deavor to make in expenditure the two ends meet is combined with the ambition to be smart and to dress as the upper classes; and thus recourse is had to cheap and flimsy materials, to base imitations and gaudy colors. And such flash displays are the more to be regretted, because the once quiet and respectable appearance of the lower and middle classes is fast becoming a thing of the past. And in very deed the motley crowds in the streets of our great cities on bank and other holidays present a melancholy spectacle. And the outward demonstrations are censurable because, with the same or less outlay, by the choice of forms and colors in simple, unobtrusive harmony, the peoples of our towns and country might make an appearance befitting allegiance to the laws of nature and of God. On all sides and in all conditions of life do we see abundant signs of how, with taste, it is easy to keep right, while without taste to go wrong is

certain.

It were almost impossible to make too much of the reforms which in recent years have arisen from the practice among artists of designing fashions for themselves. And amateurs there are so thoroughgoing that, holding in contempt the anachronisms of former days, which permitted the placing of a classic portico before a Gothic structure, begin at the very beginning by building a house in some approved English style, and then proceed to decorate and furnish the rooms in accord, and as a finishing stroke dress the household to the same pattern. And the question now asked is, not whether a gown will wear and wash, but whether it will paint. All this is much as it should be, and, indeed, always has been, in the best and truest art periods, for dress is but part of a greater whole-a means and a medium whereby man and woman are brought into harmony with the surroundings of life and of nature. Yet it may be feared that matters are being pushed rather far; there has grown up what may be called "pre-Raphaelitism in dress"—a mediævalism which, transmuting forms and colors alike, eschews classic and renaissance harmonies, and affects Gothic angles and scrags. And when the figure happens to be bony or a little ancient the effect is a sight indeed, yet by securing notoriety it may serve to save the wearer from oblivion. In contrast are a few who recline gracefully in long, sinuous robes and pose themselves statuesquely. In other cases, draperies having taken the place of dress, they are pitchforked on the back anyhow, and the figure is reduced to a mass of material. At other times, the wish to bring the whole household into harmony induces a lady to appear in the pattern of a wall-paper, or to match her dress with the cups and saucers on the tea-table. Others, again,

of a more dissipated turn, make a random dash at harlequins, and cut up their persons into patches, each apart to be admired and wondered at for wealth of material. The Bohemian lives of some artists-seldom in the first rank-naturally pass from manners to costumes; "tall talk" finds its replica in "loud dress," and, wishing good-by to the "senatorial dignity" applauded by Reynolds in the portraits by Titian, such circles in a free-and-easy way fall into sloppy, negligent attire-the garb of genius, doubtless, especially when in a garret! The bandits in the landscapes of Salvator Rosa are of the same company. The general impression produced by such æsthetic phases of life is that of a perpetual picnic, or of a continuous fancy ball, or of a ubiquitous sketching party. It is a pity pre-Raphaelites and others can not take as models for dress the saints as they appear in early Italian pictures.

A gentleman said to a friend, “I like to dress as if I were going to have my portrait painted, or as if I were about to meet the lady who might be my wife." And the requirements of distinguished portrait-painters, such as Holbein, Vandyke, and Reynolds, are no bad criterions of the costumes most becoming. The great artists select, and then improve on, what is best and therefore most enduring in the dress of the period, and by affixing their sign-manual establish patterns and precedents good for all time; while inferior limners, such as Lely and Kneller, pandering to vanity, paint what passes away. Holbein seems to have held that "fifty years and upward was the only sensible time of a woman's life, and those who had the misfortune to be younger must make the best of it." With Vandyke came in “the airy, ringlety style of coiffure; it did well for faces like trim little villas, which may be overgrown with creepers or overhung with willows; but fine features, like fine mansions, want space around them, and least of all can the smooth expanse of the forehead be spared." The next epoch is adorned by Reynolds, who, "like Holbein and Vandyke, put his stamp upon the times, or, rather, as a true artist and philosopher, took the aggregate impression which the times gave"; and "for the most part we go through a gallery of his portraits with feelings of intense satisfaction that there should have been a race of women who could dress so decorously, so intellectually, and, withal, so becomingly." But one fallacy in dressing in everyday life as for a portrait is, that a lady can not always command the same curtains and tapestries as a background; and thus, when she next graces an evening assembly, the pink of her perfection may prove wholly out of place.

