articles of wearing apparel lay on the But there was no need for her to be announced, a door opened beyond the outer office where they stood, and a voice with some slight American intonation said outside in the corridor, " "Good-night, Mr. Finacane."

It was late at the office to which she had been directed, and the lift man had gone home, but she tramped up a long flight of stairs and found a clerk waiting also to go home, but his master was still there, engaged with some one; it was too late for him to see any one else that evening. "At any rate you can take my name Saturday Review." The Saturday has in ?"

ably; life has become more complex; affairs of interest are much more numerous than they were; and so are the minds which are concerned in one or another set of them, or in a few sets, or in all. It is only necessary to state those things in order to realize that the weekly review must certainly have been undergoing some modification of character. It is easier, however, to per

that if the National Observer and the | much larger; the " reading public Speaker were a little older we should has been expanding even more remarkhear of palmy days from which they also had descended. The palmy-days doctrine must be depressing to any one who has to do with the institution to whose history it is applied; but he should note, with thankfulness, that it is charged with a certain unstinting, and even indiscriminate, generosity. There is no periodical, from Punch upwards and downwards, to which, if only it is old enough, the great heart of the peo-ceive that there must have been a ple refuses the credit of having had palmy days. That reflection, however, is consolatory only. What we have to confront is the assertion that our weekly reviews have deteriorated.

Have they?

modification than to perceive what the modification exactly is. The commonplace apprehensions on that subject are absurd. To say of any review that it is not now so influential as it used to be, and to assume that therefore it is less It is not impossible that they have. talented than it was, is to be confused. Arts of all kinds are capable of being The review may be not so influential lost, and perhaps there is none of which relatively; but there is no reason for it would be safe to say that it will believing that it is less influential absolive satisfactorily forever. The case of lutely. It may influence a smaller part bailad-writing is a case in point. We of the whole "reading public," which are told that there is no one who can has enlarged so remarkably; but it is write a ballad now. That is true. The pretty certain that the publisher's books Border minstrelsy is as distinctly dead would show the circulation to be as as the Latin tongue. It, or a minstrelsy large as ever. Besides, it is inaccurate akin to it, might come to flickering life to compare the talent and the influence if Cobbett's ghost and Mr. Greenwood of any review thirty years ago with its managed to persuade us to betake our- talent and its influence now. The true selves to rural walks and to the condi- comparison is between the talent and tions which produce the elemental the influence of the old Saturday Reheroisms and tragedies of mankind; but | view, on the one hand, and the comin the mean time minstrelsy is dead. bined talents and influences of that It is dead because, as is implicit in our statement of the circumstances amid which it might revive, we have emerged from the state of society in which life afforded materials for the ballad-monger. Even as a sonnet would be impossible if passion were eliminated from the human mind, a ballad is out of the question when most of us live in cities, and the movements of the rest are regulated by county police. It is conceivable, then, as we have said, that weekly reviewing is a lost art. If the conditions amid which the reviewer works have changed, it is probable that the reviewer is not writing as he wrote twenty or thirty years ago.

The conditions have changed very greatly. The population has become

periodical and of all its latter-day contemporaries of the same class, on the other. In reality, that is to say, the Saturday, the Spectator, the National Observer, and the Speaker, together stand in the relation to life and letters exactly as the Saturday alone stood in the old time. Together they give scope to practically all the varied aptitudes for weekly reviewing which the age has called forth, just as the Saturday alone used to represent the same class of talents in the less variegated time now known as its "palmy days." Together these four reviews discuss all the topics of the day, and represent all the intellectual moods and tastes of the day, exactly as the Saturday used to do. Together they overtake and influence a

