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but not less genuine, desire that America shall be freed from the tyranny of a corrupt and corrupting monopoly. If, however, we may do so without offence, we should like to address a word of warning to the American public, and to ask them not to be misled by false or hasty or ignorant accounts of English public opinion. The American people are just now most naturally in a state of anger and excitement, and when people are angry and excited they may be easily misled. Now it is obviously the interest of those who are implicated in the Trust scandals, or who are afraid that future revelations may damage Trusts and monopolies which are at present untouched, to do all they can to turn public attention away from themselves. Every effort will, we may be sure, be made by the astute and not over-scrupulous men who are in danger from public opinion to divert attention from themselves by raising the cry of the hostility of the British people. That, we would ask our American friends to remember, is The Spectator.

altogether a sham outcry and a sham issue. The British people are essentially friendly to America and to all that is best in America, and even though they may sometimes express themselves bluntly, clumsily, and injudiciously, what they are condemning is not the American people, but that small minority of persons who have done so cruel a wrong to the American people. Let the Americans, when they hear charges as vague as they are inflammatory brought against the people of this country of hating America, answer that they are not going to be deflected from punishing men of their own household whom they know to be doing wrong by the interested cry that somebody on the other side of the street is making ugly faces. The wise man when he has got a malefactor by the scruff of his neck does not relax his hold because the malefactor shouts out: "Don't hit me, Sir. The man you ought to hit is that wicked old cousin of yours opposite. I swear I heard him chuckling over your troubles!"

RICHARD SEDDON: A PERSONAL STUDY.

Thirty years ago the little colony of New Zealand showed few signs of becoming the democratic laboratory of the Empire. Indeed, it passed as conservative amongst colonies. The Australia of those days was defined as Democracy tempered by Banks. But in New Zealand demos was repressed by something more than the overshadowing influence of financial institutions. island had attracted in the early days of the Colony an unusual proportion of educated members of the English middle and upper-middle classes. Endowed, some of them, with much ability, these men dominated the young community, filling the professions and occupying much of the land. With

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them were allied self-made colonists, hard-headed nouveaux riches, whose industrial and social ideals were summed up in the terse sentence, "the devil take the hindmost!" When in 1877 Sir George Grey rallied a Radical party round him, and for a moment snatched office from the champions of property, an outburst of excitement which was a curious mixture of amazement and contempt shook the small New Zealand communities from south to north. All Grey's eloquence and courage could not save him from defeat, defeat to which his own following added humiliation. They met and deposed him. Amongst the few who stood faithful to the fallen chieftain in the crisis was a

young "miner's agent" just returned to Parliament by a goldfield district. He was noteworthy for a huge chest-girth and an equal measure of self-assertion; for a rush of words; for a plentiful ignorance of political theories, and for a knowledge of parliamentary procedure quite striking in a novice. His head made one think of steam-hammers and tomahawks and other things forceful and aggressive. And the pallor of his face was lit up by two alert blue eyes and by a peculiarly pleasant-nay, a sweet-smile playing round a wellshaped mouth. Richard Seddon had, moreover, an instinctive grasp of tactics and an utter disregard of hard knocks. Of these latter he had, in his early days, to take more than he gave, for the triumphant respectability of the Colony, flushed with victory over Grey, was not inclined to be forbearing. looked upon Richard Seddon as a grotesque apparition in a Legislature whose friends fondly regarded it as still perhaps the most orderly and dignified in the British Colonies. He became Respectability's favorite butt and bête noire. When he was obstructive, as he very often was, he would be pelted with threats, imprecations, entreaties and sarcasm, of none of which he took the faintest notice. Making many mistakes, he went doggedly on, and in the scuffles of the years that followed Grey's eclipse, it began to be understood that his athletic follower, Richard Seddon, was a man who could not be disregarded.

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Naturally enough, New Zealand bas in sixty-five years produced very few names of Imperial distinction. Gibbon Wakefield and Bishop Selwyn can scarcely be classed as New Zealanders. Grey and Seddon can. They both had come to man's estate before setting foot in the far-off Colony. Even so, they are the only two public names on the Colony's roll which are widely known in the outside world. Externally and

