period from that publication. The poems of the first period show the influence of Pope in form and in metrical accuracy. The thought was metre-bound also; and it is only when he began to embody higher truths in his poems that the carelessness of metre and rhyme sometimes appears. The form was no longer paramount, the sensuous pleasure in perfect metrical form giving way to the intellectual pleasure in the embodiment of thought.

OLIVER F. EMERSON.

RECENT BOOKS ON SOCIAL QUESTIONS.* One sits down to a batch of books on social He feels questions with a distinct pleasure. He feels the throes of that immense activity with which men are working at the problem of the common prosperity, and the untiring determination with which they attack it on all sides with ever varying chance of success. Each one of these attempts is pretty sure to do something to present some fresh facts, to enforce some new view, or, at the very least, to extend the knowledge of what is familiar. A book in philosophy must justify itself by very positive merit; a book in sociology is more easily justified, by virtue of the variety and magnitude

of the demand.

66

Prisoners of Poverty Abroad" is a companion volume to the author's previous work, "Prisoners of Poverty." The facts contained in these pages have been gathered chiefly in England, though the inquiries of the author have extended somewhat farther. Mrs. Camp

bell directs her attention to the work of women in a great variety of forms, and presents it in a thoroughly practical and sympathetic way. One cannot fail to desire that the book shall accomplish its purpose of making us more perfectly and feelingly aware of the breadth and the urgency of those social duties with which we have to deal. It is well fitted to abolish the indolent and unworthy impression that things will care for themselves, and may be left to work themselves out in their own fashion; as

* PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD. By Helen Campbell. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

A TREATISE ON COÖPERATIVE SAVINGS AND LOAN AssoCIATIONS. By Seymour Dexter. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

THE PLANTATION NEGRO AS A FREEMAN. By Philip A. Bruce. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

OUTLINES OF A NEW SCIENCE. By E. J. Donnell. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

SOCIAL PROGRESS. An Essay. By Daniel G. Thompson. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.

if eternal heedfulness and untiring affection were not the price of all spiritual well-being and themselves a chief part of it.

The volume on "Coöperative Savings and Loan Associations" is much needed. It aims to give aid to a movement which is almost wholly beneficent, and is showing considerable power of self-propagation. Building associations, which sprang up in Philadelphia, are extending to many parts of the country. Mr. Dexter aims to narrate the facts concerning them, to explain their principles, to guide his readers to a just estimate of their value, and to give aid in their wise formation. He includes with them mutual savings and loan associations, accumulating fund associations, and coöperative banks. The aim of them all is to secure economy, and to give that economy its most direct and profitable Though these associations may not results. go far in working out the general prosperity, their contributions are very direct, very capable of extension, stand in easy affiliation with other means of improvement, and help, in a high degree, to awaken and nourish the temof mind from which progress comes. The legal and practical details of these associations are fully given, and Mr. Dexter has rendered the cause of social improvement a real service, both on its theoretical and its practical side.

per

"The Plantation Negro as a Freeman" is a somewhat full discussion of the character of the negro in all the relations of life. It seems to be pervaded by a thoughtful, rather than by a truly beneficent, spirit. It is highly pessimistic in its conclusions. With the blacks as a whole, things are going from bad to worse; the ultimate outcome is likely to be a return to barbarism along a road of vice and wretched

ness.

Mr. Bruce represents that firm, not to say fierce, spirit in the South, examples of which have been frequently presented of late in our periodical literature, a spirit which is deeply impressed with the injury which arose from a brief domination of the colored race, and is inspired with the determination that nothing of the sort shall again occur, no matter what the cost of resistance. This temper is not so much to be criticised in its primary sentiment as in the unnecessary apprehension and harshness which now accompany it. The circumstances following the war were entirely exceptional, and are not likely to likely to return. Events would adjust themselves to present relations far more readily and comfortably, if these memories could be allowed to pass

away, and present facts be suffered freely to take their place. Fear and aversion are bad counsellors, even when there is abundant occasion for them. It is a very pitiful confession to be compelled to say that we can get along with a race as placable as the negro better on terms of slavery than of freedom; that the one hopeless fact is that from which all hope must come the fact of freedom. Justice and good-will have lost their power as redemptive agencies in the minds of those men who are so quick—a thing quite right in itself -to assert their own opportunities. They do not look upon or estimate their own spirit as it impresses others. The author says, in conclusion:

