on all States. California, then, would seem to be acting ultra vires in the present case. But Senator Rayner, of Maryland, a distinguished Constitutional lawyer, has an ingenious answer. A foreign Government, he says, in dealing with the United States, must be assumed to understand the American Constitution and therefore it is right to read into any Treaty the proviso that the Federal Government cannot surrender any privilege which clearly belongs to the States. Now education is a matter which is within State jurisdiction, and therefore an exclusion of educational questions is implied in all treaties. We do not attempt to pronounce on the law of the matter, to settle which a test action is being brought. But the difficulty will not be solved if the President is victorious in the Courts. The means by which a refractory and possibly lawbreaking State is to be coerced into obedience is the real root of the trouble, and we do not wonder that the President has appealed to San Francisco to settle matters on the basis of comity rather than of legal rights.

The incident is the beginning of the struggle of a nation, entering into selfconscious life, to free itself from the fetters of particularism which a Constitution more than a century old has riveted upon it. Splendid instrument of government as is the United States Constitution from many points of view, it has certain very serious demerits, It was framed to provide safeguards against dangers which have long since disappeared, and to encourage certain forces which to-day are more in need of control. The States are given a wide autonomy: the nation is checked on every hand by ultra vires provisions. This was well enough so long as the States were little countries by themselves, cut off by wide economic and social gulfs from each other. But now that there are common problems and

common perils throughout the whole Union, to arm localities with obstructive powers is to play into the hands of reaction and dishonesty, and to make any continuous national policy impossible. Unlike the custom in most federations, all powers not specifically delegated to the central Government are assumed to remain with the States, which are thus treated as the more important unit. Hence when a new question arises for which no delegated powers have been provided, the central Government is helpless, however desirable it may be that the matter be treated as national rather than local. A good instance was the Income-tax, which the Supreme Court in 1895 pronounced illegal. On the merits there was everything to be said for a national Income-tax, but the Constitution was adamant. The same difficulty will arise if any attempt is made to tax overgrown fortunes, or to subject the Trusts to a rigorous supervision. Legislation on labor and commercial questions, on criminal and divorce law, and on a dozen other matters which are of national interest is impossible for the national Government. The pettiest of Western States might pass laws which would be a disgrace to civilization, but which the national Government and the other State Legislatures would be bound to recognize. The first clause, therefore, in any reforming policy must be Constitutional reform on the lines of recognizing the superior importance of the Federal Government and giving it wider terms of reference and a more stringent control. Of what value is an Executive, in dealing with foreign nations, when its decisions may be set at naught by some minor State acting strictly within its legal rights?

More power for the nation,-this is President Roosevelt's appeal. No sane observer can deny its urgency and its reason; but whether it is likely to be

successful is a more doubtful matter. The Senate have already shown themselves suspicious of what they term "Executive usurpation." People in America have scarcely as yet grasped the whole meaning of nationality. The spirit wakes in them with magnificent fire and energy at a crisis, but they go back to their daily work and forget about it. The Democratic Party, who have long constituted themselves the guardians of State rights, will seize upon this excellent fighting issue. In the words of Senator Rayner, they "will oppose every movement in favor of centralization which will result in the surrender of any rights of the States not delegated to the Federal Government by the Constitution." And probably not a few Republicans will take the conservative view and oppose any tampering with what they regard as the sacrosanct charter of their country. But Mr. Roosevelt is very much in earnest, and the impasse is very serious. Is there any way out? The difficulty of carrying a specific reform of the Constitution is so immense as to place the attempt outside practical politics. An amendment must first be carried through Congress; next The Spectator.

it must be ratified in three-fourths of the States by a uniform machinery, which may be either the Legislatures or ad hoc Conventions. With such an intricate pilgrimage before them, it is small wonder that amendments to the Constitution have only been carried twice, once in 1804, and once in very special circumstances after the Civil War. We cannot believe that President Roosevelt, for all his power, could succeed in passing any centralizing amendment. But would it not be possible to pass one amendment,-to make amendments more easy? After all, the cumbrousness of the machine affects Democrat and Republican alike, and while there may be something to be said against the policy of centralization, there is no argument against giving the American people power to make their Constitution adequate to their political development. It is significant that the Eastern States in geueral support the President in this crisis. We sincerely hope that the political instinct of the great Republic will prevent a new cleavage between nationalism and parochialism, where the territorial division will be, not North and South, but East and West.

