not see what I would have you see of the

England of to-day.

Or here, presto, with a sudden whirl-the scene changes

Tower'd cities please us then,

And the busy hum of men.

Here are great towns, composite of old and new, with their huge factory barracks of brick and stone, their tall chimneys vomiting the smoke which overshadows the life beneath, with dingy, crowded homes, where every dweller and every room suggests a new problem of society: with roaring furnaces at which smudgy men perform feats Enceladan with iron and flame, and humanity wrapped in primitive dirt asserts its mastery over matter. And here again, vast docks and rivers, ringing with the clang of iron and steel, or forested for miles with masts, and huge warehouses storing up the riches of a hundred lands. Here indeed is there an England vast, strange, unequalled, displaying in old age an energy of development that rivals that of the New World; but not here would I have you study with me the England

of to-day. Or the traveller may review the religious and philanthropic institutions of England. He finds the tokens of a religious zeal and of a benevolent activity organised, unceasing, universal. In confusing successions of vast assemblies at Exeter Hall or elsewhere he may do more than mark the absurdities of religion and the follies of religious bigotry; he may learn much not only of earnest work, but of the circumstances which call these institutions into action. Moreover, he may con the newspapers, listen to parliamentary debates, frequent the clubs, mingle in the brilliant society of Belgravia or Mayfair, pass weeks in enjoying the aristocratic pleasures of country mansions, and thus see English ecclesiasticism, politics, and society in their most striking aspects.

Yet, with all this, you may and in most instances do, return without an inkling, at best with only hints, of that wonderful cosmos, with its underlying principles of life and action, its secret springs of policy, its social conditions and relations, its problems

of government and society, its prospects, contingencies, and perils, which indeed constitute my topic this evening.

Not that all is hidden. The traveller least curious gets glimpses of deeper things. He often observes, for instance, in the midst of rural districts, groups of handsome buildings; or, walking in London some winter evening, passes a great institution, at the door of which lingers a line of shivering men and women, ay! and God help us! children. And he is told that these are the palaces of the poor; the poor-houses of a wealthy and too wide-spread national bounty. His mind takes in some ideas of one of the gravest questions ever given to a people to solve, and he shakes his head ruefully at this sudden revelation of a society where one in twenty of the population receives gratuitous relief at the expense of the remainder. But as we shall see directly, little can be apprehended of all that is mixed up with that serious question, or conceive how its roots. run out and into almost every other social and political condition.

II.

DEFINITION OF SUBJECT.

You will already then have divined that Definition of subject. in speaking of the England of to-day I refer to it, not in its picturesque or its romantic aspects, not in its commercial or statistical phases, not in relation to its power, its wealth, its amazing energy and progress-these are obvious to every one of my audience, but of things which in any nation lend to all those aspects their real importance, things of its inner life and polity and social condition.

III.

IMPORTANCE OF INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM,

ance of in

criticism.

I have not come here simply to amuse Importyou. I could not have come to you without ternational a certain mission. What I am most anxious to do is, as far as may be in a brief evening, to give to Americans a better notion of the hidden meaning of some of those phases of

English politics and society of which they read the superficial history in telegrams, and newspaper items, or magazine articles.

to

How important is it, nay, let me say how imperative, that in these inner matters of national life, England should be known Americans, America be understood of Englishmen! The world is becoming daily more international. The problems of humanity reassert themselves in all states, in every relation, and the secret motives of a nation's life are among the most precious of the curiosities which it can expose to the gaze of a curious world.

But I say, by all means let these things be honestly and profoundly elicited. For such matters your brilliant criticasters are but the crackling of thorns under a pot. Take your English novelist, satirist, publicist, who scurries from New York to New Orleans. He takes up his graphic pen and sketches the surface of a great republic. See him examine people and scenery with the same eye-glass and with the same brains. He jots down its most obvious characteristics and