"Fervent should be the prayer that the course of future events will solve this momentous problem at last in a way that will redound to the prosperity of the South and the glory of the Union. In the meanwhile, the Southern people are using every means in their reach to bring about this consummation, and upon the efforts that they have made and are still making with that view they may well invoke, in the language of the Emancipation Proclamation that precipitated the special evils that now environ them, the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.''

While we heartily respond to this petition, we believe, not, we trust, underestimating the gravity of the situation-that its answer must be found in a more concessive and considerate inquiry on the part of leaders at the South into the safety and well-being of the blacks. The real danger to both portions of the community lies, not in the domination of the negro race, but in its unjust subjection. Let the sense of this danger be removed, and relations would at once become more kindly, and good influences more productive. The carpet bag régime was most unfortunate, as calling out so many senseless fears and blinding passions.

The "Outlines of a New Science," like the volume just spoken of, belongs to the series of "Questions of the Day." It is admirably got ten up, but has very little claim to attention. The author is misled by scientific phraseology, and wanders about in a very vague fashion. The new Science seems to be Economics extended, in an unintelligible way, into the Science of Man.

"Social Progress" is a discussion of familiar ground from the standpoint of evolution. The first part considers the relation of law and liberty, security in the state, and the equality of rights and powers. The conclusions reached are thoroughly democratic, and are not to be

The author

objected to, for the most part. takes his stand, in common with the school to which he belongs, on the rights of the individual, and fails to fully recognize the relatively independent organic force of society. That is the point at which recent thought is making most decided objection to the extreme individuation involved in a purely empirical, voluntary construction of the state. The second portion of the work, discussing the means of promoting social progress, is fresher than the earlier portion. The need of change and the formation and expression of opinion are clearly and emphatically enforced. The summation of the work seems to be, "Just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty, is the thing we stand in need of." The constancy with which we return to such expressions as "equal and impartial liberty," notwithstanding the difficulty we meet with in defining in what this equality and impartiality consist, shows that we are dealing with a very real idea. If the phrase is a "glittering generality," it is so because of a very constant ray of truth it contains. author, we think, lays too much emphasis on

Our

liberty as the absence of restraint, and too little on that which alone makes liberty significantthe accumulation of powers in our individual and collective relations.

66

JOHN BASCOM.

AN AMERICAN DIPLOMAT.* Admitted to the New York bar at the age of twenty, Gouverneur Morris was for seventeen years engaged in the practice of law and in the service of his country before he could gratify his desire to see the world. So much, indeed, was he occupied with the making of history that he found no time for writing it; and a single chapter covers the first epoch of his public life. I could not," he says, "furnish any tolerable memorandum of my existence, during that eventful period of American history." The remainder of the work increases the regret that we have not from his pen some account of the winter at Valley Forge; of the planning of the first United States Bank; and of the Constitutional Convention. The prac tical knowledge of men and of the science of finance, acquired in this period, is undoubtedly the chief cause of the self-reliance and decision that are characteristic of his later life. Το

*DIARY AND LETTERS OF GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. Edited by Anne Cary Morris. In two volumes. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

this was no doubt due in some measure the remarkable success that followed him all over Europe. Not only was he received in the best social circles, but his opinion was sought by many of the most eminent men of the time.

