of his country; as for reading in its flying folds a reminder of loyalty to the crown and of pride in his country, it never occurs to him; he has never been taught so to regard his flag. Neither loyalty itself nor the symbolism of his flag has ever been taught that child.

There is yet another method of creating sentiment which the Americans have practised, also with the greatest success. It is to hold a day of the nation-a holiday-a Day of rejoicing and of feasting and of speech-making. They have instituted two such Daysthe Day of Independence and the Day of Thanksgiving. They are days, I believe, which greatly afflict the souls of the small minority, who love not multitudes or noise; but move profoundly the many who love nothing so much as processions, flags, bands of music, scarves and decorations, and perfervid orations. These, however, are the mass of the people whose imagination-whose sentiment-the State most desires to move and to influence.

What Days have we? In one respect we are better off than the Americans, because we have six Days to their two. We have two holy Days and four Bank holidays-two of which commemorate events in our sacred books, four which are avowedly days of rest from labor. These Days have nothing to do with the empire or with the nation.

What Day of Celebration have we? None. Yet surely we have a history as great and glorious as the United States. Surely there is as much reason for us to foster a sentiment of national pride as for our cousins across the sea.

No teaching of patriotism and pride in our schools; no outward and visible symbol of the past and present greatness of the country; no incentive to loyalty; no holy Day set apart to commemorate the achievements of the past and the glories of the present. Our rulers absolutely ignore and affect to despise the power of imagination. Since such methods as those adopted by the States-the flaunting of the flag; the Day of Rejoicing-would offend the tastes of the small cultivated class, we are forbidden to teach the mass of the

people in the way that will most readily appeal to their imagination; they are not to learn the virtues and the duties which go to make a nation of patriots. From strength to strength we have marched on; from success to success; from poverty to wealth; from a little island in the west of Europe to a great and mighty empire, the like of which the world has never yet seen. And we suffer our people to grow up in ignorance of this goodly heritage; they know not what they possess; they know not how they arrived at this heritage; they know, that, if they fail to defend it, they will throw away the most splendid possession ever entrusted to any people!

We have seen how vague and general is the popular sentiment concerning our own country; a pride of freedom-a pride in the navy. This sentiment is the same now as it was a hundred years ago. There is nothing that I can discover-literally nothing-in the history of the vast expansion of the last hundred years that has struck the popular imagination; because the people have never learned anything about it; because the story has never been presented to them by speech or by the printed page in such a way as to move their hearts and to stir their blood.

How can an average English lad learn his duty to his country, the extent of his country, the meaning and bearing, to him, of that extent? They do not teach these things at school; he cannot learn them from any national institution. If he is a lad of East London-where there are two millions of people like himself— he sees no soldiers even. There are no barracks allowed in his quarter of the city, for fear, I suppose, that the fighting instinct-the martial spirit-of the lads might be awakened and encouraged; he never sees the gallant spectacle of a regiment marching with band and colors; he never talks with soldiers who can tell him of India and Egypt and the Far East.

Put yourself in the place of that Eastend lad, and ask how he will arrive at any knowledge of his country's glories; his rare heritage, and his own duties. There is no way for him, except slowly

and painfully to read up the subject for himself. And who is to tell him what books he should call for?

The American lad gets this knowledge from every quarter: his schoolbook teaches him; the universal presence of the flag teaches him; the Days of Celebration teach him; the "spread eagle" speeches teach him. All these things foster and develop in him the sentiment of loyalty to the flag.

I have tried to show the power of sentiment and the wisdom of fostering some form of sentiment. I must again remind my readers that I am not speaking of the class to whom enthusiasm and noise are abhorrent; they are, after all, a very small class. I speak of the huge mass of the people; those who read no history, and know little about the extent, or strength, or unity of the countries and colonies farming that federation which we call our empire. Considering the immense force of sentiment-how the fostering of sentiment is recognized by every government except our own, how enormous are the interests at stake it is surely, surely, high time to reconsider our ways.

