The figures given are as follows, the average rent of the land, as let previously, being in all cases taken at 25s. per acre, and allowance is made in all cases for repairs at the rate of 1 per cent. per annum on the cost of the buildings :-For hiring a thirty-acre holding: rent, 37s. 5d. per acre, at least, for the first fifty years at any rate; for purchase, instalments of 34s. 7d. per acre for the first fifty years, and nothing thereafter; for hiring a fifty-acre holding, 33s. 4d. per acre; for purchase, 30s. 54d. per acre.

It will be observed that in each instance there is a difference of all but 3s. an acre in favour of purchase, more than enough in ordinary cases to cover the tithe which purchase would throw on the owner of the holding; and there is the great distinction that every year is bringing the purchaser nearer to having his land rent-free; while the most the tenant can hope for is that his son, fifty years hence, may not be paying more per acre for his land than the large farmers around him.

If the loans were granted on the same terms as those of the Wyndham Act, under which interest and sinking fund are both met by a charge of 2 per cent. for sixty-eight and a half years, the calculation is even more favourable to purchase, the figures being for thirty acres: Hiring, 35s. 2d. ; purchase, 26s. 8d. per acre. For fifty acres Hiring, 31s. 10d.; purchase, 23s. 3d. per acre; and it must not be forgotten that all the Committee's calculations as to ownership are based on a price of twenty-four years' purchase of gross rents. As something extra would have to be given in many cases for compulsion and severance,* they are wise, no doubt, in allowing more than the usual average price of agricultural land; but it is notorious, there is plenty to be bought at twenty or twenty-one years' purchase of gross rents, and another shilling or two per acre off the instalments would put the case for purchase in an even more favourable light.

Mr. Collings quotes from the evidence, and in his book, 'Land 'Reform,' gives various instances in which freeholds established under less favourable conditions have succeeded. Indeed, it is not difficult to show cases of small landowners who have done well, and equally of small landowners who have failed; but it would be more difficult to say how often the failures have been due to the oppressive action of the laws affecting land.

The Committee have well pointed out (para. 131) that there is thrown on the rates too much of the cost of certain national

Sir F. Channing and Mr. Ferguson would treat owners as a conquering army treats the inhabitants of the enemy's country, and would allow only bare market price.

services, and that, till the incidence of taxation is rearranged so as to relieve agricultural land of the unfair burden at present laid on it, there will be a disinclination to become owners. This has been urged again and again; a concrete instance may give point to the argument. The writer has before him the particulars of a small landed property, and as the most important figures are round ones, it is a convenient one to quote: it may be mentioned that there is a railway station on the estate and good markets are easy of access.

Area.-Almost exactly one thousand acres, comprising four farms between 206 and 264 acres and three small holdings. There is no manor house, so the owner has to pay rates and taxes on the house he lives in elsewhere.

Gross Rental.-7461., say, 15s. an acre.

Rateable value.-Land, 514/.; buildings, 1107.

Rates, as paid by the tenants at 1s. 5d. on the land, and 2s. 11d. on the buildings for 1904-5, 521. 10s., of which 28. 128. was for Poor Law and 237. 18s. for other purposes. The rent, of course, could be increased by that amount if rates were non-existent; but as rates for Poor-Law purposes are, with Land Tax, regarded as an hereditary burden (even on land acquired before the time of Elizabeth or William III.), it may be argued that the maximum rent the land could pay, if non-hereditary burdens were removed, would be 7697. 18s., or, say, 7701.

But tithe, which happens to be 751. on present prices, has to be paid, and income-tax at 1s. on the remaining 6951. These, even after claiming the statutory allowance for repairs, together reduce the landowner's possible receipts to 6651., and the upkeep of the estate is an unavoidable charge on that balance. The actual expenditure under this head has, for the last five years, averaged 1107., almost exactly 15 per cent. ; but put it at 100l., and the most the landlord has to put in his pocket, even if relieved of non-hereditary burdens, is 5651.

Compare this with the position of a fund-holder, whose investments return 6951. per annum. The only charge on him is the income-tax of 341. 15s.; he consequently has 660l. to the credit of his account, while the landowner, in the hypothetical circumstances, would have only 5651. ; and as the non-hereditary rates have not yet been put on the foreigner by judicious Tariff Reform, and, in the long run, come out of the owner's pocket, he has, in fact, only 5401. or less.

As the buildings were lately valued for fire insurance at 12,000l.-less, of course, than they cost, and a moderate estimate places the expenditure of former owners on roads and fences &c. at another 5,000l., the owner is thus receiving about

3 per cent. for the outlay on the estate, and nothing for the land, not even prairie value.'

The people who may become the tenants or owners of small holdings do not pay income-tax, nor do they belong to the fund-holder class; but, if they did, such a disproportion of burden as is shown by the figures quoted above might well give pause to any who thought of undertaking the responsibilities of property. Borrowing, unfortunately, has been more in fashion with small owners than investing, and mortgages, no doubt, account for the disappearance of very many of the dwindled yeoman class. But is not our land system to blame for the very prevalence of these mortgages? If by means of registration Free Trade in land had been possible as advocated in past years by Kay and by the Cobden Club, would not many an embarrassed freeholder have sold a portion to clear the rest, instead of increasing his indebtedness?

