lecturer. His wit, too, seemed occasionally double-edged. The truth is that he represented very exactly one of the two great Scottish traditions. Sir Walter Scott was always to him the first of Scotsmen, and something of Sir Walter's mantle descended to his fellow-Borderer. He had much of Scott's sanity and kindliness, as he had The Spectator.

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much of his passion for old ways. has caught for us the grace of those pastoral glens "where Ettrick and where Teviot flow," and of his poetry that, at any rate, must endure. loved the Borders, and he wrote of them worthily--that is the epitaph which he would have most desired.

He

One of the things which remind me of the passing of my youth is that I can approach the Zoo without a sense of breathless excitement, a suspense that is almost intolerable, and can cover the last hundred yards before reaching the entrance gates without running. The mere sight of a turnstile no longer thrills me, since I have learnt to associate it with other things besides that magic wild world in which are collected the denizens of all the forests and jungles and deserts of a child's imagination. But there is one thing in which age has not taught me wisdom, and that is my method of procedure when I do arrive at the Zoo. Not for me is the admirable itinerary recommended in the guide-book. According to that work, the visitor, "starting from the Main Entrance, by following the path to the right, will reach

I. THE WESTERN AVIARY." But he doesn't. He goes straight on, ignoring the attractions of the parrots and bath-chair men; and unmoved by the alluring sight of the pelicans down a little alley to the left, takes a bee-line down the Terrace Walk, turns to the right, and makes for the imposing structure with the thrilling title of the "Lion House." That at least is my incorrigible habit. Not for me the austere joys of the Northern Pheasantry, the Western Goose Paddocks, or the

Wild Asses' House; I am not even sure that I have ever looked on any of these with seeing eyes; I make straight for the lions. There I walk up and down looking at them, wishing they would look at me, which they never do; considering which I should like to stroke, and regretting the regulations which prevent one from making, even at one's own risk, experiments in friendship. And having gazed for some time with an undiminished sense of admiration and respect, but with a feeling that there is somehow some expected thrill missing, I then betake myself with unerring steps under the dank tunnel, which once was so mysterious when one thought that the canal went over it and became so disappointing when one realized that it was only the Outer Circle road, to the Elephant House. This is always the second station of my pilgrimage; and in one respect at least my ancient wonder does not fail, for elephants are always bigger than I believed they were. And after more gazing, during which I feel even stupider than I did in the Lion House (for there is no comment to be made on elephants), I go on and take a look at the hippopotamus, as being the next biggest thing available. By that time I have developed an appetite for polar bears, and so retrace my steps over what seems a very long walk indeed; for the polar bears are always farther

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away than one thinks they are. sight of them in their open-air enclosure proves always refreshing, and their cool splashings and wallowings in the water, and lazy ingenious sports with a bit of stick or a ball, prove a corrective to the somewhat stuffy solemnities of the Elephant House. After that I make for the Monkey House, and there generally become aware of the first signs of what I can best describe as Zoo Headache-an ailment quite different from Academy headache, or pier headache, or theatre headache-which has marked and distinguishing symptoms of its own. The chief of these are tightness across the forehead, coupled with an abeyance of the desire to smoke; disinclination for the sight of food in any form whatsoever, but especially in the shape of dry fragments of buns; hallucinations taking the form that the world is made of concrete; and a horror of parrots. If by any chance on leaving the Monkey House one should catch sight of the Deer Paddocks-those areas of trampled mud, where an untidy cow-like creature is gazing vacantly over the smoky distances across Regent's Park -the symptoms are aggravated by profound depression, and rapidly enter upon their final stage, which is marked by a craving for taxi-cabs, followed by collapse.

That is one way of going to the Zoo, and it is the wrong way for grown-up people who have outlived their early wonder of such things, and lack that sustaining excitement as to what fearful thing may be in the next cage, which keeps smaller people going through a whole day of gazing and exclaiming. Truly one cannot see anything, anywhere, merely with one's eyes. One must bring with one a penetrating and informing curiosity that will harness the processes of the mind to the sense of vision.

On my last visit to the Zoo I realized how

even in that wonderful place, if one is in the wrong mood oneself and the animals happen to be tired or sleepy, one may spend hours without making a single discovery or thinking a single new thought. It was the day after a great holiday; the gardeners were at work on the lawns, sweeping up veritable mountains of paper, orange peel, and banana skins; the animals themselves were worn out, suffering not only from a surfeit of dainties with which they are all too familiar, but also from malaise consequent on a day of nervous strain induced by the staring of thousands of eyes, and the weary business of receiving food only to find that it was of the wrong kind.

