SPOKES FROM "THE HUB."

"THE Beacon of American Literature-Boston," is the subject of much interesting gossip by Mr. Douglas Sladen in the Leisure Hour for December. Mr. Sladen went to Boston in 1888, but recalls incidents of an earlier date. "SWEET REASONABLENESS GONE SOUR.

He tells curious incidents of two celebrated English visitors, men of letters certainly, but hardly men of manners. He says:

When I knew him (Holmes) . . . . the great centre of literary life in Cambridge was the hospitable house of Mr. Houghton, the publisher, where so many notable English authors have been entertained, two of whom, Dickens and Matthew Arnold, gave mortal offence within these walls. For Matthew Arnold's special delectation, Boston beans, which are prepared with bacon and are so identified with Boston literary life and Boston Sabbaths, had been provided as an entrée. Instead of being pleased, he was very sarcastic, and said it was an outrage bringing a dish which smelt like that into polite society. This took place at a dinner-party, and his onslaught outraged everyone present except the host.

DICKENS'S LOSS OF TEMPER-AND OF MUCH BESIDES.

One is scarcely less sorry to read this about Dickens :Dickens's ebullition of temper, which cost his heirs and assigns so dearly, took place in the library. Mr. Houghton said to him that, as he could not prevent other houses republishing Dickens's works without payment, since there was no copyright, he could not afford to pay him more than a five per cent. royalty, but he was prepared to pay that. It was at a time when the American greenback had been terribly depreciated by the war. Dickens completely lost his temper, and said, "Well, if you won't give me more than that, I don't want any of your dirty money. It is not worth anything, anyhow." When Mr. Houghton told me this story he added that, just for his own satisfaction, he had always kept an account of the money that would have been paid to Dickens and his heirs, and it amounted to a good many thousand pounds.

66 THE AUTOCRAT'S" ONLY REVENGE.

In pleasant contrast to these instances of British boorishness is the story which Oliver Wendell Holmes told when sitting in his library taking a cup of tea :—

ever

"Look at this, Mr. Sladen," he said, showing two newspaper cuttings pasted side by side; "that is the only revenge took." The first of the cuttings was a virulent review of Holmes's 66 'Dorothy Q.," published when it first came out. The success of the poem was instant and absolute. Some busybody told Dr. Holmes who had written the review. The merry, good-hearted little man took no notice of it at the time, but years later, when he came upon a paragraph in another paper announcing the failure and suicide of the man who had written the review, he cut it out and pasted it alongside of the review. A SMART JUVENILE REJOINDER.

A very ancient excuse for defective table manners was very properly snubbed by a small juvenile, to Dr. Holmes' great delight. Mr. Sladen, after recounting another incident, goes on :—

It was almost immediately after this that he had the passageof-arms with my boy, who was then about seven years old, which tickled him so immensely. The child was in his natural place-near the refreshment table. "Why don't you help yourself, little man?" said the Doctor. "Because I haven't any fork," responded the child. "Never mind, fingers were made before forks." "But not my fingers!"

These are a few samples of a most entertaining essay.

MR. ARTHUR H. U. COLQUHOUN gives, in the Canadian Magazine for November, a short account of eight General Elections in Canada between the years 1867 and 1896 inclusive.

THE FUTURE OF NEW ZEALAND. SIR ROBERT STOUT, Chief Justice of New Zealand, contributes to the Australasian Review of Reviews an article upon "New Zealand in an Island Federation." Sir Robert Stout maintains that "from the very early days of the colony settlers dreamed great dreams of their civilising mission in Polynesia. There are now in the colony large and valuable reserves set apart by the Government fifty years ago, for educational purposes in which the trust. . runs as follows: 'In trust for the education of children of our subjects of all races, and of children of other poor and destitute persons, being inhabitants of islands in the Pacific Ocean.'"