Still, on the Continent, where the transfer of land is easier than here, many small proprietors are deeply mortgaged; but the comparative lukewarmness of the desire to own land in Britain would be a safeguard, and our men would cling less to their holdings after it was to their interest to part with them. Many foretold that land purchase in Ireland would mean the creation, in a few years, of a new race of landlords, smaller and more necessitous and harder than the older ones; it is too soon to assert that these dismal prophecies may not be fulfilled, but the record as to the 877 original purchasers under the Bright clauses of the Land Act of 1870 is, at any rate, encouraging. These men, having bought in good times, had a hard struggle when agricultural prices fell; but after thirty-five years about half still occupy their holdings; in the great majority of the cases in which changes of ownership have been recorded, possession was continued in the family of the purchaser, and, so far as is known to the Board of Works, sub-letting has been of very rare occurrence. We cannot dogmatise from less than 900 cases; but such a history reinforces Mr. Collings's arguments; and if it be retorted that land registration will take years to establish, that is no argument for not seeking through it to reach the goal desired by the soundest course.

If we have free traffic in land, the economic forces that are always at work will, in a period short in the history of the nation, bring the land and the people who can make the best use of it together; and the welfare of the kingdom is more likely to be advanced thereby than by artificial regulations, and by importing into the British land system expedients that were only adopted as palliatives for the deadlock in Ireland.

ART. IV. THE PLEIADE AND THE ELIZABETHANS.

1. Ronsard and la Pléiade. By GEORGE WYNDHAM. Macmillan & Co. 1906.

2. Elizabethan Sonnets. By SIDNEY LEE. Constable & Co. 1904. 3. A History of French Literature. By GEORGE SAINTSBURY. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1884.

4. French Lyrics. By GEORGE SAINTSBURY. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. 1890.

5. Avril. By HILAIRE BELLOC. Duckworth & Co. 1904. 6. Histoire de la Littérature Française. By EMILE FAGUEt. Librairie Plon. 1900.

7. Histoire de la Littérature Française Classique. By FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE. Librairie Ch. Delagrave.

8. Tableau du XIX Siècle. By SAINTE-BEUVE. 9. Premiers Lundis. By SAINTE-BEUVE.

THERE are, it may be, but few who love Ronsard and Joachim Du Bellay, few who read the less-known singers of the Pléiade, but those few are haunted by them. A sound is in their ears, a cool, light sound as of plashing water, and it seems to come from some magic fountain in a forest, like Ronsard's Fontaine de Bellerie in the forest of Gastine, which had power to quench the thirst of poets. Among these few is Mr. George Wyndham, who has just given us his lecture on the Pléiade, together with a selection from their poems, followed by his own translations of them.

The making of selections is a work of literary charity. There are those who love poetry and have no time to prove it; there are those who would love it if they were guided in their choice; there are those who read with difficulty and should only read the best; and, for all such, selections are a boon to be thankful for. Those before us fill a niche of their own. Old students and old lovers of Ronsard will, of course, always turn to SainteBeuve's Œuvres Choisies,' but that does not include either Du Bellay or the minor stars. Mr. Saintsbury's pleasurable 'French 'Lyrics' covers the ground up to the present day, and so cannot give too much time to any group. Mr. Hilaire Belloc, that able chauffeur of literature, took a record trip through the Pléiade a few years ago, when he published his 'Avril.' It included an essay on Ronsard (which was mainly to prove that Ronsard died a good Catholic) and a very small selection from

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the poems of the Pléiade, which could hardly count as an anthology. Mr. Wyndham's choice makes no pretence to be a complete one; but it is admirably made and sufficiently representative. He begins with poems by Du Bellay and goes on to Ronsard; Rémy Belleau and Baïf follow, together with C Gilles Durant, Jean Passerat, and the less known Théodore de Viau, all later followers of the master; while to these he adds a few sonnets by Olivier de Magny and some from the hand of Magny's strange lady-love, Louise Labé, the Muse of Lyons, whose work was antecedent to the Pléiade. After the original poems we come to his translations of them, or, rather, of a chosen number. And here we must begin with a technical grumble. If there are to be translations at all, should they not be printed in a double column side by side with the originals? Or, at all events, should there not be an index in which the name of each French poem is given together with its English counterpart? We have no index at all here, and can only compare the two at some expense of time and temper.

But-and this is a vital but '-why need there be translations at all? Translations may legitimately exist for three reasons for the private pleasure of the translator (only then they should not be printed); or because a foreign language is difficult of access to the people who want to read the poems; or, best reason of all, because the translator has gift enough to make his poem stand by itself. The first of these conditions Mr. Wyndham, no doubt, fulfils. Enjoyment is written in every line of his translations-too much enjoyment, for it has carried him beyond self-criticism. But, for the rest, is he justified? It is almost a foregone conclusion that the people who desire to read the Pléiade already understand French and have a taste for French literature. And Mr. Wyndham's English versions do not stand by themselves as works of art; far from it. There is another reason, last, but perhaps first, why one who loves the Pléiade as he does, should never have done what he has done. For, in truth, these poets are untranslatable; the light grace, the airy spirit of their verse is too elusive to be caught by any language but their own, least of all by our deeper, weightier English. The footfall of Ronsard's Muse, of Joachim Du Bellay's, of their colleagues', is, as it were, the footfall of nymphs over dewy grass, in some classic grove, cool and silvery, such as Corot has painted. The atmosphere is not disturbed as they pass, it is only refreshed; you hardly know that there has been movement except for a faint fragrance in the air. But Mr. Wyndham's nymphs have put on overshoes; they have become mortal, English; they are afraid of getting their feet wet;