Buns in front of the lions' cage, nuts in front of the elephants, and sweets scattered at the shrine of the hyæna, told a sad tale. I have seldom seen a more vivid expression of combined disgust and hatred than that on the countenance of a very over-nightish monkey to whom I offered a nut; the only movement made in response to the offering was a movement of the eyes and brows; but it was eloquent. I tried to correct the impression by offering a banana. This the creature took languidly, peeled it a little in a fumbling sort of way, looked at it for a long time, bit a little off the end, spat it out, and then appeared to sponge his forehead with the rest. After that I made no more offerings, except to the elephant. I had just bought a large paper bag full of scraps, and feeling unequal to the extremely unpopular distribution of very dry bread in small pieces, I gave the whole contents of the bag at once to the elephant-almost half a loaf. He took it without a wink, and stretched out his trunk again. I then gave him the empty paper bag, which he took and swallowed with exactly the same expression, again holding out his trunk. After that I went away.

No, this is not the way to see the Zoo. One goes there in search of something which no Zoo containsnamely, one's own childish memories and wonders. I shall go again in a few days and try a better plannamely, to attempt some personal acquaintance with individual beasts, and give some account of the progress of it. I made a beginning the other day in the large Ape House-that terrifying place where, screened off from the public by sheets of plate glass, the anthropoid apes, who are so awfully like ourselves, live out their days in an ecstasy of boredom and mental demoralization. I was taken round to the back, so that I could see them at close quarters. One, of the build of a The Saturday Review.

navvy, with a face like a cocoanut and a slight resemblance to the late Mr. Spurgeon, was gazing earnestly at me through the wire, and seemed almost to be trying to speak to me. "Look out!" said the keeper, pulling me aside, "he is going to aim at you; he will get you in a minute if you don't look out; if he can't reach you with his hand he'll spit at you."

What an alternative! The creature, bored to death and seeing a stranger, desired to communicate with him in some way; and if he could not reach him with his hand, he could at least spit upon him. Being unequal to conversation of this kind, I decided to begin my researches elsewhere.

Filson Young.

Most professional authors do not worry about their style, but "good style," and how to acquire it is a topic much discussed among readers, amateur writers and beginners. The professional tends to be contemptuous of all who set out deliberately to acquire "a style," and entirely sceptical about the recommended methods of achieving the art of good writing. Mr. Bernard Shaw, for instance, has called "style" a pleasant parlor game. As he writes a very good style himself, his opinion is discouraging. Samuel Butler, who also writes with admirable dexterity and directness, is still more positive that the less we think about style the better. "I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable. Plato's having had seventy shies at one sentence is quite enough to explain to me why I dislike him. A man may and ought to take a great deal of pains to write clearly, tersely and euphemistically: he will write

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many a sentence three or four times over to do much more than this is worse than not rewriting at all; he will be at great pains to see he does not repeat himself, to arrange his matter in the way that shall best enable the reader to master it, to cut out superfluous words, and even more to eschew irrelevant matter; but in each case he will be thinking not of his own style but of his reader's convenience." puts it on record in his notebook that he never took the smallest pains with his own style, and that he does not care to know whether it is a style at all or whether it is not, as he hopes, “just common, simple straightforwardness." But he adds: "I have taken all the pains that I had patience to endure in the improvement of my handwriting and I have also taken great pains, with what success I know not, to correct impatience, irritability and other like faults in my own character-and this not because I care two straws about my own character,

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but because I find the correction of such faults as I have been able to correct makes life easier and saves one from getting into scrapes, and attaches nice people to one more readily. But I suppose this is really attending to style after all."

Both these authors, then, agree that the only important qualification for becoming a good writer is to have something to say and to express it as directly as possible; they think it waste of time to spend an hour trying to turn a sentence more cunningly or to hesitate forty times between synonyms in order to secure a subtler rhythm, like De Quincy. But both are pre-eminently authors with plenty to say; both have really little akin to the writer who feels tempted to play the parlor game of style. Such a one is not usually conscious of possessing an original point of view; he is aware, perhaps, of an original sensibility, or at any rate of an acute sensibility, in himself, original or not, and he hopes by studying the methods by which other writers have expressed themselves to find a means of conveying what he has felt. The practical ques

tion for him is whether he can learn anything from others or not. Newman and Stevenson both tell him that direct imitation of others was of great help to them; in fact, that they took pains to acquire "a style" as a preliminary measure to writing.