In order to fulfil that trust, the New Zealanders are casting covetous eyes at the Fiji Islands. Mr. Seddon would breakfast off Fiji, lunch off Tonga, and dine off the Cook and Savage groups. The New Zealand House of Representatives has already passed a resolution asking Fiji to enter into the political system of New Zealand, on which proposal Mr. Chamberlain has at present put down his foot. It is 1,140 miles by sea from Auckland to the capital of the Fiji Islands. The people of Fiji, through delegates and by petitions, asked în 1884 and 1885 to be annexed to New Zealand. In 1885, two Samoan chiefs came to Auckland on the same mission. The Colonial Office turned a deaf ear to their warnings, and Samoa was in 1889 partitioned between Germany and the United States. In 1890 the British resident appointed to the Cook group was selected by the New Zealand. Government. What is now proposed is the formal annexation of the Cook group, and of some adjacent islands that have been under British protection and management for some years.

New South Wales, which does four times as much trade with the Fijis as Auckland, protests against the proposed extension of New Zealand's sovereignty.. Against this, Sir Robert Stout protests. He reminds them that New Zealand paid part of the cost of annexing New Guinea, and now that she is undertaking at her own expense the government of islands in her range of influence, is it too much to ask Australians to assist her with kindly recognition?

The Hon. W. McMillan, in a brief paper following Sir Robert Stout's, says he thinks that the difference of opinion between New Zealand and New South Wales concerning Fiji "may possibly be one of the first of the Imperial difficulties arising out of the growing nationhood of Australasia." Mr. McMillan thinks that New Zealand is pursuing a wicked and selfish policy in standing outside Federation. She simply desires to get all the advantages of commercial reciprocity without any of the. responsibilities arising out of politica Iconnection. Australia," he declares, "will not receive New Zealand into the Commonwealth unless she subscribes to all the vital provisions of her vital constitution, and not only makes herself one with her in trade and defence, but one with her... in her political destiny."

THE Rivista Musicale Italiana, a solid quarterly, is to be congratulated on the completion of its seventh annual volume. Its articles, which are in Italian or French, deal exhaustively with topics of musical interest. The notice of Enrico Bossi's work in the current number, for instance, runs to about forty pages. One of the best papers in the same number is that (in French) on Caron de Beaumarchais, by H. Kling. The notice of Perosi's "Massacre of the Innocents," contributed by E. Adaïewsky, is also written in French.

PREHISTORIC CRETE LAID BARE.

IT is an interesting link between the remotest eld and the latest present, that the action of the Concert of Europe in freeing Crete from the unspeakable Turk has directly forwarded the discovery of the oldest civilisation in Europe. Mr. D. G. Hogarth gives in the Contemporary a most instructive account of the recent exploration of Crete, more particularly of that conducted by himself and Mr. Arthur Evans. On the Kephala Hill, at Knossos, they came upon a great quantity of "pre-Mycenaean" pottery, marked by novelty of form and "startling elegance." Mr. Hogarth says:

The art, which could produce these elaborate vessels in Crete carly in the second millennium before the Christian era, was certainly in some respects not behind the art of contemporary craftsmen in the Egypt of the Twelfth Dynasty.

A NEW LITERATURE UNEARTHED..

66

a

In March, while exploring the remains of a great palace, they came on the first example of the most epochmaking of the objects found on Kephala, namely, small wedge of hardened clay inscribed with half a dozen symbols of the undeciphered linear script, which is now known to be the long-looked-for medium of written communication in the prehistoric Ægean" " :

Three days later' more such wedges were discovered, and thereafter, as the soil deepened towards the north, clay documents appeared daily by tens and twenties, till in certain chambers and galleries in particular the tale, not only of wedges, but of larger tablets with many lines of text, had to be reckoned by hundreds. Many were found lying packed together as in boxes whose sides had long ago rotted away; others, permeated by wet, had coagulated into lumps, hardly to be divided.

