education as well as pleasure. Before long they began to read, to clamor for books, to question the lecturers, and join in the debates. They began, too, to build or rent meeting houses for themselves, and organize book supplies, libraries; and then the battle was won. All that was needed was time for life in Danish villages to become what it is, and Danish peasants to become as they are.

Now, if the Danes, after a terrible defeat, could do all that to better the lot of those who live in their villages, surely we, after a great victory, might do something to better the lot of those who live in ours. We ought, indeed, to do something, and at once, if only The Cornhill Magazine

for the sake of the villagers who went to the war and helped to win for us our victory. For their sake we ought to see to it, that, in every village, there is at least a meeting house of some sort, a place where they can spend their evenings in decent comfort. Such a place would cost so little and would mean so much to many of them. No better thank-offering than a meeting house could be given to the men who went forth from their villages to fight for us, and are now, or soon will be, again in their old homes; nor could a better memorial than a meeting house be raised to those who went forth, but will never return.

It is not altogether pleasant to review a book on the subject which one happens one's self to have in hand; and perhaps the fairest plan is to state frankly that the reviewer is also a competitor. This, at least, can be said with justice; Mr. W. B. Wells, who is an Englishman brought to Ireland by his

post on the staff of the best Irish Unionist newspaper, writes of Redmond with a detachment and impartiality wholly impossible to any man who served, as I did, under Redmond's leadership in the Irish party for a matter of twelve years. His book is eminently fair and sympathetic, though written from the stand

John Redmond: A Biography. By Warre B. Wells. Nisbet. 8s. 6d.

point of one more closely in touch with the newer Irish movements than with the old Parliamentary party; it is the work of a well-informed and serious student who has published several volumes dealing competently with the Ireland of to-day. What it lacks as a biography is the personal notenecessarily so, for Redmond was a man of few intimates, and even dangerously aloof from the younger generation. Except Mr. Devlin, for whom he had great friendship and affection, I can think of no man with whom he lived in really familiar intercourse who was not associated with him during the evil times of the great split in Irish politics. He was much a creature of habit, and his habits were formed

in those days. What linked him, for instance, to Mr. Hayden, Mr. Clancy, and Mr. John O'Connor divided him even from many Nationalists of the old school. Between him and Mr. Dillon there was constant political communication, and, in all senses, close confidence, but scarcely, I think, personal intimacy. Perhaps Mr. Wells hardly brings out sufficiently how much Redmond left to Mr. Dillon. Certainly the establishment of the National University, which Mr. Wells ranks 'highest, perhaps, after the enactment of Home Rule among his political triumphs,' was in a peculiar sense Mr. Dillon's victory, for the solution of the problem was on lines which he laid down; though, of course, the handling of the general political situation which made that success possible was, in the main, Redmond's.

But there is one phrase in this book which Redmond would have sharply deprecated. Mr. Wells writes about the early years when he was a party whip. His more gentle upbringing may have kept him aloof from many of his colleagues.' I never knew a man who chose his intimates with less reference to conventional standards. Those who came year after year to spend as long as they chose at Aughavanagh-the strange old barthe strange old barrack among the Wicklow mountains from which he never willingly moved

were friends chosen absolutely for their quality as men. I was never of their number (Mr. Wells does me too much honor in some such suggestion), for their association had its roots back in that ancient fight; but I know enough to be sure that no survivor of that privileged group will question that Pat O'Brien, for so many years the exacting and beloved little whip of our party, was of all guests the most constant and most welcome at Aughavanagh; and 'Paddy' (as all

called him) was neither 'gently brought up,' nor gentle (except with children and they adored him), and seven times never was he genteel. Redmond himself was a great gentleman; he had the rare gift of combining dignity with charm; he was in certain ways outwardly most conventional; but he had a completely unconventional mind. Where he was not interested he had prejudices, but all his tastes were sincere, all his standards were his own; and if he liked a book or man no one else's opinion had anything to do with his judgment. In consequence his circle was oddly assorted; you could hardly say why or how it recruited itself. He did not care greatly about talk and often was laconic almost to the point of brusqueness; but he liked company, the presence of those with whom he was completely in sympathy. Politics went too deep with him for association to be possible unless there was agreement on vital matters. Outside of this, love of sport made a bond with some, for grouse-shooting on the mountains by which he was surrounded made one of the chief pleasures of his life. Yet several of the men had no part in this, though all, I think, shared what perhaps he valued most of all in summertime in summertime - his daily baths in the long deep narrow pool under a fall in the mountain stream near his house. This book has a photograph of him standing by it with a rod in his hand; but he was very little of a fisherman, and the costume in which I best recall him there was a bath towel.

Mr. Wells says somewhere of Redmond: "To different audiences he could talk differently,' and goes on to add that in America he could not estrange the support of the extremist from himself by laying stress on his own belief that the Irish national claim might be satisfied within the British Empire.' This is, no doubt,

true, but it is liable to misinterpretation. Redmond insisted strongly on the fact that all the extremist things he ever said were said in the House of Commons. In all his dealings he was by temperament and by policy straightforward. He did not expect to get straightforward dealing from British Ministers, but he believed in the British public instinct to fair play. Unfortunately, in time of war that instinct is powerless. He was very proud, and justly so, of the Irish party's record for making good on any bargain; Mr. Birrell has testified loyally to this loyalty. In general, Mr. Wells puts the truth about him in two sentences:

For him politics were not the happy hunting ground of the self-seeking intriguer, but the highest form of public service to which a man's talents could be devoted. When I speak of his reputation as a political strategist, I mean nothing less worthy than the consummate skill with which he used his political talents to mould political forces and seize political opportunities for the advancement of those Irish interests in whose service he spent his life.

