APPARENT PICTURES.

I.

COLERIDGE.

I SEE thee pine like her in golden story Who, in her prison, woke and saw, one day,

The gates thrown open- -saw the sunbeams play,

With only a web 'tween her and summer's glory;

Who, when that web-so frail, so transi

tory

It broke before her breath-had fallen

away,

Saw other webs and others rise for aye Which kept her prisoned till her hair was

hoary.

THE days have slain the days,
and the seasons have gone by
And brought me the summer again,

Those songs half sung that yet were all and here on the grass I lie

As erst I lay and was glad

divineThat woke Romance, the queen, to reignere I meddled with right and with wrong. afresh Wide lies the mead as of old, Had been but preludes from that lyre of and the river is creeping along

thine, Could thy rare spirit's wings have pierced that turns its weedy stream; the mesh

By the side of the elm-clad bank

And grey o'er its hither lip

There is work in the mead as of old;

Spun by the wizard who compels the the quivering rushes gleam. flesh, But lets the poet see how heaven can shine. they are eager at winning the hay,

corpse along,

While every sun sets bright

and begets a fairer day.

The forks shine white in the sun
round the yellow red-wheeled wain
Where the mountain of hay grows fast;
and now from out of the lane

Comes the ox-team drawing another,
comes the bailiff and the beer,
And thump, thump, goes the farmer's nag
o'er the narrow bridge of the weir.
High up and light are the clouds,
and though the swallows flit
So high o'er the sunlit earth,
they are well a part of it,

And so, though high over them,
are the wings of the wandering herne;
In measureless depths above him
doth the fair sky quiver and burn ;

The dear sun floods the land
as the morning falls toward noon,
And a little wind is awake

O "Life, the Khan!" while trailed the in the best of the latter June.
They are busy winning the hay,
Sweeping the streets with flesh thou and the life and the picture they make,
madest fair-

If I were as once I was,

I should deem it made for my sake:
For here if one need not work
is a place for happy rest,

While one's thought wends over the world
north, south, and east and west.

WILLIAM MORRIS.

From The Contemporary Review. THE PROSPECTS OF THE CIVILIZED

WORLD.1

THERE is a distinction in kind be

a

tween predictions which refer to remote future, and which are necessarily, if not professedly, more or less arbitrary, and those which profess to infer what soon will be from what now is.

quickly awaken the reader's respect; and he will be impressed by the keenness and originality of observation, the interestedness and openness of mind, philosophic calmness, the apparent diswith which tendencies are traced and probable results indicated. And the author touches upon all the things that A prophecy of the latter class, if it re-liefs as to the unseen world and the life concern us most closely — upon our belates to social history, is a criticism of life. The Bible prophecies, according to the truer view of them which now

beyond the grave, upon the relations of husband and wife and of parents and trained armies and volunteers, upon children, upon town and country, upon poetry and art, upon science and industrial invention:

Quidquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas,

prevails, are of this nature. They paint, indeed, imaginative scenes of ultimate glory; but for the most part they express the liveliest interest in the present, and declare what, under the divine purpose and law, the present is about to bring forth in the future. Such a Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli, prophecy pronounces judgment upon But what will probably most astonish existing tendencies, and serves both the reader is the success with which for a warning and for an encourage- Mr. Pearson conceals any interest he ment. No philosophy of causation will may feel as a fellow-man in human drive out of the heads of living men doings and fortunes. There is somethe belief that they can do something thing abnormal in the dispassionate to guide the course of things, and so coolness with which he reports upon to modify the future. Men have always the world and the downward way on been accustomed to assume, and they which it is going-a coolness which will go on assuming, that they can set the impatience of his readers may be themselves against a tendency which tempted to resent as cynical. Almost they believe to be dangerous, and give the only sign of warmth is in the ansupport by their endeavors to one that gry bitterness of the remarks on "the promises to lead to good. Some of Churches" and theology, though some those who are most convinced that the other antipathies may be guessed. We future is a necessary consequence to be cannot help wondering what purpose developed out of the present, and most the author had in writing the book; sure about manifest destiny, happen to we feel as we read that so serious a be at the same time most earnest and thinker must have had some purpose importunate in denouncing what they besides that of making a good many consider to be hurtful habits and move-of his fellow-men unhappy; but the ments, and in urging their fellow-men object he had in view is not apparent. to adopt and favor those which they He gives us a dismal prospect, and judge to be beneficial. A forecast of he writes as if he held a brief for the future which shows genuine insight discouragement; but here and there he is not only interesting to intellectual suggests that it does not much signify. curiosity, but it can scarcely fail to He gives us leave to reject his forecast if we please, on the ground that rational forecasts have often turned out mistaken. Where he does refer to the

have some moral influence.