The ten years spent in Europe represent the second period of Morris's life. In a letter to Robert Morris, he enumerates some of the financial undertakings that occupied much of his time during the first years abroad:

"Indian voyages, the liquidated debt, debts to Spain

and France of the United States, the Fairfax estates, the sale of land in America,— and last, but much the most difficult task of all, your various debts and engagements. Here I have had to perform the task of the Israelites in Egypt to make bricks without straw." From February 1789 to January 1793, the Diary follows pretty closely the course of events. Then it stops, “because the situation of things is such that to continue the journal would compromise too many people." Beneath the careless and brilliant social life is seen the steadily approaching storm. Morris writes of a visit to the Duchess of Orleans at Raincy :

"A number of persons surround the windows, and doubtless form a high idea of the company, to whom they are obliged to look up at an awful distance. Ah, did they but know how trivial the conversation, how very trivial the characters, their respect would soon be changed to an emotion extremely different." Of the political situation, he wrote to the French Ambassador in London soon after his arrival:

"Stay where you are a little while, and when you come back you will hardly know your country. Republicanism is absolutely a moral influenza from which neither title, place, nor even the diadem, can guard their possessors."

Morris does not seem to have been popular with those in authority, but commanded their respect. Madame de Staël says to him, "I hear you quoted on all sides." He came into more or less intimate relations with Necker, Siéyès, Dumouriez, and was invited to confer with a Committee of the States General appointed to report on a Constitution. The three persons most frequently mentioned in the first volume are M. de Lafayette, Madame de Flahaut, and the Bishop of Autun. At first one fails to recognize, in the Abbé Périgord and the Bishop of Autun, the well-known Talleyrand Périgord of the next century. We find Lafayette and the Bishop meeting at breakfast with Morris, and frequently taking counsel with him regarding the political situation. Morris had no great respect, apparently, for either of them. The Bishop appeared to him

sly, cunning, ambitious, and malicious. Naturally at this time the interest of the chronicler centres in the rapid succession of political events. Morris tells of the taking of the Bastille, while the Comte d' Artois was giving a banquet at Versailles. A few days later he visited the ruins of this stronghold of iniquity, and in another striking passage describes the last day of the Royal family at Versailles.

Hitherto Morris has been simply a visitor in France. Appointed Minister of the United States in 1791, Morris was presented to the King a few weeks before the attack on the Tuileries. During all those terrible months, he alone of the Diplomatic Corps remained in Paris. "It is true," he wrote, "that the position is not without danger; but I presume that when the President did me the honor of nam

ing me to this Embassy, it was not for my personal pleasure or safety, but to promote the interests of my country." His house was searched, and he himself was arrested. The fact that he had no more serious trouble was probably due in great measure to his own tact and firmness. He rendered material assistance to many old friends, and there is reason to believe that he took part in a plan for the King's escape. It is not strange that report condemned him to the guillotine; nor that he should have written, in August 1794: "Presenting my successor, which I did yesterday, to the Commission, has given me more pleasure than any event for many months." The Diary follows Morris to Hamburg by way of Switzerland. He visited Necker and Madame de Staël at Coppet, finding friends sented at the courts of Dresden, Berlin, and He was preamong the emigres everywhere. Brunswick. When Lafayette was surrendered, by the Austrian Government, to the American Consul at Hamburg, out of consideration for the United States, Morris was at hand to accompany the Imperial Minister to the ceremony of delivering the prisoner. The Diary has a most characteristic entry in July of the following year:

"M. de Lafayette called on me and asked my advice whether he should go immediately to America, or stay awhile longer. I tell him that he has made up his mind to stay; this he blushingly acknowledges.. Always declaring his resolution to lead a private life, he sighs still for an opportunity of appearing again on the public theatre."

Morris landed in the United States the day before Christmas, 1798. His apparent determination to become a farmer at Morrisania was

interfered with by his election to the United States Senate, which he pronounced unfortunate. Although a Federalist, Morris was strongly opposed to the attempt to make Burr president. He was evidently opposed to the war of 1812. In January 1814 we find him assuming that New England will meet in Convention and throw off all allegiance to the United States, wondering only whether the Susquehanna or the Delaware will be the boundHe seems to have had the right to say, shortly before his death, at the early age of sixty-four:

ary.