The most valuable part of this book, and the most original, is that which deals with the gradual estrangement which severed Redmond and his party from the newer forces in Ireland. It was a wonderful achievement to hold together the party on the lines originally laid down by Parnell for a period (as Mr. Wells points out) far in excess of what Parnell counted possible. No man of hundreds who went through our ranks was tempted away from his allegiance by any offer that any government could make. But the political energies of Ireland were concentrated at Westminster' (it would be more accurate to say 'on Westminster'), 'and public life in Ireland suffered in consequence a certain stagnation.' The 'rigid conditions of party discipline' were repellent to

younger men, and I remember how the most brilliant of his generation, P. T. M. Kettle, chafed under their restraint. And, to And, to speak plainly, there was in the party as a whole a tendency to reject anything which had not made part of the creed in Parnell's day. The 'New Departure' of 1880 had become the somewhat intolerant orthodoxy of 1910. In many respects Redmond was the least intolerant of leading Parliamentary Nationalists

though his toleration

was extended rather to Sir Horace Plunkett's circle of activities than to the Gaelic or literary revival. With these he had little real contact, though an advocate in general of the Gaelic studies.

But, by and large, the truth is, and Mr. Wells scarcely brings it out, that Redmond won continuously till the war came and created a new situation of unparalleled difficulty, which he instantly by a stroke of genius turned to account. Only Nationalist Ireland could have defeated him. It gave to the British government a fresh opportunity to blunder.

The war hit Ireland at the precise moment when Home Rule was established in principle. As a result of passing the Act, but postponing its operation, the authorities in Dublin Castle became merely a stop-gap makeshift; caretakers in the house. When grave trouble arose they were powerless to contend with it, and abdicated instantly in favor of another temporary expedient-military rule directed without local knowledge. Redmond and the Irish party had neither the opportunity nor the power to assist.

Normally, once the Act passed, steps in preparation for bringing it into action would have begun at once. New interest would have been aroused and opposition would have only revived enthusiasm. As it was, delay

paralyzed everything except criticism. The Irish party were condemned to lag superfluous on the scene; their work, the purpose of their being, was achieved in theory; no new duties were created for them. Had the rebellion occurred with an Irish government in being, popular opinion, which, as Mr. Wells points out, was against the rebellion, would have rallied actively to the native authority. But to support an English military Governor in inflicting penalties on Irishmen without consultation of any elected Irish

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government, was more than Irish public opinion would do; and Redmond could only look on. The malignity of fate could have devised no worse embarrassment.

Mr. Wells concludes on a note of optimism. No sincere effort is wasted, he thinks. Those who helped in building up so laboriously what was so swiftly and so recklessly destroyed may be pardoned if they feel their response slow in coming to his confidence that ultimately all is best for Ireland in the best possible of worlds.

IN 1898 Mr. Hardy published Wessex Poems, 1902 Poems of the Past and Present, in 1904-8 came that mighty drama The Dynasts, in 1904 and 1914 Time's Laughing-Stocks and Satires of Circumstance. Now the veteran gives us Moments of Vision, and will, we hope, still give us more. A year earlier Messrs. Macmillan added to their Golden Treasury' series an excellent selection of 120 poems (including some which appear in this last volume) an invitation to those who know not the master, and a thricewelcome companion for the myriads who revere him.

The Woodlanders is perhaps the best of the novels; The Well-beloved is one of the happiest of all their happy titles, for it gives the key to the author's wide sway over hearts. 'I shall still read Anatole France and Thomas Hardy,' said Wilamowitz-Moellendorf

when he despaired of the restoration of literary friendship after the war. What is the deepest impression left by these two last volumes? Surely this, that Thomas Hardy is such a lover of men.

I lipp'd rough rhymes of chance not choice;

I thought not what my words might be; There came into my ear a voice That turned a tenderer verse for me. And this voice comes not only from the one faint figure of that midsummer eve, but from all sorts of men, women, and children throughout the poems, from kings and squires and farmers with their wives, from the fat, deathdoomed, ever-walking student, the lovers and mourners, enemies and friends, ladies and glass-stainers, laborers and soldiers; even from those 'primest fuglemen' of his own line 'fogged in far antiqueness past surmise and reason's reach' of whom at

last he learns himself to be 'mere continuator and counterfeit and yet, 'Love lures life on,' and this kind, simple heart finds something admirable in all its fellows and chastens us by tenderness. Well, he too, has won the love of his readers, and something more, as he tells us in many a brave lyric:

Whatever his message glad or grim
Two bright-souled women clave to him;
Stand and say that while day decays,
It will be word enough of praise.

In poems as in novels he is very close to nature:

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,

And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the people say,

'He was a man who used to notice such things'?

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,

When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,

Will they say, 'He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,

But he could do little for them; and now

he is gone'?

The innocent creatures he partly understands. Behind and about them and himself is the enveloping mystery with which he has lived so continuously in his practical country life that he knows he can never really know it. It touches, interpenetrates, absorbs him; but at the centre there is something alien, something not yet to be trusted. Nature surrounds him as his fathers' worship does: the ultimate meaning of each is obscure. All the more he accepts the use and wont of each, kindly, reverently. Churches to this architect, choirs and the old village orchestras are dear to this son of the violinist. The cool failings of the country clergy he takes without

Mr. Hardy's faith is indeed severe. It was, he says, a relief to him when he deemed it reasonable to suppose that the Immanent Will is unconscious. If that Will should ever open conscious eyes, 'How wilt thou bear thyself in thy surprise?' he asks.

Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame,

Thy whole high-heaving firmamental frame, Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal? In Tenebris (with its motto, Considerabam ad dexteram et videbam; et non erat qui cognosceret me. . . . Non est qui requirat animam meam) is a confession that among 'the many and the strong' there is no place for one who cannot discern their vision.