SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1881. THE EDITOR cannot undertake to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscript. It is particularly requested that all business letters regarding the supply of the paper, &c., may be addressed to the PUBLISHER, and not to the EDITOR. LITERATURE. Firginibus Puerisque, and other Papers. By R. Louis Stevenson. (C. Kegan Paul & Co.) E. STEVENSON's new book will scarcely cool the ardour of any who passionately Loved his earlier work; but those who have hitherto admired him more soberly will see ttle cause to regret the first misgivings to which each succeeding volume gives a more defi'te and less favourable colour. In justice roth to Mr. Stevenson and to ourselves, it saculd be conceded that any estimate of his genius must be perforce a purely individual one. The real question-far more important and interesting than any enquiry as to style or method is surely this: Are his books in the strict sense genuine ?-are they, as they profess to be, the spontaneous, careless pastime of a philosopher, or the studied, artificial, practised work of a man of letters? If the latter, it is well; if the former, it were far better. For then we should gladly confess that the man who, urging his donkey over the stony Cevennes, or slipping down the flood in his canoe, could, with each passing change of sun or cloud, philosophise in spite of himself, so lazily, so carelessly, so unaffectedly, and yet so well, and in words always so apt and poetical, must stand upon a little pinnacle of fame far above the heads of such as we who cannot even now and then be at once perfectly natural and perfectly elegant. But whether he really did all this, or only pretended, or persuaded himself afterwards that he did so, each reader must judge for himself, according to his own sentimental experiences, his own knowledge of men and books, and still more by noting how far he eels as he reads that undefinable but surely BLmistakeable feeling of affectionate camelerie, that strong sense of a personality wom one would like to know in the flesh as well as in the book, and, knowing, would find to be not other than his book, and yet something far better. It is thus that we know Montaigne and Walton, and even Bacon, Browne, and Sterne, for what they were and il are for us; it may be thus that some have traced in these essays a friendly reveation of virgin genius, wayward, unconous, and unpremeditated. But, for ourselves, far different are the conclusions to which these tests have led us. For if these books turned out to be the joint production of two or three ingenious pens, we know not whether we should not admire them the more nor like them the less. And saying this is to say all. For is it not to say in other words that they have not the faintest Yet when he has really anything to say, it "where soft joys prevail, where people are con- deifying wine abound, there, at least, let the To For It is impossible not to treat the book thus seriously, and so with apparent severity; for nothing can well be more serious than the subjects which it handles with playful dexterity and fantastic wantonness. complacently ignore its implied claims or its probable influence upon certain readers would be a poor compliment. To them its confident maxims and playful audacity will seem to imply some background of solid opinion. Such, at least, was the inference naturally suggested by Mr. Stevenson's first books. Were his earlier moralisings, so light yet earnest, so fluent yet so inconsistent, but reticent whispers of an uncandid epicureanism, or were they the playful tinkling of some more massive forge whose full ring we must wait to catch? Each succeeding book only proves that they were neither. if at first the gentle stroke but disguised the latent strength of a self-gained and well-rounded philosophy, right or wrong, it must before now have made itself felt. But what have we here beyond the same clever conceits and ingenious sallies furbished up and re-set in freshly gilt commonplace? In truth, very little. Mr. Stevenson has nurtured his beautiful gifts with rare cultivation. His pen is well worthy-and this praise he at least would feel means much-to describe the heaving tints of a sunset river, or the transient emotions of an artistic soul; but a philosopher or a moralist we cannot allow him to be. And yet at least half of this book consists of moralising upon Death, or, rather, of pathetic mumblings, graceful whimpers, and seductive little shrieks, in which the changes are rung upon every metaphor and simile which ever has been, or ever can be, applied to this new grisly pet of drawing-rooms given over to the infernal amusement of wondering whether life is really worth living. Some of this is merely superior fustian, much of it has been read before, none of it would one desire to read again. This endless fantasia upon the theme of the 22 Letters, Speeches, and Tracts on Irish Affairs. By Edmund Burke. Collected and Arranged by Matthew Arnold. With a