oners off. Everyone was attending to his business, for the relief ship had left twenty soldiers to keep order in Palamos, and, as the city has only eight thousand inhabitants, their cause was hopeless in the face of such a garrison! I have enjoyed excellent opportunities of observing mobs in different countries. One can be most careful and conservative in his statements, and yet say with utmost boldness that, no matter what its purpose, no matter how great its number, the success of a mob is directly and justifiably to be laid at the door of the civil authorities. For nothing in the world is easier than to suppress a mob. To shoot is drastic. A charge of mounted police with sticks and-all is over! I happened to be in Adana, Asiatic Turkey, on the 14th April of this year, by the side of the Pasha in the central market, when the Turkish mob began to gather to loot and kill. In vain I begged him to charge with his guard of soldiers, to fire one volley in the air. He turned away and walked back to his office, where he sat smoking, endless cigarettes for the next forty-eight hours. In the meantime, despite the fact that there were several hundred well-armed soldiers under his command, a massacre raged which destroyed the better part of that unhappy city and cost the lives of thousands. One volley at the beginning would have prevented the massacre. The story of San Felíu Guixols is proof of this. San Felíu is a cork port, only an hour by carriage from Palamos, and inhabited by exactly the same class of working-people. The troubles started in the same way. A church and a school were burned. The mob then turned to attack a convent. The alcalde had been irresolute, and refused either to demit his office or to give orders to disperse the people. But fortunately there was a high-spir ited young captain in command of the Customs guard. His spirit must have burned with indignation and contempt, as did the young Corsican's on the night of the twelfth Vendémiaire of the year Four, when he witnessed General Ménou's irresolution in the face of the Paris populace. Like Napoleon, he knew how easily a mob could be dispersed. So, when the convent was threatened, he waited no longer for orders, but joined to his Customs guard the four or five Guardias Civiles of the town-I think his force amounted to thirteen in all-and started for the mob. A volley was fired in the air. It was enough. While Palamos near by was in the throes of the Terror day after day, San Felíu Guixols remained in a state of perfect peace. The world has nothing to fear from anarchism. The damage it does, the stir it creates, will ever be sporadic and momentary. The shameful outbreaks in Catalonia, so easily avoidable, and, when force was shown, so easily suppressed, should teach the impotence of anarchism in the face of the forces of law and order. But they showed that the poison of the propaganda had permeated far and thoroughly. The old adage of the ounce of prevention worth the pound of cure fits here. If Governments could only bring themselves to go after propagandists of anarchism and the instigators of lawlessness and assassination for political ends with the same relentless energy and punish them with the same relentless severity which they employ against counterfeitors, these disturbing elements in the peace of a community would disappear. We make no greater error than when we allow individuals or societies, which conspire against life and property, to assemble and talk and publish unmolested, because of the fear we have of infringing upon personal liberty, the right of public speech, and the freedom of the Press. Separa-. Having merely suggested two lessons from the recent Catalan troubles, I cannot refrain, in closing, from expressing my belief that the last week of July will prove a great blessing to Barcelona, and to Spain in general. tism, never more than an impracticable dream, has disappeared for the present. Carlism is a lost cause, only kept alive for the sake of personal political ends and as a wholesome Damoclean sword to induce the present Government to behave itself. If there is a conflict in Spain, it will be between the The Contemporary Review. Monarchy and Republicanism, with the ballot-box and the newspaper for weapons. Madrid has an opportunity to win the confidence and good-will of Catalonia, such as it has never enjoyed before. The whole world wishes well to Spain and to Barcelona. Now it is for the King and his Cabinet, and for the municipal authorities of Barcelona, to profit by the present frame of the public mind, and take measures which will insure the unbroken peace and prosperity of their nation and its Queen City. Herbert Adams Gibbons. JOHN. He's a boy, And that's the long and (chiefly) the short of it, And two chubby fists to clutch it and grasp it; And a jolly round head, so fairly round Or take it and bowl it With never a bump along the ground. And, as to his cheeks, they're also fat- In a cloudy sky Is puffing away for all he's worth, Uprooting the trees With a reckless breeze, And strewing them over the patient earth, Or raising a storm to wreck the ships With the work of his lungs and cheeks and lips. Take a look at his eyes; I put it to you, Were ever two eyes more truly blue? If you went and worried the whole world through You'd never discover a bluer blue; I doubt if you'd find a blue so true In the coats and scarves of a Cambridge crew. And his hair Is as fair As a pretty girl's, But it's right for a boy with its crisp, short curls All a-gleam, as he struts about With a laugh and a shout, To summon his sister-slaves to him But now, as, after a stand, he budges, His four-legged playmate and John is spilt. She's a young dog and a strong dog And a tall dog and a long dog, A Danish lady of high degree, Black coat, kind eye and a stride that's free. And out she came Like a burst of flame, And John, As he trudged and strutted Sturdily on, Was blindly butted, And, all his dignity spent and gone, On a patch of clover Was tumbled over, His two short legs having failed to score But we picked him up And we brushed him down, And he rated the pup With a dreadful frown; And then he laughed and he went and hugged her, Seized her tail in his fist and tugged her, And so, with a sister's hand to guide him, And soon he waggles his way upstairs— He does it alone, though he finds it steep. He is stripped and gowned, and he says his prayers, And he condescends To admit his friends To a levée before he goes to sleep. He thrones it there With a battered bear