66 THE OLDEST THRONE IN EUROPE."

Mr. Hogarth goes on to describe, deep sunk and approached by a stairway, the most remarkable group of chambers yet laid bare :

The central one, paved and frescoed, but much damaged by fire, contains a large sunken bath or tank with stone balustrade and descending steps, and, facing it, a stone bench running round the northern wall, broken in the centre by a singular throne in grey gypsum. The seat is shaped to human convenience; the high back, resembling that of an old English chair, is scolloped round the edge, and the legs, shown in relief on the supporting block, are ornamented with truly Gothic crocketing. What purpose, ritual or otherwise, the tank may have served, what king and council sat over against it, we can only guess; but there is no doubt that, as Mr. Evans says, this is the oldest throne in Europe.

"LADIES IN PUFFED SLEEVES" B.C. 2000! The frescoes discovered amid these ruins, says the writer, "make a strange revolution in our idea of prehistoric art in Greek lands" :

One would have said the painters of early Hellenic vases had been at work. Crowds of semi-nude youths, shown in delicate profile; red-skinned and black-haired warriors hurling darts; ladies in puffed sleeves and flounced skirts in animated conversation on balconies; façades of buildings, apparently palaces and shrines--these are the subjects drawn in with a sure brush, among brilliant rosettes, sprays, and geometric patterns.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURIES B.C. AND A.D.

Here is a pretty reminder from the twentieth century before Christ to the beginning of the twentieth century after Christ :

The Knossos palace shows a civilisation which reached the highest point attained by archaic art in painting the human form, in modelling plaster, and in carving stone vessels. In treating hard gems in intaglio, it equalled the finest Phoenician craft of

a

later times, even as, at Mycena (to which countless links of fabric, style, and pattern relate the Knossian palace finds), its metallurgy equalled the finest Egyptian; while in the realism and life of its style, it excelled all its eastern rivals and teachers. We have now, under our hand, over a thousand written documents of a civilisation which a short time ago was thought to have possessed no writing system at all, and it is most probable that many of these, when deciphered, will serve to justify us in calling the "Mycenaean" Age, not prehistoric, but historic. We see the king inhabiting in Crete vast palatial building adapted for the storage of immense wealth in kind, and, so far as all appearance goes, not in any way fortified. His life was led, not behind ramparts as at Mycenae, but in open security, though his dynasty had ousted another, possessing a very high antecedent culture, refined to the verge of decadence. Relations with other shores, especi ally the Egyptian, were open and frequent. Objects of art, like a diorite statuette of Twelfth Dynasty type, came from the Nile to Crete, and pottery went from Crete to the Nile. Moreover, strong influences of style passed to and fro, for the paintings of Khuenaten's town at Tell el Amarna are as parallel to the Knossian as the foliated lamp of Knossos is to the capitals of Egyptian colonnades. Direct evidence has at last been obtained as to the racial type and the speech prevailing in the prehistoric Ægean area; and a great accession to previous evidence on religious practice and cult affinities.

The article ends with a vivid sketch of the Psychro Cave, the supposed seat of Zeus' fabled birth, with its subterranean lake and beautiful tracery of stalactite roof.

THE AUTHOR OF THE EIGHT HOURS' DAY. THE eight hours' movement has won actuality enough in home-lands to make its Colonial origin of something like Imperial interest. The series of "Capitals of Greater Britain," now being sketched in the Pall Mall Magazine, reaches this month Wellington, N.Z. Mr. Tom L. Mills, in the course of his well-written paper, recounts the beginnings of the reform :

A modest and now much-defaced marble tablet over the meagre drinking fountain outside the city's Free Public Library is the very slight tribute paid by Wellington workers to the man whose forethought won for New Zealanders, and other colonials, the eight-hour workday. Samuel Duncan Parnell, a carpenter, London-born-who never owned allegiance to a trade's unionsingle-handed, when first he set foot on Port Nicholson's beach, stipulated for, and eventually obtained for himself, and afterwards established and fostered for the benefit of his fellows, the practice of the principle of equal division of the twenty-four hours-

"Eight hours' labour,

Eight hours' rest,
Eight for recreation

And what seemeth best."

