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place of which we must create a property system that shall be established in the goodwill of the community, and enforced by peaceable means.

He is quite clear in his mind that while violent revolution is to be deprecated private property itself must be destroyed; but how this is to be done without violence does not appear. He says:

Laws to control Property-owners are inoperative while Private Property remains. Passing such Laws is like trying to get rid of an octopus by disengaging one of the creature's many arms at a time. Having loosened one, you pass to the next; while you work at that, the loosened arm fegains its hold. The whole body must be dealt with; the vital part must be attacked.

"FORCE NO REMEDY "-MAYBE.

The significance of the pamphlet lies not so much in the remedies which he prescribes as the fact that he presents his indictment of the present social order in a religious guise, and instead of attacking the institution of private property from the standpoint of an anarchist or an atheist he maintains that its abolition is indispensable preliminary to the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. What is to be expected is that those whom he addresses will eagerly accept his exposition of the injustice of things as they are, and take their own short cut to what they ought to be. Mr. Kenworthy himself holds a candle to the devil in one very significant passage in which, after saying that violence begets violence, and that no violent revolution has ever ended oppression, says that nevertheless the steps of history have hitherto been through blood and struggle, and it may be that Progress has not yet entered the better

way of peace. Mr. Kenworthy's "maybe" will certainly become in the mouths of other men a positive affirmation that as it has been so it must be in the future, and that there is no hope for the world in waiting for the peaceful birth of the new era, and that our only hope is in a Cæsarian operation. This of course conflicts directly with the principle to which Mr. Kenworthy is deeply committed.

BEGIN WITH YOURSELF!

The following passages from his last chapter, while they express his own conviction, will nevertheless be scouted by the more ardent spirits as a most lame and impotent conclusion. He says

Not by violent revolution, nor by mere political action, can actual reform be accomplished. The property laws, which we attack, are rooted in the thoughts, habits and beliefs of the majority of men; rich and poor, oppressor and oppressed. Not until these thoughts, habits and beliefs are changed will reform come. Ignorance and selfishness together are the two upholders of the property laws.

What is to be done then? There is at least one thing you can do, thoroughly, infallibly. Reform yourself.

In the Society that is to be, which we idealists imagine, certain rules of conduct must needs be observed by each individual. For our own, and for our neighbours' sakes, the laws of health must be followed-temperance, cleanliness and activity. To the same end, the true principle of economy must be obeyed "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,”- "From each according to his capacity, to each according to his need." Only persons who are simple, truthful, kind and unselfish, can obey these laws. Through disobedience to these laws, our Society is perishing; the only hope of salvation is in returning to them. There is one person-yourself-whom you can at once bring to that allegiance. In your own person you can set an example of the true life. By example and precept you can win others to the truth.

PROFESSOR WALLACE'S PROGRAMME.

This is the objection which Professor Alfred Wallace makes in a letter addressed to Mr. Kenworthy, which

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They are admirable, forcible and clear. I agree fully with them except the conclusion, which I find unnecessarily weak and hopeless.

Surely there are two modes of action, either of which would bring about the "Co-operative Commonwealth "—the abolition of the rule of capitalists-the abolition of private property in the nation's industry.

The first is by the systematic extension of the co-operative movement, the workers and trades unions devoting all their savings and accumulations of capital to establishing all kinds of productive industries themselves for their own consumption, thus absorbing first, all unemployed labour power, then withdrawing labour from the capitalists. This, if systematically pursued, would, I believe, in fifty years transfer the whole production of the necessaries and comforts of life to the workers themselves. The next method is by the whole body of workers using their voting power to return representatives who would carry certain great reforms:

(a) Nationalise the railways and the land, paying all existing owners a life income only.

(b) Adopt the principle that the unborn have no property rights and abolish inheritance.

(c) Give to all children in future equality of opportunity to its fullest extent.

Voluntary universal co-operation would inevitably follow. Both these methods are possible with men and women as they are.

It only wants systematic education, and a body of energetic leaders to bring them about.

