believe in them. They were neither happy nor wise, and he saw no reason to believe they would ever become either. "Leave me alone," he cried to the sultry mob, bawling "Wilkes and Liberty.” "I at least am not ashamed to own that I care for neither the one nor the other."

No man, however, resented more fiercely than Johnson any unnecessary interference with men who were simply going their own way. The Highlanders only knew Gaelic, yet political wiseacres were to be found objecting to their having the Bible in their own tongue. Johnson flew to arms: he wrote one of his monumental letters; the opposition was quelled, and the Gael got his Bible. So too the wicked interference with Irish enterprise, so much in vogue during the last century, infuriated him. "Sir," he said to Sir Thomas Robinson, What, sir! would you prevent any people from feeding themselves, if by any honest means they can do so?"

you talk the language of a savage.

Were Johnson to come to life again, total abstainer as he often was, he would I expect denounce the principle involved in " Local Option." I am not at all sure he would not borrow a guinea from a bystander, and become a subscriber to the "Property and Labour Defence League;" and though it is notorious that he never read any book all through, and never could be got to believe that anybody else ever did, he would, I think, read a larger fraction of Mr. Spencer's pamphlet, "Man versus the State," than of any other "recent work in circulation." The state of the Strand, when two vestries are at work upon it, would, I am sure, drive him into open rebellion.

As a letter-writer, Johnson has great merits. Let no man despise the epistolary art. It is said to be extinct. I doubt it. Good letters were always scarce. It does not follow that because our grandmothers wrote long letters, they all wrote good ones, or that nobody nowadays writes good letters because most people write bad ones. Johnson wrote letters in two styles. One was monumental-more suggestive of the chisel than the pen. In the other there are traces of the same style, but, like the old Gothic architecture, it has grown domesticated, and become the fit vehicle of plain tidings of joy and sorrow-of affection, wit, and fancy. The letter to Lord Chesterfield is the most celebrated example of the monumental style. From the letters to Mrs. Thrale many good examples of the domesticated style might be selected. One must suffice::

"Queeney has been a good girl, and wrote me a letter. If Burney said she would write, she told you a fib. She writes nothing to me. She can write home fast enough. I have a good mind not to tell her that Dr. Bernard, to whom I had recommended her novel, speaks of it with great commendation, and that the copy which she lent me has been read by Dr. Lawrence three times over. And yet what a gipsy it is. She no more minds me than if I were a Branghton. Pray, speak to Queeney to write again. . . . . Now you

think yourself the first writer in the world for a letter about nothing. Can you write such a letter as this? So miscellaneous, with such noble disdain of regularity, like Shakspeare's works; such graceful negligence of transition, like the ancient enthusiasts. The pure voice of Nature and of Friendship. Now, of whom shall I proceed to speak? of whom but Mrs. Montague? Having mentioned Shakspeare and Nature, does not the name of Montague force itself upon me? Such were the transitions of the ancients, which now seem abrupt, because the intermediate idea is lost to modern understandings."

But the extract had better end, for there are (I fear) "modern understandings" who will not perceive the "intermediate idea" between Shakspeare and Mrs. Montague, and to whom even the name of Branghton will suggest no meaning.

Johnson's literary fame is, in our judgment, as secure as his character. Like the stone which he placed over his father's grave at Lichfield, and which it is shameful to think has been removed, it is "too massy and strong" to be ever much affected by the wind and weather of our literary atmosphere. "Never," so he wrote to Mrs. Thrale," let criticisms operate upon your face or your mind; it is very rarely that an author is hurt by his critics. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out; but it often dies in the socket. From the author of 'Fitzosborne's Letters' I cannot think myself in much danger. I met him only once, about thirty years ago, and in some small dispute soon reduced him to whistle." Dr. Johnson is in no danger from anybody. None but Gargantua could blow him out, and he still burns brightly in his socket.

How long this may continue who can say? It is a far cry to 1985. Science may by that time have squeezed literature out, and the author of the "Lives of the Poets may be dimly remembered as an odd fellow who lived in the Dark Ages, and had a very creditable fancy for making chemical experiments. On the other hand, the Spiritualists may be in possession, in which case the Cock Lane Ghost will occupy more of public attention than Boswell's hero, who will, perhaps, be reprobated as the profane utterer of these idle words: "Suppose I know a man to be so lame that he is absolutely incapable to move himself, and I find him in a different room from that in which I left him, shall I puzzle myself with idle conjectures, that perhaps his nerves have by some unknown change all at once become effective? No, sir, it is clear how he got into a different room-he was carried."

We here part company with Johnson, bidding him a most affectionate farewell, and leaving him in undisturbed possession of both place and power. His character will bear investigation and some of his books perusal. The latter indeed may be submitted to his own test, and there is no truer one. A book, he wrote, should help us either to enjoy life or to endure it. His frequently do both.

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.

.

THE COLONIAL MOVEMENT IN GERMANY.