"The welfare of our country is my single object, and although I never sought, refused, or resigned an office, there is no department of government in which I have not been called to act, with what success it is not for me to say."

In editing the Diary and Letters of her grandfather, Miss Morris has done her work well. The interest of the narrative is often due to

little of the roystering friend of Falstaff, who struck the Chief Justice and pilfered his dying father's crown; but he restores to us the able soldier who held important military command in his sixteenth year, and the vigorous ruler who was sworn of his father's Privy Council at nineteen. Henry the Fifth was not a great statesman, for the purpose to which he gave his life convicts him of lack of statesmanlike views, but he was one of England's ablest soldiers; and this narrative is a faithful sketch of an interesting career in the military annals of the race. Professor Church says in closing:

"Of Henry's qualities as a military leader it is impossible to speak too highly. The one possible exception where he may be thought to have failed, not indeed in skill but in prudence, was the march from Harfleur to Calais. Yet it was a piece of calculated audacity abundantly justified by the results. He had to make an impressive display of his superiority if he was to be accepted as the future conqueror of France. His career after this was one of unbroken success— success earned by courage, foresight, tactical skill, fer

.

J. L. WHITE.

ENGLISH MEN OF ACTION.* Messrs. Macmillan & Co. have selected an admirable set of brief biographies in their "English Men of Action." The volumes are small, attractive, and inexpensive. Each is devoted to some "subject of the British Crown who has in any capacity, at home or abroad, by land or sea, been conspicuous for actions in its service." The subjects and writers of the volumes thus far issued are: Henry the Fifth, by the Rev. A. J. Church; Gordon, by Colonel Butler; Livingstone, by Thomas Hughes; Lord Lawrence, by Sir Richard Temple; and Wellington, by George Hooper. The volume by Professor Church is such as we might expect from that excellent writer and accomplished historian. Henry the real man has too long suffered from association in popular opinion with that erratic creation, partly of legend partly of Shakespeare's imagination, "Prince Hal." Professor Church's criticism leaves

*GENERAL GORDON. By Col. Sir William Butler. New York: Macmillan & Co.

HENRY THE FIFTH. By the Rev. A. J. Church. New York: Macmillan & Co.

LIVINGSTONE. By Thomas Hughes. New York: Macmillan & Co.

LORD LAWRENCE. By Sir Richard Temple. New York: Macmillan & Co.

WELLINGTON. By George Hooper. New York: Macmillan & Co.

the qualities of a great captain. There is no more conclusive proof of his greatness than the instantaneous change which his presence wrought in the prospects of a campaign: Ipso adventu profligata bella."

Henry the Fifth voiced a national sentiment in his attempt to crush France. General Gordon was but a "soldier of fortune," and yet the "adventurer" will stand far higher on the permanent roll of fame than the Plantagenet. For after his initiation, in the Crimean and Opium Wars, Gordon ceased to fight in "wars of ambition," and gave his great genius for mastery to the cause of law and civilization and charity. Colonel Butler has a noble theme, and makes a fascinating book, as he leads us in the wake of that bamboo cane, more potent than sword or sceptre, or shows us the Christian soldier for six years at Gravesend, redeeming not only souls but lives from the gutters and slums. His single-handed fight against slavery in the Soudan is pathetically told; and the account of his last effort for the helpless, when he risked all to bring off the non-combatants from that desolated and government-forsaken land, is a fine tribute to a grand hero. With true insight, too, the author fixes the cause of Gordon's failure and death in the "struggle between the permanent under-Government and the temporary upperGovernment." In his judgment the latter, the Gladstone ministry, was thwarted in its peaceful policy by the warlike purposes of "the bureau" the conservative permanent officials in every department of the administration,

who may say, Cabinets may come and Cabinets may go, but we go on forever.