I prefer the latter as the more direct and immediately practicable.

I feel sure that you must see the practicability of these or some modification of them. Why not adopt some such scheme of your own, not the weak and utterly useless plan of each one trying to live up to an ideal which you admit only a very small minority can ever attempt—and even they will effect practically nothing.

I see in your book, "From Bondage to Brotherhood," you do in the last chapter propose or suggest co-operation, but just looking at it seems too vague. To me any exposition of evils without showing that there is a real thorough practical remedy is all waste of time. Hundreds of such books have been written, and where are they, and what good have they done! "The Bitter Cry" and "Darkest England," and Booth's statistics of London, "The White Slaves," "Life in West London," etc.

None of them propose a remedy, and they are all a nine days' horror and then forgotten!

What we want is to write upon a definite programme “like the five points of the charter," and then in season and out of season keep it before the public (as the Alliance have done with drink), and especially by debates in Parliament. Agitate, agitate, agitate! Never cease, but let it be for definite legislation, demonstrably leading one step toward the Co-operative Commonwealth, and the abolition of want. I tried the proposal of "Free Bread" in the last chapter of my "Wonderful Century," and I am sure it is a good proposal, since it would demonstrably abolish actual starvation, but nobody has a good word to say for it!

I myself would advocate free bread, free coals and free housethe minimum essentials of life, and far cheaper in the end than poor laws-all to be paid by the surplus wealth of the rich-by a progressive tax on all property above £100,000 till it would absorb all surplus above a million. Then we should have breathing time for education, agitation, and remedial legislation. But while we talk and dream the poor starve, and worse than starve. Yours very sincerely, ALFRED R. WALLACE.

ACCEPTED BY MR. KENWORTHY.

I turn with some interest to see what Mr. Kenworthy would say in reply to a criticism which strikes directly at the root of the doctrine which he has stated in his book, "From Bondage to Brotherhood." In that interesting little volume he thus addresses the workers of England :

Cease from following after those who dangle before you new Laws, new Acts of Parliament, who ask you to do nothing but -vote. The Law has been framed by oppressors; neglect it, let it die. In place of it, by the Power of Brotherhood, will come up the true Democratic means of Government-unfettered public opinion, which is the will of the people.

Imagine, then, my astonishment on turning to Mr. Kenworthy's reply to find, that instead of exhorting the workers to cease from following after those who clamour for new Acts of Parliament, he accepts holus bolus everything that Dr. Wallace says. That I am not exaggerating will be proved by the following extracts from Mr. Kenworthy's letter. After expressing his whole-hearted agreement with Dr. Wallace's position and his sympathy with the immediate practical legislative proposals so set forth, which are quite the best his own mind can discover, he continues :

Six to ten years ago, during the then existing semi-crisis of popular discontent and socialist agitation, I stated and advocated broadcast in the press and from the platform exactly these proposals of yours for the development and extension of productive and distributive co-operation, and nationalisation or municipalisation of all material social resources and functions, necessarily beginning with the land. . . The first step in that programme, however, must necessarily be such agitation as you plead for ; agitation upon the moral and economic aspects of the question, which shall arouse such enthusiasm and clearness of perception in the masses that the authorities shall be compelled to move in our direction. Inquiry must be instituted as to

1. The present conditions of ownership of all agricultural lands.

2. The conditions of the unemployed in various trades. 3 Ways and means of organising men in their proper callings upon the land of the country.

If ever the judgment of God was spoken in history it is spoken to-day, prophesying quick ruin upon the infamous system which has drained the land of its inhabitants and heaped them up in cities.... For the practical politician this is the programme of the future, as I see it, and one to which I commit myself-body, sou!, and spirit.

