to conspicuously absent from English fiction) drew their origin. That the once Puritan middle class deserve most of the praise is a theory strengthened by the example of America, where prudery as to the use even of simple harmless phrases (for example, you "retire" in America; you never go to bed) irritated Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. American literature is assuredly neither licentious nor coarse. But these hypotheses may be inadequate or erroneous, in which case the problem becomes vastly more curious and interesting. A problem it is; the generation of Scott's father saw nothing out of the way or reprehensible in literary forms which the authors of Scott's generation might, and, of course, did enjoy, but dared not and cared not to follow. Walter himself was an ardent admirer of Smollett, whom, at one time, he was constantly quoting. But Scott's own heroes never once wander from the strict path of a solitary virtuous attachment. His one heroine, who, in fact, had transgressed from the path of Dian, was, if I may say so, violently shunted back into it, owing to the prudery of Ballantyne, some of Blackwood's Magazine.

Sir

whose MS. notes on Scott's proof-sheets prove him to have possessed "a nice morality." Henceforward every hero was a Galahad, till Mr. Rochester broke away from the rule, and Richard Feverel fell into the ancient errors of Captain Booth. Even now a hero's confessions are less startlingly explicit than those of Roderick Random; and nobody would pretend to interest us in a Peregrine Pickle, or even in a Pamela. The change, which was born full grown, has lasted for a century in England, which had previously set the very opposite example. It was a change due not merely to the moral revolution that sprang from the Wesleys, but to a general revolt all along the line, in favor of the ideal and the spiritual, and against the godless common-place and brutality of the early Hanoverian time. The new materialism of science has probably fostered the new "emancipated" literature of the strugforlifeur of M. Daudet. Thus, reactions succeed each other; but, on the whole, in fiction, and not looking at the worse than Smollettian vulgarity of such plays as "Lord Quex," the tendency to a new license seems to have expended itself. A. Lang.

C. D. W.

Surely in no spot in Great Britain, village or town, can it be possible to feel so far removed from the world as in an Irish country town. That peace which the world cannot give broods over it. Mr. Froude has heard the last echo of the elder world in the church bells, which chime now as they did in the days of virtuous King Harry, who turned the monks adrift. In Cullaghmore, a county town of the Irish Midlands, no sound is heard that is peculiar to modern life except the distant roar of the trains hurrying to Cork. One cannot believe, at first, that this is a mother city, whither ever so many little

demes look for supplies and help and government. Yet even here tradesmen can amass their piles of greasy notes, and banks and public houses are abundant. Hither come on market-days the slow donkeys, each stiffly dragging his little cart, which resembles in miniature the huge floats that are allowed to block London streets; the proprietor, male or female, sits on each, contented to jog on half the day, and jog back as patiently as their beasts. Perhaps, like Winky Boss, they measure the distance by pipes of tobacco; though, indeed, the younger women, brave in best clothes and feathers, smoke not-only old

crones do that-neither do they knit; they are happy enough in having nothing to do except twitch the reins at rising ground, until they reach the Mecca whither the heads of countless donkeys are turned. This patch of brown in the midst of long, green pastures, this St. Kilda of towns, to be the eponymous capital of a county! The daily arrival of yesterday's Times or Standard keeps the feeling of isolation ever present. The fact that a reply-paid telegram will bring an answer as surely and quickly as if it were sent between St. John's Wood and Chelsea is always a fresh surprise, tending to shake the mind from its lonely moorings. The badged and belted telegraph-boy looks an alien in the place, although he also is of the tribe of Ryan. There is something incongruous about his red facings, and the red pillar-boxes, as there is about the red regiment in the barracks on the hill. Were Home Rule to come, telegraph-boys and pillar-boxes would be dressed in green, and no soldiers entertained except, perhaps, the Rifle Brigade. After all, green is a more restful color. All God's works here are green or drab-the land green, and the sky drab; man follows in humble imitation, for the town and its people are in drab, with parade of green on holidays.

