things that the old dunderhead Dame Nature would have taken years to instil by rule of thumb? But what of this charming idyll when there is-as there is so often-ignorant, inefficient teaching, and when, briefly, the fact that flowers mean future fruit is allowed to enter the children's garden? Ah! then the experts can step in with their tales of torture, of the wrong done to immature nerves and muscles even by games which demand maturity. We elders, indeed, are but just beginning to understand our own cruelties in the past. For example we grasp now that the persistent determination we have reproved as persistently in young scholars to hunch and crunch themselves up over print or pothook is not due, as we deemed it of old, to original sin, but to a moral and earnest attempt at focussing the immature eye and steadying the immature hand. So it is with a thousand other so-called sins of child life.

Now, in the past, when education practically did not touch that life till the comparative maturity of seven years was reached, the evil to eyes and ears-to the nervous system generally-was not so widespread as it is nowadays when from the absolute infancy of three years onwards, the whole hope of a nation's progress is at the mercy of our well-meaning ignorance. And to what that ignorance extends Miss Morten's pamphlet tells us. Habitually underfed, habitually overstrained, aggregated in hotbeds of infection, often over-fatigued by socalled physical training, still more often out-wearied by long wet trudges to school, and finally galvanized into spurious vitality by the excitementalways to the young a dangerous one-.. of unlimited companionship, the child of to-day grows up-as we who are responsible for the training must surely expect it to grow up-a product of unnatural conditions. And we are alive

to the fact. The question of physical deterioration is being discussed on all sides; it is being written about, by none more ably than by Mrs. Watt Smyth, whose book1 should be read by every English man and woman who is honest enough to admit his or her undoubted responsibility for a state of affairs which, no matter how arguments may vary, has at least done two things-reduced our army standard by six inches, and made it possible for experts to report that out of twelve hundred Scotch children carefully examined over seven hundred were not sound. Of course conflicting arguments do-in fact must-war round this question of race deterioration. It is true, no doubt, that our army now taps a lower stratum than it did fifty years ago. But that fact does not explain the more important one-namely that England (a country which talks of progress) has somehow bred from her poorest stock and that the magnificent increase of her population has been almost entirely in this lower stratum. Doubtless, also, the hygienic conditions of town homes are worse than they were, doubtless also such homes have increased by leaps and bounds. But is this anything of which to boast? Is the answer which is invariably given to those who press the claims of home life as an educator -namely that school, with all its disadvantages, must be better than the hells which most town scholars call home is that answer a satisfactory one? Does it not, indeed, raise the larger issue of the reason why the healthy home is becoming extinct, why parents show less and less sense of responsibility It is now five-andthirty years-a generation and moresince we, as the State, undertook to rear up good citizens and therefore good fathers and mothers. What has

1 "Physical Deterioration, its Causes and Cure." London: Murray. 1904.

I

There seems therefore no alternative but that the State should step in, and try-pending the result of reform in future production-to remedy the evils for which, to a great extent, it is responsible. In doing this it would do no more than has been done and with less cause-by other countries. Mrs. Watt Smyth tells us of this and of other equally interesting attempts to grapple with the problem of rearing children who shall be physically and morally better than their parents. will not tickle anybody's palate by skimming the cream of her book; it deserves to be read from cover to cover, but there is one quotation I will make; a quotation which also embodies Miss Morten's conclusions. "It is impossible not to be convinced that upon the question of feeding during infancy and early childhood turns the whole question. If up to the age of three or four years every child were judiciously fed they would grow up robust

but no amount of after

care will ever make up for first years of neglect."

Now I have before this drawn attention to the curious and ominous fact, that despite our so-called improved hygiene the rate of infant mortality during the first year of life has not shown any tendency whatever to the decrease which is so astounding in later years. What is the cause of this? Briefly it is a question of milk supply. The statistics of the year 1900 for the town of Sheffield showed that for twenty-five infants reared

naturally two hundred were artificially or bottle fed. Only some twelve mothers therefore out of a hundred in Sheffield were willing to perform, or capable of performing, a mother's first duty.