Now writing is a craft, and the first requisite is to have a good and flexible syntax. The great difference between two writers of more or less equal imaginative or intellectual powers, one of whom is beginning to write while the other has had a good deal of practice, is that the latter will find his sentences land on their feet like cats as soon as he throws them out. It is possible to acquire this facility, and certainly imitation of writers with an agreeable rhythm, in whose hands lan

guage is a pliable instrument, is a means to achieving it. But unfortunately rhythm is a personal property; it expresses the mood of the writer almost as clearly as his choice of words, and it is fatal to acquire the manner of another man which is unsuited to the aspect in which things actually appear to ourselves. Imitation is therefore a snare unless we are careful to choose for imitation an author who sees more or less eye to eye with us-and then there is a danger of becoming a mere echo.

Still, there is no great harm in beginning as an echo. However little claim a man has to consider himself "original," in the general sense of the term, if he watches himself he will find in his own feelings, sooner or later, genuine points of divergence which no one has expressed. The common mistake is to think qualities which we admire in the writings of others can be acquired because we admire them so much. In life experience soon teaches people they cannot appropriate other people's virtues; but because writing is a craft which can be learnt, they still go on hoping that they can attain this man's naïve manner or that man's brevity or dignity. The important thing is to find out as soon as possible which are the qualities we possess, potentially at any rate, and then to notice how other writers have used the same to good purpose; to study these writers and imitate them will give us courage and inclination to employ our own proper faculties. Courage is usually a quality which the beginner lacks, courage not in opinions but in expression. Everybody who writes or reads feels in their bones how true it is that the style is the man, and that "Le style est comme le bonheur; il vient de la douceur de l'âme," and consequently their first impulse is to resemble, if possible, some one already admired; for, with a few exceptions, every

one writes for sympathy, admiration, or money. It takes more courage to make even a new kind of joke in print than the author is ever given credit for. The conclusion of these remarks is obvious: let us imitate by all means, it is the best way of acquiring a flexible syntax and confidence, but not necessarily the best models or those we adThe Eye-Witness.

mire most, only those whose tempers and gifts resemble ours, for only from them is there anything practical to be learnt. Any style is good which genuinely transmits a state of mind enviable by the reader; further improvement can only come from attending to style in Butler's sense and improving those states of mind.

Desmond MacCarthy.

to forget dull care in endless joy; we endeavor to make ourselves believe that we are supreme and beyond challenge as a world power by concealing the inner rottenness and decay under a wondrous panoply of color and music. Such signs have been visible before the fall of almost every world empire in the past. As each declined in civic virtue and military prowess, so also did the splendor of the outward display grow. Not that we mean to imply for a moment that the British Empire is on the verge of some great cataclysm, or that we are in immediate danger of being dragged into a struggle from which we shall emerge second best. We are still too strong on the sea for that. Rather do we refer to the extreme levity with which the gravest issues are regarded at the present day. Politics have sunk to the

lowest ebb they have ever reached in this country. The greatest questions are settled almost without discussion. A tremendous storm arises round them for a few short weeks, and then the public and the actors in the drama grow weary and seek a fresh rôle, which can only satisfy, for an equally short period, this modern craze for the sensational.

During the last three years a perfect mania for fancy-dress balls on a grand and hitherto unattempted scale has sprung up in the social world. All classes seem to derive equal amusement and pleasure from them: politicians, soldiers, governors of our dominions beyond the sea, those who live exclusively for pleasure, actors, actresses, the middle classes, and even the humble man in the street who takes up his position at the door to watch the gaily be-robed throng pass in to a night of wild intoxicating joy. The social world seems to have grown weary of the old-time amusements of its ancestors. The small private dance, composed of just the cream of society, from which all others were rigorously excluded, seems almost to have passed away. The beautiful waltzes of a few years ago no longer satisfy the younger generation; they must have Turkey Trots, Bunny Hugs, and Grizzly Bear dances, which would make our grandfathers and grandmothers turn in their