and their daily conversation their undisguised and heartfelt contempt for the degraded beings amongst whom they live; let the slightest weakness in the Dutch character be made to argue its utter worthlessness; let the most isolated and trivial crime in the Dutch proclaim their lawlessness; let their virtues be traced to superstition or soft-headedness; let every bona fide and natural acquiescence in the loss of their liberties be exaggerated into an apostacy and a condemnation of the national aspirations; let loyalty to the Crown in the mouths of the new inhabitants be a veritable vae victis to the old; in a word, let the evil machine of ascendancy be set in motion in South Africa, as it has been in Ireland, and Englishmen shall not long want a problem on which to exercise their intellects, or it may be a grindstone on which to sharpen their swords.

A wicked and perverse generation has asked for a sign, and lo! a sign has been given unto them. Ireland is the danger signal, and if Englishmen do not read it aright it must be because they are given over to madness as a preliminary to destruction. Can any sane man in England afford to make light of the prospect of rebellion in South Africa? It is not an easy matter to carry on a warfare against a determined and straight-shooting enemy, and to quell a well-planned rebellion is a still more formidable undertaking. In 1798 an insurrection took place in three Irish counties, Antrim and Down-heretofore the most loyal portion of Ireland-and Wexford, and the forces of the Crown were defeated in several pitched battles and the British power exerted to its utmost before peace was established. If the insurrection had spread simultaneously throughout the remaining twenty-nine counties, if even anything approaching a general "rising" had taken place, who now would be bold enough to estimate the probable result? In this connection any parallel between Ireland and South Africa utterly fails. For one capital reason all comparisons are useless: so far as rebellion is concerned, Ireland is to the South African States as the green wood to the dry.

It is with a due sense of responsibility that the statement is here advanced that the most powerful influence for peace in Ireland during the last century has been the strong hand of the Catholic Church. Not only have the clergy stood aloof from every insurrectionary movement, but they have cut away even the foundations of insurrection. Unmeasured denunciation in

season and out of season they have meted out to every physical force effort, and they held over the heads of both leaders and led the ban of excommunication. In unmistakeable terms secret societies have been condemned as the invention of Satan, and the rites of the Church have been universally denied to anyone bound by a secret oath. A relentless war has been waged against the idea of appealing to the God of battles for a justice admittedly withheld, and of putting to the arbitrament of the sword the fate of a suffering nation. If we could even faintly conceive how far-reaching and how certain of its effect is the influence of the Church in Ireland, how it enters into the atmosphere of public life, how it is felt in the remotest hamlet, how it is woven into the very fabric of the national existence; if we could conceive the strength and fervour of the loyalty which is freely tendered to that church, the control which it exercises on the lives of its adherents, the scope and delicacy of the machinery which it can without effort set in motion, and at the same time consider that this institution with its vast resources in both temporals and spirituals has ever ever set its face sternly against the doctrine of armed resistance, we might roughly estimate the value to the Empire of the Irish Church as an ally. How different might have been the nature of the Irish problem had all the might of that Church been ranged on the side of action? How if the eloquence which poured a consuming fire of scorn and enmity on every movement of rebellion had blessed the banner of revolt? How if religion had been identified with national independence? Hypothecating these things, it is no exaggeration to say that from every rood of ground within the four seas of Erin would have sprung a soldier in his country's cause; rebellion in some shape or form would have been the main business of a Celtic Irishman, and on many a consecrated field the linked themes of Faith and Fatherland would have made death seem to him a noble destiny. It is extremely probable that it is to the eternal honour of the Irish clergy that they preferred the for them thankless task of peacemakers; but, whatever opinion may be held on that point, it is undeniably true that to their unremitting watchfulness, energy, and zeal the comparative peace which has reigned in Ireland, and the comparative freedom from serious Irish trouble which during the past century the Empire has enjoyed, are entirely due. It is here