But there is one further consideration. This I may state as defence of the conclusion of "The Anatomy of Misery." Through years of every kind of labour for these very reforms, I perceived that the effectiveness of a man, whether leader or led, depends first, last, and wholly upon his personal character. To achieve any of our Socialist proposals, as much as to live under the society that would result from them, men are needed who are first of all men of goodwill, and with that, men of truthfulness at all cost. Such men will concentrate their whole force, not upon the Coercive forces, but upon the Administrative functions of Government, in that spirit of the Christian Gospel, so well understood by Tolstoy, which I have endeavoured to explain and spread among my fellow-countrymen

THE HALLOWING OF SOCIALISM.

I am not careful, however, to convict Mr. Kenworthy of inconsistency. His consistency or inconsistency matters very little. What is important is to note that his book is an attempt to present in a Christianised form the extreme proposals of the Socialists who deny the right of private property, and demand the repeal of every law authorising the enforcements of debts and contracts. For the last year or two his teachings will have fallen upon deaf ears. But in the stormy and troubled time upon which we are entering there is reason to believe that the teachings embodied in this little book will find eager acceptance from many who would have turned a deaf ear to the more violent and irreligious teaching of the materialists. Those who scoff at Socialism and profess to believe that it is a mere craze which will pass off, have taken little pains to read the signs of the times. I say nothing here of the steadily increasing strength of the Socialist vote in nearly every European country. Neither do I insist upon the probability that the Liberals in their distress at the coming election will go far in the way of purchasing the allegiance of the Socialists and the Independent Labour Party. I' would rather point to the significant declaration of Mr. Morley at Oxford, when he declared that if he had to choose between Militarism and Socialism, he would without hesitation throw in his lot with Socialism. Now, Mr. Morley is one of the strongest and most advanced advocates of the Individualism of the Manchester School that is to be found in politics. For such a man to make such a declaration at such a time ought to give the most cheery of optimists pause when he calculates upon the maintenance of the existing order.

WHITHER?

One more word and I have done. Mr. Kenworthy concludes his remarkable little book with the following

sentences:

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But," you ask, must I cease to struggle for Money and Property, as other men do? Must I refuse the aid of the Law, in defence of my Rights and Property?"

The answer you will give to these questions will depend upon your conception of the purpose of your life. Economic principles are, as we have seen, governed by Moral considerations. Morals are, finally, dependent upon our conception of the solution of the great mystery-What is to become of us hereafter? That is, Morals are based upon Religious Belief. Which is as much as to say, that Economic questions are, finally, Religious questions.

That is a very remarkable declaration :-To Mr. Kenworthy everything depends upon the question-What is to become of us hereafter? But as no one knows better than Mr. Kenworthy himself the great majority of those who are at present engaged in propagating the doctrines of Socialism have convinced themselves rightly or wrongly that there is no hereafter. What then becomes of moral considerations? That is a grave question, the answer of which is still to seek.

SOME NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE MONTH.

MAN'S EVOLVING DESTINY.

MR. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S NEW STORY.

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A NEW novel by Mr. James Lane Allen is something to look forward to. When read it is something to ponder over and glance back at with a recollection of pleasure. Of few writers can this be said. But Mr. Allen never writes unless he has something to say which is well worth reading and remembering, and he clothes his thoughts in such musical prose that merely to read his pages is a delight. Those who read his Kentucky Cardinal" and the "Choir Invisible" will need no recommendation to induce them to purchase Mr. Allen's latest book, "The Increasing Purpose" (Macmillan, 63.). It is a novel with a purpose, but that purpose is so intimately connected with the evolving destiny of man, and is so beautifully and delicately developed that the reader,while conscious of the writer's purpose, is not overconscious of it. As in all Mr. Allen's stories the scene is

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laid in the State of Kentucky. "The Increasing Purpose' is a life sketch and the story of the soul struggle of a man whose lot is cast at one of the critical turning points of the life of the human race. He lives at the moment when the old order is changing, giving place to the new.

ALWAYS MAN, MAN, MAN.