in tone and methods no two men could be more unlike than the cultivated exViceroy who founded the New Zealand democratic party and the rough Lancashire lad who captained it when it reached the pinnacle of its success. Yet there was something alike in their destinies. Grey, who by birth and temperament seemed made to be an English official of the aristocratic type, ended as a colonial tribune of the people. Seddon, whom fate seemed to have qualified to be a labor-anarchist, will best be remembered outside New Zealand as an outspoken advocate of Imperialism. And the two men, again, had this in common: that they sincerely sympathized with the lot of the masses, and that in the battles of politics they did not know what fear was. Great, however, would be the injustice of suggesting that Mr. Seddon's only remarkable qualities were a rude indifference to blows and the sort of burly strength that shoulders competitors out of the way. Strong he was, or he could not have overcome the intense prejudices he had to encounter. Burly he was, or he could not have trampled on opponent after opponent during twenty-seven years passed on the confused battlefields of colonial politics. But even the strength of a giant, and the disposition to use it as a giant, would not have availed him had he not been gifted with a more than common share of mental acuteness and practical sagacity which Britons choose to call commonsense. His industry, moreover, though in part wasted over ignoble details, was very great, and his concentration almost præter-human. He lived for politics as New York millionaires live for finance. He had no social ambitions, no recreations, power of enjoying idleness. From his father, a schoolmaster, he had a common school education. But he cared little for books. Hard experience constituted his library, and the struggle for

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to associate statesmanship with a classical training and an Oxford accent that they are apt to forget that the world has often produced men of vast organizing and administrative power who never read a book, and some who could not write their names. At any rate, Mr. Seddon did not despise education. He was, throughout his public life, a sympathetic supporter of the New Zealand National School system, and it has been pointed out that in the last few years of his life, when already overburdened with work, he snatched time to subsidize and liberalize the secondary schools of his Colony. Of course he paid for his comparative lack of education and the coarse surroundings of his pioneer days. He never appeared able to estimate the precise value of comparatives and superlatives; to the last he seemed to imagine that strong language was the only language befitting a strong man. His megaphonic exhortations to the political parties in this country occasionally lent themselves to ridicule. But there was at least no mistaking his views; and the patriotism, which took the shape of sending ten contingents of mounted riflemen to fight for the mother-country in South Africa, had a right, if it chose, to express itself loudly. Looking round us we can see in high places an abundance of cultured people; of refined pedantry; of timidity at critical moments; of perverse skill in criticising constructive work and throwing cold water upon enthusiasm. There is much to be said for the occasional intrusion into public life of the bulky, strenuous man, whose intentions are clear if their expression be rugged, and for whom patriotism and the prosperity and happiness of his people are good enough as working ideals. After all a public man is a man of action; he must be judged not

by what he says nearly as much as by what he does. It is by his acts that we must measure Mr. Seddon, and thus measured it will be hard to contend that he does not emerge triumphant from the test. It is all very well to say that New Zealand's experimental legislation-the work of a group of men of whom he alone had the stuff in him to achieve celebrity-has yet to stand the test of time. That is a commonplace concerning institutions and achievements of our own day. What can be claimed for Mr. Seddon is that he took the highest political office in an hour when his adopted country was depressed to the verge of despair, and that he died leaving it prosperous beyond precedent. In 1893 the socialistic policy of the Ballance Cabinet had indeed gained enthusiastic support, but it was only half passed and not half digested by the country. Under Seddon it was passed almost in its entirety, was amplified and given free play. Yet never were the limits of safety transgressed, never was social order disturbed, never was intolerable wrong done. Thirteen years of work may not be a final test, but to show that strange and daring experiments can be made to work, and work safely for a number of years, is in itself a very great achievement. Even should failure come, it will always be open to Mr. Seddon's friends to claim that failure did not come in his time. And, on the personal side, they may claim what is rare indeed, that as a political captain he was never beaten, and died unconquered. For, in a colony where Ministries had been brief and sometimes absurdly impotent and ephemeral, he not only held power for thirteen years, but when he died had well-nigh annihilated opposition. He survived or outwitted equals, knocked over smaller antagonists, crushed intrigue within his party, routed open opposition. He did this because he not only gained

but, to the last, retained a personal popularity that amounted to a national affection. It was not uncritical; it was half-humorous and by no means blind to his foibles. But, expressed as it was

The Outlook.

in the household words "King Dick," it brought him in an allegiance that never wavered and only strengthened continuously to the end.

Ersul.

HARDYANA.*

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of... teems with landscapes which, by a mere accident of iteration, might have been numbered among the scenic celebrities of the day."