No one, I think, can read Mr. C. H. Pearson's recent book without being in an unusual degree excited and dis-effect which his prophecies may have quieted by it. The extraordinary range upon his readers' minds, his language of knowledge exhibited in it must is curiously confused, and we speculate 1 National Life and Character: a Forecast. By in vain as to what he can really mean. Thus at the close of chapter i. he says

Charles H. Pearson.

that, for us of the Aryan race and the Christian faith,

our pride of place will be humiliated.
We shall wake to find ourselves elbowed
and hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside,
by people whom we looked down upon as
servile, and thought of as bound always to
minister to our needs. The solitary conso-
lation will be, that the changes have been
inevitable. It has been our work to organ-

when the higher races will lose their noblest elements, when we shall ask nothing from the day but to live, nor from the future but that we may not deteriorate. Even so, there will still remain to us ourselves. Simply to do our work in life, and to abide the issue, if we stand erect before the eternal eternal unrest, may be nobler training for calm as cheerfully as our fathers faced the our souls than the faith in progress (p. 344). ize and create, to carry peace and law and Here, again, "we" are evidently our order over the world, that others may enter descendants. "Eternal" is always an in and enjoy. Yet in some of us the feeling impressive word, but why is it applied of caste is so strong that we are not sorry either to the calm or to the unrest? to think we shall have passed away before The unrest, at all events, was not eterthat day arrives. the calm; and the calm at any moment nal, for it will have been superseded by can scarcely be more than a stage in the progress of decay ad non esse. Our fathers are not happily described as having cheerfully faced unrest, whether eternal or temporary; it should rather be said of them that, sustained by faith in Divine Providence, and animated by themselves into the struggle of their hope of a better future, they threw

If we, who will have passed away, are to wake, it will be presumably in the persons of our descendants. For whom, then, will the consolation be? For us, to whose pain the author allows no better name than that of injured castefeeling? Our consolation is, that we shall not see, except in prevision, the melancholy condition to which our humane endeavors, aided by opportune circumstances, are bringing the world. The deluge will be after our time. This is a consolation which I should suppose to be hardly worth offering. But it is about as satisfactory as that which our descendants will have, in the reflection that the changes were inevitable. This stoical acquiescence in the inevitable is the solitary moral attitude which Mr. Pearson suggests to his readers. But can he really think that he is offering them consolation? I should suggest for this purpose the reflection: "We! did our best; it is not our fault, but Nature's." Still stranger is the passage

which concludes the volume. The author seems to feel that he must say something in the way of moral reflection; but he has nothing to say, and he does not shrink from saying that nothing in curiously unmeaning phrases:

When Christianity began to appear grotesque and incredible, men reconciled them

selves to the change by belief in an age of

reason, of enlightenment, of progress. It is now more than probable that our science,

our civilization, our great and real advance in the practice of government, are only! bringing us nearer to the day when the lower races will predominate in the world,

time, and were a part of its "unrest." To do our work in life, and abide the issue, has a good old sound; but what is the work of life to be, when people will ask nothing from the day but to live, when they know of no Taskmaster

who sets them their work and takes account of its performance, when they see clearly that any good efforts which things worse, when "the savor of vathey might put forth would only make cant lives will go up to God from every home" ? (p. 338). I could willingly believe that our author secretly intended to suggest to his readers an unspoken alternative; that he would wish "some of us" to say, "These depressing prognostics are not easy to refute; it looks as if decay may be coming upon our world; but it will be better to resist the coming evil with all our might than to stare blankly at it, or to acquiesce cheerfully in it; we have still enough of faith and hope at the back of our minds and the bottom of our hearts to

give us courage to die fighting."

It seems possible that Mr. Pearson may have been vexed by the cheerful anticipations of those who believe in

of the superior races, Mr. Pearson brings to the front the Chinese, the Negroes, the Indians of the tropical parts of America, and the natives of British India. His primary argument is, that the yellow and black races are bound to multiply and advance, and so to squeeze into narrower quarters the hitherto dominant races of the temperate zone.