David is a Kentucky farm lad, in whose veins runs the blood of ancestors whose revolt against dogma in matters theological had cut them apart from the majority of their fellow-men. Living in a little country village, tilling, tending and harvesting the hemp which constituted the wealth of the countryside, David grew up looking at the world and man's place in it with the eyes of David the Psalmist, and of Job the patriarch. Man to him was the centre of the universe. It was created and fashioned for him. He was the pivot around which everything revolved. To him the most important among the worlds swung in space was the Earth, because it was inhabited by Man :

Its shape had been moulded, its surface fitted up, as the dwelling-place of Man. Land, ocean, mountain range, desert, valley-these were designed alike for Man. The sun-it was for him; and the moon; and the stars, hung about the earth as its lights, -guides to the mariner, reminders to the landsman of the Eye that never slumbered. The clouds-shade and shower-they were mercifully for Man. Nothing had meaning, possessed value, save as it possessed value and meaning for him. The great laws of Nature, they, too, were ordered for Man's service, like the ox and the ass, and as he drove his ox and his ass whither he would, caused them to move forward or to stop at the word of command, so Man had only to speak properly (in prayer) and these laws would move faster and less fast, stop still, turn to the right or the left side of the road that he desired to travel. Always Man, Man, Man, nothing but Man! To himself measure of the universe, as to himself a little boy is sole reason for the food and furnishings of his nursery.

THE DOGMAS OF THE CHURCHES.

Filled with this belief, and thinking nearly always of his Bible, when he heard of the establishment of a Bible College at Lexington, David determined to become a student. But in that larger world he soon discovered that things were not as he had dreamed. He had left the solemn, cloistered fields, and been introduced to the wrangling, sarcastic, envious creeds. He became doubtful

and distressed, finding that the dogmas of the churches did not fit in with the facts of science and the actualities of life. He passed through the various stages down the road of unbelief. First he tried to convince himself that all the churches were true, then he endeavoured to ascertain which of them proclaimed the truth, and finally he ended by turning his back on them all. With the mind of a devoutly religious man, he was antagonised by the excessive and unreasonable claims so confidently put forward by those who labelled themselves Christians. David, in his extremity, eagerly read the new literatures, the voices of which filled the world-literatures proclaiming the Old Faith, the New Science, and the New Doubt. This untrained and simple lad began to listen to them, one after another: reading a little in science, a little in the old faith, but most in the new doubt. For this he was ready; towards this he had been drawn.

THE TRIAL OF DOUBT BY FAITH.

The time came when the professors of the Bible College expelled David from the school. It was not done roughly or unkindly, but as Mr. Allen points out, it was a repetition of that old, old scene in the history of man-the trial of his Doubt by his Faith. One half of the human spirit arraigning and condemning the other half :

Behind David, sitting solitary there in the flesh, the imagination beheld a throng so countless as to have been summoned and controlled by the deep arraigning eye of Dante alone. Unawares he stood at the head of an invisible host, which stretched backward through time till it could be traced no further. Witnesses all to that sublime, indispensable part of man which is his Doubt-doubt respecting his origin, his meaning, his Maker, and his destiny. That perpetual half-night of his planet-mind -that shadowed side of his orbit-life-for ever allocated and held in place by the force of Deity, but destined never to receive its light. Yet from that chill, bleak side what things have we reached round and caught the sun! And of the earth's plants, some grow best and are sweetest in darkness. What strange blossoms of faith open and are fragrant in that eternal umbra! Sacred-sacred doubt of His agony, his searching, which has led him always around from more ignorance to less ignorance, from less truth to more truth; which is the inspiration of his mind, the sorrow of his heart; which has spoken everywhere in his science, philosophy, literature, art-in his religion itself; which keeps him humble, not vain, changing, not immutable, charitable, not bigoted; which attempts to solve the universe, and knows that it does not solve it, but ever seeks to trace law, to clarify reason, and so to find whatever truth it can.

man.

Across the room sat the professors, and behind them one seems to see, tier upon tier, row above row, a vast shadowy colosseum of intent judicial faces-Defenders of the Faith.

David, excommunicated by the orthodox religious authorities of his day, takes up the first duty which lies nearest to his hand. He returns to his father's farm, to hard, ungrateful work, in his endeavour to pay back the money he has spent on his college education.