that Ireland fails as a criterion of the probable course of events in South Africa. When the yoke of Government begins to gall the unaccustomed flesh of the Republicans, the natural inclination to upset the coach will scarcely be controlled by an overwhelming sense of obedience to their spiritual rulers, who themselves are not likely to entertain the same rigid views as to what justifies armed resistance as the clergy of Ireland. The modern history of Ireland is in a vague way familiar to Englishmen A people born for generations under the yoke, with their souls eaten out by the iron of subjection, with their wills, however prone to resistance, governed by the most powerful brake in the whole range of human emotions, a people in no wise sanguine by constitution, have yet time and again drawn the sword, though with weakened hand and with little hope of success. Rebellion in South Africa may be as unsuccessful as rebellion in Ireland, but the Republicans have not learned the lesson, and they might be very troublesome pupils. If Irishmen, for whom the idea of complete independence exists only in tradition, and for whom the idea of a well watered-down self-government marks the highest point of their political aspirations, have been with difficulty confined to the paths of constitutionalism, what may be expected from men born to free institutions, bred in the bracing atmosphere of political independence, and with memories stored with a record of success in offensive and defensive warfare against the mightiest of Empires? Of course, the Transvaalers and the Free-Staters may be men of weak spirit; it is just possible that they may find joy in their subjugation, and they may be, for anything we know, bursting with loyalty. Of course, too, the Irish and the South African methods of government may be different, and productive of different results. On these points it is likely that opinion will be sharply divided, and we shall learn the truth only from the

event.

How far the event shall be in consonance with the welfare of South Africa, and also of the British Empire, it is the business of the Government to determine. It is the business also of the Opposition, and particularly of that section of it which still remains untainted with Jingoism. Men who believe in free institutions should see to it that the burghers are not robbed of their birth-right. Men who believe that

government should not be inspired by racial partiality, or be made the instrument of class interests, should guard against a repetition of the policy which has brought about the condition of Ireland. All who are conscious of a sentiment of real loyalty to the Empire should insist on a policy of conciliation which would proclaim to the vanquished what they have gained rather than remind them of what they have lost. If they have occasion to ponder deeply on their loss, if the contrast between the present and the past is forced unpleasantly upon them, no amount of after-dinner platitudinizing about loyalty and no number of newspaper articles can save the situation. Campaigning will take the place of controversy about methods of government, and much campaigning might result in such a position of affairs that the South Africans would have no use for any method of government, good or bad, except their own.

THOMAS M'CALL.

THE

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE1

HE "American Men of Letters Series" is not a new enterprise; it is a good many years now since the first volume was put before the reading public of the United States. It is a very good series: all the volumes are well written, some of them are remarkable. It is true the subjects are not always inspiring; many would dispute the right of Benjamin Franklin, and George W. Curtis, and N. P. Willis to be included in a series which aims so high as this does, or, indeed, to be considered men of letters at all. It is as though Theodore Hook and McGinn were to be included in the Macmillan series here. But when you have to make a series of literary biographies, and your literature is young, and your choice of names, therefore, somewhat limited, you must, of course, do what you can ; and many of these books have a depth, and range, and power of critical acumen which allow them to rank with the best of Mr. Morley's series, while there is none so bad and slovenly as some of the worst of the English volumes. And the latest volume of the American series, if compared with one or two of the late issues of the English series, does not exactly leave us with any profound sense of triumph or of British superiority in this kind of thing; that is, if we grant that the editor, or whoever is responsible, invariably chooses the best men in England for the work.

This new American volume, this biography of Hawthorne, is a very able book. To give a notion how good it is we would call to mind one of the finest of the short biographies, and say this book is fit to stand by the side of Mark Pattison's Milton. We have always regarded the Life of Poe, which is also by Mr. Woodberry, as the best book in the excellent American series; and this volume in its way is as good as that. Mr. Woodberry has a fashion of standing aloof from his subject which amounts almost to a mannerism-the only mannerism he has; he brings the methods of Flaubert into biography, and this may disturb a little some readers; but at the end you feel there is no more

1 American Men of Letters Series. "Nathaniel Hawthorne," by George E. Woodberry. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1902.