There has been much argument in the Colonies and Great Britain upon the origin of the shorter workday, and it was not until a short time before his death that Parnell himself established his claim as the founder of the movement, and the present writer has independent evidence supporting the claim. Parnell fought in the workshop and at mass meetings on Petoné Beach, Wellington, for the principle during the time between February 7th and March 7th, 1840; he made it the custom of his trade and other trades in Wellington; it spread to other parts of the colony, thence over to Victoria; and he lived to see the establishment of an annual Eight-hour Day (Labour Day! set apart as a State holiday in the land of his adoption, and died in Wellington in 1890 in his eightieth year.

Perhaps the name of Parnell will some day, when the claim of Labour to Leisure has been more universally recognised, suggest rather Eight Hours and New Zealand than Home Rule and Ireland. Certainly Samuel Duncan has achieved more than Charles Stewart.

A TOO ANXIOUS REVIEWER.

THE enthusiasm to which the Church Quarterly Review has been stirred by the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play does infinite credit to that pious and decorous and erudite organ of Anglican opinion. The writer of the "study and appreciation" of the peasant drama has evidently been profoundly thrilled by what he saw, and he is man enough not to be ashamed of his emotion. He sees in the "Play" a "fragment of mediæval life," a glimpse of the age of faith," astonishing, fascinating, unique," and also "a living comment on the ancient classical drama.” His eulogy of the actors and of the author of the drama is warm and generous.

It is a pity that the writer should have intruded on this gracious mood of mind with a wholly gratuitous alarm about the orthodoxy of a certain guide-book to the play which is issued from this office. He says :—

As far as the text is concerned, the English world must, we suppose, be grateful to Mr. Stead; for his is the only book which gives the German and English side by side. . . But what are we to say of the Introduction? It is well meant, in a gushing, sentimental fashion. But the taste of it!.

And one expression keeps recurring and recurring about which we do not know what to think-is it meant to convey a suggestion that, after all, the interest of Calvary was only that of a martyrdom, differing in degree, not in kind, from the sufferings of other good men? Or is it pure ignorance of theology, with a Philistinish misapprehension of all that the Ammergauers intend, which makes him say to his readers that "that is the great gain of the Passion Play. It takes us clear back across the ages to the standpoint of those who saw Jesus the Galilean as but a man among men. It compels us to see him without the aureole of Divinity, as he appeared to those who knew him from his boyhood, and who said, 'Are not his brethren still with us?'"...

We are most anxious to be just to Mr. Stead, but we cannot help saying that he sadly mistook his vocation when he attempted to deal with the Passion Play. Whatever his own beliefs may be (and into these it is no business of ours to inquire), of this we cannot acquit him--that if he holds the Christian faith he has handled it with the presumption of gross ignorance. The results of such handling on the uneducated, to whom alone he can appeal, can only be to lead them to believe that the most obvious gain from the Passion Play is that it strips the legendary Christ of a divinity whose ascription to His Person has served no other purpose than to obscure the completeness of His humanity.

This is surely sheer perversity. The whole drift of my Introduction was to insist upon "the miracle of miracles," that a martyrdom which from the standpoint of Christ's contemporaries was "merely a passing episode in the unceasing martyrdom of man," should have actually transformed the world. "Why, I ask. Why," I do not use the phrase, but my meaning is clear,-" if it only differed in degree and not in kind from the sufferings of other good men," did the Crucifixion have such immense results? Surely the reviewer is capable of distinguishing between "the aureole of Divinity and the Divinity itself. The "gain" referred to consists plainly in the reproduction of the actual, the representation of what was really obvious to the senses of contemporaries, without the phenomenal accretions which were added by the adoring fancy of later times. This reversion to fact inevitably drives the mind of the spectator to seek the Divinity not in any sensuous show or fantastic outward label, but where alone it can be found in the moral and spiritual personality clothed as it was in "the form of a servant" and "in fashion as a man." It is precisely because the play recalls with intense vividness "the form of a servant" and the

“fashion as a man," that it forces us to realise what Power and Grace resided within that lowly exterior. For, as I said in the "Introduction," not until we start low enough do we understand the heights to which the Crucified has risen. It is only after realising the depth of His humiliation, we can even begin to understand the miracle of the transformation which He has wrought.