CHILDREN OF TWO REVOLUTIONS.

At this dark period of his career his life is moulded by the hands of a woman. Gabriella does not alter the course of his life, but she smooths away its roughnesses, and brings to it the softening influence of a woman's love. Gabriella herself is the product of a revolution,

social not moral, but one which is not without a profound effect upon the community. She belongs to the old Southern slave-holding aristocracy ruined by the Civil War. In order to earn a living she becomes the schoolmistress of the little country village which is David's home. These two children of vast and distant revolutions are guided by Mr. Allen into one life-a young pair, facing toward a future of wider, better things for mankind :She, living on the artificial summits of a decaying social order, had farthest to fall in its collapse ere she reached the natural earth; he, toiling at the bottom, had farthest to rise before he could look out upon the plain of widening modern thought and man's evolving destiny. Through her fall and his rise they had been brought to a common level. But on that level all that had befallen her had driven her as out of a blinding storm into the church, the seat and asylum of religion; all that had befallen him had driven him out of the churches as the fortifications of theology. She had been drawn to that part of worship which lasts and is divine; he had been repelled by the part which passes and is human.

"The Increasing Purpose" is a novel which is inspired by profound thought, and is written by a man who has a keen insight into life, a great love of nature and the ability to express his thoughts in language which it is a pleasure to read, so musical is it. There is no doubt that Mr. Allen's latest story will have many readers, but it cannot be read by more than it deserves.

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a man.

To say that this is a clever book is only to say that it is by the lady who prefers to call herself by the name of But to say that it is a satisfactory book is to take a liberty with the truth. It is an ambitious book, for what can be more ambitious than to bring Lord Beaconsfield into a story as one of the characters, and make him speak and write letters in his own name and in his own peculiar style? But nevertheless "Robert Orange" is disappointing. Nothing turns out right, everything goes wrong. The plot of the story is of the slightest, and the heroine is too young to be interesting. She is a little older, it is true, than she was in the "School for Saints," but it is impossible to work up much interest nowadays in pretty chits in their teens. As for Robert Orange, who gives his name to the title, and who may be supposed to be the hero of the story, he is a very unsatisfactory gentleman. He is a bit of a prig, and although he is a Catholic, his Catholicism is not of a very interesting variety, although it affords the authoress a definite opportunity of shunting him into a religious order at the end of the book. The only real person whom we remember with pleasure, or whom we would have cared to meet in real life, is the young half-Russian, half- English lady whose nervousness, restlessness, and excitability are very well painted. Robert Orange is little better than a lay figure who is created for the purpose of enabling the authoress to display her jewels of epigram and her embroidery of wit. In the "School for Saints we are promised an account of Orange's experiences when he enters the Church. Therefore we may suppose that there is to be yet a third volume devoted to the analysis of the character of this not particularly interesting young man. There are some pretty things in the book, some eloquent passages, a good deal of sauce piquante of one kind or another; but on the whole it does not thrill us, neither does it maintain the high level which previous works of its authoress had led us to expect. (Unwin, 6s.)

HOW TO MITIGATE INDIAN FAMINES.

BY AN INDIAN.

THE terrible calamity which has overwhelmed large portions of India this year has attracted comparatively little attention in England. Death in the more dramatic form in which we have witnessed it in South Africa and in China has fully occupied the public mind, which is so constituted as to be incapable of taking an interest in two things at the same time. Hence the sufferings of the Indian peasants in the famine-stricken districts have for the most part been passed over in silence. But the present famine, following so close upon that of 1897, ought to arouse the conscience of the people of the Empire, and lead them to seriously inquire whether they have done all they can to prevent these terrible scourges. Those who are interested in the question will find a mass of useful information on the subject in the volume which Mr. Romesh Dutt has just published entitled "Famines in India" (Kegan Paul).

TEN FAMINES IN FORTY YEARS.