And a tattered monkey to form his Court, And, having come to the end of day, Conceives that this is the time for play And every possible kind of sport. But at last, tucked in for the hundredth time, Punch. And on the bed Droops his curly round head, Gives one long sigh of unalloyed content And so begins to breathe his quiet night away. THE MID-VICTORIAN CHURCH AND CHAPEL. We can conceive a scholar of the year 2009, commissioned by the Department of Historical Research to write an account of nineteenth century England, setting aside for "special reference" four writers of special interest and credit. The first would certainly be the authoress of "Pride and Prejudice," the second that of "Cranford." The other two, we think, would be Anthony Trollope- the Trollope of the Barsetshire series-and the author who still calls himself "Mark Ruther ford." 1 And we imagine that the "general heading" under which these writers would most naturally be grouped would be "Mid-Victorian Anglicanism and Dissent," with "cross references" to "Politics" and "Religion." At this point our author's difficulties would begin. "Barchester Towers" and "Mark Rutherford's Autobiography" are both works of genius, and they deal with almost the same period of time and the same general subject, namely, the way in which religious thought and worship were organized in provincial England fifty or sixty years ago. Yet it would be difficult to find a sharper contrast of style and literary treatment. The writers 1 "Trollope's Barchester Novels." Six volumes. Routledge. 58. each. "The Works of Mark Rutherford." edition. Unwin. 1s. each, Latest doubtless were widely different men, though both possess the same quietness of method, the same distaste for the mere strepitus verborum, the imposing clash and picturesque romance of words. Trollope was, above all, a humoristic writer, a dry impassive observer of life. "Mark Rutherford," on the other hand, is passionately interested in his subject, and of all English men of letters comes nearest to Rousseau in his power to make personal experience real-to speak of himself and to thrill his listeners with the story. And of the two writers, the latter, being the sincerer, is also the more trustworthy as an historical witness. Trollope's sense of fun, like Dickens's, overflowed when he worked on characters so purely comic as Mrs. Proudie or the Signora Neroni. In "Mark Rutherford," not only is the first-hand knowledge more intimate, but the image of the past rises untroubled by literary waywardness, and steeped only in the softened light of memory and emotion. And, therefore, on the whole, the Mid-Victorian Chapel is happier in its chronicler than is the Church and the Cathedral Close. Indeed, Trollope, fair-minded as he was, and interested in Anglicanism, could hardly bring himself to discern any special spiritual texture in the life Church dignitary of of the average fifty years ago. He was acutely sensible of its dignity, self-restraint, propriety of bearing; and Mr. Slope, his nearest approach to a clerical villain, is still a long way off the malignant plotter of the "Curé de Tours." But he could not help conceiving the Establishment as a thoroughly Erastian institution, not vitally moved to extremes of "High" or "Low," but resting, broad-based, on endowments, the landed gentry, the State, and the diocesan system. Clericalism was a profession like any other: and the great thing in it, with an ample handicap for kind deeds, forbearance, and courtesy, was the race for preferment. Α Bishopric was a good thing; a Deanery less good; a Canonry not to be despised. But the best of all was for your side to win; if you were of the Dean's party to see that he triumphed, if of the Bishop's to trample (without scandal) on the foe. Trollope's gallery of clerical portraits contains no saints, unless it be the rather negative Mr. Harding: even the fanatically upright Crawley is not allowed to draw any special consolation from the austere practice of his religion, but rather sustains himself in his trials by a kind of stoical ferocity. Nearly all Trollope's clerical books end with the double prize of a marriage and a preferment, as if the one human state were intolerable without the other. The play of morals is of the faintest and most ironical kind. Within the secluded circle, shielded from the grosser passions, appear in due order the clerical Vices and Virtues, gently pricking or restraining their subjects. The former, in due course, retire foiled. The Rev. Mr. Robarts almost, but not quite, outruns the constable. Archdeacon Grantly nearly wishes his father, the Bishop, to die before the Tory Government goes out, and his chance of the succession disappears. The weakness of Trollope's presentation, exquisitely humorous as it is, is that no visible cause for such a church appears to exist, unless it be an unintelligible preference of the English Crown and aristocracy for playing the game of clerical patronage. Trollope's parsons are shepherds without sheep; knowing neither the reproach of the Cross nor its glory. No one can make this complaint of "Mark Rutherford's" pictures of the life of the small Dissenting chapel, Independent, or Baptist, or Unitarian, in the villages and market towns of the Eastern Midlands about two generations ago. Here the types are at once lower and more exalted, while the "professional" outlook is entirely changed. Even the parish of Hogglestock could hold no such tyrants as Snale and Hexton. Crawley warred with Mrs. Proudie and public opinion, not with the vulgar malignity of the more stupid arrogance which exudes from the petty masters of the rural tabernacle in "Mark Rutherford's" books. Probably no more cramping fetters were ever devised for the human soul than the old Calvinist theology, linked to a form of Church government in which the minister's happiness, good fame, and livelihood lay at the mercy of a diaconate of farmers and village drapers. For generations, thousands of sensitive men have groaned under this tyranny, and hundreds have gone down under it. Yet it has been a chief nursery of Liberal politics and social revolt in scores of centres of provincial life. Here are Pecksniff and Chadband, not caricatured, as by their creator, but set down literally and persuasively. Here are the utterly unspiritual types that for centuries kept going the fabric of evangelical Christianity in England. And here is the core of reality and profound religious sentiment which always restored and sweetened it. The present |