has been selfish and brutal, — much is to be hoped from the light thus let in upon the English mind. Of the English usurpation in India, there could be no fairer illustration than that which Mr. Pember gives in this volume; while the infamy of the Chinese opium war becomes even blacker, if possible, under the unsparing criticism of Mr. Bridges. But, apart from the genuine tone of the work, which is its chief value, the sketch of Chinese civilization and history by the latter writer, though necessarily brief, will be found valuable for its clearness and thoroughness; while the account by Professor Beesly of the manner in which England acquired its dominion on the sea will furnish some good suggestions in the philosophy of history; for it shows how the maritime supremacy of England cannot be traced back further than the battle of La Hogue (1692), and was not established beyond dispute till the battle of Trafalgar; and that, so far from being bound up with the national life, the very idea of it did not dawn on the nation till after the Revolution of 1688, not an allusion to it can be found in Shakespeare, or so far as he is aware in Milton, yet the one was the contemporary of Raleigh and Drake, the other of Blake and Montague. It shows, moreover, how the idea of building up a maritime and colonial empire with a view to commerce, leaving France to have its own way on the Continent, first conceived by Cromwell, was never deliberately resumed till the policy of England was permanently shaped by the master-mind of the elder Pitt; and, again, how the real cause of the long war of England with France was the refusal, on the part of the latter, to close the navigation of the Scheldt, which was demanded by the commercial interests of England; and finally, how, instead of seeking war with England, Napoleon wanted nothing so much as peace, which England, obstinate in her greed, would never grant till she had overthrown her adversary, and in spite of the enormous expense of the struggle had come out of it ever so many times richer than she went in,- with the reputation, moreover, of having been fighting all the time for the liberties of Europe.

That nothing, however, absolutely new is contributed by these writers to political science is perhaps their best recommendation; for politics, like morals, do not progress by a special but by a general movement; nations do not advance in the line indicated by any one mind, but through the irresistible control of forces as multiform as their life. In the first essay, nevertheless, Mr. Richard Congreve has made an attempt to be original, to show what the English mind is

capable of in the way of political theory, to be striking without being bizarre, to be profound without being obscure. And his theory is, at first hearing, plausible: it is only as we subject it to a strict criticism that we discover the basis of it to be as impossible now as it ever was, since, in point of fact, that basis never existed, as Mr. Con greve claims.

Looking broadly at the history of the world, we find, ever since the absolute rejection of the Eastern element by the Greeks, a certain progressive civilization in the West, interrupted, indeed, for a time by the fall of Rome, but, nevertheless, steadily existing. Of this civilization the main elements have been the Greek intellectual culture, the Roman law, and the Catholic feudalism. The nations, therefore, that have shared most, or shared obviously, in these elements may claim to represent, or rather to be, the West, which of course in this discussion is assumed to be superior to the East, an assumption which, so far as the beginnings of the West are concerned, is getting a good deal undermined by a wider and more dispassionate investigation of Oriental political systems and intellectual habits. These nations are the French, Italian, Spanish, English, and German; the various dependencies and offshoots of each nation being included in these general designations. Thus, France stands for the French in Canada and Algeria, and England for the Anglo-Saxons, wherever found, in the United States or Australia; and, as adjuncts of these nations, Mr. Congreve is good enough to include, under the appellation of the West, Greece, the mother of all our humanities, though she had the misfortune to miss the benefits of Catholicism, and could never make up her mind to accept those of Mohammedanism; and also Poland, because the Poles were once our support against barbarism, though somewhat unsteady indeed, if we have read the histories rightly.

Now, side by side with the development of the conception of the unity of race, it has been seen more and more clearly how necessary was a hierarchical co-ordination of its several parts. Of this hierarchy, the West is manifestly at the head; and of this West, if you exclude Russia, as you must, because Russia has never shared either in the Greek intellectual culture (Mr. Congreve forgets that the basis of the very alphabet of Russia is the Greek) or the Roman law or the Catholic feudalism, you find that the centre, geographically as well as historically, is France. Thus, then, the new order of things is to be, not England and France at war with each other in India and Egypt, for the extension of their commerce and the opportunity of

plunder; not Spain, drinking the life-blood of its colonies, and slowly rotting with the poison it imbibes; not Germany, split into a thousand fragments, and each fragment at sword's point with the others; but England and France and Spain and Italy and Germany are to combine in one grand brotherhood, for the regulation of the affairs of the rest of the world, and the harmonious adjustment of their own.

And this union, Mr. Congreve argues, is not altogether visionary. It was in this sense of a hierarchical co-ordination that feudal Europe had a unity wholly different from that which prevailed under the Roman administration. Supreme over many races and over all governments, the Church was the common bond of nationalities, the object of universal respect. And it was not till the Protestantism of the fifteenth century had broken up Europe into hostile parties, with ever-increasing animosities, that the feeling of unity was lost, and with it the commanding position of the West as a governing body.