There is no surer sign of birth and breeding than in the form, movement, and keeping of the

hands, and as in life so in art, here is the test of taste and skill. The hands, of course, as the head, need a set-off, and the wrists invite, like the neck, to ornament, such as cuffs or bracelets. Specially demanded is freedom for the turn of wrist, the play of the fingers, and the action of the forearm. The hand is an instrument of expression, and it should be made to speak. The hand must use the same language as the head; the two are in mutual accord and coöperation, and the accessories of dress should but enhance nature's gifts of intellect and beauty.

So dress has to carry out the general design

of nature: of character, nature sketches the outline; it is for art to complete the picture. Beauty of form, concord in composition, harmony in color, constitute the perfect painting, and a figure will be faultless in draping when brought into like agreement. Nature loves law and order, lays her foundation in simplicity, and builds in beauty. So dress has to accord with the ways and works of nature, for "behold the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these."

J. BEAVINGTON ATKINSON (Good Words).

AR

RE not nations liable to an infirmity analogous to somnambulism? Are they not often seen walking confidently, or even rushing along eagerly, with their eyes shut-that is, not prepared by any kind of political education to see what is before them, or against what objects they may bruise themselves? The question might be asked at any time, but it is particularly seasonable at a moment when the nation seems unusually confident and ready for rapid motion.

Democratic states are especially liable to this infirmity, and of democratic states especially those which are in the first stages of democracy. Where the government is in the hands of a class there are other dangers, but there is not this particular danger of public action being taken wholly without due knowledge or consideration. Even a democracy, if you give it time, may perhaps learn caution, or educate itself politically. But a state where the democracy is young and sanguine, and where no one is taught politics, is a somnambulist state, and, if it has at all a difficult road to travel, is exposed to the greatest dangers. Do not these conditions meet in England at the present time?

Assuredly the spirit of innovation was never at any former time so utterly unrestrained. Reformers now-and we are all reformers-have ceased to admit that any institutions are too fundamental to be touched. The time was when all the greater questions were closed for Englishmen by the happiness of an exceptional position which made it unnecessary for us to discuss them. We had a perfect constitution both in state and Church; the kingdoms might rage and the people be moved; we were sheltered from all such agitations. But now insensibly we have drifted into other latitudes; we seem now quite

Be

prepared to raise, even without necessity, the very questions which our ancestors considered it the great masterpiece to suppress. Do we trust to our national genius for politics? I hope not. I like to hear foreigners speak of this genius, but I do not like to hear English people congratulate themselves upon it. How many exceptional advantages have we enjoyed! How little have we been exposed to the particular trials which have impeded the progress of Continental countries! When we consider this, we may well doubt whether we have any right to set down our prosperity to any peculiar wisdom of our own. sides this, the political talent, which undoubtedly appears in some pages of English history, was the talent of our old governing classes. They acquired it by long practice in government, and by many mistakes which English history records not less plainly. What reason have we to suppose that the new governing classes have any such talent? To judge by the last two general elections, they are beginning their politics, as might be expected, at the beginning. If they have the talent it remains to be developed, and it will be developed probably in the usual manner, by monstrous mistakes committed, and great calamities suffered in consequence. Their advent to power is already marked by the total disappearance of all the old political maxims which embodied the wisdom of their predecessors. All those misconceptions of the nature and objects of government which we used to ridicule in the French, and hold ourselves superior to, are now taken for granted, as if they had never been questioned, and assumed as incontrovertible axioms in the popular discussion of the day. We have been suddenly converted to all the fallacies we used to take a pride in detecting.

