6

of Canada, says Professor Shortt, is not to be of the 'saw-log, pulp-wood, and wheat-growing type.' He rèjects any such blighted destiny,' and holds that there is no virtue in belonging to the British Empire unless we can have a share in its civilisation.'

Mr Balfour's policy runs counter to this ideal. Mr Chamberlain has two objects in view; one is to unite the Empire, the other is to save British trade. We have the fullest sympathy with these aims; what we object to is his latest method of securing them. His present proposals are the outcome of previous failures. When he took office he tried to establish an Imperial Zollverein and failed. He next proposed an Imperial Council, but the proposal was premature. He tried next in connexion with Imperial defence'; but the colonies declined to join. 'But,' he says, 'I did not on that account give it up, and I came back, therefore, to this idea of Commercial Union.' Such is the genesis of what Mr Chamberlain calls the colonial offer. His theory is that British industries and commerce must be saved by a development of the colonial demand, and that the bonds thereby established will unite the Empire. Professor Shortt sums up the colonial reply: the colonies will not accept 'a blighted destiny.' The decision is fatal alike, so far as the colonies are concerned, to Mr Balfour's policy and to Mr Chamberlain's. Fortunately, commercial solidarity is not indispensable to Imperial unity. Both the United Kingdom and the colonies are as yet too intent upon maintaining to the full their own rights and separate interests to merge cherished liberties in a consolidating commercial treaty. We in England have not yet apprehended the feeling of independence and equality that fills the colonial mind, or accepted the idea that in any scheme of Imperial union the United Kingdom can only be first amongst equals.

Art. VI.-LESLIE STEPHEN AND HIS WORKS.

1. Sketches from Cambridge. By a Don. London: Macmillan, 1865.

2. The Playground of Europe. London: Longmans, 1871. 3. English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. Two vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1876.

4. The Science of Ethics. London: Smith, Elder, 1882. 5. The Life of Henry Fawcett. London: Smith, Elder, 1885. 6. Hours in a Library. Three vols. Smith, Elder, 1892. 7. An Agnostic's Apology. London: Smith, Elder, 1893. New edition, 1903.

8. The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen. London: Smith, Elder, 1895.

9. Studies of a Biographer. Four vols. London: Duckworth, 1898-1902.

10. The English Utilitarians. Three vols. London: Duckworth, 1900.

11. Letters of John Richard Green.

London: Macmillan, 1901.

Edited by Leslie

Stephen 12. English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century. (The Ford Lectures.) London: Duckworth, 1904.

LESLIE STEPHEN came of a family, originally from Aberdeenshire, which had produced remarkable men during the three generations preceding his own. His father, Sir James Stephen, was for many years Permanent UnderSecretary of State for the Colonies, and had much to do with the shaping of the institutions of what are now the self-governing colonies during a period critical for their development. Sir James was also a man of considerable learning and of literary tastes. His lectures on the history of France, delivered while he was Regius Professor of modern history at Cambridge, and his essays in ecclesiastical biography, are still read and are still worth reading. Leslie, born in 1832, was for a short time at Eton, where he was a home boy,' but got most of his school instruction at King's College School in London, whence he proceeded to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. There he took honours in mathematics; but, as the natural bent of his mind was not towards that or any other branch of science, he did not carry his studies very far in this direc

tion. He had grown up in a religious atmosphere, partly evangelical-for his father had close relations with the leading men of that school, and his mother belonged to the well-known family of the Venns-partly broad church, for he had himself been taught by Frederick Denison Maurice, whom he revered, as, indeed, no one who knew that admirable man could help doing. It was natural, therefore, that Stephen should offer himself for, and be elected to, a clerical fellowship at his college-most fellowships in those days were clerical-and should in due course proceed to enter holy orders. This he did; and this settled him in Cambridge as a tutor.

Stephen was extremely fond of his university, took a great interest in the college boat, and was himself famous as a runner and as a pedestrian. Those were the days when the climbing of snow mountains had just begun to be a passion among Englishmen, and especially among the active young dons at the two universities. Stephen threw himself into the pursuit with ardour. Many of the great summits of the Alps were then still unconquered; and he had the honour of being the first to climb some of them, including the magnificent Schreckhorn. He contributed a paper to the collection of articles entitled 'Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers'; and his second book (published in 1871), entitled 'The Playground of Europe,' consisted of a selection from the papers read by him to the then recently established Alpine Club, recounting expeditions made among the high mountains. They are among the brightest and pleasantest pieces of work that ever came from his pen, because he puts so much of himself into them, and because they have that mixture of keen observation, quaint humour, and slightly sombre reflection which was characteristic of his way of studying both man and nature. Sometimes, allowing for differences due to the quality of the topics handled, they remind one of Thackeray in that sauntering and discursive mood which produced the 'Roundabout Papers.'