Preface. (Macmillan & Co.) charnel-house is the more profoundly depressing lessly and prejudicially restricted, whether by ALL that Burke wrote is valuable; and the present portable reprint of the great poli- When Burke entered political life, Ireland was groaning under the Penal Laws-in his own words, "a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverish ment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man (p. 277). indication of the remedy. Burke believed it to be quite possible for men to be mutinous and seditious who felt no grievance. But he denied this to be the case in Ireland; and, when the turbulence of the Irish was insisted on, he significantly replied that the way to keep them in order was certainly not to furnish them with something substantial to complain of. Burke's writings on Irish affairs are so free from heat and violence as to be almost judicial in their tone. His own position as a native of Ireland, and a prominent politician in so timorously conservative an age, put him under obvious restraints as the advocate of Irish liberty. That battle was fought by the politicians of Dublin, and the victory was wrested from the politicians of London. In the circumstances, his Irish writings form a strong testimony to the courage, sincerity, and generosity of his convictions, and, it may be added, to their fundamental consistency. E. J. PAYNE. The Life of Father John Gerard, of the "The most poor, illiterate, and uninformed This unparalleled code of oppression was the the cultivator's interest in the land is need now republished as a separate work. As Mr. Morris has become more familiar with the sources of information, so has he been better able to lay them under contribution. Obscurities and personal allusions which quite baffled him at first have been cleared up and explained to a wonderful extent. The confusion and uncertainty in the chronology which constituted the great defect of the of. Some beautiful reproductions by the first edition have been satisfactorily got rid other hand, let him equally Woodbury process of ground plans and bird'sbeware of following the popular cry as an eye views one of them is a plan of the Tower, published the very year that Gerard made his escape from thence-help the reader, and give an attractive feature. In fact, the Life of John Gerard, in its present form, has passed out of the region of polemics, with which it was to some extent associated heretofore. It has lost its apologetic tone, and now claims to take its place as a sober record of facts-facts too eloquent to need my wordy comment. Father John Gerard was the son of Sir Thomas Gerard, of Bryn, in Lancashire; and the present Lord Gerard is lineally descended from his elder brother. He was born in 1564, and from his infancy he was the object of religious hatred and intolerance; his earliest recollections were of his having been forced away from his home. He was but a lad of twenty when he was among the suspect for recusancy, and he was kept in gaol for two years. In 1586, while out on bail, he forfeited his recogpizances and went straight to Rome. Here be remained two years, received priest's orders, entered the Society of Jesus as a novice, and almost immediately volunteered to serve on the English Mission. He landed on the coast of Norfolk a fortnight after he had completed his twenty-fourth year, quite unknown, and without a friend in this part of England. The intense irritation caused by the Armada was at its height; the difficulties in the way of a Missioner were enormous; and every attempt to obtain a hearing for an advocate of the Catholic order had signally failed. Yet this young man became for eighteen years the most active, and incomparably the most successful, emissary whom the Church of Rome has had in England since the Reformation. It is hardly saying too much to assert that, but for him, the Catholic party in England would have collapsed altogether, or dwindled into entirely contemptible proportions. The extent of Gerard's influence before those eighteen years were half over was nothing less than marvellous. Country gentlemen meet him in the street and forthwith invite him to their houses; high-born ladies put themselves under his direction almost as unreservedly in temporal as in spiritual things. Scholars and courtiers run serious risks to hold interviews with him; the number of his converts of all ranks is legion; the very gaolers and turnkeys obey him; and, in a state of society when treachery and venality were pervading all classes, he finds without difficulty servants and agents who are ready to live and die for him. A man of gentle blood and gentle breeding-of commanding stature, great vigour of constitution, a master of three or four languages, with a rare gift of speech and an innate grace and courtliness of manner-he was fitted to shine in any society, and to lead it. From boyhood he had been a keen sportsman, at home in the saddle and a great proficient in all country sports. With his inferiors he could be genial or