In our own case, moreover, there are conditions which make this duty far more urgent than for any other people. Tuese conditions fill one with pride; but they are also charged with peril.

There are growing up around us, under our flag, with a rapidity which is startling and unparalleled, four great nations. Up to the present they have remained nominally under the crown; practically, they are independent and sovereign nations. There is, first, the Dominion of Canada; best loved of all our colonies, most tried and proved, most loyal, most faithful to the flag. There are, next, the five States of Australia, some time or other to be federated like those of America, and to form one nation. There is New Zealand, advanced in two generations from a mere handful of whites to a million. There are the States of South Africa, about to form another federation, into which our sons are now pouring by hundreds of thousands. These four nations are destined to become, very rapidly, each one, a country as mighty and as important 711

LIVING AGE.

VOL. XIV.

as any European State of the present day, and they are growing at a rate of acceleration increasing year by year, so that the population which increases to-day by five per cent. will to-morrow increase by six per cent., and the day after to-morrow by ten per cent. In the next fifty years the population of the Dominion will probably become thirty millions; that of Australia twenty millions; that of South Africa twenty millions. Of India, Ceylon, Tasmania, and the Isles I say nothing.

It is quite certain that the time will come when the present relations between this country and the colonies must be changed. No one, it is acknowledged, would desire the present relations to last a day longer than is felt by the colonies to be desirable. We wish them to continue nominally as colonies only so long as we can help each other; we are determined, if we must part, to part in amity. The danger before us is not, in fact, so much that the mother country shall become to her former colonies a land and a people which their young children, as in the United States, must be taught to hate and to despise; we are not afraid that this will happen; but that the colonies, when they become independent States, may fail to recognize the claims, the arguments, for creating a perpetual friendship and alliance between each other. In a word, the danger is that there will be presently witnessed Five Great Nations instead of one, and that these states, instead of supporting each other by an alliance not to be broken, by a Federation of mutual and perpetual support, may be as ready to quarrel as if they were French and German, and as willing to settle their disputes by wars which must be as bitter and as desperate as civil wars always are.

Therefore we cannot too earnestly set about the task of creating such a Sentiment of Race as may play an effective part in preventing this most deplorable and fatal result; we cannot too earnestly advocate federation between all these Five States-alliance offensive and defensive-such as may mean an alliance for all time. With such an alliance the Anglo-Saxon race will be free from the

fear of enemies without or of treachery within; free to work out the higher destiny to which it will be called.

This Federation will consist, then, of five distinct nations, no one being first or second, above or below, the others; their people will inhabit the finest and richest lands on the earth; they will mostly belong to one religion-the Church of England or the Episcopal Church will, I believe, swallow up all other Protestant sects and will become the greatest Church in the world-Canterbury will take the ecclesiastical lead instead of Rome; they will enjoy the same institutions, they will speak the same language, they will have the same education, they will nourish and raise their souls by the study of the same literature.

The sentiment which we are consider ing began with a vague pride of country; it has now become, you will have observed, a far larger and more important thing than it seemed at the outset. It is no longer only such a sentiment as would have been useful to George III.; it is such a sentiment as must serve to knit together great nations separated by broad seas. It is no longer like the American, a sentiment that can be symbolized by a flag; it is the sentiment of the Anglo-Saxon race.

For the creation and the fostering of such a sentiment, I ask, first of all, a Day. Let us follow the example of the United States. Let us develop and sustain such a sentiment by the formation of a national holiday which all our colonies with ourselves shall celebrate in such a way as may most easily impress the Day and its teaching upon the great mass of the people. They will demand, I dare say, processions, shows, pageants, bands of music, songs, feasts, and speeches. In the pageants, in the songs, in the speeches we shall celebrate the glories and the victories of the race; we shall remember the great days of old; we shall acknowledge the great days of the present. Once more it must be borne in mind that we are seeking to move the multitude, not the clubmen of Piccadilly; we are getting altogether outside the very little circle traversed by that illustrious thoroughfare; we are

going to Mile End, to Whitechapel, to Hoxton, to Islington, to Birmingham, to Bradford, where the people live who elect our rulers and shape our policy; whom we wish to move.