The best of the English writers on the Alps who preceded Stephen was James D. Forbes of Edinburgh, a distinguished man of science, and also a master of the pen. Forbes, however, is either scientific or picturesque. Stephen never uses science except as a humorous foil to pleasure; and he seldom attempts a brilliant piece of

description. Yet he manages not only to convey a vivid idea of the climb he is narrating, but to surround it with an atmosphere of human feeling, and to connect its incidents with reflections on other things that would seem far remote did they not arise so naturally. Here he is true because he is simple. Some who have written about the Alps, like the late Professor Tyndall, spoil their descriptions by affectation or pedantry. Others, in trying to escape selfconsciousness, become stiff and dry. Stephen knows how to let himself alone, and yet (as people say) to let himself go.' As Forbes represents the scientific way of bringing mountain-climbing into literature, and Ruskin, where he touches the theme, the poetical way, so Stephen represents the normal human way, brought to a high point of excellence by the blending of humour with a delicately suggested vein of sentiment. For some years after 1871 he continued to climb; and for a good while afterwards he was an energetic pedestrian, fond of taking long walks all round London, often with a small group of friends of similar tastes. Tall, active, and light in body, he was an extremely swift walker, though in ascending a steep acclivity he preferred that deliberate pace, irksome to some Englishmen, which he had learnt from the Swiss guides, and which is, probably, the best pace for long expeditions.

In the midst of a tranquil and pleasant career at Cambridge, teaching in the winter and scaling snow mountains in the summer, there arose a cloud. The colour of his opinions was affected, and therewith the course of his life turned. His theological views gradually changed; and after a time he found himself so far removed from Anglican orthodoxy that he resigned both clerical and tutorial duties, and ceased to consider himself, and be addressed by his friends, as a clergyman. About the year 1864, he migrated to London, where he lived for some time with his mother, then a widow, and his sister. His elder brother, James Fitzjames Stephen, afterwards legal member of the Viceroy's council in India, and, still later, a judge of the High Court of Justice, was, though practising at the bar, mainly occupied in writing for the press; and through him Leslie found an easy access to journalism. He began to write for the 'Saturday Review,' which in those days, under the

editorship of John Douglas Cook, had formed a large staff of writers unlike any that had been seen before or has been seen since in England. It included more than a dozen men of first-rate literary powers; and these men were as widely removed as possible from one another in the quality of their minds and in their political and religious opinions. Stephen wrote for the 'Saturday' for four or five years, possibly more. When the 'Pall Mall Gazette' was founded in 1865, he contributed to it also, and for a time frequented the gallery of the House of Commons as its representative there. The combats amused him; but his comments were more frequently sardonic than sympathetic; and he never expressed any wish to enter the parliamentary arena.

Like nearly all the brightest and keenest young university men of his generation, he was a Liberal tending to Radicalism-a Liberal of the school of Cobden, Bright, and Mill, if one may venture to join the two former names with the third. He was, however, too detached in mind ever to become a keen party-man. The cause which laid most hold on him was that of the Northern States in the American Civil War. Naturally disposed, by the influence of his father and his father's friends, to detest slavery and all its works, his interest was stimulated by a journey which he made to the United States in 1863, when the issue of that tremendous strife was still trembling in the balance. This journey procured for him three friendships which he profoundly valued, those of James Russell Lowell, Edwin L. Godkin, and Charles Eliot Norton; and it gave him a liking for America which induced him, though he had no great taste for travel, to cross the Atlantic once or twice in after-life.

When, some years later, Mr Gladstone's Reform Bill of 1866 led a group of young Liberals to issue a volume called Essays on Reform,' which was meant to defend popular government against the onslaughts of Mr Lowe and Sir Hugh Cairns, the subject of the choice of members by popular constituencies was allotted to Stephen. Though in later years his political zeal seemed slightly to decline, he remained always true to the doctrines of his youth, a steady if not enthusiastic Liberal. He did not like the Home Rule plans of 1886 and 1893; but by this time he had ceased to take any active part in politics. In the