What supplies the mother's place? This is the question which must be asked and answered before we can even consider the evils which will follow when the three-year-old survivor of a horrible and unnatural diet goes to school-to be starved still more! Nor is this question of a pure milk supply, of considering the children so far as to replace to the best of our abilities the natural condition which every mammal born into the world has a right to claim, one which need be mixed up with polemics as to the truth or untruth of physical deterioration in the race generally. Who will deny that milk is the best, the only safe food during the first year of life? who will deny that under the existing want of system, milk-that is pure fresh milk-is almost beyond the reach of the poor? It is no answer to say that this is inevitable, that the nature of milk makes it an expensive diet. To begin with it is not true. What other countries have done, surely we can do, and no one who has travelled in France, Germany or even Italy can fail to have been struck by the ease with which guaranteed milk can be reasonably bought even in small towns. And if it were inevitably expensive, what then? The question is not one of expense, it is one of necessity. We have as a nation to face certain indisputable facts. First that milk is the only possible diet for young mammals during a certain specific period. Secondly that for twelve mothers who thirty years ago were capable of supplying that diet to their infants, only one exists now. Thirdly that the supply of cow's milk to take the place of human milk is notoriously

unsatisfactory. Let us therefore give the go-by to all vexed questions for the present. Whether the race has or has not deteriorated, whether our faulty system of education is or is not responsible for the failure of our young women in their first duty, there can be no doubt that the children must The Saturday Review.

be considered. And since all rational consideration starts from the very beginning of the phenomenon to be considered, it is obvious that the first consideration in the healthy rearing of a young mammal is an adequate supply of pure milk.

F. A. Steel.

Professor Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute, has recently given a lecture upon old age, which he declares to be merely a "chronic disease," for which he believes that science will shortly find a cure (vide Daily Chronicle, June 14th). We read that quite a sensation was produced in Paris by the Professor's words. We are not surprised. What a vista of change must open before the eyes of those who can bring themselves, even for a moment, to consider his statement in the light of a possibility.

The immediate result of such a discovery as Professor Metchnikoff contemplates would be, we think, an overwhelming sensation of relief. A sudden access of happiness would come to all those who are no longer young as they saw the prospect of life stretch out indefinitely before them. The scientific miracle of which he dreams would not, of course, confer immortality upon man. The old would still be liable to all the ills that flesh in middle life is heir to. Within a limited number of years, the chances are that such diseases would kill even the strongest. But we all hope to live to be old. Most men not only wish, but when in health believe, that nothing but old age will kill them; and if there were no such thing, they would look to escape death altogether. After

the first sense of relief was over, there would come, we fancy, to all the thoughtful a strange feeling of leisure. Both young and old-or, as we should learn to say, both experienced and inexperienced-would tell themselves that there was no hurry. No man would need to lay up for his old age, or to try to get through his life-work by any given date. All the things, great and small, which ambitious men set before themselves as goals to be attained would cease to be definite ends, and would become indefinite aspirations. There would be lots of time to think, and it would be time enough to act when we had done thinking. Individuals and corporate bodies would alike have fewer mistakes to regret. The statesman could put off his plans till his next bout of power. The man of science could work slowly in his laboratory, believing that he would have time both to conceive and to work out, both to invent and to perfect. The man of letters would accumulate experience for a book which could appear at any time. The shopkeeper would not need to be in any haste to make a fortune. Of course, as before, every one would want money in order to live, and wish for money in order to live comfortably, and the vast majority would still make their bread by the sweat of their brow or their brain; but on one would lay up for his old

age or for the old age of his children. Work would be regarded as something to be done moderately and done always. The whole pace of life would be altered, and pleasure, as well as success, would be more soberly sought. All the sights we want to see we could see "at any time"; all the people we want to meet would be sure to cross our path again. The sense of "now or never" which acts as so great a spur would disappear. It is not impossible that, after the first joy-like the joy of the convalescent-of taking a firmer grasp of life was over, a deep sense of ennui would take hold of the world. After all, in its hurry is half its delight. If it were less certainly and arbitrarily limited, it would probably be less vivid. Born leaders of men would, indeed, have a great chance to modify the face of the world; great painters and poets might leave to their fellows a far larger bulk of work than they do now; but we very much doubt if this would be the case. We are inclined to think that such would be the increase in stolidity that one man in a hundred and fifty years would not accomplish more than he can now do in half that time.

