we

umes, "I know nothing whatever of your Irish controversies with English governments, except the fact that the English governments put heavy sentences on Michael Davitt and John Boyle O'Reilly, two of the noblest creatures I have ever met; and that settles for me the whole question of your English government system in its dealings with Ireland." Of course must all admit-every man in his senses is compelled to admit that the government of any country is bound to defend its own existence. It cannot allow the most virtuous man or the most patriotic man to endeavor to overthrow it without taking strong measures to sustain it against overthrow. Therefore, as it seems to us, there is no reason that even an Irishman should complain against the fact that an English government, after sentence in a court of law, consigned, let us say, Mr. Michael Davitt to imprisonment. But then, was it really necessary that he should have been condemned to be yoked to a cart which dragged stones at Portland, and to sleep in a cell in which he hardly had room to lie down? Was he really to be confounded with the ordinary class of miscreants who murder their wives, and who use brutal violence to old men in order to rob them of their money? Can anybody on earth say that the greatness and the integrity of the empire are to be secured by means which confound a man like Theobald Wolfe Tone, or a man like John Mitchel, or a man like Michael Davitt, with Bill Sykes and Jack the Ripper? In the same House of Commons when the debate on the address was going on sat with Mr. Davitt Mr. James F. X. O'Brien, who in his youth had also been concerned in a Fenian insurrection, and who had been sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He had, in fact, the proud distinction of being the last man on whom such a sentence had been passed. The sentence, which of course was impossible to be carried out in our days, was commuted to penal servitude for life; and that sentence, too, was

commuted, on the ground that during an attack on a police barrack he had determinedly protected the lives of the few poor policemen who had to give in. Calumny itself could never say a word against his character, and he was allowed by amnesty to return to his own country, and he became a member of the House of Commons, and a member of whom the bitterest Conservative would not say a single word that was not a word of respect. The debate, therefore, on the address in the opening of the session of 1897 brought this question into a concentrated form: Is it right to class men of this character, and this purpose, and this kind, with Bill Sykes and Jack the Ripper? It has to be remembered that Americathat is to say, the conquering Northern states, after their great civil war, put no one to death, or even prolonged the period of imprisonment, except for two or three who were actually convicted of assassination. The great leader of the Southern civil war was allowed, after a very short period of imprisonment, to go his way unharmed. Mr. Swinburne, the English poet, lished at the time when the Manchester prisoners were under trial-the story is told already in these volumesa poem in which he said:

Lo!

Thy

pub

How fair from afar, taintless of tyranny, stands,

mighty daughter for years who trod the winepress of warShines with immaculate hands, Slays not a foe, neither fears, Stains not peace with a scar;

and he added, speaking of vindictive punishments:

Neither is any land great whom in its fear-stricken mood,

These things only can save.

Lord John Russell had pointed out in the House of Commons a great many years before, that no death and no torture inflicted on any political patriot or any political fanatic ever prevented some other man of the same mood and of the same purpose from following just the same course. No doubt it is a

difficult question to settle that question as to the manner of dealing with political offenders. But to us, at least, it seems clear that there is nothing reasonable to be said for the hashing up in one system of Michael Davitt and Bill Sykes.

The criminal laws of England stand in immense need of emendation. They press with terrible force on one class of offences, and they deal very lightly with another class. The rights of property are maintained even still with a ferocious vigor, and a poor man or a woman stealing a loaf of bread is punished with what might be called in proportion an extraordinary severity. On the other hand, we read every day in the papers of a drunken scoundrel who has kicked his wife almost to death getting off with something like six months' imprisonment. The whole general system needs a parliamentary review; but, unfortunately, Parliament is busied mostly with foreign affairs, and gives itself little time to look into the concerns of the inhabitants of these islands. When we get time enough-if we ever do-to think of domestic affairs, we may come to form and act upon some definite opinion as to the scale of punishment for offences against property and offences against life, and likewise to arrange for some difference being made between the treatment of a high-minded and virtuous man who starts a rebellious movement against the existing authorities, and a man who amuses himself after the fashion of Jack the Ripper. The second question which came up concerned the general dealings of the authorities in the English prisons. To that we have already made some reference. The English prison system is beyond all question-and we are not now speaking of the relative guilt of the offenders-much more severe than that of the United States. In the American Republic there is every chance given to the convicted criminal to reform and become a better man. An English visitor to one of the State prisons in the American Republic is sometimes amazed at the sort of ad

vantages placed within the reach of the convict.

