The people have always loved to call a spade a spade. In the expression of their loathing and abhorrence of cruelty this has particularly been the case. Shelley, if we remember rightly, speaks of a poet as "a nerve along which creep the else unfelt oppressions of the world."

We question the justice of this. The plain, common man, the man in the street, feels the oppressions of the world intensely. The poets interpret and express this honest, normal, common feeling of mankind. By the poets we mean the makers of large elemental literature. Some miscreant, let us suppose, commits a loathsome outrage on humanity. David says, "Let indignation vex him even as a thing that is raw;" Dante puts him by name in the lowest circle of the 'Inferno; Dickens describes with gusto his final ignominious exit from the scene. These writers do not mince their words. They reflect and interpret in their grand manner the instinctive feeling of average mankind. "It's pretty beastly," says the plain man, if in a mild mood. Superior persons are unmoved; they weigh their words and talk in tame conventional language; in their aversion from sensationalism and the crude violence of the mob, they become inclined to defend, and to talk of wholesome impulses finding an admittedly irregular expression. But the great poets feel exactly as the plain man does. So David, and Dante, and Dickens are immortal; they live and endure; they will continue to do so when the chatterings of centuries of the solemn triflers are sunk in an echoless oblivion. After two thousand years Broad Church ecclesiastics find themselves, nolens volens, repeating David's curses; after six centuries bloodless professors are la

boriously commentating every syllable of Dante's scorn. In their deathless words the conscience of humanity finds its constant expression. Mr. Chesterton, in his recent book on Dickens, says that while all sorts of people were crying "Investigate," "Examine," "Report," Dickens cried out "Stop!"

In one way, the plain man also is a poet; he is the maker, the finder of the popular proverbs and phrases, which put the whole of Dante, the whole of Dickens, in half-a-dozen stinging, biting words. The people revenge themselves on the persecutor by some epithet which will stick to him in sæcula sæculorum. They called Mary Tudor "Bloody Mary," and through all re-readings of history, through all vicissitudes of theological opinion, while England is England, "Bloody Mary" will her Majesty remain. Many old English phrases have always seemed to us to express this abhorrence of cruelty in a very fe licitous manner. When Bunyan makes Mr. Cruelty say of Christian, “hanging's too good for him," he seems to us to strike a false note. The phrase rightly belongs, not to the cruel man, but to the righteous hater of cruelty. All such sayings as "he ought to be tarred and feathered," express the plain man's abhorrence of any kind of serious malefactor; but as a matter of fact, they are generally reserved for such creatures as the torturers of children. "I wouldn't touch him with a pair of tongs," "I wouldn't be seen in a fortyacre field with him," are other expressions of popular abhorrence. This abhorrence is not confined to cruelty, but it is of cruelty that it is pre-eminently felt. The official moralists have hardly considered cruelty to be a sin at all. To the people it is the sin of sins. The persons experienced in education,

the professional philanthropists, the disinterested toilers in the great cause of juvenile reform, the founders of Orders of the Good Shepherd, may not feel this abhorrence; they have, no doubt, other and higher aims before their eyes, from which they are not distracted by a mere carnal tenderness for the sufferings of sinful flesh; but the poet and the humanist, and the plain man always feel it. "I would willingly spit on his statue," wrote Charles Lamb, of John Howard, the philanthropist, one of the "sprouts of whose brain" was "the fancy of dungeons for children." The plain man has the same feeling about an eminent schoolmaster, of whom Erasmus tells us that he would take a little boy just confided to his care by a tender and anxious mother, and having hastily arranged some pretext, would lash him till he almost fainted, saying, "not that he altogether deserves it, but it serves to humble him." It is supposed that Colet is the "eminent schoolmaster" to whom Erasmus refers. Charles Lamb and the first passing chimneysweep would speak of Colet in much the same terms. There is, indeed, at all times a refreshing similarity between the language of the great poets and of the common people. "I ain't agoin' to waste my breath on the likes of her," said Mrs. Perkins. "Non ragionam di lor" says Dante. Both alike are worlds away from the wearisome and unreal verbiage which more conventional and measured classes use, at least in their deliberate moments.

Many phrases in use everywhere admirably express the unvarying popular belief in the justice of the ordering of the world, the inadequacy of the refuge of lies, the final impossibility of gagging and stifling the truth. Such are "it'll come home to him," and "murder will out." The people have no more cherished conviction than that a bully is always a coward. It would

possibly be more true to say that a bully is not so much a coward as a brave man, valiant with that truest valor of which discretion is the better part. There is one popular phrase which has always seemed to us to pack whole volumes into its half-dozen words "He's shaking in his shoes." This is said of the panic terror of the yet unpunished malefactor, seeking to hush up his crime, to distract attention from the rumor of it. Here we have "The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth" of David, the "Conscience, that noiseless whip with unseen thongs," of Juvenal, the "Conscience doth make cowards of us all," of Shakespeare. Such a man shudders at shadows,

starts at noises.

