interior social economy of this country and the hopeless competition that exists. If America had vacant desks to offer to the sons of our upper and upper-middle class, no doubt these would be sought with eagerness. But even the tolerably influential American or Canadian knows well that, if he had the deepest interest in securing the most humble posts of this kind for half a dozen English lads from Rugby or Haileybury, he would be at his wits' ends to accomplish the task. Nor again could the American by any possibility realise the singular aversion to indoor work and the actual pleasure in physical toil that by a strange law animates such a large proportion of our educated youth. The cry of "What shall we do with our boys?" is, as we have said, as rife as ever among the parents of the upper and middle classes who for years have been bringing into the world far more children than they could reasonably expect to float in their own class in life. Nor is it any good pushing downwards in this country, for there the well-bred seeker for work meets not only an army of small clerks hustling and jostling one another for a living, but in addition to them the inevitable, ubiquitous Teuton. Poor as are the prospects of the gentleman's son without brains, money, or interest, a high stool in such a sphere, even if it could be won, what is it? Fifty pounds a year, the disadvantages without the advantages of a great city, a constant struggle to keep the nap on the coat and the loaf in the cupboard, inferior companions, bad air, bad tobacco and music-halls.

The vicar of Bumbletown Magna has four hundred pounds a year, no private means, and eight children, four boys and four girls. The former must be educated up to a certain point to test their capacities for securing the prizes of life. The elder justifies the test and shows possibilities of exhibitions and fellowships. The second may have a special turn for mechanics, or the vicar may exhaust his interest

in getting him into a bank. For the other two, strong, healthy, wellbrought up lads, there is no visible career whatever. It is not their fault. They are not dull, but, to use a common expression of the bewildered parent, "books are not their line." They are upon the whole as fine young fellows as you wish to come across, simple and manly, with nothing in common with the cover-coated, cigarette-sucking, bar-room-haunting style of youth they might become after a year or two of idleness in this country. They have practically no alternative but emigration. It is easy enough to talk of the hardship of sending gently-nurtured lads to work upon the lands of others without much hope of becoming landowners themselves. Granted, it is a pity; but facts must be faced. In the first place, those who exclaim against it have no alternative to offer, nor is there in such cases any alternative. In the second, the objects of such compassion in most cases would resent it, and would fairly lay claim to as much happiness as falls to the lot of the average clerk in this country. They may often grumble at their lot, it is true, but they will not upon the whole grumble more than the clerks at Messrs. Goldust and Co.'s Bank, who are regarded in the city as among the most fortunate of young men. Heaven forbid that we should idealise the career of the gentleman's son who goes out to America to "work his way", as it is called. At the same time, as it is the only one open to so many there is no harm in glancing at the brighter as well as the drearier side of it. So the vicar's two sons, at the ages say of seventeen and eighteen, emigrate. They have been at one of the many good but inexpensive large schools they have not as yet rubbed shoulders with the young man of the period: the less in fact after this age that they see of their contemporaries, whether at private tutors, public schools, or universities, so much the better fitted will they be

for their future life abroad. Whether they go to Canada or Iowa or Kansas signifies comparatively little, but at such an age they should not of course be sent off to shift for themselves. Some responsible assistance in this matter can easily be secured, and the boys will find themselves in the household of some substantial and respectable but hardworking farmer, and practically members of his family. Here, with the goodman, they will learn the art of ploughing, of swinging an axe, of driving teams, of handling machinery, accomplishments which do not, as some people think, come by nature. It is really of little consequence whether during this period of apprenticeship they simply get their keep for their services, or whether the farmer pays them a trifle, or they pay the farmer. It is sufficient to say that at the end of a not very long period the boys will be qualified to ask and receive the pay of "hired men,' "that is to say their keep and from two to five pounds a month.

common

Lady Peppercorn, the squire's wife at Bumbletown, will shake her head and say, "What a dreadful thing it is, those two nice sons of our poor dear vicar working as labourers." Her ladyship will see in fancy the objects of her compassion emerging from a humble cottage with a shambling gait, their dinners tied up in a red cotton handkerchief, and their employer mounted upon a sleek cob haughtily pointing out to them their allotted tasks. As a matter of fact Dick and Tom, as has been already hinted, would generally resent such compassion. Society in the town. twenty miles away, it is true, divides itself into cliques and classes, but in the genuine farming community every respectable person is on an equality. It is quite as true that Dick and Tom work as hard or harder than agricultural labourers in this country, but then Farmer Cornstalk, who has a farm worth two thousand pounds and twice as much in the bank besides, works equally hard. English people