The

British administration of India has brought internal peace, but it has not banished famine. Within the last forty years there have been ten famines in India. At a moderate computation the loss of life in starvation and disease may be estimated at fifteen millions. periodical recurrence of famines has been accounted for, among other reasons, by the assertion that the population of the country has increased more quickly than the produceof the soil. This, Mr. Dutt points out, is not the case. The increase in the population of India is slower than in England and Wales, and is slower than in eighteen other countries out of the twenty-eight for which figures are available. The immediate cause of famine is the failure of the rain. This cause can only be combatted by a more extensive system of irrigation. Mr. Dutt's main purpose in publishing this book, however, is to call attention to the other causes which, if they do not occasion famines, do profoundly influence their intensity and frequency. Famines, he says, are greatly due to the resourceless condition and the chronic poverty of the cultivators, caused by the over-assessment of the soil on which they depend for a living. The peace which British adminis tration has given to India has not brought with it a reduction in the public expenditure or in the public debt. One-third or one-half of the net revenues of India are sent out of the country annually. Land revenue is the most important of the Indian revenues, and so it happens. that the taxation falls heavily upon the cultivators of the soil. They can save nothing in years of good harvest, and consequently every year of drought is a year of famine.

THE ROOT OF THE EVIL.

In Bengal and in Northern India the cultivator generally pays rent to private landlords. The demands of the landlords and the State's demands from the landlords are both restricted by law. The land revenue realised is between five and ten per cent, of the gross produce of the soil. In Bombay and Madras the State itself is virtually the landlord. The cultivator has no adequate protection against over-assessment. The land revenues realise between twelve and thirty-one per cent. of the gross produce in Madras, and probably more in Bombay. In the Central Provinces the cultivators pay rents to private landlords. These rents and the proportion of the rent demanded by the Government as revenue are fixed by the State. In recent settlements the rents have been raised from two to twenty per cent., and the revenue from twenty to one hundred per cent. Mr. Dutt says :

If we examine somewhat closely the death-rates of the famines

which have occurred in India in this generation, i.e., within the last twenty-five or thirty years, we shall find that deaths have generally been most numerous, and famines have been more intense and fatal, in those places where the cultivators are least protected against over-assessment. In 1874 there was a famine in Bengal which caused no loss of life; in 1877 there was a famine in Madras, and over five millions of the population perished. In 1892 there was a general famine in various parts of India; there was loss of life in Madras, but in Bengal "there were no deaths from starvation." In 1897 there was also a general famine; in Bengal and Northern India the relief operations were successful in preventing loss of lives; in the Central Provinces the deaths were more than double the normal rate. And in the present famine the distress is most severe, and the deaths most numerous, in Bombay and the Central Provinces.

Mr. Dutt is confident that a great deal might be done to mitigate the ravages of famine if the land tax were moderated; if a million tens of rupees were annually spent in the construction of irrigation works, leaving the cultivator the option of using the water when he requires it and paying for it when he uses it; if the public debt and the expenditure of India were reduced; and, lastly, in the matter of assessment, if an appeal were allowed to an independent tribunal.

THE DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY. A MONUMENT TO BRITAIN'S DEAD. THE illustrious dead of England are buried in Westminster Abbey. To few, however, is that honour reserved. But the man who cannot aspire to this English equivalent of canonisation need not despair. Mr. George M. Smith, of Smith, Elder and Co., has generously provided the nation with a second Walhalla, in which there is room enough for every man who rises above mediocrity to hope to find a niche. In "The Dictionary of National Biography," now at last completed, are entombed the 30,000 men and women who have, by their life work and achievements, made the British people what it is to-day. Throughout the historic ages one person in every five thousand has gained sufficient distinction to obtain admission to the dictionary. The sixty-three volumes, which one by one have regularly for the last fifteen years been issued every quarter, compiled under the editorship of Mr. Leslie Stephen and Mr. Sidney Lee, are a truly national monument. All phases of Anglo-Saxon life are represented in the persons of those who have achieved any reasonable measure of distinction in their respective walk of life. In this vast gallery of pen-pictures of England's distinguished men are to be found portraits of statesmen, lawyers, divines, painters, authors, inventors, actors, physicians, surgeons, men of science, travellers, musicians, soldiers, sailors, printers, sportsmen, and leaders of society. Criminals, too, whose crimes have brought them notoriety, if not fame, have their deeds recorded. The darker as well as the brighter aspect of our national life may be traced in this many-paged monument to a nation's life. Vast as it is, "The Dictionary of National Biography" does not represent the whole of Anglo-Saxon activity. The great men of the race who happen to have been born across the Atlantic within the confines of the Union find no place in the Dictionary.