"reading public" which, relatively to | ics of public moment, which nowadays
the public at large, is probably exactly arise at the rate of three each twenty-
the same as that to which the Saturday four hours on the average, were numer-
used to minister alone. In other words, ous then when they were three a
instead of having a Saturday Review month. Any literary pronouncement,
four times as large as it used to be, so therefore, was, whatsoever its merit, a
as to meet the subjective and the objec- novelty, and had a good chance of be-
tive necessities of the nation's devel- coming the talk of the town and of the
opment, we have now four Saturday country. That the essay-writing, the
reviews busily doing the work which reviewing, of that age was an activity
the great.original, if it had been me- so conspicuous was due simply to those
chanically and mentally and spiritually conditions. Society was addressed by
possible for it to have adequately grown two or three pens for every two or
with the times, might now have been three hundred which claim its attention
doing unaided. There are other con- now; and, being under no obligation to
siderations in the light of which those discuss affairs so endless as those which
who say that weekly reviewing has we have to study now, the periodicals
lost talent and influence are seen to be of that day were characterized by a
making an absurd assumption. They leisure and a concentration of mind
assume either that there is now less which rendered them, like Roman
talent in the country, or that editors of bricks, enduring. Their fame, how-
reviews have less command of what ever, is apt to mislead us in our surveys
there is. Neither assumption will bear of the history of journalism. If the
a moment's consideration. It is noto- pens at work then had been as many
rious that men of high literary accom- as those which are at work now, the lit-
plishment are much more numerous erary products of that time, it may be
than they ever were; the combined supposed, would not be held in such
staffs of our four reviews are at least as high esteem. Much of the work would
strong, relatively to the mass of the have been as good as the essays in
people, as the staff of the original Sat-"The Spectator" and in "The Tatler,”
urday was. Also it is notorious that and the commonplaceness of its merit
since Mr. Payn published his alluring would have rendered the whole of it
estimate of journalism as a profession,
many more men of parts have been
offering their services to the editors
than the editors have been able to find
work for.

What has really happened is that, besides having fallen under the law which produces division of labor in any industry when the conditions under which that industry is carried on become complex, weekly reviewing has, for reasons which will become manifest as we go on, changed its tone, its temper, and even, to some extent, its character and its purpose.

unimportant to posterity. Now, the
state of society in the palmy days of
modern reviewing was simply the state
of it in Addison's time, modified so
little that it was possible for weekly
journals to be leisurely, expository, and
comprehensive. The reviews were
leisurely because the age was leisurely,
expository because there were few
morning journals to expound all cur-
rent topics in leading articles, and
comprehensive because there were not
so many topics to comprehend. They
cannot have those qualities now. Af-
fairs, as we have remarked, have
multiplied and become infinitely more
complex; politics, social life, econom-

In the days of the original "Spectator" and "The Tatler," to which we refer in order to obtain the most strik-ics, and all other subjects of human ing possible contrast with our own age, concern, which used to be contentedly it was comparatively easy for an essay- considered in the light of simple prinist to make a great impression. The ciples are now adrift from all generally society of that leisurely period was not accepted principles whatsoever; jourmuch given to critical reflection. Top-nalistic teachers and preachers are

shouting in scores all over the land | cation, or of ignorance, is inextricably every morning, every evening, and, warped into all of them. Take, for indeed, every hour of the day. We are example, our politics. Those of us who all, whether we will or not, full of a are Tories are hostile to the Radicals feverish haste to have our minds in- less because Radicalism errs in matters formed and made up on every subject of fact and in logic than because we within an hour after it has arisen. The resent the humorless, or splenetic, or weekly reviews have adapted them- highly moral temper of its average selves to those new conditions. They apostle; less because we distrust progused to state the geneses of the ques-ress than because we are instinctively tions which had to be discussed and averse from Roundheads, consuming decided. Nowadays, as we have noted, earnestness, and the Nonconformist the exposition of current topics is dif- conscience. Those of us who are Radfused by morning and evening journals icals are anti-Tory because our taste reso widely that the weeklies take it for pels us from Toryism. We are willing to granted that their readers know all the disintegrate the empire less because we facts. It might not be quite right to believe in Home Rule than because our say that they deal exclusively with the opponents are snobs or morally wicked. questions of taste which are involved in Our ecclesiastical attachments also are the political, social, and other matters determined by our taste. Protestants which the daily newspapers treat as are anti-Papists less because they have questions of practical reason. The fault to find with the exegesis of Catholweekly reviews do not lend themselves icism than for some such reason as that to definement and generalization. the influence which the peasant priests Nevertheless, we should, perhaps, wield in Ireland is a social affront. come as near the truth as is possible by that means if we said that the reviews are now less concerned that their readers should hold sound opinions than that they should hold those opinions in a certain temper. Their manner, which used to be that of the lecturer, expository, grave, is now that of the club gossip or other agreeable rattle, bantering, cynical, distinguished. That is why, like Radical legislators raised to the peerage, and like Pall Mall clubs founded to promote reform, weekly reviews inevitably end in Toryism. It is in the nature of things impossible for men of brains, education, and character, to go into reflective detachment from "the wordy trucklings of the transient hour" and yet remain faithful to the Radicals. Our point, however, is that the new function of the reviews is to set the fashion in matters of intellectual moods and taste; and that that function is as important as their old one, which was primarily to keep the public free from error in matters of fact.