If

who look upon the cleaning out of pigstyes as a horrible degradation, but riding on a mowing-machine a performance not unworthy of a gentleman, would be regarded by an American farmer as showing signs of softening of the brain. The perfect republicanism of the farming community beyond the Atlantic, which so often irritates the English Gentleman Emigrant of capital who becomes a proprietor, stands in good stead those who have to work for others. The latter at any rate have no material anxieties. They may go within certain limits almost where they choose, and make certain of food and lodging and sufficient wage. If their lot is cast among a class socially lower than that in which they were born, it is proportionately kinder-hearted and less likely to leave them in the lurch in case of unforeseen misfortune. the physical work is hard, there is a large proportion of English youth to whom physical toil is infinitely preferable to mental labour and deprivation from fresh air. Sometimes this is only fancy and a youthful excuse to be rid of books, but often it is perfectly genuine and will stand the test of years. Social sentiment is deeply adverse to such a line of life, but after all what a trifling thing is this when placed upon the scales with bread and butter and an average degree of happiness. If there are more gentlemen, to use an ambiguous phrase, brought into the world than can be maintained in a soft-handed and blackcoated state, demand and supply must assert themselves. For the youth who has no intellectual hankerings and whose chief delight is in his physical powers, one can imagine many a worse fate than that he should be absorbed into that immense and industrious class who till the soil of the American continent. He will be none the worse for his gentle rearing if he have tact and sense. Even if he lose his superficial graces and become almost unrecognisable in the course of years from the ordinary working farmer of the

country of his adoption, what harm is it? Is there any special happiness in this life, or extra chance of it in the next, in possessing certain tricks of manner and speech that indicate neither virtue, industry, honesty, nor even education in its comforting sense? For what do young men of this kind, whose education has been to them simply a bore and its result a hatred of books, lose by such a life, if they are otherwise happy, healthy, and industrious?

After working for many years like this, "What then?" some people may say. The query is natural, and not easily auswered. But we are not talking of men who might have risen to be Queen's Counsel, or Headmasters, or Canons, nor even of those who could have got small posts in banks or offices, though in such cases the "What then?" might with almost equal justice be asked. This discussion applies only to those who have

no alternative but emigration, and no choice but physical labour. The future in such cases it is true holds out nothing definite but a livelihood. If Dick or Tom eventually end in marrying some decent farmer's daughter and secure thereby, according to local custom, a permanent lodgment in the family homestead and a greater or less share in the family acres, the question is happily settled. Such a fate no doubt would be dreadful to Lady Peppercorn's notions and those of many other excellent people who estimate happiness by the rungs in the ladder of social competition. Striking this issue, however, out of our reckoning, a vast and new country holds out opportunities that the industrious, intelligent, and experienced young man sooner or later will be able to take hold of, and so raise himself into something more materially prosperous than a "hired man."

THE "Autobiography" of Sir Douglas Forsyth contains a dispiriting record of a lost opportunity. He describes the fruitless attempt made in Lord Mayo's time to obtain the demarcation of a boundary line which should be the recognized limit to Russian advance in the direction of India, and should oppose a barrier to encroachment before it became a peril and a menace. Some twenty years ago, shortly after the Ameer Shere Ali met Lord Mayo in durbar at Umballa, Sir Douglas (then Mr.) Forsyth, at that time Commissioner of an important division in the Punjaub, was authorized by the Viceroy to proceed to Europe with the object of bringing about, if possible, a friendly understanding in regard to the relations of England and Russia respectively, with the Usbeg, Barakzai, and Kajar rulers, whose dominions lay between the frontiers of the two Powers in Asia. At this date, the Akhal Tekke Turcomans and the Turcomans of Merv,

"Toorkmuns of the south,

The Tukas, and the lances of Salore," were as yet unconquered. The Russian outposts were all to the northward of a wide belt of desert stretching from the head-waters of the Oxus to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Afghanistan was united under an Ameer who only needed moderate encouragement to continue our firm ally. It might have proved impossible to extract from our rivals in any binding form a full and complete repudiation of designs on Merv and the regions bordering on northern Persia; but we might unquestionably have so drawn the frontier of Afghanistan as to secure to Shere Ali and his successors all the territory lately ceded to Russia, as well as the states on the upper Oxus, the ownership of which is still disputed.

