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such veracity militates against his professional interests and pocket, who outrages professional nicety by appearing in his West End consulting-room in a workmanlike holland jacket, is not naturally beloved by Mrs. Grundy. His perfect mastery and thoroughness in every branch of his art is oftentimes inconvenient and embarrassing. Some years ago, whilst forming one of a committee to inquire into the sight of railway servants, he found that to arrive at correct conclusions it was necessary for him to ride upon engines amidst smoke, rain and snow, and did not shrink

from doing so. A man who has not only an enormous private practice, but could double and treble it if he so desired, and achieves bold, brilliant operations that are the envy and admiration of less devoted men, is not likely to be considered popular amongst his professional brothers, for whose decorum and trade unionism he cares not one rap.

WHY AND WHERE HE IS POPULAR.

Such is Professor Malcolm McHardy, one of the most widely known men in London (and Margate, where every Sunday morning for two hours he may be consulted by the fisherfolk there), received with cordiality in Royal circles, welcomed at clubs where his bonhomie, humour and transparent unconventionality are a refreshing novelty upon the jaded artificiality of town life, the friend of half the theatrical world, from Miss Ellen Terry downwards, and the handy man of limitless resource to every distressed creature who wants his services. "A rough, rude, swaggering, domineering, overbearing fellow,"

to whom the destiny of the great ship yonder is entrusted."

HIS CAREER.

Professor McHardy has not attained his present position without the wringing of sweat from his brow. Intended for the career of a mechanical engineer, and disliking it, as he characteristically declares, solely because his part of his work so largely depended upon the work of others, he decided, when little more than a child, to enter the medical career; and from the age of

seventeen, when he went to St. George's as a medical student, he has entirely supported himself, often filling three distinct posts at the same time. For instance, at one time he was House Surgeon at the Belgrave Hospital, Orthopædic Registrar at St. George's, and Sole Clinical Assistant at the Royal South London Orthopædic. And this triple tenure has been his over and over again, so that though he himself insists there is no man in London with more insignificant qualifications, there is none that can compare with him in experience. Probably there is no other great oculist in the world who is also a good architect (McHardy drew up all the plans oí the Royal Eye Hospital), a good mariner, a decent carpenter, and a fair draughtsman! His self-registering instrument for accurately and swiftly measuring the field of vision, is one of the indispensable accessories of eye surgery to-day, and in the Royal Eye Hospital, with its cheery motto "Eyes Right," there are half-a-dozen ingenious little appliances which were born in his fertile brain. The paper that Professor McHardy will read at the Paris Congress on the "Early Removal of Senile Cataract," deals with a branch of ophthalmology in which he has made valuable researches, and that saving of old persons in the decline of life from the desolation of complete blindness is one amongst the many important advances that have been made in this department of surgery during the present century.

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Malcolm McHardy, M.D.

(From a bust exhibited in the Royal Academy, 1900.)

say his enemies, and they are, it must be admitted, not unplentiful, as would be admitted joyfully by Professor McHardy, who is a born fighter. "The most kind, able, resourceful, undaunted man of the day," say his thousand clearer-sighted friends. "A Bismarck for resistless tenacity; a surgeon who inspires you with magnetic confidence in his strength and tenderness. You would no more doubt his decision if he ordered you forthwith to have out that eye, than you would doubt the seamanship of the strong, silent pilot

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THE REVOLT AGAINST THE PALEFACE.

MI not also a man and a brother?" That is the question which in various ways is being urged with some vehemence just now by all sorts and conditions of coloured folks. Did the Almighty give the Paleface a perpetual charter to rule all the non-white races of the world? Hitherto it has rather seemed as if this were really the case.

THE COLOURED MAN'S QUESTION.

But of late the coloured man is beginning to doubt, and to ask for the credentials by virtue of which the Paleface claims a right to dispose of his coloured brother and everything that he has. Hitherto the Divine Charter was supposed to be written plain and unmistakable on every white man's face. You had only to look at him. If his skin was white, even a dirty white, that was enough. The law of this planet was "white man on top." But nowadays the coloured man has doubts as to these things. Perhaps the charter of the ruling race was not to be found in its colour, but in its gun? And any one can buy a gun. The cunning white man is ever ready to sell his coloured brother as many guns as he can pay for. The coloured man has bought. He is buying, and he will continue to buy. And he wonders whether, now that he has got the white man's gun, he may not be able to dispute the white man's place. The Boxer is asking that question somewhat rudely in Pekin. The Filipino is pressing it home against the American. The Sultan is brooding over it. El Senoussi is believed to have arrived at definite conclusions on the subject which he will shortly put to the test against English and French in the Soudan. The Ashantees have asked it, and have not found the answer altogether satisfactory.

THE PAN-AFRICAN CONFERENCE.