That charming friend of our boyhood, Tom Hughes, has already had his story told for him, either in Livingstone's own writings, or in Stanley's records of African travel. Yet the story of Livingstone's life cannot be told too often, and we are glad to welcome it once again in this brief narrative by a man who has fixed for our gaze "the manliness of Christ." "the manliness of Christ." In the simple and vigorous English which is already familiar to us all, Mr. Hughes gathers up the leading facts of a life which will ever inspire to heroic achievement and calm endurance. No one could tell this story better than this latest biographer. Wisely he allows his narrative through many pages to adopt the exact language of this devoted man of actionlanguage as direct and forcible as his conduct. Wisely too, instead of summing up a character which all men already estimate at its true worth, he makes his closing chapter "a few "a few words as to the fruit that grain of martyrwheat has borne in the last sixteen years, and the prospect of the harvest in 1889." A brief A brief survey of the work done by the Universities Mission, the Scotch Missions, the Church Missionary Society, and the African Lakes Company, best indicates how much Livingstone did for Africa as a pioneer. But already, when But already, when this last chapter went to press, the German African Company, driven by that "earth-hunger" so contrary to the spirit of Livingstone, was looming ominously upon the eastern seaboard; and at this moment it is a matter of anxious inquiry whether or not the Cæsarism of Bismarck shall make shipwreck of African Missions.

Lord Lawrence is equally fortunate with Livingstone in his biographer for this series. Sir Richard Temple is not only a veteran Indian administrator, but was a member of Lawrence's official family, and very near to him in personal relation. His admiration for his old chief verges on veneration, but it is a veneration which the world fully shares. In the following passage the author correctly analyzes the masterful qualities of this greatest of Viceroys, and well brings out the secret of his

rare success:

"He evinced only two qualities in an uncommon degree, namely energy and resolution. But if he was not a man of genius in the ordinary acceptation of the term,

there must have been a certain genius in him, and that

was virtue. Such genius is indeed heaven-born, and this was the moral force which combined all his faculties into a harmonious whole and made him a potent

instrument for good, a man of peace or of war, according to the requirements of right and justice." Take him all in all, one is tempted to say that John Lawrence is the most perfectly balanced character in all nineteenth-century public life. Heroic in all his proportions, there is nothing trivial or petty in even his ordinary deeds or words. As pure a devotee to the welfare of man as either Gordon or Livingstone, his exalted position gave him opportunity which the latter never enjoyed for the noblest and wisest handling of the fortunes of many millions of fellow-beings, and proved that he possessed that complete sanity of vision which the enthusiast of Khartoum at times sadly lacked. Lawrence's life gives the answer to every sorrowful pessimist distrustful of his race and questioning if life be worth living.

66

His accidency" of Red River Rebellion and Tel el Kebir fame has recently denied that Wellington was a great general. But Lord Wolseley's claim to be considered either a truthful chronicler or a wise critic has been so completely shattered in recent controversies into which his shallow criticism has drawn him, that it was hardly necessary, at least for American readers, for Mr. Hooper to vindicate the Iron Duke against one whom a recent writer in "The Nation " happily calls " a Brummagen Wellington." The test of ability in the long run is success, and the man who began life as Arthur Wellesley can safely stand this test. In Mr. Hooper's pages we follow one continuous rush of conflict from Seringapatam to Waterloo, and read in many a skilfully told narrative the story of a great soldier and captain. Discipline was the basis on which his success rested, from the beginning of his life of command in Ireland in 1793, when in a few months his regiment "was officially declared to be the best-drilled and most efficient within the limits of the Irish command." of the Irish command." But Wellington was not only an admirable drill-master and provostmarshal; he was a great soldier and a masterly general. If Assaye and Talavera beyond all question prove him a master of tactics, equally does his whole series of campaigns in the Spanish peninsula prove him a great strategist. Mr. Hooper has well shown all these characteristics which made the Duke England's greatest commander. But he has also most exquisitely revealed the warm-hearted man of feeling beneath the battle-tried man of action. There is

perhaps in all biography no more admirable revelation of personal character than is given in these pages.

J. J. HALSEY.