The saying that opinions are a matter of taste is more profoundly true than we realize. The bias which comes of hereditary likes and dislikes, or of edu

Those of us who are disgusted when earnest Protestants rave at the pope are moved less by respect for the history of the ancient Church, which is abominable, than by resentment of the arrogance of the Protestants, whose history, which is brief, is comparatively lacking in color and romance. Even our artistic opinions are determined by our taste. The many of us who know nothing of pictures worshipped Mr. Ruskin when his criticism held the field; we regard him both in sorrow and in anger now, when Mr. Whistler's theories are in the ascendant, and the picture which tells a story or conveys a moral is out of fashion. In short, practically all our opinions, whether they are sound or they are unsound, are the result less of cold judgment than of imperious prejudice. That seems a deplorable confession to make at the end of the nineteenth century; but, after all, we need not be very much ashamed of it. They err who suppose that in our warfare in behalf of opinions we are seeking after truth with single eyes. The bald end of any effort is never attractive. The sportsman stalks the red deer because of the joy of stalking; he has no joy

whatever in actually slaying the stag. | contributors to the Spectator have a Similarly, we know, on the testimony of uniformity in the processes of thought,

all philosophers, that as regards truth which is a much stranger phenomenon the fun of the thing lies wholly in the than any uniformity in manner of exsearch for it; if we attained it, we pression. All of them write gravely, should be bored to death. Our theoret- decorously, almost as if playfulness ical desire for truth, therefore, is wisely were a cardinal sin; they have a trick frustrated by a practical resolution, at of pulling us up, frequently, by some the instance of our tastes, to have none striking parenthesis relevant to a subof it, since it is likely to be disagreeable | ject other than that which is under or uninteresting. To defend this state discussion; and a luminous haze of of affairs would be to defend human metaphysics is over all. The Speaker, nature, and, therefore, as human nature which is young, has its character still to is not assailed, to be battling with the form. At present its airs and graces wind; but one may remark, for the sake resemble those of the Spectator; but of lucidity, that we are sensuous as well the similarity is outward only. The as sensible beings, and that our sen- Speaker gives one the impression of suous instincts have as much right to be | being highly self-conscious that weekly exercised as our purely practical appe-reviewers who can make modern Radtite for fact has right to be appeased. icalism presentable must be very supeGentlemen of sovran intellect, like the calculating boy and the lamented Mr. Calvin, are quite as monstrous as gentlemen who have no intellect at all. The proper men, of course, are they in whom feeling, thought, and taste are blent in natural proportions.

To these, after a week of the Times, the Standard, the Daily News, and other daily journals, with their strenuous outpourings of practical instruction on the questions of the day, the weekly reviews are grateful. They have a different manner, a different tone. They are in a more soothing accord with our mental nature; for, with their cynical gaiety, they are more nearly in accord with the whole of it.

rior persons indeed. The National Observer also is at a very interesting stage of development. Like all journals of its class, it has a style of its own, a style unmistakable; but it is not yet quite certain what principles the style is to enshrine. Paganism, which is the National Observer's creed for the moment, is not incompatible with Toryism in the abstract. Indeed, Toryism being based on the theory that the people have to be governed, and that their say in the matter should be the smallest possible, a pagan autocracy, an autocracy troubled by no scruples such as are apt to arise in the minds of religious politicians, would exemplify Toryism in its best estate. England, however, hapOf course, the manner and the tone pens to be traditionally anti-pagan, and of each of the reviews are in certain our leading Tories happen to be Highcharacteristic respects its own. The Churchmen. This complicates the probSaturday, so similar is the style of each lem of life for the National Observer, article in it to that of every other, reads which, if it were to speak its mind with as if it had been written from begin- unshackled pen, would become indistinning to end by the same pen. Every guishable from the National Reformer sentence is like a dart; every paragraph has rapid movement; and every article has the air of having been written for the amusement of the writer's learned leisure rather than for the consideration of anybody else. The individuality of the Spectator is equally definitive. The homogeneity of the writing in that journal is even more wonderful than that of the writing in the Saturday. The

of Mr. Bradlaugh. That is only one of the difficulties from which the Tory review suffers in its lusty youth. The spirit of the National Observer is that of revolt against convention. The middle class, therefore, has to be seen to. Twenty years ago the seeing-to could have been gone about in what Mr. Jim Pinkerton would call whole-souled thoroughness, for at that time the middle