So wrote Mr. Hardy in his preface to Vol. VII. of the Wessex Novels, dated August, 1895. If the country to which he referred still enjoys any of the advantages or disadvantages of scenic obscurity, it is not for any lack of "iteration" since the day when these words were written. Indeed, the process of advertisement had already at that time made some way. Mr. Hardy was already at the head of the front rank of contemporary novelists. Books about his books-or, at least, the first of such, by a writer of some distinction -had already made their appearance. And it is only in the nature of things that the fame of the country about which he writes should have grown commensurately with the popularity of his novels. A map published at the end of each volume of his collected works, enabling his readers without difficulty to identify the scenes of his fiction with their originals, no doubt

"Wessex ": painted by Walter Tyndale: described by Clive Holland. London: A. C. Black. 1906. 20s. net. "Three Dorset Captains

contributed to this result. Since then the "Hardy country" has been "written up" in all manner of publications of the daily, weekly, and periodical order, illustrated and otherwise. The highways and byways of Wessex have been carried on the wings of the post to the four corners of the British Isles and to the Anglo-Saxon reading public overseas in innumerable picture-postcards, And the book now under review, by Walter Tyndale and Clive Holland, is only a further addition to the literature of the subject that has already appeared in book-form.

Some of us may regret these consequences of Mr. Hardy's work. It may be that birth or other chance of association has assigned to us for our own particular corner of the earth some one of the scenic lions of the land, so that we know something of the price that is paid for notoriety. So far as our concern is on behalf of the country itself and its natives, it is, no doubt, misplaced. Wessex has been a mark for the invader ever since it can remember, and an invasion of tourists bringing with them money to the pocket of its inhabitants and variety, amenity and mild sensation to the social side of its life, may be reckoned an agreeable substitute for the inroads of Romans, English, Danes, and Normans, not to mention Monmouths and the more dreadful sequel to a Monmouth rising. It is not the professional dweller upon the

at Trafalgar." By A. M. Broadley and E. C. Bartelot M. P. London: John Murray. 1906. 15s, net.

land who objects to tourists and publicity. His sound stomach is proof against the vulgarity which they involve. It is the sentimental amateur. rooted to the soil only by the delicate feelers of a more or less artificial association, who feels the breath of intrusion like a blight and is sickened by the easy familiarity with which the literary caterer retails the scenic intimacies of a country side.

The individuals of this class who happen to be connected with any particular corner of the country are of course not numerous, and certainly need not be considered, but there are many who sympathize with their conservatism. Few of us have not somewhere at the root of our nature some exclusive propensity which causes us to take pleasure in the existence of things that are enjoyed by the few, to rejoice in the unexploited. We like to think that there are still troutstreams accessible to the public but unvisited by the readers of the Field in general; restaurants in shy streets where the prices have not yet been spoiled by the rich, nor the quality of the wines and cookery by the many; old china still on the shelves of dressers not yet transferred from the farmhouse to the furniture shop or museum; Old English songs not yet set to accompaniments by Mr. Fuller Maitland; Old English ale not yet tasted and described by the professional Borrovian, etc., etc. Even if we are not fortunate enough to possess the secret of any of these good things, a sort of vicarious selfishness makes us enjoy the thought that they exist in privacy. And so we like to contemplate those portions of the map of our country which may still be marked with the gray shading that indicates scenic obscurity, and are conscious of a certain regret whenever a new area is picked out in purple by the pen of some popular author.

Little exception need be taken, on any of the grounds that have been mentioned, to the book under review. Mr. Tyndale's illustrations may be taken to be the raison d'être of the work, seventy-five sketches of town and country, reproduced by the three-color process, very bright and pretty, pleasing to the eye, and suggestive to the imagination. The letterpress by Mr. Holland is full of information. R. L. Stevenson says that no human being ever spoke of scenery for more than two minutes, and concludes that we hear too much of it in literature. The inference is doubtful, but the warning is, perhaps, a useful one, and Mr. Holland is evidently alive to the danger in question. His book contains a chapter on "The Four Seasons of Wessex," which might probably have been omitted for the above reason, but, except for this chapter, and one entitled "A Famous Fair and Some Wessex Types," he has refrained from writing of the "creative" order. The last chapter gives a very comprehensive index to the scenes of Mr. Hardy's novels, connecting them with their originals, and is illustrated by the map at the end of the book. Otherwise the book consists of a perfectly straightforward historical and descriptive account of the principal towns of Wessex.

Three Dorset Captains at Trafalgar is a book which may be alluded to not inappropriately under this head, inasmuch as these naval heroes, and the times with which they are associated figure no less prominently in the MidWessex of Mr. Hardy's creation than in the actual annals of the county of Dorset. The part played at Trafalgar by Captains Hardy, Bullen, and Digby was celebrated at Dorchester last year by a Nelson and Trafalgar exhibition, at which these three names shared the honors with the greater name which is claimed by the Eastern Counties. The book, besides being the first life of Cap

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