imperious as the occasion required; his powers of endurance of fatigue or pain were almost superhaman; the brain-power of the man made itself apparent in every fibre. Every sense was almost incredibly acute; he could hear a voice half-a-mile distant though the rising tide of the Thames was rushing fiercely at his feet; he could remain in hiding for days and nights in a hole where he could not stand upright, and never sleep, and hardly change his posture; he could make a joke of the gyves that were ulcerating his legs, and grimly enjoy the fun of mystifying his gaoler by feeing him for putting on the irons, though he gave him nothing for taking them off. He seems never to have forgotten a face, a name, or an incident. Writing his autobiographical notes, as he did, twenty years after the circumstances he records, there is scarcely an event or a name which recent research has not proved to be absolutely correct. As a merely literary effort, the Life is marvellous. From such a record any attempt to give specimens and extracts would be about as sensible as the producing a brick to show the kind of house that it came from. There is hardly a page which does not read like romance. Indeed, it is a romance, if there ever was one; but it is the romance of history, which leaves fiction far behind in fascinating attractiveness. Possibly those good people who are affected with a "Jesuit scare may find in Mr. Morris's book food for a feast of terror. Here, at any rate, they have the veritable Jesuit in disguise that it is so hard to meet with. He is no will-o'-the-wisp, after all, but a young giant, of infinite versatility, a Romish Admirable Crichton whom young men and maidens, old men and children, the rough and boorish, the learned and the simple, find absolutely bewitching, and submit to with instinctive awe. But the volume is noteworthy not only for the main facts and the insight it gives us into the exciting life which the Missioners led in those cruel times. We get, besides this, some valuable glimpses at the habits and manners of the country gentry, of which we know much less than we do about the courtiers and their ways. The squires do not seem to have been quite the boorish dolts they are sometimes said to have been. There was much coarseness of speech, and little taste for anything but country pursuits. When no hunting or hawking could be carried on, there was the everlasting card-playing to fall back upon; but there was some music now and then, and a lively interest in religious questions. Moreover, in the great houses the amenities of life were rather scrupulously attended to; a certain punctilious etiquette required from both sexes more attention to dress and personal appearance than we should have expected. The ladies wear watches, and are careful about their accuracy; a dean pays a morning call, wearing his apron; people stroll in the garden walks, or drive about the roads in their carriages. Whatever grossness or vice the Court may have had to deplore, Father Gerard did not find it among the squirearchy. Mr. Morris's style is extremely simple, indeed almost frigid. He disdains the usual tricks of the sensationist writer; he is not often found tripping. Every now and then, however, he is guilty of what Mark Twain has called "doubling up his haves." Once, I think, he has translated his original wrongly. Young, the bitter persecutor of the Catholics, is said to have died of a consumption; it is much more probable that morbus regius is to be taken in its ordinary sense of jaundice, and the rather inasmuch as the fatal illness is expressly said to have been brought on by exposure. Once I suspect that "a certain Cambridge doctor, a Catholic, and a man of much learning and experience," who puzzles Mr. Morris, might have been identified with some little trouble. My impression is that he would prove to be Dr. Edward Elwyn. It is hardly necessary to add that there is an element in the volume which will be distasteful to English Churchmen. Relics and visions, and knockings, and miraculous straws, are here as we should expect to find them. We cannot have a true picture of Catholic sentiment and Catholic credulity without meeting with much that jars against our own notions. But these matters may be skipped by any reader who dislikes them; and they were not written for the outside world, but for the inner circle of the faithful, who, doubtless, will be edified by such comforting stories. AUGUSTUS JESSOPP. New Colorado and the Santa Fe Trail. By A. A. Hayes, jun., A.M. (C. Kegan Paul & Co.) THOUGH neither Preface nor title-page gives the reader any clue to these not unimportant particulars, it is evident from internal evidences that the author of this slim volume is an American, and that his experience dates from 1879. The one fact we ascertain from some characteristically inconsequent political rhapsodies, which might have been omitted in the English edition of the book without either the writer or his readers suffering much from the excision; while the year of his visit