for herself as the centre of the world's commerce and industry, our virtual command of the seas, the freedom combined with order which is due to our political institutions, the enormous outlying possessions we hold in all parts of the globe-all these things strike the mind of a foreign observer as constituting a lot unduly fortunate as compared with his own. The explanation that the position which England has achieved for herself is due mainly to the superior energy, industry, and courage of her people, is one that foreigners, especially of French and German origin, seem to find inconsistent with their profound conviction of their own moral and intellectual pre-eminence. They prefer to attribute our good fortune to a run of luck which cannot be expected to last much longer, or to a political immorality which is doomed eventually to work out its own damnation.

This latent ill-will has, within the last few years, been fanned into active animosity by a cause which, from our English point of view, ought to have produced a diametrically opposite result. The movement for the confederation of the various outlying possessions and dependencies of England throughout the world was, down to the period of the first Jubilee, roughly speaking, regarded at home, and still more abroad, as a mere vague aspiration, entertained by a few arm-chair politicians, but having no real basis of solid fact. Suddenly the idea of a united British Empire seemed to our neighbours to emerge from the category of Utopian dreams, and to be on the verge of accomplishment.

It is not necessary for us to dwell here upon the manifold and grave difficulties which surround the task of uniting Great Britain with Greater Britain in any workable form of common administration-difficulties which cause even the most sanguine of British Imperialists to despair of any very early attainment of their aims. These difficulties, however, are not easily intelligible to foreigners not conversant with our political institutions, the conditions of British trade and industry, and the necessary limitations of our naval, military, and financial strength. They see what we have already accomplished, and they entertain a reluctant conviction that England can achieve by her own force of will well-nigh anything on which she has once set her heart. They are able to understand that,

be the cause what it may, the idea of a British Empire, united by close ties of blood and language, has taken hold upon the imagination of the British nation; they see that this idea has been responded to with enthusiasm by the English-speaking colonies of the Empire; they perceive that the cause of Imperialism has been espoused as his own by the most powerful and popular British statesman of the day; they recognise that under Mr Chamberlain's leadership the creation of a confederated British Empire has been presented to the artisans and traders of England in a form which appeals to their material interests as well as to their national sentiments; and, taking these various considerations into account, they have come-not unreasonably, from their own standpoint-to the conclusion that the British Empire is on the eve of its reorganisation as the greatest Imperial Power which the world has known, at any rate since the days of Rome. By an analogous process of reasoning they argue that the United States of America, the greatest Anglo-Saxon Power in the New World, as the British Empire is in the Old, will even, without any formal alliance, work in harmony with the latter as against the rest of the world; and they are confronted therefore with the apprehension that, before many years have passed, Anglo-Saxondom will reign supreme.

Now we can scarcely wonder that, to the Latin, Slav, Teutonic, and other peoples of Europe, the notion of the world being subjected to a sort of Anglo-Saxon hegemony should be bitterly distasteful. Their ways are not our ways, their religion is not our religion, their thoughts are not our thoughts. Even assuming, therefore, that there had not been any preconceived animosity against England, it is only natural that the peoples whose influence, whose interests and, possibly, whose very existence would, as they imagine, be endangered by the promotion of a world-wide British Empire, should have welcomed with delight any occurrence which seemed likely to avert, or at any rate to postpone, the triumph of British Imperialism. Such an occurrence was believed abroad to have presented itself with the outbreak of the South African war, for which England, from whatever cause, was utterly unprepared. The series of reverses which attended our army during the earlier period of the war created a belief on the

Continent the wish being father to the thought that the Boers would carry the day. A Boer victory meant the loss of South Africa to England; and the loss of South Africa would knock on the head, at any rate for a long time, any prospect of Great Britain consolidating Greater Britain into a united British Empire. Hence this outburst of enthusiasm for the Boer cause among all the continental nations of Europe, who, whatever might be their internal disputes and discussions, were united in their common fear of Anglo-Saxon supremacy.

