nations. drift of democratic feeling may compel us to assent to free education; time alone can prove whether the moral and intellectual results of such a system are satisfactory, and whether ratepayers and taxpayers will for ever contentedly bear the everincreasing burden that is being imposed upon them: the same unfailing test alone can prove whether the action of the State, and private benevolence in furnishing free education, free breakfasts, free dinners, &c., are not intensifying thriftlessness and thoughtlessness, and degrading larger numbers of the poorer classes into mere helpless dependants upon public and private charity. ART. ART. VIII.-The Golden Bough, A Study in Comparative Religion. By J. G. Frazer, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. London, 1890. A MONG the studies which have attracted an ever-increasing number of able and diligent writers in the last quarter of this century, few are more remarkable for rapid development than that which, under different aspects, is variously spoken of as Comparative Mythology, Comparative Religion, and Folklore. Great, however, as is the progress which has been made in this branch of research, it is still in a highly controversial stage. Roughly speaking, there are two main schools of opinion, though it cannot be pretended that all who may be classed as belonging to either school are in agreement with one another. A distinctive feature of one school is that it bases its arguments chiefly on language and nomenclature; of the other that it concerns itself little with words and names, and examines customs before myths. The former school, as Mr. Andrew Lang says, in dealing .with mythology, 'regards ancient fable as a disease of language,' that is, as the result of misinterpreting expressions of which the original significance is lost; and hence in a great degree arose that tyranny of sun-myths' from which a deliverer was welcome. The word tyranny is scarcely too strong to use when we find a writer of such eminence as Canon Taylor saying, 'The orthodox mythologist asserts that no explanation of an Aryan myth, however plausible, can be accepted as conclusive unless it also accords with a reasonable explication of the names of personages.' The assertion of orthodoxy is a little provocative, but, if that is admitted, who is to determine the reasonable explication? Canon Taylor, above all men, from his experience in the Etruscan controversy, must know how widely different can be the views of really eminent philologists, working in what may be regarded as their own field, as to the meaning and origin of words, and how possible it is to exhume from various languages testimony for the most opposite conclusions. The element of uncertainty in etymology is not however the only, or the principal, objection to the philological method in the study which we are considering. As to the probable etymology of the names the great authority of Professor Max Müller is unquestionable, but we believe the method, which he approves in comparative mythology, to be faulty for the main conclusions. Granted that a name means 'bright' or 'red,' it does not follow that any ancient story connected with it was an attempt to explain the word by an allegorical account of a sunrise. sunrise. It is a true remark of Mr. Lang, as will be seen further on, that 'in stories the names may well be and often demonstrably are the latest, not the original feature.' We are not obliged to suppose that 'Helen is the radiant light whether of morning or evening, Achilles in his tent is the sun behind the clouds. The Trojan War, so far from being a reflexion of the daily siege of the East by the solar powers, that every evening are robbed of their treasure in the West,' may well relate to stories of an actual combat, however much transformed by popular superstitions and poetic colouring from the reality. The names of the chief actors may have been affixed early or late in the development of the story: they do not explain its origin. If the alleged cause of the war was wholly an invention, still it was invented because the circumstances and conditions of life made it likely that a feud would so arise. The researches of Mr. Frazer, and other writers who have pursued the method which he adopts, place us in a better position for judging of the life and thoughts of primitive races, for understanding how myths generally started, and for separating, whenever it is wise to attempt anything of the sort, the mythical part of a story from the traditional history. We shall less frequently, as will be seen, find difficulty when we are confronted by the double of a so-called 'Aryan' myth or custom in Australia or America, which became a constant puzzle under the system of deriving the myth from the Aryan name of the hero, and the custom from the myth. In The Golden Bough,' Mr. Frazer, following up the labours of Tylor and Mannhardt, Professor Robertson Smith, and Mr. Lang, has done much towards spreading what we believe to be a truer view of the growth of primitive religious customs, which have passed into popular superstitions and sometimes into 'fairy tales' in civilized countries, but linger in their original shape among savage tribes. It is true that he is possessed by enthusiasm for his subject; we may feel that he is perhaps sometimes over-ready to treat all as fish that come to his netand the net is cast very widely-but still we think that in the main contentions he will carry conviction with him. He