Public Landed Endowments of the Church. By the Rev. H. W. Clarke. Koch's Treatment of Tuberculosis. By Sir Morell Mackenzie. FEBRUARY, 1891. Popular Movements in India. By Sir William Wilson Hunter, K.C.S.I.. The Ethics of Wine-Drinking and Tobacco-Smoking. By Count Leo Tolstoï Arist tle as a Naturalist. By George J. Romanes, F.R.S. MARCH, 1891. The Savoy Dynasty, the Pope, and the Republic. By a Continental Statesman The Last Days of the Earth. By Camille Flammarion Theology at King's College. By Professor Momerie. National Pensions. By W. Moore Ede The Protection of Wild Birds' Eggs. By T. Digby Piggott, C.B. The Shadow of the Kurd. By Mrs. Bishop (Miss Isabella Bird), F.R.S.G.S. The Humble Remonstrance of an Irish Nationalist. By Sir C. Gavan Sedgemoor. By Francis A. Knight . The Coming Factory Act. By Clementina Black Wit in the Pulpit. By the Rev. H. R. Haweis . A Practical Justification of Peasant Properties. By Henry W. Wolff A World-Wide Democratic Church. By A. Taylor Innes. The Political Position in Canada. By Sir Charles Tupper, Bart., K.C.M.G. Bad Air and Bad Health. (With Letters from Sir Lyon Playfair, Professor Huxley and others). By Harold Wager and the Hon. Auberon Herbert Ancient Lay Endowments. By Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L. A Basis of Positive Morality. II. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton Jenny Lind. By the Rev. H. R. Haweis HOME RULE AND HOME RULERS. THE HE possibility that the future of Ireland and the integrity of the United Kingdom may depend on the issue of a suit in the Divorce Court suggests some curious reflections. The part which accident plays in the determinations of history is a favourite branch of speculation with those philosophers who have a fancy for dealing with the "might have beens" of the world, erecting themselves into a sort of amateur Providence and constructing a succession of events which never happened. If Eve had not listened to the serpent and eaten the apple the whole course of the world would have been changed. If the Persians had not been defeated at Marathon, Europe might have been another Asia. If Julius Cæsar on the fatal Ides of March had listened to the soothsayer and to Calpurnia, and had stayed away from the Senate House, the Roman Empire might have been built up on more durable foundations than those which the inferior genius of Augustus was able to lay. If Cleopatra had been a plain and unprepossessing person; if, as Pascal puts it, her nose had been an inch shorter than Nature actually made it, Antony would not have taken flight at Actium; rather, there would have been no seafight there for him to fly from. If the fates had granted long days to Marcellus, there might have been no Tiberius, no Caligula, no Nero. If the accident which was nearly fatal to Richard Cromwell in the banqueting house had actually brought his weak and worthless life to a close, and his brother Henry had succeeded to the Protectorate, there might have been no Stuart restoration in 1660. If Queen Anne had lived long enough—a few weeks or months would have sufficed-to give Bolingbroke time to complete his plans, there might have been a Stuart restoration, and all that it implied, in 1714. If the disreputable Fred, who was alive and then dead, and left nothing more to be said, |