to the Rocky Mountains is fixed by a memorandum on one of the numerous wood-cuts embodied in the text. They have an exceedingly Scribnerian appearance, and the whole work has about it a smack of the monthly magazine. With these prefatory remarks, which either the author or his publisher might have saved us the trouble of speculating over, we may at once say that Mr. Hayes has produced a very pleasant volume, charmingly illustrated, and, whatever may be its antecedents, well worthy of appearing on this side the Atlantic. ac The country he describes has given rise to a score of volumes within the last five or six years; and if those interested in it are to be kept abreast of its progress, the literary activity of its visitors ought to continue quite as brisk for the next decade. In 1857, Colorado, with other lawless lands, was bracketed under the vague term of the "Far West." In those days Chicago was counted "West," and Omaha about, if not somewhat beyond, the limits of civilisation. As one of the rude men of the frontier touchingly observed, "Thar's no railroad west of Junction City, no law west of Kansas City, and no God west of Hays' City." Between the latter town and the frontier of California, with the exception of the dubious oasis of Salt Lake, the revolver was the only ruler. As a legal code, it was portable, quick, cheap, and lucid, and, moreover, possessed the advantage of permitting the aggrieved person to be at once suitor, judge, jury, and executioner within the space of a few seconds. It was a weapon that inspired respect. Whether used as a backer of political argument, or as a persuasive to pass the mustard, its logical weight was universally allowed. But it had its drawbacks, as the pioneers who peopled the earliest graveyards of Colorado would, at the sudden close of their career, have been inclined to admit. Most of the early adventurers in what is now styled the "Centennial State" were gentlemen imbued with these views. There were vague rumours 66 of its wealth; but the trappers, and wandering gold-diggers, and "emigrants" who brought the tidings also weighted their pleasant news with disagreeable accounts of the red sons of Belial whose homes were in its "parks," "cañons," mountain valleys, and prairies. The country, moreover, was understood to be incapable of yielding anything save the precious metals. But, as the first adventurers came in 1857 mainly because they were broke," they could not fare worse in the West than they had done farther East. The rush use was, to the words of one of those who joined in it, "a regular amalgamation of busted people who left their country for their country's good, and their own." Very few of these pioneer citizens were known in Colorado by the name they had borne "in the States," and the new designation was used with the recognised understanding that it was what sailors call "a purser's name." In most cases the presumption was correct, so that even the most reputable stranger, if asked, "What mout be yer name afore you left the States? had not, by the general consensus of public opinion from Galveston to Independence, a sound excuse for shooting the indiscreet enquirer. But when sulphurets came along and they could not hold the ores," and bacon was a dollar a pound and flour fifty dollars a sack, a good many would have left had they possessed the wherewithal to levant. getting almost as scarce in the Rocky Mountains as any of the other romantic characters so long associated with that mis-named series of mountainous tracts. The gold digger, the "cow-boy," and the shepherd are the men who have displaced him; and they, in their turn, are being closely pressed by the land speculator," the Wall Street capitalist," the sportsman, the health-seeker who camps out in the valleys, and the other intruders who are spoken contemptuously of as "tender feet," a term in Colorado of about the same significance as "immigrant" was in Nevada in the pre-Pacific Railroad days. Colorado is especially affected by Englishmen. Some of the finest parts of the country are owned by them, and some of the best-as well as many of the worst-of its citizens claim to be our countrymen. Still, in spite of "ranching" and "the sheep business," mining is the great resource of the country. or dealer in sewing "A man may come to Colorado with resolutions worthy of Leonidas; he may treat gold and silver with a lofty disdain; he may be a doctor, lawyer, parson, school teacher, book agent, lightning-rod man, machines-anything but a miner; all in vain; for sooner or later, if he stays in Colorado, the mania for the precious metals will make an easy victim of him; he will seek a 'claim,' and fondly see a bonanza in the smallest and shallowest of his 'prospect holes.' On these and a score of other points in the country from Denver to Santa Fe in New Mexico Mr. Hayes has something to say. He is occasionally absurd where an Englishman is mentioned, but is rarely tiresome except when he becomes patriotic. But even his stage Briton who accentuates his