man

In some of the State prisons in America there is, no doubt, a stern severity in dealing with serious breaches of discipline or with attempts at escape or mutiny. In many of these prisons measures of punishment for such offences are allowed which would not be endured by public opinion in England. But, on the other hand, the ordinary life of a prisoner is in most of these States made much more endurable than the ordinary life of a prisoner in England. The idea in the United States is to give the imprisoned or woman a fair chance of becoming reformed, and returning to society a better citizen. Of course it may be said, and it is said here every day, that we must not make prison life an agreeable experience for criminal offenders, and that if a man ought to be punished he ought to be punished, and there an end. That argument, of course, however it may be expressed, is an argument pure and simple for the principle of torture. The man has done wrong; he ought to be sent to prison; he is sent to prison; his life ought to be made miserable for him in prison, in order that when he comes out of prison he may take care not to go into prison again. As a matter of fact, it is quite certain that in no country in the world is there created a regular jail-bird class as much as in Great Britain. Men and women pass their whole lives in getting into prison and getting out of it. Some of the restrictions imposed in the Irish prisons were positively grotesque, and especially grotesque when they applied to political offenders. A shortsighted man was not allowed to wear spectacles; a man with a severe cold in his head was not allowed the use of a pocket-handkerchief, lest perchance he should make use of it as a rope and hang himself; and this in the case of men whose lives, as soon as they came out of prison, would be comfortable, happy, and even honored. But to return to the mere question of the common criminal, it is greatly to be doubted whether the severity of our

prison system in these countries tends in the least to make him a better man. From "History of Our Own Times: From 1880 to the Diamond Jubilee." By Justin McCarthy, M. P. Copyright by Harper and Brothers.

Price $1.50.

SOME RECENT VERSE.

JULY FUGITIVE.

Can you tell me where has hid her
Pretty Maid July?

I would swear one day ago
She passed by,

I would swear that I do know
The true bliss of her eye:
"Tarry, maid, maid," I bid her:
But she hastened by:

Do you know where she has hid her?
Maid July?

Yet in truth it needs must be
The flight of her is old:

Yet in truth it needs must be,

For her nest, the earth, is cold. No more in the pooléd Even

Wade her rosy feet, Down-flakes no more plash from them To poppies 'mid the wheat.

She has muddied the day's oozes
With her petulant feet:
Scared the clouds that floated,
As sea-birds they were,
Slow on the coerule

Lulls of the air,

Lulled on the luminous
Levels of air:

She has chidden in a pet

All her stars from her:

Now they wander loose and sigh
Through the turbid blue,
Now they wander, weep, and cry-
Yea, and I too-

"Where are you, sweet July,
Where are you?"

Who hath beheld her footprints,
Or the pathway she goes?

Tell me, wind, tell me, wheat,

Which of you knows?

Sleeps she swathed in the flushed Arctic Night of the rose?

Or lie her limbs like Alp-glow
On the lily's snows?
Gales, that are all-visitant,
Find the runaway:

And for him who findeth her
(I do charge you say)
I will throw largesse of broom
Of this summer's mintage,
I will broach a honey-bag
Of the bee's best vintage.
Breezes, wheat, flowers sweet,
None of them knows!
How then shall we lure her back
From the way she goes?

For it were a shameful thing,
Saw we not this comer

Ere autumn came upon the fields
Red with rout of summer.

When the bird quits the cage,

We set the cage outside, With seed and with water,

And the door wide, Haply we may win it so

Back to abide.

Hang her cage of earth out

O'er Heaven's sunward wall,

Its four gates open, winds in watch
By reinéd cars at all:
Relume in hanging hedgerows

The rain-quenched blossom,
And roses sob their tears out

On the gale's warm heaving bosom:

Shake the lilies till their scent

Over-drip their rims:

That our runaway may see

We do know her whims: Sleek the tumbled waters out

For her travelled limbs:

Strew and smooth blue night thereon,

There will-O not doubt her!

The lovely sleepy lady lie,

With all her stars about her!