presents in an attractive and readable form an immense number of religious rites and superstitions (many of them very familiar, but little understood), so sifted and classified that their true origin stands out, and the reader is prepared to accept the assertion in the preface, that, in spite of their fragmentary character, the popular superstitions and customs of the peasantry are by far the most trustworthy evidence we possess as to the primitive religion of the Aryans.' The peg, if we may use so homely a metaphor, on which he hangs sufficient instances and arguments to clothe his whole subject-and fill two interesting volumes is the strange priesthood of the Alban hills, the office of the Rex Nemorensis, the King' of the Grove of Aricia or Nemi: 'Those trees in whose dim shadow The ghastly priest doth reign, The meagre notice in Strabo tells us only of a sacred grove, 'wherein is the sanctuary, and the priest thereof must have slain the former holder of the priesthood: wherefore he goes about the wood ever sword in hand, as though he looked for an assailant, and stood each step upon his defence.'* The aspirant to the office must be a fugitive, according to Pausanias a runaway slave; he must pluck the golden bough from a tree in the grove, and then win, if he can, the office by vanquishing and slaying the priest; if he fails, the priest lives on till a stronger opponent comes. What is the significance of this weird custom? What is the meaning of the golden bough? Why should the reigning priest always die a violent death? Does he, while he lives, preside at human sacrifices, like those of the Tauric Artemis, whose name is traditionally connected with the grove, or is he himself in the last combat the only victim? Mr. Frazer has attempted to throw light on this hitherto obscure matter, and may be congratulated on his success, not only in producing an account of this priesthood in the main probable, but also on his elucidation of the wider subject by a comparison of kindred superstitions and rituals. To summarise his views: the priest represents the incarnation of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation :— 'As such he would be credited with those miraculous powers of sending rain and sunshine, making the crops to grow, women to bring forth, and herds and flocks to multiply, which are popularly ascribed to the tree-spirit itself. The reputed possessor of powers so exalted must have been a very important personage, and in point of fact his influence appears to have extended far and wide. For in the days when the champaign country around was still parcelled out among the petty tribes who composed the Latin League, the sacred grove on the Alban Mount is known to have been an object of their common reverence and care. And just as the Kings of Cambodia * Strabo, v. p. 239. Vol. 172.-No. 343. used used to send offerings to the mystic Kings of Fire and Water, so we may well believe that from all sides of the broad Latian plain the eyes and steps of Italian pilgrims turned to the quarter where, standing out sharply against the faint blue lines of the Apennines or the deeper blue of the distant sea, the Alban Mountain rose before them, the home of the mysterious priest of Nemi.' While the king of the grove lived he conducted those rites which secured rain and fruitful seasons; if he died a natural death from sickness or the decay of old age, it was thought that the vegetable world would droop and perish with him; therefore, when the strength to defend himself leaves him, he must be slain that his spirit and power may pass at once into the body of his conqueror. There is a further conclusion that his death was a sacrifice and analogous to that of a scapegoat, which may be considered separately. As regards the à priori probability of the explanation, there is little doubt that in primitive religions, to which this observance must surely be ascribed, the aim and object was the securing of what would satisfy the bodily needs; the savage did not look at the clouds and the sun to make fanciful stories about them, but regarded them rather as beings from whom he might conjure rain or warmth if he went the right way to work. The object then is one which we should expect to find predominant in a primitive people. For the idea of an incarnate tree-spirit we have abundant warrant in a host of instances set before us, among the most striking of which are those which Mannhardt collected in his work, Der Baumkultus der Germanen und ihrer Nachbarstämme.' Few probably of those who preserve the old English' custom of the Maypole are aware how far it is from being specially English; that the same planting of a trunk and decking it with garlands on or about the 1st of May, at Whitsuntide and Midsummer, is found in most parts of Europe, from Russia and Sweden to the Pyrenees, and traceable even in Bengal. Fewer still would recognize in the Queen of the May,' the representation of the Spirit of Vegetation. In many places she is united with a 'King of the May,' as is the custom at Königgratz and at Grenoble, which Mr. Frazer compares with the lord and lady' at Headington, near Oxford.* We have here the key to the explanation of the old Italian custom of hanging up masks (oscilla) with various offerings to Bacchus, an undoubted offspring of tree-worship, whether these masks were intended to materialise the tree-spirit or to act as a milder substitute for the ancient human sacrifice. It is a curious * Vol. i. p. 95. evidence |