Let us remember that what is very well for the Americans-a Day of Celebration for a country which is always to remain undivided-is not desirable for ourselves, who must consider the probabilities-nay, the certainties-of our future. We have two distinct duties before us, both absolutely neglected up to the present-the awakening of our people to a sense of what is meant by Great Britain and the empire; and the binding of these our colonies in bonds of kinship and affection. These things can be assisted, I maintain, greatly assisted, as the Americans have proved by their success-by the schoolbook, by the flag, by the Day of Celebration. The schoolbook need not-nay, it must notmisrepresent any country; we are quite rich enough in history to found our national pride on our own record without attacking our neighbors; our flag must fly, like the Stars and Stripes, over every school and every public building. As for our Day, it must be one in which the colonists will be able to join with as much loyalty as ourselves; not an abstract Day such as would have pleased a French Republican in the first bloodless days of doctrine and devotion; a Day which in itself, apart from its main object, will be felt by all to be representative.

What do we want, then, to represent? Our common ancestry; our common possessions; our common laws, liberties and institutions; and our common literature.

Our literature is generally acknowledged to be our most precious possession. For my own part, I think of a little scrap of parchment in the Guildhall of London, which seems to me more precious still, partly because without it our noble literature would have been impossible; the parchment is the Conqueror's Charter to London, which made all our liberties possible. However, let us accept the general opinion. Of all the possessions, then. which these four nations and ourselves have in com

When far-off cousins agree to celebrate their ancestors, they may choose between the Lawgiver, the Captain, the Prophet, or the Poet. I think that our cousins will agree to put up the Poet as the representative of all the ancestors. Let, therefore, the 23rd day of April be the Day of Celebration of the AngloSaxon race, and let England's greatest poet give his name to that imperial holiday.

Why, it may be asked, cannot the United States come in? Are they not Anglo-Saxon as well? They are certainly Anglo-Saxon as much as ourselves. We have absorbed Fleming, Frenchman, Italian, German, Pole and Dutch, and we remain Anglo-Saxon. The States have received from every nationality tens of thousands; they are all absorbed, or in process of absorption; they are become or are becoming AngloSaxon. Will, then, America join in such a celebration? I am not prepared to ower an opinion. Perhaps, if it was thoroughly realized that there was no secret intention on the part of Great Britain to exalt herself above other nations of the race, the United States would also join us in rejoicing over the past and present of the race which made them what they are. They will come in; they must come in; and then the final federation will take place; then shall be witnessed the reconciliation of all who speak our common tongue; and the future of the race with such a federation may be must be-greater and more glorious than poet has sung or dreamer has dreamed, for the widening of knowledge and the advancement of humanity.

I think-or hope-that the final federation of the whole of our race is a consummation that is not only ardently to be desired, but is also certain to occur if we take steps of ordinary prudence. The Treaty of Arbitration, when we get it, will go far to soften the tone of the American papers; it will disarm hostility; it will in time perhaps change the spirit of the schoolbooks. As for their flag, it will remain their own; as for

be exactly the same as that of Great Britain, Australia or any other State in the Federation; there will be no loss of independence or national pride; the old sentiment will remain; every American, every Englishman, every Australian, every Africander will be free to consider himself, if he pleases, the finest specimen of humanity in the world. Only to the sentiment of patriotism we shall add the sentiment of race. And to the Day of Independence the American will add another Day, when he shall celebrate the glories and the achievements of the people from whom he came, whose liberties and history and literature he inherits. There will be one thing of which he will be more proud than of achieving his independence-and that will be symbolized by the Day of Celebration, the rejoicings, on the 23rd of April.

WALTER BESANT.