But as Sir Douglas Forsyth writes: "The Duke of Argyll was Secretary of State for India, and threw cold water on the proceedings of Lord Mayo. He would not allow any substantial promise of assistance to be given to Shere Ali, and altogether destroyed what might have been the good effect of the Umballa durbar. When I reached England, I found the Duke turned a deaf ear to all the pro posals I put before him." Nevertheless Sir Douglas Forsyth persevered. Lord Clarendon helped him, and he went to St. Petersburg as the accredited agent of the English Foreign Office. In the negotiation that followed, Sir Douglas elicited from Russian statesmen admissions which only needed to be put into proper diplomatic form and to be supplemented by an agreement with the Afghan Ameer to give us all the security we could reasonably wish for. "But unfortunately," says Sir Douglas Forsyth, "when I went to the India Office, the Duke of Argyll would not take the slightest interest in the matter and no orders were passed."

The great events which intervened between the wretched sequel to this episode and the reopening of the Afghan boundary question are matters of general history. The interval was marked by Shere Ali's rejection of our friendship, by campaigns in Afghanistan and the establishment of Abdul Rahman on the throne of Cabul; and lastly by the annexation of the Merv oasis to the empire of the Czar. That measure, long deferred but long foreseen as inevitable, marks a turning point also in our Central Asian policy. The Russian menace once more loomed too portentous to be viewed with serenity. Not that the English ministry of the day showed much alarm. On being informed

still of opinion that such a measure was advisable. Towards the end of April, 1884, Earl Granville accepted the Russian proposal for a delimitation. The British Government, he went on to explain, considered that the main points should be laid down on the spot by a joint commission appointed for the purpose. After all these years, it would seem, we were unable or reluctant to say what the main points were, and almost provoked the Russians to presume on our ignorance and indecision. Nor were they slow to perceive the opportunity. They began at once to raise objections to the procedure recommended. They themselves, we presently found, had been carrying out an independent inquiry of their own; and fortified by the information thus acquired, they knew perfectly well what was wanted in Russia's interests. M. de Giers hinted plainly his hope that the Turcomans of Panjdeh would submit of their own free will to Russian authority. At the same time General Komaroff took steps to put the Turcomans in possession of the lands about old Serrakhs. Nor was Russia satisfied with thus indicating her pretensions. She wished them acknowledged and admitted before the Commission began its work. In his despatch of June 18th, 1884, M. de Giers propounded for the first time the theory that the main points of the boundary should be settled not by political officers on the spot but by negotiation between the two govern

ments. While agreeing that the joint Commissioners should meet at Serrakhs, in the beginning of October, "the Imperial Government," he he wrote, "think it would be advisable that previous to the sending of the Commission, the two Governments should exchange views on the general basis of the future delimitation." At first Earl Granville seems to have paid no heed to the suggestion beyond saying. that, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Ministers," any points on which the Commission were unable to agree should be referred for the decision of the Governments." Meanwhile Sir Peter Lumsden was appointed British Commissioner. On July 27th M. de Giers expressed his disappointment that Earl Granville had not laid down some principles on which the instructions to the Commissioners should be framed; and a few days afterwards, he ostentatiously waived his objection to the commencement of the delimitation at the western instead of the eastern extremity of the line, on condition that an agreement should be come to concerning the principles which were to form the basis of instructions. For a long time this idea of a preliminary arrangement was steadfastly rejected by Earl Granville. He would only admit that no boundary line ought to be drawn imposing on the Ameer obligations which His Highness would be unwilling to assume or would not in practice fulfil. This admission was at once fastened upon by M. de Giers, who saw in it an argument in favour of a preliminary arrangement. The Russian Minister also suggested that in such an arrangement it should be explicitly stated that the Sarik Turcomans were to be under Russian control, and that the Ameer Abdul Rahman should be required to give up all designs of aggrandizement at their expense; in other words that His Highness should then and there renounce all claims to Panjdeh. Unfortunately the English Government were unwilling either to reject this notion at once or to accept it. General Zelenoi was now ap