May the kindly and reverent heart of the reviewer be reassured, and help to widen the too ecclesiastical "head of him"! It is impossible to preface every reference to things sacred by a solemn recitation of the ecumenical Creeds. Life is too short.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AIDS.

Fortu

A FEW months ago, it will be remembered, a Bill was introduced into the House of Lords which, if passed, would have enabled the British Museum authorities, not only to disperse the collection of provincial newspapers among local authorities, but to destroy "printed matter not of sufficient value to justify its preservation." nately, Mr. Sidney Lee and others came to the rescue in the Times; the Bill was withdrawn before it reached the House of Commons, and we hope one more national disaster has been averted. Meanwhile the British Museum authorities are contemplating the preparation of a subject index to the contents of the library. This has been a long-felt want, and now, when the printing of the catalogue is approaching completion, seems the time to put it in hand. The proposal, however, comes as something of a shock to "A Scholar," and a discussion of the question is opened in the Times. In this case the Times, which took a very enlightened view of the British Museum Bill, sides with "A Scholar," and thinks "it is quite safe to say that the time is not yet ripe for the compilation, in the interest of the average reader." How the library and readers have got on so long without a subject-index passes conception. Surely it is not too much to ask the national library to make its contents as widely known as possible; and the most natural means of performing this function would seem to be the issue of model and complete classified catalogues and subjectindexes, not merely for use in the British Museum Library itself, but for the use of students and other libraries.

Meanwhile we gladly recognise any enterprising individual effort which comes to our aid on however small a scale. Mr. Alfred Cotgreave, of the West Ham Public Libraries, is to be congratulated on the successful completion of his "Contents-Subject Index to General and Periodical Literature." Though compiled originally for the use of the Public Libraries of West Ham, the library authorities, we are glad to learn, have decided to publish an extra number of copies, so that readers elsewhere may benefit. What a long-felt want such general indexes have been is well known to those who have occasion to get up special subjects at short notice. The classified catalogue, admirable and useful as it is, takes little note of the separate contents of books; the "Contents-Subject Index," on the other hand, makes these a leading feature. An equally important feature is the inclusion of a very large number of articles in periodicals, presumably all to be found on the shelves of the West Ham Libraries. A supplement at the end of the book fills up a good many omissions in the earlier part of the Index, and brings the work down to about the middle of 1900. The whole runs to some 750 pages and may be purchased from Elliot Stock for 10s. 6d.

as

every public building in the colony. The Australians are already laying in flags, so that an export trade in Union Jacks ought to be a good line for some houses in the City. It seems that the shadow of Federation is already evoking the purely professional politician. Busy lawyers or great merchants who reside in Brisbane or Perth are already discovering that it would be blank ruin for them continuously doing parliamentary work in the new capital. Queensland wants to send Sir Samuel Griffiths as her representative, but he is Chief Justice, and he naturally

A NEW FLAG FOR AUSTRALASIA. THIS is a print of the suggested flag for Australasia, which won the prize of £25 offered by the Melbourne Evening Herald for the best design for a federal flag. It is flaunted in colours on the cover of the Australasian Review of Reviews for October, and a very showy flag it is. The five stars of the Southern Cross appear in clear relief upon a red background, and the flag itself is not unlike a blend of the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. Mr. Fitchett, editor of the Australasian Review of Reviews, is now offering a prize of £50 for the best design for a federal flag. The competition is open to the whole of Australasia, and the six Australian prime ministers of the federating colonies have undertaken to act judges. The competitors may decorate the flag with what they please, whereas in the Melbourne journal it was stipulated that the federal flag must include the Union Jack and the Southern Cross. In the REVIEW OF REVIEWS competition, competitors can festoon the flag with kangaroos, if they please; but in that case it is to be feared the six Australian premiers would not award the prize. All designs must be sent in not later than February 1st. If, in the opinion of the judges, no better design than that which carried off the prize in the Melbourne competition is submitted, the £50 will not be awarded, but a consolation prize of £10 will be paid to the designer of the flag judged