What, one wonders, would be the moral effect of the sudden recession of death? We think it would be both good and bad. When death comes very close to a large number of people in some alarming form, when some scourge of disease or war threatens a whole neighborhood, the moral effect upon the population is, historians tell us, exceedingly bad; a kind of desperation seizes upon men, and they become absolutely reckless. If death were to go further off, the cause of civilization, of peace and order, might gain with the new stability of things. On the other hand, there is a vague sense of impending justice which has, we believe, a great moral force, and which is dependent upon the certainty that life

will be over before long. This sense is independent of definite religious conviction, but it comforts those upon whom the cruelty and injustice of the world press, and it restrains those persons who are largely responsible for making it cruel and unjust. The wish to die innocent rather than guilty is inherent and strong in the human heart, and it has a salutary effect in forcing those persons who would quite as soon live guilty as innocent into decent behavior. Apart from guilt or innocence, we believe that the thought of the shortness of life has a good deal to do in reconciling the laboring classes to an existence which must sometimes strike the most reasonable of them as singularly hard by contrast with that of their more fortunate brethren. This might, it is true, be counteracted by the extra length of time before them to improve their condition; but we think this factor would hardly make so strongly for class amity as does that odd idea of topsy-turvydom which enters into many simple conceptions of the life after death. Once make death an accident which is likely to happen some time, instead of an absolute certainty which must happen at the end of a given number of years, and differences of lot will seem more wide and bitter than they do at present.

But it may be said,-Are you so sure that every one will be so anxious to avail themselves of this new lease of life? After all, if Professor Metchnikoff is right, the years, though they will no longer bring physical decay, will still bring disillusionment. For our part, we see no evidence that the wish to live departs until people are actually dying, and we think, if men are ever going to be disillusioned, they are disillusioned long before they grow old. Disillusionment is a sign of departing youth rather than of approaching age. On the whole, old people take as good a view of the world as the middle-aged..

At times traces of the dead doctrine of the natural depravity of the human race are to be found, like the spars of a wreck, sticking up in their conversation; but practically they look on individuals with more kindly eyes than their sons do. Of course their point of view is different, and the real difference is caused not so much, we think, by extra experience (after all, by the time a man is well on in middle life he has amassed the greater part of his experience) as by the nearness of the end. This point of view is what it seems to us that we could least spare out of the world if, as is so very unlikely, the Professor's dream came true. The old learn something upon the confines of eternity which can be learned nowhere else. They get a new sense of comparative values, a new outlook upon life. An old man is, as it were, detached, standing outside the crowd of life, yet still able to see what is going on in the thick of the strife. He is no longer, as Jowett says, "under the dominion of the hour." "Before he departs" (we are still quoting Jowett) "he has some things to say to his children or to his friends. He will tell them that he now sees the world in different proportions, and that what was once greatly valued by him now seems no longer of importance. The dreams of love and ambition have fled away.

. . The disappointments which he has undergone no more affect him; he The Spectator.

is inclined to think they may have been for his good. He sees many things in his life which might have been better; opportunities lost which could never afterwards be by him recovered. He might have been wiser about health, or the education of his children, or his choice of friends, or the management of his business. He would like to warn younger persons against some of the mistakes which he had himself made. He would tell them that no man in later life rejoiced in the remembrance of a quarrel; and that the trifles of life, good temper, a gracious manner, trifles as they are thought, are among the most important elements of success. Above all, he would exhort them to get rid of selfishness and selfconceit, which are the two greatest sources of human evil." Could we do without the seers who tell us these things?

In looking through this article we see that we have unconsciously dwelt upon the disadvantages which might accrue from Professor Metchnikoff's prophesied discovery, and left the advantages somewhat out of account. It is as well perhaps to try to see the better side of the inevitable. The other side is, as always, only too patent. If the abolition of old age depended upon a plébiscite (alas! Demos cannot make one hair black or white), there is not a man in Europe who would not vote for the reprieve.

Mr. Henry James is putting the finishing touches to a new novel called "The Golden Bow."

In Mr. Kipling's autumn volume of short stories will be included one"The Army of a Dream," hitherto unpublished.

A new volume of poems by Mr. Swinburne, entitled "A Channel Passage and other Poems," is shortly to be issued by Messrs. Chatto & Windus.

Mr. William Watson's "Lines to a Young Lady," recently printed in the Pall Mall Magazine, was printed simul