vowels and drops his h's-as no human being is capable of doing except in the American drama-is amusing in a subdued fashion; while it is possible that the chapter about Colorado's part in "the war" may be entertaining to a limited circle of readers. He is, Of these worthies, Mr. Hayes gives us like nearly every visitor to the West, enmany graphic sketches. He entitles his book thusiastic over Colorado, its "boundless New Colorado, for the social aspects of the resources," splendid scenery, and healthcountry described by him are as widely restoring properties. But he neither conceals different from those pictured a few years ago its faults, nor the weaknesses of its characterby Ludlow, Bowles, Bayard Taylor, or Hep-istic people. The volume is peppered with worth Dixon as was the land first seen by Coronado and Cabeza de Vaca from that run over by these literary tourists. The visitor to Colorado ten years ago would, if he went over his old ground to-day, feel that he had somehow or other been in the interval a wideawake Rip van Winkle. Towns would have sprung up amid sage-brush as palaces rise in the jungle at the bidding of the genii in the Eastern fairy-tales. The mining camp of log huts and cotton tents would be unrecognisable in the "city," with palatial hotels and brick mansions. In 1880, a Pullman car would whirl him over a track which, in 1870, he wearisomely traversed on the back of a moribund mule, or still more toilsomely compassed on foot. The "parks" wherein he shot elk, and lay in nightly fear for his scalp, he would find grazed by thousands of sheep and cattle, while the country terrorised over by Cheyenne and Sioux would in ten years have exchanged the red savage for the white ruffian in the shape of the "road agent" and "the tramp." The trapper of the story-books is indeed now humorous stories: Mr. Hayes evidently labours under the incubus of a long course of Bret Harte. But most of the anecdotes, though localised in the "Centennial State and New Mexico, are old, and have been told of a dozen other places: some of them indeed are sufficiently patriarchal to be prehistoric myths which might have cheered the Aryans on their weary way from High Asia. The illustrations are admirable. For care and graphic power, and in most cases for the excellent way in which they are engraved, we have in this country little to compare with them. Miss Bird, Lord Dunraven, and Mr. Pendarves Vivian have all written useful books on this country. Mr. Hayes' work is, however, of a different stamp, and is therefore welcome as filling a gap in the social history of the West not occupied by any of its predecessors. ROBERT BROWN. France and the French in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century. By Karl Hillebrand. Translated from the Third German Edition. (Trübner.) THOUGH Herr Hillebrand's book is divided into two parts, of which the first alone purports to deal with the Society and Literature and the Political Life of France, the real object of the whole is political. In the light of his studies of the history of France during the present century Herr Hillebrand puts forward an explanation of French politics at present, with prophecies about the future; his remarks on French society are confined to the purpose of estimat ing the basis of the political aspirations of the people. Herr Hillebrand is engaged on a history of France from 1830 to 1870. He seems to wish to begin his work at both ends at once, and put forward his ideas of the meaning of the present before he has worked up to them in his published history. This purely political purpose makes his work somewhat peremptory in tone and analytical in method. He does not show us French society or French politics in movement, but aims at discovering principles and pointing out their logical results. He traces the French character to its foundation in the family, which is, in its origin, a matter of calculation and arrangement. Here the Frenchman is cautious and thrifty, devoted to a calculating pursuit of enjoyment and comfort. The virtues of the French nation are conditional on a peaceful, regular course of affairs. "They make daily life more easy, more pleasant, and more cheerful than in any other country in the world, and for ninetynine days out of a hundred they suffice." Hence the French are profoundly conservative, and wish for an ideal state of peace, order, and liberty. But their ideal is "simply the clear conclusion of concise reasoning, which allows the self-conceit of mediocrity the cheap satisfaction of understanding it." The French have an indisposition to go to the bottom of things; equality and liberty are to them merely idealised forms of the instinct of envy and personal caprice; the principle of the sovereignty of the people is fine food for their vanity, the responsibility of the head of the State is a shelter for moral cowardice. Three growing defects of the French public character-democratic envy, dread of responsibility, and a mechanical view of life—are arrayed against every