Englishmen think of Southern Ireland, if they ever think of it in these quiet days, as always fermenting upwards into lush grass and pigs and cattle under warm, everlasting rain. I know one town which can be as cheerless as the North Sea in winter. The soaking roofs cluster under a high range of hills, which lie to the southwest, cloud-capped towers with dripping sides. On the many days when the wind blows up from the Atlantic these hills extract the due moisture, and the lightened masses roll on to make way for heavier piles; from north and east there is no shelter, and the

In

wind, rejoicing in its strength, dashes through the town and measures its force against the dark-browed hills, under which the houses seem to be forlornly cowering, like a herd of cattle that seek shelter at a hedge-side. summer, if the morning be calm and warm, the mist rises from the valley and floats half way up the hills, as if an intrusive locomotive was laying its white trail. Winter more often veils them in driven clouds and rain, but at rare intervals before sunset the sky clears, and the piled heights seem to have put their heads together in wonder. Through the atmosphere washed by the everlasting rain miles are as yards in your sight, and unsuspected peaks and domes crowd into the picture. Then the wind will give a gentle moan before going to work again, driving a little mist around the more-distant hill-tops; turn away for five minutes, and the swimming vapor "puts forth an arm and creeps from pine to pine," dragging itself swiftly from hill to hill, so that when you look again the eyes turn with a shiver to the cheerful gaslights of the little town. Yet, cold as it can be, the country-folk wear clothes which an English ploughman's lusty shuddering would soon resolve into constituent rags. Unclothed and half-fed as the children are, their bones grow long and strong, until they become the tallest men in the British Isles. This, to be sure, is by the action of that great law which yet awaits its Dalton or Darwin, that what suits the Saxon is a misfit for the Celt and vice versa. The few successes to which English administration in Ireland can point, are all due to certain empirical applications of this law. Englishmen will never understand this; those that are put in authority over us learn nothing as the years advance. Because all the machinery of representative government works smoothly in England, where the greasing of the wheels is done in secret,

county councils must, therefore, mean justice in a land where the strongest force, social and political, is the tendency to disunion. But politics never yet thatched leaky roofs. Here in Cullaghmore the main road is lined by mud-walled cabins, which rise from mud floors that are lower than the roadway, so that the rain-water pours over the door-sill. Eyes and ears and nose are offended. The dwellers never wash themselves or their children, who shriek and swear amongst the pigs and poultry; as turf is dear, they burn malodorous substitutes. The air is not redolent of the sharp peat-reek, which is the sweetest smell in an Irishman's nostrils; if you have been away for a time, it is the faint smell of burning turf, as it mingles with the hedge-rows, which brings close to you that you are no longer in cold, staid England, but have returned to home, sweet home. These dwellers by the wayside, children of Gibeon, have no wish to better their lot by removal; they are contented to dwell whither it has pleased God to call them, so long as he gives them the dany bread which they hate to seek and toil for. All would fain be lords of the cabin whereof their fathers were lords, and though they cannot now sing with Herrick,

Here we rejoice because no rent We pay for our poor tenement,

the judicial rent is no more than the cabins are worth. It is a life of little ease and no comfort; they look forward to marrying their eldest son, by the matchmaker's aid, to a girl with a dowry, and then living as lodgers in the same cabin with him and his wife and a new family. The custom is kindly and thriftless, and in England would certainly lead to domestic murder, as, if Zola tells the truth, it does lead thither in France. It is a commonplace to say that the Irish flourish any

where save in Ireland, but it is truer that there are no Irish anywhere else, for they change their minds as well as their sky when they fare across the sea, just as the potato, if planted in a tropical climate, becomes something other than itself. So, for all those who live therein, God may have made a better place than Cullaghmore, but doubtless never did.

In an English town there is always a middle class, upper and lower, between which sections there is a great gulf fixed, good people who are unwearied in providing occupation for their neighbors, and amusements small but dear. Amongst them bazars and sales of work, organ recitals and temperance lectures flourish, with much talk of improving one's mind, much talk of doing things for religion's sake, all in a vulgar, tactless kind of way. Except in the three great towns, Ireland has no middle class of this kind, and pays dearly enough for the lack. These people are those who do most of the work in England, are indefatigable at committees and boards, and see that public works are not executed to undue private advantage; they constitute public opinion. No one should blame them because their first motive is self-advertisement; they are too useful to be discouraged, and it is because of them that comfort is much better understood in England than in Ireland. Here a man is, to speak roughly, a gentleman or a serf. A family of the latter class, if it has enough to eat, is as cheerful and improvident as if the sun always shone through the warm air, and there was no duty on whisky. Bad temper, always snarling and grumbling, is not the gloomy inheritance of Irishmen; there is none of that sullenness which makes the conversation of a workman's compartment on an English railway sound like the growling of a cage of wild beasts. The poorest laborer at work in a tattered coat under the west