All the ideology, all the "metapolitics," to use the expression of my friend Stein, the inveterate confusion between politics and philosophy, or between politics and religion-all this has now become naturalized in England. And, indeed, how could it be otherwise? Those mistakes are inevitably made by beginners in politics, and we have transferred the control of affairs into the hands of beginners.

Nominally, indeed, we have all admitted that the newly enfranchised classes ought to receive some sort of education to prepare them for their political functions. And yet nothing has been done for this object. We seem to have set our minds at rest by one of the worst of those rhetorical sophistries by which we drug ourselves, the sophistry of speaking of the suffrage as being itself an education. The suffrage, I maintain, is no education at all; it has no tendency whatever to make people wiser. Conferred on those who are entirely untutored, it can do nothing but develop and give substance to error and misconception. Ex stultis insanos facit. Education is no such easy popular process. It does not consist simply in drawing attention to a subject, but involves discipline, the detection of mistakes, continuous effort and personal responsibility on the part of the learner.

But it is not only in the newly enfranchised classes that this novel political tone may be observed. Almost as much metapolitics may now be detected in the political discussion of the middle classes. In the newest phase of fashion all political questions are dispatched summarily alike in drawing-rooms and at workingmen's clubs

by direct deduction from the vaguest general propositions, precisely as in the most primitive periods of science. Neither the workingmen nor those new-fledged politicians, the ladies, and scarcely, it seems to me, universitybred men themselves, admit or conceive either that there is any difficulty in these questions or any great danger of misapprehending them, and still less that they absolutely require careful study. We have caught the tone of the Parisian salons of the last days of the old régime, when ladies and gentlemen settled, without the least misgiving, and without a suspicion that they might not have immediately at hand all the materials for forming a decision, the most momentous questions, when, as M. Taine says, "the questions of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul came in with the coffee!"

I confess I hardly understand what view is taken by those politicians who nowadays seem eager to put all the largest, most momentous, and most difficult questions before the people for an immediate decision. Do they suppose the people to be inspired? Or perhaps that they

have a simple common sense which in the most intricate questions unerringly finds the right conclusion? This is almost the infatuation of Robespierre. It brings to mind his famous dictum, "Let us begin by laying it down that the people are good, but that its delegates are corruptible!" I often think of a remark I once heard made by a workingman at a club; it rises to my mind whenever I want a measure of the competence of the great mass of workingmen to judge of large national questions. It was at an early stage of the great Eastern controversy, and he settled the question of our relations with Russia in this way: "I do not know how you feel," he said, turning to the audience of workingmen, "and I do not know how it is, but, whenever I hear the Russians mentioned, I feel the blood tingling all over me." He spoke as if he thought this instinctive feeling might be fairly taken as an intimation of the proper steps to be taken, and, when I expressed alarm and horror at such a mode of handling the question, I thought I could observe that many among the audience were surprised at the impression it had made on me. But I carried away a conception I never had before of the utter childishness with respect to great public matters not immediately affecting themselves in which vast multitudes of people live. It will be answered that the working-classes respond with remarkable enthusiasm to any appeal made to their moral feelings. No doubt their minds are in a fallow state, and will yield any crop easily. That very man, who could not bear to hear the Russians mentioned, has, I dare say, since given his voice just as eagerly in their favor. But there is little comfort in this reflection. Without information, still more without a just way of conceiving political questions, they are just as likely to vote wrong when their good feelings are roused as when they are under the dominion of their animal instincts.

The notion seems widely spread that in politics good feelings and good intentions are the main thing, and almost the only thing; that if a people once has these, it will go right in the main, as if the difference between good politics and bad politics were, as Mr. Bright seems to hold, almost entirely moral and scarcely at all intellectual. And yet one of the principal lessons of recent history is the infinite deceivableness of the generous, impulsive, popular mind. No one questions the generous ardor of 1789, or that, when the Revolution entered upon its career of unprincipled conquest, many Frenchmen really thought they were setting free and benefiting the countries they overran; no one doubts the sincerity of that worship of Napoleon to which Béranger gave expression. The people had good intentions, but Napoleon was clever enough to

deceive them. And so, when thirty years later universal suffrage was given to that nation, when for the first time the voice of the French people was really heard, it called Louis Napoleon to the head of affairs, and established a system of which we have seen the results. These are instances of what I call somnambulism; they show the essential importance of a real knowledge of surrounding realities, of open eyes, and of a clear sight of the road along which the nation must walk, and the total insufficiency in politics of mere good intentions.