does not wish to leave

his well-paid life post

to undertake temporary duties in the Federal Parliament. The colonies have been holding a secret conclave to discuss the Federal tariff. It is understood that they are unanimous in favour of taking the Victorian tariff as the basis for the Federal tariff, lowering some of its rates and raising others, and putting raw materials mainly on the free list. The chief difficulty is the question of sugar. It is expected that the other colonies will insist upon forbidding the importation. of coloured labour, but as a condition they are suggesting that a duty of £4 per ton on cane sugar, with a heavy preferential rate as against beet, would be the least compensation that would suit Queensland, and it would appreciably raise the price of sugar all over Australia. It is interesting to note, in view of the strong line which the Australians have taken as to the alleged illtreatment of the blacks of the Transvaal by the Boers, that the Governor of South Australia, Lord Tennyson, has found it necessary to remind the world that the Australians themselves are guilty of abominable iniquities in relation to their black people. Lord Tennyson asked a meeting of the Aborigines' Friendly Association :

to be best among those sent in. Mr. Fitchett hopes that this competition will have the effect of "giving birth to a flag which will hold a proud and longenduring place amongst the flags of the civilised world."

The Australian Review of Reviews is already becoming like a bumper filled with foaming Imperialist champagne. In view of the coming of the Duke of York, the new Australian flag flames upon the cover, and many pages of the magazine are devoted to a discussion of how to celebrate the coming of the royalties. It is proposed that a flagstaff should be erected upon every State school, and that when the Federal Parliament is opened, the Duchess of York should press an electric button, which would give a signal which would run over the whole continent, and simultaneously the Union Jack would be hoisted to the music of cheering crowds over every State school and

Are you aware that black women in the Northern Territory have very insufficient protection by law from, I am sorry to say, the brutality of some of the lawless white men there, and suffer accordingly? Are you aware there is a great deal of illicit trading in liquor with the blacks there, which ought to be stopped, and which is ruining them body and soul? Are you aware of what your late Chief Secretary stated last year in Parliament, that the blacks are even now being carried away from their tribes by white men into virtual slavery? In God's name I hope South Australia will awaken to a truer sense of the responsibility that she owes to these black fellows, and that she will put down with a strong hand these abominable iniquities.

Mr. Fitchett thinks that Lord Tennyson's words are certain to be taken up in England, and perhaps made the text of undeserved reproach to the Colonies as a whole. Far be it from us to reproach the Colonies as a whole; only if I might be permitted to make a humble suggestion, it would be perhaps as well if the higher conscience of the Australasian community were to make itself more effective at the outposts of white colonies in Australia before sending contingents to teach the Boers at the rifle's mouth the right way of dealing with their Kaffirs.

The Queensland Assembly has amended its standing orders providing for closure if thirty members are in its favour. In New Zealand Mr. Seddon has introduced a new Licensing Bill, dividing the colony into nine districts, in each of which a three-fifths majority may close all hotels. In Victoria the programme of the Temperance Party demanded that a majority of half plus one should have power to reduce or absolutely prohibit the facilities for selling drink in each locality, and that there should be no compensation after three years' notice for suppressed licences.

The discussion as to the site of the new Australian capital continues. It must be in New South Wales, and it must not be within a hundred miles of Sydney. Bombala, which is a seaport of its own, a two-fold bay, is at present first favourite. After Bombala comes Orange, which is 192 miles west of Sydney, and is said to have "a perfect climate, with cool nights, bright days, and clear air." Another place that is spoken of is Vass, which is also 192 miles distant from Sydney. It is on the through line to Melbourne, and has ample deposits of granite, marble and limestone, from whose quarries the future capital can be built.

THE AMERICAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS. DR. ALBERT SHAW has a large harvest to garner in narrow space in his December number. He has to gather in the significance of such notable events as the returns of the American Census, the Presidential election, and the constitution-making convention in Cuba. He has besides to say a farewell word to the departing century. Yet as though by rebound from recent political strain he makes room for articles of scholarly biography and social philanthropy.