And now here in London, in this scorching African weather, a Pan-African Conference has been held under the high patronage of the Bishop of London, which has raised the same question in a formal constitutional way. A Pan-African Association has been formed, with Bishop Walters as President and the Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia and the President of Hayti as Honorary Members, which is to press, in season and out of season, for a recognition of the rights of the blacks.

The manifesto which the Pan-African Conference has drawn up and addressed to the Governments of the world is a remarkable document :

The grievances and claims of the coloured people were set out and the hope was expressed that the natives of Africa would no longer be sacrificed to the greed of gold-their liberties taken away, their family life debauched, their just aspirations repressed, and all avenues of advancement and culture taken away from them. "Let not the cloak of Christian missionary enterprise," it continued, "be allowed in the future, as so often in the past, to hide the ruthless economic exploitation and political downfall of less developed nations whose chief fault has been reliance on the plighted troth of the Christian Church."

The appeal may be addressed with advantage to others besides the Governments. It is a sign of the times of which we shall all do well to take note.

THE BLACK MAN'S RIGHTS.

The notion that even black men have ghts is no doubt novel to most of us. In Hayti and Jamaica, and

even on the Slave Coast, where he has enjoyed considerable freedom from the white man, he has not altogether justified the claims made on his behalf. What a pity it is that Miss Mary Kingsley died before the Pan-African Conference was held! It is one more count in the indictment of Humanity against this hateful South African War, that it should have cost us the life of the only Paleface who could make the Black Man intelligible to Europe! But even without Miss Kingsley's aid we may understand something of the black man's point of view. He may be very brutal and very bestial; he may in some districts practise cannibalism and celebrate the funerals of his chiefs by wholesale massacre; but even with all these failings he is still entitled to justice, and he has a right to ask us to do to him as we would that he should do to us if our positions were reversed. It may be right on the principle of the Golden Rule to subject our black brother to Mr. Carlyle's beneficent whip. It may be right to shoot him wholesale or hang him retail if he abandon practices distinctly anti-human. all that is admitted there remains a of injustices done to the black man which ought not to be done. The weaker, the stupider, the more barbarous he is, the more careful ought the strong, the wise, the civilised to be to see to it that he is not cheated, pursued, murdered and plundered by the superior race. Justice and fair play, liberally interpreted, may not involve the recognition of the political equality of black and white. But they do entail the obligation of abstaining from slaying, torturing, outraging and ruining the black man whenever it may seem to suit the interest or the caprice of his white visitor.

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IS FRATERNITY THE BEST POLICY?

There might be little hope of securing even a momentary hearing for these ethical truisms if it were not that the case of the Black Man is just now identical with the case of the Yellow Man. The revolt of China against the white men from over the sea and from beyond the river forces home the question whether, after all, it might not pay to infuse a little more fraternity into our dealings with coloured men all round the world. From the religious point of view there is, of course, no controversy. Paul's declaration that God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth is decisive. The skins may differ; the blood is the same. The universal brotherhood of man is universally affirmed in theory and as universally scouted in practice. But as the dying rogue declared, “Honesty is the best policy. I know it, because I have tried both," so it would seem as if we shall be able to affirm that a little more brotherly feeling would pay, because we are now beginning to discover the cost of its antithesis. All our troubles have come upon us in China because of our arrogance, pride, haughtiness, and all those evil ways which lead to destruction. It is not necessary to go back to the four wars which we have waged with China in the Victorian era of settled peace. It is sufficient to note the history of the last few years-nay, of the last few months. We have treated and are to-day treating the Chinese as an inferior race. We bully them, extort concessions, seize their territory, and treat them as dir

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ARIES

Chinese City, Pekin. From the top of the Tartar City Wall.

China some years back, "that a handful of soldiers from our army would suffice to reduce to subjection the whole of China." To-day the allied West doubts whether with 200,000 men it can venture to advance on Pekin, which is only seventy miles inland from Tientsin. What has happened is that the West has inoculated the East with militarism. Upon the most pacific, anti-miliDary people in the world it has grafted the militarism of urope. The soldier is to the Chinese an "antisapeck" or ot worth a cent man. But these antisapeck men have lready secured for China a respect which she could not command by all her study of the philosophy of Confucius. And who can say whether the success which has already been achieved may not inspire some Chinese

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and retain it in their memory. They are persevering and astonishingly active when they choose to exert themselves, respectful to authority, submissive and obedient, and they would easily accommodate themselves to all the exigencies of the severest discipline.

The Chinese possess also a quality most precious in soldiers, and which can scarcely be found as well developed among any other people-namely, an incomparable facility at supporting privations of every kind.

We have often been astonished to see how they will bear hunger, thirst, heat, cold, the difficulties and fatigues of a long march as if it were mere play. Thus both morally and physically they seem capable of meeting every demand; and with respect to numbers they might be enrolled in millions.

The equipment of this immense army would also be no very

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