It is indeed hard, nay, impossible, for a whole people to have such real knowledge. The masses, as a matter of course, have not leisure to acquire even the information, and still less the just way of thinking, which are necessary for a sound political judgment. What they might in some degree acquire is, as I have said, the knowledge that there is such a knowledge, the distrust of their own instincts, of their higher as well as their lower instincts, the distrust of empty rhetoric, and the power of discerning in others that political judgment they can scarcely have themselves.

But perhaps some considerable time will yet pass before the working-classes take full possession of their power. In the mean while everything still depends on the middle class, in which are included most of the best educated men in the country. This class has hitherto shown prudence, and has even been renowned in the world for political sense and tact. But the conditions are greatly changed when radicalism becomes for the first time triumphant, and takes up its position as, in some sort, the dominant practical creed. That this should happen at last was not at all surprising. In an age which has witnessed so much successful innovation, such a renewing of machinery in every department but politics, the hour was certain to arrive when people would think without too much anxiety of sending the old English Constitution after the old stage-coach and the old "wooden walls." But the enterprise of renewing English institutions, though possibly feasible, is certainly serious and hazardous. It will tax political ability infinitely more than the modest task, to which we have hitherto confined ourselves, of altering an old house where it seemed to need repair. That asks only good sense and good temper, but widely different qualities are needed by those who would handle fundamental questions. Hitherto we have held it unsafe even to open such questions, and surely it is unsafe unless we duly prepare ourselves to deal with them. A rough, common-sense knowledge of politics might suffice for the old system, but radicalism aims higher. Radicalism, as a dominant system, presumes the existence of a

large class of people systematically trained in political science.

Has England this class? We seem to mistake the habit of busying ourselves with practical politics for a taste for political science. But it is surprising how little connection there is between the two things, and what confused notions of politics many men have who pass their whole lives in practical political business. "We are not political philosophers," wrote Mr. Gladstone, not long ago. This is, indeed, a fact of which we often boast. In an age of radicalism the boast can not too soon become obsolete, for radical politics are not safe except in the hands of political philosophers.

The truth is that, till quite lately, the highest education given in England left a man almost entirely without political instruction. It was much if the study of Thucydides or Aristotle's "Politics" imparted to him the knowledge that there was a higher and serener sort of political science than that expounded by Whig and Tory newspapers. We used to assert, indeed, that our classical system afforded an excellent introduction to political studies. This might be true, but it was an introduction which came too late. Thucydides and Aristotle might have done much if they had been closely followed by a host of modern writers on politics, and if the study of Athens and Rome had been followed by a study equally serious of modern England, France, and Germany. As it was, while a few men, who had exceptional opportunities, followed up the hints their classical education had given them, and became instructed politicians, the great majority closed their political studies when they closed their Aristotle, and never afterward succeeded in bringing together in their minds the chaos of English party politics and the few germs of political science which they had picked up at the university. Improvements. have now been introduced, but it remains in the main true that the influence of science, of the school, is nil in English politics. What Englishmen know of politics they have picked up in various ways, but there is one way in which they have not acquired it-they have not been taught it.

Now, large changes must be made on large principles, and such large principles are the last thing which the English mind excogitates for itself. The helplessness of the general English intellect on this side has often been remarked. When it is in want of a principle, it snatches at any general proposition which sounds a little impressive, a little solemn, and applies it peremptorily, with slight regard either to its truth or to its pertinence. It is all the more a slave to empty generalities when it listens to them at all, because it listens to them so seldom, and is so slow in

originating them. The moment is very critical when such a nation as this enters for the first time on the path of speculative politics.

