about such things. But again here, while giving further facts, one has to keep the sense that in America there is an attitude towards it all which prevents these "pothouse politics," as Emerson called them, from being quite as corrupting outside their own limits as one would think. At the lowest we find the people who think their votes to be some property for sale; and at the highest you find the two comic papers in New York, Puck and Judge, coming out after the presidential election with this sort of tone: "Well, the political season is over; there are new games up, and other business, the Chicago Exhibition, for instance; come and make that a success." Politics is a business.

street. Put the bridge there, and you can tell your government that we business men will contribute so much to the next election or bribery fund. And the government member answers: "It is your interest to vote for the government; if you return opposition candidates the government will do nothing for the roads and bridges of your town or of your county." In fact, one minister is defeated, and in his public speech he openly threatens the county which had rejected him, and then offers to another constituency to do everything for them, and declares to his new county, so we are told, that the old one may go to the devil. Nobody seems astonished at this. It is a game; your county played against the government, Still it does excite surprise to find played to be in, in fact, and it is out. men of ability leaving the better outside That is all. So when the House of world for local politics. For one would Assembly meets there is a floating popthink either of two spurs were neces-ulation of those members who want to sary to drive them there the love of be influential in forming a new governa cause, or at least the ambition to succeed in one, or private gain. The latter is often a delusion, perhaps always; for men do not seem agreed that these politicians actually put the money in their own pockets; and for the cause, such facts as are given in this article are those acknowledged by everybody.

The explanation may perhaps be found in the words Milton puts into the mouth of Satan :

To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell. For we find men crippled with debt all the rest of their lives from the sums they have spent on these elections. To be elected means some sort of power; it means the dispensing, though indirectly, of government patronage in their constituencies; it is gratifying to be appealed to for the promise of your help in getting a bridge made near our

ment. They are known to be in this unpledged, uncommitted state; but the only difficulty they have is for each to know when the others will combine to strike the blow. If it be that they have any blow they think right to strike, then they are much maligned by the whole of their little world in which not one believer in them can be found.

A paying game somehow or other, that is what Canadians think their politics, according to the almost unvaried tone of their talk about them in private. The better sort of young man, in the age of possible high thoughts on all the framework of the land, will probably tell you, if he is not yet a political agent, that he does not care which way an election goes, that it makes no matter to him. It is impossible to exaggerate the extent to which this disbelief prevails, in local politics especially.

For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made

payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

away,

Saw other webs and others rise for aye Which kept her prisoned till her hair was hoary.

Those songs half sung that yet were all

divine

That woke Romance, the queen, to reign

afresh

THE HALF OF LIFE GONE.

THE days have slain the days,
and the seasons have gone by
And brought me the summer again,
and here on the grass I'lie
As erst I lay and was glad
ere I meddled with right and with wrong.
Wide lies the mead as of old,

Had been but preludes from that lyre of and the river is creeping along

By the side of the elm-clad bank

thine, Could thy rare spirit's wings have pierced that turns its weedy stream;

the mesh

And grey o'er its hither lip

Spun by the wizard who compels the the quivering rushes gleam.

flesh,

There is work in the mead as of old;

But lets the poet see how heaven can shine. they are eager at winning the hay,

While every sun sets bright

and begets a fairer day.

The forks shine white in the sun
round the yellow red-wheeled wain
Where the mountain of hay grows fast;
and now from out of the lane
Comes the ox-team drawing another,
comes the bailiff and the beer,
And thump, thump, goes the farmer's nag
o'er the narrow bridge of the weir.
High up and light are the clouds,
and though the swallows flit
So high o'er the sunlit earth,
they are well a part of it,

And so, though high over them,
are the wings of the wandering herne ;
In measureless depths above him
doth the fair sky quiver and burn;
The dear sun floods the land
as the morning falls toward noon,

And a little wind is awake

O "Life, the Khan!"—while trailed the in the best of the latter June.
They are busy winning the hay,

corpse along,

Sweeping the streets with flesh thou and the life and the picture they make,

If I were as once I was,

I should deem it made for my sake:
For here if one need not work

is a place for happy rest,

While one's thought wends over the world north, south, and east and west.

WILLIAM MORRIS.

From The Contemporary Review.
THE PROSPECTS OF THE CIVILIZED

WORLD.'

fer what soon will be from what now is.

quickly awaken the reader's respect; and he will be impressed by the keenness and originality of observation, the philosophic calmness, the apparent dis interestedness and openness of mind, with which tendencies are traced and

THERE is a distinction in kind between predictions which refer to a remote future, and which are necessarily, if not professedly, more or less arbitrary, and those which profess to in-probable results indicated. And the author touches upon all the things that concern us most closely· liefs as to the unseen world and the life upon our bebeyond the grave, upon the relations of husband and wife and of parents and children, upon town and country, upon trained armies and volunteers, upon poetry and art, upon science and industrial invention :

A prophecy of the latter class, if it relates to social history, is a criticism of life. The Bible prophecies, according to the truer view of them which now

Quidquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas,

prevails, are of this nature. They paint, indeed, imaginative scenes of ultimate glory; but for the most part they express the liveliest interest in the present, and declare what, under the divine purpose and law, the present is about to bring forth in the future. Such a Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli, prophecy pronounces judgment upon But what will probably most astonish existing tendencies, and serves both the reader is the success with which for a warning and for an encourage- Mr. Pearson conceals any interest he ment. No philosophy of causation will may feel as a fellow-man in human drive out of the heads of living men doings and fortunes. There is somethe belief that they can do something thing abnormal in the dispassionate to guide the course of things, and so coolness with which he reports upon to modify the future. Men have always the world and the downward way on been accustomed to assume, and they which it is going. a coolness which will go on assuming, that they can set the impatience of his readers may be themselves against a tendency which tempted to resent as cynical. Almost they believe to be dangerous, and give the only sign of warmth is in the ansupport by their endeavors to one that gry bitterness of the remarks on "the promises to lead to good. Some of Churches" and theology, though some those who are most convinced that the other antipathies may be guessed. We future is a necessary consequence to be cannot help wondering what purpose developed out of the present, and most the author had in writing the book; sure about manifest destiny, happen to we feel as we read that so serious a be at the same time most earnest and thinker must have had some purpose importunate in denouncing what they besides that of making a good many consider to be hurtful habits and move- of his fellow-men unhappy; but the ments, and in urging their fellow-men object he had in view is not apparent. to adopt and favor those which they He gives us a dismal prospect, and judge to be beneficial. A forecast of the future which shows genuine insight is not only interesting to intellectual curiosity, but it can scarcely fail to

have some moral influence.
No one,
I think, can read Mr. C. H.
Pearson's recent book without being in
an unusual degree excited and dis-
quieted by it. The extraordinary range
of knowledge exhibited in it must
1 National Life and Character: a Forecast. By

Charles H. Pearson,

he writes as if he held a brief for discouragement; but here and there he suggests that it does not much signify. He gives us leave to reject his forecast if we please, on the ground that rational forecasts have often turned out mistaken. Where he does refer to the

effect which his prophecies may have upon his readers' minds, his language is curiously confused, and we speculate in vain as to what he can really mean. Thus at the close of chapter i, he says