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THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT "" OF THE CENTURY. His chronique begins with a note of peace. He says:It is not improbable that, when the events of the nineteenth century fall into their true places in the perspectives of history, the work of the Hague Peace Conference will appear as the crowning achievement of the period, and its best legacy to its successor. An event like the great conference at The Hague usually lacks full contemporary appreciation.

He goes on to insist on the pacific value of large armaments, and suggests that if the United States had had a large military force a few years ago, Spain would have left Cuba without fighting. He says, "It is in our day just as necessary and just as honourable for a nation to maintain an army as for a city to have a police force." He remarks on the probability that the British Islands now contain two or three million more people than France does, and hints that the best guarantee of peace between the two nations, and the greatest kindness to the French Republic, would be for England to prepare energetically for possible attack.

THE AMERICAN CENSUS.

The Census report leads Dr. Shaw to refer to the growth of the people who speak English as one of the

things of prime significance in the nineteenth century. He remarks on the evenness of the growth of population in the United States. The centre of population, which has been moving westward for one hundred years, has remained almost stationary since 1890. It was then a little to the east-it is now a little to the west-of Columbus, Ohio. (Strange that the centre of the greatest people of the New World should bear the name of the New World's discoverer.)

Dr. Shaw diagnoses the national verdict in the Presidential election by saying "this was not a year for party politics; nor was it a time when the country could possibly afford to repudiate either its financial decisions of four years ago, or its actions on the larger stage of the world's affairs subsequent to the Spanish War."

CUBA AND CANADA.

"The Cuban Republic-Limited " is the title and pith of a paper by Mr. Walter Wellman. He best describes the arrangement projected for Cuba by saying that Cuba will be to the United States as Canada is to the United Kingdom, save that Cuba will choose a president instead of having a nominal governor-general appointed by the paramount Power. The Convention now at Havana is said to give signs of accepting this scheme. Secretary Root, whom the writer calls the Father of the new Cuba, selected the following franchise for the Cuban people :—

Any Cuban (or any Spaniard who has renounced allegiance to Spain) may vote provided he is twenty-one years old, has resided in the municipality thirty days immediately preceding registration, and possesses any one of the following additional qualifications :-(1) Ability to read and write; (2) ownership of real or personal property to the value of 250 dols., American gold; (3) service in the Cuban army prior to July, 1898, and honourable discharge therefrom, whether a native Cuban or not.

The Constitution agreed upon by the Cuban Convention will not become law until signed by the American President. His veto would compel the Cubans to try again until he was satisfied.

FOUR FIGURES OF THE CENTURY.

Mr. Charles Johnston, late of the Bengal Civil Service, contributes an eloquent estimate of Max Müller. The great philologist, it is pointed out, taught human kinship through kindred speech :

Most of all, he worked for the good of the Indian Empire, by infusing into the minds of her future administrators a respect for her ancient tongues and a living interest for the obscure idioms of a hundred furtive and backward peoples, who hide in the jungles and among the hills of that land of marvels, and who owe it chiefly to him that they are recognised as members of the great human family, as part and parcel of articulate man.

Mr. Johnston concludes with a noble peroration :Gladstone did much to humanise the policy of the world's most extensive empire; to reconcile was his dearest ambition, rather than to over-rule. Bismarck moulded together into one body, with a single heart, the fragments of a scattered people, showing us the vast power that lies in unity. Darwin, lovable and humble, broke down the barriers that cut us off from the lesser races of the world; broke down the barriers of time, and showed us the one Life surging for ever through all living creatures. Max Müller, accomplishing a like task for the invisible world, threw down the partition walls between peoples and tongues, making all the children of men once more akin in thought, as Darwin had shown them kindred in blood; and, lifting the mists from bygone ages, showed us the community of our speech, our thought and aspiration, with the word long hushed on lips of vanished races, of men whose name memory has ceased to whisper along the deserted corridors of time.