Government. Frenchman believes The own business and to avoid all responsibility; "that the beginning of wisdom is to mind his no other moral ideal has been held up to him than that of the family, which is based on a father's duties to his children; and no other political ideal than that of the rights of man, and of a well-ordered State which thinks, cares, and acts for all." Starting from these propositions, Herr Hillebrand explains the political parties of modern France. The real governing class is to be found in the centre-i.e., the cultivated, well-to-do bourgeoisie of liberal-conserva tive interests. When the Centre is united it is powerful. But it is wanting in character, which the other parties replace by passion; and, through want of discipline, it is generally divided. The Republic, to continue, must be 21 conservative, and this is only possible if the That Charles I. was no more scrupulous M. CREIGHTON. Danmarks y dre politiske Historie (1635-45). Af J. A. Fridericia. (Kjbenhavn: Erolev.) THE second instalment of Herr Fridericia's work on the foreign policy of Denmark reaches from the Peace of Prague, which changed the character of the Thirty Years' War, to the Peace of Brömsebro, in which Christian IV. was compelled to acknowledge. Imself to be too weak to struggle for supremacy with Sweden. As a chapter in the history of the North of Europe, the book will no doubt receive the attention which it deserves. The English historian will perhaps turn to it with curiosity to learn what is the light thrown by it on that curious question of the employment of Danish troops by Charles I., which agitated the members of the Long Parliament in 1642, and which has ever since been treated as one of the many mare's-nests which Pym is credited with discovering. may be traced in our own State papers, The question of bringing in Danish years of the last century, the date being fixed by the mention of Mrs. Fitzherbert as publicly accompanying the Prince of Wales, and some reference being also made to Caroline of Brunswick. It is a clever working-up of old materials, so as to give them almost novelty of treatment, especially in the handling of such a very trite subject as a disputed succession, which is given an entirely unusual turn, showing considerable invention on the author's part. The person who gives his name to the book is a highwayman, connected, indirectly in one case and directly in another, with two characters in a much higher station of life, themselves half-brothers, while he is the illegitimate half-brother of one of them. All these three are well-drawn figures, as also are Dr. Blandly and a country lout, Tobias Slink. But the heroine, called by the pet-name of "Lady Betty" by reason of her pretty stateliness, is the chief success, being a very charming portrait, with much freshness and vividness of description. The mixture of sauciness and tenderness, with an underlying fund of common-sense and high principle, which the girl shows is happily touched, and very taking; and, though necessarily resembling many previous heroines here and there, she has an individuality all her own. Mr. Barrett is to be commended for this character; but must be warned off languages and dialect. He attempts French but twice, and fails both times, once by presenting souci and sans soucie apparently as masculine and feminine adjectives, and once by applying bourgeois to a young lady; while the quasi-Irish dialect of his peddler teems with mistakes, denoting either a very incorrect ear, or, more probably, writing by the light of nature and of the previous failures of others in similar efforts. Mr. Solly has done fairly well the task he set himself in writing James Woodford, having carefully studied such genuine narratives as those of Thomas Cooper and Samuel Bamford, besides much literature of the Chartist movement, to prepare for the undertaking. He has cast his account into an autobiographical form, and made his hero speak throughout in a manly, sensible fashion, using the straightforward, though unbookish, English which such a character-a clever, steady, self-educated man who had risen to be an employer in a moderately prosperous business would be likely to speak, with an occasional touch of fine words which is equally true to the life. There is not, perhaps, the fire of genius with which Charles Kingsley lighted up the same topic. in Alton Locke, but there is abundant literary capacity shown. And Mr. Solly never fails for a moment in sympathy with the class whose blind struggles for some improvement in the conditions of social life he describes almost chronologically, from the beginnings. of the Chartist movement about 1833, till its ignominious collapse on April 10, 1848. He has had the tact to represent his hero as having learnt by experience something of the masters' side of the question in the strife his hereditary and acquired bias towards the between capital and labour, without losing working-men's side, and thus the points in debate between the two are put in fair and |