THE EBB AND FLOW OF NATIONAL GREATNESS.

The classification of the memoirs by date gives some indication as to the ebb and flow of our national life as it is expressed in the lives of individual citizens. Mr. Lee, in his statistical account, which prefaces the final volume, says :

Leaving out of account the dark periods that preceded the

sixth century, it will be seen that the ninth and tenth prove least fruitful in the production of men of the Dictionary's level of distinction. The seventh century was more than twice as fruitful as the ninth, and the tenth was far less fruitful than the sixth or eighth. Since the tenth century the numbers for the most part steadily increase. The eleventh century gives twice as many names as its predecessor, and supplies no more than half as many as its successor. The successive rises in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are proportionately smaller, and there is a well-marked decline in the fifteenth century for which it is difficult to account. The sixteenth makes a notable bound, the aggregate memoirs belonging to that era being three times as many as those of the previous century. The upward progress is continued, although not at quite so high a rate, in the seventeenth century, which supplies more than twice, but less than thrice, as many names as the sixteenth. In the eighteenth the number remains almost stationary: only a slight increase of 115 names is on the record. In the nineteenth century the advance recommences at a very rapid pace, the total number of nineteenth century names more than doubling those of the previous century. In mental and physical activity the nineteenth century resembles the sixteenth; but the advance of the nineteenth century upon the eighteenth in the total of memoirs is relatively far smaller than the advance of the sixteenth upon the fifteenth.

Mr. Lee does not think that the large number of names which represent the nineteenth century in the Dictionary is an unfair estimate of the claims of that century on its merits, and apart from its proximity to the present generation. He points out that opportunities of distinction have been greatly augmented. The multiplication of intellectual callings, the specialisation of science and art, and the improvements in educational machinery, have all made the path to distinction easier.

THE MOST DISTINGUISHED NAMES.

The initial letter B has been honoured by more distinguished names than any other letter of the alphabet. It can claim 3,078 names in the Dictionary. C comes next with 2,542, followed closely by S and H with 2,420 each. M yields 2,310 names. P, W, G, R, L, D, F and T all have over a thousand names to their credit. Their popularity is indicated by the order of their arrangement. X alone of all the letters is without a representative. Smith, as might be expected, claims the largest number of memoirs; 195 persons bearing that name or its variants are noticed in the Dictionary. The nation is indebted to the following family names for many distinguished men and women. Jones, 132; Stewart, 112; Hamilton, 106; Brown, 102; Clark, 99; Moore, 88; Taylor, 86; Douglas, 85; Scott, 83; Gray and Williams, 81; Gordon and Wilson, 80; Thompson, 78; Campbell, 72; Murray, 71: Davies, 68; Howard, 66, and Robinson, 63. The figures show the number of memoirs in the Dictionary. There are also 389 names beginning with the prefix "Mac, 220 with the prefix "O," and 133 with the prefix " Fitz.”

In conclusion, it need only be said that 658 persons have contributed to the compilation of this monument to Britain's dead, of whom a hundred did the bulk of the work. The cost of the undertaking has been heavy. The expenditure has considerably exceeded £100,000, while the receipts have lagged far behind that figure.

THE August number of the Young Woman contains two articles on music-an interview with Liza Lehmann (Mrs. Herbert Bedford), the song composer, by Mr. Arthur Lawrence; and a short account of Theodor Leschetizky, the great piano-teacher, who numbers Paderewski among his famous pupils.

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