Lovers of the picturesque in speech have fallen on evil days. The process goes on apace of denuding the English language of everything colored, vivid, and pictorial, of everything that suggests delight in exercising the faculty of speech, that is redolent of gossip in the chimney-corner, of stories told by people who enjoyed the telling, to whom the color and flavor of the words was as the color and flavor of wine. To the gilded youth at one end of the scale words appear to have become algebraic symbols. All mortal things to them are either "ripping" or "rotten."

The poor,

They are too idle to talk. indeed, use a more extensive vocabulary, the booty brought back from illomened adventures in the unknown realm of bookish words. But the old racy turns of speech, the vivacious, unexpected phrases are heard no more. Various cause have helped to bring this about. The hurry of the modern world, the want of leisure, the loss of the power of taking delight in simple things, the levelling influence of the Board school and the cheap Press, the sweeping away of dialect by the invading Cockney flood, perhaps above

all the decay of faith, have had a hand in it. Talk that is a pleasure in itself, and not a mere hurried communication, becomes as extinct as letter-writing.

A

A generation ago the old leisurely, pre-railroad way of speaking was still common. Phrases were heard constantly that had come down from mediæval days, and had English history in them. The present writer remembers one admirable expression, "Your noble has come to a ninepence," which must have come down orally from Plantagenet and Tudor England. "A bigger thief was never hanged at Tyburn" was a picturesque piece of vituperation which recalled the past. Margaret Roper found her father in the Tower "in a peck of troubles." People are rarely in a peck of troubles now. poor woman will tell you her worries, and add drearily “sickening, I calls it.” All zest seems dying from the querulous talk of dwellers in mean streets and even of the country poor, though rustic Sanchos are here and there to be found. "Here I am," exclaims one of Wilkie Collins's characters, "as large as life, as hot as fire, and as happy as a king." This is not the way in which people now announce their arrival. “A king's ransom" is a most beautiful and romantic phrase, opening a window upon vanished England. One never hears it now. A cottage woman will hardly say of her attempts to reason with an obdurate husband, “It's talking to the wall." Nor does one hear “wrong in the upper story," to which the Tuscans give the charming turn, "His clock goes badly." "He hasn't a sixpence to bless himself with" is still current. "To bless oneself" is of course to make the sign of the Cross. There is a delectable Tuscan phrase "mandar uno via segnato e benedetto" -"to send one away signed and blessed," which seems to lend itself to ironical applications. "Pagare il giorno di San Mai," "to pay on the feast of

St. Never," is another felicity of that charming tongue. These are capital examples of happy human speech-the speech of leisurely people with time to talk and to delight in talking. To be just, one has heard a poor woman in an English village say of the good parson, "he's always either fishing or mending the net." A few picturesque phrases survive "they live like fighting cocks," a little eighteenth-century genre picture; or "to keep the wolf from the door," a glimpse into the immemorial human past. One still hears occasionally "born with a silver spoon in his mouth," the French "né coiffé," and "under his thumb" from time to time recalls the arena. But they are heard more and more rarely, and one feels that they are doomed, even "as drunk as a lord," delightful echo from three-bottle days. The French version of this, by the way, is "ivre comme un polonais." The Jews say "drunk as Lot." "Limbo," with its incomparable suggestion of remote and dim obscurity, has vanished from spoken English. Even "old Nick" and "old Harry" are going, and it is doubtful if Breton peasants will long continue to speak of "le vieux Guillaume." The present writer heard him spoken of the other day as "the old St. Nichol," Satan thus being confused with the gentle saint of Bari, the helper of mariners and friend of little children. The decay of faith and speech go hand in hand.

Old people playing cards will sometimes let fall the quaintest phrases. The three of clubs will be called "the devil's bed-post." The phrase evokes an old maids' card-party in a country town, when the lawyer and the vicar have joined Miss Patience and Miss Jane in a rubber in their low lavenderscented room. The frantic modern bridge-player is about as likely to find fancifully descriptive names for the different cards as the motorist rushing along the road to pause and mark the

veinings of a wayside wood anemone. One would like to think, though there is no evidence, that in la vieille France old-world players gave the court-cards their proper names of knights and ladies dead, and that, for instance, a player putting down the knave of clubs would say "I play Lancelot."

Time was when in a village a stupid youth was a "numskull," and a generally useful person a "factotum."