Radicalism, considered as a ruling creed, is too new among us to have been sufficiently criticised. It has risen to the head of affairs almost before people have done denying it to be serious. Now that the nation has suddenly adopted its fundamental principle, there is some danger of its whole programme being accepted en bloc. But, after having made good its case against the negative criticism of the ancient parties, it ought to go before the discriminating criticism of science. Granted that our politics ought not to be bound eternally by precedent, granted that there are principles in politics-still principles are of two kinds, true and false. Advanced thinkers may not be, as they used to be considered, necessarily unpractical, still the question remains whether they have been advancing in the right direction or in the wrong one. And when we consider how raw we are, as a nation, in political speculation, how capable in our innocence of adopting, one after another, all the false systems that ever were exploded, we ought surely to be much on our guard against the schemes of innovation that are now proposed to us as founded on philosophical principles, or as required by the spirit of the age. On such schemes skepticism has not yet done half its work. It remains to be decided whether those philosophical principles are more solid than a hundred metaphysical systems which have been forgotten after a brief day of popularity.

What criticism do we apply to these schemes? Are we satisfied with our system of a succession of popular party speeches followed by a general election? Do not those two miracles of popular will, the elections of 1874 and 1880, excite a certain misgiving in our minds? If, indeed, all political questions are level to the meanest capacity, if the plausible view in politics is always the true view, then our system leaves nothing to be desired. But, if the obvious conclusion drawn from a small number of obvious facts is sometimes misleading, then nothing can be more futile than these great popular decisions, which never even profess to look below the surface. How would it fare with the best ascertained truths of science if they underwent such an ordeal? Many of these are flatly opposed to all ordinary or popular impressions, some of them actually to what is called the evidence of the senses. Imagine how the great voice of the people would pronounce on the question whether the earth went round the sun or the sun round the earth! Imagine the contempt and ridicule and moral indignation which would overwhelm the party which should maintain the true opinion! They would never

hold up their heads again. It would be said that they had always secretly despised the people, that they had too long successfully hoodwinked them; but that now at length they had gone too far, now at last they had unmasked themselves, and for the future the nation would know what to think of them!

The unsoundness of some of the ideas which pass among us for advanced may be illustrated by a conspicuous example, which it will be worth while to consider at some length.

It is easy to remark that men's views of politics vary with their views of history. We guide ourselves in the larger political questions by great historical precedents. In the last generation men were made conservatives more by the single fact that the French Revolution led to the Reign of Terror than by all the reasoning in the world. In these days men take up the cause of democracy, not so much on abstract reasoning as because they think they see that democracy succeeds in America, or because France, in spite of her misfortunes, is still immensely rich and prosperous. Sometimes these historical arguments are quite far-fetched, and yet produce a great effect. What a multitude of educated men were led to democratic views by Mr. Grote's animated picture of the glories of the Athenian democracy! It must be confessed that it requires much research to form a trustworthy estimate of these great historical phenomena. But people think they are practically safe if they look only to broad historical results. They fancy that, though historians may differ about small details, the large outlines are clear of all doubt, and so the practical moral of history may be easily drawn. Nothing, in my opinion, can be more erroneous than this view. It is the large outlines which are most easily falsified, and which party historians have most interest in falsifying. To falsify a fact is comparatively difficult, but the meaning or character of a fact can easily be misstated. It costs a skillful party historian only the turn of a phrase, and the greatest event in the world—the Reformation or the Revolution-is turned upside down, and made to yield a lesson directly opposite to that which it really teaches.

Now, the educated class in England does not study modern history. They will read it with pleasure-English history if it is at all attractively written, Continental history if it is written very attractively. But they read it in the easychair, and only care to remember what amuses them. And yet their political opinions are very materially influenced by this luxurious reading. Since Macaulay wrote, no opinion but his about the Revolution of 1688 has had any currency in England. Was this because he proved his points? Not at all. His partiality on many