reason; enlightenment, and progress.ganization which is already passing Those imaginative spirits who are most away, and will bring with it general excited by the movements of our time well-being, and oblige every one to be have been dreaming of universal peace amiable. To disturb these pleasant and happiness. In epochs of change, prospects of the augmenting happiness forecasts of the future have not been uncommon, and prophecies of evil have always added a growling accompaniment to the hopeful forecasts. There are plenty of disaffected persons in these days who rather enjoy telling us that we are going to the bad; who look with disgust on triumphant democracy, and are sure that we are in the way to lose refinement and religion, if not on the eve of a period of robbery and rioting. The first and gravest danger with But these Cassandra warnings do not which Europe is threatened is from the aim at being scientific; they are rather expansion of China. Mr. Pearson, a expressions of displeasure at the turn distinguished Oxford student, has been things are taking than attempts to con- minister of education in Victoria, and ceive the actual condition of the world he looks back with keen satisfaction during the coming generations. It is upon the policy adopted by the Austraimpossible to take part in making lians towards the Chinese. What the changes, or to rejoice in their being yellow race is capable of doing was made, without believing that mankind seen and tested in Australia. China will on the whole and in the long run has a multitudinous population, trained be the better for them. The youthful to habits of industry, habituated to and poetical, who dip into the future far privation and hardships, of singular as human eye can see, have always had toughness in body and spirit, ready to visions of a better and happier as well emigrate to any land to which they are as more wonderful world. Just now, attracted by a hope of bettering themphilanthropy, which pervades all classes, selves. Mr. Pearson's auguries with and socialism, which is the creed of regard to the future development of those who are most zealous in promot- China have been to some extent anticiing social change, are looking forward pated by other observers, who have to a millennium of general comfort and predicted that both Russia and the international harmony. Attempts have British Empire may find in that power been made to give realistic representa- a formidable rival on their Oriental tions of the socialist world of the future, frontiers. I have come across a physiin which life is to be made easy and ological forecast, which goes beyond happy for all by a skilful reconciliation Mr. Pearson's, in a paper by Mr. S. S. of interests. Through no such revolu- Buckman on “Some Laws of Heredity, tion, but as a gradual result of evolu- and their Application to Man," read tion, a satisfactory future has been before the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field anticipated by philosophers also. Mr. Club, and published in their "ProceedJ. S. Mill gave economic reasons for ings," vol. x., part iii. : expecting a stationary condition of society, in which a quiet and general pursuit of things really desirable may take the place of eager competition and the increasing of wealth. Mr. Herbert Spencer convinces himself that, by the continued action of existing causes, an industrial organization of society will completely supersede the military or

In time

a distant time truly, but none the less certain the European, the quickdeveloping race, will disappear altogether.

Medical science and philanthropy, though admirable for the individual, abso

lutely necessary for a high degree of civilization, and indispensable for the evolution of scientific thought, are decidedly detrimental to the race. They keep alive and

allow to multiply just those weakly mem- throughout Asia, from England and Gerbers who would be so surely and summarily many (pp. 125, 126).

In the dis

weeded out by that rough-and-ready process This is the check with which England known as Natural Selection. is most immediately threatened - a tant future, when that over-population deadly competition in the Eastern which they do so much to cherish (teste India at the present day) precipitates a genuine struggle for existence, the races in which natural selection has been checked the most will assuredly go to the wall. A race in which a high level of physical vitality is maintained by a constant struggle for existence under arduous but healthy conditions, a race able to subsist on a sparing quantity of food from the same cause, a race unaffected by so-called civilization, and a race sufficiently prolific withal, is the one which is destined to occupy the place of the Europeans. Strange as it may seem, the Chinese appear to be fitted for the work (pp. 315, 316).

Mr. Pearson takes shorter views, and does not look forward so far as to the extinction of the European race, but is content to threaten it with decline and torpor. He sees other inferior races advancing with minatory strides, the lower civilization showing more vigor than the higher; but it is with China that we have to reckon first:

markets. And Mr. Pearson makes the shrewd observation, that "the Chinese would be less dangerous than they are if they were as warlike as the Turks in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, because in that case they would waste their reproductive forces in arms" (p. 96). "Every year seems to increase the pre-eminence of industrial over essentially martial nations" (p. 95). But he believes that China will soon become formidable as a military power:

Neither does it seem possible to imagine that the great inert force of China will not some day be organized and rendered mobile and capable of military aggression. . . . We have compelled her to come into the fellowship of nations. She has adopted steamers, and European artillery and army organization; she has accepted the telegraph; she is about to introduce railways; and she has credit enough to carry out the changes she needs with foreign capital. On three sides of her lie countries that she may easily seize, over which very often she has some old claim, and in the climate of which her people can live. Flexible as Jews, they can thrive on the mountain plateaux of Thibet and under the sun of Singapore; more versatile even than Jews, they are excellent laborers, and not without merit as soldiers and sailors; while they have a capacity for trade which no other nation of the East possesses. They do not need even the accident of a man of genius to develop their magnificent future. Ordinary statesmanship, adopting the improvements of Europe without offending the customs and prejudices of the people, may make them a State which no Power in Europe will dare to disregard; with an army which can march by fixed stages across Asia; and a fleet which could hold its own against any the strongest of European Powers could afford to keep permanently in Chinese waters (pp. 111, 112).

No one in California or Australia, where the effects of Chinese competition have been studied, has, I believe, the smallest doubt that Chinese laborers, if allowed to come in freely, could starve all the white men in either country out of it, or force them to submit to harder work and a much lower standard of wages. In Victoria, a single trade, that of furniture-making, was taken possession of and ruined for white men, within the space of something like five years. Only two large employers excluded Chinamen altogether; and white men, where they were retained, were kept on only to supply a limited demand for the best kind of work. Now, what Chinamen can do in Melbourne. . . Chinamen at home could do incomparably better, if they worked in establishments fitted up with the best machinery and were directed by foremen knowing the European taste. Does any one doubt that the day is at hand when China will have cheap fuel from her coalThe reader sees with what verve our mines, cheap transport by railways and author argues his case. One of his steamers, and will have founded technical schools to develop her industries? When-chief points is, that emigration has of ever that day comes, she may wrest the late years done much to promote the control of the world's markets, especially prosperity of the European, and espe