It is difficult to deal with generalizations of this sort without a degree of fulness impossible in these limits; for there is such a mixture of truth and error, so many deductions that are false blended with so many facts that are true, that one can neither admit nor deny them absolutely. We shall only remark, therefore, that while the whole current of modern history is against such a position as Mr. Congreve seeks to establish for the West, it may very well be doubted, as a matter of science, whether this superiority of a portion of the white race (for it practically comes to that), really rests upon fact. Yet, perhaps, the American critic, far removed from the sulphurous atmosphere of European politics, may not go much out of the way if he finds in Mr. Congreve's theory an attempt at reconciling two of the most distressing difficulties which, to the English mind, are ever looming up in the future of England, — the vast aggression of Russia, not to be disputed, in the East, and the general military and social superiority of France, now clearly recognized at home.

For this readiness to stand by the fact, and to let go for ever an empty pride, we cannot do too much honor to these liberal English thinkers, so much in advance of their nation, in appreciating the tendencies of modern political life. When their generous spirit pervades the English mind, England will have little to fear from Russian aggrandizement or French ambition: and it may then come, perhaps, to admit that America must weigh in the scale of nations by something more than its mass, even by its ideas, which are the true leaders of the civilization of the West; for without their support all coali

tions are in vain, ever ready to be overthrown by the first rocking of restless empires. For it is not, after all, any political system, however elaborately contrived which can govern the world, but the spirit of justice, and the love of law, and the general recognition of other than material ends; and these things do not come of political expedients, but of universal, intellectual, and spiritual illumination.

H. J. W.

THE attractive volume of Mr. Howells* contains by far the most interesting, most accurate, and most complete account to be found in our language of the environment and daily life of the inhabitants of modern Venice. Occupying the post of American Consul, richly endowed with the sensibilities of a poet, and with the keen insight and practised tact of a critical observer, Mr. Howells is well entitled to say, "I could not dwell three years in the place without learning to know it differently from those writers who have described it in romances, poems, and hurried books of travel; nor help seeing, from my point of observation, the sham and cheapness with which Venice is usually brought out (if I may so speak) in literature. At the same time, it has never lost to me its claim upon constant surprise and regard, nor the fascination of its excellent beauty, its peerless picturesqueness, its sole and wondrous grandeur." The singular enchantments of the situation, scenery, and art of Venice; the unequalled glory, tragedy, and romance of her history; the dismal squalor, monotony, and mournfulness of her decay; the varied characteristics of the different classes of her population, as illustrated in all the phases of their life, in all the seasons of the year, - are depicted by our author with remarkable, force, fidelity, and beauty. The substance of what he says is marked by sound judgment and conscientious impartiality. His manner of saying it is distinguished by a charm of airy grace, and by a deep fund of poetic feeling, relieved by the almost constant presence of quiet humor. We heartily recommend Mr. Howells's "Venetian Life" to the two large classes of readers, have themselves visited Venice, and those who have not. The former will be delighted to have their reminiscences enlarged: the latter will be glad to have their deprivation lessened. We close with a single paragraph, as a specimen of our author's quality. He is writing of St. Mark's Place in a snow-storm: "Looked at across the Square,

- those who

* Venetian Life. By William D. Howells. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

the beautiful outline of the Church was perfectly pencilled in the air; and the shifting threads of the snow-fall were woven into a spell of novel enchantment around a structure that always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic loveliness to be any thing but the creation of magic. The tender snow had compassionated the beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so hid the stains and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the brain of the architect. The snow lay lightly on the golden globes that tremble, like peacock-crests, above the vast domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in ermine; and it danced over all the work as if exulting in its beauty, beauty which filled me with that subtle, selfish regret that yearns to keep such evanescent loveliness for the little-whilelonger of one's whole life. The towers of the island churches loomed faintly and far away in the dimness; the sailors in the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin wrought like phantoms among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance, more noislessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence, almost palpable, lay upon the mutest city in the world."

MR. MAURICE's very interesting lectures on the political topics that just now occupy so much of the English mind and ours offer a text more suggestive than the commentary is satisfactory. He writes never in the clear, "dry light" of science, — always in the suffused and mellow light of imagination, sentiment, and conscience. He loves to melt away the edges of our sharp, dogmatic theories; and shows us the thought, as physiologists study the living organism, in solution and in germ. So he is more suggestive than instructive, and piques more curiosity than he satisfies. Always widening the horizon of our vision, he shows the object we view in the flickering, uncertain light, and in the strong refraction, that belong to the dividing-line of sky and earth, His style affects the soft, dim haze that seems to envelop his thought; and the hard, swift, positive habit of mind we are all fallen into is impatient at sentences and chapters written in a sort of unvarying potential mood. And yet his "may" and his "perhaps" and his "doubtful whether" seem in reality to be the veil of strong conviction, only the conviction is rather ethic than

The Workman and the Franchise. Chapters from English History, on the Representation and Education of the People. By Frederick Denison Maurice. London & New York: Alexander Strahan.