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'balks' and 'links.' The Londoner discovers why one of his streets is named Long Acre. The cricketer who reads that the acre was fixed by the ordinance of Edward I. as a 'furlong in length and four poles in breadth' will notice that this acre-breadth exactly corresponds with the interval between the wickets of his favourite game. He may infer, then, that this distance was determined by the length of the long goad or pole with which the ploughman in old times guided his team of oxen.

A reviewer, it will be seen, has good reason for reserve and diffidence in attempting to point out any flaws in a work so generally deserving of eulogy. It is not a very grievous offence, but a singular one to be committed by the particular author, that in measurements metres and kilometres are allowed to jostle miles, fathoms, feet, and inches, confusing the reader by an admixture of two different arithmetical systems. We could be happy with either. Both are too much of a good thing. It is also rather contrary to what might have been expected that the author scarcely at all enlarges on the subjective side of his theme, on the attitude. of mind which men bring with them to the scenery as distinct from that which the scenery imposes upon them. In old but by no means distant times people evidently gazed with a sort of dread, mistrust, or even dislike upon scenes which we of the present day view with pleasure and describe as inspiriting, beautiful, or magnificent, while not allowing any intense emotion to disturb our tranquillity. In an age when every one travels and every one writes, the novelty and singularity of earlier experiences are lost; a process of denudation wears down the imposing features and majestic attributes of all natural wonders to a prosaic level. Quite recently one result of photography has been to teach us that mountains are not always quite so strikingly lofty as they have been painted. By other means it has been ascertained that overhanging precipices and perpendicular walls of rock are rather rare. Nature in general prefers a slope.

In tracing the causes to which our scenery is due Lord Avebury does not give great prominence to the effects produced by the animal kingdom. He does not forget the plodding industry of earthworms made memorable by Darwin's treatise, but the work of beavers in the past, and of moles, voles, rabbits, crayfish, in the present, might also have been considered. For scenic effect many of the animals which he actually mentions in the zoology of the shore are inferior to some of the tubicolous marine annelids, whether

we regard in one species the myriads of their isolated tubes, comparable to a field of standing corn, or in another the congregated tenements covering great areas of rock with a thick firm coating of artfully wrought and strongly cemented sand. If the dwellings of these lowly creatures impose upon the eye and are part of our scenery, much more should we take into account effects produced by the actions and artfulness of higher animals up to the highest. Beautiful as the parks of England unquestionably are, their trees are for the most part stripped of one of their natural glories. The branches do not feather to the ground, for the wellknown reason that up to a certain average height above it cattle keep them closely pruned. But whether for good or harm it is the contrivances of man that enter more largely and directly, as it seems to us, into the scenery of the country than they receive credit for in this volume. No doubt the effects of law and custom are most interestingly worked out; reasons are stated for the existence of hedgerows and winding lanes in England in contrast with open tracts and straight roads in France; the explanation is given why our cities and suburbs have been builded now rather than then, why our towns and villages have been planted here rather than there, as when we are told, for instance, that the districts where London clay came to the 'surface were left almost unoccupied until the New River 'and other water companies did away with the necessity for 'wells.' Still, those who live in Kent will miss a reference to its oast-houses, not much less characteristic of the local view than in their several places the conical fortresses of South African Termites, the domed huts of the Eskimos, or the pyramids of Egypt. Some notice might have been taken of the aerial pathways flung by man across the Bristol Avon and the Menai Straits. From Cornwall to Berwick, and beyond, our country is sprinkled with other pathways bridging sometimes at giddy heights its valleys and streams. Wild flowers often find a last refuge from their persecutors on railway embankments. Many a silent landscape is enlivened by the fleecy trail of steam that moves mysteriously across the distant woodlands. In some districts the tall chimneys of factories are conspicuous by day, and rows of blazing furnaces by night. We still have windmills and watermills. The towers and spires of famous cathedrals are gazed on with almost equal affection by the agnostic and the devotee. The same may be said of the picture which many a hamlet presents, with here a thin wreath of blue smoke

ascending over a moss-grown thatch, there a trim garden with ancestral lawns and well-loved rookery, and not far off God's acre and the church that tops the neighbouring hill. As Dyer says,

'The pleasant seat, the ruined tower,
The naked rock, the shady bower,
The town and village, dome and farm,
Each give each a double charm.'