THE

It

HE attention of the English public has been drawn during the last few months to a movement that has arisen in Germany for the purpose of acquiring colonial possessions in countries over the sea. This movement is older than these few months, but it would not, perhaps, for a long time even yet have excited any interest among politicians outside Germany, if it had not been shown in the present year that the German Government, and especially the Chancellor of the Empire, was disposed to support the movement with the power of the State. It is quite intelligible that the English public should follow this movement with careful attention, and even with a certain feeling of disquiet, so long as it was still uncertain what importance it might assume for international commerce. is therefore the more desirable to obtain as quickly as possible a clear understanding of the whole bearing of the question. For more than two centuries the German race in Europe has taken the chief part in trans-oceanic colonization and culture. Holland and England have founded the most flourishing and enduring colonies of modern times, and England in particular has, through the advantage of her maritime situation, the development of her fleet, and the mastery she has by long experience acquired in the art of colonizing, risen gradually to the position of undisputed leader in this field. England stands at the head of a movement which has sprung in the first instance no doubt from the enterprise of individuals or of nations, but which is at the same time the outcome and expression of the collective development of Europe. When we speak of colonizing, we always mean the extension of European culture, whether it be done by this or by that member of the family of European peoples, and just as we cannot recognize an equal right on the part of

Chinese or Negroes to found colonies, so we cannot think of an English, Dutch, or French colony as being completely severed from all participation on the part of other European nations. Whatever may happen in this field will always be, within certain limits, of an international character and importance. For nowadays colonies are no longer founded by the migration of peoples, but by the emigration of individuals.

Hence it is that, though Germany never till a few weeks ago had a single square mile of colonial possession, her share in colonization has yet been long a very important one. Her political impotence did not permit her to do what other nations did every year-viz., acquire new territory for the surplus of her population. But meanwhile such a surplus had already existed for long, and had to seek outlets for itself without Government direction. The number and capacity of the German population always permitted a great crowd of Germans to join as private persons in the colonizing movements which were conducted by other countries on State means. Since the Dutch, English, and French settled in North America, Germans have continually shared in the work by which the great colonies of our time have been established there. The United States alone contain to-day more than 11,000,000 Germans, and in the veins of native-born Americans there flows a considerable admixture of German blood. Germans have gone in thousands to other foreign colonies, and contributed to their growth. But no attempt has been made by them in the last hundred years to found an independent colony of their own.

Of course, hardly any European colony of importance has been founded for a long time now by any country except England, and, if we leave Algeria out of sight, it would appear as if the German and Latin peoples of the Continent had in this century lost all expansive power. This fact is due to no hindrance by main force on the part of England, whose long habituation to an exclusive supremacy at sea has certainly produced a certain sensitiveness in the Englishman towards other nations-a sensitiveness which, as it seems to me, flows less from apprehension of future dangers than from satisfaction with the existing situation and the desire to preserve it undisturbed. Nevertheless, it was impossible for England to have caused the standstill of colonization among Continental nations, because England, after her great colonial acquisitions at the beginning of this century, was hardly in a position to do justice to new colonies, and could feel no need for new enterprises of that sort, which would have led to entanglements in Europe. England acquired vast territories in Asia, Australia, Africa, and America without drawing the sword; year after year new ground was always falling subject to the Colonial Office, and she would have been possessed with the spirit

of an irrational child if she sought to employ her already sufficiently taxed powers to prevent a colonization on the part of other nations which involved no danger to herself. England had then as little thought as she has to-day of monopolizing trans-oceanic colonization, nor in truth could she have such a thought.

The explanation of the pause in colonization by the Continental Powers is to be discovered in two other facts. First, in the great absorbing power of the United States, which had no difficulty in receiving almost all the Continental emigration, and, besides, offered better prospects to the emigrant than a new and still unopened territory elsewhere could possibly do. Secondly, in the unsettled and fermenting condition of the chief Continental States at home, which gave themselves up mainly to agitations on theoretical or practical questions of home politics, of constitutions, and the like, and were therefore not favourably disposed either to an expenditure of State resources in trans-oceanic enterprises, or to a great increase of the industry of the country. Now, both these conditions are prerequisites of colonization: you must have a surplus of men in order to found agricultural colonies, and you must have a surplus of industrial products in order to found commercial colonies. And besides, an assured and firmly established political condition at home is necessary for a people who would permanently and independently employ such a surplus of men and products in trans-oceanic colonies.

But while Continental nations have been mainly occupied since the end of the Napoleonic wars in devising or carrying out new arrangements of political life, and while the political world has had its attention engrossed with the situation at home, and never considered how the number of emigrants, especially from Germany, increased year by year, there was all the time in process of development the most powerful incentive that has ever produced a colonizing movement. Since the third decade of our century, the network of railways and telegraphs has continually extended more and more widely over Europe, and one line of steamships after another has connected the shores of Europe with those of other parts of the earth. One consequence of this has been a rapid extension of the market for produce, and a second consequence a great increase of production. People were to all appearance fighting in Europe for nothing but popular rights and political theories, and yet there was growing up all the time a new world of practical forces whose importance was soon to eclipse the world of principles and doctrines. Besides England, continental countries like France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany, pushed into these markets of the world; and if the war of 1870 was kindled by the brand of national ambition, there mingled with the consciousness that the very existence of Germany as a nation was in question, the further consciousness that the fusion and union of the económic