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THE SOUL'S AWAKENING.

Undine speaks:

YESTERDAY.

THE ANTIQUITY OF ART.

(Paleolithic Man.)

TO J. G.

I STAND in the hush of the hastening river, A SAVAGE, in a bleak world, on a waste, Under willows that quiver from grey to

green;

And the dreaming lilies raise fair flower

faces

To touch my knees, from their deep recesses,

The cool clear pools, where the rushes lean.

I fear no care, and I feel no sorrow,
Life, to you mortals so full of pain,
To me goes by as a dream of pleasure,
Like the dancing river, a laughing measure,
And to-day in to-morrow returns again.

And yet, sometimes, as I watch the river
I wonder if life could give something more,
For at whiles I weary of shade and sunlight,
Of all the changes of star and moonlight,
Of the ripples breaking against the shore.

TO-DAY.

What has happened since yesterday?
Was it a God who sat on yon stone

And sang sweet songs to the stream, alone,
While I peeped from under the willows
grey?

And his eyes lit on mine as I wondering stood,

'Midst fir-tree-cover'd mountains, led his life;

The claws and fangs of mighty beasts he

faced

A hunter, seeking food for child and wife.

And, on the smooth wall of his cavern lair,
The image of a reindeer once he drew,
Small, to the life, with faithful lines and
fair,

That all its antler-blanchings copied true.
Was he a savage? No! a Man. The dew
Of pity touch'd him; the sweet brother-

hood

Of Nature's general offspring well he

knew:

Humane, he loved; ingenious, understood.

More the desires that kindling hearts inflame,

To leave dull rest, and court congenial

woe

The love of beauty, and the thirst for fame, Throbb'd faintly in that huntsman long ago!

And his wonderful eyes shone clear and still, And, friend! the self-same passion in his

Like some mountain lake in the heart of a

hill,

Or a pool in the depths of a wood.

breast

That stirr'd, and wrought to permanence divine

And he beckoned me on where the lilies One form of grace, most touchingly ex

Which separates this day from that; the The daisy buds are all uncurled,

From Blackwood's Magazine.
MOBS.

the laws by which the community of which he is a member has bound itself THE year 1893 is a great centenary together. If he wishes to go outside of anniversary. We have no intention of these, he must quit the political society inflicting on our readers a réchauffé of of which they are the rule, and betake the French Revolution, à la Mr. Rigby, himself elsewhere. This well-known or of recalling to them those visions of truth is embodied in the legal maxim the "raw mechanic's bloody thumb," sic utere tuo est alieno non lædas. If the which haunted the pillow of Sir Aylmer representatives of a single class have a Aylmer. But we may fairly choose the right to assemble in large numbers in beginning of the year '93 for saying a the heart of a busy and populous mefew words on the subject of mob vio- tropolis, to the obstruction of ordinary lence, and of the imbecility with which traffic, and to the great annoyance and it has too often been encountered, both inconvenience of peaceable and indusin this country and others, both before trious citizens, the government which and after the great convulsion of a hun-represents all classes has at least an dred years ago. In the winter of 1793, equal right to interfere when the obthe Reign of Terror was at its height struction and annoyance have passed a in Paris. In the previous August the certain limit and reached a height at Tuileries had been stormed by the mob, which they put a stop to public busiand Louis XVI. and royal family sent ness. When that point has been passed prisoners to the Temple. This was is a question for governments to defollowed by the massacres of the pris- termine; but if they allow it to be oners. In September the National transgressed with impunity, they make Convention met for the first time, and decreed the abolition of royalty, and as a king had now become useless, in the following January he was murdered. That the reform of the French government might have been accomplished without these atrocities is now universally admitted. That it was not so accomplished seems to have been exclusively due to the weakness of the government, and the toleration of popular excesses till they had got beyond all control.

But

As no

themselves answerable for consequences which, if they have ever contemplated, they must have believed to be impossible; and it will be partly the object of this paper to point out the folly of any such belief, and to show with what startling suddenness impunity begets audacity, till what began as a common riot may end in an attempted revolution. The original purpose with which a large crowd is gathered together, and the particular objects which the orators who address them have in view, may If we commence this article with some be either culpable or laudable. remarks which seem to savor of tru- that makes no difference in regard to isms, our readers should remember that the risks which they involve. there are numerous precepts and max- chain is stronger than its weakest link, ims, both political, social, and religious, so it may truly be said that no mob is of which the world, although perfectly safer than its worst elements. The familiar with them, requires to be from more well-disposed among the crowd time to time reminded, as circumstances have no control over these, and can arise investing them with fresh signifi- neither prevent them from following in The inalienable rights of man, procession nor from taking advantage for example, is a phrase to which no of the confusion and possibly the darksensible person attaches any real impor-ness which may ensue to carry out detance. But foolish people may occa-signs of their own with which the main sionally make it necessary to repeat that body of the meeting has no sympathy. in a civilized community the rights of Every great open-air meeting is atman mean only his rights as a citizen tended by a contingent of this character, those, that is, which he can exercise the camp-followers of the regular army, without injury to others, or violation of ready for any mischief, and only re

cance.