From Temple Bar.

IN THE GATEWAY. "But what is his name?" “And that I can't tell you either, sirnot his real name, at least. There's plenty of nicknames for him, of course."

"Has he been here long?"

"Since I was changed to here, and that's quite enough for me. Lads are always plaguin' him and singin,' 'Git yer 'air cut,' so I'm obliged to go over and stop it."

I asked these questions of the bearded policeman, to whom the duty is assigned to stand still by the hour together and look eastward down wicked Piccadilly, as though momentarily expecting an important signal. He answered me in a preoccupied way, almost brusquely, without taking his eyes off the long street and its foreshortened crowd of cabs and humanity.

I turned and looked at the object of my curiosity, and pondered. Presently the policeman said,—

"He's what they call not quite hard baked, or we should have moved him long ago. That's it, depend on it!"

Still I was dissatisfied. The man was so different from the other three hundred and fifty-seven street artists whom the Deserving Mendicants' Aid Society has catalogued. He had got all his legs and arms left, and he didn't sell matches, and he hadn't written a short history of himself and his diseases beside his pictures. There was only one picture too-of an archway, with a glimpse of green grass and a fountain showing through it. An hour's drizzle had not improved the clearness of the detail, and after I had made so much out I looked up at the artist himself. He wore what must once have been a suit of dress clothes; the trousers had been trimmed off short at the knee, and tattered stockings took their place below that point. His shoes had been boots once, but the uppers were shorn away. His waistcoat did not belong to the dress suit; it was two sizes larger at least, and was crossed over itself to take up the extra six inches, being thus forced to button in double-breasted fashion; visible here and there were the relics of a pattern worked into it, of a white fleur-de-lys. But his hat was more remarkable still. What its original shape had been Heaven knows; when I saw it, it had been cut and pulled and beaten into a grotesque resemblance of a lacquey's three-cornered hat. Yet there was an almost jaunty air about it. He had stuck it to the best possible advantage on his wonderful head of yellow flowing hair-blackened a good deal by exposure to London soot, but still yellow. His limbs were straight and well proportioned, and his features clear and delicate, though a stubbly beard of four days' growth took off a little from their beauty no doubt. He lay gracefully on his side, not huddled up like the other street artists-with his head supported on his hand, and heeded not the passing crowd. His thoughts seemed to be very far away from London and its dirt and its clamor.

While I was looking at him a passer

by threw him a penny; without deflecting his gaze to see where it went, he raised his hand to his forehead and saluted. It was an old-fashioned military salute, such as one of the great Frederick's guards would have made, touching his forehead with the edge, not the back of his hand. I pondered all the harder over this. It was a little thing. but it impressed me deeply-so deeply that I made up my mind at all costs to know more about him. After thinking still a little longer I moved close up to the spot where he lay, and ventured the remark,

"Rather hard lying on the pavement, isn't it?"

He turned and fixed his blue eyes on me without answering.

I repeated my question.
Then he replied,-

"It is very hard; but I lie here all the same."

This was obviously true, and I felt disappointed at getting such a reception.

"It can't be very good for you," I blundered out.

"It is not very good for me," he said, in a strange refined Ollendorffian style, "but I lie here and tell the story of my picture to myself, for nobody listens."

Not

Just then came along a middle-sized boy carrying an empty basket. wishing to be favored with au audience while I questioned the man, I affected interest in an opposite direction. The boy dropped his basket as he approached, and kicked it deftly over the picture, saying as he did so,—

"Well, old 'Where did yer git that 'at,' I'm comin' back again to eat yer." I sprang on that boy unfairly. He regarded the poor street artist as lawful prey, and long usage combined with bad example had destroyed any original feelings of compunction-but it was too late; I had hurt him very much, and he was crying bitterly. Happily no one was at hand, and so the matter passed without collecting a crowd. The boy picked up his basket and went his way whimpering; the policeman did not take his eyes off Piccadilly, and my