The course of events was not long in dispelling the delusion, so current abroad, that England lacked either the will or the power to hold her own in South Africa. The courage with which she bore her reverses in the field, the energy with which she repaired her losses, the determination she showed to admit of no foreign intervention and to fight out the war by herself, the enthusiasm with which her people responded to the call upon their patriotism, the alacrity with which her colonies came to the aid of the mother-country, the lavishness with which she shed her blood as well as her money for the prosecution of the war-all these things combined to impress foreign nations with the conviction that, to use Lord Salisbury's phrase about the Crimean War, they had put their money on the wrong horse when they identified themselves with the cause of the Boer Republics. This conviction naturally impressed itself upon the Governments of the Continent much sooner than it did upon their citizens; but gradually it has filtered down from the Ministries to the masses, and even the most rabid of continental Anglophobes have learnt that in agitating for European intervention, under any form whatever, in favour of the Boers, they are simply wasting their breath.

Thus, for the time, the danger has been averted. It would, however, be folly to imagine that it will not recur. The causes which, as we have endeavoured to show, render England unpopular with her continental neighbours must continue to operate; and, whenever in the course of affairs any complication should arise which might threaten England's Imperial interests, she will be exposed to an outburst of popular hostility on all sides similar to that she has just experienced. We may be told that, throughout the war, the Governments of

Europe have set their faces against any action at which England could fairly take umbrage, and that we may count in future upon a similar determination on their part not to give way to popular clamour. It may be so; but to rely upon such a conviction would be to live in a fool's paradise. We are convinced that the main, if not the sole, cause of the immunity which England has enjoyed in respect of foreign interference during the war has been the well-founded belief entertained by foreign Governments that England was too strong, at least from a naval point of view, to justify any action which might possibly issue in war. The moral of this statement, if its truth be admitted, is too obvious to require recital.

In conclusion, we would say that we are by no means indifferent to 'the opinion of the civilised world,' and that it would be a great satisfaction to us if we could see that opinion more just, more impartial, and therefore less unfavourable to England than it has been of late years. The perusal of such literature as that on which we have commented in this article is by no means pleasant for Englishmen, proud of their country's fame. If, by abandoning the attitude of contemptuous indifference with which we are apt to regard all foreign criticism on our national character and our national policy, or if, by trying to realise the point of view from which foreign nations judge our action and our ideas, we could render foreign critics less hostile, we should deem the result well worth any trouble spent on its achievement. But we have little faith in these and similar expedients for cultivating a more friendly feeling abroad. To speak the plain truth, the head and front of our offending is our existence as the mother-country of the English-speaking races throughout the world. If England would consent to abdicate her Imperial mission, the main cause of her unpopularity would at once disappear. But to such an abdication England is unlikely to consent while she has a ship afloat or a shot in the locker. This being so, there is little or nothing to be done save to pursue our Imperial mission in the future as we have done in the past, knitting closer and closer the ties, racial, lingual, social, and material, which tend to unite all branches of our English races into one common brotherhood.

Art. X.-TWO OXFORD HISTORIANS.

1. JOHN RICHARD GREEN.

1. Letters of John Richard Green. Stephen. London: Macmillan, 1901.

Edited by Leslie

2. A Short History of the English People. By John Richard Green. London: Macmillan, 1874.

3. The Making of England. By J. R. Green. London: Macmillan, 1881.

4. The Conquest of England. By J. R. Green. Edited by Alice Stopford Green. London: Macmillan, 1883.

5. Stray Studies from England and Italy. By J. R. Green. London: Macmillan, 1900.

6. Oxford Studies. By J. R. Green. Edited by Mrs J. R. Green and Miss K. Norgate. London: Macmillan, 1901.

THE author of the 'Short History of the English People' was a man whose attractive and brilliant personality will be of interest to a large circle of readers; and this personality is admirably displayed in the work which stands first on our list. Mr Leslie Stephen has modestly called his memoir, the Letters of J. R. Green,' though he might fairly have called it a 'Life,' for the letters and bits of autobiography and talk are so artfully pieced together, with concise and luminous elucidations, that the whole constitutes a biography which for completeness and justness of presentment may well be compared with Dykes Campbell's 'Life of Coleridge.' Green, like Coleridge, has been allowed, so far as may be, to speak for himself; and the reader is placed face to face with the living man, not with an interpretation of him, that, however faithful, must lack the intimacy and individuality of the original. Mr Stephen's studied and masterly brevity is a most laudable quality in these days, when every one thinks he has a licence to write at length on any subject. He has also followed Carlyle's advice and given three most helpful portraits of his subject. Very characteristic is the frank square face, defiant, humorous, alert, and determined, of the photograph taken at Florence in 1869. A second portrait, from a collodion print, shows him at a later stage, when resolution has taken the place of mere