But more than all conspicuous in the scenery of England are those astonishing hives of men, the great commercial cities, which seem to have no limit of growth. No Englishman will lightly esteem that view of the Thames in its sylvan surroundings which Scott with generous enthusiasm has described as 'an unrivalled landscape.' Easy to spoil, not easy to surpass in its historic loveliness, it yet remains. But, hard by, the river threads another scene, not so endearing, less winning soft, less amiably mild, still of far greater mark. One standing, not on Richmond Hill, but on 'bleak Hampstead's swarthy moor,' and gazing southward, may through the misty air descry below him signs of an encampment more vast than the world has ever before or elsewhere seen. It is not so much a capital of one of the nations as a congress of them all. Into it are poured with more than oriental profusion corn and wine and milk and honey, meat and fruit, spices and gold and jewels, ivory and apes and peacocks, and in short whatsoever is rare or singular or costly or needed; thither, to admire and be admired, come the haughty rulers of mankind, and as occasion offers all the men, the women, that are most representative of mental dominion, statesmen, authors, artists, masters of finance, men of science, missionaries and preachers; into the same great vortex are drawn for their various reasons those who have noble purposes to accomplish, and those who are bent on sneaking vice or reckless mischief; thither come the richest, to the great mart of spending, and thither the poorest for the chance of falling crumbs; the children of hope are there along with the forlorn and the desperate. Containing and covering this astonishing assemblage of things and thinkers are the miles of streets and squares and the boundless acreage of roofing which we call London. This more than all else in the scenery of England gives food for thought; this, for awe and wonder, not for boasting, is unique.

ART. VI.-1. Luke Delmege. By the Rev. P. A. SHEEHAN. London: Longmans, 1902.

2. Noblesse Américaine. Par PIERRE DE COULEVAIN. 5me édition. Paris: Ollendorff, 1902.

3. Eve Triumphant. By PIERRE DE COULEVAIN. Translated by ALYS HALLARD. London: Hutchinson, 1902.

TH

HERE is nothing in the world so magnificent as the Anglo-Saxon race. There never has been anything so magnificent. It has shown an unparalleled power of multiplying and extending itself, its dominion is the greatest recorded in history, and it has the entire future in reversion. Its justice is proverbial; it combines spotless integrity with perfect adaptation to the requirements of trade; it uses an unprecedented quantity of soap and water. Its religion is moderate belief, not extravagant superstition; its civilisation is the only civilisation worth speaking of; it represents the triumph of practice over theory, of activity over leisure, of manufacture over art, of efficiency over culture. It has made more machines and more money than ever were made before. And if the whole world becomes Anglo-Saxon, so much the better for the world.

All the propositions here stated have become for us axiomatic by the effect of steady iteration. It is, however, no matter for surprise that certain voices of dissent should be heard among the less privileged nationalities, and, though it is unnecessary to discuss the more explicit utterances of this dissentience, one may find a certain profit in observing how the Anglo-Saxon ideal, as presented in fictitious cases, strikes those to whom it is congenitally alien. And here it is necessary to say that the fullest embodiment of that ideal is to be found in the United States. America has more population, more money, more enterprise, less tradition, more efficiency, less culture than the older branch of the race. Such, at least, would be the unhesitating verdict of all Americans, and a very considerable section of English people would endorse their views. We shall begin, therefore, by considering two novels by M. Pierre de Coulevain, who contrasts with great ability the manner of life and thought habitual to Americans with the life and thought of the admittedly decadent Latin races. It is to be understood, of course, that this decadence, however universally recognised by us Anglo-Saxons, is less perfectly clear, for example, to Frenchmen, and M. de Coulevain cannot be taken as quite

convinced of it. The contrast, as he sets it forth, does not appear to him wholly to the advantage of America.

He finds the juxtaposition which is necessary for his ends in studies of international marriages. Each of his two stories is extremely slight in plot, or perhaps one should say consists rather in the developement of psychological processes than of external happenings. 'Noblesse Américaine,' the earlier and better of the two novels, introduces us to a family of Americans-Mrs. Villars, Miss Annie Villars, and Miss Clara May, cousin of Miss Villars-who come to Paris, where a relation is married to the Marquis de Kéradieu. Miss Villars has just attained her majority, and is the heiress of some two millions-a sum which, stated in francs, sounds overwhelming, and is considerable in any currency. Moreover, she is well born, well bred, pretty, intelligent; she represents in position and personal endowment the very best that America can produce. She is free, but it has always been tolerably well understood that she is going to marry a Mr. Frank Barnett, who does his best to dissuade her from going, and pictures Europe as full of coronets, each of which presents itself to him as a kind of gilded game-trap ready to close on a great heiress. Miss Villars, however, is very sure of herself; she will go, and she will come back as she went. And since, like all American women, she has le culte de la volonté,' the will which she worships and confides in makes argument futile.

On the other hand, in Paris there is the Marquis d'Anguilhon, representative of one of the greatest French houses, and physically as well as morally a real representative of it. His own expenses, following on those of his progenitors, have left him reduced to a pittance of some two hundred a year. A wealthy marriage is easily open to him, but he has decided on a very different line of conduct, and is in treaty for a post on an expedition to the left bank of the Niger. His man of affairs, whom he consults about finding the money needful for a complete settlement with creditors before departure, suggests an alternative to African exploration. This alternative is, of course, Miss Villars. The intermediary proposed is the Duchesse de Blanzac, whom Jacques d'Anguilhon had adored in his boyhood. After some debate, d'Anguilhon consents to see the Duchesse on the matter. This lady, for the present purpose, may be held to represent the ideal Frenchwoman. Married young to a grand seigneur, whom she loved in spite of the difference in their age, she has been left a widow young, and has

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