Shadows to-night

Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard

Than could the substance of ten thousand soldiers

is a superb expression in the great manner of this cowed and abject fear. Many phrases drawn from the observation of animals delightfully express the popular delight in the popular discomfiture and downfall of a bully. Such similes are, for example, "he's got his tail between his legs," "he's very crestfallen," "his comb's cut," "he's drawn in his horns." The taunting French and Italian proverbs warning the man with the wax head not to go into the sun of publicity, the man with the straw tail to beware of its catching fire, have an even more vivid version in the Yankee saying about "the man with tallow legs going down into hell." In such sayings as, "give him rope enough and he'll hang himself." one feels that the wish is father to the thought. The hope is that the spider of the morning is already swiftly descending above the culprit's head, weaving her rope as she goes.

All this popular vindictiveness seems to us essentially righteous. It is re

served for such things as "make a goblin of the sun." It is the reverse of the feeling of the homely sweetness of the everyday familiar things which the miscreant is felt to have outraged. How delightful are such phrases as "right as rain!" The summer rain falls on the thirsty earth, on turnip fields in flower, on chestnut trees, on the white, dusty road with passing mares and foals, and carts of butcher and chimney-sweep. How good it all is! "Right as ninepence" again expresses all the natural human delight in buying and selling, in chaffering in the open air, in all the neighborliness of market day. This is far from the Inferno, this good world we know. "AS fit as a fiddle" again means as right and good as that music to which the dancers go on village greens on sunburnt summer evenings. "To sell like hot cakes" is very pleasant. It calls up the white-capped pastry cooks with their trays of gauffrettes and madeleines, moving among the Sunday throng of the Luxembourg Gardens. Another variation of this is "to sell like ripe cherries." All sorts of delightful fancies are evoked by this phrase, the old London street-cry "Cherry ripe," the first baskets of the fresh delicious The Nation.

fruit in their green leaves, the bunch of juicy cherries given one day by a kind-eyed French woman to a thirsty traveller in a crowded train, "pour rafraîchir la bouche." One popular saying has always seemed to us beautiful beyond compare, fit to describe the satisfaction of the utmost love and yearning-"a sight for sore eyes." That is the face that you so longed to see, coming in upon you-suddenly in the lonely evening. It is the Child brought into the Temple, whom at last the halfblinded watchers saw.

With this feeling of goodness and sweetness of human life, and of anger against those who torture and darken it, there goes always in true popular phraseology the sense of trust in a large over-ruling purpose. This apparently takes the form of an intense fatalism. It is expressed in the saying that "if you're born to be hanged you'll never be drowned." This is the most intimate conviction of the people everywhere. It is their quaint renderings of the thought that we are in the hold of guiding hands, and of the exhortation to take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow will take thought for the things of itself, by which they so largely live.

Nothing that concerns the mechanical life of our time has gone through such a rapid evolution as the motorcar. It seems but yesterday that we were reading of, or taking part in, hazardous journeys of ten miles by road, heavily equipped with repairing apparatus and provisioned for twentyfour hours. It seems but yesterday that public opinion all over the country was gradually waking up, holding up its hands in wonder, and saying, "The motor-car has come to stay." And

all the while the motor-car has been not staying, but pursuing its inevitable way, imposing itself upon the world in ways both fortunate and unfortunate. It began by being a scientific experiment, went on to become the instrument of the adventurous, then became the toy of the rich, then the ambition of the poor, and finally the servant of everyone. Ten years ago it was a fantastic luxury, and to-day it is a dire necessity. From being the plaything of society it has come to domi

nate society. It is now our tyrant, so that at last we have turned in revolt against it, and begun to protest against its arrogant ways. We have often wondered how long the most highly civilized community in the world would endure the frightful din with which the motor has invaded parts of London that but lately were sacred to peace and dignity; but evidently the limit of endurance has been reached. If one quarter of the changes of street traffic that have happened in the last ten years had come upon London suddenly, they would not have been tolerated; but the changes have been so gradual, the nuisances have been so wonderfully mingled with benefits, and the whole system of traffic so greatly accelerated, that the increase in noise passed almost unnoticed. Now, however, public opinion has at last realized that we are in danger of the very worst stage of the Americanization of London-the stage of noise.