Now such words are seldom used. There is a whole class of words, each coined at first by some vivacious mind, which at once vividly express their meaning. Such a word is "kill-joy," the French "trouble-fête." "Wetblanket" is a more popular version. Tuscan is perhaps the richest of all languages in these. The first that comes to mind is a splendid example—“mazzasette," "kill-seven," for a swaggering blusterer. English possesses many of these, the full force of which we do not always appreciate. "Spendthrift" is an instance. When one realizes that the prodigal is spending the hoarded savings of his father's and grandfather's toil, the word is seen to be admirably expressive. But who coins such words now, or indeed what new words are made at all? The new machines must have names, and the populace cuts down "bicycle" into "bike."

The dying out of religious practices from the life of the people tends more than anything else to the impoverishment of their speech. For the last three hundred years spoken English has been filled with Biblical allusions, and if the Bible ceases to be read in the schools we must expect these to die out, as the proverbs of the saints died out after the Reformation. When Christian facts and legends and practices are a common possession, and references to them are understood by everybody, they come into the people's talk in all sorts of quaint and amusing ways. In Spain it is a most natural thing for the discontented guest to say The Outlook.

that the innkeeper has baptized the wine, and his wife has confirmed it. To give some examples. The gigantic stature of St. Christopher is proverbial all over Europe. The myth of the Eastern Church about him, by the way, says, "There is a wonderful thing to relate about this glorious martyr, and that is that he had a dog's head." The present writer well remembers the amazement with which before he knew of the Eastern story he saw St. Christopher so depicted in a shop window in Tottenham Court Road. The Western version softens this into "he was of fearful and terrible cheer," and dwells chiefly upon his immense size. So in Tuscany they call a huge hand “una mano di San Cristoforo." Again, they say "He is so thin that you can feel the Paternosters in his back." The Paternosters are the large beads of the rosary-the knots in the backbone. In Spain a thick and difficult knot is a Paternoster. One last example which is indeed an inspiration. The Tuscan phrase for "to make a long story of anything" is "fare un Passio." A "Passio" is, of course, one of the long Passion Gospels of Holy Week. “Long as a Palm Sunday Gospel," if one coined the phrase, would still be intelligible in England, in spite of the decay of church-going, but the true "Passio" is twice the length. The singing of the Passio, the words of each character be ing rendered by different persons, is a great function. One sees the friendly group of gossips, and the narrator tapping on his snuff-box, giving the words and imitating the voices of the persons of his trifling drama, bringing out each point of his village story, as every detail is recorded by the Evangelists. It is pleasant to think that such flowers of speech still blossom in remote corners of Europe, but in England these things are gone. Whatever the advantages of Board school culture, the Church may fairly claim that she is able to add more color and variety to life.

A certain noble sensuousness is the note of the poetry of our heroic age: a certain mournful wistfulness is the note of the poetry of our romantic period. Yet it is remarkable that this mournful wistfulness never deepens into the profound sadness that breathes from the works of our older writers. A man must first have been enraptured by the joy and the beauty of earthly existence to feel to the full the sublime vanity of it all.

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

last a visionary. Thereupon he gives over writing, and recovering, in the stillness of all ambition, the simplicity and blitheness of his youth, resettles quietly in the little country town in which he was born.

We poets in our youth begin in gladness;

said Wordsworth, who held to the old tradition; but most of his successors seem in their youth to have begun in despondency. Instead of opening their souls to the fair impression of things, and exercising and delighting their senses with the glowing pageantry of life, they let their imagination feed

of melancholy. Sadness seemed to them to be a more poetic thing than joy. Perhaps it is, if it be true, vehement and deep: for it is in moments of tragic grief that the depths of our nature are revealed. The young poets of the new school, however, were only fantastically sad.

It was the pleasure of mild-minded melancholy that enticed them, and its introspective quality: the melancholy that divides a man from his kind and keeps him a prisoner in the hollow Lotus-land. As is seen in the verses of Mr. W. B. Yeats, the latest and most romantic of the writers of the romantic school, the more completely a poet surrenders himself to the luxury of sorrow, the less quick and passionate grows his sense of the majesty of human woe. Passively contemplative, he cares only for the loveliness of sorrowful things, their poignancy disconcerts him; so he weaves his reveries out of dead desires and dead regrets, fading memories and dim, legendary figures of spectral beauty, and frames therefrom an artificial paradise of dreams in which he moves,