The

strained from committing it by the vigi- | the people, seeing that they possessed in the lance and activity of a small body of popular House of Parliament an assembly, men, which cannot always be adequate whose vote, given however hastily, could to the occasion, or guard every weak effect the most revolutionary change. point. mass of our people were, however, well disposed, and would listen with respect to the views of those in other classes. It was well to remember that upon the wisdom, the good sense, and the self-restraint of the masses rested this splendid edifice, and that everything we could do to bring political knowledge and judgment within the reach of the masses was now more than ever called for.

we use

or

The thieves and ruffians who hang about the great open-air meetings in London, and have no other objects in view than plunder, liquor, and destruction, the pillage of shops, the breaking of windows, and the pleasure of insulting or robbing well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, may no doubt be the occasion of great loss, terror, and anxiety to those whom the law is for the moment This is to say, in other words, that we unable to protect; and we presume it have no constitutional backbone will be admitted by the more sane and power of resistance left; that the monrational section of the Radical party archy, the Church, and the aristocracy, that even mere life and property are our commercial credit, our colonial emthings to be protected from violence pire, and our place among the nations, if it can be done without too great an exist only upon sufferance, and at the abridgment of the rights and liberties mercy of a class who, in moments of of the masses. But we readily admit excitement, are at the mercy of the that the modern English mob worst among them. Not all the eduthe word in no disrespectful sense, but cation in the world will prevent the simply as the readiest to hand-has respectable people who assemble in ideas above those of mere riot. We Trafalgar Square from giving place in know that its leaders would prevent if the day of battle to the more reckless they could anything in the shape of and brutalized spirits who flock in from vulgar disorder, which only serves to the slums of Whitechapel, or from put society on its guard, and indefinitely submitting to whatever leader shall postpone the golden age which they suggest the most daring and criminal anticipate. But what we have to conundertaking. These are the men sider is this, that the roughs and rogues, apologize again for repeating such a however sincerely disowned and reputruism- these are the men who always diated in the beginning, might be found come to the front in times of turbulence, highly useful allies in the end-in the and who have shown us over and over event, that is, of a real conflict with the again the folly of waiting to take preauthorities; and that desperate individ-cautions until they have appeared upon uals, who are never wanting on such occasions, might use them as instruments for carrying disturbance so far as to bring us within reach of changes which we do not feel called upon to 'specify.

Speaking only the other day in London, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster is reported to have said that In England democracy had surrounded itself with fewer checks and safeguards than in any other country: the venerable throne

still remained, and served to conceal the greatness of the changes that had taken place; but no institution could now withstand any general demand of the mass of

the scene.

we

If Mr. Bryce is driven to make the admissions contained in the above extract, we shall hardly be thought to have exceeded the bounds of moderation either in what we have said or in what we are about to say. In fact, we do not go so far as Mr. Bryce. We do not believe that it is within the power of a hasty vote of the House of Commons to sweep away all our institutions

"the splendid fabric," as Mr. Bryce well calls it, bequeathed to us by our ancestors. We believe that the numerous and powerful body who represent the intelligence and the property,

the great traditions and the splendid | impunity, attempting to change the history of Great Britain, backed up as constitution. When we cease to be asthey would be by a large section of sured of this, the situation is altered. the working classes, have still in their But it is not merely the victory of the hands the means of repelling such at- mob that is to be feared. Any collision tacks upon our existing political and at all, either with the police or the milsocial system as Mr. Bryce is here sup-itary, entailing bodily injuries or loss of posing, if they only have the courage life upon the combatants, would make and foresight to be wise in time, and to look full in the face the contingencies which he here foreshadows.

the defeat of the rioters only a shade less disastrous than their triumph. It should be our object to prevent a conflict, however sure we may be that the police will be successful; and that is only to be done by taking care that the mob never gets out of hand in the first instance, and that the conditions prescribed by the government are steadily enforced.

A

The hands of the executive have been very much strengthened by the creation of the police force. When it was necessary to employ soldiers to deal with any ordinary riot, it is hardly to be wondered at if disorder was often permitted to reach a great height be→ fore it was suppressed. There was a natural reluctance in England to call out the troops for such a purpose. standing army was one of the most unpopular appendages of the most unpopular dynasty in our annals, and under the two first Georges, and even in the reign of Anne, no Whig government felt anxious to employ it. But now that we have no such reason for hesitating to employ a quite different kind of force in the suppression of popular tumults, there is no excuse for any government which neglects to do its duty to the public.

Mobs may be divided roughly into three classes. There are those which have their origin in the conduct, or the treatment, of obnoxious or popular individuals, as the case may be, such as Sacheverell, Porteous, Wilkes, Queen Caroline. Secondly, there are those, and these, of course, the most numerous, which are caused exclusively by the action of the legislature in either maintaining or enacting what the people consider bad laws, or in refusing what they consider good ones. Mobs of this kind were the Excise mob in 1733, the Gordon riots in 1780, the Reform riots of 1820, 1831, and 1866, and the Press riots and Reform riots in France in 1830 and 1848. The third class of mobs, mobs which are in their inception and original design political and revolutionary, and instigated by persons aiming at the destruction of governments and a fundamental change in the condition of society, began, we may say, with the first French Revolution. But mobs of the second kind may easily become mobs of the third, either through the mismanagement of the authorities, or by the action of political and social anarchists who see Although the mobs of the eighteenth their opportunity, and have the skill century led to very lamentable results, and boldness to make use of it. As no they were attended by little or no politEnglish mob of this class has ever ical danger, because they almost always achieved anything approaching even to reflected the opinions of a considerable a momentary success, we have been body of the public, and often of a secright in despising them, and in laugh- tion of the aristocracy who took good ing at those who apprehended any seri- care to keep them clear of democratic ous danger from them. But we are tendencies. This is eminently true of only right in so doing as long as we the Sacheverell mob in 1709. The govknow that with all parties alike the ernment had made Sacheverell a marprinciple of authority is safe; and that tyr, and the working classes who were it will never be so far neglected as to Churchmen and Tories were easily inallow of a mob assuming more formi-duced to get up a demonstration in his dable proportions, and, emboldened by favor. According to Burnet, whose