Compared with other great capitals, London has always been a quiet city; even in its busiest thoroughfares, such as Piccadilly or the Strand or London Bridge, the note has always been a deep note and the sound a steady and pervading sound, like the sound of a river tide, and the chief element in it used to be the beat of innumerable horses' feet. But that is quite changed. Instead of the crepitation of thousands of tapping hoofs on the pavement we have the definite mechanical buzz of the motor for ground tone, rapidly waxing and waning as vehicle approaches and passes. But this is only ground tone; above it rise all the intermittent and harsh mechanical sounds associated with the changing of gears, and at the top of the scale the sounds of the horns and hooters which are now so justly made the cause of complaint. The prophet Nahum had a very curious premonition of the motor-car when he wrote, "The chariots

If

shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings"; he did not add that they would roar like the thunder and trumpet like the beasts of the forest. But that is exactly what they do. Sober, Georgian Mayfair has lost its ancient peace, and there are residential streets in the heart of the West End which sometimes would rival Chicago for noise. The noises themselves we all agree are quite dreadful-loud grunts or sudden hoots, yells, squeaks, other sounds that one can only imagine to be like the deathrattle of a mastodon, and still others that frankly suggest the slaughterhouse. Fortunately no one defends the nature of these noises, but many people still think them to be necessary. they are necessary, they can be regulated. A few years ago a serious attempt was made to keep down the noises made by itinerant musicians and vendors in the streets; but people do not realize that the existing state of affairs is equivalent to the licensing of thousands upon thousands of itinerant musicians, every one equipped with an instrument of his own choice and with formidable locomotive powers. In a quiet street in Mayfair the other evening some of these noises, audible from a chair in the quietest part of the house, were counted; and between ten minutes to eight and five minutes to eight there were heard three hundred and thirty-three blasts or notes of horns or various other mechanical devices of motor-cars-that is to say, an average of sixty-seven per minute. And when we consider that every sudden and unexpected sound is an assault

upon the nervous system, which has to be met by an actual physiological process of resistance, it is easily understood that all this medley of sound is adding to the nervous strain on the community, taking its

toll of energy which we would fain reserve for finer purposes.

It is claimed in defence of the motor-horn nuisance that people would be killed if the drivers of motor-cars did not frighten them by making sudden and hideous noises. If that is

so and it is quite possible then obviously the sooner the conditions which govern the driving of motor-cars in the streets are changed the better. It has always been claimed for the modern motor-car that it is infinitely more under control than a horse-drawn vehicle; that is to say, that it can be stopped sooner and its course diverted more quickly to avoid some obstacle. Yet it was never thought necessary to equip hansoms and carriages with anything more formidable than a little tinkling bell; and the carts of the butcher and the evening newspaperperhaps the most formidable of all horse-drawn vehicles-have never been equipped with any mechanical instrument at all. Such vehicles, if the pedestrian did not hear them or see The Saturday Review.

them, pulled up or got out of his way. It was always understood that this course was preferable to injuring or killing the pedestrian. Now, however, it has come gradually to be assumed that the motor-car, in spite of its having come to stay, must not stay at all; it must always go on. The motorist says, in fact, to the pedestrian, “I am coming; if you do not hear my Gabriel trombone I am afraid I shall run over you." And if by any chance a chauffeur does have to pull up suddenly to avoid committing manslaughter, his face is usually a miracle of indignant expression. To pull up a motor quickly is bad for the tyres and for the machinery; it may cost quite a lot of money. But people have not yet realized that the proper alternative to pulling up suddenly is, not to kill somebody, but to drive slowly, and that rapid travel is a luxury which should be paid for, not in the lives and deaths of pedestrians, but in the tyre and repair bills of the owner.

Under the title, St. Luke's Garden, Albert S, Stewart has gathered a number of brief sketches of scenes and events that have become part of his own experience. That he is an ardent lover of the trees and woods is evident, as he points with the moral of conservation his descriptions of woodland walks and rides. The scenery of West Virginia, little visited by the casual tourist, its mining districts, and its wild and lovely mountain views, furnish the subject matter of one series of pen pictures, while another is grouped about the better known but no less beautiful country along the Hudson River. The author betrays the clergyman in a little tendency to sermon

ize at the end of his chapters, as well as in a whole-souled interest in all sorts and conditions of men. Sherman French & Company.

A story of the far North with its accompanying descriptions of snow drifts, frozen lakes, dog-sledging, and the aurora borealis, strikes with suggestions of refreshing coolness the jaded reader of midsummer fiction. Such a story is The Honor of the Big Snows, by James Oliver Curwood. Upon the background of the life of a Hudson Bay Company's camp, beyond the Arctic Circle, fierce and half-savage, yet warm-hearted and loyal, he embroiders a golden thread of romance in the