From "New Poems." By Francis Thompson. Copeland and Day, Publishers. Price $1.50.

MIDSUMMER.

Dawn-tide growing, rose-light sowing, Heaven showing bloom and sheen, With the summer morning breaking Silver soft and all serene,

Oh, the still delight of waking, When the grass is in the mowing And the leaf is green!

Dark kine lowing, slow mists throwing

In their going, half unseen, Where the thatch is shine and shadow Oh, below the sail to lean, Barges dropping down the meadow, When the grass is in the mowing And the leaf is green!

Waters flowing, sunshine glowing,
Breezes blowing in between,
Every spray a blossom giving,
Every dewdrop Hippocrene,
Oh, the loveliness of living

When the grass is in the mowing

And the leaf is green.

From "In Titian's Garden." By Harriet Prescott Spofford. Copeland & Day, Publishers. Price $1.25.

THE OLD SPINET.

It is slim and trim and spare,
Like the slender Lady Claire
In the gowns they used to wear,
Long ago:

And it stands there in the gloom
Of the gabled attic room,
Like a ghost whose vacant tomb
None may know.

I can see the lady's hands,
White as lilies, as she stands
Strumming fragments of Durand's
On the keys:

And I hear the thin, sweet strain
Of the Plymouth hymns again,
Like the sobs of windless rain
In the trees.

She would play the minuet
For the stately-stepping set,
While the ardent dancers met,
Hands and hearts:

Did the old-time spinet care,
If Dan Cupid unaware
Pricked the breasts of brave and fair
With his darts?

Now the spiders with their floss
Up and down the keyboard cross,
And the strings are dull as dross,
Once so bright.

No one cares to touch the keys,-
Stain'd old yellow ivories,—
Save the ghosts some dreamer sees
In the night.

From "The Heart of Life." By James Buckham.
Copeland and Day, Publishers.

Arnold of Rugby; His School Life.
etc. Cambridge University Press.
Audrey Craven. By May Sinclair.
Blackwood & Sons, Publishers.
Black Watch, The. The Record of an
Historic Regiment. By Archibald
Forbes, LL.D. Cassell & Co., Pub-
lishers.

Century.

J. M.

Bon-Mots of the Nineteenth
Edited by Walter Jerrold.
Dent & Co., Publishers.
Confessions of a Collector, The. By
William Carew Hazlitt. Ward &
Downey, Publishers.

Eastern Crisis and British Policy, The.
By G. H. Perris. Chapman & Hall,
Publishers.

English Stage, The. Being an Account

of the Victorian Drama by Augustin Filon. Translated from the French by Frederic Whyte. John Milne, Publisher.

M. Ramsay. Hodder & Stoughton, Publishers.

Industries and Wealth of Nations. By Michael G. Mulhall. Longmans &

Co., Publishers.

In the Tideway. By Flora Annie Steel. Constable & Co., Publishers.

Later Gleanings; Theological and Ecclesiastical. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. John Murray, Pub

lisher.

Letters from the Black Sea During the Crimean War. By Admiral Sir Leopold Heath, K.C.B. Richard Bentley & Sons, Publishers. March Hares. By Harold Frederic. John Lane, Publisher.

My Father as I Recall Him. By Mamie

Dickens. Roxburghe Press.

Naturalist in Australia, The. By W. Saville-Kent, F.L.S., F.Z.S., etc. Chapman & Hall, Publishers.

C.E.

of

M.D. and August Hammar, Wm. Heinemann, Publisher. Pantalas. By Edward Jenkins. Richard Bentley & Son, Publishers. Told Peakland Faggot, A; Tales Milton Folk. By R. Murray Gilchrist. Grant Richards, Publisher. Popular Royalty. By Arthur H. Beavan. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Publishers.

Tale of Two Tunnels, A. By W.
Clark Russell. Chapman & Hall,
Publishers.

Wild Norway. By Abel Chapman.
Arnold, Publisher.
Woodland Life, The.
Thomas. Blackwood &
lishers.

By Edward' Sons, Pub

Woman and the Republic. By Helen
Kendrick Johnson. D. Appleton &
Co., Publishers. Price $1.50.
Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's
Reign. Hurst & Blackett, Publish-

ers.